this study analyzed the responses of masters and doctoral counseling students to two domestic violence scenarios couples counseling in domestic violence 1 endorsement of couples counseling in a domestic violence case as a function of training mona bapat and terence tracey college of education arizona state university biographical information: mona bapat is a doctoral candidate in the counseling psychology program at arizona state university. her primary research focus is on issues of intimate partner violence. terence tracey is a professor in the counseling and counseling psychology programs at arizona state university. his research efforts have focused on the topics of client-therapist interaction in psychotherapy. correspondence should be addressed to: mona bapat, division of psychology in education, 302 payne hall, mc-0611 arizona state university, tempe, az 85287-0611. email: mbapat@asu.edu. mailto:mbapat@asu.edu.� couples counseling in domestic violence 2 abstract reactions of students in helping professions to domestic violence were examined with respect to whether or not the students had any training in domestic violence. one hundred, four students read one of two vignettes describing a domestic violence case and responded to statements related to treatment options. the vignettes differed only in education level and occupation of the target of the violence. students with training in domestic violence evidenced less willingness to endorse couples counseling as a treatment option than those without the knowledge or training. this main effect held across both ses conditions. couples counseling in domestic violence 3 endorsement of couples counseling in a domestic violence case as a function of training domestic violence is an extremely prevalent problem and one that is important for mental health professionals to understand. kragh and huber (2002) summarize that “over two million united states women are abused each year by their husbands or partners and as many as four thousand women are killed during these batterings” (p. 290). thus, it is probable that every mental health worker will at some point in his or her career work with a client who has been involved in a violent relationship (hansen & harway, 1993). therefore, knowledge and training in the area of domestic violence appear to be needed in order for mental health professionals to help targets of violence most effectively. however, there has been little research evaluating the relation of training in domestic violence and interventions used in domestic violence cases. the focus of this study is on the relation between reactions to a domestic violence situation and the level of training in domestic violence of the mental health professional. we were most interested in endorsement of different treatment options, specifically couples counseling. in addition to our assessment of the relation of training to intervention endorsement, we also focused on the potentially confounding variable of socio-economic status (ses) of the target. although males can certainly be targets of domestic violence from female perpetrators, we will focus on trainees’ reactions to a domestic violence scenario with a female target in a heterosexual relationship, given that females are more likely to seek help for the abuse (graham-kevan & archer, 2005; koopmans & lamers, 2006). in working with domestic violence, the potential of increased harm can quickly arise and requires attention. domestic violence involves the perpetrator’s effort to control his partner (azcadv, 2000; mcmurran & gilchrist, 2008); therefore, there is the potential for violence to increase, especially if she attempts to leave. in other words, the possibility of her leaving his couples counseling in domestic violence 4 control could lead him to use greater violence in an attempt to get her to stay. further, challenging times for families, such as the current financial crisis, could contribute to an increase of harm to targets of domestic violence. the national domestic violence hotline reported a 21% increase in calls in september of 2008 (beginning of the financial crisis) compared to the same month in 2007 and callers reported the financial stress as a factor associated with the violence in september of 2008 (sotelo, 2009). however, the literature documents that the focus of practitioners on decreasing harm to the women is not always a primary focus. in a survey of 362 therapists conducted by hansen and harway (1993), 40% of the practitioners failed to address the issue of violence in a hypothetical case and 91% of those who addressed the conflict inappropriately considered it to be mild or moderate. in a second study conducted by hansen and harway (1993), the single most common response by psychologists when presented with a rather extreme case of violence was focusing on the couple’s marital problems. furthermore, with knowledge of the lethal outcome of the case, only 50% of the participants indicated that their intervention of choice was to seek protection for the wife. so it is important to recognize these dangerous situations and choose an appropriate intervention that decreases harm to the target. use of couples counseling in domestic violence cases anecdotal data have shown that mental health professionals believe couples counseling can be the solution in domestic violence (montreal men against sexism, 1995); in addition, the us air force family advocacy program provides various services in response to spousal abuse, of which marital therapy is most frequent (o’leary, 2001). however, marital therapy it is not a recommended intervention in the literature, particularly when the partners are engaged in physical violence. both mcmahon and pence (1996) and hansen and goldberg (1993) suggest couples counseling in domestic violence 5 that couples counseling can be effective; however, only when the couple is no longer engaging in violent transactions. montreal men against sexism (1995) conducted a study in which at sixweek follow-up, half of the couples with domestic violence that received conjoint therapy reported violent incidents, and at six months, all couples that were in conjoint therapy reported further violence. while there was no control group in this study, it does provide some support for the treatment recommendations noted above. regardless, couples counseling as an automatic treatment recommendation needs to be carefully considered. couples counseling involves helping the couple to identify and reach goals, just as in individual counseling. in order for couples counseling to be effective, one partner cannot feel threatened by the other, and in general there would need to be an agreement on the problem for which the couple is seeking help. in cases of domestic violence, there will likely be a disagreement between the partners on the nature of the problem. domestic violence is one partner trying to control the other so abuse perpetrators often blame their partners for issues, or do not acknowledge that a problem exists (azcadv, 2000), and out of fear women may not openly express themselves in the presence of their partner. montreal men against sexism (1995) state that one result of conjoint therapy with domestic violence is that “therapy can end up mimicking the batterer’s rationale for his violence.” williamson (2000) also recommends that couples counseling be avoided and to instead work with the woman to improve her situation. there are a number of possible outcomes if couples counseling is recommended or used when a woman seeks help for domestic violence, and we will list some of the main ones. one, the couple may not return for another session due to the perpetrator’s lack of acknowledgement of any problem. hansen and goldberg (1993) state that some research shows that helping the perpetrator develop insight into his responsibility for the violence fails to reduce the violence or couples counseling in domestic violence 6 change his behavior. two, the perpetrator could become more abusive because his partner has exposed their situation to an outside party or three, the couple may continue to attend therapy and the perpetrator, given his desire for control, will attempt to control the sessions and misuse guidance provided by the counselor to further abuse at home. o’leary and murphy (1999) state that in cases where the violence has become more severe and more male perpetrated, couple therapy may perpetuate a severe imbalance of power. finally, there exists the possibility that the perpetrator will not agree to go to counseling at all. consequently, attempting only to work with the woman in individual counseling is the preferred intervention because it gives her time for herself in a safe environment to deal with the situation. as a side note, in working with male perpetrators of partner violence or when identifying a strategy for reducing partner violence on a macro scale in our society, batterers intervention programs (bips) have shown to have a significant impact in alleviating abusive behavior in intimate relationships (bennett et al., 2007). however, “50% of the participants never complete the program, regardless of whether or not they are court-ordered” (bennett et al., 2007, p. 42), which further supports the importance for mental health professionals to focus on targets of violence who ask for help and what they can do to deal with the situation. training of mental health practitioners we expected that the presence of training in the area of domestic violence would be related to mental health workers reactions to domestic violence situations. we define training in this study as technical training, as received in a formal course. the literature has demonstrated that there is an absence of training in working with domestic violence cases among mental health workers. campbell, raja and grining (1999) found that of 14,119 licensed counselors, social workers, clinical social workers or clinical/counseling psychologists they surveyed, only 59% of couples counseling in domestic violence 7 them had training in domestic violence. such lack of training could lead to responses to domestic violence situations that are not in the best interest of the client, or could even cause her harm. we hypothesized that these results of hansen and harway (1993) could come in part from a lack of specific training. we thus sought to examine if the presence of formal training resulted in treatment endorsements that may be more protective of the woman, specifically a decreased tendency to endorse couples counseling. socio-economic status and domestic violence in addition to the presence of training, we examined the factor of socio-economic status (ses) of the women in the vignettes. although the literature does not provide any information on mental health professionals’ perceptions of domestic violence in relation to ses of targets, one misconception is that domestic violence only occurs in lower ses populations. shapiro (1984) states in his chapter about working with people experiencing domestic violence that, “frequently there was a need to hide the abuse from public view. secretiveness was strengthened by concern with public opinion and fears of damage to social standing and occupational status” (p. 116). shapiro (1984) goes on further to say that some therapists can “reflect a customary middle-class abhorrence of violence” (p.118), implying that there can be a denial of the existence of family violence by and within the middle-class population. nevertheless, for shapiro (1984) the family violence that was seamless to outsiders was the most frequent type in his clinic, and adragna (1991) has found that 22% of the divorces in middle-class marriages are attributable to domestic violence. therefore, even though domestic violence exists in all ses classes, it is possible that the perception of a relation between domestic violence and social class could affect decisions of practitioners. mental health professionals may use different interventions with targets of a higher couples counseling in domestic violence 8 ses than with those of a lower ses. because a woman is of a higher ses and possibly in a stronger financial position to be on her own, a mental health worker may view her situation as less grave than that of a woman of lower ses. the professional may expect this woman to be more intelligent and to be able to leave the relationship more easily. therefore, if the client remains in the relationship, the helping professional may believe that the couple is simply having marital conflict that can be alleviated with couples counseling. however, her situation can be just as severe as that of a woman of a lower social status, with various factors hindering her ability to escape. furthermore, contrary to a misconception that domestic violence only entails physical abuse, it also entails verbal, emotional and financial abuse (tolman, rosen & wood, 1999). examples of financial abuse include the target’s partner taking her money, or putting more financial responsibility on her, so she may still not have complete control of her financial resources (azcadv, 2000). however, given the potentially greater financial wherewithal of women in higher ses groups, we expected that study participants would recommend couples counseling more highly for the woman of higher ses. in summary, given the lack of education in domestic violence received by mental health professionals, and the amount of controversy in utilizing couples counseling as an intervention in domestic violence cases, it is important to empirically measure the perceptions held by students in helping professions and to determine the extent to which they would endorse couples counseling. we expected those with no training in domestic violence to more highly endorse couples counseling for the couple in the vignettes than those with training in the area, and that this endorsement would be greater for the woman of high ses. we have examined the relationship between these two factors and the students’ level of endorsement of the following couples counseling in domestic violence 9 treatment options: going to a shelter, group counseling, individual counseling and couples counseling. method participants the study participants were 104 male and female undergraduate and graduate students taking classes in the education college of a large southwestern university. these classes included counseling, counseling psychology and various education classes. eight-three percent were female and 17% were male. our sample included individuals ranging from 20 to 60 years of age with a mean age of 30 years. sixty percent were graduate students and five percent were undergraduates; 35% did not report their year in school. further demographic details of the participants are presented in tables 1 and 2. table 1 has participants’ religious affiliation in addition to gender and major. table 2 has ethnicity and marital status. table 1 study participant gender, major and religious affiliation _____________________________________________________________________________________ gender school major religious affiliation _____________ ________________________________ _________________________________ male female psychology unidentified christian none other unidentified grad undergrad _____________________________________________________________________________________ 17 83 59 1 40 38.2 13.2 15.2 33.4 ____________________________________________________________________________ note. vales are percentages based on 104 total participants. couples counseling in domestic violence 10 table 2 study participant ethnicity and marital status _____________________________________________________________________________________ ethnicity marital status _________________________________________________ _______________________________ white hispanic asian black other unidentified single married unidentified _____________________________________________________________________________________ 66 9 6 4 10 5 50 18.4 31.6 ____________________________________________________________________________ note. percentages based on 104 total participants. instrument each student completed a survey that we created. the survey included a two-paragraph description of an abusive scenario adapted from wise and bowman (1997), five statements that were rated on a likert-type scale, and a demographic section. the two scenarios were identical except for the manipulation of the educational level and occupation of the target. the text of the first vignette was: josephine smith has contacted your agency. she requests help after an incident with her husband that left her with a cut on her right hand. ms. smith, a 35-year-old college instructor with a master’s degree in chemistry, tells you her story. she had arrived home in the evening after teaching a late-afternoon class, spent some time with her 10 year-old and 15 year-old daughters, and started preparing dinner. approximately ten minutes later, her husband, mark smith (an engineer), arrived home from work and became angry because dinner was not yet ready. he walked into the couples counseling in domestic violence 11 kitchen yelling that he has things to do and that dinner should be ready on time, then picked up a knife and threw it at her. as josephine started crying and treating her wound, mark left the house. the following morning, she called the “life help agency.” for the second scenario, “college instructor” was replaced with “cashier in department store”, “master’s degree in chemistry” was replaced with “who has never attended college” and “after teaching a late-afternoon class” was replaced with “after working late.” after reading the vignettes, the participants rated five statements on a likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). these statements were related to the treatment recommendations that the participant would give to the woman in the vignette as though they were an employee of life help agency, specifically: individual counseling, group counseling, couples counseling, and going to a shelter. for example, one statement read “i recommend couples counseling for josephine and her husband.” in addition, to test the validity of the ses manipulation, study participants responded to the question “josephine is intelligent.” if participants are attending to the two conditions, then they should rate the intelligence of josephine higher in the college instructor condition than in the cashier condition. the treatment recommendations and validity check statement are presented in table 1. in addition, we asked each participant the question “have you had any knowledge or training in partner violence?” to which they were to respond yes or no. procedure students taking various counseling and education courses were recruited to fill out the survey and the surveys were administered in the classrooms with minimal instruction. the first author attended classes with instructor permission and explained to the classes in a general way that the study would be surveying students’ reactions to a hypothetical domestic violence couples counseling in domestic violence 12 situation. the first author attended the classes toward the end of class time and explained that participation was voluntary. this way those students who chose to not participate were able to leave while others stayed to complete the survey. some instructors participated in the college’s research protocol that facilitated undergraduate participation in various research projects for extra credit. the first author also attended these classes to announce the study and, according to protocol, arranged times in a reserved classroom in which students could come to fill out the survey for extra credit. each student read only one of the two possible vignettes. the first author attended the classes with a stack of the surveys with the vignettes alternating, and randomly passed out surveys to each student from the top of the stack. the students were simply told that they would be reading a short vignette describing a situation of domestic violence and answering questions in response to it. the informed consent letter only told the students that the study will help determine domestic violence-related education needed, and did not indicate the factors to be analyzed. this letter was placed on top of the surveys so that the author could not match faces with handwriting, to ensure anonymity of the participants. to ensure independence of the participants’ responses, the first author was present in the classrooms and observed that students did not discuss the survey with each other and completed it on their own. study results were not purposely shared with participants but they were encouraged to approach the authors if they were interested in seeing them, or if they had any questions regarding the study. analysis we first conducted a univariate analysis of variance at an alpha level of .05 to test our ses manipulation. then, given that we expected students’ responses to the four statements of treatment options to be related to each other, we conducted a multivariate analysis of variance couples counseling in domestic violence 13 test with the four treatment options as the dependent variables. the two fixed factors of training and ses had two levels; target ses was either “instructor” or “cashier,” and training in domestic violence was “yes” or “no.” given that we found the manova analysis to be significant (indicating a difference between levels of endorsement of the four treatments), we conducted post-hoc individual univariate analyses so that we could compare the significance of the level of endorsement of the four different treatment recommendations. this allowed us to see how participants’ level of endorsement of couples counseling differed with respect to training and ses versus the other treatments of individual counseling, group counseling and shelter. results with our first univariate test as a manipulation check at an alpha level of .05, the effect of ses was significant, f(1,103) = 23.04, p < .001. the observed power of this test was .99. effect size of the difference between the two conditions was measured with eta-squared (η2) and was found to be .18, a large size in the social sciences. thus, participants very highly perceived the college instructor as more intelligent than the cashier, so they seem to have recognized the intended difference between the two conditions. these results are summarized in table 3. twenty-six percent of our sample reported having some training in domestic violence, 43% reported no training, and 32% of the respondents did not report their training level. with our manova analysis, the training effect was significant, f(4,97) = 4.59, p < .005. this test had an observed power of .94 and another high effect size of .16. this indicated that the level of endorsement of each treatment recommendation was significantly different from the others. thus we conducted post hoc univariate analyses given that the manova showed a difference in level of endorsement between the four treatments. the results of the post hoc univariate analyses are couples counseling in domestic violence 14 summarized in table 3. the interaction effect between training and ses was not significant, f(4, 97) = .94, p > .05. table 3 univariate anova results across participant training and target ses effects ______________________________________________________________________________ target ses training statement _________________ ________________ df f η2 df f η2 ______________________________________________________________________________ recommend going to a shelter. 1,103 4.66 .04 1,103 4.10 .04 recommend group counseling. 1,103 .04 .00 1,103 4.97 .04 recommend individual counseling. 1,103 .01 .00 1,103 4.60 .04 recommend couples counseling. 1,103 2.03 .02 1,103 13.92* .11 she is intelligent. 1,103 22.36** .18 ______________________________________________________________________________ *p = .001, **p < .001 the only significant training effect in our post-hoc analyses pertained to the degree to which the participants endorsed couples counseling, f (1,103) = 13.92, p < .001. this test had an observed power of .96 and an effect size of .11. participants without training were very much more likely to endorse couples counseling than those who had training. the mean and standard deviation for those with no training were m = 3.62, sd = 1.31, and for those with training were, m = 2.62, sd couples counseling in domestic violence 15 = 1.35. again, the likert-type scale on which participants responded was from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). discussion conclusions as we expected, training in the area of domestic violence was related to how highly students recommended couples counseling for the wife and her husband in our vignette. those without training in the area more highly recommended couples counseling than those who had training in the area. these results indicate that domestic violence education succeeds in making mental health workers aware of the potential ramifications of couples counseling in domestic violence cases. as we described in the beginning, couples counseling is not an uncommonly recommended intervention in these cases; however, it is counterindicated, particularly in instances where the couple is engaged in violent transactions or the woman feels unsafe in the presence of her partner. there were no significant results related to ses of the target. in other words, participants did not treat the women of high and low ses differently, and the difference due to training held across both ses conditions. this is a positive result showing that these students did not treat the women differently based on ses. these results can probably be explained by a greater awareness of domestic violence in our society today, and people in general understanding that no ses level is immune to domestic violence. implications and recommendations given the significant relationship in this study between training in domestic violence and level of endorsement of couples counseling, it would be appropriate for mental health worker training programs to provide more education in domestic violence to their students. campbell, couples counseling in domestic violence 16 raja and grinning (1999) found that most mental health professionals receive training in childhood sexual abuse, but they receive less training in domestic violence, and they recommend that training needs to be required in graduate school. they recommend that this training include therapy strategies, referral sources for targets, and legal and medical consequences. in addition, we attest that more comprehensive training would give students the needed formal knowledge of the area in order to more clearly understand the dynamics of domestic violence, the abuse cycle and thus why couples counseling should be considered cautiously. domestic violence involves the perpetrator’s desire to control his partner and this could be done in various ways, such as through physical abuse, verbal abuse, controlling her interactions with friends and family, or controlling her money (azcadv, 2000). thus we recommend that the training include the important factor of control in abusive relationships, a description of the abuse cycle, the above-mentioned ways in which the control is executed and why a target of domestic violence may not be safe in a couples counseling situation. other factors that are related to domestic violence are alcohol use and issues of anger on part of the perpetrators (mcmurran & gilchrist, 2008). it is also important that training include these factors that can often coincide with domestic violence. such comprehensive training could allow mental health professionals to help a target avoid increased harm, and help them to understand why couples counseling could be counterproductive. in table 4 we summarize more specific items that training curricula could include, provided by payne (2009) through his survey of mental health professionals’ supervisors for their input on training needs. we organized the training topics extracted by payne (2009) into categories for parsimony in the presentation in the table. table 4 couples counseling in domestic violence 17 possible topics for domestic violence training programs category topics basic information the basic dynamics of domestic violence theoretical perspectives on domestic violence victim-related issues indicators that may identify domestic violence victims documenting domestic violence in the victim’s record talking with victims of domestic violence the critical complications involved in domestic violence, such as posttraumatic stress disorder and depression designing a safety plan for victims and children obtaining a protection order for victims the availability of community (local) resources for victims the special needs of victims of elder abuse working with community-based services to get needed services to victims (e.g. shelters) obtaining needed medical care for victims obtained needed mental health care for victims family-related issues assessing a family for the risk of domestic violence talking with child witnesses of domestic violence the effect of domestic violence on employment the effect of domestic violence on children table 4 (continued). couples counseling in domestic violence 18 possible topics for domestic violence training programs category topics developing a rapport with families living in domestic violence situations perpetrator-related issues intervening with perpetrators of violence (abusers) communicating warning signs of abuser lethality legal issues legal options and laws available in domestic violence situations accessing law enforcement or legal options in domestic violence situations assisting victims in overcoming barriers to legal options testifying in court hearings working with the police to assist victims working with the court system to assist victims health professional-related issues coping with frustrations and emotions encountered when working with victims of domestic violence planning for own safety when working with victims note. adopted from payne (2008). working with a target of domestic violence is not unlike working with clients on other issues. the role of the counselor is to help the client be safe from danger, help her identify her couples counseling in domestic violence 19 goals for counseling, and facilitate progress toward those goals. this role does not include being directive and insisting on couples counseling. it is not uncommon for targets of domestic violence in individual counseling to ask the counselor if their partners should attend sessions with them. in such a situation, providing psychoeducation to the client on the possible outcomes of couples counseling would be appropriate. a thorough assessment of the client’s situation can help to determine if she is in an abusive relationship. o’leary and murphy (1999) provide instruments including self-report questionnaires and interview techniques that can aid the assessment process. moreover, these tools can also help to determine the amount of physical danger the client is facing. safety planning, a harm reduction method, will most likely be a part of the counselor’s work with the client, whether or not she chooses to leave her abuser. the therapist would want to cater to the woman’s requests, and if her goal is to stay with her partner and she asks the therapist to help them improve their communication, couples counseling could be appropriate. the results of this research are limited in several ways. first, only one training program was studied and the results cannot be generalized to students in other programs. second, the participants were novices to the clinical setting. it is possible that the study would yield different results if the participants were experienced clinicians who had worked with more domestic violence cases. third, there is the possibility that demographic differences of therapists can be related their reactions to domestic violence, such as gender, level of schooling, ethnicity and religiosity. the literature does not provide information on why such demographic differences of therapists would be significant in their attitudes toward domestic violence, but further research could be done to explore any differences between the reactions of males versus females, undergraduate versus graduate students, whites versus ethnic minorities, and religious versus couples counseling in domestic violence 20 nonreligious therapists. further research could also be done in surveying more experienced clinicians. it is plausible that value differences between groups could lead to different attitudes, in turn leading to different treatment recommendations. nevertheless, the power of our analyses show that training in the area of domestic violence is a factor in how these students responded to the scenarios presented to them. couples counseling was recommended significantly less strongly by those students with some training in the area. therefore, training in domestic violence could be useful in allowing helping professionals to guide clients in as safe and effective way as possible. couples counseling in domestic violence 21 references adragna, m. 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(1984). therapy with violent families. in s. saunders, a.m. anderson, c.a. hart & g.m. rubenstein (eds.), violent individuals and families (pp. 116-118). springfield, il: charles thomas publisher. sotelo, n. (2009, april 17). women hit hardest in bad economy. national catholic reporter, p.23. tolman, r. m., rosen, d., & wood, g. c. (1999). psychological maltreatment of women. in r.t. ammerman & m. hersen (eds.), assessment of family violence: a clinical and legal sourcebook (pp. 322-328). new york, ny: john wiley & sons, inc. http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/limits/limits.html#id2633616� couples counseling in domestic violence 23 williamson, t. a. (2000). the relationship between formal education/training and the ability of psychologists and marriage family therapists to assess and intervene when counseling with female victims of domestic violence [abstract]. dissertation abstracts international: section a: humanities and social sciences, 61(4-a), 1311. retrieved on august 24, 2007 from psycinfo database. wise, a. j., & bowman, s. l. (1997). comparison of beginning counselors’ responses to lesbian vs. heterosexual partner abuse. violence and victims, 12, 127-135. possible topics for domestic violence training programs possible topics for domestic violence training programs disposition_final volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x disposition and early childhood education preservice teachers: where to start? ursula thomas, ed.d university of west georgia citation thomas, u. (2010). disposition and early childhood education preservice teachers: where to start?. current issues in education, 13(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this study explores teacher education programs and preservice teacher dispositions. the study examined the dispositions of two sections of a reading methods course populated by preservice teachers. a dispositions checklist was used to collect data in three phases and from two audiences. the findings of the study strongly suggest that preservice teachers have a positive view of their own dispositions as well as their peers’ dispositions. the study also shows that the perception of preservice teachers’ dispositions of themselves differ greatly from the perception of the instructor of the course. implications from this study suggest further development of practices that surface disposition and strategic use of data to improve teacher dispositions within teacher education programs. keywords: teachers, preservice, early childhood, education, disposition current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: ursula thomas, ed.d. affiliation: university of west georgia address: dept. of c&i, 1601 maple street, carrollton, ga, 30118 email: uthomas@westga.edu biographical information: ursula thomas ed.d is an assistant professor of early childhood education at the university of west georgia. her research efforts focus on cultural mediation and teacher belief systems in the context of early childhood and teacher education. disposition and early childhood education 3 as the push for effective teachers persists, many teacher education programs, and professional development administrators are left speculating about the part dispositions perform in effective teaching. johnson & reinman (2007) sought to explore the definition of dispositions as teacher professional judgment and professional action in the moral/ethical domain of adult cognition. by assessing beginning teacher judgment both quantitatively and qualitatively, convergence between predicted and observed patterns was found in addition to congruence between teacher judgment and action. based on the findings of convergence and congruence, implications for teacher education and development are made. they mirror what jung (2009) found in the study of teacher technology. jung studied technology teacher dispositions and found education significantly increased competence level and disposition measures. the study also found there are no statistically significant differences in technology proficiency level in terms of age or gender, female and older students should be strongly encouraged to use technology without fear of failure. since the major difference in the technology disposition score was due to the male students’ stronger self-confidence level toward technology, teacher educators should pay attention for female students to be more self-assured through repeated contact to the technology experience. jung made the following recommendations: (1)the importance of technology should be stressed frequently and intensely throughout the curriculum. (2) future teachers should see successful role models continuously for adopting technology. (3) numerous technology literacy and integration classes, and other forms of technology education need to be included in the curriculumto make them competent and current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 perceive themselves technologically competent. (4) future teachers should be exposed to the experiences, which repeatedly connect the value of technology with their career, which enable them to see and to experience the value of using technology and living with technology, which let them frequently use technology for their learning, problem solving, and future instruction. disparate to the literature on some dispositions, the dispositions cited in the teacher education literature (e.g., intasc) have almost no illuminating value and very little significance presently. this conclusion comes from an examination of the cited teacher dispositions in terms of underwood's levels of meaning in the behavioral sciences and shows that these dispositional paradigms are little more than labels for particular behaviors. although the construct, disposition, in teacher education may be redundant now, it is not entirely inadequate as it may provide a pilot hypothesis for further investigations (murray, 2007; windschitl, 2003). the implications from the previous studies provide the groundwork for exploring teacher dispositions. in order to effectively investigate this, a definition for dispositions by our governing bodies must be identified. “ncate now defines professional dispositions as: professional attitudes, values, and beliefs demonstrated through both verbal and non-verbal behaviors as educators interact with students, families, colleagues, and communities. these positive behaviors support student learning and development” (2007). institutions take their own stab at defining dispositions in many ways. the national association for the education of young children states in order to enact and examine surface disposition: “all teaching staff evaluates and improve their own performance based on ongoing reflection and feedback from supervisors, peers and families. they add to their knowledge and increase disposition and early childhood education 5 their ability to put knowledge into practice. they develop an annual individualized professional development plan with their supervisor and use it to inform their continuous professional development”. the national association for the education of young children also states that disposition is defined through: “all teaching staff continuously strengthening their leadership skills and relationships with others and works to improve the conditions of children and families within their programs, the local community or region, and beyond. teaching staff participate in informal or formal ways in local, state, or regional public-awareness activities related to early care by joining groups, attending meetings, or sharing information with others both at and outside the program (2005)”. the university of west georgia surfaces disposition through its conceptual framework. “the conceptual framework is the rationale and organizing principle that guides the curriculum for developing educators for school improvement. the conceptual framework is grounded in research, knowledge, and experience that describe what undergraduate and graduate candidates should know and apply to foster transformational systemic change. our conceptual framework incorporates the standards and principles established by the national council for accreditation of teacher education (ncate), georgia professional standards commission (psc), and specialized professional associations (spas). the following beliefs give credence to our professional commitments—the 10 descriptors used to describe the qualities and dispositions that we feel educators must possess to positively impact school improvement—and provide further delineation of the conceptual framework: 1. decision makers: we believe that candidates should be able to demonstrate knowledge and skills when making decisions that will influence effective transformational systemic change. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 2. leaders: we believe that candidates should be able to demonstrate effective leadership skills to initiate and facilitate transformational systemic change. 3. life long learners: we believe that candidates should seek continually to improve their knowledge, disposition, and skills to influence transformational systemic change. 4. adaptive: we believe that candidates should be able to demonstrate flexibility and strategic planning appropriate to a wide variety of learners for effective transformational systemic change. 5. collaborative: we believe that candidates should be able to develop skills to work effectively with various stakeholders involved in the educational process that will bring about transformational systemic change. 6. culturally sensitive: we believe that candidates should be able to develop awareness and understanding of individual and group differences when diagnosing and prescribing transformational systemic change. 7. empathetic: we believe that candidates should be able to develop the sensitivity for individual, family, and institutional needs that will embrace transformational systemic change. 8. knowledgeable: we believe that candidates should be able to demonstrate general knowledge inherent in a liberal arts curriculum, advanced knowledge in content areas, and specific knowledge in professional education for the implementation of transformational systemic change. 9. proactive: we believe that candidates should be able to advocate for the removal of barriers that impede life long learning and hinder transformational systemic change. 10. reflective: we believe that candidates should be able to demonstrate critical thinking skills in the diagnosis and prescription for transformational systemic change. hp authorized custo…, 3/26/11 12:19 pm comment [1]: for your consideration, this is an exceptionally long reference that perhaps could be condensed from two pages down to half a page? it begins with a quotation mark but needs an ending quotation mark added, not sure where? underlining and numbering are style choices, not always advisable and i would reference apa formating and style guide in future if this wasn’t assumably a direct reference. disposition and early childhood education 7 according to merriam-webster (2010), disposition is defined as a “prevailing tendency, mood, or inclination b : temperamental makeup c : the tendency of something to act in a certain manner under given circumstances”. katz (1985) defines disposition as “the notion of disposition was defined as an attributed characteristic of a teacher, one that summarizes the trend of a teacher’s actions in particular contexts” (p. 301). now that the definitions for this context have been identified, let us examine what the research says about them. what does research say about disposition? the arena of literature on dispositions in the field of teacher education is one of great concern. in light of the fact that our professional organizations and accrediting bodies are constructing disposition requirements for graduate and undergraduate levels, universities are now being required to provide concrete evidence as to how dispositions are being addressed. at the same time, teacher education programs are continuously providing opportunities for reflection in induction, courses, field and clinical placements. if we are considering reflection in action as schon (1987) defines it, we must marry this concept with teaching dispositions. within action, reflection has the ability to surface. this study seeks to examine this relationship within the coursework through three points of view: the students themselves, their view of each other and the instructor. in the context of this study, the researcher defines preservice teacher as “a teacher education student working to attain an undergraduate degree in education or initial certification after receiving a four-year degree in another field”. disposition origin “the study of dispositions had its roots in the 1960’s when arthur w. combs began a series of studies on the personal perceptions of effective helpers, which he called perceptual characteristics” (p. 96). teacher education programs over the last 30 years have been implicit and explicit in including current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 them in their conceptual frameworks. in issues of accreditation, dispositions play an important role in the making of teacher candidates. similarly, giovannelli (2003) stated that dispositions serve as an accurate measure of teacher effectiveness. on the other hand, beyer (2002) stated that accreditation mandates, such as dispositions, emphasize a “technical-rational” approach to teaching and ignore “social, philosophical, and political understandings” needed by educators” (p. 96). the major teacher accrediting bodies have battled with this for a while now. mcknight (2006) states, “where as before ncate held college of education faculty accountable for proving each preservice teacher had mastered certain knowledge and skills, new policies and standards now dictate faculty must generate evidence as to whether the teacher candidate is the right sort of person” (p. 213). national council for accreditation of teacher education has been criticized regarding the dispositions that are highlighted in its’ standards. they should be assessed at the college level, or taught in a manner that would guide the teacher candidate to alter his or her already established dispositions. time and opportunity may be in question. there is also the concern of whether dispositions towards virtues such as social justice, caring and honesty, which ncate standards present as attractive, will fall short of leaving a mark on teacher candidates. mcknight (2006) found, “these dispositions have been reinforced in the general process of schooling, as part of the hidden curriculum and academic achievement discourse, according to those who analyze schooling from a critical lens (e.g. bowers and flinders 1990; cherryholmes 1988; doll 1993; zeichner 1991, p. 214)”. presence of dispositions in order to be aware of the facilitation of dispositions, preservice teachers must be open to interaction and experience in the learning and teaching environment. this would denote presence. raider-roth and rodgers, (2006) defines this “engagement as ‘presence’a state of alert awareness, disposition and early childhood education 9 receptivity and connectedness to the mental, emotional and physical workings of both the individual and the group in the context of their learning environments and the ability to respond with a considered and compassionate best next step ” (p. 266). the authors also hold that reflective teaching cannot be compacted to a set of behaviors or skills, but is a practice that requires presence. “it requires selfknowledge, trust, relationship and compassion” (p. 266). research from past studies confirm that the relationship between teacher and student is a cornerstone in student achievement, motivation, engagement and in their ability to depend on what they know (midgley & urdan., 2001; pianta, 1999; roeser eccles & sameroff., 2000; rodgers, in press; raider-roth, 2005a,b). this research illustrated that the quality of these relationships is not a light or surface factor of schooling; it is a critical feature of learning. what allows this relationship to burgeon is intricate and calls upon the mental, physical, emotive and related capital of the teacher”. if this is the case, preservice teachers must be prepared and primed for such a relationship. “maxine greene (1973), lifting the semantics of merleau-ponty, wrote on ‘wide-awakeness.’ through the act of reflection the human being confronts and becomes aware of ‘his relation to his surroundings, his manner of conducting himself with respect to things and other human beings, the changing perspectives through which the world presents itself to him” (p. 269). teacher educators anticipate this permeating exchange in the classroom. schulz (2003) and heshusius (1995) illustrated a similar position when they articulated the power of listening. schultz, categorized listening at the crux of what it is to teach, defined listening as “an active, rational, and interpretive process that is focused on creating meaning” (p. 118). as with other thinkers and practitioners mentioned here she saw the teacher’s job as one of attentiveness. attending to students in this manner, implies becoming deeply engaged in understanding what a person has to say through current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 words, gesture, and action. “listening is fundamentally about being in relationship to other and through this relationship supporting change or transformation” (p. 270). transmission of dispositions oftentimes, dispositions are aligned with skills. for example, critical-thinking skills include the ability to create justification for via analysis, evaluation, and interpretation in reasonable, effective, careful, and serious ways, but these skills are powerless if certain dispositions are not in place. attending to concepts and enacting these skills requires open-minded and prejudice-free dispositions. “thinking skills rely on disposition to imply knowledge transfer within domains and the impetus to apply those skills (harpern 1998; wright 2002)”. there are multiple approaches to this. the author suggests: “creating learning experiences for students that foster the development of dispositional commitments including incontrovertible and democratic rights of liberty, opportunity, and dissent, as well as freedoms of participation, inquiry, expression, and worship, are mush easier to prescribe than enact. developing these dispositions is central to the charge of democratic education: creating widening and enlarging experiences (barton and levstik, 2004; dewey, 1916)”. instead of attempting the edification of dispositions via transmission of instruction, learners can instead appropriately surface them habitually when students have continued exposure to various kinds of learning experiences reinforcement of dispositions battalio and morin (2004) share that teachers react to reinforcement similarly as students do. in this case, strategies that engage disposition need to be reinforced. a teacher who meets with disposition and early childhood education 11 accomplishment with a strategy will more than likely use the approach at another opportunity. if the success is a lasting one, then the teacher gets consistent confirmation about the usefulness of his or her practice. regrettably, the reverse is also true. if a teacher uses a strategy that does not appear to operate, he or she is likely to employ the approach again. achieving enduring change is often slow and seemingly unresponsive to initial positive interventions. teachers need to be capable and ready to interpret preliminary intervention outcomes in the full framework of the student’s milieu while also resisting the temptation to follow subjective appraisals of the intervention’s effectiveness. the authors describe such teachers as having high personal teaching efficacy (pte; guskey & passaro, 1994). this high personal teaching efficacy springs from a candidate who has the opportunity to explore and develop teacher dispositions for such behavior. problem with dispositions due to concerns with the students’ communication to the instructor, and the nature of the language in that communication, the question of disposition arose. this is based on schon’s definition of reflection in action. reflection-in-action is defined by schon (1987) as the ability of professionals to ‘think about what they are doing while they are doing it’. schon views this as a fundamental skill. he emphasizes that the only way to manage the ‘indeterminate zones of (professional) practice’ is through the ability to think on your feet, and put into operation previous experience to new situations. students often equate a score on an assignment of project with a positive teaching disposition. this is not an automatic correlation and is often misinterpreted in various areas; student-instructor communications, classroom discussions, instructional conversations, group assignments, presentations, field placements and lesson planning; as well as the instructional environment at large. in this particular case, dispositions manifest themselves in all of the previously mentioned areas in this course. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 because of a cohort of students in the first block of the program from the previous semester experienced major problems with maintaining the teacher dispositions as indicated by the college of education’s conceptual framework, the instructor soon discovered that a more explicit system for aiding students in surfacing and monitoring their own dispositions was critical. the next semester the instructor taught the course and took a proactive approach to the situation. she instituted a simple instrument that served a three-pronged purpose: to engage students in assessing themselves, each other, and assisting the instructor in assessing the student’s disposition as well. the review of literature and the instructor’s concerns of developing the “whole” teacher raised an essential question. how and under what conditions do preservice teachers assess dispositions in terms of themselves, each other, and in the eyes of the instructor? methodology research questions 1. to what degree do preservice teachers assess their own dispositions? 2. to what degree do preservice teachers assess the dispositions of their peers? 3. to what degree does the instructor assess the dispositions of the preservice teachers in the reading methods course? population the sample consisted of forty-seven students enrolled in two sections of the reading methods course instituted in the first of four methods block courses in the undergraduate teacher education program at the university. there were forty-three females and four males. thirty-six were early childhood education majors, eight were middle grades education majors and three were special disposition and early childhood education 13 education majors. the study was voluntary and this population, and its sequences through the methods course blocks, was appropriate for this study because this is the structured progression of the undergraduate teacher education program. convenience sampling was utilized (salkind & rassmussen, 2007). though convenience sampling has been stated in the literature not to be as strong a method as others, this method is essential to the study because of the nature of the candidates to this institution’s program. if these candidates are to continue in the program as a cohort, monitoring them will be essential to teacher quality and program expectations. measurement measures the likert scale is an ordered, one-dimensional scale from which respondents choose one option that that most appropriately supports their view. there are usually between four and seven options. an advantage is that questions used are usually simple to understand and show the way to consistent responses. a disadvantage is that limited options are presented; with which respondents may not completely agree. construction of measures the instrument was a 4-point likert scale with three major response categories: satisfactory, areas of concern, and not observed. with in the category of satisfactory were two response subcategories: exemplary performance and expected performance. within the category of areas of concern was below expected performance. finally, there was the category of not observed. this makes for four responses in total. exemplary performance was rated as a three, expected performance current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 was rated as a two and below expected performance was rated as a one. the dispositions being assessed were belonging, mastery, independence and generosity. within the category of belonging were samples of descriptors. descriptors included: relates easily, positively, and tactfully with others, is friendly, courteous, and professional; actively seeks opportunities for personal and professional growth; appropriate professional appearance and personal hygiene. within the category of mastery were samples of descriptors. they were: demonstrates a commitment to continuous learning and reflection; exhibits an interest in and a commitment to teaching and learning; responds with a positive attitude when receiving feedback. within the category of independence were samples of descriptors. descriptors included: demonstrates initiative and positive attitude; is responsible, reliable, dependable, & well organized (meets deadlines, reliable, prompt, attends classes, appointments, meetings, etc.), and demonstrates flexibility and adaptability. within the category of generosity were samples of descriptors. they were willingly, actively and cooperatively participates in collaborative situations; shares ideas and concerns, and appreciates multiple perspectives. there was also an open-ended comments section for those responses that students felt were important to the survey but not included in the checklist (see appendix a). procedures the instrument was administered twice to the students and completed once by the instructor. the students completed the checklist based on their observation of themselves at the middle of the semester. the students then completed the instrument anonymously on a group member at the end of the semester. finally, the instructor completed the disposition checklist on all of the students at the end of the semester. each checklist was submitted the day it was completed and all of the data were disposition and early childhood education 15 compiled ten days after the last checklist was collected. though this was a mixed methods study, the research chose to address the quantitative aspect of the study at this time. data analysis the data was subject to descriptive statistical analysis, by way of percentages. results self-reporting in the category of belonging disposition, all of the participants rated themselves as displaying satisfactory performance; with 39 (83%) reporting exemplary performance and 8 (17%) reporting expected performance. in the category of mastery disposition 27 (57%) of the participants rated themselves as exemplary performance, 17 (36%) reported expected performance, and a small percentage; 3 (7%) rated themselves an area of concern-below expected performance. in the category of the independence disposition, 100% rated themselves as satisfactory in the area with 25 (53%) of them rated as exemplary performance and 22 (47%) at expected performance. finally, in the disposition of generosity, 39 (83%) of the participants rated themselves with an exemplary performance and with 8 (17%) of preservice teachers rated themselves with expected performance (see appendix b, table 1). figure 1. 0 10 20 30 40 50 n um be r o f s tu de nt s exemplary expected below expected not observed current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 peer reporting in the category of belonging, 40 (85%) of the participants rated their classmates as exemplary performance with 5 (10%) of the students citing expected performance. five percent of the participants rated their peers in the area of concern-below expected performance. in the category of mastery, 39 (83%) of the participants rated their peers at exemplary performance. fifteen percent of participants rated their peers with expected performance and a small percentage of participants reported 1 (2%) of their peers at an area of concern-below expected performance. in the category of the independence, 39 (83%) of the participants rated each other with exemplary performance in this area. of the preservice teachers, 5 (10%) were rated by their peers as meeting expected performance. seven percent of the participants rated each other in the category of below-expected performance. in the category of generosity, 41(86 %) of the participants rated each other with a score of exemplary performance. seven percent of participants rated their peers with expected performance. finally, 3 (7 %) of the participants rated their peers below expected performance (see appendix b, table 2). figure 2. 0 10 20 30 40 50 belonging mastery independence generosity n um be r o f s tu de nt s exemplary expected below expected not observed disposition and early childhood education 17 instructor reporting in the category of belonging, the instructor rated 12 (25%) of the participants as displaying exemplary performance. fifty-seven percent of preservice teachers were rated as displaying expected performance. seventeen percent of the participants were rated below-expected performance. in the category of mastery, the instructor rated 7 (15%) of the participants as exemplary performance. thirtytwo percent were rated as expected performance and a smaller percentage; 25 (53%) of the participants were rated as below expected performance area of concern. in the category of independence, 9 (19%) of the students were rated as displaying exemplary performance. twenty-five percent of participants were rated as having expected performance and 26 (55%) of the participants were rated as below expected performance. in the category of generosity, the instructor rated 7 (15%) of the participants as exemplary performance and 33 (70%) at expected performance. fifteen percent of the participants were rated at area of concern-below expected performance (see appendix b, table 3). figure 3. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 n um be r o f s tu de nt s exemplary expected below expected not observed current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 figure 4. discussion this tool provided three views of major disposition categories. the most marked difference was between the instructors view of the participants’ disposition of independence (figure 4). the discrepancy solicits questions about the definition of independence based on objectives and the context provided by the program’s conceptual framework. it is possible that the proactive descriptor could be part of this definition. comparison of students' scores 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 number of students m e a n s c o re reported by self reported by peer reported by instructor disposition and early childhood education 19 mastery was another disposition that elicited conversation and conflict. this, like independence, was controversial as well. participants tended to view completing assignments as mastery whereas the instructor looked at issues of quality. belonging was a disposition that was actually consistent across all three reporting groups. this disposition is critiqued because it sets the stage for collegiality; an essential part of teacher life. generosity was also consistent across all three reporting groups. this disposition too, is critical for planting seeds of empathy; a descriptor in the university’s conceptual framework. as far as limitations are concerned, the research acknowledges a few of them. first of all, of the university’s descriptors are not discreetly measured or assessed. secondly, the number of students is a relatively small number. third, these students are in the first methods block of the teacher education program. the researcher questions what this data would reveal if the students were assessed towards the end of the program. conclusion the study found a significant difference between the instructor’s view of the student’s disposition and their view of themselves. the research found this to be of importance and planned to examine this phenomenon qualitatively. independence was the one disposition where students were actually aligned with the perception of that disposition with the instructor. implications this small, yet informative study delineates three relatively important points. first, we must make the importance of dispositions explicit in each course, not just listed in the course objectives. it must be surfaced in the courses and monitored qualitatively and quantitatively. secondly, we must current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 teach students how to surface dispositions and understand the total commitment associated with the conceptual frameworks of each institution’s teacher education program. third and finally, we must continue to create and fine tune a more concise process for creating banks of comparative disposition data in our accreditation and institutional reports that inform a dynamic curriculum. as issues of teacher quality and student performance continue to avail, we must make the examination of the potential and power of disposition a part of the deliberate conversation. disposition and early childhood education 21 references american psychological association. (2001). publication manual of the american psychological association (5th ed.). washington, dc: author battalio, r., morin, j. (2004). constructing misbehavior: the efficacy connection in responding to misbehavior. journal of positive behavior interventions. vol. 6. 251-254. barton, k. c., and mccully, a. w. (2004). history, identity, and the school curriculum in northern ireland: an empirical study of secondary students' ideas and perspectives. journal of curriculum studies vol. 37, 85-116. beckham, l.; julian, k.; roberson, t.; whitsett, g. (2007). first year teachers’ reported levels of functioning on selected professional dispositions. education. vol. 128. 95-102. beyer, l. e. (2002). the politics of standardization: teacher education in the usa. journal of education for teaching, 28, 239-246 pd. bowers, c.a., & flinders, david j. 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(2007). did i forget about the dispositions? preparing high school graduates for moral life. the clearing house. vol. 80. 267-270 murray, f. b. (2007). disposition: a superfluous construct in teacher education. journal of teacher education. 58(5), 381-387. national association for the education of young children (2005). program standards: preparing early childhood professionals, washington, d.c. national council for accreditation of teacher education (2000). performance-based accreditation standards, washington dc: author. pianta, r. c. (1999). enhancing relationships between children and teachers. washington, dc: american psychological association. raider-roth, miriam b.; rodgers, carol r. (2006). presence in teaching. teachers and teaching: theory and practice. vol. 12, 265-287. roeser, r., eccles, j., & sameroff, a. (2000). school as a context of early adolescents’ academic and social-emotional development: a summary of research findings. elementary school journal, 100, 443–471. disposition and early childhood education 23 salkind, n. j., & rasmussen, k. (2007). encyclopedia of measurement and statistics. thousand oaks, calif: sage publications. schon, d. (1987). educating the reflective practitioner. jossey-bass: san francisco schulz, k. (2003). listening: a framework for teaching across differences. teachers college press: new york. university of west georgia. (2003). college of education conceptual framework: developing educators for school improvement. carrollton, ga. windschitl, m. (2003). inquiry projects in science teacher education: what can investigative experiences reveal about teacher thinking and eventual classroom practice? science education. 87 (1), 112-43. wright, i. (2002). challenging students with the tools of critical thinking. the social studies, 93 (6), 257-61. appendix a assessment of dispositions candidate name____________________________________________id#_________________ major #1______________________________major #2______________________________ course______________________________________________date___________________ the assessment of candidate disposition form will be used to assess teacher education candidates and will help to determine if candidates demonstrate the dispositions necessary to help all current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 students learn. decisions regarding program entrance and acceptance to student teaching will be informed by this and other assessment criteria. the assessment of candidate disposition form is built around the teacher education program’s conceptual framework. teacher education candidates receiving a rating of “1”, below expected performance/area of concern, on any criteria will conference with the evaluator to discuss the area of concern(s). if necessary, a staffing may be scheduled to discuss the teacher education candidate’s program status and to further address the area(s) of concern. satisfactory area o f c o n c e r n n/a exempla ry per for ma nce 3 expecte d per for ma nce 2 below exp ect ed per for ma nce 1 not o b s e r v e d belonging relates easily, positively, and tactfully with others, is friendly, courteous, professional; actively seeks opportunities for personal and professional growth; appropriate professional appearance and personal hygiene mastery demonstrates a commitment to continuous learning and reflection; exhibits an interest in and a commitment to teaching and learning; responds with a positive attitude when receiving feedback independence demonstrates initiative and positive attitude; is responsible, reliable, dependable, & wellorganized (meets deadlines, reliable, prompt, attends classes, appointments, meetings, etc.); demonstrates flexibility and adaptability generosity disposition and early childhood education 25 willingly, actively and cooperatively participates in collaborative situations; shares ideas and concerns; appreciates multiple perspectives comments: student evaluator signature________________________________________ date______ candidate signature______________________________________________ date______ rating of “1” or area(s) of concern noted yes or no if yes, conference scheduled yes or no if yes, date_____ referred for staffing yes or no original to be returned to candidate carbon copy to be filed in candidate’s academic advising folder appendix btable 1. number (percentage ) of preservice teachers who self-reported dispositions n=47 satisfactory area of co nce rn n/a current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 exempla ry per for ma nce 3 expecte d per for ma nce 2 below exp ect ed per for ma nce 1 not o bs er ve d belonging relates easily, positively, and tactfully with others, is friendly, courteous, professional; actively seeks opportunities for personal and professional growth; appropriate professional appearance and personal hygiene n=39 (83%) n=8 (17%) mastery demonstrates a commitment to continuous learning and reflection; exhibits an interest in and a commitment to teaching and learning; responds with a positive attitude when receiving feedback n=27 (57%) n=17 (36%) n=3 (7%) independence demonstrates initiative and positive attitude; is responsible, reliable, dependable, & wellorganized (meets deadlines, reliable, prompt, attends classes, appointments, meetings, etc.); demonstrates flexibility and adaptability n=25 (53%) n=22 (47%) generosity willingly, actively and cooperatively participates in collaborative situations; shares ideas and concerns; appreciates multiple perspectives n=39 (83%) n=8 (17%) disposition and early childhood education 27 table 2. number (percentage ) of preservice teachers who peer-reported dispositions n=47 satisfactory area of co nce rn n/a exemplar y perf orm ance 3 expecte d per for ma nce 2 below exp ect ed per for ma nce 1 not o b s e r v e d belonging relates easily, positively, and tactfully with others, is friendly, courteous, professional; actively seeks opportunities for personal and professional growth; appropriate professional appearance and personal hygiene n=40 (85%) n=5 (10%) n=2 (5%) mastery demonstrates a commitment to continuous learning and reflection; exhibits an interest in and a commitment to teaching and learning; responds with a positive attitude when receiving feedback n=39 (83%) n=7 (15%) n=1 (2%) independence demonstrates initiative and positive attitude; is responsible, reliable, dependable, & wellorganized (meets deadlines, reliable, prompt, attends classes, appointments, meetings, etc.); demonstrates flexibility and n=39 (83%) n=5 (10%) n=3 (7%) current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 28 adaptability generosity willingly, actively and cooperatively participates in collaborative situations; shares ideas and concerns; appreciates multiple perspectives n=41 (86%) n=3 (7%) n=3 (7%) table 3. instructors’ review number (percentage ) of preservice teachers assessed by instructor n=47 satisfactory area of co nce rn n/a exempla ry per for ma nce 3 expecte d per for ma nce 2 below exp ect ed per for ma nce 1 not ob se rv ed belonging disposition and early childhood education 29 relates easily, positively, and tactfully with others, is friendly, courteous, professional; actively seeks opportunities for personal and professional growth; appropriate professional appearance and personal hygiene n=12 (25%) n=27 (57%) n=8 (17%) mastery demonstrates a commitment to continuous learning and reflection; exhibits an interest in and a commitment to teaching and learning; responds with a positive attitude when receiving feedback n=7 (15%) n=15 (32%) n=25 (53%) independence demonstrates initiative and positive attitude; is responsible, reliable, dependable, & wellorganized (meets deadlines, reliable, prompt, attends classes, appointments, meetings, etc.); demonstrates flexibility and adaptability n=9 (19%) n=12 (25%) n=26 (55%) generosity willingly, actively and cooperatively participates in collaborative situations; shares ideas and concerns; appreciates multiple perspectives n=7 (15%) n=33 (70%) n=7 (15%) current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 30 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo “it’s not my fault”using neutralization theory to volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x “it’s not my fault”: using neutralization theory to understand cheating by middle school students nicole zito boston college patrick j. mcquillan boston college citation mcquillan, p. & zito, n. (2011). “it’s not my fault”: using neutralization theory to understand cheating by middle school students. current issues in education, 13(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract according to neutralization theory, to justify unethical behavior delinquents often embrace strategies that deflect personal responsibility for their actions from them and toward other persons or contextual factors outside their control. drawing on neutralization theory, this case study explores how middle school students endorsed comparable strategies to justify cheating. participants included six faculty members from an 8th grade teaching team and eight of their students at a competitive, private middle school in northeastern massachusetts. based on interview and focus group data, we found that students adopted three of the five neutralizing strategies to rationalize what might be seen as unethical behavior: (1) denying responsibility; (2) condemning the condemner; and (3) appealing to higher ideals. specific recommendations for schools include promoting supportive student-teacher relations and creating an academic environment in which students value course work for its inherent value, rather than solely as a means to gain admission to an elite high school. keywords: cheating, neutralization theory, middle school, student-teacher relationships, assignments current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: nicole zito affiliation: boston college email: nicolealisazit@gmail.com biographical information: nicole zito has taught both locally and internationally; this year she served as an 11th and 12th grade english at beaver country day. she completed her ph.d. in k-12 school administration in the lynch school of education at boston college. she has an article coming out in middle school journal entitled, “cheating themselves out of an education: assignments that promote higher order thinking and honesty in middle school.” (middle school journal, 2010, co-authored with patrick j. mcquillan). author: patrick j. mcquillan affiliation: boston college email: mcquilpa@bc.edu biographical information: patrick j. mcquillan, a cultural anthropologist, is an associate professor in the lynch school of education at boston college. his current research interests focus on educational change, with an emphasis on small school reform in urban contexts. his publications include reform and resistance in schools and classrooms: an ethnographic view of the coalition of essential schools (yale university press, 1996; co-authored with donna muncey) and educational opportunity in an urban american high school: a cultural analysis (suny press, 1998). using neutralization theory to understand cheating 3 in a survey of 4500 american high school students mccabe, trevino and butterfield (2001) reported that more than half admitted to plagiarizing from the internet, 74% admitted to cheating on exams, and 97% admitted to cheating on homework. according to eisenberg’s (2004) survey, out of 3000+ “high achieving” high school students, 80% self-reported cheating.1 in its 2008 biannual report, the josephson institute of ethics, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in los angeles, disclosed that of the 30,000 high school students surveyed, 64% admitted to cheating on a test during the past year, with 38% of students sharing that they did so two or more times, and 36% admitting to using the internet to plagiarize an assignment. at odds with such behavior, 96% of these same students maintained, “it’s important to me that people trust me,” and 84% believed, “it’s not worth it to lie or cheat because it hurts your character” (josephson, 2008, p. 13-14). furthermore, on the josephson survey 93% said they were satisfied with their personal ethics and character, and 77% agreed with the statement, “when it comes to doing what is right, i am better than most people i know” (p. 5). given these apparent contractions and tensions, the following case study aims to explain how students purport to value honesty and take pride in their own integrity, while simultaneously cheating in school. theoretical overview: kohlberg and neutralization theory to date, most analyses of students’ moral development and its relationship to academic integrity and honesty in school view these issues in terms of kohlberg’s stages of moral development (miller, murdock, anderman, & poindexter, 2007). according to kohlberg, moral reasoning progresses from the lowest pre-conventional level in which individuals obey established laws in order to avoid punishment to the highest post-conventional level at which point individuals make moral decisions because of an internalized universal ethic (kohlberg, 1 “high achieving” refers to students who have an a or b average and intend to go to college. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 1984). yet moral reasoning and cheating behavior have never been definitively correlated in the literature (miller, murdock, anderman, et al., 2007). while research in some cases has substantiated the progressive evolution of moral thinking, there has been no subsequent link to specific actions, as various classroom characteristics can impact students’ moral reasoning and thereby confound efforts to link students who have internalized higher levels of moral development with fewer incidences of cheating (corcoran & rotter, 1987; hartshorne & may, 1928; miller et al, 2007). even kohlberg acknowledged that his research attended to general reasoning about moral decision-making rather than specific decisions people had made. as such, cheating could, in theory, be viewed as ethically appropriate at any stage of moral reasoning. students’ reasoning about the acceptability of cheating depends to a greater extent on situational variables rather than a particular stage of moral development (murdock & stevens, 2007). as aron (1977) summarizes, “[i]ndividuals at a higher stage are not necessarily more moral than those at a lower stage; they are only more advanced in terms of the principles they espouse and the justifications which they give for their judgments” (p.18). while a relationship exists between moral development and cheating, it is theoretically possible, even according to kohlberg, that an individual at any stage could advocate either side of the dilemma (kohlberg, 1977). because kohlberg’s stages of moral development do not sufficiently explain students’ cheating behavior, researchers must turn to other theoretical frameworks to understand student dishonesty in their academic work. neutralization theory, as applied to the interplay between the beliefs and actions of delinquent youth, offers one way to understand why individuals might violate ethical codes they otherwise endorse. specifically, sykes and matza (1957) proposed that delinquents avoided personal responsibility for unethical actions by deflecting disapproval from the conforming using neutralization theory to understand cheating 5 social order before actually committing the deviant act. when justifications precede deviant behavior, such rationalizing helps offenders ignore social controls. the actor can still embrace the normative system but simultaneously qualify prohibited behavior as acceptable, though not necessarily ethical. in such instances, delinquents typically portray themselves as caught up in a dilemma that must be resolved, often at the cost of violating some existing moral standard. in applying neutralization theory to student cheating, a number of researchers have found that a student’s likelihood of cheating derives not from an absolute sense of right or wrong, but by the degree to which individuals can rationalize cheating in a given context (eisenberg, 2004, diekhoff et al., 1996; micheals & miethe, 1989, lanza-kaduce & klug, 1986; whitley, 1998). if students can convince themselves that a given situation is unjust, unreasonable, or somehow exceptional, they can apply a personal sense of morality to validate actions which may violate school rules. in accord with neutralization theory, individuals use five strategies to deflect responsibility for deviant behavior from themselves, though we found that three most aptly apply to the cheating-related beliefs of middle school students: denial of responsibility, condemning the condemner, and appealing to higher ideals.2 although researchers have applied this theory in school settings, few studies address middle school learners (evans & craig, 1990; murdock & miller, 2003). denial of responsibility. sykes and matza (1957) contend that denial of responsibility entails not only that the actor perceives the behavior as an accident or unintended but also that external forces, beyond individual control, constitute the cause for cheating. students may draw on this rationale when they consider aspects of the system of schooling as unfair. as mccabe (1999) found, a student may believe that without cheating he or she will fail a class, be excluded from a higher track in 2 the two additional strategies are “denial of injury” and “denial of the victim.” current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 school, or miss out on elite higher education opportunities. in other studies, students rationalized cheating when they were assigned overly difficult material or received excessive amounts of work (daniel, blount, & ferrell, 1991). other studies reveal that both cheating by one’s friends and parental pressure to receive high grades can serve as justification for cheating (michaels & meithe, 1989, p.876). together, these studies suggest that students may deny responsibility for their actions when, in their view, they can reasonably blame external factors for creating a situation where they must cheat to avoid unreasonable negative consequences. condemning the condemner one primary neutralization strategy involves shifting attention from the delinquent’s actions and onto the motives and behavior of those who disapprove of those actions. in deflecting attention from one’s deviant behavior to the ostensible shortcomings of others, those behaving outside accepted ethical standards can more easily repress, conceal, or deny any offense. students, for example, may cite a teacher’s perceived failings as a pretext for cheating (mccabe, 2001). various studies associate students’ judgment of teacher knowledge and pedagogical skills with increased acceptability of cheating behavior: when teachers are perceived as incompetent, unknowledgeable, or not committed to their work as teachers, students more frequently justify cheating (murdock, hale, & weber, 2001; schraw, et al., 2007; szabo & underwood, 2004). in a focus group made up of students from an ap calculus course, mccabe (2001) found that students validated cheating behavior by alluding to poor instructional methods. specifically, mccabe documented student anger toward teachers who give tests that include material not discussed in class or covered in homework assignments and how such feelings tie to the ease with which students then justify cheating (mccabe, 2001). these practices could be interpreted by students as a lack of caring, weak pedagogy, or both. when students sense they using neutralization theory to understand cheating 7 exert little control over their learning, cannot explain what they are expected to do, do not feel prepared or supported by the teacher, and do not value the task at-hand, they are more likely to cheat (koch, 2000). appealing to higher ideals deviating from accepted norms may occur not because an individual rejects specific norms per se, but because these standards are superseded by alternative priorities, held to be more pressing or involving a more valued ideal. with cheating behavior, this may occur when students feel they should cheat to help others, often to maintain friendships (jensen, arnett, feldman, & cauffman, 2002). similar tensions may arise when students weigh the value of honesty with the importance of attaining high grades as a means to gain admission to elite colleges and thereby secure a prestigious job. in such cases, a decision to cheat derives from an ethical tension between competing priorities in which students feel compelled to sacrifice one value for another. when students decide to cheat they may not be acting immorally as such; rather, they have prioritized competing ideals and decided the benefits derived from high grades exceed those derived from honest behavior. summary of neutralization theories individuals justify cheating when they view societal rules as flexible and not binding in every situation. though murder is a crime, for instance, during war or under laws of capital punishment, society condones killing. likewise, dishonest students may believe that alternative decision-making factors—such as social conventions, peer norms, and school rules—may justify dishonest behavior. with this possibility in mind, neutralization theory posits that students’ likelihood of cheating increases when they find themselves in a context they feel will excuse dishonest behavior and may even necessitate such action. drawing on the three strategies derived current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 from neutralization theory, we address the question: what do students believe are school-based characteristics that influence cheating in middle school? methods northwest school is a private, non-denominational, coeducational day school in northeastern massachusetts. blending a strong academic reputation with an advisory program, the school focuses on the holistic development of its students. average class size for grades 6through-8 ranges between 13 and16 students, with an overall student-to-faculty ratio of 8-to-1. nearly 30% of students and 18% of teachers and administrators identify as non-european americans. typically, students are assigned two-and-a-half hours of homework each night. there is no tracking although accommodating student math programs limits classroom heterogeneity. two eighth grade advisories participated in this study, and eight of the 16 students in those advisories were actively involved, five girls and three boys. all four core teachers in the advisories (math, english, history, and science) participated along with two of the four world language teachers. data were gathered during spring 2008 and included, semi-structured, onehour interviews with all participants, and two focus groups of four students each. sampling & data analysis for the purposes of this study, it seems fortuitous that the northwest school mission aligns with the aims of our study, which includes examining links between academic integrity and thoughtful pedagogy while raising student and teacher perceptions about quality schoolwork. as middle schools cluster by team level, an important characteristic of our study is the willing participation of all four core teachers from the eighth grade team and the two world language teachers. student participants came from two advisory groups and their involvement derived using neutralization theory to understand cheating 9 largely from a willingness to openly and honestly discuss issues of academic integrity. students were de facto representative of northwest students in general because the school intentionally organizes advisory into diverse, well-balanced groups of ten to twelve students. focus groups and individual interviews were conducted so students could both hear what their peers believed and clarify their own beliefs on these matters. to analyze our data, we relied extensively upon six analytic strategies outlined by miles and huberman (1994): open coding of data from interviews; sorting data by similar codes; writing reflections on the data; looking for commonalities and differences among the data; reducing codes to a concise group of generalizations, themes, and tentative theories; and analyzing these generalizations in light of extant research. for example, after reading interview transcripts multiple times, we applied line-by-line in-vivo coding to our data. we then kept a separate running list of in-vivo codes (eaves, 2001). after reviewing multiple transcripts, we reduced these codes by grouping similar codes and compressing some disparate codes into more encompassing categories. this list of preliminary codes was then applied to the remaining transcripts, adding new codes when data did not fit existing codes (hsieh & shannon, 2005). next, we generated patterns and regularities derived from these codes. upon completing this step, we identified tentative themes, generalizations, and theories regarding these data (coffey & atkinson, 1996). we continued this process until we had reviewed all data sources and used them to test and further refine our emerging insights. results based on our study, a correlation seems to exist between academic cheating and eighth grade students’ contextualized attitudes about dishonesty. consistently, students’ reasoning about the context for cheating tempered any judgments they made about those who acted current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 dishonestly. in so doing, they drew upon three aspects of neutralization theory: denial of responsibility, condemning the condemner, and appealing to higher ideals. denial of responsibility when denying responsibility, students typically attribute what might be seen as unethical actions to factors outside their control. along these lines, in a focus group one northwest student rationalized copying another student’s homework: “if you get a lot of homework in one day, if you were not to cheat, it would be four or five hours of homework. so you are just not going to do that much. so, i think it would be acceptable.. . .” another student justified getting help from a friend, even though in this focus group scenario the teacher expressly prohibited such help. as he explained, “[e]ither i work with someone else and understand what i was doing because of their help, or i do not do the assignment because it was too hard.” providing further justification for such behavior, students claimed that cheating would be minimal and their action would be somewhat altruistic if it helped other students better grasp course material. much the same, when asked, “do you think your teachers would prefer that the assignment to be done collaboratively [so that] everyone has the correct answers, or for kids who are having difficulty to have not done the assignment?” students as a whole, both in interviews and focus groups, said they did not see anything morally wrong with helping one another understand an assignment, even if that meant giving others some answers. the english teacher sought to clarify such thinking: “there are those [northwest students] who are good at the class and those who are not good at the class. and everyone knows who they are. the more empathic ‘haves’ feel compulsion to even things out, to be a middle man between the instructor and the using neutralization theory to understand cheating 11 ‘have-nots’ in class.” further, students believed the consequences of not helping or receiving help from others would be far worse, as their teachers would be upset at them for not completing the work, even if they did not understand it, and they would be penalized for doing it incorrectly. in such situations, students viewed getting help from other students, tutors or parents as the only option available if they did not understand the assigned homework. they were not responsible for their ultimate actions. in agreement, the history teacher said that students may fear the consequences of failing to complete their work: “teachers that are extremely rigid might invite more cheating. students [who] are scared of the teacher, think, ‘okay if you don’t turn it in on [this particular] day you get a zero.’ well, then the incentive [to cheat] is greater.” this teacher felt that students need to realize that teachers are not their enemies and may be quite understanding of their individual situations. he added that some students lose sight of the fact that missing one assignment is not going to mean failing a class. condemning the condemner at times, students violate a moral standard they might typically honor because a teacher has, in their view, compromised the educational process. thus, in some classroom contexts cheating may seem acceptable, though perhaps not right. the history teacher offered a classic example: when teachers have students exchange papers to correct one another’s work. as he explained, “kids, i think, are sophisticated enough to recognize that one reason a teacher might be doing that is to save themselves the trouble of correcting each paper individually.” therefore, students may “allow themselves a lower degree of respect for the content as a result. so [cheating] might not seem as serious an offense, to change something here or there. . . . the [integrity of the work] is not really being protected by the teacher who has the power to protect it.” current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 in a related instance, a student explained how one might justify cheating if a teacher failed to thoroughly explain a concept: “in the last five minutes [of class, our teacher] explained these really hard math terms, and no one really got it. and you are not supposed to work in groups, but sometimes they help.” although students recognized that the teacher considered it cheating to work in groups and had given clear directions about this issue, students still engaged neutralizing attitudes to distance themselves from moral responsibility. moreover, if students do not understand assigned work but have been told not to work with others, some may still justify doing so because, as one student contended in a focus group, “it is not really cheating, if you are learning to understand it. it is ‘not following directions.’” in this same focus group, a fellow student agreed, saying that a student could either fail to do any homework individually or complete it all wrong. in either case “the next day the teacher is probably going to be mad at you.” or, as the same student continued, “[y]ou can do it with a friend. then you will get there the next day and you will have it done. you have it understood. which one sounds better?” offering a comparable explanation, another student shared: [when] a student has so much work because the teacher is just laying it on, having someone else help you get something done faster, which might be considered cheating, [but] i guess you could consider it okay in this [situation]. you could [somewhat] cheat by asking someone to help you do it faster. if you are doing the problems really slow, a person might help you, show you one of their problems and give you a shortcut or something, which could be seen as cheating. but it is that versus not doing the assignment at all.” the science teacher offered an additional point of view on the matter, saying that students don’t like to see their classmates or friends looking dumb or feeling inferior . . . and so . . . oftentimes they are legitimatelywanting to help their friends. but what i then using neutralization theory to understand cheating 13 think is important to do is to let students know that if assignments are only being done to help them to become better [at a particular skill], that by stopping them from doing their own work, they are preventing their friends from becoming better. students can also find grounds to modify ethical standards when they feel overwhelmed by the amount of work they face—when they get home from music recitals, lacrosse practice, and art lessons. here, too, students may sense that the educational process has been undermined. in particular, students object to teachers who assign excessive amounts of homework. echoing a common sentiment, one young woman remarked, “sometimes i don’t think they realize that there are other subjects. if i had the same amount of math or spanish homework as i did in other subjects, then i would be up all night.” another student recalled a time when “i had a science paper, an english paper, a math test coming up and then a spanish paper. it just sometimes feels that you are drowning in work. you start to get really desperate then.” a third student explained how such predicaments could lead to cheating: “if you have a lot of homework . . . in one night, you are going to cheat, because one, you feel cheated, and two, you don’t have time. so you are going to copy someone’s answers.” a fourth student agreed, portraying cheating as virtually inevitable when teachers assign too much work: “i think . . . it is almost required [to cheat in this context] because [teachers] are just giving you so much homework. it is not right to do that much homework and [they] act like you don’t have other assignments to do.” students, in general, felt that teachers did not appreciate how much work they did each night and how little time they had to complete it, given their commute and extracurricular activities. although most every teacher mentioned the pressure students feel regarding schoolwork and expressed compassion for them, no teacher noted that students receive excessive amounts of work, either for their class or cumulatively. in fact, teachers mentioned a daily study current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 hall, their efforts to coordinate due dates of major tests and projects with other teachers, and their consistent efforts to break large assignments into smaller, more manageable parts as efforts they made to keep student workloads reasonable. to some degree, perceptions of being overworked provide a complementary rationale to help students justify what may seem unethical, as students often link their decisions to cheat to the type of teacher they have. a teacher who is unfeeling towards student needs will generate resentment that may justify behaving dishonestly. in the words of one female student, “the teacher has something to do with [cheating]. if [teachers] are insensitive, there is going to be more cheating. ‘oh yeah i heard you have a math test but i am going to assign you two hours of homework’ [said mockingly].” this student followed up her comments by acknowledging, you could communicate with your teacher, ‘hey, i really haven’t been getting enough sleep because you have been laying our assignments so much.’ [but] it is sort of hard to say that to a teacher. some of the teachers are almost in their own world just because they are so old. we can’t really go up to them and tell them what they are doing is bad. although their remarks, aside from a few, derived largely from hypothetical scenarios presented in focus groups, students could articulate clear and consistent rationales for deviating from accepted standards, even though they recognized the standard as a valid moral guideline. in contrast, just realizing that a favorite teacher would be disappointed to learn you had cheated would devastate some students: “i would never ever even think of like cheating with [one teacher]. it would never go into my head. you wouldn’t want him to find out. he is such a good person that you don’t want to disappoint him.” another male student shared, “i would never cheat for my seventh grade english teacher because if he ever caught me i would be miserable.” much as students validated unethical behavior with teachers who didn’t care, using neutralization theory to understand cheating 15 students expressed utmost loyalty to teachers who students believed cared about them. in looking at student thinking regarding when they would and would not cheat reveals that student views of what kind of teacher a person is can notably impact student honesty in the classroom. appealing to higher loyalties in “appealing to higher ideals,” students recognize that cheating is morally wrong. however, when negative consequences are likely to arise if one does not violate this standard, students may consider such potential outcomes valid rationales for deviating from what is generally considered ethical. thus, in certain contexts students may view cheating as the better option when failure means the loss of valued extra-curriculars or future academic opportunities. for example, one student shared, “if your mom says, ‘if you don’t get [good grades], you are not going to be on the ski team anymore.’ i think that is a pretty good reason. i know that happened at northwest.” other students shared this point of view, linking such decisions to school climate. as one girl remarked, “this is sort of an athletic school, so people might think it is okay to cheat a little bit to a lot if it is going to get in the way with their sports.” she further maintained that even though teachers say that if you are having problems with your classes then you can skip sports, if you make a varsity team and miss practice, there are consequences. a similar rationale could be adapted and applied to academics. when students feel overwhelming pressure to earn high grades to gain entry to select high schools, as is the norm at northwest, cheating may become a viable option. offering a sense for what her peers may be telling themselves, one student explained: “i know if i did this assignment without cheating, then i am going to get a bad grade. and then i am not going to get into a good school.” she continued, “then you could see it as affecting the college you get into and your job and your success later in life.” along the same lines, another student shared, if you are at risk for academic probation and current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 the possibility of expulsion, then cheating may seem reasonable: “i see it both ways. i see it as a really bad thing, as cheating. or you could see it as a sort of a thing done out of desperation, to prevent something worse from happening.” clearly, these students could envision how the negative impact from certain difficult circumstances might adversely affect their lives. every teacher did mention the pressure on students to earn high grades. the following comment from the spanish teacher exemplified this point of view: “the work all of a sudden becomes important when students don’t necessarily get a good grade and that is going to affect the secondary school [they attend].” the history teacher talked specifically about the pressure students on the edge of a b+/agrade experience: “[s]ome are on the border line, especially in our situation. they are leaving this school and their grades really matter, because they are basically applying to elite secondary schools.” in addition to concerns with getting admitted to elite secondary schools, parents were most often cited by both students and teachers as a source of academic pressure, although participants acknowledged that pressure also originated from teachers and students themselves. discussion as sykes & matza (1957) suggested in their theory on delinquent deviance, students often viewed decisions to cheat as a reflection of factors beyond their control. comparable to mccabe’s (1999) findings, this allowed students to divert blame from themselves to the situation as a means to lessen feelings of guilt and shame. in particular, northwest students may consider cheating acceptable, though not “right,” when cheating compensates for perceived unjust treatment, such as excessive amounts of work or when hard-working students do not have the time after school, given other extra-curricular commitments, to complete the work assigned (daniel, et al., 1991). using neutralization theory to understand cheating 17 as other studies have found, students also will more likely commit to an educational program if they believe their teacher “is personally interested and emotionally invested in [their] success” (collier, 2005, p.4). as shraw et al. (2007) found on their survey, the single variable most cited as decreasing cheating behavior was an effective teacher. comparably, in this study every student pointed to teacher caring and mutual respect as pivotal in shaping students’ perception toward their course work, including the possibility of them cheating. in what seems a related development, various scholars claim students are more likely to cheat when they suspect their teacher either does not care about them, the quality of instruction, or they judge the teacher as somehow incompetent (evans & craig, 1990, murdock et al., 2001; schraw et al., 2007; szabo & underwood, 2004). in such instances, students draw on this perception to justify completing work dishonestly (pulvers diekhoff, 1999; mccabe, 2001; evans & craig, 1990). as various studies have found, students are most invested in the course goals when they trust that the teacher cares about them and their individual success (collier, 2005; murdock & miller, 2003). moreover, students often view values as in competition with one another and can therefore justify cheating by framing a decision to cheat as choosing some other esteemed value over honesty. in this regard, students and teachers acknowledged that in some circumstances students feel that completing work honestly may jeopardize peer friendships. if sharing answers with a friend could help students maintain a friendship, some may choose the stability of the friendship over any concern that such collaboration constitutes cheating. likewise, in some instances, students viewed maintaining sports eligibility as justifying cheating behavior. were they to become ineligible, their self-esteem, friendships with teammates, and relations with the coach could all suffer. further, students often feel significant parental pressure to earn high current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 grades, which they may occasionally feel they cannot achieve without cheating. consequently, they may seek to honor their parents’ aspirations, but do so in dishonest fashion. implications often, as educators, we ask children to rank competing values by unintentionally placing one in tension with another. for example, we emphasize the importance of grades as well as honesty. students therefore may, at times, need to weigh two competing values, as an assignment or exam completed honestly may threaten their chance of obtaining a high grade and consequent selective school admission. in addition, we tell students to report when their peers cheat. but again, a tension may arise: students should value loyalty and friendship but also be honest and truthful. while we don’t propose a simple answer to such dilemmas, we do believe schools should explicitly acknowledge that students at times may embrace one value and thereby violate another. we need to discuss with students how to consciously grapple with these tensions as a means to help students clarify their values and begin to resolve what may for many be enduring tensions. advisory groups, such as those at northwest, seem ideal for this purpose. they are relatively small, so they provide opportunities for teachers to know students well. there is also a commitment to respect and confidentiality, which allows students a safe space to interact honestly with both peers and a teacher. and this seems precisely where students could explore the contextual factors, contradictions, and conflicts many encounter when they confront issues linked to academic honesty: as a student, do you have to share your hard work with a friend to preserve that friendship? is a teacher’s perceived lack of commitment to your success in the classroom grounds for cheating? if, as a student, your schedule leaves little free time, how do you respond to a teacher who assigns considerable homework? exploring such issues would using neutralization theory to understand cheating 19 provide students with an opportunity to articulate their position on tensions that seem inherent to a school such as northwest, and thereby address some likely scenarios in a way that is thoughtful, reflective, and includes more of the school community rather than being a spur of the moment judgment made by an individual student. moreover, this approach allows faculty working on the same team to engage in dialogue with students about important matters, air their concerns, and thereby begin to consider how they might address these matters of importance. in addition, teachers should acknowledge the links among good teaching, teachers who care, and student engagement and honesty in their work. in turn, faculty should consider how they might signal to students that they care about their personal and academic well-being. what does this look like in terms of routine classroom interactions, and how should teachers design lessons and assessments so they embody both rigor and concern for students’ academic growth? as we found, when teachers ask little of students, students respond in kind, and honesty may easily be compromised. teachers who invest little effort in developing respectful relations with their students and authentic learning opportunities in the classroom, may create alienated students who willingly cheat in a context where they care little for anyone’s well-being but their own. schools can’t be amoral institutions. they cannot ignore the link between good teaching, respect for students, and honesty. finally, our research suggests that northwest teachers and administrators, as well as those in similar schools, may want to think about how they might help students deal with pressures linked to high school admission. presently, many northwest students view eighth grade as preparation for high school rather than as equipping them with skills and knowledge that are innately interesting, personally relevant, and applicable beyond the classroom. consequently, it seems that some students rationalize cheating behavior because they sense little inherent value to current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 some school work and therefore cheating seems benign. with this perception in mind, teachers might reevaluate their instructional practices and work they assign to avoid involuntarily reinforcing cheating behavior on the part of alienated students. limitations this case study included teachers and students from a single, rather exclusive middle school in the northeast, resulting in little generalizability. to the extent that these students and teachers represent typical eighth grade students and their core teachers requires the reader to recognize particular elements of relevance to another context. in addition, because of the sensitivity of the topic, interview protocols did not ask participants about personal cheating behaviors. rather, they focused on their general attitudes on the acceptability of cheating and the perceived likelihood of cheating of their peers in particular contexts. thus, this study generally explored student perceptions of cheating behavior rather than the actual behavior of the students interviewed. students therefore may have felt a need to provide socially desirable responses and not been fully candid in their remarks. references american psychological association. 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(2004). cybercheats: is information and communication technology fuelling academic dishonesty? learning and teaching in higher education, 5, 180-199. whitley, b. e. (1998). factors associated with cheating among college students: a review. research in higher education, 39, 235-274. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain jeffery johnson seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen using neutralization theory to understand cheating 25 jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word 732-2947-3-le.docx 1 volume 14, number 2 august 7, 2011 issn 1099-839x understanding multicultural education osman özturgut university of the incarnate word with the shifting cultural texture and demographics of the united states (banks, 2006b; irvine, 2003), redefining multicultural education has become imperative. there are many views on the benefits and/or shortcomings of the multiculturalization of education. the question is not whether a multicultural education should be adopted but it is rather what we understand from multicultural education and how we are going to initiate such a reform within an educational system when we cannot even define ‘multicultural.’ “the awareness of one’s own assumptions, prejudices and stereotypes is a first step to be able to positively interact and learn from others. in this process lies the essence of intercultural learning” (martins, 2008, p. 203). this paper attempts to define (and redefine) multicultural education, explain its shortcomings, and offer recommendations for further discussion. keywords: multicultural education, intercultural communication with the shifting cultural texture and demographics of the united states (banks, 2006b; irvine, 2003), redefining multicultural education has become imperative. according to the data provided by the national center for education statistics (nces), between 1979 and 2008, the number of school-aged children (children ages 517) who spoke a language other than english at home increased from 3.8 to 10.9 million, or from 9 to 21 percent of the population in this age range (nces, 2009). nces (2010) reports that in 2007-2008, 58% of public school teachers of grades 9 through 12 are females with 83.5 % defined as belonging to “white” race/ethnicity. hispanics constituted the 6.6 % and blacks 6.9% of all teacher population of public school teachers of grades 9 through 12. the implications of the difference between the number of students with diverse backgrounds and the number of diverse teachers available to meet the needs of these students are certainly worth exploring. rhoads (1995) argues that the ever-increasing diversity that students bring to classrooms produces mass confusion about how to teach, what to teach, and even who to teach. “clearly, multiculturalism has significant implications for how we think about and structure pedagogy” (p. 262). in order to further understand these implications, this paper, evoked with an “epistemological curiosity” (freire, 1997), attempts to define (and redefine) multicultural education, explain its shortcomings, and offer recommendations for further discussion. multiple definitions of multicultural education many researchers have explained and defined the cultural difference paradigm with regards to creating classroom interventions and strategies to support the learning of students of color. with the idea of further understanding the diverse populations, pedagogical strategies such as multicultural education (banks, 1979; banks & mcgee, 2001; gay, 2000; grant & sleeter, 2003; nieto, 1996), cultural responsiveness (cazden & leggett, 1981; gibson, 1976) and culturally relevant pedagogy (ladson-billings, 1995) are grounded and justified. however, with the multiple definitions and explanations, there is not necessarily an agreed definition of multiculturalism and multicultural education among scholars and practitioners. what all agree is that there is room for further discussion about the definition and current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 application of multicultural education in nation’s schools. therefore, through a thorough review of the current and relevant literature, the author further tries to shed light on the understandings and applications of multicultural education and offers recommendations for educators and policy makers. review of current definitions even though ogbu (1992) had suggested that multicultural education has yet to be defined by the scholars, there has been a sufficient number of definitions to justify an action. banks (1993) explained that multicultural education started in the united states during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. since then, there has been a wealth of interest and research on multicultural education (banks, 1993; banks, 2001a, 2001b, 2004, 2006a, 2007; banks & banks, 2001; cochran-smith, 2001; ladson-billings, 1995, 1999a, 1999b; ladson-billings, 2003, 2006; perry, moore, acosta, edwards, & frey, 2006; sleeter, 2008, 2009; sleeter & stillman, 2005; sleeter, 1991, 2001, 2008; sleeter & bernal, 2004). banks and banks (2001) define multicultural education as: an idea, an educational reform movement, and a process whose major goal is to change the structure of educational institutions so that male and female students, exceptional students, and students who are members of diverse racial, ethnic, language, and cultural groups will have an equal chance to achieve academically in school (p. 1). they further explain that, "the term multicultural education describes a wide variety of programs and practices related to educational equity, women, ethnic groups, language minorities, low-income groups, and people with disabilities" (p. 6). multicultural education may mean making changes within the curriculum in one school but a total change in leadership in another school. gay (2000) and ladson-billings (2004) defined multicultural education as adopting a culturally responsive pedagogy with trained instructors facilitating it. nieto (1996) defined multicultural education as “antiracist education” which is “a process important for all students” (p. 307). jay and jones (2005) defined multicultural education as “the common term used to describe the type of pluralist education” where “its advocates are seeking for all children receiving an education, pre-k through college” (p. 3). the national association for multicultural education (name) described multicultural education as a “philosophical concept built on the ideals of freedom, justice, equality, equity, and human dignity as acknowledged in various documents, such as the u.s. declaration of independence, constitutions of south africa and the united states, and the universal declaration of human rights adopted by the united nations” (national association of multicultural education, 2011). kahn (2008) described multicultural education as a “process, a philosophy, a concept, which is dynamic, multifaceted, and polemic” (p. 531). with the emphasis on minority learning, gibson’s (1976) survey outlined five models where culture and education are explored in a combined fashion. 1) multicultural education for cross cultural understanding was designed to teach that there are differences among cultures and that the teaching should be designed so that the emphasis on respecting one another’s culture is apparent. 2) culturally responsive education was developed mostly for k-12 education to include the cultures of the minority students in the curriculum and adapt teaching strategies accordingly to fit the needs and expectations of these students. 3) bicultural education was adopted mostly to emphasize the importance of teaching languages and the skills needed to be able to function in the other cultures efficiently. in this, the language and culture of the minority students are reinforced in the curriculum and through the teaching methods used. 4) cultural pluralism was specifically designed to strengthen the socio-cultural, political, economic, and educational participation of minority students within societies. in this, it is important to note that the cultures do not mix but simply find a way to live with each other through providing equal opportunities to every member of the society. 5) multicultural education as an experience of the individuals in the society designed to help the society to work well harmoniously and respectfully. in short, there is no clear and agreed definition of what we understand from “multicultural education” but a variety of context-specific definitions. benefits and shortcomings of multicultural education: an overview nieto (2004) explained that the increase in cultural/ethnic diversity has caused many educators to recognize and own the need to expand their understanding of multicultural education, especially in public schools. with a very long history of immigration of people from many different cultural groups, the need for multicultural education and embracing diversity has become increasingly urgent. smith (2009) asserted that success or failure of multicultural education depends on the effective preparation of teachers and administrators. when the teachers and administrators understand the learning needs of students and recognize how these needs can be different than the needs of the students from the dominant culture, then the actual learning occurs. that is, when “we really see, know the students we must teach” (delpit, 1995, p. 183), we start making a difference in the lives of these students. in order to achieve this, teacher preparation programs are responsible for designing programs that are appropriate and in line with the needs of these teacher candidates. these programs do not only need to challenge teacher candidates to leave their “comfort zones” but the programs themselves need to examine and expand their knowledge and understanding of diverse cultures these teacher candidates will serve (ball, 2000; cruz, 1999; garcia & willis, 2001; gay, 2002). schugurensky (2002) argued that when the cultural diversity and global tolerance are promoted within understanding multicultural education 3 multicultural education, traditional elitism (of having eurocentric curriculum) and its shortcomings would be overcome. bernstein (1994) argued that multicultural education hinders the assimilation efforts and creates a divisive society. ravich (1990) argued that multiculturalization pose a threat to the best of what u.s. education has to offer the values, beliefs, and traditions of western civilization. dirlik (1997) quotes the poet russell leong as stating, "multiculturalism = postcolonial eurocentrism" (p. xi). pon (2009) further stated that “cultural competency resembles new racism both by otherizing non-whites and by deploying modernist and absolutist views of culture while not using racialist language (p. 59). some claim that a good liberal education embodies a rather mono-cultural education, where national origins and race are not confused with culture as a learned attribute (bernstein, 1994; bloom, 1994; souza, 1991; grant & graham, 1994; chavez, 1994). jenks, lee, and kanpol (2001) further argue that, under the guise of multicultural education, a deeper agenda lies, “how do we americanize minorities...? how do we prepare them for a competitive economy?" (p. 91). critical multiculturalists (chicago cultural studies group, 1992) explain that the study of multiculturalism is vulnerable because of its weaknesses in its own rhetoric: an overreliance on the efficacy of theory; a false voluntarism about political engagement; an unrecognized assumption of civil-society conditions; a tendency to limit grounds of critique to a standard brace of minoritized identities (for example, race, class, and gender); and a forgetfulness about how its terms circulate in "thirdworld" con-texts, which are often expected to provide raw material for integration in western visions of multicultural pluralism (p. 531). hooks (1994) explains that these weaknesses cause a return to narrow nationalism, isolationism, and xenophobia rather than developing a world perspective respecting multiple viewpoints and perspectives. it is an attempt to return to an idealized past. bensimon (1994) argues that the current understanding of multiculturalism downplays the role of human relations. this is because the focus is simply the reduction of tension among diverse groups. rhoads (1995) defines this as “mainstream multiculturalism” (p. 265). the attempt to change mono-cultural institutions into multicultural democratic communities is treating cultural diversity as a subject matter and not attempting to reform the ways of thinking and doing in the society. critical multiculturalism emphasizes the very nature of teaching itself. it is not only involved in discussing the content and the curriculum, but also involved in defining what the relevant knowledge is (rhoads, 1995). its purpose is to transform educational institutions and organizational structures to reflect diverse cultures and perspectives. educational anthropologists have highlighted the role of communication styles (cummins, 1986; mehan, 1979) and how societies interact within their defined cultural norms (au, 1980; foley, 1991; goldenberg & gallimore, 1991). one significant shortcoming of intercultural communication competence research and the multiculturalization of education attempts is that it focuses on majority interacting with minority groups (giles & evans, 1986; glaser, 1994; taylor, 1998). exceptions to this include sigelman and welch (1993) and sigelman et al. (1996) studying the racial attitudes of blacks toward whites and powers and ellison (1995) studying blacks’ convictions on interracial dating and friendship. all these studies focused on black/african american and white/european american populations. many ethnic and racial groups (black/african americans, latino, asian americans, and white/european americans, etc.) that form the basis of today’s multicultural environment are ignored (stein & rinden, 2000; hood & morris, 1997). advocating for multicultural education, as it is defined and practiced today in u.s. schools, whether k-12 or higher, has become a shallow application of a bicultural education. bicultural, for the purposes of this paper, is defined as interactions between african-americans and european-americans in certain states (within the u.s.) and hispanics and european-americans in certain states. ‘shallow’ in this context is defined as the poor and misguided attempts to multiculturalize the education. one example of the underestimation of the significance of a multicultural education is even though multicultural education is a necessary ingredient of quality education, it is perceived by most educators as to be embraced only in times of crisis or simply as a luxury if time in the school day allows (banks & banks, 2002). a scholar and practitioner nieto (2000) limits the shortcomings of the multicultural education to the “colorblindness”: many teachers and schools, in an attempt to be color-blind, do not want to acknowledge cultural or racial differences … although it sounds fair and honest and ethical, the opposite may actually be true … color blindness may result in refusing to accept differences and therefore accepting the dominant culture as the norm (p. 138). it is the lack of the ability “to relate and communicate effectively when individuals involved in the interaction do not share the same culture, ethnicity, language, or other salient variables” (hains, lynch, & winton, 2000, p. 2). we identify ourselves better and more easily with those who resemble us but we are generally not aware of how mono-cultural patterns influence our ways of thinking. another strong advocate of so-called multicultural education is lisa delpit. she argues that educational reforms are not designed with children of color in mind (delpit, 1995). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 delpit (1995), nieto (2000), banks and banks (2002), fuller (1992), and many other scholars argue that it is rather the mono-cultural curriculum and the shortcomings of teacher education programs that are mainly composed of female european americans that create the achievement gap. fuller (1992) compiled statistics revealing that the majority of students in teacher education programs are european-american, middle-class females, products of suburbs, small cities or rural areas. dilg (1995) warns that white teachers’ approach to multicultural education (mostly the curriculum aspect of multicultural education) as an outsider carries the danger of ignorance. despite increasing ethnic diversity in the united states, many educators do not seem to understand that multicultural education is the broader understanding, involvement, and appreciation of more than two cultures. jay (2003) explained that “despite a tendency to equate ‘americanness’ with ‘whiteness’ by individuals both outside and inside the united states, the united states is comprised of many different racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural groups” (p. 3). and in some instances, an artificial implicit connection between nationality and culture is created. this is artificial in the sense that it does not emphasize originality but pushes children into social constructs by encouraging them to learn about asian food or the mexican fiesta. contrary to the popular discourse of creating equity within the current education system, king (1991) argued that culturally relevant teaching that is successful helps produce a relevant black personality. his argument is relevant in the sense that culture is significant for individual and group identity. it “gives people a sense of who they are, of belonging, of how they should behave and of what they should not be doing” (harris & moran, 1991, p. 12). however, for all we know, while individuals foster positive self-appreciation as belonging to a specific group, they may also perceive the prejudice and stigmatization from other groups and experience exclusion and isolation. with all the shortcomings of the application of so-called multicultural education, the author argues, that the focus, as it is presented in the current literature, is on why the children of african-american population in the u.s. schools are not excelling in their classes comparable to the children of european-american populations. there are facts and the author does not argue against these facts where african-american students score low on the standardized tests. for example, garcia (1994) argues that research on african-american students tends to focus on dropouts, literacy gaps, and educational delinquency. another example to arguing the dominance of the white race is critical race theorists’ argument that official school curricula are designed to maintain a “white supremacist master script” and they are “culturally specific artifacts” (delgado, 1995, p. 21). regarding instruction, delgado argued that the “current instructional strategies presume that african-american students are deficient” (p. 22). when the african-american/black students are given tests, gould (1981) argued that it is a movement to legitimize african-american students’ deficiency. tate (1997) further commented that the current multicultural paradigm, currently popular in the u.s., exists to benefit whites. the question here is whether whites are promoting advances for blacks when only blacks promote white interests (bell, 1980). in order for learning to occur in classrooms, we need to examine a wide variety of perspectives, including our own (curtis, 1998). martins (2008) argue that “the awareness of one’s own assumptions, prejudices and stereotypes is a first step to be able to positively interact and learn from others. in this process lies the essence of intercultural learning” (p. 203). lawrence (2005) claimed that for an antiracist multicultural education to be more than superficially effective, it must go beyond the lack of multicultural ingredients in the curriculum, policy and structure issues within schools and how school personnel, specifically teachers, interact with students and with each other (see also banks & banks, 1995; lee, 1995; nieto, 2000). it is the innate rejection of culture difference as threatening as it is because “it challenges an individual to reconsider ethnocentric views of the world and negotiate each intercultural encounter with an open mind and as a unique experience” (mahoney & schamber, 2004, p. 312). furthermore, learning about other cultures and cultural competencies is rather difficult and bothersome because it entails acknowledging “how we are all implicated in contradictory relationships of oppression” (pon, 2009, p. 69). when educators claim the need for cultural competency or the need for a more comprehensive understanding of culturally responsive teaching, they are not necessarily exercising self-reflexivity but simply shielding themselves from criticisms of racism. through this study, the author postulates that the solution to the challenges of establishing a multicultural education lies in the understanding of the relationship between the individuals rather than implementation of a policy model or educational reform within an educational system. an education system, which does not recognize its problems and challenges as they exist but instead creates superficial challenges and solutions, is bound to fail in the long run. however, it should also be noted that intercultural communication and thus research is problematic as members of cultural groups may be blinded to significant aspects of their own culture. this is also a limitation of an education system where educators “represent ethnically diverse individuals and groups in all strata of human accomplishment instead of typecasting particular groups as dependent and helpless victims who make limited contributions of significance” (banks & banks, 2002, p. 33). understanding multicultural education 5 discussion bennett (1993) argued that, “probably one of the most threatening ideas encountered by students is this concept of difference and the implications this concept brings along with it” (p. 181). that is, how we perceive the differences determine the scale and limit of our interactions with other cultures. hitlin, scott, and elder jr. (2006), claim that when individuals choose from social categories that are structurally available to them, they tend to internalize the symbolic and cultural meanings attached to these categories. this internalization may cause an increase in self-appreciation or result in self-depreciation. further, park (1931) does not believe the outcome differences between whites, blacks, or other ethnic groups are a result of biology, but a function of social environments. stonequist (1935), too, argued that individual’s selfperception stems largely from his ability to view himself from multiple, if not conflicting, perspectives. in this context, intercultural communication competence is the first big step towards creating a culturally sensitive education. “exploring the construct of cultural difference is fundamental to learning about other cultures” (mahoney & schamber, 2004, p. 311) and we need to start with a close look at our intercultural communication competence. are we communicating our sincere attempts to understand other cultures effectively, or are we simply blinding ourselves with our own convictions on what is right for the students? we should also note that to understand the reason behind using the “white” as the excuse for failure, one must look to the society from a deeper perspective. the reason behind this argument might lie in self handicapping (arranging to perform under conditions that impair performance). by providing an excuse for poor performance, self handicapping makes people feel better in situations where they might fail (drexler, ahrens, & haaga, 1995). zuckerman, kieffer, and knee (1998) explain that self handicapping is mainly a problem when it becomes habitual. when it does, it typically leads to poor adjustment and lower self-esteem. and, self handicapping is the current tendency among african-americans and among some european-americans for the justification of africanamerican children’s failure in american schools. it is also not necessarily the information provided by the schools that will enhance our intercultural communication competence but an understanding of “why we do what we do”. gudykunst (1998) explained that intercultural competence includes not only knowledge of the culture and language, but also affective and behavioral skills. examples to such affective and behavioral skills are empathy, human warmth, charisma, and the ability to manage anxiety and uncertainty. there is no question that racism is a big concern and dominance of a single culture and presents a real threat for any education system. however, not belonging to the mainstream culture should not justify the failure of the education for minorities. from a pedagogical point of view, cultural sensitivity provides a road map to the multiculturalization of education and thus equality. from a political point of view, ‘divide and rule’ style of management applies where schools, through singling out the differences (unique characteristics), are creating culturally distinct groups. through these divisive policies, it becomes easier to focus on a problem where political sensitivity becomes a handicap. school management focuses on maintaining a superficially equal education rather than focusing on the learning outcomes of students from all cultures within the system. in order to have a better understanding, we need to take a close look at the policies as how an educational ideology is transferred to procedures, and regarding application, and how these procedures are practiced. the solution is not simply to create a culturally responsive pedagogy with a curriculum designed with children of color in mind, and turning young, female, white suburban teachers into culturally competent and responsive educators. the author does not argue the relevance of such discourses in the current education system. however, what is being argued here is that these do not constitute the essence of the solution but it is, rather, an understanding of ‘who i am’, and ‘why i do what i do’ as to start the ‘change’. conclusion to achieve multiculturalism in education, we need to have a clear definition of what we understand from ‘multicultural education’. through a clear definition, we can make the necessary changes in the policies. after we make the necessary changes in the policies, we need to have leaders with strong intercultural communication skills in order to communicate the vision of a multicultural education. the process of defining multicultural education, making the necessary changes in the policies, and finding a leader to communicate these can be achieved through serious and sincere applications of each of these steps, respectively. the intense focus on the mastery of other cultures within the multiculturalism is overambitious and self-satisfying, for the lack of a better word. understanding and respecting other cultural viewpoints and behavior is essential to the promotion of intercultural understanding. however, before we start to ‘change’ the world, we need to understand ‘why i do what i do.’ whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you want to accomplish, it all begins with an understanding of ‘i’: “the awareness of one’s own assumptions, prejudices and stereotypes is a first step to be able to positively interact and learn from others. in this process lies the essence of intercultural learning” (martins, 2008, p. 203). references antal, b. 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(2011). understanding multicultural education. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/732 author notes osman özturgut, ph.d. university of the incarnate word 4301 broadway cpo #293 san antonio, texas 78209 ozturgut@uiwtx.edu dr. osman özturgut has worked in international and comparative education for over ten years. he has been an administrator and faculty member in various higher education institutions in turkey, china, and the united states. dr. özturgut is currently an assistant professor of international education and entrepreneurship at the university of the incarnate word in san antonio, texas. he has conducted research in china, south korea, japan, norway, singapore, turkey, south africa, and the us. he is an expert in international and comparative higher education and leadership studies and has numerous publications and presentations in these areas. his current research interests include international students in the u.s., internationalization of higher education, multicultural education, sino-u.s. joint-venture campuses, and private higher education in china. . understanding multicultural education 11 volume 14, number 2 august 7, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editor melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser tapati sen jennifer shea alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers the teaching performance_final volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x the teacher performance assessment: reflections on the pedagogical thought processes of three student teachers kimberlee a. sharp, ed.d. morehead state university citation sharp, k.a. (2010). the teacher performance assessment: reflections on the pedagogical thought processes of three student teachers. current issues in education, 13(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the impact of the teacher performance assessment (tpa) on three pre-service teachers’ pedagogical thought processes and self-perceptions is the focus of this study. qualitative research procedures included interviews, observations, and coding of the pre-service teachers’ written documents. emerging themes and implications for teacher education include variance in: 1) the pre-service teachers’ ability to analyze and articulate learner outcome results; 2) how they thought they impacted student learning; and 3) their locus of control. keywords: pre-service teachers, pre-service teacher supervision, qualitative research, teacher performance assessment current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: kimberlee a. sharp, ed.d. affiliation: morehead state university address: 301-c ginger hall, morehead, ky 40351. email: k.sharp@moreheadstate.edu biographical information: kimberlee sharp is an assistant professor of teacher education in the department of middle grades and secondary education at morehead state university in kentucky. her research efforts focus on the pedagogy of controversial issues in the social studies, citizenship education, and pre-service teacher preparation and supervision. the teacher performance assessment 3 what is teacher quality? what attributes and dispositions must teachers possess to demonstrate quality? what is the relationship between teachers’ instructional decisions and students’ learning? these questions are just a few on the minds of teacher educators in this era of no child left behind and heightened interest in pre-service teacher effectiveness. because teacher attributes resulting in significant learner gains are difficult to determine and classify, recent experiences using performance assessments is drawing attention. this article suggests that the teacher performance assessment (tpa), although strong in its ability to evaluate entry level teacher competencies, is capable of yielding more important information about teacher candidates: their pedagogical thought processes and perceptions of themselves as teachers. the teacher performance assessment conceptualized at western oregon university as the “teacher work sample,” the teacher performance assessment (tpa) was developed as a means to assist pre-service and new teachers to evaluate their instructional effects on learners (devlin–scherer, burroughs, daly & mccartan, 2007; girod & girod, 2006). more precisely, girod and girod state that the purpose of the tpa is to develop in teachers the ability to “make systematic connections between their teaching actions and the learning of each student in their classrooms” using student data (p. 482). to ensure this occurs, pre-service and new teachers (“candidates,” henceforth) follow a six-step process while planning a unit of instruction which involves documenting: 1) student contextual features; 2) desired learning outcomes; 3) instructional plans; 4) assessment plans; 5) evidence of learner gains; and 6) reflections on student achievement and instructional decision – making (french, 2002). it is not surprising that the tpa methodology is receiving widespread attention among current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 4 teacher preparation programs. federal and state education reforms have created a high-stakes atmosphere, and at no other time in american public school history has student achievement been scrutinized as closely as it is today (french, 2002; mayer, 2005). changes occurring in the credentialing and licensing of new teachers is an example of the impact of these reforms. many states now have new-teacher induction programs, bureaucratic accountability systems, and new teacher standards to evaluate entry-level competence (branyon, 2008; mayer, 2005; ohio department of education [ode], 1999; pecheone, pigg, chung & souviney, 2005). in addition to these responses to education reform, teacher accreditation organizations, such as the national council for the accreditation of teacher education (ncate) have revised their standards to include performance-based models for assessing teacher candidates and accrediting teacher preparation programs (cawyer & caldwell, 2002; national council for the accreditation of teacher education [ncate], 2008). the current educational reform environment has given rise to several studies examining the value of using the tpa to evaluate teacher candidates’ entry-level teaching skills. one theme emerging from the current literature concerns candidates’ attitudes and supports they perceive to have received while completing a tpa. with regard to attitudes, okhremtchouk, seiki, gilliland, ateh, wallace and kato (2009) found the tpa adversely affects candidates’ ability to complete concurrent university coursework and impedes their ability to maintain normal sleeping routines and personal relationships. another study conducted by stone (1998) revealed lack of time and lack of preparation assistance by university supervisors as deterrents to the candidates’ attitudes toward performance-based assessment. taking this finding further, devlin – scherer et al. (2007) reported that some mentor teachers are unsupportive of pre assessment techniques as a method for determining instructional course of action by teacher the teacher performance assessment 5 candidates. even worse, the candidates in okhremtchouk et al. reported that mentor teachers had “nothing to do” with candidates’ teacher performance preparation and maintained an “indifference to [its] importance and significance” (p. 54). thus, the attitudes regarding tpa supports reported in these studies may be suggestive of team members’ competing pedagogical beliefs and differing levels of expertise with performance assessment. reports such as these may also justify the move of some teacher preparation programs to train partner teachers in the tpa process (branyon, 2008; devlin – scherer et al.). recent research has also explored teacher candidates’ perceived value of the tpa in terms of informing their instructional practice. girod & girod’s (2006) web-based simulation, the “cook school district simulation,” is one example. used as a training tool to introduce teacher candidates to performance assessment methodology, the cook simulation rendered positive results in candidates’ ability to connect teaching and learning in simulated classroom exercises. okhremtchouk et al. (2009) found that despite the performance assessment’s negative features (i.e., the consumption of one’s time and the sacrifice of other coursework), candidates reported to have improved their skills in lesson plan development and aligning assessment with state standards. branyon’s (2008) study further affirms the methodology’s power to inform instructional practice. this study reported that candidates “had indeed affected k-12 student learning” (p. 36), and the collaboration of skilled mentor teachers was an essential factor in the candidates’ performance. yet another marker of the perceived value of the tpa by candidates is the extent to which they claim to differentiate instruction based upon diverse learning needs and learning styles. in the devlin – scherer et al. (2007) study, candidates reported reflection and experimentation with fusing theory and practice as the key elements to informing their instructional decisions regarding individualized adaptations. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 6 in summary of the literature, the tpa is a powerful methodology for evaluating teacher candidate instructional effects on learners. it sensitizes beginning teachers to numerous factors and nuances of classroom teaching. because of this, candidates need to possess nominal skills and understandings prior to commencing a tpa. the collective skills represented in the research above stipulate common features to determine candidate effectiveness, which include: 1) the ability to demonstrate effective oral and written communication; 2) the ability to identify and articulate learner outcomes; 3) the ability to identify appropriate assessment procedures; and 4) the ability to adapt instruction according to student dynamics and student outcomes. the collective research also underscores the importance of developmentally appropriate instructional practices as informed by theory and practice as well as the presentation of thorough and accurate content knowledge as requisite understandings of teacher candidates. the teacher education program (tep) described in this article affirmed this collective body of knowledge and scaffolded the skills and understandings in courses and field – experiences prior to its candidates’ clinical practice semester. methodology the role of the tpa on the pedagogical thought processes of 3 student teachers and the perceived impact on student learning described in this article took place at a regional university in the southern region of the united states during the 2008 spring semester. the national council for accreditation of teacher education (ncate) and the state’s teacher licensing board accredit this university’s teacher education program. the college of education at this university is composed of three departments, all of which share in the preand post-professional preparation of teachers, both undergraduate and graduate. the teacher performance assessment 7 prior to this college of education’s adoption of the tpa, faculty assessed their student teachers’ initial teaching competencies using a portfolio of artifacts aligned with state teacher standards. although the portfolio was designed to represent a comprehensive evaluation of the student teachers’ exiting competencies, several faculty members criticized the method for its lack of tangible, quantifiable evidence of pre-service teacher skills (e.g., articulation of instructional decisions as determined by student data) and for its “scrapbook” format. members of the faculty and clinical practice supervisors decided to replace the portfolio with the tpa and vigorously drafted its own manual and scoring rubrics using existing tpa models, such as the renaissance partnership teacher work sample (the renaissance partnership for improving teacher quality [rpitq], 2004). the author (“professor,” henceforth) hoped to gain insight into the pedagogical thought processes of 3 student teachers during and following their work on the tpa. she solicited volunteers from among the college of education’s student teachers during their clinical practice semester. the professor informed the volunteers that the inquiry would consist of regularly scheduled conferences, interviews, and observations in order to render conclusions about their thought processes, actions, and self – perceptions as teachers. the professor collected data about the 3 student teachers’ pedagogical thought processes using methodology from the qualitative research tradition; more specifically, classroom action research. according to kemmis and mctaggart (2000), this tradition involves researchers assisting teachers in “making judgments about how to improve their own practices” (p. 569). the professor employed a reflexive system of questioning in order to challenge the student teachers’ existing views of theory and practice as well as their interactions and actions in the classroom. in doing so, the professor relied upon the unique context of each student teacher’s placement to current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 8 determine the sets of questions asked. however, to stimulate thinking about lesson planning and differentiation, the professor developed some common questions that she asked of each student teacher: 1) given the special needs identified in your classroom, how do you expect to modify instruction for every child? 2) what do you believe will be some obstacles or challenges when designing your lesson plans for your group of students? 3) what do you believe to be your strengths and/ or weaknesses with regard to the topic you are about to teach? what do you plan to do to compensate for weak areas? 4) can you explain how community factors and background experiences of your students will impact the unit you are about to teach? and, how do you know these factors will impact learning? what is the relationship between the community factors and background experiences to the unit topic you are about to teach? what do you anticipate some misunderstandings will be? as the student teachers progressed through the teaching of their units, the professor queried them about their lesson plans, the delivery of instruction, their assessment practices, and their instructional decision – making. examples of these questions included: 1) during your lesson today, i noticed that you had confused the students on the explanation of two similar, but different concepts. can you identify when that happened during your lesson and identify the two concepts? how do you think you will address this error tomorrow in your teaching? what strategy do you think will help iron – out the students’ confusion? (student teacher #1, marie) 2) how did you derive the questions asked during the interviews of your students? did these interviews elicit the responses you wanted? why or why not? (student teacher the teacher performance assessment 9 #1, marie) 3) what do you predict your students’ retention level will be using the strategy you have selected? what other strategies have you tried when helping your learners with rote – level tasks? did they work? why or why not? (student teacher #2, anne) 4) during your lesson, i observed two students off-task. can you identify when this occurred? physical and cognitive disability aside, what could you do to ensure that everyone participate? how do you know they understand “rhyming”? did the “tickmarks” used to tally their claps demonstrate an understand of rhyming? why or why not? (student teacher #2, anne) 5) based upon results of your pre-assessment, what modern day examples do you think you could use to serve as analogies for explaining prohibition and women’s suffrage? how do you know your students will identify with these examples? what is their connection to these examples? (student teacher #3, june) 6) can you explain how you decided upon “community-building” as part of your lesson plan development? what factors about the students influenced your decisions to use community building in your lessons? during your observation, i noticed a breakdown of the “democratic process.” what do you believe caused this breakdown? how do plan to restore democracy tomorrow? (student teacher #3, june) the professor archived the questions and responses in individually labeled portfolios for each student teacher. these portfolios also held classroom observation protocols, email exchanges, the student teachers’ written lesson plans, action-impact-refinement essays, and drafts of narratives of their tpa documents. following each meeting with the student teachers and review of tpa documents, the professor recorded notes on an excel spreadsheet and coded them according to decisions about instructional strategies, adaptations, assessment procedures, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 10 and resources used. the professor also recorded verbatim comments made by the student teachers that appeared to be unique thoughts and responses to their teaching and learning experience. it was during this process of recording the student teachers’ interview comments, written reflections, and anecdotal information from observations that the professor employed the constant comparative method and discovered patterns emerging from the data. according to strauss and corbin (1998), the constant comparison method enables the researcher to identify “variations in the patterns” of the data by comparing those patterns to various “properties and dimensions under different conditions” (p. 67). the researcher coded the student teachers’ information according to pre-conceived properties (e.g., instructional strategies, assessment plans, etc.) and found variance in their behaviors, thinking processes, and comments. the researcher deduced the variances were due to the individual context and predilection of each student teacher as well as the context of their classroom placement. this process generated three themes attributed to the student teachers’ entry-level competencies in which this article proceeds to report: 1) their ability to analyze and articulate learner outcome results; 2) their perceptions of how they thought they impacted student learning; and 3) the role their exhibited locus of control played in the delivery of their lessons. the student teachers the professor assigned pseudonyms to the three student teachers in order to protect their anonymity. each of the 3 participating student teachers were dual special education and regular education majors and completed their clinical practice semester in the same school district close to the university. the school district services students of the entire county and consists of one high school, one middle school, and four elementary schools. although the district is rural and the teacher performance assessment 11 generally homogenous in terms of ethnicity and religious background, several aspects regarding the grade level, classroom profile, and subject matter deemed each of these student teachers’ experiences as very different. the first student teacher, marie, was a dual elementary p-5/msd (moderate to severe disabilities) p-12 major and assigned to a self-contained, inclusive 5th grade classroom. several of marie’s students exhibited the range of ability levels often associated with inclusive learning environments. these ability levels included students with significant learning delays and/ or disabilities in addition to students designated as academically gifted. at the time of marie’s arrival, the class was studying early history and political life of the american colonies. to keep with this general theme, marie’s cooperating teacher assigned the preamble to the united states constitution as the subject for her tpa learning sequence. the second student teacher, anne, also a dual elementary p-5/msd p-12 major, was assigned to a self-contained, multi-age msd classroom consisting of grades 6, 7, and 8. each of the 9 students in this classroom had disabilities which precluded their ability to function in regular education settings, although a few of these students “went out” for physical education, social studies, and music. some of the specific disabilities represented in this classroom included down syndrome, childhood ataxia with central hypomyelination (cach), and other neurological and physical disorders impeding normal cognitive development and growth. the curriculum practiced in this classroom primarily focused on the practical living needs of the students supplemented with some academic instruction in reading, mathematics, and science. anne’s cooperating teacher assigned poetry, more specifically, the attributes of rhyme and rhythm of poetry as her tpa learning sequence topic. the third student teacher, june, was a dual elementary p-5/lbd (learning and behavior current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 12 disorders) p-12 major, and assigned to the county high school for her student teaching assignment. her experience occurred in an 11th grade lbd resource classroom in which the students’ disabilities consisted of mild mental disorders, emotional behavioral disorders, and specific learning disabilities in reading and comprehension. june’s cooperating teacher taught mathematics, language arts, and social studies at different times of the day, and assigned june u.s. history, more specifically, the roaring twenties, as her subject for the tpa learning sequence. findings as stated previously, the professor spent significant time conferencing with the 3 participating student teachers during and following the completion of their tpa for the purpose of understanding their pedagogical thought processes. these conferences along with their individual tpa documentation produced several findings which appeared to have profound effect on these pre-service teachers’ decision-making skills and the achievement of their students. these findings include variances in their understanding of their students’ prior knowledge and cognitive capabilities, their perceptions of how they thought they impacted student learning, and the extent to which their observed locus of control may have contributed to their perceptions of their impact on learning. prior to the tpa learning sequence, each student teacher ascertained their students’ prior knowledge by administering an informal pre-test. although the student teachers gleaned productive information from these pre-tests, especially in the form of zeroing in on daily skill and concept targets, the professor noted differences in the student teachers’ expectations of student performance and cognitive capabilities. marie, whose tpa learning sequence was the teacher performance assessment 13 written for a 5th grade social studies class, appeared to have the greatest challenge reconciling her students’ misunderstandings with her selected instructional strategies. marie’s pre-test results indicated that 100% of her students could recite the preamble with near perfection, that 62.5% of her students understood that the preamble is an introduction, and that 37.5% of her students knew the preamble is part of the u.s. constitution. these results indicated that her students’ rote-level understanding of the preamble was sufficient and did not require extensive re teaching. however, the pre-test also showed marie that only .03% of her students understood the meaning of each of the 6 goals listed in the preamble; thus, “after the pre-test, it was clear that my students only had a superficial understanding of the preamble” and its role in american’s lives. this pre-test result caused marie to focus her daily instruction on the “current day representations of each goal so that [the] students can derive meaning from the complex words.” marie developed higher – order objectives using bloom’s taxonomy that she hoped would enable her students “to apply those meanings to present day experiences.” in summary, marie “felt that having the students recite a bunch of big words without any conceptual understanding would serve little, if any practical purpose.” to aid her students’ understanding of the preamble and its current day representations, marie planned a variety of instructional strategies that were hands-on, engaging, and nurtured conceptual understanding. the conferences with marie and the notes in her tpa revealed that she planned these exercises according to lev vygotsky’s theory of zone of proximal development utilizing scaffolds such as rich conversation, analogies, and current event representations of the preamble. marie alluded to this constructivist approach by commenting, i will probe the students about their understanding of the constitution ... as an analogy using a game board. this activity will take the form of a whole class current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 14 discussion ... present[ing] the information in a student inquiry method. i will have the students discover the meaning of the game board by guiding them to the final conclusion that the constitution is like the instruction manual for our nation’s government. marie also demonstrated a constructivist approach to teaching this topic by her frequent use of “interactive powerpoint,” in which the teacher recorded student comments and questions on the computer for all students to see. this approach allowed marie’s students an opportunity to revise their thinking about each goal of the preamble as they proceeded through their activities. using the interactive powerpoint marie “move[d] onto the next activity using newspapers ... each group [having] one goal from the preamble and had them take time to locate articles from the newspaper that represent that goal.” as each group presented their current event representation of the preamble, “students [were] encouraged to jot down notes” using the powerpoint as their guide. although marie observed slight gains in her students’ conceptual understanding of the preamble’s 6 goals, she appeared somewhat discouraged in their ability to retain or make sense of the goals’ abstract meanings. to compensate for this, she supplemented the interactive powerpoint exercises with core content textbooks, re-taught the newspaper exercise using video clips and discussion, and asked the students to illustrate their personal constructions of the goals in small groups. the professor’s classroom observations with marie also indicated that she had confused the students during their daily discussions on two of the goals by giving vague definitions and examples to ambiguous goals, namely, “providing for the common defense” and “establishing domestic tranquility.” despite this error, the students’ scores regarding the meanings of the 6 goals listed in the preamble did improve on the post-assessment that marie the teacher performance assessment 15 administered, moving from .03% correct responses to 56.2% correct. marie commented that, those scores show a marked improvement in the conceptual understanding of the goals ... i think that this [the preamble] was an extremely challenging and abstract concept for 5th graders to understand and that my class especially had trouble due to their limited means and limited experience outside of their rural community. marie exhibited a strong internal locus of control in her tpa documentation as well as during the conferences she had with the professor. when asked about how she thought she impacted student learning, it was clear that she derived her explanations from thoughtful observations and data evaluation. she testified in her tpa that 88.8% of her students improved their conceptual understanding of each of the preamble’s goals between their pre-test and post test performances. she made a decision to “teach the preamble from a conceptual standpoint” and added that she “expect[ed] the students at the end of the unit to be able to provide specific examples and evidence of how the goals in the preamble can be seen in action today.” marie’s decision-making appeared effective as she observed that her students “provided examples of each goal from the preamble,” and attributed her students’ success to factors for which she was in control as evidenced in her comment that, “after reviewing the students’ [written] answers, i could see much of my phrasing that was used throughout the learning sequence.” in short, marie’s students were successful in repeating drilled examples of the preamble’s goals in written form. further evidence of marie’s strong internal locus of control in impacting student learning occurred during the administration of a second tier to her post-test. cleverly designed to augment her understanding of the depth of knowledge gained by her students, marie interviewed 4 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 16 students of differing academic abilities and socioeconomic backgrounds about the goals set forth in the preamble by showing them pictures of events, people, and/ or situations. marie noted vast differences and errors in their responses and interpretations about the pictures, and reasoned that 5th grade students have “a limited ability to attach the meaning of the goals to pictorial representations” and to explain them in their own words. marie further reasoned that her students’ difficulty to think abstractly on the subject was due to their “limited experiences,” yet qualified this statement by recounting various compensations she implemented to bridge the experience gap. thus, marie’s use of interview allowed her to discover firsthand the degree to which environment plays in students’ abstract thinking and served to reconcile for her the importance of examining instructional inputs in light of students’ special backgrounds. anne’s experiences teaching her tpa learning sequence and the expectations she had for her students were notably different than marie’s; the most important difference being the student context of anne’s classroom: multi-age students with severe neurological, physical, and cognitive disabilities. each of anne’s students were exempt from state standardized testing. as marie had done, anne administered a pre-test about rhyme and rhythm in poetry. her pre-test differed from marie’s, however, because anne developed pre-tests according to each student’s individual iep and alternate portfolio. having access to each of the students’ records therefore enabled anne to effectively plan her learning sequence and assessments based upon known abilities and frustration levels. each student failed anne’s pre-test which contained questions regarding the rudiments of poetry, rhyme, and rhythm. anne informed the professor that she expected each of the students to fail the pre-test because of their cognitive disabilities and because “the students lacked basic understanding and / or awareness of this literary genre.” anne reasoned that her daily objectives the teacher performance assessment 17 needed to focus on the lowest levels of bloom’s taxonomy, and, tasks will need to be age appropriate since they are in middle school, even though their academic and functional abilities are as low as a typical 1st grader ... i feel emphasizing the knowledge, comprehension, and application levels will be appropriate for my students because i want them to work at both the independent and instructional levels. i don’t want to push my students to their frustration level because they can get very sensitive, and their [impaired] confidence will prohibit them from achieving my objectives. as a result of anne’s acute attention to her students’ cognitive capabilities, she developed only one to two lower-order objectives for each day of her instructional sequence with subobjectives specifying adaptations for each student. the theoretical foundation by which anne selected instructional strategies to teach about rhyme and rhythm in poetry differed markedly from marie’s unit on the preamble. whereas the latter relied heavily on “students making meaning,” (i.e., constructivism), the former selected strategies which had more in common with behaviorist assumptions about learning (parsons, hinson, & sardo – brown, 2001). using the stimulus – response model, anne taught rhyme by reading rhyming words from shel silverstein’s (1996) “spoiled brat” and having her students match silverstein’s words to highlighted words on individualized worksheets. in addition, anne attempted to teach rhythm by breaking down the skill into small, easily emulated tasks. anne introduced syllables and rhythm by reading segments of another shel silverstein (1974) poem, “alice.” she read phrases out loud and clapped with the expectation of students echo clapping in unison. as a follow up to this exercise, the students were given a sheet with the poem printed on it. to the side of each phrase, space was provided for students to write in tick marks. tick marks indicated each time a clap was heard. for this activity, the teacher clapped the poem as the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 18 students made tick marks. following the post-assessment on rhyme and rhythm in poetry, anne discovered that her students demonstrated limited success toward her established objectives. anne’s pre-test scores were extremely low prior to her unit (i.e., 33%, 44%, 25%, and 0% for each of the four students taught), yet the daily formative assessment scores were nearly perfect. anne commented, with the results of their formatives being so high, i expected a near perfect summative assessment [for each student] ... knowing that my students have such limited cognitive ability, i had to provide several manipulatives and accommodations during their lessons to help them be successful. anne was surprised with the students’ post-test results as only two students passed her test on rhyme and rhythm with scores of 70% or higher. anne’s reflection revealed that she may have contributed to the low scores by not taking into account her students’ inability “to retain even the simplest skills and pieces of information on a day-to-day basis.” as a self-identified growth area, anne emphasized the need for frequent repetition, modeling, and immersion while developing new skills and concepts, especially with students having moderate to severe learning disabilities. whereas anne’s tpa documentation and conference notes indicated significant elaborations regarding her instructional plans and was replete with data used to inform her practice, anne’s perceptions for how she thought she impacted learning were less detailed. the professor observed that her reasoning emanated largely from the obvious physical and cognitive impairments of her students, their academic histories, and their behaviors in class; in other words, factors beyond her immediate control. thus, anne exhibited a greater tendency to justify her students’ performance based on their disabilities and other extraneous factors. in terms of her the teacher performance assessment 19 students’ reluctant behaviors and limited attention spans, anne attributed frequent interruptions in the classroom as the impediment for meaningful instruction to occur, by noting, most of my students need bathroom assistance, which is provided by the teacher or one of her aides. this can take away a lot of the day because of how much time it takes to get to every student in the room. anne also attributed her students’ limited attention span on day 2 of her learning sequence by commenting, “my students were not as engaged in the activities i had. the behavior of one student was slouching, putting her head down, and arguing. others were frustrated that we were working with poetry again.” and finally, anne pointed out that in order to maintain a student’s alternate portfolio designation, pre-test scores for the core content must fall below 50%, and based upon that standard, “by looking at my [post-test] results, i feel that my students did have success.” anne’s tpa lacked compelling evidence to suggest that she thought constructively about the impact of the external factors on her instructional delivery and on her students’ achievement, even though she mentioned the externals several times. anne provided little to no reflection for how to atone for those factors by taking responsibility for them. instead, anne’s documentation contained several references of the burden for achievement as belonging to the students, such as in her statement that, “being able to retain knowledge into another lesson can be hard for students, but it is especially hard for my students.” further, anne’s documentation mentioned “review” as a means to address her students’ inability to “retain knowledge”; yet she inadvertently failed to identify specific instructional interventions and their predicted impact on learning. because of this omission, anne’s understanding of the overall contributions she made toward her students’ achievement may only be superficial. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 20 the final student teacher, june, appeared to have the fewest struggles planning and teaching her tpa learning sequence. like anne, june had access to her students’ individual ieps and academic histories which enabled her to differentiate instruction according to specific learning styles and needs. although her students were 11th graders in a special education resource classroom, none of her students’ learning delays were severe enough for exemption from the state standardized test for u.s. history. in conferencing with june, the professor found that developing a learning sequence with strong connections to the present was her primary focus. with help from her cooperating teacher and investigation into the state’s core content for assessment, june identified the “roaring twenties” as the topic that would elicit the greatest interest and discussion among her students. june’s pre-test consisted of 10 questions using the anticipation guide method (fisher, brozo, frey, & ivey, 2007). her aim was to determine what the students considered fact or fiction regarding women’s suffrage, prohibition, and cultural change in the 1920s. the results of june’s pre-test showed that the students had naïve constructions of the term, “women’s suffrage,” had little understanding of the term “prohibition” and its effects on american society, yet had realistic understanding of the impact of automobiles and factories on society and on the economy. these misunderstandings caused june to focus her learning sequence on women’s suffrage and prohibition by, tapping into students’ interests and background experiences, asking them to make comparisons of women’s rights of yesteryear with the present, and by asking them to think about restrictions on the sale of alcohol in our state today compared to the past. june’s tpa suggested numerous efforts to compensate for her students’ lower academic aptitudes and impaired motivations to learn by involving them in the planning and decision making process of the learning sequence. much in the spirit of john dewey’s (1933) democracythe teacher performance assessment 21 building in the classroom, june commented that, “each of [the students] gave me their suggestions on how to make the unit beneficial to them . . . i added those suggestions before i taught the unit. these suggestions included more visuals and more class participation assignments.” in addition, june attempted to nurture communitybuilding and participatory citizenship skills among her students by involving them in a constructive discussion exercise. june observed that the topics of women’s rights and restrictions on the sale of alcohol evoked emotional and argumentative responses from her students. the professor observed that june did not succumb to their outbursts and strong convictions; instead, she decided to channel their intensity “by having them participate in a teacher moderated debate between the boys and girls.” to prepare her students for the debate, june provided video clips, primary sources such as advertisements and photographs, and short journal articles and newspaper clippings as resources for their position development. june’s students collectively demonstrated significant gains in achievement between her pre-test and post-test administrations; the former average being 66.67% and the latter being 92.67%. she noted, however, that her students struggled on the segment of the post-test which assessed students’ analysis of the roaring twenties’ issues and their relationship to contemporary society. june noted that because of the open-ended format and requirement to “write complete sentences and use paragraph form,” her students “had trouble explaining in writing, when they rarely have trouble explaining verbally,” even though the task was necessary for her to determine their depth of understanding. throughout the tpa process, june exuded enthusiasm and self-confidence in her instructional abilities both in her written documentation and conversations with the professor. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 22 june opined in her reflection, i feel that i have not only grown as a teacher, but i have also grown as a human being. i have been able to experience this growth from the beginning to the end. now, that it is over, i feel successful and confident in my abilities and for a new teacher that is the best reward. perhaps more so than her peers, june claimed the greatest responsibility for her actions and their effects on her learners, suggesting a strong internal locus of control. to support her students’ recommendations regarding strategies they would like to see her employ, june overtly sought ways to make her unit on the roaring twenties meaningful through extensive background reading on the subject. owning up to this responsibility she commented, i think that i need to focus on the content areas i struggle with in order to better prepare myself for the classroom. as teachers, we are taught a wide range of content and information in a short period of time. with that in mind, i believe that as much as we tell our students that they need to be lifelong learners, we ourselves need to take that into consideration and should never stop increasing our knowledge of the content. insofar as the perceived impact june’s instruction had on her students, the professor observed that june felt she could control for her students’ various learning disabilities by actively involving them in the learning process. june’s written notes indicated that her cooperating teacher conditioned the students to work silently and independently in the resource classroom with little teacher/student interaction. by experimenting with deweyian principles, june altered the learning arrangement to include group work, exchange of ideas through debate and discussion, and democratic decision-making. her own decisions to include these strategies appeared beneficial, as evidenced in her observation that, “each of my students was able to give an ‘alcohol’ law and state their opinion on why the government created that law. learning from the teacher performance assessment 23 each other’s comments, this discussion was very successful in meeting my objective.” thus, june’s thought processes recorded in her tpa suggest that she perhaps displayed the strongest self-efficacy, or power, to impact learning among the three student teachers. she appeared to exert enthusiasm for the teaching process, appeared to own the responsibility for student achievement regardless of extenuating factors, and appeared to compensate for her students’ motivational challenges by involving them in the instructional decision-making process. discussion as stated earlier, the purpose of this inquiry was to help the professor gain a better insight into student teachers’ pedagogical thought processes and perceived impacts on student learning during their completion of a tpa. the professor’s inquiry involved only 3 student teachers and therefore the results described in this article are not necessarily demonstrative of their peers’ within the same population. nonetheless, the professor uncovered worthwhile observations about these 3 student teachers’ thought processes and actions during their tpa which may have implications for teacher preparation programs and for predicting teacher effectiveness. specifically, these implications concern the articulation of desirable tpa outcomes and desirable supervision of student teachers during their completion of tpas. first and perhaps most important, the snapshots of these 3 student teachers’ experiences reveal that they demonstrated rudimentary instructional and analysis skills. their tpas represent the first opportunity to independently plan, implement, and analyze student assessment results for an entire learning sequence. in terms of knowing what to teach and cogitating appropriate strategies, each of these student teachers appeared to understand the connection between precurrent issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 24 tests and instructional targets. additionally, each student teacher attempted to address student learning needs and learning preferences by differentiating instruction as much as possible. one explanation for these observations may rest in the fact that each of the 3 student teachers majored in both regular and special education (i.e., msd and lbd specifically) and benefited from the emphasis placed on assessment and differentiation in their special education courses. if this is true, which continued research in this area could illumine, teacher preparation programs utilizing the tpa as a means of evaluating candidate competency should ensure all methods courses embed assessment and differentiation practices in their syllabi. a second implication regarding these 3 student teachers’ experiences during their tpa completion is in the area of data analysis. each of the student teachers adequately reported pre test, formative, and summative assessment results in their tpas using appropriate statistical calculations, graphs, and tables. each attempted to articulate the meanings of those results; however, these attempts depicted nothing more than written summaries of their graphs, tables, and data artifacts found in the tpa appendices. although sensitized to the importance of data collection and analysis to inform instruction, each of the 3 student teachers lacked important inferences and speculations about their students’ achievement and long – term impact on learning. an explanation for this observation may reside in the psychology of cognitive development; that as adults continue to grow and enter new situations and experiences, their ability to reason contextually expands. due to these student teachers’ experiential and cognitive limitations, teacher preparation programs may need to consider the inability of the tpa to evaluate the likelihood new teachers can effectively use and make meaning of student data. a third and final implication regarding these 3 student teachers’ thought processes during the completion of their tpa concerns the influence of internal and external factors on the the teacher performance assessment 25 shaping of their instructional decision-making. two of the student teachers exhibited strong internal loci of control as evidenced by taking responsibility for reducing barriers to learning and holding students to high standards for achievement. the other student teacher, although equally capable and conscientious in her efforts, exhibited an external locus of control tendency as factors beyond her control (i.e., the students’ obvious physical and neurological disabilities, and classroom interruptions) appeared to influence her instructional responses. an explanation accounting for this variance in their decision-making and perceived impacts on learning may reside in their innate personalities, but also in the degree to which they believe their instructional efforts will be worthwhile. as a result, teacher preparation programs utilizing the tpa should nourish the attitude in their student teachers that all students are capable of learning regardless of intervening factors. supervisors particularly should regularly query and challenge their student teachers’ thought processes in such a way that is conducive to enlightened instructional practice. in closing, this article reported on the pedagogical thought processes of 3 student teachers as derived from tpa documentation and conferencing. the findings included variances in the student teachers’ understanding of their students’ prior knowledge and cognitive capabilities, their perceptions of how they thought they impacted student learning, and the extent to which their observed locus of control may have contributed to their self-perceptions. the insights illuminated in this article will hopefully spawn new interest and dialogue in the evaluative possibilities of the tpa in predicting teacher candidate effectiveness as it relates to student achievement. references american psychological association. (2001). publication manual of the american psychological association (5th ed.). washington, dc: author current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 26 branyon, j. (2008). using mentoring and cohort collaboration: enhancing teacher quality in preservice teachers. delta kappa gamma bulletin, 74(3), 35–38. cawyer, c., & caldwell, d.a. (2002). performance-based assessment of teacher education: some contextual considerations. action in teacher education, 23(4), 1–3. devlin – scherer, r., burroughs, g., daly, j., & mccartan, w. (2007). the value of the teacher work sample for improving instruction and program. action in teacher education, 29(1), 51–60. dewey, j. (1933). how we think: a restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. boston, ma: d.c. heath. fisher, d., brozo, w.g., frey, n., & ivey, g. (2007). anticipation guides. in 50 content area strategies for adolescent literacy. upper saddle river, nj: pearson education, inc. french, r. (2002). linking teacher quality to student achievement through assessment [monograph]. basic education: a monthly forum for analysis & comment, 46(10), 12–16. girod, m., & girod, g. (2006). exploring the efficacy of the cook school district simulation [electronic version]. journal of teacher education, 57(5), 481–497. kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (2000). participatory action research. in n.k. denzin & y.s. lincoln (eds.), handbook of qualitative research, (pp. 567–605). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications, inc. mayer, d. (2005). reviving the “policy bargain” discussion: professional accountability and the contribution of teacher performance assessment. the clearing house, 78(4), 177–181. national council for the accreditation of teacher education. (2008). professional standards for the accreditation of teacher preparation institutions. washington, d.c.: ncate. ohio department of education. (1999). ohio’s entry year program for teachers: toward the implementation of performancebased licensure. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 436495). okhremtchouk, i., seiki, s., gilliland, b., ateh, c., wallace, m., & kato, a. (2009). voices of pre-service teachers: perspectives on the performance assessment for california teachers (pact). issues in teacher education, 18(1), 39–62. parsons, r.d., hinson, s.l., & sardo-brown, d. (2001). educational psychology: a practitioner – researcher model of teaching. stamford, ct: wadsworth/ thomson learning, inc. pecheone, r.l., pigg, m.j., chung, r.r., & souviney, r.j. (2005). performance assessment and electronic portfolios: their effect on teacher learning and education. the clearing house, 78(4), 164–176. the teacher performance assessment 27 renaissance partnership for improving teacher quality. (2004). the teacher work sample: manual for teacher candidates – tips for preparing the teacher work sample. retrieved june 30, 2008 from http://www.uni.edu/itq/pdf_files/student_tws_manual_june_2004.pdf silverstein, s. (1974). alice. in where the sidewalk ends. new york, ny: harper collins publishers, inc. silverstein, s. (1996). spoiled brat. in falling up. new york, ny: harper collins publishers, inc. stone, b.a. (1998). problems, pitfalls, and benefits of portfolios. teacher education quarterly, 25(1), 105–114. strauss, a. & corbin, j. (1998). basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications ltd. current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 28 editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word 778-2945-4-le.docx 1 volume 14, number 2 august 7, 2011 issn 1099-839x advocacy for the efficacy and reinstatement of funding federal even start family literacy grant programs judith j. smith east carolina university the even start family literacy model builds coalitions of community partners that build learning communities throughout our nation. the problem for stakeholders in family literacy programs is how to continue funding to encourage success and sustainability of programs. the focus of the study was twofold: 1) the importance of using data from national studies to make program improvements 2) the importance of making program improvement prior to reducing or rescinding funding for the even start family literacy program. this quantitative study identified program, participant, and funding characteristics that state and local educators can target for program improvement. programs must demonstrate measurable outcomes of success for adults and children. keywords: family literacy, early childhood education, adult education, collaboration, parenting, federal grant funding family literacy programs improve the literacy skills of parents and their children while developing an appreciation for the value of life-long learning. the even start family literacy model is an effective intervention for enhancing the lives of at-risk families. after approximately twenty-three years of federal funding, congress is eliminating the program from the national budget. this study examined program improvements suggested by three national studies of even start. in addition, the researcher conducted a quantitative study of an even start state program to find possible participant, program, and funding characteristics to improve programs prior to rescinding federal funding. historical background of family literacy in the united states the development of family literacy as an approach to level the educational playing field for impoverished adults and children is rooted in the national educational shift that began in the 1980s. according to parecki, paris, and seidenberg (1996) family literacy emerged as a field that integrated knowledge from psychology, education, social work, and literacy and applied the information to improve the educational achievement and economic wellbeing of families. as the nation focused on student achievement, legislators and educators stressed the importance of community, policy, and parental support in order to reach higher academic standards (king & mcmaster, 2000). in 1988 president ronald reagan signed into law a comprehensive program that funded a combination of adult basic education, parenting education, and early childhood education information for its participants. the national education goals of 1989 addressed literacy directly and family literacy indirectly. goal one, titled “school readiness,” laid the groundwork for family literacy programs by stating, every parent in the united states will be a child’s first teacher and devote time each day to helping such parent’s preschool child learn, and parents will have access to the training and support parents need. goal six, titled “adult literacy and lifelong learning,” looked to a future when every adult american will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 citizenship. this goal also states as one of its objectives that schools will implement comprehensive parent involvement programs. (king & mcmaster, 2000, p.2) in 1991, the national literacy act officially made community-based and nonprofit organizations eligible for family literacy funding. family literacy programs according to purcell-gates (1995) recognized the importance of the home and the community as places of learning. the impetus for these programs came primarily from the adult education community. operating under different names and from different funding sources, these programs varied in their approach. some focused on improving the literacy levels of parents and providing them with parenting tips and literacy activities in which they engaged with their children at home. other programs involved both parents and children in literacy lessons, either separately, together, or in a variation of both. the term “family literacy” was used broadly throughout the literature. it was often used to refer to the complex naturally occurring process by which literacy was transferred from parent to child during normal home activities. more specifically it was used to describe an educational program. the design of family literacy programs differed depending upon context, but the ultimate goal was to support the development of literate families (martinez, 1999; national center for family literacy, 1996). federal grant programs have been funded in schools, churches, and community agencies across the country for the purpose of improving the academic, social, and/or economic success of the participants. the even start family literacy federal statute of the elementary and secondary education act of 1965 provided “seed” money in anticipation that a successful program would be sustained through subsequent state and/or local funding. (us department of education, 2001b). yet in the past ten years, the financial climate and budget constraints in washington have caused the even start family literacy program to be scrutinized heavily each year to determine future funding. three national evaluations suggest that aspects of the grant program need improvement. the administration in fy2005 and fy2006 recommended zeroing out federal funding for the program, but the program continued at level funding. even start family literacy has been eliminated from the federal budget for fy2011-2012. historical background of the even start family literacy program the even start family literacy program was first enacted in 1988 as part b of chapter 1 of title i of the elementary and secondary education act of 1965. the purpose of even start was to help break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy by improving the educational opportunities of the nation’s low-income families. early childhood education, adult literacy (adult basic education or english as a second language [esl]), parent/child together time, and parenting education were the basic components of a comprehensive family literacy program. the even start family literacy model builds coalitions of community partners to build learning communities throughout our nation. darling (2008) noted that research demonstrates parental involvement has a positive impact on children’s reading acquisition, regardless of their families’ socioeconomic status. some parents just need a few tools to help them maximize their children’s education. according to tao and alamprese (2005) workfocused family literacy programs resulted in adults more likely to have obtained employment. after one year in the program adults had increased their household incomes, decreased their dependence on welfare, increased their education levels while retaining or increasing their basic skills. two years later many of the adults continued their education while working and reported that their lives had improved because of the work focused family literacy program. in addition, fuligni and brooks-gunn (2004) posit research that children from low income backgrounds receiving early intervention in family literacy programs make gains including reduction of delinquency and behavior problems. when young children are involved with their families in intensive high quality family literacy programs the effects are stronger than if children are involved alone in early childhood education. high quality programs for young children living in poverty demonstrated the promise of lasting benefits and return on investment (gallagher, clayton, & heinemeier, 2001). the high/scope perry preschool project; the abecedarian project; and the cost, quality, and outcomes study (peisner-feinberg et al., 1999) convinced researchers there was significantly better intellectual performance with students involved in early childhood education. hayes (2002) noted that family literacy programs were designed to be a comprehensive system of services that met the educational needs of children and their parents. for many of the families who enrolled in the programs, the educational, personal, and family needs were both too numerous and too complex to be served well by programs providing educational services for only adults or children. family literacy programs were more likely to be effective for the entire family. martinez (1999) noted that even start was an educational intervention program that assisted children and adults to achieve challenging state content standards and student performance standards. the u.s. department of education awarded formula grants to states, which in turn made subgrants to eligible applicants. these applicants could be partnerships between one or more local education agencies and one or more nonprofit community-based organizations, public agencies, institutions of higher advocacy for the efficacy and reinstatement of funding federal even start family literacy grant programs 3 education, or public or private nonprofit organizations of demonstrated quality. susan newman, then assistant u.s. secretary of education, stated: first, our goal is to ensure that all families and their young children will be provided the education that they deserve—no matter the circumstances of their birth…second our goal is to ensure that instruction is based on the scientific evidence that tells us how children and adults develop reading skills and therefore how reading is best taught…third, there is a clear and direct call for program accountability to determine if instruction results in achievement. this is how the administrations’ key priorities complement and tie into even start. (u.s. department of education, 2001a, p. a-1). through relationships with social service agencies, even start programs helped meet a range of necessary, but non-educational, needs to induce program participation, ensure access to health services, and reduce family stress. many also provided transportation, early care and education programs, and meals. to promote learning outside the program, staff helped familiarize families with community literacy resources, such as the public library and museums. collaborations with many agencies were necessary for even start programs to meet the mandate for intense, results-oriented, and comprehensive family literacy services (dwyer, 1995; schwartz, 1999; handel, 1999). collaboration and partnerships among different groups such as universities, public schools, early childhood education programs, adult literacy programs, and businesses have been advocated as promising avenues for continued growth of the family literacy movement (brizius & foster, 1993). the development of grassroots family literacy movements was a visible trend at the local level. individuals from differing sectors of a community took it upon themselves to initiate a family literacy project in their hometown or city (morrow, tracey, & maxwell, 1995). family literacy not only improved the literacy skills of parents and their children, it also helped develop an appreciation for the value of life-long learning. in our nation, education was the quintessential leveler. through family literacy programs everyone had a share of the american dream (u.s. department of education, 2001a). family literacy programs offered promise as being an effective intervention for enhancing the literacy development of young children. children received direct help with their language and literacy development. parents received help in literacy skills, parenting, and related areas such as job skills. the combination of these intervention efforts influenced the lives of children and their families who participated in family literacy programs (wasik, herrmann, dobbins, & roberts, 2000). results of family literacy studies on children’s reading acquisition from kindergarten to grade 3 noted significantly improved reading and writing test scores. (saint-laurent & giasson, 2005; senechal & young, 2008; swick, 2009). a research study by katzir, lesaux, and kim (2009) concluded fourth graders enrolled with their parents in a family literacy program had 1) higher frequency of children’s literacy practices that were associated with positive attitudes toward reading 2) reading comprehension skills were positively related to self-concept after controlling for verbal ability and word and non-word reading 3) frequency of library visits were significantly related to word reading efficiency 4) home environment was positively associated with reading self-concept. the family and child education program (face) announced that more than nine hundred native americans earned their high school diploma or general equivalency diploma (ged) and fifty percent of special education services for children were eliminated through the collaboration of the bureau of indian education and the national center for family literacy. (pfannensteil, yarnell, & seltzer, 2006). the toyota family literacy program, a project of the national center for family literacy designed for hispanic and other immigrant families, maintained that literacy levels among participants increased 21 percent, parental visits to schools increased 14.3 percent, and teachers rated participating children higher than their peers in overall achievement. (darling, 2008, 1995). the u.s. department of education (2003) stated that even start’s purpose included promoting the academic achievement of children and adults, and using instructional programs based on scientifically based research. each state reported state level performance indicators and used evaluation measures to improve even start. identifying and determining which practices and procedures worked best would be a model for improving even start projects across the nation. three national evaluations generate mixed findings the first national evaluation, 1989-1990, was broad in scope and described implementation of the program. information from this first evaluation improved the program through legislative changes by targeting those most in need, requiring at least a three-year age range of children, allowing projects to serve teen parents, and allowing involvement of ineligible family members in appropriate family literacy activities. yet the evaluation did not provide answers to questions about the effectiveness of even start family literacy. (martinez, 1999; st. pierre, gamse, alamprese, rimdzius, & tao, 1998; u.s. department of education, 2001a) the second national evaluation, esis (even start information system) was conducted from 1993-1997. this report demonstrated that overall, even start programs met the specified criteria for adult literacy, school readiness for children, and parenting improvement only to a limited degree (boser, 2002; st. pierre, layzer, & barnes, 1995; tao, schwartz, st. pierre, & tarr, 1997; u.s. department of education, 1998). st. pierre et al. (1998) noted the second current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 national evaluation reported what had been learned about the even start family literacy program after 10 years of demonstration and evaluation activities. problems existed in 1) intensity of service – children and adults with high levels of participation had larger learning gains than those with low level of participation 2) literacy-based parenting education 3) service location – center based programs had larger learning gains than children in projects that emphasized home based services and 4) duration of parent and child time. project size was equivocal – children and parents did equally well in small and large projects. the third national evaluation, 1997-2001, included two complimentary studies: 1) the even start performance information reporting system (espirs) which provided annual data on the projects, and 2) the experimental design study (eds) which was an experimental study of even start’s effectiveness in eighteen projects. key findings noted a) children and parents in the eighteen even start programs gained no more than children and parents in the control group b) even start served a very disadvantaged population in comparison to head start c) even start children and parents made small gains on literacy measures and scored low compared to national norms when they left the program d) families made little advantage of the services offered by even start projects e) early childhood classrooms did not provide sufficient emphasis on language acquisition and reasoning to produce measurable impacts and hence achieve legislative outcomes f) the extent to which parents and children participated in literacy services was related to child outcomes. (u.s. department of education planning & evaluation service, 2003) recently, the u.s. department of education contracted with westat and abt associates for the even start classroom literacy interventions and outcomes (clio) study (2001-2007 with a follow-up contract 2006 – 2010). the study examined the following two key research questions: 1) is the combination of research-based, literacyfocused preschool and parenting curricula more effective than existing even start services? 2) do research-based parenting curricula that focus on child literacy add value to the clio preschool curricula? key findings of the clio study indicated 1) although there were positive impacts on instructional supports for literacy, child social competence, and parenting skills, the clio curricula did not have statistically significant impacts on the child language development and literacy outcomes. 2) the clio parenting curricula did not significantly add value to the clio preschool curricula with respect to child outcomes. the funding controversy the even start federal grant initiative was well funded and grew rapidly in its first years, but the program has been subject to increasing criticism. from fy2000 to fy2001 the budget increased funding from $150 million to $250 million. funding declined in fy2003 to $248 million, fy2004 to $247 million, fy2005 to $225 million, and most notably in fy2006 to $99 million. the administration requested no funding for the program for either fy2005 or fy2006 stating the program had not been effective in improving child and adult learning outcomes. although funding was provided each budget year fy2006-2010, the funding has decreased and in fy2010 the even start budget was $66.5 million (congressional research service report order code rl33071, 2006). this congressional research report summarized the even start funding controversy: advocates of the even start program argue the program should not be eliminated or receive funding cuts because providing integrated family literacy services to an extremely disadvantaged population is so important. furthermore, they recommend a thorough study of the impact of legislatively mandated quality improvements to even start. proponents of even start emphasize that a concerted effort should be implemented to improve the program through implementation of model programs and technical assistance (crs report for congress, 2006, p.1). most recently, congress recommended zeroing out even start family literacy funding for fy2011-2012. committees are meeting presently to determine the fate of funding for the programs nationwide. method the purpose of this study was to identify strategies that promote success and sustainability in even start family literacy programs in north carolina. the researcher collected pre-existing data from the north carolina department of public instruction. the data included the north carolina department of public instruction continuation applications and the north carolina family literacy performance indicator reports. these reports document program characteristics, demographics, participant statistics, educational services provided, collaboration/coordination, progress toward objectives, summer services, project revisions, local contributions, budget requests, expenditures, and performance indicator results for adult education, early childhood education, parenting, and parent/child time. participants participants were twenty-four even start programs in north carolina. eligibility in a local even start program requires at least one parent and one or more eligible child(ren) to participate together in all components of the even start project (early childhood, parenting, pact [parent and child together] and adult education). the even start family literacy program statute specified that each program include the identification and recruitment of families most in need of services as indicated by a low level of income, a low level of adult literacy or english language proficiency, and other need-related indicators. a total of 776 families were enrolled in the twenty-four even start programs including 785 adults and advocacy for the efficacy and reinstatement of funding federal even start family literacy grant programs 5 929 children. of the 776 families, 364 (47%) were enrolled to learn english as a second language. approximately 501 (54%) of the children were ages three or four and were enrolled in preschool. of the newly enrolled families 87% were at or below the federal poverty level. measures the researcher analyzed data for seventeen characteristics reported as part of the north carolina department of public instruction (ncdpi) continuation applications. characteristics were categorized in accordance with the measures stated in the continuation applications as program, participant, and funding characteristics. program characteristics. the first category, program characteristics, measured first the number of families served (fs). each local even start program reported the number of families served, detailing the newly enrolled adults and children for each fiscal year. the second program characteristic noted the number of preschool children served (cs) by the local even start family literacy program. preschoolers ages birth through age 8 are served in even start. next, age of the program (age) indicated how long the program had been in operation; the number of years since the original grant award. the twentyfour programs ranged in age from one to nine years. a fourth important program characteristic was the tenure of the director (td) noting the length of time a director served as the leader of a local even start family literacy program. the educational level of the even start program director (ed) was also considered a program characteristic important in each local program. some program directors had terminal degrees while others completed masters degrees and others a four year degree. participant characteristics. the second category of characteristics described the participants in the targeted even start programs. these participant characteristics included families enrolled less than three months (ena), families enrolled four to six months (enb), families enrolled seven to twelve months (enc), and families enrolled more than twelve months (end). retention of families is considered paramount for a successful even start family literacy program. the attendance of preschool children (attc) was noted an important participant characteristic, as well as, the children’s performance on the peabody picture vocabulary test (ppvt) achievement for preschoolers. adults who obtained their general equivalency diploma (ged) were also included in the participant category. the final participant characteristic analyzed included the number of families served that were below the poverty level (pov). funding characteristics. number of collaborators (col) was included in a third category described as funding characteristics. every program was required by grant guidelines to partner with local community agencies for implementation the even start family literacy grant. funding allotment for the program (fa) specified the dollar amount for each program’s initial federal award. program allotments ranged from $250,000 to $500,000 for the initial year of funding. each year the grant award decreased as local matching funds increased. the number of collaborators that shared funding with the program (colm) was specified as a funding characteristic for analysis. the even start family literacy grant was designed as “seed money” to establish a local program in anticipation that local collaborators would “buy in” to the program and ultimately designate funding allotments on a regular basis. finally, the number of additional grant funds received by the program (ags) was noted as a funding characteristic worthy of investigation. procedure pre-existing program evaluation data were collected from the north carolina department of public instruction. the twenty-four even start partnerships submitted continuation applications and performance indicator reports to the north carolina department of public instruction. the performance indicator report stated the adult and child outcomes for each participating family. preschool teachers in each even start program pre and post tested their three and four year old students using the preschool picture vocabulary test iii (ppvt-iii). according to dunn and dunn (1997) reliability of the ppvt-iii appears to be satisfactory. four types of reliability were computed: alpha reliability coefficients, split-half reliability coefficients and test-retest reliability. validity of the ppvt-iii ranged from .30 to .86 with the lowest correlation with the wechsler preschool and primary scale of intelligence (wechsler, 1967) and highest with a receptive vocabulary test, the full-range picture vocabulary test (ammons & ammons, 1948). its correlations with measures of verbal ability were: .23 with the columbia mental maturity scale (burgemeister, blum, & lorge, 1972), and .78 with the kait crystallized iq. in summary, the ppvt-iii correlates well with other measures of vocabulary and moderately well with tests of verbal ability. ppvt-iii is the leading measure of receptive vocabulary for standard english and a screening test of verbal ability. this individually administered, normreferenced instrument is offered in two parallel forms— iiia and iiib—for reliable testing and retesting. even start adult participants were tested at local north carolina community college adult basic education centers using ged tests. according to the general educational development testing service for the american council on education (2006) the purpose of the ged tests is to provide an opportunity for adults who did not complete a formal high school program to certify their attainment of high school–level academic knowledge and skills and earn their high school equivalency credential. in order to allow adults the opportunity to demonstrate that their knowledge and skills are comparable to that of high school graduates, the score scales for the ged tests are referenced to the performance of graduating high school seniors on these current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 6 same tests. ged tests are standardized and normed using a nationally representative sample of graduating seniors. periodically, changes in national curricular trends dictate changes in the content of the ged tests. when these changes occur, the “new” forms cannot be equated to the “older” forms, and a new standardization and norming studies are performed. norming studies are also conducted whenever it is suspected that changes in achievement levels may have occurred in the norm group (i.e., graduating high school seniors). in all cases, the new norms reflect a new set of performance standards for obtaining a ged credential. a simultaneous multiple regression analysis identified predictors of success for even start family literacy programs. the researcher evaluated core indicators from the north carolina performance indicator reports. success of local programs was measured by implementing a two-phase process of data analysis. the first step of the analysis strategy was a preliminary screening to determine which characteristics were more promising in relation to others. the researcher used a significance level of .10 in a multiple regression analysis of the program, participant, and funding characteristics. next, the researcher used a significance level of .05 in a regression analysis to predict characteristics having a significant relationship to program outcomes. as noted by peugh (2009), analyzing multilevel data especially “nested” data structures such as the adult and child outcomes embedded in program outcomes of the even start family literacy performance indicator reports presents challenges for researchers. the problem arises because the data violate the independence assumption of traditional statistical analyses. for this reason, the researcher used a correlation matrix as an alternative approach. the correlation matrix was analyzed using multidimensional scaling. next a cluster tree was produced to assess the fidelity of the analysis and a high clustering configuration was presented to conceptualize the data. results relationship of program outcomes to program dynamics. seventeen sets of even start family literacy program, participant, and funding characteristics were analyzed to identify predictors of success and sustainability of even start family literacy programs. in order to manage the analysis more efficiently, characteristics were grouped into the following three categories as indicated on the continuation grant reports: program characteristics, participant characteristics, and funding characteristics (see table 1). overall, the average age of the programs was four and one-half years and the tenure of the director was four years. the average educational level of the director was slightly less than six years. the calculations for the educational level of even start directors equaled one year for each year of college (i.e. undergraduate degree [4], masters degree [6], advanced degree [7], and doctorate degree [11]). there was wider variation on the range in the number of families and children served, but the mean number of clients in each category was just over 30 (see table 2). table 1 characteristics of even start family literacy programs program characteristics participant characteristics funding characteristics number of families served (fs) families enrolled>3mo. (ena) funding allotment (fa) number of children served (cs) families enrolled 4-6mo. (enb) number of collaborators (col) age of the program (age) families enrolled 7-12mo. (enc) collab. that share $$ (colm) tenure of the director (td) families enrolled 12mo+ (end) additional grant $$ (ags) education of the director (ed) attendance of children (attc) families below poverty (pov) peabody pic voc test(ppvt iii) general equiv diploma(ged) advocacy for the efficacy and reinstatement of funding federal even start family literacy grant programs 7 table 2 even start family literacy program, participant, and funding characteristics characteristic mean standard dev 95%ci upper 95%ci lower program characteristics fs 32.333 13.130 37.878 26.789 cs 31.875 15.394 38.375 25.375 age 4.500 2.919 5.733 3.267 td 4.000 2.571 5.086 2.914 ed 5.870 1.961 6.718 5.022 participant characteristics ena 7.125 4.712 9.255 5.093 enb 9.652 8.835 13.937 6.063 enc 9.583 5.867 11.532 6.729 end 5.043 7.227 8.176 1.643 attc 128.696 24.110 139.122 118.270 pov 26.261 13.291 32.008 20.513 ppvt 9.435 6.700 12.332 6.537 ged 3.292 2.528 4.359 2.224 funding characteristics fa 181.542 31.748 194.948 168.136 col 8.708 7.704 11.961 5.455 colm 6.458 6.199 9.076 3.841 ags 0.682 0.477 0.893 0.470 note. n-24. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 8 a significance level of less than .05 was used in a regression analysis to predict characteristics having a significant relationship to program outcomes. education of the director and the number of collaborators were identified as characteristics that were significant predictors of success for children’s performance on the ppvt iii (see table 3). again, no relationship existed from data collected in this study for performance on the ged. an alternative approach was used to capture program dynamics. correlations among the different facets or elements that described the program dynamics were identified in a correlation matrix (see table 4). table 3 regression analysis of variables with a p value less than 0.10 in phase 1 characteristics ppvt ed 0.016* attc 0.086 col 0.025* table 4 correlation matrix advocacy for the efficacy and reinstatement of funding federal even start family literacy grant programs 9 configuration -2 -1 0 1 2 dimension-1 -2 -1 0 1 2 d im e n s io n -2 colm gedpct col ppvtpct attc td cs ags fs pov fa ed age figure 1. multidimensional scaling figure 2. cluster tree cluster tree 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 distances pov fs cs age td ed fa col colm ags attc ppvtpct gedpct current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 10 figure 3. hierarchical clustering mapped onto two dimensional multidimensional scaling using the correlation coefficients as a proximity (similarity) measure, the correlation matrix was analyzed using multidimensional scaling. figure 1 shows the results of the multidimensional scaling (msd) which is essentially a geometric representation for which things (e.g., objects, variables) that are correlated more closely are located closer together in a geometric space whose dimensionality is minimized. in the present study, the multidimensional scaling solution, using correlations among the different program elements as similarities, resulted in the twodimensional solution shown in figure 1. in order to assess the fidelity of the multidimensional scaling analysis, a hierarchical clustering procedure was applied to the correlation matrix. figure 2 shows the results of the hierarchical grouping procedure which iteratively linked program elements together that were closest until all elements were linked. figure 3 shows the combined results of the hierarchical clustering mapped onto the two dimensional multidimensional scaling solution. as inspection of figure 3 shows, these combined results provide evidence of the fidelity of the dimensionality of the multidimensional scaling solution. the results of these alternative scaling perspectives indicated that collaborators and collaborators that shared resources were highly correlated. also collaborators and education of the director fitted closely to the peabody picture vocabulary test as did attendance of the children. education of the even start director and the number of collaborators were characteristics that were significant as predictors of success and sustainability for even start programs in regard to performance on the ppvt. attendance of the children was also noted in the scaling model as closely related to success on the ppvt. krippendorff (1980) suggested clustering lumped together variables that shared some observed qualities. some concepts were so similar or so interrelated that they may be regarded as one. finding clusters conceptualized the data. discussion configuration -2 -1 0 1 2 dimension-1 -2 -1 0 1 2 d im e n s i o n -2 colm gedpct col ppvtpct attc td cs ags fs pov fa ed age advocacy for the efficacy and reinstatement of funding federal even start family literacy grant programs 11 first, even start family literacy programs should capitalize on their collaborations with community partners. this study indicated that the number of collaborators, particularly collaborators that share resources, influenced positively the success of the programs. melaville, blank, and asayesh (1993) noted that collaboratives are an emerging force for change in america’s communities. researchers, policymakers, and practitioners agreed that stronger connections between family, school, and the larger community, particularly among educators and health and human service providers, were essential to the success of children and families. even start family literacy programs should also require an advanced degree for the directors of the programs; a masters or doctorate degree is preferred. the educational level of the director was highly correlated with success of the program. the director needed an educational background and/or experience in early childhood education as well as adult basic education. he/she also needed knowledge of parenting education and skills in educational leadership. state and local leaders must continue to advocate and provide support for even start family literacy programs. school districts have the responsibility to provide state and local funding to match the federal mandates for even start. state and local funding endorsements for the even start programs ensure family literacy services for families and children. even start family literacy can be a powerful program. systemic change can take place for families. parents become more self-confident in working with their children and in entering the world of work. the benefit for many participants was continuing their education and improving their job skills. their first goal was to obtain their ged (general equivalency diploma). the adult participants indicated that obtaining their ged was the foremost reason for enrolling in the even start program. the adult outcomes on the north carolina family literacy performance indicators are closely linked to progress on obtaining a ged through even start family literacy and the north carolina community college system. core indicator one of the report stated that adult participants demonstrate achievement in the areas of reading, writing, english-language acquisition, problem solving, and numeracy, during the family literacy program year. core indicator three stated that adult family literacy enrollees will receive their secondary school diploma or a general equivalency diploma, ged. when collaboration was associated with other strategies, the combinations emerged as promising strategies for improvement. the success and sustainability for an even start family literacy program depended on support from local agencies in the community. collaboration among the school system, community college, health organizations, child advocates, religious organizations, and civic groups enrich the program. these partners provide varying support from funding resources to professional assistance. limitations one problem addressed in this study is the use of program data analysis related to sustained funding for even start family literacy. individual participant outcomes were more desirable but unavailable from the north carolina family literacy performance indicator reports. another problem is the education level of the directors, an ordinal variable, that was used in the statistical analysis as an interval variable. also the performance indicator report included only those students enrolled in even start programs long enough to be pre and post tested. as the school year progressed student enrollment in even start decreased dramatically. many participants left after the first month while others reached their goal and left shortly before receiving their post-tests at the community college; therefore, the successes of many students were omitted from the reports. why do adults leave the program? miller (2005) reports barriers such as culture and language, educational level of parents, psychological issues, and logistical issues prevent family involvement in schools. family literacy programs often present a deficit thinking perspective measuring adults against european-american, middle-class family literacy practices, which leads to the marginalization of students and families (reyes & torres, 2007). to retain adults in family literacy programs more culturally sensitive and supportive approaches to family literacy are needed. furthermore, adults enrolled in family literacy programs have significant life pressures exacerbated by financial struggles that negatively affect their full participation. timmons (2008) explored special challenges that exist in researching family literacy programs. the diversity in funding, organization of the programs, selection of participants, and recruitment of families make it difficult to measure effective implementation. the sometimes informal nature of the family literacy program assessment complicates researchers’ efforts to identify trends and draw conclusions about the effectiveness of family literacy programs. conclusions dwindling financial resources at the federal, state, and local level may eliminate funding initiatives such as the even start family literacy program. the federal budget for fy2011-2012 recommends eliminating funding for the even start family literacy program. state and local leaders must provide support for successful even start programs by continually finding ways to fund and improve the program. school districts as well as numerous community agencies and partners are required to provide matching funds for the even start programs and are important partners in collaborative efforts. educators current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 12 statewide must be creative and allocate funds for continuation of successful even start family literacy partnerships. the even start family literacy model funded through federal grant initiatives was designed as “seed’ money to assist states in breaking the cycle of poverty and intergenerational undereducation. evaluating programs on a case-by-case basis will inform public and private sources of funding and ultimately determine the future of the even start family literacy model. finally, “investment in family literacy programs requires evidence of their effectiveness; however, the way to obtain such evidence is to fund research that investigates the programs’ effects.” (timmons, 2008, p. 100-101). national studies provide an impetus for looking at program improvement before reducing and ultimately eliminating funding for family literacy. olson, danahy, and murphy (2005) suggest family literacy professionals must make concerted efforts to maximize implementation of evidencebased research to ensure that knowledge gained through research can be translated into practice. we should not “throw away” family literacy programs before trying to implement national findings to improve them. references ammons, r.b., & ammons, h.s. (1948). full-range picture vocabulary test. missoula, mt: psychological test specialists. boser, s. (2002). evaluation across an intergovernmental context: issues raised through different perspectives on even start. new directions for evaluation, 95, 23-37. brizius, j., & foster, s. (1993). generation to generation: realizing the promise of family literacy. ypsilanti, mi: high/scope press.723-742. burgemeister, b.b., blum, l.h., & lorge, i. (1972). columbia mental maturity scale-third edition. san antonio, tx: the psychological corporation. congressional research service order code rd33071, at 1 (2006). darling, s. (2008). family must be a part of the solution in closing the achievement gap. clearing house, 81(6) washington: heldref publications. darling, s. (1995). testimony before the house ways and means committee. national center for family literacy. dunn, l.m., & dunn, l.m. (1997). examiner’s manual for the ppvt-iii peabody picture vocabulary test third edition. circle pines, mn: american guidance service. dwyer, m.c. (1995). guide to quality even start family literacy programs. washington, dc: u.s. department of education. fuligni, a. s., & brooks-gunn, j. (2004). early childhood intervention in family literacy programs. in b.h. wasik (ed.) handbook on family literacy (pp. 117-136). mahwah, nj: lawrence earlbaum. gallagher, j., clayton, j., & heinemeier, s. (2001). education for four-year-olds: state initiatives. executive summary. chapel hill: university of north carolina fpg child development center, national center for early development learning. general educational development testing service of the american council on education (2006). who passed the ged tests? 2005 statistical report. washington, dc: american council on education. handel, r.d. (1999). building family literacy in an urban community. new york: teachers college press. hayes, a. (2002). high-quality family literacy programs: child outcomes and impacts. connecting the world of family literacy, 1, 6-7. katzir, t., lesaux, n.k., & kim, y. (2009). the role of reading self-concept and home literacy practices in fourth grade reading comprehension. reading and writing, 22, 261-276. king, r., & mcmaster, j. (2000). pathways: a primer for family literacy program design and development. ky: national center for family literacy. krippendorff, k. (1980). content analysis: an introduction to its methodology. newbury park: sage. martinez, a. l. (1999). life after funding: a descriptive study of even start family literacy programs that have completed the initial funding cycle (doctoral dissertation, texas a&m university, 1999) melaville, a.i., blank, m. j., & asayesh, g. (1993). together we can a guide for crafting a profamily system of education and human services. washington, dc: u.s. department of education & u.s. department of health and human services miller, s. f. (2005). bringing together home and school. family literacy forum, 4(1), 3-11. morrow, l. m., tracey, d.h., & maxwell, c. m. (eds.). (1995). a survey of family literacy in the united states. newark, delaware: international reading association. olson, j., danahy, l., & murphy, c. l. (2005). linking research and practice through innovative in-service offerings. family literacy forum, 4(1), 19-26. peisner-feinberg, e., burchinal, m., clifford, r., yazejian, n., culkin, m., zelazo, j., howes, c., byler, p., kagan, s., & rustici, j. (1999). the children of the cost, quality, and outcomes study go to school. executive summary. chapel hill: university of north carolina, fpg child development center. peugh, j. l. (2009). a practical guide to multilevel modeling. journal of school psychology, 48(1), 85-112. advocacy for the efficacy and reinstatement of funding federal even start family literacy grant programs 13 pfannensteil, j., yarnell, v., & seltzer, d. (2006). family and child education program (face): impact study report. overland park, ks: research and training associates. reyes, l. v., & torres, m. n. (2007). decolonizing family literacy in a culture circle: reinventing the family literacy educator’s role. journal of early childhood literacy, 7, 73-94. saint-laurent, l., & giasson, j. (2005). effects of a family literacy program adapting parental intervention to first graders’ evolution of reading and writing abilities. journal of early childhood literacy, 5(3), 253-278. schwartz, w. (1999). family literacy strategies to support children’s learning. new york: clearinghouse on urban education. (eric document reproduction service no. ed431064) st. pierre, r.g., gamse, b., alamprese, j., rimdzius, t., & tao, f. (1998). even start: evidence from the past and a look to the future 1998. washington, dc: u.s. department of education, planning and evaluation service. st. pierre, r.g., layzer, j.i., & barnes, h.v. (1995). regenerating two-generation programs. in w.s. barnett & s.s. bobcock (eds), early care and education for children in poverty: promises, programs, and long term results (pp.99-121). albany: state university of new york press. tao, f., & alamprese, j. a. (2005). work-focused family literacy programs: participant outcomes. family literacy forum, 4(1), 27-34. tao, f., swartz, r., st. pierre, r., & tarr, h. (1997). national evaluation of the even start family literacy program: 1995 interim report. alexandria, va: fu associates, ltd. timmons, v. (2008). challenges in researching family\literacy programs. canadian psychology/ psychologie canadienne, 49(2), 96-102. u.s. department of education. (1998). national evaluation of the even start family literacy program: 19941997 final report. washington, dc. u.s. department of education (2001a). program resource manual even start family literacy: the stronger the start, the better the finish. washington, dc: flood, j., lazo, l., johnson, t., mckee, p., sligh, d. u.s. department of education. (2001b). the even start family literacy programs statute, as of december 31, 2000, including amendments made by the literacy involves families together (lift) act, as enacted by p.l.o. 106-554, the consolidated appropriations act, 2001 (office of the general counsel staff). washington, dc. u.s. department of education. (2003). third national even start evaluation: program impacts and implications for improvement (publication no. 2003-05) washington, d.c. u.s. department of education planning & evaluation service. (2003). third national even start evaluation: program impacts and implications for improvement. retrieved march 8, 2003, from http://www.ed.gov/pubs/evenstartthird/execsum.html wasik, b. h., herrmann, s., dobbins, d. r., & roberts, j. e. (2000). family literacy programs: a promising practice for the twenty-first century (pr/award number r307a60004). chapel hill, north carolina: university of north carolina at chapel hill, frank porter graham child development center. wechsler, d. (1967). wechsler preschool and primary scale of intelligence. new york: the psychological corporation. current issues in education vol. 14 no.2 14 article citation smith, j.j. (2011). advocacy for the efficacy and reinstatement of funding federal even start family literacy grant programs. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/778 author notes judith j. smith east carolina university 119 speight building, greenville, north carolina 27835 smithjud@ecu.edu dr. judith j. smith is an assistant professor in the department of curriculum and instruction, in the college of education at east carolina university. her research interests include family literacy, instructional technology, and teacher education. advocacy for the efficacy and reinstatement of funding federal even start family literacy grant programs 15 volume 14, number 2 august 7, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editor melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp anglea hines younsu kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser tapati sen jennifer shea alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word jarman article.docx 1 volume 14, number 2 june 4, 2011 issn 1099-839x the impacts of budget reductions on indiana’s public schools: the impact of budget changes on student achievement, personnel, and class size for public school corporations in the state of indiana del w. jarman lori g. boyland ball state university in recent years, economic downturn and changes to indiana’s school funding have resulted in significant financial reductions in general fund allocations for many of indiana’s public school corporations. the main purpose of this statewide study is to examine the possible impacts of these budget reductions on class size and student achievement. this three-year, quantitative study examines budget cutback amounts, teaching position reductions, per-pupil spending changes, class-size data, and studentachievement indicators. methods of data collection include a statewide superintendent’s survey, an evaluation of student achievement indicators, and a collection of public financial records of participating indiana school corporations. currently, year one is complete. a compilation of this data provides current information regarding general fund budgets, position reductions, and class sizes for indiana’s public schools. keywords: school budget reduction, class size, student achievement, cost benefit analysis due to the national recession and shifts in leadership philosophy at the state level, several changes have been made to the indiana prek-12 school funding formula over the past two years. these changes have resulted in significant financial reductions in general fund allocations for the majority of indiana’s public school corporations. it is important to study these budget cutbacks because in indiana, a public school’s general fund pays for the bulk of its educational operation, including salaries and benefits of teachers and support staff, the majority of teaching supplies, and most student programs. therefore, general fund reductions could ultimately impact the quality of education that students receive in indiana’s public schools. this research is a statewide study with the goal of determining a number of outcomes as a result of these budget reductions. the researchers are asking indiana’s public school superintendents questions regarding budget cuts, position reductions, and class-size information. financial information is also being obtained for each of the responding superintendents’ school corporations, including general fund revenue and per pupil expenditure data. in addition, the researchers are gathering student achievement data in the form of statewide-standardized test results for the respondents’ schools in math and language arts for third grade, eighth grade, and the corporation as a whole. the researchers’ hypothesize that an analysis of this data will reveal steady increases in class sizes over a three-year period, and ultimately, a decline in student achievement. thus, the main objective of this study is to examine the possible impacts of budget reductions on class size and student achievement in indiana. secondary objectives include an analysis of demographic variables in relationship to school corporations’ budget changes, per-pupil current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 expenditures, reductions in personnel, class sizes, and student achievement indicators. in summary, the collected data will be examined to determine changes in the answers to each of the following research questions: 1. what are the changes being made in the number and type of teaching positions, and teaching assistant positions, in public schools in indiana? 2. what are the changes in general fund revenue and per pupil spending for indiana public school corporations? 3. what are the average class sizes for third grade, eighth grade, and total elementary and secondary classes in public school corporations in indiana? 4. what are students’ average math and language arts passing scores on the statewide standardized exam for third grade, eighth grade, and k-12 total for public school corporations in indiana? for many years, the funding of indiana’s public school corporations has proven to be a challenging and controversial process. historically, the indiana public school funding formula placed a substantial reliance on property taxes as a major source of general fund revenue. prior to 1974, individual school corporations actually had complete control over their own general fund tax rates (michael, spradlin, & carson, 2009). this created a disproportionate system due to the fact that different communities had varying levels of assessed valuation per student, depending on the local property tax base or the overall wealth of the community. across the state, property tax rates, as well as school corporations’ annual per pupil expenditures, varied greatly. over the years, state policy makers recognized these concerns and attempted to limit and reduce the variability of property tax rates across the state (toutkoushia & michael, 2005). in order to offset disparities, legislators worked to create a funding formula in which school corporations with high assessed valuation received less state aid, while school corporations with less assessed valuation per pupil received additional state funds. more recently, a “complexity index” was implemented in order to provide extra funds to school corporations with high percentages of students on free and reduced meals (michael, spradlin, & carson, 2009). unfortunately, the system has never been perfected and funding inequities have continued. for example, in 2009, per pupil expenditures for some public school corporations were as high as $11,000 per student, while some corporations per pupil spending was as low as $7,000 or less (hornaday, 2010). in 2008, the indiana general assembly made the decision to change the indiana public school funding formula to rely more on sales tax, thus eliminating the reliance on local property tax as a central revenue source for many school corporations’ general funds (michael, spradlin, & carson, 2009). because the shift to state sales tax reduces the association between a school corporation’s level of assessed valuation and their general fund revenue, it is hoped that over time, the equity issue will decline. however, due to a number of unresolved factors, some funding gaps have been perpetuated. this has prompted several school corporations to initiate a lawsuit against the state of indiana, alleging the current formula does not provide a level of funding adequate to meet current educational requirements (michael, spradlin, & carson, 2009). to raise needed additional funds, a number of indiana school corporations have attempted to hold local referendums, requesting that their community members vote “yes” on increasing property taxes in order to cover operating expenses (general fund referendum) or the costs of facilities (capital projects referendum). in some cases, these referendums have been successful, but for the most part, they have not. as of may 2011, there have been a total of 67 referendums held in indiana since the process was approved in 2008. of these 67 referendums, 40 (60%) of them have failed (ceep website, 2011). like most states in our nation, indiana is currently recovering from a recession. the recession has seriously impacted revenues generated from taxes. sales tax revenue is especially vulnerable during a recession, causing a deterioration of funding available for schools. in 2009, the indiana legislature reduced public school funding by 3%, effectively cutting $300 million from the public education budget, resulting in cutbacks in personnel and programs at the school level. educators were hopeful that this was a “one time cut.” however, in january 2011, the governor of indiana announced that the 3% cut would continue, effectively providing school corporations with the same lowered budget amounts in 2011 as in 2010. due to inflation and other increasing cost factors, this will mean additional cuts for many school corporations in the coming year. the sum of these reductions in funding for indiana’s public schools have resulted in unusually high levels of budget cuts, forcing school corporations to reduce staff and programs, and in some cases, to close schools. the impacts of these budget reductions on class sizes and student achievement are the focus of this study. a review of research on class size will be discussed next. throughout public education’s history, the subject of class size has presented teachers, parents and administrators with complex issues. discussions have surrounded the issue of “best” class size, including the relationship of smaller classes to student achievement for economically disadvantaged children. other studies have focused on smaller classes and student achievement as it pertains to children from middle or upper class families. several studies have examined the relationship of class size as it relates to the attitudes and teaching methodology of classroom instructors. although these are all important, the most perplexing issue continues to be the one that examines the general relationship between class size and student achievement regardless of the make-up of the student population. as a result of a two-year economic slump, a the impacts of budget reductions on indiana’s public schools 3 number of states find themselves financially challenged. state legislatures are re-examining and cutting educational budgets. school districts are reducing both teaching and non-teaching personnel as a response. in indiana, there has been a substantial decline in public school funding as the state wrestles with balancing its budget. the problem for indiana is becoming more than just financial. the uncertainty now emerging questions whether indiana’s financial problems will result in a severe long-term educational setback as well. as more teachers are laid off and class sizes begin to increase, the original, overriding class size question regarding the impact of larger classes on student achievement is finding its way back to the forefront. unfortunately for schools, the enactment of no child left behind leaves little room when it comes to meeting adequate yearly progress (ayp). the indiana department of education requires that its schools reach ayp. schools that repeatedly fail to meet their annual ayp goals will face state takeover. clearly, indiana’s schools are caught in the middle of a political-economiceducational battle. it is common knowledge that parents and instructional staff desire smaller class sizes. this is based on the belief that low class sizes are an important component in maintaining a quality educational program. however, research findings, especially earlier studies, have varied. while many studies have indicated that smaller classes do have a positive influence on student achievement, a few have indicated that larger classes may be more beneficial in certain instances. in addition, a number of studies have reported that class size made no difference in the achievement level of students. in order to understand and explore this issue, it is necessary to develop a working definition of class size. in their 1955 literature review, class size: the multi-million dollar question, ross and mckenna defined a class as “any group of students scheduled to meet regularly for all or a definite fraction of a school day with one particular teacher for the purpose of learning or being instructed in some specific part of the school’s curriculum” (1955, p. 24). other organizations, such as the national education association (1965), have described class size to mean the number of pupils for whom a teacher is responsible in a self-contained classroom. for the purpose of this study, a combination of these definitions is appropriate and the term “class size” will mean the number of students being taught by a single teacher, in a single classroom, for a specific period of time. looking back to 1971, the indiana department of education indicated that indiana’s class sizes, or pupilteacher ratios, were slightly higher than the national averages. in 1971, the ratios for indiana were 24.3 pupils per teacher for kindergarten classes, 24.8 per teacher for grades one through six, and 21.9 students per teacher in grades seven through twelve. by 1976, the figures showed a decided drop in ratios for the primary grades. indiana’s ratios for the 1976-1977 school year were reported as 24.6 students per teacher in kindergarten, 22.1 students per teacher in grades one to six, and 21.3 pupils per teacher in grades seven through twelve. the gap between the national combined average and the indiana combined average narrowed significantly through the 70’s and into the early 80’s. in the 1983-1984 school year, the combined u.s. average stood at 18.45 students per teacher, while the indiana combined average was reported as 19.90 (jarman, 1985). as mentioned earlier, class size research has produced mixed results. however, it is important to note that several reviewers have argued that many class size studies, especially early studies, failed to produce definitive answers because of flawed or oversimplified design techniques. in a comprehensive review of literature, murphy (1975) reported that faulty research design was a serious limiting factor in class size research studies conducted before 1975. the national education association indicated that in many studies that examined the question of class size and student achievement, the research had typically been one-dimensional and shortterm; therefore, early class size research was not nearly as comprehensive as necessary for such a complex issue (nea, 1965). for example, an early study in 1909 claimed a correlation between smaller classes and higher student achievement (ers, 1978). this research, however, was only based on one year of student promotion data. in this study, which involved third grade students in the 6th district of philadelphia, it was found that 88% of the students in classes below 40 students were promoted to the next grade level, 85% of students in classes with 40-49 students were promoted, whereas only 81% of the students in classes above 50 students were promoted. therefore, the researcher reported a relationship between increased student achievement and smaller class size because the students in the classes with less than 40 students showed a higher rate of promotion than any other group (ers, 1978). it was during the 1920s that increased interest in the issue of class size and student achievement emerged. a great deal of material was published during this time period for both the elementary and secondary levels. however, by 1930, interest had begun to level off and remained fairly consistent until the late 1970s. several researchers, including goodlad (1984) indicated that while most of the studies on class size conducted prior to 1930 were attempts to determine the relationship between class size and student achievement, typically, student grades, class standing, or promotion results measured student achievement in those studies. there was little, if any, attempt to control the various independent variables that occurred in these studies and reliable standardized testing instruments were still in the development phase (goodlad, 1984; nea, 1965). in 1954, blake conducted a summary of early class size research. blake analyzed the literature written on class current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 size prior to 1950. he located 267 studies and chose 85 of those that dealt with elementary and secondary students. from these studies, 35 indicated that small classes were better than larger ones, 18 reported that larger classes were better than smaller ones, and 32 indicated that the authors did not consider class size to be an important issue. in further analyzing these studies, blake established six criteria to test their scientific acceptability. only 22 of the original 85 studies met these requirements. of these 22, those favoring smaller classes numbered 16, those favoring larger classes numbered three, and the remaining three were inconclusive (p. 119). in 1964, menniti studied the effects of class size on reading and mathematics achievement in catholic elementary schools in harrisburg, pennsylvania, and evansville, indiana. for both locations, he concluded that large classes, those with 40 or more students, significantly favored achievement gains for average pupils in mathematics. only the harrisburg location found the same significance for reading scores. also, low iq groups exhibited positive gains for both subject areas when placed in larger classes, but high iq groups assigned to large classes did not (menniti, 1964). a study conducted by furno and collins, however, concluded that a class size of one to 25 was considerably better for non-white students in both reading and mathematics than classes above 25 (furno & collins, 1967). they also concluded that smaller classes showed significant gains in both areas for students in regular and special education curricula (p. 146). the metropolitan school district of madison, wisconsin, conducted a research study in 1976 to measure the effects of class size on the reading attainment of students in grades one through three. “small” classes contained less than 25 students for each of the three years studied. “large” classes were any classes above this number. results of the study showed that students consistently enrolled in small classes had lower reading scores than those enrolled in large classes. further examination, however, revealed that the majority of students enrolled in smaller classes had lower iq scores than those enrolled in the larger classes. at the end of the study, the district indicated, “it is impossible to know if placing students in small classes, grades one to three, would have any effect on their reading achievement scores…” (mmsd, 1976, p. 19). a 1977 study conducted by johnson at the south carolina department of education produced an interesting mix of results. this study found that smaller class sizes significantly increased reading achievement levels for first grade students, but had no noticeable effect on math scores. the study also concluded that when viewed as a standalone variable, teacher in-service training had no effect on pupil achievement in either reading or mathematics. however, when combined with class size, the results showed that students in small classes, whose teachers received in-service training, scored significantly higher in reading than students in large classes whose teachers had not participated in the training sessions. interestingly, this correlation did not hold up for math achievement (1977). in a review of class size research conducted in 1978, glass and smith proclaimed that through a metaanalysis of existing research data, they were able to make “bold generalizations” about the effects of class size on pupil achievement where previous research analysis could offer only “timid generalizations” (pp. 22-23). glass and smith reported that smaller class sizes could be expected to improve students’ academic achievement. unlike many earlier studies, the glass and smith study used class sizes ranging from one to one (tutorial instruction) up to forty to one (large group instruction). glass and smith claimed that earlier studies did not show a marked difference in achievement gains because their class sizes were normally above the 15 to one student mark. glass and smith concluded that class size could be increased from 20 students per class up to 40 students per class with only a five percent decrease in student achievement (p. 35). they postulated that decreasing from 20 students down to 10 students per class would result in an increase in student achievement of approximately ten percent, with the optimum achievement level being reached at the one to one, or tutorial level. the authors further stated that neither grade level, nor subject taught, nor ability of pupils altered the basic results. since glass and smith’s initial meta-analysis, there has been some rebuttal, notably from educational research service. in 1980, the educational research service contended that glass and smith had overgeneralized their findings and had not taken into account all of the contradictory studies that preceded them. the educational research service further contended that the glass and smith samples from which they based their findings were not of sufficient number to bear out the generalizations that were being made (pp. 239-241). however, other researchers, such as hedges and stock (1983) and cahen and filby (1979) supported the glass and smith findings. arguably, the most notable united states study on class size was the tennessee initiative known as project star (student teacher achievement ratio). this study officially ran from 1985-1989, although many student participants were followed for years afterwards. project star was a randomized $12 million experiment commissioned by the tennessee state legislature which developed into one of the most extensive class size research projects ever conducted. it was voluntary in nature and open to all tennessee public elementary schools. of the 180 schools that expressed an interest in participating, only about 100 schools had enough students in each grade to qualify. selected schools had to agree to four years of participation and to allow visitation from oversight teams who would verify class size, interview school personnel, and collect data. participating schools also had to allow for the impacts of budget reductions on indiana’s public schools 5 additional testing and for the random assignment of students and teachers to class types from kindergarten through grade three. tennessee paid for additional teachers and classroom aides and only class size conditions changed within the participating schools. curriculumbased test results were used as the student achievement indicator. the experiment randomly assigned kindergarten students into small classes (13-17 students), large classes (22-26 students), or large classes with a full-time classroom aide. teachers were also randomly assigned to classes of different types and the assignments of students and teachers to class type were maintained through the third grade. students who entered the study after kindergarten were randomly assigned to classes upon enrollment. the sound design of the star study prompted highly respected researchers and statisticians, such as the late frederick mosteller, then professor emeritus of mathematical statistics at harvard university, to declare very high confidence in the study’s data. in fact, in a review conducted by mosteller, light, and sachs, project star was called “one of the great experiments in education in u.s. history” (1996, p. 814). at the close of the star project, several researchers analyzed and then re-analyzed the data. repeatedly, the results indicated that students placed in the smaller classes showed higher gains in reading and in math in the primary grades. these gains were somewhat modest in the short-term, but were sustained over time. in addition, significant long-term gains were seen in terms of college attendance rates, especially for african-american students. in summary, finn and achilles (1990) reported that the results of the star project provided convincing evidence as to the benefits of reduced class sizes in the primary grades and what appeared to be a positive longitudinal effect, especially for minority students. other researchers have supported this analysis of the data. after a sophisticated analysis of the results, nye, hedges, and konstantopoulos also described higher long-term gains for students in smaller classes and additional benefits for minority students, saying, “the analysis reported here suggest class size effects that are large enough to be important for educational policy and that are quite consistent across schools. thus, small classes appear to benefit all kinds of students in all kinds of schools” (2000, p. 123). krueger and whitmore also conducted an in-depth analysis of project star data and reported a long-term benefit for african-american children. they went as far as to suggest that smaller class sizes might actually help lessen the black-white disparity in college attendance (2001). the star project continues to be viewed as critically important research in the ongoing discussion regarding the impact of class size and student achievement. in light of its findings, many states commenced statewide class size reduction efforts over the past 15 to 20 years. indiana’s initiative began in the mid 1980s, as did a review in texas during the same time period. nevada and oklahoma’s efforts started in 1989, while utah’s work began in 1990. wisconsin began a class size reduction effort in 1995 and california in 1996. many of these class size initiatives continue today; however, several others have been repealed due to economic factors. the question of whether increased student achievement is important for the broader good of society is not in dispute. educators, politicians, economists, and physicians acknowledge the importance of improved educational achievement as it relates to the health and prosperity of a nation. the tie between higher student achievement and a nation’s economic well-being is real and worldwide. in 2003, an english study published in the economic journal, and entitled “class size, education, and wages,” researchers dustmann, rajah, and van soest, stated, “we use micro data for england and wales to examine the effects of class size on the decision to stay on in full time schooling at 16 and on wages later in life. we find that class size has a sizeable and significant effect on the decision to stay on. this finding is very robust. wage equations show the effect of staying on is significantly positive for wages. combining this with the effect of class size on the staying on decision, reveals that class size significantly affects future wages” (p. f99). however, even if lower class sizes mean a better chance of students staying in school, not everyone agrees that reducing class size is worth the cost. in 2002, florida amended its constitution and adopted amendment 9. beginning with the school year 2003–2004, class sizes in florida were to be reduced by two students per year until the average number of students per class did not exceed the maximum set by the new law. per legislative action, the funding needed to meet this requirement was to be the responsibility of the state, not the local district. however, it was estimated that by 2012, the amendment would cost billions of state dollars, causing many groups, including the florida association of district school superintendents, to oppose the amendment. in 2006, normore and ilon of florida international university wrote an article addressing the cost-benefit analysis of class size. the authors explained that, “…the debate is whether the costs involved are the best ways to spend taxpayers’ monies...this article finds that reducing class size is the most expensive of state inputs that affect achievement scores. varying the mix of school personnel (administrators, teachers, and teacher aides) and investments in teacher quality (training and experience) are shown to produce the same results (raising test scores) at a lower cost than the reduction of class sizes” (p. 429). the conclusions drawn by normore and ilon appear to have lent credibility to those who later suggested that florida consider changing amendment 9 so that a district’s overall classroom averages could be used as opposed to individual classroom averages. therefore, while there is a mounting current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 6 body of research that supports the idea that lower class size increases student achievement, the question remains, “at what price?” indiana’s class size reduction initiative, called project prime time, began in 1985. this program, initiated as a categorical grant, provided school corporations with additional funds in order to reduce class size at the primary grade levels. under prime time, the target ratio was set at 18 students per teacher for kindergarten and first grade, and 20 students per teacher at grades two and three. as the program was being considered, a statewide study by jarman (1985), found that there was not enough classroom space in most indiana school districts to hire the number of teachers needed to fully implement prime time. consequently, the initiative that finally passed the indiana legislature allowed school districts to implement prime time with the option of hiring three instructional assistants in the place of hiring one new “prime time” teacher. however, the amount of money that indiana placed in this categorical grant did not allow school districts to fully recover the entire cost associated with the hiring of new prime time teachers and instructional assistants. the result was that school districts had to reduce their upper elementary personnel in grades four and above in order to fully implement the project. eventually, as it became apparent that the cost associated with prime time salaries and benefits would become too high, the indiana legislature folded the prime time grant monies in with a school district’s general fund revenues. the final result is that project prime time, as it was originally conceived, no longer exists in the state of indiana. recently, this type of action has become more the rule than the exception. a proposal to loosen elementary school class size requirements is now making its way through the texas legislature. for 27 years, texas has had a class size cap that limits kindergarten through third grade classes to no more than 22 students per class. this year, the texas comptroller is proposing to amend the law so that school districts could average 22 students across the district rather than using 22 as a hard cap for every classroom. however, teacher groups, parents and some local school officials are against that proposal. it has been estimated that allowing this amendment could save the state of texas as much as $558 million over a two-year period. according to sterling lloyd, a senior research associate at the editorial projects in education research center, 11 states relaxed classroom requirements in 2010, either through legislative action or administrative action (harrison, 2011). as indiana school districts receive less revenue, reductions in teaching positions will ultimately result in increased class sizes in school corporations across the state. this study examines these changes in class sizes and student achievement indicators for participating school corporation as a whole, and then, specifically, at the third and eight grade levels. given the results of previous research, it is this study’s hypothesis that over a three year time period, increased class sizes, as a result of budget cuts, will impact student achievement. method description the primary objectives of this research are to gather and examine data regarding budget cuts in indiana’s public schools and examine the possible impacts of those budget cuts on class size and student achievement. based on these objectives, a combination of public records research and survey methodology were deemed most appropriate. procedure and participants for the survey portion of this study, all questions were developed by the researchers and were reviewed by a panel experienced in the development and use of educational surveys including college professors and practicing school administrators. the demographic questions were identified as appropriate through a review of the literature. the survey and a cover letter were mailed to every public school superintendent (293 total) in the state of indiana in late july of 2010. by the end of august, a total of 103 superintendents had completed and returned the survey. a second round of surveys were sent out to non-respondents in early september, which resulted in an additional 29 completed surveys being returned. therefore, the total number of returned surveys for year one was 132, giving a return rate of 46%. of the 132 returned surveys, 127 were considered “valid” and usable. all survey were coded for confidentiality and results entered into a spreadsheet. simultaneously, a research and data collection of public records took place by accessing the indiana department of education’s master database of school corporation statistics and student achievement indicators. first, the student achievement indicators for each of the responding superintendents’ school corporations were obtained. the student achievement indicator being using for this study is the indiana statewide testing of educational progress plus (istep+), which is administered in the spring to students in grades three through eighth. the istep+ exam is based on indiana state academic standards. high levels of both reliability and validity are reported for this assessment (idoe, pp. 108-116). the researchers collected the istep+ percent passing results for each school corporation in math and language arts for third grade and eighth grade, and for each school corporation as a whole. then, the financial records and end of year performance reports for the respondents’ school corporations were examined and recorded in order to collect baseline general fund revenue and per pupil expenditure data. results in regards to the demographics of the 127 school corporations participating in this study, the data reported presents an accurate representation of the state of indiana in the impacts of budget reductions on indiana’s public schools 7 table 1 general fund budget information for participating school corporations mean high low 2009 general fund budget 2010 general fund budget amount cut 2009-10 per pupil expenditure 2010-11 per pupil expenditure $21,776,000. $21,067,000. $1,096,600. $10, 239. not yet reported $218,250,000. $217,157,000. $17,400,000. $13,000. $3,600,000. $3,400,000. $12,746. $8,300. terms of typical population distributions and characteristics. the communities of the participating school corporations are 65 percent rural, 17 percent suburban, 12 percent town, and six percent urban. of the participating corporations, 53 percent have 1000-3000 students, 19 percent have 1000 or less students, 16 percent have more than 5000 students, and 12 percent have 3001-5000 students. fifty percent of the participating schools have 30 to 50 percent of their students qualifying for free or reduced meals, 22 percent have 10 to 30 percent of their students on meal assistance, 21 percent have between 50 to 60 percent of their students on free or reduced meals, and 7 percent have over 60 percent of their students receiving meal assistance. with respect to the general fund budgets of the participating indiana school corporations, initial results also indicate a wide and expected representation as shown (see table 1). of significant interest were the numbers and types of teaching positions that have been eliminated in indiana’s public schools since 2009. the 127 participating school corporations reported a total of 1135 teaching positions cut. this includes all grade levels and represents a mean of 8.9 reduced positions per school corporation. of the eliminated teaching positions, 449 were elementary (k-5) positions and 497 were secondary (6-12) positions. the fine arts is an area that has been impacted as 89 positions were eliminated in elementary fine arts (music, art, physical education) while 59 eliminated positions were secondary related arts teachers. finally, of the eliminated teaching positions, 41 were in “other” areas, such as guidance counselors or media specialists. several superintendents made comments explaining that they had reduced positions by “encouraging” retirements and several commented that to minimize eliminating positions, they are now sharing more teachers among and between buildings. in addition to the teaching positions lost, instructional assistants’ positions have also been substantially cut since 2009 with the participating corporations reporting a total loss of 570 of these positions. this represents an average of 4.63 instructional assistant positions eliminated per corporation. for baseline class size information, superintendents from the participating corporations provided their average class sizes for the previous year. for the 2009-2010 school year, they reported secondary classes at 21.77 and elementary class sizes at 21.05. because this research focuses specifically on third and eighth grade, superintendents were also asked to project third and eighth grade class sizes for the 2010-2011 school year. superintendents reported these at 19.76 for the average third grade class size, and 21.09 for the average eighth grade class size. statewide standardized testing (istep+) data was also collected for the participating corporations for the entire corporation, third grade, and eighth grade in english/language arts and math. using 2009 as the baseline year, this data shows that the participating corporations had a mean english/language arts percent passing rate of 72.86. math passing percentages were at a mean of 75.24. the percent of students passing both areas of math and english/language arts for the participating corporations was a mean of 65.20. for the specific grades of interest, third and eighth, the third graders in the participating corporations had a mean passing percent of 77.95 for english/language arts and a mean passing percent of 76.04 for math. for both subjects, third graders in the participating corporations showed a mean passing percent score of 69.27. eighth grade scores for the participating corporations were somewhat lower than third grade scores with a mean passing percent of 67.36 for english/language arts and 70.65 for math. the mean passing percent was 59.89 for eighth graders for both academic areas tested. discussion in the state of indiana, a school corporation’s general fund is used, primarily, to pay for the salaries and benefits of personnel, as well as student programs and supplies. recent reductions in general fund revenue for indiana’s public schools are resulting in high levels of cuts in both personnel and programs. this study looks specifically at reductions in teaching positions and changes in class sizes, and it also monitors student achievement indicators over a three-year period. an examination of 2009-2010 data regarding budget cuts reveals important information. the 127 indiana school corporations participating in this study have already made substantial cuts in instructional personnel, including a total of 1135 teachers, which is a mean of 8.9 reduced teaching positions per corporation. participating schools have also eliminated 570 instructional assistants’ positions, a mean of 4.63 positions per corporation. using these means, it is estimated that overall, approximately 2,608 teachers and 1357 instructional assistants have been cut from indiana’s public schools this past year. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 8 with the recent announcement that funding will be held at a reduced level for another year, indiana’s public schools will continue to face cutbacks in both personnel and programs. it will be important to follow the participating school corporations for the next several years and examine what impacts, if any, these cuts have on class sizes and student achievement indicators. this study has significance in several ways. first, the data collected through this study will be of practical use to multiple individuals and agencies, including universities, state government and agencies, superintendents, and numerous other interested parties who are concerned about the status of reductions in indiana’s public school budgets. second, this study will advance our overall understanding of the relationship between budget constraints, class size, and student achievement. because this is an important topic, there have been many studies conducted over the years on class size and its relationship with student achievement. this study is an attempt to add to this body of knowledge. finally, for all schools facing budget cuts, continued reductions means “tightening their belts.” at the same time, schools are attempting to maintain their educational programs and improve their students’ achievement. difficult and often controversial choices will need to be made. in some school corporations, budget reductions mean the loss of valuable student programs, such as fine arts and school counseling programs, in order to keep core educational programming in place. in other corporations, extracurricular programs and class options may be severely limited. however, amidst the turmoil that these budget reductions create, there may be schools that are able to rise above these challenges. if through this research, there are school corporations identified that are able to maintain and even improve student achievement, these school corporations should be studied further. the methods corporations use to improve student achievement should be shared. ultimately, this study might provide clues as to ways school corporations can maintain or increase levels of student achievement, even during extremely difficult financial times. references balow, i. h. 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(2000). the effects of small classes on academic achievement: the results of the tennessee class size experiment. american educational research journal, 37(1). 123-151. doi:10.3102/00028312037001123 nye, b., hedges, l. v., & konstantopoulos, s. (2000). do the disadvantaged benefit more from small classes? evidence from the tennessee class size experiment. american journal of education, 109(1), 1-26. office of student assessment (2009). istep+ program manual. indianapolis, in: indiana department of education, 108-116. retrieved from http://www.doe.in.gov/assessment/ docs/programmanual.pdf porwoll, p. j. (1978). class size research: a summary of research. arlington, va: educational research services. national education association, research division (1965). class size in kindergartens and elementary schools. research report 1965-r11. washington, dc: author. ross, d. h., & mckenna, b. (1955). class size: the multimillion dollar question. institute of administrative research. teachers college: columbia university. toutkoushian, r. k., & michael, r. s. (2005). demystifying school funding in indiana. education policy brief, 3(2). indiana university, bloomington, in: center for evaluation and education policy. retrieved at http://www.eric.ed.gov:80/pdfs/ed488902.pdf current issues in education vol. 14 no.2 10 article citation jarman, d. w., & boyland, l.g. (2011). the impacts of budget reductions on indiana’s public schools: the impact of budget changes on student achievement, personnel, and class size for public school corporations in the state of indiana. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/762 author notes del w. jarman ball state university teachers college 914 muncie, indiana 47306 dwjarman@bsu.edu del jarman is an assistant professor in the department of educational leadership at ball state university. jarman previously served as a public school administrator in indiana, kentucky, and nevada, as well as department chair and faculty member of educational leadership at kennesaw state and as a faculty member of educational leadership at the citadel. lori g. boyland ball state university teachers college 907 muncie, indiana 47306. lgboyland@bsu.edu lori boyland is an assistant professor in the department of educational leadership at ball state university. before joining the faculty at ball state in 2008, boyland served as a public school educator and administrator for 22 years in the state of indiana. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 11 volume 14, number 2 june 4, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers perceptions of teaching volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x perceptions of teacher planning time: an epistemological challenge m.p. prytula, l.m. hellsten, and l.j. mcintyre university of saskatchewan citation m.p. prytula, l.m. hellsten, and l.j. mcintyre (2010). perceptions of teacher planning time: and epistemological challenge. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/437 abstract the concept of developing teacher collaboration teams continues to be a prevalent problem for teachers and schools. the results of a saskatchewan study of beginning teachers (hellsten et al., 2007) was the finding that first and second year teachers perceived planning and collaboration with other teachers, as well as professional development as the least important support or resource for their induction years. this bears heavy implications for teacher learning and learning improvement in today’s schools. this paper examines the perceptions that beginning teachers in saskatchewan have regarding preparation time and planning time, explores the epistemological basis for these findings and the impact of this basis, and discusses the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 significance of this finding and the potential problems and implications that this realization has for continued theory and practice for teacher education and collaboration in schools. keywords: teacher induction, preparation and planning time, collaboration, epistemology, professional development perceptions of teacher planning time 3 about the author(s) author: dr. laureen mcintyre affiliation: university of saskatchewan address: 28 campus drive saskatoon, sk s7n 0x1 email: laureen.mcintyre@usask.ca biographical information: dr. laureen mcintyre is an associate professor and director of the special education certificate program in the college of education at the university of saskatchewan. dr. mcintyre completed a b.ed. at the university of saskatchewan, a m.sc. in communication disorders at minot state university, and a ph.d. ineducational psychology (specifically special education) at the university of alberta. as an american and canadian certified speech-language pathologist, dr. mcintyre has worked in both community health and school settings. author: dr. michelle prytula affiliation: university of saskatchewan address: 28 campus dr., saskatoon, sk. s7n 0x1 email: michelle.prytula@usask.ca biographical information: michelle prytula is an assistant professor in the department of educational administration, college of education, at the university of saskatchewan. previous to academia, she held teacher, vice-principal and principal positions. her current faculty teaching areas include leadership, policy studies, organizational theory, and educational finance. her current research interests include teacher learning, action research, the professional learning community, teacher induction, and school leadership and improvement. her work recently earned her the mcdowell foundation award for research into teaching in 2010. author: dr. laurie hellsten affiliation: university of saskatchewan address: 28 campus dr., saskatoon, sk. s7n 0x1 email: laurie.hellsten@usask.ca current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 perceptions of teacher planning time: an epistemological challenge “teacher isolation is the enemy of improvement” (kanold, toncheff, & douglas, 2008, p. 23). teacher collaboration remains an integral component of successful teaching and learning. teachers can make significant improvements to student performance by abandoning the traditional culture of teacher isolation and opting to work in collaborative teams (leonard & leonard, 2003). after over a decade of theory and research pertaining to the potential benefits of teacher collaboration (dufour & eaker, 1998; mitchell & sackney, 2000; schmoker, 2005), one would not only expect to see this concept to have begun to take hold within the culture of teaching, but to have achieved a stronghold in the behaviours and practices of teacher education and teaching. however, this is not the case. the concept of developing teacher collaboration teams continues to be a prevalent problem for teachers and schools. so prevalent, in fact, that not only is the concept of collaboration not taking shape, but it remains “little more than an aspiration” (leonard & leonard, 2003, p. 9). developing teacher collaboration teams may be just an aspiration in saskatchewan. among the results of a saskatchewan study of beginning teachers (hellsten et al., 2007) was the finding that first and second year teachers perceived planning and collaboration with other teachers, as well as professional development as the least important support or resource for their induction years. this bears heavy implications for teacher learning and learning improvement in today’s schools. using the findings of the hellsten et al. (2007) study as the foundation, this paper will: (1) examine the perceptions that beginning teachers in saskatchewan have regarding preparation time and planning time; (2) explore the epistemological basis for these findings and the impact of this basis; and (3) discuss the significance of this finding and the potential problems and perceptions of teacher planning time 5 implications that this realization has for continued theory and practice for teacher education and collaboration in schools. background professional collaboration, collaborative planning, and school reform initiatives have been at the forefront of school improvement initiatives over the past twenty years. most commonly referred to as communities of practice (wenger, 1998), and professional learning communities (dufour & eaker, 1998), social learning and planning in collaborative teams of educators is a strategy used in many academic settings to improve student achievement (schmoker, 2005). to say that knowledge is constructive and co-created implies that mastering the skills of teaching requires working in community with other professionals, creating interactive learning environments, and sharing with and learning from one another. distinct from the epistemology that knowledge is accessible and exists beyond the individual, a constructivist epistemology implies that greater knowledge exists within a group of people, rather than in a single individual (mitchell & sackney, 2001). two main barriers to beneficial collaboration and planning in today’s schools have been identified as a lack of time and poor administrative support (henry, 2005; leonard & leonard, 2003). furthermore, professional development initiatives focused on collaboration have been criticized as one-shot, sporadic, and shallow (colantonio, 2005). cherubini (2007) found, from a research study conducted in ontario into beginning teachers’ perceptions of the effects of their induction, that beginning teachers do value those induction programs that included collaborative dialogue between colleagues that served to enhance their skills in improving student achievement, rather than those that provided a “surface approach to addressing generic needs” (p. 9). despite this, however, the concept of teacher collaboration has been slow to catch on. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 a study of the experiences of beginning teachers in saskatchewan (hellsten et al., 2007) has revealed a further barrier to the development of collaborative work teams, professional learning communities, or communities of practice. results showed that beginning teachers entered the profession perceiving collaborative planning and professional development as relatively unimportant as compared to isolated teacher preparation time. although the sample was restricted to only saskatchewan beginning teachers, and therefore is not generalizable to teachers in all provinces, this finding suggests that the barriers to collaboration may be situated internally, rather than externally. teachers’ relative perceptions of the value of supports indicate that a challenge to collaboration may exist within the epistemological beliefs of beginning teachers. individual epistemological beliefs influence “how individuals make meaning and how this (meaning) in turn affects learning” (hofer, 2000, p. 379). these beliefs play a role in how future and practicing teachers learn to teach and practice their teaching (fives & buehl, 2008, p. 135); therefore, if learning improvement is to be initiated through collaboration, these perceptions must be challenged. this is an epistemological issue, rather than a professional development issue, thus it must be approached as such. this epistemological issue will be discussed in detail following an overview of the becoming a teacher study. the becoming a teacher study becoming a teacher: a longitudinal study of saskatchewan teachers’ early career paths (“author”, 2007; “author”, 2008; “author”, “author”, in press) was designed to identify and examine key factors that affect saskatchewan beginning teachers’ early career paths, as well as their commitment to the profession. the context of this study is the province of saskatchewan where there are two teacher education institutions (university of saskatchewan and the perceptions of teacher planning time 7 university of regina). saskatchewan provides an interesting context in which to examine beginning teachers' transition experiences because of the province's diversity and distinctiveness (e.g., rural and urban dimensions1, a population comprised of a high proportion of aboriginal persons2), a recent structural renewal of the publicly funded k-12 system3, and a re-culturing of teaching and learning4. one of the six main purposes of the study was to describe and analyze the supports new teachers believe are required to assist their transition into the profession. the survey instrument was developed specifically for this study by the longitudinal research team (authors, 2007) based on relevant literature. the majority of the survey instrument was comprised of forced choice items many of which were single items (not subscales of items). although content validity evidence was collected using experts, no other validity or reliability evidence has been collected. surveys were composed of five sections including: demographics; background information regarding education and training; information about certification and employment; specific information about the teaching position; and reflections about teaching. this paper reports on the section of the survey that asked participants to reflect on their perceptions of the importance of a variety of supports. although there were minimal slight wording modifications between the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 first year teacher surveys, essentially all first year teachers were surveyed using an identical instrument. the wording of the second year survey was modified to reflect the second year teaching status of the participants and additional questions only relevant to second year teachers were asked (e.g., perception of 1 the population of saskatchewan is approximately one million people, more people in live in rural settings than in any other province in canada (tymchak, 2001), and the population in rural schools is declining (assessment and evaluation unit, 2000). 2 the young aboriginal population is growing rapidly (tymchak, 2001); there is a need to ensure that an appropriate number of beginning teachers of aboriginal ancestry are successfully recruited/ retained to reflect this population. 3 such a restructuring process has been shown in other jurisdictions to negatively impact the classroom (dibbon, 2004). 4 all schools are expected not only to educate children and youth but to serve as centres at the community level for the delivery of appropriate social, health, recreation, culture, justice and other services for children and families. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 workload in second year as compared to first). however, the section of the survey that this paper focuses on was identical to the survey completed by first year teachers. in the first year of the study (2006-2007), beginning teachers from the university of saskatchewan were surveyed. in order to ensure that the sample was generalizable to beginning teachers throughout the province of saskatchewan rather than just beginning teachers from one particular institution, graduates from the university of regina were added to the sampling frame in the second year (2007-2008). in addition, as the first two years of teaching are commonly referred to as a time of survival (huberman, 1989) we felt comfortable expanding the sample to include second year teachers from both the university of regina and the university of saskatchewan in 2007-2008. in 2006-2007, all beginning first year teachers who graduated from the university of saskatchewan with valid alumni addresses were sent a paper and pencil survey. the process was repeated in 2007-2008 for all first and second year teachers from both the university of saskatchewan and the university of regina. in order to ensure confidentiality and anonymity, the respective alumni offices at both universities mailed out the survey packages on behalf of the research team. two hundred and seventy-five participants completed and returned the first year form of the survey (n2006-2007 = 125, n2007-2008 = 153), while 151 participants completed the second year form in 2007-2008. data were entered into spss 15.0, double verification was completed, and descriptive statistics were calculated. demographic data is presented in table 1. the beginning teachers were asked to rate their perception of the importance of a variety of supports using a scale ranging from one (not important) to four (very important). respondents were asked to rate each support independently and were not asked to rank order the supports perceptions of teacher planning time 9 listed. for the purposes of this article, only the scores from the very important column were included (see table 2). findings generally, all supports were considered important by all respondents in the study. across all three samples (i.e., 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 first year teachers, and 2007-2008 second year teachers), most beginning teachers identified preparation time during the school day and support from family/friends as very important supports during their first years of teaching. more specifically, preparation time was identified as very important for all survey sets, at 81.9%, 69.9% and 66.2% respectively. similarly, support of family and friends was perceived as very important by 81.6%, 62.1% and 62.3% of the respondents in those same three survey sets. table 1 demographic data of the participants 1st year teachers 2006-2007 1st year teachers 2007-2008 2nd year teachers 2007-2008 gender males 36 (28.8) 25 (16.4) 28 (39.7) females 88 (70.4) 115 (75.2) 118 (55.0) missing 1 (0.8) 13 (8.5) 5 (3.3) age group 22-24 50 (40.0) 72 (47.1) 42 (27.8) 25-34 54 (43.2) 59 (38.6) 88 (58.3) 35-44 15 (12.0) 18 (11.8) 14 (9.3) 45 + 5 (4.0) 2 (1.3) 5 (3.3) missing 1 (0.8) 2 (1.3) 2 (1.3) marital status single 58 (46.4) 87 (56.9) 60 (39.7) married/common law 61 (48.8) 61 (39.9) 83 (55.0) divorced/separated 5 (4.0) 2 (1.3) 6 (3.9) missing 1 (0.8) 3 (1.9) 2 (1.3) note. counts are presented first, with percentages in parentheses. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 table 2 numbers and percentages of respondents who selected each factor as a very important support in their first years of teaching factors ‘very important’ (1st year teachers, year 1) ‘very important’ (1st year teachers, year 2) ‘very important’ (2nd year teachers, year 2) new staff orientation n 56 69 54 percent 61.5 45.1 35.8 mentor n 53 61 56 percent 60.9 39.9 37.1 teacher colleagues n 61 95 81 percent 62.2 62.1 53.6 principal/vice principal n 57 83 87 percent 58.2 54.2 57.6 professional development opportunities n 45 44 48 percent 50 28.8 31.8 classroom/school resources n 69 93 86 percent 71.9 60.8 57.0 assistance for students with special needs n 62 88 90 percent 66 57.5 59.6 preparation time during the school day n 77 107 100 percent 81.9 69.9 66.2 planning time during the school day with teacher colleagues, staff n 39 65 53 percent 42.4 42.5 35.1 support of students’ parents/families n 60 72 87 percent 63.2 47.1 57.6 support of my family/friends n 80 95 94 percent 81.6 62.1 62.3 note. for the purposes of this article, only the scores from the very important column were included. low sample sizes per item reflect low numbers endorsing the item at the very important category. perceptions of teacher planning time 11 although even the items that were least likely to be endorsed received a good deal of support, there were relative differences in how many beginning teachers endorsed two of the survey items as being very important. both planning time during the school day and professional development opportunities were consistently identified as very important by the smallest number of beginning teachers. planning time during the school day was identified by only 42.4%, 42.5%, and 35.1% of the beginning teachers and professional development opportunities was identified by 50.0%, 28.8%, and 31.8% of the beginning teachers. in 20072008, planning time was identified as very important by the smallest number of beginning teachers, while professional development took this position for both forms of the surveys conducted in the 2007-2008. the lack of endorsement for planning time during the school day was recognized during an interim data analysis at the conclusion of the first year of the study. due to this surprising result, and in an effort to ensure that the wording was not responsible for the lack of endorsement, the research team modified the wording of the planning time item from planning time during the school day to planning time during the school day with teacher colleagues, staff. results from both forms of the 2007-2008 surveys (i.e., both first and second year teacher responses) showed that the frequency with which the planning time item was endorsed stayed relatively stable, with planning time being the second least frequent item endorsed as very important and professional development being the least frequently endorsed item. as the purpose of the question was to determine the supports new teachers believe are required to assist their transition into the profession, the discovery that some items were perceived as relatively unimportant was unintentional. however, now that we recognize that beginning teachers perceive isolated preparation time as relatively more important than either current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 professional development opportunities or planning time with teacher colleagues and staff, we must examine this finding in terms of its potential implications for theory, research and practice. discussion the remainder of this article is a discussion to further explore the findings from the question of perceived importance of supports. specifically, we intend to present the low perception of importance of collaboration and group planning in a context of recent educational movements toward professional development through collaboration and professional learning communities. we will also discuss the role of epistemology and the potential necessity to explicitly teach for epistemological change at the teacher training level, and how epistemology and our adherence to epistemological ideas impacts the approaches of instructional leadership at the school level. the development of the professional: research and practice professional development through communities of practice, professional learning communities, or collaborating and planning with teachers in the same school, department, or grade level have proven to be not only sound approaches to education, rather they have proven themselves as having the potential to transform education (dufour & eaker, 1998; fullan, 2005; schon, 1995). in schools where these approaches have taken hold, reports of success and higher student learning have followed (dufour & eaker, 1998; prytula, makahonuk, syrota, & pesenti, 2009; schmoker, 2005; vescio, ross, & adams, 2008). despite many articles, books, and studies on this effective phenomenon, the collaborative approach is very slow to be adopted in the majority of schools. historically blamed on teacher complacency, dufour (1998) recognized that approaches to professional development have been flawed through bringing in experts with little regard for the major determinant of professional development success. that is, what is perceptions of teacher planning time 13 flawed is the “context of the school in which it is presented… the beliefs, expectations, behaviours and norms that constitute the culture of a given school” (dufour, 1998, p. 24). what is of primary importance then, is not the content of the message, but the context in which it is being delivered. this context includes the epistemological beliefs and backgrounds of the professionals within the school. too often, schools are left with the substantial work of creating the change needed in teacher thinking and learning. being products of about a dozen years of elementary and high school education, and another few years of university certification, teachers tend to teach in the ways that they were taught (ball, 1990; lortie, 1975; vrasidas & mcisaac, 2001); therefore, it is a substantial challenge to develop collaborative teams, encourage teacher planning, and erode the traditional norms of working in isolation. schools, working within their own means, have only achieved marginal success with this type of reform to date. this is likely because this task of reform has less to do with explicit behaviours and habits of teachers (which can be modified through expectations and guidelines), and more to do with internal beliefs and understandings (which have been created through past experiences and knowledge). pockets of success have been found, however, in schools where professional learning communities have been established. vescio et al. (2008) found that in the schools they studied, the establishment of professional learning communities contributed to a “fundamental shift in the habits of mind that teachers bring to their daily work in the classroom” (p. 84), and that a change in professional culture had occurred. they noted, however, that these successes are not the result of a prescriptive model, but rather based on context, experience, and the creation of new knowledge. one major limitation to the widespread success of teacher collaboration and planning through structures such as the professional learning community is that they require leadership as current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 a catalyst. the problem is that unless a leader exhibits this initiative and has an understanding of this kind of teacher learning, school leaders, working within a continuum of eclecticism, have neither the time nor the training regarding the epistemological beliefs that underpin teachers’ understanding of their work. this understanding, then, must be rooted in the foundations of education. dufour (1998) implied that school reform must begin much earlier, and achieve a much deeper effect in order to erode the norms of teacher isolation in school systems, and bring about the effects of collaboration. the perspectives and understandings of the epistemological constructivist nature of learning must come to the surface through first the foundations of teacher training, and later, through the foundations of professional development. that means if we are to take on this reform, then we must first consider a modification to pre-service teacher education. the epistemological foundations of teaching in education, “continuing learning, both structured and self-directed, is critical to professional practice” (graham & phelps, 2003, p. 2). the epistemology of teaching and learning in education has traditionally been known as the process of transmitting knowledge from the teacher to the student (schon, 1995). tyack and cuban (1996) claimed that teaching has always been traditional. this traditional approach is how society expects teachers to teach, and this is how students have always learned. for the most part, teachers have learned this way, so it is almost expected that they teach this way. hatala and hatala (2004) indicated that teaching and learning in this way no longer suits today’s knowledge paradigm. what is required includes cooperation, collaboration, wisdom, and dialogue. this brings to the surface the idea that the traditional epistemology of teaching and learning may be incomplete or insufficient. perceptions of teacher planning time 15 schon (1995) identified two ways of conceptualizing teaching and learning. he termed the first conception as institutional epistemology of teaching, the traditional idea that students learn through the transmission of knowledge from the teacher to the student. students learn what they are told and do what they are shown, and knowledge is transmitted to students through curriculum and blocks of time. schon (1995) argued that there is a second and new epistemology of teaching and learning, termed scholarship epistemology, which highlights the potential of greater learning through thinking. scholarship epistemology includes reflection-in-action, reflection-on-knowing, and reflection-on-practice, whereby a teacher takes the opportunity to reflect deeply on what he does while he is doing it, what he knows, and what he has done after doing it (schon, 1995). contrasted with institutional epistemology, where knowledge is simply becoming familiar with a model or theory and using it in practice, scholarship epistemology involves a constructive approach through the discovery of knowledge. epistemologically, if a teacher wants to convey a certain knowing, he first has to understand what it is, and how it is that he knows something, and then re-create that learning opportunity for students. “if we want to teach about our ’doing’, then we need to observe ourselves in the doing, reflect on what we observe, describe it, and reflect on our description” (schon, 1995, p. 33). richardson (2002) emphasized that discourse in teacher planning results in meaningful, reflective practice. he said that,” (i)f practitioners engage with discourse thinking, and develop their critical awareness...played out in the day-to-day micro-level practices of planning, they are likely to gain some very useful perspectives and insights which will strengthen their reflexive practice” (p. 353). the practice of reflection and discourse, or dialogue, becomes a central activity which allows professionals to make sense of their actions and work. not limiting reflection to pure discourse, bolton (2006) recognized a similar approach for reflective practice current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 through writing and sharing with colleagues. she highlighted that reflective practice “critically recognizes and challenges the prevailing discourse and dominant paradigm, denying any innocence of those which structure and force us culturally” (p. 205) and that this dialogue and reflection helps to develop clarity, insight and understanding for the work that they themselves do. key to reflection and dialogue is that they employ internal critical thinking and external discourse to learn, evaluate ideas, share strategies, and create change in practice and outcomes. important to note at this point, is that reflection, done alone, is not enough to improve practice beyond the technical day-to-day aspects of the job. what is required to take reflection to a form of scholarship is bringing it into relationship with others, either through dialogue, discussion, and debate. taken this way, this elevates the teaching profession to, as kelchtermans (2009) described “a risky endeavor” (p. 270) (emphasis in original) as through these experiences, a teacher may be confronted with ideas, practices, approaches and experiences that differ from their own, and, true to the processes of collaborative planning and learning communities, experience discomfort and work at reducing the discomfort either by modifying their own practice or influencing others to change theirs. this discomfort, however, is necessary, for as kelchermans stated, “without deep reflection, one’s scholarship cannot be developed, nor the scholarship of teaching in general” (p. 270). done regularly, collaboration results in a new epistemic understanding of what it means to teach and learn, and results in a break from traditional paradigms. schon (1995) noted, however, that the majority of the time teachers do not do this, so ultimately, they may have a very shallow understanding of their own teaching. this illustrates a gap that exists between perceptions of teacher planning time 17 policy and practice. institutional epistemology can be achieved in isolation. scholarship epistemology cannot. teaching teachers much of the work in the development of teachers’ epistemological beliefs or understandings must begin to happen at the pre-service stage. it could be said that operating, as a knowledge society, universities and schools can no longer teach the way they have always taught in the hopes of developing teachers who can work and teach differently. “in order to achieve this, teacher education as well as in-service training need to provide spaces to engage in discomforting dialogues” (kelchtermans, 2009, p. 370) (emphasis in original). schon (2005) said that teaching cannot solely be bound by the application of knowledge, but must be entrenched in the generation of knowledge. bolton (2006) went further to state that this reflective practice is vital to teaching and learning, so much so that it must be considered a pedagogical approach infused throughout the curriculum. she implied that if teachers were taught this way through their own education programs, that they would be more inclined to teach this way. recent research has revealed strong positive connections between the deprivatization practices of teachers through collaboration and planning with not only enhanced teacher learning and student centered practices, but also with improvements in student achievement (vescio, et al., 2008). finding few studies that linked epistemological beliefs with conceptions of teaching and learning, wong, chan and lai (2009), believing that “epistemological beliefs could bring impacts and solutions to problems encountered in the educational arena” (p. 2), conducted an examination into the epistemological beliefs and conceptions of teaching of pre-service teachers. although conducted in hong kong, they found that students largely held a constructivist epistemological orientation over the traditional orientation, and that this was contrary to previous findings since schools of education had introduced more collaborative instructional strategies current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 and approaches. this exploration, however, was limited to the students’ epistemological understandings of teaching and learning in the classroom, and not specifically related to teacher learning beyond certification. through another study conducted by cheng, chan, tang and cheng (2009), it was discovered that about half of the beginning teachers had tendencies towards constructivist orientations to teaching and that “when the student-teachers get used to this way of believing and thinking in their learning, they are more likely to believe in a constructivist view in their classroom teaching” (p. 325). the other half had more naïve constructivist conceptions of teaching. they noted that this caused inconsistencies in practice, but explained this with the notion that these beginning teachers were still in a state of transition and that their epistemological beliefs were still developing due to inconsistencies between their pre-service experiences and new information to be learned as they began their careers. hashweh (1996) investigated science teachers’ epistemological beliefs in teaching. they tested two groups of teachers with different epistemological beliefs to determine the effects of these beliefs on their teaching. they found that teachers with constructivist orientations had a more diverse set of teaching strategies and accepted alternative responses from students. they also used effective strategies more frequently than their positivist colleagues. hashweh indicated that these results conformed to similar studies that he conducted, indicating that constructivist teachers are better able to help students arrive at new conceptions to problems and facilitate cognitive restructuring. these studies, although helpful in determining the teachers’ tendencies toward constructivism in their future or current teaching practice in the classroom, provide little perceptions of teacher planning time 19 information regarding their perspectives or orientations toward teacher professional learning. further work is needed in this area, which will be discussed at the conclusion of this paper. the role of instructional leaders at the pre-service stage there is a growing body of research on the types of instruction and leadership that create a change in epistemology (hofer, 2000; hofer & pintrich, 1997; valanides & charoula, 2005). as an instructor, knowing that students’ epistemological beliefs affect their learning and motivation, a teacher can orient student work so that students’ epistemological beliefs are challenged, so that students may discover the value of creating knowledge in a similar way. “if teacher educators can identify areas of teaching knowledge [that] teachers and pre-service [teachers] do not particularly value, they can more explicitly address issues related to the importance of that knowledge in class” (fives & buehl, 2008, p. 172). valanides and charoula (2005) demonstrated that by structuring education students’ work in ways that require them to make their beliefs about knowledge explicit, they become better educated. valanides and charoula added that, (c)ritical thinking instruction combined with a process where students are encouraged to reflect, debate, and evaluate their thinking based in explicitly stated principles, in the context of an ill-defined and controversial issue, can have a significant effect on learners’ epistemological beliefs. (p. 328) in turn, better-educated students are more epistemologically advanced, meaning that they are capable of reflection and rational inquiry, leading to an appreciation and desire for collaboration. “when applied to the teacher education context, student-teachers beliefs and hence their classroom practices is a concern in teacher education” (cheng et al., 2009, p. 320). cheng et al. suggested, from their study, that teacher educators must assist in developing education students’ epistemological beliefs from naïve to sophisticated current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 through modeling teaching/learning environments that are consistent with a constructivist orientation, and refrain from education through transmission. although increasingly complex, this recommendation includes working closely in partnership with placement schools in providing mentorship experiences that include similar orientations. this holds implications for what it is that instructors are asking pre-service teachers to do when they are in the field. sometimes, prescribing assignments for the sake of consistency between students robs them of the authentic learning experiences that they could encounter. for example, in their study on field experiences, whitehead and fitzgerald (2006) noted that prescribing teacher mentorship requirements through defined practices reduced teacher candidates’ abilities to develop their own knowledge and limited their ability to learn through collaboration with teachers in the field. this type of top-down approach served the university rather than the profession. from this, whitehead and fitzgerald suggested a more generative approach for teacher experiences that involved collaboration, allowed for “the formation and reformation of knowledge” (p. 40), and created the opportunity for a “new epistemological base for professional learning” (p. 37). this also has implications for how pre-service educators are taught. “if a student believes that knowledge is certain and simple, then he or she may have different preferences about desirable learning environments than the student who believes that knowledge is complex and interrelated” (hofer, 2001, pp. 361-362). opportunities for higher learning and epistemological development that could potentially transform education are created when instructors take advantage of situations where teacher candidates can be engaged in the real problems of education in the field, interrelated with theory, while still enrolled as students. the opportunity for students to internalize how learning takes place and how they cognitively perceptions of teacher planning time 21 experience a change in knowledge must also be integral to these experiences. it is through providing direct experiences with creating knowledge, and then having conversations about how this knowledge was created, that educational institutions can cultivate educators who will enter the professional with an already developed sense of what it means to work in a community of practice. here, knowledge transmission is replaced with knowledge creation (schon, 1995). if university educators want teachers to know how to work in collaborative learning communities where knowledge is created, then these students cannot be taught in environments where knowledge is transmitted. this just makes sense. the university of saskatchewan, like many other universities, has partnered with school divisions to create teacher cohorts that are deployed into schools to increase their opportunities to work with teachers and students. research into specific teacher cohort experiences has found that those cohorts in which teacher candidates are invited to engage in professional learning communities, collaboration, and discussion with teachers have proven to bring about increased professional learning for the teacher candidate (prytula, et al., 2009). engagement with professional learning communities also increases the likelihood that teacher candidates achieve the type of scholarship epistemology required for sustained collaboration in their careers. unfortunately, not all schools operate as professional learning communities; therefore, these experiences have so far been trial studies in the field, and the opportunities have not yet been provided for all students. through the creation of instruction that accesses pre-service teachers’ epistemological beliefs, it is possible to advance their own understandings of their epistemological assumptions and to make changes to those assumptions. “understanding future teachers’ beliefs as well as how their beliefs are related to teaching practices and motivation may allow teacher educators to plan instruction that will best support the development of teachers” (fives & buehl, 2008, p. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 172). having experienced an education where epistemological beliefs are accessed and challenged, beginning teachers have the opportunity to enter the profession prepared for the collaborative work that will be required of them. the role of instructional leaders at the in-service stage instructional leadership at the school level is also a key factor in the role of professional development and teacher learning. once beginning teachers enter the teaching profession, they face a further challenge to their epistemological development and appreciation for the necessity of collaboration. rogoff, goodman turkanis, and bartlett (2001) contended that current school organization is still a reflection of the early 1900s when considerable efforts were made to “treat school instruction as an efficient factory” (p. 6). deep thinking does not emerge in a factory model. instead, by its very nature, education itself is holistic and continuously evolving. therefore, a traditional system of education that presents the world in chopped, linear pieces does not fit. rogoff et al. (2001) suggested that a new approach is to take on a community perspective, where “teachers and students are connected rather than isolated” (p. 4). mitchell and sackney (2001) explained that successful professional learning communities can only be sustained when the leadership is skilled in approaching knowledge and learning in nontraditional ways: (s)aying that a learning community must be thus and so does not automatically make it so. the creation of a learning community is not an easy endeavor because it entails fundamentally different ways of thinking about teaching and learning and fundamentally different ways of being teachers and administrators. (p. 12) perceptions of teacher planning time 23 learning communities thrive within environments of learning, trust, and improvement (fullan, 2002; mitchell & sackney, 2001; sparks, 2005). colantonio (2005) stated that creating such environments requires not only expertise on teacher supervision, but expertise on the contexts for and the development of knowledge. the principal must be one who “facilitates growth of teachers’ knowledge and skill in a constructivist manner” (p. 31). not to be considered in a cursory manner, having an awareness of how knowledge is created, how it develops, and how its creation can be sustained is key to achieving the type of improvement needed in today’s schools. there is the implication that a school leader must understand what teacher collaboration and group planning means prior to embarking on a school improvement initiative through the process of instructional leadership. “often confused with departmental meetings…teacher collaboration is not discussions of student behaviour, purchasing of textbooks, and distributing supplies” (henry, 2005, p. 31). collaboration and planning for student success entails a pure focus on student learning, and in-depth scholarly and academic discussion and deliberation (sometimes heated, and sometimes not) on how to engage, improve, and enhance teaching and learning. dufour (1998) argued that even in the right context, flawed professional development initiatives can have a positive effect on teacher learning. inversely, in the wrong school context, “even well-conceived and delivered activities are likely to be ineffective” (p. 25). the context that is required is one with expectations of collaboration, team planning, and collective inquiry. wenger (1998) explained a similar understanding in his theory of communities of practice. it is the participation aspect of the communities that creates the learning, and that learning must be reshaped and redefined into three categories: individual, where individuals engage and contribute to practice; community, where learning is refined and sustained for future current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 members; and organizational, where learning is sustained and where knowing exists to transform the organization into one that is effective and valuable. instructional leaders must be able to adopt this new approach and become comfortable with knowledge creation that is no longer linear, but rather murky and dialogical, conflicting, and at times disordered. such a leader must also be able to tackle the issues of resistance to professional collaboration and planning, and not succumb to them, knowing that overcoming the barriers to change will be worth the effort. instructional leaders must be the proponents of the change, as they know their contexts the best. confirmed by dufour (1999), “(t)hose who look to consultants to solve the problems of a school that continues to operate under the traditional model of fragmentation and teacher isolation are almost certain to be disappointed in the results” (p. 26). creating the proper context for collaboration, as previously mentioned, is highly dependent on the context and mindsets of the people within the school. an effective school context will be much more laborious to create, if its creation is even possible. if educators enter the profession with the understanding that teaching is done in isolation, isolated preparation time will be highly important to them; while professional development and collaborative planning time will continue to be low in terms of importance to their success as teachers. conclusion from this study, there is evidence that beginning teachers in saskatchewan value isolated teacher preparation time more than they value collaborative teacher planning time and professional development, despite the fact that research and practice indicate that learning communities and communities of practice ultimately improve student learning. this knowledge suggests that the task of challenging these perceptions requires not only challenging teacher perceptions of teacher planning time 25 practices but also challenging teacher beliefs, which must be done at the pre-service and inservice stages. this issue must be addressed systemically from the time students enter the universities which will prepare them for their profession (or sooner), as well as through the professional development initiatives in which they are part of within their school divisions. research and practice has revealed that establishing effective collaborative school teams is necessary to generate improvements to student learning, whether these collaborative teams are termed professional learning communities or communities of practice. however, the incorporation of these teams has been slow despite the knowledge that collaborative teams positively affect student learning. previously identified barriers to establishing effective collaboration in schools include time constraints, as well as lack of instructional leadership (henry, 2005; leonard & leonard, 2003). this means that instructional leadership (both at the pre-service and in-service stages) requires an understanding of collaboration, as well as knowledge and the creation of knowledge, so that contexts appropriate to collaborative teams can be created. central to the barriers, however, are the epistemological beliefs of teachers and beginning teachers in the province. perhaps through directly experiencing instruction aimed at accessing epistemological beliefs, pre-service teachers would enter the teaching profession predisposed to valuing collaboration. this would reduce the school’s burden to not only attempt create a collaborative culture, but to first change the epistemological beliefs of teachers within the school in order to sustain such a culture. given that this finding is derived from a study aimed at understanding beginning teachers’ experiences as they transition from pre-service to professional employment, more research is needed to determine why there is a difference in the perceived importance between teacher preparation time and teacher planning time. more research must also be conducted as to the differences in epistemological beliefs of those teachers who have not experienced the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 learning community and collaboration construct with those that have had such an experience. as kincheloe (2004) stated, “(t)he ultimate justification for such reflective research activity is practitioner and student empowerment” (p. 64). perhaps through a deeper understanding of the epistemological foundations of beginning teachers, and how these foundations can be influenced, we can achieve such empowerment. this paper focused on the coming to know, which has implications for instructors and leaders of students in education. it is the role of both universities and school leadership to ensure that students of education have the opportunity to possess the epistemological viewpoint that knowledge is complex and interrelated. perceptions of teacher planning time 27 references american psychological association. 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(2009). revisiting the relationships of epistemological beliefs and conceptions about teaching and learning of pre-service teachers in hong kong. the asiapacific education researcher, 18(1), 1-19. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 30 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x confronting the other: understanding empathy h james garrett university of georgia kyle a. greenwalt michigan state university citation garret, h.j. & greenwalt, k. (2010). confronting the other: understanding empathy. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the concept of empathy is strongly at play across the field of education. in analyzing literature from which this concept both emerges and presently appears, this review elaborates on what empathy affords the educational enterprise. drawing from theorists from diverse fields of inquiry, among them education research, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis, we focus on the limits of empathy while questioning what lies beyond. we find that deployments of empathy might actually create more distance between self and other rather than bring about more understanding across difference. further, in looking at the literature on empathy there is an insufficient attention to broader social considerations that impact understandings of the other. in light of what we find to be problematic about the idea and uses of empathy in education, the paper concludes with speculations about how practicing educators might adequately address the inherent problems within learning across difference. keywords: empathy, phenomenology, psychoanalysis current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: h. james garrett affiliation: michigan state university address: 624g aderhold hall, university of georgia. athens, ga. 30602 email: hjames@uga.edu biographical information: author: kyle a. greenwalt affiliation: michigan state university address: 328 erickson hall, michigan state university. east lansing, mi 48824 email: greenwlt@msu.edu biographical information: kyle greenwalt is an assistant professor in the department of teacher education at michigan state university. grounded in the tradition of progressive education, he is interested in the study of curriculum through the twin lenses of lived experience and identity. he has published his work in teaching and teacher education, the harvard educational review and education and culture. he is currently the secretary of the john dewey society. confronting the other 3 confronting the other: understanding empathy what we want from education it has not given us. we hope that students will become ethical actors in the world through learning about the people with whom they cohabitate, celebrate, and mourn, the systems that give rise to opportunity and that sustain violence, and the processes by which they form their common notions about how it works. of course we recognize that the world has wonderful people, and do not wish to convey an inappropriate or staggering pessimism. but the fact remains that gross injustices go ignored—often willfully. and so as educators, we seek to foster a sense of empathy in our students. that is, we ask individuals to consider another’s perspective before deciding on a course of action of their own. across several fields of educational research, we find the term empathy strongly at play. within the research literature in history education, the term empathy generally denotes the ability to cognitively reconstruct how historical actors experienced their world, thereby providing properly historicized explanations for past actions (ashby & lee, 1987; lee & ashby, 2001; portal, 1987; shemilt, 1984; yeager & foster, 2001). the term is also implicit in much of the literacy research on readers’ responses to literature, and becomes explicit in some research on students engagement with multicultural literature (louie, 2005). finally, empathy plays a small but crucial role in some of the work that theorizes the development of an anti-racist consciousness (derman-sparks & phillips, 1997; howard, 1999). looked at through this lens, it becomes apparent that empathy is crucial—both as a process we initiate and as an outcome we achieve—in working across cultural divides. indeed, as we shall see in the next section, debates about empathetic understanding have been present in western thinking since the romantics first started to celebrate human difference in the nineteenth century. hence, we see our own research as an important intervention not only in current current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 educational research, but also as an attempt to provide a more nuanced conceptualization of empathy, one that will allow educational researchers and practicing teachers to make better sense of the sensitivities needed for ethical living in a pluralistic world. as educators and researchers, then, we need to think about the complexity of the empathetic task: what it is that we put at risk, what do we gain, and what might we lose as we implore and explore empathy? insofar as empathic understanding is most commonly used in educational setting, it is perhaps ill suited to do that which we might wish. indeed, it all too often strengthens the divisions between self and other—that which we least want it to do. in the paper, we first seek to situate the emergence of the idea of empathy in its nineteenth-century context. we do this so as to provide historical perspective on current uses of the term, and so as to make explicit our own desire to tell a particular story about empathy—one that may have very different beginning and ending points for scholars with differing projects. i in the next section of the paper, we move to further define empathy by looking at its structure as it emerges from lived experience and ego formation. here, we show the dangers inherent in empathy, whereby it may affirm the self at the expense of the other. in the next section of the paper, we give attention to the way sociality is ignored in early attempts to write about empathy. we correct the omission of social factors by using psychoanalytic concepts such as the big other, the signifying chain, and the master’s discourse. finally, since the desire in education for students to consider others in ethical ways is by all means appropriate—indeed, of the utmost importance—we move to offer the idea of love as that towards which we should ultimately look when we speak of empathy. it is not that love can or should replace empathy in our talk in education, but more so the idea that empathy reaches a confronting the other 5 limit in its consideration of the other that love might help it to surpass. we conclude with a note on teaching. the problematic of empathy and its influence contemporary research discourses intellectual historians such as alain finkielkraut (1988) and isaiah berlin (1991) have pointed to the key role of one figure in the early theorization of cultural pluralism: johann gottfried herder. of his early nineteenth-century ―discovery of difference,‖ berlin (1991) writes: the conception that there are many different ends that men [sic] may seek and still be fully rational, fully men [sic], capable of understanding each other and sympathising and deriving light from each other, as we derive it from reading plato or the novels of medieval japan—worlds, outlooks, very remote from our own. (p. 11) sympathizing, or more correctly, empathizing (einfühlung) is that method of understanding which allows us to communicate across time and space, to understand the ―cultural other.‖ hence, from the moment where cultural diversity and pluralism become issues of importance, empathy becomes the tool of choice for both understanding and bridging it (bahr, durrant, evans, & maughan, 2008). herder’s use of an empathetic method for working across cultural divides is, for the story we wish to tell here, most importantly taken up by the early systematizers of the hermeneutic and human science tradition ii —and in particular, through the work of wilhelm dilthey (portal, 1983). however, in the mature work of dilthey (1900/1972), empathy as herder’s ―feeling one’s way‖ (sich einfühling) into other life contexts gives way to empathy as ―re-feeling‖ (nachfühling) and ―re-experiencing‖ (nacherleben) the lifeworlds iii which gave rise to the texts that come to us from the past. or as dilthey himself claimed (1900/1972): current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 much of our happiness as human beings derives from our re-experiencing [nachfühling] of alien states of mind; the entire science of philology and of history is based on the presupposition that such recomprehension [nachverstandnis] of individual existence can be raised to objective validity . . . so at the threshold of human studies we encounter a problem specific to them alone and quite distinct from anything involved in the apprehension of nature. (pp. 230-231) for dilthey, then, empathy (now conceptualized as ―re-feeling‖) is the basis upon which any individual act of understanding takes place—and in particular, those artful acts of understanding that stand as the foundation for the human sciences. as austin harrington (2001) has noted, though, dilthey’s views on the role of empathy in understanding have tended to be mischaracterized by contemporary human science theorists. in particular, both gadamer and habermas are thought to ―fail to distinguish properly between the specific problematic concept of einfühlung and a wider legitimate function of feeling and imagination in understanding‖ (p. 313). that is, confusion over two conflicting views runs throughout debates over the role of empathy in any human sciences methodology: 1) empathy as feelings another’s feelings; and 2) empathy as an imaginative reconstruction of another’s lifeworld. interestingly, the tendency to reduce empathy to ―just feelings‖ has tended to be reproduced in the field of contemporary history education, beginning when british history educators introduced empathy into the national reform curriculum of the 1970s and 1980s (lee & ashby, 2001). while the movement for an empathetic history curriculum was grounded firmly in the cognitive—―it is where we get to when we have successfully reconstructed other peoples’ beliefs, values, goals, and attendant feelings‖ (ashby & lee, 1987, p. 63)—subsequent criticism confronting the other 7 of the term’s use, both in the us and the uk, drove history educators to an even larger extreme, eventually reaching the point where affect and emotion were seen as potential defects in a student’s thinking. hence, karen riley (2001), in writing about holocaust education, could claim that ―the problem with working in the affective domain is that teachers often use history to inculcate compassion or other similar feelings within students rather than offer them a useful framework with which they can conduct individual inquiry‖ (p. 154). we find such separations—compassion from inquiry—problematic (garrison, 1997). barton and levstik (2004) have written quite movingly about this unfortunate turn of events. as they note, history without care, feeling, or emotion is ―a soulless enterprise, a constraint on motivation that warrants reconsideration of the subject’s place in the curriculum. we cannot interest students in the study of history . . . if we dismiss their feeling and emotions‖ (pp. 228-229). barton and levstik identify five different ways in which an affective empathy might matter for contemporary classrooms engaged in the study of human difference. in particular, we will note two of them now as a potential point from which our own work might be said to emerge: ―caring for‖ the other; and ―caring to‖ revise our own actions and beliefs in light of what we have learned. we will return to the connections between care, empathy and classroom life as we close the paper. stein and klein: empathy’s structure, and its role in the formation of the self what is missing from all of the above accounts, we feel, is a look at the lived structure of empathy, in and of itself. phenomenology allows us to do just that, by asking: what is the lived meaning of empathy? what role does it play in human experience? in particular, we will answer these questions by first turning to the writings of edith stein before then moving to discuss our own subsequent revisions of her work in light of melanie klein. in both cases, we pay particular current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 attention to the role empathy plays in the constitution of the self, in and through its relation to an other. that is, we will use these two thinkers to introduce the intersubjective dynamic that we feel needs to lie at the heart of any adequate explanation of empathy. edith stein was one of edmund husserl’s most important pupils, and indeed, much of her own work on the problem of empathy can be seen as growing out of the husserlian framework. in her doctoral dissertation (subsequently published as on the problem of empathy, 1917/1989), stein argues that empathy is the act by which we come to experience the experiences of others. unlike sympathy, which can be understood as a reproduction of the other’s feeling, in all of their primordiality, in one’s own self, empathy is a projective act, whereby we directly perceive the experience of others, but in a non-primordial way. the structure of this act is similar to other descriptions given by phenomenology: there is an immediate lived apprehension, such as when i see the blush of embarrassment on my friend’s face and intuit its meaning. then there is the fulfillment, when i use context to confirm that this blush is due, not to exertion or anger, but to an embarrassing slip of the tongue. my relationship to the embarrassment is non-primordial, because i do not implicate myself in the slip, and therefore do not experience it as my ―own.‖ stein therefore uses the concept of empathy to answer the question of how we are able to experience the experiences of others—and in particular, aspects of experience such as affect or feeling. for stein, foreign experiences are given to us because we perceive the other as inhabiting a living body (der leib)—that is, we immediately ―know‖ that this other body can feel, act, and sense just as we can. it is not a pure material body (der körper), a lifeless corpse or object, existing therefore without a lifeworld. in general, this experience of the vitality of the other is itself co-given with the experiences of the other; that is to say, it is apperceived along with the direct perception of the body itself. iv our contact with the experiences of others are confronting the other 9 therefore dependent neither upon the logical operation of deduction nor that of induction— rather, they are given to us in a lived reality that is felt to be both immediate and foreign. empathy is therefore an essential moment in the building of a coherent self—empathy divides self from other. without empathy, as stein’s work demonstrates, we would have no sense of our own self as an individual. our own ―zero-point‖ (stein’s term for the coordinating center of our lived body which helps us establish own from other) becomes balanced by a world where other zero-points exist. our ability to empathize is therefore ultimately determined by the degree of felt separation between co-existing zero-points. such a view also would imply that the early relationship between infant, caregiver and world are important precursors in learning how to empathize. melanie klein has made exactly this point. it should therefore be of primary notice that we all have practice with empathy in this sense of the term—indeed, in some ways, it is ―no big deal.‖ if we accept from klein (and psychoanalytic thinking more generally) that there is an unconscious component to our selves that structures our awareness and perception, then it is clear that empathy begins long before our parents or teachers ask us to ―think about the other guy.‖ in fact, the knowledge that there are others to whom we must attend begins with the infant recognizing itself as a subject during—according to lacan (2006)—the mirror stage. as the infant recognizes the self as an integrated whole and a unitary subject—where before she lived out ―her‖ experience of the self as a separated collection of drives—the infant begins to learn that there is a world of objects to which she relates, and which simultaneously relate to her. klein (1937/1994) describes this as a process of ―phantasy-building‖— the inauguration of imaginative thinking whereby the object (the caregiver) need not necessarily be physically current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 present in order to still exist for the infant. the infant can now imagine the object being there, and this imagination is incarnation enough to satisfy its desire. while klein did not label this object-relation an empathic one, it seems to build the capacity for such undertakings. it is this imaginative capacity to produce an other, to produce the presence of an object not physically present, upon which we would theorize empathy. of course, this imaginary relationship to the other is not in itself a full theory of empathy. but as we proceed through this early infant-caregiver relationship, we can see that the next task for the infant is to recognize that the world is not centered in her erogenous cravings. in oscillating between rage and love, between being given attention and having attention given elsewhere, the infant must negotiate the reality of the caregiver needing to attend to tasks other than the care of the infant’s own self, thereby shattering the infantile wish of being all there is. empathy is instrumental, then, for allowing the self to be de-centered from the world and to help the young ego allow for the existence of others and understand these others as also being constituted with desires, wants, and needs of their own. comparing the views of melanie klein with her near contemporary, edith stein, is therefore revealing. for klein, empathy de-centers, while for stein, it centers. for klein, empathy is a moment in granting the other her own separate existence, while for stein, such acknowledging reaffirms the self. rather than view these as conflicting accounts of the same empathetic phenomenon, we would instead suggest that they perfectly lay out the dilemma we face. that is, we need an account of empathy that does justice to both interdependence and independence, to both a bordering subjectivity and a breeching and interpenetrating intersubjectivity. we will take this point up in earnest in the final section of the paper. yet for now, we wish to stress the point that empathy has been both oversold and confronting the other 11 undersold in the educational literature. on the one hand, empathy is present with us from very early on in our lives, as we all have the capacity to recognize the lived feelings and experiences of others. on the other hand, the capacity to empathize, serving as it does as a bridge to the other, always implicates the way in which we think about ourselves. it is both ―a big deal‖ and ―no big deal.‖ for teachers and students, the implications are therefore clear: students and teachers have already rehearsed the performance of the empathic drama many times before they enter the classroom (todd, 2003). furthermore, since we are prone to replaying these early scripts, it is with certainty that empathy is a part of any educational transaction within a school setting— where students can never be the sole object of the teacher’s attention. the question therefore becomes not whether empathy is part of the educational experience—it is—but instead becomes what happens when there is a further pedagogical intent to have students perform empathy as either learning strategy or outcome. we turn to this question in the next section of our paper by exploring the way in which sociality impinges upon the empathic relationship. levinas and lacan: empathy and sociality a clear shortcoming in the work of edith stein is its lack of attention to sociality. the other is present in stein’s work—indeed, it absolutely necessary. but that other is not given sufficient attention in her own right. neither is it acknowledged that the other comes to us socially-coded, a product not of pure perception, but of culturally-constructed ways of seeing and perceiving. in short, the empathetic performances described by stein are an overly simplistic ithou relationship, one that does not acknowledge that the optical moment of engagement with another always take place before and within an audience (in the strictest sense of that term: the state or condition of hearing, or of being able to hear). v current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 this transition to sociality, from the optical to the auricular, is undertaken by emmanuel levinas’ in his totality and infinity (2002). while empathy is not a term that is prominent in the work itself, we feel that levinas’ own conceptualization of the relationship between self and other is crucial to our own project, as it begins to introduce ethical and social wrinkles into the fabric of empathy and empathic understandings. levinas argues that the other’s relationship to the self is one of complete alterity. our relationship is not as separate species joined by a common genus, but of two ―separate subjects,‖ each overflowing the status they are assigned by the aggressivity of the other’s gaze. this moment of overflowing (the other is not contained by my perception of her), levinas refers to as ―infinity,‖ and claims that its idea is produced in and through speech. hence, speech, or discourse, is what creates a relationship—a common humanity. vi discourse, for levinas, is not a simple exteriorization of an interior thought. as he rightly notes, ―modern investigations in the philosophy of language have made familiar the idea of underlying solidarity of thought with speech.‖ he goes on to note that ―thought consists in foraging in the system of signs, in the particular tongue of a people or civilization, and receiving signification from this very operation‖ (2002, p. 206). hence, our discourse with another, our commerce, is inherently social. indeed, while the dyadic relation of separate subjects is the plain upon which the ethical is carried out, it is always before an audience of still more: everything that takes place here ―between us‖ concerns everyone, the face that looks at it places itself in the full light of the public order . . . language as the presence of the face does not invite complicity with the preferred being, the self-sufficient ―i-thou‖ forgetful of the universe . . . the third party looks at me in the eyes of the other—language is justice. (2002, pp. 212-213) confronting the other 13 society calls us to account in our interactions with other subjects—once discourse breeches alterity, the obligation to respond is placed upon us in the full light of ―public order.‖ yet levinas remains uncomfortable with the notion of free-floating signification, of a symbolic chain that engulfs self and other in a series of shifting displacements. seeing in this pattern a denial of the ethical, levinas preserves in his thought a special foundation for discourse and the ethical relationship: the face (le visage). for levinas, the face is incapable of being signified. it is pure ―expression,‖ an ―epiphany:‖ to manifest oneself as a face is to impose oneself above and beyond the manifested and purely phenomenal form, to present oneself in a mode irreducible to manifestation, the very straightforwardness of the face to face, without the intermediary of any image, in one’s nudity, that is, in one’s destitution and hunger. (2002, p. 200) without discarding the importance of levinas’ work for our own—in his ability to conceive of a subject/object relationship outside of the dialectic (―separate subjects‖), in his acknowledgement of the social within the empathetic dyad, and in his relentless advocacy for the ethical as the foundation for knowledge—we nonetheless remain deeply skeptical of the ability of the face to function as levinas claims it does. we therefore turn to psychoanalytic frames in the remainder of this section, and in particular, to the work of jacques lacan. lacan’s notion of the unconscious—noting that, for him, it is ―the discourse of the other.‖ slavoj žižek (2008), himself a helpful decoder of lacan’s work, explains that this ―big other‖ represents: society’s unwritten constitution . . . the second nature of every speaking being: it is here, directing and controlling my acts; it is the sea i swim in, yet remains ultimately impenetrable—i can never put it in front of me and grasp it. it is as if we, subjects and current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 language, talk and interact like puppets, our speech and gestures dictated by some nameless all-pervasive agency. (p. 8) the big other, then, is the discourse that works on us. put somewhat differently, we do not speak a language, that language speaks us. we are, in effect, placed by discourse—in fluid rather than fixed ways—within a structure of symbols called the ―symbolic chain.‖ for lacan (2006), the other’s discourse is the unconscious, itself ―structured like language,‖ because of the workings of the symbolic field. the unconscious engages our desire, indeed, founds it: because the symbolic is elusive, because it is never ―here,‖ but always ―somewhere else,‖ we as speaking subjects tend to have our speaking acts pulled along the somewhat familiar tracks that constitute normative ways of speaking and acting in the world. that is, the unconscious orients us towards particular understandings of the world (and away from others), working almost like the everyday conceptualizations that pass for common sense. therefore, the way we understand the world and the objects that we find there depends upon the big other. considered in this way, in any empathic encounter, there is a necessity for considering not just the one-to-one relationship between a self and other, but also a consideration of the discursive practices that are implicated in and through the big other. in other words, the concept of the big other introduces a third term in the otherwise dyadic relationships of analyst/analysand and self/other that traditionally hold sway in both phenomenological and psychoanalytic thinking. it is this third field, socially constructed and evolving, towards which the big other orients us. lacan’s signifying chain refers to the constellation of signifiers that give meaning its illusion of stability and certainty, along which the subject slides as different positions are occupied, and through which we conceptualize self in relation to others. as with constellations of stars, for example, the signifying chain is significant not only in the ways that individual confronting the other 15 signifiers indicate and confer meaning, but instead on how meaning is indicated and produced based on the relationships between them. lacan (2006) illustrates the concept of the symbolic chain in his ―seminar on the purloined letter,‖ in which he reflects upon poe’s story of a stolen letter used in a blackmailing scheme. for lacan, the stolen letter exemplifies the signifier, circulating through the story from character to character. what lacan (2006) offers via this lecture is the idea that the signifier, in its displacement: determines subjects’ acts, destiny, refusals, blindnesses, success, and fate, regardless of their innate gifts and instruction, and regardless of their character or sex; and that everything pertaining to the psychological pregiven follows willy-nilly the signifiers train, like weapons and baggage. (p. 21) to exemplify this situation, we will share a brief story about a research encounter that one of us recently had. in undertaking a study about difficult knowledge, the first author arranged to meet several study participants at the holocaust memorial and museum in farmington hills, michigan. later, one of the participants asked the first author the following question about his drive to the memorial: why do i immediately feel the need to turn the music down or off? why, indeed. for who told the participant that this was the way to approach a holocaust memorial? there was not a sign on the freeway that asked all those going to visit the holocaust memorial to turn down their music, and there was not a passenger in the car who would have been able to report the kind of music he had been listening to. in essence, though, there was someone else in the car with the participant: the big other. this story underscores the functioning of the symbolic chain, in terms of the degree to which something beyond conscious awareness compels the actions of ourselves and our students. we are in so many ways compelled to action because of our location in these symbolic current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 coordinates, and because of an unconsciously interpolated message about what it is that we should or should not do. one could say our location within the symbolic chain trains us to think in certain ways and not others. when we enter into a conversation about cultural difference, for example, we enter an exchange already long in progress, complete with a history and certain ways of knowing and articulating experience. this is to say, then, that the existence of signifying chains determine individual understandings of the relationship between the self and another. it introduces a seemingly outside consideration to an otherwise one-to-one encounter, complicating our endeavor to consider the other ethically. the varieties of classroom experience, or, what’s love got to do with it? more often than not, the focus of an encouraged classroom empathy is to aid students in becoming attentive to the difference, pain, or misfortune of others. it is outwardly guided, moving on a one-way track from student to stranger. but the journey is always round-trip. the way and the manner of this ―return‖ lie at the very heart of the problem of classroom empathy. when a student attaches some meaning to a victim of genocide or natural disaster, that meaning is dependent upon her own individual psychic history. but the story of empathy neither begins nor ends in the class session, and these psychic histories, as we have discussed, are at least in part socially mitigated and determined. this gives rise to the need to consider a third term. and, even though we often go to the places furthest away for our empathetic performances—for, we would argue, it is all too often easier to empathize with the starving ethiopian child than the homeless person whom we pass on the street—this performance always takes place within the individually-situated psychic realities of those who are physical occupants of the classroom. it is to these types of classroom performances that we next turn. sharon todd (2003) outlines two common types of performances where the big other confronting the other 17 seemingly blocks the type of empathetic performance we as teachers seek. the first is as a defense of the ego. this manifestation of empathy can be exemplified in a student articulating a thought in two parts: first, their surprise at learning of the suffering of another, and then, secondly, their gratitude for the comforts in their own life. in this case, we are hoping to protect a construction of the world that feels safe—normal—but is put in jeopardy by the ―new‖ knowledge to which we are attending. in our position as teacher educators, we find this particular performance of empathy less than desirable, but acknowledge that it is what we often get. indeed, in recollecting our own early teaching experiences, we remember having students read accounts of the plight of sudanese children who were forced into military service, or diaries of lonely and homesick wives moving across the western frontier. our students’ protective performances helped them articulate pleasure at being ―here‖ rather than ―there.‖ although a common response, this does not seem completely ethical to us, and is, in fact, ethically congruent with pointing, laughing, and then exclaiming, ―sucks to be you.‖ this schadenfreude-approach to empathy is roundly denounced in the empathy literature of history education—but, we feel, for the wrong reasons. for we are not so interested in valorizing the cognitive over the affective performance of empathy (as has tended to happen there), but rather we concern ourselves with the ethical effects of any particular empathetic performance. ego-defensive performances of empathy deny the other—as a separate subject— their existence as such; the student only understands that the other is ―not me‖ (and thankfully so). todd’s (2003) second case is when the ego boundaries expand such that the other is incorporated as part of the self and, therefore, must necessarily be taken care of in ethical ways. in this experience of empathy, it is identification with the other that takes the place of a rejection. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 it is this identification with the other which most clearly aligns with the best of the historical empathy literature: barton and levstik’s (2004) call for history teacher to encourage ―care for‖ the victims of the past. for in this approach, empathetic classroom performances are understood as important ―tools‖ or ―resources‖ which afford ethical and democratic action in the present. we worry, however, that this identification again makes ―them‖ too much a part of ―us‖ (vansledright, 2001). it does not allow for the existence of the other as a constituted subject in his or her own right. it, in effect, assimilates that person in an affirmation that she is ―just like me.‖ of course, we want to encourage students to understand the commonalities that human’s share, but we do not wish to encourage people to equate the singularity of their own experiences with the ultimately unknowable singularity of an other’s. in opposition to these two cases, we conceptualize a third way to conceive of empathic performances. it is to ask how one might understand others not as part of our own selves—―just like us‖—but as an existing subject with desires and needs of its own. žižek (2008) explains an effort in iceland to do just this: where an other (another nationality, sexuality, etc.) is welcomed to the home of a ―normal‖ family–normal here meaning part of the dominant culture—to have a conversation, therefore making a ―subject‖ where there was once an ―other.‖ for the fundamental problem here is that when considering an other, we are considering an object as opposed to a subject. the difference between an object and a subject is, as exemplified here, that the subject is imbued with an expectation of having desires and wishes of their own. an object is imbued with the desires and wishes of the subject to whom the object is ―attached‖. an object, in other words, is less-than-human, denied the right to exist as an autonomous being within the world. the point of such žižekian encounters, we believe, is what levinas calls the ―face-to-face.‖ in welcoming the other into the very home of the self, of confronting the other 19 responding to the face of the other and the obligation for listening and dialogue which it imposes, the very notion of normality itself is called into question. yet, while such an approach may indeed be a point from which to conceive and practice empathy, it falls short for classroom practice—a site where the ―face-to-face‖ and the calling into the question of one’s ―home‖ is often not possible. feeling-sorry-for, feeling-the-pain-and-hunger-of, feeling-the whip-onthe-back and the-noose-around-the-neck: those feelings, those emotional attachments, they are the ways the symbolic interacts with the real—in short, the performance of empathy. for lacan, the real is that which is immediately and irrevocably unattainable in terms of understanding or enunciating, which is why ―the real can only be inscribed on the basis of an impasse of formalization‖—that is, where the normal paths of meaning-making consciously break down for the subject (1998, p. 93). therefore, the closer one gets to the real, the more fantasy and psychic defenses are forced into action; encounters with the real are literally traumatic, as the representation of these experiences is rendered impossible. it is a cause for great anxiety, then, that empathy asks a subject to ―walk in the shoes of another‖—since this is clearly not possible. consider those settings where empathetic performance is invited in the classroom. when a student is confronted with an image of the holocaust, they are empathizing within a particular symbolic chain. their position ―speaks‖ them. in other words, it holds fixed the person captured in suffering, or after suffering, as ―victim,‖ as ―object-deserving-of-my-attention.‖ the subject position of the student is one of giving—giving attention, giving affect—and is not necessarily positioned to receive, to be penetrated by, either by that image or by a reciprocal relationship with another separate subject. it is only by repositioning the student as not only giver, but receiver, that an ethico-erotic relationship can be maintained between the subject and that to which the subject attaches current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 knowledge. vii just as the detectives in ―the purloined letter‖—blinded by the power of the phallic position of power they hold—are certain that their method of criminal investigation will yield their wanted results, we as educators have too often been guilty of thinking that if students could only empathize with the other, we would have an ethical result. but as lacan (2006) reminds us in that ―seminar on the purloined letter,‖ it is the method of investigation that constitutes its object. so yes, we get something akin to empathy, but it is not empathy that we really want. as teachers, then, what we are really after is a consideration of an other as a separate subject, capable of his or her own thoughts, desires, and wishes, in dialogue with our own. and as such, the relationship of empathy needs to be founded upon something like love. for love is constituted of a reciprocity, of an acknowledgement and a tolerance of another being. when in love, according to young-bruehl (2003), ―we allow ourselves to be receptive . . . of love from another, who, as a real person, can give it‖ (p. 9). the return that seems missing from the symbolic structuring of empathy is precisely the idea of receptivity; where the energy of empathy is outward moving, love mandates some modicum of return. it is the vulnerability of being open to such care, which is rehearsed in the helplessness of infancy, that might work to structure our understandings of who we are in society in such as a way as to yield more humane notions of who we are as we face the separate subject about whom we happen to be learning. lacan, for whom love is defined by giving something that one does not have, provides that ―psychoanalysis alone recognizes the knot of imaginary servitude that love must always untie anew or sever‖ (2006, p. 80). an imaginary servitude to what or whom? while lacan does not specify, it is likely the case that love’s severing capability works in relation to the master’s discourse, the big other. the loving relationship within analysis works to re-order, rearrange, confronting the other 21 and re-understand the subject’s awarenesses in the world. to untie the knots of servitude that constitute the constructions of meanings that individuals live by, and through, is close both to the heart of the pedagogical endeavor as well as to the mutuality of love. indeed, lacan (1998) says that ―love is the sign that one is changing discourse‖ (p. 16). while changing discourse is not easy, nor without turmoil, it very well could be the turn that leads to the type of empathetic performances we as teachers are after. these issues arise often in our own teaching, as we ask students to question their dearly held assumptions about the world. often these conversations are difficult and emotional. but if we are to take lacan at his word, then this is a sign of a relationship of love, where subjects constituting a social space are being a/effected by ideas from an other. in thinking of classroom interactions where students are expected to learn from their encounter with an other, the landscape of what it means to learn, to express learning, and to articulate ―knowing‖ would be altered in tremendous ways, since an empathy founded upon love is sublime. a final word to those who teach: getting empathy to do what it might for us this paper has taken up the issue of encouraging empathy among our students. it has pointed out the crucial role of empathy in both centering and de-centering the self, and the importance of directing our best pedagogical efforts at artfully structuring ―the return‖—to ensuring that empathetic performances are not overtaken by the dominant social codes and master discourses that all too often objectify the other. we have argued that teachers and their students most definitely should consider the stranger, their plight, and the ways in which we are implicated in their lives and vice-versa. however, what calls for the most attention is the degree to which—and the ways in which—those occupants of the classroom allow that knowledge to current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 come home, and the challenges attendant upon the discursive breaks that will allow this to happen. as we noted in the above, the best discussions of empathy in the educational literature— such as those given by barton and levstik (2004)—borrow from the ideas of nel noddings and in particular, her the challenge to care in schools (1992). and indeed, our work mirrors noddings' own, in that empathy for us is (as care is for her) both an instrument of the profession and an achievement towards which all education—rightly understood—must aim. yet we would not want that a recurrent criticism of care theory be transferred on to our own. for, at times, care theory comes perilously close to forgetting the teacher—of reducing her to the stock image of the selfless maternal figure who is ever present and available to the child. jim garrison (1997) expresses this concern by reminding us that ―people who do not blaze with their own passions burn out‖ (p. 57). we take seriously this need for our own passions to burn. as teachers, empathy is at play as we shape our identities in relationship to those of our students. their own (in)capacities to care and empathize can move us to the heights of joy, and the very pit of despair. yet such a dynamic cannot sustain a robust self in the long term—for all fires require the consumption of fuel, and working with children for eight or more hours a day may not provide the fodder the flames most need. we therefore urge our colleagues who care about empathy to continue to find ways for their own selves to be breeched and penetrated; to be loved as well as give love; to seek encounters where established discourse fails and the face of the other opens up new heights upon which a self may be refashioned. at the present moment, such vulnerability in our teachers seems unwelcome, and therefore is perhaps too dangerous for teachers to undertake in confronting the other 23 relationship with their students. yet if empathy is to be taught, it would seem such experiences must in some other context be sought. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 confronting the other 25 references american psychological association. (2001). publication manual of the american psychological association (5th ed.). washington, dc: author ashby, r. & lee, p. (1987). children’s concepts of empathy and understanding in history. in c. portal (ed.), the history curriculum for teachers (pp. 62-88). london, uk: the falmer press. bahr, h.m., durrant, m.b., evans, m.t., & maughan, s.l. (2008). on diversity, empathy, and community: the relevance of johann gottfried herder. rural sociology, 73(4), 503-527. barton, k.c. & levstik, l.s. (2004). teaching history for the common good. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc., publishers. berlin, i. (1991). the crooked timber of humanity: chapters in the history of ideas. london: fontana press. bersani, l. (1987). is the rectum a grave? october, 43, 197-222. derman-sparks, l. & phillips, c.b. (1997). teaching/learning anti-racism. new york: teachers college press. dilthey, w. (1972). the rise of hermeneutics (f. jameson, trans.). new literary history, 3(2), 229-244. (original work published in 1900) finkielkraut, a. (1988). the undoing of thought (d. o’keeffe, trans.). london: the claridge press. garrison, j. (1997). dewey and eros: wisdom and desire in the art of teaching. new york: teachers college press. harrington, a. (2001). dilthey, empathy and verstehen: a contemporary reappraisal. european journal of social theory, 4(3), 311-329. howard, g.r. (1999). we can’t teach what we don’t know: white teachers, multiracial schools. new york: teachers college press. klein, m. (1994). love, guilt, and reparation and other works, 1921-1945. london: virago press. (original work published in 1937) lacan, j. (1998). on feminine sexuality: the limits of love and knowledge, 1972-1973 (b. fink, trans.). new york: w.w. norton & company. lacan, j. (2006). ecrits (b. fink, trans.). new york: w.w. norton & company. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 lee, p. & ashby, r. (2001). empathy, perspective taking, and rational understanding. in o.l. davis jr., e.a. yeager, & s.j. foster (eds.), historical empathy and perspective taking in the social studies (pp. 21-50). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. levinas, e. (2002). totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority (a. lingis, trans.). pittsburgh, pa: duquesne university press. louie, b. (2005). development of empathetic responses with multicultural literature. journal of adolescent & adult literacy, 48(7), 566-578. noddings, n. (1992). the challenge to care in schools: an alternative approach to education. new york: teachers college press. palmer, r.e. (1969). hermeneutics: interpretation theory in schleiermacher, dilthey, heidegger, and gadamer. evanston, il: northwestern university press. portal, c. (1983). empathy as an aim for curriculum: lessons from history. journal of curriculum studies, 15(3), 303-310. portal, c. (1987). empathy as an objective for history teaching. in c. portal (ed.), the history curriculum for teachers (pp. 89-102). london, uk: the falmer press. riley, k.l. (2001). the holocaust and historical empathy: the politics of understanding. in o.l. davis jr., e.a. yeager, & s.j. foster (eds.), historical empathy and perspective taking in the social studies (pp. 139-166). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. shemilt, d. (1984). beauty and the philosopher: empathy in history and classroom. in a.k. dickinson, p.j. lee, & p.j. rogers (eds.), learning history (pp. 39-84). london, uk: heinemann educational books. stein, e. (1989). on the problem of empathy (w. stein, trans.). washington, dc: ics publications. (based upon the dissertation published in 1917) todd, s. (2003). learning from the other: levinas, psychoanalysis, and ethical possibilities in education. albany: state university of new york press. van manen, m. (2001). researching lived experience. cobourg, ontario: transcontinental printing inc. vansledright, b.a. (2001). from empathic regard to self-understanding: im/positionality, empathy, and historical contextualization. in o.l. davis jr., e.a. yeager, & s.j. foster (eds.), historical empathy and perspective taking in the social studies (pp. 51-68). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. yeager, e.a. & foster, s.j. (2001). the role of empathy in the development of historical understanding. in o.l. davis jr., e.a. yeager, & s.j. foster (eds.), historical empathy confronting the other 27 and perspective taking in the social studies (pp. 13-20). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. young-bruehl, e. (2003). where do we fall when we fall in love? new york: other press. žižek, s. (2008). violence: six sideways reflections. new york: picador. current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 28 authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo endnotes i in this paper, we draw primarily from thinking in psychoanalysis and phenomenology. we realize that there are other disciplines which have done work on the topic of empathy, and which we do not discuss here. in particular, we wish to acknowledge the informed comments of an anonymous reviewer who not only helped us in our interpretation of lacan, but pointed us to work in experimental psychology on neuroimaging in primates and infants. we must acknowledge that such work is beyond the scope of both our expertise and interests. educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 29 ii whenever we speak of the ―human sciences‖ or the ―human sciences tradition,‖ we are referring to the line of thinking inaugurated by wilhelm dilthey, who popularized the distinction between naturwissenschaften (natural or ―hard‖ sciences) and geisteswissenschaften (cultural or human sciences). see palmer, 1969, pp. 98ff. iii ―lifeworld‖ and ―lived experience‖ are key terms in the lexicon of phenomenology. the lifeworld is ―the world as we immediately experience it pre-reflectively rather than as we conceptualize, categorize or reflect on it‖ (van manen, 2001, p. 9). likewise, lived experience ―involves our immediate, pre-reflective consciousness of life: a reflexive or self-given awareness which is, as awareness, unaware of itself‖ (van manen, 2001, p. 35). iv the notion of apperception is important in phenomenology. it refers to those aspects of experience that are ―given‖ in perception, even though they are not directly perceived. for example, the other sides of a cube are given to us in ordinary perception, even though we do not ―see‖ them directly as we do the face of the cube. v there is a long-running critique in postmodern thought of the role of sight and vision in the thought of modernity. critiques of the masculine gaze, surveillance, objectification of the other, will be familiar to many readers. the ability to listen and hear, by contrast, stands at the base of several postmodern projects engaged with ethics—in particular, within the thought of levinas. vi unlike so much of the existing literature of empathy, then, a common humanity is not a starting point for levinas, but an achievement, something that happens when two separate subjects are brought into a relationship by discourse. vii see also bersani (1987) for the importance of this ―penetration.‖ microsoft word enacting culture in gaminga video gamer’s literacy experiences and practices .docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x enacting culture in gaming: a video gamer’s literacy experiences and practices aaron a. toscano university of north carolina at charlotte citation toscano, a. a. (2011). enacting culture in gaming: a video gamer’s literacy experience and practice. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this article is a case study of a young adult video gamer and his literacy acquisition in relation to video game play. the author conducted an interview with the gamer and read texts the gamer produced—both creative and personal. the interview and textual analysis revealed evidence that the gamer’s literacy practices are influenced by his immersion in the virtual worlds of gaming environments. additionally, following scholars in new literacy studies and video game research, the author demonstrates how his interviewee enacts culture and absorbs literacy practices through socially mediated ways. this ethnographic study suggests ways in which other young adults may carry out literacy practices in our increasingly multimodal contexts inside and outside school. keywords: video games, gamers, new literacy studies, literacy acquisition, socio-cultural context, acculturation, young adults current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: aaron a. toscano, phd affiliation: university of north carolina at charlotte address: department of english, college of liberal arts and sciences, university of north carolina at charlotte, 9201 university city blvd, charlotte, nc 28223-0001 email: astoscano@uncc.edu biographical information: dr. aaron a. toscano is an assistant professor in the department of english in the college of liberal arts and sciences at the university of north carolina at charlotte. he teaches courses in technical communication, rhetoric/composition, new media studies, and women’s and gender studies. he received his ph.d. in rhetoric and composition from the university of louisville. although his main research interests are in technical communication, he also conducts research in the rhetoric of technology, science and technology studies (sts), and popular culture studies. acknowledgement: the author would like to thank brent for providing his interesting literacy narrative. the author is also grateful to dr. boyd davis, dr. jennifer munroe, and dr. mark west for their feedback on earlier drafts of this article. enacting culture in gaming 3 enacting culture in gaming: a video gamer’s literacy experiences and practices many groups inside and outside academia consider proficiency to be an important tenet of literacy. the dominant, most sought literacy related to education for the twenty-first century appears to be technological literacy. selfe (1999) argues that educators should not think of technological literacy as simply computer proficiency; instead, we ought to understand “technological literacy as a cultural phenomenon, one that includes cultural dimensions, incorporating what brian street (1995) identifies as both literacy ‘events’ and literacy ‘practices’” (p. 11). these events and practices are not experienced in a vacuum devoid of culture, history, or power. literacy—technological and traditional—is acquired by immersion in a social framework (cazden, 1988; heath, 1983; street, 1984, 1993, and 1995). likewise, gee (2003) mentions that “literacy and thinking, are, in reality…primarily social achievements” and not simply “mental achievements” (p. 1), and this article provides evidence of literacy practices and events enacting culture. in order to test gee’s argument in relation to video games, this article analyzes an interview of brent o’malley1 regarding his background in literacy acquisition and video gaming practices. the interview and analysis demonstrate how social influences contribute to a particular player’s literacy practices while engaged in the semiotic systems of video games. throughout the interview brent discussed the literacies he compiled from school, home, work, and his leisure activities. the notion that literacies “pile up” comes from brandt’s (1995) work on literacy studies (p. 652). brent’s interview uncovers his literacy practices mediated by culture, specifically, popular culture events and myths. in these settings, brent learns not only reading and writing skills, but he also absorbs cultural messages that are reinscribed in his own creative work. although this is an ethnographic study of a single gamer, brent’s literacy practices suggest current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 how others might compile literacies. that is, accumulate skills and critical faculties regarding those skills. he is, then, multimodal; an analysis of his practices as a gamer enables teachers to continue learning about the literacy practices of the growing multimodal twenty-first century citizen/student. cultural work of video games video games can serve as cultural repositories for a literacy analysis. brent does not acquire literacies in a vacuum; instead, brent acquires literacies as both a subject and agent immersed in culture. culture and the culture’s dominant ideologies mediate all forms of production: education and literacy acquisition are not outside of culture. video games, like films, are cultural products that enact culture and display values entwined with culture. therefore, video games do cultural work, and gamers acquire cultural literacy by absorbing video game narratives. societal characteristics are incorporated into video games much like ideology is carried out in all semiotic systems. for instance, most first-person shooter video games allow the gamer to take on entire armies, huge gangs, and even hordes of zombies by himself.2 such a situation is impossible in reality, but it reflects another male-dominated genre: the american action film, specifically, ones with a single male hero, such as the rambo films, many arnold schwarzenegger films, and the missing in action trilogy. these films appeal to male audiences and reflect the pervasive ideology of individualism that claims an individual is seemingly all powerful and can overcome enormous odds and be victorious. the individual hero is an american ideology, but it resonates with such archetypal characters from mythology as ulysses, hercules, and david. gamers embody their on-screen avatars and engross themselves in campaigns where they conquer the video game domain with unlimited ammunition and awesome fighting skills. such a description is not completely accurate enacting culture in gaming 5 for the entire history of video games, for instance, 1980s video games such as frogger (activision) and donkey kong (nintendo), but those games reflect the myth of the american dream that claims an individual can persevere regardless of the obstacles: in frogger it is traffic and a fast-moving river, and in donkey kong it is barrels (among other things) thrown by a huge gorilla that has captured the princess. whether one sees video games as frivolously passing time or as systems with complex grammars players must decode (gee, 2003; devoss et al., 2004), observers cannot deny that persistent, dedicated playing improves players’ gaming abilities. also, persistent playing (much like persistent consumption of media) allows gamers to absorb the cultural messages of games. this medium is quite popular and deserves scholarly attention. as cultural products, video games reflect hegemonic values. for instance, living in a capitalist society, we can expect games to reflect values related to acquiring wealth, perseverance, and free markets. some games have obvious markers of capitalism that encourage exploring the semiotic system of the game. sonic and the secret rings and the entire sonic the hedgehog series (sega) has gamers collect shiny gold rings which offer protection when injured (and make a cha-ching sound when picked up); mario in super mario brothers (nintendo) collects coins as he makes his way through his odd pipe world (on his way to save the princess); cj from grand theft auto: san andreas (rockstar), literally, starts with nothing but the shirt on his back, and, through a series of adventures, he acquires money with which he builds a small criminal empire and even owns a large stake in a casino by the end of the game. cj pulls himself up by his boot straps and lives the american dream. the other games in the grand theft auto series also follow this bootstrap narrative. in the hitman (edios) series of video games, players trade their labor—being an assassin—for money. this reflects a free market ideology because hitman claims he kills for money and not political agendas; he is completely for sale. as hitman current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 carries out assassinations, he acquires money that he can use to purchase body armor, weapons, and bribes. even illegal activity follows payment for services in this virtual world. even many massively multiplayer online role playing games (mmorpgs) have players refine their skills in order to acquire virtual wealth, thus rewarding hard work with virtual cash. mmorpgs are video games such as world of warcraft (blizzard entertainment), ultima online (origin systems), and everquest (sony online entertainment) where gamers interact with thousands of players wandering virtual worlds (often fantastic themed worlds) in order to complete tasks that build a character’s profile and skill capability. this skills building reflects advancement in capitalist societies. citizens are supposed to attend school and/or job training in order to market themselves and advance in a career. the mmorpgs reflect a skills-building type of career path where the employee enters knowing little about the job but, after years in the position, the employee is supposed to be able to work more efficiently and, perhaps, assume more responsibility in the organization. players’ characters in many virtual worlds can improve their abilities by performing actions and logging on time in these virtual environments. this time spent in the game helps players’ characters become stronger, faster, or just more powerful at various actions needed to succeed in the game. therefore, these video games enact culture by reinforcing the notion that hard work (or just work) allows individuals to succeed. video games are complex multimodal texts that both tell stories and invite audience interpretation. gamers enter virtual worlds with rules that mimic culture and provide entertainment for leisure activities. in literacy studies, prominent scholars see “figured worlds” as collective or intersubjective truths (holland et al., 1998; street, 2003). video games as figured worlds have not been theorized, but they are figured worlds in a broad sense. gamers enter the figured world of video games and allow their imaginations to position themselves within the enacting culture in gaming 7 video game structure. therefore, the gamer is lara croft or cj or mario working through the complex world the game designers created. although the software controls or, more accurately, enforces game rules that limit player action (salen & zimmerman, 2004, p. 122), the video game itself is a cultural product, one allowing gamers to immerse themselves into the narrative/activity of the video game. the lead characters in these video games, controlled by the gamer, have paths to choose and rules to follow, and these rules are accepted by the gamer. that acceptance is part of the gamer’s entertainment choice. with the exception of gamers who immediately go into “cheat mode,” most gamers want the challenge of obstacles. without obstacles, games would not be much fun. because video games embed gamers into the virtual digital world much as a film embeds viewers into the filmic narrative, they should be recognized as having a narrative feel. the video games tell stories, and the many cut scenes reinforce a narrative quality. gamers often must work through the narrative to advance in a game: successive levels unlock secrets or offer more information to the audience. furthermore, we can think of video game levels as “chapters.” video games also have characters, plots, settings, and other attributes (i.e., irony, action, and resolution) that mimic novels and stories. as gee (2003) notes, people who play, review, and discuss such games, as well as those who design and produce them, shape the external design grammar of the semiotic domain of first-person shooter games through their ongoing social interactions. it is their ongoing social interactions that determine the principles and patterns through which people in the domains can recognize and judge thinking, talking, reading, writing, acting, interacting, valuing, and believing characteristic of people who are in the affinity group associated with first person shooter games (p. 32). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 the group associated with these first-person shooters is a group enacting culture, specifically, a culture inundated with media narratives partially focused on terrorism, disasters, rampages, and combat. in turn, hollywood and the gaming industry keep recreating those violent narratives. video games reinscribe the violence enacted in society at large, violence that existed long before video games were invented. this observation complicates studies that claim video games lead to violence (c.f. anderson et al., 2003; bushman & anderson, 2001; fischer, kastenmüller, & greitemeyer, 2010; gentile et al., 2004), but other scholars in social science fields call into question the causation of violent video games leading to acts of violence in real life (c.f. block & crain, 2007; ferguson, 2007; kutner & olson, 2008; olson et al., 2007). an obvious example of video games reflecting an already violent culture is the number of video games with war themes. video games like several in the call of duty (activision) series are set during world war ii, thus, allowing gamers to enter the virtual worlds of the european and pacific theaters in the early 1940s. however, war is not the only reflection of violence in society: urban gangs, drug cartels, disgruntled spouses/family members, and rampaging shooters enact violence in society. video games reflect this violence, but they are not the genesis of violence. kutner and olson (2008) claim that suggesting video games lead to violence in real life has been “drawn from bad or irrelevant research, muddleheaded thinking and unfounded, simplistic news reports” (p. 8). news media representations of violence, which can hype situations, also provide viewers the infotainment of real life violence. consuming cultural products enacts culture, so the consumer is enmeshed in an ideological framework much greater than video games themselves. therefore, violent video game narratives are cultural reflections and not autochthonous creations of video game enacting culture in gaming 9 developers. but not all scholars agree that video games are narratives. because video games require gamers to interact with the “fixed” game environment, klevjer (2002) believes such an activity “signifies the general principle of having to work with the materiality of a text, the need to participate in the construction of its material structure” (p. 192, emphasis mine). according to klevjer, such an activity is different from “narrative discourse, where the user is invited only to engage in the semantics of the text….in narrative discourse the user is only a reader, not a coconstructor, not a player” (p. 192). several european gaming theorists see games as ludology (frasca, 1999; juul, 2000; juul, 2005), which views “games as something unique” (juul, 2005, p. 15). juul (2005) contends that “ludology has often been perceived as focused on distancing itself from narratology, and as trying to carve out video game studies as a separate academic field” (p.16). regardless of whether one believes games are narrative or not narrative, we do not need to have a purely narrative definition to define video games as texts. we may still “read” the semiotics of video games and, contrary to klevjer’s argument, readers will construct meaning based on their understanding of cultural motifs. video game spaces enact culture, and brent’s literacy activities, including his (re)presentation of ideology in his work, represent the sociality of literacy. brent is not just playing a game to pass the time or indulge in an entertaining activity. he is performing and, simultaneously, absorbing socially constructed ideologies. the video game environment is a cultural product that carries values, which, gamers, in turn, reproduce as brent shows in the following abridged literacy narrative. brent o’malley’s abridged literacy narrative at the time of his interview, brent, a male in his early 20s, lived in a medium-sized southern city. he was born and raised in a rural community south of the city. brent was the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 computer support technician for the english department at granville university, a public university on an urban campus. he holds a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems. at the time of the interview, he was enrolled in graduate-level creative writing seminars at the university, and, since then, he has received an mfa in creative writing at a different university. throughout brent’s life his parents stressed the importance of education. the o’malley parents also brought brent to the library often when he was younger and got him a library card while he was in elementary school. brent’s parents encouraged him to read all kinds of texts— “magazines, books, comics, and encyclopedias.” brent’s early life was full of traditional literacy practices, and his parents were his main literacy role models. his mother and father were (and still are) avid readers. brent remembers seeing his parents reading more than watching tv when he was younger and he, too, is an avid fiction reader. brent also likes magazines that cover popular culture from a male’s perspective—gq, details, esquire, maxim, fhm, etc.—because they are not “serious.” even when they do deal with a serious issue (such as terrorism), they have a humorous slant to their coverage. he also claims that is why he enjoys humorous online satire (e.g., the onion). because of brent’s busy job and class schedule, he does not have as much time to read novels for pleasure, but he does read his classmates’ works in his creative writing seminars. brent explains that the majority of his reading is devoted to his job. he reads internet forums where computer professionals go to ask about complex software and hardware issues. in these forums experts look for advice on technological business solutions (e.g. should they implement a particular program for their organizations) and not for consumer solutions (e.g., what should i do if i get an error message?). additionally, brent reads online articles that review software and hardware; these articles are more technical than those in pc magazine or computer enacting culture in gaming 11 shopper magazine. brent says the forums and articles he reads “are not aiming for a mass distribution. they’re for tech junkies.” because of his interest in keeping current with computer technology, brent is well informed about the state of computers today, and he knows where to find information on all kinds of products available. his ability to read specifications and descriptions in a specialized field in order to make informed decisions for his employer is a crucial literacy practice for the twenty-first-century it professional. additionally, these sources help in brent’s own personal technology choices—brent builds his own computers. brent’s résumé demonstrates his computer skills for his employer. in addition to his extensive computer skills and duties in his previous jobs, brent lists many computer skills in the following “miscellaneous” section of his resume: • possess experience setting up windows 95, 98, nt, 2000, xp, unix/linux and netware 5/6 networks as well as installing, configuring and securing ftp servers. extensive exposure to the ads and nds trees, including creating groups and users within the tree. • served on [his undergraduate university]’s laptop committee to study the feasibility of moving to a “wireless university.” • actual microsoft visual basic, access and project experience. • designed web pages with html and frontpage. • working knowledge of norton’s ghost imaging software. • set up a five-computer network at home with internet connection sharing. • received expert certification from microsoft office training course. the above are just the miscellaneous technological literacies brent has, and they alone identify him as an expert in information technology. brent says that he had no formal computer current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 instruction before his first job as an entry-level technician and data entry specialist during college, but he managed to catch on quickly to the demands of his job and learned valuable skills upon which he would later build. brent describes his way of learning technology as a “hands on” approach: he is more comfortable diving into a technology and discovering how it works as opposed to being taught by a manual or by having directives given over his shoulder. brent got most of his instruction in computer technology (mostly in gaming) at home until entering college. brent was fortunate to have been exposed to computer technology at a young age. his rural school system made computers available to his elementary school in the late 1980s and early 1990s. in fact, brent remembers being on a computer as early as first grade. brent claims to have used every gaming system available in the united states since the original atari console came out: my family, my roommates, or i have owned one of the following: atari, colecovision, nintendo, sega, super nintendo, sega genesis, playstation, nintendo 64, playstation 2, the xbox, and the game cube. i might even be forgetting a few. i can’t remember all the handheld games like the nintendo gameboy i’ve played. brent’s introduction to the internet changed his gaming habits. whether brent was on his computer or on his roommates’ gaming consoles, he has preferences as to the genres he most enjoys playing—first-person shooters and adventure games. brent became a big fan of firstperson shooters his while in college. he describes how he and his friends bonded over the very popular game doom (activision): i met most of [my gaming friends] in college by walking down the hall and going into their rooms to check out the games they were playing. doom was huge at my college. you could hear people playing up and down the hall. we would play with and against enacting culture in gaming 13 each other over the net. sometimes we would play all night and then sleep through class the next day. brent rejects the myth that gamers are alienated adolescents and young adults who just hang out in their parents’ basements and play with themselves. he says that he and his friends were very social, and, even though they spent much time playing video games, they still went out to dinner, the movies, and parties together. brent and five or six other players would get online at the same time and play as a team on a mission. many of the games he and his friends played from the tom clancy genre (e.g. rainbow six [red storm entertainment] and splinter cell [ubisoft]) were about fighting terrorists and rescuing hostages—a common hollywood film theme. the james bond video game goldeneye 007 (rare)—based on the film goldeneye (1995)—also follows a similar plot line with james bond carrying out secret missions in order to rescue hostages, stop terrorists, and save the (virtual) world. in many of the team oriented first-person shooters, the team members can only carry a limited amount of equipment, so the mission’s success is enhanced if brent’s team divides up the tasks. during the game the team members have to communicate with one another. this requires multitasking skills as well as refined kinesthetic motions. brent and his friends first started shouting commands to each other down the hall: “go right…fall in…shoot…take the hill!” the players would make their characters move by using a joystick, mouse, keyboard, or a combination of the three. eventually, brent and his friends were able to type their commands instead of shouting them. because brent had to use the mouse, joystick, and keyboard simultaneously, he claims his reflexes improved greatly. although reflexes are a kinesthetic function and not a literacy skill, the multitasking done in the games is an activity or, more accurately, are a set of activities that reappear in other contexts. during the interview brent current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 answered questions, checked his e-mail, instant messaged his friends, and surfed the internet. the computer environment offered in windows or macintosh systems (brent uses pc platforms) allows users to multitask, and he routinely downloads files, types e-mail messages, and watches videos simultaneously. operating multiple programs is definitely a literacy most of our twentyfirst-century students possess. besides trying to understand brent’s gaming practices, the interview discovered why he played video games. brent gave me a few interesting reasons. his main reason was to have a break from reality. video games are a way for brent to escape the stress of the “real world” and indulge in the fantasies video games offer. brent says “i enjoy the cathartic experience of finishing an adventure game much like i do a novel. i really believe it is a similar feeling.” brent’s relating gaming to reading a novel shows he equates video gaming to story telling or, more simply, advancing through a narrative. this assumption regarding the narrative of video gaming uncovers a literacy practice parallel with reading in the semiotic system of language (specifically literature). for instance, from reading novels and stories all his life, brent knows that all stories have plots and take readers through dialogue, scenery, characters, and even sometimes history to get to the end. video games have many of the same elements. also, like novel reading, a reader is not just trying to get through to the end—he or she wants to learn something and have an enjoyable experience. many readers would probably claim that rushing to the end of a novel is a waste of time. brent feels that way about video games: strategy games like warcraft [blizzard entertainment] are not just about getting through. they’re about mastering the situation. you can get through a game and have nearly no life left and technically solve the puzzle without mastering the game, but that’s not as fun enacting culture in gaming 15 to me. i like to learn all the secrets and truly beat a game. of course, once i do that, i rarely return to the game. although he admits to returning to some games and re-reading certain novels that are his favorites, those occasions are rare (the harry potter series being an exception). playing video games is a literacy practice that is informed by our traditional print culture. brent and his friends are engaged in reading stories similarly to how they read novels, but they do have a different vantage point—they control the protagonists (avatars) in the gaming world. brent offers us a chance to see how technology influenced his life—his literacy practices—on a micro level and how certain cultural work gets done in video games—usually in the form of the need for psychological releases—on a macro level. brent, who is very well educated, astutely reads society into video games; he especially has an interesting view of video games as sites where popular culture is re-encoded for a unique, virtual interactive experience. as we can see from brent’s literacy history and his video game interests, the idea of a “traditional” text is called into question. a text is not simply a static narrative one reads from beginning to end. a video game is a text that follows genre conventions similar to literature and film. brent’s case study demonstrates an example of someone using traditional literacy/literary terms to describe the textuality or textual features of the video game medium. the next section discusses how to view video games as cultural products that can be “read” using street’s (2003) social theory categories for literacy analysis. social contexts of literacy brent’s gaming—his video game play and penchant for certain video game genres—is mediated by culture. while playing video games, which are dynamic semiotic systems that embody ideology, brent absorbs cultural messages as the game enacts culture. therefore, brent’s current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 literacy acquisition encompasses acculturation as well as skills learning or understanding the game’s structure, patterns, or secrets. although brent has a penchant for group games where he collaborates with others, many video games hold prototypical american values related to individualism: individual heroes, perseverance, and the myth of the american dream. brent shows us that video game politics fits within his literacy practices, which may also be further generalized as his entertainment preferences. there are two important aspects of brent’s gamer identity that make him more than a passive individual who consumes entertainment, a stereotype often projected upon video game fans: 1) brent’s popular culture references inform his creative writing, and 2) his video game activity somewhat mimics his occupational practices. the games themselves are cultural products produced to fulfill gamer demands. even though video games have similar print-based attributes, they require us to re-conceptualize the idea of textuality. video games as texts relate to genre theory (bakhtin, 1986; lukács, 1962) and the notion that texts do cultural work—they are products formed by individuals and groups mediated by cultural forces and ideologies. just as scholars claim that gamers read the “grammar” of a system (gee, 2003; devoss et al., 2004), gamers and critics can read the semiotics of these cultural products. this section discusses video game “texts” through the categories street (2003) defined in his call for further research into “how literacy relates to more general issues of social theory regarding textuality, figured worlds, identity, and power” (p. 8788). identity and power is analyzed in the next section alongside brent’s reinscription of dominant ideology into his own creative work. brent’s interview helps theorize the textuality of video games and enacting culture: his own texts—his creative work—are also mediated by socially constructed narratives. enacting culture in gaming 17 because video games are cultural products they adhere to certain conventions. most notably, for the adventure/strategy games and first-person shooters that brent enjoys, some american themes arise—the individual hero, colonization/conquest, patriotism, and militarization. brent’s penchant for first-person shooters suggests that he enjoys embodying the avatar’s persona: as the helicopter “gunner” in battlefield vietnam (electronic arts), brent is in an army attack chopper firing on the vietcong listening to creedance clearwater revival’s “fortunate son” and the rolling stones’ “satisfaction”—two popular songs from the vietnam era. brent was never in vietnam, but the music and his sense of attacking the vc from a software-engineered helicopter helps him better incorporate the soldier’s persona from representations he has seen in films such as platoon (1986) and full metal jacket (1987), popular war movies he watches. the video game is a synecdoche of experience and a simulacrum at best. unlike real war, brent’s only risk is temporary eye strain and not serious injury or death—he is engaged in a fictional world. juul (2005) points out that “games project fictional worlds through a variety of different means, but the fictional worlds are imagined by the player, and the player fills in any gaps in the fictional world” (p. 121). what makes the video game a figured world is that the world of the helicopter gunner is simulated via the video game’s programming and accepted by gamers who enter the “text” for this virtual experience. like brent’s situation above regarding what it feels like to be in vietnam, a gamer’s interpretations come from other sources—culture. video games (and gamers) are products of the culture(s) from which they come, and we can read the culture—its values, fears, and “history”—in video games. video games also represent the figured worlds holland et al. (1998) describes. as brent points out, the stereotypical 1980s “computer geek,” a male living in his parents’ basement with no friends, is not the typical gamer anymore. gamers are rather social. even at the author’s current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 university there is a student organization called gamer’s alliance that consists of gamers who get together to play video games at various times during the semester. gamer culture is quite prominent and fits the definition of holland et al.’s figured worlds: “under the rubric of culturally figured worlds or figured worlds we include all those cultural realms peopled by characters from collective imaginings: academia, the factory, crime, romance, environmentalism, [and] games of dungeons and dragons” (p. 51). the last figured worlds mentioned, “games of dungeons and dragons,” parallels the gaming societies that have sprung up around certain video games. for almost any video game, one can find information on game play strategies, hints, cheats, and discussions about the game. many of the group members never communicate face to face, but they are a culture with similar interests, linguistic nuances (e.g., emoticons and texting language), and similar experiences. these members are fans, and a simple online search reveals the ways in which they communicate about games. a study of fandom and fan sites is beyond the scope of this article, but the ease of finding online discussions about games suggests there is an audience wanting both to communicate about and find information on video games. for instance, natasha whiteman (2008) observes that fans of video games participate in “the creation of websites, petitions, campaigns, and tirades [that are] left on bulletin board forums and discussion groups” (p. 33). these fans are devoted to games and express their “enthusiasm and excitement surrounding new releases” in online environments with other fans (whiteman, 2008, p. 33). these fans follow conventions of electronically mediated textual spaces. whiteman’s focus is on fan nostalgia for the video game silent hill (konami), but she also reprints excerpts of fan posts that reveal their shared experiences and ways of communicating about the video game. one post she recounts is that of an upset fan who laments “i’m sorry, but sh is supposed to be in sh” enacting culture in gaming 19 (p. 41). the poster’s use of capitalization to evoke screaming and abbreviations for a commonly known topic abound in text-based online spaces. the poster, a member of the silent hill (sh) fan gaming subculture, participates through the discourse conventions of online environments. even though these fans might never meet each other face to face, they enter the virtual community, the online space, as members of a social unit. by incorporating literacy scholars’ theories for analyzing video gaming literacy, this article proposes an expansion of social from strictly interpersonal physical connections to include virtual societies as well. for instance, contemporary video games allow gamers to play with others they have never met as well as with friends and acquaintances playing on one system or many like a lan party (a lan party is when individuals bring their gaming systems and “hook up” via a router or other network connection in order to play with or against each other). the rules of the games are set, but the gamers interact through their avatars, thus, creating social space. gamers are not solitary individuals simply interacting with the game’s artificial intelligence (ai); instead, they communicate within a community devoted to a particular game. for instance, the community could be vast like the mmorpg world of warcraft (blizzard entertainment) or the immersive environment second life (linden research), where tens of thousands of players can potentially play at the same time; on the other hand, the community could be a group of a few acquaintances entering the world of smaller multiplayer games such as halo (bungie) or gears of war (epic). brent describes his experience as both solitary and social, but he very much enjoys playing with his friends and roommates. besides brent’s earlier remark about enjoying the commando-squad games that he and his friends from the dorm would play, brent feels firstperson shooters are bonding moments: current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 first-person-shooters can be very stress relieving. you just pick your weapons and go out and shoot other characters. i really like playing these with my friends. we go out and try to kill each other online, so there’s camaraderie of a sort in doing that. again, although the figured worlds of video games are manufactured by the game designers, gamers, who may be from any socio-economic status, interact with others (or the game’s artificial intelligence) through the medium of avatars—characters the gamers embody. holland et al. (1998) argue “figured worlds rest upon people’s abilities to form and be formed in collectively realized ‘as if’ realms” (p. 49). although holland et al. (1998) reference non-virtual social realms—social groupings based on profession and gender to name two—gamer culture centers around arbitrary, yet accepted systems of valor that certainly work as “as if” spaces. gamers “win” by getting the high score, saving the princess, or eliminating their competition. juul (2005) defines a component of gaming, “valorization of outcome,” as “the different potential outcomes of the game are assigned different values, some positive and some negative” (p. 36). compared to holland et al.’s (1998) further explanation of “figured worlds,” a game is just as legitimate a figured world as non-virtual cultures: “by ‘figured world,’ then, we mean a socially and culturally constructed realm of interpretation in which particular characters and actors are recognized, significance is assigned to certain acts, and particular outcomes are valued over others” (p. 52). whether it be the game of life (milton bradley) or the games of life, value is assigned based on cultural assumptions. members of a culture value certain items, ideas, and investments over others. these values need not be universal to be prevailing cultural assumptions. in capitalist society, members value money, success, and advancement in careers. although one could argue that money is valuable because, in a practical sense, people use money to buy goods enacting culture in gaming 21 of value, the assumption that society has to believe is that the system of purchasing goods with money is acceptable. additionally, items purchased as reflections of oneself (sports cars, diamonds, exotic animals, etc.) as opposed to items purchased for sustenance (food, clothing, shelter, etc.) embody culturally defined assumptions. just as the stock market rises and falls based on the perceived value of companies, members of a culture value items, such as diamonds, based on the perceived social status associated with jewelry. the point of displaying a diamond or driving a sports car is not purely functional or practical. luxury items convey value because they are perceived as being expensive; in capitalist society, one’s being able to afford luxury items points to one’s importance through the association of wealth. games, of course, have points—both numeric and goal-oriented reasons for playing—but, in the case of friends playing against each other, the game outcome may have positive or negative social ramifications (e.g., bragging rights). regardless of the valor ascribed or assumed in winning a game, the game is a figured world “people have the propensity to be drawn to, recruited for, and formed in these worlds, and to be active in and passionate about them” (holland et. al., 1998, p. 49). gamer culture is a serious one to study along with other identities. the figured world of gamer culture has webpages, magazines, blogs, and other media to advertise itself and facilitate dialog. gamer communication contributes to the culture’s maintenance just as holland et al.’s (1998) figured worlds idea indicates where “people’s identities and agency are formed dialectically and dialogically in these ‘as if’ worlds” (p. 49). the next section covers gamer identity by examining brent’s gamer literacy practices and demonstrating how ideology mediates his creative work. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 identity and dominant ideology a gamer’s identity is inextricably intertwined with his or her literacy practices. brent is a computer expert and gamer: his acquisition of literacy skills—both traditional and technological—has informed his everyday persona. although this section is limited in what can be generalized to a larger gaming culture, brent’s literacy practices are congruent to his creative self. as a writer and popular culture consumer, brent’s identity is carried out through his reading tastes and, ultimately, through his writing. unlike the more robust discussions of literacy and identity (street, 1984, 1993, and 1995; gee 2003; holland et. al., 1998), this article offers a site for analyzing one gamer’s inculcation of popular culture literacy as garnered through a sample of texts and the gamer’s own words. in a short story brent wrote, he describes a post-apocalyptic dystopia where citizens are so stressed out they relieve their anxieties through a government program that grants a select group of citizens (through a lottery) the chance to kill another citizen without repercussions. brent’s own gaming has this release feel when he says, “the impetus for me to play a game is to take a break from real life….many games offer the player a chance to become another persona.” brent goes on to point out that through video games “a player can try out the lifestyle of a swat team member, a race car driver, and a soldier. players want these types of real life games.” the ability to enact random violence in his short story is a common theme of first-person shooters. such a philosophy on gaming must, therefore, inform his short story. additionally, the post-apocalyptic theme is common in science fiction narratives as well and futuristic-themed video games: wasteland (electronic arts) and fallout (interplay) are two notable ones. brent’s creative vision, however, shows he is a product of his historical moment. alqaeda in brent’s fictional story’s future destroyed american cities, thus plunging the united enacting culture in gaming 23 states into chaos. brent’s use of this particular plot line goes along with what holland et al. (1998) believe is the social and historical construction of identity, cited at length below: “person” and “society” are alike as sites, or moments, of the production and reproduction of social practices. but there is a substantiality to both sites. we object to antiessentialism that rotely rejects any sense of durability or predisposition in social life. forms of personhood and forms of society are historical products, intimate and public, that situate the interactivity of social practices. it is in this doubly historical landscape that we place human identities. we take identity to be a central means by which selves, and the sets of actions they organize, form and re-form over personal lifetimes and in the histories of social collective. (p. 270) also, brent’s post apocalyptic incorporation characterizes street’s (2003) “ideological model of literacy,” which claims “literacy is a social practice…identity, and being” (p. 77-78). both holland et al. and street identify the social construction of one’s literacy as a sociohistorical (re)production internalized by an individual. brent’s moment in history is carried out through his creative activities, and his entertainment choices (video games being one choice) reinforce his understanding of his historical context. our interview in april 2004 was only one year after the united states’ invasion of iraq and a little over two and a half years since 9/11. the analysis here departs from ideas of power and literacy of literacy/language scholars who note that literacy and opportunity are often related to access and one’s social position (brandt, 2001). for instance, street (2003) comments on teacher-student relationships as nonneutral hierarchies because “the ways in which teachers or facilitators and their students interact is already a social practice that affects the nature of the literacy being learned and the ideas about literacy held by the participants” (p. 78). historically, literacy—meaning the dominant culture’s current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 definition of literacy—has been assumed to be a necessary component of success and various socio-economic groups have varying access to literacy. we need only look to the historical case of frederick douglass (1845/1995) to see how his contemporary agents of social control—his owners—denied literacy instruction to him and fellow slaves. brandt (2001) argues that literacy should be “addressed in a civil rights context” (p. 206). in fact, at a luncheon in early 2003 honoring deborah brandt winning the very prestigious grawemeyer award for her book literacy in american lives, an elected official from the kentucky state legislature pressed her on the issue of literacy as a civil right. he felt it was a bold proposition, which demonstrates that such a concept is quite radical in the public sphere.3 the power differences and relationships regarding literacy and literacy acquisition have been addressed by scholars such as street and brandt. this article’s focus on literacy and power is not about brent’s socio-economic status and his assumed privileged position in the larger culture; instead, it uncovers some interesting examples where brent enacts culture, specifically, popular culture. the evidence above suggests that he absorbed dominant ideology and narratives, for instance, media headlines about terrorism, and his literacy acquisition follows a socially constructed model. culture mediates brent’s literacy activities. conclusion literacy is not just language but the politics of the language/skills that society uses. video games are literacy sites that need to be understood beyond problem solving and strategies. what cultural messages might arise and what might they mean for gamers’ other, more traditional literacy practices? brent’s literacy practices offer readers a way to understand video games as a semiotic system that exists as a mirror to the larger society. because literacy is tied to the socio-historical moment in which an individual interacts, we can think of cultural literacy as enacting culture in gaming 25 a component of literacy practices or activities. the ability to read the video game environment— a skill video gamers possess—requires the same amount of attention to details as reading other texts to locate the cultural work being done. although video gamers may transfer other skills from the semiotic system of the video game to another semiotic system, as brent shows in his creative writing, gamers’ entertainment preferences are supported by an adherence to many cultural myths that pervade popular culture. brent reminds us that our students will come to us having absorbed culture and ideology across a variety of media and modalities. we ought to be ready to help our students “read” cultural assumptions in media in order to prepare them for literacy in the twenty-first century and to foster critical thinking about cultural myths. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 references anderson, c. a., berkowitz, l., donnerstein, e., huesmann, l. r., johnson, j. d., linz, d., malamuth, n. m., & wartella, e. (2003). the influence of media violence on youth. psychological science in the public interest, 4(3), 81-110. bakhtin, m. m. (1986). speech genres and other late essays. (v. w. mcgee, trans.). (c. emerson & m. holquist, eds.). austin: university of texas press. brandt, d. (1995). accumulating literacy: writing and learning to write in the twentieth century. college english, 57(6), 649-68. block, jerald j. & crain, bradford r. (2007). omissions and errors in media violence and the american public. american psychologist, 62(3): 252-253. brandt, d. (2001). literacy in american lives. cambridge: cambridge university press. bushman, b. j. and anderson, c. a. (2001) “media violence and the american public: scientific facts versus media misinformation.” american psychologist, 56(6-7), 477-489. cazden, c. (1988). classroom discourse: the language of teaching and learning. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. devoss, d., hawisher, g. e., jackson c., johansen j., moraski, b., & selfe, c. (2004). the future of literacy. in c. l. selfe & g. e. hawisher (eds.), literate lives in the information age: narratives of literacy from the united states (pp. 183-210). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. douglass, f. (1995). narrative of the life of frederick douglass. new york: dover publications. (original work published 1845). ferguson, christopher. j. (2007). evidence for publication bias in video game violence effects literature: a meta-analytic review. aggression and violent behaviour, 12(4): 470–482. enacting culture in gaming 27 fischer, peter, kastenmüller, andreas, & greitemeyer, tobias. (2010). media violence and the self: the impact of personalized gaming characters in aggressive video games on aggressive behavior.” journal of experimental social psychology, 46(1): 192–195. frasca, g. (1999). ludology meets narratology: similitude and differences between (video) games and narrative. retrieved 17 december 2007 at http://www.ludology.org/articles/ludology.htm. gee, j. p. 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(1999). technology and literacy in the twenty-first century: the importance of paying attention. carbondale, il: southern illinois university press. selfe, c. & hawisher, g. (eds.). (2004). literate lives in the information age: narratives of literacy from the united states. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. selfe, c. & hawisher, g. (eds.). (2007). gaming lives in the twenty-first century: literate connections. new york: palgrave macmillan. street, b. (1984). literacy in theory and practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. street, b. (ed.). (1993). cross-cultural approaches to literacy. (pp. 1-21). cambridge: cambridge university press. street, b. (ed.). (1995). social literacies. london: longman. street, b. (2003). what’s ‘new’ in new literacy studies? critical approaches to literacy in enacting culture in gaming 29 theory and practice. current issues in comparative education, 5(2), 77-91. whiteman, natasha. (2008). homesick for silent hill: modalities of nostalgia in fan responses to silent hill 4: the room. in z. whalen, zach & l. n. taylor (eds.), playing the past: history and nostalgia in video games (pp. 32-50). nashville, tn: vanderbilt university press. endnotes 1 the interviewee’s name and university are pseudonyms. all information about brent’s background and brent’s actual words come from a recorded personal interview on 1 april 2004. 2 the male pronoun is used to reinforce that this study is based on a male gamer. 3the author attended this luncheon. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 30 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x valuing children‘s voices mary alice barksdale virginia tech cheri f. triplett radford university citation barksdale, m.a. & triplett, c.f (2010). valuing children‘s voices. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this paper explores the voices of elementary children in public schools. three databases were used including (a) interviews with 25 elementary students, (b) drawings and writings created by 225 third through sixth-grade students about their high stakes testing experiences, and (c) observations in two first-grade classrooms. the data demonstrate that elementary children have much to say about their overall school experiences, including their worries at school, their feelings of disconnect with their teachers, the lack of meaningful learning experiences, and their desire to be heard as unique individuals. these findings challenge educators to make changes in our american classrooms in order to best meet the needs of young children. keywords: elementary children‘s perceptions, elementary children‘s voices, child-centered practices current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: mary alice barksdale affiliation: virginia tech address: 307 war memorial hall, mc 0313, blacksburg, va 24061 email: mbarksda@vt.edu biographical information: mary alice barksdale is the program area leader for elementary education at virginia tech and her research interests include: children's perceptions, cultures, and voices; literacy teacher education; literacy teaching in developing countries, and children who struggle in literacy acquisition. author: cheri f. triplett affiliation: radford university email: cftriplet@radford.edu biographical information: cheri f. triplett is an associate professor of reading education at radford university. cheri teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in reading and language arts. she also works with student teachers as they tutor struggling readers in three local partnership schools. her research interests include motivational and emotional issues for struggling readers, motivational and emotional issues for elementary students and literacy teacher education. valuing children ’s voices 3 valuing children‘s voices historically, the design of schooling in the united states has been based on the premise that educators are the experts in determining what children need to learn, how learning should be taught, and how learning should be assessed. children are called upon to respond to teachers‘ questions, but rarely to contribute to the overall management and decision making of classrooms and schools. while the notion of identifying and meeting the needs of children as unique learners has proliferated over the past quarter century, the assumption has been that educators must identify children‘s strengths and weaknesses, determine appropriate learning goals, and create instructional plans for moving toward those goals. although educators and researchers have focused on individual children, individual student voice rarely influences the educational process and there is little evidence that teachers are listening to student voices as a means of meeting student needs (cook-sather, 2002, 2003; scherff, 2005). many educators have suggested that attending to student voice and creating educational environments that support student agency and empowerment within teaching/learning processes is necessary in meeting the needs of children (cook-sather, 2002, 2003; cook-sather & schultz, 2001a, 2001 b; kozol, 1991; mitra, 2003; oldfather, 1995a, 1995b). there is little evidence that student perspectives are given consideration in educational decision-making. in studying middle and high school student perspectives on schools and school violence, haselswertz and lenhardt (2003) found that students had an ―us-them‖ attitude about the adults in their schools. they did not feel respected by their teachers, and the only reported meaningful/respectful relationships students encountered in school were with peers. the students viewed programs and policies directed at increasing school safety as top-down in nature. they lacked trust and connection with teachers-certainly not a condition that would lead students to current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 feel that they were safe and cared for within the school context (haselswertz & lenhardt, 2003). similarly, scherff (2005) found that students held the perspective that, for the most part, teachers did not care about students as individuals. educators who did include student voices in school reform efforts discovered they were able to create more positive and trusting school learning environments. mitra (2003) found that when student voices were given a ―place‖ in high school reform, it was possible for students and teachers to develop trust and decrease divisiveness. in this study, there were teacher-focused activities that made it possible for students to understand teacher views, and student-focused activities that allowed teachers to understand student perspectives. mitra (2003, 2004) reported that by including student voices in school reform, students gained a sense of position and agency in schools, which in turn reduced the level of student alienation from schooling. similarly, bacon & bloom (2000) asserted that student voice leads to high levels of responsibility in addressing school problems and designing solutions. further, rudduck and demetriou (2003) suggested that including student voices in the school, as a learning community, could increase student engagement in learning. oldfather (1995b) found that when high school students were actively involved as educational co-researchers, they developed clear understandings of their own abilities, they developed solid understandings of themselves as learners and their own motivations for learning, and they gained perspective on their own capacities to help themselves and others. similarly, cook-sather (2003) discovered that high school students had in-depth insights and sound impressions of their own learning and of learner differences. these student insights were used to assist teachers in making decisions about appropriate instructional support. valuing children ’s voices 5 most previous research on student voice and the potential impact of student voice on teaching, learning, and schooling has been conducted with middle and high school students. what about elementary students? could the voices of elementary children be of value in improving their perceptions of school and schooling? could the voices of elementary children provide information that could be useful in the teaching/learning process? as a starting point in listening to the voices of elementary children, we revisited our own data, which was collected over the past 7 years. our research often includes the voices of children and we wondered if there were common themes across studies. we revisited three of our own previous studies with the purpose of asking a new question,‖what do elementary children have to say about their school experiences?‖ methods data sources and participants three data sources were revisited for this exploration. they will be identified as the interview study, the drawing/writing study, and the observation study. the interview study involved interviews with 25 third and fourth graders. the drawing/writing study used illustrations and texts created by 225 third through sixth graders. the observation study utilized field notes and teacher interview data related to observations of first-grade reading lessons in two different urban classrooms. interview study for this study, data were drawn from a study in which 33 students were interviewed about their perceptions about school (triplett & barksdale, 2003). in the original study, interviews were conducted with third through eighth grade students. for the current review, only the interviews with elementary learners (grades 3-4) were used, representing 25 children. the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 children were from two different states and represented from a small city school, an urban school, and a rural school. three interviews were conducted with each student over five months, with interviews lasting from 15-35 minutes each. the interview protocol included questions on: (a) current perceptions about school, (b) what students were learning, (c) what happened in school that helped students learn, (d) areas in which students were successful, (e) areas of in which students were less successful, (f) aspects of school that were stressful or worries about school, and, (g) aspects of school that help students deal with stresses and worries. drawing/writing study as a second data source, we analyzed the drawings created by 225 third through sixth grade students, as well as the written explanations these students produced to explain their drawings (triplett & barksdale, 2005). the children were from two different states, and represented both rural and urban contexts. on the day following completion of state-mandated high stakes tests, the students were asked to, ―draw a picture about your recent testing experience.‖ next, the students were asked to write in response to the prompt, ―tell me about your picture.‖ this method of data collection allowed for students' free responses without the possible biases of the researchers (which could have been revealed in interview or survey questions) influencing the responses (wheelock, bebell, and haney, 2000). observation study the third data source included observational field notes about the interactions between elementary students and their first-grade teachers, as well as interviews with the teachers after the lessons. two lessons were selected for inclusion in this paper. student voices were identified as statements made and other verbal and nonverbal messages during the lessons. the observations were of a reading group with six students and a writing group with four students. valuing children ’s voices 7 after observations of the lessons, an unstructured interview format was used to discuss the lessons with the teachers. one interview question was used to start the conversation: ―tell me what you thought about the lesson.‖ as a member check, the vignettes written based on the field notes and the interview transcriptions were shared with the teachers. the teachers were asked to identify any inaccuracies in the vignettes or transcripts and invited to recommend needed changes. both teachers found the vignettes and interviews to be accurate and neither suggested changes. data analysis all of the data collected were qualitative in nature. for the interview study, audio-taped interviews were transcribed then segmented into units of meaning, with attention given to the preservation of context (hycner, 1985). after segmenting the interviews, the units of meaning were grouped into categories sharing common characteristics. after organizing these data into categories, each category given a themed name that was representative of commonalties within the grouping (bogdan & biklen, 1998). a constant comparative approach was used in the analysis of the data for the drawing/writing study. this inductive method was selected as appropriate for the analysis of student drawings, which represent a qualitatively different type of data from interviews (strauss & corbin, 1990). the researchers examined the drawings to identify obvious recurring themes, noting the objects/people that were included. next, we transcribed the statements made by the students and met to identify emerging themes from the transcripts. finally, examinations were conducted to identify intersections between the themes identified in the drawings and the themes identified in student writings. many of the children used the acronyms for the high stakes tests current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 given in their state in their statements. for confidentiality purposes, the acronym ―hst‖ (for high stakes test) was used in the paper rather than the actual test acronyms. in the observation study, for the purpose of exploring the voices of elementary children during lessons, field notes and interviews based upon observations of two literacy lessons were selected. the teacher interview was transcribed. the field notes were written as vignettes and matched with related teacher comments. what are elementary students saying about their school experiences? the themes from each data source are presented separately, first the interview study, second the drawing/writing study, and then the observation study. interview study the recurrent themes from interviewing 25 elementary students included: (a) current learning, (b) who helps with current learning, (c) areas of success, (d) areas of struggle, (e) connections between academic struggles and life away from school, (f) stresses and worries in school (other than testing), (g) stresses, worries, and thoughts about testing, (h) methods of dealing with stress and worries, (i) concerns about fairness in school, (j) concerns about teachers and instruction, (k) liking school. current learning the children identified themes within specific subject areas they were learning in mathematics, science, and social studies, (for example, fractions, rocks and minerals, and the civil war). none of the students interviewed were able to identify what they were learning in reading, writing, or spelling. they discussed reading, writing, and spelling as subjects in which they ―worked‖ and ―practiced.‖ valuing children ’s voices 9 the participants provided many opinions about the subject areas such as, ―i can‘t stand reading and writing, and that is what we do for almost the entire day, and it is just, well, i get so tired of it and you have to sit and do these stupid stories almost everyday and all these pages about where you have to answer all these questions about nothing. and we write every day and i don‘t like writing at all because it is just the same kind of stuff to write about and the same sentences and sentences, and i just wish we could do something interesting.‖ the children made very few statements were indicating that they liked or enjoyed particular subjects. several children indicated that they liked reading, but when asked about their enjoyment of reading instruction, they had comments such as, ―i mean, i like to read, like read books at home, but i don‘t like reading in school.‖ one student liked ―some of the stories‖ that she had read in school, and several children liked for their teachers to read to them. one said that math was his favorite subject, and another liked social studies. who helps with current learning when these children were asked in interviews, ―who helps you with learning,‖ in most cases, they named family members. this was an unexpected response, as the next intended interview question was to be, ―tell me about how your teacher helps you with learning.‖ we expected that if students identified individuals other than teachers as helping them with learning, we would ask how these others helped. in 22 of the cases (66 interviews), teachers were not mentioned, so we did not ask the follow-up question about how teachers helped. instead, we asked the students about how the identified individuals helped with learning. typically, the students provided responses like, ―she helps me do my homework every night,‖ ―we read stories and magazines together almost all days,‖ and ―momma helps me study for every test, and we work and work until i know almost everything.‖ a few students made comments such as, ―my current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 dad is the best teacher because he helps me learn about how to do everything that you really need, hammering nails, climbing on ladders, and being safe and that; and we going fishing and he teaches me everything about all of the fish and how to catch them, and he helps me do everything that‘s hard. a handful of children mentioned coaches and sunday school teachers as helping them learn. only three of the 25 children mentioned teachers as helping them learn. the same three children mentioned teachers in multiple interviews. in these three cases, the students named family members first and teachers later in the discussion. one of the children‘s comments was revealing in that it may provide insight into the rarity of the identification of teachers as helping students learn. this child said, ―my teacher has too much, too many children and we have to do too many things to learn everyday so she doesn‘t really have time to help me very much, because, she does if she has time and i have something i didn‘t understand, if she has time she can tell me and explain and i can understand usually after that, and she‘s really nice, she‘s not mean if you don‘t understand and some teachers are, but she just helps me on sometimes.‖ this statement demonstrates that this child clearly perceived the time constraints faced in day-to-day interactions with her teacher. areas of success when students named areas of success such as reading, writing, math, and science, it was evident that most understood success as being reflected in grades. for instance, a fourth grader said, ―i know i‘m good at science because i always get an a, every nine weeks, but i‘m not so good at anything else.‖ the children felt that their success in different subject areas came naturally, as in, ―i just think it‘s easy,‖ and ―i‘ve always been good at writing.‖ there were few indications that the children viewed successes as related to their efforts. valuing children ’s voices 11 areas of struggle nineteen of the twenty-five students identified mathematics as the most troublesome subject area. a fourth-grade male found math to be much more challenging than it had been in the earlier years. he said, ―i was good at math in first and second grade and i really got it and good grades, too, you know? but now i can‘t remember it all and i‘m always getting something wrong even when i thought i knew it, so i think it is really hard this year and i keep getting a c.‖ several students noted difficulties in reading and writing; none indicated that they struggled with science or social studies. in several cases, the children indicated confusions about their success between home and school. another fourth-grader said, “i like reading at home and i read to my mom and we talk about it all, what it was about, and i don‘t have no problems understanding or saying the words, so my mom thinks i can read good, but i‘m no good at it in school and i always get a c, no matter how hard i try, so i guess you could say that it isn‘t a very good subject for me, and i don‘t like it in school either.‖ connections between academic struggles and life away from school there were many instances in which children made connections between their struggles in school and their lives away from school. in a rather impassioned and detailed manner, a fourth grader stated, ―i don‘t think the teachers understand what life is like for kids. i‘m slow, i just can‘t do things quickly and i have to read every word and think about every question and if i rush, i get it wrong and i don‘t like that … we get up, and get dressed and eat breakfast, and that takes a long time if there‘s a few kids, and wait for the school bus, and then ride, and we are busy at school all day, and then we have to go to the baby sitter after the bus, and there‘s a whole bunch of different kids there. you can‘t do homework with all that going on, and then momma current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 comes and gets us and while she fixes the dinner, we have to do the chores, and then we eat dinner and everybody has to take a bath, and before or after your bath, you can have a few minutes for homework, but i‘m always tired and then it‘s time to go to bed, and a new day. i almost never finish the homework, and i get bad grades and get in trouble, and i tell ms. (teacher) i don‘t have time, but she doesn‘t understand, doesn‘t believe me, or something. she just gives too much of homework to do, like she thinks everyone gets home at four o‘clock and has nothing to do but homework until they go to bed, and i really wish she could understand, but my momma tells her, and it still, we still get so much homework. i want to do it, and i want to get good grades, but she doesn‘t understand i‘m trying as hard as i can and doing all that i can with the time. i can‘t watch tv at all in the week, and i haven‘t really been able to watch it in about two years, except in the summer since the first of third grade because of my grades and there isn‘t any way to just make more time for yourself, you know?‖ stresses and worries in school (other than testing) topics for worries in school included: tornadoes and hurricanes, school violence, having to repeat a grade, competitions in school, bullies, report cards, and terrorism. most children mentioned numerous worries. for instance, in a representative statement, a fourth grader said, ―i worry about a lot of stuff, like guns and shooting, like kids who bring guns to school and might shoot some other kids, and i‘m afraid that could happen to us, and stuff like kids who are mean to me and say mean things to me and hit, sometimes, and i‘m scared they would bring guns to school. and it sort of scares me sometimes about my report card and what i‘m going to get, and whether i would pass or not, because if you don‘t pass, you have to do the whole year all over again and everybody knows about it. i worry about a whole lot of stuff.‖ stresses, worries, and thoughts about testing valuing children ’s voices 13 twenty-one of the 25 participants brought up worries about testing, and nineteen of these students discussed this topic in all three interviews. the focus of student worries about testing centered on whether or not they would pass, and what would happen if they did not pass. a third grader stated, ―the hst test, that is the worst thing that happens in school. it is awful and i worried and worried and my mom and dad, they worried a lot and we talked about it every day and i knew, i could tell ms. (teacher) was worried ‗cause everything we did, every single day, she would be saying something about remembering it for the hst test. i thought i would probably throw up in the middle of the test, it just seemed like it made me sick and now i‘m scared to know if i passed or not, ‗cause if i‘m not, then everyone will think i‘m so dumb.‖ similarly, another child said, ―if you don‘t pass the hst, you have to fail, fail the whole grade and be in third grade again next year, and i know that this is for, even if you have passing grades, they just don‘t matter, so i worry every day and every night, all the time, even in the summer, about if i can pass the hst.‖ methods of dealing with stress and worries very few children were able to identify strategies they could use to help themselves deal with or address their worries. their ideas for dealing with worries included reading books, and breathing and counting. most of the children felt that nothing could be done to alleviate worries. concerns about fairness in school many students found aspects of schooling to be unfair, and they expressed frustrations about the unfairness of school. there were discussions of unfairness such as whole classes being punished for the misbehavior of a few children, having too much homework, silent lunches, not having chances to socialize with other children, and grading methods. there were also several comments about the unfair nature of school in general. for current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 instance, a third grade student said, “i wish i didn‘t have school. i mean, you get to see your friends, but it is just so miserable all day, just sitting there, doing this and writing that and reading this and talking about this. i really don‘t think it‘s fair, what they make us do; i know, i understand that all of the kids have to learn, but we don‘t really learn very much, we just do work and write pages and give answers all day, and we aren‘t learning anything. i like learning and i wouldn‘t complain this if, about school, if i was learning new things every day, but i don‘t learn anything new most days and i really don‘t think it is fair that we have to spend so long sitting there just doing things when we aren‘t learning nothing.‖ concern about teachers over half of the children felt that their teachers did not understand their struggles as learners. again, grades were featured as being very important. a third grader reported, ―i don‘t think it is fair, because if you do all the work and try hard, and i try to know everything she tells us, and do the homework and follow the rules, why can‘t i just get good grades?‖ liking school although most of the themes in these interview data from thirdand fourth-graders had negative connotations about children‘s experiences in school, the students overwhelmingly stated that they liked school. every child stated in at least one interview (some in all three interviews) that they liked school. in a number of cases, this comment was added at the end of a negative comment about school. for instance, ―i really hate all of that worrying about the hst‘s, but i still like school,‖ ―my teacher doesn‘t seem very, like, she doesn‘t really understand, and she doesn‘t want to hear what i think about stuff mostly, but i still like her and i know she loves us and i like school,‖ i can‘t hardly stand reading time every day and it is so boring and has too many skills, but i know i would, it‘s supposed to help me and everybody grown has to, you valuing children ’s voices 15 know, read, so it‘s like okay; i mean, i hate reading, but school is okay; i like school.‖ some of the children made comments indicating that they had developed their own perspectives on liking school. one fourth-grader said, ―for kids, school is the same as your work and you have to go to school to get sort, into a way so that you‘re used to, you have to go there every day and staying for a long time like at work and some might‘ve not liked their job, not everything about their job, but you‘ve got to find something to like so you just won‘t hate everything and hate it all the time. so we go to school just like that, and you have to find some things that you like at school, something you can like about it, or if you don‘t, you‘ll be mad and mean all the time, and i do that; i find things that i can like about school, and so i can like it, like the kids and the teachers, they‘re good to be around most of the time. it‘s okay.‖ another said, ―i know it is all of my own good, and if i don‘t like stuff we do in school, my dad says it‘s too bad but i have to do it so i‘ll grow up knowing what i‘m supposed to know, and i don‘t want to be one of those stupid people who have to work at the wal-mart, so i better just learn and do whatever they tell me and try to like it.‖ drawing/writing study the themes that emerged during the drawing/writing study included: (a) emotions, (b) the culture of testing, (c) the role of the teacher, (d) adult language, (e) student metaphors, (f) isolation, (g) fire, (h) power/politics, and (i) passing or failing. emotions the expression of emotions was common in this study. in their writing, children used words like “mad,” “confused,” “frustrated,” “tired,” “bored,” “sweating,” “sleepy,” and “happy.” the most repeated word was “nervous.” although many of the children did not know how to spell “nervous,” they wanted to get the concept across. spellings for nervous included, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 “nervios,” “nurves,” “nurvse,” “nerves,” “nirvis,” “nervise,” “nerves,” “nervos,” “nervour,” “nervious,” and “nervous.” in the drawings, there were many question marks over heads and cartoon balloons containing terms like “help!” we noted that the children had drawn the mouths of the children in their pictures with great care, and across the 225 drawings, there were no standard cup-like mouths. the children had intentionally drawn unhappy and angry mouth shapes. figure 1: drawing of unhappy 4 th grade test taker. although these were not representative, a couple of the drawings depicted depression, and in one case, a student wrote that he wanted to “kill self.” valuing children ’s voices 17 figure 2: drawing of depressed 3 rd grade test taker. figure 3: drawing of 3 rd grade test taker with suicidal thoughts. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 the terms ―happy‖ or ―glad‖ occurred in 18 of the 225 pictures/writings. students indicated that they were happy when the tests were over, happy about ice cream parties after the tests, and happy about being able to chew gum and take off their shoes during the tests. culture of testing student drawings demonstrated that these students were well versed in the culture of testing. many drawings featured desks upon which bubble sheets, test booklets, and pencils were placed. figure 4: drawing of 5 th grader depicting the implements of the testing experience. valuing children ’s voices 19 teacher role although teachers were in the classrooms in which students took their high stakes tests, teachers were surprisingly absent from the drawings. only 16 children included teachers in their drawings or writings. when teachers were discussed in student writings, there was little substantive information about teachers. for instance, a sixth grader wrote, ―the work was hard & you had to think. the book was very hard to read. some words i didn‘t understand. the sun was beating on my head. very bored and tired. mr. [teacher] had wrote work on the broad after hst. i felt very spiced up. very mad. and sad.‖ in the drawings, there were teachers in both supportive and non-supportive roles. figure 5: less supportive teacher during testing. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 figure 6: more supportive teacher provides student with bubble gum during testing. adult language valuing children ’s voices 21 in some cases, children used terms in their drawings and writings adult language rather than children‘s language. for instance, one student drew a picture of a stick figure holding a large sign that said ―fuck hst.‖ several students wrote that, ―hst‘s suck.‖ there were also cases in which the adult language used did not express opinions. statements were made such as, ―the picture is about me finding the proof and circling the key words and rereading the story.‖ these terms were non-typical of the language used by students in the study, and had the marks of language repeated from teachers or parents. student metaphors several students created metaphors for their high stakes testing experience. for instance, a third-grade child said that taking the hst was like a ―war between the question marks and the light bulbs‖ in his mind. his picture was a detailed depicture of this metaphor. figure 7: drawing of a ―war between the question marks and the light bulbs.‖ current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 isolation the most recurrent pattern in the analysis of drawings was a picture of an individual child sitting at a desk on which testing materials were drawn, surrounded by white space. this was the case in 125 (55%) of the drawings. in the most cases, the children and desks were very small and in the center of the paper. no children used the words ―alone‖ or ―isolation‖ in their writings, yet, the number of drawings of this kind implied that the children felt isolated or alone during their testing experiences. figure 8: sample 1 of student isolation during testing. figure 9: sample 2 of student isolation during testing. valuing children ’s voices 23 fire fifteen students drew and wrote about fire or burning. this occurred at all grade levels and in both states. in most cases, these drawings included test booklets on fire with people standing by cheering. students made statements about their drawings such as, ―i hate test and i am sitting near a fire with a lot of tests in it burning.‖ figure 10: sixth-grader‘s depiction of burning high stakes tests. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 power/politics several student writings about their drawings had political implications, or in some way reflected the notion that testing has a political function. for example, one student wrote, ―what expressed on the back of this is nothing but pure hatred for the hst because i really don‘t need no dumb test telling if i get to go to another grade. because when you are nervous you crazy things. and if i flunk, who fault is that. not mine. it‘s george bush‘s. ps i would this war blows up all the hst tests.‖ there were also statements that reflected children‘s understandings of the fact that their test scores could eventually have an impact on their lives as adults. a fourth grader said, ―that is me before the hst testing. i was very nevios because if you don‘t pass you can‘t go to a good collage. so you could be the guy at the burger king drive through.‖ pass/fail many students expressed concern about whether they would pass or fail their hst. a fifth grader wrote, ―my picture is about me and my tests. well i am very nerveous about my valuing children ’s voices 25 hst testing. i don‘t think i can pass my test. when i read in the passages when it asks you some questions i sweat all the time when important test are on the line. well i think the hst testing was hard.‖ observation study the following vignettes were written based on field notes from observations in two different first-grade classrooms. in each case, observations were followed by an interview with the teacher about the observation. in the first vignette, the teacher was working with a group of six students in a reading group. in the second vignette, another teacher was working with a writing group of four students. vignette 1: classroom observation teacher: ―now, give me your vowel cards. we are going to work on skills today.‖ several shoulders lower. children hand cards to teacher. teacher: ―get your workbooks out.‖ students: [loud groan; seems to come from all 6. two boys stretch out over the table, laying their heads down.] teacher: ―now sit up and pay attention. you need to open your workbook to page 95.‖ male student: lifts head and says: ―can‘t we read that bear story again?‖ another student: ―yeah, we liked that one. it was the best.‖ teacher: ―you have to take the test on this book soon and you need to be able to do the skills. now, find page 95.‖ current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 the children slowly begin looking through the workbook for page 95. one child leaves to go to the restroom, then another. the others whisper as they wait for the return of the two classmates. five minutes later, the group begins to work in the workbooks. segment of interview with the teacher teacher: ―every time we do it [the workbook], it‘s like all i have to say is the word ‗workbook‘ and they just deflate, like i stick pins in all of them at once.‖ interviewer: ―what do you think about that?‖ teacher: ―i hate it, of course, because it is their reading group and i want them all to be excited about reading, and it seems to me that if they learn to hate what happens in the reading group, they are going to learn to hate reading, and i can‘t stand that, but i don‘t feel that there is any choice because we have all of these books, three hardcover books, all of these [she points to a shelf at the three different books], and they have to take a test at the end of every book. if they don‘t pass the tests, which are mostly skills, then i haven‘t done my job and they are considered not ready for second grade. and i have to start getting them ready for hst testing, even though this is only first grade.‖ vignette 2 classroom observation teacher: ―all right. today we are going to work on your mother‘s day letters.‖ teacher hands out folders and gives each child a sheet of blank lined paper. ―i‘ve gone through your letters and made some corrections, so today, i want you to copy your letters over again, very neatly and use the correct spellings. these are the letters you will take to your mothers, and after you finish copying yours, you can draw a picture to go with it.‖ valuing children ’s voices 27 child 1: ―do i have to copy mine? i only got one thing wrong.‖ teacher: ―don‘t you want it to be nice for your mother?‖ child 1: ―my mom don‘t care if there‘s only one thing wrong, an‘ i hate copying. can‘t i just draw a picture?‖ child 2: ―my mom don‘t care either, she likes it the way it is.‖ none of the children have started copying. they are all waiting and watching the teacher. teacher: ―this is special, for your mothers for mother‘s day, and just this once, let‘s make these letters as beautiful and perfect as we can make them.‖ child 1: ―my hand hurts, cause we been sitting and writing all morning. i don‘t want to copy.‖ child 3: ―if you want it perfect, why don‘t you do it on the computer?‖ teacher: “we don‘t have time for all of you to do your letters on the computer. now stop arguing with me, and get to work.‖ the children all slowly pick up their pencils and start writing. teacher: “that‘s good, but remember to leave a nice space between words.‖ child 3 has written a couple of words and begins erasing something. her paper tears. child 3: ―i messed up. i need another paper.‖ teacher: ―okay, here‘s another sheet of paper, but go slow and pay attention to your work. we need to get this finished.‖ hands child 3 another sheet of paper. child 4: ―i got mine wrong, too. see, i wrote a different word.‖ teacher: voice louder, in strict tone: ―what is wrong with you all today? this is just copying, and you can do it if you will pay attention. child 1: ―but we hate copying.‖ current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 28 teacher: still using loud voice: ―i don‘t care if you hate copying. i really want you to be able to show your mothers what a good job you can doing on your writing. you have all improved so much, and you have written sweet letters. let‘s show your mother‘s how well you can do. at this point, the children all start writing again. the teacher watches over them, making suggestions as they write. the children are silent and “on task.” the copying activity itself takes 15 minutes. teacher: ―you‘ve all done a very good job and i‘m proud of you. now you can go to your seats and draw a picture to go with your letters. put your new letters back in the folders, and we can throw away the old ones. the children follow the instructions, putting the new letters in the folders and handing the folders to the teacher. child 1 picks up his draft letter and starts shredding it, then balls up the shreds. children 2, 3, and 4 start shredding their drafts. teacher: ―what are you all doing? i just told you to throw your old letters away. we don‘t need all of this tearing and carrying on. child 1: ―i hate these stupid letters.‖ all four children take their shredded, balled up letters to the garbage can and drop them, then go to their seats and sit down. segment of interview with the teacher teacher: ―this group is just so active and so social, and i knew that if i gave them the letters to copy at their seats, they either wouldn‘t do it, or they wouldn‘t do it right. this is my lowest group, and they are very uncooperative all the time, but i didn‘t think they would do it in front of you. no matter what i ask them to do in reading or writing, they have some argument about it, and they know how it‘s going to end; they know they will end up doing what i told them to do to valuing children ’s voices 29 begin with, but they just have to argue. if they had things their way, first grade would be nothing but watching videos, socializing, and eating.‖ interviewer: ―it was obviously important to you that these children copied their letters correctly. tell me about that.‖ teacher: ―all of the other kids have already done theirs. i already had 14 folders with nice looking, correct letters in them, and just these four with lots of mistakes, and very messy letters. i know they don‘t like to copy, and i know they don‘t learn anything from copying. and it‘s not like we copy things everyday, but on friday, i wanted everyone to be able to take home a nice mother‘s day letter with a picture, and i don‘t like the idea of having most of the class bring home really pretty letters, and these four take home messy, incorrect ones. i mean, what they said is right. some of their mothers wouldn‘t care one way or the other, and some of their mothers probably won‘t pay one bit of attention to these letters, but i think the children need to learn; i know that some of these mothers don‘t deserve a lot of appreciation because they don‘t even take good care of their kids and send them to school clean, and that‘s why i have to provide snack for so many of them every morning, because they haven‘t had breakfast, and they get too hungry. but still, i know they love their mothers, and have appreciation for them no matter what the circumstances, so i thought they would be okay with this. you just don‘t know, it‘s really hard to know what to do sometimes, because most of the other kids were actually motivated by this. they wrote gorgeous letters, with lots of sentiment, surprising really for first grade, and they copied them beautifully, with not a complaint, and they‘re excited about taking them home and giving them to their mothers on sunday. but these other four, they are just a mess. i don‘t know what to do with them.‖ interviewer: ―so, were you pleased with the letters they wrote today?‖ current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 30 teacher: ―they‘re okay. these children just don‘t care about things like this, and they still have some mistakes, but this is as good as it‘s going to get with these kids.‖ the two first-grade vignettes demonstrate that the children had a great deal to say about their learning experiences, both verbally and nonverbally. in both cases, the children objected to what they had been asked to do by their teachers, and they assured that their objections were made clear for their teachers. these particular vignettes were selected for this analysis in part because the voices of the children were so articulate; in other lessons in which students did not object to teacher requests, there was little ―voice‖ of this kind and the children simply performed tasks identified by the teachers. it was also clear that both teachers heard the objections of the children and decided to follow through with their own plans and require that the children completed the assigned tasks. discussion at the onset, we asked the question, ―what are elementary students saying about their school experiences?‖ across these data, there is evidence that elementary students have much to say about their school experiences. through interviews, drawings, writings, and classroom interactions, elementary children made some very strong statements. children worry at school these studies, conducted across the past decade, reveal that children worry a lot at school. most children reported worrying about grades, the consequences of failing, or failing their end-of-grade tests. most of the children reported worrying before, during, and after their end-of –grade tests. specifically, they worried about state-mandated high stakes tests. in the drawing/writing study, students‘ perceptions were the most detailed. the students reported worry, anger, nervousness, boredom and even suicidal thoughts. the most prevalent theme about valuing children ’s voices 31 testing was that of isolation, with more than half the students creating depictions of themselves sitting alone at desks surrounded by white space—all alone. from a psychological perspective, we know that in order to feel safe and allow for maximum learning, children need to have their belonging needs fulfilled and stress should be minimal (bradburn, 1969; ellis, 2004; grant, compas, stuhlmacher, thurm, mcmahon, & halbert, 2003; sherman, 2004). these data reflect high levels of stress and worry in elementary children, a condition that might be lessened if children knew that their voices were heard and valued. sherman states, ― . . . through responsiveness to every student, teachers can nurture the unique personal qualities students possess and help move them toward deeper understandings of both the world around them and the universe within them‖ (2004, 24). unfortunately, many children we interviewed also worried that their teachers did not really understand them and their life situations. children feel disconnected from their teachers in these studies, children did not report experiencing responsiveness from their teachers. instead, the elementary students reported feeling disconnected from their teachers. much like the middle school and high school students reported in previous studies (haselswertz & lenhardt, 2003; scherff, 2005), the elementary students in this study reported feeling alienated from their teachers. the students did not think that teachers understood their lives away from school, and over half of the children indicated that their teachers did not understand their struggles as learners. several students indicated that they had high levels of success when working at home with parents, but this success did not follow them into the classroom. most students identified family members as helping them with learning – not teachers. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 32 the elementary students in this study reported that their teachers were too busy and too worried about high-stakes tests to consider their needs as individual children. even a child who thought her teacher was really nice also noticed, ―my teacher has too much, too many children, too many things to do everyday so she doesn‘t really have time to help me very much…‖ even during testing, when teachers could possibly play a positive role in alleviating anxiety, most children portrayed themselves as all alone, with no teacher present. learning opportunities are not meaningful as a fourth grader so poignantly commented, ―i understand that all of the kids have to learn, but we really don‘t learn very much, we just do the work and write pages and answers all day, and we aren‘t learning anything new most days…‖ children across the elementary grades reported that most of their school activities do not seem meaningful. children reported that they would like to learn, read, and write if they were allowed to pursue something interesting. even the teachers in the observation study wrestled with the lack of meaningfulness in their worksheets and writing practice. likewise, children in the interview study reported boring review activities for many months before the end-of-grade tests and experiencing ―wasted time‖ during the tests. these elementary students seemed to understand that a testing focus can lead to drill and skill practice, instead of momentous learning opportunities. children want an opportunity to be listened to these studies not only demonstrated that elementary children have a great deal to say; there was evidence that they welcome opportunities to say it. while collecting data for the interview study, an unexpected phenomenon was that the children began to jump up and run to the researchers as they entered classrooms, saying, ―are you going to take me today? please, take me.‖ and at the time of the final interview, children expressed sorrow, making statements valuing children ’s voices 33 like, ―i wish you would keep coming here and talking to me ‗cause you‘re the only person who‘s ever really, really like talked to me at school, and i think, i probably need somebody to talk to me and listen, really listen, like you.‖ it was difficult to end data collection when the young participants were begging for more. these children truly wanted someone to hear and value their voices in their school. likewise, in the drawing/writing study, many children were very reflective and unyielding in openly sharing their angst about high-stakes testing. they chose to use strong words and strong images to relay their thoughts and feelings—some even erasing holes in their paper until they chose the perfect word to describe their thoughts or the perfect mouth to portray their feelings. there are numerous calls in the literature for the inclusion of student voices in the classroom and in schools as a whole (cook-sather, 2002, 2003; cool-sather & schultz, 2001a, 2001 b; kozol, 1991; mitra, 2003; oldfather, 1995a, 1995b; rudduck & demetriou, 2003). previous studies have shown that when student voice is valued and used to develop respect and rapport between teachers and students, it can lead to significant school improvements; however, these studies were conducted with middle and high school students (bacon & bloom, 2000; cook-sather, 2003; haselswertz & lenhardt, 2003; mitra, 2003; oldfather, 1995b). this current look at elementary students naturally leads to questions about the viability of valuing elementary children‘s voices in the day-to-day instructional life of the schools. to what degree do elementary students understand what is best for them? when the children in the observation study asked their teacher to allow them to reread a story rather than completing workbook pages, did they know what was best for themselves? did the interviewed children who felt that their teachers did not understand their struggles as learners have accurate perceptions? what is the meaning of the fact that nearly all of the 225 drawings looked sad or current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 34 angry? could it be possible to test children in such a way as to result in drawings of happy faces? if we are to value children‘s voices in elementary classrooms, how do we know what to value, and what to hear but perhaps not value? we must assume that there are limits on what elementary children know about what is best for them and what would best meet their needs. how could elementary schools best provide ―places‖ for students to voice their thoughts and for teachers to respond to these voices? can the positive findings involving valuing student voices in middle schools and high schools be replicated in elementary schools? we are left with many questions to ponder and many children yet to listen to. valuing children ’s voices 35 references american psychological association. 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(2000). what can drawings tell us about high-stakes testing in massachusetts. teachers college record. http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=10634, retrieved april 10, 2008. http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=10634 valuing children ’s voices 37 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word 558-2782-2-le.docx 1 volume 14, number 2 may 18, 2011 issn 1099-839x educational faculty perceptions of the learning climate in a juvenile justice residential facility carolyn c. cox joseph d. visker ashley hartman truman state university the majority of educational faculty from a juvenile justice residential detention facility in rural northeast missouri who participated in a learning climate survey of their school seemed to agree that the environment for staff and students was generally physically safe and emotionally supportive; key factors for a positive learning climate. by describing perceptions of their school’s learning climate; facility educational faculty can identify strengths and improve upon weaknesses. enhancing a school’s physical and psychosocial surroundings leads to a healthier school environment for all. keywords: residential juvenile justice facility, learning climate, academics theoretical framework: school learning climate a healthy school learning climate, including the attitudes, feelings, and values of students and school personnel (marx, frelick-wooley, & northrop, 1998), provides everyone with a sound physical and psychosocial environment in which to work and learn. the school’s learning climate is multi-dimensional and includes the subjective school experiences of: relationships, sense of school community, commitment to school, and school safety. a positive learning climate has been linked to effective teaching and learning, therefore, leading to more healthful student behaviors, higher school achievement levels, better behavioral risk prevention, and improved student performance (tubbs & garner, 2008; national school climate center, 2010). the policies and practices of a healthful and safe learning climate affect all individuals and areas within schools. for school students and school personnel, learning climate reflects the quality of the overall school experience (national school climate center, 2010). in order to positively impact the socio-emotional health of students as well as their academic achievement, the school learning climate must provide a setting in which students, educational faculty, and school staff can feel that they will succeed and reach their optimal potential (tubbs & garner, 2008; marx et al., 1998). learning climate is one of the essential supports needed for school improvement (sebring, allensworth, byrk, easton, & luppescu, 2006). as part of state and district-wide initiatives, schools are now assessing school learning climate to measure support for learning as well as to enhance those climate factors that contribute to overall school and life success (cohen, pickeral, & mcclosky, 2009). it is now recommended that all schools conduct periodic learning climate assessments to supplement other forms of assessment, create learning climate standards, and direct resources to improving school learning climate (cohen, fege, & pickeral, 2009). after conducting climate assessments, leadership in the analysis of the data, planning for change, and monitoring progress should be the next steps taken to develop more positive climates (tubbs & garner, 2008). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 school learning climate and the juvenile justice setting juvenile justice facilities are also social environments that are important in the development of a youth’s skills needed to navigate life outside of detention. the facility’s learning climate is an important factor in affecting positive social growth that may diminish recidivism (scott & steinberg, 2008). appropriate educational and mental health services are to be provided to youth under the jurisdiction of the juvenile justice system. many barriers to providing quality education to confined students as reported by those teaching and working in the juvenile detention setting are related to school learning climate, including: perceived lack of administrative support, lack of security services, inappropriate student conduct, and lack of faculty and student input into decision-making (houchins, puckett-patterson, crosby, shippen, & jolivette, 2009). learning climate is especially important in the educational setting for confined youth, such as those in a residential juvenile justice facility. usually administered by a regional juvenile or family court, youth who have been abused or neglected are assigned to these residential facilities and receive academic instruction as well as clinical and non-clinical interventions (brooks & histed, 2002). education programs in this setting add muchneeded structure to the lives of the confined students. a structured environment in addition to improved academic skills is related to the reduction of risky behaviors in these students after the confinement experience has ended (national center for juvenile justice, 2006). the effects of interventions to improve anti-social behaviors, emotional problems, alcohol use, and poor academic achievement have been linked to successful changes in the school learning climate (mcevoy, 2000) as modification of school learning climate may enhance overall student health and well-being (kasen, johnson, & cohen, 1990). recent system-wide juvenile justice reform initiatives are being targeted toward improvements in specific areas including using evidence-based approaches to decrease delinquent behaviors and reduce juvenile justice recidivism rates. for example, overcrowding creates not only safety issues but also issues surrounding access to educational and therapeutic services for youth in detention. for some youth, their substandard environmental and confinement conditions may border on abuse or neglect. facilities are encouraged to use model intervention programs supported by a research base, such as alternative placement programs for low-risk youth, to assist with successful behavior change (mendel, 2007; models for change, n.d.). improving school learning climate, therefore, is an evidence-based initiative that can address these reform issues. promoting a sustained, positive climate has been demonstrated to enhance educational outcomes and support a healthy, safe school environment (cohen et al., 2009). importance of a positive learning climate for educational faculty a supportive and safe learning climate for educational faculty has been demonstrated to improve their work performance (freiberg, 1998). learning climate can impact educational faculty behaviors that can then influence student achievement levels (tubbs & garner, 2008). successful and effective schools possess positive leaning climates that include safe environments, active leadership, collegiality, and appropriate student conduct (mcdill, rigsby, & meyers, 1969). school safety/discipline. school safety and discipline are key factors in providing a safe work environment for educational faculty. as student perception of positive learning climate decreases, their levels of behavior problems increase (wang, selman, dishion, & stormshak, 2010) leading to more difficult classroom management for faculty. the specific learning climate factors of structure and support in school discipline were most associated with improved school safety in traditional schools (gregory et al., 2009). school policies should prohibit discrimination, address the safety needs of educational faculty, and build faculty capacity and leadership skills to ensure such positive learning climates. supportive polices such as these increase discipline and safety, leading to more constructive learning climates (council for exceptional children, 2008). school leadership/collegiality. educational leadership and leader’s style are also important factors in creating a positive learning climate for educational faculty (kelley, 2005; shaw, 2009). administrators’ leadership behaviors were found to be correlated with teacher perceptions of learning climate (whitaker, 2009), and school leader behaviors and teacher opinions of learning climate also seem to be related to student achievement in traditional schools (nichols, 2007; kelley, 2005). it seems that shared leadership and professional community tend to improve some faculty instructional behaviors (seashore & wahlstrom, 2011), and the most effective schools appear to possess strong educational leadership leading to a positive learning climate (kelley, 2005). trust is built when administration is supportive and reasonable and when all faculty act with respect and cooperation. when educational faculty enjoy their colleagues and have supportive administration, they set appropriately high expectations for student achievement. (hoy, smith, & sweetland, 2003). student conduct/motivation. faculty ratings of learning climate are also associated with student behavior and adjustment (brand, feiner, seitsinger, burns, & bolton, 2008). high-quality traditional school learning climates are likely to mediate student relationships and behavioral problems (loukas, suzuki, & horton, 2006). for example, learning climate is associated with and predictive of student conduct, especially violent behaviors (cohen, mccabe, michelli, & pickeral, 2009). in schools with positive, supportive learning climates, students were more likely to educational faculty perceptions of the learning climate 3 seek help in the prevention of bullying and school violence (eliot, cornell, gregory, & fan, 2010). many school improvement programs focus on learning climate factors as faculty perception of positive climate is associated with lower levels of student disruptive behaviors and discipline problems (mitchell, bradshaw, & leaf, 2010). in schools where students perceived a learning climate in decline, their behavioral and psychological health were affected (way, reddy, & rhodes, 2007). teacher efficacy/professional development. in traditional schools, provision of professional development and learning communities for educational faculty can positively affect school learning climate (tubbs & garner, 2008). also, effective professional development programs that focus on strategies to improve relationships and interactions between faculty and students was perceived as potentially leading to a more positive school learning climate (price, 2008). learning climate was also viewed as predictive of faculty self-efficacy in traditional schools (tobin, muller, & turner, 2006). a more positive learning climate and high sense of self-efficacy seemed to predict lower stress levels of those adults staffing juvenile corrections facilities, too (wells, minor, angel, matz, & amato, 2008). in addition, most juvenile justice faculty in one study believed that they made a difference in their students, and that they possessed the educational background, teaching skills, and experience to impact student achievement. those with more years of experience seemed to report these higher levels of selfefficacy. (houchins, shippen, & cattret, 2004). purpose a positive learning and work climate for educational faculty appears crucial for academic success and faculty performance (search institute, 2008) in traditional school settings. positive learning and work climates would also be just as important in the success of educational and behavioral interventions of faculty teaching in juvenile justice residential facilities. learning climate assessments are recommended as evidence-based initiatives that can address juvenile justice reform issues, and a positive learning climate may also improve educational faculty effectiveness. therefore, the purpose of this study is to assess facility learning climate and support for learning in a residential juvenile justice facility from the perspective of the educational faculty. methods sample after irb approval of the study, all 22 juvenile center educational faculty from a residential detention facility in rural northeast missouri were asked by the researchers during one of the center’s faculty meetings in may 2009 to participate in the learning climate survey. all (100%) elected to participate and completed and returned a written informed consent document to the researchers at that time. the consent form described the purpose of the study, the possible benefits and harm that may results from participation, and that they could withdraw from the study at any time. the participants were educational faculty at a detention facility that serves a three-county area of northeast missouri. the participants, all state-certified teachers, taught core subject areas following the curriculum assigned to the youth in detention by their home school districts as well as counseled, facilitated group discussions, and mentored the youth during the school day. the center contains a secure detention and a secure residential treatment unit, and it also provides safe care and education services to adjudicated youth through both clinical and non-clinical interventions. services meet the needs of youth and family in crisis and include: emergency shelter, inpatient therapeutic treatment and psychiatric services, individual and family counseling, and transition support and supervision. in addition, youth who have alleged to have committed law violations are involved in educational, recreational, and social programs using counseling and correctional skills for behavior management. a chaplaincy and a character education program are also utilized when necessary (second judicial circuit juvenile division, 2009). the survey was administered june 2009 during the regularly-scheduled all-center faculty meeting. toward the end of the meeting, researchers reviewed consent and survey instructions with participants, secretarial staff distributed surveys, collected surveys, and placed surveys into a sealed envelope for the researchers to transport. instrument the survey tool “creating a great place to learn (cgpl): a survey of your school’s learning climate – staff survey” was used to assess juvenile center educational faculty perceptions of learning climate in three focus areas: relationships, organizational attributes, and personal development (available from search institute). the survey was based on the developmental assets framework created by the search institute (search institute, 2008). the survey used an asset-based foundation to assess faculty perceptions of their work climate. emphasizing the role of the 40 developmental assets, those positive, healthy experiences and influences that protect youth from risky behaviors and allow them to be resilient and thrive, this survey assessed the facility’s psycho-social environment experienced by the educational faculty. the instrument, developed over four years and tested with demographically diverse school faculty, includes both learning climate and developmental outcome measures. after analysis of the results, school improvements and reforms can then be implemented using “asset-based” strategies (search institute, 2006). the variables examined in the survey were aligned with the 40 developmental assets categories (search institute, 2008) and were viewed as critical factors in a positive, supportive learning climate. efficacy, the ability and confidence of the faculty to modify teaching techniques and be able to work together as an educational team, and collegiality, faculty learning from each other in a current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 collaborative way, leads to positive conditions that enhance learning. leadership and shared decision-making can help address school problems in a productive manner. such a collaborative culture increases the chances of success in school reform and school improvement programs. since educational faculty need to constantly improve their skills and knowledge, an environment that supports professional development and continuing education encourages faculty professionalism. safety, discipline, and appropriate student conduct are all important to support faculty authority and provide a safe work environment (search institute, 2006). the staff survey consisted of 86 questions in three sections (demographics, facility’s learning climate, and support for learning) that took about 25 minutes to complete. after completing the demographics section, respondents were asked to indicate how much they agreed or disagreed with the list of statements describing the facility’s learning climate and support for learning on a five-point scale: 1=strongly disagreed, 2=disagreed, 3=neither agreed nor disagreed/neutral, 4=agreed, or 5=strongly agreed. the use of such a five-point scale has been supported in the literature as there seems to be little improvement in reliability with more than 5 scale points (lissitz & green, 1975). most items were worded in a positive direction, however, four items in the facility’s learning climate section and two items in the support for learning section were worded in a negative direction. reverse directions attempt to prevent response sets in order to decrease response bias. sample items from this measure include: “this school provides a caring and supportive environment for me” (positive direction) and “instructional equipment is inadequate” (negative direction). the reading level of the instrument was approximately sixth grade. internal consistency for the cgpl averaged .60 or higher and 7 of 11 had alphas that were .70 or higher. the testretest reliability averaged .74 for the total asset categories and context areas (search institute, 2008), and samplespecific reliability was .892. procedure all juvenile center educational faculty in this cross-sectional study voluntarily completed all three parts of the survey instrument at their faculty meeting during the first week of june 2009. in order to maintain confidentiality, surveys were collected at the end of the meeting by a secretarial staff member and placed into a large clasp envelope, sealed, and returned to the researchers. analysis descriptive statistics (percentages and mean scores) were computed for the frequency that each of the statements applied to the respondents. based on pilot testing, final revision, and field testing over four years, a 5point likert scale was chosen by search institute to illustrate the proportion of respondents who indicated how much they agreed or disagreed with the list of statements describing the facility’s learning climate and support for learning. the responses were scored: 1=strongly disagreed, 2=disagreed, 3=neither agreed nor disagreed/neutral, 4=agreed, or 5=strongly agreed (search institute, 2006). the scores for each question were added and then divided by the number of scores to obtain the mean or balance point in the distribution. the following facility’s learning climate questions were reverse-scored when computing mean scores for all of the statements: “students do not care about learning”, “there is a lot of being mean among students”, “i don’t have as much enthusiasm as i used to”, and “most students do as little as they have to”. the following support for learning questions were reversescored when computing mean scores for all of the statements: “extracurricular programs are inadequate”, and “instructional equipment is inadequate”. categories were collapsed and recoded into either ‘strongly agree/agree’ or ‘neither strongly agree nor agree’ with ‘neutrals’ considered as ‘neither strongly agree nor agree’. the chi square statistic was then used to determine differences in the proportion of respondents who indicated how much they ‘agreed’ or ‘disagreed’ with the list of statements by demographic category; examining the relationship between the two variables. to determine if those who reported low scores in one of the statements with the lowest means also reported low scores in the others, and if those who reported high scores in one of the statements with the highest means also reported high scores in the others; a pearson correlation coefficient with a bonferonni correction was also computed. the pearson product-moment correlation coefficient evaluated the extent of the linear relationship between two or more variables since the quantitative variables were normally distributed and the scores for one case were independent from the scores for other cases. results demographics all respondents reported their race as white (23/23, 100%), almost all respondents reported they were non-administrative educational faculty (22/23, 96%), one noted they were administrative educational faculty (1/23, 4.3%) and most described themselves as female (17/23, 74%), under 40 years of age (14/23, 61%), working in this career role for less than five years (13/23, 57%), and working at this facility for less than five years (14/23, 61%). perceptions of facility’s learning climate: positive perceptions school safety/discipline. respondent perceptions of facility learning climate including relationships, organizational attributes, and personal development are illustrated in table 1. the majority of respondents reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that “they felt safe in the school building (21/23, 91%) and on school grounds” (22/23. 96%), “students were rarely bullied at this school” (18/23, 78%), “staff would stop bullying if they did see it” (19/23, 83%), and that “the school provided a caring and supportive 5 table 1 perceptions of learning climate (n= 23) safety/discipline question sd d n a sa nr n% n% n% n% n% n% feel safe in school building 0/0.0 1/4.3 1/4.3 10/43.5 11/47.8 0/0.0 feel safe on school grounds 0/0.0 0/0.0 1/4.3 13/56.5 9/39.1 0/0.0 staff stop it if they see student 0/0.0 1/4.3 1/4.3 11/47.8 8/34.8 2/8.7 being bullied rarely students get picked on or bullied 0/0.0 1/4.3 3/13.0 11/47.8 7/30.4 1/4.3 school provides caring and supportive environment 0/0.0 1/4.3 3/13.0 12/52.2 7/30.4 0/0.0 rules enforced fairly at school 0/0.0 0/0.0 2/8.7 17/73.9 3/13.0 1/4.3 admin. enforces discipline fairly 0/0.0 2/8.7 2/8.7 14/60.9 4/17.4 1/4.3 if students break a rule, they are disciplined 0/0.0 0/0.0 1/4.3 16/69.6 6/26.1 0/0.0 ______________________________________________________________________________ leadership/collegiality question sd d n a sa nr n% n% n% n% n% n% atmosphere of collegiality 0/0.0 1/4.3 7/30.4 8/34.8 7/30.4 0/0.0 staff care about students 0/0.0 0/0.0 2/8.7 12/52.2 9/39.1 0/0.0 staff work together to improve instruction 0/0.0 0/0.0 3/13.0 14/60.9 6/26.1 0/0.0 adm. treats collaborative work as priority 0/0.0 2/8.7 5/21.7 11/47.8 4/17.4 1/4.3 school staff take academics 0/0.0 2/8.7 1/4.3 16/69.6 4/17.4 0/0.0 seriously co-workers pleasure to work with 0/0.0 0/0.0 0/0.0 16/69.6 7/30.4 0/0.0 principal trusts judgment of staff 0/0.0 0/0.0 5/21.7 12/52.2 6/26.1 0/0.0 admin. and staff work to make school function 0/0.0 2/8.7 2/8.7 10/43.5 8/34.8 1/4.3 i feel accepted and respected as a colleague 0/0.0 0/0.0 2/8.7 17/73.9 3/13.0 1/4.3 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 6 my work has positive effect on my life 0/0.0 0/0.0 3/13.0 11/47.8 8/34.8 1/4.3 my work gives me a feeling of accomplishment 0/0.0 1/4.3 1/4.3 14/60.9 6/26.1 1/4.3 this school inspires my best job performance 0/0.0 1/4.3 5/21.7 16/69.6 1/4.3 0/0.0 _________________________________________________________________________________ student conduct/motivation question sd d n a sa nr n% n% n% n% n% n% students treat each other with respect 0/0.0 4/17.4 5/21.7 13/56.5 0/0.0 1/4.3 students can work without being distracted 0/0.0 6/26.1 7/30.4 9/39.1 0/0.0 1/4.3 students are helpful and cooperative 0/0.0 3/13.0 5/23.7 13/56.5 1/4.3 1/4.3 most students try hard to get best grades 0/0.0 8/34.8 8/34.8 6/26.1 0/0.0 1/4.3 teachers are rarely interrupted by students 0/0.0 5/21.7 8/34.8 10/43.5 0/0.0 0/0.0 most students are eager to learn as much as they can 0/0.0 7/30.4 11/47.8 5/21.7 0/0.0 0/0.0 most students put forth good effort in school work 0/0.0 4/17.4 9/39.1 10/43.5 0/0.0 0/0.0 _________________________________________________________________________________ teacher efficacy/professional development question sd d n a sa nr n% n% n% n% n% n% staff help make decisions affecting school 0/0.0 2/8.7 9/39.1 9/39.1 3/13.0 0/0.0 students help set school policies 6/26.1 4/17.4 11/47.8 2/8.7 0/0.0 0/0.0 students asked their opinions before decisions made 1/4.3 7/30.4 13/56.5 1/4.3 0/0.0 1/4.3 students are free to make suggestions to admin. 0/0.0 1/4.3 9/39.1 10/43.5 3/13.0 0/0.0 most parents take an active part in child’s learning 3/13.0 9/39.1 9/39.1 2/8.7 0/0.0 0/0.0 most parents are a genuine partner in child’s learning 2/8.7 9/39.1 9/39.1 3/13.0 0/0.0 0/0.0 ___________________________________________________________________________________ 7 environment” (19/23, 83%). with regard to rules and discipline, the majority of respondents reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that “rules were enforced fairly” (20/23, 87%), “disciplinary procedures were fair” (20/23, 87%), and “if students broke a rule, they were disciplined” (22/23, 96%). school leadership/collegiality. the majority of respondents also reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that staff worked well together to improve instruction” (20/23, 87%), “staff took academics seriously” (20/23, 87%), and “co-workers were a pleasure to work with” (23/23, 100%). most (15/23, 65%) reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that “the administration treated collaborative work as a priority”, that “the principal trusted staff judgment” (18/23, 78%), and that “the administration and staff worked together to make the school function” (18/23, 78%). the majority of respondents reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that “staff really cared about the students” (21/23, 91%), “they felt accepted and respected as a colleague” (20/23, 87%), “their work had a positive effect on their lives” (19/23, 83%), “their work gave them a feeling of accomplishment” (20/23, 87%), and “they looked forward to work on most days” (23/23, 100%). most reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that “there was an atmosphere of collegiality at the school” (15/23, 65%), and most (16/23, 70%) reported ‘agree’ to the statement that “this school inspired their best job performance”. perceptions of facility learning climate: negative perceptions student conduct/motivation. only a little over half (13/23, 57%), however, reported ‘agree’ to the statement that “students treated each other with respect”, only about 40% (9/23) reported ‘agree’ to the statement that “students could work without being distracted”, and a little over 40% (10/23) reported ‘agree’ to the statement that “teachers were rarely interrupted by students”. female respondents were significantly more likely than male respondents to report ‘neither strongly agree nor agree’’ to the statements that “most students were helpful and cooperative with the staff” (x 2 =6.688, df=2, p<.05) and that “teachers were rarely interrupted by the students” (x 2 =5.247, df=2, p<.05). only 22% (5/23) reported ‘agree’ that “most students were eager to learn as much as they could”, only 26% (6/23) reported ‘agree’ that “most students tried hard to get the best grades”, and only 44% (10/23) reported ‘agree’ that “most students put forth good effort in school work”. female respondents were significantly (x 2 =6.330, df=2, p<.05) more likely than male respondents to report ‘strongly agree/agree’ that “most students were helpful and cooperative with the staff”. shared decision-making. about 40% (9/23) reported ‘agree’, and about 40% reported ‘neither agree nor disagree’, however, to the statement that “staff helped make decisions affecting the facility”. only 9% (2/23) reported ‘agree’ to the statement that “students helped set school priorities”, only 4% (1/23) reported ‘agree’ that “students were asked their opinions before key school decisions were made”, and a little less than half (10/23, 44%) reported ‘agree’ that “students were free to make suggestions to the administrators”. in addition, only 9% (2/23) and 13% (3/23), respectively, reported ‘agree’ that “most parents took an active part in their child’s learning” and that “most parents were genuine partners in their child’s learning”. facility learning climate: correlations among statements with the highest means correlation coefficients were computed among the statements with the highest mean scores in the learning climate section: “on most days, i looked forward to work” (m=4.43, sd=.507), followed by “there were adults at this school whom students can trust (m=4.43, sd=.590), “most of my co-workers were a pleasure to work with” (m=4.30, sd=.470), “staff really cared about students” (m=4.30, sd=.635), “i felt safe on the school grounds (m=4.35, sd=.573), and “i felt safe inside the school building” (m=4.35, sd=.775). using the bonferonni approach to control for type i error across the correlations, a p value of less than .05 was specified for significance. the results presented in table 2 indicate that five of the correlations were statistically significant. in general, those respondents reporting high scores for the statement that “staff really cared about students at this school” would also tend to report high scores for “felt safe in the school building”, “co-workers were a pleasure to work with”, and that “there were adults at the school that students could trust”. those who reported high scores for “felt safe in the school building” also tended to report high scores for “felt safe on school grounds”, and those who reported high scores for “co-workers were a pleasure to work with” also tended to report high scores for “ i look forward to my work on most days”. perceptions of support for learning: positive perceptions teacher efficacy. only those who identified themselves as full-time educational faculty were asked to indicate how much they agreed or disagreed with the next set of statements concerning support for learning. respondent perceptions are illustrated in table 3. the majority of respondents reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that they “believed they could make a difference in student achievement” (18/21, 86%), that “they made a positive difference in students’ lives” (16/21, 76%), and that “they could change their teaching approach” (16/21, 76%) or “change their teaching methods (16/21, 76%) for those not doing well in their class”. in addition, the majority reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that “staff played a key role in in-services” (16/21, 76%) and that “in-services meet staff needs” (15/21, 71%); as well as reported “adequate resources” (16/21, 76%) such as “adequate copying services” (17/21, 81%), “adequate computers” (17/21, 81%), and “adequate classroom supplies” (16/21, 76%). 8 table 2 correlations among the statements with the highest mean scores: learning climate (n=23) ________________________________________________________________________ staff care feel safe co-workers feel safe adults like work students building pleasure grounds kids trust most days ______________________________________________________________________________________ staff care students .42* .48* .32 .48* .28 feel safe building .07 .74* .05 .06 co-workers pleasure .09 -.007 .76** feel safe grounds -.06 .08 adults kids trust .09 like work most days . ______________________________________________________________________________________ *p<.05 **p<.01 educational faculty perceptions of the learning climate 9 table 3 perceptions of support for learning (n= 21) question sd d n a sa nr n% n% n% n% n% n% inadequate extracurricular programs at school 4/19.0 11/52.4 2/9.5 1/4.8 2/9.5 1/4.8 school or dept. library includes adequate 0/0.0 5/23.8 7/33.3 7/33.3 1/4.8 1/4.8 selection of books and periodicals i believe i can make a difference 0/0.0 0/0.0 2/9.5 12/57.1 6/28.6 1/4.8 staff play a key role in determining content 0/0.0 1/4.8 3/14.3 13/61.9 3/14.3 1/4.8 of in-service programs adequate copying equipment and services are 0/0.0 0/0.0 3/14.3 11/52.4 6/28.6 1/4.8 available to staff most of the in-service programs deal with issues 0/0.0 0/0.0 5/23.8 10/47.6 5/23.8 1/4.8 specific to the needs of school’s students/staff instructional equipment is not adequate for my 3/14.3 10/47.6 5/23.8 1/4.8 1/4.8 1/4.8 purposes staff encouraged to be innovative 0/0.0 2/9.5 5/23.8 10/47.6 3/14.3 1/4.8 counseling program is a strength 0/0.0 1/4.8 4/19.0 8/38.1 7/33.3 1/4.8 making a positive difference in the lives of 0/0.0 0/0.0 4/19.0 12/57.1 4/19.0 1/4.8 students adequate opportunities to work with faculty 1/4.8 0/0.0 6/28.6 9/42.9 4/19.0 1/4.8 members of other depts./grade levels resources are adequate for my purposes 0/0.0 1/4.8 3/14.3 13/61.9 3/14.3 1/4.8 staff development programs permit me to 0/0.0 1/4.8 7/33.3 7/33.3 5/23.8 1/4.8 acquire important knowledge and skills availability of computers is adequate 0/0.0 2/9.5 1/4.8 11/52.4 6/28.6 1/4.8 when a student has trouble learning, 0/0.0 0/0.0 4/19.0 13/61.9 3/14.3 1/4.8 i try a new strategy classroom supplies are adequate 0/0.0 0/0.0 4/19.0 14/66.7 2/9.5 1/4.8 in school, encouraged to experiment with 0/0.0 0/0.0 6/28.6 13/61.9 1/4.8 1/4.8 teaching methods if some students in class are not doing well, 0/0.0 0/0.0 4/19.0 12/57.1 4/19.0 1/4.8 i believe i should change teaching approach by trying a different teaching method, can 0/0.0 0/0.0 4/19.0 12/57.1 4/19.0 1/4.8 significantly affect a student’s achievement __________________________________________________________________________________________ current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 10 perceptions of support for learning: negative perceptions professional development. less than half, though, reported ‘agree’ to the statements that “staff were encouraged to be innovative” (10/21, 48%) and that “there were adequate opportunities for working with faculty from other departments/grades in the school” (9/21, 43%). onethird (7/21) of respondents reported ‘agree’ and one-third (7/21) reported ‘neither agree nor disagree’, however, that “in-services permitted them to acquire important skills”. support for learning: correlations among statements with the highest means correlation coefficients were computed among the statements with the highest means: “i believe i can make a difference in student achievement” (m=4.20, sd=.616), followed by “adequate copying services” (m=4.15, sd=.671), “the counseling program is strong” (m=4.05, sd=.887), “adequate availability of computers” (m=4.05, sd=.887), “if some students in my class are not doing well, i believe i should change my teaching approach” (m=4.00, sd=.649), and “by trying a different teaching method, i can significantly affect student achievement” (m=4.00, sd=.649). using the bonferonni approach to control for type i error across the correlations, a p value of less than .05 was specified for significance. the results presented in table 4 indicate that eight of the correlations were statistically significant. in general, those respondents reporting high scores for “believe i make a difference in student achievement” also tend to report high scores in “the counseling program is strong”, and “by changing my teaching methods, i can affect student achievement”. those who reported high scores in “adequate copying services” also tended to report high scores for “adequate in-services”. in addition, those who reported high scores for “the counseling program is strong” and “adequate computers” also tended to report high scores for “if some students in my class are not doing well, i believe i should change my teaching approach” and “by trying a different teaching method, i can significantly affect student achievement”. lastly, those who reported high scores in “if some students in my class are not doing well, i believe i should change my teaching approach” also tended to report high scores for “by trying a different teaching method, i can significantly affect student achievement”. correlation coefficients were also computed among the statements with the lowest means (table 5): “the instructional equipment was not adequate” (m=2.35, sd= .988), “extracurricular programs were inadequate to met student needs” (m=2.30, sd=1.174), “library selection is adequate” (m=3.20, sd=.894), “staff were encouraged to be innovative” (m=3.70, sd=.865), “adequate opportunities to work with other faculty” (m=3.75, sd=.967), and ‘i’m encouraged to experiment with my teaching methods” (m=3.75, sd=.550). those who reported low scores on “staff were encouraged to be innovative” also tended to report low scores on “adequate opportunities to work with faculty from other departments/grades”, and those who reported low scores on “adequate opportunities to work with faculty from other departments/grades” also tended to report low scores on “encouraged to experiment with my teaching methods”. table 4 correlations among the statements with the highest mean scores: support for learning (n=21) ________________________________________________________________________ make diff adq adq cns adq change change copy in-serv strong comp approach methods _____________________________________________________________________________________ make diff -.08 .26 .66** -.17 .40 .53* adq copy .65* .25 .25 .36 .12 adq in-service .33 .25 .34 .22 cns strong .07 .55* .55* adq computers .46* .55* change teaching approach .75* change teaching methods ____________________________________________________________________________________ *p<.05 educational faculty perceptions of the learning climate 11 table 5 correlations among the statements with the lowest mean scores: support for learning (n=21) ________________________________________________________________________ inadq adq inadq encourage work w/other experiment ex-cur library equip innovate diff depts. teach methods _____________________________________________________________________________________ inadq extra-curr -.01 .22 -.06 -.02 .04 adq library .39 .15 .06 .32 inadq instruct equip -.18 -.07 .17 encouraged innovative .54* .28 work w/others .47* experiment methods ______________________________________________________________________________________ *p<.05 discussion learning climate reflects the quality of the school experience (national school climate center, 2010). in this case, the climate reflected the overall work environment for the educational faculty in a juvenile justice setting. those working in the juvenile justice setting have viewed many school learning climate variables as barriers to quality education, especially poor administrative leadership, lack of safety and discipline, poor student conduct, and lack of shared decision-making (houchins et al., 2009). most respondents in this study, however, reported generally positive perceptions of safety and discipline (generally feel safe, perceive rules are fair, and view environment as supportive), leadership and collegiality (feel they work as teams, administration and faculty collaborate), and efficacy (feel confident in their teaching ability). on the other hand, most respondents reported negative perceptions of their professional development (in-service) opportunities, student conduct and motivation (disrespectful students, low effort from students), as well as shared decision-making (involvement in school-wide decisions). educational faculty perceptions related to a positive facility learning climate school safety/discipline. school safety and discipline were perceived to be associated with a positive school learning climate by the respondents. the majority of respondents from a detention facility in rural northeast missouri who participated in a learning climate survey seemed to agree that the learning climate for staff and students was generally physically safe and emotionally supportive, and that rules were adequately enforced. policies that are consistently enforced improve discipline and safety at a school (council for exceptional children, 2008). a caring, supportive school environment, therefore, was illustrated by the high mean scores reported school safety and discipline. school leadership/collegiality. school leadership and staff collegiality were also perceived to be associated with a positive school learning climate by the respondents. most respondents seemed to agree that relationships between faculty and administration were generally collegial. school leadership, teacher attitudes, and collegiality have all been associated in the literature with improved faculty work performance (search 2006) and student academic success (kelly, thornton, & daugherty, 2005). those respondents who reported high scores on school safety also reported high scores on staff collegiality as they may have felt safe enough to move beyond their content area to collaborate across disciplines with other faculty. those who perceived low levels of school leadership, however, also seemed to perceive low levels of collegiality. possibly, lack of strong safety and discipline policies or discipline policies not supported by school leadership would dissuade faculty from working as teaching teams. leadership and administrative-faculty collaboration are key factors in a sound physical and psycho-social environment that leads to a positive learning climate at a school (marx et al., 1998). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 12 educational faculty perceptions related to barriers to a positive facility learning climate student conduct/motivation. poor student conduct and motivation were perceived as barriers to a positive school learning climate by the respondents, similar to attitudes of others working in the detention setting (houchins et al., 2009). there was less agreement that students were respectful of each other; and it seemed that disruptions and interruptions were perceived to affect the learning climate, especially by female respondents. many respondents also did not agree that students put much effort into their class work or really cared about learning. although academics are important, because students in this type of school setting are placed there because of family problems and other problems; academics may not really be their first priority. shared decision-making. most respondents did not perceive a level of involvement and partnership by students or their parents. this agrees with previous studies citing lack of shared decision-making as a barrier to quality education in this setting (houchins et al., 2009). the lowest mean scores were reported as student involvement in setting rules, student behavior when unsupervised, and parents as active partners. additionally, most did not agree that students were involved in school decisions that affected them nor were parents involved as partners in their child’s learning. a positive learning climate requires involvement and cooperation of all parties (marx et al., 1998), even students and their parents. although involvement in all aspects of the school by faculty, students, parents, and community members is optimal, both students and parents in this type of school setting may have other problems that need their primary attention. if it becomes possible, though; it is recommended that faculty afford the students some say in class rules to encourage more ‘ownership’ and bonding with the school. if some rules are perceived as ‘theirs’, students may use positive peer pressure on each other for improved behavior and adherence to rules when not supervised by adults. parents need to be brought into the established school partnership to become more involved in their child’s learning. faculty’s use of any and all means of communication, such as telephone, parent-teacher meetings, and electronic communication could lay the foundation for such a partnership. implications for educational faculty in the juvenile justice setting since supportive policies from the administration improve discipline and safety (council for exceptional children, 2008), strong school administrative leadership truly shapes the learning climate in the facility (kelly et al., 2005). administrators in the juvenile justice setting should create and consistently enforce administrative policies that minimize unsafe circumstances, interruptions, and distractions in order for faculty to work at their optimum level. a structured and disciplined environment leads to reductions in students’ risky behaviors (national center for juvenile justice, 2006) that may lead to improved classroom management by the faculty member. administrators in the juvenile justice setting should also support their faculty and encourage activities that promote collegiality between faculty members if they wish to increase faculty expectations for their students (hoy et al., 2003). those who perceive strong collegiality between faculty members seemed to exhibit higher confidence levels and higher job satisfaction levels (hoy & woolfolk, 1993), both linked to higher student achievement (taylor & tashakkori, 1995). on the other hand, since poor student behaviors and lack of parental involvement are job stressors for juvenile justice staff (houchins et al., 2004) as well as barriers to providing quality instruction to the students (houchins et al., 2009), faculty and administration need to continue to enforce policies fairly and find ways to involve parents as partners. a parents’ group or parent support group could possibly be formed to work more directly with each juvenile justice facility. educational faculty perceptions related to positive support for learning teacher efficacy. teacher efficacy was perceived to be associated with positive support for learning. the majority of respondents seemed to agree that their work was relevant, that they made a positive difference, and that they looked forward to coming to work on most days. the majority of respondents also seemed to agree that they knew that they could use and even modify their teaching strategies and methods to make a positive difference in student achievement and in their students’ lives. the highest mean scores were reported in staff perception of their teaching skills and adequate instructional resources. those who reported this high selfefficacy also tended to agree that they possessed enough instructional resources to meet student needs. those with high self-efficacy, however, may also have viewed any level of instructional resources as adequate as they believe they could successfully teach no matter the amount or type of resources available. the physical learning conditions, such as adequate educational supplies and services, enhance the learning climate (marx et al., 1998). educational faculty perceptions related to barriers to support for learning professional development. lack of professional development opportunities was perceived as a barrier to support for learning. some respondents did not seem to perceive adequate support for innovative teaching or to work across disciplines or departments. the lowest mean score was reported for opportunities to work with faculty from other grades/departments. since the teachers seemed confident in their teaching skills, reported good relationships with their colleagues, and seemed quite satisfied with the physical resources available; more administrative support could be given to cross-discipline work such as thematic units, team-teaching, or newer educational faculty perceptions of the learning climate 13 techniques that allow teachers to learn from each other. inservices can be focused on learning the skills to implement the latest strategies in this area. implications for educational faculty in the juvenile justice setting in this study and in previous research in the juvenile justice setting (houchins et al., 2004), teaching faculty reported high self-efficacy and high job satisfaction. a healthy school learning climate positively impacts teaching efficacy (hoy & woolfolk, 1993) and is also an important predictor of teacher job satisfaction (taylor & tashakkori, 1995). if a teacher perceives high job satisfaction and high self-efficacy, they feel more confident that they can impact student achievement (houchins et al., 2004). faculty, though, need access to professional development activities, instructional in-services, and skillbuilding conferences to increase confidence in using the most appropriate teaching strategies. learning and applying the latest innovations in such techniques as crossdisciplinary teaching will possibly improve teachers’ selfefficacy. professional development activities that focus on improving interactions and relationships between teachers and academic disciplines have been demonstrated to improve school learning climate (price, 2008 ). in addition, learning climate assessments have been recommended for traditional schools as a supplement to other types of assessments in order to improve the quality of education (cohen et al., 2009). since juvenile justice reform initiatives also call for evidence-based programs to address concerns (mendel, 2007; models for change, n.d.), a learning climate assessment based on the 40 developmental assets would allow for program interventions based on “asset-building” strategies that have demonstrated effectiveness (search institute 2006; search institute, 2008). once the assessments have been concluded, schools would plan and implement change strategies and then evaluate those interventions (tubbs & garner, 2008). innovative interventions based on the results a learning climate assessment should thrive in an environment where faculty members feel they can succeed and make a difference. although the current study did include all members of the educational faculty population of this school facility, the small number of respondents in a specific facility makes it difficult to generalize results to other juvenile justice residential facilities. this study suggests, though, that by describing perceptions of their school’s learning climate; school staff and administration can identify strengths and work to improve upon weaknesses. since it is recommended that staff and students work cooperatively to improve learning climate, an avenue for further research is to survey the students’ perceptions of the learning climate at the school; noting if their identified strengths and weaknesses were similar to the staff’s descriptions. all in all, enhancing the school’s physical and psychosocial surroundings leads to a healthier school environment for staff and students. references brand, s., felner, r., seitsinger, a., burns, a., & bolton, n. 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(1998). health is academic: a guide to coordinated school health programs. new york, ny: teachers college press. mcevoy, a. (2000). antisocial behavior, academic failure, and school climate. journal of emotional and behavioral disorders, 8(3), 130-140. meeks, l., heit, p., & page, r. (2003). comprehensive school health education. new york, ny: mcgraw hill. national center for juvenile justice. (2006). state juvenile justice profiles. retrieved april 10, 2008 from: http://www.ncjj.org/stateprofiles/profiles/mo06.as p price, b. (2008). teacher perceptions of the impact of professional development and teacher-student relationships on school climate. dissertation abstracts international section a: humanities and social sciences, 69(6-a), 2078. search institute. (2008). survey information cgpl. retrieved april 10, 2008 from: http://www.searchinstitute.org/content/creating-great-place-learn search institute. (2006).search institute’s creating a great place to learn survey: a survey of school climate technical manual. retrieved october 1, 2010 from: http://www.searchinstitute.org/system/files/school+climate-tech+manual.pdf seashore l., & wahlstrom, k. (2011). principals as cultural leaders. phi delta kappan, 92(5), 52-56. taylor, d., & tashakkori, a. (1995). decision participation and school climate as predictors of job satisfaction and teachers’ sense of efficacy. journal of experimental education, 63(3), 217230. way, n., reddy, r., & rhodes, j. (2007). students’ perceptions of school climate during the middle school years: associations with trajectories of psychological and behavioral adjustment. american journal of community psychology, 40(3/4), 194-213. article title goes here 15 article citation cox, c.c., visker, j.d., & hartman, a. (2011). educational faculty perceptions of the learning climate in a juvenile justice residential facility. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/558 author notes carolyn c. cox, phd, mches truman state university 2108 pershing building, kirksville, mo 63501 ccox@truman.edu carolyn c. cox is a professor of health science at truman state university in kirksville, mo. she teaches courses in community and school health education. her research interests focus on community-based participatory research in the areas of school and worksite health promotion. joseph d. visker, phd, ches truman state university 2108 pershing building, kirksville, mo 63501 jvisker@truman.edu joseph d. visker is an assistant professor of health science at truman state university in kirksville, mo. he teaches courses in research methods and environmental health. his research interests are in human sexuality and youth sexual health. ashley hartman truman state university 2108 pershing building, kirksville, mo 63501 abh1764@truman.edu ashley hartman is an undergraduate student in health science at truman state university, and her research interests include school health, youth health, and health of special populations. current issues in education vol. 14 no.2 16 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 2 may 18, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss ayfer gokalp younsu kim seong hee kim angeles maldonado carol masser john michael tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers latino and whit_final volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x latino and white students’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring: do gender and ethnicity matter? rubén garza, phd texas state university – san marcos martha n. ovando, phd university of texas at austin claire e. seymour texas state university – san marcos citation garza, r., ovando, m.n., & seymour, c.e. (2010). latino and white students’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring: do gender and ethnicity matter? current issues in education, 13(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: rubén garza, phd affiliation: texas state university – san marcos address: 601 university drive, san marcos, tx, 78666 email: rubengarza@txstate.edu biographical information: rubén garza is an assistant professor of curriculum & instruction and secondary undergraduate coordinator at texas state university – san marcos. his research efforts focus on latino education, culturally responsive teaching, mentoring beginning teachers and adolescents, and feedback to improve teachers’ performance. author: martha n. ovando, phd affiliation: university of texas at austin email: movando@mail.utexas.edu biographical information: martha n. ovando is professor and graduate advisor at the university of texas at austin. her research interests focus on teacher leadership, instructional leadership, constructive feedback to improve teachers’ instructional performance, and teacher evaluation and development. author: claire e. seymour affiliation: texas state university – san marcos email: claireseymour@txstate.edu biographical information: claire e. seymour is a graduate student in the curriculum studies and special education program at texas state university – san marcos. her research efforts focus on the integration of arts education curriculum and communication design for special education, at-risk, and minority students. latino and white students’ perceptions 3 although caring has been identified as an important attribute of quality teaching (rodriguez, 2008; burrell & ovando, 2008), student perceptions of teachers’ behaviors that convey a caring attitude tend to vary, according to students’ experiences and expectations. for instance, a study of teaching practices in segregated and desegregated schools (burrell & ovando, 2008) found that teachers exhibited caring regardless of the context, but their actual display of caring varied. the study revealed that when teachers moved from one context to the other, “they needed to change how they demonstrated caring but not their philosophy of care itself” (2008, p. 279). as the context may require that teachers modify their approach to caring, students’ perceptions may also vary depending on their own needs, values, and expectations. when there is a difference between teachers’ own personal lens or practice and their students’ perspectives, classroom interactions may result in un-intended consequences for the students. thus, it is imperative to closely examine students’ perceptions of caring. previous research on caring suggests that students tend to value teacher behaviors that demonstrate caring. for instance, some (alder, 2002; garza, 2007; hayes, ryan, & zseller, 1994; nelson & bauch, 1997; nelson, lott, & glenn, 1997; wentzel, 1997) have suggested that empathic listening is a form of caring. students also agree that a caring teacher is one who provides encouragement and cultivates a climate of trust by treating students with respect (garza, 2009; nelsen, lott, & glenn, 1997). further, “it is critical to remember that when you treat students with respect, they tend to appreciate and like you” (boynton & boynton, 2005, p. 6). as ridnouer (2006) suggests, “putting your care for your student first creates a learning community that inspires them to be their best selves, both in school and out in the world” (p. 3).therefore, conveying a positive tone through teacher disposition is an approach to convey caring for current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 4 students, but more importantly, to preserve student dignity (alder, 2002; garza, 2009; nelsen, lott, & glenn, 1997; valverde, 2006). on the other hand, behaviors that may impede meaningful relationships (pang, 2005; pizarro, 2005) may be counterproductive to student success. furthermore, negative incidents can result in instructional disengagement because “students know who they can and can’t learn from” (ridnouer, 2006, p. 4). compounding the issue of unsuccessful teacher-student interactions, students who lack self-esteem generally struggle academically and lack appropriate social skills in the school environment. in addition, factors such as “academic deficits, limited intellectual ability, an unhealthy home environment, language processing, perceptual abilities, or social status” (pierangelo & giuliani, 2000, p. 2-9) may also exacerbate struggling students’ educational experiences. therefore, knowing how to improve educational experiences and classroom interactions between teacher and student through the construct of caring, may be one way to provide better learning experiences for students, especially those who are often marginalized, disenfranchised, and disconnected from the learning environment. this paper reports on the findings from a study conducted to measure latino and white high school students’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring and the influence of students’ gender and ethnicity on those perceptions. perspectives on caring while researchers (blustein, 1991; mayeroff, 1971; noddings, 1984; noddings, 2005) agree that the ethic of caring involves a relationship between someone who cares for another, not all agree on a single definition of caring. according to noddings (1984; 2005), caring is reciprocal. the person cared for must acknowledge the act of being cared for in order to form a relationship. unlike noddings (2005) who believes caring must be reciprocal in nature, mayeroff latino and white students’ perceptions 5 (1971) asserts that caring is not always a mutual act. similarly, bluestein (1991) recognizes that a relationship consists of certain roles that may not include reciprocal behaviors. for instance, a teacher-student relationship can be described in terms of a role where the teacher is expected to care for students as part of his or her professional job responsibility. still, deiro (2003) contends that “caring in and of itself, implies a relationship, but appropriate caring in teacher-student relationships is demonstrated differently from caring in other types of relationships” (p. 60). a caring ethic “requires commitment and the continual expression of caring behaviors develops the trusting relationships in which growth can occur” (chaskin & rauner, 1995, p. 674). what makes this endeavor challenging is the interpretation of caring. caring is viewed as a reciprocal interaction (noddings, 1984), behavior that is influenced by context and perspective (bluestein, 1991); a synergetic relationship between someone who cares for another but context dictates whether or not caring is reciprocal (mayeroff, 1971). whereas the construct of caring has been delineated, studies have identified behaviors that demonstrate caring. for example, nelson and bauch (1997) interviewed 88 africanamerican high school seniors and reported that teachers, who set high expectations, gave verbal encouragement, orchestrated demanding learning tasks, provided assistance, and built relationships with students, were perceived as teacher behaviors that convey caring. a study (garrett, barr, & forsbach-rothman, 2007) conducted in a large diverse urban setting, asked 24 african-american, 13 white, and 23 latino sixth grade students, and 22 african-american, 27 white, and 46 latino ninth grade students to comment on how teachers demonstrated care. their findings suggested that latino and african american students perceived providing academic support as critical in demonstrating care, more so than white students. even though teacher personality and taking a personal interest in students were identified as other aspects of current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 6 demonstrating care, white students mentioned them more often than latino and africanamerican students did. in summary, their findings suggested ethnicity did not significantly influence student’s perceptions of caring behaviors. previous research has focused on student perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring (garrett, barr, & forsbach-rothman, 2007; garza, 2007; garza, 2009), student perceptions of the learning environment (byrne, hattie, & fraser, 1986), the link between caring and motivation (wentzel, 1997), teacher conceptions of caring (weinstein, 1998), school climate (slaughter-defoe & carlson, 1996), sense of belonging (goodenow, 1993), and teacher-student relationships (osterman & freese, 2000), to name a few. “in caring classrooms where all children are represented,” (antón-oldenburg, 2000, p. 46) students are more apt to be actively engaged in their education, “especially for culturally diverse students who may be at risk of failing or who may be disengaged from schooling” (perez, 2000). gender and ethnicity as influential factors while administrators, school personnel, and classroom educators cope with mounting pressures to meet district, state and national standards, the uniqueness of diverse classrooms cannot be ignored, especially gender as an influential factor in the educational environment. “while there have been a large number of explanations of the origins of gender differences in educational achievement, few studies have examined the extent to which these differences are mediated by biological, sociocultural or school factors” (gibb, fergusson, & horwood, 2008, p. 65). according to patchen (2006), “gender studies, although varied, tend to swing from the acutely personal (how one perceives of oneself) to the obtusely general (how the force of a masculine or feminine nature determines one’s identity or role)” (p. 2056.) however, past research in education has examined gender differences with regard to achievement (clark, lee, latino and white students’ perceptions 7 goodman, & yacco, 2008; gibb, fergusson, & horwood, 2008; mulholland, hansen, & kaminski, 2004; robinson & gillibrand, 2004). some studies have examined the influence of gender on the interpersonal behavior between teacher and student (fisher, fraser, & rickards, 1997; levy, den brock, wubbels, & breckelmans, 2003), classroom participation (patchen, 2006), teacher-student relationships (koepke & harkins, 2008), course-taking (crosnoe, riegelcrumb, & muller, 2007; kloosterman, tassell, ponniah, & essex, 2008; riegle-crumb, farkas, & muller, 2006), school-related attitudes (van de gaer, pustjens, van damme, & de munter, 2006) and motivation and achievement (marsh, martin, & cheng, 2008; sokal & katz, 2008). still, other studies have examined students’ perceptions with regards to teachers’ instructional communication behaviors (mottet et al., 2008), teachers’ interpersonal behavior (den brock, brekelmans, wubbels, 2004), power relationships in the classroom (cothron & ennis, 1997), use of computers (johnson, 2006), and school experiences (pomeroy, 1999). in addition to gender, other studies have documented how ethnicity and gender may influence high school students’ perceptions of teacher caring. garza (2007) examined 49 latino and 44 white high school students’ perceptions of teacher caring. the students were asked to identify ways teachers cared for them. the results suggested five dominant themes that included the following: (a) provide scaffolding during a teaching episode, (b) reflect a kind disposition through actions, (c) are always available to the student, (d) show a personal interest in the student’s well being inside and outside the classroom, (e) and provide affective academic support in the classroom setting. both ethnic groups valued the same five themes but ranking in order of importance for each of the specific behaviors was different. ding and hall (2007) used a survey (health behavior of school-aged children) to examine more than 14,000 middle and high school students’ perceptions of teacher caring. the demographic groups included white (70%), african current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 8 american (19%), latino (10%), asian (.05%), native american (.03%), and other (2%). the findings suggested grade, gender, and ethnicity influenced student perceptions of teacher caring. “african american male and female students from all grades reported a high degree of negative school environment and male students of all grades, races, and ethnicities tended to report lower degrees of teacher caring than females” (p. 168). similarly, akos & galassi (2004) examined race and gender as factors that influence student perceptions of “difficulty of transition and connectedness to school” (p. 102). participants included 173 sixth-grade students with 57% white, 20% african american, 9% asian american, 8% latino, 4% multiracial and unspecified 2%. the demographics of the 320 freshman high school students included 76% white, 10% african american, 6% asian american, 3% latino, 2% multiracial, and 2% unspecified. the results suggested that race and gender were factors that influenced student perceptions. while middle school girls felt more connected to school than middle school boys did, this perspective was the opposite in high school. although race was not a significant factor in school connectedness, there was significance in the person who was most helpful in their transition to high school. latino high school students reported the counselors as more helpful during their transition than white students. whereas previous research suggests that students’ perceptions may vary according to their ethnicity and gender, it is also evident that teachers care about their students in both tangible and intangible ways, but the way they actually demonstrate care might vary according to the school context, and student composition (burrell & ovando, 2008). as a result, students may have different perceptions of teacher caring behaviors that align with their personal philosophy. given that “past learning environment studies have shown the importance of perceptions of interpersonal behavior in determining student learning outcomes” (fisher, fraser, & rickards, latino and white students’ perceptions 9 1997. p. 12) we were motivated to explore gender and ethnicity as factors that influence high school adolescents’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring. in addition, “as educators, we all care for our students, but the potential of caring is influenced by our own experiences and espoused pedagogical beliefs. while we may perceive our actions and dispositions as caring” (garza, 2006, p.15) student perspectives may be incongruent with teaching and schooling practices considered the norm. therefore, the purpose of this study was to measure high school students’ perceptions of caring reflected through teacher behavior and the influence of students’ gender and ethnicity on those perceptions. this research is instrumental to those in the educational field who want to improve classroom environments and foster positive learning and social outcomes of all students. methodological considerations while previous studies (byrne, hattie, & fraser, 1986; slaughter-defoe & carlson, 1996; weinstein, 1998; wentzel, 1997) have examined student conceptions of caring, our study further advances research by illuminating high school students’ voices that seem to be limited in the literature. research also suggests that additional studies that focus on diverse students’ perceptions may add information to the understanding of caring as an important component of quality teaching (rodriguez, 2008). in addition, we consider students’ gender and ethnicity as an influential factor that may shape their conceptions of teachers’ caring in a classroom environment. this study advanced the following hypotheses: h1. high school students’ ethnicity influences their perceptions of teacher caring behaviors. h2. high school students’ gender influences their perceptions of teacher caring behaviors. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 10 participants participants included 799 high school students, majority representing lowto-middleincome socioeconomic status, from a large suburban high school in the southern part of the united states. this one high school was selected because it was conducive to obtaining a rich, diverse, and substantive amount of information about the context of study. since the first author is a field-based instructor at the high school where the study was conducted, access to the study site was uncomplicated. although the research site was limited to one school district, the study focused on the adolescents’ perspectives about teacher behaviors that convey caring. in addition, the familiarity with the school faculty and administrators helped to establish credibility for the investigation. this convenience coupled with the high school principal’s suggestion to survey all students, helped to facilitate the study. purposeful and convenience sampling (creswell, 2003; creswell, 2007; gall, borg, & gall, 1996) were used to identify the participants. this means that the inquirer “purposefully selects individual participants that will best help the researcher understand the problem and research question” (creswell, 2003, p. 185). although the total number of students surveyed included various ethnic groups, representing various ethnic backgrounds, grade levels, and ages, we focus only on latino (349) and white (450) high school students in this study. this investigation was part of a larger study. procedures in order to collect the robust data efficiently, we decided to ask students to complete a survey scan form during their english class. this meant that the english teachers would be trained in data collection procedures for our study. the author and trained research assistants (high school english teachers) administered the 36 item likert survey instrument to high school students during their english classes. the participants were given a packet that included a scan latino and white students’ perceptions 11 form and the scale with directions that explained the study’s purpose, provided an example of how to respond to each item, and provided the labels for the likert scale. the research assistants adhered to a written script to explain the instructions to the students. after reading the directions aloud and explaining how to fill in the scan form, used to collect demographic information and item responses, the participants were asked to complete the scale. students were expected to rate the statements about caring using a 4 point likert scale with 1=not important and 4=very important. the perceptions of teacher caring (ptc) took about 10-15 minutes to complete and the students were thanked for participating. upon completion of the scale, the scan forms were collected and scanned. the resulting raw data file was converted to spss and sas data files. measures the ptc was developed by the author and reported in a previous paper (garza, ryser, & lee, submitted manuscript). the scale was developed in two primary phases. the first phase involved qualitatively identifying teacher behaviors that were thematically categorized. an instrument consisting of 42 items was then developed during the second phase. to reduce the number of items on the ptc and to assure the instrument had internal consistency, we conducted an item analysis. based on the results of the item analysis and a subsequent content analysis, the scale was reduced from 42 items to 36 items. all but one of the discrimination coefficients of the remaining items were moderate to high ranging from .27 to .73. the exception had a discrimination coefficient of .27. while this is low, the item was important qualitatively and was retained in the scale. cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used to determine the internal consistency of the scale and was .94 for all students, .92 for the latino students, and .94 for the white students. an exploratory factor analysis using principal axis factoring was also conducted to provide evidence of the instrument’s validity. we extracted factors based on two considerations. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 12 first, we identified how many factors had eigenvalues greater than one. second, we examined the scree plot, which is plot of successive eigenvalues. using this method one determines how many eigenvalues lie above the elbow of the plot. in our case, we found that three factors were optimal. these results, coupled with the ptc scores’ high internal consistency and strong factor loadings, supported using the ptc with a large sample of high school students. data analysis and results the purpose of our study was to measure latino and white high school students’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring and whether students’ ethnicity and gender influenced their perceptions.  first, we generated a new random variable using a bernoulli distribution to select approximately 50 percent of the sample to use in an oblique (i.e., correlated factors) exploratory factor analysis using maximum likelihood estimation. we used the results of the exploratory factor analysis and the first author’s previous qualitative analyses to ascertain which items loaded on each latent construct. results of the factor analysis revealed that the three factor model best fit the data. based on the factor loadings we eliminated eight additional items that were not correlated with any of the three factors. the resulting 28 items (appendix a) loaded as follows: factor 1 (validating student worth) consisted of 15 items, factor 2 (individualizing academic success) consisted of 6 items, and factor 3 (fostering positive engagement) consisted of 7 items. an examination of the items by factor suggested that the ptc was comprised of the following three subscales: validating student worth, individualizing academic success, and fostering positive engagement. the factor pattern loadings for factor 1 ranged from .330 to .765, factor 2 ranged from .365 to .871, and factor 3 ranged from .334 to .810.   latino and white students’ perceptions 13 ethnicity influence we created a summative total using the 28 items and compared the latino and white students’ mean total scores using an f-test for all three scales, table 1. table 1 one-way anova – ethnicity subscale and source df ss ms f validating student worth between groups within groups 1 990 .233 56374.00 .233 56.944 .040 individualizing academic success between groups within groups 1 1018 .210 14422.036 .210 14.167 .015 fostering positive engagement between groups within groups 1 1027 1.989 11763.249 1.989 11.454 .174 h1. ethnicity influences high school students’ perceptions of teacher caring behaviors, was not supported. in this study, ethnicity was not an overall significant factor which further supports results by garrett, barr, and forsbach-rothman (2007), who suggested that ethnicity is not an influential factor. while, hayes, ryan, and zseller (1994) indicate gender and ethnicity as factors that influence student perceptions at the item level, our findings do not support other studies (akos & galassi, 2004; ding & hall, 2006) that suggest ethnicity as a significant variable in shaping students’ perceptions. gender influence we next compared the mean total scores for males and females using an f-test for all three subscales. the results were statistically significant and are reported in table 2. the survey current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 14 items describe ways teacher can demonstrate caring for students. females were more likely than males to perceive the survey items as more important in each subscale. since the subscales differed for males and females, this finding is in concert with previous work (akos & galassi, 2004; ding & hall, 2007). in contrast, hayes, ryan and zseller, (1994) reported no statistical significance at the item level. we examined differences in response patterns between them by constructing cross tabulation tables and computing a chi-square statistic for each item. because multiple tests were run on the same data, we used the bonferroni procedure to adjust for type i error and set p<.001 to determine statistical significance. table 2 one-way anova – gender subscale and source df ss ms f validating student worth between groups within groups 1 980 1013.77 54676.00 1013.77 55.79 18.71*** individualizing academic success between groups within groups 1 1009 121.438 14202.065 121.438 14.075 8.63** fostering positive engagement between groups within groups 1 1017 214.764 11382.793 214.764 11.193 19.19*** **p < .01. ***p < .001. statistically significant differences were found among gender groups at the item level for 17 of the 28 items. table 3 shows the percentage of students by gender who rated the item as important or very important. latino and white students’ perceptions 15 table 3 frequency item analysis of perceived caring behaviors by gender survey items male n % female n % 1 encourages me in class. ** 327 66 376 70 2 gives me examples on how to improve. 393 80 434 82 3 is available whenever i need help on something. ** 401 82 465 88 4 prepares me for tests. *** 421 85 497 93 5 responds with a positive tone when i ask for help. *** 399 81 478 89 6 is very nice to me. 350 71 393 74 7 suggests i come to tutorials whenever i fail something. ** 288 58 355 67 8 gives additional time to turn in any kind of work. 334 68 340 64 9 talks to me whenever my grades are poor. ** 362 73 422 79 10 believes in me. *** 332 67 406 76 11 tells me i can achieve my goals. ** 276 56 342 64 12 will stay before or after school to tutor me. *** 338 68 427 80 13 makes learning fun. 415 84 453 86 14 answers my questions with respect. *** 413 84 476 89 15 allows any effort i give. ** 310 63 372 70 16 offers to help whenever convenient for me. 345 70 381 72 17 shows an attitude that makes me feel comfortable in class. *** 381 77 452 85 18 calls me by my name. *** 367 75 438 83 19 listens to me whenever i talk. *** 401 82 479 90 20 talks to me in class. 268 54 318 60 21 works with me on an individual basis. 294 60 292 55 22 jokes with me. ** 299 61 280 53 23 likes helping me when i do not understand something. *** 392 80 442 84 24 returns my papers on time. 321 65 354 67 25 reminds me about important things more than once. 388 79 424 80 26 is willing to help me when i need it. ** 414 84 463 87 27 asks for my opinions. 307 62 333 63 28 pays attention to my opinions. 338 73 367 76   **p < .01. ***p < .001. n= 799 male students were more likely to perceive jokes with me as more important than female students. female students were more likely to perceive encourages me in class, is available whenever i need help on something, prepares me for tests, responds with a positive tone when i ask for help, suggests i come in for tutorials when i fail something, talks to me whenever my grades are poor, believes in me, tells me i can achieve my goals, will stay before or after school to tutor me, answers my questions with respect, allows any effort i give, shows an attitude that current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 16 makes me comfortable in class, calls me by my name, listens to me whenever i talk, likes helping me when i do not understand something, and is willing to help me when i need it, as more important than male students. discussion the purpose of our study was to measure high school students’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring. specifically, the ptc measured latino and white high school students’ perceptions and whether ethnicity and gender influenced perceptions of caring. although ethnicity was not a significant factor in influencing adolescents’ perceptions of teacher caring behaviors, the significance at the item level merits further research and may provide some important insights about caring. this section begins with an overview of the three subscales (see appendix a), as reported in a previous manuscript, followed by the descriptive statistics at the item level with regards to gender, since ethnicity was not a statistical factor. the ptc included 28 items grouped into three subscales: validating student worth, individualizing academic success, and fostering positive engagement. validating student worth validating student worth, the first subscale of the instrument, refers to actions or behaviors, verbal and non-verbal, which demonstrate respectful interactions and communicate a sincere level of regard for students as individuals and interest for the student’s welfare. consistent with previous studies (coburn & nelson, 1989; coley, 1995; geary, 1988; hansen & toso, 2007; kitano & lewis, 2005; knesting, 2008), similar behaviors regarded as most important by the participants in this study (see appendix a) are linked to this subscale, suggesting the critical nature of caring and regard for students. the language and actions convey a perception of students as human beings rather than physical bodies in the classroom (valverde, latino and white students’ perceptions 17 2006). the manner in which a teacher responds or interacts with students is self-regulated, therefore, instrumental in the manner with which the verbal or non-verbal interaction is interpreted by a student. these behaviors engender a sense of belonging and respect for students that may increase student interest and motivation which drive learning. as kottler and zehm (2000) state “a sense of humor and playfulness are among the most powerful tools available to teachers to help accomplish this mission (p. 15). when students feel valued (kitano & lewis, 2008) and encounter positive experiences (mcmillan & reed, 1994) coupled with a teacher’s pleasant manner, a sense of belonging (coley, 1995; hansen & toso, 2007) may occur, instrumental in maintaining students’ interest in school. when teacher behavior reflects an attitude that is inviting, rather than discouraging, students are more apt to attend class and participate in the learning process because they want to be there. it is interesting to note that 9 of 15 items in this subscale were significant at the item level. the following table shows the statistical significance at the item level by gender. table 4 individualizing academic success influence on perceived caring behaviors by gender survey items suggests i come to tutorials whenever i fail something. ** is available whenever i need help on something. ** shows an attitude that makes me feel comfortable in class. *** jokes with me. ** is willing to help me when i need it. ** believes in me. *** listens to me whenever i talk. *** calls me by my name. *** responds with a positive tone when i ask for help. *** **p < .01. ***p < .001. n= 799 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 18 the next subscale, individualizing academic success, refers to student perceptions of a teacher’s responsiveness or scaffolding that provides both cognitive and affective instructional support and assistance to students (garza, 2006). these actions help to engender successful and positive classroom experiences for all students. while scaffolding may be viewed as the process of providing the cognitive input to support new learning (monzó & rueda, 2001), scaffolding in this study was reflected also by concrete actions that supported academic gains (ferreira & bosworth, 2001; nelson & bauch, 1997). these responsive actions are motivated by teacher ethic, context, and moral obligation (bluestein, 1991; noddings, 2005). when students encounter positive experiences in the classroom (epstein, 1992; hansen & toso, 2007; haynes, 1996) and caring teachers (mcmillan & reed, 1994; reis, colbert, & hébert, 2005) they are more likely to remain in school. in this subscale, all items were significant at the item level. the following table shows the statistical significance at the item level by gender. table 5 individualizing academic success influence on perceived caring behaviors by gender survey items prepares me for tests. *** talks to me whenever my grades are poor. ** likes helping me when i do not understand something. *** allows any effort i give. ** returns my papers on time. ** pays attention to my opinions. **   **p < .01. ***p < .001. n= 79 latino and white students’ perceptions 19 fostering positive engagement fostering positive engagement, the third subscale, describes behaviors that encourage self-esteem in students to promote active participation in the classroom. when this occurs, students feel cared for (hansen & toso, 2007). mendes (2003) agrees that “positive responses create an emotional bank account that can absorb relational difficulties that occur along the way” (p. 59). these behaviors reflect how the teacher invests the time necessary to create positive experiences for students rather than discounting them or labeling them as unmotivated whenever challenges occur for the learner. in other words, students believe the teacher cares about their learning and success or in irvine’s (2003) words, “effective teachers love and care about the students whom they teach, and they also love and are excited about the subject that they teach” (p. 47). additionally, brown (2007) affirms “a positive or negative response could affect the self-esteem and academic success of students” (p. 57). if students perceive the teacher to be unresponsive to their needs, disengagement may occur, which in turn may lead to underachievement or dropping out of school (kitano & lewis, 2005). valverde (2006) emphasizes that students’ “interest in learning will continue if they find success” (p. 37). this subscale included 6 of 7 items significant at the item level. ethnicity was an influential factor for two of these items; gender was an influential variable for four of the items; and both ethnicity and gender were influential factors on two of the items. the following table shows the statistical significance at the item level by gender and ethnicity. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 20 table 6 fostering positive engagement influence on perceived caring behaviors by gender survey items encourages me in class. ** tells me i can achieve my goals. ** answers my questions with respect. *** will stay before or after school to tutor me. *** **p < .01. ***p < .001. n= 799 implications students are key players in the teaching and learning process and consequently have direct knowledge of what takes place in the classroom (stronge & ostrander, 2006). students, therefore, are in the best position to provide an authentic account about student-teacher interactions in the classroom, and their perceptions about teacher behaviors that convey caring can add an important perspective to caring. obtaining their feedback is a viable means for improving educational practices that may unconsciously be ineffective and impede student success. understanding secondary students’ conceptions of caring behaviors may be influential in breaking down unresponsive institutional and systemic barriers that prevent students from learning, staying in school, or having positive experiences. we need to examine further students’ perspectives to learn how to care for them in a manner that is culturally responsive to better address their needs. as garza (2009) explains, “once students step into the context of the classroom, educators may perceive their unique assets as problems, complex challenges, or differences that are misinterpreted. as a result, educators often label students as unmotivated, withdrawn, or academically incapable” (p. 1). while some educators may ignore struggling or latino and white students’ perceptions 21 reluctant students and some continue to invest their time to scaffold and encourage them to succeed, a further examination of the dynamics of caring is important. additionally, the findings may be used as a springboard to examine teacher practice to determine the extent of culturally responsive caring (garrett, barr &, forsbach-rothman, 2007). classroom demographics have changed; in some areas, the latino population is the majority. therefore, school administrators could use the ptc survey in their respective schools to identify teacher caring behaviors congruent with their students’ conceptions. consequently, educators might benefit from knowing how to best care for their students, since their disposition and interaction with students may not be congruent with student perceptions (den brok, brekelmans, wubbels, 2004; rickards & fisher, 1999; thompson, 2007). the results of our study may assist teachers who wish to convey a more responsive caring approach in teaching a diverse population. similarly to what garza (2009) suggests, our findings “are especially helpful for teachers who are ethnically unique to their students and whose background and experiences may obstruct caring in ways appropriate for their students” (p. 22). having knowledge about gender differences in student perceptions about caring behaviors might serve as a means for educators to improve relationships with students, specifically with male students. researchers (ding & hall, 2007) have suggested that male students, in all grade levels and ethnicity groups, are more likely to perceive teachers as uncaring. the culture for learning has to be perceived as non-threatening and teachers must be perceived as caring adults if students are to reach their potential. for example, male students were more likely to perceive jokes with me as more important than female students, suggesting males need to perceive teachers as having a sense of humor. perceiving a teacher to have a sense of humor as a form of caring has been linked to student success in school (rodriguez, 2008; current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 22 geary, 1988). previous research supports this notion (van de gaer, pustgens, & van damme, & de munter, 2006) indicating males are more likely to achieve less when attitudes toward school or the teacher-student relationship are negative. some have suggested that student perceptions are influenced by teacher gender. for example, levy, den brock, wubbels, and brekelmans (2003), reported “male students thought their male teachers were more helpful, friendly, and understanding than their female teachers” (p. 27). future research might examine student’s perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring with regard to teacher gender since teachers’ conceptions of caring may not be the students’ reality (thompson, 2007). furthermore, based on this knowledge, teachers could assess their own actions and disposition towards students to improve educational experiences for all students. equal opportunity for learning in the least restrictive environment is essential for learning to occur. “when students’ needs, values, and interests are excluded from the curriculum, perhaps it is only logical that they in turn, exclude themselves from engaging in knowledge for which they see little value or recognition of their personal worth” (cothron & ennis, 1997, p. 553). methodological limitations the main focus of this study was on high school students’ perceptions with gender and ethnicity as influential factors. this study is limited by the gathering of data at one large high school. students in other content areas might have different expectations and needs associated with the subject matter and as a result, their perceptions might be different from those reported here. therefore, analysis and comparisons by subject matter or teachers were beyond the scope of this study. further research should be conducted to examine students’ perceptions in different parts of the country. the selection of participants is also a contextual limitation. examining a more geographically and ethnically diverse sample of participants might provide different latino and white students’ perceptions 23 results, especially since this study was limited to latino and white students. in addition, inquiring about teachers’ ethnicity and gender as influential factors on student perceptions is a possible research initiative. furthermore, other researchers might label the three subscales differently based on the findings of this research investigation. caution should be taken when generalizing the conclusions from this study to similar demographic groups in diverse high school settings in other parts of the united states. additional research is needed to further test ethnicity as an influential factor in student perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring. final remarks the results of our study suggest that gender significantly influences student perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring. although ethnicity was not statistically significant, we must not ignore the fact that there was some significance at the item level. these findings further expand on previous studies (ding & hall, 2007; garrett, barr, & forsbach-rothman, 2007; garza, 2009; hayes, ryan, & zseller, 1994) and support the need to research ethnicity as an influential variable on secondary students’ perceptions about caring in the school environment. our study also adds to the current research on student perceptions by illuminating high school student voices that seem limited in the literature. in addition, the results of this study were obtained through an instrument developed solely to measure students’ perceptions about teacher behaviors that convey caring. whereas a significant body of work supports the importance of a caring teacher in the classroom (bruce & stellern, 2005; collinson, killeavy, & stephenson, 1998; garza, 2009; gay, 2000; letts, 1997; noddings, 2005; pang, rivera, mora, 1999; slaughter-defoe & carlson, 1996), undoubtedly, a teacher’s ability to demonstrate genuine caring is linked to student success. collinson, et al. (1998) acknowledge that only “…cursory attention (is given) to the role current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 24 of an ethic of care in effective teaching” (p.22). this implies that caring teachers must purposefully know their students well and establish relationships with them because without establishing caring, school reforms “are not likely to strengthen teaching or improve student learning significantly as long as the focus on teacher competence overshadows the role of an ethic of care in exemplary teaching” (collinson, et al., 1998, p.23). this is especially critical for students of color (burrell & ovando, 2008). although caring is instrumental in motivating and academically engaging students (capps, 2004; osterman & freese, 2000; patchen, 2006), engendering relationships (garza, 2007; letts, 1997; stanton-salazar, vasquez, & mehan, 2000), establishing a sense of belonging (goodenow, 1993), creating a productive culture for learning (weinstein, 1998), and establishing a cooperative learning community (battistich, solomon, watson, & schaps,1997), high school students’ perspectives about how to best care for them are limited in the extant research. validating student worth, individualizing academic success, and fostering positive engagement were important notions to the high school students in this study. therefore, knowing what students think is an avenue administrators, counselors, and educators can embrace to improve schooling experiences for all students. references akos, p., & galassi, j. p. 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(1997). student motivation in middle school: the role of perceived pedagogical caring. journal of educational psychology, 89(3), 411-419. latino and white students’ perceptions 31 appendix a perceptions of teacher caring validating student worth 1. suggests i come to tutorials whenever i fail something. 2. works with me on an individual basis. 3. offers to help whenever convenient for me. 4. is available whenever i need help on something. 5. reminds me about important things more than once. 6. is very nice to me. 7. shows an attitude that makes me feel comfortable in class. 8. talks to me in class. 9. jokes with me. 10. is willing to help me when i need it. 11. believes in me. 12. asks for my opinions. 13. listens to me whenever i talk. 14. calls me by my name. 15. responds with a positive tone when i ask for help. individualizing academic success 1. prepares me for tests. 2. talks to me whenever my grades are poor. 3. likes helping me when i do not understand something. 4. allows any effort i give. 5. returns my papers on time. 6. pays attention to my opinions. fostering positive engagement 1. encourages me in class. 2. gives me examples on how to improve. 3. gives additional time to turn in any kind of work. 4. makes learning fun. 5. tells me i can achieve my goals. 6. answers my questions with respect. 7. will stay before or after school to tutor me. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 32 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word teacher collaborationimplications for new mathematics teachers.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x teacher collaboration: implications for new mathematics teachers laura m. gellert the city college of the city university of new york lidia gonzalez york college of the city university of new york citation gellert, l. & gonzalez, l. (2011). teacher collaboration: implications for new mathematics teachers. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/ abstract one increasingly popular way of supporting new teachers is through the use of mentoring. new teachers are often paired with mentors as one of a number of supports meant to aid new teachers as they begin their career. the various types of mentoring range from school based mentors assigned by the school to specialty mentors, such as math coaches. examples of other types of supports that are thought of as separate from formal mentoring are lesson studies, professional development schools, professional development workshops supported by local universities, teacher networks and sponsored professional development. given the popularity of policies promoting support for new teachers, we explore specific supports for new teachers in addition to characteristics of these supports by focusing on two new alternatively certified mathematics current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 teachers in new york city. through observations and both formal and informal interviews that span a year, we gained insight into the various influences on these two teachers’ practice in mathematics and considered how these might inform future practices aimed at supporting new teachers. keywords: : mathematics education, mentoring, teacher collaboration, alternative certification teacher collboration: implications 3 about the authors author: laura m. gellert affiliation: the city college of the city university of new york address: department of teaching, learning, and culture, school of education, the city college of the city university of new york, 160 convent avenue, new york, ny 10031 email: lgellert@ccny.cuny.edu biographical information: dr. laura m. gellert is currently an assistant professor in the department of teaching, learning, and culture in the school of education at the city college of the city university of new york. she teaches mathematics education courses. she received her ph.d. in urban education from the graduate center of the city university of new york. her main research interests are new elementary school teacher induction and the connections to the teaching of mathematics. author: lidia gonzalez affiliation: york college of the city university of new york address: 94-20 guy r. brewer blvd. jamaica, ny 11451 email: lgonzalez@york.cuny.edu biographical information: dr. lidia gonzalez is currently an assistant professor in the department of mathematics and computer science at york college of the city university of new york. she received her ph.d. in urban education from the graduate center of the city university of new york. while her primary research interest is in the teaching of mathematics current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 for social justice, she is interested, more broadly, in efforts at improving the educational experiences of urban youth. acknowledgement: this article is based upon work partially supported by the national science foundation (nsf) under grant no. esi-0333753. any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the nsf. teacher collboration: implications 5 teacher collaboration: implications for new mathematics teachers current federal and state policies advocate that new teachers not be left to their own devices in a solitary classroom. the sink or swim model described by lortie (1975) is being replaced with a “rapid growth in mentoring and induction programs in recent decades” (2006, american association of state colleges and universities, p. 1) such that over 80 percent of new teachers now participate in such programs. one increasingly popular way of supporting new teachers is through the use of mentoring. new teachers are often paired with mentors as one of a number of supports meant to aid new teachers as they begin their career. many states, among them new jersey, california, michigan, virginia and new york, have mandated support programs for new teachers that include mentoring. mentoring and other supports are abundant in new york city public schools. the various types of mentoring range from school based mentors assigned by the school to specialty mentors appointed by the department of education of new york city (nycdoe). examples of other types of supports that are thought of as separate from formal mentoring are lesson studies, professional development schools, professional development workshops supported by local universities, teacher networks and doe sponsored professional development. specifically for new teachers in new york city with less than one year of teaching experience, a teacher mentoring program was adopted in 2004. this mentoring program consisted of four components: a) a rigorous mentor selection process, b) mentors whose full‐time job was mentoring, c) intensive mentor professional development, and d) regional rather than school‐based assignments. (new teacher project@ucsc, 2006) current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 given the popularity of policies promoting support for new teachers, we explore specific supports for new teachers in addition to characteristics of these supports by focusing on two new alternatively certified mathematics teachers in new york city. we consider the supports in place for these two teachers as well as the influence of these upon their mathematics teaching practices. some of these supports may include mentoring, collaboration with peers, professional development, and coursework. these teachers are part of a larger study focused on mathematics teachers certified through the new york city teaching fellows program, an alternative certification program that provides over 60% of new mathematics teachers in new york city. through observations and both formal and informal interviews that span a year, we gained insight into the various influences on these two teachers’ practice in mathematics. theoretical framework this paper is framed by the research around learning in social settings as well as on new teacher induction especially that on both mentoring and teacher collaboration. historically, teachers were expected to “sink or swim” (lortie, 1975). this was often coupled with new teachers entering the profession as outsiders with a general concept of what to do but little experience in actually doing it. with this model, many teachers reverted to a teaching method that was familiar to them and did not deviate from, reflect on, or change this method (feimannemser, 2001) drawing on their first opportunity for learning how to teach, one’s own practice as a learner (bransford, brown, and cocking,1999). in recent years, teachers have had more opportunities to learn from their peers as well as from the school culture and the benefits of these opportunities have been studied. darlinghammond (1998) notes that, “teachers learn best by studying, doing and reflecting, by collaborating with other teachers, by looking closely at students and their work and by sharing teacher collboration: implications 7 what they see” (p. 1). teachers who are aware of and involved in a practice where participants can talk, work, generate ideas, build on others’ ideas, reason, explore, and discover together can create reflective learning environments that may have the ability to experience what franke, carpenter, fennema, ansell, and behrend (1998) call “self-sustaining generative change” in their own learning. this process incorporates not only reflection on the practice of teaching but also continual engagement in a collaborative practice that is supported institutionally. working in learning communities may not alone lead to change and growth as there needs to be a connection to practice (rufo-tepper, 2009). rather than functioning in isolation, this view of teacher development and learning puts the teachers’ social environment at the center of teacher learning. that teachers learn from the social environments in which they participate has its roots in social learning theories that describe how people learn in practice. the work of both vygotsky (1978) and dewey (1997) is seminal in this area and adds to our understanding of how new teachers learn by stressing that what people do in practice influences what they learn.(vygotsky, 1978; dewey, 1997). if the practice is designed to further our learning, then it involves “overcoming the inertia that inclines us to accept suggestions at their face value” (dewey, 1997, p. 13). to be put in a situation of uncertainty or reflective thought leads to further inquiry and change. vygotsky writes about how social interactions are central to how we learn, reflect, and change. more recently the work of wenger (1998) takes the idea of learning in social settings even further by claiming that learning is inevitable in social situations and furthermore that learning itself is participation. teacher collaboration (peer-learning) taylor (2004) describes teacher collaboration as an interaction “in which teachers engage voluntarily with the intention of improving their practice” (p. 220). building on taylor’s current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 definition and adding to it the perception by teachers of being supported, we take teacher collaboration to mean the collegial interaction between peers, either voluntary or mandated, in which the participants feel supported and we use this definition throughout this paper. schools where new teachers are not isolated from their peers but instead work collaboratively with them tend to be most successful in terms of both meeting students’ needs and retaining teachers (johnson, 2004). as a result, providing opportunities for teachers to work together allows new teachers to be supported in their professional growth through activities such as lesson planning. kardos (2004b) explains that new teachers are more likely to stay in teaching when they “feel supported and are buoyed by a professional culture that encourages professional interaction” despite the persistence of the ‘sink or swim’ paradigm in schools (pp. 139-140). similarly, many studies support the use of teacher collaboration in the form of learning communities for the retention of teachers (smith and ingersoll, 2004; national commission on teaching and america's future [nctaf], 2005; new teacher project@ucsc, 2006). teacher collaboration affords teachers the opportunity to focus on practical ways of improving their teaching that they can use almost immediately. the focus is on their immediate situation and how best to improve it. taylor (2004) notes that, “teachers, like students, learn best when they are solving problems that they have identified and that are in the context of their daily lives” (p. 221). working with colleagues allows teachers to focus on classroom issues and make practical and specific changes in pedagogy that they are unlikely to be able to do with less frequent, pre-structured, non-school based supports (branford, et.al., 1999). outside mentors who are rarely a daily presence in teachers’ lives are often not relied on for ideas and feedback on immediate issues teachers face daily (foote, brantlinger, haydar, smith and gonzalez, 2011). teacher collboration: implications 9 school based mentors while a more consistent presence in teachers’ lives may not be valued by these as highly as peer collaboration. the job of administrators and university mentors includes evaluating teachers, which may place them in a situation of power with respect to these teachers. this is unlike working with peers who may be more equal in power and position to one another. administrators often conduct observations to determine how well the teacher is fulfilling her/ his duties as an educator. while administrators may provide feedback on how to improve instruction, the evaluative nature of their work impacts the support they may be able to offer in ways that should not be dismissed. university mentors, although they are to provide feedback that improves instruction, are also using observations as evaluations of the teacher’s progress in relation to their graduate coursework. for this reason, kardos (2004b) explains that much more helpful to teachers are observations by peers that end not in evaluation or a letter in one’s file but instead in a debriefing session where the teachers learn about each others’ practice as well as reflecting on their own. while it certainly may be the case that power issues exist between colleagues especially between newer and more veteran teachers, for example, such power issues are not as pronounced as when working with a supervisor of some kind. such issues did not arise in the case of either of the two teachers we focus on. this may be due to the relatively young age of the teachers and the colleagues they chose to work with or perhaps is a result of these teachers seeking out such colleagues themselves. it is reasonable to expect that in choosing someone to work with, these teachers would select individuals who they admire but also with whom they do not feel powerless. in fact, it has been noted that when working with peers, as opposed to supervisors, new teachers may feel that they give to the interaction as well as take from it in the spirit of true collaboration, in part, because issues of power are diminished allowing for a more effective current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 means to develop teachers professionally (bransford, et.al., 1999). formal collaborations that are supported by the school are beneficial to the teachers’ overall feeling of support and guidance. johnson (2004) stresses that new teachers who are encouraged to observe and learn from veteran teachers and whose school structure supports this work, for example, through accommodations made in scheduling, tend to remain in their schools and be more successful in their work. mentoring mentoring has been shown, in many cases, to be a positive practice in the induction of new teachers. although many models exist, mentoring is often defined as a strategy for inducting new teachers into the profession where, “beginning teachers are paired with a more experienced teacher or, in some cases, with a team of experienced teachers, for guidance and support” (northwest regional educational laboratory, 2001, p. 14). in theory, mentors should be “available to answer questions, observe classes, problem solve, and talk confidentially to new teachers about problems they may be facing in the classroom” with two main goals which are to “support the new teacher” and “maximize his or her effectiveness in the classroom” (northwest regional educational laboratory, 2001, pp. 14-15). mentoring, when implemented properly, is considered a valuable way to enhance the development of new teachers (the new teacher center, 2007). some characteristics of successful mentoring include the use of peer mentors, a reliance on school-specific mentoring models and a structured approach to mentoring. kardos (2004a) also touts school-based support structures that orient new teachers to their buildings, school administration, colleagues, policies, procedures and so forth explaining that, teacher collboration: implications 11 school based induction begins with the assumption that each school is unique and intricate and that, in order to succeed, a new teacher must understand her school’s particular mission, values, norms, traditions, curriculum, policies, and practices. becoming a good teacher necessarily means becoming a good teacher in the context of a particular school and its community (p. 195). furthermore she describes exemplary programs as those that rely on experienced teachers to induct new teachers, introduce new teachers to their schools, designate time and space for the mentoring to occur, and involve reflective teaching, observations and regular feedback for new teachers (kardos, 2004a). the use of a multi-year mentoring program and pairing new teachers and mentors in similar subject areas and grade levels and the ongoing training of mentors, has also been found to be successful (smith and ingersoll, 2004; the new teacher center, 2007). reasons why mentoring may not be successful in some cases include the relationship of the mentor and mentee, time committed to mentoring, whether mentoring is content specific and consistent across multiple mentors and supports/influences. the new teacher center (2007) recommends the rigorous screening and selection of mentors and for pairing with new teachers to be done in a purposeful manner to avoid issues of a bad fit. a lack of good fit between mentor and mentee may lead to a lack of success in their work. further, many programs have mentoring that occurs infrequently. however, frequent and prolonged interaction between the mentors and those being mentored seems most successful (gellert, 2008; smith and ingersoll, 2004). the number of mentors an individual has may cause difficulties. although being able to reflect on one’s teaching with the guidance of mentors can be a positive step towards improving one’s practice, if there are a large number of individuals offering support, this might make it difficult to coordinate the feedback and advice being given. as a result, teachers receive current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 different messages from each of these individuals, some of which may conflict and thus confuse the teacher leaving her/him unable to decide whose advice he/she should follow and becoming more of an obstacle than a support (foote, et. al., 2011; the new teacher center, 2007). overall, one thing that comes across from all of these studies is similar to what ingersoll & kralik (2004) stated in their research review on mentoring, “collectively the studies do provide empirical support for the claim that assistance for new teachers and, in particular, mentoring programs have a positive impact on teachers and their retention.” therefore, while mentoring clearly has the appearance of enhancing the success of beginning teachers, it exists in a variety of forms with differing degrees of success. methodology we report on a qualitative case study of two nyc teaching fellows with the goals of examining the formal and informal influences on their teaching practices and considering how these might inform future practices aimed at supporting new teachers. we focus on two research questions. 1. what are the influences/supports on the teaching practices of two nyc mathematics teaching fellows? 2. what are the characteristics of the influences and supports that the teachers find most beneficial to their teaching practices? data collection included two in-depth, semi-structured interviews of each participant. the participants, whom we will refer to by the pseudonyms kate and ellen, were in their first and second year of teaching respectively. as such, kate’s interviews took place prior to and after her first year of teaching while ellen’s took place at the start and end of her second year of teaching. the interviews lasted over an hour each. during the interviews teachers were asked teacher collboration: implications 13 about their teacher preparation program, the supports in place to help them as they enter the teaching profession, their beliefs about teaching, mathematics and mathematics teaching as well as their teaching practices. these interviews varied significantly from post-observation interviews. post-observation interviews were more informal and conducted after a researcher observed the teacher teaching a lesson. the questions focused more on the lesson observed. they may include questions about why teachers chose a particular pedagogical approach, impressions of the teacher on the learning of students during the lesson, or clarification for the researcher about observed practices. the teachers were observed regularly over the course of two years. after each observation, the teachers wrote a reflection. these reflections varied in length and scope from teacher to teacher and reflection to reflection. more than anything, reflections gave teachers the opportunities to reflect on a particular lesson and make note of the impressions, ideas, feelings and beliefs that emerge as they considered the lesson. these were unstructured reflections so teachers could choose to write about whatever they felt was important to them. field-notes from the observations, the written reflections of the observed class and the follow-up interviews form part of the data upon which we rely for this paper. analysis was undertaken by coding the data. codes were created for each category of supports/influences that the teachers referred to in their interviews and reflections. the categories that were coded for included mentors, peers, administrators, school structure, and university coursework. we divided the supports/influences categories into two subcategories, formal and informal. formal supports/influences codes included mentors both from the university partners and the department of education, school-based math specialists, university coursework, curriculum, scheduling, and school administrators. informal supports/influences current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 codes included prior experiences as a learner, prior work experiences and collaborations with peers. coded statements were analyzed to connect the influences to teacher’s practice based upon how the teachers talked about these supports/influences. finally, comparisons were drawn between the teachers. we noted the similarities and differences in the ways they were supported and in additional supports/influences they may have sought out. before moving onto findings, we present a short introduction to each of the teacher participants. participants we were in the classroom of the two teachers participants twice a month for a full academic year with subsequent visits in the following academic year, and as a result quite familiar with these teachers and their practice. as data analysis unfolded in the larger study we noticed that there were patterns of similarity between these two particular teachers with respect to the supports/influences upon their teaching practices. this was particularly interesting to us given the fact that there were many differences between them in relation to the size of school (big school vs. small school), type of curriculum used (standardized curriculum vs. reform curriculum), grade level taught (middle school vs. high school), and the supports in place at their schools (many formal supports vs. few formal supports). as a result, we conducted a focused analysis of the data respective to each of these teachers so as to shed light on the similarities and differences in how supports /influences shape their teaching practices in mathematics. ellen. at the time of the study, ellen was entering her second year as a nyctf. prior to becoming a teaching fellow, ellen, with a degree in business management/finance was working in finance. she had taken some math courses during her undergraduate studies but was required teacher collboration: implications 15 to participate in the math immersion program offered at the beginning of the program because her math background was not deemed strong enough by her university. ellen stated that she found the math immersion program to be a reinforcement of essential math topics (1st interview, september 2006). ellen became a teacher at a large new york city public high school with over 3,000 students. this school was similar to many of the large public high schools in that the population was largely minority students of middle to low socioeconomic status who did not come from the neighboring communities exclusively. some students were part of special small academies that the school set up in recent years. one major difference of this school as compared to other nyc public schools was that its administration successfully fought to adopt a reform mathematics curriculum about eight years ago and so did not rely on the mandated new york city department of education curriculum entitled math a and math b (prentice hall publication). the reform curriculum is project centered and focuses on problem solving. the chair of the mathematics department was a strong believer in this curriculum and made sure that all of the new teachers participated in an intensive two-week professional development on how to teach the reform curriculum before they began teaching at the school. at the time of this study, ellen taught both the first and second year of the reform curriculum that had students working cooperatively to discover properties of mathematics. in one observed lesson, a ninth grade class used protractors to measure the interior angles of triangles and quadrilaterals to figure out the sum of the angles of the given polygons and then the students worked collaboratively to find the formula for the sum of the angles of any polygon and determine and/or justify why the formula works (observation, october 2006). although, the school had aligned the reform curriculum with the new york state math a and math b current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 curriculum, ellen still found that she needed to find and provide additional resources to supplement the students’ learning and readiness for the state exams. these supplements consisted of traditional texts that were very procedurally focused (1st interview, september 2006). ellen had a university mentor and a department of education mentor her first year. in her second year neither of these supports was available, according to her (2nd interview, august 2007). the internal school support provided by the chair of the mathematics department with respect to the learning and teaching of the reform curriculum may have made the other mentors less of a presence in ellen’s practice. kate. at the start of the study, kate was entering her first year as a new york city teaching fellow. she had studied international relations as an undergraduate student and had worked several jobs prior to entering the nyctf program. kate was placed in the degree program for high school math teachers (grades 7-12), however, she asked to be placed in the middle school mathematics program (grades 5-9) because she felt her mathematics background was not strong enough to warrant her teaching at the high school level. she had taken calculus i as an undergraduate and later took linear algebra on her own prior to beginning the teaching fellows initial summer program which, for her as with ellen, included the math immersion program. kate enjoyed the math immersion program noting that it was a good review of the mathematics that she had gone many years without using (1st interview, september 2006). kate became a mathematics teacher at a small middle school with only a few hundred students. at the time of the study she was one of two 7th grade math teachers at the school. the school was housed on one floor of a much larger building, the other floors of which were used by teacher collboration: implications 17 a large, comprehensive high school. the student population in kate’s school came from the surrounding neighborhood and could be described as working to middle class. there were various ethnicities, religions and primary languages represented. the school differed from others in that it integrated school fieldtrips with a focus on math and science into the curriculum. each subject teacher created a project that addressed a topic in that subject area while incorporating the trip in some way. to support the teachers, the school administration scheduled common planning time. at the start of the study, the school used the nycdoe standardized curricula, impact mathematics (mcgraw-hill, glencoe companies) and connected math (pearson/prentice hall). impact mathematics is “a complete mathematics program developed by the education development center, inc. it aligns with the everyday mathematics elementary program and supports the integration of conceptual understanding and the teaching of basic skills” (new york city department of education, n.d.). connected math is a complete middle school level mathematics curriculum that “helps students and teachers develop understanding of important mathematical concepts, skills, procedures, and ways of thinking and reasoning, in number, geometry, measurement, algebra, probability and statistics” (the connected math project, n.d.). kate’s first year of teaching can be described as teacher centered, i.e. half the time devoted to teacher talk, lecture, and little student group work (goodlad, 1983). however, she was somewhat open to new ideas, leading her to introduce more group work and exploratory lessons in her classroom as time went on (observation, january 2007). kate had a math coach based at the school, a university mentor and a department of education mentor. the administration at her school consisted of the principal and one assistant principal. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 findings the findings address the specific formal and informal ways the teachers’ practices were supported as well as the teachers’ perceptions about the supports/influences upon their practice. the formal supports/influences that emerged from the data are the mentors/ coaches/ administration, curriculum, and school structure. the informal supports/influences that emerged from the data were peer collaboration and how the individual teachers were taught mathematics themselves. we now consider these supports/influences. mentor/coaches/administration both kate and ellen noted that their experiences with mentors/coaches/administration were at times positive. for example, the school administration at kate’s school insisted that teachers sit students at tables in groups. she explained that although she was initially opposed to the idea, she did follow the school policy. the seating thing really bothered me [...] i understand that it’s important to have kids sitting in groups, but i don’t think that many 12-year-olds can handle facing away from the front of the room and out the window and be able to turn and focus when they need to. and i don’t think that the need to sit in groups is more important than the need to help them focus. so i wanted to have the tables in kind of a u, in rows shaped like a u so that they could still turn and work in fours really easily but everyone was facing the front, and i was told i wasn’t allowed to do that” (2nd interview, summer 2007). the prescribed seating structure facilitated conversations between students about the material. with time, kate began to see the value of these math-focused interactions. another example of the influence of kate’s administration was observed midway through her first year of teacher collboration: implications 19 teaching. a student was up at the board explaining some problems, taking the role of the teacher. others called him by his last name and kate consistently deferred to him when questions arose. kate noted, “that was the first time i sent a student to the board. i was observed a few weeks before and [the assistant principal] suggested i do that so that i can get to the back of the room while i'm teaching” (post-observation interview, december 2006). at ellen’s school the administration also believed in group-work and to support this approach to learning the school had tables for students to work at as opposed to individual desks (observation, september 2006). furthermore, the administration stressed the need for projectcentered student work to be displayed in the classroom (post-observation interview, february 2007). the math specialist at each school offered suggestions and advice on how to teach a topic or some other specific practice. ellen and kate followed this advice at times while continuing to make adjustments and seeking further support. kate expressed frustration at the role of the math coach in her school saying, i mean she’d say things like, ‘you really need to work on your questioning’ or ‘you need to plan out your assessments in the beginning of the unit.’ i mean what are you supposed to do with those kinds of suggestions? smile and nod, ‘oh, thank you. i wouldn’t have thought of that’ (2nd interview, summer 2007). despite this, the math coach did suggest strategies that kate could use to involve students in the lesson to a greater degree. one was to have students explain their answers at the board. kate noted that she was trying to use this strategy more often. “i’ve started having kids share their answers in different ways. the math coach suggested it” (post-observation interview, current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 march 2007). this approach was dramatically different from her earlier lessons and highlights the influence of the coach on her practice. despite recalling positive experiences with their administration/mentors/coaches, neither teacher felt as if they were receiving all that they could from these individuals. for example, kate had a university mentor with whom she met very infrequently. she described, “i don’t remember how many times we were required to meet [this year], i think it may have been like four or five or something.” she highlighted the inefficient nature of her work with this mentor as follows. so every couple of weeks she would come in at a really inconvenient time and we would sit down and she would ask me if i needed any help or advice and i would explain to her how well everything was going and how i didn’t really need any help at all in any way. and i was always really trying to be really nice and tell her how fantastic everything was and then she would leave (2nd interview, summer 2007). in general, kate’s concern with such individuals was the infrequent nature of their meetings. on the other hand, ellen found the help offered by the math specialist (the chair) at her school helpful but fleeting. after a lesson involving probability, ellen stated that she received some pointers from her math specialist stating: when i spoke to [her], i mentioned that we did not get into detail in the training session, and i was not sure how i taught the lessons last year. she showed me the point strategy using a tree diagram, but it was rushed because it was just a few minutes before 2nd period was starting (post-observation interview, january 2007). teacher collboration: implications 21 ellen expressed concern about this passing support throughout her first year as well. though, other mentors where non-existent in ellen’s 2nd year of teaching, she occasionally referred back to them. for example, in discussing an activity she used in class, she stated, “my liaison from [the university] introduced a similar concept to me last year” (post-observation interview, march 2007). school structure: curriculum working in a school with strong involvement from the head of the mathematics department in relation to the required reform curriculum, ellen was exposed immediately to this reform curriculum and a specific way of teaching mathematics. before beginning in september, the chair of the mathematics department of ellen’s school required all new teachers to participate in a two-week intensive professional development on how to use the reform curriculum. furthermore, the teachers were supplied additional materials on how best to incorporate the curriculum into the math a and math b requirements of the state of new york. throughout her second year of teaching, ellen regularly referred to her notes/lesson plans from the professional development as well as her notes/lesson plans from her first year of teaching. she found the professional development for the reform curriculum to be helpful but still felt that she needed to spend time figuring out ways to supplement the curriculum to align it with the new york state requirements. ellen stated after a unit on sequences that she “wished the curriculum helped me understand this topic better, they didn’t do enough preparation last year” (post-observation interview, october 2006). some issues that arose while ellen worked with the reform curriculum were a need for more non-traditional approaches to teaching, a need for supplementation, and a need for more professional development. as a result, ellen was teaching her class in a non-traditional manner current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 with lots of group work and open-ended questioning. the idea that mathematics is problem based and integrated made it necessary for students to solve mathematics problems by pulling from a variety of different subtopics in mathematics. however, ellen taught in a new york city public high school where students were required to take the math a and math b regents exams. therefore, ellen spent time in her class on regents review, which followed a very traditional format using test preparation texts. ellen found the curriculum to be influential in her thinking and teaching about mathematics. i think the thing that affected me the most was the curriculum and what was expected in the curriculum. i know that [the reform curriculum] is demanding, not so demanding on the teachers, but demanding on the students so that is what helped me the most in teaching mathematics last year (1st interview, september 2006). she stated this in the pre-interview before her second year of teaching. in her second year, she began to adjust her lesson plans according to changes in the scheduling of her math classes. in her first year, ellen taught in a double period class but in her second year, she needed to teach the same material in a single period. because of the time constraints, many of her reflections referred to adjusting the curriculum, having the students become familiar with the curriculum, and not spending too much time on certain activities, the time constraints make it difficult to complete one entire assignment in the time allotted, but once the students are more familiar with the language of [the reform curriculum] they will be able to finish and present [in the] same period (reflection, september, 2006). teacher collboration: implications 23 unlike ellen’s school, kate’s school used the prescribed city curriculum for middle schools, impact mathematics. the math coach at the school provided teachers with the mathematical topics to be covered and a sequence for doing so. “the math coach tells us what to do in what order and i assume she has an idea of how much we have to cover by when to get through everything in time for the test in march” (post-observation interview, september, 2006). how the topics were taught was left up to the individual teachers who created their own lessons. where ellen’s school had no common planning time during the school year, kate’s school supported collaboration among teachers by allotting time for it in teacher’s schedules. this structure allowed kate to work with the other 7th grade teacher regularly. more specifically, this time was helpful for the teachers in using both the standardized curriculum and incorporating the philosophy of the school into their teaching. as part of the school’s curriculum and focus on exploratory learning, students participated in numerous field trips. teachers were expected to create lessons, projects and activities that linked the trips with their subject area and the topics the students were studying at the time. kate noted that connecting the trips to mathematics can be more challenging than connecting them to other subjects and expressed a great deal of frustration in her second year regarding this aspect of her teaching. “they put a strain on teachers and are time consuming but also push them to use exploratory and discovery activities and to be a bit more creative with the material.” she adds that while she “had more prep periods than a lot of teachers do [i] always felt like i had so much to do every day because i was doing so much planning for offsite and regular stuff” (2nd interview, summer 2007). these above school structures that were driven by the curriculums of the schools encouraged the participants to seek out their colleagues for support. specifically, this support current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 helped to alleviate the perceived gaps in the curriculum. ellen regularly met with other mathematics teachers in her school to plan for the coming week, to supplement the curriculum with additional material, and to “lighten the load so that we are not both creating worksheets for the same lesson,” (post – observation interview, september 2006). kate felt a need for additional support and discussion due to the disconnect between content and pedagogy. she found this support in collaboration with a more experienced colleague at the school who taught the same grade. kate explains, “i think, mostly because of working with [the other 7th grade math teacher] i felt like very supported and like i was part of a team” (post-observation interview, june 2007). in both cases presented, the teachers benefited from meeting with other more senior teachers whether during common planning time or through professional development opportunities offered to them in order to best address teaching of the curriculum. thus collaborations between veteran teachers and newer teachers fostered by the school administration resulted in a support structure that enhanced new teachers’ pedagogy. peer collaboration in both kate and ellen’s schools, the administration incorporated common planning time into teachers’ schedules, although kate’s was several times a week during the school year while ellen’s was prior to the start of the school year. this feature of the teachers’ schedules facilitated kate and ellen’s work with their peers. at kate’s school common planning time was scheduled so that teachers who taught the same subject and grade levels could meet to work with one another. this structure allowed kate to work with her colleague, the other 7th grade teacher at the school, who we will refer to by the pseudonym kelly. the two were about equal in age teacher collboration: implications 25 although kelly, also a nyctf, had taught for several years prior. the two were not only supportive colleagues but also became friends. kate valued the common time built into her schedule though she and kelly found that they needed more than just the two designated periods a week to collaborate noting “[we] would use our preps and stuff to do it, so pretty much every day we would work on planning” and additionally that “if [planning together] didn’t happen during the week then we would get together on the weekend and plan lessons” (2nd interview, summer 2007). together, kate and kelly supported one another by planning lessons together, sharing curriculum materials with one another and developing exams, quizzes and projects together. despite all of the formal influences, kate quickly points to kelly a source of invaluable support as well as the primary influence upon her teaching. [who most affected my development] as an urban math teacher? okay. [kelly]. i mean i just, i worked with her all the time and more than any other person, like relied on her to give me advice and just help in every way. i mean there wasn’t – i didn’t really rely on anybody else at my school in the same way, and certainly i wouldn’t expect the fellows program to help me deal with problems that i encounter on a day-to-day basis (2nd interview, summer 2007). that kelly was such a strong influence upon kate in her initial two years of teaching partly due to the fact that kelly was a consistent presence in kate’s work life, unlike many of the formal supports. additionally, kate valued that kelly understood the material and what it means to be a math teacher at this school; that is, they had a shared practice upon which to draw. kate also valued the non-evaluative nature of their work together and felt that they were each contributing to the interaction. “last year i was the beneficiary of like an unprecedented level of current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 support from a colleague, kelly. but i think i also like gave her a ton of help too, and she would certainly admit that, especially by the end of the year,” (kate, 2nd interview, summer 2007). in ellen’s case, the highly top-down school structure made it necessary for some of the teachers to meet regularly. ellen refers to the top-down structure of the school in several instances noting that the school’s administration only cared about improving attendance, the special academies, and “the few older teachers” (post-observation interview, january 2007). with the school being attentive to the areas just mentioned, the administration did not put an emphasis on the day to day planning for teaching and learning. the collaboration that ellen and her fellow teachers conducted was not a result of common time set up by the school as in kate’s case. instead, the teachers involved found time in the mornings to meet. last year we – those kind of, in the morning we would have many talks for living, if you want to call it that, just to see where everybody was and how we should teach this, although you know, you may have planned it yourself, you may want to give it to … or i always wanted to show somebody else to see if that how they would do it and if not, what would they do differently. (1st interview, september 2006). during her second year, ellen and two of her fellow teachers set aside time on sundays to plan for the week. that is, to “plan in the sense of pacing or how the topics will be presented in class” (post-observation interview, may 2007). this planning enabled the teachers to share resources, ask mathematical and pedagogical questions of each other and develop a common theme in teaching and evaluation, “the sheet is based on an exam that i put together with like three other teachers. so i think the sheet is gonna be good for them for tomorrow.” (postobservation interview, march 2007) teacher collboration: implications 27 further information provided by the case studies continues to maintain the importance of collaboration with peers to the teacher’s practice in mathematics. with all of the formal supports provided to ellen, she jumped at the chance to change schools in her third year of teaching. this new school had the draw of structured collaboration with peers. kate, too, continued to express value in peer collaboration. prior to entering her second year she learned that kelly would be moved to another grade level. when asked, “what’s the biggest challenge you think you’ll face in your second year?” she quickly replied, “not working with [kelly]” (2nd interview, august 2007). although both kate and ellen have different school situations (middle or high, large or small), supports/influences, texts, and experiences; they both highlight in their reflections and interviews that they see working with their peers as most influential upon their teaching practices. this is consistent with prior research on teacher collaboration and mentorship. one of the most well known ideas expressed for decades about new teachers was that they would either “sink or swim.” the teachers who are able to swim, to continue teaching have undoubtedly used many means possible to do this. with respect to our case studies, both have found ways to swim by relying on partnerships built with their peers and facilitated by their school structures. these partnerships, we argue, are evidence of these teachers’ belief in continuous learning. that is, they actively seek out ways to learn more about their subject, their curriculum, and their teaching. ellen, along with the curriculum, the math specialist and collaboration with her colleagues, was continuously learning about teaching mathematics. when some topic was not clear to her in the curriculum, she would seek out help from others, “i had to ask several people in the department for assistance and what i found was that most of them could not explain clear current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 28 enough for me to understand and then i found the right teacher and i had an epiphany” (reflection, january 2007). sometimes, ellen would search for other resources to help her with the topic, as she stated at the beginning of the year that she found an old math textbook to help her. kate routinely used strategies in her classroom that she learned from other teachers, whether those in her school or those in her graduate courses. though she initially needed a push to do so, she observed the teaching of others and used what she learned to modify her own practice. as a result of reflecting upon her first year of teaching, kate explained that she looked forward to a new approach to teaching mathematics. “last year we kind of were like, ‘now we’re doing geometry. now we’re doing probability.’ and this [coming] year i’ve … actually like planned out the whole year to kind of talk about each of the topics … with like a focus on algebra and how like finding the unknown [in every problem] makes a difference” (2nd interview, summer 2007). thus, both kate and ellen have found ways to supplement their learning and become more effective educators in ways that continue their learning as teachers of mathematics. discussion these two case studies inform us about the influences and supports that teachers are both receiving and seeking out as well as the supports/influences that may be making a difference. we found specifically that even with multiple formal supports in place, these teachers actively sought out colleagues with whom to collaborate though this collaboration was, in kate’s case, facilitated by the schedule at her school. furthermore, we found that these teachers spoke positively about their work with colleagues leading us to believe that they greatly value and appreciate such work. that the teachers sought out and valued collaborations with their peers teacher collboration: implications 29 more so than working with other individuals such as mentors, math specialists and administrators leads us to believe that support models should find ways to facilitate such collaborative work. that teachers value such work can be attributed, in part, to the fact that these collaborations are voluntarily sought out, focus on specific day to day teaching strategies and lack the power issues that may arise when one is working with a supervisor or mentor. this is consistent with prior research (johnson, 2004; kardos, 2004a; taylor, 2004). focusing on why the teachers felt they needed to supplement the formal supports provides educators and policy makers with information about how best to strengthen such formal supports. an example of this involves the frequency with which teachers met with their mentors as opposed to with their peers. peer collaborations were happening much more frequently allowing peers to be a consistent, daily presence in one’s work life. increasing the frequency and length of visits might strengthen mentor models. interactions focused on content and teachers’ immediate concerns were greatly valued by teachers. this again has implications for how professional development models can be conceived and organized so as to be well received by teachers and, therefore, more likely to be both valued and acted upon. the collaborations these teachers sought out and engaged in also support prior research on learning as a social, active process furthered by interactions with others (dewey, 1997; franke, 1998; lave and wenger, 2003; vygotsky, 1978). lave and wenger (2003) argue that learning occurs in social settings and propose a framework for understanding this learning based on communities of practice of which we are all a part. in such communities those with more experience are at the center of the practice being developed and those with less experience work their way, through social engagement towards the center. applying this to our own work, we notice that the teachers in this study actively sought out and established their own communities current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 30 of practice, learning in social situations with their peers. they worked collaboratively with other teachers learning from them in order to move towards the center with respect to teaching. a similar and congruous idea is put forth by vygotsky (1978) who speaks of scaffolding, a process where those with more experience serve to pull others up to their level of understanding. the research presented in this paper supports these theories of learning giving us yet another example of the creation of human knowledge through social interaction. the research presented here in addition to prior research (gellert, 2008; gonzalez, 2008) on learning through social interaction supports the need to foster collaborations between new teachers and their peers. doing so would support school-specific and consistent interactions, in keeping with best induction practices as advocated by kardos (2004b) and would seem a valuable way to support new teachers. furthermore, it seems that the teachers were most influenced by those supports within their school. our work, though it doesn’t speak to the effectiveness of school-specific supports per se, does support the idea that school-specific supports are valuable to teachers and should be considered as part of any support system for new teachers. additionally teachers who are supported both within and outside of their school tend to stay longer in the profession and better their teaching practices in ways that those who only receive outside supports/influences cannot (kardos, 2004a). although the nyctf mentorship model involves numerous individuals to assist the beginning teacher, these mostly come from outside of the individual’s school. there are, in some cases formal school-based support people such as math coaches. though there is no definitive work on the success of math coaches, from the larger study upon which we draw (foote, m., et. al, 2009; smith & guingne, 2009) these teacher collboration: implications 31 seem to be a hit or miss situation. for example, kate mentioned the infrequent nature of her interaction with both mentors and coach if you came in every tuesday or if you came in every three days and said, ‘how is this going and how is this going?’ it’s fine, but if it’s that irregular i’m just going to lie to you and say everything’s fine, because you’re not going to be able to offer me anything that i don’t already get (2nd interview, summer 2007). at some schools the math coach is very involved in the teachers’ lives and a presence in their classrooms while in other schools the math coach may not even be licensed in mathematics. this indicates that though math coaches can be seen as school-based supports, they are not necessarily supports of the type advocated by the literature. one individual at the school offering support is far from the coordinated sustained effort that kardos (2004a) recommends. finally, one needs to consider the issue of local supports. there exists a need to infuse new ideas and strategies into schools so as to press teachers and others to reconsider their practices as part of active reflection. an over-reliance on school-based collaboration if not tempered with outside supports may lead to maintenance of the status quo. without some outside influences, patterns of inefficiency present in some schools may continue to persist. this is a particularly dangerous reality if what exists is not meeting the needs of students. while awareness of this concern is necessary, it may be remedied by the involvement of outside professional developers in addition to school-based supports that include peer collaboration. the new teacher project (2007), for example, suggested that mentors be trained extensively. in doing so, mentors are able to infuse outside information into the culture of the school as needed. most importantly, the benefits of mentoring that take the form of collaboration among teachers is current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 32 a valuable asset for in-service teachers, especially new teachers, and should be used to help them transition into the profession. this transition, as studies have shown, is likely to have positive impacts on retaining teachers in the profession (ingersoll and smith, 2004; nctaf, 2005). implications, limitations, and unanswered questions the work presented has implications for teacher development and support models, especially those aimed at supporting new teachers. examining the characteristics of peer collaboration provides us with some guidance as to the support models that the teachers value. this can then inform how such models are designed in the future. the characteristics of value described in the findings section may serve to justify changing mentoring and supports for inservice teaching to include peer collaboration perhaps through the use of communities of practice. the role of communities of practice for continuous learning is clear and has implications for teacher development and support models (gellert, 2008; gonzalez, 2008). furthermore, this work has implications for issues of educational equity as well. specifically, the nyc teaching fellows program was initiated as a way of meeting the need for teachers in high need schools. the students at high need schools are disproportionately taught by teachers who like those in this study, have a limited amount of educational training before becoming a teacher of record. it becomes imperative for support structures to be put in place so that these teachers and the students that they serve can be successful. given these implications it is important to make note of the limitations of this study. the two participants in this study, although part of a larger study, were observed using ethnographic methods to develop case studies. the generalizability of case study results is a limitation even in the context of specifics such as alternative certification, mathematics teaching, and the new york city public schools. furthermore, recognizing that the researchers did not set out to teacher collboration: implications 33 compare and contrast the participants, similar patterns from the data developed regardless of setting and situation, in the face of comparisons and contrasts. as with any research study, our work presented has left us with many unanswered questions that may be considered for future work in this area. we note that teachers value collaborations with peers and suggest this be included in models of professional development and support prompting us to question how best to structure these collaborations. such questions include but are not limited to:  how do we best set up peer collaborations? should these be teacher-initiated?  how can structural realities of time and content be addressed in the collaborations?  who should pair peers and on what should these pairings be based? additionally, we noted the issues that arise when multiple providers of support have inconsistent messages that they pass onto the new teachers leading us to ask:  how do we coordinate support across multiple providers? finally, no strategy can be put forth without considering how it fits with the current realities in schools. that is:  how can peer collaboration be incorporated into current practices, if possible? do new ways of conceiving school and teacher practices need to be developed to support peer collaboration? the questions presented here are only a handful of those that our research has spurred and which may drive future work, including our own, in the field of teacher preparation and support. with respect to our work presented here, we feel ellen herself said it best when in a postobservation interview (march 2007) she remarked that, “colleagues are the most supportive.” current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 34 research about how we use this information to support new teachers in the future seems a valuable endeavor for educators and policy makers to pursue. teacher collboration: implications 35 references american association of state colleges and universities. (2006). teacher induction programs: trends and opportunities, 3 (10). retrieved from congressweb.com/aascu/docfiles/teacherinduction.pdf branford, j.d., brown, a.l. & cocking, r.r. (1999). how people learn: brain, mind, experience and school. washington d.c.: national academy press. darling-hammond, l. (1998). teacher learning that supports student learning. educational leadership, 55, 6-11. dewey, j. (1997/1933). how we think. mineola, ny: dover publications inc. feiman-nemser, s. (2001). from preparation to practice: designing a continuum to strengthen and sustain teaching. teachers college record, 103(6), 1013-1055. foote, m., brantlinger, a., haydar, h., smith, b., & author2 (forthcoming). are we supporting teacher success: insights from an alternative route mathematics teacher certification program for urban public schools. school and society, 20(10), 1-30. franke, m. l., carpenter, t., fennema, e., ansell, e., & behrend, j. (1998). understanding teachers' self-sustaining generative change in the context of professional development. teaching and teacher education, 14(1), 67-80. gellert, l. m. (2008). new elementary school teachers and mathematics: an investigation through participation in a community of practice (unpublished doctoral dissertation). graduate center of the city university of new york, ny. goodlad, j. i. (1983). a study of schooling: some findings and hypotheses. phi delta kappan 64(7), 465-470. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 36 gonzalez, l. (2008). mathematics teachers as agents of change: exploring teacher identity of social justice through a community of practice (unpublished doctoral dissertation) graduate center of the city university of new york, ny. ingersoll, r. m., & kralik, j. m. (2004, february). the impact of mentoring on teacher retention: what the research says. education commission of the states review. johnson, s. m. (2004). schools that support new teachers. in s. m. johnson, finders and keepers: helping new teachers survive and thrive in our schools, (pp 91-118). san francisco: john wiley & sons. kardos, s. m. (2004a). supporting new teachers through school based induction. in s. m. johnson, finders and keepers: helping new teachers survive and thrive in our schools, (pp 193-224). san francisco: john wiley & sons. kardos, s. m. (2004b) professional culture and the promise of colleagues. in s. m. johnson, finders and keepers: helping new teachers survive and thrive in our schools, (pp 139 166). san francisco: john wiley & sons. lave, j., & wenger, e. (2003). situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. lortie, d. c. (1975). schoolteacher: a sociological study. chicago, il: university of chicago press. national commission on teaching and america’s future. (2005, august). induction into learning communities. washington, dc: author. retrieved from http://www.nctaf.org/documents/nctaf_induction_paper_2005.pdf. new york city teaching fellows website (n.d.), retrieved from http://www.nyctf.org/the_fellowship/prgm_overview.html. teacher collboration: implications 37 new york city department of education (n.d.). overview of core curriculum. retrieved, from: http://schools.nyc.gov/academics/mathematics/educatorresources/corecurriculum.htm northwest regional education laboratory (2001). supporting beginning teachers: how administrators, teachers and policy makers can help new teachers succeed. retrieved from: http://www.nwrel.org/request/may01/mentoring.html. rufo-tepper (2009). playing on two courts: factors that facilitate and constrain teacher learning in a lesson study group (unpublished doctoral dissertation). graduate center of the city university of new york, ny. smith, b. & guingne, s. (2009). the new york city coaching model. manuscript submitted for publication. smith, t. & ingersoll, r. (2004). what are the effects of induction and mentoring on beginning teacher turnover? american educational research journal, 41(3), 681-710. taylor, p. m. (2004). encouraging professional growth and mathematics reform through collegial interaction. in r. n. rubenstein, & g. w. bright. (eds), perspectives on the teaching of mathematics (66th yearbook), (pp 219-228). reston, va: the national council of teachers of mathematics. the connected math project, (n.d.) retrieved from connectedmath.msu.edu/ the new teacher center at the university of california, santa cruz. (2007). ntc policy brief: new teacher support pays off: a return on investment for educators. retrieved from http://www.newteachercenter.org/policy_reports.php vygotsky, l. s. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 38 wenger, e. (1998). communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. teacher collboration: implications 39 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word speaking ourselves.docx current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 30 volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x speaking ourselves: the intersections of women educators’ personal and professional lives leigh m. o’brien state university of new york at geneseo citation o’brien, l. (2010). speaking ourselves: the intersections of women educators’ personal and professional lives. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this paper presents findings from interviews conducted with 33 women educators working at varying levels of education and in diverse fields, and who varied in terms of age, ethnicity, race, family structure, geographic location, and sexual orientation1. semi-structured interviews, building on variants of this question, does who you are as person influence what you do as an educator and are there ways being an educator influences your life outside of work?, were conducted, tape recorded, and inductively analyzed. the themes uncovered suggest that women educators function as whole persons, aware of multiple intersections between their personal and professional lives. in a time of “teacher-proof,” scripted curricula, standardization, and other so called reforms in the field of education, these findings remind us that teaching cannot be reduced to curricular guidelines and generic texts mandated from above. rather, the diversity that teachers bring to the profession argues against a one-size-fits-all model and for a contextualized pedagogy that cannot be limited to mere content dissemination. keywords: women educators, pedagogy, qualitative research current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: leigh o’brien affiliation: state university of new york at geneseo address: suny geneseo, geneseo, ny 14454 email: obrienl@geneseo.edu biographical information: leigh o’brien is a professor of education who teaches and conducts scholarship in the areas of early childhood education, inclusive education, and social foundations of education. she is especially interested in women’s issues, diversity, and democracy in education. educators’ personal and professional lives 3 speaking ourselves: the intersections of women educators’ personal and professional lives the title of the paper comes from an unwillingness to separate mind and body, affect and intellect; hence, speaking "my self" – or in this case, our selves – rather than speaking "my mind" or "from my heart/gut," and is indicative of my rejection of western, cartesian dualities (e.g., mind/body, logic/emotion, reason/passion).1 the holistic approach, focusing on a rejection of certainty and universalisms, is a reflection of a feminist orientation that guides my thinking and will frame the paper. consistent with holism, it is becoming increasingly accepted that who you are influences what you are (or, more accurately, what you do). noddings contends that "who we are, to whom we are related, how we are situated all matter in what we learn, what we value, and how we approach intellectual and moral life" (1992, p. xiii). in education, there is much evidence that what teachers know about teaching derives from the links between personal life history and professional career (e.g., brown & gilligan, 1992; o’brien & schillaci, 2002). palmer, a long-time proponent of foregrounding the personal in teaching, maintains that “teaching is always done at the dangerous intersection of personal and public life” (1998, p. 17; italics added), and he exhorts us to acknowledge the forces at play within ourselves. doing so, he says, helps us to know ourselves better and thus be better teachers. 1 see, for example, hooks (1994) and johnson (2006) current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 harout (cited in göncü, 1995) describes this kind of knowing as an integration of his different “me”s. what i learned as a teacher helped me understand things that troubled me personally. my knowledge of developmental theory and my experience in the classroom met and made each other more meaningful… now, in my professional life, i no longer seek to exclude either my personal intuitions and style or the experience of teaching from my research. (p. 120). the research reported here, based on interviews with 33 female teachers, arose out of my own life history and experiences as a woman educator (glesne & peshkin, 1992). i have long been interested in thinking about how women who teach can identify and resist policies and practices that keep them from living an “undivided life” (palmer, 1998). while voiced directly by few of the women with whom a graduate assistant and i spoke, i believe this struggle is an overarching theme in the women’s responses. many of the teachers comfortably accepted this integration of their personal and professional lives, whereas others struggled with how to make it work – or wondered if it was even desirable. i believe the women in this study described a unitary, fairly stable self, which, however, might look, act, and even feel different depending on the situation. building on both palmer’s idea of leading an undivided life by seeing teaching as integrally linked to the teacher’s identity and integrity and bateson’s notion of women “composing a life” (1989), i will use the women’s stories to address the travails and rewards of teaching in a way that attempts to mesh the personal and professional. i will also provide examples of oppressions experienced as well as opportunities for/examples of agency in the teachers’ lives. educators’ personal and professional lives 5 literature review john dewey, who has done much to draw our attention to the fundamental unity of child and curriculum (1902), experience and education (1959), and the school and society (1915), provides insights on the necessarily overlapping lives we live. he posits that experience is central to our construction of understandings, and that our lived lives are always the starting points for our growth. as göncü writes, [w]e are often encouraged to consider our professional and personal lives as isolated from each other. we are tempted to engage in a struggle to maintain this isolation…nevertheless, both we, as teachers, and our students stand to gain from an emphasis on the whole person. for us as teachers, that means exploring the unique self underlying our personal and professional lives as well as celebrating, elaborating, and developing this self. (1995, p. 121) jipson, munro, victor, jones, and freed-rowland (1995) argue that the totality, the complexity, and the multiplicity of women’s lives have been muted by the institutionalized subordination of women to men (p. 229). similarly, reporting on her research with female elementary school teachers, biklen (1986) argues that the traditional notions of what it means to be a paid career worker are unduly restrictive for many women. thus, the neat separation of work and family, school and home, teacher and mother that we often try to make can cloud the complex processes of identification and differentiation that make up women's realities. these polarized positions may also limit women's visions of their potential in life. "it seems that women [often] feel forced to make decisions based on a male-modeled career pattern which ultimately denies them the full range of choices in life,” write leonard and malina (1994, p. 34). gutek and larwood (1987) contend that women’s career development is both different from and more complex than men’s because of role expectations about both current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 paid work and family life. and hall (1987a) compares the traditional view of careers as linear and predictable with new values such a concern for balancing paid work and family life. despite recent and ongoing societal changes, this still appears to be more a women’s issue than a men’s. building on the foregoing, i believe we cannot leave personal experiences out of our work lives; that our personal lives do, and must, overlap with our professional lives. many educators have come to see learning and teaching (i.e., pedagogy) as the being the essence of everyday relations. we learn and teach in multiple contexts across our life spans, and all of us are involved with, whether consciously or not, a life-long pedagogical project of reconstructing our positions on the basis of new learnings. these reconceptualizations, or new knowings, lead to a "rewriting" of life stories. life-history research is a way to access life stories. it not only provides material about individual lives, but also offers the opportunity to explore how individual lives are shaped by society. thus, life-history research offers critical insights into larger societal processes by connecting the lives of individuals to society (foster, 1997, p. xxi). such “little narratives” of local knowledge (dahlberg, moss, & pence, 1999), told in public forums, can become a powerful form of protest (gitlin & myers, 1993). this kind of storytelling can be a means of testifying, or “bearing witness” (burdell & swadener, 1999) to injustices perceived and experienced. more specifically, the life-history approach, with life-story interviewing being one form, has been used by scholars interested in documenting and interpreting women’s perspectives and experiences (biklen & shakeshaft, 1985). i chose to use (brief) oral histories2 as they capture more 2  although  the  interviews  we  did  were  too  brief  to  qualify  as  full  life-­‐history  interviews,  the  respondents  often   described  historical  moments  and  paths  that  influenced  where  they  currently  were.   educators’ personal and professional lives 7 closely the essence of the differences between men and women, and “help [us] to describe and understand better the webs in which …women … weave their lives” (perry, 1989, p. 3). oral histories allow women to tell, in their own words, portions of their life stories. for researchers, oral histories offer the advantages of gaining insight into subjects’ experiences and being able to expand into areas not thought of prior to the interview and so dig more deeply into relevant issues; in short, to achieve the qualitative researcher’s goal: “thick” description. oral history interviews are unique in that the interaction of researcher and subject creates the possibility of going beyond the conventional stories of women's lives to reveal experience in a less culturally edited form (anderson & jack, 1991). in fact, weiler argues, "women must create a new language based on women's actual lived experiences." and since the everyday world is an integral part of the social world, "...focusing on the everyday life of women should...reveal that connection between public and private..." (1988, p. 61). analyzing that connection was my intention, as feminist research emphasizes the worth of lived experience, and draws on intuition, emotion, and feelings. it also questions the possibility of finding one “right” answer and, like other interpretive research methodologies, tends to generate a variety of answers (and questions) leading to further exploration and discussion. telling our stories, then, can be viewed as contributing to the exercise of freedom – understood in a freirian sense as potentially liberatory and in a foucauldian sense as being able to think critically, in a way that opposes docility. we take control of our lives through questioning the ways we view the world and increasing our ability to shape our own subjectivity, make our own meanings (dahlberg et al., 1999). settled, transcendent meanings, what some call current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 meta-narratives, have not served women well. because of this, what “feminist movement”3 has been about, first and foremost, is meaning making. nothing is more radical than meaning making; it is what we women educators are about here. methodology the author and a former graduate assistant conducted and tape-recorded interviews with 334 women educators working at varying levels of education and in diverse fields, and who varied in terms of age, ethnicity, race, family structure, geographic location, and sexual orientation. all of the women were known to either my graduate assistant or me personally or were “friends of friends”5; obviously, this was not a random sampling, and i do not pretend it or wish it to be. in fact, the methodology is grounded in relationship: it was natural to ask other women educators to talk about their lives. knowing the women and doing face-to-face interviews also meant geographical proximity; hence, the majority of the women lived in western new york at the time of the interview, although a number grew up elsewhere. after obtaining informed consent from each woman and scheduling a meeting, the interviewers used an in-depth, semi-structured interview procedure to ask each woman about what she saw as the personal-professional intersections in her life, if any. the interviews typically took about one hour and were built on variants of this open-ended question: “does who you are as a person influence what you do as an educator and are there ways being an educator influences your life outside of work?” (see appendix a for the interview protocol.) all 3 bell hooks’ term (2000) 4 glaser and strauss (1967) suggest that the researcher is “asking questions of the data” and maintain that we cannot stop until we’ve answered the questions. i stopped after doing 33 interviews, because i felt i was able to make sense of what i was hearing, able to pull out repeating themes across women’s ‘lived’ experiences as educators. further, warren (2002) notes that a minimum number of non-ethnographic interviews is 20-30; this is considered a small but theoretically significant number. 5 this is also known as “snowball sampling” (warren, 2002). educators’ personal and professional lives 9 respondents were encouraged to focus on specific areas of personal-professional overlap, but we also strove to allow each woman's own experiences and perceptions to emerge. qualitative research seeks to describe and understand, consistent with my focus. "getting inside the lives of others is the object of the qualitative researcher, who cannot understand the acts of others except from the perspectives of the actors" (campbell, 1988, p. 72). additionally, we attempted, where relevant, to share our own experiences as educators in order to reduce the power imbalance between researcher and researched, and because i was aware that, ultimately, the interviews and interpretations would fuse our perspectives and theirs. as my graduate assistant and i were educators, we had experienced some of the tensions and pleasures participants described, often allowing us to empathize with interviewees’ stories and bringing us as close to the “inside” of the experiences as possible. although the interviews were designed to elicit respondents’ stories, they were also conducted to test my theories about personal-professional intersections in women’s lives. therefore, it was important for us to be clear about our perspectives and our agenda; i believe the informedconsent process and form the interviewees completed, as well as the dialogic nature of the interviews, contributed to clarity in terms of our positioning. after the interviews were transcribed (by the author and previous student assistants), they were coded by the author and a current student assistant. we did initial, line-by-line coding, using active terms to capture implied and explicit meanings, then used focused coding to sort, synthesize, and conceptualize. the categories that emerged from the focused coding were further developed and, in some cases, integrated, then used to construct a theoretical framework. during the data analysis process, we both did memo writing and met regularly to discuss our ideas for categories and possible links across categories. these will be discussed in the findings section. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 an interview is a useful way to get large amounts of data quickly, and when there is more than one informant, the interview process allows for a wide variety of information and a large number of subjects (marshall & rossman, 1989). for this reason, perhaps, the interview has become the most common qualitative tool used by researchers in education (warren, 2002). in-depth interviews, which we used, can be described as conversations with a purpose, and involve an interaction between the interviewer and interviewee, the purpose of which is to gather valid and reliable information. further, the interviewer’s purpose is to try to understand the meaning of respondents’ experiences and life worlds by deriving interpretations from their statements. it must be noted that the interviewer and interviewee always speak to each other from their situated perspectives (e.g., based on their race, class, and gender). these varied perspectives shape the flow of the interview and have to be taken into account by the interviewer in understanding the meaning-making process (charmaz, 2002). researchers often choose to use interviews when their concern is establishing common patterns or themes between particular types of respondents, as was the case here. qualitative interviewing provides an “open-ended, in-depth exploration of an aspect of life about which the interviewee has substantial experience, often combined with considerable insight” (charmaz, 2002, p. 676). the basic question driving such a study is, what is happening here? as a grounded theory researcher (glaser & strauss, 1967) using an inductive approach, i started with areas of interest to me and constructed interview questions to open up those areas. i used, then, a symbolic-interactionist theoretical perspective with constructivist methods. with this approach, the following assumptions adhere: (1) multiple realities exist; (2) data reflect the researchers’ and educators’ personal and professional lives 11 participants’ mutual constructions; and (3) the researcher, however incompletely, enters and is affected by participants’ worlds (charmaz). conducting the interviews in a way consistent with feminist research was also important to me, and consistent with the foregoing. whereas traditionally social researchers have been encouraged to interact with their subjects in a "neutral, value-free" way, mies (cited in leonard, 1994) argues that feminist researchers must become involved with the people they study. "feminist methodology places great value on woman-to-woman research, based on personal identification with the subjects' experiences, as a mechanism to produce more meaningful and insightful research" (leonard, 1994, p. 166). part of this strategy involves self-disclosure on the part of the interviewer so that empathy, trust, and mutual interaction are enhanced. the interviews would not have been the same had my graduate assistant and i not been women educators, as the feminist researcher “makes her direct experience the ground of her knowledge” (smith, cited in middleton, 1993). in banks’ (1998) terms, we were “indigenousinsiders,” endorsing the values, perspectives, behaviors, beliefs, and knowledge of the community and, presumably, perceived by people within the community as legitimate. because feminist researchers never claim or aspire to objectivity or detachment, subjectivity, then, is a given of feminist research. in feminist research, “truth” is found in an accurate and adequate reconstruction of the experiences of the researcher and the researched (goldstein, 1997). additionally, i had to acknowledge the likelihood of data analysis being an “unmanageable, messy, and arbitrary process” (kleinman & copp, 1993, p. 24). it is important, therefore, that the story told have internal congruence and be deemed “trustworthy.” in addition, feminist research has an explicit political agenda and argues against “value-free” knowledge. thus, the point of research is not solely to describe or even understand the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 world, but to seek to change it through enhanced understanding. this is what hollingsworth calls feminist praxis: "a willingness to risk and examine personal experiences as women and to be changed by the research process itself" (1992, p. 373). the questions underlying feminist research and its designation of experiences as the ground for social transformation ideally lead to the creation of knowledge that can be put into practice to produce changes beneficial both to women and to the larger society (goldstein, 1997; hollingsworth, 1992; lewis, 1993). in this way, we can see teacher narratives as “treasonous texts, for they offer the possibility of an alternative set of stories about teaching and the education system” (thomas, 1995, pp. 15-16). the primary aim of the investigation, then, was to derive interpretations and try to understanding the meaning of the respondents’ experiences and life worlds (warren, 2002). as denzin (1994) so aptly puts it, “in the social sciences, there is only interpretation” (p. 500). rather than asking if my interpretations are right or true, a bakhtinian perspective suggests that it is more helpful to ask if they are reasonable and appropriate replies to my informants’ statements. for bakhtin (1990), the highest ethical responsibility, not just of researchers but also of human beings, is to answer the utterances of others. to answer, we must first interpret what the other person is saying to us. our answers can never be perfect because our interpretations can never be completely true; there is, necessarily, “slippage” of meaning. however, this slippage need not and should not keep us from trying to make sense of and connect with others. we listen to each other, try to understand, and answer the best we can. inevitably, we project our own perspectives and preoccupations onto the words of others, and yet generally, we manage to understand each other well enough that our conversations make sense (tobin, 2000). unfortunately, because the interviews took place educators’ personal and professional lives 13 some time ago, it was not possible to check back with our informants. thus, it is up to the reader to decide if i have listened, heard, and understood reasonably well and appropriately. the strength of grounded theory, such as that used here, is that provides a theoretical narrative with explanatory and predictive power (charmaz, 2002). a grounded theory interview can be viewed as an unfolding story. this story arises as the interviewer and the study participants together explore the topic and put a human face on it. with this kind of research, the storyteller is considered both the expert and authority on her life. the concept of persuasion, then, applies here: does the study/story strike a resonant chord with the reader? is the story deemed “trust-worthy?” findings through multiple readings, reflections, codings, and discussions, my student assistant and i came up with 10 repeating themes that comprised the women’s responses, their collective story, as it were. the categories that emerged from the coding were further developed and, in some cases, integrated, then used to construct a theoretical framework. in the following, i present the seven extant categories with supporting data and literature. for the sake of brevity, only a few quotes will be used to support each category, although the reader will “hear from” all but three of the women interviewed as i present their compressed life stories.6 as i had suspected might be the case, based on my own life experiences, virtually all the women educators in our study functioned as whole persons, aware of multiple intersections between their personal and professional lives. the first, overarching category, then, is this: teaching is more than just a job; it’s more “who i am than what i do.” for instance, edna7 said, “i guess i can start by saying that everything 6 for the full data set, please contact the author. 7 all names are pseudonyms. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 that i am, and i think this is true of all people, directly influences your profession.” with specific reference to education, trish told us, “when i tell people what i do, i say, ‘i'm a teacher,’ but it's more of who i am rather than what i do.” in fact, all but one of the women interviewed could not separate who they were from what they did as educators, although they differed in terms of degree and kinds of integration. andrea noted that, “anywhere i go something gives me an idea. you know: the kids would really like that or i could do that with the kids, or just managing things at home. it all kind of rubs off both ways.” maureen addressed this more directly, saying, “i don't think we can separate who we are, although at times i find i [have to] bite my tongue.” cherie summed this category up well: “i can’t separate the professional part. i can’t separate the cultural part. and i definitely can’t separate that personal component of it…because it’s all a part of me.” many of the women cited liking working with people/children or wanting to help others as a major reason for going into education. this is clearly who they are. biklen, in her study of elementary school teachers, notes that the women she studied maintained consistent “internal conceptions of themselves as teachers” even when they were not employed in the field (cited in young, 1992, p. 157).8 sarah, reflecting this idea of internal conception, told us: “who i am as a person is that i've always enjoyed being around people...forming relationships with people.” trish described how she came to be a tesol9 teacher: “i went to do an observation of a tesol classroom and i fell in love with the students; i fell in love with their desire to learn the language and their desire to be assimilated into this culture.” crystal adds, i really enjoy being with children. i enjoy working with younger children and i’ve found over the years that that’s not something a lot of people like to do. it floors me [when they ask], ‘how can 8 or, as the lead character in alexander mccall smith’s friends, lovers, chocolate puts it, “you carry your profession with you.” 9 teaching english to speakers of other languages educators’ personal and professional lives 15 you work with little kids?’ how can i not? i think it’s been a part of me all along, something that i’ve always enjoyed… the one woman whose thoughts about personal and professional intersections in education clearly did not align with the foregoing was, at the time of the interview, in the process of deciding to leave the field. of note is that darlene was leaving education for the same reason the others were staying in it. she put it this way: i think one of the reasons i know that i want to be done teaching is that i can’t keep fragmenting and segmenting, and that’s why i’m moving toward something that is integral, that will have carryover. i’m a little worn out with going to off to war every day. thus, a response that might appear to challenge my theory may instead be further confirmation of the importance of women educators being able to live undivided lives. directly related to the foregoing is our second finding: women educators build on their life experiences to create who they are as teachers. karen said, “as a daughter, there are many strong connections because of my dad being an educator. i've always held my conversations with him around being an educator very highly, and i think those conversations ...have helped develop who i am.” larice, a mohawk special educator, notes that she mainly brings in a native american perspective: “when it’s addressed…when we’re talking about early american history…i would give a different perspective [than non-native teachers] on thanksgiving [for example]…” prada, born and raised in india, adds this: “i encourage the female students to [be assertive] because i have seen how much success that has brought me…being from a completely different country and being short (laughs), that was something to battle against.” many of the women built on their experiences with children out of the classroom, especially those who were parents. for example, briana noted: “the mother instinct is there… i current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 think that is almost something you can’t avoid when you have children of your own.” and maureen said, i think you can’t be a parent, without going to open house, parent conferences…you can’t go into those roles as a parent and leave behind your own philosophy of how you think schools [should be]. one of the things i learned early on [because of an experience with her son] was to help students become self-advocates; helping them understand that they have the right to ask questions and to be a participant [in the decisions made about their schooling]. third, teaching is seen as complex, multifaceted, and challenging; as being about much more than just content dissemination. in addition, as experience is gained, teachers feel that they can bring more of themselves to the job. briana, who was coming to teaching after an earlier career as a scientist, sums up the complexity and challenges of teaching nicely, “i have always been good at multi-tasking. i can keep a lot of things going on at the same time. [but] teaching is taxing my full-time multi-tasking ability.” caitlin, previously a girls’ gymnastics coach, put it like this: to me, in many respects it [learning in school and sports] corresponds. because i see sports in many respects as very cerebral: problem-solving, anticipation of what your opponent’s going to do. so i like to think about how that comes into the arena of education. and i bring a lot of that in there. bette addressed how she and her colleagues viewed their students holistically when she told us, in our early years of teaching we [she and a colleague] were everything to these kids. whether it was housing, or food, or the 16-year-old boy who slept in the same bed as his mother for want of another bed, we intimately entered into every part of our students’ lives. educators’ personal and professional lives 17 maureen, a college professor and department chair, saw her job as a college teacher as having both a formal academic component and an informal, more personal one: i think as teachers we have two roles. and the first one is the assumed one. we have a scheduled class meeting time, course syllabi, and we teach a specific body of knowledge. [but] i think the best teaching is what one does one on one. and …i'm going to say that the [students] i think i've impacted most have been women that have come [to her] for career life changes. and toward the end of our conversation edna, the director of an art therapy program who had indicated earlier in the interview that now that she was over 40 she did not really care what others thought, spoke specifically to the integration of her personal and professional selves in her teaching: it used to be when i was a less-evolved human being that i could take off my clinical hat and leave it at work. it doesn’t work that way any more and i guess it’s better, but i was taught that you were supposed to separate, so what i teach my students now is that it’s a myth…to think that neutrality and objectivity can exist in the workplace. …what you’re going to be left with, whether you’re in a therapeutic or educational setting [is that] some of that personal stuff is still going to eke in and some of it’s good because it’s experiences we bring to the classroom…and it’s what makes us what we are. so i don’t think it’s so terrible anymore…what i try to do as a professional and an educator…is i really try and take only the personal stuff that is really going to make a difference, make an impact, and share it. the fourth theme was not surprising given the expansive view of teaching most respondents had: many saw themselves as being in relationship with students; hence, they share themselves and support their students as people. flo put it succinctly: “you treat [students] like people, they will give you what you need. it’s just like parenting.” similarly, lainie said, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 “we’re all human beings, children and adults. they need to know me, warts and all.” caitlin once more drew on her coaching background to respond: one more thing that i carry over: i was lucky enough to work with girls going through adolescence who had a lot of self-confidence. then you go into the classroom and see girls this same age who are so wrapped up in how they look, how socially acceptable can they be. … i kind of felt, if a girl had a lot of self-confidence, when they hit that stage, they’re not going to turn to acceptance by their peers, especially boys, to prove their self-worth. they’re not going to decide they can’t be smart any more because boys don’t like smart girls, so i try with this age group to work a lot on getting these girls to be very independent and feeling that they have a lot of self-worth. related to the foregoing, our fifth theme was that being a role model for students was an integral part of teaching for many of the teachers with whom we talked. within this theme, we also noticed that european-american teachers tended to focus more on the gender piece, whereas teachers of color focused more on race and ethnicity. as terry, a white elementary school teacher, put it, well, i think i [bring in my belief system] through modeling. i ask them who they are and share that about myself as well. i model a healthy lifestyle and taking risks like canoeing, or outdoor things that i do, or writing and traveling. when i asked mona, who self-identifies as “caucasian, arab, and indic,” if she shared pieces of her personal life with the children with whom she worked, she responded with animation: oh yeah. like when i talk about riding my bike. they say, ‘you ride a bike?!’ so i show them a picture and talk about it…sometimes it’s an overt manipulation of a student; other times, it’s to model social behavior that is personal or appropriate. educators’ personal and professional lives 19 jasmine, an administrator of a city high school said, “i am african american and i hope i’m a positive role model. i hope that parents, staff, and students have gained from me because i’m african american.” yolanda also spoke of teaching in inner-city schools and the importance to her students of her of being african american: one kid came up to me and said, ‘you’re the same color, you know.’ i said, ‘yes, i am.’ and they’re like, ‘good.’ and i asked, ‘why is that good?’ and they tell me, ‘you remind me of my auntie,’ so they make a personal connection…and even with the hispanic kids, they want me to be hispanic (laughs). cherie, born and raised in barbados, had a complex take on this. [subbing] was challenging for me because even though i’m black, i tend to stay very close to home. so it was different in terms of the children and the way they behaved. and the expectations: i’m used to having this high value for education and here i am sitting in front of 30 kids who don’t want to be there. nella, who self-identifies as creole and catholic but who says she is probably seen primarily as black, talked a lot about the role of race and gender in education. at the time of the interview the director of multicultural affairs at a small college, she explained how she viewed the inevitable integration of the self into teaching, in this case, her spirituality: one does not have to teach in the classroom to be an educator…i think that with educators you don’t have to espouse a christian belief to look at people and stories of models, and for me, that’s the greatest model and that has to do with my spirituality, and i don’t think i can separate that out. sixth, virtually all the women noted serendipity/life circumstances and, for many, especially those who were middle-age or older, gendered expectations, in terms of ending up an educator. where they currently were in terms of their jobs was very rarely a specifically current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 planned career choice although almost all said they liked their jobs. according to keohane (cited in hall, 1987c), this kind of “flexible” success is characterized by interruptions in paid work, by part-time paid work, and by slower achievement. this was certainly true of many, though not all of the women in this study. when i asked hattie, my grandmother, how she ended up being a teacher, she told me: i can tell you why, [although] i’m embarrassed to tell you – i didn’t really know i was going to get a degree in the science of education. i thought i was taking courses in journalism. my plan was to be a great writer, but it didn’t turn out that way (laughs)…girls weren’t accepted in college at penn [the university of pennsylvania]…but you were allowed to take courses…[in education, fine arts, and nursing]. maureen, a middle-aged woman, also felt the effects of gendered roles on her decision to become an educator: at the time, it was tradition that there was a token female in the [medical school] class, and if you were female and applying, the perception was you were taking the place of a male student. so it became apparent to me that i was probably not going to be successful getting into medical school, and … i met my future husband in my senior year, got married, and transferred to rutgers. liza, born in cuba and much younger than both hattie and maureen, had a similar tale to tell about the life circumstances which led to her becoming a teacher: i was very interested in teaching but then in high school i won a poetry context and i was very much into writing and so i thought i might want to do journalism…and then my first year in college i took a writing course and was very discouraged. my love for it [writing] kind of went into hobby mode…and then in my second year i did a field experience in an elementary school educators’ personal and professional lives 21 and the children loved it, and i thought, this is for me; there is no question: i am going into education. miranda, a new teacher, had very similar, serendipitous experiences. she said, in high school i wanted to be a social worker…but then i talked with a friend’s mother and decided it wouldn’t be good for me…i went to college, loved psychology, and decided to teach young kids. i got involved with montessori [education] and thought it was fun…and wound up in education. in a story echoed by many, jeanette summed up this theme when she said, “well, a friend of mine was in deaf education and it just kind of happened.” and, although serendipity and life circumstances may have led these women into education, once they found their home in the profession, the majority of them were happy to be there. last, but certainly not least, role strain was heard in almost every interview. balancing their lives was a constant challenge for most of these women, especially those with children. young (1992) calls this dual commitment to paid and family work, the combining of multiple roles, “competing urgencies.” she argues that women generally take primary responsibility for “family work” and so regard successful juggling of their simultaneous responsibilities as a considerable accomplishment (pp. 150-151). this is what hochschild (1989) famously called “working the second shift” and may align with what griffith and smith (1991) call the “mothering discourse,” the expectation that mothers will love, care, and sacrifice the self. like good mothers, good teachers find their work is never done (acker, 1995). a feminist analysis would add that teaching, like mothering, has the expectations of “altruism, self-abnegation, and repetitive labor” (grumet, 1988, p. 87). because of this, teachers are often exhausted (mcpherson, 1972; steedman, 1987). this is the consequence of the social expectations that current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 women’s caring work should blur the distinction between labor and love (acker). reflecting this tension, yolanda told me, i’m almost finished with my course work [for her master’s in education], [and] i find myself always [feeling guilty]. that guilt: i should be doing more with them [her own children], and i hope they know i still love them, but sometimes i have to say, “i have to do this, i can’t do that”... and you know what’s so funny? my husband can bring something home from work and he says, “you can’t bother me,” and they don’t. but they still ask me, you know, “mom, can you sew this button on?” janet explained how she tried to balance her work and home lives, in part by letting go of expectations that she do all the work and that things needed to be “just so” at home: there’s no question there’s a [misperception] that education doesn’t require [a lot of] time because it takes an enormous amount of time. i guess i worry less about certain things. i like my house picked up but the big stuff on the floor, that doesn’t upset me. i don’t do my husband’s shirts; that’s his responsibility... [and] the children do help…. mindy, who began her career in education as a part-time preschool teacher and worked her way up into school administration, addressed her struggles to maintain friendships given the time demands of her position and other work-related challenges. her “solution” was rather ingenious, though probably not consciously planned: in administration, the work is so consuming that my friendship circle is shrinking. there is just not a lot of time to maintain those relationships... i have a “cell-phone friendship” with a woman who does very similar work. …we have a lot of the same issues we’re dealing with and for years we’d talk to each other every day on the way to work…i didn’t have time to play volleyball anymore which was a major recreation for me that we had done together, so we had to find a way educators’ personal and professional lives 23 to be friends and so we sat on the phone. but part of that friendship was coaching each other on our work. discussion and conclusions so what does this mean? how are the pieces related to the whole? what story are these women telling? i think i can reasonably argue, based on the evidence, that these women educators see themselves as living – or, more accurately, trying to live – undivided lives. each one is an individual who brings her personality, life experiences, cultural and ethnic background, current life situation, and so forth to her work as an educator. in fact, for most, there was simply no way they could separate who they were as people from who they were as teachers. further, most saw no reason to try to separate their “two lives.” kyra, a college professor, directly addresses the complexities of this situation. i struggle with that [how much of herself to bring into the classroom] all the time. there are some courses and some semesters in which it all seems to come together quite nicely, and other semesters where it’s all at odds. and of course i was educated in graduate school that one should be objective and value-free. and so i still carry some of that with me and i think that’s a piece of my struggle around bringing the personal into the professional arena – although it’s obviously always there. these findings have implications for practice, knowledge, and policy. first, teachers are full, immeasurably complex humans working with other full, complex human beings – their students. if teaching were reducible to filling identical vessels with the same, pre-packed materials, anyone could do it…but it wouldn’t be education, then; rather, just filling pails on an assembly line. if, instead, education means, as the word’s latin origins suggest, the drawing out of knowledge, teachers and students must come to know and address each other as the unique current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 individuals they are. obviously, this then affects how we conceive of learning and teaching. this study’s findings argue for ever-varying, never-identical pedagogical processes that cannot be reduced or simplified to mere content dissemination. this, in turn, has implications for policy. briefly, if it is true that teachers, and students, are not interchangeable automatons, then public policy must acknowledge the diversity that teachers bring to the profession by not trying to make one size fit all. this, i believe, is the key finding of this study, making these stories, perhaps, the treasonous texts mentioned earlier. this research shows how women educators’ personal lives are inextricably linked with their work lives. i believe it also challenges technical-rational models of teaching (see, e.g., steinberg, kincheloe, & hinchey, 1999), and makes a case for understanding teachers as individuals who construct meaning through social mediation and as agents who are embedded, embodied, localized, constituted, fragmented, and subject to systems of power and exploitation (dillabough, 1990). in this study, teachers do not present as passive, disembodied “professionals”; rather their identities are shaped by their own narratives as well as social and structural relations both within and outside education (dillabough). teachers, then, are embedded in social and political contexts where multiple selves meet within a dialectical frame (dillabough, 1990). thus, experience and self are key constructs and research should include an examination of these. as women’s voices are increasingly heard in education (smith, 1997), this study’s findings suggest that we must acknowledge a perspective on teaching and learning that incorporates the personal, the contextual, the lived lives of teachers (and students) at all levels. greene urges women to become truly present to themselves by reconsidering their own lived experiences, using what she calls their personal biographies (1973). and she argues “… for an educators’ personal and professional lives 25 intensified awareness of women’s own realities, the shape of their own lived worlds” (1978, p. 219). i hope that this research will help women educators who may feel marginalized or not quite “whole” realize the efficacy and importance of their own personal/professional approaches to pedagogy, the feminist praxis, and the importance of living an undivided life. ultimately, only an understanding of the daily realities of teaching will lead us to social and political changes. in a time of standardization, “teacher-proof,” scripted curriculum, and other so-called reforms in the field of education, this alternative set of stories about teaching and the education system reminds us that teaching cannot be reduced to curricular guidelines and generic texts mandated from above. however, the no child left behind act and other moves toward what is seen as “accountability” in education have promoted and rewarded an image of teaching and teachers as generic and readily replicable. and so, as always, there is always more work to be done. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 30 references acker, s. 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(1987). prisonhouses. in m. lawn & g. grace (eds.), teachers: the culture and politics of work (pp. 117-129). london: falmer press. educators’ personal and professional lives 29 steinberg, s.r., kincheloe, j.l., & hinchey, p.h. (eds.). (1999). the post-formal reader: cognition and education. new york: routledge. thomas, d. (ed.). (1995). teachers’ stories. buckingham, england: open university press. tobin, j. (2000). “good guys don’t wear hats”: children’s talk about the media. new york: teachers college press. warren, c.a.b. (2002). qualitative interviewing. in j.f. gubrium & j.a. holstein (eds.), handbook of interview research: context and method (pp. 83-102). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. weiler, k. (1988). women teaching for change: gender, class and power. south hadley, ma: bergin & garvey. young, b. (1992). on careers: themes from the lives of four western canadian women educators. canadian journal of education, 17 (2), 148-159. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 30 appendix a interview protocol we need to gather some background information first; would you tell me a little about yourself…for example, your: name (although we knew these and didn’t really have to ask, these were recorded) age or age range race/ethnicity and socio-economic status (ses) marital/family status current teaching situation (where, doing what, etc.) the focus of this study is on if/how women educators perceive connections between their professional and personal lives. do you see your personal and professional lives as intersecting? if so, how? if not, please explain. possible areas to consider/ask about: power physicality/voice flexibility/balance relationships intuition/emotion/spirituality/creatively demographic influences (e.g., age, race, and so forth) etc. (whatever comes up in conversation and seems relevant) are there any other areas you perceive as connections that we haven’t addressed? other comments or discussion... appendix b the women educators pseudonym age ethnicity/race marital/family status teaching situation regional affiliation madge 47 white/european (“mutt”) single, no children chair, college nursing dept. new york state sarah 39 white married, no children special education, elementary level grew up in savannah, ga, lived in ny state. now in seattle, wa educators’ personal and professional lives 31 karen 38 caucasian married, 2 children ass’t prof education ny state maureen 57 white/both parents born in scotland married, 3 children chair, college education dept. ny state edna 45 caucasian/whit e/jewish “very single mother of two kids” associate professor & director of art therapy ny state trish 35 “eclectic” (european american) married, 3 children tesol classroom teacher & adjunct faculty for tesol ny state marla 35+ mostly grew up in france, now ny state married, 1 son assistant professors, religious studies all over! darlene 53 white married, 3 children associate professor of education pa and ny state andrea 27 white married, no children child care center teacher and assistant director fl and ny state prada 40 native of india single, no kids assistant professor of education india, iowa, ny state hattie 91 european american/was p widowed, 3 children and many grand-children & great grandchildren retired secondary english teacher pa all of her life kyra 49 white/ “mutt” married, no children sociology professor ny state current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 32 dena 53 european american married, 2 children english teacher, continuing education program ny state mindy european american married, with children public school administrator ny state janet mid 40’s european american married, 3 children 5th-grade science teacher ny state priscilla 50’s european american divorced, 2 grown children 1st-grade teacher suburbs ny state jasmine 40’s african american/cher okee married, 2 daughters school administrator – city school grew up in texas college in oh and ga; at living in ny caitlin 42 white (angloirish) married, 3 sons special educator – 5th grade grew up in ontario, canada. now in ny state pseudonym age ethnicity marital/family status teaching situation regional affiliation cherie 35-40 “black…irish, indian, & african descent” single, 1 daughter in teacher prep program & subbing, city schools born and raised in barbados. currently lives in ny state. yolanda 36 african american married, 2 children in teacher prep program & subbing, city schools grew up in the south. attended college, atlanta, ga. lives in ny educators’ personal and professional lives 33 state. crystal 36 italian american married, 2 kids part-time preschool teacher and director ny state nella 49 creole (black/french) married, 3 kids former catholic. school principal / current director of multicultural affairs @ a college born and raised in new orleans. now living in ny state. jeanette 52 “and proud of it” white/caucasian, irish/german/a little french married, 3 kids teacher of deaf children ny state lainie 42 “human being” (african american) “i want for nothing” – 3 kids, single mom teacher, city schools raised in the south, now living in ny state. briana 42 white/czechamerican married, 2 kids student teacher ny state flo 39 african american & jewish married, 3 kids 6th grade inclusion, city schools grew up in north caroline, now ny state. ciera 36 “white” married, one son teacher of children with visual impairments grew up all over the u.s. now ny state terry 41 white married, no children elementary-level special educator pa current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 34 liza 38 cuban-american second marriage. 2 kids, one stepdaughter tesol teacher born in cuba. lived in u.s. & abroad. now ny state miranda 28 “caucasian” married, one child 2nd grade teacher ny state bette 56 “white generic” married, one daughter tesol teacher ny state mona 43 “caucasian, arab, indic” has been with her partner for 18 years/no kids, “two dogs” tesol teacher raised in u.s. & iran; now in ny state larice 49 native american: mohawk divorced; one son special education teacher ny state educators’ personal and professional lives 35 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo visible or invisible_final volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x visible or invisible? korean high school students’ current schooling experiences in the united states bogum yoon texas woman’s university claudia haag texas woman’s university citation yoon, b. & haag, c. (2010). visible or invisible? korean high school students’ current schooling experiences in the united states. current issues in education, 13(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this qualitative study examined the current schooling experiences of eight korean high school students in the united states. by comparing and contrasting recent immigrant adolescents and 1.5/2nd generation students, the purpose of this study was to explore how their identities as koreans or korean americans were formed and shifted while they engaged with american teachers and peers in mainstream contexts. the findings suggest that even in the same ethnic group, differences were conspicuous. the newcomer group desperately wished to assimilate to mainstream culture by associating with american classmates. on the other hand, the 1.5/2nd generation group lived bi-culturally with dual identities as korean and american and shifted their identities according to their convenience. despite these differences, both of the groups suffered a similar experience by receiving unwelcome gestures from their mainstream teachers and peers: the newcomers as invisible outsiders and the 1.5/2nd generation as visible and marked outsiders. keywords: qualitative study, schooling experiences, korean students, and shifting identities. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 2 about the author(s) author: bogum yoon, ph. d affiliation: texas woman’s university address: p. o. box 425769, denton, tx 76204-5769 email: byoon@mail.twu.edu biographical information: bogum yoon, ph. d. is an associate professor in the department of reading at texas woman’s university. she has worked in the field of literacy as a teacher educator both in south korea and the united states. her research interests include teacher education on adolescent english language learners, critical literacy, cultural and social identity, and multicultural education. author: claudia haag, ph.d affiliation: texas woman’s university address: p. o. box 425769, denton, tx 76204-5769 email: chaag@mail.twu.edu biographical information: claudia haag, ph.d. is an assistant professor in the department of reading at texas woman’s university. her research interests include culturally responsive teaching practices in working with english language learners, esl and mainstream teacher collaboration, and her newest collaborative research with dr. yoon focusing on the analysis of current multicultural literature using a multicultural education framework. visible or invisible? 3 koreans began to emigrate to the united states at the turn of the 20th century, but the majority of modern-day korean americans arrived after the passage of the immigrant reform act of 1965 (chan, 1991). in 1990, the u.s. census registered about 800,000 korean americans, but current population estimates suggest that approximately 1.08 million koreans reside in the united states (u.s. bureau of the census, 2001). the older-generation koreans were greatly diverse and they were from all segments of korean society. but most of recent korean immigrants have highly educated, urban, christian, and middle-class backgrounds (min, 1993). currently, the immigration pattern is changing. more and more korean adolescents are coming to the united states by themselves to study or coming with only one parent, leaving the other parent at home, who usually acts in a financially supportive role (kim & greene, 2003). it is predictable that these students will have tremendous difficulties in adjusting to american educational systems and curricula that are different from those of south korea (yoon, 2009). along with language barriers, the high school korean students, who construct and reconstruct their identities in the mainstream culture, may also experience racial discrimination and intergroup conflicts and tensions (chiu & ring, 1998; goodwin, 2003). not only newcomer students, second-generation korean students may also have difficulties living in the u.s. although they may not have language difficulties like newcomer adolescents, they may struggle with dual identities as korean and american. living up to the standards of a model minority as koreans and living as americans at the same time, korean american students may be highly conscious about their dual identities. their identities as korean or korean americans will form and shift through their experiences while they interact with american teachers and classmates. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 4 in spite of the different educational backgrounds and experiences between newly arrived korean students and second-generation korean students, there has been very little research examining the identity issues of these students through their voices. simple emphasis on similarities within the korean group of students has often led teachers to overlook these students’ complicated lives in the mainstream culture and increased stereotypical beliefs about the students. it is essential to analyze the complex dimensions of the korean groups’ differences by looking at their schooling experiences and their own interpretations of identity as they navigate the u.s. school systems. the central purpose of this article is to report the difficulties and dilemmas that eight korean adolescents experienced when they engaged with american teachers and peers in the mainstream culture. one overarching research question guided this study: how do high school students of korean backgrounds who have different lengths of stay in the united states articulate their engagement with school, experiences in courses, as well as their experiences with peers, teachers, and other school personnel? by comparing and contrasting the schooling experiences of the recent adolescent immigrants and second-generation students, this study explored how their identities as koreans or korean americans were formed and altered. theoritcal perspectives this study which focuses on the identities of the newly arrived korean students and second-generation korean students draws on davidson’s (1996) identity concept: “presentation of self in a matrix of social relationships – a pattern of social assertion that significant others recognize and come to expect” (p.2). this concept includes that identity is formed and shifts in accordance with the relationships among people in a changing society. visible or invisible? 5 davidson’ identity notion, which emphasizes social relationships, is better understood when we look at positioning theory. positioning theory (harré & langenhove, 1999) is defined as “the study of local moral orders as ever-shifting patterns of mutual and contestable rights and obligations of speaking and acting” (p. 1). by paying attention to how people speak and act, this theory focuses on people’s discourse and intentional acts. “positioning” is a metaphorical term that was originally introduced to analyze interpersonal encounters from a discursive viewpoint (hollway, 1984, cited in tan & moghddam, 1999). it has a specific meaning in the analysis of interactions between people. in the technical sense, a position has an effect on the possibilities of interpersonal and intergroup action. positioning is relational and reciprocal. when people interact with each other, assignments such as rights, duties and obligations are involved. in other words, positioning happens. for instance, if a person is positioned as powerful, this person is given a legitimate right to command and demand obligation. however, if a person is positioned as powerless, the person is not given a legitimate right to do so. thus, there is always positioning between people. positioning has the characteristics of a power relation. tan and moghaddam (1999) discuss the positioning process of power by using the example of the boys who participated in sherif et. al.’s study (1961) that focused on intergroup conflict and cooperation. an informative incident happened among the boys. a boy took a knife to cut a watermelon for his group, but some of the members stopped him from doing it. another boy, who was highly regarded by the group, took the knife and cut the watermelon and said, “you guys who yell the loudest get yours last.” in this example, the second boy was positioning himself as one claiming the right to cut the watermelon. he was positioning himself as having the authority to select his own criterion by which the watermelon pieces were to be distributed. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 6 in positioning himself as the one with the power to be group leader, he was positioning the other members as followers. however, the second boy’s positioning as the group leader was put to an end by another boy, who said, “you’re not the boss.” the example above indicates that positioning is reciprocal. initial positioning can be challenged, and the speakers thereby repositioned (harré & langenhove, 1993). the boys negotiated positions and repositioning was formed. if nobody in the group had challenged the second boy’s claims to be the leader, they would have allowed him to take a privileged position and accordingly, would have allowed him more rights to exercise his power over the other members. the incident illustrates that there is a person to be positioned as powerful as long as there is a person to be positioned as powerless. as shown in the example, positioning is an active and discursive practice rather than a stable one. people position others and the others position them back. while positioning and repositioning each other, power relation is always embedded in action. as harré and langenhove (1999) argued, positioning theory is a theory which allows people to reflect on many different aspects of social life in relation to people’s interactions. they emphasize that it should not be treated as a “general theory” which calls for a deterministic application to several subject matters. it can be applicable to research and theories regarding reflection on human relations. because of positioning theory’s reflective and applicable characteristics, it is often used when people understand the relationship between identity and learning. miller (2000) conducted studies of several asian immigrant students who recently arrived in an australian high school. the study illustrated how the students were positioned by the dominant anglo-australian teachers and peers. some students mentioned that they did not like to speak because of their visible or invisible? 7 different accents which were not recognized as legitimate under the mainstream power. the australian classmates simply did not talk to the asian students. failing to be accepted by the mainstream members, the students remained silent without challenging them. repositioning did not occur in this context. this example illustrates how learning, identity, and power are related. it implies how the dominant power affects students’ learning and identity. literature review a vast amount of literature discusses minority groups in terms of ethnicity, race, culture, and education in the united states (banks, 2004; brown 1994; sleeter & grant, 1988). however, the voices of asian americans including koreans are almost absent in the discourse of race because the discussion of race is generally framed in terms of black and white (asher, 2001; s. j. lee, 1996). although there are several reasons why asian voices are excluded from the discourse of race, such as their relatively small population when compared to african american and hispanic people, the most conspicuous reason is that asians have been viewed as “model minorities” in the united states (sleeter, 1993). only successes by asian students have been depicted and praised in american societies. lee (1996) argues that this minority stereotype has been used as a hegemonic device which makes it possible to maintain the dominance of whites in the racial hierarchy by diverting attention away from racial inequality and by setting standards for how minorities should behave. the stereotype has been used in order to silence the charges of racial injustice made by african americans and other minorities. several studies (fu, 1995; s. j. lee, 1996; li, 2002; nozaki, 2000), which have attempted to debunk the stereotype of model minority asian students, discuss the differences among the minority groups and between individuals in the same group. for example, s. j. lee’s current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 8 (1996) study suggests that only korean immigrant students identified themselves as koreans, compared to other asian youth who identified themselves as asian or asian american. korean students thought of themselves as being different from all other asian americans in order to distance themselves from southeast asians who they believe received special financial aids from the government. a notable point in such a discussion is that, in spite of korean students’ efforts to distance themselves from southeast asian students, non-asian students and teachers did not recognize any differences. they saw asians as one homogeneous group and lumped koreans together with all other asians. the study suggests that no matter how hard asian groups attempt to differentiate themselves, the dominant group does not acknowledge the distinctness. yeh and inose’s study (2002) also suggests differences between asian students by exploring east-asian immigrant students’ cultural adjustment. the study suggests that, compared to their chinese and japanese counterparts, korean immigrant students have greater cultural adjustment difficulties. one important finding shows that korean immigrants tend to utilize religious practices as a coping strategy more than chinese and japanese students do. attending church allows not only for worship but also for a place to socialize and network with one another. the studies illustrated above explain some of ways korean students differ from other asian students. the participants in the studies were mostly second generation, or 1.5 generation those who came to the u.s. when they were elementary or middle school (kim, 1993). therefore, it is not known, through these studies, whether newly arrived korean students have similar characteristics as earlier generations of korean students do in terms of their identity formation and adjustment in the united states. visible or invisible? 9 although there are lack of studies focusing on korean high school students’ identity issues, several scholars’ (e.g., goodwin, 2003; kibria, 2002; mehra, 2003; palmer, 2001; g. park, 2001; vyas, 2001) post-modernistic approach to examine minority groups’ identity are important here. for instance, gilbert park (2001) examines korean american college students’ ethnic sense of selves. his findings suggest that the students’ ethnic identities do not simply equal their national ancestry or origin. the students identify themselves by using different labels in different situations. it shows that the students’ ethnic sense of selves is multidimensional and situational. identity appears to change according to different contexts. palmer’s (2001) study about korean adopted young women also suggests the complexity of identity. the students were seen to struggle with their dual identities as korean and american under the dominant group’s power. as seen in the review of literature above, the korean americans’ complex identities were discussed more in general contexts rather than centering in on specific contexts such as schools and classrooms. discussions on identity issues in contexts such as schools or classrooms in which korean adolescents engage directly with teachers and peers are missing. a focus on identity issues in these contexts is needed to help american teachers better understand korean adolescents’ complicated identity development and their different needs. method participants and contexts i, the first author, used a qualitative approach following creswell’s (1998) perspectives that emphasize the nature of research questions focusing on how or what, a detailed view of the topic, and studying individuals. among research traditions in qualitative study, i selected the method of case study (stake, 1995; merriam, 1998). the case study fits the characteristics of my current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 10 study of eight korean students, which involves in-depth, detailed description. i divided the students into two groups according to their length of stay in the united states: “the newcomer group” and “1.5/2nd generation group.” i define the newcomers as those who arrived in the united states less than two years ago and the 1.5/2nd generation group as those who were born here or have been here for more than ten years. i wanted to study whether there were any similarities or differences in the high school experiences and identity issues of the two groups. the selection criterion of participants was the length of stay in the united states. i used two different channels to recruit participants. i contacted my own children’s middle school esl teacher who was also teaching at a public high school. she helped me contact one high school student who arrived eight months ago. i also contacted several korean families who attended the same church that i attended, to find if any had high school children or knew of other korean families with high school children. along with the first student recommended by the esl teacher, the other seven students (three newly arrived students and the four second-generation students) who met the selection criteria were all contacted by me and were willing to participate in my study. the newcomer group the newcomer group’s situations are unique and different in terms of their motives for coming to the united states. specific backgrounds of the four participants are presented below, followed by some educational contexts of south korea to help readers better understand the students’ backgrounds. all of the participants’ names are pseudonyms kyung is a ninth grader in a catholic school in western new york. she came to the u.s. for the purpose of studying, and her parents stayed in south korea to run their small motel. since middle school, kyung has desperately pursued her desire to study in the u.s. by searching for visible or invisible? 11 schools on the internet. she kept asking her parents to allow her to study abroad and finally obtained their permission. it was kyung, and not her parents, who initiated her study decisions. she is currently staying in mr. kim’s home, who is a korean immigrant. he is beginning to recruit korean students who want to study in the united states. eun, who is also in the ninth grade, is attending the same school and taking the same courses as kyung. eun is staying with her sister, a college student, who came to the united states by herself when she was in the seventh grade. eun’s father is a businessman who manufactures pesticides in south korea. her mother is a housewife. eun mentioned that her father sends almost all the money that he earns for her and her sister’s educational expenses. wook is in the tenth grade. he is also attending the same school as kyung and eun. wook is staying with his mother who came to the u.s. for graduate study at a university. after completion of her master’s program, she is planning to go back to south korea, where her husband and daughter live. wook, however, is going to stay in the u.s to continue his study at college. the three students above mentioned that they wanted to attend a public school. however, the american embassy in south korea refused to issue them visas to the united states unless they obtained private school admissions in the united states. all three students stated that they chose their current catholic school because their parents thought the school cost less (about $6,000 per year) than most of other private schools in the u.s. the fourth student in the newcomer group, bon, is a ninth grader. he is attending a public school in a suburban area in western new york. he came to the united states following his father who is a visiting scholar (art professor) at a university. bon is the only student among the newcomer group who is living with all of his family members, including his father, his current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 12 mother, and his two other siblings. he is going to stay with his two other siblings and mother even after his father returns to south korea to teach at a university there. except for wook, who lived in one of the most affluent areas in seoul, korea, the other three lived in other provinces which are not recognized as “good educational” provinces. there is a general saying among korean people that states, “if you want to educate your children, you should send them to seoul.” there is a huge educational gap between seoul and most of the other areas in south korea. even among seoul school districts, the gap is huge. for example, a student who ranks first in his/her class in a district area outside of seoul might be ranked as below average in a school in seoul. most renowned colleges in south korea are situated in seoul, and korean parents desperately wish to send their children there. if their children cannot enter one of the colleges in seoul, it is a matter of embarrassment to many parents. the decision on whether their children can enter a good college is usually made before they enter high school. it depends on what school district students attend, but mostly, only one or two top students in a class can enter a prestigious college in south korea. therefore, the desire for professional jobs, such as that of a medical doctor or a lawyer, is a difficult dream to realize for most “average” korean adolescents. 1.5/2nd generation group compared to newcomer students, all of the 1.5/2nd generation students live with their parents in homes that range in price from about $400,000 to $500,000. their parents all immigrated to the united states twenty years ago. more specific students’ profiles are as follows. visible or invisible? 13 two participants were siblings. eugin is in eleventh grade and his sister, eunji, is in ninth grade. eugin and eunji’s father is a businessman and their mother is a minister. both eugin and eunji were born in the u.s. daewon is in the ninth grade. he came to the u.s when he was two months old. his parents own a clothing store. daewon attends a public school in an affluent district, where eugin and eunji attend. bokeun was born in the u.s. she is in the twelfth grade and attends a public school in one of the most affluent districts in western new york. her father is a radiologist and her mother is a housewife. data collection as a qualitative researcher, i functioned as the primary instrument in data collection (creswell, 1998). my identity as a middle-class korean, as a former english teacher for middle and high school students, as a teacher educator in korea, and as a mother of two esl (english as a second language) children was my lens for processing, collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data. my second author, a european american colleague, was invited to provide an outsider lens as she reviewed, questioned, and helped me clarify my findings. in this study, the primary form of data consisted of in-depth interviews with the participants (see appendix for interview questions). their personal narratives were my main data. the interviews were conducted for about ninety minutes to two hours at the participants’ convenience at their homes or at my office. i interviewed the 1.5/2nd generation group at their houses. i interviewed using the korean language with the newcomer group who expressed that their english is limited and wanted to speak in korean. however, i interviewed the 1.5/2nd current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 14 generation group in english. all of the 1.5/2nd generation members said that they could hardly speak in korean. limitations the limitations of this study are two-fold. the major data depended on the students’ narratives through the method of interview. if i could have opportunities to observe the students in their classroom, i could triangulate my data and provide a fuller picture of their interaction with their teachers and peers. the other limitation is related to the selection of participants. although i did not intend to choose the students from the same school, it happened that the three students in each group attended the same school. diverse settings in different school districts might have provided different insights of the korean students’ current school experiences and their identity formations and shifts. data analysis data sources include interview transcripts, interview memos in which i wrote down the participants’ “illocutionary force,” such as their gestures and tone, and research journal logs in which i wrote down my reflections as soon as i returned from the interviews. all of the formal interviews were audio taped, transcribed, and coded. first of all, i transcribed the tapes with the newcomer group in korean and then translated the data into english. while i was translating, i attempted to find equivalent words and nuances to match with english words since there is no exact relationship between english language and korean language (brown, 1987; chu, 1999). therefore, all interview data for the newcomer interviews shared in the following findings section has been translated into english. for data analysis, i used merriam’s (1998) case study analysis – within-case analysis and cross-case analysis and spradley’s (1980) taxonomic analysis. for within-case analysis, i first visible or invisible? 15 treated each student’s case individually within each group. then, i tried to find common themes within the group. finally, i compared the newcomer group with the 1.5/2nd generation group and found similarities and differences between them. the codes that emerged from newcomer groups were: “invisible outsiders,” “impact of content knowledge,” “assimilation desire,” & “american dreams.” the codes from 1.5/2nd generation groups were: “realistic dreams,” “blaming teachers & school systems,” & “dual identities.” in categorizing my data, spradley’s seven steps of taxonomic analysis were helpful: 1) select a domain for taxonomic analysis, 2) look for similarities based on the same semantic relationship, 3) look for additional included terms, 4) search for larger, more inclusive domains, 5) construct a tentative taxonomy, 6) make focused observations to check out my analysis, and 7) construct a completed taxonomy. more specifically, i first found more general themes such as difficulties and identity shifts related to my research questions. then, i looked for similar patterns such as teachers’ and peers’ mistreatments. finally, i closely looked for specific examples to support my arguments. findings and discussion the newcomer group as stated earlier, four codes emerged while analyzing my data on the newcomer group: invisible/silent outsiders, being recognized through content knowledge, the desire to assimilate to the dominant culture, and living with the american dream. invisible/silent outsiders the newcomer students, who expressed their difficulties in speaking in english, often received unwelcome gestures from their mainstream teachers and classmates. for instance, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 16 kyung’s statements below illustrated how mainstream teachers and classmates positioned her and her korean friend, eun, as invisible outsiders. kyung: a teacher in global class always calls on me and eun “ladies,” instead of calling our names individually although we changed our korean names to english names, (kelly and jenny, respectively). the first time, i thought he could not distinguish eun and me because asian people might look the same to him. but it has been a few months, and he still doesn’t call on us by our english names, kelly and jenny. he remembers and calls the other students’ [american classmates] names in an accurate way. researcher: how did you feel when you were called “ladies?” kyung: i didn’t feel good, of course. i wanted him to call me kelly. researcher: then did you ask him to call you kelly, not “ladies?” kyung: no, i didn’t. researcher: why not? kyung: ‘cause (long pause)… i don’t know. my english is not good enough. the teacher in global class treated kyung and her friend eun as a categorized asian group and not as individual agents. by treating the two korean students differently from the other american students, he marginalized and positioned kyung and eun as outsiders. even though kyung knew that it was not appropriate to be addressed as “ladies” when all the other students were called on by their individual names, she did not reposition herself as a legitimate member of the community by challenging the teacher. not only were kyung and eun treated as outsiders by teachers, but also by peers in their classes. for instance, kyung and eun were in the same group in science class. at that time, one boy in the same group looked at the korean girls and said to the boy in another group, “our team visible or invisible? 17 is bad,” enunciating that kyung and eun were not good enough to contribute to his group. this case illustrated the boy treating the korean girls as invisible persons, as if they were not present as he made this comment. another example also provides evidence that the girls encountered discrimination from their american peers. kyung and eun mentioned in an interview that some american classmates also talked about them behind their backs. although kyung and eun did not clearly understand what was being said, they could sense that their american classmates talked about them. one day, when the two korean students turned around, a boy who was talking behind them said to his friend, “that’s okay—they do not understand, anyway.” this incident indicates that although the korean students were a part of this classroom, the american classmate positioned kyung and eun as outsiders who would not be able to understand due to language differences making it all right to talk behind their backs. with these unwelcome gestures from mainstream teachers and classmates, the striking point is that kyung and eun did not blame their teachers and classmates who treated them as outsiders. the korean girls attributed themselves to be at fault for not being able to speak english well. the girls took it for granted that it was acceptable to be treated like that. both kyung and eun mentioned that if they could speak english well, “it would be all right.” this illustrates that they only blame their poor english rather than the american teachers’ and peers’ discriminatory attitudes towards them. wook’s remarks also demonstrated that he blamed his english pronunciation and accent, not his peers, for this treatment. he talked about his experience with one of his classmates: wook: when i asked anne next to me, “what time is it?” she did not respond at all. researcher: maybe she did not hear you? current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 18 wook: no way. she was just next to me and when i called her name to ask her the time, she looked at me. researcher: then why do you think she did not respond to you? wook: maybe because of my poor pronunciation. maybe she did not like my heavy accent. instead of noting his peer’s mistreatment of him, wook blamed his pronunciation of “what time is it?” which was stated clearly to me during this interview session. the examples above illustrate how newcomer students experienced unwelcome gestures from their mainstream teachers and classmates. the korean students appeared to view that the mainstream teachers’ and classmates’ ignorance and mistreatment toward them being related to their own lack of english skills, rather than american teachers and classmates themselves. being recognized through content knowledge despite such ignorance and mistreatment by their teachers and classmates, the newcomer students are nevertheless “happy” and “satisfied” with their new school life. it appears to be contradictory in arguing that the students were being discriminated against, but they were happy at the same time. a plausible answer is that, as time goes by, compared to the first semester, the students began to have confidence by displaying their content knowledge, such as in math or science. by proving that they were not deficient, the korean newcomer students began to be recognized as acceptable persons by the mainstream teachers and peers. three of the students who i interviewed individually were excited to be talking about their experiences with their american peers: visible or invisible? 19 kyung: in biology class, a girl did not know even where a lung was. i showed her. since that time, she has treated me differently. i mean, since then, she has greeted me first and acted very kindly. _ _ _ wook: i am taking an english language skills class with two other american.one is a junior and the other is a senior. they did not even know what the spelling of “grammar” was. one boy answered the english teacher’s question, by saying, “grammer.” i was speechless at that time, thinking american people may not know how to spell words correctly. we (wook, kyung and eun) are all strong at spelling, and the american boys sometimes ask me how to spell some words, such as “cemetery.” _ _ _ eun: in math class, i drew four graphs correctly and neatly by using a pencil. after the math teacher saw my clean drawings, she praised me highly. since then, some american peers who never paid attention to me asked me whether they could borrow a pencil or angles. i was happy about the fact that they asked to borrow my stuffs. the korean students were all excited talking about how they proved to american teachers and classmates that they are knowledgeable. the students want to be accepted and recognized by the mainstream teachers and peers. eun’s excitement that some students asked her to borrow a pencil indicates how greatly she wants to gain acceptance and be recognized by mainstream american people in class. she said, “i am grateful that they ask me something.” it appears that the newcomers’ content knowledge played a limited role in making them recognized as capable rather than deficient. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 20 desire to assimilate to dominant culture most of the newcomer students were eager to make american friends to fit into a new culture. bon’s narration illustrates how he attempts to make friends despite the mainstream classmates’ disinterest in him: bon: when i was passing by, i said, “hi” to a boy who is in my class. but he simply ignored me without saying, “hi” back. researcher: how did you feel at that time? bon: i felt he was very rude. but i decided to make him as my friend. since then, i approached him and joked around even with my poor english. and now he has become my friend. although all of the newcomer students attempted hard to associate with american friends, the results were not successful. to them, getting associated with american friends was a difficult task in a mainstream context, which only accepts standard american english and its norms. however, it was interesting that only bon seems to accomplish the “goal”: making american friends. his attempt to fit into mainstream culture by joining sports clubs and joking around appeared to make it possible for him to do so. kyung, eun, and wook also showed their eagerness to associate with americans. although the three students have lunch together at a cafeteria with a senior korean student in the school, they mentioned, in individual interviews, that they wanted to have lunch with their american peers. eun’s remarks illustrate how greatly she wishes to be in the mainstream group: eun: i really want to get closer to american peers. if i can speak english well later, i will act and play like american peers do, not thinking of myself as asian who cannot speak english well…. even though i want to be with american friends for lunch, i can’t visible or invisible? 21 move to them because we [korean group] already formed a lunch group. also i am hesitant to do that because i am concerned that i might feel stupid when sitting with american friends and keeping silent while they are talking [because of my lack of understanding english]. eun’s consciousness of the other korean students’ opinions and her lack of english inhibit her willingness to join in her american peers’ lunch tables. however, her eagerness to act like and play like the americans indicate that she wishes to assimilate to mainstream culture. living with american dreams interestingly, kyung, eun, wook, and bon all mentioned that they ranked about 20th out of 40 students in a class in south korea. from a korean academic standard, they all ranked below average and it would have been hard for them to enter a prestigious college that is closely related to their future job in a korean context. however, all of the newcomer members mentioned they wanted to be medical doctors in interviews. they all recognized that they might not be able to be doctors in their native country because their grades did not guarantee it at all. however, the students were sure that their goals could come true in the u.s. once they overcame their language difficulties. the newcomer group did not seem to show any doubt about accomplishing their dreams. to the students who have experienced the competitive and rigid schooling in korea that only focuses on tests for entering college (seth, 2002), the united states seems to be viewed as a land of opportunity. to those who have not been recognized as top students in south korea, the united states is a dreamland in which they can pursue their goals. all the newcomer students shared that they like their american schools. everything seems to be new and great to them. when i asked the students about the reason why they liked american schools so much better than korean schools, all of the newcomer students kept current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 22 mentioning that “no teacher gives corporal punishments to students.” “facilities are good.” bon said even moving to other classrooms and having his own locker was new to him. he did not have the same facilities in south korea, where he did not have to move from class to class because teachers move and students stay and have their own desks in their classrooms. all the newcomer students were excited to share their american school experiences with their korean friends through chatting on the internet. this is one way that they release their tension in a new culture. the interesting point is that the korean students only share exciting experiences with their peers in korea, not their struggles. kyung’s remarks illustrate how as she chatted with her korean friends, she made them long for american high school life: kyung: i only tell them the good and funny things because i do not want them to feel sorry for me by telling them about my difficulties. and, i know they want to hear something new, i mean, something different. so i told them that i saw many students here kiss and hug each other in the hall way and it was quite natural. then they say, “really? i wish i could go there [u.s].” researcher: to see them? kyung: no, to do that [kissing and hugging] researcher and kyung: [laugh]. the newcomer group students appear to be still in a euphoric stage. despite their language obstacles and mistreatment as outsiders by the mainstream group, they are still in high spirits and are satisfied with living in the u.s. society. their strong belief that they can accomplish their dreams in the unites states, once they overcome language difficulties, does not seem to be hindered even in light of their struggles and dilemmas as a marginalized group in class. visible or invisible? 23 the 1.5/2nd generation group as noted earlier, except for daewon, who was born in korea and moved to america when he was two months old, the other three students were born and raised in the united states. compared to the newcomer group students, adolescents in the 1.5/2nd generation group show very different perspectives and attitudes towards their school experiences. three main codes emerged: realistic dreams, blaming their teachers, and living with dual identities. realistic dreams first of all, the 1.5/2nd generation students’ dreams appeared to be realistic. the students were not sure about their future. even though most of the students’ parents wanted them to be medical doctors or lawyers, they did not believe that they could be and often considered different dreams. although they all took it for granted that they would go to college, they were not sure what they wanted to be after graduating from college: researcher: what do you want to be after graduating from college? eugin: my dad wants me to be a lawyer. i don’t know. i might be an english teacher. or involved in technology. i don’t know. _ _ _ eunji: my dad wants me to get a good job to make good money. my mom doesn’t care. she wants me to do what i like. maybe something with the church. i don’t know what i want to be. _ _ _ daewon: my parents want me to be a doctor. i don’t know. probably. i don’t know. _ _ _ current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 24 bokeun: they [my parents] want me to be a doctor. but i haven’t decided what i want to be. all the remarks above illustrate that they are not sure what career path they want to take in life. even though their parents wish them to be doctors, the 1.5/2nd generation group students show doubts about their future, unlike newcomer students who appeared to have confidence about their future jobs. all of the immigrant group students made their dreams realistic in accordance with their academic achievement. in particular, eugin’s narration indicates how he views himself and adjusts his dream to his academic achievement: eugin: i am an average student. researcher: what do you mean? eugin: like, my grades are average. sometimes 90s, sometimes 80s, and 70s, i usually go down there. my parents keep telling me i should go higher in order to get into a good college. i will go to an average college, like x university, they still accept average students, so i think i am good. i don’t want to be a doctor or lawyer—what my parents want me to be. my goals are very reasonable. i should do what i can do. i might be an english teacher. as shown in eugin’s remarks, he might get pressure from his parents who keep telling him to get higher grades. as most of korean parents, eugin’s parents seem to have high aspirations for their son. they believe that his grades are not adequate enough to gain admission to a good college and to be a doctor or a lawyer. they think that eugin is not doing as well as he could be. considering that he cannot meet his parents’ expectations, eugin adjusts his dream to go to an “average” college and to be a teacher rather than being a doctor or a lawyer. visible or invisible? 25 the other students, daewon (ninth grade) and bokeun (twelfth grade), also reveal that they do not dream about what they feel is hard to accomplish: daewon: my dad wants me to go to an ivy league school. but i don’t think so. it’s really hard to get into. i get average 90s. i don’t think it is enough. _ _ _ bokeun: i know a lot of competition to go to a good college such as columbia. i got sat 1470 [current 2190]. i got average mid-90s in most ap level college classes. but it is not enough to go there. researcher: isn’t sat 1470 enough? bokeun: no, it’s not. i should get at least over [sat] 1500. many students need to get over 1500 to go to a good college. going to a good college is very competitive. daewon’s and bokeun’s grades are excellent from american standard points of view. however, daewon and bokeun seemed to believe that their grades were not sufficient to accomplish their goals. blaming their teachers another notable point in the 1.5/2nd generation’ attitudes about school is that most of them, except for bokeun, who is involved in many activities such as being vice president of a student council and editor of school newspaper at her school, have negative perceptions towards their school and teachers. they responded to my question about their school and teachers: “school is school.” “i have no school spirit.” “why should i have to have school spirit?” “teachers are boring.” “so boring.” “typical teachers.” by having negative perceptions towards their teachers, the 1.5/2nd generation group students blame their teachers when they get rather “low” scores, which was quite a different current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 26 perspective when compared to the newcomer group students who blame themselves. eugin, eunji, and daewon talk about their teachers and their impact on their grades: eugin: if i am motivated, i can get high grades. real high grades. my teachers keep telling me i am a potential straight-a student. but they are not interesting. all our teachers are very dull. they don’t motivate me. researcher: don’t you think you can motivate yourself? eugin: no, they should be encouraging me. _ _ _ eunji: if teachers teach better, then my grades will be higher. some teachers don’t really push you to do something. some are really bad at teaching. they just write on the board and do not explain. especially, my french teacher, i don’t think she knows what she is doing. _ _ _ daewon: they (teachers) affect my grades, like, if i don’t like the way they teach, i can’t really do well—as well as i can. these students’ remarks imply that schools have to provide engaging instruction. they view barriers to their academic achievement as social, which is a different perspective from the newcomer group students who view the barriers as personal rather than social. if the teachers taught better, their academic achievement would improve. to the students, it is the teachers’ responsibility to serve students, and the students deserve the best educational service. motivating them is the teacher’s job—not their job. instead of blaming themselves, they blame the teachers’ lack of encouragement, which fails to motivate them. the 1.5/2nd generation students’ criticism towards their teachers, which is related to institutions, is quite conspicuous and in contrast to the visible or invisible? 27 newcomer group students. the newcomer group students never viewed their unequal treatment— making them marginalized outsiders—as the fault of the teachers or school systems. living in the two cultures/two identities the 1.5/2nd generation adolescents live in two cultures with dual identities. their relationship to their american teachers and peers affects the students’ dual identities as korean and american. the dominant group’s stereotype of the model minority in regard to koreans influences the students’ identities: eugin: my blood is korean. but, since i was born in america, i am more like american. i speak like an american, act like an american. researcher: act like an american? eugin: like say, accent, i really don’t have much accent. also study habits. i have heard that koreans are very smart. study hard, work hard. me? i am just, i am just like an american. i don’t try hard. i am an average student [laugh]. eugin’s remarks about his identity as american because of his study habits illustrate that he is unable to live up to standards of the model minority. to him, the model minority stereotype affects his identity formation. his narration implies that if he thinks that he is a model minority student, his identity as an american might shift to that of being a korean. it should be noted, however, that eugin did not dichotomize his identity as, “i am korean,” or “i am american.” rather, he talks about his dual identity in an indirect way such as, “my blood is korean,” and “i am more like an american.” he is in dilemma between two identities. succinctly speaking, he lives in his dual identities as korean and american and uses his identities differently according to his convenience as a living strategy in american society (palmer, 2001; g. park, 2001). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 28 eugin is not the only student who feels the asian concept of model minority is a burden which impacts individual identities. eunji narrates how american peers view her: they (american peers) think all asian people are smart. they ask me, “what classes are you taking?” i said, “i am just taking a freshman class.” and they say, “really?” because i am asian, they think i should take higher classes. i don’t feel good. i want them to treat me as american at those times…in global class, we talked about north korea, nuclear weapons, attacks—stuff like that. the teacher looked at me because i am korean. i just felt it’s not me. eunji’s descriptions imply that she wanted to be considered as an american, not as a korean, in the context of when she is not in a favorable situation. when the asian model minority stereotype did not apply to her, she wanted to remain as an american. in addition, when she was perceived as korean by the teacher in global class, she resisted her identity as korean in that unfavorable context. she wanted to remain as american. however, her american identity shifts to korean in a different context: eunji: my american friends think i am korean. when they saw a taekwondo (korean martial arts) demonstration, they shouted to me, “eunji, eunji, taekwondo, taekwondo. they think koreans are really cool. in terms of fashion, computer games, korean students know more. they (american friends) find out later about what we already know. eunji used the word “we,” which means koreans, to represent her identity. during the interview, she was exuberant to talk about how her american peers view her as korean. although the first example above indicated she was not pleased about her teacher’s and peers’ perception toward her as korean, her narration indicates that she senses her american peers’ positive perceptions towards koreans in terms of fashion and technology. eunji does not show any resistance to be visible or invisible? 29 perceived as korean when the situation does not hurt her korean identity. in sum, the 1.5/2nd generation examples show that their identity shifts are influenced by the dominant groups’ recognition. conclusion this study examined the current schooling experiences of eight korean high school students in the united states. the findings suggest that even in the same ethnic group, differences were enlightening. how the korean students portrayed themselves in the mainstream context was related to how american teachers and peers recognized them. it was interesting that the way that the newcomer korean students presented themselves in a social matrix was different from that of the 1.5/2nd generation group. both groups’ different experiences might have affected their view of themselves as koreans or korean americans. the korean adolescents’ different experiences in a mainstream context show the complex features of their identity formation and shift as follows. first, the newcomer group experienced serious language difficulties along with discrimination from the dominant group and was often treated as invisible outsiders. the 1.5/2nd generation group did not experience the same type of discrimination as invisible outsiders, but they experienced how the dominant group positioned them as visible and marked outsiders. the newcomer students’ sense of themselves as outsiders was more evident when they worked with american teachers and peers by communicating in english. this study suggests that english language was used as a tool that disempowered the korean students. as shown in the data of kyung, eun, and bon, the students felt powerless and acted passively when their american teachers and classmates exercised their power through english language. the korean students, however, did not reposition themselves as legitimate and active members in the class by current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 30 challenging the mainstream power. as positioning theorists (harré & langanhove, 1999; tan & moghdam, 1999) argue about power relation, without challenging the dominant group, the korean students allowed the group to take a privileged position, and accordingly, allowed it more rights to exercise its power over them. second, in spite of their mistreatment from their mainstream teachers and classmates, a notable point is that the newcomer students did not take the discrimination issue seriously. the students believe that when they have a good command of english, the mainstream people would treat them well. as ogbu (1992) claimed, barriers are mostly overcome by concentrating on future goals. the korean students seemed to focus on possibility, not obstacles, for their future dreams. to them, the american dream meant that individuals had an equal opportunity if they worked hard. to the newcomer students, “barriers to success are mainly personal rather than social” (macleod, 1987, p. 1). clearly, the way that the 1.5/2nd generation viewed obstacles was different from that of the newcomers. to the 1.5/2nd generation, barriers to academic success were social rather than personal. they tended to blame the school system because it did not provide effective teachers who motivated them and provided them with the best services for their learning. the 1.5/2nd generation group adolescents were very realistic about their future goals. the way that they set goals was related to their academic achievement at school. as shown in the data from the 1.5/2nd generation, their parents’ pressure on their grades is apparent. the students who did not meet their parents’ high expectations tended to adjust their dreams as realistic. these 1.5/2nd generation group students’ attitudes towards their dreams contrasts sharply to the newcomer group adolescents who believe that they can accomplish their goals once they overcome a language barrier. visible or invisible? 31 finally, the way that the newcomer students associate with american peers was different from that of the 1.5/2nd generation students. the newcomer group desperately wished to assimilate to mainstream culture by associating with american classmates. they wanted to be like americans and to be treated as americans. to the newcomer students, assimilation was seen as a way of integrating into the mainstream context (kibria, 2002) and was viewed as an essential process in becoming legitimate members of the society. on the other hand, the 1.5/2nd generation adolescents lived in two cultures and they were often in a dilemma in regard to their dual identities. they lived bi-culturally with dual identities as korean and american, according to their convenience. norton (2000) argues that the question “who am i?” can be understood from the question “what am i allowed to do?” however, this case study suggested that the answer about “who am i?” can be influenced by the question “how do you perceive me?” the 1.5/2nd generation group’s identity formation and shifting were affected by how american people viewed and positioned them. in sum, the findings of this study support most of identity researchers’ findings that identities are situational and socially constructed (palmer, 2001; g. park, 2001; vyas, 2001). however, findings also suggest that the second-generation students’ identity shift depended on whether they perceived the situations as favorable or unfavorable to them. my data support several researchers’ (kim, 1993; s. j. lee, 1996; palmer, 2001) perspectives on identity, that it is flexible and fluid, not rigid and unchanging over time. the students shift their identities from korean to american or vice versa. however, the shift of identity is always based upon the students’ recognition and consciousness of the dominant group. their identities shift according to how the dominant group positions them. creating, forming, and shifting identities are all related to the dominant group’s power. the students become current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 32 korean, korean american, or american as they develop their images on the “map” of american society (olsen, 1997). by being positioned and repositioned by the mainstream culture, students from both groups continually have to define and redine their identities and place in u.s. school contexts. in sum, the findings of this study suggest that whether they arrived recently, had lived for over a decade, or were born in the u.s, the korean adolescents carried with them the legacy of outsiders in the mainstream context. the implication of this study is that the complexities and differences within the same ethnic group need to be focused on and studied more in educational contexts. in particular, american teachers might reflect on how to focus on students’ individuality and develop diverse teaching approaches that address their needs. the perceptions that teachers hold about a certain ethnic group guide their practices and how they interact with them (olneck, 2004). when teachers hold perceptions that all asian students are strong at math or science, they may not attempt to pursue different pedagogies for the students who are not as strong in these content areas and may label them as “deficient” or “at-risk” students. taking students into consideration as individual entities, as is needed for all students, is the way that teachers can avoid the stereotyping of ethnic minority students. in addition, helping students develop a positive sense of themselves is significant since it affects their learning. when students perceive hostility, indifference, and discrimination from american teachers and peers, they are deterred from learning and their sense of marginality is accentuated (trueba, jacobs, & kirton, 1990). even initially resilient immigrant students as shown in this study may have their optimism and confidence eroded and their engagement decreased when they continuously encounter denigration and neglect by teachers and classmates (davidson, 1997). teaching that fosters culturally relevant pedagogy (ladson-billings, 1995), visible or invisible? 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(1990). cultural conflict and adaptation: the case of hmong children in american society. new york: falmer press. u.s. bureau of the census (2001). profiles of general demographic characteristics: 2000 census of population and housing [online]. available: http://www.census.gov vyas, s. (2001). am i indian, american, or indian american?: studying the home and school experiences of indian bicultural adolescents. in c. c. park, a. l. goodwin, & s. j. lee (eds.), research on the education of asian and pacific americans (pp. 129-154). greenwich, ct: information age publishing. yeh, c. j & inose, m. (2002). difficulties and coping strategies of chinese, japanese, and korean immigrant students. adolescence, 37, 69-82. yoon, b. (2009). education fever and exam hell: the current educational systems and issues in south korea. in s.b. mertens, v.a. anfara, & k. roney (eds.), handbook of research in middle level education: an international look at educating young adolescents (pp. 115134). information age publishing, charlotte: north carolina. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 38 appendix semistructured interview questions: 1. introduce about yourself. how old are you? what grade are you in? 2. what made you come to the united states? 3. how would you describe yourself? what would you call yourself? is there a label that best describes who you are? 4. how would your teachers/peers describe you? 5. how long have you attended this school? how would you describe your school? 6. do you have any difficulties/successes in school? 7. tell me about your level of participation in class. 8. what type of academic program are you in? 9. what do you think it takes to be successful in your school? 10. describe a class/subject that is important to you. what makes the course important to you? what courses are not so important, if any? why? 11. do students in your school separate themselves into groups? what groups does your school have? do the members of different groups interact? which groups are you a part of? can anyone become part of any group? 12. how do you feel about your teachers? 13. are there any teachers at your school who you feel have had a particularly positive or negative impact on you? who are they? what did they do? 14. how would your teachers describe you as a student? is this description an accurate one? 15. how do you feel about your peers? 16. how do your peers interact with each other? visible or invisible? 39 17. what do you think your peers would say about you? 18. how would you describe your parents’ involvement in the daily aspects of your school life? 19. what do you hope to do after you leave high school? 20. do your parents approve of your success in high school thus far? 21. what do your parents want you to do after you graduate from high school? 22. what is the occupation of your mother/father? do your parents expect that you will follow in their footsteps? 23. tell me about your daily life. 24. is there anything that you think i have missed or that you think i should have asked you? is there anything else you would like to tell me? current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 40 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word #748-final document with process dates.docx 1 volume 14, number 3 september 28, 2011 issn 1099-839x making success in education: what black parents believe about participation in their children’s education linwood h. cousins western michigan university roslyn a. mickelson university of north carolina at charlotte this article examines the role of parent involvement—its meaning and effects—among a determined group of african american parents. we focus on some of the characteristics of involvement of a subset of african american parents in a larger program designed to enhance the math and science course selection of middle and high school students. as one of several factors related to school success, our findings confirm the centrality of parent participation and its implications among members of a historically marginalized group. keywords: african american, parent involvement, educational equity the academic performance of african american1 students in k-12 schooling has rightly received broad attention in both the research community and public policy circles because of the tremendous negative effects low educational achievement has on the scope and quality of future opportunities. we enter this broad discussion through a narrow examination of the role of parent involvement—its meaning and effects.2 more important, we describe the agency of a set of african american parents who defy mainstream stereotypes of passivity and inactiveness. we argue that the actions of such parents provide a more complete picture of the range of parent involvement of minorities, and that education and social policy and practice are the better for considering such outcomes. even if our evidence and arguments are tempered by the limited sample size in this study, these parents are not anomalies. in fact, the assertive agency of these parents is consistent with research and policy debates regarding the level and quality of african american parent participation in education. our findings reflect the need to rethink how african american parents experience and manage barriers that they will certainly face due to racial and social class status, and perhaps consider the legacy of the relatively weaker connections historically between african american parents and the educational system. education focused research shows that parent participation is one of several factors that contribute to the academic success of african american public school students (epstein, 1995, 2001; gutman & mcloyd, 2000). other factors include school dynamics, family and community structures, social class, gender, race and ethnicity (barbarin, mccandies, coleman, & hill, 2005; diamond & gomez, 2004; epstein, 2001; mickelson, 2003b; ogbu, 2008). as such, our focus on parent involvement is not intended to imply that it is the most important factor in african american children’s success in school. however, our findings confirm the centrality of parent participation among members of a historically marginalized group (barton, drake, gustavo, st. louis, & magnia, 2004; kim, 2002; jeynes, 2005; waggoner & griffith, 1998). this article focuses on some of the characteristics of involvement of a subset of african american parents in a program designed to enhance the math and science course current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 2 selection of middle and high school students. called the math/science equity program (msep), we developed and implemented a university-community partnership that offered knowledgeand skills-based workshops to african american parents of students in the charlotte-mecklenburg schools (mickelson, cousins, velasco, & williams, 2011). msep’s specific purpose was to empower greater parental involvement in children’s education through enhancing and supplementing the knowledge, skills, and strategies parents can employ to more successfully manage children’s educational careers in public schools. the subset of parents from which we draw our data were part of a “follow-up” component for msep graduates. drawing upon qualitative data we collected, in this article we describe several dynamic characteristics of involvement that were common across parents of middle and high school children in select schools in charlotte, nc. these data focus on beliefs about parent involvement, how parents act on their beliefs, the barriers they face or perceive regarding involvement in their children’s education, and how they manage these barriers in order to promote their children’s education. although our small sample limits how far we may generalize our results, our findings reinforce the current body of knowledge concerning parent involvement. in sum, we found that these parents “make success” in their children’s schooling by asserting themselves in persistent, constructive, and creative ways to ensure educational success no matter the obstacles. findings from our study are consistent with prior research on african american parental involvement. we find that middle class african american parents are as engaged in their child’s schooling as comparable white parents when they have access to school officials, information about their child’s curriculum, and when they feel invited to engage in their child’s school and capable of doing so. access, curriculum information, and comfort in school relations were three of several dimensions the project we describe in this article focused on in its workshops for african american parents. additional findings undergird the central findings above and include the following: african american parents perceive a need to be actively involved in their child’s schooling; they anticipate barriers, but try, nonetheless, to be involved and work to overcome them; and the barriers they do perceive are in terms of relations with schools in which they do not feel invited or heard, and in terms of their own limited resources such as time available to assist their child and support from spouses/ partners. our findings also support previous research on “ecologies of parental engagement” which describes how parents “engage in a very personal way in their children’s education by authoring personal spaces” (barton et al., 2004, p. 11). our findings are consistent with a growing body of evidence that challenges accepted stereotypes of african american parents as disinterested and uninvolved in their children’s education. finally, our findings identify characteristics that social and educational programs need to nurture and cultivate in parents who are not adequately involved in their child’s education. the article proceeds by framing this study within the parent involvement literature. this will be followed by a description of the msep; a description of the methodology for the component of the msep study from which data for this article were drawn beginning with a brief description of the historical and contemporary context of education in charlotte, nc.; and by presenting findings from 14 completed follow-up interviews. the final section will discuss the implications of our findings and directions for future research. parent involvement the necessity and importance of parent involvement in the educational outcomes of children has been debated in both historical and contemporary terms (anguiano, 2004; heystek, 2003; hiatt-michael, 2001; jeynes, 2003). yet, there is little doubt about the positive influence of parent involvement on children’s educational outcomes and the overall effectiveness of schools (huang & mason, 2008; o’bryan et al., 2006; redding, langdon, myer & sheley, 2004). however, just how parents should be involved or what in particular parents should do to influence their children’s education are central issues in the debates (barbarin et al., 2005; barton et al., 2004; yap & enoki, 2001). specifically, what remains unclear is how parents’ perceptions and beliefs about education and their own human agency or station in life influence their participation in their children’s education at home or in school. previous research has identified key aspects of parent participation in schooling, including beliefs and perceptions that are pertinent to our study. parents tend to get involved more when they feel welcomed and their traditions and contributions are respected (brandon, 2007; mapp, 2003; mckay, atkins, hawkins, brown, & lynn, 2003), but they are discouraged from involvement when they feel inadequate or feel they do not understand how schools work (brandon, 2007; johnson, 2001; lawson, 2003). institutional responses count, as well. for example, school personnel’s responses to parents’ attempt to become involve may encourage or discourage them. lareau and horvat (1999) refer to this phenomenon as moments of inclusion and moments of exclusion. various demographic factors predict parental involvement. parents are more involved if their children are girls as compared to boys; with fathers generally less involved than mothers (nord, brimhall & west, 1997; suichi & willms, 1996). mothers in single parent households are slightly more involved in their children’s education than fathers (nord, brimhall, & west 1997; sui-chi & willms, 1996; suizzo, robinson, & pahlke, 2008). parents’ socioeconomic status and racial and ethnic identity— separately or combined—influence their magnitude and making success in education: what black parents believe about participation in their children’s education 3 type of involvement (diamond & gomez, 2004; gutman & mcloyd, 2000; hanafin & lynch, 2002; kim, 2002). magnitude of involvement is influenced by parents’ ability to form beneficial partnerships with teachers and other school officials (epstein, 2001; lawson, 2003; waggoner & griffith, 1998). however, the ability to form such partnerships is shaped by parents’ social and cultural capital, which are in turn influenced by their social class status (barton et al., 2004; lareau & horvat, 1999; lareau, 2003), and the overall health of parent-schoolcommunity relations in a given school (epstein, 2001; trumbull, rothstein-fisch, & hernandez, 2003). african american parents often face barriers to involvement because of overt racism among school staff, prior negative contact with school staff, isolation, and the lack of activity networks (barton et al., 2004; brandon, 2007; mckay et al., 2003). generally, there is little disagreement about the importance of parent involvement in a child’s education, but there is disagreement over the level and quality of african american parent involvement compared to the involvement of non-african american parents—largely white parents (brandon, 2007; huang & mason, 2008; jeynes, 2005; mckay et al., 2003; o’bryan, braddock, & dawkins, 2006). the research is not clear as to whether african american parents are less involved or if their involvement is merely different from the white, middleclass norms. one key factor that may contribute to the lack of clarity in this body of research is the weaker connections between african american parents and the educational system. not unlike white parents, some african american parent involvement tends be influenced by affiliation or relationships with school staff, a sense of power to influence their children’s learning, and by the belief that educational success can provide opportunities and personal success for their children (huang & mason, 2008; tyler, boykin, miller & hurley, 2006). indeed, connections for african american parents are compromised when they encounter “personal, cultural, and structural barriers that may cause them to be isolated or alienated from the school system” (brandon, 2007, p. 116; see also huang & mason, 2008). finally, educators who do not respect parenting styles that differ significantly from those practiced by middle-class white parents may communicate their disapproval and alienate parents (ferguson, 2001; lareau, 1987, 2003; lareau & horvat, 1999; thompson, 2003; tyler et al., 2006). in sum, for both african american and nonafrican american parents, involvement in education is never straightforward —especially with respect to the thorny issues of race. we agree with barton et al. (2004) that the important hows and whys should be added to the question of what parents do to engage in their children’s education. understanding how and why african american and other parents are involved, and examining what they do during their involvement, especially in the face of barriers to their participation, can dramatically improve our understanding of parent involvement and increase the effectiveness of schools and educational programs. the math science equity program msep project background between 2002 and 2005, a university-community partnership called the math/science equity program (msep) was implemented to increase african american parental involvement in high school math and science course selections in the charlotte-mecklenburg schools (cousins et al., 2008; mickelson et al., 2011). based at the university of north carolina at charlotte and funded by a grant from the national science foundation, msep’s goal was to increase the enrollment of african american students in higher-level math and science courses and, by doing so, contribute to reducing the race gap in academic achievement and attainment. msep was designed and implemented as a series of community-based parent enrichment workshops. these workshops developed parents’ knowledge, skills, strategies, and social networks and created capacities for future collaborations among parents. the findings we report in this article come from follow-up interviews with parents who graduated from our math/science equity program workshops. the math/science equity program’s workshops the heart of our university-community collaboration was the math/science equity program’s home (helping ourselves mold education) workshops. msep’s approach centered on parental empowerment workshops where participants received information about the charlotte-mecklenburg school system’s high school math and science course sequences and the sequence’s relationship to postsecondary education and professional careers. home workshops’ content and processes were developed in conjunction with multiple community groups, educators, and parents. throughout the design and implementation process, the researcher-activist team from uncc worked intimately with a community advisory council (cac) on the goals, content, scope, curricula, recruitment, and evaluation components of the project. for example, at the suggestion of our cac we developed the acronym home (helping ourselves mold education) as a user-friendly name for msep’s parent workshops, the first phase of our project. we used the phrase “home workshops” in our interactions with community groups rather than the math/science equity program, because the latter seems too officious.3 the msep team presented the complete set of home workshops in a six-week format. weekly sessions were roughly two and one-half hours in length. workshops were considered “enrichment sessions” that built upon extant parental knowledge and skills. parents who attended learned about their educational rights under the north carolina constitution. they engaged in hands-on math and science activities and participated in role-playing designed current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 4 to equip them for effectively managing their children’s educational careers. community organizations such as the public libraries, parks and recreation department, several churches, and a number of non-profit organizations collaborated with msep by providing space, publicity, personnel, and expertise. what began as childcare and educational enrichment activities for participants’ children became a parallel children’s math and science program once the children started to request an opportunity to do the same kinds of “fun” hands-on math and science that their parents were doing. the children’s program became so popular, a number of parents attended the enrichment sessions merely because their children wanted to attend the children’s program! workshop sites varied in order to maximize convenience for parents. they include the unc charlotte campus, community recreation centers, public schools, public libraries, and local churches. all parent participants and their children shared a meal with the msep team during home workshops. we provided transportation on an as-needed basis. we established a website at http://www.msep.uncc.edu and developed a project newsletter, “letters from home,” that we mailed out every two months. several parent graduates of the workshops worked in conjunction with msep staff to develop an autonomous parent organization to succeed the workshops as a source of ongoing leadership training, networking, and information. msep was designed as a quasi-experiment. therefore, we selected three high schools and their feeder middle schools to receive msep workshops. we then matched these treatment high schools with three others that served as our control sites. only parents of students who attended our treatment schools were eligible to participate in workshops. we expected parents who attended workshops would become more involved in their children’s course selection, more of their children would enroll in high-level math and science courses, and the increases in high-level math and science enrollments among african american students attending our treatment schools would exceed increases in enrollments in our control schools. our team of researcher-activists collaborated with several community organizations including the public schools, libraries, parks and recreation department, several churches, and a number of non-profit organizations in the development and implementation of our program. msep workshops provided parents with hands-on experiences with science (biology, chemistry, physics) and mathematics (geometry and algebra). the interactive curricula involved parents in math and science course sequences, selection activities; information about curricular tracking, parental educational rights, social networking, and strategies for effectively engaging teachers, administrators, and adolescent children in the math and science course selection process. impact of msep on parents moreover, the vast majority of participants in msep reported that their participation in the program had positive effects on their capacities to become effectively involved in their children's education. all msep participants completed post tests before departing from the program on the last day of their session; they discussed their reactions to the program with msep staff (who took extensive field notes), and a subset of completers were interviewed following the completion of the workshop phase of the project. across all data collection methods (posttest surveys, informal observations and discussions, and follow-up interviews), the research team learned that parents were affected positively and deeply by msep's program. they gained invaluable information that previously they did not have or if they were exposed to it, they did not understand (e.g., the course selection process). furthermore, some parents were moved to tears of anger that the school system had not effectively communicated this vital information to them. posttest surveys indicated that the preponderance of parents learned new information, were likely to use it in their own interactions with school staff, and were likely to share it with friends. parents also indicated that msep developed their skills of directly asking school officials for information, or asserting their legal rights as parents to request certain course-level placements. the subsample of participants who agreed to a follow up interview consisted of parents who, like others just described, believed that (1) msep had provided them with a set of discrete interpersonal skills for navigating the school bureaucracy, and (2) they learned about the pleasures and importance of science and mathematics for their children in cms secondary schools. thus, the parents whose interviews are reported in this study, while selfselected, are similar to all msep parents in one crucial dimension: they had a positive experience with the program. methods and procedures education and race in charlotte in order to understand the implications of msep in the charlotte community, we summarize the important educational context of charlotte, nc and consequently the experiences of the parents who live and school their children there. like most metropolises in the united states, cms (which includes the city of charlotte, north carolina as well as several smaller cities and all unincorporated areas of surrounding mecklenburg county) is a dynamic and complex system. emblematic of the new south, the city is economically prosperous and culturally vibrant. it is the national headquarters of bank of america, a professional football and basketball team, and has a growing multiethnic, well-educated adult population. until 1998, cms was a majority white district. making success in education: what black parents believe about participation in their children’s education 5 by december 2005, soon after msep’s first workshops began,4 the student population of cms had changed dramatically (mickelson, smith, & southworth, 2009). of the 126,903 students enrolled in the school system in 2005, 43% were african american, 37% white, 12% hispanic, 4% asian, and 3% native american and multiracial. increasing numbers of schools have more than 75% of students eligible for free or reduced price lunch. charlotte is and has been plagued by inequities based in race, ethnicity, and class status that reach into most sectors of the city; including stark differences between private and public schooling, and central city, inner ring suburbs, and outer ring suburbs (douglas, 1995; smith, 2004; u.s. census bureau, 2000). from roughly 1975 to 2002, the cms district operated under court orders to desegregate (smith, 2004; swann v. charlotte, 1971). in 2002, the district was declared unitary and subsequently employed a race-neutral residential based pupil assignment plan. however, the neighborhood school-based assignment plan, in conjunction with rapid demographic change in mecklenburg county and residential segregation, have resulted in rapid resegregation of the district by race and social class (mickelson, 2003a; mickelson & southworth, 2005). consequently, cms faces the same academic and social challenges that many other urban school systems face when their schools have concentrated poverty and racially isolated schools. follow-up interviews with msep parent graduates the data for this article were gathered from a subset of 14 parents, more fully described below, who were part of a “follow-up” component of msep graduates in the msep study. our follow-up interviews had two primary purposes: (1) to ascertain the extent to which parents increased particular knowledge and skills by their participation in msep, and (2) to develop in-depth qualitative case-histories of parents to assist msep in understanding issues of particular significance regarding the participation of african americans in education and schooling. the focus of this article is on parents’ beliefs and perceptions about the education system as part of parent participation, in the broader context of social class, race/ ethnicity.5 follow-up interviews with parent graduates of msep (home and teen summit workshops) were conducted in parents’ homes and lasted between 1 and 3 hours. research assistants who had worked with the parents in the workshops contacted them initially by telephone to schedule an interview. letters and post cards were sent to parents who did not respond to phone calls or who did not have a phone. all family members, especially parents and guardians in the household, were invited to participate in the interview. interviews were scheduled at a time and location of the parent’s choosing. we offered a modest stipend of $20 to participants. interviews were tape recorded if the parent consented, and in most instances, interviews were conducted by two research assistants (one to ask questions and the other to take notes or record contextual observations). sample to reiterate, the data for this article derive from a subsample of parents who participated in the msep. that is, approximately 100 parents participated in msep workshops (either home or teen summit workshops) during the two years that the workshops were conducted. of these parents, 77 completed one of the two workshop programs. all 77 graduates were contacted for follow-up interviews. twenty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted and of these, 14 interviews provided the researchers with data relevant to the questions that guide this article. the findings presented in this article consequently derive from the subsample of 14 interviews among the 25 follow-up interviews the msep conducted. table 1 education of parents (n = 22) ________________________________________________________________________ education women men some high school 1 high school diploma 2 some college 5 1 associates degree 4 1 bachelors degree 3 3 not reported 2 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 6 table 2 occupations of parents (n = 22) ________________________________________________________________________ occupation women men bus driver 1 customer service 1 day care provider/ owner 2 electrician 1 federal government 1 health system buyer 1 landscaping company 1 nursing assistant 1 postal service clerk 1 real estate agent 1 sales 1 secretary/ administrative asst. 2 airline sky cap 1 stock clerk 1 telecommunication specialist 1 transportation 1 truck driver 1 not reported 3 tables 1 and 2 present the educational and occupational status of 14 parents and their spouses. of the 14 parents we interviewed, 12 were women and two were men, 8 were married, and 6 were single parents who were divorced or never married. because we report on the demographics of spouses who did not participate in the interviews, we report 22 responses under educational status and 22 responses under occupational status. tables 1 and 2 are integrated into our discussion of findings in which we specifically address the beliefs and attitudes of the parents. given our limited sample, we do not assume a correlation of any significance among gender, marital status, education, or occupation and the categories of beliefs and perceptions we explore in this article. the predominance of mothers (12) over fathers (2) in our interview sample is noteworthy in the context of research that suggests the general tendency for mothers to assume greater responsibility for child rearing activities, including those pertaining to school (nord, brimhall, & west 1997; sui-chi & willms, 1996; suizzo, robinson, & pahlke, 2008). we speculate that the small number of msep graduates willing to be interviewed may be related to parents’ lifestyle (work schedules that did not permit flexibility), changes of address related to the high making success in education: what black parents believe about participation in their children’s education 7 residential mobility of low-income families (16.5% of households in n.c changed residence between 2004-05 compared to the highest mobility status in the nation in arizona at 21%; us census bureau, 2005-2007), and perhaps emotional fatigue associated with participating in extended educational programs such as msep. the low response rate for follow-up interviews means our findings are not generalizable to the entire group of parent participants, a weakness we recognize. data analysis although we reviewed the nine substantive followup questions we asked to investigate what use parents made of workshop content, this article and analysis focus on three questions that tap more generally into beliefs, actions, perceptions, and barriers. in other words, our analysis attempted to uncover parents’ fundamental sense of their personal and historical experiences with regard to their child’s education, in contrast to the specific influences of their participation in the msep workshops. we chose to focus on the more general issues rather than msep-specific responses because our interests lie in the more theoretical aspects of parental involvement. for this article, we use data from an analysis of parent responses to the following three questions: 1. what role should a parent play in their child’s education? 2. what role do you play in your child’s education? 3. what barriers have you faced that prevent you from participating in your child’s education?6 our analysis of the interviews was guided by grounded theory. we analyzed the interview responses to the three questions above by using a content analysis to identify the themes and categories we report here (bernard, 2002; maxwell, 1996). our approach was inductive in that we closely analyzed the interview responses to identify and code emerging themes and categories, rather than being led to them deductively by a set of hypotheses we sought to confirm or theories we sought to explore. finally, we analyzed the themes and categories in terms of extant theories of parent participation in schooling. findings we divided parents’ responses into subcategories based on thoroughness and completeness in relation to the three questions we sought to answer. although our interest is parents’ more general beliefs and perceptions about involvement in education, it became clear that these msep graduates’ experiences with home workshops may have influenced their responses to the three core questions we posed. their responses, nonetheless, indicate welldeveloped preexisting beliefs about education, and high levels of motivation and active involvement. indeed, their very participation in the workshops suggests the a priori nature of their beliefs about parent participation. in addition to self-selecting for the workshops, consider the following points revealed in their responses: their motivation is influenced by their own successes, limitations and struggles in life and education; they are keenly aware of the connections between educational achievement and their children’s future success; they are aware of the social and academic needs of children based not just on variations in personality, but also on social and psychological development for pre-adolescent and adolescent children; and several of them have developed savvy and sophisticated judgment about education in a way that anticipates barriers, overcomes barriers, or refuses to yield to them. category i: parent beliefs7 we begin with parent responses to the question: what role should a parent play in their child’s education? our analysis focuses on three categories of responses: (1) beliefs about the academic activities a parent should do at home, including social, behavioral, psychological activities; (2) beliefs about participation at school; and (3) beliefs about participation in a general, all encompassing way. few parents limit their involvement to just one of the domains of involvement. several parents convert the general question of a parent’s role to the personalized question of their role. in other instances, parents address both. beliefs about the academic activities a parent should do at home. mrs. warner has a daughter in 8th grade. she believes her role is to: [do] homework with [my daughter], stay in touch with teachers, monitor [her] progress, and let’um [the school] know that i’m involved. we read together and, you know, we try to make sure that she knows that if she has questions, i’m involved and if i can’t help her i‘ll try to get her tutoring. ms. zachary works for the postal service and has a 13-year-old son in 8th grade and a 20-year-old son in college. she is an assertive single parent who always made her voice heard in the workshops. referring to her 13-yearold son, she said: i graduated from high school but never finished college cause i went and had my oldest child but i always wanted to go back to school. [my] biggest role is that i know better than anybody else about my child; for math i’mma push him; look in their book bags 2 to 3 times a week; make sure they have their homework; taking them to different events; introducing him to different aspects of life and everything else. mrs. landers is a nursing assistant with a 15-yearold son in 10th grade, a 14-year-old son in 8th grade, a nine-year-old son in 3rd grade, and a five-year-old daughter in pre-k. her husband has some high school and works as a stock clerk in a department store. believing in a more measured approach, mrs. landers identified her role as: more like, more so as a teacher. just make sure they’re getting the classes they should. i used to current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 8 try to check their homework, but since they got older i try to basically check their grades . . . and encourage them; if they need tutors [i tell them] don’t be ashamed. i let them know how important their grades are. the parents above perhaps epitomize “best practices” of parent involvement although the parents can be categorized as working class based on education and occupation. that is, they emphasize self-awareness, knowledge of child development, and differentiated roles they may need to play as parents to foster the academic success of their child. beliefs about participation at school. mrs. franklin has a 14-year-old son in 9th grade. she is married, has a ba degree and works as a real estate agent while her husband, who has a 2-year degree, works for the federal government. her views indicate a blurring of the boundaries between school and home. she said her role is as: very supportive. never negative. [parents should] make themselves available to the child and also to the school staff and anybody involved in his education; parents should have an open mind and participate, make themselves present in the system so they will know that you are concerned about your children. they (parents) should be ready and willing to do that and that’s what i do. mrs. clark embraces the role of parent advocate for her child. she has an 11-year-old daughter in 6th grade and a seven-year-old daughter in 2nd grade. she is married, has a 2-year degree and operates her own childcare center while her husband, who is a high school graduate, drives a truck. she said: [parents should play] a major role. more like cheerleaders as well as their advisor, being is because most of the time kids just want somebody to listen to them, someone encouraging them to do the right thing. mrs. clark’s and mrs. franklin’s comments suggest they see themselves as advocates and motivators. this may be based not only on the individual characteristics of their children, but also because of their knowledge and experience regarding the tendency of many african american children to become discouraged and disengaged from schooling (cousins, 1999; ogbu, 2008)—a point often made in the msep workshops. beliefs about participation in a general, all encompassing way. mrs. jayson is married, has 3 years of college and works as a telecommunication specialist; her husband has a ba degree and is self-employed in the transportation business. they have a 13-year-old son in 8th grade and a 10-year-old son in 4th grade. mrs. jayson said she believes parents should be involved: from every aspect. if we leave it up to the average kid, which is probably most kids, they would probably take the easiest classes they can and as few as they can. we gotta be there guiding the ship. mr. peters is married and attended college. his wife is his son’s stepmother. mr. peters is a skycap for an airline. peters and his wife have a 15-year-old son in 11th grade and they brought along their son’s 15-year-old friend to the workshop. he began his interview by saying simply that a parent’s role should be: “very big. very big.” we believe mr. peters’ statement, which is about his actions as much as his beliefs, makes a point that would be affirmed by all these parents: i’ve been telling him [my son] lately i was a kid once too and didn’t have anybody to try and plan for me, so i’m the grown-up, i’ve got to make sure that you get what you need, not what you want. later you get what you want when you get to [your] senior [year]. you can relax a little bit ‘cause that next year you’re going to college. so let’s get all these things out of the way now but let me plan it. personally i want my son to be everything that he can be and i’mma get him there. that’s my goal. summary the centerpieces of interviewees’ beliefs about a parents’ role in their child’s education include assertiveness, advocacy, emotional support, encouragement, and motivation. indeed, parent responses also revealed how they use their own experiences—their successes (college education and self-employment, for example), limitations and struggles (e.g. lack of personal success in education and life)—as a context for their beliefs. they also used their experiences as road maps to guide their children. these findings begin the process of identifying what parents believe about their involvement so that we can couple beliefs with actions for a more complete picture of what parent believe and how they act on their beliefs in terms of parent involvement in education. category ii: parent actions we now discuss responses to the second question: “what role do you play in your child’s education?” from the outset, it is clear that parent responses to the first question overlap considerably with this question. they include responses that address (1) visits to the school in general, availability to the school, and talking to the teachers and administrators; (2) talking to, motivating, and/or monitoring the child in terms of academics and social/ attitudinal/ behavioral actions; and (3)supplementing making success in education: what black parents believe about participation in their children’s education 9 the child’s schooling with additional social and academic resources. visits to the school in general. in her response to the first question, mrs. franklin stated that she believed parents should be very supportive, never negative. continuing this line of thinking, she responded by saying: …that’s what i do. everybody at west meck [high school], most of all his teachers, they are very familiar with me cause i’m there. i make myself available to them and they can call me anytime of the day if they have any problems. comments from other parents follow along similar lines. ms. marvin is a single parent with 14-year-old son in 8th grade, a 12-year-old daughter in 7th grade, and a 9year-old son in 3rd grade. she has some college and earns a living as a bus driver. i talk to teachers. i make sure as a parent that i do stay on top of whatever he’s doing. you know…i ask the teachers to also make sure that they call me, you know, if it’s a problem and they know… no hesitation whatsoever. again, social class status and race may be markers for the types and degrees of parent involvement, but much lies below the surface of such indicators in the case of mrs. franklin and ms. marvin. even if these parents did not get involved as they indicate above, they seem to know the importance and effects of being involved, even to the point of facilitating open parent-teacher communication, an important variable in classroom outcomes (brandon, 2007). the comments continue. discussing, motivating, and monitoring the child’s academics, attitudes, and actions. emphasizing the collaborative nature of her actions, which helps her acknowledge her limitations and improve her own education, mrs. franklin said: i learn along with him. when he has homework to do, reading, i ask him to read to me and i sit there and listen. i let him do his work then i go and check it and make sure if he doesn’t understand it, and if i can’t help him, then i seek help. ms. warner says she does the same thing and more: i do homework with her. i stay in contact with her teachers via email and also get updates, you know, how she’s progressing in school and, we read together and you know, we try to make sure that she knows that if she has questions, i’m involved, and if, if i can’t help her, i try to get her tutoring. ms. delaine identified differences between parental involvement in high school and middle school. she argues for broad involvement in education at both levels. like many parents in the study, she is a single parent. she has a 2-year degree and works in customer service. her 15year-old daughter is in 10th grade, her seven-year-old daughter is in 2nd grade, and her five-year-old daughter is in kindergarten. i do a little bit of everything. but it changes in middle and high school because they feel a little bit embarrassed about parents being around…see[ing] for yourself what’s going on, and share[ing] with your child that you’re doing those things. and then after a while that little attitude about “oh well, i don’t want you up there cause it’s embarrassing,” it kind of changes because they start liking it. i do it all. i’m seeing about, you know, her grades and stuff and she comes back and tells me about things that’s going on with people. the comments above indicate thoughtfulness, lack of isolation, and some of the attributes of social and cultural capital related to successful parent engagement and educational success (barton et al., 2004; diamond & gomez, 2004; lareau & horvat, 1999). as we will see, these characteristics supplement and support the use of social and academic resources and activity networks by these parents for the education success of their children. supplementing the child’s schooling with additional social and academic resources. many parents specifically emphasized the supplemental aspects of their involvement with their children’s education. ms. zachary said: i try to do as much as possible…something that would interest him and things that we wouldn’t normally be exposed to. just to have fun…or make it fun.” mrs. landers reported: i try to make sure that i see what they are doing. i check their grades, used to check their homework. encourage them if they need tutors, don’t be ashamed to get a tutor. [i] just try to encourage them about how important their grades are. and mrs. burton described her actions as: i just try to supplement her education with giving her materials that are a little challenging for her, current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 10 with community service projects that we do. summary we see again assertive and active engagement in school, supportive and collaborative engagement at home, and direct and indirect attempts to supplement schooling via constructive activities, learning materials that are fun, and community service—all parts of the “ecologies” of engagement of successful parent involvement (barton et al., 2004). nonetheless, just as the beliefs and life experiences of these parents underlie their fundamental everyday actions on behalf of their children (i.e., engagement with teachers and schools, use of activity networks and related resources, and high levels of motivation and awareness to be involved as parents), their actions support and perhaps reinforce their fundamental beliefs. it is therefore important that we link or distinguish the mutual and disparate roles of beliefs and actions, particularly in the lives of african americans who claim high degrees of belief in education but have comparatively low educational outcomes (mapp, 2003; mickelson, 1990). category iii: perceived barriers to involvement this section reports parents’ responses to the question: what barriers have you faced that prevent you from participating in your child’s education?8 this third question concerns perceived relationship between parents’ beliefs about involvement and their actions. we found responses fell into four categories: (1) no barriers/ will not allow any, (2) work schedules; (3) single parenting, and (4) school related issues (academic subjects and classroom management). no barriers/ will not allow any. responses in this category suggest parents may have had barriers or problems in the past but they have found ways to overcome them. asked if she perceived any barriers, mrs. franklin said “not so far.” similarly mrs. burton replied “there aren’t any.” ms. gerard elaborated that she found: none. i can talk to the teachers and principals and they can talk to me, so no problems. it was common in the workshops for parents to describe distrustful, strained, or non-existent relations with teachers and school administrators. perhaps ms. gerard either anticipated such relations or has experienced them and has worked to resolve them. nevertheless, mrs. jayson’s response to the question about barriers was to say: none. i won’t allow it to be a barrier. but what would be ideal for me is if i was home when he got home from school, then i know he’s not on the phone, not watching bet (black entertainment television). this first set of responses perhaps suggests where they look for barriers—being able to talk to teachers and administrators, child management and supervision. when added to the comments below regarding work schedule, single parenting, and the quality of classroom management, it is safe to say that “not allowing barriers,” (a question of selective perception) as mrs. jayson says, or “no barriers so far,” according to mrs. franklin, does not preclude their existence. work schedule & single parenting. three single parents discussed barriers to participating that were related to work schedule and or single parenting. ms. delaine said: i’m a single parent and have to try to get off sometimes and can’t participate with them in some things. but i have my father and mother to help also. mrs. warner said: i travel for work sometimes so i’m not available to help her with homework and stuff, but my husband tries to pick that up and my next door neighbor owns a tutoring center, so she’s gonna help. ms. zachary, who is a single parent, identified her barrier as her job. she developed an effective strategy to staying involved: i email teachers and send them notes. academics and classroom management. like many american parents, at times msep graduates faced the situation where their own stock of knowledge was insufficient for helping their children with homework. with respect to academics, mrs. landers said sometimes her child has academic questions about subjects with which she was not familiar. but i’ll try to find the answer to them. basically, like i visited the library and found out they have tutoring and i try to encourage them to go to tutoring and sign them up for stuff like that. another parent, mrs. clark, said some parts of algebra were a barrier before she attended teen summit: now before—whew (signaling the difficulty of it). and he (brian williams, the workshop director and instructor) broke it down to the point that i really, really understood that. so i don’t have any problems now. mr. peters described concerns regarding behaviors in his son’s classroom: we’ve come across some big challenges already and we met them about my son’s performance and one instance in the classroom where they had a making success in education: what black parents believe about participation in their children’s education 11 substitute teacher who left the classroom unsupervised and one bigger boy was bullying my son and others by trying to get them to not read their books. but i checked into it, told him [you] have to protect yourself. summary as noted earlier, while parent responses to our interviews suggest they encountered few to any barriers to involvement in their children’s education, during msep workshops many of the other 80 or so parent participants actually cited numerous barriers to their involvement in schools. nonetheless, on their face, the barriers or concerns expressed above seem relatively ordinary and anticipated in the broader spectrum of academic problems african american children and their parents face. and it is highly likely that the overall assertiveness, activeness, and optimism of this set of parents has either limited what they perceive as a barrier, as mrs. jayson’s response indicates, and or that they have already dealt with perceived barriers. otherwise, it is noteworthy to recognize the challenges on the time single parents had available to assist their children compared to married couples in which husbands were involved. we also recognize the impact of work schedules. but the fact that parents called upon the support of extended family, neighbors and the resources of community libraries to assist them in meeting the challenges they faced speaks to their supportive networks, lack of social isolation, and available stock of social and cultural capital in the ecology of successful parent involvement. discussion the sociopolitical, socioeconomic and sociocultural contexts of education in the us and in particular in charlotte, nc are relatively significant in their impact on african americans students and their parents (mckay et al., 2003; smith, 2004). african american parents can manage and mediate the effects of these contexts, but they cannot escape them. in what follows we discuss the questions and issues raised in this article, what remains unclear and unanswered, and what might future research and educational practice examine. we began by presenting the responses of parents to overlapping questions about their beliefs and their actions regarding participation in their child’s education. all of the parents involved in the study believed in active involvement and their actions were consistent with their beliefs. they believe involvement should include the classroom, teachers, monitoring progress, reading with their child, and exposing them to different aspects of life, among other things (see similar findings in mckay et al., 2003). the responses of the 14 parents who participated in the msep follow-up interviews also suggest that actions should be (and were) pragmatic and grounded in the realities of their lives and life experiences. parents recognized the push and pull on children of tv, developmental issues, the absence of structure, academic support and resources, motivation and other forms of social support and resources. on the other hand, parents appropriated in varying degrees the social and cultural capital they had available to generate resources to manage these circumstances (barton et al., 2004; lareau & horvat, 1999). parents addressed school relations, acquired academic resources (or planned to) such as tutoring, and engaged social support by enlisting the help of extended family and neighbors. though these parents differed in the amount of social capital they possessed (married, lower middle class parents compared to single working class parents, for example), they did not appear to vary in willingness to use it. they all held to an ethic of involvement, and exercised the will and motivation to overcome barriers they perceived. likewise, the limited evidence we found about the influence of social class standing—for example, parents with less flexible jobs were not able to, in their view, provide adequate supervision for their child—ended up taking us in a different direction probably based on the a priori high level of motivation among parents in our sample (diamond & gomez, 2004; gutman & mcloyd, 2000; hanafin & lynch, 2002; kim, 2002). that is, we found no strong differences in parent perception and involvement based on differences in education and occupation—all of which varied slightly among our parents. most participants were working class or lower middle class. indeed, working class single parents were just as likely to be involved, generate resources, and express high levels of motivation as their middle class, college educated counterparts. however, our small self-selected sample limits our generalization on these points beyond our parents. parent responses suggest that mothers were more involved than fathers even in married couples. single mothers did not indicate any involvement on the part of their child’s father (greif, hrabowski, & maton, 2000; nord, brimhall, & west, 1997; sui-chi & willms, 1996). we found only one case in which parent involvement may have been inhibited by feelings of personal inadequacy (parent did not understand algebra; see johnson, 2001; lawson, 2003), but several cases in which parents did not allow inadequacy in resources or their social class status to discourage or limit their involvement in their child’s educational endeavors (diamond & gomez, 2004; gutman & mcloyd, 2000; hanafin & lynch, 2002; kim, 2002; lareau & horvat, 1999). these findings are consistent with the work of other scholars who report a complex array of critical factors that interact with family structure to influence children’s academic achievement (barbarin et al., 2005; greif et al., 2000). our respondents reported mostly positive relations with their children’s schools in as much as they reported being successfully involved and only one school-related problem (a parent reported his son was being bullied in class due to the inadequate supervision of a substitute current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 12 teacher). however, we need to situate this relatively positive relationship alongside parent responses that asserted the necessity of being available to the school, having an open mind, and being present to demonstrate concern for one’s child. related research suggests our interviewees’ experiences were strikingly at odds with the experiences of many parents of color (ferguson, 2001; lareau & horvat, 1999). on the whole, our parents were likely to get involved in their child’s education even if they felt unwelcomed and that their cultural traditions were not respected (mapp, 2003). this does not contradict research findings that suggest that connections between african american parents and the educational system tend to be weak (brandon, 2007; huang & mason, 2008). the parents we interviewed demonstrated that they would not let feelings of inadequacy or weak relations with schools stand in their way; they were prepared, nonetheless, to take actions that helped their child succeed. again, due to the self-selection and size of our sample, these responses cannot be generalized to other african american parents in the population at large nor to other parents who completed our workshops. still, to move to the next point in the discussion, we cannot minimize the finding that a parent’s ethic and will to participate in their children’s education “to make success” by trumping barriers whether they are real or merely perceived. turning now to the last responses from our parents, we note they perceived or said they experienced no barriers and would not allow any. but they also said that work schedules, being a single parent, lack of familiarity with some academic subject matter and classroom supervision were concerns for them. the key here may be “not allowing barriers,” nor feelings of inadequacy or weak relations with schools, stand in their way. another key may be that their motivation, resources, and past successes in overcoming barriers influenced their overall perception of the existence of barriers in the first place. these are parents whose own truncated educational, occupational and social achievements motivated and equipped them to assist their children to do better. conclusion we completed a two-year university-community collaborative project designed to empower african american parents to become more involved in their adolescent children’s math and science course selections and placements. we collected a subsample of data from interviews with 14 parents who graduated from msep’s home or teen summit workshops. the interviews revealed that (a) parents see a need to be actively involved; (b) try to be involved although they face barriers; (c) barriers occur in terms of parents’ own resources such as available time to assist their children, support from a spouse or partner, and in terms of school relations; and (d) parents anticipate barriers but respond creatively to them. the bottom line is that these parents believed they were responsible for “making success” in the educational careers of their children. parents were highly motivated and aware of the various factors interacting in their children’s lives; they were involved at home and at school; they took into consideration numerous ways of being involved, from providing pep talks to tutoring to more structure at home; parents anticipated obstacles to their participation and acted successfully to address them, and they were not deterred by obstacles and therefore perhaps did not consider them barriers in the traditional sense of the word. in sum, parents acted and felt the need to make success where success did not exist or where success was threatened. our workshops and interviews confirmed what we believe are the empowering and self-affirming effects on parents of being creatively and progressively involved in their child’s education (barton et al., 2004). indeed, this is understandable for parents whose belief systems tie their own success to their children’s success, despite the social, psychological, and emotional vulnerability and risk a parent and child may be exposed to by these sensitive interdependencies. still, although our findings confirmed the overall importance of parent involvement in education, they are limited in their generalizability because of the unique sample we interviewed. for these reasons, our findings are more suggestive than definitive. moreover, our findings should be examined in the context of research involving a larger sample of african american and non-african american parents. such research, qualitative or quantitative, can pursue the questions we asked and explore the outcomes in terms of relationships among parents’ race and ethnicity, social class, gender, social and cultural capital, parent-school relations and the existence and perception of barriers. as one example, our sample of parents leans toward workingto lower middle class status, with class status defined in terms of education and occupation (diamond & gomez, 2004; mcgrath & kuriloff, 1999; rowan-kenyon, bell, & perna, 2008). implicit in our findings are similarities among the characteristics of parent involvement of middle-class african american parents and our sample, as well as middle-class white parents and our sample: high levels of motivation; assertiveness in relations with schools; proactive and assertive in a child’s school activities at home, and the like. these class distinctions are important to highlight when examining the effects of race and ethnicity on academic performance (crozier, 2001). nonetheless, in the realm of educational policy and practice, it would serve us well to know if our findings are an anomaly or, instead, representative of an incipient trend among african american parents. if it is the latter, then educational and social policy and practice should capitalize on these findings for the betterment of schools, families, and society at large. making success in education: what black parents believe about participation in their children’s education 13 in conclusion, we must continue to shape the affirming and empowering role of parent involvement into questions to be researched and findings to be translated into policy and practice. we believe our study operates within this framework and the msep was our attempt to translate this ethic into practice. msep was based on research which suggested that african american parents are as engaged in their child’s schooling as comparable white parents when they have access to school officials, information about their child’s curriculum, and when they feel invited to engage in their child’s school and capable of doing so. the findings in this article point in a similar direction. 1african american and black are used interchangeably throughout the article. 2for a comprehensive case study of african american parent involvement, see tough’s (2008) analysis of geoffrey canada’s project in harlem, ny. tough describes the connections between parent involvement and a child’s schooling outcomes, the challenges of getting parents involved, the types of involvement parents may be expected to practice in urban environments with high rates of poverty, crime, and single parents, and also the conviction of parents and educators that education be provided to all children. 3after the first year, the six week home workshops were reconfigured and condensed into a two-week version renamed teen summit. see (mickelson, cousins, williams & velasco, 2011) for details. 4our description of cms focuses on the years 2002-2005 during when msep was implemented. 5in addition to these primary purposes, we hoped the interviews would reinforce, sustain, and expand the knowledge, skills and strategies parents developed in the workshops, and support their efforts to build and sustain networks. 6in hindsight, if asked differently (what barriers have you faced 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(2011). making success in education: what black parents believe about participation in their children’s education. current issues in education, 14(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/784 author notes linwood h. cousins, ph.d. western michigan university 1903 w. michigan avenue kalamazoo, michigan 49008 linwood.cousins@wmich.edu linwood h. cousins is a social worker and cultural anthropologist who studies the cultural characteristics of race, ethnicity, and social class among african american families and communities, with an emphasis on how culture influences schooling and racial identity. he currently serves as director of the school of social work at western michigan university. roslyn arlin mickelson, ph.d. university of north carolina at charlotte 9201 university city blvd. charlotte, north carolina 28223 roslynmickelson@uncc.edu roslyn arlin mickelson is professor of sociology, public policy, women and gender studies, and information technology at the university of north carolina at charlotte. she taught social studies in an urban high school for nine years before she received a ph.d. from the university of california, los angeles in 1984. mickelson has published widely on minority educational issues, desegregation, social science and the law, gender and education, the education of homeless children, and educational policy. mickelson has investigated school reform in the charlotte-mecklenburg schools from 1989 to 2008, chronicling the consequences of the district’s transformation from a desegregated to a resegregated school system. currently she is surveying and synthesizing the literature on the effects of school racial and ses composition on educational outcomes. the authors acknowledge the contributions of brian williams and anne velasco to the research projects that produced the data for this article. manuscript received: 5/5/2011 revisions received: 8/5/2011 accepted: 9/2/2011 making success in education: what black parents believe about participation in their children’s education 17 volume 14, number 3 september 28, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editor melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy carol masser leslie salazar jennifer shea alaya swann faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 568 layout complete_4.doc current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 1 volume 15, number 1 january 1, 2012 issn 1099-839x the effects of background music on learning disabled elementary school students’ performance in writing robert s. legutko bloomsburg university theodore t. trissler north penn school district this study investigated effects of background music on writing performance of nine 6th grade students with learning disabilities at one suburban public elementary school in the mid-atlantic region of the united states. a single-subject a-b-a design was utilized, and results from graded writing prompts with and without background music over 21 weeks were compared. group mean gain was higher in the music (treatment) phase than in the final phase (returning to baseline), indicating that background music improved writing ability of students with learning disabilities overall. scores dropped instantly and markedly in the first weeks that music was added and removed, indicating that consistency in routine may be more essential to academic performance for students with learning disabilities than the presence or absence of background music. keywords: learning, special education, music, learning disabled, writing this study was based upon research conducted by kariuki and honeycutt (1998) which investigated whether or not music could be used as a tool to motivate students with emotional and behavioral disorders to develop positive attitudes toward writing, and whether or not these attitudes would result in improved writing skills. kariuki and honeycutt focused upon two 4th grade male students with emotional and behavioral disorders in a rural east tennessee elementary school. their results indicated that (a) the quality of basic writing skills improved overall when the students were exposed to music during writing assignments, (b) the students were immediately absorbed in the music and the calming effect helped them to ignore surrounding distractions (thus enabling them to focus on their writing assignments), (c) quantity of writing increased substantially in writing assignments with music while writing assignments without music were regarded as chores to be accomplished as quickly as possible, and (d) the students’ attitudes towards writing improved (writing assignments were considered “exciting” when exposed to music during writing). understanding the impact of motivational techniques on students with learning disabilities can be of great assistance to practicing teachers. students with learning disabilities welcome verbal persuasion to boost their confidence levels (klassen & lynch, 2007) and depend on external sources of evaluation such as teacher feedback, grades, and marks (lincoln & chazan, 1979), although teacher behaviors are not significantly linked to motivational variables for students with learning disabilities (lapointe, legault, & batiste, 2005). purpose of the study the purpose of this study was to determine whether or not background music had a positive effect on writing performance of students with learning disabilities. if a positive relationship could be determined, the use of current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 2 background music may be considered beneficial in educating students with learning disabilities in writing assignments. if there was a negative or no relationship, then either additional research may be necessary, or background music should not be utilized in future writing assignments. literature review the research located in this literature review included studies that were tangentially related to the subject and spanned from 1979 to the present. this was due to a scarcity of directly related literature found concerning the effects of background music on writing performance of students with learning disabilities. none of the works cited were considered to be seminal works. positive effects of music on student learning educators have a problem motivating students to become engaged in the literary process, and music may be one way of fostering this engagement (ebistuani, donlan, & siebers, 1991). integrated music experiences improve students’ reading, writing, thinking, and analyzing skills and strategies by providing excitement in learning (collett, 1992). it may also be concluded that integrating music into elementary, middle school, high school, advanced placement, and college linguistic classrooms, as well as into virtual classrooms, enables students to learn to read and write more easily, based upon gardner’s multiple intelligence theory, the mozart effect, and participation as precedent to learning (diedwardo, 2005). according to o’bruba (1987), the use of music in the teaching of reading at the elementary level may motivate and build the ability of students, whether or not they are musically talented or intellectually above-average. o’bruba further stated that because of similarities in the symbol structure of music and written language, left-to-right framework, and visual and auditory discrimination, music can be used in beginning reading programs for stimulation and inspiration. kariuki and honeycutt (1998) found that the quality and quantity of spontaneous writing demonstrated by their two students with emotional and behavioral disorders was positively affected by using music as a stimulus. observation during the duration of the research revealed a difference in the students’ outward reactions during their writing assignments. when music was not available, both students were easily distracted from the classroom environment. they were apparently frustrated and indicated this through their verbal responses and physical actions (usually complaining about the writing assignment and exhibiting increased physical movement). in contrast, when the students were exposed to music, their resistance to perform decreased and they were able to ignore outside disturbances and focus on their writing. this enabled the students to produce a higher volume of writing output which resulted in improved writing skills and positive attitudes. in a similar study by donohoe and mcneely (1999) of two 4th grade classes in rural virginia with a majority of low-achieving students, the number of words written by students when not listening to music was found to be significantly fewer than when the students listened to music. neutral and inconclusive effects of music on student learning in their review of the literature on the effects of music on reading, oral language, and writing abilities, ebisutani, donlan, and siebers (1991) posited that the theories which justify the use of music in reading and language arts activities were not firmly backed by research, that the research itself was inconclusive, and that it did not suggest that music has the potential for affecting writing fluency. they recalled studies from as far back as 75 years ago: fendrick found in 1937 that music distracted students’ reading; henderson, crews, and barlow discovered in 1945 that only certain kinds of music was distracting; and freeburne and fleischer learned in 1952 that music was not significantly distracting to reading performance. ebisutani, donlan, and siebers also reported research from groff in 1977 who stated that good listening skills gained in school music situations or instruction will not necessarily transfer into a student’s successfully reading words. examples of integrating music into learning schuster and vincent (1980) described lozanov’s suggestive accelerative learning and teaching (salt) method with students with learning disabilities, where music was used in the classroom at the beginning and end of class to relax and calm the students. there were significant gains in both reading and mathematics after one year in the program (a mean gain in reading of 2.2 years and a mean gain in mathematics of 1.4 years), and students also had increased positive self-concepts and better feelings toward their education (schuster & vincent). collett (1992) reported that the learning to read through the arts (ltrta) program was an integrated elementary curriculum designed as a collaborative effort of specialists in performing arts, visual arts, and reading and classroom teachers who designed units with specific developmental aims that reflected the needs of the children. according to collett, arts instruction, when integrated with a total reading and writing approach, had significant impact on the child’s appreciation for the arts, self-esteem, ability, and desire to learn in the lrta program. methodology guiding research question and hypothesis the following question guided the research: what effect will playing background music during specific writing assignments have on writing performance of students with learning disabilities? the hypothesis was that background music would increase student performance in writing fluency (writing speed) and quality of writing in focus, content, organization, style, and conventions. design this study utilized a single-subject a-b-a design. a-b-a designs are characterized by taking repeated baseline measurements, introducing treatment, making a the effects of background music on learning disabled elementary school students’ performance in writing 3 number of measurements, then removing treatment to return to a second baseline phase. if the behavior is better during the treatment phase than during either baseline phase, the effectiveness of the treatment has been demonstrated (gay, mills, & airasian, 2009). participants this study was conducted at a suburban public elementary school in the mid-atlantic region of the united states. there were nine 6th grade students (two females and seven males between 11-12 years of age) in one learning support class who had specific learning disabilities in reading, writing, or both. the students’ deficiencies in reading negatively affected their performance in writing and spelling. also, if these students were not proficient at a task, they simply did not desire to either work on or complete it. the students were placed into this learning support classroom based upon one or more of the following characteristics: specific learning disabilities in reading, mathematics, and/or speech; autism; attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder (adhd); oppositional defiance; communications disorder; emotional disturbance; or required occupational therapy. instruments, data gathering, and procedures aimsweb correct writing sequence probes were administered weekly to assess writing fluency. reliability and validity studies were provided by powell-smith and shinn (2004), authors of the aimsweb training workbook. reliability was based upon 15 studies that included interscorer agreement, alternate form, parallel forms, testretest, split-half, and cronbach’s alpha; validity was based upon eight studies that included criterion measures from the stanford achievement test, california achievement test, test of written language, and developmental sequence scoring system (powell-smith & shinn). a rubric writing skills evaluation form, which was used to objectively measure various writing skills, established the initial baseline. the rubric was not tested for reliability or validity. students engaged in writing prompts and received feedback daily for the duration of the study. they worked on writing skills and writing strategies through both small group and one-on-one instruction with the teacher. there was a weekly one paragraph writing homework assignment (a rough draft, graphic organizer, and final copy). students also had a formal in-class writing assignment, a threeparagraph essay (edited with the teacher and one peer), and a typed final copy. in addition, students practiced their writing daily through an assigned writing prompt administered during the morning homeroom period. the study lasted 21 weeks, was conducted in spring 2009, and was comprised of three sections. in the first and third sections (six weeks each), the students completed their writing assignments without any intervention. in the second section (seven weeks), background music was provided as students completed their writing assignments. (note: baseline data was gathered during the first week.) the background music utilized in the study alternated each week between two mozart compositions, il re pastore (opera k. 208) and symphony no. 16 in c major (opera k. 128). these compositions were chosen by the classroom teacher because they are from the classical period and up tempo in nature. once a week, students completed correct writing sequence probes (aimsweb). a story starter/writing prompt was read to them. students then had one minute to think, then the prompt was repeated again followed by three minutes to write. the prompt was repeated one final time before they were finished. from this point, students were graded by the teacher (with a number grade) on spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and whether or not the words made sense. additionally, a special education assistant teacher scored the prompts a second time to ensure that the number grade was the same. (note: there was 100% consistency in both scores each time.) findings overall results all students improved their writing efficiency throughout the experiment. as a group, students improved by 26.9 words correct per three minute probe from the beginning to the end of the experiment. the highest score attained by a student was 96, the highest increase from baseline by a student was 41, and the highest overall increase (range) of a student was 44. four students had their highest score in the final phase of the experiment (return to baseline), four students had their highest score in the music (treatment) phase of the experiment, and one student tied for highest score in both the final phase (return to baseline) and the music (treatment) phase of the experiment. low score, high score, range, increase from baseline data (calculated as the mean for the entire phase and not as the highest score), and the phase where the highest score was attained for each student is found in table 2. in both cases where there was a change in environment – adding the music and removing the music – scores dropped immediately and markedly in the week of the change. when music was added in the treatment phase, the mean score dropped from 54.1 to 50.6 (difference of 3.6). when music was removed in the return to baseline, the mean score dropped from 71.9 to 61.7 (difference of -10.2). these findings are graphically illustrated in figure 1. data at critical weekly points in baseline, treatment, and return to baseline by student is located in table 3. measurements of progress (or regression) in each phase by student is found in table 4. the overall group mean gain was higher in the music (treatment) phase (9.8) than in the final phase (returning to baseline) (6.0). a one-way analysis of variance (anova) was used to determine whether or not the differences in student means at the baseline, treatment, and return to baseline phases were significant. scores differed significantly across the three phases, f (2, 24) = 57.2, p = .001. (f score significant). tukey’s hsd post hoc analysis (psychology world, n.d.) was then used to determine which specific current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 4 table 1 student diagnoses student 1 moderate learning disabilities in reading, mathematics, and speech student 2 autism and adhd student 3 learning disabilities in reading, writing, and mathematics; autism; adhd; oppositional defiance; required occupational therapy student 4 moderate learning disabilities in reading, writing, and speech student 5 moderate learning disabilities in reading student 6 communications disorder student 7 moderate learning disabilities in reading and speech student 8 moderate learning disabilities in reading, writing, and speech student 9 moderate learning disabilities in reading, writing, and speech table 2 low score, high score, range, increase from baseline, and highest score phase data by student lowest score highest score range increase from baseline high score phase student 1 42 84 42 35 b student 2 38 82 44 41 b student 3 23 66 43 31 b & return a student 4 45 82 37 20 b student 5 38 70 32 21 return a student 6 29 50 21 17 return a student 7 34 72 38 28 return a student 8 36 73 37 25 return a student 9 57 96 39 24 b group mean 38.0 75.0 37.0 26.9 n/a the effects of background music on learning disabled elementary school students’ performance in writing 5 table 3 points in baseline, treatment, and return to baseline by student figure 1. students’ combined weekly mean writing score at baseline, treatment, and return to baseline phases (a-b-a) final baseline week initial treatment week drop/ gain final treatment week initial baseline return week drop/gain student 1 59 61 2 84 68 -16 student 2 55 56 1 81 73 -8 student 3 54 23 -31 60 53 -7 student 4 64 59 -5 74 72 -2 student 5 54 54 0 64 63 -1 student 6 41 39 -2 50 45 -5 student 7 46 46 0 65 55 -10 student 8 47 41 -6 73 60 -13 student 9 64 76 9 96 66 -30 group mean 54.1 50.6 -3.6 71.9 61.7 -10.2 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 6 table 4 measurements of progress/regression in each phase by student note. difference in a-b measures the progress or regression of the student mean from initial baseline to treatment. difference in b-a measures the progress or regression of the student mean from treatment to the return to baseline. table 5 anova for measures of student means for baseline, treatment, and return to baseline note. n = 9. baseline a treatment b return to baseline a difference in baseline a difference in a-b m sd m sd m sd m sd m sd student 1 55.7 6.3 67.9 13.5 73.8 5.6 12.2 7.2 5.9 -7.9 student 2 46.8 7.1 64.0 12.2 76.3 4.1 17.2 5.1 12.3 -8.1 student 3 46.1 8.3 50.3 15.7 60.5 4.9 4.2 7.4 10.2 -10.8 student 4 58.4 7.7 68.7 8.7 72.5 3.2 10.3 1.0 3.8 -5.5 student 5 47.3 5.2 56.4 6.4 60.3 6.7 9.1 1.2 3.9 0.3 student 6 34.4 3.0 40.0 5.3 44.7 4.5 5.6 2.3 4.7 -0.8 student 7 42.6 4.2 49.9 7.7 58.3 6.4 7.3 3.5 8.4 -1.3 student 8 44.3 7.8 50.1 8.4 59.3 8.4 5.8 0.6 9.2 0.0 student 9 61.4 3.0 77.9 11.3 73.5 12.6 16.5 8.3 -4.4 1.3 group mean 48.6 5.8 58.4 9.9 64.4 6.3 9.8 4.1 6.0 -3.6 ss df ms f p between groups 1,145 2 572.5 10 0.001 within groups 1,373 24 57.2 total 2,518 26 the effects of background music on learning disabled elementary school students’ performance in writing 7 mean pairs (phases) significantly differed. in this analysis, the mean scores from baseline to treatment were significantly different from one another, indicating that students scored higher overall due to the treatment (listening to music) than with no treatment (absence of music) in the initial phase of the study. individual results better with music. five of the nine students performed better on average with music. they were student 1 (6.3), student 2 (4.9), student 4 (6.5), student 5 (5.2), and student 9 (20.9). student 1, student 2, and student 9 also had their highest score in the final week of the music (treatment) phase. student 4 had his highest score in the next-to-last week of the music (treatment) phase. student 1, with moderate learning disabilities in reading, mathematics, and speech, went below baseline once, and surprisingly it was during the music (treatment) phase. student 2, with autism and adhd, was near baseline twice during the initial phase. student 4, with moderate learning disabilities in reading, writing, and speech, went below baseline once during the initial phase, and surprisingly returned to near baseline once during the music (treatment) phase. student 5, with moderate learning disabilities in reading, returned to near baseline twice during the initial phase, and also surprisingly once during the music (treatment) phase. student 9, with moderate learning disabilities in reading, writing, and speech, returned to near baseline twice in the initial phase, and surprisingly once in the music (treatment) phase. student 9 was also the only student to regress in any phase, dropping -4.4 from music (treatment) to return to baseline phase. student 9 also realized a 30-point drop in the first week without the music (treatment). better without music. two of the nine students performed better on average without music. they were student 3 (-6.0) and student 8 (-3.4). student 3, with learning disabilities in reading, writing, mathematics, autism, occupational therapy, adhd, and oppositional defiance, went below or near baseline twice, both during the music (treatment) phase. student 3 immediately dropped 31 points in the first week with music. student 8, with moderate learning disabilities in reading, writing, and speech, was near baseline once in the initial phase, and either near baseline or below baseline three times in the music (treatment) phase. student 8 immediately dropped six points in the first week with music. same with or without music. two of the students performed essentially the same with or without music. they were student 6 (0.9) and student 7 (-1.1). student 6, with a communications disorder, was near baseline once in the initial phase, twice during the music (treatment) phase, and once in the return to baseline phase. student 7, with moderate learning disabilities in reading and speech, was either near or below baseline twice in the initial phase, twice in the music (treatment) phase, and once in the return to baseline phase. discussion summary of findings although gains and losses were realized in the baseline, treatment, and return to baseline phases, all students improved their writing over the entire course of the study. data obtained in anova and tukey’s hsd post hoc analysis indicated that the increase in student mean scores from baseline to treatment were a result of listening to music. it may then be determined that using background music as a means to improving writing ability of students with learning disabilities can be beneficial. individually, five students performed better when background music was utilized, two had similar results with or without background music, and two students performed worse when background music was utilized. those students who performed better when background music was utilized also had their highest scores in that part of the study. conversely, it should be noted that the two students who performed worse when background music was utilized performed at or below their baseline several times in the music (treatment) phase. this suggests that it may be beneficial to incorporate background music to improve writing for students with learning disabilities, but if students drop to their lowest levels, remove the music for those students immediately. perhaps having the background-music-benefiting students using headphones to play the songs (and thus keeping the rest of the classroom quiet for those who have difficulty when the music is playing) would be a way to incorporate the strengths of all students into the activity. also, the data indicates that any change – going from silence to adding music, and then back to silence – results in a large drop in writing performance of students with learning disabilities, and it takes several weeks to regain the progress made in the time before the addition of music. this likely shows that consistency in routine is essential to the academic performance of students with learning disabilities, and that variability or change in routine is both a distraction and a hindrance in performance. the classroom teacher observed that when he initially began using the music, “a number of students (3-4) commented that they found it distracting and did not want it played; however, once i ended the music, those same students (plus several more) were disappointed to see the music removed.” limitations and generalizability the primary limitation of this study pertains to generalizing the findings to other educational settings. this investigation focused upon the effect of background music on writing performance of students with learning disabilities in a suburban public elementary school in the mid-atlantic region of the united states. as a result, current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 8 external validity is questionable. appropriateness of the findings of this study should be determined by the consumer of the research. another limitation of the study is that specific learning disabilities were neither considered nor measured singularly. all students were grouped together in the learning disabilities classroom regardless of their condition. as a result, it cannot be determined if a student with a particular learning disability (for example, adhd) performed better (or worse) with music or without music. there was also a lack of qualitative data to support or refute the quantitative findings. there may have been instances where students enjoyed having the music played and performed at a higher level than without it, and conversely may have disliked the music being played and yet still performed at a higher level. performance may also have been affected by the scope of the writing prompt administered. although aimsweb probes were utilized in sequence, probes may have been of varying interest to the students, and personal connections may have been made at varying degrees based on a student’s background knowledge. the study may also be more advantageous to occur over a longer period of time than 21 weeks. perhaps an entire year-long examination would yield alternative results. recommendations it may be beneficial to conduct this study utilizing an experimental design with independent samples, comparing like-groups over a period of time with one group utilizing music (treatment) for the duration and the other group being denied music for the duration of the study. it may also be beneficial to conduct this study in alternate settings – with younger or older students, private or parochial schools, or even utilizing different types of music – to either validate or refute the results found in this examination. implications for practice background music improved the writing ability of students with learning disabilities overall as compared to writing in silence. incorporating music into writing exercises and activities is sound pedagogy. however, consistency in routine appears to be more essential to the academic performance for students with learning disabilities than the presence or absence of background music. references collett, m. (1992). music as the basis for learning. the education digest, 57, 61-64. retrieved from education full text database. diedwardo, m. (2005). pairing linguistic and music intelligences. kappa delta pi record, 41(3), 128130. (eric document reproduction service no. ej773903) retrieved from eric database. donohoe, r., & mcneely, t. (1999). the effect of student music choice on writing productivity. (eric document reproduction service no. ed448472) retrieved from eric database. ebisutani, k., donlan, d., & siebers, e. (1991, january 1). the effects of music on reading, oral language, and writing abilities: a review of literature. (eric document reproduction service no. ed333356) retrieved from eric database. gay, l. r., mills, g. e., & airasian, p. (2009). educational research: competencies for analysis and applications (9th ed.). upper saddle river, nj: pearson education, inc. kariuki, p., & honeycutt, c. (1998). an investigation of the effects of music on two emotionally disturbed students' writing motivations and writing skills. (eric document reproduction service no. ed427491) retrieved from eric database. klassen, r. m., & lynch, s. l. (2007). self-efficacy from the perspective of adolescents with ld and their specialist teachers. journal of learning disabilities, 40(6), 494-507. retrieved from ebscohost. lapointe, j. m., legault, f., & batiste, s. j. (2005). teacher interpersonal behavior and adolescents’ motivation in mathematics: a comparison of learning disabled, average, and talented students. international journal of educational research, 43(1/2), 39-54. retrieved from ebscohost. lincoln, a., & chazan, s. (1979). perceived competence and intrinsic motivation in learning disability children. journal of clinical child psychology, 8(3), 213-216. retrieved from ebscohost. o’bruba, w. (1987). reading through the creative arts. reading horizons, 27(3), 170-177. powell-smith, k. a., & shinn, m. r. (2004). administration and scoring of written expression curriculum-based measurement (we-cbm) for use in general outcome measurement (aimsweb training workbook). eden prairie, mn: edformation, inc. retrieved at http://www.aimsweb.com/uploads/pdfs/adminand scoringwe-cbm.pdf psychology world. (n.d.). tukey’s hsd post hoc test steps. retrieved at http://web.mst.edu/~psyworld/ tukeyssteps.htm schuster, d. h. & vincent, l. (1980). teaching reading and math with suggestion and music. academic therapy, 16, 69-72. the effects of background music on learning disabled elementary school students’ performance in writing 9 article citation legutko, r.s., & trissler, t.t. (2012). the effects of background music on learning disabled elementary school students’ performance in writing. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/568 author notes robert s. legutko ed.d. bloomsburg university 400 e. 2nd street, bloomsburg, pa 17815 rlegutko@hotmail.com robert s. legutko is an assistant professor in the early childhood and adolescent education department at bloomsburg university (where he also received his bachelor’s degree). dr. legutko earned master’s degrees from penn state university and desales university, and a doctorate in education from wilmington university, delaware. theodore t. trissler ed.d.. north penn school district 401 east hancock street, lansdale, pa 19446 tedtrissler@hotmail.com theodore t. trissler is a special education teacher in the north penn school district and an adjunct instructor at desales university. dr. trissler earned a bachelor’s degree from edinboro university, a master’s degree from penn state university, and a doctorate in education from widener university. manuscript received: 5/28/2010 revisions received: 9/19/2011 accepted: 12/8/2011 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 10 volume 15, number 1 january 1, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines lisa lacy copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang younsu kim monica keys lisa lacy catherine lasman victoria lucero carol masser faculty advisors lauren preston stephanie quintero katherine ronan kelly rubel leslie salazar bertha sanchez melisa tarango lauren williams dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 14, number 3 september 24, 2011 issn 1099-839x what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? an account of newcomer immigrant youths’ afterschool academic lives hee jin bang national writing project while substantial research has focused on homework in the lives of native-born englishspeaking students, research on immigrant students’ homework experiences remains scarce. a goal of this study was to describe the homework experiences of newcomer immigrant students, drawing from a project on how individual, family, and school characteristics shape these youths’ homework experiences. focus groups and surveys were conducted with newcomer students (n=192) in an urban high school. survey data were used to determine the prevalence of homework facilitators and impediments students experienced; focus group data were examined to develop an enhanced understanding of the contexts in which students encounter various facilitators and impediments. understanding course materials, i.e. having academic english proficiency to comprehend course contents, was a key determinant in whether students experienced homework as easy or difficult. results can inform ways in which home, school, and afterschool settings may be structured to facilitate immigrant youths’ homework completion. keywords: immigrant youth, english language learners, homework, ecological systems, mixed methods recent educational reform initiatives in the u.s. have focused attention on raising students’ academic achievement. schools are held accountable for ensuring that all children make adequate progress towards achieving standards aligned with the general curriculum. in this climate, homework has emerged as a potential vehicle to improve achievement. it is a means of extending the school day, as homework is schoolwork assigned to be done outside of class. among students who could potentially benefit from the learning opportunities offered by homework is the increasing population of immigrant adolescents. in the united states today, about 12% of the population are foreign-born (larsen, 2003), and among 262.4 million people aged 5 and over, about 18% speak a non-english language at home (u.s. census, 2002). more than one in five children are either firstor second-generation immigrants, growing up in homes with at least one foreignborn parent (mather, 2009); these youth comprise the fastest growing segment of the school-aged population (hernández, denton, & macartney, 2007). newcomer immigrant youth refer to first-generation immigrants who have recently arrived in the u.s. (typically within 5 years). this paper concerns youth (ages 14-17 yrs) within this group; in particular, it focuses on their homework experiences. since many immigrant youth learn english and complex academic subjects simultaneously, they often lag behind their native-born english-speaking peers in academic achievement. one way to bridge this gap is through the thoughtful assignment of homework. since homework can be tailored to individual student’s learning needs, appropriately designed assignments can offer valuable learning opportunities for immigrant youth who need to review course materials and current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 2 practice specific skills. there is limited research, however, on academic and developmental needs of newcomer immigrant adolescents; thus, secondary schools are often ill-equipped to address the needs of these newcomers (ruizde-vélasco, clewell, & fix, 2001; suárez-orozco, suárezorozco, & todorova, 2008). yet schools represent the primary context of acculturation for immigrant youth, and performance in secondary grades has significant implications for students’ decision to continue on to college. since research shows strong positive relationship between high school achievement and homework completion (cooper, robinson, & patall, 2006), each homework assignment that is out of reach for immigrant students places them at a position of cumulative disadvantage—for failed opportunities to learn, negative teacher perceptions (weinstein, 2002), lower academic selfefficacy (schunk, 1991), and academic disengagement over time (goslin, 2003). thus, educators need to be informed of factors that facilitate or challenge immigrant students’ homework experiences, so that steps can be taken to help them derive maximal benefit from homework. theoretical framework this study is guided by an ecological perspective (bronfenbrenner & morris, 1998) which recognizes that academic performance is linked to various characteristics in students’ family and school ecologies (benner, graham, & mistry, 2008; chung & steinberg, 2006). the ecological systems and the processes that occur within each system are interrelated; the persons or characteristics of one ecological system can influence those found in another system. in this study, the ecological systems model is used as a framework for understanding how various individual, home, school, and outside school activities are associated with newcomer immigrant students’ homework completion. literature relationship between homework and academic achievement a rich body of literature exists on homework experiences of native-born english speaking students, but research on immigrant students’ experiences with homework remains scarce. the existing research has been synthesized in a recent review (cooper et al., 2006); it demonstrated a general positive relationship between the amount of homework and academic achievement. however, this positive effect of homework on achievement is significant only at the secondary grade levels. there is a moderate correlation between time spent on homework and achievement at the middle school level, while little or no relationship is observed at the elementary grade levels. thus, the relationship between homework and achievement is not straightforward or uniform across all students. some scholars contend that homework can be overwhelming for students, leading to frustration, disengagement from school, and low academic self-efficacy (bennett & kalish, 2007; zimmermann & kitsantas, 2005). homework can also disrupt families, as parent-child conflicts arise over homework, and too much homework often takes time away from family events, extracurricular activities, leisure, and rest (kralovec & buell, 2000). moreover, studies that show positive associations between homework completion and attainment of higher class grades and test scores (cooper & valentine, 2001; tymms, 1992) may in fact be reflecting the socioeconomic advantage of students who have access to resources such as computers, internet, or help from parents or tutors. homework and grades. in broad terms, grades are meant to indicate students’ mastery of skills and level of understanding in a given course. in practice, however, grades are not limited to students’ mastery of the course materials, and doing one’s homework is often critical for obtaining good grades. a previous study based on a survey of teachers working with recently arrived immigrant youth (from china, central america, dominican republic, haiti, and mexico) showed that the most important determinant of grades is homework completion (bang, suárez-orozco, pakes, & o’connor, 2009). indeed, the literature on grading practices indicates that teacher-assigned grades often take into account students’ homework completion and other indicators of effort and classroom behaviors (brookhart, 1991, 1993; stiggins, frisbie, & griswold, 1989). such grading practice is supported by a theoretical model of academic achievement (diperna & elliott, 1999, 2000) which asserts that academic competence is a combination of two types of student characteristics: academic skills (i.e., language, mathematics, and critical thinking skills) and academic enablers (i.e., motivation, engagement, interpersonal skills, and study skills). teachers’ consideration of both components in evaluating student achievement is particularly important in immigrant students’ grades, since low performance on tests may be less a result of these students’ content knowledge and skill than their limited proficiency in the new language (e.g., genesee, lindholm-leary, saunders, & christian, 2006). thus, teachers may justifiably seek to give relatively greater weight to factors such as effort, class participation, and homework completion in determining immigrant students’ grades (brookhart, 1994). although grades are subjective, they identify students as highor low-achieving, determine the level of classes in which students can enroll, and generally are closely linked to other more objective indicators of students’ achievement (wendel & anderson, 1994). individual characteristics english proficiency and academic skills. limited proficiency in english is a particular impediment to homework completion for immigrant youth, and the challenges are even greater for students with interrupted formal education, as they lack the basic academic skills needed to complete assignments and perform in school (august & hakuta, 1997). moreover, not having developed what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 3 strong literacy skills in one’s native language considerably decreases the chances of acquiring academic language skills in a second language (genesee et al., 2006). additionally, the content of secondary school curricula becomes increasingly complex, and resources available in u.s. schools for adolescent ells are more limited in comparison to those available for younger ells (ruiz-de-vélasco et al., 2001). without solid instruction in content areas and language support to access the materials being taught in classes, immigrant youth are unlikely to acquire english proficiency regardless of the length of their time in the u.s.; the gap in academic achievement relative to native-born youth will continue to increase (suárezorozco et al., 2008). academic engagement. in broad terms, engagement is conceptualized as the extent to which students are involved in their classes and school-related activities (steinberg, brown, & dornbusch, 1996). engagement is a multi-faceted construct that involves behavioral (e.g., effort, participation), emotional (e.g., enjoyment derived from learning), relational (e.g., sense of connectedness with peers and teachers), as well as cognitive dimensions (e.g., interest in a topic) (fredricks, blumenfeld, & paris, 2004; national research council, 2004; suárez-orozco, pimentel, & martin, 2009). research has demonstrated that the extent to which students are academically engaged in their classes significantly influences their performance in school (fredricks et al., 2004; suárez-orozco et al., 2008). the present study examines behavioral and cognitive dimensions of engagement. prior analyses on data involving newcomer immigrant students indicated that behavioral engagement is an important predictor of homework completion (bang et al., 2009). furthermore, research shows that engagement is a prerequisite for learning (goslin, 2003), and students need to be interested and intellectually engrossed in what is being taught in class in order to learn and be able to apply the skills in completing their homework. family background and home environment many studies have demonstrated associations between family demographic factors (e.g., socioeconomic status, maternal education, parental employment, racial/ethnic background) and children’s achievement (e.g., ferriss, 2006; sirin, 2005). the socioeconomic status of a family is among the most important demographic factors related to children’s development and academic performance. some family background and home environment characteristics affect homework completion due to poverty (e.g., limited educational resources, parents working long hours, children having to work in order to support the family), while others are particular to immigrant families. immigration is a stressful event that often brings about changes in the family system, causing some family relationships to be strained and conflictual (falicov 1998; suárez-orozco & suárez orozco, 2001). the process of migration and acculturation frequently involves separation and estrangement between family members, introduction of new members, and cultural/generational gap due to children’s and parents’ differential rates of adaptation to the u.s. culture (suárezorozco & suárez-orozco, 2001). in addition, immigrant youth are often asked to take on responsibilities beyond their years, such as childcare, translation, and negotiation, which can sometimes deter students from focusing on school work (faulstich-orellana, 2001; suárez-orozco et al., 2008). parental involvement. a review of research on native-born students’ parental involvement in homework has shown that across all grade levels, students who receive parents’ assistance and support tend to achieve higher, outperforming their peers with relatively less-involved parents in accuracy, consistency, and quality of completed assignments (hoover-dempsey, battiato, walker, reed, dejong, & jones, 2001). however, immigrant parents may be unable to attend to their children’s schooling and provide homework help to the extent that many parents of nativeborn, middleto upper-class youth often do. some may have received limited formal schooling or education in another language; they may not be familiar with the u.s. school system. nevertheless, parental homework help can take many forms. these include having regular discussions about what children are learning in classes, providing emotional support and encouragement, helping to develop learning strategies and work habits, and ensuring that their children’s homework is completed (hoover-dempsey et al., 2001; xu, 2004). school environment many studies have shown that student engagement and achievement are increased in school environments that ensure physical safety, promote positive social norms, provide opportunities to develop skills within warm, supportive relationships, and convey high expectations for academic achievement (e.g., hoy & sabo, 1998; phillips, 1997; shouse, 1997). previous research involving immigrant students indicated that many of them attend schools with high levels of poverty and segregation (suárez-orozco et al., 2008). students in these contexts have limited access to educational resources and few opportunities to interact with peers of the dominant culture (kozol, 2005). in some schools, ells may be isolated in english as second language tracks, where they may experience unchallenging classes, low expectations, and embarrassment due to their slow acquisition of academic english (olsen, 1997; valdés, 1998). problems such as lack of discipline and violence that often afflict high-poverty schools threaten the physical safety of students, leading them to focus their energies on remaining safe rather than on learning (gronna & chinchance, 1999; prothrow-stith & quaday, 1995). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 4 outside school supports/homework help and resources the availability of someone who can provide homework help is associated with higher homework completion rates and greater enjoyment of the learning experience (xu, 2005; xu & corno, 2003). for many youths, the often isolating experience of working on assignments instead of activities that involve socializing with others seems to contribute to their negative attitude toward homework (xu, 2005). especially for youths who are struggling in school, homework that is overly challenging, repetitive, uninteresting, or too lengthy can lead to frustration, impatience, low self-esteem, and low academic self-efficacy (zimmermann & kitsantas, 2005). homework help centers or tutoring programs can provide a set place and time for students to complete their assignments, thus helping them manage their afterschool hours efficiently and ensuring an environment that is conducive to academic work. by structuring students’ afterschool schedules and offering educational resources, homework centers may further increase the time that students dedicate to academic work, and time spent on homework is generally positively associated with homework completion, accuracy, and achievement (dotterer, mchale, & crouter, 2007). furthermore, newcomer immigrant youths can benefit from the language support provided by teachers, gain insight and learning strategies by working with peers, and develop skills in using reference materials that can help them in future assignments. whether or not immigrant students have access to such help and resources can significantly impact their homework experiences and determine the success with which they complete their assignments. this brief review points to numerous factors that may shape immigrant students’ homework experiences. yet little is known about the homework experiences of newcomer immigrant students. since homework, particularly in high school, has been recognized to help students achieve in school (cooper et al., 2006), and given newcomer immigrant students’ need to acquire academic english language proficiency, research is needed to help develop a better understanding of the factors that influence homework experiences among this population. the present study this study is based on a subset of data i collected for a broader project on the homework experiences and academic adaptation of recently arrived immigrant youth in the u.s. given the limited research on homework experiences of newcomer immigrant students, a primary objective of the project was descriptive; the research question guiding this study is: what are the facilitators and impediments to homework completion for immigrant students attending a newcomer school? focus groups were conducted to gather reports from immigrant youth about the various factors that affect their homework completion; the resulting data informed questions to be included in a subsequent questionnaire. this study utilizes a subset of the quantitative data derived from the surveys, as well as data collected through focus group discussions. method study setting and participants participants were students from international high school at prospect heights, a newcomer school in new york city (referred to hereafter as ―international high school‖). this school is a part of the internationals network for public schools, a non-profit organization that addresses the educational needs of recent immigrant students in 9th through 12th grades who have limited proficiency in english. the international high school was opened in 2004 and is one of the most recently established sites. in 20072008, it served about 450 students, operating as one of four small schools housed in a building that was formerly a single high school. it accepts a diverse group of newcomer students who have spent less than four years in the u.s. at the time of admission. these students, who have scored at an intermediate level or below on the new york state english as a second language achievement test (nyseslat), come from over fifty different countries in africa, asia, europe, central and south america. some enter the school with a solid formal educational background, while others have had almost no formal schooling. as a school designed to serve first generation newcomer immigrants, the international high school was an appropriate site at which to conduct research that aims to shed light on the academic adaptation and homework experiences of recently arrived immigrant youth in a u.s. school. procedures a brief presentation of the project was given before all teachers at international high school during a faculty meeting. all teachers expressed interest in the project; irb approvals were obtained from the author’s institution and from the nyc department of education. each teacher received permission forms and letters describing the study to parents to be distributed to students in their respective advisory groups. numerous efforts were made to obtain signed parental permission forms (e.g., incentives, party for the advisory group with the highest return rate). administrators and teachers also helped by requesting parents’ permission when they came to school for parent-teacher conferences, and almost all parents agreed to have their child participate in the project. data collection times were scheduled to take place after school (for focus groups) and during 50-minute independent reading periods (for surveys). a total of four 45-60 minute focus groups were conducted with students across grades 9 through 12 (see appendix a for focus group protocol). with the help of the school’s special programs coordinator, participants were recruited so that each group would be balanced by gender. attempts were made to recruit students of varying achievement levels and what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 5 countries of origin, but given the constraints of scheduling and the voluntary participation of students, selection bias may have been introduced; thus, the focus group data are not generalized beyond the participants. each group included 4 to 7 participants (one group of 4 students, two groups of 5 students, and one group of 7 students); a total of 21 students participated in the four focus groups. a brief description of students in each group is presented in table 1. focus groups. focus groups were moderated by trained bilingual / bicultural research assistants (ras), each accompanied by a non-participating observer whose task was to take detailed notes on elements that could not be captured in discussions, such as participants’ body language, facial expressions, or behaviors in interactions with other group members. all focus group discussions were audio-recorded. the focus groups elicited a rich set of first-hand, contextualized accounts on participants’ homework experiences and identified specific facilitators and impediments that newcomer immigrant students encounter in completing homework assignments in the u.s. school system. these focus groups also offered considerable flexibility in exploring new ideas that emerged during the data collection process and investigate unanticipated factors that act as homework facilitators or impediments (seal, bogart, & ehrhardt, 1998). the responses provided during these discussions served to refine measures to be included in the survey so that it posed culturally relevant questions about factors influencing immigrant students’ homework experiences. focus groups offered a means of gathering rich data contextualized in the lives of the participants. students could build on and respond to the comments from other group members. moreover, as the participants were english language learners, communication was facilitated by peers with relatively more advanced english proficiency (stewart, shamdasani, & rook, 2007). the focus group data provided student perspectives about the type and importance of various facilitators and impediments to homework completion. the data also informed items included in the subsequent survey, designed to gather information about a variety of factors associated with homework completion. it was designed to gather information about a variety of factors associated with homework completion. table 1 description of focus group participants group gender & grade level countries of origin home language length of time in the u.s. 1 m: two 9 th f: two 9 th & one 11 th haiti, dominican republic, philippines, sierra leone kreyol, spanish, filipino, mende 6 months – 5 years 2 m: two 9 th & one 10 th f: one 9 th china, haiti, mexico mandarin, kreyol, spanish 1.5 years – 3 years 3 m: two 9 th & two 10 th f: one 9 th & two 10 th honduras, mexico, bangladesh spanish, bengali 8 months – 8 years 4 m: one 12 th f: one 11 th & three 12 th dominican republic, gabon, haiti, south africa spanish, french, kreyol, zulu 3 years – 5 years current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 6 survey on homework experiences. for the survey, two lists of reasons (facilitators and impediments) were generated based on focus group discussions and literature regarding factors associated with students’ homework experiences (see appendix b for the complete lists of items). students were asked, ―which of the reasons listed below make it hard / easy for you to do your homework?‖, and they were to check all reasons that applied to them (e.g., i do not understand the lesson; the assignment is explained step by step.) responses were coded dichotomously, with 1= ―yes‖ and 0= ―no.‖ the survey items were piloted with five high school students (of whom two were english language learners); all items were translated by professionals into six languages that were most commonly used as the primary/home language of students at the international high school: spanish, chinese, french, haitian kreyol, bengali, and arabic. (the diverse language(s) that students reported using at home are displayed figure 1.) each translated survey was back-translated and reviewed by native speakers of the target language to assess whether the questions were linguistically and age-appropriate; they also examined the items to ensure that the intended meanings were accurately conveyed. the survey was administered by a team of trained bilingual research assistants (ras). all ninth and tenth graders who were present on the survey day were asked to participate. a total of 192 students agreed to participate and completed the survey, corresponding to a response rate of 97 percent. the sample was balanced by student gender (n of boys = 99, or 52%); the mean student age was 16 (sd= 1.07 years); and, participants came from diverse regions: 11 (6%) from africa, 55 (31%) from caribbean, 44 (25%) from central/south america, 25 (14%) from east asia, 34 (19%) from south/southeast asia, and 9 (5%) from eastern europe/other. according to students’ reports, about 59 percent (n= 114) of their mothers and 49 percent of their fathers (n=95) had completed high school education or less. as for their parents’ employment status, 50 percent of mothers (n=96) and 72 percent of fathers (n=139) were working outside the home. in addition to the focus groups and surveys conducted with students, i also interviewed eight purposefully selected teachers (from various subject areas and grade levels) to understand the kinds of homework students received. the interview protocol included questions on the amount and type of homework that were typically assigned, relationships between homework and class work or tests, teacher perceptions about their students’ capacity to complete homework, and any accommodations or adjustments made to facilitate their students’ homework experiences. findings from the interviews are reported elsewhere (bang, in press). figure 1. number of students who reported using the language at home. note: total is greater than n=192 because many students reported using more than 1 language at home: 96 students reported two languages, 58 reported three or more languages. other category includes 6 or less of the following: albanian, fuzhounese, ewe, fuliani, nepali, polish, punjabi, russian, tibetan, and urdu. what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 7 analysis all focus group discussions were transcribed. the interview transcripts were organized and analyzed using atlas/ti. this qualitative data analysis program facilitated taking memos, development of inductive and deductive codes to be applied across the qualitative data, as well as categorization and thematic analysis. i read the transcripts and listened to the recordings multiple times and wrote memos and annotations, giving particular attention to students’ responses about the various facilitators and impediments that they encounter in completing homework. the data were then fractured into phrases and sorted into broader categories. while the topics covered during the focus group discussions provided several coding categories, most codes were developed inductively during analysis, using grounded theory approaches based on the data. an open-coding process using phrases as the unit of analysis was employed (strauss & corbin, 1998). i analyzed the content, extracted keywords, and identified emergent descriptive themes from the transcripts, generating a comprehensive set of 35 firstlevel codes (e.g., not knowing what the homework is, having clear, detailed instructions to complete assignment). then, similar codes were combined to reduce redundancy in coding categories. larger chunks of data could then be sorted, and general patterns could be identified. for example, getting good grades and praise from teachers or parents were combined into a higher-level coding category labeled rewards/encouragement. the data were then organized in a table in which each row was labeled with codes. more specific codes, definitions, and illustrative quotations of each code were displayed in adjacent cells. subsequent tables were created by individual characteristics (e.g., fatigue, fear of mistakes) home environment features (e.g., parents’ encouragement) school environment features (e.g., starting homework with teacher), and out-of-school factors (e.g., jobs). examining the data in this way helped identify homework facilitators and impediments in relation to the ecological systems framework. this coding scheme was presented to two colleagues who have expertise in psychological development and academic adaptation of immigrant youth. they were asked to independently code all focus group transcripts and to generate coding categories. the two colleagues and i refined the coding scheme through discussion of each code and its relationship with other codes. we established rules for determining when a code was to be assigned. coding cross-checks were performed by tallying the number of agreements and disagreements between two colleagues and myself. the formula for intercoder reliability was: agreement/ (agreement + disagreement) with a target rate of 85% reliability as the lowest acceptable level for each category (miles & huberman, 1994). the team obtained an inter-coder reliability of 90%. disagreements in coding were resolved through discussion and consultation with another expert in school psychology and immigration studies until complete agreement was achieved. the focus groups generated rich data that informed the questions to be included in a subsequent survey, which was designed to gather information about a variety of factors associated with newcomer immigrants’ academic adaptation and homework experiences. the survey data were examined descriptively. i first counted the number of students who answered ―yes‖ to having experienced each facilitator and impediment and calculated the percentages to see the prevalence of each homework facilitator or impediment among the students. on average, each student reported 7.2 (sd = 4.05) total facilitators and 4.1 (sd = 3.28) total impediments. examination of the relative frequency and prevalence of homework facilitators and impediments reported by all 9th and 10th grade students indicated that the ecological systems model can be applied to understand the factors as originating from the individual-, home-, school-, and outof-school systems. this categorization, along with the focus group data, allowed me to gain insights into how newcomer immigrant students’ homework experiences are shaped by various factors in contexts in which they engage routinely. results this section presents the descriptive statistics of the specific homework impediments and facilitators and categorizes them into individual, home, school, and out of school/ extracurricular systems. the data from focus groups are also presented, along with interpretations of how specific factors operate to shape students’ homework experiences. prevalence of homework impediments the number of students who responded ―yes‖ to statements describing a specific factor that may either help or hinder their homework efforts were counted (e.g., ―having clear instructions about the homework assignment‖ ―not having the necessary materials i need to do homework‖). of the impediments to homework completion, the most salient factors were related to having limited understanding of the course materials (50.5 percent of participants), or having difficulty with english (40.6 percent of participants). the least frequently reported impediments included not being organized (8.3 percent), getting limited feedback from the teacher (8.9 percent), and having a job (9.4 percent). in broad terms, the impediments fell into the following seven types, in descending order from the most frequently reported to the least frequently reported impediment: limited understanding; fatigue; motivational issues; organizational issues; competing environmental demands; high standards; and limited access to help or resources to complete homework. table 2 displays the number and percentage of students who reported experiencing specific homework impediments. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 8 table 2 total number and percentage of students who responded having experienced each homework impediment homework impediments type n of respondents % of respondents limited understanding limited academic skills 97 50.5 problem with vocab in hw 78 40.6 limited english proficiency 64 33.3 not reviewing lessons 21 10.9 too much hw fatigue 78 40.6 too tired 55 28.6 forgetting hw materials organization issue 48 25.0 leaving hw till last minute 45 23.4 not knowing what hw was assigned 43 22.4 lack of organization 16 8.3 fear of mistakes high standards 40 20.8 not happy with quality of own work 23 12.0 lack of will/desire to do hw motivation issue 31 16.1 boredom/lack of interest in topic 31 16.1 chores competing environmental demands 27 14.1 no quiet place 21 10.9 job 18 9.4 limited teacher feedback limited help/resources 17 8.9 no materials to do hw 17 8.9 the factors influencing homework completion were then categorized using the ecological systems model framework that guided the study. most of the homework impediments (about 86 percent of all impediments reported by students) fell under individual student characteristics (e.g., limited academic skills; too much homework; fatigue; forgetting homework materials). less than 10 percent of studentreported impediments were related to home environment characteristics, and less than 3 percent of the impediments were related to school environment or extracurricular/ afterschool contexts. figure 2 displays the distribution of homework impediments across the ecological systems. what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 9 figure 2. ecological systems categorization of homework impediments table 3 ecological systems categorization of homework impediments individual limited understanding problem with vocab in hw too much hw limited english proficiency too tired forgetting hw materials leaving hw till last minute not knowing what hw was assigned fear of mistakes lack of will/desire to do hw boredom/lack of interest in topic not happy with quality of own work not reviewing lessons lack of organization home chores no quiet place school limited teacher feedback out of school/ extracurricular job current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 10 focus group discussion of homework impediments although the students tended to attribute a disproportionate number of homework impediments to individual student characteristics, an examination of qualitative data indicated that many of the individual level factors interacted with factors in their greater ecological contexts. the responses from the students in focus groups complemented the survey data and shed light on the interaction between the individual and contextual factors. limited academic skills and too much homework. the most commonly discussed impediments in focus groups were related to not understanding the course materials and having limited english proficiency; this language barrier, in turn, prevented students from fully grasping the meaning of materials. limited understanding further led students to feel overwhelmed, as they needed to exert greater effort and time to complete assignments. a number of students concurred with jorge and wen, 9th grade students from mexico and china, respectively: jorge: homework is a lot because we really not understand a lot of english so… we have some of the words that we don't understand and we have to translate and everything and i think with that it's a lot of work. wen: sometimes the words in the question, they are too difficult. i don’t understand it. thus, completing homework assignments in english demanded more time and energy from newcomers than it would have from native english-speaking students. the resulting feeling of burden is illustrated in an exchange amongst 9th graders from honduras, mexico, and bangladesh: remi: english is hard. luis: yeah, global [studies] is hard too. [why is it hard?] because i don't understand the language. annie: sometimes they like give us a quote and we have to write an essay on it ... and writing essay is hard. it takes a really long time. these remarks suggest that newcomer students need extra help and supports to facilitate their homework completion. yet not all students readily had access to such help. limited help or access to resources. immigrant parents are often unable to provide direct homework help that students need. a haitian 10th grade boy stated: ―when i came here, like last year in 9th grade i never did my homework cuz i didn't understand what to do, like we're immigrants, and in new york, parents work and don't have much time to help you.‖ his statement was supported by responses from other students: 9th grade chinese girl: my mom, she don’t help me because she comes home like seven or eight o’clock. she’s so tired. 10th grade mexican boy: i don’t ask my mom or father because they learn how to talk english, but they don’t know how to read or do homework 9th grade mexican boy: my father comes home at eleven and he doesn’t have time. clearly, schools must provide adequate instructional support and homework help for these students to compensate for the limited help they can receive at home. motivation, organization, and competing environmental demands. like all students, whether immigrant or not, certain types of facilitators such as motivation, organization, and competing environmental demands serve as impediments to getting homework done, in varying degrees. student responses elicited through focus groups allowed for contextualization of these impediments. for instance, a statement from 12th grade girl from gabon illustrated how motivation or engagement in an assignment and organizational skills such as time management can interact to pose challenges in doing homework: 12th grade gabon girl: one time i don't want to do homework is like these journals… just about what we read and the words we looked up. i have to write in it like three times a week, and usually i don’t do it. i wait till the last minute cuz um the teacher collects them like after a certain period of time like a month… so i have missing assignments but then i have to it cuz i know she's going to collect it so i do like six in a row. students also described how organizational issues such as procrastination can be compounded with competing environmental demands, including television, household chores, and other responsibilities. a frequently mentioned source of distraction was the television: 9th grade boy from bangladesh: sometimes at home, other people are watching tv so you watch too, and when you wanna do homework, it's too late, and so you sleep and then the next day you aren’t ready for class. 12th grade girl from dominican republic: television, i mean like if there’s a show that just comes on every thursday, like lost, i might choose to just watch that rather than do homework some immigrant students, particularly girls, had responsibilities at home that interfered with their ability to get their homework done. a student described how requests what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 11 from parents often made it difficult for her to do homework: 10th grade girl from bangladesh: when i start to do homework and concentrate really hard, something that happens a lot for me, like every day, is …my mom calls, and says, annie, do this, do that, and i’ll be like, let me do my homework and then i will do it. but then i start to do chores and stuff, and a call comes, like from my friend, and they will never hang up the phone before an hour, and i'll have to speak with them. it happens every day….my mom, she works four days a week, so it's really hard to do homework… and i have to maintain every single thing and also do my homework so it's really hard.‖ interplay of homework impediments in students’ lives. for some students, types of impediments such as competing environmental demands, limited access to resources to do homework, and having high standards together interacted as impediments. an exchange between 12th grade girls from gabon (jasmin) and dominican republic (lesly) illustrates this interplay: jasmin: my door, the lock is messed up and i always have my family. they live close by and i have little cousins they always come in so i cannot concentrate and whenever i do something i like to put my complete thought into it so i almost never have that chance. i’d rather not do something if i am not gonna do it right, so i’d rather not even bother. lesly: like me, my ...the room, i share with my little sister and my aunt, so she comes in, she puts the tv on, and i cannot do nothin’ with the tv… so if i go in the living room, my mom is in the room and she’s watching tv, so then my dad comes in the living room and watches games, like basketball, soccer, and like we have speakers, like boom boom boom and i am like in the corner trying to concentrate and looking at him like with evil eyes [laughs] that’s how it is so... i can't go anywhere. i have the brooklyn library over there but the library, sometimes i don't like the library cuz they’re not really updated… jasmin: yeah, so their books are kinda old and also the computer thing, you have to get off after thirty minutes and then if it’s too much people then you have to wait for them to get off ... so it's really annoying. these students recognized that their school offered afterschool homework help sessions, where they could ask questions to teachers and gain access to the internet and other educational resources. an unexpected finding, however, was that homework help centers did not always provide the support needed by some students, particularly 11th and 12th graders and those with relatively more advanced english skills. these students were expected to help beginner ells and others who were having difficulty with their homework; thus, they were unable to use the time and environment designated for completing their own assignments: 12th grade girl from south africa: we have homework help, but the thing is, if we go we are not gonna get our homework done ... we have to help others cuz we are 12th graders. we’re supposed to know everything. we are supposed to help. and you get distracted. even in class sometimes that happens... [sounds of agreement from other participants]. you don’t get your things done cuz you have to go and help people this quotation illustrates how a factor that is generally expected to facilitate homework completion (e.g., afterschool homework centers, peer tutors) can also serve as an impediment. in the following section, i examine the homework facilitators reported by students and present an analysis which parallels that of homework impediments. prevalence of homework facilitators the student survey data on homework facilitators revealed that the most frequently reported factor was knowing or understanding the course material (75.5 percent of participants). having clear instructions (59.9 percent) and having the assignment broken down into smaller steps (58.3 percent) were also among the most frequently reported facilitators; this finding stressed the importance of understanding the content and/or language in order to be able to complete homework. the other major homework facilitators were being interested in the topic or subject the assignment is for (68.2 percent), and getting good grades (63.0 percent); these factors would make homework completion easier for all students, not just for the participants in this study. somewhat surprisingly, the least frequently reported homework facilitators included not having to do chores around the house (16.7 percent), receiving rewards from parents (18.2 percent), and attending homework help centers (18.8 percent). these facilitators can be grouped into five broad types: knowing/understanding course materials, help/access to resources, environment conducive to doing homework, rewards/encouragement, and use of one’s native language. table 4 shows the number and percentage of participants who reported having experienced each of the homework facilitators. applying the ecological systems framework to examine the homework facilitators revealed a notable difference between the distributions of facilitators and impediments discussed earlier. while most of the impediments fell under the individual student characteristics, homework facilitators were relatively current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 12 evenly distributed throughout the ecological systems. individual student characteristics still comprised the most frequently reported facilitators (37.4 percent), but home environment and school environment characteristics also represented substantial proportion of the facilitators, 27.2 percent and 23.1 percent, respectively. about 12.3 percent of the homework facilitators were related to extracurricular or afterschool contexts. the distribution of homework facilitators across the ecological systems is presented in figure 3 and table 5. figure 3. ecological systems categorization of homework facilitators table 4 total number and percentage of students who reported having experienced each homework facilitator homework facilitators type n of respondents % of respondents understand course material know/understand material 145 75.5 interested in topic 131 68.2 clear instructions 115 59.9 hw broken down in to small steps 112 58.3 to get good grades rewards/encouragement 121 63.0 parents' encouragement 66 34.4 mentor's encouragement 60 31.3 praise from teacher 51 26.6 rewards from parents 35 18.2 available reference materials help/access to resources 101 52.6 starting hw in class with teacher 87 45.3 friends' help 72 37.5 hw help center 36 18.8 quiet place to do hw conductive environment for hw 80 41.7 no chores 32 16.7 translation of hw and instructions use if native language 62 32.3 doing hw in native language 56 29.2 what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 13 table 5 ecological systems categorization of homework facilitators individual understand course material interested in topic clear instructions translation of hw and instructions doing hw in native language to get good grades home available reference materials quiet place to do hw parents' encouragement rewards from parents no chores school hw broken down in to small steps starting hw in class with teacher praise from teacher out of school / extracurricular friends' help mentor's encouragement hw help center focus group discussions of homework facilitators the broad categories of homework facilitators identified from survey results also emerged in student focus group discussions. many participants acknowledged the value of homework and recognized it as a means of reinforcing, extending, and deepening their understanding of the materials covered in class. one 10th grade boy from bangladesh noted: if you go home and like don't do anything, like not be in touch with homework, with lesson,… i’ll forget everything so it's very important to keep in touch with those things. yeah besides it's not possible for a teacher to teach everything in one hour, so he or she gives homework to cover it at home so that the student can learn something. that also proves what did you learn from that class, if you can do your homework. in another focus group with 11th and 12th graders, two girls from dominican republic (lesly) and south africa (kyra) said: lesly: you learn. like for example for math, if you don't practice, you forget it. everybody knows that. kyra: yeah, and it’s for your own understanding, cuz for the homework, it might just be, explaining the subject, … like you might have questions that if you didn't do the homework, you wouldn't have had before so you know it expands your knowledge. knowing / understanding course materials. when asked to talk about some things that help them get their homework done, students also commented on their understanding of the course materials and the steps required to complete the given assignments. the following exchange is between two girls, lesly, an 11th grader from dominican republic and jasmin, a 12th grader from gabon: lesly: if you understand it, if you understand the homework, what to do, and in class, you already have a pretty good, … an idea of what to do when you go home, then homework would be easy. it just flows. but if you go home and you’re like how did the teacher explain …then you’re stuck. jasmin it also depends on the teacher cuz different people have different teaching styles… i remember like current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 14 comparing my previous history teacher and the one that i have now… mr. p., the one i had before, he would really explain what we are supposed to write about and we would have some background and insight about it. and we have to do this, that, and that, in order to get to the final thing… now it’s basically,… just one class, he said something quick about a topic and you have to start. use of one’s native language. for 9th and 10th grade students with limited english proficiency, knowing or understanding assignments entailed the use of their native languages. when students could get translations from peers or help from a teacher who knows the students’ native language, completing homework was relatively easier. in a focus group with 9th and 10th grade students from china, haiti, and mexico, students made the following comments: student: as an international school they should have teachers that speak other languages, for all the languages especially to help students that don’t understand their assignments. student: or if there’s a student in the same class that speaks your language, if he or she understands what they are doing the teacher should ask that person to help us. student: yeah, you need someone to help you with your homework, someone to translate. rewards/encouragement. another main category of homework facilitators were rewards/ encouragement, such as extra credit and higher grades, praise from parents, and encouragement from mentors. some students reported practical, instrumental reasons that motivated them to complete homework, as illustrated in the following exchange amongst 10th graders from bangladesh: student: the positive thing about homework is that i can get extra credit if i do homework. student: if you don't hand it in,…you lose points. student: yeah your grade goes down. other students’ comments also indicated that they are inclined to complete their assignments because homework completion can affect how teachers evaluate them. for example, jasmin, a 12th grade girl from gabon remarked: if you do your homework, it makes you look better [laughs]. you don’t want teacher to think bad about you, see what i mean? like sometimes you are asked to do homework because you want to do something like an activity with the homework, and if you didn't do it, it looks bad you know, just in general. for example, back in my junior year, you want something, like the internship, you’re looking for an internship and right now and then the teacher might know somebody who’s interested in what you are doing and if he sees the way you are in class, you know not doing your work and stuff, he might not think that he can trust you. he might say that you act the same way over there the same way you do in class, so this is bad. students also described rewards and encouragements from parents that helped them complete homework. their remarks show how these rewards and encouragements shape the home environment and interact with individual characteristics to promote homework completion. annie, a 10th grade girl from bangladesh, reported: every year if i get a’s and b’s only, [my parents] give me a present. like this year i got a cell phone ...they saw good results, and they just took me to a store and were like, here, pick one. ... they give me like options, if you do this, i will give you this, if you don’t i will never let you do this. a 10th grade mexican boy commented on how his father encourages him to do homework: my father asks me if my homework is done when he gets home from work. he always says that he’s not that good and tells me to do my homework to achieve a higher level than him. my father, he never got enough school and he thinks i can reach higher and homework is important for that. by simply checking to see that homework is completed, asking about what their children are learning at school, parents could encourage their children to focus on their schoolwork. even discipline served as a way to encourage homework completion. one 9th grade haitian boy described how his mother monitors his homework: when she’s at work she’s always calling me, asking if i am doing my homework or if i don't understanding something. then she tells me to,… i just go to the library to look up some books and finish it because i know she’s gonna ask about it. additionally, kyra, a 12th grade south african girl shared the following comment with the group: my dad, he tells me to do my homework, cuz he’ll be checking, and if i didn’t do it, he can whoop me up …. even if i’m sleeping. so i probably won’t do it if he doesn’t tell me to do it. he always asks me if i got homework, cuz my dad, you don’t play, he want me to do my homework all the time. what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 15 furthermore, if students were motivated and interested by the homework they were more likely to complete it: kyra: if you like what you’re doing right now in class of course you will do it. jasmin: i am personally moved to do homework whenever it’s something i am particularly interested about like if it’s for math it’s really rare for me to do it ... [laughs] just like, in general, if something does not motivate me to something about it… there’s a big chance that i would not do it... i’d probably just rather watch television or go to sleep. [laughs] help or access to resources and environment conducive to doing homework. other homework facilitators were access to help or resources such as the internet, and environment that is conducive to studying. the following comments illustrate how these facilitators interact with each other and influence students’ homework completion: an exchange between students from dominican republic and south africa show how the internet and friends can serve as sources of homework help: lesly: internet. i cannot do my homework without internet. kyra: me, i talk to friends. i call them all the time, like one o’clock in the morning and i go, you're doing your homework? yeah. because most of the time we all are doing our homework at two, one o’clock in the morning ... [why so late?] lesly: cuz it's just the way it is. kyra: you go on the internet, on msn, all of them are there, you just go and ask a question ... and you chat chat chat [laughs] lesly: yeah, msn, it's faster and it’s there all the time, twenty-four hours. lesly, the 11th grader from dominican republic further elaborated on her room, where she does her homework, in talking about the facilitators: there’s like a little learning environment going on … i have a lot of books about just cleopatra, anne frank. i have stuff about surrealism. i have books about nature, how we could just more simply, stuff like that, so um yeah whenever i look at that, i feel inspired to do the homework. in sum, the findings based on survey data and focus group data complement one another and are consistent with the ecological systems model. homework completion was affected by a wide range of characteristics related to individual students, home environments, school environments, and extracurricular/ outside school contexts, many of which could function as impediments and also serve as facilitators. the focus group data shed light on the interrelated processes affecting homework completion from students’ perspective. the individual student characteristics were influenced by and interacted with characteristics of the other ecological systems. many of the individual characteristics challenging homework completion could be mitigated by factors in the home, school, or afterschool contexts, resulting in increased homework completion among the participants. discussion facilitators and impediments to immigrant students’ homework completion whether or not students understood their course materials was a major factor affecting their homework completion. as newcomer immigrants, their limited english proficiency played a primary role in the extent to which the participants understood their lessons and the assignments given to them. data from focus groups indicated that figuring out homework instructions and translating unfamiliar words in the assignments consumed a considerable amount of time and effort, leading students to feel overwhelmed and burdened by homework. thus, in broad terms, limited understanding of course materials, often due to limited english proficiency, and fatigue resulting from the energy and time demanded by homework were the two major categories encompassing homework impediments. conversely, understanding the course material and having supports to overcome the language barrier (e.g., clear instructions, homework broken down into smaller steps, reference materials) comprised the two major categories of homework facilitators. academic english proficiency: a prerequisite for homework. the fact that successful completion of homework is heavily dependent on students’ english proficiency corroborates the findings from an earlier study (bang et al., 2009) that examined the relationships between homework completion, course understanding, and english language skills of recently arrived immigrant youth. the study showed overall positive associations between students’ homework completion and their academic achievement as indicated by teacher evaluations of students’ course understanding. yet this positive association between homework completion and course understanding was substantial only for youth with relatively high levels of english language proficiency. for youth with lower levels of english language proficiency, completion of homework had little positive associations with their achievement of understanding the course materials. these patterns from both studies indicate that teachers across the curriculum need to first and foremost help students master english. without proficiency in academic english, each assignment that is inaccessible to immigrant youth increases the educational disparities between these youth and their native-born english speaking peers. this finding also underscores the need for teachers to carefully design current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 16 homework and make necessary adjustments so that the tasks are appropriate for each student’s level of academic skills. if thoughtfully assigned, homework represents precious opportunities for newcomer immigrant students to build proficiency in academic english critical for performing grade-level work. however, if the homework is ill-suited to students’ learning needs, it can potentially do more harm than good. factors common to all students’ homework experiences. several categories of factors influencing homework completion were those that would most likely affect all students, regardless of whether or not they were of immigrant origin. these categories were motivation or engagement, organizational skills, and characteristics of environments in which students do their homework. consistent with the existing literature on engagement (e.g., fredricks et al., 2004; goslin, 2003), being interested in the topic of a given assignment made homework completion easier for students. not surprisingly, inadequate organizational skills (e.g., forgetting materials needed for homework, procrastination) made homework completion a challenge for a considerable number of students. further, having a quiet place to study or an environment was important for students’ homework completion. the descriptive data on homework facilitators and impediments also confirmed the existing body of research applying the ecological systems framework (e.g., benner et al., 2008; cook, herman, phillips, & settersen, 2002). many of the homework impediments were individual student characteristics (e.g., limited academic skills, motivation, organization, high standards); these individual characteristics interacted with factors in other ecological systems in influencing homework completion. focus group data revealed that impediments at the individual level may be mediated by facilitators in home environment (e.g., encouragement from parents), school environment (e.g., teacher feedback, grades), and outside school contexts (e.g., homework centers, friends’ help). this interplay of factors across ecological systems shaped students’ homework experiences. factors unique to study participants. a noteworthy finding is that while facilitators were fairly evenly distributed across the ecological systems, the majority of impediments were attributed to individual characteristics. it seems that the students generally had high levels of internal locus of control (bandura, 1997; pajares, 2003) perceiving themselves as agents of certain outcomes (e.g., successful completion of homework), rather than believing that fate, luck or other external circumstances determine the outcomes. this finding indicates that given access to adequate resources and appropriate guidance, these students would likely to take initiative and direct their behaviors to realizing their goals. additionally, an unexpected finding, (i.e. some students’ experiences with homework help centers), illustrated the interaction between individual characteristics (academic skills, english proficiency) and extracurricular/ afterschool contexts (homework center), influencing these participants’ homework completion. while homework help center provided the much-needed support for struggling students or students with limited english proficiency, it could hinder homework completion for more advanced students, as they felt obliged to serve as peer tutors. factors such as not wanting to do the assignment or having to do chores around the house were relatively minor hindrances to homework completion among the participants in this study. one explanation for this finding may be that students recognized the value of homework, as 9th and 10th grade students from sierra leone and dominican republic noted: ―the homework is for you, for your future,‖ ―yeah, you learn… and if you don’t do your homework, you don’t learn anything, you lose.‖ another explanation may be that impediments such as lack of will or desire to do homework and competing demands on students’ time were mitigated by potent facilitators such as getting good grades and positive feedback from adults. implications this study offers insight into newcomer immigrant students’ homework experiences and the factors that impact their homework completion. the specific factors that newcomer immigrants in this study reported as facilitators or impediments to their homework completion have implications for teachers and afterschool programs. according to this study’s results, the most significant factor affecting students’ homework completion involves whether or not they understand the course materials. participants’ limited understanding of course materials and difficulty with the language involved in the assignment or the instructions were major reasons for their inability to complete their homework. this finding highlights not only the importance of homework for immigrant youth to provide them with additional opportunities to learn and practice skills, but also the need for teachers to design assignments that their immigrant students can comprehend and complete. to ensure that newcomer immigrant students understand their homework tasks, teachers may have students start their homework in class, discuss vocabulary in the assignment that could pose difficulties, or have students explain to each other the instructions and the steps to take in completing a given task. by doing so, students would have the chance to ask questions and have help readily accessible from teachers and peers. in addition, newcomer immigrant students would benefit from attending homework help programs, where they have access to teachers or tutors who can simplify the vocabulary used in assignments and explain the materials targeted in the homework. results of this study indicated that lack of materials to complete assignments and competing environmental demands (e.g., crowded/noisy family settings, responsibilities beyond those typically expected of adolescents) can hinder homework completion what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 17 for immigrant youth. thus, homework help sessions would ideally be arranged to take place in libraries or classrooms well-equipped with educational resources (e.g. computers with internet access, encyclopedias, periodicals), that can aid students with understanding and mastering new materials. the study findings showed that for some students, resources such as access to the internet is critical for completing homework, and that it can be frustrating to go to the library to find outdated books and long line of people waiting to use the computers. such impediments can be addressed by reserving certain resources (e.g., quiet space, time, school supplies, and equipments) for use by students to work on their assignments. furthermore, homework help programs may serve as a vehicle through which students receive guidance on how to organize their assignments, allocate their time, and manage their study environments. since a considerable number of participants reported difficulty completing homework due to lack of organization or distractions in their homework environment, teachers and tutors staffing the homework help programs may demonstrate strategies, for example, on how to use an assignment agenda and plan one’s homework time. extracurricular programs that are not focused on academic tasks may also consider including a homework help or tutoring component to their program, especially in light of research evidence indicating improvement in academic performance among immigrant youth who obtained homework help through participation in afterschool activities (e.g., aspiazu, bauer, & spillett, 1998; cosden et al., 2004; dotterer et al., 2007; eccles et al., 2003). finally, in order to help immigrant students derive maximal benefits from homework, teachers may reconsider the purposes of homework and the role that homework plays in giving grades. many participants in the present study indicated grades as an important reason for doing homework, sometimes to the exclusion of other reasons. emphasizing the effect that homework has on students’ grades, or offering extra credit for behaviors such as handing assignments earlier than the deadline can send the wrong message about why homework is given. since most homework is designed to help students practice their skills, it seems that assessments of homework should primarily be formative, used to shape day-to-day instruction (o’connor, 2007; william, 2007), and not included in students’ grades that indicate their achievement in the course. limitations and future research this study was conducted with newcomer immigrant adolescents in one international high school designed specifically to address the educational needs of ells. in addition, the homework survey questions were administered only to 9th and 10th graders of the school. since the study site was a relatively new school (first graduating class was class of 2008), and given the shift in the focus of academic curriculum as students enter 11th and 12th grades (e.g., increased emphasis on regents examinations, postsecondary education), the findings of the present study are not generalized beyond the study participants. future studies should be expanded to include immigrant youth in upper grades as well as students in other international schools in new york city to enhance the generalizability of findings and to examine changes in immigrant youth’s homework experiences longitudinally, as they advance through the high school grades. student samples should also be expanded to include second generation immigrant-origin youth, as well as native-born minority youth who may experience some similar challenges in completing homework as newcomer immigrant youth. furthermore, a wider range of school contexts should be considered, such as private schools, charter schools, and parochial schools that serve differing densities of ells, as well as comparison schools that serve primarily non-ells. it will be important to distinguish the homework impediments that are unique to each group of students and determine which homework facilitators have positive effects for whom, under what conditions, and with what support services, in order to implement intervention programs that can best address the needs of specific populations. evaluation research should also be undertaken to identify the characteristics of programs that produce increased homework completion and academic achievement to explore means of implementation throughout different communities and school contexts. subsequent studies should incorporate individual student interviews to gather more detailed information about the processes of newcomer immigrant students’ homework completion and the ways in which they cope with specific homework impediments. although the survey data, supplemented with qualitative data collected through student focus groups, provided some insight into several major factors that help or hinder their homework completion, individual students varied in the range and type of factors influencing their homework experiences (e.g., lack of understanding, responsibilities around the house, fatigue) as well as in their responses to these factors (e.g., seeking help from older siblings, accommodating parents’ requests for help instead of completing homework). data collected through in-depth interviews and case studies can shed light on patterns or sets of homework facilitators and impediments associated with, for example, newcomer immigrant students with interrupted formal schooling or students from certain language backgrounds. delineating specific, unique factors that shape different immigrant students’ homework experiences would complement the findings of the present study, which focused primarily on the most common or frequently reported impediments. the detailed profiles created through individual interviews can also help school staff identify additional potential factors that may be deterring some students from accessing homework help. such information would well inform the instructional practices of teachers and schools seeking to tailor assignments / programs to current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 18 newcomer youths’ diverse individual learning needs and circumstances. immigrant families and english language learners are becoming a majority in many communities in the united states (u.s. census bureau, 2003), and educators have the important role of providing quality education for this rapidly growing segment of the population. ensuring that homework assignments offer meaningful learning experiences and facilitating newcomer immigrant youth’s homework completion is a first step towards academic achievement among these students. success in school will not only improve the lives of these immigrant youth and their families, but also help to enhance the future economic and 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(2005). homework practices and academic achievement: the mediating role of self-efficacy and perceived responsibility beliefs. contemporary educational psychology, 30, 397-417. doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych. 2005.05.003 what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 21 appendix a focus group protocol welcome & introduction goal of the focus group the purpose of this focus group is to gain a better understanding of how homework affects your lives as immigrant youth living in the u.s. the information you provide will help your teachers design more effective homework assignments and improve the kinds of help that are available to students like you when doing homework. explanation of how data will be recorded and used: we will be discussing your experiences with homework. i would like you to share with the group, talk about how homework affects your daily lives, and what makes doing homework easy or hard. there is no right or wrong answer, and what you share with the group will not impact your grades in any way. i will be using the data only for my project. everything we talk about will remain confidential and anonymous, so i will not use any of your names in my project. the discussion will be recorded by a digital recorder, but if during the discussion, there is something you want to share but do not want it to be recorded, you can just ask me to turn the recorder off. establish ground rules for focus group discussion: 1. please turn off any music or communication devices that you may have. 2. please share your experiences and ideas openly and honestly. 3. please respect what your peers have to say and allow everyone to take their turn to speak. there should be only one speaker at a time. 4. at times, i will intervene so that we stay focused and to keep the discussion moving. focus group questions and discussion  how do you feel about homework? o why do you think that teachers assign you homework? o do you feel that you have too much homework / too little / just the right amount? o generally, is homework easy / hard for you? what makes homework easy or hard?  when and where do you usually do your homework? (during school hours? right after school, at home? at an afterschool program or homework center? morning of the day it is due?) o why do you tend to do homework at that time / place? • how important is it to you that you have your homework done and handed in on time? probe why it is relatively important or unimportant. • for you, what are benefits of homework? • what are the costs / negative effects of homework? • what are some things that help you get your homework done? (e.g., someone to help with homework, reference resources such as computer with internet access, encyclopedias, tutor, homework center, encouragement from parents and teachers) facilitators to homework completion (prompts) tutors after-school programs / homework centers reference materials; computer with internet access quiet place to study / set time designated for homework / study relieved from household chores / responsibilities to do homework rules about homework (e.g., no playing with friends / watching tv, etc. until homework is completed) peers who can explain homework problems / who can be counted on to bring you the assignments when you have missed school. mentors / non-related adults / role models who provide encouragement and motivation parental support (direct assistance with homework assignments or indirect / emotional assistance rewards for homework completion (from parents, teachers)  how regularly / often do you have these things available to you when you do homework?  what are some things that make it hard for you to get your homework done? (e.g., not interested in the subject, lack of motivation / self-discipline, lack of quiet place to do homework, responsibilities in the house, part-time jobs, current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 22 interruptions from siblings, peers, or family members, limited english, limited understanding of course materials, no one to help with homework) impediments to homework completion (prompts) limited english proficiency limited understanding of materials overwhelming amount of homework not knowing exactly what homework has been assigned limited feedback from teacher responsibilities around the house paid employment lack of a quiet, suitable place to study limited resources at home (reference materials, computer with internet access) no one who can help with homework lack of motivation / desire to do homework procrastination fatigue / frustration / impatience fear of making mistakes and feeling like a failure dissatisfaction with one’s work forgetting to bring home assignments and necessary materials lack of organizational skills and study habits  failing to bring assignments back to class  how regularly / often do these things affect your ability to do homework?  what are some strategies that you have used to complete your homework?  what would make you want to do homework?  what would you like to change about your homework assignments / teachers / parents / environments so that doing homework is easier / more enjoyable for you? what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 23 appendix b homework facilitators and impediments which of the things listed below help you to do your homework? (check all that apply) when... 1. i am interested in the subject. 2. i understand what was taught in class. 3. i have clear instructions about what to do. 4. the assignment is explained step by step. 5. i start the homework in class. 6. i go to homework help sessions in the morning or after school. 7. i use reference materials (e.g., dictionary, encyclopedia, internet). 8. i have a quiet place to do homework. 9. i get rewards from my parents for finishing my homework. 10. i get good grades if i do my homework. 11. my teachers praise me for doing homework. 12. i do not have to do housework. 13. my friends help me with homework. 14. i get instructions in my own language. 15. i can complete the homework in my own language. 16. my parents encourage me. 17. my mentor or another adult encourages me. which of the reasons listed below make it hard for you to do your homework?(check all that apply) when... 1. i do not understand the lesson. 2. i have too much homework. 3. i do not understand the instructions for the assignment. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 24 4. i don't know what the homework is. 5. i have problems with english. 6. i don't think my teacher will check my homework. 7. i have to do housework. 8. i have a job. 9. there is too much noise in my home. 10. i don't have the things i need to do homework (e.g., books, computer). 11. i don't want to do the homework. 12. i do my homework last-minute. 13. i am too tired to do homework. 14. i am afraid of making mistakes. 15. i am not happy with my work. 16. i forget to bring home the assignment. 17. i am not interested in the subject. 18. i am not organized. 19. i don't review or study what was taught in earlier lessons. what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 25 article citation bang, h.j. (2011). what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? an account of newcomer immigrant youths’ afterschool academic lives. current issues in education, 14(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/527 author notes hee jin bang national writing project university of california 2105 bancroft way #1042 berkeley, ca 94720-1042 hbang@nwp.org hee jin bang is a senior research associate at the national writing project. her current research interests include academic and social adaptation of immigrant youth in the united states and france; influence of school and home environments on minority youths’ civic engagement; second-language acquisition; writing instruction and assessment of writing by english language learners; and cross-cultural research methods. special thanks go to the students and staff at the international high school at prospect heights for their time and participation in the project. mailto:hbang@nwp.org current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 26 volume 14, number 3 september 24, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editor melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy carol masser leslie salazar jennifer shea alaya swann faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word school improvement grants.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x school improvement grants: ransoming title i schools in distress craig a. waddell university of missouri, st. louis citation waddell, c. (2011).school improvement grants: ransoming title i schools in distress. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract in august 2009, the u.s. department of education announced opportunities for states and local educational agencies to vie for $3.5 billion in title i school improvement grants targeted at turning around or closing down chronically low-achieving schools. to qualify for a portion of these funds, school districts were required to implement one of four remedies at schools where students chronically demonstrated low academic performance. evidence is provided showing that the mandated interventions are highly speculative, minimally effective, and overly punitive toward educational professionals. keywords: school improvement grants, low-achieving schools, title i schools, school turnaround, charter schools current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: craig waddell, phd. affiliation: university of missouri – st. louis email: craig.waddell@sbcglobal.net biographical information: craig waddell is an 8th grade math teacher in a large urban school district and part-time associate adjunct professor at the university of missouri – st. louis. his research interests include student achievement motivation and educational policies. opinions expressed in this article are the authors own. school improvement grants 3 school improvement grants: ransoming title i schools in distress in august 2009, the u.s. department of education announced opportunities for states and local educational agencies to vie for $3.5 billion in title i school improvement grants targeted at “turning around or closing down chronically low-achieving schools” (abrevaya & white, 2009, p. 1). to qualify for a portion of these funds, school districts are required to implement one of four remedies at those low-income schools that ranked in the bottom 5% on the state’s annual achievement test. the press release described the required “rigorous interventions” as follows: turnaround model – this would include among other actions, replacing the principal and at least 50 percent of the school’s staff, adopting a new governance structure and implementing a new or revised instructional program. restart model – school districts would close failing schools and reopen them under the management of a charter school operator, a charter management organization or an educational management organization selected through a rigorous review process. school closure – the district would close a failing school and enroll the students who attended that school in other high-achieving schools in the district. transformational model – districts would address four specific areas: 1) developing teacher and school leader effectiveness, which includes replacing the principal who led the school prior to commencement of the transformational model, 2) implementing comprehensive instructional reform strategies, 3) extending learning and teacher planning time and creating communityoriented schools, and 4) providing operating flexibility and sustained support (abrevaya & white, 2009, p. 1). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 the well-intentioned remedies mandated by the u.s. department of education are highly speculative, minimally effective, and overly punitive toward educational professionals. the mandate has two major shortcomings: 1. this legislation falsely assumes that student learning is wholly under the control of the school system, holding teachers and administrators exclusively responsible for inadequate student achievement. 2. the mandated “rigorous” interventions are arbitrary and unsupported by solid scientific evidence. the legislation’s first presumption is that the nation’s children are being “underserved” by the “lowest-achieving public schools.” achievement levels are based on rank-order comparisons rather than specific criteria. this is a zero-sum formula, where one out of every twenty schools must be labeled as failing. there is no level of mastery or yardstick of competency that a “low-achieving” school can demonstrate to exonerate itself. therefore, it is statistically inevitable that one-twentieth of title i or title i-eligible schools will have students whose standardized test scores rank in the bottom 5%; just as some schools must place in the upper echelon, some must place near the bottom when relative comparisons are made. ironically, the vision of school improvement has shifted from no child left behind to some schools must be failures. under the “lowest-achieving” philosophy some title i(-eligible) schools must be labeled as defective. for example, if a state has 1,000 title-i(-eligible) schools, 50 of them (5%) will be designated as low-achieving and there is nothing that anyone can do to change that fact. the standard being put into place now is that the lowest ranking schools are considered unmitigated failures, and the presumption is that those schools are deficient primarily due to the faculty. some of the schools at the back of the pack will be closed, others will be reincarnated as charter schools, and the remaining will be whipped into shape through teacher churn and metamorphosis. school improvement grants 5 “low-achieving” schools typically have high student drop-out rates, students with subpar standardized test scores, high absentee rates, acute classroom management challenges and myriad other indicators of academic deficiency. some of the teachers and school administration may be partially culpable for inadequate student progress, as gauged by standardized test scores. however, the school improvement grant program presumes that the majority of the school personnel are guilty of malfeasance simply by virtue of their presence in a low-achieving school setting. under the u.s. department of education’s plan, one-twentieth of title i(-eligible) schools must be considered failures. further, the rationale for determining badness is the premise that when students’ test scores are bad the schools are bad. however, this assumption that the lowest results are always the result of bad faculty is problematic. lashway (2003) identified three primary causes of school failure: demographics, inefficient resources, and ineffective school practices. attributing school failures to the latter cause is arbitrary. teachers in low-performing schools are denied due process when they are terminated en mass, without regard to individual teacher performance. school improvement grants should be geared toward accurately identifying and ameliorating sources of academic inadequacy in teachers, students, parents, and the community. testing experts have warned against using a single annual test to gauge academic progress and evaluate teacher effectiveness (maxwell, 2009). so, “lowest-achieving” designation is based on the speculative selection of one of three causal factors of low test scores, and this factor is assessed contrary to professional advice. even if the supposed measure of school caliber (i.e., student achievement) is valid and the supposed cause of student achievement current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 is correct (i.e., school faculty), critical decisions are seldom based on a single piece of evidence (i.e., annual test scores). consider the following analogies: 1. in 2006-2007, the following hospitals had the highest death rates due to heart failure: memorial hospital of martinsville & henry county in martinsville, va; valley hospital medical center in las vegas, nv; and st. clare medical center in crawfordsville, in (sternberg & debarros, 2008). based solely on the mortality rates for these hospitals, is it reasonable to conclude that the hospitals’ staffs are inept? 2. between 2000 and 2008, louisiana and north dakota experienced population declines while every other state saw population growth (u.s. census bureau, 2008). can this statistic be used to validly conclude that the government and legislature of these two states—in the bottom 5% of population growth—is incompetent and should be disbanded? 3. based on the fbi’s uniform crime report, issued in 2008, detroit, memphis, and miami are america’s “most dangerous cities” (greenburg, 2009). since the crime rates are high, can one reliably deduce that the cities’ police forces are ineffective and that “rigorous interventions” are warranted to fix the police departments (i.e., replacing the chief of police and terminating all of the police officers)? rarely should a single metric be used to judge the overall effectiveness of an organization’s entire staff, yet this is precisely what the department of education has elected to do in classifying schools as “persistently low-achieving.” ironically, this approach is contrary to the department’s own long-standing precedents. for several decades, the u.s. department of education attributed academic success to several factors. the elementary and secondary education act of 1965 (public law 89-10)—which was the predecessor to the no child left behind act (public law 107-110) and the obama administration’s school improvement grants—begins as follows: sec. 201. in recognition of the special educational needs of children of low-income families and the impact that concentrations of low-income families have on the ability of local educational agencies to support adequate educational programs [italics added], the congress hereby declares it to be the policy of the united states to provide financial assistance (as set forth in this title) to local educational agencies serving areas with concentrations of children from low-income families to expend and improve their educational programs by various means (including preschool programs) which contribute particularly to meeting the special educational needs of educationally deprived children [italics added] (p. 1). school improvement grants 7 almost a half-century ago, the u.s. government explicitly acknowledged that “concentrations of low-income families” have “special educational needs.” why, then, is it surprising that some of these children would continue to underperform their more-privileged peers? more than thirty years later, the department of education, under the clinton administration, reiterated the position that poverty, family distress, crime, and violence impair academic achievement. here is an excerpt from turning around low-achieving schools: a guide for state and local leaders (educational resources information center, 1998): many low-achieving schools are located in impoverished communities where family distress, crime, and violence are prevalent. these and other circumstances make it hard for children to come to school prepared to learn … students in high-poverty schools may be performing at levels up to four years behind their peers in low-poverty schools [italics added] (educational resources information center, 1998, p. 1). “low-achieving schools” are not simply the result of bad teaching. by the department of education’s own admission, students in title i(-eligible) schools having “special educational needs” that handicap their academic performance. some title i schools may be labeled as “lowachieving” by virtue of their inability to overcome the communities’ socioeconomic liabilities. teachers are responsible for students’ academic growth, but not solely responsible. furthermore, the incompetence of some teachers should not be an indictment of an entire schools’ faculty. another indication of the effect of the environment on students’ academic success is provided by the foundation for child development (2010). the organization’s child wellness index (cwi) predicts that the current economic downturn (“great recession”) will result in lower future scores on the national assessment of educational progress (naep) tests and higher school dropout rates. this report forecasts an academic downturn caused by an economic recession, independent of teacher and school quality. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 the u.s. department of education’s contemporary presumption that “low-achieving” schools “underserve” students summarily disregards the social, economical, physiological, and psychological extenuating circumstances that, by definition affect title i communities. in some cases, “low-achieving” schools may simply be unable to overcome the demographic handicaps of the communities that they serve. this scenario is similar to the analogies presented earlier: hospitals cannot dictate their patients’ lifestyle choices, governments cannot control citizens’ emigration choices, police departments cannot suspend civil liberties simply because liberties might result in criminal activity, and title i(-eligible) schools cannot nullify the social and economic liabilities of their impoverished clientele. school improvement grants cannot solve all of society’s ills, but they should not place the responsibility for academic failure exclusively on the shoulders of teachers and school administrators. teachers and school administrators should be held accountable for student achievement, but only insofar as they have the ability to influence student outcomes. teachers should not be held liable for lack of resources, mandated curriculum materials, mandated pacing guides, placement in non-certificated fields, excessive student absences and truancies, test scores that occurred prior to the teacher’s residency, unfunded mandates, and socioeconomic declines. the current incarnation of the school improvement grants identifies inadequate educational progress and metes out punishments without regard to culpability. school improvement grants are essentially academic redlining; the bottom 5% threshold brands a school as anathema and the entire faculty is convicted of guilt by association. the department of education has mistakenly equated “lowest-achieving public schools” with schools that have been unable to leapfrog their students’ academic performances beyond the achievements of their socially-advantaged peers. these “lowest-achieving public schools” may school improvement grants 9 be doing an adequate job under the circumstances. as diane ravitch (2010) noted, “our schools cannot be improved if we use them as society’s all-purpose punching bag, blaming them for the ills of the economy, the burdens imposed on children by poverty, the dysfunction of families, and the erosion of civility” (p. 229). both educational specialists and experienced politicians across the political spectrum recognize the crucial role of families and “villages” in children’s learning (clinton, 1996; santorum, 2005). conversely, the department of education has chosen to heap blame disproportionately on the school’s teachers and administrators. there are bad schools. there are incompetent, disinterested, burnt-out, negligent educators. they should be properly identified, carefully diagnosed, intensely rehabilitated, and if necessary, terminated. however, identification and remediation cannot be based on a simplistic, naïve formula that: a) consists of an annual test with unsubstantiated construct validity, b) disregards all mitigating factors, and c) applies a scorched earth policy. even when substandard schools are properly identified the school improvement grant’s prescriptions are regressive. in order for a “low-achieving school” to be successful, this “low” school must academically jump ahead of other schools—thus making some sister school the “loser”—by engaging a talented faculty, employing an effective curriculum, and implementing superior instructional strategies. the flaw in this line of reasoning is that it presumes that other schools are not making similar academic improvements. the low-achieving school will only surpass other schools if their counterparts employ less effective faculty, a less rigorous curriculum, and inferior instructional strategies. the low-achieving school cannot simply improve; it must improve more than its peers. adequate progress is now relative; a lowachieving school must overtake its peers regardless of how much its peers might improve. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 school improvement grants are predicated on the unsubstantiated assumption that all schools with consistently “low-achieving” students are broken and require “rigorous interventions.” as previously discussed, many environmental factors affect student achievement. even when deficient schools are properly identified, the government-mandated interventions are unsupported by solid scientific evidence. each of the proposed interventions will be briefly critiqued. one of the permissible remedies is school closure. this intervention seldom makes sense as a mandated recourse. when a school closes, all of its students are moved to other schools within the district. typically, all tenured faculty are relocated to other positions. either additional classrooms are opened in target schools and there are few staff reductions, or class sizes increase at the receiving schools. students and faculty are shuffled. shuffling people from school to school does not magically improve their caliber any more than promoting students from second grade to third grade makes them smarter. school closure simply masks the problem of students with low academic performance by camouflaging them among higher-performing peers. indeed, research into the school closure model suggests that this approach is not effective. marisa de la torre and julia gwynne (2009) studied the effects of eighteen school closures on students in the chicago public school system. they concluded that: “most students who transferred out of closing schools reenrolled in schools that were academically weak” (p. 2); reading and math achievement for the relocated students did not improve one, two, or three years following school closure; students’ high school completion outlook did not improve; and, “changing schools neither resulted in additional negative effects on student achievement nor substantially improved the achievement of displaced students” (p. 26). school improvement grants 11 school closure does not seem to be a worthwhile approach to improving students’ academic achievement. when schools close, students and staff are displaced; children are dispersed from their neighborhoods; the connections between the community, the family, and the school are weakened; and academic acceleration does not occur. school closure is not an effective solution for low academic performance. a second remedy permitted under the school improvement grant legislation is the restart model. under this approach, school districts close failing schools and reopen them under the management of a charter school operator, a charter management organization or an educational management organization (emo). the fallacy with this approach is a misconception that will be called the lebron james syndrome. consider the following scenario. a teacher attempts to emphasize the importance of academic skills in helping students pursue future career opportunities. invariably, a few students will contend that they do not need these academic skills because they are going to be professional athletes. the teacher argues that most athletes are recruited from college teams and that aspiring athletes will need academic credentials to be admitted into division 1 colleges. a student retorts that, “lebron james didn’t need to go to college.” hence the lebron james syndrome: the person suffering from this affliction misinterprets the possibility that an event can occur as the probability that an event will occur. this line of reasoning is only slightly less radical than subscribing to a state lottery as a retirement plan; one could win a fortune but they probably will not. conceptually, there is nothing wrong with charter schools; there is simply no compelling evidence that this approach is superior to a public school implementation. the department of education misinterprets the possibility that charter schools and emo’s could be effective as the probability that they will be current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 effective. school vouchers, home schooling, or private school enrollment alternatives could be equally-viable options. a number of educational experts and researchers have questioned the efficacy of charter schools. here are some of their findings. fleishman and heppen (2009) found no “reliable evidence that emos [education management organizations] can have a positive impact at the high school level” (p. 125). buckley and schneider (2007) concluded that charter schools’ promises are “at best, weakly supported by evidence” (p. 267). the national center for education statistics (2005) found that students in charter schools scored lower on mathematics assessments than their public school counterparts and observed “no measurable difference between the overall performance of charter school fourth-grade students as a whole and their counterparts in other public schools” (p. 10). interviews of charter school parents indicated that their impressions of their children’s school meshed with those of public school parents, and their children felt “no differently about their schools than their peers in the traditional public schools” (buckley & schneider, 2007, p. 269). finally, an extensive study of 2,403 charter schools across 16 states found that 17% of the charter schools were superior to their traditional public school counterparts, about half of the charter schools provided educational quality similar to that of public schools, and 37% of the charter schools were significantly worse than corresponding public schools (center for research in education outcomes [credo], 2009). charter schools, in total, fail to live up to their claims and their hype. there definitely are instances of highly-successful charter schools but there are also numerous instances of inferior charter schools and premier public schools. there is nothing inherent in the charter school implementations that heighten their likelihood of success above that of other school structures. the next charter school to open certainly could be a successful school improvement grants 13 school but, based on the research cited above, there is 83% chance that it will not be any more successful than a traditional public school. in fact, the likelihood that a charter school will be inferior to a public school is more than twice as high as the chances that it will be superior to a public school. should we invest in a venture that has less than a one-out-of-four chance of success and a large downside? should we bet our children’s educations on those odds? even if we should choose to take this gamble it should be pointed out that charter schools are prohibited in many communities; state and local regulations do not allow public funds to be allocated to charter schools. for most “low-performing” schools, the restart model is either ill-advised or illegal. the third intervention allowed by the school improvement grants legislation is the turnaround model. this approach requires that the principal and at least 50 percent of the school’s staff be replaced and that the instructional program be revamped. this approach is so ambiguous and speculative that it defies being either supported by or refuted by scientific research. for example, is it a good idea to replace a failing school’s principal? districts typically have wide latitude when dealing with administrators. why must the u.s. government mandate a principal’s reassignment? what basis is there for the presumption that a principal is always guilty when a school’s students are “low-achieving”? similarly, the requirement to replace “at least 50 percent” of the faculty is completely arbitrary. statistically, one-half of the faculty is at or below the median, but this says nothing about their competency. there is no scientific basis for presuming that “at least” 50% of a “lowachieving” school’s faculty is incompetent. couldn’t two-thirds or three-fourths of the faculty be good? most faculty members have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree, professional certification, and positive employee evaluations. these teachers—who are employees of the local current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 educational agency (lea), not employees of the “low-achieving” school—have met all state and lea employment criteria. junior faculty may be relegated to these stigmatized schools, and some teachers may be forced to teach subjects for which they are not certificated employees. these employees should not be condemned based solely on their involuntary placement into a struggling school. even if we accept the dubious premise that half of the veteran core teachers in “lowachieving” schools are incompetent, what about teachers with less than three years at the school? should they be held liable for student scores that occurred prior to their arrival at the institution? and what about teachers outside of the core subject areas? for example, art teachers, p.e. teachers, and music teachers have an ancillary impact on standardized test scores in communication arts and mathematics. what criteria will be used to assess their competency when their students span grade levels and core subject area teachers? on what basis are school counselors and other support personnel evaluated, condemned, or exonerated? the turnaround model mandates faculty changes. how will the replacement staff be selected? what reason is there to believe that the replacement teachers will be superior to the faculty that they are replacing? recall that a median cut-off was part of the “rigorous intervention” mandated by this legislation. statistically speaking, one-half of the newly-selected teachers will be at or below the median of the new group. therefore, the turnaround model is placing a new set of subpar teachers into the revamped school (i.e., half of the replacement group will be at or below the median of their group). perhaps the lea could circumvent future problems of having half of its staff “below the median” by hiring twice as many replacement teachers as needed and then summarily firing the bottom half of the newly-recruited pool! school improvement grants 15 assuming that the displaced faculty can be rehabilitated, the school improvement grant legislation has not fully considered the consequences of the mandates on these teachers. teachers who are “fired” from low-achieving schools will often be reassigned to another school within their district (especially if they are tenured), quite possibly a struggling school with high staff turnover. what happens to this teacher if the target school is designated as “low-achieving” within the following year or two; should this reassigned teacher be held liable for scores that he or she did not affect? the edict that at least half of all teachers must be dismissed disregards many of the nuances of a lea’s personnel issues, just as the “low-achieving” designation overlooks the characteristics of the school’s community. overall, the turnaround model seems rather inchoate. here are just a few of the issues that have been trivialized. perhaps this is nitpicky, but the word turnaround means a reversal in direction. are “low-achieving” schools always going in the wrong direction, or could it be that they are going in the right direction but at an inadequate pace? it could be that additional supports are required to help the school surmount obstacles. then there is the issue of principal selection under the turnaround model. unless some ingenious process is implemented it is quite possible that the new principal will be no better than his or her predecessor. the same holds true for the replacement faculty. the turnaround model’s ambition to employ better principals, recruit better staff and improve instruction presumes that the existing structure is defective, and that the same people who created the existing structure can “build a better mousetrap” if compelled to do so through federal edict and financial incentive. the turnaround model is a shotgun approach to fixing low-achieving schools by a series of speculative prescriptions aimed at arbitrarily-presumed causes of low student achievement. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 the american education research association, a group of more than 25,000 education researchers, agrees that the turnaround model is a highly speculative approach (vaidero, 2009). the final intervention available under the school improvement grant guidelines is the transformation model. two key characteristics of this model are to replace the principal—a recurring theme—and develop “teacher and school leader effectiveness.” principal replacement in this scenario is equally as dubious as described in the turnaround model. developing teacher and school leader effectiveness includes monetary rewards for teachers based on student achievement. recent research debunks the assumption that performance-based pay enhances teacher quality (sawchuk, 2010; springer et al., 2010). upon reflection, this should be a fairly self-evident conclusion: teacher salaries are typically lower than salaries for comparable business opportunities. unless teacher salaries are commensurate with those of business people—a highly-unlikely scenario—“effective” teachers who are salary-motivated will likely exit the teaching profession despite a nominal incentive pay. there is an important caveat to the transformation model: many local teacher unions prohibit merit pay, nullifying this option. sure, some inferior teachers use tenure and pay steps to protect them from well-deserved indictment, but the primary reason for opposition to merit pay in education is that it is very difficult to objectively measure teacher quality. measuring teacher quality is like assessing beauty. the transformation model is ethereal and its implementation is frequently prohibited by union contracts. interestingly, the department of education’s regulations prohibit the use of the turnaround model in more than 50% of the district’s low-achieving schools (u.s. department of education, 2010). one has to wonder under what omniscience the government has divined that the transformation model is one of only four viable “rigorous interventions,” interventions that school improvement grants 17 must be used 100% of the time, but this particular approach cannot be effective in more than 50% of a district’s endangered schools. does incentive pay make sense for one of the district’s schools but not for another one? this double-standard could certainly cause friction among the school district’s employees. through its definition of what constitutes a “low-achieving school,” the u.s. department of education may have unfairly indicted some institutions by erroneously presuming that all schools with academically sub-par students are defective schools with categorically incompetent or uncaring faculty. teachers in these schools are victims of professional profiling and are at risk of being blacklisted by virtue of their association with a “low-achieving school” (school improvement grants mandate that all teachers be “fired” and no more than 50% rehired). in actuality, some effective schools may simply be unable to compensate for the socioeconomic liabilities of their clientele. schools that are erroneously singled out for improvement are then blackmailed into tolerating a litany of harsh, speculative interventions. here are just a few of the concerns with the interventions expressed by reputable researchers: • “the [center on education policy] studied what 23 school districts and 48 schools in six states learned during the past five years about improving struggling schools. it found that the five strategies for restructuring under the no child left behind act, the current version of the esea, did not offer much help to schools that were trying to improve after five or more years of failing to make adequate yearly progress under the law” (gewertz, 2009, p. 10). • “federal restructuring strategies have not shown promise, and all six states in our studies have moved away from these options” (caitlin, 2009, p. 2). • “experience with these sorts of remedies outside the nclb context provides little cause to believe that they reliably yield heightened student achievement or school improvement” (hess & finn, 2007, p. 317). • “thus far, research on takeovers and reconstitutions has been inconclusive” (lashway, 2003, p. 4). • “all recommendations had to rely on low levels of evidence” (national center for education evaluation and regional assistance, 2008, p. 1) current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 schools whose students are academically unsuccessful are not necessarily “lowachieving” schools; “powerful cultural and political forces will continue to impede school improvement” (hess & finn, 2007, p. 328). furthermore, there is little reason to believe that the “rigorous interventions” mandated by the u.s. department of education are pedagogically sound. even if the interventions were sound, two of the four possible interventions, the restart model and the transformation model, are often prohibited by either local statutes or teachers’ unions, and the school closure model is more of a condemnation than an intervention. this leaves many “low-achieving” schools with the hobson’s choice of the turnaround model. title i(-eligible) schools serve a disadvantaged populace. the edicts of school improvement grants exacerbate the problem, ransoming federal funds contingent on districts making illconceived interventions. the u.s. department of education should recognize the competency of local school districts, retract the edicts of the school improvement grants, and work cooperatively with local authorities to achieve authentic educational improvements for disadvantaged families. school improvement grants are a great idea gone seriously awry. the department of education needs to close the book on the current incarnation and then turnaround, restart, and transform their approach. school improvement grants 19 references abrevaya, s., & white, j. (2009, august 26, 2009). obama administration announces historic opportunity to turn around nation's lowest-achieving public schools. u.s. department of education, pp. 1. buckley, j., & schneider, m. (2007). charter schools: hope or hype? princeton: princeton university press. caitlin, s. (2009). improving low-performing schools: lessons from five years of studying school restructuring under no child left behind (report). washington, dc: center on education policy. center for research in education outcomes (credo). (2009). multiple choice: charter school performance in 16 states. stanford, ca: stanford university. clinton, h. r. (1996). it takes a village and other lessons children teach us. new york: simon & schuster. de la torre, m., & gwynne, j. (2009). when schools close: effects on displaced students in the chicago public schools. chicago: consortium on chicago school research. educational resources information center. (1998). turning around low-performing schools: a guide for state and local leaders. washington, d.c.: u.s. department of education. fleishman, s., & heppen, j. (2009). improving low-performing high schools: searching for evidence of promise. the future of children, 19(1), 105-133. gewertz, c. (2009). restructuring under nclb found lacking. education week, 29(15), 1, 10. greenburg, z. o. m. (2009). america's most dangerous cities. forbes.com. retrieved june 10, 2010, 2010, from the world wide web: http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/23/mostdangerous-cities-lifestyle-real-estate-dangerous-american-cities.html current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 hess, f. m., & finn, j., chester e. (eds.). (2007). no remedy left behind: lessons from a halfdecade of nclb. washington, dc: aei press. land, k. c. (2010). 2010 child well-being index (cwi) (report). new york: foundation for child development. lashway, l. (2003). the mandate to help low-performing schools (edo-ea-03-06). eugene, or: office of educational research and improvement (ed), washington, dc. maxwell, l. a. (2009). test experts wary on 'race to top' rules: officials warn against using single assessment to measure gains. education week, 29(7), 16. national center for education evaluation and regional assistance. (2008). turning around chronically low-performing schools. washington, d.c.: u.s. department of education. national center for education statistics. (2005). american's charter schools: results from the naep 2003 pilot study. washington d.c.: national center for education statistics, u.s. department of education. ravitch, d. (2010). the death and life of the great american school system: how testing and choice are undermining education. new york: basic books. santorum, r. (2005). it takes a family: conservatism and the common good. wilmington: isi books. sawchuk, s. (2010). performance-pay model shows no achievement edge. education week. retrieved june 10, 2010, from the world wide web: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/06/01/33tap.h29.html springer, m. g., ballou, d., hamilton, l., le, v.-n., lockwood, j. r., mccaffrey, d. f., pepper, m., & stecher, b. m. (2010). teacher pay for performance: experimental evidence from school improvement grants 21 the project on incentives in teaching. nashville, tn: national center on performance incentives. sternberg, s., & debarros, a. (2008, 8/21/2008). hospital death rates unveiled for first-time comparison. usa today. u.s. bureau of labor statistics. (2010). unemployment rates for metropolitan areas. retrieved june 10, 2010, from the world wide web: http://www.bls.gov/web/metro/laummtrk.htm u.s. census bureau. (2008). state population—rank, percent change, and population density: 1980 to 2008. retrieved june 10, 2010, from the world wide web: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0013.pdf u.s. department of education. (2010). guidance on school improvement grants under section 1003(g) of the elementary and secondary education act of 1965. washington, d.c.: u.s. department of education. vaidero, d. (2009). 'race to top' said to lack key science: scant evidence for policies, researchers tell ed. dept. education week, 29(6), 1, 18-19. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word 811_final2_mh.doc 1 volume 15, number 1 february 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x higher education tuition and fees in china: implications and impacts on affordability and educational equity haiying dong arizona state university xuehong wan sichuan university students in china are being shouldered with more financial responsibility for their higher education. this shift impacts individuals across the economic spectrum in different ways. this paper assesses recent trends in china’s higher education tuition and fees, and the implications on educational equity. results document substantial increases in tuition and fees since 1996. china’s policies have caused costs to rise to the point where they now exceed the abilities of many individuals to pay. as a consequence, many lower income families find it impossible to afford higher education without assistance. recently, the government began increasing financial assistance to low-income families. this has resulted in some relative improvements. while progress has been noteworthy, it will be important for the chinese government to continue reforming student subsidy programs and student loans policies in order to foster more equal access for capable students from all economic backgrounds. keywords: chinese higher education, cost-sharing, tuition and fees, educational equity china needs a system of higher education that will be accessible and affordable to its most capable young adults. in the past three decades, dramatic growth of china’s higher education system has helped lead to unprecedented changes within society and tremendous expansions of economic opportunities. these major developments and achievements have received worldwide attention. from 1978 to 2009, the number of general higher education institutions increased from 598 to 2,305; while the number of full-time undergraduates and shortterm training students increased from 0.86 million to over 21.4 million (bureau of china statistics, 2010). this growth of higher education has been centrally important to china’s economic development. since 1978, china’s policies relating to higher education fee charging have undergone tremendous change. beginning in 1989, a few chinese universities began to experiment with policies that required students to pay a portion of some tuition and fees; and by 1997, all higher education institutions were charging students some form of fees for their higher education (dong &wan, 2006; zhong & zhan, 2003). the result is that higher education in china is no longer without cost to students. college students in china now must pay substantial parts of, if not all of their tuition and fees. in july of 1999, in an attempt to solve the mismatch between the strong demand for higher education and the deficiency of the supply, the chinese state department made another attempt to adjust the nation’s economic and social development plan (the working group of “the reform of china’s higher education”, 1998). the policy changed from one of current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 2 steady, moderate expansion to one that more proactively developed higher education. as a result, it became clear that a wider base of support for higher education was needed. after considering various sources, the government strengthened policies related to the charging of fees. since then, tuition and fees have increased annually. officially, it is presumed that spreading the costs of higher education in china will lead to higher market efficiency and promote student learning. the actual impacts may, in fact, be much more far reaching. there were two main motivations for implementing these changes in tuition policy. the first motivation was that the scale of china’s planned higher education expansion exceeded the government’s ability to finance it. second, the chinese government embraced the higher education cost-sharing theory (the so called cost compensation theory). this theory was first proposed by united states economists in the early 1970s. since then, cost-sharing theory has become more widely accepted (johnstone, 1986, 2004), and related policies were adopted in many countries throughout the world (colclough, 1996). policymakers in china agree that cost sharing is conducive to educational equity; that it fits the common sense that education is a kind of quasi-public product. the rationale was that those who will benefit most directly from higher education should pay for a substantial portion of it. accordingly, in china the costs of higher education shifted from an entirely governmental burden to a shared governmental, societal, and individual burden to the point where students and their families now must cover increasing proportions of their higher education costs through tuition and fees. the new tuition policies have gone a long way towards reducing the chinese higher education funding shortage. it has also led, however, to the emergence of many new problems that have aroused widespread concern throughout chinese society. this paper uses official, publicly available statistical data to analyze what has happened to tuition and fees in chinese higher education from 1996 to 2008. tuition and fee trends are identified and their implications for chinese society and for the higher education system are discussed. the hope is that this analysis and discussion will help foster equitable development of china’s higher education system while remaining consistent with prudent application of cost sharing theory in china. data and analysis the growth trends of tuition and fees data from the china statistical yearbooks from 1996 to 2010 (bureau of china statistics, 1996 through 2010) were used to seek a better understanding of how higher education has come to be financed. in order to better understand tuition and fee trends, we compare the annual proportions of higher education funds from two main resources: 1) government appropriations for education; and 2) tuition & fees (the amounts that college students and their families are required to pay) (see table 1). table 1 shows unprecedented decreases in the proportion of higher education funds from government appropriations, but remarkable increases in the proportion of tuition and fees. during this period, the share of table 1 the proportion of higher education funds by different resources (percentage) year government appropriation (%) tuition & fees (%) 1996 80.3 13.7 1997 78.3 14.8 1998 65.0 13.3 1999 62.5 17.0 2000 58.2 21.1 2001 54.2 24.2 2002 50.6 26.3 2003 47.9 28.8 2004 45.5 30.4 2005 42.8 31.1 2006 42.9 29.2 2007 44.0 33.7 2008 47.6 33.7 data source: bureau of china statistics (2010) higher education tuition and fees in china 3 government appropriation for education in total funds dramatically declined. in 1996, the ratio of governmental appropriations to total funds was 80.3%. by 2008, this ratio decreased to 47.6%; less than half of the total amount of funding. growth of tuition and fees, however, has also been dramatic. in 1996, the ratio of tuition and fees to the total higher education funds was only 13.7%. by 2008, this ratio increased to about one-third of the total amount of funding. tuition and fees in china have increased to the point where the amount of total education funds that individuals now assume has reached or exceeded the level in some developed countries. in 1990, for example, personal tuition and fees only accounted for 24.3% of the cost of american higher education (wang, 2000). according to table 2, total higher education expenditures and government appropriations for education were maintained at almost stable annual growth rates. the average annual growth rate of the total higher education funds was 24%. the average annual growth rate for government educational appropriations, however, only averaged 19%. in contrast, the average annual growth rate of tuition and fees was as high as 34%. these figures reveal two conspicuous trends: 1) the growth rate of tuition and fees was significantly higher than it was for governmental sources; 2) during this period, china’s steady growth in total funds available to higher education was achieved primarily through rapid increases in tuition and fees. the growth of per capita tuition and fees in 1999, the policy of “the enrollment expansion” began to be implemented throughout china’s mainland (the working group of “the reform of china’s higher education”, 1998). since then, the student enrollment in higher institutions increased rapidly. as the gross rate of higher education enrollment grew from 8.3% in 1996 to 26.5% in 2010, china’s higher education entered the popularization stage. according to some economists’ and educators’, adequate per capita funding for higher education can ensure better teaching, more learning, an increase in the overall quality of higher education, and more purposeful development of higher institutions generally (wang, 2006). therefore, because the growth of the total amount of tuition and fees may have been largely due to the increases in student numbers, per capita tuition and fees may not have actually risen as much as it may seem. for these reasons it is necessary for us to examine per capita higher education funding. table 3, based on the china statistical yearbook (bureau of china statistics, 2010), shows growth trends of the average value of various factors in higher education funding from 1996 to 2003. during the entire period, total per capita higher education funding maintained steady growth, with an average annual growth rate of 6%. starting in 1999, when the enrollment expansion policy was implemented, average annual growth rates of per capita higher education funds dramatically decreased, due to the sharp increase of enrollment of higher education in table 2 the annual growth rate of china’s higher education funds year total funds (%) government appropriation (%) tuition & fees (%) 1996 19.5 16.5 29.7 1997 40.7 16.7 26.3 1998 29.0 24.2 65.2 1999 28.9 19.9 59.5 2000 27.7 19.1 46.6 2001 27.5 18.9 38.3 2002 17.9 11.8 29.5 2003 21.4 15.4 28.1 2004 19.7 12.5 22.3 2005 15.2 15.5 8.3 2006 23.7 26.9 42.6 2007 15.9 25.4 15.9 2008 19.5 16.5 29.7 data source: bureau of china statistics (2010) current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 4 table 3 the growth trend of per capita various factors in higher education funds in china year per capita total funds (%) government appropriation (%) per capita tuition & fees (%) 1997 13.7 10.8 23.5 1998 31.0 8.7 17.6 1999 7.6 3.6 37.8 2000 -5.3 -11.9 17.2 2001 -1.2 -7.9 13.4 2002 1.5 -5.4 10.1 2003 -3.9 -8.9 5.5 2004 0.9 -4.1 6.5 2005 2.2 -4.0 4.4 2006 3.5 3.7 -2.7 2007 14.1 17.1 31.6 2008 8.0 16.9 8.1 data source: bureau of china statistics (2010) china. this downward turning situation had not improved until 2007. during the same period, the average annual growth rates of per capita government appropriations were actually negative from 1996 to 2007; its average annual growth rate was -2%, though it had a period of growth in the years before 1999. in contrast, per capita tuition and fees continued to increase, except in 2006, when the growth rate of per capita tuition and fees was uncommonly negative. however, it significantly increased to 31.6% in 2007. from 1996 to 2008, per capita tuition and fees steadily increased with an average annual growth rates as high as 14.4%. the dramatic increase of per capita tuition and fees, just as the increases in total tuition and fees, is the primary reason to help china’s per capita higher education funds steady growth, even when considering the rapid enrollment. both total tuition and fees analyses and the tuition and fees per capita analyses indicate that higher education cost-sharing was quick to be realized in china. however, china is still a developing country. according to the china statistical yearbook (bureau of china statistics, 2010), per capita gdp and per capita income in china is still far below the world’s average level. with the reality of increasingly more substantial levels of higher education tuition and fees in china, a series of new questions have become relevant. among the most important are: can most chinese students and their families afford the growing cost for higher education? what is the impact of the incremental tuition and fees on educational equity? what are the appropriate policies or measures that the government should adopt to help those poor students accomplish their educational goals? life-cycle model. to answer the first question, an estimate was made of china's urban and rural residents’ paying ability for higher education by applying publicly available data. the ability of resident students to pay for their higher education depends not only on their income, but also on their accumulated wealth (heckman, 1976). cha and ding (2006) set up a new model to estimate students’ and families’ ability to pay for higher education based on the life-cycle model: they reported that paying for higher education is one of the chief aims of chinese families’ savings plans. under normal circumstances, families will primarily use their savings to pay for their child’s education. the model assumes that families typically do their best to support the higher education needs of their child. hence, student/family paying ability for a four-year undergraduate student’s tuition and fees can be presented as follows: (model i) (where x is student/family paying ability for higher education; n is the number of people in a family; w is annual per capita saving; r is annual per capita net income; c is the per capita balance of saving deposits). improved life-cycle model. cha and ding’s 2006 theoretical model is helpful for examining the paying ability of the students and their families for higher education expenditures. in china, however, there are huge differences in the economic situations and social higher education tuition and fees in china 5 structure between the rural and urban areas. if students come from different areas, the methods of calculation will be different. for example, most of china’s colleges and universities are located in urban areas, so the annual average consumption of a student could be thought as approximating the annual per capita consumption expenditure of city households, even though calculating the paying ability of students from rural areas. the consumption of others in rural chinese families still resembles the average level of the rural residents. using model i for reference, then, two new models can be derived to evaluate the different paying ability of rural students and urban students based on their different backgrounds. in model ii, the capacity of rural students and their families to pay for higher education would be: (model ii) (where rr is annual per capita net income of rural households; cu is annual per capita consumption expenditure of city household; cr is annual per capita expenditure of rural household.) in model iii, the capacity of urban students and their families to pay for higher education would be: (model iii) (where ru is annual per capita disposable income of city household; cu is annual per capita consumption expenditure of city household.) the structure of chinese family has been relatively stable in the most recent ten year period. in 2008, the average number of people in urban families was 2.91; in rural families the number was 4.01. so, to facilitate the calculation, 3 was used as the reference value of the number of people in urban families while 4 was used as the reference value of the number of people in urban families without considering the impact of the years. according to models ii and iii, the estimated values for rural and urban students paying ability for higher education were presented in table 4. results indicate that the per capita tuition and fees exceed both urban and rural residents’ average paying ability for higher education, in general. in fact, these estimated values of the rural students’ paying ability for higher education are probably overly optimistic. restricted by statistics, the data used to substitute per capita balance of saving deposit is the statistical average for all urban and rural residents in model ii and iii. however, some studies have demonstrated that in china, the wealth gap between urban and rural residents is large and widening (huang, 2006). according to some assessments, in 1999, the per capita saving deposit balance of rural residents was only 1,600 yuan while that of urban residents was 11,570 yuan (bureau of china statistics, 2010). in urban areas as well, gaps of wealth should not be ignored. it should be noted that all of the data presented in table 4 were based on averages. the number of students in a family was hypothesized to be 1. if calculations assumed there were some significant portions of families with two or more children who may accept higher education in a family at the same time, then the estimated value would be even lower than the reported results. hence, it can be assumed that the above methods of calculation cover up, to a degree, gaps of wealth. the conclusion, therefore, is that tuition and fees in china already outstrip the ability of many families to pay for higher education, especially in chinese rural areas or the low-income communities in urban areas. the impact of rising tuition and fees on educational equity in china most educational resources are located in urban areas. under current admission systems, the sole criterion for admission to major higher institutions is a student’s score in the national entrance examination. according to a recent survey, there are large differences in actual admission scores between the students from different economic strata. the average score of the students who come from rural areas is about 20 points higher than for those that come from urban areas. it can be assumed that high-priced and rising tuition and fees has likely prohibited many outstanding students with low socioeconomic status (ses) from accepting higher education opportunities (chung & lu, 1999). in 1960, while it was recognized that increasing student payments for higher education standards would be beneficial for reducing higher education funding shortages, it was also recognized that doing so was viewed as an unfavorable way to achieve educational equity and the objectives of social welfare (johnson, 1960). several other empirical studies (hoenack & weiler, 1975; rose & sorensen, 1992) have come to similar conclusions. that said, in china, higher education tuition and fees are already beyond the means of significant numbers of lower income students (chung & lu, 2003). the negative impacts of rising tuition and fees on educational equity have been mainly documented in two areas: 1) relatively fewer high ability lower income students admitted, and; 2) more high ability lower income students choosing lower status universities and majors. some studies have predicted that the growth of tuition and fees would impact the social demand for higher education. for example, one empirical study demonstrates that the price flexibility of the american students’ demand for higher education was -0.62, which means if tuition current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 6 table 4 the estimated value of the rural and urban residents’ paying ability for higher education (1996-2008) (units: yuan) estimated value year per capita tuition and fees rural residents urban residents 1996 1477 -2582 294 1997 1824 -1765 584 1998 2145 -938 1063 1999 2956 -421 1411 2000 3464 -1118 1374 2001 3928 -771 2128 2002 4324 -608 2391 2003 4562 298 3425 2004 4857 4268 4196 2005 5071 4944 5247 2006 4932 5870 6649 2007 6489 5809 7375 2008 7017 8464 10138 data source: bureau of china statistics (2010) and fees increased 10%, the enrollment of students in the higher institutions would drop 6.2% (leslie & brinkman, 1988). in china, the social demand for higher education is extremely strong (altbach, 1992, 2007; johnstone, 2004; mok, 2000). even though tuition and fees have increased to some extent, total enrollment in higher education institutions has still increased dramatically. however, the growth of tuition and fees may have serious undesirable impacts on those students who are from low ses families. this is because the price flexibility of tuition and fees for lower-income students was higher than that of students from higher income families (gertler & glewwe, 1990). probably because of lower paying ability, in china the proportion of rural students in the college population is remarkably decreasing. in the 1980s, this proportion was about 30%. by 2004 it had declined to 19.2%, even though the rural population accounted for 58.2% of china’s total population (wu, 2004). while students from low-income families have access to higher education, they are still subject to inequities when they choose a college or major within the institution. under cost sharing policies, tuition and fees have become a very important factor effecting students choice of college and major. students from lower-income families tend to choose majors like agriculture, teacher education, forestry, geology in less highly ranked higher institutions. students from high ses families tend to choose higher ranked institutions and are more likely to major in foreign languages, the arts, economics, law and the medical sciences (chung & lu, 1999). this indicates that regardless of where they matriculate, students from low-income families may be disadvantaged in the labor market when they graduate. as a result, the rate of return from their higher education would be expected to be lower than that of students from more wealthy, middle class families. improving affordability for china’s lowincome families the increase of residents’ income for rural or urban disadvantaged families obviously is not simple for the chinese government to achieve in a short time. in such a case, the financial assistance for helping lowincome students to complete postsecondary education is an effective means for the government. such an approach requires the government and society to provide adequate financial aid to highly capable students from low-income families. in fact, many countries have adopted similar “high-charging and high financial support” policies to assist with the development of their higher education systems. since the 1990s, most american universities have gradually raised tuition and fees. as a result, many forms of financial aid have been provided. these have included waivers of tuition and fees, fellowships, and scholarships for over 30% of needy students (chung & lu, 2003). such measures were intended to help balance competing demands of educational development and equity of access to higher education. because of the imperfections in current subsidy systems, however, china’s higher education remains in a “high-charging and low subsidizing” mode. the higher education tuition and fees in china 7 government has been trying to improve financial assistance by increasing the scope and the amount of needs-based subsidies by engaging in some overcharging of tuition and fees. as a result, it appears that china’s higher education policy is slowly transitioning to a policy of “higher-charging and higher financial support.” in this reform procession, a student loan system is thought of as a promising measure to improve students’ financial situations while in school. to enhance the effectiveness of student loan program, countermeasures put forward by albrecht and ziderman (1991) were thought to be valuable: (1) more effectively identify the needy recipients for loans; (2) reducing the debt burden of students with the reduction of the subsidy (such as raising interest rates, but using the students’ future income to help repay their loans) and; (3) designing even more effective recovery mechanisms to reduce the risks/costs to a minimum, such as australia has done by recovering student loans through the tax or social security system (albrecht & ziderman, 1991). nevertheless, debate continues in china about how to best structure student loan and subsidy programs to maximize access to higher education for academically talented students in relatively affordable ways so that educational equity will also be achieved. low-income families will likely be willing to continue accepting, perhaps out of necessity, universities that have lower tuition and fees even though they would prefer to have their children have access to more prestigious universities through more substantial educational grant and scholarship programs. it is likely that student loans and other subsidy programs will become more a part of china’s solution to educational inequality, particularly for middle income families who are capable of making meaningful financial contributions to the education of their children. without more loans and more grant programs, however, lower income students will continue to have less access to higher quality higher education and, as a result, will tend toward lower paying jobs. without even greater advances in these areas, the loser will be society which needs the best and brightest to help address the huge challenges that china’s recent transformation and development are posing. conclusion based on the foregoing analyses, it appears that china’s rising tuition and fees have already exceeded many families’ ability to pay. it also appears that the effects may be particularly hard on most of rural families and some lower ses communities in urban areas. the net effects can be presumed to be largely negative on educational equity. how to ameliorate these likely adverse effects of the recent changes in tuition and fee policies, and how to improve the low-income families’ ability to pay for higher education remain perplexing questions. a number of conclusions are inescapable from this study. first, despite the fact that the “high-charging and high subsidy” policy remains controversial, the chinese government is considering re-intensifying it as a means to improve access to higher education opportunities. second, in the past 15 years the contribution of tuition and fees accounting to total higher education funding has increased rapidly, reaching a peak of 33.7% in 2008. the same period witnessed the proportion of government appropriation for higher education declining gradually to less than half; indicating that the higher education cost sharing policies are having substantial impacts in china. third, rapidly rising tuition and fees have increased the burden on rural and lower ses urban students and their families. fourth, the current situation of having higher education tuition and fees beyond many students’ and/or families’ ability to pay, which is likely to have negatively impacted educational equity. these impacts on students have resulted from lowincome students selecting different admission opportunities and different choices of college and majors. finally, the chinese government is attempting to reform student assistance and loan policies to accelerate attainment of the goal of increasing the likelihood that low-income families’ can afford higher education. based on the life cycle theory, a new method was used to calculate the students’ abilities to pay for higher education in china. models were used to estimate the ability of rural and urban students and their families’ abilities to pay for higher education. the analysis indicated that the current high-priced tuition and fees have resulted in a situation where costs of higher education exceed the ability of many low ses chinese families’ abilities to pay, even families that use their entire savings to pay for their child’s higher education. if china’s system of higher education is to meet its goals, then a more comprehensive system of student financial assistance will be critical. increasing the affordability of higher education in china means that net tuition and fees would need to begin declining more so that the majority of families would become more able to afford it. if that were to happen, then low-income families would not have to pay as much. such an approach could make lower income students more economically capable of accessing higher education. similar studies in china, however, have shown that the low-charging policy will not significantly improve educational equity by itself (cha & ding, 2006; chung & lu, 1999, 2003; mok, 2000; zhong & zhan, 2003). the admirable goals of increasing the quality of china’s higher education, and making it more equally accessible to all able students, must be undertaken carefully so as not to bring excessive financial burdens to the government (cha & ding, 2006) upon which higher education so heavily relies. in addition, it is important that those who can afford higher education and benefit from it current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 8 should pay a fair share of the costs. progress to date has been somewhat less than optimal because the scope of the financial assistance is quite narrow; only a relative few needy students are being helped. we therefore recommend that china consider expanding programs that offer more ability-based tuition and fee waivers, scholarships, work-study opportunities, and fellowships, to high ability but lower income students. references albrecht, d., & ziderman, a. (1991). deferred cost recovery for higher education: student loan programs in developing countries (world bank discussion paper). washington, d. c.: the world bank. altbach, p.g. (1992). patterns in higher education development: toward the year 2000. in r.f. arnove, p.g. altbach, & g.p. kelly (eds) emergent issues in education: comparative perspectives. albany, ny: state university of new york press. altbach, p.g., & knight, j. (2007). the internationalization of higher education: motivations and realities. journal of studies in international education, 11 (3-4), 290-305. bureau of china statistics. (2010). china statistics yearbook (1996-2010) (china). beijing: china statistics press. cha, x., & ding, s. (2006). can low tuition policy improve education fairness and social welfare? tsinghua journal of education (china), 27(1), 65-70. chung, y., & lu, g. (1999). the affecting factors in students choosing college under fee charging system. journal of higher education (china), 2, 31-39. chung, y., & lu, g. (2003). the equity effects of cost recovery in higher education. peking university education review (china), 1(2), 52-64. colclough, c. (1996). education and the market: which parts of the neoliberal solution are correct? world development, 24(4), 589-610. dong, h., & wan, x. (2006). the research of current cost-sharing system in higher education in china, china education science study (china), 4(6), 25-26. gertler, p., & glewwe, p. (1990). the willingness to pay for education in developing countries: evidence from rural peru. journal of public economics, 42(3), 251-275. heckman, j.j. (1976). a life-cycle model of earnings, learning, and consumption. journal of political economy, 84(4): 11-44. hoenack, s.a., & weiler, w.c. (1975), cost-related tuition policies and university enrollments. journal of human resources, 10(3), 332–360. huang, l. (2006). the statistical analysis of the income gap between urban and rural in china. statistics and decision (china), 21, 107-108. johnson, e.l. (1960). is the low-tuition principle outmoded? the review of economics and statistics, (3), 44-47. johnstone, d.b. (1986). sharing the costs of higher education: student financial assistance in united kingdom, the federal republic of germany, france, sweden, and the united states. new york: college board. mok, k.h. (2000) marketizing higher education in postmao china. international journal of educational development, 20(2), 109-126. rose, d.c., & sorensen, r.l. (1992). high tuition, financial aid and cross-subsidization: do needy students really benefit? southern economic journal, 59(1): 66–76. the working group of “the reform of china’s higher education”. (1998). the reform of china’s higher education. beijing: finance and economic press. wang, s. (2000). concise guide to economics of education. beijing: higher education press. wang, y. (2006). changes in funding source of higher education in china: an analysis of the relationship between government funding and student tuition and fees, tsinghua journal of education (china), 27(5), 42-48. wu, s. (2004). the comparative analysis of the students’ cost about attending school and getting employment between public and private universities, education and economics (china), 2, 6-10. zhong, y., & zhan, s. (2003). on charging fees in public higher education from an equality perspective application of cost-recovery theory in mainland china. journal of higher education (china), 24(6), 28-33. higher education tuition and fees in china 9 article citation dong, h. & wan, x. (2012). higher education tuition and fees in china: implications and impacts on affordability and educational equity. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/811 author notes haiying dong arizona state university po box 871811 tempe, az 85287 usa haiying.dong@asu.edu haiying dong is a ph.d. candidate at arizona state university, in the area of educational leadership & policy studies. his interests include the application of large-scale data analysis in educational policy studies; the influence of educational policy on individual and collective actions; school choice; school accountability; student achievement; and international and comparative education. xuehong wan west china school of medicine, sichuan university no. 37,guoxue xiang, west china school of medicine, chengdu, sichuan, 610041, china xhwan929@163.com xuehong wan is a professor of internal medicine and vice dean for educational affairs in west china school of medicine, sichuan university. his interests include the international comparative study on medical education system, curriculum designing, medical tests and faculty development. manuscript received: 09/12/2011 revisions received: 12/21/2011 accepted: 1/13/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 10 volume 15, number 1 february 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines lisa lacy copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero katherine ronan kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers ideological dissonance in a literature teaching process volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x the ideological dilemma in teaching literature moral conflicts in a diversified society an israeli teacher case study lea baratz achva-college of education roni reingold achva-college of education citation baratz, l. & reingold, r. (2010). the ideological dilemma in teaching literature moral conflicts in a diversified society an israeli teacher case study. current issues in education, 13(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the current study examines the implications of literary teaching material in a national diversified society in which the governmental educational policy separates between two national educational systems, and controls both of these separate systems. we set out to examine whether, in such realty, teachers are willing to teach texts, not formally included in the curriculum, that are replete with values and politics. in addition, we examine if they are willing to teach, whether they would introduce their ideological beliefs even if the teaching unit is incompatible with their ideological worldview. the teaching material comprises two poems about jerusalem, one written by a jewish poet and the other by an israeli palestinian poet. 26 interviews were preformed with teachers: 13 jews and 13 palestinians. their sayings were categorized into the following voices: the essence of the voice – a captured or liberated voice; character of the voice – neutral or political; and aim of the voice – socialization or individualization. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 we did not find any differences in the voices among the palestinian and the jewish teachers. categorically, the teachers attempted to silence any discussion that spilled over into political matters. the ideological dilemma made the teachers voice as hidden voice. since, we do not believe that the governmental educational policy in israel is going to become more democratic, we hope that our findings will encourage colleges of education in israel and similar societies to encourage their students to develop liberated and political voices, and voices of individualization. keywords: literature teaching, teachers' voices, israel, ideological dilemma, moral conflict the ideological dilemma 3 about the author(s) author: lea baratz affiliation: achva-college of education email: lbaratz@netvision.net.il biographical information: lea baratz has a phd in hebrew literature from bar ilan university (israel). she is chair of department of literature in achva-college of education (israel). her fields of research are modern literature (mostly children literature), literature teaching, multicultural education. she wrote several research books and in addition one poem book. author: roni reingold affiliation: achva-college of education email: reingold@netvision.net.il biographical information: roni reingold has a phd in history and philosophy of education from tel aviv university (israel). he is chair of department of education in achvacollege of education (israel). his fields of research are multicultural education; teacher education and online learning. he is the organizer of the earli's 2nd sig 13-moral and democratic education symposium. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 jerusalem has been the focus of jewish national being since ancient times and is the political and cultural center of modern israel. jerusalem is central to three faiths christianity, islam and judaism. in addition, jerusalem remains a bone of contention in the israeli-palestinian conflict: israel's annexation of east jerusalem (captured in the 1967 six-day war) is a particularly controversial issue. israeli palestinians view the eastern part of the city in which the palestinian population resides as an occupied area and consider east jerusalem as the capital of a future palestinian state. possible descriptions of jerusalem in literature are numerous and diverse. the images can change from realistic to abstract, from symbolic to representative. each poet has his or her own personal point of view of jerusalem: jerusalem as a geographical point, a social or political location. in addition, jerusalem is an archetypical symbol, standing for a vague heavenly sacredness. jerusalem might also be a secular and private place to live in or a universal religious essence1. jerusalem creates a complex situation, not only politically. the issue of jerusalem is not less complex when we deal with jerusalem as an object of literature, and of course as a subject to be taught and as a pedagogical issue. introducing such a theme in the classroom, raises the question of what political-ideological teaching direction would be suitable, knowing that the subject could be problematic. the major political problems implicated in the whole subject of jerusalem generate a wide spectrum of firmly fixed concepts, which are almost impossible to change through analysis and estimation. the conflict is political by nature and therefore not given to be solved practically. clark (2006) described a case study, which represents a poem that creates a moral conflict in the teaching process teaching poems opposed to the war in iraq. she noted the 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/jerusalem the ideological dilemma 5 difficulties that the subject creates in the process of teaching. in her conclusion she writes: "poets against war," offering students an opportunity to understand literary production and the power of poetry – in the context of social change." (p. 11) her notes about poetry emphasize the following assumption: literature mediates between politics and esthetics: "doing literature" will never be equivalent to "doing politics" in the "real world" (grobman, 2005). "through experiencing art, we may potentially perceive that which binds us to the world as it is or should be and eradicates the violence at the heart of our society, where the powerlessness of the many sustains the power of few" (p.143). hence, the current study examines the implications of literary material for the teaching process where the teaching unit not formally included in the curriculum, is replete with values, politics and beliefs, in some cases, such a teaching unit is incompatible with the teacher’s ideological worldview, thus creating an ideological dissonance (baratz, 2004). the teaching material used in the study comprises two poems written about jerusalem by jewish and arab israeli poets. the two poems are: "in the holy temple", by nida’a houry and "eternal jerusalem" by uri zvi greenberg. both poems were given to the teachers in hebrew, even though houry's poem was originally written in arabic and was translated. it was done since, even though both hebrew and arabic are formal languages in israel, palestine students learn hebrew since the second grade, so they read and write hebrew almost as well as arabic. jewish students, on the other hand, learn arabic only a few hours in junior high schools, so most of them do not know how to read arabic. the two poems we choose are not included in the reading list of the official literature curriculum. both of them were written by nationalist (or right-wing advocated). the palestinian poet, nidaa khoury, is a christian palestinian woman (meaning member of several minority current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 groups). her poetry has been the subject of studies at the university of haifa and the hebrew university and has been widely reviewed by the arab press. the jewish poet, uri zevi greenberg, was a member of a right-wing party in the israeli parliament. he was awarded the israel prize in 1957 for his contribution to hebrew literature. following are the two poems: "you, the wedding of……… dancing with the sun you, whispering legend you, his vision is opened the world till the wind calls our holly till the wind calls our via dolorosa till the wind calls' our blessings and our funerals and drops till the wind will say that mother of earth gives birth to the truth's child to freedom and nation in front of the sultan we are shooting our scream" (in the holy temple, nida’a houry) "….. jerusalem was, is and will be. the gate to royalty and the gate to sky the ideological dilemma 7 at its entrance its enemies will kneel down" (eternal jerusalem, uri zvi greenberg) we examined whether or not, teachers are willing to teach those texts that present the political complications, which exist regarding the question of jerusalem? but, we also wanted to know what pedagogical approach will be chosen by the teachers that will agree to teach these poems. choosing a particular technique of teaching is a means of self-expression! what sort of "voice" will the teacher wish the students to hear? will the pedagogical voice sound like the formal voice of the state? will it reflect personal beliefs and those of the collective group to which he belongs, or will it reflect the voices of students? in the process of teaching a poem, it is assumed that the role of art is to create an esthetic experience. in presenting the esthetic experience, the teacher is liable to confront a pedagogical method, which does not correspond to the ideological position. the teacher can respond in one of three possible ways: a. the teacher may ignore the subject because it does not match the perception of values (to ignore and repressing approach). b. the teacher may teach the material despite its incompatibility with his or her worldview, while distancing him or herself from the material and alienating it (a socialization approach). c. the teacher may teach it while presenting the full range of problems the poems arouse. one can also allow students to state their opinions (individualization approach). exploration of teachers' individual response to governmental (ministry of education) policy of suppression will enable us to indicate whether there are differences in the voices among the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 palestinian and the jewish teachers. moreover, it will provide us empirical basis for our recommendation to policy makers in colleges of education. theoretical background the ideological basis of literature curricula in israel in israel the ministry of education – a political agency controls educational policy and practice throughout the country. the ministry of education is responsible for pre-academic education. the task of developing curricula is entrusted to teams of planners subordinated to a ministerial department, which also has the power to authorize textbooks for daily schoolwork. the ministry also controls the matriculation examinations, which test the knowledge the students have acquired in the course of their studies. israel differs from most countries in the world in setting educational goals and curricula in the various disciplines, as well as controlling and supervising textbooks. curricula dealing with subject matter are drawn up by local, non-political professional teams or even by school teaching staffs. at times, syllabi are drawn up jointly by teachers and students (alpert, 2002). this concentration of power in the ministry enables control of the curricula (hoffman and schnell, 2002). this is particularly evident in the humanities and social sciences (see discussions by al-haj, 2002 on the history curricula, and that by pedahtzur & frlinger, 2004 on the civics curricula). control and supervision of education in israel also extend to teacher training. the ministry of education determines the structure of the curricula; the ministry determines the number of students accepted into the colleges of education and also provides the resources for these colleges. the ideological dilemma 9 control and supervision through shaping the body of knowledge are the foundation of the doctrine of michel foucault. according to foucault, the absolute and brutal power of the sovereigns ruling before the 18th century has been replaced in the modern era by a hidden and sophisticated power system based on the politics of truth (foucault, 1975, 1980). he claims that knowledge is that which governmental power creates and shapes, and in turn, shapes governmental power. power and knowledge are actually two sides of the same coin (foucault, 1972). powerful individuals of high standing are those who determine and define truth, although there is no absolute truth, and use that definition of truth to promote their own interests (back, 2005). in our era, social sciences or human science are the main theoretical fields for shaping truthfulness (ball, 1990, popkewitz, 1998), which enables building and preserving power systems, knowledge, supervision, control and exclusion. there should be a distinction between ideological education and political education. in the framework of ideological education, the educator endeavors to instill in his or her students a loyalty to political concepts, while in the framework of political education he or she endeavors to encourage them to develop capabilities to form personal opinions on all political issues (lamm, 1991). in more recent works (2000, 2001, 2005) lamm extended the distinction between educational ideologies and formulated a typology which is constructed of three educational ideologies: socialization, acculturation and individualization as a socialization agent, teachers must guide the students to adopt a dictated world of values and norms. those values and norms are dictated from the ministry of education, and teachers function as a connecting channel between the state and the students. teachers are not authorized to make any personal decisions about those values and norms. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 as acculturation agent, teachers are also dedicating to a world of values and norms, but they must represent cultural values they support and be the model for values their students should identify with. in the third typology, the individualization, the tasks of teachers are to help students grow and develop. in this framework, teachers help them to form value concepts and acquire skills for evaluating moral considerations by themselves. as already mentioned, humanities teachers in israel, including literature teachers, are expected to be socialization agents of zionist education. since political thinking, ideological thinking, tolerance of minorities and support for freedom of expression are internalized by people during their childhood and adolescence, i.e. in the learning process at school, teaching literature to the young can turn the teacher into a very effective socialization agent. voice and identity in the process of education a "voice" has social and political ramifications that cannot be ignored. from a psychological point of view, everyone can express himself in different voices or reveal different aspects of his personality at different moments according to a given situation, but it is also important to pay attention to the notion of "voice" from a social point of view. the location of a voice implies the right to speak, as well as speaking in a context, speaking to an audience and speaking to achieve a specific purpose (boa, 1999). the social reality is constructed by human voices and not only examined and reflected through it. thus, the teacher's voice is a means of both formulating world-view and expressing it. the ideological dilemma 11 because of those assumptions, we decided to examine the teacher's voice in order to explore an educational reality. since, every interaction between worldviews and political power is ideological (eagelton, 1991, back, 2005); we can identify the teacher's personal political and ideological beliefs by listening to his or her "voice.” hence, a teacher’s voice is the measure for identifying the position in the educational system more than that the personal and social voice. elbaz luvish (2005) examines the process teachers are experiencing while standing in front the class. she isolates the teacher's different "voices" while analyzing the narrative of the teacher's stories. teachers are often "ambivalent" about their work. in a variety of cases, they show this ambivalence even in the course of telling one single story. sometimes the analysis of the sub-text yields contradictory points of view. however, when it can be pointed out as a "moral voice"? it can be called "moral voice" when teaching merges evaluation with judgment and choices. in the process of teaching, teachers demonstrate authority and impose their status of authority on those under their supervision and influence. at the same time, teachers have a unique responsibility for the appropriate ethical development of their students (elbaz, 1991). according to bakhtin (1981), language cannot be disassociated from the social contexts in which it is used. every utterance is a unique expression of socio-linguistic interaction in a specific social context: every utterance is dialogical, and it is therefore dependent on what precedes it and the way others interpret it. the dialogue takes place between "voices" likely to represent differences of social classes, ideologies, periods or genres. consequently, contact of one utterance with another serves to give presence and a unique "voice" to each one of them. in addition bakhtin claims that authoritative voice is bodiless, sounding reliable and objective. it expresses a rigid ideological position rejecting out of hand, by using various rhetorical devices, current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 all "strange speech," i.e. every "voice" that is not in harmony with the ruling official ideological opinion of the time. "it demands that we acknowledge it, to make it our own. it handcuffs us in a way that almost does not depend on its power to be able to persuade us; in a way … its authority has already been acknowledged in the past" (bakhtin, 1981, p. 342). while listening to teachers' voices, one must pay attention to the voice speaking in a social, historical and cultural environment (gudmundsdottir, 2001). lensmire and satanovsky (1988) developed their approach and commentary regarding "voices" following bakhtin's assertions. they do not perceive voices as something given, expressed in speech in a natural, trouble-free manner, but as a 'project', something that students can develop through work and effort. in addition, they claim that voices do not indicate any essence in their content that finally attains expression, but indicate a continuous human effort that builds and rebuilds our self and our relationship with the world. they identified three dimensions in voices: appropriation, social struggle and creation. appropriation is an activity emphasizing the "activity of the self vis-à-vis cultural resources." in developing a voice, the individual does not passively acquire knowledge. he also does not internalize cultural content as it presents itself, but he must make an effort in order to impart meaning to occurrences using language, that we share with others. in bakhtin's (1981) concept, this is an activity involving our using and reprocessing other people's language. social struggle is the use of our voice to express our ideas, some of which are new, in convincing ways. an additional aspect of this struggle is the fact that at times we must choose one voice among many others. we must take a stand on issues facing one audience or another, toward others or concerning others. the ideological dilemma 13 it is important to express the teacher voice who teaches according to the "critic pedagogy" as mentioned by giroux (2000). it is insufficient to consider the politics of texts, the canon, or the curriculum without connecting issues of power in public spheres (75-76). by moving away from the text, giroux argues, theorists will become more "politically responsible" in their approaches to literary texts and, in so doing, will "open . . . up possibilities for new approaches to social reform" (68), addressing issues such as civil rights for minorities and the poor, including immigrants; public school reform; racism in the criminal justice system; and welfare and workfare. methodology the current research followed two empirical stages. first, 200 questionnaires were handed out to literature teachers. since, many school principals (both jewish and palestinians) did not allow us to handed questionnaires to teachers in their schools, we handed the questionnaires to teachers that participated in professional development course in college. in consideration of the demographical structure of the israeli society: 80% jewish and 20% of the palestinian, we handed out 159 questionnaires to teachers in secular jewish high schools (i.e., not from religious schools and not from the occupied territories). forty-one were handed out to teachers in regular palestinian high schools (i.e., schools under the supervision of the ministry of education). all of the participants knew that both of the researchers are secular jews. teachers were asked to send back the questionnaires to the researchers, but only 91 of them (70 jewish and 21 palestinians) replied. the teachers were asked in the questionnaires current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 whether or not they would agree to teach one of two provocative poems, written about jerusalem by jewish and palestinianisraeli poets, and whether or not they would agree to be interviewed in that context. 45.5% of the 200 teachers that were asked to participate in the study agreed to participate 51.2% of the palestinians teachers and 43.4% of the jewish teachers. only 13 of the palestinians teachers and 25 of the jewish teachers accepted the challenge. we decided, as the second empirical stage of the current study, to conduct interviews with two groups of 13 teachers from the two national groups. each teacher was asked to read a poem which he would be required to teach, and, after reading it, to relate to it. the data generated by the interviews was analyzed and divided into predefined categories. a method of qualitative research was chosen in order to locate the important, interesting, and repetitively appearing elements of the data. the findings were analyzed in a manner known as quantification, by open coding on one axis of the information yielded in the interviews (ben-yehoshua, 1990). the interviews were conducted discreetly, with no one else present. complete confidentiality was guaranteed to the interviewees and even the teachers who expressed reservations about cooperating with the research agreed to speak candidly results ninety-two percent of the teachers that replied the questionnaires declared that they would teach any poem that they were asked to teach, and 97% said that while teaching they would deal with both the esthetic and the ideological aspects of the poems. we asked the the ideological dilemma 15 informators if they are willing to teach a provocative poem, written about jerusalem by a poet from the opposing national group and participate in an interview which would deal with how they would teach that poem. almost 65% of the jewish teachers and 38% of the palestinians teachers, who replied, did not agree to our request. during the interviews, the teachers explained how they prepared the poem to be taught in class. a distinction was made between the esthetic-poetic and the ethical-moral aspects, which stems from the poem, that is to say, deconstructing the text. some of the teachers were dealing only with the text, avoiding the meaning in the sub text. a variety of teaching methods was used, each method depending on the teacher's world point of view. categorically, the teachers attempted to silence any discussion that spilled over into political matters. there were no voice differences among the palestinian and the jewish teachers. hence, we do not represent the findings according to national affiliation. following the analysis of the teachers’ words and examination of the common threads observed in them we defined several voices as follows: the essence of the voice is divided into the flowing sub categories: a captured or liberated voice. a captured voice implies that a teacher cannot feel free to express his or her own beliefs, or to express non-formal and external ideology. a liberated voice implies that teachers express themselves freely according to their own beliefs and according to their moral courage or personal point of view. captured voice: (13 palestinians teachers, 9 jewish teachers) current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 "i’ll teach only poems which match my political opinions. if i am forced to teach a poem which does not match opinions, that will be the one which “i didn’t have time to get to.” "students are liable to identify my political opinions" and "i’m liable to be perceived as being a "collaborator”.” "the school administration forbids the expression of political opinions.” "the proper place for discussions like this one is in citizenship or history class.” "we should teach according to the values of the state.” "i teach according to the worldview acceptable to all the students.” liberated voice (2 palestinians teachers, 4 jewish teachers) "we are a heterogeneous people, so we must teach poems of different shades" "we must expose the student to the whole, wide world, including the world of the other.” "a student should be permitted to express anger, criticism, and his feelings.” the ideological dilemma 17 "it’s important that students should express their feelings under the guidance of the teacher. the expression of personal opinions educates the student to be a good citizen in his country" "we will discuss things which characterize the three religions." "the lesson is interesting when many opinions are expressed" "we will discuss things which characterize the three religions" "a poem is a means of instilling an esthetic essence. there’s no alternative to explaining that we have to live together here.” voice manner: agitated speech or subdued speech agitated voice reflect the teacher’s voice, moving from the text to reality. in this case, teachers are not afraid to transmit a message through the text. in subdued speech the voice remains very close to the poetic content, and there is hesitation to say something about reality especially not about politics. agitated speech an esthetic voice (5 palestinian teachers, 6 jewish teachers) "the poem is militant in its tone. it is therefore hard to appreciate its poetic strengths. even if the poem is beautiful from an artistic point of view, its political stance neutralizes the artistic side.” "it is important to struggle with difficult texts, from both a poetic and an ideological point of view" current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 "it is important to struggle with difficult texts, from both a poetic and an ideological point of view" "students shouldn’t be allowed to express their opinions, as they are still immature" subdued speech an ideology poetic voice (8 palestinians teachers, 7 jewish teachers) "the poet’s sensitivity is helpful in exposing the political problem.” "i am a deprived citizen, and feel enchained. first, they should make amends for the kfar kassem massacre (an historical event l.b & r.r)" "poems whose message is death should not be taught.” "the poem nurtures dangerous values.” content of the voice – divided into a voice of socialization or a voice of individualization. in a socialized voice the teacher express just what is allowed to be expressed by the authority, but as one who holds an individual voice, one may allow students to express their personal opinions, even if the students’ voices oppose or coincide with the teacher’s personal opinion the socialized voice (9 palestinians teachers, 8 jewish teachers) "every student will judge the issues (the political statements in the poem) by his own standards.” "the student must examine his worldview in relation to the world around him.” "one must distinguish between the political climate and the poetic process" "one must nurture the student’s emotional world, therefore he should be taught to struggle with painful problems as well.” the ideological dilemma 19 "one may teach non-violence with the help of a violent poem." "violence is not the way to solve problems.” "i have no intention to influence my students, but i do intend to show the justice in the poet’s attitude.” "the student will not be able to separate the esthetic attitude from the political one.” individual voice (4 palestinians teachers, 5 jewish teachers) "the text strengthens the student’s ability to cope with his feelings; including his negative ones.” "one mustn’t confuse adolescents with problems of this sort.” "these days we must not deal with these painful topics. five years ago everything was different.” "the historical truth is what should be taught" "the historical axis should be built from scratch" "it’s difficult to accept poetic truth. also, poetic truth has no meaning for the future of society.” "an experienced teacher is able to neutralize his opinion, and so is able to present an objective message.”" we should help the student to mature so that he is able to listen to a wide range of views, even if they are not always pleasant for him to hear.” "poetic pathos won’t solve the conflict between two peoples.” "we should educate students to have a pluralistic view of the world.” current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 diagram of result discussion our research was intended to examine how teachers deal with ideological dissonance and/or with the formal educational policy in israel while teaching a poem about jerusalem. we tried to isolate teachers' voices in order to discern whether it is possible to identify the voices and determine if they can overcome the ideological dilemma. conclusions it was difficult to isolate just "one" voice in the teaching process. participants from both of the national groups (jewish and palestinian) tried to appear consistent in their opinions or ideological point of view, as revealed in the interviews. a voice of socialization characterized most teachers’ voices. moreover, since they were speaking in captive voice denotes that they hesitated to teach or to discuss matters arising from the text. in other words, they ignored the idea that emerges from the sub text and leads to political issues. the subdued speech reflects 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 captured voice liberated voice agitated speech subdued speech socialized voice individual voice essence of the voice voice manner content of the voice jews arabs the ideological dilemma 21 their way of working – they remain at the esthetic level of the text. they do not transfer any message from the text to the socio-political context. in this situation, they prefer to relate to history because they could rely on a solid basic argument. each teacher found his or her own interpretation of justice in order to justify his or her attitude to the subject matter. a common phrase was "we never expressed our opinions at any point in the interview. nor were we judgmental about this sensitive issue." the teachers with subdued voices clung to the text. they refused to express their opinions, or as one of the teachers said: “when you’re sitting in a draft, get up, close the window, sit down and rest.” by means of that aphorism, he wished to state that he did not want to enter into an unhealthy situation. in instances of ideological dissonance, the head in the sand approach is not at all unpopular. implications from the findings the texts, which were presented to the teachers, revealed a process of emotional struggle with the text, which represents a worldview incompatible with the “official” ideology. the world of emotions makes it harder to maintain a rational struggle for understanding the meaning of a text. from studying the utterances, it is clear that most teachers cannot allow their voices any freedom. they explained that external factors were responsible for not allowing them to say what was really on their minds, or what they wished to say. most teachers reflect the formal official format and their wish to neutralize all political affinity in it (a socialization process). they produced a 'broken monologue' according to bakhtin's terminology. as a result, the learning process concentrates on the "poetic" side of teaching. seemingly, there is a conscious effort on the part of the teachers to avoid 'appropriation of a voice'. in the process, the teachers remain faithful to the text according to barthes' (1967) definition, that is to say their discussions revolve current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 around the personality of the writer, and around the presentation of the world as depicted in the poem. khaled abu‘asbah (2001) provides an answer to what was revealed from our findings in the field. the arab teacher is not willing to endanger his/her status as a teacher. for that reason, there is a gap between the educational process and his/her perception of his/her works as something merely technical and external to himself/herself. the writer lists the reasons, which emphasize that gap: the absence of internal democracy, and a lack of confidence in school administration, other teachers, and students. the system does not provide an inclusive educational experience. the bottom line is that the only benefits a student can expect to get out of school are information and technical skills. the ideological dilemma determined the teachers’ voice as a hidden voice. teachers should teach by the perception of alienation. alienation is responsible for a rational approach. people cannot be rational in their political or ideological decisions without liberating themselves from their emotional ties and obligations, which cause them to prefer one set of resources and goals to another, different set. the student develops an attitude of non-identity regarding his/her position, and regarding the extension of the cultural, political, and social code, which sets the existing limit of power, dependence, and possibility. according to his/her concept, pedagogy of this sort assimilates the asynchronous relationship between a given person’s social perception and the many ways in which culture is built on its patterns, and is read. in other words, there is not even one relationship between the cultural code and the position held by the subject, which is predetermined. an individual’s racial, social, sexual, or ethnic status may have influence, but it the ideological dilemma 23 does not have the kind of influence which dictates how the person chooses ideology for himself/herself, how he/she reads a certain text, or how he/she responds to a particular form of oppression. pedagogy of limits recognizes that teachers and students read and write culture on varying levels. recommendation continuation of such an educational realty in which teachers, both in jewish and palestinian schools in israel, prefer to act without moral courage whenever they have to deal with ideological dilemmas is very dangerous to the israeli society. this is true not only in relation to the jewish-palestinians relationship, but, also to the sake of the possibility that israel will be a true democratic society. how can there be a democratic society when teachers do not educate their students to do so? since, we do not believe that the governmental educational policy in israel is going to become more democratic and multicultural, we hope that our findings will encourage colleges of education in israel and similar societies to encourage their students to develop liberated and political voices, and voices of individualization. the colleges of education, even though they are controlled and budget by the ministry of education, should encourage their students to develop moral courage attitude through complicated matters like those reflected in this issue. we strongly recommend focusing in future researches in finding the appropriate and effective ways of developing moral courage during teacher education programs. in addition, since the subject of teaching literature texts that arouse ideological dilemmas in a moral courage ways should not be dealt only regarding future teachers, we would like to current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 suggest another two theoretical anchors for in-service teachers that would like to build true dialogues in the classroom. the literary work itself is a broad field, full of meanings and facts. it is perceived not as a finished text, but as a production (barthes, 1967). the textual analysis creates the space for understanding the text. jacobson’s (1987) five elements of etymology can help to discuss the message of the poem: the addressor, the addressee, the code, the context, and the contact. a poetic message becomes understandable and meaningful only after the code and the context have been understood, especially regarding the principle functions of the poem’s language. jacobson presents it: examination of the direct tie between the word and its meaning, the word as a representative of a certain thing. an additional way of dealing with a text is the way proposed by scholes (1985, 1996), who speaks of reading within the text, about the text, and against the text. he maintains that in this way, one can learn about the "other", and, thus, learn about oneself. reading within the text means identifying the cultural codes, which build the work. reading within the text means that the reader can retell the story, sum it up and expand upon it. a text seeks to develop a range of readings in the student. it seeks to create a situation in which the student can analyze the text in terms of that which is missing from it, so that he will be able to develop a position external to his opinions of the text. it seems, that taking into consideration the demographical structure and the political reality of israeli society, has an added significant value with teachers exercising moral courage, while participating in initial teacher education programs and of course while servicing in their classes. the ideological dilemma 25 references al-haj, m. 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(1990), qualitative research in teaching and learning. ramat-gan: masada (hebre current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 28 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain jeffery johnson seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word the 65% instructional expenditure ratio and student achievement.docx volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x the 65% instructional expenditure ratio and student achievement: does money matter? timothy b. jones sam houston state university john r. slate sam houston state university citation jones, t.b. & slate j.r. (2010). the 65% instructional expenditure ratio and student achievement: does money matter? current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract in this study, the researchers examined the extent to which texas public school districts’ compliance with the 65% instructional expenditures ratio was related to student academic success on the texas assessment of knowledge & skills tests. separated into three groups (i.e., 65% instructional expenditures and higher, 60 to 65% instructional expenditures, and less than 60% instructional expenditures), statistically significant differences were yielded among these groups in the taks reading, math, social studies, science, and writing measures. school districts that spent less than 60% of their monies on instructional expenditures had the lowest percent passing rates in all five taks tests. effect sizes ranged from small to large and were consistent across ethnic groups. implications of these findings and suggestions for further research are discussed. keywords: instructional expenditures, student performance, statewide assessments current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: timothy b. jones affiliation: sam houston university email: tbj004@shsu.edu biographical information: timothy b. jones is an associate professor and director of the educational research center and doctoral studies in educational leadership at sam houston state university. dr. jones received his ed.d. in educational leadership from stephen f. austin state university. he teaches doctoral level ethics, policy, finance and law. his research interests focus on school finance policy, public school law and school improvement. author: john r. slate affiliation: sam houston university email: jrs051@shsu.edu biographical information: john r. slate received his ph.d. in psychology from the university of tennessee, knoxville. he teaches doctoral level statistics, research design, and academic writing courses in the department of educational leadership and counseling at sam houston state university. his research interests lie in the use of state and national educational databases for school improvement. the 65% instructional expenditure ratio the 65% instructional expenditure ratio and student achievement: does money matter? columnist and political commentator george will (2005a, 2005b), in his article, one man’s way to better schools, and then in a policy statement from an organization called first class education, gave a wide national audience to first class education, an organization founded by overstock.com president and ceo patrick m. byrne. the organization called for all state governments in the united states, by 2008, to spend at least 65% of school district funds on instructional costs as defined by the national center for education statistics (2003). in their policy statement, first class education (2005) suggested three critical objectives that would be met with the implementation of the 65 percent rule: (a) an increase in the amount of money spent in the classroom without increasing taxes; (b) a reduction in the amount of money spent on non-classroom expenditures such as athletics, teacher training and curriculum, student support such as nurses and counseling, instructional support such as libraries and librarians, food service, student transportation and administration; and hence, (c) provide school children with a first class education indicated by higher student performance. other organizations have also joined the 65 percent call. for example, one organization, americans for prosperity, cited “texas polling data” that shows “overwhelming support” in texas for the measure (americans for prosperity, 2005). the no child left behind act (nclb, 2001) mandated that schools evaluate not only the academic performance of all students but, more importantly, the academic performance of students by ethnic membership as well as by variables such as economic status and at-risk status. the 65% instructional expenditures ratio mandate should be evaluated along the same lines. that is, the extent to which this mandate affects the academic performance of students similarly across ethnic membership is unknown and merits attention. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 the literature six studies were identified as being particularly germane to this study. roper (1996) examined the relationship between expenditures and student performance using stanford achievement test scores of 127 alabama public school districts using fourth, seventh, and tenth grade students. when the test scores of the homogeneous groups were analyzed, the instructional support expenditures were not related with student academic achievement. roper (1996) stated that the relationship between expenditures and achievement was seemingly curvilinear, rather than a typically linear relationship. that is, too little expenditures and too much expenditures were not related positively with student achievement, compared with expenditures in the middle of the range. turner (1999) conducted a study in which he examined the relationship between fifth grade state reading scores and per pupil expenditure. data were collected and analyzed from a sample of 40 public schools in georgia for the 1997-98 school year. factors such as percentage of students receiving free and reduced lunch, percentage of total budget used for salaries and benefits, district enrollment, percentage of teachers with a master's degree or higher, and average years of teacher experience were the specific variables analyzed. only a moderate relationship was demonstrated between per pupil expenditure and fifth grade state reading scores. a stronger relationship was observed between the percentage of students receiving free and reduced lunch and fifth grade reading scores. a relatively low relationship was identified between the percentage of total budget used for salaries and benefits and fifth grade reading scores in georgia. turner (1999) also noted an implication from his study was that increasing school spending did not necessarily increase student achievement, and that targeting specific programs might lead to more substantial academic gains than simply increasing overall school spending. the 65% instructional expenditure ratio in a recent study, lance et al. (2003) gathered data on hours of operation, staff and activities, the media collection, educational technology, total library expenditures, and several types of library usage in 657 illinois school libraries. they demonstrated the presence of statistically significant relationships between various dimensions of school libraries and appropriate indicators of academic achievement. walters, in a study published in 2005, sought to determine the efficient allocation of school district financial resources for the delivery of educational services as related to performance outcomes in arkansas public schools. walters (2005) documented that high academic achieving school districts, compared to other academic achievement levels, had the highest support service cost per student for instruction, the lowest administrative cost per student, the highest percent of net current expenditure for instruction, the lowest transportation cost per student, and the lowest expenditure per pupil cost. walters (2005) further demonstrated that high academic achieving school districts had the lowest free and reduced lunch rate, the greatest number of students in average daily membership, and the highest percent of white students, when compared to the other achievement levels. these findings were consistent with numerous other researchers who have documented that a variety of factors contribute to high student performance (lance, rodney, & hamilton-pennell, 2005; roper, 1996; turner, 1999; walters, 2005). the research literature on the topic surrounding the newly coined phrase “65 percent rule” is rather limited (jones, bingham, & jackson, 2007). in november 2005, standard and poor’s disclosed their findings and conclusions on various 65% policies in their study the issues and implications of the “65 percent solution.” in their study, data were examined from the 9 states (i.e., minnesota, ohio, louisiana, texas, kentucky, florida, kansas, arizona, and colorado) that have implemented policy mandates of some type using the 65 percent rule. utilized in this study were state testing data for each individual state. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 using a linear regression analysis, the standard and poor’s study revealed the absence of a positive correlation between instructional spending allocations and student performance. in fact, documented in the study was “that there is no minimum instructional spending allocation that necessarily produces higher student achievement” (standard and poor’s, 2005, p. 4). they ultimately concluded, “there is a lack of empirical evidence for mandating a uniform percentage spending threshold across all districts to raise student achievement” (p. 4). in 2006, standard and poor’s conducted a follow-up addendum to their original study the following year by adding arkansas to the list of schools and had similar findings (standard & poor’s, 2006). finally, jones et al. (2007) reported, in a study of more than 1000 school districts in texas, that no relationship was present between school district instructional expenditure ratios and student academic performance on the state-mandated achievement measure. in addition, jones and colleagues (2007) explored whether a relationship was also present between instructional expenditure ratios and student performance on the scholastic assessment test (sat). similar to their results on the state-mandated achievement measure, jones et al. identified the lack of a relationship between school instructional expenditure ratios and the sat. additionally, jones et al. (2007) stated that “using the 65 percent rule standard or mandate as a dependent variable for prescribing improved student performance negated all other dynamics at play in successful school district operations” (p. 229). they concluded that, “such a uniform standard trivializes the complex nature of the public educational systems across the united states and the task of educating individual children with individual needs” (p. 229). purpose of the study our purposes in conducting this study were twofold: (a) to determine the extent to which student academic achievement might differ as a function of school district instructional the 65% instructional expenditure ratio expenditure ratios and (b) the extent to which findings would be consistent across ethnic membership. with the state mandate that instructional expenditure ratios be 65% or higher, an analysis of its relationship with student performance is clearly warranted. research questions the following research questions were addressed in this study: (a) what is the difference in math percent passing rates as a function of instructional expenditure ratios?; (b) what is the difference in reading percent passing rates as a function of instructional expenditure ratios?; (c) what is the difference in science percent passing rates as a function of instructional expenditure ratios?; (d) what is the difference in social studies percent passing rates as a function of instructional expenditure ratios?; (e) what is the difference in writing percent passing rates as a function of instructional expenditure ratios?; and (f) to what extent are differences consistent in student academic achievement among ethnic groups (i.e., white, hispanic, african american)? method participants data from all texas public school districts for the most recent school year, 20072008, were utilized in this study. the research questions previously mentioned were addressed for all students and then separately by ethnic membership. a total of 943 public school districts had passing rates on the five taks academic measures that were utilized in this study. for african american students, a total of 363 school districts provided analyzable data whereas for hispanic students, a total of 653 public school districts had passing rates available for analysis. the reason for the different sample sizes reflects the manner in which texas reports educational data. when a small number of students is present at a school, scores are not reported to ensure student anonymity and confidentiality of their scores. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 instrumentation archival data were acquired on all texas public school districts for the 2007-2008 school year. through accessing and downloading files from the texas education agency (tea) academic excellence indicator system (aeis), data that were reported by each public school district were gathered. specifically, data on the instructional expenditure ratio, overall student performance on each taks measure, and student performance by ethnic membership on each taks measure were obtained. because the data for these variables are reported to the state by each school district and/or calculated by the texas education agency, traditional reliability and validity estimates are not appropriate for the variables analyzed in this study. rather, any errors in these self-reported figures are assumed to be minimal. to determine the extent to which the individual taks measures provide reliable and/or valid scores, readers are referred to the tea website for the technical manuals for each of the taks tests. the dependent variable of instructional expenditure ratio was defined by the texas education agency as: this measure, required by tec 44.0071, indicates the percentage of the district's total actual expenditures for the 2006-07 fiscal year that were used to fund direct instructional activities. the instructional expenditure ratio is a district-level only measure, and is calculated as follows: expenditures reported in function codes 11, 12, 13, 31 and object codes 6112 through 6499 divided by expenditures reported in function codes 11-52, 92,and 95 and object codes 6112 through 6499. (tea, 2008) procedures after accessing the texas education agency’s academic excellence indicator system website, connection to each aeis data file of interest (i.e., school district, financial, and student the 65% instructional expenditure ratio achievement) was made. data from each data file were downloaded as .dat files and then merged using the statistical package for the social sciences-version 15. prior to conducting statistical procedures, the underlying assumptions (e.g., normality of data) were checked. even though some of the skewness and kurtosis values exhibited a departure from normality (i.e., +/ 3, onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002), the decision was made to use parametric statistical procedures because of their robustness. results the results are presented by subgroup: all students, african-american students, hispanic students, and white students. all students to ascertain whether a difference was present in student performance on the five taks measures as a function of instructional expenditures for all students, a multivariate analysis of variance (manova) procedure was conducted and yielded a statistically significant result, λ = .95, p < .001, n2 = .024. this overall difference was reflective of a small effect size (cohen, 1988). univariate follow-up fs revealed statistically significant differences for math, f(2, 940) = 19.58, p < .001, n2 = .04; for english, f(2, 940) = 11.75, p < .001, n2 = .024; for science, f(2, 940) = 18.16, p < .001, n2 = .037; for social studies, f(2, 940) = 13.57, p < .001, n2 = .028; and for writing, f(2, 940) = 10.15, p < .001, n2 = .02. effect sizes for these statistically significant results were small (cohen, 1988). scheffe` post hoc procedures revealed that the school districts in the less than 60% instructional expenditures ratio group had statistically significantly lower passing rates in math than the other two sets of school districts which did not differ from each other in math passing rates. the same pattern was present for english, science, social studies, and writing. when the passing rates of all students were analyzed, the poorest passing rates were in school districts in current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 the less than 60% of instructional expenditures ratio schools. an examination of table 1 shows the average passing rates for each taks measure, separated by instructional expenditures group. table 1 descriptive statistics for taks passing rates in math, english, science, social studies, and writing by instructional expenditure ratios group for all students taks measure by instructional expenditures n m sd math 65% and above instructional expenditures 134 80.34 10.92 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 473 80.61 8.43 below 60% instructional expenditures 336 76.23 11.94 english 65% and above instructional expenditures 134 91.35 5.69 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 473 91.56 4.53 below 60% instructional expenditures 336 89.64 7.06 science 65% and above instructional expenditures 134 74.02 12.36 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 473 73.64 9.48 below 60% instructional expenditures 336 68.92 14.15 social studies 65% and above instructional expenditures 134 91.30 7.01 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 473 91.24 4.96 below 60% instructional expenditures 336 88.76 9.20 writing the 65% instructional expenditure ratio 65% and above instructional expenditures 134 92.76 5.43 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 473 92.50 5.57 below 60% instructional expenditures 336 90.64 7.44 african american students to determine whether a difference was present in student performance on the five taks measures as a function of instructional expenditures for african american students, a manova was conducted and yielded a statistically significant result, λ = .88, p < .001, n2 = .06. this overall difference was reflective of a moderate effect size (cohen, 1988). univariate follow-up fs revealed statistically significant differences for math, f(2, 360) = 12.44, p < .001, n2 = .065; for english, f(2, 360) = 9.80, p < .001, n2 = .05; for science, f(2, 360) = 15.44, p < .001, n2 = .08; for social studies, f(2, 360) = 8.09, p < .001, n2 = .043; and for writing, f(2, 360) = 7.02, p < .001, n2 = .038. effect sizes for the math and science results were moderate whereas the effect sizes for english, social studies, and writing were small (cohen, 1988). scheffe` post hoc procedures revealed that the school districts in the less than 60% instructional expenditures ratio group had statistically significantly lower passing rates in math than the other two sets of school districts which did not differ from each other in math passing rates. the same pattern was present for english, science, social studies, and writing. in science, however, all three school district groupings differed. as the percent of instructional expenditures increased, so too did student passing rates on the taks science measure. when the passing rates of african american students were analyzed, the poorest passing rates were in school districts in the less than 60% of instructional expenditures ratio schools. an examination of table 2 shows the average passing rates for each taks measure, separated by instructional current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 expenditures group. findings for african american students were commensurate with the results for all students. table 2 descriptive statistics for taks passing rates in math, english, science, social studies, and writing by instructional expenditure ratios group for african american students taks measure by instructional expenditures n m sd math 65% and above instructional expenditures 78 68.99 11.98 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 201 67.51 9.03 below 60% instructional expenditures 84 61.43 12.91 english 65% and above instructional expenditures 78 87.49 6.26 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 201 85.90 6.14 below 60% instructional expenditures 84 82.89 8.62 science 65% and above instructional expenditures 78 60.38 12.88 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 201 55.44 12.13 below 60% instructional expenditures 84 49.56 12.78 social studies 65% and above instructional expenditures 78 86.71 9.04 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 201 84.52 9.38 below 60% instructional expenditures 84 80.51 12.39 writing the 65% instructional expenditure ratio 65% and above instructional expenditures 78 90.08 6.71 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 201 86.61 9.25 below 60% instructional expenditures 84 85.12 9.03 hispanic students to ascertain whether a difference was present in student performance on the five taks measures as a function of instructional expenditures for hispanic students, a manova was conducted and yielded a statistically significant result, λ = .96, p = .001, n2 = .02. this overall difference was reflective of a small effect size (cohen, 1988). univariate follow-up fs revealed statistically significant differences for math, f(2, 650) = 8.72, p < .001, n2 = .026; for english, f(2, 650) = 4.70, p = .001, n2 = .014; for science, f(2, 650) = 5.74, p = .003, n2 = .017; for social studies, f(2, 650) = 3.32, p = .037, n2 = .01; and for writing, f(2, 650) = 8.71, p < .001, n2 = .026. effect sizes for these results were small (cohen, 1988). scheffe` post hoc procedures revealed that the school districts in the less than 60% instructional expenditures ratio group had statistically significantly lower passing rates in math than the other two sets of school districts which did not differ from each other in math passing rates. the same pattern was present for english, science, social studies, and writing. when the passing rates of hispanic students were analyzed, the poorest passing rates were in school districts in the less than 60% of instructional expenditures ratio schools. an examination of table 3 shows the average passing rates for each taks measure, separated by instructional expenditures group. findings for hispanic students were commensurate with the results for african american students. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 table 3 descriptive statistics for taks passing rates in math, english, science, social studies, and writing by instructional expenditure ratios group for hispanic students taks measure by instructional expenditures n m sd math 65% and above instructional expenditures 101 75.86 9.50 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 355 75.42 8.01 below 60% instructional expenditures 197 72.27 10.76 english 65% and above instructional expenditures 101 87.99 5.39 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 355 87.69 4.77 below 60% instructional expenditures 197 86.35 6.52 science 65% and above instructional expenditures 101 65.37 12.51 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 355 63.39 9.52 below 60% instructional expenditures 197 60.91 13.52 social studies 65% and above instructional expenditures 101 87.49 6.92 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 355 87.01 6.07 below 60% instructional expenditures 197 85.55 9.31 writing 65% and above instructional expenditures 101 91.27 5.34 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 355 90.50 5.54 the 65% instructional expenditure ratio below 60% instructional expenditures 197 88.47 8.10 white students to ascertain whether a difference was present in student performance on the five taks measures as a function of instructional expenditures for white students, a manova was conducted and yielded a statistically significant result, λ = .92, p = .001, n2 = .04. this overall difference was reflective of a small effect size (cohen, 1988). univariate follow-up fs revealed statistically significant differences for math, f(2, 729) = 16.72, p < .001, n2 = .04; for english, f(2, 729) = 11.17, p = .001, n2 = .03; for science, f(2, 729) = 25.07, p < .001, n2 = .06; for social studies, f(2, 729) = 20.51, p < .001, n2 = .05; and for writing, f(2, 729) = 8.74, p < .001, n2 = .023. effect sizes for these results were small, with the exception of science, which was a moderate effect size (cohen, 1988). scheffe` post hoc procedures revealed that the school districts in the less than 60% instructional expenditures ratio group had statistically significantly lower passing rates in math than the other two sets of school districts which did not differ from each other in math passing rates. the same pattern was present for english, science, social studies, and writing. when the passing rates of white students were analyzed, the poorest passing rates were in school districts in the less than 60% of instructional expenditures ratio schools. an examination of table 4 shows the average passing rates for each taks measure, separated by instructional expenditures group. findings for white students were commensurate with the results for african american students and for hispanic students. table 4 descriptive statistics for taks passing rates in math, english, science, social studies, and writing by instructional expenditure ratios group for white students current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 taks measure by instructional expenditures n m sd math 65% and above instructional expenditures 117 86.40 7.73 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 396 85.75 6.30 below 60% instructional expenditures 219 82.59 8.23 english 65% and above instructional expenditures 117 94.84 3.58 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 396 94.75 2.71 below 60% instructional expenditures 219 93.55 3.74 science 65% and above instructional expenditures 117 83.98 8.64 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 396 82.45 6.46 below 60% instructional expenditures 219 78.57 9.03 social studies 65% and above instructional expenditures 117 95.25 3.62 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 396 94.32 3.52 below 60% instructional expenditures 219 92.51 5.32 writing 65% and above instructional expenditures 117 94.18 5.62 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 396 93.44 5.73 below 60% instructional expenditures 219 91.68 6.45 the 65% instructional expenditure ratio discussion researchers previously cited (jones et al., 2007; lance et al., 2005; roper, 1996; standard and poor’s, 2005, 2006; turner, 1999; walters, 2005) have documented the absence of any strong relationships between the 65% instructional expenditure ration and student performance on state assessments or the scholastic aptitude test. these researchers, though important, seem to address the broader systems of state accountability and national norm tests, but ignore perhaps a greater understanding of subsets of the population within these broader systems. in this study, the presence of statistically significant differences were documented between schools that maintain a 60% or higher instructional expenditure ratio in their student performance on the reading, math, social studies, science, and writing portions of the texas assessment of knowledge & skills compared to schools that have lower than a 60% instructional expenditure ratio. further, our findings demonstrate clear relationships between instructional expenditure ratio and sub-population student performance. in contrast to jones et al. (2007) and standards and poor’s (2005) who reported the lack of relationships between the 65% instructional expenditures ratio and student test performance, the presence of statistically significant relationships were demonstrated between a benchmark of 60% instructional expenditures and student test performance. as such, a better benchmark may exist at the 60% level than at the 65% level. this recommendation is particularly important as schools continue to close the gap in student performance among sub-group. several cautionary statements are necessary to discourage readers from going beyond the limitations of this study. first, this study represents a causal-comparative research design and, as such, does not yield cause-and-effect results. second, a limited set of variables was examined that related to instructional expenditure ratios and student academic performance. third, data current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 from only one state were analyzed. fourth, data from only a single school year were analyzed. therefore, readers are urged to be tentative to the extent they make generalizations from this study. researchers are encouraged to extend this study by investigating other schooling financial variables. though results of this study, as well as the other studies cited, do not offer a panacea on the complete impact of money on student performance, it is clear that money does influence student achievement. it is clearly true that the enterprise of educating young people is complex and involves many variables. one of those variables is resources and thus it clearly stands that money does matter. perhaps the better question is, “to what extent and in what way does money matter?” the 65% instructional expenditure ratio references americans for prosperity. (2005). highlights on the 65% initiative to put 65 percent of the education funding in the classroom. retrieved from http://www.americansforprosperity.org/highlights-65-initiative-put-65-percent-educationfunding-classroom american psychological association. (2001). publication manual of the american psychological association (5th ed.). washington, dc: author byrne, p. m. (2006). chairman’s perspective. retrieved from http://www.firstclasseducation.org/index.asp cohen, j. (1988). statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). new york, ny: wiley. first class education. (2005). frequently asked questions. retrieved from http://www.firstclasseducation.org/index.asp government affairs home. (2006). 65% rule background. retrieved from http://www.txla.org/html/legis/65rule.html jones, t. b., bingham, w. d., & jackson, s. h. (2007). the emerging sixty-five percent instructional expenditure rule public policy: will student performance improve? in lemasters, l.k. & para, r. (eds.), at the tipping point: navigating the course for the preparation of educational administrators. lancaster, pa: pro-active publications. lance, k. c., rodney, m. j., & hamilton-pennell, c. (2005). libraries make powerful learners: the illinois study. retrieved from http://www.islma.org/pdf/ilstudy%20report.pdf national center for education statistics. (2003). financial accounting for local and state school systems. washington dc: author. onwuegbuzie, a. j., & daniel, l. g. (2002). uses and misuses of the correlation coefficient. research in the schools, 9(1), 73-90. roper, d. m. (1996). alabama public school expenditures as correlates of student academic achievement. ed.d. dissertation, the university of alabama, al: u.s. retrieved from proquest digital dissertations database. (publication no. aat 9633936) standard and poor’s. (2005). the issues and implications of the “65 percent solution.” school matters. retrieved from http://www.65percentdeceptionfacts.com/pdf/s&p_report.pdf current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 standard and poor’s. (2006). the issues and implications of the “65 percent solution – addendum.” school matters. retrieved from http://admin.schoolmatters.com/smresourcehandler/resourcehandler.res?rtype=file&rpi d=42767467&flnm=the%20issues%2065%20percent%20solution%20%20addendum.pdf texas education agency. (2008). instructional expenditure ratio. retrieved from http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/aeis/2008/glossary.html turner, y. m. (1999). the relationship between student achievement, per-pupil expenditure, and other factors in selected georgia public schools. ed.d. dissertation, university of sarasota, fl: u.s. retrieved from proquest digital dissertations database. (publication no. aat 9938767) will, g. (2005a, april). one man’s way to better schools. the washington post. p. b7. will, g. (2005b, april). the 65 percent solution. retrieved from http://townhall.com/columnists/georgewill/2005/04/10/the_65_percent_solution the 65% instructional expenditure ratio current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo draft september 28, 2008 arts-based teaching 1 arts-based teaching: a pedagogy of imagination and a conduit to a socially just education gail humphries mardirosian and sarah irvine belson american university yvonne pelletier lewis imagination stage for more information about this paper, contact gail humphries mardirosian at ghumphr@american.edu. mailto:ghumphr@american.edu� arts-based teaching 2 abstract this article describes a study in which 53 teachers participating in arts-based professional development courses and workshops gained a profound understanding of the role of the arts in education and an appreciation for the powerful role the arts can play in pedagogy and social justice. the findings of study demonstrate how arts-based instructional approaches contributed to the teachers’ perceptions about the importance of students’ active engagement in the learning process (i.e., the importance of student voice) and the role of higher-order thinking in providing all children the possibility of success in learning. we discuss how the described study was based on action research and how the participants’ perspectives were discerned from their writings using document analysis. arts-based teaching 3 introduction this paper presents findings from the impact of arts-based, in-service, professional development training on participating teachers’ readiness and ability to adopt pedagogy of social justice. we begin by examining the underlying political and personal responsibilities teachers assume when they decide to work as educators and to be part of a community dedicated to the education of our children. many educational researchers and theorists have described teachers’ and systemic responsibilities to children, and we find it useful to draw from their theories to engage in a meaningful discussion of pedagogy emphasizing social justice. next, we examine the current state of the field of education related to arts-based instruction. finally, we analyze how the intersection of these two fields can affect teachers' beliefs, attitudes, skills, and behavior. using document analysis and action research, we cull examples from the writings of 53 teachers. the teachers participated in three arts-based professional development six-week summer courses entitled “arts-based teaching” in addition to a oneday professional development workshop. we also draw upon data from concurrent student in-class residencies involving approximately 200 students. from our findings, we conclude the following: the arts have a powerful and important role in the ongoing development of a progressive, democratic, educational pedagogy. foundations of a pedagogy of social justice in education social justice is a common philosophical perspective in many fields including politics, religion, and economics. for those in education, concepts of social justice are particularly poignant, prompted by the systemic failure to provide equitable educational opportunities to students who are economically or socially disadvantaged both in terms of access to quality arts-based teaching 4 education and because of poverty. the need for a more socially just curriculum has long been recognized and described by many theorists. paulo freire (1993) described how educational concepts and practices can be analyzed in the context of a pedagogy of social justice. two major concepts in freire’s writings inform the theoretical basis of his paper. first and foremost, freire asserted dialog must be a central instrument of education. gottlieb and labelle (1990,p. 3) described freire’s “rehumanizing” discourses having significant value to a teacher’s decision making. a teacher can both create opportunities for expression and also use expression as modes of understanding. freire described children as “unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality” giving the teacher an opportunity to create experiences which allow for completing the being. as described by rafi (2005), freire sought the liberation of the oppressed by asking teachers to avoid authoritarianism through establishing dialog with their students. in this model, the teacher and the student both contribute to their cognition on the subject being studied through classroom discourse (p. 3908). this leads to a second important concept -the idea of shared knowledge creation. freire challenged teachers not to attempt to import educational practices, but rather, to re-invent the curriculum through shared action (ronald and roskelly, 2001). in this way, what is learned is not a static set of information but rather a process of thinking, and, therefore, liberation of those who are oppressed. john dewey (1938) posited that the responsibility of a democratic society is to develop children’s ability to question the status quo in order to move that society forward. dewey’s work is important to understand the state-of-the-art pedagogies concerning social justice. an example of these practices is seen in edelsky’s (2006) description of bilingual classrooms in which the teacher and student can engage in historicallyand culturally-shared social activities and together arts-based teaching 5 discover psychological and linguistic practices (p. xi). in her study of classrooms situated in a migrant community in duncan, arizona, she found teachers and students struggling with a statemandated curriculum and their own understandings of functional language (p. 58). dewey’s writings provide a foundation upon which we can build a set of perspectives and practices related to progressive, democratic goals of education. a progressive, democratic education proposes that schools do not merely serve the purpose of translating to children a finite pool of already existing knowledge. we engage in educating children so that our own society can ultimately progress beyond what we already know. today, dewey’s work challenges educators to consider the role of experience in the child’s interaction with the “real world” as a vehicle of opportunity by which we can move toward the goal of education. in his book, experience and education (1938), dewey stated a democratic society is intentionally progressive, ever widens its interests, and constantly encourages its members to act continuously as guardians of the democracy. it is, therefore, the responsibility of a democratic society to develop children’s ability to question the status quo, to create better processes within the society, and to progress toward a more just society. the concept of using discourse as a pedagogical tool, not only for educating but also as the main policy instrument for conceptualizing education, is posited by henry giroux (1981). discourse relates to an understanding of how the school creates and recreates forms of consciousness through the language we use to describe its goals since 1976, giroux has written about teaching and learning and how children should be given the opportunity to “negotiate their own shifting environments,” as they often do in the arts. giroux built on the work of freire by arguing schools need to construct conditions of empowerment for the majority of students so that discourse becomes a defining feature of education. on the particular subject of discourse, giroux stated educators should “critically analyze modern forms of discourse which disguise arts-based teaching 6 power relationships and can bring to a specific site the ability to inform and educate” (giroux, 1981, p. 87). for example, ladson billings (1992) contrasted the concepts of international efforts toward literacy to the “literacy campaign” in the united states (p. 381) and suggested literacy skills are technical, social, political and cultural. the current conceptions of literacy in the u.s. are primarily likely linked to a job attainment and must be challenged in order to create opportunities for empowerment (ladson billings, 1992). similarly, boler (1997) suggested the need for discourse has been prompted by the sudden emergence of the "emotional literacy" curriculum. she suggested without discourse and attention to emotion, teachers focus too heavily on rationality, biology, and pathology and, therefore, limit the possibilities of emotion and relationships. discourse is a concept that embodies the process of linking knowledge and power. the call for a socially-just curriculum is profound and is prominent in the literature of the educational field. boutte (2008) described the transfer from theory to practice. for example, dewey’s broad principles and theories r relating to social justice provide high ideals, but these principles and theories provide few practical approaches to achieve those ideals [in the classroom] (mcdonald, 2008). apple (2000) suggested the beliefs teachers hold and bring to the classroom about students and their in-class capabilities are significant indicators of how socially just their pedagogy will be in the classroom. when teachers give credence to the concept that some students are not able to learn, it creates a significant deterrent to democratic education. however, there are significant questions as to whether or not teachers are able to do take on the challenge of focusing on social justice in schools that are focused on teaching to the test. for example, ellsworth (1992) suggested when discourse is a popular practice in classrooms, the results of discourse often become vehicles of repression (p. 298). perhaps, as we suggest, the arts-based teaching 7 arts, particularly the performing arts, give the opportunity to challenge the status quo instead of reinforcing it as do traditional forms of discourse. this study examines arts-integration as a means to empower teachers to translate theory into action in the classroom and to view the classroom as an arena for social justice. arts-based teaching to consider the impact of student voice (i.e., students’ active and personalized participation in what and how they learn) and a progressive education (as described by dewey) on the learning experience of all children, the role of arts-based teaching in education should be considered. arts-based teaching furthers the functional understanding and practical application of current cognitive and affective learning theories. it is an instructional approach strongly aligned with brain research. this research posits that while the learning process takes place in each student’s mind, learning is enhanced when the teaching environment gives students opportunities to think out loud, exchange ideas with their peers, and produce collaborative work. for example, wolfe found “concrete experience is one of the best ways to make strong, longlasting neural connections” (2001, p. 188). arts-based teaching provides opportunities for these concrete experiences. further, recent findings compiled by seven cognitive neuroscientists and presented in the dana consortium report, learning, arts and the brain: a report on arts and cognition describes the interaction between art-based experiences and training and the “ability of the brain to learn in other cognitive domains” (2008, p. v). additionally, arts-based teaching engages students in authentic learning through delivering classroom practices that develop student capacity to function within our culture while incorporating elements of their own culture. support for the use of the arts as a means by which children can achieve academic success and strength of self-esteem comes from many sources. in an in-depth study conducted by arts-based teaching 8 anita page (1983), first, second, and third-grade students were tested for comprehension using dramatization or listening. page’s 1983 study found children were more engaged and scored higher on comprehension tests when the story was dramatized than when students were only listening to the story. the study also clearly demonstrated the drama “had more effect on the younger (grade one) students than older students (grades two and three)” (page, 1983). to support page’s findings, a study evaluating shakespeare & company’s national shakespeare institute (1998) found dramatically enacting shakespeare’s works allowed students to gain rich understanding of difficult texts. the study by the national shakespeare institute also “provides a model of how arts-based, project-based learning can assist students in developing higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills” (catterall, 2006, p. 49). in a study of fifth-grade students in remedial reading classes using three methods of instruction, results suggested, “creative drama assists students to develop ’mental images’ of stories, which in turn helps with comprehension” (catterall, 2006, p. 23). stevenson and deasy (2005) described this arts-rich environment as a “third space” where young people and adults can create in an environment free of barriers imposed by themselves or by others. activities engaging students in this manner not only have the promise of increasing student achievement, but also have the potential of contributing to a socially-just curriculum (zyngier, 2008). in a national endowment for the arts document, “critical evidence: how the arts benefit student achievement”, it is noted “the benefits associated with study of the arts are inclusive of all students, although they can be greatest for those who are educationally or economically disadvantaged. and, an arts-rich learning environment can have far-reaching effects that extend to the entire school and surrounding community” (rupert, 2006, p. 15). arts-based teaching 9 methodology arts-based study: from theory to practice this study describes how teachers' concepts of social justice in education were enhanced through art-based professional development courses and workshops. one of the authors, gail humphries mardirosian, designed the arts-based imagination quest (iq) professional development course and workshop and was involved as team leader in the action research project her contributions generated a “community of practice” in a reflective process throughout the professional development experiences. participants in the extensive workshops included k 12 teachers from washington, d.c., from all subject areas including special education. teachers in the field workshop included students and teachers from grades two through five. teachers’ development of instructional strategies were designed to address a pedagogy of social justice, which included giving students voice, developing a problem-solving and social equity perspective, and helping students develop their own understanding of cultural capital through an examination of their own culture and its impact on their learning. . document analysis of teachers' writing was used as a tool to understand the themes of social justice in teachers' pedagogical approaches and the degree to which those approaches were impacted by their participation in the arts-integrated professional development programs. the professional development courses and workshop in this study were based on an artsintegrated teaching and learning model, imagination quest (iq). in iq, the arts are used as a pathway to understanding and as tools for learning and have the goal of realizing potential in each individual student. to that end, a particular target of the iq program are title i schools often serving at-risk students, who because of limited english proficiency, poverty, race, geographic location, and/or economic disadvantage, face a greater risk of low educational arts-based teaching 10 achievement and/or reduced academic expectations. iq is based on the premise that arts-based teaching can help generate a fair system of education through the accommodation of different ways of learning and acknowledgement of and respect for the different cultures and backgrounds that exist in today’s classrooms. its primary goal is to engender teacher effectiveness in the classroom inhering to greater student achievement; fostering creative, analytical, and social skills; and, providing all students with the opportunity to succeed in learning. drawing upon hammond, the workshops aimed to manifest a democratic pedagogy that “supports freedom of expression, inclusion of multiple perspectives, opportunities to evaluate ideas and make choices, and opportunities to take on responsibility and contribute to the greater good” (1996, p. 144). they furthered, as gutman (1987) posited, teaching and learning involving knowing, doing, and analyzing; developing student capacity to function within a community of learners; and, attempting to realize democratic education. by fostering learning through the arts, the workshops also provided teachers and students with opportunities for ownership, invention, and self-actualization, creating a space for both the teacher and the student to “find their voice.” these professional development courses and workshops were designed to facilitate teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom through the development of experiences linked to the participating teachers’ core curriculum and to their school systems’ standards of learning for both content and the arts. through modeling, guided practice, coaching, and co-teaching, teachers were provided both a theoretical and practical foundation for applying arts-based teaching and learning strategies. the experiential approach used in iq involves the teacher participant in a 4-rs sequence of activities: (1) reading selections informing the theoretical framework of arts-based teaching; (2) reacting through and to the theories in authentic learning arts-based teaching 11 experiences and discussion; (3) responding to the theories through the arts-based mechanisms (body, voice, mind, and imagination); (4) reflecting on the full scope of the learning process through analyzing the practical experiences as they connect to the theoretical framework. the teachers were also provided with multiple possibilities for lesson plan development articulating the studied learning theories into instructional practices. this model highlighted links between the techniques of arts-based activities and cognition and memory via processes such as: • dual coding—enhancing memory by presenting material in both verbal and nonverbal representations, i.e., images, sign language. • hot cognition—enhancing memory by arousal of emotions and furthering personal connection to the content, i.e., relating the learning to the students’ own experiences. • making meaning/comprehension—furthering associations using multiple symbol systems, i.e., music, dance, visual arts... the following categories of activities helped teachers construct knowledge that relies on the arts: arts-based games drama/music/movement/play scripted performance using movement, body language, and visual symbols to connect language to meaning with body analogies, using role-play, visual theatre, improvisations, songs and dances that develop analogous thinking but in more extended scenarios and with more complex or expansive concepts. semi-formal or formal presentation developed over time and shared with an audience and integrating elements of theatre, music, dance, sign language, and the visual arts. arts-based teaching 12 while many of the teachers who participated in this study appeared eager to embrace new pedagogy, elements of apprehension, skepticism, and even fear were evident in their writings. many teachers expressed concerns about “not being artistic enough to use this approach.” others feared “not having the energy or the time for lesson plan development using the arts.” and others had exemplified defiant attitudes of “ok, i’m a math teacher, show me how this is relevant to me.” but as was evidenced through their concluding written and oral responses and ownership of the pedagogy via the transfer from training to classroom practice, the teachers’ initial outlooks changed to a positive stage. by the end of the workshops, the teachers were enthusiastically ready to adopt the arts-based instructional innovation. one teacher, who initially believed the course to be “intimidating,” arrived for her final (required) portfolio presentation in complete scuba diving outfit as she presented her self-developed lessons on the rainbow fish. an excerpt from another teacher’s poem presented on the last day of the class also demonstrates the teachers’ readiness to adopt arts-based instructional practices into the classroom: i’ve learned to make a juuuuuuuuuuuicy word and p-p-p-p-pronounce all my s-s-s-s-sounds there was a lot of standing up and activities done on the ground poetry and sound even beating on a drum using scarves to create a scene can bring a page alive to anyone acting and applying creating, singing, drawing too if it can be fun for me there’s no limit to what my kids could do based on the teachers’ output, it appeared the initial outlooks had changed to an acceptance that arts-based pedagogy is transformative. one teacher noted, the approach is “an arts-based teaching 13 oasis for today’s dehydrated classrooms…bringing back the joy of learning and self-discovery to all our learners.” data collection and analysis data collection the data in this study were collected from two sources: (1) writings from participants in three six-week imagination quest (iq) teach to reach professional development courses; and, (2) data collected from a one-day iq professional development workshop followed by a learning to read, reading to learn consisting of seven sessions, in-class student residency, coconducted by an iq-trained classroom teacher and iq artist/educators specializing in visual theatre/sign language and visual arts, along with music and dance, to present a core reading book story content with the use of multiple symbol systems. data from the courses were derived from the writings of the participants; data from the workshop were derived from teacher evaluations using a k-w-l qualitative data collection design that included preand post-workshop questionnaires. the qualitative data collection included specific prompts in three categories: what i know (k); what i want to learn (w); what i learned (l). the student residency data were derived from preand post-tests for the students involving: picture matching; vocabulary; and, sentence completion. a “storyboard” assessment was also administered as a way of measuring the students’ understanding of the sequencing of the story and their ability to explain the key plot elements of the story. data analysis the primary tool of research in this study is document analysis. the use of document analysis engenders a deeper understanding of teachers' perceptions. in this study, the document analysis yields teachers’ knowledge and practice of a pedagogy of social justice. strauss and arts-based teaching 14 corbin (1990) stated methods of qualitative research can be used to better understand any phenomenon through gaining in-depth information that may be impossible to convey quantitatively. the use of document analysis has been of particular benefit in teacher education. hansen (1995), for example, used a variety of documents from journal entries and memos written by participants to university policy documents to understand new teacher development. in this study, teachers’ writings before and after participation were transcribed and then imported into a qualitative research analysis program--hyperresearch software. themes related to social justice were identified using this code-and-retrieve data analysis program. theories were constructed through an examination of the themes that emerged through the analysis. the data were coded according to predetermined categories and additional emerging subcategories related to social justice. the coding schemes included statements from both the teachers and the residency students garnered through individual student and focus group interviews. the emerging subcategories were identified, discussed, and defined during the coding process. the most appropriate choice for unit of analysis focused on phrases that rationalize the teachers’ decision-making process. findings this study focused on the reactions/writings of the 45 teachers who participated in three intensive, arts-based, six-week professional development summer courses in 2005, 2006, and 2007. it also focused on the reactions/writings of nine teachers who participated in a one-day, arts-based professional development workshop and culminating seven-session, in-class student residency. six of the teachers were assessed—preand post-—regarding their knowledge and http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/jte/v9n1/hoepfl.html#strauss� http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/jte/v9n1/hoepfl.html#hansen� arts-based teaching 15 beliefs about the iq arts-integrated instructional pedagogy and its impact on a pedagogy of social justice. using document analysis, certain themes emerged. a prominent theme seen throughout the document analysis is that teachers gained a broader understanding and appreciation of students’ talents and skills. the document analysis also revealed teachers more greatly appreciated their own talents and skills as well. throughout the lessons, teachers focused on how skills related to the arts were potentially linked to their students’ increased success in learning. by the end of the study, the teachers developed a common conception that children who might otherwise be unsuccessful in the classroom may be better able to comprehend abstract content elements through the arts. as the teachers incorporated elements of the theory of the multiple intelligences (gardner, 1983), they acknowledged there are varying abilities and talents possessed by the children in their classrooms that are frequently underappreciated. the teachers attributed this growth in discernment of the children’s abilities to their personal experiences in the courses and workshop. the experience of the teachers to participate in arts-based activities encouraged them to comprehend what their students would gain in the classroom from an artsintegrated pedagogy. one teacher who “took a risk” commented: what i saw in the rest of the group were people who were confident, creative, uninhibited, and imaginative. what i saw in myself was a person who was inhibited, who felt uncreative and unimaginative, and who lacked confidence. i felt that i did not measure up against all of the others. in the end of this session, this teacher commented, “if i can do it, they [my students] can do it.” to demonstrate the understanding gained by teachers relating to their students’ skills and abilities, it is useful to include some comments derived from the participating teachers’ writings. one teacher noted, “this workshop has added so much color to my life. i have a more positive attitude towards teaching, lesson planning, and student involvement.” furthering this arts-based teaching 16 theme, another teacher observed, “by incorporating arts into my lessons, i can achieve a higher level learning from my students.” in addition to the understanding of the importance of artsbased skills in the classroom, teachers developed a commitment to diverse instructional approaches across classroom settings. the participating teachers’ writings included discussions of a broad set of concerns related to what was described as “traditional” approaches to teaching and a focus on basic knowledge instead of a focus on higher-level thinking this focus on basic knowledge was particularly noted in schools and classrooms where the majority of children came from communities of low socioeconomic standing or were second-language learners. teachers expressing these concerns perceived the arts could be more beneficial to children as arts-based instruction may create more opportunity to learn. examples of teachers’ statements around this theme included the following: “i now find the use of the arts appears to be extremely beneficial for the students in title i schools. arts integration, that is, arts-based teaching and learning, gives every student a chance to experience the subject matter and turns the abstract into something more concrete.” further evidence of the importance of arts-based instruction in enhancing socially just pedagogy is the increase in resistance and risk-taking in teachers’ vocabulary seen through the document analysis. teachers regularly discussed ways in which children should be exposed to different ways of knowing and a different set of concepts related to children’s roles in the classroom. they demonstrated a commitment to meet with school principals to discuss the need for more time for student-based performances; the need to allow students to assume a role in the organization and construction of the school calendar to include more time for their own interests and, the need to find ways to bring parents/caregivers and community members onto the school grounds for positive, student-centered activities. one teacher said, “this class has opened my mind to a world of possibilities with the school system.” another said, “i have already asked for arts-based teaching 17 a teachers’ back -to -school workshop on arts-integration.” another stated: “every principal and teacher should be a part of this approach!” teachers also related statements from parents/caretakers who had been provided the opportunity to see their children respond to artsintegrated instructions. these statements included: “i learned that there is more than one way of looking at things. by asking my child questions, we are able to work problems out together.” “the transfer of knowledge comes in many different forms. sometimes the transfer provides for learning that was unintended. my child now understands the importance of repetition. he sees how important it is to memorize lines. and now, he applies that same understanding and patience to other areas, such as multiplication tables.” another important theme of a socially just pedagogy revealed in the document analysis is the importance of students’ voices in the curriculum. analysis of teachers’ writings revealed an ongoing discussion of the importance of engendering students’ engagement in the classroom, both literally and theoretically. teachers described the desire to challenge students to act out the books they were reading or the ideas they had about society. they also discussed the need for students to spend time in the classroom discussing works and ideas, such as segregation and racism, relevant to their lives. one teacher remarked, “i have learned how to make learning applicable to my students' culture.” an illustrative example of this theme comes from another teacher: “before, i would have never imagined having my students really study something more written by dr. martin luther king, jr., other than the “i have a dream” speech. now i know my students need to read and perform more of his works to better understand exactly what that dream was.” many teachers commented on their own new abilities and the development of their own “voice,” on teacher noted, “i am now able to use innovative ways to reach children and teach them to think on a higher level—to help them in the process of critical thinking.” another arts-based teaching 18 teacher reacted to the use of arts in the classroom in saying, “the arts can inspire, stretch, and increase every student’s ability to learn and ability to live. conclusions the authors conclude the arts play a key role in generating pedagogy of social justice and can engender democracy in the classroom. the arts offer an opportunity for meaningful, unfettered creation. the arts allow one, through the act of making, to actively engage in one’s own development. the generation or making of art builds one’s understanding about relationships to others and to the environment. donald blumenfeld-jones, the lincoln associate professor of ethics at arizona state university’s college of education, stated making art is a meaningful social action since the maker, in order to both make and comprehend the art-piece, comes in contact with both her/his personal and social being. blumenfeld-jones suggested that: the arts may be educationally justified, not because of the ways we can understand ourselves through the examination and appreciation of art but, rather, because of the ways we can understand ourselves and live in a particular way through the making of our own art works (blumenfeld-jones, 1997). much of the extant research on the use of the arts in education focuses on students, yet the arts can also assist teachers in constructing a vocabulary related to a more progressive, sociallyjust curriculum. this study expands the use of the arts in the classroom beyond students creating and producing scripted plays to the retelling and dramatization of literature as an instructional strategy for the teachers. in furthering their understanding of the use of drama in engaging students in their own education teachers assist students in constructing and developing their own voice. the results of this study indicate the participating teachers increasingly saw students as important contributors within the school culture. the study also supports other research that suggests that policy makers should consider how to advocate for teachers in their quest to attend arts-based teaching 19 to students’ individual needs while developing a critical stance toward understanding how those needs are constituted and experienced (mcdonald, 2008). teachers and educational leaders-if committed to the types of schools envisioned by freire, dewey, or giroux-should embrace and endorse the arts as a means by which teachers help children to develop the tools of dialog these tools may be gained through the body, the voice, the mind, or the imagination. specifically, teachers must act as the conduits by which students are given the opportunity to do something much greater than simply appreciating art, as students must be allowed to become involved in the arts in a critical and generative fashion. this deep experience with the arts provides students with the opportunities to examine the world and their role in it. as suggested by rafi (2003), through these arts-constructive experiences, students and teachers can come together to study curriculum and meaningful issues in depth. this study begins to describe the ways in which the arts might enable teachers to engage in pedagogies of social justice and develop sophisticated forms of emotional literacy and awareness in their students and themselves (boler, 1997). a deeper question of how teachers can enable students to utilize the arts and other extra-curricular outlets such as debate and student government to develop their own voice should be undertaken. the analysis of teachers’ writings in this study leads to the idea that this approach may have contributed to a change in instructional methods for the study participants, but a powerful questions remains-how do teachers in the global educational system bridge the intersection between student voice, perspective, and resistance with student learning and the test-driven nature of the school environment? arts-based teaching 20 references apple, m. w. (2002). patriotism, pedagogy, and freedom: on the educational meanings of september 11. teachers college record, 104 (8), 1760-1772. author (2008). learning, arts and the brain. the dana consortium report on arts and cognition. new york, ny: dana foundation. boler, m. (1997). taming the labile other: disciplined emotions in popular and academic discourses. retrieved april 4, 2009 from http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/pesyearbook/97_docs/boler.html. blumenfeld-jones, d. (1997). aesthetic experience, hermeneutics, and curriculum. retrieved september 9, 2007 from http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/pesyearbook/97_docs/blumenfeld-jones.html boutte, g. s. (2008). beyond the illusion of diversity: how early childhood teachers can promote social justice. social studies, 99(4), 165-173. catterall, james s. (ed.) (2002) critical links: learning in the arts and student academic and social development arts education partnership, washington, dc: national endowment for the arts. dewey, j. 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(re) conceptualizing student engagement: doing education not doing time. teaching & teacher education, 24 (7), 1765-1776 arts-based teaching arts-based study: from theory to practice if it can be fun for me based on the teachers’ output, it appeared the initial outlooks had changed to an acceptance that arts-based pedagogy is transformative. one teacher noted, the approach is “an oasis for today’s dehydrated classrooms…bringing back the joy of learning... data collection and analysis findings scripted performance many teachers commented on their own new abilities and the development of their own “voice,” on teacher noted, “i am now able to use innovative ways to reach children and teach them to think on a higher level—to help them in the process of critical t... conclusions exploring parental_final volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x exploring parental aggression toward teachers in a public school setting david c. may eastern kentucky university jerry johnson eastern kentucky university yanfen chen eastern kentucky university lisa hutchison eastern kentucky university melissa ricketts eastern kentucky university citation may, d., johnson, j., chen, y., hutchison, l., & ricketts, m. (2010). exploring parental aggression toward teachers in a public school setting. current issues in education, 13(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract almost all of the extant research examining aggressive activity uses data from student populations. in this study, we extend that literature by examining teacher perceptions of parental aggression in public schools in kentucky. using data from a sample of 5,971 public school teachers, we determine that parental aggression directed at public school teachers is a rare event, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 2 and when it occurs, it is far more likely to be verbal than physical in nature. the multivariate results presented here further indicate that younger teachers, teachers with advanced degrees, and teachers from more heavily populated areas as more likely to have experienced parental aggression than their counterparts. implication for policy and suggestions for future research are also discussed. keywords: parental aggression; teacher victimization; school violence; parent-teacher communication exploring parental aggression 3 about the author(s) author: david c. may affiliation: eastern kentucky university email: david.may@eku.edu author: jerry johnson affiliation: eastern kentucky university email: jerry.johnson@eku.edu author: yanfen chen affiliation: eastern kentucky university email: yanfen.chen@eku.edu author: lisa hutchison affiliation: eastern kentucky university email: lisa.hutchison@eku.edu author: melissa ricketts affiliation: eastern kentucky university email: melissa.ricketts@eku.edu exploring parental aggression toward teachers in a public school setting current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 4 while researchers have identified a number of characteristics and causal influences related to aggression against students in school settings, similar research focusing on aggression against teachers is limited and typically concerned only with instances that involve students as perpetrators. given the literature describing an inherent conflict in parent-teacher relationships, the emerging recognition of the “pushy parent” (beard, 1991; estes, 2002; frean, 2002), and increased recognition of the existence of incidents of parental aggression against school personnel, a more thorough examination of the issue of parental aggression is warranted. the research reported here is an attempt to fill that void by (1) examining public school teachers' perceptions of (and experiences with) parental behaviors they perceive as aggressive or otherwise problematic, and (2) investigating the extent to which perceptions and experiences vary according to selected teacher, school, and community characteristics. we begin with a review of the literature on teacher experiences with (and perceptions of) instances of parental aggression and violence, followed by a description of the methods through which these data were collected. using self-reports from a cross-section of elementary, middle, and high school teachers from the state of kentucky, we then provide a descriptive analysis of teacher perceptions of, and experiences with) problematic behaviors on the part of parents. we follow that with results from analyses investigating variations in perceptions and experiences according to individual teacher characteristics, school characteristics, and community characteristics. finally, we conclude with policy recommendations and suggestions for future research. literature review in recent years, recognition of the seriousness of school safety issues has brought about a concerted effort to document the existence, types, and frequency of crimes and aggressive exploring parental aggression 5 behaviors that occur within schools (bauer, guerino, nolle, & tang, 2008; dinkes, kemp, & baum, 2009; eaton et al., 2007; harris & udry, 2010; national center for education statistics, 2009). however, the majority of information specific to the issue of acts of aggression in school settings has focused primarily on student-on-student behaviors (bauer et al., 2008; dinkes et al., 2009) and includes only a small amount of information regarding aggression towards teachers (callahan & rivara, 1992; johnston, o’malley, & bachman, 1993). moreover, a growing literature has also sought to identify the causal influences of aggressive behaviors among students. of particular relevance to the current project, out of this effort has emerged a wealth of information regarding the influential nature of parents as predictors of student aggression within schools (batsche & knoff, 1994; farrington, 1989; hotaling, strauss & lincoln, 1989; loeber & stouthamer-loeber, 1986; olweus, 1980; paperny & deisher, 1983; patterson, dishion, & bank, 1984; trickett & kuczynski, 1986). a related literature has examined the adversarial nature of the parent-teacher relationship as well (anderson-levitt, 1989; attanucci, 2004; fine, 1993; katz, 1996; lasky, 2000; lightfoot, 2003; lodish, 1994; trumbull, rothstein-risch, & greenfield, 2000). in response to this body of knowledge regarding the importance of parents' role in the school environment and culture, researchers have also attempted to develop appropriate methodologies for dealing with the inherent conflict between parents and teachers (ames, 1995; epstein, 2001; fenwick, 1993; krumm, 1989; rucci, 1991; st. john-brooks, 2001). much of the aforementioned literature focuses on how to resolve the inherent teacherparent conflict or improve the nature of parental involvement in the school, yet little attention has been paid to the specific issue of parental aggression in education. this lack of attention is surprising given that studies have identified parental attitudes as a significant source of stress for current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 6 teachers (brown, 1984; heads fear, 2000; moses, slough, & croll, 1987; phillips, 2005). in fact, the strain of dealing with parents has been cited as one of the primary factors in new teachers leaving the profession (phillips, 2005). further, documented incidents of parental aggression towards school administrators are numerous. philadelphia public schools reported 57 instances of parental assaults against teachers in one six-month period. in a 2001 study of school administrators in one florida county, trump and moore (2001) found that 70% of respondents had been threatened by a parent. they identified three primary types of threats that occurred: verbal threats accompanied by intimidation, non-contact threats accompanied by intimidation, and intimidation with physical contact. while the study results confirmed the anecdotal belief that parental aggression towards teachers existed in their district, the authors cautioned against generalizing beyond their district and suggested replicating their study in other places (trump & moore, 2001). from an international perspective, 140 members of the national association of head teachers reported being assaulted in the united kingdom in the year 2001 (figures confirm, 2001; rights culture, 2001). in edinburgh alone, over 70 parental assaults of teachers occurred during 2004 (meglynn, 2005). recent incidents of parental aggression in a variety of other contexts further recommend this line of inquiry for additional investigation. parental involvement in extracurricular activities has been linked to a wide range of behaviors, including relatively harmless acts of overextending their child’s involvement in youth sports to more serious acts of physical aggression and even murder (freivogal, 1991; kanter, 2002; sports illustrated, 2000). indeed, increasingly close parental involvement in extracurricular activities and debates between parents and teachers regarding academic grades has resulted in the emergence of a “pushy parents” typology (beard, 1991; estes, 2002; frean, 2002). exploring parental aggression 7 although society has recognized the existence of “pushy parents” and educators have sought to develop strategies to address conflict in parent teacher relationships, limited empirical research examines parental aggression towards teachers. specifically, while some research is available, it is limited in scope and geography. the present study fills a void in this literature by conducting a descriptive and exploratory analysis focusing on parental aggression toward teachers. this study will enable researchers to learn more about 1) the prevalence and incidence of behaviors perceived as aggressive or problematic, and 2) the teacher, school, and community characteristics associated with the presence and prevalence of such behaviors. methodology survey construction the limited literature on parental aggression towards teachers necessitated developing original constructs to include in the survey instrument. to facilitate that development, the researchers convened a focus group following a structured group format (morgan, 1997) with a representative group of administrators and teachers (n = 10). the purpose of the focus group was to solicit information regarding the following issues: (1) conceptual definition of parental aggression, (2) forms of parental aggression, (3) frequency and extent of parental aggression, (4) issues around which parental aggression arises, (5) current responses to parental aggression, and (6) possible recommendations for dealing with aggressive parents. several themes emerged from analysis of the focus group data. the question concerning the conceptualization of parental aggression resulted in the identification of two primary sources of conflict, communication and issues of control, as well as a suggestion for a more appropriate conceptualization of the problem. specifically, participants stressed the need to frame the survey current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 8 instrument to conceptualize the issue from the standpoint of a problem versus a conflict (i.e., to extend the inquiry beyond just overtly aggressive behaviors to consider other problematic interactions). the question concerning the types of parental aggression also yielded several themes, with verbal, property, and physical aggression identified as the most common. the question concerning the frequency and extent of parental aggression produced results suggesting that while few parents were problematic, dealing with those problematic parents consumed an inordinate amount of the teacher’s time. a total of seven themes emerged for the question concerning the issues around which parental aggression arises: grades, discipline, special education, curriculum, absences, extracurricular activities, and negative media portrayal. the aforementioned themes served as the basis for developing the survey instrument. data collection data were collected via electronic questionnaire. while electronic questionnaires may not yield representative results for surveys of the general public, valid, reliable electronic surveys involving members of organizations that have both access to the internet and valid email addresses can be conducted with minimal issues of coverage (devoe et al., 2000). a letter was mailed to all kentucky superintendents (n = 176) describing the purpose and methodology of the study and asking for the email addresses of all school principals in the district and permission to send an email to each principal asking for their help in administering the questionnaire. the initial letter was followed up with three mailings and a phone call. in the end, 161 (91.5%) superintendents agreed to allow their principals to participate. using an email distribution list of principals created from addresses provided by the superintendents, an informational letter was emailed to the principals. approximately one month later, principals were sent an email containing the link to the web-based survey and were asked exploring parental aggression 9 to forward the email to all the teachers in their school. the website was deactivated after approximately six weeks. after cleaning the data, the sample consisted of responses from 5,971 public school teachers. estimating an accurate response rate for this project is problematic. if each of the principals forwarded the email to all teachers in their school, then 33,106 teachers, the number of teachers in the 161 districts who agreed to participate in the research, had the opportunity to complete the questionnaire. because the sample under study here consists of 5,971 respondents, our response rate using that calculation strategy is 18.0 percent. this estimate is conservative, at best, as it assumes that (1) all principals in all districts whose superintendent cooperated were able and willing to forward the email containing the link to the web-based survey to all the teachers in their school and (2) all teachers in those schools received and read that email. nevertheless, the low response rate is indicative of the literature suggesting that lower response rates generally result from online versus pen and paper survey administrations (handwerk, carson, & blackwell, 2000; matz, 1999; sax, gilmartin, & bryant, 2003; tomsic, hendel & matross, 2000; underwood, kim & matier, 2000). demographic characteristics of teachers in the sample are remarkably similar, however, to the overall population of kentucky teachers in terms of race and gender, suggesting that nonresponse bias is not a serious issue (dillman, 1991; krosnick, 1999). as such, while the findings presented here need to be taken in the context of this sample and are not immediately generalizable to the state as a whole, it is reasonable to expect that future research efforts with more representative samples would produce similar results. moreover, if we construe the 5,971 respondents as a sample for the population of 33,106 teachers, sample size calculations using a current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 10 confidence level of 95% result in a confidence interval of 1.15 when based on the most stringent range of responses (two-item, or 50%). data analysis the following research questions guided the quantitative investigation in this study: 1. to what extent have public school teachers in kentucky experienced aggressive or otherwise problematic parental behaviors? 2. what do public school teachers in kentucky perceive to be the primary causes of problematic interactions with parents? 3. how do teachers’ experiences and perceptions with regard to problematic interactions with parents vary according to key characteristics of the teacher (e.g., gender, age, years of education experience, education level)? 4. how do teachers’ experiences and perceptions with regard to problematic interactions with parents vary according to key characteristics of the school and community (e.g., grade level, school enrollment, community population size)? the research questions were addressed using descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance (anova), and multiple linear regression analysis. specifically, descriptive statistics were used to present a general overview of characteristics of the teachers, schools and communities represented in the sample, and were also used to describe experiences with aggressive or problematic interactions for the sample as a whole. a one-way anova test was then used to investigate the extent that incidences of problematic behaviors vary according to the level of the school (i.e., elementary, middle, or high). finally, multiple linear regression analysis was used to investigate the impact of salient teacher and school characteristics on the number of instances of aggressive or problematic interactions with parents reported by respondents. exploring parental aggression 11 additional description and specification of the anova and regression models follows in the next section, accompanying the results reported from these investigations. this study is responsive to key gaps in the literature regarding parental aggression toward teachers. in general, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners have little information about: (1) the prevalence or incidence of parental aggression toward teachers; and (2) situational and contextual factors associated with parental aggression toward teachers. thus, despite the caveats indicated by the sampling limitations, this project lays an important foundation for future work in this area. results descriptive analyses tables 1 to 4 provide descriptive and frequency statistics for demographic and professional characteristics of respondents in the sample. table 1 presents descriptive statistics for respondents’ age and years of teaching experience. tables 2-4 offer frequency statistics describing gender, race, and education level distributions among the sample. table 1 summary of descriptive statistics for respondents’ age and tenure in education variable n min. max. mean sd teacher’s age 5,743 21 75 41.636 10.493 years experience 5,933 0 43 12.670 8.976 table 2 summary of frequency statistics for teacher gender variable frequency percent valid cumulative current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 12 percent percent valid female 4,856 81.3 81.6 81.6 male 1,097 18.4 18.4 100.0 total 5,953 99.7 100.0 missing 18 .3 total 5,971 100.0 table 3-summary of frequency statistics for teacher race variable frequency percent valid percent cumulative percent valid black 109 1.8 1.8 1.8 white 5,757 96.4 96.9 98.7 american indian 24 .4 .4 99.1 hispanic 17 .3 .3 99.4 asian 11 .2 .2 99.6 other 17 .3 .3 99.9 multiracial 7 .1 .1 100.0 missing 29 .5 total 5,971 100.0 table 4 summary of frequency statistics for teacher education level variable frequency percent valid cumulative exploring parental aggression 13 percent percent valid some college 9 .2 .2 .2 bachelor’s 1,428 23.9 24.0 24.2 master’s 2,957 49.5 49.7 73.9 masters +30 hours 1,502 25.2 25.3 99.2 ed.d./ph.d. 48 .8 .8 100.0 total 5,945 99.6 100.0 missing 26 .4 total 5,971 100.0 tables 5 to 7 provide frequency statistics for school and community characteristics. table 5 reports the distribution of respondents by school level, table 6 reports the distribution of respondents by school size, in discrete categories, and table 7 reports the distribution of respondents by community size, in discrete categories. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 14 table 5 summary of frequency statistics for school level variable frequency percent valid percent cumulative percent valid elementary 2,598 43.5 43.6 43.6 middle 1,501 25.1 25.2 68.7 high 1,865 31.2 31.3 100.0 total 5,964 99.9 100.0 missing 7 .1 total 5,971 100.0 exploring parental aggression 15 table 6 summary of frequency statistics for school size (enrollment) categories variable frequency percent valid percent cumulative percent valid less than 250 471 7.9 8.0 8.0 251 to 500 1,922 32.2 32.5 40.5 501 to 750 1,874 31.4 31.7 72.2 751 to 1,000 754 12.6 12.8 84.9 1,001 to 1,250 335 5.6 5.7 90.6 1,251 to 1,500 272 4.6 4.6 95.2 1,501 to 1,750 151 2.5 2.6 97.8 1,751 to 2,000 73 1.2 1.2 99.0 2,001 to 2,500 59 1.0 1.0 100.0 total 5,911 99.0 100.0 missing 60 1.0 total 5,971 100.0 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 16 table 7 summary of frequency statistics for community size (population) categories variable frequency percent valid percent cumulative percent valid less than 2,500 974 16.3 16.6 16.6 2,501 to 5,000 1,047 17.5 17.8 34.4 5,001 to 10,000 861 14.4 14.7 49.0 10,001 to 25,000 1,169 19.6 19.9 68.9 25,001 to 50,000 784 13.1 13.3 82.3 50,001 to 150,000 388 6.5 6.6 88.9 over 150,000 653 10.9 11.1 100.0 total 5,876 98.4 100.0 missing 95 1.6 total 5,971 100.0 tables 8 and 9 provide frequency and descriptive statistics related to respondents’ experiences with aggressive or problematic interactions with parents. table 8 reports the number and percentage of respondents who experienced one or more incidents in a given category, as reported by respondents based on their overall career (i.e., since they started teaching). table 9 reports descriptive statistics for the total number of aggressive or problematic interactions; in other words, the sum of all aggressive or problematic interactions, per the seven types of interactions reported in table 8. exploring parental aggression 17 table 8 incidence of respondents reporting various problematic interactions with parents interaction frequency valid percent a parent has shouted at me in anger 1,930 36.0 a parent has used profanity directed toward me 1,506 27.9 a parent has verbally threatened me 820 15.2 a parent has sent numerous emails to harass me 443 8.3 a parent has detained or attempted to detain me against my will 300 5.6 a parent has damaged my property at home or school 122 2.3 a parent has hit, pushed, or attempted to hit or push me 91 1.7 table 9 summary of descriptive statistics for the number of total incidents reported variable n min. max. mean sd incidents reported 5,426 0 255 3.2254 10.567 the results presented in table 8 reflect responses to questions regarding the prevalence of problematic behaviors that respondents had experienced in their careers. the most prevalent form of aggressive/problematic behavior was verbal aggression. more than one in three respondents reported that a parent of a child at the school had shouted at them in anger, more than one in four reported that a parent had used profanity directed toward the respondent, and current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 18 more than one in seven reported having been threatened verbally. considerably less common, about one in eight respondents reported having been harassed as a result of receiving numerous emails. far fewer respondents had experienced any of several more serious situations: a parent detaining or attempting to detain the teacher in a location in which they did not want to be (5.6%); a parent damaging their property at school or at their home (2.3%); or a parent pushing, hitting, or attempting to push or hit them (1.7%). the results presented in table 9 represent descriptive statistics for the variable measuring the total number of incidents reported in the above-described seven categories of aggressive or problematic interactions with parents. of note, the mean of 3.2 is potentially misleading as an illustration of what is a typical among respondents. the median statistic for this variable is in fact 0, and a total of 3,243 respondents (approximately 60%) reported no interactions in one of these categories. thus, the majority of respondents in the sample have never experienced aggressive or otherwise problematic behavior from a parent. a sizable minority did report having some but not many incidents; an additional 30% reported between one and eight total instances of aggressive parent behavior or problematic interactions with parents. less than 3% of respondents reported 20 or more incidents of such interactions over the course of their career. table 10 reports frequency statistics for the variable measuring respondents’ perceptions of the most important causes of problems between teachers and parents. exploring parental aggression 19 table 10 summary of frequency statistics for respondents’ perception of most important causes of problems with parents variable frequency percent valid percent cumulative percent valid discipline 3,016 50.5 51.4 51.4 grades 1,637 27.4 27.9 79.3 special education 417 7.0 7.1 86.4 other issues 285 4.8 4.9 91.3 attendance 228 3.8 3.9 95.2 curriculum 117 2.0 2.0 97.2 sports 120 2.0 2.0 99.2 other extracurricular 44 .7 .8 100 total 5,864 98.2 100.0 missing 107 1.8 total 5,971 100.0 more than half of the respondents reported that discipline was the most important cause of problems with parents, while another 28% cited grades as the leading cause. other notable causes included special education, cited as most important by 1 in 14 respondents, and attendance issues, cited as most important by 1 in 25 respondents. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 20 investigative analyses the results reported in the previous section represent measures of central tendency and variance among the nearly 6,000 respondents in the sample, thus depicting their collective experiences with regard to aggressive or otherwise problematic parent behavior directed toward teachers. as a follow-up to that general depiction, here we investigate the extent to which reported experiences vary according to characteristics of the respondent, the school, and the community. the results from a one-way analysis of variance (anova) that was performed to investigate whether experiences with aggressive or otherwise problematic parent interactions vary according to the level of the school are reported in tables 11 and 12. the dependent variable for this analysis operationalizes respondents’ experiences as the total number of incidents reported from among the categories in table 8. the factor variable is the grade level of the school (i.e., elementary, middle, or high school) table 11 summary of anova for number of incidents reported by school level sum of squares df mean square f between groups 1467.307 2 733.654 6.581** within groups 603802.379 5416 111.485 total 605269.686 5418 **p = 0.001 exploring parental aggression 21 table 12 post-hoc bonferroni comparison for number incidents reported by school level 95% ci comparisons mean difference (in reported incidents) std. error lower bound upper bound elementary vs. middle -1.130* 0.358 -1.989 -0.271 elementary vs. high -0.972* 0.336 -1.777 -0.166 middle vs. high 0.158 0.384 -0.762 1.079 * p < 0.05 anova results indicate that there is a significant difference in the number of aggressive parent behaviors or problematic parent interactions experienced by teachers at the three grade levels (f = 6.581, df = 2, p < .01). this suggests that the grade level of the teacher’s school affects the number of aggressive/problematic parent incidents experienced by the teacher. results of post hoc comparisons indicate that experiences for teachers at the elementary level differ significantly from that of each of the other two groups; elementary teachers experienced significantly fewer incidents than either middle or high school teachers. elementary teachers, on average, experienced 1.1 fewer incidents than middle school teachers, and .9 fewer incidents than high school teachers. the difference in the number of incidents experienced by middle school teachers when compared to high school teachers was not statistically significant. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 22 we next performed a multiple linear regression analysis to investigate whether salient teacher and school characteristics constitute viable predictors for the same dependent variable used in the anova (i.e., the variable measuring the total number of instances of aggressive or problematic interactions with parents reported by the respondent). independent variables included respondent’s sex, age, total years of experience in education, and educational attainment, along with school enrollment size and community population size. prior to performing the analysis, relevant statistical tests and transformations were performed to ensure that variables met assumptions for regression analysis. table 12 summary of regression analysis for variables predicting number of incidents reported by teacher (n = 5, 691) variable b se b β sex of respondent .129 .062 .048 age of respondent -.010 .004 -.100** years experience in education .004 .005 .031 level of educational attainment .080 .038 .054* school enrollment .020 .018 .030 community size .057 .012 .108*** notes: adjusted r2 = .162; *p ≤ .05; **p ≤ .01;***p ≤ .001 the r2 statistic in table 12 indicates that 16.2 percent of the variation in experiences with problematic parent behaviors is explained by the variables included in the regression equation. the results suggest that respondent’s age, respondent’s level of educational attainment, and exploring parental aggression 23 community size where the respondent was located all had statistically significant associations with problematic parental behavior. specifically, the regression results suggest (1) that, on average, the higher the age of the teacher, the less likely it is that the teacher will experience aggressive and/or problematic interactions with parents; (2) that, on average, the higher the education level of the teacher, the more likely it is that the teacher will experience aggressive and/or problematic interactions with parents; and (3) that, on average, the larger the community, the more likely it is that a teacher will experience aggressive and/or problematic interactions with parents. discussion interpretation of results as noted earlier, data limitations in this study prevent us from making generalizations to the larger population with statistical certainty. in other words, we cannot draw statistical conclusions. given the close similarities between teachers, schools, and communities in the sample and in the larger population, we can, however, draw logical conclusions based upon the results reported here. first, the experiences and perspectives of nearly 6,000 kentucky teachers were assessed regarding the incidence and prevalence of problematic behavior among parents. the results presented here suggest that although a substantial minority of teachers had experienced verbal abuse and threats from parents, only a small percentage of teachers had actually experienced any physical aggression from parents. in other words, while the problem of parental aggression was present for many of the teachers in the study, the issue was more verbal than physical. this finding, coupled with the fact that much of the literature on parental aggression against teachers is found in popular or trade magazines (e.g., time, good housekeeping, times current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 24 educational supplement), further suggests the need for scholarly research in this area. based on the results of this study, most teachers are likely to experience somewhat regular, if primarily verbal, conflict with parents. contradicting anecdotal evidence and media accounts of numerous threats and assaults on parents, the results presented here suggest that teachers in this sample experienced only a small amount of physical confrontations with parents. the explanation for this perception that teachers are at great risk of physical assault by parents may be attributed to the rarity of these types of events, rather than their frequency. whenever a teacher is assaulted by a parent, it becomes a newsworthy event, not just at the local level, but often at the state, regional, and sometimes national levels as well. thus, these rare events often dominate the news, saturating those areas with news accounts about these events. this saturation increases public perceptions that these events are regular occurrences in the school setting when, in actuality, verbal threats from parents far outnumber any sort of physical threat against teachers in the school setting. secondly, respondents indicated that the primary cause of conflict between parents and teachers is discipline. this finding suggests that teachers who regularly discipline students may increase the likelihood of parental conflict by doing so. consequently, it is important that school administrators be aware of this relationship and take steps to reduce potential for conflict between parents and teachers over disciplinary actions in their schools. one method through which administrators can do so is by supporting teachers when they discipline students and, if needed, by serving as the disciplinarian for teachers for particularly problematic children so teachers can focus on the academic tasks at hand, and not worry about increasing their risk for victimization by firmly and fairly enforcing classroom rules. exploring parental aggression 25 anova results also suggested that the experiences of elementary teachers with regard to parental aggression or problematic interactions differ from that of either middle school or high school teachers. specifically, both middle and high school teachers are, on average, likely to experience about one more incident of problematic parental behavior than an elementary teacher is. to characterize the practical significance of this one incident difference, it is worth recalling that approximately 60% of respondents reported no such incidents, and that 90% of respondents reported eight or fewer incidents. the one incident difference represents a 33% increase over the mean of 3.2, and a 100% increase over the median of 0. thus, differences in the experiences of elementary school teachers, when compared to those of middle school and high school teachers, are not only statistically significant, but substantively significant as well. the grade-level differences suggest that efforts in this area should be targeted at the middle and high school levels. teachers were more likely to experience incidents of parental aggression or other problematic interactions than their older counterparts, as were teachers working in larger communities. the relationship between age and exposure to increased incidents of parental aggression is intuitive, as younger teachers often do not have the life experience and maturity of their older counterparts, who have often developed strategies through the “school of hard knocks” that are effective in avoiding parental conflict. additionally, given that teachers working in smaller communities are generally more likely to have long-standing roots in that community (and often have attended the same school in which they are currently working) and are also more likely to interact with the parents of their children in settings outside of the school, this finding makes sense as well. it is also possible that differences in the number and/or severity of disciplinary incidents is a contributing factor—rural and small town schools, on average, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 26 experience fewer incidents and fewer serious incidents (nces, 2006). this difference is thus impacted by differences in community dynamics in urban, suburban, and rural settings. the regression results also suggest that teachers with more advanced degrees were more likely to experience incidents of parental aggression or other problematic interactions than their counterparts without those advanced degrees. although this relationship was somewhat unexpected, it is not completely surprising. it may be that teachers who return for additional graduate courses are more willing to experiment with innovative educational practices and theories than their counterparts who do not. these practices may make parents that are unfamiliar with these strategies uncomfortable and thus more likely to confront these teachers than they would be to confront their less innovative counterparts. it could also be that teachers with higher levels of education are less willing to tolerate questions or suggestions about their educational strategies and methods from parents. this resistance may make conflict with parents more likely. further analysis is needed to unravel these relationships. recommendations for future research the results of this descriptive and exploratory project warrant further inquiry into this line of research. specifically, the following recommendations for future research are offered: (1) replication of this project using a more representative data sample and additional salient variables, and (2) investigation of parental perceptions at different grade levels about school discipline, attendance, and other issues identified by respondents as causes of parent aggression and other problematic interactions. data for use in a replication or modified replication of this study could be obtained using different sampling and collection methods to achieve a more appropriate set of respondents. additional variables that could be added to enhance the work include (1) discipline data about exploring parental aggression 27 the teacher and school, additions that would allow for examining the influence of teachers’ disciplinary action and also provide some additional context for exploring school level influences; (2) locale codes from nces, an addition that would allow for more precise consideration of the influence of community characteristics by using an established 12 item typology describing school locations on a rural-suburban-urban continuum; and (3) types and perceptions of coursework completed by respondents as part of their graduate programs, additions that would allow for exploring the influence—and potential for influence—of graduate instruction on practices related to student discipline and parent engagement issues. the use of national datasets such as the schools and staffing survey and the national household education survey, both products of the national center for education statistics, should also be explored. a related line of inquiry with the potential to inform findings in this line involves the investigation of parent perceptions of salient issues identified in this project (e.g., discipline). results of such inquiry could confirm teacher perceptions that certain types of issues and interactions lead to aggression and problematic interactions. moreover, and more exploratory in nature, investigations in this line of inquiry would allow researchers to explore the hypothesis that differences in parent behaviors at different school grade levels are in part the result of changes in the perceptions of those parents as their children move through the different schooling levels, with a particular focus on the middle school transition years. recommendations for policy and practice the results presented here reveal that incidents involving problematic interactions with parents are far more likely to be verbal than physical, that middle school and high school teachers are more likely to experience such incidents, and that discipline is a primary cause of such incidents. with that in mind, the following recommendations for policy and practice are current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 28 offered: (1) that pre-service training and in-service professional development incorporate strategies for dealing effectively with verbal conflict; and (2) that schools involve parents in developing, implementing, and monitoring discipline policies and procedures. because teachers are most likely to experience verbal conflict with parents, providing training for teachers on how to avoid, prevent, and resolve verbal confrontations with parents (e.g., de-escalation strategies for preventing verbal confrontations from turning into physical conflict) is recommended for both pre-service and in-service teachers. additionally, training and support for teachers in developing non-confrontational approaches to student discipline are recommended. while providing training and support in these areas for all teachers is clearly warranted by results reported here, findings also suggest, if more tentatively, that inexperienced teachers likely need the most support and assistance if they are to build capacity in these areas. because discipline incidents are a primary cause of teacher-parent conflict, based on teacher perceptions, disciplinary policy and practice should be procedurally clean, should involve parents, and should provide for transparency in its development, implementation, and monitoring. schools can be proactive in preventing problems here by: (1) developing clear discipline codes, including consequences for specific infractions; (2) enforcing rules consistently and without favoritism; (3) communicating the rules to parents, students, and the community at large; and (4) creating and maintaining a process through which parents can address their concerns regarding discipline issues with the principal and, if needed, the superintendent and school board. involving parents in the process of developing discipline codes can be a very effective approach (sheldon & epstein, 2002). a clear disciplinary code and a process for addressing appeals and other issues should also be thoroughly explained in the student handbook. recent research (nces, 2006) suggests that only 60% of schools have a formal process to obtain exploring parental aggression 29 parent input on policies related to school crime and discipline, and only 19% of schools have a program that involves parents at school in helping to maintain school discipline. moreover, data on disciplinary incidents should be assembled and published in a manner that is accessible to parents and other interested parties in the community. schools should also be proactive in disseminating this information to parents at every opportunity and through a variety of media (e.g., print, electronic). clearly and proactively communicating this information may reduce the number of potentially problematic situations 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(eric document reproduction service no. ed 446513). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 34 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word playing with sciencean investigation of young children’s science conceptions and misconceptions .docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x playing with science: an investigation of young children’s science conceptions and misconceptions lori smolleck bucknell university vanessa hershberger washington episcopal school citation smolleck, l. & hershberger, v. (2011). playing with science: an investigation of young children’s science conceptions and misconceptions. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/ abstract the purpose of this research was to investigate the conceptions and misconceptions of young children (ages 3 – 8) related to science concepts, skills, and phenomena. these conceptions and misconceptions were investigated within the framework of the pennsylvania early learning standards for pre-kindergarten and the pennsylvania standards for kindergarten as developed and published by the pennsylvania department of education in 2005. in addition, the national science education standards also served as a foundation for our research. findings reveal the most common conceptions related to matter, magnetism, density, and air. extrapolations from current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 this research can be used by pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and teacher educators to implement experiences in the classroom that assist in developing and refining young children’s understandings of scientific concepts, skills, and phenomena. keywords: young children, science education, misconceptions, conceptions, conceptual change, conceptual learning playing with science – an investigation 3 about the author(s) author: lori smolleck affiliation: bucknell university email: lori.smolleck@bucknell.edu biographical information: lori a. smolleck is an assistant professor at bucknell university. she teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in the education department. her research interests include science education, self-efficacy, early childhood education, and literacy education. *correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to lori a. smolleck, 470, olin science building, department of education, bucknell university, lewisburg, pa 17837. email: lori.smolleck@bucknell.edu. author: vanessa hershberger affiliation: washington episcopal school biographical information: vanessa hershberger is an elementary school teacher at washington episcopal school in montgomery county, maryland. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 playing with science: an investigation of young children’s science conceptions and misconceptions past research in science education indicates that most educators underestimate the abilities of early childhood age children to learn science concepts (ayers, 1999; blosser, 1987; eaton, anderson, & smith, 1984; kyle, family, & shymansky, 1989). this notion is problematic because by holding this idea, teachers often fail to “…capitalize on young children’s seemingly innate interest and enthusiasm for science” (watters, diezmann, greishaber & davis, 2001, p. 2). children are constantly exploring, and as they investigate their environment, they create naïve understandings about the world in which they live. these naïve understandings become the building blocks for developing more sophisticated understandings and can therefore interfere with subsequent learning. children are “naturally inquisitive and begin doing science from the moment of birth by observing and sorting out their world” (martin, raynice & schmidt, 2005, p.13). as a result of these exploratory experiences, children often come to school with conceptions that are often inconsistent with commonly held views of scientific concepts, skills and phenomena. in many early childhood settings, science is often omitted from the classroom. in fact, research indicates that early childhood classrooms spend an average of 119 minutes per day on reading/language arts instruction versus 21 minutes per day for science instruction (fulp, 2002). in the rare cases when science is taught to young children, teachers often neglect children’s prior experiences. when teachers ignore the experiences that have been instrumental playing with science – an investigation 5 in forming students’ conceptions of the world, teachers are simultaneously ignoring the misconceptions that students hold about the world. teacher must understand both the conceptions and misconceptions of students in order to teach in a manner that allows for the correction and replacement of misconceptions with accurate scientific understandings. hence, the purpose of this research was to investigate the conceptions and misconceptions young children hold in relation to scientific concepts, skills, and phenomena. by understanding the conceptions and misconceptions of young children, educators may be better able to achieve the goal of scientific literacy for all children (national research council, 1996). framework misconceptions the term misconception is used to describe “a situation in which students’ ideas differ from those of scientists about a concept” (blosser, 1987, a variety of terms section, para. 2). as young children explore the world guided by curiosity and interest, children’s conceptions and misconceptions are based on their everyday experiences. the way that students characterize and explain the world is often guided by logical but scientifically inaccurate understandings. “in many cases students have developed partially correct ideas that can be used as the foundation for further learning” (as cited in committee on undergraduate science education, 1997, misconceptions as barriers to understanding section, para. 2). while students’ prior experiences serve as the foundation and context for further learning, educators should not underestimate the power of student’s misconceptions. “ausubel, (1968) noted that misconceptions are ‘amazingly tenacious and resistant to extinction…the unlearning of preconceptions might well prove to be the most determinative current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 single factor in the acquisition and retention of subject-matter knowledge’” (as cited in kyle, family, & shymansky, 1989, prior knowledge and conceptions of students section, para. 1). there are several ways that children develop conceptions and misconceptions. some of the sources of misconceptions include everyday observations, religious or mythical teachings, science teaching that does not adequately challenge students’ misconceptions, and vernacular misconceptions (committee on undergraduate science education, 1997). there are multiple contexts through which young children encounter information that promotes misconceptions. it is therefore possible for children to have multiple explanations for a given phenomena, depending on the context in which it occurs. young children are capable of delivering the appropriate answers to questions however, they may simultaneously hold misconceptions in which they believe strongly. for example, in a study reported by william philips (1991), “…it was estimated that 95% of [second graders] knew that the earth was a sphere. however, through interviews it was later discovered that while students said they believed it was a spherical planet, they actually believed that earth was indeed flat” (p. 21). this example demonstrates how students combine their everyday experiences with the world and the knowledge that they are taught in school. when students are exposed to two different explanations of scientific phenomena “it is possible that children develop mutually inconsistent explanations of scientific concepts – one for use in school and one for use in the ‘real world’” (blosser, 1987, findings related to elementary science section, para. 1). thus, it is important to consider how to truly uncover misconceptions. one way to correct the misconceptions that children have is through teaching for conceptual change. “misconceptions are rarely expressed aloud or in writing and, therefore, playing with science – an investigation 7 often go undetected…but before beginning instruction to challenge misconceptions a teacher must discover the misconceptions that his or her students hold” (phillips, 1991, p. 21). by understanding the conceptions and misconceptions of young children, educators can better adapt their teaching methods in an attempt to guide students toward accurate and more sophisticated understandings of science. conceptual change conceptual change elaborates on the theory of constructivism and refers to the process learners go through in “…coming to comprehend and accept ideas because they are seen as intelligible and rational” (posner, strike, hewson, & gertzog, 1982, p. 212). the conceptual change learning model is a view of learning that takes into account the interplay between what a student already knows and what the student is being taught (1982). in order for a student to replace a faulty understanding (i.e. misconception) with an accurate understanding, certain conditions must be met. these conditions describe the process by which learners’ “…central, organizing concepts change from one set of concepts to another” (p. 211). specifically three criteria must be met when attempting to replace misconceptions with accurate understandings. first, a student must experience “dissatisfaction” with existing conceptions (p. 214). students are unlikely to change their faulty conceptions unless they come to believe that the conceptions they hold no longer satisfy their need to solve problems (1982). second, the new conception that is to replace the old must be “intelligible” (p. 214). this means that the learner must come to “grasp how experience can be structured by a new concept sufficiently to explore the possibilities inherent in it” (p. 214). third, the new conception must appear “plausible” (p. 214). plausibility refers to a concepts ability to “at least appear to have the capacity to solve problems and be consistent with other knowledge and/or past experience” (p. 214). finally, the new current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 concept should be “fruitful” (p. 214). in other words, the new concept must present the learner with new avenues for solving problems. clearly, the process of conceptual change can at times be a lengthy and complex endeavor due to the fact that students have constructed their conceptions over extended periods of time. thus, at times, it can be quite difficult for learners to accept that their ideas need adjustment and/or replacement, even when these ideas are not supported by evidence. “changes can be strenuous and potentially threatening, particularly when the individual is firmly committed to prior assumptions” (posner, strike, hewson, & gertzog, 1982, p. 223). in fact, some students will go to extreme lengths to defend these ideas. on the other hand, some preconceptions can be easily revised through instruction (chi & roscoe, 2002). regardless of the tenacity of the beliefs, students will resist making a change “…unless they are dissatisfied with their current concepts and find and intelligible and plausible alternative that appears fruitful for further inquiry” (1982, p. 223). “the conceptual change model is widely accepted among science educators. though there are competing views of how conceptual change occurs, there seems to be no argument about whether conceptual change occurs; it is central to learning in science” (suping, 2003, conclusions section, para. 1). hence, by understanding the common misconceptions that children have, teachers can come to better understand the ways in which they can begin to scaffold instruction in an effort to encourage students to move through the process of conceptual change. “in science…misconceptions affect the way children understand a variety of scientific ideas,” therefore it is imperative that teachers understand why and how misconceptions can exist, as well as how they may be replaced (eaton, anderson & smith, 1984, p. 366). playing with science – an investigation 9 although teaching for conceptual change is challenging, it is an attainable goal and has proven benefits or learning. in this style of learning, children confront the inconsistencies in their scientific knowledge, and gain a deeper understanding of science content (watson & kopnicek, 1990). as such, providing instructional strategies that address the importance of students’ conceptions and prior knowledge is imperative. consequently, this study is aimed at investigating the conceptions and misconceptions young children hold in relation to science concepts, skills, and phenomena. as a result of this investigation, educators may come to better understand the conceptions and misconceptions that children hold in relation to science. furthermore, this knowledge will also assist in the development and implementation of instruction that supports conceptual change. method the purpose of this research was to investigate the conceptions and misconceptions young children hold in relation to scientific concepts, skills, and phenomena. this study represents qualitative research. qualitative data was collected from 63 children from three separate early childhood educational sites in an attempt to investigate the conceptions and misconceptions of young children. the age range of the participants was from 3 – 8 years old and data collection took place over the course of three months. of the 63 participants, 65% were male and 35% were female (see table 1). participants were predominantly white, middle class and resided in a suburban town of pennsylvanian. to conduct the research, the researchers created multiple inquiry-based science units for the areas of matter, magnetism, density, and air (see appendix). these inquiry-based units were developed using the national science education standards. hence, each unit was designed around the five essential features of classroom inquiry, which are necessary for teaching science current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 as inquiry (national research council, 2000). each of these units was aligned with both state and national standards and required children to express their understandings of science concepts and skills. the units encouraged student participation, thus the researchers assumed the position of uncovering student conceptions and misconceptions. it is important to note that throughout all of the lessons, the researchers were careful not to confirm or deny participant ideas. the goal of this research was to uncover the conceptions and misconceptions held by young children, not to teach them scientific content. in addition, within each of the lessons, the research asked the students to justify their thoughts, decisions and responses by giving priority to evidence. units were implemented with small groups of young children on multiple occasions. each site was visited an average of five times over the three month time period. during each visit, a unit was implemented and videotaped in an effort to capture all of the conceptions and misconceptions that children portrayed in both their verbal and non-verbal communication skills. the videotapes from each implementation were transcribed and then analyzed. data sources were analyzed in an attempt to identify the common conceptions and misconceptions held by the participants with regard to science concepts, skills, and phenomena. the method of choice for analyzing the data was grounded theory (denzin & lincoln, 2000) and narrative inquiry (clandinin & connelly, 2004). specifically, the researchers analyzed videotapes and transcripts to uncover the most common conceptions and misconceptions held by the participants in regard to matter, magnetism, density, and air. playing with science – an investigation 11 table 1 demographic information of teaching sites site a site b site c male 20 14 7 female 8 8 6 total 28 (44%) 22 (35%) 13 (21%) total n = 63 results upon completion of the qualitative data analyses, the researchers were able to identify the common conceptions and misconceptions young children hold related to the specific areas addressed within this study: matter, magnetism, density, and air. matter the common conceptions that children held related to matter included “a brick is a solid” (ages 7, 6, 5, 4) and “water is a liquid” (ages 6, 5, 4). in addition, children were able to provide several accurate examples of both solids and liquids. specifically, some children categorized liquids as something that “they could drink” (ages 7, 6, 5, 4). although this notion of ‘drinkable’ does not always determine if a substance is liquid, children used this idea when providing examples of liquids such as “milk,” “juice,” “soda,” “water…etc.” in addition, children also utilized the ‘touch test’ to determine if a substance was a solid or liquid. for example, children articulated the belief that “you can stick your finger in a liquid, but your finger stops for a solid” (ages 7, 6). children utilized this ‘touch test’ process to inform their ideas about additional objects/materials that were presented during the unit. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 the common misconceptions that children held related to matter were that “solids are “heavy” (age 5), “hard” (ages 7, 6, 5, 4), solids cannot be “eaten” (age 6), “broken” (ages 7, 6, 5), “bent” (ages 7, 6), “squished” (ages 7, 4), “have holes” (age 7), “be hollow” (age 7), or “soft” (ages 6, 5). in addition, children also believed that “you can drink liquids” (ages 7, 6, 5, 4) and that “if you cannot drink a liquid, it is not a liquid” (ages 5, 4). it is important to note that the conceptions children have oftentimes inform the misconceptions that they have. this notion is particularly evident in the children’s explanation of a solid being something that cannot be “broken” or “bent” (ages 6, 4). this misconception is informed by their conception of a brick being a solid. although children were able to categorize the brick as a solid, they also generalized the properties of the brick to determine the properties of a solid. another example of this was in the children’s description of a liquid being something that “you can drink” (ages 7, 6, 5, 4). although it is true that some liquids can be drank, the children used this idea to incorrectly generalize the idea of drinkable liquids to all liquids. for example, juice is a liquid, but vinegar is not because “you can’t drink it—it doesn’t taste good” (ages 5, 4) these examples are a perfect illustration of how children can hold inconsistent understandings about scientific concepts that lead to the creation of further, more detrimental misconceptions, which may prevent young children from gaining deeper understandings of science. magnetism the common conceptions about magnetism included that magnets “stick” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4) and magnets “help you stick pictures/paper to the refrigerator” (ages 5, 4), in addition, children were able to generate some correct predictions about what magnets would and would not be attracted to in a classroom or recreational space. children also acknowledged that magnets playing with science – an investigation 13 are different “colors” (ages 8, 7, 4), “shapes” (ages 8, 7), “sizes” (ages 8, 7), magnets “have north and south poles” (age 8), and magnets have “different strengths” (ages 8, 7, 6). it is important to note that children were able to use real world examples and experiences such as the refrigerator, to inform some of their scientifically accurate conceptions. however, the children’s overgeneralizations of their conceptions again lead to misconceptions. for example, a common misconception was that “magnets stick to all refrigerators” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4). while this may be a logical extrapolation based on their previous experiences, the children failed to recognize that there might be some circumstances where a magnet will not be attracted to a particular refrigerator. furthermore, this overgeneralization communicates the children’s lack of understanding related to why magnets are attracted to certain objects and not others. another common misconception among children was the idea that magnets “stick.” at all of the sites, children explored the room with magnets looking for items that the magnet would “stick to” and would “not stick to.” as the children tested their predictions, many children tried to “stick” their magnets to a filing cabinet; the magnets did attract to the cabinet but the magnets then slid down the cabinet door. as a result, because the magnet did not “stick” and stay stationary, the magnet was not “sticking” to the cabinet and thus the magnet was not attracted to the cabinet. additional misconceptions about magnets are that magnets are “magic” (age 5), “hard” (ages 4, 5), “stick to all metal” (ages 7, 6, 5), “stick to silver”(ages 6, 5) the “size of a magnet” affects its magnetic field (ages 8, 7), the poles “do not stick equally” (ages 7, 6), magnets will not attract through objects that are “heavier” than the magnet itself (ages 8, 7), and magnets will not attract through items that are “harder” (age 8), “thicker” (ages 8, 7), “stronger” (age 7), and “bigger” than the magnet (ages 8, 7). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 density the common conceptions that children held about density primary correlated with the children’s ability to predict and identify objects that would sink and float. children knew that: “a marble sinks” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5) and “corks” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4), “boats” (age 5), and “ducks” (ages 6, 3) float. however, the young children were also able to express that water inside a boat would impact the boat’s ability to float. this finding illustrates the children’s understanding of mass being important in determining the density of an object. it is clear that the children used their prior knowledge and experiences with sinking and floating to inform their conceptions as their list of conceptions included many examples from their everyday lives, and the same is true of their misconceptions. common misconceptions were that “glass sinks” (age 5), “heavy metal sinks” (ages 7, 6, 4), “plastic floats” (ages 6, 5), “all wood floats” (ages 8, 7, 6), “objects with air inside them float” (age 8). while these conceptions are sometimes true, they are not true all of the time and thus again, illustrate how incomplete conceptions can create misconceptions. additional misconceptions that the children held were related to the task of manipulating a piece of clay so that it would both sink and float, but at different times. to accomplish this task, the children were provided a piece of clay. to make the clay sink, most children immediately formed a ball and put it in the water. however, when asked if they could take that same piece of clay and make it float, the children needed time to experiment with the clay in an effort to test their ideas. many children attempted to remove amounts of clay from the original piece thinking that by decreasing the mass, the clay would then float. this strategy clearly illustrated inconsistencies associated with the concept of density. specifically, children articulated the following misconceptions when manipulating the piece of clay: “heavy objects playing with science – an investigation 15 sink” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3), “light objects float” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3), “thin objects float” (ages 8, 7, 6), “big things sink” (ages 8), and “small things float” (ages 8). with time to explore, children were able to conclude that their initial ideas were not accurate and eventually, all children were able to make their piece of clay float by creating a boat-like object that spread the mass of the clay over a greater area without “flooding.” although children arrived at the understanding of the relationship between mass and volume, this understanding was certainly naïve. specifically, children articulated that, “walls make things float” (ages 8), “flattening it will make it float” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3), and “objects with air in them float” (ages 8, 6). throughout the course of this unit, children consistently drew on previous experiences and knowledge to inform their attempts at creating objects that would float. some interesting examples included a young girl who made a duck out of the clay because she knew that ducks floated and a young boy who made a lifesaver ring because he knew that he had seen the object float in a swimming pool. air the common conceptions associated with air were…“air is for breathing” (age 6), “air can be used to move objects” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4), “if you have more air, you can move heavier objects” (ages 8, 6), “air can be created by blowing” (ages 6, 5, 4), “air is inside a bubble” (ages 7, 6, 5, 4), and “air is invisible” (ages 5, 4). for this particular concept, children again used many connections to their real life to arrive at their conceptions regarding air. it is important to note that this unit involving air required children to explore paper and plastic bags along with napkin parachutes. through this exploration, the following misconceptions were revealed: “if a bag is flattened, there is no air in it” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4), “if a bag is puffed up, there is air in it” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4), “air helps the parachute fall slowly” (age current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 6), “air is inside or on top of a parachute, but not around it” (ages 8, 7, 6), “air is outside and in the sky” (ages 5, 4), and “air is not everywhere…it’s only around when someone/something is blowing” (ages 6, 4). similar to the conceptions previously listed, children again relied on their prior knowledge and experiences to inform their misconceptions. additionally however, their prior knowledge was also used in concert with the new experiences they were encountering. for example, when children explored the napkin parachute to determine how air was involved, they used their conception of air being used to move objects to recognize that air did indeed influence the way the parachute fell to the ground. in the same sense, however, the children were unable to recognize that air was also present on the sides of the parachute, as well as inside and on top of the parachute. this example demonstrates another instance where children have a naïve understanding of a concept that informs how they interact with materials and science content discussion “since the early work of piaget (1929; 1969) researchers have been aware that children’s conceptions about the world are sometimes quite different from scientific conceptions” (eaton, anderson & smith, 1984, p. 365). these misconceptions subsequently affect they way children learn, understand, and apply scientific concepts, skills, and phenomena. by investigating and understanding the conceptions and misconceptions of young children, educators can better tailor their instruction so that opportunities are provided for children to correct their misconceptions and develop deeper, more sophisticated understandings of science. the findings of this research are consistent with other research in the area of children’s misconceptions, however this study is unique in that the population researched involved young children. in addition, this study shed further light on the strategies children use to create understandings about science. for example, children used the ‘touch test’ and playing with science – an investigation 17 the categorization of ‘drinkable’ to determine if a substance was a liquid or a solid. furthermore, when exploring all areas of content involved in this study, children consistently relied on their prior knowledge and experiences to articulate their understandings, which is consistent with previous research associated with misconceptions and conceptual understanding (ayers, 1999; blosser, 1987; committee on undergraduate science education, 1997; eaton, anderson, & smith, 1984; kyle, family, & shymansky, 1989; ozdemir & clark 2007; suping, 2003). this finding further exemplifies the importance of prior knowledge and past experiences in the development of young children’s conceptions and misconceptions associated with science. “children come to school already holding beliefs about how things happen, and have expectations based on past experiences which enable them to predict future events” (blosser, 1987, findings related to elementary science section, para. 1). teachers must take these experiences and knowledge into account when planning and implementing instruction. if teachers do not connect their units of study to the child’s life and prior experiences, the misconceptions that the children have will never be challenged and will therefore continue to exist. another notable finding associated with his study was the discovery of how the conceptions that children hold can also lead to the misconceptions that they have. for example, children articulated the conception that marbles sink. this understanding informed the misconception children simultaneously held: all glass sinks. this finding was consistent across all content areas and is an important discovery for educators to consider when planning and implementing instruction. “preconceptions, never having been put on the table, will continue to coexist with a morass of conflicting ideas… and scientific principles that are not addressed, can coexist with ‘what the teacher told us’ and create a mishmash of fact and fiction” (watson & current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 kopnicek, 1990, p. 680). in addition, we also found that children frequently over-generalized their conceptions, which created inadequacies in their scientific understandings. this overgeneralization of knowledge is a manifestation of conceptions informing misconceptions. implications based on the results of this research, the experiences of the researchers as well as prior literature, three areas of implications are specifically addressed. these areas are implications for research, policy, and practice. research there are several research implications targeted for misconceptions and conceptual change. first, further research to identify additional conceptions and misconceptions that young children hold in regard to scientific concepts, skills, and phenomena is warranted. many research studies address the misconceptions associated with older populations of students, however, little is done in the area of early childhood education. although this study was successful in providing results associated with young children in the areas of matter, magnetism, density, and air, more research should also be conducted to include other areas of science such as, biological science, physical science, chemistry, earth science, as well as environmental and ecological sciences. second, research to investigate and determine effective instructional methods for identifying misconceptions and promoting conceptual change is also critical. although research indicates that implementing instructional strategies to help children progress through the four conditions necessary for conceptual change (posner, strike, hewson, & gertzog, 1982) are promising, specific methods for teaching in such a way are limited. in our research, we found the inquiry process to be effective for identifying the conceptions and misconceptions of young children. inquiry teaching and learning provided the children with opportunities to discover and playing with science – an investigation 19 begin to address the inconsistencies in their scientific ideas while also providing them the space to enjoy learning about science content, skills, and phenomena. once methods of instruction have been identified, it would also be especially useful for researchers to investigate the effectiveness of conceptual change instruction on academic achievement. if the underlying goal of progress made in the area of science education and conceptual change is to have children come to better, more sophisticated understandings of science, it is crucial to investigate the effectiveness of these practices on student achievement. finally, we also believe that the misconceptions of preservice and inservice teachers should be investigated. it has been suggested that teachers oftentimes transfer their own misconceptions on to their students, thereby creating additional misconceptions for students that are even more difficult to address (blosser, 1987; maria 1997; watson and kopnicek, 1990). therefore, understanding and correcting the misconceptions of preservice and inservice teachers before they begin teaching would be a worthy research endeavor. policy professional development opportunities and additional preservice and inservice teacher education opportunities are important if we expect teachers to be adequately prepared for teaching conceptual change in early childhood science classrooms. according to the national research council (1996), “the process of transforming schools requires that professional development opportunities be clearly and appropriately connected to teachers’ work in the context of schools” (p. 57). therefore, these opportunities must provide teachers with both the theoretical and practical background knowledge of conceptual change. specifically, preservice and inservice teachers will need to understand how to identify and address the multitude of misconceptions that children can have in their classrooms. in addition, preservice and inservice current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 teachers will also need to be provided with numerous opportunities and a great deal of support when developing lessons and units designed to create cognitive conflicts which provide children opportunities to confront the inconsistencies in their scientific ideas. most importantly, if all of these propositions are to take place, preservice and inservice teachers must also have adequate scientific content knowledge in all areas of science. if all of these issues are addressed, educators may then be able to augment their teaching practices to support children in developing accurate and sophisticated understandings of science. practice both teachers and preservice teachers alike need to understand that children are capable of discovering and constructing scientific understandings, skills, and abilities with deliberate planning of effective instruction. this research provides further evidence to suggest that young children are capable of expressing their ideas associated with science, when they are provided the opportunity to do so. thus, it is important for preservice and inservice teachers to not underestimate the abilities of their young learners and plan for instruction that addresses conceptual change. specifically, preservice and inservice teachers must provide opportunities for children to inquire into the world of science while connecting their prior knowledge with the new information that is to be acquired. children must experience the dissatisfaction of erroneous ideas so that they can progress toward finding more accurate ways of knowing that are “intelligible, plausible, and fruitful” (posner, strike, hewson, & gertzog, 1982, p. 214). teaching science through inquiry may be one potentially valuable avenue for assisting children in moving from misconceptions to accurate scientific understandings. in doing so, preservice and inservice teachers will thereby be employing strategies that support accommodation. in addition playing with science – an investigation 21 to instructional practices, preservice and inservice teachers also need to develop more appropriate evaluation techniques that take into consideration the process of conceptual change. while making these adaptations to instruction, it is important for preservice and inservice teachers to recognize that “…changes can be strenuous and potentially threatening, particularly when the individual is firmly committed to prior assumptions” (posner, strike, hewson, & gertzog, 1982, p. 223). although teaching for conceptual change will take time, it is a worthy pursuit that will indeed assist in achieving scientific literacy for all children (nrc, 1996). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 references ayers, t. (1999). early start counts in science education. science, 284(5423), 2189-2192. blosser, p. (1987). science misconceptions research and some implications for the teaching of science to elementary school students. retrieved from http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-925/science.htm chi, m. & roscoe, r. (2002). the process and challenges of conceptual change’, in m. limon & l. mason (eds.), reconsidering conceptual change: issues in theory and practice, (pp. 3 – 27). dordrecht: kluwer. clandinin, j.d. & connely, m.f. (2004). narrative inquiry: experience and story in qualitative research. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. committee on undergraduate science education. (1997). science teaching reconsidered: a handbook. national academy press, retrieved from http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=5287#toc. denzin, n. k. & lincoln, y. s. (2000). handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications, inc. eaton, j.f., anderson, c.w, & smith, e.l. (1984). students’ misconceptions interfere with science learning: case studies of fifth-grade students. the elementary school journal, 84(4), 365-379. fulp, s. (2002). the status of elementary science teaching. washington, dc: national academy press: u.s. department of education. kyle, w.c., family, e.d., & shymansky, j.a. (1989). enhancing learning through conceptual change teaching. retrieved from http://www.narst.org/publications/research/concept.cfm maria, k. (1997). a case study of conceptual change in young child. the elementary school playing with science – an investigation 23 journal, 98(1), 67-88. martin, d.j., raynice, j.s., schmidt, e. (2005). process-oriented-inquiry—a constructivist approach to early childhood science education: teaching teachers to do science. journal of elementary science education, 17(2), 13-26. national research council. (1996). national science education standards. washington, dc: national academy press. national research council. (2000). inquiry and the national science education standards: a guide for teaching and learning. washington, dc: national academy press. ozdemir, g & clark, d. (2007). an overview of conceptual change theories. eurasia journal of mathematics, science & technology education, 3(4), 351-361. philips, w. (1991). earth science misconceptions. the science teacher, 58(2), 21-23. posner, g., strike, k. hewson, p. & gertzog, w. (1982). accommodation of a scientific conception: toward a theory of conceptual change. science education, 66(2), 211-227. suping, s. (2003). conceptual change among students in science. retrieved from http://www.ericdigests.org/2004-3/change.html. watson, b. & kopnicek, r. (1990). teaching for conceptual change: confronting children’s experiences. phi delta kappan, 71(9), 680-684. watters, j., diezmann, c., grieshaber, s., davis, j. (2001). enhancing science education for young children: a contemporary initiative. australian journal of early childhood, 26(2), 1-7. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 appendix unit information it is important to note that throughout all of the lessons, the researchers were careful not to confirm or deny participant ideas. the goal of this research was to uncover the conceptions and misconceptions held by young children, not to teach them scientific content. in addition, within each of the lessons, the research asked the students to justify their thoughts, decisions and responses by giving priority to evidence. matter to begin the lesson, the researchers provided each participant with a variety of rocks and had them describe the rocks to us (i.e. what do they look like, feel like, etc). after listening to student responses, we introduced the word ‘solid’ to the students and told them that the rocks were examples of solids and then asked the participants to provide other examples of solids. next, we provided the participants with the opportunity to explore a variety of objects that were also solids (i.e shoe box, brick with holes, solid brick, bucket, water bottle, baskets with holes, foam noodle, marbles, coins, keys, paperclips, sorting bears, crayon, teddy bear, blocks, rubber eraser or dog toy, paper, cloth), however, we didn’t tell then that these objects were solids. instead, we asked the children to talk about the objects and discuss whether or not they thought they were solids. after listening to student discussions, we then asked the students to create a definition of solid and provide additional examples of solids. to extend the idea of matter to liquids, the researchers provided the participants with a shallow bowl of water. children were allowed to explore the water and describe what they were feeling and/or noticing. after listening to student ideas, we then asked the students if this water was a solid and asked follow up questions, which required students to justify their thoughts based playing with science – an investigation 25 on their previous experiences. next, we introduced the idea of a liquid and told students that water is an example of a liquid. based on this idea, we then asked students to provide other examples of liquids. we then provided the participants with the opportunity to explore a variety of substances that were also liquids, but again, did not tell them that they were examples of liquids (i.e. water, milk, half and half, ginger ale, cool aid, oil, syrup, vinegar, soy sauce, juice, etc.). similar to the solids exploration, we asked students to classify the substances as either ‘liquid’ or ‘not liquid’ and then asked the students to create a definition of liquid and provide additional examples. to conclude the lesson and to determine if students would be able to differentiate between solids and liquids, the researchers provided the participants with a large piece of construction paper with the labels of ‘solid’ and ‘liquid’ at the top of the paper. using this organizer, we asked students to classify a variety of solids and liquids into the appropriate categories. while categorizing the materials, the researchers asked the students to justify their decisions with evidence and attention to the properties of solids and liquids previously discussed. magnetism to begin the lesson, the researchers threw a stuffed animal (with magnetic limbs) onto a magnetic surface so that it would stick. the researchers then asked the students why they thought the animal was able to stick to the surfaces. the participants were allow the opportunity to manipulate the stuffed animal and based on evidence, adjust their ideas if necessary. te researchers then introduced the idea of magnets to the children and asked them to discuss what they knew about magnets (i.e purposes, appearance, etc). participants were then asked to discuss what magnets stick to and make predictions about objects around the room that would stick to magnets. students were then provided with the opportunity to test their predictions by traveling current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 throughout the classroom to determine which objects the magnets would stick to. after children had time to explore, we came back together to discuss findings as a group. during this time, the researchers were sure to have students discuss the things that did stick as well as those that did not. next, the researchers extended this idea of ‘stick’ and ‘not stick’ typically used by the children and introduced the vocabulary of attract and repel. next, the idea of magnetism was further investigated by having the participants discuss if magnets would attract through other things. after a discussion, students were again provided the opportunity to explore this idea within the classroom using, cloth, paper, wood, glass, water, plastic, etc. after children had time to explore this idea, we again discussed findings with attention to the materials that magnets did attract through as well as those they did not attract through. to uncover the conceptions and misconceptions associated with the poles of a magnet, each participant was provided with two bar magnets. then were then asked to make observations about their magnets and encouraged to predict what the ‘n’ and ‘s’ on either side of the magnet represented. next, to assist students in articulating these ideas, we asked questions regarding which poles would attract to each other and prompted students to explore this question with their magnets. after exploring, the students then discussed their findings with the researchers and were asked to explain what they have learned, being sure to give priority to evidence. finally, to ascertain if the learning from the exploration could be applied to a new situation, the researchers showed students a demonstration of magnets suspended on a rod. the researchers asked the students what they thought was happening and why. to conclude the lesson, the researchers had the students share their new understandings about magnets as well as their new wonderings. playing with science – an investigation 27 density to begin this lesson, the researchers showed the participants a cork and marble and allowed them to hold and explore the objects. next, the researchers asked the participants to predict what would happen if we put them both in a bucket of water. after listening to responses, the researchers placed one of the objects in the water and had the students make observations and discuss what happened. next, the researchers introduced the vocabulary of sink or float and had students use the vocabulary accurately to describe what happened to the object. the participants were also asked to explain why they thought the object sank or floated. this same procedure was followed for the second object then the participants were asked to articulate the difference between the two objects when they were placed in the water. the goal of this conversation was to elicit from students their ideas about why one object floated and one sank, and to determine if the participants noticed any differences between the two objects. to offer participants an opportunity to apply their ideas associated with density, they were presented with a variety of objects, one at a time, and asked to predict if the object would sink or float. again, students were asked to justify their thoughts. following the prediction, participants were then asked to place their object in the bucket of water to determine the accuracy of their predictions. in light of this exploration, the researchers again discussed the results with the participants and required them to provide explanations for what they were observing giving priority to evidence and drawing relationships between and among the objects. expanding on these basic ideas, the researchers then provided the participants with another exploration with density cubes and clay. first, the density cubes are cubes that have the same volume but different weights. to begin, the participants were presented with the cubes and provided the opportunity to manipulate the cubes to observe their properties. similar to the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 28 previous explorations, students were instructed to discuss their predictions regarding how the cubes would behave when placed into the water. next, the students placed the cubes (one at a time) in the water, made observations and discussed happenings. again, the researchers discussed the results with the participants and required them to provide explanations for what they were observing giving priority to evidence and drawing relationships between and among the objects. during the clay exploration the researchers provided the participants with a ball of clay and asked them to predict if the clay would sink or float. similar to the above procedures, these predictions were discussed. next, the students placed the clay in the water, made observations, evaluated the accuracy of their initial predictions, and discussed happenings. again, the researchers discussed the results with the participants and required them to provide explanations for what they were observing giving priority to evidence and drawing relationships between and among the objects. the participants were then asked if they thought there might be a way they could make the clay float and were then provided time to explore this question. when students finished molding the clay, they were then asked to place it in the water. the students then discussed their observations with the researchers and were allowed additional time for alternative designs of the clay if needed. after all children were able to successfully float their clay in the water, the researchers asked the participants why the clay was floating if we didn’t change the original amount of clay. within this discussion, students were encouraged to justify their thoughts and to make connections to the previous investigations (i.e. density cubes). using this connection, the participants were then asked to discuss how the heaviest density could possibly be manipulated to float. playing with science – an investigation 29 to conclude the lesson, the participants were shown a picture of an aquarium with objects that were floating and sinking and were asked to discuss their observations of the aquarium. participants were encouraged to discuss why some objects were sinking and others were floating. to elaborate on this idea, participants were then asked to explain how we could get the objects that were floating to sink. participants discussed their thoughts with the researchers while giving priority to evidence and then were asked how the objects that were sinking could be made to float. again, the participants discussed their thoughts and related their ideas to evidence from previous explorations. air to engage students in the air lesson, the researchers showed students a paper bag full of random items and told them that we were going to investigate the objects and materials inside the bag. students were then asked to predict what might be inside of the bag. one by one, the items from the bag were removed and identified. when the bag was “empty” the researchers asked the students if there was anything else in the bag and required them to justify their thoughts. when the students arrived at the idea that there was only air left in the bag, we then discussed with the students how they are able t tell if air is inside of a bag or another container. to uncover the answer to this question the participants were provided with experiences to investigate air on their own. the first of these investigations involved providing the participants with a zipper seal bag and a straw and were encouraged to see what they could discover about air. specifically, participants were instructed to blow into their baggies and observe what happens. throughout the exploration, participants were encouraged to discuss and describe what they were doing and how air was being used. after participants completed their investigations, the researchers current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 30 revisited the initial question: how can you tell when air is in a bag or another container? participants were required to use evidence from their explorations as a way to justify their thoughts. to conclude this portion of the lesson participants were asked where else they have seen or felt air. next, the students explored air through the use of parachutes. to begin, the participants were asked what a parachute was, if they had ever seen one, and if so, where. participants were then asked how they thought a parachute worked. to encourage students to elaborate, the researchers, when necessary, asked the participants how air was involved in moving a parachute. to extend this idea, the participants were provided with parachutes and were asked to release them and observe how they move. after investigating the parachutes, the participants then explained and discussed what was happening and why they thought it happened. the researcher then posed another question to the participants: what do you think will happen if we add a ‘passenger’ to the parachute? again, a brief discussion about the associated predictions took place and the participants were once again provided the opportunity to explore this question. after all investigations had concluded, the researchers conducted a discussion with the students to discover how they thought the ‘passenger’ impacted the way the parachute worked. to conclude this portion of the lesson, the researchers discussed with the participants what made the parachute fall slowly and asked them to compare the differences between flying one and two ‘passengers.’ within this discussion, the researchers were attempting to ascertain where the students recognized the presence of air. finally, the participants were asked to predict what would happen if we took the parachutes outside or home and a discussion was conducted around the following questions: would the parachutes move differently? what role would air play in making the parachute move outside or at home? where can air be found? playing with science – an investigation 31 the next portion of this lesson centered around the use, production, and movement of bubbles. to begin, participants were shown a bottle of bubbles. they were then asked what they thought it was and how they might use it. the researcher then blew a bubble and asked: what is inside a bubble? can you see it? what is outside a bubble? can you see it? what moves a bubble around? the researchers then explained to participants that, although they cannot see the air, they could use bubbles to see where the air is moving. in light of this idea, the participants were then asked to explain how they thought air was moving in the classroom. to assist them in their ideas, the researchers blew more bubbles, required the students to make observations and then asked students to elaborate on their thoughts using evidence. to extend this idea, the researcher provided time for the participants to investigate the following questions: how can you use bubbles to show if air moves around corners? how can you use bubbles to show where the air moves fastest? how can you use bubbles to show where the air moves slowest? how can you use bubbles to show how air moves in a doorway? the participants then discussed their findings and provided justification using evidence from their investigations. to conclude, the researchers asked the participants what bubbles had to do with air and what bubbles could tell you about air. additionally the participants discussed what they had learned about air and then drew a picture to illustrate their learning. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 32 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt volume quality citation oloo, j. a is abstract debate a extensive the impo study ex alberta, norwegi higher e jurisdicti keyword 13, numbe y assura a. (2010). q ssues in edu t about academ e dispute ab ortance of qu amined issu canada, no ian agency education in ions. possib ds: quality a er 4 nce of hi quality assur cation, 13(4 mic quality bout the mea uality assura ues in quality orway, and k for quality n assuring an ble lessons f ssurance, hi w igher edu jame university rance of high 4). retrieved assurance h aning of the ance and enh y assurance kenya and t assurance i nd enhancin for kenya an igher educat winter 2010 ucation in s alan olo y of saskatc her education from http:// has often ten phrase. how hancement o of higher e the roles of c in education ng quality of nd other dev tion, alberta n alberta oo chewan n in albert, k /cie.asu.edu/ nded to bring wever, man of degree pr ducation in campus alb n, and the k f higher edu veloping cou a, kenya, n iss a, kenya kenya, and n / g into the fo ny observers rogramming the provinc berta qualit kenya comm ucation in th untries are p norway sn 1099-83 and norw norway. cu ore s appreciate g. this ce of ty council, mission for he three presented. 39x way urrent current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 quality assurance of higher education in alberta, kenya and norway in alberta, kenya and norway, postsecondary participation rates have been growing steadily for years (snowdon, 2010; aas, 2007; odhiambo, 2006). while recognizing the public and private benefits of investment in higher education, snowdon (2010) posited that at a time when many jurisdictions are investing heavily in their higher education sector, “government commitment to quality higher education must be strengthened” (p. 2). law (2010) surmised that the rapid expansion of higher education provision makes it necessary to address the question of quality of degree programming and whether it is sacrificed for quantity. welle-strand (2000) asserted that for a country to remain relevant in today’s competitive knowledge economy, it cannot afford to ignore the importance of the quality and reputation of its higher education institutions and programs. snowdon (2010) predicted that it is the quality of a country’s graduates that will set it apart in the 21st century. hence, degree programming in alberta, kenya, and norway has undergone fundamental reforms in recent years (snowdon, 2010; lycke, 2004; odhiambo, 2006). a primary aspect of higher education reforms in the three jurisdictions is the “emphasis on the pursuit of educational quality” (law, 2010, p. 65). despite the reforms, debate about academic quality assurance has often tended to bring into the fore extensive dispute about the meaning of the phrase. dill (2003, p. 1) suggested that “academic quality is amorphous, non-measurable, (and) too ambiguous in meaning as to be not appropriate for public regulation.” beaton (1999, p. 4) argued that the “rhetoric of ... quality is often vague ... lucks substance (and) is empty of meaning” while pounder (1999) posited that quality is a “notoriously ambiguous term” (p. 156). as a result of the difficulty in defining quality, the measurement of quality has also proved to be contentious (becket & brookes, 2006). in this study, ‘quality’ refers to continuous improvement in the search for excellence while quality assurance of higher education 3 ‘quality assurance’ means initiatives which are undertaken in the quest to assure and enhance quality of degree programming (law, 2010) in alberta, kenya and norway. the three jurisdictions were chosen because the author is a native of kenya who has visited norway and previously worked as a policy analyst at the campus alberta quality council. primary sources for the descriptive aspects of this study were websites for campus alberta quality council (www.caqc.gov.ab.ca), the norwegian agency for quality assurance in education (www.nokut.no) and the kenya commission for higher education (www.che.or.ke). this paper is loosely divided into five sections. section one explores general issues in academic quality assurance. section two discusses quality assurance of degree programming in canada and the province of alberta. section three explores higher education quality assurance and accreditation in europe in general and norway in particular. section four presents an overview of quality assurance in kenya, while section five suggests possible lessons for kenya and other developing countries. general issues in academic quality assurance today, the increased popularity of academic quality assurance initiatives is perhaps best reflected in the membership of the international network of quality assurance agencies for higher education (inqaahe). from inqaahe’s founding in 1990 through 2007, the year of its biennial conference in toronto, the network’s membership increased from 12 to 180 agencies from over 70 countries. most of these agencies are interested in the quality of postsecondary education especially due to such factors as increasing numbers of private providers, many of dubious provenance; rapid growth in transnational education leading to the need for a credible quality assurance process; and proliferation of new types of postsecondary programs and institutions (law, 2010; bond & patton, 2007). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 quality assurance processes in higher education are based on four general principles (van vught & westerheijden, 1994), namely, a coordinating agency (such as campus alberta quality council in alberta, the norwegian agency for quality assurance in education, and the commission for higher education in kenya); self appraisal by the institution to be evaluated; a site visit by experts; and a report on the evaluation results prepared by experts. among the objectives of conducting external evaluation is to declare the applicant institution’s processes of self-evaluation and submit them to evaluation by a third party. the third party perspective being brought to the validation must however be a judicious mix of relevant technical expertise, and a detached external stakeholder perspective (carmichael, 2007). quality assurance of higher education in canada in canada, education is a provincial responsibility and there is no federal ministry of education. in the absence of a coherent national quality assurance policy for higher education and lack of formal national system of accreditation for degree-granting institutions, there is a general acceptance that membership in the association of universities and colleges of canada (aucc) serves as an assurance that the member institution has undergone a thorough assessment by credible peer experts who have concluded that the institution meets exacting criteria (queen’s university senate committee on academic development, 2004). as well as having their own internal quality assurance policies and processes, members of aucc are committed to aucc principles of institutional quality assurance. these principles include: provision of responsive, “high quality education that is competitive with that offered anywhere else in the world and the provision of complete and reliable information about the quality of their educational programs to maintain public confidence, (and) support mobility of graduates” (aucc, 2008, p. 1). quality assurance of higher education 5 not all degree granting institutions in canada are members of aucc. thus, while degrees awarded by non-aucc member institutions in alberta, such as grant macewan university, northern alberta institute of technology, and st. mary’s university college, are recognized in alberta and beyond, some canadian graduate schools, including those at queen’s university, do not consider them to be of comparable quality to those awarded by aucc member institutions (marshall, 2005). in nova scotia, quebec, and saskatchewan, only aucc member institutions are authorized to offer degree programs (marshall, 2004). academic quality assurance process in alberta established in 2004 by an act of legislature, campus alberta quality council (caqc) is the quality assurance agency that makes recommendations to the minister of advanced education and technology on applications from postsecondary institutions to offer new degree programs in alberta. other than degrees in divinity, all degree programs offered in alberta must be approved by the minister. caqc also has guidelines on quality assurance for alberta universities that offer degree programming outside alberta (see working group on quality assurance of off-site and international degree programs, 2009). upon receiving an application from a postsecondary institution to offer a degree program in alberta, the minister of advanced education and technology initiates a two-stage review process. the ministry conducts a system coordination review of the proposed program to determine the need for the program and how it fits with other degree programs currently offered in alberta. during the review process, the ministry may require the institution to submit a selfevaluation report. the self-study provides evidence of the institution’s academic and strategic planning, governance and resources, as well as its analysis of any shortfalls and plans for current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 improvement (bond & patton, 2007). following a successful system coordination review, the minister refers the proposal to caqc for quality review. in evaluating the proposal, caqc decides whether to employ a full review or an expedited review. a full review involves both an organizational review to determine if the institution is capable of implementing and sustaining the proposed degree program; and a program review to determine whether the quality of the proposed degree program meets caqc’s standards. full campus alberta quality council review full review usually applies to institutions that are proposing to offer a first degree, or first degree program at a new level (e.g., a first graduate degree). the organizational review team conducts a site visit to the institution, and using caqc’s organizational guidelines prepares a report for caqc. the team report and the institution’s response to it are then reviewed by caqc. if the results are positive, the application is moved to the program evaluation stage of the review during which a review is conducted by a team of subject area experts recruited by caqc. using caqc’s program guidelines, the team reviews the proposal, visits the institution, and writes a report for caqc. based mainly on the team report and the institution’s response to the report, caqc makes its recommendation to the minister on whether or not to approve the application. expedited review caqc may conduct a partially expedited review or a fully expedited review of a proposal. a partially expedited review does not require an organizational evaluation; rather caqc engages a team of experts to assess the quality of the proposed degree program and prepare a report. in a fully expedited review, caqc does a desk review of the proposal, may or quality assurance of higher education 7 may not engage external evaluators, and does not conduct site visit of the institution. fully expedited review usually applies to ‘mature’ institutions like the universities of alberta and calgary. caqc guidelines and standards are comparable to those used by quality assurance agencies in canada and internationally (see british columbia degree quality assessment board, 2006; european association for quality assurance in higher education, 2005). caqc emphasizes its commitment to the quality review of its own activities and to the sharing of best practices with other jurisdictions (bond & patton, 2007). caqc’s organizational and program assessment standards and guidelines and its expectations of evaluators and applicant institutions are available on its website at www.caqc.gov.ab.ca. accreditation of professional programs a form of quality assurance and enhancement exists at a national level in canada. professional regulatory organizations, such as canadian engineering accreditation board, canadian association of schools of social work, and the canadian architectural certification board, participate in the establishment and review of postsecondary programs and other professional issues governing students' preparations for entry into such professions (bond & patton, 2007; marshall, 2004). this form of review is based on meeting or exceeding predetermined requirements and leads to professional accreditation of specific programs. some programs offered by alberta institutions are also accredited by american accreditation agencies. these include university of calgary’s doctor of veterinary medicine program that is accredited by the american veterinary medicine association, and the university of alberta school of business and the university of calgary haskayne school of business, both accredited by the american-based association to advance collegiate schools of business. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 whether or not the accrediting agency is based in canada, meeting or exceeding the requirements of these agencies is an affirmation of quality (bond & patton, 2007). however, while caqc recognizes the existence of such accreditations, its decisions are not subservient to those by other agencies (caqc, 2007). challenges to academic quality assurance in alberta alberta permits ‘non-resident’ institutions, such as the university of northern british columbia and university of phoenix, to offer degree programs in the province. because alberta, and most canadian provinces have traditionally focused on resident institutions as opposed to commercial transnational universities (leyton-brown, 2004), observers, such as council of ministers of education, canada (cmec), worry that this gap could lead to a proliferation of degree mills (cmec, 2007). indeed, in 2007, the governments of china, india, and korea advised their students to be cautious of private institutions in canada following reports that british columbia minister of advanced education was investigating private for-profit institutions for granting university degrees in the province without authorization (sen, 2007). the minister later ordered lansbridge university to cease its operations in the province of british columbia (b.c. ministry of advanced education, 2007). although there is need for a coherent national process for ensuring quality of higher education programs in canada, how this could be attained within the context of exclusive provincial/territorial jurisdiction over education is a longstanding policy dilemma. in 2007, provincial ministers responsible for higher education in canada under the umbrella cmec took a step towards a canada-wide policy for quality assurance of degree education in canada. the proposals endorsed by cmec aim to “provide assurance … at home and abroad that … programs and … institutions of higher learning meet appropriate standards” (council of quality assurance of higher education 9 ministers of education, canada, 2007, p. 1). however, these proposals were non-binding and nothing has been done with respect to national quality assurance of degree programs in canada since then. despite the importance of aucc membership as attestation for institutional and program quality, there is a potential shortcoming in overreliance on aucc given that aucc has no reaccreditation requirement (marshall, 2004). that is, once an institution becomes a member, it remains a member with no “further assessment of degree-granting capability” (marshall, 2004, p. 92). as well, in the coming years, the presence of transnational private-for profit institutions in alberta is likely to increase judging by the fact that between 2009 and 2010, alberta minister of advanced education approved four new graduate degree programs to be offered in alberta by city university of seattle, gonzaga university, and university of portland (caqc, 2010). because private-for profit universities are currently excluded from aucc membership, establishment of quality assurance standards and guidelines will be left to provincial politics, and thus, be susceptible to the type of abuse in the now-disbanded ottawa business college (marshall, 2004, p. 18). the next section of this article explores how europeans are dealing with the issue of academic quality assurance. quality assurance of higher education in europe european countries have diverse processes for quality assurance in their higher education sector. among the objectives of the bologna declaration is “the promotion of european cooperation in quality assurance with a view to developing comparable criteria and methodologies” (campbell & van der wende, 2000, p. 2). as a participant in the bologna process, norway has committed itself to the standards and guidelines for quality assurance in the european higher education area. the council of european union recommended that national current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 systems of higher education quality assurance be based on: 1) autonomy of the quality assurance agencies; 2) relating evaluation procedures to the way institutions see themselves; 3) internal and external evaluation; 4) involvement of stakeholders; and 5) publication of evaluation reports (european association for quality assurance in higher education, 2005). european standards and guidelines for internal quality assurance in institutions of higher education stipulate that institutions should have: 1) policies and procedures for the assurance of the quality of their programs; 2) formal mechanisms for the approval, periodic review and monitoring of their programs and awards; 3) student assessment policies that include using published criteria, regulations and procedures; 4) qualified and competent academic staff; 5) adequate and appropriate resources to support student learning for each program offered; and 6) means of collecting analysing and using relevant information of the effective management of their programs of study (european association for quality assurance in higher education, 2005). higher education in norway norway has a highly educated population. according to 2002 statistics, 55 percent of norwegians have completed upper secondary schooling and 31 percent are college or university graduates (correa, 2008). four of norway’s seven universities are listed among the top 500 in the world (shanghai jiao tong university, 2009). higher education in norway is offered by a range of seven universities, eight specialized universities, 25 university colleges, as well as a number of private university colleges. norwegian higher education system is in accordance with the bologna process, with bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. the norwegian agency for quality assurance in education (nokut) is the organization mandated to safeguard and enhance the quality of higher education in norway. it quality assurance of higher education 11 does this through evaluation, accreditation and recognition of quality systems, institutions and programs of study (nokut, 2006). unlike caqc whose mandate covers only degree programs, nokut ensures quality of both degree programs and vocational education at the postsecondary level. lycke (2004) argued that quality processes in the norwegian higher education sector have “not traditionally been associated with the term quality assurance but with quality development (and) ... has largely been synonymous with multifaceted and multilevel development of quality of studies” (p. 219). among the broad purposes of quality assurance of degree programming in norway are to: 1) ensure that higher education in norway is of high quality and is developing toward further improvements, 2) reveal cases of deficient quality and to detect good and bad quality, 3) provide educational institutions with a basis for selfassessment and change, and 4) help to develop a strong quality culture (nokut, 2003). evaluation criteria in norwegian higher education do not relate directly to the quality of educational provision, but concern the quality assurance system and the quality work that is carried out in the institution (aas, 2007). norwegian institutional quality assurance system is evaluated both internally and externally and developed in accordance with needs and in the spirit of continual improvement (lycke, 2004). the ministerial regulation, nokut’s criteria and the european standards and guidelines together make up the standard against which internal quality assurance systems at norwegian institutions of higher learning are evaluated. as in alberta, the process of evaluation in norway includes: 1) a study of documentation from institution’s quality assurance system including a description of the system and annual report on educational quality; 2) an assessment made by an expert panel based on the institution’s documentation and the standards and criteria for internal quality assurance systems; current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 3) site visit to the institution by the panel; and 4) presentation of the panel report to nokut. the report and institution’s response to it forms the basis of nokut’s decision on whether or not the quality assurance system is satisfactory. if the results indicate that the institution’s quality assurance of its approved programs does not meet nokut’s expectations, then the institution could lose the right to establish new programs (danø & stensaker, 2007). the sections above have briefly explored academic quality assurance processes in alberta and norway. the next section discusses how kenya assures and enhances quality of its degree programs. higher education quality assurance in kenya kenya has eight public and 17 private universities. a number of foreign institutions including edith cowan university (australia), technicon southern africa university (south africa), and the university of sunderland (great britain) are also offering their degree programs, usually in partnerships with local kenyan institutions. private universities include united states international university which is accredited both in kenya by commission for higher education and in the united states by the accrediting commission for senior colleges and universities. about 20 percent of the 150,000 university students attend private universities. the annual university enrolment in kenya accounts for less than 10 percent of the high school graduates (oloo, 2010). public universities in kenya are established under their respective acts of parliament, giving them autonomy in governance and quality assurance. thus, unlike alberta and norway, in kenya there is no external agency that accredits or monitors the quality of the public universities (commission for higher education, 2008; odhiambo, 2006). private universities, on the other hand, are established under the universities act of 1986 and the associated university rules of 1989. the university act established the kenya commission for higher education (che), the quality assurance of higher education 13 agency that accredits private universities and their programming. as is the case in alberta and norway, both institutional and program accreditation processes involve institutional self-study and the use of external experts who conduct a site visit of the institution and write an evaluation report for the che. public universities in kenya may choose to enter into partnership agreements with nondegree granting private or public colleges to deliver their degree programs (commission for higher education, 2006). this policy is double-edged. while it empowers public universities to be responsive to demand for degree programming and is less bureaucratic, public institutions are expected to ‘accredit’ the colleges they partner with to deliver their programs. however, public universities have been accused of putting more emphasis on increased enrolment to raise money from tuition than on quality of their degree programs (odhiambo, 2006). jomo kenyatta university of agriculture and technology, for example, delivers its programs at 22 colleges scattered all over the country. in some cases, these colleges are understaffed and lack adequate facilities to deliver quality higher education (commission for higher education, 2006). challenges and possible future development according lycke (2004), four main purposes of academic quality assurance are to ensure and develop quality, to detect good and bad quality, to put in place a strong quality culture, and as a basis for self-assessment and change. in their own ways, caqc, nokut, and che play fundamental roles in achieving these goals in alberta, norway, and kenya respectively. a challenge facing caqc, nokut and che is striking a good balance in their roles as a tool for sanctioning and rewarding, conducting evaluation processes that presuppose interpretations and judgments, and operating systems that require equal and fair treatment of institutions (aas, 2007). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 both caqc and nokut were founded less than a decade ago, so they are relatively young organizations. che has been in existence since 1986. unlike caqc and nokut, che has jurisdiction over private institutions and not public institutions. a challenge facing caqc, che, and nokut with respect to their roles in higher education quality assurance is striking a good balance in their quests to achieve their three main goals: their roles as a tool for sanctioning and rewarding, conducting evaluation processes that presuppose interpretations and judgments, and operating systems that require equal and fair treatment of institutions (aas, 2007). caqc, nokut and che continuously maintain documentation and processes that guide academic quality assurance and enhancement in their respective jurisdictions. however, there is a potential risk of paying less attention to whether institutions are teaching and assessing their students at appropriate levels as the agencies’ processes and guidelines tend to emphasize on whether institutions have established and documented in great detail processes which may or may not enhance teaching and student assessment (moodie, 2008). as law (2010, p. 72) put it, higher education systems “tend to favour the institutional aspects rather than the student aspects of the quality issues,” as well as put more emphasis on the “accountability-led view rather than the improvement-led view of quality assurance.” moodie (2008) posited that monitoring in academic quality should be of standards directly and not of processes which may or may not result in high quality. he suggested that quality assurance agencies should take a risk management approach rather than seeking to apply the same level of scrutiny to all institutions and all areas. that is, caqc, che, and nokut should scrutinize most intensively institutions and areas that are at greatest risk of a lapse of standards and it should spend far less effort monitoring institutions and areas that have a low risk of poor standards. quality assurance of higher education 15 lessons for kenya and other developing countries while public universities in kenya enjoy autonomy with respect to entering in to partnerships, starting new programs, and ensuring quality of their programs, there should be some form of accountability and transparency in their policies on quality assurance after all they get public funding. this could be by way of an external oversight by peers or organizations such as che. external review promotes institutional quality improvement by giving a third party feedback to the institution as well as enhancing and legitimizing internal quality management (leyton-brown, 2004). as stated above, institutional self-appraisal is a key aspect of quality assurance and enhancement in alberta, kenya and norway. however, unlike in alberta and norway where caqc and nokut conduct external evaluation of institutions and programs respectively, in kenya, public universities are not mandated to undergo external appraisal. while self-assessment can be variable in its quality and effectiveness (leyton-brown, 2004), it is the foundation of well-managed and successful institutions (lloyds, 2003) and is likely to lead to quality enhancement of degree programming and make the “reports of external reviewers more useful to that purpose” (leyton-brown, 2004, p. 11). trow (1996, p. 30) posited that effective quality assurance and enhancement is premised on “efforts to create an institutional culture marked by self-criticism, openness to criticism by others, and a commitment to improvement in practice.” thus both self-evaluation and external evaluation should be emphasized in the quest for quality degree programming by public universities in kenya. this study discussed quality assurance of higher education in alberta, norway, and kenya. alberta and norway have a long history of quality assurance of their degree programming and have world class universities. despite the challenges both face in their quest current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 for assuring and enhancing quality of their higher education, there are lessons from their experience that would be valuable to kenya and other developing nations. these include transparency, accountability, and increased emphasis on external review of quality assurance processes of both institutions and quality assurance agencies. as well, quality assurance must not be reduced to rules of inspection and control but rather should aim at enhancing quality of degree programming and upholding institutional independence and accountability. quality assurance of higher education 17 references aas, g. h. 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(2008, march 20). australian universities quality agency’s role. retrieved on november 23, 2009 from the australian website: http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/gavinmoodie/index.php/theaustralian/comment norwegian agency for quality assurance in education (nokut). (2006). norway: the system of education. oslo: author. quality assurance of higher education 19 norwegian agency for quality assurance in education (nokut). (2003). criteria for evaluation of universities and university colleges’ quality systems for educational activities. oslo: author. odhiambo, j. (2006). advancing the quality of higher education through internationalization. a paper presented at the 2006 international investment forum for private higher education, international finance corporation headquarters, washington, d.c., february 2, 2006. retrieved from http://www.strathmore.edu/pdf/ifd_speech.pdf oloo, j. a. (2010). citizenship education and youth engagement in kenyan politics. presented at the graduate student conference on theories and practices of citizenship education, centre for global citizenship education and research (cgcer), university of alberta, edmonton, canada, november 11-13. pounder, j. (1999). institutional performance in higher education: is quality a relevant concept? quality assurance in education, 7(1/3), 156-163. queen’s university senate committee on academic development. (2004). policy on determining canadian universities’ status for basis of admission. retrieved march 14, 2010 from http://www.queensu.ca/secretariat/senate/jan2204/scad_cdnuniversities_policy.pdf shanghai jiao tong university, china (2009). academic ranking of world universities, 2009. retrieved on january 14, 2010 from http://www.arwu.org/arwu2009.jsp sen, m. (2007, april 12). indian students 'stranded' in canada. retrieved may 3, 2010 from http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indian_students_stranded_in_canada/articleshow/189 5067.cms snowdon, k. (2010). canada’s quality challenge. retrieved october 20, 2010 from http://educationalpolicy.org/publications/etw/canada/commentary/etwcancom_100416.html trow, m. (1996). on the accountability of higher education in the united states. paper presented at the princeton conference on higher education, march 21-23, university of california, berkley. van vught, f. a., & westerheijden, d. f. (1994). towards a general model of quality assessment in higher education. higher education, 28, 355-371. welle-strand, a. (2000). knowledge production, service and quality: higher education tensions in norway. quality in higher education, 6(3), 219-230. working group on quality assurance of off-site and international degree programs. (2009). toolkit for off-site and cross-border delivery of programs. edmonton: government of alberta. current is about th author: affiliatio address of saska email: j biograp adminis previous ministry ssues in educ he author james ala on: univer s: departme atchewan, s james.oloo@ phical infor stration) pr sly worked y of advan cation vol. 13 n oloo rsity of sask ent of educ saskatoon, @usask.ca rmation: ja rogram at th d as a policy nced educat 3 no. 4 katchewan cational ad sk s7n 0 ames alan o he univers y analyst at tion. dministratio x1, canad oloo is a st ity of sask t the camp on, college da tudent in th katchewan i pus alberta e of educat he phd (ed in saskatoo quality co tion, unive ducational on, canada ouncil, alb 20 ersity . he berta quality a volum authors articles publishe an kr hilla d ju an h mi assurance of h me 13, num hold the copy s in other jour er and include ngela abeyta rista adams ary andrelch diana barela ulia boukara ndrew darian aiying dong iriam emran higher educa curr mber 4 yright to artic rnals should b e the url of t provide a hik n n tion rent issu http:// fall/ cles published be addressed t the cie publi ed cie is cred edit exe lor katy e jeffr sec sar mar me amb seo tiff calv linds fac gusta jean deb ues in e /cie.asu.e /winter 20 d in current is to the author. ication. permi dited and cop torial team cutive editor ri ellingford elizabeth his rey i. johnso ction editors rah heaslip rlene hinton elinda hollis ber johnston onghee kim fany o’neill vin richards say richerso culty advisers vo e. fischm nne m. power bby zambo educati edu 010 issues in educ reprints sho ission is here pies are not so m rs d rich on n n s on s man rs on issn cation. reque ould credit cie eby granted to old. ror ta kar luc ker jennife ky n 1099-83 ests to reprint e as the origi o copy any art ry schmitt apati sen ri visconti cy watson rie wilkins er wojtulewi yle wright 21 39x cie inal ticle, icz xxx 22 the development of 'project 1'formative assessment project 1: formative assessment 1 volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x the development of 'project 1': formative assessment strategies in uk schools ian clark university of washington citation clark, i. (2011). the development of 'project 1': formative assessment strategies in uk schools. current issues in education, 13(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract in recent years, a growing political emphasis has been placed upon the development of transformative assessment-driven reform in schools. there is global consensus on the value of assessment activities that are carefully designed to be consistent with desired learning outcomes, and which coherently connect learning theory, the curriculum, classroom activities and assessment. the consensus ends when there is debate between those who believe that schools produce more able students when they are faced with summative assessments and those who propose the implementation of formative assessment strategies in classrooms. this article presents a literature review which investigates the large-scale transformation of classroom practice in the scottish region of the uk, known as project1. the article begins with a summary overview of project 1 and continues with a conceptual discussion of formative and summative assessment. the latter sections of the article delineate the key architectural principles underpinning formative assessment in practical settings before going on to present the professional evaluations of project 1 by participating teachers. keywords: formative, assessment, curriculum, summative, scotland, uk current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 2 about the author(s) author: ian clark affiliation: university of washington email: clarki@u.washington.edu biographical information: ian clark is a research assistant at the university of washington (seattle) specializing in formative assessment and in the latter stages of his doctoral studies. he is a nationally qualified high-school and college level teacher in business studies and economics and has worked in seven different nations where his focus has been the development and delivery of formative assessment programs in esl/efl settings. project 1: formative assessment 3 in the past 30 years, educational researchers have given the significance of emphasis to various investigations on assessment practices and how they impact the quality of student learning and motivation, (bloom et al, 1971; crooks, 1988; black & wiliam 1998a, b; arg, 1999, 2002; george street research, 2007). arising from the proliferation of historical interest into assessment and learning the development of formative assessment strategies has gathered momentum on an international scale. one example of the remarkable expansion in awareness regarding the benefits of formative assessment is a 2005 organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) study which features exemplary cases from secondary schools in canada, denmark, england, finland, italy, new zealand, queensland in australia, and scotland. despite widening global awareness regarding the impact of assessment strategies on learning, one review of assessment practices (in us schools) remarked that transformative ‘assessment practices are not common, even though these kinds of approaches are now widely promoted in the professional literature’ (neill, 1997, p. 35-6). project 1: summary overview there were two distinct phases to assessment reform in scotland: firstly, the development phase (2002-2004) of the program, which was strategically directed by the assessment action group (aag) and operationally managed by the aifl program management group (apmg). secondly, the implementation phase (2005-2008) was overseen by the apmg, which served as the main forum for liaison, encouraged cooperation and emphasized the importance of professionals working together in order to build communities of practice (seed, sept 2005). this article examines the crucial first phase which took place between the beginning of 2002 and the end of 2004. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 4 the development of formative assessment strategies in the scotland is connected by two contiguous assessment themes: assessment for learning (afl) and assessment as learning (aal). afl focuses on the progress of the learner toward a desired goal, seeking to close the gap between a learner’s current status and the desired outcome. ‘this can be achieved through processes such as sharing criteria with learners, effective questioning and feedback’ (aag/apmg 2002-2008). aal is about reflecting on evidence of learning. it is a process ‘where pupils and staff set learning goals, share learning intentions and success criteria, and evaluate their learning through dialogue and self and peer assessment’ (aag/apmg, 2002-2008). both themes are integrated into a nation-wide project classified by the scottish executive education department (seed) as 'project 1' and stand together as the cornerstone of a wider programme known as assessment is for learning (aifl). 'an aifl school is a place where everyone is learning together. it is a place where assessment is part of learning and teaching without dominating them ... is about supporting classroom learning and teaching. it connects assessment and learning/teaching' (aag/apmg, 2002-2008). the emphasis of this article is placed upon the early experiences of participating schools, which in partnership with the british government began to develop the use of project 1 formative assessment strategies across many hundreds of primary, special and secondary schools. 195 schools were involved in the initial phase of aifl (2002-2003). a key feature of developments during 2003-2004 was to increase the number of schools involved in the program, with a particular emphasis on building collaborative partnerships between schools called associated schools groups (asgs). asgs range from individual schools to large groups of schools (for instance a secondary school and feeder primary schools) that work together on practitioner-based action-research projects that support the development of professional practice in assessment. by december 2004, local authorities' reports on the number of schools involved in aifl through asgs had risen from project 1: formative assessment 5 195 to 1,581 schools (approximately 56% of all schools in scotland). the scottish executive education department (seed) expressed the intention of making every possible effort to meet the target to 'ensure all schools are part of the assessment is for learning programme, by 2007' (june, 2005). formative and summative assessment: concepts and issues new ways of seeing formative assessment is described as: 'all those activities undertaken by teachers, and by their students in assessing themselves, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. such assessment becomes 'formative assessment' when the evidence is used to adapt the teaching work to meet the needs.' (black & wiliam, 1998b, p. 2). seed advocate a re-thinking of the 20th century vygotskian perspective because traditional teacher centered instructional methods designed to prepare students for frequent high-stakes summative tests were found to be ineffective when compared with collaborative learning systems which emphasize high quality interactions between teachers, students and parents/carers (aag/apmg 2002-2008). the notion of the zone of proximal development (zpd) (vygotsky, 1978) is of central relevance to the formative assessment classroom entailing a significant change in classroom culture from one that is teacher-centered (expert/novice) to one that encourages equality and mutuality between students. goos, galbraith and renshaw (2002) use the term ‘collaborative zpd’ to denote equal status interactions between peers. however, high-quality interactions between students are rarely found in classrooms. in an oft-cited study from 1980 conducted by galton, simon and croll, it was noted that the students frequently work in groups but not as groups. some 20 years later galton, hargreaves, comber, wall and pell (1999) conducted a replication study which found only a slight current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 6 increase in peer interaction; a finding more recently reiterated by black (2005). baines, blatchford and chowne (2007) observe, ‘teachers typically plan for their interactions with pupils, but not for interactions between pupils’ (p. 664). what is a 'project 1' classroom? a project 1 afl/aal classroom is founded upon eight key formative assessment principles (aag/apmg, 2002-2008; oecd, 2005) which demand high quality interactions between students, teachers and parents/carers. there are six key principles underpinning the afl aspects of project 1: students need to 1) be able to understand clearly what they are trying to learn, and what is expected of them; 2) be given immediate feedback about the quality of their work and what they can do to make it better; 3) be given advice about how to sustain improvement; 4) be fully involved in deciding what needs to be done next; 5) be aware of who can give them help if they need it and have full access to such help, and 6) to engage parents and carers in the learning process. the six principles of afl combine with two further aal assessment principles: students need to 7) be able to build knowledge of themselves as learners, and become meta-cognitive; 8) take more responsibility for their learning and participate more in the process of learning. when taken together afl/aal strategies breathe a new vitality into the concept of 'student centered learning' by re-positioning the students at the center of the learning process by building a network of constructive interactions which seek to link students directly to systems, teachers, parents/carers and their peers. in a project 1 classroom, students can develop a deeper understanding of their learning when they are given opportunities to discuss the learning process with their teacher as their advisor and with their peers in a climate of equality and mutuality (aag/apmg, 2002-2008). the quality of classroom interaction is a matter for grave consideration. askew (2000) observes that: 'the characteristics of dialogue are equality, sharing, spontaneity, collaboration and project 1: formative assessment 7 reciprocity. what i found interesting is that young people do not think such experiences are appropriate for the classroom where a particular view of behaviour is perceived' (p. 47). the issue of ineffective classroom interaction is comprehensively addressed by black & wiliam (1998b) who believe that, 'in terms of systems engineering, present policies in the u.s. and in many other countries seem to treat the classroom as a black box' (p.1). the 'black box' is an object for vital criticism because it functions primarily as a receptive system where, 'certain inputs from the outside--pupils, teachers, other resources, management rules and requirements, parental anxieties, standards, tests with high stakes, and so on--are fed into the box,' (black & wiliam, 1998b, p. 1). as proponents of the constructivist classroom, they are persuasive in voicing their concerns about such a system which is primarily designed to receive and decode external signals. those who advocate afl/aal seek to go beyond a merely passive congregation of students (i.e. the notion of the pejorative 'black box') by encouraging co-operative and collaborative activities in the classroom. however, traditional learning arrangements continue to prevail, consequently pupils are often seen working in groups but not working as groups (galton et al, 1980; black, 2005). at present, the majority of classrooms exhibit a superficial culture of cooperative interaction (black, 2005). however, research undertaken by the aag (2002-2004) and the subsequent in-service experiences reported by the apmg (2005-2008) found compelling evidence which indicates the conditions for successful cooperation exist in classrooms. it was found that students are very responsive to the idea of co-operating with different people in their assessment. of particular interest among their findings is confirmation that students liked to help each other with schoolwork, while either actually working and learning or in terms of assessment. it is therefore unsurprising that a key technique of the afl/aal program is effective dialogue among the central participants--the students. furthermore, afl/aal necessarily entails cooperation current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 8 between all the participants in the learning process including teachers and parents/carers. the apmg found that students appreciate in-depth communication with teachers and parents/carers about their progress, and consider it to be a valuable part of the process of learning. mccroskey and richmond (1992) state that 'all aspects of what happens in the classroom are contingent upon eliciting cooperation from every class member by employing sound principles of classroom management' (p. 44). the term 'management' in a afl/aal classroom context takes on a unique meaning because it entails the effective management of the learning process by developing activities which support learning through high quality interaction such as, discussion, feedback and goal setting. formative assessment strategies in practical settings participants in project 1 schools were trained in the deployment of 16 formative assessment teaching strategies: higher order questioning techniques; use of problem solving techniques; jot time (students are afforded an extended period of time to commit their ideas in writing before the beginning of an interaction); use of wrong answers; wait time; traffic lighting; group work and pair work; discussions; feedback as comments and not grades; oral feedback; sharing assessment criteria; peer assessment; redrafting of work; developing peer-peer communication skills (relational skills training); collaborative goal setting; reflective learning. a strategy worthy of some extended emphasis from the list provided here is that of traffic lighting. it may be used in various ways and is a powerful tool for self and peer assessment. for peer assessment, students may be required to traffic light each other’s explanations and justifications: green indicates work that exhibits explanations which surpass their own current level; orange indicates work that is comparable to their own, and red is used for work which is of lesser quality than their own. all students are then required to explain why they assigned those levels of recognition and provide constructive critique project 1: formative assessment 9 and praise to each other. for example, a student may recognize that his/her partner has included an example or explanation from beyond the worksheet and award a ‘green light’. traffic lighting also provides an opportunity for self-assessment and reflection upon one’s current status. for example, if students are required to learn certain science terms or language vocabulary they may clarify their own knowledge by assigning green to words they know and can use with confidence, orange for words in which they have some understanding and red for terms/words that they do not yet understand. summative assessment revisited research indicates that many of the problems with assessment arise from its summative nature (black & wiliam, 1998a; harlen & deakin crick, 2003; arg, 1999). a significant systemic obstacle frustrating the engagement of teachers with formative assessment strategies is the tension between the formative (assessment for learning) and summative (assessment of learning/assessment for qualifications) components of a program. this tension arises from the roles and responsibilities expected of teachers as both formative assessors, engaged in the process of student learning and as summative assessors required to behave as dispassionate judges of attainment (knight & yorke, 2003). tests are usually viewed summatively by teachers, and their formative potential is largely overlooked (morris et al, 1999) and 'while teachers are usually conscientious about marking student work they often fail to offer guidance on how work can be improved' (hallam et al, 2004, ¶ 2.4). the assessment reform group (arg, 1999) at cambridge university identifies various undesirable tendencies exhibited by classroom practitioners. these may be summarized as: a) a tendency for teachers to assess quantity of work and presentation rather than the quality of learning; b) a focus on marking and grading at the expense of providing advice for improvement, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 10 which tends to lower the self esteem of pupils; c) a strong emphasis on comparing pupils with each other which demoralizes the less successful learners; d) teachers' feedback to pupils often attempts to serve managerial and social purposes rather than helping them to learn more effectively. the arg go on to propose that improving learning through assessment depends on five key factors: i) a recognition of the profound influence instruction and specifically assessment has on the motivation and self esteem of pupils; ii) adjusting teaching to take account of the results of assessment; iv) the provision of effective feedback to pupils; iii) the active involvement of pupils in their own learning; v) the need for pupils to be able to assess themselves and understand how to improve. particular emphasis was placed upon the sharing of learning goals with pupils; encouraging equality and mutuality between students; involving pupils in self-assessment and providing feedback which leads to pupils recognizing their next steps and how to take them. a consequence of summative assessment strategies is the creation of large numbers of disaffected students, particularly among lower achieving students (harlen & deakin crick, 2003). this negative impact of current practice has been well documented. both the arg (1999, 2002) and the university of london's eppi-centre (2002) found that students show high levels of test anxiety when facing summative tests and much prefer other forms of assessment. high-stakes testing creates disaffection among students who do not achieve their full potential. as with all systemic phenomena, the outcomes are cyclical and reinforcing. those students who exhibit disaffection often experience an ever-deepening spiral of self-defeating learning behavior and worsening motivational problems (covington, 1984). the arg (1999, 2002) found that the use of formative assessment techniques in the classroom mitigates the problems identified with summative testing and creates large positive increases in the level of student engagement. consequently, choices need to be made between assessment techniques which support the process project 1: formative assessment 11 of classroom learning by involving the student with the meta-process of learning and those that demotivate students by frequently testing performance outcomes (clark, 2008). not only does the predominance of summative testing systems create disaffection on a wide-scale, it perpetuates its own existence a phenomenon noted by wiliam et al (2004) when they write: '... the introduction of high-stakes state-mandated testing, such as now exists in england and most states in the u.s.a, makes the effective implementation of formative assessment even more difficult. this is because ... attempts to maximise student and school scores appear to result in a lack of attention to the kinds of higher-order thinking involved in formative assessment' (p. 49). however, it should be noted that there is great importance in ensuring the constructive alignment between aims, learning and teaching processes and so summative assessment methods have been emphasized as methods to ensure effective learning (biggs, 1996). the difference between summative assessment and formative assessment is that while constructive alignment can promote success on summatively assessed learning outcomes, formative assessment is specifically designed to support the learning process itself. afl/aal curriculum: four key architectural principles if wide-scale educational innovation is to be successful, the strategic aims of the curriculum should be embodied in a comprehensive blueprint: the 'curriculum architecture'. it must also be understood that such a blueprint presents the structure of a curriculum and as such, it is an unresponsive or 'inorganic' entity. it is not designed to (and therefore does not) predict or limit the valid learning activities which arise in a classroom where formative assessment strategies are in use. while the afl/aal classroom system is built upon the blueprint, afl/aal is an organic process and a process of continuous adaptation which seeks to meet the learning needs of the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 12 students. the afl/aal classroom is a place where students and teachers work together and 'feedback is used to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged' (black & wiliam, 1998b, p.2). the fundamental need for constant readjustment means that a prescription for teacher action, which seeks to specify the 'best' course of action given certain conditions is impossible even in principle (wiliam, 2003). the central importance of the dynamic adaptation of instructional methods to the needs of individual students is therefore powerfully emphasized in the formative assessment classroom. four interdependent principals govern the construction of an effective assessment infused curriculum; 1. coherence; 2. progression; 3. relevance; 4. engagement/motivation and personalization/choice. the following sub-sections will discuss these principles of curriculum architecture and how they orient teachers and students to the learning process. the principle of coherence the first curriculum design principle is coherence, or the alignment of program content with program aims to ensure that learning activities combine to form a coherent experience. to avert a misalignment, which can cause serious issues across time, there should be clear links between the different aspects of children's learning, including carefully considered opportunities for extended activities which further consolidate learning and draw different strands of learning together. assessment should support the learning process, not drive it and assessments should be part of a holistic and balanced learning and teaching process. learning behaviour is determined by the kind of assessments learners are confronted by and therefore assessments 'define what specific patterns of thinking we want students to demonstrate' (sparks, 1999). if we want students to demonstrate higher order cognitive skills they need to be engaged in assessment activities which support that kind of learning. in order to support the learning process and realize learning goals, assessment of project 1: formative assessment 13 content should support higher order learning goals by involving learners in the processes of their own learning. the curriculum architecture should underpin the process of orchestrating high quality learning encounters that provide students with the means for achieving desired learning outcomes (knight, 2001). as such, curriculum coherence is in part conceptualized as a 'series of encounters between students' (parker, 2003, p. 532) in collaboration with other stakeholders in the learning process. the principle of coherence was a vital aspect of the successful development of project 1 in scottish schools; it is the fundamental need for coherence the aag/apmg refer to when they say, 'assessment is for learning connects assessment and learning/teaching,' (aag/apmg, 2002-2008). learner: assessment is an important part of my learning. i understand how the assessment activities i do can help me learn. teacher: in planning learning and teaching, i consider what information is needed to demonstrate that learning has taken place and how this evidence can be gathered from learning activities. in my planning i share assessment information with others involved in the learner’s learning across the curriculum. together we ensure learning is planned on the basis of sound evidence about skills development. the principle of progression the second curriculum design principle is progression (aag/apmg, 2002-2008). as part of learning and teaching, evidence needs to be collected which demonstrates and promotes the full breadth and depth of learning as experienced by learners and described by the outcomes. all children should have opportunities for a broad, suitably weighted range of experiences. the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 14 curriculum should be organised so that they will learn and develop through a variety of contexts within both the classroom and other aspects of school life. there should be opportunities for children to develop their full capacity for different types of thinking and learning. as they progress, they should develop and apply increasing intellectual rigour, drawing different strands of learning together, and exploring and achieving more advanced levels of understanding. learner: assessment information provides me with a full picture of my learning. it shows me how much i have learned and how well and helps me to see pathways into the future of my learning both in and beyond school. teacher: i design assessment in a way which enables the learner to demonstrate the breadth and depth of their learning. i use information on their progress and their learning goals to plan appropriate learning opportunities, building on what they have already achieved. the principle of relevance the third principle is relevance, and may be divided into two parts a) validity and b) consistency. many students will learn whatever is necessary to get the grades they desire. many summatively assessed programs are based on memorizing details. in those circumstances students will usually attempt to deploy a learning strategy that focuses on the retention of facts. the development of higher order cognition is a focal instructional strategy of project 1 (hallam et al, 2004). formative assessment is fundamentally underpinned by dialogue (black & wiliam, 2006). it is therefore an assessment process that supports learning by stressing higher order thinking skills project 1: formative assessment 15 through collaborative planning and organising of work; compromise; conflict resolution (baines, blatchford & chowne, 2007); the sharing and augmentation of knowledge and feedback (barron, 2000). a) validity: a range of assessment approaches are used which are fit for purpose. this means that they should be valid and reliable – they should be well designed and capture the full range of learning and skills that are being developed; particularly high-order problem solving skills. learner: i understand why i am being assessed and my assessment clearly reflects the learning i am trying to achieve. they provide me with valuable feedback about how much and how well i have learned so that i can plan next steps. teacher: in planning learning activities, i consider the learning intentions and range of evidence i will gather to demonstrate this learning. i develop valid and reliable methods of assessment accordingly. parent: i have accurate and succinct information about my child’s learning across a wide range of learning and skills. b) consistency: learners’ achievements are assessed fairly and consistently across the system, based on shared and commonly understood and consistently applied standards. learner: i understand what good learning looks like and i know what i have to do to achieve my learning goals. self and peer evaluation help me to develop my understanding of what i need to do. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 16 teacher: i know what quality in learning looks like. i share a common understanding of standards with my colleagues, and apply these with consistency across learners. the principles of engagement/motivation and personalisation/choice the decision to develop formative assessment strategies in scottish classrooms arose from the compelling research of black and william (1998a, b) and subsequent reports on their work (arg, 1999, 2002) which emphasized the potential of formative assessment strategies to create a large positive increase in the level of student engagement with the learning process. the principles of engagement and motivation are contiguous with those of personalisation and choice, and are highly significant features of an effective curriculum architecture. the arrangements for assessment should be responsive to individual needs and support particular aptitudes and talents in order to challenge and motivate all learners to develop to their fullest. the curriculum should recognize that learners progress in different ways and, based on their experiences go on to make different choices. assessment should reflect these differences by giving each child increasing opportunities for exercising responsible personal choice as they move through their school career. once they have achieved suitable levels of attainment across a wide range of areas of learning the choice should become as open as possible. there should be safeguards to ensure that choices are soundly based and lead to successful outcomes. the effectiveness of such safeguards is dependent on the ability of individual teachers to understand the principles of assessment for learning and apply them in the classroom in order to support the fullest development of learners, while minimising distortions in learning (aag/apmg, 2002-2008). project 1: formative assessment 17 the notion of personalization and choice is by no means new. for more than 30 years researchers have been aware that relating new knowledge to learners' existing understandings of the world is an effective way for learners to acquire deeper meaning from new information. since personalization of the curriculum emerged as a valid pedagogical principle, it has been discussed as a means of motivating learners by incorporating their goals and choice of topics into a curriculum, particularly for addressing values (howe & howe, 1975), and as a model of behaviour modification for disruptive students (mamchak & mamchak, 1976). some 35 years later the project 1 classroom system seeks to fully value and recognize learners' achievements by acknowledging the individuality of personal experience and the accommodation of learners' needs in the instruction. learner: i am involved in planning my learning and setting challenging goals for myself. assessment information helps me to see how far i have come and what i need to do to achieve my goals and motivates me to set new goals. i am assessed in ways that allow me to demonstrate and recognise the full range of my achievements. where appropriate, i am involved in decisions about when and how this assessment will take place. teacher: the learning, teaching and assessment activities i plan create opportunities for dialogue to help learners set and achieve challenging goals based on high quality feedback on their progress. in planning teaching learning and assessment, i consider the needs of the wide needs of learners. i plan an appropriate range of activities to give learners the opportunity to demonstrate their learning and provide feedback accordingly. a practitioner evaluation of 'project 1': a literature review current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 18 this section of the article features the findings of two separate research papers which evaluate the crucial development stages of project 1 (2002-2004) in uk schools: 1) hallam, kiston, peffers, robertson and stobart (2004) investigated project 1only and; 2) condie, livingstone and seagraves (2005) examined the impact of project 1 alongside various other projects within the aifl programme. it may be of interest to note that teachers exhibited a consistently greater interest in responding to questions regarding project 1 than any other project included in condie’s research. at the behest of seed, hallam et al undertook to investigate effective classroom approaches to formative assessment (october 2004). their investigation is founded upon the earlier (and continuing) research of black and wiliam (1998a, b). they draw various sources of data directly from school settings: teachers' agreements, action plans, program dairies, case study reports, relevant school self-evaluations and field visits. a primary function of the early field visits was to introduce participating staff to the use of a rating scale used to quantify the perceived effectiveness of project 1 to a range of outcomes. all data was analyzed to consider the extent of change across the early period of the innovation in the following areas: student learning, motivation and behavior; student awareness of assessment; attainment; classroom practice; teacher beliefs and attitudes; teacher understanding of assessment; parental/carer involvement in their child's education. student learning, motivation and behaviour hallam et al (2004) found strong positive consensus among teachers (n=72) regarding enhanced involvement, motivation and confidence in their students. generally, there were fewer comments regarding behavior. hallam et al (2004) speculate that 'this may have been in part, because the pupils participating in the project were on the whole already well behaved (¶ 4.7.4).' a project 1: formative assessment 19 slightly later seed commissioned study into aifl and the effectiveness of formative assessment strategies was undertaken by condie et al in december 2005. the reluctance of teachers to comment on changes in behavior was a remarkable feature here as well. condie et al (2005) used questionnaires as a part of their method and issued the same basic template in two phases spaced 16 months apart. 44 teachers and 21 head-teachers participated in phase 1; 56 teachers and 26 head-teachers participated in phase 2 of the survey. in both phases, 21% of participating teachers declined to evaluate the statement: 'pupils have shown improved classroom behavior'. a further interesting feature of condie's research is that while 73.5% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed (sa/a) with the statement on discipline in phase one, only 46% did so in phase two (2005, ¶ 4.4). the marked decline of positive responses in phase two of condie's questionnaire was explained by head-teachers' as an indication of the generally good discipline found across participating classes at the time, and so what may not be observed may not be reported. condie's report did not seek to examine if the good discipline reported by head-teachers at the time of phase two was the outcome of earlier project 1 interventions in the classroom. the responses to the condie et al questionnaire concur with the favorable indications received by hallam et al, regarding learning, confidence and motivation: project 1 questionnaire (condie et al, 2005, ¶ 4.4) phase 1 phase 2 sa/a sa/a the developments enhance the learning of all pupils 75.00% 67.00% pupils have increased confidence and show greater self-esteem 70.50% 72.00% pupils are more motivated toward learning 70.00% n/a current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 20 pupils have become more actively involved in the learning process 81.00% 82.00% student awareness of assessment an important aspect of project 1 was the effect on students' meta-cognitive skills. participating students became more aware of their learning needs and what they had to do in order to make progress (hallam et al, 2004). for example, hallam reports a strong positive reaction from students after the use of a feedback sheet designed to develop their insights into their writing skills (2004, ¶ 4.7.5). condie solicited the perceptions of teachers on this matter: phase 1 phase 2 sa/a sa/a pupils are better equipped to assess their own learning 79.50% 78.00% pupils are able to set realistic targets 66.00% 66.00% pupils are developing skills in peer assessment 66.00% 77.00% attainment attainment was an area in which teachers were reluctant to offer comment. hallam states that drawing conclusions about project 1's impact on attainment would be premature because of the early development stage of the project. they do however report that some teachers were very positive about the impact of formative assessment strategies, while some in policy positions (headteachers and local government officials) were more reserved in their praise (2004, ¶ 4.7.8). condie posed the following statement on attainment to teachers: ‘i have evidence that pupil attainment has project 1: formative assessment 21 improved through project activities.’ only 32% of respondents in phase 1, and 28% in phase 2 strongly agreed or agreed with the statement. the low approval rating afforded to this statement is in part explained by a marked reluctance among participating teachers to commit any form of response on this issue: 44% of teachers in phase one and 42% in phase two chose to offer no response. it is therefore impossible to ascertain if they inclined towards agreement or disagreement on the issue of attainment. classroom practices 'a major outcome...was the change in classroom practices which increased the active engagement of pupils, who were encouraged to take ownership of their learning rather than being the passive recipients of the delivery of curriculum' (hallam et al, 2004, ¶ 4.7.1). hallam reported that relationships with the students 'blossomed' and it became possible to bring forward difficulties without negative impact (2004, ¶ 4.7.1). significantly, hallam found that the students were generally positive about the impact of the project. similarly, condie et al (2005) requested that teachers respond to the following statement: ‘pupils themselves report positive views of project activities.’ practitioner responses were favourable, with 62.5% (in phase 1) and 65% (in phase 2) of teachers strongly agreeing or agreeing with the statement. it can be seen that there is a consensus which runs throughout the responses to the condie research questionnaire. teachers consistently indicate that students are more motivated, more involved and better equipped to assess their own learning. in addition, students are positive about project activities, show greater confidence and are generally able to set realistic learning targets. teacher beliefs and attitudes the afl project tapped into the existing beliefs and attitudes of many participating teachers. hallam et al (2004) observe that: current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 22 'the nature of the project itself with its focus on pupil learning and the enhancement of teaching resonates with teachers, taking them back to fundamental pedagogical principles...it's success in delivering improved pupil motivation and engagement provided teachers with immediate positive reinforcement for continuing development, implementation and evaluation of the strategies' (¶ 1.5.11). indeed, 100% of respondents assigned a rating of vs/s to the project improving their motivation (hallam et al, 2004, ¶ 1.5.18). condie et al reported numerous positive descriptions: 're-energised, satisfied, confident, renewed enjoyment' (2005, ¶ 4.4). it is evident that the students are not the sole beneficiary of a movement from a teacher-centered pedagogy to one which places the student and their learning needs at the heart of teaching. teachers themselves report it to be an essential opportunity to reflect on their existing attitudes on classroom practice (hallam et al, 2004). hallam et al present a particularly meaningful remark from a participating teacher: 'even in terms of where i was in education 10 years ago, you can see that is a shift, and it’s almost as if now the focus is on the process rather than the product' (¶ 4.8.2). this is a very significant insight into the essential focus of formative assessment being one of process and not oriented to performance. both hallam and condie gathered extensive evidence of the impact of project 1 on the personal and professional development of teachers, many of which used the opportunity to reflect on their past understandings of teaching and learning and compare them to their current practices. teacher understandings of assessment hallam's report on project 1 stresses the need for a careful clarification of the meaning of formative assessment, followed by the embedding of formative assessment strategies in practice. 'teachers need to understand the underlying principles rather than have a superficial knowledge of strategies' (hallam et al, 2004, ¶ 1.8). condie et al discovered that teachers and head-teachers project 1: formative assessment 23 participating in the initial development phase of project 1 were troubled by a lack of understanding regarding the underlying theories and principles of formative assessment (2005, ¶ 4.4). both studies elicited feedback which indicated that a much greater depth of understanding was required by participating staff prior to the commencement of work in schools. however, as the development phase of project 1 continued, teachers reported the evolving understanding of how assessment and learning connect as a very powerful learning experience (hallam et al, 2004, ¶ 4.8.1). by the latter stages of project development, 100% of participating teachers in project 1 evaluated the project as vs/s at improving their understanding of assessments (2004, ¶ 1.5.18). in terms of the overall effect of the project upon teachers, the hallam et al report reveals that the project had a significant impact and led to: • the understandings that formative assessment takes time and requires long-term commitment; • improved feedback to students; • a deeper understanding of assessment; • teachers applying formative assessment strategies beyond the prescribed boundaries of the project; • teachers becoming increasingly aware of how students learn and their learning needs. parent/carer involvement one of the key aims of the wider multi-project aifl innovation is to involve parents and carers more actively in the process of their children's learning. this overall aim is therefore equally significant when considering project 1 and the task of developing formative assessment strategies in schools. the importance of parental/carer inclusion is confirmed by townsend (1997),who current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 24 believes that effective schools are those which welcome parents by engaging them and involving them in the widest range of school activities; most crucially those concerning their child's development. although a key aim of project 1, the level of involvement by parents and carers by the end of the development phase was disappointing, particularly when compared to the other more successful aspects of the project discussed above. only 23% of teachers indicated that parental/carer involvement had increased as a result of the project (hallam et al, 2004, ¶ 1.5.18). condie et al found that only 38% of head-teachers reported that involvement practices had changed as a result of the project. indeed, some schools neglected to inform the parents about the project (2005, ¶ 4.4). condie determined six key themes by analyzing teachers' comments about the project. from a total of 410 recorded thematic references there were only 22 mentions of better links to parents and carers (2005, ¶ 4.4). it is apparent that the space between the school system and parents/carers had not been sufficiently explored by the end of the project development stage. it is to be hoped that the level of 'public engagement' exhibited by schools increases in order to create communities of practice which work together in the spirit of trust and under the agreement of mutual accountability. it is this kind of relationship which brings into existence legitimate partnerships (marx 2000). project 1: challenges encountered in the development stage (2002-2004) instigating change in schools is a highly complex process. any complex system can be broken down into sub-parts and various authors have sought to examine the process of educational change management in terms of categories. for example, johnston and neidermeier (1987) see change in terms of 3 broad categories of variables: a) structural (leadership, finance, human resources); b) procedural (time, organization, technical assistance) and c) attitudinal, primarily relating to negative responses to top-own policy making and the existence of internal politics. project 1: formative assessment 25 knoop (1987) suggests four key areas of change: i) administrative (policies and objectives); ii) curriculum/program; iii) human resources (staff interactions, beliefs, expectations; and iv) teaching and learning, where knoop highlighted group interactions between teachers and students and methods of teaching pertaining to classroom relations and communication. fullan (1991) confirms that the actual process of educational change management is a highly complex process requiring the strong commitment of principals and external policy makers. it can be seen that the factors which ensured the success of the project 1 (stated earlier) take these change variables into full account. the careful arrangement of consultative networks by seed led to project success despite the reputation of teachers for being inherently stubborn when faced with innovation, in part due to their strong sense of acculturation and continuity. hallam et al report very positive attitudes by schools to the difficulties faced during the developmental stage of project 1. when asked about the difficulties encountered schools identified relatively few, preferring instead to see problem solving as developmental and positive (2004, ¶ 1.5.6) – an indication that the overwhelming majority of participating teachers and principals were committed to the project from the outset. it was in this spirit that various developmental challenges were reported by participating schools. hallam et al (2004) found that some teachers, even those who grasped the underlying principles of formative assessment, were unclear on what they were supposed to do in their classrooms. one teacher explains that this barrier to change exists because, 'teachers are used to attending various in-service courses where they are told exactly what to do in the classroom' (hallam et al 2004, ¶ 4.6.1). consequently, participating teachers expressed concerns about the movement from concept to operationalization. some felt that more direction was required on the differentiation of strategies taking into account the wide range of attainment in some classes (hallam et al, 2004). these are valid concerns, not least when one considers issues of current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 26 choice and equity, which are fundamental themes of any credible curriculum architecture. all students, no matter what their ability, gender, ethnicity or economic status, need to be supported equally as they gain mastery of the basic curriculum and so it is essential that schools 'identify and remove physical and programmatic barriers that produce disproportionality in academic achievement' (ospi website). this situation must exist in such a way that students do not perceive bias or discrimination in their treatment. if it does not, it is to betray sensitivity and trust and destroy the central pillar supporting the afl/aal classroom: cooperation (arg 2002). in addition, some teachers found the integration of formative and summative assessments very challenging (george street research [gsr], 2007). such initial uncertainty among some teachers is not indicative of shortcomings in their preparation by seed. such preparations simply did not take place and traditionally precise instruction regarding the specifics of implementation were carefully avoided. wiliam, lee, harrison and black (2004) explain the rationale behind this non-prescriptive approach, 'the central tenet of the research project was that if the promise of formative assessment was to be realised, traditional research designs, in which teachers are 'told' what to do by researchers would not be appropriate (p. 50).' as the project progressed, the lack of clarity exhibited by some teachers at the beginning evolved into an advantage as they appreciated that it had compelled them to focus on their own teaching materials and devise their own action plan (hallam et al, 2004) in effect they were adjusting to the atmosphere outside of the 'black box' (black & wiliam, 1998b). however, in a 2007 review of the entire aifl project research conducted by george street research found that awareness and understanding of aifl was not firmly embedded across teachers in scotland and understanding was not clear by teachers in terms of the principles underpinning assessment strategies (gsr, 2007). as the government funded part project 1: formative assessment 27 of the aifl project drew to close in late 2007 the quest for fine-grained understandings of formative assessment principles among teachers continued. other challenges arising from the development of formative assessment strategies included: • some staff and students didn't like to be videoed or lacked the technical support to expedite this process; • teachers spoke of the need for self awareness to avoid reverting to old habits; • tensions between formative and summative assessment demands; • concerns about funding for further development; • competing agenda and external accountability demands. many teachers identified their primary concern as insufficient time to engage in the process of strategic development (planning, preparing, reflecting, reporting) (condie et al, 2005). time was also a concern when it came to covering the curriculum, with many teachers expressing concern that the material was being covered at a slower pace. these initial concerns were to some extent mitigated by the emerging quality of work and learning as the project progressed (hallam et al, 2004). project 1: factors contributing to success both hallam et al (2004) and condie et al (2005) found the development stage of project 1 to be a success from which lessons can be learned and applied to future projects which seek to develop innovative changes to classroom practice. it is clear that the development of formative assessment strategies in the classroom stimulated teachers personally and improved them professionally. hallam et al attribute various factors to the success of the project: • participating teachers had time to plan, prepare, reflect and evaluate. this was made possible current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 28 by the serious intent of seed to instigate change at a policy level; • once teachers became accustomed to the idea of exploring formative assessment strategies in their classrooms, the action-research elements of the project became very meaningful; • head-teachers, senior management team members and teachers were committed to the project from the outset; • teamwork between all stakeholders in the project; • regular meetings and project forums to reflect upon project efficacy and to plan next steps; • resources (supply teachers, i.t, instructional materials, time and funding) were provided which supported the project and the strategies; • the incorporation of the project into the school development program. conclusion the development of formative assessment strategies in the scottish region of the uk was a highly complex process that required the political commitment of government to be matched by that of participating teachers and principals. even when this collaboration was secured and the processes of change management among stakeholders carefully planned, conceptual difficulties persisted beyond the 2002-2004 development phase of the aifl project (gsr, 2007). the embedding of innovative pedagogical principles is beset by challenges and tensions. as black & wiliam (2005) observe, the effective integration of formative and summative assessment will require a different changemanagement strategy depending on national circumstances, and in some cases may be very challenging indeed. innovations in education invite such challenges and are inevitable (fullan, 1991). from the out-set, the constructive problem-solving attitude exhibited by participating schools in scotland was project 1: formative assessment 29 a large contributory factor to the successful development of formative assessment strategies (hallam et al, 2004). a primary source of conceptual challenge associated with project 1 was the acculturated preference of teachers for prescriptive and precise instructions on how to implement new classroom practices (william et al, 2004; hallam et al, 2004). despite the challenges discussed in this article, teachers responded very positively on an evaluative rating scale: 100% of respondents reported that the project was ‘very successful’ or ‘successful’ (vs/s) in increasing teacher understanding of the role of assessment and in improving teacher motivation. further, 91% of respondents indicated that project 1 was vs/s in changing classroom practices; 92% indicated the project was vs/s at changing assessment practices; 94% the extent of questioning; 95% in increasing the level of discussion and 97% of respondents assigned a vs/s rating to an improved teacher focus on the learning needs of students (hallam et al, 2004). if formative assessment interventions are to be successful on a large and long-term scale certain conditions should exist: (i) dedicated political support at all levels of government; (ii) a clear and compelling expression of the conceptual framework which underpins formative assessment and continuing support for practitioners beyond the development phase (iii) close collaboration between all stakeholders (teachers, administrators, parents/carers and students), who work together to engage students with the process of their own learning; (iv) a climate of change management in which practitioners approach obstacles as constructive and necessary challenges; (v) the alignment of summative and formative assessment activities so that they work in concert to support and evaluate learning. finally, at the most fundamental level formative assessment practices are characterized by positive learning interactions and dialogue. as such, an important strand of future research resides in developing fine-grained understandings about high-quality current issues in education vol. 13 no. 3 30 classroom dialogue between teacher/student and between peers, and how they support productive learning in practical settings. references american psychological association. 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(2004). teachers developing assessment for learning: impact on student learning. assessment in education, 11(1), 49-65. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 34 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain jeffery johnson seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word 785-2966-3-le.docx 1 volume 14, number 3 august 26, 2011 issn 1099-839x the serious games of racial accounting in schools martha i. martinez university of oregon educational disparities are frequently framed in racial comparisons that are based on data generated by sorting and counting racial subgroups. our reliance on these data, and the sorting and counting mechanisms entailed therein, is fundamental to debates about racial inequalities. what is largely ignored in achievement gap discourse is how racial data collection procedures naturalize and legitimize what counts as race and what doesn’t. the contested racial status of latinos illustrates the tension within and political significance of government-sanctioned racial classificatory schemes. by situating race discourse within actual race data collection practices, particularly as they relate to latinos in the u.s. and other racial misfits, this study explores how technologies of truth re-create racial (arti)facts and how school staff interpret race and their roles in the data-keeping process, it also considers the implications of recent changes to racial accounting procedures in schools. keywords: race/ethnicity, racial measurement, latinos, multi-racial students, racial disparities in 2001, i registered my daughter for kindergarten. on the school registration form was a question regarding her ethnicity, with instructions that respondents select one of five options presented: american indian or alaskan native; asian or pacific islander; black; white; or hispanic. i asked the office assistant if i could check two boxes: having a latina1 mother and white father, i didn’t want my daughter to have to be identified as one at the expense of the other. i was instructed that i could only choose one. i checked off two boxes anyway. the next year, when the form was returned to me for updating, one box was checked: white. i didn’t protest the erasure of my racial/ethnic contribution to my child’s racial/ethnic identification. although i resented it, i nevertheless rationalized that, if forced to choose, i would classify my child as white instead of latina – because, in my formulation of racial/ethnic identities, she is more white than latina. she is far more privileged in many respects than many latinos in the u.s. – in fact, than i was as a child. although i understood the history and rationale behind the data collection effort, i nevertheless resented being boxed in, or in this case, boxed out. the paperwork seemed to represent more than bureaucratic record-keeping. to me it represented a definition of racial/ethnic identity; and, i identified my child as being equal parts latina and white. this incident wasn’t the only or primary reason for initiating a project on race data collection in schools, but it nevertheless captures a key question of interest: what officially and actually counts as race in school data and for whom? the question is particularly significant given what appear to be two competing contemporary trajectories in u.s. racial ideology and its manifestation in school policy. on the one hand, there is considerable criticism within theoretical and applied research, as well as in public policy arenas, regarding the validity and utility of existing racial categories. essentialized ethnic/racial categories have been destabilized in academic circles (allen, 1998a, 1998b, 1999; gimenez, 1998; hollinger, 1995; moya, 2000). findings from the human genome project dispute the contention that “separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans” (u.s. department of energy, n.d.). and, race-based remedies to racial disparities have become increasingly criticized in legal circles as reverse current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 2 discrimination or anathema to a colorblind democracy. the u.s. supreme court’s decision in parents involved in community schools (pics) further restricting the use of race in student assignment policies showcases this “colorblind/reverse discrimination” reasoning. writing for the majority, chief justice roberts concluded: the school districts have not carried their heavy burden of showing that the interest they seek to achieve justifies the extreme means they have chosen--discriminating among individual students based on race by relying upon racial classifications in making school assignments (pics, 2007). anderson (2007) contends that the pics decision and contemporary legal arguments against the use of raceconscious education policies rely on a faulty theory of “color-blind constitutionalism,” i.e., that the intent of the reconstruction congress was to articulate one class of american citizenship without regard to racial classification and thus establish a constitutional goal of “racial neutrality” (p. 249). in contrast, he provides ample evidence that racial ideology and not color-blindness permeated the legal foundations upon which citizenship and equal rights continued to be defined and enforced. moreover, he finds this racial ideology was not limited to black-white race relations, but existed within the context of a multiracial landscape where concerns about american indians and asians were also predominant. thus, anderson (2007) concludes, “we may argue for or against the use of racial classifications to pursue issues of school desegregation and affirmative action, but we should not pretend that we are constrained by a color-blind constitution” (p. 256). at the same time that the construct and political utility of race is undergoing considerable challenge, our educational system has become increasingly invested in race data as it seeks to address persistent achievement gaps between white students and students of color. the no child left behind act of 2001 (nclb) relies heavily on racial data collection procedures, and these procedures have taken on greater significance given the consequences for schools that fail to report adequate yearly progress for racial (and other) subgroups on standardized tests. moreover, substantial demographic changes in the past two decades have led to heightened attention within the school system on the growing latino population, especially those for whom english is a second language. the data-keeping enterprise initiated with nclb creates a very real triple data monitoring of many latinos who are “subgrouped” in nclb accountability reports not just by race (or rather ethnicity, since they are not classified as a race), but potentially by limited english proficiency and socioeconomic disadvantage as well. the purpose of the study is to explore how racial “truths” in education are (re)created via one of the most mundane bureaucratic tasks in schools: race data collection procedures. the primary questions guiding my investigation are: (1) what counts as race (and what doesn’t) within actual race data collection practices in schools, particularly as these practices relate to “nonconforming” racial types; (2) how do school staff interpret the race categories and their data collection roles; and (3) what do existing practices imply for the recent changes to racial data collection and reporting in u.s. schools? i refer to the racial accounting practices in schools as “serious games” not to make light of them, but rather to highlight the practices as a series of negotiations between actors within a discursive web of meaning construction. in addition to the local players involved in the collection of these data (i.e., students, their families, and school staff), there are state and federal government representatives who regulate the collection process. the uses of these data vary and encompass other players in the game of racial accounting in schools. these players, such as policymakers, researchers and the general public, use these data to monitor and debate how our schools are serving a racially diverse student body. these are, as ortner (1996) suggests, “serious games” that are steeped in power and inequality, and that involve actors who play with “skill, intention, wit, and intelligence” (p. 12). ladson-billings (2004), for example, recounts the following story of an elementary school in a historically black neighborhood in san francisco that was ordered to desegregate and prohibited from having more than 47% of any one “designated” minority. when i asked the school principal about the school demographics, she responded, “do you want to know what it is on paper or what it is in reality?” i was surprised to learn that when african american parents saw that the school district was willing to improve the school once white children were coming in and their children were being sent out of the community, a large contingent of them reenrolled their children in the neighborhood school with the racial/ethnic designation “native american.” the principal told me, “i have the largest concentration of “native american” students in the city!” (p. 8). the example above and the pics case illustrate the high stakes of racial accounting practices in the context of school desegregation cases, and the ways in which students and families are active participants in the data collection and interpretative processes entailed therein. however, the collection of racial/ethnic data frequently occurs in schools where their use(s) may be unclear to students and their families, as is the case in this particular project. no desegregation order or voluntary integration plan governs student assignment policies in the schools involved in this study. yet, in these schools, as in all u.s. public schools, racial data are collected and interpreted by school staff and educational researchers to (a) make meaning of the educational experiences of students, and, in the wake of nclb, (b) hold schools accountable for meeting specific assessment outcomes for all racial/ethnic subgroups. while students and families are key players in the serious games of racial accounting in schools 3 this racial accounting game, this study focuses on the institutional apparatus of racial data keeping in schools, how school staff navigate this system and interpret their roles within it, and the implications of this game for critical consumers of the “racial (arti)facts” that emerge: educational policymakers, practitioners, and researchers. i use the term “racial (arti)facts” to reflect the contradictory characteristics of these data: they are labels and counts of social groups defined by characteristics and conditions that are real and imaginary, stable and unstable, present and past. the next section highlights the historical evolution of this game and some of the current challenges to keeping racial boxes intact. the creation and maintenance of a u.s. racial cosmology despite the significant impact nclb has had on school data, its passage did not initiate racial data collections in schools. nor did the racial and ethnic categories currently in use materialize in an institutional vacuum. the policies and practices related to race data collection in schools are embedded within the larger sociopolitical forces that have helped shape racial datakeeping across government institutions. the evolution of these classificatory schemes supports omi and winant’s (1994) contention that race is an “unstable and ‘decentered’ complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle” (p. 55). the contested racial status of latinos (or hispanics, as they are frequently referred to and categorized in u.s. demographic profiles) illustrates the tension within and political significance of government sanctioned racial classificatory schemes. according to u.s. racial classification systems, hispanics are not officially a race but instead an ethnic group (allen, 1999; hirschman, alba, & farley, 2000; logan, 2004; saenz, 2004; snipp, 2003). an anomaly of racial sorts, they are the only ethnic group officially classified and counted as such in the u.s. census and in federal and state school reports. although race is more often linked with human differences in phenotype and ethnicity is frequently defined in terms of a shared cultural heritage, there is much debate about the utility/validity of this distinction and much variability in the manner in which hispanics identify themselves racially (hirschman et al., 2000; logan, 2004; omi & winant, 1994; snipp, 2003; suro, 2006a, 2006b). in an effort to better count hispanics, the census 2000 reordered the ethnic and race questions, hoping to encourage more hispanics to identify their hispanic heritage in the ethnic question as well as their racial type in the race question that followed. however, hispanics continued to defy neat racial categorization, choosing instead the “some other race” category and writing in “latino”, “hispanic” or a similar term almost half the time (logan, 2004; saenz, 2004). and, hispanics aren’t the only ones wreaking havoc on u.s. census interpretability. in response to growing criticisms around the race categories used in the u.s. census, the 2000 census allowed individuals to check multiple boxes and over 6.8 million people did. although many of these individuals identified hispanic or latino as one of the “other races” they claimed, another significant multi-race respondent (approximately 1 million individuals) were those who identified as both american indian/alaskan native and white (tafoya, johnson, & hill, 2004). despite what might be construed as having a subordinate racial status, hispanics constitute one of the five racial/ethnic groups that are routinely counted by various government agencies, including the u.s. department of education. this is largely the result of the office of management and budget’s (omb) statistical policy directive no. 15 (snipp, 2003). omb directive 15, which became official federal policy in 1977, standardized and institutionalized racial data-keeping into five racial/ethnic data categories: (a) american indian and alaska natives, (b) asians and pacific islanders, (c) nonhispanic blacks, (d) non-hispanic whites, and (e) hispanics (hollinger, 1995; snipp, 2003). hollinger (1995) refers to these five categories as the ethno-racial pentagon. snipp (2003) suggests that this ethno-racial pentagon constitutes a racial cosmology that permeates u.s. society to this day. maintaining this racial cosmology, however, has its challenges, particularly when self-enumeration is the principal process by which racial data collection proceeds and when increasing diversity in the u.s. undermines the adequacy of existing racial boxes. contested definitions of race aren’t new; they in fact co-exist with dominant racial narratives to elaborate, refine and challenge racial realities. as omi and winant (1994) contend, race is not an essence or an illusion, but a social construct under constant political struggle that “continues to play a fundamental role in structuring and representing the social world” (p. 55). at times the omnipresent political struggle for racial “truths” destabilizes the racial order and new meanings seep into the broader public domain, staking claim on what officially counts as race, for whom, and for what purpose. changes to the racial order are only achieved “when there is significant ‘decay’ in the capacities of preexisting state programs and institutions to organize and enforce racial ideology” (omi & winant, 1994, p. 88). with the move from observer identification in the 1960 u.s. census to self-identification in order to better count native americans living in non-reservation settings (snipp, 2003), the racial ideology pandora’s box was irrevocably opened. skerry (2000) suggests that collecting and interpreting racial/ethnic data has become increasingly difficult because “race and ethnicity are coming to be understood less as social constructs denoting affiliation to one or more groups than as psychological choices denoting individual identity” (p.8). whether or not individuals respond to the categories based on social affiliation or personal identification with one or more social groups, census studies indicate that individuals respond to these questions differently at current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 4 different times, and increasingly choose either not to respond at all or to respond in ways that do not conform to the official racial classification scheme (hirschman et al., 2000; logan, 2004; skerry, 2000). the new racial/ethnic categories to be used by k12 schools and other government agencies beginning in 2010 represent the federal government’s most recent attempt to replace the ill-fitting previous racial lid with a new one. the title of the federal government’s 2008 guide for implementing the new categories – managing an identity crisis – suggests a paternalistic nation-state’s assessment of its racially conflicted citizenry. although the guide states that the changes were prompted in part to accommodate “parents [who] want the opportunity to more fully describe their children’s heritage” (p. 3), there is no open-ended response to the race/ethnicity question in the new format. to handle this identity crisis, the state’s response is a minor tweaking of the previous categories and the utilization of its bureaucratic machine to establish the new racial order. thus, the primary audience for the 2008 guide is not the public, but “data, information systems, and program staff” (national forum, p. v) who are charged with operationalizing the changes, and, in an ironic twist of racial data keeping fate, using observer identification when the racially conflicted citizenry refuses to comply with the new rules of the game. because this study was initiated prior to the implementation of the new federal guidelines, the racial accounting game that follows focuses on practices immediately prior to the new rules and discusses what these changes imply for the future. methods of inquiry i began the study using two guiding questions: (1) what counts as race within actual race data collection practices; and (2) how do school staff interpret the race categories and their data collection roles? a third question was added when the new federal guidelines on race and ethnicity data surfaced mid-way through the data collection phase: what do the recent changes to racial data collection and reporting in u.s. schools imply based on existing practices? drawing on smith’s concept of ruling relations (1990, 1999), i examined the discursive and multifaceted web of coordinated activities that “produce local events as readable in the texts of the ruling” (1999, p. 87). like foucault’s (2000) concept of governmentality, smith recognizes the salience of the scientific apparatuses used by the state to (re)create the knowledge and truths necessary for governance, while at the same time not reducing the state to a monolithic unity that directs all human action. to investigate microsocial phenomena and the power relations embedded within them, smith (1990) emphasizes focusing not only on textual representations of discourse but in “actual relations that are vested in texts” (p. 162). i also relied on ortner’s (1996) articulation of practice theory to help interpret the results of the study. her methodological approach rests upon “a model of practice that embodies agency but does not begin with, or pivot upon the agent” and instead highlights the “serious games” of social life where power differentials and inequalities manifest themselves in multiple ways (p. 12). to examine how the policies and procedures governing race data collection and reporting practices mediated actual race data collection practices within and across public schools in oregon, i relied on two data sources: archival documents and interviews. the principal archival data sources used were race data collection protocols and policy documents, as well as district and state reports referencing student demographics. these texts were supplemented with interviews of staff responsible for student data collection activities in oregon. archival documents and interviews were analyzed using an iterative approach to illuminate race data collection and reporting practices and how staff interpreted their roles within these processes. the investigative process began with an analysis of archival documents to decipher how official policies and procedures were supposed to guide the data collection and reporting process. interviews with staff helped to fill in the gaps that emerged from the analysis of the documents, and to gather evidence about how staff interpreted their roles and the race categories. observing actual incidents of families providing these data to the schools would have also been helpful. however, at this point in the project i was more interested in understanding the rules of racial data collection and how staff interpreted and enacted these rules. in addition to researcher, i was known by some of the study participants as a parent, a latina, a diversity advocate, and a relatively well educated community member. not all study participants were fully aware of my personal and professional background, but all were aware that their comments were being recorded and analyzed. this of course had an effect on what they told me and what they allowed me to see. as mauthner and doucet (2003) contend, i recognize that i have made “choices about how to interpret the voices [of study participants] and which transcript extracts to present as evidence” (p. 418). i have nevertheless tried as much as possible to critically reflect on what i was being told, what i saw, and how my lens distorted and clarified the data i collected and my analytical focus. additional details about the research setting, participants and procedures follow. setting the study was conducted in oregon, and involved staff from a medium-sized school district, two elementary schools within this district, the oregon department of education, and an education service district (esd). the schools, school district, esd, and state were selected largely on the basis of convenience, but also because of the relatively high numbers of latino families that the study schools and the esd’s migrant education program served. in 2007-08, the meadows2 school district served approximately 7200 students, of which 10% were hispanic/latino. of the total student population in oregon, the serious games of racial accounting in schools 5 ethnic minority students accounted for about 30% in 2007, with hispanic students representing over half the total ethnic minority population. although the state is not among the most diverse in the country, the white student population has steadily decreased while minority student enrollment, particularly hispanic enrollment, has increased – student demographic trends that are consistent with schools across the country (fry, 2006). from 1992-2007, the total actual growth rate of oregon public school students was approximately 10%, with white students decreasing by over 11% during this time and hispanic students growing by over 230% (oregon department of education, 2006-2007). the participating schools and the esd were also selected due to the relatively large hispanic populations that each served. the two elementary schools involved in the study, centennial and new river, were district english learner magnet schools for spanish-speaking students and served disproportionately larger numbers of hispanic students than the remaining six elementary schools. in the 2007-08 school year, centennial had about 380 students, over 36% of whom were hispanic. new river had about 440 students, just over 30% of whom were hispanic. the percentage of hispanic enrollment at the other elementary schools in the meadows school district ranged from about 2-6%. esds are intermediary administrative agencies that serve multiple school districts, providing administrative support and other supplementary educational services to support the activities of their respective districts. the esd included in the study was responsible for the migrant education program that operated in a geographic region adjacent to the school district. migrant education programs, including the program staffed by this particular esd, typically serve large numbers of hispanic students and their families, many of whom speak spanish as their primary language. participants selection of participants was based on a purposive sampling strategy (teddlie & yu, 2007). direct involvement in the collection of race and ethnicity data in oregon schools was the criterion used to recruit interview participants. i relied on personal connections at the schools and the department of education to direct me to appropriate staff. i did not provide any incentives for participation. a total of twelve individuals were interviewed, including three oregon department of education (ode) employees, two meadows school district employees, five elementary school employees, and two esd employees affiliated with the migrant education program that operates in several counties adjacent to the meadows school district. two participants were males, the rest females. at least half the participants were 50 years or older (one respondent didn’t return the background survey). when asked how they identified racially/ethnically, most (9 out of 12) identified themselves as caucasian or white. one identified as white hispanic. another identified as being half white and half mexican. race/ethnicity data is unavailable for the participant who did not return the background survey. procedures interview questions were emailed in advance to all participants, with the hope that these would guide later discussions. however, some participants (two ode employees and one district employee) chose to answer the questions exclusively via email. the rest of the participants (9) were interviewed in person, with some individuals providing additional information via email either before or after our conversations. interviews took place august 2007 – april 2009. in-person interviews occurred at the participants’ worksites, with two exceptions. both esd employees were interviewed at a local eating establishment. in-person interviews ranged in duration from about 20 minutes to an hour, and all but one of these interviews were digitally recorded. interviews were semi-structured and designed to elucidate the textual forms used to capture race data, how these forms were interpreted to families, how “nonconforming” race data were entered and reported in the system, and how staff interpreted their roles and the race categories. because i was also interested in how nclb might be influencing current race data collections, i specifically asked staff about whether nclb had had any effect on race data collection processes. i was aware that all students filled out a school registration card upon enrollment in the district and that this card requested racial/ethnic background information, so i used this as a principal investigatory tool in interviews. for migrant education staff, the comparable in-take form that we discussed in interviews was the certificate of eligibility. interviews with school, district, and state staff investigated race data collection processes articulated across these levels of school governance. however, the interviews with migrant education staff solely examined the data collection interface between migrant education staff and families, as interpreted by migrant education staff. despite the more limited investigation of race data collection processes within the migrant education program, the interviews were helpful in providing additional insight into the manner in which racial categories were explained to non-english speaking immigrants from latin america, which are the families typically served by migrant education programs in oregon. the following three sections summarize the results related to each of the research questions. the ruling relations of racial data monitoring there is an extensive paper trail governing race data collection procedures in schools. several texts stand out as those that actively shape what counts as race for students in the study’s schools. these are school registration forms, the computer technologies that transfer these data from school to district to state to federal offices, and the policy directives that govern race data collection current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 6 practices in schools. counting race in schools, however, isn’t solely accomplished by texts. official counts of students begin with students and their families – who are charged with voluntarily identifying their racial/ethnic affiliation in school registration forms, frequently by checking a box. this practice of self-identification is fundamental to racial accounting in schools, but it doesn’t always yield data that is easily translated into standardized racial/ethnic categories for all students. in the cases of racial misfits, i.e., those who check too many boxes or none at all, school staff must decide what and who counts racially within schools. their actions and the racial/ethnic self-designations of students and families in their schools, while not controlled by the racial discourse that permeates the school environment, are nevertheless constrained and guided by allowable standardized options from a complex racial accounting bureaucracy. this racial accounting bureaucracy could be conceived of as the ruling relations of race data collection practices in schools. the ruling relations governing racial/ethnic data collections in schools start with federal policies that dictate what must be counted as race, what must be counted as ethnicity, and how counting should happen. they trickle down to the school in an articulated, official discourse that illuminates some racial truths and obfuscates others. figure a illustrates the ruling relations of racial data collections in the oregon schools i investigated. as the figure shows, the textual forms that govern these practices aren’t just in paper form. computer-based data systems play a significant role in the standardization of racial types via the use of race data fields in computer programs that only permit acceptable data forms to be entered. two contested areas of racial truth construction within the context of these ruling relations emerged in the analysis of theinterviews and archival documents: the (non)existence of multi-racial students and hispanic racial/ethnic ambiguities. the (non)existence of multi-racial students in the 2007-08 school year, the year in which most of the interviews for the study took place, the meadows school district used the same five categories (i.e., the ethnoracial pentagon) established by omb directive 15 in 1977 to collect racial/ethnic information from families: (1) american indian or alaska native, (2) asian or pacific islander, (3) black, (4) white, and (5) hispanic. all categories on the form appeared under the heading “ethnic”, even though officially (per federal guidelines) hispanic is considered an ethnicity and the remaining four categories are defined as races. although the majority of other oregon districts of similar size or larger counted students who identified as multi-racial by 2007, the meadows district did not report these data until 2009. (for student enrollment counts by ethnic group, see table 2 for meadows school district and table 3 for all districts, including those with 1000 or more students.) prior to 2009, when families from new river and centennial checked multiple boxes these students were reported either as unknown, declined to report, or by one of the ethnic categories that were checked on the registration card (school staff determined which one). there was a good deal of discomfort that i was asking these questions about staff’s specific role in helping students and families officially identify their racial/ethnic identity, with all staff stressing that self-identification was the only method they relied on, as michele’s comments below highlight. michele was a front office assistant at centennial. how do we explain it? well, basically, it’s what do they think their first ethnicity is. you know, if, for instance, if a parent has a black child and they are white, what do you consider your child? we can’t make that decision what we think. it’s what the parent thinks that that child is. what do they honor? and, same with if we have a spanish family that they, um, who are white. what do you consider? i mean we put both. we put, you know, they say, “well, i would think my first one would be white, and secondary is spanish.” and, we put in… or hispanic… we put that in. it’s not something that we make that choice on. we let the parent choose what, what’s important to them. nevertheless, since the school’s computer program had limited racial data entry fields, michele revealed how staff were the final arbiters when families did not comply with the rules of the racial identification game. before the parent even leaves, i see this. and, i look at it. and, if they’ve marked two, i ask them what they, what they prefer, as first or second. um, if they don’t want to, they, they do not have to answer it. if they decline, that’s what it shows on the, in the system. that they declined. or if they inadvertently left it out, but they didn’t know, and we didn’t catch it or they just handed it in, then we put in that they declined it. because we can’t ask them to fill it out. multi-racial students (or multi-ethnic, which was the category used by the state for the collection and reporting of student race/ethnicity data3) within the meadows district were thus transformed into acceptable ethnic data-keeping categories via the technological apparatus of the district, which (prior to 2009) literally did not compute multi-racial bodies. despite the official nonexistence of multi-racial students in meadows’ schools, staff at new river and centennial staff nevertheless commented on the existence of these students in the years prior to 2009, as the following excerpt illustrates. it is from my interview with candice, a bilingual front office assistant at new river: like i said it’s mainly the mixed families that either decline or choose both boxes. so, we really don’t have a problem with hispanic families trying to choose one or the other ‘cuz it’s mainly just the serious games of racial accounting in schools 7 hispanic – they don’t have a mix. it’s always with the mixed families, that, that have kind of a concern about throwing that out. the excerpt also illustrates another contested truth in racial data-keeping: the creation of a pan-ethnic (but not officially racial) hispanic identity. figure 1. illustration of the ruling relations in race data collections in oregon k-12 schools. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 8 hispanic racial/ethnic ambiguities a significant area of interest in my interviews with school staff was how racial categories were explained to recent immigrants who may be unfamiliar with u.s. customary and legal practices, including the collection of racial data, and who may not speak or read english. in addition to asking whether registration forms were translated into other languages, i asked what additional types of assistance staff provided to these families to help them understand the ethnic categories they were offered and to choose among the options. i also asked whether staff were provided any training about what the categories meant (e.g., how they were defined) in order to explain the categories to families who may have questions about the options offered or how they should identify their children. both the school staff and the migrant education staff indicated that the immigrant population they predominantly interacted with was spanish-speakers from latin america. spanish translations of registration forms were provided at both schools, and staff members who spoke spanish were available to assist families in both schools. the certificate of eligibility that migrant education recruiters used to enroll families was not translated into spanish, since the recruiter was the person responsible for completing the form. however, most migrant education recruiters in the state, including the individual who participated in the study, spoke spanish. the ethnic categories used by the migrant education recruiters were the same as those used in the meadows school registration forms, although the ethnic categories did not appear on the certificate of eligibility (coe) form. the codes for the six ethnic background categories (the omb ethno-racial pentagon plus an “other” category) were listed in the instruction manual for how to complete the coe. staff reported receiving no training on what the categories meant and few inquiries about the racial categories from spanish-speakers. they also reported that most spanish-speakers willingly complied with the request for ethnic identification, and most frequently selected hispanic from the available choices. the manner in which the categories were presented to spanish-speakers varied among the spanish-speaking staff charged with assisting families with this task. the spanish-speaking staff with whom i spoke were candice (who identified as half white and half mexican), jan (who identified as caucasian), and isabel (who identified as white hispanic). according to candice, spanish-speakers at new river were typically not provided assistance in interpreting the ethnic categories or how to fill this section out. this was left to family members to figure out on their own. jan, a migrant education recruiter indicated that in accordance with the training she’d received, she simply asked families which category they identify with and would read all six. isabel, on the other hand, indicated that she typically referred to the hispanic category first and sometimes referenced the white category too in her conversations with families around the school registration form. following is an excerpt from my interview with isabel where she explains how she approached this issue. isabel: i just ask them: do you think you feel the… the hispano part? and they say: yes. and, because they don’t speak english, um… you know, i… maybe i had have very few cases where the, the, white and hispanic were one thing. and, then i fill both. … mim: so when you talk with families maybe that don’t read the categories, do you read all the categories, or do you just say, “are you hispanic?” isabel: hmm. i guess i never had the case like that. they all kind of read [here she says “read” in the past tense, i.e., like red]. and, if they don’t read anything, maybe…. no, i don’t think i have read the whole thing. just these two. so i make assumptions, i guess. jan noted that she was surprised not to encounter more questions in her current job as a recruiter for the migrant education program given her previous years of experience helping latino immigrants complete immigration paperwork that also asked for racial/ethnic identification. in her previous experience, she found that the immigrants with whom she interacted often expressed confusion and/or were more likely to “take it on as an issue”, by either joking about the race/ethnic question or wanting to leave it blank. in contrast, when asked whether she encountered any confusion or resistance to the categories in her current work with the migrant education program she stated: i’ve only been there six months. i’ve probably done, i wonder how many i’ve done… 40 or 50 of the [certificate of eligibility] forms? 50…? and, yeah…. so i haven’t had that come up. even though i expect it would with all my experience filling out forms with immigration – that came up often, you know. people would be like, not knowing what, what they want to say. [she pauses briefly then continues.] i guess i’ve gotten some little joke comments, something like, “soy mexicano. i’m mexican.” a couple of those, but then they’ll just say, “mark hispanic.” staff interpretations of race and race data two major themes emerged from the interviews with staff that characterized how they interpreted the racial categories and their roles within the racial accounting system. the first theme, race is personal, encompasses a general staff sentiment that racial identification was a personal matter, and that staff should play no role in deciding how students and their families identified racially. this was evident in several of the quotes above. staff consistently minimized their role in the process, and indicated that the process was so routine that families did the serious games of racial accounting in schools 9 not ask questions about it and staff did not insert themselves into these decisions. if families chose not to answer these questions, staff indicated that they did not press the issue, as the following excerpt illustrates. candice: honestly, no one’s ever asked questions about that, that part of the registration card. i know some people will, will decline or say other or something like that and they won’t give that kind of information. mim: do you ever follow-up with families who don’t provide that information to see if they forgot to do it or do you just leave it at that? candice: honestly, i just leave it at that. although data collection procedures are technical and likely boring to most people, race is a sensitive topic and the results of the study suggest that race data collection is as well. there was a general discomfort evident in my conversations with staff regarding race data collection procedures. several participants were visibly relieved when i informed them that their identity would remain confidential. discomfort with my questions was particularly evident in my interviews with school and esd staff. this was likely because they were the individuals primarily responsible for gathering race data from families. while my questions about how racial/ethnic categories get explained to families, especially those that don’t speak english, could be and were shrugged off by district and ode staff with “you’ll have to ask school staff those questions,” school staff did not have the luxury of “passing the buck.” they were the individuals ultimately responsible for making sure families filled out their registration forms. families were expected (although not legally required) to check one of the five racial/ethnic boxes on these forms. if they had questions, didn’t fill out this section, or chose multiple boxes, it was the school staff that dealt with these issues. distancing themselves from the collection of these data appeared to be influenced by staff’s expressed belief that race was a personal matter not just for students and families but for them as well. a second theme that emerged concerned the utility of student race data for staff. staff weren’t sure how these data could or whether the data should inform their work. cindy, who worked in the district office, expressed concerns that collecting and analyzing race data ran counter to her belief that race or color shouldn’t matter, how do you be neutral and then focus on it at the same time. we’re being trained/coached and some of us just know not to treat people different. then i’m being involved in pulling apart data [into racial categories]. it’s hard to know how to balance that. i’ve grown up in this area, [she mentions a nearby rural community], which is obviously white. maybe there were one or two latino students in the school. i don’t have preconceived notions. i notice them, visually. but, others from more racially diverse neighborhoods seem to have more preconceived ideas about other racial or ethnic groups. marla, a front office staff person at centennial, also believed a student’s ethnicity (which she consistently called “ethnicicity”) wasn’t important, although language background was. to me it’s more important to know what language you’re speaking than it is to know what ethnicicity [sic] you are. it is. it really is, because … because of that melting pot that we’re all in right now. george, who worked for the state department of education, suggested that some school staff lack the statistical expertise to understand their student achievement data, and erroneously focus on racial achievement gaps when their problem lies elsewhere. he recounted the following example to illustrate his point. what they’re trying to improve by their [school improvement] plans should be backed up by, you know, statistics … not guesses…. an example was in [a mid-sized oregon city]. in [this city], you looked at their data and they said, “well we’ve got a problem with all, with the minority kids, ‘cuz their tests are down compared to the non-minority kids. and, folks that we had go [sic] there, looked at it, …and said, “no, you’re wrong…. what you do [have is] something happening at the 8th grade.. that’s [what is] wrong. because the [lower] test scores for minorities is [sic] across all the grades. all the grade levels are below non-minorities. so it’s consistent. but, here in the 8th grade, you’ve got this down drop of everybody…from what, sort of, the norm is. so, there is what your problem is. it’s in your 8th grade. interestingly, george’s comments implied that because the racial disparities in achievement were consistent, they were “normal,” not statistically meaningful, and did not merit focused attention by the school. implications for recent changes to the rules of the game there are myriad rules that govern racial and ethnic data collection practices in schools. racial and ethnic identity construction, at least in school records, occurs within the context of these ruling relations. in 2010, the rules of the game changed in significant ways. new federal rules governing racial/ethnic data collection in schools went into effect then, rules that were codified in 1997 but had been under review and in various stages of adoption by federal agencies since then (national forum on education statistics, 2008). i discuss what these changes imply based on existing racial accounting practices and staff roles, as well as the broader implications regarding the interpretation and use(s) of these data. changing categories and counts in 2010, “two or more races” became a required data entry and reporting category. the oregon department of education reports this category as “multi-ethnic.” as a current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 10 result of this change, the official racial/ethnic make-up of the meadows schools and many other schools in districts across the state changed – not because of a change in the bodies occupying the school seats, but because the bodies that were already there now had a new name. the oregon department of education’s website provides data on the ethnic breakdown of k-12 students by district for each academic year beginning with the 1997-98 school year. a multi-ethnic category was included in all years in the state’s tally of students but not all oregon schools appeared to have collected and/or reported these data until 2010. the first year that multi-ethnic students appeared in the state’s student enrollment counts was 200405, when 35% of the state’s school districts reported having at least one multi-ethnic student and 0.7% of the state’s total student population was reported as multi-ethnic. table 1 summarizes the percentages of oregon students by ethnicity for the state from 2001-2010. meadows school district did not report any multiethnic students until 2009-10, when 3.4% of the district’s students and 2.7% of the state’s total population were reported in this category. the following year the percentage of meadows’ (6%) and the state’s (4.2%) multi-ethnic students (6%) almost doubled. table 2 lists the percentages of students by ethnic group for meadows school district and centennial and new river schools from 2008-2010. it is hard to know exactly how many students within the meadows school district would have been identified as multi-ethnic prior to 2009 or whether the oneyear growth in multi-ethnic students was a reflection of new students in the schools or existing students that identified themselves differently and/or were reported by staff differently in the two years. these students were similarly rendered invisible in other district’s student enrollment counts until 2010, when all schools were required to comply with the new federal regulations governing racial/ethnic data collection. table 3 provides a snapshot of the state’s school districts reporting multi-ethnic students from 2004-2010. a second change relates to the hispanic category. in 2010, schools were required to use a two-question ethnic/racial identity format on school registration forms that first asks whether the student is hispanic, followed by a question requesting racial identification. this is the same format used in the u.s. census since 2000. since the manner in which hispanics are counted will remain the same as in previous years (i.e., hispanics by ethnicity, all others by race), the clear demarcation of hispanic as an ethnic identity and not a race won’t likely effect the hispanic counts in k-12 student enrollment. while the racial identity of students who identify as hispanic will not be counted, hispanic students will still be asked to identify racially by selecting one or more of the acceptable race options: american indian or alaska native; asian; black or african american; and native hawaiian or other pacific. because hispanics frequently interpret the hispanic/latino table 1 percentages of k-12 students by ethnic group in oregon: 2001 – 2010 year white black hispanic asian american indian multi ethnic unknown 2001/02 77.6 2.9 11.3 4.1 2.1 0 1.9 2002/03 76.3 3.0 12.2 4.1 2.2 0 2.3 2003/04 75.0 3.0 13.4 4.3 2.3 0 2.0 2004/05 72.5 3.2 13.9 4.4 2.2 0.7 3.2 2005/06 72.2 3.0 15.1 4.5 2.2 1.1 1.8 2006/07 70.4 3.0 16.1 4.6 2.1 1.9 2.0 2007/08 69.1 3.0 16.8 4.7 2.1 2.3 2.0 2008/09 68.4 2.9 17.2 4.7 2.0 2.9 1.8 2009/10 67.5 2.8 19.6 4.6 1.9 2.7 1.0 2010/11 66.3 2.6 20.5 3.9 1.9 4.2 0 note. american indian category also included alaska natives. asian category also included pacific islanders, even in 201011 despite the new federal guidelines requiring separately reporting native hawaiians/pacific islanders beginning that year. the serious games of racial accounting in schools 11 table 2 percentages of students by ethnic group in meadows district and study schools: 2008 – 2010 year white black hispanic asian american indian multi ethnic unknown meadows 2008/09 73.9 2.3 10.0 8.2 1.1 0.0 4.5 2009/10 73.7 1.7 12.0 7.8 0.9 3.4 0.6 2010/11 72.4 1.4 13.1 5.9 0.7 6.0 0.0 centennial 2008/09 52.1 3.2 36.6 5.6 0.0 0.0 2.4 2009/10 42.8 1.9 45.3 4.1 0.3 4.6 1.1 2010/11 40.1 1.1 49.6 1.9 0.8 6.1 0.0 new river 2008/09 60.8 3.1 28.4 5.2 1.6 0.0 0.9 2009/10 60.7 2.3 31.5 3.9 0.8 0.8 0.0 2010/11 55.3 1.5 37.0 0.9 0.6 4.3 0.0 note. data above reflect different grade levels by institution. for meadows, k-12 grades were included. centennial data included k-5 grades. new river data included k-8 grades for 2008-10, but only k-5 grades in 2010/11, as a result of the school’s grade configuration changing to k-5 that year. table 3 school districts reporting multi-ethnic students: 2004 – 2010 all >1000 students year count % count % 2004/05 69 35.0 40 44.9 2005/06 92 46.9 52 58.4 2006/07 107 54.6 56 62.9 2007/08 111 56.6 62 69.7 2008/09 124 63.6 70 78.7 2009/10 147 75.4 86 96.6 2010/11 172 88.2 87 97.8 note. from 2004-2010, there were 195-198 school districts in oregon. of these, 87-90 school districts enrolled at least 1000 students. prior to 2004, no districts reported any multi-ethnic students. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 12 label as a race and not an ethnicity (logan, 2004; saenz, 2004; tafoya et al., 2004), it is unclear how hispanics will respond to the racial question. a third change that will impact racial/ethnic counts concerns a category that wasn’t explicitly requested in ethnic/race data collections but has nevertheless been allowed. this category is reported by various names: unknown, declined to report, or other. as of 2010, this category is no longer valid. from 2000-2009, when multiethnic students in oregon schools were either not counted at all or partially counted, unknowns averaged 2.0% of k12 students in the state. in 2010, 0% of students were reported in this category, and interestingly in one year the multi-ethnic percentage of k-12 students grew from 2.7% to 4.2% in the state, and from 3.4% to 6.0% in the meadows school district. whether the increase in multiethnic students is a result of (a) families in all school districts being able to self-identify multi-ethnically, (b) staff relying more heavily on multi-ethnic categorization for those who chose not to provide racial/ethnic information, or (c) a combination of both, is unknown. changing staff roles another change to the racial accounting rules is the requirement that school staff use observer identification when families choose not to answer the ethnicity and/or racial identity questions. officially, the policy about selfidentification of race/ethnicity has not changed: selfidentification continues to be optional. however, the new requirement that staff use observer identification when families do not provide this information means that all elementary and secondary students will be racially classified even if they wish not to be. the federal guidelines stress that self-identification continues to be the preferred method of securing racial/ethnic data for students, and that observer identification should be used “as a last resort” in accordance with the following procedures. if respondents do not provide information about their race or ethnicity, educational institutions and other recipients should ensure that respondents have refused to self-identify rather than simply overlooked the questions. if adequate opportunity has been provided for respondents to self-identify and respondents still do not answer the questions, observer identification should be used (final guidance, 2007, p. 59268). based on the staff interviews i conducted, observer identification was not a task for which staff were prepared or comfortable. before staff were aware of the new guidelines, i inquired whether they had received any training in racial data collection and how they should explain the categories to families. they consistently reported that they did not and when they were informed that observer identification would be required in the near future when families did not fill out this section, their eyes grew big. although observer identification is now required only as a last resort, it seemed clear that staff training about the categories, their use, and the data collection procedures was necessary and that the federal government’s response to this need was likely insufficient. the 2008 guide to implementing the changes devotes a chapter to training and communication, which includes a list of the staff training topics that should be covered, examples from districts that have already adopted the changes, and other tips such as: anticipating questions about race and ethnicity identification will help: • middle eastern students should be identified as “white,” not “asian.” • students from spain should be identified as hispanic and one or more of the racial categories (p. 16). • districts can provide some “real life” practice as school personnel analyze their current student population, develop scenarios of possible observer misidentification, and anticipate possible data entry errors (p. 18). this training may help staff better understand their data collection roles and responsibilities, but the training topics highlighted in the federal guide focus on the mechanics and legalities of racial data collection, not the history behind it or the evidence for and against their continued collection and uses. thus, there are much broader implications to the changes to race data collection that merit further policy attention than simply training school staff about the new rules of the racial accounting game. how should/will multi-racial students challenge our understanding of and responses to school segregation and achievement gap concerns? if latinos officially count in terms of ethnicity only and they frequently interpret latino as a racial identity, why is it necessary for latinos to have an officially sanctioned racial identity? because educational practitioners, researchers and policymakers regularly rely on race data to make meaning of the educational experiences of students and craft policies in response to the meanings we infer, we all need to grapple with these questions, understand the history and purposes of racial data collection, recognize the limitations of racial measurement, and continually seek better ways to ensure that no child is left behind. conclusion this study was designed to shed light on the serious games of racial accounting practices in schools by examining three questions: (1) what officially counts as race, (2) how staff interpret their data-keeping roles and race data, and (3) the implications of the recent changes to racial data collection and reporting. the findings regarding the first question focused on two contested areas of racial truth construction within the context of the previous rules of racial accounting practices: the (non)existence of multiracial students and hispanic racial/ethnic ambiguities. two major themes emerged in response to the second question. the first theme, race is personal, reflected staff’s expressed the serious games of racial accounting in schools 13 desire to distance themselves from the racial identification of students and their discomfort with the topic of race in general. the second theme highlighted the questionable utility of race data for staff. the findings related to the last question suggest that the recent changes in racial accounting practices would likely yield relatively small differences in the racial/ethnic counts of students, but important differences in the official recognition of multiracial identities and the requirement that all bodies have an official racial label. moreover, they highlight the need for greater understanding among school staff, researchers, and policymakers about the history, purposes and mechanics of racial data-keeping in schools. although individuals are actively involved in selecting their own identities and/or the identities of their children within schools, they do so within the context of the ruling relations of race data monitoring. legally, their active participation in the game is optional. however, for all intents and purposes, after 2010, their participation is mandatory – with all k-12 students officially classified and counted racially, whether they selected this identity or not. this change to racial data-keeping could be viewed as a more accurate reflection of racial realities – whether we choose to play or not, we live in a society in which “there has been a continuous tendency, arguably a necessity, to organize and signify domination along the lines of corporeality/‘phenotype’” (winant, 2004, p. ix). measuring race is not an exact science, it is a political science. thus, the significance of the distortion in racial facts built into the racial/ethnic counts of students lies not just in the actual numbers, but in whether ultimately the racial counts correspond closely enough with the racial realities that we seek to understand and racial injustices that we seek to redress. measuring these racial truths by racially sorting and counting people is always fraught with error, controversy, compromises, and, increasingly, resistance. in 2003 the american sociological association issued a statement in response to the growing skepticism of the validity and utility of race-based research. refusing to measure the impact of race, the asa contends, will simply preserve the status quo of racial inequality. nevertheless, the effectiveness of the racial classificatory scheme to measure truths, albeit partial-truths, in school data-keeping depends on a minimum level of agreement on which racialized bodies should count and how they should count. whether the new rules will better illuminate racial realities and lead to socially just policies or not depends on how all the players (the families, school staff, researchers and policymakers) regard the purpose and rules of the game, and whether they are in agreement with their purported goals. 1 the terms latino/a and hispanic are used interchangeably throughout the paper. 2 the district name is a pseudonym as are the names of the study schools and participants. 3 for this reason, multi-racial and 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(2006b). a developing identity. hispanics in the united states. carnegie reporter, 3(4), retrieved march 10, 2007, from http://www.carnegie.org/reporter/12/identity/ind ex.html tafoya, s. m., johnson, h., & hill, l. e. (2004). who chooses to choose two? new york, ny: russell sage foundation. teddlie, c., & yu, f. (2007). mixed methods sampling: a typology with examples. journal of mixed methods research, 1(1), 77-100. u.s. department of energy (n.d.). human genome project information: minorities, race and genomics. retrieved january 31, 2008 from http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/human_ge nome/elsi/minorities.shtml winant, h. (2004). the new politics of race. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. the serious games of racial accounting in schools 15 article citation martinez, m. i. (2011). the serious games of racial accounting in schools. current issues in education, 14(3). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/785 author notes martha i. martinez university of oregon 5267 university of oregon, eugene, or 97403 mim3210@hotmail.com martha i. martinez recently received her ph.d. in educational methodology, policy and leadership from the university of oregon. her research examines school policies and practices that impact the educational opportunities and outcomes of underserved populations. she wishes to thank the center on diversity and community at the university of oregon for the graduate summer research award that supported this research. current issues in education vol. 14 no.3 16 volume 14, number 3 august 26, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca seong hee kim anglea hines younsu kim lisa lacy carol masser leslie salazar jennifer shea alaya swann technical editor james stockburger faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers students’ first amendment rights and demographics volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x students’ first amendment rights and school district demographics: gauging school board responsiveness to student speech policy mario s. torres jr. texas a&m university, college station virginia s. collier texas a&m university, college station homer tolson texas a&m university, college station citation torres, m., collier, v., & tolson, h. (2010). students’ first amendment rights and school district demographics: gauging school board responsiveness to student speech policy. current issues in education, 13(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this study examined the extent to which texas school boards of education made efforts to locally modify student speech policy. using online policy manuals provided by the texas association of school boards, speech policies for 91 school districts were gathered using a purposive stratified sampling procedure and examined for local modifications to student speech policies under school-sponsored publications, expression, distribution of non-school literature, use of school facilities, and harassment. the geographical location of the district, district percentage of minority students, and total district student enrollment were employed as explanatory variables. the results of a chi-square statistic indicate geographical location and current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 student enrollment were significantly related to whether school boards made changes to its speech policy. although not entirely surprising, the more pertinent issue is whether an over reliance on school board associations for policy development curbs meaningful discussion of critical issues such as free speech. keywords: first amendment, student speech policy, school board policy, student civil liberties, school leadership students’ first amendment rights 3 about the author(s) author: mario s. torres affiliation: texas a&m university, college station email: mstorres@tamu.edu biographical information: mario s. torres, jr. is an associate professor in the educational administration program at texas a&m university, college station. dr. torres obtained his ph.d. in educational administration from penn state university, university park in 2003. his research interests include elementary and secondary school law and policy. a substantial part of his legal scholarship is devoted to examining the administrative, political, and demographic dimensions associated with students’ fourth amendment rights, while his policy research has focused largely on the ethical and political implications of school reform. dr. torres has published in the field’s premier journals including the educational administration quarterly, journal of educational administration, the journal of school leadership, and education and urban society and recently co-authored a book with john hoyle entitled six steps to preparing exemplary principals and superintendents: leadership at its best through rowman and littlefield education press. he also serves on the summer faculty at teachers college, columbia university and is a research fellow with the mexican american and u.s. latino research center. author: virginia collier affiliation: texas a&m university, college station email: vcollier@tamu.edu biographical information: virginia collier is currently a clinical professor at texas a&m university. dr. collier served as a teacher, principal, and superintendent in texas schools for 35 years. governor george w. bush appointed her as a member of the texas state board of educator certification. she served as the first female president of the texas association of school administrators and is active in the american association of school administrators. she is co-director of the administrative leadership institute and co-authored a book entitled the superintendent as ceo: standards based performance in 1995 through corwin press. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 author: homer tolson affiliation: texas a&m university, college station email: htolson@tamu.edu biographical information: dr. tolson is currently a senior professor of human resource development at texas a&m university. he served as the program chair for human resource development for 2006-2007and again in 2009 to present. he also serves as departmental coordinator of research courses in the educational and human resource development department. as for his scholarly contributions, dr. tolson has published in the several high profile journals including human resource development international, the journal of college admission, and the journal of research in science teaching. students’ first amendment rights 5 gauging school board responsiveness to student speech policy1 the legal principles surrounding student speech are becoming increasingly complex. as student difference in racial and ethnic distribution, family structure, religious identity, and wealth increases, school leaders will surely face a much broader array of viewpoint and perspective (hodgkinson, 2002). what is more, current and future leaders are expected to make sound legal decisions and choices. take for instance, the orange unified school district school board’s decision to deny club status to the gay-straight alliance (folmar & martelle, 1999; folmar & richardson, 2000). while the school board presumed its actions were justified, a federal district court ruled the club’s exclusion violated the federal equal access act under the first amendment, which protects students from prohibited viewpoint discrimination. under the equal access act, it shall be unlawful for any public secondary school which receives federal financial assistance and which has a limited open forum to deny equal access or a fair opportunity to, or discriminate against, any students who wish to conduct a meeting within that limited open forum on the basis of the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meetings… (equal access act, 20 usc 4071, 1984). the reality is that while school officials feel their decisions reflect the children’s best interest, a lack of legal awareness may potentially result in costly litigation. for this reason, this study examines the degree to which school boards address speech concerns within their school districts. school board responsiveness is measured according to the degree to which boards modify, adapt, or revise speech policy to meet the particular needs of a school district. this study 1 the authors extend their appreciation and gratitude to tse-yang huang from texas a&m university for his contributions to the manuscript. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 investigates speech policy using a purposive/stratified sample of traditional texas public school districts (i.e., no charter schools) by geographical setting (i.e., urban and rural). assuming changes to speech policy reflect a level of discernment on the part of school boards, one may anticipate diverse school districts tailor speech policy in a manner different from that of less diverse school communities. to be sure, little is known about the influence of local context on legal matters related to student free speech, which makes this exploratory study significant. to begin, this study explores literature addressing the legal complexity of student speech protection and school governance of policy issues which is subsequently used to sketch a framework for probing the nexus between student speech rights and district decisions to locally tailor policies. the methodology is explained in turn followed by a discussion of the results. conclusions and implications for school leaders and policy makers are offered in closing. framework the legal contours of permissible speech the role of the first amendment of the u.s. constitution in public schools has been extensive. as the first amendment reads, “congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” (u.s. constitution). while clear and direct, the amendment has been at the center of many legislative, judicial and administrative controversies. its purposeful inexactness has created difficulties and challenges as far as its applicability in practice. fortunately, case law, state constitutions, and school board policy together have forged a more thorough and practical understanding of student speech. while case law has been illuminating alone, the courts’ scope of influence is fairly constrained. as horowitz (1977) notes, students’ first amendment rights 7 courts are in large measure “backward looking” in that “they are well equipped to see the past and present fairly clearly, and ill equipped to gauge the future” (p. 284). recent opinions indicate the u.s. supreme court is consistent in upholding forms of speech diverse and extreme in political, religious, and philosophical character. cases such as r.a.v. v. city of st. paul (1992) and virginia v. black (2003) serve as prime examples. in r.a.v., a city ordinance making certain types of speech unlawful because of their emotive impact was ruled unconstitutional because it discriminated against viewpoint and content. citizens were charged with misdemeanors if symbols or objects were placed on public and private property that “[aroused] anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender..." (p. 380). the court would conclude, “the ordinance [was] facially unconstitutional in that it [prohibited] otherwise permitted speech solely on the basis of the subjects the speech addresses” (p. 381). similarly, in virginia v. black (2003), the high court struck down a state statute prohibiting all forms of cross burning. justice o’connor writing for the majority acknowledged the “hypothetical” association (p. 357) between cross-burning and violent threats, but stopped well short of categorically condemning cross burning as an unprotected classification of speech. while the court has accorded considerable speech protection to the ordinary citizen, the speech rights of students have been treated somewhat differently. considered by many to be the watershed case in student speech jurisprudence, the u.s. supreme court in tinker v. des moines (1969) ruled that forms of student expression should be protected by the first amendment but limited at the occurrence of material and substantial disruption or when the rights of others are infringed upon. per tinker, the court upheld students’ right to passively and symbolically express their disapproval of the vietnam war on school grounds. as the tinker court surmised, current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 schools “may not be enclaves of totalitarianism” (p. 511) nor suppress speech solely upon the “mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint” (p. 509). in sum, the school failed to justify its actions in prohibiting the speech. fifteen years later, the court would further clarify the contours of student speech in favor of school official discretion. in bethel school district v. fraser (1986), the court ruled that student speech is subject to censorship when it violates standards of civility. shortly following bethel, the court in hazelwood v. kuhlmeier (1988) would determine that schools may regulate content of school-sponsored student newspapers. two recent cases however, saxe v. state college area school district (2001) and morse v. frederick (2007), epitomize the present day complexity of student speech. in saxe, the u.s. circuit third circuit court reversed a district court ruling holding that a district “antiharassment” policy was unconstitutional because it violated the student’s first amendment right to “speak out about the sinful nature and harmful effects of homosexuality” (saxe, p. 203). according to the district policy, harassment was defined (in part) as: verbal or physical conduct based on one’s perceived race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or other personal characteristics, and which has the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with a student’s educational performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive environment (saxe, p. 202). the third circuit court found the language overbroad and inexact, as it “[prohibited] a substantial amount of non-vulgar, non-sponsored student speech” and would further inappropriately classify forms of speech as materially and substantially disruptive (saxe, p. 216). furthermore, it concluded that “emotive impact” alone was insufficient grounding. the court was not persuaded by the district’s contention that the policy suppressed a form of speech that students’ first amendment rights 9 would by its very nature create a material and substantial disruption.2 while the implications of saxe are far reaching, the case itself serves as a cautionary tale to school agencies that policies governing speech must be carefully developed and implemented. the u.s. supreme court ruling in morse v. frederick (2007) reveals a similar complexity. a high school student, joseph frederick, displayed a banner with the message “bong hits 4 jesus” at a school-sponsored event. when the principal asked the student to remove the banner, the student refused and was subsequently suspended for violating the school district policy prohibiting “any assembly or public expression that … advocates the use of substances that are illegal to minors…” (p. 3). the u.s. ninth circuit found in frederick’s favor holding the “banner expressed a positive sentiment about marijuana use” (p. 4) and that his entitlement to speech protection was “well established” (p. 5). in reversing, the u.s. supreme court concluded that the while the expression may be interpreted as “meaningless” or “gibberish,” it contains an “undeniable reference to illegal drugs” (p. 7). the court relied on two factors from its prior speech ruling in bethel v. fraser. first, the level of constitutional protection students enjoy in schools is less so than the ordinary citizen due to the unique function and context of schools. second, other factors besides whether a material and substantial disruption had or would have manifested should be considered when assessing the suitability of student speech, which in the present case, was not seen as an appropriate analysis. the majority was narrowly interested in the policy violation of speech that encourages illegal drug use, not whether the content of the speech should be interpreted as “plainly offensive” (p. 14). the court states in conclusion that the “first amendment does not 2 see tinker v. desmoines (1968), 393 u.s. 503; bethel v. fraser (1986), 478 u.s. 675; hazelwood v. kuhlmeier (1988) 484 u.s. 260 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 require schools to tolerate at school events student expression that contributes to those dangers” (p. 15). beyond whether the morse ruling signifies a victory for schools, both courts were cautious in avoiding language that connoted banning any speech considered “offensive.” in other words, the courts issued no ultimatum on what forms or types of speech should be made permissible. in spite of unclear criteria, schools must still make legally appropriate decisions regarding expression and be keenly aware and sensitive to religious, social, and cultural change. the extent to which school boards attend to speech and other relevant issues is not well understood. neither is the impact of politics on decision-making regarding speech policy. research demonstrates that particular factors predict greater board involvement in issues. leadership responsiveness to issues while demands intensify for board members to acquire an increasingly technical expertise of educational issues (e.g., examining test data), little is known about board engagement in student speech policy. much research, however, has examined board engagement in general policies and affairs. for instance, greene’s (1990) study of board responsiveness to constituent and policy issues found board members preferred to approach their policymaking duties as technical rather than political responsibilities. factors identified included the competitiveness of an election, opposition from a candidate, district student enrollment, and whether the district was involved in a controversy in the past year. a later study by greene (1992) revealed a greater number of students served in the district predicted greater board member political involvement while socioeconomic status was not a factor. other studies reveal similar findings. hess (2002) in a national study of school board members found board members in large school districts engaged more often in political affairs students’ first amendment rights 11 (i.e., campaigns, political platforms, interest group activity, formalized community input) than board members from smaller school districts. newman and brown (1993) found board members from larger districts were more interactive with the community on issues and were less disposed to accepting recommendations from the district superintendent. with respect to policy development and diversity, findings by hess (2002) suggest racial and ethnic concerns rate low in importance among factors school board members use to assess superintendent performance. results from hess’ survey indicated board and superintendent relationship (86%), system morale (81%), and student safety (80%) rated as most important while only 40% of members surveyed considered racial and ethnic concerns as most important. when district size was used as factor, the largest disparity existed in the racial and ethnic concern category. fifty-six percent of large district school board members compared to 32% of small district board members considered racial and ethnic concerns very important. in sum, the governance literature as a whole suggests leadership responsiveness may correlate to a fair degree with district size and diversity. in the present study, student speech policy was purposefully selected as an issue in which to evaluate district leadership action for two reasons. first, student speech policies are usually low visibility policies, which typically fail to capture widespread interest. because student speech garners less attention compared to other more pressing concerns (e.g., accountability and finance), it typically is regarded as a low stakes issue. in view of local control, the manner in which speech policies are developed and implemented hinges largely upon local educational agency policy and to some degree individual schools. minimal policy discussion afforded to speech usually results in school personnel serving as the ultimate arbiters of policy. second, increasing ethnic and cultural diversity calls for practitioners and policy-makers at every level to give added attention to difference. as the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 orange unified school district example illustrates, board member misgivings in granting club status to a gay group violated civil provisions under the equal access act. boards can potentially face legal challenges if their stance toward a protected viewpoint appears indifferent and discriminatory. unprecedented social and cultural change demands an appraisal of leadership responsiveness to this largely unattended area. in this study, leadership responsiveness to student speech is measured according to whether districts locally tailored any of the five standardized speech policies issued by the texas association of school boards (tasb) as of october 2004 (a further explanation of tasb and its policies will follow). the researchers assessed leadership responsiveness to speech policies by probing the following two questions: (a) to what extent are school boards locally addressing student speech policies?; and (b) to what extent do district student enrollment, district minority percentage, and the geographical location of the school predict whether school boards are tailoring speech policy to meet local needs? method sources of data information regarding student speech and harassment policy was collected via a stratified random sample of school districts in texas in october 2004. approximately 10% of the 1,039 independent texas school districts were randomly selected and stratified according to district geographical indicators gathered from the common core data through the national center for education statistics (nces). the texas education agency’s academic excellence indicator system (aeis) provided data for minority representation and student population for the school district (tea, 2004). a stratified purposive approach was selected to gather a larger sampling of urban districts. this sampling method was crucial in light of the sizable disparity in number students’ first amendment rights 13 between urban and non-urban school districts in texas. in total, there are 1,039 school districts in texas and only 28% of the school districts come from “large central city” and “urban fringe of large city” metropolitan statistical areas (msa). all other districts are situated in mid-sized cities and below. to ensure an adequate amount of data, larger school districts were over-sampled. thus, 33% out of the 183 large city and urban fringe of large city school districts yielded a subsample of 61 while 6% of the 856 cases in all other geographical cases generated a sub-sample of 57. to ensure a more balanced data set, a purposive sampling technique was used to offset the large number of smaller school districts as well as to explore the urban effect more broadly. purposive sampling, according to kerlinger (1986), involves the “use of judgment and a deliberate effort to obtain representative samples…” (p. 120). of the 118 selected school districts, speech policy information was not available for 27 districts thus resulting in a final sample size of 91. treatment of data three independent variables (i.e., district geographical location, district minority enrollment percentage, and district student enrollment) were utilized in the study. note that due to sample size limitations, variables were coded into binary form. geographical location a core objective to the study was to assess responsiveness of school boards to policy under the realm of speech by district type (e.g., urban v. rural). for the variable “geographical location of the school district,” the common core data (u. s. department of education) provided locale identifiers for each district in the sample. each district was assigned to one of two geographical groups one designating urban and the other mid-sized town, small town, and rural. in the sample, 55 districts were identified as “large central city” and “urban fringe of large current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 city” while the remaining smaller districts including “mid-sized city,” “urban fringe of mid-sized city,” “large town,” “small town,” and “rural” were categorized as mid-sized and smaller (n=36). minority enrollment percentage the study also examined whether school boards serving higher concentrations of minority students would be more inclined to alter speech policy given greater diversity. the “percentage of minority students” for each school district was collected via the texas education agency website (texas education agency, n.d.). districts were then classified into one of two clusters. two reports issued by the nces were consulted to construct categorical minority school system variable. a report entitled contexts of elementary and secondary education: school characteristics and climate (wirt, j., rooney, p., hussar, b., choy, s., provasnik, s., & hampden-thompson, g., 2005, defined high minority schools as schools having minority enrollments 50% or greater (u.s. department of education, national center for educational statistics, 2005). fifteen percent of the sampled districts met this criterion. a second nces report entitled efforts by public k-8 schools to involve parents in children’s education: do school and parent reports agree? (xianglei, 2001a) identified high minority schools as having minority enrollments greater than 75% (xianglei, 2001b). only 4% of the sampled districts fit this definition for high minority district. to minimize bias, both operational definitions were utilized in the analysis. school district size a third objective was to examine whether school district size measured by student enrollment influenced district responsiveness to speech policy concerns. a report issued by the nces entitled characteristics of the 100 largest public elementary and secondary school students’ first amendment rights 15 districts in the united states: 2001-2002 (sietsema, 2003) indicated that a cumulative percentage of 52.1% of students were enrolled in 5.6% of school districts in the u.s. that served at least 10,000 students (sietsema, 2002). thus, a district size of 10,000 was used as the dividing point because of its close distance to the midpoint. based on this criterion, 21% of the districts were assigned to the large category while the remaining 79% represented the small district category. school board engagement in speech policy the present study required that student speech policies of various types be assessed for local changes or adaptations. the online policy manuals provided by the texas association of school boards (tasb) provided the most efficient means to accessing district policy. tasb develops policy manuals for most school districts in texas. nearly a third of member districts post their policy online (texas association of school boards, n.d.). online manuals utilize a standardized delivery format. thus, the presentation and organization of policy is virtually the same for every member district. policies are assigned by type to one of seven different policy categories which include “basis district foundations,” “local governance,” “business and support services,” “personnel,” “instruction,” “students,” and “community and governmental relations.” student speech policies are found in the “students” policy section. these policies include (a) school sponsored publications; (b) student expression; (c) distribution of non-school related literature; (d) use of school facilities; and (e) harassment. as a service, tasb additionally develops standardized local policies, which school districts can choose to adopt word for word depending on the policy area (see table 1 for examples of standardized policy versions retrieved). school districts have the discretion to locally modify policy if they so choose. policies are coded with a letter “x” or “w” if the policy current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 has undergone a local revision. tasb’s online localized policy manual provides information pertaining to local adaptations, which reads as follows: local policy versions have been created to reflect language common to many districts and determined by the board to be appropriate for the district. local versions have the code in the lower left corner with the designation (local) followed by a letter (or letter/number combination) that identifies the version. a unique local policy developed by the district can be distinguished from the standard local versions by the designation (local)-x or -w in the lower left corner of the page (tasb, n.d.). board engagement in student speech policy is evaluated by whether districts have locally modified the standardized versions offered by tasb. for the purposes of this study, local changes to the policy signify school board engagement in student speech issues. for instance, departing from the standardized local version of the “school sponsored publications” policy, one school district added the following to more accurately reflect its stance on student speech: student participation in the publication of school newspapers, yearbooks, literary magazines, and similar publications is encouraged by the district as an educational experience. student publications shall be directed by faculty advisors and shall strive to meet high standards of journalism (texas association of school boards, 2005). efforts at tailoring the policy to accommodate local conditions were perceived as school boards giving added attention to societal issues and perhaps a shift in board governance roles and responsibilities as well. table 1 tasb local speech policiesstandardized version a policy policy description (excerpts) students’ first amendment rights 17 school sponsored publications all publications edited, printed, or distributed in the name of or within the district schools shall be under the control of the school administration and the board. all publications approved and issued by individual schools shall be part of the instructional program, under the supervision of a faculty sponsor, and shall be carefully edited to reflect the ideals and expectations of the citizens of the district for their schools. the principal shall be responsible for all matters pertaining to the organization, issuance, and sale of such publications and any other publication procedure, subject to the superintendent's approval. student expression* students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. at school and school events, students have first amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment. student expression that is protected by the first amendment may not be prohibited absent a showing that the expression will materially and substantially interfere with the operation of the school or the rights of others. distribution of non-school literature for purposes of this policy, "distribution" means the circulation of more than ten printed copies of material from a source other than the district. the district's classrooms during the school day are provided for the limited purpose of delivering instruction to students in the courses and subjects in which they are enrolled. hallways in school buildings are provided for the limited purpose of facilitating the movement of students between classes and allowing access to assigned lockers. classrooms and hallways shall not be used for the distribution of any materials over which the school does not exercise control. each school campus shall designate an area where materials that have been approved for distribution by students in accordance with this policy may be made available or distributed. campus principals may develop reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions regarding the distribution of materials at designated areas. use of school facilities for purposes of the equal access act, the board has created a limited open forum for students attending the district's secondary schools. district secondary schools shall offer an opportunity for noncurriculumrelated student groups to meet on school premises during noninstructional time. each principal shall set aside noninstructional time before or after actual classroom instruction for meetings of noncurriculum-related student groups. students wishing to meet on school premises shall file a written request with the campus principal. the request shall contain a brief statement of the group's purposes and goals, a list of the group's members, and a schedule of its proposed meeting times. requests shall be approved by the principal and superintendent subject to availability of suitable meeting space and without regard to the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech likely to be associated with the group's meetings. notices of meetings may be posted in a manner determined by the principal. harassment students shall not engage in harassment motivated by race, color, religion, national origin, or disability and directed toward another student. a substantiated charge of harassment against a student shall result in disciplinary action. * tasb provides only a “legal’ not ‘local’ policy for student expression current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 method of analysis a chi-square analysis was employed to measure the association between two categorical variables. using a 2 x 2 contingency table format, the researchers gauged the strength of the association between the one dependent variable (i.e., whether any of the speech policies were locally modified) and three independent variables by computing phi. the statistic phi is useful in assessing a relationship’s strength in a 2 x 2 table format (healey, 1999). the following relationships were examined in order: test 1: is district minority enrollment related to whether school boards are locally modifying speech policy? x= district minority enrollment y= whether any of the speech policies were locally modified test 2: is district student enrollment related to whether school boards are locally modifying speech policy? x= district student enrollment y= whether any of the speech policies were locally modified test 3: is district geographical location related to whether school boards are locally modifying speech policy? x= geographical location y= whether any of the speech policies were locally modified limitations and assumptions to the study because tasb school district policy was not retrievable for every school district in the original sample, the reduced size may have resulted in sampling bias. lack of available information for smaller school districts resulted in uneven representation, which may students’ first amendment rights 19 inadvertently bear on the accuracy of the findings. in all, speech policies for 91 of the 118 districts originally sampled (77%) were gathered and reviewed. also, the researchers assumed for exploratory reasons that policy modification may be a direct or indirect consequence of effort on the part of school boards to adapt speech policy to meet local needs. in other words, local changes of any sort to the speech policies developed by tasb might suggest greater attention to students’ speech rights. the researchers concede that while changes may occur in the absence of substantive school board discussion and deliberation, it is nonetheless important to specifically identify factors that lead districts to become more active in student speech governance. the possibility critical events or patterns of undesirable activity prompt more intense board engagement deserves greater scrutiny indeed and is beyond the scope of the current research. furthermore, it is important to acknowledge the data could largely reflect the inevitable outcomes of socioeconomic and cultural difference as opposed to a greater or lesser commitment to address student speech concerns. with more diversity in urban areas, there is likely greater conflict. this factor alone could be a fairly strong predictor of board engagement and responsiveness. results in all, 23% of the school districts opted to locally tailor versions of their speech policy. the remaining 77% chose to adopt standardized versions of policy created by the texas association of school boards. when the dependent variable was cross-referenced by school district geographical locale, 86% of the 23% (18/21) of school districts modifying policy were situated in large central city and urban fringe of large city school districts. of the 18 small town and rural school districts examined (outside the msa), none had locally modified their speech policy. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 to test the association between minority student enrollment (percentage of minority students in a school district) and the district’s modification of the speech regulation, a chi-square statistic was used. two cut points, 50% and 75%, were used as low minority student enrollment or high minority enrollment of the school. the pearson chi-square results are shown in table 2 and table 3 and indicate that both cut points for minority student enrollment of the school are not significantly different on whether the schools modified the regulation (χ2= 1.489, df = 1, n = 91, p = .222, for 50% cut point; and χ2= 1.255, df = 1, n = 91, p = .263, for 75% cut point). table 2 summary of chi-square analysis for local modified by minority student enrollment (50%) locally modified? variable n yes no χ2 p minority (50%) low 77 16 61 1.489 .222 high 14 5 9 totals 91 21 70 note. minority: low < 50%; high >=50%. phi= .128. table 3 summary of chi-square analysis for local modified by minority student enrollment (75%) locally modified? variable n yes no χ2 p minority (75%) low 87 21 66 1.255 .263 students’ first amendment rights 21 high 4 0 4 totals 91 21 70 note. minority: low < 75%; high >= 75%. phi= -.117. a chi-square statistic was also employed to investigate whether district size (total student enrollment equal to or greater than 10,000 considered as large, less than 10,000 considered as small) was related to the district’s modification of speech regulations. the pearson chi-square results in table 4 indicate that small and large district size are significantly related to speech policy modification (χ2=7.982, df = 1, n = 91, p = .005. phi = .296). large districts are more likely than expected to make modification to the regulation than are small schools districts. phi, which indicates the strength of the association between the two variables, is .296 reflecting a small to medium effect size. table 4 summary of chi-square analysis for local modified by district size locally modified? variable n yes no χ2 p district student # small 72 12 60 7.982 .005** large 19 9 10 totals 91 21 70 note. total district student #: small < 10,000; large >= 10,001. phi= .296**. **p <.01. again, a chi-square statistic was used to examine the association between geographical location of school (urban and other) and whether districts modified speech policy. as the pearson chicurrent issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 square results suggest in table 5, urban and schools in other locations are significantly different on whether the district modified the regulation (χ2=7.294, df = 1, n = 91, p = .007. phi = .283). urban school districts are more likely than expected to make modification of the regulation than are school districts in other locations. the strength of the association (phi) between the two variables is .283 thus reflecting a small to medium effect size. table 5 summary of chi-square analysis for local modified by location locally modified? variable n yes no χ2 p geocode urban 55 18 37 7.294 .007* * other 36 3 33 totals 91 21 70 note. phi= .283**. **p <.01. in sum, the findings suggest the geographical location of the school district and size of the district student population have significant influence on the decision of school districts to make local adaptations to student speech policies (see table 6). these two factors, student population size and geographical location, proved influential in prior studies in the area of school governance (hess, 2002; newman & brown, 1993). table 6 summary of all chi-square analyses students’ first amendment rights 23 variable χ2 p minority (50%) 1.489 .222 minority (75%) 1.255 .263 district student population 7.982 .005** geographical location of school district 7.294 .007** **p <.01. discussion a review of school board policy indicates texas school districts vary little with respect to student speech policies, which may suggest minimal attention to speech. because most school districts are members of the texas association of school boards (tasb), member districts, as a service, are issued policy in standardized form reflecting yearly changes in federal and state law. this is an important development because school districts may not be independently engaging in conversation and dialogue about critical legal issues. tasb describes itself as a “voluntary, nonprofit, statewide educational association that serves and represents local texas school districts” (texas association of school boards, n.d, about tasb). it serves 1,042 school districts and represents the “largest group of publicly elected officials in the state” (texas association of school boards, n.d, about tasb). the membership fee includes services in the areas of training, legislative and regulatory information and support, legal services, timely publications, risk and cash management services, and cooperative purchasing (texas association of school board, n.d., products and services). in addition, the organization markets paid services such as policy development, personnel current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 administration, and superintendent searches. there is a tacit overlapping of the free and paid services. for example, free legal advice is available as part of the membership but only in order to answer questions and review policy. there are also paid legal services. the result is a large organization with a large number of employees. given the deference to tasb, it is not surprising that school boards generally prefer to abstain from modifying policy in general. however, the results from this analysis suggest to some degree that context may be influential. the findings suggest districts in urban settings as well as districts serving high student enrollments modified speech policy to a significantly greater degree. this could be interpreted as greater board attention and responsiveness, which would be consistent with prior research on urban boards (hess, 2002; newman & brown, 1993) and boards representing districts with high student enrollments (k. r. greene, 1990; kenneth r. greene, 1992). the non-influential impact of district minority representation was also consistent prior findings (kenneth r. greene, 1992). for the large urban school district, issues naturally attract greater public attention and require school board members to address political implications. urban board members, as the research suggests, seem to be more oriented to serving as “politicians” and “negotiators” (kenneth r. greene, 1992; lutz & gresson, 1980; merz, 1986; tucker & zeigler, 1980) especially in circumstances where greater social volatility exists and when policy in inherently values laden. but what is noteworthy from the findings is that not a single small town or rural school district within the sample locally modified a single speech policy. perhaps, such issues are trivial in relation to other pressing demands facing rural schools such as meeting accountability requirements and balancing district budgets. if such issues truly generate minimal responsiveness in small town/rural school districts, administrators become the final arbiters of law and policy. students’ first amendment rights 25 should anyone in a district be responsive to speech concerns, it should be the superintendent. working with the board on policy is one of their major responsibilities. while superintendents are immersed in the day-to-day operation of the district, their involvement relates to the “big” issues, such as managing the budget and their role as communicator to the community at large. boards are dependent upon campus administrators to tell them when free speech issues arise. whether or not they are informed will depend on the sensitivity of campus administrators to this issue. consider the following scenario: a student appears on campus wearing a confederate flag t-shirt, a teacher notifies the office that this might be a problem, a vice-principal quietly talks with the student whom he or she knows well, and the shirt is replaced with another one without incident. the entire episode may take no more than 15 minutes early in the morning and is not ever reported to the superintendent. the result is that the educator responsible for the policy is unaware of the need until a significant incident involving free speech occurs. even in small schools where the superintendent may be the only district level administrator and serve as the principal of one or more campuses, there are pressures that work against addressing free speech issues in policy. in these districts, reliance on a policy service is seen as a necessity. since the board hires and fires the superintendent, there is also a need and obligation to address the board’s interests and needs. the superintendent is aware of the obligation to protect the democratic rights of students through policy, but this issue is rarely, if ever, brought to their attention to the board or the public. it is therefore, rarely addressed by the superintendent and is likely not to be brought forward as an issue without a critical incident that makes addressing the issue compulsory. prior research has uncovered a similar form of role “variety,” “autonomy,” and informal “power” in decision-making within rural and small schools current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 (pearson & sutton, 1999) as well as a considerable amount of role “socialization,” especially for rural school leaders, in terms of role expectations and problem solving (hurley, 1992). conclusion although dependence on external policy services may be a necessity, school districts could face challenges to speech policies if content and viewpoints are being censured inappropriately. actions such as those taken by the orange county unified school district are likely neither isolated nor uncommon and serve as cautionary examples of minimized board involvement in systematic legal education and policy development. increasing diversity in the form of race/ethnicity, wealth, political thought, and religious faith, to name a few, demand school leaders reassess policy domains and perhaps in some instances issue clarifications or render substantial revisions. the need for greater responsiveness, particularly in rural communities, is further substantiated by a report issued by the rural school and community trust policy program (johnson & strange, 2007), which indicates a considerable increase in rural student enrollment as a percentage of the national enrollment along with massive increases in minority populations (i.e., american indian/alaskan native, asian pacific islander, black, hispanic) in rural areas nationally -an increase of 55% between 1995 and 2005. clearly, the issues of administrative discretion and policy attention/implementation warrant further scrutiny. future research should more closely examine factors that lead to greater school board involvement in policy/legal areas, particularly in circumstances when school districts outsource policy development. for instance, one might examine whether critical incidents (e.g., crises) or board member level of education impact the level of board engagement in developing local policy. studies may also broaden their analysis of district codes of conduct relative to speech to include a greater geographical diversity of school districts or explore the impact of poverty on students’ first amendment rights 27 board involvement. a future study may also explore school board member role types (i.e., political v. professional) and their relationship to various forms of policy. in sum, the findings of this exploratory analysis suggest that while district leaders in urban communities and districts serving large student populations may be locally tailoring student speech policy to a greater degree, a considerable number of districts seemingly do not. cases such as saxe and morse illustrate the evolving complexity of speech litigation and student protections and serve as reminders to school leaders at every level that continuing legal education and substantive conversations around diversity and civil liberties are fundamentally important and necessary to sustaining an effective government. whether over-dependency on external policy-making organizations leads school government to be less responsive to student speech policy is a question beyond the scope of the study. yet, the findings seem to suggest that this dependence could be inhibiting thoughtful deliberation of important topics to some degree. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 28 references american 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(2001a). efforts by public k-8 schools to involve parents in children's education: do school and parent reports agree? (u.s. department of education, nces 2001-076). washington, d.c.: u.s. department of education. xianglei, c. (2001b). efforts by public k-8 schools to involve parents in children's education: do school and parent reports agree? (u.s. department of education, nces 2001-076). retrieved on march 7, 2006 from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/quarterly/vol_3/3_4/q21.asp wasby, s. l. (1973). toward impact theory: an inventory of hypotheses. in t. l. becker & m. m. feeley (eds.), the impact of supreme court decisions (2nd ed., pp. 214-217). new york: oxford university press. students’ first amendment rights 31 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain jeffery johnson seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word building new identities in teacher preparation for inclusive education in ghana.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x building new identities in teacher preparation for inclusive education in ghana joseph a. agbenyega monash univeristy and prosper k. deku university of cape coast, ghana citation agbenyega, j. & deku, p. (2011). building new identities in teacher preparation for inclusive education in ghana. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract “we want our classrooms to be just and caring, full of various conceptions of the good. we want them to be articulate, with the dialogue involving as many persons as possible, opening to one another, opening to the world” (greene 1993 as cited in nieto & bode, 2008). these words sum up inclusive education as a multifaceted practice that deals with value and belief systems, invites and celebrates diversity and difference arising from family background, social class, gender, language, socio-economic background, cultural origin or ability with human rights and social justice at its core. in this paper we reflect critically on current pedagogical practices in ghana in relation to inclusive education. using a critical post-colonial discursive framework the paper takes up the challenge to problematise the existing pedagogical practices, which are intensely oppressive. it examines the impact of colonial and cultural practices (beliefs, values, norms) on teaching and learning, using data obtained from three focus groups with 21 student teachers, a total of 42 hours of non-participant observation of their classroom teaching and existing research commentaries. we found that current pedagogical practices are prescriptive, mechanistic, and do not value student diversity and different learning styles. we conclude with new directions for teacher education programs in ghana that value and celebrate diversity, and difference. keywords: ghana, inclusion, teacher preparation about the author(s) author: joseph a. agbenyega affiliation: monash university address: department of early childhood education, faculty of education monash university, mcmahons road peninsula campus, frankston email: joseph. agbenyega@monash.edu biographical information: dr. joseph s. agbenyega is currently a lecturer in inclusive education and teacher professional inquiry in the department of early childhood education in monash university, australia. he has served on the victorian state department of education and early childhood development workforce advisory board in 2010 and is currently a member of the international inclusive research expert panel and victorian curriculum and assessment authority early childhood advisory board. author: prosper deku affiliation: university of cape coast, ghana biographical information: mr prosper deku is a senior lecturer in inclusive education at the department of educational foundations at the university of cape coast, ghana. he was a former head of the department of early childhood education in the same university. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 building new identities in teacher preparation for inclusive education in ghana in ghana, government and teacher training institutional initiatives have aimed to contribute to the quality design and conduct of preservice teacher education, and inclusive teaching (amedeker, 2005; anamuah-mensah, n.d.; republic of ghana, 2002). this paper aims to contribute to the knowledge base for the design and implementation of preservice teacher education to enhance teachers’ professional knowledge and identity to support diverse learners’ needs. the paper draws on data obtained from 21 preservice teachers in three focus groups, 42 hours of non-participant observation of these teachers’ professional placement experience, public commentaries and previous research to highlight the issues associated with inclusive teaching and learning in ghana. using a critical post-colonial discursive framework, the paper highlights the need to construct new teacher knowledge and identity forms for inclusive education to be successful in ghana. a critical post-colonial discursive framework there is no space in this paper to provide a comprehensive account on a critical postcolonial discursive framework; therefore, we present key components of this theoretical framework to guide our analysis. historically and intellectually, post-colonial theory deals with the examination of the impact and continuing legacy of the european conquest, colonisation and domination of non-european lands, peoples and cultures (mcleod, 2000). integral to this is a critical examination and analysis of the inherent ideas of european superiority over noneuropean peoples and cultures that such imperial colonisation implies (childs & williams, 1997). post-colonial work also seeks to uncover the debilitating effects of such ideas on both the self-identity of the colonised and the instability of the conceptual underpinnings of the colonizers, for instance, the role of representation in establishing and perpetuating such notions inclusive education in ghana 5 of european superiority (ashcroft, griffiths, & tiffin, 1989, 1998; childs & williams, 1997). dirlik (1994) and slemon (1990) present three reference points of post-colonial theory: a literal description of conditions in formerly colonial societies; a description of a global condition after the period of colonialism; and a description of discourse informed by an epistemological orientation. in this paper, we draw on the third reference point to critically examine and analyse discursively, how information, knowledge, belief and value systems are structured to create dominating meaning for everyday school practices. our main framing of critical post-colonial theory in this analysis is a gradual disengagement with the colonial experience of pedagogy not necessarily the foreign but also local forms that are dominating, exclusive and elitist with little accommodation for students’ creative thinking in school and teacher training institutions. we used post-colonial theory as a pathway towards exploring the complexities of teacher identity, policy dimensions, inclusive education and the constructs that maintain or uphold the current pedagogical system in ghana. we believe that a critical post-colonial analysis of pedagogical archetypes in ghana offers possibilities for arguing for educational and pedagogical change, and for supporting social and educational inclusion. true change that supports inclusion must start from teacher training institutions (mclaren, 2007). teacher identity studies on teacher identity formation have identified teaching as a complex process of socialization (carrington, deppeler, & moss, 2010; murrell, 2001; proweller & mitchener, 2004; wenger, 1998). with this complexity is the tension between philosophy of teaching underpin by the teacher’s self (values, beliefs, behaviours) which influences what is taught, the policy and curriculum, and the structural constraints of school ethos (goodson, 1992; helms, 1998). teacher identity development and change is shaped by the interrelationship between personal current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 and experience, and professional knowledge linked to the teaching environment, students, curriculum and culture of the school (proweller & mitchener, 2004). according to proweller and mitchener (2004), “early functionalist frameworks dominating research on teacher socialization provided linear models of teacher identity development and change” (p. 1045). fullan (1993) argues, ”the way that teachers are trained, the way that schools are organized, the way that the educational hierarchy operates, and the way that education is treated by political decision makers results in a system that is more likely to retain the status quo than to change” (p. 3, italics in the original). lortie as far back as 1975 posited that the school as a society shapes and alters the teacher, reconstructs teacher socialization more in terms of structural accommodation than individual agency. agency here implies giving opportunity to learners to produce themselves in the world of their learning, to socially interact and reflect back through the independent behaviours of their interaction and knowledge they have produced. without agency teacher development practices remain traditional, and “legitimate and institutionalize dominant beliefs and values; a process that both undermines critical thinking as a democratic educational and social practice” (armstrong, 2006, p. 8). however, new theoretical insights into strong and effective teacher professional identify formation relevant for inclusive education have highlighted the importance of multidimensional framings within interrelationships and community (britzman, 1991; munby & russell, 1994) and professional knowledge linked to the teaching environment, students, curriculum, policy and ethos of the school (hargreaves, 1994). what does inclusive education involve? inclusive education is “a process intended to respond to students’ diversity by increasing their participation and reducing exclusion within and from education” (unesco, 2009 p.1). this definition considers inclusive education beyond disability issues and includes quality inclusive education in ghana 7 teaching, the attendance, involvement and achievement of all students, especially those who, for different reasons, are excluded or at risk of being marginalized (unesco, 2009). our own understanding and concept of inclusive education intersects with established multifaceted scholarship that deals with value and belief system, invites and celebrates diversity and difference arising from family background, social class, gender, language, socio-economic background, cultural origin or ability with human rights and social justice at its core. thus far, our definition is grounded in gardner and kelly’s (2008) view that educators must “…foster learning environments that are integrally attentive to issues of meaning-making, critical reflection, social justice, diversity, care, collaboration, and community” (p. 1). therefore, teachers who promote inclusive education are caring. they consider a school as a community, value good interpersonal and personal relationships and create optimum learning opportunities for all students (lindsay, 2003; sweetland, 2008). inclusive education requires something more than the binary divide between teachers as the givers of knowledge and the students as receivers (freire, 1973). freire (1998) posits, … our relationship with the learners demands that we respect them and demands equally that we be aware of the concrete conditions of their world, the conditions that shape them. to try to know the reality that our students live is a task that educational practice imposes on us: without this, we have no access ‘to the way they think, so only with great difficulty can we perceive what and how they know (p. 58). this affirms that positive attitudes from the whole school community and changes to the concept of pedagogy, structure and policy are perpetuities for successful inclusion (elkins & grimes, 2009; hooker, 2008; loreman, 2007; peterson, 2004; sweetland, 2008). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 in relation to inclusive practice student achievement can be compromised unless teacher training programmes change course to embrace a new wave of pedagogical practice that value all learners (carrington, deppeler, & moss, 2010). learning to teach in an inclusive setting is a highly complex and dynamic activity, and much to do with context that uses a ‘whole school approach.’ a whole school approach to inclusive education involves using multiple strategies that have a unifying purpose and reflect a common set of values. it requires that policy makers, teacher educators, teachers parents, students, and the community working together to create education environment that promotes equal opportunity for learning and wellbeing on social and emotional levels (avramidis, 2005; elkins & grimes, 2009; fullan, 2007; peterson, 2004). while we cannot claim a definitive form of inclusive pedagogy an attempt can be made to stir up a rich and diverse knowledge base that informs the preparation of teachers for inclusive education. the education policy framework the first post-independence policy initiative in ghana to provide a comprehensive equal access to education for all children was the 1961 education act, which sought to provide a free, universal and compulsory basic education (of 6 years duration) for all children from 6 years of age. the act mandated that: every child who has attained the school going age as determined by the minister shall attend a course of instruction as laid down by the minister in a school recognised for the purpose by the minister (ges, 2004, p. 2). this act was followed by a free compulsory universal basic education (fcube) policy which was the ministry of education’s response to the 1992 fourth republican constitution of ghana article 39 (2) which states: inclusive education in ghana 9 the government shall, within two years of parliament first meets after coming into force of this constitution draw up a programme for implementation within the following ten years, for the provision of free, compulsory and universal basic education (gov, 1992, p. 40). in line with this the special education division of ges developed a policy in 2004 that sought to adhere to the challenges of marginalization, segregation and inequality that students with additional needs experience in ghanaian schools. essential components of the policy outlining inclusive initiatives were presented at the international conference on education in geneva in 2004. these included: the mandating of special education division of ges to carry out policies that will ensure the social inclusion and quality education for children with disabilities; the provision of equal educational opportunities for children with special needs at pre-university levels to promote access and participation, quality and inclusion; and the mobilization of financial and human resources towards the provision of educational opportunities for children with special needs and its efforts towards inclusive education in ghana (ges, 2006, pp. 14 & 16). the ministry of education’s strategic plan (2003 – 2015) envisions the achievement of quality inclusive education system by 2015 (ges, 2003; hooker, 2008; kuyini, 2010). this is reflected in the support provided by both government and ngos such as voluntary services overseas (vso), sight savers international (ssi), and united states agency for international development (usaid) in inclusive education in the last decade (agbenyega, 2005; kuyini, 2010). the government also initiated pilot inclusive education programs in 2003 in 30 schools in central, eastern and greater accra regions with the aim of rolling out the outcomes nation-wide (see agbenyega, 2005 for details). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 the ghanaian persons with disability (pwd) act 2006 reinforced the rights of (pwd) and gave the impetus for their inclusiveness in education and all aspects of social life in ghana. although the policies demonstrate the government of ghana’s commitment to equity for all children, researching from insider perspectives, we would argue that ghana’s education system is essentially arbitrary, dualist in nature with good education policies on one side and poor implementations on the other side (avoke & avoke, 2004; kuyini & desai, 2006, 2009; ocloo & subbey, 2008; yarboi-tetteh, 2008). whereas the education policies advocate for inclusive teaching, we found through our observation that curriculum and assessment requirements are essentially prescriptive and rigid, leaving little room for teachers to modify it to meet individual student’s needs. the main concern for teachers was to finish the curriculum as stipulated by policy. post-colonial theory provides a framework which helps to address questions of why so many curriculum practices appear still so far away from reaching or even recognising the goals of individual differences. the inclusive elements of the education policy thus remain on paper without its real meaning being experience in schools. a post-colonial view of the policy-practice divide as it currently exists would see it as an outdated dysfunctional colonial institution in many ways, including the way in which it promotes inclusive policy on one hand and a curriculum steeped in the traditional assumption that the highly structured examination driven and teacher centred approach is the best. it is argued that the traditional school almost inevitably promotes and reinforces socio-economic inequity (hickling-hudson, 2002; ladwig, 2000) because they are unsuitable for meeting the learning needs of diverse student populations but rather drill the bodies of students into a regimented and stultified approach to learning through regimented curriculum (tait, 2000). post-colonial educators argue that it is vitally necessary to teach inclusive education in ghana 11 students to critique policies and practices that reproduce privilege and dominance for some children, and disadvantage others (dei & shahjahan, 2008). current teacher education in ghana teacher training in ghana has a checkered history yet space will not allow us to present a detailed historical account in this paper. currently, teacher training is offered at two types of institutions in ghana, teacher training colleges and universities. prior to 2004, the training colleges offered a 3 year post-secondary teachers certificate a. due to low teacher salary levels compared to other sectors of the economy, students who do not qualify to enter public universities mostly enrolled in the training colleges, and some brilliant but needy students who could not afford university fees also find their way into the training colleges. the training colleges pay allowances to the preservice teachers as a form of motivation. as part of a national improvement strategy to raise teachers’ entry level skills the 38 public and three private post secondary teacher training colleges, which formerly offer a three-year ‘certificate a’ to teachers were upgraded in 2004 to offer diploma courses. students spend two years on campus learning theory and in the third year, are assigned to classroom mentor teachers to undertake a one year professional placement while they continue to study through a distance mode. education studies, cultural studies, physical education, english, basic science, basic mathematics, ghanaian language and basic agricultural science form core course components of study with little emphasis on inclusive education. ghana education service (ges) exercises supervisory responsibilities over the work of the teacher training colleges, and qualified teachers from the programs are eligible to teach in primary and junior secondary schools. primary school teachers generally teach all subjects in a class, and junior secondary teachers teach subjects according to their specializations but this is not always the case in areas with teacher shortage. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 the university of education, winneba (uew) and the university of cape coast are both public universities and provide university level training for teachers, awarding diplomas and degrees. currently, uew has replaced the four-week per year teaching practice with a new programme that seeks to enhance the efficiency of teacher-trainees. this involves teachertrainees spending the final year of their training period out of campus to undertake teaching practice in selected schools with the aim of infusing greater professionalism into the students before they graduate. professional placement is supervised by the university lecturers (amedeker, 2005). the university of cape coast is currently reviewing its current structure of practicum experience. there are departments of special education in both universities that teach courses in inclusive education and an introduction to special education as a core unit for all students undertaking education related courses for a semester. the pedagogical landscape this section theorizes pedagogical practices in ghana. by using a critical post-colonial discursive lens we examined the power dynamics inherent in ghanaian pedagogical practices and histories represented in the education system. this approach enabled us to explore the complexities of oppressive pedagogy (freire, 1973) so as to become emancipated of the embedded colonial pedagogical archetypes. emancipation is foundational for developing a new pedagogical landscape that values and supports all learners. perhaps the major challenges facing teacher education in both the training colleges and the universities are the approach to pedagogy and entry level scores for admission into the teacher training colleges. in an international teacher education conference in 2008 in ghana, prof. joseph kingsley aboagye, director of the institute of education of the university of cape coast, (ucc), advocated strongly for a review of the entry requirement for admission into inclusive education in ghana 13 ghana’s teacher training colleges to be raised from aggregate 24 to 22 or better to make it comparable to what pertains in the universities. he indicated that some of the students admitted into the teacher training colleges were sometimes of sub-quality standard (yarboi-tetteh, 2008). similarly, prof. emmanuel adow obeng, the former vice chancellor of ucc, posited that there is absence of coherent policies in teachers’ professional training and development, and content of many teacher training programmes lacked reflective practice, active learning, innovation, creativity and partnership building. pervasive of these are severe disjuncture between the training provided and the realities of the classroom, schools, their communities and the world of work affect teaching quality and learning for all (yarboi-tetteh, 2008). as some of the teachers stated in focus groups: the issue is the lack of support systems for pre-service teachers in training colleges or universities. if you struggle with academic work the only option available for you is expulsion from the academic program. the moment you enter you are on your own unless you have a critical friend who can support you…because rigid examinations are more favoured than any other forms of assessment, it makes teaching and learning mechanistic, prescriptive, we don’t think this support inclusion (transcript, 2/10/2009). this situation depicts the student teachers as colonised bodies with limited opportunities to thrive in learning environment. we observed similar practices in the student-teachers’ professional placement, they were subjective, rigid in their pedagogy without provision for individual differences. foucalt’s (1977) point illustrates this more vividly: the body now serves as an instrument or intermediary: if one intervenes upon it to imprison it, or make it work, it is in order to deprive the individual of a liberty that is current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 regarded both as a right and as a property…now the body is caught up in a system of constraints….obligations and prohibitions (p. 11). while the gloomy picture of the lack of support and regimented assessment practices are giving way to generic assessment practices such as portfolios in many advanced education systems these students are still caught up in the transcendental pedagogy of colonialism. similarly, a ghana education service report card on inclusion found that critical challenges facing educational inclusion highlighted curriculum inflexibility and inadequate pre-/posttraining in additional education needs for regular teachers (ges, 2004, p. 15). further evidence suggests that a large number of children are in school as a result of fcube policy but a significant number do not stay to finish and those who stay on produce poor results because of the hostile school communities, poor teaching, regular corporal punishment and the lack of care expected in inclusive classrooms (agbenyega, 2006; dei & shahjahan, 2008; kuyini, & desai, 2007). it appears the form of oppressive pedagogy in ghana has its roots in her colonial history and traditional cultures. colonialism under the former imperial power (great britain) was based on a social and economic construction of "otherness", a conscious oppression, exclusion and marginalisation of native ghanaians from the white minority. by this construction ghanaians were considered unequal to their former colonial masters, and consequently, were subjected to master-servant relationships accompanied with severe sanctions and punishment. formal schooling, which started as a colonial endeavour in the castles, the symbols of white supremacy, adopted oppressive pedagogical practices. the traditional ghanaian system, which operates on the culture of submissive absolutism, reinforces the oppression experience through colonialism (deppeler, moss, & agbenyega, 2008). inclusive education in ghana 15 for instance, the traditional kinship system in ghana resonates around subject-master ideology. it precludes mutually constituted relationships and legitimises authoritative relationships. a king must exercise his authority over his subjects to demonstrate how powerful he is. invariably, it can be explained that the dualist experience (culture and colonialism) were precursors to the formation of excessive control identities and the ways in which teaching and learning are currently legitimated and practiced in ghana. without the experiences of mutually constituted learning it would be difficult for an educator to do same for his/her learners. research points to the direction that the ghanaian learning spaces (from preschool to the university level) depict a hegemonic colonial rationalist way of organizing educational practice (agbenyega, 2006; deppeler, moss, & agbenyega, 2008). researchers of inclusive education practices in ghana consistently found that despite the majority of teachers’ support for inclusive education, they had limited knowledge of inclusive practices and their approaches to pedagogy remain punitive (agbenyega, 2006; deppeler, moss, & agbenyega, 2008; kuyini & desai, 2007, 2009). for example our observation of pedagogy during field works in some primary schools show: some of the children with tears in their eyes so we asked the teacher, what is wrong with the children? the teacher replied, i caned all of them…i taught them well then i gave them work to do but they all failed… it is shocking…they don’t know anything so i caned them. i am going to cane them again for this disgrace. we saw most of the kids very timid, some unable to express themselves for fear of making mistakes that could attract punishment from the teacher (field observation, 5/11/2009). this is a demonstration that the colonial-culturally blended pedagogical practice is still ripe in the ghanaian classrooms. by culture we imply, the self in relation with others to which current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 the individual belongs. this self is made up of beliefs, values and behaviours. by colonial we mean anything that is imposed. thus colonial-culturally blended pedagogical practice is pedagogical practice that imposes beliefs, values, behaviours and knowledge on learners. in noninclusive learning spaces learners’ voices and agency are submerged in the authoritative pedagogy of teachers (deppeler, moss, & agbenyega, 2008; kanpol, 1994; mprah, 2008). the colonial pedagogical practice considers the learning relationship as simply a ‘novice’ receiving knowledge from a higher authority. other comments made by the classroom teachers during focus groups are quite illuminating of the power dynamics they experienced during their professional preparation: the entire university system operates on the false belief that we the students are ignorant and that the professor is the one who has knowledge and is the one to whom everybody should listen…if you question a lecturer that might be your license to losing your student status or your certificate because… you just need to keep your cool and salute them if you want to guarantee your successful exit (teachers’ focus groups). mprah (2008), a ghanaian quoting paulo freire’s baking concept of education to illustrate the pedagogical situation in ghana states: the teacher teaches and the students are taught, the teacher thinks and the students are thought about, the teacher knows everything and the student knows nothing, the teacher talks and the students listen and meekly, of course. the teacher is the subject of the learning process, while the students are mere objects. the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which is set in opposition to the freedom of the students (p. 1). inclusive education in ghana 17 it appears from this extract that teachers often privilege their position over their learners through a replication of their previous experiences. because their own training silenced them similarly, they are also likely to silence their students. it can be argued that preservice teachers who form their identities through the experience of tyranny and exclusion are likely to accept that tyranny is good to be meted out to other learners. thus, the ‘colonial’ should not be perceived simply as only ‘foreign and alien’, but as broadly to imply any pedagogic behaviour that is ‘imposed’ and ‘dominating’ (dei & asgharzadeh, 2001; dei, & opini, 2007; foucault, 1980). a colonised pedagogy considers teaching as a mere collection of strategies of what works and what does not work for the teacher; the authoritative knower must pass on what works to his or her students whether that knowledge is contextually relevant or not. further focus group comments from preservice teachers reflect this: during a lecture we all sat quiet as the lecturer dictated her notes on language acquisition…the only time she paused was when she thought there was a difficult term she needed to explain to us... she went on like that and everybody was silent. i took the courage to ask a question, madam, i read in another book which contested noam chomsky’s version of innate language abilities, what is your…i did not finished the statement when she attacked me verbally…are you here to teach me or who is in control here? it went on for some five minutes but i was the looser as my fate was decided by the final grade that was awarded me for what was considered challenging the lecturer’s authority (transcript, 2/10/2009). this account further confirms the practice of pedagogy as simply the transmission of information through fear. it is an approach that rejects knowledge construction through mutual meaning making (vygotsky, 1987; daniels, 2001). such approaches to pedagogy current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 neither make connections with learners nor engage them so that they want to be at school. it mirrors the banking concept of education where knowledge is perceived as a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing (freire, 1973). it demonstrates a departure from a school as a community of individuals learning and sharing knowledge together (rogoff, 1994). in inclusive learning, all students, teachers and policy makers belong to the school community and therefore, value the differences embodied in various elements of the school (keddie & churchill, 2005). colonial form of schooling on the other hand, considers schooling as simply receiving knowledge from a superior authority for replication (dahlberg & moss, 2005). if the pedagogical landscape of the ghanaian schooling systems privilege teachers’ authority and knowledge over learners then individuals with learning difficulties will be further subjugated. dewey (1938) cautions that: education is essentially a social process. this quality is realised in the degree in which individuals form a community group…as the most mature member of the group, [the teacher] has a peculiar responsibility for the conduct of the interactions and intercommunications which are the very life of the group as a community…when education is based upon experience and educative experience is seen to be a social process,…the teacher loses the position of external boss or dictator but takes on that of leader of group activities (pp. 65-66). dewey’s comments are consistent with rogoff’s (1994) idea of a learning community and a whole school approach where all elements of the school must be brought together to make inclusion effective (rinaldi & stuart, 2009). similarly, teacher education and pedagogy in ghana need to shift a focus from sheer transmission of knowledge to a more inclusive approach that inclusive education in ghana 19 actively involves learners in producing knowledge. this approach values active engagement where the voice of teacher trainees are valued and respected. current inclusive practices challenged traditional frameworks of pedagogy that view learners as receptacles. it embraces a new discourse of education where appropriate support is the key (loreman, 2007). given this new direction post-colonial theory signals a new interest in education, a renewed interest in the colonial legacy and its aftermath in ghana. by applying a post-colonial theory to current pedagogical practices in ghana we place centre stage the continuing implication of colonial legacy of pedagogy on inclusive education which has little changed since independence in 1957. our main framing of post-colonial theory in the analysis of teacher education in ghana is a gradual disengagement with the colonial and the aversive forms of cultural reproduction of pedagogy. teachers need a new way of thinking about educational practice as a collective social and cultural endeavour (daniels, 2001; fleer, 2006). teachers will not support inclusive education if they do not understand it. we therefore consider teacher education as the primary task in addressing the challenges facing inclusive education in ghana. reframing teacher preparation for successful inclusion in ghana we conclude this paper by proposing a new framework for teacher education in light of the presidential committee on the review of education reform in ghana which stated the objective of teacher education in ghana as the training and development of the right type of teacher who is competent, committed and dedicated who should be able to: • develop attitudes, values and dispositions that create a conducive environment; for quality teaching and learning in schools; • apply, extend and synthesise various forms of knowledge; • facilitate learning and motivate individual learners to fully realise their potential; current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 • promote inclusive education at all levels; • adequately prepare the learner to participate fully in the national development effort (anamuah-mensah, n.d; republic of ghana, 2002). deconstructing the pedagogical experiences reported in this paper provided insights into how teacher training must be reconstructed and the factors instrumental in reshaping teacher identities or core beliefs consistent with the above statements. it appears that if current teacher preparation continues to reproduce teachers in the traditional practice of knowledge transmitters, inclusive education will be hard to achieve. teacher education in ghana needs to be infused with content that includes instructional and curricular techniques appropriate for the development of cognitive, social, cultural and physical needs of diverse learners in the inclusive environments. the implementation must be swift, decisive and dramatic in the wake of ghana’s education reforms that characterised the education enterprise. the pedagogical archetypes in practice in current teacher training institutions and schools in ghana lacked the complexity of teaching required in inclusive classrooms. effective teachers know their role and do effective teaching, and this begins with effective training (fullan, 2007; norwich, 2000). teacher training institutions in ghana need to design inspiring preservice and inservice programs that engage learners in problem-based learning communities, transforming their understanding and experience of learning, teaching and inclusive practice. current approaches should inspire transformational learning in student teachers by structuring learning opportunities and experiences that respond to the student’s home culture. there should be both a solid foundation in the course content, and its application to problem solving in classrooms and society. course development should be based on these core beliefs: • vibrant learning communities; inclusive education in ghana 21 • respect and a positive attitude influence learning; • a high level of content knowledge and expertise on subject matter to influence teaching; • strong and continuous support of students’ learning; and • empowerment to encourage students to become critical thinkers who can take risks to question normalisation and marginalisation processes which will lead to broader understandings of the broader historical, cultural, political and educational context in which they are part of (curran, 2007). vibrant learning communities. inclusive education is full of complexities in regard to policy and implementation. the course units in teacher training should lead students to identify and understand these complexities, and find practical ways of implementing inclusion practice in their schools. an important way to do this is to make learning spaces vibrant communities that allow preservice teachers to reflect on their own experiences of inclusive education (mclaren, 2007) and consider why inclusion matters and for whom it is important. they would then reflect on how their own experience of inclusion in education and learning compares with what they now believe inclusion should be about and look like. course units should incorporate requirements for students to conduct research as part of their ongoing learning and assessment which they must discuss in groups. teaching methods and teacher behaviours that are needed to facilitate context specific quality inclusive education should form core components of course delivery. through this approach, students are not only learning content but are also building their identities as effective teachers with extensive knowledge in using research to inform practice. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 respect and positive attitude influence learning. the extracts provided in this paper demonstrated that colonial pedagogy does not respect students and as such is counterproductive to inclusive education. for a transformation to occur pedagogical practices in ghana must be based on respect and positive attitude as these play important role in students’ survival in their academic learning (keddie & churchill, 2005; rinaldi & stuart, 2009). teachers cannot motivate diverse learners without earning their respect. this can be achieved by designing the professional development course structures that take learner’s feelings, needs and thoughts into consideration (rogoff, pradise, arauz, correa-chavez, & angelillo, 2003). for example, teaching and learning must encourage open discussion both in lectures and tutorials on what qualities and capabilities the students want to attain at the end of their qualifications. this implies that ghanaian teacher educators must listen non-judgmentally and non-defensively, and allow students to come out with innovative suggestions other than those provided by their lecturers. a high level of knowledge and expertise on subject matter influences teaching. research shows that the pedagogy of talking, where the lecturer dominates the teaching and learning situation, dampens students’ enthusiasm and leads to exclusion (dahlberg & moss, 2005). for this reason, the nature of the material to be delivered to preservice and inservice teachers must be based upon constructivist learning incorporating a community of learners approach (rogoff, 1994; rogoff et al., 2003) whereby real world, classroom, family and societal problems are incorporated into developing course units. the constructivist approach to learning derives its name and power from the belief that knowledge is best constructed when the learner actively interacts with the environment and, hence, constructs meaning from that experience (vygotsky, 1987; daniels, 2001; hausfather, 2001) implying that learning should be meaningful inclusive education in ghana 23 and related to real life situations. educators following the constructivist perspective base their instruction on what the students already know as a foundation (duhany & duhany, 2000) and active learning is an important facet. when students are actively involved in the lesson, they learn and retain information (harris & graham, 1996). according to bruner (1997), the teaching of theoretical concepts must be inextricably linked to its application. this kind of teacher training is required if teachers are to assist all children in inclusive settings to apply their learning to a useful purpose. similarly, prospective teachers must understand the relationship between the ideas they are taught and the applications they will encounter. one way to develop this skill is to arrange for this connection to be made in the context of real life situations (hughes, 2006). such learning in context will provide the preservice teachers the opportunity of questioning what they do or think (brookfield, 1995). it is during this process of inquiry, thinking about their practice that teacher transformation and new identity forms occur (hughes, 2006). the community of learners approach (rogoff, 1994) ensures that the lecturer and the students have no fixed position but where everybody is a learner and an educator. there should be a focus on setting interesting but challenging assessment tasks. students can be motivated for learning through assigning tasks that are neither too easy nor too difficult, and which incorporates research activity for individual or group investigation. to counter students’ apathy to engagement and learning, rigorous steps and time must be spent to develop a well-organized unit that is integrated, and incorporates real life situations and events into assignment tasks. teacher professional preparation should aim at liberating the individual and must move away from unidirectional to a community of learners’ relationship (rogoff, 1994). this calls for collaborative teaching and dialogicity the essence of education as freedom in practice (freire, 1973). this interactive approach is important for working with varying learning styles. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 preservice teachers need to know from the onset what they are learning, why they need to learn it and what is expected of them as well as how this applies in real classroom or world context. to facilitate the preparation in a more unified fashion, the field experience would have to be constructed and take place in classrooms and settings that are inclusive and representative of the range of students one would expect to teach after completing training (fleer, 2008; hedegaard, 2008). further, field experience would have to be structured to provide regular and consistent opportunities for reflection since experience alone would not be enough to clarify the knowledge and meanings derived from practice (pugach, 1996). this type of reflection forms the basis by which students can question what they think or do (brookfield, 1995). constructive timely feedback. quality inclusive teachers are those that provide prompt and timely response on students’ work. research suggests that timely constructive feedback can be a powerful tool for learning ad contributor to building student’s identity (black & william, 1998). feedback is critical to preservice and novice teachers’ professional development. newmann and wehlage's (1983) writes, “the professional cultures into which new teachers are inducted are critically important because the early years not only confirm new teachers' choice of occupation in life, but also lay a base for future professional development” (p.255). we should not assume that full blown teachers emerge from preservice programs capable of implementing all that they learnt from their professional preparation programs (russell & mcpherson 2001), which suggested that, failure to acknowledge the effects of experience and further professional development on professional growth could result in teachers losing their core identities as good teachers. thus, frequent, timely, positive feedback that supports preservice teachers' beliefs that they are either doing well or what they need to do to be successful in their programs should form a core component of the teacher training programs. inclusive education in ghana 25 reflections for professional development. of particular importance is personal measurement of preservice teacher’s own work. many ghanaian teachers know a lot about children with additional needs however, they do not incorporate reflection in their teaching. the lack of reflection about children with additional needs can push teachers into ineffective programming, rejection and abuse (allen, 2000, horn, 2000). thus reflective practice needs to form a core component of preservice teacher education in ghana. our analysis demonstrate a pattern of schooling that reflects ongoing teacher education models based on what freire (1973) described as oppressive educational practice and creates further barriers to inclusive education that continue to reinforce a technical approach to the professional practices of teaching (giroux, 1981). carrington, deppeler and moss (2010) argue strongly that “if we want to progress education reform and change, then the importance of value positions that are grounded by social and cultural beliefs about education, learning and difference need to be acknowledged” (p. 1). a critical post-colonial framework requires that teachers use selfreflection to form their identities through communities of practice that promote active and critical dialogue, and questioning of historical and traditional notions about education and pedagogy. kumashiro and ngo (2007) writes succinctly, “anti-oppressive education requires us to be continuously reflexive about how any of our perspectives on teaching and learning are partial, necessarily so” (p. xix). to confront oppression involves teacher educators and teachers discerning and critically positioning themselves in ways that allow them to actively question ideologies about how professional beliefs and knowledge are understood and enacted in professional preparation and practice. as teachers reflect, construct and adopt identity positions for themselves (bucholtz & hall, 2005) that are grounded in equity and social justice transformational teaching and learning can occur (gur-ze’ev, masschelein, & blake, 2001). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 conclusion what we have discussed so far provides a framework for teacher education that prepares teachers to be responsive to individual differences. it moves beyond the mechanistic prescriptions of pedagogy and conformity expected in dominant traditional classrooms. a postcolonial teacher preparation and pedagogy applies a multilogical reasoning and meaning making that draw on individual strengths, and not on their shortcomings (kincheloe, 2008). teacher education within this theoretical space will re-position pedagogy in ghana that rejects the notion of transmission (dahlberg, moss, & pence, 1999; nsamenang, 2008). inclusive teaching does not set boundaries and or lock children into rigid categories of ‘deficits and normals’ (ashby & causton-theoharis, 2009; rossetti, ashby, arndt, chadwick, & kasahara, 2008). inclusive teaching is an ethical practice that brings to the educational table multiple ways of learning and knowing (dahlberg, moss, & pence, 1999). it is only when teachers achieve such transformations that they would no longer view different cognitive abilities in children as markers of deficiency, and need to fix them (ashby & causton-theoharis, 2009; daniels, 2001; rossetti et al., 2008). society and school systems would come to view all children as knowledgeable individuals who are developing in different cultural contexts and thus need culturally appropriate support and not criticism and punitive pedagogy that is based colonial rationality. inclusive education in ghana 27 references agbebyega, j. s. 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(2008). review entry requirement of teacher training colleges, the ghanaian times, wed, 23 jul 2008. inclusive education in ghana 37 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x the de-emphasis on social studies in elementary schools: teacher candidate perspective amy j. good university of north carolina at charlotte tina l. heafner university of north carolina at charlotte tracy c. rock university of north carolina at charlotte katherine a o‟connor east carolina university jeff passe towson univeristy scott m. waring university of central florida sandra byrd university of north carolina at asheville citation good, a.j. et al (2010). the de-emphasis on social studies in elementary schools: teacher candidate perspective. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the de-valuing of social studies is becoming prevalent as schools shift emphasis to other subjects addressing national and state accountability. the teacher candidate perspective is presented from an original study regarding the de-emphasis of social studies in elementary schools (rock, heafner, o‟connor, passe, oldendorf, good, & byrd, 2006). teacher candidates gathered data current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 during their clinical experiences, from five teacher preparation programs in north carolina. teacher candidates recognized difficulty in finding instructional time for the entire curriculum, conveyed social studies is de-valued in the elementary curriculum, stated integration is important to social studies instruction, and recognized it is their responsibility social studies is taught. keywords: social studies, elementary, teacher preparation, marginalization, instructional time, integration, social studies instruction teacher candidate perspective 3 about the author(s) author: amy j. good affiliation: university of north carolina at charlotte address: 9201 university city blvd., charlotte, nc 28223 email: agood5@uncc.edu biographical information: amy j. good is an associate professor in the department of reading and elementary education at the university of north carolina at charlotte. author: tina l. heafner affiliation: university of north carolina at charlotte address: 9201 university city blvd., charlotte, nc 28223 email: tina.heafner@uncc.edu biographical information: tina l. heafner is an associate professor in the department of middle, secondary, and k-12 education at the university of north carolina at charlotte. author: tracy c. rock affiliation: university of north carolina at charlotte address: 9201 university city blvd., charlotte, nc 28223 email: tracy.rock@uncc.edu biographical information: tracy c. rock is an associate professor in the department of reading and elementary education at the university of north carolina at charlotte. author: katherine a. o‟connor affiliation: east carolina university email: oconnork@ecu.edu biographical information: katherine a. o‟connor is an associate professor in the department of curriculum and instruction at east carolina university. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 author: jeff passe affiliation: towson university email: jpasse@towson.edu biographical information: jeff passe is professor and chair of the department of secondary education at towson university. author: scott m. waring affiliation: university of central florida email: scott.waring@ucf.edu biographical information: scott m. waring is an assistant professor and program coordinator of social science education at the university of central florida. author: sandra byrd affiliation: university of north carolina at asheville email: sbyrd@unca.edu biographical information: sandra byrd is the assistant provost and associate professor for graduate and continuing education program at the university of north carolina at asheville. teacher candidate perspective 5 the de-emphasis on social studies in elementary schools: teacher candidate perspective in a social studies methods class, a future teacher was assigned to observe social studies lessons in a school setting, as part of the clinical field experience requirement. the veteran clinical teacher, leading the clinical field experience, let the teacher candidate know, “i do not teach social studies; therefore it would be hard to observe. i will teach a lesson for you, if you need to just observe the subject being taught”. the de-valuing of the social studies is becoming prevalent as schools shift their emphasis to science, math, and language arts addressing national and state accountability. researchers (burroughs, groce, & webeck, 2005; center on education policy, 2008; gross, 1977; hahn, 1977; heafner, lipscomb, & rock, 2006; lintner, 2006; ochoa, 1981; rock et al., 2006; stecher & chun, 2001; vanfossen, 2005; vonzastrow & janc, 2004) raise concerns about the diminishing emphasis spent on elementary social studies instruction. according to owen (1997), there are five challenges when educating preservice social studies teachers 1) negative past experiences, 2) lack of interest, 3) confusion over the definition, 4) world view taught in a short time, and 5) finding clinical placements where social studies is taught. in what ways can teacher candidates obtain a substantive social studies clinical experience, when social studies is missing from elementary classrooms? will teacher candidates not see the value of social studies and not teach the subject in their future classrooms? the purpose of the original longitudinal north carolina initiative was to gather information regarding the de-emphasis of social studies in elementary schools (rock et al, 2006). in this study, most teachers reported that students received social studies instruction in 30 to 45 minute lessons for two to three days per week. the authors present the argument that the high current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 stakes standardized testing of reading and math in north carolina has diminished instructional time in elementary social studies. it was also found, however, that the more teachers valued social studies the more instructional time they devoted to it. the study recommends that solid actions in the form of research, advocacy, and professional development with in-service and preservice teachers is needed if social studies education is to be revitalized in our elementary schools. the purpose of this paper is to share the teacher candidate perspective, while in their social studies clinical classroom, of the devaluing and de-emphasis of social studies. the impact of the de-emphasis of social studies instruction on teacher candidates and attempt to validate teacher reported responses from the structured interviews are outlined. the following three areas will be reviewed from the teacher candidate‟s perspective: a) the amount of instructional time allowed for social studies in the elementary classroom, b) corresponding responses from cooperating teacher regarding the nature of the social studies in their classrooms, and c) the impact of the social studies clinical on the teacher candidate‟s teaching and learning of social studies. method to explore teacher candidate perspectives of social studies within their c linical experiences data were collected from the following sources. at the beginning of the clinical experience, preservice teachers interviewed cooperating teachers using a structured questionnaire consisting of 20 closed-ended and open-ended questions in which teachers were asked to explain their responses [see appendix]. interviews were conducted face to face and the teacher candidates transcribed cooperating teacher responses. candidates then observed their cooperating teaching and documented comparisons between the initial interviews and actual classroom observations. the teacher candidates were students enrolled teacher candidate perspective 7 in social studies methods classes within the unc system. the amount of time the teacher candidates spent in the clinical placements varied between 15-30 contact hours over the course of the semester depending on their program‟s requirements. the nature of the clinical experience varied in minor ways at each institution as well. all teacher candidates were required to observe social studies instruction, plan at least one lesson, teach the lesson, and receive feedback from their cooperating teacher. at the conclusion of preservice teacher candidates‟ clinical experiences, preservice teachers provided written reflections to the following three questions: 1) did the amount of instructional time used for social studies as conveyed by the clinical teacher in the interview, correspond with what you observed in the classroom this semester? explain. 2) were you surprised by any of the responses your cooperating teacher shared with you? explain. 3) how did the time you spent in this elementary school classroom impact your thinking about the teaching and learning of social studies? data from teacher candidate written reflections are the focus of this article. seventy-one (n=71) teacher candidate reflections were reviewed. the teacher candidates were students enrolled in social studies methods classes within the unc system. qualitative responses were evaluated by four university researchers using a combination of content analysis (silverman, 1999) and the constant-comparative method (glaser & straus, 1967) to determine patterns or themes in the data. teacher candidate reflections were coded to guarantee anonymity. individual question responses were evaluated, grouped, and categorized based on themes that emerged. each researcher conducted three independent readings of these data with subsequent collaborative meetings to compare themes, categorical grouping, and discuss implications. findings current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 overall, the following findings were conveyed. the teacher candidates: a) recognized the difficulty in finding time to teach the entire curriculum, b) conveyed social studies is not valued in the elementary curriculum, c) stated that integration is important to be able to teach social studies, and d) recognized it is their responsibility to make sure social studies is taught. teacher candidates also noted cooperating teachers felt their students were well prepared for the next grade level in social studies but indicated limited instructional time provided for social studies instruction. the focus of this research was to examine the teacher candidate perspective, and to give the teacher candidates a voice related to this topic. the following section will highlight the themes found in the qualitative responses. based on their responses, it is difficult to ascertain whether the teacher candidates are valuing the social studies because they are not seeing it taught. on the contrary, their responses reveal they value the social studies even more following this experience, in spite of what their clinical teacher valued or taught. some of the teacher candidates observed wonderful social studies instruction while others observed no social studies instruction at all, not even an integrated lesson. when asked about the time spent in the clinical and the impact on teaching and learning social studies, a teacher candidate responded: i will work hard to be an advocate for social studies. i didn‟t realize this was such a problem. i think it is crucial to student‟s academic and social development and i will work harder to push it in my classes, since i know it is so overlooked! difficult to find time for the subject the majority (53/71=75%) of the teacher candidates reported the amount of instructional time used for social studies conveyed by the cooperating teacher corresponded with what was observed in the classroom. with only 14/71 (20%) not corresponding with what was observed in teacher candidate perspective 9 the classroom, and 4/71 (5%) were not able to report because they felt they were not there long enough to determine correspondence of answers. the 20% who responded “no” to the first question reported their cooperating teacher would teach lessons mainly focused on math and reading. the “yes” responses included the following themes of what was observed: a) social studies taught through „integration‟ everyday, when possible, b) social studies, science, and health were taught on a three-week rotation c) social studies was taught 1 hour per week or not at all, and d) teachers were ordered to spend more time on other subjects and leave social studies behind. one teacher candidate wrote: i think i was most surprised by the fact that the school system tells you what you are to concentrate on most. a lot of the time it is not up to the teacher even though you may think you have a lot of freedom. i was totally baffled by the amount of time she spends on the social studies. there are four nine-week terms in one school year. therefore, this means she covers all of the social studies standards in less than 12 weeks! social studies under pressure a majority, 55/71 (77%) of the responses revealed the teacher candidates were surprised by the clinical teacher responses. a large portion (47%) of those 55 teacher candidates were surprised about the actual amount of time the teachers claimed to teach social studies. other themes from the responses included when the cooperating teacher reported no familiarity with the standard course of study for social studies and when the school systems allow certain standards to be ignored, so focus can be placed on the tested subjects and when clinical teachers did not seem to value the social studies more than other subjects or enough to teach it anyway, in spite of the pressure to teach other subjects. in current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 some cases, the teacher candidates could not believe that even if the teacher valued the subject of social studies, they would still not teach it, due to administration pressures. confusion over integration even though the teachers reported „integration‟ was used to teach social studies, the teacher candidates may not have been able to see this integration or may not know what to look for in an integrative lesson. for example, one teacher candidate reported: i was surprised that she put social studies as her last priority, even below science. she also said that all of the subjects were „covered‟ through integration, but i never once saw her doing this. maybe she did it on days i was not there? another teacher candidate reported: i am shocked that the school system allows the social studies curriculum to be „left in the dust‟ like it is. thankfully, i observed social studies being integrated in the classroom, without compromising the quality of the other objectives being taught. this experience inspired me to do what i observed: teach social studies, throughout the whole curriculum using integration and technology… of the 71 teacher candidates surveyed, the importance of learning how to integrate was explicitly mentioned in thirty-two (45%) responses. they stressed the desire to learn proper integration methods for their own class of the future. planning to teach social studies in the future the teacher candidates‟ self-report responses revealed themes implying they would take responsibility to teach the social studies to their classes of the future. perhaps with more training and experience, they will teach the subject regardless of pressures. other common themes included: a) the importance of making time for the social studies b) the realization that social teacher candidate perspective 11 studies can be taught in a powerful, innovating, and dynamic manner, while involving the children in the learning process, and finally, c) the emphasis on social studies should not be neglected because it is a natural part of our lives. even though there is pressure to teach other subjects, the teacher candidates point out the teachers, ultimately, make the decisions of what is taught and valued in the classroom. the teacher candidates report they plan on teaching the subject in some manner in the future. one teacher candidate reported, “i know now that social studies is much easier to include when it is integrated with other subjects. i am no longer frightened of teaching social studies; i am looking forward to it”. while another participant stated: the clinical teacher‟s classroom was really cool. you could tell she spent a lot of time on social studies integrated with the arts. there were student made mexican hats and artifacts in her classroom and displayed in the hall because they were studying mexican culture. i did not get to observe the lessons on mexico, but there was evidence integration has occurred. i am just not sure how to do it. discussion as teacher candidates reflected on their clinical observations, they expressed frustration with the lack of time dedicated to the subject of social studies and their own inability to differentiate social studies instruction from other content areas. one student wrote, “how can i observe social studies when it is not being taught?” the teacher candidates are required to teach at least one lesson in their clinical experience; however, they indicated barriers to their own course requirements of teaching social studies lessons. many were unable to teach social studies because of time devoted to other content areas, like reading and literacy (boyle-baise, hsu, johnson, serriere, &stewart; 2008), and the shared current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 time with science. teacher candidates reported a concern with a lack of understanding fo r how to integrate social studies, based on their observations. the level and definitions of integration varied among teachers indicating a need for university instructors to provide models for effective integration. there is, oftentimes, a hidden curriculum or camouflaged social studies being taught (character education, citizenship, classroom management, classroom community, etc.). if preservice teachers cannot recognize social studies instruction then how can we expect k-6 students to know they are learning social studies? as teacher educators, we need to help our teacher candidates to identify social studies in various settings. the data point to another important role for teacher education promoting the value of social studies. teachers who value social studies claim to be more prepared to teach it (duplass, 2007). plus, they tend to believe their students are prepared for subsequent levels of study. a methods course that is devoted to social studies seems to be an effective strategy for promoting teachers‟ valuing of social studies goals (mccall, 2008). the teacher candidate responses reveal they recognized, as they observed and participated in their clinical placements, that social studies is not an equally valued component of the elementary school curriculum. for example, one teacher candidate wrote: i am very disappointed… social studies and the skills and information learned by studying our world are imperative to one‟s personal and academic development. however, it is not being learned and taught. i spent numerous hours in this classroom and was very disappointed that a teacher of such caliber feels so much time constraint that her students are not learning about their world. it‟s disheartening that students are graduating high school and have little or no understanding of the world and how it works teacher candidate perspective 13 but they are quite skilled at bubbling a multiple-choice test. as a result of this methods course, i am determined to change this pattern of preparing effective test takers rather than effective citizens. the role of the social studies methods course becomes one of not only teaching the social studies curriculum and content pedagogy, but that of advocating for teaching social studies (pascopella, 2005). with the external constraints on time and the focus on standardized testing, teachers must have a strong grounding in the importance of social studies or they will surrender to these external pressures and omit social studies from their instruction, (willis &sandholtz, 2009), as observed by many of our teacher candidates. those teachers who remained steadfast and continued to seek ingenuous methods for integrating social studies were those who had a robust training in the social studies (vanfossen, 2005). in addition, the teacher candidates demonstrated through their reflective writing that they valued the social studies by emphasizing the importance of providing a balance between integrated and stand-alone instruction in social studies and that it was their responsibility as a professional teacher to ensure that students receive instruction in the social studies. these areas are addressed in the social studies methods course and appear to have impacted the teacher candidate‟s perspectives as they interacted in the clinical schools. the purpose of the social studies methods course is to provide the teacher candidate with the opportunity to experiment with various social studies teaching methods in the clinical placement. such assignments allow teacher candidates to see that students can engage in and even enjoy learning social studies and may lead to a greater valuing of the social studies curriculum. if the opportunity to try the methods and theories supporting social studies best practices is not available, it is possible the teacher candidates will not value the subject. the results of this study show that the teacher current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 candidates value the subject at this time but what about when they are under the same pressures and constraints of time and testing that clinical teachers are currently experiencing? there are limitations to this study. the teacher candidates could have framed their answers to be „pro‟ social studies, knowing their methods instructor was reading the responses. another limitation of this study might be the teacher candidate participants may have reported valuing the social studies because they thought it was an expectation of the course. there is also a construct issue, related to a need for common definitions of integration, social studies instruction, and social studies powerful teaching. perhaps this study will allow educators to continue to re-examine how we discuss and deliberate issues surrounding social studies instruction. the main and immediate concern for the authors was how can teacher candidates obtain a substantive social studies clinical experience, when social studies is „missing‟ or not clearly seen often in elementary classrooms? also, in what ways is the de-emphasis on the subject impacting the teacher candidate‟s experience? following this study, those questions remain for each new class of teacher candidates. from the responses, it appears the teacher candidates, who participated, will be teaching social studies in their classrooms in the near future. conclusion in the elementary grades, social studies has been and continues to be marginalized within state curriculum standards, and a continued de-emphasis has been placed upon it by some administration and classroom teachers alike (gross, 1977; hahn, 1977; heafner, et.al, 2006; ochoa, 1981; rock, et al, 2006; vanfossen, 2005). this does not mean the teachers and administrators are “wrong,” it just means the pressures of standardized tests and yearly progress have almost forced schools to reprioritize subject matter. consequently, many teacher teacher candidate perspective 15 candidates enter the higher education classroom with a lack of content knowledge and very little interest for the subject. with the lack of coursework dealing with social studies methods and poor modeling occurring in content related courses, many of the students graduate with the same low level of interest and the ability to teach as they were taught. it appears the social studies clinical course can make a difference: now that i have seen social studies taught in such a way that the students were directly involved with the decision of their learning was so amazing. my previous idea of teaching social studies strictly from a textbook is completely shattered. to me, learning social studies is a part of our everyday lives as we interact with others, work in groups, meet new people, etc. i do not think i am nearly as intimidated or insecure about teaching social studies as what i originally expected i would be. faculty in teacher preparation programs and clinical teachers, especially at the elementary level, have an obligation to instill the passion for social studies and empower teacher candidates with the knowledge and skills to teach social studies in an effective and powerful manner (heafner et al, 2007). with increased usage and availability of technological resources, educators have access to more resources than ever to help make instruction more meaningful and enjoyable for elementary students. there is also a need for increased collaborative efforts with local school districts and community resources, so that an environment of interest in social studies is fostered. a change in the status-quo is greatly needed. it must begin with a triad approach of teacher educators, clinical teachers, and teacher candidates working together to not only emphasize the importance of the social studies in the classroom, but to develop strategies for instruction and planning, and advocate for social studies (mccall, janssen, & riederer, 2008). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 references american psychological association. 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(2009). constrained professionalism: dilemmas of teaching in the face of test-based accountability. teachers college record, 111(4), 1065-1114. http://music-forall.org/documents/cbe_principal_report.pdf current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team teacher candidate perspective 19 executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo peer functioning in children with ad/hd and new directions in the application of interventions peer functioning 1 peer functioning in children with ad/hd: a review of current understanding and intervention options selda ozdemir, phd gazi university, turkey address: gazi university, gazi education faculty special education department teknikokullar 06500 ankara turkey email seldaozdemir@gazi.edu.tr peer functioning 2 abstract this review critically evaluates the existing research literature on the peer relationship problems of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. empirical evidence suggests that children with the disorder are severely impaired in the social area and strongly rejected by peers. the purposes of this article are to provide a review of key contributing factors to the peer relationship problems of children with ad/hd and to outline intervention options that have been supported as beneficial for children with the disorder. finally, the article provides a framework to understand and address the complex social problems of children with the ad/hd. key words: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; peer relationship problems; peer rejection; social skills; emotion regulation; interventions. peer functioning 3 peer functioning in children with ad/hd: a review of current understanding and intervention options attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is the most commonly diagnosed childhood disorder characterized by symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and/or impulsivity (dsm-iv; american psychiatric association, 2000; blachman & hinshaw, 2002). international epidemiological studies using standardized diagnostic criteria suggest that 3 % to 7 % of the school-aged population is affected by the disorder (barkley, 2006; peterson, pine-cohen, & brook, 2001). this prevalence estimate means that almost 1 in every 20 children, or at least 1 child per general education classroom, is likely to be identified as having ad/hd (barkley, 2001; barkley, 2006; mcgoey, eckert, & dupaul, 2002; peterson, et al., 2001). in addition to the primary symptoms of the disorder, increased rates of comorbid psychiatric conditions including oppositional defiant disorder (odd) and conduct disorder (cd) (barkley, 2006) and secondary impairments such as academic underachievement and learning problems are commonly reported in ad/hd (dupaul, 2007; farone et al., 1993). social deficits in peer relations including social skills and social performance deficits (maedgen & carlson, 2000; wheeler & carlson, 1994) have been widely noted, as have difficulties in aggression (hodgens, cole, & boldizar, 2000) and emotion regulation (southam-gerow & kendall, 20002). empirical evidence suggest that long term effects for some children with ad\hd include attending fewer years of school, achieving lower overall occupational status such as being ranked significantly lower than control groups (mannuzza, gittelman-klein, bessler, malloy, & lapadula, 1993; weiss & hechtman, 1993) and displaying worse job performance (weiss & hechtman, 1993), and experiencing greater range of social maladjustment and personality problems such as lower self-esteem depressive symptoms, antisocial and criminal status (barkley, 2006; treuting & peer functioning 4 hinshaw, 2001; young, 2002). even those children with ad/hd who are monitored into adolescence and found to be free of psychiatric disorders appear to have some social problems, such as significantly less community and school activity involvement (mannuzza, klein, bonagura, konig, & shenker, 1988). although earlier research has focused primarily on the attentional, academic/learning, and behavioral problems associated with this disorder (dupaul, 2007; farone et al., 1993; treuting & hinshaw, 2001), the social domain is being increasingly accepted as one of critical importance for these youngsters (blachman & hinshaw, 2002; hinshaw, & melnick, 1995; mikami & hinshaw, 2003; stroes, alberts, & van der meere, 2003). the difficulties in the social domain are so common that some investigators have claimed that the phenomenon of disturbed social relations itself should serve as a classifying characteristic of the disorder (landau & moore, 1991; whalen & henker, 1991). indeed, erhardt and hinshaw (1994) argued that social problems of children with ad/hd might be central to an understanding of the psychopathology of these children. the interpersonal behaviors of children with ad/hd are often described as more impulsive, intrusive, excessive, disorganized, engaging, aggressive, intense, and emotional (bagwell, molina, pelham, & hoza 2001; mikami & hinshaw, 2003; stroes, alberts, & van der meere, 2003). thus, they are disruptive to the smoothness of the ongoing stream of social interactions, reciprocity, and cooperation, which is an increasingly essential part of the children’s social lives with others (barkley, 2006). problems caused by inattention and impulse control effect negatively the social performance of children with this disorder in a number of areas. first, they may enter ongoing peer activities in a sudden, disruptive manner. second, their communication style often differs than their typically developing counterparts. children with peer functioning 5 ad/hd have difficulty in following the implicit rules of good conversation (stroes, et al., 2003). they are likely to interrupt others, talk more during spontaneous conversation, pay minimal attention to what others are saying, and respond in an irrelevant fashion to the queries or statements of peers (landau & milich, 1988; stroes, et al., 2003; zentall, 1988). further, studies of language fluency and discourse organization indicate that children with ad/hd are likely talk less and be more dysfluent in response to confrontational questioning (tannock & schachar, 1996).third, these children frequently approach interpersonal problems in an aggressive manner, lose their temper, and become angry quite easily (blachman & hinshaw, 2002; hinshaw, & melnick, 1995; mikami & hinshaw, 2003). thus, arguments and fights with peers are very common among children with the disorder (dupaul & stoner, 2003). being inflexible if another child appeals, having a need to take control of play situations, becoming intimidating, and being stubborn about having things occur the way they want them to happen are other common observable behaviors of children with ad/hd (barkley, 2006). it is not surprising then, that children with ad/hd are rejected at higher rates than are their non-ad/hd peers (blachman & hinshaw, 2002; guevromont & dumas, 1994; johnston, pelham, & murphy, 1985; mikami & hinshaw, 2003). although peer rejection does not, in itself, indicates an externalizing behavior disorder, it is well known that low social status with peers significantly predicts a host of negative outcomes in later life (parker & asher, 1987) and covaries positively with disruptive and particularly aggressive behavior. it is essential to note that, when tracking children diagnosed with ad/hd into adolescence and adulthood, those who ultimately experience the most serious clinical problems (e.g., substance abuse, criminal arrests and incarceration, psychiatric hospitalization) were previously identified as having difficulties with aggression or social relations (mannuzza, klein, bessler, malloy, & lapadula, 1998; parker & asher, 1987; peer functioning 6 young, 2002). researchers have shown that from 45% to 84% of children and adolescents with ad/hd meet full diagnostic criteria for odd alone or with cd (barkley& biederman, 1997; pfiffner et al., 1999; willens et al., 2002). thus, most of these risks seem to be increased further by the coexistence of hostile, conduct disordered behavior patterns, or oppositional defiant disorder (odd), with early onset hyperactive-impulsive behavior (anastopoulos, guevremont, shelton, & dupaul, 1992; barkley, 2006; barkley, fischer, smallish, & fletcher, 2004; stormont-spurgin & zentall, 1995). to make the case worse, researchers have found that children with high ratings in kindergarten on hyperactivity and aggression were more likely than those initially rated average or low on hyperactivity and aggression to have third and fourth grade outcomes of peer rated aggression and self-reported delinquency (vitaro, tremblay, gagnon, & pelletier, 1994). studies reveal that the early onset and persistence of cd symptoms such as lying, stealing, truancy and physical aggression are the hallmark of the later ad/hd+odd/cd (barkley, 2006). overall, evidence suggest that impaired peer relationships is already set into motion by the early years of elementary school and is evident across various measures of peer functioning (hoza et al., 2005). further, impairment in peer relations has been found to persist into adolescence (bagwell, molina, pelham, & hoza, 2001) and young adulthood (murphy, barkley, & bush, 2002). in general, extant data suggest that social problems of children with ad\hd are pervasive and put these children at heightened risk for future social maladjustment (barkley, 2006; landau, milich, & diener, 1998; young, 2002). such children are more likely to develop conduct disorder, to participate in more delinquent or illegal acts as adolescents, and to engage in greater substance experimentation and eventual dependence and abuse than are purely hyperactive or impulsive children (barkley, fischer, edelbrock, & smallish, 1990; biederman et peer functioning 7 al., 1996). indeed, follow-up studies suggest that early peer problems not only indicate concurrent difficulties for the child, but also represent a significant "at risk" marker for later emotional and behavioral disturbance (landau & milich, 1990; macdougal, hymel, vaillancourt, & mercer, 2001). even if the long-term outcome measures did not reveal subsequent adjustment problems, one is left to wonder if children with ad/hd experience the same quality of life as other children (landau & moore, 1991). given protracted nature of the disorder and the attendant long-term risks for a large percentage of children with ad/hd, there is an emerging consensus that peer relationship problems of children with ad\hd should be a crucial target for interventions. this article review the research relevant to the peer relationship problems of children with ad\hd including, emotion regulation deficits, social performance and social knowledge deficits, and aggression. following section provides an overview of the various interventions that have been supported as beneficial for children with the disorder. finally, this paper proposes a system perspective as a framework to understand and address the complex social problems of children with the disorder. emotion regulation deficits cole, michel, and teti (1994) define emotion regulation as processes or strategies used so that successful interpersonal functioning is possible. the construct of social competence is inexorably tied to emotion regulation (saarni, 1999) and emotion regulation skills are essential to healthy social adaptation (eisenberg, 2001; gross & munoz, 1995). eisenberg (2001) argues that more important than having the cognitive ability to understand others’ expression of emotion, social competence involves the ability to adequately manage one’s own experience of emotion while interpreting signals from another. accordingly, children who regulate emotion constructively are rated by their teachers as socially competent and by their peers as attractive peer functioning 8 playmates (eisenberg, fabes, bernzweig, karbon, poulin, & hanish, 1993). the social behaviors of children with ad/hd are suggestive of underlying difficulties with emotion regulation (maedgen & carlson, 2000; melnick & hinshaw, 2000; southamgerow & kendall, 2002). children with ad/hd frequently exhibit increased emotionality, displaying greater degrees of explosive, unpredictable, and oppositional behavior (dupaul, mcgoey, eckert, & van brakle 2001; hinshaw & melnick, 1995). over reactions to minor inconveniences are common, and such children may seem overly aroused when in stimulating situations (guevremont & dumas, 1994; waschbusch, pelham, jennings, greiner, tarter, & moss, 2002). cole, zahn-waxler, and smith (1994) found that levels of negative affect were significantly correlated with symptoms of ad/hd. likewise, peers tend to view these children as more aggressive, inflexible, intrusive, disruptive and annoying (taylor, 1994). in an experimental design, maedgen and carlson (2000) examined emotion regulation problems of children with ad/hd along with their social skills problems. the researchers used an emotion control task that assesses children’s expressive responses to receiving a disappointing prize. findings from the study indicated that children with ad/hd were more intense in their emotional displays (positive and negative) and displayed more positive behavior than children in the other two groups displayed during both a nondisappointing and disappointing period. interestingly, melnick and hinshaw (2000) found that impairment in emotion regulation in children with ad/hd was related to comorbid aggression rather than simply ad/hd symptomatology alone. the researchers reported that children with ad/hd in the highaggressive groups used a less constructive pattern of emotional coping, including overresponsive emotionality and diminished problem solving, than ad/hd children in the low-aggressive groups or non-ad/hd diagnosed children. while more research is needed, the apparent peer functioning 9 differences in emotion regulations skills between aggressive and non-aggressive children with ad\hd has led to the hypothesis that there may be an important distinction in underlying emotion regulation deficits (sandstrom & cramer, 2003). specifically, children characterized by aggression display a distinct profile of social information processes (sandstrom & cramer, 2003). studies have consistently found support for deviant social information encoding, response generation, response selection, and enactment in children with aggressive behavior (dodge & feldman, 1990; dodge & pettit, 2003; sandstrom & cramer, 2003). these distinct social information processes appear to be linked in transactional fashion with problems with emotion recognition, emotion regulation, and aggressive behavior. in a comprehensive review of both biological and psychological factors contributing to aggressive behavior, dodge and pettit (2003) noted that deficient social information processing (sip) likely develops from a series of additive life events that gradually shape a child’s mental representation of the world. early harsh and negative interactions with parents and peers might result in the amplification of social cognitive difficulties. consistent negative interactions with parents and peers, coupled with the gradual alteration of the child’s environment lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby emotional disturbances and aggressive behavior result from biased social cognitive processes and biased environmental factors (dodge & tomlin, 1987). overall, deficits in emotion regulation signify one of the primary areas of impairment in ad/hd which eventually result in various problems in peer relationships (barkley, 1997; hinshaw & melnick, 1995). even though a link has been demonstrated between deficits in emotional competence and the presence of social problems in general (eisenberg, et al., 2001; lemery, essex, & smider, 2002), less work has been done addressing the emotional functioning of children with specific types of psychopathological difficulties (southam-gerow & kendall, peer functioning 10 2002). according to barkley (2006), most children with ad/hd have a disinhibitory deficit, which causes secondary impairments in domains of self-regulation such as emotion. barkley (2006) emphasized that children with the disorder display greater prepotent emotional reactivity to “charged” events and less capacity to regulate emotion/arousal states in the service of goaldirected behavior. certainly, there is a great need to move forward in our understanding of how emotion regulation develops in normative populations and how this process may become atypical in children with ad\hd (southam-gerow & kendall, 2002). information generated by research on children’s emotion regulation strategies eventually may yield reformulated interventions for children with the disorder. such interventions could foster children’s abilities to reinterpret situations cognitively, build awareness of their acts on the negative or uncontrollable aspects of situations, and teach helpful ways of signaling distress (melnick & hinshaw, 1999). social knowledge deficit versus social performance deficit social relationship problems of children with ad\hd can results from two types of deficits: social knowledge and social performance deficits, either of which may be accompanied by inferring problem behaviors such as anxiety and aggression. social knowledge deficit refers to whether an individual knows the appropriate behavior that is called for in a given social situation (landau, milich, & diener, 1998). in contrast, social performance deficit represents the presence of the social skills in a behavioral repertoire but failure to perform these skills at acceptable levels (landau, milich, & diener, 1998; maedgen & carlson, 2000). social performance deficit in children with ad/hd-combined subtype is based on research findings showing that children with ad/hd interact with other people as much as their peers (wheeler & carlson, 1994). because children with ad\hd frequently interact with peers, they arguably have similar opportunities to learn appropriate social behaviors (whalen & henker, 1985; wheeler & peer functioning 11 carlson, 1994). evidence also suggests that children with ad\hd are able to initiate appropriate prosocial behavior. further, according to dupaul and stoner (2003) children with ad/hd-c are able to state the rules for appropriate social behavior as well as their typically developing peers. however, what makes them have problems in social situations is that they often do not act in accord with these rules. this performance deficit is consistent with the hypotheses that children with ad/hd-c are impaired in delaying responses to the environment (barkley, 2006). in his theory, barkley (2006) proposes that children with ad/hd act before they have a chance to think. in fact, studies have found that children with ad/hd-c engage in higher rates of unmodulated behaviors that are often inappropriate in the given context and insensitive to social expectations (e.g.,yelling, running around, or talking at inappropriate times) both as verbal (teasing, commanding) and physical (hitting) (barkley, 2006). evidence suggests that impulsivity and hyperactivity can be the reasons that obstruct a child with ad/hd-c from displaying social knowledge properly (maedgen & carlson, 2000). specifically, impulsivity may effect the social interactions of children with ad/hd negatively by causing them to act without thinking and to have a difficult time waiting their turn in games. consequently, this behavioral style is expected to meet with dislike and subsequent peer rejection (wheeler & carlson, 1994). although it appears that children with ad\hd-i have less severe social problems than children with ad\hd-c, they do present difficulties in social relationships (bachman & hinshaw, 2002; faraone, biederman, weber, & russell, 1998; maedgen & carlson, 2000). rather than being rejected by peers for disruptive or aggressive behaviors, children with ad\hd-i are more likely to be socially isololated, neglected, ignored, and teased by peers (hinshaw, 2002; hodgens et al., 2000: mcburnett et al., 1999). according to wheeler and carlson (1994), children with ad/hd-i may have deficits in both social performance and peer functioning 12 knowledge, whereas children with ad/hd-c type have performance deficits. the researchers further argued that these deficiencies might be differentially mediated by the symptoms typically co-occurring with each subtype. impulsivity and hyperactivity may prevent a child with ad/hdc from using social knowledge appropriately, whereas the anxiety and disorganization that characterize children with ad/hd-i may limit social interactions and thereby restrict acquisition of adequate social knowledge (maedgen & carlson, 2000). if such a pattern is the nature of children with ad/hd-i, they may be too fearful to experience social interactions and therefore have fewer opportunities to learn appropriate social behaviors than children with ad/hd-c (landau, milich & diener, 1998). overall, the distinction is important because it suggests that different interventions may be necessary, depending on whether a child presents with knowledge or performance deficits. if a child lacks competency in the basic skills necessary for social interactions, remediation approaches will focus on skill acquisition. on the contrary, if one finds that child knows, but is unable to judge when to or what specific skills to apply, interventions will emphasize performance. in general, direct instruction, modeling, coaching, and behavioral rehearsal frequently are used to remediate social skills deficits whereas contingent reinforcement, token economies that manipulate antecedents and consequences are beneficial for children with social performance deficits (landau, milich, & diener, 1998). interventions targeting social performance deficits are designed to increase the frequency with which children display the appropriate social behaviors typically by manipulating antecedents and consequences. providing immediate feedback to children with social performance deficits is an especially important part of intervention design. to sum, the distinction between children with ad\hd’s social knowledge and social performance deficits can directly address the risk factors of social failure and rejection peer functioning 13 by peers before children become attached to deviant peer groups that promote antisocial personality disorders (landau, et al., 1998; ozdemir, 2009). aggression aggression has been a popular focus of research for developmental psychology and special education (melnick & hinshaw, 1996). researchers have shown that children with ad/hd display social behavior that is described as disruptive, controlling, trouble-making, and frequently aggressive (melnick & hinshaw, 1996; reid, 1993). the primary features of ad/hd combined with aggression often interfere negatively with a child’s ability to interact effectively with peers, family members, and others (bagwell, molina, pelham, & hoza 2001; dupaul, mcgoey, eckert, & van brakle, 2001). temperamental and behavioral deficits observed in young children with ad/hd interfere with typical social interactions. they demand a great deal of attention from others, with their behaviors often being more intense or forceful than the situation requires (sheridan, 1998). researchers have found that at least one-half of all children with ad/hd are known to have comorbid problems with aggressive conduct (hinshaw, 1987; hodgens et al., 2000; maedgen & carlson, 2000). these children are more likely to propose aggressive solutions to a problem situation and are less able to anticipate negative consequences when compared to non-ad/hd peers (matthys, cuperus, & van engeland, 1999; waschbusch et al. 2002). they frequently misinterpret neutral behaviors as hostile and confrontational, which may prompt an aggressive response (hinshaw, 1987). similar self-distortions were also found in aggressive rejected children (dodge & pettit, 2003). sandstrom and cramer (2003) proposed that aggressive rejected children are particularly prone to engage in biased encoding processes that “protect” them from negative peer feedback. moreover, research has described that children with aggressive behavior not only misinterpret intent but also the degree of aggressive behavior in a peer functioning 14 social situation (dodge & feldman, 1990; hubbard et al., 2001). for example, when involved in an aggressive interaction, children with aggressive tendencies are more likely to underestimate their own level of aggression than are other children. these results suggest that aggressive children misjudge their level of aggression possibly because they over-attribute hostile intention to their peers’ actions thereby justifying aggressive behavior. to make the case worse, aggression is one of the most pervasive social problems for children with the disorder (landau, et al., 1998). researchers showed that 67% of preschoolers at risk for ad/hd with aggression at age 3 continued to have behavior problems when they reached 9 years old (campbell & ewing, 1990). it is also important to note that in various studies, children with ad/hd were rated by their peers as starting fights and arguments more than non-ad/hd children (hodgens, et al., 2000; maedgen & carlson, 2000). in fact, research documented that children with ad/hd tend to be aggressive without an obvious aim except to inflict harm on a peer and are also more likely to be aggressive to obtain something valuable for them, such as to come first in a game (atkins & stoff, 1993). the overlap of ad\hd with oppositional defiant disorder (odd) and conduct disorders (cd) has probably received the most attention of all in the literature on comorbidity in ad\hd (barkley & biederman, 1997; pfiffner et al., 1999; wilens et al., 2002). the comorbidity of odd\cd with ad\hd is often associated with a poorer outcome than either disorder alone. this comorbidity is also a marker for increased levels of symptomatology within each of the disorders making up the comorbid group, and with increased levels of impairment in functioning. for example, individuals with both ad/hd and odd or cd have higher levels of cd/odd symptoms than children with pure cd (hinshaw, lahey, & hart 1993; maughan, rowe, messer, goodman, & meltzer, 2004), greater levels of parental psychopathology, conflictual interactions peer functioning 15 with parents, peer rejection, school problems, and psychosocial adversity (fletcher, fisher, barkley, & smallish, 1996). overall, research suggests that the majority of children with ad/hd experience either social incompetence or aggression, or a combination of both problems (barkley, 2006). it is important to note that the more a child exhibits aggressive behavior or related comorbid disorders, the more challenging the treatment will be (barkley, 2006). although medications may decrease aggressive behavior, children with ad\hd need interventions that promote social competence because medication does not “normalize” the behaviors that lead peer rejection (landau & moore, 1991). hence, practitioners need to understand these comorbid conditions to plan and implement effective interventions. interventions improving behavior in children with ad\hd depends on addressing a range of interrelated issues at the family level, in the classroom and in relation to individual children. in general, most current evidence based treatments for ad\hd include: behavior modification procedures, stimulant medication, the combination of behavior modification and stimulant medication (american academy of pediatrics, 2001), parent training, and social skills training (stormont, 2001). various intervention programs exist but all strive to promote more positive, compliant, and generally prosocial behavior while decreasing negative, defiant, and disruptive behavior in children (shelton et al., 2000). these programs typically include antecedent modifications, skill development, and consequent strategies and focus on peer and family relations, classroom conduct, and school achievement (arnold et al., 1997; bierman, miller, & stabb, 1987; dupaul & weyandtb, 2006). in general, evidence suggests that most of these approaches appear to be acutely effective interventions for children with ad\hd in reducing the peer functioning 16 symptoms of the disorder (dupaul & eckert, 1997; pelham & fabiano, 2007; pelham, wheeler, & chronis, 1998). however, for the majority of children, a long-term intervention that requires the support and commitment of all people who have a close relationship with the children is crucial (dupaul & weyandtb, 2006). despite the increased understanding and awareness about the nature of the disorder, many professionals face the challenges of designing programs that can be easily integrated into children’ life and are practical in use. there remains, therefore, a pressing need to further develop long-term multimodal interventions that are intended to address the complex problems exhibited by this population. behavior modification interventions behavior modification interventions is probably one of the most commonly used interventions in ad\hd (dupaul & eckert, 1997; dupaul & weyandtb, 2006; pelham, wheeler, & chronis, 1998). these interventions focus on manipulating the environment to decrease inappropriate behavior and increase appropriate replacement behaviors (reid & maag, 1998). behavior modification interventions typically involve a functional behavior assessment to determine the target behaviors, training parents and\or teachers in behavior management techniques, reinforcement contracts for home and school, and daily reinforcements and consequences. token reinforcement and response cost procedures are the most universally employed set of classroom management techniques in reducing disruptive, off task behavior and enhancing work productivity (fiore, becker, & nero, 1993). token reinforcement involves awarding or removing tokens or points to children contingent upon specified desirable behaviors. these tokens or points are collected and exchanged later for activities, objects, or privileges (carbone, 2001). a token economy may or may not include a response cost procedure (barkley, 2006), which involves the loss of privileges, tokens or points contingent upon inappropriate peer functioning 17 behavior. it is widely accepted that behavior modification interventions can be of great value for children with ad\hd because children with the disorder need more structure, more frequent and powerful reinforces to act appropriately, more consistent and immediate negative consequences to avoid a fine, and accommodations of school work to address slow work style (dupaul & eckert, 1997; dupaul & stoner, 2003; maag, 1999; pelham, et al., 1998). pertinent to this point, existing empirical support for token programs and the practical use of these programs with a wide range of problem behaviors have led to their widespread use in school settings (rowland, umbach, stallone, naftel, bohlig, & sandier 2002; mcgoey & dupaul, 2000; dupaul & eckert, 1997). according to barkley (2006), behavioral interventions can be effective in managing the ad\hd symptoms, because the severity of the symptoms and that of comorbid conditions are very sensitive to environmental variables. medications in addition to behavior modification interventions, pharmacological interventions with stimulant medication are also widely used to treat ad\hd. it is estimated that over 1.5 million school age children in the u.s. annually may be using stimulants for behavior management (zito et al., 2003). interestingly, research suggests that adolescents and adults meeting criteria for ad\hd are being increasingly prescribed for stimulants due to the persistence of the symptoms across multiple domains of life into adolescence and adulthood (conner & steingard, 2004). not surprisingly, the use of medication in children with ad\hd has been the subject of some controversy and increased public concern. despite remarkable popularity of pharmacological treatment of the disorder, not all children benefit from medication, and even those who do still do not “normalize” in their social relationships (barkley, 2006). in fact, many professionals are hesitant to medicate young children and often remind that the use of psychostimulant drugs for peer functioning 18 the treatment of ad\hd symptoms in young children necessitates serious consideration of risks relative to potential positive effects (kern et al., 2007). supportive of this view, some data suggest that the nature and severity of side effects may vary and be more intensive in young children (kouins & greenhill, 2006; wigal et al., 2006). a related concern is that little can be said about the effects of medications on the developing brain as well as long-term side effects (rappley, 2006). although, serious concerns raised by many practitioners and parents remain to be addressed about medicating children with ad\hd, it is particularly challenging to design interventions that will effectively control the symptoms and treat the disorder without using stimulant medications. some practitioners wisely discuss that behavioral interventions, structured preschool experience (kouins & greenhill, 2006; rappley, 2002) social skills training, and parent education are attractive alternatives to medication (dawson, 2007). clearly, this is an area that requires considerable attention and further research. social skills training one of the most widely used psychosocial interventions that directly targets peer relationships is social skills training (sst). social skills training was originally developed for the purpose of enhancing the peer relationships of rejected and neglected children. it is based on the social skills deficit model, which posits that a child’s lack of social skills results in less positive peer interactions and lower social status (bierman & greenberg, 1996; durlak, 1997; grossman et al., 1997; kavale, mathur, forness, rutherford, quinn, 1997; mrug, hoza, & gerdes, 2001; pfiffner, calzada, & mcburnett, 2000). although short-term effects of sst are positive, longterm outcomes reveal discouraging results on social, vocational, and academic measures when it is applied to children with ad\hd (carlson & bunner, 1993; kavale et al., 1997; pfiffner et al., 2000). apparently, the nature of the disorder requires certain changes in both the content and the peer functioning 19 form of the interventions (mrug, et al., 2001). in particular, evidence exists that children with ad/hd-c display performance deficit rather than a skill deficit. in other words, children with ad/hd-c are able to express the socially appropriate rules and behaviors, but they often do not act accord with these rules (dupaul & stoner, 2003). it is important to note that social performance deficits are more complicated to ameliorate than social skills deficits. first, existing sst’s focus on deficits in skills rather than deficits in performance. second, because social performance problems exist across settings, interventions addressing performance problems must be carried out by different individuals in a child’s natural environments (dupaul & stoner, 2003). the other main problem is that most sst programs are designed for children who are apparently rejected without considering the unique topography of each child's performance in the social domain. as hinshaw (1992) noted, social skills problems of children with ad/hd are quite heterogeneous and are not likely to respond to one-size fits all approach. for example, social needs of children with ad/hd-i who are withdrawn and isolated are different than children with ad/hd-c who display hyperactive and impulsive symptoms (wheeler & carlson, 1994). thus, a social skills deficit approach may be applied to the children with ad/hd-i whereas both skills and performance deficit approach may work with children with ad/hd-c when conducting any sst programs. another important area to review is related to the structure of social skills interventions. social knowledge and the acquisition of prosocial behaviors are thought and practiced generally in group therapy formats. however, research indicates that traditional group therapy format do not lead to stable changes in social relationships of children with ad/hd in “real-world” environments (dupaul & eckert, 1994; gresham, 2003). the lack of maintenance and generalization of social skills training become a major problem because of the fact that peer functioning 20 appropriate social behaviors are not essentially prompted by adults and peers on a consistent basis (dupaul & weyandt, 2006; gresham, 2003). indeed, the generalization of the newly acquired skills to other contexts requires their reinforcement across different settings in the child’s natural environment for an enough period of time (mrug, hoza, & gerdes, 2001). essential components of environmental programming may involve teaching parents and teachers to reinforce children to perform the behaviors trained in the social skills sessions and developing contingency management programs at home and at school to prompt trained skills (dupaul & eckert, 1994). therefore, it is critical to accomplish the inclusion of parents, teachers, and peers as crucial members of the “social skills treatment team” for generalization. however, individuals within the child's natural environment such as parents typically have not been involved in intervention programs. providing parents with necessary knowledge and training not only increases the continuity of the program but also, the intensity. indeed, parents are generally with their children more than are teachers; this puts parents in the top position to create difficult behavior environments, or, more constructively, to provide long-term interventions. overall, research supports that parents who are educated in the description, causes, prognosis, and treatment of ad/hd are better able to facilitate behavioral change in their children (dupaul, guevremont, & barkley, 1991). likewise, interventions can be more effective especially with respect to generalization of improved behavior across settings, when parental involvement is combined with social skills training programs. in addition, inclusion of parents in the sst program establishes consistency between the school and home environments (dupaul & stoner, 2003). discussing behavioral strategies, rewards, and limits with parents to ensure continuity of approach to dealing with challenging behaviors between home and school is crucial. in that way, parents can encourage the same skills peer functioning 21 and performance at home and in different peer groups. indeed many children with ad/hd appear to need very strong and intense levels of reinforcement to produce appropriate behavior in certain settings (barkley, 1997; landau & moore, 1991). parents must learn to identify the specific behaviors they want to substitute and then by giving rewards for the new more appropriate behavior, teach the child how to control his actions and reactions (barkley, 2006). this is particularly important for children who have difficulty with anger management. an anger management program focused on adaptive ways of managing anger in children with ad/hd and a behavioral skills training program focused on both social skills and motivation can be used to help children with ad/hd experience more positive social outcomes (stormont, 2001). the other considerable problem is that once a child is rejected, peers cognitive processing of the child behavior becomes biased. in other words, the peers may develop a negative stereotypical perspective of the child, and as a result of their view, the peers may selectively perceive and respond to the stereotype-consistent behaviors (mrug, et al., 2001). thus, social skills interventions not only should work on changing the negative social behaviors of children with ad/hd, but also the interventions should attempt to increase peers awareness of positive changes in a child’s behaviors (mrug, et al., 2001). in order to do that, peers should be allowed to play active roles in every phases of social skills intervention (ang & hughes, 2002). specifically peers can participate in the social skills training sessions as role models and encourage the enactment of positive social behaviors of children with ad/hd (dupaul & stoner, 2003). indeed, research supports that including diverse peer group rather than using only children with disturbed behaviors increases the success of social skills training (ang & hughes, 2002). parent training peer functioning 22 another most widely used form of psychosocial interventions for young children is parent management training (barkley, 2006). studies have shown that parent management training alters parental disciplinary practices, including reducing the frequency of coercive exchanges between parents and children, reduces parenting stress, enhances parental confidence, and improves family relationships (anastopoulos, shelton, dupaul, & guevremont, 1993; bor, sanders, & markie-dadds, 2002; chronis, chacko, fabiano, wymbs, & pelham, 2004). in addition, parents are encouraged to consistently monitor their children to prevent antisocial behavior (e.g., physical aggression) and to prevent accidental injuries associated with impulsive behavior (dupaul & stoner, 2003). positive future outcomes for all children has been associated with stable family environments, consistent discipline, positive parental expectations for their future, positive parents-child relationships, perceptions of competence perceived by parents, and low rates of parental criticism. research indicates that behavioral treatment that teaches parents to modify their reactions to the child’s primary symptoms, should directly alter parental negative responses, and also train parents to increase their positive responses to children (barkley, 2006; wells et al., 2000). however, it is also important to recognize that the use of family relationship as a positive corrective experience in changing the relationship patterns of the child requires insight and support over time (dupaul et al., 2001; podolski & nigg, 2001). family members should learn necessary skills to apply behavioral interventions in a supportive environment and gain knowledge to identify indicators of emerging negative manifestations that will need assessment and intervention modifications (barkley, 2006). observing the child/parent interaction and then coaching parents in providing corrective behavioral interventions can be used via home visits while utilizing an empathic approach to the child and parents. even though extensive research documenting the importance of positive parenting practices in remediating peer functioning 23 children with ad\hd’s social relationship problems (barkley, 2006; dupaul et al., 2001; podolski & nigg, 2001), there is undoubtedly more to the etiological chain. in fact, research has shown that despite the success of training programs for parents of children with ad/hd, improvements in child behavior within the family do not significantly transfer to school or to other environments (anastapoluos, barkley, & shelton, 1996). anastopoulos and colleagues (1996) posit such programs work because they lower parental stress by teaching them to regard disruptive behaviors as less severe than previously thought. for example, the teaching of skills to ignore minor missteps is a common element in parental training programs (barkley, 1997). furthermore, parent training only treats one of the many environments of which a child is a part. research suggests that the key to change is connecting conduct at home with conduct at school while creating a system of communication between the two (goldstein & goldstein, 1998). discussion from an ecological perspective, behavior inextricably interviewed in the complex network of persons and environment (cook & plas, 1984). interventions are most effective when key players from each ecology of the child’s world are involved in the treatment team. according to noam & hermann (2002), an important dynamic in selecting an intervention for at risk young children is that we specifically need programs placed directly in the natural ecology and developmental context where children grow up and that bridge the different worlds that children inhabit. therefore, a key to developing effective interventions for children with ad\hd may be to adopt an ecological perspective, collectively addressing all of the factors that impact a child’s life. within this perspective, it is viewed that three major dimensions of a child’s life may likely to determine the degree of ad\hd symptoms. these dimensions include family, school, and child related characteristics and risk factors. indeed, many researchers strongly argue that the peer functioning 24 use of multiple treatment modalities in ad\hd produces therapeutic benefit greater than the sum of each modality’s contribution (barkley, 2006, stormont, 2001). for example, ozdemir (2006) have examined the effectiveness of the first step to success program on decreasing social emotional and academic problems of turkish children with ad\hd. her findings are particularly important for the current paper because of the focus on implementing a multi-component early intervention program with children with ad\hd. study results revealed that all participant children displayed increased levels of academic engagement behavior and decreased levels of social emotional problems with the introduction of the program and at three months and two years follow-ups. the results of this study indicate compelling evidence that implementing a multi-component early intervention program can yield important benefits for children with ad/hd. in general, research supports that some current treatment approaches, if rigidly applied, could dramatically decrease certain symptoms of ad\hd in short term (barkley, 2006). a multicomponent approach, however, would result in an overall remission of the ad\hd symptoms which could serve as the basis of positive social emotional development (ozdemir, 2006). such an approach would remind us that risk factors to peer relationship problems of children with ad\hd are by no means simple or linear. bowen’s concept of triangles (bowen, 1978) can be used to articulate the dynamic shifts of alliance and discordance that occur among persons and systems. the systems theory implies that all the interior angles of the triangle will influence and be affected by transactional relationships within the triangle. specifically, peer relationship problems of children with ad\hd appear to be in part mediated by family relational variables, school variables, and child related variables and the dynamic relationships between these elements. thus, interventions that link different variables in the family-school-child triangle will peer functioning 25 benefit from a focus on the interactive nature of child problems. conclusion various intervention approaches to ad\hd are reviewed in this study. even though these treatment approaches are all evidence based treatment approaches for treating ad\hd in different settings such as classroom and home, the research findings establishing these interventions generally contrast one of the treatment against a control group, rather than comparisons of their combination. thus, critical questions remain to be answered regarding how different treatment approaches might be best combined into a more meaningful package. furthermore, there is a compelling argument in favor of an increased emphasis on primary prevention efforts because of the heavy burden of suffering of ad/hd and the short-term effectiveness of the interventions (kern et al., 2007; mcgoey et al., 2002). unfortunately, until recently, minimal research has been conducted to help practitioners in identifying and supporting young children at risk for this disorder. it is essential to note that these two critical research gaps emphasize the importance of continuing program of research to develop interventions that better meet the needs of children with ad\hd. further advances in helping children with the disorder in having relationships that are more satisfying with peers depend upon the continued research efforts to address these critical research questions. finally, consideration of a systems perspective may lead to refinement of current intervention models. narrow conceptual models miss the complex nature of the disorder. in contrast, the systems perspective emphasizes that the systems interface and what happens in one system is likely to affect the child’s behavior in the other from such a perspective, interventions would be implemented most effectively with reference to a wider family, school, and child framework. without intervention, children with ad/hd will likely remain frustrated, angry, peer 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(1988). production deficiencies in elicited language but not in the spontaneous verbalizations of hyperactive children. journal of abnormal child psychology, 16, 657-673. zito, j. m., safer, d. j., dosreis, s., magder, l. s., gardner, j. f., & magder, l. s., soeken, k., et al., (2003). psychotropic practice patterns for youth: a 10-year perspective. achieves of pediatrics and adolescent medicine, 157, 17-25. cie template 1 volume 14, number 3 september 28, 2011 issn 1099-839x redefining curriculum integration and professional development: in-service teachers as agents of change sharon price schleigh michael j. bossé tammy lee east carolina university calls for curriculum integration in k-12 mathematics and science have seen nominal results. numerous factors including cycles of practice in teacher development and professional development practices have inhibited the development, dissemination, and implementation of integrated curriculum. this paper examines the characteristics of the professional development standards of both disciplines; considers inherent hindrances to the implementation of integrated curriculum; generates a novel definition for integrated curriculum; argues that the most effective change agent is in-service professional development; and provides guiding notions for effective in-service professional development. keywords: teacher professional development, curriculum integration, teacher education, math education, science education, teacher standards educational discussions, particularly in mathematics and science education, are continually abuzz regarding student learning, classroom pedagogy, and the need for integrated curricula to support both (frykholm & glasson, 2005; furner & kumar, 2007; koirala & bowman, 2003). educational organizations such as the school science and mathematics association [ssma], national council of teachers of mathematics [nctm], american association for the advancement of science [aaas] and national research council [nrc] provide educational leadership to researchers and classroom practitioners in the call for an integrated math and science curriculum. much of the literature and research supporting the integration of mathematics and science curricula is based on real world applications of both subject areas (frykholm & glasson, 2005; rutherford & ahlgren, 1990), the affect of integrated mathematics and science investigations on student motivation and learning through relevant investigations (e.g., frykholm & glasson, 2005; jacobs, 1989; koriala & bowman, 2003) and the belief that integrated investigations promote deeper understandings in both fields (berlin, 1994; george, 1996; mason, 1996). summarily, most rationales in support of integrated mathematics and science curricula argue either that mathematics and science are in some ways similar or that they are complementary. this latter argument is often stated in one of two ways: either “mathematics is the tool through which science is done and science brings a context to mathematics” or “mathematics enhances scientific understanding and vice versa.” in a more recent argument, bossé, lee, swinson and faulconer (2010) state that mathematics and science curricula should be integrated because people learn mathematics and science through similar learning processes. thus, the concern becomes less one of the content of mathematics and science and more about how people learn in the two fields. despite which rationale or call for reform is selected in support of integration, the integration of mathematics and science curricula and instruction are still not commonly seen in our k-12 classrooms and rarely current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 2 attempted in post secondary education courses. a major stumbling block for creating integrated learning opportunities is the environment in which teachers find themselves. the educational community needs to work together to better offer students integrated math-science curricula. unfortunately, multidimensional factors continually hinder the development and application of integrated curricula. herein, many of these factors are considered and, in so doing, this article argues that, to make the change toward integration in mathematics and science curriculum, the fields must first address teacher education through professional development. teaching & learning in integrated curriculum the importance placed upon the need for integrated curricula in mathematics and science has been a consistent theme since the 1930s (lake, 2003). this is evidenced in the abundance of professional publications touting strategies for integration, projects promoting integration, and research indicating effective learning through integrated curricula. for example, research suggests that: by integrating mathematics and science, students are more likely to find relevance in their learning and are thereby more likely to be interested and motivated to engage in classroom learning events (friend, 1985; wolfe, 1990); students will develop a deeper understanding of both subjects as they use science to contextualize mathematics and they use mathematics to explain and model science (mcbride & silverman, 1991); and instructional practices of both mathematics and science education include implementation of inquiry-centered instruction (hamilton et al., 2003) resulting in many similarities in the way that science and mathematics are generally taught. more recently, it has been demonstrated that there are extensive similarities among the processes through which mathematics and science are learned (bossé et al., 2010), including principals of argumentation, models, discovery, exploration and problem solving. these shared processes leading to the doing and learning of mathematics and science lead to the development of deep conceptual understanding of the topic. according to how people learn (nrc, 1999) there are three essential components of powerful teaching and learning: active inquiry; in-depth learning; and performance assessment. exemplars and discussions provided in how students learn (nrc, 2005) also support an integrated curriculum. these exemplars specifically demonstrate that while the teaching of abstract principles does not provide a bridge for changing misconceptions, abstract principles taught along with quantitative relations or applications in observation and exploration can effectively teach science and math concepts. the totality of these publications argues that integrated curriculum is effective in student learning. addressing these concerns, many national organizations leading the charge in educational reform of mathematics and science have focused on the implementation of integrated curricula. this call is manifested in documents such as the national science education standards (nrc, 1996) and project 2061 (aaas, 1990, 2009). integrating mathematics and science instruction mathematics and science are most often thought to be the easiest of subjects to be integrated in instruction as the two disciplines are typically viewed as logically connected (aaas, 1990; mcbride & silverman, 1991; pang & good, 2000). related literature has revealed four dimensions of mathematics and science learning and discusses how these dimensions can be used as lenses through which to view professional development programs and revise such into models which more effectively address the integration of mathematics and science. first, recent research has determined that the respective standards for mathematics and science demonstrate significant similarities in learning processes among both disciplines (bossé et al., 2010). this is based on the analysis of the five process standards from mathematics (problem solving, reasoning and proof, communication, connections, and representations) (nctm, 2000) and the 5-es from science (engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration or extension, and evaluation) (nrc, 1996, 2000). second, the development of a community of learning is identified in each respective domain as crucial for teachers involved in the teaching of science and mathematics (hiebert, gallimore, & stigler, 2002). commonalities in discussions within the nctm and nrc texts regarding social and affective dimensions to learning (bossé et al., 2010), reinforce the importance of student learning through social interaction and community. third, since science and mathematics can both be learned through problem-solving opportunities, the well established four-step problem solving heuristic (understanding the problem, devising a plan, carrying out the plan, and looking back) promoted in the work of polya (1957) can be expanded upon and be applied to reinforce the importance of problem solving in an integrated curricula. problem solving and problem posing are shared core learning experiences within math and science that transform lessons into critical thinking experiences (nrc, 2005) and transforms students into active learners and investigators (nrc, 2005; xia, lu, & wang, 2008). within mathematics and science instruction and learning, problem posing and problem solving are neither separate nor linear; similarly, within integrated mathematics and science instruction, the content of a particular lesson may not have a designated linear path; one transforms into the other and can easily transform back (brown & walter, 2005). while these dimensions may argue that the integration of mathematics and science may be somewhat easier than the integration of other topics, and nearly a century of calls for this integration can be recognized in the literature, there remains a dearth of integrated mathematics and science curricula and educational experiences in the redefining curriculum integration and professional development: in-service teachers as agents of change 3 classroom. two primary reasons may be ascribed to this disconnect: inconsistent definitions for integrated curriculum and environmental factors inhibiting the implementation of integrated curricula. these issues are considered in the following discussions. definition of integration since the 1930s, progressive educators have advocated for an integrated curriculum, sometimes identified as the “core curriculum” (vars, 1987). their arguments were often based on the work of piaget, dewey, bruner and others who held holistic views of learning and constructivist theories (lake, 2003). in an argument for an integrated curriculum to improve education, dressel (1958) defined integrative curriculum as planned learning experiences which provide learners with solid instruction in one field while developing their understanding of new relationships through other topical structures. unfortunately, the term “integrated curriculum” is generally not well defined, even among organizations who tout the importance of curriculum integration. no particular global definition for integrated curriculum seems to have taken sufficient hold to support the efforts of individual groups. therefore, identifying what curriculum integration means for any dimension of education is not readily accomplished. compounding the difficulty of defining integrated curriculum are the myriad of seemingly synonymous terms used in the place of “integration” (lederman & niess, 1997); among others, these include: interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary, thematic, integrated, connected, nested, shared, webbed, threaded, immersed, networked, blended, unified, coordinated, and fused (bossé et al., 2010). the employment of such extensive vocabulary regarding integrated curricula has made the discussion, development, and implementation of integrated curricula in the schools unnecessarily complex and may have significantly hindered the progress of educational reform in this direction. a novel definition berlin and white (1992) report on the difficulty of the consensus in defining integration. in an interest to improve science and math education, the national science foundation (nsf), the school science and mathematics association (ssma) and the johnson foundation, invited community members, experts and leaders in science, math and education to develop a single working definition. after several days of deliberation, and without complete consensus, berlin and white report on the working definition of integration as the fusion of “…mathematical methods in science, and scientific methods into mathematics, such that it becomes indistinguishable as to whether it is mathematics or science (p. 341).” unfortunately, this definition seems overly philosophic to be educationally pragmatic in either curriculum development or instructional practice. recognizing when a classroom learning experience “becomes indistinguishable as to whether it is mathematics or science” may be nonsensical to most curriculum developers and classroom teachers. thus, while the expert’s definition may be philosophically dense and provocative of rich and valuable discussion regarding integration, it may be educationally unusable, manifesting a disconnect between practitioners and curriculum developers. it may be argued that a definition of this form leads to greater confusion, lack of coherence, and a stymieing of the efforts it hopes to promote. in this paper we pose a new definition for curriculum integration which we argue is more usable by educators: recognizing the strengths, weaknesses, commonalities, and distinctiveness among two or more fields of study, an integrated curriculum uses each field in the experiential learning of the other(s). integrated curriculum is designed to allow students to simultaneously experience these fields of study in such a manner that students both do and learn important content and concepts in each of the respective subjects and glean further understanding from the gestalt formed among the subject matters. notably, this generic definition can be beneficial to educators interested in integrating any number of subject matters. to make this definition more specifically directed to the integration of mathematics and science, we offer the following working example of the preceding definition: in respect to mathematics and science, integration is not simply recognition that mathematics and science are complementary or that mathematics is a tool for science and science is a context for mathematics. integrated mathematics and science should not always begin with a scientific investigation which is then solved mathematically. truly integrated instruction may begin with a problem scenario posed in either subject, pass through either subject in investigatory phases, and find a resolution in either subject all the while ensuring that neither subject is subservient to the other and that the level of content and conceptual coverage in both areas is at least commensurate with that which would be covered in standalone subject matter courses. to exemplify this definition, we offer the following scenario of a professional development workshop offered to math and science middle grade teachers. the classrooms reaching enquiry through astronomy & telescope education (create) workshop focuses the learning on an integrated approach for math and science. teachers build a 4.5 inch mirror telescope from scratch as they learn about the concepts of light. as an introduction, they are given several kinds of lenses and mirrors and asked to observe how they each provide a different kind of observation. teachers talk about the properties of light and discuss the placement and relationship of the lenses and current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 4 mirrors in order to build telescopes. they are then introduced to two types of telescopes (reflecting and refracting). teachers are directed to think about how they might build a reflecting telescope with the mirrors and to determine how they would need to redirect light from a secondary mirror to an eyepiece (science concept). they discuss methods of determining the length of the focal point (science concept), the exact placement of the eyepiece (math concept) and have to convert units between inches to metric (math concept) because the materials are manufactured and sold in different units. the lesson is simultaneously about focal length, the behavior of light in respect to mirrors, performing mathematical calculations and conversions, and algebraic and geometric concepts. the teachers make their plans as to where to cut holes and locate the mirrors in the tubes and argue in support of that placement based on their methods of determining the cut (science and math processes). the discussion is both mathematical and scientific in nature. as the teachers discuss the cuts and placement, they argue over what is actually measured and how that is represented in the equations that they decide appropriately model their understanding. they argue about what it means for the focal length to meet at a given point and why the light should bend or reflect on the secondary mirror at a given point. they argue how the positioning of the mirror changes the calculations for the placement of the eyepiece and the length of the tube. before any actual cutting takes place, they find several ways to model their ideas and try to convince others of the soundness of their measurements and understanding of light and mirrors. when the teachers have agreed and completed their task of placing the eyepiece, they are asked to explain what to do if the tube was shorter or if the mirror had a different focal length (a combined math and science conceptual confirmation). differentiating both this generic definition of integrated curriculum and the mathematicsand sciencecentric concretization of such from the nsf’s definition is an issue of distinguishability. while the nsf’s definition for curricular integration denotes that the subjects in question become so thoroughly integrated that one becomes indistinguishable from the other, the definition and example provided in this discussion embraces the fact that any two subject areas have sufficient distinctiveness such that one subject can accentuate the interaction with, and learning of, the other subject. furthermore, rather than simply stating that methods from two subjects can become indistinguishable, this new definition seeks to emphasize that instructional investigations in integrated curricula between two subjects may be initiated alternately with an inquiry from one or the other subject, use either subject in the investigation of the problem scenario, and be finally resolved in either one of the subject areas. altogether, denoting the two subjects as a and b, this can lead to the following variations in the problem posing-problem solving-solution sequence of the process: aaa, aab, aba, abb, baa, bab, bba and bbb. thus, from only two subjects, at least eight scenarios are possible in solving a problem in an integrated curriculum – although some may argue that combinations such as aaa and bbb fail to exemplify integrated models. if the problem solving process is understood to include a greater number of processes, the possible combinations of these sequences grow very rapidly. the previous scenario (create project) is an example of a sequence of aabbab; a reflection of a nesting of integration (fogarty, 1991). with a solidified understanding of, and unified definition for integration, curriculum development and applications have a greater possibility of affecting education reform, curriculum development, and classroom practices. this understanding of integrated curriculum can be the foundation upon which future professional development can be launched. perpetuation of traditional learning environments & approaches numerous factors work in tandem to further inhibit the development and implementation of integrated curricula in k-12 schools. among others, these include environmental factors, the current framework of state standards and high stakes testing in k-12 schooling, and collegiate pre-service educational programs. most importantly is the issue of pragmatic compartmentalization in the learning and teaching of mathematics and science. some of these dimensions are expanded upon in the following discussions. teacher experiences as with students, what teachers bring to the classroom is built upon prior knowledge (bramald, hardman, & leat, 1995; carin, bass, & contant, 2005); what teachers have previously learned, their own beliefs and ideas, and their previous experiences in education will affect what they will learn and what they will teach (loucks-horsely, love, stiles, mundry, & hewson, 2003). like all learners, teachers need to have their knowledge integrated (davis & krajcik, 2005). however, virtually all teachers are the products of educational systems in which mathematics and science were compartmentalized and segregated. thus, k-12 students envisioning entering education as a career are already programmed and predisposed to recognizing the separation of mathematics and science in the schools and curricula. upon entering the teaching profession, novice teachers return back to an environment where segregation of mathematics and science instruction is prevalent. unless participating in relatively unique projects, most teachers will only see minimal examples of science and mathematics integration throughout their entire careers. intensifying the problem, state standards in all subject areas are written in isolation with no reference or use of common language regarding integration. teachers are mandated to teach their individualistic state standards under the pressure of high stakes testing. this forces teachers to focus their redefining curriculum integration and professional development: in-service teachers as agents of change 5 curriculum on their tested content, causing teachers to adopt instructional strategies to increase student test scores (cimbricz, 2002; marchant, 2004; paris & urdan, 2000), increase their instructional time spent on test preparation, use instructional and assessment approaches more likely to resemble the tests (marchant, 2004), and avoid both topics that are not covered by the tests and innovative teaching methods (cimbricz, 2002), such as integration. teachers, especially novice teachers, are likely to perceive subject integration as impractical in light of accountability to standards and high stakes testing. drake and burns (2004), argue that teachers’ misperceptions of their inability to work with integrated curricula to meet the requirements of high stake testing while addressing student standards is partially attributable to their unfamiliarity of other disciplines’ content and standards: teachers who teach math are not likely to have a strong understanding of science or science teaching standards. however, if teachers were exposed to learning about content and teaching standards in multiple subjects and to understanding those subjects, they could more easily identify how to chunk the standards into meaningful clusters both within and across disciplines (drake & burns, 2004). some might argue that integration is occurring in elementary schools, since elementary teachers are responsible for teaching all subjects. while the elementary grades may seem like an optimal opportunity to teach through integration, elementary teachers almost universally teach segregated topics, aligning discrete class times to discrete subjects (e.g., english, math, and science) each day (lewis, 2010). many elementary teachers teach science only once a week or during one quarter and even when elementary teachers think they are integrating science and math, they are most likely lacking the conceptual connections between subjects and instructional strategies that promote integration (douville, pugalee & wallace, 2003). altogether, the status quo for teacher experiences creates a block to teachers having the experiences necessary for them to understand and implement integrated curriculum in their classrooms. pre-service teaching experiences sandwiched between these two k-12 educational experiences of student and teacher are the few years of preservice teacher development programs. unfortunately, preservice programs rarely do much to foster an understanding of the core processes (i.e., the nature of science) (lederman, 2006). the value and application of integration of mathematics and science instruction, when addressed in a pre-service program is likely to be perceived as contrived (cady & rearden, 2007). when pre-service teachers begin their collegiate pursuits, identification of mathematics or science is placed on respective plans of study. each plan of study is usually heavily weighted in content and methods specific to either field. while some pre-service programs allow students to be certified in one subject area and encourage students to choose a concentration that requires more content and methods in another subject, this is not a universal programmatic design. a query for integration and course requirements for elementary teacher programs in a national association for research in science teaching [narst] and association of science teacher educators [aste] listserv returned a rare case when integration was purposefully designed and in which content courses were heavily loaded in the program requirements for elementary pre-service teachers. many certification programs for elementary education require little more than a single mathematics or science content course with one methods course. exacerbating the balkanization of mathematics and science seen in the k-12 educational setting, collegiate preservice content courses are even more emphatically segregated. mathematics and science content areas are generally in different departments and the rare purposefully planned integrated courses are not likely to be effectively integrated experiences by students (cady & rearden, 2007). additionally, dual certification in math and science was rarely connected to the notion of integration; rather students were required to complete disjointed coursework to increase the disconnected understanding of science and math content. returning to the premise that the greatest majority of teachers are predisposed to teach in a manner similar in which they have themselves experienced learning, it is dubious if our future teachers will implement integrated curricula. since few classrooms or programs actually engage students in an integrated learning environment, those entering into our teacher education programs will not have the experiences upon which to build their teaching skills and pedagogy in a manner that includes integration. most teachers enter the profession experiencing approximately seventeen years in classrooms where learning has been compartmentalized and science and mathematics instruction has been lecture-based or teacherdemonstrated. during student teacher internships, preservice teachers visit the classrooms of expert teachers, observe topically segregated instruction and curriculum, witness lecture-based instructional techniques, and infrequently observe integrated curricular practices. without some change in the experiences and preparation of teachers, future teachers cannot be expected to teach in an integrated manner. based on factors which perpetuate the status quo and the fact that both the k-12 system and university pre-service system are simultaneously monolithic and immutable, it seems unlikely that efforts to make changes in our educational curricula will occur at the k-12 and pre-service education levels. although research continues to demonstrate that integration of math and science are important in teaching and learning, this research does not seem to be reaching and affecting students, classrooms, and practicum experiences of pre-service teachers (beck & kosnik, 2002) and the philosophy of teaching and learning supported by research current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 6 is not reaching campus programs and practicum experiences (darling-hammond, 1999; zeichner, 1996). these educational institutions (k-12 education and preservice teacher programs) have historical relationships to philosophies, politics, procedures and structures that are difficult to change. on the other hand, institutions for professional development remain less formalized in their relationships with political bodies, such as professional organizations and accreditation agencies, and are consequently easier to evolve and change. therefore, in order to break this perpetuation of the traditional cycle of teaching and learning, educational designs need to provide teachers with the necessary experiences to promote integrated thinking and practices. it seems most reasonable that in-service teacher professional development be targeted as the primary point of intervention to provide teachers these pro-integration experiences. in addition, it has become more acceptable for research faculty to be involved in professional development designs (darling-hammond, 1999) which further promote opportunities for the research supporting integration to reach the practice of teachers. the remainder of this paper addresses in-service teacher professional development and provides ideas to promote the integration of mathematics and science instruction. focus on professional development at this point, it may seem that professional development is being promoted as the solution to increasing integration of mathematics and science in k-12 education. however, professional development itself also contains inherent hindrances to the dissemination of integrated curriculum. thus, before considering the benefits of professional development in this goal, its weaknesses are investigated. weaknesses of professional development prior to considering the nature of professional development needed to promote integrated curricula in mathematics and science, the authors thought it appropriate to investigate the recommendations, standards, and goals for professional development provided by various leading organizations which are recognized as pertinent to this discussion. standards are lists and descriptions of benchmarks and milestones which form the specifics of goals that lead to the vision or mission (loucks-horsley et al., 2003). the standards documents included in this investigation are: nctm (1991), nrc (2000) from the developers of the science standards for teachers through the national science teachers’ association [nsta], nbpts (2004), and nsdc (2001). altogether, these documents consider mathematics, science, pre-service, and in-service teacher education and hold the imprimatur of their respective organizations. therefore, throughout this paper, the association is considered synonymous with its respective publication. although other organizations address standards for teacher education (e.g., mathematical sciences education board [mseb] and interstate new teacher assessment and support consortium [intasc]), analysis was delimited to these four documents and organizations as they specifically offered standards for teacher professional development, are highly respected among math and science education fields, and are a fair representation of the guidelines used to structure and design professional development in math and science. the national council for accreditation of teacher education [ncate], another leading organization that offers standards for teacher education related to professional development, provides guidance for teacher education entities and professional development schools which paralleled recommendations from the four selected documents. since this study intended to evaluate professional development in respect to integrated curriculum rather than professional development schools, the simultaneous finding of redundancy and the misalignment of professional development schools versus professional development itself allowed for this investigation’s omission of ncate’s standards without the loss of the study’s integrity or completeness. loucks-horsley et al. (2003) identify four areas of goals which are essential for professional development, if professional development is to be linked to student achievement: student learning, teacher learning, teaching practice, and the organization. among all standards from the four documents investigated, these four themes, along with an additional theme related to community centered goals (found in nbpts and nsda), were readily recognized. however, analysis found that the goals for teacher learning and teacher practice were often combined in such a way that discerning a distinction was difficult. for example, the nbpts standard that “teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience” is focused on both teacher learning and teacher practice. therefore, this study combined teacher learning and teacher practice goals to form a teacher-centered goal. each of the four sets of documentary standards were analyzed and compared regarding their respective emphasis on four foci (student-centric, teacher-centric, programmatic-centric, and community-centric) according to the number of individual goals described by each set of standards. a synthesis of this analysis is represented diagrammatically in figure 1. while the standards from the four organizations display a broad panorama of the many concerns which must be filled in order for professional development to be successful, the inconsistency among organizations and the varying emphases of foci may make it difficult for professional developers to create programs which will accomplish all these goals. table 1 provides an alternate summary of the findings in figure 1. together, figure 1 and table 1 indicate that each organization focuses their standards more toward one theme than any of the other themes and that none of the organizations agrees entirely with the emphases of goals redefining curriculum integration and professional development: in-service teachers as agents of change 7 nctm the teacher’s role in professional development nctm developing as a teacher of mathematics nctm knowing students as learners of mathematics nctm experiencing good mathematics teaching (modeling) nrc the coherence and integration of professional development programs nrc the development of the understanding and ability for lifelong learning nrc the learning of science content through inquiry studentcentric goals programmatic goals nbpts teachers are committed to students and their learning nbpts teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students nctm knowing mathematics and school mathematics knowing mathematical pedagogy nrc the integration of science knowledge w/learning, pedagogy, and student knowledge nbpts teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning nbpts teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience teachercentric goals nsdc content deepens educators’ content knowledge, provides them with research-based instructional strategies to assist students in meeting rigorous academic standards, and prepares them to use various types of classroom assessments appropriately nsdc content prepares educators to understand and appreciate all students, create safe, orderly, and supportive learning environments, and hold high expectations for their academic achievement nsdc process uses disaggregated student data to determine adult learning priorities, monitor progress, and help sustain continuous improvement nsdc content provides educators with knowledge and skills to involve families and other stakeholders appropriately nsdc process prepares educators to apply research to decision making nsdc process uses multiple sources of information to guide improvement and demonstrate its impact nsdc process uses learning strategies appropriate to the intended goal nsdc process applies knowledge about human learning and change nsdc context organizes adults into learning communities whose goals are aligned with those of the school and district nsdc context requires resources to support adult learning and collaboration nsdc process provides educators with the knowledge and skills to collaborate nsdc context requires resources to support adult learning and collaboration nbpst teachers are members of learning communities nsdc context requires skillful school and district leaders who guide continuous instructional improvement communitycentric goals figure 1. foci of respective organizational recommendations for professional development. table 1 numeric breakdown of foci in professional development standards for respective organizations goals _____________________________________________________ organization teacher student communityprogram centric centric centric centric___________________________________________________________________ nctm 5 2 0 1 nrc 1 3 0 1 nbpts 2 3 1 0 nsda 2 2 6 4 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 8 proposed by the other organizations. for example: nctm has five goals that are specific to teacher-centered needs, while nrc only has one; nsdc has six goals focused on community needs, while the nctm and nrc have no goals in that theme; and nbpts has zero programmatic goals, while the nsdc has four. this inconsistency can be problematic for the developers of professional development. for instance, while professional development coordinators in mathematics will design their programs to meet the goals and emphases provided by nctm, these programs may not support the same emphases in goals for science educators who will work to design goals provided by the nrc. thus, they will feel compelled to offer separate professional development programs to meet their field’s respective needs and may miss the opportunity to design professional development which fulfills a more global set of goals. beyond the inconsistencies in foci among standards from the four organizations, curricular integration is a focus in none of the standards documents. thus, even if any educational enterprise successfully created a professional development program which fulfilled all the standards of the four organizations, curriculum integration may still not be valued. the finding of the four foci emphasized in the standards documents may further speak to why integrated curricula are so problematic to implement in k-12 schools. for example, it may be that one organization emphasizes teacher-centric components because they feel that teachers need more development in that area than other foci; or an organization may believe that emphasis on one particular focus is more essential in positively affecting student achievement. in either case, this reflection of differing philosophies or perceived needs may interfere with subject matter integration in classroom instruction. summarily, the status quo for the vast majority of professional development for mathematics and science education may inherently possess a greater number of obstacles to curricular integration between the two fields than it does to facilitate such. only if professional development is revisioned and reconfigured can it make a positive impact on the field. this is addressed in the following discussions. the positive side of professional development while professional development may necessarily differ across k-12 grade levels, it is herein argued that inservice professional development provides a sufficiently positive and nuanced platform to appropriately meet respective needs of classroom teachers and break the cycle of experience and teaching that has previously prevented integration between science and mathematics education. in-service professional development is the point of intervention that is most likely to have an effect in changing teaching practices and experiences and change the nature of k-12 mathematics and science instruction toward a model which includes greater curricular integration. however, to alter professional development into successful models, new frameworks and rationales must be considered upon which to create these professional development projects. a number of these rationales are addressed sequentially. promoting educational change through inservice professional development. it was previously mentioned that altering either the k-12 educational system or pre-service teacher education programs toward integrated curricular models is extremely difficult. thus, no opportunity for promoting the changes in teacher understanding, skills, and beliefs, may be as ripe for actualizing these changes as is the in-service professional development of mathematics and science teachers. while practicing mathematics and science teachers have most likely learned how to teach math and science in a compartmentalized manner, using their in-field experiences, professional development programs can address what these teachers recognize is working and what is not. pre-service teachers rarely have sufficient experiential bases to recognize instructional strategies which are more or less successful. in-service professional development leaders can introduce an integrated teaching approach to practitioners, demonstrate a correlation between integrated learning experiences and student outcomes, and address teacher beliefs about the importance of integrated curricula and instructional practices. teachers acquire new knowledge by constructing it for themselves (carin et al., 2005; hiebert et al., 2002; loucks-horsely et al., 2003) and when they can share their knowledge with colleagues and the public (hierbert et al., 2002). professional development can situate teacher learning and experience regarding integrated curricula in their own classroom contexts which they find to be more meaningful and relevant (hiebert, et al., 2002; louckshorsely et al., 2003). thereby, as a result of in-service professional development, practicing teachers are able to experiment with different instructional strategies in their classrooms. possessing experience in assessing student learning, in-service teachers can identify what changes students may experience when the instructional approach changes and in-service teachers will have experience in implementing, interpreting and addressing results from assessments; this affords them the expertise to identify apparent changes in teaching effectiveness and learning, further confirming or denying the effectiveness of the implementation of an integrative curriculum. novice teachers. another rationale for focusing educational change through in-service professional development is related to teacher experiences with classroom management. novice teachers focus most of their attention in their decisions for instructional practice based on classroom management (berliner, 1988; veenman, 1984). although they may be taught to implement strategies that promote inquiry and integration, they will not transfer this knowledge into practice because they are uncertain as to how to address classroom redefining curriculum integration and professional development: in-service teachers as agents of change 9 management while simultaneously focusing on novel instructional practices (feiman-nemser, 2001). in-service teachers are more likely to have developed strategies that allow them to have a strong classroom management plan which permits them an opportunity to focus on the instructional decisions that impact their instructional delivery. some novice science and mathematics teachers feel that, when implementing instructional techniques which focus on either inquiry-based instructional or the integration of mathematics and science, they don’t sacrifice classroom control, removing themselves from the focus of instruction (fogarty, wang, & creek, 1983). more experienced teachers are less likely to be discomforted by these experiences. the teaching cycle. due to the impact and connection that practicing teachers have on both grade school students and pre-service teachers, addressing a change in practice with practicing teachers affects the entire cycle of teaching. because teachers learn by watching other teachers (feiman-nemser, 2001), most pre-service teacher education programs require an internship through which pre-service teachers observe how experienced educators teach, write, implement lesson plans, and use curricula. as pre-service teachers observe effective and experienced in-service teachers employ integrated curricula and instruction, greater possibility grows that pre-service teachers will later use the skills and techniques associated with integrated curricula which they observed. this cycle of teaching practice impacts the grade school students who may later decide to enter into education. if teachers are not providing an integrated learning experience, k-12 students become trained to think compartmentally and may have difficulty thinking about teaching and learning in an integrated manner. some studies suggest that students cannot transfer their learning from one subject to another (perkins, 1991) and they may resist the change of learning from the compartmentalized teaching to the integrated teaching. students may be even more resistant to change from compartmentalized instruction to integrated learning if they had previously found some degree of success in the former. with these forces in place, while novice teachers may abandon implementing the changes needed to implement integrated curricula, experienced teachers are more likely to feel confident about their teaching, make necessary modifications of such, and find support strategies as needed to help their students through the stress they may feel with a new learning environment. although experienced teachers often do not conduct research on student misconceptions (hiebert et al., 2002), with the support of researchers providing professional development and the teachers’ classroom experience, in-service teachers are more likely to be able to identify student misconceptions. in-service teachers can draw upon their experiences to know what kinds of strategies to implement to address and challenge those misconceptions. this knowledge and skill are developed through improving a teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge (pck). studies show that pre-service programs do little to change a teacher’s pck and their pck does not change for the first three years of practice (luft & roehrig, 2004). this is primarily because the early career teacher is focusing on the stresses of the job and because pck is developed with teaching experience, not through instruction (lee, brown, luft, & roehrig, 2007). to be able to teach an integrated curriculum, a teacher would need to have pck specific to both mathematics and science. while it is unlikely that a teacher would have a well developed pck for both mathematics and science (since they are most likely trained in either but not both), it would be less difficult for an expert, practicing teacher with a well developed pck of at least one of these areas to integrate the lesson and learn to develop the other area of pck. in addition, it is unlikely that novice teachers will be comfortable teaching what they do not feel they know. many researchers suggest that beginning teachers tend to rely more heavily on one domain of knowledge rather than drawing simultaneously from all domains, as is the case with in-service or expert teachers (ball & bass, 2000; davis & krajcik, 2005; grossman, 1990). this supports that inservice teachers are more likely comfortable with trying new approaches, and are more likely to implement an integrated curriculum that requires more than one domain. a new model for professional development having argued that integrated mathematics and science curriculum is both needed and woefully lacking in k-12 schools and that the most effective timing of teacher support which will most positively affect the implementation of integrated curriculum takes the form of in-service professional development, it must be questioned what unique features or characteristics this professional development must take. the following bullets provide some guidance for a novel framework for in-service professional development which will lead to the integration of mathematics and science instruction. general recommendations for all in-service professional development ■ professional development should utilize teachers’ classroom experiences in school settings while developing a community of learning among the participants. ■ professional development should be student-centric, teacher-centric, program-centric, and communitycentric. it should not simply consider how it affects classroom teachers, it should consider how the students and community are affected through the professional development and consider the effectiveness of the professional development as a whole. ■ professional development should attempt to affect the teaching cycle. whenever possible, experienced teachers should be partnered with pre-service teachers in authentic instructional and practicum scenarios. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 10 this assists in molding the next generations of teachers and showing them the best instructional models as understood through the eyes of the classroom teacher. ■ professional development should occur after teachers are no longer novices and before they become professionally unalterable. recommendations for professional development in respect to integrated curriculum ■ professional development should focus on problem posing and problem solving in both areas of study. ● investigations should not always begin in one field and be solved in the other. ● problem scenarios should be posed in either subject, pass through either subject in investigatory phases, and find a resolution in either subject. ● problem scenarios should ensure that neither subject is subservient to the other. ● the level of content and conceptual coverage in both areas should be at least commensurate with that which would be covered in standalone subject matter courses. ■ mathematics and science must be understood as both separate and interconnected fields. professional development must help teachers develop pck in both fields. ■ employing the definition for curriculum integration previously espoused, professional development should: ● recognize the strengths, weaknesses, commonalities, and distinctiveness among two or more fields of study; ● use each field in the experiential learning of the other, and ● allow the teachers and their respective students to simultaneously experience these fields of study in such a manner that they both do and learn important content and concepts in each of the respective subjects and glean further understanding from the gestalt formed among the subject matters. conclusions according to our educational leaders, and to the calls for reform in education, our current educational system is broken. the calls for reform suggest that the system be improved upon by developing curricula that is integrated. current research supports similarities among how mathematics and science is learned. in our educational system exists a cycle of teaching which includes students, pre-service teachers, and in-service teachers; each is an important component in enacting changes in the educational system. the most effective change agents in instigating educational reform through curriculum integration rests with experienced teachers for three reasons: (1) k-12 students may someday be educators and will need the experience of this sort of learning environment. (2) preservice educational programs often rely on the internships to help new and upcoming teachers to develop skills, experiences and models of good teaching. if pre-service teachers do not observe and experience integrated curricula, they will have great difficulty in this environment. later in their practice, after becoming comfortable in traditionally segregated curricula, they will become even more reluctant to make changes. they need a contextual view of curriculum while they are learning how to teach math and science (frykholm & glasson, 2005). (3) expert teachers have an understanding of assessments and pck and have developed skills in classroom management that will support their willingness to try new things and their ability to implement new ideas into practice. similarities in learning processes among mathematics and science open new dialogues concerning professional development regarding integrated curriculum. investigations capable of being integrated when necessary and yet distinguishable as distinct pieces, is the most pragmatic approach to view the integration of mathematics and science based on the similarities in learning processes. decisions of distinction should be determined by the best interest of the discipline in respect to learner needs and student achievement in the existing paradigm. it is hoped that educational leaders will collaborate on revising professional development standards that are consistent in meeting essential components of teaching and learning: addressing the importance and value of integration; the issues of high-stakes and standardized testing; and infused opportunities for in-service teachers to engage in and add to educational research. we recommend that the starting point for promoting integrated mathematics and science instruction and curriculum and the necessary supporting professional development should begin in small incremental steps. historically, the greatest success in changing curricular practices has consistently been found to occur when the change desired requires noticeable, sustained effort, but is not so massive that typical users must adopt coping strategies that seriously distort the change (crandall, eiseman, & louis, 1986). references american association for the advancement of science [aaas]. 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(2008). research on mathematics instruction experiment based problem posing. journal of mathematics education, 1(1), 153-163. zeichner, k. (1996). designing educative practicum experiences for prospective teachers. in k. zeichner, s. melnick, & m.l. gomez (eds.), currents of reform in preservice teacher education (pp. 215-235). new york: teachers college press. redefining curriculum integration and professional development: in-service teachers as agents of change 13 article citation schleigh, s. p., bossè, m. j., & lee, t. (2011). redefining curriculum integration and professional development: in-service teachers as agents of change. current issues in education, 14(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/693 author notes dr. sharon price schleigh east carolina university 1001 e 5 th st, flanagan rm 317 greenville, nc. 27834 schleighs@ecu.edu dr. sharon price schleigh is an assistant professor of science education at east carolina university, dept. of mathematics, science & instructional technology education. she was a classroom teacher for over 15 years and has been involved in teacher professional development for 9 years. her research interests include teacher professional development, teacher education, argumentation in science, curriculum development and understanding of the nature of science. dr. michael j. bossè east carolina university 1001 e 5 th st, flanagan rm 329 greenville, nc. 27834 bossem@ecu.edu dr. michael. j. bossé is an associate professor of mathematics education at east carolina university. his research interests include, curriculum, learning, and instruction in mathematics, multiple representations, and mathematics learning connected to language acquisition. ms. tammy lee east carolina university 1001 e 5 th st, flanagan rm 342 greenville, nc. 27834 leeta@ecu.edu ms. tammy lee is a teaching instructor of science education at east carolina university. her research interests include professional development, elementary science education, microbiology, and neuroscience education. manuscript received: 2/01/2011 revisions received: 7/24/2011 accepted: 9/13/2011 mailto:schleighs@ecu.edu mailto:bossem@ecu.edu mailto:leeta@ecu.edu current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 14 volume 14, number 3 september 28, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editor melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy carol masser leslie salazar jennifer shea alaya swann faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word building democratically active citizens through the prefectship system in botswana schools.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x building democratically active citizens through the prefectship system in botswana schools zibisani edwin morapedi batanani secondary school agreement lathi jotia university of botswana citation morapedi, z. & jotia, a. (2011). building democratically active citizens through the perfectship system in botswana schools. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/ abstract the goal of education in countries which regard themselves as democracies is to help develop citizens who can actively participate in the democratic process. today, more than ever before, schools face the challenge of aligning their philosophies to the democratic national principles of the nation-state in order to produce citizens who are active in the democratic process. therefore, this study was undertaken to explore the relationship between democracy and education by investigating the efficiency of the prefectship system (student leadership system where students choose their leaders) in botswana secondary schools. keywords: prefectship system, democracy, education, botswana, democratically active citizens, voter apathy, student representative council (src) current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 about the authors author: mr. zibisani edwin morapedi affiliation: senior teacher-sports, batanani secondary school, mapoka, botswana address: batanani secondary school, private bag 005, ramokgwebana, botswana email: zmorapedi@yahoo.com biographical information: zibisani edwin morapedi is a senior teacher at batanani secondary school who teaches social studies and setswana language. his research interests are in the area of civic education, democracy and education as well as in languages and multicultural education. author: dr. agreement lathi jotia affiliation: lecturer, department of languages and social sciences, university of botswana address: university of botswana, department of languages and social sciences, private bag 00702, gaborone, botswana email: agreementjotia@yahoo.com biographical information: dr. agreement lathi jotia is currently a lecturer at the university of botswana in the department of languages and social sciences education. he has previously taught at ohio university in athens, ohio, usa as well as at the university of central florida in orlando, florida, usa. his research interests are in the areas of democracy and education, education and globalization, politics of developing areas as well as in education and cultural diversity. building democratically active citizens 3 building democratically active citizens through the prefectship system in botswana schools this was a study on the prefectship system in the botswana’s junior secondary schools and how it contributes towards the development of democratically active citizens. the study was influenced by the issue of voter apathy in our general elections as well as the issue of student leadership in schools. according to the independent electoral commission (iec) (2002), youth are not interested in voting during national elections. they do not give the elections or political participation the seriousness it deserves. this therefore raises the feeling that this might be due to the fact that youth are not given enough exposure to be involved in the democratic process at a tender age. as a matter of fact, they are not given the chance to elect representatives or their leaders during their schooling period which ultimately impacts their participation in the democratic process. denying students a platform for political participation in schools emanates from the belief that students are children who within the african ways of child upbringing, children are only supposed to seen and not heard. this is definitely an issue that causes concern because consequently it could escalate the problem of voter apathy in the nation-state. the study therefore sought to investigate whether voter apathy among youth is directly linked to the process of electing prefects in botswana secondary schools or not. ideally, for students’ voices to be heard by school authorities, they have to be represented by their student representative council (src) or prefects. the difference between the two is that prefects are students charged with the responsibility of helping the administration to maintain a friendly and orderly atmosphere amongst the students and in the school in general through guiding and supervising other students. they are found mostly in secondary schools. the student representative council (src) is a more radical body of representatives tasked with the responsibility of representing the interests of the students in tertiary institutions such as colleges current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 and universities. the body is elected by students through the ballot. in all these settings, the representatives are supposed to come into these positions by virtue of being chosen by other students through the ballot and looking at certain qualities in their possession such as the ability to communicate, intelligence, competence and control among others. prefectship system and democratic engagement participatory citizenship demands every member of the community to participate in self governance which ultimately could lead to the building of a strong democracy (barber, 1989 in mckenna, 2000:15). election of prefects is therefore supposed to make students have a feeling of being part of the school organization as well as being exposed to the functions of the democratic process through participation. under such circumstances, it could be argued that the prefectship system can be an ideal mechanism of developing democratically active citizens who do not only hear about democracy but also live it. the situation at hand in botswana secondary schools is that nomination of such students is done by teachers without the input from students. in instances where students are given the chance to submit names of colleagues who they wish to be prefects, teachers usually screen those names and reject those that they think do not possess the right qualifications. this violates the operations of a true democracy and this is certainly a matter that needs attention. such a scenario contributes towards the development of apathetic citizens since they do not partake directly in the ultimate election of their leaders. democracy is about participation. jotia (2008) indicates that the scenario in botswana schools is that the prefects are not representatives of the student body. the student body does not have a last say on who should become their leader. the administration has absolute power to refuse or accept a student leader building democratically active citizens 5 despite the fact that the student body might be having confidence in that individual (p.152). such practice is detrimental to the production of rational and democratic leaders and suppresses the students’ potential to develop into leaders as well as partaking in the national political process. in a sense, under such circumstances, prefects become more of police officers than functionally active democrats representing the student body. jotia (2008) further contends: the prefectship system in place violates democratic practice and is toothless since the students are not involved in the running of the affairs of the institution other than the fact that they supervise meals, studies, cleaning of school environment and reporting wrongdoers to the administration. it is for this reason that i contend that prefects are the eyes and ears of the administration but do not have any powers whatsoever. their decision-making potential is suppressed and generally the school authorities strangle their voices and deny them full exposure to how democracy functions. (p.155) the purpose of having student leadership is to involve the students in the running of the school organization and the consequences should be an improved discipline and helping in the building of a democratically active society. according to thorburn & jenkins (2003, p.37) democracy incorporates strong participatory and deliberative elements in which citizens are engaged at local and national levels in a variety of political activities and regard discourse, debate and deliberation as essential conditions for reaching common ground and arbitrating differences among people in a large multicultural society. in a strong democracy, citizens actually participate in governing themselves, if not in all matters all the time, at least in some matters at a time. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 it is on the basis of the above assertions that we believe this study was crucial in that it addressed some of the key weaknesses regarding the prefectship system in schools and how it affects democratic participation. it is also hoped that this study would contribute towards finding modalities which would help prompt youth’s participation in the national politics through voting. structure of botswana’s education system: junior secondary soon after independence in 1966, botswana focused on the development of a sound and robust education system that fosters the intellectual maturity of citizens so that they could develop identities which will enable them to partake actively in the evolving democratic process. taking into account the fact that the country had just been freed from the chains of colonization, botswana’s education system at primary, secondary and tertiary levels was premised on the principle of education for kagisano (social harmony) which literally meant that the state wanted to build a society different from that of the colonizers which promoted oppression, domination, corruption, greed and socio-economic and political disparities. therefore the education system was driven by a set of national principles (democracy, development, unity and self-reliance) and a combination of these four principles produces the national philosophy of kagisano (social harmony) which embraces the concepts of social justice, interdependence and mutual assistance (national commission on education (nce), 1977: 24). during the early 1990s, the government of botswana added the fifth national principle of botho (humane/good personality) as a guiding principle which will help produce morally and ethically sound citizens. as such, botswana’s education system today is driven by these five national principles and the goal is to develop selfreliant, democratically active and conscious citizens who are development-oriented, morally and ethically good, as well as being able to cherish unity at the same time remaining loyal and patriotic to the state. it is an education system which promotes principles of national building democratically active citizens 7 development, rapid economic growth, economic independence, social justice and a desire for continued learning (curriculum development and evaluation, 2002:1). the basic education programme includes ten years of education (standard 1 through 10 or form 3) and thereafter students have two years of senior secondary school. just to indicate botswana’s zeal to produce educated citizens, in 1985 the government embarked on a large scale programme to increase access to form 1 and increased the number of junior secondary schools from 33 in 1984 to 146 in 1991 and this enabled the enrolments in junior secondary schools to rise from 23 500 in 1984 to 52 866 in 1991 (national commission on education, 1993:140). as of now, there is automatic promotion from standard 7 to form 3, which means even those students who have failed standard 7 are allowed to go on to form 1 through form 3 so that they can attain the basic 10 years of education. however, those who fail to perform well at form 3 do not automatically progress to form 4. according to teaching service management (2004), an ordinary junior secondary school class size ranges from the ratio of 1:45 to a maximum of 1:50 in some extra-ordinary circumstances. currently, the ordinary teacher at a secondary school can teach between 30-45 lessons (periods) per week, senior teachers teach 20, 25 or 30 periods per week depending on their rank of seniority. heads of departments, deputy school heads as well as school heads are not required to teach, their duties are purely administrative. at junior secondary school, students are expected to pay p300.00 (about $42.00) per annum. a normal school day for both boarding and day schools starts at 7:30am and ends at 4:30pm and within that time-period both academic and extra-curricular activities are supposed to be covered. the extra-curricular activities cover inter alia sporting activities, clubs, societies, in-service activities, committee activities and remedial teaching (teaching service management, 2004:10). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 students are provided with meals within the school in most cases and the non-teaching staff are the ones responsible for the preparation of meals. in fact, the prefects play a crucial supervisory role when it comes to meal times and in most cases they are paired with the teachers who are on duty. the idea behind the introduction of prefects in schools therefore was highly influenced by national educational philosophy-education for kagisano and the goal is that children should be able to identify with the national principles of democracy, self reliance, unity, development and botho at a tender age so that they can become actively engaged democrats in the future. in a sense, the introduction of the prefectship system in schools was meant to nurture the development of citizens who can participate in botswana’s democratic process. the noble goal of this system is to empower students although what we see practically in schools defeats the whole purpose of the system. purpose of study the purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which the prefectship system in botswana schools develop and nurture students democratically. the study also investigated why and how the schools in botswana embark on such a system and finally the study evaluated whether the system was bringing good results for both the students and the school organization on issues of democratic engagement. significance of the study according to lebuso (2003) the purpose of the prefectship system can be seen as twofold. firstly, it is to serve the school’s immediate need for effective management and maintaining discipline and order and implementing the school’s development projects. secondly, it is preparing the students for future citizenship as prescribed by education systems of most countries (p.14). given lebuso’s observations, we can deduce that the prefectship system can serve the building democratically active citizens 9 school organization in many ways and at the same time instilling citizenship education in the minds of the students. this study can therefore be used by the schools to improve or re-align their prefectship systems and it can also influence government to introduce civic education in schools. the study is quite essential in that it provides a lens on the evaluation of the effectiveness of the prefectship system in so far as it produces vocal, vibrant and active leaders. moswela (1995) states that since students are the most extensive users of the school facilities they could be a good source of information and ideas on how to improve school facilities if given the opportunity to do so (p.26). in other words, prefects should not just be used for the interest of the school authorities, but should also be used to involve students in the running as well as in infrastructural development of the school. through their prefects, students should be able to come up with suggestions on how they want their school to be run; the involvement of students in the decision-making process can smoothen the general running of the school and take away a lot of tension. more often than not, tensions between the school administrators and students results in strikes and absolute commotion in the institution. this state of affairs can be ameliorated by putting in place an effective and efficient prefectship system. methodology research design this research is a multiple and instrumental case study which focused on choosing a limited number of cases to investigate the problem (yin, 2003). eisenhardt (1989) in yin (2003) states that a case study is a research strategy which helps the researcher understand the dynamics which exist within a single setting and in this case our focus was in the junior secondary school environment. since the study focused on searching for responses on the “how” or “why” questions, the case study approach was deemed favorable in order to demonstrate the results current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 (yin, 2003). yin subscribes to the notion that a case study approach in research is favorable especially when investigating contemporary issues. the issue of democratizing schools in botswana is a contemporary issue. our analysis of the school setting or what geertz (2000) would call the analysis and interpretation of cultural webs, helped us get meaning in as far as the operation of the prefectship system is concerned. in this qualitative study, we documented real events, recorded what people said (with words, gestures and tone), observed specific behaviors, studied written documents, and examined visual images (neuman, 2007). yin (2003) posits that case study research often includes the use of multiple methods to collect data and the use of multiple methods constitutes data triangulation which enhances the validity of the study. glense (2010) observes that the use of multiple-datacollection methods in most cases contributes towards the trustworthiness of data under a practice called triangulation. data from this study came from interviews with students, teachers, heads of departments, school heads and prefects. research sites the research settings were batanani junior secondary school in mapoka and ramoja junior secondary school in ramokgwebana in the north east district of botswana. batanani catchment area includes mapoka, masukwane and kgari villages while ramoja catchment area covers ramokgwebana, moroka and jakalasi no. 1 village. some of these areas are between four to seven kilometers from the schools. both the schools are “twelve streams,” that is they have four form three classes, four form two classes and four form one classes, hence the term “twelve streams.” batanani is a boarding school while ramoja is a day school. the schools were chosen because of their accessibility since one of them (batanani) is located within the home village of one of the researchers. ramoja also became ideal in the study since it is not far distanced from building democratically active citizens 11 batanani and it is one of the old schools within the north eastern region, hence its rich history was considered very essential to the study. selection of participants as earlier reflected, this was a case study which involved a detailed examination of two different settings. bogdan & biklen (2003) charge that under a case study researchers scout for possible places and people who may be subjects or possible sources of data and then cast a wide net in their attempt to judge the feasibility of the site or data source. one factor that determines the participation of subjects in a study is feasibility or willingness to participate in a study (yin, 2003). the research data was collected through interviewing and observing participants. the interviews were carried out on a population of fifty eight participants that is heads of departments (n =6), teachers (n =10), students (n =20), prefects (n =20) and school heads (n =2). heads of departments, school heads and teachers were interviewed individually; students and prefects were interviewed in groups. prefects were observed on duty within stipulated times such as study time, meal hours, sports times and assembly times. in conducting the study, we used semi-structured interviews whereby we used an interview guide and also prompted and probed the participants to get more information. focus groups were used in this study where we discussed the topic on democratization of schools through the use of prefects. morgan (1997) states that through focus groups, different types of data can be gained because of pronounced interaction of different people within a social group. one advantage of using focus groups in a study of this nature is that they encourage communication and provide insights into how others think and talk about the problem under investigation (morgan, 1998). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 theoretical framework democracy the word democracy has its origins in ancient greece. it comes from two greek words “demos” and “kratos”. the word “demos” means people while “kratos” refers to power. so democracy therefore is people power or power by the people. democracy is widely defined as a government of the people by the people and for the people. it is a state in which the power of government resides in or is exercised by the people and for the people. power can be exercised by the people directly or indirectly (unafas & istp, 2009). under democratic discourses especially in schools each individual matters and should be given a platform to exercise their democratic rights by being allowed to participate in the decision-making process. waldron (2003) in mcdonough & feinberg (2003) observes that civic education in schools should focus on building learners who are going to develop the willingness to play a role as well as taking responsibility in all issues that affect their life. waldron further contends that in democratic schools, a good citizen is the one who shoulders his share of the burdens of departmental administration, who is willing to advise and supervise students as well as being available to help during a time of a crisis (p.41). given this assertions, it could be argued that schools are supposed to train students to become active role players within the school system and even beyond. berstein (1996) observes that within a social class, education is supposed to help promote communication, cultural and functional codes whereby consensus within a social structure is promoted rather than promoting dominance and privilege. undemocratic schools cherish dominance and social repression which can consequently produce frustrated citizens. citizenship education and democracy in schools under liberal democratic set-ups educational institutions should adopt a philosophy of education whereby citizenship education becomes part of the educational entitlement of young building democratically active citizens 13 people so that they can develop intellectually and reflect on the need to participate in democratic processes (mclaughlin, 2000). in the case of botswana, the national commission of education (nce) (1977) stipulates that the focus of education in the school and in the classroom should be on enabling learners to acquire knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors that will give them a full successful life and continued personal growth, equipping them to participate effectively in a rapidly changing society (p.23). citizenship and the teaching of democracy are so important for schools and society and all schools are supposed to expose students to democratic engagements (mclaughlin, 2000:545). taking into account the advent of the globalization process, it is essential that citizens in every global society be equipped with knowledge, attitudes, and skills required to function not just in their cultural communities but to able to function productively even beyond their borders. banks (2006) records that students within the global society need to acquire the knowledge and skills required to become effective citizens in the global community (p.25). davies (1999) contends that the fundamental principle of democracy in schools should be that sovereignty should be vested in the people. schools therefore need to decentralize power from the center of the administration to the periphery of student community whereby the student community through their prefects could be seen to be playing a fundamental role in the running of all the affairs affecting the students directly or indirectly. according to davies, attempts to democratize schools should embrace strategies such as developing processes of decision-making whereby constantly students and teachers can come together on the basis of the school mission to set rules, code of conduct and any other school governing policy. political education programmes and education for citizenship should be introduced in schools so as to foster current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 participation as well as helping students to directly experience grassroots democratic involvement (davies, 1999). one troubling scenario regarding the prefectship system in botswana schools is that although the prefects are supposed to be the official management representatives of the students, their powers and involvement in school affairs continue to dwindle. molosiwa (2005) reflects that the “prefectorial government” in botswana schools has never been based on democratic principles since their “election to power” is basically spearheaded by school authorities without much involvement of the student body. sybouts & krepel (1984) in molosiwa (2005) make a case: one of the fundamental assumptions of democracy is that people are competent to govern themselves and their efforts will result in organization ‘of the people, by the people and for the people.’ …however, these tenets are not automatic but must be developed. this development comes appropriately through practice and philosophy of ‘learning by doing’ in a setting resembling that of ultimate citizenship. participation by students in school government truly represents such a setting (p.3). models of citizenship in many academic circles within the modern nation-state, citizenship is often looked at in terms of identity or common identity thereof. williams (2003) in mcdonough & feinberg (2003) reflects that instead of looking at citizenship from the model of citizenship-as-identity, we should move toward an idea of citizenship as membership in a community or shared fate…whereby one becomes involved with others in such a way that one’s future could be seen to be tied to the future of others (p.209). in a sense, citizenship is linked to pragmatic actions where individuals have to act, account for their actions vis-à-vis democratic principles and building democratically active citizens 15 relations. much of contemporary democratic theory begins from the suppositions that meaningful democratic citizenship requires citizens to share a subjective sense of membership in a single political community (williams, 2003: 209) in mcdonough & feinberg (2003). kiwan (2008) states that when addressing the conception of citizenship, it is vital that it be looked at in terms of four models/categories which are moral, legal, participatory and identity based. with reference to the moral dimension, kiwan argues that is important since it will train citizens within a democratic society to know the importance of valuing justice as well as working towards building close relationships with others which will ultimately lead to the construction of just societies. haydon (2000) in kiwan (2008) also adds that citizenship education should help citizens to understand morality issues which cut across the public and private spheres. regarding the legal conception of citizenship, the argument is that education should help citizens to broaden their scope of understanding pertaining to issues that have to do with human rights discourses. citizenship education in schools focuses on making learners understand the nature and practices of participation in a democracy as well as having an understanding of their rights, roles and responsibilities as members of a community (qualifications and curriculum authority, 1998). the development of informed citizens in a democracy is nurtured by the promotion of their participation in the socio-economic and political spheres of society. as such, the conception of participation within any education system is important since it arms the learners with knowledge regarding the importance of participation in all government businesses as well as playing a fundamental role in the development of their communities. blunkett (2008) quoted in kiwan (2008) indicates that it is crucial in every democracy for people to be informed so that current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 they can actively participate at the same time understanding the importance of taking part in both civil and civic activities. finally, as suggested earlier, identity-based conceptions of citizenship help build citizens who can function productively within multicultural societies by respecting diversity and the identity of others. when schools promote the teaching and practice of citizenship within their parameters, they are likely to end up with democratically informed learners who can participate effectively within the local, national and global environment. identity-based conceptions of citizenship prepares citizens to be anti-racism, respect multiculturalism as well as being able to accommodate those whose background differs from theirs ( kiwan, 2008). education that focuses on producing citizens who can build good societies should help the learner understand the importance of good relationships between the individual and the group so that they live together harmoniously despite their diverse political and social ideologies ( durkheim, (1911) cited in filloux, 2001). the practice of democratic education in schools is meant to socialize learners to become functional citizens in diverse multicultural societies. schools which cherish democratic principles within multicultural societies are supposed to produce citizens who can challenge existing discriminatory practices in school and society which compromise educational equality and social justice. research questions in addressing the objectives of the study, the researchers used the following questions: 1. do you think the prefectship system is relevant to the democratic process in schools? 2. what mechanisms are in place within the school that are used in the promotion of students’ democratic participation? building democratically active citizens 17 3. does the prefectship system in schools have an influence on students’ active participation in the national elections? findings and discussions the purpose of having student leadership in the school is to involve the students in the running of the school organization since this will result in improved discipline and the building of a democratically active society. botswana’s philosophy on education, education for kagisano, sees democracy as a very important element of the country’s education system. monyatsi (2005) contends that the first commission on education of 1977 took further the principle of democracy and emphasized that the structure and organization of education must reflect the four national principles (democracy, development, self-reliance and unity) and that any features of the education system which impaired democracy should be changed. botswana schools therefore should be seen to be using the prefectship system as one way of teaching or advancing democratic values for robust citizenship. democracy through the prefectship system: easier preached than practiced although some of the interviewees acknowledged the presence of democracy in the prefect election process, this study has revealed that there is still a lot to be done in terms of the duties of the prefects in the schools. schools are supposed to empower students through the creation of little democratic pockets where the students can put their hearts and mind in the decision-making process but apparently the prefectship system acts towards the disempowerment of students. below is a presentation of the analysis of data from school heads, department heads, teachers, prefects and students on the issue of the prefectship system in schools. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 heads of departments’ views when asked about what specific duties one thinks prefects should carry out in schools, a head of department at batanani responded: prefects should continue doing what they have been doing all along. they should supervise others during meal times and extracurricular activities. help teachers in the supervision of study and general cleaning. (interview excerpt) a head of department at ramoja responded by saying: here prefects, dish food during meals times, conduct assembly, supervise afternoon and saturday studies, help teachers in supervising general cleaning and sometimes help teachers in organizing “june 16” (the day of the african child) commemoration.(interview excerpt) when asked whether the issue of electing prefects has an influence on the active participation of students in the general elections as future citizens, a head of department at batanani answered: yes, i strongly agree that it has a great influence looking at the fact that during the three days of campaigning and manifesto presentation the school was lively. students showed a lot of enthusiasm. (interview excerpt) another head of department at ramoja responded to the same question by saying: not much, i think we need to do more like conducting an induction workshop for elected leaders and put in place a coherent system which will nurture and coach them. (interview excerpt) still on the same question, another head of department at batanani outlined that according to his views, their school is nurturing participation of students in the democratic building democratically active citizens 19 process since their prefects were democratically elected through the ballot-box after declaring their interests on various positions. the question that springs to mind is whether the duties reflected above really empower students democratically in the decision-making process or they are basically just about policing other students. school heads’ views when responding to a question on whether the prefectship system in his school is meeting the intended objectives of trying to live and practice democracy, the school head at ramoja said: not 100% but there is progress, students learn and practice leadership skills, but i would like to see more and more involvement of students in issues that pertain to their well being. (interview excerpt) the school head at batanani responded to the same question by saying; ‘not much, i think we need to involve them in almost all our decision-making processes but you know, it is just practically impossible.’ pearl & knight (1999) add: the executive function of a student government is to administer a variety of programs (e.g. students’ assemblies, excursions, dances, sports days, science and art fairs, safety and security and supervision of community service). the legislative function, in addition to the aforementioned fiscal responsibilities, includes establishing rules by which students must line. the judicial responsibility is to provide due process and to determine consequences for rule infractions (p.106). schools are key means through which we can promote democracy and yet they are also part of an education system in which anti-democratic values continue to flourish. to achieve democracy within a school we need to change our approach to education. schools should help current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 pupils in decision-making and get them involved in decisions that concern them through the prefectship system. on a positive note, it was good learning that students’ leadership at the two research sites were brought to power by students through the ballot box although the electorates’ names were screened by the school administration. the big question now is, are the prefects being used for the intended purpose? the answer becomes a big no! the interviewees revealed that they are used in those activities that advance the interest of the school authorities, especially on discipline issues and spying on wrong doers. prefects should not be seen as a radical group advocating students’ strikes (as often alleged by school authorities) but as a body which is used to facilitate dialogue and exchange of ideas and concerns between students, school authorities and parents, which will manifest improvement of facilities, students’ welfare and the general running of the school. jotia (2008) correctly argues, “prefects are the eyes and ears of the administration that do not have power whatsoever. their decision-making potential is suppressed and generally the authorities strangle their voices and they deny them full exposure to how democracy functions (p.155). when responding to the question on whether the selection of prefects in schools had any influence on students’ active participation later in the national general elections, the school head at ramoja responded by saying: yes, i agree that there is direct correlation here. the way the students campaigned and presented their manifestos was very interesting. those who were voting did it with much zeal. they didn’t mind the long queues they were subjected to. the way they celebrated after the announcement of the results showed that in future the country should forget about voter apathy. (interview excerpt) building democratically active citizens 21 given the above assertion, it could be argued that giving students a chance to play various roles in school produces a set of principles which make students understand democracy as a value system, as well as a method of associating with one another and learning how to solve or confront problems together within the boundaries of solidarity and validating human dignity (henderson & kesson, 1999). students who are accorded an opportunity to embark on democratic practices at an early stage in school will develop habits of human efficiency as well as developing proper habits which are productive in the national democratic project. students’ views when asked about what they think the role of prefects should be within the school system, one student at batanani charged: our prefects are supposed to report those teachers who never mark our work. they should also be involved in the school’s decision-making process. for instance, we need a better tuck-shop and a good library, our prefects are supposed to be discussing this issues with the administration. we also need better food at our school and if our prefects cannot represent us, who else will? unafas & istp (2009, p.5) posit that prefects assist in maintaining discipline, by guiding and supervising other students, they therefore help to manage, guide and lead all school matters in a smooth manner. prefects ought to be debating and discussing key fundamental and controversial issues especially given cogan’s (1989) observation that in a democratic process people have to thrive on controversy through the consideration of a multitude of perspectives so as to reach a consensus which will benefit all of them. on a comparative note, when asked whether the prefectship system in their school is meeting the intended objectives, one teacher at ramoja simply said, “no” and elaborated that the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 prefects are used by the school administration for a wrong purpose. the teacher lamented that in their orientation programme, prefects are told that they are responsible for ensuring the smooth functioning of the school in matters of peace, order and discipline and strict respect of school rules without fear or favor. nothing is ever mentioned on representing the interests of the student body on a full force and that on its own is problematic. a student at the same site said he was disappointed with the prefects because they “elected” them with the hope that they will take their voices to the school administration but it seems they are afraid of talking to the teachers and administration about their problems. the student further contested that the fact that prefects remain silent on issues that matter certainly verifies the fact that prefects are just puppets and stooges of the school administration. a student at the same site charged: no, what we see in our school is that prefects are taking responsibility in areas which do not suit them. they do work for the kitchen people instead of representing us. basically they are more of mere messengers of the school administration than anything else. this is really terribly. (interview excerpt) the prefectship system has to be used to transform the schools towards democracy. in a democracy there should be consultation and active public participation in the decision-making processes. if schools can see prefects as stakeholders in the running of the schools and involve them in their decision-making processes, then they can achieve functional and rewarding democracy which can benefit the country in future. schools should refrain from using prefects as puppets of the administration or school’s watchdogs and should instead involve them in matters of paramount importance such as academics and general issues of institutional development and critical decision-making. building democratically active citizens 23 the prefects can also come together with other stakeholders in an attempt to resolve problems that are faced by the students in their everyday lives and coming up with solutions to such problems. jotia (2008) notes: the src (prefects) need to be used as a democratic structure that helps solicit student’s voice and be a mouthpiece between school administration, parents and the student body… src will provide meaningful platforms for student’s leadership opportunities by engaging in discussions with the schools authorities on matters related to school management, curriculum and the general welfare of the student community. to further enhance development of future leaders, the src can also liaise with teachers, parents and school administrators to organize and facilitate workshops that benefit youth on topic such as hiv/aids, teenage pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual harassment, environment, gender equity, citizenship, voter education to mention only a few (p.164). on the basis of the above, it could be concluded that prefects need to work hand in hand with parents, teachers and administrators on matters deemed paramount to the academic environment as well as those linked to the general wellbeing of the student body. the top-down management style which school administrators use to run schools compromises the existence of sound democratic habits. although there was a general claim from school heads and heads of departments that prefects were elected democratically to their “offices” most of the students held a different view. one student at batanani contended: may be i do not understand what democracy means. although people claim that we elect our own leaders, i was shocked to learn that the person i voted for was not part of the student government although he won the elections and i understand the school current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 administration took him out of the list because they say he is troublesome. i do not think that is fair because that person is going to represent the student community and not the administration. (interview excerpt) teacher’s views when asked about the correlation between national elections and the election process for prefects, an assistant teacher at batanani indicated that the student body and the candidates were much interested in what was happening during the campaigning and manifesto presentation during the prefect’s selection period. another teacher also reflected that students were much interested in the whole election process and many of them were seen queuing to cast their votes. she went further to say she thinks the enthusiasm was an influence from the previous national general elections thus making us contend that national elections and “democratic practices” in schools do influence one another. another teacher at ramoja said students liked the idea of voting and think in future when they become eligible voters in the national elections; they won’t miss the chance to vote. he further said though it wasn’t a party affair (based on political parties), some students were happy to see those they supported becoming victorious while others were disappointed because of the losses suffered by their preferred candidates. giving students platforms for democratic participation in schools will help them grow as active and effective citizens. it also helps students to have a sense of responsibility and be in a position to make good judgments and act in an intelligent way. white & openshaw (2005) in jotia (2008) share: as indicated by dewey in his address to american school administrators in 1937, democratic principles are essential to educational institutions, if political democracy is to survive. schools need to embrace and practice democratic habits so as for students to building democratically active citizens 25 experience and practice democracy in their daily school lives, which ultimately will motivate them to partake in national politics by having a voice in the formulation of policies that govern people. because the aim of education is to free individuals from barriers that would prevent them from cooperating and supporting each other as members of inclusive communities, it is necessary for the institutions of learning to also be inclusive democratic communities (p.117). surprisingly another teacher at ramoja dismissed the existence of democracy by contending: we are in an institution where the school administration wants to create an intimidating platform for both students and teachers. communication is absolutely horrible and at times we just hear about things in the corridors and the poor prefects are just used as messenger boys and girls for the administration. the school administrators at times just announce things to the entire school community without firstly engaging us and the student leaders in the decision-making process. democracy does not work like that. in a democracy, students’ leaders, teachers and the administrators are supposed to come together and caucus on issues that matter so as to promote everybody’s welfare within the school arena. unfortunately, i do not see that happening and is real sad more so we claim to be a democratic institution. (interview excerpt) an assistant teacher at batanani also contended that prefects’ supervision of study, dishing of food to other students and helping with the supervision of toilet cleaning and the general cleaning of the school was not enough evidence to justify the existence of democracy in school. another teacher at ramoja observed that it was essentially crucial for prefects to be involved in decision-making committees, supervision in different areas such as general cleaning current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 and study time so that they can be empowered. she suggested also empowering prefects to punish by way of detaining students for some hours after school, sweeping of the classroom after study and cleaning of the toilets which most students abhor. one teacher at batanani testified that prefects at their school do obvious jobs such as study supervision, supervising during meal times, general cleaning and generally maintaining order in the school. another teacher said prefects should supervise meals and study time and act as intermediaries between the teachers, the administration and the students. he added that prefects should communicate with teachers and school administration about the welfare of the students, citing issues such as food (menu), toilets and dress code. discussing citizenship and democracy in schools, osler (2006) states: students usually appear to be much more interested in quality of life issues than in curriculum issues. toilets, food, lockers, dress code, travel, safety, rights, privileges, rules are all perennial items for discussion, suggestion and complaint (p.138). from what the respondents have said, it clearly shows that prefects in secondary schools are used as the wheels of the administration in maintaining a friendly and orderly school instead of advancing the interests of the students which include ascertaining that students are not abused through the use of corporal punishment as well as reporting teachers who fail to pursue their duties properly. a social studies teacher at ramoja charged that prefects are not doing enough in their duties as representatives of the student body. the teacher argued that the administration’s failure to empower prefects is tantamount to abandoning democratic principles which they advocate in social studies lessons. the general feeling is that in order for prefects to become active and building democratically active citizens 27 efficient leaders in school and even beyond, they ought to be given a platform where they can autonomously partake in the decision-making process. prefect’s views although the school authorities appear to be happy with operations of the prefectship in school, a student who is a prefect at ramoja held a different opinion: in as much as we are involved in the voting process, i do not really think that the student body has much of a say regarding who becomes a prefect at the end of the day because the school authorities screen down the names of the elected students leaders and bring in their own favorites. that is not democracy. the other worrying issue is that prefects are supposed to implement imposed rules and regulations from the administration which basically make them feel useless because they are not allowed to be innovative. (interview excerpt) another prefect at batanani had a perplexing view regarding the issue about the existence of democracy in schools: for me i think democracy can only prevail if both teachers and the administration can stop using us as their school police officers. it appears as though all they want is for us to report the so-called trouble makers to them and they never give us a chance to come up with ideas which could help improve the running of the school. so for me i am not stupid, i am not going to run around reporting my colleagues so that they become subjected to corporal punishment. (interview excerpt) when responding to the question on what they would do given a chance to change the manner in which the school was run under the prefectship system, a prefect at ramoja stated: current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 28 firstly the school authorities should have their hands-off especially when it comes to the selection of prefects because at times they reject some of the students who have been elected by the student body just because they feel that the students can cause trouble. secondly, i want to see myself developing into a leader by being involved in the decision-making process rather than supervising meals and writing down the names of trouble makers. i want to attend serious meetings and have my voice heard. (interview excerpt) contrary to the views of the school heads and heads of departments regarding the efficiency of the prefectship system in schools, a prefect at batanani charged: i personally feel that as a prefect i would feel valued only if both teachers and the administration gave me the freedom to use my mind especially on issues which affect students. i am really disappointed that we are never given a chance to run the affairs of the students, instead we are expected by the school head to always side with him on issues and i do not think that is fair. some of us were hand-picked by the teachers and the administration to be prefects and it looks as though we are just servants who are serving the master without question. (interview excerpt) given the above assertions, it could be concluded that the understanding and the interpretation of the concept of democracy in schools differs especially when taking into the perspectives of school administrators, teachers, ordinary students as well as the students’ leaders themselves (prefects). giving every member of the school community especially the students a voice in the running of the affairs of the schools should be a prerequisite for promoting democratic platforms in educational institutions. schools are supposed to promote democratic engagements by giving students a chance to act on critical issues so that they can develop skills building democratically active citizens 29 and attitudes which will help them to become independent and responsible leaders. critical analysis, practical skills, value clarity, and self confidence lead to empowerment and participation in the democratic process and also help students to develop the political courage to work towards the resolution of their real life problems (campbell, 2004). limitations the study limited itself to junior secondary schools. time as well as financial constraints hampered the researchers from covering a large area. some students and teachers did not feel free to disclose information to the researchers as they were skeptical about divulging internal information to outsiders especially information pertaining to the general administration of the school. the topic was also political in nature and made both teachers and students to be uncomfortable in discussing supposedly “political issues.” since teachers are regarded as members or servants of the public service, according to their code of conduct document, they are not supposed to be seen to be actively involved in political issues. therefore, naturally when a study of this nature is presented before teachers some automatically distance themselves from the study so as to avoid being victimized by their employer in case they share information which could be deemed political in nature. it is for this reason that most of the teachers prefer to share their voices through the teachers’ unions which are the bodies mandated to represent them in both the socio-economic and political matters. summary this study reveals that students’ leadership in schools to some degree does exist but the students are not given the opportunity to fully participate, represent and serve the interests of the student body. school administrators use student leadership structures to their benefits. it is high time that school authorities realize that if used properly, student leadership could current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 30 enable students to develop skills and processes needed for independent enquiry and civic decision-making throughout their lifetime. these are capacities needed if at all constitutional democracy is to work which will in turn impact on the production of democratically active citizens under the goals of education for kagisano. this study certainly was an eye opener in as far as exploring the interrelationship between democracy, the prefectship system, education as well as active citizenship engagement in the democratic process. the study definitely opens more avenues to interrogate further those issues pertaining to education, democracy, the prefectship system or student’s leadership as well as the general ways in which schools could be turned into platforms for democratic engagement in botswana. gutmann (1999) shares that schools are the legitimate and proper institutions which are supposed to teach children civic culture as well as democratic politics so that eventually they can actively participate in the running of democratic governments. botswana junior secondary schools ought to create conducive spaces for the practice of democracy so that students can leave school having acquired skills and attitudes as well as behaviors which nurture continued existence and survival of a democratic culture. building democratically active citizens 31 references jotia, a.l. (2008). educating for deep democratic participation in the post colonial botswana. suarbrucken: vdm, verlag dr. muller. banks, j.a. (2006). cultural diversity and education: foundations, curriculum and teaching. new york: pearson. bernstein, b. (1996). pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. london: taylor and francis. bogdan, r.c. & biklen (2003). qualitative research for education: an introduction to theories and methods. boston: ally and bacon. campbell, d. (2004). choosing democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. columbus: pearson. cogan, j. (1989). the continuing vigil for democracy. social education 63 (1) 341. curriculum development and evaluation. (2002). curriculum blue print: ten year basic education programme. gaborone: government printers. dahl, r. a. (1991). democracy and its critics. boston: yale university press. davies, l. (1999). comparing definitions of democracy in education. a journal of comparative and international education, 29 (2) 127-140. filloux, j.c. (2001). emile durkheim (1858-1917). unesco: international bureau of education 23 (2) 1-15. geertz, c. (2000). an interpretation of cultures. new york: basic books. glesne, c. (2010). becoming qualitative researchers: an introduction. (4th ed.). boston: pearson. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 32 gutmann, a. (1999). democratic education with a new preface and epilogue. princeton: princeton university press. henderson, j., & kesson, k. (1999). understanding democratic curriculum leadership. new york: teachers college press. independent electoral commission (iec) (2002). democracy in botswana: gaborone: government printers. kiwan, d. (2008). citizenship education in england at the cross-road? four models of citizenship and their implications for ethnic and religious diversity. oxford review of education, 34 (1) 39-58. lebuso, w.c. (2003). student involvement in school governance: the case of maseru district high school in lesotho. gaborone: macmillan. mcdonough, k. & feinberg, w. (2003).citizenship and education in liberal-democratic societies: teaching cosmopolitan values and collective identities. new york: oxford university press. mckenna, m. (2000). building tomorrow’s citizens in today’s classroom. ann arbor: bell & howell information and learning company. mclaughlin, t. (2000). citizenship education in england: the crick report and beyond. journal of philosophy of education, 34 (4) 541-570. molosiwa, p. (2005). the principal’s police? prefectship and law enforcement in botswana’ public secondary schools. unpublished conference paper, gaborone. monyatsi p.p. (2005). transforming school into democratic organization: the case of secondary schools management development project in botswana. international education journal, 6 (3), 354–366. building democratically active citizens 33 morgan, d. (1998). the focus group guidebook. london: sage. morgan, d. (1997). focus groups as qualitative research. london: sage. moswela, b. (1995). decision-making in botswana senior secondary schools. gaborone: macmillan. national commission on education. (1977). education for kagisano. gaborone: government printers. national commission on education. (1993). education for kagisano. gaborone: government printers. neuman, w.l. (2007). basics of social research, qualitative and quantitative approaches. boston: pearson education, inc. osler, a. (2006). citizenship and democracy in schools, diversity, identity, equality. london: trentham books. pearl, a. & knight, t. (1999). the democratic classroom. new jersey: hampton press qualifications and curriculum authority (qca) (1998). education for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools (crick report). london: qca unafas & istp (2009). school elections–notes for students. http://www.unafas.org.uk/files/school:20elections:20for:20students.pdf.(retrieved 23/10/2009). teaching service management. (2004). the report of task force on review of teaching loads in secondary schools. gaborone: government printers. thorburn, d. & jenkins, h. (2003). democracy and new media. cambridge: the mit press. yin, r. (2003). “discussing case studies:” case study research: design and methods, (4th ed.) thousand oaks: sage. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 34 appendix a interview questions for students and prefects 1. what is your understanding of the term democracy? 2. what do you think a democratic school would look like? 3. do you think your school is democratic? explain. 4. how do the student leaders get to office? 5. what is your reaction to the manner in which student leaders were brought to office? 6. if you were given a chance to change the way your school is run what would you change? 7. do you think schools help produce future responsible citizens? explain. 8. what do you think is the relationship between voting or being involved in the decisionmaking process in school and your involvement in the national elections? building democratically active citizens 35 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word 699-2799-6-le.docx 1 volume 14, number 2 may 28, 2011 issn 1099-839x do schools make a difference? a study of high school effects and first year college success wade smith jason droddy louisiana state university a. j. guarino massachusetts general institute of health schools across america are being ranked for their effectiveness on a number of student criteria, among them preparation of students for a successful college experience. this study investigates the relationship between graduating seniors, their successful first year retention in college and several personal and school related factors. the study also explores the relationships between school accountability rankings and the demographics of the respective schools in an effort to assess school effect sizes for student growth, a mandate of no child left behind (nclb). nearly 11,000 high school seniors from more than 280 schools were included in the analyses. when taken collectively, results from the study indicate that school accountability rankings provide little predictive value when assessing successful first year college retention. keywords: accountability, school effects, college retention “success in college is predicated upon success in high school.” intuitively this just makes sense, and as a result, students who perform well in high school are rewarded with scholarships and are courted by colleges seeking their admission. many states in an effort to bolster the high school experience are now offering concurrent or dual enrollment courses. in these courses, students are able to receive both carnegie units and college credits simultaneously and the interest in these opportunities is growing (u.s. department. of education, 2010). these efforts reflect the belief that the high school experience contributes to subsequent success in college. beyond the high school to college expectations, no child left behind applies pressure to states and school districts to develop and implement accountability measures with the express purpose of improving student learning and achievement. in louisiana, the site of this study, the accountability system has a goal of documented improvement in student achievement and it is reasonable to conclude that one of the desired outcomes is students that are well-prepared for success in higher education. this conclusion is supported by a state constitutional requirement that requires the louisiana board of elementary and secondary education (bese) to meet semi-annually with louisiana’s higher education coordinating board to coordinate programs (louisiana constitution,1974). although the data base is unique to louisiana, efforts to affect human and social capital as well as individual productivity via schools are by no means unique current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 to this particular state. historically, america has held a strong belief that schools provide students of all social classes with the means to achieve (traub, 2000) and school accountability models are expected to provide confirmation of their successes or failures. a core goal of accountability models in general, and in the particular case of louisiana’s accountability model, is the measurement of a school’s contribution to students’ academic success. therefore, schools can be viewed as the provider of environmental stimuli that are expected to shape and facilitate productive student behaviors. or, said another way, louisiana’s accountability model attempts to categorize the extent individual schools are preparing their students. these efforts borrow heavily from tenets of environmental determinism, a view most notably associated with b. f. skinner (e.g., 1971, 1974) and can be summarized succinctly by the phrase “the school makes the student.” no one would likely argue the statement to be literally true. however, the underlying basis for the statement is indeed a powerful contributor to school accountability efforts throughout the nation. accountability models are, therefore, efforts to document school level effects as they pertain to student achievement. environmental solutions provide a practical means of attempting to facilitate and document student learning. the solutions can be applied in a rather universal fashion, providing an efficient means of attempting to improve school and student productivity. this contrasts markedly with efforts that attempt to change the individual belief systems of students. processes such as these would, by necessity, tend to be idiosyncratic and time consuming. furthermore, how exactly would an accountability system accurately recognize and reward the school for these internal shifts in motivation or perseverance? for reasons such as these, it is understandable why accountability models such as louisiana’s tend to focus on measuring school effects. that said, it is important to remember that school effects are mediated by the collective and individual results of environmental conditioning being imported to the school by its student body, not to mention the role that strongly held internal beliefs of students, faculty, and indeed all stakeholders will ultimately play in determining just how strong the school level effects actually are. for these reasons there is compelling justification to analyze how the two contexts might interact. in other words,” to what extent do the students make the school or the schools make the students?” is a valid question. research conducted by payne and biddle (1999) and berliner and biddle (1995) attest to longstanding efforts towards these ends. louisiana’s school accountability model categorizes schools into five categories and these are designated by stars. five star schools are the highest ranking school and 1 star the lowest. accountability rankings are a combination of attendance, standardized test scores, and graduation rates (louisiana department of education, 2009). because a 5 star school has documented success for the accountability parameters, it is reasonable to assume these effects will translate into the success of the students who have enjoyed the collective benefits of the opportunities afforded them. conversely, poor performing schools have strict guidelines they must follow in order to work towards improving their school scores. if these efforts do not produce results a school is designated as” academically unacceptable.” if progress is not forthcoming the school is designated as a “failed school” and is taken over by the recovery school district (louisiana department of education, 2010). if a school’s success is the order of the day for documenting school accountability, it is reasonable to infer that a school’s accountability ranking is a valid indicator of success in delivering appropriate instruction. from this perspective, it is also reasonable to infer that student success in college should be influenced by the level of success schools have been able to generate regarding these effects. it is also sensible to posit that other variables contributing to a school’s accountability score may also influence a student’s success in their first year of college (cohn, cohn, balch, & bradley, 2004; debeard, spielmans, & julka, 2004; tinto, 1993). with that in mind, the study included variables that would indicate a student’s academic preparation, socioeconomic status (ses), and the ses of the student’s school. these variables were included to provide means of assessing effects that might be primarily attributed to a school along with those that would likely be outside the scope of the school’s primary influence. the variables were operationalized through widely recognized indicators of these factors (national association for college admissions counseling, 2008), such as high school grade point average on a college preparatory curriculum (coregpa) and eligibility status for the state’s merit-based scholarship called the taylor opportunity program for students (tops). additionally, in an effort to determine whether school effects might be extending to disadvantaged students pell grant status was also included as a study variable. finally, with the question of school level effects being raised, we believe it is essential to investigate the extent (if any) that school accountability rankings might be a function of a school’s attendant student demographics. this study has three primary objectives. first, this study investigates the predictability of school accountability status (star) upon first year college retention for students. a second concern is the nature of the relationships of successful first-year college retention to pell grant status, core gpa, tops eligibility, and proportion of students on free/reduced lunch. finally, the study investigates the relationships between school accountability rankings and attendant student populations. collectively, these analyses do schools make a difference? a study of high school effects and first year college success 3 table 1 number and percent of students in star status schools, tops, and pell eligibility variable status n percent 1 3229 29.7% 2 4969 45.8% 3 2308 21.3% 4 354 3.3% stars total 10860 100.0% no 3715 34.2% yes 7145 65.8% tops total 10860 100.0% no 6799 62.6% yes 4061 37.4% pell total 10860 100.0% table 2 at-risk students by star mean percents, sd, and n stars mean std. deviation n 1 62.7788 15.34221 3250 2 43.1878 12.18475 4988 3 31.2507 15.17589 2324 4 20.0289 10.73974 355 total 45.7258 18.60767 10917 table 3 mean core gpa and percent of at-risk students in sample n minimum maximum mean std. deviation core gpa 10860 .33 4.00 3.1004 .61332 covariate atrisk 10860 2.09 100.00 45.6965 18.57601 are belived to provide a picture of the interactions between school level effects and subsequent student success in the first year of college. methods the louisiana board of regents, the state’s higher education coordinating body, provided a dataset of 17,123 student-level records of students who graduated from a louisiana high school in 2006 and enrolled in a public fouryear university the same year. the sample was refined to 10,935 due to obvious data entry errors, missing data, and graduates of private and parochial schools that are not subject to the state’s accountability system. retention is defined as a 2006 louisiana public or non-public high school graduate who began at public fouryear university in fall 2006 and enrolled at any public postsecondary institution, twoor four-year. students who were retained in the public postsecondary system were identified with a “1”, and students were not retained or transferred out of the public system were assigned a “0”. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 the louisiana school accountability system assigns a baseline school performance score (sps) comprised of data from three statewide student assessments, two subject area tests, attendance, drop-out rates, and graduation data (louisiana department of education, 2009). schools with higher baseline sps earn a higher rating from the state, and we assigned a value (star) equivalent to the number of stars each school achieved. a baseline sps of 140 or greater is equivalent to five stars, four stars to 120-39 points, three stars to 100-119 points, two stars to 80-99, and one star to an sps of 60-79. schools scoring below 60 are considered “academically unacceptable,” and we coded those as “0” (louisiana department of education, 2009). given the small number of schools designated as 4 and 5 star schools, it was decided to collapse these schools into one category (star4). unacceptable schools (o stars) and 1 star schools were also collapsed into one category for the same reason, providing the categories of star1, star2, star3, and star4 respectively. noting nclb’s stated interest in improving student performance across all sub-populations, it was deemed necessary to use a variable indicative of community wealth which could also imply social capital. heller and rasmussen (2002, august) created a “school ses” variable using the proportion of students at each school who qualified for freeor reduced-lunch and they used the term “at risk.” an atrisk variable was included to provide a means of analyzing relationships between a school’s demographics and its accountability ranking. at-risk is the proportion of students in each school who qualify for the free and reduced lunch program. the mean at-risk proportion in this sample is 45.73%, indicating that at the average louisiana public high school; nearly half of the student population qualify for free or reduced lunch (louisiana department of education, 2006). results data were analyzed using pasw (18) employing the following statistical tests, (a) multi-level modeling, (b) generalized estimating equation (gee) with ordinal logistic regression, (c) gee with binary logistic regression, and (d) trend analysis with simple contrasts. prior to analyses, descriptive statistics for the sample were collected. of interest were the disproportionate levels of students in 3 star or lower schools (96.7%) and the small number of students attending four or five star schools (3.3%). approximately 65% of the students in the sample were tops eligible while over 37% were pell eligible, suggesting that many of the students who are tops eligible could also be categorized as “at-risk.” it is also worth noting that the mean core gpa for the group was 3.10. this information is provided in tables 1-3. analysis 1: predictors of first year success in college to assess retention rates among the school districts, an unconditional multi-level model analysis revealed that there was significant variability among the districts in retention rates, indicating that a conditional model could explain additional variability. the conditional model included the following predictors, (a) pell grant (1= yes, 0 =no), (b) tops (1 = yes, 0 =no), and (c) star status (4 = highest level to 1 = lowest level) with free/reduced lunch and core gpa as covariates. results indicated that holding all other predictor variables constant; students attending star4 schools were more likely to persist compared to stars1 or 2 classified schools with odds ratios of 1.38 and 1.62 respectively. there were no statistically significant differences in retention between star 3 and 4 schools. pell grant recipients were less likely to persist with an odds ratio of 0.87. students achieving tops demonstrated no statistically significant differences in retention in this model, regardless of their school’s accountability ranking. this conditional model demonstrated a substantial improvement in model fit by reducing the quasi likelihood under the independence model criterion (qic) value from 48521.73 to 37609.37. analysis 2: predicting tops recipients by school accountability status generalized estimating equation (gee) with ordinal logistic regression was conducted to assess the effects tops status (1=yes, 0=no), pell grant status (1=yes, 0= no), core gpa, and atrisk values on star classification (1=poor to 4=highest rating). although previous analyses indicated no significant difference for the retention rates of tops students from high or low performing schools, the data indicate there is a significant relationship between a school’s accountability status and the likelihood of students receiving tops. data analysis indicate star 4 schools compared to star 1, 2, and 3 schools were more likely to produce tops recipients 1.66, 1.26, and 1.14 times respectively. analysis 3: predicting pell recipients by school accountability status results suggest that star 1 schools compared with star 2, 3, and 4 schools (while holding all other predictors constant), were more likely to produce pell recipients 1.81, 2.62, and 2.40 times respectively. analysis 4: is there a relationship between atrisk students and star classification? results indicated a statistically significant trend, f(3, 10917) = 2969.22, p < .001, eta-squared = .45. simple contrasts supported the linear trend that lower rated schools do schools make a difference? a study of high school effects and first year college success 5 reported higher levels of free/reduced lunches. these results are represented in figure 1. discussion taken collectively, our analyses provide little evidence to suggest that any of our findings confirm a substantive school level effect is translating into subsequent student success in the first year of college. in fact, the totality of our analyses suggests that neither school accountability models nor any of the other attendant variables in this study are accurate predictors of first-year college success for students. we did find that a school’s accountability ranking was predictive of the likelihood of astudent receiving tops, but one must wonder what the importance of this finding is when faced with data that indicate students achieving tops demonstrated no statistically significant differences for first year college success. furthermore, retention rates for students receiving tops from a one star school demonstrated no significant difference for retention rates than students from high performing schools. one could reasonably infer that a school’s higher ranking would indicate the likelihood of a school level effect providing some advantage to their students, but our analyses failed to document this possibility. with regard to predicting first year college success via a school’s accountability ranking, the analyses again demonstrated a statistically significant effect. students from higher performing schools do indeed tend to be successfully retained at a higher rate than those who graduate from 1 or 2 star schools. however, this too must be tempered with the findings that nearly 45% of a school’s accountability ranking can be accounted for by the level of atrisk students that attend. it seems possible (likely?) that the findings for school accountability rankings are operating as proxy measures for levels of human and social capital present in a school, at least as it pertains to first-yea college success. this possibility seems to be supported by the findings for pell grants that indicate pell recipients are less likely to persist when compared to those who do not receive the grant. in short, our initial analyses provided little evidence to advance an argument that a school’s accountability status has significant predictive value for their students’ first year college retention. we are not altogether surprised by this finding. there is a year of distance between the last direct influence a high school has upon a senior and the culmination of the freshmen year in college. a tremendous amount of variables beyond those included in this study can influence first year success in college, and those that are part of the first-year college experience seem to be far more important. additionally, the small sample size for high performing schools may also limit our conclusions. it should be noted that none of our data provide any personal profiles so we do not know how motivated these students were to attend college or the degree to which they are inclined to persevere. finally, and perhaps most importantly, we do not know the levels of attention colleges are providing to their incoming freshmen in an effort to maximize first-year retention. figure 1. simple trend analysis of at-risk populations vs star classification current issues in education vol. 14 no.2 6 it seems to us however that a broader issue emerges regarding school accountability. school accountability models are expected to discriminate between levels of school performance and the information about these schools is expected to inform public opinion regarding the quality of education received from a school. linn (2000) recognizes this reality and notes that the ready accessibility of accountability rankings is a major factor in their popularity. because of this ready access, innumerable parents have received accountability results and scrutinized high schools searching for the best possible educational experience with a belief that this decision will have a large bearing on subsequent college success for their child. in these cases parents are behaving rationally, using information provided to them via a state accountability model to maximize their child’s future educational opportunities. however, these decisions do not seem to be supported by the real world evidence. we are not arguing that choice of school decisions are without merit. there are obvious differences in instructional efficacy in louisiana schools subject to the state accountability model. to argue otherwise would be absurd. we return however to a foundational issue at this point: accountability models represent a concerted effort to document school level effects regarding student success. they posit that “schools make the student.” if that position is held regarding first-year success of graduating students it will be difficult to defend, given the results of this study. finally, no child left behind requires states to develop school accountability models. nclb also pays close attention to disadvantaged populations, requiring that data be disaggregated for this specific sub-population. our findings suggest that something far different may be happening from the outcomes nclb anticipates with atrisk populations. in spite of the considerable attention being paid to this sub-population in school accountability models there remains compelling empirical evidence indicating much work is left to be done. we do not want to overreach with our conclusions. however, this we know: in our study, nearly 280 schools with an average at-risk population of nearly 46% have individually tackled the problem of affecting substantial educational progress for their at-risk populations. yet, after all of these efforts we are still left with compelling collective evidence suggesting that at-risk students are dramatically less likely to succeed in their first year of college, regardless of how their school is rated in the accountability model. that this trend is evident so clearly after nearly a decade of nclb should give one pause when seeking solutions to the problem of elevating the educational advantages attained by students at-risk. our data also indicate that nearly 45% of the variance in school accountability scores can be explained by the percentage of at-risk population found at a particular school. this finding should be tracked over time to see if this trend changes or if it is reinforced. also, similar analyses should be conducted in different states to assess whether results generalize. as noted previously, at-risk students demonstrated no significant differences in retention rates regardless of their high school’s accountability ranking. essentially, there was nothing in the data to suggest that at-risk students from high performing schools were more likely to succeed in their first year of college. there is, however, compelling evidence that higher performing schools tend to have lower percentages of at-risk students. but, when we looked for any evidence that there was a school level effect facilitating this phenomenon none was demonstrated in our analysis. this finding supports traub’s conclusion that, in general, schools are not (cannot?) providing effects that effectively mediate for the myriad of external issues associated with atrisk populations. this implication, if it is borne out by further investigation, is significant. some states, louisiana included, are now designing or utilizing accountability systems that take performance scores from students as the primary component of a school accountability assessment (2 the advocate, 2010). in essence, the level of analysis is being extended from the school level to the teacher level. and, at least in the case of louisiana, the weight being assigned to variables other than assessment scores will “barely register in the assessment model,” as stated by the designer of louisiana’s model in the aforementioned newspaper article. if this is the case, it will be interesting to see if the trend analysis conducted for this study varies significantly. perhaps more important will be the retrospection that occurs regarding whether these efforts to document school level effects are, in fact, translating into subsequent student success. references 2 the advocate (2010). new law changes teacher evaluation. retrieved from http://www.2theadvocate.com/new/100953239.ht ml berliner, d. c., & biddle, b. j. 1995. the manufactured crisis: myths, fraud, and the attack on america’s public schools. reading, ma: perseus books. cohn, e., cohn, s., balch, d., & bradley, j. (2004). determinants of undergraduate gpas: sat scores, high-school gpa and highschool rank. economics of education review, 23(6), 577-586. deberard, m. s., spielmans, g. i., & julka, d. l. (2004). predictors of academic achievement and retention among college freshmen: a longitudinal study. college student journal, 38(1), 66-80. do schools make a difference? a study of high school effects and first year college success 7 heller, d. e., & rasmussen, c. (2002, august). merit scholarships and college access: evidence from florida and michigan. in d. e. heller & p. marin (eds.), who should we help? the negative social consequences of merit aid scholarships. linn, r. l. (2000). assessments and accountability. educational researcher, 29(2), 4-16. louisiana constitution. (1974). article viii, section 5(d). retrieved april 4, 2010 from http://www.legis.state.lsu.us/lss/lss.asp?doc=2065 76 louisiana department of education (2006). multiple statistics by site code for mfp and other public school funded student membership may 2006. may db: may 01, 2006 multi-stats by site-4 (funded membership). retrieved from http://www.louisianaschools.net/lde/pair/2289.html louisiana department of education (2009). 2006-2007 accountability summary results: a user guide for the state and district table. retrieved from http://www.louisianaschools.net/lde/uploads/1147 5.pdf louisiana department of education (2010). accountability page. retrieved august, 18, 2010 from http://www.doe.state.la.us/lde/portals/accountabilit y.html payne, k. j., & biddle, b. j. august-september 1999. poor school funding, child poverty and mathematics achievement. educational researcher 28(6), 4-13. skinner, b. f. (1971). beyond freedom and dignity. new york: knopf. skinner, b. f. (1974). about behaviorism. new york: knopf. tinto, v. (1993). leaving college: rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition (2nd ed.). chicago: the university of chicago press. traub, j. (jan. 16, 2000). schools are not the answer. the new york times magazine. cambridge, ma: harvard university. u.s. department of education (2010). high school students using dual enrollment programs to earn college credits, new reports say. retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2005/04/0 4062005a.html current issues in education vol. 14 no.2 8 article citation smith, w., droddy, j., & guarino, a.j. (2011). do schools make a difference? a study of high school effects and first year college success. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/699 author notes wade smith, phd louisiana state university 14255 dalrymple drive baton rouge, la 70803 smithwa@lsu.edu wade smith is the superintendent of the louisiana state university laboratory school. he maintains an active research agenda related to school level effects on student learning and social cognitive theory. jason droddy, phd louisiana state university 156 thomas boyd hall baton rouge, la 70803 jdroddy@lsu.edu jason droddy serves as director in the chancellor’s office at lsu, specializing in external relations. his research interests include higher education funding and successful retention of college students. a. j. guarino, phd massachusetts general institute of health 36 first avenue, charlestown navy yard boston, ma 01880 ajguarino@mghihp.edu a. j. guarino is a professor of inter-disciplinary studies and nursing at the massachusetts general institute of health. he has co-authored the following statistics textbooks: applied multivariate research design and interpretation (2006), analysis of variance designs with spss and sas (2008), and data analysis using sas enterprise guide (2009). do schools make a difference? a study of high school effects and first year college success 9 volume 14, number 2 may 28, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp angela hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser john michael tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers research into_final volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x research into factors contributing to discipline use and disproportionality in major urban schools caven s. mcloughlin kent state university amity l. noltemeyer miami university citation mcloughlin, c. & noltemeyer, a. (2010). research into factors contributing to discipline use and disproportionality in major urban schools. current issues in education, 13(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract major urban high poverty schools frequently use exclusionary discipline (i.e., out of school suspensions) and apply these consequences disproportionately to african american students. we explored school demographic variables predicting these two outcomes using data from 433 major urban, high poverty schools. results suggest a different set of predictors for the overall use of suspensions than for disproportionality. specifically, four variables significantly predicted overall suspension use (office disciplinary referrals; the proportions of african american teachers, economically disadvantaged students, and african american students) whereas only one variable significantly predicted disproportionality (percentage economically disadvantaged students). implications, limitations and future directions are provided. keywords: disproportionality; suspension; expulsion; discipline; urban; african american current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 2 about the author(s) author: caven mcloughin affiliation: kent state university address: 405 white hall, kent state university, kent, oh 44242 email: caven@kent.edu biographical information: caven mcloughlin is professor of school psychology at kent state university with a specialty in delivering services to infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families, and in policy and implementation practices for related services. author: amity noltemeyer affiliation: miami university email: anoltemeyer@muohio.edu biographical information: amity noltemeyer is an assistant professor in school psychology at miami university. her research interests include disproportionality (in special education identification and discipline), response-to-intervention, and systems change. discipline use and disproportionality 3 exclusionary discipline is frequently utilized in today’s schools. in 2006 approximately 3.3 million students in the united states received out of school suspensions (planty et al., 2009), and data suggest the practice is increasing. for example, in the state of maryland a 58.7% increase in suspensions was documented from 1995 to 2003 (krezmien, leone, and achilles, 2006). these practices are concerning considering the documented relationship between exclusionary discipline and a variety of unfavorable student outcomes (e.g., costenbader & markson, 1998; deridder, 1990; gersch and nolan, 1994; rausch & skiba, 2004; safer, heaton, & parker, 1981). also concerning is the overrepresentation of minority students as recipients of such exclusionary discipline. evidence of this phenomenon – referred to as disciplinary disproportionality – is abundant. for example, constenbader and markston (1998) found that african american students composed 23% of the student population but 45% of those receiving disciplinary actions. even more startling, mendez and knoff (2003) found that african american males in a large florida school district experienced approximately 2.5 times as many suspensions per 100 students as white males, and african american females in the same district experienced approximately 3.6 times as many suspensions per 100 students as white females. other researchers have documented similar findings of disciplinary disproportionality (garibaldi, 1992; skiba, peterson, & williams, 1997; skiba, michael, nardo, & peterson, 2002; thornton & trent, 1988; wu, pink, crain, & moles, 1982). because the use of exclusionary discipline and the overrepresentation of minority students as recipients have both been thoroughly documented, recent research has become more specifically concerned with identifying factors that predict each phenomenon. for example, school administrator philosophy and beliefs (christle, nelson, & jolivette, 2004; mukuria, 2002; current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 4 wu, 1980), ambiance of the physical school setting (christle et al.), per pupil spending (christle et al.), district ses (fowler & walberg, 1991), and public-versus-private school status (farmer, 1999) are school-level variables that have been shown to impact disciplinary practices. in addition, several student-level variables have been linked to discipline use, including gender, (mendez & knoff, 2003; skiba et al., 1997; skiba & peterson, 2000), student socioeconomic status (wu et al., 1982), and student grade-level (mendez and knoff, 2003; arcia, 2008). school typology (urban, suburban, rural) is another factor that has recently been considered. noltemeyer and mcloughlin (in press) conducted a study to examine differences in disciplinary usage and disciplinary disproportionality based on school typology. results suggested that, when compared to other school typologies, major urban districts with ‘very high poverty levels’ evidenced greater reliance on disciplinary techniques overall as well as higher levels of disciplinary disproportionality for african american students (even when controlling for student poverty level). we suggested a need for further research to identify the unique contribution of various characteristics of major urban, very high poverty schools that increase their likelihood of utilizing exclusionary discipline and disproportionally for african american students. we further recommended additional research aimed at determining the degree to which overall differences in exclusionary discipline rates explain differences in disciplinary disproportionality, as well as the degree to which differences in discipline rates can be explained by the ethnic composition of the student population. this follow-up study addresses these issues using school-level demographic variables as predictors. specifically, the purpose of our study is: (1) determine which of five variables significantly predict overall suspension usage in major urban, very high poverty schools, and identify the relative contribution of each variable; (2) determine which of six variables discipline use and disproportionality 5 significantly predict suspension disproportionality in major urban, very high poverty schools and identify the relative contribution of each variable. methods first, the district identification numbers for all major urban, very high poverty schools in the state of ohio (usa) were obtained using the “school typology” database, available at http://www.ode.state.oh.us/. “major urban, very high poverty” is one of nine school typologies identified by the ohio department of education. this typology describes school districts in major cities with high population density, very high poverty, and a very high percentage of minority students (ohio department of education, 2007). next, data on predictor variables were obtained using the ohio department of education’s power users tool. this ‘tool’ allows for access to all schools in all public school districts in ohio, disaggregated by desired characteristics (e.g., ethnicity). the following data were obtained for each of the 433 schools from the 12 major urban, high-poverty school districts in ohio for the 2007-2008 school year: percent african american teachers in the school (%aat); total suspensions per 100 students at the school (susp); percent economically disadvantaged students at the school (%ed); percent african american students attending the school (%aas); instructional expenditures per student (instr); suspensions per 100 white students; suspensions per 100 african american students; and, office disciplinary referrals per 100 students (odr). these predictor variables were selected for inclusion due to previous research suggesting a possible relationship to suspension use or disciplinary disproportionality. data for each predictor variable were exported to microsoft excel and then transferred to spss. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 6 once these variables were in spss, a new variable—called the relative risk ratio (risk) —was created by dividing the suspensions per 100 african american students by the suspensions per 100 white students. the relative risk ratio is a metric that compares an ethnic group’s risk of receiving an exclusionary discipline action to the risk of a comparison group (donovan & cross, 2002). in our investigation, this number represents the risk of african american students compared to white students. white students were selected as the comparison population because they represent the majority of students attending school in ohio. a relative risk ratio of 1.0 indicates that african american students and white students in the school are equally likely to receive an out-of-school suspension; in contrast, a relative risk ratio of 2.0 indicates african american students were twice as likely as white students to receive an out-ofschool suspension. ratios have frequently been used as used metric for assessing disproportionality (e.g., krezmien et al., 2006; mcnulty, eitle & eitle, 2004; noltemeyer & mcloughlin, in press; rausch & skiba, 2004). latino, asian american, native american, and students from other ethnic groups were not included in any analyses due to small sample sizes. some schools did not have any values for suspensions per 100 african american students or for suspensions per 100 white students because (a) no white or african american students attended the school, or (b) white or african american students did attend the school, but none were suspended during the 2007-2008 school year. if either of these variables was empty or had a value of zero, the relative risk ratio was not calculated. as a result, the relative risk ratio was available for 206 schools. analyses were conducted to determine how the participating schools differed from the non-participating schools. most notably, results suggested that participating schools had a higher number of suspensions per 100 students (white, african american, and discipline use and disproportionality 7 total) as well as a higher number of odrs per 100 students than non-participating schools. these findings should be considered when interpreting the results of the study. multiple regression analyses were run to answer each of the two research questions. multiple regression was selected as the analysis technique because it allows for an examination of the effect of several predictor variables on a dependent variable. stepwise procedures were used because there was no theoretical foundation for the relative contribution of each predictor variable to the dependent variable. the first multiple regression analysis examined the effect of five predictor variables on the overall number of suspensions per 100 students in the 346 schools for which all data were available. the second multiple regression analysis examined the effect of six predictor variables on the relative risk ratio in the 206 schools for which all data were available. this analysis included one more variable because the outcome variable from the first analysis (total suspensions per 100 students) was also used as a predictor. descriptive statistics and pearson correlations were also calculated to provide more information about the variables in each of the analyses. in addition, partial eta squared – an estimate of effect size – was used to determine the percentage of variation in the dependent variables explained by the predictor variables in each analysis. ohio data comprise the data-set for this study because the state is a bellwether that reflects national educational and political trends (noltemeyer, brown, & mcloughlin, 2010; rubin, 1997) and the percentages of white and african american individuals statewide are approximately equal to national averages based on census data (united states census bureau, 2008). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 8 results examination of the tolerance and vif values for each of the two analyses indicates no concerns with multicollinearity of data. additionally, because the η2 and adjusted η2 were close in value, both multiple regression models were judged to be reliable. results of the first regression analysis indicated that the best set of predictors for overall use of suspensions included the following variables: office disciplinary referrals per 100 students; percent african american teachers; percent economically disadvantaged students; and percent african american students, f (4, 341) = 18.51, p <.001. this suggests that the linear combination of these variables significantly predicted the number of suspensions per 100 students in the sample of ohio’s major urban, high poverty schools during the 2007-2008 school year. specifically, this set of variables predicted nearly 18% of the variability in suspension use (η2 = .18). when considering the unique contribution of each of these predictor variables to total suspensions per 100 students, the number of office disciplinary referrals per 100 students explained 8.4% of the variability. the percent of african american teachers, the percent of economically disadvantaged students, and the percent of african american students each explained 3.5%, 3.9%, and 2.1% of the variability, respectively. see table 1 for descriptive statistics. as evidenced by these data, the participating schools averaged over 32 suspensions per 100 students and over 33 office disciplinary referrals per 100 students. in addition, the majority of students in the schools were economically disadvantaged and african american, whereas less than 25% of teachers were african american. table 2 reveals a summary of the relationships between the predictor variables and total suspensions per 100 students. these results indicate the strength and direction of the relationships between each of the variables using pearson correlations. discipline use and disproportionality 9 table 1. descriptive statistics for variables in the first multiple regression analysis m sd n total suspensions 32.51 46.24 346 %african american teachers 21 17 346 %economically disadvantaged students 75 19 346 %african american students 59 31 346 office discipline referrals per 100 students 33.08 72.08 346 instructional expenditures per student ($) 6945.47 1893.43 346 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 10 table 2. pearson correlations between variables in the first multiple regression analysis susp %aat %ed %aas odr instr suspensions per 100 students 1.000 % african american teachers -.207 1.000 %economically disadvantaged students .108 .139 1.000 % african american students .126 .266 .207 1.000 office discipline referrals per 100 students .289 -.072 -.210 .008 1.000 instructional expenditures per student ($) .035 .218 .243 .261 -.085 1.000 results of the second regression analysis suggested the best set of predictors for disciplinary disproportionality (i.e., the relative risk ratio) included a single variable: percentage of economically disadvantaged students f (1, 205) = 10.48, p =001. this variable explained almost 5% of the variability in the relative risk ratio during the 2007-2008 school year (η2 = .049). see table 3 for descriptive statistics on all variables in this analysis, and table 4 for a summary of the relationship between the variables and the relative risk ratio. discipline use and disproportionality 11 table 3 reviews descriptive statistics for this second analysis. the participating schools averaged over 42 suspensions and over 37 office disciplinary referrals per 100 students. in addition, over 75% of the students in the schools were economically disadvantaged, 47% were african american, and 17% of teachers were african american. like table 2, table 4 summarizes the relationships between the predictor variables and the relative risk ratio using pearson correlations. table 3. descriptive statistics for variables in the second multiple regression analysis m sd n relative risk ratio 2.88 2.32 206 total suspensions 42.45 49.48 206 %african american teachers 17 15 206 %economically disadvantaged students 76 19 206 %african american students 47 26 206 office discipline referrals per 100 students 37.18 79.01 206 instructional expenditures per student ($) 6672.56 1727.88 206 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 12 table 4. pearson correlations between variables in the second multiple regression analysis risk %aat %ed %aas odr instr susp relative risk ratios 1.000 %african american teachers -.036 1.000 %economically disadvantaged students -.221 .191 1.000 %african american students -.116 .109 .120 1.000 office discipline referrals per 100 students -.045 -.180 -.243 .082 1.000 instructional expenditures per student ($) .047 .284 .240 .135 -.119 1.000 suspensions per 100 students -.127 -.143 .016 .341 .460 -.038 1.000 discussion compared to other school typologies, major urban high poverty schools have been documented frequently to use exclusionary discipline (e.g., adams, 1992; noltemeyer & mcloughlin, in press), and apply these techniques disproportionately to african american students (e.g., noltemeyer & mcloughlin, 2010). our study sought to explore school discipline use and disproportionality 13 demographic variables that predict suspension use and disciplinary disproportionality. results suggest a different set of predictors for the overall use of suspensions than for disproportionality. overall suspension use four variables were found to predict overall suspension use: office disciplinary referrals per 100 students; percent african american teachers; percent economically disadvantaged students; and percent african american students. the finding that office disciplinary referrals was a significant predictor of overall suspension use makes intuitive sense considering referrals that lead to suspensions begin in the classroom setting and typically require an initial referral to a school administrator. skiba et al. (1997) found that most behaviors prompting an office disciplinary referral occurred in the classroom and were made by teachers. they also found that nearly half of the referrals were written by small percentage of teachers who made high numbers of referrals. these findings along with results of our investigation suggest that schools seeking to minimize exclusionary discipline techniques – and thus its negative and unintended consequences – should aim to provide teachers with professional development and supports to prevent and handle behaviors within the classroom. the finding that the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in a school significantly predicts suspension use is also logical given previous research demonstrating a positive relationship between the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in a district and suspension use (e.g., christle, nelson & jolivette, 2004; fowler & walberg, 1991; mendez, knoff, & ferron, 2002;). poverty can increase stressors on a child and his or her family, which may in turn increase the risk of poor behavioral outcomes. in addition, children living in poverty may bring different experiences and beliefs than their middleor upper-class teachers. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 14 the ethnic composition of both teachers and students also predicted overall suspension rates. specifically, a positive relationship emerged between the percentage of african american students and suspension rates, and a negative relationship emerged between the percentage of african american teachers and suspension rates. the relationship between african american students and suspension is expected given the documentation of disciplinary disproportionality over the past several decades (e.g., constenbader and markston, 1998; garibaldi, 1992; mendez and knoff, 2003; skiba et al., 1997; skiba et al., 2002; thornton & trent, 1988; wu et al.,1982). although the negative relationship between african american teachers and suspension use remains unexplained, speculations can be made based on other research. for example, when examining preservice teachers’ perceptions about characteristics of effective teachers, witcher and onwuegbuzie (1999) found that minority preservice teachers less often endorsed behavior management skills (e.g., authoritative, good disciplinarian) as characteristic of effective teachers than did white preservice teachers. at the same time, they more often endorsed ethical behaviors (e.g., impartial, fair, unbiased) as characteristic of effective teachers than did their white counterparts. these results suggest there may be cultural differences in views on discipline and its application. in addition, saft and pianta (2001) found that when children and their teachers have the same ethnicity, teachers rated the relationships more positively. because of the positive correlation between the percentage of african american teachers and students in this sample of urban schools, these more positive relationships and reduced potential for cultural incongruence could contribute to the findings. finally, instructional expenditure per student was not a significant predictor in the model. christle et al. (2004) found that in one state higher per-pupil spending was linked to higher discipline use and disproportionality 15 suspension rates; however, they indicated these findings needed replication. in our study, a positive relationship was noted; however, it was extremely weak and not statistically significant. disproportionality in suspension use our findings related to disciplinary disproportionality provide less insight into factors contributing to the phenomenon. the only significant predictor of disproportionality in suspensions was the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in the schools; however, the relationship was opposite that found when considering overall suspension use. specifically, as the percentage of economically disadvantaged students increased, disproportionality decreased. in addition, this variable explained very little of the proportion of variance in disproportionality. this weak and contradictory role of poverty is interesting, yet perhaps unsurprising; skiba & peterson (2000) in a study on the factors contributing to disproportionality in special education identification, found that poverty made a weak and inconsistent contribution, having a positive effect in some disability categories and a negative effect in others., using multiple regression, they found that a district’s level of poverty did not predict its overall disproportionality rates nor disproportionality in two disability categories; in two other disability categories it was a significant negative predictor, and in the final disability categories it was a significant positive predictor. additionally, a more recent study (pelham, 2007) suggested that professional development efforts aimed at increasing teachers’ understanding of student poverty had no significant effects on disciplinary disproportionality, and in some cases actually led to a greater discrepancy in suspensions between african american and white students. when considering the findings of our study, it certainly appears that poverty level positively predicts overall suspension use and negatively predicts disproportionality rates. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 16 it is surprising that reliance on suspensions and office disciplinary referrals did not significantly predict disciplinary disproportionality, particularly given evidence that suspension rates do predict disproportionality in special education identification (e.g., skiba et al., 2004). also, the percentage of african american teachers and the percentage of african american students did not significantly predict disciplinary disproportionality. together, the failure of any of these variables to significantly predict disciplinary disproportionality – while they concurrently predict overall suspension rates – suggests that a different mechanism may explain overall discipline rates and disciplinary disproportionality. limitations these data derive from a single midwestern state in the usa; the degree to which our results accurately generalize to other states and other settings is unknown and should be considered with caution. in addition, we examined only major urban, very high poverty schools. previous research has suggested predictors may vary based on school typology. it is important to conduct similar analyses on other school typologies to avoid generalizing the results to nonurban schools. many schools in the sample had to be eliminated due either to an insufficient population of african american students or to an insufficient number of suspensions. it appears that the eliminated schools engaged in less exclusionary discipline than the participating schools; therefore, the analyses are really generalizable only to a circumscribed set of urban schools. finally, the study relied on existing data and the degree to which suspensions were administered and documented consistently between schools is unknown. future research we anticipate these results contributing to the growing understanding of factors that contribute to exclusionary discipline and disciplinary disproportionality. multiple avenues for discipline use and disproportionality 17 future research emerge from the study. given prior contradictory results, coupled with our results, it is reasonable to assume that future research needs to move beyond an examination of poverty and attempt to capture the primary force behind disproportionality. in the case of overall suspension rates, it appears that although some contributing factors have been identified, there are further unstudied explanatory factors. with regard to disproportionality, it appears that none of the primary explanatory factors were captured using simple school-level demographic variables as predictors. future research should explore other predictors. most notably, it seems wise to move beyond demographic variables to explore the effect of process and attitudinal variables. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 18 references american psychological association. 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(1982). student suspension: a critical reappraisal. the urban review, 14, 245-303 discipline use and disproportionality 21 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word empowering parents choice of schools.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x empowering parents’ choice of schools: the rhetoric and reality of how hong kong kindergarten parents choose schools under the voucher scheme fung, kit-ho chanel the chinese university of hong kong and lam, chi-chung the hong kong institute of education citation fung, k. & lam, c. (2011). empowering parents’ choice of schools: the rhetoric and reality of how hong kong kindergarten parents choose schools under the voucher scheme. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract school choice gives parents greater power over their children’s education. but ever since the pre-primary education voucher scheme (pevs) was introduced in hong kong in 2007, school choice has become a hotly debated topic. the scheme was introduced to empower kindergarten parents in choosing a school for their children by offering them direct fee subsidies that, in return, could propel education quality forward. parents in the private kindergarten sector, however, have long enjoyed the privilege of choice, and they have been preoccupied with an intense interest in their children’s academic upbringing, even if it means compromising the holistic development of their children. this runs counter to the principles of a quality education. therefore, the urge to further promote parental kindergarten choice will likely allow parental academic interests to continue to prevail and hence invalidate the pevs’ promise to improve current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 education quality. the result is a unique dilemma between school choice for parents and the promise of education quality within hong kong’s unique private kindergarten sector. keywords: school choice, parental school choice, voucher scheme, kindergarten education, hong kong empowering parents’ choice of schools 3 about the author(s) author: fung, kit-ho chanel affiliation: the chinese university of hong kong address: rm. 308, ho tim building, department of curriculum and instruction, faculty of education, the chinese university of hong kong, shatin, new territories, hong kong email: kithofung@cuhk.edu.hk biographical information: assistant professor of the department of curriculum and instruction, faculty of education, the chinese university of hong kong author: lam, chi-chung affiliation: the hong kong institute of education address: department of curriculum and instruction, 10 lo ping road, tai po, new territories, hong kong email: lancc@ied.edu.hk biographical information: professor of the hong kong institute of education current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 empowering parents’ choice of schools: the rhetoric and reality of how hong kong kindergarten parents choose schools under the voucher scheme strengthening parental school choice is not a new idea; indeed, in the past three decades it has become a global trend in education management. gordon (2008) observed that giving more power to parents in choosing schools is “a powerful rallying cry for reform” (p. 177). on the academic side, studies of parental school choice have not been restricted to the philosophical rationale that supports parent rights in education; empirical research has also generated evidence that school choice increases parent satisfaction and student performance. in hong kong, this has become a hot issue ever since the launch of the pre-primary education voucher scheme (pevs) in 2007.1 the scheme aims to empower kindergarten parents to choose a school for their children by offering them direct fee subsidies, which in theory could exert pressure on schools to improve education quality. yet, kindergarten parents in hong kong have long had a choice of schools, because the kindergarten sector has always been privately run. so to what extent would increasing parental choice of kindergartens help propel education quality within the private kindergarten sector in hong kong? since little research has been done to address the question the new scheme raises, this study focuses on this question. through survey questionnaires and focus-group interviews with parents, the study (a) identifies the school choice preference of kindergarten parents, and (b) documents the concerns underpinning parental choice. in addition, the findings will facilitate discussion about the tension between empowering parents in school choice and the promise of the pevs to improve education quality in hong kong’s private kindergarten education sector.2 1 the pre-primary education voucher scheme introduced to the hong kong preprimary education sector in 2007/2008 aims to “increase investment, enhance quality.” parents of young children who attend kindergartens that have registered with the scheme are offered a direct fee subsidy, which then empowers them with the financial ability to choose a school. 2 kindergarten education in hong kong has never been recognized as part of the formal education system. prior to the pevs, government subsidy of kindergarten education was very limited. instead, kindergartens have been run by a large number of service providers with different backgrounds under the private education sector. in hong kong, kindergarten education is offered at three levels: kindergarten level 1 (k1) is for children aged 3–4, kindergarten level 2 (k2) is for those aged 4–5, and kindergarten level 3 (k3) is for those aged 5–6. most kindergartens run a half-day service, with some offering full-day classes. empowering parents’ choice of schools 5 school choice: how is it perceived? school choice is an issue that has attracted much attention in the education realm. the promises of school choice have been widely discussed in the literature and have been articulated from different perspectives. school choice under the parents’ purview: a philosophical justification parents are prominent stakeholders in the upbringing of their children. the philosophical justification for school choice says that parents should have exclusive authority over educational decisions. it argues that permitting parents a good deal of power and control over how their children are educated is the right of parents in a democratic society (reich, 2008). lubienski (2008) further made sense of the philosophical rationale of assigning parents the primary school decision role for a number of reasons: (a) parents know the strengths and weaknesses of their children best and will act in their children’s best interest, so it is right for them to exercise responsibility over their children’s education; (b) families are interested in reinforcing their values in their children, and so it is appropriate for a family to look for schools that serve the values they practice at home; (c) parents are proxy consumers for their children in school, and rolling back the decision about schooling within the parents’ purview will strengthen the institution of the family; and (d) parental choice is encouraged simply because it is the divine right of parents, who place the best interests of their children at the forefront of their concerns. in short, school choice empowers the voices of parents and protects the family’s desire to give their children the best education possible (cohen & farrar, 1995; wise & darling-hammond, 1995). at its roots, school choice is a manifestation of social trust. parents are trusted to make their own sensible educational choices among a variety of options, and families are drawn back into the education system (leone, 2003; paulu, 1995). empirical grounds for the benefit of expanding parental choice some empirical work has supported the argument that parents should be respected with the right to decide which school to send their children to. houston (2004) argued that expanding current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 parents’ right of school choice made them more inclined to invest themselves in their children’s education. because parents would be more involved, there would be more collaboration between home and school. at the same time, godwin, kemerer, and martinez (1998) and teske, fitzpatrick, and kaplan (2007) found that parents who had some say over the choice of schools reported higher levels of satisfaction with school performance in both how their children were educated and the effectiveness of school discipline. after being given more choice, fewer parents raised complaints about their schools (bracey, 2008; raty, kasanen, & laine, 2009). naismith (1994) found a link between this satisfaction and feelings of greater involvement and the feeling of pride of ownership; moe (2001) correlated parents’ satisfaction with having a greater degree of choice over the kind of education service they used. children’s academic achievement has also shown the positive effects of parental choice. studies have shown that school choice can benefit children in multiple ways. weinschrott and kilgore (1998) stated that “increasing parents’ choice over how and where their children are educated gives parents a sense of ownership and enthusiasm that contribute directly to improvements in students’ performance” (p. 307). raywid (1995) added that the concept of school choice recognizes that learners are individuals with unique talents and specialized needs, and choice gives parents the freedom to find a school that will design curricula to accommodate their needs. in the same way, when school choice can help with student diversity, it can also improve learning motivation and academic progress (perkins-gough, 2008). howell and peterson (2006) found that school-choice students, on average, demonstrated fewer disruptive behaviors, including fighting, property destruction, racial conflicts, truancy, and absenteeism. school choice for education quality: a market theory perspective school choice that empowers parents to decide which schools their children attend injects the education system with “a degree of consumer-driven, market-style competition” (feinberg & lubienski, 2008, p. 2). weidner and herrington (2006) argued that “market theory applied to educational settings postulates that parents are the best judge of which school their children empowering parents’ choice of schools 7 should attend and that parental choice among schools will lead to increased competition” (pp. 27-28). from an economic perspective, competition in a market economy creates incentives for schools to provide services and goods that fulfill the needs of the market, and so schools should improve their service and quality (kahlenberg, 2003). similarly, school choice forces schools to compete for student enrollment. if schools are to survive in a competitive education market and attract families, they will have to improve the quality of the education they offer in order to truly reflect parental wishes. in this way, schools become more accountable to parents (lips & feinberg, 2007). heid and leak (1995) listed the various ways in which school choice can improve schools: “bringing about needed structural changes, recognizing student diversity, fostering competition and accountability, improving educational outcomes, and increasing parental involvement in the educational process” (p. 390). freedom of choice for parents and market competition become a promise for better schools. and when school administrators are forced to be responsive to parent preferences, the locus of control shifts and changes in school governance are brought about. parental choice and market competition further reform the consumer-provider relationship between parents and schools, replacing it with a collaborative partnership (ball, 2007). parental preferences and school choice what factors do parents consider when choosing a school for their children? weidner and herrington’s (2006) study on the florida mckay choice program found that parents based their decisions on a school’s academic quality, teacher quality, special education, curriculum, and class size. weinschrott and kilgore (1998) found that most parents in the educational choice charitable trust choice program in indianapolis, indiana, took into account academic performance, financial aid, religious values, and school safety. a series of studies spanning the us, new zealand, chile, and great britain all found that the academic performance of a school was central to parent decisions (armor & peiser, 1997; fiske & ladd, 2000; gauri, 1998; gewirtz, ball, & bowe, 1995; glatter, woods, & bagley, 1997). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 parents in asian countries have the same concerns, as found in a number of studies on early childhood education programs. a cross-cultural study carried out by zhou, ma, and aoyagi (2007) on parental expectations for early childhood education found that parents in china, japan, and korea held high expectations for their children’s academic achievement. among them, “chinese parents had the highest expectation of their children’s education” (p. 145). hewitt and maloney’s (2000) work on malaysian parents’ perceptions of preschool education revealed that parents saw preschool education as “a formal academic preparation” (p. 86) for their children, and their most preferred school activities were those that improved their children’s academic development. studies of hong kong’s early childhood education sector have found similar results. a large-scale study organized by opper (1994) on early childhood education and services in hong kong in the 1990s showed that parents “expect preschools, both kindergartens and day nurseries, to prepare children for primary schooling by learning precisely those skills that children will be learning at the primary one level” (p. 50). ebbeck (1995) found that hong kong parents had extreme visions of the purpose of early childhood education and expected their children to be assigned large amounts of homework each day, even at the very young age of three. parents in cheng, lau, fung, and benson’s (2009) study made it clear that they preferred schools where teachers used traditional academic drills and rote learning to ensure the academic readiness of their children for primary school. the findings of these studies across nations have a great deal in common: the predominant interest of parents in their children’s academic well-being. economists would likely argue that parents worldwide are primarily interested in high-performing schools because those schools are thought to be better able to “enhance the economic prospects for their children” (lubienski, 2008, p. 107). if this is how parents handle school choice at an individual level, to what extent do their overwhelming academic concerns serve to stimulate quality improvement in the education realm? while economists and market theorists have argued that empowering empowering parents’ choice of schools 9 parents is a vehicle for creating incentives for schools to improve performance and thus promise education quality, might there not be pitfalls that come with school choice, particularly when parents are focused mainly on developing their children’s intellect at the cost of other skills? the situation is even more complex in hong kong’s private kindergarten education sector, where the voice and choice of parents have always been highly respected and kindergartens have long marketized their services to fit with parents’ desires (fung, 2007; fung & lam, 2009). in such a case, what dilemma arises between expanding parental school choice and improving education quality, both of which are the initiative behind the pevs? the current study aims to answer this question. method this research, split into two consecutive phases, used (a) self-administered questionnaires first to capture an overview of the considerations embedded in parental choice in the first phase (between may and july, 2009), and (b) focus group interviews with parents to document their school choice preferences in the second phase (between july and october, 2009). this is a mixed approach, bringing together quantitative data in the first phase and qualitative data in the second. the qualitative interview data supplemented the quantitative questionnaire data and enhanced the overall richness of the field data gathered. collectively, both sets of data supported an empirical analysis of the characteristics of parental school choice after implementation of the voucher system in hong kong. parents as key informants parents of kindergarten children were the key informants in the study. they were selected by a three-step process of stratified quota sampling. first, government statistics were examined to identify and select 30 of the 758 kindergartens from all 18 districts of hong kong that had registered with the pevs (education bureau, 2008) in academic year 2008/2009. coverage of all districts ensured that families from the upper, medium, and lower social classes were included in the study. special care was also taken in the selection to ensure that no two schools chosen were current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 run by the same service provider. second, with participation consent obtained from the kindergartens, the present study was introduced to the parents of these schools, who were invited to fill out a parent questionnaire. it was hoped that 30 parents (10 from each of the three kindergarten grades, i.e., k1, k2, and k3) from each school would agree to take part in the questionnaire survey. this design ensured that the data would broadly represent the perceptions of parents from all three kindergarten levels. it was clear to all participating parents that their participation was voluntary. lastly, upon completion of the questionnaire survey, invitation was once again extended to the parents who had taken part to participate in focus group interviews. in the end, nine groups of parents from nine kindergartens expressed willingness and so were interviewed. the anonymity and confidentiality of the identity of individual parents were guaranteed. research instrument parent questionnaire: a quantitative tool to gather an initial impression of concerns in parental choice the parent questionnaire focused on parental considerations when choosing a school. the questionnaire listed 24 items, including education quality and ancillary school characteristics (table 1 shows details of the list). respondents were requested to tick the factors they considered in choosing a school. they were also asked to rate the importance of the factors by ranking them in order and completing a 4-point likert scale survey. the second section of the questionnaire covered respondent demographic data. empowering parents’ choice of schools 11 table 1 kinds of kindergarten (kg) school information education quality of schools ancillary school characteristics 1. academic content school missions and visions teaching methods and strategies 2. academic performance academic achievement of other children in the school primary school allocation for kg graduates 3. program-related data professional qualification of teaching staff choice of extracurricular activities program offerings (half-day/full-day) background of the kindergarten service provider members of the school board records of school board meetings and decisions school organization and the management team monthly salary range of principal and teaching staff school fee school financial information link with parents no. of teaching staff quality review: results and report kgs’ self-evaluation report no. of classes no. of students school facilities outdoor playground and facilities additional charges for extracurricular activities network with other kgs and primary schools of the 900 questionnaires distributed to the parents of the 30 participating kindergartens, 862 were returned. of these, 841 were found completed and regarded as effective questionnaires; the remaining 21 were incomplete with missing data and so were discarded, giving a satisfactory response rate of 93.4%. this high response rate reflected not only the interest of the participating parents in the study, but also their interest in issues relating to the practice of the pevs, being a milestone of the kindergarten sector. the parents who filled out the questionnaires had different educational backgrounds with different total monthly household incomes. table 2 lists details of the parents’ demographic particulars. table 2 demographic particulars of parents who filled out the questionnaires education background total monthly household income form 5 level matriculated level university degree or above less than hk $10,000 between hk$10,000 and hk$20,000 between hk$20,000 and hk$40,000 over hk $40,000 k1 parents 157 40 88 52 91 94 48 k2 parents 153 31 89 40 88 79 66 k3 parents 180 35 68 41 96 74 72 total 490 106 245 133 275 247 186 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 each completed questionnaire was coded individually and grouped under one of the three kindergarten levels to form three data sets (k1, k2, and k3). to classify into various categories parental considerations when choosing a school, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted. after the major underlying factors were identified, a one-way anova was conducted to test for significant differences in these factors among parents from different kindergarten grades. in addition, to test whether education and income levels affected parental school choice, a correlation analysis was carried out to check for a relationship between these two variables. since both were ordinal variables, pearson’s correlation was selected to recognize the correlation. pasw (predictive analytics software) statistics 18 was adopted to perform the statistical analysis. focus group interviews: a qualitative means to invite parental sharing of choice preferences to complement the data derived from the questionnaires, focus group interviews with parents were conducted to gather more in-depth information and the views of parents on choosing a school. the interviews were designed to be natural, conversational, and semistructured with “grand tour questions” (goodwin & goodwin, 1996). the guide was refined and revised upon reflection on the pilot interviews conducted with another three groups of parents who had also filled out the parent questionnaires. all interview questions were openended and framed mainly around the criteria that parents had considered when deciding on a kindergarten for their children. the aim was to invite them to share their “deep” and internal perspectives (gorman & clayton, 2005). ceja (2006) remarked that “this data collection method allows the researcher to obtain data in the participants’ own words from which the researcher can then develop insight on how participants interpret a particular phenomenon” (p. 91). of the 81 parents from the nine schools who initially showed an interest in the focus group interviews, some could not attend the interview meetings for various personal reasons. ultimately, 49 parents, consisting of 46 mothers and 3 fathers, with 17 from k1 classes, 15 from k2 classes, empowering parents’ choice of schools 13 and 17 from k3 classes, were interviewed. the length of the interviews varied from 40 to 77 minutes. all interviews were conducted by the chief investigator at the kindergartens and were audiotaped with permission. the audio recordings were later transcribed. parent responses collected at the interviews were examined, coded with corbin and strauss’s (2008) “open coding” method, and categorized into groups by making reference to the nature of their responses. the systematic management of the qualitative interview data facilitated comparisons and contrasts across categories, the addition of new phenomena to the research areas, and the discard of materials falling outside the research focus. in the end, the interview findings were cross-analyzed with the statistical data to enrich the interpretation and articulation of findings. results factor structure of parental choice of a school from the 841 questionnaires filled out and returned, all responses of parents to the 24 items on school information were analyzed using factor analysis. the analysis sought to reveal groupings, if any, of the numerous concerns hidden within the parents’ choice of a school. the analysis extracted six factors from the parents’ responses, which explained 64.36 of all variance. these six factors included school hardware, school software, school background, school administration, school performance, and finance and charges (table 3). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 table 3 factor loadings of the structure underpinning parental choice of a kindergarten (kg) school factor loadings items 1 school hardware 2 school software 3 school background 4 school administration 5 school performance 6 finance & charges no. of students 0.795 no. of classes 0.771 no. of teaching staff 0.690 outdoor playground and facilities 0.644 school facilities 0.612 choice of extracurricular activities 0.565 professional qualification of teaching staff 0.492 teaching methods and strategies 0.678 program offerings (half-day/full-day) 0.650 link with parents 0.611 quality review: results and report 0.507 school missions and visions 0.739 background of kindergarten service provider 0.674 school organization and management team 0.612 kgs’ self-evaluation report 0.452 records of school board meetings and decisions 0.850 members of the school board 0.710 monthly salary range of principal and teaching staff 0.614 primary school allocation for kg graduates 0.788 network with other kgs and primary schools 0.763 children’s academic achievement in the school 0.691 school fee 0.770 additional charges for extracurricular activities 0.589 school financial information 0.581 empowering parents’ choice of schools 15 group differences underpinning parental school choice upon derivation of the factor structure, a one-way anova was conducted to explore whether significant group differences prevailed among the k1, k2, and k3 parents. the anova analysis revealed significant group differences across all six factors; therefore, a posthoc tukey analysis was further applied to delineate these differences. they are reported as below. school hardware. the post-hoc tukey analysis on significant group differences for school hardware, f(2, 829) = 29.26, p < 0.01, revealed that whereas the k2 parents (m = 3.19) and the k3 parents (m = 3.16) considered school hardware similar in importance when choosing a kindergarten, their perceived level of importance was below that of the k1 parents (m = 3.48), although all means were higher than the midpoint of 2.5. school software. the post-hoc tukey analysis on significant group differences for school software, f(2, 832) = 9.92, p < 0.01, showed again that whereas the k2 (m = 3.36) and k3 (m = 3.32) parents perceived the importance of school software similarly, their perceived level of importance was lower than that of the k1 parents (m = 3.48), although the means were unanimously higher than the midpoint of 2.5. school background. similar post-hoc comparison results were found for the factor school background, f(2,826) = 9.09, p < 0.01. this showed that the k1 parents’ ratings (m = 3.20) were significantly higher than those of the k2 parents (m = 3.08) and the k3 parents (m = 3.07), with a midpoint at 2.5. finance and charges. the post-hoc tukey analysis on significant group differences for finance and charges, f(2,800) = 17.39, p < 0.01, once again disclosed a similar difference in group patterns as with school hardware, school software, and school background. that is, the k1 parents (m = 3.02) regarded finance and charges a piece of school information vital to their current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 school choice decision more than the k2 parents (m = 2.81) and the k3 parents (m = 2.72), with a midpoint at 2.5. worth noting, the k1 parents consistently rated the above four factors as higher in importance compared with the k2 and k3 parents, though the latter groups also recognized the importance of these four factors at a level higher than the midpoint. perhaps the findings suggest that the k1 parents, being new to a school, were relatively more eager than their k2 and k3 counterparts to familiarize themselves with the different aspects of a school when deciding on one. this information also possibly informed them as to whether they needed to choose a different school for their children for k2 and k3. school administration. the post-hoc tukey analysis unfolded a different pattern with respect to significant group differences for school administration, f(2, 775) = 8.51, p < 0.01. for this particular factor, both the k2 (m = 2.51) and the k3 (m = 2.45) parents rated it with a mean higher than that of the k1 parents (m = 2.29); the means calculated from the k1 and k3 questionnaire data, however, were below the midpoint 2.5, whereas that of the k2 data was just slightly above the midpoint. indeed, the overall mean (m = 2.41) of this factor was below the midpoint of 2.5. such results actually portrayed an interesting picture for this factor, suggesting that school administration was not a crucial element in determining school choice. school performance. the post-hoc tukey analysis exhibited yet another group difference pattern in the factor school performance, f(2,825) = 3.57, p < 0.05. both k1 (m = 3.32) and k2 (m = 3.23) parents shared similar views concerning the importance of this factor, the mean of which was higher than that of the k3 parents (m = 3.20). nevertheless, all means were still higher than the midpoint of 2.5. the relatively low rating for school performance derived from the k3 data can likely be explained by the point of time at which the k3 parents were asked to fill out the questionnaires. the questionnaires were distributed to the parents in the last month (june) of the 2009 academic year. this was also the time when all k3 children had been centrally assigned a primary school empowering parents’ choice of schools 17 place, to which the children would move on with their primary school education the following year. thus, it was understandable that when the k3 parents no longer needed to make further kindergarten choices for their children, a kindergarten’s performance might not be as relevant to their interests, although the observed mean (3.20) was still higher than the midpoint. parental interest shown in a wide spectrum of school information despite the significant group differences in how parents across the three kindergarten levels observed the importance of a factor with respect to their school choice, the statistical means derived from the parent questionnaires revealed that all parents rated all factors as central to their choice of a school, with most associated means higher than 2.5 (table 4). these sets of descriptive findings suggest that all parents took into consideration a wide spectrum of school features when choosing a school for their children. in other words, the parents were very serious about their children’s education and made their school choice cautiously. table 4 descriptive data of the six factors of all parents n m sd school k1 parents 282 3.48 0.44 hardware k2 parents 269 3.19 0.46 k3 parents total 279 830 3.16 3.28 0.45 0.47 school k1 parents 285 3.48 0.45 software k2 parents 270 3.36 0.46 k3 parents total 278 833 3.32 3.39 0.43 0.45 school k1 parents 279 3.20 0.44 background k2 parents 268 3.08 0.44 k3 parents total 280 827 3.07 3.12 0.43 0.44 school k1 parents 268 2.29 0.54 administration k2 parents 247 2.50 0.53 k3 parents total 261 776 2.45 2.41 0.48 0.52 school k1 parents 278 3.32 0.57 performance k2 parents 267 3.23 0.48 k3 parents total 281 826 3.20 3.25 0.46 0.51 finance and k1 parents 278 3.02 0.50 charges k2 parents 254 2.81 0.56 k3 parents total 269 801 2.72 2.85 0.46 0.52 * midpoint = 2.5 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 prevalence of academic concerns in parental choices although parents were interested in a large number of school characteristics, crossexamining the descriptive data with the qualitative data gathered from the parent focus-group interviews uncovered a prevalence of academic concerns when choosing a school. of the six factors characterizing parental school choice, school software, with an overall mean of 3.39 (midpoint = 2.5), was rated the most important factor of all. making up this particular factor were four items on school information, namely, “teaching methods and strategies,” “program offerings (half-day/full-day),” “link with parents,” and “quality review: results and report.” table 5 lists the mean of each item; teaching methods and strategies had the highest mean calculated across all three groups of parents. in terms of the mean derived statistically from the questionnaire responses, the k1, k2, and k3 parents all weighted teaching methods and strategies as the most important item determining their school choice compared with the remaining 23 items on school information. table 5 means of the five school information items in the school software factor k1 k2 k3 m sd m sd m sd teaching methods and strategies 3.64 0.54 3.43 0.53 3.44 0.55 program offerings (half-day/full-day) 3.57 0.54 3.40 0.54 3.36 0.55 link with parents 3.41 0.59 3.38 0.58 3.28 0.55 quality review: results and report 3.30 0.64 3.21 0.62 3.19 0.62 * midpoint = 2.5 keen parental interest in the kinds of teaching methods and strategies used by schools was reflected in the parents’ sharing at the focus group interviews: empowering parents’ choice of schools 19 this kg [kindergarten] assigns lots of homework and delivers a curriculum that drills the children … i don’t mind drills … it can secure a smooth transition to primary school studies. (k1, ds-021-i/6/8)3 this school designs plenty of worksheets for children and assigns them chinese and english writing exercises every day … i have confidence that my daughter is going to benefit from its primary school-type learning and teaching. (k2, ch-010-i/1/29) this school delivers the hardest curriculum in the district … frequent dictations … it helps to prepare my child for future primary studies … and i find this a desirable school. (k1, ds-021-i/2/24) given the choice between didactic learning and child-centered, activity-based learning (advocated as the best professional practice to promote quality learning; curriculum development council, 2006), 28 of the 49 parents interviewed opted for didactic learning. of these 28 parents, 17 had children who were in the final year of kindergarten and would be moving up to primary school the following year. many of these parents stated in the interviews that they expected kindergartens to prepare their children for a smooth transition to primary school study by ensuring they were academically ready. this school equips children well for the demanding learning in primary schools … and the school is my first choice. (k1, sv-011-i/5/19) i do think that kgs should teach to the primary school curriculum … develop children’s readiness for primary school studies … primary level 1 holds high expectations of the children … if kgs can follow the primary school curriculum, the children would then be guaranteed a smooth transition to their primary school learning. (k2, tm-008-i/7/25) i find that what my daughter is learning at k3 can prepare her well for primary school studies … and so i find this kg a desirable school. (k3, ch-010-i/1/30) 3 (k1, ds-021-i/6/8) is an interview transcript entry code. it is made up of five parts. “k1” refers to a parent from a k1 class; “ds” represents the name of a kindergarten; “021” is the voice file of the interview; “i” stands for “interview data”; “6/8” indicates the page and entry number, respectively, of an interview transcript. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 this kindergarten stresses language learning heavily and training in both mandarin and english … a good foundation in language proficiency and usage is vital to my son’s future learning; in particular he is going to primary school level one next year … and so i made no school choice other than this one. (k3, wk-007-i/1/20) these interview transcripts implied that most parents thought that “the principal aim of kg education is to lay a solid foundation for the children for subsequent primary school learning” (k2, wk-018-i/4/4). with this personal perception in mind, parents did not limit their academic concerns to “teaching methods and strategies,” but extended them to “academic achievement of other children in the school” and “primary school allocation for kindergarten graduates,” which were enfolded in the factor school performance. this factor, with an overall mean of 3.25 (midpoint = 2.5), was another one perceived by parents as influential in their choice of a school, and parents with children in all three levels rated highly the items “academic achievement of other children in the school” and “primary school allocation for kindergarten graduates” (table 6): most of the graduates of this kindergarten are placed in a prestigious primary school … some are even assigned to the “gifted” class. (k1, sv-011-i/5/19) i find this kindergarten gets a satisfactory academic record in terms of both the intellectual readiness of its graduates and the kinds of primary schools where its graduates are placed … it secures for my daughter a smooth transition to the subsequent primary school studies, and so i have chosen it. (k2, ds-021-i/2/1) table 6 means of the items “academic achievement of other children in the school” and “primary school allocation for kindergarten graduates” k1 k2 k3 m sd m sd m sd academic achievement of other children in the school 3.27 0.70 3.19 0.58 3.19 0.56 primary school allocation for kindergarten 3.49 0.62 3.34 0.60 3.29 0.59 empowering parents’ choice of schools 21 graduates * midpoint = 2.5 parental academic interest did not stop after parents had decided on a school; instead their interest kept up throughout the course of their children’s kindergarten study. in another question asking parents, “which aspects of school information would you like to learn more about in the future through the schools’ dissemination of information?”, 63% of k1 parents, 62% of k2 parents, and 52% of k3 parents said they would continue to be interested in the kinds of teaching methods and strategies delivered in school (appendix 1). similarly high percentages of the k1 (64%) and k2 (61%) parents showed eagerness to learn about primary school allocation for kindergarten graduates when answering the same question, even though they were not equally interested in the “academic achievement of other children in the school” after deciding on a school. again, fewer k3 parents responded to this question with a curiosity toward the “primary school allocation for kindergarten graduates” of their children’s school in the future. as articulated earlier, when the k3 parents were asked to complete the questionnaires (june and july, 2010), their children had already been officially assigned a primary school placement. any further information regarding primary school allocation would not be of great interest to them because their children would shortly be leaving kindergarten. analyzing the questionnaire data alongside the interview transcripts made it obvious that a majority of kindergarten parents shared a common concern about the quality of teaching, in particular the academic content delivered by the schools and that related directly to their children’s academic learning. they were desperate to choose a kindergarten that practiced a “pre-” primary learning curriculum and that gave their children a primary school mode of teaching and learning. parents believed that preprimary learning would equip their children with the essential qualities for a smooth transition to primary education, and could further guarantee success in their children’s primary school learning. the overwhelming concern of parents over their children’s next stage of academic learning appeared to have inhibited their awareness of the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 arguments against early academic instruction. they were also unable to recognize the undesirable effects of premature academic drilling. this view is in contrast with the government’s and most preprimary educators’ preference for student-centered education. for some time, both academics and the government have argued that young children should be encouraged to be “active constructivists” and that schools should provide them with a rich learning experience to enable them to experiment and explore. this approach encourages them to construct knowledge actively and go through progressive developmental stages at their own pace (chan & chan, 2003; curriculum development council, 2006; dupree, bertram, & pascal, 2001; vygotsky, 1978). pragmatic concerns in parental choice the questionnaires and interviews suggested that academics were not the only concern of parents. the data also revealed their pragmatic and nonacademic concerns, such as “the teaching team of the school is very caring” (k3, tm-008-i/4/18), “the school offers nutritious snacks freshly prepared by the school cook everyday” (k1, wk-020-i/2/2), “the school gets a regular cleaning routine” (k2, wk-019-i/1/10), and “the school is spacious, with an outdoor playground and a number of special rooms for activities” (k3, pl-002-i/1/23). among the myriad of pragmatic and nonacademic aspects that parents mentioned, the geographical proximity of a school, fullversus half-day program offerings, and religious affiliation were the most common ones named in the interviews. school location the influence of school location was exemplified by the parents’ intention in picking a neighborhood school for the sake of convenience. although school location was not an item given to parents to check in the questionnaires, 40 of the 49 parents interviewed referred to choosing kindergartens located “close to where i live” (k1, an-009-i/1/6); “on the ground floor of the building” (k2, an-009-i/1/6); “downstairs in my building” (k2, al-012-i/2/2); “within walking distance of the housing estate” (k3, pl-002-i/1/8); and “across the road” (k1, ch-010empowering parents’ choice of schools 23 i/2/15). other parents added that the proximity of a kindergarten “saves a child the trouble of traveling” (k2, ds-021-i/2/11); “accommodates the family routine of dropping off their children to school and picking them up after school, in particular for a working mother” (k2, wk-019i/1/28); and “facilitates a mother of three children to cope with the hectic schedule of caring” (k1, al-012-i/2/17). to parents, proximity meant convenience (hsieh & shen, 2000); they identified a school within their local, residential district. in a sense, parental choice of a kindergarten was geographically defined. full-day versus half-day programs another pragmatic ground influencing parent decisions was the choice between fulland half-day programs. most parents were highly interested in information on the kinds of program offerings available. the statistical means that parents gave to “program offerings (half-day/fullday)” showed that k1-k3 parents all considered this variable equally important, and their ratings were significantly higher than the midpoint of the scale (see table 5). indeed, this item was considered by the k2 and k3 parents as second only to the most important item, “teaching methods and strategies,” among the 24 school information items listed in the parent questionnaire. in addition to the survey, 29 parents explicitly stated in the interviews that they wanted full-day programs because “i have to work” (k1, wk-020-i/1/14), “it fits with my working schedule better” (k2, tm-008-i/3/8), and “i am a working mother” (k3, pl-002-i/1/8). traditionally, the family offers the first socialization setting for young children, and parents are their primary caregivers and educators. these functions, however, have been increasingly supplemented by other socialization agents as a result of the rapid increase in the number of families where both parents work (opper, 1992). more and more parents in hong kong have thus become consumers of kindergarten services as a way to compromise between their parental and work roles. this was a major reason these parents wanted full-day programs for their young children. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 religious affiliation in the interviews, 21 of the 37 parents whose children attended religious schools cited this affiliation as another important reason for their selection. they were inclined to pick a kindergarten because “of its religious background” (k1, pl-002-i/1/16) or “the protestant background of the school” (k2, tm-008-i/3/6). these parents were religiously observant, which was reflected also in their responses to the survey item labeled “background of the kindergarten service provider.” all ratings of this particular item were over 3.00, which was significantly higher than the midpoint (table 7). table 7 means of the items “background of the kindergarten service provider” k1 k2 k3 m sd m sd m sd background of the kindergarten service provider 3.10 0.59 3.11 0.55 3.03 0.52 * midpoint = 2.5 in short, parents explored and chose religious schools in order to select one that possessed a religious background compatible with the religious values of their family. goldring, hawlety, saffold, and smrekar (1997) noted that “when parents choose schools, their choices reflect value-based preferences” (p. 370). as lubienski (2008) added: “families have an interest in reproducing their values in the next generation” (p. 104). obviously, schools present young learners with a vital socialization setting outside the home and are one of the first and key microsystems that surround children (bronfenbrenner, moen, & garbarino, 1984). as such, parents who hold high aspirations for the development and upbringing of their young children make careful school choices for their youngsters on behalf of their family. they therefore choose schools that affirm their family values and beliefs (weidner & herrington, 2006). furthermore, these schools continue to nurture these family beliefs and values outside the home (wringe, 1994). prioritizing academic over pragmatic concerns empowering parents’ choice of schools 25 although parents expressed their concerns about the academic and nonacademic aspects of kindergarten education services in the questionnaire, a thorough scrutiny of the interview transcripts made it clear that, when academic desires conflicted with pragmatic desires, academic interests always ranked above all other considerations. although parents were prone to choose a kindergarten in their neighborhood, many maintained their focus on academic performance. as a strategy, parents first considered several of the kindergartens near their home, and among them preferred the one that delivered a curriculum that was heavily weighted academically: there are three kindergartens located on the ground floors of different buildings in our housing estate … but this school delivers the hardest curriculum in the district … frequent dictations … it helps to prepare my child for the future primary studies … and i find this a desirable school. (k1, ds-021-i/2/24) there is a kindergarten underneath the block where i live, but i did not put my daughter there … instead, i chose to enroll my daughter in this school and walk her to school every day for five minutes … because i find this kindergarten has a satisfactory academic record in terms of both the intellectual readiness of its graduates and the kinds of primary schools where its graduates are placed … it secures for my daughter a good preparation for her subsequent primary school studies, and so i have chosen it. (k2, sv-011-i/5/21) likewise, when parents opted for a full-day program, it was not merely because “the fullday program keeps my child at school for most of the day … it means more free time for me [the mother] … to make my life easier” (k1, sv-011-i/1/ 29). also, a full-day program “means engaging my son longer in formal learning” (k2, sv-011-i/2/13). a sense of academic concern was a vivid underpinning in parents’ preferences for full-day programs. one parent made this point clear: to select a kindergarten that offers a full-day program is indeed one of my concerns … but to enroll my child in a school that teaches to the primary school curriculum to secure him a current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 smooth transition to the subsequent primary school studies is even more important … and this school delivers a curriculum close to that of the primary school … so even though i have to bus my child to school every day, i still find this school my best choice. (k2, sv011-i/5/11) lastly, when parents chose a school for its religious background, it seemed at first glance to reflect their desire for a school with the family’s religious values. but a closer look into the parents’ hearts told another side of their intention. such a choice may not necessarily mean that the parents wanted their child exposed to a particular religious creed. one k3 mother, for example, shared her reasons for choosing a catholic school despite herself being protestant. i ultimately decided on this kindergarten because it is a catholic school … though i myself am protestant … studying in a catholic kindergarten makes it easier to get into a catholic primary school because they are administered by the same catholic school board … catholic schools are often academically better than other schools … if i can get my girl into a good catholic primary school … she probably has a higher chance of being placed in a good catholic secondary school in the future, and then getting into a good university afterwards. (k3, sv-011-i/4/5) this mother was willing to compromise her religious preference in order to obtain an academic start that would secure her child a smooth transition from kindergarten through to primary, secondary, and even university education. this example vividly illustrates the overwhelming concern for academic performance among parents of kindergarten-age children in hong kong. kindergarten parents seemed to combine their acute academic values with many other pragmatic and nonacademic values, but when the pragmatic concerns conflicted with academic interests, the latter almost always came first and determined their school choice. indeed, the overwhelming academic concern of parents found in this study echoes much of what previous empowering parents’ choice of schools 27 research has found (cheng, lau, fung, & benson, 2009; ebbeck, 1995; opper, 1994). it suggests once again that a long-standing, overwhelming academic concern is central for most parents. academic consideration as a shared and overriding concern in parental choice across different socioeconomic groups the academic concern of parents revealed in the study was found to be shared by parents from different socioeconomic backgrounds. a pearson’s correlation analysis on the demographic data collected in the questionnaires examined whether a relationship prevailed between parental education levels and income levels. the results showed that education levels were significantly related to income levels in a positive direction (r = 0.326, p < 0.01), suggesting that the more education the parents had obtained, the higher their income levels. to facilitate subsequent analysis, parents of each kindergarten level were categorized into four socioeconomic groups: high (group 1), medium high (group 2), medium low (group 3), and low (group 4). that is to say, all k1 parents were divided into these four socioeconomic groups, as were the k2 and the k3 parents. by the same token, parent responses to the questionnaires were reorganized and compiled into separate data sets according to the socioeconomic groupings. this facilitated analysis of any differences in school choice concerns among parents from different socioeconomic groups. the statistical means derived from the parent questionnaires on these reorganized data sets divulged that parents from all socioeconomic groups shared a concern over school education quality. whether quality was reflected in the academic content, the academic performance, or the program-related data of the kindergartens making up the construct of the parent questionnaire, parents across the four socioeconomic groups rated each item related to education quality with a mean higher than the midpoint 2.5 (tables 8, 9, and 10). these items were also the ones occupying most of the top positions when all 24 items of school information listed in the questionnaire were ranked by their means. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 28 the descriptive statistical data further showed that parents from the same kindergarten levels but of different socioeconomic backgrounds gave each education quality item a fairly similar rating. despite the observed range in the means, all ratings were over 3.0 on a 4-point likert scale, implying the importance of these items to the parents’ choice of school. among the diverse items of school information mirroring the education quality of schools, “teaching methods and strategies” was rated by parents from all socioeconomic groups with the highest mean of all, between 3.39 and 3.84. in a sense, whether the parents belonged to the high or the low socioeconomic group, they all were concerned with the pedagogical practices adopted by the kindergartens. these statistical analyses, together with the parent views documented in the interviews, made it explicit that academics was a shared concern among the kindergarten parents and was not restricted to a particular socioeconomic group. whether they were well-educated or not, whether they had a high income or not, parents in general bore a keen concern over the academic preparation and the intellectual development of their children. this specific concern then drove them to choose a kindergarten based upon the school’s academic performance, thinking that it could ensure their children’s academic readiness for the subsequent primary school studies and help them confront the competitive educational context in hong kong. table 8 means of all four socioeconomic groups of k1 parents rating items related to school education quality group 1 (high socioeconomic group) group 2 (medium-high socioeconomic group) group 3 (medium-low socioeconomic group) group 4 (low socioeconomic group) school education quality m sd m sd m sd m sd academic content school missions and visions teaching methods and strategies 3.34 3.59 0.57 0.56 3.33 3.84 0.63 0.44 3.45 3.80 0.54 0.40 3.54 3.78 0.50 0.42 academic performance children’s academic achievement primary school allocation for kg 3.30 3.52 0.69 0.60 3.44 3.53 0.61 0.61 3.34 3.48 0.68 0.62 3.42 3.63 0.62 0.53 empowering parents’ choice of schools 29 graduates program-related data professional qualification of teaching staff choice of extracurricular activities program offerings (half-day/fullday) 3.50 3.48 3.50 0.62 0.57 0.57 3.57 3.49 3.68 0.50 0.51 0.47 3.64 3.57 3.75 0.53 0.52 0.43 3.43 3.51 3.80 0.62 0.55 0.40 * midpoint = 2.5 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 30 table 9 means of all four socioeconomic groups of k2 parents rating items related to school education quality group 1 (high socioeconomic group) group 2 (medium-high socioeconomic group) group 3 (medium-low socioeconomic group) group 4 (low socioeconomic group) school education quality m sd m sd m sd m sd academic content school missions and visions teaching methods and strategies 3.25 3.47 0.55 0.53 3.32 3.39 0.54 0.52 3.23 3.49 0.68 0.56 3.29 3.50 0.53 0.50 academic performance children’s academic achievement primary school allocation for kg graduates 3.21 3.33 0.59 0.62 3.16 3.29 0.54 0.63 3.20 3.45 0.61 0.53 3.22 3.40 0.56 0.59 program-related data professional qualification of teaching staff choice of extracurricular activities program offerings (half-day/full-day) 3.37 3.23 3.43 0.54 0.55 0.53 3.30 3.15 3.35 0.57 0.61 0.56 3.34 3.31 3.49 0.51 0.58 0.53 3.32 3.28 3.45 0.54 0.52 0.50 * midpoint = 2.5 table 10 means of all four socioeconomic groups of k3 parents rating items related to school education quality group 1 (high socioeconomic group) group 2 (medium-high socioeconomic group) group 3 (medium-low socioeconomic group) group 4 (low socioeconomic group) school education quality m sd m sd m sd m sd academic content school missions and visions teaching methods and strategies 3.13 3.40 0.56 0.56 3.18 3.41 0.49 0.56 3.32 3.54 0.63 0.53 3.42 3.63 0.53 0.49 academic performance children’s academic achievement primary school allocation for kg graduates 3.13 3.23 0.56 0.58 3.17 3.19 0.51 0.53 3.23 3.44 0.58 0.61 3.32 3.42 0.57 0.53 program-related data professional qualification of teaching staff choice of extracurricular activities program offerings (half-day/full-day) 3.22 3.17 3.33 0.62 0.54 0.56 3.15 3.08 3.32 0.62 0.55 0.56 3.41 3.23 3.44 0.60 0.52 0.50 3.30 3.19 3.57 0.50 0.51 0.50 * midpoint = 2.5 discussion “bounded rationality” in parental school choice as revealed in the data analysis, parents’ interest in the education of their children focused primarily on the academic status of the kindergarten, and particularly on how well the school prepared their children for primary school learning. this academic interest is justified by the influence of china’s confucian heritage culture. confucianism holds that effort and willpower are the essence of successful learning (lee, 1996). parents thus uphold a belief that equates hard work with academic success (lam, ho, & wong, 2002), and they expect their children to take learning seriously. and in the competitive and exam-dominated educational environment of hong kong, people generally see academic achievement as a road to future success and a ladder to a better life (chan, 2004; lam, 1999). so it is not surprising to find that parents are highly concerned about their children’s academic performance. parents make every effort to train their children to study diligently and do well in their schoolwork. and with this strong academic value, parents choose schools for their kindergarten-aged children by looking for programs that deliver instructional curriculum, that practice didactic teaching, and that adhere to rote learning. these are the pedagogical practices that parents in hong kong generally believe can equip their children with the intellectual readiness needed to succeed later in the formal education system (fung & lam, 2009). in market theory, parents are ambitious consumers of education services. they are assumed to be rational judges in choosing a school in the best interests of their children (goldring, hawlety, saffold, & smrekar, 1997). moreover, these rational choices should “increase their children’s likelihood of success” (willms & echols, 1993, p. 64). beyond a doubt, all parents in the study very much wanted to get the best education for their young children. yet the way they defined “best education” was restricted to their personal perceptions current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 32 of how to succeed in hong kong’s competitive academic environment. ultimately, school choice was determined by the parents’ very subjective definition of the best education. this makes the rationality of their school choice a “bounded rationality,” according to the framework of simon (1983) and march (1986). wells (1993) describes the concept of bounded rationality: the theory of bounded rationality acknowledges that the decision maker’s perception of the real world affects his or her decisions, whether it is an accurate perception or not. such constraints on the decision making process lead to … “satisfying” as opposed to maximizing … in other words, decision makers choose the satisfactory school given the amount of information they have on the available options and their perception of where they fit into the society, but it may not be the same school they would choose given more information or experience. (p. 32) in other words, parents are not irrational. they make rational choices for their children to secure for them a good academic start and a place on the fast track to success. but their rationality was based on their overriding concern for drilling their children to prepare for subsequent primary school studies. this sidetracked concerns for the holistic and balanced development of their children, as continually denounced in the quality assurance inspection (qai) annual reports4 (hong kong education commission, 2000/2001, 2001/2002, 2002/2003, 2003/2004, 2004/2005, 2005/2006, 2006/2007). if such is the case, what is likely to happen when the pevs further empowers parents to make school choices based on such a narrow academic focus? to what extent will the expansion of parental school choice actually improve education quality, an official intention of the pevs? the dilemma between school choice and the promise of education quality 4 the quality assurance inspection (qai) is conducted annually by the quality assurance division of the education bureau of hong kong. the annual qai focuses on four key domains: (a) management and organization, (b) learning and teaching, (c) support for children and school ethos, and (d) children’s development. empowering parents’ choice of schools 33 school choice and education quality are dominant topics in contemporary education reform. the concept of school choice as a means to improve education quality is “carried primarily through the language of vouchers” (tannenbaum, 1995, p. 12). the idea behind education vouchers is that when the key consumers of education (parents) decide where and how to educate their children, their desires will become the market demands. these demands are channeled through market forces, pushing schools to undertake “new educational ventures, which would presumably succeed only if they truly reflected the wishes of parents” (cohen & farrar, 1995, p. 43). the result is that schools become market-driven. under this theory, school choice guarantees education quality by strengthening market forces. this positive effect of school choice on education has been widely discussed (brighouse, 2008; feinberg & lubienski, 2008; heid & leak, 1995; kahlenberg, 2003; lips & feinberg, 2007; weidner & herrington, 2006). hong kong’s kindergarten sector, however, is quite peculiar. it has never been recognized as part of the formal education system or incorporated into the government subsidies for free education. rather, it has long been run as a kind of private education business by individual parties and nongovernmental organizations, such as churches. so the status of kindergartens as a private business has not changed with the introduction of the pevs. resembling instead the operation of businesses in the commercial sector that are driven by market forces, kindergarten services are run like private businesses that are inevitably marketoriented to ensure their survival. as the major consumers in this private education market, parents enjoy total freedom of school choice. they are free to buy whatever kind of education best fits their preferences. and kindergartens have always seen the power and control parents have as the dominant “invisible current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 34 hand.” parental school preferences may even have come to overshadow the authority of kindergartens in determining which learning and teaching strategies to use (fung, 2007). kindergarten curricula are thus often designed to meet parental expectations. although kindergartens are well aware that they should observe official government curriculum guides (curriculum development council, 2006; curriculum development institute, 1996), many opt to adjust their service mission to fit parental preferences. this way, many schools end up formulating their policies and culture to satisfy parents and so compromise their professional stance because of the intense competition in the private kindergarten market. in the power struggle between parents and kindergartens, parents always have the upper hand. if parents have been enjoying the privilege of school choice and kindergartens have been operating in line with parental preferences, any further expansion of parental school choice by the pevs will only magnify the one-sided power struggle between parents and kindergartens. the influence of parental preference will become more acute. parental choice dictates pedagogical practice and undermines the autonomy of kindergartens. this sort of parental influence on the pedagogical practice of kindergarten teachers was documented in an earlier study conducted by the authors in academic year 2006/2007 (fung & lam, 2009): “the pedagogical decision making of kindergarten teachers in hong kong: professional autonomy versus market orientation.”5 to secure enrollment for their programs, teachers in the study had 5 the study was a qualitative research, conducted in academic year 2006/2007, investigating what kindergarten teachers in hong kong did in class, how they planned their lessons, and what they considered in making pedagogical decisions. field observations and interviews were used. four kindergarten teachers with the pseudonames marlene, laura, nelson, and carmen were invited to be the teacher informants of the study. they were invited not only because they all had a basic professional qualification to work in kindergarten, but also because they came from schools that fell within the two major categorizations of kindergartens in hong kong. among them, both laura and marlene worked in religious, nonprofit kindergartens, whereas nelson and carmen were teachers in a private independent kindergarten. each teacher informant was observed three times. on average, each observation visit lasted over 2 hours, with some approaching 3 hours. the teacher informants were also interviewed before and after each observation, in addition to a round-up interview at the end of the data collection process. in total, each teacher informant was observed three times and interviewed seven times. empowering parents’ choice of schools 35 to compromise their own professional beliefs and values about how children should learn. in other words, the ability of parents to choose a school and their concerns about their children’s academic upbringing were intruding on the professional mission and vision of kindergartens, as well as the pedagogical practice of teachers. this kind of market-driven education service runs counter to the education style that the government advocates. it is in opposition to child-centered, play-based curricula that treat children as active learners, respect them as owners of their learning, foster their holistic development, and nurture their motivation for life-long learning. the influence of parents’ traditional education values could explain the criticisms documented in the qai annual reports since 2000/2001, which have criticized kindergartens for placing undue emphasis on intellectual matters, limiting the diversity of developmentally appropriate learning opportunities, and not allowing children to learn skills naturally. yet if the pevs further expands parental school choice, it will only make these problems worse, which in turn will undermine its promise to improve education quality. the above analysis of hong kong’s unique kindergarten sector makes it clear that the good intentions behind the pevs are not feasible in hong kong’s already market-driven kindergarten sector. any attempt to further empower parents in school choice increases the adverse parental influence on the pedagogical choice of schools. the current situation calls for attention, especially when many parents are unaware of the arguments against early academic instruction and premature academic drilling. many studies and local schools have noted the influence of parents on kindergarten education. but the urge to promote school choice through the pevs and to intensify the marketization of kindergarten education has probably overlooked the undesirable effects that parental influence can have on the professional quality of current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 36 kindergarten education services. and so there has emerged a unique dilemma between school choice and education quality within hong kong’s distinctive private kindergarten sector. conclusion in general, parents try to get the best education for their young children. therefore, it makes sense philosophically to argue that “permitting parents to select a school for their children is crucial” (reich, 2008, p. 21). family advocates have also argued that entrusting parents with school decisions is to respect the liberty, rights, and interests of parents in a democratic society (feinberg & lubienski, 2008). libertarians argue explicitly that giving parents control over school choice encourages them to play a proactive role in the education of their children (bell, 2008). it invites parents to communicate their desires and needs to the schools. in return, schools and families are more likely to collaborate smoothly. and parents become more satisfied with the education they have chosen for their children. furthermore, economic theory argues that, when school choice turns parents into education-service consumers, their choices become a powerful market force to push schools—in particular the schools not chosen—to improve their education to fit the needs and wants of parents. school choice thus benefits the different stakeholder parties in children’s education through the motivating force of parental control. when parental choice is central to school decisions, parental preference becomes crucial and cannot be neglected. care should be taken, however, when parents focus primarily on their children’s academic outcomes and the schools’ academic excellence without considering the holistic and balanced development of their children. also, the problem of allowing parental preference to dominate the pedagogical autonomy of kindergartens should be resolved. on the contrary, schools should take every possible and potential opportunity to educate parents about their children’s developmental levels and learning needs. schools should teach parents the basic empowering parents’ choice of schools 37 educational principles of early learning and development and encourage them to adopt proper, developmentally appropriate expectations for the education of their young children. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 38 references armor, d., & peiser, b. 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(2007). parental expectation of early childhood education: comparison between china, japan, and korea. frontiers of education in china, 2(1), 140-147. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 46 appendix 1 ratings given by all parents to school attributes they would like to know more about in the future from the school which aspects of school information would you like to learn more about in the future through the schools’ dissemination of information? k1 parents k2 parents k3 parents yes no na* yes no na* yes no na* background of the kindergarten service provider 24% 75% 1% 38% 59% 3% 36% 61% 3% school mission and vision 41% 59% 0% 45% 53% 2% 41% 57% 2% members of the school board 6% 93% 1% 17% 81% 2% 15% 82% 3% records of school board meetings and decisions 13% 87% 0% 34% 64% 2% 29% 68% 3% school organization and the management team 31% 68% 1% 36% 62% 2% 29% 67% 4% monthly salary range of principal and teaching staff 9% 91% 0% 23% 74% 3% 17% 79% 4% school fee 29% 71% 0% 36% 62% 2% 27% 69% 4% school financial information 15% 85% 0% 34% 63% 3% 26% 71% 3% link with parents 56% 44% 0% 48% 49% 3% 37% 59% 4% no. of teaching staff 40% 59% 1% 38% 59% 3% 30% 66% 4% professional qualification of teaching staff 53% 47% 0% 60% 37% 3% 48% 49% 3% quality review: results and report 56% 43% 1% 73% 25% 2% 72% 25% 3% kgs’ self-evaluation report 45% 54% 1% 49% 48% 3% 46% 50% 4% no. of classes 41% 59% 0% 39% 59% 3% 28% 68% 4% school capacity 45% 55% 0% 44% 53% 3% 30% 66% 4% school facilities 66% 34% 0% 48% 50% 2% 38% 58% 4% outdoor playground and facilities 68% 32% 0% 48% 49% 3% 36% 60% 4% choices of extracurricular activities 58% 41% 1% 48% 49% 3% 40% 57% 3% additional charges for extracurricular activities 26% 74% 0% 33% 64% 3% 28% 69% 3% program offerings 58% 41% 1% 61% 37% 2% 42% 54% 4% teaching methods and strategies 63% 36% 1% 62% 36% 2% 52% 45% 3% academic achievement of other children in the school 42% 58% 0% 46% 51% 3% 33% 63% 4% primary school allocation for kindergarten graduates 64% 35% 1% 61% 36% 2% 47% 49% 4% network with other kindergartens and primary schools 41% 58% 1% 52% 45% 3% 35% 61% 4% * na = no answer. empowering parents’ choice of schools 47 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word 731-3048-2-le.docx 1 volume 14, number 3 october 4, 2011 issn 1099-839x quality assurance in private higher education in china osman ozturgut university of the incarnate word the economic modernization drive of the 21st century has not only fostered the growth of a market economy [in the people’s republic of china] but has also created the need for a structural change in education (zha, 2006). mok (2009) explained that when the chinese government realized that the state alone could not keep up with the increasing demand for higher education, it allowed non-governmental institutions to get involved. however, with the fast expansion of the private higher education system, maintaining educational quality and integrity has not been a priority. administrators have been rather incompetent in hiring qualified faculty and staff. they have minimum or no experience in curriculum and program development. laboratory facilities and technological services are insufficient while living and learning conditions for students, staff, and faculty are far from satisfactory. china’s private higher education needs a major overhaul even from the start. keywords: chinese education, quality assurance, private higher education. although the growth of the private sector has been important in supporting the overall expansion in higher education, there is increasing anxiety about the ability of the sector to deliver appropriate quality in the light of problems in attracting suitably qualified teachers and students. (lin, 2005) the economic modernization drive of the 21st century has not only fostered the growth of a market economy [in the people’s republic of china] but has also created the need for a structural change in education (zha, 2006). traditionally, china’s higher education sector had been relatively disengaged from the international arena and the appropriate forms of quality assurance methods. however, with the entrance into world trade organization (wto) and the increasing need for the higher education services within the country, the need for developing quality assurance methods gained urgency. this study looks at the current situation of the private higher education in china and highlights the challenges to initiate a discussion on quality assurance strategies. mok (2009) explained that when the chinese government realized that the state alone could not keep up with the increasing demand for higher education, it allowed non-governmental institutions to get involved. this occurred not only because of the demands of the rapidly globalizing economy and interdependency among nations, but also because of the conventional governmental institutions’ lack of structural, political, and financial ability to provide the much needed education for the growing population. from the opening up in 1978, china’s private higher education has had several phases: • 1978-1991: the 11th communist party committee allowed the establishment of private higher education institutions. • 1992-1996: with deng xiaoping’s travel to southern china, diploma programs have been created. • 1997-2003: the regulations for private higher current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 2 • education institutions were formulated, which led to a faster growth for private higher education institutions. • 2003-2020: with the law on private education promotion, private higher education institutions receives recognition from the central government. • 2020-beyond: this is the period when private education in china will reach its maturity with quality assurance systems in place with recognition from the higher education field abroad. china’s intent in establishing private higher education institutions (pheis) was to give more responsibility to its own entrepreneurs to help develop the education system in china. for a genuine development, local initiatives had to be supported as these would focus on the problems of the communities surrounding these initiatives. it was not simply an attempt to increase the number of higher education institutions (heis) to close the gap within the system but also to give more responsibility and accountability to these institutions with multidimensional development model to improve the social, political, educational, and economic quality of life. with all the good intentions to provide access to the masses, it still remains to be seen how effective these pheis are and will be for the development of the country. it is imperative that a method be developed to assure the quality of such institutions before the privatization of higher education gets out of control. theoretical framework: human capital theory with china already a key player in the world market, officials as part of their economic development plan placed emphasis on human capital. human capital theory explains that a large gradation in earning by level of education reflects to returns to individuals’ investment in education (becker, 1993; mincer, 1974). human capital theorists view humans as economic resources. for them, the idea of education is a form of “capital” and the notion of education, a form of “human capital” (little, 2000, p. 287). for any given economic enterprise, regardless of what is being produced and of where, how and under what conditions it is being produced, “more educated workers will always be more productive than their less educated counterparts” (baptiste, 2001, p. 189). baptiste further explained the pedagogical implication by claiming that “human capital theorists treat people as homo economica: radically isolated, pleasure-seeking materialists who are born free of social constraints or responsibility, who possess no intrinsic sociability, and who are driven, ultimately, by the desire for material happiness and bodily security” (p. 195). when today‘s students reach adulthood, their children will gain by virtue of the informal education received at home. much learning takes place at home, where the child’s attitude towards school is also largely shaped. better educated parents are more likely to raise children who recognize the value of education, in terms of job opportunities, as well as in terms of cultural opportunities (weisbrod, 1971). properly conceived, education produces a labor force that is more skilled, more adaptable to the needs of a changing economy, and more likely to develop the imaginative ideas, techniques, and products which are critical to the process of economic expansion and social adaptation to change. “by doing so— by contributing to worker productivity—the education process qualifies handsomely as a process of investment in human capital” (weisbrod, 1971, p. 74). if one pursues education because knowledge is desired for its own sake, or if one considers that education can enrich one‘s life through increasing the variety and depth of intellectual pursuits, then educational services can be treated as consumption good. in this sense, education is an end itself. however, if one obtains educational services solely because of their impact upon future occupational choices and earnings, then educational services can be treated as an investment good (hu, lee, & stromsdorfer, 1971). education is, after all, much more than a means of raising productivity or otherwise bringing financial returns. china currently spends about 2.5% of its gross domestic product (gdp) on investment in education. at the same time, roughly 30% of its gdp is devoted to physical capital investment. in comparison, the figures for the united states are 5.4% and 17% respectively. in south korea, they are 3.7% and 30% (heckman, 2003). china is below average among comparable countries in expenditure on investment in people. heckman (2003) further argued that education and skills are important determinants of economic growth and investment in education and this is part of the solution for china‘s development. first of all, human capital is productive because of its immediate effect on raising the skills levels of workers. that is to say, if a mechanic is trained to repair cars, the mechanic will be more productive in repairing cars. investment in human capital, through investing in education in this case, has direct effects to the growth of the economy. ruth hayhoe, an expert on chinese education, argued against the position that most scholars are trying to explain the present changes and transformation of the chinese higher education through dependency and modernization theory. little (2000) claimed that “theories of economic and social modernization became central frameworks for the analysis of economic growth and societal development, and became influential also in determining national economic and social policy and policy implementations” (p. 286). kang (2004) further confirmed that, “modernization means that chinese higher education should remain at the forefront of contemporary development of sciences (including natural sciences, social sciences and humanities) and technology in both ideas and practice” (p. 149). hayhoe (1996) further argued that the theory of modernization presented an optimistic model for quality assurance in private higher education in china 3 development of those societies that were not yet modern and industrialized. however, the transformation in chinese higher education cannot be explained by means of a single scientific concept. even though hayhoe (1989) suggested that dependency theory and world systems theory have been valuable in raising the question of why modernization has not worked in china, she leaves out human capital theory in the justification of her argument. hayhoe (1989) argued that, for modernization, “knowledge interaction is conceived as a technical contribution to progress along a defined economic continuum involving the rationalization of educational provision to create as efficiently as possible the types and levels of manpower needed for rapid economic growth” (p. 17). for dependency, international educational relations appear to consolidate pressures to conform to the political-economic interests of the capitalist world by “co-opting a compliant elite and reinforcing educational structures that favor capitalist development strategies” (p. 165). dependency theory as suggested by little is that “poor countries are conditioned by their economic relationships with rich economies to occupy a subordinate and dependent role that inhibits development by expropriating investible surplus” (p. 287). even though china’s emphasis on developing human capital is not the single explanation why the private higher education institutions were allowed in china, it is still a significant reason. private higher education in china throughout the late ming period, private learning academies had been in abundance (ding & liu, 1992). chen (1981) reported that there were about 12 hundred private learning academies in the ming era (1368-1644). from the end of the opium wars in the mid-1880s to the formation the people’s republic in the early 1950s, private higher learning institutions were an integral part of society. following the footsteps of the soviet model, all private institutions of higher education were transformed into public ones by the year 1952. with this, the long history of private education in china had closed its first part (borthwick, 1983; zhu, 1994; lin, 1994; mok, 1997). since then, there have been attempts to privatize higher education in china—though markedly inefficient and ineffective. since the late 1990s, the number of private heis in china has been increasing steadily. zhou and xie (2007) reported that in 1996 there were 1,219 private higher education institutions (including vocational colleges). most of them had enrollments of hundreds of students and a few with over a thousand. hua (2009) reported that “the total number of private schools of all levels and categories increased 52%, from 61,200 in 2002 to 93,200 in 2006, and the corresponding number of students in these schools also rose, from 11.16 million in 2002 to 23.13 million in 2006, a 107% increase” (p. 40). in order to respond to the needs of the public for more higher education accessibility, but to also limit the establishment of private educational institutions, the ministry of education established a more controlled alternative. public universities were give permission to establish second-tier colleges that used their names and credentials. these second-tier affiliated colleges are selffunded institutions and are considered a more reputable substitute to non-public-university-affiliated private universities. table 1 the number of private/minban institutions in china 1999 2000 2001 2002 2004 minban vocational colleges 950 999 1040 1085 1633 minban higher education 37 43 89 133 228 institutions adapted from mok, k. h. (2009). the growing importance of the privateness in education: challenges for higher education governance in china. compare. 39(1), 35-49. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 4 initial steps for privatization of higher education in china article 19th of the national constitution stipulates that “the state encourages the collective economic organizations, state enterprises and other social forces to set up educational institutions of various types in accordance with the law” (article 19). this was the first official step towards privatization of higher education in modern china. later in 1993, when the chinese communist party (ccp) issued guidelines for the reform and development of education in china, it acknowledged that the central government could not alone cope with the increasing demand for higher education. it provided information regarding how different educational structures and funding models were needed in order to meet the needs of higher education (ccpcc, 1993). this policy report outlined a formal private education development plan and the overall structure of governance for such institutions. in 1997, chinese government released its first official regulatory plans and in 2002, passed a law on promotion of private higher education in china, updating the regulations. by then, there were 133 non-governmental institutions granting diplomas per ccp regulations. 2003 was a significant year for private higher education in china. the law on the promotion of nongovernmental education and regulations of the people's republic of china on chinese-foreign cooperation in running schools (moe, 2003) was finally approved. the state began to move away from the financing and provision of higher education towards the role of “regulator, enabler, and facilitator” (mok, 2005, p. 236). driven by the desire to modernize higher education, to build a strong science and technology base as well as to learn from the more advanced educational systems in the west, chinese higher education underwent a major reform process which introduced a stronger market based element into its management and delivery (cai, 2004). the reform process has been characterized by four key components: table 2 key components of the reform process commercialization education introduced a co-funding model in which students (and/or parents) shared its cost with the state. (wu & zheng, 2008): decentralization focusing investment in higher education in the areas where the impact was likely to be greatest, this approach also helped the government to control some of the costs associated with the expansion of the sector. (cai, 2004) expansion demand for higher education in china increased rapidly as the economy developed, driven by both the demand from individuals and the economy’s need for a skilled and educated workforce. (ennew & fujia, 2009) marketization an equally important part of the process was the increased involvement of non-state sectors in higher education. this constitutes the fourth strand in the reform process, namely marketization and the development of private (non-state) institutions (usually described as minban). these minban institutions are typically of three types, private universities, private colleges and other private institutes. (ennew & fujia, 2009) quality assurance in private higher education in china 5 the central government intended to distribute its responsibility of providing education resources and opportunities for citizens to local governments and any individual or group who was capable of running schools and universities, including foreign investments (yang & gale, 2004). unfortunately, there has been increasing anxiety about the ability of the sector to deliver appropriate quality in the light of problems in attracting suitably qualified teachers and students (lin, gao, & liu, 2005). because of the speedy and somewhat unregulated system, there has been a lack of stability in this market. ding (2008) argued that “ it remains to be seen whether profit motives can be aligned with improving educational standards, or whether these universities can attract enough able and qualified teachers to deliver a decent education to their growing number of students” (p. 1). according to a 2001 survey conducted by private higher education committee of china nearly half of the 1,134 private heis set up had shut down their operations. overall, there were only forty private higher education institutions in the survey that were operating without major concerns (zhou & xie, 2007). furthermore, there were 13 pheis in beijing, of which only two survived in early 1990s. by 2004, only 35 of the pheis were allowed to admit students. in henan, out of 118 pheis, only ten of them had survived as of 2004. by 2005, there were only 50 pheis operating of the total 280 in late 1980s (see jiang, 2005; peng, 2004; guo, 2002; zhou & xie, 2007). zhuoda tourism career college was the first phei in hainan province. it was established by zhuoda corporation in 2001, a hebei province based real estate company, and began recruitment in the same year. in the first year, zhuoda recruited about 300 students. these students arrived on campus only to find that the infrastructure was only being constructed. they gradually left the school, leaving only 190 students. in 2003, zhuoda was only able to recruit 26 students for the associate’s degree program. in 2004, they invested 40 million chinese yuan to transform a holiday village into a temporary campus. the students, therefore, finally were able to have an official site for class meetings. zhuoda welcomed its largest class freshmen in 2005—600 incoming students. however, because of the lack of facilities, poor management, and lack of teachers, zhuoda had to merge with guangzhou chaoshan vocational college (zheng, 2006). existing frame work for quality assurance in higher education physical facilities in china are simple and backward compared to the united states, but what constitutes adequate educational facilities is a matter of subjective definition. expectations in china are low. even in a public school, a chalkboard, a desk and a chair for each student, and a roof over their heads often have sufficed. (kwong, 1997, p. 250) higher education can be viewed as a service industry, and as such, it needs to provide the same service quality as any other type of service provider (ruben, 1995). in order to provide quality service, organizations must put customers first and evaluate how well the needs and expectations of their customers are being met. they must also identify what improvements are needed and make progress towards those goals. ruben explained that “an emphasis on quality in academics, management, and interpersonal relationships accompanies corporate concerns with competitiveness, operational efficiency, productivity, service orientation, and cost effectiveness” (p. 7). in the context of higher education in china, with the understanding that higher education is a service industry, there is minimal concern in identifying and meeting the educational and service expectations/needs of the students, parents, faculty, administrators, and staff. this disregard paired with inefficiency and strong cultural emphasis in bureaucracy that controls the public arena has fostered a private higher education system that is not necessarily promoting a “quality” education. as mok (1997) put it, “the flourishing of private education on the mainland has challenged traditional approaches to education in terms of its quality, relevance and applicability to contemporary society” (p. 56). to resolve the old and new problems and to pursue the goal of legislation, the private education law established four general criteria as a framework for national policy on private education (pan & law, 2006). however, the implementing regulation discourages investors by establishing four criteria to determine what constitutes a ‘reasonable return’ (fan, 2004; wang, 2004), including: 1. making profit: the school makes a profit in that year and is found not to have issued any misleading advertisements, cheated the students out of any money or used the school’s money for anything other than education. 2. rate of return with poor quality: if a school charges high fees but shows poor input into educational activities and school facilities and is found to provide a poor quality of education in comparison with other private schools the investors cannot claim a higher return than other similar private schools. 3. transparency: the school demonstrates transparency relating to its quality of education and accounting before the investor can claim a return. 4. compliance with minban: investors must follow the law for the promotion of private (minban) education or face confiscation of the return, an end to student admissions, annulment of the school’s operating permit or even prosecution. (articles 45_47 & 49, p. 277) “law is used by the state as a new social game rule intended to govern original intent of the law” (pan & current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 6 law, 2006, p. 278). for example, one intention of the law was to increase incentives to put more money into private education by allowing them to realize a reasonable return on their investment. legislation of private education: issues and resolutions the 1997 regulation on schools run by social forces issued by the ministry of education (moe) tightened the state’s governance over private education. to rectify these irregularities the 1997 regulation adopted a policy of “‘active encouragement, vigorous support, right guidance, and strengthening governance’ of private education” (p. 275). the 1997 regulation marks a tightening of the state’s control over private education as a means of rectifying irregularities generated by the private sector in education reform. the law for the promotion of private education was enacted by the national people’s congress (npc) with the intent of using legislation to achieve four main goals: 1. to provide a common legal framework for the regulation of both new private education practices and government’s administration over private education; 2. to recognize and protect the legal rights and benefits of private schools, their teachers and students; 3. to protect private education providers’ legal rights and freedom to own and use their private property as private schools; 4. to increase investor interest in putting more capital into education. (lu, 2003; ye, 2003) in 2002, the task group of the study on development strategies for non-governmental tertiary education in china found that the continued establishment of private heis is unnecessary. the issue is not whether to have more private heis or to legislate on the operations, but the key to advancing the higher education in china is to have more efficient admissions and operation system for public heis. furthermore, the current job market in china makes it difficult for public hei graduates to find employment and it is even more difficult for private hei graduates to secure employment. the task group further stated that the private heis are motivated by profits therefore are not inclined to improve the quality of teaching and management. discussion regulations tightened government control over private institutions. with this, government had the power to audit institutions in regards to their internal administration, including financing and teaching, and external relations, such as recruitment of students and competition with other schools (pan & law, 2006). to develop healthy private higher education: 1. a correct understanding and awareness of private higher education should be set up among proprietors, 2. teaching facilities and campus infrastructure construction should be timely upgraded and educational quality should be focused at any time, 3. proprietors of private heis need to avoid family business management and seek a sensible mechanism, 4. educational specialties ought to be highlighted at their own level. (p. 116) further, pan and law explained that the private higher education institution must establish a base of fulltime and part-time instructors with necessary qualifications and professionalism. administration must be selected among the qualified candidates who could be held accountable for the academic and administrative success of these institutions. this can be achieved through a proper system of personal responsibility that will allow greater standardization and systematization. further, an academically sound in-service training needs to be provided to the instructors. incomplete law and ineffective implementation, cultural barriers (meritocracy and minban) and improper coordination among institutions has hindered the delivery of quality education. private schools driven more by commercial motives than academics violated chinese consumer law (chaocheng, 2009). for policy implementation to be successful, it must involve the collaborative effects of political will, adequate resources, institutionalized structures, adequate time and minimal stages and strategy (yang & gale, 2004). in addition, inadequate internal governance system with international associate schools fosters unquestionable disparities and contradictions (chaocheng, 2009). there are certain core values of higher education which may, in certain circumstances, be assisted by the market yet cannot totally rely on it. these include a certain degree of job stability and security, necessary to accumulate research and teaching experience and develop long-term, basic research (this is threatened, for example, by an excessive reliance on short-term contracts or too much pressure to generate revenue from applied research). teachers are very mobile; and the teacher base is unstable. market forces do not necessarily produce positive results. they may be for better or for worse. how to ensure a wholesome development of market forces, how to maximize their positive effects while minimizing their accompanying hazards, is perhaps the greatest challenge that chinese higher education faces today. there is great urgency in facilitating an expansion of access to higher education in china, both to sustain the growth in the economy, and to support the extension of economic opportunity and social mobility. therefore, it is urgent to establish and maintain a quality assurance system, which the chinese education system needs desperately. quality assurance in private higher education in china 7 references baptiste, i. 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(1994). perspectives on minban schools in china. paper presented to the shanghai international house for education. 15-20 august. quality assurance in private higher education in china 9 article citation özturgut, o. (2011). quality assurance in private higher education in china. current issues in education, 14(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/731 author notes osman özturgut, ph.d. university of the incarnate word 4301 broadway cpo #293 san antonio, texas 78209 ozturgut@uiwtx.edu dr. osman özturgut is currently an assistant professor of education in the phd program at uiw. dr. özturgut has worked in the field of international and comparative education for over a decade. he has been an administrator and faculty member in various higher education institutions in turkey, china, and the united states. he has conducted research in china, south korea, japan, norway, singapore, turkey, south africa, and the us. he is an expert in international and comparative higher education and leadership studies and has numerous publications and presentations in these areas. his current research interests include international students in the u.s., internationalization of higher education, multicultural education, sinou.s. joint-venture campuses, and private higher education in china manuscript received: 1/22/2011 revisions received: 9/22/2011 accepted: 9/22/2011 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 10 volume 14, number 3 october 4, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editor melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy carol masser leslie salazar jennifer shea alaya swann faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word pre-service teachers’ perception and beliefs of readiness to teach mathematics.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x pre-service teachers’ perception and beliefs of readiness to teach mathematics clarissa rosas and mary west college of mount st. joseph citation rosas, c. & west, m. (2011). pre-service teachers’ perception and beliefs of readiness to teach mathematics. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/ abstract this study explored pre-service teachers’ perceptions regarding their readiness to teach mathematical concepts and their preparation to integrate mathematical topics in instruction. participants consisted of pre-service teachers who agreed to participate in a state-wide survey. for the purpose of this study, data was disaggregated into two groups: pre-service teachers who attended a private teacher education program and pre-service teachers who attended a public teacher education program. results of this study indicate that pre-service teachers from both private and public colleges felt adequately prepared to teach mathematics and were indifferent in their perception of their ability to integrate mathematical concepts. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 keywords: teacher preparation; mathematical readiness; teacher perception; integration of topics; private teacher preparation; public teacher preparation; higher education teacher preparation; mathematical integration; mathematic education; and mathematical education preparation. readiness to teach mathematics 3 about the author(s) author: clarissa rosas, ph.d. affiliation: college of mount saint joseph address: 5701 delhi road, cincinnati, ohio 45233 email: clarissa_rosas@mail.msj.edu biographical information: dr. rosas is the director of the graduate multicultural special education program at the college of mount st. joseph. her research interests include multicultural special education, teacher education and effective online course delivery. dr. rosas has extensive experience in curriculum development for both pre-service and in-service teachers at the school, district and higher education level. dr. rosas holds a ph.d. in multicultural/bilingual special education and an ed.s. in school administration from the university of new mexico. studies, etc.). author: mary west, ph.d. affiliation: college of mount saint joseph address: 6701 delhi road, cincinnati, ohio 45233 email: mary_west@mail.msj.edu biographical information: dr. west is the director of the graduate adolescent & young adult graduate program at the college of mount saint joseph. dr. west earned her doctorate at ohio state university. her research interests include issues in science education, educational technology and teacher thinking. she is an ohio board of regents math and science teacher fellow and recent recipient of a two-year teach ohio grant from the team aya program. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 pre-service teachers’ perception and beliefs of readiness to teach mathematics in an effort to raise the academic achievement of all children, the no child left behind act of 2001 (nclb, 2001) mandates that all teachers be highly qualified in the content area they teach and that all student subgroups meet the academic standards set forth by individual states. at the heart of this mandate is the requirement that teacher preparation institutions graduate teachers who have the subject content knowledge to instruct all children in grades k-12. this type of mandate reflects the increased concern in recent years of the failure to adequately staff schools in grades k-12 with qualified teachers. a review of the literature also indicates that there is a heightened concern for both the quantity and quality of teachers to fill mathematics teaching positions (ingersoll & perda, 2009; boe, 2006; u.s. department of education, 2002; national commission on mathematics and science teaching, 2000). institutions of higher education (ihes) that provide teacher training programs are faced with the challenge to ensure that graduates are prepared to teach mathematics to students in grades k-12. two bodies of research warrant consideration from institutions of higher education that provide teacher training programs: (1) teachers’ mathematical background and (2) pedagogical knowledge. mathematical background the literature indicates that teachers’ background subject knowledge directly influences student achievement (barth, 2002; ingersoll, 2003; darling-hammond & bransford, 2005; heritage & vendlinski, 2006; hill, rowan & ball, 2005; national mathematics advisory panel, 2008). this view is supported by studies which spans over several decades documenting that many teachers enter the classroom without a comprehensive understanding of mathematics (hill, rowen, & ball, 1995; ball & bass, 2000; ball, 1990; usiskin, 2001). such findings claim that the lack of teachers’ mathematical understanding significantly impact students’ opportunities for readiness to teach mathematics 5 learning, as teacher content knowledge is a vital component for academic success (darling hammond, 2000). in order to explain mathematical concepts and provide connections and rationales behind mathematical operations, teachers need a profound understanding of the subject (ma, 1999). rosas & campbell’s (2010) study found that pre-service teachers had a limited understanding of mathematics. their study, which focused on mathematical achievement of preservice teachers at a small private ihe in southwestern ohio, revealed that these graduate students completed an average of three undergraduate mathematic courses (m = 3.5; sd= 2.09), with the majority (77%) of the coursework at the basic level. this finding of a basic level of mathematic coursework supports floden & meiketti’s (2005) literature review, which found that teachers only had a cursory understanding of mathematics and lacked the ability to elucidate important concepts. “if the ability to explain basic concepts is important for teaching, then the subject matter courses teachers now typically take leave a large fraction of teachers without important subject matter knowledge” (p. 283). rosas & campbell’s (2010) study found that pre-service teachers in the graduate program had an inadequate, basic mathematics background to prepare k-12 students for ohio’s required standardized tests. when pre-service teacher participants were given the ohio achievement math practice test at the 8th grade level, the majority of the pre-service teacher participants (69%, n=26) correctly answered 50% or less of the math questions, which covered concepts of measurement, data and probability, patterns/algebra, and number sense. the belief that student achievement is directly linked to teachers’ subject knowledge and their understanding of how individuals learn is based on intuition and logic. a reasonable assumption would be that teachers must know the subject content they teach. however, according to floden & menikeetti (2005), there is little empirical research to support such a claim. floden & meniketti (2005) reviewed current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 the literature and found few empirical studies that conclusively affirmed the common belief that teachers’ background knowledge directly impacts student achievement. of the forty empirical studies reviewed by floden & meniketti (2005), the majority used classroom assessments to measure student achievement, severely limiting the generalizability of the findings. the few empirical studies that linked teachers’ mathematical content knowledge to student achievement were vague. there was a lack of specific information which linked mathematical coursework and content completed by the teachers during their teacher preparation programs to students’ mathematical achievement. this inability to specifically identify the mathematics content courses can be attributed to two main issues: (1) the variability of college courses within and across ihes and (2) the fact that student data on mathematic achievement was not established until the 1990s. the shortage of empirical studies to define the relationship between content knowledge from ihes’ teacher preparation courses and k-12 student achievement compounds the issue further. pedagogical knowledge in addition to the research on mathematical background knowledge, institutes of higher education that provide teacher training programs also must be cognizant of teacher candidates’ pedagogical background and its effect on teaching performance. it is important to note that while content knowledge represents a general aptitude, pedagogical content knowledge refers to an understanding of how to teach the subject (shulman, 1986). several researchers (usiskin, 2001; conference board of mathematical sciences, 2001; shulman, 1986; darling hammond, 2000) stress that pre-service teacher education programs need to focus on distinctive courses that expand upon future teachers’ conceptual and pedagogical knowledge in mathematics. teacher readiness to teach mathematics 7 training programs typically require pre-service teachers to complete methods of teaching coursework and field experiences. in an effort to determine the effectiveness of methodology coursework and field experience, clift & brady (2005) reviewed the research from 1995 through 2001and found that most studies focused on pre-service teachers’ beliefs and perceptions of teaching. in general, the reviewed research indicated that teacher candidates who participated in mathematics methodology courses and field experiences reported confidence in their ability “to write lesson plans,… to focus on learning as exploratory rather than rote, …the importance of the teacher’s role, and … method and understandings of problem-solving process and skills (p.318)”. however, clift & brady (2005) found studies which indicated that while methodology courses focused on instruction that included national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm) standards, in practice there was little evidence that pre-service teachers included the standards in instruction during field experiences. even more confounding, clift & brady found that cooperating teachers understanding of standard-based instruction improved through their experiences with pre-service teachers, their. the research further indicated a consistent theme of a paradigm shift from the teacher as the “authority and provider of knowledge to teacher as facilitator” (p.319). such contrasting findings obviously indicate that more in-depth research, which directly connects teacher preparation to student achievement, is needed in the field of mathematics instruction. the first step to this type of research requires an investigation into the pre-service teachers’ perception about their readiness to teach mathematics. in summary, the literature revealed that the research on teachers’ mathematics content knowledge and teaching methodology was limited and therefore inconclusive. the purpose of this study was to provide more specific information about pre-service teachers’ perceptions of current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 their readiness to teach mathematics, their mathematical knowledge base, and their ability to integrate mathematics in the curriculum. this study will add to the body of knowledge on mathematics teacher training. the research questions that guided this study were as follows: 1. what are pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their readiness to teach mathematical concepts? 2. what are pre-service teachers’ beliefs on the integration of mathematical topics in instruction? methodology this study explored ohio’s pre-service teachers’ perceptions regarding their readiness to teach mathematical concepts and their preparation to integrate mathematical topics in instruction. data was disaggregated from an ohio 2006-2007 statewide survey and analyzed using descriptive statistics. participants participants for this study consisted of pre-service teachers who agreed to participate in the teacher quality partnership (tqp, 2007). in 2003, 50 institutes of higher education formed a partnership known as the teacher quality partnership (tqp) to identify effective teacher preparation practices and their impact on students. the participating ihes consisted of thirtyeight private colleges and/or universities and twelve public universities which offered teacher preparation programs. during the final semester of coursework, pre-service teachers at each participating institute were asked to volunteer in the tqp study by completing an eleven-page survey regarding their beliefs about the quality of their teacher preparation program and their concerns regarding teaching. data from each institution was compiled and a data base was formed. for the purpose of this study, the data was divided into two groups: 1) pre-service readiness to teach mathematics 9 teachers who attended a private ihe and 2) pre-service teachers who attended a public ihe. demographic questions on the survey revealed that the majority of the participants from both private and public ihes were white and non-hispanic females. table 1 presents the demographics of the pre-service participants. table 1 demographic data of pre-service participants by percentage ____________________________________________________________________________ institutes of higher education participant percentage of percentage of n male female white other _____________________________________________________________________________ private 2559 20.75 75.89 91.48 4.37 public 2747 21.59 76.52 91.01 6.71 ______________________________________________________________________________ tqp, 2008 (2006-2007 data set) instrumentation the pre-service survey was developed by a team of ohio faculty representatives from ihes participating in tqp. the survey measure has been used each semester since 2004 with pre-service teachers and since 2005 for in-service teachers in ohio. the pre-service survey consisted of 167 questions/statements regarding teachers’ perceptions of their preparation programs, professional knowledge and skills, teacher efficacy, and concerns about teaching. using a 5-point likert type scale, participants were asked to rate each question or statement. researchers who coordinated the development of the survey asserted that the survey was a reliable measure of teachers’ perceptions, as responses from approximately 7,000 teachers yielded similar mean scores (loadmen, 2007). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 for the purpose of this study, data generated from the survey pertaining to mathematics were disaggregated for the academic year of 2006-2007. the data was then categorized into two groups. the first group consisted of pre-service participants from ohio’s private ihes and the second group was pre-service teachers from ohio’s public ihes. descriptive statistics was used to examine pre-service teachers’ perceptions about their background mathematical knowledge and their beliefs on the integration of mathematical topics in instruction. t-tests were completed to determine if there was a significant difference between the responses of pre-service teachers trained at public versus private ihes. results disaggregated data from the survey was analyzed to determine pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their readiness to teach mathematics. using a 5point likerttype scale, preservice teachers were asked to rate ten statements regarding how well their program prepared them to teach mathematics (on a scale from 1not at all;2poorly; 3adequately; 4well; to 5very well). the pre-service teachers from private ohio ihes rated all ten questions related to their preparation to teach mathematics as adequate (m=3.31, s.d. = 0.15). the pre-service teachers from public ohio ihes also rated all ten questions/statements regarding their preparation to teach mathematics as adequate (m=3.29, s.d. = 0.14). table 2 provides the preservice teachers’ response to the ten questions regarding their preparation to teach mathematics. readiness to teach mathematics 11 table 2 ohio pre-service teachers’ perception on readiness to teach mathematics ______________________________________________________________________________ survey response to: how well teacher public institutes private institutes preparation prepared them to… n mean (sd) n mean (sd) ______________________________________________________________________________ use mathematical problem solving processes 2702 3.35 (1.27) 2506 3.32 (1.27) in teaching. teach mathematical representations 2700 3.50 (1.23) 2505 3.47 (1.26) (e.g. graphs, tables). use mathematics communication processes 2696 3.27 (1.28) 2502 3.24 (1.29) in teaching. integrate mathematics with other subject areas. 2703 3.38 (1.28) 2507 3.43 (1.28) teach mathematical concepts to student groups 2698 3.15 (1.32) 2503 3.16 (1.32) that are mixed in ability. teach connections among mathematical ideas. 2701 3.05 (1.34) 2497 3.05 (1.33) use discovery approaches in mathematics. 2698 3.19 (1.37) 2498 3.28 (1.36) use manipulatives (e.g. blocks) in mathematics. 699 3.50 (1.44) 2497 3.55 (1.44) take into account students’ prior conceptions 2696 3.34 (1.34) 2493 3.40 (1.35) about mathematics when planning curriculum & instruction. use textbook as a resource in mathematics rather 2694 3.20 (1.38) 2493 3.26 (1.37) than as the primary instructional tool. ____________________________________________________________________________ tqp, 2007 (data set for 2006-2007) 5-point likert scale type: 1= not at all; 2=poorly; 3=adequately; 4=well; 5=very well current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 a t-test was completed to determine if a significant difference existed between the responses per question of pre-service teachers trained at an ohio private versus public ihe. the survey statements regarded pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their readiness to teach mathematics. results of the t-test (α=.05) indicated that there was no significant difference in ratings between pre-service teachers’ from private and public ihes. results of the t-test are presented in table 3. table 3 t-test results of ohio pre-service teachers’ perception on readiness to teach mathematics ______________________________________________________________________________ survey response to: how well 95% ci teacher preparation prepared t df p mf sed ll ul them to… ____________________________________________________________________________ use mathematical problem 0.8517 5205 0.3944 0.03 0.035 -0.0392 0.0992 solving processes in teaching. teach mathematical represent 0.8689 5203 0.3849 0.03 0.035 -0.0378 0.0978 ations (e.g. graphs, tables). use mathematics communica 0.8411 5196 0.4003 0.03 0.036 -0.0401 0.1001 tion processes in teaching. integrate mathematics with 1.4088 5208 0.1590 0.05 0.035 -0.0500 0.0197 other subject areas. teach mathematical concepts 0.2730 5199 0.7849 -0.01 0.037 -0.0820 0.0620 to student groups that are mixed in ability. teach connections among 0.0000 5196 1.0000 0.00 0.037 -0.0728 0.0728 mathematical ideas. use discovery approaches 2.3743 5194 0.0176 -0.09 0.038 -0.1645 -.0155 in mathematics. use manipulative (e.g. 1.2505 5194 0.2112 0.050 0.040 0.1286 0.0286 blocks) in mathematics. readiness to teach mathematics 13 take into account students’ 1.6057 5187 0.1084 0.060 0.037 -0.1334 0.0134 prior conceptions about math ematics when planning curriculum & instruction. use textbook as a resource in 1.5700 5185 0.1165 -0.060 0.038 -0.1351 0.0151 mathematics rather than as the primary instructional tool. ____________________________________________________________________________ note: ci= confidence interval; ll = lower limit; ul = upper limit; α=.05; equal variances not assumed; 5-point likert scale: 1=not at all, 2=poorly, 3 =adequately, 4=well, 5=very well the second question which guided this study pertained to pre-service teachers’ beliefs on the integration of mathematics. disaggregated data from the survey was analyzed to determine pre-service teachers’ beliefs on the integration of mathematical topics in instruction. overall, participants from both the private and public institutions rated the belief statements at m=3.40 (s.d. =0.3078), which indicates a similar level of indifference (“neither agree or disagree”). using a 5point likert-type scale, pre-service teachers were asked to rate their level of agreement or disagreement for eight statements. the statement that had the lowest rating from the pre-service teachers was the statement, “in my mathematics lessons, i aim for in-depth study of selected topics, even if it means sacrificing comprehensive coverage”. the pre-service teachers from public ihes rated this statement as “neither disagree or agree” (m=3.0; s.d. = 3.0). the pre-service teachers from private ihes rated the statement as “neither disagree or agree” (m= 2.97; s.d. = 1.14). the statement which pre-service teachers rated the highest was, “my job as a teacher is to encourage students to think and question mathematically”. the pre-service teachers from public ihes rated this statement as “neither disagree or agree” (m=3.86; s.d =1.14). the pre-service teachers from private ihes rated the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 statement as “neither disagree or agree” (m= 3.85; s.d. = 1.16). overall, the pre-service teachers from private ihes rated all eight questions as “neither disagree or agree” (m=3.4; s.d. = 0.31). the pre-service teachers from public ihes also rated all eight questions as “neither disagree or agree” (m=3.3; s.d. 0.32). table 4 presents the findings on pre-service teachers’ belief on the integration mathematics topics in instruction. table 4 ohio pre-service teachers’ belief on the integration of mathematics topic in instruction ____________________________________________________________________________ survey statements public institutes private institutes n mean (sd) n mean (sd) ____________________________________________________________________________ my primary goal is to help students learn 2670 3.13 (1.18) 2476 3.14 (1.21) mathematical terminology. my primary goal is to help students achieve a 2670 3.70 (1.28) 2472 3.67 (1.27) deep conceptual understanding of mathematics. in my mathematics lessons, i aim for in-depth 2659 3.00 (1.13) 2470 2.97 (1.14) study of selected topics, even if it means sacrificing comprehensive coverage. my primary goal is to help students master 2664 3.43 (1.10) 2468 3.47 (1.12) computational skills. i generally teach basic facts and computation 2660 3.27 (1.18( 2471 3.30 (1.18) skills before discussing underlying principles of mathematics. in my mathematics lessons i aim for 2.663 3.08 (1.09) 2470 3.12 (1.13) comprehension coverage, even if it means sacrificing in-depth study. my job as a teacher is to encourage students to 2666 3.86 (1.14) 2475 3.85 (1.16) think and question mathematically. my job as a teacher is to transmit the knowledge 2664 3.66 (1.18) 2470 3.68 (1.20) and content of mathematics. ____________________________________________________________________________ readiness to teach mathematics 15 tqp 2007 (data set 2006-2007) 5-point likert scale: 1=strongly disagree: 2=somewhat disagree; 3=neither disagree or agree: 4=somewhat agree; 5=strongly agree t-tests were completed to determine if there was a significant difference between preservice teachers’ mean ratings of statements regarding beliefs on the integration of mathematics topic in instruction. results of the t-test (α=.05) indicated that there was no difference in the beliefs between pre-service teachers’ from private and public ihes. results of the t-tests (α=.05) are presented in table 5. table 5 t-test results of ohio pre-service teachers’ belief on the integration of mathematical topic in instruction ___________________________________________________________________________________________ survey questions 95% ci t df p md sed ll ul ____________________________________________________________________________ my primary goal is to help 0.3001 5144 0.7641 -0.0100 0.033 -0.0755 0.0555 students learn mathematical terminology. my primary goal is to help 0.8420 5129 0.3998 0.0300 0.036 -0.0323 0.0923 students achieve a deep conceptual understanding of mathematics. in my mathematics lessons, 1.2904 5131 0.1970 -0.0400 0.031 -0.1009 0.0209 i aim for in-depth study of selected topics, even if it means sacrificing comprehensive coverage. my primary goal is to help 1.2904 5131 0.1970 -0.0400 0.031 -0.1009 0.0209 students master compu tational skills. i generally teach basic facts 0.9099 5129 0.3629 -0.0300 -0.033 -0.0948 0.0348 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 and computation skills before discussing underlying principles of mathematics. in my mathematics lessons 1.2907 5131 0.1969 -0.0400 0.031 -0.1009 0.0209 i aim for comprehension coverage, even if it means sacrificing in-depth study. my job as a teacher is to 0.3116 5139 0.7553 0.01000 0.032 -0.0530 0.0730 encourage students to think and question mathematically. my job as a teacher is to 0.6019 5132 0.5473 -0.02000 0.033 -0.0853 0.0453 transmit the knowledge and content of mathematics. note: ci= confidence interval; ll = lower limit; ul = upper limit; α=.05; equal variances not assumed; 5-point likert scale: 1=strongly disagree: 2=somewhat disagree; 3=neither disagree or agree: 4=somewhat agree; 5=strongly agree conclusion this study explored ohio pre-service teachers’ perceptions regarding their readiness to teach mathematical concepts and their preparation to integrate mathematical topics in instruction. historically, there is a body of research that indicates that teachers’ background subject knowledge influences their teaching (barth, 2002; ingersoll, 2003; darling-hammond & bransford, 2005; heritage & vendlinski, 2006; hill, rowan & ball, 2005; national mathematics advisory panel, 2008). however, results of this study indicate that pre-service teachers rate their perception of readiness to teach mathematics only in the adequate range (likert response of 3= adequate). the overall mean response for all ten survey questions from ohio’s public and private pre-service teachers was 3.30 (sd=0.146); the overall mean from the public pre-service teachers was 3.29 (sd=0.14), while the mean for private pre-service teachers was 3.31 (sd=0.15). an overall mean pre-service teacher perception of adequate readiness to teach mathematical readiness to teach mathematics 17 concepts, instead of a rating of well or very well on the likert scale, is noteworthy for several reasons. while there is a limited number of empirical studies that connects student achievement with teachers’ background knowledge, there is a body of research that indicates that student achievement is directly connected to teachers’ background knowledge (darling-hammond & bransford, 2005; heritage & vendlinski, 2006; national mathematics advisory panel, 2008). therefore, a rating of “adequate” in terms of readiness to teach mathematics concepts is concerning. teachers’ confidence levels to teach mathematical concepts should be at least at the well or very well prepared. further research is needed to determine if there is a connection between student achievement and pre-service teachers’ perceptions of being prepared to teach mathematics. results of this study support the research that spans over several decades documenting that many teachers enter the classroom without a comprehensive understanding of mathematics (ball & bass, 2000; ball, 1990). in particular, flodin and meiketti (2005) found that teachers only have a cursory understanding of mathematics, which could explain the perceptions of the pre-service teachers in this study. ma (1990) found that a profound understanding of mathematics is necessary to fully explain mathematical concepts and to provide meaningful connections behind mathematics in the classroom. therefore, the self-reported adequate level of readiness to teach mathematics by ohio pre-service teachers may be an indication that additional mathematics coursework is needed in teacher preparation programs. there are few empirical studies that specifically identify the mathematical content courses that pre-service teachers would require to have a comprehensive understanding of mathematics (floden & meniketti, 2005). this gap in educational research should be addressed in future studies. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 the second area of focus in this study was to determine pre-service teachers’ beliefs on the integration of mathematical topics in instruction. both private and public pre-service teachers indicated that they felt indifferent (“neither agree or disagree”) on their beliefs of the integration of mathematics. overall, participants from both the private and public institutions rated the belief statements at m=3.40 (s.d. =0.3078). this level of indifference may be more indicative of pre-service teachers’ lack of comprehensive understanding of mathematics and the critical need to integrate and apply mathematics throughout the curriculum with all k-12 subject areas. the statement that was rated the lowest by both private and public pre-service teachers which further sheds light on the participants’ beliefs was, “in my mathematics lessons, i aim for in-depth study of selected topics, even if it means sacrificing comprehensive coverage”. these findings support the body of research that stresses the importance on teacher preparation programs to focus on the expansion of pedagogical knowledge in mathematics (usiskin, 2001; conference board of mathematical sciences, 2001; shulman, 1986; darling hammond, 2000). in conclusion, the findings from this study indicate that future empirical research is needed in order to determine if pre-service teachers’ perceptions about their readiness to teach mathematics and their ability to integrate mathematical topics in instruction directly impacts student achievement. in addition, a follow-up investigation is needed to determine if the classroom teaching experiences of in-service teachers eventually change their perception of their preparation and readiness to teach mathematics. readiness to teach mathematics 19 references ball, d. 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(1986). those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. educational researcher, v 15 (2): p. 4-14. teacher quality partnership (2007). tqp graduate survey progress report. presented at the spring ohio confederation of teacher organization (octeo) conference. columbus, ohio. usiskin, z. (2001). teachers’ mathematics: a collection of content deserving to be a field. the mathematics educator, 6 (1), 85-97 u.s. department of education. (2002). meeting the highly qualified teachers challenge: the secretary’s annual report on teacher quality. washington, dc: u.s. department of education, office of postsecondary education, office of policy, planning, and innovation. readiness to teach mathematics 23 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt education websites_final volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x education websites and their benefits to potential international students: a case study of higher education service providers in malaysia teik chooi ooi intel penang, malaysia henry wai leong ho swinburne university of technology siti amri griffith university citation ooi, t.c, ho, h., & amri, s. (2010). education websites and their benefits to potential international students: a case study of higher education service providers in malaysia. current issues in education, 13(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this paper looks at criteria on how education service providers’ websites could benefit their potential students from overseas. effective design of education website is important as web users are typically fastidious and want information fast this serves as the background of this study. the study focuses on three selected education institutions’ websites; identifying their strengths and weaknesses, followed by recommendation on how institutions can improve their websites to gain good impression or perception from potential customers, such that they will re-visit the websites to get more information. ultimately, the goal is to turn potential students to real students. three education service providers (all located in penang, malaysia) have been identified and used for this study. they are inti international college penang, kdu college penang and olympia college penang. these current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 2 websites are examined against a list of criteria: source, layout, accessibility, speed, navigability, content, accuracy, level of details, current information and appearance. based on the study done, the kdu college website is the best website compared to the other two colleges. nevertheless, further improvement can be made in terms of displaying all course fees, frequently asked questions (faq) for international and local student admission, and contact information for faculty, staff and students. keywords: education service providers, international student, webpage analysis, education in malaysia education websites 3 about the author(s) author: teik chooi ooi affiliation: intel penang, malaysia biographical information: short paragraph (department info, field, studies, etc.). if there is more than one author, start and use separate paragraphs. author: henry wai leong ho affiliation: swinburne university of technology email: hho@swin.edu.au biographical information: short paragraph (department info, field, studies, etc.). if there is more than one author, start and use separate paragraphs. author: siti amri affiliation: griffith university email: samri@csu.edu.au biographical information: short paragraph (department info, field, studies, etc.). if there is more than one author, start and use separate paragraphs. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 4 private higher educational institutions (pheis) in malaysia have equal role as the government funded universities, that is, the public universities, in the provision of tertiary education in malaysia (wilkinson & yussof, 2005). pheis are fully-funded by the private sector. a number of these educational institutions have also obtained listing in the bursa malaysia (formerly known as kuala lumpur stock exchange (klse)). these institutions of higher learning are under the jurisdiction of the ministry of higher education (mohe) malaysia, and are governed by various legislations to ensure provision of quality education. in 1995, mohe found that 20 per cent of overseas-trained malaysian students cost the country around us$800 million in currency outflow, constituting nearly 12 per cent of malaysia’s current account deficit. in order to reduce the outflows of funds, the government has intervened by increasing the capacity of public universities and expanding the capacity of local (private) higher education sector (sirat, 2008; ziguras, 2001). the mohe saw the local pheis as the key means of reducing this currency outflow and in the long term of transforming malaysia into a net exporter of higher education (ziguras, 2001). poised to be the centre of educational excellence in the asia pacific region, majority of the pheis are using english, an international lingua franca, as the medium of instruction for programmes conducted. besides offering study opportunities to the malaysian students, pheis are also the favourite choice of many international students. the advantages for international students to pursue their tertiary education in malaysia include time and cost saving, quality education awarded by foreign partners and the opportunity to explore in the country’s diverse culture and language. as of january 2005, there were about 40,000 foreign students from over 150 countries studying in malaysia (acca, 2007). the number of foreign students increased into 55,000 in 2006 (verbik & lasanowski, 2007). as education websites 5 claimed by verbik and lasanowski (2007), malaysia has an approximate 2% share of the international student market since 2006. the majority of international students came from china, indonesia, india, thailand, singapore and the middle east, and they pursued courses in business, information technology, and engineering. the target of the malaysian government is to recruit 100,000 foreign students by year 2010 (sirat, 2008). under the ninth malaysia plan (2006 – 2010), the malaysian government will double efforts to develop malaysia as a regional centre for excellence in the provision of tertiary level education (prime minister malaysia speech, 2006). malaysia intends to promote and export tertiary education through strategic marketing efforts and the branding of educational products. promotion approaches through the web is accepted to be one of new forms of technology that can contribute to the success of the plan. in june 2007, there were 521 pheis approved by the ministry of higher education malaysia. they are categorized as below: table 1: number of pheis as at 30 june 2007 categories of pheis number university status university status university college status foreign university branch campuses 16 16 4 non-university status 485 total 521 source: study malaysia.com (2008) current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 6 the four foreign university branch campuses offer foreign degree qualifications and the 32 universities provide home-grown degree programmes. a number of these institutions also offer 3+0 foreign university degree programmes. under this 3+0 arrangement, institutions are permitted by the foreign partner university to conduct the entire degree programme in malaysia for their foreign-partner university, which will then award the degree qualification). 25 of the non-university status pheis conduct 3+0 foreign university degree programmes in collaboration with overseas host universities. several pheis also have twinning degree arrangement with reputable foreign universities all over the world. at the beginning of year 2007, there were more than 320,000 students studying in pheis and about 35,000 (approximately 10% of the total) of them were international students pursuing tertiary programmes and english language courses (study malaysia.com, 2008). promoting tertiary education service providers in malaysia in order to achieve the target of 100,000 students by 2010, the government and pheis have implemented selected strategies. under the ninth malaysia plan, the malaysian government plans to promote tertiary education through marketing efforts and the branding of educational products. this included the implementation of a quality assurance system, promotional activities and the establishment of education promotion offices in beijing, dubai, ho chi minh city and jakarta (ninth malaysia plan, 2006). with these efforts, enrolment of foreign students in education institutions increased. de-regulation of visas by allowing foreign students in malaysia to work part-time also helped to recruit more foreign students (higher-edge.com, 2004). education websites 7 there are a few promotional approaches used by pheis. they are advertisements in selected education publications, education fairs and information sessions targeted at students and parents. colleges also have ambassadors like personnel and programme providers (for example, idp – individual development programme) who directly provide advice. other promotion approaches are running series of media and agent visits from targeted markets, exhibitions at conferences targeted directly at secondary schools and college counsellors, and distribution of promotional publications such as flyers (deupree, 2002). they also have partnership strategies to actively pursue dual degree programmes, which allow students to spend a year studying abroad, and awarded a degree by both the local and foreign institutions. a study on attracting foreign students also recommends that students be allowed to seek employment during and after their studies. it also suggests adapting immigration rules to make it easier for malaysia’s private tertiary institutions to hire teaching staff from abroad. it will be more attractive if study loans and scholarships (binsardi & ekwulugo, 2003) from private sectors or the government are offered to foreign students. website and promotion of tertiary education service providers in malaysia the web is important to organizations and is recognized by all industries including education. fast and easy access to millions of potential customers are the main benefits of websites (belch & belch, 2007; keegan & green, 2008). research has shown that total internet user growth in asia increased more than 406% from 2000 to 2008 (internet world stats, 2008). the web facilitates an efficient way to conduct international business (belch & belch, 2007; kotler, brown, adam, burton, & armstrong, 2007). websites can be updated often with latest promotions and course information in timely manner, with comprehensive virtual brochures current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 8 (chaffey, ellis-chadwick, johnston & mayer, 2006; strauss, el-ansary & frost, 2006). as claimed by allison (2002), access to and use of the internet is increasing rapidly: • 39% of adults claimed use of the internet in august 2001, up from 28% the previous year • 83% of potential higher education students had access the internet from home in 2001 • 81% of applicants used the internet for higher education information in 2001 compared with 50% in 2000 • 77% of applicants in 2001 had visited individual institution sites (allison, 2002) as a promotional medium, changes to the web can be quickly implemented and with limited cost. websites that are dynamic are those that get the hits. the web enables the display of photos, sound and short movie clips at lower costs. frequently asked questions on websites can address typical admission questions from customers, freeing up a lot of time for office staff. websites serve customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without additional costs. websites can efficiently reach target customers by presenting the right branding message at the right time, at the right place, to the right person for optimum results (belch & belch, 2007; chaffey et al., 2006; kotler et al., 2007; strauss et al., 2006). comparing the web to other mediums such as print media advertising, education fairs, exhibitions, personnel fees, information sessions and publication mails, a website is cheaper, with faster and wider audience coverage (belch & belch, 2007; chaffey et al., 2006; strauss et al., 2006). this is in line with the quote, “marketing on the internet has received substantial attention. businesses are not only able to reach a wider audience but also reduce marketing costs” (ellsworth & ellsworth, 1994). as indicated by porter (2001), "the internet is a powerful set of tools that can be used, wisely or unwisely, in almost every industry and as part of almost any strategy". he stressed that education websites 9 companies which succeed will be the ones that use the internet as complimentary to traditional ways of competing, not those who set their internet initiatives apart from their established operations (porter, 2001). in summary, although there are many advantages of having websites, tertiary education providers need to consider and overcome some common mistakes and limitations of websites. this is to ensure the institution’s website is an effective marketing tool and brings value to institution. method three higher education service providers (inti, kdu, and olympia) have been selected as a focus in this paper due to numerous reasons. firstly, they are pioneers in malaysian private education and both inti and kdu colleges have been established for more than 20 years, while olympia college started up 12 years ago. in addition, kdu and olympia are public listed companies in klse, under the subsidiary of paramount corporation berhad group and stamford group respectively. secondly, they offer a wide range of programmes at certificate, diploma, degree and masters levels. the certificate and diploma courses are internally developed while the degree and masters programmes are conducted in association with prestigious universities in australia, uk, usa, new zealand and other countries. thirdly, the institutions’ high standards of academic provision are well recognized by employers of various industries and universities worldwide, as a result of their competent graduates who excel in their workplace. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 10 most importantly, they are internationally acknowledged as institutions that are committed to providing quality education. students now come from various countries around the world including china, indonesia, middle east, africa and others. website indicators for evaluation the website evaluation criteria are designed based on two sections. first section consists of 10 criteria with their respective components. criteria are scaled depending on a number of sub-components rated ‘yes’. however, criteria at second section are rated with yes or no. for example, the first criterion in the first section has three sub-criteria located at second section. from the evaluation, if it only has one “yes”, the first section will have a score of “1”. if there are no “yes” ratings, then the first section scores “0”. table 2 provides the detail listing of the criteria and its respective component used in this study: table 2: criteria used to evaluate tertiary service providers website no criteria 1 source 1.1 more than 10 years 1.2 awards 1.3 public listed company 2 layout 2.1 center, left and right 2.2 sequence base on important 2.3 not “below the fold” 3 accessibility education websites 11 3.1 highest hits at search engine 3.2 counter 3.3 no error outage 3.4 affiliate partner, newspaper and government sponsor 3.5 cascading style sheet (css) 3.6 alt attribute 3.7 named links 3.8 contrasting background + text color 4 speed 4.1 website site (bytes) 4.2 flash (if none is there an option for flash or non-flash?) 4.3 download time (<10 seconds) 5 navigability 5.1 number of clicks ( < 4 clicks) 5.2 two minutes to find information 5.3 site map usage 5.4 button terminology – descriptive 6 content 6.1 admissions 6.2 academic programmes 6.3 faculty, staff, student, alumni 6.4 student financial assistance current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 12 6.5 welcome from the chair or programme director 6.6 news and announcements 6.7 cost of admission 6.8 frequently asked questions (faqs) 6.9 international student corner 6.10 sign in/request information 6.11 contact us 6.12 other languages used in website, besides english 7 accuracy 7.1 college affiliated with wellknown university 7.2 testimonials from students 7.3 government 7.4 author of website 8 appropriate level of details 8.1 the level of details for information 8.2 courses offered 8.3 pre-requisite to register course 8.4 credit transfer 8.5 course fees 9 current information 9.1 regular update 9.2 reliable link education websites 13 9.3 event date 9.4 semester calendar 9.5 copyright 10 appearance 10.1 good spelling 10.2 grammar 10.3 font 10.4 professional look 10.5 news flash source: develop for this research the criteria designed were implemented in these three colleges’ websites, and data collected by surfing and browsing each college website. the strategy is to use case study evaluating three identified colleges’ websites in gathering primary data. the data collection was performed within 32 days, commencing from second week of september until the third week of october, 2008. most of the time, access to respective website were performed during night time in malaysia, although evaluation of speed was done during day and night time in order to have more accurate data. after data collection, a separate analysis focusing on each individual institution calls out both available and non-available attributes at respective websites. the result and summary are presented in the following section. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 14 results webpage analysis of inti international college penang for more than 19 years, inti international college penang has maintained its commitment to uncompromised teaching excellence. this continues to benefit students in business, law, computing & it, engineering, applied science and social science (inti international college penang, 2008). figure 1 website of inti international college penang source: inti international college penang (2008) the college offers programmes wherein students complete certificates, diplomas and bachelor degrees. in the 3 + 0 programmes, students can complete their studies on-campus at inti and still obtain overseas degrees. in addition, they can select from an impressive list of education websites 15 prestigious universities and enrol in the uk degree transfer programmes, the australian degree transfer programmes, or the american degree transfer program before proceeding overseas to complete their degrees (inti international college penang, 2008). strategic links with partner universities have resulted in several exchange programmes that enable students and staff to expand their knowledge, experiences and creativity. inti encourages such exchanges as they provide unique opportunities for participants (inti international college penang, 2008). sources for this college are its 20-year history as an established education center. inti international college penang is the top-notch centre in the world for higher school certificate (hsc). the layout for page uses top center as the main menu and left hand is the sub-menu from the main menu selected. sequence of menu is based on the importance of information and length of the page is just nice, not a very long page that required scrolling down the page. accessibility is part of the quality and popularity assessment of websites. higher search engines ranking translate into greater traffic on a site and, subsequently increase its accessibility degree. practical ways to examine inti college was conducted through search engine google. the result is inti college has the highest result from search engine ranking. second factor used to measure accessibility is the site popularity. the most common of web performance is the number of "hits" a site generates. for inti college, there is no counter included in their website. the third factor used is website up time. almost all the time, the site is accessible. other factors used to measure the accessibility are the website uses css, alt attribute, named links, and contrasting background and text color. speed is important as potential customers are looking for information and they do not have much patience to wait a long time for a web page to down load. it is not advisable to use current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 16 flash site, if there is a need, should have options of flash or non-flash site. the web page is a non-flash website with reasonable download time (~30 seconds). the average number of clicks needed to access faculties or college pages < n, and to access courses information was n. however, some sites require around ten clicks to access programmes, implying a very poor organization of the information that should be improved. the average number of clicks needed to access faculties or college pages < n, and to access courses information was n. however, some sites require around ten clicks to access programmes, implying a very poor organization of the information that should be improved. navigability for inti college by potential customer is less than five, in terms of number of clicks. it took two minutes to find the information that is readily available with the descriptive buttons as a main menu and sub-menu. the content of the web page includes admissions, academic programmes, alumni testimonial, student financial assistance, welcome from the school principal, news and announcements, and online enquiry for information. however, the webpage lacks frequently asked questions, cost of admission, site map and international student corner. in addition to this, the inti college student affair information provides information about general welfare of students and provides other services to increase the quality of student life in iicp. the services are included as follows: accommodation transfer, booking of bus tickets, students’ mail, lost and found, health & emergencies, available facilities, available equipment/games, grievance report, rental of lockers, on/off-campus jobs, and notice boards. other information published at the website are map to college, contact information and campus facilities photos at library, convenience store, lecture theaters, cafeteria, and cybercafe. sports facilities include football, pool, table tennis, gymnasium, basketball, table education websites 17 soccer, tennis, chinese chess and music room. computer labs include engineering labs, physics labs, chemistry labs, biology labs. various forms of campus accommodation are provided types with reasonable prices and listed in the website. the site publishes contact information like email address, phone number and fax number. the language used in website meets the needs of their targeted market. it uses english as the official language of the internet. site accuracy is good promoting college facilities, services, and courses with reasonable price and yet not compromising quality, and good study environment through their websites. the site has short testimonials with good comments from students. the site also publishes affiliations with well-known universities in united states, united kingdom, canada, australia and new zealand, jobdb.com and industrial training center, which gives confidence to potential customers to pursue their studies in the college. courses offered by the college are also recognized by national accreditation board (nab), or better known as lembaga akreditasi negara (lan) in bahasa. the detail level of information for courses offered include description, academic pathway diagram, course structure, intake, course link with affiliated university and subjects needed to complete per semester/year. another value-added feature shows past track record of college achievement on passing score specifically on pre-university programme and it lists out the partnership of respective universities for credit transfer programme. the limitations are no course fees and credit transfer details available. for admission, it also contains the information for local student and international student requirements. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 18 respondents mentioned that sites need to be dated [x]. in order to know if the website is current, last updated date needs to be listed at the bottom of web page. furthermore, the home page can publish coming events like college open day, seminars, forums and other workshops. current information appears on the college‘s intake calendar and latest news on serving community and student achievements. an organization that regularly updates websites gives confidence to potential customers and influences them to visit the site repeatedly, while a website’s current reliable links should be available and working. the copyright year at the bottom of the website also reflects the current status of websites. there is no last updated date listed at the inti site. appearance of the site looks professional. generally, the site has short and meaningful text, good spelling and grammar, and font size and color are appropriate, usage of frame to make websites look organized, links are working, minimal animation, quality college picture, best viewed information of the website example with internet explorer & resolution (1024 x 768). there is no virtual tour to college with multimedia component that could make the website look more professional. webpage analysis of kdu college penang from its humble beginnings in 1991, kdu college penang has evolved into one of the leading higher learning institutions in the country, offering a commendable range of industrydriven courses. in a poll conducted by the star education during the star education fair 2004 in penang, kdu college was listed as one of the top four choices for higher education in the northern region (kdu college penang, 2008). education websites 19 figure 2 website of kdu college penang source: kdu college penang (2008) strategically located at jalan anson (anson road), the five-storey college building is well-equipped with state-of-the-art teaching, learning and research facilities to provide a more conducive learning environment for students enrolled in its six schools: american university studies, arts & science, business, computing & information systems, engineering, and hotel & tourism management. a new eight-storey block was also completed in october 2003 to meet the demand of increased students and to provide more facilities. with this expansion, the college now has a capacity of 5,000 students (kdu college penang, 2008). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 20 with a current student population of 2,500, kdu penang is becoming a popular higher educational institution for international students from indonesia, thailand, china, hong kong, japan, korea, mongolia, europe and many other nations (kdu college penang 2008). sources for this college are also its 20-year history as an established education center. kdu college was established as a small institution, becoming a well-known education center today. kdu college, under paramount corporation berhad group is a public listed company in malaysia. potential customers, who visit these websites, should be impressed, considering the good track record. the layout for the page has the main menu located at the top center and left hand side. menu sequence is based on the importance of information and length of the page is just nice – not a very long page that requires significant scrolling down the page. accessibility is part of the quality and popularity assessment of websites. higher search engines ranking translate into greater traffic on a site and, subsequently increase its accessibility degree. practical ways to examine kdu college was conducted through the search engine google. kdu college is the highest result from search engine ranking. second factor used to measure accessibility is the site popularity. the most common of web performance is the number of hits a site generates. kdu college does not have a counter in its websites. the third factor used, is website up time. almost all the time, the site is accessible. however there is one limitation where expand function for respective button will only work when it starts from the home button. other factors used to measure the accessibility are usage of css and alt attribute, which are not used in this web page. however the page has a contrasting background and text color and it does name the links as well. education websites 21 speed is important as potential customers are looking for information and they do not have much patience to wait a long time for a web page to download. it is not advisable to use flash site, if there is a need, one should have options of flash or non-flash site. the web page is not a flash site but has some animation and graphics with reasonable download time of ~30 seconds. the average number of clicks needed to access faculties or college pages < n, and to access courses information was n. however, some sites require around ten clicks to access programmes, implying a very poor organization of the information that should be improved. navigability for kdu college by potential customer is less than five, in terms of number of clicks. it took two minutes to find the information that is readily available with descriptive buttons as a main menu and sub-menu. site map is also available to ease finding information. the content of the web page include admissions, academic programmes, alumni testimonial, student financial assistance, welcome from the school principal, news and announcements, international student corner and online enquiry for information. however, he webpage lacks frequently asked questions and cost of admission. other links are online enquiry¸ contact information and site map. photos of campus facilities photos such as career corner restaurants, canteen and gymnasium are published. laboratories include class lab, multimedia lab, workshop lab, computer lab, internet lab, communication lab, chemistry/biology lab, electronic lab, electrical power lab, smart lecture theatre, library, resource centre, and studio. the site publishes contact information like email address, phone number and fax number. kdu college website has additional contact information, which is kdu online enquiry. besides this contact information, some value-added services provided to students are kdu 24current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 22 hours emergency assist line information for emergency assistance to staff and students. there is a kdu accommodation help-line for assistance with an accommodation or to lodge complaints about repairs to the hostel or student houses. both these services could influence potential customers to study at the college. language used in the website meets the needs of their targeted market. the site uses english as the official language of the internet. in addition, kdu college website does use mandarin in certain webpages, as china and taiwan are their targeted markets. site accuracy is good promoting college facilities, services, and courses with reasonable price and yet not compromising quality, and good study environment through their websites. the site has short testimonials with good comments from students. the site also publishes affiliations with well-known universities in the united states, united kingdom, canada, australia and new zealand, giving confidence to potential customers to pursue their studies in the college. courses offered by the college are also recognized by nab. level of details of the site and its information available are for international students, where it provides information about malaysia, climate, people and language, religion, food, currency and banking, living expenses, one-stop center for international students, accommodation, transport and shopping. apart from this, there are a few services provided to international students, such as airport pickup, accommodation check-in, banking and currency exchange, immigration matters, safe-keeping of passports, and booking air tickets. besides this, appropriate level of details for courses are available, such as course introduction (affiliated university), course description (intake and duration), structure (syllabus) requirement, study route (in diagram), and full accreditation. the limitations are no publication of course fees except for one-course and credit transfer details. education websites 23 respondents mentioned that sites need to be dated [x]. in order to know if the website is current, the last updated date needs to be listed at the bottom of the webpage. furthermore, the home page can publish coming events like college open day, seminars, forums and other workshops. current information appears on the college’s coming intake calendar and latest news on serving community and student achievements are available by utilizing the rss (really simple syndication). an organization that regularly updates websites gives confidence to potential customers and influences them to visit the site repeatedly, while a website’s current reliable links should be available and working. copyright year at the bottom of the website also reflects the current status of websites. there is no last updated date listed at the kdu site. appearance of the site looks professional. generally, the site has short and meaningful text, good spelling and grammar, font size and colour are appropriate, usage of frame to make websites look organized, links are working, minimal animation, quality college pictures, best viewed information of the website example with internet explorer & resolution (1024 x 768). there is no virtual tour of the college with multimedia component that could make the website look more professional. however, the usage of rss for coming intake calendar, latest news on serving community and student achievements contributed to the appearance of web page as well. webpage analysis of olympia college olympia college penang has a five-acre campus and has an extensive range of facilities for its students that include sports and accommodation. it has always been at the forefront of cocurricular activities where staff and students alike maintain equilibrium of academia and current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 24 recreation. perhaps it’s the typical penang culture that influenced the campus environment as it buzzes with activities, be it their work, study or otherwise (olympia college, 2008). figure 3 website of olympia college penang source: olympia college (2008) for more than 10 years, olympia college has provided quality training and education services to benefit students in secretarial, business, entrepreneurship, hotels, multimedia specialist, systems engineer, financial services, accounting, sales and marketing, human resource, administrative management, public relations or advertising, system analysis and web designing (olympia college, 2008). the college offers programmes wherein students complete pre-university/foundation, certificate programmes, diploma programmes, higher national diploma and degree education websites 25 programmes. the qualification would lead to external awards from australia, united kingdom and united states of america universities (olympia college, 2008). sources for this college are its 10-year history as an educational institution. olympia college, under raffles education group, is a public listed company in malaysia. potential customers, who visit these websites, should be impressed, considering with the good track record. apart from this, olympia college has been awarded the napei education excellence 2005 award, for the best large private education institution in malaysia. the layout for the page has the main menu located at top left hand side. sub-menus based on the selection from main menu are located at the middle left hand side. menu sequence is based on the importance of information. however, length of the page is quite long and requires significant scrolling down the page. higher search engines ranking translate into greater traffic on a site and, subsequently increase its accessibility degree. practical way to examine olympia college has been conducted through the search engine google. olympia college has the highest result from search engine ranking. the second factor used to measure accessibility is the site popularity. the most common indicator of web performance is the number of hits a site generates. there is no counter included in olympia college’s websites. the third factor is website up time. generally all sites are accessible except at the intake button, where there was an error due to microsoft ole db provider. speed is important as potential customers are looking for information and they do not have much patience to wait a long time for a web page to download. it is not advisable to use flash site, if there is a need, one should have options of flash or non-flash site. the web page is non-flash website with reasonable download time of ~30 seconds. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 26 the average number of clicks needed to access faculties or college pages < n, and to access courses information was n. however, some sites require around ten clicks to access programmes, implying a very poor organization of the information that should be improved. navigability for olympia college to potential customer is less than five, in terms of number of clicks. the content of the web page includes home (campuses, student testimonial), about us (college, country), courses (why choose olympia college, programmes available, courses faq), fees, intakes, scholarship, career opportunities, galleries (events & forum), contact us (campus facilities contact, application & scholarship form) photos with facilities such as library, classroom, computer lab and canteen, for the benefit of students. the only weakness in terms of content is the lack of a site map that will help ease the navigating perspective of a potential customer. the site publishes their contact information like email address, phone number and fax number. it uses english as the official language of the internet. site accuracy is good promoting college facilities, services, and courses with reasonable price and yet not compromising quality, and good study environment through their websites. the site has short testimonials with good comments from students. the site also publishes affiliations with well-known universities in the united states, united kingdom, canada, australia and new zealand, giving confidence to potential customers to pursue their studies in the college. courses offered by the college are also recognized by nab. for level of details, the site has information line up the main menu, such as about us, fees, intakes, scholarships, and contact. a portion for foreign potential customers lists out education websites 27 details in the following sequence: about us, followed by the country, study abroad and international student office. besides this, appropriate level of details for availability of information for courses offered, pre-requisite to register course, credit transfer and course fees are available. quality education and support, arrival and orientation, studying on-campus, study abroad and exchange, sufficient publications and forms and frequently asked questions were found. olympia college has a country introduction link, providing information about malaysia, climate, people and language, religion, food, currency and banking. the study abroad link provides information such as international passport application details, and furnished accommodation services provided by the college. the international student office offers services including airport pickup, accommodation check-in, banking and money changing, immigration matters, safekeeping of passports, and booking air tickets. there is a link to the malaysia immigration office, which is useful especially to foreign students who need to apply for visas, understand lead times and custom restriction on food and plants. respondents mentioned that sites need to be dated [x]. in order to know if the website is current, the last updated date needs to be listed at the bottom of the webpage. furthermore, the home page can publish coming events like college open day, seminars, forums and other workshops. current information appears on the college’s coming intake calendar and latest news on serving community and student achievements are found. an organization that regularly updates websites gives confidence to potential customers and influences them to visit the site repeatedly, while a website’s current reliable links should be current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 28 available and working. copyright year at the bottom of the website also reflects the current status of websites. there is no last updated date listed at the olympia college site. appearance of the site is professional. generally, the site has short and meaningful text, good spelling and grammar, and font size and color are appropriate, usage of frame to make websites look organized, links are working, best viewed information of the website example with internet explorer & resolution (1024 x 768). there is no animation or virtual college tour with multimedia component that could make the website look more professional. the following is a summarized analysis of the three colleges’ websites: table 3: summary analysis for three colleges no criteria inti kdu olympia 1 source (0 3) 2 3 3 1.1 more than 10 years (yes or no) 1.2 awards (yes or no) 1.3 public listed (yes or no) yes yes no yes yes yes yes yes yes 2 layout (0 3) 3 3 2 2.1 center, left and right (yes or no) 2.2 sequence based on importance (yes or no) 2.3 not “below the fold” (yes or no) yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes no 3 accessibility (0 – 8) 7 5 4 3.1 highest hit at search engine (yes or no) yes yes yes education websites 29 3.2 counter 3.3 no error outage 3.4 affiliate partner, newspaper and government sponsor 3.5 css 3.6 alt attribute 3.7 named links 3.8 contrasting background + text color no yes yes yes yes yes yes no yes yes no no yes yes no no yes no no yes yes 4 speed ( 0 – 3) 2 2 2 4.1 website size (bytes) 4.2 no flash (if no, is there an option for flash or non-flash?) 4.3 download time (<10 seconds) yes no yes yes no yes yes no yes 5 navigability (0 – 4) 3 4 2 5.1 number of clicks ( < 4) 5.2 two minutes to find information 5.3 site map usage 5.4 button terminology – descriptive yes yes no yes yes yes yes yes no yes no yes 6 content (0 – 13) 8 10 10 6.1 admissions 6.2 academic programmes yes yes yes yes yes yes current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 30 6.3 faculty, staff, student, alumni 6.4 student financial assistance 6.5 welcome from the chair or programme director 6.6 news and announcement 6.7 cost of admission 6.8 course frequently asked questions (faqs) 6.9 foreign student frequently asked questions (faqs) 6.10 international student corner 6.11 sign in/request information 6.12 contact us a. international number 6.13 other language used in website, besides english yes yes yes yes no no no yes yes yes no no yes yes yes yes yes no no yes yes yes no yes yes yes yes yes yes yes no yes yes yes no no 7 accuracy (0 – 4) 2 2 2 7.1 college affiliated with wellknown universities 7.2 testimonials from students 7.3 government 7.4 author of website yes yes yes no yes yes yes no yes yes yes no education websites 31 8 appropriate level of details (0 – 5) 1 2 2 8.1 the level of details for availability of information 8.2 courses offered 8.3 pre-requisite to register course 8.4 credit transfer 8.5 course fees no yes no no no no yes no no yes no yes no no yes 9 current information (0 – 5) 5 5 5 9.1 regular update 9.2 reliable link 9.3 event dates 9.4 semester calendar 9.5 copyright yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes 10 appearance (0 – 5) 5 5 4 10.1 good spelling 10.2 grammar 10.3 font 10.4 look professional 10.5 news flash yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes no total possible score 55 38 41 34 percent score 69% 75% 61% source: develop for this research current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 32 table 3 provides the results of the websites evaluation. this study shows that kdu college has the best overall scores for web content and information presentation. all three institutions have on average similar ratings. this study revealed that these institutions have perfect scores for information currency and appearance. this evaluation also illustrates where the selected institutions performed poorly, especially in areas of level of details and accessibility. the results of this study can be useful for website content improvements for better servicing of their potential students. speed is in an acceptable range, as all of them are non-flash websites. three websites have current information by through regular updates, reliable links and updated event calendars. three websites have good spelling, grammar and font, and professional outlook, especially the kdu college website which has rss feature where it could refreshed by the latest news and events. layout from three websites look good, except that olympia college has a long page that requires significant scrolling down to read the whole page. generally, the basic content are available, such as admissions, academic programmes, student testimonials, student financial assistance, welcome message, news and announcement, international student corner and contact information. however, three websites lack frequently asked questions for international students, and costs for local and international student. cost of admission is fully available at olympia college and some courses in kdu college. site map feature is only available in kdu college website. english is the language used at three websites, while chinese language is also used in the kdu college website. with existing content available, three websites are rated moderate for detailed level of content. education websites 33 accessibility and navigability for inti college are the best compared to the other two colleges. olympia college needs to improve on their accessibility and navigability, as there is an error outage encountered when a certain button is clicked, while it takes more than three clicks and exceeded two minutes to find the international student corner. therefore, it can be concluded that the kdu college website is the best website compared to the other two college websites. nevertheless, more effort can be made to further publish all course fees, faqs for international and local student admission, and contact information for faculty, staff and students. this study indicates that these web site attributes are vital to convert potential customers to real customers. in summary, the study shows that source and accuracy of the content are trusted based on prestige of higher education service providers that are established over 20 years. two are public listed companies and all of their courses are recognized by the malaysian government, and are affiliated with well-known universities from uk, usa, australia, new zealand and canada. conclusion and future research the present paper is a timely and useful report that can be used to identify the benefits of higher education service providers’ websites to potential international students. it can also be used to build competitive advantage. as previously mentioned, the study focuses on three tertiary education service providers websites from malaysia. this study illustrated a website evaluation technique for educational institutions to undertake a comprehensive assessment of their respective websites. this study also provides useful recommendations for educational institutions to integrate in the improvements of websites content and appearance. websites specific to private tertiary education promote courses offered, promoting services provided, promote the tertiary education institution, promote events, facilitate potential customer interaction 365 days, 24/7, answer frequently asked questions, improve current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 34 branding, reach targeted markets, improve communication and timely information, and support inquiry marketing. the key strategies used to promote private tertiary education were identified, and having a website is a key strategy to promote private tertiary education in malaysia. as an exploratory study of how higher education service providers’ websites could benefit their potential students from overseas, we limited our investigation into three institutions only. it would be interesting for future studies to undertake the investigation across 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(2001). the effect of gats on transnational higher education: comparing experiences of new zealand, australia, singapore and malaysia. proceedings of the australian association for research in education (aare) annual conference, fremantle, australia. retrieved february, 1, 2009 from http://www.aare.edu.au/01pap/zig01257.htm education websites 37 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x web-based call to listening comprehension li-mei chen valdosta state university ruiming zhang guangzhou university citation chen, l. & zhang, r. (2011). web-based call to listening comprehension. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this paper reports on a study which investigated the effectiveness of web-based computer assisted language learning (call) on tertiary students’ listening comprehension. both students’ academic performance and attitudes were examined at the end of the web-based call. while t tests were used to analyze the results of students’ academic performance, descriptive statistics interpreted students’ attitudes toward this learning. although there was no significant difference between the students employing the web-based call and the students using the traditional method, the students responded to the web-based call positively, and the lower-level students, compared to their higher-level peers, were more motivated to practice listening comprehension under the web-based call environment. this paper ends with discussions of potential issues that need to be taken into account and recommendations for future implementation and studies. keywords: listening, call, web-based current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: li-mei chen affiliation: valdosta state university address: 1500 north patterson street, valdosta, ga 31698 email: lchen@valdosta.edu biographical information: li-mei chen received her phd from ohio state university. she is an associate professor of linguistics. she has published articles on technology and language teaching, teacher education for esl and efl, and testing effects on language education. author: ruiming zhang affiliation: guangzhou university biographical information: ruiming zhang is an instructor of english. his research efforts focus on language acquisition, computer-assisted language teaching, and applied linguistics. web-based call to listening comprehension 3 web-based call to listening comprehension traditional tertiary english education in china placed an emphasis on reading. the ultimate goal was to cultivate students’ abilities in reading and translating materials written in english. most college teachers implemented the grammar translation teaching method in the classroom to meet the expectations of national college english teaching syllabus. as china strengthens its economic development and accelerates its steps into the world, the function of english education is shifting from linguistic competence to communicative competence. more employers, especially those in joint-venture businesses, consider communicative competence in english as a crucial factor in hiring (huang & xu, 1999). the national syllabus for tertiary english teaching was under serious criticism for not preparing college students with an adequate level of communicative competence to meet the actual needs. the ministry of education, thus, undertook the revision of the old syllabus. the revised syllabus emphasizing communicative competence also stipulated the national standardized college english tests (cet) as a means to evaluate college students’ english levels. college students are required to pass cet level 4 (cet4) before graduation. despite many years of effort, most college english learners in china are still not able to use the language to communicate. according to zhao’s (2004) analysis, insufficient input, lack of practice, ineffective feedback, and lack of motivation are four major challenges faced by english learners in china. however, traditional face-to-face, teacher-led instruction fails to respond to these challenges. faced with the disappointing outcomes, china has launched a reform of the traditional mode in english education at all levels. one of its major efforts in the reform is to maximize modern technology in english education because it is believed that the advancement of information and communication technology should make it possible to devise a current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 language environment that delivers high-quality language education (zhao, 2004). the technology-integrated approach is also expected to remove two major teaching barriers, poor resources and lack of teaching professionals, in teaching college english listening and speaking. theoretically, web-based call seems a suitable environment for tertiary students in china to improve listening skills; its effect, however, remains unclear. in spite that many studies have reported positive effects of web-based call on language learning, successful models from one context may not produce a desirable result in another context. thus, this study was designed to investigate effects of web-based call on language learning with a focus on english listening to understand how web-based call facilitates tertiary students’ listening comprehension in the context of china and what the students’ attitudes are toward this learning. the results of this study should also provide more insight into the nature of web-based call to language learning. theoretical background web-based call computers have been used in language learning since 1960s. since its first introduction, computer-assisted language learning or simply call has involved through three major phrases: structural call (1970’s-1980’s), communicative call (1980’s-1990’s) and integrative call (21 st century). each phrase corresponds to the main language acquisition theories and advancement of computer technology. the present phrase of call, integrative call, has been made possible by the development of powerful pcs that support rapid use of the internet, lans, multimedia, and linked resources known as hypermedia (lee, 2007). a significant feature of integrative call is a shift from language-learning software and cd-roms to web-based activities that allow learners flexible, self-paced access to information (fotos & browne, 2004). web-based call to listening comprehension 5 the powerful web offers a range of new opportunities for learners to develop their language proficiency. the use of multimedia, such as sound, pictures, and video, in addition to text, facilitates language learning (al-seghayer, 2005). not only does the web make it possible for easy access to an assortment of language experience, but it also allows repeated practice with a variety of authentic materials that can supplement and transcend what students receive in class or in their local communities (hubbard, kessler, & madden, 2004). the web-based practice tools also create different learning and assessment contexts, and produce flexible approaches to instruction and evaluation (lee, 2007). such flexible approaches allow learners to receive timely feedback for their improvement and adjustment. moreover, web-based call can be a great means for achieving independent learning and better learning results in the long run because through computer technology learners can 1) access huge amounts of relevant information, 2) explore and browse through different choices, 3) expose themselves both to linguistic input and socio-cultural knowledge, and 4) eventually make their own evaluations and suggestions regarding what works for them, what can be improved and how (sheerin, 1997; sturdridge, 1997). this, in turn, increases learners’ engagement, willingness, motivation as well as autonomy (rowsell & libben, 1994). due to its wide use, effects of call and web technology on second and foreign language education have been concerned and studied. numerous researchers and practitioners (e.g., warschauer & healey, 1998; watts & lloyd, 2001; chang & lehman, 2002; cobb, 2002; bang & cantos, 2004; murray & mcpherson, 2004; breen, 2005; son, 2007) have asserted that the integration of call and web technology is beneficial in the area of second and foreign language acquisition. technology and listening comprehension current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 listening has long been labeled as the major and fundamental skill in language acquisition. not only is it a key language and communication skill in its own right, but it also provides a channel through which new language can be received and become intake (brett, 1997). the features that computer and web technology possess, in terms of their flexibility and variety of content, approach and media, provide a solid basis and platform for acquiring english listening because the integration of web-based call enables students’ learning of listening not to be restricted by time, space, content, and environment; large number of students can have access to the web-based listening learning opportunities. it allows students to practice listening in a simulated and concrete learning environment. also, web-based call promotes learning interests as the web allows students to search for the relevant information instead of being restricted in a pre-designed course model (wijekumar, 2005). a number of research studies have proved that with the utilization of computer and web technology, listening comprehension can be taught much more efficiently and effectively. for example, a research study conducted by brett (1997) to investigate the effectiveness of computer-based multimedia applications for developing listening skills shows that multimedia enhance listening comprehension greatly. in a similar study, klassen and milton (1999) demonstrate that call can be an efficient medium whereby learners can improve their listening skills significantly. smidt and hegelheimer (2004), in a study of examining how web-based video assists listening comprehension, conclude that online academic lectures supported by multimedia increase listening comprehension. corresponding to smidt and hegelheimer’s findings, zhou and yang (2004), in their study of the effects of visual aid on efl listening comprehension, support the use of multimedia in enhancing listening comprehension. they also point out that viewing-assisted functions are especially helpful to learners with low-level english web-based call to listening comprehension 7 competence. wong (2006), in her study of evaluating a web-based listening program for chinese university non-english majors, indicates that the web-based instruction, when integrated appropriately, can add a valuable dimension to face-to-face teaching. she further points out that the web-based listening program is suitable for self-access, which fully incorporates significant factors (e.g., learner differences and modified interaction) in second language acquisition into its task design. learner attitudes learner attitudes toward call play a crucial role influencing effectiveness of call to language acquisition. smith (2000), in a study examining students’ response to call as a language learning approach, concludes that students’ positive response to call helps them benefit more from technology in language learning. aacken (1999) as well as lasagabaster and sierra (2003), in their studies, report a positive relationship between student attitudes to call and effective language learning. likewise, many other studies (see klassen & milton, 1999; ayres, 2002; greenfield, 2003) also confirm the relationship between students’ reaction to call and language learning results. even though most studies prove that students have a general positive attitude toward call, a few studies question the effectiveness of call integration into language learning due to negative learner attitudes toward call. as bloom (1985) indicates, students’ resistance to the use of call into language learning is related to their anxiety or computer phobia. susses (1998) also points out that students, especially those of lower proficiency, may not have developed the navigational skills needed to find what they want or the skills for how to exploit the material. thus, they may feel call is an “unwanted” change. because engaging in call current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 requires time and commitment particularly during the transitional stage, some learners may not accept it. as learners potentially contribute to the development of the language tools, a number of researchers (e.g., hulstijn, 2000; lynch, 2000; lasagabaster & sierra, 2003) recommend taking students’ opinions into consideration when evaluating call in language learning. thus, this study also aims to identify the relationship between learner attitudes toward web-based call when examining the effectiveness of web-based call on students’ listening comprehension. methods all the first year non-english majors (n = 556) from school of humanities and school of education, who were taking college english as required courses at guangzhou university in 2005, were asked to participate in this study. they were randomly assigned to two groups. the experimental group contained 296 students and the control group consisted of 260 students. to ensure that the two groups had the same level of listening competence, both groups took the traditional english classes in the first term (about 4.5 months) in which the students learned the text first (e.g., main point, vocabulary, and structure of sentences) and listened to the text read by a native speaker of english on a tape recorder. in the end of the term, listening scores in the university’s standardized english test from both groups were analyzed by using spss, and the results are as follows. according to table 1, both the means (10.68 vs. 10.88) and standard deviations (2.46 vs. 2.51) of the two groups are very close. from the two-tailed t-test, the p-value (0.35) is greater than 0.01, which indicates no significant difference between the two groups in their first-term final english test scores in listening. in other words, the listening levels between the two groups before the experiment appeared to be the same. web-based call to listening comprehension 9 table 1: comparison of all students’ first-term final english test scores in listening between the experimental group and the control group first term (before the experiment) group n mean std. deviation t p-value df control 260 10.68 2.46 0.93 0.35 554 experimental 296 10.88 2.51 p>0.01, t-test not significant (two-tailed) students with lower listening abilities were also compared. these students were identified based on their first-term final english test scores in listening. the bottom 30% of the students whose scores in the listening test were below average was drawn. we compared the listening score differences between the students in the experimental group and those in the control group; table 2 shows the results. the means (7.89 vs. 8.13) and standard deviations (1.29 vs. 1.53) of the two groups are close to each other; and the p-value (0.26) from the two-tailed ttest is greater than 0.01 and thus is not statistically significant. all of these indicate that the listening abilities in the two groups had no difference before the experiment. table 2: comparison of lower-level students’ first-term final english test scores in listening between the experimental group and the control group first term (before the experiment) group n mean std. deviation t p-value df control 79 7.89 1.29 1.12 0.26 168 experimental 91 8.13 1.53 p>0.01, t-test not significant (two-tailed) our study started at the second term, which, like the first term, took another 4.5 months. in this term, students in the control group continued the traditional classes. as to the experimental group, listening was not taught in class, but the students were required to use a web-based computer-assisted listening system to practice their listening comprehension during current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 the term. while students were free to arrange their time, the web connection was a must; otherwise, they could not log into the system. information including the frequency of log-ins, numbers of students on line, the study time each student spent on the web-based call, number of activities each student completed, and students’ test scores was recorded and transmitted to the server. teacher interventions were provided whenever necessary. after the second term, both groups took the university’s standardized english test. their performance in listening was compared by using the t-tests. the experimental group was also asked to complete a questionnaire which surveyed their approval of the web-based call to listening comprehension. the results were analyzed by using descriptive statistics. in order to facilitate our investigation, we formulated the following research questions: 1) does the experimental group perform better than the control group? 2) do the lower-level students in the experimental group outperform those in the control group? 3) how do students respond to the web-based call? we adopted a learning system, the new era interactive english, developed by tsinghua university press and approved by the ministry of education. this system, designed to reflect the challenges of english learning for non-english majors in china, contains four main components that are closely integrated with each other. the online learning material, through authentic videos, flexible control mechanisms, advanced speech recognition technology and automatic feedback mechanisms, provides students with individualized and flexible access to authentic language and cultural materials and practice opportunities with instant feedback. the audio cds offer students extended access to authentic language and cultural materials. the companion book provides students with the opportunity to study language and cultural materials in more depth. web-based call to listening comprehension 11 the learning system also includes links to a variety of media-based materials, e.g., english movies, sound files, etc., to provide students extensive access (zhao, 2004). the actual learning material was installed on a local computer but had to be accessed though the web so that the students’ learning process and performance could be transmitted to the server. the administrator assigned a login name and password to every student, so he/she could log into the learning platform. the learning material, with about 13 theme-specific units in each level, fairly matched the students’ linguistic competence by categorizing listening into six levels. within a unit, the students could do the study and practice as many times as they wanted as long as they did not submit their study report and go to the next unit. in the end of each unit, there was a test to assess students’ learning. if a student failed to reach a score of 70 out of 100, he/she had to repeat the same unit. after three units, a review test followed. when the students finished all units at a level, there was a final test to assess their overall learning. we used the following ways for the teachers and students to interact with each other. while the students worked on the listening course on their own, the teacher, via the web, could learn of each student’s learning progress and performance and communicate with the student (see figure 1). the teacher could also schedule classroom meetings to provide academic reporting and, if desired, guidance to the students to help them make the best use of their time. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 figure 1: main components of the web-based call results question 1: does the experimental group perform better than the control group? the students’ academic performance results after employing the web-based call are shown in table 3. the experimental group has a lower standard deviation (1.86) than the control group (2.44). this indicates the experimental group has a more homogeneous dispersion of the scores than the control group. that is to say most of the students’ scores in the experimental group, while not identical, are more similar. in contrast, a wider dispersion or greater heterogeneity in the listening ability exists in the control group. although this is a pleasing finding, the p-value (0.15) from the t-test is greater than 0.01 and is not significant. this means the experimental group did not perform better than the control group. table 3: comparison of all students’ second-term final english test scores in listening between the experimental group and the control group web-based call to listening comprehension 13 second term (after the experiment) group n mean std. deviation t p-value df control 257 13.96 2.44 1.45 0.15 548 experimental 293 14.22 1.86 p>0.01, t-test not significant (one-tailed) question 2: do the lower-level students in the experimental group outperform those in the control group? the results of the comparison of the students with lower english competence are shown in table 4. the t-test (p-value 0.06 > 0.01) is not statistically significant, meaning the experimental group did not demonstrate higher listening comprehension than the control group after the web-based call. table 4: comparison of lower-level students’ second-term final english test scores in listening between the experimental group and the control group second term (after the experiment) group n mean std. deviation t p-value df control 76 13.16 2.95 1.88 0.06 165 experimental 91 13.87 1.87 p>0.01, t-test not significant (one-tailed) question 3: how do students respond to the web-based call? according to the survey results, 83% of the students were in favor of the web-based call; 79% of the students indicated that compared to the traditional learning, the web-based call made their learning more autonomous; 83% of the students revealed that the web-based call was more interesting than the traditional learning. the students commented on strengths of the web-based call as self-paced learning, flexibility, easy access to information, instant feedback on their performance, and ability to work on their own. however, some students had current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 concerns of their comfort and confidence levels in utilizing the web and computers, accessibility of computers and the network, and issues of teacher facilitation and support. according to the participation information recorded under the server, students in general participated in the web-based call regularly and actively. however, the participation rate started to decline when cet4 was approaching. participation of the students after their pass of cet4 dropped dramatically; more than half of them did not participate in the rest of the webbased call after they passed cet4. compared to their higher-level peers, the lower-level students logged into the learning platform more frequently, spent more time on the learning activities, and completed more unit tasks. discussion and recommendations this study examined the effectiveness of the web-based call on listening comprehension and learner attitudes toward this learning. in contrast to the literature, the study did not show that the web-based call improved listening comprehension. nevertheless, the students generally responded to the web-based call learning positively. the results of this study reveals that integration of web-based call is quite context dependent. although it has been commonly reported that call is effective to language learning, a successful model from one context cannot be imported into another context without modifications. based on this, we recommend further studies investigating factors influencing the implementation of web-based call, e.g., cet4, should be conducted to help understand how to implement the web-based call into the context of china. although the lower-level students employing the web-based call did not demonstrate higher listening comprehension than those using the traditional method, our record from the server shows that the lower-level students, compared to their higher-level peers, spent more time web-based call to listening comprehension 15 practicing listening and completed more unit activities under the web-based call environment. this is a pleasing finding because in class the lower-level students are usually less motivated to practice listening. when they are less motivated to learn, it is hard to improve their listening skills. this study reveals that if given a proper opportunity, lower-level students can be selfdisciplined and motivated to improve their listening skills. because it generally takes more time to see lower-level students’ progress than higher-level students’, a longitudinal study is encouraged to understand effects of the web-based call on lower-level students’ listening comprehension over longer-term scales. overall, the students responded to the web-based call positively. over 80% of the students were in favor of the web-based call. they viewed the web as a helpful tool and the call as a useful way for acquiring listening. about 80% of the students reported the call made their learning more autonomous. the students listed the best features of the web-based call as self-paced learning, flexibility, easy access to information, instant feedback on their performance, and ability to work on their own. as the self-paced learning allows the student to control the pace of their learning process, each student has the same level of participation in the learning process. in addition, the web-based call offers instant feedback on the students’ performance and exercise errors so that they are able to understand their weaknesses and make necessary adjustments. while the call program can be seen to constitute the first step to promoting the students’ autonomy in acquiring listening, the web further fosters the students’ autonomous learning. via the web, the students can access their learning at any time and complete their activities at their own pace. the flexibility allows them to set their learning goals, arrange their time, and assess their learning. in this way, the students can monitor their own learning and work on their own. this result, corresponding to many other findings (e.g., rowsell current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 & libben, 1994; hayati, 2005; pala, 2005; wong, 2006), shows that students when using computer technology become motivated and interested in improving their listening comprehension. this, in turn, promotes learner autonomy. however, about one-fifth of the students disliked their web-based call experience. some of them were not satisfied with the availability of computers and connectivity of the network. inaccessibility, poor performance, and slow speed impede the success of the webbased call. for this, we strongly recommend the institution to make necessary arrangements and financial investments in the computer labs (e.g., coordinating with different departments and units to open their computer labs or otherwise establishing more pubic computer labs for the students) and in upgrading all the remaining hubs with newer, faster network technology. in addition, some students expressed their lack of comfort and confidence in using the web and computer technology. such a problem particularly occurred to frustrate the students from remote, less-developed areas. these students had less access to the web and computer technology and thus lacked necessary computer skills for task completion. this finding emphasizes the importance of taking students’ computer skills into consideration before the web-based call is implemented. we recommend the institution assess students’ computer skills, offer necessary training and instructions to help students obtain essential computer skills, and provide students with adequate onsite and online technology supports. the other finding also supports that the teacher role as a facilitator is an important variable in the success of the web-based call (stepp-greany, 2002). in this web-based call, like any call activity at any level of proficiency, for a variety of cultural or psychological reasons, some students had a more passive learning attitude than the others. although the learning environment offered ways for the teacher to provide input web-based call to listening comprehension 17 to the students during their learning process, some students still felt they needed more physical teacher facilitation and support (e.g., in developing their learning strategies and in navigating the web). this reflects jones’ (2001) argument when he examines call and teachers’ responsibilities. according to jones, the web is an immensely seductive resource for efl learners. while it offers genuine opportunities for self-directed learning, the sheer wealth of material places more responsibility on the teacher. all of these reveal that the teachers’ role in the web-based call environment cannot be minimized. teachers need to be called on to provide assistance in training students in adopting effective independent learning strategies and in the use of the web for learning. in addition, we recommend teachers add one-on-one conferences with individual students in the early stages of the web-based call and whenever necessary to better understand individual learners’ special needs. conclusion the study does not correspond to the recent research that proves the use of web-based call facilitates students’ acquisition of english listening. this finding explains that the relationship between web-based call and listening comprehension is complex. successful models from one context cannot be imported into another context without modifications. nevertheless, this study shows that lower-level students are more motivated to practice their listening skills under the web-based call environment and learners have positive attitudes to the web-based call. despite these two pleasing findings, this study also reveals a variety of issues, including accessibility of technology, students’ comfort level to technology, the role and responsibilities of teachers, and the institution’s support, which may occur to impede the effectiveness of the web-based call. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 the findings of the study should serve as a basis for additional research that will examine more closely the effects of web-based call on listening comprehension. since the results may be context dependent, further studies in different esl and efl contexts are encouraged to better understand the influence of computer and web technology on listening comprehension. we also recommend longitudinal studies investigating effects of web-based call on lower-level students to understand how web-based call really affects lower-level students’ listening comprehension over longer-term scales. since learner engagement serves as an important indicator for how web-based call functions, we encourage additional studies to examine factors affecting learner engagement or motivation under the web-based call environment. web-based call to listening comprehension 19 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 references aacken, van s. 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(2004). the effects of visual aid on efl listening comprehension. journal of pla university of foreign languages, 27(3), 58-62. http://www.gse.uci.edu/person/markw/overview.html http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=26 http://www1.open.edu/cn/elt/5/22/htm web-based call to listening comprehension 23 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo parenting style_final current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 1 volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x parenting style, self-esteem and student performance in the united arab emirates negmeldin alsheikh united arab emirates university gowri parameswaran suny, new paltz hala elhoweris united arab emirates university citation alsheikh, n., parameswaran, g, & elhoweris, h. (2010). parenting style, self-esteem and student performance in the united arab emirates. current issues in education, 13(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the impact of parenting styles on 5-8th grade students’ performance and self-esteem was analyzed within a sample of the united arab emirates (uae) public school children. a sample of 162 children (50% boys, 50% girls) reported on their parents’ child-rearing practices. parenting styles were classified into one of three groups (autonomy granting, demandingness, or responsiveness). the results show that demandingness was found to have a significant impact on gpa scores. mothers’ interactions with children were dependent on both the gender of the child and the age of the child. factor analysis results suggested that family cohesion and effort were positively related to school performance and self-autonomy was negatively related to school performance. self-esteem was not significantly related to any of the variables studied. keywords: parenting style, uae students, self-esteem, student performance, arab students, primary school, early adolescence, secondary school, gender, gpa, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: negmeldin alsheikh affiliation: united arab emirates university address: p.o. box 17551, al-ain, uae email: nalsheikh@uaeu.ac.ae biographical information: negmeldin alsheikh is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction. his research efforts focus on language learning strategies, metacognitive awareness of bi-literate and multi-literate readers, and emergent literacy. author: gowri parameswaran affiliation: suny, new paltz email: paramesg@newpaltz.edu biographical information: gowri parameswaran is an associate professor of educational studies. her research efforts focus on children development in poor environments, exploring changes across generations, and education for social justice.. author: hala elhoweris affiliation: united arab emirates university email: helhoweris@uaeu.ac.ae biographical information: hala elhoweris is an associate professor of special education. her research efforts focus on students with special needs, inclusion, assessment, multicultural issues in education, and gifted education. parenting style 3 introduction the conceptualization of parenting styles as a way to categorize and measure the quality and type of interaction between parents and children began with the pioneering research by baumrind (1971). she noticed that parents varied in their interactions with children along 2 major dimensions – warmth and demandingness. her original framework could place most parental interactions along a 2-way axis, with one axis representing warmth from warm to cold and one axis representing demandingness, ranging from low to high. she thus classified parent-child interactions into 4 types: a) authoritarian: the relationship was characterized by lack of warmth and high demandingness; b) authoritative: the relationship is characterized by high warmth and high demandingness; c) permissive: the relationship is characterized by high warmth and low demandingness; d) neglectful: the relationship is characterized by lack of warmth and low demandingness (baumrind, 1989, 1991; cohen & rice, 1997; maccoby & martin, 1983). researchers added another dimension to baumrind’s original framework. another category called it ‘autonomy granting’ was added. democratic parents encourage their children to be autonomous without being overprotective while authoritarian parents are overprotective (steinberg, lamborn, dornbusch and darling, 1992). there have been several variations of this 3–dimensional model proposed by other north american researchers, which have been used to examine parenting and parent child relationships in other parts of the world. in some cases, the parent child relationship atmosphere is highlighted (stevenson, chen & uttal, 1990) and in other cases, parent child relationship behaviors are emphasized and measured (dornbusch, ritter, leiderman, roberts, & fraleigh, 1987). in studies emphasizing the climate of the relationship, global questions capturing the relationship in a current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 4 variety of situation are asked when the behaviors are emphasized; particular parental responses to specific situations are enquired about. the relationship between the two remains strong in most studies indicating that they are measuring similar constructs (e.g., lee, daniels & kissinger, 2006) there have been many studies attempting to substantiate the positive impact of authoritative parenting on various indicators of child development and the negative impact of the authoritarian and permissive parenting styles on children’s functioning (cohen, richardson, and labree, 1994; epstein, 2001; lamborn, mounts, steinberg, & dornbusch, 1991; steinberg, lamborn, darling, mounts, & dornbusch,1994), i.e., selfesteem (robin & foster, 1989), academic performance (dornbusch, et al.,1987; paulson,1994), emotional maturity (lamborn, et al., 1991), tobacco use (ary, duncan, duncan, & hops, 1999; fleming, kim, harachi, & catalano, 2002), drug use and delinquency (baumrind, 1989, 1991; jackson, henricksen, & dickenson, 1997; tomlinson, 1991), and alcohol use (johnson & padina, 1991). other researchers have found that parental style is related to the frequency of adolescent injuries (bijur, kurzon, hamelsky, & power, 1991) and negative adolescent identity (petersen, 1993). results from studies that attempt to relate parental styles and child and adolescent academic and social behavior and identity have been mixed and the effect sizes vary widely depending on the gender of the parent or a care-giver, gender, age and temperament of the child and the socio-economic status of the family (harris, 2002). for instance, conrade & ho (2001) found that mothers’ parenting style had a bigger impact on child performance in school while bronte-tinkew, moore and carrano (2006) found that fathers’ emotional responsiveness was more highly related to children’s performance. in some studies girls are parenting style 5 affected both positively and negatively by parenting style differences among parents while in others boys are more negatively or positively affected by parenting styles (conrade et al., 2001; lee, et al., 2006). perhaps, the most damaging to the current framework of parenting styles and its impact on children are the findings of parent child relationships and their impact on children in non-western societies. in a study conducted within the usa, it was found that hmong children are less affected by variations in parental behavior in terms of their academic performance and frequency of engaging in risky behavior as compared to european american children (supple & small, 2006). one of the contexts where the parenting style theory has been widely tested for validity is in china. it was found that in china, authoritarian parenting was positively related to children’s performance in school while there was no similar positive impact for authoritative parenting and permissive parenting styles (e.g., chao, 1994; juan & larry, 2004; lamm & keller, 2007). chao (1994, p. 1112) proposed that chinese parenting style involves the confucian concept of ‘chiao shu’ which refers to training in culturally appropriate behaviors and ‘guan’ which means love and governing. chinese parenting involves being very strict and maintaining a high level of control, so that children can learn to value social hierarchy and discipline and at the same time communicating real parental care about the child. school success is highly valued in chinese society and children and parents both valued the control that parents exerted over their children in matters related to academic life (gorman, 1998; quoss and zhao, 1995). however, even in the chinese context, the effects of authoritarian parenting were rarely consistent. in studies conducted with chinese immigrant families in the usa, no difference was observed between chinese current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 6 american families and european american parents with regards to their parenting styles (kelly & tseng, 1992; lin & fu, 1990). additionally, in a study conducted with children of chinese origin in hong kong, tam and lam (2003) found that authoritative and permissive parenting had similar impact on children’s academic performance while authoritarian parenting was no different from neglectful parenting in terms of the impact on children. academic achievement was the most investigated variable among school-related variables. for example, leung, lau & lam (1998) found academic achievement was positively related to general authoritarianism in a hong kong adolescent’s sample, while authoritative parenting style was found to be unrelated to the grades of hong kong adolescents but positively related to the grades of european american and australian adolescents. in another study, park & bauer (2002) found that a positive relationship between authoritative parenting style and academic achievement exists only for the majority group (european americans), but not for latinos, african-americans, or asianamericans (christina, 2008; odubote, 2008; park & bauer, 2002). blair and qian (1998) found parental control was positively related to school performance of chinese adolescents. on the other hand, chao (2001) found that first-generation chinese youth from authoritative families were not better off in school than their counterparts from authoritarian families, whereas european american adolescents from authoritative families performed better in school than those european american youth from authoritarian families. additionally, authoritative parenting had consistently more positive effects on both school grades and school effort for european americans compared to first-generation chinese. all this may suggest that authoritarian parenting style is not commonly associated with negative adolescent outcomes, especially when studying non-caucasian samples. furthermore, positive adolescent outcomes have been parenting style 7 associated with authoritarian parenting style in some asian samples whereas positive effects have been found with authoritarian parenting style in some studies involving asian and other non-caucasian samples. one of the classic measures of adolescent adjustment in parenting studies is the selfesteem (rudy & grusec, 2006). several studies have explored the relationship between parenting styles and self-esteem. for instance, in a study that investigated the impact of parenting styles on adolescents’ self-esteem and internalization of values in spain, martinez and garcia (2007) found that adolescents of indulgent parents show highest scores in selfesteem whereas adolescents from authoritarian parents obtain the worst results. several other researchers have stressed the importance of parenting styles in children’s internalization of social values (grusec, goodnow, & kuczynski, 2000; martínez, garcía, & yubero, 2007). these researchers recommended in taking into account self esteem among other variables of psychological adjustment, because selfesteem entails an internalization of values, and the lack there of could lead to the impediment for such internalization. studies are now being conducted in other non-western cultural contexts to explore the issue of the impact of parenting styles on children’s academic performance and other child outcomes. there are very few studies exploring the relationship between parenting styles and child outcomes in the islamic world. in a study conducted in egypt (dwairy, achoui, abouserie & farah, 2006), the researchers found that for arab youth, the authoritative and authoritarian parenting style both had a positive impact on children’s mental health. the consistency of parenting was more predictive of the mental health status of the child as compared to the type of parenting style itself. the authors posit that in cultures where current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 8 authoritarian parenting is the norm, there are no negative effects of the authoritarian parenting style. the current study hopes to add to our knowledge base on the impact of parenting in the arab world as measured by the mothers’ parenting style questionnaire, administered to children and children’s development as measured by the gpa scores acquired by children in school and their self-esteem. it is hypothesized that the scores on the mothers’ parenting style questionnaire will be related to children’s gpa scores and self–esteem. in the uae, parents’ concept of the ideal child is closely related to traditional values in islamic culture: respect for elders, good manners, good academic outcomes, and self discipline. generally, in islamic societies parenting involves being very strict. the belief is that parents must be authoritarian to maintain a high level of control so that children can learn to value disciplines and social hierarchy. method participants our sampling frame consisted of a complete list of all the uae elementary and secondary public schools including boys and girls schools. identification of participants followed the guidelines of the stratified cluster sampling technique according to gender and geographical location. a total of fourteen elementary and secondary schools (7 boys’ schools & 7 girls’ schools) from the seven emirates were included in this study. classes were selected randomly from these schools. a total of 162 united arab emirates children who attending the uae public schools were included in this study. the children were selected from grades 5, 6, 7 and 8. the number of participants in each grade level was: 18, 85, 26 and 32 respectively. there were about equal numbers of girls and boys in each grade. all participants were muslim, middle-class and lived in urban areas. parenting style 9 instruments i) parental style inventory ii (psi-ii): the scale was adapted for the purpose of this study. this scale was designed to assess the construct of parenting style independently of parenting practice (lefebevre, 2004). it consisted of 36 items; twelve items for each parenting style dimension, namely, autonomy-granting, demandingness and responsiveness. participants had a choice of circling a scale from one to five, one symbolizing disagreement with the statement and five depicting high agreement with the statement. the inter-item reliability of the psiii is adequate for this study (r = .78). additionally, the psi-ii has adequate internal consistency, variability, and predictive validity. based on the scores on the scale participants' mothers' parenting styles were classified into four categories: authoritative, where the mother demonstrated democratic interaction patterns with the child, authoritarian, where the parent was autocratic and cold with the child, permissive, where the parent was laissez-faire and finally, neglectful, where the mother had all but abandoned the child. ii) rosenberg self-esteem scale: the scale was adapted for the purpose of this study. the scale consists of 10 positive and negative self-appraisal statements rated on a 4point likert scale format from 1 (strong disagree) to 4 (strong agree). higher scores indicate higher self-esteem (rosenberg, 1965). the reliability and validity of the scale are both adequate. iii) self-reported gpa score by the student: students were asked to report their current cumulative gpa scores. the reported gpa scores range between 1-4 points. the overall gpa mean score is 2.85 (sd = 1.7) as reported by the participants of this study. procedures participants were selected using the stratified random sampling technique. fourteen school principals who represented the seven emirates of the researchers’ interest were current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 10 contacted and agreed to participate in the study. information about the study and a thank-you letter from the researchers were sent via e-mail to the principals of all the schools. principals were also asked in the letter if the researchers could come at the beginning or after a class to collect the data. most principals preferred that researchers come at the end of the class to collect the data. all students who are enrolled in the selected classes took part in the study. the first and the third author visited each classroom and administered the questionnaire to each child individually. the investigators read each question out loud and wrote down the response. results results are reported as significant when the p-value is less than .05 for each relationship for all of the statistical computations that were performed.table 1 depicts the bivariate correlations of the parental dimensions of autonomy, responsiveness, demandingness, and mothers’ parenting style with children’s selfesteem, and their overall academic performance in the classroom. there were only two relationships that were significant with respect to either of the outcome variables. demandingness was significantly related to overall academic performance. the more demanding the parents were, the better the performance of the child in school (r = .29). gender was significantly correlated with gpa score. boys performed better in school than girls (r = .53). self-esteem was not significantly related to any of the variables. the student’s gender and age were significantly correlated to the mother’s parenting styles. in other words, parents’ interactions with children were dependent on both the gender of the child and the age of the child. autonomy-granting and demandingness by parents was significantly related to the age of the child. the older the child, the more autonomy parents parenting style 11 offered the child (r = .20) and the more demanding parents were of the child (r = .23). responsiveness was significantly correlated with the gender of the child. parents were more responsive to girls as compared with boys (r = .39). having transformed each of the independent parental-style dimensions into four banded categories by the standard deviation change on each dimensional score, a 4 (responsiveness) x 4 (demandingness) x 4 (autonomy-granting) manova was conducted using grades and self-esteem scores as dependent variables. responsiveness and autonomygranting were not found to significantly affect the dependent variable scores. demandingness was found to have a significant impact on gpa scores (f = 3.45, p < .05) but the relationship between demandingness and self-esteem was not significant. a tukey post-hoc test revealed that parents who scored very high on demandingness (4.35 or above on a scale of 5) had children who had significantly better grades than parents who scored less than 4.34 on demandingness. however, there was no difference between the gpa scores of children who reported that their parents made very few demands on them (less than 3.03) and children who reported that their parents had relatively higher expectations of them (between 3.04 and 4.34). the average gpa score for children in the highest demandingness group was 2.36 out of 3.0. the average grade for children of parents in the other three demandingness groups were 1.77, 2.0 and 1.8 respectively. finally, a factor analysis was conducted using the items in the parental style questionnaire. this statistical technique aims to explain the most amount of common variance in a correlation matrix using the least amount of variables possible. since the study was conducted in a different cultural context, the items may not always hold the same meaning for respondents in the uae that they hold for respondents in the u.s. where the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 12 questionnaire has been used the most. the questionnaire has been used mostly with middle class caucasian students and less often with other children, even within the u.s. in this sample of 162 children the kaisermeyer-olkins was .68, which was greater than .5, indicating that this was a sufficient enough sample to conduct a factor analysis. initial principals-component extraction yielded a total of ten factors, which accounted for 69.56 % of the total variation. however, a scree plot analysis suggested retaining three of the variables. the factors were analyzed after an orthogonal rotation with varimax with kaiser normalization method. the first factor with an eigenvalue of 6.7, we called family cohesion, accounted for 21 % of the variation. the family cohesion variable involved items such as, “when my family does things together, she expects me to come”. the second factor with an eigenvalue of 3.2, we called self-autonomy, accounted for 10 % of the total variation. the self-autonomy factor included statements such as, “my mother encourages me to think for myself”. the third factor with an eigenvalue of 2.1, which we called effort, accounted for 7 % of the variation. the effort factor included statements such as “my mother sets high standards for me to meet.” the scores from the three factors that we derived from the factor analysis procedure were correlated with gpa scores and self-esteem. family cohesion correlated significantly with gpa scores (r = .33) but not self-esteem. effort was related to grade (r = .16) and to self-esteem (r = .15). self-autonomy was correlated negatively with gpa scores (r = -.22) but did not exhibit any relationship with self-esteem. discussion the impact of parenting style on 5-8th grade students’ academic performance and self-esteem was analyzed within a sample of the united arab emirates (uae) public school parenting style 13 children. a sample of 162 children (50% boys, 50% girls) reported on their mothers’ childrearing practices. the psi–ii and the rosenberg self-esteem scales were administered to children along with their self-reported gpa scores. parents’ styles were classified into one of three groups (autonomy granting, demandingness, or responsiveness). the results show that demandingness was found to have a significant impact on gpa scores. both gender and age were significantly related to parenting styles. thus mothers interacted differently with their children based on the age of the child and the gender of the child. factor analysis results suggested that family cohesion and effort were positively related to school performance and self-autonomy was negatively related to school performance. self-esteem was not significantly related to any of the variables studied. of the three dimensions of parenting, only the demandingness measure was correlated positively with gpa scores. the results of this study indicated that children of parents who had high expectations from them performed better in school than children whose parents had low expectations from them. when each parental style dimension was transformed into 4 discrete categories with each category about one standard deviation from each other, it was found that only children with the highest parental demandingness score performed significantly better than the others; the grades of children who came from the other three bands of scores did not do significantly better than each other. thus increasing parental expectations from children did not necessarily translate itself into better grades. it is also unclear as to what the direction of the relationship is, since parents who have high expectations in school for their children may simply be reacting to the high achievement exhibited by the students. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 14 gender was correlated significantly to the gpa scores earned by the students. boys did significantly better than girls. this trend has been replicated in other cultural contexts. sadker and sadker (1995) bemoaned the significant hurdles facing girls in american schools, outlining the many ways in which girls and women are discriminated against in educational institutions. this practice may have resulted in girls achieving less than their potential especially in areas that are considered masculine like science and math. gender and age were both related to parenting as measured by the mothers’ parenting style questionnaire. just as in studies in other cultural contexts, the older the child was the more autonomy mothers granted the child. this substantiates the notion that parenting style is not a stable quality exhibited by parents but is often fluid and responding to the changing nature of the child. parents were more demanding of children as they got older as well. in traditional islamic societies, children are perceived to be connected to other members of their families and the larger community. along with increased autonomy also comes increasing responsibility and demands to prove they are capable of fulfilling their obligations to their parents and other family members. the fact that age and gender were both related to mothers’ parenting styles in this study corroborate the findings from previous research (e.g., conrade et al., 2001; lee, et al., 2006). parental responsiveness was related to the gender of the child; girls perceived parents to be more responsive to them as compared to boys. again, this phenomenon is exhibited in other cultural contexts as well. researchers who have studied parenting styles and its impact on school performance argue that the more responsive a parent is, the better the performance of the child should be in school (baumrind, 1989; cohen & rice, 1997). a counter argument to the above reasoning is that there is a lot of evidence to show that parents respond to girls parenting style 15 verbally and non-verbally more often and faster than they respond to boys (maccoby & martin, 1983; tomlinson, 1991). yet, their school achievement typically lags behind boys. one reason for the contradiction is that girls are taught to view themselves relationally with regard to other people and increased parental responsiveness to their needs advances that aim. however, it does not lead to better performance in school because school achievement is essentially an individualistic endeavor and makes girls alienated and less connected in the process. in traditional societies this phenomenon may be exacerbated because a girls’ identity may be tied up with perceiving herself as a sustainer of other people and not towards her own growth. additionally, a factor analysis was conducted using all of the items on the parenting scale. the rationale for conducting the factor analysis is that often questions in surveys that may seem to have obvious and straightforward meanings to researchers in one cultural context may be read very differently by participants in another cultural context. thus a statement like, “my mother respects my privacy” may indicate a sense of trust in middle white class society while it may indicate neglect in another culture. three major factors emerged from the analysis. family cohesion had the most number of items (8 items) and it was reflected in statements that had to do with activities performed with one’s parent and the importance that parents gave to it. some of the statements were not part of the original 15item scale (psi-ii). it had the highest correlation with self-reported gpa scores as well (r = .33). children who perceived their family as being important and closely knot had higher gpa scores than children who did not. the family is the center of one’s relational life in traditional islamic societies. children spend a lot of time with the adults in their families even as they turn into adolescence. as this study illustrates, the expectation that they are current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 16 going to follow family rules, have strict codes of behavior around family members and do chores for the family appears to influence school performance in a positive fashion. these have not been studied in terms of their relationship with grades in the western context. high self-autonomy was negatively correlated with gpa scores. this parental dimension had items similar to autonomy granting as conceived of in the original scale. but it had other items that are not part of the original scale, i.e., “my mother encourages me to talk to her honestly”. the finding that self-autonomy was not positively related to school performance is contradictory to what has been found in studies in western contexts. perhaps children’s performance in school in the uae is heavily influenced by the obligations that they feel towards their families to make them proud. in families where the child is not allowed to have their own voice, the child may decide that school is not very important to them and may not make much effort to do well. finally, effort was related positively to gpa scores but to a lesser extent than did family cohesion. effort included a number of items that were not included in the original scale, i.e., “my mother pushes me to do my best in whatever i do”. in several studies, it has been found that asian cultures value effort more than they do ability. when children are asked to explain success and failure in vignettes that were posed to them, they spontaneously chose effort as an explanation rather than ability even when it contradicted reality (parameswaran & hom, 2001). the finding in this study perhaps reflected the attributional framework that the child participants in this study used. in other words, successful children in school may perceive their parents to be more supportive of their efforts than children who do not do well in school. parenting style 17 thus in this study, of the traditional parental style dimensions (demandingness, autonomy-granting and warmth), only demandingness appears to significantly affect child outcomes if child outcomes is operationalized as school performance. the original parenting styles questionnaire as conceived by baumrind was mainly used with white middle class children. our study explored parenting styles among children in the united arab emirates. examining the parental behaviors that related to school achievement among the sample in this study, we found a very different group of variables that seemed to relate to school performance. factor analysis with the questionnaire seems to suggest that, family cohesion and effort were positively related to gpa scores and selfautonomy was negatively related to gpa scores. results from studies from “non-western” cultures substantiate the importance of the extended family in children's lives and their school achievement (chao, 2001; christina, 2008). in collectivistic societies, the feeling of oneness to the larger group prevents one wanting to stand out from other individuals in any way. thus too high a self-esteem is discouraged and self-disparagement is encouraged by adults in the familial group. even when children exhibit increased effort it is for the good of one’s familial group and it is less about exhibiting one's own prowess. in cultural groups where one's identity is so tied to the larger cultural group that one belongs, it is not surprising that increased feelings of cohesion with the family leads to better performance in school. a very interesting problem posed by the outcomes of this study is the apparent disconnectedness of self-esteem to any of the variables we studied unlike previous research (e.g., juan & larry, 2004; martinez & garcia, 2007; robin & foster, 1989). however, previous studies have found that higher self-esteem is not necessarily a positive force in current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 18 many cultures. among marginalized and disadvantaged communities in the usa, members of ‘gangs’ and other deviant groups tend to have higher self-esteem than other children in the community. in several traditional cultures, self-depreciating behavior is considered appropriate in order for members to demonstrate their solidarity with the group (chao, 1994; martinez, garcia & yubero, 2007). the items used to measure self-esteem as conceived by western researchers may be inadequate to capture respect for oneself as construed by members of a traditional islamic community. thus we may need to come up with a more culturally sensitive test in order to capture this construct in the uae. there were some limitations to this study. the parenting style of mothers alone was examined and not that of fathers. the gender of the parent has been found to have an important mediating effect of mothers’ style on the child. mothers were not interviewed nor were observations conducted in order to incorporate the children’s reports with actual behavior. the grades of the children were self-reported and not reported by school personnel and hence they may have been inaccurate. there are potentially exciting questions that a future study may be able to answer. how might parental behaviors vary across cultures as parents attempt to develop bonds with their children? what are the familial determinants of school performance in an affluent but traditional society? table 1: correlation between selected variables in the study: correlation between selected variables in the study: age gende r selfesteem gpa responsiveness demandingness autonomy age .04 .02 .08 -.11 .20* .23* parenting style 19 gender .04 -.05 .53** -.20* .14 -.15 self-esteem .02 -.05 .15 .04 .02 -.07 gpa .08 .53** .15 -.03 .29** -.02 responsiveness -.11 -.20* .04 -.03 .03 .39** demandingness .20* .14 .02 .29** .03 -.07 autonomy .23* -.15 -.07 -.02 .39 -.07 notes: * indicates that the relationship is significant at the p<.05 level (2-tailed) ** indicates that the relationship is significant at the p<.01 level (2-tailed) current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 20 references american psychological association. 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(2003). parenting style of chinese fathers in hong kong: correlates with children's school-related performance. international journal of adolescent medicine and health, 15(1):51-62 2003. tomlinson, r. k. (1991). unacceptable adolescent behavior and parent adolescent conflict. child & adolescent social work journal, 8(1), 33-51. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 24 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo level of preparation of general education teachers to include level of preparation 1 running head: level of preparation level of preparation of general education teachers to include students with autism spectrum disorders emily e. teffs student saint joseph college eteffs@sjc.edu kathleen m. whitbread associate professor of education saint joseph college kwhitbread@sjc.edu mailto:eteffs@sjc.edu� mailto:kwhitbread@sjc.edu� level of preparation 2 abstract since 1998 there has been a dramatic increase in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (asd), resulting in an estimated prevalence of 1 in 150 children. federal law requires schools to educate children with asd in the least restrictive environment, increasing the number of children with asd in regular classrooms. teacher preparation rarely includes training in asd, leaving many teachers unprepared to accommodate these students. using an online survey distributed to a random sample of connecticut teachers, this study explored formal and informal preparation of teachers as well as teachers’ feelings of confidence and competence to teach children with asd. level of preparation 3 level of preparation of general education teachers to include students with autism spectrum disorders according to the individuals with disabilities education improvement act of 2004, an autism spectrum disorder (asd) is a developmental disability that usually manifests itself before age 3 and significantly affects a child’s communication ability, social interaction, and educational performance. additional characteristics associated with asd include: “engagement in repetitive activities and stereotypical movements, resistance to environmental change or change in daily routines, and unusual responses to sensory experiences” (34 code of federal regulations § 300.8 (c) (1)). included under the umbrella of asd reflecting severe to mild symptoms are childhood disintegrative disorder, rhett's disorder, autistic disorder, pervasive developmental disordernot otherwise specified, and asperger's disorder (kutscher, 2002). while symptoms and development vary among individuals, the most common characteristic of those who have asd is a considerable impairment in social skills (boutot, 2007; jordan, 2003). over the past decade there has been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of children with asd (newschaffer, falb, & gurney, 2005; volkmar et al., 2004). recent federal reports by the united states center for disease control and prevention (cdc) reveal that approximately 1 in every 150 children have an asd diagnosis (cdc, 2007). reports by the connecticut state department of education (csde) show that prevalence rates in the state have increased from 1.8 students per thousand in 1998 to 6.2 students per thousand in 2006 and currently average 1 in 150 students in kindergarten through grade twelve (csde, 2007). these data suggest that the number of individuals affected by asd has been increasing at a rate of 10-17% per year (cdc, 2007). if this trend continues, an estimated 4 million americans will have a diagnosis of asd within the next ten years (hecita, 2004). level of preparation 4 on december 19, 2006, president bush signed the combating autism act of 2006 into law. this act authorizes expanded activities related to autism research, prevention, and treatment through 2011. the act focuses on the following six aims: (a) to increase public awareness of developmental milestones, (b) to promote research into the development and validation of reliable screening tools for asd and other developmental disabilities, (c) to promote early screening of individuals at higher risk for asd and other developmental disabilities, (d) to increase the number of individuals who are able to confirm or rule out a diagnosis of asd and other developmental disabilities, (e) to increase the number of individuals able to provide evidence-based interventions for individuals diagnosed with asd or other developmental disabilities, and (f) to promote the use of evidence-based interventions for individuals at higher risk for asd and other developmental disabilities. in signing the act, the president stated that the combating autism act will, increase public awareness about this disorder and provide enhanced federal support for autism research and treatment... [t]his legislation will help more people recognize the symptoms of autism. this will lead to early identification and intervention, which is critical for children with autism. (office of the press secretary, 2006) concurrent with the increase in the prevalence of asd, there has been a trend toward educating children with disabilities, including children with asd, in regular education classrooms (yeargin-allsopp et al., 2003). the united states department of education regulations implementing the individuals with disabilities education act (idea) of 2004 state: to the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities, including children in public or private institutions or other care facilities, are educated with children who are not disabled, and special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of children with level of preparation 5 disabilities from the regular educational environment occurs only when the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily. (34 code of federal regulations § 300.550(b)) the least restrictive environment (lre) mandate has been a key tenet of idea since the law was first enacted in 1975, yet some states have been slow to apply the concept. in connecticut, a significant special education lawsuit was settled in 2002 requiring the state to increase the number of children with disabilities educated in general education classes. the lawsuit (p.j.et al. v. state of connecticut department of education et al.) was brought by parents of children with intellectual disabilities against the connecticut state department of education (csde), the state commissioner of education, and certain local school districts, alleging that the csde was denying many children the right to an education in the least restrictive environment. the p.j. settlement agreement proposed to address this problem by increasing the percentage of students placed in general education classrooms and increasing the time that children with disabilities spent with non-disabled peers. although the lawsuit specifically addresses children with intellectual disabilities, the csde issued a series of statements and memoranda during the five years that the settlement agreement was in effect, reiterating the intent of idea to educate all students in the least restrictive environment (csde, 2005). as a result of the p.j. case, a number of initiatives were put into place by the csde to provide training and technical assistance to teachers and related service personnel to successfully include children with significant disabilities in general education classrooms. however, according to the expert advisory panel (eap) appointed to oversee the case, these initiatives did not result in significant progress in meeting the goals of the settlement agreement. in a 2007 level of preparation 6 report to the united states district court, the eap stated that the “lack of sufficient progress is shocking given the level of dissemination of information about p.j. and the technical assistance and professional development that has been provided” (burrello, coulter, freagon, & sailor, 2007). in spite of the state and federal laws and regulations requiring teachers to include students with significant disabilities in regular classrooms, many connecticut teachers may be ill prepared to successfully teach this population of children. little is known about the status of personnel preparation for teachers of children with asd (scheuermann, webber, boutot, & goodwin, 2003). however, recent studies have shown that providing teachers with training specific to the needs of children with asd improves student outcomes (browder, trela, & jirnenez, 2007; dib & sturmey 2007; jordan, 2003; koegel, koegel, frea, & green-hopkins, 2003). presently, connecticut teacher preparation programs are multi-categorical and designed to meet the needs of students with mild to moderate disabilities, as opposed to serving the specific needs of students with asd and other low incidence disabilities. current connecticut statistics reveal that 41% of students with asd are included in general education classrooms for at least 80% of their day (csde, 2008), resulting in the likelihood that a general education teacher will be assigned at least one student with asd during his or her teaching career. in september 2007, the network of training and technical assistance programs (nattap) held its first annual conference focused on individuals with asd. nattap is affiliated with the autism society of america and includes a network of experts dedicated to the education of children with asd. one of the outcomes of this conference, attended by more than 1400 participants, was a draft of national teacher standards for teachers of students with asd. the draft was made available to conference participants and is currently under review by level of preparation 7 the council for exceptional children. the document includes more than thirty competencies that teachers of students with asd must possess under the following broad categories: a) characteristics of asd, including etiology and criteria used to diagnose the disorder; b) assessment using evidence-based approaches, varied formats and current instruments; c) instructional planning, including access to the general education curriculum, modifications and accommodations, collecting and analyzing data to inform instruction; d) instructional strategies, including individualized and intensive instruction, applied behavioral analysis, positive behavior support, and communication strategies, and; e) transition and independence to assist students with asd to successfully transition to adult life (draft national teacher standards, 2007). these standards are consistent with current literature on personnel preparation needs of teachers of students with asd (callahan, henson, & cowan, 2008; ingersoll & dvortcsak, 2006; scheuermann, webber, boutot, & goodwin, 2003; sulzer-azaroff, fleming, tupa, bass, & hamad, c. 2008). embedded in this set of proposed standards is an emphasis on team collaboration. fleming & monda-amaya (2001) note the following requirements for team effectiveness: shared goals and visions, clear roles, open and effective communication, support and respect, and strategic decision making strategies and monitoring. also crucial to the team process is the inclusion of families. effective home-school communication and collaborative relationships among school personnel must be established in order to develop an appropriate intervention or program for a child with asd (ingersoll & dvortcsak, 2006; ruble, 2002). as the number of children labeled with asd rises, general education teachers must be prepared to not only include these students in their classrooms, but teach them according to grade level standards. the purpose of this study was to determine the level of formal and informal level of preparation 8 preparation of connecticut teachers to teach children with asd as well as teachers’ feelings of confidence and competence to include this population of children in their classroom community. methodology participants study participants were randomly selected from a database of current teachers and administrators in connecticut public schools provided to the researchers by the connecticut state department of education in a microsoft access file. all positions other than general education teacher were removed from the database, resulting in a sample frame of 33,315 general education teachers from kindergarten through grade twelve. a 2% random sample was calculated using the statistical package for social sciences (spss), resulting in a sample of 655 teachers from kindergarten through high school. teachers in the random sample were dispersed among the state’s 169 districts in representative percentages when compared to teachers in the sample frame based on connecticut’s district reference groups (drg). drg is a classification system used to group districts on the basis of the socioeconomic status and at-risk indicators of their student populations. these drgs are used for the purpose of making comparisons in research studies and performance monitoring, and are based on the following seven student/family variables: family income, parental education, parental occupation, family structure, poverty status, home language and district enrollment. each district in the state is placed in one of nine groups, ranging from the most affluent (group a) to the least affluent (group i). see table 1 for a comparison of the drg classifications for teachers represented in the sample frame and teachers represented in the random sample selected for this study. table 1. level of preparation 9 district reference groups district reference group (drg) sample frame n =33,315 random sample n=655 a 6.1% 5.8% b 18.4% 18.9% c 7.7% 7.7% d 15.9% 16.3% e 5.1% 5.4% f 5.6% 7.6% g 12.9% 12.8% h 11.6% 11.1% i 16.7% 14.0% survey development the survey was designed to gather information about the confidence and competence of general education teachers to include students with asd in their classrooms. following a review of the literature, draft survey questions were developed. the survey was piloted with a convenience sample of 10 practicing teachers and minor changes were made to survey questions as a result of feedback from pilot participants. there were three parts to the survey. the first part included demographic questions related to grade levels taught, amount of time in current position, and total number of years in the teaching profession, as well as number of students with asd assigned to their classroom during the current school year. level of preparation 10 the second section of the survey asked teachers to report their experiences working with students who have asd. participants were asked if and when they were notified that they would have a student with asd assigned to their classroom and if they had access to individual education programs (ieps) for those children. they were also asked about their feelings and perceptions about teaching students with asd as well as communication with parents and team members. two open-ended questions were included at the end of this section which asked participants first to comment on whether or not they felt their student(s) with asd was in the most appropriate placement, and then to discuss their greatest challenges in teaching students with asd. the third section of the survey contained questions about respondents’ specific training in asd. participants were asked how much training they may have had in the following areas: characteristics of asd, instructional strategies, implementing the iep, behavioral supports, social skills training, communication and assistive technology. participants were asked if they felt they required additional training in order to successfully teach children with asd and finally, how prepared they felt to teach students with asd. the complete survey is included in appendix a. procedure all information obtained for this study was recorded in such a manner that participants could not be identified directly or through identifiers linked to the subjects. the participant names and email addresses were stored in separate locations from the data. surveys were distributed through surveymonkey, a web-based interface for creating and publishing web surveys. results were calculated by surveymonkey software and were available for view by the research team in real time on the surveymonkey website. results were level of preparation 11 password-protected and displayed without identifying information. email addresses for the selected teachers were obtained by the researchers from district websites. a cover letter with an embedded link to the survey was sent electronically via surveymonkey to the group of teachers in mid-april (approximately 2 months before the end of the school year). emails returned due to incorrect email addresses were re-checked, corrected, and resent. when it was not possible to locate an accurate email for a teacher, a hard copy of the survey and cover letter was mailed to the teacher at his or her school. two electronic reminders were sent through surveymonkey at approximately two and four weeks following the initial mailing of the survey to those who did not respond nor opt out of the study. the response rate was 18.6% with a total of 122 completed surveys. nearly half (47.1%, n=56) of survey respondents were kindergarten and elementary teachers; 22.7% (n=27) were middle school teachers and 31.1% (n=37) were high school teachers. three teachers (2.4%) declined to identify their grade level. in order to encourage participation in the study, respondents were not asked to supply any identifying information so it was not possible to make direct comparisons between the sample group and respondent group based on district reference group classification. in addition, the coding system in the state database did not allow for separation of middle and high school teachers. however, data collected for elementary teachers showed that this grade level was overrepresented in the respondent group, as shown in table 2. table 2. grade level taught grade level sample frame random sample respondents elementary 38.3% 37.4% 47.1% level of preparation 12 middle --22.7% high --31.1% more than a third of the teachers (35.5%, n=43) in the study had been in the teaching profession more than 20 years. a quarter (24.8%, n=30) had been teaching for 11-20 years, 20.7% (n=25) had been teaching 6-10 years and 19% (n=23) had been teaching less than 6 years. fifty-nine percent of participants (n=72) had been teaching in their current position for more than 7 years, 36.1% (n=44) had been teaching a total of 1-6 years, and 4.9% (n=6) had been in their current position for less than one year. results training in autism spectrum disorders a number of participants reported having no formal training in the following areas: characteristics of asd (35.4%), instructional strategies (33.0%), implementing the iep (35.7%), behavioral supports (42.9%), social skills training (48.5%), communication (46.9%), and assistive technology (61.9%). see table 3. table 3. amount of training received specific to teaching students with asd none 1 day or less 2-3 days 4-5 days college course characteristics 35.4% 37.4% 5.1% 7.1% 15.2% instruction 33.0% 38.0% 3.0% 7.0% 19.0% the iep 35.7% 35.7% 8.2% 3.1% 17.3% behavior 42.9% 33.6% 5.1% 7.1% 11.2% social skills 48.5% 28.3% 8.1% 7.1% 8.1% level of preparation 13 communication 46.9% 27.5% 12.2% 4.1% 9.2% assistive tech. 61.9% 22.7% 3.1% 4.1% 8.2% some participants commented that most of their training had come from their direct experiences working with children with asd and from what they read in books and journals. more than two-thirds (76.9%, n = 83) reported the need for more training or support to better meet the needs of their students with asd. within this group, the most frequently cited area in which additional training was needed was social skills, followed by behavioral supports and communication, as shown in table 4. table 4. additional training needs cited by respondents training area % respondents social skills 82.9 behavioral supports 78.0 communication 70.7 assistive technology 63.4 characteristics of asd 52.4 implementing the iep 48.8 finally, when asked how prepared participants felt to teach students with asd, nearly a quarter (22%, n = 24) reported feeling “not at all prepared.” nearly half (54.1%, n = 59) felt only “somewhat prepared,” 18.3% (n = 20) felt “prepared” and only 5.5% (n = 6) felt “wellprepared.” level of preparation 14 experiences with students with autism spectrum disorder during the past school year (2007-2008), more than half of the respondents (60%, n = 72) had been assigned a child with asd to their classroom. of these, 29.2 % (n = 35) had been assigned one student with asd, 20% (n = 24) had been assigned 2-3 students with asd, and 10.8% (n = 13) had been assigned more than 3 students with asd. forty percent (n = 48) had not been assigned a student with asd. of those participants who were assigned a student with asd, 77.6% (n = 52) were informed ahead of time of that assignment. however, 34.5% (n = 20) were not informed until the first week of school and 17.2% (n=10) were notified over the previous summer. approximately half (46.6%, n = 27) were notified during the previous school year. asked if they had access to the individual education program (iep) plan for their student(s) with asd, 77.3% (n = 51) reported having full access to students’ ieps, 16.7% (n = 11) had only partial access to the student's iep and 6.1% (n = 4) had no access to the iep at all. those participants who had a child with asd in their classroom were asked if their feelings about teaching students with asd had changed as a result of the experience. nearly half (45.5%, n = 30) said their feelings were more positive, 42.4% said their feelings were unchanged, 10.6% (n = 7) were unsure and one participant said his/her feelings were more negative. when asked how often participants communicated with parents and other team members, the majority reported the following: monthly communication with parents (41.3%), daily communication with the special educator (48.5%), weekly communication with related service providers (33.3%), and no communication with administrators (54.8%). see table 5. table 5. average frequency of communication between teacher and team members level of preparation 15 daily weekly monthly never parents 7.9% 27.0% 41.3% 23.8% special educator 48.5% 24.2% 21.2% 6.1% related services 20.6% 33.3% 20.6% 25.4% administrator 1.6% 9.7% 33.9% 54.8% sixty participants (83.3 % of those who had taught a child with asd the previous year) responded to the open-ended question asking if they felt their student with asd was in an appropriate placement. of these, 48 (80%) responded “yes,” 6 (10%) responded “no” and the remaining were unsure or had mixed feelings. a third (33%, n = 16) of the teachers who responded “yes” to this question indicated that they felt the placement was appropriate because the student had a mild form of asd. typical comments included: “this particular student is very high functioning,” or “his case is not severe, but very mild.” three of the 6 teachers who responded that their student’s placement was inappropriate cited the severity of the student’s disability as the reason, revealing a trend toward equating the appropriateness of general education placement with the perceived severity of a student’s disability. this finding is consistent with other research on this topic (white, scahill, klin, koenig & volkmar, 2007). two teachers who responded that their students’ placements were inappropriate commented that they had not been trained to teach students with asd. one teacher expressed feeling “overwhelmed … trying to accommodate them,” and another wrote “i am not a special education teacher... by choice! the demands placed on regular ed. teachers these days are outrageous! we were never trained properly to teach these students, nor should we be expected to.” thirty-five percent of the teachers who responded that their student with asd was level of preparation 16 appropriately placed in their classroom wrote about the benefits to the student and the other students in the class. as one teacher stated, “it allows him the opportunity to succeed both academically and socially in the least restrictive environment.” another commented, “he is a welcome member of the class and helps all students use strategies to help them best learn.” participants were asked to comment on their greatest challenges in teaching students with asd. the majority of teachers (83.3%, n = 60) who indicated they had taught a child with asd in the previous school year responded to this question. more than a quarter of this group (26.6%, n = 16) cited behavioral difficulties as their primary challenge. as one teacher commented, “my biggest challenge has been in learning how to get him to calm down or re-evaluate before he has an outburst that disrupts the entire class… i am typically alone in the class.” two respondents cited “inappropriate social behavior” as their greatest challenge. a number of teachers (11.6%, n=13) wrote of a lack of time or resources to meet the individual needs of their student with asd while also meeting the needs of other students in the class. lack of training/technical assistance in adapting curriculum was another frequently cited challenge, with 11 teachers (18.3%) reporting that they lacked the ability or resources to modify curriculum to meet the individual needs of students with asd. discussion this study explored the experiences and perceptions of general education teachers regarding students with asd. approximately half of the respondents had taught at least one student with asd during the current school year (2007-2008). most were notified before the beginning of the school year that they were being assigned a student with asd; however, more than half were notified either in the previous summer or the first week of the school year. while teaching students with asd can be challenging and many teachers lacked appropriate training, level of preparation 17 only one of the respondents felt more negative about teaching students with asd following the experience. half of the respondents who had taught a child with asd reported feeling more positive about including students with asd in their classrooms. one teacher wrote of regret that he or she “doubted the student’s ability,” and another commented, “i really didn't consider this student to be any more challenging than the other children in the class. i had the support of a full time paraprofessional and a wonderful special ed team. so, when problems arose, there were staff to collaborate and/or address the difficulties as needed.” still, responses to the survey show that general education teachers in connecticut have had little training specific to teaching students with asd and once in the classroom, may lack the support they need to provide an appropriate education for students with asd. since connecticut teacher training programs do not currently require preparation in asd, most teachers do not have the confidence and competence to teach these learners. one quarter of the respondents felt totally unprepared to teach students with asd, and nearly half felt only “somewhat prepared.” the current study adds to the existing literature in several ways. first, the findings show that general educators in connecticut are rarely trained to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population of students with asd, even though nearly half of connecticut students with asd spend at least eighty percent of their day in general education classrooms. second, results were consistent with current literature showing that teachers perceive students with milder forms of asd as being appropriately placed in a general education classroom, while students who were viewed as having more significant disabilities were not considered to be appropriately placed in a general education classroom. finally, and perhaps most importantly, the results of this study support the proposed standards of the network of training and technical assistance programs (nattap) which recommend that teachers who work with students with asd receive specific level of preparation 18 training in the following areas: a) characteristics of asd, b) instructional planning, including access to the general education curriculum, c) instructional strategies, d) individualized education plans, e) positive behavior support, e) social skills instruction, f) communication strategies and g) team collaboration. the combating autism act of 2006 calls for an increase in the number of individuals trained to provide evidence-based interventions for students diagnosed with asd and to further the use of evidence-based interventions for students with these disorders. in order to fulfill that promise, pre-service and in-service training programs must be developed and implemented to prepare teachers to provide appropriate educational services to this population of students in the environment where many students with asd spend the majority of their school day: the general education classroom. in addition to infusing this training into existing teacher preparation programs, graduate certificate programs which address research-based competencies in asd, such as those recommended by the nattap, would allow existing teachers to develop competencies that can be immediately put to use in their classrooms. offering these programs in summer, evening and weekend formats would allow teachers to continue to teach while expanding their skills to meet the needs of this population of students. technical assistance in the form of instructional coaching, with experienced educators mentoring less experienced colleagues, has proven effective in the areas of literacy, mathematics and inclusive education (knight, 2007; west & staub, 2003) and may provide a useful model for increasing teachers’ competence and confidence as they apply newly learned skills and concepts in the classroom. this preliminary study was limited to a small sample of teachers in connecticut. to generalize the findings of this study, the sample size would need to be expanded. however, the level of preparation 19 study does provide a glimpse into the current challenges faced by general education teachers who may be assigned to teach students with asd without the appropriate training or technical assistance. further research is needed to explore the experiences of special educators as well as related service personnel in serving students with asd. in addition, it would seem important to explore whether general educators require individualized training programs based on their relative lack of experience with students with disabilities, or if it is effective to train general and special educators along with related service personnel and administrators so they may develop and practice the collaboration skills necessary to meet the varied needs of students with asd. level of preparation 20 references boutot, e. a. 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(2004). autism and pervasive developmental disorders. journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 45(1), 135-170. west, l., & staub, f. (2003). content-focused coaching: transforming mathematics lessons. portsmouth, me: heinemann. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061219-1.html� http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061219-1.html� http://www.literacycoachingonline.org/library/resources/westlstaubf2003content-focusedcoachingtransformingmathematicslessonsportsmouthmeheinemann.html� http://www.literacycoachingonline.org/library/resources/westlstaubf2003content-focusedcoachingtransformingmathematicslessonsportsmouthmeheinemann.html� level of preparation 24 white, s. w., scahill, l., klin, a., koenig. k., & volkmar, f. (2007). educational placements and service use patterns of individuals with autism spectrum disorders. journal of autism and developmental disorders, 37 (8), 1403-1412. yeargin-allsopp m, rice c., karapurkar t., doernberg n., boyle c., & murphy c. (2003). jama, 289(1), 49-55. level of preparation 25 appendix a survey questions: preparation to teach students with autism spectrum disorders section i: demographic information 1. what grade level do you teach? a. elementary school b. middle school c. high school 2. how many years have you taught in your current position? a. less than a year b. 1-3 years c. 4-6 years d. more than 7 years 3. how many years have you been a teacher? a. less than a year b. 1-5 years c. 6-10 years d. 11-20 years e. more than 20 years 4. during the past school year, how many students with autism spectrum disorders (asd) have been assigned to your classroom? a. 0 b. 1 c. 2 level of preparation 26 d. 3 e. more than 3 section ii: experiences with students with autism spectrum disorders definition of autism spectrum disorder: according to the individuals with disabilities education act (idea) an autism spectrum disorder (asd) is “a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age 3 that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.” included under the umbrella of asd are childhood disintegrative disorder, rhett’s disorder, autistic disorder, pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified and asperger’s disorder. please answer the following questions about your experiences during the current (2007 2008) school year. if you have more than one student with asd, please select one student about whom you will answer the survey questions. 5. were you informed ahead of time that a student with asd would be assigned to your classroom? a. no b. yes 6. if you answered “yes” to question 5, at what point were you informed that you would be assigned a student with asd? a. the previous school year b. the summer c. the first week of school d. i was never informed level of preparation 27 7. did you have access to the individual education program (iep) plan for your student with asd? a. no b. yes, i had full access c. yes, but i had only partial access if you had access to only part of the iep, please indicate which part. 8. have your feelings about teaching students with asd changed since having a student with asd assigned to your classroom? a. no b. yes, i am more positive about teaching students with asd c. yes, i am more negative about teaching students with asd d. not sure 9. on average, how often do you communicate with the following in relation to your student with asd? daily weekly monthly never parents special educator related service providers administrator 10. do you feel that your student with asd is in the most appropriate placement? why or why not? 11. what is your greatest challenge in teaching your students with asd? level of preparation 28 section iii: training in autism spectrum disorders 12. please indicate what training you have received specific to teaching students with asd. length of training 1 day or less 2-3 days 4-5 days college course characteristics of asd instructional strategies implementing the iep behavioral supports social skills training communication assistive technology other (please comment on any additional training you have received in teaching students with asd) 13. do you feel you need more training or support to better meet the needs of students with asd? a. no b. yes 14. if you answered “yes” to question 13, please indicate areas of further training needed: a. implementing the iep b. social skills training c. characteristics of asd d. assistive technology level of preparation 29 e. communication f. behavioral supports g. instructional strategies h. other (please specify) 15. how prepared do you feel to teach students with asd? a. not at all prepared b. somewhat prepared c. prepared d. well prepared microsoft word accountability ratings of elementary schoolsstudent demographics matter .docx running head: accountability ratings of elementary schools 1 volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x accountability ratings of elementary schools: student demographics matter cynthia martinez-garcia kimberly n. laprairie john r. slate sam houston state university citation martinez-garcia, c., laprairie, k. n. & slate, j. r. (2011). accountability ratings of elementary schools: student demographics matter. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the researchers examined the most recent year of data (i.e., 2008-2009) from the texas academic excellence indicator system regarding accountability ratings and student characteristics (i.e., ethnicity, programmatic enrollment, mobility) in elementary schools (n = 4,110). accountability ratings (i.e., exemplary, recognized, academically acceptable, and academically unacceptable) are assigned primarily based upon school performance on statemandated tests by student subgroups. exemplary elementary school campuses had statistically significantly lower percentages of black students, hispanic students, at-risk students, 2 economically disadvantaged students, students with limited english proficient, and mobility percent (i.e., being at the school less than 83% of the school year) whereas academically unacceptable had the highest percentages in all these areas. as such, accountability ratings in texas elementary schools were clearly related to student characteristics and not just test scores. implications of these findings and suggestions for further research are discussed. keywords: elementary schools, student demographics, accountability ratings accountablitiy ratings of elementary schools 3 about the author(s) author: cynthia martinz-garcia, edd affiliation: sam houston state university, department of educational leadership and counseling address: teacher education center, box 2119, huntsville, tx 77341 email: cynthia3687@sbcglobal.net biographical information: dr. martinez-garcia is an assistant professor at sam houston state university. her research interests lie in beginning teachers and teacher attrition. author: kimberly laprairie, phd affiliation: sam houston state university, department of curriculum and instruction address: teacher education center, box 2119, huntsville, tx 77341 email: knl007@shsu.edu biographical information: dr. laprairie is an assistant professor at sam houston state university. her expertise and interests lie in the use of technology to improve instructional practices. author: john r. slate, phd affiliation: sam houston state university, department of educational leadership and counseling address: teacher education center, box 2119, huntsville, tx 77341 email: jrs051@shsu.edu biographical information: dr. slate is a professor at sam houston state university in the department of educational leadership and counseling. his research interests lie in the use of national and state educational databases for school reform. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 accountability ratings of elementary schools: student demographics matter andreas schleicher, senior education official at the organization for economic cooperation and development (o.e.c.d.) and leading expert on comparing school systems, recently revealed findings to the united states senate education committee that show many other countries surpassing the united states in high school completion rates and achievement test scores (dillion, 2010). though unsettling and cause for concern (alliance for excellent education, 2008), these revelations are not new ones (secretary arne duncan, 2010). results such as these reports have undoubtedly prompted the obama administration’s race to the top initiative and proposal for overhauling the no child left behind act, the core law outlining federal education policies on public schooling (obama, 2009, july 24; 2009, july 23). as the united states department of education office of educational technology (2010) pointed out in the national educational technology plan: under the obama administration, education has become an urgent priority driven by two clear goals. by 2020, we will raise the proportion of college graduates from where it now stands [39%] so that 60% of our population holds a 2-year or 4-year degree. we will close the achievement gap so that all students regardless of race, income, or neighborhood graduate from high school ready to succeed in college and careers. (p. 3) these goals are lofty ones in view of the fact that, despite the focus of the no child left behind act on closing the achievement gap between white and minority students, the gap has not narrowed under previous administrations (dillion, 2009). in fact, “… a disproportionate accountablitiy ratings of elementary schools 5 number of the schools being labeled as persistent failures and facing sanctions under this program are segregated minority schools” (orfield & lee, 2005, p. 4). at the 2010 centennial convention of the national urban league, president obama responded to concerns that were raised on the competition for education funds with the race to the top reforms during a time of recession (christian science monitor, 2010). he affirmed, “let me tell you, what’s not working for black kids and hispanic kids and native american kids across this country is the status quo…” (education week, 2010, para. 3). president obama expressed that, "we have an obligation to lift up every child in every school in this country, especially those who are starting out furthest behind” (www.msnbc.com, 2010, para. 2). he also declared that race to the top is “the single most ambitious, meaningful education reform effort we’ve attempted in this country in generations” (christian science monitor, 2010, para. 5). we believe it is imperative that the academic achievement level among all students be increased, regardless of race, language, or socioeconomic status, to ensure the economic growth and prosperity of the united states and to guarantee the ability of american youth to compete in a global economy. in president obama’s remarks on race to the top (2009, july 24), he emphasized this priority. america will not succeed in the 21st century unless we do a far better job of educating our sons and daughters... in an economy where knowledge is the most valuable commodity a person and a country have to offer, the best jobs will go to the best educated -whether they live in the united states or india or china. in a world where countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow, the future belongs to the nation that best educates its people… current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 but what does it take to transform american education? as stakeholders, the population of students served in today’s schools need to be understood. currently, approximately 18% of children in the u.s. live below the federal poverty level and an additional 8% are considered low income, with a family income less than twice the federal poverty threshold (bowling & cummings, 2009). during the mid-1950s and early 1960s, black student enrollment was much higher than latino student enrollment and asian student enrollment was considered insignificant in our nation; however, immigration during the past four decades has changed american schools. orfield and lee (2005) stated that latino and asian student enrollment has increased exponentially; black student enrollment has increased steadily; whereas white student enrollment has decreased. national enrollment statistics show that black students make up approximately 17% of the total student population, whereas 18% is represented by a rapidly growing latino student enrollment and white student enrollment continues to decline as a proportion of the total (orfield & lee, 2005). in the south, where minority populations are more concentrated and students have less opportunity to attend multiracial schools, black students represent 27% of the total enrollment and latino students account for at least 19% of total student enrollment. these statistics are important to note because minority students are disproportionately represented in special education (frankson & white-lindsey, 2007; petterway, kritsonis, & herrington, 2006) and nationally, minority students have the highest drop-out rates. for example, hispanics students had almost four times higher drop-out rates (i.e., 16 through 24-year-olds who are not enrolled in school or have not earned a high school diploma or equivalent education certificate such as the general educational development [ged] certificate) and black students had around two times higher drop-out rates than white students accountablitiy ratings of elementary schools 7 (i.e., 22%, 11%, and 6% respectively) in 2006 (planty et al., 2008). orfield and lee (2005) noted that as many as half of the country’s black and hispanic students drop out of school, with the most severe problems in segregated high poverty schools. though much more attention has been devoted in recent years to test scores, dropping out is, of course, the ultimate failure for a student in the post-industrial economy—a failure that usually causes deep and irreversible life-long damage to a student and his future family. (orfield & lee, 2005, p. 37) factors other than mental capacity must be associated with racial performance disparities and the gap in minority student achievement (gould, 1981). one such factor may actually be a design flaw in curriculum and assessments used to measure academic achievement (frankson & white-lindsey, 2007; petterway et al., 2006). specifically overlooked in the design of academic expectations are the distinct cultural needs of minority students. for instance, in a review of the literature, frankson and white-lindsey (2007) reported that “african americans display the academic behaviors that do not emulate their non-minority peers; african americans are more expressive, verbal, field dependent (in that they require contextual instruction), relational, and affectively oriented” (p. 18). consequently, when these students are instructed and evaluated through traditional means they are automatically at a disadvantage compared to their nonminority peers. petterway et al. (2006) also pointed out that schools with a large number of english language learners (ells) “… risk being ranked as underperforming because the measure used to evaluate its performance is blind to this important demographic fact” (p. 3). beyond being culturally irresponsive to minority students, the education system fails to provide minority and economically disadvantaged students with high-quality teachers (allen, palaich, & anthes, 1999; darling-hammond, 1998; ingersoll, 1999, 2002; martinez-garcia & current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 slate, 2010a, 2010b; nieto, 2003; orfield & lee, 2005; peske & haycock, 2006; rowland & coble, 2005). on average, students in high-minority and the highest-poverty schools are twice as likely to be assigned to a beginning teacher as students in schools with low-poverty and few minority students (education trust, 2008; jepsen & rivkin, 2002; peske & haycock, 2006; u.s. department of education, national center for education statistics, 2000). in a multi-year statewide study of texas, martinez-garcia and slate (2010a) noted that elementary schools with the highest percentage of beginning teachers had higher percentages of minority student enrollment and also had higher percentages of economically disadvantaged student enrollment. this situation is of concern because numerous researchers have documented that teachers are considerably more effective at contributing to student learning and preparing students to meet state standards after completing at least two years of teaching experience (education trust, 2008; peske & haycock, 2006). furthermore, given that a growing body of research underscores the impact of the quality of the teacher and instruction on student achievement gains despite other background factors, this situation is particularly concerning (alliance for excellent education, 2004; darling-hammond, 2000; darling-hammond & sykes, 2003; obama, 2005; rice, 2003; rowland & coble, 2005; whitehurst, 2003). the education system, however, cannot shoulder all of the blame for educational inequality. in fact, according to sociologist james coleman’s 1966 equality of educational opportunity research, “… everything schools did accounted for only 5 to 35 percent of the variation in students’ academic performances, though he did find the figures for disadvantaged students were on the high end of the scale” (traub, 2000, p. 53). numerous researchers support this finding and have proposed that the achievement gap is largely environmental (bainbridge & lasley, 2002; jencks & phillips, 1998; orfield & lee, 2005). specifically, factors such as accountablitiy ratings of elementary schools 9 community conditions, including housing inadequacy and decay, weak and failing infrastructure, and critical lack of mentors and shortage of jobs (orfield & lee, 2005); family-background characteristics, including the education level of people in the home (bainbridge & lasley, 2002), family income, number of siblings, and the number of books in the home (peterson, 2010); peer influence (orfield & lee, 2005); and availability of health care and proper nutrition (bainbridge & lasley, 2002; orfield & lee, 2005) have been documented to have a substantial impact on student success in school. as orfield and lee (2005) noted, “schools tend to reflect and intensify the racial stratification of society” (p. 15). therefore, to establish effective school environments leaders in education need to understand the interrelationship between demographic characteristics and achievement. of particular interest to these researchers are the student demographic characteristics that might be reflected in the accountability ratings assigned to elementary schools. significance of the study to date, the means for measuring school accountability has focused mainly on student achievement on state-mandated tests (u.s. department of education, 2002). though important, such a focus is limited. test scores by themselves are not a complete picture of student learning and performance. in this study, the characteristics of students who were enrolled at elementary schools that differed in their accountability rating were investigated. accountability rating, assigned primarily on the basis of state-mandated assessments, may also reflect student demographic characteristics. no published research studies with such an emphasis were located, even after an extensive search of academic databases occurred. as such, more detailed current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 information than is currently available on the characteristics of students enrolled at elementary schools differing in their accountability rating may be provided in this study. purpose of the study the purpose in conducting this study was to determine the extent to which elementary school campus accountability rating was related with student demographic characteristics. that is, for accountability ratings that are assigned based primarily on student academic performance, the extent to which student characteristics were related to the assigning of accountability ratings was the primary focus of this study. research questions the following research question was addressed in this study: what is the difference among elementary school campus accountability ratings in their percent of black students, hispanic students, economically disadvantaged students, at-risk students, students designated as limited english proficient, mobility, and the total student enrollment? method participants data from all elementary public school campuses (n = 4,110) in texas for the 20082009 school year were utilized in this study. because of their uniqueness and major differences from public elementary schools, charter schools and their data were removed from analysis in this study. the public elementary schools whose student data were analyzed in this study were separated into four groups: exemplary (n = 1,791), recognized (n = 1,750), academically acceptable (n = 544), and academically unacceptable (n = 25). the state of texas rates school success through its state-mandated accountability system. this accountability system provides ratings both for individual school campuses and for school accountablitiy ratings of elementary schools 11 districts. at the highest rating, exemplary, the following criteria must be met: no more than a 0.2% dropout rate, at least 90% of students passing the texas assessment of knowledge and skills (taks), as well as subgroups, and 95% of the completion standard met (texas education agency, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008). the next highest rating, academically recognized, is assigned when these criteria are met: no greater than a 0.7% dropout rate, at least 75% of students passing the taks, as well as subgroups, and 85% of the completion standard (texas education agency, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008). a label of academically acceptable is assigned when: no greater than a 1.0% dropout rate, at least 65% of students pass the english/language arts, writing, and social studies sections of the taks, as well as subgroups, at least 45% of students pass the taks math, including subgroups, at least 40% of students pass the taks science measure, including subgroups, and 75% of the completion standard met (texas education agency, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008). readers are referred to the tea website, specifically the aeis glossary in which the definitions for dropout rate and completion standard, among others, are present (http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/aeis/2010/glossary.pdf) instrumentation and procedure archival data were acquired on all public elementary school campuses in the state of texas for the 2008-2009 school year. through accessing and downloading files from the academic excellence indicator system (http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/aeis/), data that were reported by each elementary school campus were gathered. specifically, data on the accountability rating, the percent of black students, the percent of hispanic students, the percent of students designated as limited english proficient, the percent of economically disadvantaged students, the percent of at-risk students, and the number of students enrolled at each elementary school campus were obtained. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 results prior to conducting statistical analyses, checks for normality of data and for the assumptions underlying parametric statistical procedures were made. though a few of the skewness and kurtosis values were outside the range of normality, the majority of the assumptions underlying parametric statistical procedures were met. therefore, a multivariate analysis of variance (manova) was conducted to determine whether the (a) percent of black students, (b) percent of hispanic students, (c) percent of economically disadvantaged students, (d) percent of at-risk students, (e) percent of students with lep, (f) mobility percent, and (g) the total student enrollment differed as a function of campus accountability rating for the 2008-2009 school year. this analysis yielded a statistically significant result, λ = .78, p < .001, n2 = .08, moderate effect size (cohen, 1988). this overall result revealed a difference among the four accountability ratings as a function of student demographic characteristic. univariate follow-up analysis of variance procedures revealed statistically significant differences for the percent of black students, f(3, 4012) = 48.36, p < .001, n2 = .04, small effect size; for the percent of hispanic students, f(3, 4012) = 121.47, p < .001, n2 = .21, large effect size; for the percent of economically disadvantaged students, f(3, 4012) = 327.43, p < .001, n2 = .44, very large effect size; for the percent of at-risk students, f(3, 4012) = 222.45, p < .001, n2 = .41, very large effect size; for the percent of students designated as lep, f(3, 4012) = 87.05, p < .001, n2 = .06, moderate effect size; and for the mobility percent, f(3, 4012) = 141.43, p < .001, n2 = .10, moderate effect size. no statistically significant difference was yielded for the total number of students enrolled in school, f(3, 4012) = 0.84, p = .47. thus, with the exception of school size, student demographic characteristics were different by elementary school accountability rating. accountablitiy ratings of elementary schools 13 scheffe` post hoc tests revealed that the percent of black students was statistically significantly different among the four campus accountability ratings. as the accountability rating decreased from exemplary to academically unacceptable, the percent of black students increased (i.e., from 10.44% to 34.36%). concerning hispanic students, exemplary schools had lower percentages of hispanic students (i.e., 38.33%) than did the other three accountability ratings (i.e., in the mid-50% range) which did not differ among themselves. differences were also present for the percent of economically disadvantaged students. with the exception of academically acceptable and academically unacceptable elementary schools which did not differ, as the accountability rating decreased, the percent of economically disadvantaged students increased (i.e., from 49.04% to 91.19%). similar results were present for the percent of at-risk students (i.e., from 39.28% to 67.62%). that is, as the school ranking became poorer, the percent of at-risk students dramatically increased. concerning students with a label of limited english proficient, exemplary schools had lower percentages (i.e., 17.02%) than did the other three school accountability ratings which did not differ among themselves (i.e., mid-20s to low30%s). all four accountability ratings differed for the mobility percent. as the accountability rating went from exemplary to academically unacceptable, the mobility percent increased (i.e., from 15.45% to 26.46%). readers are referred to tables 1 3 for the descriptive statistics for the percentages of the dependent variables by campus accountability rating. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 table 1 descriptive statistics for student characteristics by elementary school accountability rating for the 2008-2009 school year variable n m sd percent of black students exemplary 1791 10.44 14.49 recognized 1750 13.74 17.98 acceptable 544 19.16 21.16 unacceptable 25 34.36 28.67 percent of hispanic students exemplary 1791 38.33 30.32 recognized 1750 56.26 30.70 acceptable 544 58.59 29.22 unacceptable 25 56.08 29.03 percent of minority students exemplary 1791 48.77 31.24 recognized 1750 69.99 27.68 acceptable 544 77.76 24.40 unacceptable 25 90.44 12.55 accountablitiy ratings of elementary schools 15 table 2 descriptive statistics for student characteristics by elementary school accountability rating for the 2008-2009 school year variable n m sd percent of at-risk students exemplary 1791 39.28 20.44 recognized 1750 53.82 19.47 acceptable 544 58.82 18.01 unacceptable 25 67.62 17.90 percent of economically disadvantaged students exemplary 1791 49.04 28.91 recognized 1750 70.67 21.19 acceptable 544 78.32 16.49 unacceptable 25 91.19 8.81 percent of students with lep exemplary 1791 17.02 18.80 recognized 1750 26.86 22.24 acceptable 544 29.91 23.15 unacceptable 25 33.84 26.75 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 table 3 descriptive statistics for student characteristics by elementary school accountability rating for the 2008-2009 school year variable n m sd percent of student mobility exemplary 1743 15.45 6.99 recognized 1719 19.40 6.86 acceptable 530 20.77 7.09 unacceptable 24 26.46 8.07 total number of students enrolled exemplary 1791 552.91 214.84 recognized 1750 553.96 216.79 acceptable 544 540.32 210.36 unacceptable 25 514.72 195.26 discussion in this study, student characteristics of texas elementary public schools were analyzed by their accountability rating for the 2008-2009 school year. with the exception of school size, elementary schools differed in their student characteristics by the school accountability rating. exemplary elementary schools had the lowest percentages of black students, hispanic students, economically disadvantaged students, at-risk students, students with lep, and mobility percent whereas academically unacceptable schools had the highest percentages. effect sizes, or the practical importance of these analyses, ranged from moderate to very large (cohen, 1988). what accountablitiy ratings of elementary schools 17 these analyses revealed was that differences were clearly present in the students who were enrolled at texas elementary schools with different accountability ratings. based on the findings of this study, texas elementary schools with higher percentages of black, hispanic, economically disadvantaged, at-risk, lep, and mobile students face unique challenges. documented in the existing research literature is that these students, largely minority and low-income, tend to have varied cultural needs (frankson & white-lindsey, 2007; petterway et al., 2006) and are susceptible to environmental risk factors (bainbridge & lasley, 2002; jencks & phillips, 1998; orfield & lee, 2005) that require special attention to ensure academic achievement. the current system of education and assessment appears to continue to fall short of properly serving these children (allen et al., 1999; darling-hammond, 1998; education trust, 2008; ingersoll, 1999, 2002; jepsen & rivkin, 2002; nieto, 2003; orfield & lee, 2005; peske & haycock, 2006; rowland & coble, 2005; u.s. department of education, national center for education statistics, 2000). if appropriate and effective educational programs are ever to be designed for minority and economically disadvantaged students, educational leaders must recognize and understand the interrelationship between student demographic characteristics and achievement. currently, the amount of learning that takes place in schools is measured primarily based on students’ scores on standardized assessments (petterway et al., 2006). however, black and hispanic students are at a disadvantage compared to non-minority peers on achievement tests (bainbridge & lasley, 2002). therefore, they are often unable to demonstrate what they have actually learned. researchers have reported that these students need, “to be exposed to high quality, well-designed assessments that take into consideration the risk factors associated with certain racial groups” (frankson & white-lindsey, 2007, p. 21). frankson and white-lindsey (2007) suggested that current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 appropriately teaching and assessing minority students requires the following measures be taken to build on students’ strengths and meet their individual needs: implantation of culturally responsive practices, including teacher dialogue offering social support and encouragement, activities honoring ancestral culture, and parental involvement; designing instructional practices in which goals, objectives, and parental input and involvement are aligned with the diversity of students’ cultures and learning styles; and infusion of authentic assessments, such as oral retellings or tactile physical activities, that involve relatable content-rich pedagogy. without this understanding of the particular needs of minority students, the achievement gap between these students and their non-minority counterparts is not likely to be bridged, and school rankings will continue to be unintended indicators of the demographic characteristics to which schools cater (petterway et al., 2006). to raise the achievement of all students in the nation and eliminate the achievement gap seen among students by race, ethnicity, poverty, and english proficiency, the education community must also recruit, train, and retain highly qualified teachers who are prepared to work in diverse environments (bowling & cummings, 2009; u.s. department of education, 2002). according to the education trust (2008), “by assigning poor and minority students to stronger teachers, texas schools could produce much better results, regardless of the outside-of-school factors that affect students success” (p. 2). peske and haycock (2006) recommended a range of actions to aid education leaders in ending the unfair distribution of teacher quality, which include: overhauling hiring practices to allow schools that serve low-income, high-minority, and low-performing students the first pick of teacher talent; paying effective teachers more in highneed schools; balancing the challenges of working in high-poverty schools by giving teachers reduced student loads; reserving tenure for those teachers who demonstrate effectiveness at accountablitiy ratings of elementary schools 19 producing student learning; setting staff budgets at the school level and ensuring that they are proportionate with student needs; building better data systems that link individual teachers to the academic achievement of their students over time in order to identify the most effective teachers; and targeting funding to high poverty schools. closing the achievement gap will not be an effortless task, neither will it be immediate or cheap. as bainbridge and lasley (2002) observed, closing the achievement gap will require new approaches to understanding demographics, diversity, and accountability. it will also require more commitment on the part of society to find ways of ensuring that those who start school possess enough advantages to be advantaged by education and not so many disadvantages that make the efforts of even the best educators ineffective. (p. 434) as with other studies in which archival data are utilized, this study is a causalcomparative study which limits the extent to which any cause-and-effect statements can be made. additionally, only data from one state were analyzed. finally, numerous variables that are related to student success were not analyzed herein. therefore, readers are encouraged to be cautious in the extent to which they make generalizations from this study. researchers are encouraged to extend this study by investigating other schooling conditions and student demographic characteristics related to school accountability ratings. in particular, accountability ratings and characteristics of students enrolled at other school levels (i.e., middle schools, high schools) and in additional states need to be addressed. until such time as these findings are extended and replicated, these results should be viewed as tentative in nature. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 references allen, m., palaich, r., & anthes, c. 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(2010, march 5). transforming american education: learning powered by technology, national educational technology plan executive summary. draft. retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/netp-2010-exec-summary.pdf whitehurst, g. (2003). research on teacher preparation and professional development. whitehouse conference on preparing tomorrow’s teachers. washington, dc. retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/admins/tchrqual/learn/preparingteachersconference/whitehurst.html current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word wingfield layout.docx 1 volume 14, number 2 june 4, 2011 issn 1099-839x is there a relationship between body mass index, fitness, and academic performance? mixed results from students in a southeastern united states elementary school robert j. wingfield joseph p.h. mcnamara david m. janicke university of florida paulo a. graziano florida international university the purpose of this study was to investigate relationships between body mass index (bmi), physical fitness, and academic performance in elementary school students. specifically, bmi and scores on the president’s challenge physical activity and fitness awards program, a physical fitness test, were compared to reading and mathematics scores on the florida comprehensive assessment test (fcat), a standardized normreferenced academic achievement measure. participants included 132 4th and 5th grade students from a k-12 school located in north central florida. results revealed that bmi and physical fitness were correlated with academic performance for 5th grade females. in addition, there was a significant and negative association found between bmi and physical fitness across grade level and sex. keywords: obesity, overweight, physical education, president’s challenge, fcat, fitness the association between physical fitness and academic performance has received understandable attention in response to the growing prevalence of children who are overweight and out-of-shape (ogden, carroll, mcdowell, tabak, & flegal, 2006), as well as demands placed on schools to produce students who meet academic standards (castelli, hillman, buck, & erwin, 2007). a potential relationship of fitness to cognitive functioning may be explained by both physiological and psychological mechanisms (chomitz, slining, mcgowan, mitchell, dawson, & hacker, 2009) as physical activity stimulates neural development (studenski, carlson, fillit, greenough, kramer, & rebok, 2006), enhances circulation, increases blood flow to the brain, and raises levels of norepinephrine and endorphins–which collectively may decrease stress, improve mood, stimulate a calming effect after exercise, and as a result possibly improve academic performance (taras, 2005; fleshner, 2000; & morgan, 1994). yet, despite conceivable connections between physical fitness and academic outcomes, physical education (pe) in us schools is diminishing as emphasis on high-stakes tests increases (rentner, scott, & kobert, 2007). physical education according to the national center for chronic disease prevention and health promotion, only 1 in 3 students participate in daily pe classes (nccdphp, 2010). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 in addition, nationwide research suggests that few schools provide daily pe or its equivalent for all grade levels throughout the school year. for example, only 3.8% of elementary schools (excluding kindergarten), 7.9% of middle schools, and 2.1% of high schools provide daily pe throughout the year for all students (kann, brener, & wechsler, 2007). this issue is gaining in popularity as the identification of the effects of physical fitness, and its components, on cognitive functioning could aid school administrators in the decision-making process (castelli et al., 2007), particularly decisions related to the amount of time students should spend in core academic instruction versus pe. thus, the matter of whether physical fitness has a meaningful impact on students’ academic performance must be adequately explicated. despite a number of nationwide health initiatives to reduce childhood obesity by promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors, the diminution of pe in schools sends a resounding message to stakeholders that students’ physical fitness has little to no bearing on their academic performance. the discounting of pe may inadvertently occur, due in part to the no child left behind act (nclb, 2001) which mandated that schools evaluate the academic performance of all students not the physical fitness of all students, so it is easy to understand why many school administrators routinely place pe on the chopping block in favor of more mathematics, language arts, and science instruction. if compelling and overwhelming research existed showing a significant positive relationship between physical fitness and academic performance most administrators would likely place more emphasis on improving students’ fitness. unfortunately, research on the relationship between physical fitness and academic performance remains unclear. gender & age given the substantial influence that gender and age have on children’s educational experience (cushner, mcclelland, & stafford, 2009), it is important to consider and control for these variables when conducting research that examines academic outcomes. obesity, for example, is associated with decreased college enrollment particularly for females (rimm, 2004), which suggests that females incur harsher educational repercussions for being overweight. in addition, overweight girls are more likely to experience greater social isolation and emotional distress compared to overweight boys (faulkner, neumark-sztainer, story, jeffery, beuhring, & resnick, 2001). they also endure more relational victimization and suffer from less supportive and more antagonistic friendships (pearce, boergers, & prinstein, 2002). on the other hand, larger boys are more likely to be praised for their size especially in the context of sports such as football in which bigger equals better. furthermore, boys and girls generally have different rates of growth and maturation that have important implications from a physiological standpoint. it is generally accepted that puberty begins earlier for girls – often between 9 and 13 years of age while boys begin the process a year or more later in life (american academy of pediatrics, 1996). for many youth, puberty marks a period of doubt and challenges as they must deal with variations in hormone production that influence mood. research indicates that depression-related differences in negative affect are especially pronounced for pubertal girls (forbes, williamson, ryan, & dahle, 2006). taken together, these patterns could result in notable differences in how boys and girls across ages and weight statuses perform in school. the literature five studies were identified as being especially germane to this study. chomitz et al. (2009) examined relationships between physical fitness and academic performance in diverse, urban public school children enrolled in 4th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. academic performance was assessed as a passing score on the massachusetts comprehensive assessment system (mcas) achievement tests in mathematics and in english. physical fitness was assessed as the number of physical fitness tests passed during pe class. specifically, students completed an endurance cardiovascular test, an abdominal strength test, a flexibility test, an upper body strength test, and an agility test. these tests were adapted from the amateur athletic union and fitnessgram guidelines. results revealed that the odds of passing both the mcas mathematics test and the mcas english test increased as the number of fitness tests passed increased. castelli et al. (2007) examined the relationship between physical fitness and academic performance in public school students enrolled in the 3rd and 5th grade. participants completed the progressive aerobic cardiovascular endurance run (pacer) to assess aerobic capacity and later completed push-ups and curl-ups to measure muscular strength. in addition, participants completed the back-saver sit and reach test to measure flexibility. finally, participants completed the illinois standards achievement test (isat) in mathematics and reading to measure academic performance. results revealed that field tests of physical fitness were positively related to academic performance in mathematics and reading. specifically, aerobic capacity was positively associated with academic performance. furthermore, there were significant effects for body mass index (bmi), indicating that lower bmi and higher aerobic fitness were positively related to mathematics achievement. similarly, there were significant effects for bmi, and the pacer indicating that lower bmi and higher aerobic fitness were positively related to reading achievement. grissom (2005) also evaluated the relationship between physical fitness and academic performance of students enrolled in 5th, 7th, and 9th grade. scores on the fitnessgram, a physical fitness test that measures aerobic capacity, body composition, curl-ups, trunk lifts, upper body strength, and flexibility were compared to reading and mathematics scores on the stanford is there a relationship between body mass index, fitness, and academic performance? 3 achievement test 9th (sat/9) edition. results revealed that when the overall physical fitness test score was compared to mean sat/9 reading and mathematics scores, there was a consistent positive relationship between physical fitness and academic performance. this relationship appeared to be stronger for females than males and stronger for higher socioeconomic status (ses) than lower ses students. while kaestner and grossman (2009) did not examine the relationship between physical fitness and academic performance, they did investigate the relationship between body weight and academic performance. given weight’s indubitable association with physical fitness, the study is considered to be relevant to the current investigation. in their study, the peabody individual achievement tests in mathematics and reading, and grade attainment were utilized to represent academic performance. results suggested that, in general, children who were overweight or obese had academic test scores that were about the same as children with average weight. tremblay, inman, and willms (2001) examined the relationship between children’s selfreported levels of physical activity and reading and mathematics scores of 6th grade students. students’ test scores in reading and mathematics were based on standardized tests administered by the new brunswick department of education. the measure of physical activity was based on four questions regarding students’ regular participation in physical activities. although, physical activity and physical fitness are different constructs the study is deemed to be applicable since most physical activity guidelines consider fitness a surrogate measure of physical activity (myers et al., 2004). results revealed that physical activity had a trivial negative relationship with academic performance. specifically, a one unit increase on the activity scale was associated with a reduction in test scores of 2-3% of a standard deviation. altogether, the research on this topic is mixed at best warranting additional investigation and elucidation. furthermore, it appears that one of the most popular fitness tests, the president’s challenge physical activity and fitness awards program (the president’s challenge), has not been utilized in previous investigations to measure students’ physical fitness. unlike other fitness tools such as fitnessgram, the essential components of the president’s challenge are free or relatively inexpensive so the findings of this study may be more intriguing to many schools that cannot afford other fitness programs. in addition, few studies have utilized both academic and fitness raw scores to analyze student data. raw scores have added value because they are more sensitive to variations in performance and can capture smaller differences (flippo & caverely, 2009). finally, previous research on this topic has seemingly neglected the southeastern region of the united states. this is a significant omission since trends in childhood obesity are not constant across the nation. for instance, a recently identified cluster of states in the southeastern portion of the country, referred to as the “diabetes belt,” generates a significantly higher prevalence of diabetes and obesity than other parts of the country (barker, kirtland, gregg, geiss, & thompson, 2011). therefore, it is important to study all regions rather than make broad and potentially inaccurate generalizations based on a few. purpose of the study the purpose of this study was to examine relationships between bmi, physical fitness, and academic performance in 4th and 5th grade children. specifically, the researchers sought to identify the relative contribution of bmi and physical fitness as correlates of academic performance in the study’s sample. unlike many previous investigations, the strength of the association between fitness and academic performance was examined by using both fitness and academic test’s raw scores as continuous variables rather than dichotomized pass/fail factors. additionally, the current study used fitness measures, procedures, and norms from the president’s challenge which has been understudied in comparison to its counterparts. finally, the data were collected from students attending a school located in the southeastern region of the united studies which helps fill the demographic void that exists in the current literature. it was hypothesized that increased bmi and low physical fitness would be associated with poor academic performance across grade level and gender. methods participants the setting for the study was a k-12 school located in north central florida. this cross-sectional study included data on 132 children enrolled in 4th (n=66; 52% males) and 5th (n=66; 50% males) grade. the racial makeup of the sample was as follows: 44% white; 23% hispanic; 22% black; 7% mixed; 3% asian; and 1% native american. gender (male/female), race/ethnicity (asian, black, hispanic, and white), and ses were extracted from the school administration record system. the annual household income was as follows: 30% = $97,750 or more; 22% = $69,000 to 97,749; 24% = $39,250 to 68,999; and 24% = $0 to 39,249. a certified teacher in the pe department annually measures students’ height, weight, and physical fitness during pe class with students from kindergarten to eighth grade. based on the center for disease control and prevention (cdc) age norms, children whose bmi z-score based on age and gender were greater than the 95th percentile were classified as obese (n = 20, 15%), children whose bmi were between the 85th and 95th percentile were classified as overweight/at-risk for overweight (n = 19, 14%), and children whose bmi were between the 6th and 84th percentile were classified as normal weight (n = 82, 62%). three children (2%) had a bmi < 6th percentile and were excluded from the analyses to control for outlier effects (hodge & austin, 2004). for the purposes of this study, school record data that included current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 bmi, physical fitness, and academic test scores for students who were enrolled in 4th and 5th grade during the 2008-2009 academic year were used. the study protocol was reviewed and approved by the behavioral/nonmedical institutional review board (irb-02) of a southeastern university. data collection physical fitness data were gathered from a series of fitness tests conducted by the pe teacher during regularly scheduled pe periods in march and april of 2009 as students completed physical fitness tests in five domains (curl-ups, shuttle run, one mile run/walk, pull-ups, flexedarm hang, and v-sit reach) adapted from the president’s challenge. fitness scores are based on the 1985 school population fitness survey. the pe teacher and students followed the president’s challenge program manual to maintain objectivity in scoring. the president’s challenge recommends partner assistance in test administration and research indicates that it possesses acceptable reliability based on both instructor scores (rc1 = .95, r d total = .69) and student scores (rc1 = .95, r d total = .73; killman & barfield, 2008). curl-ups, a movement similar to sit-ups, were completed to measure abdominal strength and endurance by recording the maximum number of curl-ups performed in one minute. the pe teacher provided general guidelines and monitored students during each fitness test. for example during curl-ups, “bouncing” off the floor was not permitted. the shuttle run was completed to measure quickness and agility, and times were recorded to the nearest tenth of a second. the one mile run/walk was completed to measure cardiorespiratory fitness/endurance, and times were recorded in minutes and seconds. pull-ups were completed to measure upper body strength and endurance. recorded scores indicate the number of pullups that participants completed under non-timed conditions. flexed-arm hang was also completed to measure upper body strength and endurance. to record a valid score students assumed the flex-arm hang position, held their chin over the bar, kept their chest close to the bar, and allowed their legs to hang straight. timing was stopped when the student’s chin touched or fell below the bar. the v-sit reach was completed to measure flexibility of the lower back and hamstrings by reaching forward in the v-position. to obtain a valid score, students were required to keep their legs straight while keeping the soles of their feet positioned perpendicular to the floor. students were encouraged to reach slowly rather than “bounce” while stretching. v-sit reach scores were recorded to the nearest half-inch and are read as plus scores for reaches beyond baseline; and minus scores indicate reaches that were performed behind baseline. weight status was assessed by bmi z scores based on height and weight measurements collected by the pe teacher in march and april of 2009. height was measured to the nearest .25 inch and body weight was measured to the nearest ½ pound in light indoor clothing without shoes. bmi z scores were calculated and categorized based on cdc protocol. for descriptive purposes, bmi-for-age percentiles for boys and girls were constructed using the cdc and prevention/national center for health statistics growth charts and categorized as: obese (≥95th percentile), overweight (between ≥85th and ≤95th percentile), normal weight (between ≥5th and 85th), and underweight (≤5th percentile). academic performance was measured using the florida comprehensive assessment tests (fcat), which annually tests all students across the state, including students with disabilities and students with limited english proficiency. the fcat was administered in march of 2009 by teachers in classrooms. as mandated by the education reform law of 1993 and the federal nclb law from 2001, all students educated with public funds are required to participate in the fcat administered in their grades. the fcat is part of florida’s overall plan to increase student achievement by implementing higher standards. the fcat, administered to students in grades 3-11, consists of norm-referenced tests in reading and mathematics, which compares the achievement of florida students with that of their peers nationwide; and criterionreferenced tests in reading, mathematics, science, and writing, which measure student progress toward meeting the sunshine state standards (sss) benchmarks. fcat raw scores in reading and mathematics range from 86 to 3008. these scores were used to interpret academic performance results. data analytic plan. preliminary analyses were conducted to determine the normative distribution of each variable and to examine whether there were any statistically significant associations between demographic variables (i.e., sex, age, race, or ses), bmi, physical fitness, and academic performance. in addition, a principal component factor analysis was conducted to determine if the six fitness tasks loaded into a single fitness factor. as part of the primary analyses, we first conducted a univariate analysis of variance (anova) to determine whether fitness levels differentiated children classified as overweight, obese, and normal weight. correlational and regression analyses were then performed to examine whether fitness and bmi were related to academic performance. separate correlational and regression analyses were computed for each grade given that the standardized academic test was different per grade. results preliminary analysis descriptive statistics. in terms of the normative distribution of each variable, two fitness tasks were significantly skewed: pull-ups and flex-arm hang time (skewness value of 1.88 and 2.02, respectively). flex-arm hang time was normalized via a log + 10 transformation. given that a larger portion of children could not do a single pull-up (44%), this variable was categorized (children who could do a single pull-up or more versus children who could not do a single pull-up). all other variables had normative distributions. is there a relationship between body mass index, fitness, and academic performance? 5 next, preliminary analyses were conducted to determine any associations between demographic variables, physical fitness, and academic performance. effect sizes were calculated using cohen’s d. first, multivariate analyses indicated significant gender differences across various fitness variables, (f(6, 54) = 7.34, p < .001, d = .82). specifically, boys performed significantly more situps (f(1, 59) = 8.63, p < .01,, d = .15), and had faster shuttle times (f(1, 59) = 19.07, p < .001, , d = .32), and mile times (f(1, 59) = 6.97, p < .05, , d = .12) than girls. while girls were more flexible than boys, (f(1, 59) = 7.40, p < .01, , d = .12). no other significant associations were found among demographic variables and any of the study’s outcomes. due to these significant sex differences, the primary analyses were conducted separately for boys and girls. data reduction and fitness factor. academic reading and math scores were combined into a single academic performance variable due to their high correlation, r = .69, p<.001. in addition, the current study used 6 indicator variables to measure children’s fitness— mile time in minutes and seconds, shuttle time to the nearest tenth of a second, number of curl-ups, ability to do a pull-up, flex-arm hang time in seconds, and flexibility (vstretch). hence, a principal component factor analysis was first conducted to determine if these 6 indicator variables loaded into a single fitness factor. from this analysis, 2 factors emerged (i.e. fitness factor 1 and fitness factor 2) with an eigenvalue above 1 (λ =1.05) and these factors explained 63.51 percent of the total variance across measures for this sample. as seen in table 1, all fitness tests, other than flexibility, had high loadings (>.60) on the first factor while the second factor was only comprised of flexibility. consequently, all fitness scores, except flexibility, were standardized and combined, by averaging their total scores (reverse scoring was used for mile and shuttle times), into a single continuous fitness factor. this fitness factor, with higher scores indicating better fitness, was used in subsequent analyses. fitness and pediatric obesity. it was also important to determine whether physical fitness levels differed according to weight groups. accordingly, a univariate analysis of variance (anova) was conducted to determine whether physical fitness levels differentiated children classified as obese, overweight/at-risk, and normal weight. gender and grade were controlled, given their earlier relations to fitness. this analysis revealed a significant main effect for the weight groups (f (2, 111) = 32.69, p< .001, partial eta-squared = .37), on fitness. as seen in table 2, follow-up contrast tests with bonferroni correction indicated that children classified as obese had significantly lower fitness levels (m = -.90, se = .15) compared to both children classified as overweight/at-risk (m = -.26, se = .15) and children classified as normal weight (m = .35, se = .07), p<.01 and p<.001, respectively. children classified as overweight/at-risk also had significantly lower fitness levels than children classified as normal weight, p<.001. associations between bmi, fitness, and academic performance. correlational analyses were conducted to determine whether fitness level and bmi were associated with academic performance. separate analyses were conducted for each grade level as well as for boys and girls. as seen in table 3, these analyses revealed a significant positive association between fitness and academic performance, but only for girls in 5th grade. finally, a regression analysis (see table 4) was conducted to determine whether for 5th grade girls, both bmi and fitness were uniquely associated with academic performance or if one variable was more important in this association. this analysis revealed an overall effect of bmi and fitness predicting academic performance, (f(2, 24) = 5.58, p<.01, total r 2 = .32, d = .47). however, only bmi marginally predicted academic performance, β = -.40, p<.08. thus, 5thgrade girls with higher bmi levels had worse academic performance. fitness (β = .21, p = .34) no longer significantly predicted academic performance when bmi was in the model. table 1 factor loadings from the principal component factor analysis fitness test fitness factor #1 fitness factor #2 mile run time -.70 .35 shuttle time -.76 .28 sit-ups .76 -.25 pull-ups .71 .27 flex-arm hang time .68 .23 stretch .37 .81 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 6 table 2 demographic characteristics, fitness levels, & academic scores according to weight group normal weight (n=82) at-risk for overweight/overweight (n=19) obese (n=20) demographics gender male 46 9 12 female 41 12 13 race caucasian 41 11 9 minority 46 10 16 age 10.6 (.77) 10.6 (.65) 10.7 (.74) bmi 17.48 (.19) 21.70 (.39) 27.23 (.38) fitness measures mile run time (seconds) 633.6(135.9) 718.8 (146.5) 872.6 (207.1) shuttle time (seconds) 11.34 (.88) 11.94 (.87) 12.66 (1.30) sit-ups 34.98 (10.0) 31.1 (8.4) 26.6 (11.0) pull-ups 3.05 (3.64) .21 (.58) .12 (.33) flex-arm hang time (seconds) 21.08 (17.01) 5.53 (6.32) 3.41 (7.09) stretch 1.12 (3.96) .10 (4.0) -.77 (3.01) academic measures reading (fcat) 1784.3 (220.9) 1763.1 (275.6) 1638.8 (277.6) math (fcat) 1716.0 (213.2) 1683.8 (210.5) 1611.8 (203.0) is there a relationship between body mass index, fitness, and academic performance? 7 table 3 associations between bmi, fitness, and academic performance across groups bmi fitness composite academic performance 4th grade 1. bmi -.64*** -.15 2. fitness composite -.64*** -.02 3. academic performance .13 .07 5th grade 1. bmi -.63*** -.59** 2. fitness composite -.50** .42* 3. academic performance -.15 .17 note: values above the diagonal are for girls; values below the diagonal are for boys. * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001. table 4 regression analyses grade and gender β f r 2 standard error 4th grade female (n=32) fitness -.16 bmi -.25 .54 .04 169.91325 4th grade male (n=34) fitness .26 bmi .29 .92 .06 202.966655 5th grade female (n=33) fitness .21 bmi -.40 5.58** .32 169.83254 5th grade male (n=33) fitness -.03 bmi -.22 .54 .04 161.73034 +p<.08, *p <.05, **p <.01 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 8 discussion the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between bmi, physical fitness, and academic performance in 4th and 5th grade children. specifically, the researchers sought to identify the relative contribution of bmi and physical fitness as correlates of academic performance for boys and girls. secondarily, the researchers sought to determine the viability of a single fitness composite measure in terms of muscular strength, muscular endurance, aerobic capacity, and flexibility. it was hypothesized that higher bmi and lower physical fitness would be associated with poor academic performance across grade level and gender. consistent with recent research (chomitz et al., 2009; castelli et al., 2007) results indicate a significant negative association between bmi and physical fitness across grade and gender with the effect size falling in the moderate range. the difference for males and females on sit-ups, the mile run, and flexibility was small, while the difference for males and females on the shuttle run was moderate. furthermore, the difference for males and females across weight groups was moderate. somewhat consistent with previous research (knudson, magnusson, & mchugh, 2000) the results indicate that flexibility did not load highly with other physical fitness variables. thus, it is questionable whether flexibility should be considered a relevant indicator of physical fitness in children since its relationship with other measures of physical fitness is exceptionally weak. another key finding of this study was that bmi was moderately correlated with academic performance only in 5th grade girls. the finding that girls may be more impacted academically by being overweight is consistent with research from datar and strum (2006) who found significant associations across grades and gender. specifically, these researchers found that moving from notoverweight to overweight across a four year span was significantly correlated with reductions in academic tests scores for girls in elementary school; however, this link was mostly absent for boys. while social-emotional functioning was not measured in the current study, it is possible that this variable could help explain why 5th grade girls appeared more adversely impacted academically by being overweight compared to other groups. for example, faulkner and colleagues (2001) found that overweight adolescent females were more likely to report serious emotional problems and lower levels of self-efficacy than their normal weight peers. in addition, obese girls were about twice as likely to report being held back a grade and to consider themselves poor students. these patterns were not found in obese boys. it is possible that similar socialemotional issues existed in the sample of 5th grade girls included in the current study. perhaps, the overweight 4th grade girls were just one-year away from encountering a similar fate as body image issues and related problems tend to emerge as children get older. implications the data herein highlight the need for researchers to take a closer look at both individual and subgroup differences in the manifestation of poor academic performance associated with high bmi and low physical fitness. it seems that certain groups of children may be less susceptible to experiencing academic decline due to being overweight. for example, in this study overweight and physically unfit 4th grade students and 5th grade boys appeared impervious to declines in academic performance. this possibility should not be viewed as justification to devalue the importance of exercising as research indicates that regular exercise improves children’s quality of life (shoup, gattshall, dandamudi, & estabrooks, 2008). however, data from the current study should caution readers to recognize that not all children will exhibit the same academic performance consequences due to being overweight and physically unfit. limitations several cautionary statements are warranted to dissuade readers from bypassing the limitations of this study. in addition there are unique characteristics of this study that should be considered when interpreting the results. first, the participants in this study attended the same school; thus, the population may be more homogenous than other groups included in similar investigations (e.g. chomitz et al., 2009; castelli et al., 2007; grissom, 2005). second, participants represented a narrow age range further limiting the generalizability of the findings. third, the school that the participants attended may have better than average academic instruction and greater resources (e.g. teachers with terminal degrees, graduate student aides, interns) because it is a laboratory school affiliated with a large research oriented university. these resources could have helped prevent low achievement in at-risk children. fourth, the school has an effectively implemented response-to-intervention (rti) program which may meet the academic and socialemotional needs of at-risk students who would otherwise perform poorly on standardized academic achievement tests. rti involves screening youth for problems, intervening early for at-risk youth, and monitoring students’ response to the intervention as well as their general educational performance (wodrich, spencer, & daely, 2006). fifth, the students in this study attended a choice school which requires parents to autonomously apply for their child to attend. generally, more assertive, concerned, and involved parents engage in this application process. together, these characteristics may function as protective factors against negative academic outcomes. another limitation of this study has to do with possible flaws in data collection. although the pe teacher reportedly followed the president’s challenge guidelines, the researchers were not present to confirm this. is there a relationship between body mass index, fitness, and academic performance? 9 conclusion in view of the demands placed on schools to produce students who meet academic standards, understanding the relationship between weight status, physical fitness, and academic performance is crucial for quantifying the degree to which specific components of health affect learning and academic performance. despite the limitations, the current study provides evidence that bmi and fitness were correlated with the academic performance for 5th grade girls. however, it will be important for future research to provide a more causal understanding of the relationship between bmi, physical fitness, and academic performance. as cross-sectional data, these results do not indicate causality. based on this, these data do not infer that healthier bmi and higher fitness caused higher academic performance for 5th grade girls. future research should examine children’s social-emotional well-being to shed light on whether that aspect of a child’s functioning mediates the relationship between bmi 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(2002). adolescent obesity, overt, and relational peer victimization, and romantic relationships. obesity research, 10, 386-393. rentner, d.s., scott, c., & kober, n. from the capital to the classroom: year 4 of no child left behind. washington, dc: center for educational policy: 2006. available at: http://www.cepdc.org/nclb. accessed april 12, 2010 shoup, j., gattshall, m., dandamudi, p., & estabrooks, p. (2008). physical activity, quality of life, and weight status in overweight children. quality of life research, 17, 407-412. doi 10.1007/s11136-008-9312-y. studenski, s., carlson m.c., fillit h., greenough w.t., kramer a., & rebok g.w. (2006). frombedside to bench: does mental and physical activity promote cognitive vitality in late life? science of aging knowledge environment, 28, (10):pe21. doi: 10.1126/sageke.2006.10.pe21 taras, h. (2005) physical activity and student performance at school. journal of school health, 75, 214-218. tremblay, m.s., inman, j.w., & willms, j.d. (2000). the relationship between physical activity, self-esteem, and academic achievement in 12-year-old children. pediatric exercise science, 12, 312-323. wodrich, d.l., spencer, m.l.s., & daley, k.b. (2006). combining rti and psychoeducational assessment: what we must assume to do otherwise. psychology in the schools, 43, 796 806. doi: 101.1002/pits. is there a relationship between body mass index, fitness, and academic performance? 11 article citation wingfield, r. j., graziano, p. a., mcnamara, j., & janicke, d. m. (2011). is there a relationship between body mass index, fitness, and academic performance? mixed results from students in a southeastern united states elementary school. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/727 author notes robert j. wingfield, m.a., ncsp university of florida norman hall po box 117050 gainesville, fl 32611-7050 robertjoshua21@ufl.edu robert j. wingfield is an advanced doctoral student in the school psychology program at the university of florida. his main research interest focuses on the role of parents and schools in preventing childhood obesity, with a primary focus on students enrolled in grades k-8. paulo a. graziano, phd. center for children and families florida international university 11200 s.w. 8th street, ahc1 235a miami, fl 33199 email: pgrazian@fiu.edu dr. paulo a. graziano is a postdoctoral fellow at the center of children and families at florida international university (fiu). dr. graziano has extensive child specialty clinical training in the area of behavioral treatments for young children with externalizing disorders and pediatric obesity. his research expertise lies within the self-regulation domain and how it relates to the development of child psychopathology (adhd), social competence, academic readiness, and health outcomes including pediatric obesity. his research also examines how environmental factors, in particular treatment interventions via parenting, can improve children’s self-regulation skills and subsequent adaptive and health functioning. joe mcnamara, ph.d. assistant professor university of florida college of medicine po box 100234 gainesville, fl 32610 jpm2@ufl.edu joseph p. h. mcnamara is an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at the university of florida. his main research interest focuses on the interaction of factors that impact treatment adherence in both children and adults. david m. janicke, ph.d. associate professor 101 s. newell dr. #3151 department of clinical and health psychology university of florida, djanicke@phhp.ufl.edu david janicke is an associate professor in the department of clinical and health psychology at the university of florida. his main research interest is translational research intended to promote the dissemination of obesity interventions for individuals in underserved settings, with a primary focus on children. acknowledgements: the authors would like to thank andrea zazo and willie powers for their data collection efforts. current issues in education vol. 14 no.2 12 volume 14, number 2 june 4, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word an analysis of high school transformation effort from an outcome perspective .docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x an analysis of high school transformation effort from an outcome perspective hea-jin lee ohio state university at lima s. aslı özgün-koca wayne state university dean cristol ohio state university at lima citation lee, h., özgün-koca, s., & cristol, d. (2011). an analysis of high school transformation effort from an outcome perspective. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/ abstract this study investigates the effectiveness of the ohio high school transformation initiative using several years of state data on attendance, graduation, dropout rates, and performance index scores. results indicate differences between small schools or small learning communities, and traditional schools that have similar school profiles to small schools in: graduation rates by year; attendance rates among the traditional schools over the years; and the performance index scores. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 small schools’ performance index scores gradually increased, but traditional schools with similar school profiles outperformed small schools. there was no difference in the dropout rates. creating a sense of community, rather than simply transforming the school structure, seems to be the key to improving high school education. keywords: secondary education; small schools; ohsti; attendance rates; graduation rates; dropout rates; performance index scores an analysis of high school transformation effort 3 about the author(s) author: hea-jin lee affiliation: ohio state university at lima address: college of education and human ecology, ohio state university, lima, oh, 45804 email: lee.1129@osu.edu biographical information: dr. hea-jin lee is an associate professor of mathematics education at the ohio state university-lima. her research interests include improving reflective thinking and practice, assessing professional growth, designing teacher-needs based professional development programs, and teaching mathematics to children at various levels. author: s. aslı özgün-koca affiliation: wayne state university address: college of education, wayne state university, detroit, mi, 48202 email: aokoca@wayne.edu biographical information: dr. s. aslı özgün-koca is currently an assistant professor in the mathematics education program area under the teacher education department at wayne state university. she teaches mathematics and secondary mathematics education courses. her main research interest is the use of technology in mathematics education. her research with preservice teachers earned an outstanding paper award in mathematics education from the international conference of the society for information technology and teacher education in 2008. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 author: dean cristol affiliation: ohio state university at lima address: college of education and human ecology, ohio state university, lima, oh, 45804 email: cristol.2@osu.edu biographical information: dr. dean cristol is an associate professor at the ohio state university-lima campus. his research areas are university-school partnerships, professional development and utilizing instructional technology in pk-12 classrooms. he recently secured a national science foundation grant focusing on stem careers for high school students in ohio and north carolina. an analysis of high school transformation effort 5 an analysis of high school transformation effort from an outcome perspective in 2003, the knowledgeworks foundation, along with the bill & melinda gates foundation, the ohio and u.s. departments of education, the ford foundation, the kellogg foundation, and local community-based foundations established the ohio high school transformation initiative (ohsti). this school improvement effort focused on transforming ohio’s ineffective large urban high school model into a model that promoted smaller learning communities by diminishing school size and by addressing “rising high school dropout rates, declining scores on the state student achievement exams, and increased problems with school violence and truancy” (knowledgeworks foundation, 2009, p. 3). the ohio state board of education (ode, 2004) proposed that a key measure for educational success would be an increase in the graduation rates for all students, in all demographic groups, and an increase in the percentage of students who advance with their cohort group from eighth grade to graduation. the western interstate commission for higher education (2008) reported that the u.s. was heading toward an overall decline in the number of high school graduates. the report predicted that the number of graduates in the midwest would continue to increase until 2007-08 then face a dramatic decline that will ultimately see the region’s number of graduates fall by eight percent by 2014-15. the report concluded that ohio can expect large decreases in graduation rates by 2021-22 (relative to 2004-05), which will result in almost 16,000 fewer public high school graduates. in this study, we investigate the effectiveness of the small schools concept from an outcome perspective. because the concept became a transformative model for many urban high schools in ohio, we were curious about the initiative’s effect on school characteristics: graduation rates, attendance rates, performance index scores, and dropout rates. the purpose of current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 the study is to analyze the ohio department of education’s data to see if the initiative had an effect in these areas, when compared to similar high schools that remained large. the research questions for this study are: 1. did the transformation of a school from a large urban school to small learning communities have an effect on graduation rates, attendance rates, dropout rates, and performance rates? 2. did the transformation of a school from a large urban school to small learning communities have an effect on graduation rates, attendance rates, dropout rates, and performance rates when compared to similar schools that remained traditional? school characteristics that measure success school size several studies report that small schools attain: higher achievement (lee, 2000; lee & smith, 1997; wasley, fine, gladden, holland, king, mosak, & powell, 2000; wyse, keesler & schneider, 2008), lower dropout rates (kahne, sporte, de la torre, & easton, 2008; toch, 2003), higher graduation rates (wasley et al., 2000), and even a higher likelihood of student enrollment in higher education (schneider, wyse, & keesler, 2007). high school students, especially those who are considered at greater risk, fare much better in small schools: “the effect of increasing the size of high schools, it seems as though there is reduced individual participation in school activities, decreased attendance, and less expressed satisfaction with school” (pittman & haughwout, 1987, p. 338). students attending small schools are reported to be doing better, because the learning experience that is offered is more authentic and relevant to the student. many small learning communities focus on the continued success of each student, especially those learners who seem neglected by the typical large school environment. in a small learning an analysis of high school transformation effort 7 community, every student is a significant member of the school; in the large schools, many disadvantaged students sense that teachers and staff lack concern for their well-being and learning (ark, 2002; crane, 2002; house, 2007). the small school concept stresses a supportive community where students receive individualized help and attention from their teachers. by making schools smaller, the goal is to create a better teaching and learning environment, as well as a caring community within the schools. soon after a district has changed to small schools, a common manifestation is that achievement gaps among all students appear to be bridged (ark, 2002; crane, 2002; house, 2007; keller, 2001; raywid, 1998, 2002). smaller school environments allow for improved safety and increased support for students and staff (association for supervision and curriculum development, 2000). small learning environments commonly create the possibility of closer collaboration among teachers, which contributes to a collaborative school community (duke & trautvetter, 2001; strull, 2002). “teachers could develop better connections between home and school, better understand students’ strengths and weaknesses, provide better support for both, and learn more from each other, creating a more exciting and vibrant career” (wasley et al., 2000, p. 10). perhaps it is not only due to the size of a small school and its classes, but rather to the greater involvement of students, teachers, staff and parents, that yields a more pronounced sense of community where all affected groups work together in the interest of their learning community. students tend to feel more connected to their teachers and peers when they are in a small school. overall, attending a small school at any grade level appears to reap greater rewards for students than the larger schools, regardless of social class or minority status (driscoll, 2003; metzger, 2006; sackney, leonard, & leonard, 2001). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 it has been shown that converting a large school into a small school has some disadvantages. with a limited number of faculty, a small school may not be able to offer an extensive selection of courses. also, as more large high schools become small schools, some schools become small only physically, but retain the same philosophy of teaching and learning found in the large school. they do not adopt the small school principles described earlier in the paper (gregory, 2000; myatt, 2005). in summary, school size seems to have an impact on some school related issues, such as performance, dropout rates, attendance, and behavioral issues. students feel that their needs and accomplishments are better recognized, which leads them to higher achievement. although there may be more opportunities for extracurricular activities in larger schools, more students are involved and participate in more activities in small schools. small schools seem to benefit students in numerous ways, from greater engagement in learning and activities to a higher level of parent involvement (iatarola, schwartz, stiefel, & chellman, 2008). dropout and graduation rates the reporting of dropout rates for high schools varies greatly within the research literature. the variation in dropout rate data is due to differences in the ways data is collected and reported. for example, some researchers count students who move back and forth between multiple school systems, while other researchers use the rate of enrollment, instead of the actual number of students attending the school (bracey, 2009; mishel & roy, 2006; stanard, 2003). the graduation rates in many school districts have been steadily improving for several decades, especially among minority groups. some discrepancies arise from overgeneralization of categories, which yields rates that are higher than actual, especially in inner city schools. a cause of high dropout rates, one that could be more easily focused on, if not rectified, is the lack of an analysis of high school transformation effort 9 community involvement in the schools. some students drop out because their families do not value education. others leave school early, because the available school options are just too limited. some researchers maintain that if these issues were more seriously addressed, the graduation rate would improve (alliance for excellent education, 2008a). attendance rates students in larger schools are more likely to commit truancy and miss more days than students who attend small schools. research shows that the small schools have a greater impact on student engagement, parent involvement, and attendance (roby, 2004, the national forum, 2004). a deficiency with the research that examines attendance rates is that they do not account for excused absences, which yields inaccurate data (greene & winters, 2002). some research shows that the more students miss school, the more they do not want to be there at all, “excessive absenteeism influences the student’s desire to return to school” (news briefs, 2006, p. 6). performance index scores some schools require a high school exit exam, while others require that students pass standards-based exams at a tenth grade level or higher. the number of schools with this requirement has greatly increased in the past few years. emphasis is also being placed on factors considered by college admissions offices, such as grade point average, scholastic aptitude tests scores, american college testing scores, class rankings, and classes taken, so that students will be considered “college ready” at graduation. some advanced courses are required to get into certain colleges, while some colleges consider how many years of each subject a student has taken during their high school academic career (alliance for excellent education, 2008b; greene & forster, 2003; louvouezo, 2008). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 the importance of what content should be addressed in high school is an issue that is constantly changing and discussed among policy leaders and educators. this leads us to believe that some form of action must be taken regarding how and what students are being taught, if it is leading them to perform poorly on tests related to the content that students are struggling to master (cavanagh, 2009; manzo, 2009). students who do not perform well academically tend to give up and eventually drop out of school. some research demonstrates that students who are alienated in school often feel their absence goes unnoticed. many students who dropped out said that they felt school did not relate to real-life situations and was therefore irrelevant. if they had been more interested in what they were learning and had felt it was relevant, they might have remained in school and possibly achieved at higher rates. engaging the students is the key to academic motivation and success (national academy of sciences, 2003). potentially, socioeconomic segregation could also be a factor in the large achievement gap between minority and white students. much of the research demonstrates that a student’s family background and socioeconomic status (ses) play a much more significant role in achievement levels than does anything directly related to the school itself (konstantopoulos, 2006, mickelson & borman, 2007; rumberger & palardy, 2005). method the study focused on the effects of small schools in ohio on graduation rates, attendance rates, dropout rates and performance index rating scores. the data from the small schools were compared to traditional schools that are identified as similar to the small schools by the ohio department of education. graduation rates, attendance rates, and dropout rates are based on the data reported by each school to the state, and performance index rating scores are based on the an analysis of high school transformation effort 11 state standardized tests scores. the data used in this study are produced by the state, and our research team was unable to collect descriptive information how each school calculated their graduation rates, attendance rates, and dropout rates. data collection data were collected from more than 230 ohio schools, from 2003 – 2007: between 30 – 35 schools from 14 districts were identified as small school by knowledgeworks; and approximately 200 schools were identified as similar to small schools by the ohio department of education (ode). our reason for collecting data from these schools during these school years was to align with the data included in the report on the effectiveness of the small schools released in january 2009 by the knowledgeworks foundation. the knowledgeworks foundation collaborated with the bill & melinda gates foundation and other partners, to create the ohio high school transformation initiative (ohsti), a model to transform large urban low performing high schools to small learning communities. the ohsti model defined a large school as at or above 800 students, while small schools or small learning communities are approximately 100 students per grade level, or 400 students within the learning community (knowledgeworks foundation, 2009). the ohsti model was designed according to the following criteria developed by the knowledgeworks foundation (2009): • existing campuses have been divided into independent schools of no more than 400 students; • each school has its own area of focus such as business or creative arts, or a curriculum model; current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 • each school has its own shared leadership model consisting of administrators and teachers; • a standards-based curriculum is combined with new teaching methods, such as real-world connections, longer class periods, project-based learning and cross-curricular study; and • close working relationships between teachers and students, such as teachers working as student advisers (ohio education matters, 2009). the ode website allows researchers to extract data that pertains to specific schools in ohio. the site allows the data to be compared to similar schools through a process designed by ode. the similar school district comparison methodology data evaluates performance data for a school district. when a school is identified, the site finds up to 20 districts that are most similar according to certain criteria. statistically, the comparable districts are considered the nearest neighbors of the selected district. ode maintains that a “consistent and objective method of determining similar districts has been established, and within that framework, comparison groupings have been tailored to each individual district. each district’s characteristics drive the creation of the comparison groupings, and each district’s set of "peers" is developed with only that district’s characteristics in mind. every district thus has its own unique set of peers” (ode, 2010, http://webapp2.ode.state.oh.us/similar_districts/). ode produced a set of 11 descriptors to differentiate districts; four stand alone, and seven are included in two composite measures. composite measures were used for dimensions where there is no valid data element used to describe the dimension. “tests for relationships between data elements were conducted with each variable prior to the analysis of dimensions. data representing each dimension were normalized prior to the analysis, with means equal to zero and standard deviations of 1. this process standardized the metric used for comparative an analysis of high school transformation effort 13 purposes so that each district can be fairly compared with any other district. the data used for each dimension represent a set of descriptive background characteristics that distinguish one district from another. these single or composite variables create the six dimensions used to determine a district’s comparison grouping: district size, poverty, socioeconomic status, rural/urban composite, race/ethnicity, and non-agricultural” (ode, 2010, http://webapp2.ode.state.oh.us/similar_districts/). the similar school process works by identifying a district which is compared to 609 other districts by performing a collective comparison across all dimensions. the formula for each district-to-district comparison can be found at http://webapp2.ode.state.oh.us/similar_districts/. the comparison groupings are those districts that are most similar to the initial district. for most districts, there are 20 similar districts, but some large urban and unique districts have a minimal number of comparatively similar districts. ode recognized that there are limitations to this methodology: (1) no geographical dimension; (2) arbitrarily setting a minimum of 6 and maximum of 20 comparison districts; (3) comparison groupings can produce counter-intuitive results for inter-grouping comparison cases; (4) the poverty measure includes all children ages 517 residing in a school district, living in a family reported by the ohio department of jobs and family services; and (5) the rural-urban scale for school district population (2000 census) and whether the school district contains a large (>40,000) or very large (>100,000) city. data analysis analyses were conducted with spss for windows, version 16.0. in order to examine differences in small and similar schools over the four years, we performed the wilcoxon, the mann-whitney, and friedman nonparametric statistical tests. the mann-whitney test is a nonparametric analog of the independent samples t-test and can be used when the dependent variable current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 is a normally distributed interval variable. we used this test to determine if there is a difference in small and similar schools. a friedman test is used when there is one within-subjects independent variable with two or more levels and a dependent variable that is not interval and normally distributed (but at least ordinal). finally, we used the wilcoxon test to compare the differences for two years for each group separately. results graduation rates table 1 is a summary of the descriptive statistics for graduation rates with mann-whitney results for group comparisons, from 03-04 to 06-07. this test compares graduation rates by year between small schools and similar schools. z scores in table 1 suggest that there is a statistically significant difference between small schools and similar schools in graduation rates by year with similar schools having greater graduation rates. table 1. graduation rates between small and similar schools type n mean std. dev. z score graduation rates 03-04 small school 30 66.387 18.299 -3.872* similar school 207 79.514 20.496 graduation rates 04-05 small school 31 69.500 18.638 -3.944* similar school 212 82.994 16.949 graduation rates 05-06 small school 33 72.091 21.482 -3.480* similar school 218 83.742 18.317 graduation rates 06-07 small school 35 77.214 18.809 -2.122* similar school 215 84.451 15.498 note. *p<.05 table 2 is a summary of a friedman test for graduation rates in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. this test compares differences in graduation rates over the four years for the whole group, small schools, and similar schools separately. according to the chi-square scores shown in an analysis of high school transformation effort 15 table 2, there are statistically significant differences in the whole group and also small and similar schools separately in their graduation rates over the four years. table 2. graduation rates over the four years friedman test whole group small school similar school n 224 27 197 chi-square 39.978* 21.067* 31.833* df 3 3 3 note. *p<.05 in order to compare changes of each group’s graduation rates in two consecutive years, a wilcoxon test (two-by-two comparisons) is performed (see table 3). we compared the whole group, small schools, and similar schools separately. both the whole group and similar schools show statistically significant differences in graduation rates in the years 03-04 & 04-05, 04-05 & 05-06, and 05-06 & 06-07. no yearly differences were observed from small schools. however, all three groups showed statistically significant differences in their graduation rates when we compared 03-04 and 06-07. table 3. graduation rates comparison between two years wilcoxon test grad 03-04 grad 04-05 grad 04-05 grad 05-06 grad 05-06 grad 06-07 grad 03-04 grad 06-07 whole group z -4.845* -4.121* -2.105* -5.996* small school z -1.635 -1.470 -1.674 -3.460* similar school z -4.662* -3.894* -3.012* -4.912* note. *p<.05 according to the knowledgeworks report (2009): • high school graduation rates increased from 62.8 percent in 2002 to 82.4 percent in 2007. • the graduation gap between ohsti high schools and all ohio high schools closed dramatically, by nearly 75 percent, from 19.9 percentage points in 2002 to 4.5 percentage points in 2007. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 • 91 percent of ohsti campuses experienced an increase in graduation rates since 2002. • the growth in graduation rates for white, black, and hispanic ohsti students exceeded the state growth rate for these groups between 2002 and 2007 (pp. 11-12). unlike the knowledgeworks’ claim, our findings can only conclude that the differences between small and similar schools lie in their graduation rates every year. a steady yearly difference in graduation rates is not observed in small schools, but is found in similar schools. as seen in table 2 and the last column in table 3, the graduation rates changed over the four years, which suggests that ohsti school graduation rates increased from 2003 2004 to 2006 2007. however, we also observed a significant difference in graduation rates for similar schools from 2003-2004 to 2006-2007. attendance rates table 4 shows the descriptive statistics for attendance rates with mann-whitney results for group comparisons. table 4. attendance rates between small and similar schools type n mean std. dev. z score attendance rates 0304 small school 34 93.056 4.012 -0.939 similar school 221 92.857 3.433 attendance rates 0405 small school 35 92.960 3.415 -0.996 similar school 226 92.142 4.598 attendance rates 0506 small school 34 91.271 4.551 -1.405 similar school 221 92.524 4.037 attendance rates 0607 small school 35 91.457 4.093 -1.365 similar school 217 91.989 4.324 attendance rates 0708 small school 32 90.688 4.386 -2.176* similar school 213 92.376 4.251 note. *p<.05 an analysis of high school transformation effort 17 this test compares attendance rates between the two groups, small and similar schools, by year. as can be seen from the z scores in table 4, 2007-2008 is the only year showing a statistically significant difference in attendance rates between small schools and similar schools, with similar schools having higher attendance rates. table 5 is a summary of a friedman test for attendance rates in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. it shows that there is a statistically significant difference in attendance rates for the similar schools over the 5 years. however, there was no statistically significant difference observed in the attendance rates of either the whole group or small schools. table 5. attendance rates over the five years friedman test whole group small school similar school n 235 28 207 chi-square 9.398 6.105 12.564* df 4 4 4 note. *p<.05 a wilcoxon test was performed to make two-by-two comparisons for the whole group, the small schools, and similar schools separately (see table 6). both the whole group and similar schools show statistically significant differences in attendance rates between 04-05 and 05-06 and between 05-06 and 06-07. the only differences in attendance rates observed in small schools occurred between the years 05-06 and 06-07 and between 03-04 and 07-08. table 6. attendance rates comparison between two years wilcoxon test att. 03-04 att. 04-05 att. 04-05 att. 05-06 att. 05-06 att. 06-07 att. 06-07 att. 07-08 att. 03-04 att. 07-08 whole group z -1.493 -3.196* -2.077* -1.178 -0.429 small school z -0.858 -1.309 -2.588* -1.171 -2.403* similar school z -1.246 -4.112* -3.314* -1.711 -0.598 note. *p<.05 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 according to the results shown in table 4, the only statistical differences in attendance rates between small and similar schools were observed in 07-08. however, only similar schools’ attendance rates show differences over the 5 years, specifically from 04-05 through 06-07 (see table 5). a statistically significant difference in attendance rates between 03-04 and 07-08 was observed only in small schools (see table 6). this finding supports the knowledgeworks report (2009) on ohsti campus growth in attendance in total, but cannot support their claim on the growth in attendance rate for annualized data. performance index scores table 7 shows the descriptive statistics for performance index scores for both small and similar schools. there are mann-whitney results for group comparisons, comparing performance index scores between small schools and similar schools by year. the z scores in table 7 suggest that there is a statistically significant difference between small schools and similar schools in performance index scores by year, with similar schools performing better. table 7. performance index scores between small and similar schools type n mean std. dev. z score performance 04-05 small school 34 76.256 17.737 -3.660* similar school 226 87.997 13.264 performance 05-06 small school 35 78.143 17.717 -4.239* similar school 221 90.989 10.809 performance 06-07 small school 35 82.989 11.912 -3.848* similar school 217 91.037 9.660 performance 07-08 small school 32 83.728 12.270 -3.111* similar school 213 90.320 10.327 note. *p<.05 table 8 is a summary of a friedman test for performance index scores for 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. this test compares differences in performance index scores over the four years an analysis of high school transformation effort 19 for the whole group, small schools, and similar schools. according to the chi-square scores shown in table 8, there are statistically significant differences in all three groups, the whole group, small schools, and similar schools in their performance index rates over the four years. table 8. performance index scores over the four years friedman test whole group small school similar school n 241 29 212 chi-square 39.991* 13.138* 34.622* df 3 3 3 note. *p<.05 a wilcoxon test was performed to do two-by-two comparisons for the whole group, the small schools, and similar schools separately (see table 9). all three groups, the whole group, small schools, and similar schools, show statistically significant differences in performance index scores between 04-05 and 05-06, between 05-06 and 06-07, and between 04-05 and 07-08. table 9. performance index scores comparison between two years wilcoxon test per. 04-05 per. 05-06 per. 05-06 per. 06-07 per. 06-07 per. 07-08 per. 04-05 per. 07-08 whole group z -7.175* -2.683* -1.148 -3.712* small school z -3.291* -2.097* -1.197 -3.125* similar school z -6.433* -3.844* -0.731 -2.752* note. *p<.05 according to the results from these mann-whitney, friedman, and wilcoxon tests, there was a statistical difference in performance index scores between small and similar schools every year. also, the differences in performance index scores were observed across four years within each group. however, only statistical differences between two consecutive years were observed from 04-05 through 06-07 in all three groups. the findings in the last column in table 9 show that all three groups have a significant difference in the performance index scores, comparing 04current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 05 data to 07-08. according to mean scores in table 7, the performance index scores of small schools gradually increased every year. however, we cannot compare our findings on performance index scores to the knowledgeworks report (2009), because their report does not include overall performance growth, but rather the improvement on both the mathematics and reading pass rates on the ohio graduation test. dropout rates the state dropout data are presented using frequency data. our team re-coded the data as less than 10, between 10 and 19, between 20 and 29, between 30 and 39, between 40 and 49, and more than 50. figure 1 shows the frequencies of the middle grades. dropouts for grades 6 – 8, middle school students, do not seem high enough to be a matter of concern. figure 2 shows the frequencies for the dropout rates for grades 9 – 12 in small and similar schools. as can be seen in figures 1 and 2, the dropout rates of high school students are much higher than those of middle school students. an analysis of high school transformation effort 21 figure 1. dropouts in middle schools figure 2. dropouts in high schools 0
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 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 figure 2 and table 10 compare dropout rates of re-coded data categories (from less than 10 to more than 50) for 5 years for small and similar high schools. no increasing or decreasing pattern was found in the total number of students dropping out of school in either small schools or similar schools. for every year, a higher ratio of students appears in the more than 50 group in small schools than in similar schools. both small and similar school dropout rates mostly appear in the less than 10 students range. less than 5 percent of dropout rates of similar schools occur in the ≥ 30 range; whereas approximately 20 percent of dropouts in small schools occur in the ≥ 30 range each year. considering the size of the small school, the respective ratios of (1) dropout rates in the range of 30 39, (2) 40 49, and (3) more than 50 to the total in small schools are much higher for similar schools. table 10. dropout ratios for small and similar high schools 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 less than 10 65 59 69 67 54 10-19 30 24 19 11 33 20-29 10 14 14 14 11 30-39 6 10 12 9 13 40-49 4 6 7 8 4 small schools more than 50 7 4 8 14 9 less than 10 509 560 474 432 473 10-19 158 118 164 211 169 20-29 54 31 49 66 57 30-39 9 9 18 29 15 40-49 2 7 11 5 4 similar schools more than 50 9 7 8 the mann-whitney results for group comparisons (small schools versus similar schools by grade) show significant differences in the high school grades: the ninth grade dropout rates an analysis of high school transformation effort 23 show a statistically significant difference between small and similar schools in 2005 and 2007; and 10th, 11th, and 12th grade dropout rates show statistically significant differences in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2007. implications in order to investigate the effectiveness of the ohsti model, four variables are used to measure the success of small schools and traditional schools that have similar school profiles according to the state criteria. knowledgeworks also released a report on the effectiveness of the small schools in 2009. we attempted to compare our findings and the results reported by knowledgeworks to provide readers with a broader view of school transformation. the knowledgeworks report and our findings cannot be compared item by item, because the two studies used different sets of data and the detailed research methods used by knowledgeworks cannot be confirmed. some findings of these two studies support each other to some degree, while others do not. with regard to the graduation rates, knowledgeworks reported that small schools’ graduation rates in 2007 increased by 20 percent compared to those of 2002, and that the graduation gap between ohsti high schools (small schools) and all ohio high schools closed dramatically in 2007 compared to 2002. unlike knowledgeworks, our findings conclude that the differences between small and similar schools lie in their graduation rates by year. a steady yearly difference in graduation rates is not observed in small schools, but is found in similar schools. similar schools had higher graduation rates than small schools. however, both small and similar schools showed statistically significant differences in their graduation rates when we compared 03-04 and 06-07. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 according to the descriptive statistics for attendance rates, 2007-2008 was the only year showing a statistically significant difference between small schools and similar schools, with similar schools having higher attendance rates. there was a statistically significant difference in attendance rates for the similar schools over the 5 years. there was no yearly difference in small schools but a difference in small schools occurred between 03-04 and 07-08. our findings support the knowledgeworks report (2009) on the growth in attendance rate not for annualized data but in total. even though the performance index scores of small schools gradually increased by year, there was a statistically significant difference between small schools and similar schools in performance index scores by year, with similar schools performing better. since knowledgeworks did not report on an overall performance growth, no comparison on performance index scores between the two studies was conducted. based on our data, there was no pattern in the total number of students dropping out of school in either small schools or similar schools. there was no dropout data reported by knowledgeworks. this study exclusively analyzed the standardized test results available from the ohio department of education. the authors did not use individual class or individual student data, since that data was not made available by ode. the results of the study are therefore limited by the information available from the state standardized tests: limitation of standardized tests in assessing students/schools growth; limited data or analysis offered by knowledgeworks or small school organizations; and relatively new data with a short history of the school system. another limitation of similar studies is in the variation among the states of the definition of graduation and requirements to obtain a high school diploma. this also needs to be taken into consideration when reviewing the collected data (gewertz, 2007). an analysis of high school transformation effort 25 issues to be considered regarding the variation in reported dropout rates is that some research does not account for students who move/transfer schools or who are held back for a year and so graduate a year later than expected. many studies also do not account for those students who enter or are expelled in the course of the year. all of these things cause significant discrepancies in the data collected and the rates reported. several of the researchers seem to be in agreement that the best way to get the most accurate data on who is graduating and what the dropout rates are is to collect this type of data by following individual students through their high school years. this would be the best way to ensure more precise data is being reported (greene & winters, 2002; ramirez, 2008). some believe that having more accurate data on dropout rates, which ties directly to performance issues and why students are not performing well in schools, would be very beneficial in evaluating student performance and the effects for school reform issues (ode, 2004). one teacher stated the importance of the “need for a cultural shift—at the federal, state, and school levels—from using data for compliance to using data for improving student performance in each classroom” (marshall, 2009, p. 1). both knowledgeworks and our studies observed some progress in the small schools. however, it was not clear if the progress occurred due to a change in the school system. small schools programs alone are not the answer to improve education. in addition to restructuring a school system, a sense of community needs to be created within small schools. learning must be made a relevant hands-on endeavor by supporting teachers to become more caring, helping administrators become more effective leaders, and increasing parental involvement. in addition, it has been suggested to extend the school day and year for the students who need and want additional instruction (driscoll, 2003; 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(2008). assessing the effects of small school size on mathematics achievement: a propensity score-matching approach. teachers college record, 110(9), 1879-1900. an analysis of high school transformation effort 33 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word #805 with corrections (2).docx 1 volume 15, number 1 february 06, 2012 issn 1099-839x urine trouble: drug testing of students and teachers in public schools frank butler st. joseph’s university non-individualized (so-called “random”) drug testing in public schools presents issues of constitutional law on both the federal and state levels, particularly with regard to citizens’ freedom from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” the trend toward increasing acceptance of such testing by the courts (and particularly the u.s. supreme court) stands in tension with public-health approaches to preventing abuse of psychoactive substances. this paper analyzes the major legal, social, and ethical challenges presented by random drug-testing in schools. keywords: drugs, public schools, searches, fourth amendment discouraging adolescents from ingesting harmful, psychoactive substances is a relevant goal for public schools. also, encouraging those same students to value constitutional freedoms is an enduring understanding for the schools to cultivate. the two purposes, however, exist in tension when schools adopt programs of drug testing that are not based on individualized suspicion but rather on a general premise that at least some members of certain categories of students may be users of illicit drugs. this essay reviews the legal and social issues involved in such testing and includes an analysis of the socio-ethico-legal challenges the testing entails. though use of cigarettes and alcohol among secondary-school students is at its lowest level in at least 35 years, relatively high rates of abuse of marijuana, prescription drugs, and non-cigarette tobacco products (e.g., hookahs, smokeless tobacco) remain (johnston et al., 2011). for example, nearly 22 percent of 12th-graders report binge drinking (five or more drinks in a row over the past two weeks), 11 percent report using synthetic marijuana (“spice”), 8 percent abuse the opioid painkiller vicodin, and 8 percent abuse amphetamines (johnston et al., 2011). substance abuse in adolescence increases risks of deleterious behaviors at that stage of development and well into adulthood. examples of behaviors that have been correlated with substance abuse include: impaired driving, interpersonal violence, poor academic performance, disturbed family and interpersonal relationships, and criminal activity (skiba, monroe, & wodarski, 2004). drug testing of students generally increased in the early 21st century, with approximately 25 percent of districts with a middleand/or high-school having a student drug-testing policy, and 56 percent of those districts (or 14 percent of districts overall) including random testing in their policies (centers for disease control & prevention, 2006). ringwalt et al. (2008) found that more than onequarter of districts with random testing subjected all students to it, a practice that is more encompassing than the protocol approved by the u.s. supreme court in 20021. as technology enables testing of less “intrusive” samples than urine (e.g., hair, saliva), legal privacy concerns may be further diminished, with consequent court-approved 1 earls v. pottawatomie county school district, 536 u.s. 822 (2002). current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 2 expansions in testing. constitutional background for drug testing: the fourth amendment to what extent does the fourth amendment’s prohibition on “unreasonable searches and seizures” protect students in public schools? in 1969, in a case involving students’ freedom to express their opposition to the vietnam war by wearing symbolic armbands to school, the u.s. supreme court established the basic tenet that at least some constitutional provisions (in this case, the first amendment’s freedom of speech) apply to public-school students (tinker v. des moines independent school district, 393 u.s. 503 [1969]). however, it was not until the mid-1980s that the court specifically addressed students’ rights with regard to unreasonable searches and seizures. in 1985, in new jersey v. tracey lis odem (t.l.o.) (469 u.s. 325), the court considered a school’s search of a 14-year-old high-school freshman’s purse after a teacher reported that the girl had been smoking in the school restroom. in upholding the search, the court emphasized the school’s responsibility for maintaining safety and discipline. accordingly, searches like this one do not require a search warrant or the justification of “probable cause” that are identified in the fourth amendment itself. the court was satisfied that a search of a public-school student by school officials generally satisfies the fourth amendment if it is justified at its inception (i.e., if there is a reasonable basis for expecting that the search would disclose evidence of the particular student’s violation of the law and/or of school rules) and if the scope is “reasonably related” to the situation that initially justified it (i.e., if the search is not “excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction”). 2 in the t.l.o. case, the court justified dispensing with the warrant and probable-cause requirements of the fourth amendment by declaring that school searches such as this one are “special needs” searches. they serve needs beyond the normal needs of law enforcement, and they occur in settings where it is impractical to require warrants or probable cause. t.l.o. “marks the first time the court extended the ‘special needs’ doctrine to the public school setting” (lacroix, 2008, p. 258). in lieu of using the existence of a valid warrant and probable cause as justification for searches that are deemed “special needs,” the court assesses whether or not the search is “reasonable” by balancing the individual’s privacy interests against the government interests in conducting the search. in t.l.o., the court acknowledged that students do possess some privacy interests that the fourth amendment protects, but those interests are attenuated in comparison with those of adults. individualized suspicion is traditionally highly valued in fourth amendment jurisprudence, and in t.l.o. the school did have suspicion of violation of school rules that was specific to t.l.o. herself. in the context of drug testing, however, controversy arises particularly when there is no individualized suspicion. for example, in random drug testing, there is no suspicion that any particular person is using illicit drugs, though there may be a more generalized, diffuse suspicion that some members of the group may be so doing. in 1989, the court upheld so-called “suspicionless” drug testing in two employment contexts, developing the relaxed “special needs” standard that it planted in t.l.o. (hutchens, 2002). the federal railroad administration’s requirement for drug testing of employees who were involved in train accidents or who violated certain safety rules was upheld as a “special needs” search (skinner v. railway labor executives’ association, 489 u.s. 602 [1989]). likewise, the u.s. customs service’s requirement for drug testing customs officers who seek transfer or promotion to positions that involve carrying firearms and/or drug interdiction was a legitimate “special needs” search (national treasury employees union v. von raab, 489 u.s. 656 [1989]). the court approved the drug testing in von raab even though the customs service produced no evidence of a specific drug problem among its employees and even conceded that the drug testing program was ineffective in identifying drug users. the court also authorized random motor-vehicle stops at pre-established checkpoints, for the detection of drunk drivers (michigan department of state police v. sitz, 496 u.s. 444 [1990]). in all of these situations, the court “balanced the intrusion on the individual’s fourth amendment interests against the government’s legitimate interests and found that the government’s ‘special needs’ justified a fourth amendment exception” (conlon, 2003, p. 302). school-based, random drug testing: the u.s. supreme court view in 1995 the u.s. supreme court first considered school-based drug-testing that was not based on individualized suspicion, in vernonia school district v. acton (515 u.s. 646). james acton was a seventh-grader subject to the school’s program of random drug testing of 10 percent of athletes each week, regardless of any individual athlete’s suspicion of drug use. school officials had initiated the program in response to what they determined to be appreciably increased use of illicit drugs by students who had since graduated and the belief that the ringleaders of the “drug culture” at the school had been student-athletes, who were also role models for many other 2 this two-part analysis for “reasonableness” of searches conducted without warrants or probable cause was first articulated by the court in terry v. ohio (392 u.s. 1 [1968]), which authorized police “frisks” (brief pat-downs to detect weapons) of citizens in situations where the police lawfully “stop” a citizen and reasonably suspect that citizen may be armed. urine trouble: drug testing of students and teachers in public schools 3 students. here again, the court—in a 6-to-3 decision written by justice scalia—identified a “special needs” search, since the school’s “drug culture” represented a special need for detection of drug use without reporting such findings to law enforcement. consonant with its “special needs” jurisprudence, the court balanced students’ privacy interests against the school’s strong interest in preventing use of illicit drugs. though urine collection for drug analysis did represent a “search” as defined by the fourth amendment, the intrusion on students’ reasonable expectations of privacy was minimal, according to the court. the collection of urine samples involved a school official standing a few feet behind a male student at a urinal, or just outside the closed stall door for a female student. the court found this protocol not appreciably different from everyday occurrences in public restrooms. additionally, the court found that student-athletes’ expectations of privacy are even less than those of students who are not athletes, since the athletes are frequently required to engage in “communal undress” for changing clothing and showering, and since they are subjected to more school rules and regulations than non-athletes, and since there is a material possibility for severe sports-related injuries due to impaired athletes. in aggregate, the school’s legitimate interests in custody and control over student-athletes trumped the athletes’ attenuated privacy interests, legitimizing the drug testing under the fourth amendment. the acton case established that under the fourth amendment, the lawfulness of a program of random search by school officials, not based on individualized suspicion, is to be analyzed by balancing the competing interests of the student and the school. in particular, courts must: (1) consider the nature and magnitude of the students’ privacy interests, (2) evaluate the intrusiveness of the search, especially the manner in which it is conducted, and (3) consider the “nature and immediacy of the school’s concerns and the efficacy of the means chosen to address those concerns” (palestini & palestini, 2006). in situations such as existed in acton, the court refused to require individualized, reasonable suspicion as a prerequisite for drug testing, since that higher standard would be “impractical, arbitrary, and accusatory” (einesman & taras, 2007, p. 238). acton emphasized the “custodial and tutelary” power of schools in crafting an important government need for random drug-testing of students. in 2002, the court expanded the ambit of schoolbased, random drug testing in earls v. pottawatomie county school district (536 u.s. 822). though there was no evidence of any considerable drug problem in the district, all middleand high-school students who voluntarily participated in any “competitive” extracurricular activity were required to consent to random drug testing throughout their period of participation. “competitive” activities were defined broadly and included band, choir, cheerleading, the academic team, the future farmers of america, and future homemakers of america, in addition to athletics. in a 5-to-4 decision authored by justice thomas, the court again classified these searches as “special needs” and determined that the district’s interest in protecting its students’ health and safety from the “drug epidemic” facing the nation outweighed the students’ privacy interests. though many of these students were not athletes, the court expanded its rationale from acton by declaring that the students are similar to athletes in having attenuated expectations of privacy, due to the fact that they face additional school rules as part of the activities, and due to the occasional sharing of rooms that may occur if the group participates in competitions that occur in other venues. the lack of evidence of drug use in the school district was not problematic for the court, which focused instead on the national plague of illicit drug use. that same rationale was used in von raab, though that case involved a closely-regulated industry in which the drug testing was ostensibly for the sake of avoiding life-threatening injury to others through the impaired use of firearms or the corruption of drug-enforcement agents (donaldson, 2006). the court did strike down one pervasive drugtesting program, though it was not in the context of schools. a georgia statute required all nominees for state office to submit to a drug test within 30 days of being elected or of qualifying for election. in chandler v. miller (520 u.s. 305 [1997]), the court refused to declare this a “special needs” search, finding instead that the statute had no legitimate purpose and that any drug problem that may exist among candidates for public office was more appropriately addressed through ordinary law enforcement. here the candidates’ privacy interests prevailed. commentators have leveled considerable criticism at the earls decision and, to a lesser extent, the acton decision. indeed, in each case the dissenting justices themselves presented powerful counterarguments. whether public-school students, even student-athletes, are comparable to the “closely regulated industries” that justified drug testing in skinner and von raab is certainly open to question. traditionally the court has found lesser expectations of privacy with regard to such industries because of extensive government regulation of them, usually consequent on the potential major dangers with which the industries deal. the “communal undress” that was central to a finding of decreased expectations of privacy among student-athletes has been questioned: it seems that the court found that voluntary nudity in front of peers, a minor consequence of athletic participation, constituted an implied consent to being observed during the very personal process of urination by an adult who is present only for that reason, and whose ultimate purpose is to perform scientific tests on the urine to discover if something very current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 4 major is going on in the athlete’s private life. (lacroix, 2008, p. 260-261) the extension of this rationale in earls to students who participate in any competitive extracurricular activity is even more tenuous, especially when there is no evidence of a significant drug problem among these cohorts of students. a broad policy allowing drug testing of all students involved in extracurricular activities may prove counterproductive in the long run: it “invades the privacy of students who need deterrence least, and risks steering students at greatest risk for substance abuse away from extracurricular involvement that potentially may palliate drug problems” (earls, p. 853 [ginsburg, j., dissenting]). another critique involves the applicability of the historical in loco parentis (“in place of a parent”) rule. when the fourth amendment was adopted, the limited schooling that was available usually did involve schools that functioned in place of parents. american courts adopted from english common law the doctrine of in loco parentis, giving school officials broad authority over students in matters of conduct (including morality) and discipline. accordingly, students had few rights to “due process” when they believed schools had overreached in those matters. as compulsory school attendance became the norm, however, the in loco parentis philosophy became attenuated, such that schools no longer “have the same freedom from the constraints of the constitution that parents enjoy” (donaldson, 2006, p. 830). lacroix (2008) notes that the relationship between the school and students no longer fits the in loco parentis model; rather, it is now “astoundingly diagnostic and treatment-oriented”: “we want our schools to succeed so badly that we have commanded them to stop being parents and start increasing test scores” (p. 273). fulfilling federal and state mandates (e.g., mandatory testing, accommodation of disabilities) has trumped any historical “parenting” role that public-school officials may have performed. beginning with t.l.o., the court did clearly recognize school officials as state actors and applied a “reasonableness standard” to fourth amendment privacy invasions of students by school officials (higbee, 2005).3 nevertheless, particularly when schools present policies (e.g., regarding drug testing) as ostensibly designed to promote school safety, courts commonly defer in the interest of in loco parentis. a correlative criticism relates to the court’s failure in both acton and earls to consider the fundamental right of parents to control the upbringing of their children. in wisconsin v. yoder (406 u.s. 205 [1972]) the court used first amendment freedoms, in combination with parental rights, to nullify a state compulsory education law. more recently, in troxel v. granville (530 u.s. 57 [2000]), the plurality opinion identified parental rights as fundamental, though it “refused to establish an applicable level of scrutiny” (donaldson, 2006, p. 842). this theory has potentially far-reaching implications: parents who in good faith refuse to consent to random drug-testing of their children are exercising a fundamental right with regard to raising their children. in refusing to delegate in loco parentis power to the school for drug testing, they are retaining a right which, at least in theory, inheres in their privilege as parents and cannot be usurped by the school. more philosophically, in considering the essential functions of mandatory public schooling, one may query, “if one purpose of the public schools centers on preparing citizens for participation in our democratic society, then what is lost by wholesale denial of constitutional rights to schoolchildren?” (hutchens, 2002, p.1286). donaldson (2006) opines that “drug tests send a message to children that they are guilty until proven innocent” (p. 852). school-based, random drug testing: state constitutional interpretations state constitutions contain analogs to the fourth amendment, and state high courts can interpret those analogs to grant more rights to their citizens than the threshold set by the u.s. supreme court. with regard to random drug testing, some state supreme courts have chosen to use this power, though most have been content with the federal minimums. in joye v. hunterdon central regional high school board of education (826 a.2d 624 [2003]), the new jersey supreme court used rationales very similar to acton and earls to uphold random drug testing of students who park on school property, in addition to those who participate in extracurricular activities. the court emphasized the “special need” of the school to maintain order and safety (including keeping student-drivers safe), and that those who park at school are subjected to additional regulations (and hence have a compromised expectation of privacy). also, the collection procedure was minimally intrusive, and there was evidence that a fair portion of students used alcohol and illicit drugs. the indiana supreme court found no violation of the federal or state constitutions with regard to a broad drug-testing program that covered athletes, participants in extra-curricular activities, and students who parked at school (linke v. northwestern school corporation, 763 n.e.2d 972 [2002]). the court noted that the activities were all subject to regulations beyond those applicable generally to all students, that the students involved in these activities were commonly deemed role models, and that there was evidence of illicit drug use among the student body. in contrast, in theodore v. delaware valley 3 hence, school officials cannot claim parental immunity with regard to fourth amendment rights, since they are not surrogate parents but rather state actors. urine trouble: drug testing of students and teachers in public schools 5 school district (836 a.2d 76 [2003]), the pennsylvania supreme court considered a program of random drug testing of all middleand high-school students who wished to participate in any extracurricular activity or wished to drive to school or park at school. based on the state constitution, the court declared the program facially invalid. using pennsylvania’s four-factor test, which was based on acton, the court considered: (1) the students’ privacy interests, (2) the nature of the intrusion, (3) the adequacy of notice given, and (4) the “overall purpose to be achieved, including the immediate reasons prompting the decision to conduct the search” (young, 2010, p. 179). the fourth factor was the fatal one for the school district: the court concluded that the policy was “based on the general deterrence of drug use and failed to establish the existence of a specific drug problem in the district or with the targeted group of students” (wolfe, 2005, p. 515). likewise, there was no evidence the policy would be efficacious in addressing any drug problems that may exist. the court did intimate that the policy would have been valid if it applied only to student-athletes and studentdrivers. in york v. wahkiakum school district (178 p.3d 995 [2008]), the washington supreme court declared that the federal definition of “special needs” searches was too broad vis-à-vis the state constitution. the random testing of student-athletes had begun after half the school’s studentathletes identified themselves as alcohol or drug users. in a unanimous decision, the court declared random drug testing of student-athletes unconstitutional under the state constitution. the court rejected the federal “reduced expectation of privacy” rationale for student-athletes: “we do not see how what happens in the locker room or on the field affects a student's privacy in the context of compelling him or her to provide a urine sample” (york, p. 995). additionally, the court feared that random drug-testing could easily proliferate to encompass the entire student population. empirical studies of drug testing in schools results of empirical studies of random drug testing generally show disappointing results in terms of deterrent effect. for example, yamaguchi, johnston, and o’malley (2003) used national survey data of eighth-, tenth-, and twelfth-grade students, finding that among high-school male athletes, use of illicit drugs showed no significant difference between schools with and without drug testing. also, among all students surveyed, “school drug testing was not associated with either the prevalence or the frequency of student marijuana use, or of other illicit drug use” (yamaguchi et al., p. 164). a prospective randomized control trial of drug testing of student-athletes was undertaken at eleven oregon high schools by goldberg et al. (2007). the authors divided the schools into a control group without drug testing and an experimental group that initiated drug testing at the start of the study. over the course of two years, the testing schools showed significantly lower mean past-year drug use (measured by student-athlete self-report surveys), compared to the non-testing schools, but those results existed for only two of four follow-up time periods. also, past-month drug use (where testing would be expected to have its greatest deterrent effect) showed no difference between control and experimental groups at any of the four follow-up time periods over two years. finally, somewhat paradoxically, over time, athletes in the testing schools “had less belief in their athletic competence, believed less in the benefits of testing, believed that authorities were less opposed to drug use, and believed less that testing was not a reason to use drugs” (goldberg et al., p. 426). all of those attitudes would seem to represent increased risk for future substance abuse. russell, jennings, and classey (2005) surveyed middleand high-school students in four schools, representing grades 6 through 12. nearly 45 percent of respondents said they had experimented with drugs, and nearly 75 percent said they had used alcohol. none of the schools had a drug-testing program. most students said they would still participate in after-school activities if drug testing was required, but most students also felt that drug testing would violate their privacy. students who reported frequent use of drugs or alcohol were least apt to believe drug testing would control drug use among students. frequent drug use was significantly less common among students who participated in after-school activities (11 percent) than among those who did not (19 percent). in contrast, frequent alcohol use did not differ significantly between the two groups. the authors note that alcohol use is a much more prevalent problem than illicit drug use, though the former is generally not part of drug testing programs. evans et al. (2006) surveyed students at two rural high schools that were about to implement an aggressive program of drug testing. the testing would involve alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs, and it would involve any student in grade 6 through 12 who participated in any extracurricular activity or was issued a school parking permit. though three-quarters of respondents believed the new policy would reduce drug use, 40 percent of respondents thought that the consequences of testing positive would be nothing or minimal. conlon (2003) conducted a mail survey and interviews with high-school principals, finding that most schools without random drug testing did not consider instituting it in the aftermath of the earls decision. schools with high rates of parental contact, high standardized test scores, low truancy rates, and high instructional expenditures per pupil generally did not use random drug testing, nor did schools that scored low on those variables. the author suggested that in wealthy districts, strong parental influence likely inhibits testing programs, as current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 6 influential parents do not wish their children to undergo testing that may have adverse ramifications. on the other hand, in poor schools, there is probably insufficient political energy to start random testing. it is in middle-range schools, where parents have less time to be involved in policymaking, that political power to start a program of random testing may devolve to principals, though “principals are making policy in the absence of data to show that random drug testing actually deters student drug use” (conlon, p. 319). in a survey of state-level education agencies and a sample of school districts, cho, hallfors, iritani, and hartman (2009) found that both gave low priority to student drug testing. this is in spite of the fact that both the u.s. department of education and the u.s. office of national drug control policy have made drug testing a high-priority strategy. in another survey of school districts, ringwalt et al. (2009) discovered that nearly half of respondent school districts notified law enforcement of positive results from drug testing (including a first positive test), thereby potentially violating the federal family education rights and privacy act (ferpa) and the federal confidentiality of alcohol and drug abuse patient records (42 cfr part 2, §2.1[f]). other punitive responses included: one-third of districts with drug testing suspended students who tested positive, 13 percent sent such students to alternative schools, and 8 percent expelled the students. drug testing of teachers the case law and commentary on drug testing of public-school teachers is much more limited than that with regard to students. mawdsley (2004) argues that teachers’ expectation of privacy “is diminished by the reality that they have been employed to instruct students, most of whom are minors required under state compulsory attendance laws to attend school” (p. 609). he contends that in the school environment, consistency of standards is valuable, such that teacher rights “should be subject to the same ebb and flow of supreme court interpretation as for student rights” (mawdsley, p. 617). with reasonable suspicion, a public employer may search a public employee’s office (e.g., desk and file cabinets where personal correspondence is stored) (o’connor v. ortega, 480 u.s. 709 [1987]). this is fairly consistent with the standard for school searches of students articulated in the t.l.o. case. in shaul v. cherry valleyspringfield central school district (363 f.3d 177 [2004]), the 2nd circuit upheld the school’s search of a suspended teacher’s classroom—including drilling open a locked file cabinet—in preparation for turning the classroom over to another teacher. the original teacher had been suspended for misconduct with a student and had not removed his personal items as required by the school. the court ruled that the teacher had only a minimal expectation of privacy in the classroom once he was suspended and left his personal items there. additionally, the school had reasonable suspicion that it would find material evidence (in this case, photos of the student) of the offense inside the classroom. mandatory pre-employment drug testing of teacher-applicants was upheld by the 6th circuit in knox county education association v. knox county board of education, 158 f.3d 361 (1998). there was no evidence of a drug problem among applicants, but the court applied the “safety sensitive” positions rationale of skinner and von raab. the court focused on teachers’ responsibilities for the safety and welfare of children, as well as the numerous regulations that govern the teaching profession. in her analysis of the decision, schmidt (2001) criticizes the court’s expansion of the “special needs” exception in this context, arguing that it should apply only to drug testing involving employees “in situations where incredible risk weighs on the government interest side of the balancing analysis,” especially where those being tested are not members of a group which has a known drug problem (p. 255). teaching, she contends, is not an industry that is “highly regulated” for safety, and the risks presented by teachers are not nearly so imminently catastrophic as “train wrecks or misguided gunshots” (schmidt, p. 271). in united teachers v. school board (142 f.3d 853 [1998]), the 5th circuit considered drug testing required after any work-related injury. in nullifying the program, the court noted lack of evidence of a drug problem among the school-system employees, as well as the fact that it tested both too many (all injured employees, regardless of fault) and too few (no testing of non-injured employees, though there was no evidence that injured employees were more likely to be abusing drugs). with regard to random drug testing, the 5th circuit upheld against fourth amendment challenge the random testing of all employees in “safety sensitive” positions (aubrey v. school board, 148 f.3d 559 [1998]). the case involved a custodian/groundskeeper at an elementary school who routinely worked with dangerous equipment and was continually in the presence of students. the u.s. district court for the eastern district of kentucky upheld drug testing of teachers that was part of a program of randomly testing 25 percent of employees in “safety sensitive” positions (crager v. board of education of knott county, 313 f.supp.2d 690 [2004]). emphasizing teachers as role models for students, the court drew on skinner, acton, earls, and knox to justify the policy. there was little evidence of drug abuse among the teachers, but the court emphasized that the county in general was experiencing a significant drug problem. in a survey of superintendents, demitchell, kossakoski, and baldasaro (2008) found that 35 percent of respondents supported a random drug-testing policy, while 45 percent did not. over half of respondents believed that such testing would not violate teachers’ constitutional rights. non-supporters of random drug-testing generally urine trouble: drug testing of students and teachers in public schools 7 believed that drug use by teachers was not a problem, that testing would harm the school climate and violate teachers’ personal liberties, and that it would be a financial burden. supporters, on the other hand, felt testing would make schools safer, would exemplify the teacher as role model, and would provide fairness and leverage in testing students. the authors note the fact that though superintendents generally believe they can adopt testing policies for teachers, most choose not to do so. socio-ethico-legal issues in drug testing without reasonable suspicion based on the case law with regard to teachers, mandatory pre-employment drug testing, as well as testing based on reasonable suspicion, would appear to be lawful under the fourth amendment. likewise, particularly after the u.s. supreme court’s expansive view of random testing in earls, it seems that courts are willing to consider teaching as a “safety sensitive” occupation and to allow area-wide drug problems to substitute for any particularized drug problem among teachers. within this post-earls paradigm, there appear to be few constitutional barriers to random drug-testing of teachers, similar to the situation for students. random drug-testing of students has expanded beyond earls through use of expansive definitions of “extra-curricular activities” (e.g., a school dance) and new cohorts of students with presumably lesser expectations of privacy (e.g., those who park on campus). though a strong argument can be made that random drug testing should require evidence of a significant drug problem within the particular school district (e.g., turner, 2007), courts increasingly seem content with more amorphous, generic domains (e.g., county-wide or national substance-abuse). if schools truly are concerned with harm prevention and harm reduction, with regard to illicit drugs, random testing of only certain cohorts of students is anomalous. this is particularly true with regard to extracurricular activities, since the most disconnected and alienated students (most of whom would likely be uninvolved in extra-curricular activities) are apt to be more drug-involved than students who are closely bonded to school activities and values (e.g., darling, 2005). one argument in favor of random testing involves “reverse peer pressure,” in which the existence of random testing gives non-drug-using students an “excuse” for not doing drugs due to not wanting to get in trouble. however, if students do not see the sanctions for a positive test as particularly serious, as evans et al. (2006) found, this dynamic is easily negated. cost-benefit aspects of random testing are also debatable. the cost for a standard drug screening ranges between $14 and $30, and a test for drugs such as steroids can cost over $100 (velasquez, 2010). texas tests up to 3 percent of high-school student-athletes, at a cost of approximately $6 million per year (velasquez, 2010). the yield for the money may be minimal, e.g., in 2009 the texas university interscholastic league reported seven positive results for steroids out of approximately 19,000 tests of high-school athletes (young, 2010). cost inefficiencies are particularly evident if random testing focuses on students less likely to abuse drugs, e.g., students involved in extra-curricular activities at school. einesman and taras (2007) note that “preliminary studies of the deterrent effects of drug screening are not yet convincing” (p. 264). indeed, adolescent psychology makes deterrence a difficult undertaking in general: “taking risks that do not make sense to adults is a notorious yet frustratingly normal part of teen development” (brendtro & martin, 2006, p. 75). teens who abuse drugs may not be particularly sensitive to the social stigma of drug use; rather, it is common for them to see drugs as “substitutes for human bonds” (brendtro & martin, p.77). from a public health perspective, random drug testing lacks epidemiologic sensitivity, since random testing easily “misses” many users, and since only select drugs are screened (einesman & taras, 2007). alcohol, the drug most widely abused by adolescents, is rarely screened, in part because of its evanescent nature. also, testing can motivate students to conceal drug use, e.g., by switching to drugs that are not screened or that are less detectable (e.g., cocaine, methamphetamines). when testing focuses on students involved in extra-curricular activities, the testing itself may be iatrogenic, discouraging at-risk students from participating in activities which might actually inhibit drug abuse. involvement in extracurricular activities can serve as a protective factor from high-risk behaviors (brendtro & martin, 2006). a culture of drug testing “may send youths a message that they are not trusted by teachers, coaches, and counselors, potentially damaging a climate conducive to learning” (einesman & taras, 2007, p. 269). trusting and supportive relationships between staff and students are particularly inhibited when school staff are directly involved in administering the testing. a focus on mutual trust and respect, as well as student engagement with school, may do far more to promote effective learning and to inhibit drug abuse. the american academy of pediatrics (2007), which opposes drug testing in schools, notes that “drug testing youth who have not been implicated in using drugs may be perceived as being unfair and, thereby, may reduce trust and connectedness with their school, which are essential for maintaining lines of communication” (p. 1381). alternative strategies for deterring substance abuse preventing and deterring substance abuse among adolescents can take the form of positive messages, as an alternative to the punitive approach of drug testing. for some students, drug testing may be iatrogenic. roche et al. (2009) observe that “imposition of sanctions in the school setting may be counterproductive if they further exacerbate risk factors, such as low self-esteem, poor academic current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 8 performance, or lack of commitment to school—factors known to be associated with drug use” (p. 522). after reviewing the extant research, these same authors conclude that “currently, there are no empirical effectiveness data from independent, unbiased, and rigorous studies on which to base a case to support drug testing in schools” (p. 524). there is little evidence that such testing among adolescents either deters drug use or promotes desistance. school-based programs to discourage substance abuse by students can be implemented in lieu of, or perhaps prior to, drug testing. unfortunately data to support the effectiveness of such programs are largely deficient. even the most well-accepted drug-prevention programs have little evidence of long-term salutary effects.4 gandhi et al. (2007) note that designations of programs as “effective” have sometimes been based on just one or two evaluations. it is not uncommon for the evaluations to have been conducted by those who created the program (a potential conflict of interest) or in the case of multiple evaluations, to rely on the same data set. also, some programs are successful with some types of students (e.g., experimenters) but are associated with increased use among others (e.g., users). similar untoward effects have been reported with some programs led by teachers rather than by peers or older students. gandhi et al. (2007) also identify a variety of methodological shortcomings in research on school-based prevention programs. these include a focus on atypical, exceptionally well-implemented programs, a wide diversity of outcome measures as determinants for “success,” and a lack of clarity between treatment and control groups. also, the authors note that even among programs demonstrating substantial impact, “any positive results dissipated after a few years” (gandhi et al., p. 64). it is generally recognized that “programs based on information and attitude change alone have minimal effect on adolescent substance-using behavior and in some cases contribute to experimentation” (skiba, monroe, & wodarski, 2004, p. 346). for enduring effects, the attitudes, beliefs, and skills cultivated in substance-abuse prevention programs need to be supported and reinforced via the allimportant adolescent social environment, including school policy, parental behavior, and community norms (flay, 2000). on a more “macro” level, any “program” to prevent or deter substance abuse is incomplete without societal commitment to child and youth development, through the cultivation of individual, family, and community strengths. such commitments are expensive and daunting, but “there is a strong body of policy research that demonstrates that countries that invest in supporting children and families achieve better outcomes in terms of child health, well-being and social functioning than countries with systems dominated by notions of individual responsibility and the policy philosophy of user-pays” (spooner, 2005, p. 90). midford (2009) explains the futility of drugprevention programs taking an abstinence approach to some drugs, noting, for example, that alcohol is consumed by two-thirds of the adult population in the united states. rather than entirely pathologizing the use of such substances, programs should recognize that “curiosity, experimentation, and definition of personal boundaries are all part of the psychosocial development of young people” (p. 1692). in this regard, programs need to focus on healthand-welfare-based “harm reduction,” including contextualization as “part of a broader approach that addresses the systemic factors such as advertising and sales strategies that encourage underage and inappropriate use of legal drugs” (p. 1692). cuijpers’ (2002) review of school-based drugprevention programs notes that those that have been deemed effective are often developed in research settings that do not jibe well with common practice in real-world schools. nevertheless, the most promising programs used interactive methods, including open exchange of ideas— with feedback and constructive criticism—among students in a non-threatening atmosphere. the methods usually are based in a social influence approach. social-influence models emphasize the need to change “behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge in the context of the social environment,” e.g., by recognizing social modeling of adults’ behavior and the tendency to overestimate the prevalence of substance abuse among peers (skiba, monroe, & wodarski, 2004, p. 348). commonly they involve development of resistance skills, decision-making skills, and stress reduction. they have been found more effective when embedded within comprehensive, community-wide activities and mass-media initiatives. cuijpers (2002) recommends that, based on the extant research, “prevention programs should be interactive and focus especially on norms (social prevalence knowledge, social acceptability knowledge, normative expectations, friends’ reactions to drug use), commitment of students to not use substances, and intentions not to use” (p. 1020). in their review of research on a variety of schoolbased prevention programs, botvin and griffin (2007, p. 4 as an example, drug abuse resistance education (d.a.r.e.) was federally funded with hundreds of millions of dollars annually, for approximately two decades, though numerous empirical studies (including quasi-experimental and experimental designs) have documented its ineffectiveness in preventing drug use (rosenbaum, 2007; west & o’neal, 2004). urine trouble: drug testing of students and teachers in public schools 9 613) conclude that effective drug-prevention programs schools: 1) are guided by a comprehensive theoretical framework that addresses multiple risk and protective factors; 2) provide developmentally appropriate information relevant to the target age group and the important life transitions they face; 3) include material to help young people recognize and resist pressures to engage in drug use; 4) include comprehensive personal and social skills training to build resilience and help participants navigate developmental tasks; 5) provide accurate information regarding rates of drug use to reduce the perception that it is common and normative; 6) are delivered using interactive methods…to stimulate participation and promote the acquisition of skills; 7) are culturally sensitive and include relevant language and audiovisual content familiar to the target audience; 8) include adequate dosage to introduce and reinforce the material; and 9) provide comprehensive interactive training sessions for providers to generate enthusiasm, increase implementation fidelity, and give providers a chance to learn and practice new instructional techniques. the general trend countenancing more expansive, non-individualized drug-testing of students seems on a collision course with public-health approaches, which focus on harm reduction and which counsel great caution with regard to widespread drug testing. though legally (i.e., with regard to the u.s. and many state constitutions) such testing usually survives “search and seizure” challenges, schools would do well to recognize that empirical research has failed to demonstrate deterrent effects and that commentators have raised myriad, and often serious, potential downsides to the testing. a school environment that is non-threatening and in which students are provided with realistic tools for understanding and dealing with the diverse social pressures they face may be a more effective goal than an admittedly more expedient program of random drug testing, if schools are meaningfully to influence students’ worlds regarding drugs. such an environment would cultivate an earned sense of trust that students can feel with adults, especially at school. the school would value a holistic approach to drug abuse, addressing not only students but also the families and communities that are so integral to their everyday lives. in the long run such a perspective may be far more effective in changing drug-related behaviors than a “gotcha” approach that ascribes guilt only to those who “randomly” get caught. references american academy of pediatrics. (2007). the role of schools in combating illicit substance use. pediatrics, 120(6), 1379-1384. botvin, g.j., & griffin, k.w. (2007). school-based programmes to prevent alcohol, tobacco and other drug use. international review of psychiatry, 19(6), 607-615. brendtro, l.k., & martin jr., g.a. (2006). respect versus surveillance: drug testing our students. reclaiming children & youth, 15(2), 75-81. centers for disease control & prevention. (2006). school health policies and practices study (shpps). retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/healthy youth/shpps/2006/factsheets/pdf/fs_alcoholorot herdruguseprevention_shpps2006.pdf cho, h., hallfors, d.d., iritani, b.j., & hartman, s. (2009). the influence of “no child left behind” legislation on drug prevention in u.s. schools. evaluation review, 33(5), 446-463. conlon, c.k. (2003). urineschool: a study of the impact of the earls decision on high school random drug testing policies. journal of law & education, 32(3), 297-319. cuijpers, p. 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(2010). drug testing in schools: a brief review and analysis of recent events. american journal of health education, 41(3), 180-186. west, s.l., & o’neal, k.k. (2004). project d.a.r.e. outcome effectiveness revisited. american journal of public health, 94(6), 1027-1029. wolfe, a.t. (2005). theodore v. delaware valley school district: school drug testing and its limitations under the pennsylvania constitution. widener law journal, 14, 505-519. yamaguchi, r., johnston, l.d., & o’malley, p.m. (2003). relationship between student illicit drug use and school drug-testing policies. journal of school health, 73(4), 159-164. young, s. (2010). piac (pee in a cup)—the new standardized test for student athletes. brigham young university education & law journal, 10, 163-190. appendix cases cited aubrey v. school board, 148 f.3d 559 (1998) chandler v. miller, 520 u.s. 305 (1997) crager v. board of education of knott county, 313 f.supp.2d 690 (2004) earls v. pottawatomie county school district, 536 u.s. 822 (2002) joye v. hunterdon central regional high school board of education, 826 a.2d 624 (2003) knox county education association v. knox county board of education, 158 f.3d 361 (1998) linke v. northwestern school corporation, 763 n.e.2d 972 (2002) michigan department of state police v. sitz, 496 u.s. 444 (1990) national treasury employees union v. von raab, 489 u.s. 656 (1989) new jersey v. tracey lis odem (t.l.o), 469 u.s. 325 (1985) urine trouble: drug testing of students and teachers in public schools 11 o’connor v. ortega, 480 u.s. 709 (1987) shaul v. cherry valley-springfield central school district, 363 f.3d 177 (2004) skinner v. railway labor executives’ association, 489 u.s. 602 (1989) terry v. ohio, 392 u.s. 1 (1968) theodore v. delaware valley school district, 836 a.2d 76 (2003) tinker v. des moines independent school district, 393 u.s. 503 (1969) troxel v. granville, 530 u.s. 57 (2000) united teachers v. school board, 142 f.3d 853 (1998) vernonia school district v. acton, 515 u.s. 646 (1995) wisconsin v. yoder, 406 u.s. 205 (1972) york v. wahkiakum school district, 178 p.3d 995 (2008) current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 12 article citation butler, f. (2012). urine trouble: drug testing of students and teachers in public schools. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/805 author notes frank butler st. joseph’s university 5600 city avenue, philadelphia, pa 19131 fb081602@sju.edu frank butler received a j.d. and a ph.d. in criminal justice, both from temple university. he is a graduate student in education at st. joseph’s university. his research interests include juvenile justice, social ethics, and criminal law. manuscript received: 8/22/2011 revisions received: 12/18/2011 accepted: 1/22/2012 urine trouble: drug testing of students and teachers in public schools 13 volume 15, number 1 february 06, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines lisa lacy copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero katherine ronan kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers a comparison of_final running head: a comparison of academic performance 1 volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x a comparison of the academic performance of college bound high school students in regional vs. community high schools in connecticut joseph p. cullen appalachian state university citation cullen, j.p. (2010). a comparison of the academic performance of college bound high school students in regional vs. community high schools in connecticut. current issues in education, 13(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract consolidated regional high schools (rhss) have replaced traditional community high schools (chss) in many nonmetropolitan communities. consolidation purports to offer cost savings that, in theory, enable nonmetropolitan districts to provide a wider array of instructional opportunities to their students. nonetheless, critics argue that the benefits of consolidation do not outweigh the costs. this inquiry adds to this discussion an examination of differences in performance on the 2006 2008 sat i between rhs and chs students in connecticut. results suggest that rhs students outperformed their chs counterparts on 15 of 16 points of comparison. four of these differences were statistically significant. keywords: rural education, educational policy, school reform, secondary education about the author(s) author: joseph p. cullen affiliation: appalachian state university email: joe.cullen@familyinnovations.org biographical information: joseph p. cullen received his ph.d. in special education from the university of connecticut in 1995. during his 26-year career in the fields of education and child welfare, dr. cullen has served in a school psychologist, learning disabilities specialist, consultant, program director, and university faculty member. he currently serves in a dual capacity as the director of research and evaluation at appalachian family innovations, a university-affiliated research and training program, and as an associate professor in special education at appalachian state university in boone, north carolina. dr. cullen’s research and professional interests include school reform, the prevention of child maltreatment, and strategies for working with teachers and families to support children with learning disabilities, adhd, and emotional and behavioral challenges in school and community settings. a comparison of academic performance 3 for more than a century, educational reformers have been discussing solutions to the challenges of rural schools. as kannapel and deyoung (1999) relate, rural schools have traditionally been described as lacking appropriate facilities, curricula, and personnel, leading many to regard them as inferior to schools in metropolitan communities. to improve rural school quality, advocates for reform in the first half of the 20th century relied heavily on the factory paradigm that emerged during the industrial revolution (bard, gardener, & wieland, 2005). in particular, it was thought that rural schools would benefit from the concept of “economies of scale” (i.e., the principle that the production cost per unit is reduced when the size of the operation is increased). in this regard, large consolidated schools were thought to be more efficient and to have lower production costs than small community schools, leaving more resources for the improvement of facilities, curriculum, and the quality of teachers (fanning, 1995). this trend of thought led to the conclusion that school consolidation -the unification of two or more attendance areas into one large school (peshkin, 1982) -was the premier solution to the challenges of rural schools (lasley, leistritz, lobao, & meyer, 1995). by the middle of the 20th century, the pace of rural school consolidation was accelerated by demographic trends that included a decline in the population of rural areas due to a dying agricultural economy and falling birth rates. these factors resulted in diminished resources, especially in rural districts that received state funds on a per pupil basis, and made it difficult for them to upgrade school facilities or offer competitive salaries to teachers or administrators. consequently, many rural districts could not provide the same educational services and specialty courses as their larger, better-funded, urban and suburban counterparts. specifically, they were found to be less likely to offer advanced placement (ap) classes along with fewer courses in art, music, literature, foreign language, technology, and laboratory science (schwartzbeck, 2003). to address these challenges, conant (1959), in a highly influential report on secondary school reform, urged the elimination of small high schools as a means of offering a wider range of curricula and improving the cost-effectiveness of secondary education. in addition, elected officials implemented state policies in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s that encouraged school consolidation by requiring districts to meet mandated enrollment levels before they could receive state funds for new school buildings or capital improvements. many districts were forced to consolidate in order to meet these mandates (deyoung & howley, 1990; purdy, 1992). advocates of consolidation at the secondary level also benefited from the political climate of the cold war era. after the launch of sputnik in 1957, secondary education received a great deal of federal scrutiny, especially in the domains of math and science. the resulting effort to improve instruction in these areas necessitated significant upgrades to educational infrastructure including the modernization of laboratory facilities, the development of curricula, and the training of teachers and support staff. in order to afford these upgrades, many rural secondary schools were forced to consolidate into regional high schools wherein capital and operational costs could be shared among two or more communities (deyoung, 1989; ravitch, 1983). further accelerating the consolidation movement was the a nation at risk report (usde national commission on excellence in education, 1983) and its scathing critique of the nation’s public school system. the effect of this report was to shift the emphasis in secondary educational policy away from broad-based curricula to a primary focus on preparation for college. it also resulted in a series of federal mandates aimed at raising professional standards for teachers and increasing facility and academic requirements. these mandates added significantly to the cost of a comparison of academic performance 5 public schools, creating additional hardship for high schools in nonmetropolitan areas and forcing many to consolidate (kannapel & deyoung, 1999). by the end of the 20th century, rural school consolidation and associated efforts to increase the professionalization of the teaching field were so effectively implemented that large, centralized school districts controlled by credentialed professionals became the accepted standard in our society (kannapel & deyoung, 1999). it is, in fact, no longer accurate to refer to consolidation as an exclusively rural phenomenon in that many outlying suburban communities have also joined the consolidation movement (plucker, spradlin, magaro, chien, & zapf, 2007). for this reason, this inquiry will use the term nonmetropolitan, as proposed by hobbs (1994), to refer to the rural, small town, and outlying suburban districts that most often experience pressure to consolidate. this change in terminology is particularly well suited to the state of connecticut, the locale for this inquiry. connecticut, like many northeastern states, has experienced a demographic shift over the past 25 years. in 1986, approximately 67% of connecticut school districts were described as small/rural in 1986 (melnick, shibles, and gable, 1986). however, due to the phenomenon of urban sprawl, the population of many rural communities has swelled since the 1980’s. these shifts have changed the character of these communities from rural/agrarian to suburban. consolidation and the effects of school size as the united states entered the 21st century, the justification for school consolidation encompassed research on the effects of school size. one such study was done by horn (1986) who found that, relative to larger schools, teachers in small high schools were less qualified, lower paid, and had fewer opportunities for professional development. in addition, he found that course offerings in small high schools were more limited and guidance counselors and librarians were less likely to be available. another study from this era (monk, 1990) found that school size was one of the most powerful predictors of variation in curriculum offerings in secondary schools. nonetheless, recent examinations of the issue of school size have reached conclusions that are at odds with earlier studies. for instance, monk and haller (1993) concluded that that the relationship between school size and curriculum was not linear. rather, they found that it appears to be influenced by factors such as academic subject area, level of course difficulty, school setting, socioeconomic status, faculty unionization, and grade configuration. in addition, other authors have found evidence that small schools have distinct advantages over large schools. they include cotton (1998) who wrote that the benefits of small schools appear to include higher numbers of students taking academic courses, more attention to student needs, a closer connection with one’s community, more positive staff attitudes, higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities, and better attendance. furthermore, lee and burkham (2003) found that small schools have lower dropout rates than their larger counterparts while lee and loeb (2000) found that teachers in smaller schools took greater personal responsibility for student learning than teachers in larger schools. as a result, they tended to exhibit better relationships with their students and more confidence in their teaching. in the domain of school climate, noguera (2004) cites evidence of student alienation as justification for reorganizing secondary schools into smaller, more personalized learning communities. efforts to address this factor have resulted in the creation of smaller high schools in distressed inner city districts where student alienation is a significant problem (“making room for literacy in secondary schools,” 2005; rubenstein, reisner, coon, & fabiano, 2005). finally, recent research has provided evidence that smaller schools show higher overall a comparison of academic performance 7 achievement, more inclusive decision-making processes, less tension between teachers and students, fewer resources devoted to discipline problems, higher rates of parent-teacher involvement, higher morale, and lower levels of frustration and alienation (plucker, et al., 2007; steward, 2009). the results of these studies have been used to advocate for changes in educational policy that would give a higher priority to creating and maintaining small community schools (deyoung & howley, 1990; fanning, 1995; howley, 1989; kannapel & deyoung, 1999). with regard to schools in connecticut, the subject of this inquiry, melnick et al. (1986), concluded that there were very few differences between small and large districts in terms of quality. specifically, small and large schools were not found to vary with respect to per pupil expenditures, percent of students in need of remedial services, performance on state-mandated assessments, or student attendance and persistence rates. differences favoring larger high schools were, however, found in the number of advanced courses offered and proportion of students who continue on to higher education. in addition, a difference favoring small schools was found in the number of school staff per 1,000 students. these results indicate that the effects of school size in connecticut mirror national trends; that is, size appears irrelevant to school costs with the primary benefit of large schools being their potential for offering advanced curriculum and the primary benefit of small schools being their potential for offering more individualized attention to students. consolidation and consumer satisfaction like any government policy, the most important test of school consolidation may occur not in academia but in the court of public opinion. in this regard, the consolidation movement continues to thrive because some communities welcome consolidated schools and perceive them to be effective at achieving their intended benefits. specifically, self (2001) in an evaluation of the effects of school consolidation found that teachers, parents, and students held overwhelmingly positive attitudes toward the consolidation of schools in ohio in the early 1990s. a follow up survey revealed that major stakeholders continued to perceive consolidation in a positive manner eight years later. in addition, studies supportive of consolidation report that, relative to community high schools, consolidated high schools exhibit: 1) financial advantages, 2) higher and more consistent standards of teacher preparation, 3) more variation in course offerings, and 4) higher faculty salaries (cummins, chance, & steinhoff, 1997; nelson, 1985; schwartzbeck, 2003). despite these positive perceptions, a growing number of stakeholders have expressed dissatisfaction with the practice of school consolidation. their criticisms have been positioned within a broader discourse about the ends and means of education and the importance of schools as community centers, not just instructional settings. specifically, the arguments of advocates for the preservation of small nonmetropolitan schools have focused on: 1) practical problems such as long bus rides and disincentives to participation in extra-curricular activities and 2) philosophical concerns such as social justice and maintaining a meaningful context for learning (bard, et al., 2005; fanning, 1995; fitchen, 1991; howley & howley, 2001; kannapel & deyoung, 1999; luloff & swanson, 1990; nachtigal, 1982, 1994; peshkin, 1978). regarding practical concerns, howley and howley (2001) write that students in consolidated schools are far more likely to have long bus rides than students in small community schools. these lengthy bus rides add significantly to transportation costs that rise more sharply, are less predictable, and offer fewer instructional benefits than the costs associated with educating children in their own communities. in addition, the logistics of providing bus a comparison of academic performance 9 transportation across broad geographic areas make it difficult for many students to participate in extra-curricular activities. research has found that consolidated schools show significantly lower rates of student participation in extra-curricular activities than do comparable community schools (biere, 1995; cotton, 1998; fitchen, 1991; howley & howley, 1995; luloff & swanson, 1990; nachtigal, 1982). this finding is particularly problematic in light of research indicating that many nonmetropolitan communities value extra-curricular and nonacademic activities as much as academic activities if not more so (deyoung, 1995; nachtigal, 1982; peshkin, 1978; stern, 1994). other examiners have challenged consolidation on the basis of social justice and the importance of creating meaningful contexts for learning. specifically, a robust body of research suggests that large consolidated schools primarily benefit affluent, college-bound students while small community schools have been found to achieve positive learning outcomes across a broader range of socioeconomic strata (fowler & walberg, 1991; friedkin & necochea, 1988; howley, 1995; lee & smith, 1997). another social justice issue concerns the fact that consolidation is often justified by its effectiveness at addressing national goals such as the preparation of workers to compete in the global economy (deyoung, 1995; howley, 1997; howley & howley, 1995; post & stambach, 1999; theobald & nachtigal, 1995). this justification weakens local control over public schools, resulting in policies that are less responsive to community values and priorities. for example, in farming communities, modern consolidated high schools that are designed first, and foremost, to prepare students for college often fail to provide learning experiences that are rooted in the community’s agricultural heritage (fanning, 1995; kannapel & deyoung, 1999). fanning (1995) indicates that this lack of connection between school and community results in “place-less” rather than “place-based” learning; a trend that undermines the meaningfulness of learning contexts and runs contrary to modern movements in curriculum reform such as constructivism (haas & lambert, 1995; herzog & pittman, 1995; howley, 1997: howley & howley, 1995; rosenfeld, 1983; theobald and nachtigal, 1995). to re-connect schools to the community, fanning (1995) argues for a balance between “grounded knowing,” which helps children to interpret the events of their lives, and “technical knowing,” which enables them to understand the connection of these events with larger human experience (p. 4). consolidation may be an effective model for promoting technical knowing. however, if it results in impersonal educational institutions devoted primarily to college preparation, then it becomes an ineffective model for promoting grounded knowing outcomes such as good citizenship, healthy relationships, or functional living skills. it also fails to value the importance of community schools as cultural and social centers that enrich the broader community (deyoung & lawrence, 1995; herzog & pittman, 1995; nachtigal, 1982; seal & harmon, 1995; stern, 1994). current status of school consolidation despite the arguments of its detractors, school consolidation is alive and well as an educational policy initiative. the state of maine, for example, has recently proposed merging its 290 local school districts into 26 regional administrative districts. in addition, the 2007 state budget in indiana appropriated funds for use by school districts wishing to study the feasibility of consolidation. furthermore, the legislatures in kansas, nebraska and north dakota have recently debated school consolidation initiatives. over the past three years, these states, along with idaho, south dakota, and arkansas, have either passed laws or established policies that encourage consolidation (plucker et al., 2007; schwartzbeck, 2003). a comparison of academic performance 11 in light of these trends, there is a need for communities considering the question of consolidation to engage in rigorous cost-benefit analyses relative to community values, culture, and traditions. do the benefits of an enhanced capacity to offer technical education outweigh the practical and social justice objections to consolidation or the loss of meaningful contexts for learning? surprisingly, very few quantitative inquiries evaluate the effects of consolidation on the academic performance of students. to inform policy makers on this issue, this inquiry will explore this gap in the literature. it will do so by comparing the scores on college entrance examinations of students in consolidated (also known as regional) high schools with those of students in community high schools. for the purposes of this study, the term regional high school (rhs) will be used to describe a secondary school that was created to serve a consolidated student body from several nonmetropolitan districts. the term community high school (chs) will be used to refer to a secondary school in a nonmetropolitan area whose student enrollment falls in the bottom quartile in the state census. in addition, chss resemble in size, demographics, and geographic location the constituent high schools of districts that have consolidated.   methods this investigation utilized a causal-comparative design to address the following research question: on standardized college admissions tests, do students is regional high schools (rhss) outperform students in community high schools (chss)? given that the districts being studied cannot be randomly selected, a matching procedure was used to assure that the two groups were comparable on key demographic and geographic characteristics. to address the threat of location (gall, gall, & borg, 2006), a standardized instrument (the college board sat i) with specific administrative guidelines was used to assure that data were collected under relatively uniform sets of circumstances. to address the threat of mortality, this inquiry focused on archival data collected from an authoritative source, the connecticut education data and research (cedar) database (2008). this approach assured a 100% response rate among districts in the sample. in addition, with regard to instrumentation, the use of an objectively administered and scored standardized achievement measure eliminated data collector bias as a significant rival hypothesis. finally, because the data for this investigation were collected in a naturalistic setting, it is free of the threats to external validity mentioned by campbell and stanley (1963) with respect to experimental research designs. however, given that the sample for this study is geographically limited, results will not be generalized beyond school districts within the state of connecticut. the dependent variable for this investigation was student performance on the college board sat i reasoning test (sat i), the premier norm-referenced measure of academic preparedness for college. in that this study compared the performance of two discrete groups of participants, the independent variable was group membership; that is, comparisons were made between group a: rhs students and group b: chs students. the sample for this investigation included 32 high schools – 16 regional and 16 community – with an enrollment in excess of 20,000 students. the two groups used for this investigation were matched using district reference group (drg) as the control variable. the state of connecticut created district reference groups (drgs) – designated a (the highest) through i (the lowest) – as a means of classifying schools and school districts according to their needs and resources. specifically, drgs are groups of districts that have similar geographic, cultural, and socio-economic characteristics. the csde assigns districts to drg groupings based upon data elements from the 2000 census and 2004 public school information system a comparison of academic performance 13 (psis) database. to measure socioeconomic status, the csde used three data elements from the 2000 census: median family income; percentage of parents with a bachelor’s degree or higher; and percentage of parents holding jobs in executive, managerial or professional occupations. three other indicators – the percentage of children living in families with a single parent, the percentage of children enrolled in public schools whose families have incomes that make them eligible to receive free or reduced-price meals, and the proportion of children in the district whose families speak a language other than english at home – were used to assess need. in addition, enrollment in the district at the end of the 2003-2004 academic year was a minor factor in the analysis (cedar, 2008). the first step in sample selection was to establish an operational definition of a small high school. this process involved an analysis of two sources of information. the first was enrollment data on communities that participate in regional high schools. these data were examined to identify benchmarks for selecting a matched sample of schools that would be similar in size to the schools that would be operated by these communities if they did not participate in a regional high school. based on state of connecticut k-12 enrollment data (cedar, 2008), “head counts” in the elementary grades, which offer a valid prediction of the number of high school aged students in these districts, range from approximately 40 to approximately 800 students. to obtain more precise figures, a second source of information – the 2006 state of connecticut school census (cedar, 2008) – was analyzed. this document lists 123 comprehensive community high schools with a mean enrollment of 1147 students (standard deviation=589). based on the mean and standard deviation, it was determined that schools with 750 or fewer students would constitute the bottom quartile in enrollment. given the similarity between this figure and the upper limit of the elementary “head count” among communities with regional high schools, it was accepted as a defensible benchmark for selecting schools for the sample. when this benchmark was applied, an initial pool containing the 30 smallest comprehensive public high schools in connecticut was identified. these schools ranged in size from 231 to 740 students with a mean of 509.13 and a standard deviation of 149.74. the second step in sample selection was to match regional high schools with community high schools based on the drg system. to accomplish this in a defensible manner, it was necessary to narrow the range of drgs in both groups. therefore, given that the state’s 17 regional schools are spread across drgs a through f, community high schools in lower drgs (g though i) were eliminated from the chs pool. by the same token, because there were no community high schools in drg a, the lone drg a regional school was eliminated from the rhs pool. in addition, since consolidation appeals primarily to schools in rural areas, small community high schools in suburbs on the fringes of urban centers were eliminated from the chs pool. to achieve a similar distribution in the rhs and chs groups on key demographic and geographic variables, schools were matched based on their drg to the fullest extent possible. however, because of unequal distributions of schools across drg groups, it was necessary, in some instances, to match schools in higher drgs with schools in lower drgs based on a careful examination of demographic data. this strategy was legitimized by the fact that the schools in drgs c through e are all in middle-income communities that are very similar demographically. the two resulting groups had the following compositions: (1) the rhs group was composed of 16 high schools serving 12,231 students. the group includes one high school from drg b, 14 from drgs c through e, and one from drg f. (2) the chs group was composed of 16 high schools serving 7,893 students. the group includes one high school from drg b, 14 from drgs c through e, and one from drg f. a comparison of academic performance 15 descriptive and inferential statistics were used to verify the comparability of the rhs and chs groups on the demographic factors that the state of connecticut uses to assign schools to drgs; i.e., median family income; percentage of parents with a bachelor’s degree or higher; proportion of children’s parents who hold jobs in executive, managerial, and/or professional (i.e., “white collar”) occupations; percentage of children living with a single-parent; proportion of students who meet eligibility guidelines for free or reduced meals, and percentage of students whose families speak a language other than english at home. in addition, schools were compared on their minority enrollments, number of students per academic computer, and per pupil expenditures. table 1.1 provides a complete profile of the rhs and chs groups, including descriptive statistics and t-test results used to evaluate the significance of group differences. table 1.1 descriptions and comparisons of research groups source: connecticut education data and research (cedar, 2008) schools size d r g median income % free/ reduced meals % minority % college degree % white collar % single parent % non english speaking students per computer per pupil spending regional n=12,231 region 1 562 e $56,591 12.6 3.7 29.4 44.5 30.1 1 1.6 $12,305 region 4 594 c $82,620 7.3 6 43.9 50.8 16.3 1.7 1.9 $11,046 region 5 1678 b $93,868 1.8 12.7 59.1 63.5 12 3.2 3.5 $10,397 region 6 390 e $65,759 7.6 2.6 28.7 38.7 13.7 0.2 2.9 $10,395 region 7 786 c $84,090 2.1 2 40.8 56.2 13 0.1 2.0 $11,392 region 8 1026 c $81,862 3.6 3 45 51.2 15.1 0.1 2.4 $8,365 region 10 775 c $84,246 3.1 4.9 42.5 55 5.3 2.1 2.2 $11,016 region 11 200 f $64,732 14.8 5.8 21.5 32.6 20.3 0 1.4 $14,210 region 12 392 c $83,514 2.6 6.1 39.9 42.7 10.3 0.8 2.1 $13,510 region 13 1380 c $79,900 4.8 3.5 40.2 47.8 16.3 0.2 3.4 $10,040 region 14 836 c $82,025 4.6 4.5 46.9 52.6 19.6 1.4 3.7 $9,205 region 15 814 b $87,671 1.6 7 53 57.4 9.2 2.4 4.1 $9562 region 16 679 e $77,260 8.2 4.9 27.6 35.8 8.8 1.9 3.1 $9,705 region 17 459 c $88,307 5.6 3.4 48.3 57.9 9 0.4 3.7 $11,732 region 18 459 c $78,025 3.8 5.7 55.5 51.9 18.2 1.8 2.9 $13,538 region 19 1201 c $70,239 6.8 11.7 50 58.9 17.3 1.7 2.9 $10,291 means 764.4 $78,794 5.58 5.47 42.02 49.84 14.66 1.19 2.74 $11,044 sd 408.8 $9,829 3.79 2.98 10.67 8.85 5.96 0.99 .82 $663 community n=7,893 bolton 285 c $81,293 6.2 6.4 47.4 54.1 16.2 0 3.6 $11,706 canton 515 c $76,113 3.5 7.2 47.5 58.6 12.3 1.1 4.1 $10,888 clinton 663 d $70,776 7.8 9.7 35.9 45.7 16.2 1.3 3.4 $11,854 coventry 573 e $65,707 10.6 5 20.8 40.1 22.7 0.3 3.7 $8,234 e. granby 241 d $77,852 1.3 11.2 29.8 49.5 20.6 3.6 3.1 $11,919 e. haddam 387 e $68,393 5.4 4.7 29.7 41.1 11.1 1.2 3.3 $9,463 e. hampton 567 d $70,400 7.8 5 32.6 44.1 22.1 1.4 4.9 $10,467 ellington 738 c $81,196 4.4 7.2 36.1 48.5 13 1.7 3.0 $10,111 granby 687 b $92,696 3.4 6.7 57.3 65.4 10.9 1.2 3.1 $10,201 lebanon 581 e $66,652 8.1 4.3 26.8 43 13.3 0.7 3.6 $9,776 litchfield 438 e $66,809 4.8 5.2 36.5 43.6 14 0 3.5 $11,420 old saybrook 462 d $73,409 7.7 11.1 43.3 44 19.9 5 4.3 $11,294 plymouth 526 f $65,917 14 5.4 16.4 33.9 18.8 1.5 4.4 $9,013 portland 362 e $68,802 9.9 8.4 38.4 41 25.3 0.6 3.0 $11,811 somers 574 c $77,795 4.8 4.4 34.9 46.3 9.5 1.2 3.8 $9,747 westbrook 294 e $75,568 9.6 6.5 31.9 35.4 19.4 1.7 2.5 $13,984 means 493.3 $72,711 6.83 6.78 35.33 45.89 16.58 1.41 3.58 $10,527 sd 119 $7,354 3.24 2.26 10.25 8.10 4.80 1.28 .62 $1,148 t probability .026 .150 .337 .128 .058 .232 .414 .550 .003 .425 a comparison of academic performance 17 the instrument used to measure the dependent variable in this investigation was the college board sat i reasoning test (sat i), a norm-referenced measure of student readiness for college learning with three sections: critical reading, writing, and math. the sat i meets the highest standards of technical adequacy in content, construct, and criterion-related validity as well as internal consistency and test re-test reliability. it was deemed an appropriate basis for the comparison of school districts in that it now measures, since its 2006 revision, a set of skills that is closely aligned with college preparatory instruction. in addition, relative to state mastery tests, it offers an elevated ceiling capable of differentiating student performance at higher levels of achievement. scores from 2006 through 2008 were used for this inquiry, as they are the only scores available since the revision. the connecticut state department of education official database was used as the sole data source for this inquiry. this database compiles official statistics on connecticut school districts based upon federal census information and superintendents’ yearly reports. with regard to the research question – on standardized achievement tests, do students in regional high schools outperform students in community high schools? – the sat i scores for the rhs group were compared with those of the chs group. to assure that group differences were not primarily a function of the size and diversity of the test-taking cohort, the two groups were also compared on the proportion of students who took the sat i. given that this inquiry used matched groups, correlated t-tests were used to evaluate group differences. in addition, twotailed tests with an alpha level of .05 were used for all comparisons. all analyses were performed on the ms excel spreadsheet with t-test results reported as probability values. results in terms of demographics, table 1.1 provides a profile of the two groups that were the focus of this inquiry. the reader will note that while the regional schools are consistently higher on most indicators of socioeconomic status, none of the differences between the groups crosses the threshold of statistical significance. however, one indicator, the percentage of parents who are college educated bordered on statistical significance (p=.058). nonetheless, given that both groups exhibited socioeconomic characteristics that were solidly in the middle range, the decision to treat them as comparable is justified. aside from demographic contrasts, there are two points of comparison between the two groups that are noteworthy. first of all, the rhs and chs groups were found to be strikingly similar in terms of per pupil expenditures. this finding is intriguing given the economy of scale argument that is often used to justify consolidation. in fact, the data indicate that the regional high schools sampled spend approximately $600 more per year per student than their community high school counterparts. while this difference is not statistically significant, it is supportive of the conclusion that regional high schools do not appear to offer overall cost savings relative to community high schools. secondly, there was a significant difference between the two groups in terms of students per academic computer. this difference suggests that the regional schools may offer significantly better access to technology than their community school counterparts. with regard to the research question, table 2.1 provides a summary of the 2006, 2007 and 2008 sat i scores for the two groups. a summary of the 2006-2008 sat i mean scores can be found in table 2.2. both tables also provide the results of correlated t-tests on all 16 points of comparison between the rhs and chs groups. as these results indicate, the groups were not found to differ in terms of the proportion of students taking the sat i. however, in 2006, a comparison of academic performance 19 students in regional high schools obtained higher scores than their community high school counterparts on three out of four points of comparison: critical reading (p =.002), writing (p = .025), and total scale (p=.016). in addition, the difference between groups in math was very close to the threshold of statistical significance (p=.057). in 2007, students in regional high schools earned slightly higher scores than their counterparts in community high schools on three of the four sat i components (critical reading, writing, and sat i total). in math, the chs group outperformed the rhs group by a slim margin. these differences, though, were not found to be statistically significant. similarly, in 2008, students in regional high schools earned slightly higher scores than their counterparts in community high schools on all four sat i components (critical reading, math, writing, and sat i total). however, these differences were, again, insignificant. overall, when compared on the basis of 2006 through 2008 sat i mean scores, students in regional schools outscored students in community high schools on all four components but the only statistically significant difference occurred in critical reading (p=.035). the approximate mean score differences in favor of the rhs group were as follows: 11 points in critical reading, five points in math, ten points in writing, and 26 points on the total scale. table 2.1 2006 -2008 sat i scores for rhs & chs groups tot=sat total; cre=sat critical reading; mat = sat math; wri=sat writing source: connecticut education data and research (cedar, 2008) high schools % of students tested 06-08 2006 sat i 2007 sat i 2008 sat i tot cre mat wri tot cre mat wri tot cre mat wri regional : region 01 64.68 1579 539 519 524 1551 532 501 518 1528 513 505 510 region 04 81.20 1563 521 525 524 1550 523 504 524 1576 530 519 526 region 05 92.25 1677 552 566 559 1634 539 548 547 1655 545 551 559 region 06 75.05 1563 520 517 522 1566 527 531 508 1601 531 531 539 region 07 83.55 1628 544 548 538 1586 529 533 524 1612 526 551 535 region 08 83.30 1608 536 542 528 1628 541 550 536 1627 540 552 536 region 10 85.88 1601 532 527 540 1554 512 521 521 1556 515 520 521 region 11 74.65 1579 534 515 530 1475 501 468 506 1509 521 477 511 region 12 88.98 1576 527 527 522 1551 527 504 521 1536 513 506 516 region 13 77.35 1579 540 530 517 1595 531 530 534 1569 520 522 526 region 14 91.88 1552 520 518 515 1517 510 498 508 1560 524 508 528 region 15 95.18 1568 522 528 525 1629 547 546 536 1633 541 551 541 region 16 71.23 1489 500 499 491 1457 485 487 485 1463 485 490 488 region 17 85.78 1598 530 531 529 1532 511 512 509 1578 522 528 527 region 18 79.60 1660 542 567 553 1691 560 569 561 1687 557 565 565 region 19 72.93 1668 563 558 550 1651 547 560 542 1657 550 561 547 mean 81.5 1593 532.6 532.3 529.2 1572.9 526.4 522.6 523.8 1584.2 527.1 527.3 529.7 sd 8.5 47.9 14.8 19.2 16.5 63.4 19.1 28.1 18.70 59.8 17.4 26.2 19.1 community: bolton 77.13 1562 526 512 524 1626 544 538 543 1583 525 511 546 canton 86.93 1624 531 546 543 1632 535 554 543 1625 537 545 543 clinton 86.63 1538 515 512 512 1508 495 510 503 1572 521 523 528 coventry 78.73 1518 510 507 499 1499 506 499 495 1527 516 507 504 e. granby 71.83 1551 510 548 493 1620 533 561 526 1619 534 562 523 e. haddam 79.03 1469 494 499 492 1523 497 501 525 1582 522 521 539 e. hampton 82.10 1530 512 505 514 1527 503 514 511 1615 538 540 538 ellington 86.90 1572 519 530 526 1549 512 529 508 1554 513 522 519 granby 80.83 1646 554 549 544 1650 550 553 546 1617 539 542 536 lebanon 86.78 1469 494 487 490 1490 499 494 497 1529 526 499 503 litchfield 83.20 1564 509 523 528 1682 556 559 567 1607 528 539 539 old saybrook 90.35 1567 504 531 531 1543 510 516 517 1534 510 507 517 plymouth 75.25 1516 499 512 505 1483 492 499 489 1416 470 482 464 portland 89.53 1490 491 500 496 1573 522 541 510 1571 528 526 517 somers 85.15 1568 520 533 519 1636 542 553 541 1551 512 524 515 westbrook 77.30 1492 507 495 493 1552 515 522 516 1567 524 509 533 mean 82.4 1542.3 512.2 518.1 513.1 1568.3 519.4 527.7 521.1 1566.8 521.4 522.4 522.8 sd 5.4 50.3 15.9 19.6 18.4 63.9 21.1 23.8 21.9 51.9 16.5 20.1 20.6 t probability .649 .016 .002 .057 .025 .840 .313 .619 .685 .324 .283 .538 .262 a comparison of academic performance 21 table 2.2 20062008 sat i mean scores for rhs & chs groups tot=sat total; cre=sat critical reading; mat = sat math; wri=sat writing source: connecticut education data and research (cedar, 2008) mean 2006 – 2008 sat i tot mean 2006-2008 sat i cre mean 2006-2008 sat i mat mean 2006-2008 sat i wri regional high schools: region 01 1552.67 528.00 508.33 517.33 region 04 1563.00 524.67 516.00 524.67 region 05 1655.33 545.33 555.00 555.00 region 06 1576.67 526.00 526.33 523.00 region 07 1608.67 533.00 544.00 532.33 region 08 1621.00 539.00 548.00 533.33 region 10 1570.33 519.67 522.67 527.33 region 11 1521.00 518.67 486.67 515.67 region 12 1554.33 522.33 512.33 519.67 region 13 1581.00 530.33 527.33 525.67 region 14 1543.00 518.00 508.00 517.00 region 15 1610.00 536.67 541.67 534.00 region 16 1469.67 490.00 492.00 488.00 region 17 1569.33 521.00 523.67 521.67 region 18 1679.33 553.00 567.00 559.67 region 19 1658.67 553.33 559.67 546.33 mean 1583.38 528.69 527.42 527.54 sd 54.09 15.46 23.55 16.90 community high schools: bolton 1590.33 531.67 520.33 537.67 canton 1627.00 534.33 548.33 543.00 clinton 1539.33 510.33 515.00 514.33 coventry 1514.67 510.67 504.33 499.33 e. granby 1596.67 525.67 557.00 514.00 e. haddam 1524.67 504.33 507.00 518.67 e. hampton 1557.33 517.67 519.67 521.00 ellington 1558.33 514.67 527.00 517.67 granby 1637.67 547.67 548.00 542.00 lebanon 1496.00 506.33 493.33 496.67 litchfield 1617.67 531.00 540.33 544.67 old saybrook 1548.00 508.00 518.00 521.67 plymouth 1471.67 487.00 497.67 486.00 portland 1544.67 513.67 522.33 507.67 somers 1585.00 524.67 536.67 525.00 westbrook 1537.00 515.33 508.67 514.00 mean 1559.13 517.69 522.73 518.96 sd 47.10 14.46 18.91 17.00 t probability .183 .035 .549 .135 discussion current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 22 the results of this inquiry suggest that, relative to community high schools (chss), regional high schools (rhss) may provide a slight academic benefit to college preparatory students as measured by scores on the sat i. however, this conclusion must be viewed as highly tentative in light of the fact that the most dramatic differences occurred in a single year, 2006, and were not consistent across the three-year period examined. furthermore, those who would use these results to inform policy decisions should be mindful that the sample for this inquiry is small and drawn exclusively from nonmetropolitan regions of connecticut. the results cannot, therefore, be generalized nationally or to urban or suburban districts where the relationship between school-level variables and student achievement appears to be much more complex. another limitation of this inquiry is the fact that it is focused on the sat i, a college entrance examination, and its findings are, therefore, limited to students who are bound for college. as a result, it offers few insights into the differences between students in regional and community high schools who are pursuing courses of study that prepare them for postsecondary objectives other than college. this is an especially important consideration in that it is these students that critics describe as being most in need of the more intimate environment of a small community school (bard et al., 2005; fitchen, 1991; luloff & swanson, 1990; nachtigal, 1982; plucker, et al., 2007; purcell & shakelford, 2005). when applied to the consolidation debate, advocates and opponents of consolidation will both find support for their positions in the results of this inquiry. advocates will argue that their view is validated by the higher sat i scores of students in regional high schools and data indicating that regional schools offer greater access to technology for a comparable per pupil cost. opponents will point out that most of the differences between groups on the sat i are a comparison of academic performance 23 insignificant and that the ones that reach statistical significance are not sufficiently robust to be considered an advantage for regional schools. in addition, they will point out that the gap between rhss and chss appears to narrow over the three-year period examined in this study. specifically, in reading, the performance of chss improved each year from a mean of 512.2 in 2006 to a mean of 519.4 in 2007 and 521.4 in 2008. similarly, writing scores improved from 513.1 in 2006 to 521.1 in 2007 and 522.8 in 2008. these trends suggest that the “regional effect” may be fading. furthermore, advocates of chss will argue that the data from this inquiry do not support the conclusion that regional schools are more cost effective that community schools. this conclusion is consistent with a previous study conducted on a similar sample in the same geographic region (melnick et al., 1986). finally, critics of consolidation will point out that the results of this inquiry do not speak to such core concerns as the effects of consolidation on transportation, student participation in extracurricular activities, educational equity, or the context for learning. conclusions the results of this inquiry strongly indicate a need for further research. specifically, given the size and geographic limitations of the sample, it would be necessary to replicate this study with larger samples, drawn from multiple locales, over a longer period of time before the stability and meaningfulness of these results can be determined. in addition, should meaningful differences be found, further inquiry would be needed to determine the reasons for these differences. a related issue would be to determine why these differences seem to occur more often in reading and writing than in math. inquiry in this area may also provide an explanation for the finding that, from 2006 through 2008, the gap between regional and community high schools on the sati reading and writing subtests diminished steadily. possible areas of inquiry current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 24 might include differences in the quality and preparation of teachers, the availability of instructional resources in regional versus community high schools, or the distribution of these resources across socioeconomic strata. furthermore, since the demonstration of positive academic effects would not alone be sufficient to address the most daunting social, cultural, and philosophical challenges to consolidation, there is a need for policy makers to reflect on existing research and arrive at a consensus position on its benefits and limitations. while community leaders await the emergence of such a position, they would be wise to look beyond the fiscal benefits of consolidation and engage stakeholders in a deeper discussion of community beliefs regarding the goals and purposes of public education. the relevance of this study to this discussion is that an analysis of data from 32 nonmetropolitan communities in connecticut provides additional support to the following three conclusions from the literature on school consolidation: (1) the cost benefits of modern school consolidation may be illusory given that regional schools and small community schools have similar per-pupil expenditures. therefore, consolidating schools primarily as a cost saving measure may not be a defensible strategy. (2) regional high schools appear to offer some limited advantages to college preparatory students as demonstrated by their higher performance on the literacy sections of the sat i. these differences may be associated with the enhanced curriculum resources of larger schools, including the ability to offer advanced placement classes. however, these benefits may be diminishing as the performance gap between collegebound students in regional vs. community high schools appears to be narrowing and a comparison of academic performance 25 affordable technology becomes available to add these enhancements to the curriculum of smaller schools. (3) large consolidated schools may offer greater access to technology. however, this advantage may be of diminishing importance in light of the growing saturation of technology in american society. given the advantages of small schools as described in the literature and the growing body of research on the benefits of small schools for a variety of historically under-performing groups, school leaders in connecticut and across the country many need to re-examine the assumptions of school consolidation and consider the possibility that “small may be the new big.” in this regard, recent research indicates that “small is better” in poor inner-city communities where schools must counteract anomie, normlessness, and the breakdown of institutions that form the fabric of society (“making room for literacy in secondary schools,” 2005; rubenstein, reisner, coon, & fabiano, 2005). similarly, many have suggested that small may be better in remote rural areas where schools are the only institutions that can combat the effects of social isolation (biere, 1995; fanning, 1995; fitchen, 1991; luloff and swanson, 1990; nachtigal, 1982; peshkin, 1978, 1982). nonetheless, if we are to heed the admonition of kannapel and deyoung (1995) to avoid assuming that all schools suffer from generic problems that lend themselves to generic solutions, then we must also make room for the possibility that, in some communities, larger may continue to be better. in this regard, one practical recommendation would be to consider the question posed by fanning (1995); “what should our young people have the chance to learn?” (p.5). if the answer to this question is, as fanning suggests, a balance of “grounded” (i.e., personal and experiential) with “technical” (i.e., rational and empirical) knowing, then the results of this inquiry suggest current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 26 that community schools, which may be more effective at promoting grounded knowing, may wish to actively explore alternatives to consolidation for assisting their students in the development of technical knowing. by the same token, communities served by regional schools, which may offer advantages over community schools in promoting technical knowing, may wish to explore strategies for assisting their students in the development of grounded knowing. in the domain of technical knowing, communities that wish to preserve their community schools may find in this study the motivation to identify new ways to access talent and resources. one evidence-based option for accomplishing this objective is to develop partnerships with public and private institutions and foundations (fanning, 1995; nachtigal, 1994). in addition, to augment and/or avoid consolidation, schwartzbeck (2003) recommends that districts explore: 1) cooperative agreements with nearby districts that enable then to share staff, contractual services and/or buildings; 2) four day work weeks (thus saving on utility and transportation costs); 3) distance learning; and 4) using regional educational service centers (rescs) to achieve economies of scale in areas such as food and custodial services, special education, and payroll management. in the domain of grounded knowing, communities that are served by regional and/or consolidated schools may wish to explore the formation of smaller learning communities to promote a sense of cohesion and belongingness among students (cotton, 1998; “making room for literacy in secondary schools,” 2005; noguera, 2004; and rubenstein, reisner, coon, & fabiano, 2005). this approach, based on the schools-within-schools model (goodlad, 1984; murphy, 1991), creates semi-autonomous small schools that are housed within larger schools to achieve learning environments characterized by greater intimacy, improved teacher engagement, and a more positive peer culture. a comparison of academic performance 27 finally, the results of this inquiry provide insight into the thorny question of school size. it is noteworthy that although the regional high schools examined in this study were significantly larger than the community high schools sampled, they were not large schools relative to the state mean. indeed, of the 16 schools studied, eight fell in the bottom quartile in terms of school size (n≤750) and only three were above the state mean (n≥1147). it is, therefore, difficult to conclude that the benefits (or lack thereof) of consolidation suggested by this inquiry have much to do with school size. this conclusion fits with prior research on this subject (melnick et al., 1986) and with the lack of consensus in the literature on the benefits and disadvantages of small versus large schools. it also fits with the conclusion that the factors that mitigate the effects of school size are myriad and appear to include the demographic, socio-economic, cultural, and geographic characteristics of a given community. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 28 references american psychological association. 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(1983). a nation at risk: the imperative for educational reform. washington, dc: u.s. government printing office. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 34 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word academic achievement for fifth.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x academic achievement for fifth-grade students in elementary and intermediate school settings: grade span configurations julie p. combs david clark george w. moore anthony k. onwuegbuzie stacy l. edmonson john r. slate sam houston state university citation combs, j. p., clark, d., moore, g. w., onwuegbuzie, a. k., edmonson, s. l., & slate, j. r. (2011). academic achievement for fifth-grade students in elementary and intermediate school settings: grade span configurations. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract few researchers have addressed student achievement outcomes as a function of grade span configurations for older elementary-aged students. thus, this study was designed to determine differences between students’ grade 5 reading and mathematics achievement in elementary schools (k–5) as compared to intermediate schools (grade 5, 5–6) for 5 academic years. using archival statewide data, researchers used a rigorous five-step distance-based formula to match elementary schools to intermediate schools on four demographic/school characteristic variables. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 students in k-5 settings attained statistically significantly higher levels of reading and mathematics achievement than did their counterparts, with moderate mean effect sizes of 0.37 and 0.47, respectively. keywords: achievement, grade configuration, elementary schools, grade span, middle schools, intermediate schools, school settings academic achievement for fifth-grade students 3 about the author(s) author: julie p. combs affiliation: sam houston state university address: department of educational leadership and counseling, box 2119, sam houston state university, huntsville, tx 77341-2119 email: jcombs@shsu.edu biographical information: julie combs is a tenured associate professor in the department of educational leadership and counseling at sam houston state university, where she teaches doctoral-level courses in writing and research methods. her areas of research are focused on issues that impact school leaders. author: david clark affiliation: sam houston state university email: david.m.clark@pearson.com biographical information: david clark is a former teacher and central office administrator from a large district in northwest houston. he currently works for pearson in the interim and formative assessment division. author: george w. moore affiliation: sam houston state university email: gwm002@shsu.edu biographical information: george w. moore, is an assistant professor in the department of educational leadership and counseling. he teaches administration and organization of public schools, instructional leadership, and instructional theory and application. his research interests include advanced placement enrollment and performance of diverse groups, college-readiness, and instructional leadership for change/transformation. author: anthony j. onwuegbuzie affiliation: sam houston state university email: tonyonwuegbuzie@aol.com current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 biographical information: anthony onwuegbuzie is a tenured professor in the department of educational leadership and counseling at sam houston state university, where he teaches doctoral-level courses in qualitative research, quantitative research, and mixed research. he writes extensively on qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methodological topics. with a h-index of 36, he has had published more than 300 works, including more than 250 journal articles, 50 book chapters, and 2 books. author: stacey l. edmonson affiliation: sam houston state university email: sedmonson@shsu.edu biographical information: stacey edmonson is professor and chair of the department of educational leadership and counseling at sam houston state university. she has served as a teacher, principal, and central office administrator in texas public schools. her scholarship agenda includes stress and burnout among educators, legal issues in education, and educator ethics. author: john r. slate affiliation: sam houston state university email: profslate@aol.com biographical information: john r. slate, phd is a professor in educational leadership and counseling at sam houston state university where he teaches basic and advanced statistics and academic and professional writing courses. his research interests lie in the use of national and state educational databases for school improvement. academic achievement for fifth-grade students 5 academic achievement for fifth-grade students in elementary & intermediate school settings: grade span configurations schools for students in grades kindergarten (k) through high school (grade 12) are organized in a variety of sizes and grade configurations or grade spans (combs, moore, edmonson, & clark, 2008). grade configurations or grade spans refer to the ranges of grade levels (e.g., k-5, k-6, 9-12, 10-12). although numerous researchers have studied school size in relation to achievement and cost-effectiveness (see leithwood & jantzi, 2009), fewer studies have been conducted in which the effect of grade span configurations on student achievement has been examined (coladarci & hancock, 2002; renchler, 2002). a common sentiment about the lack of evidence concerning grade configurations—also known as grade span—was expressed more than 10 years ago and remains true today: “research has not provided definitive answers to the myriad possible questions about grade span, but the questions have never gone away” (paglin & fager, 1997, p. 1). of particular interest are students in upper elementary or early middle school grades. these students, ages 11 to 13, are in a “developmental period in which prevention and intervention efforts can be particularly effective in deterring negative trajectories or outcomes” (coyl, 2009, p. 407). interestingly, students in grade 5 are educated in a variety of grade configurations, whereby fifth-grade students could be the oldest students in an elementary setting (e.g., k-5) or the youngest students in an intermediate or middle school setting (e.g., 5-6, 5-8). the most common grade span configuration for fifth graders in the united states in 2005 was the various combinations of pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and/or grade 1 to grade 5 (n = 24,060 schools, 36.9%) or to grade 6 (n = 12,569, 19.3%) school (national center for education statistics, 2005). the next most common arrangement with 12,545 schools or 19.2% was the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 intermediate or middle school setting housing various combinations of grades through grade 8. a less frequent but currently debated (coladarci & hancock, 2002) arrangement for fifth graders are grades k-8 schools—also known as elemiddle schools (hough, 2005)—which was the configuration for 5,595 or 8.6% of u.s. schools. although k-5 and k-6 schools have been the most frequently occurring elementary arrangement for some time, an increasing number of school districts are moving upper elementary students into intermediate and middle school settings (mcentire, 2005; stevenson, 2007) to be more responsive to the needs of students (cook, maccoun, muschkin, & vigdor, 2008; paglin & fager, 1997). one rationale for this trend has been that teachers in grades 4-6 can become subject-matter specialists. moreover, the middle school movement, particularly since the 1980s, has brought greater attention to the social-emotional needs of young adolescents (elovitz, 2007) as educators have applied teaching strategies and school organizational models (e.g., teaming, departmentalization) with these students in the fifth and sixth grades (see finnan, 2009). although educational setting structures (e.g., facilities, school size, grade spans) are considered important variables by researchers examining student achievement, few studies exist that examine the relationship between grade span configuration and student achievement (educational research service, 2004). moreover, although some students in grades 5 and 6 are being educated in intermediate school settings separate from younger elementary students and from older middle school students, even fewer studies were located wherein intermediate schools were examined. most of the studies conducted focused on the comparisons of students in middle schools (i.e., 5-8, 6-8) to students in k-8 schools. these studies can provide evidence concerning student achievement in two types of school settings—those with large grade span configurations academic achievement for fifth-grade students 7 and those with small grade span configurations, which is ultimately the focus of the current investigation. grade span and student achievement connolly, yakimowski-srebnick, and russo (2002) examined 2,871 students from baltimore, maryland in grade span configurations of k-5, 6-8, and k-8, and reported that students in k-8 settings had statistically significantly higher performance on standardized tests in the areas of mathematics, writing, and reading than did students in k-5 and 6-8 settings. in maine, wihry, coladarci, and meadow (1992) documented that eighth-grade students in elementary grade span configurations (k-8, 3-8, k-9) performed better on standardized tests than did eighth graders in junior high or high school configurations of grades 6-12, 7-12, and 8-12, particularly in the subject area of reading. similar results were reported for sixth graders. in connecticut, tucker and andrada (1997) studied academic achievement of sixth graders and discovered that students who were at the upper end of an elementary grade span configuration (e.g., sixth graders in a k-6 setting) performed better on the connecticut mastery test (cmt) than did students in the lower grade of a secondary configuration (e.g., sixth graders in a 6-8 setting). three studies using longitudinal data were conducted in philadelphia schools (i.e., byrnes & ruby, 2007; offenberg, 2001; weiss & kipnes, 2006). specifically, offenberg (2001) examined ninth-grade achievement data to compare k-8 graduates and middle school graduates and reported that students from the k-8 schools had statistically significantly higher levels of achievement in reading, mathematics, and science than did students from middle schools, even when controlling for socioeconomic status and school size. moreover, these k-8 students achieved higher grade point averages and earned a larger number of credits than did students in current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 the middle school settings. byrnes and ruby (2007) compared student achievement data of preexisting k-8 schools, emerging k-8 schools, and the 6-8 middle schools in philadelphia. they studied student data over 5 years for 95 schools and noted that students in the more established k-8 schools demonstrated higher levels of achievement than did those in middle schools. weiss and kipnes (2006) also analyzed longitudinal data from philadelphia public schools, a district with both 6-8 and k-8 schools. in contrast to the findings of other researchers (byrnes & ruby, 2007; connolly et al.,2002; offenburg, 2001; tucker & andrada,1997; wihry et al., 1992), little evidence was found to indicate higher student achievement occurred in k-8 schools as compared to 6-8 schools. interested in grades 5-6 students in middle schools, jenkins and mcewin (1992) studied instructional practices in three grade span configurations: k-6, k-8, and 5-8. they reported similarities among all three settings regarding the levels and amounts of instruction in mathematics, language arts, science, social studies, and physical education. however, they believed that programs at k-6 schools tended to be more developmentally appropriate for younger children rather than for adolescents in grades 4-6. in fact, jenkins and mcewin (1992) recommended that fifth-grade students would be better served in middle schools than in other types of grade span configurations. only one study was located wherein researchers compared the large and small grade spans in elementary (k-5) and intermediate (5-6) settings using a science achievement measure—a subject that was assessed for the first time in grade 5. combs et al. (2008) noted that grade 5 students in elementary settings outperformed students in intermediate settings in science achievement and reported a medium effect size (d = 0.40) based on cohen’s (1988) criteria. academic achievement for fifth-grade students 9 although researchers have recently focused on k-8 grade span configurations (e.g., byrnes & ruby, 2007; connolly et al., 2002; offenberg, 2001; pardini, 2002; weiss & kipnes, 2006; yecke, 2006), many researchers (e.g., byrnes & ruby, 2007; cook et al., 2008; connolly et al., 2002; mizell, 2005) have suggested a need for additional studies to confirm achievement differences for students in other grade span configurations. even though much of the evidence favors schools with larger grade spans (k-6 and k-8), limitations remain in all of these studies. indeed, cook et al. (2008) recognized such limitations by stating, “the results . . . are not based on random assignment, which leaves open the possibility that the true causal process has not been adequately identified” (p. 118), and the associated benefits of grade configurations for older and younger children remain an “open empirical question” (p. 119). theoretical frameworks: transitions and communities of practice in an attempt to understand why achievement differences might exist in schools of various grade span configurations, we utilized two theoretical frameworks. students changing from one school to another (i.e., transitions) has been one common explanation for achievement declines. further, based on a systems-perspective and our experience in schools, it is possible that interactions among educators might be related to the organizational structures (e.g., physical layout, size, grade configurations) of the school. thus, the communities of practice theory is presented. transitions when reviewing grade span configurations, researchers have focused on the transitions required of students as they progress in u.s. schools (e.g., alspaugh & harting, 1995). transitions are the changes students make when changing from grade to grade and teacher to teacher; however, the transitions among levels or different school settings appear to be more current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 problematic for students (anderman & midgley, 1997). as such, grade configurations are “inextricably linked” to transitions “because grade span dictates to a large degree when children will move between schools” (burkam, michaels, & lee, 2007, p. 290). students who leave an elementary (k-5) setting to enter a middle school (6-8) setting experience many changes, including a new building, a new faculty, a new schedule, and a new routine. furthermore, students move from a setting where they are the oldest to a setting where they are the youngest. moreover, alspaugh and harting (1995) provided evidence of these transition effects occurring in every grade span configuration regardless of students’ ages. for some students, possible negative effects such as lower self-esteem or increased behavioral problems have been noted (anderman & midgley, 1997; arcia, 2007; bergquist, bigbie, groves, & richardson, 2004; cook et al., 2008; cromwell, 1999; kennedy, 1993; malaspina & rimm-kaufman, 2008; mendez & knoff, 2003; simmons, black, & zhou, 1991; weiss & kipnes, 2006). in addition, students might experience decreased academic performance during transitions to another school or setting (alspaugh & harting, 1995; byrnes & ruby, 2007; mizell, 2005). as such, whitley, lupart, and beran (2007) concluded that the transition from elementary school to junior high school has “long been associated with a decline in academic performance” (p. 650). some researchers have offered explanations for the decline in achievement for early adolescents as they transition from an elementary school setting to a middle school or junior high school setting (eccles, lord, & midgley, 1991; simmons & blyth, 1987). simmons and blyth (1987) suggested that a decline in achievement, in addition to motivation and self-esteem, might occur because these early adolescents are facing two major transitions—puberty and a change in schools. these researchers argued that students who remain in a setting without transitions (e.g., k-8) have to adjust to only one major transition—puberty. academic achievement for fifth-grade students 11 communities of practice another framework that might be useful in understanding achievement differences that might occur in schools with various grade spans is communities of practice. wenger’s (1998) communities of practice theory has been applied by businesses to understand organizational behavior and by educators to understand learning processes (wenger & snyder, 2000). communities of practice are “groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (wenger, 2008, p. 2). not all groups or communities are actual communities of practice. a community of practice has three characteristics: domain (i.e., members are committed to a shared domain of interest), community (i.e., members interact and learn from each other), and practice (members are practitioners who share a practice) (wenger, 2008). members in the group develop relationships, share ideas, and help each other and, as a result, acquire new learning and new ways to solve problems (wenger & snyder, 2000). the groups can be recognized and structured by an organization, or the groups can be created informally through social networks (e.g., teachers who share the same lunch period or hallway in a building). the structural components of a school (e.g., grade span configuration, school size, facility design) can affect the forming of communities of practice. for example, mcpartland, coldiron, and braddock (1987) reported that teachers who worked in schools with more grade levels in the same school provided a more continuous program than did teachers in schools with fewer grade levels. it is possible that teachers who work in schools with larger grade spans (e.g., grades k-5, k-8) form communities of practice that learn and work to solve problems associated with student achievement through formal and informal discussions about teaching strategies and curricular issues. although communities of practice also would be present in schools with current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 smaller grade spans (e.g., grades 5-6, 6-8), teachers in these intermediate or middle schools would not have the benefit of engaging in discussions with grades k-4 colleagues in the same building on a regular basis. interestingly, these cross-grade-level discussions have been formalized in school districts as a way to improve curriculum and instruction (texas leadership center, 1998); such structures have been termed vertical alignment teams, defined as “a small number of people from different levels within an organization who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable” (p. 18). vertical alignment teams could function as communities of practice, although vertical alignment teams and communities of practice are not identical concepts. in practice, vertical alignment teams (e.g., all mathematics teachers in grades k-6 from all campuses in a school district) are often presented as formal structures organized by district leaders and result in limited interaction among teachers and limited changes in instruction, based in part on a faulty social infrastructure (duffy, 2006). conversely, communities of practice offer regular interaction, interdependence, and member-initiated accountability (wenger, 2008). thus, communities of practice appear to be a viable structure for school improvement (rogoff, turkanis, & bartlett, 2001) and useful in understanding the informal interactions that can occur among teachers that impact student achievement. purpose of study although school district decision-makers have claimed that consideration of student achievement is important when planning new school facilities, attendance zones, and grade spans (educational research service, 2004), researchers have claimed that a lack of empirical studies exists in which these relationships have been examined (byrnes & ruby, 2007; cook et al., 2008; wihry et al., 1992). as district administrators and school board members face increasing academic achievement for fifth-grade students 13 and/or decreasing student enrollments, they need information to plan and to guide the design of district facilities. in addition, very few studies were located in which fifth graders were the focus of the studies. jenkins and mcewin (1992) noted that the placement of fifth graders is “too often made with little regard for which grade organization best serves these youths” (p. 8). therefore, in the present study, the differences in reading and mathematics achievement were examined as a function of grade span configuration. specially, grade 5 students’ scores in k-5 elementary schools were compared to students in grades 5 and/or 6 intermediate schools. the grade span configurations (i.e., k-5, 5-6) were selected for this study because they represented the largest configurations for schools in texas containing fifth-grade students, and they provided a basis for comparing schools with large grade spans to those with smaller grade spans, as shown in table 1. k-8 schools were not selected because they had smaller student enrollments and were located in mostly rural areas. several variables that have been shown to impact school achievement were controlled through a rigorous matching technique (i.e., school size [leithwood & jantzi, 2009], economic disadvantage [sirin, 2005], student mobility [kerbow, 1996], and limited english proficiency [contreras, 2005]). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 table 1 number of texas elementary and middle schools by grade span configurations serving grade 5 in texas 2003–2008 grade span school classification 2003– 2004 2004– 2005 2005– 2006 2006– 2007 2007– 2008 total k-5 elementary 1,984 2,015 2,096 2,270 2,407 10,772 k-6 elementary 740 730 713 616 557 3,356 k-8 elementary 95 98 102 115 115 525 3-5 elementary 81 84 79 70 84 398 4-6 elementary 69 67 71 54 51 312 4-5 elementary 52 54 50 63 64 283 1-5 elementary 42 38 43 48 47 218 2-5 elementary 22 25 22 22 22 113 1-6 elementary 19 23 22 16 21 101 k-7 elementary 18 21 15 11 16 81 3-6 elementary 12 5 8 13 9 47 5 elementary 8 6 5 11 12 42 2-6 elementary 8 5 3 4 4 24 1-8 elementary 1 4 3 2 1 11 3-7 elementary 1 2 3 1 1 8 3-8 elementary 1 2 2 3 8 2-8 elementary 1 3 1 1 1 7 1-7 elementary 1 1 1 3 2-7 elementary 2 2 5-6 middle 136 142 137 135 137 687 5-8 middle 74 74 82 72 78 380 5-7 middle 6 4 7 4 3 24 5-9 middle 4 3 3 3 3 16 4-8 middle 4 3 1 2 3 13 4-7 middle 2 1 1 2 1 7 note. the two configurations in bold typeface represent the population from which matched pairs were selected for the present study. these two groups represented the most schools identified as elementary and middle schools containing fifth-grade students. the present study was conducted in texas for several reasons. following california, texas is the most populous state in the nation (u.s. census bureau, 2005) and thus a large sample could be obtained. second, texas has had a stable accountability system and has used the same criteria-referenced achievement measure since 2003 for grades 3 to 8, the texas academic achievement for fifth-grade students 15 assessment of knowledge and skills (taks) (texas education agency [tea], 2009). this stability in assessment allowed the researchers to include multiple years in the study, and this multi-year analyses were rare in other grade configuration studies. third, as noted earlier, many studies on grade span have been conducted in the northeastern u.s. and relatively few studies have been conducted in the southwest. finally, howley (2002) called for future research on grade span configurations focused at the state level rather than those analyses focused at the national level because most policy decisions that influence schools are made at the state and local governance levels. research questions the following research questions were used to guide this investigation: 1. what is the difference in grade 5 students’ levels of reading achievement between elementary campuses and intermediate campuses for 5 academic years, 2003-2008? 2. what is the difference in grade 5 students’ levels of mathematics achievement between elementary campuses and intermediate campuses for 5 academic years, 2003-2008? based on the research concerning the effects of school transitions on student achievement and the framework of communities of practice presented, it was hypothesized that fifth-grade students perform at higher levels in reading and mathematics in the k-5 elementary schools as compared to those in 5-6 intermediate schools. method participants participants in this study consisted of 1,356 texas schools comprising 678 elementary schools (grades k-5) and 678 intermediate schools (grades 5 or grades 5-6), drawn from 5 academic years, 2003–2008.1 to conduct dependent statistical analyses on student achievement current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 data for the campuses, intermediate schools were matched to elementary schools using a rigorous distance-based formula developed by clark (2009). this distance-based formula accounted for school size, percent of students with low socioeconomic (ses) status students, campus mobility rates, and percent of students with limited english proficiency (lep).2-3 as a result, campus compositions were very similar for the two groups. for example, elementary schools in this study were represented by the following mean student demographics: an average student count of 593 students, 49.8% low ses, 15.6% mobility rate, 9.9% african american, 44.3% hispanic, 40.6% white, and 23.3% lep. intermediate schools were represented by the following mean student demographics: an average student count of 640 students, 48.6% low ses, 15.4% mobility rate, 16.2% african american, 32.7% hispanic, 48.5% white, and 7.5% lep. instrumentation the taks reading and mathematics examinations, which are comprehensive statewide assessments, were used to measure the dependent variable in this study. the scores have a possible range of 0 to 100 and represent the percentage of students who met the minimum requirements on the examination. the score reliability of the taks examinations are based on internal consistency measures (tea, 2007). specifically, the kuder-richardson 20 (kr-20) was calculated for each examination year from 2003-2008, with alphas ranging from 0.81 to 0.93 (tea, 2007). the taks examinations are based on the state curriculum, the texas essential knowledge and skills (teks). the taks mathematics examination contains 44 multiplechoice items and assesses six strands of mathematical concepts, which are (a) numbers, operations, and quantitative reasoning; (b) pattern relationships and algebraic reasoning; (c) geometry and spatial reasoning; (d) measurement; (e) probability and statistics; and (f) academic achievement for fifth-grade students 17 mathematical processes and tools (tea, 2008a). in the subject area of reading, four objectives are assessed using 42 multiple-choice items, which are (a) the understanding of culturally varied written texts, (b) the application of knowledge of literary elements, (c) the use of strategies to analyze texts, and (d) the application of critical thinking skills (tea, 2008b). assessment and campus data were accessed from the state’s academic excellence indicator system (aeis) database. the aeis was shared with the public beginning in the 19901991 school year, but it originated in 1984 with the passage of house bill 72. data for the aeis originate from a variety of sources, including the public education information management system (peims), an extensive data reporting system required of all public schools in texas. additional data are derived from the taks examination results, compiled by independent testing contractors (tea, 2008c). collectively, this information comprises one of the most extensive data sets on public schools available. procedures for the purpose of this study, elementary schools were classified as those schools that contained grade levels comprising kindergarten and/or pre-kindergarten through grade 5. intermediate schools were defined as campuses only serving students in grade 5 or grades 5 and 6. campuses that did not fall into these classifications were excluded from the study. datasets for each school in one of the two classifications coded by tea (i.e., elementary, middle) were formed from the aeis for each of 5 academic years, 2003–2008. all elementary and middle school campuses were renamed according to their grade span configurations, and researchers apportioned elementary schools (k–5) and intermediate schools (grade 5, 5–6) into a dataset. schools with fewer than 30 students in grade 5 were excluded from the study because such schools would not be held accountable for meeting passing standards established for grade current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 5, as explained in the state agency’s guidelines (tea, 2005). additionally, schools classified as charter schools also were excluded. in an attempt to isolate the effect of grade span organizational patterns on student achievement, all intermediate schools for the 5 years examined were matched to an elementary school using clark’s (2009) distance-based formula. this technique involves matching each target school to a school in a comparison pool by calculating the distance (i.e., difference) between the target school and all schools in the pool with respect to one or more matching variables, and then selecting the school that yields the smallest distance to serve as a match. as such, the technique is repeated until all target schools are matched (clark, 2009). this technique was validated and adopted by pearson’s4 educational assessment group in 2009 for use in matching campuses and resulted in two commercial products: districts like us (clark, 2008a) and schools like us (clark, 2008b). these products are used by school districts for evaluation and improvement purposes. clark’s (2009) distance-based procedure contains the following five steps: (a) select the matching variables, (b) identify and account for any missing data, (c) standardize the matching variables; (d) find optimal matches for each target school, and (e) validate the matching procedure. each of these steps is described in the following sections as it was operationalized in the current study. step 1: select the matching variables. according to clark (2009), schools can be matched on as few as one variable. however, as the number of matching variables increases, so does the sensitivity of the matching procedure until diminishing (marginal) returns prevail (clark, 2009). in the present study, schools were matched to one another based on the following four campus characteristics: (a) school size, (b) low ses (i.e., percent of students identified as academic achievement for fifth-grade students 19 economically disadvantaged on the campus), (c) mobility (i.e., percent of students who had completed less than 83% of the school year on their identified campus) (tea, 2008c), and (d) lep (i.e., percent of students identified as lep). these four criteria were selected by the researchers as a foundation for school matching based on the current texas and previous california statewide models for creating campus comparison groups (california department of education, 1994; cronbach, bradburn, & horvitz, 1994; tea, 2005). for both states, low ses, mobility, and lep were key demographics in determining useful campus comparisons because of their impact on students’ achievement (california department of education, 1994; tea, 2005). however, of the two states, only california’s method took school size into account, and unlike both models, which were designed to create a group of comparison campuses for a school within its grade classification (e.g., an elementary comparison group for an elementary campus), the researchers in this study attempted to match an intermediate school to its closest comparison campus at the elementary level. step 2: identify and account for any missing data. to utilize a distance-based formula for school matching, complete data for each of the variables were needed for every school. although school size, ses, and lep data sets were complete in the aeis system, mobility rates were not present for 3% of the schools extracted (i.e., 398 of 10,928). as noted by clark (2009), various ways of dealing with missing data include listwise deletion (i.e., deleting schools that have missing values on any of the selected matching variable), pairwise deletion (i.e., deleting the specific missing matching values from the analysis [not the entire school]), and imputation (i.e., replace the missing matching values with the predicted values). with respect to imputation, researchers can utilize either single imputation procedures (e.g., group means, medians, or modes; regression imputation; stochastic regression imputation; expectation-maximization [em] current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 algorithm) or multiple imputation procedures (e.g., frequentist multiple imputation, bayesian multiple imputation) (cf. shafer & graham, 2002). single imputation involves substituting each missing matching value with a single value, whereas multiple imputation involves “replac[ing] each missing value with a set of plausible values that represent the uncertainty about the right value to impute” (yuan, 2000, p. 1). in the present study, the researchers used a multiple regression analysis (i.e., regression imputation) to impute predicted values for missing mobility rate data using school size, percent of low-ses students, and percent of lep students as the independent variables (allison, 2001; california department of education, 1994). although the regression imputation has limitations—as do all other imputation techniques—this technique has been found to produce estimates with little bias (musil, warner, yobas, & jones, 2002; see also, allison, 2001). step 3: standardize the matching variables. an important obstacle that had to be addressed prior to computing the shortest distance between intermediate and elementary schools were the variations in the data pertaining to the school size and lep variables. the average size of the grade 5 cohorts at the intermediate campuses (m = 323.34, sd = 132.40, n = 678) was statistically significantly larger (mann-whitney’s u = 225558.50, p < .0001) than was the average size of the grade 5 cohorts at the elementary campuses (m = 90.53, sd = 33.42, n = 10,249), yielding an extremely large effect size (d = 5.04; cohen, 1988). in addition, average lep rates were statistically significantly lower (mann-whitney’s u = 1945827.50, p < .0001) at an intermediate campus (m = 7.47%, sd = 8.84, n = 678) than at an elementary campus (m = 25.31%, sd = 22.96, n = 10,249), yielding a very large effect size (d = 0.80; cohen, 1988). to overcome these variations and account for school size and lep rates in the matching process, the researchers converted school size and lep data into z-scores exclusive to school academic achievement for fifth-grade students 21 classification. by performing this calculation, intermediate campuses could be compared to elementary campuses relative to school size and lep rates (i.e., large intermediate campuses would be paired with large elementary campuses, and well-matched schools would adhere closely to the ratio established by compared means). finally, to standardize the remaining data, ses and mobility rates were converted into z-scores relative to the entire group. this conversion was conducted at the group level as opposed to the school level because significant differences in the variations were not present in the remaining data (i.e., sd = 24.11 vs. 29.96 for intermediate ses vs. elementary ses; sd = 4.94 vs. 7.48 for intermediate mobility vs. elementary mobility) as were present in school size and lep averages. step 4: find optimal matches for each target school. once missing variables were accounted for and the data converted to z-scores relative to either school classification or whole group, schools were matched to each other by calculating the lowest average z-score difference between a target intermediate campus and all elementary campuses within an academic year across all four selected variables. in the pairing process, no schools were used more than once for each academic year (i.e., matching without replacement). in addition, if one elementary school was determined to have the lowest z-score difference in relation to two intermediate schools, then the pairing that produced the lowest rate of difference for the entire set of schools for that specific academic year was selected. specifically, a four-dimensional pythagorean distance formula was utilized—with school size (ss) and lep rates for each school converted into z-scores relative to school classification (i.e., k-5, 5/5-6), and ses and mobility rates (m) for each school converted into z-scores relative to the entire data set (i.e., all k-5 and all 5/5-6 schools in the state). the distance formula was as follows. assume t is the demographic variable for the target school (i.e., intermediate school), current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 and k is the demographic variable for the k-th school (elementary school). then, for the 5 years, the number of elementary schools that had each of the four demographic variables for each year was as follows: 2003-2004 k-th school = �1,�2,….,�1889 2004-2005 k-th school =.�1,�2,….,�1919 2005-2006 k-th school = �1,�2,….,�1997 2006-2007 k-th school = �1,�2,….,�2161 2007-2008 k-th school = �1,�2,….,�2283 further, the overall euclidean distance between intermediate school t and elementary school k was given by: ��,�=����−����2+�����−�����2+���−���2+�����−�����2, where zsst and zssk represented the z-scores of the school size variable for intermediate school t and elementary school k, zsest and zsesk represented the z-scores of the ses variable for intermediate school t and elementary school k, zmt and zmk represented the z-scores of the mobility variable for intermediate school t and elementary school k, and zlept and zlepk represented the z-scores of the lep variables for intermediate school t and elementary school k. thus, intermediate school t had k euclidean distance scores. that is, each elementary school had k euclidean distance scores. the elementary school then that was matched with intermediate school t was the school that had the smallest euclidean distance (ed) score, as follows: edt,k = min (d [t, k]), where edtk represents the elementary school with the smallest euclidean distance. for example, intermediate school 1 was paired with the elementary school that had the smallest euclidean distance: academic achievement for fifth-grade students 23 ed1,k = min (d [1, k]). however, if this elementary school already had been matched to another intermediate school because the euclidean distance associated with this other school was even smaller, then edtk represented the next smallest euclidean distance, ed1,k+1 = min (d [1, k+1]), or the third smallest euclidean distance was identified if this second-choice elementary school already had been matched, and so forth, until the unmatched elementary school with the smallest euclidean distance was identified. thus, elementary school matching was undertaken without replacement such that an elementary school could not be paired with more than one intermediate school. ultimately, the goal of the distance-based procedure was to obtain a solution in which the mean euclidean distance across all t intermediate schools was minimized—a form of least squares minimization. using these aforementioned techniques, the researchers were able to match schools with different grade span configurations in an optimal way. moreover, no studies were located in the literature that used such extensive matching techniques. the participating schools and their demographic compositions for each of the years studied are shown in table 2. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 table 2 demographic compositions (%) of elementary and intermediate campuses studied school size m low ses m mobility m lep m african american m hispanic m white m 2003-2004 school year elementary (n = 130) 590.66 48.97 15.45 21.75 9.73 43.78 41.94 intermediate (n = 130) 659.77 47.59 15.32 6.41 18.07 29.88 49.84 2004-2005 school year elementary (n = 140) 589.18 48.42 15.69 23.06 9.22 43.14 41.76 intermediate (n = 140) 648.57 46.94 15.31 7.04 15.21 30.65 51.76 2005-2006 school year elementary (n = 137) 599.82 50.69 15.33 23.61 9.82 43.70 41.51 intermediate (n = 137) 630.40 49.31 15.25 7.50 16.12 33.23 48.25 2006-2007 school year elementary (n = 135) 590.14 50.38 16.53 23.14 9.39 45.13 40.53 intermediate (n = 135) 635.78 49.50 16.59 7.65 16.87 33.25 47.21 2007-2008 school year elementary (n = 136) 596.85 50.59 14.77 24.63 11.28 45.85 37.13 intermediate (n = 136) 627.30 49.86 14.74 8.74 14.92 36.64 45.57 note. schools were matched based on the following four variables: school size, ses, mobility, and lep. academic achievement for fifth-grade students 25 step 5: validate the matching procedure. after all target schools had been matched, a pearson’s correlation matrix was conducted for each academic year to determine the extent of the relationship between the schools’ matched variables, with the assumption that the higher the correlation, the better the match. bonferroni’s adjustment was used to control the familywise error rate (chandler, 1995; ho, 2006; manly, 2004; vogt, 2005). specifically, for each school year (i.e., family), the nominal alpha value of .05 was divided by the number of correlations involved (i.e., 16), which yielded an adjusted alpha value of .003 (i.e., .05/16). results from the pearson’s correlation matrix, as depicted in table 3, indicated statistically significant correlations for 63 of the 80 demographics combinations at the p < .001 level. moreover, with respect to the effect size, 41 of the 80 correlation coefficients were large (i.e., > 0.50; cohen,1988) and 19 correlation coefficients were in the moderate range (i.e., .30 ≤ r < .50; cohen,1988). thus, 60 of the 80 (75.0%) of the correlations represented at least a moderate effect size, which indicated that the matching was successful. this additional step was taken to demonstrate the similarities in the matching variables of the matched schools. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 table 3 pearson correlation matrix for matched variables for 2003-2008 2003-2004 school year intermediate schools elementary schools school size low ses mobility lep school size .90* .21 .19 .50* low ses .13 .97* .58* .67* mobility .11 .58* .96* .44* lep .43* .65* .43* .96* 2004-2005 school year intermediate schools elementary schools school size low ses mobility lep school size .81* .22* .19 .54* low ses .16 .97* .56* .69* mobility .02 .55* .96* .40* lep .40* .67* .44* .96* 2005-2006 school year intermediate schools elementary schools school size low ses mobility lep school size .86* .20 .22* .50* low ses .05 .97* .55* .72* mobility -.02 .54* .96* .36* lep .34* .68* .38* .97* academic achievement for fifth-grade students 27 2006-2007 school year intermediate schools elementary schools school size low ses mobility lep school size .91* .12 .21 .49* low ses .05 .97* .49* .68* mobility .12 .48* .96* .41* lep .41* .65* .36* .97* 2007-2008 school year intermediate schools elementary schools school size low ses mobility lep school size .83* .14 .25* .49* low ses -.02 .97* .58* .71* mobility .07 .59* .96* .47* lep .30* .65* .45** .98* *p < .003 (i.e., the bonferroni-adjusted alpha value = .05/16 = .003 for each school year) current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 28 results prior to conducting inferential statistical tests, the dependent variables (i.e., taks reading and mathematics examination scores) were examined to determine if the skewness and kurtosis values were within normal limits. the standardized skewness coefficients (i.e., skewness divided by its standard error) and standardized kurtosis coefficients (i.e., kurtosis divided by its standard error) were calculated and compared to ±3, which represents the cutpoint suggested by onwuegbuzie and daniel (2002) for deeming a standardized skewness and a standardized kurtosis coefficient to be relatively large and thus represent a departure from normality. of the 40 standardized skewness and kurtosis coefficients, 25 (63%) were outside the range of normality. more specifically, 40% and 10% of the intermediate schools yielded standardized skewness coefficients and standardized kurtosis coefficients, respectively, that were large, with these schools yielding non-normal test scores that were characterized by negative skew and a leptokurtic distribution (i.e., a distributional shape that was more peaked than the normal distribution). even more notably, 100% of the elementary schools yielded standardized skewness coefficients and standardized kurtosis coefficients that were large, with these schools also yielding non-normal test scores that were characterized by negative skew and a leptokurtic distribution. consequently, non-parametric dependent samples inferential procedures were conducted (i.e., wilcoxon’s matched-pairs signed-ranked test). this inferential test can be used to test differences between two samples when using a matched-subjects design (howell, 2007; sprinthall, 2003). because five inferential tests were computed for reading and mathematics scores for each of 5 academic years, the bonferroni adjustment was applied such that the total familywise error rate did not exceed .05. thus, the adjusted level of statistical significance was .01 (i.e., .05/5). academic achievement for fifth-grade students 29 mathematics for mathematics, five individual wilcoxon’s matched-pairs signed-ranked tests were conducted comprehensively to measure student achievement between the matched schools over a 5-year period. fifth-grade students attending an elementary school had statistically significantly higher scores in mathematics than did fifth-grade students in intermediate campuses for all 5 academic years (2003-2004, z[130] = -5.05, p = .0001, d = 0.53; 2004-2005, z[140] = -3.51, p = .0001, d = .33; 2005-2006, z[137] = -5.15, p = .0001, d = .56; 2006-2007, z[135] = -4.91, p = .0001, d = .42; 2007-2008, z[136] = -5.19, p = .0001, d = .49). effect sizes ranged from .33 to .56 and, on average (m = 0.47, sd = 0.10), were moderate, based on cohen’s (1988) criteria. descriptive statistics for these schools for each of the 5 years of data analyzed are depicted in table 4. table 4 grade 5 mathematics scores for matched groups of elementary and intermediate campuses, 2003-2008 *p < .01 (i.e., the bonferroni-adjusted alpha value = .05/5 = .01) elementary (k-5) intermediate (5-6) school year n m sd n m sd wilcoxon z p cohen’s d 2003-2004 130 78.69 13.91 130 71.27 14.30 -5.05 .0001* 0.53 2004-2005 140 82.81 13.52 140 78.69 11.40 -3.51 .0001* 0.33 2005-2006 137 86.48 10.35 137 80.31 11.68 -5.15 .0001* 0.56 2006-2007 135 88.82 10.04 135 84.68 9.47 -4.91 .0001* 0.42 2007-2008 136 88.93 9.09 136 84.29 9.90 -5.19 .0001* 0.49 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 30 reading for reading, five individual wilcoxon’s tests were conducted to measure, in a comprehensive manner, student achievement between the matched schools over a 5-year period. grade 5 students attending an elementary school had statistically significantly higher scores in reading than did grade 5 students in intermediate campuses for all 5 academic years (2003-2004, z[130] = -5.18, p = .0001, d = 0.49; 2004-2005, z[140] = -3.79, p = 0001, d = .25; 2005-2006, z[137] = -4.03, p = 0001, d = .35; 2006-2007, z[135] = -4.87, p = 0001, d = .38; 2007-2008, z[136] = -4.61, p = 0001, d = .36). effect sizes ranged from 0.25 to 0.49 and were, on average (m = 0.37, sd = 0.08), small to moderate, based on cohen’s (1988) criteria. descriptive statistics for the taks reading measure for each year appear in table 5. table 5 grade 5 reading scores for matched groups of elementary and intermediate campuses, 20032008 elementary (k-5) intermediate (5-6) school year n m sd n m sd wilcoxon z p cohen’s d 2003-2004 130 79.59 13.69 130 73.13 12.76 -5.81 .0001* 0.49 2004-2005 140 79.14 14.61 140 75.76 12.06 -3.79 .0001* 0.25 2005-2006 137 84.05 11.89 137 80.05 11.29 -4.03 .0001* 0.35 2006-2007 135 85.75 11.24 135 81.93 9.09 -4.87 .0001* 0.38 2007-2008 136 88.24 9.24 136 84.94 8.87 -4.61 .0001* 0.36 *p < .01 (i.e., the bonferroni-adjusted alpha value = .05/5 = .01) academic achievement for fifth-grade students 31 discussion in this study, reading and mathematics scores of grade 5 students who attended elementary schools were compared with the reading and mathematics scores of grade 5 students who attended intermediate schools. grade 5 students attending elementary settings scored statistically significantly higher in each of the 5 years of analyses, with effect sizes ranging from 0.25 to 0.56. special attention was given to the matching procedures for each pair of schools so that the following variables could be controlled: school size (leithwood & jantzi, 2009), economic disadvantage (sirin, 2005), student mobility (kerbow, 1996), and limited english proficiency (contreras, 2005). interestingly, the mean achievement difference between the fifthgrade students who attended elementary settings and those who attended intermediate settings was one tenth of a standard deviation larger for mathematics achievement than for reading achievement (0.47 vs. 0.37, respectively). this suggests that fifth-grade students who attend intermediate settings in texas might be at a greater disadvantage relative to their fifth-grade counterparts who attend elementary schools, particularly in mathematics. although some researchers have documented that students perform better in settings with larger grade spans (e.g., k-8), and in settings including younger students (e.g., arcia, 2007; byrnes & ruby, 2007; cook et al., 2008; offenberg, 2001), few studies were located in which the performance of fifth graders in an intermediate setting having only one or two grades in the school was examined. one exception is a study where researchers examined the science performance of texas fifth graders in elementary and intermediate settings and reported statistically significant differences favoring elementary settings (combs et al., 2008). additional studies should be replicated to determine if these findings are present in other states. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 32 interpretation of results using theoretical framework of transitions the intermediate schools in this study contained either grades 5 and 6 or grade 5, thus having only one or two grade levels in the school. such settings would require students to make an additional transition after grade 5 or 6. in previous studies, achievement losses associated with transitions have been noted (alspaugh & harting,1995; howley, 2002). although students with achievement losses were able to regain prior levels, alspaugh and harting (1995) reasoned that fewer transitions would result in fewer performance concerns. based on the work of simmons and blyth (1987), it is possible that achievement differences were present in part because of the negative effects students might have experienced in the transition to an intermediate setting while also experiencing the changes taking place during puberty (simmons & blyth, 1987). one possible explanation for lower scores at the intermediate schools could be that grade 5 intermediate students were adjusting to their new settings in terms of different school structures, unfamiliar teachers, and peer interactions. although transitions have been related to decreased achievement and increased behavior infractions (e.g., arcia, 2007; byrnes & ruby, 2007; weiss & kipnes, 2006), this study was not designed to determine why differences may have occurred. moreover, because multiple variables affect student achievement, the researchers, in the design stage of the study, addressed variables that have been found to be related to achievement differences in previous research (e.g., school size [leithwood & jantzi, 2009], economic disadvantage [sirin, 2005], student mobility [kerbow, 1996], and students with limited english proficiency [contreras, 2005]). however, there are other variables also known to impact student achievement such as teacher quality (see hanushek, kain, o’brien, & rivkin, 2005), which could be investigated in future studies. academic achievement for fifth-grade students 33 interpretation of results using theoretical framework of communities of practice another possible explanation, based on wenger’s (1998) communities of practice theory, is that the interaction of the adults in the elementary schools might differ from the interactions present in intermediate schools structured with fewer grade levels. grade 5 teachers in schools with larger grade spans (e.g., k-5) likely have more opportunities to interact with teachers in younger grade levels in ways that might influence student achievement (e.g., sharing strategies and resources). providing continuity in curricula and instruction has been noted in schools experiencing success (mcpartland et al., 1987). in fact, the interaction of teachers among various grade levels has been formalized into a practice used to improve instruction (i.e., vertical alignment teams; duffy, 2006; texas leadership center, 1998). communities of practice may be useful in understanding why an infrastructure with several grades included in one building might be more beneficial to improving student performance. future studies should be conducted to explore communities of practice and qualitative research might be helpful in understanding the variations among the communities of practice in various grade span configurations. limitations one limitation of this study is that it is nonexperimental; therefore, the cause of the differences in scores between the two settings cannot be determined. as such, the findings are best considered collectively with other studies (cook et al., 2008; tucker & andrada, 1997; wihry et al., 1992). another limitation stems from the inability to model the potential nested structure of the data, namely, mathematics and reading achievement (e.g., students within classes, classes within schools, schools within school districts). unfortunately, the researchers did not have access to student-level (i.e., level 1) data, which prevented the use of hierarchical modeling techniques (hlm; raudenbush & bryk, 2002). nor could classes be used as the levelcurrent issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 34 1 unit of analysis because this level of data also was not available. it is possible that the intraclass correlation is large enough to indicate within-school dependency among the achievement scores; thus, the inability to model this situation using hlm techniques represents a limitation to the study. thus, replications of this study are needed using hlm procedures. strengths of current study and need for additional research notwithstanding, the present study makes an important contribution to the literature about grade span configurations for early adolescents. although the optimum method for examining causality would have been to randomly assign schools to configurations, this is a practical impossibility. however, the researchers were able to undertake the next best design, namely to identify rigorously the closest match for every existing intermediate school in texas. this matching technique reduced threats to the internal validity of the findings (e.g., differential selection of participants, mortality; [johnson & christensen, 2010]) by controlling for variables known to predict achievement (i.e., school size, ses, mobility, and lep). researchers were able to examine achievement differences across 5 years, and this is an additional strength of the study. additional longitudinal studies are needed to examine other transition points for students, such as students in primary schools, ninth-grade centers, and single grade schools. qualitative research could help to uncover some of the issues related to transitions for various ages of students. the present findings point to the need for continued research on grade span, particularly focused on the aspects that might be related to grade span (e.g., curricula continuity, teacher interaction). in addition, based on the findings, the researchers challenge the notion that isolating young adolescents into a separate facility with a small grade span is superior to educating these students in elementary settings with larger grade spans (see beane & lipka, 2006; paglin & fager, 1997). on the other hand, few grade span configurations studies were identified that academic achievement for fifth-grade students 35 examined the performance effects on younger children (e.g., first, second, third graders) being educated with adolescents (see burkam et al., 2007), although some anecdotal evidence describes the negative social effects for younger students in k-8 schools (see connolly et al., 2002; cook et al., 2008). in conclusion, more studies are needed to understand the reasons that grade 5 students 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(2000). multiple imputation for missing data: concepts and new development. proceedings of the 25th annual sas users group. retrieved april from http://faculty.smu.edu/slstokes/stat6380/mi.pdf current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 44 footnotes 1 there was a total of 130 elementary schools matched with 130 intermediate schools in the 2003-2004 school year, 140 elementary schools matched with 140 intermediate schools in the 2004-2005 school year, 137 elementary schools matched with 137 intermediate schools in the 2005-2006 school year, 135 elementary schools matched with 135 intermediate schools in the 2006-2007 school year, and 136 elementary schools matched with 136 intermediate schools in the 2007-2008 school year. this yielded a total of 678 elementary schools matched with 678 intermediate schools across the 5 academic years, and a total of 1,356 schools. 2 the distance-based matching formula converts campus demographics into standardized measures so that campuses with dissimilar school classification can be compared. using standardized measures, and accounting for the distance between those measures, allows researchers to compare “large” elementary schools with “large” middle schools, regardless of the actual student counts. 3 limited english proficient status for students is concentrated at the lowest grade levels, and gradually diminishes as students move up and are exited from the program. for this reason, lep percents are much higher in the elementary campuses when compared to middle schools. however, using the distance-based matching formula in relation to standardized measures, the researchers were able to compare and to examine elementary schools with a “high” percent of lep students to middle schools with a “high” percent of lep students. 4 according to their website, since september 2000, [pearson has been]…the leading provider of assessment and education data management services in north america. together with [their] sister companies (edexcel, pearson language testing, and pearson vue), pearson is the academic achievement for fifth-grade students 45 leading and most innovative provider of assessment and education data management services in the world. (pearson, 2010, ¶ 1) current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 46 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt volume citation smith, g ex ht abstract recruitin mathema remains were trai goal of e emerged career in improved nature of keyword satisfacti 13, numbe introduc t g. (2010). int xperiences a ttp://cie.asu. t ng people w atics (stem so today. in ined and pla encouraging d from the tu n teaching, in d academic f teaching. ds: tutoring, ion, intrinsic er 4 cing ste through troducing st as tutors. cur edu/ with rich bac m) into the te n this bound aced as scien them to con utors’ experi ncluding alt performanc stem teac c motivation wi em major authenti grin san josé tem majors rrent issues kgrounds in eaching prof ed instrume nce and mat nsider teach iences as sig truism from ce, and a mo ching, teache n, teaching a inter 2010 rs into th c experie nell smith state univ into the teac in education n science, te fession has ental case stu th tutors in g hing as a pos gnificant in helping oth ore nuanced er motivatio as complex he teachi ences as h versity ching profes n, 13(4). ret echnology, e historically udy, underg grades 9-12 ssible career their willing hers, satisfac understandi on, teacher r is ng profe tutors ssion through trieved from engineering, y been diffic graduate ste , with an ov r path. seve gness to con ction from t ing of the co recruiting, c sn 1099-83 ssion h authentic m , and ult and em majors verarching eral themes nsider a tutees’ omplex career 39x current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 introducing stem majors to the teaching profession through authentic experiences as tutors whether you like it or not, history is on our side. we will bury you. nicolai khrushchev, premiere, ussr finding enough good science and math teachers is an old problem. it is also, according to many, a critical problem. a watershed moment in us-ussr relations during the cold war illustrates both the problem’s persistence and its criticality. in november of 1956, soviet premiere khrushchev delivered his now infamous remark (above) in a speech to a delegation of ambassadors from the west, many of whom regarded his remark as an existential threat (foreign news: we will bury you!, 1956). less than a year after khrushchev’s speech, the soviet union demonstrated its ability to project nuclear force across continents by launching the first intercontinental ballistic missile (icbm). then, close on the heels of the icbm launch, the ussr launched sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, into a low-earth orbit. when the usa awoke on the crisp october morning following the sputnik launch to discover that the ussr had beaten the usa into space, many viewed the engineering feat as evidence of looming soviet technological, and therefore military, world dominance, and many in the states were quick to blame poor public education in science, mathematics, and engineering in america’s k-12 schools for america’s failure to measure up (dickson, 2001). responding to widespread fear that a continued failure of public schools to produce top-notch scientists and engineers would undermine the ability of the usa to meet threats from the ussr, the usa directed unprecedented resources toward bolstering national science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (stem) education (see, for example, boerner, 2009; bruner, 2003; dickson, 2001, rutherford & ahlgren, 1990; smith & o’day, 1990; yager, 1996). in 1958, for example, the us introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 3 congress passed the national defense education act (ndea), which added billions to the federal public education budget and resulted in sweeping changes in the way children were introduced to stem subjects. underlining the commitment of the times, in 1963, president kennedy delivered a speech at the 90th anniversary convocation of vanderbilt university (kennedy, 1963), noting that “modern cynics and skeptics see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing” (para. 15). kennedy sandwiched the comment about low teacher salaries between remarks about putting a man on the moon within the decade and about americans’ patriotic responsibilities in times of tension, making clear the reasoning behind the sweeping national education reform policies of the late 1950s and 1960s that sought to bolster education, and in particular education in stem areas: the nation was worried about being left behind; many saw stem education reform as a path to technological and military supremacy; and the government was ready to fund the reform effort. of course khrushchev’s ussr did not bury the west, and military threats due to the technological prowess of competing nations do not loom as large as they did when kennedy was president. however, many believe we now face other more pernicious existential threats, not as a nation but as a species, due to climate change and unwise global stewardship (see, for example intergovernmental panel on climate change, 2007; union of concerned scientists, 2010). therefore, and perhaps not surprisingly, according to many experts, a crisis of public stem education still exists and is as urgent as ever, despite the massive efforts of the past five decades. james rutherford (1997), for example, characterizing some of the failures of these five decades of effort, suggests that the crisis lingers in part because of a misguided emphasis of many of the education reform attempts, noting that reform of the cold war era was guided by the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 assumption that content and methodology were most important, so “post-sputnik concerns were curricular, focusing on what was being taught and how, rather than who was being taught” (para. 2). however, as any good teacher can attest, the process of educating a child is not as simple as curriculum or methods-centered reform efforts seem to assume. the latest sweeping systemic stem reform effort, spurred in large measure by the rise of asian economies as us rivals, reflects a growing awareness in the general public that focusing exclusively on curriculum and methodology is unlikely to result in the kinds of improvement in student understanding of stem subjects the public demands (bowers, 1997). a more holistic approach to education reform that takes additional factors into account may be more successful. for example, in the context of teacher preparation reform, grossman (1990) defined subjectmatter knowledge as one of the four “cornerstones of the emerging work on professional knowledge for teaching” (p. 5). similarly, gess-newsom (2001) posits “deep and highly structured content knowledge that can be accessed flexibly and efficiently for the purpose of instruction…will be essential in order to teach for understanding and to provide authentic opportunities for students” (p. 53). following this logic, many people think recruiting people who have strong stem background into the teaching profession may be a critical component of such a holistic approach (see, for example, center for educator compensation reform, n.d.; darling-hammond & sykes, 2003). are teachers prepared to teach stem? it has been quite clear to researchers for years that teacher quality is among the strongest correlates of student outcomes (darling-hammond, 1999; monk, 1994). thus, many of the more recent reform efforts put a strong emphasis on teacher quality. the no child left behind act (nclb), for example, requires teachers to become “highly qualified” by demonstrating subject introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 5 matter competence in core subject areas, with one path to becoming nclb compliant requiring completion of significant university coursework in the content areas in which they will teach (nclb, 2008). the unfortunate truth, however, is that as well intentioned as they may be, nclb and other systemic policy efforts have failed to alleviate the chronic shortage of stem-knowledgeable teachers in k-12 classrooms (darling-hammond & sykes, 2003). put simply, the us teaching force is not as qualified to teach stem as it should be (ingersoll, 1999). for example, fewer than 20% of middle school science teachers were undergraduate science majors, and in grades 1-4, fewer than 10% hold even a minor in science or science education (greenwood & north, 1999). when coupled with evidence of a high correlation between student performance and the number of science and math courses their teachers had taken in college (monk, 2004), these facts are alarming. indeed, the 2000 national survey of the state of science and mathematics education (weiss et al, 2001) reported that only about a quarter of elementary teachers surveyed felt well qualified to teach science and math. why the shortage of stem qualified teachers? many researchers point to teacher attrition as a primary reason for the shortage of stem qualified teachers (gursky, 2001; ingersoll & smith, 2003). however, recruiting difficulties, particularly in stem areas, also play a role (weld, 1998). a joke teachers tell gets at the heart of one possible explanation for the shortage: you know the difference between a large pizza and a teacher? a large pizza can feed a family of four! like most good jokes, this one contains more than a little truth. marx and harris (2006) report that in arizona, for example, among fields that require 4-year degrees, average teacher salaries rank in the15th percentile range and that top teacher salaries are lower than many entry level engineering positions. as marx and harris current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 (2006) write, “although it is clear that compensation is not the only or even the most important reason… it certainly is one reason” (p 473). similarly, a review of recent literature by guarino et al shows that cross-sectional variation in salary is clearly associated with teacher recruitment (guarino et al, 2006). this is consistent with the economic labor market theory of supply and demand as applied to teacher labor markets, which posits that the number of people willing to work as teachers is directly and positively related to the desirability of the teaching profession as compared to alternative available professions (haggstrom et al, 1988). in short, recruiting teacher candidates with rich backgrounds in stem subjects into the teaching profession has historically been difficult and remains so today in large part because of the all-too-accurate perception that teachers are poorly rewarded relative to scientists, technology experts, engineers and mathematicians. in an environment in which the average starting salary of an undergraduatetrained mechanical engineer in the us is $55k but the starting salary of a teacher is only $31k (bureau of labor statistics, 2008), many stem trained people rightly ask, “why be a teacher?” of course quite a few people with rich stem content knowledge do become teachers, and they offer many viable and compelling answers to that question. perhaps not surprising to anyone who has taught, their answers often rank salary considerations relatively low in importance. in one study, practicing teachers in a large urban setting cite enjoyment at seeing the students learn new things and making a difference in students' lives as the two leading reasons why they teach, and identify intrinsic rather than extrinsic rewards as most important to their general job satisfaction (bradley and loadman, 2005). as this and a raft of other research shows, people generally become teachers not because it pays well, but because it is personally rewarding. guarino et al (2006) report that one intrinsic factor in particular may be a primary introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 7 motivator for becoming a teacher: an altruistic desire to serve society. this suggests that teacher recruitment programs designed to help people find resonance with the intrinsic rewards of teaching, such as altruism, and that allow for meaningful evaluation of the teaching profession from first-hand experience, may be effective. this study presents one such program and describes some of the experiences perceived by participants as significant in their willingness to consider a career in teaching. methods this study represents a bounded instrumental case study (creswell, 2007; sandmanhurley, 2008; stake, 1995). selected participant experiences within a single tutoring project are highlighted specifically to illustrate aspects of the tutors’ perceptions of the project that seem important to their consideration of stem teaching as a viable career possibility. as with all such case studies, the present study is not intended to define or characterize universal themes common to all similar situations, but rather serves to illuminate specific interactions and perceptions situated in the context in which they occurred. no causal inferences regarding relationships between any given variables implicit in this study can be made from the present case, and generalization from the present case to other cases should be made cautiously. the tutoring project in brief the tutoring project, which spanned the spring 2009 semester, was offered in connection with the college of education at a large urban university that is a part of the california state university system.1 the project had two primary goals. the immediate goal was to provide high school students struggling with academic progress in math and the sciences with ongoing access 1 unlike most other states, california does not certify its teachers via undergraduate programs in which students major in education, but rather relies on a system of post-baccalaureate teacher credential programs as the major source of k-12 credentialed teachers. as a result, there is no education major available to undergraduate students at the university where this study was conducted. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 to tutors with strong content knowledge in chemistry and mathematics. the overarching goal was to expose undergraduate stem majors to the teaching profession in a forum that allowed them to experience the joys, satisfaction, complexities and fulfillment of teaching first-hand, and simultaneously to investigate the viability and effectiveness of this approach in encouraging undergraduate stem majors to consider careers in teaching. selection of participants/tutors about two months before the spring semester began, a series of recruitment flyers were placed in science, mathematics, and engineering buildings on campus advertising the opportunity to become paid tutors of middle and high school students in stem areas. over 45 students showed interest and attended an orientation meeting that introduced the project and described the tutors’ duties and responsibilities. funds were not available to support such a large number of tutors, however, so a survey instrument was developed to aid the selection of tutors from this pool. (the survey instrument can be accessed at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=euqkijnuyy9dnlvw5_2f84ba_3d_3d). thirteen individuals were selected, eight young women and five young men whose career interests, tutoring experience, stem content knowledge, dispositions, and availability seemed particularly suited to the program goals. those selected were between the ages of 19 and 24, and all had completed at least two years of study toward a stem area major at the undergraduate level (six sophomores, five juniors, and two seniors) and all maintained at least a 3.0 gpa (self-reported). in addition, each of the selected tutors indicated that they were at least somewhat interested in the possibility of pursuing a career in k-12 education. table 1 shows the gender and undergraduate majors of the tutors. introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 9 table 1 gender and undergraduate majors of tutors major males females biology 0 1 chemistry 0 1 math 1 2 engineering 2 3 computer science 2 0 social work (pre-med) 0 1 __________________________________________ the tutors agreed to commit between 10 and 20 hours per week at $15 per hour at an area high school in one-on-one or small group settings with students in grades 9 through 12. tutor training four 2.5-hour seminars were held over the course of the semester – one each month starting in early february and continuing through may. seminars focused on aspects of teaching methodology and educational psychology of particular utility to novice stem tutors. drawing from the work of rabow et al (2007), specific topics for the seminars focused on four major themes, described below. the initial seminar focused on helping tutors understand and manage initial attitudes, anxieties and expectations. specifically, the seminar centered on helping tutors develop realistic and healthy expectations toward the tutees and the tutoring experience, managing anxieties regarding being a tutor, understanding the tutor’s role, understanding the tutees’ needs, and building appropriate and useful relationships with tutees and others at the school site. at the beginning of this initial meeting, after a few clerical concerns regarding record-keeping procedures, payment procedures, and the like had been addressed, tutors were asked to hold up fingers to indicate on a scale of one to ten the level of anxiety they felt regarding four concerns, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 with one finger representing low anxiety and ten fingers representing high anxiety. consistent with rabow’s (2007) experiences with beginning tutors, all 13 of the participants in this project indicated moderately high to high anxiety (five to ten fingers aloft) when asked in turn if they were worried about students not liking them or them not liking the students, about working with students from different backgrounds, about their abilities to teach, and about their abilities to help their tutees succeed. after a brief whole-group discussion about these remarkable commonalities, each tutor generated an individualized list of concerns s/he was most worried about. the tutees then read four short illustrative cases taken from rabow (2007) and discussed each in small groups with instructions to look for intersections between their lists and the cases. the cases focused on (1) unconditional acceptance of tutees (pp. 9-11), (2) giving up expectations and preconceptions of tutees (pp. 14-18), (3) displaying genuine interest in the lives of tutees (pp. 19-21), and (4) communicating empathy (pp. 21-22). this was followed by a whole-group discussion in which participants shared insights they developed in small group discussions regarding their concerns. the seminar ended with a share-out of any concerns from the tutors’ lists that were not addressed in the small group discussions. notably, a second informal survey at the end of the first seminar along the same four dimensions probed by the initial informal survey revealed that almost all (11 of 13) tutees felt much less anxious about the prospect of tutoring (1-5 fingers aloft) than they did initially. the second seminar explored how to build trust, how to set appropriate boundaries with tutees, how to engage tutees in learning tasks, and how to structure learning tasks to be appropriately challenging to tutees. this seminar was held after all of the tutors had visited the school site and had met some of the tutees. in this seminar, we began by recounting in small groups some of our initial experiences at the school site and with the tutees. following this introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 11 discussion, each tutor was asked to recount two or three specific experiences related to a connection that s/he made with a tutee, such as the discovery of a common interest or a gesture of trust or acceptance on the part of the tutee. these specific shared experiences allowed for focused small group discussions of several themes related to becoming an effective tutor. these themes included how to find common interests, how and why to avoid the dangers of using gifts and bribes to motivate (e.g. “i’ll give you this really nice pen if you finish the worksheet.”), helping tutees overcome past negative experiences with tutors, showing appropriate respect for tutees, establishing healthy reciprocity by sharing appropriate personal stories and experiences with tutees, and helping tutees set and meet appropriate academic goals. the seminar ended with a whole-group discussion that summarized the small-group discussions; during the discussion, each tutor was asked to generate notes about practical strategies they could use to address some of the specific needs of their individual tutees. the third seminar sought to explore how to foster tutee involvement and interest in learning, and in particular, how to let tutees take the lead in learning tasks via inquiry, following rabow’s (2007) suggestions and insights regarding successful teaching techniques and strategies for use by tutors with tutees from varied backgrounds. thus, we began with a brief introduction to inquiry learning (bass et al, 2008) in which tutors were presented with a discrepant event (a cup of water is covered with an index card and inverted: the water does not spill out). tutors were given cups and index cards and were asked to explore the phenomenon in pairs in order to generate a series of conjectures and hypotheses, and to work toward a possible explanation of the phenomenon. after a brief exploration phase, we held a whole-group discussion in which we generated an academically acceptable explanation of the phenomenon. we then discussed the power of self-directed learning to motivate, the ability of inquiry strategies to hold student current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 interest in learning, and the satisfaction that can derive from solving an initially mysterious puzzle, or, in the words of one of the tutors, “the rush of feeling the pieces fall into place!” with this seminar experience in common, we focused the discussion back on the job of tutoring. tutors discussed in small groups some of the difficulties they had experienced at the school site regarding getting tutees engaged in learning or keeping tutees challenged and interested. using insights derived from their experiences with the inquiry activity that began the seminar, each group generated a collection of ideas and possible strategies that might address the specific difficulties their tutees were having. the seminar ended with a whole-group discussion regarding how an inquiry approach to learning can create opportunities for cross-cultural connections and can reduce barriers arising from cultural or language differences by providing those involved with a common experience or phenomenon to explore together (bass et al, 2008). the final seminar introduced approaches, strategies, and methods to bring the tutoring experience to a close at year-end. as rabow (2007) notes, “forming a strong, successful tutoring relationship and overcoming the various obstacles in its way are among the most difficult tasks a tutor faces. equally critical, and perhaps equally difficult, is ending that strong partnership” (p. 161). thus, this final seminar helped tutors explore the importance of ending their tutoring activities in constructive ways. the seminar opened with a share-out of tutor-tutee experiences and interactions that illustrated the depth of the partnerships that had developed over the course of the semester. tutors then read and discussed in small groups three illustrative cases taken from rabow (2007). the first two cases illustrated some of the common pitfalls that tutors can make, such as not saying goodbye at all (pp. 167-168) or making empty promises (pp. 169-170). the third case illustrated what rabow (2007) calls “the clean-break principle” and highlighted some characteristics of an effective goodbye (pp. 175-177). after the small group discussions, introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 13 tutors generated ideas about how to end their tutoring relationships, and each tutor briefly described one or more of the relationships they had formed with tutees over the semester and then shared their ideas with the other seminar participants about how to bring the experience to a close. the final seminar ended with a brief share-out by the tutors of the tutoring experience as a whole. the tutoring site the tutoring site, one of the oldest public high schools in california, is a relatively small yet comprehensive high school with just under 1000 students in grades 9 through 12. about 75% of the students identify themselves as hispanic or latino, about 10% as white (not hispanic), and the remainder either as asian, filipino, african american, american indian, alaskan native, or pacific islander. about 65% of the students are economically disadvantaged, and about 35% are considered english learners. the school is staffed with 4 administrators, 55 credentialed teachers, an academic advisor, and support staff. six percent of the core classes are taught by teachers who do not meet nclb compliance requirements. the school prides itself on offering a rigorous and demanding curriculum in a supportive atmosphere, and in 1990 the school site became a district magnet for the international baccalaureate (ib) diploma program, recognized and accepted by universities worldwide as a rigorous and comprehensive preuniversity education. most of the tutees had been identified by their teachers as needing extra help in stem subjects in general and math and chemistry in particular, although a few sought out the tutoring sessions on their own. also, several of the tutees were involved in the ib diploma program. the majority of the tutoring sessions were offered through the homework center, an after school program available mondays through thursdays, although a significant current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 number of sessions were held during school hours, either as pull-out sessions from established classes, or as assistance instruction during classes. no formal data regarding the tutees were generated or maintained; consequently, it is not possible to provide more than a cursory description of who the tutees were or what their individual needs might have been. however, based on informal observations and field notes, it can be reported with confidence that the tutees, who numbered well over 30, represented individuals from many if not most of the socio-economic, cultural and linguistic groups making up the school’s student body. tutees included academically high-achieving students as well as struggling students, native speakers of english as well as native speakers of spanish, tagalog, vietnamese, and other languages, students who seemed economically well-off as well as students who seemed economically disadvantaged, and roughly equivalent numbers of students of both genders. data collection data came from five sources: (1) an initial online survey, (2) weekly tutor’s logs, (3) tutoring journals, (4) a closing open-ended questionnaire, and (5) seminar leader’s field notes. first, the online survey instrument used during the initial selection process provided demographic data such as undergraduate class standing, subject major and languages spoken. the survey also provided descriptions of prior tutoring or teaching experiences and potential interest in pursuing teaching as a career. second, the tutors kept weekly logs documenting each tutoring session (e.g. time, date, tutee name(s), subject area, and a brief description of activity). third, the tutors kept written records of their tutoring experiences in journals in which they reflected on insights they had about their tutoring, the tutees, the tutoring process, and other significant experiences at the school site. the journals differed from the weekly logs in that they introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 15 were meant to capture the tutors’ subjective experiences in more depth than the more quotidian records kept in their weekly tutoring logs. fourth, at the end of the year each tutor provided a three to six page response to a questionnaire containing four open-ended prompts designed to gauge the extent to which the tutoring experience met their expectations and whether it resulted in meaningful or transformative experiences likely to influence their career plans. the prompts were as follows: (1) what were your ideas/expectations regarding tutoring in general? how have they changed over the course of the semester? (2) what new insights do you have about the teaching profession? have your views about teaching and teachers changed as a result of your experience as a tutor? if so, how? (3) what has been the most challenging aspect of the tutoring program? and (4) what has been the most rewarding aspect of the tutoring program? the fifth data source consisted of field notes generated immediately after each seminar that sought to record information communicated in informal conversations during the tutoring seminars. although these field notes do not offer verbatim accounts of conversations, they intended to capture the essence of what was said. data analysis data analysis followed creswell’s (1998) guidelines for categorical aggregation, interpretation and generalization. weekly logs, tutoring journals, culminating written responses and field notes of informal conversations occurring during seminars were systematically examined for issue-relevant meanings. each artifact (e.g. a student journal, or a weekly tutoring log) was read a minimum of four times, with a minimum of two days between subsequent readings. line by line coding was conducted using an unmarked copy of the text for each reading, with provisional codes applied to phrases, sentences, and segments of text that appeared to be related to the tutors’ consideration of stem teaching as a viable career option. during this current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 initial stage of data analysis, the net was cast widely, and a very broad interpretation of the construct “related to stem teaching as a viable career option” was operationalized, resulting in the generation of a relatively large number of codes. these codes were developed during the reading of the artifacts themselves while simultaneously keeping information from the literature in mind, using a methodological process that miles and huberman (1994) describe as “partway between the a priori and inductive approach” (p. 61). for example, because marx and harris (2006) identified teacher pay as important, the phrase from a tutor’s journal “salary of an engineer” was identified and coded, as was “low teacher pay.” both were given the code “compensation.” in addition, the journal entry phrase “the feeling you get when you help a kid” and the sentence “i didn’t think i’d enjoy it as much as i am.” were also coded (positive feeling). after each artifact was coded four times, the four code lists that resulted were compared and an attempt was made to form a single internally consistent code list for each artifact by revisiting the artifact once more specifically to re-examine areas of differences in the four code lists. the process was repeated with all artifacts, resulting in a large set of both etic and emic codes representing the data from four of the five data sources used in this study. (the initial survey was not coded). this extensive code list was then examined to identify larger categories and to locate emerging themes within these categories (adcock and collier 2001). these categories and themes were identified using a process of direct interpretation: the presence of a given code was considered as representing a single instance of a construct without attempting to look for multiple instances or to divine the context in which the construct was situated (creswell, 1998). thus, each individual code was assigned to one or more category directly, without further examination of the data, and the resulting categories were then examined to identify underlying introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 17 themes. for instance, from the above examples, the phrases “salary of an engineer” and “low teacher pay” were both coded as “compensation” while the phrase “the feeling you get when you help a kid” and the sentence “i didn’t think i’d enjoy it as much as i am” were coded as “positive feeling.” both of these codes, “compensation” and “positive feelings,” were identified as falling under the broader category of “motivation,” with the first two codes in the category representing the theme “external motivation” and the second two codes in the category representing the theme “internal motivation.” in this way, codes were aggregated into categories, and categories were organized into themes. once themes related to teaching as a career possibility were identified, the data was examined once again with these themes in mind in order to make what creswell (1998) refers to as “naturalistic generalizations.” thus, themes from one data source (e.g. a particular student’s tutoring journal) were cross-referenced with themes from other available data sources (e.g. that student’s responses to the culminating survey or notes of conversations between that student and the researcher) in an attempt to gauge the significance of the theme and the characteristic of its relationship to other themes. cross-referenced themes that emerged as particularly important in relation to the tutors’ consideration of stem teaching as a viable career possibility, or what creswell (1998) might call a set of naturalistic generalizations, are presented here. outcomes and discussion several factors seemed to play an important role in tutors’ favorably considering teaching as a career. three major themes are reported here: tutors’ positive perception of the value of their work; tutors’ positive perception of their aptitude for teaching; and tutors’ perception of teaching as a complex act. the following section is organized into three sub-sections, each corresponding to one of these three themes. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 tutors’ positive perception of the value of their work the first theme relates to the tutors’ perception of the value of their work in terms of tutee improvement. most of the tutors dedicated well over the required minimum of 10 hours per week to tutoring, with nearly a quarter of them logging up to (and over) 20 hours per week, and while no formalized attempt to gauge the impact of the tutors’ efforts on tutee learning was carried out, entries from the tutors’ journals provides consistent anecdotal evidence that tutees benefited from the relationships. without exception and on numerous occasions, tutors reported that their efforts with tutees resulted in performance gains on class assignments and tests. this perception on the part of the tutors gives rise to the first important and common theme. at the beginning of the project, many of the tutors doubted their ability to have much of a positive impact on tutee performance; when their efforts bore the fruit of tutee academic improvement, tutors experienced it as a positive intrinsic reward for their work. jason provides a typical journal entry. jason2: i feel that the most rewarding aspect of being a tutor was when i get to see the improvement in the kids. … seeing the kids that were struggling and failing when we first got there, to seeing them excelling and achieving in the classes now. and i’m proud that i could be a part of that. hai conveyed a similar thought in her end-of-year survey response. hai: when i think about what’s been the most rewarding part of the job, i think about the students i helped. i remember wondering if i would be able to get them to do anything or to help them at all because i thought that if they were going to a tutor it was because they were bad at whatever, math or science. but i found out that a lot of them were there 2 pseudonyms are used throughout this study. introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 19 because they wanted to do better, not because they had to be there. i think i did help them and that was really rewarding. almost every tutor (12 of 13) expressed a similar feeling of pride or satisfaction at having helped a tutee improve his or her academic performance. to be sure, evidence of student improvement is dubious when self-reported by individuals with extremely limited or no experience teaching or evaluating student academic progress. however, given the preponderance of such evidence from most of the tutors’ journals, it seems reasonable that the tutors had at least some positive effect on student learning. and even if academic gains were minimal, nonexistent, or resulted from factors other than the tutoring sessions, tutors perceived that their actions brought about student improvement, and as jason’s comment illustrates, that perception seemed to bring great satisfaction. this finding is well aligned with findings of several large quantitative studies, such as bradley and loadman (2005), who report that the most important determining factor related to the job satisfaction of practicing teachers is the intrinsic reward that comes from helping children. this is also consistent with studies, such as moran et al (2001) and guarino et al (2006), that report altruism as a positive motivating factor. tutors’ positive perception of their aptitude for teaching a second theme that seemed to play an important role in tutors’ favorably considering teaching as a career arose from the opportunity to experience teaching first-hand in an authentic context. it seems that the authenticity of working at a school site became an avenue for appraising initially-held ideas and assumptions against a set of actual experiences and that this authenticity allowed many of the tutors to think more deeply about the idea of becoming a teacher and their individual aptitude for it. specifically, differences in many of the tutors’ initial expectations and their actual experiences seemed important in their assessment of their own current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 suitability for teaching: many of the tutors seemed to hold more positive views about teaching and their suitability for it in the later stages of the tutoring project than they did initially. not surprisingly, this change of perception often translated into a more positive view of teaching as a viable career choice. a mid-project journal entry from antonio illustrates this theme well. antonio (mid-march): at first i was nervous about tutoring these students. i have a little brother back at home who goes to elementary, and he drives me nuts sometimes. so i was imagining a roomful of students just like him. i was expecting the kids to be hard to work with since they are only kids. i was not sure if could connect with them, or that they would just see me as an outsider and not pay any attention. luckily after working these past few months, my [experiences] are more positive. the kids are very welcoming to me, and sometimes prefer to work with me on some assignments. they mostly pay attention and they are definitely not the troublemakers that i was dreading at the beginning. here, antonio expresses initial reticence about the prospect of being a tutor and doubts his abilities to succeed even in this limited teaching role, yet after only a couple of months on the job his nervousness has evaporated and his view of students is more solidly grounded in meaningful and contextualized understanding of the nature of working with students. in fact, as he reported in two separate journal entries, antonio’s view about his abilities to reach students and help them learn metamorphosed rather remarkably in a very short time – a fact that seems integrally related to his increased willingness to give a career in teaching serious consideration. as the two journal entries below illustrate, both his increased understanding of the nature of introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 21 teaching and his increased confidence in being able to succeed at it inform his thinking regarding teaching as a possible career. antonio (late march): i feel great when students participate when i am going [over] a problem with them instead of just sitting around waiting for the answers. they … get involved and try and solve the problem. it makes me feel that i am actually making a difference! antonio (early may): along with engineering, teaching was always an interest for me. i always liked helping others with their work, especially when they finally got it (the “aha moment” we talked about in the seminars). tutoring at the school has definitely made me more interested in teaching. i really enjoyed working with the students and a teaching career would also make [me] feel that [i] could help students succeed and make a difference. similarly, in her first journal entry, mika remarks about the rapidity with which the differences between her expectations of the tutoring experience and her actual experience collided. mika (february): i really had a lot of anxiety going in. i figured that it was just gonna be a waste of time and i just thought i wasn’t gonna make any difference. i figured it was just a way to make some money but that it wasn’t gonna do much good. but after the first few times, especially when i got to work with the same student with her math more than once, i started to think i’m really helping this kid! that felt good. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 later that month, mika made a connection between her positive experiences with students, her changing attitudes about being a tutor, and a growing awareness that she may even have an aptitude for it. mika: (journal entry, late february): i’m enjoying this [tutoring] more than i thought i would. the money’s not great. i mean it’s not bad, i can pay my phone [bill] with it. but i really like going to the school and not just for the money. there are a few of the kids i can tell that i’m actually helping. they’re learning. and i didn’t really know if i could do that at first. i think i was worried that i would be bad at it so i didn’t get into it at first. this awareness that she might not be as bad at tutoring as she had initially thought, in turn, seemed to be related to her musings about a future teaching career in a conversation we had during the second seminar. mika responded to a direct question regarding what she thought about the possibility of becoming a teacher, saying (paraphrased in field notes), “it seems like a lot of people talk about wanting to be a teacher when they grow up. i thought about it when i was younger. but i hadn’t thought much about it since i started college, until i became a tutor. i like tutoring, so now i’m thinking about it. it’s a possibility.” jason also reports significant differences between his expectations of the tutoring experience and his actual experiences differences that plainly improved his view of the teaching profession. interestingly, however, jason’s observations center not on his expectations regarding his ability to help students, but on his interactions with the teachers and administrators. jason (early may): i expected the relationship with the teachers at [school site] to be much different. i didn’t think that they would be so happy about us coming in and taking some of their kids and us teaching them. but what happened was the complete opposite. introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 23 the teachers were glad that we were there. not to mention the two vice-principles [sic] as well. they were constantly praising our work, telling us what a good job that we have done. and that made me feel good, and made me want to work harder and make the kids learn more. six other tutors, along with antonio, mika, and jason (for a total of nine of the 13), expressed similar views, indicating that their actual experiences of tutoring were very different, and more positive, than their initial expectations. of the nine who expressed that their actual experiences were more positive than initial expectations and noted a more positive assessment of their suitability for teaching, five cited this change as an important contributing factor in their willingness to consider teaching as a career. this theme is consistent with expectancy-value motivation theories, such as wigfield and eccles (2000), which posit that perceptions of one’s ability are important in motivation. in the present case, the change in perceptions of five of the tutors’ suitability for a teaching career seemed to act as a motivator to consider the profession as a career option. tutors’ perception of teaching as a complex act while the two themes reported above are generally consistent with much of the literature on teacher motivation that reports the strongest motivations for choosing teaching include intrinsic factors such as an altruistic desire to help children and a positive perception of teaching abilities (e.g. richardson and watt, 2006), jason’s observations regarding his acceptance at the school site also hints at a third theme that emerged as important: a view of teaching as a complex act. this theme of teaching as a complex act is not as well documented in the literature. jason’s points at this theme in several journal entries. for example, his initial expectations were that the professional educators at the school site would resist his efforts or current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 perceive him as an outsider encroaching on protected turf. but when school staff reacted quite differently, not only did it have an effect on his own willingness to work hard, it also caused a shift in his understanding of what teachers do for a living. jason: (early may) my views of teachers have definitely changed. i have experienced many teachers that i felt that i could just never learn from. simply, i thought that they were “bad teachers.” but i realize now that all teachers want their students to pass and do well. i have seen some of these kids be incredibly rude and disrespectful to teachers, and the teachers give them detention after school. and instead of the teachers blowing them off, and ignoring them the whole time, they put effort into helping them learn the material that they may have missed while they were disrupting the class. jason: (early may) i realize that a high school teacher’s job goes far beyond the classroom, the students, and their parents. they are very much involved in these kids lives. here, jason’s appreciation for the complexity of teaching seems to be increasing. concurrently, his growing enthusiasm for the job seems to be keeping pace. it is possible that jason’s view of the complexity of teaching as a positive motivator – to the extent that this is a correct interpretation of his view – is related to an appraisal of teaching as an intellectually stimulating career. this factor is recognized as an important motivator by several researchers, such as sinclair et al (2006), who developed a psychometric tool to measure teacher motivation, modified orientation to teach (mots), and found the construct useful as an internal (intrinsic) adaptive scale of measurement related to teacher motivation. introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 25 another tutor, martin, evidences the theme as well. he came to understand that teaching is more than just a cut-and dried procedure in which a content expert dispenses content knowledge but is instead a complex endeavor that requires strong content understanding, flexibility, a thorough understanding of the student, and a nuanced sensitivity to context. in this context, it is perhaps significant that martin is an upperclassman approaching the completion of an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering. when asked why he had chosen to study engineering, he said that he viewed engineering as a problem-solving endeavor that would keep him challenged and thus intellectually engaged, which he indicated was very important to him. in addition, he often spoke about the satisfaction that came from working with others on complex and authentic engineering projects in his upper-level classes. in short, he expressed the idea that the complexity of being an engineer would hold his interest. notably, in seminar conversations, he often expressed that as difficult and rigorous as his university level engineering curriculum has been, he has often found his role as a tutor to be equally challenging, quite rewarding, and ultimately perhaps even life-changing. the following quotes seem to indicate a growing awareness that teaching may offer similar intellectual challenges and opportunities to martin as engineering, challenges and opportunities he clearly values. martin: (march) i have learned that when tutoring i shouldn’t expect a mechanical approach. sometimes i will have to move towards the student in order to teach them. martin: (april): the students actually appreciate me being there to help them! it’s amazing how each time i enter they all say “hi” or “yay! he is here today!” and also when they [have] confidence enough to thank me or talk about random things. for example a girl, maureen, would come in during recess and start asking me question about current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 college or if i ever eaten some random dessert and how it’s really good. her innocence … is what i enjoy from spending my time with them. martin: (early may) overall this experience has made me want to become a teacher even more. taken separately, these journal entries may seem to indicate merely that martin’s interpersonal experiences involved a recognition that teaching is socially involving, requires significant skill at recognizing changing student needs, and that is accompanied by interactions with people that go far beyond what he expected. however, when contextualized with other data, these entries seem also to reveal that martin highly valued these complexities. on many occasions in conversation, for example, martin confessed that before his experience as a tutor, he held a view of teaching as a far more mechanical endeavor than his actual experience revealed it to be, and his changing view was accompanied by a growing appreciation for the profession. stewart seemed to hold similar views. in a response to the open-ended questionnaire prompt, “what new insights do you have about the teaching profession? have your views about teaching and teachers changed as a result of your experience as a tutor?,” stewart expressed this theme quite plainly. stewart: i learned this: teaching isn’t easy! i may know about math, but teaching it to someone else is something else altogether. i can see how it would take a long time to get good at it. we learned some [information] that was helpful in the seminars, and i would watch the teachers at [school site], and i can see that there’s much much more i’d have to learn to be a good teacher. introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 27 notably, stewart connected his newly found appreciation for the complexity of teaching to an increased willingness to consider it as a worthy profession. when asked whether this view of teaching as complex made the career more or less appealing as compared to other careers he might choose, his response, paraphrased below, was clear. stewart: i’m a math major because i like to solve problems. i like the way you can take a concept and use it in a variety of ways to find answers to a lot of different problems that are very difficult, and that you can’t solve any other way. i can see that teaching might be like that too. it’s complex, but it also seems like there are methods you could get good at. aside from jason, martin, and stewart, two others (for a total of five of the 13) expressed similar conceptions of teaching as a complex act and connected that perception it to an increased willingness to consider teaching as a career. in addition to these three themes, another simpler theme emerged in the present study: not at all surprisingly, simply having positive experiences as a tutor seemed to play a role in tutors’ favorable consideration of teaching as a career possibility. of course, merely having a positive tutoring experience is unlikely to be a sufficient cause for someone to consider becoming a teacher; however, in kristin’s case it may prove to be! kristin: (late march) sometimes the students i normally work with are not in class so i have to tell the teacher i need another student, and when all the kids raise their hands to work with me, it feels nice… i had forgotten how it was to be in school, so with this experience i have been exposed to being in a school environment once again. i feel like i might not want to teach really young students, but i still want to teach. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 28 similarly with shuo and michele, who were both already strongly considering teaching careers, their overall positive experiences as tutors bolstered their resolve to become teachers. specifically, shuo highlighted camaraderie with the staff and students as important factors. shuo: the teachers made it enjoyable and the students were fun to work with. i want to become a math teacher one day, and to have this experience made me want to continue in that direction. michele seemed to be well on her way toward developing the outlook of a practitioner and was eager to sharpen her skills in anticipation of entering the profession. michele: the workshops were helpful because they provided tips and tools for tutoring in the classroom. during this semester, i have gained more passion to teach in the future. it is rewarding to see students succeed and to know that i am part of their success. my views have changed … i have a greater willingness to pursue a career in education. in carolyn’s case, the experience provided a forum for her to explore her own motivations in an authentic context. carolyn: from this job, i was able to learn a lot about myself and what drives me. i had a chance to narrow down and think about what i enjoy and want to do. i thought i would work with kindergarten/preschool. but now i also would like to work with middle school and high school students. conclusions writing about the challenges of recruiting teachers into the profession, thornton and reid (2001) note that although some people wind up in the teaching career because they have introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 29 limited options elsewhere, they state that, “ideally it would seem best to ‘pull’ recruits towards teaching, as a positive career choice, rather than to ‘push’ them. the best way of accomplishing this appears to be positive work experience in schools.” (p. 112). this may be especially important with people who have significant training and expertise in stem areas. this study suggests that programs designed to offer potential teacher candidates with rich stem understanding authentic and meaningful experiences as instructors in classroom settings may be an effective way to pull them toward a career in teaching. as a result of participating in this project, eight of the 13 tutors expressed an increased willingness to seriously consider teaching as a career option, and all 13 tutors reported that the experience made the possibility more attractive. this is captured well by the observations of michele and liza, who after only one semester working with kids in schools were able to capture quite succinctly an idea that rings true for many of us who have been teaching for years. liza: it feels really good when students get the “ah ha!” and they thank me for it! michele: the most rewarding aspect of tutoring was to see the students arrive at the “ah, ha!” moment…to see that grand smile on a kid’s [face] and the kid saying, “thank you, michele.” in this light, and consistent with what thornton and reid (2001) suggest, the implications of the project discussed here are simple: it seems likely that if more stem majors are given opportunities to experience what liza and michele experienced, more stem majors might wind up as k-12 teachers. aside from its potential utility as a teacher recruitment method, it is hoped that the methodological approach used in this bounded instrumental case study will add to the depth of the quantitative literature about what motivates people to choose teaching as a career. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 30 the findings reported here regarding the first two of the three major themes that emerged from this project are generally consistent with much of that literature (e.g. bradley and loadman, 2005; richardson and watt, 2006). the third theme that emerged from this study is far less well established in the available literature. it is unclear from the present study why a view of teaching as a complex and nuanced endeavor rather than a cut-and-dried procedural exercise might have appealed to them, or indeed if such an interpretation is correct. however, it is reasonable to hypothesize that a view of teaching as a complex act is part and parcel of a view of teaching as intellectually stimulating, which sinclair et al (2006) recognize as an important motivation to teach. further exploration of this theme in particular may lead to a better understanding of the kinds of experiences that may lead stem students into the teaching profession. introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 31 references bradley, k.d. & loadman, w.e. 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(1999). teacher quality and student achievement: a review of state policy evidence. center for the study of teaching and policy. university of washington. darling-hammond, l. and sykes, g. (2003, september 17). wanted: a national teacher supply policy for education: the right way to meet the "highly qualified teacher" challenge. education policy analysis archives, 11(33). retrieved august 15, 2009 from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v11n33/ dickson, paul (2001). sputnik: the shock of the century. new york: walker and company. foreign news: we will bury you! (1956, november 26). time, 68(22). retrieved november 11, 2010 from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,867329,00.html gess-newsom, j. (2001). secondary teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about subject matter and their impact on instruction. in j. gess-newsome & n. g. lederman (eds.), examining pedagogical content knowledge (pp. 51-94). dordrecht, the netherlands: klewer academic publishers. greenwood, m. r. & north, k. k. 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(1997). ipcc fourth assessment report: climate change 2007. retrieved september 15, 2009 from http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/contents.html kennedy, j. f. (1963, may). remarks in nashville at the 90th anniversary convocation of vanderbilt university. speech presented at vanderbilt university in nashville, tn. retrieved august 9, 2009, from http://www.jfklibrary.org/historical+resources/archives/reference+desk/speeches/jfk /003pof03vanderbilt05181963.htm marx, r. w. & harris, c.j. (2006). no child left behind and science education: opportunities, challenges, and risks. elementary school journal, 106 (5), 467-477. miles, m.b., & huberman, a.m. (1994). qualitative data analysis: an expanded sourcebook. thousand oaks, ca: sage. monk, d. (1994). subject area preparation of secondary mathematics and science teachers and student achievement. economics of education review, 13(2), 125-145. moran, a., kilpatric, r., abbot, l., dallat, j. & mcclune, b. (2001). training to teach: motivating factors and implications for recruitment. evaluation & research in education, 15 (1), 17-32. no child left behind act of 2001, 20 u.s.c. § 6319 (2008). rabow, j., chin, t., & fahimian, n. (1997). tutoring matters: everything you always wanted to know about how to tutor. philadelphia: temple university press. introducing stem majors to the teaching profession 33 recruiting new teachers, inc. (2000). in council of the great city schools (ed.), the urban teacher challenge: teacher demand and supply in the great city schools. [electronic version]. retrieved august 15, 2009, from http://www.cgcs.org/pdfs/utc.pdf richardson, p. w., & watt, h. m. g. (2006). who chooses teaching and why? profiling characteristics and motivations across three australian universities. asia-pacic journal of teacher education, 34(1), 27-56. rutherford, j. (1997). sputnik and science education. retreived august 6, 2009, from http://www.nationalacademies.org/sputnik/ruther1.htm rutherford, j & ahlgren, a. (1990) science for all americans. oxford: oxford university press. sinclair, c., dowson, m., mcinerney, d. m. (2006). motivations to teach: psychometric perspectives across the first semester of teacher education. teachers college record, 108(6), 1132-1154. smith, m.s & o’day, j. (1990). systemic school reform. journal of education policy, 5(5), 233267. sandman-hurley, k. (2008). volunteers tutoring reading-disabled adult literacy learners: a case study. adult basic education literacy journal, 2(2), 94-103. stake, r. (2005). qualitative case studies. in n. k. denzin & y. s.lincoln (eds.), the sage handbook of qualitative research (443-466). thousand oaks, ca: sage. thornton, m., & reid, i. (2001). primary school teaching as a career: the views of the successfully recruited. journal of education for teaching, 27(1), 111-112. union of concerned scientists. (2010). climate change in the united states: the prohibitive costs of inaction. retrieved november 22, 2010 from http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/climate-costs-ofinaction.html weiss, i. r., banilower, e. r., mcmahon, k. c., & smith, p. s. (2001). report of the 2000 national survey of science and mathematics education. chapel hill, nc: horizon research, inc. weld, j. (1998). attracting and retaining high-quality professionals in science education. phi delta kappan, 79(7), 536-539. wigfield, a., & eccles, j. s. (2000). expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation. contemporary educational psychology, 25, 68-81. yager r.e. (1996). science/technology/society as reform in science education. albany, ny: state university of new york press. current is about th author: affiliatio address ca 951 email: g biograp conduct his wor sustaina ssues in educ he author grinell sm on: san jos s: departme 92 grinell.smit phical infor ts scholarsh rk focuses o ability. cation vol. 13 mith se state un ent of elem th@sjsu.ed rmation: gr hip in the ar on two maj 3 no. 4 niversity mentary edu du rinell smith reas of scie or themes: ucation, sa h is a profe ence educat preparing an josé stat essor of ed tion and ed excellent s te universi ducation wh ducational f stem teac ity, san jos ho teaches a foundations hers, and 34 sé, and s. introducin volume authors articles publishe an kr hilla d ju an h mi ng stem ma e 13, num hold the copy s in other jour er and include ngela abeyta rista adams ary andrelch diana barela ulia boukara ndrew darian aiying dong iriam emran ajors to the te curr mber 4 yright to artic rnals should b e the url of t provide a hik n n eaching profes rent issu http:// w cles published be addressed t the cie publi ed cie is cred edito exe lor katy e jeffr sec sar mar me amb seo tiff calv linds fac gusta jean de ssion ues in e /cie.asu.e winter 2010 d in current is to the author. ication. permi dited and cop orial team cutive editor ri ellingford elizabeth his rey i. johnso ction editors rah heaslip rlene hinton elinda hollis ber johnston onghee kim fany o’neill vin richards say richerso culty advisers vo e. fischm nne m. power ebby zambo educati edu 0 issues in educ reprints sho ission is here pies are not so m rs d rich on n n s on s man rs on iss cation. reque ould credit cie eby granted to old. ror ta kar luc ker jennife ky sn 1099-83 ests to reprint e as the origi o copy any art ry schmitt apati sen ri visconti cy watson rie wilkins er wojtulewi yle wright 35 39x cie inal ticle, icz cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x an analysis of the fidelity implementation policies of the what works clearinghouse jean stockard university of oregon and national institute for direct instruction citation stockard, j. (2010). an analysis of the fidelity implementation policies of the what works clearinghouse. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract a large body of literature documents the central importance of fidelity of program implementation in creating an internally valid research design and considering such fidelity in judgments of research quality. the what works clearinghouse (wwc) provides web-based summary ratings of educational innovations and is the only rating group that is officially sponsored by the u.s. department of education. yet, correspondence with the organization indicates that it disregards information regarding implementation fidelity in its summary ratings, relying on “replicated findings” and suggesting that any fidelity issues that “may have arisen are averaged.” this paper demonstrates the fallacy in this logic. simulations show that the policy minimizes the positive impact of highly effective programs and the negative impact of highly ineffective programs. implications are discussed. keywords: implementation fidelity, what works clearinghouse, evidence screening, systematic reviews, program evaluation current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: jean stockard affiliation: university of oregon and national institute for direct instruction address: p.o. box 11248, eugene, oregon 97440 email: jstockard@nifdi.org biographical information: a sociologist by training, jean stockard is professor emerita at the university of oregon and director of research for the national institute for direct instruction. her recent publications span areas of sociology of education, family, youth, demography, and methodology. an analysis of the fidelity implementation policies of the what works clearinghouse analysis of fidelity implementation policies prompted by the long-standing concern with promoting students’ academic achievement, reviews and meta-analyses of studies of educational reforms are relatively common (e.g. adams and engelmann 1996, aft 1998, beck and mccaslin 1978, borman et al 2003, herman, et al 1999). in addition, several groups have web-based summaries of program effectiveness oriented toward educators and the public at large (e.g. social programs that work, http://www.evidencebasedprograms.org/; promising practices network, http://www.promisingpractices.net/; and the best evidence encyclopedia, http://www.bestevidence.org/). yet, only one of these, the what works clearinghouse (wwc), is endorsed by the u.s. department of education. the wwc was established in 2002 by the u.s. department of education’s institute of education sciences “to provide educators, policymakers, researchers and the public with a central and trusted source of scientific evidence of what works to improve student outcomes” (wwc statement of work, p. 1). given this official sponsorship by the federal government, any systematic errors with its conclusions should be the focus of serious concern. although the clearinghouse began reviewing research on various topic areas in education in 2003, summary ratings did not begin to appear until 2007. despite its relatively short period of existence, the wwc’s policies and procedures have received substantial scholarly and professional criticism. these criticisms have included concerns about 1) the scope of studies that are reviewed, both the inclusion of poor quality work as well as the exclusion of large numbers of relevant studies; 2) the quality of reviews, including reporting inaccurate and misleading summaries, using measures of outcomes that fail to match the studied curricula, and employing inappropriate statistical techniques; 3) a narrow research agenda including a bias toward small studies in artificial settings and of short duration; 4) ignoring contextual factors and issues of external validity; 5) failing to incorporate the cumulated scientific knowledge regarding research procedures in its conduct of http://www.evidencebasedprograms.org/ http://www.promisingpractices.net/ current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 reviews; 6) employing analysis techniques that result in minimizing the actual size of effects; 7) not including rigorous and transparent quality control measures such as peer review, comparisons with previous summaries, and reliability checks of ratings; and 8) the suppression of criticism, thus violating basic norms regarding the open quality of scientific inquiry (e.g. briggs 2008, chatterji 2005, 2008, confrey 2006, mcarthur 2008, schoenfeld 2006, slavin 2008, stockard 2008). much of the substance of these critiques focuses on the wwc’s strong preference for strongly controlled randomized experiments. for instance, in an extensive discussion of the wwc’s procedures, robert slavin (2008) cites meta-analytic studies showing that quasi-experimental designs with well matched experimental and control groups provide results very similar to randomized experiments. in addition, slavin suggests that the focus on highly controlled, randomized designs often results in highlighting short-term studies with small samples. he notes that this focus can potentially introduce bias and have low external validity. jeffrey confrey (2006) compares the wwc’s procedures to those used by the national research council’s report on evaluating curricular effectiveness (oece). like slavin, confrey criticizes the overreliance on randomized studies, detailing the way in which a sole focus on randomized designs ignores other issues in the quality of studies such as the nature of outcome measures, insights that are obtained through multiple methods of analysis, and issues regarding both internal and external validity. confrey specifically criticized the way in which the wwc deals with the fidelity of implementation: in sum, if the intervention program is sufficiently described, and there is no evidence in the research report that particular kinds of disruptions occurred, the program is given a rating of “fully meets the criteria” for implementation fidelity. this process seems to underestimate dramatically the challenges associated with implementation. analysis of fidelity implementation policies based on the studies we reviewed for oece, the variation within an implementation of a curriculum is substantial… (confrey, 2006, p. 206). this paper focuses on a specific aspect of the clearinghouse’s procedures for dealing with the fidelity of treatment interventions. this aspect has not received public scrutiny, but has the potential of resulting in misleading recommendations and conclusions. below i expand on confrey’s statement, by discussing the well-established importance of treatment fidelity in research and describing the wwc’s policies for addressing fidelity in their reviews. i then move to a description of the problems that result from the implementation of the wwc’s policy: it results in summary ratings that minimize the positive impact of effective programs as well as the negative impacts of poor programs. quite simply, it makes good programs look worse and poor programs look better than they actually are. the potential impacts are illustrated with examples using effect sizes and regression techniques. a concluding section discusses the potentially serious implications of the policy for educators, families, and students, as well as the public at large, and provides suggestions for change. treatment fidelity and the wwc policy as summarized by o’donnell (2008, pp. 33-34), “fidelity of implementation (emphasis in original) is traditionally defined as the determination of how well an intervention is implemented in comparison with the original program design.” the central importance of treatment fidelity to ensuring internal validity of an experiment has long been a standard element of strong research. poor implementation of an intervention is a major threat to the internal validity of any type of research design, and numerous scholars call for paying close attention to fidelity of implementation in any type of review of research results (e.g. crowley and hauser 2007, desimone 2002, emshoff et al 1987, gersten et al 2005, haynes 1998, mcmillan 2007, o’donnell 2008, ross 2007). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 somewhat surprisingly, the wwc website (as of october 7, 2009) pays relatively little attention to fidelity of implementation. a search of the website (using their search engine and the term “fidelity”) revealed 26 reports on individual curricula that included information on fidelity within a given study. in addition, a document directed toward consumers and titled, identifying and implementing educational practices supported by rigorous evidence: a user-friendly guide (2003), listed fidelity as one of the “important factors to consider when implementing an evidence-based intervention in your schools or classrooms.” the document notes that “whether an evidence-based intervention will have a positive effect in your schools or classrooms may depend critically on your adhering closely to the details of its implementation” (http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/references/idocviewer/doc.aspx?docid=14&tocid=7). i was not able to find any documentation on the website regarding how the fidelity of implementation affects the rating that a study may receive and nothing to indicate that confrey’s description, quoted above, has altered. it was only through personal communications with the wwc that i was able to obtain additional details regarding the way in which they handle issues of fidelity. in a letter written to mathematica, the organization that now holds the contract for wwc, in june of 2008, i mentioned the issue of treatment fidelity in the context of more general concerns with recognizing issues of both internal and external validity in their review procedures, echoing the criticisms cited above. the paragraph in which these issues were raised is reproduced below: finally, the range of work considered has been limited by downgrading findings from studies that do not incorporate strict random assignment. while we all know that random assignment is the “gold standard” for experimental work, the wwc’s overreliance on this criterion ignores the realities of how school organizations work. with this strict attention to random assignment, other aspects of research designs that are analysis of fidelity implementation policies an even greater threat to internal validity can be ignored. the most important of these is no doubt ensuring the fidelity of treatment implementation, making sure that a program is implemented as the developers designed it. a response from a high-level wwc official was received in september of 2008: the letter notes that the wwc review process may downplay implementation fidelity. definitions of implementation fidelity vary and many studies include little information to gauge fidelity, especially information about whether an intervention has been implemented within normal operating regimes of districts, schools, and teachers, not under specialized laboratory conditions. moreover, there is no standard metric with which to rate and assess fidelity across studies that assures comparability. the wwc’s approach emphasizes the importance of replicated findings, which ensures that any one study in which fidelity issues may have arisen are averaged with findings from other studies. intervention reports include an “extent of evidence” classification that allows practitioners to place more weight if they choose on interventions for which the extent of evidence is large, meaning the results are drawn from multiple studies and a large number of classrooms and students. note that this response essentially confirms the description provided by confrey – variations in implementation fidelity are simply ignored with an assumption that any bias will “balance out.” problems with the wwc policy there are numerous logical and methodological problems with the policy outlined by the wwc. the sections below address these issues beginning with the claims regarding defining and measuring fidelity and then moving to empirical assessments of the claim that “replicated findings” provide a way to deal with any fidelity issues. defining and measuring fidelity current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 the first paragraph quoted above makes three general points regarding the definition and measurement of fidelity. first, it suggests that the wwc review process downplays the importance of fidelity because definitions of fidelity vary. yet, as noted above, the definition of fidelity of implementation is well-grounded and highly developed within the field. in her extensive discussion of the area, o’donnell (2008) cites at least 15 sources in the mainstream education literature that converge on the standard interpretation of the term. she also notes that even more studies discuss the term in areas outside of education. contrary to the wwc’s claim, the notion of fidelity of implementation as program integrity, the implementation of a program as it was intended, is long established and well accepted. second, the wwc letter suggests that “many studies include little information to gauge fidelity.” the number of reports on the wwc website that include mentions of fidelity indicates that, in fact, many of them have sufficient information to gauge the extent of fidelity of implementation.1 more important, however, is the point that a study’s failure to include such information should be taken as a reason to question its conclusions (see crowley and hauser 2007, emshoff et al 1987, gersten et al, 2005, haynes 1998, mcmillan 2007, ross 2007). interestingly, two published criticisms of wwc decisions specifically address the wwc’s decision to give high ratings to studies with serious fidelity issues (slavin 2008, confrey 2006, and see discussion in briggs 2008, p. 18). third, the wwc letter notes that “there is no standard metric with which to rate and assess fidelity across studies that assures comparability.” this statement can be logically challenged. fidelity, by definition, is measured within a program, for the question is the extent to which an implementation adheres to the developer’s guidelines. logically, such comparisons would be within 1 because the wwc downplays the importance of fidelity of implementation, the number of studies that actually deal with this issue and were reviewed by the clearinghouse may well be larger than the number found through the web search. analysis of fidelity implementation policies a program. most well developed programs have guidelines for implementation and ways to assess the degree to which adopters meet those guidelines. comparisons across programs could be easily made, such as using dummy variables to represent whether or not a program met the developer’s standards (see cook 2002, p. 186). a measure of fidelity must, by definition, be program specific, but an indicator of the extent to which fidelity occurred can easily be universal. can fidelity problems “average out?” the second paragraph of the wwc’s response quoted above claims that by consulting numerous reports “any one study in which fidelity issues may have arisen are averaged with findings from other studies.” in other words, any problems with fidelity will simply “wash out,” sometimes portraying a program as better than it really is and sometimes portraying it as worse. this assumption probably, however, only applies to programs that have little or no effect, that is, to programs in which students achieve, on average, only as well as (not better than or worse than) those in a control group. it is likely however, that even if there were no differences in central tendency (the means), poor fidelity would result in a larger variance. when programs are implemented in different ways, greater variability should occur.2 more generally, however, the assumption that the effect of fidelity problems will be random is seriously flawed. for both exemplary programs and for programs that are ineffective, poor implementation of a program would, very likely, produce results that are systematically biased. thus, the wwc’s policy has very serious consequences for consumers, minimizing the positive impact of good programs as well as the negative impact of poor programs (see also engelmann 2008). basic to our analysis is the assumption of “regression toward the mean,” the well-established statistical phenomenon where those with high scores, or low scores, on a measure will tend to have 2 a recent article by zvoch and associates (2007) included measures of fidelity in the analysis of multisite implementation of a childhood literacy program and found greater variability among the sites with low fidelity of implementation than among those with higher fidelity. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 scores that are closer to the mean (lower for those who are high and higher for those who are low) at later testing periods. simply through regression toward the mean we would expect those who score lower than a mean at pretest to score higher (and closer to the mean) at posttest. this concept can apply to programs as well as individuals. by chance, programs that typically do well will, on average, do less well (rather than even better) over time. similarly, programs that do not perform well will, on average, do somewhat better (rather than worse) over time.3 these trends would be expected to be even stronger with poor implementation. a good program, when implemented poorly, would result in students doing less well than they would normally do. similarly, a program that typically results in poor achievement would, when implemented with less fidelity, result in students doing better than they normally would with the program. with poor implementation, the good programs would be less good and bad programs would be less bad. in other words, poor fidelity would result in biased results – and the nature of this bias is different for effective programs than for less effective programs. the sections below illustrate the extent of this problem using two different methods: calculations of effect sizes and calculations of regression coefficients. the impact of poor fidelity on effect sizes. tables 1 and 2 summarize the possible implications of inadequate fidelity of implementation for two different hypothetical curricular programs: one that is more effective than a control program (table 1) and one that is less effective than a control (table 2). effect sizes (the difference between the mean scores of experimental and control groups divided by the common standard deviation) are used as the metric of comparison.4 3 in lay person’s terms, this phenomenon corresponds to common-day sayings such as, “when things are bad, the only way to go is up;” and “those on top are poised for a fall.” 4 effect sizes are measures commonly used to estimate the strength of the relationship between two variables. unlike tests of statistical significance, they are not affected by sample size and thus provide estimates that can be compared from one study to another. they are often used in meta-analyses and other quantitative summaries of research literature. this paper uses cohen’s d, a widely used measure (cohen 1992). analysis of fidelity implementation policies for sake of illustration, it is assumed that the scores involved are normal curve equivalent (nce) scores with, for the control group, a consistent mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 21. consider first the data in table 1 regarding an exemplary program. the first column of panels a and b of table 1 gives four possible mean values of the experimental group that we will assume are the “true” values and the second column gives the values of cohen’s d that result when comparing these experimental means with those of the control group. it can be seen that the d values vary from .24, when the experimental mean is 55, to .95, when the experimental mean is 70. the higher values in this column are, in fact, similar to those often obtained in studies of highly effective programs, especially when they are implemented with fidelity (see adams and engelmann 1996). the lower values correspond to the level generally considered the point of educationally significant (d = .25, see fashola and slavin 1997). the other columns in part a of table 1 examine the likely result if the effective program is implemented with less than optimal fidelity, but the impact is simply the “random” effects that the wwc assumes will occur. in these calculations, as implied by the wwc assumption, the means of the experimental group do not change. however, the standard deviation is assumed to change, for with lower levels of fidelity, even if the means stay constant, greater variability would be expected. this is at the basis of the wwc notion of “averaging out.” three different table 1 effect sizes of comparisons with an effective program with different levels of fidelity a. random influences of fidelity problems (the wwc assumption) alternative d % change from "true" d m exp. gp. "true" d sd = 25 sd = 30 sd = 35 sd = 25 sd = 30 sd = 35 55 0.24 0.22 0.20 0.18 -10% -18% -26% 60 0.47 0.43 0.39 0.36 -8% -17% -24% 65 0.71 0.65 0.59 0.54 -8% -17% -25% 70 0.95 0.87 0.78 0.71 -9% -18% -25% current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 b. systematic influences of fidelity problems with smaller experimental means, but constant standard deviation effect sizes % ch. from "true" d m exp. gp. “true” d m 5 pts less m 10 pts less m 5 pts less m 10 pts less 55 0.24 0.00 -0.24 -100% -200% 60 0.47 0.24 0.00 -49% -100% 65 0.71 0.47 0.24 -34% -66% 70 0.95 0.71 0.47 -25% -51% c. systematic influences of fidelity problems with smaller experimental means and varying standard deviations effect size % change from "true" d m 5 pts. less m 10 pts less m 5 pts. less m 10 pts less m exp. gp. sd=25 sd=30 sd=25 sd=30 sd=25 sd=30 sd=25 sd=30 55 0.00 0.00 -0.22 -0.20 -100% -100% -190% -182% 60 0.22 0.20 0.00 0.00 -54% -58% -100% -100% 65 0.43 0.39 0.22 0.20 -39% -45% -69% -72% 70 0.65 0.59 0.43 0.39 -31% -38% -54% -59% note: if the impact of fidelity implementation is random (panel a), it is assumed that this affects only the standard deviation of the experimental group and not the mean. if the impact of fidelity implementation is systematic (panels b and c), both the mean and the standard deviation can be affected. cohen's d is calculated by subtracting the mean of the experimental group from the mean of the control group and dividing by the common standard deviation. the control group is always assumed to have a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 21.06, the mean and standard deviation of the experimental group varies as shown in the table. for the "true" condition, with perfect fidelity, both the experimental group and the control group are assumed to have the s.d. of 21.06, reflecting the definition of normal curve equivalent scores. the common standard deviation is calculated as the average of control and experimental group s.d. for each case, assuming that the two groups are of equal size. values of the standard deviation are given, and it can be seen that in all situations the value of the effect size becomes lower than the “true” value. the final columns in panel a report the percentage change from the “true” d value, with results ranging from eight to 26 percent. (percentages were calculated by comparing the “true” values in the second column with the other values of d going across each row and using the “true” value as the base of the percent.) panel b and panel c of table 1 presents results that are more likely to occur when an effective program is implemented with less than adequate fidelity. in such a situation, it would be analysis of fidelity implementation policies logical to expect that performance would be lower – that the mean value would decline. as with panel a, the first two columns of panel b give the “true” experimental mean and effect size for comparison purposes. the next two columns present the effect sizes that would occur if the average value of the experimental group declined by either 5 points (column 3) or by 10 points (column 4), but assuming no change in the standard deviation.5 again, all of the effect sizes are smaller, but the percentage change from the “true value” is much larger than in panel a, ranging from 25 to 200 percent. finally, the calculations in panel c assume that lower fidelity with an effective program has two effects: the average score is lower than it would otherwise be and the standard deviation is larger, as in panel a. again, of course, the effect sizes are substantially lower and the declines are marked. now consider the possible implications of poor fidelity of implementation of a program that is, in reality, ineffective and, in fact, produces poorer results than the control group. these results are shown in table 2. as with table 1, the results with the “true” values are shown in the first two columns of panels a and b. it can be seen that the “true” effect sizes vary from -.24 to -.95. the data in panel a illustrate what would happen if the fidelity problems produced only random changes: the means would stay the same, but the standard deviations would become larger. it can be seen that, in all cases, the absolute values of the effect sizes become smaller – that is, less negative. table 2 effect sizes of comparisons with an ineffective program with different levels of fidelity a. random influences of fidelity problems (the wwc assumption) alternative d % change from "true" d m exp. gp. "true" d sd = 25 sd = 30 sd = 35 sd = 25 sd = 30 sd = 35 45 -0.24 -0.22 -0.20 -0.18 -10% -18% -26% 40 -0.47 -0.43 -0.39 -0.36 -8% -17% -24% 5 these differences in the means are probably reasonable estimates. a recent analysis (stockard, forthcoming) compared reading achievement nce scores between a control group and two implementations of a highly effective program – one with high fidelity and one with lower fidelity. the differences in nce scores between the two experimental groups ranged between 5 and 17 nce points depending on the measure and time during the implementation. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 35 -0.71 -0.65 -0.59 -0.54 -8% -17% -25% 30 -0.95 -0.87 -0.78 -0.71 -9% -18% -25% b. systematic influences of fidelity problems with larger experimental means, but constant standard deviations effect sizes % change from "true" d increased mean increased mean m exp. gp. "true" d 5 pts. 10 pts 5 pts. 10 pts 45 -0.24 0.00 0.24 -100% -200% 40 -0.47 -0.24 0.00 -49% -100% 35 -0.71 -0.47 -0.24 -34% -66% 30 -0.95 -0.71 -0.47 -25% -51% c. systematic influences of fidelity problems with larger experimental means and varying standard deviations effect size % change from "true" d m 5 pts higher m 10 pts higher m 5 pts higher m 10 pts higher m exp. gp. sd=18 sd=15 sd=18 sd=15 sd=18 sd=15 sd=18 sd=15 45 0.00 0.00 0.26 0.28 -100% -100% -207% -216% 40 -0.26 -0.28 0.00 0.00 -46% -41% -100% -100% 35 -0.51 -0.55 -0.26 -0.28 -28% -22% -64% -61% 30 -0.77 -0.83 -0.51 -0.55 -19% -12% -46% -42% note: if the impact of fidelity implementation is random (panel a), it is assumed that this affects only the common standard deviation and not the mean. if the impact of fidelity implementation is systematic (panels b and c), both the mean and the standard deviation can be affected. cohen's d is calculated by subtracting the mean of the experimental group from the mean of the control group and dividing by the common standard deviation. the "true" calculations assume that the standard deviation for both groups is 21.06, the values of the experimental mean and standard deviation vary as shown in each of the rows of the table. the common standard deviation is calculated as the average of the experimental and control group s.d., assuming that the groups are of equal size. the results in panels b and c illustrate the results if the impact of poor fidelity is systematic. with programs that are ineffective, it would be expected that poor implementation would lead to higher average scores (through regression to the mean) and smaller standard deviations. the smaller standard deviations result from having values that are “less ineffective.” as can be seen in table 2, the result is that the effect sizes are less negative. that is, the extent to which tahe programs are ineffective, as shown by the “true” values of d, is disguised. the impact of poor fidelity on regression coefficients. the same substantive results occur if one addresses this issue using regression models. in other words, one reaches the same analysis of fidelity implementation policies conclusion when approaching this issue with the language of regression analysis rather than the language associated with difference of means and effect sizes. assume that there are two groups, an experimental and a control group and that the two groups are of equal size. by definition, the variance of this grouping variable, which we will term x, is var (x) = p (1-p) = .5 (1 .5) = .25 (1). equation (1) simply reflects the computational formula for the variance in a binomial distribution as equal to the product of the two proportions (p * q), where q = 1 – p and where, with groups of equal size, p = .5. now suppose that a program is implemented with complete fidelity. in other words, there is no error at all in the implementation. for sake of example, we will assume that the “true” covariance between the treatment (x) and the outcome (y) (cov (xy)) is 4.6 the regression coefficient (byx) is defined as the covariance of the treatment and outcome (cov (xy)) divided by the variance of the predictor, or treatment, variable. with the values defined here, b*yx = cov (xy) / var (x) = 4 / .25 = 16 (2), where b* refers to the “true” value of the regression coefficient. in other words, when the program is implemented with complete fidelity the regression coefficient (byx), which is defined as the difference between the experimental and control group (the two values of x), is 16 points. now suppose that the program is implemented with less than complete fidelity. in regression terminology, poorer fidelity results in lower reliability of the experimental treatment. this simply means that the differences that are observed between the experimental and control group do not reflect the “true” differences that exist. observed differences reflect the true differences (var(x)) 6 the choice of “4” is arbitrary. the important point for the example is that it is the “true” value, or the covariance that occurs with perfect fidelity of implementation. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 as well as error (termed var(e), for variance of the error term). in other words, under poor implementation, it is harder to tell the “real” or “true” differences between the two groups, and the observed variance of this grouping variable reflects both true differences and error. as a result, when a program is implemented with less than complete fidelity, the estimates of the regression coefficient are altered: byx = cov (xy) / [var(x) + var(e)] (3). (note that the asterisk has been omitted from the b coefficient to indicate that it is not the “true” value.) the covariance is unchanged, but the estimate of the variance of the independent variable is increased because it now includes the error resulting from less than perfect implementation (var(x) + var (e)). the result is simple. with lower reliability (higher error) the denominator of equation 3 becomes larger and the absolute value of b decreases. in other words, the error introduced through poor implementation obscures the “true” difference between the experimental and control group and increases the estimated variance of the independent variable (by var (e)). this change in the estimate of variance alters the regression coefficient. in a regression framework, varying levels of fidelity of implementation are usually illustrated through the use of reliability coefficients, a standard method of estimating measurement error. by definition, reliability coefficients vary from 1.0, indicating no error in measurement and thus perfect implementation, to 0.0, indicating simple random implementation procedures. the computational formula for the reliability coefficient, rii, is rii = var (x) / [var(x) + var (e)] (4). thus, in a situation of error-free implementation, when the error variance equals zero, rii = var (x) / [var(x) + 0] = var(x)/var(x) = 1.0 (5). however, as implementation fidelity declines and the error variance increases, the denominator of equation 4 rises and the reliability coefficient declines. analysis of fidelity implementation policies from rearranging equation (4), we can estimate the sum of the variance of x and the error variance as the variance of x divided by the reliability coefficient: var(x) + var(e) = var(x) / rii (6). substituting in equation (3), we can then estimate the regression coefficient, byx, as byx = cov (xy) / [var(x)/rii] = [rii * cov(xy)]/ [var (x)] (7). given that cov (xy) /var (x) is the “true” value of the regression coefficient (b*yx), the biased estimate of byx that results from decreasing reliability can be written simply as byx = (rii )( b*yx) (8), where b*yx is the “true” value of byx and rii is the reliability coefficient. in other words, the estimated value of the regression coefficient, or the difference between the experimental and control group, is linearly related to the reliability coefficient. if there is perfect reliability (perfect implementation or no error), the estimated coefficient equals the true coefficient (r ii = 1.0 and b*yx = byx). however, as reliability declines the absolute value of the estimated coefficient becomes lower than the true coefficient. table 3 summarizes this pattern of results for programs with positive effects and programs with negative effects. three different covariance values are included, with absolute values ranging from 2.0 to 4.0 (across columns two through seven). the first column on the left lists different levels of reliability, from a coefficient of 1.0, indicating perfect fidelity, to .30, indicating very low reliability and low fidelity. values within the table are the regression coefficients, byx, which were computed using equation 8, for each level of reliability. as would be expected, the absolute value of the estimate of b declines linearly with decreasing reliability levels. most importantly, as with the results with effect sizes, both the positive impact of effective programs and the negative impact of ineffective programs are obscured. with effective programs, the positive impact is smaller with less reliability (lower fidelity), as indicated by current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 table 3 regression coefficients for varying levels of association and varying levels of fidelity covariance (x,y) effective programs covariance (x,y) ineffective programs reliability 4 3 2 -4 -3 -2 1.0 16.0 12.0 8.0 -16.0 -12.0 -8.0 0.9 14.4 10.8 7.2 -14.4 -10.8 -7.2 0.8 12.8 9.6 6.4 -12.8 -9.6 -6.4 0.7 11.2 8.4 5.6 -11.2 -8.4 -5.6 0.6 9.6 7.2 4.8 -9.6 -7.2 -4.8 0.5 8.0 6.0 4.0 -8.0 -6.0 -4.0 0.4 6.4 4.8 3.2 -6.4 -4.8 -3.2 0.3 4.8 3.6 2.4 -4.8 -3.6 -2.4 note: the values in the cells represent the regression coefficient (b) for each level of reliability and for different values of the covariance, calculated using equation 8 in the text. lower reliability coefficients correspond to lower levels of fidelity of treatment (larger error variances). smaller coefficients. with ineffective programs, the negative impact is also smaller with poor implementation fidelity. thus, with lower fidelity the “true” difference of both effective and ineffective programs is obscured. discussion the results presented above seem to refute the assumption that guides the wwc’s approach to considering the fidelity of implementation in its deliberations and summary ratings. even if the results of poor fidelity of implementation were random, the efficacy of both good and poor programs would be misrepresented. if, as is more likely, the results of poor implementation are not random, the impact would be even greater. good programs appear less effective and poor programs appear better than they actually are. the logic and calculations presented in this paper are simple, but the implications are potentially serious. even though the chance of a false negative (concluding that a good program is analysis of fidelity implementation policies harmful) or false positive (concluding that a harmful program is good) is not high,7 the procedures that the wwc has adopted would appear to almost definitely promote inaccurate conclusions. their ratings would automatically minimize the extent to which individual programs can either help or hurt students. in addition, the procedures lead to false impressions regarding the extent to which educational programs have the potential to change achievement patterns by minimizing accurate information about the actual range of change when programs are well implemented. the wwc policy may result in especially misleading results regarding effective programs, which are, of course, of most interest to policy makers, educators, and families. effective programs may be more difficult to implement precisely because they address numerous factors that affect student performance. such models are typically “extensive-requirements” reform programs, rather than “minimal-requirements” programs. the greater complexity and intricacy of the models, while resulting in substantially stronger results, also present greater challenges to full implementation and high fidelity (engelmann and engelmann 2004). it would not be unreasonable to expect that issues with fidelity could affect a higher proportion of such extensive requirements models than those that were simpler. the impact of the wwc policy should also be considered in light of the very few studies that the wwc has determined meet their standards of evidence. while their reviews of individual curricula generally indicate that numerous studies, often dozens, have been examined, only a handful, usually less than three for any particular program, are deemed to have met the set criteria for inclusion. as noted earlier, the standards and their application have received an extraordinary amount of criticism. yet, the simple fact that so few studies are actually reviewed to develop the summary ratings makes the importance of considering fidelity of implementation even more crucial. 7 with the regression simulation, the calculated values of b never cross zero, but come increasingly close to this point as the error variance approaches infinity. this result reflects the constant covariance used in the analysis. with the effect size simulations, in which the difference of means varies, some of the simulations result in changing signs from positive to negative or negative to positive. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 given the very small number of studies on which the summaries are based, it is extremely important that the possibility of systematic bias be removed. it could be relatively easy to add such elements to a review procedure. as noted earlier, simple rating scales could indicate the extent to which study reports note fidelity of implementation. those with low fidelity to a given model could be discounted or omitted from analyses. more generally, this paper adds to the already large body of critiques of the procedures of the wwc. the literature is replete with well-developed guidelines for reviewing literature and developing systems of consolidating findings in ways that pay careful attention to issues of both internal and external validity – including issues of fidelity. the results of the analysis above suggest that the wwc would benefit from consulting this literature closely. if the clearinghouse were simply a project of a lone faculty member or small nonprofit with an obscure website the issues would be far less serious. however, given the extensive funding received by the clearinghouse (in excess of $50 million at last report) as well as the endorsement of the federal department of education, one could suggest that students, families, the educational community, and the general public deserve more. analysis of fidelity implementation policies references adams, g. l. & engelmann, s. 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(2008). the what works clearinghouse beginning reading reports and rating of reading mastery: an evaluation and comment. technical report # 2008-4. eugene, http://www.zigsite.com/pdfs/machinationswwc%28v4%29.pdf analysis of fidelity implementation policies oregon: national institute for direct instruction. stockard, j. (forthcoming). direct instruction and first grade reading achievement: the role of technical support and time of implementation. journal of direct instruction. zvoch, k., letourneau, l.e., & parker, r.p. (2007). a multilevel multisite outcomes-by implementation evaluation of an early childhood literacy model. american journal of evaluation, 28, 132-150. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word model 1.docx volume 14, number 2 may 28, 2011 issn 1099-839x the social dimension of distance learning by interactive television: a qualitative study liang zhao saint xavier university this qualitative study examined instructors’ and students’ perceptions of social relationship in distance learning. interview and observational data were collected and analyzed to generate theories. convenient sampling was used. factors influencing a sense of distance were analyzed. findings revealed greater difficulty establishing a social relationship in interactive television environments than in face-to-face environments. both instructors and students found it important to build a personal connection between them. instructors’ preference for course delivery and building rapport with students was to travel and teach at the remote sites. the study implies that faculty and administrators should seriously consider, in their decision-making, both the gains and losses of interactive television as a delivery format. keywords: distance learning, interactive television, social relationship, qualitative study. the past three decades have witnessed increased use of distance learning in higher education. the latest statistics by the national center for education statistics (parsad & lewis, 2008) show that 66% of american higher education institutions offered distance learning courses, with an estimated 12.2 million enrollments (registrations) in the 2006-07 academic year. the percentage in public institutions was even higher: 97% in public 2-year institutions and 89% in public 4-year institutions. the report also indicates that the most frequently cited reasons for offering distance learning courses were to provide access to college for students who otherwise would not have access, to make more courses available, and to increase enrollment. while these might be legitimate reasons, researchers are also challenged to explore how teaching and learning manifest in distance learning. fundamental questions include how do instructors teach and how do students learn in distance learning? how is distance learning the same as, or different from, traditional face-to-face learning? this study is an attempt to tackle these questions. distance learning has existed for one and a half centuries, from the correspondence courses in the beginning to the online courses today (mood, 1995). although today’s distance learning takes various formats, the most frequently used arrangements in the united states include online courses (synchronous and asynchronous), two-way interactive video, and one-way pre-recorded video (parsad & lewis, 2008). interactive television (itv), also known as interactive video or videoconference, connects several sites by audio and video links, so that one instructor can teach to a few sites at the same time. itv is interactive and synchronous: it is capable of real-time, two-way communication between the instructor and the student, and among the students at different sites. itv is advantageous over other distance learning formats in that it may greatly enhance teacher-student interaction (e.g., mash et al., 2006; whithaus & neff, 2006). among the different formats of current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 distance learning, itv resembles face-to-face learning the most. what, however, is the social dimension like in distance learning in general, and itv in particular? how is the social relationship in the itv environment? more specifically, how do instructors and students establish a social relationship across sites? how is the social connection in itv, as compared to face-to-face learning? these questions are important ones, although the answers to them are not clear yet; therefore, the researcher chose to investigate them in this study. the questions above are the research questions and they guided this study. this paper is therefore about the closeness, or proximity, between the instructor and the student, and among students across sites. it is about the teacher-student relationship, with a focus on immediacy and affinity. it is also about closeness and distance, connection and detachment. this study will contribute a better understanding of the phenomenon of distance learning (therefore will add to knowledge), help instructors and students create more desirable teaching and learning experiences, and help policy-makers make informed decisions regarding distance learning. literature review theories in distance learning are still developing. theories developed earlier, such as the theories of independence, autonomy, and industrialization (see keegan, 1986) do not apply to itv. more relevant to itv are the theory of interaction and communication, and the theory of equivalency. the theory of interaction and communication (holmberg, 1986, 1989) emphasizes the importance of didactic conversation and two-way communication in distance teaching and learning between the learner and the tutor. holmberg’s ideal was to give learners a more satisfactory learning experience and make distance learning resemble face-to-face, group-based learning as much as possible. it is not clear how the theory will work in the itv environment. simonson and his colleagues (simonson, 1997, 1999; simonson, schlosser, & hanson, 1999) proposed the equivalency theory, which states that “distance education’s appropriate application should provide equivalent learning experiences for all students— distant and local—in order for there to be expectations of equivalent outcomes of the educational experience” (simonson, 1999, p. 7). it is not clear, however, in what way the remote and local learner's experiences are to be equivalent, or how the equivalent value of the learner’s experiences is to be judged. among studies of itv, few have followed the qualitative paradigm (e.g., kelsey, 2000; swartz & biggs, 1999). quantitative studies of itv mainly address issues in three areas: student achievement, student attitude and satisfaction, and teacher-student communication and relationship. it is not clear whether the itv format has an impact on student academic achievement, although some studies (e.g., huff, 2000; silvernail & johnson, 1990) reported results of no significant difference in achievement between itv students and campus students. regarding student attitude and satisfaction, it is consistent in the literature that students prefer traditional face-to-face instruction. when the same group of learners evaluated the same instructors’ instruction, they rated the face-to-face portion significantly higher than the itv portion (thyer, artelt, markward, & dozier, 1998; thyer, polk, & gaudin, 1997). some students followed the instructor to whichever site the instructor was teaching face-to-face (biner, barone, & welsh, 1997). some students requested that the instructor visit each site (gerber & shuell, 1997), and some even requested that the instructor rotate to teach among the sites on an equable basis (milan & shuell, 1996). on a course evaluation of the same instructor teaching the same class twice, itv students rated the instructor's teaching effectiveness significantly lower than the on-campus students did on 12 of the 13 items on a course evaluation instrument, and on the instructor’s overall teaching effectiveness (fetzer, 2000). students generally accept itv as a viable alternative delivery method, but would choose traditional course delivery if they were given a choice. only a very small percentage of the students thought itv instruction was as good as the typical instruction on their campus, and a very large percentage of the students would rather take a regular class than an itv course (gallagher & mccormick, 1999). regarding teacher-student communication and relationship, research shows that the teacher-student relationship is a critical element of student learning (see chandler & hanrahan, 2000), and is important for effective learning (see frymier & houser, 2000). the teacher-student relationship can be enhanced by immediacy behaviors, such as eye contact, facial expressions, tone of voice and gestures. immediacy behaviors enhance the closeness and nonverbal interactions between people (baringer & mccroskey, 2000). a study (frymier & houser, 2000) shows that both verbal and nonverbal behaviors have positive impacts on student learning and motivation to learn. a comparative study (freitas, 1998) finds different student perceptions of instructor immediacy in conventional and itv classes. taking the same course by the same instructor, students enrolled at the face-to-face section perceived higher rate of instructor nonverbal immediacy than students enrolled at the distance learning section. the researcher identified the following trends in his review of the literature. (1) research into distance education in general, and itv in particular, has primarily taken the quantitative approach, and there have been few empirical qualitative studies in this area. (2) studies of itv have focused on student evaluation of courses, student achievement, student attitude and satisfaction, and very few have examined the teaching-learning process and the instructor and learner’s lived experiences. (3) some studies (e.g., carter, 2001; chandler & hanrahan, 2000; mottet, 2000) reported difficulties that itv instructors and students the social dimension of distance learning by interactive television: a qualitative study 3 encountered, but few have studied these difficulties systematically and how these difficulties influence teaching and learning. this study is an attempt to fill these gaps by doing a qualitative study with a focus on the social dimension in the teaching-learning process and the instructor and student’s lived experiences in the itv environment. methodology this study aimed at exploring the teachinglearning process in the itv context and the specific experiences of participants. the exploratory and descriptive nature of the study therefore determined the qualitative paradigm as more suitable for this purpose. as marshall and rossman (1995) note, the qualitative paradigm is especially suitable for a study “that is exploratory or descriptive, that assumes the value of context and setting, and that searches for a deeper understanding of the participants’ lived experiences of the phenomenon” (p. 39). in essence, the social interactions and contextual factors embedded within the teaching-learning process were relevant to the decision to the research design. the fieldwork for the study was conducted primarily at a distance learning center at a public research university located in the northeastern united states. the center operated about 10 itv courses each semester, among other duties. the researcher also observed students at distance sites including a secondary, remote (receiving) site located about 15 miles north of the host institution. fourteen people were interviewed. instructors, students, and remote sites were assigned pseudonyms for the purposes of confidentiality. research data were collected using observation and interview. specifically, the researcher formally observed five itv courses—two as participant observer at a remote site and three as non-participant observer at the local site. courses were also observed in their entirety (i.e., the researcher attended all the class meetings of each course, except for one). a summary of the five classes observed is noted in table 1. all classes were at graduate level and used fiber optic connection across sites. one class was in library science, one in english, and three in education. the classes were mainly lecture based, although some group activities were incorporated. the five classes were all that was available for observation and the researcher could manage. observations of instructors and technicians were conducted primarily at the local site, and observations of distance-learning students were primarily at the remote site. however, when at the local site, the researcher also observed distance-learning students’ activities on the monitor, and similarly, he also observed instructors’ and technicians’ activities when he was at the remote site. initially, a broad and holistic approach was taken to events and behaviors. later, he focused on a few categories developed during an earlier pilot study, based on the constructivist theory of learning (shuell, 1996). throughout the process the researcher took notes and brief comments while observing, and immediately afterwards (the same day) completed detailed field notes to preserve fresh memory of events (emerson, frets, & shaw, 1995). the observations enabled the researcher to see how instructors and students interacted across sites and how they built a social relationship. table 1 classes observed instructor field researcher’s role enrollments dr. black education dr. schindler english participant observer 0 at home, 4 at norwood, 13 at allentown, 12 at columbia. dr. bacon library science non-participant observer 20 at home, 12 at bata. dr. rousseau education non-participant observer 10 at home, 3 at greenville. dr. moore education non-participant observer, operator 8 at home, 1 at greenville. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 the purpose of the interviews was to obtain participants’ perspectives on the nature of teaching and learning in the itv environment, and to learn about the meaning constructed from their personal teaching and learning experiences. convenient sampling was used. a total of 6 instructors, 5 students, and 3 technicians were included in the interviews, which lasted approximately 60 minutes each. the technicians were included because they were able to offer a unique perspective on the nature of social interaction across sites; they served as the eyes and ears for the remote-site students. both unstructured and open-ended questions were used in the interviews. the researcher told the interviewees the topics he was interested in and let them frame and structure their responses. interviewing techniques used in the study included those suggested by seidman (1998), such as avoiding leading questions, asking participants to tell a story or give an example, keeping participants focused and asking for concrete details, and so on. the interviews informed the researcher of how the participants perceived the nature and quality of the social interaction and relationship across sites. to maintain data quality, all individual interviews were recorded on audiotapes and later transcribed verbatim. during the interviews, the researcher asked participants about the things he observed to verify his observational data (i.e., member checking). observational data were then compared to interview data in order to identify consistencies and inconsistencies among emerging themes. all measures taken helped ensure the accuracy of data and credibility of results. as expected in qualitative methodology, data analysis was on-going and simultaneously conducted during data collection. while performing initial analysis, the researcher adjusted the data collection strategy and focus. upon leaving the field, more substantial data analysis was performed. this procedure is consistent with the views of marshall and rossman (1995) who pointed out, “data analysis is the process of bringing order, structure, and meaning to the mass of collected data… qualitative data analysis is a search for general statements about relationships among categories of data; it builds grounded theory” (p. 111). microsoft excel was used to store, organize, retrieve, and code the textual data collected from interviews and observations. after reading the data as a whole (twice), the researcher placed data in column a (first column from left), and did open-coding in column b. open coding is typically the beginning of meaning-making. the question in mind is, “what’s going on here?” he placed each data chunk into a cell in column a, and attached a code word in column b. he also used focused coding of selected categories, and placed code words for this purpose in column c. he then used column d to store code words for the third level abstraction. memoranda were written continuously and stored in column e. he also assigned a document id and a row number to each data chunk, so that when he retrieved data from a category, he knew where the data originated, and could go back to the context for further consideration. findings four categories emerged as relevant to the study, that address the complexities involved in establishing and maintaining social interactions within distance learning. among these were factors related to (1) instructors’ perceptions of interactions with students, (2) students’ perceptions of the class in general (including instructors’ sense of care), (3) the sense of distance created within the setting, and (4) teaching at remote sites. an overview of salient findings for each of the areas mentioned follows as related to the evidence gathered. instructors’ perception of the social relationship how did the instructors feel about their social relationships with students at remote sites, as compared to their relationship with campus students? generally, participants felt less connected with students at remote sites. participants reported that it took them longer to get to know the students, and that they did not feel they knew the students well. meeting someone through video is, after all, different from meeting someone in person. as one itv instructor commented, “when you see them (on the monitor), you don’t really see them” (zhao, 2002). students typically looked different in person than on the monitor as did the instructors. as a result, instructors felt less connected with students at remote sites. as dr. jones, one of the instructors the researcher interviewed, noted, “in general, i felt less of a connection, less of an emotional connection, with the students through the video.” dr. rousseau, another instructor in the study, echoed dr. jones, saying that he had a closer connection with the students on campus, and that those at the remote site wished they could be at the host site with the instructor and the local students. dr. rousseau’s experience further demonstrated the difference between video communication and in-person communication. (in itv the student’s body language, such as nodding of the head and facial expressions, got blurred on the screen, and the instructor could not maintain eye contact with the students.) due to the nature of video communication, it was more difficult for the instructors to build a social relationship with students at the remote site. in the class on diversity in education taught by dr. jones, she and her students explored some controversial issues such as children raised by gay couples, which required her to create a close relationship with students, and among students enrolled in the class at different sites. however, it was difficult for dr. jones to do so through itv, though she worked hard to manage the process. in her words, “i think that is a lot harder actually in distance learning. i think you have to work at it. i found that i had to work at it harder. the social dimension of distance learning by interactive television: a qualitative study 5 so, for instance, i don’t feel like i know the students very well in the distance.” it took instructors longer to get to know students at the remote site than it did to get to know those on campus. another instructor in the study, dr. schindler, taught a literature course where all students were at the remote sites. he had taught the same course many times before to students on campus. dr. schindler said he got to know students on campus better and was able to build a personal relationship with them very quickly. he indicated further that, in the face-to-face setting, the class appeared more relaxed and had much more joking around. dr. schindler stated that he got to know everybody by the third or fourth week in a regular class with 50 students. dr. schindler added that he knew who the students were and knew them by name. in contrast, with the itv class, dr. schindler got to know only the students who presented themselves and made themselves known, which represented a small portion of all students enrolled in the class. also, there were a number of students that he did not know by the end of the semester. dr. schindler was still trying to learn the names of the students at the very end of the semester, which indicated how difficult it is to know and build rapport with students through the video. although he had 30 students in total, the class met for an hour and 15 minutes each week and he made much effort to learn the students’ names, he still did not know them. the instructors believed that a better relationship would help students with their academic studies and professional development. the students would engage more in the class, perform better, and achieve more if they felt that the instructor knew them, cared about them, and was interested in them. they would be more likely to ask for guidance regarding professional issues, such as whether they should apply for a particular job. to summarize, in itv the instructors communicated with students at the distance site through itv monitors, where the instructor could not have a visual fix of students’ faces, and student immediacy behaviors were lost. so, the instructors felt less connected with students at these sites, and it was more difficult to establish a social relationship with the students involved although instructors tried harder to do so. students’ perception of the social relationship compared to students at the local site, those at the remote site had many disadvantages in connecting with the instructor. students at the local site could interact with the instructor informally before and after class, and during the break, and in class they could exchange facial expressions and informal audible responses with the instructor, which were not possible for students at the remote site. also, students at the local site received more of the instructor’s attention than those at the remote site. students at the remote site were not happy that instructors did not know their names. students wished the instructor would know them better, or at least know their names. students also reported that they felt “detached” from the classes, and perceived itv classes as “impersonal.” the lack of rapport and instructors’ knowledge of students’ names appeared to negatively affect how students were served, which was illustrated in the case of katy, a student participated in the study. katy asked an instructor to write her a letter of recommendation for her job hunt. the instructor said she would write the letter, but stated that she did not know katy that well, because they only interacted with distance learning. while students at the remote site knew each other within their sites, they did not interact across sites, except for the few students who always spoke up. the four students interviewed at the remote site were enrolled in a cohort of 30 students, which spread across three locations. the students had been taking the same classes for about two years, but they still did not know the names of some students at other sites. students in this case also developed a “them-us” perspective, in which they considered peers at the same site as “us”, and those at other sites as “them.” students developed this group identity and referred to people by site name instead of individual names. students at the remote site believed that going to itv classes was like watching tv at home. students also reported that it was like watching somebody else’s show on tv when instructors seemed to be teaching to students at the local site only. one instructor used the same analogy, “let me give you an example. i love rock music. watching the rolling stones on hbo is not the same as being at a rolling stones’ concert (laugh).” similarly, students found it difficult to relate to people on the screen, and they would rather sit with the instructor face-to-face. students reported feeling detached to the itv classes. students at the remote site also reported feeling detached from the university and some of them did not want to attend the commencement. students stated they would “feel out of place.” although their diplomas were issued by the university, students rarely visited campus and had primarily attended school at the itv receiving site. as a result, students at the remote site did not feel connected to the university, which was further aggravated by the fact that they did not receive much support from the university. students also believed that they were neglected at times by the instructors. learning at a distance was not just about how far away they were physically from the university; sometimes students just felt so far away from everything. students did not receive direct feedback from instructors or advisors, and they had to fall on their own group for support. echoing the instructors, the students did not think the instructors knew them. students perceived that students at the local site had a closer relationship with the instructors than they did. the students believed that their personal lives were connected to the teaching-learning process, and current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 6 instructors had to know them in order to understand them-understand what they said in class as well as what they wrote in the papers. they believed that a better relationship with the instructor would create stronger rapport that would lend purpose to their studies and facilitate their interest in the course content. sense of distance created instructors for itv were separated from students at the remote site by physical space and could not reach them face-to-face. the physical distance therefore created a sense of distance and disconnectedness. in campus classes, instructors and students were able to maintain a physical proximity. in contrast, students at itv remote sites were spread across a few locations and only appeared on tv monitors in distant images; thus, the physical proximity was missing. due to the physical proximity, students at the local site could communicate better with instructors, and therefore could connect better. students at the remote site had a disadvantage in this respect. the distant image of the students further created the sense of distance. the wide-angle cover shot of the students made it difficult for instructors to recognize individual students, and students’ nonverbal responses were also lost. the wide-angle cover shot of students made the instructors feel distant and removed. this process further created a personal and psychological distance. in the cover shot instructors could not see students clearly, and could not have a visual fix of the students. students could not have close-ups of their peers and, in one instructor’s words, “eye to eye, gazes into gazes.” the cover shot also made students feel distant and disconnected--as if they were invisible to the instructor. as a result, students believed they could go off task without being found and participated nominally in the class to obtain credits. maintaining eye contact is necessary for people to connect with one another. however, participants could not maintain eye contact through itv, which is an intrinsic limitation of the itv system. not being able to keep eye contact influenced participants’ feeling distant and disconnected. because students did not perceive the instructor as talking to them, they did not believe in the need to listen actively to the instructor. the fact that instructors and students at remote sites did not have opportunities to interact informally before or after class, or during the break or group work time also contributed to the sense of distance. teaching at remote sites how can a better relationship be built between the instructor and the student in itv? having instructors teach at remote sites proved to be an effective way to achieve this goal. most of the time the instructors taught at the host site and students at a distance received instruction at remote sites. occasionally, some instructors traveled and taught at each remote site. of the six instructors interviewed, two (dr. rousseau and dr. jones) taught at the remote sites. instructors taught at remote sites to connect with students taking classes from a distance and to provide them more personalized attention. in addition, instructors gave students at remote sites a chance to pursue off-camera conversations where they could ask the questions that they were reluctant to do in front of the whole class. dr. jones ended up teaching more sessions of a class at the remote site than at the local site for several reasons. first, she had two students at the host site and 27 at the remote site. there were also technical difficulties connecting the two sites and the remote site camera could not cover all the students. as a result, microphones were not available to all students. for this reason, dr. jones drove to the remote site, which was 60 miles away from campus. she also taught more often at the remote site than at the local site. dr. jones preferred this approach so that she could interact face-to-face with the 27 students at the remote site. she also believed it essential to establish a relationship with the students, and she believed the face-toface format would help accomplish this goal. in her case, distance learning resulted in driving the 60-mile distance every week. dr. jones felt compelled to do it “for the students’ benefit” because, otherwise, they would not receive the full benefits of the class and would not be as invested, an outcome that would not meet her expectations. students at the distant site preferred that instructors teach at their sites. the four students that the researcher observed at a remote site talked excitedly about how great it was when they had the instructors on site, with them face-to-face. students also remembered who went to teach at their site and who did not, and expressed their resentment to the instructors who chose not to come out. when students had an instructor coming, they brought in food for them, "trying to make them feel welcomed because they did come out and it was nice for them to come out to meet with us." when dr. jones went to teach at the remote site where the researcher observed, students perceived her as a very personable individual who really cared about them and wanted to know students. the students enjoyed seeing the instructors “from a different view,” as one student put it, and believed the instructors looked differently in person than on tv. students also developed a better rapport with dr. rousseau when he taught at a remote site. one student said she had conversations with the instructor during the break and could communicate through nonverbal means, which she thought was very much a part of “language” that is often underestimated. students eagerly exchanged stories with dr. rousseau and “got to know him” a little better instead of seeing only a face on the screen. teaching at distance sites took greater effort on the part of the instructors. students wished all the instructors did so, at least once, but most instructors did not. for those who did, instructors did so for the students’ benefit by giving those at a distance additional personal attention and the opportunity for off-camera talks. the instructor and the social dimension of distance learning by interactive television: a qualitative study 7 students got to know each other better from informal interactions, which made students feel more connected with the instructor and the course. students also developed a better rapport with the instructor. overall, teaching at remote sites was the best way for the instructor and students to connect. conclusion and discussion instructors and students in this study found it more difficult to establish social relationships in the itv environment than in face-to-face environments. several factors contributed to participants’ sense of distance and detachment, which included the physical distance between the instructor and students, the poor video quality of the students and the lack of eye contact and opportunity for informal interaction. both instructors and students believed it important to have a personal connection between them in order for the teaching-learning process to be meaningful. students’ personal lives were also connected to teaching and learning, and the instructors needed to learn about their students to better understand them. findings indicate that stronger rapport with instructors might help students engage in learning and achieve more in distance education. the best way for instructors to connect with students in this case was to physically travel and teach at the remote sites. social constructivist psychology highly values the role of interpersonal relationship in teaching and learning. in their work, a vision of vygotsky, wink and putney (2002) note that, from a vygotskian perspective, "learning takes place first on... an interpersonal plane, through interaction with others, then move to... an intrapersonal plane, as concepts are internalized by the individual" (p. xxi). they also note that "(t)he notion of social is key to the work of vygotsky. in terms of learning and developing, one sense of social incorporates the idea of interpersonal relationships" (p. 60). vygotsky "acknowledged learners as interactive agents in communicative, socially situated relationships" (p. 62-63). similarly, in my pedagogic creed, dewey (1897) also contends that the educational process is both psychological and sociological. thus, we understand that social relationship is a critical element in the teaching-learning process, and the implication is that instructors need to build rapport between the instructor and the student, and among students across sites, which requires that all parties interact with, and get to know, one another. the teacher-student relationship can be enhanced by immediacy behaviors (baringer & mccroskey, 2000); however, distant learning by itv lessens the likelihood that these behaviors will be captured, transmitted, and perceived by people at other sites—at least in ways that contribute to the social dimension inherent within teacher-student relationships. this finding is consistent with the literature (e.g., balkin, buckner, swartz, & rao, 2005; mottet, 2000). in a 153-subject study, mottet (2000) reports that instructors' inability to perceive students' nonverbal responses is related to their impression of students, their perception of teacher-student relationship, and their willingness to teach in the itv classroom as opposed to the face-to-face classroom. studies (e.g., frymier & houser, 2000) show that the teacher-student relationship influences student learning both directly and indirectly. students’ attitudes toward the teacher and the content (affective learning) influence their cognitive learning. a closer teacher-student relationship facilitates affective learning, which in turn enhances cognitive learning. instructors and students in this study held similar beliefs. unfortunately, neither the instructors nor the students were satisfied with the social connection between them, and they wished they had a better connection and relationship. the itv system did not help much in building the connection and establishing the relationship. gillies (2008) reports similar findings. itv was inferior in this respect as compared to the face-to-face format. in this study both instructors and students perceived it highly beneficial that instructors travel and teach at remote sites. this is also documented by other researchers (e.g., gillies, 2008). to compensate the inherent limitations of the technical system, instructors should travel and teach at remote sites when feasible. although it could be expensive, educational administrators should balance the benefits and the costs of doing so. this study adds to knowledge on distance learning by revealing the inner working of the social connection across sites in itv and the factors that contributed to the difficulty in establishing social relationships in this environment. this study confirms that both instructors and students highly value the connectedness, and that itv was less able to support it in comparison to face-to-face instruction. by examining participants’ lived experiences, this study provides empirical evidence for similar findings in survey studies. this study has implications for practice and policy, which faculty, administrators, and policymakers should all consider. at the practice level, when a course is considered for delivery by itv, the nature of the course should be examined: is it knowledge-based or performance-based? a course on collective bargaining negotiation skills, for example, is not suitable for itv because of the level of action that it entails. is social relationship a critical factor in student learning? a course on diversity studies, for example, requires that students are comfortable discussing in class some sensitive issues, such as gay marriage. at the policy level, as more and more higher education institutions rush to distance learning at a time of increasing financial austerity, the strengths and limitations of various distance learning formats must be considered. the author recommends that face-to-face delivery should be chosen over itv for the maximal teacher-student connection, and that itv should be chosen over asynchronous distance learning formats for its capacity in building relationships across sites through real-time audio and video links. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 8 this study has a limitation: the researcher observed some classes as a participant observer and other classes as a non-participant observer, and this difference in way of observing can cause different viewpoints. this study focused on affective learning in itv, not cognitive learning. future research should investigate cognitive learning in itv in comparison to face-to-face references balkin, r., buckner, d., swartz, 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(2011). the social dimension of distance learning by interactive television: a qualitative study current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article /view/740/ author notes liang zhao saint xavier university 3700 w. 103rd street, chicago, il 60655 zhao@sxu.edu liang zhao is associate professor in the school of education, saint xavier university in chicago. he teaches courses in the foundations of education. his research interest includes the history and philosophy of education, research methodology, technology in education, and character education. the author would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism, and dr. sheila wright and dr. mary lawson for their editorial assistance and ideas for revision. the social dimension of distance learning by interactive television: a qualitative study 11 volume 14, number 2 may 28, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser john michael tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word finalmodel for melinda from lori.docx 1 volume 14, number 2 june 1, 2011 issn 1099-839x student attitudes toward accelerated reader: “thanks for asking!” amy f. smith karen l. westberg university of st. thomas the accelerated reader (ar) program, designed by renaissance learning, states its purpose is to increase students’ motivation to read and students’ achievement in reading. a review of the literature reveals inconsistent findings about its outcomes. while renaissance learning cites many research studies on their website that suggest the program is meeting its goals, very little has been noted regarding student opinion of the program. independent research studies about students’ attitudes toward the program have been varied, yielding both favorable attitudes toward the program and others indicating unfavorable results. what do students really think about the accelerated reader program, a widely used supplemental, independent reading program in which students read fiction and non-fiction books of their choice and take brief online comprehension quizzes about the books? the results from student focus group interviews during our study on students’ attitudes toward ar in grades 3-8 are described in this article. keywords: accelerated reader, independent reading, motivation to read the accelerated reader (ar) program was designed by renaissance learning to increase students’ motivation to read and students’ achievement in reading; however, a review of the literature reveals inconsistent findings about its outcomes. the renaissance learning company reports several research studies on their website that suggest the program is meeting its goals. independent research studies about students’ attitudes toward the program, however, have been varied, some reporting favorable attitudes toward the program and others indicating unfavorable results. the purpose of this two part study was to gather students’ views about the accelerated reader (ar) program. in part one of the study (results previously reported in a paper given at american educational research association, may, 2010) questionnaires were administered and completed by 1365 grade 3-8 students in four schools. the results from the questionnaires indicated that most students perceive the ar program as being helpful in motivating them to read and acquiring reading skills; however, older students have significantly less favorable attitudes toward the program. while valuable insights emerged from the questionnaire data, the purpose of this article is to discuss the results from part two of the study in which focus group interviews were conducted at five schools. the focus group interviews provide findings that are similar, in some respects, to the questionnaire findings, but students express more critical views about the ar program in the interviews. what do students really think about the accelerated reader program? the focus group interview results from our study on students’ attitudes toward ar in grades 3-8 are described in this article. review of the literature the empirical literature on student outcomes from participation in the accelerated reader (ar) program reveals varied and contradictory findings. renaissance learning, the developer of the ar program, reports on its website that 155 studies conducted on the ar program support the effectiveness of the program, of which 129 were conducted independently, and 20 were published in peerreviewed publications. it isn’t totally clear, however, how “independent” these studies are, and the studies are varied in terms of methodology and purposes. and, furthermore, a review of the literature using databases, such as eric and wilson web, reveals that studies resulting in negative findings on the ar program are not listed on the renaissance learning website, and we have been unable to current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 locate 129 “independent” studies. in discussions with teachers regarding their knowledge of ar it was noted that teachers, consumers and prospective customers of the ar products most likely read only the research summaries on the renaissance learning website and are not aware of other research conducted on ar that reports different outcomes or some concerns about the program (d. cooper, personal communications, 2009). many parents and teachers perceive the ar program to be achieving its promise (personal communications, 2009), but some independent research studies indicate that students have unfavorable views about the program and that the ar program does not increase students’ achievement or self-efficacy about reading (e.g., conrath, 2007; krashen, 2005; melton, et al., 2004; schmidt, 2008; white, 2005). for example, when investigating students’ motivation for reading, schmidt (2008) found that teachers believed the program was important for instilling a love of reading, but the students of these teachers indicated they read only for the ar points, not for the joy of reading. thompson, mahuri, and taylor (2008) also found negative student views in their study with high school students in california. the use of ar was actually counterproductive in this situation because the students read less after the ar program was implemented than before they participated in the ar program. obviously, the program had a negative impact on students’ interest in reading. the developers of ar claim that the program will "get students excited about books", but persinger (2001) and brisco (2003) questioned if ar is responsible for getting students excited about reading or if it simply gets students interested in the program to earn points and prizes. teachers often reward students with pizza parties, etc. after they have earned a certain number of ar points. persinger concluded that rewarding students with points and prizes actually undermines students’ intrinsic motivation to read. schmidt (2008) also concluded that ar has a negative effect on students because of its emphasis on literal facttype quizzes and extrinsic rewards. gallagher (2009), the author of readicide, argues that the “overteaching of academic texts” and the use of programs, such as ar that offer extrinsic rewards for reading, are responsible for “readicide”, the noun he created to describe “the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools” (p. 2). only a few studies have investigated whether the ar program actually has an impact on students’ reading achievement. as with ar studies on motivation, the results of these studies are contradictory, and only a few used comparison groups. peak and dewalt (1994) investigated the impact of ar on 50 randomly selected grade 9 students in north carolina who had used the system for five years; and they report that the ar students made better gains on the california achievement test in reading than the comparison students. a different result was found, however, in a causal-comparative study by conrath (2007), who found that grade 8 students in non-ar schools had higher reading achievement scores on the measures of academic progress than the students in the ar schools. these surprising findings were attributed to the teachers’ emphasis in non-ar schools on reading in general and their use of critical reading skills. some researchers have examined reading achievement outcomes for various student subgroups. for example, melton et al. (2004) conducted an ex post facto study comparing the reading achievement of 352 students who had ar for one year with a group in another school (n = 270) that did not have ar. pre-test and post-test terra nova scores (ancova analyses) indicated that the ar students in quartiles 2, 3, and 4 scored significantly lower than those who did not participate in the ar program. no difference was found for students in quartile 1 (lowest quartile). it appears from the limited number of studies conducted to investigate achievement that ar does not usually result in gains, although it should be emphasized again that few well-designed, independent experimental and quasi-experimental studies have examined this issue. despite the positive views that many educators have about the ar program (personal communications, 2009), many teachers do not integrate the accelerated reader program into their regular reading program—it is an add on. white (2005), in his dissertation research, found that ar is an isolated event in most classrooms and is not integrated into other literacy activities. biggers (2002) argues that computer-based literacy programs, such as ar, are eroding well-supported balanced literacy programs and states that ar cannot even be considered a literacy instructional program. stevenson and camarata (2000), when comparing whole-language learning with the accelerated reader program, concluded that ar teaches students that reading is an isolated and competitive activity. cuddeback and ceprano (2002) conducted a study to determine if ar would be beneficial to the development of comprehension in young emergent readers when involved in a summer school program that used ar. they concluded that ar did contribute to reading comprehension improvement with struggling readers when utilized in conjunction with other materials and teaching procedures. the reality is, however, that most teachers do not integrate ar into their literacy programs (schmidt, 2008; white, 2005). as the previous study cited, some researchers have investigated how the program impacts high-achieving and low-achieving students. in our conversations with capable elementary and adolescent readers (k. westberg, personal communications, 2008, 2009) and in a few studies (e.g., thompson, madhuri, & taylor, 2008), we found that capable readers actually dislike the program so much that they take quizzes by watching a movie made from a book, ask friends to take the tests for them, or read books well below their reading level to earn ar points on the ar tests. student attitudes toward accelerated reader: “thanks for asking!” 3 some studies have found that low-performing students and low ses students also do not like ar (e.g., thompson, madhuri, & taylor, 2008). student focus group procedures while much has been published by renaissance learning heralding the value of accelerated reader for students, and teachers speak of the quiz printouts as proof that students are gaining comprehension skills and are motivated to read more, very little has been written about students’ perceptions of accelerated reader. the student voice is missing in this conversation. in order to gain a more complete picture of students’ opinions, we conducted focus group interviews in three school districts (five schools). we recognize that students are not given the opportunity to express their opinions about school programs to an outsider very often, and as one grade 7 student commented after the focus group, “thanks for asking!” methodology eight to ten students were selected by their teachers from five school sites to meet in focus group settings. these student participants were selected by their teachers from among 1,365 students in 68 heterogeneous classrooms within five school buildings located in three districts. in district no. 1, 591 grade 3-5 students in an elementary school and 504 grade 6-8 middle school students participated in this study. district no. 1 is considered to be a rural district (less than 10,000 residents in the town), but it is located near a metropolitan area and will soon be considered a suburban school district. at the second site (referred hereafter as district no. 2), participants included 166 grade 4-6 students attending an urban, magnet school in an inter-district school district created to promote diversity and interdisciplinary education. the third site for the study was a private religious school located in a metropolitan area, referred to as district no. 3. 104 grade 3-8 students in this school participated in the study. students in the three school districts are relatively diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, and socio-economic status, and they reflect the overall demographics in the state in which these districts are located. district no. 1 is 90% caucasian, 10% noncaucasian; district no. 2 is 64% caucasian, 36% noncaucasian; and district no. 3 is 88% caucasian, 12% noncaucasian. using free and reduced lunch as an indicator of ses, district nos. 1 and 2 have 25% and 24% of their students, respectfully, participating in the federal free and reduced lunch program (district no. 3 is not a public school.) we conducted five focus group sessions, three with middle school students (grades 6-8) and two with elementary school students (grades 3-5) at their respective school sites. the open-ended questions were designed to give students an opportunity to share what they thought of accelerated reader (see fig 1). we met with each group of 8-10 students for approximately 45 minutes. no school personnel were present for the interview sessions. at the beginning of each focus group, students were assured that their responses would not be shared with any school officials, teachers, or parents, so they were encouraged to be candid. prior to meeting with the students, their parents had signed consent forms and the students had signed assent forms. students’ experiences with ar varied from school site to site. for example, some middle school students had ar as a class for forty-five minutes a day, and ar was optional for some students in grade 3. some elementary students could read with a partner or as a class, and then take a quiz. students at all sites were given an ar point total goal for each quarter. point levels and reading level were determined in all schools by a standardized measure of reading aptitude or achievement. all students received rewards for reaching reading goals. during each focus group session, we made handwritten notes of students’ responses to interview questions. these raw data were then analyzed using constantcomparative analysis procedure. this method was originally developed for use in grounded theory methodology, and is now applied more widely as a method of analysis in qualitative research. it requires the researcher to take one piece of data (e.g. one interview, one statement or one theme) and compare it to all other pieces of data that are either similar or different. during this process, the researcher begins to look at what makes this piece of data different or similar to other pieces of data. the results section will focus on the themes that emerged from the analyses from the focus group data. findings the first question on the focus group interview guide asked students to describe how ar is used in their school. students provided the following descriptions in each district. in district no. 1, the middle school students have a class period devoted to ar. their ar class meets daily for 45 minutes, just like math or science. students spend class time reading ar books each day, and record what they are reading in an ar reading log. a teacher supervises the class period, but no instruction is given. students must read books totaling 25 points each quarter. when students reach the reading goal they may use the ar period as a study hall. students receive grades for this subject, their ar class, based on the number of points they earn. the elementary students in district no. 1 are given the option of participating in the ar program, although most students participate. students who reach reading goals receive prizes. third graders read several books as a class and then take individual quizzes. in district no. 2, students in grades 4-6 participate in ar. the program is organized and supervised through the media center, with little connection to classroom instruction. students read ar books and must earn an assigned number of points each quarter. schoolwide incentive programs are in place for students who go current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 focus group interview guide: accelerated reader 1. tell us about how accelerated reader is used in your school. 2. what do you like best about accelerated reader? 3. what do you like least about accelerated reader? 4. if you could change anything about accelerated reader what would it be? 5. do you and your classmates always read the book before taking the quiz? explain. 6. do you find the ar quizzes to be easy or hard? explain. 7. do you have enough books that interest you from the accelerated reader titles available to you? explain. 8. how do you choose which accelerated reader books to read? 9. do you think all schools should have accelerated reader programs for their students? explain. 10. is there anything else you’d like to add about your experience using accelerated reader? explain. figure 1. interview guide questions above and beyond their assigned reading goals. in district no. 3, students in grades 4-8 are required to earn teacher-assigned point totals each quarter. occasionally students will have time in class to read, but the majority of ar reading is homework. grade 4 students, new to the ar requirement, read several books together as a class, and then the students take individual quizzes on the books. the remaining focus group interview questions provided students with an opportunity to express their views about the ar program. the following themes emerged from these conversations with students across all focus group sessions. too much process several students explained that they like to read and don’t particularly like the extra components of the ar program. at the completion of a 45-minute discussion about ar, one grade 6 student summarized the group’s opinion stating, “ar--it’s just plain silly.” a grade 5 boy corroborated this sentiment by saying, “i don’t know, quiz questions, points, rewards…i just like to read. i don’t need all that.” several students noted that time spent organizing and supervising ar could be better spent just letting kids read. a seventh grader noted that, “i sometimes have to spend the whole independent reading block filling out my log and waiting to see the teacher to prove that i read what i said i read, before i can take a quiz.” from their perspective there was too much process and not enough time to read. rewards for reading a considerable amount of time in the focus group sessions was spent discussing the reward systems associated with ar. when asked about receiving rewards for reading and reaching point goals one student commented, “you shouldn’t read just to get a reward, but i like them!” students were careful not to complain too much about receiving rewards for reading. while many children explained that time to read for pleasure was valuable to them, they also like receiving candy or treats, ar parties, special field trips etc. for reaching point totals. points lead to changes in reading behavior a middle school focus group spent several minutes revealing that they read differently because of ar. one student said, “i wouldn’t read as fast, i would read at my own pace if i didn’t have to do ar.” another boy in grade 7 noted, “i would read more relaxed, pay attention to details if i didn’t have to do ar.” other students commented that they would choose different books or read several books at a time if they didn’t have to worry about meeting point totals. children at all grade levels stated that ar points influenced their reading choices. a girl in grade 4 said, “i would read a lot more if i didn’t’ have to worry about points.” an entire middle school group agreed that they would not read a book unless it had ar points because they needed to get points for their grades. they limited what they read until they achieved their point goal. one boy added, “after i reach my point goal, i can read the books that interest me.” a grade 6 boy suggested that point values be left off books so that you didn’t know how much they were worth and you wouldn’t limit yourself. ar quizzes need improving students discussed the ar quizzes in much detail. a grade 8 student summarized his opinion of the quizzes by saying, “they’re [the quizzes] 80% small facts that don’t connect with big ideas.” another student noted, “the quizzes are either way too easy or way too hard.” still another commented, “i read some of the quiz questions and think ‘who cares’?’” an elementary student noted that the quizzes asked for details that were not important to the story and were designed to trick you. students also noted that often two answers seemed like good choices. this phenomenon led grade 5 student to say, “the ‘thoughtful reader strategies’ we learn about during reading class don’t help you on the quizzes.” cheating and ar quizzes elementary and middle school groups discussed student cheating on ar quizzes. one grade 8 student made the suggestion that an “ar police” monitor students so it was fair to everyone. a grade 5 student said, “we take student attitudes toward accelerated reader: “thanks for asking!” 5 quizzes for each other sometimes if we really need to get our points in. we know each other’s pin numbers so we can help each other out.” other children commented that it was common for students to take a quiz and then write down as many questions as they could remember and then tell friends what questions they needed to know. two grade 4 friends related that they took quizzes on books they hadn’t read just for the fun of it, to see if they could pass the quizzes. several other grade 4 and 5 students admitted that if they were bored or had free time, they took quizzes on ar books on which movies had been made (which they had seen), which would eliminate the need to actually read the books. after studying our field notes, we realized an interesting phenomenon emerged during the student focus groups; namely, students often distanced themselves from the usual classroom behaviors by making recommendations for other students. students made comments, such as “i would read anyway, but for kids who don’t read, ar is good.” or, “the quizzes are good to make sure kids read all the details, not just the back cover.” “i don’t share answers to quizzes, but teachers should supervise other kids better so there’s less cheating.” students had a keen eye on equity, especially in situations where rewards were at stake. ar program improvements finally, when asked about how students would improve ar in their schools the students made the following recommendations: have more books available; have more quizzes available; have better rewards/no rewards; remove point totals from books; improve quiz questions, allow students to adjust their own reading goals; and allow students to delete a quiz if they want to stop midway through the quiz. conclusions and recommendations clearly students have a lot to say regarding the ar program. they articulated concerns regarding important issues such as pressure, cheating, and motivation to read that are different from most published studies that surveyed only teachers, parents, and administrators. all focus group participants noted they feel pressure to earn points for ar. those students whose reading/language arts grade was impacted ar expressed frustration and annoyance with the program. students also reported that the pressure to earn points changed the way they approached independent reading. many students reported reading high point books right away until they had enough points, and then they read the books that interested them. other students reported reading many easier books to reach point goals before concentrating on books they enjoyed. schools need to evaluate how they are using point goals as some practices appear to cause undue pressure regarding independent reading. students also pointed out the need for schools to do a better job of monitoring student quiz taking. students from all five focus groups recognized that cheating on quizzes was common. students commented on the resentment they felt about that, especially when rewards were at stake. regarding renaissance learning’s claims that ar motivates students to read, and teacher beliefs that ar motivates students, caution should be used when assuming students are motivated for positive reasons. many focus group participants said they read more because of ar, especially if class time was devoted to ar reading time, but that they didn’t read for the pleasure of reading. rather, they were motivated by earning treats, candy, parties, and other incentives. independent reading became a competitive endeavor. based upon student comments a close and careful look at how ar is implemented in schools is warranted. while renaissance learning cannot control the manner in which schools implement the ar program, noting student concerns, and presenting solutions in their promotional materials and website along with the full range of research on ar would be beneficial to teachers and administrators as they make decisions on program implementation. most students disliked turning independent reading into a competitive activity, even if they enjoyed rewards. students reported that they would read without the ar program rewards, especially if it meant they didn’t have to take quizzes but could report on their reading in alternative ways. additionally, schools need to be prepared to support ar with the resources to provide more books and quizzes so that students can select from a wide variety. overall, student focus group participants expressed negative views towards the accelerated reader program. when asked for their opinions, students offered complex insights into the program and its implementation citing several weaknesses that were consistent across focus groups. students do not like the point system because it adds pressure to independent reading, especially when tied to grades. earning points also led to cheating behavior on behalf of some students so they could avoid reading and still earn points. most focus group participants also expressed that they changed their reading habits and preferences in order to complete point goals before they could read what they wanted to read. in order to address these student concerns, it is recommended that administrators and teachers consider the voices of their students and make changes to implementation practices at the school level. references biggers, d. (2001). the argument against accelerated reader. journal of adolescent and adult literacy, 45, 72-75. brisco, s. (2003). ar: what are motives behind the motives? teacher librarian, 30(4), 33-34. conrath, r. a. (2007). a comparative study for the effects of a supplemental reading program on eighthgrade students’ reading comprehension growth unpublished doctoral dissertation, university of south carolina, columbia, south carolina. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 6 corbin, j., & strauss, a. c. (2007). basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (3 rd ed.) thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. cuddeback, m. j., & ceprano, m. a. (2002). the use of accelerated reader with emergent readers. reading improvement, 39(2), 89-96. gallagher, k. (2009). readicide: how schools are killing reading and what you can do about it. portland, me: stenhouse publishers. krashen, s. (2005). accelerated reader: evidence still lacking. knowledge quest, 33, 4849. mccoy, d. (1991). surveys of independent reading: pinpointing the problems, seeking the solutions. paper presented at the annual meeting of the college reading association, crystal city, va. (eric reproduction document service no. ed 341021) melton, c. m., smother, b. c., anderson, e., fulton, r., repogle, w. h., & thomas, l. (2004). a study of the effects of the accelerated reader program on fifth grade students’ reading achievement growth, reading improvement, 41(1), 18-23. peak, j., & dewalt, m. (1994). reading achievement: effects of computerized reading management and enrichment. ers spectrum, 12, 31-34. persinger, j. (2001). what are the characteristics of a successful implementation of accelerated reader? knowledge quest, 29(5), 30-35. schmidt, r. (2008). really reading: what does accelerated reader teach adults and children? language arts, 85, 202-211. stevenson, j. m., & camarata, j. w. (2000). imposters in whole-language clothing: undressing the accelerated reader program. talking points, 11(2), 8-11. renaissance learning. (2009). 155 research studies support the effectiveness of accelerated reader. retrieved july 10, 2009 from, http://www.renlearn.com/ar/research.aspx renaissance learning (2009 ). june 27, 2008: news release. retrieved july 10, 2009, from http://www.renlearn.com/aboutus/pressreleases/20 08/100%20million%20quizzes.pdf thompson, g., madhuri, m., & taylor, d. (2008). how the accelerated reader program can become counterproductive for high school students. journal of adolescent and adult literacy, 51, 550560. white, w. q. (2005). an investigation of the accelerated reader program in one small school district: students’, teachers’, and administrators’ perceptions. unpublished doctoral dissertation, the ohio state university, columbus, ohio. student attitudes toward accelerated reader: “thanks for asking!” 7 article citation smith, a. f., & westberg, k. l. (2011). student attitudes toward accelerated reader: “thanks for asking!” current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/632 author notes amy f. smith, ph.d. university of st. thomas 1000 lasalle avenue, minneapolis, mn 55403 afsmith@stthomas.edu amy smith is an assistant professor in the department of teacher education where she teaches literacy methods courses and directs the master of arts in k-12 reading instruction. karen l. westberg, ph.d. university of st. thomas 1000 lasalle avenue, minneapolis, mn 55403 klwestberg@stthomas.edu karen westberg is an associate professor in the department of gifted, creative, and talented education where she teaches gifted, creative, and talented methods courses, as well as courses in educational psychology and research methodology. current issues in education vol. 14 no.2 8 volume 14, number 2 june 1, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x rethinking undergraduate mathematics education: the importance of classroom climate and self-efficacy on mathematics achievement michelle l. peters university of houston-clear lake karen kortecamp the george washington university citation peters, m. & kortecamp, k. (2010). rethinking undergraduate mathematics education: the importance of classroom climate and self-efficacy on mathematics achievement. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract given the growing societal demand for a more mathematically proficient work force, mathematics proficiency is viewed as a necessary component for success in today’s world. to ensure proficiency, undergraduate institutions may need to rethink their instructional approaches to teaching mathematics. understanding the influence of classroom climate and self-efficacy on mathematics achievement may lead to instructional practices that increase the percentage of students choosing to pursue mathematics related majors. this literature review synthesizes research that has empirically examined the influence of classroom climate and self-efficacy on mathematics achievement. this review also offers recommendations for future research and policy in the area of undergraduate mathematics. keywords: mathematics education, mathematics self-efficacy, mathematics achievement, classroom climate, learner-centered environments, teacher-centered environments, literature review current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: michelle l. peters affiliation: university of houston-clear lake address: university of houston-clear lake, houston, tx 77058 email: petersm@uhcl.edu biographical information: michelle l. peters is an assistant professor of quantitative research methods at the university of houston-clear lake’s school of education. her research focuses on middle school stem and undergraduate mathematics education. author: karen kortecamp affiliation: the george washington university address: 2134 g street, washington, dc 20052 email: karenkor@gwu.edu biographical information: karen kortecamp is an associate professor of curriculum and pedagogy at the george washington university’s graduate school of education and human development. her research interests include professional development, teacher development, and evaluation practices. rethinking undergraduate mathematics 3 rethinking undergraduate mathematics education: the importance of classroom climate and self-efficacy on mathematics achievement for nearly fifty years leaders in american industry, military, education, and politics have focused considerable attention on stem (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education. it has been argued that growing the number of college graduates proficient in stem fields is essential to america’s economic well being and national security. the federal government has legislated billions of dollars to fund stem research and education (lips & mcneil, 2009). recently, the american recovery and reinvestment act of 2009 signed into law by barack obama included an additional $2.5 billion to fund the national science foundation including stem programs. in spite of increased spending the number of undergraduate students completing stem degrees is not increasing sufficiently to meet workforce demands. viewed separately, proficiency in mathematics is a necessary component for success in today’s technological workforce (mdhe, 2007; shinn et. al, 2003). higher education institutions are an avenue for preparing this workforce. to ensure proficiency, undergraduate institutions need to rethink their instructional approaches to teaching mathematics. the challenge to undergraduate mathematics educators is to teach students with diverse backgrounds and interests. according to nces (2007), the total number of bachelor’s degrees conferred continues to increase from year to year. the number of women and minorities pursuing college degrees is also increasing (hussar & bailey, 2008). despite the fact that the demographics of undergraduate mathematics classes have dramatically changed over the years, undergraduate mathematics education has remained pedagogically stagnant. as a result, student achievement in current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 those mathematics classrooms has declined (fletcher & tienda, 2010; nelson, 1996; treisman, 1992). teachers often teach in the manner in which they were taught (ball, 1988; clark, dicarlo, & gilchrist, 2003). for those who have had traditional schooling experiences, this may lead them to believe that their role is to give information to students utilizing didactic teachercentered approaches. compounding this, walczyk, ramsey, and zha (2007) reported mathematics faculty perceive obstacles to instructional innovation including the weight given to teaching effectiveness in personnel decisions, challenges in assessing teaching effectiveness and lack of formal professional development. with little or no incentive to improve instruction and little or no professional development in innovative teaching practices, the learner-centered directions in undergraduate mathematics education called for by the national research council (nrc) in 1999 will likely not be pursued. the concern is that the infrequent use of learnercentered instruction has negative effects on undergraduate learning and motivation (walczyk, ramsey, & zha, 2007). this literature review synthesizes research that has empirically examined the influence of classroom climate (teacher-centered and learner-centered) and self-efficacy on mathematics achievement. improving classroom climate and self-efficacy in undergraduate mathematics is increasingly important as the percentage of students earning mathematics degrees is not increasing at the same rate as college enrollments. in a september 2008 report, the national center for education statistics (nces) reported, “total enrollment in degree granting institutions increased 23 percent from 1992 to 2006” (hussar & bailey, 2008, p. 8). between 2006 and 2017, the nces has projected the following enrollment trends: rethinking undergraduate mathematics 5 1. thirteen percent increase in total college enrollments from 17.8 million to 20.1 million. 2. ten percent increase for students between the ages of 18 and 24 and 8% for students over 35 years of age. 3. thirteen percent increase for both males and females. 4. twelve percent increase in undergraduate enrollments and 18% increase in graduate enrollments. 5. five percent increase for students who are white, 26% for black students, 39% for hispanic students, 26% for asian or pacific islander students, 30% for american indian or alaska native, and 1% for nonresident aliens. although college attendance rates are climbing, the number of mathematics majors is not increasing. this poses a challenge for the traditional ways of approaching or thinking about undergraduate mathematics education. though the percentages of minorities, women, and older students deciding to pursue college degrees is increasing, groups such as these typically have reported lower self-efficacy and achievement in their previous mathematics courses (betz, 2001; o’brien & martinez-pons, 1999; stevens, olivarez, lan, & tallent-runnels, 2004). as a result, educational institutions are going to be faced with the challenge of educating an increasingly diverse set of learners. research shows that only 2.6 out of 30 students in the class or approximately 9.0% percent will complete a degree in mathematics or choose to major in a mathematics related field nces, 2008). given society’s need to maximize the usage of human capital in an increasingly technological world, a strong background in mathematics is critical for many career and job opportunities (meece, wigfield, & eccles, 1990). mathematics proficiency is necessary, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 particularly for those students in post-secondary education who will someday take the middle and higher-level jobs in the current and future economy (augustine, 2007). despite the growing need for graduates prepared to enter mathematics related fields, trends show those needs will be largely unmet. research shows that the lack of self-efficacy (bandura, 1997) relating to mathematics is a significant contributor to why students are not successful in mathematics (hackett & betz, 1989; hall & ponton, 2005; lent, brown, & larkin; 1986; o’brien, martinez-pons, & kopala, 1999; pajares & miller, 1994). self-efficacy is defined as a person’s perception of his or her capabilities at performing a given task (bandura, 1997). in order to build self-efficacy on the way to increasing mathematics achievement, the classroom climate in undergraduate mathematics may need to address and support the development of students’ mathematics self-efficacy. many students entering undergraduate education lack confidence or a sense of efficacy in their academic abilities because of unpleasant mathematical experiences, such as poor mathematics grades in high school. due to an increasing number of individuals seeking to earn higher education degrees, the traditional classroom climate utilizing the teacher-centered perspective may no longer be sufficient for ensuring academic success in an undergraduate mathematics course for a majority of students with diverse mathematical skills and career goals. consequently, if greater numbers of students are to be successful in undergraduate mathematics courses, it may be imperative to examine the influence classroom climate can have on mathematics self-efficacy and ultimately mathematics achievement. given that k-16 studies have shown that mathematics self-efficacy influences mathematics achievement, a review of the empirical studies may illuminate what could be done to ensure that more students choose to major in mathematics-related career fields, and thus add to rethinking undergraduate mathematics 7 today’s workforce in technical fields (cooper & robinson, 1991; hackett & betz, 1989; hall & ponton, 2005; lent, lopez, & bieschke, 1991; o’brien & martinez-pons, 1999; pajares & graham, 1999; pajares & miller, 1994; schunk & hansen, 1985; randhawa, beamer, & lundberg, 1993). research has verified that self-efficacy beliefs greatly influence decisions that college students make concerning choice of college majors and career decisions (hackett, 1985; hackett & betz, 1989; lent & hackett, 1987; lent, lopez, & bieschke, 1991). as a result of low perceptions of mathematical ability, students tend to choose career fields that do not require success in mathematics. according to nces (2007), approximately 91% of bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2005-2006 were primarily from non-mathematics degree fields. these statistics clearly indicate that the majority of students are choosing not to pursue mathematics-based fields. yet, the demands of society are requiring greater numbers of competent graduates in mathematics. theoretical framework this section provides a proposed conceptual framework, concerning the relationships between (a) classroom climate and mathematics self-efficacy, (b) mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement, and (c) classroom climate and mathematics achievement. based on our review of the literature we believe learner-centered classroom climates promote mathematics self-efficacy, which in turn improves mathematics achievement. classroom climate research suggests that classroom climate can influence achievement directly through the environment established by the teacher in a classroom (brown, 1960; eggen & kauchak, 2007; o’reilly, 1975; pierce, 2001). classroom climate is defined as the learning environment that the instructor creates by teaching in a teacher-centered or learner-centered manner. teachercurrent issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 centered (tc) refers to an instructional preference or teaching style focusing most on teaching and assessing behavioral objectives through course content and delivery. the needs of the student are placed second to instructing and assessing the curriculum. the teacher-centered instructional preference is the dominant approach across all levels of education in north america (conti, 1990). this is especially the case for mathematics teachers, whose subject matter expertise and skill in organizing and structuring content is what makes them most useful (boldt, 2002). on the other hand, learner-centered (lc) climate refers to an instructional preference or teaching style that focuses most on the needs and well being of the student, not to mention the process of learning (knowles, holton, & swanson, 2005). a learner-centered environment provides students with: (a) support and guidance, (b) positive feedback and encouragement, (c) empathy, and (d) mutual trust and respect (pratt, 2002). when teachers create a classroom climate based on mutual trust and respect, which is also free of ridicule and criticism, students tend to feel more secure (pratt, 2002). this sense of safety is believed to have a positive influence on mathematics self-efficacy and, consequently, mathematics achievement (adelman & taylor, 2005; harradine, 1999; pianta, stuhlman, & hamre, 2002; pierce, 2001; stipek, feiler, daniels, & milburn, 1995). learner-centered teachers at all levels have faith that learners can grow and, therefore, can learn. a primary role of the learner-centered educator is to establish a learner-teacher relationship that fosters growth in confidence and self-efficacy. it is believed that educators who embrace the learner-centered perspective of teaching: (a) seek to empower the learner, (b) divulge a sense of personal regard for the welfare of their learners, and (c) view subject-matter content as simply a means for learner self-efficacy (pratt, 2002). in facilitating self-efficacy, rethinking undergraduate mathematics 9 learner-centered teachers attempt to find a balance between caring and challenging by believing in their students and helping them achieve their goals. from this point of view, teaching is effective if achievement is the means and self-efficacy is the end. mathematics self-efficacy the link between self-efficacy and achievement is well documented in the literature (cooper & robinson, 1991; hackett, 1985; hackett & betz, 1989; hall & ponton, 2005; lent, lopez, & bieschke, 1991; o’brien, martinez-pons, & kopala, 1999; pajares & graham, 1999; pajares & miller, 1994; randhawa, beamer, & lundberg, 1993; schunk & hansen, 1985; siegle & mccoach, 2007). an individual’s level of self-efficacy affects his or her behavior in many ways in that it influences the choices that a person will make and the courses of action he or she will choose to pursue (pajares, 1996). bandura (1986, 1997) claimed that a person’s selfefficacy is a major determinant of whether there will be persistence in a given task, how much effort will be expended toward the task, and whether a person will even attempt it (pajares, 1996). people tend to avoid tasks for which they feel less competent and confident, but do engage in those tasks in which perceived competence and confidence is high. research suggests that the higher the self-efficacy, the greater the effort and persistence expended toward a given task (schunk, 1991). there are four key factors that contribute to the development of a student’s self-efficacy: (a) prior behaviors and performances, (b) verbal persuasion, (c) vicarious learning, and (d) emotional arousal (bandura, 1986, 1997; ormrod, 1998; schunk, 1989). students are more likely to feel confident in their mathematics ability, and thus have higher academic achievement, if they have experienced success in a previous mathematics class, if they have received positive current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 feedback and encouragement for their mathematics accomplishments, or if they have witnessed others of a similar age and ability successfully solving a difficult mathematics problem. in academic venues, self-efficacy research has primarily focused on two main areas: (a) exploring the relationships among self-efficacy beliefs, related psychological constructs, and motivation and achievement (cooper & robinson, 1991; hackett & betz, 1989; hall & ponton, 2005) and (b) examining the link between self-efficacy beliefs and college major and career choices (betz & hackett, 1983; hackett, 1985; lent, lopez, & bieschke, 1991; pajares, 1996). as previously mentioned, the results from past k-16 studies have shown that mathematics selfefficacy is positively correlated with mathematics ability/performance. in other words, students who report higher levels of mathematics self-efficacy also report higher levels of mathematics performance. research has also indicated that self-efficacy is a mediating factor for academic outcomes, cognitive engagement, and academic performance (patrick & hicks, 1997). the mediating effects of mathematics self-efficacy on mathematics performance have been of great interest to many researchers (hackett, 1985; o’brien, martinez-pons, & kopala, 1999; pajares & miller, 1994; randhawa, beamer, & lundberg, 1993; stevens, olivarez, lan, & tallentrunnels, 2004). review of the research literature an exploration of the empirical literature was undertaken to better understand the relationships among (a) classroom climate and mathematics self-efficacy, (b) classroom climate and mathematics achievement, and (c) mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement. the developmental nature of self-efficacy and the lack of empirical research for all grade levels required studies to be reviewed from the k-16 literature base. given the limited amount of rethinking undergraduate mathematics 11 research on the above relationships carried out in mathematics classrooms, these studies were taken primarily, but not entirely, from studies conducted in mathematics. the search of literature on classroom climate was limited to studies published after 1936, when it was discovered that the environment and its interaction with an individual’s personal characteristics were powerful determinants of human behavior. few studies of collegiate teachers’ classroom teaching practice actually exist (speer, smith, & horvath, 2010). given the lack of relevant research conducted using undergraduate and/or mathematics students, classroom climate studies focused primarily on non-mathematics k-12 literature. the relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and achievement has been well established in the k-16 literature base. empirical research in self-efficacy was limited to studies published after 1977 the year bandura’s social learning theory was published. initially, the search discovered 71 articles on classroom climate, mathematics selfefficacy, and mathematics achievement. in order to narrow the number to only those that addressed the research purpose and questions, each article was reviewed thoroughly to determine if it did or did not meet the necessary criteria for inclusion. although several articles were examined for this literature review, only 5 of the classroom climate studies and 12 of the selfefficacy studies met the criteria for inclusion. the classroom climate studies were restricted to those demonstrating a link between (a) a learner-centered classroom climate and self-efficacy and (b) a learner-centered classroom climate and achievement. the self-efficacy studies were limited to those primarily, but not entirely, in higher education examining the relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 studies of classroom climate for more than 20 years, the influence of classroom climate on student learning has been of interest to researchers. according to fraser (1989), “the strongest tradition in past classroom environment research has involved investigation of associations between students’ cognitive and affective learning outcomes and their perceptions of psychosocial characteristics of their classrooms” (p. 315). research has shown that student perceptions account for a considerable amount of variance in learning outcomes and, as a result, one could assume that student outcomes might be improved by creating a classroom environment conducive to student learning (fraser, 1989). haertel, g., walberg, and haertel, e. (1981) conducted a meta-analysis involving 734 correlations from 12 studies (823 classes in eight subject areas, 17,805 k-12 students in four nations). the purpose of the study was to estimate the sign and size of the correlations between student perceptions of the social psychological climates of their classrooms and student learning outcomes. findings indicate that better achievement on a variety of learning outcomes was positively associated with classrooms consisting of cohesiveness, satisfaction, task difficulty, formality, goal direction, democracy, and the material environment. negative associations were found to exist in those classrooms consisting of friction, cliqueness, apathy, and disorganization. in 1981, walberg incorporated classroom environment as one factor in a multi-factor model of educational productivity. the model claims that student learning is codetermined by the following factors: (a) student age, ability, and motivation, (b) quality and quantity of instruction, and (c) the psychosocial environment of the home, the classroom, the peer group, and the mass media (walberg, 1981). research not only confirmed the importance of all of the factors in the model, but also concluded that even when all other factors in the model were held rethinking undergraduate mathematics 13 constant; classroom environment was a strong predictor of student achievement and attitudes (fraser, 1989; walberg, fraser, & welch, 1986). for the purpose of this review, only classroom environment (climate) will be utilized as a factor in determining self-efficacy and achievement levels. classroom climate and self-efficacy this review of the literature revealed a lack of empirical research directly related to whether classroom climate builds self-efficacy in an undergraduate mathematics class. however, related k-12 research links learner-centered environments to increased self-efficacy in other classroom contexts (pianta, stuhlman, & hamre, 2002). results of such studies indicate that the climate in a classroom affects a student’s confidence in his or her abilities (adelman & taylor, 2005; harradine, 1999; stipek, feiler, daniels, & milburn, 1995). stipek, feiler, daniels, and milburn’s (1995) study compared children in learner-centered preschools and kindergartens with children in didactic (teacher-centered) preschools and kindergartens in terms of motivational variables, such as perceptions of abilities and expectations for success. their study consisted of a total of 227 children (105 males, 122 females), from 32 classrooms (age 4-6). to differentiate classroom types, observers, using a 47-item observation measure, rated each classroom based on classroom instruction and social climate. the didactic group consisted of 123 students (60 males, 63 females) and the learner-centered group consisted of 104 students (45 males, 59 females). findings indicated that, compared to students in teachercentered classrooms, students in learner-centered classroom climates tend to (a) rate their abilities significantly higher, (b) have higher expectations for success, (c) select higher levels of task difficulty, (d) have less dependency on the teacher, and (e) display more pride in their accomplishments. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 in a similar study conducted by harradine (1999), possible relationships between classroom climate, self-efficacy, and interest were examined with 107 third and fourth-grade students from four classrooms and two schools throughout the duration of one social studies unit. the two classes in school i were taught in the traditional manner, with the teacher positioned at the front of the room and the students sitting in clusters of four desks. classroom activities were teacher-driven, with students seated at their desks, and the textbook primarily drove instructional content. the students in school ii did not have assigned seats and each classroom consisted of numerous work centers where the students could work. each student was afforded quite a bit of autonomy in deciding what they would do, when they would do it, and where they wanted to do it. students were administered a 10-item self-efficacy scale, a 12-item general interest scale, and a 7-item unit-specific interest scale constructed by the researcher. in addition, a modified version of the origin climate questionnaire was administered to each student to gauge perceptions on classroom climate. the classroom teachers administered each of the scales, one per day, in the same week. the results of the study concluded that classroom climate was responsible for fostering the students’ interests and self-efficacy was directly related to student interest in the classroom topics and activities. classroom climate and achievement various characteristics of the classroom environment, such as satisfaction and “democraticness” (one aspect of a learner-centered environment), were found to be directly linked to academic achievement (o’reilly, 1975). in order to evaluate various aspects comprising classroom climate on mathematics achievement, o’reilly (1975) surveyed 1,100 ninth and tenth-graders in 48 mathematics classrooms from 12 secondary schools in eastern rethinking undergraduate mathematics 15 ontario. in two sittings, students were administered the stanford achievement testmathematics and the learning environment inventory (lei). the results indicated that a positive significant relationship existed between classroom satisfaction and mathematics achievement, r = .45, p < .05, and between democraticness and mathematics achievement, r = .47, p < .05. the results of this study suggested that the higher the satisfaction perceived by the student concerning the class, the greater the mathematics achievement and the more democratic the learning environment, the greater the mathematics achievement. teacher characteristics related to establishing a learner-centered environment, such as praising and encouraging students, can affect the classroom climate and, subsequently, academic achievement (brown, 1960; pratt, 2002). brown (1960) conducted a study to gauge a teacher’s classroom climate, based on verbal behavior, and compared it to student achievement. the study consisted of 15 third-grade classrooms (n = 318; 175 males, 143 females). to measure the classroom climate of the teachers, observers classified the verbal behavior toward the students into seven categories, such as learner-supportive statements and teacher-supportive statements, and then placed each teacher on a continuum that extended from learner-centered to teachercentered. to gauge student achievement, students were administered various forms of the elementary battery of the stanford achievement test. the findings indicated a higher relationship between a learner-centered classroom climate and the arithmetic subtest of the elementary battery of the stanford achievement test. a more recent study examined the influence of other teacher behaviors on her classroom’s climate, and thus her students’ achievement. pierce (2001) conducted a case study involving a middle school teacher with 24 years of teaching experience (21 at-risk students). the teacher was selected for the study based on recommendations from teachers, administrators, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 parents, and former students. observations were conducted over a period of 12 weeks in the form of audiotapes and field notes paying close attention to verbal/nonverbal teaching behaviors, teacher personality characteristics, and student learning. findings showed that the teacher created a classroom atmosphere that promoted a non-threatening environment for taking risks and participating freely in the learning process, provided students with a sense of safety and support, and showed enthusiasm and respect for her students. as a result, she increased her students’ level of academic achievement. mathematics self-efficacy and achievement in contrast to the body of work on classroom climate, the self-efficacy and achievement literature is more rich and complex. bandura’s social cognitive theory has greatly influenced researchers in many disciplines, particularly in the field of mathematics. in academic venues, self-efficacy research has focused on exploring the relationships between self-efficacy beliefs, related psychological constructs, and motivation and achievement (pajares, 1996). it is held that self-efficacy fosters engagement with learning activities, which promote educational competencies, which influence academic achievement (zimmerman, 1995). in addition, research has shown that self-efficacy is a mediating factor for academic outcomes, cognitive engagement, and academic performance (bikkar, beamer, & lundberg, 1993; patrick & hicks, 1997). the effects of mathematics self-efficacy on mathematics performance have been of great interest to many researchers. although there might be a reciprocal relationship between selfefficacy and achievement (pajares, 1997), a range of k-16 studies have shown that mathematics self-efficacy is positively correlated with mathematics ability/performance (betz, 1978; cooper & robinson, 1991; goldman & hewitt, 1976; hackett, 1985). results from these studies indicated that students who tend to report higher levels of mathematics self-efficacy also tend to rethinking undergraduate mathematics 17 have higher levels of mathematics performance (hackett & betz, 1989; pajares and miller, 1994; schunk and cox, 1986; schunk & hanson, 1985). modeling (vicarious experience) and persistence increase mathematics self-efficacy and thus have a direct effect on skill acquisition and performance (bandura, 1997; schunk & gunn, 1986; zimmerman & ringle, 1981). in 1985, schunk and hansen conducted a study to explore the influence of modeling on self-efficacy and mathematics achievement. the study involved 72 elementary students (36 boys, 36 girls, mean age = 10.1) selected from eight classes in two schools (schunk & hansen, 1985). students were administered a pre-test on which each student rated his or her self-efficacy for solving subtraction problems correctly. immediately following the self-efficacy assessment, each student took a subtraction skill test composed of 25 problems. following the pre-test students were randomly assigned by sex and school to one of the six experimental conditions including one control group. all children in the five model conditions received two 45-minute treatment sessions on consecutive school days. students viewed two videotapes that presented various subtraction operations in 15-minute blocks. the day after students viewed the second videotape, children participated in a subtractiontraining program consisting of 40-minute sessions on five consecutive days. students assessed their subtraction self-efficacy, skill, and persistence the day following the last training session, and it was concluded that modeling led to higher self-efficacy for learning and subtraction skills. several years later, mccoach and siegle (2007) conducted a study to assess whether training teachers in ways to enhance self-efficacy could influence mathematics self-efficacy and achievement. this study consisted of 872 fifth-grade mathematics students from 10 school districts, 15 schools, and 40 classrooms. each of the 15 schools was randomly assigned to either the treatment (n = 7 schools, 21 classrooms, 430 students) or the control (n = 8 schools, 19 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 classrooms, 442 students) group. after the teachers assigned to the treatment group received staff development training in self-efficacy strategies to use in their classrooms, all of the fifthgrade mathematics teachers taught a 4-week unit on measurement. prior to and following instruction, all of the students completed the student mathematics survey and the math achievement test. the results of the hierarchical linear modeling (hlm) analysis indicated that mathematics self-efficacy was a statistically significant predictor of mathematics achievement and the relationship for post-test mathematics achievement and self-efficacy was stronger for the treatment students than for the control students. in a study consisting of middle school students, pajares and graham (1999) chose 273 sixth-graders (150 boys, 123 girls) from one suburban, public middle school in the south to investigate the impact of various motivation variables on task-specific mathematics performance. attitude and outcome measures were administered in october and again in april, including a mathematics self-efficacy scale and a mathematics performance examination. the results of the multiple regression analyses concluded that mathematics self-efficacy was the only variable to predict mathematics performance at the beginning and the end of the school year. during the same year, o’brien and martinez-pons (1999) published a study designed to assess relationships among mathematics self-efficacy, performance, ethnicity, gender, and career interests in mathematics/science. four-hundred and fifteen (221 boys, 194 girls) 11 th grade high school students were surveyed using the mathematics self-efficacy scale (mses), adapted for high school students, and their achievement scores were obtained through pre-scholastic test (psat) scores. the results of path analyses techniques showed statistically significant correlations between mathematics self-efficacy and academic performance, indicating that as mathematics self-efficacy increases, so does mathematics performance. rethinking undergraduate mathematics 19 in a somewhat similar study, stevens, olivarez, lan, and tallent-runnels (2004) conducted a study to determine if self-efficacy could predict mathematics achievement across ethnicity. high school algebra students (317 ninth-graders, 100 tenth-graders, mean age = 14.7, 53% hispanic, 30% caucasian, 4.6% african american) participated in the study. each student was required to take a mathematics self-efficacy instrument created by pajares and graham (1999) to evaluate the confidence levels of eighth-grade students at the end of the school year. in addition, mathematics performance was assessed by having each student complete 20 problems similar to those found on the self-efficacy instrument. the findings suggested that on the average the hispanic students have a lower mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance than did the caucasian students and a statistically significant relationship existed among mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance for the entire sample. the findings showed a statistically significant relationship among mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance for the entire sample, r = .47, p < .01, caucasian sample, r = .46, p < .01, and the hispanic sample, r = .41, p < .01. studies evaluating the relationship between self-efficacy and academic achievement have also been conducted utilizing various groups of undergraduate student populations. in 1985, employing the use of undergraduate volunteers (n = 262; 109 males, 153 females) enrolled in an introductory psychology course, hackett (1985), utilizing data that were collected as part of a larger project on mathematics self-efficacy, developed a causal model examining the role of mathematics self-efficacy as a mediating variable in the choice of mathematics-related majors (betz & hackett, 1983). each participant was administered the mses and participant act mathematics scores were obtained from college records. to investigate the relationship between act mathematics current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 scores and mathematics self-efficacy, path analysis techniques were applied and found a significant positive relationship between act mathematics scores and mathematics self-efficacy, r = .66, p < .001. these results suggest that as mathematics self-efficacy increases, so does mathematics achievement. in addition, findings showed that there existed a relationship between gender and mathematics self-efficacy, r = -.25, p < .01, and gender and mathematics achievement, r = -.19, p < 05. men tended to have higher mathematics self-efficacy and achievement than women. in 1989, hackett and betz, extending on the previous study (betz & hackett, 1983), extended their research to further explore the relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance in undergraduate college students. pearson product-moment correlations were conducted to examine the relationships between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance. the results of the pearson product-moment correlation indicated that there was a significant positive relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance, r = .44, p < .001. in other words, the higher the mathematics self-efficacy, the higher the mathematics performance. in 1991, two other research teams, cooper and robinson and lent, lopez, and bieschke published findings addressing the relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and achievement. building on previous research conducted on mathematics self-efficacy, cooper and robinson’s (1991) study aimed to examine the relationships between hackett’s (1985) recommended variables of mathematics and career self-efficacy, perceived external support, mathematics background, math anxiety, and mathematics performance. this study targeted engineering and applied science students at a public mid-western university. participants included 229 male and 61 female undergraduates, who selected rethinking undergraduate mathematics 21 mathematics-based college majors, attending the first, third, and fifth summer orientation session. during the first two days of the orientation session, each participant was administered various survey instruments, including the mathematics self-efficacy (mse) scale constructed by the investigators. the american college testing program mathematics academic test (act-9) scores were obtained from student transcripts. pearson product-moment correlations were computed between mathematics and mathematics ability. the results indicated that significant correlations existed between scores on the mse and act-9. a significant positive relationship was found to exist between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance, r = .22, p < .001, suggesting that as mathematics self-efficacy increased, mathematics performance increased. building on prior research on career and academic self-efficacy, lent, lopez, and bieschke’s (1991) study investigated mathematical self-efficacy beliefs and the relationship of those beliefs to outcome expectations, academic interests, and science-based career choices. at a large mid-western university, participants (53 men, 85 women; 94% white, and 80% freshmen/sophomores) enrolled in an introductory psychology course received experimental credit for agreeing to take part in this study. each participant completed various measures, to include a mathematics self-efficacy scale designed specifically for this study. in addition, researchers obtained participant act scores from university records. predicting for mathematics self-efficacy, the results of the regression analysis indicated that after controlling for gender, only the mathematics act scores and perceived performance variables explained unique variation. a couple of years later, randhawa, beamer, and lundberg (1993) proposed a structural model to test the mediational role of mathematics self-efficacy between mathematics attitudes current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 and mathematics achievement. a sample of 225 (117 male, 108 female, age 17-19) high school students, from nine algebra 30 (an academic grade 12 course) classes in three high schools, was chosen to participate in the study. each participant was administered 3-rating scales including the mses) and a mathematics achievement test. results indicated that not only did mathematics self-efficacy act as a mediator variable between mathematics attitudes and mathematics achievement, it was also statistically correlated with mathematics achievement, r = .44, p < .05. the following year, pajares and miller (1994) decided to use path analysis to test bandura’s hypotheses regarding the mediational role of self-efficacy in the area of mathematics. the authors were interested in examining whether mathematics problemsolving self-efficacy had a greater effect on problem-solving performance, than did math anxiety, gender, math selfconcept, prior experience with math, and perceived usefulness of mathematics. in addition, pajares and miller tested whether self-efficacy had a mediating effect on gender and prior math experience on problem-solving performance. students at a large public university in the south, (121 men, 229 women), a majority of whom were enrolled in courses in the college of education (137 education majors, 213 other majors), volunteered to participate in this study. in the individual classes, in one sitting, students were asked to complete four survey instruments, including a modified version of the mathematics confidence scale (mcs), and were required to complete the mathematics problems performance scale (mpps) to assess their mathematics performance. the correlation of the variables in the path analysis results indicated significant relationships between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance. path coefficients from mathematics self-efficacy, β = .545, t = 10.87, p < .0001, were found to be significant to mathematics performance. in comparison to the other variables in the study, mathematics selfrethinking undergraduate mathematics 23 efficacy had the stronger direct effects on mathematics performance. in addition, self-efficacy was found to mediate the effect of gender and prior mathematics experience on mathematics performance. several years later, hall and ponton (2005) aimed to determine whether there were selfefficacy differences between undergraduates enrolled in a calculus course and those enrolled in a developmental mathematics (intermediate algebra) course. hall and ponton hypothesized that self-efficacy beliefs may impede success for those students enrolled in developmental mathematics courses. freshman students, enrolled in either intermediate algebra (n = 105; 42 men, 63 women) or calculus i (n = 80; 42 men, 38 women), were solicited from a medium-sized southeast rural university. each participant was required to complete the mses. the results of an independent t-test indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between the self-efficacy beliefs of the intermediate algebra and calculus i students, t(185) = 8.902, p < .001. the calculus i students (mean mses = 7.08) showed a higher selfefficacy than the intermediate algebra students (mean mses = 5.33). the pearson productmoment correlation results for all participants, r = .580, p < .001, and the calculus i students, r = .454, p = .598, indicated that there was a relationship between mses scores and act scores, whereas there was no relationship found with the intermediate algebra students, r = .052, p = .598. discussion summary of the literature the studies reviewed provide evidence of relationships among (a) classroom climate and mathematics self-efficacy, (b) classroom climate and mathematics achievement, and (c) current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement. the research here shows that it is reasonable to link classroom climate to learner and teacher-centered climates (harradine, 1999; stipek, feiler, daniels, & milburn, 1995). empirical studies indicate that learner-centered classroom climates increase learner self-efficacy and influence academic achievement indirectly and directly. in addition, the results of studies also suggest that self-efficacy affects mathematics achievement (hackett & betz, 1989; harradine, 1999; pajares & graham, 1999). results of several studies suggest that as self-efficacy increases mathematics achievement also increases (hackett, 1985; hackett & betz, 1989; lent, lopez, & bieschke, 1991; siegle & mccoach, 2007; stevens, olivarez, lan, & tallent-runnels, 2004). research therefore indicates that selfefficacy influences academic achievement directly. implications for practice mathematics proficiency is a must for today’s technological workforce (mdhe, 2007; shinn et. al, 2003) and colleges and universities are one avenue for preparing individuals for that workforce. given that most higher education institutions require the successful completion of at least one mathematics course and that many college students lack confidence in their mathematics abilities (ashcraft, 2002; lent, lopez, & bieschke, 1991; stipek, 1998), undergraduate mathematics classroom instruction may need to be augmented with a classroom climate that engenders the success of all students thereby increasing the number of students choosing to pursue degrees that prepare them for mathematics-related careers. this review of the literature suggests that one means to increase the number of students who successfully complete undergraduate mathematics courses and, in turn, the percent of students who decide to major in mathematics or pursue mathematics related careers is to utilize learner-centered approaches designed to empower the learner and develop learner self-efficacy. rethinking undergraduate mathematics 25 undergraduate mathematics instructors can be instrumental in ensuring this by creating a classroom climate which fosters mutual respect and trust, affords sufficient support and guidance, provides positive feedback and encouragement, and bestows frequent opportunities for student success. learner-centered approaches would include, but are not limited to, encouraging students to ask questions, eliciting classroom discussion among students, instructor willingness to provide additional assistance, and empowering students through positive communications about their ability to achieve success. surprisingly little research exists on undergraduate mathematics education. the impact of instructional methods and classroom environment on students’ learning has not been well documented. consequently if greater numbers of students are to be successful in undergraduate mathematics courses, it follows that more research in this arena needs to be undertaken. recommendations for future research given the dearth of literature, several recommendations are suggested for future research examining the dynamics of undergraduate mathematics courses. based on our review of the literature, we would argue that quantitative methods dominate the majority of published research studies conducted in mathematics education. we question whether all research questions dealing with undergraduate mathematics education can or should be answered using quantitative methods. given that the classroom is a learning environment abundant with psycho-socio elements, it logically follows that survey instruments cannot adequately measure the contextual inputs that influence individual and group performance in an undergraduate mathematics classroom. for instance, the dynamics involved in teacher-student interactions cannot be completely captured or measured using the responses to a likert scale (always agree – always disagree). as a result, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 researchers should broaden their data collection methods to include classroom observations, interviews, and/or focus groups to gather data that may lead to deeper understanding of the complex interactions between environment and learners. in the event that a researcher chooses to examine the climate of a mathematics classroom using a survey instrument, he/she must be cautious in his/her selection. although validated classroom climate or environment scales are already in existence (e.g., college and university classroom environment inventory (fraser et al., 1986), learning environment inventory (fraser, 1994), principles of adult learning scale (conti, 1978)), for the most part, several of the survey items appear to either not apply or to be inappropriate for measuring the climate of a mathematics classroom. given the importance of classroom climate on the academic success of mathematics students, one might consider either modifying a pre-existing instrument or developing an instrument that is designed to specially measure the climate of mathematics classrooms. last, but not least, very little research examining the dynamics of mathematics classrooms appears to acknowledge the nested structure that exists within a classroom. for instance, mathematics self-efficacy and academic achievement more often than not occur at the individual level, while classroom climate typically takes place at the classroom level. in this particular case, the unit of analysis poses a methodological dilemma. in the past, researchers have chosen to address this issue by aggregating individual level variables to the group level (e.g., district, school, classroom) or assigning group level variables to the individual level (e.g., student). this statistical strategy often poses many challenges, such as: (a) aggregation bias, (b) heterogeneity of regression among groups, and (c) misestimated standard errors (raudenbush & rethinking undergraduate mathematics 27 bryk, 2002). as a result, future research in mathematics might consider analyze quantitative data using a multi-level analysis technique, such as hierarchical linear modeling (hlm). hlm results are more precise and credible than those of a single-level analysis, such as pearson’s correlations, analysis of variance (anova), and regression. hlm has the distinct advantage of allowing for the analysis to be conducted simultaneously at multiple levels by using procedures that let the researcher examine relationships among variables within a nested structure, such as students within a classroom, thereby preventing the bias toward the rejection of the null hypothesis and thus the inflation of type-i errors (frank, 1999; raudenbush & bryk, 2002). as a result, estimations can be made for between-classroom variables (e.g., classroom climate) and within-student variables (e.g., mathematics self-efficacy and achievement). in addition, hlm also has the unique ability to account for the violation of the interdependence of observations assumption. given that students within a class represent a cluster and, therefore, share similar educational experiences, their responses to survey items or answers on achievement examinations would not necessarily be independent of one another. recommendations for policy it is important to accept certain “givens”; the diversity of students choosing to attend college is increasing (hussar & bailey, 2008); most students entering college have low selfefficacy in mathematics; and most students entering college will be required to successfully complete at least one mathematics course, such as college algebra, to graduate college. therefore, it would seem that providing classroom climates conducive to enhancing student success in mathematics is imperative. colleges and universities can be instrumental in the academic success of students enrolled in undergraduate mathematics courses. all newly hired mathematics instructors could current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 28 be required to either have a k-12 teaching certification and/or to have successfully completed teacher preparation coursework (e.g., educational psychology, human growth and development, development, diversity). another avenue would be to require instructors to attend professional development workshops focused on methods and strategies aimed at developing favorable classroom climates that enhance student self-efficacy. professional development could be provided in the form of paid workshops instructed by national experts, seminars taught within the university’s school of education, or departmental meetings addressing topics dealing with how to enhance student learning. in sum, current trends suggest that a much smaller percentage of undergraduate students are completing degrees in mathematics than is needed to meet increasing demands for mathematics proficiency in the workforce. although insufficient supply to meet demands in the workforce tends to ensure more competitive salaries and benefits for those who meet the need, relatively few undergraduate students are choosing to pursue mathematics education. one explanation for this may be the structure of undergraduate mathematics education. the review of the literature presented in this paper documents the relationships between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement and classroom climate and self-efficacy. combined, the studies imply that climate influences self efficacy and therefore achievement. in particular, learner-centered climates in which instructors seek to empower learners, show empathy and are committed to learner success have been shown to foster growth in learner confidence and self-efficacy. rethinking how undergraduate mathematics courses are taught to incorporate strategies and approaches that support development of learner self-efficacy could lead to increased enrollment in mathematics courses and subsequently, help meet the need for a more mathematics proficient workforce. rethinking undergraduate mathematics 29 references adelman, h., & taylor, l. 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(1981). effects of model persistence and statements of confidence on children’s self-efficacy and problem solving. journal of educational psychology, 73, 485-493. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 34 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo cie template 1 volume 14, number 2 july 31, 2011 issn 1099-839x comedy hour: using audio files of joke recitations to improve elementary students‟ fluency emily mitchell kristin t. rearden dawn stacy university of tennessee the purpose of this action research study was to measure changes in fluency components in three struggling readers. the researchers sought to increase oral fluency and confidence in order to improve reading skills among struggling readers. intervention strategies were implemented over a span of four weeks in a second grade classroom. strategies included teacher modeling, self-rehearsal, and audiotape analysis. automaticity and prosody in initial audio recordings of joke recitations were compared to the final readings of the same jokes. progress was also monitored by students‟ engagement in a class-wide weekly performance to present their jokes to peers. results of this study indicated an increase in automaticity and prosody as well as an increase in confidence in oral reading. keywords: fluency, technology, elementary, self-assessment, media files fluency is a vital component for success in core subject areas, as students‟ reading abilities impact academics beyond literacy and language arts. however, when teachers listen to a student read, how do they determine whether the student is “fluent”? in the vernacular, one might state that “the fluent reader sounds good, is easy to listen to, and reads with enough expression to help the listener understand and enjoy the material” (clark, 1999, p. 19). a more formal definition is provided by kuhn and stahl (2003), who state that “the primary components of fluency include a) accuracy in decoding, b) automaticity in word recognition, and c) the appropriate use of prosodic features such as stress, pitch, and appropriate phrasing” (p. 5). students who can decode words with accuracy are ready for the next two components of fluency as outlined by kuhn and stahl: automaticity and prosody. samuels (1988) states that developing automaticity with reading is similar to strategies employed with sports and hobbies: teachers must provide instruction, provide time to practice, and motivate students to stay on task. prosody, however, is more elusive to quantify progress. this research was modeled on work by ness (2009), in which students‟ fluency was positively impacted through the implementation of jokes into daily individualized instruction. ness selected joke delivery to increase fluency because of the reliance of joke delivery on prosodic features such as expression. this study aimed to explore the extent to which repeated joke recitation and the use of technology for recording initial and final readings impacted elementary students‟ fluency, specifically the components of automaticity and prosody, and impacted their confidence in oral reading. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 literature review fluency is not definitively bound by one single definition; however, fundamental characteristics include the ability of a student to read “smoothly, accurately, and with expression” (conderman & strobel, 2008, p. 15). a fluent reader is one who can read with “speed and effort-lessness,” and is often tied to understanding, or comprehension of the text (hasbrouck, ihnot, & rogers, 1999, p. 27). while a student‟s progress in reading is typically focused on the pace at which he or she reads (automaticity), it is also essential to focus on improving students‟ prosody (rasinski, rikli, & johnston, 2009). prosody prosody is defined as the ability of students to make words read aloud mirror the spoken sounds (language) they hear and speak every day (rasinski et al., 2009, p. 351). prosody also focuses on additional aspects within a text that include rhythm, pitch or intonation, tempo and rhythm. according to ness (2009), prosody in students‟ reading is often overlooked because of its subjective nature as opposed to the quantifiable attributes of automaticity and accuracy. modeling prosody in reading goes hand-in-hand with increasing fluency; such reading demonstrates to students the flow and expression of fluent readers (welsch, 2006). a significant difference exists between merely reading texts and actively engaging in or rehearsing text. in a study of first graders, rasinski (2006) evaluated the gains in reading rate as a result of using expression in students rehearsing poetry with their parents at night, versus simply reading the poetry without rehearsal or practice with their parents. rasinski stated that the critical objective of teaching students to read is to focus more time on prosody instruction in order to see gains in accuracy, automaticity, and ultimately comprehension of text. research by ness (2009) supports the development of expressive readers through the use of joke books. in her research, fluency instruction was taught through one-on-one methods to increase the elementary student‟s application of stress and inflection, or tone, during oral readings. the use of joke recitations for fluency instruction proved to be significantly beneficial, primarily because effective joke-telling relies on more than just saying words aloud; the phrasing, stress, and emphases on words all affect the humor (ness, 2009). targeting fluency instruction: repeated reading repeated reading is an effective strategy for promoting automaticity and prosody. according to wilfong (2008), repeated reading is a strategy in which “a piece of text is read and reread to build fluency, confidence, and comprehension in students” (p. 4). over thirty years of research findings have shown that repeated readings of text increase students‟ overall reading rate (conderman & strobel, 2008). teachers play a vital role in repeated readings by providing feedback to students in order to point out areas that may need improvement in reading, providing praise, and providing directions for students to read with expression. samuels (1988) and rasinksi (2005) both liken the role of the reading teacher to that of an athletic coach who motivates, provides instruction, and provides opportunities for practice. the genre of poetry lends itself well to repeated readings. research by wilfong (2008) assessed the extent to which poetry increased fluency and yielded positive attitudes and motivation in below-level third grade students during a “poetry academy.” students were asked to read selected poems aloud while listeners provided assistance and praise. significant gains were found in wcpm and word recognition as a result of strategies such as the repeated readings. poetry recitations are effective not only for below-level students. burton-szabo (1996) encourages the inclusion of poetry units with gifted middle school students, and poetry reading was found to encourage more active participation by elementary students when compared with story reading (elster & hanauer, 2002). methods the focus of this action research study was to determine the effect of repeated joke recitations on the participants‟ automaticity and prosody, and to enhance their confidence in oral reading. this study spanned over a period of four consecutive weeks in spring 2010 at a suburban elementary school in the southeastern united states. the school consisted of over 1,000 students pre-k5th grade. participants participants in the study were two males and one female in a 2nd grade classroom. the participants for this study were purposefully selected based on their calculated words correct per minute (wcpm) collected from running records during the first half of the school year. their wcmp were lower than the other students in the classroom, and therefore they were targeted for additional practice with oral reading. the researcher had extensive individualized reading instruction with two of the three students. she was well acquainted with their ability levels in regards to expression, timing, attention to punctuation, and the overall rate at which the students read in an informal class setting. the researcher collected baseline fluency rate data through grade-level fluency assessments and determined that additional intervention for these three students was needed. the targeted outcomes of the intervention were to increase automaticity and prosody through effectively conveying the humor in recited jokes and to build participants‟ confidence with oral reading. procedure the daily reading block routine for all students modeled the “daily five” (boushey & moser, 2006) which consisted of 1) reading to someone, 2) reading to self, 3) word work, 4) listening to reading, and 5) writing work. the three participants continued this routine with slight modifications that were explained to them by the researcher prior to intervention. during the four-week intervention, the comedy hour: using audio files of joke recitations to improve elementary students‟ fluency 3 three participants read only joke books to their reading buddy during their “read to someone” and “read to self” times, which consisted of approximately fifteen minutes for each rotation. joke books used in the study were 101 school jokes (eisenberg & hall, 1987), knock knock jokes (fremont, 1998), 101 valentine jokes (brigandi, 1994), and the best joke book ever (keller, 1998). these books were selected based on their reading or instructional level, vocabulary, and sentence structure. for four days a week, each of the three participating students received individualized direct instruction from the researcher. the duration of the direct instruction was ten minutes during the allotted core extension block of the day. the direct instruction consisted of a sequence of strategies. first, the student read a designated joke aloud to the researcher while his/her voice was recorded. the researcher then asked the student what the meaning or humor was behind the joke to assess for comprehension. the researcher made notes pertaining to word emphasis, timing, and expression. next, the researcher provided direct instruction to explain how the student could have used his/her voice as an instrument to improve the joke‟s humor. specific aspects of the student‟s delivery of the joke included pointing out correct pauses for punctuation as well as the purpose that the question marks, commas, periods, and exclamation marks possessed in the joke‟s overall meaning. after instruction was given, the researcher modeled a fluid and expressive delivery of the joke while the student listened. the researcher then asked for the student to provide feedback for the researcher on the difference between his/her first delivery and the researcher‟s. this model was followed by choral and echo reading of the same joke in order to re-read with the student. after the researcher provided a model and guided practice, the researcher recorded the student‟s second solo delivery of the joke. this audio recording was played back for both the student and researcher to analyze and discuss any differences. the researcher then provided each student with a copy of the joke of the day to write in a joke book folder (see figure 1). this allowed students to keep track of all of their jokes for the week and practice at home and with classmates. figure 1. participant 3‟s recited joke. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 at the end of each week, students participating in the intervention were given the opportunity to share the jokes they practiced all week with their peers during “comedy hour” on friday afternoons. students who did not participate in this study were also given the opportunity to perform as comedians for their classmates on a bi-weekly basis but were not given direct instruction that the three participants received. the researcher noted aspects such as facial expressions during the performance and verbal indications of excitement about performing to monitor the confidence level of each of the three participants. at the end of the four-week intervention, the students were asked to re-read all of the jokes they had recorded in their joke book folders. a total of sixteen jokes were recorded initially and after the intervention. the purpose of the recordings was two-fold. all recordings were timed, thereby providing data for changes in automaticity. secondly, the recordings allowed both the researcher and students to capture the prosodic nature of each reading. both the researcher and participants could listen for elements such as expression and pacing. data analysis audio recordings of each participant‟s initial readings of all 16 jokes were compared with recordings of final readings of each joke after the four-week intervention. the researcher used the recorded audio files to determine changes in automaticity and prosody. gains in automaticity were determined by duration of time to read each joke. gains in prosody were determined by comparing the expression, phrasing, and intonation of the initial and final joke recitations. changes in confidence levels were determined by observational notes pertaining to the willingness of participants to perform in each week‟s comedy hour. aspects that were noted during observations included verbal requests anticipating the performances and facial expressions during each performance. results the researcher recorded the three students‟ initial readings of all 16 jokes and final readings four weeks afterwards. reading durations were recorded in seconds, with results varying according to the length and vocabulary difficulty depending on the joke. each participant was assigned a different joke based on varying reading levels in order to differentiate instruction. the three participants showed a decrease in reading time durations on all 16 jokes. the decreased reading time was a reflection of the students increase in automaticity and accuracy, as well as a decrease in pausing techniques (for example, clearing one‟s throat). all three participants demonstrated an increase in prosody as indicated by their effective comedic expression through phrasing and pitch in the final reading of each joke. participants‟ confidence levels also increased during the intervention. below is a brief description of each participant‟s progress. participant 1 at the start of the intervention participant 1 possessed little interest in reading, possibly due to the fact that he was significantly below grade-level according to baseline data. in the initial readings, when he came to a word he did not know, he simply stopped reading to wait for assistance from the researcher. he made no attempt to sound out the word or skip over it to continue reading, as indicated by the initial reading in the audio recording. by the end of the intervention, however, the participant made an effort the majority of the time to either try to pronounce the word or skip over it. see figure 2 for participant 1‟s initial and final recording times. the most substantial gain represented in this graph is at joke #9 (nearly half-way through intervention) at which the participant had an initial read time of 54.2 seconds and a rehearsed time of 5.8 seconds. participant 1‟s confidence in reading increased, as noted by his anticipation for telling his rehearsed jokes during comedy hour. the positive feedback from peers was derived in part from his effective delivery of the jokes, indicating an increase in prosody. participant 2 participant 2 struggled with acknowledging proper pauses at commas and punctuation marks. he habitually cleared his throat when he came to word he did not know or could not pronounce. this is clearly audible in the initial recording of the joke included here. after the student read the first joke, the researcher explained the importance of skipping over a word he did not know without clearing his throat, and to come back to that word after he completed reading the rest of the sentence to check for understanding. discussing the meaning of each joke enabled the student to recognize when to use expression and assisted him with gaining more confidence in reading. similar trends were found for participant 2 in relation to participant 1‟s automaticity in terms of initial and final recording times (see figure 3). based on observational notes from the joke recitations over the course of the intervention, this student made noteworthy gains in using expression, emphasizing exclamation and question marks, and discontinuation of clearing his throat when he came to an unfamiliar word. participant 3 participant 3 typically had limited expression and insufficient attention to punctuation marks in initial readings. after engaging in one-on-one discussions and rehearsals, this student was able to make gains in expression as well as accuracy. see figure 4 for participant 3‟s initial and final recording times for reading. the largest difference was with joke #6, in which the student had a difference of 27.2 seconds between initial and final readings. the least change was noted in joke #7 with a marginal difference of .093 seconds. improvements were not only in automaticity but also with prosody. an audio recording of this participant‟s initial and final reading of one joke is included to comedy hour: using audio files of joke recitations to improve elementary students‟ fluency 5 demonstrate the difference in wcpm and prosody between the initial and final recordings. the audio file includes the participant‟s initial and final reading of the following joke: “did you hear what happened when jake and kate tried to kiss in the fog? they „mist‟!” on the initial recording, there are inaccurate words, repeated words, pauses, and flat expression. on the final recording, there is notable expression, effective pausing, and accuracy of words. figure 2. participant 1‟s initial (blue) and final (red) recording time for each joke. figure 3. participant 2‟s initial (blue) and final (red) recording time for each joke. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 t im e ( s e c o n d s ) joke number participant 2 6 figure 4. participant 3‟s initial (blue) and final (red) recording time for each joke. discussion implementing the instructional model suggested by samuels (1988), the researcher provided direct instruction, incorporated additional time for practicing repeated readings, and created a supportive environment to motivate the three participants as they focused on improving their automaticity, prosody and confidence. the time differences between initial and final recordings indicated that students‟ automaticity increased. prosody was also improved, supporting ness‟s (2009) research incorporating jokes for reading instruction. the use of audiotaping was a key strategy for students. they were able to self-assess their progress with reciting the jokes as they attempted to read them in a manner that conveyed the humor through comedic elements such as expression and pacing. while listening to their recordings, students could note the places where a pauses or inflections were needed. using technology to support struggling readers was not only effective but also motivating; the participants demonstrated excitement each time they used the teacher‟s computer to record their jokes. the researcher found that assigning students different jokes enabled them take ownership of reading their jokes aloud to the class. the participants visibly enjoyed taking center stage in front of their peers to rehearse their jokes each week. they knew it was their responsibility to rehearse their jokes to perform for comedy hour. all three participants anticipated comedy hour each week and repeatedly asked when it would occur throughout the day, which led the researcher to conclude that they were all genuinely interested in performing their jokes in front of the class. when the researcher asked a participant to deliver his or her jokes to the class, each one had a visible expression of happiness (such as smiling). they clearly enjoyed the opportunity to present their jokes in front of an audience. through this study, the researcher discerned that the intervention provided the participants with a motivating instructional mode for improving their automaticity, prosody and confidence. although only three students were targeted for the intervention, other students in the class benefited as well. the effects of implementing this study resulted in class-wide interest in reading jokes to fellow peers during the “read-to-someone” time during the reading block. “comedy hour” was a time of the day on fridays that all students eagerly anticipated. limitations of the study include the short duration of the intervention and the small number of participants. conducting action research is somewhat of a moving target, as the fluid nature of elementary school schedules often interfered with anticipated intervention events. implementing the strategies for a longer time would have strengthened the study. additionally, this study focused only on lower-achieving second grade students and therefore cannot be generalized to other reading levels or grade levels. areas for future research include conducting the intervention with average and high readers, and incorporating other genres that rely heavily on prosody, such as poetry, for recitations. in conclusion, results of this study suggest that the inclusion of joke telling in reading lessons can be a positive addition to more traditional print resources, particularly when teachers are attempting to note gains in prosody. as noted by ness (2009), while elements of accuracy and automaticity are quantifiable measures that are easily obtained through assessments formats such as running comedy hour: using audio files of joke recitations to improve elementary students‟ fluency 7 records, the features of prosody are more subjective. analyzing audio recordings of readings of text is one strategy that teachers and students can use to note improvements in prosody. students can compare files of initial readings and those made after direct instruction and practice time have been provided. although the changes are not quantifiable in the manner of accuracy and automaticity, prosodic aspects such as expression, inflection, and phrasing of text is discernable upon listening to the recordings. jokes, in particular, are an effective resource for providing instruction in the nuance-based feature of prosody because the humor is connected in part to the delivery. plainly stated, jokes don‟t “work” if they are told in a manner devoid of prosody, and most students know the difference between a poorly told joke and a humorous one. students often share jokes outside the context of school, and therefore are already familiar with comedic expression and pacing. capitalizing on students‟ interest in jokes to improve automaticity, prosody and oral reading confidence was successful in this action research study, and future research may indicate its success with older students as well. references boushey, g., & boser, j. (2006). the daily five: focusing literacy independence in the elementary grades. portland, maine: stenhouse publishers. brigandi, p. (1994). 101 valentine jokes. new york, ny: scholastic inc. burton-szabo, s. (1996). special classes for gifted students? absolutely! gifted child today magazine, 19, 12-15. clark, c. (1999). building fluency: do it right and do it well! teacher-to-teacher initiative summer workshop, 19. conderman g., & strobel, d. (2008). fluency flyers club: an oral reading fluency intervention program. preventing school failure, 53, 15-20. eisenberg, l., & hall, k. (1987). 101 school jokes. new york, ny: scholastic inc. elster, c. a., & hanauer, d. i. (2002). voicing texts, voices around texts: reading poems in elementary school classrooms. research in the teaching of english, 37, 89-134. fremont, v. (1998). knock knock jokes. mineola, ny: dover publications, inc. keller, c. (1998). best joke book ever. new york, ny: sterling publishing company, inc. kuhn, m. r., & stahl, s. a. (2003). fluency: a review of developmental and remedial practices. journal of educational psychology, 95(1), 3-21. hasbrouck, e. j., ihnot, c., & rogers, h. g. (1999). read naturally: a strategy to increase oral reading fluency. reading research and instruction, 39, 27-37. ness, m. (2009). laughing through rereading: using joke books to build fluency. the reading teacher, 62, 691-694. rasinski, t. (2005). the role of the teacher in effective fluency instruction. the nera journal, 41, 9-12. rasinski, t. (2006). reading fluency instruction: moving beyond accuracy, automaticity, and prosody. the reading teacher, 59, 704-706. rasinski, t., rikli, a., & johnston, s. (2009). reading fluency: more than automaticity? literacy research and instruction, 48, 350361. samuels, s. j. (1988). decoding and automaticity: helping poor readers become automatic at word recognition. the reading teacher, 41, p. 756-760. welsch, r. (2006). 20 ways to increase oral reading fluency. intervention in school and clinic, 41, 180-183. wilfong, g. l. (2008). building fluency, word-recognition ability, and confidence in struggling readers: the poetry academy. the reading teacher, 62, 4-13. current issues in education vol. 14 no.2 8 article citation mitchell, e., rearden, k.t., & stacey, d. (2011). comedy hour: using audio files of joke recitations to improve elementary students‟ fluency. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/651 author notes emily mitchell university of tennessee theory and practice in teacher education, bec 512, knoxville tn 37996-3442 emitch16@gmail.com emily mitchell completed her master‟s degree in teacher education at the university of tennessee and has taught at elementary schools in both tennessee and hawaii. kristin t. rearden university of tennessee theory and practice in teacher education, bec 512, knoxville tn 37996-3442 krearden@utk.edu kristin rearden is a clinical associate professor in science and elementary education at the university of tennessee. dawn stacy university of tennessee theory and practice in teacher education, bec 512, knoxville tn 37996-3442 dawn.stacy@knoxschools.org dawn stacy is a second grade teacher in east tennessee and is a mentor for elementary teacher interns in collaboration with the university of tennessee. mailto:emitch16@gmail.com mailto:krearden@utk.edu mailto:dawn.stacy@knoxschools.org comedy hour: using audio files of joke recitations to improve elementary students’ fluency 9 volume 14, number 2 july 31, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp anglea hines younsu kim angeles maldonado lisa lacy carol masser tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 806 layout.docx 1 volume 14, number 3 december 7, 2011 issn 1099-839x job stress and coping strategies of elementary principals: a statewide study lori boyland ball state university the purpose of this exploratory study is to gather and examine data regarding the jobrelated stress of elementary public school principals in indiana. specific job issues that principals perceive as stressful are explored, as well as self-reported changes in the stress levels of experienced principals. objectives of this research are to deepen understanding of the evolving climate surrounding public school leadership, in particular, to investigate current roles, challenges, and stress levels of principals. findings suggest that supportive measures should be considered in order to assist principals in dealing with increasing job stress and time demands. several such supportive practices are discussed. in addition, the 20 most common stress-management strategies that principals self-reported as helpful are presented in the appendix. keywords: principal stress, coping strategies, job stress, task overload, leadership issues the public school principalship has evolved considerably in recent years. changes in society, such as demographic fluctuations, economic downturns, and political shifts, have significantly affected public schools and impacted the role of the school leader (de leon, 2006; glass & franceschini, 2007). while the principalship has long been described as a challenging position, many principals are reporting escalating pressure as well as serious concerns regarding time demands (cushing, kerrins, & johnstone, 2003; friedman, 2002; queen & queen, 2005). increasingly long hours, growing lists of responsibilities, funding difficulties, and rising accountability standards are creating what some are characterizing as a culture of stress for school principals (bottoms & o’neill, 2001; combs, edmonson, & jackson, 2009; queen & queen, 2005). although some stress is a common and necessary element of life, excessive unmanaged stress has been linked to a long list of physical and mental health problems (colbert, 2008; sapolsky, 2005; weil, 2005; wheeler, 2007). as colbert (2008) explains, not all stress is harmful and a certain amount of stress is a normal part of life. however, when an individual experience high levels of ongoing stress, the excessive release of stress hormones can, over time, cause damage to cells, organs, and tissues (colbert, 2008; sapolsky, 2005; wheeler, 2007). the term that doctors use for excessive stress that continues for months or years is “chronic stress” (colbert, 2008; weil, 2005; wheeler, 2007). chronic stress is typically measured through self-reporting methods, either in interviews or with survey instruments using checklists, scales, or open-ended questions in which participants document their perceived stress levels and stressors (cohen, 2000). health care specialists are becoming increasingly concerned about chronic stress because it has been associated with a variety of health problems including muscle tension and pain, memory loss, suppression of the immune system, and even damage to the heart or other organs (colbert, 2008; larimore, 2003; weil, 2005; wheeler, 2007). in addition, larimore (2003) explains that chronic stress can weaken the functioning of the adrenal system (the source of one of the energy producing hormones, adrenalin), resulting in decreased energy during the day and disrupted sleep at night. left untreated, chronic current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 2 stress can eventually lead to exhaustion, burnout, and serious physical or mental illnesses (colbert, 2008; wheeler, 2007). armed with this knowledge, one can clearly see the value in identifying and assisting individuals who are experiencing high levels of ongoing job stress. in terms of the principalship, this issue has even broader implications because an entire school can be negatively affected when a principal becomes ill or can no longer perform at optimal levels due to chronic stress. chronic stress has been shown to negatively impact job performance and can lead to burnout or position change (brock & grady, 2002; combs et al., 2009). therefore, as the principalship evolves, it is important to monitor the stress levels of individuals in this position and to promote practices that can assist school leaders in coping successfully with their challenging jobs (brock & grady, 2002; queen & queen, 2005). review of literature the review of literature reveals several characteristics of the principalship that distinguish it as a diverse and demanding position. in addition to the daily rigors of maintaining the operations of a school, principals face a variety of taxing issues on a regular basis including meeting state and federal mandates, criticism from parents, large amounts of paperwork, funding cuts, escalating accountability, troubled students, and frustrated teachers (cushing et al., 2003; de leon, 2006; whitaker, 1995). combs et al. describe the position as “unrelenting” (2009, p. 14). in this fast-paced setting, principals may feel besieged and have difficulty finding adequate time to efficiently handle every aspect of the job (brock & grady, 2002; carr, 1994; queen & queen, 2005). however, a great deal of research has shown that successful principals really do make a positive difference in terms of student and staff achievement, parent involvement, and overall program success (edmonds, 1979; sergiovanni, 1995). larsen (1989) claimed that the effectiveness of the principal was the one consistent finding as primary to a high-achieving school. ubben, hughes, and norris (2004) stressed the magnitude of the principal’s role and summarized the research by indicating that the principal was the key element in school success. clearly, it is the public’s best interest for principals to be highly effective and productive in their important leadership positions. curiously, the research presents conflicting information regarding how principals feel about their positions. there are many reported positives about the principalship, but also many accounts of negatives associated with the role. some of the perceived positives that principals report include the opportunity to help students, leading a faculty towards a vision, being involved in the community, working collaboratively with others, serving as a changeagent, and managing an efficiently run organization (sergiovanni, 1995; malone, sharp, & walter, 2001). in addition to these perceived positives, studies have indicated that the majority of principals at both the elementary and secondary level find their work rewarding (doud & keller, 1998; graham & messner, 1998; malone et al., 2001). however, in the literature, there are also many negatives associated with the role of principal. some of these include reports of a hectic lifestyle, intense pressure, and constant conflict resulting from an inability to please all constituencies (carr, 1994; cushing et al., 2003; doud & keller, 1999). for many years, the principalship has been described as a stressful position and the degree of stress appears to be increasing over time (brock & grady, 2002; queen & queen, 2005; whitaker & turner, 2000). in the 1980’s, hiebert and mendaglio (1988) found that principals reported moderate levels of job stress, confirming results described by hembling and gilliland in 1981. however, by the mid-1990’s and early 2000’s, job-related stress was identified as a growing problem for principals by several researchers including carr (1994), whitaker and turner (2000), and brock and grady (2002). brock and grady found that over the past twenty years, principals have indicated higher levels of exhaustion and stress, resulting in reduced mental and physical stamina (2002). queen and queen called the principalship an “undoable position,” claiming that increased demands in a changing society caused great stress for principals and exposed them as major candidates for exhaustion and serious health concerns (2005, p. 10). cushing et al. (2003) also reported that the long hours and high stress of the position were taking a toll on principals’ personal lives and their health. while both elementary and secondary principals have reported feeling overwhelmed with their positions, elementary principals typically do not have assistant principals, which might put them at additional risk for high job stress (combs et al., 2009; doud & keller, 1998). in a recent study, combs et al. (2009) found that 8.8% of the elementary school principals in their study were stressed to the point of experiencing job burnout. mitchell (2010) described the modern elementary principalship as being, “…filled with constant challenges such as meeting the needs of diverse student populations, budget cuts, and strict accountability measures” (p. 116). mitchell goes on to say that due to the pressures of the position, many elementary principals are considering leaving the profession (2010). it appears that principals are under more pressure now due to several changes in recent years that have increased the variety, scope, and demands of the position. researchers have identified time constraints, conflicting desires and needs of various constituencies, role overload, and lack of role clarity, among other things, as potential sources of increased job-related stress (holt, 1982; queen & queen, 2005; whitaker, 1995; wiggins, 1988). for example, no child left behind, which was signed into law in 2002, brought several challenges to the nation’s school principals including higher overall accountability, mandatory standardized student testing, highly qualified teacher requirements, the pressure for schools to meet adequate yearly progress goals, and the threat of sanctions job stress and coping strategies of elementary principals: a statewide study 3 (including principal replacement) for inadequate student academic performance (linn, baker, & betebenner, 2002). in addition to the challenges presented by no child left behind, there are many other issues that principals now face on a regular basis. some of these include increasing student discipline concerns, excessive bureaucracy (especially in larger urban school corporations), conflicting internal and external expectations, deteriorating and overcrowded facilities, community dissatisfaction, unfunded mandates, special interest groups, and teacher shortages (combs et al., 2009; cushing et al., 2003). school leaders have also indicated that changing demographics in many communities, for example, population increases of students who are new english language learners, combined with funding cuts, have stretched their schools’ thin resources close to the breaking point (de leon, 2006; glass & franceschini, 2007). cushing et al. stated that for principals, “stress comes from high levels of responsibility, while authority and flexibility are simultaneously reduced via union contracts and fiscal and legal requirements” (2003, p. 29). in addition, cushing et al. reported that many principals were working a 60 70 hour work-week and still not feeling that they were getting the job done. it is interesting that principals have not been found to be highly motivated towards the job by features such as higher salaries, benefits, or status (malone et al., 2001). actually, in the literature, the main factors that appear to be drawing people to the principalship are altruistic in nature, that being the opportunity to serve others, to be a change agent, and to make a positive difference for children (cushing et al., 2003; malone et al., 2001). cushing et al. (2003) suggested that the rewards for principals were intrinsic and came simply from doing a good job and seeing children achieve. malone et al. reported that the majority of principals surveyed, 72.8%, asserted that their work was rewarding because they had “…an opportunity to impact students” (2001, p. 10). therefore, it is important to recognize that even though research indicates that the demands on principals are increasing, it appears that many principals still believe that the position is rewarding, primarily because of their interest in helping others. however, when an individual faces intense job-related stress for long periods of time, even the most rewarding position can become unmanageable and undesirable. consequently, further research is needed in order to investigate principals’ current levels of job-related stress and examine factors that may promote the health and retention of quality individuals in this critically important leadership role. method theoretical framework this study views job stress from a transactional perspective, which has become a widely accepted framework for understanding the nature of stress (cox & griffiths, 2010; hiebert & mendaglio, 1988; lazarus & folkman, 1984; torestad, olah, & magnusson, 1985). transactional stress theories propose that the level and duration of the stress response an individual experiences is influenced by the interplay between environmental factors and the person’s ability to cope with the stressor (cox & griffiths, 2010; lazarus & folkman, 1984). principals can be described as high-achieving, well-educated individuals who have been found to generally have effective coping capabilities (hiebert & mendaglio, 1988). however, there is a point for an individual when the demands outweigh his or her coping abilities and stress results. the levels of stress can range from very low to very high, or anywhere in between. stress levels that remain high for extended periods of time are of particular concern, as are the abilities of the individual to identify and cope with the stressor(s) (colbert, 2008; sapolsky, 2005; weil, 2005). therefore, in addition to identifying the stress levels of principals, it is important to examine principal’s personal coping strategies and compare those with research-based stress management strategies in order to determine the effectiveness of the techniques that principals are currently employing. assessment and measures the purposes of this study are to gather and examine data regarding the job-related stress of elementary school principals and their successful coping strategies. based on these exploratory objectives, a mixed methodology using a survey assessment was deemed most appropriate. the survey first gathered participants’ demographic information, including age, gender, years of experience as a principal, and highest degree earned. then, to determine perceptions regarding stress about their positions, principals were asked to rate their levels of job stress as “low stress,” “medium stress,” or “high stress.” answers were assigned a numerical value, applying a likert-type scale that has been successfully used by other researchers in this field (e.g., hiebert & mendaglio, 1988). the participants’ demographics and reported levels of job stress are located in table 1. a secondary objective of this study was to gather principals’ perceptions regarding stress-related job issues, as well as their successful methods and techniques for coping with stress. this secondary purpose was significant in itself as helpful stress-management strategies should be documented and shared, especially with those who may be experiencing unusual high levels of job-related stress. as gmelch and chan (1995) indicated, most studies of this nature have looked at the sources of stress, while few have discussed how school administrators manage their job pressures. gathering this qualitative information was accomplished through a series of open-ended questions, which were written by the researcher and then reviewed by a panel of educators including college professors and practicing school principals. the open-ended questions on the survey included: current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 4 table 1 participants’ demographics frequency (n=193) percent mean (sd) gender female male no answer age <41 years 41-50 years 51-60 years >61 years total years as principal <5 years 6-10 years 11-15 years 16-25 years >25 years highest degree earned ms or ma ed.s. or ed.d. school community rural suburban urban student enrollment <400 students 401-600 students >601 students no answer 88 96 9 44 55 84 10 51 52 33 45 12 155 38 132 38 23 71 89 32 1 45.6% 49.7% 4.7% 22.8% 28.5% 43.5% 5.2% 26.4% 26.9% 17.1% 23.3% 6.2% 80.3% 19.6% 68.4% 19.7% 11.9% 36.8% 46.1% 16.6% 0.5% 2.43 (0.58) 2.21 (0.62) 2.47 (0.59) 2.33 (0.61) 2.36 (0.61) 2.00 (0.58) 2.25 (0.63) 2.35 (0.59) 2.34 (0.60) 2.40 (0.67) 1.92 (0.61) 2.34 (0.61) 2.16 (0.60) 2.27 (0.62) 2.24 (0.54) 2.65 (0.61) 2.28 (0.70) 2.27 (0.54) 2.48 (0.57) note: higher mean indicates higher reported job stress level with 3=high stress 1) what do you find most stressful about your job? 2) what do you enjoy most about your job? 3) for experienced principals (practicing for 5 or more years), do you feel more or less stress on the job now than in previous years? 4) for experienced principals who report more job stress now, what accounts for the increased stress? 5) do you feel that job-related stress has impacted your overall health? 6) what helpful stress-reduction strategies do you practice that you would like to share with other principals? (see appendix.) the researcher established face validity of the survey questions by identifying appropriate queries and concepts through a review of applicable literature. content validity was determined by forwarding the survey for review to a panel experienced in the development and use of educational surveys including college professors and public school principals. several changes were made in wording and sequencing on the instrument after this review. then, the survey questions were pilot tested with a group of practicing principals. after a two-week interval, the same group completed the questions again and results were compared, demonstrating overall favorable stability job stress and coping strategies of elementary principals: a statewide study 5 reliability of the instrument. for the standardized (quantitative) questions using likert-type scale responses, the cronbach’s alpha coefficient for internal consistency reliability was computed at .881. the entire survey and a cover letter explaining the study were mailed to a random sample of 25%, or 290, of indiana’s elementary public school principals. to identify the sample, a random number generator program was employed and applied to a list provided by the indiana department of education of all currently employed public school elementary principals (indiana school directory 2009-2010). the subjects voluntarily completed the survey and returned it sealed in an enclosed self-addressed stamped envelope. all surveys were anonymous (the name of the principal, school or school corporation were not asked). the counties of postmark from the return envelopes were recorded, but not matched in any way with the returned surveys. then, the return envelopes were destroyed in order to ensure participants’ anonymity was not compromised by postmark information. in summary, this study was an attempt to check principals’ current levels of job stress, to recognize the specific issues that principals find stressful in today’s schools, and to identify coping strategies that principals perceive as helpful. by examining multiple perspectives, the information from this study contributes to the body of knowledge about this topic. the fundamental goal of the researcher was, and still is, to help educational leaders develop successful stress management plans and learn to cope effectively in their high-pressure positions. results data for this study came directly from the survey results. a total of 193 principals from 79 counties in indiana responded to the survey. this was a return rate of 67% and represents 86% of the counties in the state of indiana. based on this response, there was wide representation from around the state. all survey results were entered into a spreadsheet and reported in a combined format in order to protect respondent’s confidentiality. table 1 shows the demographics of the 193 respondents whose surveys were returned. based on the analysis of data received from the participating principals, the majority were found to be experiencing moderate to high levels of job stress. of the respondents, 38.5 % reported high job stress, 53.6 % reported moderate job stress, and 7.8 % reported low job stress. with almost 40% of the principals in the high stress category, these results support the work of previous researchers in this field who have suggested the job stress for principals is increasing over time (brock & grady, 2002; cushing et al., 2003; queen & queen, 2005; whitaker & turner, 2000). table 2 shows these results. anova tests were calculated using participant demographic information as the independent variables and the reported stress levels as the dependent variable. no statistically significant relationships were found. however, it is worth noting that urban principals indicated the highest mean of any demographic group in terms of their reported levels of job stress. the principals who had been on the job the longest, 25 years or more, reported the lowest levels of job stress of any demographic group. table 1 also documents these results. in analyzing the qualitative data, the open-ended question responses were grouped using content analysis. in order to accomplish this, the responses were first coded to identify general themes and then placed into categories and also quantified (saldana, 2009; weber, 1990). on the first open-ended question, which asked principals what they found stressful about their jobs, the majority of principals reported that the difficulty of “task overload” caused them the most job stress. for this study, task overload is described as having too many tasks to accomplish in a given amount of time. while everyone experiences task overload at times, many indiana principals appear to be in a continual state of work-related task overload. there were 88 separate written comments from principals that related directly to the theme of ongoing task overload. many of these comments revealed that principals felt overwhelmed by their managerial duties, for example, “the position is stressful because i always have too much to do and not enough time as i’m bogged down in paperwork and meetings,” and “all the paperwork, deadlines, state reports, and the continual budget cuts are very stressful.” many other principals’ comments indicated table 2 level of job stress reported by participants frequency percent low job stress moderate job stress high job stress n=15 n=103 n=74 7.8% 53.6% 38.5% 6 concerns about lack of time for instructional leadership. for example, “i’m working longer and longer hours to try and get everything done, but there is not enough time left to be an instructional leader,” and “i’m trying to get into classrooms more, but just don’t have enough time. i’m always behind on something.” do principals feel that their job stress has increased over time? of the experienced principals (five or more years in the principalship), 70% reported more stress now than in previous years. there were 113 experienced principals who answered this question. most experienced principals felt that the additional stress was due to expansion of the scope and demands of the job, in particular, a greater emphasis on accountability. principals commented on increased paperwork and reports, the difficulty in meeting the needs of special populations, and generally feeling “spread too thin” by responsibilities. again, the majority of the comments could be categorized under the theme of task overload that is escalating over time. many principals specifically mentioned meeting adequate yearly progress requirements under no child left behind and the rising emphasis on test scores, for example, “the job is more stressful now because of increased pressure and time demands by the state and federal government, like more paperwork, testing, and making ayp, but we get no additional help.” the majority of this study’s participants reported that they believe that job-stress from the principalship has negatively impacted their health. of the total respondents, 69% perceived that job stress had affected their overall health and wellness. this supported reports by cushing et al. (2003) who claimed that due to high job stress, health issues were prevalent among principals, especially those who had been on the job a few years. while this researcher cannot validate the relationship between respondents’ medical problems and their job stress, it is interesting that this study’s participants perceived a relationship between the two variables. some principals even made note of the health issues that they have developed since taking the job, even though this information was not requested. these included high blood pressure (n=22), trouble sleeping (n=21), fatigue (n=16), anxiety or depression (n=13), and headaches (n=8). in addition, a large number of principals commented that they do not have time to exercise regularly and several mentioned that they frequently eat on the run. for example, one principal remarked, “i used to exercise at least four times a week, now i’m lucky to get one day in.” principals also reported that their job responsibilities often consumed their family and recreational time, for example, “there is simply not enough time to work on your own agenda or have balance between home and school.” what do principals enjoy most about their jobs? “students” was the overwhelming response on this question. there were 116 separate comments from principals regarding the importance of their students, which was the most common response categorized under any one theme. for example, “i have the opportunity to impact 500 students in a positive way,” and “the thing i enjoy most is making a difference in the lives of children.” this research supports work previously mentioned by sergiovanni (1995) and malone, sharp, and walter (2001), which found that principals consider the opportunity to help students a leading positive attribute of the position. discussion principals are expected to be many things to many people. at times, the messages are conflicting. principals are the managers of their buildings and are expected to “run a tight ship,” yet they must also be creative risk-takers and flexible change agents. principals should be talented instructional leaders, well-versed in the latest learning research; however, they are also required to work within the confines of many financial and legal restrictions. principals are charged with promoting equity and diversity, yet must make difficult financial decisions in a very tight economy. to be successful, principals must work collaboratively with a variety of constituency groups while keeping the best interest of the students they serve at the forefront, which can be problematical when some groups have their own self-serving agendas. in short, the principalship is a difficult job. one can understand how in this age of amplified accountability and public dissatisfaction with schools; even the most effective principals are feeling under immense pressure. this study found that a large majority of indiana’s elementary principal participants are experiencing moderate to high levels of job stress. in addition, most of the experienced principals indicate more stress now than in previous years. these results are concerning, especially if this trend continues, as high levels of ongoing stress could adversely affect the physical and mental well-being of principals currently practicing. chronic stress can also impact job performance and could negatively affect a principal’s ability to lead a school effectively. furthermore, the principalship being seen as an increasingly stressful position could hinder the attraction of new recruits into the profession. this research suggests that supportive structures for principals should be implemented. there are several ideas found in the literature that might be of help to principals. some of these include increased professional development regarding particular aspects of the job, training in problem-solving skills, communication workshops, time-management classes, mentoring support, improved principal evaluation procedures, and opportunities for principals to observe one another (cushing et al., 2003; de leon, 2006). however, the results of this study indicate that reducing the problem of ongoing task overload might provide principals with the greatest relief. in this study, principals reported that they were responsible for an unrealistically large number of duties. it appears that the pace and complexity of the job has increased to the point of great frustration for some job stress and coping strategies of elementary principals: a statewide study 7 principals. in addition, principals repeatedly described in their comments that the tasks that kept them the busiest were managerial in nature, yet many indicated a desire for more time to focus on meaningful leadership issues, such as school climate, instructional improvement, and professional development for teachers. consequently, the results of this study suggests that principals need to be relieved of some of their managerial responsibilities in order to provide the time necessary to be effective leaders. ideas for this include reducing paperwork, adding assistant principals, and reallocating responsibilities that do not have to be taken care of at the building level to the central office. assigning some administrative duties to teachers in exchange for additional release time or other perks might be helpful (cushing, 2003). queen and queen supported this view when they said, “recognizing which tasks principals must do and which tasks can be shared or delegated will not only alleviate stress for the principals but also empower their staff members” (2005, p. 104). in addition to a reduction in managerial duties, today’s principals must be educated about stress management. they should gain a basic knowledge of the negative impacts that chronic stress can have on their health and their job effectiveness, and learn strategies to combat negative effects. school leaders need to develop a repertory of stress-management techniques and understand the importance of taking care of themselves. in short, they need to develop and follow personal stress-management plans. professional development should be offered to all principals on this topic. also, it would be helpful to make stress management information available to candidates studying to be future school administrators, at the university level, as an early preventative measure. conclusion the principalship is a complex and challenging position. an examination of data regarding principals’ job stress gives us clues as to ways we can help principals cope effectively in this high-pressure position. as the public school principalship continues to evolve, it appears that the position is becoming even more taxing, which could impact not only the health of principals, but also the functioning of entire schools. therefore, it is important that we consider the stress levels of the people taking on this difficult leadership role. principals are high achievers who are intrinsically motivated and very dedicated to their students (cushing et al., 2003; malone et al., 2001). however, the problem of task overload due to the huge variety and number of duties principals are responsible for each day warrants a closer look by superintendents, school boards, department of education officials, and researchers alike. steps should be taken to assist and support principals in coping with the demands of their jobs. keeping job-related stress under control is a critical step towards avoiding health issues, burn out, and job or career change (colbert, 2008; gmelch & torelli, 1994). the results obtained from this study, and others of this nature, may help us reach the important goal of retaining and recruiting quality principals who are able to perform at maximum levels. references brock, b. l., & grady, m. l. (2002). avoiding burnout: a principal’s guide to keeping the fire alive. thousand oaks, ca: corwin press. bottoms, g., & o’neill, k. (2001). preparing a new breed of school principals: it’s time for action. atlanta, ga: southern regional education board. carr, a. (1994). anxiety and depression among school principals: warning, the principalship can be hazardous to your health. journal of educational administration, 32(3), 18-34. cohen, s. (2000). measures of psychological stress. psychosocial working group. retrieved from http://www.macses.ucsf.edu/research/psychosocial /stress.php colbert, d. (2008). stress less. lake mary, florida: siloam publishers. cox, t., & griffiths, a. (2010). work-related stress: a theoretical perspective. in s. leka, & j. houdmont (eds.), occupational health psychology (pp. 31-56). west sussex, uk: wileyblackwell publishing. combs, j., edmonson, s. l., & jackson, s. h. 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(1988). stress and administrative role in educational organizations. journal of educational research, 92, 120-125. job stress and coping strategies of elementary principals: a statewide study 9 appendix sharing of principals’ stress-management strategies following are the twenty most common techniques principals reported as helpful in managing their job stress. these techniques came directly from school administrators around the state of indiana. however, they closely mirror researchbased strategies found in the literature, which validates their effectiveness (larimore, 2003; queen & queen, 2005; weil, 2007). 1. regular exercise (this was the number one strategy principals reported as helpful). when you can’t leave work, take a brisk walk in or outside your school. 2. try to leave your work at work. don’t allow yourself to think about school problems when you are at home. get out of the habit of taking work home every night. 3. take time to eat during the day. principals often work through lunch. try to force yourself to set aside some time to eat and take a break each day. also, keep healthy snacks on hand and drink plenty of water. 4. don’t dwell on your mistakes. we all make mistakes, so learn from them and move on. be as forgiving of yourself as you are of others. 5. journaling. many principals said that they journal after a tough day to relieve stress and reflect. journaling can also help you put your school issues in perspective. 6. get out of the office and go be with the kids. they bring you back to your purpose and adjust your focus. 7. network with others. the principalship can be very lonely. build a supportive network. find another administrator you can talk to. get away to a conference occasionally. 8. play relaxing or inspirational music in your office during the day. 9. increase your daily levels of communication with staff and parents. more communication means fewer problems. people like to feel “in the know.” 10. write out tomorrow’s “to do” list before you leave each day. it will help you start the next day feeling prepared. 11. look at the big picture and realize that you can’t get it all done in one day, or one week, or even one month. stay organized and plan ahead, but take each day a day at a time. 12. don’t make snap decisions (unless it is an emergency). don’t rush to judgment, especially when people are upset. slow down your reaction to an emotional situation. gather input and data before you make a big decision. 13. don’t take it personally. realize that it is usually the position, not you as a person that is upsetting people. plan to serve others and realize that “thank yous” are seldom given. when you need a lift, do something nice for someone else. 14. keep your sense of humor. as one principal said, “learn to laugh at the little stuff and don’t take yourself too seriously.” 15. be optimistic. don’t lose your positive attitude. start each day with a smile. count your blessings. several principals said they keep a file of positive notes and re-read them on crazy days to regain their perspective. 16. hire good staff. surround yourself with great people who love kids and let them do their jobs. don’t feel that you have to control everything. 17. balance your life. make time for family, friends, recreation, a hobby. schedule some “down time” for yourself. schedule some fun too! 18. identify something you really enjoy that is healthy and positive for you, for example, a hot bath, a walk in the woods, or getting a massage, and do it regularly. 19. deep breathing. when you are stressed, your breathing becomes shallow. so, focus on breathing deeply, into the abdomen, hold it for a few seconds and then exhale. 20. get organized. organize your office, your desk, your computer files, and your paper filing system so that you don’t waste time and energy looking for items. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 10 article citation boyland, l. (2011). job stress and coping strategies of elementary principals: a statewide study. current issues in education, 14(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/806 author notes lori boyland, ed. d. ball state university teachers college 907 muncie, indiana 47306 765-285-8490 lgboyland@bsu.edu lori boyland is assistant professor in the department of educational leadership at ball state university. before joining the faculty at ball state in 2008, boyland served as a public school principal for 16 years in the state of indiana. manuscript received: 9/1/2011 revisions received: 10/23/2011 accepted: 12/1/2011 job stress and coping strategies of elementary principals: a statewide study 11 volume 14, number 3 december 7, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editor melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy carol masser leslie salazar jennifer shea alaya swann faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers speaking in an echo chamber: the politics of parental choice volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets: an alternative analytical framework christopher lubienski university of illinois gregg garn university of oklahoma citation lubienski, c. & garn, g. (2010). evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets: an alternative analytical framework current issues in education, 13(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the question of how information is used by parents in selecting schools is a central issue in school choice debates, where advocates and opponents frequently intermingle theory (often economic), ideological beliefs, and empirical evidence in constructing arguments about the potential of this reform. we employ a nomination strategy to analyze rational choice claims about information on school quality, finding a much more complex picture of this issue than is typically found in policy advocacy. we offer an alternative framework for evaluating consumer information on schools, concluding that researchers and policymakers must consider the nature, quality, and equitable distribution of information. keywords: education reform, school choice, vouchers, charter schools, parent information current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: christopher lubienski affiliation: university of illinois address: 338 education building mc-708, 1310 south sixth street, champaign, il 61820 email: club@illinois.edu. biographical information: christopher lubienski is an associate professor of education politics and policy, and a fellow at the forum on the future of public education at the university of illinois. his current work examines organizational responses to competitive conditions in urban areas, and was recently named a fulbright senior scholar for research on local education markets in new zealand. author: gregg garn affiliation: university of oklahoma email: garn@ou.edu biographical information: gregg garn is professor of educational leadership and policy studies and associate dean of the jeannine rainbolt college of education at the university of oklahoma. dr. garn is director of the k20 center for educational and community renewal (k20center.ou.edu) and serves as the linda clark anderson presidential professor. evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 3 a fundamental assumption of all school choice policies is that parents are in an advantageous position for discerning and choosing the best schools for their children. this argument holds that parents are not only best situated to evaluate their own child’s educational options, but also have the incentives to choose wisely. this thinking identifies the idealized “rational consumer” in the parent, where individuals are driven by the quest for academic quality and, consequently, advantages in later economic opportunities. this thinking is aligned with what is known as “rational choice” theory, where individual actions are assumed to be based in logical weighting of different alternatives based on accumulated information and motivated by self-interest. i while this hypothesis is appealing with regard to educational choice, and is seemingly supported by common-sense evidence, empirical support for this perspective is highly contested in policy debates. in fact, contrary to the claims of some policy advocates, a comprehensive review of the evidence on parental information and choices presents a much more complex picture of parents’ use of information on academic quality — one which seriously questions the idealization on a rational consumer pursuing educational effectiveness. we note the key question is not so much whether parents can choose wisely for their children, but whether information to make effective choices is readily available and equitably distributed. in this analysis, we re-examine a framework offered by two school choice policy advocates regarding the theoretical and empirical evidence related to the rational consumer hypothesis, which has been used to support the contention that not only can parents make good choices, but “parents would do a better job choosing schools for their children than do experts in governmental agencies” (bast & walberg, 2004, p.431). this framework had been structured around three lines of research: current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 1.) survey data demonstrating that parents and “experts” come to similar assessments of school quality — indicating that parents have the necessary information on schools in order to make wise choices. 2.) survey data demonstrating that parents tend to focus on issues of academic quality when selecting schools — suggesting that parents are making choices in support of the rational consumer concern with later economic opportunities. 3.) achievement data indicating that academic effectiveness is superior in choice schools, as opposed to that in schools to which students are assigned (see bast & walberg, 2004). although such claims are often framed as emerging from empirical research, we demonstrate in this analysis that they are instead a clear example of what belfield & levin (2005) argue is ideology trumping evidence. as we note in our discussion, the empirical evidence used to support the rational consumer model is highly selective (and sometimes misinterpreted or misrepresented). a more careful review of the research indicates a much more complex picture that defies neat, ideologically pure portraits. this paper pursues the question of what we know about parents and the use of information on educational options. in the following section we question how this issue is framed, suggesting the need to consider institutional, political, and individual concerns. then we consider the different research literatures highlighted in the framework (following bast and walberg) pertinent to this issue. we examine (1) the evidence on the propensity of parents to accurately determine the academic quality of a school, and (2) whether or not academic quality is the paramount concern for parents. furthermore, we survey the research on (3) the effects of choices on academic quality; this last issue offers insights into the type of evidence that is used to support the “rational consumer” argument, and suggests the role of an ideological echoevidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 5 chamber to substantiate that model. alternatively, we propose a framework for considering the types, quality, and utility of information on school effectiveness, and provide specific recommendations on improving the availability and distribution of information for consumers. the concluding discussion highlights the need for more careful and comprehensive understanding of the complex evidence on parental choice of schools. consumer information the simple insight that parents are best able to exercise responsibility over their children’s education is quite appealing and seemingly self-evident. indeed, there are many cases where this is obviously true. however, the question is not whether this is typically the case or not, but whether or not this is to be a guiding principle for shaping public policy. fundamentally, if parents are expected to make good choices for their children, they must have sufficient information on both their children and their options in order to make this decision most effectively. in that regard, there are three essential issues that need to be addressed — issues that are too often neglected in assumptions about the appropriate role of parents in their children’s education. the first issue is institutional. parents act as proxy-consumers for their children in schools, as they do in other areas of life: medical care, nutrition, religion, and so forth (brighouse, 2000). yet, with regard to different social institutions, proxy consumers play different roles, depending largely on their knowledge and the nature of a specific sector. for instance, parents purchase food and clothing in the business sector for their children based on their assessment of preferences, costs, availability, etc. similarly, other institutions such as politics and religion are left almost exclusively to the parents to instruct the child as they see fit. however, in more specialized sectors, parents often defer to experts with arcane knowledge on current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 issues such as medicine, for instance. the issue, then, is whether education is best characterized as a market, politics, or science. but this is a question neglected in the discourse among policymakers debating parental choice. this discussion currently advances largely from the assumption that education is akin to the inculcation of political or religious values, often played out in a market arena where parents can shop for the right educational services for their children. while education does indeed embody these types of qualities, it is also the case that education may require some outside expertise (that is, moving beyond the role of advocate) in “diagnosing” and “treating” each learner — a consideration often denied in the rhetoric about parental control. the second issue is political, specifically a democratic concern. families have an interest in reproducing their values in the next generation. thus, parents rely not only on childrearing or church, but also look to institutions such as education to reinforce (or at least not contradict) the values that they emphasize in the home (bast & walberg, 2004). this is widely agreed to be a primary interest of the good parent. however, a democratic society — particularly one with any pretensions of meritocratic fairness — also has an interest in providing equitable opportunities for autonomous citizens. since family backgrounds provide an inequitable basis for determining future opportunities — with some children receiving a much greater advantage from their families — democratic societies typically look to institutions such as schooling to provide both equity and autonomy for individuals. this means, in a sense, that schools need to break the cycle of poverty (and, implicitly, then, the cycle of affluence as well) that so characterize modern market societies. that is, one of the primary purposes of schools in a democratic society is to make a child’s family factors meaningless for success in schools and life. similarly, parents typically seek to get children to respect their authority, while a truly democratic society may encourage children to question authority. evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 7 the third issue is a concern for the individual and involves the place of the child in a democratic society. choice advocates often point to a parent’s “prior” right to determine their children’s education, guaranteed in agreements such as the universal declaration of human rights, which trumps claims of other interests (monk, 2004). although it is assumed that parents will act in the child’s best interests, as a parental right, that assumption is largely irrelevant. instead, this parental right is often articulated and exercised in the manner of a property right. yet parents do not “own” their children, nor are they the only recognized authority with respect to the child. the broader public also has both a right and responsibility to care for the child’s interests. although parents are typically positioned to be the primary agent in looking after the child, it is generally accepted that democratic societies also exercise an overriding prerogative regarding a child’s welfare, particularly in instances where a parent is unwilling or ill-equipped to make wise choices on behalf of the child. although it can take many forms, this public interest is typically articulated through the role of the government in areas such as education. while these three concerns confound simplistic claims that a parent’s position makes him or her an exclusive authority in education, they are not necessarily the only issues in evaluating parental choices in education. it is also important to consider the empirical evidence on parental choice of schools. as noted above, information is a key component, so it is essential to understand the information available to parents in making school choices. below we highlight three forms of evidence on parents choosing schools. in doing so, we draw on the framework employed by bast and walberg (2004) in promoting the rational consumer model to support school choice: parent ratings of schools, parent preferences for academic quality, and effects of choice on academic achievement — these together are thought to support the classical economic current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 idealization of a rational consumer, proving that parents are inherently better positioned to make such choices than is, say, a government bureaucracy. thus, we use a nomination strategy, examining research nominated by policy advocates, under the assumption that such research represents the strongest evidence is support of that position. however, a more comprehensive review of the evidence around these three points suggests a much more complex picture, problematizing easy and attractive assumptions about parents, information, and academic quality. rating school quality many observers argue that parents are both best positioned and most likely to make the best education choices for children. some refer to empirical literatures in order to demonstrate parents’ ability, willingness, and effectiveness in making wise and informed choices. the first element of this argument is that parents and education experts rate school similarly. to support this point, bast and walberg (2004), for instance, cite three studies indicating that parents’ ratings and ranking of schools were accurate on specific criteria. however, two of the studies cited actually contradict that thesis. hoxby (2001) examines parental satisfaction with different public schools, relative to the actual academic effectiveness of those schools. yet, contrary to the thesis that parents are necessarily accurate judges of school quality, the majority of parents were incorrect in their assessment of school quality; according to the data reported by bast and walberg: only 44% were “highly satisfied” with the highest performing schools, and 15% of parents were “highly satisfied” with the worst schools — suggesting that the majority of parents (71%) assessing school quality in that study were inaccurate or highly inaccurate. a second study, examining new zealand’s educational choice reforms, noted that parent assessments of high quality schools were probably based on the evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 9 socioeconomic characteristics of the students (fiske & ladd, 2000). this finding is problematic for the argument that parents are the best judges of academic quality, since it suggests that academic quality is either difficult to discern, or parents focused on other information instead, such as the racial characteristics of students in a school, rather than actual evidence of school quality. ii thus, it appears that the evidence cited does not necessarily support claims about parents’ ratings matching those of experts, but instead actually undermines this argument, and presents a more complex picture of this issue. in fact, a comprehensive research literature suggests that parents do not necessarily always agree with objective assessments of school quality. in research on parents’ school choices in chile — a nation with a much more comprehensive market model for education than those in the us and new zealand — studies have found parents had tenuous sources of information, and were largely incorrect when asked to identify high and low quality schools in their area (espínola, 1993; gauri, 1998). and in a comprehensive study of us mathematics achievement on the national assessment of educational progress, lubienski and lubienski (2006) noted that, after controlling for student demographics, charter schools were actually performing significantly beneath the level of public schools, despite their much-mentioned waiting lists (see also braun et al., 2006a). more importantly, students in self-described conservative christian schools, which are the fastest-growing segment of the private school sector, are almost a year behind their public school counterparts, while higher performing catholic and lutheran schools often struggle to attract families — indicating that popularity with parents is not a good proxy for academic quality (see broughman & pugh, 2004; braun et al., 2006b). similarly, evidence that parents are using vouchers to send their children to higher performing schools is less than compelling (belfield, 2006). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 indeed, much evidence already indicates that parents have different perceptions around general issues of school quality than do school choice advocates. president bush’s 2006 state of the union address called for a dramatic ramping up of math and science training, a theme echoed by many business leaders and school reformers. but parents are generally satisfied with the amount and quality of instruction their children receive in these areas (johnson et al., 2006). parents often see more value to the local public schools than some advocates of rational choice believe they should. iii surveys have repeatedly demonstrated that the people thought to be best positioned to make assessments of school quality — “those who are closest to and most familiar with the situation” (bast & walberg, 2004, p. 433) — also tend to give relatively high marks to the schools they know the most: the local public school that their children attend (rose & gallup, 1999, 2003, 2005). either parents are in error regarding the quality of their local schools and therefore, by implication, are incapable of judging school quality, or the experts calling for drastic moves to market models for schooling are inaccurate in their own assessment of schools. once again, the issue is much more complex than some of the advocacy rhetoric would indicate. choosing a school based on academic quality the second pillar of the rational consumer model holds that parents are primarily interested in academic quality. we find a much less conclusive sense of the literature on this issue than advocates or opponents of school choice may like. the notion that parental preferences for schools revolve around issues of academic quality is a key element in the rational consumer idealization in much of the thinking on school choice (see schneider et al., 2000). specifically, economic logic holds that the parents are primarily interested in the academic quality of a school because this will in turn enhance economic prospects for their children (bast & walberg, 2004). iv theorists seek to support this notion by citing four sources showing evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 11 national and local survey research in which parents identify academic quality as the most important criterion in selecting a school. on the other hand, there is a substantial research literature — both survey and behavioral — from the us and other nations suggesting that parents choose for a number of reasons besides strictly academic considerations (e.g., gauri, 1998; molnar, 1996; polansky, 1998; smith & meier, 1995; wells, 1993). this is not to say that parents do not choose schools based on academic quality, but that many other considerations (e.g., location, transportation, curricular focus, uniforms, sports, or student demographics) also come into play — making for a much more complex picture than is portrayed in the rationalconsumer idealization. in fact, since school choice moved into the national spotlight, this question has been debated, and the literature hardly reflects the consensus implied by the four sources cited by some rational choice theorists (see coulson, 1999; moe, 1995; solomon, 2003; witte, 2000). of course, there are problems with citing survey data to support any contention on this issue. most importantly, surveys are notoriously unreliable when people are asked to express preferences on controversial topics, compared to when they actually reveal their true preferences away from public scrutiny. for instance, although few parents cite racial composition of schools as a factor in their choices (schneider et al., 1998), it is, in fact, perhaps the most urgent bit of information they seek when considering different schools (schneider & buckley, 2002; see also glazerman, 1998; henig, 1996). furthermore, many of these studies survey parents who have chosen to use a voucher or charter school, presenting a problem with selection bias; not only are those schools based on choice more likely to have already shed disgruntled families, who would then not be included in the survey, but, furthermore, those remaining are unlikely to admit in a survey they have chosen poorly for their child. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 finally, while parents may say that academic quality is a high priority, this does not mean that they actually have hard information on that issue. for instance, recent studies of school marketing in competitive environments suggest that evidence of academic quality is not a prominent theme in school promotional materials; instead, schools often seek to attract families through images of white or asian-american students, information about extracurricular opportunities, or symbols associated with exclusive schooling, rather than, say, test scores (identifying information removed). this trend may be troubling. even if parents act on “perceived academic quality,” school officials may recognize and respond to incentives to shape those perceptions through surrogate information on school quality that highlights racial and socio-economic criteria (bast & walberg, 2004, p. 431; emphasis added). competitive dynamics may promote sorting on these factors, and undercut incentives for school improvement (identifying reference, 2005). our analysis of the relevant literature leads us to conclude that academics may be one of a variety of factors that influence school selection by parents. moreover, problems with selection bias in the survey data and difficulty in getting trustworthy evidence of school quality complicate the rational consumer argument. academic achievement gains are higher in schools of choice the third pillar of the rational consumer argument is that academic achievement gains are higher in schools of choice than traditional public schools. the dynamics set in motion by parental choice are thought to lead to more effective schools overall (hoxby, 1994). this is a crucial claim. as bast and walberg (2004) note: higher academic achievement by students attending schools of choice, after controlling for family socioeconomic status, could be evidence that parents are evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 13 choosing wisely. however, it could also be evidence that competition produces better schools… even if parents are not choosing wisely, the fact that producers must compete or that choice motivates parents to be more engaged in their children’s schooling may lift their children’s academic achievement. (p. 436, emphasis in original) as a case in point, bast and walberg (2004) cite 25 studies on a number of school choice programs, including public school choice, private schools, charter schools, and voucher programs to support this claim. not all of the studies report original research, but some instead summarize existing research. more importantly, a review of these studies indicates a much more complex picture than is implied in the effort to support this claim. for instance, a study by grogger and neal (2000) is cited as evidence of a “positive and statistically significant” private school effect on academic achievement. in fact, grogger and neal’s study of nels:88 data found no statistically significant effect for catholic schools on mathematics achievement for students in the suburbs, but a modest advantage for white students, and larger gains for minority students, in urban areas; no private school effect was found for secular private schools. v (this is a significant omission, in view of the thesis about the competitive impact of choice, since nonreligious private schools may be more susceptible to market-like forces than catholic schools, which can rely on the more inert patronage of parishioners.) other studies cited show similarly mixed results. furthermore, causation is often implied, but cannot be supported by the data or analysis. for example, bast and walberg cite a one-page study of inputs and achievement of catholic and public school students in new york as proof that achievement “growth is greater in catholic schools than in public schools” (peterson & walberg, 2002, p. 435). however, the authors do not indicate that they used longitudinal data, nor does it appear that they controlled current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 for student demographics — two fatal errors if one is to demonstrate that a school type, and not family factors, caused achievement growth. many of the other studies cited to support this claim are actually just summaries of previous studies that have also been contested on methodological grounds. vi not only does the rational choice argument depend on a selective interpretation of these studies, but it would depend as well on a very selective review of the literature. other studies not cited found no academic advantage for schools of choice, and a few found a negative effect. for instance, studies by rouse (1998) and miron and nelson (2002) of achievement in voucher and charter programs, respectively, do not support the thesis that school choice necessarily leads to greater achievement gains. in a longitudinal study, figlio and stone (1997) found a small but statistically significant negative effect for religious schools for white students, but a positive impact for minority students (see also figlio & stone, 1999). more recently, using national samples, lubienski and lubienski (2006) and braun, jenkins and grigg (2006a, 2006b) found schools of choice to be trailing public schools in academic achievement after implementing appropriate controls for student demographics. and belfield (2006) found a negative private school effect in his rigorous study of the cleveland voucher program. we reference the aforementioned studies, not to “prove” that choice has a particular impact (or not) on student achievement, but to demonstrate that the picture is much more complex than what is implied in support of the claim that choice generates gains in academic achievement. ideology and evidence in support of rational choice in education the three pillars of the rational consumer hypothesis that parents would do a better job choosing schools than experts are tenuous at best. a selective use of the literature and a mischaracterization of several key studies undercut the rational choice argument significantly. evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 15 however, another problem also problematizes such claims. the rational choice claim relies heavily on studies of questionable value for researchers and policymakers. as table 1 demonstrates, many of them are supported and published by various think tanks rather than traditional peer reviewed publications. in an analysis of their references we found only two of the 64 total references come from traditional refereed journal articles while 32 are published by think tanks — most with definite political agendas. vii table 1: think tanks and other sources of research citations in bast and walberg (2004) source frequency brookings institution 9 hoover institute 6 school reform news (heartland institute) 2 american enterprise institute 1 national center for the study of privatization in education 1 carnegie foundation 1 pacific research institute 1 rand 1 manhattan institute 1 kettering foundation 1 morrison institute 1 goldwater institute 1 human resources policy corporation 1 reason public policy institute 1 princeton university working paper 1 public agenda 1 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 the world bank 1 national bureau for economic research 1 for example, the three surveys offered by advocates support the assertion that parents rate schools similar to experts were published by the human resources policy corporation, the hoover institute, and the brookings institution. similarly, in section 4.3.2 (p.437) bast and walberg identify nine references to support their assertion that the private school effect is statistically significant (see table 2). table 2: sources of research on school effects cited in bast and walberg (2004) reference publication source chubb & moe, 1990 brookings institution coleman & hoffer, 1987 basic books grogger & neal, 2000 brookings institution neal, 1996 national bureau for economic research patrinos & ariasingam, 1997 the world bank rouse, 2000 princeton university working paper sander, 1995 westview press witte, 1996 brookings institution peterson & walberg, 2002 the heartland institute simply analyzing the publication source raised credibility issues in several cases. in fact, the table they present on page 435 summarizing research on school choice includes only two peerreviewed journal articles. thirty-two of the references are to documents produced by think tanks evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 17 (brookings, hoover, heartland institute, etc.). in sum, the quality of the debate is weakened when publications from ideologically driven think tanks dominate the citations. towards a deeper understanding of parent information on school quality in view of these difficulties in substantiating the thesis that parents are positioned to make the best choices for their children’s schools, it makes sense to take a deeper look at the issue. indeed, it appears that there are serious shortcomings with the question itself when it is framed as: “can parents choose the best schools for their children?” or “can people be trusted to decide for themselves?” (bast & walberg, 2004; brandt, 2000, respectively). such representations of the issue treat parents as monolithic, ignoring substantial evidence that parents’ views of schools and information can be diverse and socially situated (e.g., ball et al., 1995; bell, 2005; gewirtz et al., 1995; schneider et al., 1998). furthermore, as noted above, framing the issue along strictly individualistic/ consumer lines negates any broader social or democratic interest in a child’s education. therefore, hypotheses such as “parents would do a better job choosing the schools their children attend than “experts” working for governments” (bast & walberg, 2004, p. 432), while empirically falsifiable, largely miss the point. rather than asking if parents can make informed choices (when for many the answer is obvious), it makes more sense to ask whether the requisite knowledge or information to make such choices is of sufficient quality, widely available and equitably distributed. a framework for assessing information on school quality to that end, we offer three dimensions to consider in evaluating information that could be employed in selecting a school: insights into observable productive processes, the nature of the good or service, viii and information that encourages horizontal and vertical differentiation. although there is a strong case to be made that education exhibits many of the primary aspects of current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 a public good (labaree, 2007), we can assume here, for the sake of argument, that schooling is primarily a private good, and should be examined as such. 1) information on productive processes. first, to understand information on the quality of any consumable good, it is important to consider what aspect of the good is being illuminated for the consumer. for many goods, such as a car or a computer, consumers look for information on the quality of the finished product. ix for others, such as health care, the quality of the production processes is a key concern (weisbrod, 1998). with schooling, for instance, a diploma may be important, but it tells us little about the quality of the school experience — instead, such information is often just a proxy for school inputs (such as the socioeconomic characteristics of students enrolling at a school). perhaps slightly more accurate assessments of quality come from evaluations of the more immediate educational inputs in a school (e.g., teacher qualifications, class composition and size, etc.). probably the best information on processes would be information on actual educational processes at a school: curriculum program, pedagogical practices, etc. however, productive processes and their effectiveness are not always apparent to consumers, leading to asymmetries of information between producer and consumer that put the customer at a relative disadvantage. the clarity of productive processes can be represented on a scale, where more obvious processes are transparent to the consumer, somewhat complex or hidden processes are translucent, while opaque processes are more obscured or even removed from the consumer’s view. as is noted below, schooling involves some aspects that are difficult to make apparent to the consumer. 2) information on the consumable qualities of a good. second, just as information on productive processes can be important to consumers, different goods themselves exhibit different types of qualities — qualities that are conveyed to the consumer in different ways. some goods evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 19 embed qualities that are readily apparent to consumers before purchase and consumption. for instance, we can usually decide if fruit is ripe, or if a sweater fits, and use that information in making a selection. such qualities then allow consumers to make choices based on other factors as well, such as price and availability, and competitive marketing for these search goods tends to offer information on those criteria (aggarwal & vaidyanathan, 2003; darby & karni, 1973; nelson, 1974; tirole, 1988). however, important aspects of other types of goods are not readily apparent to consumers before purchase, in the case of experience goods such as canned food or a movie; while, for credence goods, important qualities may never be really known — for instance, the effects of an herbal supplement, or the actual effects of higher octane gasoline on an engine. in these cases, marketing tends to play upon the information asymmetries enjoyed by the producer, further obscuring information on quality by appealing to emotions or allegiance. therefore, it is useful to consider the types of information available about a good: whether the information makes “softer” emotional appeals, or provides direct or “hard” evidence of product quality or effectiveness. 3) horizontal and vertical differentiation. third, in any competitive market, producers or providers are expected to differentiate their product or service from those of competitors. x while assessments of the diversity of different options can be made by examining the qualities of actual products, more importantly for the present purposes is the information made available to consumers regarding the differences between products. in sectors such as education it is important to note whether that information identifies differences between different options arranged on a vertical scale of different-but-equal programs, or on a horizontal scale of quality (glomm et al., 2005). if the information focuses on the former, that could indicate niche marketing to diverse preferences. if the information focuses primarily on the latter, that could current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 indicate a monolithic conception of quality, but it could also suggest competitive incentives to enhance market position by attracting more “preferred” customers. discussion the educational processes in schools are relatively esoteric, and largely obscured from the direct observations of current and potential consumers. since schooling does not appear to lend itself to easy comparisons between options based on explicit indicators of quality, as it would if it were a search good, competition between providers by itself is unlikely to generate the information necessary for consumers to make informed choices (identifying reference, 2001). instead, with experience or credence goods, extra-market remedies such as licensing, regulation, or accreditation are often necessary in order to compensate the consumer in light of informational asymmetries favoring producers. xi unfortunately, quality information appears to be rare, or rarely used. xii furthermore, the information that is available has little to do with program diversity, and more to do with socio-economic distinctions between students, suggesting incentives for families and schools to sort themselves by such characteristics, and thereby voiding incentives for school improvement, innovation, and equitable access to diverse options. of course, it is likely that many parents get information on schools from social networks — the word-of-mouth means of gathering information on options (identifying reference, 2005). however, it is important to note that these networks tend to be relatively homogenous, so that information disseminated through such channels will not be equitably distributed (schneider et al., 1997). as noted earlier, there are many justifications for parental choice of schools, and most school choice plans depend on the informed participation of parents. as former secretary of education rod paige so aptly put it in championing nclb: “there is no more powerful advocate evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 21 for children than a parent armed with information and options” (wrightslaw, 2002). such assertions, while simple, eloquent, and appealing, appear to be more of a statement of ideology than of evidence. this analysis finds both the ideological and empirical aspects of such claims to be problematic in light of both their own internal logic and evidence on the dynamics of school choice in the real-world context. the issue of parental choice of schools is much more complex than simplistic assertions would indicate. instead of debating whether or not parents are able to choose the best schools, it is important to consider whether the requisite knowledge or information is widely available and equitably distributed. the question is centered largely on the issue of school quality, which is difficult for researchers to identify even with advanced statistical measures, and is also difficult to convey to potential consumers. yet more useful types of information are least likely to be available to parents, thereby hindering parental choice as an effective vehicle for equity and effectiveness in education. this does not mean that parents are incapable of choosing wisely — a claim that is obviously not supported by this analysis. however, this absence of quality information problematizes easy assumptions about informed parental choice of schools as the basis for public policy. notes i “rational choice” theory (see blau, 1997; goode, 1997) is often called “market theory” when applied to education (lubienski, 2006; see, for example, walberg, 2000). ii see also (schneider & buckley, 2002). although rational from the consumer’s perspective, such patterns can also be problematic since they indicate incentives for providers to promote themselves based on evidence of the social characteristics of their students, rather than evidence of academic quality (see below; see also identifying reference, in press-c). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 the third study cited by bast and walberg — from solomon (2003) — supports their thesis, but is of highly dubious quality. not only was it never peer reviewed, but it suffers from multiple shortcomings, including low response rate (29%), selection bias (surveying only families with children currently still in charter schools), and possible responses weighted toward higher scores (with the inclusion of an a+ response). iii thus, there is a degree of irony when market enthusiast john stossel (2006) cites parental choice advocate kevin chavous in arguing that parents do not understand about school quality: “if you're like most american parents, you might think ‘these things don’t happen at my kid’s school.’ a gallup poll survey showed 76 percent of americans were completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids' public school. education reformers like kevin chavous have a message for these parents: if you only knew. even though people in the suburbs might think their schools are great, chavous says, ‘they’re not. that’s the thing and the test scores show that.’ chavous and many other education professionals say americans don't know that their public schools, on the whole, just aren’t that good.” similarly, former heritage foundation analyst and bush (ii) administration education official nina rees says: “to some extent, when you offer something new to low-income parents or to any parent group, initially you’re not going to have a surge signing up because they don't know what it is and the procedure to sign kids up is somewhat complicated” (saulny, 2006). iv bast and walberg do note — and we agree — that it is presumptuous to assume that academic achievement is the ultimate measure for school success. (there are, after all, other goals for schools that are often neglected in reform rhetoric: socialization, democratic citizenship, integration, tolerance, etc.) however, this is certainly the metric that is elevated by reform discourse on school effectiveness, so it is important to consider. evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 23 v this finding caused hoover institute economist eric hanushek to wonder, in his commentary, how parents could violate basic economic logic by paying for an underperforming service when a superior alternative is free of charge (grogger & neal, 2000, p. 196). vi see, for instance, krueger & zhu (2004a, 2004b), metcalf (1998), and witte (1996). vii most of these sources are agenda-driven think tanks, although a few — including the national bureau of economic research and the national center for the study of privatization in education — focus instead on presenting research for its own sake, and thereby reflect a range of perspectives. viii for brevity, we use the term “good,” while understanding that education and other “consumables” can also be described as a service. ix in those cases, process innovations (as opposed to product innovations) may lower production costs, but are largely irrelevant to the consumer as an immediate consideration in making a choice. x of course, producers at the low end of a hierarchy have an incentive to minimize distinctions between their product and those of their more prestigious competitors, while those at the high end of the scale attempt to exaggerate any differences. in education, policymakers have used reforms such as charter schools to encourage diversification of options so that parents have a greater set of choices. xi walberg and bast (2003) focus on market mechanisms to deal with asymmetric information (p. 65). in particular, they point to information from producers, repeat purchases, and “personal and public sources of information.” however, schooling does not lend itself to repeat purchases, which would be required to punish bad providers; and children, not the choosers, are the ones who have to pay a price for unfortunate choices in this idealized “discovery process” (bast & current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 walberg, 2004, p. 433; brighouse, 2000; identifying reference, in press-b). and, as this analysis shows, information from producers, as well as personal and public sources, can be more limited than these authors assume. xii it does not appear that competition is necessarily producing quality information on schools’ value-added effects (identifying reference, in press-b). bast and walberg (2004) point to extra-market mechanisms such as school data collection sites on the internet as a possible device to equalize access to information. while the internet is certainly just one means of accessing information on schools — and, of course, access to the internet is not equitably distributed — it is fast becoming a primary method for gathering information on schools (as bast and walberg note). indeed, while gaps in access exist, we might expect the most demand for high quality information from the relatively sophisticated consumers with internet access. still, the quality of information from school information websites is relatively poor, and speaks more to school inputs and demographic characteristics than to school effectiveness (identifying reference, in press-c). references aggarwal, p., & vaidyanathan, r. 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(2002, december 2). no child left behind act — final regulations published. wrightslaw, 6. ________________________________________________________________________ note from the spring 2016 executive editor, constantin schreiber april 18, 2016. a major editing issue with the original version of this article was discovered in april 2016. this issue was addressed and all content from the original manuscript has been preserved to the extent possible. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. however, it was not possible to identify the references that were removed from the manuscript for the purposes of peer review. therefore, the article contains references to “identifying information” that has been removed. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. ________________________________________________________________________ mailto:cie@asu.edu current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 30 cie template 1 volume 14, number 2 june 11, 2011 issn 1099-839x connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan matthew stein foreign military studies office when the soviet union collapsed in 1991, kazakhs did not make up the majority of the population in their own titular state. since then, kazakhs have become the majority ethnic group and the government revised the education system to reflect this demographic change. education is an important tool for shaping national identity in a multiethnic state, especially one undergoing demographic shifts. this article is a snapshot of how the demographic change in kazakhstan has affected education and in turn how this is shaping national identity on young generations. this transformation is important to monitor and understand as kazakhstan continues to develop and become an important security partner and increasingly vital source of energy supplies for asia and europe. keywords: kazakhstan, national identity, education, multiethnic, curriculum the suffix „-stan‟ is used to form the name of several states in central and southern asia. it comes from the persian word „stān‟, meaning place or land (the macquarie dictionary, 2005). kazakhstan translates into „the land of kazakhs‟, although this carries with it a somewhat misleading meaning. out of all the post-soviet central asian states, kazakhstan is one of the most ethnically heterogeneous (szayna, 2003). at the time of the collapse of the soviet union, ethnic kazakhs did not make up a majority of the population in their own titular state. it is only during the last several years that kazakhs became the definite majority. over the last several years the government in kazakhstan passed laws and changed civic institutions that reflect this demographic change (blum, 2003). this has happened in the state‟s education system, specifically through the curriculum, the textbooks, and lessons in schools. basic compulsory education reaches a broad audience and the younger generations in kazakhstan do not have the same national identity that the previous generations did during the soviet union. this article is a snapshot at demographic change in kazakhstan, how it has affected education and in turn how this has shaped the national identity of young generations. this transformation is important to monitor and understand as kazakhstan continues to develop and become an important security partner and increasingly vital source of energy supplies for asia and europe. background history of kazakhs and kazakhstan kazakhs are turkic people who trace their roots from the descendants of turkic and turko-mongol groups. the first kazakh khanate was established in 1465-66 when two tribal leaders broke away from the uzbek khanate (another turkic group) and formed their own khanate. this khanate was divided into three groups called zhuz or a horde, namely the great, middle, and little hordes. the hordes and clan system survive to the present day, but unofficially. each of the hordes has numerous clans (esenova, 2002) and below that individual families. because of the people‟s nomadic lifestyle, the kazakh khanate was not a fixed state. the kazakhs did have, however, an identity that would later be challenged when the russian empire expanded into the region in the eighteenth century. the russian empire established a bureaucracy, including formal education, which did not follow the lines of the kazakh zhuz or clan systems (zharmukhamed, 2004). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 this education system put russian-related subjects to the forefront and marginalized kazakhs. the kazakhs formed a short-lived independent government in 1917, but then were incorporated into the soviet union in 1920 (esenova, 2002). this was the last time that kazakhs had a real hand in shaping institutions that reflected what they thought about themselves. the soviet union‟s actions ensured that kazakh identity would be shaped by an outside entity for some time. the soviet government used its control over the education system to create a soviet identity system (ro‟i, 1984; esenova, 2002). they also remapped the borders and resettled other ethnicities that made kazakhs a minority in their own republic (zharmukhamed, 2004). the most recent and relevant changes began during the last years of the soviet union (in the mid-to-late 1980s). the removal of kazakh dinmukhamed konayev as first secretary of the kazakh communist party and appointment of russian gennady kolbin, a man who had never worked in the kazakh soviet socialist republic (ssr), led to protests and a riot in almaty in december of 1986, an event known as the zheltoksan incident. kazakh university students were angry that outsiders were interfering in kazakh affairs and while this incident was a grassroots movement, it resulted in concrete legal changes. in march of 1987, the kazakh communist party central committee passed a new law “on improving the study of the kazakh language.” this was the communist party‟s way of keeping peace after the events of the preceding year. this was the first of several laws on the status of the kazakh language and highlighted changes in attitude. the 1989 “law on languages” was important because the general public had a hand in its creation. prior to its passage there were many public meetings and debates held to discuss it (fierman, 1998). alongside these new laws there was a demographic shift in kazakhstan. ethnic kazakhs were a minority in the kazakh ssr for a number of years. during the period from 1979-1989, they became the largest ethnic group, going from 36% of the population, according to the 1979 soviet census, to 40.1% in the 1989 census. while this certainly is not a majority, it is significant when compared to the next largest ethnic group, ethnic russians were 40.8% of the population in 1979 and then dropped to 37.4% in 1989 (oka, 2006). most importantly, the number of ethnic kazakhs continued to grow, and in 1999, they made up 53.4% of the population. many russians left kazakhstan following the dissolution of the soviet union and kazakhs have had a higher birth rate than other ethnicities. according to the 2009 census they now make up 63% (stat.kz, 2009). now that kazakhs make up a more solid majority of the population in kazakhstan, it is logical that they hold key positions in the government. many positions within the government require the ability to speak kazakh and many aspects of life are now bureaucratically slanted in ways that favor kazakhs, including promotion preference for kazakhs (szayna, 2003). this does not mean that minority groups are completely ignored. russian remains an important „official‟ language in kazakhstan (zharmukhamed, 2004) and the prime minister, karim masimov, is an ethnic uyghur (rfe/rl, 2007). additionally, the government set up schools for some minorities. there are schools for russian, uyghur, and uzbek speakers, the latter two being synonymous with that ethnic group. this is not an example of government segregation in schools. in a russian school it is common to find students of all ethnicities. in kazakh, uyghur, or uzbek schools, it is typical to find only those ethnic groups there. parents have a choice on what language school their child attends; it is not a government directive according to administrators i interviewed at the altynsarin institute. using education as a tool in shaping national identity national identity according to smith (1991, p.9), “involves some sense of political community, however tenuous. a political community in turn implies at least some common institutions and a single code or rights and duties for all the members of the community. it also suggests a definite social space, a fairly well demarcated and bounded territory, with which the members identify and to which they feel they belong.” there are different civic institutions that can be used to shape national identity in a multiethnic state. one of the most important and far reaching is a state‟s education system. education is one of the first places where a young generation is socialized into a larger group, which is particularly important if they come from different ethnic backgrounds (perko, 2003), and this socialization happens at a time when identities are being developed (jo, 2004). education can shape the attitude of an entire generation (christou, 2006). providing education in a multiethnic state is not a new issue. some states have used centrally controlled education as a tool (abu-saad, 2008; mclean, 2007; segawa, 2007) in an effort to assimilate other ethnicities and at times, allow them elements of educational and cultural autonomy. this is also the same for kazakhstan. kazakhstan‟s government has almost total control over the education system and there is a multi-ethnic generation that has recently finished compulsory education or are currently students in their last few years of school. they are the first generation to be educated entirely in kazakhstan as an independent state and their national identity is highly influenced by the kazakh education system. education in kazakhstan the curriculum standards are an important tool the ministry of education of kazakhstan can use to shape national identity. it represents what the government of kazakhstan wants their younger generations to know and to think about certain subjects. the standards, gosudarstvennye obshcheobiazatel’nye standarty srednego obshchego obrazovaniia respubliki kazakhstan (government compulsory standards of secondary connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan 3 education of the republic of kazakhstan, 2002) written at the altynsarin institute in almaty named after ibrahim altynsarin, an important historical figure in kazakh education. altynsarin founded the first national secular schools in kazakhstan and is considered a key figure in kazakh educational history (altynsarin.ru, 2009). the institute is used to train teachers who will work in primary and secondary schools and many of its professors and instructors contributed to the standards. other authors of the standards teach at universities and schools around kazakhstan. a distinguishing feature of these authors is that they are almost all ethnic kazakhs. the main purpose of kazakhstan‟s education system is, not unlike any other state, to educate its citizens to either continue education in an institute or university, or to enter the workforce. kazakhstan inherited an education system from the soviet union, which was strong in math and sciences. in an effort to diversify its economy from being too dependent on energy exports, kazakhstan restructured its education system to be on a level with developed states (daly, 2008). this system, specifically secondary education, includes 19 subjects that students study from the 5th through the 11th grade. the subjects include math and science courses, physical education, and several courses in the humanities. in order to gather data on the national identity of young generations currently studying in school, five subjects from the humanities were selected because they have the most potential of shaping identity. these subjects are: literature, history, fundamentals of social studies, language(s) (both native and foreign), and geography. these subjects are closest to the fundamental features of national identity that smith (1991, p. 14) stated: “an historical territory, or homeland (for the subject history); common myths and historical memories (history and literature); a common, mass public culture (languages and literature); common legal rights and duties for all members (fundamentals of social studies); and a common economy with territorial mobility for members (geography).” smith‟s fundamentals may not fit exactly with these five subjects, but are the best possible choices. each subject in the standards has goals and requirements on what information students need to know, some of which is based on their grade level. a subject like literature for example includes important writers and novels that students will study. the other subjects have their own appropriate requirements. each subject includes a section as a guide for teachers to check the knowledge of the students. the section states that “a minimum level of knowledge (the requirements) must be obtained” and that the student either “achieved” or “did not achieve” this level. literature there are two categories of literature in the curriculum, kazakh and russian literature. the goals and requirements sections state that students need to understand different types of written literature and important writers and their works for different periods in history. kazakh literature focuses mainly on writers from the nineteenth century, called the classic enlighteners, and the twentieth century. one of the main classic enlighteners is abay kunanbaev. among kazakhs, abay is considered to be the most important writer in their history. he was the first to write about what it means to be „kazakh‟. other notable writers include mukhtar auezov, who wrote a novel about abay‟s life, saken seifullin, and akhmet baitursynov. the latter two are writers who were executed in the stalin purges of intellectuals and enemies of the state in the 1930s. due to their label as an enemy, they were not thought of as significant writers during the soviet union. the requirements of russian literature focus on writers and works of the eighteenth through the twentieth century. the section on the eighteenth century is titled the „russian classical literature of the 18th century‟ and students are required to know about well known writers like pushkin, lermontov, gogol, tolstoy, dostoevsky, and chekov and their works. the sections on the twentieth century include gorky, akhmatova, pasternak and their writings. the literature sections of the standards are inclusive of the two major ethnicities in kazakhstan, kazakhs and russians. each section has a broad historical range of literature and well-known writers and students study both topics. although not listed in the standards, ugyhurs have the freedom to teach their own literature. schools have their own literature textbooks complete with notable writers from their own history. this demonstrates that kazakhstan is acknowledging its minority groups. history according to the goals and requirements of this section students need to know about history as it relates to people, the environment, and the community. it consists of world history and history of kazakhstan. the first topic covers ancient egyptians, the greek and roman empires, the middle-ages, and recent history. the history of kazakhstan also covers an extended period from ancient history through the soviet union to the present day. there are more specific requirements that go further into topics of kazakh history such as the khans of the fifteenth century, the war against russia over the colonization of kazakh lands, and even the development strategy of kazakhstan into the year 2030. this latter topic demonstrates how a connection has been made between the past and the not-too-distant future, where kazakhstan sees itself in the group of developed states of the world. lastly, this section mentions that there is a problem of bias in teaching history, both kazakh and world history. this bias is “euro-centric” and that this perspective needs to be “studied,” implying that it needs to be altered. the two courses, world and kazakhstan history, both cover extensive periods of history. world history current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 includes a wide range but the latter topic deals mainly with history relating to kazakhs and does not include other major ethnic groups. the euro-centric bias in this case could be interpreted as the russian/soviet, european, western, or a combination of all these perspectives. kazakhs believe that the teaching of their history during the soviet union was marginalized. this is, in a sense, their way of correcting that problem. unlike literature, no other ethnic group has its own history section. fundamentals of social studies this is a subject with a range of goals and requirements that deal with the role of citizens in kazakhstan in areas of political-economic, socio-cultural, and general development of the community. other requirements are separated into categories such as people, community, and the environment. these are meant to give the students an idea of what the community is and what their role is within it. the topic of community in this section includes themes of philosophy and great thinkers. several of these listed are known throughout the world such as confucius, plato, aristotle, and hobbes. there are however, other philosophers listed like korkit, a central asian-turkic poet from the ninth century, and al-farabi, an islamic-persian scientist and philosopher also from the ninth century. additionally, there is list of kazakh philosophers like the writer/poet abay as well as toli bey, kazibek bey, and aiteke bey, famous tribal leaders from kazakh history. the social studies section is an effort to include everyone in the community. it is meant to teach students their role in the community and to think about ways that they can be involved. however, teaching the philosophies of turkic, islamic, and kazakh origin means that only students of certain ethnic groups can see a connection between themselves and the material. there are russians, ukrainians and even koreans and germans still living in kazakhstan, each group with a considerable number of people. the requirements, specifically studying turkic or islamic philosophies, do not take this latter demographic group into consideration. languages the two most important languages in kazakhstan, kazakh and russian, are subjects that every student studies. in the case of uyghur or uzbek schools, their respective languages are also studied. within the standards are three subject sections on kazakh, russian, and foreign languages, the latter of which consists of english, arabic, french, german, and chinese. the chapter on kazakh language is written for non-native speakers of kazakh, namely for russian, uyghur, and uzbek schools. it is written in the goals that because kazakh is a state language it is necessary to communicate in it and to be introduced to the culture of it. this will help to prepare the student for later opportunities. in addition to this, the standards say that being able to speak and write the language is especially important, mentioning a few more times the importance of communication and connections to kazakh culture and history. the chapter on russian language is similar in scope to that of kazakh, only that the main goals are to use the language are more in depth. it states that knowing russian is important for intellectual, emotional, and moral development in studying. it also lists further uses for the language, such as further educational and career purposes, that far exceed expectations compared to requirements for kazakh. the chapter on foreign languages has a main goal of mastering basic skills in a non-native language. the goals state that this will happen by forming simple and communicative abilities in a foreign language for use in interactions with another culture in typical situations. each of the languages has its own goals and requirements, many of which are focused on grammar, phonetics, and lexical usage. these sections do include both of the major languages of kazakhstan, as well as foreign languages, but there is some inconsistency in the requirements. in addition to their native language, most ethnic kazakh students naturally have a high level of proficiency in russian. the high requirements for russian are for all students and come as no surprise; russian is still the lingua franca among all ethnicities and its inclusion in the standards is an important acknowledgement of other ethnicities. conversely, students of other ethnicities speak their native language (russian) but have low levels of proficiency in kazakh. the standards say that it is necessary to be able to communicate in kazakh, but do not mention any specific proficiency level. these requirements are also for non-native speakers of kazakh, meaning expectations for non-native kazakh speakers are vague. considering that knowledge of kazakh is required for government positions, most russian speakers should be able to move on to higher education and find jobs, but they will have problems finding work in the government. geography the main goals of geography are more scientific than the other subjects and as a result have somewhat less of an influence on identity. however, under the requirements of the subject are a number of different topics important to the study of geography. several of these do relate to the study of geopolitical issues like natural resources, environmental problems, and how regions of the world break down economically, historically, and culturally. this is the least direct subject when analyzing how it shapes identity. geopolitical topics are mentioned but do not go into any detail. a few of the topics are literally written as „the spreading of religion in the world‟ or „green revolution‟ without any further explanation. some deductions can be made from topics like these, but it is necessary to look at how these lessons are taught. connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan 5 research methodology observations while the national curriculum includes important information, how students are taught this material and what they think about those particular topics is more significant. to determine this i visited four schools in the city of almaty to observe lessons in literature, history, fundamentals of social studies, languages, and geography. i also gave a questionnaire out to students in order to find out what they generally think about the five subjects, but this is explained in detail later in the article. i chose four schools in the city to gather information from, two russian, one kazakh, and one uyghur. these schools are named for the main language of instruction, not necessarily for students‟ ethnicity. for kazakh and uyghur schools, however, this does represent the main ethnicity of the student population. i made a preliminary visit to each school to get permission to observe lessons and distribute the questionnaires. the schools were selected based on a cross section of the major ethnic groups. one of the russian schools, #35, is a magnet school for foreign language instruction. at each of the schools i observed lessons in the five subject areas mentioned in grades 9-11. a typical lesson observation included following along with the textbook if an extra one was available, looking at various pictures and other learning aids in the room, and speaking with the teacher for a few minutes during a break. during some of the visits i also toured the school facilities including the libraries and in the case of two schools, small museums. school #12 this is a kazakh language school that i visited four times during the course of research. i observed eight lessons in all, and toured the library. unlike other schools i visited, this one held a morning assembly on two of the four visits. the assembly took place in the lobby, surrounded by various pictures of kazakh national symbols and the flag, and included the singing of the national anthem. there was also an assistant director on hand for both assemblies who strictly oversaw everything. many of the classes i attended used the government-issued textbooks for subjects like kazakh language and literature, russian language and literature, history, geography, and in some cases english. the majority of these textbooks were printed, depending on the subject, within the past five years. this is a fairly good indication that the material being taught does follow the national curriculum standards. one of the most noticeable things i observed took place during a history lesson. in the back of the history classroom was a large poster of a timeline of the history of kazakhstan. an interesting feature on the timeline shows that modern kazakhstan can be traced back to the foundation of the kazakh khanate in 1465-66. the timeline shows that despite subsequent governments or historical periods, such as the russian empire and the soviet union, the idea of a kazakh state never disappeared. the visit to the library was also an important factor in determining the overall tone of the school. there were a dozen shelves of books; the majority of them were in kazakh and only one shelf in russian. those that were in another language like english were a series of famous novels that only an advanced or fluent speaker would be able to read. the school has other influences outside of the ministry of education of kazakhstan. several english classes used a series of books printed by oxford university press, and one teacher pointed out to me that they only use the government issued books for english when preparing for exams. i also noticed that students were conversing with each other in a mix of russian and kazakh. school #28 this is a russian language school that i visited three times and observed six lessons, toured the school museum, and interviewed a teacher. this school had various national symbols of kazakhstan in the lobby and adorning the hallways, but did not have any kind of morning assembly during any of the visits. the student population was made up of a variety of ethnicities, but mainly russian, kazakh, and ukrainian, according to a senior teacher and administrator. the geography, and russian and kazakh language classes i observed used the government-issued textbooks, all printed in the last four to five years. what made the kazakh language lessons significant was the size, as each class had no more than eight students. after the lesson i spoke with the teacher about how well she thought students were learning kazakh. she said that these were 11th grade students who had studied kazakh for seven years but were still working with an intermediate level of the language. it is worth questioning whether or not standards have been set against them achieving high levels of proficiency in the language. i asked this to the teacher after class and she agreed that expectations for non-kazakhs to learn the language were generally low. she acknowledged that kazakh is becoming a more important language but that students in almaty do not have opportunities to practice it outside of class. she suggested that an educational center be set up so that students could have a place to use the language. in contrast to this was the russian language class i observed where 25 students were packed tightly into a room. they used the government-issued textbooks and the group quickly moved through a series of exercises. the russian literature class i observed was about maxim gorky, who is specified in the standards. when i spoke with the teacher after class i noticed that the lesson was taught from a textbook from the 1970s, as the teacher felt the quality of books from that time period was better. she said that the students still read the texts from current books, but she read aloud in class and asked some questions current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 6 from the older soviet version. she also mentioned, without me asking, that the students do not see much of a connection with the material that they read to their own lives. during one of my visits to this school i was surprised to learn that the school had a museum and i was able to take a quick tour of it. the museum is made up of one room with several exhibits about the history of the school and a few well-known people who graduated from there including olzhas suleimenov, an anti-nuclear weapons activist. one of these in particular was a young woman named menshuk, who was killed during the second world war and later awarded hero of the soviet union. one entire wall was dedicated to her, including a large painting of her in battle while the area in front of it had dirt and several things picked up from the place where she died. school #35 this is a russian language magnet school that i visited four times, observed 11 lessons, and toured the library. there was not an assembly before school but i noticed that there were the usual symbols and posters of kazakhstan adorning the walls of the lobby. there was also a small section on the wall about friday being the day to speak kazakh, with a poster encouraging „let‟s speak kazakh‟. most of the lessons i observed used the government-printed textbooks, including fundamentals of social studies, geography, history, and kazakh language. the english classes used a series from the oxford university press. the english teachers i spoke with said that the quality of this series was better and helped the students, but that like school #12 the government-printed books are used to prepare students for tests. the geography teacher mentioned that the textbooks lacked useful information. i went to an additional geography lesson where students were discussing current events, focusing mainly on food products that they had recently researched. the same teacher said that she wants students to use more outside sources like the media to supplement lessons. i visited the library of the school and found that it included a fairly-even mix of russian and kazakh books, with a small selection in english. the librarian showed me books from the soviet union still in use despite some that are falling apart. i was also able to watch a kazakh language and literature class during one of the visits. the students were discussing an excerpt from a story they had read, reading and repeating sections of it in kazakh. this was the only time they used the language, except for the teacher speaking to them in kazakh during the lesson, and even during the last 10-15 minutes of the lesson, the teacher reverted to speaking russian. school #153 this is a uyghur language school that i visited three times and observed 10 lessons, and toured the library and school museum. the school featured many of the same symbols and posters of kazakhstan that other schools had, except that everything in the school was written in uyghur. the school was named for rozybakiev, a uyghur who was involved in the bolshevik revolution in kazakhstan. during one of the days i observed lessons, i arrived to find a morning assembly where the students lined up outside the school and sang the national anthem. however, a few minutes after this it changed into an informal period of exercises with dance music and a lot of joking between teachers and students. i was not able to watch a variety of class levels in this school, but instead observed a 9th grade group of students during many of their lessons. this was the arrangement that the school had set up for observations, not a choice on my part. this also meant observing a few classes not in one of the five subjects, such as physics and algebra, but turned out to be valuable proof that all of the classes are taught in uyghur. for some of the classes, such as geography and english, the government-issued textbooks were used. all of these textbooks were written in uyghur. i noticed that these 9th grade students rarely spoke uyghur to each other, instead using russian. i noticed that the teachers pushed the students to speak uyghur in class but with mixed results. many of them could easily converse in it during classes, while a few had trouble and reverted back to speaking in russian even if it meant being scolded by the teacher. during one of the visits i was able to take a quick tour of the library, where i found the usual selection of russian and kazakh materials, but also a large quantity of books in uyghur. the students who accompanied me inside were quick to point out this collection. this group of students had also taken it upon themselves to show me a small room where the school museum is housed. it included traditional uyghur musical instruments, pictures of former teachers and students, a section dedicated for the first director of the school, and a section about rozybakiev with newspaper clippings about him from the time of the revolution. even as i left the library the students continued talking about their heritage, without any questions from me. a few of them talked about how they should have a country of their own. a student showed me photos on his cell phone of the map of a potential uyghur state, the unofficial flag with a blue background and a crescent moon and a star that uyghur people associate with, and others of uyghur clothing and culture. many of these aspirations are shared by uyghurs living across the border in the xinjiang region in china. observation summary the kazakh school, #12, has teachers, textbooks, lessons and a general attitude influencing its students in a way that reflects the national curriculum standards. some of these same characteristics can be found at schools, #28, #35, and #153. in all schools there are teachers who connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan 7 decided not to use government-issued textbooks for some lessons, instead preferring older or outside materials. the library of a russian school (#35) also retained a large number of russian-language books as did school #153 for books in uyghur. the uyghur school is also noteworthy as it represents the recognition of another ethnic group. the conclusion of observations in schools is that while there is a major focus on kazakh attributes in school subjects, there are some other features that act as a balance to this. the overall material presented to students closely follows the curriculum set out by the government. it reflects the demographic change; most material puts kazakhs at the forefront, but it is also inclusive of other ethnic groups. questionnaires the questionnaire included five questions; one for each of the subjects observed. students were instructed to not write their name on the questionnaire; this was told to them before giving the questionnaire out and written on the top of the paper. the questions were broad and open in order to allow students to answer with their own opinion. the process was intended to be similar to an interview, but questionnaires were distributed in order to get the most honest answers possible. this was done out of a cultural and peer pressure consideration; individual answers and thought are not widely encouraged in this society. it should be stressed again that this is a snapshot of how education influences identity of young generations in kazakhstan. conducting research in kazakhstan can be a difficult endeavor. despite a significant effort to open up to the western world, a foreign presence in kazakhstan is still viewed with some suspicion. even though this meant that answers may not be easily coded, i felt general questions were more appropriate. specific questions about opinions and about ethnicity in particular might be viewed by locals as inflammatory and ultimately counterproductive for this study. it should also be pointed out that directly asking about national identity is problematic. in the kazakh language the term for national and ethnic can be used as one word, ūlt. therefore, it is difficult to use the term national identity or ethnic identity with a group of people who do not have similar terminology or viewpoint. questionnaires were translated into both russian and kazakh and while a uyghur version was not translated, the teachers at school #153 felt that their students could answer in russian. i did not give out surveys at school #35 due to having enough from another russian language source, school #28. overall there were 67 surveys from school #12, 93 surveys from school #28, and 18 surveys from school #153. i translated the survey answers with the assistance of language instructors in kazakhstan and at the university of kansas. the following section will include the question followed by the consensus from each of the three schools surveyed. question #1 what do you think are the most important works of literature (for example kazakh, russian, american literature, etc.)? who are the most important writers in literature? why do you think they are important? write as many examples of works and writers you feel is appropriate. school #12 – kazakh school. all students gave answers that were very similar with the topics listed under the standards. they wrote that abay kunanbaev and mukhtar auezov are the most important kazakh writers. less than 50% of the students wrote an answer for russian literature. a dozen students wrote that shakespeare is significant, and three students answered that j.r.r. tolkien was important. school #28 – russian school. around 90% of the students wrote that abay, auezov and pushkin, tolstoy, dostoevsky, and gogol are important for kazakh and russian literature respectively. a dozen wrote that shakespeare is notable and two students answered brazilian author paulo coelho. one other thing worth mentioning is that students from this school gave the most complete answers to this question. all wrote at least one example for kazakh, russian, and foreign literature. school #153 – uyghur school. 75% of the students from the uyghur school listed the well known kazakh and russian writers. half also identified mahmud al-kashgari, an 11th century turkic scholar and writer as important in literature. question #2 what do you think are the most important periods or significant events in history (for example world, kazakh, russian, eurasian history, etc.)? why do you think that they are important? write as many examples of periods or events you feel is appropriate. school #12 – kazakh school. there was a variety of answers but around 75% of students listed four incidents or specific periods of time. they were: the years 1465-66 when the kazakh khans created a khanate, the second world war (when it involved the soviet union) 1941-45, the zheltoksan incident, and when kazakhstan gained independence in 1991. three students who wrote that the zheltoksan protests were important also mentioned that the incident helped kazakhstan gain independence. school #28 – russian school. around 75% of the students listed two events as the most significant, the second world war and the break-up of the soviet union. less than 10 students put the zheltoksan incident as important and said that kazakhstan‟s independence resulted from it, and two students even put the creation of the kazakh khanate and referred to the khans as being „ours‟. school #153 – uyghur school. the students gave a variety of answers, but around 75% wrote that the second world war and kazakhstan‟s independence were the most significant. two wrote that the break-up of the soviet union and the economic problems of 2008 were also important events. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 8 question #3 do you think it is important to be involved in your community (neighborhood, district, city, country, globally)? why or why not? who do you think plays an important role in your community? why? school #12 – kazakh school. around 65% of the students from the kazakh school said that it is important to be involved in the community and half of those also wrote that the current president nursultan nazarbayev plays an important role. seven students identified dinmukhamed konayev, the longtime first secretary of the kazakh communist party in the kazakh ssr, as a person who played an important role in the community. two students said that it is not important to be involved, and around one third did not answer the question. school #28 – russian school. the answer to these questions was split half yes and no, while a few students also left it blank. those that answered yes wrote that people in the community generally need to be involved but they did not identify any one individual. only four said that the president or government members are important. a dozen of those who answered no said that there is nothing in the community for them. school #153 – uyghur school. two thirds of the students felt that it was important to be „generally‟ involved in different areas of the community, while two specified that it is important only in almaty. no one identified a particular person as being important. question #4 what language(s) do you think are important to know in the world today? why do you think this? school #12 – kazakh school. around 90% of the students answered that knowing one‟s own native language is the most important, or that kazakh is the most important before listing other languages. they said that english is also important, for reasons of international and intercultural communication, and russian because students responded that it is still in wide use in kazakhstan. additionally important is chinese, as two dozen students feel that it is used in trade and international relations. school #28 – russian school. nearly 100% of the students answered that english is the most important language to know, even putting it before russian. these same students wrote that russian is important, but listed it at second. around 60% of students also said that chinese will become more important in the future, giving the reason that china will be a great power. school #153 – uyghur school. all of the students from this school also highlighted that english and russian are important languages, especially for communicating with others. 14 of them said that their own native uyghur was important and four added that kazakh is important to know because of the country that they live in. question #5 what countries that border kazakhstan do you think are important to its future? why do you think this? do you think there are any countries that do not border kazakhstan but are still important for its future? why? school #12 – kazakh school. russia and china were listed as the two most important countries that share a border with kazakhstan by around 80% of students. these students said that they are important for economic and political reasons, and general relations. the other countries that share a border, such as kyrgyzstan or uzbekistan, were only listed by several students. as for non-bordering states, the united states and turkey were said to have importance for reasons of trade and good relations. school #28 – russian school. 90% of the students answered that russia was the most important state for kazakhstan, followed by china. the reasons were similar to school #12, that they are important for economic and political relationships. three students also listed germany and japan as important countries that do not share a border, and said so because of economic and development ties. school #153 – uyghur school. half of the students from this school said that all five countries are important for kazakhstan and half of them gave no response. four answered that russia and china are important without giving reasons why, and two said that the u.s. is important and also did not answer why they thought that. questionnaire summary the survey results show that most of the students at school #12 think that kazakhs and topics related to kazakhstan, such as those in literature, history, language, etc., are more important than others. few students gave broad answers to questions when they had the option, instead choosing for example that only kazakh writers or that certain events in kazakh history are significant. they also wrote that knowing one‟s native language is the most important language to know in the world today. they gave similar answers as other schools for question five. overall, kazakh students responded with answers that indicate the education system has been effective in shaping their identity. the students from the schools #28 and #153 gave answers that at times proved the education system was also shaping their identity, but they gave additional answers that presented a somewhat different view of the subjects. many students, especially from school #28, gave answers that represented both kazakh and russian literature and acknowledged the importance of the kazakh language in addition to english and russian. one of the most noticeable groups of answers came with question #3, that half of the students from school #28 felt that community involvement is not important because they do not see anything in it for them. to summarize the effects of this on students of other ethnicities, their identity is being shaped by the education system. there are however, a few things connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan 9 that act as a balance to this, most notably separate language schools. these separate schools allow other ethnicities some level of autonomy. this affects how the subjects are taught. there are other influences on students outside of school that shape their identity such as family, peers, and community institutions. education is just one area that influences the national identity of young generations. however, the survey results are as honest a look as possible into what these students think about the given subjects, and with open-ended questions given under the condition of anonymity, the answers can speak for themselves. the national curriculum is having an effect on the identity of the young generations, even if other influences are pushing them to think differently. assessment education can be used to shape national identity. given the demographic changes in kazakhstan and that kazakhs (as opposed to an outside power) have control of their education system; this identity is being shaped by education in kazakhstan. the national curriculum standards, observations, and student surveys indicate that kazakhs have asserted their views in their education system, particularly through the five previously-mentioned subjects. as this continues to be shaped, kazakhstan is developing economically through energy exports while becoming an increasingly-important global and regional security partner. as a member in the shanghai cooperation organization (sco) and the 2010 chair of the organization for security and co-operation in europe (osce), kazakhstan is involved with security issues in two important spheres in the world. kazakhstan‟s importance as an east-west bridge in eurasia will continue to grow. what this ultimately means for kazakhstan is that citizens in the next 10-15 years will have a somewhat different national identity than those currently in government and influential positions. the same identities behind those who protested at the zheltoksan incident are felt today in the education system and are in many ways are a continuation of that. kazakhs want to have their own state, free from outside rule. younger generations will very likely conduct themselves along similar lines. this change should be noticed by states or organizations that want to interact effectively with kazakhstan in the future. references -stan. in the macquarie dictionary. the macquarie dictionary searched through credo reference. retrieved on december 19, 2009 from http://www.credoreference.com.www2.lib.ku.edu: 2048/entry/macqdict/stan abu-saad, ismael. 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(2003). potential for ethnic conflict in the caspian region. in t.s. szayna & o. oliker (eds.), faultlines of conflict in central asia and the south caucasus, implications for the u.s. army, (pp. 145-183). santa monica, ca: rand corporation. zharmukhamed, zardykhan. (2004). russians in kazakhstan and demographic change: imperial legacy and the kazakh way of nation building. asian ethnicity, 5(1), 61-79. connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan 11 article citation stein, m. (2011). connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/ cieatasu/article/view/551 author notes matthew stein foreign military studies office 731 mcclellan ave. ft. leavenworth, ks 66027 matthew.stein2@us.army.mil matthew stein is a central asian research analyst at the foreign military studies office, at ft. leavenworth, kansas. he was a national security education program (nsep) boren fellow in kazakhstan from 2008-09. mailto:matthew.stein2@us.army.mil current issues in education vol. 14 no.2 12 volume 14, number 2 june 11, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp anglea hines younsu kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers reflective teaching_final volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x reflective teaching and how it aids in coping with heavy workloads, mandated policies and disagreements with colleagues mark a. minott university college of the cayman islands citation minott, m.a. (2010). reflective teaching and how it aids in coping with heavy workloads, mandated policies and disagreements with colleagues. current issues in education, 13(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the main aim of this study is to understand (from the perspective of local teachers) what constitute reflective teaching, negative in-school factors, and how teaching reflectively aid in coping with negative factors. in-school factors cited by teachers in the study are: heavy workload, mandated policies and disagreement with colleagues. by reflecting on these, the respondents arrived at a number of solutions and employed both direct and indirect coping strategies. keywords: reflection, reflective teaching, coping strategies, negative in-school factors, cayman islands, students, school context, teaching, heavy workload, policy current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: mark a. minott affiliation: university college of the cayman islands address: 168 olympic way, p.o. box 702 gt ky1-1107 cayman islands. email: mminott@ucci.edu.ky biographical information: mark minott is an assistant professor of teacher education. his research efforts focus on reflective teaching, teacher education and ict in the classroom. reflective teaching 3 the connection between reflective teaching and coping with negative in-school factors is documented in international literature. there is, however, no known local research in the cayman islands which examines these areas. this paper contributes to filling this literary gap by reporting on a study which seeks to understand (from the perspective of local teachers) what constitute reflective teaching, negative in-school factors, and how teaching reflectively aid in coping with negative factors. a review of literature on reflective teaching, indicators of the practice, and what generally constitute negative in-school factors, establishes a framework for the paper. the study, which forms the basis for the paper, is outlined and its findings discussed. teaching reflectively and indicators of the practice minott (2009), defines reflection as careful consideration or thought; it is a process of disciplined intellectual criticism combining research; knowledge of context, and balanced judgment (critical thinking) about previous, present, and future actions, events or decisions. in light of this, reflective teaching is an approach to teaching, learning and problem solving that uses reflection as the main tool. it encourages teachers to create distance between themselves and their practice, as outlined by bengtsson (1993). it involves them in analysing, discussing, evaluating, changing and developing their practice, by adopting an analytical approach to their work as purported by martin jr. wood, & stevens (1988). a common feature of the reflective process is the questioning of ‘self’, that is, one’s beliefs, values, assumptions, context, and goals, in relation to actions, events, or decisions, as outlined by cruickshank (1987). zeichner and liston (1996) put this in practical terms when they point out that reflective teaching involves teachers in examining, framing, attempting to current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 4 solve dilemmas of classroom and schools, and asking questions about assumptions and values   they bring to teaching. it also involves attending to the institutional and cultural context in which they teach, taking part in curriculum development, being involved in school change and taking responsibility for their professional development. the advantages of teaching reflectively are many, for individual teachers, the teaching profession, and schools that are willing to employ and encourage its use. for example, i can infer from farrell (2001) that reflective teaching demands that teachers employ and develop their cognitive skills as a means of improving their practice. they would recall, consider, and evaluate their teaching experiences as a means of improving future ones. cole (1997) and calderhead (1992) point out that reflective teachers develop and use self-directed critical thinking and ongoing critical inquiry in their practice, initiated by them and not administratively decreed. this results in the development of contextualised knowledge. elder and paul (1994), and halpern (1996) also point out that reflective teachers would think critically, which involves the willingness to question, take risks in learning, try out new strategies and ideas, seek alternatives, take control of learning, use higher order thinking skills and reflect upon their own learning processes. they would discuss and analyse with others, problems they encounter in their classroom, to aid their analysis of situations, which could result in improved future classroom encounters, as suggested by (cunningham 2001). i also infer from zeichner and liston (1996) that reflective teachers would be subject conscious as well as standard conscious because teaching reflectively promotes the individual as responsible for identifying subject content deficiencies and, through the act of reflection and being autonomous, address such deficiencies. reflective teaching also demands that teachers use and develop their affective skills as a means of improving their practice. according to markham (1999), they would use their intuition, reflective teaching 5 initiative, values, and experience during teaching, and exercise judgment about the use of various teaching and research skills. reiman (1999) suggests that they would identify personal meaning and or significance of a classroom or school situation and this would include the disclosure and examination of personal feelings. markham (1999) further suggests that teachers would also take personal risks, for reflective teaching demands the sharing of perceptions and beliefs with others. they would engage in the disclosure of feeling, ideas, receiving and giving feedback as a part of a collaborative experience, as purported by (day 1999) and, as cunningham (2001) states, they would confront the uncertainty about their teaching philosophies and indeed their competence. if teachers hone their cognitive and affective skills via reflective teaching, this could improve their ability to react and respond—as they are teaching—to assess, revise, and implement approaches and activities on the spot. according to cunningham (2001) and bengtsson (1993), this could also develop further self-awareness and knowledge through personal experience. more importantly, this could aid in encouraging teachers in their role as autonomous professionals, by encouraging them to take greater responsibilities for their own professional growth by deepening an awareness of their practice, set within their unique particular socio-political contexts. defining reflective teaching and outlining its benefits point to its value and role in encouraging effective teaching and teachers. however, given the focus of the paper, there is also the need to highlight potentially, what constitute negative in-school factors. what generally constitute negative in-school factors? the literature draws attention to a number of important in-school factors which affect teachers and teaching: teachers’ heavy workload, administrative requirement/mandated policies, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 6 poor student behaviour and inadequate interpersonal relational skills. teachers’ workload. the study of johnstone (1993), bridge (2004), and mcavoy (2004) are examples of studies of teachers’ workload and its impact on teachers’ stress, lesson planning, and various aspects of their lives in and out of school. workload is the most important in-school factor that contributes to teachers leaving the classroom. those who headed for new jobs stressed excessive workload as the main reason for leaving, and not the attraction of opportunities elsewhere (smithers and robinson 2003). merttens and robertson (2002) for example, point out that some primary school teachers spend many hours on sundays on work for which there is no cover provided during the week. there are, however, suggestions for addressing this issue of heavy workload. for example, a solution to one aspect of the problem of teachers’ workload i.e. lesson planning could be the use of electronic and computerized aids to planning. this includes making use of available preprepared lesson plans found on the world wide web, thus reducing teachers’ workload by reducing time spent on planning (hamilton-trust 2004 & whittaker 2002). for areas that are administrative in nature, the solution could involve hiring more support/administrative or specialists staff to relieve teachers of certain tasks. the additional staff would take on routine but essential administrative tasks to support behaviour management and provide guidance to pupils, thus giving the classroom teacher more time for planning and teaching (bridge 2004, department for education and skills 2002). another suggestion by braggins (2004) involves structural changes in schools. this requires adjusting timetables to accommodate specialist staff and/or changes in timetabling and school practices to accommodate time for lesson planning in school and during the school day. finding full solutions to these issues is not easy; therefore, what is required is further systematic research into policy, practice, reflective teaching 7 culture of schools, and school systems, which are outside the scope and focus of this paper. the other in-school factor identified in the literature and hinted at in this paragraph is administrative requirements and in particular mandated government or school policies. administrative requirements/mandated school or government policies. administrative requirements and or mandated government or school policies are also factors affecting teachers. it is understood that not every government or school mandated policy or decree is eagerly adhered to by teachers. scott (1999), in a questionnaire survey of teachers in 114 schools in eight local education authorities (leas) found that school teaching staff felt increasingly inadequate in the face of rising expectations, greater responsibilities being placed upon them and by government demands that impact their autonomy. in reference to governmentmandated policies and reform and how these affect teachers, lasky, moore, and sutherland (2001) in their study, found that—in response to mandated government educational reform in ontario—ten percent (10%) of teachers in the schools they researched took early retirement or decided to leave teaching altogether. maxwell-jolly (2000) in her study on factors influencing the implementation of mandated policy, states that teachers adapted to the situations they faced in a number of ways. essentially, then, instead of open rebuttal and defiance of mandated government and school policies, teachers performed subtle forms of resistance. maxwell-jolly’s work brings to my attention the fact that both school-mandated policy and the subsequent covert and adaptive behaviour of teachers to such policy could be either detrimental or beneficial to students’ learning. here too, what is required is further systematic research. away from government-mandated policies, teacher also saw other factors such as attending required workshops, completing home visits, attending meetings and conducting developmental review as factors affecting them; for these activities result in a loss of weekly or current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 8 daily planning or teaching time (venn and mccollum 2002). often, visits to homes are required because of another in-school factor i.e. poor student behavior. poor student behavior. poor student behavior seems to be a world-wide concern for teachers. smithers and robinson (2003) in their study found that teachers leaving secondary schools were more likely to cite the school situation, particularly poor student behavior, as a factor that contributed to their leaving. poor student behavior also puts a strain on teacher-parent relationships. while there are many tried and tested strategies i.e. non-punitive and punitive, (long, frye & long 1985) the area of poor student behaviour, especially among students in secondary schools continues to be an in-school challenge for teachers. despite this seeming challenge, reid (1991), encourages teachers to persist, and suggests way to manage behavioral problems. she points out that behavior is a result and not a cause, so there is the need to start with identifying the cause as a part of the process of attending to the behavior recognizing that at times, the cause is beyond the teachers’ control. the writer points out that while corrective measures are of value, the social– emotional climate of the classroom must be attended to, for this can contribute positively to changing poor student behavior. the social-emotional climate of the classroom involves good interpersonal relationship or the cultivation of good human relation i.e. friendliness, understanding, warmth and courtesies. this recommendation seems to place the responsibility on teachers to hone and cultivate relevant interpersonal skills, but this is not always adhered to as will be shown later in this paper. interpersonal relational skills. apart from contributing to addressing the in-school factor of poor students’ behavior, teachers must be in possession of certain interpersonal relational skills because teaching is a reflective teaching 9 social activity involving relationships (markham 1999) and peoples’ emotions and feelings are being exposed and examined. gladding (2000), belkin (1988), jacobs (1998) switzer (1986) proposed empathy as a relational skill needed by teachers. empathy refers to perceiving what another person might be feeling, or experiencing another’s emotions from the point of view of that person. this is what feldman (1997) refers to as the ‘understanding of what another individual feels’ (p. 279). mccann and baker (2001), in defining the term take it further by suggesting that to empathize is to understand your client, this means giving them time, listening to them so as to be able to hear their perspective. this also involves an attempt to understand the emotions being expressed. ‘tuning in’ is another relational skill needed, which mccann and baker (2001), hutchins & vaught (1997), suggest involves adopting a flexible and open approach to relating, including the ability to listen effectively which means carefully listening to what is said. being friendly and disclosing oneself are also necessary relational skills for teachers. mccann and baker (2001) interpret ‘being friendly’ as treating colleagues and students as people. they are not to be dealt with in a detached manner, which involves relating to them at their own level and not speaking in a condescending manner. this demands that teachers develop a non-confrontational and non-judgmental relationship in which students and colleagues feel their concerns can be openly and freely discussed. writers such as gladding (2000) and switzer (1986) suggest that a conscious sharing of personal information can facilitate a relationship. information shared between colleagues might not be a secret, but can be quite personal. the sharing of such information might demand confidentiality, which belkin (1988), jacobs (1998); mccann and baker (2001) pointed out is a relationship of trust in which one person imparts private or secret matters to a second party. belkin (1988), jacobs (1998) and mccann and baker current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 10 (2001) also suggest that the level of commitment to this principle also reflects one’s commitment to professionalism. now that we have an understanding of what is involved in teaching reflectively and what generally constitutes in-school factors affecting teachers, there is the need to point out, potentially, how teaching reflectively aids teachers in coping with in-school factors. teaching reflectively and negative in-school factors the role of reflective teaching in aiding teachers to cope with negative in-school factors is outlined by a number of writers. posner (1989) points out that it is by critically thinking about these factors that teachers will be able to make adjustments and arrive at solutions. cunningham (2001) introduces the idea of a collaborative approach when she suggests that teachers should not face in-school factors alone, but should do so by engaging with colleagues in problem solving. she makes the point that reflective teaching demands that teachers discuss and analyse with others, problems they encounter in their classrooms, to aid their analysis of situations, and this could result in improved future classroom encounters. writers such as cole (1997), and calderhead (1992), also point out that employing reflective teaching could result in creative and innovative approaches to classroom and school situations and problems and this can result in improved learning opportunities for students. cultivating interpersonal relational skills are necessary for reflective teachers if they are going to carry out the following affective behaviour and learning methods: an examination of self, beliefs and values, share their interpretations and thoughts, become involved in interaction, analysis, personal learning logs and partnership as suggested by (posner 1989, & cunningham 2001), they need to be able to do these knowing that they are being listened to and that their thoughts are seriously considered. while the connection between reflective teaching and coping with negative in-school factors reflective teaching 11 seems to be well documented in international literature, there is no known local research in the cayman islands that examines these areas. based on this fact, a study was carried out. method the aim of the study and research questions the purpose of this small study was twofold, one, to aid in filling this seeming literary gap. two, to identify from the perspective of local teachers what constitute teaching reflectively, negative in-school factors, and how teaching reflectively aid them in coping with the identified factors. three broad research questions were formulated. what constitute reflective teaching? what do participants consider negative in-school factors? how does teaching reflectively aid teachers in coping with negative in-school factors? participants i used an instrumental case study approach, which involves using the participants to provide insight into the concerns of the study. they were two female teachers – william and maxwell (obviously, these are pseudonyms and giving the respondents male names, further enhanced anonymity) with a number of years of teaching experience. maxwell was a junior high school teacher of social studies, history and religious education with over twenty-five years teaching experience and william a primary school teacher with over twenty years of teaching experience. data collection methods i used the process of purposeful convenient or opportunity sampling (creswell, 1998), in their selection, based on their years of experience of teaching in a number of different countries and contexts. their years of experience allowed them to have experienced negative in-school factors. interviews and documentary analysis i.e. teachers’ lesson plans, were the data collection current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 12 methods employed. the main instrument used for the collection of data was a semi-structured interview schedule which i piloted twice (wragg 2002). i chose to use interview, for there was the need to get in-depth information. however, the main reason for employing this method is the fact that it provides the opportunity to include follow-up as well as supplementary questions thought of during the actual interview and used as necessary to illuminate or clarify, thus facilitating depth in responses, as suggested by joffe (2001). interviews focused on participants’ experience and observations of their practice, and were approximately one and a half hours in length. participants also agreed to participate in a second round of interview, if necessary. data analysis process the data from the interviews (which were transcribed from tape recordings) were analyzed using ‘within and cross-case’ analyses. this meant that an analysis was done of each participant’s views, as was a cross-examination of emerging categories to discern findings that were common to all two cases. i also used direct interpretation of the data, which involved looking at each case and drawing meaning from it, and categorical aggregation, where a collection of instances was sought with the hope that issue-relevant meanings would emerge (creswell 1998). i examined all the responses to the interview questions to identify similarities and differences. by highlighting similarities and differences from what was said or how the respondents said it, i constructed an understanding of what constitute teaching reflectively, negative in-school factors and how teaching reflectively aid then in coping with negative factors. i also used participants’ lesson plans to supplement, that is, to confirm or make more or less plausible, findings of the interview. before commencing actual analysis of the data, i asked respondents to read transcripts of their interview and say if the account faithfully represented their experience. elliott (1991) refers reflective teaching 13 to this as validating by appealing to the participants. they both agreed and carried out this task and only minor corrections needed to be made. results and discussion what constitute reflective teaching locally? during the data analysis, three useful categories emerged in response to the question of what constitute teaching reflectively. each represents facets of teaching that the respondents described when speaking of reflective teaching. the categories are students (s), teaching context (tc), and mechanics (m).the category of students refers to the use of students in peer evaluation or their engagement in other activities specifically geared to facilitate the acquisition of information, or references made to students’ well-being, welfare, their activities, roles and learning styles. the category of teaching context, includes policies, teaching and teaching material/supplies, facilities, school responsibilities, school physical layout, school philosophy and how each respondent interpreted, conformed, interacted with, and utilised these aspects in their practice. the category of mechanics emerged from the data because the responses were replete with descriptions of ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘what was done’ during their practice. students and teaching reflectively. both respondents seemed to believe that students were significant to the process of teaching; however, similarities and differences exist in their use of elements of reflective teaching in relation to their students. both employed reflection or ‘thinking about’ and questioned the relevance of their schools’ curricula to students’ needs for example: i find that, people say ‘oh you try to do too much’ but it is my belief that the children must be actively engaged. and so i am always thinking, ‘ what can i do current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 14 to actively engage them’ while someone will just come and give them the text books and the paper and ‘ that’s a no no.’ so they are an active part of the learning process and this is one of the philosophy which guides my own teaching’ (maxwell) now i think about it a lot, you teach them things and you wonder, ‘why am i teaching them about active and passive voice or stuff like that?’ why are we teaching them to convert fractions when in everyday life we don’t do those kinds of fractions? if we truly look at genuine life, we don’t convert anything to anything now, so it is just nonsense! it frightens me’ (william) giving thought to, and the employment of questions is compatible with the view of zeichner and liston (1996), who saw the use of questions by teachers as an aspect of reflective teaching. maxwell’s engagement in a process of questioning led her to become proactive in addressing students’ perceived need by joining the national curriculum planning team. zeicher and liston (1996), in their definition of a reflective teacher, highlight pro-activity and involvement with curriculum issues. maxwell was not only generally concerned with the students in her class, but also reflected on their differences, with the aim to improve how she taught them. the analysis of her lesson plan supports this claim, because the focus of the objectives and overall lesson were the students’ needs. for example, there was a focus on students’ need to be able to identify, list, categorise, utilise the computer, work in pairs, to critically examine a video show and participate in discussion. the idea of reflecting on any aspect of teaching with the aim to improve or change is a characteristic of reflective teaching (cunningham 2001). maxwell also seemed to have reflected on her belief regarding matters to do with students and students’ activities, for she was reflective teaching 15 able to articulate a particular personal view regarding this matter. in addition, she also carried out self-evaluation or reflection-on-action as described by (schon 1987), regarding students’ activities she included in her lessons, and the degree to which students had been actively engaged in the lessons. teaching context and teaching reflectively. similarities and differences also exist in respondents’ view regarding the use of elements of reflective teaching in relation to teaching contexts. both respondents reflected on their school layout and the extent to which it influenced their teaching activities. william reflected on, or thought about, her school layout and the extent to which it influenced her choice of student activities. she, however, extended her thinking to include the availability of school resources, space, and the degree to which the lack of these resources negatively influenced lesson implementation. maxwell reflected on the school layout and the extent to which it influenced her choice of student activities, but only in relation to class size and special occasions. she said she thinks about this when she invites special speakers to address a number of classes at the same time, which requires a large area for the students to congregate. maxwell’s lesson plan that i analysed revealed the fact that she reflected on resources, school facilities, and supplies, in relation to the lesson, and she listed these in a specific section labeled ‘resources’. differences in this area were seen in the fact that while both william and maxwell reflected on their school layout and the extent to which it influenced their choice of student activities, they did so either in relation to how their classroom could be arranged to accommodate student activities, when they were planning special events for students, when a large space and special teaching resources were required for the lesson, or when a lesson required the students to current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 16 be out of their self-contained classroom. william, however, employed reflection-on-context and the degree to which this influenced her mood. difficult circumstances at school, for example, difficulty with the school system, act as a trigger for her to question her values, beliefs, and assumptions about teaching generally, and this includes her mood. she also questions her whole interaction with students, her attitude about discipline, and not only in relation to how she planned lessons. cunningham (2001) recognizes this act of self-examination as an element of reflective teaching. the mechanics of teaching and teaching reflectively. similarities and differences also exist in the respondents’ view about the use of elements of reflective teaching in the mechanics of teaching. to varying degrees, both respondents reflected and were reflective about their teaching. both carried out reflection-in-action, framing students’ activities as the cause for making unplanned changes during a single lesson. periodically, changes to a whole lesson occurred. william tried to avoid making changes during a single lesson, by carrying out pre-testing. however, sometimes-misplaced teaching resources caused her to make changes. for maxwell, various interruptions caused changes to occur within a single lesson. maxwell and william reflected on their feelings, values, beliefs and assumptions, about teaching, and the degree to which these influenced their teaching generally. maxwell for example, considered the degree to which lessons that she planned displayed her assumptions, values, and beliefs about teaching. she also questioned the way she went about planning lessons and, by so doing had, over the year, used a number of ways of planning, which she shared with her colleagues. yesover the years, i have done different ways [of planning], i share with reflective teaching 17 colleagues to say ‘this is what i did, what do you do ‘asking what do they do, for i am always looking for best practices. (maxwell) during this sharing, she tried to get their ideas about teaching, for she was interested in ‘best practice’. while focusing on making her lessons ‘student centred’, she even questioned the effectiveness of that kind of approach to teaching and compared it with other methods that her grandmother had used. william also used established research, carried out research using students and colleagues, and read generally to improve her teaching. ‘with all the reading that i am doing, the things i learnt in college is a bit, outdated now, i do my reading and i try to make sense of all the new things that are happening now and i might plan it[ lesson] that way instead’ (william). maxwell and william reflected on self and made notes about their role in making lessons a success or failure. in other words, they employed reflection-on-action during their lesson evaluations. differences rested in the elements of reflective teaching that they emphasized or on which they focused. william periodically questioned her role in the success or failure of lessons and employed ‘flashback’ during lesson evaluation. reflecting on lesson plans in order to identify possible difficulties that students might encounter during actual implementation, is a practice of william. this results in creative and innovative approaches to classroom and school situations. maxwell’s willingness and desire to participate in collaborative exercises in order to improve an aspect of her teaching is characterised by day (1999) as a reflective act; additionally, she questioned the usefulness of a ‘student-centered’ approach to teaching. she also reflected on her role regarding students’ activities and the degree to which they were actively engaged in the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 18 lessons she taught. what constitute negative in-school factors locally? during the data analysis, three factors were identified in response to the question of what constitute negative in-school factors, these are: heavy workload, mandated policies and disagreement with colleagues. heavy workload. in line with the literature review, both respondents spoke of being heavily involved with either additional school responsibilities or having to give certain prescribed number of hours to teaching students, and the negative impact that these had on where and how lessons were planned. this is best summed up by william: you don’t have time; you might share a thought about something that really went well or share resources, that’s about it. we don’t have time and that’s one of my areas of interest that i could go on about. in all they want us to have 190 teaching days and directed instruction and all that garbage but they don’t give teachers time to sit down and plan, talk about what is happening in the classroom, share ideas and i think this is so important but they don’t give us time for that’ (william) an examination of william’s statement specifically reveals administrative hindrances to the sharing and discussion of lesson plans with colleagues. for, she said, there was no time for this and the authorities stipulated teachers’ contact-time/ teaching time and the number of hours that they should allocate to teaching. she, however, found a solution in the use of the internet, which she uses to facilitate her lesson planning. maxwell also highlights the fact that during the school term, her heavy school reflective teaching 19 responsibilities deterred her from going over her lesson plans, looking for possible difficulties that students might encounter during the actual lesson. in an effort to improve students’ learning and to make lesson planning easier, thus reducing the stress of heavy workload, maxwell encourages colleagues to share lesson plans on the school intranet to make available a number of lesson plans from which they could easily pull ideas and ‘free up time’ to accomplish otherschool responsibilities. mandated policy and disagreement with colleagues. william’s mood influenced by a school mandated policy and disagreement with colleagues affected how she planned and, especially, how she implemented a particular lesson. there are times as teachers our moods affect the teaching. for, depend on your mood you may decide to write on the black board and let the student ‘copy’ the notes and we will discuss it ‘another day kind of thing’. we all have days like that ... any teacher who is without days like these she needs to teach me a thing or two, sometimes you start a lesson and you know that nobody is into it, not you, not them, so you say, let’s try this another way and another day (william). according to william, both the mandated policy and disagreement with her colleagues influenced her ‘bad’ mood on that occasion. for her, the policy was unnecessary and the disagreement with her colleague was related to an issue in the school, hence they were negative in-school factors. this is reflective of the thoughts of maxwell-jolly (2000) who points out that mandated policies are not always embraced by all teachers. maxwell believes that students must be an active part of the process of learning and this philosophy guides her teaching. she explained this in the next excerpt, from which i will also infer that she must have reflected on her belief regarding this matter, hence, she is able to current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 20 articulate this particular view: i find that, people say ‘oh you try to do too much; but it is my belief that the children must be actively engaged. and so i am always thinking, ‘what can i do to actively engage them’ while someone will just come and give them the text books and the paper and ‘that’s a no no’ (maxwell). the important thing about this quotation is that she identified that her colleagues’ response to her beliefs about students’ involvement was indifferent. as a result, she decided not to share her lesson evaluation with all colleagues but with a select few. how does teaching reflectively aid in coping with these negative in-school factors? gage (1977) and clark and peterson (1986), state that teachers’ practical knowledge is credited with forming a large part of the knowledge base which shapes their classroom actions. marland (1998) agrees and states that teachers, and in particular expert teachers, draw heavily on their practical knowledge about how to teach and they rely less on research. their practical knowledge—that which they build up on the job as they grapple with the daily challenges of teaching and as they seek to refine their professional practice—inevitably influences how they address the issue of heavy workload. by reflecting on the nature of the heavy workload i.e. administrative or pedagogical, and pulling on their practical knowledge, participants arrived at solutions which help them cope with heavy workload. for example, william (after reflection), decided to use the internet as a place for planning lessons which is in-line with suggestions from the literature or maxwell (after reflection) decided to encourage colleagues to place their lesson plans on the school intranet. doing so allowed access to a variety of available lesson plans that could be easily utilised at any time (hamilton-trust 2004 & whittaker 2002). this no doubt reduces the stress of their heavy reflective teaching 21 workload by ‘freeing up time’ to accomplish other school responsibilities. birrell et al (1999) make the point that when the teaching context presents a serious challenge to self, ‘strategic defensive adaptations’, or coping strategies, emerged. coping strategies may be indirect, for example, changing the way one thought about or physically responded to the situation to reduce its impact and active, for example, taking some action to change oneself or the situation. based on the study of cooley and yovanoff (1996) reflection can facilitate these coping strategies. in cooley and yovanoff’s study of how to cope with perceived contextual challenges, the writers proposed a peer collaboration program. its strength was the use of reflective problem solving interactions between two teachers about student-related problems. an overview of the process reveals that it closely resembled the activities commonly employed by a reflective teacher, for example, framing the problem as promoted by schon (1987), and asking questions, as suggested by zeichner and liston (1996). the respondents in my study employed these kinds of coping strategies based on their use of reflection. william, when faced with a mandated school policy and a disagreement with colleagues decided to teach the lesson even though these contextual situations affected her mood negatively. the way she taught the lesson (after reflecting on the issue) was also a means of coping. at that time, she felt it necessary to write notes on the chalkboard for the students to copy, instead of employing activities that were interactive and demanded verbal communication between the students and her. the decision she took was one that protected the students from possible negative reaction that could have resulted from her negative mood. in addition, her actions were acts of safeguarding her job, hence herself. here again, according to birrell et al (1999), william was employing an indirect coping strategy by changing the way she physically current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 22 carried out the lesson and she was being active in her coping, in that she took a particular action to reduce the impact of the situation. in the case of maxwell, when faced with a disagreement with her colleagues based on the fact that they lacked the interpersonal relational skills of ‘empathy’ and ‘tuning in’ gladding (2000), belkin (1988), jacobs (1998) switzer (1986) and (after reflection), decided not to share her lesson evaluation with all colleagues. she did so because of seemingly negative responses she had received and these seemed to have affected her emotionally, given the fact that she was able to vividly recount this in the interview (cahill 2003 & mcgaugh 2003). according to birrell et al (1999), maxwell was employing an indirect coping strategy, by changing the way she thought about or physically responded to the situation, and she was being active in her coping, in that she took a particular action to reduce the impact of the situation. conclusion firstly, the findings of this study highlight the fact that school context and situations can be challenging. therefore, what is required in these ever changing, demanding, and sometimes difficult contexts are teachers who employ an approach to teaching that incorporates an understanding of their particular contexts, personal beliefs, practical knowledge and particular content knowledge. this approach should enable them to survive the many contextual constrains and irritations and allow them to draw on knowledge to solve problems that are unique to their particular teaching situation. this approach should also enable creative and innovative approaches to classroom and school situations and problems, which should result in improved learning opportunities for students. reflective teaching provides an excellent opportunity to achieve these. secondly, while the study’s aim was achieved the ways portrayed of how the respondents reflective teaching 23 arrived at solutions may seem simplistic, for by simply reflection on situations and encounters they found solutions. the process however is anything but simply, for what is required is careful consideration or thought, a process of disciplined intellectual criticism combining research, knowledge of context/classroom, and balanced judgment (critical thinking) (minott, 2009). this implies there is the need to ‘make the time’ to accomplish this task and requires a willingness to adapt an attitude of inquiry and an engagement in self-assessment. achieving these are not without challenges, given that teachers are not always willing to engage in self-assessment and they are saddled with numerous and varied tasks daily. limitations of the study when considering my study and its contributions, the following limitations must be borne in mind. the study examined the impact of negative in-school factors on teachers and teaching from a narrow empirical perspective, that is, two respondents and my own. however, given my limited financial resources as an independent researcher, this narrow focus made the study both manageable and achievable. clegg (1990) states that an aim underlying almost all scientific investigation was that the findings are applicable from the specific to the general. by looking for similarities and differences between the respondents, i was able to make relatively general statements regarding their understanding of the area being researched. however, given the nature of the research i engaged in, large-scale generalization was neither appropriate nor was it the outcome i sought. therefore, while this study 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(editors) (1996). reflective teachingan introduction. usa: current issues in education vol. 13 no. 1 28 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team reflective teaching 29 executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word factors influencing stress, burnout, and retention of secondary teachers.docx teacher stress, burnout, and retention 1 volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x factors influencing stress, burnout, and retention of secondary teachers molly h. fisher university of kentucky citation fisher, m. h. (2011). factors influencing stress, burnout, and retention of secondary teachers. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this study examines the stress, burnout, satisfaction, and preventive coping skills of nearly 400 secondary teachers to determine variables contributing to these major factors influencing teachers. analysis of variance (anova) statistics were conducted that found the burnout levels between new and experienced teachers are significantly different, with novice teachers having higher burnout, but their difference in stress levels was not statistically significant. in three multiple regression tests, stress and burnout were found to be statistically significant predictors of job satisfaction; years of experience, job satisfaction, and burnout were statistically significant predictors of stress; and job satisfaction, preventive coping skills, and stress were statistically significant predictors of burnout. keywords: stress, burnout, teacher retention, job satisfaction, beginning teachers, quantitative research current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 about the author(s) author: molly h. fisher, phd affiliation: university of kentucky address: college of education, 105d taylor education building, lexington, ky 40506 email: molly.fisher@uky.edu biographical information: dr. fisher is an assistant professor of mathematics education in the stem education department at the university of kentucky. she obtained her phd in curriculum and instruction in mathematics education from the university of north carolina at charlotte. her research interests include mathematics education, distance learning, and teacher stress, burnout, and retention. teacher stress, burnout, and retention 3 factors influencing stress, burnout, and retention of secondary teachers for centuries, teaching has been characterized as a profession that is “emotionally taxing and potentially frustrating” (lambert, o’donnell, kusherman, & mccarthy, 2006, p. 105). the rate at which teachers leave the profession is significantly higher than the departure rate in other professions (minarik, thornton, & perreault, 2003). ingersoll (2002) reports the departure rate in non-teaching professions remains around 11% each year. this percentage is lower than the over 16% of public school teachers that leave the profession or change schools each year (cox, parmer, tourkin, warner, & lyter, 2007). the departure rate of novice teachers is even higher. the number of teachers who leave the profession within the first five years can range from one third to one half (hanushek, 2007; ingersoll, & smith, 2003). because of the high teacher attrition rates within the first five years of their career, this vulnerable time is “an opportunity lost for the health of the teaching profession” (national council on teacher quality, 2008, p. 3). this vulnerability can be attributed to the fact that they transition from being a student to being a teacher and this can define who they are as educators (conroy, 2004). studies have shown that teaching is a stressful career and this can lead to teachers suffering from burnout (mccarthy, lambert, o’donnell, & melendres, 2009), resulting in a national epidemic of teacher departures. this paper delves into this problem and attempts to find adequate predictors of teacher stress and burnout within secondary level teachers. this research could, in turn, help alleviate the number of teachers fleeing the profession by informing and guiding future studies on determining specific solutions to relieve stress and burnout. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 literature and framework stress and burnout factors leading to stress and burnout are often related to the characteristics of being effective or highly qualified and the pressures related to achieving those goals (grant, 2007), as well as increased accountability measures for teachers (sorenson, 1999). however, those are not the only factors that contribute to the stress of the teaching profession. according to the most recent teacher follow-up survey, 32% of teachers who changed schools cited “poor working conditions” as an important reason for their decision, and over 37% of teachers who left the profession stated they were leaving to “pursue a job outside of teaching” (cox et al., 2007). geving (2007) found that poor student behavior is a main contributor to teacher stress, especially in secondary level teachers. other cited reasons for teacher stress are lack of administrative support (blase, blase, & du, 2008; lambert et al., 2006) and the excessive number of tasks that are required of new teachers who have not acquired successful task-management skills (brown, 2005). the combination of many factors will result in nearly 50% of teachers leaving the profession before they reach their sixth year of teaching (ingersoll & smith, 2004). teaching is a highly stressful career, and teachers are leaving the profession at an alarming rate (hanushek, 2007; ingersoll, & smith, 2003). without effective teachers, class sizes increase, school administrators become frustrated, parental concerns grow, and stress levels increase. liminality the term “liminality” derives from the latin root limen meaning “boundary or threshold” (meyer & land, 2005, p. 375). in 1960, arnold van gennep wrote about the “rites of passage” a person experiences when changing cultures or a way of life. he describes this particular teacher stress, burnout, and retention 5 transition in three different stages: preliminal rites, liminal rites, and postliminal rites. the liminal stage is the stage has been the most researched and van gennep (1960) describes it as “the transitional stage” where a person is transitioning from one social state to another. he also refers to it as a “territorial passage.” thus, van gennep refers to liminality as the period when one is between states, such as during a wedding ceremony when a person is not single but not married, or when certain cultures welcome a new member but they are not yet completely transitioned. the transition was later described as being “betwixt and between” social stages, and this terminology has been used widely in studies on liminality (bettis & mills, 2006). in the terms of education, conroy (2004) explains liminality as “a threshold…the entry and exit point between zones of experience or understanding,” and this concept matches the threshold a new teacher experiences when he or she is “betwixt and between” being a student and a teacher (p. 53). this period can involve a humbling of the participant because the teacher is being “stripped” of their old identity (meyer & land, 2005). these are the stages in which a teacher is most vulnerable to stress and feelings of dissatisfaction with the profession. cooksather (2006) describes the liminal stage as when “she or he is neither what she or he was nor what she or he will become” and the hope is those teachers in this stage find their stride and become successful teachers (p. 110). teacher follow-up survey the “teacher follow-up survey” is administered every four years. it serves as a followup to the “national schools and staffing survey” from the national center for education statistics. it was completed most recently during the 2004-2005 school year. over three million teachers were surveyed for this version of the teacher follow-up survey. each teacher surveyed was placed in one of three categories. they were either classified as a “stayer,” “mover,” or current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 “leaver.” “stayers” were teachers who remained at their current teaching assignment. “movers” were teachers who remained in teaching but left their current teaching assignment for another school or district. finally, “leavers” were those teachers who left the education profession. of those surveyed, over 19% were teachers within their first three years of experience. of that 19%, over 23% were classified as movers or leavers. additionally, the study revealed that over 10,000 (36%) of the first-year teachers were movers or leavers that year (cox et al., 2007). the teacher follow-up survey reinforces some of the reasons teachers leave the profession and refutes others. teacher salaries are a widely discussed feature of american education. although 16% of the teachers stated this was one of the reasons they left, it was not the most noted reason as retirement was the highest rated reason with 38% of the teachers leaving due to retirement. hanushek, kain, and rivkin (2001) were able to show that a substantial increase in salary would reduce only marginally the attrition rate of teachers. other reasons suggested for teacher departures are violence, urban populations, and weak administration. the teacher follow-up survey indicates a weak administration is one reason teachers were movers with 37% of teachers changing schools because of weak administration, but violence and urban populations were not found to be significant contributors of teacher departures (cox et al., 2007). pointing out the contradictory nature of the results, in a qualitative study, smith and smith (2006) find that some of the teachers interviewed left urban schools for stress-related reasons including violence, lack of feelings of safety, and poor community involvement. other reasons were noted as significant factors for teachers who were leavers or movers. over 38% of movers left for a better teaching position, and almost 33% stated they were moving due to “poor working conditions.” as for the leavers, retirement is the most commented reason teacher stress, burnout, and retention 7 for teachers to leave the profession with 38% of leavers citing retirement as one of the reasons. more significant is the fact that 37% of leavers left to pursue a career outside of the teaching profession, and 18% cited they were leaving because they were “dissatisfied with teaching as a career.” stress sorenson (1999) states, “stress is a condition of twenty-first-century education that continues to increase as more accountability standards and new policy initiatives are introduced” (p. 12). many factors can contribute to high levels of teacher stress, but geving (2007) suggests student behavior is an increasing factor of the stress, especially among secondary level teachers. in her study of secondary level teachers, she found 10 specific student behaviors to be statistically significant contributors to teacher stress. the behavior factors leading to teacher stress from the most stressful to the least stressful (but still statistically significant) are: hostility towards the teacher, not paying attention during class, noisiness, lack of effort in class, coming to class unprepared, hyperactivity, breaking school rules, harming school property, hostility toward other students, and lack of interest in learning. other potential stressors may include the lack of parental and administrative support (blase, blase, & du, 2008; lambert et al., 2006), and the lack of task management for new teachers when dealing with paperwork and extracurricular duties outside the classroom (brown, 2005). these tasks can include parent conferences, bus monitoring, hallway duty, staff meetings, bathroom duty, cafeteria supervision, and a plethora of other tasks assigned to teachers. jepson and forrest (2006) conducted a multiple regression test to determine which factors contribute to teacher stress. they tested and found the following independent variables to be statistically significant predictors of stress: type of school setting, type a personality, teachercurrent issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 specific achievement striving, and occupational commitment to the teaching profession. the strongest negative predictor of stress was occupational commitment, and it revealed that as commitment increases, stress decreases. the next most significant factor was achievement striving. its positive beta value indicated the teachers who were striving to reach higher achievement were more stressed. additionally, teachers with a type a personality are also found to be more stressed. type a teachers are more aggressive, and would consider themselves to be “perfectionists.” another interesting result is that elementary school teachers have higher stress than secondary teachers. the factors that were not found to be significantly related to teacher stress were gender, years of experience, and job status (full or part time). burnout freudenberger (1974) began researching burnout during the free clinic movement and found that those involved were becoming “inoperative to all intents and purposes” due to the extreme working conditions (p. 160). maslach, jackson, and leiter (1996), some of the most well-known researchers of burnout, constructed burnout as a combination of three components: emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment, and depersonalization. “emotional exhaustion” is the emotional lassitude a person experiences when they are fatigued and frustrated. “personal accomplishment” is the person’s self-evaluation of their own work. the final component, “depersonalization,” is when a person has a tendency to isolate themselves from others. ghorpade, lackritz, and singh (2007) found that the components of burnout are statistically related to different personality traits. emotional exhaustion was negatively related to extroversion and emotional stability, depersonalization was negatively related to agreeableness and emotional stability, and personal accomplishment was positively related to extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability. kokkinos (2007) also found similar teacher stress, burnout, and retention 9 results when comparing burnout to personality traits; however, that study also revealed that student misbehavior and the time constraints on teachers were significant predictors of the burnout components. preventive coping skills teachers cope with school stress in many different ways. sorenson (1999) suggests simple tactics that can help a teacher control stress such as a balanced diet, exercise, adequate sleep, as well as being able to recognize work overload and stress-resistant workplaces. certain coping mechanisms can also have a negative effect on a person’s mental health. relieving stress using anger-induced methods such as placing blame on others and yelling can increase mental health problems such as insomnia, anxiety, and depression (suldo, shaunessy, & hardesty, 2008). when a potential stress threat occurs, a stress response is triggered (hobfoll, 1988). adequate preventive coping resources can reduce the number of events a teacher interprets as stress threats, which eliminates the stress response trigger (mccarthy, lambert, & brack, 1997). mccarthy (2002) and his colleagues created a model of stress prevention and coping and used this model to visually represent the use of preventive coping skills in a stressful situation, known as demands. this model is found in figure 1. the model begins with preventive coping resources and the dashed lines from that variable indicate the individual can control the degree of demands from life events, individual perceptions they have about demands encountered, and their own appraisal of the ability to handle demands. once the demand has become apparent, the individual must appraise the seriousness of the demand. optimal results would be those in which the individual feels the resources available outnumber the demands (r≥d), but the reverse can also current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 occur (r<d), which triggers the aforementioned stress response. if this occurs, combative coping mechanisms must be reinforced to reduce the intensity of the stressors. figure 1. model of prevention of stress and coping (mccarthy, lambert, beard, & dematatis, 2002). betoret (2006) conducted a study on spanish teachers in spain. his study combined teacher self-efficacy, coping resources, stress, and burnout. he found that teachers with a reported higher amount of coping support at their schools and higher self-efficacy were found to be less stressed and more motivated and satisfied in the profession. additionally, those teachers were also found to be less burned out. it has been found that up to one half of teachers leave the profession within their first five years of teaching (ingersoll & smith, 2004). this failure to retain teachers is becoming a national epidemic and strategies invoked by school systems are not effective enough to reduce the stress of these novice teachers, thus resulting in their departure from the profession. current efforts such as mentoring, professional development training, and stronger collaboration among teachers may be showing small improvements but have yet to be effective on a larger scale. in order to teacher stress, burnout, and retention 11 reduce stress levels and increase teacher retention, more research must be conducted to understand how teachers cope with the stress and study those teachers with successful coping skills. rationale and research questions large-scale studies such as the schools and staffing survey and the teacher follow-up survey are conducted to determine reasons that teachers leave the profession and studies have been published that also delve into reasons for teacher stress and burnout. in contrast, this study aims to combine these facets together and study how they can be related within secondary level teachers. since the teacher follow-up survey reports such a high number of departures prior to the fifth year of experience, this project aims to determine if there is a significant difference between the stress and burnout of those teachers within the first five years of teaching and those with greater than five years of experience. additionally, the teacher follow-up survey also finds that teachers are dissatisfied with the teaching profession so this paper is designed to determine if those teachers who claim to be dissatisfied are more stressed and more burned out than those who claimed to be satisfied with the profession. finally, the third goal of this paper is to determine a combination of variables that can be significant predictors of a teacher’s stress and burnout levels. previous research on teacher stress and burnout has been conducted with elementary level teachers using an instrument designed specifically for elementary level teachers (lambert, mccarthy, & abbott-shim, 2001). this study will use that previous research and elementary level instruments to guide the creation of the secondary level instruments in attempts to better reach the goals of this paper, which involve secondary level teachers. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 methodology participants during the summer of 2008, 412 secondary level teachers attended advanced placement (ap) professional development workshops on the campus of a large, urban university in the southeastern united states. these teachers were targeted for participation in this research project. the participants were current or potential ap teachers of various ap topics. all workshops were either five days or two days in length. the five day workshops were designed for teachers new to teaching ap courses and included more in-depth instructions for teaching the courses. the two-day workshops were refresher courses for experienced ap teachers. the consultants leading the workshops made appointments for the researcher to administer the surveys for the project during or immediately after class time on any day of the workshop. after all appointments with the workshop leaders had been made and surveys collected, 385 teachers had participated in the project. teachers of ap courses often are more experienced teachers, but there was still a reasonable sampling of teachers with fewer than six years of teaching experience (36.3%). table 2 describes the distribution of the sampling of teachers surveyed for this portion of the study. participants were instructed to leave any question blank they did not feel comfortable answering. the percentages not totaling 100% are due to the participants who chose not to respond to those individual questions. when questioned about their teaching license and how it was obtained, there was a higher percentage of teachers who chose not to respond. this response rate can indicate a lack of clarity with the question and should be addressed in future uses of the instrument. approximately half of the teachers attending the workshop were local commuters to the workshop from the state holding the workshops, and approximately ninety percent of the participants were teachers from that state. the other teacher stress, burnout, and retention 13 participants included teachers from other states and countries. even though the majority of the teachers participating in the summer programs were from the state where the research was conducted, that state contains a very diverse population of students. approximately 37% of the school districts in the state are labeled as urban schools. also, 50% of the students in the state were classified during the 2008-2009 school year to receive a free or reduced lunch, which is an indicator of the poverty level of the students within the state. of the students attending school in that state during the 2008-2009 school year 54% were caucasian, 31% were african-american, and 15% were from other races such as hispanic, asian, and american indian. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 table 2 demographics of participants quantity percentage gender male 145 37.7 female 232 60.3 years of experience 0-5 years 145 36.3 6-10 years 83 21.6 11-15 years 75 19.5 16-20 years 34 8.8 21-25 years 18 4.7 26+ years 29 7.5 age 21-25 51 13.2 26-30 68 17.7 31-40 124 32.2 41-50 79 20.5 51-60 51 13.2 61+ 11 2.9 subject taught math 73 18.9 history 87 22.6 foreign language 21 5.5 science 104 27.0 english 80 20.8 other 9 2.4 teacher stress, burnout, and retention 15 instruments three instruments were used to collect data for this project. all three instruments were combined into one single packet with a consent form for the teachers to complete. the average time used to complete the survey was approximately 30 minutes and the participants completed the survey in a quiet setting with the researcher present. teachers were given adequate time to finish the survey and all were finished within 40 minutes. classroom appraisal of resources and demands (card) – stress. this survey instrument was created by lambert, mccarthy, and abbot-shim (2001) but was designed for elementary school teachers. with permission from the authors, the original card was altered by the researcher to make it suitable for secondary-level teachers. the card survey measures on two scales: classroom demands and classroom resources. this allows the researcher to compute a stress score for individual teachers by finding the difference between these two scales. each participant received a score for “demands” that was a mean of their responses to individual questions asking teachers to rate the severity of 34 specific demands of the profession. those questions ranged from scoring the demands of extracurricular activities to the demands of problematic behaviors of students. similarly, each participant received a score for “resources” that was a mean of their responses to individual questions asking teachers to rate the helpfulness of 29 specific resources of the profession. the resources they scored were items such as front office staff resourcefulness and administrative support. when the card was designed, the creators found that teachers whose self-reported demands were greater than their self-reported recourses (d>r) suffered more stress than those teachers who felt the resources surpassed the demands (d<r) (lambert et al., 2001). because of this correlation, they found the difference between the two scores adequately measured an individual teacher’s stress. in this study, the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 resource score was subtracted from the demand score to determine a stress score for each teacher. a positive number would indicate higher stress than those teachers acquiring a negative number. in addition to the standard questions on the card, questions were added to allow the researcher to determine if the teacher has ever had thoughts of leaving the profession and how often those thoughts occur or have occurred. there was also an additional question for teachers to rate their satisfaction with the teaching profession. their satisfaction score choices were “very satisfied”, “somewhat satisfied”, “somewhat dissatisfied”, or very dissatisfied”. this item was used in the statistical measures as the teacher’s satisfaction score with 1 being “very satisfied” and 4 being “very dissatisfied”. maslach burnout inventory (mbi) – burnout. the mbi was created in 1996 by maslach, jackson, and leiter. the mbi is the most well-known measure of teacher burnout and has been used in more than 90% of empirical studies on the subject (hastings, horne, & mitchell, 2004; schaufeli & enzmann, 1998). the three main components of burnout measured by the 22 questions on the mbi include: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. each of these three scores is measured using questions answered with a 7-point frequency scale and the answers range from 0 (“never”) to 6 (“everyday”). “depersonalization” occurs when a teacher isolates himself from others. this variable is measured with five items on the survey that ask for the frequency with which they experience negative feelings towards other teachers and administrators. “personal accomplishment” is the self-evaluation of the efficacy of the teacher’s own work. eight items on the survey test the teacher’s feelings of personal accomplishment. “emotional exhaustion” measures fatigue, frustration, and stress. nine questions on the survey are used to create a score for this component. since they are measured by teacher stress, burnout, and retention 17 frequency, the personal accomplishment scores were reverse-coded to match the consistency of the results (mccarthy, kissen, yadley, wood, & lambert, 2006). the average of each of the twenty-two questions yields a burnout score for individual participants. preventive resources inventory (pri) – coping skills. the pri, created by mccarthy and lambert (2001), is a survey instrument that measures how well a teacher can prevent stressful situations. it consists of 15 questions requiring a likert scale response where participants are asked to describe how well they agree with statements related to the prevention of stress. the pri instrument measures the following aspects: perceived control, maintaining perspective, social resourcefulness, self-acceptance, and scanning. “perceived control” is similar to self-confidence and is defined as “measuring perceptions of the ability to influence life events in order to keep daily hassles from becoming stressful” (lambert, mccarthy, gilbert, sebree, & steinley-bumgarner, 2006). “maintaining perspective” is the belief that one can keep emotions at a manageable level during stressful situations. participants who have higher scores in this category are more successful in using life experiences in a constructive and beneficial way. “social resourcefulness” is the act of keeping others close who can act as a buffer during stressful situations. it measures the participant’s perception of how well they can maintain supportive relationships. “scanning” is the ability of a teacher to anticipate stressful situations before they arise. questions in that category include “i am good at identifying things that will cause stress in the future” (mccarthy et al., 2006). “self-acceptance” is the degree to which a teacher can accept any of his/her own shortcomings, especially when dealing with life situations. after measuring those various scales, the number of questions on the pri made the survey quite lengthy. due to the length of the pri, current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 the instrument used in this study was shortened to measure only self-acceptance. in previous studies “self-acceptance” has been shown to be an indicator for all other variables. therefore, a condensed questionnaire was used in this study consisting of only the 15 questions measuring self-acceptance (lambert et al., 2006). variables descriptive statistics the means and standard deviations of the dependent variables are reported in table 3. burnout scores range from zero to six with six being the most “burned out.” “self-acceptance” ranges from one to five with a higher score indicating more sufficient preventive coping skills. “job satisfaction” was the result of a single scale score where a score of zero meant “very satisfied,” one was “somewhat satisfied,” two was “somewhat dissatisfied”, and three was “very dissatisfied”. finally, each participant was given a stress score, which was the difference of their perceived demands and their perceived resources. due to the order of the variables in the difference, a positive score would indicate the teacher feels the demands are higher than the resources, which would reveal higher stress. normality measures were tested and all were within reasonable ranges. table 3 means and standard deviations of dependent variables dv m sd burnout 1.91 .82 stress -.209 1.05 self-acceptance 4.06 .483 job satisfaction .53 .635 teacher stress, burnout, and retention 19 reliability job satisfaction. all teachers participating in the study were asked how satisfied they were with the teaching profession. the answer choices ranged from 0 (very satisfied) to 3 (very dissatisfied). of the teachers surveyed, 93% stated they were either “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with the teaching profession. this could be the result of sampling bias because students enrolled in ap courses are generally college-bound students who tend to be more dedicated to education. this could serve as a limitation due to the reason that this particular sampling of teachers appeared to be more satisfied in teaching as a profession, but this was not unexpected. due to this situation, the data for this variable was skewed to the right. seven participants chose not to answer the question resulting in n=378. due to this outcome, job satisfaction was not used as a variable to stratify and conduct group comparisons by satisfaction levels; it was only used as an outcome variable in an effort to determine whether other factors can contribute to a teacher’s job satisfaction. stress, burnout, and self-acceptance survey instruments. the three individual surveys were analyzed for reliability. it was found that the reliability coefficients were comparable to those found in previous studies. from the mbi, the burnout score found from a combination of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment posted a tenable cronbach’s alpha (α=.895). no reportable skewness or kurtosis was found in the burnout variable. the two components of the stress score for each teacher posted strong reliability coefficients. the teachers’ self-reported appraisal of resources (α=.910) and appraisal of demands (α=.930) combined generate a stress score for each participant. the bivariate correlation between resources and demands was found to be small (r=.104), but when combined current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 to create a stress score, they create a high reliability (α=.895). it was found that the skewness and kurtosis of these scores were all within normal ranges. one participant skipped an entire page of the card resulting in one missing result for resources as well as a missing result for stress. the shortened preventive resources inventory was found to be a reliable test of selfacceptance (α=.846). each question presented a different idea with extreme and moderate answer choices using a likert scale. in ten of the fifteen questions there was at least one participant who selected the most extreme answers. in five of the questions none of the participants made the choice of “strongly disagree.” there was no significant skewness or kurtosis of self-acceptance. results and discussion stress and burnout of new and experienced teachers a one-way anova was conducted to determine if there is a significant difference between the stress and burnout levels of new and experienced teachers. the descriptive statistics are reported in table 4 below. the means indicate a very small difference between the two groups’ stress scores and only a slightly higher burnout score for the novice teachers. when the tests were conducted, however, it was found that no significant difference was found between the stress scores of the two groups (f = 2.374, p = .124), but a significant difference was found when measuring burnout between the groups (f=3.956, p = .047). table 4 descriptive statistics of stress and burnout scores of new and experienced teachers n m sd stress 0 (<=5 yrs) 145 -.104 .991 1 (>5 yrs) 238 -.274 1.080 bo 0 (<=5 yrs) 145 2.020 .854 1 (>5 yrs) 238 1.849 .797 teacher stress, burnout, and retention 21 research shows that up to fifty percent of teachers leave the profession by the close of their fifth year of experience (hanushek, 2007; ingersoll, & smith, 2003). based on those previous studies, it was decided that for this study “novice” teachers would be those with up to five years of experience and that “experienced” teachers would be those with greater than five years of experience. the anova showed that the teachers in these two groups determined by experience did not have a statistically significant difference in their stress scores. teaching is a stressful career at all levels of experience. perhaps the causes of stress are different for those teachers in their inaugural year of teaching than for those in their twentieth year of teaching. more experienced teachers generally carry more non-classroom duties such as committees and coaching whereas less experienced teachers may struggle more with teaching responsibilities. finding a significant difference in the burnout scores between the two groups was an interesting result since the less experienced teachers were the ones with the higher burnout scores. many people feel more experienced teachers would have higher burnout due to the prolonged exposure to stressful conditions. stress, burnout, and job satisfaction a multiple regression analysis was conducted with the dependent variable being the participants’ responses on a single item about job satisfaction and the independent variables being burnout and stress. the independent variables were found to be moderately correlated (r=.502), but the variance inflation factor remained at a reasonable level (vif=1.329). the regression analysis was found to be statistically significant (r2 adj=.337, f=96.77, p<.001) and both stress (β=.129, p=.008) and burnout (β=.508, p<.001) were found to be statistically current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 significant indicators of job satisfaction with burnout being a stronger indicator of job satisfaction. the results reveal that 34% of the variance in job satisfaction of teachers in this study can be attributed to stress and burnout. dissatisfaction in a profession can lead to departures by the professionals in that career. although 34% may not seem like a large percentage of variance, there is a moderate effect size (f2=.508), which means it could result in a large number of teachers that continue teaching and opt not to leave the profession. that variance indicates the possibility of a substantial number of teachers remaining in the profession if a remedy is found to reduce stress and burnout. this could result in more successful teachers, improvement of schools, and better educated students. factors contributing to stress and burnout two more multiple regression analyses were used to determine which factors contribute to stress and burnout among the teachers in the study. the tests are outlined in table 5 below. table 5 variables of multiple regression analyses dv iv test 1 stress number of student taught year of experience age gender self-acceptance (preventive coping skills) job satisfaction burnout test 2 burnout number of student taught year of experience age gender self-acceptance (preventive coping skills) job satisfaction stress teacher stress, burnout, and retention 23 correlations pearson correlation coefficients were computed among the independent variables. the results are reported in table 6. table 6 pearson correlation coefficients of independent variables n um be r o f st ud en ts y ea rs o f ex pe rie nc e a ge g en de r se lfa cc ep ta nc e jo b sa tis fa ct io n st re ss b ur no ut number of students 1 -.009 -.031 -.070 -.037 .136** .096 .119* years of experience -.009 1 .741** .003 .116* -.143** -.186** -.128* age -.031 .741** 1 -.075 .104* -.140** -.125* -.130* gender -.070 .003 -.075 1 -.049 .051 .080 .098 self-acceptance -.037 .116* .104* -.049 1 -.401** -.314** -.540** job satisfaction .136** -.143** -.140** .051 -.401** 1 .382** .572** stress .096 -.186** -.125* .080 -.314** .382** 1 .499** burnout .119* -.128* -.130* .098 -.540** .572** .499** 1 ** significant at the .01 level * significant at the .05 level the correlation coefficients indicate statistically significant bivariate correlations between some of the independent variables. job satisfaction correlates statistically significantly with all variables, with the exception of gender, which does not correlate with any of the variables. additionally, the teacher’s years of experience, self-acceptance, age, and stress all correlate with each of the variables, with the exception of the number of students taught and gender. test 1, stress. mahalanobis’ distance was computed to determine if multivariate outliers occurred in the dataset. three participants were found to be outliers (p<.01) and they were current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 removed from the dataset. additionally, 17 other participants failed to receive a score for at least one of the variables which resulted in missing data for those participants. from the pearson correlation coefficients found in table 6 above, it was determined that years of experience, age, job satisfaction, self-acceptance, and burnout were all deemed significantly correlated to stress. variance inflation factors (vifs) were computed and none were found to be unacceptable. the highest vif was found to be for age (vif = 2.263). the results of the multiple regression were found to be significant (r2 adj=.263, f=19.527, p<.001). the results indicate that years of experience, job satisfaction, and burnout are the statistically significant predictors of stress with number of students, age, gender, and self-acceptance being not significant. the standardized and unstandardized betas are reported in table 7 below. table 7 results of multiple regression test 1 unstandardized β standardized β t sig. vif num students .002 .073 1.594 .112 1.048 yrs. exp. -.019 -.156 -2.313 .021 2.252 age .062 .077 1.139 .255 2.263 gender .101 .047 1.035 .302 1.023 satis .212 .129 2.293 .022 1.563 bo .492 .385 6.280 .000 1.850 sa -.025 -.012 -.214 .831 1.447 r = .527, r2 adj =.263, f2=.356 test 2, burnout. when analyzing this multiple regression, 18 participants were not included due to the lack of a score for one of the independent variables. mahalanobis’ distance was computed to find multivariate outliers. two participants were deemed outliers (p<.01) and both were removed from the dataset. similar to the first test, all of the independent variables, except gender, were found to have bivariate correlations with burnout. the variance inflation factors were again found to be teacher stress, burnout, and retention 25 within reasonable ranges with the highest vif (2.285) being for years of experience. the results of this multiple regression were also found to be significant (r2 adj=.504, f=53.791, p<.001). the outcome of the multiple regression analysis reveals that job satisfaction, self-acceptance, and stress are the significant predictors of burnout with number of students, years of experience, age, and gender not being found significant. the standardized and unstandardized betas are reported in table 8 below. table 8 results of multiple regression test 2 unstandardized β standardized β t sig. vif num students .001 .041 1.095 .274 1.051 yrs. exp. .003 .028 .497 .620 2.285 age -.020 -.031 -.557 .578 2.270 gender .056 .033 .888 .375 1.021 satis .429 .332 7.819 .000 1.324 sa -.562 -.331 -8.052 .000 1.236 stress .207 .263 6.390 .000 1.246 r = .716, r2 adj =.504, f2=1.016 factors contributing to stress and burnout. the multiple regression analyses conducted revealed that years of experience, job satisfaction, and burnout were all statistically significant predictors of stress. the beta values indicate that as years of experience increases, stress decreases, while as burnout increases stress increases as well. there was a positive beta value for job satisfaction, but job satisfaction was coded in order in which they appeared on the survey with zero being most satisfied and three being least satisfied. this indicates the reverse of how the results may immediately appear: as job satisfaction decreases (score rises) the stress increases. the results indicate that years of experience, job satisfaction, and burnout contribute to 26% of the variance of the stress scores. with the large variance accounted for being attributed to years of experience, job satisfaction, and burnout, it seems feasible that if local, district, and state current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 administrators could find ways to increase job satisfaction and reduce burnout, then the stress level of teachers should decline, resulting in fewer teachers leaving the profession. the second multiple regression test shows more statistically significant results. it reveals that job satisfaction, self-acceptance, and stress are all significant predictors of burnout. the beta values indicate that as job satisfaction and preventive coping skills decrease, burnout increases. also indicated is that as stress increases burnout increases. the results of the regression analysis reveal that those three are statistically significant and these predictors account for over 50% of the variance in the burnout scores. when referring to the retention and general well-being of teachers, 50% can be considered a very substantial number. job satisfaction. in this study job satisfaction was a single item contained on the classroom appraisal of resources and demands (card). there are many nationally normed and validated job satisfaction surveys that could be used for future studies. the reason that one was not included in this study was an effort to reduce the number of questions on the survey. the general social survey (gss) conducted by tom w. smith (2007) at the university of chicago found that only 47% of americans are satisfied with their jobs. despite such a low percentage overall, teachers were found to be near the top of the list of professions where the participants were generally happy. clergymen, firefighters, and physical therapists were the top three most satisfied at 87%, 80%, and 78% reporting being very satisfied, respectively. special education teachers were near the top of the list with 70% very satisfied, all teachers were next with 69%, and education administrators followed with 68%. the participants in the gss study were “full-probability samples of adults living in households in the united states.” this study has been conducted yearly since 1972 and in this 2006 study, 4,510 participants were interviewed. they were asked two questions: “on the whole, how satisfied are you with the work teacher stress, burnout, and retention 27 you do – would you say you are very satisfied, moderately satisfied, a little dissatisfied, or very dissatisfied” and “taken all together, how would you say things are these days—would you say you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” there was a significant correlation found in the answers of the two questions. participants in this study were asked how satisfied they were with the teaching profession. they were offered similar responses as they were asked to check “very satisfied,” “somewhat satisfied,” “somewhat dissatisfied,” and “very dissatisfied.” of the 380 teachers who answered this question, only 54% responded as being “very satisfied”. this number is lower than the 69% reported in the gss study. the mean score in the gss study was 3.61 with a high score indicating higher degrees of satisfaction. the mean score in this study was .53 with lower scores indicating high satisfaction. if the .53 was normed to meet the same criteria as the gss study, the mean would be 3.47, which is similar to the results found in the gss study. final remarks and implications the data collected in this study reveals many interesting and relevant facts about stress and burnout that teachers face; however, there is a strong need for additional research in this field. novice teachers are particularly vulnerable, but the classification of “new” and “experienced” still needs further investigation. it appears just measuring the years of experience in the profession may not be adequate enough and further investigations should be conducted using more in-depth studies of the psychological levels a teacher progress through during their beginning stages of teaching. it is interesting to note that when the number of years of experience was included in the multiple regression tests, it was found to be a significant predictor of stress, but not a significant predictor of burnout, when the anova test between novice and experienced teachers showed otherwise. the contradictory results could be explained by the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 choice of the cutoff point between novice and experienced teachers and that it may need to be lowered. perhaps novice teachers should be defined as those with up to three years of experience instead of five. to further investigate this concern, a test was conducted using this data that presented inexperienced teachers as those with less than three years of experience and experienced teachers as those with three or greater years of experience. when this stratification change was conducted, neither stress or burnout was found to be statistically significant between the newly formed novice and experienced groups (fstr=1.596, pstr=.207, fbo=.546, pbo=.460). by changing the stratification levels, only 78 teachers remained in the inexperienced group and 306 in the experienced group. the unmatched groups could result in data that is not tenable for a study of this nature. this could be an interesting change for future studies comparing the stress and burnout of novice and experienced teachers when the teachers are not in the specific scenario of those used in this study. some may insist that the use of ap teachers for a study of this nature could be a limitation of this study. however, even though the participants were scheduled to teach ap courses at their respective schools the next school year, the majority of those teachers do not teach only ap courses. of the 385 participants, only six participants reported that they only taught ap courses in the previous school year. the remainder of the participants taught other non-ap courses of various subjects and ability-levels. ap teachers still have strict demands in their ap courses. many could say they are under more scrutiny for accountability due to the nature of the national test they are required to prepare students for, as compared to other subject area tests in their field that are only state mandated. teacher stress, burnout, and retention 29 this data does show the need for more specific stress reducing tactics for our teachers that can result in more satisfied educators who are willing to remain in the profession. the most popular methods of combating stress are positive peer collaboration, better mentoring for new teachers, and more effective professional development, however the specificity of those three methods has yet to be determined. novice teachers need camaraderie in the form of informal collaboration, but this collaboration must avoid negative feelings that can only increase the stress of teachers. in order for this to happen, new teachers cannot be isolated from their peers (brown, 2005). unfortunately, this can happen physically and socially resulting in the lack of collaboration among teachers. it is also important that novice teachers are assigned mentors in their content area to share ideas and concerns. unfortunately, in many cases, the mentor is asked to become an evaluator of the new teacher, which can cause animosity between the new teacher and the more experienced teacher, resulting in additional unnecessary stress (adams & adams, 2003). professional development is needed in order to grow and reflect professionally and teachers desire this form of collaboration (cwikla, 2002). however, teachers do not see all professional development activities as effective. in order to reduce stress and increase retention, teachers need better professional development that they can see as useful contributions to their teaching. professional development activities can range from simple school-level tasks for new teachers such as copy machine usage and how to complete administrative tasks to more advanced sessions on content knowledge or best practices. teaching is a stressful career and few will refute the significance of the amount of stress involved in the career. when freudenberger (1974) initially began his research on burnout, he started by researching burnout on all professions, not specifically education. this led up to current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 discussions on the teaching profession. when discussing who is prone to burnout, freudenberger claims those most at risk are “the dedicated and the committed” who are “seeking to respond to the recognized needs of people” (p. 161). that description can be interpreted to include teachers who “would rather put up than shut up” (p. 161). when even more pressure is added from administrators, stress levels increase and burnout worsens. unfortunately, this causes many teachers to never see beyond their fifth year in the profession. teacher stress, burnout, and retention 31 references adams, k.l, & adams, d.e. 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(1960). the rites of passage. chicago: the university of chicago press. teacher stress, burnout, and retention 37 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word improving student engagement.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x improving student engagement leah taylor and jim parsons university of alberta citation taylor, l. & parsons, j. (2011). improving student engagement. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the paper that follows reviews research literature in the area of student engagement. our goal in this work is practical: we hope to discover in this literature curricular and pedagogical ideas educators might successfully use to better engage students in learning. prior to outlining the specifics of our research, we offer a general overview of what we have found as we have studied the literature to provide a context that might help readers better understand this area of study. specifically, our reading suggests that work in the area of student engagement seems to have grown in a number of ways – the greatest of which is the change from focusing upon disengaged current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 students (who are not learning) to engaged learners (who are learning). we theorize that older work about student engagement attempted to reshape ‘renegade’ students back into the fold of schooling, but current work is more willing to revision schools to fit the learning needs of students. this change seems crucial and promises to organize how the study of student engagement will be carried out in the future. keywords: student engagement, student learning, pedagogy, assessment for learning improving student engagement 3 about the author(s) author: leah taylor email: leahtaylor@shaw.ca biographical information: leah taylor is an educator who works for westjet airlines. she is a long-time collaborator with jim parsons. she is a parent of two who works with the comox valley school division on vancouver island, canada. her interests are parental involvement and educational research. author: jim parsons affiliation: university of alberta email:jim.parsons@ualberta.ca biographical information: jim parsons has been a professor in the department of secondary education, university of alberta, edmonton, canada, for 35 years. he is a teacher educator whose interests are student learning and instructional leadership. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 improving student engagement pedagogy should at its best be about what teachers do that not only help students to learn but actively strengthens their capacity to learn.” david hargreaves, learning for life, 2004, p. 27. student engagement has primarily and historically focused upon increasing achievement, positive behaviors, and a sense of belonging in students so they might remain in school. because the focus was high school completion, research on student engagement targeted students in middle school and high school, where disengagement typically becomes a concern (willms, friesen, & milton, 2009), and student engagement was seen as a way to re-engage or reclaim a minority of predominantly socio-economically disadvantaged students at risk of dropping out of high school. over time, student engagement strategies were further developed and more broadly implemented as a way to manage classroom behaviors. more recently, student engagement has been built around the hopeful goal of enhancing all students’ abilities to learn how to learn or to become lifelong learners in a knowledge-based society (gilbert, 2007, p. 1). student engagement has become both a strategic process for learning and an accountability outcome unto itself. defining and measuring student engagement clearly, educators hope students will become successful learners. teachers’ experiences also clearly tell them that students disengage and do so for a variety of reasons – perhaps each of which could be studied and mediated on its own. for very good reasons, a large number of researchers have studied student engagement. however, the literature we reviewed did not agree upon a definition of what student engagement might be. several types of engagement were noted – academic, cognitive, intellectual, institutional, emotional, behavioral, social, and psychological to name a few. these differences beg a number of questions. must a learner function in all arenas improving student engagement 5 of engagement for successful learning to take place? for example, some researchers studied students’ need to “belong” to achieve high grades and graduate. but, must students belong to be academically successful; or, must they simply behave? are high-achieving students who work but do not participate in extracurricular school events disengaged learners? (willms, friesen, & milton, 2009; willms, 2003; harris, 2008). such questions stir both our interest and the age-old question: what might our education system do to help students engage successfully? perhaps one way to define student engagement is to see how it is measured. historically, a number of common measures have been used to identify if students are actively engaged in learning. these measures have predominantly focused on quantitative data such as attendance, standardized test scores, and truancy or graduation rates. the majority of these measures track levels of achievement (outcomes such as high scores, full attendance for the year) but not levels of student engagement in learning (interest, time on task, enjoyment in learning). more recently however, researchers are beginning to ask students and teachers how they would measure engagement. this question is producing both interesting qualitative criteria and further definitions of engaged learning, which, consequently, have impacted how we ‘assess’ learning. answers to this refocused question have revealed a gap between what teachers consider engagement in learning and what students consider engagement in learning. the promise of student engagement clearly, student engagement is a rich research area. educators must continue to seek to understand and apply specific, well-considered, if not agreed upon, strategies that support student engagement in learning both in and beyond the classroom. the consequences of not engaging students in learning are reportedly dire (prensky, 2001; tapscott, 1998; gilbert, 2007; willms, 2003, p. 56; claxton, 2007). “some educationists consider engaging disengaged pupils current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 to be one of the biggest challenges facing educators, as between 25% (willms, 2003) and over 66% (cothran & ennis, 2000) of students are considered to be disengaged” (as cited in harris, 2008, p. 57). it is obvious that students live in world that engages them differently than the world their parents experienced. that students respond to this world and have changed over the last twenty years in response to their engagement within a technology rich society and changes in upbringing almost goes without saying. how schools respond is key to student success. a great issue might be that students leave school incapable of or unprepared for a productive and healthy life in the “knowledge society” in which they will live and lead (gilbert, 2007). if we fail to change our pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment strategies, we fail our students and jeopardize our own futures (willms, 2003; robinson, 2009; tapscott, 1998; prensky, 2005; gilbert, 2007). students have changed over the last twenty years; perhaps as a result of a technology rich upbringing, they appear to have “different” needs, goals, and learning preferences than students in the past. we must better understand these youth to determine how to best engage them in learning; yet, there is a notable lack of “student voice” or student perspectives in the literature on student engagement. that said, some critics (carlson, 2005; young, 2006; carnivale, 2006; bennett, maton, & kervin, 2008) do not believe today’s students require special educational concessions. in fact, they believe we are dumbing down an entire generation through coddling. as “professor baron” is quoted in carlson (2005): it is very common to hear people say, ‘here's the millennial or the digital generation, and we have to figure out how they learn. poppycock. we get to mold how they learn.’ administrators push professors to use technology in the classroom because they believe that is what today's students want, says ms. baron. and faculty members feel pressured improving student engagement 7 to shorten lectures, increase group-discussion time, and ignore the “multitasking” student who is e-mailing his friends in the back of the room -all to attract and satisfy a generation that doesn't have the discipline of its predecessors. ‘we think that the students will come if we teach in a way that meets the expectations we have of what the students want. at some point, what we are doing is killing higher education’ (carlson, 2005, p. 2). however, this view is a minority; the majority of the literature we read embraces the idea of changing education. in fact, most educators practically implore transforming education and pedagogy from kindergarten through post-secondary and strongly believe we fail to meet the needs of students who have grown up in a digital world and are heading into different cultural and economic futures rich in ever-advancing technology and information (project tomorrow, 2010). today’s world absolutely requires collaborative critical thinkers, creative and courageous innovators, and true lifelong learners (prensky, 2005; tapscott, 1998; robinson, 2009). common elements when we sift the literature for common strategies to improve student engagement in learning, a rather clear pattern of practices has emerged and certain “best practices” were recommended and repeated. for example, windham (2005) recommends that, to engage learners in learning, new educational curriculum and activity must include – “interaction, exploration, relevancy, multimedia and instruction” (pp 5.7-5.9). her themes echo throughout the literature. various elements of windham’s (2005) list are shared by willms (2003, 2007, 2009), claxton (2007), hay (2000), barnes, marateo, & ferris (2007), dunleavy & milton (2009), and oecd (2003) to name a few. we have synthesized the following categories from our reading and will use these to elaborate further: (1) interaction, (2) exploration, (3) relevancy, (4) multimedia, (5) instruction, and (6) authentic assessment. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 interaction. respectful relationships and interaction – both virtual and personal – are shown to improve student engagement. students today are intensely social and interactive learners. those surveyed by willms, friesen, and milton (2009) stated that they want to interact with people both within and beyond the classroom and school environment. the results from imagine a school, design for learning, and what did you do in school today? repeatedly show that: • students want stronger relationships with teachers, with each other, and with their communities – locally, provincially, nationally and globally. they want their teachers to know them as people. • students want their teachers to know how they learn. they want their teachers to take into account what they understand and what they misunderstand, and to use this knowledge as a starting place to guide their continued learning. • students want their teachers to establish learning environments that build interdependent relationships and that promote and create a strong culture of learning (p. 36). today’s learners want to connect and communicate constantly and want an environment to support these connections. educators from “older” generations might see forms of communication such as computer chatting or texting “as the opposite and the antithesis of contact,” but for the net gen it “allows interaction with a variety of people and material” (windham, 2005, p. 5.7) dunleavy & milton (2009) asked students what their ideal school would look like and what learning environment increases engagement. students listed three criteria that correlate to the concept of interaction: (1) learn from and with each other and people improving student engagement 9 in their community, (2) connect with experts and expertise, and (3) have more opportunities for dialogue and conversation (p. 10). these dialogues and conversations extend beyond the classroom. if learners engage physics, they want to talk to engineers in the field. windham (2005) suggests, “students should be given the opportunity to interact with faculty and researchers outside the confines of the curriculum and to develop meaningful relationships with them (p. 5.8). facilitating such expanded relationships requires a shift from vertical to horizontal classrooms – no longer the sage on the stage, teachers are learning along side students, helping them actively construct their learning experiences and knowledge. as friesen notes in dunleavy & milton (2009), authentic intellectual engagement requires a deeper reciprocity in the teaching-learning relationship where students’ engagement begins as they actively construct their learning in partnership with teachers, work toward deep conceptual understanding, and contribute their own ideas to building new knowledge or devising new practices in activities that are “worthy of their time and attention (friesen, 2008, p. 8, as cited in dunleavy & milton, 2009, p. 14). such teaching contains more interaction, negotiation, and exploration among learners and teachers, who explore and discuss content together, often with teachers modeling learning as opposed to telling students what the answers, process, or outcomes should be (claxton, 2007). open, caring, respectful relationships between learners and teachers are essential to develop and support social and psychological engagement in learning, but also are part of the new curriculum itself, as described by dunleavy & milton (2009). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 effective learning experiences are also shaped by student-teacher relationships that support the development of young peoples’ social and emotional competencies. as students progress through middle and secondary schools, they face increasing complexity. students themselves consistently say that what most helped them thrive in spite of these challenges was the quality of relationships they developed with adults in their schools. when students have opportunities to connect with adults who approach these relationships with a spirit of caring, empathy, generosity, respect, reciprocity and a genuine desire to know students personally, they can make a unique contribution to young peoples’ emerging adaptive capacity, self-sufficiency, resiliency, confidence, and knowledge of themselves as learners (dunleavy & milton, 2009, p. 15). one might conclude that this “interaction” criteria falls under social engagement. but, the literature connects social engagement and intellectual engagement. to be engaged in learning, today’s students need social interaction. dunleavy & milton (2009) list strategies for social engagement, but these same strategies emerge for other types of engagement: in the early development of the concept, measures of social engagement were considered a constructive way of identifying students who were at risk of disengagement and, ultimately, of dropping out. since then, this dimension of student engagement has also provided schools with direction for adopting proactive dropout prevention strategies focused on improving school climate factors that tend to have the most influence in supporting high levels of engagement in the life of school. these include, for example: • an ethic of caring and supporting relationships. • respect. • fairness, trust and a strong disciplinary climate. improving student engagement 11 • teachers’ sense of shared responsibility and efficacy related to learning. • a school-wide culture of “academic press” (lee, bryk, & smith, 1993), or high expectations for academic success (dunleavy & milton, 2009, p. 8). it is worth noting that students expect and respect challenging, rigorous, disciplined, positive, and safe learning environments. willms, friesen, and milton (2009), in transforming classrooms through social, academic and intellectual engagement, suggest one factor of relationship building that stands above others: “the importance of a positive classroom disciplinary climate. students who describe their classroom disciplinary climate as positive are one and a half times more likely to report high levels of interest, motivation and enjoyment in learning” (p. 35). exploration. classroom practices reported to engage learners are predominantly inquirybased, problem-based, and exploratory (willms, friesen, & milton, 2009; brown, 2000; hay, 2000; oblinger & oblinger, 2005; barnes et al., 2007). our own longitudinal alberta-based research (parsons, mcrae, & taylor, 2006) about the efficacy of problem-based learning supports these findings. today’s learners ask for the opportunity to explore and to find solutions and answers for themselves (windham, 2005): just as we want to learn about the web by clicking our own path through cyberspace, we want to learn about our subjects through exploration. it’s not enough to accept the professor’s word. we want to be challenged to reach our own conclusions and find our own results. the need to explore is implicit in our desire to learn (p. 5.8). how important is it to help students engage the digital world? crucial, say linguist james paul gee and educator elisabeth hayes, whose recent language and learning in the digital age suggests that digital media are reshaping language especially the role of oral language. gee and current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 hayes note that new forms of digital media draw children increasingly toward video games, social media, and alternative ways of learning. their insightful work explores how alternative methods of learning might create a paradigm shift for schools. hay (2000) reports that “net geners want more hands-on, inquiry based approaches to learning and are less willing to simply absorb what is put before them” (as cited in barnes, marateo, & ferris, 2007, p. 23). they want to turn the thing on, get in there, muck around, and see what works. today’s kids get on the web and link, lurk, and watch how other people are doing things, then try it themselves. this tendency toward “action” brings us back into the same loop in which navigation, discovery, and judgment all come into play in situ (brown, 2000, p. 6). as brown (2000) says, “learning becomes situated in action; it becomes as much social as cognitive, it is concrete rather than abstract, and it becomes intertwined with judgment and exploration” (p. 6). if the environment in which learners explore is sterile and lacks context, there is a chance transference of knowledge will not occur beyond the classroom. such exploration is also tied to learners’ requests to move past classrooms: students often ask to take their research and learning into the larger community and into the fields they are studying. seeing how “a thing works in real life” is more engaging than reading about it in class. relevancy. one common prerequisite for engaging learners is “relevancy.” today’s learners ask that their learning apply to real-life scenarios whenever possible as opposed to being theoretical and text-based. working with authentic problems or community issues engages students and builds a sense of purpose to the learning experience (claxton, 2007; dunleavy & milton 2009; willms, friesen, & milton, 2009). “the work students undertake also needs to be relevant, meaningful, and authentic – in other words, it needs to be worthy of their time and attention” (willms, et al., 2009, p. 34). students, themselves, clearly want their work to be improving student engagement 13 intellectually engaging and relevant to their lives. effective teaching is characterized by thoughtfully designing learning tasks with these features: • the task requires and instills deep thinking. • the task immerses students in disciplinary inquiry. • the task is connected to the world outside the classroom. • the task has intellectual rigor. • the task involves substantive conversation (willms, friesen, & milton, 2009, p. 34) ramaley & zia’s (2005) chapter in oblinger & oblinger’s (2005) educating the net generation speaks to the need to make learning contextual. they point to research-based recommendations produced by the board on children, youth, and families’ 2004 national research council report focused on keeping young people in school, engaged, and motivated. two key ideas emerged: (1) forming good connections between learners and the social contexts in which they learn and (2) making curriculum and instruction relevant to their experiences, cultures, and long-term goals. claxton (2007) further suggests that activities and curricula must have the following factors to engage learners: (1) relevancy: the topic connects with students’ interests and concerns; (2) responsibility: students have genuine control over what, why, how, and when they organize their learning; and (3) reality: solving problems or making progress genuinely matters to someone (p. 12). multimedia & technology when it is simply not possible to move past the classroom to speak with and learn from experts in the field, technology helps students interact globally with people and events. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 technology brings learners accessible and relevant subject matter and experts and is a tool for engaged learning. both students and researchers issued a common call for new tools in the classroom toolbox, expanding beyond standard computer stations and overhead projectors to facilitate deeper research and learning and to build relationships among learners and experts (brown, 2000; parsons, mcrae, & taylor, 2006; kvavik, caruso, & morgan, 2004; project tomorrow, 2010; barnes, marateo, & ferris, 2004). barnes, marateo, and ferris (2007a) synthesized a list of multimedia tools from the literature; but, these represent only a few of the technological methods that can help students engage their learning, explore, and construct new knowledge. their list includes webquests, blogs, wikis, youtube, video documentaries, and a variety of other multimedia projects. such examples show how students might incorporate technology into autonomous learning activities while ensuring time is devoted to information literacy and higher-order, critical thinking skills. although project tomorrow’s speak up 2009 (2010) suggests that the value of some technologies is hotly debated by educators, students who use cell phones, iphones™ and blackberries ™ and other mobile devices for research, collaborative communication, or socialbased learning activities have been shown to increase their engagement by as much as 78% (project tomorrow, 2010, p. 8). multimedia and technology (cameras, video, and video editing, projectors, smartboards, sound recording equipment, animation and gaming software, and the ubiquitous powerpoint™) have proven helpful in engaging students in learning about subjects, in exploring ways to present their learning, and in helping students control their learning (dunleavy & milton, 2009; barnes, marateo, & ferris, 2007; project tomorrow, 2010). kvavik, caruso, and morgan (2004) state, “students recognize a number of benefits of classroom it. included are convenience, improving student engagement 15 management of classroom activities, time savings, improved learning, better and more effective communications, and better presentation of their class assignments” (p. 12). in a recent paper titled “unleashing the future: educators “speak up” about the use of emerging technologies for learning” (2010), teachers report that technology increases factors of student engagement – including cognitive, affective, behavioral, academic, and social engagement. the reported outcomes of increased access to technology in classrooms increases aspects of student engagement, such as taking initiative and responsibility for learning, using resources wisely, time on task, and having interest and desire to pursue information and learn in and beyond classrooms. as a result of using technology in the classroom, students are more motivated to learn (51%), apply their knowledge to practical problems (30%), and take ownership of their learning (23%). teachers also report that, by using technology, students are developing key 21st century skills including creativity (39%), collaboration (30%) and skills in problem-solving and critical thinking (27%). furthermore, the learning experience becomes more meaningful for the student as teachers have newfound time to differentiate instruction (31%) to a greater degree, and have more information to how their students are doing academically (29%) (project tomorrow, 2010, p. 2). in celebrating school improvement (2006), parsons, mcrae, taylor (2006) report that students in k-12 schools used technology to gather information, analyze information, and share information (pp 110-111). the positive outcomes included higher achievement and quality of work, and, “perhaps more important, student motivations and time spent on task were reported to have increased significantly with the integration of technology into alberta’s classrooms” (p. 112). a second element of “multimedia and technology” for improved learner engagement was current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 to create a “rich learning environment” that allowed cross-curricular, interactive, and exploratory learning. the term rich learning environment not only includes physical devices, such as experiment kits or computers, but also the teaching technique, the type of activity pupils engage in, and the method of assessment. associating science and technology studies with a rich, flexible, computer-embedded learning environment may enable pupils to attain higher academic achievements and overcome their cognitive and affective difficulties (barak, waks, & doppelt, 2000, as cited in barak & doppelt, 2002, p. 22). in a province-wide evaluation of school projects that integrated technology into core curriculum, parsons, mcrae, and taylor (2006) found that “report after report further substantiated current research that ict-based curricula and problem-based learning combine to engage students as never before in learning and working together” (p. 112). students were engaged, staying after school and during lunch hours to work on projects together. similar stories of engagement come from barak and doppelt’s (2002) study of students given the opportunity to work with lego™ robotics technology. these otherwise disengaged and low-achieving students, when provided a “rich, modern, and flexible technological learning environment, … created authentic technological projects, using their own imagination and documented their own work in rich portfolios” (barak & doppelt, 2002, p. 28). they also developed a genuine passion for learning and a solid set of learning and research skills: “findings all indicated improved pupil self-esteem and self confidence. pupils changed their attitudes towards their everyday learning and their future intentions to continue studying” (barak & doppelt, 2002, p. 28). brown (2000) calls these rich learning environments learning ecologies. “an ecology is basically an open, complex, adaptive system comprising elements that are dynamic and improving student engagement 17 interdependent” (p. 14). he argues the need to develop “learning ecologies” in classrooms by having the right tools and environments for learning, (there is) an interesting shift that i believe is happening: a shift between using technology to support the individual to using technology to support relationships between individuals. with that shift, we will discover new tools and social protocols that help us help each other, which is the very essence of social learning. it is also the essence of lifelong learning a form of learning that learning ecologies could dramatically facilitate” (p. 17). it is important to note that not everyone agrees that digital technology is the best option for cognitive and affective engagement in children. one study by oecd (2008) suggested that many researchers and educators believe harm can come to learners who are too entrenched in technology. oecd (2008) reports that negative consequences of technology in learning are frequently reported, but there is limited empirical research about the positives. however, our review suggests that research is beginning to show positive correlations between technology and student engagement. (this research) presents and discusses the main research findings in controversial areas such as the effects of technologies on i) cognitive skills development, ii) social values and lifestyles, and iii) educational performance. this section reveals how little is known and examines how empirical research has contributed more to highlighting the negative impacts of technology than to unveiling and documenting its positive sides. accordingly, a plea for more empirical research as well as for more cumulative efforts is made (oecd, 2008, p. 2). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 engaging and challenging instruction two aspects seem to encourage engagement – engaging pedagogy and engaging curriculum. according to the research, we need to change how we teach as well as what we teach if we are to engage learners – moving from didactic to constructivist pedagogy. constructivist instruction requires strong respectful relationships and safe learning environments, especially as teacher-student relationships shift from expert-disciple towards peer-based collaborative learning. several authors note that this shift might require an uncomfortable change in locus of control over process and, at times, content. given the freedom and sense of safety to do so, “students can find material that challenges the faculty member’s worldview and expertise; they can uncover stories and research results that the faculty member has never heard about. it can be uncomfortable when the instructor no longer controls the subject matter the students will use” (windham, 2005, p. 8.16). affecting a deeper transformation to school and classroom practices calls upon all of us to begin looking at school improvement as a collaborative knowledge-building activity where teachers themselves are actively engaged in co-constructing ideas that contribute directly to school improvement and development” (dunleavy & milton, 2009, p. 18). meyer and turner (2006) speak to emotion and motivation to learn in classrooms and talk about creating safe environments conducive to learning and “academic risk-taking” (p. 377). claxton (2006) also discusses the need to make it safe to speak up, challenge, and engage in learning. expanding the capacity to learn means creating a climate in which that feeling of enfranchisement and entitlement is systematically broadened and strengthened – not improving student engagement 19 weakened, undermined or simply ignored. in such a climate, students’ questions are welcomed, discussed and refined, so the disposition to question becomes more and more robust; more and more evident across different domains; and more and more sophisticated (claxton, 2006, p. 7). creating an engaging learning environment includes ensuring students feel able and safe to challenge teachers as part of the learning process. it also means students will need to learn interpersonal skills to engage in dialogue respectfully and constructively, as well as learn the subject content. students want more autonomy to engage in and design their own learning (glenn, 2000; tapscott, 1998; hay, 2000; carlson, 2005). they want to learn and utilize their learning preferences and styles and want support to do so. the research call to change our pedagogy is clear, but the ways we can change are still being developed. contrary to the suggestion that today’s students are asking for a diluted or moderated curriculum, research shows that students prefer to be held to high expectations: they also desire quality, rigorous, and meaningful curriculum and high academic goals. students’ desires for instructional challenge were reported by a majority of authors reviewed, including willms, friesen, and milton (2009), dunleavy and milton (2009), oblinger and oblinger (2005), windham (2005), parsons, mcrae, and taylor (2006), barak and doppelt (2002), shernoff, csikszentmihalyi, schneider, and shernoff (2003), and barnes, marateo, and ferris (2007). the research noted above suggests that students desire engagement. perhaps here csíkszentmihályi’s seminal work flow: the psychology of optimal experience is worth noting more specifically when speaking to the potential of student engagement. csíkszentmihályi theorizes that people are most happy in a state of flow, which he defines as complete absorption with the activity and situation in which they are engaged. sometime students note they “are in a current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 zone.” this zone – the flow state – is intrinsic motivation at its best, where people are so fully immersed in doing that they are totally engaged and fulfilled. during such times, concerns like time, food, and in the case of students behavior issues are typically forgotten. teachers have reported to us that such flow states are possible when students are fully engaged. the research also pushes for interdisciplinary curriculum – the “what” we teach. the new, “more engaging” curriculum reported in the research primarily calls for cross subject exploration and collaboration, often called “century 21 skills” in recent literature. such curriculum is preferred by students. students interviewed by dunleavy and milton (2009) stated that engaging learning includes considering teacher’s ideas and having opportunities to “see how subjects are interconnected, learn from and with each other and other people in their community, and have more opportunities for dialogue and conversations” (p. 10). unlike curriculum of the last 150 plus years, which focused on learning and mastery of individual “specialties” or “majors,” the new curriculum is intentionally interdisciplinary. changes in curriculum referred to in the literature also include the addition of new “literacies.” expected outcomes of education are no longer limited to acceptable (according to standardized testing) levels of knowledge in core disciplines. new literacies and skills are required –critical thinking, interpersonal relationship skills, creativity, information, media and technology skills – all infused into core content as both process and outcome. for example, the call for rigorous instruction in “information navigation” (brown, 2000) or “digital information literacy” (oblinger & oblinger, 2005; windham, 2005; barnes et al., 2007) shows up repeatedly in the research. while they are frequent users of electronic tools, net geners typically lack information literacy skills, and their critical thinking skills are often weak (oblinger & oblinger improving student engagement 21 (2005). they may be digital natives, but they do not necessarily understand how their use of technology affects their literacy or habits of learning. for educators, providing the technological bells and whistles needed to engage net geners may not be as effective or as critical as improving their information literacy and critical thinking skills (barnes, marateo, & ferris, 2007a, p. 28). engagement does not mean core knowledge and traditional literacy (aka 3rs) should be discarded; instead, students want to learn these in more engaging ways, while also learning how they learn. they desire quality instruction delivered in socially, emotionally, and intellectually engaging ways. assessment for learning willms, friesen, and milton’s (2009) research found that five effective teaching practices promise to increase engagement in learning – (1) creating thoughtful, intentional designs for learning; (2) making learning meaningful; (3) building relationships; (4) improving teaching practice in the presence of peer teachers; and (5) using assessment to improve learning and guide teaching (pp 33-37). given the opportunity to “co-create assessment criteria with their teachers, … students figure out the criteria of powerful work, they are able to use the criteria to guide their own learning, both in school and beyond” (p. 35). assessment for learning (afl) calls for teachers to use formative assessment practices to monitor student success and engage in regular sharing conversations with students about how they are learning. afl is noted to increase student engagement and is more about “learning for further development” and less about “marking to standard expectations” or meeting externally dictated accountability measures. standardized testing often leads teachers to teach to the test instead of to learner’s needs, interests, and abilities (armstrong, 2006) and removes current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 responsibility and accountability from the learner, a side effect that can disengage learners. barrett (2005) provides “ten research-based principles of assessment for learning (afl) to guide classroom practice:  afl should be part of effective planning of teaching and learning  afl should focus on how students learn  afl should be recognized as central to classroom practice  afl should be regarded as a key professional skill for teachers  afl should be sensitive and constructive because any assessment has an emotional impact  afl should take account of the importance of (and foster) learner motivation  afl should promote commitment to learning goals and a shared understanding of the criteria by which they are assessed  afl develops learners’ capacity for self-assessment so that they can become reflective and self-managing  afl should recognize the full range of achievements of all learners  learners should receive constructive guidance about how to improve (as cited in barrett, 2005, p. 17) barak and doppelt (2002) and barrett (2005) both recommend alternatives to standardized testing. student portfolios were the most frequently suggested method for assessment for learning because they actively helped learners explore and articulate what they wanted to learn and how they would demonstrate they learned it. the time is right to study the potential of electronic portfolios to engage students in active participation in assessing and managing their own learning. in 2005, the level of improving student engagement 23 available technologies makes possible an international study…to support student learning, engagement and collaboration. we have the technology. we have the vision. we need to better understand what works, especially with adolescent learners and their teachers (barrett, 2005, p. 23). summing up student engagement barnes, marateo, and ferris (2007a) cite glenn (2000): “net geners need self directed learning opportunities, interactive environments, multiple forms of feedback, and assignment choices that use different resources to create personally meaningful learning experiences” (p. 2). claxton (2007) summarizes his recommendations of strategies that promote learning engagement. he recommends the following eight ideas to successfully create “epistemic cultures” that support learning how to learn. 1) language – speak “learnish” (talk about process of learning, nature of oneself as a learner, one’s improvements and intentions as a learner.) 2) activities – a potentiating milieu (learning is both attractive and challenging; activities and topics that stretch the learners) 3) split-screen thinking – the warp and weft (keeping both content and process in mind; make sure students understand how they just learned some content; embed metacognition into lesson plans) 4) wild topics – rich, real, responsible (problems or projects are real, relevant, and make a positive difference in some way – real life feedback and benefits for all) 5) transparency and involvement – students as epistemic co-workers (students are made aware of what’s going on, given significant input or control in assessing their own learning and learning styles) current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 6) transfer thinking – looking for wider relevance and application (explicitly discussing where current learning could be useful: what else could we do with this? where else would this be useful knowledge?) 7) progression – stronger, broader, deeper into subjects and learning 8) modeling – walking the learning talk (claxton, 2006, pp. 9-14) when dunleavy & milton (2009) discuss the requirements for intellectual engagement, they note how difficult it is to “pinpoint which classroom practices will be most effective in supporting it” (p. 13). however, they summarize the following list of common instructional “designs for learning that begin with the goal of intellectual engagement:” 1. emphasize conceptual learning and opportunities for students to work with authentic ideas and problems, develop a deep understanding of ideas, sort through misconceptions, learn new ideas and create or improve upon ideas, see conceptual connections across disciplines. 2. require high levels of student participation and provide time for in-depth work. 3. incorporate authentic assessment as a strategy that helps students set goals and assess their own learning. 4. use work that is relevant, interesting, and connects with students’ aspirations; is rigorous and allows students to think as “professionals” and create professional” quality outcomes; is challenging and allows students to experience a sense of deep intellectual and emotional investment in learning; is built from diverse and improvable ideas; and is informed by the current state and growing knowledge bases of different subject disciplines. 5. promote students’ sense of ownership and responsibility for their own learning. improving student engagement 25 6. invite students to be co-designers of their learning in classrooms; support student voice and autonomy. 7. provide a high level of social support for learning and encourage students to take risks, ask questions, and make mistakes. 8. foster collaboration and community building. 9. engage students in becoming literate with technologies as social networkingknowledge building tools. 10. connect students with opportunities to develop abilities in critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, reasoning, analyzing, problem solving, communicating, etc. 11. bridge students’ experience of learning in and outside of school by exposing them to digital technologies in knowledge building environments (dunleavy & milton, 2009, pp. 13-14). dunleavy, milton, and crawford (2010) sum up their research from the students’ perspective: students want to experience work that is meaningful, not easy: they want to work with ideas that matter, solve real problems, learn from each other, people in their communities, and experts in the subjects they are studying, engage in dialogue in their classes, and know that their learning contributes to making a difference in the world. they consistently demand to be respected (p. 1). to summarize improving student engagement, the themes and ideas that surface most often in the literature are: embedded collaboration, integrated technology, inquiry-based learning, assessment for learning, and making learning interdisciplinary and relevant to real life. as barak and doppelt (2002, p. 22) note, “imparting creative thinking … requires not only current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 changing the teaching methods and learning environment, but also adopting new assessment methods such as portfolio assessment, which is based on records of pupils’ activities.” ramaley and zia (2005, p. 8.15) add, “significant changes in teaching and learning are possible, particularly when interactive technologies are involved. the changes noted in our review promise to better engage student learners. research suggests that successful, student-engaging classrooms combine these five aspects: 1. learning that is relevant, real, and intentionally interdisciplinary – at times moving learning from the classroom into the community. 2. technology-rich learning environments – not just computers, but all types of technology, including scientific equipment, multi-media resources, industrial technology, and diverse forms of portable communication technology (project tomorrow, 2010). 3. positive, challenging, and open – sometimes called “transparent” learning climates – that encourage risk-taking and guide learners towards co-articulated high expectations. students are involved in assessment for learning and of learning. 4. collaboration among respectful “peer-to-peer” type relationships between students and teachers (horizontal organization model); professional learning communities working together to plan, research, develop, share, and implement new research, strategies, and materials. 5. a culture of learning – teachers are learning with students. language, activities and resources focus on learning and engagement first, and achievement second. improving student engagement 27 references armstrong, t. 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(1998). growing up digital: the rise of the net generation. new york: mcgrawhill. willms, j. d. (2003). student engagement at school: a sense of belonging and participation. results from pisa 2000. paris: organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd). accessed october 2010 from http://www.unb.ca/crisp/pdf/0306.pdf current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 32 willms, j. d. & flanagan, p. (2007). canadian students: tell them from me. education canada. the education association. 47(3), 46-50. accessed october 2010 from the learning bar http://www.thelearningbar.com/doc/tell_them_summer07-2.pdf willms, j. d., friesen, s. & milton, p. (2009). what did you do in school today? transforming classrooms through social, academic and intellectual engagement. (first national report) toronto: canadian education association. windham, c. (2005). the student’s perspective. in d. oblinger & j. oblinger (eds), educating the net generation (pp. 5.1-5.16). boulder, co: educause. retrieved december 2010, from http://www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen young, j. r. (2006). the fight for classroom attention: professor vs. laptop. the chronicles of higher education, 52(39). retrieved september 2010 from http://chronicle.com/article/the-fight-for-classroom/19431 improving student engagement 33 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word curriculum integration and adaptation individualizing pedagogy for linguistically and culturally diverse students.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x curriculum integration and adaptation: individualizing pedagogy for linguistically and culturally diverse students tynisha d. meidl & christopher meidl st. norbert college citation meidl, t. & meidl, c. (2011). curriculum integration and adaptation: individualizing pedagogy for linguistically and culturally diverse students. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract in the united states, populations identified as linguistically and culturally diverse (lcd) are increasing at the fastest rate in public schools (samway & mckeon, 2007). lcd students have not performed as well as their monolingual and/or affluent peers on state mandated assessments. no child left behind act (2001) stressed this disparity as “the achievement gap,” resulting in highly structured curricular demands from districts forcing teachers to grapple between those demands and meeting the academic and cultural needs of lcd students. using case-study methodology, this research explored how teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning influence curriculum decision-making for lcd students. through the triangulation of interviews, observations, and document analysis, three teachers and their students in a low-income, urban, k4 school in a predominantly spanish-speaking community was investigated. participants integrated and adapted curriculum based on personal beliefs about teaching and learning, the needs of their lcd students, and the mandated curriculum. keywords: linguistically and culturally diverse, curriculum planning, curriculum integration, curriculum adaptation current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: tynisha d. meidl affiliation: st. norbert college address: 100 grant street, de pere, wi 54115 email: tynisha.meidl@snc.edu biographical information: dr. t. meidl is an assistant professor at st. norbert college in teacher education. her research focuses on literacy, preparing pre-service teachers for the reading classroom, and academic service learning in teacher education. author: christopher meidl affiliation: st. norbert college address: 100 grant street, de pere, wi 54115 email: chistopher.meidl@snc.edu biographical information: dr. c. meidl is a visiting assistant professor at st. norbert college in teacher education. he currently teaches undergraduate courses in early childhood education. his research includes character education. curriclulum integration and adaptation 3 curriculum integration and adaptation: individualizing pedagogy for linguistically and culturally diverse students the changing climate of classrooms in the united states increasingly includes populations who are linguistically and culturally diverse (lcd) (samway & mckeon, 2007). to better understand what linguistically and culturally diverse students are defined as “minority populations” (darder, 1991). based on the u.s. census bureau’s definitions of race and for the focus, when discussing individuals from lcd backgrounds refers to any person who is (1) of non-white ancestry and/or (2) utilizes english as a second language. nieto (2005) states given the inexactness of language, just one term cannot fully encompass all that composes a person. research has indicated that students from racial and ethnic-minority backgrounds do not perform as well academically as their mainstream peers (darder & torres, 2004). sleeter (2001) suggested “education in many communities of color, as well as many poor white communities, is in a state of crisis” (p. 94). she continued by saying, “students are learning far too little, becoming disengaged, and dropping out at high rates” (sleeter, 2001, p. 94). in a climate of standards/objectives based reform, educators have to seek ways to address diversity in classrooms and employ practices that concentrate on the needs of lcd student populations. as a result, many public schools adopt curricula aligned to state standards under the auspice of making planning easier for teachers or preparing students for standardized assessments. often times, classroom teachers may not be included or have limited input in the process of adopting curriculum. when teachers are not included in the curriculum adoption process or curriculum decision-making, they are forced to plan and deliver curriculum that may neither be appropriate for meeting the needs of their diverse students nor permit opportunities for current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 individualized instruction. tomlinson (2000) summarized the notion of stripping from teachers the ability to create effective curricula when he wrote: for many teachers, curriculum has become a prescribed set of academic standards, instructional pacing has become a race against a clock to cover the standards, and the sole goal of teaching has been reduced to raising student test scores on a single test (p. 7). a disconnect occurs between the needs of children from diverse cultures and the system of instructional delivery, including curriculum, planning, and materials, in public education in the united states (darder & torres, 2004). the curriculum materials should be chosen based on evidence that they contribute to the production of meaningful learning experiences. educators, on the front lines, are attempting to close the achievement gap as judged against proficiency delineated by standards in academic areas, without being equipped with the proper tools to both meet both state standards and students learning needs. in an era of educational reform, appropriate curricula and materials are essential for embracing the background knowledge of diverse learners. teachers’ voices and involvement are essential for developing and adapting curricula and adjusting learning experiences and formative assessments to create educational success (owings & kaplan, 2001). appropriate curricula allow teachers to create lessons that empower students to be successful learners. when teachers are not given the autonomy to create appropriate curricula, the planned curricula, especially when scripted, is informally modified through instructional delivery (tomlinson, 2000). objectives-driven curricula provide the exact content, written in measurable terms, to which district administrators expect teachers to adhere (darder & torres, 2004). instead of teachers using objectives based “melting-pot” mentality and the “one-size-fitsall” approach, they should be encouraged to incorporate differentiation of learning, inclusive of curriclulum integration and adaptation 5 language, culture, community, and socioeconomic status that best serves students (darder, 1991). currently, teachers are confined to the curricular demands of the school or district while grappling with the academic and cultural needs of lcd students. curriculum adoption and teacher voice nieto (2002) stated, “teachers sometimes view curriculum development as little more than a technical activity rather than as a dynamic and potentially empowering decision-making process” (p. 190). curriculum should challenge students to think creatively and critically. according to nieto (2002), teachers have tremendous power when deciding how to execute a curriculum. effective learning occurs when teachers “learn to view curriculum as a decision making process in which their own creativity and talents can be used” (nieto, 2002, p. 191). the following explores curriculum in these contexts: curriculum adoption and teacher voice, nclb requirements, effects of standards/objectives-based reform, scripted curriculum, and addressing student academic needs through individualizing instruction. teachers’ voices in curriculum decision making is paramount to student outcomes and the ability for teachers to meet individual student needs. shavelson (1983) believed that a unique feature of teacher decision-making is that most decisions are made in front of the class during the instruction process. he called this “real time” decision-making (shavelson, 1983, p.325). because many teacher choices are done spontaneously in front of the classroom, teachers must rely on their own knowledge and experience to determine the appropriate path to take. owings and kaplan (2001) found that teachers who have an active voice in curriculum development or leeway to adapt and adjust curriculum are able to design creative and unique learning experiences and formative assessments so learners experience success. as ladsonbillings (2006) explained, teachers demonstrate the ability to make professional decisions about current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 curriculum in the process of constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing curriculum. this process is never to “tear down” (ladson-billings, 2006, p. 32), but to expose weaknesses, discover ways to address weaknesses, and then, through critical analysis, make decisions about the best ways to fill the weakness. effects of standards-based reform in an era of standards/objectives based reform, curricular focus is on alignment to state standards/objectives with state testing as the anchor. standards and objectives suggest a “onesize-fits-all” approach (samway and mckeon, 2007). decisions of curricula creation and “pedagogical imperatives of the classroom” are founded on state standards and objectives (darder & torres, 2004, p. 80). the curriculum, as a result, has become a prescribed set of skills leading instruction (tomlinson, 2000). the intent of standards/objectives based curriculum is for all students to become competent applying skills demonstrating mastery of content matter. standards/objectives based reform in american public schools are a response to criticisms that schools were not preparing students with the knowledge and skills necessary for college or fulltime employment (owings & kaplan, 2001). standards based instruction, often times assessed through high-stakes testing, is believed by some to be the most effective way to raise student achievement (mclaren & farahmandpur, 2001). a standardized approach to school curriculum has resulted in teachers being given exact content and expected to adhere to the form of delivery prescribed by the curriculum designer (darder & torres, 2004). some policy makers have argued that is what is needed to decrease the achievement gap between students. in contrast, kaplan and owings (2001) argue that standards and objectives deprive students and teachers of a broad range of creative learning experiences. curriclulum integration and adaptation 7 scripted curriculum some school districts, under the pressure of accountability due to the residual effects of nclb and currently race to the top, are choosing scripted curriculum designed to complement state standards, thought to lead to increased achievement. scripted curriculum not only takes away the decision-making ability of teachers, but also articulates the exact words teachers are to say during instruction (ladsonbillings, 2006). thinking that meaning is enhanced or depleted by emphasizing the specificity of exact words epitomizes hall’s concept of the united states as a low-context society (bennett, 2003). giving educators the exact words to be spoken viewed by some as a strategy to “teacher proof” learning by prescribing a particular sequence and format, that is often skill driven (darder & torres, 2004). the system of high-stakes testing and standards/objectives based instruction legislated by federal government and state governments, and endorsed by many school districts has led to a very trade like culture to teaching. the concept of “right or wrong” approaches to instruction has led to what darder and torres (2004) have called a “deprofessionalized” vocation driven by “mistake” free scripted curriculum. “deprofessionalizing” or what shannon (2007) calls “deskilling,” is where planned or mandated curriculum reduces teaching to a technical skill. with teachers being accountable for student learning as demonstrated solely on high-stakes tests, there is pressure for instruction to center around skills found in district and state tests. hence, teaching becomes a procedure of teaching skills in a similar fashion to a technical job where success is based on a job being done to code, and entails a sense of correctness or incorrectness. the emphasis on skills supports traditional “melting-pot” and the one-size-fits-all approaches to instructional delivery. differentiation, from a standards/objectives based model, is not grounded in the appreciation of current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 language, culture, community, and social economic status as darder (1991) suggests. instead, it is anchored in approaches meant to teach and reteach skills until “mastered” by students. darder (1997) states how scripted curriculum, “fails to acknowledge the creative potential of educators to grapple effectively with a multiplicity of contexts found in classrooms and to shape environments according to the lived experiences and actual educational needs of their students” (p. 332). this approach to curriculum design employs banking methods to teach basic skills; with the assumption students will score higher on standardized tests (darder & torres, 2004). therefore scripted curriculum reinforces instruction with what freire (1970) described as “banking” (p.72). freire’s (1970) notion of “banking” describes a process where teachers, the depositors, make deposits of knowledge and information into the minds, depositories, of passive students. the adoption of scripted curriculum insinuates teachers need to be directed in what and how to teach while students are expected to attain specific skills deemed necessary for future success in society by politicians, businessmen, and administrative level educators of the dominant culture. a major effect of scripted and planned curriculum, according to kayes and maranto (2006), is that recently graduated pre-service teachers are leaving certification programs with the expectation they don’t need to be able to develop curriculum because, “the curriculum people will tell you what to teach” (p. 41). when teachers are required to use scripted curriculum, both “students and teachers, as subjects of classroom discourse who bring their personal stories and life experiences to bear on their teaching and learning, are systematically silenced by the need for the class to ‘cover’ a generic curriculum at a prescribed pace established by the state” (darder & torres, 2004, p. 87). nieto (1999) summed up the backlash of planned and scripted curricula as curriclulum integration and adaptation 9 learning environments in which students are subjected to “stale teaching and irrelevant curriculum” (p. 78). addressing student needs through individualized instruction brisk and harrington (2007) elucidated upon lived constructs related to teaching and learning saying, “students are individuals very different from each other” (p. 16). individualizing instruction is not a means to “water down” curriculum. nieto (2002) claims, “good teachers know that learning begins where the students are at” (p.192). effective individualized instruction necessitates identifying and recognizing students’ abilities as strengths and not weaknesses. pang and kamil (2004) suggested that instruction should build on students’ knowledge and experiences as well as present opportunities for students to make connections between school and community-based knowledge sources. perez and torres-guzman (1996) discussed setting up learning environments where instruction does not consist of drills, but projects, dramatic presentations, storytelling, and encouraging teachers to seize teachable moments when students have real purpose for learning. another way to individualize instruction is through an understanding of students. brisk and harrington (2007) discussed teachers’ knowledge of students’ personal life, home and situational factors, in establishing individualized instructional techniques helping to teach, motivate, and evaluate students. an active voice in curriculum development increases teachers’ ability to adapt curriculum and adjust learning experiences, including formative assessments so each learner experiences success (owings & kaplan, 2001). standards-based reforms have led many schools to make objectives-based curriculum aligning to state standards as evidenced by samway and mckeon (2007). current education reforms and policies such as nclb and race to the top have endorsed curricular materials current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 debatably described as being based on sound evidence, sometimes through research funded by for profit educational companies who profit from the perceived evidence. states and districts in hopes they ensure students’ proficiency in academic content areas adopt these marketed curricular materials. increasingly the result of this movement is away from teacher-based decision making to state and school districts mandating teachers use scripted curriculum as a means to raise test scores. methods this qualitative study focused on how teachers in a small, urban elementary school in the northeast negotiated their beliefs, teaching materials, and instructional delivery in linguistically culturally diverse (lcd) classrooms. the central focus of the study was based on the “overarching” research question (creswell, 1998, p. 99): how do teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning influence curriculum decision making for lcd students? this question, as it applies to everyday classrooms, seeks to understand what it means when teachers use rhetoric such as “every student can learn.” investigation site the elementary school featured in this case study was chosen because it serves a lcd community in an urban area. the school site serves a low-income, inner-city, k–4 school in a predominantly spanish-speaking community. the building is over one hundred years old and was built to serve 125 students, but served 334 students at the time of the research. the largest demographic group represented in the school was latino at 93.4%, while the remaining population was 3.3% african american and 2.7% caucasian. although the student population was largely spanish-speaking, all classes were taught in english with an emphasis on english as a second language (esl) strategy. curriclulum integration and adaptation 11 participants the participants invited to take part in this research were state certified thirdand fourthgrade teachers. these teachers held teaching certificates in their content areas and each had over ten years of teaching experience. each had worked in this school for a minimum of four years. all three of the teachers identified as caucasian, and one spoke spanish. all other demographic data regarding teachers and students was collected through interviews to understand the background characteristics of the teachers and the classrooms where they were teaching. observations and interviews this research focused on teachers’ beliefs about lcd student populations influence their curriculum decision-making, one form of data collected was observations designed to understand the instructional intersections between the written curriculum, curriculum planning, and instructional delivery through the actions and interactions of the participants. observations were conducted on a daily basis for eight weeks during literacy instruction. the researcher made daily visits to the elementary school and visited the three participants for 60 minutes of the 90-minute literacy block. the observations were of direct instruction, mini-lessons, small groups, one on one conferences, and assessments. the research employed a field log to organize and document data. systematic field observations and maintained detailed written records of the observations established a contextual basis for understanding and interpreting the interviews. in-depth, semi-structured interviews were the primary source of data used to understand participants’ perceptions about teaching and learning with lcd students. teachers were interviewed to collect information about past and present experiences as a means to assist the researcher in making sense of the participating teachers’ beliefs and philosophies about teaching and learning. in addition, teachers reflected on their instructional practices and defined their current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 beliefs about teaching and learning for lcd students. the interviews were scheduled, securing a time and location, to occur after the first week of the school year. the interviews took place at the school site during the school day or at the end of the school day. the follow-up interviews were intended to draw explanations about teachers’ instructional delivery based on observations and data from the initial interview. the explanations created an understanding of how teachers negotiate between their beliefs and the needs of their classrooms in planning and delivering instruction. each follow-up interview lasted about thirty minutes. follow-up interviews were designed to obtain clarification of teachers’ beliefs about practices, addressing the needs of lcd students, observed and statements made during previous interviews. analyzing interviews, observations, and documents three sources of data were analyzed both as single sources of data and for the relationships between them (stake, 1995). using yin’s (2003) analytic strategies for observations and interviews, a descriptive framework for organizing this case study was developed. first, interviews and field notes were transcribed. the researcher searched for patterns of behavior and outcomes that generated a list of categories. after categories were identified, the data were manually coded to visually denote the patterns and the contradictions. besides analysis of documents the researcher collected from observations and interviews, documents relevant to prescribed content involved in curriculum planning, such as district time lines, also called pacing schedules, were analyzed. the purpose of engaging in document analysis was to explore the triangulation of the researcher’s observations, the teachers’ responses from the interviews, and the documents guiding and influencing teacher pedagogy. as merriam (2002) pointed out, “the strength of documents as a data source lies with the fact that they curriclulum integration and adaptation 13 already exist in the situation; they do not intrude upon or alter the setting in ways that the presence of the investigator might” (p.13). this is of importance because all of the documents are used for either planning, instruction, or for both. they are available on the district’s website and are expected to be used by teachers in daily classroom instruction. triangulation of data sources allows the interpretation of data to make sense of the case, and establish trustworthiness of relationships between the three data sources (stake, 1995). results data collected by the researcher consisted of an initial and concluding interview, observations of each teacher’s literacy instructional period along with a follow up interview after each week of observations. as the data was coded the following themes emerged: (a) curriculum adaptation and (b) curriculum integration. curriculum integration and adaptation were strategies teachers employed to create equilibrium between teaching the content and skills of the mandated curriculum required for the six-week assessment and the learning needs of the lcd students. the following sections analyze and synthesize the data, incorporating relevant literature as it pertains to the findings focused specifically on curriculum adaptation and integration through the use of non-district mandated supplemental resources and technology. the particpants described the curriculum used in their classroom as a “mandated curriculum based on the state standards,” that the district calls the “core curriculum.” tomlinson (2000) explained that, “for many teachers, curriculum has become a prescribed set of academic standards, instructional pacing has become a race against a clock to cover the standards, and the sole goal of teaching has been reduced to raising student test scores on a single test” (p. 7). as participants thought about how they planned for instruction in their classrooms many of them referred back to the district’s pacing guide or pacing schedule as a docment that “may not current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 always fit every student or every classrom because student needs are not taken into account” (participant response). in reflection on the needs of their individual students and their classrooms, participants discussed the tension between what the mandated curriculum prescribed for them to teach and their ability to do so. the following vignette attempts to capture the tension expressed by partcipants: … if i realize that students don’t get it, i am re-teaching it in, it’s the sixth week. if i realize i'm never touching it again according to the curriculum; [but] not according to me. what i do, according to me, is i would further the skill. i would further predicting [for three weeks], because i know it's a very important strategy that they need to have. they need to go deeper into it. not just tell me a basic prediction. they have been doing that since kindergarten, so i feel that even if it says we are done predicting, and never talking about again, it can always be touched on. these are important strategies, just like all the other comprehension strategies. they are all very important. in resolving the tension between teachers’ beliefs about teaching, learning, and the mandated or planned curriculum, the participants individualized and adapted instructional pedagogy. curriculum integration and curriculum adaptation are conceptually individualized pedagogical approaches to address teachers’ perceptions of inadequate curriculum choices. the implemented curriculum is how teachers interpret curriculum and “maximize the value of their lessons in light of the dynamics of their classroom” (marsh & willis, 2007, p. 185). supporting clandinin’s (1986) work, participants sought ways to either integrate other strategies, viewed as “best practices,” or incorporate alternative resources into the mandated curriculum. they used resources and programs that fit their beliefs about teaching and learning along with the intention of addressing the needs of diverse learners in their classrooms. curriclulum integration and adaptation 15 curriculum adaptation the mandated curriculum was organized by one-size-fits-all objectives and standards intended for designated grade level instruction. incongruence occurs when designers of mandated curriculum presume students have the prerequisite skills necessary to introduce new skills. not only are prerequisite skills disregarded, but also a delinquency within the mandated curriculum to revisit skills taught previously in lieu of maintaining a pace so “coverage” occurs. teachers navigate the incongruence using one or more strategies. for example, a third grade teacher states: “…if i realize that students don’t get it, i am re-teaching it. what i do, according to me, is i would further the skill. i would further predicting for three weeks, because i know it's a very important strategy that they need to have.” the particpants “do more clarification” or find ways to “slow things down” for students instead of focusing on “coverage.” during an observation one fourth grade teacher was teaching students how to make predictions. she knew students had learned making predictions. she modeled making predictions thorugh a read aloud and prediction chart. every student had a white board and she would read then stop and have students make predictions. students during their independent reading time were making predictions about what would happen next or how their story would end. as she conferenced with individual students she would have students orally make predictons for her. participants referred to this approach as “going deeper” rather than “reteaching” which is what teachers did. the mandated curriculum perpetuates maximum coverage of material, breadth over depth, with greater amounts of surface knowledge leading to a mastery of subject knowledge (tomlinson, 2002). the participants validated the quality of the parts of the planning and scheduling timeline that fit their personally constructed beliefs about teaching, learning, and current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 instructional practices. dissonance came when they disagreed with the mandated skills within the planning and scheduling timeline. when the participants perceived deficiencies in the curriculum for the abilities of their students, they found concordance of the various influences on classroom pedagogy through adaptations and supplements to the curriculum. some strategies for modifying the curriculum included clarifications/connections of concepts or adjusting the pacing schedule, completely or in part, for students. the idea of “going deeper” was echoed by all participants, especially when students needed more time to learn the skills outlined to be learned during a specified period of time. “going deeper” would challenge students to engage in higher order thinking such as synthesizing and evaluating information. observations indicate this pedagogical practice as “reteaching” or “differentiating” instruction based on students needs. participants reteach concepts and skills students do not master or as a means to make the curriculum recursive. curriculum adaptation portrays the way that participants “tweak the curriculum.” “tweaking the curriculum defined by participants are ways curriculum is perceived to be adapted to create a “good program” with “what works in the classroom and what doesn’t.” participants believed they could reconcile the limitations of the mandated curriculum by “tweak [ing] it to fit the children and learners in the class.” a participant stated, “i take what i know will work, i take what they [students] need. i model it into a lesson i know that my children will get something from.” participants explained that the curriculum did not leave room for creativity or for prerequisite concepts to be taught. while the document informs teachers as to what concepts and skills to teach, it also “fails to acknowledge the creative potential of educators to grapple effectively with the multiplicity of contexts they find in their classrooms and to shape environments according to the lived experiences and actual educational needs of their students” curriclulum integration and adaptation 17 (darder et al., 1997, p. 332). the pacing timetable dictates when specific concepts and skills have to be taught while making assumptions as to how certain concepts will be taught in order to prepare for the district and state assessments. teachers used curriculum adaptation and integration to make curriculum decisions based on their beliefs about creativity and best practices learned throughout their experience as described by nieto (2002). participants adapted curricula when it conflicted with what they believed was good teaching. as a result, teachers who recognized the importance of cultural relevance appeared to have greater dissonance between personal beliefs about teaching and learning, the mandated curriculum, and addressing their lcd students’ needs. for example, a third grade teacher stated, “at times there may be a need for mini-lessons.” in this case it was a phonics lesson in the middle of the literacy lesson that the researcher observed; later the teacher described, “if the students need a phonics review i am not going to neglect that need and keep going. i am going to teach the phonics lesson that is needed because that is going to impact learning later on.” teachers incorporated mini-lessons to adjust for students’ lack of prior knowledge with a skill or concept presented in the district’s pacing schedule. the mini-lesson also provided an opportunity for the teacher to model thinking about text, make connections across content areas, and introduce or re-teach literacy strategies. mini-lessons, aligned to the objectives but not necessarily in congruent with the pacing schedule allowed for instruction as a means to either extend learning or fill in gaps beyond the set objectives. for instance, if the third-grade curriculum indicated predictions were to be taught for a week, then making predictions was a mini-lesson taught and reinforced throughout the week. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 the participants believed they continued to use “good teaching and learning” by using supplemental resources to focus on skills and re-teaching. many opportunities were created for students to learn skills taught through additional teaching. small groups and independent instruction were two strategies discussed and observed to address students’ needs. curriculum integration unlike curriculum adaptation, which takes the currulum and makes modifications using the same materials and resources idenitfied by the district, curricululum integration combines outside resources with the existing curriculum to “fill the gaps” or “meet student needs,” where the core curriculum seems to fail to do so. during observations the researchers saw teachers using outside resources or approaches to deliver the planned curriculum. for example, a third grade and a fourth grade teacher used aspects of other curricular approaches such as: readers and writers workhop and message time plus, to meet the needs of their students in the area of literacy. technology played an integral role in delivering instruction; however, its use is not defined in the curriculum. in numerous observations the researcher watched one participant rely on the smart board in the classroom for instruction. a smart board has been provided by the district to assist in instructional delivery, however was only present in this participants classroom. in addition, the curricular materials did not identify technology integration, technology support or the use there of as a means to meet the standards. the data indicates that the core curriculum, which informs instructional practice, is not designed to incorporate this type of technology as supported by the following vignette. while teaching is going on, you constantly have to scan the room to differentiate what kind of delivery you are giving them, to differentiate the kind of activities you are going curriclulum integration and adaptation 19 to give them. there have been times i've had an activity ready, and i'm like i'm not going to give them this today because they are no way ready for it; or, it's too boring for them because they've already got it. so you modify right there, and that's where the smart board is a really great tool, because you can come up with another activity (snaps fingers) on the spot. finally, teachers found ways to integrate students language into instruction as a means to “clarify” or “make connections” with what students know. curriculum integration “help[s] build the prerequisite skills so that they [students] can get the target skills that are identified by the pacing schedule.” from an observation, one of the fourth grade teachers used an old set of english textbooks with her students. when asked about this on a follow up interview she stated, “i am outsourcing. it is the content that i am working on. i try to use as many sources as i can to implement the core curriculum.” in addition, another particpant discussed how many students have a limited number of experiences and as a result it makes it hard for them to connect with the texts in the basal reader, the reading program purchased by the district, and other parts of the curriculum. the use of newspapers in the classroom, helps when it is integrated into the curriculum. unlike curriculum adaptation, curriculum integration combines supplemental resources with the existing curriculum to “fill the gaps” or “meet student needs” where the core curriculum was perceived to fail to do so. curriculum integration, as observed and explained by participants, “help[s] build the prerequisite skills so that they [students] can get the target skills that are identified by the pacing schedule,” as stated by a participant during an interview. all of the participants make use of supplemental resources, like a smart board, to assist in current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 instructional delivery. the particpants drew on their past experiences, likes and dislikes to make not only teaching choices, but curriculum choices as well (shavelson, 1983). discussion this study set out to explore how teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning impact curriculum planning to meet the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse students. the findings from this qualitative case study offer us a glimpse into the pedagogical approaches and instructional strategies that drive what teachers do in the classroom to meet the needs of lcd students. as in any case study, generalizability is left to the reader and the findings may not be generalizable to all contexts. when teachers are able to reflect, identify, and name their own socialization process and experiences, they will be better able to recognize and identify those qualities in their students (ladson-billings, 2006). ultimately “you as a teacher, a professional, know what’s best for you students, your class and what works,” said a fourth grade teacher. teachers know what students “need in their heart.” this was a sentiment shared by participants. despite the strengths and weaknesses of the core curriculum, one participant statement encompasses the importance of being a reflective practitioner, “you don't want to have them [students] leave your room and not feel you've done the best possible job you could just because the curriculum says do this. you need to give them what they need to be lifelong learners.” the teachers clearly had beliefs about teaching and learning, but believed they should use the mandated or planned curriculum. although the participants recognized the deficiencies in the planning and scheduling timeline, they also validated it by using it as the foundation of their instructional practice. dissonance occurred in all three teachers when faced with a mandated curriculum that did not fit the needs of their students nor their beliefs about teaching and curriclulum integration and adaptation 21 learning. they chose one or more strategies to balance came when they disagreed with the mandated skills within the planning and scheduling timeline. the two major ways teachers met the needs of lcd students as identified through this research was curriculum adaptation and curriculum integration. a conclusion drawn from the data was that behind closed doors teachers made curriculum decisions based on their beliefs of what was best for their students rather than strict obedience to the district created pacing schedule. quality instruction for lcd students, where instruction is continually adjusted to address the needs of the students is supported by nieto and bode’s (2007) call for a standards-conscious curriculum. a standards-conscious curriculum is where standards are a tool for promoting a rigorous, demanding, and inspiring curriculum that can be creatively designed around the needs for diverse student populations. teachers must present opportunities for students to construct knowledge and reinvent their world through a curriculum providing activities, texts, and a variety of learning experiences. educators must be willing to transform curriculum and instructional pedagogy to engage students and connect learning to the real world. freire & macedo (1987) states: “what we do in the classroom is not an isolated moment separate from the ‘real world.’ it is entirely connected to the real world” (p. 25). connections to the real world provide authentic learning experiences that validate individual people, who they are, what they bring to the classroom, culturally and linguistically, which can be used to stimulate student engagement and academic success. teachers found ways to adapt and supplement the curriculum to balance the perceived deficiencies of curriculum. some strategies for modifying the curriculum included clarifications/connections of concepts or adjusting the pacing schedule, completely or in part, for students. the contentious part of the planning and pacing timeline is that teachers are current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 expected to teach in a way leading to high achievement on the state test. as one participant elaborated, “everything has to be linked to the test.” data such as this reinforces silvermail’s (1996) evidence that standardized testing promotes a narrowed curriculum. teachers used curriculum adaptation and integration to make curriculum decisions based on their beliefs about creativity and best practices learned throughout their experience as described by nieto (2002). although participants adapted curricula, they supported the mandated curriculum as a legitimate foundation for teaching and learning, as evidenced by lessons connectivity to the goals and objectives of the mandated curriculum. the more teachers recognized the importance of cultural relevance and context, the greater the dissonance between beliefs about teaching and learning, the mandated curriculum, and addressing their lcd students’ needs. the participants believed they continued to use “good teaching and learning” by using supplemental programs or curricula to focus on skills and re-teaching. many opportunities were created for students to learn skills taught through additional teaching. small groups and independent instruction were two strategies discussed and observed to address students’ needs. implications this study unveiled the how teachers used their professional judgment or “real time” decision making in the classroom to benefit their students. the use of professional judgment was explicated, as “you know what the kids need to know to survive.” explicitly structured curriculum, like the planning timeline, is teaching and learning operating at a technical level, in which content and skills are the predictors of the outcomes and goals of students as measured by benchmarks and the state assessment. as a result not all teachers are struggling, as professionals, to implement practice meant to address the unique needs of diverse students through an understanding of their students (language, culture, and lives). some have found ways to do what curriclulum integration and adaptation 23 is best for their students once the classroom door is closed, although the incongruence in what is being taught and a solid way to assess learning gets lost. although students’ needs may be met, they still are left behind their peers who have many more advantages when it comes to testing. another implication from this study could be the use of formal or informal dialogue may guide school-based curriculum planning meetings in which teachers reflect on their beliefs and goals for their students. school stakeholders must have dialogues where the needs of students represented in the school community as are identified and defined in an effort for greater application of academic and social learning. dialogues must include planning for teaching and learning experiences developed in intentional and innovative ways to meet students’ needs, while allowing them to develop a love for learning. dialogue in this sense is not simply having a conversation, but rather engaging in an on-going forum between and among colleagues, mentors, administrators, and others. the lack of dialogue or collaborations between constituents was evident as a fourth grade teacher indicated when discussing the mandated curriculum, “it does not always have what we need” and “needs more open ended writing in the curriculum.” the curriculum has “no flow with it.” it is, “missing great strategies; inferring, questioning, and visualization.” through reflective practices veteran and pre-service teachers begin to see themselves as learners and understand that they are also engaging in the learning process and are able to find ownership in the curriculum to be taught. conclusion in creating classrooms where the needs of lcd students are met, teachers need to become more aware of their own beliefs about teaching and learning, presumptions about mandated curriculum, and a true understanding of the instructional strategies that meet the needs of lcd students. mandated curriculum is implemented more fully when it is in line with current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning. when the curriculum is identified not coordinating with teachers’ beliefs, it will be adapted or integrated in some form to meet the perceived needs of the students. as mandated curriculum necessitates specific prior knowledge for success on current learning, those 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(2003). case study research design and methods (3rd ed.). thousand oaks: sage. current issues in education current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 30 http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word the effect of computer supported problem.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x the effects of computer supported problem based learning on students’ approaches to learning serife ak adnan menderes university citation ak, s. (2011). the effects of computer supported problem based learning on students’ approaches to learning. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/712 abstract the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of computer supported problem based learning on students’ approaches to learning. the research was conducted as a pre-test and posttest one-grouped design used to achieve the objectives of the study. the experimental process of study lasted 5 weeks and was carried out on 78 university students. the scale of approaches to learning was used as the data collection instrument, which was developed by researcher. the collected data were analyzed by paired simple t-test. according to the results, it can be stated that problem based learning has a significant effect on adopting a predominantly deep approach to learning by students. keywords: problem based learning, approaches to learning, deep, surface current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 2 about the author author: serife ak phd affiliation: adnan menderes university address: aydin, tr,09010 email: serife.ak@adu.edu.tr biographical information: serife ak works as a assistant professor in the department of computer education and instructional technology at adnan menderes university. she holds a phd degree in computer education and instructional technology at ankara university. her research interests include instructional design, computer supported education, problem based learning (pbl), educational technology and technology integration into education. moreover, she has contributed to various projects and researches about integration of ict into teacher training. the effects of computer supported problem based learning 3 the effect of computer supported problem based learning on students’ approaches to learning effective learning is a unique combination of the learning environment and the student's preferred orientation toward learning (woods, hrymak, & wright, 2000). in the literature, it is suggested that the learning environment affects the student’s approaches to learning. this assertion is supported by some research evidences (ramsden & entwistle, 1981; biggs, 1987; campbell & smith, 1997; webb, 1997; dart, burnett, boulton-lewis, campbell, smith, & mccrindle, 1999; trigwell, prosser, & waterhouse, 1999; dart, burnett, purdie, boulton-lewis, campbell, & smith, 2000; hativa & birenbaum, 2000; lizzio, wilson, & simons, 2002; goh, 2005; groves, 2005). it is generally believed that the use of deep approach to learning is associated with higher quality learning outcomes and surface approach with lower quality learning outcomes (gijbels, dochy, van den bossche, & segers, 2005), and the deep approach will contribute positively to learning outcomes (zeegers, 2001). therefore, it is considered to be important to encourage students to adopt a deep approach. according to felder and brent (2005), a goal of instruction should be to induce students to adopt a deep approach on subjects that are important for their professional or personal development. it is suggested that problem based learning (pbl) is one of the learning environments to foster a deep approach to learning (davis & harden, 1999; spencer & jordan, 1999; wood, 2003). in pbl environment it is hypothesized that students focus on understanding rather than the memorization of facts. according to groves (2005), pbl’s capacity to stimulate intrinsic interest has been well documented. although in the literature it is suggested that students in pbl processes are more likely to adopt a dominantly deep-learning approach to learning (davis & current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 4 harden, 1999; spencer & jordan, 1999; wood, 2003), it is not clear what the available research says about this correlation. therefore, this paper focuses on the relationship between pbl and students’ approaches to learning pbl pbl is an approach of teaching and learning that requires the student to apply higher level learning processes. students who are presented with a complex problem need to undertake higher level processes such as analyzing, comparing and contrasting, explaining causes, and hypothesizing, and to apply the outcome of these processes towards the development of a solution (mcalpine & clements, 2001). the historical underpinnings of pbl date back to the work of john dewey (1963) at the university of chicago and his commentary on experimental education (mcdonald, 2002). in addition, pbl also builds on social constructivism as developed by vygotsky (1978). besides the idea of “psychological tools” that reflect the cultural instruments offered to learners to guide their learning (language, symbols, speech …), he especially emphasized the mediating role of the others (teachers, tutors, peer students) during the learning process. recognizing that dewey’s work could be used in medical school, barrows, a physician and medical educator at mcmaster university, wanted to develop methods of instructing physicians that fostered their own capabilities for reflection of school in ordinary life (mcdonald, 2002). the medical faculty at mcmaster university pioneered pbl in the 1960s as an innovative solution to make learning more relevant and effective. since then, pbl has been implemented in several areas of higher education, including: medicine, business, education, architecture, law, engineering, social work, and in high school as well (savery & duffy, 1995; wilson & cole, 1996; wee, kek & sim, 2001). the effects of computer supported problem based learning 5 pbl is a student-centered learning model whose main attributes are related to real-world problems, student control, and group based processes. in pbl, learning occurs while working on problems in small groups and students determine their own learning objectives when trying to understand or resolve the problem. therefore, it can be stated that pbl requires the student to develop a deeper understanding of the content and, to adopt the use of higher level learning processes. approaches to learning researchers have done numerous studies of students’ approaches to learning since marton & saljo’s (1976) approaches to learning were first identified. the approaches to learning are considered by many educators to be a powerful means of modeling students learning and the quality of students learning outcomes (duff, dunlop & connelly, 2002). an approach to learning describes the nature of the correlation between student, context, and task (biggs et al., 2001). basically, two approaches to learning have been identified: the ‘surface’ approach and the ‘deep’ approach (marton & saljo, 1976). the surface approach describes the intention to reproduce information in compliance with externally imposed task demands, while the deep approach involves the intention to understand (chan, 2003). the deep approach to learning is considered to be an appropriate approach as students learn for understanding, derive enjoyment from the learning task, and apply the acquired knowledge to the real world. on the other hand, the surface approach to learning is inappropriate as students rely on rote learning and memorization, avoid personal understanding and are unreflective about their learning experiences (biggs et al., 2001; tiwari et al., 2006). biggs and ramsden identified a third approach, called the strategic or achieving approach (entwistle, 1998). the achieving approach implies that a student wish to achieve positive outcomes is characterized by students who intend to obtain high grades and organize their time (biggs, 1987). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 6 which approaches to learning will be adopted by students is determined by a great deal of variables. several studies about the influence of the learning environment and the personal characteristics of the learners on their approaches to learning are available in the literature (ramsden & entwistle, 1981; campbell & smith, 1997; dart et al., 1999; trigwell et al., 1999; dart et al., 2000; hativa & birenbaum, 2000; goh, 2005). approaches to learning are influenced by student characteristics, the learning environment and learning outcomes. therefore, approaches to learning cannot only be seen as mere student dependent characteristics. the approach to learning that will be adopted by students is determined by a large number of variables. when the relation of students’ approaches to learning with these variables is considered, it can be argued that the learning environment is one of the most important variables. therefore, if proper strategies are applied, it might be possible to move students learning approaches from a surface to a deep orientation. computer supported pbl the incorporation of pbl strategy into a computer supported learning environment provides the engaging, collaborative, and learner centered activities that are required to encourage a student to fully participate in the learning process (gooding, 2002). the use of computer supported technologies in pbl plays a critical role in terms of organization of the pbl course and use of online resources to support a pbl course (watson, 2002). in literature there is some research evidences about computer supported technologies impact positively on pbl process and learning outcomes (cho & jonassen, 2002; dennis, 2003; kerfoot, masser & hafler, 2005; an, 2006; donnelly, 2006). according to sage (2000), pbl is an effective way to integrate technology into the classroom. hoffman and ritchie (1997) identified ways in which interactive multimedia might the effects of computer supported problem based learning 7 be used to support pbl. the key benefits they anticipated were fidelity, representational richness, time and timeliness, individualization, assessment, efficiency, and increased power of agency (albion & gibson, 1998: 42). pbl builds on social constructivism as developed by vygotsky (1978). he especially emphasized the mediating role of the others (teachers, tutors, peer students) in the learning process. in this respect, it can be stated that the integration of computer technologies to pbl may be considered to be a facilitative factor of interactivity. for these reasons, in this study pbl application supported online discussion boards and computer supported instructional materials. problem statement a review of literature indicated that the learning environment is one of the most important variables that affects student approaches to learning. in pbl, environment students are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning (strømsø, grøttum & lycke, 2004). in this respect, it can be stated that pbl environment may also have an effect on students’ approaches to learning. although in the literature it is suggested that students in pbl processes are more likely to adopt a dominantly deep-learning approach, it is not clear what the available research says about this relationship. also, the effect of computer supported pbl environments on approaches to learning is quite ambiguous. for these reasons the current study aimed to investigate the effects of computer supported pbl on students’ approaches to learning. the following research questions were addressed: 1. does computer supported pbl environment effect on adopting surface approaches to learning by students? 2. does computer supported pbl environment effect on adopting deep approaches to learning by students? current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 8 3. does computer supported pbl environment effect on adopting achieving approaches to learning by students? methods research design in the current study, the pre-test and post-test grouped design was implemented to investigate the effects of the independent variable (computer supported pbl) on dependent variables (deep, surface and achieving approach). study group the experimental process of study has been carried out on 78 pre-service teachers (41 female and 37 male) who attended information technologies in education ii course in their second semesters. the study group ages ranged between 21-27 years old. instruments the learning approaches questionnaire (laq), developed by researcher, was used to measure each student’s approach to learning on a scale ranging from deep, surface, and achievement. the questionnaire contained 39 items. students responded to each item on a five-point likert scale, where 1 point was given for “never true” and 5 points were given for “always true”. the scores for each subscale (surface, deep and achieving) were determined by adding up all items and taking the average. subscale reliabilities ranged between 0.85 and 0.94. pbl implementation pbl implementation lasted 5 weeks. initially, students were informed about pbl and the pre-questionnaire was administered. then students were introduced to complex, illthe effects of computer supported problem based learning 9 structured problem with no obvious solutions by means of computer supported instructional material. students worked in small, heterogeneous groups to identify what additional information they needed based on the initially given facts. they then brainstormed ideas and hypotheses related to the problem, decided on the key issues, and identified the resources to be used. after these meetings each student conducted an independent search for information regarding issues related to the problem. the process of research and group discussion continued until all groups were satisfied that they had learned sufficient basic knowledge to solve the problem. for interaction within groups and between groups, online discussion boards were used. the last week, study groups presented their report to the others and the post-questionnaire was administered. throughout the implementation process, the researchers monitored and facilitated group activities. data analysis paired simple t-test was conducted to see the effects of online pbl on approaches to learning. at the inception of interpreting significance of the results, the probability value was set as α=05. results the results of pre-test and post-test scores of surface approach subscale were compared with t-test and given in table 1. table 1. t-test-surface approach scores n mean sd df t p surface pre-test 78 45.87 15.52 77 3.58 .001 post-test 78 39.38 8.60 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 10 as seen from table 1, there is a significant difference between students’ pre-test and post–test mean scores [t(77)=3.58, p<.01]. while mean score of surface approach subscale was 45.87 before pbl implementation, it declined to 39.38 after pbl implementation. these findings show that pbl might negatively affect adopting of surface approaches to learning by students. table 2. t-testdeep approach scores n mean sd df t p deep pre-test 78 39.92 7.55 77 -5.74 .000 post-test 78 46.23 8.29 as seen from table 2, there is a significant difference between students’ pre-test and post–test mean scores [t(77)=-5.74, p<.00]. while the mean score of deep approach subscale was 39.92 before pbl implementation, it increased to 46.23 after pbl implementation. these finding shows that pbl might positively affect adopting of deep approaches to learning by students. table 3. t-testachieving approach as seen from table 3, while the mean score of achieving approach subscale was 33.64 before pbl implementation, it increased to 35.58 after pbl implementation. but the scores were not found to be significantly different [t(77)=-2.00, p>.05]. these finding shows that pbl have no effect on adopting of achieving approaches to learning by students. scores n mean s df t p achieving pre-test 78 33.64 8.42 77 -2.00 .056 post-test 78 35.58 7.78 the effects of computer supported problem based learning 11 discussion the current study revealed that computer supported pbl environment has both a positive effect on adopting deep approaches to learning by students and a negative effect on adopting surface approach to learning. these findings are consistent with previous publications (newble & clarke, 1986; spencer & jordan, 1999; woods et al., 2000; wood, 2003; waters & johnston, 2004; tiwari et al., 2006). pbl enhances motivation, because when learners work on problems whose relevance is clearly related to their professional work, they are much more likely to tackle them wholeheartedly rather than when they are working on more abstract or theoretical situations. this increased motivation may be considered an important component of connection between pbl and deep approach to learning. in a pbl environment, a student who does not apply higher level processes (such as analyzing, comparing and contrasting, explaining causes…) simply cannot complete the task as lower order processes, because memorizing, describing, or following a simple procedure are insufficient (mcalpine & clements, 2001). this characteristic of pbl process, and also the positive impact of computer supported technologies on pbl process, might be considered to be a factor in encouraging the adoption of deep approach to learning. however, future research is needed to examine which contextual elements in the pbl learning environment foster deep learning. there are several characteristics of computer supported pbl environment that help to understand why deep learner can be expected to be fostered. pbl entices student control, complex problems, group work and collaborative tasks, and a focus on process assessment. but future research is needed to clarify what mixture of ingredients and which mediators (other student characteristics) in the pbl learning environment encourage deep learning. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 12 future research needs to be geared toward developing and testing the complex nature of the interrelations between the processes and variables studied. in this context, path-analysis and structural equation modeling could be helpful in studying the impact of mediating variables, and to consider the multiple co-variations that are regularly observed in analysis results. the testing and validation of more complex models could also help to research the feedback loop in the complex set of variables since dependent variables could feedback to the way independent variables are being perceived, interpreted, etc. current study was focused on effects of computer supported pbl on students’ approaches to learning. future research is also needed that clarifies how approaches to learning adopted by students affects their learning outcomes in pbl process, such as: performance, motivation, and problem-solving skills. also, the effects of formative feedback provided by teachers during the pbl process on students’ approaches to learning should be analyzed in following studies. the effects of computer supported problem based learning 13 references albion, p. r. & gibson, i. w. 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(2001). approaches to learning in science: a longitudinal study. british journal of educational psychology, 71, 115–132. the effects of computer supported problem based learning 19 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors andrew darian lori ellingford assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik kerry brewster meg burke miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afel hossain jeffery johnson seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol messer john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melisa tarango andrw tesoro jill wendt 
 microsoft word exploring mathematics.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x exploring mathematics college readiness in the united states nancy
j.
mccormick
and
marva
s.
lucas middle tennessee state university citation mccormick, n. & lucas, m. (2011). exploring mathematics college readiness in the united states. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/680 abstract large numbers of students graduate high school unprepared for post-secondary education and illequipped for the labor force of the 21st century. research on college readiness reveals the prominent role that mathematics preparedness plays in the fulfillment of hopes and dreams for a college degree. as requirements for post-secondary education and qualifications for the workforce merge, college readiness in mathematics is a significant factor in job opportunities and career choices. this report provides an in-depth exploration in mathematics college readiness in the united states and offers a compilation of recommendations from many significant constituents who have made notable advances in mathematics preparedness in the education of today’s high school students. keywords: college readiness; mathematics college readiness; workforce readiness; underprepared students; remediation current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 2 about the author(s) authors: nancy j. mccormick and marva s. lucas affiliation: middle tennessee state university address: department of mathematical sciences, middle tennessee state university, murfreesboro, tn 37132 email: nmccormi@mtsu.edu biographical information: dr. nancy j. mccormick is currently an associate professor in the department of mathematical sciences at middle tennessee state university. she has served as an area representative and as the chapter treasurer for the tennessee association for developmental education. her work with online courses earned an outstanding achievement in instructional technology award in 2003, as well as a tennessee board of regents distance education innovations award in 2004. dr. marva s. lucas is currently an associate professor and chair of university studies at middle tennessee state university. she teaches mathematics and is responsible for testing and placement of incoming students. in 2004, she received certification as a developmental education specialist from the kellogg institute of appalachian state university. in the past, she has served as president and political liaison for the tennessee association for developmental education (tnade), a chapter of the national association for developmental education (nade). exploring mathematics college readiness 3 exploring mathematics college readiness in the united states research shows a surprisingly large number of students in the united states (u. s.) graduate from high school unprepared for post-secondary education. various sources resoundingly echo each other in the conclusion that the u. s. faces a college readiness crisis (act, 2004; bradley & blanco, 2010; conley, 2007; kaye, lord, & bottoms, 2006). according to a 2004 report from american college testing (act), higher education is in the midst of an ongoing college readiness deficit that has not shown any significant improvement in the decade leading up to the report. greene and winters (2005) reported only 34% of the graduating class of 2002 left high school equipped with the skills necessary for college-level work. a report issued from the u.s. department of education indicated that 28% of first-year students enrolling in four-year institutions in fall 2000 required remedial coursework (adelman, 2006). the proportion rose to 42% for students entering public two-year colleges (kobrin, 2007; russell, 2008). a similar study in 2001 conveyed a more disturbing number stating approximately 50% of first-year college students were enrolled in remedial courses (morgan & michaelides, 2005). moreover, as requirements for readiness in post-secondary education and readiness for the workforce continue to converge, many high school graduates also find themselves ill-equipped for the 21st century job market (achieve, 2005; ali & jenkins, 2002). mathematical skills and abilities are often tested and used to judge the qualifications of job applicants in many career choices (duranczyk & higbee, 2006). a joint publication of the national governors association center for best practices, the national conference of state legislatures, the council of chief state school officers, and the national association of state boards of education (2008) stated more than half of all new jobs through 2014 will require some college experience. studies also emphasize the significant role that mathematics college readiness plays in an applicant’s choice of and admission to current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 4 institutions of higher education (olson, 2006) and even in the eventual attainment of a college degree (adelman, 2006; hall & ponton, 2005). this literature review explores the following questions: 1. what is mathematics college readiness? 2. what is the status of college readiness in mathematics? 3. why is mathematics college readiness important? 4. why is there a deficit in mathematics college readiness? 5. what efforts are underway to address mathematics college readiness? finally, this investigation offers a compilation of recommendations from many significant constituents. using this information, the authors outline the elements of a strong mathematics program for today’s high schools. what is mathematics college readiness? college readiness is a vital issue to several important groups. high school teachers have heightened interest because as key players in a student’s final preparation prior to college, they are more likely to be held accountable when students graduate without skills necessary for postsecondary education. parents are apprehensive because the hopes and dreams for their children’s futures hinge most likely on a college degree (greene & winters, 2005). students who receive a high school diploma want to have the assurance that they are prepared to meet the challenges of a postsecondary curriculum leading to a college degree and a promising career. employers desire qualified personnel who will enable companies to be productive and competitive in a global economy. lastly, government officials at both state and national levels realize the value of an educated citizenry. this diversity of stakeholders at various points of involvement attests to the importance of college readiness (achieve, 2005; ali & jenkins, 2002). exploring mathematics college readiness 5 in spite of the attention that has been devoted to this topic, a great deal of ambiguity remains about the definition of college readiness. as a result, research identifies several perspectives by which college readiness is measured and defined. these perspectives include, but are not limited to, high school courses completed, high school grade point average (gpa), mathematics content and procedural standards, scores on national tests and college placement exams, and success in firstyear college courses. a summary of the viewpoints is reflected by conley’s (2007) statement that “college readiness can be defined operationally as the level of preparation a student needs in order to enroll and succeed – without remediation – in a credit-bearing general education course at a postsecondary institution that offers a baccalaureate degree or transfer to a baccalaureate program” (p. 5). applying conley’s definition, mathematics college readiness is a student’s ability to be successful in college-level mathematics courses without the need for remedial or developmental coursework (conley, 2007). efforts to establish standards or benchmarks that are indicative of a student’s readiness in mathematics have been undertaken by both secondary and post-secondary educational systems in various states and by several national organizations. at the secondary level, successful completion of a required number of high school mathematics courses signifies college readiness while college readiness at the post-secondary level is more often judged by scores on institutional placement exams or on nationally recognized college entrance exams. using national data, act in a 2007 report defined mathematics college readiness by a correlation of act benchmark scores with success rates of students in credit-bearing mathematics courses at post-secondary institutions. the act benchmark score for mathematics college readiness was determined to be 22, which is associated with a 50% chance for a student to earn a grade of b or better and a 75% chance of a c or better in college entry-level mathematics courses (act, 2007; kaye, lord, & bottoms, 2006). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 6 in defining college readiness, kobrin (2007) examined scores on the reasoning test component of the scholastic aptitude test (sat). first-time students enrolling at 41 postsecondary institutions in 1995 were studied in an effort to establish benchmarks that predict at least a 65% probability of attaining either a first-year college gpa of 2.7 or higher or a first-year college gpa of 2.0 or higher. it should be noted that this investigation looked at the overall college gpa, while act considered gpas for specific entry-level college courses. the research determined benchmarks for a first-year college gpa of 2.7 or higher to be 590 on the sat verbal and 610 on the sat mathematics. indicators for a first-year college gpa of 2.0 or higher were 360 on the sat verbal and 370 on the sat mathematics. various state initiatives identified both procedural and content standards in defining mathematics college readiness. the transition mathematics project (tmp) in washington state undertook a collaborative endeavor involving k-12 education, colleges, and universities to determine requirements for college readiness in mathematics. procedural standards included the abilities to communicate, to reason and problem-solve, to make connections between mathematical concepts, and to relate mathematics to other disciplines and real-life situations. content standards included number sense, geometry, statistics and probability, algebra, and functions (tmp, 2006). ohio, one of the early partners in the american diploma project (adp), emphasized both content and process for college readiness in mathematics and asserted, “algebra continues to be the most fundamental prerequisite for success in college mathematics” (ohio board of regents [obr], 2007c, p. 12). similar standards defining mathematics college readiness were developed by faculty from seven campuses in the university of maine system (n.d.). this group also stressed procedural and conceptual knowledge as important achievements for the understanding of mathematics. in considering the role of technology in college readiness, its proficient use is an important standard that can be used to promote students’ understanding of mathematical concepts, but with exploring mathematics college readiness 7 the stipulation that proficiency in technology does not equate to competency in mathematics (obr, 2007a; tmp, 2006). ohio’s position statement on technology advised that a mathematics curriculum provide students with the knowledge of how to use technology and, more importantly, with the ability to recognize when the use of technology is warranted for efficient problem solving (obr, 2007c). what is the status of college readiness in mathematics? the work to define mathematics college readiness reveals and quantifies a lack of preparedness on the part of many students enrolling in institutions of higher education. only 43% of students tested nationally reached the established act benchmark. though test scores for caucasian and asian students were slightly to somewhat higher than the national average, 52% and 68%, respectively, minority students did not fare as well with 13% of african-american students and 27% of hispanic students tested reaching the benchmark (act, 2010). studies also revealed that female students are less likely to be prepared for college-level mathematics than their male counterparts (kobrin, 2007; long, iatarola, & conger, 2009). assessment of college readiness benchmarks as defined by sat research and presented by the college board showed that for 1995 and 2005 only 22% and 25%, respectively, of college-bound students met the criterion for a 2.7 or higher first-year college gpa (kobrin, 2007). the national assessment of educational progress (naep) showed one-fourth of high school seniors in 2005 were proficient in mathematics (boser & burd, 2009; huebner & corbett, 2008). although 66% of high school graduates enroll in colleges and universities, many of this number are unprepared for college-level work (achieve, 2008a). ohio reported that for first-time freshmen entering post-secondary institutions in fall 2003, 70% had completed the minimum college preparatory curriculum that includes four english courses and three courses each of mathematics, science, and social studies. twenty-four percent had taken current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 8 the complete core of college preparatory courses consisting of four courses in english, mathematics, and social studies, and three courses (biology, physics, and chemistry) in science (obr, 2007b). yet, 32% of these first-time freshmen required remedial or developmental coursework in mathematics (obr, 2007a). for students who had taken the complete core of courses, every measured outcome was better with remediation rates of 15% and average act scores of 24 (obr, 2007b). overall, almost one-third of the nation’s high school graduates who enroll in college are not prepared for college-level mathematics (long, iatarola, & conger, 2009). why is mathematics college readiness important? the number of students seeking enrollment in higher education institutions has been increasing steadily. according to the national center for education statistics, undergraduate enrollment was 7.5 million in 1970, 15.2 million in 2006, and projected to be 17 million in 2017. (national center for education statistics [nces], 2008). approximately 33% of all first-year college students enroll in remedial programs, which are available at 99% of public two-year institutions and at more than 75% of public four-year institutions (boser & burd, 2009) the cost of remediation for these students ranged from 2.31 to 2.89 billion dollars in public post-secondary institutions during the 2004-2005 academic year (strong american schools [sas], 2008). citing difficulties in obtaining reliable information as to the exact costs associated with remediation, russell (2008) stated a cost of $1.4 billion annually for community college students as estimated by the alliance for excellent education. it should be noted that this calculation represented only the cost for students who were recent high school graduates and did not include non-traditional students and students attending four-year colleges. within the larger post-secondary population, there are a growing number of underprepared students who also find themselves unready for a workforce that has changed considerably (american council on education, 2004). according to ali and jenkins (2002), several studies have indicated exploring mathematics college readiness 9 increased commonalities between skills necessary for the workplace and post-secondary success. employers have expressed a need for applicants to have not only a high school diploma, but to have comparable skills and knowledge required of students entering post-secondary education (achieve, 2005). based on national surveys conducted by the american management association, many potential employees fail literacy and mathematics skills tests. the 17% increase in failure rates from 1996 to 1998 was attributed to the testing of more advanced job skills as opposed to an actual decline in the skills of applicants (ali & jenkins, 2002). a more recent survey by the national association of manufacturers indicated 84% of companies surveyed suggested that k-12 schools were not doing an adequate job of preparing students for the workforce (eisen, jasinowski, & kleinert, 2005). employers identified the following areas of great concern: basic skills related to timeliness, attendance and work ethic; mathematics and science; and reading comprehension (eisen, jasinowski, & kleinert, 2005). the cost of remediating these basic skills is shouldered by many employers and providing this service can be very expensive. in michigan, the most conservative estimate of the cost for remediation of basic skills by businesses was $222 million yearly (greene, 2000). approximately 60% of jobs in the labor force require some education at the post-secondary level and that percentage is expected to continue to increase. in addition to basic skills, employers also want to hire individuals who have the ability to be effective oral and written communicators, to be independent researchers, and to be complex problem solvers (achieve, 2005). it is predicted that almost twothirds of future jobs will require college-level mathematics skills (huebner & corbett, 2008). the role of higher-level mathematics is increasingly significant in paving the way to postsecondary and workplace success. in 2008, the vice president of achieve appeared before the house committee on education and referred to mathematics as a “gateway” to college and career goals (achieve, 2008a). act (2006) reports that high school students need a comparable level of current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 10 readiness in mathematics for success in college and in workforce training programs. advanced mathematics courses, upper-level courses beyond algebra ii, are among the high school courses act labels as courses for success and greatly affect students’ readiness for college (act, 2004). the texas college readiness standards adopted by the texas higher education coordinating board in 2008 and published by the educational policy improvement center (epic) goes even further in stating the increasing importance of mathematics as the world becomes more and more quantitative in nature. the standards indicate “mathematics knowledge is essential to becoming a productive citizen” (achieve, 2008a, p. 15). the understanding of mathematics bridges all subject areas, as well as the globalization of today’s society, and provides measures to effectively interpret, critically analyze, and evaluate data in both numeric and visual presentations. in a global economy where american 15-year olds ranked 25th among 30 developed countries in mathematical literacy in 2006, there is a growing concern whether the u.s. can remain competitive without a greater emphasis on mathematics in its schools (chikoore, 2008). the economy, security, and government of the nation depend more than ever on a college-educated population in the workforce (sas, 2008). mathematics readiness affects college admission and acceptance to many degree programs. although many public two-year institutions of higher education have an open-door policy for admission, students often find they are denied access or have limited opportunities for enrollment in some four-year institutions or universities based on a lack of readiness for college-level mathematics (huebner & corbett, 2008). even when admitted to higher education institutions, a deficit in a student’s preparation in mathematics often limits choices of college majors and careers. in addition, there is a strong correlation between preparedness for college mathematics and the actual completion of a college degree. students who need remediation in mathematics are considered atrisk for academic success and for retention and perseverance in their post-secondary education (ali exploring mathematics college readiness 11 & jenkins, 2002). act reports that students who are prepared for college mathematics are more likely to enroll in college. once there, students who are college-ready in mathematics are far more likely to earn grades of b or better in college algebra and to earn college gpas of 3.0 or better. also, a greater number of them return to the same institution for their second year of college (act, 2007). clifford adelman (2006) reports a far higher percentage, 71%, eventually complete a bachelor’s degree if they have completed their college-mathematics credits by the end of their sophomore year compared to a 38% graduation rate for students who have not completed their mathematics credits during the same time frame. why is there a deficit in mathematics college readiness? clearly, not enough graduates are exiting high school with the preparation that will be needed to be successful either in college or in the workplace (achieve, 2008a; eisen, jasinowski, & kleinert, 2005). one reason offered for the lack of preparedness for college mathematics includes the number of students not tracked to the college-preparatory curriculum. only in recent times has the need for all students to be college-ready been recognized by educators. prior to the 1980s, few believed that high school should prepare all students for college. until then, barely 50% of high school graduates enrolled in higher education (sas, 2008). as a result, the k-12 educational system was not designed to prepare all students for college (russell, 2008). more recently, the number of high school graduates who enroll in higher education has risen considerably. approximately 66% of graduates now enroll in institutions of higher education in the fall following high school graduation (boser & burd, 2009). a major impetus to the growing number of high school graduates seeking college degrees lies in changes in the skills and training necessary to be competitive. yet, most high schools are not preparing students for the rigors of coursework at the university level (sas, 2008). only 29% of low-income students are tracked to college preparatory classes, compared to 49% and 65% for mediumand high-income students, respectively. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 12 similar disparities exist for african american and latino students whose enrollment rates in a college-prep track are 28% and 23%, respectively, compared to 34% for white, non-latino students (chait & venezia, 2009). a 2006 report prepared by the national math panel of act reveals an actual loss of momentum in students’ progress toward college readiness during their high school years. the loss is attributed to a lack of direction on the part of the states in establishing and defining specific course standards and expectations for mathematics achievement in high schools. while more than twothirds of high school teachers surveyed believe they are meeting state standards for preparing students for college-level mathematics, approximately the same ratio of post-secondary educators believe students are coming to college unprepared (act, 2007), indicating a serious misalignment between the expectations of k-12 and post-secondary education. the high school exit exams in several states are assessing mathematics content at an eighth or ninth-grade level (achieve, 2004; boser & burd, 2009). in many cases, teachers at the secondary level are focused on preparing students to pass state exams that are not aligned with post-secondary expectations for mathematics (conley, 2007). also, teachers at the secondary level often assume they need to cover a broad range of topics in advanced mathematics courses while teachers at the post-secondary level are more concerned that high school students receive a rigorous and in-depth coverage of the fundamental mathematics topics (chait & venezia, 2009). one of the more significant factors in mathematics college readiness is whether high school students take a higher mathematics course following completion of algebra ii. seventy-three percent of students who had completed a course higher than algebra ii placed into college-level mathematics at north arkansas college compared to a 29% placement for students who did not take a course beyond algebra ii (berry, 2003). in a higher education policy brief by the american exploring mathematics college readiness 13 association of state colleges and universities, russell (2008) reported only 21% of students who completed three years of high school mathematics were college-ready. several studies of students in post-secondary public institutions noted increased test scores on standardized exams for students taking more advanced mathematics courses in high school (act, 2004; berry, 2003; obr, 2007b). a study conducted on students in florida high schools who continued to public higher education institutions in the state found that 35% of the deficit in readiness gaps for students of hispanic ethnicity could be attributed to the differences in courses taken when compared to caucasian counterparts. it was also determined for higher readiness rates among asian students, compared to caucasians, that 75% of the readiness gap was attributable to the number of mathematics courses taken. however, african american students and those students from a poorer socio-economic background received smaller gains from completion of higher-level mathematics courses than their racial and socio-economic counterparts, suggesting differences in the quality of educational opportunities ( long, iatarola, & conger, 2009). research has shown that schools in low socio-economic communities do not offer the higher-level mathematics courses needed for a college preparatory curriculum. adelman (as cited in huebner & corbett, 2008) reported that while 72% of high schools in the wealthiest communities offer calculus, only 44% of high schools in high poverty communities do so. even when the right courses are offered, often a lack of rigor or inconsistency in the level of rigor still leaves students unprepared for college mathematics (act, 2005). additionally, some students may opt to take easier courses, especially in their senior year, and others may be discouraged from taking the more challenging courses as a result of low expectations by teachers (bamburg, 1994; russell, 2008). ali and jenkins (2002, p. 18) went so far as to state “the cycle of low achievement begins and ends with low expectations of our students.” what efforts are underway to address mathematics college readiness? current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 14 nationally, president bill clinton introduced legislation in 1994 requiring states to develop more rigorous academic standards and to provide ways to assess student performance. president george bush followed up on this action by endorsing the no child left behind act in 2002. other federal initiatives focused on assisting low-income students in gaining access to post-secondary education. three such programs include trio talent search, trio upward bound, and gear up. for disadvantaged middle and high school students who have been recognized as having college potential, trio talent search offers both inand out-of-school programs to encourage these students to pursue higher education. trio upward bound works with high school freshmen and sophomores to provide academic support for core subjects, and gear up begins in middle school grades establishing college partnerships to make counseling and other college outreach services available to disadvantaged students (boser & burd, 2009). achieve, an independent, bipartisan, non-profit education reform organization based in washington, dc, launched the adp network in 2005. the goal of achieve through adp is to help states raise academic standards and graduation requirements, thus enhancing college and career readiness. since its inception, the adp network has grown to include 35 states (achieve, 2010). this growth is an indication that states are acknowledging the problem and are actively involved in seeking solutions. often mathematics courses with the same name are not created equal. for example, a student’s high school transcript may list algebra ii as a course successfully completed. however, algebra ii could have been classified as “general” or “honors” at the high school attended, indicating that the course requirements were different. furthermore, “honors” algebra ii can be quite different in content covered from one school to the next or from one state to the next (kaye, lord, & bottoms, 2006). recommendations emphasize the importance of aligning content on high school exit exams to reflect newly developed college readiness standards. criteria should be consistent and built on skills and knowledge that high school and post-secondary faculty have agreed exploring mathematics college readiness 15 as necessary for success in beginning college-level courses (kaye, lord, & bottoms, 2006; spence, 2007). in an effort to promote instructional rigor, consistency, and accountability among high schools, the southern regional education board (sreb) advocates end-of-course exams particularly in mathematics and english (kaye, lord, & bottoms, 2006). in may 2005, representatives from fourteen states participating in the american diploma project, with support from achieve, took initial steps toward the development of an algebra ii end-of-course exam. secondary and postsecondary faculty, working together, constructed the exam to directly assess content knowledge following completion of algebra ii. test items were designed to correspond to identified standards that faculty agreed correlated to college-readiness in entry-level mathematics courses. constructed in this manner, the exam was judged to be “significantly more rigorous than most statewide high school exams” (achieve 2008b, p. 11). many sources have noted that high school exit exams often test mathematical content at an eighth or ninth grade level and do little to measure college readiness in mathematics (act, 2007; boser & burd, 2009; chait & venezia, 2009). in spring 2008, approximately 90,000 students across 12 states took the exam. in the initial administration, student performance on the exam was low, as expected, with average scores ranging from 21-35% (achieve, 2008b). the low performance was attributed to the increased level of difficulty of the exam, to it being the first year of using the test instrument, and to a lack of motivation as no consequence or reward was associated with students’ test scores. in 2009, an algebra i end-of-course exam was also developed and administered. with the exams firmly in place, the consortium acknowledged the next step would require states to ensure a level of consistency and rigor within the mathematics curriculum. for optimal results, states must also provide students and teachers with necessary resources (achieve, 2009). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 16 mathematics college readiness merits special attention due to the prominent role that mathematics preparedness plays in admission to post-secondary institutions and in ultimately earning a college degree. according to two landmark studies conducted by the u.s. department of education, “the highest level of math taken in high school is the most powerful predictor of whether a student will ultimately earn a bachelors degree, and that students completing algebra ii in high school more than doubled their chances of earning a four-year college degree” (massachusetts department of elementary & secondary education, 2007, ¶ 7). the sreb advocated that all students take an essential core of mathematics courses that go beyond algebra ii to include a mathematics course in the senior year. however, for the core to be effective, sreb also proposed the development of uniform standards and end-of-course assessments to promote instructional rigor in these courses. in six of the sreb states that utilized end-of-course tests in algebra i, initial pass rates have increased (kaye, lord, & bottoms, 2006). prior to end-of-course evaluations, instruction can be tailored to meet the needs of students through formative assessments administered over several short periods throughout the academic year. both informal and formal assessments can be used to modify teaching and learning strategies in an effort to address student deficiencies. informal reviews include teacher observations and classroom discussions, while formal reviews include homework and tests (boston, 2002). when citing elements of a strong mathematics program, huebner & corbett (2008) stated “this kind of assessment can provide critical and timely information about what students understand and where they need help. armed with this knowledge, teachers are better prepared to adjust their instruction, keep students on track, and help them meet learning goals” (p. 3). using this approach, fenway high school in boston, massachusetts adjusted mathematics instruction based on students’ specific needs and recorded a 91% pass rate for tenth graders taking the state’s mathematics exam (huebner & corbett, 2008). exploring mathematics college readiness 17 in washington, a statewide effort began in 2004 to develop standards for mathematics college readiness. representatives from both secondary and post-secondary faculty groups formulated a set of standards called college readiness in mathematics (crms). the project revised a mathematics placement test given at both two-year and four-year post-secondary institutions to align with the newly developed standards. the revised placement exam provided “a standard definition of college readiness in mathematics” (office of educational assessment, 2007, ¶ 2). a version of this placement test will be administered to 11th graders in the state as an earlier assessment of college readiness in mathematics to identify areas of weakness and to provide needed interventions (office of educational assessment, 2007; tmp, 2006). interlake high school in bellevue, washington made dramatic improvements to its mathematics curriculum that resulted in noteworthy increases in achievements for all students. the school had been noted as the poorest performing school in the district. since 2003, interlake has been reported by newsweek as one of the highest ranking schools in the nation (as cited in huebner & corbett, 2008). unlike the state, interlake high school strongly encourages all students regardless of their past academic history to take four mathematics courses including pre-calculus. all basic mathematics courses were eliminated, and all mathematics courses were offered at the honors level or higher. to go along with this recommendation, numerous support options were made available to enhance the students’ chances for success. the school staff operated on the premise that “every student is a math student” (huebner & corbett, 2008, p. 9). as a result of this approach, students’ mathematics scores on the washington assessment of student learning improved from less than 49% to almost 75% proficiency over a three year period. this improvement in the state assessment was also reflected at the national level on the sat college entrance exam. in the reporting period for 2007, interlake students had an average mathematics sat score of 550, which was 19 points above the state average and 32 points above the national average (huebner & corbett, 2008). according to current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 18 sat benchmarks, a score of 550 predicts a first-year college gpa between 2.0 and 2.7 (kobrin, 2007). examples of student support efforts at interlake include a summer program offered to students before their entrance to high school. middle school teachers identify students who may need additional assistance in mathematics and communicate with the high school to direct students to this program. the high school also recognizes that some problems with student success are not academic, but rather problems with self-regulatory behavior such as being organized, coping with stress, and managing time. interlake provides an after-school program in which students receive assistance in these areas (huebner & corbett, 2008). granby high school in norfolk, virginia emphasizes collaboration among its teachers in the mathematics department to encourage the exchange of ideas for more effective teaching methods and strategies. this sharing of teaching techniques cultivates an atmosphere of continual teacher development and professional learning. teachers, working collaboratively, collect and analyze student data to provide on-target and timely changes in instruction. at granby, “professional learning is a constant, guided by teachers’ real-world needs and, thus, targeted to their daily efforts to help all students succeed in mathematics” (huebner & corbett, 2008, p. 17). based on findings from the third international mathematics and science study (timss) and the national science foundation (nsf), granby high school is taking the right approach for improving mathematics education (zucker, 1997, 2010). granby high school students have shown increased pass rates of 84% and 90% for algebra i and algebra ii, respectively, and now take more advanced mathematics courses including calculus. faculty professional development at granby high school contributed significantly to granby’s student achievement gains (huebner & corbett, 2008). although states are looking for ways to strengthen students academically prior to receiving a high school diploma, state officials are concurrently providing support for underprepared students exploring mathematics college readiness 19 who, nevertheless, have been granted admission to higher education. state funding is often used to help post-secondary institutions respond to the college readiness crisis and to effectively serve the needs of underprepared students. across the nation, many programs and initiatives have been implemented. most of these efforts include offering remedial courses that are designed to bring students to a level where they can be successful in entry level college courses. over the years, the discipline addressing this concern has been termed “developmental education” (boylan & bonham, 2007). for many institutions, developmental education programs have been enhanced through the achieving the dream project, another national effort that focuses on improving the success rates of community college students (boser & burd, 2009). various projects aimed at aligning secondary and post-secondary standards include, but are not limited to, the following: ap courses, dual enrollment, international baccalaureate degree program, tutoring services, and professional development for teachers (boser & burd, 2009). conclusion the literature reveals the significant role that mathematics readiness plays in admission to higher education. mathematics readiness merits special attention because a deficit in a student’s preparation in mathematics limits choices of college majors and careers. there is also a strong correlation between preparedness for college mathematics and the prospect of earning a college degree (ali & jenkins, 2002). this review provides a broad examination of college readiness in mathematics. many studies have established that the lack of college readiness is a long-standing and prevalent problem, affecting greater and greater numbers of u. s. high school graduates. overall, nearly 33% of students admitted to post-secondary institutions are not prepared for college-level mathematics (long, iatarola, & conger, 2009). the sreb reports the number of students requiring remediation in mathematics exceeds numbers for remediation in either reading or english (kaye, lord, & bottoms, 2006). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 20 the mathematics readiness problem significantly impacts college success, workforce eligibility, and u. s. competitiveness in a global economy. this study presents various factors influencing college readiness and reveals a serious disconnect between a high school diploma and a student’s preparedness for post-secondary education. historically, secondary and post-secondary institutions have functioned as separate entities. the goal of formulating realistic and effective college readiness standards obligates these two groups to collaborate in identifying skills and content knowledge that students will require to be successful in entry-level college courses. the elements for a strong mathematics program as indicated from the examination of literature should be implemented within an emerging culture focused on intellectual development and high expectations for all students. only then will real value be restored to a high school diploma enabling graduates to reach their highest potential in post-secondary education and in a labor force geared to a global economy. recommendations a review of college readiness in general suggests that all high schools should foster a climate of academic challenge necessitating continuous intellectual development on the part of students and teachers alike. specifically, the literature indicates the following elements of a strong mathematics program: 1. a common college preparatory core of rigorous courses for all students; 2. an offering of advanced courses beyond algebra ii; 3. a continual emphasis on teacher professional development to improve content knowledge and pedagogical skills; 4. a culture of high expectations and intellectual development for all students; 5. student support services; 6. formative assessments utilizing student data to modify instruction as needed; and exploring mathematics college readiness 21 7. standards developed by secondary and post-secondary educators with exit exams reflecting agreed-upon standards for college readiness. taking higher-level mathematics courses in high school relates positively to student success in initial post-secondary coursework (russell, 2008). a high school curriculum consisting of more rigorous coursework is needed for all students. tracking all students to a college preparatory curriculum has been shown to be particularly effective for minority students and for students formerly classified as low-achievers. in fact, a rigorous course selection has been shown to be more important in student success than either income or education level of parents (act, 2005, 2007; ali & jenkins, 2002; boser & burd, 2009; huebner & corbett, 2008; olson, 2006). a curriculum of demanding courses needs to go beyond the traditional core to span four years of mathematics including courses beyond algebra ii. students taking more advanced courses are the ones who are most likely to be ready for college. advanced mathematics courses are a part of the courses for success that act recommends for all students going into college or the workplace (act, 2004). increasing student requirements to include more advanced mathematics courses necessitates teacher development in content knowledge and pedagogical skills to address new standards (achieve, 2009; conley, 2007). strategies for teaching should include ways to serve a diverse student population and multiple learning styles. support for students in challenging college preparatory courses might be provided in the forms of double class periods for some subjects and through afterschool and summer programs that target those students needing extra help. additionally, customized learning plans based on formative evaluations and individual needs could be generated for at-risk students (achieve, 2005). states are recommended to reevaluate and change teacher licensure requirements to correspond to the more rigorous curriculum that is being promoted. concurrently, post-secondary education needs to make adjustments in teacher preparation programs to produce qualified teachers for current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 22 effective instruction in more advanced course offerings (achieve, 2005; chait & venezia, 2009; spence, 2007). the elements of a strong mathematics program reflect a school culture of high expectations and an environment where all students are given the opportunity to reach their potential. such an environment promotes the success of individual students and serves to narrow achievement gaps among ethnicities and socio-economic groups within the student population (achieve, 2005). a demanding school curriculum immersed in a culture that not only emphasizes content knowledge, but also recognizes the importance of developing key cognitive strategies such as analysis, interpretation, precision, accuracy, problem solving, and reasoning prepares students for success both in post-secondary education and in the workplace (conley, 2007). exploring mathematics college readiness 23 references achieve, inc. 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(2006). college readiness mathematics standards. retrieved from http://www.transitionmathproject.org/standards/doc/crs_march23_2006.pdf university of maine system (n.d.). college readiness for mathematics. retrieved from http://www.maine.edu/pdf/mathuniversitybooklet.pdf zucker, a. a. (1997). reflections on state efforts to improve mathematics and science education in light of findings from timss. retrieved from http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/negp/reports/zucker.htm zucker, a. a. (2010). the growing need for professional development. retrieved from http://www.nctm.org/resources/content.aspx?id=1632 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1, 2011 28 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain jeffery johnson seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt value of the first days of school field experience for teacher education candidates the value of experiencing the first days of school for preservice teachers sarah c. blackwell and kaye pepper school of education university of mississippi biographical information: sarah c. blackwell is an assistant professor in the department of curriculum and instruction. her research interests focus on teacher preparation, with emphasis on reflective instructional decision making and active participation by preservice teachers in educational settings. kaye pepper is an associate professor in the departments of curriculum and instruction and educational leadership. her primary research interests focus on the use of program evaluation results as an impetus for change and organizational leadership. correspondence should be addressed to: sarah c. blackwell, university of mississippi. guyton 308, university, ms, 38677. phone: (662) 915-5037. fax: (662) 915-6718. email: sblackwe@olemiss.edu abstract quality teacher education programs recognize the importance of field experiences in preparing teacher candidates. a field experience planned during the first days of school is invaluable to the success of a new teacher. the school of education faculty at the university of mississippi took on the challenge of implementing a first days of school field experience which proved to be beneficial to the teacher candidates. the information provided in this article explains the steps involved in implementing the plan, as well as the perceptions of the teacher candidates regarding the experience during the preparation program and later during their first year of teaching. value of the first days of school field experience for teacher education candidates field experience is one of the most common “real world” learning experiences implemented in schools of education across the united states (mcglinn, 2003). teacher education programs recognize the need for candidates to participate in a variety of quality field experiences. teacher education candidates also understand the importance of field experiences. according to guyton and mcintyre (1990), they often tend to believe that field experiences provide the only “real” learning in their teacher education programs. quality field experiences at the beginning of the school year provide candidates with many of the tools they need to be successful and prepare them to start the school year on the positive note their k-12 students deserve (sommers, 2000). probably the most frightening time for beginning teachers is the first day of school. insuring that teacher education candidates have an opportunity to experience the beginning of school prior to having their own classroom is essential. wong (2000) contends that the first day of school is the most important day of the school year because what the teacher does can determine success or failure for the entire year. teacher education candidates and beginning teachers deserve to know how to prepare for this most important time. teacher candidates often have misconceptions about what they believe is involved in beginning a school year (darling-hammond & bransford, 2005). however, first days of school field experiences provide candidates with an opportunity to see how classroom procedures and routines are established and put into motion, how teachers get to know their students and build an understanding of their families and communities, and how prior planning for instruction and procedures enhances classroom management (lepage, darling-hammond, akar, gutierrez, jenkins-gunn, and rosebrock, 2005). candidates better understand the challenges and necessary problem-solving skills inherent in teaching when they have the opportunity to actually experience the first days of school and build on that knowledge through class discussion later in coursework. in addition, these experiences allow them to make connections between the content learned in coursework and real-life experiences in the classroom (darling-hammond, hammerness, grossman, rust, and shulman, 2005). learning to make these connections increases the probability that the theories, concepts, and skills teacher candidates learn in coursework are remembered and used later as they begin their career (bransford, darlinghammond, and lepage, 2005). ross, hughes and hill (2001) acknowledges there are advantages for learning when students are required to connect educational concepts with application observed in school classrooms. they conclude that field experiences, such as the first days of school experience, produce measurable improvement in understanding theory taught in university courses. it is important for teacher education candidates to recognize that reflection and evaluation are as important as having adequate content knowledge and skills for teaching. in addition, they should learn from their teaching so that it continually improves (bransford, darling-hammond, and lepage, 2005). according to moore (2003), field experiences hold great potential for providing candidates with opportunities to practice decision-making. university instructors advise teacher candidates about the instructional situations they encounter in the classroom, yet through reflection candidates analyze classroom situations and practice effective decision-making skills. student teaching is one field experience opportunity in which routine reflection focuses on classroom situations. moore (2003) contends that teacher education programs need to provide opportunities for teacher candidates, their supervisors, and their mentor teachers to examine and discuss the rationale behind decisions prior to student teaching. ingersoll (2003) suggests that understanding the issues beginning teachers face and how university faculty can support them during the initial years of teaching is a proactive measure for maintaining those new to the profession. teacher education programs realize the need to provide field experience opportunities that include preparing for a new school year. the goal of the teacher preparation program is to provide teacher candidates with the experiences necessary to build the complex schema required to be an effective classroom teacher (holing, 1998). in order to help future teachers cope with the challenges and diversity of current schools and classrooms, darling-hammond (2005) recommends participating in more authentic experiences. assisting a classroom teacher prior to the first day of school and on the first day of school offers an excellent authentic experience to reduce candidates’ anxiety and heighten their awareness that teaching is complex and multifaceted. the challenge facing many teacher education programs is deciding how to implement a field experience during the first days of school since the starting dates for the k-12 school year and the starting dates for the university are different. a review of the teacher preparation programs across the nation revealed that some universities offer optional first days of school observation field experiences. in these optional programs, teacher education candidates choose to participate in the first days of school observation or elect to substitute another form of field experience. in areas where the k-12 school year begins after the beginning of the university school calendar, soe programs place candidates in local professional development school (pds) sites near the university. faculty at one university in canada found that placing candidates in pds sites was a very beneficial field experience for their candidates. placing candidates in schools on the opening day not only provides their candidates with insight into what it takes to prepare for the first day of school, but also provides the best possible preparation for the candidates’ own first day as a newly qualified teacher the following year (russell, 1999). after years of discussing the feasibility of implementing a first days of school field experience, the school of education faculty at the university of mississippi (um) took on the challenge of devising a workable plan for implementing a first days of school field experience and were rewarded with very encouraging results. the plan revealed promising effects in better preparing secondary, elementary and special education teacher education candidates for their first teaching job. unlike the optional field experience offered at other universities, the um school of education required all k-12 teacher education candidates entering their senior year to participate in the first days of school field experience. placing candidates in schools typically used for field experience within the teacher preparation program was not an option because the starting dates for k-12 schools and the university did not coincide. the solution was to allow teacher education candidates to complete this field experience at a public or private k-12 school that they found in the area where they were located during the month of august. implementing the plan in this manner makes it a unique and flexible alternative that better accommodates the teacher candidates. method the university of mississippi’s school of education has administered the teacher education program evaluation (tepe) to teacher candidates, university supervisors, clinical instructors and administrators in the cooperating schools for over 15 years. as a result of concerns raised on the tepe and during focus-group interviews held with candidates, the school of education planned and implemented the first days of school field experience with senior teacher education candidates. a review of the research supported this decision. candidates’ reflective journals, written during the field experience opportunity, were analyzed to determine their perceptions of the benefits of working with and observing an experienced teacher as they prepared for the school year. in addition, a follow-up study was conducted with graduates who participated in the initial first days of school field experience during their first year of teaching to determine the effectiveness of this experience. the research questions that guided the study are listed below. 1. what connections did teacher candidates make between university instruction and the k-12 setting in relation to preparing for a new school year? 2. what were first-year teachers’ perceptions as to the value of this experience? 3. what evidence was revealed that assisted in making improvements to the experience? research design a mixed-method research design was utilized to answer the questions posed in this study. incorporating both qualitative and quantitative methods allowed for a more complete understanding of the issue at hand. qualitative research incorporates participants’ own words as they relate their ideas, perceptions, and attitudes about the phenomenon. survey research utilizes quantitative methodology that provides an explanation of the phenomenon through numerical data (gay, mills, & airasian, 2006). sample the participants in this study were 244 elementary, secondary, and special education teacher candidates beginning their senior year at the university of mississippi. the first days of school field experience was required for all teacher education candidates at this stage in their program. participants consisted of one hundred sixty-one elementary teacher education candidates, sixty-five secondary teacher education candidates, and eighteen special education teacher education candidates. procedures university instructors talked with teacher education candidates about the importance of the first days of school and the benefits they would receive from participating in this “event” during the semester prior to their senior year. candidates were given a packet of materials that provided specific guidelines of what they were to observe, assist with, and reflect upon. (see guidelines at the end of this article.) other materials included an informational letter from the dean of the school of education and a form to be completed by the school principal where the field experience would take place. in order to make this field experience possible, teacher education candidates were allowed to assist in a k-12 school convenient to them during the opening of the school year, usually during the first weeks of august. it was their responsibility to contact the principal, provide the letter from the dean, and explain their assignment. the principal was asked to complete the form provided and return it to the school of education. the dean’s office then contacted the principal to thank him/her for providing this important opportunity for our student. the teacher education candidates were required to assist one day prior to the first day of school and on the first day of school. following the field experience, the principal notified the dean’s office verifying that the teacher education candidate completed the field experience requirements. candidates turned in their written responses for each item on the observation guideline sheet when they reported for senior orientation at the beginning of the university school year. guideline criteria included information about the physical environment of the classroom, procedures and routines used on the first day of school, implementation of a classroom management plan, and teacher affect. the reflection component of the guidelines required candidates to explain the rationale for decisions made by the classroom teacher and the implications for impact on student and teacher success. candidates were also asked to explain how their ideas about the first days of school were influenced during the observation. teacher education candidates’ written responses to the observation guidelines were utilized in the classroom management course the following semester during student teaching. the candidates’ knowledge and understanding of the importance of the first days of school were extended by using their written responses as a supplement to the course content. their understanding of classroom management was enhanced through group discussions focused on management issues related to their observations during the first days of school experience. in addition, course instructors discovered that some candidates had much richer experiences than others did. candidates were able to benefit from one another’s experience through the structured discussions facilitated by the instructors. data analysis in the initial stage of this study, student written responses to items on the observation guideline sheet were coded and categorized to identify themes within the responses. the follow-up portion of the study was completed by asking first year teachers who participated in the first days of school field experience to complete a survey to indicate their perceptions of the value of the experience. a percent was calculated for each response choice for each survey item. for the open-ended item, responses were coded and categorized to reveal themes. information for improving the first days of school field experience was generated from results of both the qualitative and quantitative approaches. results analysis of observation guideline written responses valuable information about candidates’ conceptualization of preparing for the first day of school was gathered through the analysis of their written responses. this analysis also provided feedback that assisted the school of education in making changes in the first days of schools field experience that better met the needs of the teacher education candidates. two themes emerged from the written responses: realizations about preparing for the school year and management on the first day of school. theme 1: realizations about preparing for the school year. the teacher education candidates assisted with a variety of tasks before the students reported to school. these tasks included putting up bulletin boards, hanging posters, writing names in textbooks, rearranging desks, and copying educational materials. the review of the written responses also indicated that some candidates were not aware of some important aspects of preparing for the first day of school. special education candidates helped prepare the physical environments of classrooms for students with special needs. in those classrooms, seating arrangements were altered to accommodate students with physical disabilities. a secondary candidate was surprised to discover that by the time she got to her school site, the classroom teacher had already worked for a couple of weeks to prepare the classroom for the first day of school, leaving her little to do. one elementary candidate, who observed in a fourth grade classroom, characterized the day before students arrived as a whirlwind of activity. he admitted being exhausted at the end of the day. these were important aspects of teaching that these students had not considered prior to this experience. although most responses indicated our teacher education candidates were impressed with the organization of the physical environments of the classrooms, one candidate noted that the classroom in which she observed remained very messy, even on the first day of school. she realized that this was not how she intended for her classroom to be. candidates from each program were surprised to discover that some school districts could not equip teachers and students with needed supplies. yet they pointed out that this too was a good learning experience because future teachers need to be prepared to deal with such shortages. teacher education candidates also learned that there is more to the beginning of school than preparing the classroom for students. in addition to duties that helped prepare the classroom, some candidates attended teacher’s meetings. one candidate attended a professional development meeting that presented various teaching strategies for teaching writing. another candidate met with kindergarten teachers to plan lessons for the first two weeks of school. one elementary candidate explained how teachers at her field experience site met to discuss test scores and plan strategies to improve students’ test scores. a teacher’s meeting, attended by one secondary candidate, called attention to the need for school safety and familiarized teachers with ways to recognize potential gang related problems. to her surprise, the principal introduced the school’s police officer. this was certainly a wake-up call. theme 2: realizations about managing a classroom on the first day on the first day of school, most teacher education candidates expressed amazement at how much the teacher had to ‘juggle’ in order to take care of everything. numerous candidates were surprised to learn how many duties teachers were responsible for in addition to teaching. candidates in all three programs indicated that many classroom teachers provided clear expectations for the students by going over the classroom rules and reading the handbook to the students. teacher education candidates expressed uncertainty as to how students would behave and how teachers would react. a candidate observing in a second grade classroom expressed pleasure as she observed her classroom teacher greet each student at the door with a big smile and welcome them into the classroom. one candidate was impressed with how well behaved the students were; while another teacher education candidate was shocked to see a child spanked on the first day of school. experiences like these validated the need for an effective classroom management plan, a topic covered in several of their teacher education courses. numerous teacher education candidates indicated that the first day of school was hectic. one candidate even described it as the most organized chaos he had ever experienced. however, even with the chaos, almost every candidate agreed that the experience had been beneficial. a secondary candidate stated that this chaos revealed another dimension. she pointed out that in previous observation experiences, schools were well into their school year and functioned like well-oiled machines. witnessing this disorderly aspect revealed a surprising side she never knew existed. one special education candidate said that she found it encouraging that the first days of school can be exciting and fun when the teacher is prepared. this field experience seemed to diminish fears of the first day of school. the narratives yielded interesting information concerning how teachers spent their time prior to and on the first day of school. many of the teacher education candidates were surprised by the amount of work required to effectively plan lessons and activities for the beginning days of a new school year. most candidates felt the observation was beneficial to them because they were able to see what happened behind the scenes as teachers prepared for the first day of school. some candidates admitted they were intimidated at first, while others stated they were skeptical of the value of the experience. however, after observing these initial days of school, most of the candidates were grateful to have had this experience and felt more confident to plan for the beginning of the year. follow-up survey results teacher education candidates who participated in the initial first days of school field experience were contacted during the fall of their first year of teaching. a follow-up survey, which consisted of ten likert-type items and one open-ended question, was sent electronically to these graduates. the intent of the survey was to determine the benefits of the experience to the new teachers and to assist university faculty in strengthening the experience for future teacher education candidates. responses to the items on the followup survey ranged from strongly agree, agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, disagree, to strongly disagree. results of the survey are included on table 1: table 1 first year teacher responses to follow-up survey the first days of school observation: strongly agree agree somewhat agree somewhat disagree disagree strongly disagree 1. provided me with an opportunity to assist a classroom teacher in preparing a classroom for the beginning of the school year. 54.5% 27.3% 9.1% 9.1% 2. provided me with an opportunity to assist in a classroom the first day students reported to school. 63.6% 18.2% 9.1% 9.1% 3. was beneficial to my preparation as a classroom teacher. 63.6% 9.1% 9.1% 9.1% 9.1% 4. helped prepare me for my first day of school as a classroom teacher. 54.5% 27.3% 9.1% 9.1% 5. reduced my anxiety about the first day of school. 36.4% 27.3% 18.2% 9.1% 9.1% 6. helped me organize my classroom for the first day of school. 27.3% 18.2% 18.2% 9.1% 27.3% 7. helped me organize materials for the first day of school. 36.4% 36.4% 9.1% 9.1% 9.1% 8. provided me with effective procedural techniques to implement on the first day of school. 36.4% 27.3% 18.2% 9.1% 9.1% 9. enhanced my content knowledge during class discussions in the classroom management class. 18.2% 27.3% 36.4% 9.1% 9.1% 10. should be continued as a required field experience component in the teacher education program. 18.2% 27.3% 36.4% 9.1% 9.1% note. cells that contain a indicate that no response was made for that rating category. although the return rate was low (41%), the survey revealed some interesting results. • overall, respondents were positive about the experience and the majority strongly agreed or agreed that it was beneficial in their preparation of becoming a classroom teacher and in preparing them for the first day of school. the majority also strongly agreed or agreed that the experience provided ideas on procedural techniques to use on the first day of school. • the respondents were not as positive, however, that the experience reduced their anxiety about the first day of school or that the experience helped them organize their own classrooms or materials for the first day of school. • when asked whether the experience strengthened their understanding of the connections between course content and the classroom and whether this experience should continue to be required, only 18.2% of respondents disagreed. to better prepare teacher education candidates for the first days of school, results of the follow-up survey indicated three areas that should receive focus in our teacher education program. the areas were related to reducing anxiety about the first day of school, and providing more guidance on organizing the classroom and instructional materials for the first day of school. teacher education candidates and first-year teachers provided suggestions for improvement on the teacher candidate narratives and on the follow-up survey that would strengthen these areas. these suggestions, described below, are being taken into consideration while planning for future first day of school experiences. teacher candidates felt the experience should last longer than two days; one response indicated that it would be beneficial to remain in the classroom the entire first week of school. other candidates responded that it would be beneficial to meet with the teachers several times throughout the summer as they prepared their classroom and considered lesson plans. the days prior to school starting are hectic for teachers and the candidates did not feel they had adequate time to talk with the teachers and ask questions related to their experience. after experiencing the first days of school as teachers in their own classrooms, first-year teachers indicated they realized much more was involved in starting a new school year. they suggested that spending more than two days in a k-12 school setting would be beneficial to future teacher education candidates. the extra time in the classroom at the beginning of the school year would allow more dialogue with veteran teachers and would involve them in a wider range of beginning of the year experiences. feedback from principals and classroom teachers was also positive. they indicated the extra help at this hectic time of year has been very beneficial to the classroom teacher and students. conclusion as lepage, et. al. (2005) indicated the opportunity to participate in preparation for the first day of school is an invaluable experience for teacher education candidates. being a part of this allows them to acquire knowledge about procedures and routines that should be in place; about planning for instruction and classroom management; and learning about the community, the students, and their families. findings from the study conducted at the university of mississippi support these ideas and indicate the need for the program to add more time to the first days of school experience to address teacher candidate concerns related to anxiety and preparation for the beginning of school. the results also provide information about the transfer of learning teacher candidates made between the university course content and the k-12 classroom that later became useful in their first year of teaching. allowing teacher candidates to observe and assist in-service teachers as they prepare for the beginning of the school year heightened candidates’ awareness of what was involved. providing a predetermined list of items on which candidates focus during the experience and use as they reflected on the time spent in the classroom proved very beneficial to their understanding of the importance of establishing a positive k-12 environment. as a follow-up activity, these candidates were surveyed during their first year of teaching to determine the value of the first days of school field experience and to provide suggestions of ways the experience may be improved. improvements to the field experience for future teacher education candidates were based on the reflections and the suggestions for improvement provided by the participants. the initial first days of school field experience plan used at the university of mississippi shows promise for programs searching for a plan that will allow their teacher education candidates to spend time in the k-12 setting at the beginning of the school year. however, each teacher preparation program must consider their own circumstances when developing a plan to meet the needs of the future teachers in their education preparation programs. if scheduling a field experience for teacher candidates during the first days of school is not possible because of time constraints, the use of video clips, interactive videos, or other electronic means could be an alternative. this opportunity will be beneficial to teacher candidates however it is structured. references bransford, j., darling-hammond, l., & lepage, p. (2005). introduction. in l. darlinghammond and j. bransford (eds.). preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. (1-39). san francisco: josseybass. darling-hammond, l. (2006). powerful teacher education: lessons from exemplary programs. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. darling-hammond, l., hammerness, k., grossman, p., rust, f., and shulman, l. (2005). the design of teacher education programs. in l. darling-hammond and j. bransford (eds.). preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 390-441). san francisco: jossey-bass. gay, l.r., mills, g. e. and airasian, p. (2006) educational research: competencies for analysis and application (8th ed.). upper saddle river, nj: pearson. guyton, e., & mcintyre, d. j. (1990). student teaching and school experiences. in w. r. houston (ed.) handbook of research on teacher education (pp 514-535). new york: macmillan. hammerness, k., darling-hammond, l., bransford, j. (2005). how teachers learn and develop. in l. darling-hammond and j. bransford (eds.). preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 358-389). san francisco: jossey-bass. lepage, p., darling-hammond, l., akar, h., gutierrez, c., jenkins-gunn, e., & rosebrock, k. (2005). classroom management. in l. darling-hammond and j. bransford (eds.). preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 327 357). san francisco: jossey-bass. moore, r. (2003). reexamining the field experiences of teacher education candidates. journal of teacher education, 54 (1), 31-42. ingersoll, r.m. (2003). the teacher shortage: myth or reality? educational horizons, 81(3), 146-152. mcglinn, j. (2003). the impact of experiential learning on student teachers. clearing house,76 (3), 143-148. ross, s., hughes, t., & hill, r. (2001). field experiences as meaningful contexts for learning about learning. journal of educational research, 75 (2), 103107. russell, t. (1999). the challenge of change in teacher education. journal of teacher education, 45, 86-95. sommers, r.c. (2000). learning to set the stage. washington, d.c. (eric document no. ed 468 427). wong, h.k., & wong, r.t. (2000). the first days of school. sunnyvale, ca: harry k. wong publications. first days of school observation guidelines teacher education candidate: grade: program: elementary secondary special education district school: principal classroom teacher part 1: respond to the following in narrative form based on your first of the school year two-day observations. • what preparations were made by the classroom teacher prior to the students’ first day? • how did students enter the class, and how/where were they seated? • describe the room environment (e.g., posters, bulletin boards, teacher table, etc.) • what was the desk/table arrangement? provide a brief description and attach a detailed diagram. • were there posted/written objectives or daily agenda? if so, describe: • were there posted classroom/school rules? if so, describe. if not, how were the students informed of the rules? • how were textbooks and other materials they distributed? • what was the routine for dismissal (bell or other)? • describe the teacher’s effect (e.g., tone, smiling, friendly, strict, humorous, etc.) part 2: reflection of observation experience • what procedure and routines did the teacher introduce on the first day that will clearly be used all year long? • what did the students learn on their first day of class about behavior expectations from the teacher? what did the teacher do (both implicitly and explicitly) to teach the students about his/her behavior expectations? • what did you find surprising or unexpected about your observations? how have your ideas about the first days of school been influenced by this observation?  teacher education candidates will turn in the completed computer generated narrative at the beginning of the next school year at the senior orientation. microsoft word 807-4235-4-le.doc twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 1 volume 15, number 3 october 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources abigail l. larrison,ab alan j. daly,a and carol vanvoorenb university of california, san diegoa california state university, san marcosb as the number of public waldorf schools operating in the u.s. continues to grow, there is a need to examine the effectiveness of this approach in the public sector. this empirical study provides a beginning look at available quantitative and qualitative extant data on public waldorf schools obtained from state and national websites. available data included standardized tests and parent comment boards hosted by the independent source, greatschools.org. public waldorf schools were compared to their district standardized test scores in reading and math as well as matched comparison schools. test score results suggested the waldorf experience provided a slower academic build-up resulting in poorer test scores in the lower grades followed by higher levels of advanced performance in the 8th grade. quantitative content analysis of parent comments supported the idea that public waldorf is indeed a more holistic approach with greater emphasis on the arts, community and developmentally appropriate practice. findings suggest standard measures of school quality may midjudge the effectiveness of holistic education particularly with regards to academics. challenges for successfully bringing holistic education into the current cultural-political climate are discussed. keywords: charter schools, holistic education, steiner, testing, waldorf it has been more than two decades since the first public waldorf methods school opened its doors in the high poverty urban area of milwaukee, wi. the milwaukee urban waldorf elementary school created in 1991 was an immediate success, increasing grade level reading scores from 26% to 63% in just three years (mcdermott et al., 1996). since that time, the number of public waldorf methods schools has continued to grow across the united states, with more than half operating in the state of california. although waldorf has predominantly existed in the private sector and has been called a “special philosophy for special children” (see oberman, 2008, p. 10), on its inception waldorf was intended to meet the needs of all types of students. in speaking to teachers, rudolf steiner described the aims of the school as, “a school for all classes” with the aim of taking into “account of what is universally human.” he goes on to say, “in the waldorf school what is considered is the educational principles and no difference is made in their application between a child of the proletariat and a child of the ex-kaiser” (steiner, 1922/1947, lecture 4). steiner also made specific recommendations as to how the school must adapt to fit sufficiently well within the existing structures of traditional schools. this running in parallel with the traditional schools was both strategic and practical as steiner stated: this arrangement to run parallel with the organization of ordinary schools was an current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 endeavor to accord our own intentions and convictions with things as they are, to make a certain harmony. for there is nothing unpractical about the waldorf school, on the contrary, on every point [waldorf education] aims at realizing things which have a practical application to life. (steiner, 1922/1947, lecture 4) nonetheless, waldorf schools in today’s modern public educational milieu face unique challenges when operating within the policy structure of standards driven high stakes testing. the difficulty of this endeavor is highlighted by the recent closing of the milwaukee urban school. hence, research on the potential of waldorf to provide a holistic experience for public school children is critical if we are to protect this approach from the encroachment of rigid policies misaligned with developmental and holistic pedagogies (nichols & berliner, 2007; ravitch, 2010). waldorf is not an add-on program to a traditional approach; rather it is structurally and functionally different from conventional public education. it is not a free school where students can decide whether to attend class or not, and it is not a democratic school where students vote on coursework and other aspects of running the school. waldorf education follows a learner-centered pedagogy within a specific curricular framework including content suffused with texts from mythology and classical literature (ogletree, 1975). the order of the curriculum across grades is set to accord with the developmental and psychological challenges of each specific age range. teachers are trained to appreciate these specific challenges and utilize meditative practice to fully understand and meet the needs of each student in his/her classroom (woods, ashley, & woods, 2005). steiner describes his approach as being “based on educational theories founded on a real knowledge of the growing, developing human being” (steiner, 1971, p. 15). the waldorf curriculum moves through learning first by engaging students’ motor/action systems, then students’ emotions and finally engaging students’ knowledge and skill base; this is referred popularly to teaching to the head, heart and hand (steiner, 1919/1997). perhaps the most significant difference between waldorf and conventional education is the structure of the school day. rather than switching from class to class in 50 minutes blocks, the students engage in what is called the main lesson presented at the beginning of the school day while the afternoon is spent entirely in what some schools would be considered electives: second languages, drama, painting, movement, music, and handwork. the main lesson contains the core of the academic content and is fully integrated across disciplines. for example, when the students in 7th grade study the renaissance, the main lesson includes content from history, math, science and art from that time. discussions of the major figures of the time are presented as historical narratives within which cross discipline content is presented via the major discoveries of those historical figures. so for example, learning about leonardo da vinci, students might hear how he was commissioned to draw images for the mathematician luca pacioli. from there the discussion of the mathematical concepts of the golden ratio could be followed by student created geometrical constructions as well as perspective drawing. across the grades, the main lesson content follows logically and/or historically so that each year provides the foundation for the following years of schooling. in this way students are able to have significant context allowing for greater ability for meaning making, something that is well recognized in the brain sciences as critical for learning (tokuhamaespinosa, 2011). all basic content is addressed through the main lesson, and the subject is presented for several weeks during which students prepare a high quality product called the main lesson book. general themes and sequencing of content are defined by the waldorf curriculum, however, the details and specific focus is left to the teacher’s discretion, and can be based on the interests of the students. completely original content is added to meet the specific needs and interests of the community as steiner was clear that waldorf education must be responsive to the space and time in which it would be enacted (steiner, 1919/1966). other central aspects of traditional waldorf include: (1) the integration of the arts into all subjects, (2) a slower, more developmental approach to academics, (3) looping of students with a single main lesson teacher, (4) block scheduling in which two hours a day are spent on a single subject for several weeks, (5) two second languages starting in first grade, and (6) no text books or standardized testing (ogletree, 1975). modern day waldorf schools also have rules regarding exposure to media. the incorporation of technology is delayed, with some schools not introducing computers until high school. public waldorf schools attempt to maintain as much of this framework as possible, but of course must also follow the requirements of public schools, including the administration of standardized tests. the empirical research on waldorf education is surprisingly limited given its nearly 100 year history. however, the available studies suggest a positive impact of waldorf on a number of cognitive and social outcome measures. these outcomes are aligned with some of the more recent initiatives in education to promote greater creativity and critical thinking in students (partnership for 21 century skills, 2008; bellanca & brandt, 2010). waldorf has been shown to be associated with greater creativity (ogletree, 1971), critical thinking (gidley, 1998; mitchell & gerwin, 2007) and potential for engagement as global citizens (dahlin, 2010; oberman, 2008). research suggests that students attending waldorf schools show more mature social and moral impulses twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 3 (armon, 1997; dahlin, 2010; rivers & soutter, 1996) as well as better social skills (payne, river-bento, & skillings, 2002) and a reduction in bullying of peers (rivers & soutter, 1996). further, studies indicate that waldorf students value lasting relationships and helping others (mitchell & gerwin, 2007) and have a tendency to have more long term friendships (oberman, 2007). research findings on the academic outcomes of waldorf students are scarcer. oppenheimer (1999) reported that waldorf graduates’ sat scores are well above the national average; however these findings are confounded by the fact that most waldorf schools are private, and that parents tend to be well-educated and financially stable. studies in public waldorf schools, although limited, indicate a positive impact of waldorf on academic achievement (oberman, 2008; schieffer & busse, 2001). schieffer and busse (2001) compared achievement scores on national assessments of 4th graders in the urban waldorf school to scores in a neighboring school with a similar demographic profile. overall there were a greater number of students achieving higher levels of performance in the waldorf schools. oberman (2007) examined not just overall test scores, but the interaction of performance and grade level. overall, test scores were significantly lower for waldorf students; however, this effect was isolated to the early grades. the significantly lower second grade test-scores in her sample were replaced by superior scores by the 8th grade waldorf students, and these standardized test scores were on par with the top ten peer-alike public schools in the state (oberman, 2007/2008). in an article examining parent and teacher’s perceptions on the outcomes of waldorf on students, smith (1998) reported that parents felt that waldorf education developed artistic abilities and appreciation of nature in students as well as imagination, intuitive abilities, and a strong sense of self. there was also a belief that waldorf contributed to academic and intellectual skills and, although less frequently cited, a responsibility to the local and global community and spiritual awareness. the study by smith (1998) was performed in private schools. parent perceptions of public waldorf schools have not been formally examined, and hence this research addresses this gap in the literature by examining parent’s self-reported perceptions of their experiences with waldorf using available online data. in their extensive report on waldorf schools in the uk, woods, ashley, and woods (2005) point to the fact that: no research was found on steiner schools entering the public sector, nor on the process and outcomes of mutual sharing of practices between steiner and mainstream schools. both of these topics would benefit from systematic investigation, through action research and other methods. (p. 6) although the number of waldorf schools in the public sector continues to grow, the dearth of literature continues. beyond the need to examine waldorf in particular, there is a noteworthy value in determining how holistic approaches are faring in the current context of high stakes testing. by examining the ways in which waldorf schools are performing under the constraints and structure of public education, we can begin to identify the issues facing holistic and alternative approaches in general as they are implemented under the current standards driven model of education. this study compared standardized test measures of public waldorf schools using three different data sets. data set a examined national public waldorf schools against district standardized test scores for the year 2008, data set b examined performance on standardized testing and reporting (star) for california public waldorf schools for the year 2009, and data set c examined longitudinal performance on the star for california public waldorf schools from the years 20052011. in addition to examining quantitative test scores, this study looked at open-ended school comments posted from the parents, teachers, and students obtained from the third-party resource greatschools.org. content analysis of parent comments from waldorf schools were examined for multiple themes including issues surrounding holistic education. the current challenges and successes of waldorf schools can be connected with greater emerging trends and issues being faced nationally. becoming aware of how alternative approaches perform might help guide practice to meet the concerns and issues of communities working towards greater holism in their local public schools. methods school selection all public waldorf schools in the united states were considered for use in our study. a list of public waldorf schools were obtained from the waldorf answer website (http://www.waldorfanswers.com/ publicwaldorf .htm#list) and from oberman (2007) producing an initial sample of 34. schools were selected from the list given they met the criteria outlined in table 1. the exclusion of schools that had been in operation for less than five years acted to assure the student had had a minimal number of years participating in the waldorf curriculum. the initial exclusion criteria for data set a were also applied to the two following data sets, but were expanded to exclude schools outside of california. this was done so that differences and variability caused by the comparison of multiple state standardized tests would be eliminated. for data set a, standardized test scores in reading and math by public waldorf schools were compared to the district averages. twenty waldorf current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 table 1 school exclusion criteria data set a – 2008 national waldorf data set b – 2009 california waldorf data set c – 2005-2011 ca. waldorf longitudinal charter less than 5 years (n=2) non-california schools no available data from 2005/20062010/2011 court ordered/alternative schools (n=1) same as data set a same as data set b grade range less than 6th grade (n=8) unavailable test scores (n=3) table 2 school selection criteria quantitative data sets data set a data set b data set c waldorf schools all national waldorf public schools (n=20) ca waldorf public schools (n=15) ca waldorf public schools (n=11) control/comparison schools district averages (n=20) matched in district for ses & % minority (n=20) highest-performing k-8th schools in ca (n=11) data sources www.greatschools.org www.schoolmatters.com california department of education http://star.cde.ca.gov/ california department of education http://star.cde.ca.gov/ dates collected 11/2009-2/2010 4/2010 2/2011-8/2011 schools were used for this data set, and were compared to their 20 district scores. data sets b and c examined california waldorf schools matched to comparison schools according to appropriate criteria (see table 2). data set b comparison schools were selected from the same districts and matched for socioeconomic status (ses) and percent of minority groups with known achievement gaps, i.e. african american and hispanic. fifteen waldorf schools were compared to twenty comparison schools. this was because only ten of the comparison schools provided a full k-8 education. the remaining matches represented separate elementary and middle schools, each matched for demographics. for data set c, the longitudinal study, because it used a within-subjects design, there was a greater requirement for matching schools with continuous enrollment of their student body from 2nd – 8th grade. eleven waldorf schools met this criteria, and eleven schools with k-8 education were matched. the reduced number of available schools meeting the criteria of k-8th and data available from 2005-2011 made it not possible to match across every demographic variable or to maintain cohesion within the district. for data set c, rather than matching schools for demographic variables, comparison schools were selected based on performance. the schools with the highest performance ratings according to the greatschools.org rating system were selected as our final eleven matches (see appendix ii). school selection, qualitative data set qualitative data were collected from the greatschools.org website from may to june 2011. all waldorf public schools for which parent comments were available were utilized in the qualitative data analysis, resulting in a total of 23 schools (see appendix i for list). comparison schools represented all of the matched schools utilized across the quantitative data analyses for which parent comments were available on the greatschools.org website. all of the 26 comparison twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 5 schools used from data set b and data set c had parent comments available for analysis (see appendix ii). data analysis –quantitative data anovas. for data set a and b reading and math score data were submitted to individual between subject anovas where group (comparison, waldorf) and grade (2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th) represented the two between factors. any significant interactions were further submitted to a post-hoc fisher lsd. for data set c, data were submitted to repeated measures within and between factor anovas where the between factor was group (comparison, waldorf) and the within factor was year (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011). treatment of missing data. there were several missing values in all three of the data sets. for data set a there were the following missing data values: 7th grade reading (2 schools), 7th grade math (3 schools), 8th grade reading (5 schools), 8th grade math (7 schools). there was also no 2nd grade test score data in several schools since nclb does not require 2nd grade testing. data from the following states did not provide 2nd grade scores: arizona (n=3), oregon (n=1), alaska (n=1) or wisconsin (n=1). no attempt was made to replace or estimate missing values in these cases. however, a missing value for a waldorf school resulted in the elimination of the district score for that school so that scores were paired with their comparison districts only. thre greater number of missing values for math was due to the use of alternative testing in the algebra subtest in 8th grade. for this reason, data sets b and c excluded 8th grade math scores. for data set b there were the following missing data values: 7th grade reading and math (2 schools), 8th grade reading (4 schools) making the group totals (n=13 and n=11, respectively). only five out of the 15 schools provided general math scores for the 8th grade, as mentioned previously, due to school alternate assessment of algebra; therefore, 8th grade math scores were excluded from both this data set and data set c. missing values from comparison schools were eliminated when no comparison values from waldorf schools were available. no attempt was made to replace or estimate missing values. for data set c, the use of repeated measures, made it necessary to replace missing values with appropriate estimates. there were three missing data points: two from year 2005 and one from 2011. the estimated values for these missing data points were determined by taking the mean difference between the missing year, and adding it to the closest available year. so the for example, the mean difference between 2005 and 2006 for waldorf schools was -8, so taking the 2006 score and subtracting 8 provided the estimate. there were no missing values from matched comparison schools. estimated values were required in order to run the repeated measures anova, however, to verify that these estimated values did not impact the overall performance scores, t-test values of year-by-year differences were run, demonstrating that no changes the data output were seen when the estimated values were removed. qualitative data analysis-content analysis first coding: emergent themes. in the first stage of coding we examined 606 comments from 23 public waldorf schools. these comments were coded by hand using in vivo and descriptive coding techniques (saldana, 2009). hand coding was performed by the first author and results were discussed with the other authors. coded comments were assigned, based on these discussions, into three groups: (1) parent school relationships, which corresponded to the codes of: community, parent involvement, teachers, leadership; (2) academic core: second languages, academics, curriculum; and (3) whole child education: 21st century skills, art and music, holistic education, developmentally appropriate practice (dap), love of learning, world citizens. each code from these three emergent themes was then utilized for the second coding procedure. although there are the opportunities for teachers, students, administrators, and other community members to submit comments on the greatschools.org site, our data showed that approximately 97% of the comments were from parents (also including the very few comments by grandparents or other direct relatives or guardians of the students). non-parent/guardian comments consisted of less than 1% of comments from teachers, and slightly less than 2% from students or former students. because of the low numbers of comments from other sources than parents we refer to the analyses as parent comments and no effort was made to distinguish between comments from any of the subgroups during the frequency and subsequently autocoding process. second coding: autocoding procedure. autocoding is an approach to content analysis that acts to minimize subjectivity. the use of predetermined keywords allowed for examination of patterns of responses in waldorf schools compared to non-waldorf schools. the same 606 responses from the 23 waldorf schools used in the first coding were compared to the 1013 comments posted for the 26 comparison schools. there was a higher average number of responses for comparison versus waldorf schools (mean= 39, 26 respectively) however, median values for comments were fewer for comparison versus waldorf schools (median= 11, 17 respectively). each school was entered as a separate case into hyperresearch™ qda software and was coded using key terms relating to our selected themes (see appendix iii). the autocodes were checked for accurate correspondence with the theme before being included in the final counts. the frequencies counts were then changed to percents and compared for pattern in responses using an exploratory factor analysis. as with current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 our first hand-coding procedure, each of the parents’ comments was separated into positive and negative statements. patterns of responding across positive and negative comments were submitted to separate independent-samples t-tests with school type as the grouping variable. results data set a – 2008 scores there were several significant differences between waldorf student performance compared to their district scores in both reading and math. for reading, there was no significant difference for group, f(1,240) = 1.13. however, there was a significant effect of grade f(6,240) = 13.93, p<0.0001, as well as a group x grade interaction, f(6,240) = 4.65, p<0.001 (fig. 1a). this effect was due to an increase in reading scores progressing from the lowest to the higher grades in waldorf-based curriculums. fischer lsd post-hoc analysis revealed significant differences for group at second grade (p<0.01), where waldorf methods showed significantly poorer test scores than their matched districts. there were no significant fisher test values for 3rd, 4th or 5th grades. for 6th, 7th and 8th grade, however, waldorf students significantly outperformed district comparisons (p<0.05 and p<0.01 respectively). for math scores, unlike reading, there was a significant main effect of group, f(1,240) = 9.47, p<0.01, but there was no significant main effect of grade. similar to reading, there was a significant interaction between group and grade, f(6,240) = 2.53, p<0.05, (see fig. 1b). fisher lsd post-hoc analyses revealed significant differences between waldorf and district scores at 3rd grade (p<0.01). this was due to poorer performance by waldorf students at this grade level. no significant differences were noted at any other grade level. data from our first analysis were taken from nationwide public waldorf programs compared to their district scores. some concerns over the validity of these comparisons, specifically regarding use of multiple state measures and comparing average district scores with individual waldorf schools, needed to be addressed. a second set of data was collected to address these issues. the criteria for the second data set are outlined above (see table 2). data set b – 2009 scores waldorf schools in california matched to nonwaldorf schools in the same or neighboring districts figure 1. waldorf curriculum was associated with poor initial performance in the early grades in reading (1a) and math (1b) this effect was reversed in the higher grades. (error bars = sem). twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 7 table 3 demographic information from waldorf schools in california and matched comparisons waldorf n=15 comparison n=20 class size % ses parent education % minority teacher credentials waldorf 23.4 19.9 3.93 11 89.8* comparison 25.4 20.7 3.76 15.4 98.7 (* = p<0.05)(parent education 1= did not grad hs; 5=completed graduate school, % minority = %hispanic+%african american) figure 2. waldorf school scores compared to comparison schools matched for ses. scores are presented as those students performing at or above the proficient level (2a., 2c) and those performing at the advanced level (2b, 2d). waldorf students performed more poorly in early grades, but these differences were no longer present in the upper grades. (error bars = sem). current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 showed similar demographic profiles (see table 3) five out of the 15 matches were taken from separate elementary and middle schools, the other 10 matches provided k-8th education. demographic data were submitted to separate individual t-tests and showed no significant differences between waldorf and matched non-waldorf schools on any of the demographic measures, except teacher credentialing, where waldorf schools were associated with fewer credentialed teachers p<0.05. anova analysis the california department of education website breaks down performance not only by percent proficient or above, but into five levels: far below, below, basic, proficient, and advanced. we compared performance across schools by comparing percent proficiency and above (proficient + advanced scores) as well as looking at students who were in the advanced range for both math and reading. there were several significant differences between waldorf school scores and district scores in both reading and math. for reading, there was a significant difference for group for both those scoring above proficient, as well as for percent advanced only, f(1,198) = 15.4, p<0.001; f(1,198). =6.7, p<0.01, respectively. there was also a significant group x grade interaction for both proficient, f(6,198) = 12.2, p<0.001 (fig 2a) and advanced scores, f(6,198) = 4.0, p<0.001 (fig. 2b). this effect was due to poorer performance in reading and math in early grades shifting to better performance higher grades in waldorf schools. fisher lsd post-hoc analysis revealed significant differences between groups at second and third grade (p<0.01), for students above proficiency (advanced + proficient) and for second grade and third grade (p<0.01, p<0.05 respectively) for students in advanced proficiency. although not significant, there was a trend towards significance for 8th grade reading scores in the advanced range, (p=0.08). this was due to higher percentages of waldorf students scoring in the advanced range by 8th grade. for math scores, there was a significant main effect for group and a group x grade interaction both for students’ scoring above basic, as well as those scoring in the advanced range f(1,188) = 18.7, p<0.001; f(1,188). =26.9, p<0.001, f(6,188) = 5.7, p<0.001 (fig 2c), f(6,188) = 4.7, p<0.001 (fig. 2d). fisher lsd post-hoc analysis revealed significant differences between groups in second through fifth grades for students above basic (advanced + proficient) and for students in advanced proficiency. this effect was no longer significant in 6th through 8th grade. data set c – 2005 to 2011 waldorf schools are unique in their continuity of education. more than simply remaining in the same school through the elementary and middle school years, the students and teacher in waldorf are intentionally kept together through the practice of looping; i.e. instruction by a single main lesson teacher from grade one to grade eight. data from our previous analyses indicated improved test scores of students in the higher grades. however, examining cross-sectional data from a single testing year limits the assumptions regarding the growth of those same students. in order to address whether individual classes of students would demonstrate the same pattern of performance as our cross-sectional data, test scores of waldorf school classes from grades two to grade eight corresponding to the academic school years of 20052011 were submitted to repeated measures within subject anovas. grade eight data for mathematics were excluded based on the loss of subjects in that year due to the high number of schools opting to take the algebra portion of the math exam rather than the general math exam for eighth grade. performance of waldorf students from california schools were compared to schools matched for continuity of grade (i.e. combined elementary and middle school program) and the availability of test scores from 2005-2011. because of the limited number of schools meeting these criteria, it was not possible to match on all variables known to affect standardized test scores (see table 4). comparison schools were chosen based on the nationally recognized greatschools.org table 4 demographic information from 2010 for waldorf and comparison schools included in the longitudinal analysis waldorf ( n=11) comparison ( n=11) charter school class size ses parent education minority teacher credentials parents’ school rating great school rating waldorf 9 22.1 18.8 3.83 13.1 92.9 4.36 5.82 comparison 8 22.2 19.4 3.55 32.9* 95.2 4.09 7.45* (*p<0.01) (parent rating, 1=poor, 5=excellent) (greatschool rating, 1=low, 10=high) twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 9 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!reading!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!math! 3a.!students!above!basic! 3c.!students!below!basic! 3b.!students!advanced! 0! 10! 20! 30! 40! 50! 60! 70! 2005! 2006! 2007! 2008! 2009! 2010! 2011! pe rc en t'o f's tu de nt s' cont! wald! 0! 10! 20! 30! 40! 50! 2005! 2006! 2007! 2008! 2009! 2010! 0! 10! 20! 30! 40! 50! 60! 2005! 2006! 2007! 2008! 2009! 2010! 2011! pe rc en t'o f's tu de nt s' cont! wald! 10! 20! 30! 40! 50! 2005! 2006! 2007! 2008! 2009! 2010! 0! 10! 20! 30! 40! 50! 60! 70! 80! 90! 2005! 2006! 2007! 2008! 2009! 2010! 2011! pe rc en t'o f's tu de nt s' cont! wald! 10! 20! 30! 40! 50! 60! 70! 80! 90! 2005! 2006! 2007! 2008! 2009! 2010! figure 3a-c. reading and math scores (column 1 &2 respectively) for california public waldorf schools compared to high performing california k-8 schools. waldorf students scored poorer in the early grades, but show significant improvement in the later grades (error bars = sem). current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 table 5 t-test post-hoc analyses of waldorf and non-waldorf schools* reading – t-tests & p values t-test p-values 2nd grade 3rd grade 4th grade 5th grade 6th grade 7th grade 8th grade above basic -4.53 -1.82 -1.16 .38 .06 .42 2.02 .00 .08 .26 .71 .95 .68 .06 advanced -5.23 -1.27 -.14 .84 .27 2.22 1.99 .00 .22 .89 .41 .79 .04 .06 below basic 5.25 2.38 1.75 1.29 1.19 -.70 -.33 .00 .03 .10 .21 .25 .49 .74 math – t-tests & p values 2nd grade 3rd grade 4th grade 5th grade 6th grade 7th grade above basic -2.94 -3.42 -2.86 -1.77 -.69 1.58 .01 .00 .01 .09 .50 .13 advanced -4.24 -3.21 -2.70 -1.16 -.32 1.75 .00 .00 .01 .26 .75 .10 below basic 2.78 3.37 2.81 2.14 1.52 -.63 .01 .00 .01 .05 .14 .53 note. * data corresponds to fig 3a-c. darker blue indicates significantly poorer performance by waldorf students, while darker orange indicates significantly better performance. lighter blue indicates performance trending towards significantly poorer performance, while lighter orange indicates performance trending toward significantly better performance. (above basic = proficient + advanced; below basic = below + far below basic) rating system score. this score is based on a number of performance variables (http://www.greatschools.org/finda-school/defining-your-ideal/2423-ratings.gs). in addition, the greatschools.org site provides the opportunity for parents to rate their own school. notably, the greatschools.org performance measure was significantly higher in our selected schools, suggesting that the schools selected for comparison were “better” schools. however, there was no difference between parent ratings on their satisfaction with the school. there was no significant difference in the ses measure between our groups. however, there was a significantly greater number of african american and/or latino minorities in our comparison schools. although previous research has shown a relationship between minority students and standardized test performance, correlational analysis between percent minority and students scoring proficient or above in our sample did not indicate a negative impact of percent minority. on the contrary, using a pearson’s bivariate correlation, california standardized test (cst) performance measures were positively correlated with increasing percent minority, these included reading scores for 2005, r(20)= 0.514, p<05; and math scores for 2007, r(20) = 0.575, p<0.01. this reflects the nature of the schools that were selected for comparison, of which many utilized unique approaches to teaching, i.e. international schools, open classroom, positive discipline, project based learning (see appendix ii). anova analysis. for the test score longitudinal data analysis we performed separate mixed between and within factor anovas for the following four categories: basic level, above basic (proficient + advanced), below basic (below basic + far below basic), and advanced. there were no group main effects or group interactions on the percent of students achieving basic level performance, and therefore basic scores were not included in any other of the analyses. the findings from the remaining three categories were as follows. for reading scores above basic (i.e. proficient and above), there was a main effect of time, f(6,15)=71.6, p<0.0005, but no main effect of group. this was also true for those scoring in advanced only f(6,15)=54.7, p<0.0005. there was also a significant group x time interaction for both above basic f(6,15)=12.7, p<0.0005, and advanced only f(6,15)=8.59, p<0.0005. this was the result of increasing numbers of students in waldorf twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 11 education achieving higher levels of proficiency by later grades compared to no change seen in comparison students. in math there was no main effect for either group or time, for above basic and advanced only. however, there was a significant interaction, between group x time for both above basic f(5,16)=7.89, p<0.0005 and advanced f(5,16)=7.89, p<0.0005. this was due to increasing scores in later grades for waldorf students, while matched schools declined in their average scores (fig 3a, 3b). for scores below basic the trend was reversed. reading and math showed main effects for group (p<0.005; p<0.05, respectively) and time (ps < 0.0005). in addition, both reading and math scores below and far below basic resulted in significant interactions for group x time f(6,15)=14.8, p<0.0005; f(5,16)=4.04, p<0.01 (figure 1c). post hoc analysis: independent samples ttests. the initial repeated measures anova was significant for group x time for above basic, advanced and for below basic. in order to examine which of the grade levels differed between our groups we examined differences at each time point using independent sample t-tests (table 5). there were several significant differences between our two groups in the early grades. all of the performance levels for reading and math show significantly poorer performance by waldorf students in 2nd grade (ps < 0.01). by the 6th grade waldorf students were no longer performing more poorly than matched schools, and for advanced students by 7th grade there was a significant difference in performance in reading, and a trend towards better performance in math (p<0.05, p<0.10, respectively). in 8th grade, both those scoring above basic and in advanced range in reading showed a trend towards better performance than non-waldorf students (p<0.10). qualitative data results first coding. the first coding of the parent comments utilized waldorf school data only. this first coding sequence segregated positive and negative comments, an approach supported by quantitative content analysis using frequency coding (saldana, 2009; weber, 1990). by far the majority of the comments were positive, with the emotional tones of enthusiasm, gratitude, appreciation, ownership, and pride. approximately 10% of the codes were negative, and these had the tones of warning, insulting, sarcasm, disappointment and anger. once positive and negative comments were separated, differences in code frequencies between the positive and negative codes provided a look at tendencies within the data. the frequency of the more common hand-codes is presented in order (table 6). many of the codes corresponded to the central elements of waldorf education. parents appreciated the arts integration, music and handwork along with second language starting in the early grades and continuing throughout the child’s education. in reference to the waldorf approach, parents particularly liked the holistic model, and cited frequently the attention to “head, heart and hand” (steiner, 1919/1971). positive comments included an appreciation for the slow build-up to academics and the use of play in the early childhood without formally teaching reading until later. in fact there were positive comments for almost all of the aspects central to waldorf (see ogletree, 1975). although the data are rich, it is beyond the scope of this paper to go into too much depth. here we report specifically on the most common themes that could provide indicators as to how waldorf schools in the public sector are being received by parents. for the first coding, i.e. hand-coded waldorf school data, the most common code was teachers. parents referred to teachers as caring, committed, dedicated, aware, knowledgeable, and doubly-credentialed. teachers were seen as being sensitive and responsive to their child and respecting individual differences. not all teacher comments were positive. negative posts were more varied and mentioned several problems including: communication, flakiness, cold, cliquish attitudes, aggressive behavior towards their child, and brushing off parents. one aspect of the teacher-student relationship that was specific to waldorf spoke to the difficulty of successfully “looping” with the child given factors such as teacher attrition and inconsistent teacher quality. by some, getting a good teacher was considered the luck of the draw and was deemed critically important in the quality of the education. negative comments surrounding disciplinary issues, with parents mentioning lack of teacher control of the class and/or parent led classrooms. several comments mentioned bullying as a problem with a lack of intervention or taking of responsibility. this was more frequently cited as a leadership problem than the fault of the teachers. besides art, the most common positive theme was community. waldorf parents described the community as warm, welcoming, loving, nurturing, supportive, diverse, open-minded, dynamic, active, magic, and rare in comparison to traditional public education. community was often associated with parent involvement and a sense of ownership towards the school. there was mention of the participation in festivals and school performances. the community was compared to a family and thought to foster sensitivity and respect for others. many of the parents reported with enthusiasm how much their children loved school and felt this was the beginning of life-long learning. there was great enthusiasm from many parents that this education was free, and that their children were obtaining a private school experience in a public school. although parent involvement was a decidedly positive theme, there were some negative comments current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 12 associated with involvement. these related to parents feeling they were being used as piggy banks, and serving mandatory volunteer hours, especially for single, working parents. parents reported feeling unappreciated and that their voice was not heard or that they were not allowed in the classroom. on the other-hand, parent involvement was also seen as negative when it seemed pervasive. several comments mentioned parents dictating classroom activities and teachers not being in control. one comment suggested that certain parents, referred to as “waldorfites”, controlled the school. along those lines there were a few extreme comments of waldorf as being a cult, having a secretive feel, or that there was a spiritual undercurrent to the school. in terms of academics, many parents appreciated the slow build-up to academics, with positive comments that revolved as much around the lessened focus on academics as the quality of academics themselves; however, this was also one of the more common negative codes. negative comments referenced poor test scores, although test scores also came up in positive comments too, with parents praising the fact that their schools were not just about test scores, and that they did not ‘teach to the test’ as other public schools did. with respect to the reduced academic load and holistic focus, one parent commented that waldorf was teaching laziness and mediocrity, another that students were being taught arts and crafts at the expense of real learning or factual knowledge. parents also feared that the reduced academic load would leave their child unprepared for high school or life. parents voiced concerns that the waldorf approach was not preparing their children for the future. in some cases the same parents who were concerned with the lack of academics stated that they appreciated the arts, and others appreciated the slow pace for the younger grades, but were decidedly unhappy with the pace in the later grades. a number of these comments were associated with decisions to take a child out for middle school due to ‘lack of rigor’ in the upper grades. frequency based content analysis. following analysis of hand coding a frequency report of the codes was generated. raw data was not used for this analysis, rather the codes themselves were counted. looking at the pattern of codes some things become immediately apparent (table 6). overall, frequency of comments tended to be more positive than negative, and there were distinct differences in the balance of that positive negative frequency across the codes. table 6 waldorf hand-coding counts based on positive/negative comments handcoding frequency counts waldorf positive negative teacher 208 52 arts 171 16 community 168 6 waldorf curriculum 78 12 love of learning 84 0 academics 53 24 music 73 2 parent involvement 64 10 holistic ed 56 2 leadership 25 32 relationships 47 6 second language 35 0 discipline 7 18 testing 10 6 slow pace 4 11 media 4 4 special needs 1 6 total 1088 207 twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 13 two codes showed only positive comments: love of learning and second language, and only three codes had greater numbers of negative to positive codes: leadership, discipline, special needs, and slow paced. examining the pattern of responding was used to validate the second phase of coding. second coding: auto-coding. the second coding consisted of analyzing the frequency of words using auto-codes (see appendix iii). unlike the handcoding where some subjective assessment of the comment will be used to assign a code, the use of auto-codes provides an unbiased analysis of word frequency. autocodes were selected based on the three themes that emerged through discussion of the hand-codes, parentstudent relationships, whole child learning and academic core. because both hand-codes and auto-codes were performed on the waldorf schools, comparisons between the two allowed for internal validation of the accuracy of the chosen auto-codes. comparing the responses in table 6 and table 7 it is possible to see that there is a similar pattern of positive and negative responses as in the hand-codes. this is true even though the hand-codes used actual counts, and the auto-codes used percents or proportional responses, something more appropriate when applying parametric statistical measures (weber, 1990). furthermore, the high level of concordance between the hand and auto-codes, supported the validity of the selected key-words as representing our hand-coded categories. responses from waldorf and the comparison schools indicated several similarities between the two data sets (table 7). for example, both waldorf and comparison schools showed the greatest overall number of responses to the themes teachers and leadership. in addition, both had similar patterns of positive versus negative comments surrounding the themes. for leadership, there was a greater percentages of negative responding compared to positive responses for both waldorf and comparison schools. factor analysis & t-tests. we examined our data for alignment with our intended three factors: parent school relations, academic core and whole child education. the use of a factor analysis is typical in basic content analysis (weber, 1990) and although our absolute number of cases was small (n=50), the actual number of participant comments exceeded 1600 postings. furthermore, there is some precedence for using a factor analysis with as few as 50 units of analysis (arrindell & van der ende, 1985). the rotated varimax output from our fourteen variables showed that our categories did not separate into their presumed groups. setting eigenvalues at 1.1, a five factor model emerged that explained 71.25% of the variance. in this model none of the variable loadings were less than 0.5, and three were greater than 0.80. the use of a factor analysis with such high explanatory value, and high factor loadings further supported this approach (costello & osborne, 2005). therefore the five factor model was used to organize our table as well as to guide the interpretation of the data (see table 7). five factor model. there were distinct differences between our waldorf and non-waldorf comments with regards to the five factors. factor a and factor b both showed higher rates of responding by nonwaldorf schools, whereas for factors c-e, waldorf schools had greater rates of responding. interestingly, these higher rates of responding were seen in both negative and positive comments, indicating the greater presence of these themes overall, and that not all members of the community were in agreement on the value of each. independent t-tests. using independent t-tests we then looked at differences between the frequency of responses across our 12 themes for positive and negative comments. table 7 shows significant differences between waldorf and comparison schools and these differences related to both significantly higher rates of responses (light orange shading), and significantly lower rates of responses (light blue shading). however, there were no significant differences for any negative comments. this might reflect the relatively few number of negative comments that contributed to the data set. there were several response patterns between waldorf and non-waldorf schools that were unexpected and did not fit within our initial categories of related codes. parent-involvement versus community. we had initially assumed that parent involvement would be related to community in parent-school relationships, however, these did not load together in our factor analysis, and they showed distinct differences between waldorf and non-waldorf school comments. waldorf schools show lower rates of responding around issues related to parent involvement, and higher rates of responding for community. the difference between community and parent-involvement suggests that community is supported by the holistic philosophy of waldorf. parent involvement may reflect a more independent activity than involvement through community. this difference should be further investigated with regards to effective parent engagement. curriculum versus academics. we had also initially assumed curriculum and academics would be related under the theme of academic core, however, the factor analysis grouped these separately and again, there was a distinct difference between waldorf and nonwaldorf schools responses. waldorf school comments were higher for the term curriculum, while the term academics was more often seen in non-waldorf school comments. again, the difference between what is signified by a curriculum versus academics can be current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 14 table 7 percent positive and negative responses across 12 codes pos (ns= 23, 27) factor waldorf nonwaldorf positive negative neg (ns=12, 14) loadings pos neg pos neg t-test p-value t-test p-value factor a parent involv. .61 6% 3% 12% 8% -1.57 p=0.11 -0.72 p=0.48 leadership .68 7% 30% 17% 56% -2.75 p<0.01 -1.88 p=0.07 teachers .72 43% 47% 59% 69% -2.77 p<0.01 -1.55 p=0.14 factor b academics .82 9% 16% 16% 24% -1.99 p=0.05 -0.47 p=0.64 testing .68 4% 10% 6% 12% -0.97 p=0.34 -0.11 p=0.92 factor c curriculum .66 17% 21% 9% 11% 1.95 p=0.06 0.77 p=0.45 holistic ed .61 10% 3% 2% 0% 3.79 p<0.001 1.01 p=0.34 second language .69 7% 0% 2% 0% 2.29 p<0.05 na na factor d arts & music .87 29% 1% 12% 7% 3.35 p<0.005 1.01 p=0.39 love of learning .83 10% 0% 3% 0% 1.63 p=0.11 na na factor e community .51 24% 4% 14% 0% 1.85 p=0.07 1.00 p=0.34 21c skills .65 4% 0% 1% 2% 2.13 p<0.05 -0.92 p=0.34 dap .65 6% 17% 1% 0% 2.78 p<0.01 1.48 p=0.17 world citizen .79 6% <1% 4% <1% 0.98 p=0.33 0.40 p=0.69 note. individual t-tests for waldorf and comparison schools show several significant difference for positive responses only. there were no significant differences between groups for negative responses. light blue = significantly less frequent from waldorf. light orange = significantly more frequent for waldorf. interpreted as potentially more holistic, and should be investigated further. second language. rudolf steiner emphasized the early introduction of languages. “the earlier you begin, the more easily children learn foreign languages and the better their pronunciation. beginning at seven, the ability to learn languages decreases with age. thus, we must begin early.” (steiner, 1966, p. 79). the fact that this aspect of waldorf continues to be successful in the public sector is reflected in the parent comments. this point is important to validate the successful practice of waldorf principles in the classrooms. limitations of qca. although quantitative content analysis (qca) is traditionally used for documents, there is a growing trend to mine data from blogs and internet sources (berendt, 2010). the data presented here represent a select portion of the population of the attendees at the schools. these findings are considered supportive, but in no way are meant to be conclusive. future research using controlled surveys or interviews would be able to better address some of the issues that have been brought up in these data. qca is not about making causal determinations; it is rather to look for trends and tendencies within written text. the tendencies reported here lead to some interesting hypothesis that frame questions and may suggest possible directions for further investigation of these schools using more direct survey methods. limitations of qualitative data source. there is a need to recognize that the data collected here represent a unique population of participants. first, those who decided to post comments on greatschools.org represent only a few voices from the many members of the school community. nonetheless, it is safe to say that although this group is not random, the perspectives may be more meaningful in that it required a certain degree of motivation to engage in the comment writing process. this motivation could reflect a bad experience, or it could twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 15 reflect school pride and enthusiasm. in their “terms of use” policy, greatschools.org makes a general disclaimer as to the accuracy of the information, stating “greatschools does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information on the website.” although there is no system by which the leadership of the school is able to delete comments, abusive comments, comments deemed to be incorrect, or posted maliciously and not by actual parents or other related members of the school community, can be challenged, and thereafter removed by a greatschools.org administer if they are deemed to not follow the guidelines (www.greatschools.org/about/guidelines.page). given this framework, the presence of negative and unflattering comments, so long as they fit within general guidelines, would be just as likely as positive comments. although this data source could most certainly be considered a convenience source, the advantage of being hosed by a third party supports the notion of impartiality, as greatschools.org would have no particular interest in promoting one school versus the other. discussion federal title i mandates of no child left behind (nclb, 2002) have created an accountability program in the educational system in the united states that relies heavily on performance on standardized tests. this emphasis on academic fact-based content knowledge presents challenges to holistic alternative education. the difficulty of undertaking a program such as waldorf, in which academics are intentionally delayed, is one that requires a great deal of risk when school test scores requiring early academic achievement in reading and math determine whether a school is considered passing or may face entering program improvement (pi). not only do schools risk state interventions such as pi, but their reputation is impacted by rating scales based on test results. even the most recent research indicates that parents generally base their perceptions of school quality almost entirely on student test scores (gibbons & silva, 2011). waldorf schools must work against the culture of competition for the highest test scores and educate parents to the purposes of a more balanced developmental approach. the basic content analysis of parent comments performed here reflected potential difficulties in parent perceptions when creating an alignment of the school curriculum away from academics and towards a more holistic approach. the unique pattern of performance by students in waldorf education on standardized tests presented here suggested a trajectory of continued improvement in both cross-sectional as well as longitudinal data. the slower developmental approach of waldorf, particularly with the delay in learning reading, is one that is misaligned with current test-based policies. unfortunately, the high value society places on test scores along with the policy structures of nclb effectively takes the focus away from effective developmental and creative approaches resulting in a narrowed view of curriculum (cawelti, 2006; daly, 2009; perlstein, 2010). the question this data presents is whether there is any value at all of using test scores in determining the quality of education particularly in the early grades. these data do not intend to say that waldorf as a pedagogical approach is better than the comparison schools. comparison schools were some of the best in the state of california, with some utilizing incredibly progressive approaches. rather these data should be interpreted with respect to their pattern of performance. waldorf student outcomes at 8th grade are on par with those of some of the top schools in the state, while in the early grades waldorf students fall below even the district averages. since the current measure of school effectiveness, api and ayp do not differentiate between the various grades, the overall measure of student outcome in waldorf schools are being grossly underrepresented and further call into question the current use of standardized testing as an accurate measure of school quality. our data and the work of others indicate that the costs of testing outweigh the benefits. research examining the impact of early focus on academics, a byproduct of early testing, has reported that the small initial benefits on academics seen in the early grades are followed by long term worsening of life outcomes (nel, 2000; schweinhart & weikart, 1997). as such we must ask the question as to what are the consequences of not moving away from a system of school evaluation that is inaccurate and flawed. research from the brain sciences suggest that the pressures on students and teachers to reach reading milestones early, may in fact, have a causal relationship to acquired learning disabilities. david boulton calls the emotional damage caused by attempting to force a child to read before they are developmentally ready, mind-shame (boulton, 2005). given that early test scores appear not to hold any predictive value for a student’s ultimate academic success, at least for waldorf, and there is no reason to suspect these children are biologically unique, it is important that we reconsider the utility of early grade testing at all. chauncey (2006) describes the challenge of evaluating waldorf education using the traditional testing assessments. we wanted to move beyond examining standardized test performance as the sole means of assessing the quality of education being provided by public waldorf schools. examining qualitative data and moving beyond test scores required some ingenuity. we utilized self-initiated comments by parents of waldorf and non-waldorf comparison schools posted on a nationally recognized website. through comparing code frequencies on critical issues, it was possible to reveal patterns in responses. waldorf schools were associated with greater frequency of responses relating to aspects of holistic education when compared to demographically current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 16 similar charters and public schools. these findings suggest that a more holistic approach is possible in a public setting even in the era of accountability. the difficulty of trying to fit waldorf into the current standards-based culture can be seen in the parents’ negative comments, particularly around issues of testing and academics. one parent stated: while i appreciate the concept of ‘teaching the whole child’, i do not believe that this school has been able to successfully merge the waldorf philosophy with the statemandated standards for public schools. i feel that my child was taught some life skills, but not exposed to some of the experiences of a traditional school. it is not possible to tell from these self-reported comments to what extent complaints regarding the waldorf approach reflect the clash in cultural values versus the inability for waldorf to maintain integrity in the public sphere. however, research reminds us that regardless of the growing number of whole child initiatives, the norm for many parents remains in support of early academics and higher test scores (chingos, henderson, & west, 2010). traditional waldorf encompasses a spiritual dimension. the inclusion of ideas surrounding spiritual and soul development can often clash with the public agenda. some have said that bringing waldorf into the public sector was done too soon and in too much of a rush. there was the feeling that as a public school, waldorf would not be able to fully maintain its philosophy, and that it would have to minimize or bury the spiritual components of the program (see ruenzel, 2001). the question as to how a so called “despiritualized” form of waldorf in the public education sector compares to private waldorf deserves further investigation. in some cases the schools have already experienced difficulties in these areas with two public waldorf schools having to go through the court system to prove they were not a religious school in order to receive state funding (retrieved from: http://www.waldorfanswers.com/lawsuit.html). the motion submitted by the agency plans (people for legal and nonsectarian schools) was denied, but the issue of spirituality continues to be critical both for the parents and for the public at large. as such, waldorf teachers participating in the public school institute in sacramento learn the physical and emotional developmental aspects of waldorf, rather than the spiritual dimension. the challenge faced by waldorf parents who misunderstand the tenets of the philosophy is further exacerbated by the existing policy structure. a delay in academics, as is prescribed by waldorf, will necessarily bring about low test scores in the early grades. this will impact a school’s rating on nclb measures and can make parents worried that their child is being “left behind” academically. it will be necessary not only to change public opinion but also change national policy of measuring a school based only on test scores if waldorf is to be able to succeed in the public sector. in an evaluation of the potential of bringing waldorf into the mainstream in england, woods, ashley, and woods (2005) make several recommendations. first, with regard to the use of a national curriculum, woods et al. (2005) recommend the “disapplication of steiner schools from the requirements of the national curriculum” (p. 10). they further recommend the allowance for evaluation of schools based on measures other than national tests and assessments. these allowances would certainly go a long way towards creating opportunities for schools, such as waldorf, to follow unique curricular and pedagogical practices that may hold significance for understanding alternative means of educating. our findings from the qca suggest that public waldorf schools are able to provide a more holistic experience for their students, while giving them the ability to be ultimately successful in academics over the course of a k-8 education. this study draws into question the value of early test scores as predictors for later performance for students in waldorf schools. based on our data, early test scores provide poor predictive value as to the quality of education of waldorf students are receiving at least as measured by test scores and national rating scales. even parents who spoke poorly about waldorf in the later grades praised waldorf for its treatment of early childhood and the early grades. this lack of correspondence of test scores to qualitative measures of schools performance should be a considerable concern for policy makers who support testing in the early grades. if we are to gauge schools based on test scores then these tests should at least be reliable measures of student outcomes in later grades. if not, then we must question the expense, time and stress of testing at all. until reliable measures of school quality are available, the impact of testing should be minimized, especially in the lower grades. the findings presented here were drawn from extant data, primarily from schools in california, and therefore generalizability of the data may be limited. nonetheless, these results support further investigation into the waldorf approach and indicate it may have potential for guiding pedagogy towards a more holistic approach in public education. future research should examine the emergence of cognitive capacities such as creativity, flexibility, and innovation specifically in students participating in public waldorf schools. as holistic education grows in the public sector, there is the need to support the approach as reliable and valid. perhaps the most significant support may come from an unlikely source, findings from the brain sciences. in their new book, educating the whole child for the twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 17 whole world, editors suarez-orozco and sattin-bajaj (2010) include a section on the emerging field of mind, brain and education (mbe). mbe is a program cofounded by one of the central figures in modern holistic approaches to education, howard gardner. the primary goal of this initiative as defined by another of the founding members, kurt fischer is “to join biology, cognitive science, development, and education in order to create a sound grounding of education in research” (fischer, 2009, p. 3). mbe is a growing field that holds promise for holistic educators (sousa, 2010; tokuhama-espinosa, 2011). a recently published report on neuroeducation calls for the use of music and the arts, not as a means of enrichment, but as a means of building cortical circuits critical for success in writing, reading and mathematics (hardiman, magsamen, mckhann, & eilber, 2009). there is also a long history of research speaking to the importance of play as the primary source of learning for young children with continued supporting evidence from the brain sciences (singer, golinkoff, & hirsh-pasek, 2006). given this growing awareness from the brain science on the beneficial aspects of holistic practices, it is not surprising that the waldorf curriculum with its full two year play-based kindergarten and fully integrated arts-based curriculum is gaining attention. references armon, j. 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(2005). steiner schools in england. report #645, department for education and skills, pg. 1-208. twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 19 appendix i public waldorf schools alice birney waldorf a, b, c, d sacramento, ca blue oak charter b, d chico, ca coastal grove charter school a, b, c, d arcata, ca desert marigold school a, d phoenix, az desert star d yavapai, az golden valley charter a, b sacramento journey charter school a, b, c, d aliso viejo, ca lighthouse school a, d north bend, or live oak charter a, b, c, d petaluma, ca monterey bay charter school a, b, c, d pacific grove, ca mountain mahogany d albuquequerqui, nm mountain oak school a, d prescott, az novato charter school a, b, c, d novato, ca ocean charter school a, b, c, d los angeles, ca pine forest charter school a, d flagstaff, az portland village school d portland, or river oak charter school a, b, d ukiah, ca sebastopol independent charter a, b, c, d sebastopol, ca stone bridge school a, b, c, d napa, ca sunridge charter school a, b, c, d sebastopol, ca the urban waldorf school a milwaukee, wi the village school a, d eugene, or woodland star charter school a, b, c, d sonoma, ca yuba river charter school a, b, d nevada city, ca (a=data set a, b=data set b, c=data set c, d=qualitative data set) current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 20 appendix ii matched comparison schools academy for academic excellence c, d san bernadino alder grove charter b, d humboldt apple blossom b, d sonoma brook haven elementary b, d sonoma forest charter b, d nevada hesby oaks b, d los angeles hooker oak elementary b, d butte international school of monterey b, c, d monterey ivy academia c, d los angeles unified julian charter c, d san diego unified las flores middle school b, d capistrano unified leonardo da vinci b, c, d sacramento mendocino elementary b, d mendocino natomas charter #19 c, d sacramento ottoman way elementary b, d sacramento pleasant valley elementary b, d marin ramona community c, d san diego river charter b, d napa sanger academy charter c, d fresno santa rosa charter b, c, d sonoma sinaloa middle b, d marin sonoma charter b, c, d sonoma temecula preparatory c, d temecula valley unified tijeras creek elementary b, d capistrano unified twin hills middle b, d sonoma vichy elementary b, d napa (b=data set b, c=data set c, d=qualitative data set) twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 21 appendix iii autocodes 21st century skills – century skill, century learn, creativity, critical think, imagination, innovation, problem solv, solve problem, think critical academics –academic, homework, home work art & music-art, music community –community, community curriculum-curricul, curicul, cirricul, ciricul developmentally appropriate practice-develop, pace, rate of learn, speed second language – foreign lang, foriegn lang, french, japanese, spanish holistic – whole child, holist, child centered, well (-) rounded leadership-admin, board, director, director, leader, organiz, principal loves learning – life(-)long learn, love(s) school, love(s) going to school, love(s) to learn, love(s) learn, love of learn parent involvement-fund raising, fundraising, parent involv, parent participation, volunteer, volunter teachers –teacher, staff, faculty testing – score, test world citizens—citizen, citez, world, glob, future, societ, steward, environmental, earth, planet current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 22 article citation larrison, a. l., daly, a. j., & van vooren, c. l. (2012). twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/807 author notes abigail l. larrison university of california, san diego and california state university, san marcos 9500 gilman drive, la jolla ca 92037; 333 s twin oaks valley rd, san marcos ca 92096 abigail.larrison@gmail.com abigail larrison received her phd in neuroscience from rutgers center for molecular and behavioral neuroscience studying mechanisms of attention and systems level neuroscience. she began working in education in 1995, applying her knowledge of the brain sciences towards teaching pedagogy and practice. she joined the joint doctoral program in educational leadership in order to further advance issues of educational reform based on the brain and learning sciences. her recent publications extend into the area of neuropharmacology, the psychophysiology of attention and critical issues in neuroeducation. alan j. daly university of california, san diego 9500 gilman drive, la jolla ca 92037 ajaydaly@uscd.edu alan j. daly is an associate professor of education at the university of california, san diego. in addition to 16 years of public education experience as a teacher, psychologist, and administrator, alan has also been the program director for the center for educational leadership and effective schools at the university of california, santa barbara. research interests include leadership, educational policy, district reform, and social network theory. his recent publications include an edited volume entitled, social network theory and educational change, published by harvard education press. carol van vooren, ed.d. california state university, san marcos 333 s twin oaks valley rd, san marcos ca 92096 cvanvoor@csum.edu carol l. van vooren has served as a teacher and school leader at all levels of instruction and is currently an assistant professor at california state university san marcos. her interest in alternative pedagogy developed as the principal of an international baccalaureate primary years programme school and as the director of the international baccalaureate certificate in teaching and learning at csusm. her research in international mindedness and leadership has resulted in publications and presentations at conferences around the world. acknowledgements: the authors would like to thank dr. alison guerra-wishard for her assistance with the quantitative research design. twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 23 manuscript received: 09/01/2011 revisions received: 02/22/2012 accepted: 08/26/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 24 volume 15, number 3 october 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers teachers' perceptions of the influence of no child left volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x teachers' perceptions of the influence of no child left behind on classroom practices craig a. mertler university of west georgia citation mertler, c. (2011). teachers' perceptions of the influence of no child left behind on classroom practices. current issues in education, 13(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract due to the magnitude of nclb, the pressure on teachers has increased to perhaps immeasurable proportions. one could argue that nclb has ramifications for nearly all aspects of the teaching– learning process, including classroom-based assessment. the purpose of this study was to describe the extent to which k–12 teachers perceive that nclb has influenced their instructional and assessment practices. differences based on several demographic variables were also examined. an original instrument was administered to teachers and 1,534 responses were received. salient findings revealed that teachers believe nclb is having negative impacts on instructional and curricular practices, including higher levels of stress related to improving student performance. teachers reported several changes in how they assess students. significant group differences were found, particularly on the resultant components of student test preparation and instructional changes. keywords: teacher perceptions, no child left behind, classroom practices, assessment practices current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: craig a. mertler affiliation: university of west georgia address: 102 education center, carrollton, ga. email: cmertler@westga.edu or craig.mertler@gmail.com biographical information: craig a. mertler is currently a professor of assessment and research methodologies and director of the doctoral program in school improvement in the college of education at the university of west georgia. he teaches doctoral courses focused on the application of action research to promote school improvement and reform, and also teaches quantitative research methods, introductory statistical analyses, multivariate statistical analyses, and educational assessment methods. he is the author of five books, four invited book chapters, 16 refereed journal articles, and numerous nonrefereed articles and manuscripts. he has also presented numerous research papers at professional meetings around the country, as well as internationally. he conducts workshops for in-service educational professionals on classroombased action research and on the broad topic of classroom assessment. his primary research interests include classroom-based action research, professional learning communities, and assessment practices of classroom teachers. teachers’ perceptions of nclb 3 the no child left behind act of 2001 (nclb) requires all states in the nation to set standards for grade-level achievement and to develop a system to measure the progress of all students and subgroups of students in meeting those state-determined grade-level standards (u.s. department of education, 2004). this act represents a marked departure from the efforts of the clinton administration to develop a single national test. nclb provides a mandate for national testing, but leaves the format and design of the test up to individual states (sloane & kelly, 2003). furthermore, because of the inconsistencies in the implementation of the mandate, students in some states will not graduate or be promoted unless they are able to pass their respective state's test (kober, 2002). in this most recent era of high-stakes testing, the amount of pressure and stress imposed upon students—and teachers, as well—has increased immensely. many leaders believe that this push for increased test scores, with little regard for how those improvements are attained, have created an accountability system that tends to cultivate inappropriate and sometimes unethical behaviors on the part of educators. additionally, research has cited the fact that large-scale, high-stakes standardized testing movements actually result in decreases in student learning. for example, in their study of high-stakes test data from 18 states, amrein and berliner (2002) concluded that student learning is indeterminate, remains at the same level it was before the policy was implemented, or actually decreases [emphasis added] when high-stakes testing policies are instituted. they further concluded that a transformation of current high-stakes testing policies is warranted due largely to this lack of improvement to student learning, as well as unintended consequences associated with high-stakes testing policies (e.g., increased drop-out rates, teachers' and schools' cheating on exams, teachers' defection from the profession). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 due to the magnitude of the nclb testing mandates, the extent of this "pressure to perform" and its impact on teachers and their classroom practices has increased to perhaps immeasurable proportions. nonetheless, it is imperative for the educational community at large to better understand the degree to which teachers have altered their instructional and assessment practices based primarily on their knowledge, understanding, and implementation of nclb. the purpose of this study was to describe the extent to which k–12 teachers perceive that nclb has influenced their instructional and assessment practices. additionally, the study sought to determine if any differences in these perceptions existed based on gender, school level, education level, teaching experience, and school and district rating. the impact of "no child left behind" the no child left behind act has been the topic of substantial debate since its enactment in early 2002. arguably, its most crucial component is the heightened requirement for—as well as its greater importance placed on—accountability and high-stakes testing. few people would disagree with the notion that high-stakes testing can be a driving force behind fundamental change in schools. however, there is little agreement as to whether this change is for better or for worse (abrams, pedulla, & madaus, 2003). whereas, some have argued that the guarantee of rewards and the threats of sanctions will promote higher quality teaching and, therefore, higher student achievement, others have argued that focusing instruction on the ultimate goal of performance on high-stakes tests only limits the scope of classroom instruction and student learning. research studies have revealed somewhat mixed findings regarding the impact of nclb, depending on whether one examines its effects on student achievement or its effects on motivation and stress. teachers’ perceptions of nclb 5 in comparing student achievement and growth in achievement prior to the implementation of nclb (school year 2001-2002) and following its implementation (school year 2003-2004), researchers at the northwest evaluation association found mixed results in their analyses of mathematics and reading assessment data from over 320,000 students in more than 200 school districts in over 22 states. the main finding reported by cronin, kingsbury, mccall, and bowe (2005) was that mathematics and reading scores had improved over the initial twoyear period of nclb. however, they also found that student growth scores had decreased, that students in grade levels tested by state assessments have higher achievement and growth than students who are in non-tested grades, and that student growth in every ethnic group had decreased slightly since nclb was implemented. the researchers concluded that there is evidence that nclb has improved student achievement, but if the change in achievement continues at roughly the same magnitude, nclb will not bring schools anywhere near the requirement of 100 percent proficiency by 2014. research has not been limited to examinations of the effects of nclb and its testing requirements on student achievement, but has also investigated the effects on student and teacher motivation. abrams et al. (2003) and stecher (2002) delineate several positive and negative effects on both students and teachers. the positive effects on students include that high-stakes tests motivate them to work harder in school, provide them with better information about their own knowledge and skills, and send clearer signals to students about what to study. frustration, discouragement from trying, increased competition, and a general devaluation of grades and school assessments are the primary negative student effects. positive effects on teachers include improvements in the diagnosis of individual student needs and the identification of strengths and weaknesses in the curriculum, as well as increased current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 motivation to work harder and smarter, to align instruction with standards, and to identify content not mastered by students, thus allowing for redirected instruction. these positive effects are countered by the facts that high-stakes tests increase stress and decrease morale among teachers, encourage teachers to focus more on specific test content rather than on standards, lead teachers to engage in inappropriate and unethical test preparation practices, and entice teachers to cheat when preparing or administering tests (abrams et al., 2003; stecher, 2002). according to teachers, much of this pressure comes from district administrators, building administrators, and the media (herman & golan, n.d.). that being said, there is certainly a lack of agreement regarding the effects of testing on student motivation. some believe that high-stakes accountability testing is unfairly criticized for these effects (sloane & kelly, 2002). the authors discuss that it is not clear if the anxiety experienced by students in high-stakes testing situations is due to the tests themselves—as well as the consequences of the resulting test scores—or to generally ineffective preparation for learning, which may be attributable to numerous causes, which could possibly include poor instruction. teachers' perceptions of "no child left behind" since the implementation of nclb, research has shown that, generally speaking, teachers do not have favorable perceptions of the law. in 2004, researchers at the civil rights project at harvard surveyed over 1,400 teachers regarding their knowledge of nclb and how they were responding to its mandates (sunderman, tracey, kim, & orfield, 2004). among the key findings from the study, teachers confirmed that the accountability system created by nclb is influencing the instructional and curricular practices of teachers, but is also producing unintended and possibly negative consequences. specifically, teachers reported that they ignored important teachers’ perceptions of nclb 7 aspects of the curriculum, de-emphasized or completely neglected untested topics, and tended to focus their instruction on tested subjects, sometimes excessively. additionally, these teachers rejected the idea that nclb's testing requirements would ultimately focus teachers' instruction and/or improve the curriculum. finally, teachers who were teaching in schools that had been identified as needing improvement reported that they did not plan to be teaching in those same schools five years in the future. generally, teachers believed that nclb sanctions would cause teachers to transfer out of schools not making adequate progress (sunderman et al., 2004). in a survey conducted by the nclb task force of the national staff development council, nearly half of the 2,000 educators responding to the survey believed that the impact of nclb on professional development has had "no discernable effect." these teachers reported that professional development activities were more of an obligation, as opposed to being meaningful, useful professional learning opportunities. only a small percentage (14%) believed the nclbfunded professional development is "improving the quality of teaching" (national staff development council [nsdc], 2004). furthermore, and perhaps more pertinent to this study, the results of the nsdc survey revealed that nearly 60% of teachers believed that the law is having a negative impact on their work settings. forty percent reported that they experience nclb implementation pressures that negatively impact teacher morale and performance (nsdc, 2004). one-tenth reported that one effect of the law is that teachers are being forced to divert their attention away from more important educational issues that could improve teaching and learning. approximately the same proportion believed that educators are carrying on their work much as they did prior to the implementation of nclb. in contrast, over one-fourth of responding teachers indicated that the law is having a more positive effect, as evidenced by the fact that many educators were current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 beginning to think, talk, and act in new ways that could ultimately result in higher levels of student performance (nsdc, 2004). "no child left behind" and classroom assessment since nclb places such high-stakes consequences on its mandated standardized testing, teachers must do a more thorough job of teaching to their respective curricular standards. they must also engage in meaningful and valid classroom assessment in order to accurately determine the knowledge and skills that have been mastered by their students, as well as those content areas that may require redirected instruction to entire classes or individualized student reinforcement. one could make the argument that nclb has far-reaching ramifications for nearly all aspects of the teaching–learning process, of which classroom-based student assessment is a part. unfortunately, at this point in time, very little research exists regarding the relationship between nclb and teachers' classroom assessment practices. in a statewide survey conducted with teachers in virginia, mcmillan, myran, and workman (1999) found that more than three-fourths of elementary teachers and one-third of secondary teachers believed that their statewide testing program had a "somewhat" or "extensive" impact on their teaching and assessment. specifically, teachers reported that they did not cover untested areas of the curriculum nearly as much as those areas that were tested, and that they tended to emphasize breadth rather than depth of content coverage. teachers also reported greater use of multiple-choice formats on their self-developed classroom tests. many teachers identified accountability and increased pressures as the driving forces behind these changes in assessment and instruction (mcmillan et al., 1999). these results have been supported by a more recent, nationwide survey of more than 4,000 teachers (abrams et al., 2003). teachers’ perceptions of nclb 9 with respect to a smaller, yet important, aspect of this relationship, there is research that has examined the arena of test preparation practices. researchers have identified five types of legitimate test preparation practices that help students demonstrate more completely their knowledge and skills. these strategies include teaching the entire content domain, using a variety of assessment and test item formats, teaching time management skills, fostering student motivation, and reducing test anxiety (gulek, 2003; miyasaka, 2000). these practices are considered by the measurement community to be ethical strategies for helping students prepare to take high-stakes tests, largely because they produce student learning that is robust; that is to say, the learning is generalizable to contexts beyond student performance on the test (gulek, 2003). however, inappropriate test preparation practices also abound. the basic problem with these practices is that they focus only on raising scores on a given test without also increasing students' knowledge and skills in the broader subject being tested (kober, 2002; gulek, 2003). these practices include such teacher behaviors as limiting content instruction to a particular item format, teaching of those objectives from the domain that are sampled on the test, using instructional guides that review actual items from a recent issue of a test, and limiting instruction to actual test items (gulek, 2003; mehrens, 1991). abrams, pedulla, and madaus (2003) summarized research in which teachers reported giving greater attention, with regard to instruction and assessment, to content areas they knew would appear on a state test. some teachers reported de-emphasizing or completely neglecting untested subjects or content. these types of practices are arguably a result of the stress and pressure experienced by teachers to raise test scores (stecher, 2002; mehrens, 1991). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 purpose of the study the purpose of this study was to describe the extent to which k–12 teachers perceive that nclb has influenced their instructional and assessment practices. additionally, the study sought to determine if any differences in these perceptions existed based on gender, school level, education level, teaching experience, and school and district rating. the specific research questions addressed in this study were: 1. what are k–12 teachers' perceptions of nclb? 2. in what ways do teachers believe that nclb has influenced their instruction and assessment practices? 3. what differences in the perceptions of nclb's influence on assessment practices exist between groups as determined by gender, school level, education level, teaching experience, and school rating? methods participants the population for this study included all k–12 teachers in the state of ohio during the 2005–2006 school year. participation was sought through initial contact with superintendents from 156 school districts (roughly 25% of the total 614 school districts in the state). this initial list was randomly selected from the ohio department of education's online database of school districts (http://www.ode.state.oh.us/data/extract_oed_addgrades.asp). email communications with the superintendents provided them with an explanation of the study and asked for their agreement to allow their teachers to participate. by using this procedure, the researcher was not required to have access to individual teachers' email addresses. once a superintendent agreed to teachers’ perceptions of nclb 11 allow the district’s teachers to participate, he or she was asked to simply forward an email "cover letter" to respective teachers via email. thirty-eight of the 156 districts (24%) agreed to participate. the researcher sought an additional random sample of 105 districts. from the second random sample, 15 districts agreed to participate. completed surveys were submitted from 1,534 teachers representing 53 school districts (more than 20% of those districts randomly sampled) across the state. instrumentation an original web-based survey instrument, titled the nclb * cap (classroom assessment practices) survey, consisting of 22 items, was developed for purposes of data collection. teacher respondents were instructed to respond to each statement on a four-point likert scale, ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree." for purposes of addressing research question #3, six additional demographic questions were asked of respondents. they were asked to indicate their gender, teaching level, education level, years of teaching experience, and school district and school building rating, as determined by the ohio department of education (ode). with respect to these last two questions, some explanation of this rating system is in order. each year, ode provides local report cards for each school district and building in the state of ohio. both districts and individual buildings are provided with a rating based on multiple measures, including the results from statewide assessments, graduation rates, and attendance as the input variables (ohio department of education [ode], 2004). specifically, the three measures are: § the school's or district's adequate yearly progress (ayp) for students in 10 student groups; current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 § a series of state indicators, defined as a minimum percentage of students at or above the proficient level on grade-level achievement tests (at grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. and 8) and on the ohio graduation test; and § a performance index score, ranging from 0 to 120, and defined as the average of performance level scores (i.e., below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced) received by students on each of five subjects tested in grades 4 and 6 (ode, 2004). school district ratings and their descriptions are as follows: § excellent—district meets 22 or 23 (of 23) indicators, or has a score of 100 or more on the performance index (pi); § effective—meets 17 to 21 indicators, or has a score of 90 to 99.9 on the pi; § continuous improvement—meets 11 to 16 indicators, or has a score of 80 to 89.9 on the pi, or meets ayp (the lowest a district can be rated is they meet ayp is continuous improvement); § academic watch—meets 8 to 10 indicators, or has a score of 70 to 79.9 on the pi and has missed ayp; and § academic emergency—meets 7 or fewer indicators, has a score less than 70 on the pi and missed ayp (ode, 2004). the rating for an individual school is based, in part, on the percentage of indicators that apply directly to that school (rather than out of a total of 23 for the entire district). these school-level ratings are as follows: § excellent—school meets 94% or more of applicable indicators, or has a score of 100 or more on the performance index (pi); teachers’ perceptions of nclb 13 § effective—meets 75% to 93.9% of applicable indicators, or has a score of 90 to 99.9 on the pi; § continuous improvement—meets 50% to 74.9% of applicable indicators, or has a score of 80 to 89.9 on the pi, or meets ayp (the lowest a district can be rated is they meet ayp is continuous improvement); § academic watch—meets 31% to 49.9% of applicable indicators, or has a score of 70 to 79.9 on the pi and missed ayp; and § academic emergency—meets 30.9% or fewer indicators, has a score less than 70 on the pi and missed ayp (ode, 2004). the initial set of content-based items were adapted from a handful of existing instruments (i.e., abrams et al., 2003; nsdc, 2004; sunderman et al., 2004). the nclb * cap survey underwent pilot-testing (with data collected from a randomly-selected sample from the population previously described) and revision prior to its implementation. content-evidence of validity was also collected during the pilot-testing phase, based on reviews from survey research experts, as well as from classroom teachers. an alpha coefficient value equal to .76 was obtained for instrument's overall reliability. procedures school district participation was sought through email communications with the superintendents from the randomly selected districts during late summer. once a superintendent, or an appropriate designee, agreed to permit the survey to be accessed by the district's teachers, the researcher sent the email "cover letter" to the superintendent and asked that the message be forwarded to the entire teaching staff of that district. teachers were informed that the survey would require only about 10 minutes to complete, that their responses would remain confidential, current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 and that only aggregate results would be reported. this email message contained an embedded link which provided direct access for respondents to the nclb * cap survey. the survey was administered during a three-week period extending from mid-september through early-october. all data were collected and stored electronically. data analyses all data analyses were conducted using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss, v. 15). initial data analyses included frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations to summarize the overall results. an exploratory factor analysis was conducted as a data reduction technique in order to reduce the number of items for purposes of group comparisons. analyses of variance were then used to compare group responses based on gender, teaching level, education level, years of teaching experience, district rating, and school rating. all anova results were evaluated at an alpha level equal to .05. results the descriptive, overall results of the analyses are presented first. these results are followed by a discussion of the data reduction procedure and the subsequent group comparisons. provided in table 1 is a summary of the demographic characteristics of the sample. table 1 demographic characteristics of teachers as represented by frequencies and percentages demographic characteristic frequency percentage gender female male 1186 319 78.8 21.2 school level elementary 697 50.4 teachers’ perceptions of nclb 15 secondary 687 49.6 education level b.a./b.s. m.a./m.s. doctoral/specialist 408 1039 76 26.8 68.2 5.0 years of teaching experience 1-5 years 6-10 years 11-15 years 16-20 years 21-25 years 25-30 years more than 30 years 228 316 238 194 166 199 179 15.0 20.8 15.7 12.8 10.9 13.1 11.8 district rating excellent effective continuous improvement academic watch academic emergency 84 808 248 298 44 5.7 54.5 16.7 20.1 3.0 school rating excellent effective continuous improvement academic watch academic emergency 280 657 326 122 49 19.5 45.8 22.7 8.5 3.4 overall results the descriptive results for the 22 items appearing on the survey, including the percentages of response for each point on the scale, means, and standard deviations, are presented in table 2. with respect to teachers' knowledge of nclb, nearly three-fourths (72%) of teachers responding to the survey indicated that they believed that they knew a lot about current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 nclb and nearly half (43%) specified that they did not care to know anything more about it and its effects on their work as classroom teachers. nearly three-fourths (73%) of teachers believe that nclb has forced teachers to divert their attention away from the types of issues that can actually improve teaching and learning. only 31% believed that the overall effect of nclb on their schools has been positive, and only 24% believed that most teachers are carrying on their work much as they did prior to the law. table 2 percentages of teachers' responses, means, and standard deviations for items appearing on nclb * cap survey (n = 1,531) frequencies (percentages) of response item 1 sd 2 d 3 a 4 sa mean (sd) i believe that i know a lot about the no child left behind (nclb) act. 35 (2%) 392 (26%) 931 (61%) 167 (11%) 2.81 (.65) nclb has forced me to change the focus of my classroom instruction. 68 (5%) 441 (29%) 748 (49%) 260 (17%) 2.79 (.77) nclb has changed the nature of academic motivation for students and has placed more stress on students. 68 (5%) 338 (22%) 579 (38%) 530 (35%) 3.04 (.87) nclb has changed the nature of instructional motivation for teachers and has placed more stress on teachers. 12 (1%) 98 (7%) 599 (40%) 805 (53%) 3.45 (.65) the importance placed on ohio's achievement tests and the ohio graduation test (ogt) has lead to instruction that violates the standards of good educational practice. 36(2%) 380 (25%) 613 (40%) 488 (32%) 3.02 (.82) i feel more pressure and stress as a result of the increased testing mandates in ohio and 26 (2%) 166 (11%) 629 (42%) 696 (46%) 3.32 (.73) teachers’ perceptions of nclb 17 the related need to improve student performance. my students feel more stress as a result of the increased testing mandates in ohio. 16 (1%) 201 (13%) 642 (42%) 655 (43%) 3.28 (.73) nclb has forced me to change the ways in which i assess my students' academic performance. 21 (1%) 356 (24%) 806 (53%) 325 (22%) 2.95 (.71) as a result of nclb, i create a greater number of my classroom tests such that they mirror the same format and types of questions on the state's achievements tests and/or the ogt. 37 (3%) 284 (19%) 743 (49%) 439 (29%) 3.05 (.76) i use multiple-choice classroom tests more frequently than i have in the past. 139 (9%) 837 (56%) 398 (27%) 119 (8%) 2.33 (.75) i have substantially decreased the amount of time spent on instruction of content not tested on the state-mandated tests. 49 (3%) 345 (23%) 635 (42%) 476 (32%) 3.02 (.82) i have not let nclb or the state-mandated testing program in ohio influence what or how i provide instruction to my students. 424 (28%) 842 (56%) 213 (14%) 33 (2%) 1.90 (.71) i have substantially increased the amount of time spent on instruction of content that i know is covered on the statemandated tests. 28 (2%) 240 (16%) 742 (49%) 491 (33%) 3.13 (.74) i have not let nclb affect how i assess the academic achievement and progress of my students. 283 (19%) 849 (57%) 322 (22%) 42 (3%) 2.08 (.71) i spend much more time throughout the year preparing my students for the state-mandated tests. 28 (2%) 272 (18%) 721 (48%) 472 (32%) 3.10 (.75) as a result of nclb, i now spend more time teaching 28 (2%) 291 (20%) 817 (55%) 358 (24%) 3.01 (.71) current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 test-taking skills to my students. i have used sample test items from the state tests, approved by the ohio department of education, to help prepare my students to take the tests. 49 (3%) 268 (18%) 699 (47%) 477 (32%) 3.07 (.79) as a result of nclb, i use standardized test data to help guide and improve my instruction. 46 (3%) 394 (26%) 835 (56%) 219 (15%) 2.82 (.71) in my school, i believe that most teachers are carrying on their work much as they did before nclb. 311 (21%) 831 (55%) 315 (21%) 46 (3%) 2.06 (.73) in my school, i believe that nclb has forced teachers to divert their attention away from more important issues that can better improve teaching and learning. 38 (3%) 375 (25%) 674 (45%) 418 (28%) 2.98 (.79) i do not care to know any more about nclb and its effect on my work as a classroom teacher than i do right now. 148 (10%) 704 (47%) 495 (33%) 153 (10%) 2.44 (.81) i believe that the overall effect of nclb on my school has been positive. 331 (22%) 698 (47%) 436 (29%) 34 (2%) 2.12 (.77) the majority of the survey items dealt with the impact of nclb on classroom practice. some of the more prominent individual item results were found with statements that addressed increased amounts of pressure and stress that are being caused by nclb. an overwhelming majority (n = 1,404, 93%) of teachers indicated that nclb has changed the nature of instructional motivation for teachers and has placed more stress on teachers, although a slightly smaller number of teachers (n = 1,325, 88%) believed that they personally were feeling more pressure and stress. a smaller, but meaningful, number (n = 1,109, 73%) of teachers believed teachers’ perceptions of nclb 19 that nclb, in general, has changed the nature of academic motivation for and has placed more stress on students; however, more teachers (n = 1,297, 85%) felt that their students were feeling additional stress, as compared to students in general. two-thirds (n = 1,008, 66%) of teachers agreed that nclb has forced them to change the focus of their classroom instruction. an even greater amount (n = 1,101, 72%) indicated that the law and its required testing mandates have lead to instruction that violates standards of good educational practice. according to these teachers, nclb has had a major impact on their instruction of content. the vast majority (n = 1,266, 84%) of teachers agreed that nclb had influenced what or how instruction is provided to students. additionally, 74% (n = 1,111) indicated that they have substantially decreased the amount of time spent on content that they knew was not tested on the state-mandated tests. similarly, 82% (n = 1,233) responded that they had substantially increased the amount of time spent on content that they knew would appear on the state tests. finally, with respect to the assessment of student learning, teachers clearly indicated several prominent impacts of nclb. three-fourths (n = 1,131, 75%) of teachers indicated that nclb had forced them to change the ways in which they assess their students' academic performance. a substantial majority (n = 1,193, 80%) indicated that they spent much more time throughout the school year preparing students for the state-mandated tests. many teachers engaged in this type of preparation by teaching test-taking skills (n = 1,175, 79%), by using sample items from previous versions of the state tests to help prepare students to take the tests (n = 1,176, 79%), and by creating a greater number of classroom tests so that they mirror the format and item types which appear on the state's tests (n = 1,182, 78%). interestingly, 65% (n = 976) disagreed with the statement that they use multiple-choice classroom tests more frequently than in the past. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 factor analysis results in an effort to reduce the number of items into more meaningful clusters of items for purposes of group comparisons, the data were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis. principal components extraction with varimax rotation was used in order to reduce the number of items to a smaller set of uncorrelated variables for use in analysis of variance procedures. using the criterion of eigenvalues equal to 1, the analysis returned four components. however, items composing two of the components were so diverse that naming those components proved quite difficult. therefore, the researcher requested the extraction of three components, which lent themselves nicely to interpretation. this three-component solution explained 52% of the variability across the items. the loadings for this resultant three-component solution are shown in table 3. based on the relationships between items within components, it was feasible to attach conceptual labels to each. following an interpretation of these loadings, component 1 was labeled student test preparation, component 2 was labeled stressful motivation, and component 3 was labeled instructional changes. table 3 loadings, eigenvalues, percent of variance accounted for, and reliability coefficients for resulting components component item 1 2 3 i spend much more time throughout the year preparing my students for the state-mandated tests. .79 .23 .13 i have used sample test items from the state tests, approved by the ohio department of education, to help prepare my students to take the tests. .78 .03 .01 i have substantially increased the amount of time spent on instruction of content that i know is covered on the state-mandated tests. .77 .13 .14 as a result of nclb, i create a greater number of my classroom tests such that they mirror the same .71 .08 .17 teachers’ perceptions of nclb 21 format and types of questions on the state's achievements tests and/or the ogt. as a result of nclb, i now spend more time teaching test-taking skills to my students. .70 .24 .12 i have substantially decreased the amount of time spent on instruction of content not tested on the state-mandated tests. .69 .32 .15 i have not let nclb or the state-mandated testing program in ohio influence what or how i provide instruction to my students. -.68 -.01 -.25 i have not let nclb affect how i assess the academic achievement and progress of my students. -.66 -.02 -.27 as a result of nclb, i use standardized test data to help guide and improve my instruction. .63 -.20 .18 i use multiple-choice classroom tests more frequently than i have in the past. .40 .24 .01 in my school, i believe that most teachers are carrying on their work much as they did before nclb. -.31 -.20 -.29 i believe that the overall effect of nclb on my school has been positive. -.11 -.80 .06 in my school, i believe that nclb has forced teachers to divert their attention away from more important issues that can better improve teaching and learning. .15 .77 .08 the importance placed on ohio's achievement tests and the ohio graduation test (ogt) has lead to instruction that violates the standards of good educational practice. .11 .76 .14 my students feel more stress as a result of the increased testing mandates in ohio. .32 .57 .29 nclb has changed the nature of instructional motivation for teachers and has placed more stress on teachers. .19 .54 .50 i do not care to know any more about nclb and its effect on my work as a classroom teacher than i do right now. -.09 .50 -.04 i feel more pressure and stress as a result of the increased testing mandates in ohio and the related need to improve student performance. .41 .49 .36 nclb has forced me to change the focus of my classroom instruction. .32 .14 .68 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 nclb has changed the nature of academic motivation for students and has placed more stress on students. .17 .45 .60 i believe that i know a lot about the no child left behind (nclb) act. .01 -.19 .58 nclb has forced me to change the ways in which i assess my students' academic performance. .46 .21 .52 eigenvalue 5.57 3.59 2.27 percent of variance accounted for a 25.33 16.31 10.34 alpha reliability coefficient b .57 .53 .64 a total percent of variance accounted for by three components = 51.98 b overall alpha reliability = .76 group comparisons the responses (as the three component scores) from teachers were compared across the various demographic data collected (i.e., gender, teaching level, education level, years of teaching experience, district rating, and school rating). these results are summarized in table 4. table 4 summary of significant group comparison results demographic factor dependent variable (component) f-ratio p-value eta squared gender student test preparation 5.58 .02 .004 instructional changes 32.14 < .01 .024 school level student test preparation 34.40 < .01 .031 instructional changes 53.10 < .01 .042 years of teaching experience student test preparation 2.80 .01 .013 district rating student test preparation 7.03 < .01 .022 school rating student test preparation 6.61 < .01 .021 teachers’ perceptions of nclb 23 females scored higher (i.e., they had a higher level of agreement) on each of the three component scores than their male counterparts. however, the differences between females and males were significant only for student test preparation, f(1, 1298) = 5.58, p = .02, η2 = .004, and for instructional changes, f(1, 1298) = 32.14, p < .01, η2 = .024. the difference for stressful motivation was not significant, f(1, 1298) = 1.54, p = .216, η2 = .001. these results indicate that female teachers are doing more to prepare students to take the state-mandated tests and that they are making more nclb-induced instructional changes than are male teachers. however, it is important to note that the discrepancy in sample sizes between females (n = 1,186) and males (n = 319) certainly could have impacted these statistical results. a similar pattern of differences was apparent for the comparisons between elementary and secondary teachers in the sample. elementary teachers scored higher on all three components than did secondary teachers. however, only two of these differences were significant. the difference for student test preparation was significant, f(1, 1198) = 34.40, p < .01, η2 = .031, as was the difference for instructional changes, f(1, 1198) = 53.10, p < .01, η2 = .042. the difference for stressful motivation was not significant, f(1, 1198) = .57, p = .45, η2 = .000. these results indicate that elementary teachers are doing more to prepare students to take the state tests and that they are making more instructional changes than are secondary teachers. although none of the education level comparisons were significant, teachers with masters degrees scored higher than both those with bachelors or doctoral/specialist degrees on student test preparation, f(2, 1313) = 1.11, p = .33, η2 = .002. those teachers with bachelors degrees scored higher than the other two groups on stressful motivation, f(2, 1313) = 3.03, p = .05, η2 = current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 .005. finally, those with doctoral/specialist degrees scored highest on instructional changes, f(2, 1313) = .458, p = 63, η2 = .001. those with 6-10 years of teaching experience scored highest on student test preparation, where there was a significant difference, f(6, 1309) = 2.80, p = .01, η2 = .013. scheffé post hoc tests revealed the only significant difference to be between those with 6-10 years of experience and those with more than 30 years of experience. there were no significant differences based on years of teaching experience for stressful motivation, f(6, 1309) = .77, p = .59, η2 = .004, or for instructional changes, f(6, 1309) = .74, p = .62, η2 = .003. with respect to the current school district rating, a significant difference was found for the student test preparation component, f(4, 1279) = 7.03, p < .01, η2 = .022. teachers from districts rated as "academic emergency" scored significantly higher (indicating that they were engaged in more of these practices) than those rated "excellent" or "effective." additionally, "academic emergency" and "academic watch" were both significantly different from those rated "continuous improvement." although there were no significant differences for stressful motivation, f(4, 1279) = .70, p = .59, η2 = .002, those from "academic watch" districts scored highest. similarly, there were no significant differences for instructional changes, f(4, 1279) = 1.18, p = .32, η2 = .004, those from "effective" and from "academic watch" districts scored highest. finally, with regard to the current school building rating, a similar pattern of results was found. there was again a significant difference for student test preparation, f(4, 1241) = 6.61, p < .01, η2 = .021, with teachers from "academic emergency" and "academic watch" schools scoring significantly higher than those from "excellent" and "effective" schools. again, although there were no significant differences for stressful motivation, f(4, 1241) = 1.55, p = .19, η2 = teachers’ perceptions of nclb 25 .005, those from "academic emergency" schools scored highest. similarly, there were no significant differences for instructional changes, f(4, 1241) = 1.96, p = .10, η2 = .006, those from "academic emergency" schools scored highest. discussion the results of this study support those of the limited studies previously conducted on the topic of the impact of nclb on teachers' classroom practices. consistent with recent studies (abrams et al., 2003; mcmillan et al., 1999; nsdc, 2004; sunderman et al., 2004), this study found that teachers do not have favorable perceptions of nclb. specifically, teachers believe that nclb is having negative impacts on both instructional and curricular practices of teachers. the vast majority of teachers in the large sample employed in this study also reported that they have substantially reduced the amount of time spent teaching content that they know is not tested on the state-mandated tests and substantially increased time spent on tested content. previously, 60% of teachers surveyed indicated that nclb was having a negative impact on their work settings (nsdc, 2004); in the present study, 69% of teachers believed that its impact on their work, as well as on their school setting, was negative. teachers in this study also reported experiencing much greater levels of pressure and stress related to the need to improve student performance as a result of nclb and its associated testing mandates. this stress has also "trickled down" to the students of these teachers. this study has provided empirical evidence of assertions made by abrams et al. (2003) and stecher (2002). specifically, with respect to classroom assessment practices, the results of this study have strongly supported previous research (abrams et al., 2003; mcmillan et al., 1999). a substantial majority of teachers in this study reported that they had changed the ways in which they assess students, spent more time teaching test-taking skills, used sample items from previous tests, and current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 created a greater number of classroom tests that paralleled the format of state tests. the lone finding from this study that seems to contradict previous research (e.g., mcmillan et al., 1999) is that well over half of the teachers reported that they did not use multiple-choice classroom tests more frequently than in the past. this study found that teachers have experienced a substantial increase in stress and pressure as a result of its testing mandates, as well as the push to improve student performance on those tests. teachers in this study have reported altering numerous aspects of their instruction, including content coverage and methods of assessing student performance. teachers believe that these types of changes have forced them to take time away from more important aspects of the teaching–learning process. these results seem to support an assertion made by abrams et al. (2003) that these state tests are the more powerful influence on teaching practices, as opposed to the content standards themselves. while it is important to remember that the ultimate purpose of any test is to improve teaching and learning (kober, 2002), this study strongly supports previous research (e.g., abrams et al., 2003) that nclb, with its emphasis on and pressure to improve student performance as measured by standardized assessments, has quite possibly led to an increased level of teacher-led student test preparation in our schools. while this appears to be an ethical and admirable effort on the part of teachers, abrams et al. (2003) are quick to point out that these "highly consequential tests encourage teachers to employ test preparation strategies that may result in improved test scores...but may not represent an actual improvement in achievement" (p. 25). the group comparisons from this study revealed some interesting findings. the fact that there were no significant differences between any subgroups on the stressful motivation teachers’ perceptions of nclb 27 component suggests that all teachers—regardless of gender, school setting, education level, years of teaching experience, or effectiveness ratings—are feeling the stress of this increased accountability and the need to improve student performance. although the effect sizes were not large, the two largest group differences were obtained for comparisons between elementary and secondary teachers on the student test preparation and instructional changes components. elementary teachers indicated significantly more time spent on test preparation and that they had made more instructional changes than secondary teachers. this is not surprising when one takes into consideration the nature of state-mandated testing in ohio. there is substantially more testing that occurs during the elementary years of school. in addition to diagnostic testing in grades 1 and 2, students in elementary grades are required to take achievement tests in the following grade levels and subjects: § grade 3—mathematics and reading § grade 4—mathematics, reading, and writing § grade 5—mathematics and reading (science and social studies will be added in 20062007) § grade 6—mathematics and reading (ode, 2005). at the secondary level, students are tested in mathematics and reading in grades 7 and 8. additionally, students begin taking the ohio graduation test (ogt) in grade 10. arguably, there is more pressure at the elementary level for students to demonstrate academic achievement on these tests since they are being tested every year in grades 1 through 6. however, at the secondary level, students are tested only three times between grades 7 and 12. elementary teachers in ohio may feel it necessary to spend more time current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 28 preparing students to take the state tests and may engage more frequently in making changes to their instruction. similarly, more pressure to demonstrate improvements in student achievement may be felt by those districts or individual schools that are currently rated low (i.e., "academic watch" and "academic emergency") on the state's effectiveness scale. these districts and schools are on a much shorter timeline, so to speak, to show improvements and to demonstrate adequate yearly progress than those that are rated as being more effective. teachers, as well as administrators, in these districts and buildings undoubtedly feel that they must do more, and do it sooner rather than later, to improve student performance. however, this fact raises an interesting set of questions. in light of greater pressure to perform, are these teachers preparing students for these tests by using only those practices that are generally agreed-upon as being acceptable by the greater measurement community? if not, they may be engaging in practices that are truly, and only, artificially inflating test scores (urdan & paris, 1994). examples of these unacceptable test preparation practices include: § acquiring actual test questions from a current test form and teaching students the answers; § giving students actual test questions for drill, review, or homework; and § copying, distributing, or keeping past versions of a test that have not been officially released as practice exams (kober, 2002). a second question relates to teachers' knowledge of these practices. if teachers are using any of these practices, are they aware of their ethical “violations?” we might assume and take for granted that teachers would know what is and is not appropriate practice in this arena. for example, however, it is possible that a given teacher may not be aware that the state may reuse some of the same test questions, or the same entire test version, from year to year (kober, 2002). teachers’ perceptions of nclb 29 a final question of interest is that if these teachers are engaged in unethical test preparation practices, have they taken this initiative on their own, or are they feeling increased pressure to do so from district or school-level administrators? again, it is possible that this is happening without realizing that certain practices are considered unacceptable. it is important to note a couple of limitations of the results of this study. although the findings are limited by geographic location (all teachers currently work in school districts in ohio, a state which includes a series of state-mandated achievement tests), external validity of the findings of this study is suggested through the large and broad nature of the sample. the study sought to describe teachers' beliefs with respect to specific classroom-based instructional and assessment practices. of course, the findings are based purely on self-reported data, and no efforts were made within the scope of this study to validate the extent to which these beliefs are consistent with actual classroom practice. worthy of reiteration is the fact that this was a study of teachers’ perceptions of the impact of nclb, and not one of scientifically studying the extent to which actual classroom practices have changed as a direct result of nclb. in light of the findings from this study of teacher perceptions, it is imperative for various groups to be aware of any unintended effects of nclb. for example, policymakers need to be aware of how the law is affecting teachers. the increased pressure that has been placed on teachers to raise levels of student academic achievement has made their daily work much more stressful. furthermore, teachers have been forced to change the ways that they provide instruction to students and assess their resultant academic performance. they have substantially altered the amount of time spent on specific content, which sometimes conflicts with their respective academic content standards and violates sound educational practice. additionally, teachers have resorted to spending much more time teaching students how to take standardized current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 30 achievement tests, perhaps turning to unethical practices in order to achieve higher test scores. similarly, administrators need to be mindful of these issues as well. they should be aware of these unintended consequences of nclb and should look for ways to address increased stress levels, perhaps through professional development activities. they should definitely be cognizant of the potential for their teachers to utilize unethical test preparation practices. closely examining how teachers are instructing students in the skills of test-taking may be a critical first step. in light of the earlier discussion of unacceptable test preparation practices, it is recommended that teachers gain a better understanding of not only these unacceptable practices, but also activities whose practice would be more acceptable. some students do not perform to the best of their abilities because they lack skills in test taking (hogan, 2007; linn & miller, 2005). specifically, students can be taught “testwiseness” skills (i.e., test-taking strategies) in order to prevent this type of inadequacy from lowering their test scores. these skills can be mastered by most students, but they need practice in order to develop them (linn & miller, 2005). testwiseness skills that students should be taught, and given the opportunity to practice, include: § listening to and/or reading test directions carefully (including following proper procedures for marking responses on the answer sheet); § listening to and/or reading test items carefully; § establishing a pace that will permit completion of the test or subtest; § skipping difficult items (instead of wasting valuable testing time) and returning to them later; § making informed guesses, as opposed to just omitting items that appear too difficult; teachers’ perceptions of nclb 31 § eliminating possible options (in the case of multiple-choice items), by identifying options that are clearly incorrect based on knowledge of content, prior to making informed guesses; § checking to be sure that an answer number matches the item number when marking an answer; and § checking answers, as well as the accuracy of marking those answers, if time permits (linn & miller, 2005). the importance of engaging in these types of practices with students in advance of the administration of standardized tests is not only that they are seen as acceptable and ethical, but that they likely will result in test scores that demonstrate real student learning (mertler, 2007). since there were so many group differences on the student test preparation component, it is imperative that we shed light on the phenomenon. in order to understand this potential "problem" more completely, it is recommended that researchers look more closely at how teachers engage in student test preparation, focusing perhaps on particular test preparation strategies used by teachers. we need to better understand what specific techniques are used, why those techniques are used (i.e., what teachers are hoping to accomplish by using them), and the nature of their overall effectiveness. if they fail to improve actual student learning, their use should be strongly discouraged. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 32 references abrams, l. m., pedulla, j. j., & madaus, g. f. (2003). views from the classroom: teachers' opinions of statewide testing programs. theory into practice, 42(1), 18-29 american psychological association. (2001). publication manual of the american psychological association (5th ed.). washington, dc: author amrein, a. l. & berliner, d. c. (2002, march 28). high-stakes testing, uncertainty, and student learning education policy analysis archives, 10(18). retrieved february 19, 2010 from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n18/. cronin, j., kingsbury, g. g., mccall, m. s., & bowe, b. (2005, april). the impact of the no child left behind act on student achievement and growth: 2005 edition. retrieved february 14, 2006, from the northwest evaluation association web site: http://www.nwea.org/research/nclbstudy.asp gulek, c. (2003). preparing for high-stakes testing. theory into practice, 42(1), 42-50. herman, j. l., & golan, s. (n.d.). effects of standardized testing on teachers and learning: another look. (cse technical report 334). los angeles, ca: university of california, national center for research on evaluation, standards, and student testing. hogan, t. p. (2007). educational assessment: a practical approach. hoboken, nj: john wiley & sons. kober, n. (2002). teaching to the test: the good, the bad, and who's responsible (testtalk for leaders, issue no. 1). washington, d.c.: center on education policy. linn, r. l., & miller, m. d. (2005). measurement and assessment in teaching (9th ed.). upper saddle river, nj: merrill/prentice hall. mcmillan, j. h., myran, s., & workman, d. (1999). the impact of mandated statewide testing on teachers' classroom assessment and instructional practices. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, montreal, canada. mehrens, w. a. (1991, april). defensible/indefensible instructional preparation for high stakes achievement tests: an exploratory trialogue. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, chicago, il. mertler, c. a. (2007). interpreting standardized test scores: strategies for data-driven instructional decision making. thousand oaks, ca: sage. teachers’ perceptions of nclb 33 miyasaka, j. r. (2000, april). a framework for evaluating the validity of test preparation practices. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, new orleans, la. national staff development council. (2004). nclb: survey finds many educators experience little positive nclb impact on professional development. retrieved may 20, 2005, from http://www.nsdc.org/library/policy/nclbsurvey2_04.cfm ohio department of education. (2004). 2004-05 ohio school district rating definitions. retrieved july 15, 2005, from http://www.ode.state.oh.us/reportcard/definitions/rating.asp ohio department of education. (2005). implementation schedule of ohio statewide assessments. retrieved march 2, 2006, from http://www.ode.state.oh.us/proficiency/pdf/implementation_schedule_ohio _statewide_assessments083005.pdf sloane, f. c., & kelly, a. e. (2003). issues in high-stakes testing programs. theory into practice, 42(1), 12-17. stecher, b. (2002). consequences of large-scale, high-stakes testing on school and classroom practice. in l. s. hamilton, b. m. stecher, & s. p. klein (eds.), making sense of testbased accountability in education. (pp. 79-100). santa monica, ca: rand. sunderman, g. l., tracey, c. a., kim, j., & orfield, g. (2004). listening to teachers: classroom realities and no child left behind. cambridge, ma: the civil rights project at harvard university. urdan, t. c., & paris, s. g. (1994). teachers' perceptions of standardized achievement tests. educational policy, 8(2), 137-156. u.s. department of education. (2004). a guide to education and "no child left behind." retrieved september 10, 2005, from http://www.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/guide/guide.pdf current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 34 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. teachers’ perceptions of nclb 35 editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain jeffery johnson seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo volume an an citation karadağ, d 13 abstract to asses researche frequent correlatio bivariate statistica introduce techniqu keyword 13, numbe nalysis of doctoral , e. (2010). a doctoral diss 3(4). retriev t s research m ers, this stud tly used rese onal study; e correlation al technique ed into educ ues stayed re ds: research er 4 f researc disserta e an analysis sertation at th ved from http methods and dy surveyed earch metho and a case s n, many wh s analysis. t cational diss elatively stea h method, st ch method ation at th engi eskişehir os s of research he education p://cie.asu.ed d analysis of d unpublishe ods consisted study. descr itney-u test though som sertation, th ady. tatistical ana ds and st he educat in karadağ smangazi u h methods an n sciences in du/ f statistical t ed doctoral d d of experim riptive statis t, and krusk me new statis e trends of f alysis, docto tatistical tion scien ğ university and statistica n turkey. c techniques e dissertation mental resea stics, t-test, kal wallis-h stical techni frequently u oral disserta is techniqu nces in t al technique current issue employed by from 2003 arch; a surve anova, f h test were f iques analys used analysi ation, educat sn 1099-83 ues used turkey es used by es in educati y education to 2007. ey; a factor analys frequently u ses were is of statistic tion science 39x d by ion, al sis, used cal es current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 an analysis of research methods and statistical techniques used by doctoral dissertation at the education sciences in turkey educational research worldwide has played a major role in influencing and informing educational practice. indeed, the last decade has seen a proliferation in the number of articles published in educational research journals. some of these published works have been the basis of educational reform in many settings. moreover, most investigators utilize previous research in developing their conceptual and theoretical frameworks, as well as in providing qualitative (e.g., content analyses) and quantitative (e.g., meta-analyses) reviews of the literature in which the key findings are summarized. in conducting literature reviews, researchers often assume that the documented findings are trustworthy (onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2003). for the last 20 years a large body of literature on ways of synthesizing research in education has been developed (dunkin, 1994; walberg, 1986). approaches to gleaning the accumulated findings of that research have varied from the narrative through vote counting of box scores to meta-analysis. some of these approaches make more demands on the conceptual and interpretative skills of the synthesizer than others and, therefore, contain more scope for error and bias than others, although all approaches are subject to the fallibility of the synthesizers and those upon whom they necessarily rely. it is important that the validity of all syntheses is subject to be tested as for they are the mail ways in which assessments can be made about the accumulation and development of research-based knowledge. syntheses of research are influential in regard to subsequent research, policy, and practice. they provide the empirical bases for applications for research grants, for higher-degree dissertations and theses as well as for individual and institutional research. they are used by policymakers both in designing strategies for development and to guide practitioners in the enhancement of professional activity. research methods and statistical techniques 3 they provide the contents of highly regarded publications in handbooks, encyclopedias, and textbooks and become the best known statements of the state of knowledge on the topics to which they are addressed (dunkin, 1996). different research methods and analysis of statistical techniques have been preferred in the research of different disciplines. for example, laboratory experiments tend to be used in physical sciences, while field studies are carried out more often in social investigations. more correlation-related statistics are used in biological and medical research. in agricultural research, however, analysis of variance and covariance (anova/ancova) are used most frequently. what methods/analyses are preferred in educational research? what are the application trends of these methods/analyses over the years? educational researchers have shown interest in these questions throughout the years. surveys on methods/analyses used in articles published by educational and psychological journals have appeared in literature continuously (hsu, 2005). surveys on research methods, which were treated separately from statistical techniques analysis in this study, are reviewed first. walker (1956) identified the following as the commonly used educational research methods in the 1950s: survey, historical research, library method, case study, experimental design, action research, statistical method and content analysis. observation, interview, measurement and opinion polls were frequently used data collection techniques. shaver and norton (1980) reviewed articles in the american educational research journal (aerj) published in 1968, 1971, 1973 and 1975–1977 in terms of several design issues such as design types, randomization, replications and sampling. they found that almost more than half of the articles were correlation studies and that the percentage remained about the same throughout the years. the number of true-experimental studies declined as the number of quasi-experimental studies increased. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 the review by keselman et al. (1998) involves both statistical techniques analysis and research design. four hundred and eleven articles in the 1994 and 1995 issues of 17 educational and psychological journals were reviewed in terms of the practice of using anova (analysis of variance), manova (multivariate analysis of variance) and ancova (analysis of covariance) in four types of design: between subjects univariate design, between subjects multivariate design, repeated measures design, and covariance design. results show that many researchers failed to verify assumptions, report effect sizes, and examine power of the statistics employed. however, it is interesting to note that the repeated measures design was used most often, about 55%. the percentages of the remaining three designs range only between 11 and 19. the trends and shifts of research methods during the past decade are well summarized by kelly and lesh (2000). in general, more emphasis is given to qualitative methods than quantitative methods. experimental method is no longer the only dominant method in math and science research. in determining the existence of certain factors, ethnographic descriptions are often used instead of statistical tests. designs involving one-time summative measure or pre-post tests are less frequently used. instead, approaches involving iterative cycles of observations of complex behavior are employed. this article deals with research methods employed in mathematics and science education research. the question to be answered here is whether research practice in education as a whole has made similar shifts in research methodology. there are many surveys on statistical techniques analysis used in studies published by educational and psychological journals. for example, edgington (1974) reviewed seven journals of the american psychological association each year from 1948 to 1972. his results showed that the percentage using anova increased steadily from 1948 to 1972. however, the percentages using t-test and correlation declined. the percentages employing chi-square and factor analysis research methods and statistical techniques 5 were about the same throughout the period. willson (1980) surveyed aerj between 1969 and 1978. he discovered that approximately 41% of the statistical techniques analyses were biostatistics (such as correlation, multiple regression, discriminate analysis, multivariate analysis of variance). approximately 34% were agricultural statistics (such as anova/ancova). in comparing the statistical procedures used in articles published in the journal of educational research (jer), 1970 and 1980, with the exception of descriptive statistics, west, carmody and stallings. (1983) found more multivariate statistics were used in 1980. the most frequently used statistics in 1970 were correlation, anova, t-test, chi-square, multiple regression, and nonparametric statistics. the most frequently used statistics in 1980 were anova, multivariate, multiple regression and t-test. goodwin and goodwin (1985a, b) surveyed statistical techniques used in the journal of educational psychology (jep) and aerj between 1979 and 1983. the most commonly used statistics in aerj were anova/ancova (17%), correlation (12%), descriptive statistics (10%) chi-square/non-parametric statistics (7%), multiple-comparison (6%) and t-test (5%). statistics most frequently used in jep were anova/ancova (26%), correlation (17%), multiple-comparison (13%), t-test (8%) and regression (8%). elmore and woehlke (1988) reviewed aerj, review of educational research (rer) and educational researcher (er) between 1978 and 1987. they discovered that the most frequently used statistics were anova/ancova, descriptive statistics, multiple correlation/regression, bivariate correlation, multivariate and non-parametric statistics. later, they extended their survey to include 1978 to 1997 (elmore & woehlke, 1998). the extension changed the rankings of the most frequently used statistics to descriptive statistics, anova/ancova, correlation/regression, qualitative techniques, bivariate correlation, and multivariate. the discrepancies between goodwin and current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 goodwin (1985b) and elmore and woehlke (1988, 1998) were due to the different nature of the articles published in er (consisting of more interpretive and philosophical articles) and rer (consisting mostly of reviews of research). the rankings were almost identical when only the articles in aerj were considered. purpose an expressive review of the literature revealed that all authors (e.g., hall, ward, & comer, 1988; onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2003; thompson, 1998; vockell & asher, 1974; ward, hall, & comer, 1975) who have examined the research methods and statistical techniques analysis made by researchers have utilized journals published in the united states and these errors occur in the other parts of the world as well. thus, as the purpose research methods/designs, and data statistical techniques analysis appeared in research studies unpublished by doctoral dissertation from 2003 to 2007 the purpose of the study was to assess the research methods and statistical techniques analysis used by doctoral dissertation at the education sciences in turkey. more specifically, this study was designed to address the following questions: (i) what are the frequently used research methods? (ii) what are the frequently used statistical techniques analyses? results of the investigation should be of concern not just to the publishers of educational research journals and the practitioners of educational research, but also to the instructors of research methodology as well. graduate students in education are required to take research method courses so that they can become both/either good consumer of research publications and/or conductors of quality research. however, educators disagree on exactly how much knowledge of methods/analyses should be required for which levels of graduate students. research methods and statistical techniques 7 information about research practice in the field may provide some helpful guidelines. the present study is different from previous surveys in several aspects. first, it does methods/analyses without considering the subject matters investigated. second, unlike most of the previous surveys, this survey separates statistical techniques analysis from research methods. research methods include approaches, plans or designs of investigation with the exception of procedures to deal with data and their interpretations. third, it covers dissertations published from 2003 to 2007 (hsu, 2005). method data for the present study were obtained from a database developed by a cross-cultural study of educational and psychological research methods (hsu, 2005). the construction of the database included the following steps: (i) initially 211 unpublished doctoral dissertation original research studies in education sciences in turkey from 2003 to 2007 were indentified. years were coded by numbers: 6 (2003), 7 (2004), 30 (2005), 79 (2006), 89 (2007). (ii) as shown in table 1, each article was reviewed and classified in terms of three aspects: (i) research methods (15 categories); and (ii) statistical techniques analysis (23 categories). the categories of research methods; and data analysis procedures were adapted from the study of hsu (2005). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 table 1. categories of research methods, and statistical techniques analysis categories of research methods 1-action research 2-case study 3-experimental design 4-causal comparative/model 5-comparative approach 6-correlational study 7-cross culture 8-survey 9-ethnography 10-phenomenology 11-histography 12-other methods 13-interpretative/rhetorical 14-observational study 15-policy study categories of statistical techniques analysis 1-ancova 2-anova 3-bivariate correlation 4-canonical correlation 5chi-square 6-cluster analysis 7-descriptive statistics 8-discriminant analysis 9-effect size/power analysis 10-factor analysis 11kruskal wallis h test 12-kormogrov smirnov 13-linear regression 14-mancova 15-manova 16-many whitney-u test 17-meta-analysis 18-multiple correlation 19-multiple regression 20-path/structural equation 21-psychometric statistics 22-t-test 23wilcoxon the selection of categories for methods/analyses was based on an extensive review of methodology literature (keeves, 1988), encyclopedias of education and psychology (alkin, 1992) and categories used in surveys reviewed in a previous section. unlike some previous studies, as mentioned previously, analyses of statistical techniques were treated separately from research methods because they served somewhat different functions in the research process. for methods that were named after analysis of statistical techniques such as meta-analysis, multilevel analysis and structural equation modeling, they were included in statistical techniques analysis in research methods and statistical techniques 9 this study. rationales of some subjects/methods/analyses categorizations will be clarified in the following sections when appropriate. for studies employing more than one research method, up to three of the most important methods were recorded for each study. for data analysis, all procedures in the article were recorded. however, if a procedure was used more than once in the same doctoral dissertation, it was counted only once. it is important to note that qualitative interpretation was also considered as one technique so that data treatment procedures of qualitative research could be considered. to assure that the same criteria were used in classifying the articles, a manual description of the characteristics of each category was prepared. the frequencies of methods/analyses appearing in each doctoral dissertation from 2003 to 2007 were tabulated and their percentages were computed. to compute the percentage for each subject matter, its frequency was divided by the total number of doctoral dissertation and multiplied by 100. the frequency for each category was divided by the total number of methods/analyses and multiplied by 100 because a doctoral dissertation may have more than one method/analysis. to explore the trends of application, categories for plotting were selected because they were classified as frequently observed (at least 5%) in at least two of the doctoral dissertations. the unpublication years from 2003 to 2007 were divided into seven periods with five years each. in situations where a combination of categories was required (e.g., where experimental research is a combination of pre -quasiand true-experimental designs) frequencies of the combined categories were summed for that period before the percentage was computed (hsu, 2005). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 findings table 2 shows frequently used research methods and the least frequently used methods in unpublished doctoral dissertation. four of the frequently used methods are identical for all unpublished doctoral dissertations: experimental research, survey, correlational study, and case study. comparative approach was used to describe a study when it compared different techniques, methods, instruments, procedures, or objects and when it was neither an experimental study nor a correlational study. descriptive research involves the collection of data to describe the existing conditions of the problem under investigation. some publications use this term to include most non-experimental studies such as case studies, developmental studies, and observational studies, which were treated separately in this study. descriptive research was used only to identify studies describing existing characteristics that were not case studies, developmental studies, or observational studies. action research, phenomenology, causalcomparative approach, grounded theory, arge is also shown in table 2 as the least frequently used methods. table 2. research methods/designs used most and least frequently in the unpublished doctoral dissertation methods η % 1-experimental design 85 37.1 2-survey 78 34.0 3-correlational study 28 12.2 4-case study 26 11.3 5-action research 5 2.1 6-phenomenology 4 1.7 7-causal-comparative approach 1 0.4 8grounded theory 1 0.4 9-arge 1 0.4 total 229 100 research methods and statistical techniques 11 percentages of statistical techniques analysis most frequently appearing in articles published by unpublished doctoral dissertations presented in table 3. again, there are similarities among these unpublished doctoral dissertations. in fact, five of the six frequently used analyses are identical: descriptive statistics, t-test, anova, factor analysis, bivariate correlation, many whitney-u test and kruskal wallis-h test. actually, if the percentages were rounded to a whole number, psychometric statistics (3%) for unpublished doctoral dissertations could be classified as a frequently used data analysis procedure too. psychometric statistics included statistics designed for data collection instruments such as indices of reliability and validity. this category did not include factor analysis because it was treated as a separate category. in the present study, we deliberately included two categories that were normally omitted in surveys of analysis of statistical techniques: descriptive statistics and qualitative interpretation. descriptive statistics is the foundation of quantitative analysis. its role cannot be overlooked simply because advanced statistics are also used in the same studies. with the increasing popularity of qualitative research, qualitative interpretation should be included to account for treatment of qualitative data. fifteen (15) of the statistical techniques analyses were classified as the least frequently used procedures in table 3. this large number is unusual but was expected because the categorization is so specific. for example, multiple regression, linear regression, kormogrov smirnov, manova, and path analysis on this list can be grouped into a single category of multivariate statistics. same table also presents the percentages of the number of different statistical techniques analysis used in the same study. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 table 3. statistical techniques analysis used most and least frequently in the unpublished doctoral dissertation analysis of statistical techniques η % 1-descriptive statistics 181 28.46 2-t-test 138 21.70 3-anova 114 17.92 4-factor analysis 58 9.12 5-bivariate correlation 33 5.19 6-many whitney-u test 29 4.56 7-kruskal wallis-h test 19 2.99 8-ancova 19 2.99 9-chi-score test 12 1.89 10-wilcoxon 10 1.57 11-multiple regression 8 1.26 12-linear regression 7 1.10 13-kormogrov smirnov 4 0.63 14-manova 2 0.31 15-path analysis 2 0.31 total 636 100 results and discussion this study identified and tabulated research methods and statistical techniques analysis from studies unpublished in doctoral dissertation from 2003 to 2007. in addition, it also identified the subject matters under which these methods/analyses were applied. percentages of frequently used methods and analyses were plotted over for being unpublished in doctoral dissertation so that its trends of practice could be assessed and compared. as for being connected with the research model, it is related to the distribution of the models used in dissertation studies. in the case it has been determined that totally 9 different research models were used in 211 doctoral dissertation studies. among the models determined, research methods and statistical techniques 13 experimental design (37.1 %), survey (34.0 %), correlational study (12.2%) and case study (11.3 %) models are frequently used ones. besides this, only a few researchers carried on their works by taking the improvement on research methodology into the consideration and applying to causal-comparative approach and qualitative models. hsu(2005), who has studied a similar matter about methodological errors, suggests that the frequently used research methods, mentioned through the articles published by american educational research journal (aerj), journal of experimental education (jee) and journal of educational research (jer) between 1971 and 1998, are composed of experimental, defining, correlational, causal-comparative approach and case study, but, till middle of 1980s, percentage of the experimental and defining studies have continuously decreased in number; on the contrary, causal-comparative and the qualitative research has increased. when the results of this study are discussed in terms of these outputs, the experimental and scanning model applications in the three of four thesis studies in turkey can be shown as an indication of lack of an adaptation to innovations in this field, compared to the international tendency. furthermore, frequent use of experimental and scanning models in the study held by balcı (1993), and the findings of akkoyun’s study (1989) that show the existence of a modeling difference between the researches on consultation physiology held in america and turkey, supports this comment. as far as the data analysis dimension is concerned, the other comprehensive result relates to the distribution of the statistical techniques applied during data analysis in dissertation studies. it has been determined that 23 different statistical techniques were used in 205 doctoral dissertations in which statistics applied. among the techniques determined, descriptive statistics (28%), t-test (21%) and anova (17%) are most frequently used. when these techniques current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 analyzed, it can be said that descriptive statistics and differential statistics are applied in most of the dissertations. other statistical techniques which are limitedly applied are manova, mancova and path analysis. on the contrary, while there exists more than one variable in most of the dissertations, an evaluation has been done as if there were only one. thus it has prevented the study from achieving its purpose by using the techniques with one variable such as t-test and anova instead of applying multi variable statistical techniques in dissertation studies in which attitude and success are discussed together as a sample. most favorable explanation of this situation was done by loftus (1994). he states that a force effect exists on differential researches and relatively a negative view has been encountered in some studies. corresponding with this dimension of the research lots of works can be encountered in international literature; these studies mostly include the published articles on education. (table 4). wilson (1980) stated in his articles in american educational research journal (aerj) between 1969 and 1978 that anova, ancova, correlation, multiple regressions, discriminate analysis and manova are mostly applied tests. in 150 articles issued at journal of educational psychology (jep) between 1979 and 1983, anova and multiple regressions, correlation tests were stated as mostly applied ones (goodwin & goodwin, 1985a). in another study held by goodwin & goodwin (1985b) variant and covariant analyses, multiple regressions, correlation, descriptive statistics and manova were stated as largely used ones in the articles issued in aerj between 1979 and 1983 and t-test was found to be the one among the least preferred methods. the research results, which were repeated to determine the statistical techniques used in aerj published by elmore & woehlke (1998) since 1997, are parallel to the research outcomes of goodwin & goodwin’s (1985b). kieffer, reese & thompson (2001) determined that variant and covariant analyses, regression analyses, and correlation analyses had research methods and statistical techniques 15 been frequently used in 756 articles issued in journal of counseling psychology (jcp) and american educational research journal (aerj) between 1988 and 1997. in addition to american oriented journal analysis, at onwuegbuzie’s (2002) studies published in british journal of education psychology (bjep) in 1998, the most applied analyses techniques were variant, covariant and factor analysis. some parts of these outcomes are relevant to those found in this research. however, when a comparison made among the studies carried on after 2000, the fact that the research going along with the results of the study are desperately dated, can be interpreted as an indication our being behind the international progress with regard to statistical analysis in the research on education held in turkey. fortunately, some slow, glacial progress in the incremental movement of the field was reflected in the apa (1994, p. 18) style manual “encouraging” the reporting of effect sizes. but enlightened editorial policies now provide the strongest basis for cautious optimism (thompson, 1998). finally, even the criteria for the combination of different categories might not be identical; the differences of the results among surveys are relatively minor. it should be noted, however, that the percentages presented in table 4 were aggregated over the time periods covered. the percentages of procedures might vary from one year to another for different surveys, which was not addressed in this table. to have a more accurate comparison among these results, trends of application over the years should be explored (hsu, 2005). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 table 4. a comparison of most commonly used statistical techniques analysis identified by selected surveys reference journals statistical techniques analysis (%) edgington [1974] 7 apa journals [1948-1972] [54%] anova [26%] correlation [22%] t-test chi-sq. [15%] non-parametric [15%] factor analysis [3%] willson [1980] aerj [1969-1970] [41%] based correlation/regression [34%] anova/ancova [12%] factor analysis goodwin & goodwin [1985a] jep [1979-1983] [26%] ancova/anova [17%] correlation [13%] multiple comparison t-test [8%] regression [8%] goodwin & goodwin [1985b] aerj [1979-1983] [17%] ancona/anova [12%] correlation [10%] descriptive statistics non-parametric [7%] multiple comparison [6%] t-test [5%] elmore & weohlke [1988] aerj [1978-1987] [25%] ancova/anova [15%] correlation/regression [10%] multivariate bivariate correlation [9%] non-parametric [8%] t-test [8%] elmore & weohlke [1998] aerj [1978-1997] [31%] ancova/anova [19%] multiple regression [12%] multivariate bivariate correlation [11%] nonparametric [10%] t-test [10%] onwuegbuzie [2002]  bjep [1971-1998] [38%] anova [22%] manova [19%] factor analysis correlation [11%] regression [11%] chi-sq. [8%] hsu [2005] aerj [1971-1998] [24%] descriptive [19%] anova/ancova [13%] correlation regression [7%] qualitative interpre. [7%] t-test [6%] hsu [2005]  jee [1971-1998] [29%] descriptive [24%] anova/ancova [13%] correlation t-test [7%] non-parametric [6%] regression [6%] hsu [2005]  jer [1971-1998] [29%] descriptive [23%] anova/ancova [12%] correlation t-test [8%] regression [7%] non-parametric [6%] this study [2003-2007] [28%] descriptive [21%] t-test [17%] anova factor analysis [9%] non-parametric [6%] bivariate correlation [5%] note: apa: american psychological association, aerj: american educational research journal, jep: journal of educational psychology, bjep: british journal of education psychology, jee: journal of experimental education, jer: journal of educational research research methods and statistical techniques 17 references akkoyun, f. (1989). danışma psikolojisindeki araştırmaların gelişimi [development of research in counseling psychology]. paper presented at the meeting of the ii. ulusal sosyal bilimler kongresi, ankara, turkey. american psychological association. (1994). publication manual of the american psychological association. washington, dc: author. balcı, a. (1993). türkiye’de eğitim araştırmalarının durumu: a.ü. ebf örneği [status of educational research in turkey: a.u. f.e.s. example]. in eğitim bilimleri birinci ulusal kongresi (pp. 89-120). ankara: milli eğitim basımevi, dunkin, m. j. (1994). teaching, synthesizing research on. in t. husen & t. n. postlethwaite (series eds.), the international encyclopedia of education: vol. 10. research and studies (pp. 6235-6240). oxford, england: pergamin press. dunkin, m. j. (1996). types of errors in synthesizing research in education. review of educational research, 66(2), 87–97. edgington, e. s. (1974). a new tabulation of statistical procedures in apa journals. american psychologist, 29, 25-26. elmore, p. b., & woehlke, p. l. (1988). statistical methods employed in american educational research journal, educational researcher and review of educational research from 1978 to 1987. educational researcher, 17(9), 9-20. elmore, p. b., & woehlke, p. l. (1998). twenty years of research methods employed in american educational research journal, educational researcher and review of educational research. (eric document reproduction service no. ed420701). goodwin, l. d., & goodwin, w. l. (1985a). an analysis of statistical techniques used in the journal of educational psychology, 1979-1983. educational psychologist, 20(1), 13-21. goodwin, l. d., & goodwin, w. l. (1985b). statistical techniques in aerj articles, 1979-1983: the preparation of graduate students to read educational research literature. educational researcher, 14(2), 5-11. hall, b. w., ward, a. w., & comer, c. b. (1998). published educational research: an empirical study of its quality. journal of educational research, 81(3), 182-189. hsu, t. (2005). research methods and data analysis procedures used by educational researchers. international journal of research & method in education, 28(2), 109-133 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 keeves, j. p. (ed.) (1988) educational research, methodology, and measurement: an international handbook, oxford, england: pergamon press. kelly, a. e. & lesh, r. a. (2000) trends and shifts in research methods. in a. e. kelly & r. a. lesh (eds), handbook of research design in mathematics and science education (pp. 35-44), mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. keselman, h. j., huberty, c. j., lix, l. m., olejnik, s., cribbie, r. a., et al. (1998). statistical practices of educational researchers: an analysis of their anova, manova, and ancova analyses. review of educational research, 68, 350-386. kieffer, k. m., reese, r. j., & thompson, b. (2001). statistical techniques employed in aerj and jcp articles from 1988 to 1997: a methodological review. journal of experimental education, 69(3), 280-309. loftus, g. r. (1994). why psychology will never be a real science until we change the way we analyze data. current directions in psychological science, 5, 161-171. onwuegbuzie, a. j. (2002). common analytical and interpretational errors in educational research: an analysis of the 1998 volume of the british journal of educational psychology. educational research quarterly, 26, 11-22. onwuegbuzie, a. j., & daniel l.g. (2003). typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research. current issues in education [on-line], 6(2). http://cie.ed.asu.edu/ volume6/number2/ shaver, j. p., & norton, r. s. (1980). randomness and replication in ten years of the american educational research. educational researcher, 9(1), 9-15. thompson, b. (1998). five methodology errors in educational research: the pantheon of statistical significance and other faux pas. (eric document reproduction service no: ed419023). vockell, e. l., & asher, w. (1974). perceptions of document quality and use by educational decision makers and researchers. american educational research journal, 11, 249-258. walberg, h. j. (1986). syntheses of research on teaching. in m. c. wittrock (ed.). handbook of research on teaching (pp. 214-229). new york: macmillan. walker, h. m. (1956) methods of research, review of educational research, 26, 323-344. ward, a. w., hall, b. w., & schramm, c. e. (1975). evaluation of published educational research: a national survey. american educational research journal, 12, 109-128. research methods and statistical techniques 19 west, c. k., carmody, c., & stallings, w. m. (1983). the quality of research articles in the journal of education research, 1970 and 1980. journal of educational research, 77(2), 28-36. willson, v. l. (1980). research techniques in aerj articles: 1969 to 1978. educational researcher, 9(6), 5-10. current is about th author: affiliatio address educatio email: e biograp educatio educatio ssues in educ he author engin kara on: eskiseh s: eskisehir on, meselik enginkarada phical infor on at eskis onal leaders cation vol. 13 adağ hir osmang r osmangaz k, eskişehi ag@ogu.ed rmation: en sehir osman ship, social 3 no. 4 gazi univer zi, college r, turkey du.tr ngin karada ngazi univ l constructi rsity of educati ağ is an ass versity. his ivism, and ion, depart sistant prof research in advanced e tment of pr fessor of el nterests inc educational rimary lementary clude l statistics. 20 research m volume authors articles publishe an kr hilla d ju an h mi methods and e 13, num hold the copy s in other jour er and include ngela abeyta rista adams ary andrelch diana barela ulia boukara ndrew darian aiying dong iriam emran statistical te curr mber 4 yright to artic rnals should b e the url of t provide a hik n n echniques rent issu http:// cles published be addressed t the cie publi ed cie is cred edit exe lor katy e jeffr sec sar mar me amb seo tiff calv linds fac gusta jean de ues in e /cie.asu.e d in current is to the author. ication. permi dited and cop torial team cutive editor ri ellingford elizabeth his rey i. johnso ction editors rah heaslip rlene hinton elinda hollis ber johnston onghee kim fany o’neill vin richards say richerso culty advisers vo e. fischm nne m. power ebby zambo educati edu issues in educ reprints sho ission is here pies are not so m rs d rich on n n s on s man rs on issn cation. reque ould credit cie eby granted to old. ror ta kar luc ker jennife ky n 1099-83 ests to reprint e as the origi o copy any art ry schmitt apati sen ri visconti cy watson rie wilkins er wojtulewi yle wright 21 39x cie inal ticle, icz microsoft word five secondary teachers.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x five secondary teachers: creating and presenting a teaching persona janine s. davis averett university citation davis, j. (2011). five secondary teachers: creating and presenting a teaching persona. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this qualitative study investigates the ways that five secondary teachers developed and presented personae. the researcher collected and analyzed data using a theoretical frame based in social psychology, including goffman’s presentation of self in everyday life (1959), and miles and huberman’s (1994) three-step approach to qualitative data analysis. findings indicate that teachers drew on three major realms—the physical, psychological, and social—when constructing classroom personae. implications include increased opportunities for teacher reflection on persona and its effects. keywords: persona, social psychology, qualitative, reflection current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: janine s. davis affiliation: averett university address: 4880 cox road #101, glen allen, va 23060 email: jsdavis@averett.edu biographical information: an assistant professor in the averett university graduate and professional studies m.ed. program, janine is currently teaching courses in philosophy of education, curriculum development, and models of instruction. her research interests include teacher persona and identity, preservice teachers, and qualitative research. creating and presenting a teaching persona 3 five secondary teachers: creating and presenting a teaching persona teachers and actors have similar jobs—they perform for audiences, and those audiences can interact with the actors and change the outcome of the performance based on their reactions. elliot eisner (2002) calls the classroom a context for improvisation and likens teaching to standup comedy. those who teach know that they do not necessarily play the same role in class as they do at home or among friends. we adopt personae and present the sides of our selves that suit us and the situation. the word persona comes from the latin word for mask and suggests the “taking on of a mask,” that “involves artifice” (parini, 1997). this aspect of teaching is especially relevant to the current push to determine what successful teachers do: a recent new york times magazine article suggests that teaching is “decidedly not about being yourself” (green, 2010). persona is complex, and we know little about how and why teachers create certain personae in their classrooms. it is crucial to know all we can about what goes on in the classroom, including the ways that teachers enact roles; investigating how teachers create personae may impact teacher training in the future. the construct of persona the persona provides external clues about one’s self-image (sadoski, 1992). since the time of aristotle, when public speakers employed the rhetorical technique of ethos to highlight their character to sway their audiences, people in society have engaged in playing social roles (minot, 1989). more recently, social psychologists have investigated how and why people enact social roles: symbolic interactionism states that we adopt roles and define our selves depending on our understanding of and response to situations (blumer, 1969; mead, 1982; zurcher, 1983); thus, as applied to teaching, describing one’s persona helps others understand how the actor views the teaching act. in education, symbolic interactionists might refer to the novice teacher current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 who “takes on the role” or persona of the teacher (knowles & holt-reynolds, 1991; labaree, 2000; lortie, 1975). among the reasons for certain personae are one’s expectations and understanding of specific professions, which include rigid role expectations for teachers due to our extended time as students (lortie, 1975; perlman, 1986; weber & mitchell, 1995). studying social roles has extended to poker games, college football fans, and sorority houses and revealed that people do play roles consciously based on the audience’s expectations and the context (zurcher, 1983). however, there are few clear examples of studies that investigate the ways that personae emerge within the complex sociological interactions of teaching. theoretical frame various ideas from the literature underpin this study. figure 1 details the interrelationships of theory that informed data collection and analysis. the process of persona creation set forth in figure 1 also served as an a priori hypothesis about the ways that the participants would create personae. figure 1. theoretical frame. creating and presenting a teaching persona 5 as seen in figure 1, consideration of context serves as a filter for managing impressions and constructing persona (gardner & avolio, 1998; schlenker, 1980). teachers are primarily influenced by the classroom context as they create personae. the context can shape a leader’s presentation of self; charismatic leaders use positive characteristics like high self-esteem and motivation and manage their audience’s impressions through framing, scripting, staging, and performing, which leads to positive group outcomes (gardner & avolio, 1998). the next stage of the diagram shows the various ways that people construct a persona in society: goffman (1959), in his theory of the presentation of self in everyday life, separated the methods of creating a persona into discursive and non-discursive actions. non-discursive actions might include such signals as clothing or gestures; it is partly through these that a teacher conveys his or her ideas about the role of the teacher. discursive speech is influenced by relationships and social norms, which comes from the field of sociolinguistics. relationships and social norms influence discursive language because they are a part of the discourses that preservice teachers encounter in their own schooling and teacher training programs (kagan, 1992; lortie, 1975; zeichner & gore, 1990). as indicated in the third stage of the diagram, the purpose of these actions is for the teacher to display a persona and manage the students’ impressions of him or her. part of the point of managing students’ impressions is for the teacher to continue to do his or her job (schlenker, 1980); depending on the teacher, this may take the form of increasing student attention or learning, or simply be to make the teacher want to continue appearing in front of the class day after day. this process of persona creation and presentation occurs in all social settings, including the classroom. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 study’s purpose because there has been little research in the area of teacher persona, the purpose of this study was to investigate the ways that teachers create a persona in their classrooms. the research question guiding this study was “how do teachers develop and present a teaching persona?” it is important to know how teachers present personae in the classroom because the method infuses and modifies content—or how one teaches is constituent with what is taught (eisner, 2002). this study’s findings provide insight into the ways that teachers construct personae in the classroom, which can in turn inform pre-service teacher education and teacher staff development. once we know more about the choices that teachers make when creating personae, we may be able gauge the effectiveness of various personae in future studies and intervene to enable teachers to construct the most effective personae possible. method site and participants participants were a convenience sample of teachers at the trinity school; i gained access to the site through an acquaintance who taught at the school. the site was conveniently located but was not as saturated with other researchers as other public schools in the area due to the presence of a large research university in the vicinity. the five participants volunteered for the study in response to an email sent to all teachers at the school. the teachers were all caucasian, between the ages of 30 and 65, and had been teaching for more than three years, some for more than a decade. the participants taught math, english, science, history, and government. trinity school, a private, religious, k-12 school of about 700 students, is located in a residential area of a small city in the mid-atlantic region. the approximately 400 seventh to 12th creating and presenting a teaching persona 7 grade students pay tuition of more than $12,000 a year; most students are caucasian and uppermiddle-class. the school website indicates that 13% of the student body is made up of minorities and 20% of the students receive some financial assistance. observations suggest that the largest group of minority students are asian, followed by a small number of latino, africanamerican, and biracial students. sports are an important component of student life at trinity: almost 80% of students play at least one school sport, and the hallways showcase newspaper clippings about teacher-coaches or student-athletes. data collection data collection involved observations, interviews, and document analysis and took place from september 30 to december 1, 2008. observations totaling 15 hours included class periods at multiple class levels, such as honors or regular, as well as time immediately before and after the class periods to observe “backstage” (i.e. not engaged in teaching) behavior at those times. i conducted semi-structured, audio recorded interviews of between 45-60 minutes with each participant. these interviews included questions that were grounded in the literature and probed teachers’ ideas about their personae, including their responses to different school and student contexts and prior teacher models. sample questions and sub-questions are listed below: what do you think you are like as a person? what do you think you are like as a teacher? if the two are similar or different, please explain why you believe that is the case. what kinds of personality traits do you think you present to the class purposefully? why do you choose those traits? are there any traits that you deliberately choose not to show? current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 how much personal information (about children, spouse, hobbies) do you choose to share with students? why do you choose to share it? i interviewed each participant once, near the end of the data collection period. interviews took place at trinity school, and i transcribed them for analysis. document collection included assignment sheets, lecture handouts, photocopied readings, and the school schedule, website, and newspaper. i collected these multiple sources of data in order to triangulate my findings—which is vital to qualitative research—and not rely on one source of data collection. all of the data that i collected contributed to answering the research question, but i relied most heavily on observations for the initial phase of analysis. because of the nature of the research question, i used observations to determine how teachers presented their teaching personae. interviews mainly addressed how teachers had developed their personae over time. documents were a minor source of data collection and served to provide details about the classroom and school context in order to support a thick description. data analysis the data analysis involved miles and huberman’s (1994) three-step approach of data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification. i developed a start list of codes that was grounded in the literature and added emergent codes during the process of analysis, which ran concurrently with data collection. coding language mirrored goffman’s (1959) discussion of enacted personae, using, for example, the code “costume” for teacher clothing, “setting” for classroom decoration, and “backstage” for teacher comments that occurred when the teachers were not engaged in the act of teaching. some later codes that evolved during the analysis included “sarcasm,” “teacher sensitivity to student needs,” and “address”. creating and presenting a teaching persona 9 after uploading all data files into the nvivo computer program, i assigned codes during multiple readings of the entire data corpus. in addition to assigning codes to relevant sections of text at the phrase level, nvivo supported later phases of analysis, which included the creation of models using these codes and displays of instances of certain key codes across the participants. for a complete list of codes, see appendix i. limitations as with any study, this study has limitations that must be acknowledged. these limitations included the site and participants, time for data collection, and data collection implementation. the site for this study was one private, religious school, which means that extending the findings to public school teachers is most likely not advisable due to the difference in context. the data collection for this study took place over the course of eight weeks, starting at the middle of the semester, which is a relatively short period of time. additionally, while i compare instances of codes across the participants in the findings, my observations did not always provide a completely representative sample of each participant’s schedule. while i developed the questions for the interview protocols from the literature, it is possible that my questions did not resonate with the participants as they described their experiences. it is also possible that the themes i derived from the data were not absolutely representative of the participants’ experiences, however in order to guard against this i employed member checking. each participant accepted my analysis and played a role in shaping the final themes. finally, i did not have access to the pupils’ perspectives through interviews, although pupil voices do appear in my field notes and i observed their actions and reactions during my note taking. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 findings: how do teachers develop and present a teaching persona? analysis of the data revealed that the teachers were operating within and drawing from three interconnected realms—the physical, psychological, and social—when developing and presenting their personae (figure 2). each teacher’s persona was informed by all three realms, but the teachers varied in the degree to which each realm drove their choices. figure 2 illustrates the relationships among these realms and associated concepts; the subheadings listed under each realm below align with those found in the figure. figure 2. the three realms of persona development. the physical realm according to goffman (1959), we use sign vehicles, or indicators of persona, for two kinds of expression: the one that we give discursively, through speech and language, and the one that we give off nondiscursively, through such nonverbal modes as clothing and gestures. these creating and presenting a teaching persona 11 two kinds of expression are inextricably linked in the dramaturgical view of social interaction (brissett & edgeley, 1990). the participants in this study often used vocal volume, pitch, discourse, and general physicality to present their teaching personae. voice. perhaps most notable among the ways that teachers created a persona were the ways that they spoke to their students. a consideration of voice involved not only simply volume and pitch, but also the kinds of speech the teachers used in their classrooms. whether through the use of questioning at various levels, calling students by name or by nicknames, or using sarcasm, teachers conveyed differing roles of the teacher and the teacher’s relationship to students through their choices. table 1 numerically represents these findings. table 1 instances of student address, questioning, and sarcasm code ann john mary rob tina address 14 27 26 12 10 name 13 18 26 8 8 nickname 2 12 0 4 2 questioning 21 35 32 31 17 high 5 5 12 10 1 low 16 30 24 21 16 sarcasm 1 4 13 1 25 table 1 shows a clear division in the teachers’ use of discursive language. mary and tina used sarcasm often in the classroom, while ann, john and rob did not. ann even acknowledged that this choice was made deliberately when she said, “i don’t think that it’s [sarcasm] appropriate for the classroom” (ann, personal interview, november 20, 2008). tina said that she did use sarcasm purposefully because she saw it as a part of her personality (tina, personal interview, november 23, 2008). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 for coding purposes, high and low levels of questioning were defined using bloom’s taxonomy, with lower-level questions involving either clear yes or no answers that drew on recently-taught information or questions that asked students to comprehend instruction and respond to it briefly. higher-level questions asked students to synthesize or apply knowledge or predict outcomes. all of the teachers asked more lower-level questions than higher-level questions, but both mary and rob often used higher-level questions as well. this could be due to the age of the students in their classes—both taught seniors—although tina taught upperclassmen as well and she asked one higher-level question to 16 lower-level questions. the teachers’ views of their content areas contributed here; tina taught math and both she and the students saw the subject as being made up of more clearly right-or-wrong knowledge. ann and john taught middle school science and social studies, respectively, and also had many more lower-level questions than higher-level questions—5 to 16 and 5 to 30, respectively. these two teachers also tended to focus much more on the process of learning, such as how to take notes, read for information, and conduct research, and acknowledged that they saw middle school students as needing this kind of support instead of a content-heavy curriculum. this contributes to the explanation of why teachers differ in their personae: they believe that their students need certain things from teachers. finally, the ways that teachers addressed students conveyed the teachers’ personae. persona is constructed within social interactions (goffman, 1959), and the ways that people address others indicates their ideas about their roles in the interaction. for example, a teacher who calls students “honey” or “sweetie” with a gentle tone may be seen as presenting a motherly persona. although in the initial analysis the difference appeared to be between teachers who did and didn’t use nicknames, later analysis showed that a bigger difference appeared when teachers creating and presenting a teaching persona 13 did or didn’t address students at all. i observed all of the teachers for the same amount of time, but while rob and tina used student names or nicknames fewer than 12 times overall, mary and john addressed students 26 and 30 times, respectively. mary did not use nicknames for students, while john, who also coaches a sports team at the school, often referred to students as “my man,” or by nicknames that slightly changed their actual names, like “macster.” ann fell in the middle of this division, addressing students 15 times. she favored nicknames like “sweet pea” or “sweetheart,” when she did use nicknames. this set up a big sister/mom persona and relationship with the students. the use of names was one way that teachers conveyed a basic relationship with their students, whether it was straightforward and collegiate, as with mary, or enthusiastic and coach-like, as with john’s persona. physicality. teachers had active or stationary styles when it came to motion in the classroom: mary usually sat a large round table while discussing literature. tina generally stood in front of the smart board while teaching and rarely circulated throughout the room, perhaps because there was little room to maneuver between the students’ desks. john and ann frequently circulated throughout the room to check on student progress. john also frequently employed fist bumps with his student in class, which created a coach-like persona and drew on the signals of physical action and tone of voice, as it was often delivered in an expectant, excited manner. rob moved purposefully, and indicated how he developed an awareness of his movements, saying: i’m probably more self-aware of my body actions than most because of my law training…and i did ceremonies for the marine corps where everything from the curl of my hand to [where my feet are] was analyzed…i choose to sit down on the desk at times, or i’ll be on a [power point] slide and then change it and consciously go to the other current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 side—that’s kind of a classic persuasive use of body movement (rob, personal interview, november 25, 2008). rob’s deliberate and intentional use of physical movements to make points in the classroom created a lawyerly, college-like teaching persona. other teachers did not express this level of awareness of their movements, although all acknowledged their preferences for sitting, standing, or circulating. costume. the teachers’ clothing choices contributed to their personae in the way that the costume contributes to a character onstage. both rob and john dressed in a polished and preppy style. the first time i met rob, he was wearing a pink oxford shirt with his monogram embroidered on the chest. ann’s colorful, youthful clothing choices included cowboy boots, brightly colored college sweaters, and mini skirts. ann’s style contrasted with mary’s and tina’s comfortable-looking and generally dark-colored wardrobes. tina often wore knee-length jean skirts and solid-colored shirts, while mary favored pants and tops in dark colors. setting. decorations varied from many diverse materials to almost nothing. although teachers had little control over the size, shape, and furnishings of their classroom space, they used posters and decorations to outwardly represent their personae. in this way, they served as the set decorators of their classrooms. rob controlled the setting by planning several off-campus field trips and trips to the computer lab. some choices were a function of the teachers’ content areas; for example, ann had live animals in her room because she taught science. ann also displayed family pictures and large amounts of student work. this was a highly-charged election year as viewed from a conservative religious school, which led rob, a government teacher, both to take students to a polling place on election day and to break with his usual strategy of not telling students who would receive his vote. he attributed this choice to wanting to check in creating and presenting a teaching persona 15 with students about whether he was accurately presenting an unbiased view of politics. rob also displayed personal artifacts including framed diplomas. john decorated his space with college pennants, a large american flag, and a personal pez collection. in mary’s room, there were fewer decorations, including two small pictures from nature and a bulletin board on mla style. finally, tina used the smart board during lessons, but there were very few decorations on the walls other than a few slogan stickers such as “if i throw enough at ‘em, maybe something’ll stick,” which presumably represented the tongue-in-cheek side of her view of teaching. the psychological realm predating goffman, some of the origins of our conceptions of persona can be found in jung (1875-1961), whose work centered on personality as exhibited through social interaction; for example, the popular division of types into extravert and introvert is based on one’s own interest and attitudes toward others in social settings. extending from personality and intertwining with the psychological aspect of persona creation is teacher identity. selfpresentation within the context of social interaction is seen in the research as a step toward identity formation (perlman, 1986; zembylas, 2003). in other words, persona is enacted socially with various others on a daily basis, and identity is formed by processing the effects of the accumulation of these daily personae; this relationship between persona and identity highlights that the ways people think about themselves impact the ways they conduct themselves in public. for this study, the psychological dimension of persona creation included feelings about content, beliefs about teaching such as what the role of a teacher should be and what students like or need from a teacher, and personal teacher models, whether real or fictional. feelings about content. the participants’ feelings about their content areas influenced the personae they created in the classroom. ann’s enthusiasm for the nature of scientific current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 discovery meant that she wanted to present an enthusiastic persona for her students, while mary’s feelings about english as an interesting but serious and scholarly pursuit led to her serious and practical persona. both rob and john described a love for the civic opportunities and relevance of social studies and government, and they revealed this through their professional but democratic personae. they made their openness and desire to hear multiple students’ voices—as in a democratic society—a part of the personae that they presented to their classes. tina saw math as important but often boring, and her often impatient and sarcastic persona flowed from these beliefs. beliefs about teaching. in considering her views of teaching the students at trinity, tina drew on her own experience as a student in a religious school and her upbringing and said, i know that these kids drink, they do drugs, they’re not sheltered…a lot of the trinity teachers actually believe that they do absolutely no wrong, and so they treat them as if they do absolutely no wrong…i don’t want them for one second to think that i can be manipulated…i’m a control freak, and a lot of it had to do with that i grew up in an alcoholic family, a bad one. (personal interview, november 23, 2008) tina acknowledged that her often inflexible, sarcastic persona came from these aforementioned beliefs about the students. during one class, tina said, “so this is solving, in the other one we were just simplifying.” when a boy offered a long explanation for how to do the problems, tina said in a joking, sarcastic way, “well, that was made a whole lot easier” (field notes, november 10, 2008). ann’s caring, motherly persona contrasted but could also be attributed to her beliefs about teaching her particular students. she said, “well, i believe the best in all my students…my kids know i love them” (ann, personal interview, november 20, 2008). rob had held a high position in the military and attended law school, and recalled the styles of creating and presenting a teaching persona 17 teaching and leadership that were effective in those settings as he considered his own persona. mary said that she enjoyed her work and english literature but admitted that she felt that “so much of teaching is scut work” (personal interview, november 24, 2008). teacher models. a common expression that is supported by the literature is that teachers teach in the ways that they were taught (lortie, 1975), and the teachers in this study did describe using their own favorite teachers as models as they formed their personae. ann named a teacher model who was “very frenetic” and who “looked for you to get things right, which is what i try to do with my struggling students” (ann, personal interview, november 20, 2008). one particular movie proved to be polarizing between two teachers with different personae. john stated, “one of the great models is actually from a movie, dead poets’ society…i remember seeing that movie early in my college career and being inspired by it…just the connection that his character was able to make with his students, i think is very powerful, even more than academe” (john, personal interview, december 1, 2008). john frequently enacted a charismatic, enthusiastic persona similar to the teacher in the film. in contrast, mary listed the prim and proper mary poppins from literature (not the film, she indicated) as one of her models, and said that, “some of the teachers that are not role models for me are people like robin williams in dead poets’ society, sort of, you know, cutting edge maverick, throw the book out the window…that’s so not who i am” (personal interview, november 24, 2008). in her teaching, she set up an opposing persona to the teacher in dead poets’ society; she could be stern, inflexible, and sarcastic, and delved deeply and straightforwardly into the text in discussions. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 the social realm persona is enacted in social settings, with an “audience” (goffman, 1959). the social definitions of symbolic interactionists (blumer, 1969; schlenker, 1980; zurcher, 1983) extend to the classroom and persona: students form definitions and expectations for the role and behavior of the teacher and teachers respond to these expectations (lortie, 1975; vanderstraeten, 2004; weber & mitchell, 1995). in this study, the social realm of persona construction included the teachers’ relationships with students and their (the teachers’) responses to the school context. relationships with students. as they enacted persona socially, the relevant audiences for the teachers in this study were the classes of students they taught, and the kinds of relationships that the teachers created were an important part of their personae. ann wanted to convey motherly warmth and gentle support in her relationships with students, and indicated that she would hug students when they were upset. during class, john and rob brought up experiences with students that they had had while coaching sporting activities, which highlighted their views of teacher-as-coach. tina responded to the students’ academic performance, at times openly conveying frustration when they hadn’t completed assignments or weren’t paying attention. mary listened to the students’ thoughts but pushed them to interact with and think critically about the material (in this case, novels) instead of discussing their personal lives with her or their classmates. context response. in this private, religious school, students were encouraged to get involved in extra-curricular activities such as sports, and many of the teachers responded to this context by discussing their coaching duties (as rob and john did) or interest in student or professional sports (as tina and ann did) during class time. creating and presenting a teaching persona 19 additionally, trinity school used ability grouping and at times the teachers adjusted their personae depending on the level of students that they were teaching. this became evident in observations and the teachers confirmed in the interviews that their choices were intentional. in this way, the prior and present actions of the “audience” of students informed the teacher’s performance. for example, tina was often sarcastic in class, but the tone of the sarcasm was more positive in the honors class, while in the regular class, it was harsher and directed at students’ misbehavior or lack of involvement with the class activities. when teaching a mathematical formula, tina said to a regular class, “oh yeah. this is for two by two. it’s gonna get big. abc, def, ghi.” student: [sarcastically] “i hate you.” t: “write it down. i’ll never ask you to like me, i’ll never ask you to like this class, and i’m not asking you to cure cancer” (field notes, tina, october 20, 2008). in the honors class, she said, “you have to be meticulous [she pronounces it carefully]. [to two students] guys, stop petting.” student: “were you petting her?” t: “yes, like a dog. i’ll check the numbers. you understand how, though? maybe? because i’m so nice, i printed this out for you” (field notes, tina, october 6, 2008). she changed her persona slightly based on the “audience,” and could be slightly more abrupt and negative with lower-performing students. some of these differences between class levels were subtle and were enacted through slight changes such as the level of the questions asked of the students. for a comparison of the numbers of questions by level, see table 1. at trinity, teachers pray with their classes at least once each day, and the ways that the teachers responded to this requirement contributed to their overall presentation of persona. because prayer was the one subject common to the participants in the context of trinity school (except mary, who did not teach during the prayer time), their treatment of the prayers indicated their preferred teaching style, which was a part of the persona. while rob began a prayer with a current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 joke and then chose some quotes from the bible and explained their significance, ann and john would ask for prayer requests from students and spend about ten minutes asking for strength and comfort for the students. in contrast, tina once prayed for students in the class who were failing and may not be asked back to the school. discussion the theoretical framework for this study served as an a priori hypothesis, and the process indicated therein did occur for each of the participants. they considered the context of their classroom and school and used non-verbal and discursive signals in order to manage the students’ impressions of them. goffman’s interaction order (1983, as cited in malone, 1997) indicates that face-to-face interaction involves “bodily displays [that] are enacted and read as if part of a natural theater.” the participants engaged in this “natural theater,” which included hand gestures, eye movements and gaze, facial expressions, and physical positioning in the classroom and in relation to the students. the importance of clothing and appearance, particularly for ann, highlights some participants’ attention to their physical presentation of self. non-verbal signals such as these, combined with speech and use of objects, form what gee (2000) calls a “combination” (109). the participants developed and presented personae in various ways, and indicated varying levels of awareness that they were doing so. research supports the actions of the teachers, including goffman’s theory of the presentation of self, which states: sometimes the individual will act in a thoroughly calculating manner, expressing himself in a given way solely in order to give the kind of impression to others that is likely to evoke from them a specific response he is concerned to obtain. sometimes the individual will be calculating in his activity but be relatively unaware that this is the case. creating and presenting a teaching persona 21 sometimes he will intentionally and consciously express himself in a particular way, but chiefly because the tradition of his group or social status require this kind of expression and not because of any particular response (other than vague acceptance or approval) that is likely to be evoked from those impressed by the expression. sometimes the traditions of an individual's role will lead him to give a well-designed impression of a particular kind and yet be may be neither consciously nor unconsciously disposed to create such an impression (1959, p.7). personal biographies can impact teacher role identity (knowles, 1992; solomon, worthy, & carter, 1993), and in this study, patterns of interaction from the participants’ family lives were also important when presenting a persona. this was especially true for tina, who recalled toxic relationships with her siblings and parents and who admitted that she sometimes resorted to negative interactions with students. the findings raise many questions which may be addressed in future studies. one of the biggest remaining questions is that of teacher choice of content area and student age level (as in middle or high school). it is unclear whether teachers made choices in response to the students in the room or whether teachers chose the kinds of situations that suited their own personal teaching preferences and personae. more work is needed in this area to know the reasons behind this complex process of persona creation. nevertheless, the research findings do have some important implications for research on teaching and teacher education. implications first, if teachers operate within these three realms, then it is reasonable to investigate how teacher educators might prepare their programs to align with these areas. results also suggest that reflection on the development and presentation of one’s personae may support teacher current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 awareness of their actions and interactions. this is a small sample of teachers at one private school, so more studies like this are necessary to know whether the persona-creating choices made by these teachers are similar to those made by teachers in larger and/or public schools. second, this study does not focus on effects of certain personae on students, but my observations suggest that students do respond differently to different teacher personae. future studies must consider the impact of teacher personae on both student achievement and student attitudes about learning. conclusion the kinds of personae that teachers enact in front of their student audiences vary a great deal. how do teachers develop and present their personae? this study aims to answer this question; the findings show that the physical, social, and psychological realms are vital as teachers construct their public selves in the classroom. participants signaled their differences in persona through visual and auditory cues like vocal tone, student address, classroom decoration, and teacher dress. they interacted with students in different ways and drew on a variety of experiences as they went “onstage” day after day. to what degree are the teachers’ personae intentional? this question was beyond the scope of this study, but would definitely provide a rich source of data for future studies. if we can determine if and how certain teachers construct their personae purposefully in the classroom and the effects of those personae on pupils, then we may take a step toward increasing teacher effectiveness in the future. creating and presenting a teaching persona 23 references blumer, h. (1969). symbolic interactionism: perspective and method. berkeley: university of california press. brissett, d. & edgeley, c. (eds.). (1990). life as theatre: a dramaturgical sourcebook. new york: walter de gruyter. eisner, e. (2002). the educational imagination: on the design and evaluation of school programs. upper saddle river, nj: prentice hall. erickson, f. (1986). qualitative methods in research on teaching. in m. wittrock (ed.), handbook of research on teaching, (3rd ed.), pp. 119-161. new york: macmillan. gardner, w., & avolio, b. (1998). the charismatic relationship: a dramaturgical perspective. the academy of management review, 23(1), 32-58. geertz, c. (1973). the interpretation of cultures. new york: basic books. goffman, e. (1959). the presentation of self in everyday life. new york: doubleday. goffman, e. (1983). the interaction order: american sociological association, 1982 presidential address. american sociological review. guba, e.g. & lincoln, y.s. (1994). competing paradigms in qualitative research. in n.k. denzin & y.s. lincoln (eds.), handbook of qualitative research (pp. 105-117). thousand oaks, ca: sage. kagan, d. (1992). professional growth among preservice and beginning teachers. review of educational research, 62(2), 129-169. knowles, g., & holt-reynolds, d. (1991). shaping pedagogies through personal histories in preservice teacher education. teachers college record, (93)1, 87-113. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 labaree, d. (2000). on the nature of teaching and teacher education: difficult practices that look easy. journal of teacher education, (51)3, 228-233. lortie, d. (1975). schoolteacher: a sociological study. chicago: university of chicago press. mead. g.h. (1982). the individual and the social self: unpublished work of george herbert mead. chicago: university of chicago press. miles, m. b., & huberman, a. m. (1994). qualitative data analysis: an expanded sourcebook (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. minot, w. (1989). personality and persona: developing the self. rhetoric review, 7(2), 352 363. parini, j. cultivating a teaching persona. chronicle of higher education, september 5, 1997. perlman, h. h. (1986). persona: social role and personality. chicago: university of chicago press. richards, l. (2005). handling ideas (chapter 6). in handling qualitative data: a practical guide (p. 146-161). thousand oaks, ca: sage. sadoski, m. (1992). imagination, cognition, and persona. rhetoric review, 10(2), 266-278. schlenker, b. (1980). impression management. monterey, ca: brooks/cole. vanderstraeten, r. (2004). emerging mechanisms of educational interaction. educational review, 56(1), 43-52. weber, s., & mitchell, c. (1995). that’s funny, you don’t look like a teacher: interrogating images and identity in popular culture. philadelphia, pa: the falmer press. zeichner, k. m., & gore, j. m. (1990). teacher socialization. in w. r. houston (ed.), handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 329348). new york: macmillan. creating and presenting a teaching persona 25 zembylas, m. (2003). interrogating “teacher identity”: emotion, resistance, and self formation. educational theory, 53(1), 107-127. zurcher, l. (1983). social roles: conformity, conflict, and creativity. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 appendix i list of codes tree node address tree node affect tree node content relevance tree node humor tree node motion tree node politics tree node questioning tree node sarcasm tree node teacher models free node age free node backstage free node collective teachers free node costume free node gender roles free node ignoring free node inflexibility free node micromanaging free node onstage free node personal story free node prayer free node process of learning free node setting free node sports free node student excitement free node student frustration free node teacher sensitivity to student needs free node text reference creating and presenting a teaching persona 27 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt volume vi citation yüksel, s c abstract the purp project fo researche teachers. had more have had responsib keyword 13, numbe ews of sc s. & karada councils proj t pose of this s or school co ers develope based on th e positive vie d positive vie bility of the c ds: school c er 4 chool ma e ağ, e. (2010) ject. current study is to de ouncils whic ed a perceptio he results of ews than ma ews regardin councils wil councils pro anagers a coun sed uluda engi eskisehir os . views of s t issues in e etermine teac ch have been on scale for this research ale teachers a ng the school ll turn projec oject, democ and teach ncils proje dat yüksel ag universi in karadağ smangazi u school mana education, 13 chers' views n used in sch the project ( h, female tea and high sch l councils pr ct practices i cracy, schoo hers rega ect l ity ğ university agers and te 3(4). retriev s regarding d hools in turk (pspda), w achers and el hool teacher. roject, the la into a mere r ols is arding th eachers rega ved from http democracy e key. in the st which was ad lementary sc . although st ack of power ritual. sn 1099-83 e school arding the sc p://cie.asu.ed ducation and tudy, the dministered t chool teache taff member r and 39x chool du/ d the to the ers rs current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 views of school managers and teachers regarding the school councils project the 21st century places high demands on education with regard to globalisation, multiculturalism, democracy, and human rights. students should graduate from schools after they incorporate an understanding of democracy that satisfies these demands. teaching students about democracy and other relevant subjects through theoretical lessons alone does not raise awareness about democracy in students. the key factor is that students accumulate experiences based on the principles of democracy at many points in their lives, but these opportunities occur more frequently at school. there is no doubt that teaching theoretical information to students is insufficient to make democracy a lifestyle. the most basic characteristic of democracy is that it is an idea form and a cultural matter. it cannot be integrated into individuals through laws, regulations, enforcement, or teaching through school lessons. the information should be conveyed through experiences. the individual should learn democratic values at school; however, the key is to practice these values with the help of the teacher (beane, 2005; mosher, kenny, & garrod, 1994). . practicing democratic education depends on configuring school and class media based on the principles of democracy. rusch (1994) states that democratic practices at schools should consist of two related parts: (i) the values achievable in reality (creating an intellectual base for beliefs and practices); and (ii) specific practices for attendance of the individuals at school completely. calabrese (1990) states that there are several basic democratic practices, including: of the promotion of justice, a cherishing of equity, the maintenance of integrity, constituents (active and full participation), a norm of inclusion, equity in the distribution of resources, and reasonable recourse for grievances. considering these principles, it is evident that a participatory structure should be formed at school. school councils project 3 one of the most important elements of democracy is participation. participation is the basis of an education in democracy. democracy may be better learned in democratic environments where participation is encouraged, ideas are sincerely expressed and discussed, freedom of expression is truly experienced by teachers and students, and justice exists. democratic relationships between all parties (managers, teachers, students, other employees, and families) participating in school life are desired. these democratic relationships will facilitate the formation of a participatory environment. as a result, providing democratic participation in schools is a process that includes managers, students, and guardians. a system to increase the effectiveness of teachers and guardians was planned during the 1990s, and efforts were undertaken to implement this system (levin, 1998). recognition of teachers within school management and their contributions to making these decisions were seen as a factor in making the education process democratic. the idea of student participation in school management appeared after the 1990s (perlin, 2004). school councils one of the key methods for raising student participation in school management and making democracy education effective is to form “student councils” “student assemblies”. according to this practice, managers, teachers, and students should work in cooperation for modifications at school (alderson, 2000). school councils also gather students and make them aware of projects at their schools (baginsky & hannam, 1999). students can explain their demands about their schools, which will increase the quality of education and bring attention to matters ignored by management. students will take responsibility during councils, rather than observe events around them as a spectator; this will lead students to show the required sensitivity that is appropriate in these councils. they will not hesitate to explain their ideas about the events current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 (cotmore, 2004). according to studies, students, teachers, and guardians look favourably on active student participation in management, and believe that school councils are effective and helpful in developing democratic behaviours (parker & leithwood, 2000; veugelers & kat, 2003). however, according to some studies, teachers and students do not look on active participation of students in management with the same favour; teachers do not believe that student councils have a positive effect on schools and classes (parker & leithwood, 2000). some teachers complain that student councils create additional work burdens. students state that they cannot explain their ideas in meetings due to the time restrictions. however, it is understood that students are willing to take responsibility and have positive views on school councils (alderson, 2000; cotmore, 2003). however, it has been observed that school managers do not want student groups to participate in matters relating to schools, thus keeping their participation levels to a minimum (clune & white, 1988; conley, 1991; 1993; malen & ogawa, 1988). school councils in the turkish educational context turkish education system has democratic, modern, scientific secular and coeducational characteristics. the purpose of the turkish education system is to increase the welfare and happiness of the turkish citizens and turkish society, to support and facilitate economic, social and cultural development in national unity and integration and to make the turkish nation a constructive, creative and distinguished partner in modern civilization (meb, 2002). the age of entry to school is six or seven in turkish education system. since 1997, secondary education follows eight years of basic education and covers general, vocational and technical high schools that provide three or four years of education. general high schools do not prepare students for a specific profession but rather for higher education. the following institutions are considered to fall within general secondary education: high schools; high schools with intensive foreign school councils project 5 language teaching; anatolian high schools where a foreign language english, french or german is taught during the preparatory year and the teaching of certain subjects is provided in that language in upper grades; science high schools; teacher training high schools; anatolian fine arts schools; multi-curricula high schools; evening high schools; and private high schools. in general high schools, the average number of weekly periods of teaching in each grade varies from a minimum of 33 to a maximum of 41. in their second year, students in high schools where the general programmer is applied may choose to attend branches which specialize in the natural sciences, literature and mathematics, the social sciences, foreign languages, art or physical education. vocational high schools provide three-year secondary education, train qualified people for various professions and also prepare students for higher education. technical high schools offer a four-year programmer. subjects offered in the first year are the same as in the vocational high schools. secondary education students obtain the diploma which is the prerequisite for entry to higher education (whed, n.d.). the most important reason for this development, the european union and the modernization of the turkish education system examines the reconstruction of turkish history/social studies curriculum and accesses how well the program conforms to the established european union (eu) directions and norms. in this age of globalization, the extent to which the eu can impose its educational norms on turkish education as the membership process unfolds is in question. therefore, the problem addressed in this study concerns the relationship between educational and national development in turkey and the degree of influence the eu can exercise appropriately on that development (tarman, 2008). although positivism –as well as its corollary in the social sciences, structuralfunctionalism – continues to resurface as an influential paradigm, the last two decades have witnessed the emergence of a variety of new perspectives and approaches. these include: critical current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 theory (foster, 1986), hermeneutics, feminism (capper, 1999), (critical) pragmatism (maxcy, 1991, 1995), and postmodernism/post-structuralism (capper, 1998, 1993) (see also, derrida, 1982, 1984; lyotard, 1984; foucault, 1979, 1992; anderson & grinberg, 1998). anderson and ginsberg (1998) have offered a subtle theoretical account of how foucault’s ideas on power can illuminate the field of educational administration. the deployment of a range of discursive techniques has been an essential element in the legitimating of educational policies and management practices in a period of rapid change. according to turan (2000), citizens have not comprehended the importance of participatory democracy in turkey since the turkish government has not made the necessary arrangements in schools which would create a democratic environment or prepared the administrators who would implement those arrangements. school councils and practices for cooperative decision-making have been seen in canada, the u.s., new zealand, australia, and the united kingdom (malen & ogawa, 1992; mohrman, wohlstetter & associates, 1994; murphy & beck, 1995). these practices have also been started in turkey. democracy education has consistently been discussed in turkey. one of 15 basic principles in turkish education is to provide democracy education (official gazette, 24 june 1973). considering the legal fundamentals of education, this indicates the importance that is attached to education. however, the quality of democracy education has frequently been discussed. theoretical teaching in democracy education in turkey has been dominant, and attitudes and skills have been ignored until recent years. with respect to the theoretical teaching of democracy to students, subjects regarding human rights and democracy have been included in other lessons. in addition, lessons regarding “human rights and democracy” are beginning to be school councils project 7 taught in elementary and senior schools after the relevant program was recently developed in turkey. however, it is claimed that the contents of these lesson are insufficient (kepenekçi, 2000) and the subjects of human rights and democracy are not properly emphasized in lesson books (i̇nal, 2004; akbaşlı, 2000). theoretical aspects of democracy were discussed within lessons; however, there was no practical application that could help students relate to democracy at schools. thus, discussions of organising school councils began in turkey, and “the project for democracy education and school councils -pdesa” was put into effect. this project was enabled by a protocol signed between the ministry of national education (mne) and the turkish grand national assembly (tgna) on 13 january 2004, and was based on the idea that democracy can only be learned through practice. in the same year, pilot practices of the project began at 300 schools. due to the positive results that were obtained, pdesa was implemented in all schools across turkey in the 2004-2005 academic years. “the project for democracy education and school councils pdesa,” executed by the ministry of national education (mne) and the turkish grand national assembly (tgna), cooperatively aims to raise children, starting at early ages, with an awareness of democracy. this will make students more sensitive to democratic subjects, such as elections, becoming elected, voting, critical thinking, cooperation, participation, forming public opinion, and the adoption of democratic leadership (meb, 2007). there are three separate councils in the execution of this project. first, the school assembly is founded according to the votes of all students at the school; this assembly assigns one student as president through election. the city’s student assembly is founded on a general city basis, and assigns one student as president through election, who is then sent to the tgna to represent the city assembly. the presidents coming from various cities make up the turkish current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 students’ assembly, and discuss matters relevant to education in their cities during sovereignty week, which starts on the april 23rd of each year. the city’s student assembly notifies the minister of national assembly of its decisions, reached during this week, as recommendations for education (tezgel, 2006). there is no doubt that school managers and teachers are key factors in democracy education and in the execution of the projects for school councils. studies on attitudes, thoughts and behaviours of managers and teachers with respect to turkish democracy education indicate that managers and teachers adopt democratic principles and also consider themselves sufficient to practice them at school (bilgen, 1993; işıkgöz, 1999). however, there are often shortcomings in teachers’ democratic behaviours (ertürk, 1970; tezcan; 1982; gözütok, 1995; şahin, 1995). the physical conditions of schools often obstruct teachers’ abilities to demonstrate democratic behaviours (yeşil, 2001). studies conducted after the implementation of democracy education and the project for school councils confirm the results mentioned above. accordingly, teachers’ opinions on democracy are positive, and they believe that democracy can only be learned through education. therefore, they reported positive views regarding the project; however, there are a number of problems with respect to execution due to school conditions. teachers complain that participatory mechanisms cannot be instituted at schools, and that school managements have general intentions to supervise participation and keep the project under control (cılga, 2004; emir & kaya, 2004; kıncal & uygun, 2006; metin, 2006). however, these studies were conducted only a short time after the project was put into effect. consequently, it was assumed that teachers were still experiencing difficulties in satisfying the requirements of the project for democracy; therefore, results obtained before the project is fully and correctly integrated may be subject to change. as a result, it was decided to review the practicability of school councils at the school councils project 9 end of the third year. the aim of this study is to determine teachers’ views about democracy education and the project for school councils and its practice. the key role of teachers in democracy education and the importance of practising the concepts at school and in class have both been highlighted in the literature (giroux & penna, 1983; holmes, 1991). thus, teachers’ contributions to the execution of the project will remain high, and there is no doubt that opinions on the project will directly affect the result of its execution. method participants this is a descriptive study and was carried out on 235 managers and teachers working in istanbul and bursa at the end of the 2006-2007 academic years. istanbul and bursa are intensely populated cities, and are also industrial and commercial centres. migration to these cities occurs at high rates. as a result, schools in these cities contain students from lower, middle, and higher socio-economic classes. table 1 shows data regarding the schools in which the participants work. table 1 distributions of the schools at which the participants included in the sample work city elementary school senior school vocational high school total n % n % n % n % istanbul 61 45.9 29 21.8 43 32.3 133 100 bursa 50 49.0 25 24.5 27 26.5 102 100 total 111 47.2 54 23.0 70 29.8 235 100 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 almost half of those participating in this research (%47.2) work at elementary schools. 29.8 and 23 percent of the participants work at vocational high schools and senior high school respectively. table 2 shows data regarding personal features of the participants who were included in the study. table 2 distributions of personal features of the participants who were included in the study options 1 2 total gender male female – n 130 105 235 % 44.7 55.3 100.0 job manager teacher – n 19 216 235 % 8.1 91.9 100.0 education school of education other faculty – n 155 80 235 % 66.0 34.0 100.0 as can be seen at table 2, the ratios of participants were mostly female (55.3 %), teachers (91.9 %), and graduates of school of education (66 %). instrument in the study, the researchers developed the perception scale for the project for school councils project 11 democracy assembly (pspda), which was applied to the teachers. the scale was designed to question the views of the teachers regarding democracy education and the school council’s project applied in elementary and senior schools. the correlations of item-total and item-residue were calculated based on data collected from 235 teachers in order to determine the distinguishing powers of the individual criteria of the 37 questions in the draft form with respect to its features. correlation coefficients, which were obtained in item-total correlations, ranged between 0.19 and 0.80; item-residue correlations ranged between 0.23 and 0.78. all items were statistically meaningful. to determine the distinguishing power of the items existing in the draft form, raw scores (which were obtained from the scales) were ordered from highest to lowest. the scores can also be evaluated in one dimension due to the total point, which may be obtained from the form. a significant difference at a level of p<.01 was determined by comparing this ordering result with the average scores of the lower and upper groups of 27% through an independent group t test. analytic and confirmatory factor analyses were employed to determine the structural validity of pspda. analytic factor analysis for analytic factor analysis, kaiser meyer was calculated as olkin=.943, and bartlet analysis was calculated as [p<.01]. the perpendicular axial rotating technique was then performed to generalise the data to be obtained from the scale in this study. the varimax technique for perpendicular axial rotation was preferred due to the multifactor nature of the scale (kline, 1994; stapleton, 1997; stewens, 1996; rennie, 1997). it was understood that the items of the scale consisted of two (2) subscales. the specific values of each subscale are greater than 1. the total of the specific values of the subscales in the scale is 11.87. the explained variance percentage total is 56.57, and factor charges for the items of the subscales range between 0.44 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 and 0.78 (see table 3). when factor analysis was repeated for the remaining 21 items resulting from factor analysis, it was seen that the factor charges of these items were higher in only the subscale directly below. these subscales are as follows: (i) awareness of democracy: this consists of sixteen items, which are all positive. high scores obtained for this scale indicate that the project will help in raising awareness of democracy in the individuals. samples from the items: (1) endeavouring to be elected is a good opportunity for students to bring their personal characteristics to the fore. (2) pdesa encourages students to express their ideas. school councils project 13 table 3 the results of analytic factor analysis for the pspda scale subscales awareness of democracy national and global values item no factor charge factor charge item 15 .83 item 23 .76 item 14 .72 item 29 .71 item 28 .69 item 25 .68 item 30 .68 item 24 .67 item 17 .67 item 3 .67 item 20 .66 item 31 .63 item 27 .62 item 16 .61 item 9 .59 item 18 .57 item 6 .82 item 7 .78 item 21 .74 item 8 .57 item 11 .53 specific value 7.80 4.07 explained variance 37.18 19.38 (ii) national and global values: this consists of five items, all of which are positive. high scores obtained for this scale indicate that the project will contribute to raising national and global values in the individuals. samples from the items: (1) pdesa will help to raise awareness of scientific thinking in students. (2) pdesa will help to raise awareness of being open to global values in students. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 confirmatory factor analysis confirmatory factor analysis was performed in two stages as another effort to support the scale’s structural validity. in the first stage, it was determined whether the estimated values exceeded the theoretical limits before evaluation of the confirmatory analysis results of the subscales (which were obtained as a result of analytic factor analysis of the scale). according to the results, no values were found to exceed the theoretical limits. the consistency indices for confirmatory factor analysis seen on table 4 were calculated as chi-square (χ2) value [χ2=241.64, df=89, p<.01] for the scale. also, other consistency wellness indices [gfi=0.88, agfi=0.84, pgfi=0.65] show that the model recommended for scale is suitable. furthermore, factor charges, which were obtained in the confirmatory factor analysis for the scale, range between 0.54 and 0.81. table 4 consistency parameters of the scale for the confirmatory factor analysis model consistency parameter coefficient gfi 0.88 agfi 0.84 pgfi 0.65 df 89 χ2 241.64 χ2/df 2.71 cronbach’s alpha coefficients for interrelation in the scale were found to be 0.80 and 0.94 for the subscales, and 0.94 for the scale in general. table 5 shows the cronbach’s alpha school councils project 15 coefficients of subscales and item numbers of the subscales of the scale. table 5 reliability coefficients of the subscales and item numbers subscales n item number alpha 1awareness of democracy 235 16 0.80 2national and global values 235 5 0.94 total 235 21 0.94 table 5 shows the scale is consist of two subscales (awareness of democracy, and national and global values). cronbach’s alpha coefficients of subscales are 0.80 and 0.94. . analysing the data in the study, demographic variables of the sample group were grouped before statistical analysis, and the scale was then scored according to a 5-point likert system. sample number (n), describing demographic features of the teachers included in the sample, as well as percentage values (%), were calculated. sample number (n), mean (x), and standard deviation (sd) scores were calculated for the scores obtained by the scale. the distribution of the data was checked. kolmogorov-smirnov’s normality test was performed to determine whether the distribution was normal. according to the result of the test (p<.05), the data was not distributed normally. in other words, the distribution was non-parametric. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 table 6 test of normality: kolmogorov-smirnov dimension z df p 1awareness of democracy 2.32 235 .012 2national and global values 1.78 235 .013 total 1.43 235 .033 accordingly,  the mann-whitney-u test was employed to determine whether the scores of the teachers included in the sample varied depending on gender and job variables.  the kruskal wallis-h test was employed to determine whether the scores of the teachers included in the sample varied depending on the following variables: the type of school in which the teachers worked and the socio-economic level of the school’s district.  if variation was seen between the groups according to the kruskal wallis h test, the many whitney-u test was employed to determine the cause of the variation [between the groups].  pearson product moment correlation analysis was employed to determine the relationships between the scores of the teachers and their experiences. findings the findings of the research are as follows: table 7 shows the results of the many whitney-u test for variations in participants’ views regarding the school council’s project depending on gender. school councils project 17 table 7 mann-whitney u-test results for participants depending on gender subscale female n=105 male n=130 u z p x sd x sd 1awareness of democracy 4.09 .55 3.91 .62 5400.0 -2.756 .006 2national and global values 3.87 .62 3.54 .73 5069.5 -3.409 .001 total 7.97 1.10 7.45 1.22 5012.5 -3.499 .000 according to the statistical results, meaningful variations were found for female participants in favour of the school councils project in the subscales of awareness of democracy and national and global values, as well as in the total. that is, female managers and teachers are more positive about the school councils project than males. table 8 shows the results of the mann-whitney-u test for variations in participants’ views about the school council’s project depending on the job variable. table 8 mann-whitney u-test results for participants depending on the job variable subscales manager n=19 teacher n=216 u z p x sd x sd 1-awareness of democracy 3.76 .65 4.01 .59 1591.0 -1.626 .104 2-national and global values 3.53 .64 3.70 .71 1739.0 -1.109 .268 total 7.30 1.03 7.72 1.20 1561.5 -1.727 .084 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 according to the statistical results, no meaningful variations were found for the school councils project in the subscales of awareness of democracy and national and global values, or in the total. thereby, the opinions of participants about school councils project do not change whether they are managers of teachers. this is an important finding. it would have been thought that managers would perceive such projects negatively since managers worry that students can have more power in school administration (levin, 1998), the discipline and governance of the school might be disturbed by the propaganda and election campaigns (furman & starratt, 2002). however, managers are aware of the importance of school councils project and perceive it positively like teachers. table 9 shows the results of the kruskal wallis-h test for variations in participants’ views about the school council’s project between groups divided according to the socioeconomic levels of particular school districts. school councils project 19 table 9 kruskal wallis-h test results for participants depending on the socio-economic levels of the districts in which the schools exist subscales group n xrank df p variation 1awareness of democracy lower 89 120.02 2 .488 –middle 134 118.69 upper 12 95.29 2national and global values lower 89 116.67 2 .892 –middle 134 118.11 upper 12 126.58 total lower 89 116.13 2 .930 –middle 134 119.46 upper 12 115.54 according to the statistical results, no meaningful variations were found for the school councils project in the subscales of awareness of democracy and national and global values, or in the total. that is, the opinions of the participants do not change according to socio economical level of schools at which they work. it had been assumed that those participants working at low socio-economical environments would have perceived this projects negatively since the process of the election might have been troublesome in those schools. however, these managers and teachers do not worry about the process of the elections. table 10 shows the results of the kruskal wallis-h test for variations in participants’ views about the school council’s project depending on the school type variable. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 table 10 kruskal wallis-h test results for participants teachers depending on the school type subscales group n xrank df p variation 1awareness of democracy elementary school 111 126.12 2 .150 –senior high school 54 104.59 vocational high school 70 115.47 2national and global values elementary school 111 129.24 2 .043 1-2senior high school 54 103.32 vocational high school 70 111.49 total elementary school 111 129.13 2 .043 1-2senior high school 54 102.38 vocational high school 70 112.40 according to table 10, it was found that variation occurs between elementary and senior school managers and teachers. the variation is in favour of the elementary school managers and teachers according to the results of the many whitney-u test performed to determine which groups caused the variation. however, no meaningful variation was found for the school council’s project in the subscale of awareness of democracy. these results show that managers and teachers in elementary schools perceive this project more positively. the reason why high school managers and teachers perceive this project negatively might be that there would be undesirable interactions among students during elections such as fighting. table 11 shows the results of the pearson product moment correlation analysis done to determine the correlation between participants’ views on the school council’s project and their job experience. school councils project 21 table 11 pearson correlation matrix between participants’ views and their job experience variables awareness of democracy national and global values total job experience -.060 -.057 -.063 n=235 according to the statistical results, no meaningful correlation were found for the school councils project in the subscales of awareness of democracy and national and global values, or in the total. namely, there is no relationship between job experience and the opinions about school council project. in fact, as the seniority of managers and teachers increase, they might have been expected to have negative opinions about this project. however, it is very important that there is no finding in this research supporting this expectation. this means that, this project does not meet considerable resistance by managers and teachers in schools discussion turkey, which is a candidate for member statehood in the european union, is undertaking efforts to satisfy eu criteria. accordingly, it is making changes in its social welfare and education systems, in addition to its official government bodies. without a doubt, one of the most important criteria of change is to make democracy an integral part of turkey’s social life. strengthening social attachment and enabling the efficient participation of citizens in social and political life are among the essential considerations of governments and the eu. schools are considered to be important organisations that can contribute significantly to the socialisation of citizens and the future development of democracy. accordingly, the council of europe current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 announced that 2005 was ‘european citizenship year through education’ (council of europe, 2008). the council of europe wishes to highlight the importance of education by raising awareness of citizenship and through participation in democratic society. it was seen in many european states in recent elections that participation and interest in political life and public life are decreasing, which is cause for concern, especially with regard to young people. this organisation aims to make young people aware of the need to participate in democratic life. the council of europe aims to highlight individuals’ critical thinking abilities, as well as their abilities to discuss matters within the limits of tolerance and logic (kepenekçi, 2000). thus, the development of individuals who have adopted democracy into their social lives and are respectful of democracy has become increasingly important. the turkish education system has been modified such that the lessons of democracy and human rights have been put into schools, and these subjects are now taught in social information lessons. the second stage requires that students learn democracy through experimentation and practical experience at schools. accordingly, the project for democracy education and school councils was put into effect. it is expected that democracy will effectively take place in school life if this project is successfully completed. without a doubt, two of the most important factors for integrating democracy into schools are managers and teachers. some of the most important tools in the project are the attitudes, beliefs, and views of teachers regarding democracy and democratic practices at school. the study shows that managers and teachers view the project favourably and believe in its benefits for students. this result is very important, especially since managers and teachers retain favourable views despite the additional workloads incurred due to the project. also, it is significant that managers and teachers have taken on such views since the beginning of the school councils project 23 project in light of the fact that many managers and teachers had poor views on the benefits of school councils in the beginning (leithwood & menzies, 1998). another important finding is that managers and teachers’ positive views do not vary according to the school’s socio-economic level. it was possible that staff at schools with lower socio-economic level would think that students could not benefit sufficiently from the project due to their lower socio-economic conditions. another interesting finding is that no correlation was found between the staff’s job experience and their views on the project. it is well-known that resistance to change increases with increasing experience and age (achinstein & ogawa, 2006; gonzalez, nelson, gutkin & shwery, 2004; mckenzie & scheurich, 2008; şimşek & seashore, 2008). it is significant that the staffs’ views on student council, as well as participation at older ages, were positive. more positive views from the staff working for elementary schools are normal. it may be said that students of elementary schools may benefit more from the project compared with those attending senior schools the important matter is whether this council will be effective in school management and practice. for example, leithwood & menzies (1998) failed to find strong proof for direct or indirect effects in their reviews, which covered 83 studies on the effects of site-based management and school councils. it must be said that various factors influence the effectiveness of school councils. these factors include: the makeup of the councils in direct relation to student participation (wohlstetter et. al., 1994), the council’s goals, clearly-defined objectives and purpose (daresh, 1992; jenni, 1991; malen, ogawa & kranz, 1990), and the management style of the council (easton & storey, 1994). in considering the school councils project from these points of view, the election process for making up the council was clearly defined. however, the council’s goals and mission were not defined. in fact, students in the council were not authorised current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 to make decisions in the school, and they carried no significant responsibilities. the authority is mostly held by a central organisation in the ministry, and partially by school managers, as was previously the case. as a result, although staff members have had positive views regarding the school councils project, the lack of power and responsibility of the councils will turn project practices into a mere ritual. unfortunately, the lack of power and responsibility of the councils (and consequently, the students) indicates that the traditional approach is still valid; this approach underestimates student participation in decision-making processes, considering them to be insufficient, illiterate, and unreliable. however, when schools fail to rely on students, who account for the main element of the school, the school fails to rely on democracy. development of a democratic lifestyle at school depends on raising awareness of ‘us’ in a school’s mentality. consequently, the project should be seated on strong foundations, relieved of its mere ‘project’ status, and made into a reality in practice. in addition, school councils should be authorised as required by a democratic lifestyle. as a result, individuals will make democracy a lifestyle in the future, which will influence and contribute to the development of democracy in society. for these reasons, turkish ministry of education should give more power to the school councils since this research reveals that managers and teachers favor school councils. thus, these educators are not expected to resist or obstruct the activities of school councils. in this respect, the power of school councils should be increased and its participation in school administration should be encouraged. as a result of this, democracy will strongly take place at schools and students will acquire more easily the democratically attitudes. this research reveals the opinions of managers and teachers about school councils project. the same topic can be studied with different samplings. moreover, quantitative and school councils project 25 qualitative research can be conducted to find the possible problems in the operation of school councils in high schools. since senior high school managers and teachers perceive this project more negatively, the reasons for this negative perception can be studied in detail by conducting research in high schools. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 references achinstein, b., & ogawa, r. t. 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(eric document reproduction service no. ed479166). whed, (no date). world higher education database. london: macmillan. wohlstetter, p., smyer, r., & mohrman, s. (1994). new boundaries for school-based management: the high-involvement model. educational evaluation and policy analysis, 16(3), 268-286. yeşil, r. (2001). i̇lköğretim düzeyinde okul ve ailenin demokratik davranışlar kazandırmadaki etkisi [the effects of schools and families on the elementary school students in the process of gaining democratic behaviours] unpublished doctoral dissertation, atatürk university, erzurum, turkey. school co about th authors affiliatio address 16059 g email: s biograp sedat y univers democra engin k osmang construc ouncils project he authors : sedat yük on: uludag s: uludag u gorukle, bu sedaty@ulu phical infor yüksel is an ity. his res acy educati karadağ is a gazi univer ctivism, adv t ksel & eng g university university, ursa, turke udag.edu.tr rmation: n associate p search inter ion and effe an assistant rsity. his re vanced edu gin karadağ y & eskise education ey r professor o rests includ fect of teach t professor esearch inte ucational st ğ hir osmang faculty, d of curriculu de hidden c hing course of elemen erests inclu tatistics. gazi unive department um and ins curriculum, es in teache ntary educa ude educati ersity of educati struction at student re er education ation at esk ional leader onal scienc uludag sistance, n. kisehir rship, socia 31 ces, al current is volume authors articles publishe an kr hilla d ju an h mi ssues in educ e 13, num hold the copy s in other jour er and include ngela abeyta rista adams ary andrelch diana barela ulia boukara ndrew darian aiying dong iriam emran cation vol. 13 curr mber 4 yright to artic rnals should b e the url of t provide a hik n n 3 no. 4 rent issu http:// cles published be addressed t the cie publi ed cie is cred edit exe lor katy e jeffr sec sar mar me amb seo tiff calv linds fac gusta jean de ues in e /cie.asu.e d in current is to the author. ication. permi dited and cop torial team cutive editor ri ellingford elizabeth his rey i. johnso ction editors rah heaslip rlene hinton elinda hollis ber johnston onghee kim fany o’neill vin richards say richerso culty advisers vo e. fischm nne m. power ebby zambo educati edu issues in educ reprints sho ission is here pies are not so m rs d rich on n n s on s man rs on issn cation. reque ould credit cie eby granted to old. ror ta kar luc ker jennife ky n 1099-83 ests to reprint e as the origi o copy any art ry schmitt apati sen ri visconti cy watson rie wilkins er wojtulewi yle wright 32 39x cie inal ticle, icz cie template 1 volume 14, number 2 june 14, 2011 issn 1099-839x entitled or excluded? attitudes toward access to postsecondary education for undocumented students courtney palmer paine intermediate school theresa davidson samford university this study examines the determinants of attitudes towards undocumented immigrant students‟ access to higher education, an area that has received little attention in the literature on immigration and public opinion. theories of symbolic politics and labor market competition frame our research question. using data from the 1994 general social survey, we find partial support for our predictions. attitudes toward bilingual education, concerns about economic growth, and family income are significant predictors of public opinion regarding access to higher education for undocumented immigrants. keywords: undocumented immigrants, higher education, public opinion, attitudes in 2004 the census bureau reported that the foreign-born population had exceeded 32 million residents with approximately one third of those entering the country since 1990 (larsen, 2004). recent estimates find that there are 9.3 million undocumented immigrants in the u.s., comprising about 26 percent of the total foreign-born population. the majority of these immigrants originate from mexico or other latin american countries (passel, 2004). while many immigrants do return to their home countries (massey, 2005), a considerable amount will remain in the country, often raising children that are themselves undocumented. indeed, a recent report found that approximately 1.5 million children in the u.s. are undocumented immigrants (passel & cohn, 2009). these children will have a significant impact on the social and economic future of the u.s. (shields & behrman, 2004), and their current and future presence demands greater consideration from policy-makers. undocumented status results in significant barriers of access to a variety of institutions and resources including healthcare, welfare benefits, food stamps, and other forms of support (capps, henderson, & reardon-anderson, 2005; levinson, 2002). while the undocumented do have access to public primary and secondary education, postsecondary education remains a largely inaccessible resource, primarily due to the prohibitive costs of college education, but also due to legal and social boundaries. a considerable body of literature documents public opinion toward immigration, yet there is a notable absence of research on attitudes toward access to higher education. given the importance of public opinion for policy design and implementation, as well as the heightened social, political, and job-market value of a college degree, we find this a remarkable shortcoming in the literature. thus, we intend to build on this literature by examining attitudes toward undocumented immigrant access to higher education. we frame our investigation using symbolic politics and labor market competition theories. literature review immigrants and education an estimated 65,000 undocumented students graduate each year from u.s. secondary schools current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 (drachman, 2006). the supreme court plyer v. doe decision in 1982 guaranteed children of undocumented immigrants‟ access to free public education for grades k12. the court stated that “denying undocumented children access to free public education „imposes a lifetime of hardship on a discrete class of children not accountable for their disabling status, [and that] the stigma of illiteracy will mark them for the rest of their lives‟” (drachman, 2006, p. 92). while this decision allowed children access to primary and secondary public education, it did not ensure eligibility for financial benefits for postsecondary education. providing access to public primary and secondary education to undocumented students in the u.s. may appear to reduce the lifestyle of hardship described by drachman (2006), but it is a façade. given the current economic, political, and social state of the country, it is postsecondary education that serves as the key to upward mobility. providing access to it would allow relief from drachman‟s “stigma of illiteracy” and the challenges of poverty experienced by many immigrant groups (2006). though roughly 15 percent of undocumented immigrants between the ages of 25 and 64 have earned a college degree, this figure is less than half that of legal immigrants and natives (passel & cohn, 2009). an estimated 7 to 13 thousand undocumented immigrants enroll in college after high school, however, the sites where their access is permitted are limited and the likelihood of these students completing their degree is slim (passel, 2003). generally speaking, financial and legislative barriers make it exceedingly difficult for these students to continue with postsecondary education. the barriers that make higher education difficult to access could mean even higher future costs in the labor force, healthcare services, and criminal offenses (drachman, 2006). the cost is too great for both taxpayers and undocumented immigrants to not address their access to postsecondary education. the dream (the development, relief, and education for alien minors) act has been introduced in the senate every year since 2003. the act would make undocumented immigrant students eligible to pay in-state tuition funds for public higher education. access to in-state tuition is crucial as undocumented students cannot qualify for federal aid. this act has not been implemented at the federal level; so many state legislatures are finding ways to temporarily ameliorate the problem. in 2001, texas was the first state to pass legislation allowing undocumented high school students access to public universities and colleges by allowing students to pay in-state tuition rates. nine other states followed suit: california, illinois, kansas, nebraska, new mexico, new york, oklahoma, utah, and washington (flores & chapa, 2009). however, many states with large immigrant populations still remain in opposition to immigrant access. colorado, massachusetts, nevada, and new jersey, states with some of the largest concentrations of latino immigrants, still remain without policies that support the presence of undocumented students in higher education. even after recent dramatic increases in the immigrant population in the southern region of the u.s., most southern states remain in direct opposition to the presence of undocumented students in secondary education, much less postsecondary. mississippi, north carolina, virginia, and tennessee have forbidden undocumented students from enrolling in public colleges and universities even if they can afford the tuition rates (flores & chapa, 2009). furthermore, the lack of federal support means even for undocumented students in states that permit access to funding for postsecondary education, their degree may be useless in the american workforce because of their citizenship status (flores & chapa, 2009). the long-term implications of limiting access to higher education are quite salient when one considers most undocumented students will continue to live in the united states. carens argues that “to refuse to educate a child in the modern world is to condemn that child to a life of very limited possibilities” (2008, p. 170). in our current globalized society, higher education is crucial for social mobility. globalization requires technologically based forms of education, new forms of knowledge and new standards for expertise, yet immigrant students may be limited to primary and secondary education which cannot always provide these specialized skills (vasquez, 2007). education is the key to entrance and mobility in a global society. the restriction of education will perpetuate exclusion and stratification of minority ethnic and immigrant groups (solis, 2003). as vasquez states, education provides a “safeguard for [the] human and civil rights” of immigrants whose socioeconomic status places them at a disadvantage (2007, p. 122). the more education one receives, the greater his or her worth in the social structure, giving him or her access to more resources and protection against exploitation and discrimination in the labor force (vasquez, 2007). socially inclusive policy will aid in immigrant assimilation into the larger culture through means of social mobility, possibly even reducing poverty through participation in the higher-paid segments of the labor market. indeed, “all society benefits by providing [the immigrant] population with the education and supports they need today” that they may become productive and engaged for the future (shields & behrman, 2004, p. 4). we must consider immigrant education policy in the same manner we consider other socially inclusive policy, or the result may be a marginalized and uneducated population (carens, 2008). the initial implementation of programs that promote child development and educational opportunity for immigrants may place a financial burden on society, but failure to create national policies that support the assimilation and success of the undocumented immigrant class will likely result in an even greater financial burden over time (shields & behrman, 2004). entitled or excluded? attitudes toward access to postsecondary education for undocumented students 3 public opinion considerable research has established that americans tend to hold generally negative attitudes toward immigration (espenshade & hempstead, 1996; jarret, 1999; simon, 1985; simon & alexander, 1993; stephan, renfro, esses, white, & martin, 2005). americans tend to express opposition to immigrant-specific social policy such as access to welfare services (pantoja, 2006) and bilingual education (garcia & bass, 2007). given the importance that public opinion can have in developing policy towards access to important institutions in society, it is notable that there is little research on public opinion regarding access to higher education for undocumented immigrants. though opposition to immigration is evident, when it comes to children of immigrants, many of whom are themselves undocumented, attitudes may be tempered. according to carens (2008), children are a group of “special claims”. while many may feel that undocumented immigrants have broken the law by gaining entry into the u.s., they may also feel that the children should not be held responsible for their presence within the country. as a result, states are “even more morally constrained in dealing with irregular migrants who are children, than in dealing with irregular migrants who are adults” (carens, 2008, pp.168-169). the public opinion shift when considering children and students is most likely a result of the american public favoring humanistic treatment (lee & ottatai, 2002). americans‟ recognition of the importance of education also plays a role in the development of attitudes toward educating undocumented immigrants or the children of undocumented immigrants. generally, some college has become the norm for americans, as about eighty percent of all american students enroll in either public 4-year or 2year colleges (porter, 2002). on average, college graduates earn more than high school graduates, and a bachelor‟s degree is now seen as essential for success (riley, mcguire, dessy, & dorfman, 1999). americans view higher education as having both public and private benefits. individuals with higher education experience greater social and professional mobility, sustained cultural and family values, higher salaries and greater benefits, and improved working conditions and health. also, the greater society experiences increases in the tax revenue, consumption rates, numbers of skilled workers, charitable giving, diversity, and decreases in government aid and crime (institute for higher education policy, 1998). the value placed on higher education in america, combined with a unique sympathy for children, may temper attitudes toward immigrant access to higher education predicting attitudes toward access to higher education: theoretical framework a substantial body of research suggests that the perception of an economic and cultural threat posed by immigrants affects attitudes toward immigration generally (espenshade & hempstead, 1996; esses, jackson, & armstrong, 1998; fennelly & federico, 2008), and immigrant access to public services (garcia & bass, 2007; wilson, 2001). while none of this research focuses on undocumented immigrant access to higher education, we feel that the traditional models used to predict these other attitudes might also be useful for understanding our specific interest. these models indicate that concerns about economic competition and cultural changes to america brought about by immigrants are strong predictors of opposition to their presence. to open up educational institutions to undocumented immigrants, at a cost similar to that of citizens, suggests another component of economic competition that immigrants may pose. in addition, the presence of undocumented students, who may struggle with english competency, implies changes to pedagogy that may threaten the “uniquely american” educational experience. on this basis, we test attitudes toward undocumented student access using models that have predicted different, but related, attitudes. previous literature has employed the symbolic politics and labor market competition theories to explicate public attitudes toward immigrants and their access to public services. thus, the following section discusses, within the symbolic politics framework, economic and cultural threat. we also discuss labor market competition theory as it shapes attitudes toward immigrants. symbolic politics recent waves of immigration have brought insecurity about national cohesion and how one defines “american”. according to citrin, reingold, and green (1990), through socialization we acquire cultural attitudes and definitions that can predict how we feel about those that differ from us. this reflects the basic principle of the symbolic politics argument: that cultural objects such as language, race, religion, and socioeconomic status are embedded in the social system and solidify the concept of a unique “american” identity by giving citizens a reference for their identity (keogan, 2002). this identity, when paired with political symbols such as legislation that contributes to the benefits of immigrants, evokes negative political attitudes regarding those viewed as out-groups (sears, citrin, cheleden, & van laar, 1999). within this framework, the socialized identity of the majority group contributes to one‟s perception of ingroup and out-group distinctions and influences attitudes about those considered members of the out-group (lee & ottatai, 2002). pantoja (2006) found the majority of americans identify social values such as economic individualism, humanitarianism, and egalitarianism as playing a role in shaping american identity. recently, the public has expressed toward immigrants and immigrant policy a “growing negativity…possibly caused by the perception that these newcomers threaten existing american cultural identity, beliefs, and values” (garcia & bass, 2007, pp. 64-65). pantoja‟s 2006 study shows the extent to which a growing minority group threatens core values and shapes the way citizens within the majority group respond to immigration policies such as border current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 enforcement, the number of immigrants admitted to the country, and the public resources to which they are granted access. lee and ottatai‟s 2002 study demonstrated that factors such as target ethnicity, perceived economic threat, and obedience to law significantly influenced participant‟s responses regarding humanistic treatment of immigrants. importantly, however, the results of this study differed when respondents considered the children of illegal immigrants and their access to resources. therefore, the perception of undocumented students as both a cultural and economic threat for the public will be key in our study. cultural threat. immigrants, who bring with them different cultural beliefs and practices, are often seen as a threat to cultural definitions of “american.” fennelly and federico (2008) and wilson (2001) found respondents with more monocultural, or ethnocentric definitions of “american” more likely to hold exclusivist views toward immigrants. americans often endorse the value of diversity, particularly within the realm of education, but continue to see immigrants, both documented and undocumented, as a threat to cherished values and traditions (chandler & tsai, 2001; lamont & morales da silva, 2009). generally speaking, citizens express concern over english language use and bilingualism, and, the possibility that public policy may favor immigrants over citizens. these issues are discussed in the following sections. research sites the use of the english language as a main factor in defining american identity (chandler & tsai, 2001). english is considered “a cohesive force solidifying united states citizenry,” and many immigrants to the u.s. do not speak english, posing a threat to the established american language standard (garcia & bass, 2007). citizen-driven movements have developed where the main objective is to make english the official language so as to clearly define what it means to be american (citrin et al., 1990). interestingly, chandler and tsai (2001) found all measurable factors linked to exclusivist attitudes to be related to english language use. exclusivist attitudes regarding english language use, however, are not solely expressed toward adult immigrants, undocumented or documented. while studying immigrant students in north carolina, wainer‟s (2006) interviews with students, parents, and educators linked exclusivist attitudes of english-speaking anglos and african americans‟ with the widespread use and growth of spanish speakers. however, within the realm of higher education, americans generally promote the concept of diversity and see bilingualism as an asset (lamont & morales da silva, 2009). paradoxically, the undocumented population could provide to our public universities a wealth of diversity in education, yet they are generally restricted as a threat to our national identity and values (lamont & morales da silva, 2009). according to wilson‟s (2001) group threat theory, dominant group attitudes toward minority groups are also influenced by fears that minority group members will be favored over their own group members. the ideal of the “american dream” denotes economic wealth, occupational success, and opportunity for upward mobility, yet the continued growth of immigrants is often perceived as competition by majority group americans who aspire to those ideals. indeed, it is the majority group‟s perception of threat to their status within the social or political system that influences attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policy (wilson, 2001). feelings of threat to one‟s status can be further exacerbated if majority groups, noting an increase in immigrant populations, overestimate minority group size (alba, rumbaut, & marotz, 2005). the stronger the sense of group threat, the more likely the dominant group will express negative views toward policies that benefit minorities. americans who believe immigrants threaten employment opportunities, economic growth, or national unity are more likely to oppose policy that benefits undocumented or documented immigrants (wilson, 2001). economic threat. in addition to a cultural threat posed by immigrants, economic concerns shape attitudes toward immigrants and related policy. conditions of the national economy prove to hold great influence over citizens‟ perception of immigrants and their attitudes about their access to country entry, citizenship, and public services. keogan (2002) found exclusivist attitudes develop when the public primarily perceives material conditions as unfavorable, and, contemporary immigrants as significantly different from the european-origin population. anti-immigrant attitudes often come in response to political leaders placing blame on immigrant workers for rises in unemployment rates, economic downturns, and tax increases (citrin, green, muste, & wong, 1997). exclusivist attitudes emerge with higher levels of anxiety about the national economy. for example, eight percent of citrin et al.‟s (1997) sample supported residency time restrictions of one year before immigrants could obtain access to social services. espenshade‟s (1995) evidence seems to counter this restrictionist attitude, finding that the negative fiscal impacts from undocumented immigrants are reported to actually decrease with increased time in the u.s. among legal immigrants, only 5 percent receive welfare, which lee and ottatai deem not an “excessive demand” (2002, p. 620). while state and local governments burden about $43 billion in annual taxes for undocumented immigrants, they are estimated to produce a $23 to $30 billion annual surplus in the federal budget (espenshade, 1995). so, it is possible that the short-term costs are a small price to pay for longterm fiscal benefits and access to public services would only lessen their financial burden in order to quicken their financial contribution. if the united states continues to allow its immigrant population to remain uneducated, some argue, the lack of skilled workers in the labor force will result in a greater economic crisis (collins & reid, 2009). labor market competition new immigrants, particularly those of undocumented status working in the u.s., may be viewed entitled or excluded? attitudes toward access to postsecondary education for undocumented students 5 as competition in the labor market and a financial burden on the state. historically, immigrants have been viewed as the source of increased unemployment and poverty levels, lowered national wages, and limited provision of social services (espenshade, 1995). currently, immigrants make up about 20 percent of the low wage labor force (shields & behrman, 2004). the labor market competition theory suggests that persons with lower socioeconomic status are less likely to support immigration because it generates greater competition within their own bracket of the labor market (bonacich, 1972; garcia & bass, 2007). generally, one‟s labor market position is determined by economic status or wage bracket and level of education. immigrants, generally of low education levels, provide an economic advantage for employers, supplying a lower overall cost of labor. their citizenship and lower socioeconomic status mean immigrants have less political power, and are therefore more vulnerable to labor market abuse through underpay, exclusion of benefits, and lack of advocates (bonacich, 1972). undocumented workers are also typically paid almost 30 percent less than legal immigrants from their same native countries, despite their high rates of labor force participation (espenshade, 1995). thus, while undocumented immigrants supply a readymade low-wage labor force, they have little to no recourse to challenge their subordinate status. natives who are economically disadvantaged are more likely to express anti-immigrant attitudes as they may view immigration as having a negative personal impact (citrin et al., 1997). american employers turn to undocumented immigrants for labor because undesirable tasks in many blue-collar jobs can be completed for considerably less than the national wage, therefore increasing employer profits. by increasing the size of the minority immigrant population, the majority, mostly anglo white-collar workers, are secured in their higher status (espenshade, 1995). bass and garcia (2007) found that non-whites were indeed most likely to view immigrants as competition for employment in low-wage jobs. according to lee and ottatai (2002), direct competition for jobs in the lower wage brackets rarely occurs. nonetheless, immigrants are still perceived to hinder employment opportunities, which results in exclusivist attitudes towards their access to resources that may potentially make them even more competitive in the labor market (citrin et al., 1997). the possibility of experiencing later competition in the job market due to increased human capital among immigrant students may pose a threat to americans of low socioeconomic status and education. citrin et al. (1990) argue that those with higher levels of education, higher wages, and upper middle-class status are more likely to hold inclusivist attitudes because their own status is not threatened by immigrants in lowwage, blue-collar jobs. those in blue-collar jobs are more likely to view immigrants in a negative light, as immigrants pose a direct threat to their own job security (citrin et al., 1997). citizens with higher education are more likely to hold white-collar jobs, and a “college education gives one a regularly protected labormarket situation and instills confidence in one‟s future prospects” (citrin et al., 1997, p. 865). clearly, education level and socioeconomic status is strongly linked to how one perceives immigrants and, thus, their access to public services. background characteristics and demographics other factors that have been found to influence attitudes toward immigration and related policy include political party and ideology, gender, race, region of the country, and type of community in which one resides. research has shown that political ideology can be an important predictor of attitudes and that, generally speaking, those holding more liberal perspectives tend to be more supportive of immigration and its corresponding policies. for example, whites who identify as politically liberal are more likely to favor inclusive immigration policies (hood & morris, 1997). chandler and tsai (2001) found conservative political ideology to be the strongest factor in opposition toward immigration. likewise, those who hold a conservative ideology tend to believe too many immigrants are residing in the u.s. (fennelly & frederico, 2008). overall, political ideology, rather than political party identification, has been found to shape one‟s economic beliefs and views, including attitudes toward immigration. research on the effect of other demographic characteristics has been inconsistent. while some have found gender to be an important determinant of attitudes, with males expressing the most opposition (chandler & tsai, 2001), other research has found no such effect (espenshade & hempstead, 1996; wilson, 2001). findings on the effect of race are likewise contradictory. while burns and gimpel (2000) found blacks and latinos more likely to desire decreased immigration, fennelly and federico (2008) found latinos to be less supportive of restrictions. on the question of english-only policies, garcia and bass (2007) showed that non-whites exhibited more support for bilingual language programs in schools. recent trends in settlement patterns suggest that residents in different regions of the country may hold different perspectives on immigration policy. the decade during the 1990‟s saw substantial growth in the latino population characterized by immigrant settlement in nonborder states (kandel & cromartie, 2004; passel, 2004; kochar, suro, & tafoya, 2005). indeed, some of the highest growth rates in the country can be found in southern states such as north carolina, arkansas, georgia and alabama (kochar et al., 2005). the fact that these states may be unaccustomed to latino and other immigrant populations, combined with the fact that no southern states have adopted in-state tuition policies for undocumented students (flores & chapa, 2009), suggests that southern residents will be more likely than others to oppose higher education policy. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 6 immigrants have historically settled in urban metropolitan areas where greater receptivity and opportunities for affordable housing and jobs could be found. de jong and tran (2001) reported metropolitan atlanta, baltimore, detroit, miami, minneapolis, philadelphia, phoenix, seattle, and washington, d.c. to be most receptive of immigrants. their findings are true for many metropolitan areas, but it is important to note that attitudes in urban areas are not necessarily consistent. keogan (2002) found stark differences in public perceptions of immigrants in the cities of los angeles and new york. due to the geographic distribution of immigrants and the resulting residential segregation, immigrants in los angeles were most commonly perceived as a cultural threat, while immigrants in new york were perceived as victims of culture. americans living in metropolitan areas near the u.s.-mexico border expressed equally exclusivist sentiments as those in non-metropolitan, agricultural areas with little to no immigrant populations (de jong & tran, 2001). nonetheless, those in more rural areas have likely experienced less contact with immigrants and have been shown to be more prone to hold exclusivist views, often believing that immigrants decrease the quality of life in their community (fennelly & frederico, 2008). however, the demand for skills acquired through higher education has increased in rural areas such as the great plains states. so, rural areas in states such as nebraska, north dakota, south dakota, kansas, and missouri would benefit greatly from educating their immigrant workforce (collins & reid, 2009). hypotheses based on the previously cited research, we develop a set of hypotheses. within the symbolic politics framework, we expect the following: h1: those who oppose bilingual education will be more likely to oppose undocumented student access to higher education compared to those who do not oppose bilingual education. h2: those who feel that immigrants demand too many rights will be more likely to oppose undocumented student access to higher education than those who do not feel this way. h3: those who are concerned that immigrants are being favored over one‟s family will be more likely to oppose undocumented immigrant access to higher education than those who do not feel this way. h4: those who feel that immigrants inhibit economic growth will be more likely to oppose undocumented immigrant access to higher education than those who feel immigrants bring economic growth. h5: those who feel immigrants lead to higher unemployment will be more likely to oppose undocumented immigrant access to higher education than those who do not feel this way. concerning labor market competition, we expect the following: h6: those with higher family income will be more likely to support undocumented immigrant access to higher education than those with lower family income. h7: those with a higher earned degree will be more in support of undocumented immigrant access to higher education than those with lower levels of education. h8: those with higher occupational prestige will be in support of undocumented immigrant access to higher education than those with lower prestige. despite some contradictions in the literature, we also make predictions in regard to our control variables: h9: males will be more likely to oppose undocumented immigrant access to higher education than females. h10: whites will be more likely to oppose undocumented immigrant access to higher education than non-whites. h11: southerners will be more likely to oppose undocumented immigrant access to higher education than non-southerners. h12: those in rural areas will be more likely to oppose undocumented immigrant access to higher education than those in suburban or urban areas. h13: republicans will be more likely to oppose undocumented immigrant access to higher education than independents and democrats. h14: the politically conservative will be more likely to oppose undocumented immigrant access to higher education than moderates or liberals. data and methods to test our hypotheses we analyze data from the 1994 general social survey (gss) conducted biennially by the national opinion research center, university of chicago (davis & smith, 2000). the gss uses probability sampling techniques to select respondents from englishspeaking non-institutionalized adults. there is a core set of questions asked of all respondents, and certain years contain particular topical modules asked of a subset of the sample. we use the year 1994 data set because it is the only year that includes the specific variables of interest that allow us to test general attitudes toward immigration for their effect on attitudes toward immigrant children‟s access to higher education. the survey for 1994 sampled 2,992 respondents. after selecting only those who responded to the survey question about undocumented student access to higher education, our final sample includes 1,024 respondents. our analysis involves both univariate and multivariate statistics. first we describe our sample, including our dependent variable of interest, reporting means or percentages as appropriate. second, in order to test those factors that determine attitudes toward undocumented student access to higher education, we employ logistic regression. logistic regression is used when the outcome variable is dichotomous, or binary. this type entitled or excluded? attitudes toward access to postsecondary education for undocumented students 7 of analysis predicts the odds of an event occurring. our dependent variable is coded dichotomously, thus, logistic regression predicts the odds of supporting undocumented student access to higher education. dependent variable our dependent variable is based on the gss question, “should illegal immigrants have access to public universities at the same cost as other students?” respondents replied “yes” or “no”, so we dichotomized this variable to reflect those who feel immigrants should have access, with those in opposition as the reference group (1 = yes, 0 = no). independent variables: symbolic politics we measure two types of threat that may affect attitudes toward higher education access: cultural and economic. we employ three measures of cultural threat. the first variable (bilingual2) assesses attitudes toward bilingual education. this question asks whether respondents favor or oppose bilingual education, and the response categories are on a likert scale which ranges from “strongly favor”, “somewhat favor”, “somewhat oppose” and “strongly oppose”. we combine response categories such that 1 = those who strongly or somewhat favor and 0 = those who oppose or strongly oppose. the second variable (imprts) asks if immigrants are demanding too many rights, with the likert responses “strongly agree”, “agree”, combined into one category, and, “neither agree nor disagree”, “disagree”, and “strongly disagree” serve as the reference category. our final measure (immfavr) which asks about the chances illegal immigrants will be favored over one‟s family, is also dichotomized such that 1 = “very likely” or “somewhat likely”, and 0 = “somewhat unlikely” or “very unlikely”. next, we use two measures of economic threat posed by immigrants. econgrow asks if it is “very likely”, “somewhat likely”, “not so likely”, or “not at all likely” that immigrants will lead to economic growth. finally, unempl asks if immigrants will fuel unemployment, with likert response categories “very likely”, “somewhat likely”, “not so likely”, “not at all likely”. both variables were recoded such that 1 = very or somewhat likely and 0 = not so or not at all likely. independent variables: labor market competition we measure labor market competition using income, education, and occupational prestige. family income (hincome) is a categorical measure that we have dichotomized to reflect those who earn $25,000 or more 1 , 1 the general social survey income measure has 12 response categories, beginning with “less than $1000 per year” to the final category of “$25,000 or more”. since this measure is truncated at the $25,000 income category, we dichotomize thusly. in addition, we feel the amount of $25,000 represents a point of demarcation between those who might be considered low income and those with moderate to high incomes based on u.s. census data that and all those earning less as reference category. we measure education (degree) by respondents‟ highest degree earned, a categorical response variable. finally, we use the gss variable “prestg80” to measure the prestige of the respondent‟s occupation. this measure is based on a rating system created using census occupational and industrial classifications in combination with the norc/gss prestige scores 2 . this results in a continuous variable with lower scores indicating lower occupational prestige and higher scores indicating higher prestige. control variables the final group of variables include demographic measures and measures of political orientation. gender (male) is coded such that 1 = male and 0 = female. race is dummy coded into the category white, with black and “other” race serving as our reference category. the gss assigns respondents to one of nine u.s. regions of residence based on their state of residence. we combine three of these regions, the south atlantic, east south central, and west south central, to create one variable representing south. all other regions serve as reference category. we also include a measure of community size, derived from the gss variable “src beltcode” which assigns codes based on the place of interview. our rural variable is based on those counties having no towns of 10,000 or more 3 . we dummy code for suburb based on the suburbs of the 112 largest standard metropolitan statistical areas (smsa). finally, we include measures of political party identification and political views. repub represents those who identify as republican, with democrat and independent serving as reference categories. for political views, respondents are asked to identify themselves on a 7-point scale ranging from extremely liberal to extremely conservative. those who identify as “extremely conservative”, “conservative”, or “slightly conservative” are combined to form the category conserv. our reference category includes those who identify as moderate or liberal. findings table 1 presents the descriptives for the study sample. the mean is presented for interval measure variables, and percents are presented for categorical variables. generally speaking, the public is opposed to undocumented immigrants having access to public universities at the same cost as other students with just 31 percent in support of this type of policy. regarding our cultural threat measures, respondents are generally in support of bilingual education (58%), yet a majority agrees that immigrants demand too many rights (58%). about 32 percent feel that immigrants will be favored over their own family. on the question of economic threat, about 31 identifies median family income for 1994 at roughly $35,000 (weinberg, 1996). 2 see general social survey documentation, appendix g. 3 see general social survey documentation, appendix d. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 8 table 1 sample statistics measure percent or mean n access to public universities 31% 1024 symbolic politics: cultural threat 1024 support bilingual education 58% 1024 immigrants demand too many rights 58% 1024 immigrants favored over one‟s family 31% 1024 symbolic politics: economic threat 1024 immigrants lead to economic growth 33% 1024 immigrants fuel unemployment 90% 1024 labor market competition 1024 family income $25,000 or more 63% 1024 degree earned 1.57 1024 occupational prestige score 43.51 1024 control variables 1024 male 48% 1024 white 84% 1024 south 34% 1024 rural 9% 1024 suburban 27% 1024 republican 29% 1024 conservative 37% 1024 entitled or excluded? attitudes toward access to postsecondary education for undocumented students 9 table 2 logistic regression, determinants of attitudes toward access to higher education for undocumented immigrants (n = 1,024) measure β (s.e.) df p-value ℮β 95% c.i. lower 95% c.i. upper symbolic politics: cultural threat support bilingual education .550 (.161) 1 .001 1.733** 1.263 2.377 immigrants demand too many rights -.013 (.153) 1 .932 .987 .731 1.333 immigrants favored over one‟s family -.079 (.159) 1 .621 .924 .676 1.263 symbolic politics: economic threat immigrants lead to economic growth .513 (.149) 1 .001 1.670** 1.247 2.236 immigrants fuel unemployment -.285 (.228) 1 .211 .752 .481 1.176 labor market competition family income $25,000 or more -.303 (.228) 1 .045 .737* .546 .993 degree earned .122 (.075) 1 .101 1.130 .977 1.308 occupational prestige score -.007 (.006) 1 .269 .993 .981 1.005 control variables male -.233 (.141) 1 .099 .792 .600 1.045 white .013 (.197) 1 .945 1.014 .689 1.491 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 10 south -.061 (.150) 1 .685 .941 .701 1.263 rural .226 (.249) 1 .364 1.254 .769 2.044 suburban -.296 (.165) 1 .074 .744 .538 1.029 republican -.330 (.172) 1 .055 .719 .513 1.007 conservative -.194 (.156) 1 .215 .824 .607 1.119 constant -.456 (.431) 1 .290 .634 notes: pseudo r 2 = .079 (***p<.001 **p<.01 *p<.05) χ 2 =70.4 percent feel that immigration will lead to economic growth and ninety percent feel it will fuel unemployment. labor market competition measures show that almost sixty-three percent earn at least $25,000 per year and more than half, roughly 56 percent, have completed high school (1.57). the average occupational prestige score is 43.51, with the scale ranging from 17.0 to 86.0. regarding our control variables, about 48 percent of the sample are male, 84 percent are white, and 34 percent live in the southern region of the u.s. nearly nine percent reside in rural areas and 27 percent in suburban areas, with the remaining 64 percent in urban communities. approximately 29 percent claim a republican political affiliation, and, ideologically, almost 37 percent are conservative. due to the binary nature of our dependent variable, a logistic regression was performed, using statistical package for the social sciences (spss), entering all independent and control variables simultaneously. table 2 presents the results of the logistic regression, predicting support for higher education access for undocumented students. only one of our cultural threat measures shows significance: attitudes toward bilingual education. the odds of supporting access to higher education for undocumented immigrants are increased by a factor of 1.7 among those who support bilingual education compared with those who do not. those who favor bilingual education are significantly more likely to support undocumented student access to higher education, than those who oppose bilingual education. concerns about immigrants demanding too many rights and being favored over one‟s family are not significantly related to attitudes toward higher education. we find partial support for our predictions regarding economic threat. the odds of supporting access to higher education increase by a factor of nearly 1.7 among those who feel immigration brings economic growth when compared with those do not feel this way. thus, those who feel immigration benefits the economy are significantly more likely to allow undocumented students access to higher education. there is no relationship between feelings about unemployment and attitudes toward educational access. our next set of variables measure labor market competition, and show that the odds of supporting entitled or excluded? attitudes toward access to postsecondary education for undocumented students 11 educational access are decreased by a factor of .74 among those with higher family income compared with those who have lower family income. so, those with higher family incomes are less supportive of undocumented student access to higher education than those with lower levels of income. level of education and occupational prestige, however, have no impact on our dependent variable. finally, we included a set of control variables measuring gender, race, southern region, rural and suburban residence, republican political party, and conservative political ideology. none of our controls show a significant relationship to attitudes toward higher education access. discussion and conclusion our goal for this research was to examine the determinants of attitudes toward access to higher education for undocumented immigrants, a question that, to our knowledge, remains unaddressed in the literature on public opinion and immigration. overall, we found partial support for each of our predictions. cultural threat is an important sentiment as the relationship between feelings about bilingual education and higher education access demonstrates. those who are in support of bilingual education in school also support undocumented immigrant access to higher education. within the symbolic politics framework, language can be seen as an important aspect of american identity. it is possible that those who support instruction in both english and the native language of students feel that this will lead to educational promotion and ultimate success in the labor force. to have mastered the english language and then experience upward mobility in the u.s. can be seen as an embodiment of the “american dream”, and an important symbol of a shared identity and common goals among natives and non-natives alike. however, it is also possible that those who support educational instruction in english and spanish are simply more tolerant toward undocumented immigrants (garcia & bass, 2007) and this warmer sentiment thus predicts greater support for undocumented student access to higher education. concerns about immigrants pushing for too many rights and being favored over one‟s family, our other measures of threat, show no salience in the matter of attitudes toward access to higher education. although this is not what we predicted, others have found no relationship between group threat measures and attitudes toward immigration and immigration related issues (o‟neal & tienda, 2009). it could be that respondents‟ anxiety about rights and favoritism shown to immigrants does not extend to the children of immigrants. the cultural symbol of the immigrant that does not assimilate, takes native jobs, and threatens the culture of the u.s. may not include the image of children or students. indeed, the “american dream” explicitly endorses education as the route to opportunity and upward mobility, including the notion that children can advance beyond their parents‟ circumstances. these sentiments may exempt children and students from hostility and opposition sometimes reserved for adult immigrants. however, as stated, these two measures were not significant; thus, interpretation of this non-finding is purely speculative. future research should consider investigating possible differences in attitudes toward undocumented immigrants and undocumented immigrant children. this could add further nuance to the group threat framework. the symbolic politics framework was partially supported when examining economic threat. while feelings about the role of immigration and unemployment were not an important determinant of attitudes toward higher education access, beliefs about economic growth were. others have determined that economic conditions are an important influence on attitudes toward immigration policy generally (burns & gimpel, 2000; citrin et al., 1997), yet no studies that we are aware of have examined these factors for their influence on immigrant educational access. clearly, concerns about the general economy are important in shaping attitudes toward undocumented immigrant access to higher education. we suspect that those who perceive that immigration brings economic growth may perceive benefits regarding their own status and competitiveness in the economic realm. the converse of this finding is that those who feel that immigration will not bring growth may perceive a constrained job market, and if undocumented immigrants are allowed to access higher education, an important form of human capital, at the same cost as citizens, they may usurp job opportunities from “deserving” natives. thus, undocumented immigrants with higher levels of education represent a real material threat to natives. our third set of measures tested the labor market competition theory and we found partial support for this hypothesis. interestingly, the findings on income are in the opposite direction than expected. while findings from other research show that those who are economically disadvantaged are more opposed to immigration because of perceived job competition (citrin et al., 1990), we find that those with higher levels of family income are more likely to oppose access to higher education for undocumented immigrants. in our view, however, this is further confirmation for the labor market competition thesis and a clear platform for future research. those who have higher levels of income are more likely to be able to finance their children‟s higher education and may perceive future competition from undocumented immigrants who also attain a college degree. thus, they may be “protecting” the future economic advantage of their progeny by opposing a more egalitarian educational policy. regarding other measures of labor market competition, others have found educational level to be an important determinant of attitudes toward immigration (citrin et al., 1990), but we did not find this to be the case. in our analysis it appears that income level is more salient in determining a sense of competition with undocumented immigrants. in addition, occupational prestige is not related to attitudes toward educational access. it may be that the wording of the question that our dependent current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 12 variable is based on, with its emphasis on “cost” of higher education, causes income to be a more tangible and concrete factor in the consideration of this particular policy. it is notable that none of our control variables were significant, given the research outlined earlier that suggests gender, race, community type, political affiliation and political views to be important predictors of attitudes toward immigration. however, we are predicting a very specific aspect of immigration policy and it appears that other factors are more explanatory here. nonetheless, it should be noted that three of our control measures very closely approached significance, thus, future studies using other data or methods should consider investigating these potential relationships. first, gender showed near significance with a p-value of .099. this finding would be in line with other research showing males to express more opposition than females to immigration policy (chandler & tsai, 2001; garcia & bass, 2007). another interesting possibility is the connection between community type and attitudes. suburban residence approaches significance with a p-value of .074. recent research (benjamin, 2009) suggests that some suburbs, and particularly exurbs, have become a haven for many whites who experience fear and discomfort from the encroaching diversity that immigrants represent. future research should use more specific measures of community to gauge the attitudes of those in highly race-segregated areas, on issues of immigration policy. finally, republican party affiliation had a p-value of .055. while other research has shown that political ideology is more salient on immigration issues, it is possible that party identification matters on the question of educational access. a shortcoming in our research is the year of data used: 1994. although the survey data were gathered near the middle of a decade that experienced significant increases in undocumented immigration, it may be that these effects were not felt until many years later. unfortunately, the gss has yet to produce more current data generated from similar variables regarding immigration. more recent survey data could allow for a more current examination of attitudes regarding educational access. in addition, the ongoing economic crisis and rising costs of college would surely affect general attitudes regarding immigration, and particularly attitudes about equalizing the costs of higher education between citizens and non-citizens. despite this shortcoming, we feel this study contributes significantly to the extant literature that has, thus far, been deficient in examining attitudes toward educational policy for undocumented immigrants. our study underscores the relevance of the symbolic politics and labor market frameworks for understanding various forms of resistance to the “other”. though we did not find total support for our hypotheses, it is clear that real and perceived threat shapes sentiment toward this very specific immigrant-centered policy. if data are available, future research should examine immigration policy attitudes during the current recession. the economic threat framework may produce more telling results in this context. more recent data might reflect more awareness and even exposure to immigrant populations, thus group threat may be more apparent in future analyses. in recent months, the debate about immigration has become even more contentious with the passage of sb 1070 in arizona. other states are considering similar measures. we would expect that more recent analyses of attitudes would mirror our findings. the poor economy combined with hostile rhetoric suggests perceived cultural threat could be particularly predictive of opposition to undocumented student access to higher education. we hope that our study can begin a dialogue about this important policy issue and spur additional research that considers attitudes toward, and outcomes of, restricting access to higher education for this vulnerable population. while the influx of undocumented immigrants may be partly due to 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(2001). “american‟s view on immigration policy: testing the role of threatened group interests.” sociological perspectives, 44(4), 485-501. entitled or excluded? attitudes toward access to postsecondary education for undocumented students 15 article citation palmer, c., & davidson, t. (2011). entitled or excluded? attitudes toward access to postsecondary education for undocumented students. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/715 author notes courtney palmer paine intermediate school 7600 gadsden highway trussville, alabama, 35173 courtney.palmer@trussvillecityschools.com courtney palmer is a 2011 graduate of samford university with a m.s. in education. she serves as an elementary public school educator at paine intermediate school. her research interests include educational policy, equality in the inclusive classroom, and the role of race and ethnicity in politics. theresa davidson samford university 800 lakeshore drive birmingham, alabama, 35229 tcdavids@samford.edu theresa davidson is an assistant professor in the department of sociology at samford university. her research interests include the intersection of public opinion and social policy on issues such as immigration, poverty, and same-sex marriage. mailto:courtney.palmer@trussvillecityschools.com mailto:tcdavids@samford.edu current issues in education vol. 14 no.2 16 volume 14, number 2 june 14, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp anglea hines younsu kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 14, number 3 december 2, 2011 issn 1099-839x filling in the implementation gap? problems in the greek educational system – an evidence-based explanatory framework and critical reflections argyris kyridis nikos fotopoulos ageliki chronopoulou university of western macedonia nikos papadakis university of crete christos zagkos centre for educational policy development (kanep/gsee) the greek educational system during last 50 years recounts among numerous reformations and counterreformations. all the continuous changes seem not to be characterized by a clearly defined operational aim and rational continuity. currently, educators, pupils, university students, parents, politicians and citizens criticize various structural and functional aspects of the greek educational system. the main scope of this piece of research is recording and analyzing the problems of the greek educational system according to the opinions of greek undergraduate students. we asked about 400 undergraduate students for written answers to the following question: “according to your opinion which are the main problems of the greek educational system?" the written answers have been analyzed according to the methodological standards of the classical thematic content analysis. 1468 statements have been summarized and taxonomized in ten main thematic categories. the cohen test has showed a high degree of taxonomic accordance among the reviewer of the written texts (κ=0,97). the content analysis has showed that statements can be categorized in 7 main thematic categories. themes like institutional, political and social aspects are in the epicenter of students‟ perception revealing that the educational issue is a dialectically complicated process with many facets and parameters. additionally, the sample of the research focuses on specific issues which provoke dysfunctions to the effective operation of the educational system revealing the domination of symptoms like mediocrity, bureaucracy or lack of rationalization. keywords: education policy, educational problems, implementation, greek educational system current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 2 the greek education system is divided into four main levels: pre-primary education and care provision, compulsory education, post-compulsory-upper secondary and post-secondary level and higher education. public and private sectors operate at all levels of the system, except the university level, which consists exclusively of state institutions. under a recent law (law: 3518/2006) compulsory education begins at the age of 5, with children attending pre-primary classes, before they go on to primary and lower secondary schools which are compulsory, covering therefore the age from 5 to 15 year-old pupils. provision for vocational education normally starts after the compulsory age of schooling. it is worth mentioning, at the start, that as a general rule, the majority of pupils enroll in the public education system. for example, in 2009-2010 academic year, of all students enrolled in primary and secondary education, 93.64% attended public schools (eurydice, 2011). the modern history of greece is characterised by a close embrace of education from the official state. an important element in understanding the educational changes and reforms in greece since the 19th century is the structural integration of education in shaping social policy, so that any educational changes should meet social needs and satisfy broad popular demands. the greek educational system has suffered from chronic under-funding, and has been described as having a history of „educational conservatism‟ due to country‟s nation-building effort and the primary role of education in political socialization and the formulation of a solid, common identity (dimitrakopoulos, 2004). since 1910, the ideological foundation of the national educational policy proposed by liberal political forces has dearly been the principle of equality of opportunity in education, namely, that all members of the greek nation have the moral and political right to enjoy the social benefit of education. on this basis, liberal social forces during the second half of the 20th century have repeatedly brought forward the demand for educational reforms that would make the educational system correspond to the demands of the economy and, in particular, of the country's economic development (frangoudakis, 1981). since an important reform of the education system that took place in 1964 the evolution and the development of the educational system in greece seems to be synonymous with social struggle for democracy, equality, meritocracy and social justice. during the 1960s, within the context of influential educational reforms, the demand for modernisation of the educational system was aligned with wider demands for freedom and for individual, political and social rights as well. during this period, the connection between the educational movement and the wider social struggles was very close. in the meantime, the educational and intellectual sphere of country played a fundamental role against the dictatorship period (1967-74) and the social oppression from which the country suffered since the period of civil war and later in the decade of fifties. since 1974, the year that the dictatorship in greece ironed out by the rebelled people, there were a lot of controversial reforms of the greek educational system, even by ministers of the same political party and during the same parliamentary period (tsoukalas, 1987). almost 30 years after the demolition of the dictatorship in greece and after at least two major and numerous minor reformations the greek educational system still faces a lot of problems. beyond any doubts, there were some remarkable efforts, even outcomes in some cases, towards the democratisation of the educational system, teachers‟ participation in school management, the adoption of “formal equality” regarding the access to higher education, the adoption of the nine years free of charge and public compulsory education and so on. nevertheless, there are many institutional problems that the greek educational system is experiencing even today. this is exactly what we are aiming to sketch, focusing on a very specific dimension: namely greek students‟ perception of “what‟s going wrong” within the system. currently, the greek government under the shadow of the economic crisis has put in practice a middle range reformation of the greek educational system using as battering ram the concepts of the “quality in education” and “excellence in education”. in 1980s and 1990s a great emphasis in educational quality had been stated and to the needed closed relationship between educational research and educational policy. numerous academic works (chapman & carrier, 1990; hallak, 1990; adams, 1993; hanushek, 1994; gitlin et al., 1992; ginsburg, 1991) have pointed out and strengthen this relationship but in greece the studies on this academic subject remained in an embryonic level. entering the field of educational problems deficits and disorientations via a top-down approach could contribute to the formation of a concrete explanatory framework regarding educational crisis‟ impact on young student‟s life-course. in the case of the present research, the data reflect the fact that the crisis is based on low expenditure for education and more generally on underfinancing of educational system and on phenomena related to inadequate infrastructure (about the economic context concerning educational policies see haddad, 1995), the lack of libraries, laboratories and rooms, sufficient and suitable spaces for accommodation and campus restaurants for students. furthermore, the data have revealed some of the most crucial institutional problems facing the greek educational system, such as trainers training, objectives of educational system, education orientation, educational material and books, curriculum of study, evaluation of students, teaching methods, privatisation of education and filling in the implementation gap? problems in the greek educational system – an evidence-based explanatory framework and critical reflections 3 source: commission of the european communitiessgib, 2010, based on jrc/ipts, ec/dg eac and empirica gmbh figure 1. relative occurrence of creativity, innovation and synonyms in primary and secondary school curricula in eu27. lack of meritocracy. based on our results, students focused on everything that hinders the efficiency of the educational system creating a negative climate where the academic mission loses its orientation. even though they are not familiar with the relevant terminology, they seem able to reveal the determinants of major limitations of the greek educational system, such as the active presence and development of creativity and innovation. the results of this research show an overwhelming sense of scorn from the students at the state university, as well as the lack of sufficient resources for technical, scientific and pedagogical support to the educational task. this is connected with the low public investment on education in a period where the good of free-of-charge public education is called into question and it goes through ordeals. the challenge of reliability and the future of the greek educational system are connected with its effectiveness in two levels: (a) how it achieves to transmit to young people knowledge, skills and qualifications that would constitute a solid cultural background which is deemed to be necessary for each citizen concerning his/her active participation in social life, and (b) how it achieves to form a solid background for the sustainable perspective development to the employment and the professional life. in the era of globalisation and the subsequent globalised crisis, the certainties of modernity have been substantially reduced. the educational systems, especially after the second world war, are gradually macro-economically determined instead of applying policies emanated from the field of social policy (see tracy & tracy, 1999). alterum dicum, the era where the field of educational policy action is highly involved in the fields of social policy, is definitely over. τhe results of this change are the decline of public-social character of education and at the same time the promotion of private initiative and consumerist control in the field of education. within the above mentioned context, the educational systems have lost part of their educational autonomy, while humanitarian education was inevitably delegitimized (see ginsburg et al., 1990). τhe dependence of learning outcomes of educational system on the positivist logic of results measurement creates the sense of a generic confusion among young students. when the students refer to no clear orientation of educational system, they mean the lack of clear orientation since the objectives are neither clear nor evident. will the educational organizations be deemed mainly as educational and cultural institutions or as enterprises that will be judged by measurable results in the context of competitiveness of common commercial law? despite the joint effort of eu member states to 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 a u st ri a b e lg iu m g e rm a n s p e a ki n g c o m m u n ity b e lg iu m f la n d e rs b e lg iu m w a llo n ia b u lg a ri a c ze ch r e p u b lic g e rm a n y b a va ri a g e rm a n y l o w e r s a xo n y g e rm a n y s a xo n y d e n m a rk e st o n ia g re e ce s p a in a n d a lu cí a s p a in e xt re m a d u ra s p a in m a d ri d s p a in n a tio n a l l e ve l f in la n d f ra n ce h u n g a ry ir e la n d it a ly l ith u a n ia l u xe m b o u rg l a tv ia m a lta t h e n e th e rl a n d s p o la n d p o rt u g a l r o m a n ia s w e d e n s lo ve n ia s lo va ki a u n ite d k in g d o m e n g la n d u n ite d k in g d o m n o rt h e rn i re la n d u n ite d k in g d o m s co tla n d u n ite d k in g d o m w a le s creativity innovation synonyms eu-27 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 4 create a mutual zone of understanding and eventually redesign european education via the european framework on key competences for lifelong learning 1 , the mismatch between a building approach to education and the quest for direct alignment to the macro-economic agenda has a certain impact in many european member states‟ educational systems and greece is not an exception in any case. the key competences are they consist of and contribute to 1. mother tongue knowledge skills attitudes personal fulfillment social inclusion and active citizenship employability 2. foreign languages 3. mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology 4. digital competence 5. learning to learn 6. social and civic competence 7. sense of initiative and entrepreneurship 8. cultural awareness and expression key competences are overlapping and work together. they are underpinned by "process dimensions" which obtain when competences are applied in real-life situations. these process dimensions are: critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, initiative, risk assessment, decision-taking and management of one‟s own feelings. they are applicable in many situations; multifunctional so that they can be used to achieve several objectives, accomplish different kinds of tasks and solve different kinds of problems. source: eccluster on key competences, 2010, p. 4. figure 2. key competences framework 1 since 2006, lifelong learning has been supported by the european reference framework of key competences for lifelong learning (recommendation of the european parliament and of the council on key competences for lifelong learning [december, 2006], http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-policy/doc42_en.htm). this is designed to help member states prepare all of their young people for adult life in a changing world, and ensure that all adults are offered the means to up-date their skills and reap the social and economic benefits of the knowledge society. http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-policy/doc42_en.htm filling in the implementation gap? problems in the greek educational system – an evidence-based explanatory framework and critical reflections 5 according to haddad and demsky (1994), kemmerer (1994), bredo and feineberg (1986), archer (1985), ball (1990), baldridge (1989), and books (2004), educational policy is concerning issues, such as the structure of the educational system, the educational opportunities and educational equality and both internal and external efficiency. beyond any doubt, the will for an educational system based on the principles of quality, meritocracy and reliability of degrees and diplomas constitutes a basic concern for every modern democracy. however, the factor which is not revealed to be so important regards the acceptance of the role that social and educational inequalities play in the equal access in knowledge. it is clear that despite the formal adoption of educational equality, class, cultural and social inequalities constitute an important obstacle in the effectiveness of the educational system. furthermore, “the evidence shows that viewed in a wider perspective, equity and efficiency are, in fact, mutually reinforcing” (commission of the european communities, 2006, p. 2). the deficits in achieving actual equality within the european educational systems, “lead” thousands of citizens to social exclusion. in countries with remarkable rates of low skilled workers, such as greece, the abovementioned correlation and the subsequent mismatches are undoubtedly threats for the social cohesion and stability. the research the aim of the research “educational research also has the role of providing attested information to improve the quality of decision-making for educational policy” (livingstone, 2005, p. 1). in spite of any common practice, the reformations of the greek educational system never depended on any research findings. all greek ministers of education have announced their reformations arguing that the changes that they intended to introduce depended upon a “common sense” about what is going wrong in the greek educational system. the aim of this piece of research is recording and to categorizing the problems of the greek educational system according to university students views. we hope that this or the next greek government will take into consideration just a bit of these research findings. towards a top-down approach to the greek case: preliminary remarks on the state of play and the rationale of research focusing on the greek case, it could be mentioned that the greek educational system changes rapidly towards a particularly contradictory landscape since it can combine many opposite aspects of the reality. source: eurostat, key data on education, 2009 (data extracted from eu lfs, july 2008) quoted in perez et al, 2010. figure 3. percentage of low skill workers percentage of population who do not have at least an upper secondary education (isced 3) by age group, 2007 0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0 70.0 80.0 90.0 100.0 e u -2 7 b e b g c z d k d e e e ie e l e s f r it c y l v l t l u h u m t n l a t p l p t r o s i s k f i s e u k country p e rc e n ta g e 25-34 years 34-44 years 45-54 years 55-64 years current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 6 it is clear that the greek educational system enters a new transitional phase. day by day the public good of education loses its prestige and reliability, the educational inequalities continue to be extended causing exclusions of wider social categories and the gap between privileged people and not privileged ones does not only continue to exist, but it increases the future of social cohesion. as far as the greek case is concerned, the crisis of educational system is a temporal phenomenon causing the decline of symbolic and essential value of public education. at the same time, phenomena such as the lack of study quality, the mediocrity, the fact that diplomas do not ensure access to employment, are still present. the deprecation of knowledge as a cultural code and the dependence of the good of education on the realm of market have led to a painful ending of the abovementioned situation. the political question that is posed concerns the way by which forces could be liberated in the educational system in order for the target of quality and effectiveness of the educational task to be achieved. how could education be more attractive and “competitive”, the value nihilism, the ideological confusion and the disappointment that young people today have to face? it is worth mentioning that no matter which policy of reformation or restructure of the educational system is implemented, except the imposed guarantee of a minimum social consensus and communication, the substantial involvement of the educational community, which is also the normal factor of any reform, is required. but in this case the involvement of the educational community has to participate not as a defensive mechanism against the innovation but as an active force of avant-garde and rupture with the mediocrity of leaders, individual conformation and especially the procrastination which is responsible for the underdevelopment of the country. in the context of educational policy the indicators provide us an evidence-based motivation for social dialogue and reflection. nevertheless, the modernisation of the greek educational system, within an extended crisis, constitutes the main question of quality, substance, collective action and individual responsibility. sample and methodology of the research data collection the corpus of data is comprised of 248 texts produced by greek university students, randomly chosen, but evenly distributed in greek university courses. the research was based on a non-stratified random sample, irrespective of gender, as in various university courses students are normally stratified in terms of gender. all subjects were asked to write their views on the subject: “what, in your opinion, are the major problems of the greek educational system?” the vague formulation of the subject provides for the researchers‟ basic objective, that is, to record the students‟ viewpoints and attitudes concerning major educational problems in greek schools, colleges and universities. the specific age group was chosen on the premise that it could enable recording mostly the social aspects related to the subjects‟ school age opinions for the higher education in greece, which, however, are likely to have been modified on account of the fact that the subjects study in a free/public educational institution. the sample was random non-stratified. data analysis the corpus of texts was analyzed on the basis of content analysis, which, as curley (1990) states, allows (a) the combination of quantitative and qualitative data, (b) tracing and recording the types of social interaction through discourse analysis, (c) recording historic and cultural elements, (d) recording and analyzing social ideologies and (e) investigating concepts as well as the ways in which the specific concepts are perceived by social subjects. in detail, the texts were analyzed following the principles of quantitative and qualitative content analysis, as they were stated by holsti (1969), berelson (1971), de sola pool (1959), palmquist (1990), weber (1990) and by french researchers (moscovici, 1970; mucchielli, 1988; veron, 1981; bardin, 1977; grawitz, 1981) (classical thematic analysis). the „theme‟ was considered as the basic unit of analysis (lasswell et al., 1952; lasswell & leites, 1965). according to lagarde (1983), the interpretation of the results and their effect is the responsibility of researchers, as it is characterized by the utter absence of any a priori hypotheses. in the present research, the specific method was employed with a view to identifying the criteria for grouping the students‟ views and attitudes in terms of issues related to school or university problems, identifying the interrelated factors that affect their views, and, finally, examining the flow of information that the interrelations at issue generate. in addition, the specific method was employed in order to identify the characteristics of each of the resulting groups. after the content analysis of the texts, 948 statements were collected. the test cohen‟s kappa coefficient for the agreement among the researchers about the distribution of the statements to the thematic categories showed a high degree of agreement (kappa = 0,97) (for the measurement and the use of cohen‟s kappa coefficient see smeeton, 1985; uebersax, 1987; strijbos, 2006; and cohen, 1960). the limited number of participants does not enable any generalizations and relevant conclusions; however, the analysis can be the basis for further discussions and research into the theme of the reformation of the greek national educational system, a theme that is crucial for the national educational policy. table 4 demonstrates the distribution of the statements in terms of thematic category (theme), and table 3 demonstrates the distribution of the statements in terms of socioeconomic status of the family. the quantitative distribution of gender and age is presented in table 1, and the educational characteristics of the subjects in the table 2. finally, in table 5 the qualitative analysis of the statements is presented. 7 table 1 demographic characteristics of the sample gender ν % male 41 16,5 female 207 83,5 total 248 100,0 age 17 19 y.o. 77 31,0 20 – 22 y.o. 149 60,1 over 22 y.o. 22 8,9 total 248 100,0 table 2 educational characteristics of the sample type of school n % public 244 98,4 private 4 1,6 total 248 100,0 department n % department of elementary education 36 14,5 department of preschool education 150 60,5 department of balkan studies 34 13,7 other 28 11,3 total 248 100,0 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 8 table 3 socioeconomic status of the family degree of urbanization n % metropolitan urban centre (athens/thessaloniki) 90 36,3 prefecture capital (major cities) 144 58,1 rural region (villages) 14 5,6 total 248 100,0 father’s profession n % mother’s profession n % free lancer/scientist 30 12,1 free lancer/scientist 13 5,2 civil servant 73 29,4 civil servant 54 21,8 private sector servant 47 19,0 private sector servant 60 24,2 free lancer/technician 34 13,7 free lancer/technician 32 12,9 trader 21 8,5 trader 12 4,8 workman 15 6,0 workman 8 3,2 farmer 28 11,3 farmer 12 4,8 domestic duties 0 0 domestic duties 57 23,0 total 248 100,0 total 248 100,0 father’s education n % mother’s education n % illiterate 7 2,8 illiterate 3 1,2 elementary school graduate 47 18,5 elementary school graduate 37 14,9 secondary school graduate 96 38,2 secondary school graduate 116 46,8 technological institution graduate 53 22,4 technological institution graduate 51 20,6 university graduate 29 11,7 university graduate 37 14,9 post graduate degree 16 6,4 post graduate degree 4 1,6 total 248 100,0 total 248 100,0 filling in the implementation gap? problems in the greek educational system – an evidence-based explanatory framework and critical reflections 9 table 4 distribution of the statements according to the thematic analysis themes and categories n % 1.economic aspects 83 8,4 1.1. low salaries for the personnel 2 0,2 1.2. low budget for the educational system 50 5,1 1.3. private education in practice 31 3,2 2. facilities 232 23,6 2.1. inhabitable or insufficient buildings 154 15,7 2.2.bad school textbooks 78 7,9 3. institutional aspects 401 40,8 3.1.teaching (authoritative, inadequate, bad organized) 44 4,5 3.2.deficiency of compensatory educational system 3 0,3 3.3.lack of clearly defined aims of the educational system 78 7,9 3.4.unorganized curricula 33 3,4 3.5.lack of supportive personnel 46 4,7 3.6.bad educated teachers 126 12,8 3.7.redundant classes 3 0,3 3.8.no connections between education and labour market 7 0,7 3.9.student evaluation 46 4,7 3.10.lack of motives for the students 15 1,5 4. structural 234 23,8 4.1. privatization of the actual education 53 5,4 4.2. lack of continuity of the educational system – bad organization 31 3,2 4.3.relations between students and teachers 28 2,8 4.4.lack of meritocracy 31 3,2 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 10 4.5.the school is bounded from the society 4 0,4 4.6.education and social inequalities 10 1,0 4.7.bad educational orientation 77 7,8 5. professional orientation via school 10 1,0 6. educational management 22 2,2 7. no problem 2 0,2 total 984 100 table 5 qualitative analysis of the sample themes and categories statements 1.economic aspects 1.1. low salaries for the personnel «there is no money for the teachers”, “the education personnel is not well paid” 1.2. low budget for the educational system low percentage of the gdp for educational matters”, “lack of appropriations”, “lack of money for the public school” 1.3. private education in practice “the fees asked by the students in order to learn are very high”, “privatization of universities”, “there is no free education in practice” 2. facilities 2.1. inhabitable or insufficient buildings “deficiency of classrooms and workshops”, “old building facilities” 2.2.bad school textbooks “inefficient school books”, “badly written books”, ”inefficient school libraries” filling in the implementation gap? problems in the greek educational system – an evidence-based explanatory framework and critical reflections 11 3. institutional aspects 3.1.teaching (authoritative, inadequate, bad organized) “false teaching culture”, “bad teaching methods from the educators”, “bad organized lessons” 3.2.deficiency of compensatory educational system 3.3.lack of clearly defined aims of the educational system “lack of humanitarian education”, “provision of technocratic education”, “there is no aesthetic cultivation in the greek school” 3.4.unorganized curricula “we spend too many hours in school”, “there is no free time for the students”, “inefficient curricula” 3.5.lack of supportive personnel “lack of personnel”, “lack of psychologists in schools” 3.6.bad educated teachers “uneducated teachers”, “negligence of teachers” 3.7.redundant classes “too many students in a classroom”, “it is impossible to have a well scheduled lesson in a classroom of 30 students” 3.8.no connections between education and labour market “there is no vocational rehabilitation of graduates”, “there is no connection between education system and job market” 3.9.student evaluation “insufficiency in the system of student examination”, “the evaluation of students is limited to the degree of exams current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 12 and does not include wider elements of his/her personality” 3.10.lack of motives for the students “total lack of motives”, “the schoolteachers do not provide any motives to us”, “the children do not aim at visions” 4. structural 4.1. privatization of the actual education “boost of crammer centres as a result of the bad operation of the educational system”, “the private tuition centres play the actual role of school” 4.2. lack of continuity of the educational system – bad organization “there is a complete disorganisation of education”, “lack of central educational infrastructure” 4.3.relations between students and teachers “there is no appropriate guidance from the teachers to the children”, “unacceptable behaviour of professors to students”, “lack of communication between professors and students” 4.4.lack of meritocracy “lack of meritocracy”, “cliental processes in the engagement of educators” 4.5.the school is bounded from the society “the school is broken away from the society”, “the school does not keep pace with the needs of society” 4.6.education and social inequalities “children are separated since the elementary school in good and bad filling in the implementation gap? problems in the greek educational system – an evidence-based explanatory framework and critical reflections 13 students”, “the social discriminations are increased through school” 4.7.bad educational orientation “the school promotes the barren memorisation without essential education”, “benefit of limited knowledge from school”, “school is just a preparation for the university, loosing thus its essential pedagogic role” 5. professional orientation via school “inefficient professional orientation via school”, “school does not give to the children the essential professional orientation and as a result the students select professions that they do not actually like” 6. educational management “need of changes in the administrative structure of greek education”, “need of reform of the educational system” 7. no problem “there is no problem with the greek education system”, “the greek school is excellent” demographics from the 248 greek university students of the sample of the research 207 (83.5%) are female while 41 (16.5%) are male. the age distribution of the sample is as follows: 31% of the sample is from 17 to 19 years old, 60.1% from 20 to 22 and 8.9% of the sample is aged more than 22 years old (table 1). the vast majority of the sample attended public schools (98.4%), while a small percentage attended private schools (1.6%) (table 2). moreover, 60.5% of the sample studies at the department of preschool education, 14.5% in the department of elementary education, 13.7% in the department of balkan studies, while a rate of about 11.3% is studying at various schools and departments of the greek higher education (table 2). regarding the geographical distribution of the sample, 36.3% of subjects come from the two metropolitan centres of the country, athens and thessaloniki, 58.1% from urban centres and major greek cities, while 5.6% of subjects come from purely rural areas. in an effort of recording the cultural and socioeconomic background of the subjects, we noticed that the majority of parents of the students surveyed are public or private servants (48.4% for fathers and 46% for mothers). moreover, the 25.8% of father‟s works as free lancers (technicians or scientists), the 11.3% as farmers, 8.5% as traders and 6% as workers. similarly 29.4% of the mothers of the respondents work as free lancers current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 14 (technicians or scientists), 4.8% as farmers or traders and 3.2% as workers. noteworthy is the fact that 23% of the mothers of the respondents declare as their main occupation their domestic and housewife duties. regarding the educational level of parents, the majority is secondary school graduates (46.8% for mothers and 38.2% for fathers), the 34.1% of the fathers and 35.5% of the mothers are graduates of a higher education institution, while a very low percentage of the parents are illiterate or holders of postgraduate degrees (table 3). research findings regarding the results of quantitative content analysis of 248 subjects' written texts, from the whole of 948 written statements, 40.8% talked about institutional problems of the greek educational system, 23.8% of the statements regarded to problems in the major structure of the education system, 23.6% attached great importance to the infrastructure and facility problems and 8.4% of all statements related to economic factors affecting the greek educational system. moreover, there were references to the lack of professional orientation via school (1%) and to problems of educational management (2.2%). finally a rate of about 0.2% said that the greek educational system does not present any specific problem. more specifically, of the 401 statements related to institutional problems of the greek educational system, the 126 spoke about bad educated teachers, 76 about lack of clearly defined aims of the educational system, 46 about insufficient student evaluation and lack of supportive personnel in the school, while many subjects pointed out the bad organized teaching (see haberman, 1995, concerning the importance of an effective teacher for student success) about, the unorganized curricula, the lack of connections between education and labour market, the lack of motives for the students and the phenomenon of redundant school classes (see shields & knapp, 1997). even if the greek educational system is state funded and the greek state has the exclusive responsibility of funding allocation, (e.r.c., 2004), the majority of the students that reported the financial problems of the greek educational system emphasized on the low percentage of gdp for the education, while statements were made for the phenomenon of crammers in greece and for the low salaries of teachers and professors. with regard to structural problems of the educational system in greece, most of the subjects showed the lack of infrastructures, while references were made to the awkward textbooks. according to the statements for structural problems of the greek educational system, the subjects of the research highlighted the gradual privatization of education in greece, the lack of meritocracy within the educational system and the poor educational orientation of the greek educational system. additionally we can observe the sense about the lack of social trust in greek educational system as well as the vitiation of a claim that free public education system can not be effective according to the modern conditions. at the same time the greek educational system seems to be bureaucratic, centralized and “phobic” (kanep/gsee, 2011). accordingly to the main agenda concerning educational policies worldwide, greek university students focused on four main problems: (a) economical aspects, (b) institutional aspects, (c) pedagogical aspects and (d) social aspects. these are the crucial aspects concerning every serious educational policy. scholars agree that any educational policy focused on one or even all of these aspects (see swanson & barlage, 2006; ginsburg & cooper, 1994). finally, the statistical analysis of survey data showed a significant statistical correlation between the answers of the students, the sex (x2 = 30.428, p<0,01) or the age (x2 = 33.519, p<0,01). in particular, according to research men seem to give more emphasis than women in the economic problems of education, as well as those related to educational management. on the other hand, women stressed more than their male colleagues, the problems of facilities and institutional aspects. as regard the age distribution of responses, younger people have more frequently mentioned issues related to facility problems of education, while those of older solar panels emphasized on institutional problems of the greek educational system. we have to point out that there are no correlations between the topics that students chose to arise within their texts and their socio – economic status. this is a clear sign that everyone acknowledges the same problems for the greek educational system and this is not a social signified topic. it is a national topic, with a common interest and without class and political orientated amplifications. accordingly to our findings, vongalis-macrow (2009) states that: when analyzing the textual data related to educational restructuring in the seventeen policy documents, ten themes are more often made explicit within policy. these themes are: human capital, budgetary decisions, costing education, educational objectives, educational outcomes, education system, global/local context, investment, management, teachers. (p.2) conclusion without a doubt, the educational system consists of one of the major aspects for the greek society. this is illustrated on student‟s statements, especially when they try to express what do consider important concerning the situation and perspective of greek educational system. themes like institutional, political and social aspects are in the epicenter of their perception showing that the educational issue is a dialectically complicated process with many facets and parameters. on the other hand, students still consider education as one of the main categories of public and social life expecting that knowledge remains the basic vehicle for professional and social upward mobility. additionally, they focus on specific issues which provoke dysfunctions to the effective filling in the implementation gap? problems in the greek educational system – an evidence-based explanatory framework and critical reflections 15 operation of the educational system revealing the domination of symptoms like mediocrity, bureaucracy, lack of rationalization. it is also significant to refer that, apart from these institutional and methodological topics, pedagogical themes are considered as very crucial for the development and enhancement of educational system. in conclusion, the main obstacle for the implementation of each educational reformation is except for the strong political will the creation of a wide social consensus among social partners and governmental and other political powers. in fact, political and social consensus, especially for a country like greece with a weak civil society, is the most appropriate tool for a stable transition from one educational reality to another. additionally, the collective subject who historically has the basic role in this process is the educational community through schools, universities and research centers. without having the acceptance of educational subject, any political project for educational transformation will probably be proved ineffective and failed. references adams, d. 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(2011). filling in the implementation gap? problems in the greek educational system – an evidence-based explanatory framework and critical reflections. current issues in education, 14(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/779 author notes argyris kyridis, ph.d. professor, university of western macedonia 5th klm florina – niki, florina, 53100, greece akiridis@uowm.gr argyris kyridis has studied political science and sociology at the university of athens. he has obtained his ph.d. in political sociology, sociology of education at the same university and an m.sc. in politics and sociology at birkbeck college, university of london. he is currently a professor at university of western macedonia. he has published more than twenty books in greek and more than 120 articles in greek and international scientific journals. nikos papadakis, ph.d. assistant professor, university of crete university campus, rethymnon,74100, greece nep@pol.soc.uoc.gr assistant professor of educational policy, department of social and educational policy, faculty of social sciences, university of peloponnese. visiting professor, department of political science, faculty of social sciences, university of crete. research fellow in the institute of labour (athens) and the centre for research for lifelong learning (crll) of the university of stirling and glasgow caledonian university. publications in greek, english, french and arabian include journal articles and book chapters on educational policy, public policy in comparative perspective, university politics, and qualitative methods in social and political research. he is the author of the books: educational policy as social policy (athens: ellinika grammata, 2003) and state, university and policy in greece (athens: gutenberg, 2004). he is also the editor of the books: state, market, society and policies in education (athens: savvalas, 2003) and education and educational policy between the state and the market (in cooperation with d. gravarisathens: savvalas, 2004). christos zagkos, ph.d. researcher, centre for educational policy development (kanep/gsee) 3rd septemvriou 36, athens 10432, greece zagbal2003@yahoo.gr christos zagkos was born in patras, greece. he studied balkan studies at the aristotle university of thessaloniki and he obtained his ph.d. thesis at the university of western macedonia in the field of political sociology. he also obtained a m.a. degree in international relations and international law at the university of lancaster, u.k. he has published more than twenty papers in greek, european and american scientific journals. he is working as a researcher in the university of western macedonia and in the centre for education policy (kanep-gsee). nikos fotopoulos, ph.d. lecturer, university of western macedonia 3rd km florina – niki, florina, 53100, greece nikfotopoulos@kanep-gsee.gr nikos fotopoulos was born in amaliada greece. he studied sociology in the panteion university of athens where he obtained and his ph.d. thesis. he also holds an ma in eucational policy. he is a lecturer in the university of western macedonia. aggeliki chronopoulou, ph.d. researcher, university of western macedonia 3rd km florina – niki, florina, 53100, greece sygekp@ath.forthnet.gr ageliki chronopoulou is a mathematician and obtained her ph.d. thesis in educational policy in the university of western macedonia. she is the editor of the journal "contemporary education" in greece. mailto:akiridis@uowm.gr mailto:nep@pol.soc.uoc.gr mailto:zagbal2003@yahoo.gr mailto:nikfotopoulos@kanep-gsee.gr mailto:sygekp@ath.forthnet.gr current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 18 manuscript received: 4/13/2011 revisions received: 11/9/2011 accepted: 11/9/2011 filling in the implementation gap? problems in the greek educational system – an evidence-based explanatory framework and critical reflections 19 volume 14, number 3 december 2, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editor melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy carol masser leslie salazar jennifer shea alaya swann faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers using narrative_final volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x using narrative case studies in an online world religions course to stimulate deep learning about islam sherman elliott, ed.d arizona state university citation elliott, s. (2010). using narrative case studies in an online world religions course to stimulate deep learning about islam. current issues in education, 13(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the purpose of this action research was to examine how a narrative case study in an online asynchronous world religions course affected learners’ understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. the world religions course examined a variety of religions including islam. ten participants received information about the five pillars of islam; they then analyzed a narrative case study written by the instructor that was a fictional representation centering around the five pillars. following this analysis, learners used the five pillars of islam to construct their own narrative case study. pre and post assignment data were collected and analyzed. the data sources included: responses to a survey; narrative answers to open-ended questions; written analyses of the narrative case study; responses to telephone interviews; and, written original narrative case studies. results indicated that learners demonstrated positive changes in their beliefs and attitudes about islam, and experienced different ways of thinking. in particular, participants demonstrated changes when they: (a) expressed new understandings of islam as framed through self reflection; (b) compared islam to a personal prayer life; (c) reflected new appreciations of the islamic faith; and, (d) recognized stereotypes about islam. the different ways of thinking that participants experienced occurred when current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 2 they; (a) created mental images; (b) understood comprehensively and analytically; (c) reflected understandings in constructing an original narrative; (d) applied content to real-life; and, (e) enjoyed analyzing the case. keywords: teaching world religions, islam; deep learning, narrative case studies using narrative case studies 3 about the author(s) author: sherman elliott affiliation: arizona state university email: sherman.elliott@asu.edu biographical information: sherman elliott is the director of the center for civic education and leadership in the college of teacher education and leadership at arizona state university. his research interests include the pedagogy of world religions (particularly buddhism and islam), teaching religious studies objectives in social studies courses, and civic education. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 4 introduction as evidenced by the current situations between the united states and iraq, the united states and al-qaeda, muslim-hindu uprisings in india, the spread of the taliban outside of afghanistan, the conflict between palestinians and israelis, and the assassination of former prime minister benazir bhutto of pakistan, the world’s population is drawn into and affected by the beliefs and values of others. many of these conflicts’ causes emanate from peoples’ religious experiences. now more than ever, it is crucial that people not only know about the various religions of the world but understand the perspective and intrinsic views held by believers. opening to the faith and spirituality of others is to show affection for others, which ultimately leads to new understandings and respect for their humanity (ruland, 1985). as citizens of the world, people living in the 21st century need to understand others and, in times of value-laden conflict, to truly comprehend others’ religions. religion has multiple meanings. according to paul tillich (1948), religion is defined as “that which is of the ultimate concern” (p. 273). with this description, religion is a very broad experience that affects all people. more specifically, vernon ruland (1998) of the university of san francisco describes religion as “the quality that permeates that life; the center from which everything derives its meaning or without which all else would be meaningless” (p.10). finally, webster’s third new international dictionary of the english language, unabridged (2002), a commonly used source for world religions texts, defines religion as, “a personal awareness or conviction of the existence of a supreme being or of supernatural powers or influences controlling one’s own, humanity’s, or all nature’s destiny” (p.1918). a collective approach to the study of religion would use or blend definitions so as to encompass the broadest possible approach to understanding all of the world’s religions. however, designing world religions courses with such a broad comprehensive treatment often creates a learning environment that using narrative case studies 5 leads to surface as opposed to deep learning (masuzawa, 2005). the consequence of such a pedagogical approach is that the learner leaves the course with a simple fact-based understanding of complex beliefs and values held by others. further, such a simple or surface knowledge does not invite the learner to change his or her own understandings about the beliefs and values held by others. while educators agree on the need to develop courses that cultivate deep learning, the challenge persists as to how to do so in a fast paced, technological age where the instructor has less opportunity to interact personally with learners and draw out deep insights and meanings from the presented material. as an instructor of asynchronous online world religions courses in the community college setting for over nine years, i have discovered that a real challenge persists as to how to present an enormous curricular subject such as world religions, often times in an abbreviated semester of 8 to 14 weeks, without resorting to a fact-based, surface treatment of the material. as such, i have continually experimented and sought out pedagogical devices that will lead the learner to draw deep and meaningful understandings from the study of religion. when a learner leaves my course, it is my hope that the person is able to make connections between the values and beliefs of others and his or her own values and beliefs. i have sought to design a course in which each person’s view of the human condition is altered and new meanings and ideas about the world have emerged. one promising tool that appears to facilitate a deep learning experience is the narrative case study. a narrative case study is a short account written for the sole purpose of leading learners to understand specific curricular content objectives by examining the actions and dialogues of others. the narrative blends fiction and non-fiction into a story that the learner analyzes after studying basic core tenets of a religion or religious system. the purpose of this research was to examine how a narrative case study in my on-line asynchronous world religions course affected learners’ understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 6 review of supporting scholarship four categories of ideas and information were central to this study. although the major philosophical underpinning of the study encompassed the implementation of deep learning in a religious studies context, many significant strategies of learning were utilized as a means of facilitating a deep learning experience for the study of islam. this section explores deep learning as well as narrative text processing, writing to learn, and case study instruction. deep learning for several years, many courses in higher education have been dominated by pedagogical methods that reflect surface learning where facts and concepts are emphasized by the external demands of testing, institutional goals, or society (atherton, 2005). instead of instilling wisdom in learners, this approach encourages an artificial form of learning wherein the aim is to please teachers on various short-lived assessments (ramsden, 2003). learners often are asked to demonstrate their knowledge of disassociated facts and theories or memorize data about philosophies and principles without applying them to individuals and real-world situations. this approach often results in learners obtaining a shortlived knowledge of a very specific field of study, a curriculum that is shallow in its depth, and a cursory view of meaningful, interdisciplinary connections (lombardo, 2006). a generative goal of education is to guide learners toward developing the necessary tools and learning strategies needed to think deeply and productively about broad–based subjects, including historical and social phenomena (bransford, brown, & cocking, 2000; pring, 2000). the intent is to have learners move beyond simple recitations of facts and figures to a relevant knowledge where they move outside of the basic realm of information to thinking about problems, analyzing issues, making inferences, and relating various pieces of information for the purpose of drawing conclusions (bigge & shermis, 1999; joyce &weil, 2000). using narrative case studies 7 designing a course with these objectives is to guide learners toward deep learning. deep learning forms a learner in such a way that he or she can apply theories to everyday practices and behaviors (atherton, 2005; pring 2000). deep learning is a “comprehensive understanding of a domain of study” (lombardo, 2006, p. 2). the goal is to have learners internalize new understandings and directly apply these new thoughts and ideas to previous knowledge. simply put, deep connections are made between the new understanding and previously held ideas and beliefs (atherton, 2005; bransford et al., 2000). when learners successfully engage in deep learning, they are self-reflecting. that is, they are thinking about how they interpret events and ideas in their own life. by challenging learners to engage in this form of thinking, the instructor helps learners ultimately create new understandings and new operational knowledge (lombardo, 2006; pring, 2000). narrative text processing narrative texts represent the world by describing characters’ experiences during sequences of events (graesser, golding, & long, 1991). research in cognitive psychology and reader-response theory has shed light on the role of narrative texts in deep learning. cognitive psychology. research in cognitive psychology has shown that narratives appeal to the natural attributes of human memory (mccauley, 2000). once learners begin to hear a story, they tend to automatically search their long-term memory to locate a story that is similar (shank, 1995). a level of understanding develops while the listeners are engaged in the process of searching their own memories and making connections to prior knowledge resonating from prior stories (shank, 1995). while they are searching for a familiar or related story in their memory, learners begin to apply concepts to someone else’s story. by engaging in this extraction and construction process, learners produce deeper and deeper levels of understanding (shank, 1995). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 8 research has suggested that engaging in story is an effective means of learning about the customs and rules of other societies (hsu, 2008). this learning process occurs as individuals experience narrative that appeals to their emotions and capacity for empathy (hsu, 2008). the degree to which narrative influences others’ beliefs rests on the existence of prior knowledge and experience. as learners process a narrative, on an unconscious level they apply theories and philosophies about the beliefs and values of others to their own beliefs and values. during this process, they are beginning to create new understandings about both their own beliefs and the beliefs and values of others. the more a person relates to the life experience or emotions of the characters in the narrative, the greater their immersion in a state green calls “narrative transport” (as cited in hsu, 2008, p.51). this purposeful strategy of inviting learners to relate their own experiences to that of others is a form of deep learning(smith & colby,2007) reader-response theory. reader-response theory offers key insights into the experience that an active reader or listener brings to a narrative (karolides, 2000; tompkins, 1980). according to readerresponse theorists, the reader does not sit by passively when reading text, but participates as an active actor in a process of generating new meaning from the text. during reading, there is an engaging mutual process that exists between the reader and the text. according to louise rosenblatt (1978), “the relation between the text and the reader is not linear. it is a situation, an event in a particular time and place in which each element conditions the other” (p.16). as such, if learners enrolled in a world religions class are actively reading a narrative on religion or a religious system, they are doing much more than seeking out clues and answers from the printed material. the learners bring their own cultural and societal biases, including perceived religious or spiritual beliefs, to the actions, ideas, and dialogues found in the text (karolides, 2000). the impressions brought about within the text in conjunction with the background provided by the reader at using narrative case studies 9 a particular point in time lead to a new experience where a unique meaning is understood (beach, 1994; karolides, 2000). this new meaning often creates new insights and understandings about the values and beliefs of others. by bringing their emotional and intellectual engagement to the text, respondents create a response that unknowingly is shaped by their own perceived identity with or distance from the characters (karolides, 2000). writing to learn when all goes well, writing, as a mode of learning, engages learners with content and activates thinking (emig, 2003). writing can lead learners to new insights, new ideas, and new knowledge. although writing often is a mainstay of everyday communication and frequently is used pedagogically for assessing the transmission of information, it can create opportunities for learners to grasp content and analyze it critically. in commending the value of writing in order to learn, george newell (2005) claims that the “process of writing will somehow lead inevitably to a better understanding of information gleaned from texts and from a teacher’s presentation” (p. 238). the constructivist school of thought has influenced the writing to learn movement in education (newell, 2005). according to the constructivist view, which aligns with the cognitive psychology and reader response theories of reading presented earlier, writers actively participate in the creation of knowledge. similar to readers who often “compare a speaker’s or character’s experience with their personal experience” (beach, 1994, p. 762), writers break down barriers between themselves and their subjects and actively place themselves in the roles of others. when learners place themselves in the roles of others, they are moving toward deep learning. case study instruction scholars have noted some general characteristics of effective case studies (hiltz, coppola, rotter, turoff, & benbunan-fich, 2000). effective case-studies tend to be authentic, ill-structured, and current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 10 open-ended -just like problems in real life (bernard & lundgren-cayrol, 2001). real-life problems, as opposed to unlikely or implausible actions and dialogues, tend to engage learners (vinaja & raisinghani, 2001). however, little research is available to guide pedagogues in the design and use of on-line case studies in a world religions course devoted to deep learning. as used in my pedagogy, a narrative case study is a short narrative written by the instructor for the sole purpose of getting learners to understand specific curricular content objectives by examining the actions and dialogues of others. learners study the tenets of a specific religion or religious system through various means, then they read the actions and dialogues of characters who embody these tenets. the purpose in creating the narrative case study is to guide the learner toward a deep learning experience where the learner does not simply accept the material at face value, but questions and analyzes it. here the learner contemplates the personal relevance of the material and the potential applications of it. in an online setting, the learner is completing this activity without the benefit of a face-to-face classroom environment where colleagues and an instructor would be able to probe and offer immediate possible meanings. since online learners are working independently on this assignment, the question remains as to how a narrative case study in an on-line asynchronous world religions course affects learners’ understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. methods the purpose of this research was to examine how a narrative case study in my on-line asynchronous world religions course affected learners’ understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. this research was conducted utilizing an action-research mixedmethods methodology (stringer, 2007). using narrative case studies 11 setting learners participating in the research were enrolled in rel 243 (world religions) at rio salado college, a member of the maricopa county (az) community colleges. learners enroll in the online course every two weeks. once they are assigned an official start date, each learner receives a 15 week calendar that reflects when lessons should be completed and assignments submitted. due to the asynchronous nature of the class, the average learner is engaged only with the online material and does not have an opportunity to process the content with peers. after assignments are submitted, they are scored and returned by me within five calendar days. the demographics of those who participated in the research study represented a traditional range of online learners at rio salado college. seven of the 10 participants were women. while four participants ranged from 29-39 years of age, one was 42 and the remaining five were 18-28 years of age. eight of the participants resided in the greater phoenix metropolitan area, while the remaining two resided in tucson and florence, arizona. one participant, who just completed a tour of duty in iraq, was in the earmy university partnership with rio salado college, a program where active duty u.s. army personnel take online courses through rio salado college and other online colleges throughout the country. although learners entered the course in two week intervals commencing on august 25, 2008, all fifteen original research participants were presented with a due date calendar for assignments and a due date calendar for completing the extra research study assignments. assignments were collected at various times during fall 2008 with all ten participants finishing the data collection pieces of the study by january 5, 2009. action steps current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 12 world religions is an undergraduate survey course that is designed to expose learners to the major developed and indigenous religions of the world. after examining indigenous religions, several developed asian religions, and two other abrahamic religions, learners are required to complete a unit on islam. the unit begins with the life of islam’s founder, mohammed, and ends with a discussion of contemporary muslim sects and practices. learners read two chapters in a textbook, read an online summary provided by me on the main tenets of islam, completed two multiple choice quizzes, and wrote a brief essay describing the five of pillars of islam. the specific actions examined in this asynchronous online world religions course consisted of two learning tasks. in addition to the above assignments, participants produced a written analysis of a narrative case study, and then they constructed a narrative case study. written analysis of a narrative case study. each learner was invited to analyze a narrative case study on islam so as to stimulate deep learning (appendix d). the procedure for analyzing a narrative case study was to examine the actions and dialogues of the characters in the story so as to identify the five pillars of islam. when learners are analyzing a piece of information in this fashion and drawing conclusions, they are engaging in deep learning. (bigge & shermis, 1999;joyce & weil, 2000). in their written analysis, the learner was to specifically name the pillar, identify how it was represented by the actions and dialogues of the characters, and show the direct correlation between the actions and dialogues with the definitions and attributes of the pillars. for example, after reading the narrative case study provided, a learner may have written in their analysis,” sadia professed her faith with the creed or shahada when she stated, ‘o’merciful god, i know of your oneness and praise the name of mohammed your prophet.’” this statement would be appropriate because shahada is the first pillar that is a profession of faith. it also is the acceptance of this confession of faith and its faithful repetition that using narrative case studies 13 constitute the first step to being a muslim. the significance of the shahada is the belief that the only purpose of life is to serve and obey. construction of an original narrative case study. under the theoretical umbrella of writing to learn to stimulate deep learning, the participants were invited to construct their own original narrative case studies. after they prepared a written analysis of the narrative case study provided, each learner was asked to write his or her own narrative case study based on the five pillars of islam using the same technique of embedding the curricular content in the actions and dialogue of the characters (see appendix c). learners were provided with the already analyzed narrative case study as a sample. although they were asked to submit the original narrative case study within five days of receipt of the assignment, specific length or writing style were not included in the instructions so as to provide as much creativity as possible with the writing process. writing a narrative case study allows the learner to apply content facts to sophisticated actions, dialogues, and events, which is a form of deep learning (smith & colby, 2007). with analytic writing, such as constructing a written narrative case study based on how characters live out their religious beliefs, learners were prompted to engage in a deeper form of understanding. by producing their own original narrative case study, a learner has the opportunity to participate in a “more lasting intellectual representation of the content (that) seems to develop through an integration and reformulation of ideas” (newell, 2005, p. 240). data sources data for this study came from surveys, the written analyses of a narrative case study, the written original narrative case studies, and telephone interviews. the following describes each data source. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 14 surveys. at the beginning of the unit, learners were asked to complete a survey that measured their personal beliefs and attitudes about islam (see appendix b). the purpose of such a preassignment survey was to capture an initial snapshot of the learners’ attitudes and provide quantitative data on those attitudes that could be used for comparison (johnson, 2002). the pre-assignment survey included statements that were considered to be inaccurate stereotypical beliefs about islam. using content analysis research, i noted and collected statements from assignments and email correspondence over the past ten years of teaching courses with curricular content on islam(fraenkel & wallen, 2006) the survey incorporated five statements that included beliefs or assumptions about islam or the role of islam in the lives of others. beliefs about violence, the role of women, tolerance for other religions, the worship of a singular abrahamic god, and the events on september 11, 2001 were poignantly and directly stated in survey prompts. each statement was accompanied by an open-ended question that allowed the participant to clarify why they held such beliefs or values about islam. after they completed the pre-assignment survey and the written analysis of the narrative case study assignment, learners were asked to complete a post-assignment survey designed to measure their beliefs and values about islam (see appendix d & e). the post-assignment survey listed the identical statements and questions about participants’ beliefs and attitudes about islam, but it also included open-ended questions about analyzing a narrative case study and constructing a written narrative case study. the quantitative data on learners’ beliefs and attitudes about islam collected from the postassignment survey were used for comparison with the pre-assignment survey. the qualitative data on learners’ responses to analyzing a narrative case study and constructing a written narrative case study were analyzed separately. using narrative case studies 15 written analysis of a narrative case study. participants’ were given a narrative case study written by the instructor to analyze as a learning task for this study’s action. this narrative case study also served as a source of data. once the appropriateness of the case study was determined, it was given to learners to analyze. because of the difference innate to what each learner brings to the narrative case study, learners would draw different interpretations of presented religious practices and values. participants’ written analyses of the particular narrative case study on islam used in this study reflected their understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. constructed original narrative case study. participants’ construction of an original written narrative case study, which they completed as a learning task for this study’s action, also served as a source of data. in the narrative case study that they constructed, learners represented in a concrete way their understanding of the five pillars of islam. this assignment required them to organize and interpret in a very real and meaningful way the five pillars of islam. as a data source, these constructed narrative case studies reflected both the participants’ understandings and appreciation of the five pillars and of islam as a whole. interviews. interviews enable learners to describe their interactions in detail and on their own terms (stringer, 2007). i used interviews (see appendix f) to afford participants the opportunity to describe their interactions with the case studies and to explore and share their beliefs and attitudes about islam. the interviews were a blended approach of structured and informal (franklin & wallen, 2006). the structured component of the interview helped to maintain consistency as the same questions were asked in the same order (franklin & wallen, 2006; johnson, 2002). by being consistent, i was able to minimize the impact of variables that do not pertain to deep learning. utilizing a computer audio recording program allowed me to focus on learners’ responses and to develop immediate follow-up current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 16 questions that represented individual understanding, beliefs, or attitudes about islam and a learner’s experience with the narrative case study. during the semi-structured interview process, i posed questions that probed learners about their experiences analyzing the narrative case study on islam and creating an original narrative case study on islam. a special emphasis was placed on participants’ experiences that represented deep learning. analysis the data consisted of 185 minutes of digital audio files, 36 pages of audio transcriptions, nine written narrative case studies of 1-2 pages each, 35 pages of pre and post lesson surveys, and 13 pages of analyses of the narrative case study. quantitative analysis quantitative data aggregated from the preand post-assignment surveys were compared through a repeated measures analysis of variance test (fraenkel & wallen, 2006; olejnik & algina, 2000). the effect of time was significant, f(1, 9) = 21.87, p < 0.001. as table 1 shows, the post-assignment survey mean, 4.08, was statistically significantly different than the pre-assignment survey mean, 2.98. the partial eta squared effect size, 0.71, is extraordinarily large for a within-subject factor based on cohen’s criteria (olejnike & aljina, 2000). table 1 means comparison for survey (n = 10) pretest posttest m2m1 p hp 2 using narrative case studies 17 m 2.98 4.08 1.10 <.001 0.71 sd 95% ci 0.70 2.48 3.58 0.71 3.48 4.58 note: maximum score = 5 qualitative analysis the qualitative data consisting of the written analyses of narrative case studies, open-ended questions on the surveys, written original narrative case studies, and telephone interviews were analyzed with a content analysis approach (fraenkel & wallen, 2006). employing a grounded theory methodology (fraenkel & wallen, 2006), each response was unitized and coded as individual “units of meaning” (stringer, 2007, p. 98). units of meaning consisted of learner comments that indicated their understandings and appreciation of the beliefs and values of others. in particular, units of meaning consisted of comments indicating deep learning such as words, phrases, sentences, or ideas that reflected profound understanding about islam or one’s beliefs, understandings, or attitudes about islam. the following deep learning indicators (lombardo, 2006) were used to focus the content analyses of the various qualitative data sources: 1. comprehension and analytical understanding 2. critical thinking 3. holistic insight and interdisciplinary application 4. self-reflection and self-awareness 5. demonstration of application and value to life current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 18 6. expansion of consciousness 7. open to growth after categorizing the data by source (i.e., interview transcriptions, written analysis of the narrative case study, written original narrative case studies and open-ended survey questions), i identified each respondent in the data source and collated the sources accordingly. each source was then analyzed in great detail by using color highlighting pens to identify discreet units of meaning that pointed to deep learning or beliefs and attitudes about islam. as much as possible, the verbatim principle was employed to prevent an insertion of my own views or interpretations of the data into the analysis (stringer, 2007). each category was then labeled according to the various perspectives that participants shared during the study. categories and subcategories emerged as this process brought in units of meaning from all four qualitative sources. main categories that were generated included self-reflection and self-awareness, application of theories to everyday practices and behaviors, comprehension and analytical understanding, value to life, and connections between new understandings and previously held ideas and beliefs. a written record was maintained of all categories, including those that may not have represented deep learning or changes in beliefs and attitudes about islam. all relevant participants’ comments were analyzed for word choice. participant verb choices, other forms of the same word, and other words that were repetitively used by the participants were listed individually for each participant along with the number of times they used the word. i then developed a grid for words that were used by several participants. coded on the grid were participants’ names, thirteen words used by more than one participant, and the number of times each participant used the word. words noted on the grid included the following: 1) know/knowledge, 2) understand, 3) think/thought, 4) learned, 5) different(ly), 6) real(ly), 7) appreciate/appreciation, 8) realized, 9) analyze/analytic. 10) comprehend, 11) using narrative case studies 19 believe, 12) experience, 13) change. after detecting these patterns of word choice. i then merged the themes into triangulated, data-based assertions regarding how a narrative case study in my on-line asynchronous world religions course affected learners’ understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. results my analysis of the data collected during this action research led to two assertions. the assertions are (a) learners demonstrated changes in their beliefs and attitudes about islam and (b) learners experienced different ways of thinking. assertion #1: learners demonstrated changes in their beliefs and attitudes about islam data collected in this study revealed that learners generally demonstrated changes in their beliefs and attitudes about islam. learners were observed to engage in a process of changing their beliefs and attitudes and, after doing so, ascribing new meaning to the knowledge they acquired. the survey scores revealed a significant change in overall belief about islam, and the qualitative data revealed the process of change for the learners. prior to the lesson, learners held pejorative viewpoints about islam that correlated islam with intolerance, violence, oppression of women, and terrorism. specific changes that i noted involved learners demonstrating a new understanding and appreciation of the faith itself, devoid of the cultural stereotypes listed above. learners demonstrated an understanding and appreciation of the pillars of islam in a manner that was self-reflective and personal. prior to the unit of study, learners ascribed pejorative views to islam, but after the unit of study learners reflected an appreciation of the pillars of islam to the extent that they saw the pillars containing some elements that were similar to their own faith experience. in particular, participants demonstrated changes when they (a) expressed new understandings of islam as framed through self reflection, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 20 (b) compared islam to a personal prayer life, (c) reflected new appreciations of the islamic faith, and (d) recognized stereotypes about islam. expressed new understandings of islam as framed through self reflection. after analyzing the narrative case study on the five pillars of islam, several learners made connections between their own religious beliefs and those of muslims. when learners engaged in such comparisons, they demonstrated active self-reflection. to illustrate, one respondent commented, “i do believe that they are a lot like me. my religion is different from them, but i believe they have a lot of similarities i believe in”(rd\ sur)1. other learners were even more specific about the comparisons between their own religious convictions and those of muslims. allison stated, “it just caused me to pause and think about how…how very different islam is from, my christian faith in terms of how much is required. i don’t think anyone in my church or denomination is going to hold it over my head if i make it to the holy land or not” (as\int). statements by other participants, although brief, also pointed to active self-reflection. chuck stated, “the koran is like the bible” (cs\int), and later said, “i see from their side instead of just our side” (cs\int). the reflection was very introspective for rebecca, who stated, “i do believe they are people like me” (rd\int). another learner’s comments not only echoed personal reflection, but also contained the reflections of a friend, with whom the learner dialogued on her own volition. i am catholic and i realize through their religion, it’s very similar in that they put god first…you just realize that they’re more like us, a different culture we don’t know. after reading the narrative and learning about the five pillars, my opinion was pretty much changed. my best friend, she’s catholic too, [she] was like wow i didn’t realize that’s how similar these religions were. (eo/int) 1 parenthetical information specifies data-based support for the assertion. the first letter string identifies the pseudonym for the participant. the second letter string identifies the data source (int = interview; sur = survey; oncs = original narrative case study). using narrative case studies 21 significantly, the deep learning principle of selfreflection was articulated by every research participant, including one who had analyzed the narrative case study but had not written her own narrative. compared islam to a personal prayer life. in demonstrating a comparison to one’s own devotional life, some learners focused on prayer. they commonly associated their own relationship with praying to a monotheistic god who was the same god of a muslim. one respondent stated, “when you hear that they pray 5 to 8 times a day, you think wow, that’s a lot in the [day] okay, i pray before bed, and other times, so it’s not so different” (tw\int). at first this learner was clearly conscious of the number of times a muslim may pray, but by relating those actions to her own life, she came to draw a comparison that emphasized the similarity to her own prayer life. reflected new appreciations of the islamic faith. in the interviews, learners reflected an appreciation of some specific aspect of islamic faith independent of comparing it to their own religious beliefs. one learner commented, “i am exposed to a lot of protestants and judaism, where i grew up. even those religions …people (are) very ritualistic…i saw in this islam faith not just ritualism but whole-heartedness(ca\int). another respondent focused on the structure of daily religious life for muslims. he stated, “praying five times a day…they really take that to heart, so i think that’s definitely a very positive thing for them”(ck\ sur). another learner was not specific in his appreciation of islam, but did gain appreciation of the faith that affected his personal life. he stated, “i have some friends that are muslim too so i guess it kind of makes me understand or appreciate them a little bit more and some of the things that they have to do on a daily basis (mm\ sur). in constructing an original narrative case study, the participants reflected an appreciation of islam in their representations of some of the pillars. in their characterizations, several learners reflected excitement over the pilgrimage to mecca. theresa’s character, heba, states, “i know i am just so excited because of our trip to mecca next week” (tg\oncs). another learner created a character, prathan, who “enjoys the peace that comes current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 22 with consistent submission to allah and his will” (as\oncs). other learners depicted characters who were pleased to give alms. mercy wrote, “amir went to bed feeling very excited about the next day when he would give the money he set aside and the money his family had given him to the muslim family that was having difficulty” (mm\oncs). another learner reflected a character who “enjoys his time of prayer with his family” (ca\oncs). rebecca writes of a character, shillan, who has cancer but who longs to be “well for the fasting month of ramadan” (rd\oncs). most of the constructed narratives reflected an affirming depiction of at least one pillar of islam. recognized stereotypes about islam. toward the end of the telephone interviews, i provided the respondents with a quote from a nationally recognized radio broadcaster. during the broadcast, the radio commentator linked the muslim hijackers who attacked the united states on september 11, 2001 to a current group of muslim inmates in a british prison who requested that the toilets in their restroom be turned around so that they were not using the facility while facing mecca, a sacred place. the broadcaster implied that all muslims were terrorists who deserved no special treatment. the purpose of my prompt was to determine if the participants could easily recognize this stereotype about islam. in all cases, the respondents stated that the radio broadcaster’s comments reflected a strong religious stereotype about islam. one respondent stated, “i think it is based on ignorance, and probably a lack of knowledge, and personal…inactions or convictions in their own lives to generate a comment on that”(mm/int). another learner ascribed a nefarious motive to the radio broadcaster’s comment, stating that, “that’s a shallow comment because it had nothing to do with the first part…he was trying to take one story personally, a horrible comment, i think he’s trying to build a case against islam by making additional comments, and by tying it in with a different story”(ca/int). the ability to recognize islamic stereotypes extended beyond the interview prompt. in responding to one open-ended survey question, one participant commented, “it [the narrative case study] put the life of a using narrative case studies 23 regular muslim family in perspective so i can relate to them in the fact that they are people too instead of satan in human form which many americans think about muslims”(bj/ sur). assertion #2: learners experienced different ways of thinking the majority of respondents stated that they experienced different ways of thinking by analyzing and responding to the narrative case study. nine of 10 respondents used the word, “different,” or the phrase, “different way of thinking,” in both their survey responses and telephone interviews. these different ways of thinking represented a deeper sense of understanding of content, in this case the five pillars of islam. overall, different ways of thinking led to new insights and understandings. during her interview, kay stated, when i first went into this class, to be honest with you, i was probably ignorant about the culture and what they believe in [islam]. they just don’t necessarily believe in hating americans or blowing up the united states…when you read the narrative you find what’s important to them, giving back…after reading the narrative and learning about the five pillars, my opinion pretty much changed. (ko\int) michael also reported that the narrative case study prompted different ways of thinking. he stated, “it [narrative case study] definitely taught me a lot of new things, a lot of information, and opened my eyes up into different understandings of religion, cultures, to see how some similarities are in my beliefs altogether different”(mi\ sur). the different ways of thinking that participants experienced occurred when they (a) created mental images, (b) understood comprehensively and analytically, (c) reflected understandings in constructing an original narrative, (d) applied content to real-life, and (e) enjoyed analyzing the case. created mental images. many learners were aided in their analysis of the narrative and their understanding of the content by creating pictures or images in their minds of what was occurring with the characters. allison stated, “i understand the characters, they have a name and you’re picturing them. when you read a case study you’re kind of picturing them walking in the busy streets…in time, it just becomes a current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 24 little more real than simply reading an academic text” (as\int). another respondent went beyond creating a mental image of the story and inserted herself into the narrative, as this comment shows, “it was really interesting to try and image myself or someone else i know in that situation” (mm\int). other learners related a sense that the narrative was a “real world experience” for them (as\int) or that it gave them a “vivid understanding of what or how…[muslim] people conduct some of their daily living” (mm\int). understood comprehensively and analytically. analyzing the narrative case study on the five pillars of islam led learners to demonstrate a comprehensive and analytical understanding of the content. mercy stated, “i learned differently. i can remember each pillar right off the top of my head just by thinking about the narrative.”(int.) on a survey prompt, kay revealed that she had to “think in a different way. [i] had to become more analytical.”(sur.) reading about the lives of others created a much deeper level of knowledge. learners applied the basic content to real situations, a mainstay of deep learning. for example, sherry stated, “it kind of forced me to go to another level of what they (pillars) are…to comprehend them more in a(n) application…it kind of brought in my thinking on it rather than here’s the topic and learning about it, a place of actually having to incorporate it into a different way of thinking.” (int.) reflected understandings in constructing an original narrative. although many learners stated that constructing an original narrative case study was challenging and difficult, the original narrative case studies constructed by the learners revealed a thorough understanding of the five pillars of islam and their application to the daily life of a muslim. every learner represented each pillar accurately and in such a manner that revealed a very complex and deep understanding of the practice of the religious concepts. for example, when explaining the pillar of salat, or daily prayer, learners not only depicted a character praying, but they referred to characters praying a number of times per day in a meaningful and reverent way that reflected praise and submission. allison wrote about her character, “although he felt tired from staying up too late the previous using narrative case studies 25 night, he would never consider skipping the 1st prayer of the day” (as\oncs). rather than simply mention that a character is praying, the writer here refers to the challenges of everyday life and the centrality of prayer in that life. this reflects a deep level of understanding of the pillar as the learner has applied the principle to her own creation. another learner depicted the hajj as a very meaningful experience for one of his characters. when describing the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to mecca, charles’ character not only plans the trip with his spouse and children, but states that, “[it will be] time spent at the ka’ba with other members of the same faith. it will be refreshing for the soul, mind, and body” (ck\oncs). again, the learner is writing about a piece of content in such a way that reveals depth and holistic insight about the hajj rather than simply articulating that it is the annual trip to mecca. applied content to real life. participants frequently applied case contents to real life. mercy stated during her interview, “it makes you think of things in real life, you can actually put yourself in that position as someone really living at that moment”(mm\int). this notion of putting oneself in an actual situation was a recurring theme. learners applied contents to real life in concrete terms. the words “real” or “reality” were used by respondents over 200 times. for instance, allison stated, “we got a chance to actually think of religion in people’s lives in an everyday sense, in a very practical sense. it was enjoyable. it was a real world experience” (as\int). the process of analyzing the actions and dialogues in the narrative case study led many learners to a deep knowledge of islam and its role in everyday life. mercy said, “it (the narrative case study) made me think about how i would act if i were a muslim” (mm\int). another participant stated, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 26 i felt the story was a reflection on how you would go about your daily life, through your eyes what would constitute a day of someone who adopts these religions and practices them…it just made me appreciate actually learning about religion. it made me appreciate how focused they are on religion. (mm\ int) enjoyed analyzing the case. each respondent described the experience of analyzing the narrative case study as enjoyable. allison stated, “i enjoyed the case study. i looked forward to reading paragraph after paragraph about the characters and how their faith was part of their daily life” (as\int). other learners used terminology such as “enjoyed,” “fantastic,” “really good,” “interesting,” and “fascinating” when describing the process of analyzing the narrative. in response to an open-ended survey question, jane stated, “i have learned a lot. i don’t get to associate with many people from other religions and found it fascinating” (jg\sur). limitations this study is limited by the nature of how participants were recruited into the study. participation was solely voluntary. since there was not a reward or incentive to participate in the study, any social desirability on the part of learners to please the instructor was mitigated. as an online, asynchronous, general prerequisite course, i did not have a long term relationship with learners. this action research was intended to address the impact of a narrative case study on learners enrolled in this specific course and was not designed to address personal change in belief in the long term. conclusion discussion as an instructor of world religions, i have noted that students bring to the study of islam stereotypes and pejorative views of muslims’ practices and beliefs. many views have been shaped by the events of september 11, 2001, the wars in iraq and afghanistan, and the continual conflict among arabs and israelis over the future of palestine. a survey of learners’ perceptions of certain aspects of islam conducted prior to the unit of study on islam revealed that these learners did, indeed, hold stereotypical views of islam. the purpose using narrative case studies 27 of this research was to examine how a narrative case study in my on-line asynchronous world religions course affected learners’ understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. to stimulate deep learning so as to facilitate change within the learner, participants were asked to identify the five pillars of islam within a narrative case study and to generate their own written narrative case study illustrating the five pillars of islam. the data collected in this action research demonstrated that change took place among learner’s beliefs and attitudes about islam. my surprise in this study was the means by which new understandings of islam occurred; namely, they occurred through the lens of the participants’ own religious lens. learners made comparisons and contrasting statements about the five pillars of islam as it related to their own religious practices and spiritual beliefs. at times during the interview, participants appeared to be more focused on what they learned about themselves as opposed to what they learned about islam. in a secular world religions course, this method for change in meaning would not be something that would be an expectation for learners. as a teacher of religious studies, i acknowledge that a person’s spiritual or religious practices will certainly enter into the course and its outcomes; however, it is not the intent to ask learners in a secular world religions course to analyze their own faith-based perspective. nevertheless, the study revealed that my learners’ new understandings of islam were engendered by their framing of meaning through their own personal faith-based convictions and practices. i inferred from their statements that the majority of the learners held christian beliefs. a religious lens may also be reflected in the culminating assignment of constructing a narrative case study. in their written original narrative case studies, learners tended to focus more on one aspect of the five pillars, that being either zakat (almsgiving) or salat (daily prayer). both of these pillars have similar expressions in the other abrahamic faiths of christianity and judaism. these faiths affirm also the private and current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 28 communal role of prayer and the sacrificial nature of almsgiving. it was interesting to note that the one pillar that finds less similarity with these faiths, that of the shahada, was depicted less in the constructed narratives. the shahada, or profession of faith, is a requirement for all muslims. in one form or another, muslims proclaim that there is no god but allah, and muhammad is the prophet of allah. although the shahada was mentioned in the constructed narrative case studies and was identified in the analysis of a narrative case study, learners included little explanation or expansive detail with this pillar. most practicing christians or jews, for example, probably would easily see a connection between their own faith and the muslim practices of almsgiving, prayer, pilgrimage and fasting. the creed, however, would not be a daily practice, but would appear in text or in a specific liturgical practice. this focus on familiar practices may correspond with my early assertion that learners were continually comparing their own religious beliefs and practices with those of muslims. although learners on the whole found it difficult to construct an original narrative, they were able to objectify their new understanding of the five pillars of islam into a concrete story. the characters in the narratives reflected in word and deed a positive disposition toward the pillars. in some cases, the tenets were depicted in an idyllic way with characters attributing great meaning and significance to them. in addition, the women in the narrative were depicted as thoughtful and faithful women and were treated well by the male characters of the story. this depiction of characters contrasts with findings from the initial pre-assignment survey that reflected learners’ beliefs of women being treated poorly in islam. implications for practice there is no typical on-line learner of today. rather, the strong diversity of on-line enrollees affirms the need for different learning experiences that reach more learners. assignments that are meaningful to more learners and that appeal to a diversity of learners are in high demand. by continuing to design narrative case studies and invite learners to construct their own narrative case studies, i plan to not only facilitate new using narrative case studies 29 understandings for my diverse learners, but also to offer them an enjoyable experience. for educators who wish to stimulate deep learning under the same conditions as this study, it is reasonable to assume that utilizing teacher generated narrative case studies and inviting learners to write their own narrative case studies would indeed offer a pedagogical platform for new understandings and new insights. closing word a very promising finding of this study was that learners processed their thoughts about the written case study analysis and constructing a written narrative case study with others. several respondents indicated that they spoke with their families, intimates, and peers in other classes about muslim beliefs and practices. in fact, one respondent mentioned that she sought out an old friend from previous employment who is muslim to discuss the assignments. as an educator, it is always a point to relish when learners take experiences outside the confines of a course and are open to the views of others. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 30 references american psychological association. 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(2002). springfield, ma: merriam-webster. using narrative case studies 33 appendix a pre-assignment survey 1. pre-survey of beliefs and attitudes about islam please match your response to each comment below with the scale provided scale: 1-5: 5 =absolutely true, 4=likely true, 3=neither true/false, 2=somewhat false, 1=absolutely false muslims practice a religion that supports or condones violence. the god to whom muslims pray and worship is the same as the god worshipped by christians and jews. muslims are to blame for the attacks against the united states on september 11, 2001. women are treated very poorly if not disrespectfully in islam. muslims are intolerant of other religions. for the following five questions, please reflect on your rating of the items above. why did you choose the rating that you did for each question. 2. why did you choose the rating you did for "muslims practice a religion that supports or condones violence." 3. why did you choose the rating you did for "the god to whom muslims pray and worship is the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 34 same as the god worshipped by christians and jews." 4. why did you choose the rating you did for "muslims are to blame for the attacks against the united states on september 11, 2001.” 5. why did you choose the rating you did for "women are treated very poorly if not disrespectfully in islam” 6. why did you choose the rating you did for "muslims are intolerant of other religions.” 7. gender: 1. female 2. male 8. age: a)18-22 b) 23-28, c) 29-39 d) 40-45 e) 46 or older 9. how many courses have you completed that have contained content about islam? a) 1 b)2 c)3 d)4 5)5 or more 10. how many years of post secondary education have you completed? a)1 b)2 c)3 d)4 5)5 or more appendix b student guide for production of a case study world religions (rel 243) directions: write a narrative case study based on the five pillars of islam using the technique of embedding the curricular content in the actions and dialogue of the characters. the narrative case study that you analyzed prior to this assignment serves as one example of the construction of narrative case study designed for the study of a particular religion or religious tenant. please be certain that your narrative case study contains the following components: 1. narrative contains the five pillars of islam 2. narrative reflects a direct correlation between the action and conversations of the characters and the five pillars of islam. 3. narrative is sufficiently broad in scope to develop the concepts for understanding. guidelines for presentation and submission of narrative case study: 1. writer uses clear, direct, easily understood language. 2. proofread and invite peer readers to check for grammatical, spelling or typographical errors. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 36 3. presentation is double-spaced typed, attractive and has appropriate headings. using narrative case studies 37 appendix c written analysis of a case study case study on the five pillars of islam rel 243 world religions assignment: case study analysis on the five pillars of islam: • directions: once you have completed the essay assignment on islam, please read the attached narrative case study very carefully. analyze the case study to determine which pillars of islam are represented in the characters’ actions and conversations. be certain to show the direct correlation between the action and content of the conversation with the definition or attributes of each pillar. “o’merciful god, i know of your oneness and praise the name of mohammed your prophet.” sadia was able to make her profession of faith this morning as she does every morning, but for some strange reason, she felt that this day would not be ordinary. after helping her husband and older children get off to work and school, she grabbed her two little ones and fled quickly out the door. sadia was rushing to the market this morning, because she needed to get back to the mosque by noon. she is never late to the mosque on friday and wants to show her children that we can rush through the vegetable stand but current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 38 not through their relationship with allah. her youngest, abduallah hears the familiar cry of the vegetable vendor, “...closing in ten minutes....” oh my, says sadia nervously, we will have to eat leftovers tonight..." sadia quickly dashes down the narrow street to her family’s mosque. a nice surprise awaits as her husband greets her in front of the mosque. “why are you here today? sadia asks. her husband, ahmet, smiles and says i have a surprise for you, but i will have to tell you later, after prayers. ahmet was so eager to tell sadia that he had received a bonus at work and that he could now take her and her sister on the annual trip to mecca. he knew how eagerly sadia wanted to visit mecca, but they never seemed able to come-up with the necessary funds. during the imam’s talk, ahmet was trying to think of a way to tell sadia about his bonus and the trip when all of a sudden, some very anxious news came from the imam. it seemed that a terrible earthquake had struck pakistan; the red crescent society was asking for alms to build shelters and provide food and water for those who were suffering. ahmet became troubled and began to question whether his bonus should go for alms or for his family’s pilgrimage to mecca. after noontime prayers, sadia went home with the little ones as ahmet returned to work. during the afternoon, sadia was very excited about the surprise that awaited her at dinner. meanwhile, ahmet was listening to everyone at work talk about the devastation in pakistan and was watching images of people in great need on the al-jazera news network all afternoon. he decided that giving alms was going to have to take precedence over the trip to mecca with sadia. using narrative case studies 39 sadia’s oldest son tazik arrived home from school as he always does. running into the house, tazik threw his books on the kitchen table, kissed his mother on the cheek, and grabbed his soccer ball. “wait,” shouted his mother. “your father has a surprise for us tonight. please put the ball away and stay inside awhile.” tazik began to whine about his plight and begged his mother to let him go to the field with the others, but sadia reminded him that he needs to be with his family just like when they break the fast together during the holy month. ahmet came inside and his wife was waiting for him. she and the children were very excited. ahmet told her that there would be no surprise because of the day’s news. he quickly and quietly explained that he had received a bonus at work and wanted to take her and her sister to mecca this year, but the disaster in pakistan produced so much devastation and suffering that he heard the call of the imam today and decided that his bonus would have to go to those in need. sadia began to cry. ahmet was so upset that he had disappointed his wife that he begged her to stop. sadia composed herself and told her husband that she was crying not because of the disappointment of not going to mecca, but because of how caring and loving her husband was and that he roll-modeled for her what it meant to follow the will of allah. appendix d post-assignment survey 1. post-survey of beliefs and attitudes about islam please match your response to each comment below with the scale provided scale: 1-5: 5 =absolutely true, 4=likely true, 3=neither true/false, 2=somewhat false, 1=absolutely false muslims practice a religion that supports or condones violence. the god to whom muslims pray and worship is the same as the god worshipped by christians and jews. muslims are to blame for the attacks against the united states on september 11, 2001. women are treated very poorly if not disrespectfully in islam. muslims are intolerant of other religions. for the following five questions, please reflect on your rating of the items above. why did you choose the rating that you did for each question. 2. why did you choose the rating you did for "muslims practice a religion that supports or condones violence." 3. why did you choose the rating you did for "the god to whom muslims pray and worship is the using narrative case studies 41 same as the god worshipped by christians and jews." 4. why did you choose the rating you did for "muslims are to blame for the attacks against the united states on september 11, 2001.” 5. why did you choose the rating you did for "women are treated very poorly if not disrespectfully in islam” 6. why did you choose the rating you did for "muslims are intolerant of other religions.” 7. have you ever analyzed a narrative case study for a college course before? a) yes b) no 8. how would you describe the learning experience of analyzing a narrative case study? a) very useful or interesting b) interesting or useful c) somewhat interesting or useful d) neither interesting or useful e) definitely not interesting or useful please describe what the learning experience meant to you. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 42 9. if you completed the case study assignment, how many hours did you devote to this assignment from beginning to end? a) 1-3 b) 4-6 c) 7-9 d) 10 or more 10. did you find value in creating your own narrative case study on islam? a) yes b) no c) did not complete the assignment please describe your experience with creating a narrative case study. appendix e interview questions sample interview questions: 1. what was your overall experience with the narrative case study assignment? 2. do you believe that completing the case study aided your understanding of the basic components of islam? using narrative studies 43 3. do you recall how the following pillars of islam were present in the narrative case study: shahada (creed), salat (prayer), zakat (almsgiving), ramadan (fasting period), hajj (pilgrimage)? 4. after completing the case study, do you feel that you have changed your views of islam? 5. did you find value or personal meaning in creating your own narrative case study on the basic religious tenants of islam? if so, why? if not, why not? 6. after writing your own narrative case study on islam, did any of your preexisting beliefs or attitudes change about islam? 7. prompt for telephone interview: recently, it was reported in the news that a british prison changed the direction of its toilets to accommodate religious muslim inmates who are forbidden to face or turn their backs on their direction of prayer, which must be directed toward mecca, while using the bathroom. when hearing this news report, rush limbaugh responded on his national radio program, "what do they do on an airplane? go to the cockpit and say, 'i got some box cutters, and if you don't turn this airplane 45 degrees for the next two minutes, i'm going to hijack you? current issues in education vol. 13 no. 2 44 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word 761-2970-5-le.docx 1 volume 14, number 3 august 25, 2011 issn 1099-839x executive leadership in school improvement networks: a conceptual framework and agenda for research donald j. peurach university of michigan emine gumus ataturk university the purpose of this analysis is to improve understanding of executive leadership in school improvement networks such as those supported by comprehensive school reform providers, charter management organizations, and education management organizations. while they have potential to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for large numbers of students, researchers have yet to explore systematically the work of executives in establishing, managing, and sustaining school improvement networks. in this analysis, we review the literature on school improvement networks and executive leadership. further, we draw on research in organization and management to develop a conceptual framework to structure initial, exploratory research. finally, we propose a research agenda aimed at comparing executive practice, knowledge, and learning (a) within different types of school improvement networks (e.g., csrs, cmos, and emos) and (b) between networks and institutionalized education agencies (state, regional, and local). keywords: educational leadership, executive leadership, networks, educational reform networks, scale up, sustainability, comprehensive school reform, charter management organizations, education management organizations over the past two decades, large scale education reform has emerged as a pressing problem of education policy: moving beyond "boutique" initiatives to solutions with potential to effect coordinated improvements in leadership, instruction, and student achievement in large numbers of schools. over that same period, school improvement networks have emerged and gathered support as one possible solution to that problem. these networks function as de facto educational systems in which nongovernmental organizations collaborate with schools to enact common designs for school-wide improvement. a problem, however, lies in weak understandings of executive leadership in the central, hub organizations of these networks. school improvement networks depend on executives who can establish, manage, and sustain new types of educational systems absent institutionalized authority or funding. in principle, the goal of these new educational systems would be to enable academic success that has been difficult to attain in the k-12 public school system. to achieve that goal, these new educational systems would be anchored in cultures of responsibility and possibility, and they would be structured to support the continuous evaluation and improvement of instructional and leadership practice in ways uncommon in the k-12 public school system. creating, reforming, and leading such educational systems is historically novel work. until the advent of the standards-based reform movement, system-level current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 2 educational leadership had focused much more on administration and politics than on improving practice and achievement. however, with increasing accountability for student achievement, system-level leaders have incentives to embrace the work of improving practice and achievement: not only executives in school improvement networks but, also, executives in local, regional, and state education agencies. even so, researchers have yet to investigate systematically the practice, knowledge, and learning of executives in order to understand differences (a) among executives in different types of school improvement networks or (b) between network executives and executives in local, regional, and state education agencies. weak understandings, in turn, inhibit efforts to support the professional development of network executives, the assessment of executive capabilities as a condition for funding, and the evaluation of executive capabilities as bearing on the effectiveness, scale, and sustainability of networks. weak understandings also inhibit efforts to develop a positive, reciprocal exchange of leadership knowledge and practices either among school improvement networks or between networks and the k-12 public school system. these problems, in turn, function as limiting conditions on efforts to create, reform, and lead educational systems that value and seek to improve practice and achievement, whether in school improvement networks or in the k-12 public school system. the purpose of this analysis is to develop a conceptual framework and agenda for research aimed at improving understandings of executive leadership in school improvement networks. our goal is to motivate and to expand conversation among researchers, reformers, policymakers, and philanthropists about what we argue is an essential-but-overlooked dimension of large-scale education reform. our analysis is structured in four parts. we begin with brief reviews of school improvement networks as a reform strategy and, then, of executive leadership in school improvement networks. we continue by drawing from the literature on organization and management to propose a conceptual framework to structure initial research on executive leadership in school improvement networks. we conclude by sketching the broad parameters of an agenda for exploratory, comparative research on the practice, knowledge, and learning of network executives. school improvement networks for purposes of this analysis, we define school improvement networks as enterprises that feature a central, "hub" organization that develops a school-wide model for improvement and, then, collaborates with "outlet" schools to replicate, use, and refine the model over time (glazer & peurach, in press; peurach & glazer, in press). hubs are typically non-profit or for-profit organizations operating outside the formal system of education governance. outlets can be new and/or existing schools. hubs and outlets are linked into coherent networks via common goals, norms, language, structures, technologies, and (especially) practices. examples of school improvement networks include comprehensive school reform programs, charter management organizations, and education management organizations. some networks advance school-wide designs that target single content areas in particular types of schools: for example, success for all, a comprehensive school reform program designed to improve reading achievement in high poverty elementary schools. others advance school-wide designs that are more comprehensive in their academic focus and in their targeted schools: for example, the international baccalaureate, a program that provides school-wide designs for improving achievement in core content areas in elementary, middle, and high schools. the resulting school improvement networks function as de facto educational systems that operate within (and in interaction with) the broader system of u.s. public education. the "hub-and-outlet" structure of these networks also differentiates them from other educational networks in which schools collaborate directly with each other to share solutions and practices absent a common, school-wide design or a coordinating hub organization. one example of this sort of "hub-less" network is international networking for educational transformation (inet), an initiative originally established in the united kingdom in 2004 that has since grown to include 5600 schools in 35 countries (inet, 2011). public and private support since the late 1980s, steady streams of public and private funding have provided billions of dollars in support of school improvement networks. an early and continuing source of support is funding for school-wide improvement under title i of the federal elementary and secondary education act. other funding streams have included the new american schools initiative; the obey-porter comprehensive school reform demonstration act of 1997; the no child left behind act of 2001 (which incorporated comprehensive school reform as a new program); the newschools venture fund; and large-scale grant programs by the bill and melinda gates foundation, the walton family foundation, and other philanthropic organizations (peurach & glazer, in press). both public and private investments appear likely to continue for the near future. for example, one of four federally supported "turnaround" options for underperforming schools is to enlist in a charter school network (duncan, 2009). further, under the federal investing in innovation (i3) program, two of the four largest, $50 million, five year scale up grants were awarded to organizations operating school improvement networks, with 20% matching funds provided by private donors: the success for all foundation, a provider of comprehensive school reform programs, and the knowledge is power program, a charter management organization (u.s. executive leadership in school improvement networks: a conceptual framework and agenda for research 3 department of education, 2010a). still further, the bill and melinda gates foundation has begun to support districts and charter networks in collaborating to use school-wide models to improve or replace underperforming public schools (gates foundation, 2010). potential advantages extensive support for school improvement networks is predicated, in part, on their arguable potential to provide schools and districts with access to established, proven organizational models that can be adopted and used quickly, widely, and effectively to improve leadership practice, instructional practice, and student achievement. a useful analogy is that of franchise-like organizational replication in the commercial sector (bradach, 1998). such arrangements are argued to support economies of scale by centralizing design responsibilities in the hub organization, thereby reducing the need for "from scratch" organizational design, development, and refinement in outlets. however, research on organizational replication in the education and business sectors suggests another possible advantage: the potential of school improvement networks to function as contexts for distributed, collaborative learning among hubs and schools (peurach & glazer, in press; winter & szulanski, 2001; zollo & winter, 2002). in effect, school improvement networks have potential to function as knowledge-producing enterprises, with hubs and schools collaborating to develop, refine, evaluate, and propagate coordinated, enterprise-wide "best practices" that show positive effects on student achievement. leveraging this potential is central to efforts by the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching to explore a new, entrepreneurial approach to design, educational engineering, and development in the u.s. (bryk, gomez, & grunow, 2010). successes and problems as a policy solution, school improvement networks have seen instances of success. for example, in a longitudinal analysis of three leading comprehensive school reform programs, two of the programs (success for all and america's choice) were found to produce significant, positive program effects on leadership practice, instructional practice, and student achievement in those curricular areas for which the programs provided two key sources of support: (a) extensive, detailed guidance for practice; and (b) extensive, practice-based learning opportunities for teachers and leaders (camburn, rowan, & taylor, 2003; correnti, 2007; correnti & rowan, 2007; rowan, correnti, miller, & camburn, 2009a, 2009b; rowan & miller, 2007). moreover, the programs achieved these effects in state-sized networks of schools: a peak of over 600 schools for america's choice (roughly as many elementary schools as in south carolina); and a peak of over 1600 schools for success for all (roughly as many elementary schools as in new jersey). other meta-analyses and syntheses of research have also identified instances of positive, significant program effects on student achievement in large numbers of schools (borman, hewes, overman, & brown, 2003; borman, 2009). even so, research suggests that such success is the exception and not the rule. for example, rather than providing schools ready access to proven programs, research on the new american schools (nas) initiative found that the participating comprehensive school reform programs were under constant development and improvement over the entire span of nas (berends, bodilly, & kirby, 2002). further, rather than a quick and seamless process, researchers found implementation to be a long-term process of sense-making and co-construction among schools, developers, and other educational agencies (datnow, 2006; datnow & park, 2009). the success of these initiatives, in turn, depended on the co-emergence of capabilities in districts and hubs to support implementation (berends et al., 2002). finally, rather than yielding immediate, positive effects, meta-analyses of research on comprehensive school reform found the strongest program effects in schools implementing programs for five or more years (borman et al., 2003). problems of development, implementation, and effectiveness have been matched with normative concerns. for example, some critics have portrayed the large-scale enactment of highly-specified, school-wide designs as a form of top-down, one-size-fits-all reform at odds with traditions of local autonomy and professional control in education (klugh & borman, 2006). such criticism is argued to be endemic to franchise-like enterprises in the non-profit sector, where success often depends on local actors who derive personal benefit and reward from autonomy and agency (bradach, 2003). other critics caution that school improvement networks are part of a "new privatization" of school improvement services in the u.s., with billions of public and private dollars being spent on school improvement absent transparency and oversight (burch, 2009). critics express concern that this new school improvement market will be more responsive to principles of competition and consumerism than to principles of student welfare and the public good, with student achievement potentially taking a back seat to increasing the scale of operations or (in the case of for-profit providers) showing positive returns on investment. executive leadership our operating assumption is that realizing the potential advantages of school improvement networks while managing the potential problems depends, in part, on executive leadership in the hub organizations. by "executive leadership," we mean the work of the person or group of people who bear ultimate responsibility for establishing, managing, and sustaining the hub organization and the network. responsibilities for executive leadership may rest with initial founders who also maintain operational responsibilities within the organization: for example, the proverbial "mom and pop shop" or the committee of current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 4 concerned citizens seeking educational alternatives for their children. alternatively, responsibilities for executive leadership could conceivably span an array of roles: for example, chief executive officer, president, other chief officers (e.g., chief financial officer, chief operating officer, and chief information officer), vice presidents, directors, board members, and other top managers. our operating assumption derives from research on systemic reform in the k-12 public school system: specifically, research suggesting the central role played by superintendents in district-wide reform. with the advent of district-level accountability, the role of the superintendent has been transformed, shifting beyond reform-via-programadoption to deep engagement in the work of systemic, practice-focused improvement (anderson, 2003; elmore, 2000). with that, the responsibilities of superintendents have grown to include an array of key tasks that support school-level improvement: for example, establishing district-wide improvement strategies; establishing organizational and technical infrastructure to support improvement in practice; cultivating an achievementfocused and practice-centered culture of improvement; and constructing coherent, value-added relationships with constituencies and collaborators in the environment of the district (honig, copland, rainey, lorton, & newton, 2010; honig & hatch, 2004; rorrer, skrla, & scheurich, 2008; supovitz, 2006). provisional characterizations provisionally, our conjecture is that the work of network executives is complex and uncertain. from one perspective, the work appears to overlap with that of executives in public educational agencies (local, regional, and state). for example, both groups of executives face policy pressure to produce annual, measurable gains in student achievement by improving instructional and leadership practice in schools. both groups face incentives to develop capabilities and coherence within their enterprises and in their environmental relationships. both groups compete in the grants economy for public and private funding to support school improvement. finally, both groups work in turbulent, fragmented environments in which policy churn has long been a source of instability in the reform agenda and in resources for reform (cohen & spillane, 1991; hess, 1999) from another perspective, the work of network executives appears more consistent with that of executives in innovative, start-up enterprises in dynamic market sectors (brown & eisenhardt, 1998; hess, 2007, 2009). for example, network executives are responsible for the ground-up design of novel organizational forms for schools that are simultaneously responsive to ever-evolving standards for performance and to the ever-evolving needs of students. network executives must recruit, acquire, or build schools, and they must support de facto systems of schools absent institutionalized funding or authority. they face market incentives to differentiate the identity, resources, and services of their hub organizations from those available from institutionalized education agencies and from their competitors. all of the preceding are predicated on network executives creating the very hub organizations that they lead, which requires that they secure capital, establish business systems, develop capabilities for program design and training, and more. not only is such work complex and uncertain, it is often unsuccessful. historically, developing alternative systems of schools that break from the institutionalized structure of the u.s. public education system has proven to be exceedingly difficult, owing to problems of power and politics, functional inefficiencies, cultural challenges, and personal burdens and stresses on reformers (tyack & tobin, 1994). further, executives seeking to establish school improvement networks are competing in a broader "school improvement industry" notoriously hostile to innovating organizations in emerging, niche market segments (rowan, 2002). weak understandings of network executives the preceding analysis suggests that establishing, managing, and sustaining school improvement networks places a premium on "executive discretion:" the latitude of executives to act strategically in response to dynamic task environments, exigencies within their organizations, and their own aspirations, visions, and loci of control and influence (finkelstein, hambrick, & cannella, 2009). however, in our review, we were unable to identify a coherent, sustained body of research focused specifically on executive leadership in school improvement networks. consequently, we know little about the practice of network executives, the knowledge and capabilities needed to successfully enact executive practice, or the ways in which network executives develop their knowledge and capabilities over time. further, we know little about the differences (if any) between the practice, knowledge, and learning of network executives and executives in public education agencies. research on the structure and function of school improvement networks in our analysis, the most developed line of research on the operation of school improvement networks examines the design, implementation, and scale-up of comprehensive school reform programs. an additional, emerging line of research examines the design, implementation, and scale-up of charter school networks. rather than focusing specifically on network executives, these two lines of research provide a broad perspective on the structure and function of school improvement networks as a context for executive practice. findings from these two lines of research support the conjecture that the work of network executives is complex and uncertain. they also support the conjecture that the work requires both extensive knowledge and continuous executive leadership in school improvement networks: a conceptual framework and agenda for research 5 learning. for example, research on comprehensive school reform suggests that the core, practical work of hub organizations (i.e., replicating a common organizational design across a large number of schools) does not adhere to common understandings of replication as a rational, sequential process of research, development, dissemination, and utilization. as such, the work does not appear amenable to conventional methods of rational management. instead, researchers have framed the work as a set of interdependent tasks performed and managed simultaneously, in interaction, over time (glennan, bodilly, galegher, & kerr, 2004; peurach, 2011). these tasks include designing the core model, developing essential tools and resources to support implementation, recruiting and marketing, monitoring implementation and continuously improving the program, adapting to environmental contexts, obtaining financial support, and building the capacity of the hub organization further, research on comprehensive school reform suggests that the short term operation and long term viability of school improvement networks requires managing a complex set of interdependent relationships within and between four domains: the schools being served, the organizational models and their associated supports, the hub organization, and broader educational environments (glazer, 2009; glazer & peurach, in press; peurach, 2011). each of these four domains is a potential source of problems, uncertainty, and turbulence and, thus, a focus of continuous analysis and management. further, each is contingent on the other, such that problems, uncertainty, and turbulence in any one domain of operations can have profound implications for the others. for example, changes in the strings attached to funding opportunities for school improvement can have implications for the schools eligible to participate in the network, the essential parameters of the organizational model, and the capabilities of the hub organization to adapt the organizational model to adhere to new funding requirements. finally, research on comprehensive school reform suggests that school improvement networks are challenged by uncertainty arising from weaknesses in available knowledge. specifically, this research suggests that highlydeveloped, school-wide improvement models do not typically exist prior to scaling up school improvement networks; instead, they emerge and develop through the process of scaling up the networks (berends et al., 2002; cohen, gates, glazer, goldin, & peurach, in press; peurach, 2011). this is, in part, a consequence of generally weak knowledge about the very enterprise to be replicated: that is, coordinated, school-wide practices, technologies, structures, professional learning opportunities, and other supports needed to realize increasing levels of academic success among increasing numbers of students. this is also a consequence of generally weak knowledge about how to replicate complex organizational models quickly and effectively across large numbers of schools. as a result, knowledge of exactly what, how, and where to replicate is argued to emerge through distributed, coordinated, experiential learning among the hub and its schools over time. the themes of complexity and uncertainty are echoed in emerging research on the structure and function of charter management organizations. for example, researchers have framed the work of scaling up charter management organizations not as a sequential developmentand-diffusion process but, again, as a collection of simultaneous, interdependent tasks: for example, creating a growth strategy, monitoring and interpreting environments, developing professional capabilities, crafting a public identity, creating a financial strategy, cultivating relationships, measuring success, and maintaining flexibility (farrell, nayfack, smith, wohlstetter, & wong, 2009). other researchers have reported that this work is complicated by such issues as the complex needs of the disadvantaged students, problems recruiting and retaining capable teachers, and opposition from organizations and interests in the k-12 public school system (education sector, 2009; lake, dusseault, bowen, demeritt, & hill, 2010). particularly problematic is the need to project rationality and efficiency to secure external funding. doing so often results in a "tyranny of business plans" at odds with the complexity and uncertainty experienced routinely in developing and scaling up charter networks (national charter school research project, 2007). broader research on replication and innovation findings from research on the structure and function of school improvement networks are consistent with findings from broader research in the commercial sector. for example, leading research on the use of organizational replication to establish franchise-like networks found no evidence that the replication process adhered to common understandings of research, development, diffusion, and utilization (winter & szulanski, 2001). rather, researchers again found that the model to be replicated typically is not known perfectly by the replicator prior to large-scale replication, transfer of the model to outlets is complex and imperfect, and effective implementation typically requires formidable learning. as explained by winter & szulanski: the formula or business model, far from being a quantum of information that is revealed in a flash, is typically a complex set of interdependent routines that is discovered, adjusted, and finetuned by "doing." growth by replicating such a "formula" requires the capability to recreate complex, imperfectly understood, and partly tacit productive processes in carefully-selected sites, with different human resources each time, facing in many cases resistance from proud, locally current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 6 autonomous agents. for this reason, replication requires effort and naturally takes time (p. 731). these findings are consistent with findings from broader research on the process of innovation, itself. for example, findings from a seminal study of the innovation process conducted by the minnesota innovation research program directly refute the stage-wise innovation model (van de ven, polley, garud, & venkataraman, 1999). instead, researchers described the innovation process as cycles of "divergent" and "convergent" learning co-enacted by developers and users over time. divergent learning involves experimentation, discovery, and search to expand innovation alternatives. convergent learning involves trialand-error testing to design, learn to use, and refine the innovation. successful innovation, then, is argued to depend on executives' capabilities to coordinate both "plural" and "unitary" management strategies to motivate, coordinate, and leverage divergent and convergent learning (van de ven et al., 1999). researchers describe this as an uncommon sort of managerial ambidexterity that often functions below executives' level of consciousness. moreover, executives must manage such learning while simultaneously monitoring, interpreting, and adapting to environmental supports for innovation that are likely coemerging concurrent with the innovation process, itself: for example, regulations, funding, research, human capital, market incentives, and proprietary activity among competitors and suppliers. in interviews with over 1500 executives in a broad array of industries, researchers reported that more than half of the executives doubted their capabilities for strategic management when faced with such environmental complexity (ibm, 2010). executive leadership: a conceptual framework thus, while research provides insight into school improvement networks as a context for executive leadership, it provides little specific insight into executive leadership, itself. we continue to know little about the practical, day-to-day work of network executives, the knowledge on which network executives routinely draw, or the means by which they acquire and refine that knowledge. as such, we propose four questions to guide initial, exploratory research on executive leadership in school improvement networks: 1) practice: what are the critical practices of executives responsible for establishing, scaling up, managing, and sustaining school improvement networks? 2) knowledge: what knowledge and capabilities are needed to enact those practices successfully? 3) learning: how do executives acquire and refine this combination of knowledge and capabilities over time? 4) variation: how do practice, knowledge, and learning vary among executives in different types of school improvement networks (e.g., comprehensive school reform providers, charter management organizations, and education management organizations) and between network executives and executives in institutionalized education agencies (state, regional, and local)? we continue by drawing from the literature on organization and management to propose a provisional conceptual framework to structure initial, exploratory research (see table 1, below). the framework is intentionally broad and general, for two reasons. the first is the goal of examining a wide range of practices, knowledge, and learning opportunities potentially instrumental in establishing, managing, and sustaining a diverse population of school improvement networks. the second is the goal of comparing network executives to executives in institutionalized education agencies to identify areas of convergence and divergence in their practice, knowledge, and learning. executive practice by "executive practice," we mean the day-to-day work of network executives in establishing, managing, and sustaining school improvement networks. for purposes of exploratory, comparative research, we propose examining three categories of functional responsibilities: managerial, social, and strategic. we derive these categories from classic characterizations of organizations as rational, natural, and open systems (scott & davis, 2007). drawing on the rational systems tradition, "managerial responsibilities" focus on improving efficiency and effectiveness in pursuing diverse (and possibly competing) organizational goals: for example, improving student achievement, increasing the scale of operations, ensuring sustainability over time, and increasing revenues. as such, managerial responsibilities include conventional administrative functions associated with founding, operating, and sustaining organizations: for example, budgeting, finance, accounting, reporting, information systems, human resources, and facilities management. they include operational functions: for example, evaluating the performance of (and external demands on) technical work and, then, adapting and coordinating technologies, structures, and policies both to improve effectiveness and efficiency and to comply with expectations beyond the organization. finally, they include learning functions: for example, acquiring, developing, and retaining the knowledge and capabilities needed to improve performance, both through evolutionary change in existing domains of operations and through innovation and creative problem solving that deviate sharply from existing ways of working. drawing on the natural systems tradition, "social responsibilities" focus on building culture and maintaining relationships both within and beyond the organization. within the organization, examples of social responsibilities executive leadership in school improvement networks: a conceptual framework and agenda for research 7 include articulating a mission and vision, modeling and representing essential norms and values, brokering relationships and information, asserting influence and control, motivating people and securing their commitment, mediating conflicts, and managing organizational politics. beyond the organization, examples of social responsibilities include maintaining relationships with key constituencies in the environments of the organization (e.g., boards of directors, resource providers, and labor unions); acting as the public face of the organization; and acting as a table 1 conceptual framework: executive practice, knowledge, and learning category description executive practice managerial responsibilities: functions focused on improving efficiency and effectiveness in pursuing organizational goals, including administrative, operational, and learning functions. social responsibilities: functions performed by executives in building culture and maintaining relationships, both within the organization (e.g., articulating a mission and vision, modeling norms and values, and brokering relationships) and beyond the organization (e.g., acting as spokesperson, advocate, and lobbyist on behalf of the organization). strategic responsibilities: functions associated with monitoring environmental activity and adapting the organization to maintain legitimacy and viability, including responsibilities for entrepreneurship and innovation. executive knowledge disciplinary knowledge: formal knowledge as retained both in the academic literature and in the popular business literature. situated knowledge: knowledge anchored in specific organizational and social contexts, both formal (as retained in procedures, routines, and manuals) and social (as retained in communities of practice). expert knowledge: knowledge, beliefs, and values retained in the minds, habits, and practices of individual executives. executive learning early career learning: formal and experiential learning prior to assuming formal executive roles and responsibilities. formal learning: intentionally constructed learning opportunities anchored in conventional educational, classroom, or workshop contexts. practice-based learning: learning opportunities grounded in realities, artifacts, circumstances, and challenges in the day-to-day work of executives, both formal (e.g., coaching and mentoring) and informal (e.g., individual and collaborative reflection). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 8 spokesperson, advocate, and lobbyist on behalf of the organization, its clients, its supporters, and its cause. within school improvement networks, these social responsibilities again have potential to be both complex and conflicting: for example, championing the interests and needs of students, balancing norms of experimentation and efficiency in developing programs, and (in the case of for-profit providers) representing the interests of investors. drawing on the open systems tradition, "strategic responsibilities" focus on monitoring environmental activity and adapting the organization in order to garner legitimacy, secure resources, and, thus, maintain viability. a chief focus of strategic responsibilities lies in monitoring changing market, political, regulatory, and economic conditions to establish and adapt the domain of the organization: the clients served, the products or services offered, and the technology used (thompson, 1967). the domain of the organization, in turn, establishes an organizational identity and purpose: what the organization will do, for whom, and how. strategic responsibilities, thus, incorporate responsibilities for entrepreneurship and innovation by way of strategically selecting new directions and acquiring the resources and legitimacy to pursue them. while analytically distinct, these functional responsibilities are practically interdependent, with the performance of each dependent on the performance of the others. as such, a meta-responsibility typically shouldered by the chief executive is that of coordinating managerial, social, and strategic responsibilities to satisfy multiple goals, including maximizing effectiveness and efficiency, maintaining the commitment and motivation of members, increasing shareholder value, maintaining legitimacy among key constituents, and sustaining the organization over time. executive knowledge by "executive knowledge," we mean the understandings and capabilities that support the enactment of executive practice. for purposes of exploratory, comparative research, we propose three categories of knowledge: disciplinary, situated, and expert. "disciplinary knowledge" refers to formal knowledge as captured and represented both in the academic literature and in the popular business literature. disciplinary knowledge can be theoretical or practical: for example, "the theory of the firm," so central to economists as contrasted with practical strategies for motivating employees. disciplinary knowledge can also be scientific or pragmatic: for example, the products of formal research as contrasted with "wisdom of practice" published by leading executives. a key characteristic of disciplinary knowledge is that it exists in the public domain and not as the intellectual property of a particular individual or organization. "situated knowledge" refers to shared knowledge anchored in specific organizational and social contexts. this includes formal/codified knowledge such as procedures, routines, manuals, and artifacts in particular organizations (feldman & pentland, 2003; nelson & winter, 1982). this also includes tacit knowledge as represented in the relationships, interactions, and shared ways of working among executives and as retained in communities of practice (brown & duguid, 1991; wenger, 1999, 2008). "expert knowledge" refers to knowledge, beliefs, and values as retained in the minds, habits, and practices of individual executives (mintzberg, 1973, 2005). expert knowledge can include personal understandings of different categories of disciplinary knowledge and of how to mobilize such knowledge in practice. it can include knowledge of customers, individuals, competitors, history, and other matters that executives accumulate over their careers. it can also include "soft skills" and "managerial competencies." as with all knowledge in organizations, expert knowledge can be tacit or explicit: for example, manifest in personal and taken-for-granted routines as contrasted with personal philosophies of business articulated among colleagues and staff (brockmann & simmonds, 1997; grant, 1996). again, while analytically distinct, these domains of executive knowledge are interdependent and likely confounded in practice. as such, knowledge supporting executive practice also includes the meta-capacity to mobilize and to integrate knowledge in all three domains in enacting managerial, social, and strategic responsibilities. executive learning by "executive learning," we mean the experiences by which executives acquire the understandings and capabilities needed to enact their practice. for purposes of exploratory, comparative research, we propose three categories of executive learning: early career learning opportunities, formal learning opportunities, and practicebased learning opportunities. yet again, while analytically distinct, these learning opportunities are interdependent and likely to interact over time. "early career learning opportunities" describe formal and experiential learning prior to assuming formal executive roles and responsibilities (melone, 1994; guthrie & datta, 1997). early career learning opportunities can function as a chief means of developing knowledge of the domain of technical activity that executives will ultimately lead: for example, engineering, manufacturing, service provision, etc. they can also function as a chief means of developing knowledge of the organization and management of that activity, as well as a chief means of developing knowledge of the environmental actors on which this activity depends. early career learning opportunities can also function as a means of developing social relationships and building social capital, as well as a means of developing motivations, values, and standards of performance that ultimately guide executive practice. "formal learning opportunities" are intentionally constructed learning opportunities anchored in conventional executive leadership in school improvement networks: a conceptual framework and agenda for research 9 educational, classroom, or workshop contexts. these include graduate classes and executive education provided by universities, as well as executive education provided by professional associations, external agencies, and other sources of "pull out" executive training. formal learning opportunities function as a primary venue for developing understanding of what we described above as "disciplinary knowledge," as well as a venue for developing knowledge of formal policies and procedures in individual organizations. through the case method and through rolebased scenarios, formal learning opportunities can also function as a context for grounding executive education in authentic problems of practice. "practice-based learning opportunities" are learning opportunities grounded in artifacts, circumstances, and challenges encountered regularly in the day-to-day work of executives (dunbar & starbuck, 2006; feldman & lankau, 2005; geletkanycz & hambrick, 1997; schoen, 1987; virany, tushman, & romanelli, 1992). practicebased learning opportunities function as a primary venue for developing situated and expert knowledge grounded in specific relationships, organizations, and their environments. practice-based learning opportunities can arise in the context of formal venues, such as regularly scheduled meetings, working sessions, collaborative projects, and coaching relationships. they can also arise informally through individual and collaborative reflection, executive transitions, board memberships, and other forms of social networking among executives. agenda for research the preceding analysis provides context intended to motivate concern with executive leadership in school improvement networks. it also provides a conceptual framework intended to guide initial thinking and reasoning about the practice, knowledge, and learning of network executives. we continue, then, by building on the preceding analysis to propose an agenda for exploratory research on executive leadership in school improvement networks. the agenda heeds the meaning of "social science exploration" advanced by stebbins (2001): "a broad-ranging, purposive, systematic, pre-arranged undertaking designed to maximize the discovery of generalizations leading to description and understanding of an area of social or psychological life" (p. 3). in the case of network executives, exploratory research should serve three purposes. the first is to provide descriptive accounts of executive practice, knowledge, and learning in school improvement networks, with the goal of raising awareness and concern among policy makers, philanthropists, and researchers about the need for deeper investigation. the second is to elaborate, refine, and extend the general conceptual framework developed immediately above to ground it more specifically in the leadership of school improvement networks. the third is to develop analytic frameworks for examining variation in the practice, knowledge, and learning of executives: specifically, by comparing different leadership roles within networks, both formal and informal; by comparing executive leadership in different types of networks, including comprehensive school reform programs, charter management organizations, and education management organizations; and by comparing executive leadership in networks and institutionalized education agencies. research method: case study the preceding purposes call for the use of case study as a primary research method. consistent with criteria set out by yin (2009), a case study approach would enable in-depth and in-context investigation of executive practice, knowledge, and learning as contemporary and weakly understood phenomena, where the boundaries between the phenomena and its broader context are unclear. more specifically, the situated nature of executive practice, knowledge, and learning calls for the use of an embedded case study design (scholz & tietje, 2002; yin, 2009). the school improvement network functions as the case. individual executives would serve as the primary units of analysis, with specific focus on the practice, knowledge, and learning of executives in formal and informal leadership roles. executives would be situated within "communities of executive practice." those communities, in turn, would be situated within hub organizations. the hub organizations, finally, would work in interaction with their school-level designs, their schools, and their broader environments. a single, embedded case study design would create opportunity both to provide descriptive accounts of executive practice, knowledge, and learning and to further develop the general conceptual framework proposed above. however, a multiple, embedded case study design is needed to develop analytic frameworks for examining variation in executive practice, knowledge, and learning by role, by network type, and as compared to executives in institutionalized education agencies. resource permitting, both single and multiple embedded designs would be strengthened if structured longitudinally, given the longterm work of school improvement networks, likely variation in the relevant work of executives over the course of the school year and over the life of the enterprise, and the dynamic environments in which networks operate. case selection: school improvement networks in selecting cases for investigation, we propose first selecting school improvement networks based on their current stage of development, in order to structure appropriate comparisons. our assumption is that, over time, school improvement networks progress through a process of maturation and structuration, with executive roles, practices, knowledge, and learning co-evolving with the maturation and structuration of the network. further, our assumption is that the longevity and continued development of networks function as indicators of progress along multiple dimensions: for example, recruiting or building schools; securing resources; developing the school-wide current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 10 model; generating evidence of effective implementation and outcomes; establishing and sustaining a viable hub organization; and managing relationships with broader environments. to assess a network's current stage of development, we draw on three categories used by the federal investing in innovation program: development, validation, and scale-up (u.s. department of education, 2010c). the development phase describes programs fielded in a small number of schools either by an emerging hub organization or a new project team within an existing organization, with the primary goal of establishing proof of concept. consider a newly founded charter management organization establishing three pilot schools as compared to a district piloting a combination of new programs in a small number of schools (e.g., a curriculum, data warehouse, and teacher-leadership initiative). such initiatives are likely to be initially supported primarily by grants or other contributions (rather than by institutionalized funding streams). the validation stage focuses on a set of simultaneous tasks: for example, recruiting additional schools to expand to a district-sized network (e.g., 5-50 schools); developing resources and capabilities in the hub or project team to support larger-scale implementation; formally evaluating implementation and effects on student achievement at scale; and continuing to refine the organizational model. consider a charter management organization expanding from schools in the single digits to the double digits as compared to a mid-sized district supporting the district-wide implementation of a set of coordinated interventions. the scale-up phase further extends work initiated in the development and validation stages: for example, continued recruitment and retention; more rigorous evaluations of implementation and effectiveness; continued formalization of capabilities for development, training, and research in the hub or project team; and, possibly, increasing dependence on revenues or institutionalized funding streams (and, with that, decreasing dependence on grants and other contributions). consider the largest, national school improvement networks (e.g., success for all and kipp) as compared to efforts by state education agencies to support improvement in state-wide networks of turnaround schools. working within these categories, selecting networks at the development, validation, and scale-up phases would support a "lifecycle" perspective, enabling comparisons of how executive practice, knowledge, and learning vary with the size, maturation, structuration, and legitimacy of the enterprise. alternatively, selecting networks operating at one particular stage of development would enable comparisons of how executive practice, knowledge, and learning vary among types of hub organizations and between hub organizations and institutionalized education agencies. even with careful case selection, establishing appropriate comparisons between hub organizations and institutionalized education agencies may be difficult. for example, it is unlikely that local, regional, or state education agencies are developing and fielding school-wide improvement models. by contrast, it is more likely that these agencies are structuring multi-component interventions for schools, with the individual components developed by external providers. alternatively, it is unlikely that school improvement networks will be bound by the same geographic constraints as local and regional education agencies, especially as they increase in scale. these differences are potentially consequential, and they must be made explicit and considered carefully in the context of analysis. case selection: network executives regarding selecting individual executives within school improvement networks, we propose a combination of purposive and snowballing sampling (miles & huberman, 1994). initial, purposive sampling would focus on identifying "top management:" that is, executives who initially founded or established a specific network, as well as the current chief executive officer and/or president (if different from the founders). continued snowball sampling would then focus on asking founders, chief executive officers, and/or presidents to identify additional executive roles and role incumbents that comprise the executive team, as well as individuals within the organization who function in informal, quasi-executives capacities. thus structured, the combination of purposive and snowballing sampling would support comparisons within and between cases by identifying executives in both similar and different leadership roles. available resources would limit the extent of snowball sampling, as would likely changes in the population of executives over time. at the development stages, executives are likely also to enact operational roles within the organization, and many staff members in operational roles are likely to contribute to the performance of executive functions. beginning at the validation stage and continuing into the scale-up stage, we predict the emergence of specialized leadership roles, growth in the number of executive roles, and the possibility of nonexecutives continuing to function in quasi-executive capacities (e.g., lead developers, trainers, and/or researchers). sources of evidence the scope of data collection will clearly be limited by available resources. that said, the use of embedded, comparative, longitudinal case study designs calls for the type of broad-based data collection strategies characteristic of organizational ethnography (brewer, 2004; fine, morrill, & surianarain, 2008: lee, 1999). these strategies center on participant-observation as an opportunity to generate a rich data set that includes documents, artifacts, field notes, interviews, and possibly even surveys. that, in turn, creates executive leadership in school improvement networks: a conceptual framework and agenda for research 11 opportunities to triangulate among multiple sources of evidence to identify points of convergence and divergence in executive practice, knowledge, and learning. with an embedded case study design, the focus of data collection should vary with the level of analysis (yin, 2009). for example, given the dynamics of comprehensive school reform networks reviewed above, network-level data collection should focus on four domains, alone and in interaction: the targeted schools, the school-wide model, the hub organization, and broader environments. possible sources of evidence fall into three primary categories: documents, including program materials, proposals, reports to funders, internal memos and publications, public reports, and media accounts; participant-observation in hubsponsored training events and school visits; and interviews with developers, trainers, coaches, researchers, and executives in the hub organization. because program evaluation falls beyond the scope of the proposed research, a key dimension of network-level data collection is to identify evidence of program effects on culture, practice, and (especially) student achievement in such documents as state achievement reports, hub-maintained data warehouses and information systems, and (if available) formal research. at the intermediate level, data collection should focus on collaborative activity among executives in communities of practice, structured initially (though loosely) by the categories of executive practice, knowledge, and learning proposed above. direct observation should address formal venues for collaboration such as structured meetings. it should also address informal venues for collaboration such as routine, daily work activities. direct observation should be complemented by other sources of evidence: for example, meeting agendas and minutes, memos exchanged among executives, email exchanges (if available), joint reports and publications, focus groups, and individual interviews. at the individual level, data collection should focus on the individual network executive, again structured initially (and loosely) by the categories of executive practice, knowledge, and learning proposed above. a series of in-depth, phenomenological interviews has potential to serve as a primary source of evidence, with the goal of exploring the life history of executives, their immediate work and experiences, and their reflections on themes that emerge through the interview sequence (siedman, 1991). again, interviews should be complemented by other sources of evidence: for example, copies of résumés, curriculum vitae, or other professional credentials; direct observation of executive practice; experience sampling; logs of daily practice; and interviews with subordinates about the work of executives. analysis the exploratory nature of the proposed research places a premium on analysis running concurrent with (and informing) data collection. throughout, analysis should center on conventional methods of within-case and crosscase analysis (miles & huberman, 1994). further, analysis should be both (a) deductive, with a focus on refining provisional conceptualizations of executive practice, knowledge and learning and (b) inductive, with a focus on devising frameworks for examining variation in executive practice, knowledge, and learning within and between cases. finally, embedded, comparative, longitudinal case study designs create multiple means for establishing the validity of findings: for example, triangulating among different categories of evidence (i.e., documents, field notes, and interviews); triangulating among roles and initiatives; leveraging opportunities to investigate "negative cases" that do not square with emerging categories and themes; on-going member checking; and continued surveillance of the academic literature. conclusion the preceding is a first step toward improving understanding of executive leadership in school improvement networks. we reviewed the literature on school improvement networks, arguing for their currency in contemporary education reform, potential advantages as a reform strategy, and successes and problems in their enactment. we defined executive leadership, reviewed the literature on comprehensive school reform and charter management organizations, and argued that the work of network executives appears to be essential, complex, and uncertain. working from research on organization and management, we developed a provisional conceptual framework describing the practice, knowledge, and learning of network executives. finally, we sketched an agenda for exploratory, comparative research that integrates principles of case study, organizational ethnography, and conventional qualitative analytic methods. throughout our analysis, we emphasized that any characterizations of the context, practice, knowledge, and learning of network executives are provisional: a foundation for research on network executives rather than the product of such research. though provisional, our analysis still has potential to function as a platform for broader conversation among researchers, reformers, and philanthropists about the system-level leadership needed to support large-scale education reform, with particular emphasis on improving leadership practice, instructional practice, and (especially) student achievement. this conversation is currently underway around initiatives aimed at supporting the professional development of system-level educational leaders, both in university-based programs (e.g., harvard university's doctorate of educational leadership) and in foundation-supported programs (e.g., the broad residency). one goal is to expand the conversation to include a specific focus on the work of network executives. another goal is to motivate (and to garner support for) research that can further inform the conversation. continued research is imperative. research such as that which we propose would provide specific insight into the day-to-day work of system-level leaders seeking to current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 12 establish achievement-centered and practice-focused education systems. it would provide insight into the complex knowledge and capabilities supporting their work. it would also illuminate the means by which knowledge and capabilities emerge and evolve, both over the professional lives of executives and in interaction with the systems that they lead. finally, it would create a platform for the reciprocal exchange of leadership knowledge and practice among school improvement networks, as well as between school improvement networks and the k-12 public school system. by contrast, not engaging research such as we propose risks the reform conversation continuing without deep understanding of such matters and without a platform for the reciprocal exchange of leadership knowledge and practice. indeed, though currently benefiting from extensive public and private investment, our provisional understanding is that school improvement networks are awash in complexity, uncertainty, and interdependence that place a premium on executive leadership and discretion. the difference between positive and negative returns on formidable public and private investment -and, importantly, the difference between positive and negative rewards for students -may very well rest on a novel, scarce, and complex form of executive educational leadership that we are just beginning to recognize, understand, and value. it is precisely that combination of recognition, understandings, and values that we seek to advance with continued research. 1under the federal i3 program, school improvement networks were also awarded development and validation grants. at the development stage, network-based initiatives include college yes, stem21, compass, l.a.'s bold competition, and schools to watch school transformation network. at the validation stage, network-based initiatives include programming in the 21st century high school, the secondary school turnaround model, and the scaling the new orleans charter restart model (u.s. department of education, 2010a). twelve additional charter management organizations were awarded a total of $50 million under the federal charter school grant program competition (u.s. department of education, 2010b). 2by way of précis, scott and davis (2007) frame early organizational scholarship as focused primarily on the rational management of production-oriented, bureaucratic, and hierarchically-structured enterprises, with particular attention to developing formal structures that increased effectiveness and efficiency (e.g., fayol, 1949; gulick & urwick, 1937; taylor, 1911). scholarship expanded to include attention to managing the social and cultural dynamics in organizations (e.g., barnard, 1938; mayo, 1945; selznick, 1957) and to managing the interactions between organizations and their often-uncertain environments (e.g., pfeffer & salancik, 1978; thompson, 1967). there is no evidence of obsolescence: for example, of early concern with rationally managing operations being cast aside in favor of concern with strategizing in complex environments. rather, research and scholarship continue in all three traditions. in terms of the functional responsibilities of executives charged with leading complex organizational enterprises, the result is very much an "all of the above" situation. 3for example, consider early efforts focused on developing principles of "scientific management" for solving problems of effectiveness and efficiency in production-oriented enterprises (with the classic case in point being taylor, 1911). these early efforts had their basis in the field of mechanical engineering, and they deliberately associated managerial knowledge with "science" as a means of legitimizing the knowledge base. these early efforts were followed by efforts to draw from individual disciplines (e.g., psychology, mathematics, economics, sociology, and others) to fashion a formal body of knowledge and curricula of studies supporting executive and managerial practice (khurana, 2010). 4the earliest efforts to establish formal learning opportunities for executives began in the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s with the establishment and proliferation of "masters in business administration" programs in universities (jones & zeitlin, 2008; khurana, 2010). in 1943, the university of chicago established the first "executive mba" as a formal learning opportunity designed to accommodate practicing managers and executives (university of chicago, 2010). in the time since, formal learning opportunities for aspiring and practicing executives have grown into a multi-billion dollar industry (reingold, schneider, & capell, 1999). providers include universities, companies, and private agencies. learning opportunities include general management programs, programs tailored to specific roles and specializations (e.g., chief operating officers, marketing directors, etc.), and programs tailored to the needs of individual organizations. references anderson, s. e. 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(2011). executive leadership in school improvement networks: a conceptual framework and agenda for research. current issues in education, 14(3). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/761 author notes donald j. peurach university of michigan department of educational studies 610 e. university, room 4218 ann arbor, mi 48109 dpeurach@umich.edu donald j. peurach is assistant professor in the department of educational studies at the university of michigan. his research, teaching, and outreach activities focus on large-scale, systemic efforts to improve leadership, instruction, and student achievement in chronically-underperforming schools and districts. emine gumus ataturk university emine gumus is a phd candidate in the department of educational administration at ataturk university in turkey. she is currently doing her doctoral research as a visiting scholar at michigan state university. her research focuses on the professional development of educational leaders, with a specific focus on processes for selecting and preparing school principals. an earlier draft of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the university council for educational administration, new orleans, la, october, 2010. the authors gratefully acknowledge support for this research from the education policy center and the college of education at michigan state university. the authors also thank vincent cho, sarah winchell lenhoff, and anonymous reviewers for their very helpful feedback on earlier drafts. executive leadership in school improvement networks: a conceptual framework and agenda for research 17 volume 14, number 3 august 25, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca anglea hines seong hee kim younsu kim lisa lacy carol masser leslie salazar jennifer shea alaya swann technical editor james stockburger faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers volume colleg citation barnes, w pr ht abstract the purp to the co no child college-r curriculu legislatio college-r graduate standard including the issue college-r keyword 13, numbe ge-readin wa w., slate, j., reparedness: ttp://cie.asu. t pose of this oncept of aca d left behin readiness is um and strin on in hopes ready. a qu s are more a ized testing g national re e of collegereadiness sh ds: college-r er 4 ness and ally barne s , & rojas-le : the same c edu/ literature re ademic-prep nd act to a f merited. w ngent accoun of increasin uestion that academicall regime rath eports and le -readiness. i hould, in all readiness, ac w academ s, john r. sam housto ebouef, a. 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m ates ng the f ral all on , current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 college-readiness and academic preparedness: the same concepts? the long and winding road to college-readiness, or possibly more correctly stated as academic preparedness, began approximately three decades ago with a report commissioned by president ronald reagan on the state of secondary schools and students in america. although the report was intended to create avenues for academic success for students in the u.s., little did the authors know that they set the course to high-stakes standardized testing and stringent accountability measures without considerations for fueling other requisite skills and strategies necessary for college success—creativity, critical thinking, self-efficacy, and self-regulation (amrein-beardsley, 2009; bell, 1993; berliner, 1993; bracey, 1998, 2003; crosby, 1993; national commission on excellence in education, 1983; ravitch, 2009, 2010; u.s. department of education, 2008a; zhao, 2009a, 2009b). although success in rigorous academic courses and high scores on standardized tests are good indicators of academic preparedness, high school and college personnel must work together to help students develop an understanding of the academic and non-academic expectations of entering and succeeding at postsecondary institutions, thereby internalizing a college-going attitude. purpose of the study we believe that an important distinction exists between the terms of college-readiness and academic preparedness. this distinction is more than mere words; it reflects real differences in the skills students possess. in this paper, we examine these terms and provide evidence that college-readiness, as it is currently defined and measured, does not represent the set of skills students need to be successful in college. as such, we contend that a better phrase, that of academic preparedness, represents what is presently being measured under the rubric of collegereadiness. in this paper we discuss the extant literature concerning the extent to which high pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 3 school graduates are more academically prepared based on core curriculum and a one-size-fitsall standardized testing regime rather than being college-ready. the politics of education, including national reports and legislative acts, are examined and discussed to shed light on the issue of college-readiness. politics of education in their 1983 landmark document, a nation at risk: the imperative for educational reform (a nation at risk), the national commission on excellence in education reported, that, “american prosperity, security, and civility” were in serious jeopardy because the educational foundation on which the united states was built was rapidly eroding (national commission on excellence in education, 1983, p. 7). further stated in the report was that, “mediocrity threatens our very future as a nation and a people” (national commission on excellence in education, 1983, p. 7). although the commission discussed the future of american prosperity and power through well-rounded citizenship, all recommendations for improvement in graduation rates and college-readiness were aimed primarily at academic preparedness. the commission reported their findings and recommendations in four categories: (a) content, (b) expectations, (c) time, and (d) teaching (national commission on excellence in education, 1983). regarding content, the findings were that course content had been diluted and that many students were abandoning college preparatory courses for the easier “general track” courses (national commission on excellence in education, 1983, p. 62). the recommendation regarding content was to strengthen graduation requirements, and that, at a minimum to include, all students seeking a diploma be required to lay the foundation in the five new basics by taking the following curriculum during their 4 years of high school: (a) 4 years of english; (b) 3 years of mathematics; (c) 3 years of current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 science; (d) 3 years of social studies; and (e) one-half year of computer science. for the college-bound, 2 years of foreign language in high school are strongly recommended in addition to those taken earlier. (national commission on excellence in education, 1983, p. 70) with respect to expectations, findings were that although grades were improving, much less time was being spent on homework, and average student achievement had declined. to remedy this problem, the recommendation was that: schools, colleges, and universities adopt more rigorous and measurable standards, and higher expectations, for academic performance and student conduct, and that 4-year colleges and universities raise their requirements for admission. this will help students do their best educationally with challenging materials in an environment that supports learning and authentic accomplishment. (national commission on excellence in education, 1983, p. 73) three disturbing trends emerged with regard to time. first, american students spend much less time on school work than do students from other nations. second, the time spent on schoolwork is used ineffectively. finally, students are not taught study skills and time management skills (national commission on excellence in education, 1983). to redirect the three trends, the commission recommended that more time be devoted to teaching and learning the five new basics, but committee consensus was to leave administrative and curricular decisions to education professionals. however, the recommendation was made to increase the number of hours in the school day and the number of days in the school year (e.g., 7 hours per day for 220 days per year) (national commission on excellence in education, 1983). pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 5 regarding teachers, it was determined that academically adept students chose college majors other than teaching. moreover, rigor was lacking in teacher education and programs needed substantial pedagogical improvements. another concern was that teachers did not make enough money and they were not valued as professionals. finally, noted in the report was that serious shortages of teachers existed in key fields (i.e., mathematics, science, and technology) (national commission on excellence in education, 1983). recommendations included moving to an 11-month contract for teachers to allow time for inservice and additional preparation time. an additional recommendation was to hire noneducators as mathematics and science teachers who were degreed and had been in the workplace (national commission on excellence in education, 1983) although the national commission on excellence in education was incorrect on both of their primary assertions that the u.s. k-12 educational system was in shambles, with student achievement scores on a downhill slide; and the political, technological and economic dominance of the united states in the newly forming global community was imperiled, “the report motivated much that is right for american education” (guthrie & springer, 2004, p. 7). guthrie and springer (2004) identified two positive results that a nation at risk may have triggered: (a) “a move away from measuring the quality of schools by the resources they receive and onto a plane where school performance is judged on outcomes students’ achieve,” and (b) “the nation has increasingly focused on the achievement gap, the failure of low-income and minority children to achieve at the levels of white middle class children” (p. 9). however, guthrie and springer (2004) pointed out three negative results engendered by the authors of a nation at risk that severely hampered the effectiveness of creating equality in education: (a) “federalization of education policy… that now threatens the creativity and diversity of local current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 school systems that have been among the nation’s greatest strengths,” (b) primarily disregarding all other aspects of student achievement except scores on standardized tests, and (c) adding residual factors on the “belief that all of the nation’s social problems can be solved by improving schools alone and an accompanying willingness to tolerate failures in other social institutions” (p. 9). in 2008, the u.s. department of education issued another ominous report, a nation accountable: twenty-five years after a nation at risk, which reiterated the gloom and doom in the original document, summarizing that the american education system was still in shambles, with student achievement in mathematics and reading stagnated for 25 years (u.s. department of education, 2008a). of the risk factors (i.e., content, expectations, time, and teaching) discussed in the 1983 document, the only improvement was in the standards and expectations because of more rigid federal control with the inception of the no child left behind act (u.s. department of education, 2008b). to emphasize the point, the authors stated “a nation at risk anticipated that our secondary schooling deficiencies could eventually threaten the quality of the entire k-12 system, and this legislation has generated data that, unfortunately, confirm this threat” (u.s. department of education, 2008a, p. 4). further, the authors reported that through the guidelines of the no child left behind act, “we have transformed ourselves from a nation at risk of complacency to a nation that is accountable and at work on its education weaknesses” (u.s. department of education, 2008a, p. 8). the clinton administration’s education agenda was responsible for enacting the improving america's schools act of 1994 (iasa) (p. l. 103-382). primarily, the iasa was created under the guise of the federal government promoting a comprehensive approach to promote students’ academic success (paris, 1994), when in actuality the new amendment pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 7 “required state academic-content standards and tests” (u.s. department of education, 2008a, p. 8). two of the eight major goals of iasa were that every child will begin school ready to learn and that high school graduations will increase to 90%. additionally, it was posited that students would leave the 12th grade having mastered challenging subjects, including: english, math, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, art, history, and geography (paris, 1994). at the time the iasa was signed into legislation, the national education standards and improvement council (nesic) reported that only one in five 12th graders could understand complex math problems and perform critical literacy tasks (paris, 1994). in 1994, iasa was the mandate by which the academic progression of students was identified and schools’ annual yearly progress evaluated (cizek, 2001; cizek & bunch, 2006). according to riley (2002), secretary of education from 1993 to 2001: it is imperative that we recognize that our national effort to raise standards is not just about testing… rather, it represents a broad and sweeping endeavor to reform american education from top to bottom. an unflinching commitment to excellence and equity must be our guiding principle… the future of american education must involve creative ways for students, teachers, parents, and the entire community to work together in partnership to make sure that all children are given a high-quality education. if we offer young people a future of hope and an education of rigor, excellence, and excitement, they will respond and america will be better for it. (pp. 700, 707) further, riley (2002) stated “in the broad effort to raise standards, states should not rely on just a single high-stakes test…i believe that these tests and other accountability measures will be useful if, at the same time, we build capacity of schools and students to meet the challenge” (p. 703). although iasa mandates were well-intentioned to provide guidelines to enhance current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 academic success for all students, high-stakes testing and accountability were escalated to the forefront at the expense of most other possible positive features of the new law with little effect on increasing student academic achievement. shortly after the new millennium began, the no child left behind act was created to bolster student achievement, create more equality and equity in education for all america’s students (i.e., decrease the achievement gap), and develop more stringent assessment and accountability measures (borkowski & sneed, 2006; gray, 2005; paige, 2002; yell & drasgow, 2008). the no child left behind act of 2001 (nclb) (p.l. 107-110) was enacted into law by president bush in 2002. accountability measures defined in nclb guidelines require states, districts, and school administrators to develop and implement rigorous standardized tests to all students in grades 3 through 8, in both reading and math (darling-hammond, 2007; schiller & muller, 2003; yell & drasgow, 2008). although the primary focus of the nclb act was kindergarten through 8th grade, secondary schools must now comply with five nclb guidelines. first, states must set adequate annual yearly progress (ayp) goals and objectives to ensure that all students attain proficient levels by the 2013-2014 school year. second, students must be tested in reading, mathematics, and science at least one time in 10th, 11th, or 12th grade. third, high school graduation rates must be included in ayp reports. fourth, graduation rates are calculated on students who receive regular diplomas in the standard number of years. finally, teachers who teach core subjects must be highly qualified (learning point, 2007). college-readiness vs. academic preparedness in the first decade of the 21st century, college-readiness became the standard by which all high school graduates were measured (ravitch, 2009, 2010; zhao, 2009a). greene and winters (2005) indicated that the college-readiness rates in the u.s. increased from 25% in 1991 to 34% pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 9 in 2002. greene and winters (2005) stated that the 9% increase in college-readiness rates may have been caused by increased testing and accountability measures. however, the american college test (act) (2009) reported that only 23% of high school graduates in u.s. who completed the act test in 2009 attained a college-ready score as measured by four act college-readiness benchmarks. shortly before the turn of the century, high schools were placed under the microscope and examined through a more powerful lens. although assessment and accountability guidelines for high schools were not specifically stated in the nclb act, it became apparent that high schools were not fulfilling their expectations of preparing students for postsecondary education, and as a consequence, redesign and reform initiatives were begun (balfanz, 2009; braun, wang, jenkins, & weinbaum, 2006; gray, 2005; scott, 2007). points of contention to invested stakeholders were high student dropout rates, flat admissions test scores, stable but wide achievement gap, large numbers of students poorly prepared for college, and 50% of students enrolled in developmental education classes in college (u.s. department of education, 2008b). at the beginning of the new century, high school reform received intense attention by local, state, and national legislators, philanthropic individuals and foundations, and school district administrators who discovered that high school course enrollment statistics were disappointing, and actually worse than imagined (clark, 2007). according to balfanz (2009), “reformers must also create a system of academic and social supports for students who enter high school with inadequate academic skills and declining levels of school engagement” (p. 31). readers are referred to table 1 to review the chronology of national high school reforms from 2000-2010. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 table 1 chronology of national high school reforms, 2000-2010 2000 u.s. secretary of education formed the national commission on the high school senior year 2000 carnegie foundation focused major efforts and funds on urban high school reform 2001 annenberg foundation completed a multi-million dollar grant to chicago public school district to improve urban schools 2001 bridging the gap report explored the poor alignment of classes and the curricular disconnect and between high school and colleges 2001 states met to discuss school alignment from early childhood to college graduation, p-16 initiatives 2001 betraying the college dream illuminated the lack of preparedness of high school graduates based on expectations of colleges 2001 claiming common ground was a prescriptive document to alleviate the disparity discussed in betraying the dream 2001 alliance for excellence in schools formed as an advocacy organization on behalf of “atrisk” students 2002 bill & melinda gates forayed into secondary education to recommend and design smaller schools 2002 national high school alliance formed to promote excellence and equity to high school students in 50 states 2004 president george w. bush created high school reforms and funding to complement nclb 2005 achieve, inc. and nga held the national high school summit in seattle, washington to discuss dropout rate, college readiness, and the cost of developmental education 2005 u.s. department of education funded the national high school center to help states develop goals and guidelines to improve high school performance and college readiness 2005 u.s. house of representatives committee on education and the workforce convened to congratulate president bush on making high school initiatives a national priority pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 11 table 1 (continued) 2005 gates foundation donated $23.6 million to improve college-ready graduate rates in 26 states 2005 gates foundation funded the nga high school honor states program, american diploma project data quality center, and national center for educational accountability data quality center 2006 commission on no child left behind released report, nclb: fulfilling the promise of our nation’s children, to recommend strengthened accountability in the form of a 12th grade assessment 2006 new commission on the skills of the american workforce published tough choices or tough times to illuminate problems that may be detrimental to the national economic landscape 2007 no child left behind reauthorization rescheduled by congress 2008 researchers at rice university and the university of texas-austin find that texas' public school accountability system under the no child left behind act (nclb) directly contributes to lower graduation rates. 2009 arne duncan, secretary of education, supports the focus on accountability for student achievement, but he wants to make the nclb law less punitive. 2009 race to the top funding competition begun by president obama to help states with low graduation rates and wide achievement gaps 2010 president obama voices significant changes to the nclb act 2010 arne duncan visits congress with new nclb act proposal note. the information in table 5 was synthesized from clark, 2007; dillon, 2010; khadaroo, 2010; mcneil, coppola, radigan, & vasquez-heilig, 2008; ramirez & clark, 2009; toppo, 2009. in an attempt to increase college-readiness rates and to comply with the stringent nclb accountability measures, texas legislators mandated that at the end of the 2006-2007 school year all texas school districts should report to the texas education agency (tea) on six indicators of college-readiness: (a) advanced placement exam scores; (b) dual credit course enrollment; (c) current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 standardized assessment test (sat) critical reading and math test scores, act english and math test scores, or the texas assessment of knowledge and skills (taks) english/language arts (ela) and mathematics exit-level test scores; (d) advanced coursework in science, math, and foreign languages; (e) scores from state college-readiness assessments; and (f) the percentage of college-ready graduates in each high school and district as determined by the first four indicators (tea, 2009). these indicators can be used by administrators and teachers as they work to ensure that students will be able to perform in entry-level, credit-bearing courses at postsecondary institutions (i.e., vocational and trade schools, community colleges, and universities). however, to exhibit college-readiness, a graduate must have met or exceeded the college-ready criteria by the attainment of specific scores on the: (a) taks ela and mathematics exit-level tests, or (b) sat critical reading and mathematics tests, or (c) act english and mathematics tests (tea, 2009). readers are referred to table 2 to examine the college-readiness criteria for high school graduates in texas. table 2 tea criteria for college-ready graduates subject exit-level taks sat act ela 2200 or higher scale or score and 3 or higher essay score 500 or higher in or critical reading and 1070 or higher composite score 19 or higher in english and 23 or higher composite score math 2200 or higher scale or score 500 or higher in or math and 1070 or higher composite score 19 or higher in english and 23 or higher composite score note. information in table 2 synthesized from tea, 2009. pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 13 in 2009, achieve, inc. released closing the expectation gap 2009: fourth annual 50state progress report on the alignment of high school policies with the demands of college and careers to “help states raise academic standards, improve assessment, and strengthen accountability to prepare all young people for postsecondary education and training, careers, and citizenship” (achieve, inc., 2009, p. i). in 2005, at the national summit on high schools, the american diploma project (adp) a collaborative effort by the fordham foundation, the education trust, and achieve, inc., was founded with 13 states participating to close the expectations gap (achieve, inc., 2009). in 2009, the adp network was comprised of 34 states and approximately 85% of america’s students (achieve, inc., 2009). although well intentioned, it appears that achieve, inc. is focused on academic preparedness rather than college-readiness. although federal mandates for academic rigor in high school curriculum have been in place well over 20 years, college-readiness rates of high school graduates continue to be low nationwide. zhao (2006, 2009a) suggested that because of high-stakes testing and the nclb act accountability measures, students who met or exceeded college-readiness standards based on standardized test scores, to which the aforementioned texas college-readiness indicators allude, were perhaps more academically prepared for college rather than college-ready. conley (2007a, 2007b) concurred that high school students were more academically prepared, and that collegereadiness was more inclusive of students’ self-efficacy (bandura, 1997), self-regulation (young & ley, 2002, 2003), and knowledge of academic strategies for reading, writing, and critical thinking rather than specific content knowledge as measured by standardized tests. roderick, nagaoka, and coca (2009) elaborated that if college-readiness standards were used to gain college access and measure college success, high schools and postsecondary institutions must current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 couple strategies and skills needed by students to understand the college-going process with the academic preparedness as measured by standardized tests. several researchers postulated that junior high and high school students should be made aware of faculty expectations and postsecondary academic standards to develop college knowledge and a college-going attitude that would increase their likelihood of entering college and persisting to graduation, especially lower-socioeconomic, ethnically-diverse students (act, 2005; barefoot, 2008; bean & eaton, 2002; conley, 2005, 2007a, 2007b; pascarella & terenzini, 2005; roderick et al., 2009; seidman, 2005; tinto, 2007; zhao, 2009b; zimmerman, 2000). further, researchers indicated that not only do junior high and high school students need the academic prowess to be successful at the postsecondary level; they should also have knowledge of the college enrollment processes, including admissions, financial aid, and money management (act, 2005; callan, finney, kirst, usdan, & venezia, 2006; moore, slate, edmonson, bustamante, & onwuegbuzie, in press; roderick et al., 2009; varcoe et al., 2001; vienne & slate, 2009; zhao, 2009b). additionally, junior high and high school students should develop key cognitive strategies, including time management and study skills (conley, 2005, 2007a, 2007b; lammers, onwuegbuzie, & slate, 2001; slate, jones, & dawson, 1993; slate, jones, & harlan, 1998; slate, jones, & rodgers, 1997/98). moreover, an awareness of such factors as locus of control may influence student success at college (e.g., jones, slate, blake, & sloas, 1995; jones, slate, & marini, 1995). according to zhao (2006), measuring collegereadiness by centralized curriculum and excessive high-stakes assessments created a one size fits all syndrome, which negated creative and critical thinking; both of which were required to be successful at the postsecondary level and beyond. pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 15 because of high-stakes testing requirements and punitive accountability guidelines set forth in the nclb act, college-readiness, even by academic standards alone, may be illusory. after 27 years of academic reform suggested by the authors of a nation at risk and approximately eight years of stringent academic accountability mandated by the nclb act, little, if any, change has occurred in the academic achievement of most american students (amrein-beardsley, 2009; jones et al., 1995; jones et al., 1995; lammers et al., 2001; national commission on excellence in education, 1983; nclb, 2001; nichols & berliner, 2008; ravitch, 2010; slate et al., 1993; slate et al., 1998; slate et al., 1997/98). according to slate and colleagues (1993, 1998, 1997/98), teachers acted primarily as dispensers of knowledge who filled student vessels with that knowledge. however, slate and colleagues (1993. 1998, 1997/98) stated that if students were to be successful at the postsecondary level, teachers should explain and model effective cognitive and metacognitive strategies as integral parts of the curriculum and diligently help students internalize these strategies to become confident, autonomous, self-regulatory critical thinkers. in 2010, control in public secondary schools is more soundly in the hands of teachers than in the 1990s. with educational agencies nationwide being controlled by nclb mandates, teachers are forced to narrow student learning and self-regulatory strategy development by deleteriously dumbing-down student learning, dispensing only those content specific items that will ensure successful student pass-rates on state mandated standardized tests (amreinbeardsley, 2009; dzubak, 2010; cubukcu, 2009; popham, 2008; ravitch, 2010, zhao, 2009a, 2009b). additionally, redundant benchmarking of state mandated tests has significantly lessened teaching and learning experiences that should be occurring in public schools (amrein-beardsley, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 2009; berliner, 2006; dzubak, 2010; ravitch, 2010). according to ryan, matheson, and morgenthau (2003): the no child left behind act, perhaps the most important federal education law in our nation’s history, is at war with itself. first, while the act is supposed to raise achievement across all schools, it creates incentives for states to lower academic standards. second, while the act is supposed to close the achievement gap, it creates incentives to increase segregation by class and race and to push low-performing students out of school entirely, which will make it even more difficult for disadvantaged students to catch up to their more affluent peers. finally, while the act is supposed to bring talented teachers to every classroom, it may deter some from teaching altogether and divert others away from the most challenging classrooms, where they are needed the most. in short, although the act is supposed to promote excellence and equity, it may work against both. (p. 934) with the aforementioned ideas in mind, the requirement of highly qualified teachers mandated by the nclb act should be severely scrutinized. also, the idealistic notion that all children will have access to a quality education is called into question by the negatively reinforced accountability measures of the nclb act. to increase the college readiness-rate of graduates, schools and school districts should develop and implement comprehensive teacher professional development programs (callan et al., 2006; conley, 2007a, 2007b; roderick et al., 2009). according to conley (2007b), professional development for high school teachers, administrators, and counselors should include the “four facets of college readiness” (p. 12): key cognitive strategies, key content, academic behaviors, and contextual skills and awareness. as high schools educate students, schools must pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 17 shift from an emphasis on gpa and credit accumulation to a predominant focus on learning and preparing students for college. personnel developing professional developmental programs could focus on strategies for critical and analytical thinking, drawing inferences and conclusions, conducting research, and communicating effectively orally and in writing (moore et al., 2010). additionally, specific strategies and interventions that focus on academic behaviors (i.e., selfregulation and self-awareness) and study skills are essential for students at risk of not being prepared for entry-level, credit-bearing courses (bean & eaton, 2002; callan et al., 2006; conley, 2007b; lammers et al., 2001; roderick et al., 2009; seidman, 2005; slate et al., 1993; slate et al., 1998; slate et al., 1997/98; young & ley, 2002, 2003; zhao, 2006, 2009b). to assist students at risk, high schools and postsecondary institutions must work together to create environments that prepare students to graduate college-ready to allow them to be academically and socially adept at the college level (conley, 2007b; kuh, kinzie, buckley, bridges, & hayek, 2006; moore et al., 2010; roderick et al., 2009). according to kuh et al. (2006), programs to assist the transition from high school to college for students at risk should include but are not limited to the following student success initiatives: “(a) orientation, (b) transition courses and first-year seminars, (c) learning communities, (d) intrusive advising, (e) tutoring, (f) supplemental instruction, (g) peer tutoring, (h) study groups and summer bridge programs, (i) study skills workshops, (j) mentoring and student support groups, (k) studentfaculty research, and (l) senior capstone projects” (p. 57). although rigorous programs for students, effective instructional resources, and quality professional development may do much to increase college-readiness rates and prepare students to be successful in college courses, schools and school districts should establish working relationships with local universities and colleges to perpetuate a college-going attitude in high current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 schools across the u.s., especially among lower-socioeconomic, ethnically-diverse student populations. continuous interaction between high schools and postsecondary institutions may assist schools in defining and aligning their programs and instructional goals and create a working relationship of professional cooperation to help high school graduates excel in their postsecondary endeavors (callan et al., 2006; conley, 2007b; roderick et al., 2009). to ensure that students graduate college-ready, high schools cannot rely only on increased graduation requirements and standards alignment that focus primarily on academic preparedness (roderick et al., 2009; zhao, 2009a, 2009b). policy and practice must create instructional environments that develop cognitive strategies (i.e., content knowledge and core academic skills) and metacognitive strategies (i.e., self-efficacy, self-confidence, and selfregulation) to provide students with college knowledge with which they can internalize a college-going attitude (brown, 1987; callan et al., 2006; flavell, 1976, 1979, 1981; lammers et al., 2001; moore et al., 2010; roderick et al., 2009; slate et al., 1993; slate et al., 1998; slate et al., 1997/98; zhao, 2009a, 2009b). additionally, roderick et al. (2009) stated that students must develop a set of metacognitive skills: that determine educational achievement but are not measured readily by standardized tests or directly taught as content. metacognitive skills include a range of behaviors that reflect greater student self-awareness, self-monitoring, and self-control—study skills, work habits, time management, help-seeking behavior, and social problem-solving skills. meeting the developmental demands of college requires behavioral, problem-solving, and coping skills that allow students to successfully manage new environments and the new academic and social demands of college. (p. 190) pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 19 according to conley (2005, 2007b), key elements for college-readiness are the development of cognitive and metacognitive strategies; an understanding of content knowledge (i.e. writing, key concepts, and major theories); self-regulation behaviors and strategies demonstrating self-awareness, self-control, and intentionality; and college knowledge. college knowledge includes the information, strategies, and skills that allow students to successfully navigate the complex, sometimes mind-boggling, college admissions and financial aid processes, as well as develop an understanding of college norms, expectations, and diverse academic and social cultures (conley 2005, 2007b). roderick et al. (2009) stated that although academic strategies and behavioral skills are necessary, college-readiness “moves beyond academic and behavioral skills to acknowledge the role of social capital in college access and success” (p. 190). according to jones (2005), financial literacy and personal money management strategies should be included in college knowledge discussions in junior high and high schools to help students begin to understand the importance of personal finance decisions. an understanding of financial literacy and the internalization of money management strategies by students empowers them with the knowledge and confidence to make wise budgetary decisions (vienne & slate, 2009). further, vienne and slate (2009) stated that large amounts of debt and credit related problems place financial burdens on students that may hinder persistence, college graduation, or financial and social success after attaining a degree. “college-readiness is a multifaceted concept comprising numerous factors internal and external to classroom environments” (conley, 2007b, p. 6). academic preparedness is one piece of the college-readiness puzzle, but, college-ready is more than college-eligible. as long as school systems in the u.s. are required to evaluate college-readiness using high-stakes standardized test scores controlled by stringent accountability measures, minimized teaching and current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 learning environments may equate to academic preparedness, but college-readiness will continue to be elusive for most high school graduates (act, 2009; amrein-beardsley, 2009; balfanz, 2009; dzubak, 2010; lammers et al., 2001; moore et al., 2010; nichols & berliner, 2008; slate et al., 1993; slate et al., 1998; slate et al., 1997/98; ravitch 2010; rothstein, 2008; zhao 2009a, 2009b). conclusion national and state policy and school district, school, and classroom practices should be developed and implemented to help all students be successful in more rigorous coursework and develop a college-going attitude (conley, 2007a, 2007b; moore et al., 2010). lowersocioeconomic, ethnically-diverse students who exhibit persistently low college-readiness rates will need intense intervention and mentoring if they are to have the slimmest of chances to be successful at the postsecondary level (anyon, 2005; berliner, 2006; moore et al., 2009; roderick et al., 2009, zhao, 2009a, 2009b). because many of fastest-growing jobs require some form of postsecondary education (dohm & shniper, 2007; national association of manufacturers, 2005; u.s. department of labor, 2006), schools and school districts cannot continue to measure college-readiness solely on gpa and standardized test scores, rather students must develop college knowledge, which is a personal understanding of how to enroll in and successfully navigate the new academic culture they aspire to join (conley, 2005, roderick et al., 2009; wise, 2008; zhao, 2009a, 2009b). as standards for academic success become more demanding, universities and school districts must work together to assure that all students are prepared for promising, productive learning experiences at postsecondary institutions. pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 21 references achieve, inc. 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(2000). self-efficacy: an essential motive to learn. contemporary educational psychology, 25, 82-91. doi:10.1006/ceps.1999.1016 pre-service about th authors affiliatio address state un email: j biograp wally b univers research john r. sam ho national ana roj houston research ethnic g e teachers’ c he authors : wally ba on: sam ho s: john r. s niversity, b jrs051@shs phical infor barnes, ed.d ity. he rec h interests a slate, ph.d ouston state l education jas-leboue n state univ h interests a groups. changing visio rnes, john ouston stat slate, ph.d box 2119, t su.edu rmation: d., is the d eived his d are in the ar d., is a pro e university al database ef, ed.d., i versity. sh are in the in ons of themse r. slate, a te universi ., departm teacher ed director of doctorate in rea of colle fessor in th y. his rese es for schoo s a reading e received nequities de elves ana rojas-l ity ent of educ ducation ce the readin n education ege-readine he departm arch intere ol reform. g specialis her doctora emonstrate lebouef cational le enter, hunt ng center, s nal leaders ess. ment of edu sts are in th st in the re ate in read ed by achiev eadership, s sville, tx sam housto ship in aug ucational le he use of st ading cent ding in may vement gap sam houst 77341 on state gust, 2010. eadership a tate and ter, sam y, 2010. he ps among 27 ton his at er current is volume authors articles publishe an kr hilla d ju an h mi ssues in educ e 13, num hold the copy s in other jour er and include ngela abeyta rista adams ary andrelch diana barela ulia boukara ndrew darian aiying dong iriam emran cation vol. 13 curr mber 4 yright to artic rnals should b e the url of t provide a hik n n 3 no. 4 rent issu http:// w cles published be addressed t the cie publi ed cie is cred edito exe lor katy e jeffr sec sar mar me amb seo tiff calv linds fac gusta jean deb ues in e /cie.asu.e winter 2010 d in current is to the author. ication. permi dited and cop orial team cutive editor ri ellingford elizabeth his rey i. johnso ction editors rah heaslip rlene hinton elinda hollis ber johnston onghee kim fany o’neill vin richards say richerso culty advisers vo e. fischm nne m. power bby zambo educati edu 0 issues in educ reprints sho ission is here pies are not so m rs d rich on n n s on s man rs on issn cation. reque ould credit cie eby granted to old. ror ta kar luc ker jennife ky n 1099-839 ests to reprint e as the origi o copy any art ry schmitt apati sen ri visconti cy watson rie wilkins er wojtulewi yle wright 28 9x cie inal ticle, icz microsoft word singleton-jackson, final proof copy johnny still can’t write, even if he goes to college: a study of writing proficiency in higher education graduate students jill a. singletonjackson department of psychology university of windsor d. barry lumsden ron newsom department of counseling and higher education university of north texas biographical information: jill singleton-jackson is an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the university of windsor in windsor, ontario, canada. she teaches psychology courses and is also the coordinator of the foundations of academic writing courses. her research interests include student writing and student entitlement. barry lumsden is retired from the department of counseling and higher education at the university of north texas. he is currently a senior research fellow at texas a&m university and editor-in-chief of the community college journal of research and practice, educational gerontology, and christian higher educator. he is a national faculty development leader on non-fiction scholarly writing and publishing. ron newsom serves as associate professor and assistant chair of the department of counseling and higher education at the university of north texas. correspondence should be addressed to: jill singleton-jackson university of windsor department of psychology 401 sunset avenue windsor, ontario canada n9b 3p4 phone: 519-253-3000, ext. 4706 email: jjackson@uwindsor.ca abstract this study explored the extent to which graduate students enrolled in higher education courses were proficient at writing. a total sample size of 97 graduate students from programs of higher education served as the sample. to assess writing proficiency the sat ii: writing test, part b was used. the graduate students in this sample did not score significantly higher on the sat ii: writing test, part b than the typical high school senior whose scores enter into the norm group. key words: higher education, writing, writing proficiency, graduate students, sat ii writing test johnny still can’t write, even if he goes to college: a study of writing proficiency in higher education graduate students language, both written and spoken, serves as a critical cornerstone for our culture. “the faculty of language stands at the center of our conception of mankind; speech makes us human and literacy makes us civilized” (olson, 1977, p. 257). however, writing can be a painful and anxiety producing task for many individuals. and while the final goal of any writing is the same communication this goal is not always reached. in an effort to explore the current nature of this phenomenon while adding a unique twist, this study focused specifically on writing proficiency among higher education graduate students. interestingly, a review of the literature, while rich with studies relative to undergraduate writing assessment, revealed a marked paucity of studies involving graduate student writing assessment. likewise, aside from the gre-written (gre-w), launched in 1999, instruments for assessing graduate student writing specifically are not national norm-based instruments, but are instead idiosyncratic to institutions and departments. graduate school is undeniably a writing intensive experience (hadjioannou, shelton, fu, & dhanarattigannon, 2007; wasley, 2008). so it is interesting that while not a population that is often studied with regard to writing proficiency, graduate students are required to write as experts. this paradox is further complicated by the fact that faculty often complain about the amount of time they spend editing and discussing graduate student writing. clearly there is a disconnect between the expectations and reality. part of the problem may be the result of an assumption. higher education operates based on the assumption that students entering graduate school should be more proficient writers than they were upon entering college for the first time. as summarized by mullen (2006), “like their younger counterparts, graduate students need to demonstrate high-level skills in reading comprehension, thinking and reading critically (as in knowing how to identify various rhetorical structures and to distinguish between what should be said explicitly and implicitly), and communicating with particular audiences for specific purposes. they also should know how to collaborate on writing; how to use technology; and how to write for specific genres, both professional and academic” (p. 30). meanwhile, it has been established historically and repeatedly that there are many issues surrounding undergraduate writing proficiency (flateby, 2005). for example, knudson, zitzer-comfort, quirk, and alexander (2008) have published an article indicating that when measured for proficiency in writing and reading in english, 46 percent of the first-year students at the california state university required remediation. just as the california state university has put in a place a program to increase reading and writing proficiency for their freshmen, many undergraduate institutions provide abundant opportunities for their undergraduates to acquire writing skills and then attempt to assess those skills as students exit the institution (devarics, 2006). it is logical to assume that with the recognition of undergraduate writing problems and the subsequent prevalence of opportunities for skill acquisition and repeated assessments of writing in the undergraduate curriculum (e.g., essay exams, research papers); students should be skilled in writing upon completion of an undergraduate degree. and while not everyone who obtains a bachelor’s degree is an appropriate candidate for graduate study, a bachelor’s degree is a minimum requirement for attending graduate school. as stated by mullen (2006), “[i]n graduate circles, academic writing is presumed to be a solitary activity for which students already are prepared” (p.30). to summarize, there seems to exist an assumption that graduate students are competent writers; they have completed a bachelor’s degree, and it is assumed they have learned to write competently during that undertaking. this assumption is exhibited by the fact that graduate study is writing-intensive, yet graduate programs do not offer or require specific courses in writing. instead, graduate students study their chosen field in-depth and are expected to write as scholars. but to what degree is this assumption correct? the purposes of this study were to explore this assumption by looking at graduate students’ writing proficiency as defined by their ability to 1) control the basic elements of written english (e.g., grammar, word choice, syntax, 2) recognize writing errors in usage and structure, and 3) use language with sensitivity to meaning. a fourth purpose was to determine if writing proficiency is correlated with selected demographic variables. graduate student writing proficiency and assessment in addition to understanding the cognitive processes and skill levels involved in producing written text, measuring proficiency is an important element of written communication that is of practical interest to faculty and administrators at institutions of higher education. writing proficiency is a term that can be hard to conceptualize and even harder to define because it is a "slippery term" that hides "an even more slippery concept" (white, 1994, p.150). proficiency may be thought of as skill, adequacy, sufficiency for a defined purpose, or capability. regardless of how proficiency is specifically defined, it is something that those who evaluate writing as part of their profession can readily identify and describe when asked to discuss it. and while it may not be easy to define, writing proficiency has long been on the minds of those who teach and study graduate students. in 1986, scardamalia and bereiter asserted that as expectations for scholars, including graduate students, rose so would expectations regarding competence in writing. this expectation of writing competence from over two decades ago still exists for graduate students today, and while we can assume that they certainly possess some degree of writing competence, what is that degree? the two most commonly used means of evaluating the writing ability of graduate school applicants are 1) the graduate record exam (gre) verbal score, and 2) committee evaluations of the personal statement. the gre verbal score is a marker of general language ability, but it is not a measure of performance or of applied writing skill for the applicant. while a language skill score might be expected to correlate to some degree with writing ability, it can be argued that the gre verbal score alone is not enough to ascertain the baseline writing proficiency levels of entering graduate students. sternberg and williams (1997), while not specifically studying graduate student writing, looked at the gre as a meaningful predictor of success in graduate training. they based their research on the fact that the use of gre scores as a criterion for admission is prevalent in graduate programs across numerous institutions. their research was grounded in sternberg's triarchic theory of human intelligence. the triarchic theory of human intelligence distinguishes among academic, creative, and practical abilities. it should, however, be noted that "these kinds of abilities are not wholly independent...but research indicates only a weak relationship among the three abilities" (sternberg & williams, 1997, p. 633). according to these researchers, performance on the gre will be most affected by analytical abilities while creative and practical abilities will not be as readily apparent from gre test scores. sternberg and williams (1997) hypothesized that the gre, while a good predictor of initial graduate grades, would not be a strong predictor of success among advanced graduate students. specifically, they predicted "that the gre would be, at best, very weakly predictive of more meaningful criteria of graduate program success: in particular...of dissertations" (sternberg & williams, 1997, p. 634). sternberg and williams did find that gre scores, while predictive of first-year graduate school grades, did not prove useful as predictors of a number of graduate school performance measures. notably they were not correlated with faculty ratings of dissertation quality. this is of particular relevance to the current research study due to the intensive writing component involved in producing a quality dissertation. while analytical abilities are important in writing, creative and practical abilities are also of relevance. the gre verbal scores, while relative to language, still rely heavily on analytical skills, not creative or practical skills (sternberg, 1996; sternberg, ferrari, clinkenbeard, & grigorenko, 1996). using this score as an indicator of graduate students' writing ability, especially the ability to produce writing as complex as the dissertation, is a misuse of the score and can lead to frustrated faculty and defeated students. and while studies that are more recent have furthered ideas about best practices for increasing chances of graduate student success, the dissertation remains a major obstacle (dipierro, 2007). the second form of attempting to evaluate graduate student writing proficiency, the personal statement (sometimes called statements of purpose or goals, or letters of intent), is a popular method of direct and indirect assessment of writing proficiency. many graduate programs require applicants to submit personal statements as part of their application materials. these statements, written as part of the applicants’ attempt to gain admission to a program of study, usually reflect the applicants' motivation for attending graduate school and outline the intended career goals of the applicants. while providing information about aspiring graduate students' personal qualities and disciplinary socialization, the personal statement is also often viewed as a valid indicator of writing ability (powers & fowles, 1997; powers, fowles, & willard, 1994; brown, 2004; samraj & monk, 2008). although personal statements are typically used as direct assessments or measurements of writing ability, defining personal statements as direct measures of writing ability is somewhat misleading. messick contends that measurement is direct only in a very limited sense: skills and knowledge are more correctly inferred from a product as opposed to being measured directly. writing ability is, therefore, inferred from applicants' personal statements more than it is measured by such means (as cited in powers, et. al., 1994). while it is "widely acknowledged that an instrument [such as a personal statement] is not valid in and of itself....it is the inferences about the meaning and use of test scores that are to be validated" (powers & fowles, 1997, p. 76). research studies two studies, one by powers et al. (1994) and the other by powers and fowles (1997) explored the use of the personal statement as both a criterion for admission to graduate school and as a valid indicator of graduate student writing ability. in 1992, the staff of the gre program conducted a nationwide study. graduate deans and faculty were surveyed in an effort to determine if there was interest in a gre writing test. while a number of the respondents were receptive to the idea of a test designed specifically to evaluate writing ability, a number of the respondents indicated that the information obtained from a writing test would be redundant with the information contained in the personal statement (i.e., personal statements serve as sufficient indicators of writing proficiency). many of the respondents to the gre survey indicated a belief that "personal statements were better indicators of writing skill than were standardized writing measures" (powers & fowles, 1997, p. 77). this echoed the earlier findings of anderson and ekstrom (1994). in a similar investigation, they found that writing samples from graduate departments in arts and humanities, on average, carried as much weight as gre verbal scores and undergraduate course of study. additionally, the writing samples were more heavily weighted than gre quantitative, analytical, and subject test scores, letters of recommendation, undergraduate institution quality, and personal interviews. one faculty respondent from an economics department made the following comment: "i cannot see what we would gain from another test score. the applications already contain a statement of purpose, which gives a direct writing sample" (powers & fowles, 1997, p. 77). to summarize the findings of the gre survey, "those who viewed a writing test as largely unnecessary valued the personal statement as a sufficient indicator of writing ability" (powers & fowles, 1997, p. 77). this could have been the end of this line of inquiry had the responses of some of those surveyed been considered definitive. however, there are a number of problems associated with equating the personal statement with a measure of writing ability. powers and fowles (1997) attempted to answer the following question: is a standardized measure of writing skill largely redundant with the personal statement (statement of purpose) for determining writing skills?" (p.79). they were interested in determining the relative merit of the two means of assessing writing skill: the personal statement and a standardized test. they hypothesized that, for a number of reasons, writing skill would be best reflected by a standardized writing measure as opposed to a personal statement. their hypothesis was based on the following: 1) a standardized writing measure would "better reflect writing skill than the personal statement"; 2) a standardized test "is based on topics that have survived careful pre-testing to ensure that they are accessible to most examinees and they elicit a sufficient range of response"; and 3) because it is administered under standardized conditions, a formal test "should reflect fewer sources of irrelevant variation than the personal statement" (powers & fowles, 1997, p. 79). powers and fowles (1997) recruited 475 gre general test examinees from among those who took the gre between january and may of 1994. the participants went to testing centers where, under standardized conditions, two-thirds of them wrote two expository essays. the study participants also provided several non-test indicators of writing proficiency, a recent sample of undergraduate writing, and a copy of their personal statement if they had submitted one as part of their application to graduate school. of special interest was a survey question posed to the participants asking them "to indicate how much help they had received in drafting and in editing and revising their statements" (powers & fowles, 1997, p. 80). college faculty who qualified as trained essay readers then evaluated the personal statements and the expository essays. the essays were independently scored by two readers, and a 6-point holistic score scale was used. the results of this study proved quite interesting. in response to the question regarding the amount of help they had received when constructing their personal statements, 59% of the participants revealed that they had received at least some help in editing and revising their statements. thirty-four percent indicated that they had received moderate or substantial help. thirty-six percent acknowledged receiving assistance when drafting their statements and 19% indicated that they had received moderate or substantial help. fifteen percent indicated that when drafting, editing, and revising their statements, they had received moderate or substantial help. thirty-eight percent of the participants stated that they had not received any help in writing their personal statements. the inter-reader correlation for the personal statements was .78, and the inter-reader correlations for the test essays ranged from .77 to .80 across the four different essay prompts. powers and fowles (1997) report that "the correlation between scores assigned to the test essays and those assigned to the personal statements was low, only .15. therefore, on the basis of our sample, the timed essay and the personal statement cannot be considered to provide interchangeable information" (p. 83). these findings underscore the idea that personal statements are not necessarily adequate in providing graduate school faculty with valid information about an applicant's writing ability, and it might be unsafe to assume that an effective personal statement is indicative of writing ability on par with faculty expectations regarding student writing. the researchers ultimately concluded that "although the personal statement may provide certain unique and important information about applicants...its validity as an indicator of writing skill...needs to be better established” (p.75). in a similar study conducted by powers et al. (1994), writing assessment was examined with the focus on the relationship between direct assessment and direct validation. in this study, sets of six student-produced essays (ranging in quality from poor to excellent) were sent out to be scored on a 6-point scale by graduate school personnel (department chairs, faculty, and deans) at 115 graduate institutions. powers, fowles and willard contacted 1,100 individuals; a total of 347 people responded to the survey with 231 of the respondents submitting satisfaction ratings for the sample essays. interestingly, when a sample of non-respondents was contacted for follow-up, the main difference between respondents and non-respondents was that non-respondents indicated a lower interest in a gre writing measure. the researchers concluded from this study that "some performance assessments, such as those involving direct measurement of writing skills, may enable validation that requires somewhat smaller inferential leaps than those needed for less direct measurements" (powers et al., 1994, p. 97). however, the authors were careful to explain that unless direct assessments are constructed and administered carefully, the inferential leap is actually more hazardous. namely, "limited content coverage, poor generalizability, difficulty in maintaining test security, and increased opportunity for bias due to subjective scoring all pose plausible threats to the validity of these assessments under some conditions (powers et al., 1994, p. 97; dunbar, koretz, & hoover, 1991). powers et al. also added an interesting aside in their discussion; they related that the faculty respondents expressed a distrust of the writing samples currently required by several of the graduate schools surveyed. the faculty members commented that it is impossible to know how much help an applicant has received in writing, revising, and editing personal statements or other writing samples not obtained in a secured testing environment. this concern would seem to be consistent with powers and fowles' subsequent 1997 study findings. other more recent studies explore aspects of graduate student writing outside the realm of the gre or the personal statement. kamler (2008) and cuthbert and spark (2008) both engaged in two studies that centered on the idea of graduate students needing to learn how to write for publication and the problems contained therein. kamler’s study starts with the premise that “writing for publication is an important activity for established academics and doctoral students alike” (2008, p. 283). green, hutchison, and sra (as cited in kamler, 2008) have concluded that publishing from the dissertation is a critical factor when predicting scholarly productivity. kamler’s paper concludes with her assertion that through publication graduate students become productive members of a discipline through, among other things, publication. similarly, cuthbert and spark (2008) look at graduate students writing for publication by exploring the results of a pilot program in australia that used writing groups in an attempt to help graduate students gain skills and find support needed for writing for academic publication. in another study of graduate student writing, lavelle and bushrow (2007) explore the writing processes and beliefs pertaining to graduate students as they attempt to learn and master the highly specialized task of high-level academic writing. these researchers make the point that graduate school demands that students produce higher quantities and quality of writing; however, “[a]cademic writing at the graduate level is a complex and often novel undertaking for the student. indeed, expectations as regards breadth and depth, and the diverse range of writing demands (article critiques, academic papers, grant writing), call for new insights and increased levels of skill” (lavelle & bushrow, p. 807). they then go on to describe an in-depth study of writing processes of graduate students and their attempt to develop psychometric model and measurement standards that would help explain and support graduate student writing. interestingly, these authors cite as one of the rationales for their study the fact that while it is a commonly known that graduate students need to write a lot and write well, as early as the 1970s discussions have ensued regarding the need to address graduate student writing by providing support and instruction, while still little has been done to actually assess what graduate students go through (process) when they write. to underscore both the longstanding nature or this issue and the concept of a need for increased understanding of graduate student writing, in her 1998 presentation to the annual meeting of the mid-south educational research association, debbie hahs presented findings from a survey of graduate students that asked them what they thought they needed to succeed and persist in graduate study. her survey results discovered many interesting things. most relevant to this study was the respondents indication that they would like to attend workshops to gain knowledge about various writing tasks common to graduate school (e.g. dissertation, cv, grant) (hahs, 1998). when given 11 sample workshops and asked which they would be most likely to attend, of the top five, three of them pertained to writing. the respondents in her study seemed to understand the need to master their field and then be able to communicate their expertise in writing to others in their field as well as to those not in their field. we can infer, as hahs has, that “students who are requesting information or services or resources have not satisfactorily received this information through current channels” (1998, p. 2). these studies by lavell and bushrow and hahs, as do the others previously discussed, speak to the assumption that graduate students by virtue of being in graduate school, are prepared to write at an acceptable level regardless of actual scrutiny of graduate student writing or of that assumption. there seems to exist, as summarized by newman (2004) a “vexed relationship” between undergraduate writing and how this first level of education relates to writing at levels of higher study (p. 31). these studies, while focusing on different aspects of graduate student writing, reflect the same basic premise that there are issues with graduate student writing that require exploration of process and proficiency that ranges from studying the personal statement to creating writing groups to supporting graduate student publication efforts. so while all the previously discussed studies approached the topic of graduate student writing from different angles and with different agendas, these studies do allow for a general conclusion. namely, graduate student writing assessment is a multi-faceted area of study; using the personal statement as an indicator of writing proficiency is erroneous; graduate students need to be competent writer; and graduate student writing merits further investigation. perhaps the most obvious message to be concluded for this brief review of research in the area is that it should not be taken for granted that being a graduate student equates with being a proficient writer. method participants an availability sample of graduate students enrolled in at least one course in higher education at public institutions of higher education in the united states participated in the study. a total sample size of 97 students was obtained. participants came from seven universities in the united states. demographic data were collected from the study participants. the majority of respondents were female (65.6%). participants were also asked to report the grade they earned on their most recent writing assignment. a few of the respondents (6.2%) appeared to be fairly new in their program (having fewer than 12 hours); the majority (68.0%) had accumulated 25 or more hours of graduate credit. table 1 contains descriptive statistics for the sample demographic variables. each participant received a cover letter to keep explaining the requirements of participation in the study. in this letter, the participants were informed of the right to withdraw from the study at any time. participants were also provided with a detailed set of directions for completing the instruments. in the case of the data being collected in a group setting, the administering professor was given data collection instructions to read to the group of participants. in lieu of signatures, participants’ returning the completed instruments served as an indication of their consent to participate. this recognition of completion and submission of the instruments as consent was used for both individual participants and those who participated in classroom settings. participants who participated in classroom settings did so on a voluntary basis and in no way was their participation linked to a grade in the course. the administering professor did not score or review the instruments; he or she mailed the completed instruments back to the primary researcher for analysis. data collection materials were coded with a threedigit number for the purpose of being able to collate the data, but participants could not be linked to the submitted data.1 1 this study was approved by the university of north texas institutional review board committee for the protection of human subjects. table 1 participant demographic variables first language percent english 91.75 other 8.25 age group less than 25 years 18.56 25 to 28 years 9.28 29 to 35 years 20.62 36 to 50 years 34.02 over 50 years 17.53 gender male 34.37 female 65.63 graduate hours completed less than 12 6.19 12 to 24 25.77 25 to 40 19.59 41 to 60 23.71 more than 60 11.34 all but dissertation (abd) 13.4 program masters in higher education 26.8 doctorate in higher education 54.64 masters in other field 3.09 doctorate in other field 15.46 doctoral degree sought ed. d. 50.7 ph. d. 49.3 note: for table 1, all percentages are based on n=97 except a) 1 person did not answer the gender question, b) 3 people did not identify their current program. furthermore, for type of doctorate in higher education, the percentages are based on n=71 (n=79 respondents indicated they were pursuing a doctorate in higher education, and of those, eight respondents did not indicate the type of doctorate). instruments to assess writing proficiency for the participants, the sat ii: writing test, part b was used. the sat ii: writing test, part b is a timed, 60-item multiple-choice test developed by educational testing service (ets). the purpose of the test is to “measure [test takers’] ability to…recognize faults in usage and structure, and to use language with sensitivity to meaning” (educational testing service, 1999-2000, p.7). the multiple-choice questions deal with such common writing problems as “being consistent, expressing ideas logically, being clear and precise, and following conventions” (educational testing service, 1999-2000, p.7). this instrument has demonstrated reliability (r. goodman, personal communication, august 22, 2000). although it might seem unconventional to use the sat ii, an instrument typically associated with high school level testing, the use of this instrument was warranted based on a number of reasons: • ets professionals who developed the test assert that “most students take the…sat ii tests…during their junior or senior year in high school, but there are no age or grade restrictions [italics added] (handbook for the sat program, 1999-2000, p.5). • the sat ii is typically taken by college-bound seniors and is used by many colleges for “admission, placement, and advising” purposes (handbook for the sat program, 19992000, p.7). • given the assumption being tested (i.e., after earning a bachelor’s degree, students who wish to pursue a graduate degree and are accepted to a graduate program of study are prepared to write at a level adequate for graduate level work), it is sensible to use a test typically given to college-bound seniors. in other words, graduate students should score significantly higher than the sat ii average if they did indeed obtain the writing skills assumed of a bachelor’s degree holder. • the sat ii is a normed instrument. a normed instrument was ideal for this study based on a number of reasons. namely, by using a normed instrument, the scores obtained were scaled relative to people who have previously taken the test. if a raw score is obtained (e.g., 40 correct), it is meaningless unless information is available about how other people scored on the same test; norms anchor a test. the sat ii served as an anchor, or point of comparison, for the scores obtained from the participants. this instrument has “been established as a common standard against which students performance can be compared. finally, to investigate students’ performance on the instrument, cursory observations about the instrument were made through the use of a pilot study of the instrument. to determine variation among responses to the 60 items on the test, the sat ii: writing test, part b was piloted with six graduate students in higher education at the university of north texas. the data were collected, and two of the students’ response sets were removed because they indicated that english was not their first language. only one of the four remaining students was able to complete the 60 items in the allotted time. interestingly, it was found that there was variance among two-thirds of the items on the instrument. this suggested that the instrument would yield useful information since there were individual differences in the responses of the pilot sample. if everyone had selected the same responses to the test items, this instrument would not yield useful information for the study. however, because variance was discovered and the instrument has been determined to be reliable by ets, it is safe to assume that this instrument provided useful and informative results. further, this should dispense with any concern about using an instrument typically associated with high school testing, since it is clear that even with a small pilot sample (n = 4) variation was present. procedure in the original attempt at data collection, a list of all public institutions of higher education in the united states that offer graduate degrees in higher education was obtained from the eric clearinghouse on higher education (www.eriche.org/resource/public.html). the institutions were sampled to ensure that both master’s and doctoral programs were represented. this resulted in a non-proportional stratified sample of institutions that offer graduate degrees in higher education (gall, borg, & gall, 1996). following the selection of the program pool, the researcher accessed program websites to obtain the names of contact persons. the identified contact person for each program in the sample was then contacted by phone or e-mail. the study was described, and a request was made that the contact person help recruit graduate students to participate in the study. after considerable effort, it was discovered that this was an ineffective means of recruiting study participants. twenty-five institutions were contacted and only two professors had agreed to help collect data from graduate students. it was then determined that multiple means of collecting data would be necessary. study participants subsequently were recruited in three ways: 1) by contacting higher education professors at various programs, 2) through higher education graduate student organizations, and 3) through a request for study participants posted on the association for the study of higher education (ashe) list serve. this resulted in a convenience sample of graduate students in higher education. professors of higher education courses were contacted and asked if they would be willing to recruit volunteers for the study from their classes. if they agreed, data collection materials were sent to the professor, the instrument was administered in a group setting by the professor, and the completed materials were returned to the researcher by the professor. seventy-three participants were obtained using this method of recruitment. individuals were also recruited to participate in the study. this was done in two ways: by obtaining permission to post a request for subjects on the ashe list serve, and by asking graduate student coordinators or graduate student organization officers to forward an e-mail request for participants to students enrolled in courses in higher education. students who received the posted messages and were interested in participating in the study contacted the researcher by e-mail, and arrangements were made to send a packet of data collection materials to the student. twenty-four participants were obtained using these methods of recruitment. in the case of an individual providing data, as opposed to the data being collected in a group setting, a statement of honesty was required in an attempt to ensure that all data collected were legitimate and provided under similar circumstances. each program or individual that participated in the study was offered a copy of the findings for the study. results the sat ii: writing test, part b participants in this study completed the sat ii: writing test, part b. the test was scored using the answer key provided by sat, and raw scores were converted to scaled scores according to the conversion table provided by sat, (sat ii: subject tests, 2000). the average multiple-choice scaled score from the sat writing test, part b was 59.30 (the range was 20 to 80), and the sample standard deviation was 10.27. the distribution had a very slight negative skew (-0.129), implying that the mean score was slightly lower than the median. based on published norms, the population mean is 59 and the population standard deviation is 10 (inside sat ii, 1999). this norm is based on “scores earned by 1998 college-bound seniors who took the sat ii: writing test at any time during high school” (inside sat ii, 1999, p.12). when a sample of data is obtained and the population mean and standard deviation are known, an appropriate test for a significant difference between the sample and population mean is the z-statistic for a single sample mean (howell, 2002). hence, this significance test was used to determine whether the sample mean was significantly higher than the population mean, after ascertaining that there were no univariate outliers, z-scores in excess of an absolute value of 2.5 (kirk, 1995). the sample mean was not significantly higher than the population mean (z=0.295, p<0.38). the graduate students in this sample did not score significantly higher on the sat ii: writing test, part b than the typical high school senior whose scores enter into the norm group. demographic variables and sat ii: writing test scores statistical tests were used to determine whether significant differences in sat ii: writing test scaled scores existed for selected demographic variables. this was done in an exploratory manner, with the goal of understanding whether significant differences existed based on these selected variables. there was no specific theoretical framework used to test formalized hypotheses. instead, these variables were selected based on a deductive review of the literature. the demographic variables we examined were undergraduate major, type of degree program in which participants were enrolled, gender, whether individuals participated individually or as part of a class , and type of doctorate degree (ed.d. or ph.d.). table 2 contains descriptive statistics related to the significant findings. a description of each test and findings follow, and the results of the statistical tests are summarized in table 3. table 2 descriptive statistics corresponding to significant effects for demographic variables independent variable n m sd gender female 63 60.86 9.90 male 33 56.15 10.53 participation method individual 24 65.22 9.34 class 73 57.46 9.91 degree type ed.d 36 56.75 9.02 ph.d. 35 63.26 10.65 note: for table 2, one person did not answer the gender question and the sample size for degree type is 71 because out of the 97 participants, 79 respondents indicated they were pursuing a doctorate in higher education and eight of those did not indicate the type of doctorate. we used parametric tests of group differences, namely between groups analyses of variance and independent samples t-tests depending upon the number of groups, to evaluate group differences. the assumptions of the techniques were met (e.g., kirk, 1995). specifically, the assumption of homogeneity of variance was evaluated and found to be tenable using the levene statistic (levene, 1960). data were screened for outliers by group, using a z-score of 2.5 as a cutoff (kirk, 1995). furthermore, we had no reason to suspect any violation of the assumption of independence of observations since each participant completed their own sat ii writing test and there was no common intervention designed to alter the writing test scores. while there was a mild departure from normality for the writing test score, namely the previously noted negative skewness, mild departures from normality are deemed acceptable, especially when the assumption of homogeneity of variance has not been violated (stevens, 2002). finally, we chose to evaluate all null hypotheses at an alpha level of .05 and did not correct for type 1 error since the analyses are considered exploratory and should be validated in a separate sample in future research. with respect to undergraduate degrees, the undergraduate majors of the 97 participants were coded into four broad categories. these categories were as follows: english (n=10), math/science (n=17) social science (n=48) education (n=16). there were six participants who indicated that they had majored in “business” as undergraduates. this group was too small to include in the analysis. an analysis of variance revealed there were no significant differences among the four groups (see table 3). participants were grouped into three categories in terms of their current program: those getting a master’s in higher education (n=26), those getting a doctorate in higher education (n=53) and those getting a doctorate in another field (n=15). there were only 3 participants who indicated that they were receiving a master’s degree in a program outside of higher education and these observations were eliminated from the analysis. analysis of variance revealed no significant differences among the three groups (see table 3). we did find significant differences in writing test scores for gender with females having a higher average score than males (see table 2). furthermore, those who participated on an individual basis had significantly higher test scores than those who completed the instruments as part of a class2. finally, participants who were pursuing an ed.d. had significantly lower scores than participants pursuing a ph.d. table 3 results of tests for differences in sat ii: writing test, part b scores by demographic variables independent variable test statistic results probability effect size undergraduate major f(3, 87) = 1.01 .392 0.000 academic program f(2, 91) = 1.95 .148 0.020 gender t(94) = 2.17 .033 0.048 participation (individual vs. class) t(95) = -3.32 .001 0.104 degree type (ed.d. vs. ph.d.) t(69) = -2.78 .007 0.101 note: effect sizes are ω2 (see e.g., kirk, 1995) for f values and cohen’s d for t values (cohen, 1988). discussion and implications for future research review of the research questions in an attempt to gain information regarding graduate student writing proficiency, two main questions guided this study. how do graduate students compare to high school seniors on a standardized, norm-based measurement of writing proficiency? is writing proficiency correlate with specific demographic variables? the series of analyses presented here helped to both answer these questions and to raise questions for future research. when reviewing the literature to form the basis for this study, it became clear that while there is great deal of interest in assessment of student writing, there is very little research available that addresses graduate student writing specifically. while educators agree that writing proficiency is an important skill for graduate students, there seems to be a discrepancy between expectation and reality (hahs, 1998; torrance, thomas, & robinson, 1999; mullen, 2006; lavelle & bushrow, 2007; & kamler, 2008). to wit, graduate students are expected to write like 2 in fact, those who completed the study individually did score significantly higher than the sat ii norm sample (z = 3.043, p < .05). see discussion section for more comments on this finding. experts, but graduate student writing quality elicits cries of despair and exasperation from faculty. this basic idea was the driving force behind this study. is the state of graduate student writing as depicted by disgruntled faculty a myth or of anecdotal nature, or is there indeed a real issue with regard to graduate student writing proficiency? writing proficiency to recap, the graduate students in this sample did not score significantly higher on the sat ii: writing test, part b than the typical college-bound, high school seniors whose scores constitute the norm. implications. this finding is interesting for several reasons, some clear, some more ambiguous. several assumptions predicated this study. for the purpose of clarity in this study, “better writers” is taken to mean more proficient, and regardless of personal definitions of the term “proficiency,” there is arguably an understanding that college students will be “better writers” when they graduate than they were prior to matriculation (north, 1996; abate-vaughn, 2007; & knudson et al., 2008). it follows that this would seem to be a reasonable expectation on the part of graduate faculty – reasonable, yet unmet. the outcomes of a study by the american association of colleges and universities (as cited in abbate-vaughn, 2007, p.52) “revealed that a dismal 11% of college seniors are able to write at the ‘proficient’ level while holding the belief that college was contributing to their skills in writing and other areas.” by requiring a bachelor’s degree as a prerequisite to admission to graduate study, it may be safe to conclude that graduate admissions committees are incorrectly assuming that an undergraduate degree has adequately prepared students for the rigors of graduate level writing since most graduate programs are writing intensive. the discovery that the graduate students sampled in this study did not in fact score significantly higher than college-bound high school seniors seems to justify faculty complaints that graduate students cannot write on a satisfactory level. presumably, graduate faculty expects their students to write better than high school seniors. if the sample population used in this study is representative of graduate students in higher education courses across the united states, then the conclusion reached is that after four years of undergraduate study, and possibly even after some graduate study in the case of those with master’s degrees, the graduate students sampled in this study were no more proficient writers than average college-bound high school seniors. this finding begs many questions. namely, are the skills required to produce writing proficiency not adequately addressed in the undergraduate curriculum? or is there simply not enough emphasis placed on writing proficiency as a prerequisite for admission to graduate school? does this lack of emphasis on screening lead to the admission of graduate students who are inadequately prepared to produce the level of writing expected in graduate school? also, is it possible that the faculty assumption that entering graduate students will be proficient writers is in error or unfair? is it possible that graduate faculty should expect to teach writing skills to their students? writing proficiency and demographics significance testing was done for writing proficiency scores and selected demographic variables. while overall this testing proved to be fairly unspectacular, it did unearth a few points of interest. undergraduate major was considered as one variable with a potential relationship to writing proficiency score. although a relatively small n for three of the four major categories limits the usefulness of this information, it was not surprising to find that the study participants who were english majors as undergraduates did, as a group, have the highest scores on the sat ii: writing test. however, it should be noted, that the english majors did not score significantly better than the other participants. two independent samples t-tests did prove to have significant results. first, females scored significantly higher than males on the writing test. this may exemplify the theory of gender’s role in language ability in general. females typically score higher than males on tests of verbal ability (cohen, swerdlik, & phillips, 1996). perhaps this verbal ability translates to writing proficiency. this might also be the result of studying students who were, for the most part, higher education graduate students. as a social science, higher education programs are typically writing intensive, and may attract and admit students from a social science background. females are more likely to be found in education and the social sciences than in other areas of study (pascarella & terenzini, 1991). forty-eight of the ninety-seven participants in this study were social science majors as undergraduates, and the participants were predominantly female (65%). a loosely drawn conclusion then might be, that more females are undergraduate social science majors, they get more practice writing as undergraduates, they seek writing intensive graduate programs because of a comfort level with writing, and this translates to an overall higher writing proficiency. secondly, it was discovered that the participants in this study who were pursuing a ph.d. scored significantly higher on the sat ii: writing test than those participants who were pursuing an ed.d. perhaps this is simply a function of the type of student who pursues the ph.d. versus the ed.d. this finding might indicate that the more applied degree, the ed.d., attracts students with less writing experience, interest, background, or skill. also, it is a possibility that ed.d programs have a different set of criteria for admission. for example, admission committees may look less upon writing proficiency as a significant factor in their decision to admit a student to graduate study in ed.d. programs. the most bothersome finding from this portion of the study involved a comparison of participants who completed the writing test on an individual basis versus those who completed the test as part of a class. the participants who did the test on an individual basis scored significantly higher than those who participated in a classroom setting and significantly higher than the sat ii normative sample. this is troublesome because of the nature of the writing test. the sat ii: writing test, part b, is a timed, 60-item, multiple-choice test. participants in the classroom setting were monitored for time (40 minutes) and use of reference materials (not allowed). however, individual participants were not monitored. instead, they were asked to sign a statement of honesty indicating that they would observe the conditions of the test. the most reasonable explanation for this significant difference is that individuals who agreed to participate in the study had a particular interest or propensity for writing and were therefore somehow more proficient writers than their cohorts who were recruited as a part of a group. additionally, based on these “possible” characteristics the sub-sample of 24 participants may not represent the typical graduate student. limitations convenience sample. aside from the possibility of a type ii error, there is the fact that a convenience sample was used. in some cases, this might result in the findings being questionable. however, for this study this would seem to be illogical in light of the sample population’s failure to score significantly better than the population mean on a test of writing proficiency. all the participants were volunteers. students who volunteered to complete the instruments on an individual basis comprised 24.7% of the sample. the remaining 75.3% of the sample population were recruited by graduate faculty and completed the instrument in a classroom setting. if it is assumed that the students who volunteered to participate in the study did so because of an affinity for writing, or because of a personal interest in the topic, then it would be more likely that a significant difference would have been found between the sample population and the norm population, with the sample population scoring significantly higher than the norm group. instrument limitations. a second issue regarding the validity of the findings centers on the use of the sat ii: writing test, part b as the means of measuring writing proficiency for the sample population. this instrument tests for three major components or subscales of english proficiency: grammar, usage, diction (choice of words), and idiom; correctness and effectiveness of expression (inclusive of grammar, word choice, sentence construction, and punctuation); and organization and development relative to clarity and coherence. a second assumption of this study, knowledge of the technical aspects of english grammar translates into proficient writing or production of quality text, ties into the use of this particular instrument. additionally, this assumption allows for the conclusion that the sample population, as reflected by mean score on the instrument, is no more adept at writing than college-bound high school students. however, if there is fault in this assumption, then there is fault in this conclusion. more simply put, when measuring the technical aspects of writing proficiency, is it safe to assume that the sat ii, writing test, part b measures writing proficiency or just technical proficiency? is there incongruence between technical knowledge of english grammar and usage and actual generation of quality text? a limitation of this study was that part a of the sat ii: writing test was not used. part a consists of an essay assignment. test takers have twenty minutes to write an essay on an assigned topic. two independent readers, who are experienced high school or college teachers, score these essays. test takers receive a composite score “calculated by combining the multiplechoice score with a weighted writing sample score” (inside sat ii: subject tests, 1999, p. 5). the logistics and the subjective nature of the scoring made the use of part a an impossibility for this study. however, this merits discussion. the following question arises: does technical knowledge of english grammar and usage necessarily translate to writing proficiency? in other words, is a multiple-choice test that measures technical skills (i.e., grammar, usage, diction (choice of words), and idiom; correctness and effectiveness of expression (inclusive of grammar, word choice, sentence construction, and punctuation); and organization and development relative to clarity and coherence) able to provide information about writing proficiency as it pertains to production of text when not combined with an essay test? it is hard to accept that graduate students are no more proficient at writing than college-bound seniors. having completed an undergraduate education, students assuredly gained practice at writing, and by virtue of experience must surely possess some competence as writers (biggs, et. al, 1999). however, perhaps they have not gained significant knowledge of the technical aspects of writing. if this is the case, then by administering part a, of the sat ii: writing test, a different picture of graduate student writing proficiency might emerge. generation of text is qualitatively a different task than proving knowledge of the technical aspects of writing on a multiple-choice test. to summarize, if both parts a and b of the sat ii: writing test had been used with the sample population, and a composite score obtained for the study participants, then perhaps the sample population would have scored significantly higher than the norm base for writing proficiency. interestingly, when asked what grade they had received on their most recent writing assignment, 88.5% of the study participants indicated that they had received an “a” (singletonjackson, lumsden, & newsom, 2009). this information lends itself to three conclusions: 1) there is some plausibility to the idea that technical knowledge does not affect or relate to writing proficiency with regard to producing text (e.g., research papers, writing assignments), 2) professors are complaining about student writing, but perpetuating the problem by not giving low marks for poorly written papers, or 3) the reported data does not give an accurate depiction of the respondents typical writing assignment grade. however, it should be noted that when the composite score for parts a and b of the sat ii: writing test is calculated, “the weighting makes the writing sample constitute only one-third of the combined score” (inside sat ii: subject tests, 1999, p. 5). while the sat documentation does not provide an explicit reason for this weighting, from examining validity coefficients – correlations between the sat ii: writing test and freshmen writing performance – it would seem to be due to the fact that the multiplechoice portion of the test is a more valid predictor of actual writing performance. therefore, it is in all likelihood, reasonable to assume that the sat ii: writing test, part b alone provides an accurate picture of a test taker’s overall writing ability, viz. technical knowledge and ability to generate text. implications for future research and practice this study has spurred a number of ideas for future research studies in the area of writing proficiency among graduate students. further, this study may prove to affect practice with regard to how writing is dealt with by graduate admissions committees, programs, and faculty with regard to preliminary assessments, curriculum, writing assignments, and thesis and dissertation supervision. an obvious idea for future research would be to replicate the study, but include graduate students from a wide variety of disciplines instead of exclusively studying students from higher education graduate courses. also, obtaining a larger n of either exclusively higher education students, or graduate students from all disciplines could prove to be extremely interesting. this study used the sat ii: writing test, part b to assess graduate student writing proficiency. there is also a part a to this instrument which requires essay writing. the addition of part a, an applied writing task, in future studies might yield a different picture of the writing proficiency of graduate students. a future study of this nature, regardless of choice of instrument(s), could be improved if the data collection environment was held consistent. it was discovered that the data were harder to collect than originally predicted. this gave rise to a change in procedure that necessitated data being collected from graduate students on an individual basis and in a classroom setting. a future study could plan for this contingency and include a plan to only collect data from proctored groups. while it did not affect the overreaching finding that the sample population did not score significantly higher on the sat ii: writing test, part b than the norm group, the fact that the participants who did the test on an individual basis scored significantly higher than those who participated in a classroom setting gives pause. it would be important to find out if this was a chance finding particular to this study, or if the testing environment gives rise to performance differences. we might trust the scores of those who completed the sat ii in a class setting more than the scores of individual test-takers as being more representative of higher education graduate students’ proficiency indicators. other variations might include a professor-focused study. graduate school professors could be tested for writing proficiency. additionally, it would be interesting to determine to what degree professors can actually articulate rules regarding grammar, usage, diction, idiom; correctness and effectiveness of expression; and organization and development relative to clarity and coherence. by doing this it might be possible to glean to what degree graduate faculty are prepared to actually teach writing skills to graduate students. it is one thing to grade for content, but an altogether different undertaking to teach writing as a part of a graduate course. a study along these lines could also include an attitudes survey that aims to discover graduate faculty attitudes toward teaching graduate students to write. a related idea could involve surveying professors about their opinions regarding the current quality of graduate student writing. following the collection of these data, a follow-up questionnaire could be sent to the same professors asking about the grades they are typically giving on writing assignments. the purpose of this would be to follow up on the idea of inconsistency existing between graduate student writing proficiency and the grades received on writing assignments. with regard to implication for future practice, there are several possibilities for changes to graduate education. graduate admissions committees may find it useful to more formally assess the writing proficiency of incoming graduate students, not necessarily as a tool to be used for denial of admission but to identify for students deficiencies in writing skills that need to be addressed with coursework or in conjunction with on-campus writing resources. also, as discussed in the introduction, expectations that graduate students should possess writing proficiency exist, thus this study may provide an impetus for programs to put in place more proactive measures to help students attain the needed writing skills required for graduate level study. required courses or mandatory workshops to address graduate student writing issues may be warranted should graduate programs feel that there are significant writing issues among their students. graduate students might also use this study as a basis for exploring mentor-type programs wherein more expert graduate student writers provide direction, resources, and support for fellow students requiring writing assistance. additionally, increased understanding of the reality of graduate student writing ability, based on assessments or other measures, could assist faculty as they guide students through theses and dissertations. the findings from this study indicated that the graduate students studied were no more proficient at writing than the typical college-bound, high school senior. the fact that these study participants all had at least a bachelor’s degree did not seem to result in them being better writers than students who had not yet matriculated. it could prove useful to follow this idea through graduate school to see to what degree if any a graduate education results in increased writing proficiency. a longitudinal study could be developed so that entering graduate students could be tested for writing proficiency. a follow-up study could then be done involving testing for writing proficiency at the end of the students’ course of study. this would allow for an evaluation of how much or if writing proficiency changes during the course of graduate study. conclusion this study began with the idea that graduate student writing was a topic worthy of assessment. the findings of this exploratory study seem to confirm that initial belief. stevenson (2006) echoes the importance of graduate student writing proficiency by asserting that there is no question that graduate students need to know how to write. we can conclude, however, that “[g]raduate students are novice researchers and writers who must be initiated into the culture of academic writing” (mullen, 2006, p.30). this study tells us that there is reason to believe that being a graduate student does not equate with writing proficiency adequate for graduate level study. in his preface to writing to learn, william zinsser indicates that he wrote this book “to try to ease two fears that american education seems to inflict on all of us in some form. one is the fear of writing” (the other being a fear of subjects that do not come easily or naturally) (zinsser, 1988, p. vii).while fear of writing may be pervasive, it does not have to be continuous. in an attempt to initiate graduate students into the writing community of scholars, we can proceed with dispassionate study of the process and product of writing. by doing so we can discover information to reduce the stress of writing for graduate students, who are our future creators of reports, articles, chapters, books, and various other written documents that can educate, advance, and inspire both scholars and the populace. to reiterate a previous point, graduate school is a writing-intensive experience, justifiably so. increasing understanding of writing as a critical skill for success in graduate school can reduce some of the fear that accompanies that intensity. as long as good writing remains a mystery that is accessible to only a chosen few, then fear of writing will persist. while academic standards and faculty expectations 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(1988). writing to learn. new york, ny: harper & row, publishers. microsoft word 915-3879-3-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x using question answer relationships in science instruction to increase the reading achievement of struggling readers and students with reading disabilities leah h. kinniburgh abigail baxter university of south alabama the question answer relationship (qar) literacy strategy was integrated into science instruction in a fourth grade classroom. ten students who struggled with reading, including some who were diagnosed with a reading disability, participated in this study. significant gains were made in reading by the 10 student participants in comprehending science expository text after a 4week implementation period. the general education teacher showed an increase in her ability to assist these struggling students after receiving training and constant support over the 4-week instructional period. keywords: reading in the content areas, question answer relationships, assisting struggling readers in 2007-2008, standardized testing in science became mandatory in the united states. the 2009 results of the national assessment of educational progress (naep) science assessment were very discouraging regarding the progress students were making in this content area. the majority of students in 4th and 8th grades scored at or above basic, and only 30% scored at or above proficient at both grade levels (national center for educational statistics, 2011). this lack of progress should not be surprising. the no child left behind act of 2001 has left schools and districts little choice but to place the strongest instructional emphasis for student achievement on reading; therefore, reading instruction is the main focus in most primary classrooms. science has been omitted from many children’s early school experiences resulting in students moving into the upper elementary grades with large deficits in reading the technical language of the science textbook (cunningham & allington, 2007). the integration of reading strategies into science instruction provides a means for increasing student achievement in both content areas. integrating reading strategies into science could prove especially beneficial for students who struggle in reading and students in special education who have been diagnosed with a reading disability. a review of the literature indicates that very few studies have been conducted in this area. in 2004, hall published a meta-analysis of studies conducted between 1940 and 2004 that identified promising strategies for students who were experiencing problems in comprehending expository texts. results indicated that few studies focused upon reading and comprehending science text. none of the studies focused upon elementary-aged students, and many of the studies involving middle school students included a minimal number of students who had been diagnosed with reading disabilities. this indicates a need for research in the area of the identification of reading strategies that improve current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 students’ ability to comprehend science material. by teaching students to apply strategies that will assist them in understanding science content area materials, standardized test scores may increase in the areas of reading and science. this study focused upon increasing the reading achievement of struggling readers and students in special education had been diagnosed with reading disabilities through the integration of a reading comprehension strategy into science instruction. it was conducted in a fourth grade classroom. fourth grade was selected because at this grade level the science textbook becomes increasingly difficult to read and comprehend. the question answer relationship (qar) comprehension strategy was integrated into science instruction. this literacy strategy was selected because it has proven to lead to achievement gains for struggling readers and students who have been diagnosed with disabilities in the area of reading (raphael, 1982). the term students with reading disabilities was defined in this study as students who showed a discrepancy between their reading ability and achievement and read 3 to 7 years below grade level (bakken, mastropieri, & scruggs, 1997; bos, anders, filip, & jaffe, 1989). these students were all enrolled in special education. the term struggling readers referred to “readers who have average to above average intelligence with reading skills that fall two or more years below their intellectual level, but have not been identified as having a learning disability” (zecker & zinner, 1987, as cited in hall, 2004, p.77). these students were not enrolled in special education. ten fourth grade students all of whom were either struggling readers or students enrolled in special education who had been diagnosed with a reading disability received this integrated instruction. they were provided their science instruction by a general education teacher. the teacher taught three sections of science; all classes were ability grouped. the special education teacher came into the classroom to assist the students with special needs during this instructional period. reading strategy instruction in science gunning (2003) defines strategies as “deliberate, planned procedures designed to help us reach a goal” (p. 279). anderson and roit (1993) give a more detailed definition of the term which stresses the role of existing mental abilities used to form new strategies. they define strategy as “a thoughtful and effortful mental act designed to maintain existing mental competencies when those competencies are taxed” (p. 126). pressley (2002) contends that many teachers provide students with opportunities to practice comprehension strategies, but do not actually teach students the strategies or how to apply them. research has indicated that all students, especially those with deficits in reading, need explicit instruction in applying reading comprehension strategies while reading science text (neufield, 2005; radcliffe, caverly, peterson, & emmons, 2004). science texts are predominantly expository in nature whereas most of the students’ reading instruction is focused on narrative text. many upper elementary teachers have not been trained in how to infuse explicit reading comprehension strategy instruction into other content areas. they are unaware that literacy strategies that have been proven effective in increasing students’ reading comprehension can be easily integrated into content areas such as science. many upper elementary teachers need training in effective implementation of specific reading comprehension strategies. this is especially important for those teach students with learning disabilities who are included in the general education classroom. in many instances, teachers may be aware of the strategies, yet they have not been provided with support in strategy implementation with struggling readers and feel inadequate in using the strategies effectively. “in the upper elementary grades, reading comprehension, or the ability to construct meaning from a variety of texts, can be the key to academic success” (mason, meadan, hedin, & corso, 2006, p. 47). students must learn that reading expository text is much different from reading narrative text, which is what most students have been exposed to in the primary grades in elementary school (bakken et al., 1997; frey & fisher, 2007). while commercial reading programs have integrated more science material into basal readers (norris et al., 2008), comprehension strategies to assist students in comprehending the material may not be included with the teacher directions. struggling readers and students who have been diagnosed with reading disabilities who have been taught comprehension strategies in the primary grades are likely to show difficulties in transferring the specific strategies and skills to expository text in the content area reading materials (anderson & roit, 1993). these students must have assistance in making this transfer in order to improve in their reading abilities. teaching students to apply these specific comprehension strategies must not be left just to the language arts teachers, or within the domain of language arts. they should be taught in other content areas as well (neufield, 2005). the qar strategy can easily be applied in all content areas. qar comprehension strategy raphael (1982, 1986) devised the qar strategy as a way for students to understand that the answer to a question is directly related to the type of question that is asked. qar assists students in differentiating among questions based on where the answer can be found: either in the book or in my head (caldwell & leslie, 2005). if answers are in the book, the questions will be of a literal type because the answers are “right there” in the text. if the questions are in my head, inferential questions have been posed, and readers must use their own background using question answer relationships in science instruction to increase the reading achievement of struggling readers and students with reading disabilities 3 knowledge to compose answers that require information not found in the text (tompkins, 2004). the two categories of questions, in the book and in my head can be further delineated into four subcategories. when questions are posed whose answers can be found in the book, students will find them either right there in one place in the text, or they will have to think and search. this means that students will need to look in several places in the text to find the answer. questions that fall under the heading of in my head are going to be deemed either author and you or on my own questions. for answers to in my head questions, students will need to use their own background knowledge and experiences in addition to the textual information to answer the question. if the answers to the questions are found on my own, students must rely solely on background experiences and knowledge to answer the question (frank, grossi, & stanfield, 2006). in addition to assisting students in knowing how to relate the questions to their answers, the qar provides a framework for comprehension strategy instruction. the questions posed before, during, and after reading require students to use multiple comprehension strategies as they formulate their answers (raphael, highfield, & au 2006). for example, students will recall information, make predictions, synthesize information, make connections, and use text structures when answering the questions. they learn that good readers use multiple strategies, and, in many cases, strategies are used simultaneously, when reading a text to find information. many research studies have been conducted in the upper elementary grades, (grades 3-6), and in middle and high school, (ezell, hunsicker, & quinque, 1997; ezell, hunsicker, quinque, & randolph, 1996; ezell, kohler, jarzynka, & strain, 1992; graham & wong, 1993; raphael & mckinney, 1983; raphael & pearson, 1982; raphael & pearson, 1985; raphael & wonnacutt, 1985) which prove that qar improves students’ reading comprehension. therefore, it would seem logical that integrating the qar into science instruction would increase students’ reading comprehension of science materials. method participants participants in this study were 10 fourth grade students in a science class in a rural elementary k-5 school in a large public school district located in the southeastern united states. all of the participants had either been diagnosed with a reading disability and were in the special education program, or were classified as struggling readers. half (five) of the participants were boys and half (five) were girls. four of the boys were white and one was african-american. three white girls and two african-american girls participated. these students were homogeneously grouped by ability and changed classes throughout the day. this was strictly a study to compare the pretest and posttest results of this one small group of students. no control group was used for comparison because the students were grouped for science in homogeneous groups. this was the only group of students in the fourth grade who had been diagnosed with a reading disability or who struggled in reading. there was no other like group with whom to compare the scores. in addition, the study was primarily undertaken to see if the general education teacher could implement qar instruction and whether there would be preliminary evidence of its influence on students’ reading abilities. one general education classroom teacher with 4 years of teaching experience provided science instruction to the student participants. this teacher had three sections of ability grouped students who came to her classroom specifically for science instruction. she used qar with one of these sections of students for this study. she was chosen to participate based on her interest in improving these students’ reading abilities. she was unfamiliar with the qar strategy prior to this study, and but had no knowledge of ways to integrate reading strategies into content area instruction. this teacher provided direct instruction in science using qar during a four 4 week implementation period. she designed and taught lessons each week that integrated the strategy. a special education resource teacher came into the classroom during science and lent support to the special education students who had been identified with a reading disability. the special education teacher did not provide any instruction related to the qar strategy. her role as a participant in this study was to administer an informal reading inventory to each student participant. the informal reading inventory was administered before and after the implementation period and served as a pretest and posttest. measures the analytical reading inventory, (ari, 8th ed., wood & moe, 2007), an informal reading assessment tool, was administered as a pretest and posttest in this study. this informal reading inventory was chosen because the questions posed for selections correspond with the question types in the qar strategy. the question types included in the inventory and their correlation to qar question types are: ari question type qar question type retells in fact (rif) right there puts information together (pit) think and search connects author and reader (car) author and me evaluates and substantiates (eas) on my own current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 sample questions from the ari for the first grade passage on the topic of the five senses were: 1. how many senses do we have? (rif/right there) 2. what do you know about the phrase the five senses? what does the five senses have to do with this text? (car/author and me) 3. what did the text say we can learn about when we see? (rif/right there) 4. why can we hear our name called out? (pit/think and search) 5. what sense helps us know how soft a kitten feels? (rif/right there) 6. in your opinion, what would life be like without all five senses? you think this because… (eas/on my own). an additional reason for selection of the ari was because it contains specific content related passages that can be used to assess reading comprehension in those areas. science text passages were used to determine each student’s reading level (pretest) and the progress made over the four week period (posttest). a dependent samples t test was used to analyze pretest and posttest data. an interview was conducted with the classroom teacher at the end of the intervention period to gather descriptive data. the purpose of the interview was to gain information regarding the teacher’s perspective about the effectiveness of integrating the qar into science instruction. since she had no prior experience or training in this method of teaching, the interview provided information regarding how she viewed qar’s effectiveness in assisting struggling readers in comprehending science text. it would also offer insights into how confident she felt in using the teaching method following teacher training. the first author held a one day training session for the classroom teacher on the use of the qar reading comprehension strategy and how to effectively integrate it into science instruction. the special education teacher attended a half day training session taught by the first author in correct administration of the ari. procedures the ari was administered to each student by the special education teacher before and after the 4 week implementation period. the results served as the pretest and the posttest. in administering any informal reading inventory, a graded word list is used to determine the reading level of the comprehension passage that will be read by the student. the special education teacher followed all of the directions for properly administering the assessment. because the ari has passages from specific content areas that can be used to assess reading comprehension, science expository passages were read by the students to determine their reading levels. none of the passages used were on the topic of force and motion which was the unit of study students would be learning during the four week implementation period. the topics of the passages used were: 1st grade-the five senses 2nd grade-hearing sounds 3rd grade-changing matter 4th grade-a comet students read the passages aloud, and the special education teacher then asked students the comprehension questions from the passage. based on the ari pretest results, three students were reading at the first grade level, one at the second grade level, five at the third grade level, and one was reading on grade level. the first author provided support to the classroom teacher during the 4 week intervention period by observing the science lessons that integrated the qar strategy. over the 4 week period, the classroom teacher used this strategy in each 50 minute science lesson for a total of 20 lessons. meetings between the classroom teacher and first author followed each lesson for the purpose of debriefing. these observations verified that instruction in the identification and use of qar strategies were part of the teachers’ daily science instruction. likewise, all of the students were observed using qar strategies to answer questions during their science class. during the intervention period, the classroom teacher used the fourth grade science textbook and children’s books of expository text on the topic of force and motion. if the text being used was the science textbook, the teacher read the text aloud to the students as they followed along in their textbooks. if the text used was a children’s expository trade book, the teacher read the book aloud as the students listened. the teacher explicitly taught the four different types of questions during the first 2 weeks of the intervention and had students practice identifying each type of question based on the science text she used for the lesson. she created motivating, engaging lessons for students that involved them in a lot of interaction and discussion. the special education teacher worked with the students with special needs during these lessons, giving them support as was needed. the special education teacher provided help in both the identification of questions and the use of the qar strategies. during the 3rd and 4th weeks, the students applied their knowledge of the four types of questions to identify the kind of question being asked, and to answer the questions. the teacher used questions that were included in the science textbook for the lessons from the book, and she created the questions when trade books were used. she made sure to create questions from all four categories in the qar for the lessons and activities. these lessons were also very motivating and engaging. students were using question answer relationships in science instruction to increase the reading achievement of struggling readers and students with reading disabilities 5 involved in activities that involved small group work, as well as whole group and partner lessons. the special education teacher assisted the students with special needs during these lessons. at the end of the 4 week implementation period, the special education teacher, once again, administered the comprehension section of the ari to each student. the same science passages were used that had been administered for the pretest. this was used as posttest data. because the duration of the study was only 4 weeks, it was decided not to administer the graded word lists as part of the posttest. the focus of the study was to find if instruction in the qar strategy and application of the strategy would assist students in comprehending science content material; it was not expected nor anticipated that students’ grade levels in reading would change. results all students’ reading comprehension scores improved from the pretest to the posttest. a dependent samples t test computed on the percent of items correct indicated that students’ posttest scores were higher than their pretest scores. in addition, significant differences between pretest and posttest scores were found for the four different types of questions, as can be seen in table 1. as can be seen in table 2, the students had a significantly higher percentage of questions answered correctly on the overall ari and for all question types after the intervention. removing the one student whose reading level was at grade level, did not change the pattern of results. table 1 results of dependent t tests for pretest and posttest scores on the ari and four question types (n = 10) score df t p cohen’s d ari total score 9 8.46 .00 2.27 right there 9 6.00 .00 2.53 think and search 9 2.76 .02 0.68 author and me 9 3.00 .02 1.22 on my own 9 .3.67 .01 1.47 table 2 percent correct on ari and four question types (n = 10) score m sd sem ari total score pre .41 .25 .08 ari total score post .85 .12 .04 right there pre .40 .26 .08 right there post .93 .14 .04 think and search pre .48 .39 .12 think and search post .73 .34 .11 author and me pre .35 .47 .15 author and me post .85 .38 .11 on my own pre .30 .48 .15 on my own post .90 .32 .10 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 the interview with the classroom teacher provided insights regarding the importance of teacher training and support in the effective integration of the qar literacy strategy into science instruction for struggling students. her comments indicated an increase in her confidence level in effectively teaching these students to read science content material. discussion the results of this study show that the integration qar literacy strategy can be successfully implemented into science instruction and as a collateral effect it may increase the reading achievement of both struggling readers and students with a reading disability. though this was an extremely small sample of students, it is very promising because of the significant increase in the students’ ability to answer comprehension questions after reading science text over the 4 week period. the significant differences for all four question types for all students from pretest to posttest for these 10 participants (all of whom struggled with reading) is an indicator of the impact this strategy may have in assisting students in comprehending science text. for these students, reading expository text, specifically science expository text, is very frustrating. when shown specific strategies that enable them to be successful, they can achieve success. future studies will need to build upon this and provide empirical evidence of the qar strategy’s impact upon student achievement in science. one extremely interesting result of this study was that the students made the highest gains in the two types of higher-order thinking types of questions, author and me and on my own. the first author had no information regarding any other type of instruction regarding critical thinking skills that these students received during this intervention period in other classes; however, this may have had an effect on the results if this instruction was in place. however, because the progress in these two types of questions was significant, the implication is that students who struggle to read may benefit from strategies such as the qar to enhance their critical thinking skills. author and me type questions require students to use information from the book and their background knowledge to answer the questions. on my own types of questions require students to rely solely on background knowledge. therefore, students must analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the information in order to generate the answers to these types of questions (raphael et al., 2006). in the content area of science, as students move into higher grade levels, the text becomes more difficult, and more critical thinking is needed in order to be successful in this area. this strategy can assist teachers in ways to help struggling students perform at these higher levels of thinking. the interview with the classroom teacher showed the importance of teacher training and support for teachers working with struggling readers. integrating a literacy strategy into science instruction was a very new idea for this teacher. because she was working with this self-contained ability group of struggling readers, she lacked confidence in being able to teach them effectively. the idea of integrating a literacy strategy into science instruction was very intimidating for her at the beginning of the study. in the interview, the teacher stated that “the training made her much more aware of how literacy strategies can be used with students with reading disabilities and students who struggle with reading.” she said that after receiving the training that she “was anxious to implement the strategy with her students.” this showed that her confidence level had risen after the one day of training because of her excitement to begin using the information in her lessons. she mentioned several times that she had never been told that reading comprehension strategies could be used to teach science, or any other content area. she alleged that even if she had learned this in her college training, she probably would have been resistant to do with this group of students because she thought she might “do something wrong” since she had not been trained as a special education teacher. her comments are very telling with regard to the importance of general education teachers’ attitudes toward working with special education students and low ability students. mungai and devin (2002) explain just how important this is when working with students with special needs. they state, “teacher attitudes and behaviors in the classroom have the most immediate and powerful impact on students’ academic development and performance” (p. 44). when specifically asked about the qar strategy, one comment the teacher made referred to the fact that she had not realized “how easily reading comprehension strategies could be incorporated into science instruction.” she said that learning how to present the material and the questions in a way that would hold the students’ interest made her realize how students, especially students who struggled with reading, could be explicitly taught how to look at specific questions that were being asked and find clues in the questions that would lead them to the answers. she went on to say that it was extremely difficult for them to answer questions, especially in science, because the content was difficult for them to understand. she discovered, through the qar strategy instruction training, “that even struggling readers can be shown how to be successful at answering questions.” the first author noticed during the observation periods, the progression of both students and the teacher in feeling comfortable with the strategy. the students had difficulty in the beginning, which the teacher attributed to them not having been exposed to any strategies that focused on questions as most focus on answers. as the lessons progressed, she using question answer relationships in science instruction to increase the reading achievement of struggling readers and students with reading disabilities 7 became more confident in creating the lessons and the questions, and the students became much better at determining and creating the different question types. the teacher also described how her perceptions had changed regarding how students with reading disabilities and students who are struggling to read learn to read expository text. she stated, “i would definitely say that this strategy worked. my students were all interested in my lessons, and they were taking pride in searching for the correct answers.” she went on to say, “this made a huge difference in my class and it helped me to realize just how capable my students are.” she stated that in the future she would use the qar strategy with struggling readers and students with reading disabilities. conclusion the qar strategy can be introduced to and effectively used in elementary science instruction. the teacher, with minimal professional development on the use of qar, was able to implement this strategy when teaching 4th grade science to struggling readers and students with reading disabilities. students were able to learn to and use the qar strategies in the context of their science class. there is also evidence that this strategy instruction may have lead to improved reading abilities. future studies will need to investigate the use of the qar strategy in science instruction. a very important component of assisting these students was teacher training and support. the comments from the interview with the teacher following the intervention period supported the significance of how the training and support gave her confidence to work with struggling readers. further studies need to be conducted with a larger sample of students (including using a control group) and in different content areas in order to document the progress struggling readers might make by using the qar strategy. the integration of other literacy strategies into science instruction should also be investigated. it was found in this study, that when a general education teacher was given training and support in effective strategy use in content area instruction, she was more likely to use the strategies in her teaching of low ability students. many general education teachers simply need the confidence that they can assist these students in being successful. references anderson, v., & roit, m. 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(1985). increasing students’ awareness of sources of information for answering questions. american educational research journal, 22(2), 217-235. raphael, t. e., & wonnacott, c. a. (1985). heightening fourth-grade students’ sensitivity to sources of information for answering comprehension questions. reading research quarterly, 20 (3), 282-296. tompkins, g. e. (2004). 50 literacy strategies: step by step. upper saddle river, n.j.: pearson education. woods, m. l., & moe, a. j. (2007). analytical reading inventory (8th ed.). upper saddle river, n.j.: pearson education. zecker, s., & zinner, t. (1987). semantic code deficit for reading disabled children on auditory lexical decision task. using question answer relationships in science instruction to increase the reading achievement of struggling readers and students with reading disabilities 9 article citation kinniburgh, l. h., & baxter, a. (2012). using question answer relationships in science instruction to increase the reading achievement of struggling readers and students with reading disabilities. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/915 author notes leah h. kinniburgh, ph.d. university of south alabama college of education department of leadership and teacher education ucom 3100 mobile, al 36688-0002 lkinniburgh@usouthal.edu leah kinniburgh, ph.d. is an associate professor of elementary education and the coordinator of the reading specialist program at the university of south alabama. abigail baxter, ph.d. university of south alabama college of education department of leadership and teacher education ucom 3100 mobile, al 36688-0002 abaxter@usouthal.edu abigail baxter, ph.d. is an associate professor of special education in the department of leadership and teacher education. she is also the director of graduate studies and research for the college of education at the university of south alabama. manuscript received: 1/25/2012 revisions received: 3/06/2012 accepted: 5/22/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 10 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 781.docx 1 volume 14, number 3 september 13, 2011 issn 1099-839x teacher professional learning as the growth of social capital wesley johnson david lustick minjeong kim university of massachusetts lowell teacher learning can be modeled in a variety of different ways. in this study, an analysis of teacher social capital was used to describe the effects of a school-wide professional development program. social capital refers to the resources that teachers can access through peer collaboration to support their ongoing learning. findings indicate that conceptualizing professional development as the growth of shared resources can avoid some of the difficulties that arise when teacher learning is viewed solely as either an individual or social process. keywords: professional development, teacher learning, collaboration, social capital sfard (1998) identified two metaphors for learning – acquisition of new concepts and participation in new practices. the acquisition metaphor explains how knowledge is transferred from one context to another while the participation metaphor offers new insights into how we learn through social interaction. sfard warned researchers against making an exclusive commitment to either one of these two metaphors. a great deal of professional development research, however, does just this. as a result, an unnecessary dichotomy has crept into the research field. some researchers emphasize the specialized knowledge and skills teachers need in order to deliver effective lessons. following the acquisition metaphor, they view professional development as a method for providing teachers with this expertise. other researchers follow the participation metaphor and emphasize the social aspect of teacher learning. they view professional development as a way of strengthening a teacher’s professional learning community. we call the first view of professional development the “training model” and the second view the “sociocultural model.” because these two models emphasize separate aspects of teacher learning, it seems that neither one may be able to reveal a complete picture of the effects professional development activities have on teacher learning. this article explores the process of teacher professional development from a different perspective – one that acknowledges both the individual-cognitive and also the social aspects of teacher learning. we call this the “social capital model.” social capital is defined as the resources teachers can access through peer collaboration to support their ongoing learning. professional development is viewed as a way to increase the availability of teacher social capital. this can be done either by introducing new resources into the teachers’ social network or by improving the teachers’ access to the resources that already exist in that network. in other words, both expert knowledge and peer collaboration are seen as important to teacher learning. recently, education researchers have begun using this concept to describe the effects of school-wide teacher professional development programs. for example, researchers have shown that an analysis of teachers’ social capital can help explain the success or failure of reform initiatives (penuel, riel, krause, & frank, 2009). coburn and russell (2008) demonstrated ways in which administration policies are and are not able to increase current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 2 teacher social capital. baker-doyle and yoon (2011) added another level of complexity to the discussion. they argued that social networks with the most social capital contain “a delicate balance of knowledgeable experts, open-minded novices and bridge-builders (p. 90). in other words, the strength of school’s professional learning community is not only a function of the total amount of expertise or the total amount of collaboration in the school. also important is how this expertise is shared. the goal of this study is two fold: 1) to demonstrate how the concept of social capital can be used to describe the effects of professional development on teacher learning and 2) to determine whether the social capital model can offer a more complete picture of teacher learning than either the training or sociocultural models. in order to do this, data from a multi-year, school-wide professional development program were collected and analyzed using each of the three models. the article begins with an in-depth description of the training, sociocultural, and social capital models of professional development. the training model according to the training model, professional development consists of specifically designed activities. by participating in these activities, teachers acquire a predetermined set of knowledge and skills. when they return to the classroom, teachers apply what they have learned by making the associated changes to their professional practices. student learning increases as a result of these improved teaching practices. in the final step, standardized test scores rise to reflect this increase in student learning. borko (2004), for example, presents a clear agenda for professional development research based on this model. much of what is known about effective professional development has come out of research that follows the training model. researchers have conducted large scale studies, surveying and interviewing hundreds of teachers about their experiences (cohen & hill, 2000; desimone, porter, garet, yoon, & birman, 2002; garet, porter, desimone, birman, & yoon, 2001; huffman, thomas, & lawrenz, 2003; penuel, fishman, yamaguchi, & gallagher, 2007; supoitz & turner, 2000). research conducted in this vein has succeeded in identifying a broad consensus of the characteristics of high-quality professional development programs (birman, desimone, porter, & garet, 2000; borko & putnam, 1995; darling-hammond, wei, andree, richardson, & orphanos, 2009; desimone et al., 2002; elmore & burney, 1999; garet et al., 2001; hawley & valli, 1999; kuijpers, houtveen, & wubbles, 2010; little, 1984; loucks-horsley, 1999; pink & hyde, 1992; sykes, 1999; wilson & berne, 1999). these characteristics include professional development that is: centered on the curriculum, directly connected to teachers’ practices, focused on student learning, long-term or ongoing, coherent with other goals of the school community, and designed to allow for teacher collaboration. one of the goals of this research was to develop a method for designing consistently effective teacher professional development. but rather than providing a recipe for creating successful programs, the research revealed just how challenging it is to perform meaningful professional development. specifically, researchers have found it difficult to link individual professional development activities directly to gains in student achievement (hiebert, 1999; killion, 1998; louckshorsley, 1999; fishman, ronald, marx, best, & tal, 2003; sykes, 1999; wilson & berne, 1999; yager, 2005). making such a connection is difficult due to the large number of complicating factors between the two variables (guskey, 1998; guskey & sparks, 1996). the training model presents a clear research plan: test the students, train the teachers, and then retest the students. unfortunately, professional development programs rarely provide researchers with ready-made experiments. the problems lie in the hidden assumptions of the training model. even after participating in a high-quality professional development program, teachers often resist making changes to their existing practices (davis, 2003; johnson, 2006). teachers who do make a sustained attempt to reinvent their practices may still fail to make the exact changes that the professional developers had in mind. in addition, there is no guarantee that the prescribed changes will ultimately succeed in increasing student learning or that this increased learning will be easy to identify in the standardized test data. a final hidden assumption of the training model is that teacher learning happens on an individual, cognitive basis. this is not, however, necessarily the case. the sociocultural model from a sociocultural perspective, teacher learning results from their interactions with the professional communities in which they work. lave and wenger (1991) argued that professional learning involves not only the acquisition of certain knowledge and skills but also participation in a community of practice. to them, teacher knowledge is not something that is learned in one context, such as a teacher-education program or a professional development workshop, and then brought into the classroom. instead, teacher learning happens as teachers engage in and then give socially constructed meanings to their professional experiences. all this happens within a school community. the goal of professional development, therefore, should be to strengthen the teachers’ professional learning community (darling-hammond et al., 2009). halverson (2003) gave advice to school leaders on how this could be done. he claimed that teachers needed to “share their own practices, reflect upon their hard-won instructional expertise, question their own practices, and teacher professional learning as the growth of social capital 3 accept the suggestions of peers” (p. 22). each of these suggestions involves teacher collaboration. in the past, similar thinking led reformers to reorganize schools in order to increase the total amount of contact teachers had with each other (elmore & burney, 1999; long, 1996; o’day, goertz, & floden, 1995; pink & hyde, 1992). following their suggestions, many school districts, especially in urban areas, reorganized from subject departments to houses containing multiple subjects. reformers hoped that these changes would create professional learning communities that would support ongoing teacher learning. unfortunately, this has not always been the case. teachers at reorganized schools often continued to interact primarily within their own subject departments (scharmann, 2007; siskin & little, 1995). subject departments should not, however, be seen as obstacles to teachers’ collaborative learning. instead, the resilience of the subject department reveals a more complex picture of how teachers collaborate within a school community. social network data confirms that sub-groups play an important role in determining how teachers work together and what resources are made available through their collaboration (penuel et al., 2009). as such, it seems overly simplistic to speak only about the total amount of collaboration at a school. instead, researchers may have to take a closer look at who is working with whom. furthermore, the notion that teacher collaboration always supports teacher learning has been called into question by research that takes a closer look at what teachers really do when they interact with each other. often times, teachers avoid in-depth discussions about how students learn and which instructional approaches are most effective (hargreaves, 1993; little, 1991; sato & kleinsasser, 2004; scribner, 2003). collaboration can even have a negative effect on teacher learning if teachers reinforce each others’ poor instructional choices. other researchers have questioned just how important peer collaboration really is to teachers’ daily work. they argue that most decisions are made on the individual level – determined by teachers’ personal views and commitments (diniz-pereira, 2003; flores & day, 2006; hargreaves, 1993; hargreaves, 1994; huberman, 1993; little, 1991). the social capital model the training model relies on a straightforward view of teacher learning in which teachers change their practices after completing a predetermined set of professional development activities. experience has shown, however, that the teacher learning process is not this simple. the sociocultural model offers a more complex view of teacher learning. it claims that changing a teacher’s behavior involves affecting the entire culture in which he or she works. a teacher’s school community undoubtedly affects his or her thinking, but analyzing teacher learning on this level can miss the important differences in how the school’s culture is experienced by individual teachers. the social capital model offers researchers a new alternative. it is perhaps best introduced though a consideration of why teachers think and act the way they do. throughout their careers, teachers amass a unique, idiosyncratic collection of instructional ideas and practices, what van driel, beijaard, and verloop (2001) termed their personal practical knowledge. in most cases, teachers make only small, incremental changes to their beliefs and practices as new ideas are built off of older ones (ball & cohen, 1999; borko & putnam, 1995; davis, 2003; huberman, 1992). ideas must be internalized, tried out, and reflected upon before they are likely to be incorporated into a teachers’ thinking (darling-hammond & mclaughlin, 1999; kelly, 2006). depending on how it is used, a teachers’ personal practical knowledge can either be a source of valuable experiences and ideas or an obstacle to change. lortie (1975/2002) observed that the way in which teachers learn about their profession does not often “lay the basis for informed assessment of teaching technique or encourage the development of analytic orientations toward the work” (p. 67). as a result, many teachers repeat the same “common sense” instructional decisions over and over without giving them serious thought. schön (1987) argued that teachers can make the most out of their existing knowledge through an activity he termed “reflective practice.” this involves teachers examining their instructional choices and articulating the reasoning behind them. according to day (1987), teacher change results from “processes [that] clearly link deliberative reflection and inquiry, self-confrontation, and the sharing of insights gained from this” (p. 215). the final step in this process requires peer collaboration. in other words, reflective practice is perhaps best understood not as one individual’s meta-cognitive activity but rather as a social activity in which teachers and their colleagues participate (hoffmankipp, artiles, & lopez-torres, 2003). by viewing reflective practice as a social activity, it can be seen not only as a way to help teachers improve their instruction but also as a way of strengthening their professional learning community. to summarize, changes in teacher practice come incrementally as teachers consider new ideas and experiment with new instructional activities. collaboration is essential to this process for two main reasons. first, collaboration forces teachers to put their instructional approach into words. second, peer collaboration gives teachers a chance to think about new ideas and invites them to consider their instruction from different points of view. collaboration can be thought of as supplying the air and water that allows a teacher’s personal reflections to grow. the social capital model does not claim that effective instruction always involves peer collaboration but that sustained teacher learning usually does. for example, teachers with sufficient pedagogical and content knowledge current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 4 might be able to deliver effective lessons even if isolated from their peers. these teachers might also be able to identify parts of their instruction that need to be improved. but the scope and strength of their reflections would be limited by the walls of their classrooms and the extent of their prior knowledge. improving teaching and learning throughout a school is a social as well as intellectual process and therefore involves social capital. when examining the idea of social capital, the term ‘capital’ specifically refers to the ability of a commodity to be exchanged for other desired assets (bourdieu, 1986). these transactions are enacted by individuals in order to advance certain interests. for example, coleman (1988) discusses how the availability of social capital helps teenagers acquire a high school diploma. although social capital was originally seen as an individual’s private property, coleman also discussed differences in the types of networks connecting these individuals. in other words, social capital could be used to describe the characteristics of social networks. putnam (1995) took this approach the furthest, using social capital to analyze the social health of an entire country. portes (1998), among others, objected to this expanded use of social capital. he cautioned that social capital was not well suited to expressing all the complex effects, both positive and negative, of group membership. in an effort to better define the conceptual usefulness of social capital, researchers investigated the specific ways in which having this capital benefits individuals and groups. in their synthesis of the research literature, adler and kwon (2002) found that the effects of social capital “flow from the information, influence, and solidarity it makes available to the actor” (p. 23). by analyzing individuals’ access to resources along these lines, researchers can describe the types of social capital available to these individuals and therefore the characteristics of their social network. in this study, social capital was used to describe the strength of the teachers’ professional learning community. whereas sociologists are interested in how social capital is leveraged in order to maintain the advantage of one group over others, educational researchers need not think in zero-sum terms. shared use not only makes more resources available to teachers, it can also multiply the value of these resources to teacher learning. effective teaching requires many different types of resources including specialized knowledge (intellectual capital) and instructional technology (physical capital). simply by sharing these resources, teachers can improve their instruction. more importantly, these resources can increase the teachers’ social capital by initiating critical discussions of the theory or practice of effective instruction. the training model views teacher learning in terms of the absorption of new information and the adoption of new practices. the sociocultural model views it in terms of enculturation into a community of practice. the social capital model, on the other hand, recognizes that teachers play a more autonomous and conscious role in their own development. professional development may increase their access to social capital, but teachers decide for themselves if and how this capital will be used. method how will a professional development program look when viewed through the social capital model of professional development? how will this view be different from – maybe even more helpful than – the views offered by the training and sociocultural models? in order to answer these questions, the researchers collected extensive data from teachers engaged in a multi-year professional development program. data were collected on several aspects of the teachers’ professional development experiences including the characteristics of the meetings they attended, the teachers’ reactions to these meetings, how the teachers worked with each other, the teachers’ self-assessed learning, and their self-described changes in practice. ongoing informal conversations were also conducted with the professional developers. in addition, the researchers collected instructional artifacts such as lesson plans and student work. student learning was assessed though publically available standardized test results. site and participants the professional development program from which data were collected was a partnership between a state university’s graduate school of education and a nearby prek-8 school. two of the program’s goals were to increase the mathematical content knowledge of the school’s teachers and promote their use of standards-based instructional practices. the school in question served approximately 450 students in grades prek-8. this school was located in a mid-sized city in the northeastern united states. compared to state averages, a high percentage of the school’s population were minorities (69%), had limited english proficiency (21%), received free or reduced priced lunches (77%), and scored on the lowest range on the state’s yearly mathematics exam (53%). eighteen of the school’s 20 teachers (90%) participated in the program, attending at least 75 hours of professional development during the year. the professional development program contained a variety of different learning opportunities including a four-day content institute during the summer and additional weekend meetings during the school year. taught by a local expert in mathematics education, these meetings were designed to improve the teachers’ knowledge of mathematics and pedagogical skills. other weekend meetings were devoted to lesson planning. in these meetings, teachers were introduced to the four stages of lesson planning (panasuk, stone, & todd, 2002; panasuk & todd, 2005). this lesson planning scheme involves writing student learning objectives, constructing a homework assignment matched to the lesson objectives, planning classroom activities to develop the identified concepts, and creating an activator to begin the teacher professional learning as the growth of social capital 5 lesson. these meetings also gave teachers a chance to practice using what they had learned by working together to plan new lessons for the upcoming week. the program also included weekly team meetings designed to provide teachers with ongoing collaborative support. these meetings were attended by teachers who taught at the same grade level and were held during their hour-long shared planning period. the team meetings followed a strict format called the fine tuning protocol that divided the teachers’ activities into a series of separate tasks (easton, 2002). each week, one of the teachers would select a topic for discussion and receive feedback from his or her peers. during some of these meetings, teachers discussed student work. other times, they presented ideas for classroom activities or developed common assessments. two questions worth asking about this program are, “was it collaborative?” and, “was it effective?” as for the first question, parts of the program were collaborative and other parts of it were not. in order to make the comparison between the three models as fair as possible, we did not assume that the collaborative activities would necessarily be any more beneficial than the other parts of the program. answering the second question was not part of this study. we were not interested in using the three models of professional development to provide three different evaluations of the program. instead, we attempted to use the program as a laboratory to investigate the models themselves. data collection and analysis the data for this study were collected from three sources: meeting observations, post-meeting surveys, and teacher interviews. using these three methods, the researchers collected data on the teachers’ professional development activities, how the teachers felt about these activities, and how the teachers believed these activities affected their professional practice. special attention was paid to how the teachers worked together. data were collected during the 2008 – 2009 school year. table 1 interviewed teachers’ demographic information pseudonym grades taught teaching assignment years of teaching experience overall satisfaction with collaborative pd (1-5) mary * k all subjects 29 4.82 hannah 2 all subjects 11 4.45 rachael 2-4 special education support 10 4.91 sarah 5-6 special education support 3 4.18 abigail 6 math and science 3 2.63 julia 7-8 math 3 4.32 anne ** 7-8 social studies 8 4.50 elizabeth 7-8 science 11 4.55 * did not participate in team meetings ** did not participating in weekend meetings current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 6 over the course of one year, the researchers observed the teachers’ meetings and took comprehensive notes. over 40 hours of teacher meetings were observed. the teachers’ activities were coded based on the four categories of teachers’ collaborative behaviors identified by little (1991) – storytelling and scanning, aid and assistance, sharing, and joint work. this allowed for an analysis of the different ways in which teachers worked together throughout the program. in addition, 75 anonymous surveys were collected after teacher meetings. these surveys indicated that, with one or two exceptions, most of the teachers had a high opinion of the meetings. over half of the returned surveys were identical, listing “strongly agree” for every prompt. during the second half of the school year, teachers were interviewed and asked to describe the overall characteristics of their collaborative experiences. of the 18 teachers who participated in the professional development, eight agreed to be interviewed. demographic information for these teachers is provided in table 1. their semistructured interviews lasted approximately 1 hour and began with an 11 question interview-survey. each interviewee was then asked follow-up questions based on her answers. this ensured that all the interviews covered the same set of topics and allowed the experiences of one teacher to be contrasted with the experiences of the others. all but one of the interviews took place at the school where these teachers worked after the students had left for the day. the interviewees were each given a $20 gift card to an office supply company for participating. the interviews were recorded and transcribed. little (1982) identified seven dimensions of staff interactions: range, focus, inclusivity, reciprocity, relevance, concreteness, and frequency. as part of the interview survey, teachers were asked to rate the extent of their collaboration on each of these seven dimensions on a (1-5) scale. the teachers were then asked four questions about the extent to which the professional development had affected their knowledge and practices. the average value of the responses to these 11 questions was interpreted as a measure of the interviewee’s overall satisfaction with the collaborative professional development. the data collected from the observations, surveys, and interviews were coded using the three models of professional development. each model emphasizes different types of data. the training model was concerned with evidence of changes in teacher knowledge, teacher practice, and student performance. the sociocultural model was concerned with evidence of changes in how the teachers worked together. the social capital model looked for examples of shared resources that became available as a result of the program. we analyzed the collected data not only to find evidence of teacher learning according to each model, but also to identify possible challenges to the models. the following is an example of how interview data were coded for this study. answers to questions such as, “did you learn any new mathematics during this program?” and “what effect did this program have on your instruction?” typically provided information relevant to the training model. on the other hand, answers to questions such as, “how frequently were you able to collaborate with other teachers?” and “did you have any additional opportunities to collaborate as a result of the program?” were more relevant to the sociocultural model. evidence of increased social capital was found in the answers to a variety of different questions, any time a teacher discussed new resources he or she had gained access to through peer collaboration. one example of a question that was likely to lead to this sort of evidence is, “what parts of this program do you think worked best and why?” limitations the most significant limitation of this exploratory case study stems from the small sample size. the conclusions we reached may say more about the characteristics of the participating teachers and their professional development experiences than the nature of professional development in general. still, by completing this study, we were able to raise important questions for professional development researchers to consider. providing definitive answers to these questions, however, would require future work that includes a reliable measurement tool for quantifying teacher social capital. the small same size complicated some of our data collection efforts. originally, it was hoped that the postmeeting surveys would indicate which of the different kinds of meetings the teachers found most beneficial. but because so many of the surveys were identical, indicating ‘strongly agree’ for every prompt, they did not prove useful for this purpose. as a result, the teacher surveys did not play a significant role in the data analysis. instead, the researchers relied on the meeting observations and the teacher interviews. choosing how to express the collected data in terms of the training, sociocultural, and social capital models was the main methodological challenge in this study. although there seemed to be a clear distinction between the training model and the sociocultural model, the teachers’ behaviors did not always fall neatly into one category or the other. for example, peer coaches were available to support the teachers during the weekend meetings. the teachers’ interactions with these coaches often included aspects of both training and collaboration. as a result, data from the observations were sometimes difficult to code. in order to address this difficulty, we asked the teachers during the interviews to clarify which professional development activities they found most beneficial and why. another limitation involves our presentation of the training and sociocultural models of professional teacher professional learning as the growth of social capital 7 development. the methodology of the study required us to highlight the common elements found among the many different approaches to conceptualizing teachers’ professional learning. in so doing, we were able to place much of the recent professional development literature into one of two groups – the training model or the sociocultural model. this categorization was possible even though educational researchers typically adopt more nuanced models of teacher learning than the two we described. results this section explains how the collected data looked when viewed through the three models of professional development. the training model was useful for describing the new concepts teachers learned during the program. the sociocultural model was useful for describing how the program increased collaboration at the school. these two models conceptualized teacher professional learning differently, making a direct comparison between them difficult. both the training and sociocultural models did, however, have difficulty explaining all of the collected data. the social capital model, on the other hand, allowed for a more complete description of the effects this professional development program had on each teachers’ professional learning. the training model following the training model, the researchers sought evidence that the teachers had learned new material, changed their practices, and succeeded in raising student test scores. clear evidence was found that the program achieved the first goal. the situation was more uncertain, however, for the other two goals. although teachers did change their practices during the program, they did not always do so in the ways the professional developers had envisioned. test scores did improve during the course of the program, but these gains were not great enough to declare the program a clear success. at some of the weekend meetings, the teachers heard lectures on topics including place value and absolute value. teachers described these lectures as extremely helpful. “that was new math for me,” mary exclaimed, “it really was!” during other weekend meetings, the visiting expert challenged the teachers’ view of how mathematics should be taught. she showed them how a student’s understanding of math concepts could be developed incrementally without relying on algorithms. the expert talked about how certain teaching practices can foster student misconceptions and how this can be avoided. in rachael’s words, “she shook up my programmed way of thinking about mathematics.” but the researchers also found evidence that teachers were having trouble implementing the ideas presented by the professional developers. for example, many of the lessons planned during the weekend meetings were not written in the way prescribed by the visiting expert. the lesson planning method introduced during the program had teachers construct the homework assignment before creating an activity to begin the lesson. this process seemed counterintuitive to some of the teachers because, when the lesson is taught, students see the activator before being asked to complete the homework. hannah described this method of lesson planning as, “one of the things i had a hard time with . . . which i thought was pretty weird [because] i always planned the homework last.” all of the interviewed teachers reported using the new lesson planning scheme with their students. only sarah and julia, however, talked about lesson planning when asked to describe how the professional development program had affected their instruction. the other teachers mentioned a variety of changes including using a new seating plan, new textbooks, and new teaching props. each of these teachers described changing her instruction in a different way. although most of the teachers expressed a preference for professional development activities that led to practical suggestions they could use in the classroom, the teachers had different opinions on which meetings were best able to produce these suggestions. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 8 according to the training model, the ultimate test of any professional development program is its ability to demonstrate increased student achievement. results from yearly state-mandated tests would, therefore, be of great interest. on these tests, scores were grouped into four categories: advanced, proficient, needs improvement, and warning. figure 1 shows a slow but steady increase in student scores during the time of the program. these results show a modest but measurable increase in student achievement. this seems to indicate that the professional development program was successful. a different interpretation is suggested, however, when the scores are compared with state averages during the same time. this is shown in figure 2. the percentage increase in those students scoring ‘advanced or proficient’ at this school (from 13% to 25%) was slightly better than the average gains state wide (from 50% to 59%), but the school’s overall performance was still far below state averages. what do these data demonstrate in terms of the training model? do they indicate that the professional development program described in this study should be used in other schools or not? it seems that a case could be made in either direction. the sociocultural model following the sociocultural model, the researchers sought evidence that the program had increased the amount of collaboration at the school and had strengthened the teachers’ professional learning community. the teachers all agreed that the program provided them with additional opportunities to work with their colleagues. they enjoyed these opportunities and described them as helpful. the teachers were not so united, however, in their descriptions of the school’s professional learning community. each teacher seemed to understand the role of collaboration differently. this calls into question the usefulness of the concept of a professional learning community in describing the specific effects of this professional development program. during the interviews, the teachers explained how the weekend meetings gave them chances to meet with colleagues who worked at different grade levels; colleagues with whom they otherwise had little contact. these meetings gave teachers a better understanding of where their lessons fit into the school’s overall mathematics curriculum. the weekend meetings also gave teachers a valuable opportunity to discuss upcoming lessons with tutors and special education teachers. teachers also enjoyed the team meetings, especially at the beginning of the year. “everyone sounds so smart, i love sitting in on these!” hannah said. “when you’re looking at a problem all by yourself it’s difficult, you’re worrying; so this was very helpful.” the team meetings gave teachers a chance to clarify their educational goals. during these meetings, the teachers made frequent reference to the state benchmarks. they all agreed with rachael that, “our goal is to get them [the students] to grade level no matter what.” but it was not always clear how this could be achieved, especially when dealing with students who had english language or special education needs. one problem with the sociocultural model is that it can lead to the assumption that every teacher in a school will view the school’s culture in a similar way. but the data collected in this study tell a different story. five of the interviewed teachers believed they had adequate opportunities to collaborate with their colleagues, but mary, teacher professional learning as the growth of social capital 9 abigail, and sarah did not. furthermore, the teachers all expressed different reasons for wanting to work with their peers. the teachers’ amount of classroom experience affected what they wished to gain from collaboration. three of the eight interviewed teachers – sarah, abigail, and julia – were just beginning their careers. they were still developing their professional identities and still searching for the instructional methods that would work best for them. for example, abigail talked about the difficulty she was having assigning and assessing homework. she was looking for colleagues whose example she could follow. she also wanted classroom management advice. hannah, rachael, and elizabeth had more educational experience but were currently in the first year of new teaching assignments. these teachers were searching for effective approaches to teaching the new material. elizabeth observed, “i have three college degrees and really don’t need more coursework. give me some practical suggestions.” each of these teachers specifically mentioned the value of the lesson planning meetings. teachers left these meetings with lessons ready for the next week. the lesson planning meetings also helped teachers develop the skills needed to plan better lessons in the future. the final two interviewees had been working in their current assignments for several years. anne explained how the professional development program had given her a better understanding of how students learn. she was able to use this additional knowledge to better teach all her students, especially those in need of the most help. mary, who was entering her third decade in the classroom, told us how collaboration helped keep her instruction fresh. “it’s never the same. i love changing what i do.” she described her colleagues as a source of both new ideas and inspiration. following the sociocultural model, professional developers might assume that increased collaboration will always lead to increased teacher learning. but a closer examination of the team meetings showed that this was not the case. at the beginning of the year, the team meetings were very popular with the teachers. over the winter, however, their opinions began to change. “we do the same thing every single week,” sarah stated. “we look at student work and it gets kind of tedious.” at the same time, the teachers were giving very high praise to the weekend meetings presented by the visiting professor even though these meetings included more direct instruction and less time for peer collaboration. in other words, it seems that both collaborative and non-collaborative professional development can be beneficial. the social capital model in the previous two sections, the collected data were coded using the training and sociocultural models of professional development. this section reviews the data for evidence of increased social capital – resources that the teachers could access through peer collaboration in order to support their ongoing learning. identifying and describing these resources was made easier by grouping them into three categories: access to expert knowledge, emotional support from shared commitments, and the ability to analyze instructional practices. the teachers in this study gained access to several forms of expert knowledge including knowledge of practical classroom activities, classroom management techniques, mathematical content, and the principles of effective instruction. with regard to their emotional support, teachers were able to discuss the school’s goals for student learning, learn about the school’s mathematics curriculum, and coordinate upcoming lessons with special education teachers and tutors. teachers were also given tools to help analyze their instructional practices. they practiced using a new lesson planning scheme, critiqued each others’ instructional decisions, discussed the progress of individual students, and developed common student assessments. the above list of teacher resources – or social capital – shows some of the effects that the professional development program had. importantly, the social capital model does not assume that every teacher had equal access to these resources. instead, the teachers’ access to resources was influenced by the sub-groups in which they worked. furthermore, not every teacher would find these resources equally useful. this explains why different teachers responded to the professional development activities in such different ways. the real strength of the social capital model, however, can be expressed by taking a closer look at examples where the professional development program worked best. three of these ‘success stories’ are included below. they involve a team meeting, a response to the lesson planning scheme, and a new look at the student test scores. for these examples, the concept of social capital provides a more coherent explanation of what was happening than either the training or sociocultural models. in one team meeting, julia asked for advice concerning an english language learner who was studying linear equations. she distributed photocopies of the student’s written explanation of how to calculate the slope of a line. everyone at the meeting agreed that the student understood the mathematical concepts but was unable to express her understanding in written english. the teachers discussed how to evaluate the work, what accommodations were appropriate, and how a similar answer would be scored on the upcoming state test. this led to a broader discussion of the instructional goals for english language learners. the teachers also discussed possible instructional strategies such as having the student’s classmates peer-edit the assignment, having the student memorize math vocabulary words, and minimizing the language issue in order to focus on the student’s mathematical ability. at the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 10 end of the meeting, julia seemed pleased with what she had heard. she nodded and said, “lots of good input.” in the preceding example, the teacher faced difficult instructional decisions. the comments from her peers gave her a better understanding of the situation and information that could help her improve her instruction. in other words, the team meetings helped give her access to the expert knowledge she needed. much of this knowledge came from her colleagues explaining what they had done in similar situations. this meeting provided a way to access the knowledge stored in her colleagues’ combined experience. it provided greater access to a resource already present within the teachers’ social network – it increased their social capital. the results of this meeting would not be easy to describe using the training model of professional development. julia did not receive any formal training; she was not going to adopt any new practices because she was told they were the right ones to use. julia did, however, receive helpful suggestions from professionals with uniquely relevant experience. these suggestions could help her critically reflect on and improve her current practices. the second example concerns how the teachers responded to the lesson planning method introduced during the program. the sociocultural model would have a difficult time expressing the benefits of these meetings because planning lessons had been, and will likely remain, mostly an individual activity at this school. also, the new planning scheme was not developed on-site but brought in by a visiting expert. for these reasons, it seems like the training model is better suited to explaining this part of the teachers’ professional development. the training model might not, however, be able to tell the whole story. by following the planning format, some of the teachers in this study began to take a step-by-step approach to developing their students’ conceptual understanding of mathematics. hannah explained, “it has really made me go through and really read through the lesson and think about what it is i want them to learn.” in other words, the new approach to lesson planning supported her reflexive practice. it was an approach to lesson planning that other teachers had learned about too. this is important because reflective practice is understood to be a social as well as an individual activity. the lesson planning format, therefore, became a source of social capital because it provided a shared model of high-quality instruction that could facilitate the teachers’ discussions. the third example of how the social capital model explained the teachers’ professional development experiences involves a reexamination of student test scores. unlike the training model, the social capital model does not view student data primarily as a way of evaluating the success or failure of a professional development program. instead, this data is seen as a way of helping professional developers understand how the school’s resources are being used. for example, the test scores showed a noticeable difference between student performance by grade level. this is shown in figures 3 and 4. teacher professional learning as the growth of social capital 11 scores in the lower grades increased every year while scores in the higher grades did not. an analysis of the teachers’ social capital might help professional developers understand why. perhaps the teachers in grades 3, 4, & 5 were been better able to employ the resources made available by the professional development program. if this is the case, an analysis of the middle school teachers’ social capital could help identify the additional resources they need. conclusions following the training model, we were able to find some evidence of teacher learning. there was less evidence, however, of the changes in teacher instruction and student achievement that the program had hoped to bring about. following the sociocultural model, we were able to find evidence of increased teacher collaboration. there was less evidence, however, that the program had established a strong professional learning community among all teachers. the social capital model, on the other hand, was able to offer a more congruous description of the collected data. specifically, the social capital model was better able to accommodate the fact that different teachers responded to their professional development experiences in unique and unpredictable ways. under the training model, researchers ask, what don’t these teachers know and what aren’t they doing? the sociocultural model leads to the question, how can these teachers work together more effectively? in the social capital model, the questions are: what resources are available to the teachers and how are these resources being used? this is the crucial difference between the social capital model and the other two. viewing professional development in terms of resource building invites questions about how these resources are being used. as a result, the social capital model can lead to suggestions for how a professional development program could be improved that would not be obvious from either of the other models. the professional development program described in this paper gave teachers a wide variety of different learning opportunities. in terms of social capital, many different resources were added to the teachers’ social network. at times, however, these resources were used in an uncoordinated way. specifically, ideas about lesson planning from the weekend meetings were not often referenced during the weekly team meetings. the teachers at these meetings relied on their own practical knowledge instead of analyzing instructional decisions based on the model of effective instruction presented in the program. the professional developers could make small changes to the weekly team meetings in order to address this lack of coordination. team meetings could focus on the teachers’ lessons instead of their individual questions. teachers could use the lesson planning technique introduced in the program to analyze each others’ lessons and suggest possible improvements. the team meetings would thus become a vehicle for disseminating not just the teachers’ personal practical knowledge but also the expert pedagogical knowledge introduced during the program. implications the social capital model is certainly not the first attempt to unify the cognitive and social aspects of teacher learning. other attempts often start with either a cognitive or a sociocultural framework and then incorporate additional considerations into that framework. in so doing, these studies may acknowledge different views of where teacher learning comes from – either from experts in workshops or from peers through collaboration – but they often ignore the fundamental differences in what teacher learning is according to the two models. this fact is nicely demonstrated by the two examples below. both of these current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 12 studies discuss the cognitive and social sides of teachers’ reflections, but they do so from very different points of view. kuijpers et al. (2010) present a model for teacher professional learning that integrates “top-down” strategies for teacher training with “bottom-up” strategies for encouraging teachers’ reflections. the researchers remain committed, however, to the training model of professional development. they were looking for a template that could be used to design consistently effective programs. the template they describe includes collaboration with peer coaches because the researchers believe this to be an effective way to help teachers adopt new instructional practices. in other words, they see collaborative professional development as a good way to transmit knowledge to teachers for use in the classroom. in another recent example, ovens and tinning (2009) investigated the effects a pre-service training program had on the reflections of beginning teachers. the pedagogical concepts presented in this program were seen as important but only insofar as the teachers were able to use these ideas to further their own reflections. ovens and tinning were committed to a sociocultural view of teacher learning in which the beginning teachers were actively constructing their professional identities. in this view, teacher knowledge loses nearly all its meaning when separated from the contexts in which it is practiced. unlike these two examples, the concept of social capital allows for a more seamless weaving together of the cognitive and social aspects of teacher learning. pedagogical concepts and structured conversations can both be used to support teachers’ reflections. both are potential sources of social capital. professional development is seen as resource building. the resources are shared, but how they are used depends on the individual teachers. different models for professional development may be appropriate for different research goals. if, for example, a researcher wished to evaluate the effectiveness of a reform initiative, the training model might be a sensible choice. if, instead, a researcher wished to examine the formation of expert teachers, the sociocultural model might be appropriate. but if the researcher was interested in improving the professional development at a particular school in order to better serve both teachers and students, the social capital model is worth considering. darling-hammond et al. 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(2005). accomplishing the visions for professional development of teachers advocated in the national science education standards. journal of science teacher education, 16(2), 95-102 teacher professional learning as the growth of social capital 15 article citation johnson, w., lustick, d., & kim, m.j. (2011). teacher professional learning as the growth of social capital. current issues in education, 14(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/781 author notes wesley johnson, ed.d. 505 prospect st. methuen, ma 01844 wjohnson@bpsk12.org wesley johnson has been teaching secondary science for ten years. during this time he completed a doctorate from the university of massachusetts lowell. his dissertation topic was teacher collaborative learning. david lustick, ph.d. university of massachusetts lowell 530 o'leary library, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854 david_lustick@uml.edu david lustick taught secondary science for twelve years prior to receiving his doctorate from michigan state university. dr. lustick is currently an associate professor of math and science education at the university of massachusetts lowell. minjeong kim, ph.d. university of massachusetts lowell 529 o'leary library, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854 minjeong_kim@uml.edu minjeong kim received her doctorate from ohio state university. her research interests include literacy education. dr. kim is currently an associate professor of education at the university of massachusetts lowell. *the authors wish to acknowledge the valuable contributions by regina panasuk towards this work. current issues in education vol. 14 no.3 16 volume 14, number 3 september 13, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editor melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy carol masser leslie salazar jennifer shea alaya swann technical editor james stockburger faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers volume does i citation gill, m. & intervent ht abstract this pap identifie answerin designs t feasible research and plan sample s participa keyword research 13, numbe it work? mi & hahs-vau tions in educ ttp://cie.asu. t per examines s interventio ng causal qu that may ov or appropria in educatio ning future study to test ants who ma ds: research er 4 a guid i ichele gre ughn, d. (20 cational res edu/ s types of re on research uestions are ercome limi ate. the rol n. finally, research on the effects ay be consid design, inte e to inve in educat goire gill university 10). does it earch. curre esearch ques as a type of reviewed, p itations face le of the des a graphical n educationa of a new ma dering plann ervention re stigating tional re and debb of central work? a g ent issues in stions posed f causal que paying attent ed when ran signs is disc organizer to al interventio ath program ning their ow search, effic the effic esearch bie l. hahs florida guide to inve n education, d by educati stion. next tion to the a ndomized ex cussed as is t o aid in inte ons is prese m that may b wn research cacy, causal is cacy of in s-vaughn estigating th 13(4). retri onal researc t, research d application o xperimental the role of n erpreting exi nted. a des be used as a is also pres l research, n sn 1099-83 nterventi he efficacy o ieved from chers and designs for of lesser use designs are non-causal isting resear sign for a model for ented. non-causal 39x ons of ed not rch current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 does it work? a guide to investigating the efficacy of interventions in educational research in a recent article on newsweek.com (2008), peg tyre commented on the latest study showing that more boys—a lot more boys, nearly double—are being referred to medical professionals for emotional and behavior problems than are girls. that statement is a fact. in the next several paragraphs, tyre discusses possible explanations for such a disparity. these explanations take the form of various theories about why boys are struggling more than girls. some attribute the cause to an increase in adhd in boys or the burgeoning levels of contaminants in our environment. tyre offers her own theory—that kids are overscheduled and asked to behave like adults at too young of an age; moreover, their unstructured free play time has diminished. she supports her theory with anecdotal evidence, but tyre is not alone in her thinking. the recent plethora of books with titles such as the hurried child (elkind, 2001) and the case against standardized testing: raising the scores, ruining the schools (kohn, 2000) show a backlash against schools’ increasing reliance on standardized testing as well as the no child left behind act (u.s. department of education, n.d.). but is her theory correct? tyre makes plausible arguments, but there are other arguments—and, more importantly, conflicting data—that cast doubt on her lay theory. consider, for instance, the many benefits of head start (u.s. department of health and human services, 2001) and the abcedarian project (national institute of early education research, 2008) for low income children. these kids do not seem to be harmed by earlier exposure to academic rigor. consider also children in colonial times (washington crossing historic park, n.d.) or living in indigenous tribes (sprott, 2002) who were and are expected to perform significant household chores with little playtime at very young ages. there is no evidence that these children suffered negative outcomes from such labor. does it work? 3 so, who do we believe? are all theories equally valid? of course not. the scientific method provides a way to evaluate claims of competing theories so we can determine which are better supported than others. we may never “prove” a theory correct, but we can “disprove” enough claims of the theory to render the theory invalid. as educators and education researchers, we share the common goal of trying to find solutions that work to increase students’ success in school, and ultimately, in life. often, we may ask ourselves if what we are doing works. we may obtain anecdotal evidence that it does, but what if it only works in one classroom and not others? perhaps the activity we love works for reasons unbeknownst to us. it would be helpful to be able to identify the aspects of the activity that are most beneficial for improving students’ learning in order to most efficiently meet students’ needs. similarly, how do we know that what is being taught during professional development teacher work days actually works? it would save much time and resources if teachers knew that what they were being told to implement in their classrooms really and truly works. the purpose of this paper is to provide a useful heuristic for understanding and evaluating intervention research in education. when one of the authors of this paper was a teacher, she dreamed of having access to a large binder filled with research-supported activities that made sense and promoted student learning. what actually happened, however, was that she was required to attend multiple workshops and inservice trainings in which each presenter claimed that his/her particular method of instruction was really the best way to teach. what was most disconcerting was that the theories underlying the different methods often conflicted with each other, resulting in superficial changed to the curriculum rather than well thought out plans for how to design comprehensive instruction based on these techniques. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 as stated in the national research council's 2002 report on scientific research in education (shavelson & towne, 2002): no one would think of getting to the moon or of wiping out a disease without research. likewise, one cannot expect reform efforts in education to have significant effects without research-based knowledge to guide them… [t]o address the challenges of, for example, low-performing schools, the 'achievement gap,' and language diversity, educators today require new knowledge to reengineer schools in effective ways. to meet these new demands, rigorous, sustained, scientific research in education is needed (pp. 1, 12). to meet this need and to suggest improvements in designing future educational studies, there must be an increased dissemination of information on and guidelines for effectively conducting research on educational interventions. new guidelines exist (e.g., see center for psychology in schools and education, 2008), but they are still seldom implemented. with the recent emphasis in our public schools on accountability, it becomes even more important to make sure that we are investing in curriculum and teaching methods that really work to increase students’ academic success. it is our hope in this paper to provide teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers with the tools to be able to evaluate current research on interventions—in our case, activities that are supposed to work to improve schooling—in order to make more informed decisions about their efficacy in the classroom. unfortunately, for many years, educational research on interventions was often not generalizable to schools because of either its weak design or lack of ecological validity (shadish, cook, & campbell, 2002). in 2002, the institute of education sciences (ies) was created to help does it work? 5 strengthen the quality of educational research, particularly research on educational interventions—those specific activities, programs, curriculum changes, or textbooks that purport to increase student achievement and success in school: the education sciences reform act of 2002 established a new organization within the u.s. department of education, the institute of education sciences. our mission is to provide rigorous evidence on which to ground education practice and policy. by identifying what works, what doesn’t, and why, we intend to improve the outcomes of education for all students, particularly those at risk of failure. (whitehurst, n.d.) since the formation of the ies and the push for quality educational research, guidelines for conducting such research have been clarified and updated. for example, the recent revision of cook and campbell’s classic text on quasi-experimentation (1979) by shadish, cook, and campbell (2002) presents an extensive discussion about not only how to conduct high quality educational intervention research, but also the conditions under which different types of research designs might be used. in addition, the center for psychology in schools and education, an office within the american psychological association, just published a useful chart to help educational researchers test intervention effects using multiple methods (2008). still, such guidelines remain out of reach of many educators and educational researchers. in this paper, we will discuss the types of research questions posed by educational researchers, review research designs created to answer causal questions, and then present a useful graphical organizer for helping educational researchers decide which study design to use, which can also be used as a useful heuristic for evaluating intervention research. we will conclude with a design for a sample study to test the effects of a new math program using the guidelines just presented. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 types of research questions concerning education in this section, we discuss examples of the types of research questions posed by educational researchers and identify intervention research as a particular type of causal question. this list is not comprehensive, but it does address the majority of questions asked by those interested in educational research. factual questions these questions concern descriptive information about a topic, such as what are the facts about x, or how does a relate to b. an example question might be, “on average, how do u.s. students compare in their math achievement compared to those in other industrialized nations?” another is “are ses and achievement related?” these types of questions are often investigated using straightforward quantitative designs, such as survey questionnaires and correlational statistics. investigative questions investigative questions concern why things are the way they are, such as why does a particular phenomenon happen. a typical example is the question, “why do students with low ses tend to do more poorly in school than their more affluent counterparts?” this type of question may be answered using grounded theory (glaser & strauss, 1967) or using a predetermined theoretical framework, with the careful collection of evidence to support or disprove key hypotheses of the theory involved. attachment theory is a good example. ainsworth (crain, 2005) started with the idea that some children seemed to be happier, more confident, and more connected to their parents. she investigated this phenomenon at first with ethnographic research techniques where she lived among a tribe in uganda and studied their does it work? 7 parenting techniques. she developed the idea of secure attachment, then after moving to baltimore, she tested her theory by designing a strange situation for children to see if how they actually reacted upon being separated from their mothers confirmed her hypothesis of how they would react. explanatory questions these questions concern how something works, such as, how does this method or this type of schooling work. an example question is “how does montessori education benefit students with mental retardation?” this type of question is usually answered with qualitative research that investigates a phenomenon over a period of time, gathering careful descriptive evidence from classroom observations, interviews, etc. and is particularly suited for grounded theory research (glaser & strauss, 1967). intervention questions these questions concern whether one treatment works better than other, along the lines of whether x (treatment) is helpful to students. similarly, we can ask if one treatment is better than another, such as, is x better than y, or which is better under what conditions. a sample question might be: “is whole language instruction better than phonics instruction?” these are the types of questions we are addressing in our paper, and they are best answered using experimental methodology, particularly the gold standard in educational research of the randomized control trial (rct). due to the limitations and difficulties of executing this design, particularly in school settings, the quasi-experimental design was created to also help answer questions of a causal nature. used properly, it can be a very good way to test the efficacy of particular school interventions. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 in the next section, we review research designs for answering causal questions that are concerned with the efficacy of instructional interventions, paying particular attention to some of the newer designs that may overcome some of the limitations encountered when rcts cannot be conducted. research designs for answering causal questions in intervention research new methods, treatments, interventions, curriculum, and other strategies are often implemented in classes or schools with the intention of making some positive impact, such as increasing student performance, learning, or skills or decreasing behavior problems. as these new elements are introduced in a classroom or implemented across grades or school-wide, the question of “how effective is x on y” and more specifically “does x cause y” often arises. these are valid and important questions to answer. for example, does the implementation of a new teaching method increase student performance in mathematics more than the previous method? it is important to define what causality is in the context of intervention research. a causal relationship is such that the following occurs: 1) the cause (e.g., new intervention or curriculum) occurs prior to the effect (e.g., student performance in mathematics); 2) there is a relationship between the cause and the effect; and 3) the cause is the only plausible explanation for the effect (shadish et al., 2002). there are a number of research designs that allow researchers to study causal relationships, and the most commonly known is an experiment. additional but less frequently does it work? 9 used designs exist, however, that are valuable in educational research when true manipulation of the treatment (as in a true experiment) is not possible. the following research designs will be reviewed: a) randomized experiment; b) quasi-experiment; c) regression discontinuity; d) propensity score analysis; e) correlational; and f) action research and design experiments. randomized experiments for intervention research what is referred to as an experiment has been more specifically labeled a 'social experiment' (p. 546) by cook and shadish (1994) or a ‘field experiment’ by kerlinger & lee (2000, p. 581). a social experiment (shortened to just 'experiment' in this manuscript) occurs outside of a controlled environment (e.g., in a ‘real’ classroom) which therefore results in less standardization and more enduring treatments as compared to experiments conducted in a controlled laboratory (cook & shadish, 1994). in a randomized experiment, the treatment (e.g., new teaching method or curriculum) is assigned to students (i.e., the participants in the research study) on the basis of chance such as through a coin toss or random number generation (shadish et al., 2002). when random assignment is performed correctly, the groups created are similar, on average (shadish et al., 2002). random experiments, more specifically termed randomized control trials (rct) (shadish et al., 2002) or more loosely “true experiment” (wallen & frankael, 2001, p. 279), are often known as the "gold standard" (shadish et al., 2002, p. 13) in educational research. this is because when designed rigorously and systematically, random assignment creates groups that are similar, on average, and any differences between groups can be attributed to the intervention rather than other factors (shadish et al., 2002; torgerson & torgerson, 2008). in addition, when a randomized controlled trial is designed and conducted systematically and rigorously, relatively simple statistical procedures are all that is required to analyze the data (torgerson & torgerson, 2008). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 in many randomized controlled trials conducted to examine intervention research, it is not possible to randomly assign at the student level but it is possible to randomly assign at a cluster level (e.g., randomly assigning classes rather than individual students to different teaching methods). if the interest is on studying the student, however, randomly assigning at the cluster level introduces analytical issues such as potential homogeneity that exists within the clusters. although beyond the scope of this paper, statistical procedures such as multilevel modeling are commonly used to address issues related to cluster random assignment (raudenbush & bryk, 2002; shadish et al., 2002). there are a number of variations of randomized experiments that can be applied in intervention research. the most basic design includes two conditions (e.g., one treatment and one control group) in which students are randomly assigned to one of two groups. the students in the treatment group receive the intervention or treatment (e.g., new teaching method or curriculum). how the control group is defined is left to the researcher's choosing. the control group may be, for example, a group that receives no treatment at all or a number of variations in which the control group receives the treatment at some point or receives a comparison treatment (e.g., the method of instruction that has always been offered or the curriculum that has been used previously) (shadish et al., 2002). regardless, both the treatment students and the control students are measured after the intervention. a classic example of this basic design is research conducted on the salk polio vaccine in which 400,000 children were randomly assigned to receive a placebo or a polio vaccine (meier, 1972). other commonly used experimental designs include: 1) pretest-posttest control group; 2) alternative treatments design with pretest; 3) multiple treatments and controls with pretest; 4) factorial; 5) longitudinal; and 6) crossover (shadish et al., 2002). discussing each of these designs is beyond the scope of the present paper. does it work? 11 interested readers are encouraged to review any of a number of excellent sources (e.g., frankael & wallen, 2005; kerlinger & lee, 2000; shadish et al., 2002). quasi-experiments in intervention research although rcts may be the gold standard in educational research because they most clearly allow the inference of causality, there are many instances in which rcts are not ethical nor feasible (rutter, 2007). a quasi-experiment does not include random assignments of students to intervention (shadish et al., 2002; wallen & frankael, 2001). this does not mean inferences of causality cannot be made from quasi-experiments; however, causality is more difficult and more attention must be paid in designing the study in order to reduce the likelihood of other explanations for what has occurred (beyond that of the intervention) (shadish et al., 2002). in a quasi-experiment, the following conditions must still occur: 1) the cause occurs prior to the effect; 2) there is a relationship between the cause and the effect; and 3) the cause is the only plausible explanation for the effect (shadish et al., 2002). the last condition is the point at which random experiments and quasi-experiments differ. in a quasi-experiment, the last condition is not met through random assignment but can be met by the following. first, potential threats to internal validity (i.e., the probability that something other than the intervention caused the outcome) are identified and examined to determine the likelihood that they may explain the outcome rather than the intervention. second, design (e.g., additional pretest measurements and more control groups) and statistical (i.e., using statistical procedures to remove confounding of variables) controls are introduced. third, "coherent pattern matching" (shadish et al., 2002) is current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 introduced in which "a complex prediction is made about a given causal hypothesis that few alternative explanations can match" (p. 105) there are a number of different types of quasi-experiments including designs that: 1) do not have control groups (e.g., one group pretest-posttest, repeated treatment); 2) have a control group but do not have a pretest (e.g., posttest-only with nonequivalent groups); and 3) have both a control group and a pretest (e.g., untreated control group with dependent pretest and posttest samples, untreated control group with dependent pretest and posttest samples using a double pretest, cohort control group with pretest from each cohort). interested readers are encouraged to review any of a number of excellent sources for specific details on designing quasi-experimental studies (e.g., frankael & wallen, 2005; kerlinger & lee, 2000; shadish et al., 2002). two valuable but lesser used types of quasi-experiments—regression discontinuity and propensity score analysis— will be discussed next. these designs were selected because they have great applicability in educational research and, of all the quasi-experimental designs, are the closest kin to a randomized experiment. regression discontinuity although regression discontinuity was introduced in the late 1950s (campbell, 1984), with the exception of application to evaluate title i programs in the mid-1960s (trochim, 1980), it has been used sparingly in educational research. however, there are many instances where regression discontinuity is a better option than a quasi-experiment or may increase the power of the test when combined with a randomized experiment (shadish et al., 2002). additionally, regression discontinuity is the only natural experiment that can deal with unobserved confounding variables (rutter, 2007). the regression discontinuity design for intervention does it work? 13 research is really very simple: students are assigned to a treatment condition based on a cutoff score of an assignment variable (which is at least ordinal in measurement scale and measured prior to intervention) rather than randomization or other assignment (shadish et al., 2002). this assignment, by cutoff and only cutoff, is a strict rule that must be adhered for regression discontinuity to function properly. participants on one side of the cutoff score receive the treatment, and participants on the other side of the cutoff score do not receive the treatment (shadish et al., 2002). a treatment effect is found if the scores of the two groups differ (i.e., show discontinuity) at the cutoff on a scatterplot of participants’ scores (torgerson & torgerson, 2008). regression discontinuity is a robust quasi-experimental design and is a useful approach to take in instances where it is not possible or not ethical to design a randomized controlled trial. in education, it is easy to imagine the vast number of instances where regression discontinuity may be applied--from instances where students scoring below proficient on the fcat reading, for example, are assigned to developmental reading classes to instances where students scoring above a cutoff receive a meritorious program (e.g., gifted program) (shadish et al., 2002). regression discontinuity designs can also be combined with a randomized control element to strengthen the design (torgerson & torgerson, 2008). with the fcat reading proficiency example this combined process can be illustrated as follows. students scoring above proficient do not receive developmental reading. students scoring below proficient are randomly assigned to one of two different types of developmental reading: one is a new, innovative developmental approach and the other is the usual developmental reading approach. as stated previously, regression discontinuity designs have been used infrequently in education and the social sciences. only three refereed studies were found by the authors that current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 have applied regression discontinuity within the past ten years (bryant, bryant, gersten, scammacca, & chavez, 2008; cahan, greenbaum, artman, deluya, & gappel-gilon, 2008; gormley, gayer, phillips, & dawson, 2005). note that all three studies found within the past ten years have been published since 2004. due to the stronger standards for research being implemented at the institute for education sciences, regression discontinuity designs should increase as robust alternatives to rcts; therefore educational researchers and consumers of research should have some familiarity with these designs. propensity score analysis propensity score analysis is also considered a robust quasi-experimental design with nonequivalent groups (shadish et al., 2002) and is the recommended approach to take when estimating causal effects from observational data (rosenbaum & rubin, 1983; rubin, 1997). data is considered observational if it has been collected on students in situations that do not involve manipulation. introduced by rosenbaum and rubin (1983), propensity score analysis is considered an extension of discriminant analysis (rubin, 1997). the value in propensity score analysis is that it can be used to answer causal questions with observational data in situations where random assignment is not feasible (rubin, 1997). observational studies allow for empirical examination of treatment effects, similar to an experiment, however they differ from an experiment in that there is a lack of systematic assignment of students to groups (dehejia & wahba, 2002). researchers that use observational data run the risk of biased data because differences between groups may be due to the treatment or to pre-existing differences between the groups (that could have been balanced out through the random assignment process in a true experiment) (rosenbaum, 1986). does it work? 15 propensity score analysis has been used most extensively in medical research (e.g., connors et al., 1996; earle et al., 2001; foody, cole, blackstone, & lauer, 2001; gunn, thamilarasan, watanabe, blackstone, & lauer, 2001; mitra, schnabel, neuget, & heitjan, 2001) and has been slow to migrate to education and the social sciences (pruzek, 2004). an example of an educational research study where propensity score analysis would be appropriate is examining outcomes of children based on their attendance at a public or private school. in this example, it would likely be difficult to get support of parents to allow their child to be randomly assigned to either a public or private school. thus a researcher wishing to study this topic is left with conducting a quasi-experiment and matching students on important and relevant covariates. the matching process can become quite cumbersome, however, considering the large number of potentially relevant covariates on which to match. traditional matching is conducted based on direct matching of covariates whereas propensity score analysis matches on propensity score. in traditional matching, therefore, researchers are limited in the number of covariates on which to match and thus the design of the study is comprised. this often leads to biased results in which differences in the outcome are difficult to attribute to the intervention and may rather be due to covariates that were not considered in the matching process (rosenbaum, 1986). this bias can then lead to a case of mistaken identity (e.g., false positive or false negative) with the treatment effect (rosenbaum, 1991). more specifically, the propensity score is the estimated chance of receiving the treatment based on pretreatment covariates (rubin, 1997). given the propensity score, this conditional distribution of the covariates is the same for both treatment and control groups and thus creates a balancing score (rosenbaum & rubin, 1983). the beauty in propensity score analysis is the one score is created from the information of the covariates that can be applied in the model rather current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 than applying multiple covariates in the model--greatly simplifying the model (rubin, 1997). unlike other procedures, propensity score analysis does not hinge on parsimony. rather, all variables that may possible predict the outcome are included (rutter, 2007). one limitation with the use of propensity score analysis is that the assurance that there will not be systematic differences between groups is based solely on the use of observed covariates. in comparison, random assignment provides the assurance that systematic group differences tend to not exist based on both observed and unobserved covariates. however, sensitivity analysis can be examined to determine the probability that relevant but unobserved covariates were excluded from the model (rosenbaum, 1991). although computing propensity score analysis is a multi-step process, it does not require special statistical software. additionally, primers (luellen, shadish, & clark, 2005) and how-to tutorials are available (hahs-vaughn & onwuegbuzie, 2006). correlational designs correlational studies in intervention research allow researchers to determine the extent to which variables are related without attempting to manipulate any (frankael & wallen, 2001). correlations are just that—relationships—and thus causality cannot be inferred from studies that are strictly correlational in nature (rutter, 2007), although results from correlational studies can suggest causality and the suggested causality is often the spark from which rcts are created (wallen & frankael, 2001). correlational studies are generally considered less advantageous than quasi-experiments (rutter, 2007). so why bother with correlational studies? historically, much has been gained from correlational studies, especially in disciplines where design of rcts are difficult (wallen & frankael, 2001). possibly the best known example are the multitude of does it work? 17 correlational studies that examined smoking and lung cancer (wallen & frankael, 2001). thus correlational studies are valuable in explanatory studies where clarifying understanding is critical (wallen & frankael, 2001). correlational studies are also beneficial in prediction. for example, predicting college grade point average based on high school grade point average (wallen & frankael, 2001). in terms of intervention research, examining the relationship between, for example, a diagnostic measure and a test score may be very beneficial in clarifying the extent to which the diagnostic can be used to predict a test score. new statistical methodologies, such as structural equation modeling and multilevel modeling (e.g., hierarchical linear modeling), are correlational procedures that can be very powerful in examining relationships. interested readers are encouraged to examine key texts in these areas (raudenbush & bryk, 2002; schumacker & lomax, 2010). action research action research was first introduced approximately 60 years ago by kurt lewin with the intent of seeking solutions to social issues (lewin, 1946/1948). action research, or teacher research, is one way to foster meaningful professional development (cochran & lytle, 1999), and it can have a powerful impact for the teachers who engage in it (boles, kamii, & troen, 1999; cochran & lytle, 1999; graham, 1998; hankins, 1998). teacher researchers indicate that through their investigations they learn about their students (fecho, 2000), their schools (herr, 1999), and themselves (hankins, 1998). bargal cited eight principles for action research (2008, p. 19): current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 1. action research combines a systematic study, sometimes experimental, of a social problem as well as the endeavors to solve it. 2. action research includes a spiral process of data collection to determine goals, action to implement goals, and assessment of the results of the intervention. 3. action research requires feedback of the results of intervention to all parties involved in the research. 4. action research implies continuous cooperation between researchers and practitioners. 5. action research relies on the principles of group dynamics and is anchored in its change phases. the phases are unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. decision making is mutual and is carried out in a public way. 6. action research takes into account issues of values, objectives, and power needs of the parties involved. 7. action research serves to create knowledge, to formulate principles of intervention, and to develop instruments for selection, intervention, and training. 8. within the framework of action research, there is an emphasis on the recruitment, training, and support of the change agents. although there are cited benefits of teacher research, there are also concerns with effectively supporting teacher researchers and assisting teachers to learn about teacher research (radencich, 1998). there are different schools of thought on what action research is or can be as well as how to design action research. reason and bradbury (2001) define action research as an ideology as well as a methodology. the traditional view of action research holds that this form of research is conducted by a practicing teacher within their own classroom with the goal of making does it work? 19 instructional changes based upon the results (little & rawlinson, 2002)--i.e., taking action based on the research--although as noted later, this is a narrow perception of what may constitute action research. in addition, qualitative statistical procedures are also often considered the tool of choice for analysis of action research (clayton et al., 2008), and this is evidenced in a complete chapter devoted to action research in the handbook of qualitative research (kemmis & mctaggart, 2000). however, experiments and quasi-experiments can also be applied in action research (bargal, 2008) and the application of quantitative methods is recommended depending on the research question addressed in action research (lankshear & knobel, 2004). it is important to note that while action research is often considered a methodology itself, this does not exclude action research studies from being rigorously designed in a systematic fashion (lankshear & knobel, 2004). this is one of many myths related to action research that have been dispelled by lankshear and knobel (2004) who introduce teacher research more broadly, suggesting that teacher research is research. they offer a more global picture of what constitutes research conducted by teachers and emphasize the systematic and rigorous nature of teacher research. design experiments design experiments, also termed design studies or teaching experiments, have been embraced in recent decades in education (gorard, roberts, & taylor, 2004) to the extent that an entire issue of educational researcher was devoted to the topic (2003, 32, 1). in essence, design experiments allow teachers to examine contextual learning while at the same time designing and creating interventions for the classroom in a systematic way (gorard et al., 2004). applying design experiments is not always clear cut: "design experiments are messier than traditional current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 experiments, because they monitor many dependent variables, characterize the situation ethnographically, revise the procedures at will, allow participants to interact, develop profiles rather than hypotheses, involve users and practitioners in the design, and generate copious amounts of data of various sorts" (gorard et al., 2004, p. 581). before design experiments can be easily incorporated into practice (gorard et al., 2004), systematic and explicit design experiment models are needed (kelly & lesh, 2002). what is the role of these designs in intervention research? the descriptions presented are meant to provide a framework so that discussion on how they can be applied in intervention research is better contextualized. when applied effectively in intervention research, randomized control trials (rct) will provide the best evidence of causality of all research designs. in addition, relatively simple statistical analysis can be applied to data from rcts if designed appropriately. however, rcts may be difficult to apply in many educational settings due to ethical issues or lack of feasibility in randomizing students to the intervention. in situations where a rct cannot be applied, quasi-experimental designs may be applied. there are a number of traditional quasi-experimental designs (aka ‘natural experiments’) (e.g., pretest-posttest control group) that may be appropriate for intervention research. lesser-used quasi-experimental designs that are considered the “next best thing” to rct include regression discontinuity and propensity score analysis. while both are powerful in providing evidence that may be used for causal inference, both require higher level statistical skills (although no special statistical software is needed). thus, those interested in applying said designs who do not possess the statistical ability needed may want to consider collaborating with university faculty does it work? 21 who can provide the statistical expertise. correlational research may be appropriate in intervention research when other types of design cannot be applied and/or as a precursor to an experiment in an attempt to explore relationships or determine predictive power of one or more variables. action research and design experiments, when applied systematically and designed rigorously using experimental or quasi-experimental methods as well as correlational designs, can provide evidence of causality in intervention research. the key in designing both action research and design experiments for intervention research is being systematic and rigorous. without this rigor, results become less interpretable and thus evidence from the results less valuable and lacking inference of causality. the role of non-causal research designs in intervention research depending on how the efficacy research is designed, all the designs presented may, in a given situation, be non-causal (even a rct may fit this category if it is poorly designed). closer to rcts are regression discontinuity designs and propensity score analysis and thus the inference of causality becomes clearer, but not perfect, with these designs. beyond these types of designs, however, there are many research questions that are valuable to examine but do not permit the application of a research design that will allow the inference of causality. for example, theory building is usually initiated by qualitative research such as grounded theory. other types of qualitative designs such as case studies and phenomenologies provide comprehensive examination of people or events that can help inform a discipline but do not provide inference of causality. descriptive studies that only describe a situation or group of students may be very valuable in enlightening a research problem but at the same time do not provide evidence of current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 causality. these are just a few examples of non-causal designs. although results from these types of designs may not suggest cause and effect when studying whether a particular intervention works, they still hold value if they serve to appropriately answer the research question. additionally, when designed effectively, they can contribute to understanding the efficacy of an intervention, albeit not causality of such efficacy. flowchart for determining how to investigate causal questions regarding educational interventions in figure 1, we present a flowchart that represents a decision-making path that can be used when either planning a research study or evaluating a research study that involves intervention research (in other words, does treatment x work?). to begin, we suggest that the first question that needs to be asked is whether x is a desirable treatment. is it needed? if not, then the path suggests that efficacy studies should be conducted and/or qualitative research studies to determine how to improve x or find where it might be needed. however, if x is found to be desirable, figure 1 shows that the next question to ask is whether x is feasible to test experimentally. if yes, then the solution is to conduct a randomized control trial (rct) of x against either a control group, another treatment group, or both. does it work? 23 figure 1. does x work? flowchart for determining how to investigate this question conduct efficacy studies conduct qualitative research *action research and design experiments may incorporate any of these designs, albeit usually on a relatively smaller scale. no yes desirability: is x needed? feasibility: can we experimentally test x? no yes conduct a: 1. quasi-experimental study* 2. correlational study* conduct a rct* (randomized controlled trial) current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 if it is not feasible to conduct an rct, then we suggest two options to try instead, in order of decreasing validity. the first choice is to conduct a high quality quasi-experimental study where the groups have been carefully selected to match on as many important criteria as possible (e.g., socioeconomic status, age, ability, etc.). this may be accomplished by using one of the lesser used statistical techniques discussed in the second section of our paper, particularly propensity score analysis. in the event of the application of a cutoff score in the research, an additional lesser used technique (regression discontinuity analysis) may be applied. although complicated statistically, they provide a way of testing causal questions without the need for random assignment into a treatment and control group. the second option is to conduct a well-designed correlational study, using high quality statistical analyses and measures (such as structural equation modeling or hierarchical linear modeling). these analyses should control for pre-existing differences between groups so that the suggestion of causality results. with any of these designs, action research or design experiments may be conducted although possibly on a smaller scale, i.e., local studies of the efficacy of a particular treatment. depending on the design, these studies may be limited in their generalizability to a broader population (i.e., external validity), but they may be very helpful for determining the efficacy of an intervention on a local scale (i.e., internal validity). we realize that not all researchers may have the resources to apply some of the designs, such as propensity score analysis, in their research. figure 1, however, serves as a functional heuristic to use when evaluating competing claims about the effectiveness of a particular instructional treatment, something most teachers must do on a regular basis. the remaining does it work? 25 options are well within the reach of most educational researchers. applying randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental designs are ones that we encourage more researchers and administrators to adopt. determining the efficacy of an intervention on a local scale is not only practically useful—it can help one’s day to day teaching—but it is also important for the broader research community in that it may reveal conditions under which the treatment x works or does not work as well. in the next section, we present an example of a study designed for testing whether a particular intervention works in a local setting using a randomized controlled trial in the context of an action research study as the framework for our design. example study we present this example study applying a randomized controlled trial (albeit limited randomization at the classroom level) in the context of an action research design because we want to appeal to the broadest possible audience, discussing a design, that, when conducted with appropriate methodological rigor, can be used by both administrators and educational researchers to investigate the efficacy of an instructional intervention at the local level. to begin, let us say that one is interested in a new mathematics curriculum that focuses predominantly on complex problem solving, with less emphasis given to procedural fluency. one might be the principal asked to make this curriculum change or an educational researcher interested in the local impact of this intervention on both teacher efficacy and student achievement. in this illustration, we will assume that we are the principal of the school who has been asked to make this curriculum change. one way to go about testing this intervention is to select two sections of the same class. one section will be taught with the new curriculum while the second section will be taught with the previously used curriculum. deciding on which class to administer the new curriculum to may be done on the basis of a coin toss. to determine the comparability of mathematics skills of current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 students prior to initiating the new curriculum, we collect data on the previous year’s mathematics portion of our state’s standardized assessment as well as their grade received in the mathematics class taken previous to this (assuming all students completed the same mathematics class). so that we are not overburdening students with additional testing, these scores will serve as their pretest scores. however, because these instruments were not designed to specifically measure the skills acquired from exposure to the new curriculum, we may also want to consider administering either a teacher-created test or other assessment that is designed to more directly measure skills that should have been acquired at the conclusion of teaching the new curriculum. how can we be assured that we are not biasing our own study by teaching ‘better’ using the new curriculum? one thing we decide to do is to have another math teacher observe the classrooms at various times throughout the year to check the fidelity of implementing both the status quo curriculum as well as the new curriculum. we also ask the teachers to keep a detailed teaching log in which they reflect on their teaching and tracks any unusual (and not so unusual) occurrences in both classes. their lesson plans will further provide documentation of adherence to curriculum. in combination, these three elements (colleague observation, teaching log and lesson plans) will provide some suggestion of fidelity to the curriculum, whether old or new. at the conclusion of the semester, students’ grades are tracked. at the end of the academic year, information on this year’s state mathematics assessment is collected. if we also administered an additional pre-assessment, either created by the teacher or that was provided with the curriculum, we would want to administer that same assessment as a posttest at the conclusion of the semester. in terms of analysis, depending on finding comparable groups on the pretest measures, we may be able to apply basic statistics such as an independent t test, analysis of variance, or multiple regressions. as stated previously, one limitation to this research is that it does it work? 27 was not possible to draw a random sample of students. more limiting, however, is that it was not possible to randomly assign at the student level. that limits our ability to generalize to a larger population (i.e., external validity). however, depending on how comparable we find our groups to be prior to initiating the study, we may have relatively good internal validity—the ability to find evidence that our intervention is the reason for the change in mathematics achievement. conclusion the purpose of this paper was to present a conceptual framework that summarized state of the art research designs for investigating causal questions regarding educational interventions. this paper examined examples of the types of research questions posed by educational researchers and identified intervention research as a particular type of causal question. next, research designs for answering causal questions were reviewed, paying particular attention to and providing examples of the application of lesser used designs (such as regression discontinuity and propensity score analysis) that may overcome some of the limitations faced when randomized experimental designs are not feasible or appropriate. the role of these designs in teaching and research were also discussed as was the role of non-causal research designs in education. next, a useful graphical organizer to aid in interpreting existing research and planning future research on educational interventions was presented. finally, we presented a design for a sample study that could be used by educational administrators and researchers interested in testing the local effects of a new curriculum intervention. this paper was designed to serve dual purposes: first, to help teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and others understand how to judge quality intervention research, and second, to provide educational researchers a useful heuristic to guide their own intervention research. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 28 references bargal, d. 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(n.d.). director's statement. journal. retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/director/ does it w about th authors affiliatio address florida, email: m biograp michele school o complet research educatio debbie h college educatio include: to comp question work? he authors : michele g on: univer s: school of orlando, f mgill@mai phical infor gregoire g of teaching ed her ph. d h interests in onal reform. hahs-vaug of educatio onal researc methodolo lex survey ns, program gregoire gi sity of cen f teaching, florida, 328 l.ucf.edu rmation: gill is an as g, learning d. in educa nclude conc . ghn is an as on at the un h at the un ogical issues data and us evaluation ll & debbie ntral florida , learning, 816-1250 ssociate pro and leader ational psych ceptual chan ssociate pro niversity of niversity of a s associated sing comple n, and practi e hahs-vau a and leade ofessor of e rship at the hology at th nge, teacher ofessor in e f central flo alabama. d d with apply ex survey da itioner use o ughn ership, univ educational university he universi r beliefs an ducational orida. she dr. hahs-v ying quantit ata to answ of research. versity of c l psycholog y of central ity of florid nd developm research w completed vaughn's res tative statis wer substanti . central gy within th florida. sh da. dr. gill ment, and within the her ph. d. search inter stical metho ive research 33 he he l’s in rests ods h current is volume authors articles publishe an kr hilla d ju an h mi ssues in educ e 13, num hold the copy s in other jour er and include ngela abeyta rista adams ary andrelch diana barela ulia boukara ndrew darian aiying dong iriam emran cation vol. 13 curr mber 4 yright to artic rnals should b e the url of t provide a hik n n 3 no. 4 rent issu http:// cles published be addressed t the cie publi ed cie is cred edit exe lor katy e jeffr sec sar mar me amb seo tiff calv linds fac gusta jean de ues in e /cie.asu.e d in current is to the author. ication. permi dited and cop torial team cutive editor ri ellingford elizabeth his rey i. johnso ction editors rah heaslip rlene hinton elinda hollis ber johnston onghee kim fany o’neill vin richards say richerso culty advisers vo e. fischm nne m. power ebby zambo educati edu issues in educ reprints sho ission is here pies are not so m rs d rich on n n s on s man rs on issn cation. reque ould credit cie eby granted to old. ror ta kar luc ker jennife ky n 1099-83 ests to reprint e as the origi o copy any art ry schmitt apati sen ri visconti cy watson rie wilkins er wojtulewi yle wright 34 39x cie inal ticle, icz microsoft word increasing visibility for lgbtq students what schools can do to create inclusive classroom communities .docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x increasing visibility for lgbtq students: what schools can do to create inclusive classroom communities derry l. stufft university of maryland eastern shore colleen m. graff university of scranton citation graff, c. & stufft, d. (2011). increasing visibility for lgbtq students: what schools can do to create inclusive classroom communities, current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/636 abstract the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning students is increasing in schools. school districts, administrators and teachers need to increase awareness of these students and work to make them feel included and welcomed in a safe school environment, one free from offensive languages and practices. this article discusses some of the problems that these students and teachers face and some strategies that educators can use to help them be a valuable part of a learning community. keywords: lgbtq, homophobia, sexual identification, sexual stereotyping current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 about the author authors: derry l. stufft and colleen m. graff affiliation: university of maryland eastern shore and university of scranton address: department of education, university of maryland eastern shore, princess anne, maryland, 21853 email: dlstufft@umes.edu biographical information: increasing visibility for lgbtq students 3 increasing visibility for lgbtq students: what schools can do to create inclusive classroom communities on friday, april 17, 2009, the family of carl joseph walker-hoover should have celebrated his twelfth birthday. instead, they mourned his loss. eleven-year old carl joseph walker-hoover made efforts to participate in his school and community. he played football and basketball. he belonged to the boy scouts. despite carl’s participation in these team-oriented activities, he felt isolated. he did not identify himself as being gay, but his classmates repeatedly teased him implying that he was in fact gay. carl could not continue living with the torment he underwent every day at school. he felt he had nowhere else to turn, and he decided suicide was his only choice, his only way out. he hanged himself on april 6, 2009. in an effort to influence policy makers, to enact policies and procedures, which may help to prevent future tragedies, the authors examine the stigma surrounding non-heterosexual students and explore ways to make schools more welcoming, inclusive communities. there are many issues that have worked to shape the current school environment which require a variety of actions in order to make positive changes. literature review society has a long history of stigmatizing homosexuality. while lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people have always been in society, they were not often mentioned (campos, 2003; sullivan, 2003). occasionally in history, famous individuals, such as playwright oscar wilde (oscar wilde online, 2009), were jailed for the crime of sodomy. at one time, doctors classified homosexuality as a disease. while the american psychiatric association (dsm-ivtr, 2000) does not list homosexuality as a disease and society has a somewhat more enlightened current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 view of the science behind sexual orientation, the societal stigma behind homosexuality remains. students commonly dismiss something that they dislike or disapprove of, situations that make them uncomfortable or demands that they do not want to hear as being “gay” (depaul, walsh & dam, 2009; savage & harley, 2009; daniel, 2007). as a result of this kind of talk in the hallways, classrooms, locker rooms and bathrooms, many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning students (lgbtq) may feel unwelcome and left out in the school community. as a direct result of the harassment, the bullying and the unwelcomed comments, students are at risk for suicide. although savin-williams (2005) postulates that these students actually feel quite good about themselves. in fact, savin-williams (2005) believes that those students who identify themselves as being gay show no difference in self-esteem from their heterosexual peers. but, curwood, schliesman, & horning (2009) indicate that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning students often live in a world that is not safe for them. blackburn (2006) indicates schools are often not safe places for students who see themselves outside of the gender rules. there still remains the issue of defining what is meant when referring to people who themselves in a different light. lgbtq’s are defined for ease of clarification and to focus on meeting the issues, obstacles and concerns of these school-age youth. additionally, the use of the acronym lgbtq includes all sexual minorities, serves to raise curiosity about each letter and can cause intellectual inquiry as to what each letter represents (savage & harley, 2009). the order of the letters is often changed, usually for political reasons (macgillivrary, 2004). the following serves to define each of the letters as it represents a different group of students in schools. macgillivrary (2004) explains that the l, g, b, and q in lgbtq have to do with sexual orientation. sexual orientation represents physical, emotional, and spiritual attraction. the word lesbian identifies increasing visibility for lgbtq students 5 women who are sexually attracted to other women. the term gay represents men who are attracted to men for sex. bisexual individuals find themselves attracted to both men and women. the q indicates a person who is questioning his or her own sexual preference; allowing this type of person the ability not to claim a sexual orientation identity. savage & harley (2009) state that, the focus of transgender people is on the identification of being male, female, or somewhere in between, rather than on sexual preference for either males or females. in addition, transgender deals greatly with a person whose physical sex (male or female) conflicts with his or her psychological identity of being either male or female or somewhere in between. students who identify themselves as lgbtq have reasons to fear for their physical and emotional safety in schools. there is plenty of documentation that substantiates this sense of being uncomfortable. espelage and swearer (2008) reported that homophobic behaviors and attitudes appear to be interrelated with other forms of verbal and physical forms of peer victimization. swearer, turner, givens, and pollack (2008) found that 26% of boys (ninth through eleventh grades) who had experienced bullying indicated that they were bullied by being called gay. williams, connolly, pepler, and craig (2005) explored the social adjustment of lgbtq students. these students expressed concern for their well-being, given the prejudices against non-heterosexual individuals. safren and heimburg, (1999) commented on the negative connotations associated with non-heterosexuality, indicating that this association may reduce the student’s ability to have positive social interactions with friends and family. this was usually based on a perceived reduction in social support. safren and heimburg (1999) go on to conclude that the reduction in social support and increased harassment are detrimental experiences for these youth and pose a major obstacle to “normal” emotional and behavioral adjustments in social settings. in the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 course of their work, williams et al (2005) discovered that lgbtq students reported incidents of vandalism coupled with being both physically threatened and emotionally isolated by their peers. statistics indicate that harassment of lgbtq students in schools is a significant problem. lgbtq students are three times more likely than their heterosexual peers to have been verbally assaulted or involved in a physical altercation in school (human rights watch, 2001). for every lgbtq student who reported being harassed, four heterosexual students reported harassment based on a perception that they were also gay or lesbian (reis, 1996). lgbtq students often report that administrators, teachers and other staff do not get involved when derogatory language is used towards them (kosciw & diaz, 2006). more recently, cyberbullying has been making the news. tippett, thompson and smith (2010) reported that 1 in 10 children in our public schools have experienced cyberbullying. it is also apparent from the literature that girls are more often the victims of cyberbullying and boys the most likely to be cyberbullies. boys, it seems, are most often the bullies whether it be face-to-face or in the cyber world. current conditions harassment, bullying, including cyberbullying and violence are common in schools, and lgbtq youth experience more extreme and persistent violence and harassment in school than their heterosexual peers. in a study conducted during the 2005 school year, the gay, lesbian and straight education network (glsen) and the national association of secondary school principals (nassp) found that although most schools have anti-bullying policies in place, less than fifty percent (50%) of the policies include sexual orientation or gender identity. many principals do not acknowledge or are unaware of the extent of lgbtq student harassment taking increasing visibility for lgbtq students 7 place in their schools. (glsen and harris interactive, 2008). this lack of knowledge often manifests itself in a variety of ways. research has demonstrated that lgbtq students are at high risk for dropping out of school, suicidal thoughts and actions, depression, self mutilation, drug and alcohol abuse, feelings of isolation and unsafe sex (cochran & mays, 2000; d'augelli, 2002; mcdaniel, purcell, & d'augelli, 2001; united states department of health and human services, 1999). for many students, high schools are the center of life and culture, and they may be the most homophobic institutions in american society (unks, 1995). high school culture does not tolerant sexual minorities. for the lgbtq student, ‘coming out’ may be extremely dangerous (savage & harley, 2009). sadly, school culture is often seen as a mirror of our society at large (morris, 2005). with those thoughts in mind, it is no wonder that school curriculum and extracurricular activities reflect this heterosexual bias, reinforcing negative attitudes and stereotypes of any sexual orientation other than heterosexual (savage & harley, 2009). an equal and inclusive education is not possible for lgbtq students when their physical and emotional safety is frequently compromised (stone, 2003). lgbtq students are not the only people to feel isolated within the school community. it has more far reaching implications. lgbtq stigma can also affect teachers. one example is that of mike fishback (2004) who spent many years as a closeted student. while he did come out in college, when he landed a teaching position in the baltimore area he felt he had to hide his identity. although he was just getting used to being openly gay, he decided that in his new school environment he had to proceed cautiously. during his first winter, scandal broke out within the catholic church, and the terms "gay male" and "child abuser" were thrown about interchangeably in the media. according to fishback (2004) “even though our school was "progressive," few teachers were current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 ‘out’ to their fellow faculty, and none were ‘out’ to their students” (pg.5). fishback (2004), with support of his school district, took a direct approach when he decided to come out to his seventh grade students. this gesture was not without some risk. his parents worried he might be falsely accused of molestation. colleagues worried he would become the sole representative of gay culture. a survey conducted among students indicated most felt a gay person would not be accepted at school (fishback, 2004). nevertheless, he persevered, and with the support of the administration and his colleagues he told his students during a unit on gay rights (fishback, 2004). rather than ridicule him, his students flooded him with questions about his life. they asked if he and his partner planned to adopt children. they wanted to know if he hated homophobic people and how he reconciled his jewish faith with his sexual identity. they asked if he chose to be gay and how his parents accepted him. many wondered if he had been scared to tell the class. one girl inquired why he told the students in the first place. she wondered why gay people didn’t just keep that part of their identity to themselves. the situation is not always handled the same and the area may not be as receptive as was that of fishback’s. sanlo (1999) reported on a group of gay teachers in northeast florida who were almost paralyzed by fear and living in silence. these teachers worked in an atmosphere that was uncomfortable in dealing with both students and colleagues. they came to distance themselves both personally and professionally, living in anxiety from day to day, hoping that no one would find out that they were gay. like many school districts in florida, sexual orientation was not a part of any non-discrimination policies for teachers (mayo, 2008). mayo (2008) indicates that this lack of legal protection heightens the teachers’ fears and makes it very difficult for them to do their jobs. this fear is not unique to just one part of the country. anywhere in increasing visibility for lgbtq students 9 this country where school districts do not consider sexual orientation as part of antidiscrimination policies, gay and lesbian teachers are experiencing similar fears and feelings of not being a part of the school culture. often this translates into feelings of not being good role models for their students (mayo, 2008). even when school policies do exist, teachers often face issues of community standards that often go far beyond what is in school policy, and which the community outside of the school or classroom enforces either subtly or overtly. attitudes cannot be legislated away, and it takes a school and a community, working together, to change them and to change the culture in the school. but there is hope on the horizon and there are positive steps being taken to address this issue. schools increasingly recognize the need to embrace a diverse student body taught by a diverse faculty. they are working to ensure bully-free zones, but not every school takes the time to address the subtle bullying of lgbtq students and faculty. these students and faculty remain invisible, and their voices remain silent. schools still need to address this issue, but given the stigma of homosexuality and the potential for controversy, many teachers and school officials may not know where to begin. homophobia is still largely ignored as a bias. the question is: “how do educators begin to change antiquated attitudes?” suggestions for future improvements what can schools, superintendents, principals, and teachers do to make schools and classrooms more inclusive and embrace diversity? the following discussion focuses on some ideas that could be implemented to achieve this end; looking at all levels of education and pointing to key personnel that can act to positively influence the classroom experience for students. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 research indicates that educators should first work on themselves, examining their own prejudices and misconceptions. how does teacher education programs prepare tomorrow’s teachers to take positive actions toward the lgbtq student population and to work with lgbtq colleagues? fletcher and russell (2001) acknowledge a lack of training for pre-service teachers, suggesting a first step might be to help pre-service teachers feel more comfortable with topics surrounding homosexuality. as a starting point, fletcher and russell (2001) suggest that pre-service teachers begin by reviewing current research on homosexuality and education. although that is a good first step, teachertraining programs need to be even more proactive. wyatt, oswalt, white, and peterson (2008) explain that because students spend a third or more of each weekday at school, the school environment needs to be a safe, welcoming place for all students and staff. teachers and administrators must learn how to develop and maintain a safe learning atmosphere that openly welcomes sexual diversity. wyatt et al (2008) also believe that teacher attitudes toward homosexuality contribute significantly to the classroom environment. they examined attitudes toward homosexuals among 334 teacher candidates. the findings indicated that while most of the pre-service teachers reported a moderate attitude toward lgbtq, many had a more negative perception of gay males (wyatt et al. 2008). as a result of their study, the researchers recommended that all students in teacher education programs take a course on sexuality to begin to address the needs of lgbtq students and suggested teacher training programs provide ways for teacher candidates to examine their own values (wyatt et al. 2008). incorporating values clarification strategies into teacher preparation programs should increase future educators’ awareness of their potential biases. the ability of teachers to be aware of their own attitudes can help them overcome increasing visibility for lgbtq students 11 unconscious or subtle ways in which they inadvertently create a hostile environment for lgbtq youth and teachers. therefore, colleges and universities engaged in training future teachers should introduce these issues into the regular curriculum. many of these institutions have courses on multicultural education and diversity. unfortunately, most are geared to addressing issues of race, religion, sex (male or female), and economic status but fail to address the issues integral to the lgbtq community. an open discussion on language and terminology will enable these pre-service teachers the opportunity to be prepared to intervene once they are in the classroom. these students also need exposure to literature that is not based on heterosexual characters but allows them to explore the world of this alternative lifestyle. also, pre-service teachers must be given strategies and coaching on how to effectively deal with lgbtq students in their classrooms so that they do not feel left out. one final strategy is to help students understand that the home, the place where students go after school, may not consist of a mother and a father but could have just one parent or two guardians that are of the same sex. it is thought that as many as ten million school children in the united states have lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (lgbt) parents (pawelski , perrin, foy, allen, crawford, & del monte, m.et al.,2006). this last point can be best illustrated by the work of bower and klecka (2009) when they discuss the issue of children being asked to make father’s day presents in school. first, many students come from single parent homes, usually without a father present, or more recently where the guardians are either lesbian or gay. not knowing your students can have very negative effects on students and can put them in situations that are very uncomfortable. if we teach pre-service teachers to examine their own biases, then we may have more open-minded educators. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 as for veteran classroom teachers, this same exercise of examining their biases can have a positive effect on the classroom. teachers need to be aware of the language that students are using during the school day. they also need to be made aware of the biases in the textbooks that they are using. in addition, veteran teachers need to consider issues such as the father’s day exercise (bower & klecka, 2009) when they are doing classroom projects or making homework assignments. the authors are not advocating immersing students at all grade levels into an open discussion of lgbtq issues, but do encourage classroom teachers to be sensitive to those issues and reinforce positive elements when appropriate. this is the place where solid professional development can be very useful to veteran teachers. a well planned open discussion with opportunities to express fears and anxiety can help teachers be more sensitive to lgbtq students, colleagues, and families. veteran teachers should also examine their beliefs and misconceptions. a common misconception is that only adults are gay. teachers need to be aware of the numbers of lgbtq students that are potentially sitting in their classrooms. savage and harley (2009) indicate that as many of 10% of students in schools are lgbtq youth or are from homes that have gay or lesbian family members. some students may not be gay, but they may have gay parents. this trend is becoming more prevalent as more states adopt laws permitting same sex marriages and adoptions by gay and lesbian couples. these parents can bring a different perspective to school when it comes to dealing with their students in the classroom. bower (2008) interviewed twelve lesbian mothers asking them questions about teachers and how they viewed their experiences in dealing with them. the mothers shared both positive and negative teacher experiences. the best teachers, according to this group, embraced diversity, encouraged creativity, involved themselves with the students and their families both in increasing visibility for lgbtq students 13 school and in the community, and actively discouraged any sort of bullying or intolerance (bower, 2008). unfortunately, the mothers interviewed did not always encounter teachers who met these criteria. they had a long list of objections to some teachers. in bower’s (2008) study, the participants were concerned about teachers who remained unaware of differences in the classroom and who ignored the changes in family structures. the same participants were not happy with teachers who were quick to label students without really knowing much about them or their families or to categorize students based on the family. this dissatisfaction included teachers thinking that if the parents are gay, then the student also must be gay (bower, 2008). there is still the thought among some teachers that boys rough house and engage in athletic activities while girls play with dolls and want to learn to cook and be mothers. the general theme from the bower’s (2008) study was that the lesbian mothers were really upset with teachers who allow bullying to take place and turn their backs on the situation whenever they see these types of incidents occurring. this leads to another area where teachers and schools can take positive steps to make the school environment more open and friendly: language awareness. teachers need to be aware of the language that students are using during the school day. they also need to be made aware of the biases in the textbooks that they are using. not all schools address this issue. weinberg (2009) explored this issue of language usage. words and phrases such as “fag”, “dike” and “that’s so gay,” serve to hurt and demean lgbtq students (weinberg, 2009). unfortunately, very few teachers say anything or take any actions when they hear these types of comments being made in their classroom. imagine the different response if a teacher heard an africanamerican student referred to using the “n” word. it appears that in many of our schools, we have a double standard for what is and is not acceptable. weinberg (2009) goes on to suggest current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 teachers search for more inclusive language for lgbtq students in the classroom. weinberg (2009) advises avoiding comments such as being a sissy or acting like a man because these comments reinforce the concept of a heterosexual view of gender. weinberg (2009) also advocates using gender-neutral terms such as date, parents or guardians instead of mother and father, and spouse to help reduce heterosexual language. words have power, and they can inflict invisible but painful wounds on students. students, whether we see it or not, can be deeply hurt by them. even seemingly innocent phrases perpetuate stereotypes. heightening language awareness is one way to make the school community more welcoming for lgbtq students and parents. in addition, veteran teachers need to consider issues such as the father’s day exercise (bower & klecka, 2009) when they are doing classroom projects or making homework assignments. the authors are not advocating immersing students at all grade levels into an open discussion of lgbtq issues, but do encourage classroom teachers to be sensitive to those issues and reinforce positive elements when appropriate. this is the place where solid professional development can be very useful to veteran teachers. a well planned open discussion with opportunities to express fears and anxiety can help teachers be more sensitive to lgbtq students, colleagues, and families. but there are more things that schools can do. one way is to seek a more diverse curriculum that would be inclusive and respectful of all students and families regardless of sexual orientation. sieben and wallowitz (2009) share observations about creating a curriculum that includes queer theory. although warned by older colleagues to be mindful of the curriculum, sieben and wallowitz (2009) decided to develop a course of study that included queer theory. queer theory looks at common labels, how people are affected by those labels and how those labels influence behavior (sieben & wallowitz 2009). they reasoned that teachers have an obligation to encourage students to question the status quo. increasing visibility for lgbtq students 15 today’s students must become active participants versus passive observers of our society. education has the capacity to cause students to engage in intellectual discussions that may challenge the everyday norm. from their work, sieben and wallowitz (2009) concluded that while students and our society in general may claim diversity, as a society we do not practice tolerance especially when it comes to sexual orientation. just look at the issue of same sex marriage in this country. if americans truly believed in tolerance, same sex marriage would be legal in all fifty states, not in just the current five. in a second exercise, sieben and wallowitz (2009) asked students to reflect on two aspects of their lives that they would be reluctant to share with their teachers. they designed this exercise to illustrate to students that personal lives do not always impact performance in academic or professional environments. through this exercise, students understood the plight of many lgbtq students and professionals. this exercise helped cultivate more empathy and understanding for everyone. students were made aware of the dangers of labels. interestingly, like fishback (2004), sieben and wallowitz (2009) reported a very positive response from both students and parents, suggesting that in hesitating to include queer theory curriculum, perhaps school officials are biased regarding student maturity levels and parental close-mindedness. sieben and wallowitz (2009) assert that “playing it safe” and ignoring lgbtq issues in curricula only continues to fuel the stigma. actively involving the students in the change process can reap many positive rewards. young (2009) agrees with sieben and wallowitz (2009) that lgbtq issues should be included in curricula. in the contemporary issues class, a high school humanities elective, young (2009) asked students what issues they wanted to study. after putting all the ideas on the board, the students voted to study homophobia. young (2009) suggests that students voted current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 overwhelmingly on this issue because it was an everyday issue in many of their lives, yet it was also a topic rarely discussed in their other classes. young (2009) emphasized critical literacy and social action. students do not just study issues; they also explore means to positively affect the issues. in the classroom, young (2009) had students write about experiences with homophobia in journals. students were drawn to language that minimizes lgbtq individuals. all students came to the same conclusion that the term “gay” was often used to indicate that something was “stupid” (young, 2009)). they were able to see how language can subjugate individuals, and they came to see the position of privilege held by heterosexuals. young (2009) had students list the privileges that heterosexuals typically took for granted. the student-generated list included: being able to publicly talking about whom they were dating, having a curriculum geared to heterosexuals, religious agreement and receiving support in most homes, the ability to get married, and having a majority of printed literature that reflected heterosexual lifestyles (young, 2009). the gay, lesbian, and straight education network (www.glsen.org) and the gay straight alliance (www.gaystraightalliance.org) inspired many of the students to start a gsa at their school. again, responding to students’ requests, young (2009) invited a panel of lgbt people to speak at the school, and one panelist shared two strategies to raise awareness, “jeans and white t-shirt day” and “day of silence” (http://www.dayofsilence.org). the clothing shows support for the lgbt community. by participating in the day of silence and not speaking, students demonstrated the difficulties endured by lgbtq individuals (young, 2009)). young (2009) acknowledged that addressing homosexuality is still challenging, particularly when trying to maintain respect for students’ religious and cultural diversity; however, she suggests that discussion can be centered on human rights issues which tend to stay increasing visibility for lgbtq students 17 clear of religion thus alleviating some of the students’ anxiety. this small sampling of research reveals that students are capable of handling a discussion on sexual diversity, particularly if it is taught as a source of an individual’s identity. in general teachers can: • teach tolerance • eliminate stereotypes in the classroom • show no tolerance for stereotypical language in the school • include lgbtq issues and examples of lgbtq prominent people in discussions • provide emotional support for lgbtq students and teachers • include materials that are truly inclusive when it comes to multiculturalism • be positive role models building principals play an important role in helping teachers, staff and students deal with issues related to lgbtq individuals. handbooks need to be written that openly address lgbtq issues such as language and names used within the building, and discipline codes that back them up need to be enforced. everyone in the building must be encouraged to be tolerant of the differences within the people present. ideally the principal should lead by example, avoiding the use of derogatory terms and intervening when these terms are used by either students or staff. putting together a planning committee to investigate in-service training that addresses these concerns is a positive step for any staff. looking for student assemblies that address these same issues and even including students in that planning will serve to bring the entire building community together. the principal can also lead a curriculum committee that investigates literature that can be used as part of the curriculum that truly celebrates diversity and multiculturalism. these are important steps in moving the school forward to being a fully current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 inclusive school that respects all staff and students and does not judge them based upon sexual orientation. principals can: • insure school forms, requiring signatures, are inclusive and take into account multicultural situations • be positive role models • support multiculturalism • encourage teachers to be pay attention to lgbtq students • provide a support network for lgbtq students and teachers • ensure lgbtq students have equal access to all school activities • provide professional development on issues related to lgbtq inclusion • use appropriate measures insuring full inclusion for lgbtq students and teachers • be prepared to address controversial issues surrounding lgbtq students and teachers the superintendent plays a vital role in the entire process. as the chief school administrator, he or she must have frank and open discussions with the school board. many schools have mission statements that address the issue of diversity. it is the role of the superintendent to enlighten board members that the term diversity includes lgbtq individuals. policies and handbooks need to be aligned with the idea of celebrating the diversity that exists. kosciw (2004) indicates that approximately 5% of high school students in this country consider themselves to be lesbian or gay, which translates into, on average, every secondary classroom having one lgb student. it is the job of the superintendent to keep the board apprised of current literature and research findings such as this. the board needs to understand that anti-bullying increasing visibility for lgbtq students 19 policies must also cover both the verbal and physical abuse of lgbtq staff and students. the superintendent can: • be a positive role model • be an educational leader who supports multicultural education • be informed on issues surrounding lgbtq students and teachers • be open, honest and actively engage in discussions about lgbtq issues • be prepared to address controversial issues surrounding lgbtq students and teachers • provide training for school board members on multicultural issues • support zero tolerance policies that address anti-gay harassment in all forms school boards have both a legal and a moral obligation to provide a fair and equal education to all students. and this education must occur in a work environment that operates and protects the staff who may also be a member of the lgbtq population. in addition, boards need to be made aware of the growing tide of litigation that both supports students’ first amendment rights to protest and openly oppose homosexuality, the title ix rights of students who are being subjected to harassment for expressing homosexuality, and equal access act rights which also extend to homosexual students (zirkel, 2007). this applies to policies that address diversity and multiculturalism and to other activities in the school, including athletics. in many cases, boards like to get involved in the athletic component. but every school board also has the important role of approving and adopting the curriculum. this task will become more difficult as the school board moves forward to meet the goal of offering a challenging and appropriate curriculum that is inclusive of all students, including lgbtq students. here is current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 where boards may face their greatest dilemmas, and it will be the job of the superintendents to guide them and walk them through the processes that will serve all students. school boards can: • pass policies that protect the rights of lgbtq students and teachers • promote multicultural education • provide multicultural curriculum and materials • hire a diverse staff • encourage lgbtq parents to take an active role in school district discussions the superintendent must also serve as the liaison between the school board and the community. these issues need to be presented to the public. by working with the general population, the superintendent can help to alleviate fears and to make the district one that truly welcomes diversity. this requires having frank discussions on the law, diversity issues and the curriculum. the community needs to understand equal access and students’ rights. terms need to be explained and meanings clearly discussed while being open to community thought. these actions can serve as a beginning for any school or community in attempt to change the school environment in an attempt to make it a welcoming place for everyone. conclusion a suicide, particularly the suicide of a child, always leaves survivors asking “what if” questions. what if schools incorporate the study of queer theory and add more diverse texts to the curriculum? then students may have the chance to critically examine their own attitudes and beliefs toward non-heterosexual people. what if schools work with organizations like glsen and incorporate gay straight alliances in schools? then school environments may become more welcoming. what if schools work with communities to understand that families are changing? then all families in the community can celebrate diversity. what if teachers simply intervene when they hear an anti-gay epithet? then students may become more aware of how increasing visibility for lgbtq students 21 these terms degrade people. if all these things were to happen, then maybe tragedies like carl walker-hoover’s death can be avoided in the future. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 references blackburn, m. v. (2006). risky, generous, gender work. research in the teaching of english. 40(3), 262-71. bower, l. (2008). standing up for diversity: lesbian mothers suggestions for teachers. kappa delta pi record, 44 (4), 181-183. bower, l. a., & klecka, c. l. (2009). lesbian mothers’ bids for normalcy in their children’s schools. the educational forum, 73(3), 230-239. campos, d. (2003). diverse sexuality and schools: a reference handbook. santa barbara, ca: abc-clio. cochran, s.d., & mays, v.m. (2000). lifetime prevalence of suicide symptoms and affective disorders among men reporting same-sex sexual partners: results from nhanes-iii. american journal of public health, 90, 573-578. curwood, j. s., schliesman, m., & horning, k. t. (2009). fight for your right: censorship, selection and lgbtq literature. english journal, 98(4), 37-43. daniel, p. l. (2007). invitation to all: welcoming gays and lesbians into my classroom and curriculum. english journal, 96(5), 75-80. d'augelli, a. r. 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(2001). hatred in the hallways: violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students in the u.s. new york: author. kosciw, j.g. (2004). the 2003 national school climate survey: the school-related experiences of our nation's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth. new york: gay, lesbian, and straight educational network. kosciw, j. g., & diaz, e. m. (2006). the 2005 national school climate survey: the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth in our nation's schools. new york: gay, lesbian, and straight education network. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 macgillivray, i. k. (2004). sexual orientation and school policy: a practical guide for teachers, administrators, and community activists. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. mayo, j. b., jr. (2008). gay teachers’ negotiated interactions with their students and straight colleagues. the high school journal, 92(1), 1-9. mcdaniel, j. s., purcell, j., & d’augelli, a. r. (2001). the relationship between sexual orientation and risk for suicide: research findings and future directions for research and prevention. suicide and life-threatening behavior, 31, 81-105. morris, m. (2005). queer life and school culture: troubling genders. multicultural education, 12, 8-13. oscar wilde online: the works and life of oscar wilde. retrieved january 6, 2010, from: https://www.wilde-online.info/oscar-wilde-biography.htm. pawelski, j. g., perrin, e. c., foy, j. m., allen, c. e., crawford, j.e., del monte, m., et al. (2006). the effects of marriage, civil union, and domestic partnership laws on the health and well-being of children. pediatrics, 118(1), 349-64. reis, b. (1996). safe schools anti-violence documentation project, third annual report. seattle, wa: safe schools coalition. increasing visibility for lgbtq students 25 sanlo, r. l. (1999). unheard voices: the effects of silence on lesbian and gay educators. westport, ct: bergin and garvey. savage, t. a., & harley, d. a. (2009). a place at the blackboard: lgbtiq. multicultural education, 50(4), 2-7. savin-williams, r. c. (2005). the new gay teen: shunning labels. retrieved on december 4, 2010 from: http://www.glreview.com/issues/12.6/12.6-williams.php sieben, n., & wallowitz, l. (2009). watch what you teach: a first-year teacher refuses to play it safe. english journal, 98 (4), 44-49. stone, c. b. (2003). counselors as advocates for gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth: a call for equity and action. journal of multicultural counseling and development, 31, 143-155. swearer, s.m., turner, r.k., givens, j.e., & pollack, w.s. (2008). you’re so gay!: do different forms of bullying matter for adolescent males? school psychology review 37(2), 160173. sullivan, m. k. 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(2005). peer victimization, social support and psychosocial adjustment of sexual minority adolescents. journal of youth and adolescence, 34 (5), 471-482. wyatt, t., oswalt, s., white, c., & peterson, f. (2008). are tomorrow’s teachers ready to deal with diverse students? teacher candidates’ attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. teacher education quarterly, 35(2), 171-185. young, s. (2009). breaking the silence: critical literacy and social action. english journal, 98(4), 109-115. zirkel, p. a. (2007). true diversity? phi delta kaplan, 89(3), 238-239. increasing visibility for lgbtq students 27 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors andrew darian lori ellingford assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain jeffery johnson seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word selecting one story and hiding othershow ayp chooses the portrayal of a school.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x selecting one story and hiding others: how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school peter clyde martin ithaca college citation martin, p. c. (2011). selecting one story and hiding others: how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this article discusses how the adequate yearly progress (ayp) accountability mechanism of no child left behind makes use of supposedly objective standardized test scores to describe schools in a certain way when the same results could serve to draw very different conclusions. examining the proficiency scores of students from a specific middle school that is determined to be unequivocally failing according to ayp, the article shows how the same data could be used to characterize this school in ways that are more complex and emphasize its possible accomplishments. in addition to disaggregating test scores according to ayp-prescribed student categories, the study accounts for length of time students have been enrolled in the school and current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 considers those students who do not present characteristics that nclb views as putting them at risk of school failure as a separate category of their own. the study shows that the portrait of the school that is drawn by including these additional categories is quite different from that presented by the existing ayp reports. it is suggested that, in addition to questions regarding the validity of high-stakes assessments for the evaluation of student learning, the very way in which the data is presented in ayp reporting makes tacit choices that are disturbing, need to be highlighted, and whose implications ought to be considered. keywords: school accountability, urban education, education reform, equity, special education, english language learners how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 3 about the author(s) author: peter clyde martin affiliation: ithaca college address: department of education, 194 phillips hall, 953 danby road, ithaca, ny 14850 email: pmartin@ithaca.edu biographical information: dr. martin is on the faculty of the education department at ithaca college. he holds a doctoral degree in bilingual special education from the george washington university. his research interests focus on the areas of teacher collaboration, vision-based and transformational schooling, and serving the needs of english language learners considered to be at risk of educational failure. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 selecting one story and hiding others: how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school when the no child left behind act of 2001 (nclb) was voted into law with overwhelming support from a wide range of political currents and interest groups, its promise was to finally ensure that in the united states high academic achievement would be attained by all students regardless of race, background, income, or other special circumstances. for the first time, all public schools were required to implement annual student testing for a systematic measurement of educational effectiveness and were held accountable for all students being academically proficient by 2014. nclb insisted that schools be held accountable for the success of all students, including those who are poor, are learning english as a second language, or have a diagnosed disability. issues of accountability the scope and historic nature of nclb’s accountability system has been lauded on many fronts. it has been pointed out that for the first time all the nation’s public schools are subject to clearly defined educational goals for student achievement (the education trust, 2004) and that there is now a consistent system for determining school success (hall, wiener, & carey, 2003; yell, katsiyanna, & shiner, 2010). credit has been given to how, as a consequence, schools that historically failed to adequately educate their students are no longer allowed to simply keep doing so (hall et al., 2003). advocates for students with disabilities have remarked that nclb’s insistence that schools be held accountable for the academic proficiency of all students has led to greater inclusion of special education students in grade-level instruction (hardman & dawson, 2008). it can be argued, however, that the enforcement arm of nclb, namely the adequate yearly progress (ayp) accountability mechanism with its underlying high-stakes assessment how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 5 tools, has also ended up serving as a way to conceal individual student differences (and thereby us social inequities). ironically, ayp may have become a means to gloss over disparities when it could instead be a tool to highlight differences and potential connections between student characteristics and academic achievement and thus truly hold schools accountable. this article is an examination of one middle school in washington, dc where the ayp process has been used to draw one particular portrait of the school—tell one particular story—by presenting one view of test scores and the student population while ignoring other views and characteristics of the very same scores and student body. by proclaiming one conclusive— supposedly objective—view of the school, the ayp process as it is implemented in fact reflects a particular choice of what to tell and what not to tell, choosing one story over others. case of washington, dc: ayp and the ayp report the particulars of how a school educates its student body, with the characteristics that make it unique, could be expected to dictate how it is portrayed. given their history of perceived failure, it would seem that public schools in washington, dc would be especially keen on having portrayal mechanisms in place that highlight not only what they are achieving, but also the difficulties they contend with. nclb was in fact designed to highlight those achievement gaps and educational failures that schools and districts were not noticing, divulging, or effectively addressing. in itself, this initiative was nothing new. the improving america’s school act of 1994 (iasa) had already reacted to findings of persistent lags and gaps in student achievement by requiring that states implement academic standards and assessments. this, it was thought, would keep schools and states from simply ignoring problems and provide data to guide improvement measures. the effectiveness of these initiatives, however, was undermined by a lack of consistency across states current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 and the absence of any comprehensive accountability system (yell et al., 2006). nclb, as the continuation of iasa, sought to rectify this by setting a clear objective for all schools across states (100% proficiency in math and reading by 2014) and backing it up with an accountability system based on ayp reporting, the details for which would be defined on a state level. by insisting on rigorous assessments of all students nation-wide and holding schools and districts accountable for results, the federal government seemed to take away the option of hiding or ignoring educational failure. in order to meet federal ayp requirements of assessing at least 95% of all students in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school in reading and mathematics, the d.c. office of the state superintendent of education (osse) has mandated that the d.c. comprehensive assessment system (dccas) test be given each spring. standard scores are calculated and categorized as below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced based on single-score cut off points. in accordance with nclb, all but very few students with disabilities are required to take the test in its standard form. scores for english language learners (ell) are not counted for ayp purposes during students’ first year in the united states. both ells and students with disabilities are allowed specific accommodations for taking the test. these accommodations are considered to have no effect on the construct or the standardized nature of the test. in washington, dc every school is subsequently issued a one-page “ayp report” that lists the percentage of students who were assessed and of those who scored proficient or above. also listed are the percentages for subcategories by ethnicity, special education classification, ell classification, and students who are economically disadvantaged. finally, the report indicates whether, for each student category, the school reached the predetermined state-wide proficiency target. indeed, since nclb mandates that 100% of all students in every category how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 7 score proficient by 2014, states have set annually increasing targets in order to meet the federal requirement. thus in 2007 schools in dc were required to meet proficiency targets of 43.58% in reading and 40.54% in math in order to make ayp. in 2008 the target jumped to 57.69% in reading and 55.41% in math. based on whether the target is reached in the given year, the official report states whether the school made ayp or whether it is in “need of improvement.” depending on the number of consecutive years the school has not made ayp, a continuum of remedial measures are mandated, with the eventual threat of reconstitution. schools that do not make ayp but show at least a 10% decrease in students who did not score proficient are given a ‘safe harbor’ designation that freezes their ayp status until the following year. the summary ayp report is disseminated to the public and published in the local newspaper without further analysis of the student population, of the actual standard scores, or of any measure of statistical validity. essentially, this cursory glance at some of the assessment data establishes an official, public view of a school as, for example, successful, struggling to become successful, or incontestably failing. in addition to formal state-mandated repercussions, this ayp report also serves to guide students, families, teachers, and administrators in their choice of what schools to enroll or work in. while other states have a dual system that allows for ayp to be down-played in the public view in favor of a more variable state accountability determination, this has not been the case in dc. the significance of this single-page ayp report and its consequences for the individual schools can therefore not be overstated. while on the surface the very succinctness and quantitative nature of the data on the ayp report would seem to go a long way toward establishing clear-cut, measurable goals and holding schools accountable in an undisputable way, the narrative the report tells is in fact neither clearcut nor undisputable. by disaggregating the assessment data in one way and not in others, and current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 by identifying some categories and not others, a specific story is selected among many. what becomes in effect the official story of the school is selected rather than evident as the only one possible. due to low proficiency rates common in dc public schools, the degree of failure as publicized in the ayp report is important as well. indeed, for the school year 2007-2008 only 39% of all secondary school students scored proficient in reading and 36% in math. since these results are 19% and 20%, respectively, below what was stipulated, many schools are arguably not only under pressure to make ayp, but also—if they do not—to not fall significantly below the local average (dc government, 2007). the ayp report is thus critical beyond whether a school has made ayp. for stakeholders the difference between being a school that struggles to try to make ayp and one that is irrevocably failing could be significant. in the case of a middle school that has to accept for at most three years any student coming from any elementary school with any language and economic background and a possible disability, the ayp report is equivalent to its public story. this story, in turn, is not dictated by the specifics of the school, the demographic makeup or mobility of its population, or even the quality of its feeder schools. assessing student differences rather than student learning there is evidence that scores on standardized tests closely correlate with demographic factors rather than with educational achievement directly resulting from instruction. in their examination of student information in testing data from multiple states, marchant, paulson, & shunk (2006) found that characteristics of the test-takers accounted for up to seventy percent of the variance among scores in a same state. similarly, welner (2005) shows that if two students how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 9 are given the same interventions to help increase their achievement, the outcomes will be different for each based on factors specific to the learner. a number of authors have argued that ayp measures do not, in fact, account for why one student’s scores are lower than another’s (welner, 2005; hershberg, 2008; koretz, 2008; jennings & corcoran, 2009). koretz (2008) suggests that achievement on ayp assessments “reflects the cumulative effect of many factors, both educational and not,” thus hardly making it an objective measure of instructional quality. welner (2005) argues that test scores are, if anything, the reflection of the effect of a large number of different and varied factors and stake holders. according to him, “the truth is that each—school and student—bears some responsibility, along with the state, the school district, the family, the community, peer groups, libraries, and various other people and institutions including the federal government. and the truth is that if it were possible to measure the actual contributions of each to student test scores, we would find varying proportions for each community, family, student, teacher, and school. a more rational nclb would acknowledge both those truths.” what are we (not) evaluating? an inevitable consequence of the ambiguous relationship between instruction and test scores is the ayp system’s failure to do what it so adamantly aims to ensure, namely, a way to fairly and clearly evaluate schools and thus hold them accountable for student learning (barton, 2006). according to hershberg (2008), data indicates that there is greater variance in student achievement within schools than among schools, thus highlighting the flaws in how test scores are used for evaluation purposes. koretz (2008) points out that once student background factors are controlled for, there is not much variation among scores. there therefore seems to be little direct connection between school quality alone and scores on ayp measures. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 who are we (not) targeting? an additional flaw in the use of ayp measures to evaluate educational effectiveness relates to how many schools try to increase the percentage of their students who score proficient. in their study of increases in 5th grade test scores in chicago public scores, neal & schwanzenbach (2007) found that the introduction of test-based accountability measures did in fact correlate with an increase in scores for students in the middle of the achievement distribution. there was no evidence, however, of gains among lower students and only mixed evidence of increases among the higher students. thus, while schools demonstrated progress in student achievement, these concerned only a certain group. according to the authors, “schools face weak incentives to devote extra attention to students who are either already proficient or who have little chance of becoming proficient in the near term” (neal & schwanzenbach, 2007). in a study of the effect of the test-based accountability system and teaching practices in texas, booher-jennings (2005) found evidence of educational triage whereby teachers diverted resources to those students believed to be close to passing the assessment bar and to those whose scores would most affect the school’s accountability rating. ironically, ayp provides clear incentives to focus instructionally on some students only and thereby neglect others. economically disadvantaged students. the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in schools impacts ayp determinations. such inequity is confirmed by data on the achievement of students in certain sub-groups. there is ample evidence that schools, both regular and charter, with high percentages of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch receive lower average scores than do schools with wealthier students (escamilla mahon, rileybernal, & rutledge 2003; jennings & corcoran, 2009). english language learners. ells and the schools that serve them also receive generally how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 11 lower test scores, based on the fact that they speak english as a second language and not because they receive an inferior education. while there are strong arguments that including ells in ayp-related assessments and accountability measures ought to improve the quality of the education they receive by leading teachers to establish higher expectations, the consequence is often a purposeful educational exclusion (menken, 2008). according to no child left behind, making ayp requires that ells who have been enrolled in us schools for at least one year be administered the same assessments as their native-english speaking peers—in english—even though these tests were developed for native speakers of english (menken, 2009). as a consequence, serious questions have been raised as to the actual validity of administering these assessments to ells—let alone holding anyone accountable based on the results (government accounting office, 2006; menken, 2008). not surprisingly, then, students with limited proficiency in english score generally lower than native speakers (abedi & dietal, 2004; government accounting office 2006; abedi, 2009). ultimately, any content-focused achievement test, when administered to ells, will in effect function as a test of english proficiency (menken, 2008, 2009). english proficiency, however, is not what is supposed to be measured when evaluating whether a school is making adequate yearly progress. the assessments, in this case, do not test what they claim and the accountability system uses them to make judgments it cannot fairly make. consequently, schools with large numbers of ells are, in effect, unfairly punished for serving a particular population (escamilla et al., 2003; ga’ndara & baca, 2008). as menken (2008) states in her study on discriminatory testing practices in new york public schools, “language has become a liability in our quest for accountability.” current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 students with disabilities. similarly, there is strong evidence that students with disabilities have far lower proficiency results than the law mandates. typically, students’ academic levels are determined to be at least two years below their grade if they qualify as having a disability. nevertheless, close to all of them are administered the same one-size-fits-all test as students who do not have disabilities. generally there is a significant performance gap between special education and general education students (abedi, 2009). indeed, it is common for schools not to make ayp because of the test performance of their special education subgroup (eckes & swando, 2009; cole, 2006). it should be noted, however, that a number of advocates for the education of students with disabilities have lauded their inclusion in the assessment process as a way to ensure—as nclb intends—that schools are held fully accountable for their learning (hardman & dawson, 2008). not surprisingly given the heterogeneity of types and degrees of disability and given the nature of many prevalent processing disorders, there is evidence of a wide range, inconsistency, and unpredictability of group scores that makes the validity of evaluating schools with students with disabilities using ayp measures highly questionable. for example, in one large-scale multi-state study that examined progress of the special education subgroup for individual schools over time, both gains and drops were so significant from one year to another that it became difficult to make inferences about performance trends for students with special needs as a group (thurlow, quenemoen, altman, & cuthbert, 2008). given that ayp-related tests were not designed for many students with disabilities, the low test scores and their unreliability should not come as a surprise. in a study of scores from california, texas, and florida, the low scores of students with disabilities was attributed largely to the fact that these constituted the only ayp subgroup whose defining characteristics involved how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 13 actual limitations on the ability to learn. it was concluded that differences in proficiency levels between students with and without disabilities were evident from the onset and that these remained over time, regardless of the progress made by each subgroup. the scores of students with disabilities stayed lower than those of any other category. ayp requirements therefore effectively mandate that special education students make progress faster than their peers who do not have disabilities (eckes & swando, 2009). in fact, the very principle of nclb and ayp that all students are to reach a common level of proficiency contradicts the individuals with disabilities education act’s (idea) mandate that students are held to expectations that are individualized based on their needs (albritte, mainzer, & ziegler 2004). furthermore, there is little evidence that assessment accommodations that special education students are entitled to are indeed effective in making the tests more accessible (bowen & rude, 2006). ultimately, this makes it more difficult for a school that has significant numbers of students with disabilities to make ayp than one that does not. again, student population is the determiner of a school’s “quality” according to ayp rather than the level of instruction (eckes & swando, 2009). english language learners with disabilities. if ells and students with disabilities are inherently less likely to score proficient on assessments, it follows that students who are both ell and qualify for special education would be most severely handicapped in the context of ayp (minnema, thurlow, van getson, & jimenez, 2006; barrera, shyyan, liu, & thurlow 2008; abedi, 2009). in a study comparing test scores of ells, non-ells with disabilities, ells with disabilities, and students who were in none of these categories, there was evidence of a clear performance gap favoring students who were not ells and did not have disabilities. significantly, the gap was highest with students who were ell and had disabilities. they had current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 the lowest scores as a group (abedi, 2009). it is suggested that these students’ failure to score proficient is a given because of the nature of the test. abedi (2009) argues that “due to the impact of linguistic and cultural factors and also because of their disabilities, assessments that are developed for mainstream students may not be providing valid outcomes for these students.” given disabilities that, for the most part, have to be impacting their learning in order to be diagnosed as such, and given the fact that they are in the process of learning the language of the test, ells with disabilities are, as a group, almost guaranteed to do poorly and their schools to be judged as doing a poor job teaching them. the case of the bilingual community academy deciding whether to take into account poverty, disability, and language background in the way the ayp gavel falls when judging the quality of a school is critical in determining the public profile of any school that struggles not to lose potential students to others that are betterregarded. the public story that the ayp system tells, emphasizing some aspects of the data and not others, is puzzling given the problems in validity and significance of standardized test scores, but also risks misrepresenting the struggles and successes of the schools it describes. this article focuses on the hidden story of one such school, deemed to be unequivocally and miserably failing according to one view of its assessment scores, while a more detailed scrutiny of these same, ayp-targeted assessment-results tell a story that is still problematic, yet far more complex, nuanced, and arguably more hopeful. the bilingual community academy (“abc” for its spanish name, academia bilingue de la comunidad) was a middle school in washington, d.c. whose appearance was heavily marked by its ayp report card that made public its very low test scores and status as failing according to nclb. established as a charter school in 2005 with a spanish-english bilingual how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 15 program, it attracted a small student population that was almost exclusively low-income, mostly came from low-performing public schools, and was almost evenly split between hispanic and african-american students. depending on the year, special education students made up between 21.65% and 28.85% of the population. while abc served grades 6 through 8, and did not have a feeder school, students entered in all three grades. it was thus never clearly established as a three-year program, with students coming and going between one school year and the next. table 1 gives a demographic breakdown of the student population over the first three years of the school’s existence (2005 through 2008). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 table 1 abc student population by year and subgroup* group year number percentage of total african-american 2006 2007 2008 26 53 56 49.1 55.2 53.8 hispanics 2006 2007 2008 27 43 48 50.1 44.8 46.2 caucasian 2006 2007 2008 0 0 0 0 0 0 females 2006 2007 2008 25 55 54 47.2 57.3 56.2 males 2006 2007 2008 28 41 50 52.8 42.7 43.8 special education 2006 2007 2008 13 21 30 24.5 21.9 31.2 non-special education 2006 2007 2008 40 75 74 75.6 78.1 69.8 lep/nep** 2006 2007 2008 23 41 50 43.4 42.7 48.1 non-lep/nep 2006 2007 2008 30 55 57 56.6 57.3 51.1 economically disadvantaged 2006 2007 2008 53 92 104 100 958 100 non-economically disadvantaged 2006 2007 2008 0 0 0 0 0 0 total 2006 2007 2008 53 96 104 100 100 100 *these represent the number of students enrolled, which may be slightly different from the number of students assessed on the dccas. **this constitutes a subgroup among students categorized as english language learners according to district regulations. how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 17 the official story: a failing school with failing scores. based on the one-page ayp report that every school in washington, dc is issued upon disaggregation of the previous year’s assessment, abc consistently failed as a school. table 2 shows the summary portion of the ayp report for all students. abc never came close to reaching the benchmarks in any of the achievement-related indicators. the school never reached the safe harbor mark that is available for schools that do not reach the absolute benchmarks necessary to make ayp, but still achieve substantial growth in their proficiency scores. based on the official story told by the report and spread by newspapers abc was nothing more than yet another very bad school in a city where bad schools seemed to be the norm. table 2 percent proficient on the 2008 dc-cas* subject tested number tested number proficient/adv. percent proficient made ayp? reading 98 23 23.71% no math 101 16 16.0% no * each of the three grades tested was subject to the same proficiency target and received the same ayp designation. looking more closely: the hidden stories. however, there are untold stories underneath this official one that are contained in details that ayp omits. as the literature explains (welner, 2005; hershberg, 2008; koretz, 2008; jennings & corcoran, 2009), there are questions as to the significance of high-stakes tests for evaluating the achievement of different current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 sub-populations. indeed, if the assessment results—and therefore their significance—are affected by issues of poverty, language proficiency, and disability, then it would follow that they mean something quite different depending on the students’ circumstances. scores should be viewed with the understanding that there are doubts as to their validity for a number of subpopulations and that, in effect, they are to be considered most meaningful when evaluating students who are neither ells nor individuals with disabilities. abc’s actual student population. examining abc’s test results while taking into consideration both the reality of its particular student population and some of the abovementioned doubts as to the appropriateness and validity of the test for certain subgroups, a fairly complex picture emerges that suggests the importance of broadening the ways ayp results are reported. while, as the data will show, abc was a struggling school that would not have made ayp even if the scores had been reported differently, its degree of failure and apparent hopelessness was associated primarily with demographic and turnover factors that the report does not highlight. given that the ayp report does not provide confidence intervals and that the objective of this article is not to estimate a parameter but simply to show how the same interpretive rules for the ayp report could be used to tell a more nuanced narrative, confidence intervals will not be used here. several authors have reported on the negative impact of poverty on test scores (escamilla et al., 2003; jennings & corcoran, 2009). as the near entirety of abc’s student body came from low-income homes (depending on the year, between 95.8% and 100% of the students qualified for free and reduced lunch), it is unfortunately not possible to provide comparative data in this regard. how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 19 one important point of comparison when attempting to make sense of what the scores actually represent and that is not reported on for ayp is the amount of time students spent in the school. indeed, one might assume that a school’s effectiveness would be more definitely demonstrated by students who have been enrolled for some time than for students who are new. this appears to be corroborated by the data. indeed, there was a noticeable difference in scores between students who had newly transitioned to the school and others who had two or three years of continuity at abc. if one measured the proficiency status of returning students only the percentage scoring proficient was higher (30.9% in reading, or 7.19% more than the total, and 21.8% in math, or 5.8% more than the total, see table 3). conversely, the status of students who were in their first year at abc was lower (14.29% in reading, or 9.42% less than the total and 8.8% in math, or 13% less than the total). while scores remain far below the ayp target, one of the untold stories is therefore how newness to the program may have had a negative impact on the likelihood of scoring proficient. given the large number of new students (43.9% in reading and 45.5.% in math), any difference here is worthy of attention. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 table 3 percent proficient—returning students total students new students* returning students subject tested percent proficient number tested number proficient percent proficient number tested number proficient percent proficient reading 23.71% 43 6 14.29% 55 17 30.9% math 16.0% 46 4 8.8% 55 12 21.8% * only includes students enrolled since the beginning of the school year this trend of better test results over time is confirmed when we separate scores of students who have attended the school for more than one year (see table 4). indeed, the percentage of students scoring proficient increases significantly with each year they remain at abc. while the reasons for this student mobility are beyond the scope of this study, turnover (42.11% and 61.05%, depending on the year) can be negatively linked to the assessment scores, a fact that is omitted from the official story of the school. if we look at students who spent all three years in the school—as the design of abc’s program called for—the difference in scores is moderate in math, but becomes remarkable in reading. in reading we note a jump from 33.98% below the ayp target for all students (and 43.4% for new students) to 18.8% below the ayp target for students who were in their third year. if in reading they had been considered an ayp subgroup (which they were not) in order to hold the school accountable for academic achievement over time, then theirs would be a story of a school struggling to narrow the gap rather than one of utter academic failure. how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 21 table 4 percent proficient—returning students after 2 and 3 years % proficient total students 1st year students 2nd year students 3rd year students number tested 98 42 38 18 number proficient 23 6 10 7 reading percent proficient 23.71% 14.29% 26.32% 38.89% math number tested 101 45 38 18 number proficient 16 4 8 4 percent proficient 16.0% 8.89% 17.78% 22.22% the large percentage of students with disabilities should also be underlined as a significant aspect of the school and its results. as mentioned in the literature (eckes & swando, 2009; cole, 2006), there are questions as to the validity of using these test scores and benchmarks to evaluate the learning of students with ieps. not surprisingly, then, average scores are very different when general education and special education students are counted separately. this is particularly significant in the context of telling the story of abc, given the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 high percentage of special education students who took the high-stakes tests (32.7% of the total in reading and 31.7% in math). the percentage of students scoring proficient jumps considerably if results for general education students are viewed separately. indeed, while none of the students with disabilities scored proficient in either subject, 35.29% of general education students made proficient in reading (or 11.58% more than the total) and 25.71% made proficient in math (or 9.71% more than the total) (see table 5). scores for general education students as a group are not mentioned in the ayp report. table 5 general education students total students students with disabilities students without disabilities subject tested percent proficient number tested number proficient percent proficient number tested number proficient percent proficient reading 23.71% 32 0 0% 66 23 34.85% math 16.0% 32 0 0% 69 16 23.18% research has pointed to a lack of validity of high-stakes tests to measure the academic achievement of ells, questioning whether they don’t in fact assess english language proficiency instead (menken, 2008). given that ells constituted close to half the population of the school during each of the three years, it seems appropriate to identify two separate languagerelated stories for abc. how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 23 in both reading and math the percentage of ells who scored proficient was lower than for native speakers. ells scored 7.35% lower in reading than non-ells and between 6.99% lower in math. for ells, of course, the question ultimately becomes how much of a story these results actually tell other than that they are in fact in the process of acquiring the english language. table 6 non-english language learners & english language learners non-english language learners english language learners subject tested number tested number proficient percent proficient number tested number proficient percent proficient reading 52 14 26.92% 46 9 19.57% math 52 10 19.23% 49 6 12.24% so far we have considered how students with characteristics that undermine the validity of the test results have done worse on ayp measures than others who did not have that particular characteristic. in many ways, this investigation follows the logic of ayp which also examines results for the total population and those particular subgroups that are seen to be at a disadvantage. we have shown how in the case of abc these disadvantages do in fact seem to be substantiated by the test scores, but also how the large size of these subpopulations plays a part in determining the ayp results for the school’s population as a whole, thus indicating that the narrative embedded in these test results is far more complex and nuanced than the ayp report indicates. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 while the report accounts for the results of those students considered to be disadvantaged, it is important to note that it does not do so for those students that the test appears to actually be designed for. indeed, at abc a minority of the students were not english language learners and did not have a documented disability. if the ayp report had a separate category for general education students who are native speakers of english, they would, as a group, tell a different story. in this unlabeled subgroup 48.28% of the students scored proficient in reading (or 23.28% more than in the total population and 9.41% less than the ayp target) and 34.48% in math (or 19.1% ,ore than in the total and 20.93% less than the ayp target, see table 7). it is also to be noted that, had the ayp target for reading not increased from the previous year, these students would, as a subgroup, have made ayp. this story is ignored in the official ayp report, substituting instead a single narrative about an irrevocably failing school. table 7 percent proficient— general education: non-english language learners total students general education-ells general education-non-ells subject tested percent proficient number tested number proficient percent proficient number tested number proficient percent proficient reading 23.71% 36 9 25.00% 29 14 48.28% math 16.0% 39 6 15.38% 29 10 34.48% how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 25 telling a different story in addition to determining the need for remedial or even punitive measures, ayp reports play an important role in describing for the general public the work accomplished by an individual school. this function of the ayp mechanism in turn needs to be reconciled with the much-documented fact that schools that are more diverse economically and/or racially are less likely to make ayp than schools that are not (kim & sunderman, 2005; balfanz, legters, west, & weber, 2007). in their study of high schools, balfanz et al. (2007) found that schools that have numerous student subgroups (denoting diversity) rarely make ayp. kim and sunderman (2005) propose that requiring all subgroups to meet the same proficiency goals places schools with high levels of poverty and diversity at a disadvantage. the authors suggest that africanamerican and hispanic students, in particular, often belong to other ayp subgroups as well and that schools with large minority populations are therefore even less likely to make ayp (kim & sunderman, 2005). it seems important that ayp clearly present and underline these factors as relevant to the educational gaps of a school rather than gloss over them. supposedly, the ayp process, as established under nclb, provides the irrefutable story of a school’s success or failure to educate its students. supported by what is supposed to be the transparency and evidence of numbers derived from standardized test results, the narrative provided by ayp is to be an objective, factual report based on the sense that ‘numbers don’t lie.’ according to the ayp formula, the story of the abc middle school is simply one of complete educational failure. low percentages of students scored proficient among the total population, economically disadvantaged students, ells, and students with disabilities, in both reading and math. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 looking further into the data used for ayp purposes, we find that the clarity and simplicity of this story hinges on the fact that certain subgroups are singled out and others are not, and that the effects of specific student characteristics on proficiency results are not being taken into account at all. currently, nclb mandates that ayp be determined and reported for the following four subgroups of students: • economically disadvantaged students • students with disabilities • english language learners • students from major racial and ethnic groups in order to use the ayp system to truly render a plausible portrait of the school, the findings discussed here suggest additional categories. first of all, it is urged that the complementary categories for those listed above be used as well and given equal weight so that they, too, become full parts of the story. here the following categories are suggested: • students who are not economically disadvantaged • students without disabilities • students who are not english language learners • students who are not economically disadvantaged or in special education or english language learners. if one purpose of ayp is to make explicit and force schools to address educational gaps among subgroups, not listing results for this second set of categories inevitably leads to an incomplete and potentially false picture. furthermore, the findings of the article demonstrate a need to reflect the transient nature of part of our student population and the fact that schools’ accountability for the achievement of how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 27 students who have been enrolled for several years will undoubtedly be different than for students who have not. the following two categories are therefore suggested, at a minimum: • students who have attended the school for no more than one year • students who have attended the school for more that one year once we include in our story the widely-documented truths that being in the process of learning the language one is tested in, having a disability that is defined based on ones low academic achievement, and being new to a school that is still working with ones prior learning are all factors that have a negative impact on test scores, the story changes. instead, the story becomes that of a school that is actively struggling to achieve a degree of success while serving a largely poor and diverse population of students, many of whom have personal characteristics that put them at a disadvantage when it comes to meeting the requirements of ayp. rather than present an ‘objective truth’ thanks to its underlying quantitative data, the ayp process reflects a failure to tell the story of the population of a given school, thus hiding those very differences that it was supposed to highlight and not reporting on outcomes directly linked to learning rather than demographics. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 28 references abedi (2009). english language learners with disabilities: classification, assessment, and accommodation issue. journal of applied testing technology, 10(2). albritten, d., mainzer, r., & ziegler, d. ( 2004). will students with disabilities be scapegoats for school failures? teaching exceptional children, 36 (3), 74-75. balfanz, r., legters, n., west, t. c., & weber, l. m. (2007). are nclb’s measures, incentives, and improvement strategies the right ones for the nation’s low-performing schools? american educational research journal, 44(3), 559-594. barrera, m., shyyan, v., liu, k. k., & thurlow, m. l. (2008). reading, mathematics, and science instructional strategies for english language learners with disabilities: insights from educators nationwide (ells with disabilities report 19). minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota, national center on educational outcomes. barton, p. (2006). “failing or “succeeding” schools: how can we tell? washington, dc: american federation of teachers. booher-jennings, j. (2005). below the bubble: ‘educational triage’ and the texas accountability system. american educational research journal, 42(2), 231-268 bowen, s. k. & rude, h. a. (2006). assessment and students with disabilities: issues and challenges with educational reform. rural special education quarterly, 25(3), 24-30. cole, c. (2006). closing the achievement gap series: part 3. what is the impact of nclb on the inclusion of students with disabilities? bloomington, in: center for evaluation and education policy, indiana university. how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 29 dc government (2007, august 17). district of columbia releases school achievement data. washington, dc: author. retrieved from http://newsroom.dc.gov/show.aspx/agency /seo/section/2/release/11684/year/2007 eckes, s. e. & swando, j. (2009). special education subgroups under nclb: issues to consider. teachers college record 11 (11), 2479-2504. escamilla, k., mahon, e., riley-bernal, h., and rutledge, d. (2003). high-stakes testing, latinos, and english language learners: lessons from colorado. bilingual research journal, 27(1), 26-50. government accountability office. (2006). no child left behind act: assistance from education could help states better measure progress of students with limited english proficiency. washington, dc: author. hall, d., wiener, r. & carey, k. (2003). what new “ayp” information tells us about schools, states, and public education. washington, d.c.: the education trust. hardman, m. l. & dawson, s. (2008). the impact of federal public policy on curriculum and instruction for students with disabilities in the general classroom. preventing school failure, 52(2), 5-12. hershberg, t. (2005). value-added assessment and systemic reform: a response to the challenge of human capital development. phi delta kappan, 87(4). jennings, l. j. & corcoran, s. p. (2009). “beware of geeks bearing formulas”: reflections on growth models for school accountability. phi delta kappan, 90(9), 635-639. kim, j. s. & sunderman, g. l. (200). measuring academic proficiency under the no child left behind act: implications for educational equity. educational researcher, 34(8), 3-13. koretz, d. (2008). a measured approach. american educator, fall 2008. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 30 marchant, g. j., paulson, s. e., & shunk, a. (2006). relationships between high-stakes testing policies and student achievement after controlling for demographic factors in aggregated data. education policy analysis archives, 14(30). menken, k. (2008). english learners left behind: standardized testing as language policy. clevedon, avon: multilingual matters. menken, k. (2009). policy failures: no child left behind and english language learners. in s. groenke & a. hatch (eds.), critical pedagogy and teacher education in the neoliberal era: small openings. berlin, germany: springer. minnema, j.e., thurlow, m.l., van getson, g.r., jimenez, r. (2006). including english language learners with disabilities in large-scale assessments: a case study of linguistically-diverse populations (ells with disabilities report 14). minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota, national center on educational outcomes. neal, d.& schwanzenbach, d. w. (2007). left behind by design: proficiency counts and test based accountability. (nber working paper nr.13293). cambridge, mass.: national bureau of economic research, 2007. sparks, s. d. (2010). study finds fewer ‘dropout factory’ schools. education week, 30(14),12 13. the education trust (2004). the abcs of “ayp.” raising achievement for all students. washington, dc: author. thurlow, m., quenemoen, r., altman, j., cuthbert, m. (2008). trends in the participation and performance of students with disabilities (technical report 50). minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota, national center on educational outcomes. yell, m. l., katsiyanna, a. & shiner, j. g. (2006). the no child left behind act, adequate how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school 31 yearly progress, and students with disabilities. teaching exceptional children, 38(4), 32-39. welner, k. g. (2005). can irrational become unconstitutional? nclb’s 100% presuppositions. equity & excellence in education, 38, 171–179. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 32 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word 1004_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 february 21, 2013 issn 1099-839x analysis of an instructional coach’s role as elementary school language teachers’ professional developer chin-wen chien national hsinchu university of education, taiwan coaches can provide teachers with quality professional development experiences by mentoring, providing workshops, modeling, or encouraging professional growth (yorkbarr & duke, 2004). this study focuses on the instructional coach’s role in the professional development of teachers of english language learners (ells). the study has the following findings. first, the coach, acted as a professional developer for teachers of ells in the workshop, because she designed and delivered the workshop, mentored teachers, modeled and scaffolded lessons in the lesson-planning process, modeled teaching, and led them to do self-reflection. second, from the participating teachers’ perspective, the instructional coach’s knowledge and understanding of academic language made the workshop well-organized. the teachers of ells surveyed and interviewed found the instructional coach they worked with to be helpful, organized, and well-informed. third, less follow-up coaching support and district policy on coaching made the workshop less effective. two suggestions for coaches to be effective professional developers for language teachers are provided. keywords: effective coaching, instructional coach, professional development, role, teachers of english language learners educators and researchers generally believe and promote the concept that one of the best ways to improve the teaching and learning process is by providing teachers with quality professional development experiences (eun, 2006). continuous professional development must be given top priority for teachers (ardila-rey, 2008). professional development and workshops for language teachers are designed and delivered by external expert presenters such as instructional coaches (boroko, 2004). coaches can provide teachers with quality professional development experiences by mentoring, providing workshops, modeling, or encouraging professional growth (york-barr & duke, 2004). unlike traditional professional development, which takes place outside the classroom setting and requires teachers to transfer new knowledge to the classroom, coaching takes place in the instructional setting (taylor, 2008). coaching provides learning opportunities that can be adapted to the particular classroom setting; therefore, coaching can aid the transfer and application of new learning in teachers’ daily classroom instruction (joyce & showers, 1980). coaches were once found only on the athletic field. however, coaching for teachers’ effective instruction has spread rapidly through elementary, middle, and high schools in the united states. coaching develops trust, instills collective responsibility, imparts an innovative orientation, and provides an example of professionalism around instructional practice (knight, 2006, 2009). carrera’s (2010) study concludes that different types of coaching practice, coaches’ qualities, and followup coaching support influence the effectiveness of current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 coaching on language teachers’ professional development and learning. this study focuses on the instructional coach’s role in the professional development of teachers of english language learners (ells), with particular reference to the coach’s role as a learning facilitator and instructional specialist. in addition to considering the coach’s roles, qualities, and the provision of follow-up support (carrera, 2010), this study aims to discuss the attributes and conditions that contribute to effective coaching when an instructional coach provides teacher’s professional development. suggestions are provided on effective coaching. literature review the current study and literature on the roles of coaches, their attributes and expertise, and values, as well as conditions for effective coaching are discussed as follows: roles of coaches reiss (2007) defines a coach as a person, a process, a role, and a profession. toll (2004) defines a coach as: …one who helps teachers to recognize what they know and can do, assists teachers as they strengthen their ability to make more effective use of what they know and do, and supports teachers as they learn more and do more. (p. 5) therefore, a coach takes on different roles as in figure 1, including that of data coach, resource provider, counselor, mentor, curriculum specialist, instructional specialist, classroom supporter, learning facilitator, school leader, and catalyst for change (knight, 2009; marsh, mccombs, lockwood, martorell, gerwhwin, & naftel, 2008). while data coaches assist individual teachers or teams of teachers in examining student achievement data and in using these data to design forms of instruction to meet students’ learning needs, mentors serve the needs of new teachers or new-to-the-school teachers. coaches also act as curriculum specialists who focus on teaching content and classroom support and work side by side with teachers within the classroom. coaches can themselves be school leaders or catalysts for change, because they contribute to initiatives for reform. by acting as learning facilitators, coaches can design and facilitate adults’ learning in schools (knight, 2009). kise’s (2006) definition limits coaching to a partnership between the coach and the person being coached. poglinco and bach define coaching as “a form of inquiry-based learning characterized by collaboration between individual, or groups of, teachers and more accomplished peers” as in figure 1 (2004, p. 398). bean (2004) identifies three levels of activities associated with the coaches. level one includes informal activities such as curriculum development or leading a study group. level two activities are focused on area needs such as co-planning lessons, co-teaching lessons, or analyzing student work. level three refers to visiting classrooms and providing teachers with feedback. figure 1. instructional coach’s roles. analysis of an instructional coach’s role as elementary school language teachers’ professional developer 3 therefore, an instructor coach supports teacher’s professional development, and this role combines that of both a learning facilitator and instructional specialist. a coach organizes, designs, and facilitates teachers’ learning. a coach also helps teachers choose appropriate instructional methodologies to meet students’ needs and works with the teacher in modeling effective teaching practices, co-teaching, and observing and giving feedback. attributes and expertise of coaches effective reading coaches must meet the following criteria. coaches must be expert classroom teachers; possess in-depth knowledge of reading processes, acquisition, assessment, and instruction; be excellent presenters and have a lot of experience working with other teachers to improve their classroom practice; and, have expertise in observing, modeling, and providing feedback to teachers (international reading association, 2004; feger, 2004; froelich & puig, 2007; killion & harrison, 2005). reiss (2007) identifies coaching mindset attributes: active listener, nonjudgmental, possibility thinker, compassionate, inspirational, personable, intuitive, sincere, trustworthy, risk taker, action oriented, focused on results, knows core coaching competences, and curious. lisa, a reading coach in gibson’s (2006) study, provided reading lesson observations and feedback to jim, a kindergarten teacher. she demonstrated her expertise throughout the coaching session by using pedagogical reasoning to support jim on improving his instruction, asking him to analyze his students’ responses to instruction, helping him clarify and expand his understanding of his proposed course of action, and providing him with specific information and advice on effective reading instruction. hence, effective coaches must have adequate knowledge of the curriculum and instruction. most importantly, they must learn “how to coach,” implying that they must learn how to relate to adult learners, present professional development sessions, use student performance data, develop rapport with colleagues, and tailor their work to teachers’ needs (johnson, 2009; taylor, 2008). value of coaching the value of instructional coaches has been studied extensively over the last several years. west (2012) claims that high-quality coaching can help develop coach-teacher partnerships and affect teaching practices in the classroom for ells. when teachers participate in traditional in-service programs, they apply less than twenty percent of their learning in the classroom (spokane public schools, 2004). teachers are more likely to "buy in to" and change their own instructional practices when coaches come into their classrooms and model instructional techniques (poglinco & bach, 2004; knight, 2009). compared to those who have not received coaching, teachers who experienced coaching are more willing to try new strategies (taylor, 2008). an instructional coaching model offers support, feedback, and intensive, individualized professional learning which promises to be a better way to improve instruction in schools (knight, 2006, 2009; reeves, 2007). ultimately, professional development results in the transfer of new instructional practices, and the coaching aspect facilitates the transfer of the training (joyce & showers, 1988). in reed’s (2005) case study, the cognitive coaching process provided the opportunity for seven teachers to restructure their educational practice as they engaged in professional dialogue and reflection with instructional coaches, principals, and peers. johnson’s (2009) study concludes that coaching may be a very valuable tool for increasing the instructional capacity of schools and differentiating the career of teaching. in her study, 85 second-stage teachers who had 4–10 years of teaching experience were interviewed; they commented that they welcomed the help of instructional coaches, because the instructional coaches, as skilled teachers, provided practice and inclass assistance, and helped them improve their current performance. carrera’s (2010) study examines the use of instructional coaching in one urban school as a form of professional development for teachers of ells in new york. the teachers of ells identified three challenges in teaching their students, including student stressors related to adapting to a new country, the wide range of literacy levels in the classroom, and teaching academic language. based on the challenges teachers of ells faced in carrera’s (2010) study, the instructional coaches offered a professional development program in vocabulary, reading, writing, lesson planning, and cooperative learning strategies. two types of coaching were implemented: (1) peer observations and group debriefing sessions in teacher learning communities (tlcs); and (2) individualized coaching sessions, which included: a one-on-one pre-meeting, an observation, and a one-onone debriefing session. the study concluded that the professional and personal qualities of the coaches and support from the principal became key factors in how coaching was established at the school. carrera’s (2010) findings were consistent with the literature on coaching (knight, 2006, 2009). these qualities of the coaches affected the ways in which coaches and teachers of ells established trust, how coaches set the tone for their work at the school, how coaches provided teachers feedback and opportunities for reflective dialogue, and how they created a supportive and nurturing environment. the coaches in carrera’s (2010) study did not provide followup coaching sessions to see if the professional development was effective or not. this study aims to discover the influence and value of an instructional coach’s design and delivery of workshop ii, two follow current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 up workshops, and follow-up coaching support on ell teachers’ classroom practice and their perspectives on coaching. conditions for effective coaching according to taylor (2008), coaching is most likely to be effective when coaches are supported by time, logistics, training, and expertise. coaching is influenced by other reform initiatives, educational policy imperatives, and the organizational context (borman & feger, 2006; taylor, 2008). coaching is likely to be affected by the “policy environment.” taylor (2008) explained that: “such environment is comprised of a complex historical accumulation of previous reform initiatives, professional development policies, and teacher recruitment, retention, and collective bargaining realities” (taylor, 2008, p. 27). more than 28 percent of coaches in marsh et al.’s (2008) study reported that frequent changes in district policy and priorities were a moderate hindrance to their work, while 20 percent of coaches reported that the district education authority asked them to communicate and enforce district messages and initiatives in ways that discouraged them from doing more important work to improve reading in schools. in addition to the policy environment, another condition for effective coaching is the need for coaches to spend time getting into classrooms to work with teachers and provide them with follow-up support (borman & feger, 2006; marsh et al., 2008). cheliotes and reilly (2010) recommend that 85% of the coaches’ time should be in the coaching zone, about 10% of their time in the mentoring zone, and only 5% of their time in the supervising zone. however, compared to florida state’s expectation that half of coaches’ time should be spent on in-class coaching activities, more than 60 percent of coaches interviewed in marsh et al.’s (2008) study spent 16 hours or less on individual instructional work. about 47 percent of coaches reported that their other duties or work (i.e., testing and data reporting) made it difficult for them to spend time in classrooms working with teachers, and they would have preferred to devote the time to inclass, one-on-one work with teachers. from the teachers’ perspective, more than 60 percent of social studies teachers in marsh et al.’s (2008) study reported never having received the various types of one-on-one coaching support, such as classroom observation, feedback on instruction, assistance with lesson planning, help with modeling lessons modeling, or co-teaching. another condition for effective coaching is for teachers to be willing and motivated to receive instructional coaches’ help in changing and improving their instructional practice (reed, 2005; reeves, 2007; taylor, 2008). the motivation of teachers to implement the practice and receive help is a result of their internal conviction that they can make changes that improve students’ performance. approximately one-third of coaches interviewed in marsh et al.’s (2008) study reported that teachers’ reluctance to work with them was a hindrance to their work. teachers in reed’s (2005) study reported that their openness and willingness contributed to, or their resistance inhibited, the implementation of the cognitive coaching process. there are books on how to coach teachers, the roles of coaching, coaching cycles, etc. (bloom, castagna, mori, & warren, 2006; carr, herman, & harris, 2005; davis, 2008; flaherty, 2006; killion & harrison, 2006; kise, 2006; knight, 2006, 2009; reiss, 2007). there are also studies (coskie, robinson, buly, & egawa, 2005; farrell, 2001; froelich & puig, 2007; gibson, 2006; goker, 2006; vacilotto & cummings, 2007) on peer coaching among esl teachers, literacy coaching, and math coaches, but only carrera’s (2010) study focuses on what factors affected the instructional coaching on language teachers’ professional development. in addition, to considering coaches’ roles, their qualities, follow-up support, the perspectives and attitudes of those who are coached, the organization, and context (borman & feger, 2006; carrera, 2010; marsh et al., 2008; reed, 2005; reeves, 2007; taylor, 2008), this study aims to discuss the attributes and conditions that contribute to effective coaching by an instructional coach providing support to a teacher’s professional development. this study focuses on an instructional coach’s role as the teachers’ professional developer in terms of roles, expertise and attributes, as well as factors that affects the effective coaching. the following three issues will be discussed. first, what tasks does the instructional coach need to undertake to provide professional development for teachers? second, what attributes and expertise does the instructional coach demonstrate in workshop ii? third, what are the conditions for the instructional coach to provide effective professional development for teachers? method this is a qualitative case study. qualitative research begins with assumptions, the possible theoretic lens, and the research problems. then researchers use an emerging qualitative approach to inquiry by collecting the data in the natural setting as well as analyzing and interpreting the data on themes or patterns (creswell, 2009; yin, 2009). merriam (1998) claims that case study research is effective in providing intensive descriptions and analyses of a unit or bounded system such as an individual, program, or group, because a case study focuses on developing an in-depth analysis of a single case and it requires researchers to set boundaries and describe that they have engaged in a purposeful sampling strategy in meeting those boundaries (creswell, 2009; hamel, 1993). so the case is the coach and the unit of analysis is the interactions that the coach has with the teachers. analysis of an instructional coach’s role as elementary school language teachers’ professional developer 5 settings and participants during the fall semester of 2009, instructional coaches in a school district in a northwest american city began to provide a workshop (herein referred to as workshop ii) to teachers of ells. workshop ii was a twelve-hour course which consisted of one full day with six hours and two evening sessions with three hours each and aimed to support teachers in developing a better understanding of what academic language is and how to teach it. participants in this study included (1) 30 teachers who participated in workshop ii and answered the surveys, (2) one instructional coach, and (3) two additional teachers who participated in the follow-up interview. the instructional coach works with five other instructional coaches and two consulting teachers under one program director in the district office and she was chosen because she designed and delivered workshop ii. the instructional coach provided the researcher with a list of teachers who attended workshop ii and were in the coaching school areas that she was responsible for in the district. the researcher emailed the teachers on the list provided by the instructional coach and two teachers of ells responded that they were willing to participate in this study. the major person in this study was the instructional coach, barbara. she is working on her doctoral dissertation in ell teaching coaching practice. barbara has six years of ell teaching experience, and is currently working with five other instructional coaches and two consulting teachers under one program director. in the fall of 2010 she worked with teachers from six elementary schools. barbara designs and delivers professional development, co-plans lessons with teachers, provides model lessons, observes teachers’ instruction, designs and releases a monthly newsletter, provides related teaching materials and resources, and helps teachers understand the requirements of the language proficiency levels of english language development. two teachers of ells participated in the followup study including nichole and rebecca. they taught students from kindergarten through fifth grade in the selfcontained classes. nichole is a teacher of ells with a master’s degree in education, a teacher’s certificate, and an ell endorsement. she began to teach in 2001, although she has taken a few breaks in the past ten years. rebecca received her bachelor of arts in english. she has a teacher’s certificate and an ell endorsement. she was a kindergarten teacher for six years in two schools and she wanted to be an ell specialist. she became a teacher of ells two years ago. data collection data were collected from september 2009 to december 2010, through surveys, observational field notes; and interviews. the first type of data was gathered from surveys designed specifically for providing constructive comments for instructional coaches. teachers were asked the following four questions at the end of the last session of workshop ii: 1) what new ideas or questions do you have about academic language?; 2) what did you find helpful/effective about today’s professional development session?; 3) what would you like to learn more about?; and 4) what was not effective about today’s professional development session? observation is one of the most natural ways of collecting data (bartels, 2005; richards & morse, 2007). the researcher attended, observed, and took field notes while the instructional coach designed and delivered workshop ii. at the researcher’s time convenience, six observations, including of one full-day, three evening sessions, and two follow-up, were conducted from september 2009 to december 2010. the third type of data was drawn from interviews. two teachers and the instructional coach were interviewed twice in this study and each interview lasted for forty minutes. the first interview was in october 2010 and the other one was in december 2010, respectively before and at the end workshop ii. two teachers of ells and one instructional coach were interviewed: the interview with the instructional coach focused on her demographic information and the objectives of designing, delivering, and providing follow-up support for workshop ii, while the interviews with the teachers of ells focused on their reactions and the support teachers of ells received following workshop ii. semi-structured interviews were used in this study in order to explore issues, probe for and follow up on the responses, and to allow for interaction (flick, 1998; kvale, 1996). an interview protocol was designed and consists of interview questions generated based on the research questions. the instructional coach was asked questions such as, “how did you design and deliver of workshop ii?” or “how have you provided teachers of ells with continued support and follow-up activities after workshop ii?” two teachers of ells were asked questions such as, “what kinds of continued support and follow-up activities did you receive from workshop ii?” or “what’s your experience like being with instructional coaches?” data analysis qualitative researchers build their patterns, categories, and themes by organizing the data into more abstract units of information (creswell, 2009). guided by the research questions, data are categorized into units of information, such as coach’s role, expertise, or attributes. qualitative researchers gather multiple forms of data, such as data from interviews, observations, and surveys, rather than rely on a single data source (creswell, 2009; lecompte & schensul, 1999). in this study, the triangulation of multiple sources of data (interviews, observations, and surveys) adds texture, depth, and multiple insights to an analysis and it enhances the validity or credibility of the results. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 table 1 fieldnotes on coaches’ roles number fieldnotes #1 today barbara and other instructional coaches went through the powerpoint slides of workshop ii and wrote down the instructional procedures. #2 barbara introduced the objectives and academic language. she reviewed clear teaching points. she wanted teachers to talk to partners and discuss how they would explain generalization to fourth graders. #3 barbara gave one mini-lesson demonstrations on non-fiction writing to all teachers. #4 barbara wanted teachers to design their own lessons. she walked around to help teachers. table 2 teachers’ responses on surveys on coaches’ attributes number teachers’ responses on surveys #1 nice coach, very helpful. #2 it was so well-organized. the coach was very knowledgeable and articulate. #3 clearly reviewing the materials, demonstrate, model discussion this study focuses on an instructional coach’s role as language teachers’ professional developer in terms of her roles, expertise and attributes, and conditions. an instructional coach’s roles in workshop ii, the instructional coach, barbara, took the major role of professional developer for teachers of ells. she designed and delivered workshop ii, mentored teachers, modeled and scaffolded lessons in the lesson-planning process, modeled teaching, and led them in a self-reflection exercise as table 1. therefore, she devoted herself more to bean’s (2004) as level two activities “co-planning lessons, co-teaching lessons, or analyzing student work.” an instructional coach’s expertise and attributes in this study, most teachers of ells in the surveys responded that they considered barbara to be knowledgeable, helpful, and well-organized when she delivered workshop ii as in table 2. when asked about her experience with barbara, nichole said: “i have a lot of respect for her. i found her to be the most organized, articulate, and quick.” rebecca thought that barbara was knowledgeable about academic language and the topics covered in workshop ii. barbara demonstrated the attributes of instructional coaching identified in current research (international reading association, 2004; feger, 2004; froelich & puig, 2007; killion & harrison, 2005) such as professionalism, expertise, and content knowledge, in academic knowledge in workshop ii. conditions for effective coaching teachers apply less than 20 percent of their learning from in-service training in their classrooms (spokane public schools, 2004); however, teachers are more likely to change their own instructional practices when coaches come into their classrooms and model instructional techniques (poglinco & bach, 2004; knight, 2009). in respond to the question “what new ideas or questions do you have about academic language?” on the evaluation form, two teachers wrote as in table 3. analysis of an instructional coach’s role as elementary school language teachers’ professional developer 7 table 3 teachers’ responses on evaluation forms on their learning number teachers’ responses on surveys #1 implementation of activities on academic language in my classroom and follow-up support from the coach #2 i’d like someone to observe me and provide direct feedback on my application of my learning. the most efficient and effective way to improve teachers’ knowledge base, analytical skills, and expertise is through one-on-one coaching. the key to teachers’ growth, development, and improved practice is the ability to reflect on one’s learning, to change practice based on the reflection (fountas & pinnell, 1996). unfortunately, barbara was not able to provide much follow-up and ongoing support for the teachers of ells who attended workshop ii. nichole wanted barbara to come to her class to observe a lesson, and do a teaching demonstration. due to district policy on coaching, barbara could not go to nichole’s class and provide her with follow-up support because nichole was not in barbara’s coaching school during the 2009 academic year. the coach who was supposed to be responsible for providing nichole’s coaching support neglected her request. the district policy on coaching and teachers’ willingness to receive barbara’s coaching service limited the implementation of workshop ii in teachers’ classroom practices to some extent. under district policy on coaching, barbara explained that each instructional coach is assigned to serve and provide coaching supports to teachers of ells in different elementary schools that are grouped by areas as northwest, southwest, central, etc. this study suggested that the district should take district policy on coaching into consideration and future research should study the impact of coaching context policy on teachers’ classroom practice. nichole was not in barbara’s coaching schools in 2009, but she was in barbara’s coaching schools in 2010. nichole received more coaching support from barbara in 2010, so she stated that she implemented more strategies from workshop ii. in the interview, nichole said, workshop ii motivated me to integrate more academic language and language focus into my teaching. for example, before reading the story the rough-face girl, i introduced two types of texts by pointing to the word cards “informative” and “narrative” on the wall and explaining these two types of genres. i reviewed these two types each time when i read books and asked students to identify which genre the book was. therefore, lycons and pinnell (2001) discover that the greatest shifts in understanding and practice occur when the teacher is engaged in the reflective process with a more knowledgeable and experienced coach. during the 2009 academic year, barbara wrote an email to the teachers of ells in her coaching schools to provide one-on-one coaching to workshop ii on academic language instruction, but only a few teachers responded to her. she provided these teachers with a three-day coaching cycle, referring to co-lesson planning on the first day, observing teachers’ teaching on the second day, and modeling a lesson on the third day. rebecca had not had one-on-one coaching with barbara before, and she hoped that she would be able to receive more coaching support in the future. in order for coaches to be effective professional developers for language teachers, suggestions are provided based on the above findings and literature as in figure 2. first, effective professional development must be comprehensively designed and systematically delivered by knowledgeable teacher trainers such as instructional coaches. an instructional coach must have expertise in content areas and designing and delivering professional development. second, instructional coaches should provide teachers with ongoing support. third, in this study, the district policy on coaching limited the implementation of the workshop outcomes in teachers’ classroom practice to some extent, so the area policy should be taken into consideration as part of achieving effective coaching. finally, teachers must be willing to receive coaching support, so coaching can make changes on their teaching beliefs and classroom practice. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 figure 2. instructional coach as effective teachers’ professional developer. conclusions this study focuses on an instructional coach’s role as language teachers’ professional developer. the study has the following findings. first, barbara, the coach, acted as a professional developer for teachers of ells in workshop ii, because she designed and delivered workshop ii, mentored teachers, modeled and scaffolded lessons in the lesson-planning process, modeled teaching, and led them to do self-reflection. second, from the participating teachers’ perspective, the instructional coach’s knowledge and understanding of academic language made workshop ii well-organized. the teachers of ells surveyed and interviewed found the instructional coach they worked with to be helpful, organized, and well-informed. third, less follow-up coaching support and district policy on coaching made workshop ii less effective. the findings of this study are consistent with carrera’s (2010) study on instructional coaching as a form of professional development for teachers of ells. qualities of instructional coaches and follow-up support influence the effectiveness of teachers’ professional development and their classroom practice. barbara created a teacher observation form to assess how the teachers could integrate workshop ii into their classroom practice. she observed teachers’ instruction in the 2009 academic year. compared to her prior observations before workshop ii, her observations after the workshop were as follows: teachers were more aware of the language focus. teachers of ells integrated sentence stems and introduced more vocabulary into their classroom practice. teachers taught sentence stems mostly for oral language, but not in writing. when teachers did guided reading, they asked students to respond orally by saying phrases such as ‘i predicted that___’ or ‘i found out that__’ as was provided in workshop ii. this study concludes that teachers’ willingness to receive coaching practice and district policy on coaching are conditions for effective coaching. this case study involved only one instructional coach and 30 teachers of ells in a northwest american city. this small number of participants limits its findings by preventing them from being generalisable in regard to larger english teacher populations. based on the observational fieldnotes of workshop ii, the evaluation forms, and interviews data; however, 25 out of 30 teachers of ells found that the coach’s role as teachers’ professional developer can provide practical implications for coaching practice among language teachers. another limitation is that there is no direct measure of how teachers of ells actually changed due to the coaches and workshop ii. the study can only reveal what teachers of ells felt about workshop ii, their attitudes toward the instructional coach, and the instructional coach’s observations of the teachers’ classroom practice. instructional coaches play different roles in educational fields from data coach to teacher leaders and this study mainly focuses on the coach’s role as a professional developer. one aspect of instructional coaching that requires further study is how far bean's (2004) three levels of training activities influence coaches. understanding how instructional coaches divide their time could add to an understanding of the role of coaches in teachers’ classroom practice. other studies might also explore how instructional 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(2004). what do we know about teacher leadership? findings from two decades of scholarship. review of educational research, 74(3), 155-316. analysis of an instructional coach’s role as elementary school language teachers’ professional developer 11 article citation chien, c. w. (2013). analysis of an instructional coach’s role as elementary school language teachers’ professional developer. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1004 author notes chin-wen chien national hsinchu university of education 521, nanda rd., hsinchu city 300, taiwan chinwenc@ms24.hinet.net chin-wen chien received her doctor of education degree from the university of washington (seattle, usa). she is an assistant professor in department of english instruction of national hsinchu university of education in taiwan. her research interests include language education, language teacher education, and curriculum and instruction. manuscript received: 5/16/12 revisions received: 10/8/12 accepted:2/7/13 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 12 volume 16, number 1 february 21, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template 1 volume 14, number 2 may 27, 2011 issn 1099-839x changing course: reflections of second-career teachers darrell lee polk school district (polk county, ga) this study examined the phenomenon of second-career teachers. the participants in this study shared their reflections concerning the motivating factors and common experiences associated with leaving established professions in order to pursue careers in teaching. the study also inquired into the process involved in professional preparation as well as in assimilating to the culture of schools. the participants in this study indicated several reasons for changing careers such as the need for more meaningful work, a more flexible and family-friendly schedule, and the desire to share their experiences with the younger generation. many of the participants also discussed a sense of religious calling. hardships faced by second-career teachers are discussed, along with an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of teacher education programs as they relate to secondcareer teacher candidates. reflections concerning the participants‟ current teaching practices are also examined. keywords: second-career teachers, late-entry teachers, career-changers, qualitative hermeneutics, interviews changing careers is a relatively new phenomenon among working professionals. in the past, a career was likely to be characterized by an employee seeking to stay with a single company for the duration of one‟s working life. leading theorists from the 1950s through the 1970s continued to support this traditional understanding of career (super, 1957; levinson, 1978). by contrast, recent trends indicate the prevalence of the so-called “boundaryless career,” where one may change professions many times over the course of a working lifetime (arthur & rousseau, 1996). some have argued that the very nature of work has changed in modern society due to a number of factors including technology, globalism, and economics (sullivan & emerson, 2000; chope, 2001). these factors have led to the emergence of the career changing worker who has traded the “company man” mentality of the past for the free-agent approach of the present. conversely, valcour and tolbert (2003) found that boundaryless careers tend to work well for women, due to a number of factors including time off for child bearing and raising and moving due to a spouse‟s career. the study also found that these types of career paths do not serve men well as they are more likely to stay with one company while seeking promotions within the organization. it is also important to note that little research has been done to look at the effects of the changing nature of careers upon minority populations (sullivan, 1999). some career changers are looking for work that may be more fulfilling and personally satisfying than their original choice of profession. for example, jung (1933) believed that a mid-life crossroads was common for the worker, and at this point one would choose to change careers toward a profession that mirrors one‟s belief current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 systems and personal goals. holland‟s (1972) groundbreaking work on the nature of careers stated that people gravitate toward types of work that are compatible with their personalities and are more satisfied once they have settled in such a job, becoming far less likely to switch careers in the future. this theory provides a possible explanation for those second-career teachers who have given up what are often well paying professions to seek a career more in line with personality traits and value systems. however, thomas and robbins (1979) asserted that those who moved into what they labeled as congruent careers were no more likely to remain in those careers after five years than those in non-congruent careers. certainly, there are implications here for the second-career teacher who enters the profession believing it to be more in line with his or her personality. thomas and robbins went on to speculate that one‟s profession holds less importance after a middle point in life and that changes in profession are just as likely to be influenced by the need for more leisure time as it is by a need for an alignment of profession with values and beliefs. just as there are different reasons for changing careers, there are also different results. not all adults experience a seamless transition from one career to another, even if the second career is something that the career changer has always dreamed about doing. lewis (1996) pointed out the obstacles faced by many older career changers in the quest to pursue a second career, including considerable investment of time and money as they prepare for a new profession. by contrast, younger career changers are often suffering from negative self-images and a lack of information “not only on occupations, but also within their own interests and skills” (lucas, 1999, p. 117). rationale for study there is much to be gained from a scholarly investigation of individuals who have chosen teaching as a second profession. for example, there may be advantages that a mature, non-traditional teaching applicant has over the recent college-aged graduate who enters the profession. investigating a sample of this population provided data that may be useful for teacher education programs as they seek to provide learning experiences designed to best train these unique educators by emphasizing the value of prior work experiences in the preparation process. in addition, school administrators may find the results of this study useful in recognizing the strengths of this population of teachers, which is clearly different from the traditional entrant to the teaching profession. finally, this study may be useful to second-career teachers themselves as they learn how experienced second-career teachers have been able to weave prior work experiences into the practice of teaching. second-career teachers often have vastly different experiences rooted in many other professions (brady, 1997; wolpert-gawron, 2008) and may have a unique set of experiences that allows them to adjust more easily to the demands of the teaching profession. career changers often bring a lifetime of knowledge and work experience that may have a profound effect on themselves, their colleagues, and their students. it is also plausible that an older beginning teacher, with diverse work experiences, may have a stronger appreciation of the profession. in many cases, these older novice teachers have raised families and have considerable experience dealing with children prior to serving as a teacher. literature review second-career teachers are different from most new college graduates. as resta, huling, and rainwater (2001) have pointed out, “midcareer individuals bring many strengths to teaching, including maturity, life experience, and good work habits” (p. 61). the retention rate for these teachers is also much better than that of their counterparts. rather than gain these attributes as most traditional teachers do, in the first difficult year of teaching as a young person starting their first job, these career changers are ready for the task. many of these teachers are eager to utilize what they have learned in prior careers and teach the values of democracy in their classrooms (unterreiner, 2006). most teacher candidates who seek to enter the teaching profession as a mid-career transition choose to do so by way of non-traditional teacher education programs. these non-traditional programs can focus purely upon preparing career changers to apply what they already know to a new situation. some of these career changers give up professions that pay considerably better and have more benefits than teaching (peske, liu, kaufman, & kardos, 2001). there are also suggestions that employers draw upon the paraprofessional ranks for new, but experienced, teaching candidates. in fact, a number of school districts are working in conjunction with teacher education departments to create flexible certification programs in order to prepare these potential teachers (villegas & clewell, 2001). conversely, other districts are partnering with local colleges to ensure that quality mentoring and residency programs are in place, especially in hard-to-staff urban schools (hueser & owens, 1999; keller, 2006; chin & young, 2004). such programs help to guarantee not only that better and more diverse teacher candidates enter the classroom, but also increases the likelihood that they will stay there. these measures become imperative in high turnover schools, which are more likely to hire inexperienced teachers. theoretical framework this study draws upon four major theorists in an effort to understand the motivations of career changers who have chosen teaching as a second profession. these theories include maslow‟s hierarchy of needs, which asserts that lower level basic needs must first be met before an individual can progress to higher order needs, such as self-esteem and self-actualization; alderfer‟s existence, relatedness, and growth (erg) theory which proposes that when an individual fails to obtain higher order needs, he will work doubly hard at establishing lower order needs; herzberg‟s hygiene and motivational factors, which is a changing course: reflections of second-career teachers 3 variation of maslow as it relates to the workplace; and levinson‟s adult development theory, which identifies the stages in a man‟s (later expanded to woman‟s) life, including within the workplace. these four theories are interrelated and will serve to form a theoretical framework for this study of the perceptions of second career teachers. motivation to teach a recent study by the woodrow wilson foundation (2008) found in a nationwide survey of almost 2,300 adults aged 24 to 60; a full 42% would consider teaching as a second career. this number is in spite of the many high profile problems with the profession that have been highlighted by the news and entertainment media over recent decades. these second-career teachers share some of the motivating factors that lead traditional age students to choose education as a future career, as well as different and unique factors that set them apart. snyder, doerr, and pastor (1995) surveyed 3,000 pre-service teachers, including significant numbers of career changers, and found that most were interested in the profession because of an interest in and a love for young people. with regards to older students seeking teaching as a second career, most had the benefit of children of their own and saw “teaching as an end in itself, rather than as a means to some other professional end” (p. 9). redden (2008) adds that those with degrees in engineering and science, as well as those with graduate degrees, are increasingly becoming interested in teaching as a second career. this is good news considering the current shortages in science and math fields and the prevalence of out-of-field teachers in these areas (nces, 2005). second-career teachers also differ from traditional age entrants in the area of influential factors leading to teaching. for example, traditional age pre-service teachers were often strongly influenced by a former teacher or by those in the family who are teachers. by contrast, secondcareer teachers are more likely to be influenced by value systems and other intrinsic motivators as well as by prior work experiences (powell, 1994). in addition, many of these teachers had extensive experience with children as most have raised children of their own. other studies have shown that additional factors also contribute to the decisions of those who choose to change careers in order to become teachers. richardson and watt (2005) found that a desire for security, more time with family, and a sense of calling were significant reasons why non-traditional teachers were leaving their jobs and steady incomes in order to prepare to become a teacher. they went on to indicate that these teachers were realistic and prepared for the demands of the job and were not dissuaded by the perceived lowly status of the profession. novak and knowles (1992) asserted that secondcareer teachers were as equally overwhelmed by the realities of the classroom as traditional age first year teachers. the authors contended that the subjects in their study had erroneously believed that prior, but unrelated, work experience would immediately transfer to the classroom and it did not. these teachers needed mentoring and adjustment time just like other novice teachers. however, they were eventually able to incorporate prior experiences into their classrooms effectively after an appropriate amount of time settling into their new jobs. the study points out the need for teacher education programs to teach these students how to tap into these prior experiences. preparation some researchers suggested the need for change in teacher education programs in order to attract career changers (suell & piotrowski, 2007; hale & chowning, 1999). others called for changes to teacher education programs to be adapted to the specific needs of older, work experienced career changers, including a challenging and accelerated curriculum (project innovation, 1999). these older candidates, who enter graduate school already with a lifetime of diverse experience, need programs tailored to them as students who are very different from traditional age college students. in another study of second-career preservice science teachers, bohning, hale, and chowning (1999) found that these teachers were anxious about the content to be taught more than concerns over learning to teach. the authors theorized that these teachers had been able to develop beyond the concerns common to most preservice teachers much earlier than traditional candidates do. an emerging theme among much of the literature is the need to attract older and diverse candidates into teacher education programs while retooling these programs to meet the needs of these potential teachers (ers ebulletin, 2008; reichardt, 2001; shroeder, 2002). clearly, there are concerns that are unique to this group of teachers that are different from their younger counterparts, such as balancing current work schedules with school and meeting the demands of family responsibilities. bray (1995) looked at the perceptions of three groups of students as they cycled through a traditional teacher education program: traditional college students, older returning students, and career changers. this study found that there is a need for individualization in teacher education programs that would allow some customization to meet the needs of nontraditional students, including a re-design of the typical student teaching experience. kolb (1984) argued for the incorporation of experiential learning as a key component in viewing personal development as process, rather than product. key to this approach is the understanding that, as new experiences are acquired, the learner should reflect and then modify behavior based on new information. this approach would benefit the pre-service teacher candidate, as well as the in-service teacher, as it requires continuous reflection, evaluation, and adjustment. schon (1983) advocated a reflection-in-action practice in which “doing and thinking are complimentary” (p. 280). only through constant reflection and adjustment does the practitioner substantively current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 grow in the chosen profession. such practices are becoming increasingly interwoven into teacher education programs seeking to provide meaningful and abiding experiences in addition to theory. transition to the classroom once they have gained credentials, teachers find a classroom that is often very different from what they expected. some teachers note that the transition is not as smooth as they might have anticipated (bulloch & knowles, 1990) and that teaching is more difficult than they expected. in fact, many second-career teachers‟ perceptions of the teaching profession and of themselves as a teacher begin to alter after some time in the classroom (freidus & krasnow, 1991). teaching has traditionally been a relatively lonely profession with teachers closing the door of their classrooms and having little time to interact with peers. yet, this collegiality is of extra importance to the secondcareer teacher, many of whom enter the teaching profession from the business world with its work teams and collaborative projects. roy (2002) emphasized the importance of developing cohorts of colleagues as these second-career teachers transition from college to the classroom. the author also encouraged the maintenance of online communities in which new entrants to the teaching profession can stay in contact with other second-career teachers to share frustrations, victories, advice, and other messages of support. the opportunity to establish peer support networks would likely benefit novice second-career teachers immensely and eases the transition into a new work setting, complete with its own unique culture and norms. gender and age several interesting studies have considered the role of gender in the selection of teaching as a second career. both men and women who had originally rejected teaching considered the major as an easy path to a college degree and a career for the non-ambitious (lerner & zittleman, 2002). freidus (1989) examined the degree to which gender plays a role in the decision of career changers choosing education. in a follow-up study (1990), freidus conducted case studies of four second-career teachers with a specific emphasis upon gender roles and societal expectations. the study found that a world view constructed in early years, while still living at home, had a profound impact upon career decisions, and later, the decision to change careers. increasingly, college graduates are looking to the field of teaching as a viable career alternative. some have decided to turn their backs on the corporate world and look for a career with meaning (brady, 1997). even later in life some, who have been quite successful in other careers having earned recognition and handsome salaries, have the desire to impact and serve society in professions such as nursing, teaching, and fire-fighting. gender and age seem to be less important when determining the reasons why those with established careers choose to change course to become teachers. teacher identity other researchers have called for the need to help second-career teachers develop a teacher identity in order to establish roots in the profession. allen (2005) made the point that second-career teachers need time to reflect upon life histories and to adapt to the profession in order to properly form a new identity, rather than the traditional baptism by fire that is common to most beginning teachers. an important, but often ignored, component of teaching is developing an identity as a teacher. this identity formation is a process that often takes a great deal of time and likely involves a shift away from idealism and naiveté toward survival mode in the first year of teaching toward reflective practice as one gains experience. the second-career teacher is not spared this often painful process (bullough & knowles, 1990). yet, the degree to which second-career teachers are able to adapt and develop an individual and unique teacher identity may be shaped considerably by prior working experiences. teacher certification licensure and certification have also become daunting challenges to the potential second-career teacher. as if going back to school while trying to fulfill the obligations of adult life aren‟t enough, many states have created excessively bureaucratic hoops that one must repeatedly jump through in order to teach. as peske, et al. (2001) stated: currently, there are two competing views about how to best prepare, license, and hire teachers in the years ahead. one calls for extensive preservice preparation and rigorous, enforced certification requirements. the other argues for opening many routes to teaching and deregulating teacher certification (p. 310). the authors contended that each approach has severe limitations as stand alone policies and propose a “mixed model” approach to teacher certification. in addition, serotkin (2007) pointed out the need for “more field placement and a longer preand post-certification training experience” (p. 211). harrell and harris (2006) highlighted an innovative online certification program with high admissions standards, a rigorous curriculum, and a success rate in preparing non-traditional candidates that is hard to dispute. this program, and those like it, has gained broad appeal because of its market based approach that maintains the integrity of the licensure process while encouraging non-traditional candidates to apply. attrition and retention if a person can make the decision to walk away from one career after spending many years establishing a place in the working world, it is plausible that some may choose to change professions again once they have become teachers. furthermore, it is possible that constant teacher turnover has a negative effect on student motivation and changing course: reflections of second-career teachers 5 performance. bird (2004) found that teachers who leave the profession within the first five years do so because of being overworked and beaten down by disruptive student behavior. in addition, many second-career teachers are simply not prepared for the demands of both the students and the administrative tasks of teaching (denny, 2007). johnson and birkeland (2002) found that second-career, alternatively prepared teachers were much more likely to leave the profession that those who were prepared by traditional programs at the customary college age. salary and work conditions were the major contributors to most of these decisions to leave, along with the lowly status associated with the teaching profession. on the other hand, teachers who see the profession as a “calling” are willing to juggle the various demands between their personal and professional lives, understanding that teaching is a difficult line of work (weasmer, 2002). even in the challenging setting of hardto-staff urban schools, which are often rife with violence, underfunded, and offer poor working conditions, many second-career teachers make the decision to stay. induction programs can be designed that foster the growth of teachers who have chosen the most difficult assignments and incentives created to keep teachers in these schools with children who need the consistency of teachers with a long term commitment (jorissen, 2003). another study contended that “people entering teaching through alternate routes who are in their 40s or 50s are the most committed to staying in teaching for 10 or more years” (feistritzer, 2005, p. 33). teachers, in any setting, who are given the time and encouragement to develop a reflective practice, are also much more likely to stay in the profession for many years. duck (2000) suggested learning to reflect “on growth toward the profession and planning for growth within the profession” as a means for creating the endurance and freshness to sustain a career in education (p. 42). ultimately, second-career teachers make the decision to stay in the classroom based on a desire to grow as an individual, find a career that is congruent with family responsibilities, and because they want to make a difference (hedrick, 2005). when these teachers find a setting that allows them to accomplish these objectives, they are far more likely to stay with the profession. methodology goals of the study this study was designed to examine the motivations, experiences, and perceptions of second-career teachers who are at different stages in their teaching careers. specifically, the study sought to discover the motivations to become a teacher, entry experiences, and challenges faced during the process from the perspective of the non-traditional teacher. the literature indicates that these unique teachers are different from their peers who entered the profession through the usual route and at the traditional age. guiding questions the development of a sound set of guiding questions is critical in any form of qualitative research. ary, jacobs, and razavieh (2006) emphasized developing questions before settling on the specific qualitative approach to gathering data. particularizing questions are those which focus upon describing and then interpreting a given phenomenon and processing questions focus upon how a phenomenon takes place. both types of questions were employed in this study. in order to understand the phenomena surrounding second-career teachers, the following research questions were developed: 1. what motivating events precipitated a change of career to education? 2. what common experiences do these teachers share that may be unique to non-traditional entrants to the field of education? 3. do these teachers believe that the teacher education and/or alternative certification process helped them learn to utilize their prior work experiences? 4. how have these teachers‟ previous careers guided and/or benefited them in their new profession? 5. what degree of satisfaction have these teachers found in their new profession? design of the study hermeneutics. the method of research chosen for this study was hermeneutic phenomenology. this particular method is “concerned with the life world or human experience as it is lived” (laverty, 2003, p. 7). the study sought to uncover the essence of the experiences of those entering teaching from previous careers. the language used by the participants in recorded interviews becomes particularly important using this method. gadamer (1975) referred to the “bond” between understanding and subject knowledge, in this case the skills and experiences acquired in a prior profession. the deeper meaning of these experiences is what hermeneutics seeks to uncover. hermeneutics attempts to derive meaning of phenomena through language. heidegger (1927) asserted that the researcher‟s own experiences are an integral component in the process of interpreting the meaning of phenomena. these experiences should be used as a lens by which the researcher may view the data as it relates to the event or phenomenon. as laverty (2003) pointed out, “a hermeneutical approach asks the researcher to engage in a process of self-reflection…specifically, the biases and assumptions of the researcher are not bracketed or set aside, but rather are embedded and essential to the interpretive process” (p. 17). site description and demographics the sample of twelve teachers were from six schools in the state of georgia, one junior college, two high schools, two middle schools, and one elementary school spanning five non-adjacent counties. these teachers current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 6 represented schools from urban, rural, and suburban settings. the researcher found subjects that represented a good cross section of teachers who were assigned to ethnically diverse classrooms. many of these teachers also served special education students. the schools ranged in size from 700 students to over 1500 students. sampling procedures the intent of this study was to find a sample of twelve diverse career changers working on different grade levels from kindergarten to college and in diverse subject matter, in different schools and school districts, with an experience range from pre-service to 20-plus years of service. the participants for this study were purposefully chosen using two methods. first, the researcher selected teachers whom he knew had a minimum of three years of work experiences prior to becoming a teacher. second, the researcher utilized a method that groenewald (2004) referred to as snowballing, in which one participant suggests another potential participant. this recommendation led to the 12 diverse candidates highlighted in this study. purposeful sampling was most appropriate for this study as confirmed in patton‟s (2002) assertion that “information-rich cases are those from which one can learn a great deal about issues of central importance to the purpose of the research” (p. 46). in purposeful sampling for this study, it was important to consider individuals who would provide a number of perspectives, but most importantly, an opportunity to learn about the phenomenon from this population of teachers (stake, 2005). it was important to include teachers at the high range of experience continuum as they might provide insight into the experience of teaching well beyond what would be the customary teacher retirement age. three of the subjects gained certification by a means other than a graduate level program in the form of the georgia teacher alternative preparation program, or tapp. this program allows career changers to enter the classroom on a provisional basis, at a reduced level of pay, and teach under the direction of a mentor while gaining full certification. in terms of selecting participants, moustakas (1994) pointed out that it is essential that “the research participant has experienced the phenomenon, is intensely interested in understanding its nature and meanings, and is willing to participate” in the various methods required to gather the data (p. 107). those who were a part of this study met these criteria. they were a diverse group of teachers who were interested in how they got where they are and how they could reflect upon and utilize those past experiences in order to help them be better teachers. overview of participants this study sought to examine second-career teachers with a diversity of prior careers who are now serving in different educational roles. silverman (2006) advised that the qualitative researcher first determine the “parameters of the population that we are interested in and choose our sample case carefully on this basis” (p. 306). all participants in this study were classroom teachers in the state of georgia (see figure 1). teaching experience for this group ranged from one to 20 years on elementary, middle, high school, and collegiate levels. four of the participants were male, eight were female, all but two were caucasian. eight of the participants were high school teachers, two taught at the middle school level, one was a college instructor, and one was an elementary teacher. all of the teachers in this study were teaching in schools where they were responsible for multiple classes, grade levels, and subject matter. the study was designed to focus upon unique experiences prior to becoming a teacher, while in professional preparation, in the early transition phase, and then at the respective points in their individual careers. all of the participants had at least three years of previous professional experience outside of the field of education prior to entering the classroom. previous career fields varied considerably with an average of 10 years spent in the prior career before choosing to become a teacher. three of the 12 participants had spouses who were teachers and instrumental in the decision to become a teacher. five of the participants reported having always wanted to be a teacher, but having avoided the profession for reasons such as better pay and more prestige. four mentioned the required education methods classes having been a dissuading factor while considering the field in college. findings interviews the interviews were audio recorded with each initial interview lasting approximately one hour and each follow-up interview lasting approximately 30 minutes. these recordings were then transcribed verbatim over a period of several weeks. the researcher made the decision to leave the interviews essentially unedited in order for the reader to clearly understand the entirety of the response, along with the accompanying emotion, enthusiasm, and misgivings concerning each question. there was some redundancy in the interview responses, along with the occasional digression or diatribe. however, it was important to allow the participants to address the question without editing from the writer. initial interviews were coded in order to identify emergent themes. focused follow-up interviews, based upon the themes, were then conducted. the result of these interviews is approximately 20 hours of taped conversations. group analysis the twelve participants chosen for this study ranged in ages from 30 to 55 years, with a median age of 41.5 years. the variety of previous careers included a financial analyst, social worker, police officer, stockbroker, graphic designer, juvenile justice counselor, retail manager, seamstress, minister, prison counselor, and an office worker in a manufacturing setting. these careers ranged from three years in duration to over 33 years, with a mean of 10.5 years spent in the previous profession before 7 name prior career yrs. in prior career now teaching years teaching andrea finance 3 years hs vocational 5 years anna graphic design 10 years elementary <1 year chad juvenile justice 6 years ms physical ed 5 years chuck stock broker 3 years hs special ed 15 years hilary counselor 3 years hs english 7 years janet manufacturing 10 years ms special ed 8 years marjorie seamstress 10 years hs drama 20 years rhonda peace corps 3 years college math 4 years rick retail manager 33 years hs civics 3 years sara ministry 24 years hs history 6 years susan social worker 9 years hs guidance 12 years thomas police officer 13 years hs vocational 3 years figure 1. list of participants beginning the process of becoming a teacher. the method by which these second-career teachers gained certification also varied significantly with three of the participants seeking alternative certification through the state department of education, eight obtaining certification through a formal graduate degree program, and one teaching on a collegiate level and not requiring a state license. the average time spent acquiring teacher certification, whether through graduate school or state operated programs, was 2.8 years. eight of the participants worked in public high school settings, two in public middle schools, one in a public elementary school, and one in a private vocational college setting. these participants ranged in teaching experience from three to 20 years with a mean of 7.3 years. second-career teachers average age average years of prior work experience average time spent acquiring teaching credentials average years of teaching experience participants 41.5 years 10.5 years 2.8 years 7.3 years figure 2. group analysis current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 8 themes over the course of the data collection process, six themes emerged from the initial and detailed coding categories. these themes were consistent across the initial and follow-up interviews with the 12 participants. these themes are as follows: 1. reflection: the value of prior experiences 2. inspiration: factors motivating change 3. preparation: teacher training 4. assimilation: school culture 5. perception: teacher self-efficacy 6. vision: glimpsing the future a closer examination into the phenomenon of secondcareer teachers was provided by grouping responses into these thematic categories. of course, not every teacher fit neatly into every theme but, in accordance with the coding process, these themes were repeatedly identified in the responses and the writings of a majority of the participants. reflection: the value of prior experiences virtually all of the participants agreed that prior work experiences were not only valuable to them as teachers, but influenced the teaching process on a regular basis. some of the participants entered the teaching profession from careers that held much in common with teaching. for example, rhonda had served in the peace corps as an english teacher for african students. sara had entered the profession after many years in christian ministry, which often involved leading bible study groups. susan, a high school counselor, had previously worked in family and social services. on the other hand, an equal number of the participants entered the teaching profession from business, industry, and public service professions that offered little in the way of crossover skills to education. nevertheless, even these participants felt that there was at least one valuable skill that their prior career had equipped them with that now benefits them in the classroom. andrea pointed out that having prior work experiences allows her to focus upon her teaching without wondering what life might have been like if she had chosen another career. stress. rick emphasized his prior experiences as having been far more stressful than teaching, which allows him to have an attitude of thankfulness that he feels many traditional teachers do not have. in responding to a question regarding how well adjusted he believes himself to be for the demands of teaching, he stated: i think i‟m ahead of the curve than people who just come out of school and are teaching because retail is a lot more demanding than this job with a lot more at stake. you don‟t have a union to protect you as a manager. you have expectations that you have to meet in business and if you don‟t get it you are out. this assessment was shared by many of the participants who entered teaching from the corporate arena. the general agreement was that, in the business world, everyone is expendable. conversely, all 12 participants spoke of the teaching profession‟s lure of time off, good benefits, and the opportunity for personal development as pull factors and as elements that distinguish the teaching profession from other careers. maturity. maturity was a recurring term when the topic of prior experience was discussed. all of the participants felt that entering the profession at an older age than their traditional counterparts had provided them with an opportunity to mature as working professionals. janet pointed out that she thinks “you are going to learn the tricks of the trade anyway, but being older, you just know more how to act in the working world.” many of the participants offered similar reflections regarding how they were different from those who entered the profession immediately upon graduating from college. thomas, the former police officer, added, “i can see myself if i was a teacher 10 years ago. i may have been too friendly instead of being firm and friendly.” anna stated that many of the skills that she learned in her previous setting would likely have been learned by the traditional teacher in time, but added that she entered the profession better equipped as a result of already having these experiences. she said that among these experiences are things such as, listening closely to details so you don‟t have to go back and redo whatever you‟re doing, reading your e-mail, all of the intangibles that you simply have to learn from working. would you learn these anyway? of course, but i feel that i have those skills with me on day one. hilary added that having to deal with difficult prisoners in her work in a state penitentiary prepared her for dealing with difficult students. rhonda stated that organizational and time management skills are among the most important skills that she acquired in her previous work setting. virtually all of the participants echoed this sentiment. set apart. when participants were asked what it is that sets them apart from their traditional track counterparts, the answers were widely varied. andrea pointed out what she considered to be the unprofessional nature of many teachers which she found incredible. she said: i was always surprised by the amount of teachers that did not even check their email. there are teachers that consistently have to be asked to complete necessary items. in the business world, these people would be fired! my ability to work with a sense of urgency, follow through, and anticipate sets me apart from my colleagues. rhonda added that she believes the burnout tendency is higher among traditional track teachers. rick pointed out that he has something more to offer his students after a 33 year career in business. he stated that “i can tell kids to stay in school, get your education, and keep your nose to the grind stone or this is what you could expect, changing course: reflections of second-career teachers 9 because i‟ve been there and i‟ve done those sorts of things.” sara and anna spoke of their experiences raising their own children as being a tremendous advantage to them as new teachers. when asked what sets her apart from her colleagues who entered the profession upon graduating from college, marjorie simply answered, “they can retire earlier.” inspiration: factors motivating change this diverse group of second-career teachers chose to leave their previous professions for a number of reasons. among the reasons mentioned were the strain of the prior career on personal and family life, the unsatisfying nature of the work, a desire to do something meaningful, and a sense of calling in a religious or humanistic sense. lifestyle. one of the most appealing factors of teaching among this group of participants is the lifestyle that the profession offered. a few of these second-career teachers even sacrificed much better paying careers because they were lured by the potential of a career that is family friendly, with free weekends, holidays, and summers. some commented on the strain that the previous line of work created, including personal life and family pressures. rick stated: i knew that my career had pretty much cost me my first marriage and i missed a lot of time with my children growing up. my second wife and i had a child and i did not want that to happen the second time around so i thought, „i‟ve got to make a change.‟ chad reflected that in his first career he became unsatisfied after five years, adding, “i probably over worked myself, and committed to a really difficult career path, and i considered leaving that just because it was more than i could handle.” janet commented on the monotony of her previous job and the dismal prospect of never having any significant time off: “when you work a regular 40 hour per week job, it is just week after week with no break.” she went on to say that the opportunity to have time off was a major factor in choosing teaching as a second career. thomas, who worked a demanding and constantly changing schedule as a police officer, decided to try substitute teaching first to see if he might prefer the schedule of a teacher. he elaborated that “somebody told me to substitute teach and see if you like that, you know, you‟ll be off during the summer. i thought, that would be nice.” satisfaction. rather than pull factors to teaching, some participants were influenced by push factors from their old job, most notably the unsatisfying nature of the work. several of the participants commented that they felt that their work was meaningless and that they eventually came to desire a purpose in their work. andrea felt that she was approaching the proverbial glass ceiling that many women encounter in the corporate workplace. in reflecting upon that experience and her decision to become a teacher, she said: they‟re very male oriented and, and i just realized that i couldn‟t really progress very high up in the company. then i remembered fourth grade. i was a nerd and i guess i decided to stand up and give some presentation in front of the class and my teacher called my mom and said „she‟s going to be a teacher one day.‟ chuck voiced a similar dissatisfaction with the financially volatile world of stock brokering. he added that in “february of „88 i made $10,000 take home, march i made $250. you just didn‟t know.” he went on to state that he had always wanted to teach and coach baseball and he began to seek the advice of friends and family, as well as former teachers and coaches, who encouraged him to change professions. making a difference. the desire to do something meaningful has served as a strong motivator for all 12 of the participants in this study. each of them repeatedly referred to teaching as a profession that has a tremendous impact on the lives of other people. in fact, smith and pantana (2009) found that the desire to “make a difference” rated higher than any other factor among a sample of 311 second-career teachers in a recent study of pre-service career changers. eleven of the 12 participants in this study indicated that they are more satisfied with teaching than their previous career. chuck characterized himself as much more satisfied with his teaching career “because it‟s more fulfilling and you are touching people in a positive light, no matter who it is.” janet noted a remarkable difference from her previous job: oh, definitely more satisfied. i‟ve gone through a lot. i‟ve had a major illness since i‟ve been teaching and i have had a lot of support from students and from co-workers through all of that. rhonda, the lone college instructor, added that “when you‟re teaching you are doing something positive for other people and to me the most important thing is feeling like you‟re doing something useful.” calling. in addition to other factors that make teaching appear to be an attractive second career, there is also among some of the participants a sense of calling, a religious or humanistic sense. bigham and smith (2008) asserted that in today‟s high-pressure climate of accountability, a “spiritual milieu” seems to be a necessary component in order to enter and succeed in the teaching profession. the term “calling” came up at several points in the initial interviews, prompting the researcher to ask the participants whether they considered teaching to be a calling in the follow-up interviews. all of the participants referred to teaching as a calling, although not all believed that teaching was their personal calling. anna was emphatic in her belief that teaching is a calling. she said, for me i definitely believe this was a calling from god, and i feel like i‟m following his will for me. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 10 this is something that i have given a lot of thought to. i believe that we all have a purpose that we were created for. that doesn‟t mean that it will be easy, though. rhonda added that teaching shares a sense of calling with other service professions, such as medicine and law enforcement. she adds, “i think it‟s one of the most influential jobs you can ever have, so to not look at it with some kind of ethical or humanistic or moral purpose…i think it‟s kind of missing the big picture.” former stockbroker chuck pointed out that i think it is a calling, but then again it‟s also a job. you know that you are going to work and doing all of that, but if you love what you do and you do it right, there‟s no greater calling. this sense of calling provided a strong grounding for many of the participants, especially when the inevitable difficulties began to present themselves in the classroom. the feeling that one has been called by god coupled with the maturity gained through previous work experience was mentioned as a sustaining force through difficult situations. preparation: teacher training quality of training. an important component of teacher preparation is the quality of the training that a teacher receives, regardless of whether it is a formal graduate degree or a state alternative certification process. the perceived value of these experiences varied greatly among the participants of this study. for example, when asked whether teacher training actually prepared these teachers for the realities of the classroom, the response was mixed. andrea, the former financial analyst, answered flatly, “i think that it prepared me as much as anything could have, because you have to find your own groove as a teacher.” she went on to state that teaching is a process of discovery in finding what does and what does not work for each teacher. chad pondered this question for some time, finally responding that “the problem with being a teacher is, until you are a teacher, you really don‟t know what it‟s like to be a teacher.” sara, with her background in ministry, did not feel that the teacher education process was very helpful in terms of realism. she advocated having more fieldwork and genuine classroom experiences. many of the participants echoed this sentiment. rick stated that, even though he had given countless business presentations, he was still “intimidated” by getting up in front of a classroom of high school students. susan, the high school counselor, reflected that after working in social services that she was, “a lot more realistic than the curriculum was.” she pointed out that her training presented her with ideal situations and that in schools, “we don‟t have many ideal situations.” chuck was critical in his assessment of his teacher education experience, stating: it put so much emphasis on theory. well, that‟s not what really goes on in the classroom. i think there needs to be more emphasis on classroom management and dealing with the political structure of a school. i‟d like to see it be more realistic. student teaching. despite these frank evaluations of teacher training programs, all of the participants who completed a traditional student teaching experience spoke highly of this experience. anna spoke of the value of planning and conducting lessons over simply discussing or observing these tasks. marjorie discussed the challenges of student teaching for the older career changer with a family: “i was paying tuition, working for free, and paying child care so that was a little frustrating.” she went on to state that her overall experience was good and that she believes that every experience in a classroom is ultimately valuable to the teacher-in-training. prior experience. when asked if their specific teacher training program did anything to emphasize or build upon their previous work experience, the answer was also varied. the majority of the participants believed that their program, even if it was tailored to career changers, did little to capitalize upon those experiences. rick reflected that his program reinforced skills that he learned over three decades of management. as far as tailoring content for second-career teachers, sara commented that she believed “my professors differentiated. i think they did.” others questioned whether teacher education programs were even capable of adapting to meet the needs of second-career teacher candidates. chad commented on the difficulty of addressing those needs in his experience: i think it did a good job teaching me the content knowledge that i needed to know and teaching me some basic structure of lessons, but in terms of what it‟s like to be a teacher and what the lifestyle is going to be like and what the difficulties are, i don‟t think it did a very good job anticipating or explaining those facts. chuck and hilary found their programs woefully lacking when considering prior work experiences, with hilary commenting, “i feel like we were really trained more like robots.” these comments led the researcher to ask how the participants believed that teacher education might be improved in order to emphasize the diverse backgrounds of potential second-career teachers. anna came straight to the point when she addressed this question saying, i think what could be helpful would require a lot more observations of teachers and hands-on experience, things that you could actually use. so much of it is theoretical and when you are actually there it‟s as if you are thrown to the wolves. chad shared anna‟s assessment, saying that many career changers who decide to become teachers “don‟t really have a good idea of what they are getting themselves into.” almost all of the participants spoke of a need for teacher education programs to move away from the traditional focus upon methods and theory classes toward more practical field oriented course work. changing course: reflections of second-career teachers 11 school districts. in addition to the question concerning how teacher education programs might be improved, each participant was asked what school districts might do in order to take advantage of their experiences. the responses ranged from allowing these teachers to create a workshop for other teachers in which they could share skills and insights learned from other professions to allowing students more access to their particular areas of expertise. rick, the second-career teacher with over three decades of business experience, strongly advocated using people like himself to prepare students for the reality of the workplace. many of the participants stated that school districts have an untapped resource in its second-career teachers. andrea, the former financial analyst asked: what if schools established workshops for parents and maybe students outside of the school day using these teachers‟ prior work experiences? for example, i was a finance major. i could have easily, along with a counselor, led a class for the parents of seniors with discussions on college budgeting and spending. most of the participants felt that school districts make very little effort to identify and utilize prior work experience among their teachers. all of them felt that they and others like them have much to offer to both colleagues and students in the way of prior experiences. in fact, among these 12 second-career teachers alone, there is well over 100 years of collective work experience outside of the field of education. assimilation: school culture the second-career teachers in this study indicated a difference in the culture of schools versus their previous working environment. the researcher was interested to know specifically what difficulties were encountered in the process of assimilating or adjusting to school culture. the responses varied because, just as the culture of schools is different from those in business or government settings, the participants suggested that each of their schools have certain unique cultural aspects also. for example, a rural high school is likely quite different from an urban elementary setting. nevertheless, the researcher was especially interested in the process of adapting to the role of teacher after entering from another field and the challenges that the school climate presented to these individuals. early experiences. andrea felt that the most difficult phase was the first “few months of working where you are not only learning the school culture but how your individuality fits inside the culture.” hilary observed that “there is no follow through and that‟s hard, and just for me personally, dealing with the teachers is a lot harder than dealing with the students.” she pointed out the politics and favoritism that exist among administrators in some work settings and how students often feel the same way about teachers. after 10 years in industry, janet was surprised by the unpredictable nature of teaching. she said, “when you come from a quiet, organized environment to where anything can happen at any time, you‟ve got to be able to move quick.” she also discussed the importance of the new teacher staying away from the teachers‟ lounge and the negativity that exists among many teachers, pointing out the need to, “stay away from that, don‟t get into the gossip. don‟t get into that kind of thing which will only get you in trouble.” chad immediately recognized the bureaucratic nature of working in public schools. he said: i think schools are very insular. i think that people do things often because they‟ve always been done, and there‟s always kind of a never ending little game of red tape that has to be played, and i think that‟s really hard to make an adjustment to when you first come into the profession. adjusting. all 12 of the participants in this study seemed to be well assimilated into the schools in which they teach. in classroom observations conducted by the researcher, each of these teachers appeared to be relaxed and comfortable in their interactions with students, other teachers, and administrators. the common sentiment among the teachers in this group who had worked at multiple schools was that school culture varies greatly from school to school. andrea made this point clearly, stating: i have now worked for three different schools, and each school has been very different. i have learned from being displeased with the corporate culture in which i worked that it was very important for me to find the school culture that meshed with my values and ideas in education. rhonda vocalized the frustration that many new teachers face, regardless of whether they are new college graduates or career changers. her frustration with being “thrown into the classroom” without a transition period was a common complaint among the participants. a lack of adequate mentoring programs added to this sense of frustration. perception: teacher self-efficacy knowing students. participants were asked to reflect upon how skills acquired during the previous career were beneficial to them in their current teaching assignment using specific examples where appropriate. often, these responses were introspective and gave additional insight into the phenomenon of second-career teachers. for example, chad lamented that “we rarely get to know our kids really as people. this makes it difficult sometimes to relate to them.” hilary reflected on a similar theme as chad. her concern for her students, as well as her frustrations, emerges clearly in the following statement: for every class i teach, i estimate having 3-5 students at risk for behaviors such as dropping out, committing crimes, relying on welfare, etc. with these kids, it always feels like i am in a boxing ring leaving me feeling exhausted and beaten up. and with my weak little jabs, i have to keep plugging that self worth back into them. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 12 a desire to know and connect with students was obvious among all twelve participants in the study. each teacher felt that establishing strong, positive, and appropriate relationships with students was a necessary ingredient toward achieving success as a teacher. interest in students. a selfless interest in the well being of their students was a common theme in most of the journal entries of the 12 participants in this study. anna demonstrated a motherly love for her students. she wrote: i believe my skills as a mother of three children have given me a different view, one through the child‟s eyes and heart. my mothering has helped me teach each student individually to guide them as a unique person with different abilities. acquired skills. chuck reflected on how his previous career helped him to develop the people skills that he now uses in teaching and coaching. in fact, many of these teachers returned to the skills that they obtained in their previous career and how those skills are transposed upon their teaching practice. rick emphasized the value of his real world experiences in preparing his students for life. he wrote: i believe that my experiences in all the different jobs that i have had outside of being a schoolteacher may help some of these kids. some of them open their eyes because i have done some things. most teachers do not have those experiences. role models. many of the participants reflected on their role as a positive adult role model for their students. in addition to providing this example, a recurrent theme in the comments of these teachers was the value of their prior experiences. thomas spoke of using his repertoire of police skills on an almost daily basis. it should be noted that the overwhelming majority of these teachers were focused upon their students rather than upon their environment, careers, or personal interests. a clear need to make an impact upon the lives of the students that they are teaching, as well as the desire to impart the lessons learned during their previous careers is evident in these journals. vision: glimpsing the future outlook. second-career teachers enter the profession at a later age than their traditional track peers, often one or two decades later. as a result, their outlook for the future takes on a different perspective. for example, these teachers will reach retirement at a much older age, meaning that they are still in the classroom at an age well beyond their colleagues. by contrast, having changed careers before, some of these teachers are not opposed to the notion that they may do so again at some point in the future. the researcher was interested in the general impressions of these teachers concerning the current state and future of education as a profession as well as having them discusses personal professional goals. finally, all of the participants were willing to offer advice for teachers entering the profession from other fields. the state of education. the participants in this study were asked to comment on what they perceive to be the current state of education in the state of georgia, as well as in the nation in general. most teachers were quick to report concerns over national and state educational policies and increasing demands being placed upon teachers in areas beyond the scope of the classroom. andrea commented on the sluggish manner in which the profession has sought to address the needs of the 21 st century learner, saying: this generation is very different and needs more to be able to become productive, valuable citizens of this century. i think the future for teachers holds some tumultuous times especially if they are unwilling to learn, change, and be flexible. anna voiced the concerns of most of the participants by addressing the current national obsession with accountability. “i see that even getting more abundant in the future with more red tape, more regulation,” she said. hilary had a similar forecast predicting, “less time for the kids and less money because all the money will be for the paperwork and putting the data on the computer instead of working with the kids.” marjorie, disturbed by the question, finally responded, i look at the budget cuts and we all know that the money is wasted, not just in education but throughout the state, and then no wonder we‟re where we are. it‟s easy to see but i try not to dwell on that because if i did i‟d be ready to quit. legislation. the no child left behind act of 2001 was a subject that invoked a great deal of vitriol from these second-career teachers. although some spoke of a need for standards and accountability, all of the teachers who mentioned nclb did so in a negative context, questioning its effectiveness and mentioning a need to allow teachers to focus upon the classroom. rick stated that “there are kids that are going to be left behind no matter what, and i look at education as so many politicians who‟ve never taught, meddling in something that they don‟t fully understand and don‟t comprehend.” the notion that the entire process has become seriously flawed was mentioned by chad. he reflected that “it‟s a constant sort of bureaucratic game of paperwork and these types of things and that really bogs down the actual education process.” the future of education. other participants voiced different concerns over the current and future state of education. thomas believes that the degeneration of the american family is chief among his concern and that he is hopeful that society will move back to a point where parents discipline their children and teachers can focus upon teaching. other participants spoke of student misbehavior and a lack of parental support. these factors, along with the increasing pressures of accountability during changing course: reflections of second-career teachers 13 a major economic downturn may discourage future college graduates, according to some of the participants. susan, reflecting on the current economy, made the point that “most colleges have made the education program one of the easier ones to complete, and i think in the future we‟re going to have lots of people with degrees that don‟t have jobs.” rick also theorized that economic pressures may cause some to reconsider teaching despite the lure of what is often perceived as a steady profession. encouragement and advice. despite these gloomy assessments of the future of education, most of the participants were willing to encourage others, including their own children, to become teachers, with a couple of notable exceptions. however, most were emphatic that any potential teacher, especially any considering a career change, should be certain that he or she really wants to be a teacher. andrea pointed out that “you just have to constantly tell yourself that you‟re in it for the kids and, if you keep them as your primary focus, then i think everything else falls into place.” chad was pragmatic as he offered two points of advice to those considering changing professions to become a teacher. he said: i would suggest they do two things: the first is that they need to really spend some time with a group of teachers and look at the lifestyle and the wage because i think the trap with education is that they pay you decently at the beginning but then it never really increases. the other thing that i would recommend is that they spend as much time in a classroom working with kids as possible. chuck warned that those considering this change should be certain that teaching is what they strongly desire to do because of the long term damage that a poor teacher might have upon the children in his or her classroom. hilary made a similar observation, stating that it is “bad for your students to know that you‟re dissatisfied with your job.” sara continued to state the need for those considering teaching to be certain that it is what they want to do, observing that i don‟t know why some people go into teaching to be perfectly honest. i don‟t know what they‟re looking for. i don‟t know what they‟re expecting it to be, because if you don‟t have a genuine compassion for kids, then you don‟t need to be here. the answers were mixed when the participants were asked if they would encourage their own children to become teachers. chuck quickly responded, “i would because of the good things. i still think that the good things out weigh the bad things.” college instructor rhonda also gave teaching a positive endorsement saying, “absolutely, i mean even though there are all these pitfalls, that‟s any profession really, i think it‟s a wonderful job.” rick agreed and made the point that one of his children had already decided to become a teacher. anna returned to the idea of individuals receiving a spiritual calling into teaching. when addressing the issue of encouraging her own children, she answered: definitely, if they felt called. it is not something to be entered into lightly. it is a much harder job than most people think. it takes a certain type of person. it‟s not for everybody, but if it was something that they felt they were being led to do, then i would support their decision. andrea echoed anna‟s statement, saying that “if my children were called to teach, yes i would love for them to be in education.” among the other group of teachers, those who were reluctant to respond that they would encourage their children to become teachers, there was a degree of caution. for example, chad seemed to have conflicting emotions as he wrestled with issues of status and earning potential versus a strong desire to be a teacher. he reluctantly stated that he would, probably discourage them. there are too many other professions that they could do more for their family with. i‟m not saying that i would absolutely forbid them from doing it but i would discourage them highly and if they were convinced that they were really called to do it, i wouldn‟t stand in their way. hilary also pointed out that, although she would not encourage her children to be teachers, she would not try to stop them from doing it either. these comments revealed an apparent duplicity among most of the participants in this study. although many wanted to recommend the teaching profession, they felt that they could not do so without a clear warning to potential teachers to be certain that they truly desire to be teachers. discussion motivating events the participants in this study mentioned several factors that served as an impetus for changing careers. among these were the desire to have a career that makes a difference in the lives of other people, the need to do more meaningful and fulfilling work, the need to leave a legacy for future generations, the desire to have a more flexible and family friendly schedule, the love of a particular subject matter, and the desire to share life experiences with younger people. many of the participants mentioned being encouraged to change careers, particularly in order to become teachers, by family, friends, former teachers, and coaches. many also mentioned feeling a “calling,” in the spiritual sense, to enter teaching. these motivations match closely the recent study by smith and pantana (2009) which found that: 23% of respondents offered the top reason as their love for children and desire to make a difference in their lives. the second most commonly provided answer related to their ability to teach and their enjoyment of it. interestingly, the third most current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 14 common response, given by 12% of the participants, identified dissatisfaction with their previous career as their main reason for switching to teaching (p. 7). regardless of reason, the participants in this study all had come to a career crossroads and, in some cases, a purpose of life crisis that ultimately led them to the classroom. in the process of changing their careers, many of the experiences that they had were later found to be common across the sample. common experiences although the participants in this study came from a variety of backgrounds, they did share some common experiences in the decision to become teachers, the teacher preparation process, and in the transition to the classroom. many of the participants mentioned considering and then rejecting teaching as a college major as an undergraduate. others spoke of having no initial interest in teaching whatsoever. almost all had come to a point of dissatisfaction with the previous career. some mentioned a sense of reaching a plateau with no real hope of advancing within the organization. others mentioned realizing that they had chosen the wrong career upon graduating from college or the feeling that they were being led toward a career in teaching by way of a spiritual revelation, or calling. most of the participants spoke of the hardships encountered upon making the decision to leave an already established, and for some a well paying, career to go back to school in order to become a teacher. this sentiment was especially true among those who had family responsibilities at the time. financial hardship, strained personal relationships, and a sense of uncertainty were common themes during these discussions. some spoke of frustrations with the teacher training process including what were often deemed as excessive requirements by the state for those seeking alternative certification. certainly, there are ways to streamline the process in order to encourage those who are seeking to change careers. nevertheless, it is clear that any major upheaval in one‟s life will have a ripple effect upon finances and relationships. these teachers understood that changing careers would be difficult, but were willing to endure many hardships in order to achieve a better way of life and a career more aligned with their personal goals and values. these desires are consistent with what maslow (1943) identified as a need for selfactualization, as well as what levinson (1978) referenced as a desire by many mid-life career changers to find a profession more in-line with one‟s system of beliefs and values. teacher education there were three methods by which these career changers obtained a state teacher‟s license: traditional degree programs, graduate programs for those with undergraduate degrees outside of the field of education, and state sponsored alternative certification routes. overwhelmingly, the participants in this study believed that these programs did not adequately prepare them for the realities of the classroom, nor were they able to help them utilize their previous work experiences. nevertheless, they all felt that student teaching was the most valuable preparation experience of their respective programs. the majority of the participants spoke of a need for more field experiences in teacher training programs, especially for second-career teacher candidates, for many of whom it has been decades since they were grade school students themselves. teacher education programs need to be revamped in order to meet the needs of career changers and those entering the profession at a later age. already, there has been some relief for potential career changers with the advent of a number of high quality online teacher preparation programs, which seems to support the findings of smith and pantana (2009) in their recent study of second-career teachers. they reported that, in a sample of 311 teachers, “nearly half (48%) stated that they would not have switched careers if such an online option were not available” (p. 8). in an age of readily available technology, these blended online/residential programs may offer a viable alternative to potential career changers who wish to remain employed or simply cannot afford to return to school full time in a traditional program. benefits of a previous career not surprisingly, all of the participants in this study highlighted the value of having prior career experiences before becoming teachers. some of these teachers made the point that, although the previous career may have had no crossover value in terms of skills, it nevertheless provided an opportunity to mature and experience a world outside of education that few teachers who enter the profession immediately after college ever see. on the other hand, approximately half of the participants could point to specific skills that are of particular use to them now as teachers. all of these teachers stated that they have something unique to offer to students, that being a glimpse of the “real world.” interestingly, most felt that school districts do very little, if anything, to capitalize on the wealth of previous work experiences that exists among members of the teaching community. suggestions by these teachers included staff development sessions where these teachers may be utilized as outside “experts” and as advisors or mentors to work-bound high school students. finally, reactions were mixed when the participants were asked if they might change careers again at some point in the future. many teachers simply responded that they enjoy teaching and intend to continue until retirement, while others emphasized the desire to do something different at some point in the future. because the phenomenon of second-career teachers is relatively new, there is little research that directly indicates whether these teachers will remain in the profession. for those who become successful teachers, changing course: reflections of second-career teachers 15 there is every reason for school districts to make the effort to retain these teachers. their firsthand experiences in fields such as business, industry, law enforcement, and the military are valuable resources that simply cannot be replicated in the classroom. satisfaction with the new career the decision to leave one career for another can be life changing in many respects. for example, it will likely involve an extended period of financial hardship, along with the inevitable strain upon personal relationships and the ability to pursue hobbies or other interests. in many cases, teaching also results in a reduction in earnings. in order for these difficulties to be worthwhile, it is necessary for potential second-career teachers to believe that they will find some degree of satisfaction in their new profession. this study sought to discover the extent to which secondcareer teachers have found satisfaction in their new jobs. the overwhelming majority of the participants in this study reported being satisfied with their new choice of profession. many discussed the advantage of having time to spend with family and friends, as well as to pursue interests outside of work, as a clear advantage over their previous careers even though this meant giving up higher paying positions. this particular instance seems to illustrate alderfer‟s (1972) regression theory in which the individual, unable to find satisfaction in the upper levels of maslow‟s hierarchy, reestablishes himself at a lower, more basic level. in addition, many participants also spoke of being fulfilled by working with children, which was the primary motivator for most of the participants to change careers in the first place. conversely, there were some distinct areas of dissatisfaction. namely, the bureaucratic nature of schools, the overwhelming demands placed on teachers to do much more than just teach, and the apathy of many students and parents. a small minority of the participants in this study indicated that these concerns may eventually lead to yet another career change at some point in the near future. these findings are consistent with herzberg‟s (2008) observations concerning a need to satisfy basic dissatisfying, or hygiene factors in the workplace. for the most part, these teachers envision themselves remaining in the teaching profession until retirement. most confessed that the youthful idealism that many new teachers have along with a tendency among many new teachers to burn out and leave the profession early does not apply to secondcareer teachers. they have already passed through this phase while working in a previous profession. most of these teachers agreed that teaching is a good and honorable profession and stated that they would encourage those considering changing careers to enter the field, including their own children. conclusion the participants in this study entered the teaching profession from a variety of previous careers. they had different motivations for becoming teachers, but shared a desire to have a meaningful impact on the lives of young people. all of the participants in this study faced hardships as they began the process of preparing to become teachers, including strains on finances and upon family responsibilities. the routes taken by this group of second-career teachers to equip themselves with the necessary academic degrees and state certifications varied somewhat. some chose graduate programs while others took advantage of georgia‟s alternative certification process. regardless of how they were prepared, these teachers eventually found themselves in front of classrooms while adjusting to the culture of schools. many found these new work settings to be very different from their previous work environments. despite the challenges that face those seeking to enter the profession from a previous career, the overwhelming majority of the participants in this study would encourage others become teachers. references alderfer, c.p. 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(2003). gender, family and career in the era of boundarylessness: determinants and effects of intraand interorganizational mobility. international journal of human resource management, 14(5), 768-787. villegas, a.m., & clewell, b.c. (1998). increasing teacher diversity by tapping the paraprofessional pool. theory into practice, 37(2), 121-130. woodrow wilson national fellowship foundation. (2008, december 14).national survey identifies incentives to attract talented career changers into america’s classrooms. retrieved january 18, 2009, from http://www.woodrow.org/news/news_items/ww_ 2nd careerteachers_0908.php wolpert-gawron, h. (2008, december 9). my brilliant second career. teacher magazine, pp.1-3. http://nheon.org/pt3/newteachercd/virtual2ndcareer.htm http://nheon.org/pt3/newteachercd/virtual2ndcareer.htm http://www.woodrow.org/news/news_items/ww_2nd%20careerteachers_0908.php http://www.woodrow.org/news/news_items/ww_2nd%20careerteachers_0908.php current issues in education vol. 14 no.2 18 article citation lee, d. (2011). changing course: reflections of second-career teachers current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/683 author notes darrell lee, ed.d. rockmart high school 990 cartersville highway rockmart, ga 30153 dlee@polk.k12.ga.us darrell lee teaches ap u.s. history at rockmart high school in rockmart, ga. his research interests include secondcareer teachers and alternative delivery methods for ap instruction. mailto:ccox@truman.edu changing course: reflections of second-career teachers 19 volume 14, number 2 may 27, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss ayfer gokalp younsu kim seong hee kim angeles maldonado carol masser john michael tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 14, number 2 june 6, 2011 issn 1099-839x unifying k-12 learning processes: integrating curricula through learning michael j. bossé elizabeth a. fogarty east carolina university this study was designed to examine whether a set of cross-curricular learning processes could be found in the respective k-12 us national standards for math, language arts, foreign language, science, social studies, fine arts, and technology. using a qualitative research methodology, the standards from the national associations for these content areas were narrowed to thirteen distinct learning processes consisting of both singleton and hybridizations of several learning processes. the determination of a superset of learning processes will allow researchers, curriculum developers, and teachers both in and outside the united states to better understand the relatedness of certain types of instruction, irrespective of content area; develop novel techniques regarding content integration within instruction; better develop students‘ capacities for 21st century learning; and develop new standards more attuned to these process standards. this investigation concludes with a call for national learning processes standards. keywords: standards, curriculum, pedagogy, national skill standards according to alvin toffler, ‗the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn‘ (as cited by the partnership for 21 st century skills 2002). in an era where new technologies are produced more quickly than they can be utilized, the ability to learn becomes paramount. nobel prize winning economist amartya sen contends that those able to apply the capacities required in the digital age ensure themselves a place in a globalized economy and further the economic potential of their respective societies (van dijk, 2006). sen‘s work and that of others emphasize the importance of studying how new processes can be utilized in educational settings and explore solutions to issues surrounding the digital divide. familiarity with digital divide issues is usually limited to physical access limitations, but motivational, skills, and usage divides exist as well (van dijk, 2006) similarly restricting the learning of new technologies. to prepare students to contribute in meaningful ways to a modern society, recommendations from the partnership for 21 st century skills (2008) state that students should gain competence in core subjects, learn through weaving 21 st century educational themes throughout their experiences, and gain skills needed for this century. altogether, it is difficult to argue against the notion that education must change in order to meet the needs of students in the coming decades; doing so, however, requires an expanded view of educational standards that allows for an examination of how learning occurs, not just within a discipline, but across disciplines in order to enable new types of learning and processes, including digital learning and processes, not previously applied in teaching. the readership of k-12 subject matter standards continues to expand. classroom teachers, curriculum developers, professional development providers, teacher educators, and policymakers all frequent these documents to glean insight into their respective concerns. thus, no longer is it sufficient for educational standards to simply list current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 the skills and knowledge students must possess at various stages in learning a particular subject. educational standards must also describe how students learn the respective content. when the process of learning is central to discussions within the standards, stakeholders can apply the standards in developing instructional experiences which will help students learn the pertinent knowledge and skills. while some professional educational standards (e.g. nctm, 2000; nrc, 1995, 2000) explicitly define learning processes within a respective field – rather than simply list skills and knowledge – far more do not. rather, the majority of professional standards documents indicate what students should learn and leave it to the reader to infer how learning takes place and what instructional practices and learning processes facilitate learning. altogether, there exists a great inconsistency among the styles and foci among standards documents from various fields. this inconsistency makes it difficult for educators from different fields to discuss student learning. the researchers in this study were familiar with the national standards for mathematics and science education and became curious regarding how other national k-12 subject matter standards defined and discussed learning processes. together, they decided to investigate all current standards for k-12 education. the initial fundamental questions in mind were in reference to whether there was a common set of learning processes within all k-12 standards, whether there were more learning processes than those depicted by mathematics and science education standards, and what a cataloging of all standards would reveal. these questions led to the meta-analysis discussed herein. defining and discovering process standards the national council of teachers of mathematics (2000: 30) states that the process standards ‗highlight ways of acquiring and using content knowledge‘. these processes include: problem-solving, reasoning and proof, communications, connections, and representations. thus, the process standards have two interrelated foci: they define the modalities through which students learn mathematics and they define how mathematics is done by anyone with any level of mathematical understanding. additionally, these process standards can be recognized as both tools and goals for learning. for instance, while students are to learn content and concepts more deeply through communication with other students, a common goal for education is for students to become effective communicators. all other k-12 content areas have their inherent process standards, albeit many are not denoted as such. nevertheless, experts in the learning of each k-12 subject recognize that there are modalities through which their respective subject is learned and done. for instance, although the national science education standards (1996) and inquiry and the national science education standards (nrc, 2000) do not employ the term ‗process standards‘, it is recognized that students learn and do science through a process of ‗5es‘: engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate. in most k-12 content areas, the representative standards are more content(or product-) than processoriented and state what a student should know and be able to accomplish in each grade. these standards are more consistent with nctm‘s content standards (nctm, 2000) which define content goals for each grade. while these content standards do not constitute process standards, the vast number of these standards in each subject area often tacitly connotes a body of process standards. translating from product standards to process standards significant difficulty exists in translating content standards into process standards. the verb choices alone within the content standards (e.g. describe, demonstrate, apply, compare, and etc.) are generally insufficient for reinterpreting content standards into learning processes. often, a verb in a product statement is used repeatedly in very different contexts, synonymous verbs are used in similar contexts, and synonymous verbs are used in different contexts. for instance, depending on the context, the verb demonstrate can mean ‗show examples‘, ‗do a physical action‘, ‗show an idea using a different modality‘, or ‗give an explanation for‘. thus, the examination of product standards necessitates investigating verb use in the context of each individual standard and comparing/contrasting such with other verb choices and contexts. notably, the subject matter from which a product standard is found is rarely a significant factor in the reinterpretation of the product standard to a process standard. for instance, creating a piece of music, a written report, or an argument in support of a position are all very different activities in respect to the subject matter. however, the act of creating has many commonalities among all subject areas. altogether, translating from content statements to process standards necessitates a continual consideration of entire content statements both in isolation and in tandem with other statements within that subject matter area. verbs and their synonyms must also be compared and contrasted within the context of the subject matter and beyond to other subject matter areas. this process is nonlinear and often necessitates investigating concepts and reinvestigating the concept in another context. the value of investigating process standards since process standards define the processes through which students learn, amassing and categorizing as many of them as possible should be beneficial to all educators. as depicted in figure 1, it may be possible to find valuable and appropriate learning processes which are not previously discussed in a subject matter‘s representative standards, or learning processes. for instance, the more broad it may be possible to define a fuller understanding of investigation of process standards may lead to discovering mathematical learning processes appropriate for other subject matters and learning processes from other subject matters previously unrecognized by mathematics unifying k-12 learning processes: integrating curricula through learning 3 educators. alternately, better understanding the processes used across content areas allows for the development of pedagogy for teaching 21 st century curricula and for the possibility of applying pedagogy to previously undeveloped or less valued curricula, such as those enabling digital learning. more fully understanding all learning processes may better lead to understanding learning in each subject and learning altogether. this has the possibility of leading to new findings and curricular notions which can make future curriculum and instruction more effective. research questions the following questions directed this investigation and its research methodology: 1. can process standards for a subject matter be determined when only content standards are provided? 2. is there a superset of process standards which can be developed from all k-12 subject area standards? 3. is the superset of all process standards larger than the set of process standards found in mathematics and science? 4. will the superset of process standards connote that some process standards are missing from mathematics and science? research methodology in this study, the researchers began with the nctm process standards and the 5es of the science standards as an initial list of possible process standards. the researchers wondered whether analysis of all other k-12 subject areas would generate process standards not already listed through mathematics and science or if some of these standards could be collapsed into fewer standards. to investigate such, this study examined textual sources from a number of disparate academic fields. while some of these academic fields shared common vocabulary, they often did so with differentiated meaning attached. conversely, any number of academic fields often employed dissimilar vocabularies to denote similar meaning. it was therefore necessary to contextually analyze vocabulary in each field. techniques associated with discourse analysis proved valuable in this endeavor (gee, 2005; johnstone, 2002; schiffrin, tannen, & hamilton, 2001). more specifically, this study opted for a research methodology more in line with semantic discourse analysis as discussed by van dijk (1985). within any literature-based research, it is necessary to delimit which documents will be examined. in the process of the research design, it was determined to use us k-12 subject matter standards documents exclusively, since these documents are published under the auspices of the national content area organizations and connote the understanding and acceptance of numerous scholars regarding the teaching and learning of those subjects. this decision was not intended to diminish the value or contribution of innumerable national and international scholarly resources which could shed more light on this investigation. rather, this investigation was envisioned as only an initial venture to later be supplemented by further research utilizing additional resources. altogether, the texts selected simultaneously provide a voice for each subject matter standard for k-12 education in the usa and sufficiently limit this initial study to a manageable form. to study the standards from all the k-12 content areas and to ensure validity within the findings, three researchers worked both independently and collaboratively figure 1. learning processes are interrelated and often new learning processes are formed in areas where one or many processes overlap current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 to qualitatively analyze all the standards provided in the subject areas of: mathematics (national council of teachers of mathematics, 2000), science (nrc, 1995, 2000), language arts (national council of teachers of english, 1996), social studies (national council for the social studies, 1994), foreign language (american council on the teaching of foreign languages, 1996), technology (international society for technology in education, 2007), and fine arts (national art education association, 1994). since textual discourse analysis involves the interpretation of various written documents and interpretation can be subjectively affected by the experiences and ideology of the interpreter, methods were included to ensure that: interpretations were true to the documents investigated; analyses of these documents were prevented from being prejudiced and self-fulfilling in respect to the researchers‘ backgrounds; and pertinent explicit and implicit salient points were discovered from the texts. to accomplish this and avoid prejudicing the interpretation of the documents, the researchers involved specialized in numerous distinct fields of educational research and expertise. although it is recognized that discourse analysis is by nature subjective, it was the hope that this selection of researchers together with the following methodologies undertaken assisted in making the interpretation of the inspected documents somewhat more valid and reliable. the following stages define the process through which this analysis was completed. (1) it was decided that all participating researchers were to be involved in all aspects of the reading, amassing, interpreting, recasting, analyzing, organizing, synthesizing, and evaluating of all documents and the respective learning standards from such. this would make the cumulative interpretation of, and subsequent work with, the text more consistent. (2) all standards documents were initially read independently by all participating researchers, thus providing the initial uncritical reading recommended by huckin (1997). the entire team of researchers then completed all following tasks collaboratively. (3) the researchers reinvestigated all documents looking for specific learning standards, fulfilling the deeper secondary reading recommended by price (2002). (4) learning standards from all content areas were recorded on index cards color coded by content area. (5) since only some learning standards were originally written as learning processes, the researchers had to return to the respective texts, consider each text holistically, and recast certain learning standards into learning processes (a process similar to that recommended by huckin). content standards were investigated contextually within the framework of the respective subject area in order to ascertain tacit learning processes. key verbs from each standard were analyzed to find both commonalities and differences among processes. to enhance reliability and validity, verbs from each standard were not removed from the context of their respective statements. thus, the verbs retained their original contextual intent. in so doing, most verbs were recognized in multiple process standards. (6) additional comments from the recasting were added to the original index cards. in so doing, researchers were able to have continually before them the original text as well as the mutually agreed upon interpretation of such—a form more usable by this investigation. (7) each index card was then affixed to a large, open wall. each index card was thereby movable. as more index cards were added to the wall near cards with similar processes, conceptual themes coalesced, denoting learning processes. (8) as index cards were placed and reorganized, their positions were determined in respect to the intent of the verb in the context of the standards and not abstracted from such. (9) after index cards denoting similar process standards were associated, verbs were collected for each process standard and standards were reevaluated to ensure correct interpretation. since, however, there were numerous synonymous verbs, synonyms were collapsed into fewer words. then the remaining verbs were again investigated to ensure that no alteration of meaning ensued from this condensation. (10) once the researchers narrowed the original field of content standards down to several process verbs, the categories were entered into a computer program and diagrammed to discover and denote the relationships among the terms. once the relationships were determined, the software allowed the researchers to move the terms about on the diagrammatic grid until connections evolved and were recognized. (11) after accomplishing this, additional relationships among the terms were determined and the remaining terms were backward mapped to the processes standards previously discovered. (12) writing emanated from these diagrams and allowed the researchers to discuss the relationships among the processes derived from the original set of standards. altogether, the research team chose this methodology with the belief that, in a collaborative interpretive effort, the team would provide more consistent and unbiased readings and interpretations of the respective texts and allow the texts to speak for themselves and articulate the meanings of the original writers rather than take on the beliefs of the researchers. therefore, while discourse analysis can often be accomplished by one investigator, in this case we believed that the collaborative effort would provide deeper insights into the texts and more validity and reliability to the results of this study. findings prior to specifically addressing learning processes, the researchers made some more general findings regarding the k-12 educational standards from all academic fields which warrant brief discussion. these general observations make no judgment regarding the quality of any of the standards documents. rather, observations are made regarding the framework of standards without evaluating the quality of the contents within the standards. standards from various fields can be characterized more by dissimilarities than similarities. the most apparent distinction among the standards documents may be in the unifying k-12 learning processes: integrating curricula through learning 5 realm of the intended audience. while some subject matter standards seem to focus on the classroom teacher as the primary readers, others address the concerns of curriculum developers or policymakers. clearly the intended audience affects the purpose, content, and style of the documents. while some standards documents carefully define and differentiate educational principles and goals from content and process standards, others treat most of these issues alike. in the latter case, it is often difficult to determine if the goals of education go beyond simply learning the subject matter content; the role of the student in culture and society is only minimally addressed. the value of the content and purpose for its study is often disconnected from preparing students for life and success in social and career endeavors. some subject matter standards documents focus more on providing lists of grade-appropriate facts and skills which students must master, while others concentrate on how students learn the content. in the former, the authors of the standards seemingly believe that the readers will either possess their own understanding of how students learn or will be able to infer some of this understanding from the lists of content. in the latter cases, the standards authors seemingly believe that teachers and curriculum developers will recognize grade-appropriate content when they understand how students learn. many of the standards documents focus more on how instruction should take place rather than how students learn. in these cases, the reader is left to interpret how teaching recommendations are to be translated into understandings of how students learn. thus, within the document, pedagogy is not sufficiently connected to epistemological beliefs. significant differences exist between the levels of specificity among the recommended content in different standards documents. while some standards denote global conceptual themes, others detail micro-concepts and specific facts which must be mastered. the following discussions will align with the previously listed research questions. each will be developed in its own section of varying length. discovering process standards the first research question asked if process standards for a subject matter could be determined when only content standards are provided within the document. while the answer to this question is in the affirmative, this was found to be so only through extensive analysis of each statement in the respective national educational standards for k-12 subjects. notably, as previously mentioned, many subject matter standards were not written with the goal of defining the processes through which a student learns. many subject matter standards documents focus either on grade-appropriate concepts and topics which should be covered through instruction or on the actual practice of classroom instruction and not on learning. altogether, these dynamics forced the researchers to read, interpret, analyze, reinterpret, and synthesize process standards from statements not necessarily intended to connote such understanding. it was particularly difficult to analyze standards in order to discover learning processes which were not explicitly stated. in the case of some subject matter standards, precise meanings of some statements, in respect to the statements being recast into learning processes, were not possible until all recommendations within that subject matter were investigated simultaneously. only then could seminal meanings emerge which remained consistent with the intent of the document. thus, in some cases, dozens of statements had to be understood both independently and corporately in order to deduce tacit meanings which were consistent with the whole. nevertheless, despite the difficulties of traversing numerous documents of varying subject matter content and style of exposition, it was found possible to distill from them clearly defined learning processes. categorizing process standards the next two research questions inquired whether a superset of learning processes could be developed from all k-12 subject area standards and if this superset would be larger than the set of process standards found in mathematics and science. as demonstrated herein, both of these questions are also answered in the affirmative. after learning processes were gleaned from one subject matter, this procedure was repeated for all others. in so doing, a cadre of learning processes was recognized. however, the initial list of learning processes was too lengthy to be either meaningful or useful. after further analysis, it was determined that many of the learning processes shared sufficient characteristics to be considered synonymous. this led to another level of analysis aimed at determining if synonymous learning processes could be collapsed into fewer learning processes. it was found that this was possible. immediately, explore from science and problem solving from mathematics were recognized as adequately synonymous to justify connecting the two processes. as analysis continued, additional themes of processes emerged. thirteen distinct process standards were discovered among all of the standards within all the k-12 subject matter documents. these included: 1. the original nine combined mathematics and science standards: a. math and science combined: problem-solving and explore; b. math: reasoning and proof, communications, connections, and representations; 2. science: engage, explain, elaborate, and evaluate; three new hybrid learning processes: relation, justification, and profession; and 3. a disconnected standard denoted skills & practice. each of these process standards, as found in standards documents, is denoted and defined in figure 2. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 6 figure 2. process standards that emerged from the categorical mapping exercise. the following thirteen process standards are divided into two groups: singletons and hybrids. while singleton learning processes can be defined in one camp, hybrid learning processes share many commonalities with listed singletons. however, in numerous dimensions, it can be stated of hybrid learning processes that ‗the whole is greater than the sum of its parts‘. the following descriptions will attempt to develop the distinctiveness of the hybrid processes from its constituent parts. further discussions of some of these listed processes follow. singleton learning processes skills and practice. numerous k-12 subject matter standards indicate that the practicing of skills, techniques, and algorithms has a definite place in student learning and that students learn as they repeatedly do some tasks. verbs from various product and process standards which are commonly employed in this discussion include: work (independently and cooperatively); calculate; estimate; distinguish; differentiate; identify; practice; perform; and read (various representations in the respective subject matter). for this research project, this list of verbs has been codified to: contrast/differentiate/distinguish; identify; collaborate; calculate; estimate; practice; and perform. notably, within subject matter standards promoting the importance of skills and practice, these processes are neither divorced from deepening conceptual understanding nor imply the historic convention of drill and kill. rather, as in the learning of music, skills and practice are seen as necessary components of mastery leading to deeper understanding of more sophisticated musical concepts. thus, skills and practice are simply necessary components to conceptual understanding of music. while a significant number of subject areas contain standards statements which fall under the process standard skills & practice, these statements are usually qualitatively different from all others. most significantly, these standards statements often demonstrate greatest value for the content being learned more so than for the process of learning, the value of such knowledge for the growth of the student, or the connection of that factual knowledge with other facts and understanding. most often, when a subject matter‘s standards consist primarily of gradeappropriate lists of topics, concepts, and skills, which are to be mastered, the focus of the document‘s authors seems to unifying k-12 learning processes: integrating curricula through learning 7 be in respect to this process standard. however, this description is not intended to ring pejoratively. rather, those who promote skills and practice do so because they seem to truly believe that learning occurs through such. exploration/problem-solving. this learning process is usually defined as students learning as they investigate novel concepts or find themselves in a situation in which they do not know how to navigate. as students experience problem scenarios, they learn the pertinent concepts, how to solve that type of problem, and how to solve other problems. while leading a student to the skill of problem-solving is a goal of most educational efforts, it is also recognized that the process of problem-solving itself leads to different and greater learning. within product and process standards, the verbs most commonly seen are: think; plan; research; investigate; explore (causes and consequences); organize; develop multiple interpretations; justify selections; and seek reasonable solutions. this process was collapsed to the fewer verbs: interpret/explain; organize; and investigate. reasoning. while it is the role of education to grow students to become reasoning agents and to be able to reason through complex tasks as adults, this standard also argues that students learn through the process of reasoning; they both learn to reason and learn more deeply about the topics through which they are reasoning. reasoning may be either formal as in mathematical proofs, debates, or expository writing or informal as in extemporaneous classroom discussions. the collected verbs leading toward reasoning include: analyze; evaluate; describe; identify; compare/contrast; explain; recognize and interpret. these are herein codified to: interpret/explain; describe; contrast/differentiate/distinguish; compare/connect/correlate; identify; analyze; evaluate/critique/assess/defend; and organize. connection. this learning process can be defined as determining and/or applying relationships between and among concepts and representations. connections can be formed internally among topics within a subject matter or externally applied from one subject matter to another. (for instance, an algebraic concept can be seen geometrically or the same algebraic concept can be applied to music.) from the product and process standards which spoke to connection, the verbs most commonly employed are: locate; assess; organize; synthesize; evaluate; apply information; and evaluate multiple points of view. in this investigation, these and numerous other terms were collapsed to the verb list: compare/correlate; apply; organize; evaluate/critique/assess/defend; and synthesize. several types of specific connections were commonly found in the standards and these include: connections from content to content, connections from content to culture, and connections from content to person. communication. this learning process can be defined as the mono-directional (speaking to), multidirectional (sharing among), mono-modal (writing), and multi-modal (presenting orally and with charts) dissemination of information. while communication may include a student producing oration and writing, it may also include a student learning through listening to others and reading what others have produced. additionally, it may take innumerable content-centric forms including dance, music, poetry, and expository writing, among many others. from product and process standards discussing this element, the verbs most commonly used are: collaborate; demonstrate; articulate; give examples; engage in conversations; provide and obtain information; express feelings and emotions; exchange opinions; write; depict through visual language; and tell stories. these and other terms were collapsed to the verb list: demonstrate/show examples and collaborate. some standards documents emphasize different contexts for communication. standards often recommend teacher and student communication being attuned to and appropriate for different purposes, audiences, and contexts. thus, effective communication skills allow a student to effectively share ideas in many environments. other documents emphasize that the value for students to become effective communicators resides more so in students being able to communicate and gain employment outside of school in a broader social environment. verbs most often associated with communication include: demonstrate; show examples or evidence; give/share information/ideas/reasoning; justify; and convey/articulate. explanation. although closely connected with the more general and global notion of communication, this learning process usually connotes a more specific process of analyzing information and confirming findings to oneself or to others. verbs from various standards which are generally associated with this process are: give examples; describe; identify; interpret; distinguish. this process was conceptualized around the verbs: interpret; describe; identify; contrast/differentiate/distinguish; and demonstrate/ show examples. extension. this learning process speaks to expanding concepts either to or through additional concepts or by applying concepts to other realms. while connection seeks to ―determine relationships between and among concepts and representations,‖ extension purposely seeks to take these connections in novel directions. verbs often associated with this learning process include: apply; expand; solidify; construct; describe; explain; by demonstration; formulate strategies; make suggestions; reconstruct and reinterpret; convey; and design. these verbs were simplified to: interpret/explain; describe; demonstrate/show examples; apply; and construct/create. representation. nearly every idea can be represented through multiple modalities. for instance: emotions can be represented through actions, poetry, or music; equality can be represented geometrically, algebraically, or philosophically; and part-whole relationships can be represented numerically or through subcultures and cultures. within mathematics, four representations are commonly current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 8 recognized: verbal, numeric (or tabular), symbolic (or algebraic), and graphical. the learning process of representation connotes students interpreting various forms of conceptual representations, independently recreating conceptual representations, and translating from one representational form to another. educational standards connect representation with the verbs: improvise and compose (music); conceive and create; compare and contrast (forms); illustrate (ideas); read/interpret/apply (appropriate diagrams and data); show (through examples using technology); and make mental maps. this investigation coalesces these verbs to: interpret/explain; contrast /differentiate/distinguish; compare/connect /correlate; construct/create; and illustrate. two foci of representation are commonly seen in educational standards from the humanities and social sciences. the interworking among society, culture, and subcultures is regularly treated as a representation of various social dynamics and concepts which, although occasionally esoteric, are important for students to learn. the person, as an individual participating within society, is also regularly developed as a representation for students to understand concepts such as freedom, human value, and responsibility. together, both culture and the person become common, educationally valuable representations. while it may appear that representation and communication are synonymous processes, important distinctions exist between the two. although connections can exist between different representations of a concept, concepts can also be interconnected without use of different representations. second, any representation of a concept can be utilized without consideration of other concepts or representations to which it may connect. evaluation. students learn as they analyze and evaluate concepts and ideas. using theoretical arguments or experimentation, the process of evaluating concepts for truthfulness or validity leads to greater understanding. evaluation differs from reasoning as evaluation speaks to the specific purpose of determining truthfulness/value and reasoning addresses the more global dimension of thinking through ideas with or without the necessary concern for truthfulness. verbs which commonly express these ideas include: describe; analyze; compare/contrast; evaluate; identify; recognize; interpret; describe (the role); formulate; examine; investigate; consider; observe; speculate; construct reasoned judgments; apply; articulate; justify; critique; evolve (criteria for evaluations); describe (meaning of representations); reflect analytically; correlate; defend validity; and form and defend judgments. this study abbreviates this list to: interpret/explain; describe; contrast/ differentiate/distinguish; compare/connect/correlate; identify; analyze; apply; critique/assess/defend; investigate; reflect; and speculate. engagement. students learn as they become personally involved in the subject matter and they see the relevance of the topic to their own lives. sharing similarities with connections, engagement relates connectedness of the subject matter to the students and vice versa and not simply one topic to another. although engagement speaks more to the affective domain, the subject matter standards which promote engagement recognize that learning is more effective and efficient when students are interested in investigations and recognize the pertinence of such for their lives. common verbs surrounding this learning process include: participate; reflect; create; and show evidence. herein, these are simplified to: construct/create and reflect. hybrid learning processes justification. while justification is the intersection of evaluation, communication, and explanation, it transcends these three singleton processes through the purpose it places on the process. this standard argues that students learn more about a topic as they communicate and explain their evaluation of work or a product (either their own work or the work of others) associated with the topic. while evaluation, explanation, and communication each have role in the process of learning, the subject matter standards documents seem to state that an additional dimension of learning occurs when these three processes are purposively interwoven. the most common verbs associated with this learning process are: analyze; explain; describe; differentiate; interpret; and examine. herein, these have been solidified to the verbs: interpret; describe; contrast/differentiate/distinguish; demonstrate/show examples; and analyze. relation. while it is possible for connections to consider the interrelatedness of various representations of a concept and representations to simultaneously consider more than one representation, relations makes the investigation, integration, and application of various distinct representations of a concept the specific goals of the process. in mathematics, this is tantamount to considering representations singularly versus considering multiple representations simultaneously. this learning process proposes that students experience a different, and possibly deeper, dimension of learning when they investigate concepts through simultaneous multiple representations. common verbs used in this discussion include: describe and examine relationships; reinforce and further knowledge; compare different representations; and recognize the distinctiveness of representations. herein, these verbs are abbreviated to: describe; and compare/connect/correlate. profession. although interconnected with representation, communication, connection, and explanation, profession transcends all of its constituent parts. profession is the process of a student experiencing and communicating in a field of study in a manner consistent with professionals and experts in that field. although this dimension of communication and experience is possible within and among a number of previously listed singleton and hybrid processes, this process standard has the stated goal of students doing, experiencing, and communicating about a concept in a manner consistent with unifying k-12 learning processes: integrating curricula through learning 9 professionals (albeit at an age-appropriate level of understanding and sophistication). this standard promotes the notion that learning differs and is enhanced when educational experiences are modeled by or situated within professional practice. verbs commonly used to construct this learning process include: analyze; compare; create; demonstrate; apply technology to synthesize information and communicate knowledge; give examples; describe; connect concepts in one field to concepts in another; identify and describe patterns; apply concepts; and illustrate. the investigators of this study have recast this list to: interpret/explain; describe; compare /connect/ correlate; identify; demonstrate/show examples; analyze; apply; construct/create; synthesize; and illustrate. these leaning processes, together with their included key verbs, are presented in figure 3. figure 3. cross-curricular process standards and the relationships among them. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 10 discussion this study sought to conclude whether a superset of learning processes could be determined from the us national k-12 content standards provided in individual subject areas. it also sought to determine whether processes aside from those identified in the math and science standards would emerge. having determined that a set of thirteen learning processes could be identified from the subject area content standards, a set which transcends those provided by the math and science standards, the researchers have determined that a larger map now exists to use in the discussion, creation, and analysis of curriculum. the identification of the learning processes that underlie the k-12 national content standards has the potential to greatly influence future directions in education. these findings have implications for stakeholders including curriculum and standards developers, teachers, and teacher educators. knowing that thirteen overall learning processes encompass the entire set of standards might enable these individuals to put a greater emphasis on the processes used in teaching content and develop methods for teaching content or subject areas that have been previously nonexistent or underdeveloped (e.g., digital learning skills). an extensive discussion of the possible applications of all learning processes is beyond the scope of this article, but brief discussion of these learning processes, as well as implications and possible future directions for this research, is provided. the existence of thirteen learning processes the fact that all k-12 subject matter standards could be analyzed and synthesized into only thirteen distinct learning processes is far from trivial. this finding alone leads to a number of significant implications. first, it can be said that learning across almost all fields does not differ as greatly as some might be prone to assume. learning a foreign language may not differ all that greatly from learning science or fine arts. if this is the case, and a thorough understanding of learning can be accomplished through the understanding of only thirteen learning processes across all subject matters, educators and curriculum developers have greater opportunity to create epistemologically sound and consistent curricular materials across all disciplines. second, the fact that the number of learning processes is manageable and that the whole superset of processes is comprehensible leads to the understanding that teachers can use the learning processes in their instructional preparation. with the learning processes as their focus, they can concentrate on teaching the student rather than the content area. arguably, students fail to learn when they experience instruction that is not supported by epistemological understanding and sound pedagogical practice and students cannot fail to learn when instruction is directed specifically at their learning of the content at hand. third, the superset of thirteen learning processes may argue for the increased need for instruction, which integrates various content areas. with the simultaneous recognition that all learning occurs through combinations of the thirteen learning processes and that learning of most subject matter is more similar than different, it becomes more difficult to argue that all subject matter instruction and learning should be experienced disjointedly. in the future, if the superset of thirteen learning processes became the basis of the national standards, curriculum could be reconceptualized so that teachers taught processes rather than content areas. instead of going to a history class, students might spend one or more periods per day in a completely integrated ‗connection class‘. in this class, students and teachers would learn how to make connections among various pieces of information and together would transcend the formal boundaries of school subject content areas to learn to make meaning through multi-dimensional processes. however, since it is highly unlikely for the educational system to reorganize the curriculum according to learning processes rather than content areas, teachers and developers of standards might instead be yet persuaded to shift their focus from fact-based content to learning processes when creating lessons and units. the identification of these thirteen learning processes raises some important issues. answering one of the research questions associated with this investigation, the thirteen learning processes certainly exceed the five mentioned in the nctm principles and standards for school mathematics (2000) and the 5es from the national science education standards (1995, 2000). another way of stating this may be that the standards document for mathematics has missed some learning processes through which mathematics could be learned. hybrid learning processes one possible benefit of this new superset of standards is the discovery of new hybrid learning processes. these hybrid standards, created by the intersection of several singleton standards, may connote new instructional methodologies and learning processes that could be utilized by educators of all subject areas to teach students to think about and learn content in new ways. alternately, determining the relationship among all content processes may enable educators to develop thematic units based on shared processes and topics that span several content areas. since the three hybrid learning processes include components of other singleton learning processes, it may be easier for teachers to concentrate on fewer learning processes and still hit the majority of the others. for instance, rather than considering all thirteen learning processes, educators could concentrate on an abbreviated list of only eight learning processes including: problemsolving, reasoning, engagement, extension, skills & practice, relation, justification, and profession. since this list includes the hybrid learning processes, it also includes some characteristics of the entire superset. some educators and curriculum developers may find this list of only eight learning processes a more manageable list from which to unifying k-12 learning processes: integrating curricula through learning 11 create curriculum and learning experiences, and more streamlined and facilitating of the development of integrated instructional opportunities. the hybridization of connection, communication, and representation to form relation creates a learning process that emphasizes the ability to communicate information to others in ways that enhance our understanding of one another and may potentially be useful in various content areas. in the social studies, the process of relating to one another is important as we teach young children how to become peacemakers to solve their own problems or as we teach high school students how to compare and connect the lives of people far removed from them to their own. these are both important skills and using the newly formed process of relation may enhance teachers‘ capability of teaching these and other concepts. another previously unrecognized process may hold the ability to reach students. the process of justification is formed at the crossroads of communication, explanation, and evaluation and requires students to first evaluate information, and then be able to communicate the results. thus, justification is a combination of several of the singleton processes that requires a richer, more multidimensional process. a math student who has just used an alternate algorithm to solve a difficult math problem may be asked to create a math journal response to justify why her problem-solving method was more effective than another. in studying a post-civil war era novel, another student may be asked to provide justification for the behavior of a sharecropper who steals from the land owner. these tasks require the learner to evaluate the information at hand and develop an explanation that can be clearly communicated to the listener. such processes are clearly more rigorous in nature than each of the singular components within. finally, the newly formed profession involves the combination of connection, communication, representation, and explanation. this comprehensive process requires that students activate skill sets and higherorder thinking to become knowledge producers, rather than knowledge consumers. utilizing the process of profession, a student might develop and share a previously unrecognized method of solving a mathematical proof. in another area, a student might develop a presentation to share his analysis of the similarities of two characters from the novels of shakespeare. with seemingly different content, both students have effectively used the process of profession to produce and display knowledge. implications according to audience the implications for the discovery of a superset of thirteen learning processes among all k-12 subject matter standards are numerous for all involved in education. however, individuals in certain professions within education may have more specific concerns. the following paragraphs consider the implications for standards developers, curriculum developers, teachers, and teacher educators. each of these is considered independently. standards developers. those who develop standards, either at the national or the state level, have a great deal of influence on future directions in education. if these individuals were to shift their focus to the processes involved in learning, modifications could be made to existing content standards in social studies, language arts, and fine arts, to provide greater influence of the processes involved, as is currently done in the science and math standards. the existence of a broad cross-curricular set of learning process standards, as is suggested in this article, would allow for all national k-12 standards to be mapped onto the same set of learning processes. such a mapping would enable teachers and other developers of curriculum to observe the interrelatedness of seemingly non-related content, according to the shared learning processes. at some point, national standards should be written either entirely as learning process standards, or mapped as process standards in coordination with content standards so that teachers can more easily observe the relationships between content and process. curriculum developers. curriculum developers need to place an emphasis on learning processes when writing curriculum. as they translate standards into lesson plans and units, they must retain the level of rigor present in the standards. curriculum developers without a strong sense of the learning processes underlying the content will have difficulty constructing curriculum that meets the level of rigor demanded by the standards. if a set of k-12 national process standards existed, however, curriculum could be written to meet any of the thirteen standards regardless of content area. also, the desired rigor could be retained due to the fact that the language of the learning processes would be stated explicitly in the standards, rather than implicitly hidden beneath the content. teachers. educators should familiarize themselves with the thirteen learning process standards in order to determine how they might be used to further students‘ understanding of content. teachers should also utilize the expanded process map to determine how the processes can be used to relate seemingly unrelated content. for example, the same process – representation – could be used to show mathematical equality, such as in algebraic expression, or to represent human feeling, as with poetry. though the content is different, the underlying learning process is the same. most teachers do not illustrate these connections in their daily teaching, but may be able to enhance student understanding by doing so. curriculum delivery, then, should include all of the thirteen learning processes. it should be noted that there is a great range of processes from the more teacher-led (skills & practice) to the more student-led (exploration/problem-solving). the availability of a wider range of learning processes should provide teachers with multiple pathways for increasing student understanding of content. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 12 teacher educators. teacher educators must also be familiar with the learning processes that underlie curriculum as they instruct pre-service and in-service teachers in the development of curricular materials and instruction. if standards were based primarily on learning processes, rather than content standards, a greater focus would be brought to the pedagogy of teaching and would perhaps minimize the occurrence of tedious lectures based only on content coverage with little regard to instructional method. the shift in focus would require that teacher educators prepare teachers to create complex and integrated curricula including advanced applications of learning processes in the classroom. a call for national/international standards on learning processes while the following section maps out some future considerations for the findings in this investigation, the authors opine that the findings previously cited warrant a call for national/international standards on learning processes which would be referred to by all k-12 subject matter standards. this document could significantly help ameliorate the current set of national subject matter standards and make such documents somewhat more consistent in form and function. as previously mentioned, current standards documents differ greatly in many dimensions. indeed, these differences are often so great as to hinder, rather than promote, collaboration between educators from different fields of study and hamper efforts toward integrated curricula across numerous content areas. additionally, national/international standards of learning processes could create a unique dimension of discourse in which all educators could participate. central to the documents would be agreements regarding how all students learn and instructional techniques designed to promote such. as learning processes, these statements would discuss both the process and product of learning as defined in the opening of this paper. these documents would also discuss general notions and techniques appropriate for differentiating instruction, learning, and assessment for all learners in all subject matter areas. in an era of the us no child left behind policy and high stakes standardized testing, discussions regarding assessment practices could be founded upon student learning rather than countless facts associated with each subject matter. as previously stated, 21 st century learners must continually learn how to continually learn. based on national/international standards on learning processes, educators working in unison across all disciplines may be able to use these learning standards to evaluate a student‘s subject matter mastery, ability to learn, and progress as a life-long learner. these latter two dimensions may better speak to the goals of education than the temporary learning of facts which may or may not be employed in the future. future directions the information in this article, determined through an extensive qualitative process, seems to be a small piece of a potentially vast research area on the influence of using learning processes, rather than content standards, to guide teaching and learning. this information has the potential to change the way that teacher educators develop skills in preservice teachers, to influence curriculum writers to base curriculum on a broader scope including the teaching of digital skills to yield greater capacity for the use of new technologies, as well as to change the practices of teachers to include more advanced processes in their daily instruction. additional research, including observation of current learning processes used in daily instruction, has the potential to strengthen the development of a k-12 process standard framework by offering evidence of current practice and suggestions for use of such a framework. it is hoped that this investigation will be followed up and advanced by many other researchers and studies in the future. it is hoped that these thirteen learning processes can be reinvestigated by others, refined, abbreviated, or extended as needed. moreover, it is hoped that this study facilitates cross-curricular discussion among educators in every field. thereby, education can be consolidated under the concern for student learning above all other concerns. conclusion in the end, it is the goal of every educator to develop the higher-level thinking and processing of their students. currently utilized in the national science and math standards, process-based standards may enable the writing of curriculum that is correlated to higher order thinking as defined by bloom‘s taxonomy (bloom, 1956). recognizing and utilizing the thirteen learning processes defined herein may assist in developing instructional practices which lead to higher order thinking. today, educational studies and discussions most often consider different subject matter areas as disjoint. education is fractured by segregation according to subject matter. by utilizing the superset of process learning processes, educational discussions, investigations, planning, and development can be unified. the thirteen learning processes discovered through this study give educators and curriculum developers a new platform from which to write integrated, multi-dimensional 21 st century curriculum. furthermore, a definition and discussion of national/international process standards, or learning processes, could help develop the groundwork for truly integrated (the simultaneous consideration and learning of multiple subject matters, e.g. mathematics, science, and music) curricula, instruction, learning experiences, and research. heading in this direction has the potential to have lasting and meaningful influences on the education of a generation of students who face the unknowns of the 21 st century and beyond. references american council on the teaching of foreign languages. (1996) standards for foreign language learning. american council on the teaching of foreign languages, alexandria, va. unifying k-12 learning processes: integrating curricula through learning 13 bloom, b. s. (1956) taxonomy of educational objectives, handbook i: the cognitive domain (new york: david mckay co). consortium of national arts education associations. (1994) the national standards for arts education. retrieved july 31, 2008, from http://artsedge.kennedy-enter.org/teach/standards/ gee, j. p. (2005) an introduction to discourse analysis: theory and method (london: routledge). huckin, t. (1997) critical discourse analysis. in t. miller (ed), functional approaches to written text. retrieved march 6, 2003, from http://exchanges.state.gov/education/engteaching/p ubs/br/functionalsec3_6.htm. international society for technology in education. (2007) national educational technology standards for students. retrieved july 31, 2008, from http://www.iste.org/am/template.cfm?section=n ets. johnstone, b. (2002) discourse analysis (oxford: blackwell). national council for the social studies. (1994) curriculum standards for social studies. national council for the social studies, silver spring, md. national research council. (1995) national science education standards. national academic press, washington, d.c. national research council. (2000) inquiry and the national science education standards: a guide for teaching and learning. national research press, washington, d.c. national council of teachers of english. (1996) standards for the english language arts. international reading association, newark, de. national council of teachers of mathematics. (2000) principles and standards for school mathematics. national council of teachers of mathematics, restin, va. partnership for 21 st century skills. (2002) learning for the 21 st century: a report and mile guide for 21 st century skills. washington d.c. partnership for 21 st century skills. (2008) homepage. retrieved july 31, 2008, from http://www.21stcenturyskills.org, price, l. (2002) industry and sustainability. retrieved march 6, 2003, from http://www.kubatana.net/docs/env/indsust_lp0208 12.pdf schiffrin, d. s., tannen, d., & hamilton, h. e. (2001) the handbook of discourse analysis. (malden, ma: blackwell publishing). van dijk, j. a. g. m. (2006) digital divide research, achievements and shortcomings. poetics, 34, 221235. van dijk, t. a. (ed) (1985) handbook of discourse analysis (london: academic press). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 14 article citation bossé, m.j. & fogarty, e. a. (2011). unifying k-12 learning processes: integrating curricula through learning. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/763 author notes michael j. bossé department of mathematics, science, & instructional technology education college of education east carolina university greenville, nc 27858 bossem@ecu.edu (252) 328-9367 fax (252) 328-9371 michael j. bossé is an associate professor of mathematics education at east carolina university in the department of mathematics, science, & instructional technology education. his primary areas of research are in cognition and learning, mathematical representations and translations, mathematics learning and language acquisition, and curriculum. he is widely published, has developed numerous mathematical manipulatives for the teaching and learning of mathematics, and continues as a consultant to assist teachers, schools, and districts. elizabeth a. fogarty department of curriculum and instruction college of education east carolina university greenville, nc 27858 fogartye@ecu.edu (252) 328-4945 fax (252) 328-2585 elizabeth a. fogarty is an assistant professor at east carolina university where she teaches undergraduate and graduate classes and her teaching and research focuses on preparing teachers of the gifted and providing differentiation for all learners. in her previous position, she served as a research associate at the national research center on the gifted and talented. she currently sits on the board of directors for the north carolina association for the gifted and talented, chairs the professional development network of the national association for the gifted and talented, and is writing a book on talented readers. mailto:bossem@ecu.edu mailto:fogartye@ecu.edu unifying k-12 learning processes: integrating curricula through learning 15 volume 14, number 2 june 6, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 7, number 5 january 20, 2004 issn 1099-839x cultural collision in urban schools floyd beachum university of wisconsin-milwaukee carlos mccray alabama state university young african americans face several critical issues such as dire economic circumstances, peer pressure, random violence, and feelings of alienation from the cultural mainstream in america. black popular culture for these youth creates a value system born out of these same issues. this analysis will address the influence of black popular culture on african american urban youth and its subsequent intersection with the culture found in secondary schools (cultural collision). black popular culture will be examined through the use of two components: hip-hop culture and television media. current literature as related to the topics discussed will be used to make recommendations. black youth identity is unique and multi-faceted. it can be affected by a multitude of factors including parents, peers, music, school, television, religious influences, and life experiences. for many inner-city youth in particular, self-identity is a combination of various complexities. these youth may face several critical issues such as socioeconomic despair, pressure from gangs, a lack of faith in government, and society‟s concentration on materialism and individualism (berman & berreth, 1997). these issues also have an effect on youth identity. of the numerous influences and factors that shape youth identity, two, sometimes conflicting factors, black youth popular culture (hip-hop culture and television) and school culture are of particular importance. this analysis will concentrate on the development of secondary school-aged urban youth; i.e. those in grades 7-12. urban black youth popular culture will be examined by means of hip-hop culture and the media. both of these variables have the awesome potential to shape youth identity. the american phenomenon known as hip-hop can affect youth in both positive and negative ways (kunjufu, 1993). in a like manner, television too, can exert a powerful influence over youth. the media has the power to alter the habits, feelings, and minds of young people, especially black youth (kunjufu, 1990). for the purposes of this discussion it is important to also understand the significance of the urban context. many urban areas across the nation are plagued with all types of social and community problems. urban schools in these areas face challenges such as inadequate funding and teacher apathy. resentment from external powers fuels the fire for the marginalizing and criticism of these schools (ayers, 1994). furthermore, youth in these areas deal with pressures from gang violence, drugs and alcohol, domestic conflicts, and depression. hip-hop culture hip-hop culture has a great influence on american youth. white and cones (1999) write, “hip hop is a catchall term for a contemporary, urban-centered youth lifestyle associated with popular music, break dancing, certain dress and hair styles, graffiti, and street language” (p. 96). hip hop culture has gone from primarily rapping, break dancing, dj-ing, and graffiti to including dialects, attitude, expression, mannerisms, and fashion (dyson, 2001; kitwana, 2002). in reference to its wider appeal, kitwana (2002) asserts, “rappers access to global media and their current issues in education vol. 7 no. 1 2 use of popular culture to articulate many aspects of this national identity renders rap music central to any discussion of the new black youth culture” (p.11). this emphasis on media opens up rap artists to audio and visual mediums. mccall (1997) writes: dr. william byrd, a black clinical psychologist, pointed out that for young, impressionable people the mere fact that explicit gangsta lyrics are aired on the radio lends credence to their messages as truth. „when you bombard someone with those messages, it causes conflict, even with those young people who may have been taught other values. with these rap messages, not only are they being bombarded with radio, they also get video‟. so it‟s what you hear and what you see. it confirms that these are acceptable values in a subculture. (p. 60) therefore, this “message bombardment” can be influential to impressionable youth. kitwana (2002) agrees, “today, more and more black youth are turning to rap music, music videos, designer clothing, popular black films, and television programs for values and identity” (p. 9). hip-hop culture has become an integral part of the lives of many urban youth. through its influence they develop various ideas about sex, relationships, success, and life (kunjufu, 1993). in addition, these influences can have positive or negative effects on youth identity. “the ages between 13-17 are when they [youth] are particularly vulnerable to outside influence and before their values and ideas have fully developed” (kunjufu, 1993, p. 81). hiphop culture is expressed through songs on the radio, glamorized by video, and reinforced by peers. the result is a particularly powerful form of indoctrination. however, this influence can be good or bad. most of the controversy surrounding hip-hop culture has to do with its emphasis on male chauvinism, open gunplay, and illegal drug usage. hip-hop culture has the ability to affect the values of black youth through various mediums. another important medium is television. television media the american media is a source of news, entertainment, and information. it includes radio, newspapers, the internet, and television. for our purposes, the authors will concentrate on the media as represented by television. the media has the ability to spread truthful and positive knowledge or misrepresent people, events, and data. unfortunately, many times the latter is the case. moreover, television is responsible for imagery that negatively influences youth (bush, 1999). consequently, this imagery has the ability to affect youth identity. television is an important part of life to many americans. black youth, in particular, watch seven to eight hours of television a day, as compared to four and a half hours for white youth (browder, 1989). bush (1999) notes, “negative images presented in all of the media conspire with many hours of television viewing to produce a negative effect on black children‟s self-image” (p. 36). in reference to black youth and television, browder (1989) observes the following:  black children tend to use tv as a source of role models. they imitate other people‟s behavior, dress, appearance, and speech.  tv provides examples of relationships with members of the opposite sex.  tv is used as a primary source of learning and perfecting aggressive behavior.  black children closely identify with television characters – particularly the black characters. (p. 47) given the amount of television watched by black youth and its influence on their development, the images portrayed by the television media become extremely important. television many times promotes gender stereotypes and negative images of blacks. a study conducted by mamay and simpson (as cited in bush, 1999) concluded that “women in commercials were typecast according to three stereotypical roles: mother, housekeeper, and sexual objects” (pp. 35-36). some research indicates that television has the ability to affect the way people view gender roles. katz (1995) writes: stressing gender differences in this context means defining masculinity in the opposition to femininity. this requires constantly reasserting what is masculine and what is feminine. one of the ways that is accomplished, in the image system, is to equate masculinity with violence (and femininity with passivity). (p. 135) in addition to gender, the television media also influences many youth towards violence. for instance, a 14year-old black male was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a 6-year-old girl. he was imitating pro wrestling moves he watched on television (ripley, 2001). today‟s black youth are many times criticized and labeled as violent or rebellious (dyson, 1997; kitwana, 2002). wilson (1990) asserts, “deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their selfesteem, to defend their self-image, or to demonstrate that they too are significant” (p. 54). this is not to excuse individuals for violent behavior, but it provides insight into other influences impacting behavior. moreover, the television media promotes a value system based on materialism and immediate gratification (kunjufu, 1990). in accordance with these values, too many youths resort to violence. thus television exposure to negative imagery could possibly encourage a warped self-identity. identity theory and black youth black youth who are matriculating through middle and high school deal with a considerable amount of transition. the transitions here are related to grade levels, geographic location of schools, maturation, and identity development (to name a few). considering the latter, young adults share a certain amount of curiosity, exploration, and cultural collision in urban schools 3 discovery with regard to the development of identity (tatum, 1997). however, black youth in particular, begin to examine their own ethnic/racial identities even more that their white counterparts (negy, shreve, jensen, & uddin, 2003). tatum (1997) agrees noting that “given the impact of dominant and subordinate status, it is not surprising that researchers have found that adolescents of color are more likely to be actively engaged in an exploration of their racial or ethnic identity than are white adolescents” (p. 53). in this state of heightened identity awareness is where salient and unconscious messages and imagery can influence ideas and values. black youth are more sensitized to society‟s view of them with regard to race. “our selfperceptions are shaped by the messages that we receive from those around us, and when young black men and women enter adolescence, the racial content of those messages intensifies” (tatum, 1997, p. 54). hence, identity development for black youth is complicated by notions of race/ethnicity more than for their white peers, making this a time of complexity and vulnerability. this situation creates the need for direction and guidance from influential individuals and institutions, one of which is the school. school culture the school itself can have a major impact on the development of students. during school, students are afforded opportunities for academic, emotional, and social growth. students also interact with teachers and administrators within this educational environment that is founded upon certain values. academics, opportunities for growth, different types of interaction, and value systems all play a role in a school‟s culture. the school‟s culture also has the ability to shape student identity. a school is commonly defined as a place of teaching and learning. karpike and murphy (1996) indicate that the culture of an organization is the set of values and beliefs of the organization, and these values and beliefs are normally shared with the majority of people in the organization. thus, school culture is the shared value system of a given school. specifically, school culture involves certain components. according to pawlas (1997), “the key components of a strong effective school culture include shared values, humor, storytelling, empowerment, a communication system for spreading information, rituals and ceremonies, and collegiality” (p. 119). school culture is important to all that are involved with the school. the school culture can affect student identity. banks (2001) notes “the school culture communicates to students the school‟s attitudes toward a range of issues and problems, including how the school views them as human beings and its attitudes toward males, females, exceptional students, and students from various religious, cultural, racial, and ethnic groups” (p. 24). when the school‟s culture is characterized by value disagreement, lack of communication, and little collegiality (among teachers and students), many students see themselves as incapable, incompetent, and worthless. however, when an environment promotes a school-wide value system, good communication, collegiality, and the utilization of ceremonies, students‟ attitudes are much more positive. karpicke and murphy (1996) agree that a healthy (school) culture has a great impact on the success of students. taking all of this into account we find that those leaders who are interested in changing a culture must first try to understand the existing culture. in doing this, the leader and others would have to begin by respecting the various cultures that come to the schoolhouse on a daily basis, before imposing another culture. intersection of school culture and black popular culture the values as dictated by negative hip-hop culture and the media many times conflict with the values of the school. kunjufu (1990) notes that gangs and negative media promote immediate gratification and materialism, while parents and teachers promote long-term gratification and qualities such as moral integrity and honesty. kunjufu (1993) also states that there is a concern about some hiphop artists‟ misogynistic and violent messages. in effect, students obtain certain values from this segment of hip-hop culture and television media and then bring those values to the school. therefore, there is a conflict of value systems, which sometimes results in discipline problems and lack of communication between students and educators. in addition, peers can have a great influence on each other, even more so than the influence of adults (kunjufu, 1990). thus, the values are shared and become pervasive because of the influence of peer communication and pressure. furthermore, black youth spend much more time with peers, listening to music, and watching television than they do having meaningful conversations with teachers and parents (kunjufu, 1994; bush, 1999). the task for educators is to familiarize themselves with youth culture/value systems and realize the subsequent affect on youth identity. hip-hop culture has undergone tremendous growth as an artistic form of expression, fashion, as well a money making venture. many have advocated censorship in order to curtail much of the negative influence of rap music. however, censorship may not be the appropriate response. it sends the message that artistic expression can be stifled by those who simply disagree. therefore, a certain amount of responsibility must be placed on parents, guardians, and school officials. in effect, parents and educators should take a greater role in involving themselves in the lives of these youth. one must remember that hip-hop culture has a business aspect and the supply will meet the demand. what would happen if the consumers demanded more positive conscious images? the media also has to be held accountable for its negative imagery. if not, then youth identity could be at stake. chideya (1995) writes, “in the final analysis, it‟s up to the reader and viewers to keep the media honest…pointing out times that the media has current issues in education vol. 7 no. 1 4 misrepresented the african-american community can only make the community better. the media belongs to all of us. if we want it to work, we have to work” (p. 11). implications for educators in summary, there are many factors that influence the identities of urban black youth. hip-hop culture, television media, and school culture do have a serious impact on this particular group. at the heart of this analysis is the creation of a healthy positive value system. consequently, those students who develop this strong value system have less of a chance to be affected by negative aspects of hip-hop culture and misrepresentation in television media and more of a chance to be influenced by the “positivity” exemplified in a healthy school culture. due to the increasing amount of cultural and social diversity found in society and in our schools, educators must find the right balance which promotes a healthy school climate while also embracing some degree of cultural pluralism. there should be a willingness and effort among educators to structure the school culture to ensure that individuals of diverse backgrounds are well positioned to achieve regardless of their predispositions in life. a school culture structured in a pluralistic manner, can lead to the self-efficacy and self-determination of students who may bring conflicting values from their environment (banks, 1995). banks (2001) insists “the culture and organization of the school must be examined by all members of the school staff…in order to create a school culture that empowers students from diverse racial and ethnic groups” (p. 22). this is extremely important because it helps to ensure that students are not being labeled incorrectly and are not subjugated because of inadequate cultural capital. therefore, it is important for educators to help such students develop the kinds of value systems that encourage positive self-identities and give them the legitimate opportunity to become successful in school as well as in life. references ayers, w. 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(1990). black on black violence. new york: african world info systems. the netgeneration: the internet as classroom and community 5 2004 article citation beachum, f. d. & mccray, c.r.(2004, september 14). cultural collision in urban schools. current issues in education [on-line], 7(5). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number5/ author notes dr. floyd beachum is an assistant professor in the department of administrative leadership at the university of wisconsinmilwaukee, where he teaches courses in organizational change and leadership in educational organizations. his research interests include: character education, racial inequity in urban education, and organizational change in k-12 schools. dr. carlos mccray is an assistant professor of educational administration at alabama state university, where he teaches school law, foundations of education administration, and mentoring in education. his research interests include: organizational change, organizational diversity, and school law. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article‟s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article‟s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation beachum, f. d. & mccray, c. r. (2011). cultural collision in urban schools. current issues in education, 7(5). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/821 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number5/ http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x making the transition from traditional to home schooling: home school family motivations kenneth v. anthony and susie burroughs mississippi state university citation anthony, k.v. & burroughs, s. (2010). making the transition from traditional to home schooling: home school family motivations. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this study examined the motivations of families that operate home schools. four intact, religiously conservative families were interviewed and observed over one year. findings showed that families were motivated by multiple factors to leave traditional schooling and begin home schooling. additionally, the motivations to home school influenced the families‘ instructional practices. finally, results indicated that the decision to home school was a positive decision for the families, not an outright rejection of traditional schooling. this study reveals the complex motivations to home school and may assist administrators, teachers, and policymakers in traditional schools induct and retain families considering home schooling. keywords: home education, motivations, home schooling, parental control, curriculum decisionmaking current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: kenneth v. anthony affiliation: mississippi state university address: po box 5447, mississippi state, ms 39762-5447 email: kanthony@armyrotc.msstate.edu biographical information: kenneth v. anthony is a lecturer in the college of education at mississippi state university and adjunct faculty in history in the school of undergraduate studies at university of maryland university collegeeurope. author: susie burroughs affiliation: mississippi state university address: po box 5447, mississippi state, ms 39762-5447 email: susie.burroughs@msstate.edu biographical information: susie burroughs is professor of education in the college of education at mississippi state university. making the transit ion 3 making the transition from traditional to home schooling: home school family motivations, home schooling is not a new phenomenon, but the increased numbers of home schooled children, the organization of homeschoolers into a mass movement, and the potential social impact of home schooling mark those involved in home schooling as a significant segment of the population in the united states (u.s.) today. as early as 2000, mcdowell and ray observed that ―the home education movement is a growing one. its numbers are growing, its acceptance is growing and its power to affect the political environment is growing‖ (p. 1). in 2005, brian ray, president of the national home education research institute, estimated that the number of students home schooled in the u.s. had reached 2.5 million (roberts, 2005). as home schooling continues to grow in the u.s., the number of home schooled students who attend college and move into the workforce also grows. consequently, the motivations, experiences, and outcomes of homeschoolers have, of late, intrigued educators and researchers alike. the purpose of the study described herein was to examine the motivations of families to leave a traditional, public school environment and teach their children at home. of particular interest to the researchers was the intersection of pedagogical and ideological motivations in the reasoning implicit in parents making the decision to home school. other goals of the study were to learn how the parents of the home schooled children involved in the study made the transition from traditional schooling to home schooling and why they had continued to home school their children. making the decision to home school home education has grown as an education alternative for those who are current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 dissatisfied with public education as well as schools in general (i.e., private and public). jeub (1994) identified four main reasons parents home school: social, familial, academic, and religious. a 1999 national center for education statistics (nces) study (as cited in basham, 2001) reported data on 850,000 children that were home schooled. from the data, three primary reasons that parents home school were extracted. the data revealed that the primary reasons cited were better education (48.9%), religious reasons (38.4%), and poor learning environment at school (25.6%). a subsequent nces study (bielick, 2008), reported that the number of home school students increased to 1.1 million in 2003 and 1.5 million in 2007. this increase indicates that home schooling continues to grow as an educational choice for american families. the 2008 nces report updated the primary reasons cited for home schooling were concern about the school environment (88%), desire to provide religious or moral instruction (83%), dissatisfaction with academic instruction in other schools (73%), and non traditional approach to child‘s education (65%). in a study of 235 families that home school, collum (2005) identified four broad reasons that parents home school their children: dissatisfaction with public schools, academic and pedagogical concerns, religious values, and family needs. other factors were also found to influence a parent‘s decision to home school. these included parental education level, the number of siblings home schooled, and political identification. princotta and bielick (2006) identified similar reasons families home educate, but the priorities of home school families they reported were different than in the nces or collum studies. the purposes of the princotta and bielick study were to estimate how many people in the united states home school and to collect descriptive data on home school families. survey data was used from the national household education surveys program as well as interviews conducted with 239 home school families. making the transit ion 5 these researchers found that parents home school for the following reasons: disdain for adverse environment of schools (e.g., safety concerns, drugs, negative peer pressure) (31%); desire to provide religious and moral instruction (30%); and dissatisfaction with the academic programs of schools (16%). generally speaking, the motivations to home educate can be divided into two domains: ideological and pedagogical (basham, 2001; knowles, 1991; knowles, muchmore, & spaulding, 1994). ideological motivations are primarily religious and social in nature, while pedagogical motivations primarily center on the process of education. there are, however, similarities between the two domains, and a family can have reasons to home educate that are both ideologically and pedagogically motivated. ideological reasons to home educate predominately focus on issues related to family values (ray, 2000); perceived lack of religion in public schools and a desire to educate children in an environment that is in tune with the family‘s religious beliefs (carper, 2000; pearson as cited in martin, 1997); conflicts between families and schools over values and religion (klicka, 2002); family matters or building a closer family (holt & farenga, 2003); and safety concerns, including moral, physical, mental, and spiritual safety (martin, 1997). according to kirschner (as cited in ray, 2000), ―we find many americans turning to ‘family values‘ and scriptural religion in a search for stability and something to believe in‖ (p. 2). those who ascribe to this ideology view home education as a means to upholding their values and finding stability that cannot be achieved outside the home. consequently, the home education movement has, for many, taken on the feel of a religious revival and, indeed, has been characterized as such: current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 home schooling has proven to be a revival of a time-tested method of individualized education. it reflects a deep concern by parents to be involved in the education of their children. the home school movement is profoundly religious, for the most part making the revival more than educational. it is a christian revival and restoration of the family, with a focus on god‘s absolute moral values and principles. (klicka, 2002, p. 439) interestingly, even in this appraisal of the home school movement as a revival, reference is still made to the pedagogical advantages of home schooling. it is, in reality, difficult to separate the two, especially among ideological practitioners of home education. the twin factors of the perceived irreligious or anti-religious nature of public schools (carper, 2000) and the importance of religion in developing and educating children (basham, 2001) combine to push some families out of public schools and into home schools. while concerns about their children‘s moral safety strongly influence ideologues to home educate their children (knowles et al., 1994), some also fear for their children‘s physical safety (hill, 2000; klicka, 2002; martin, 1997; princotta & bielick, 2006). the ideological reasons to home educate students originate predominantly from a fundamentalist, religious mindset. for some whom ideological and religious conflicts with public schools are the lone motivations for home schooling, having their children educated in privately funded religious schools is an option. beyond the conflicts with public schools, however, it has been documented that there is yet another, deeper ideological motive that drives many to home educate, and that motive is intrinsically connected to the notion held of the proper role of the parent in a child‘s education (carper, 2000; ray, 2000). for this reason, many homeschoolers proclaim that ―they have abandoned institutional education for home schooling in an attempt to restore what they believe to be education in its purest form—parents teaching their own making the transit ion 7 children‖ (carper, 2000, p. 6). these ideological homeschoolers believe they are fulfilling a religious mandate, and for them neither public nor private schools is an option. as explained by klicka (2002), ―in home schooling, parents can fulfill the commands in scripture to teach their children god‘s truth throughout each day‖ (p. 124). parents who hold this belief maintain that they are exercising their rights to educate their own children as they deem appropriate. mayberry (as cited in ray, 2000) discovered that many parents who home school ―perceived home education as a way for parents to regain control of their own lives, a way to make the impact they want on the next generation‖ (p. 2). parents who ascribe to this mindset not only see home education as a right, but as an obligation they must fulfill. they perceive a fundamental difference between their value systems and mass schooling, be it public or privately funded and controlled, and they feel an obligation as parents to build a closer family (knowles, marlow, & muchmore, 1992). while ideological reasons for home schooling are first and foremost religiously oriented, pedagogical reasons for home schooling stem directly from the preferred relationship between the student and learning. pedagogues do not view school and education as the same thing. they believe that education should occur in a less structured environment and students should engage in the type of experiential learning that they believe is seldom practiced in public schools. they also value more freedom in the curriculum than is typically allowed in public schools (jeub, 1994). medlin (2000) reported that home school families describe traditional schools as ―rigid and authoritarian institutions where passive conformity is rewarded, where peer interactions are too often hostile or derisive or manipulative, and where children must contend with a dispiriting ideological and moral climate‖ (p. 107). for homeschoolers, schools create environments that actually make learning too difficult for kids (holt & farenga, 2003). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 within both domains of motivation to home school, there exists a feeling that traditional schools are not the best places to educate children (knowles et al., 1994). when describing the sentiments of homeschoolers toward the prescripted curriculums of public schools, klicka (2002) declared that, ―we [homeschoolers] don‘t want that controlled by the government‖ (p. 8). many homeschoolers feel that schools equal a less individualized education (zehr, 2006), and many also view home schooling as a less stressful learning environment (holt & farenga, 2003). lubienski (2003) proposed that there is an ―anti-institutional element to the home education movement, where parents believe that institutions can be destructive, or think that they can do a better job than impersonal bureaucracy‖ (p. 176). according to gaither (2009), most parents who home school their children ―choose this option out of frustration with or protest against formal, institutional schooling and seek to offer an alternative, usually conservative christian, worldview to their children by teaching them at home‖ (p. 343). in sum, the pedagogues do not acknowledge the need for public schooling; and, in fact, they reject such government action as unwanted interference into an area that should be reserved to parents. these radical stances can be found among members of both groups of homeschoolers – those who seek to establish a religious education for their children as well as those who choose to home school for pedagogical reasons. however, medlin (2000) determined that ―when parents decide to home school, they are thinking more of the advantages of home schooling than the disadvantages of conventional schooling‖ (p. 107). simply stated, parents choose to home school because they are convinced that the home is the best environment in which to educate their children. because of this, their motivations to home school can be interpreted to be grounded in a more positive than negative impetus. making the transit ion 9 the question then becomes, why do home school families contend home schooling is a preferred learning environment for their children? generally speaking, it is primarily because of the nature of instruction typically employed in a home school setting. home school advocates defend their choice to home school by pointing to what they view to be two of the greatest strengths of homeschooling: (a) the practice commonly referred to as the ―tutorial method,‖ (basham, 2001) and (b) the ability of parents to individualize learning to the specific needs of the child (klicka, 2002). interestingly, home school parents‘ oftentimes ascribe to liberal philosophies of education. it has been found that most advocate experiential learning, individual freedom, and hands-on learning in the real world (griffith, 1998; holt & farenga, 2003; jeub, 1994; knowles, 1991; knowles et al., 1994). in 1992, however, researchers knowles, marlow, and muchmore observed that although the modern home school movement was an ―outcome of a direct reaction to the many short comings of public education that was commonly raised by educational reformers of the 1960s and early 1970s‖ (p. 195), within a decade or so, the movement had been co-opted by individuals and groups that were religiously and politically conservative. these ideologues adopted pedagogical reasons to home educate and paired them with their ideological motivations, but according to knowles et al. (1992), when home schools are examined carefully, ―… it becomes clear that they are not closely tied to the liberal roots of home education. relatively few home schools seem to operate on the premise that homes are superior places of learning‖ (p.227). it can, therefore, be concluded that the motivations of those who choose to home school are myriad and complicated, and although a number of studies have been conducted to ascertain the primary motivations of homeschoolers (basham, 2001; knowles, 1991; knowles et al., 1994; neuman & aviram, 2003; princoiotta & bielick, 2006), a review of the literature reveals that current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 research into the subtle ambiguities that exist when determining why parents choose to home school their children is lacking. while previous research has focused on why parents home school, little attention has been given to the interconnectedness of pedagogical and ideological motivations or to the reasons why parents continue to home school. furthermore, while the question of why parents‘ home school has been answered using large-scale surveys, the individual stories of families that inform those measures have not been captured. it is these stories that can serve to provide the detail and nuance into how motivations pushed or pulled families into home schooling and why they chose to continue to home school their children. methodology research design the study presented herein sought to fill a perceived gap in the literature on home schooling by exploring the individual stories of selected home school families and identifying the push-pull factors parents encounter when making the decision to home school their children. to this end, the research was guided by two lines of research. the first was intended to identify factors that influenced the families to home school. the second was designed to determine how the families made the transition from traditional schooling to home schooling and why they continued to home school their children. because of the nature of the questions the study sought to answer, the case study method was used employed. as explained by merriam (1998), ―case study is appropriate when the object of an evaluation is to develop a better understanding of the dynamics of a program‖ (p.39), and such was the objective of the researchers. participants four home school families that were active in a home school organization that operated in the southeastern u.s. were chosen and agreed to participate in a year-long study. the home making the transit ion 11 school organization the families were affiliated with was a cooperative that embraced a classical approach to education. the organization was made up of primarily religiously conservative families. though chosen from the same home school organization, the families transitioned to home schooling before they joined the group. the criteria for choosing the families were that they (a) had at least three years of home school experience, (b) had children they were currently home schooling, and (c) had at least one child who had completed the home school education and had moved on to college or into the work force. these criteria were chosen to insure a study cohort with extensive experience with home education that was willing to candidly discuss their motivations, successes, and failures. glesne (2006) wrote that homogeneity sampling can be used to describe a subgroup in depth. the researchers used purposive homogeneity sampling from a home school group of religious conservative families in order to find a sample that would provided a rich detailed description of the research problem. this enabled the researchers to allow the participants to tell their unique stories about how they made the decision to home school. this narrow sampling increases the depth of the findings of the study but limits the transferability to other groups who differ from the sample. table one provides demographic data on the sample families. procedures data for this study were gathered through (a) interviews with the parents and children; (b) informal discussions during and after periods of observations; (c) observation of the families at home; (d) observations of home school group activities; and (e) collection of artifacts (student work samples and weekly logs). interview protocols were scripted using open-ended questions designed to elicit rich, comprehensive dialogue from the participants. the researchers elected to conduct formal interview and informal discussion sessions because they ascribe to the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 philosophy expounded by byers and wilcox (as cited in vaughn et al., 1996), which is: ―if we want to know how people felt, what they experienced, what they remembered, what their emotions and motives were like and the reasons for acting as they did, why not just ask them?‖ (p. 18). as suggested by morgan (1993), the number of target questions was limited to 12 with additional impromptu probing and follow-up questions asked as needed. observations were conducted in the homes of the homeschoolers in an effort to accomplish what sherman and webb (1988) recommended that researchers do, which is to ―gather data about the ‗lived' experience of participants‖ (p. 125). table 1 sample demographics smith johnson harbor riley family structure intact intact intact intact father‘s occupation constitutional lawyer business owner university employee (non faculty) business owner mother‘s education level b.s. history some college some college b.s. education/ m.s. education administration children at home school male (16), female (13), female (8), male (6) male (16), male (10) male (15), female (8) male (15) children at college male (20) female (18) female (18) male (18) none adult children out of college or in work force none none none female (26) male (25) making the transit ion 13 children ever in private school? no yes no yes children ever in public school? yes yes yes yes the data analysis began with an initial set of domains that emerged from the review of the literature. as additional domains emerged during the data analysis, the set expanded accordingly. qsr‘s nvivo 8 software was used to code the data collected during the interviews and the observations. nvivo is a useful tool for researchers that can be used to efficiently manipulate and query text-based data (bazley, 2007). data charts and matrices were used to analyze the information gathered within and across the four cases that was relevant to the research questions. supporting data from both parents and children as well as from the multiple data sources were identified to elicit major findings of the study. peer review and participant checks were utilized to confirm the trustworthiness of the study‘s findings and conclusions. the trustworthiness of the data was also bolstered by the facts that the data were collected over a period of a year and multiple data points within and across the cases were used to support each finding. results for the four families involved in this study, motivations to home school were determined to be exceedingly complex. three elements were found to be common among the families. first, although the initial catalyst for each family might have been a conflict with the public school, there were also latent motivations that pushed the families to make the change and resort to home schooling their children. secondly, the motivations to home school were found to directly influence the way the families operated their home schools. lastly, additional, unanticipated motivators to continue home schooling were revealed. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 the smith family the smith family was initially motivated to home school because of conflicts with the public schools. the mother was involved in her children‘s education and active in the public school. she began to be concerned about some of the teachings that she felt were contrary to her family‘s religious beliefs. she articulated the push-pull she experienced as follows: i got involved in the schools and didn‘t agree with a lot of things. it was new age stuff in the schools. i always said i would never home school, but it felt like god changed my heart, and led me toward home schooling. when asked for a specific instance that illustrated her rejection of public school instructional practices she replied: one stands out, they were doing these guided imagery classes, and i knew about new age and all and asked questions, and they did not like it. once i started asking questions, my son started getting checks all the time. i felt they were taking it out on him. this mother reported that her attempts to address the issue led to further conflict with the schools. she perceived her child‘s teacher to be defensive when asked about the ―guided imagery‖ activities, and when she asked to see the school system‘s curriculum framework, the mother said she was told she could not see it. when asked why they home school, the fifteenyear-old son replied, ―when my older brother was little, he went to public school and there was something with the teachers and i don‘t remember exactly, but my mom found out about home school.‖ strikingly, even though the event happened sixteen years earlier, this story was still being echoed by the younger children who were being home schooled during the study. in spite of the conflict with the school, the parents said that they tried to keep the older child in public schools. two additional factors ultimately influenced their decision to home making the transit ion 15 school. the first was financial. when asked if private school was ever an option the father replied, ―it was really just the money,‖ and the mother added, ―financially it was not an option.‖ the second factor was religious and family reasons. the mother was the first to want to home school but the father resisted, even though he stated that he understood why she wanted to home school. recounting discussions they had when deliberating over the decision, the father said, ―she more or less had a spiritual calling and wanted the children to have a godly upbringing.‖ the mother added, ―we were uncomfortable with the public school system, but really feeling like that‘s what god wanted us to do as a family.‖ hence, while the initial catalyst to home school for the smiths may have been conflict with the school, the desire to do what they felt god wanted them to do with their family was the reason that they actually removed their children from the public school setting. it was revealed through the course of the interviews that the family continues to home school for several reasons. family and religious reasons are central to their belief that homeschooling is a better alternative than public schooling, but they also maintain that they prefer homeschooling because of the flexibility it allows and for pedagogical reasons. flexibility encompasses both curriculum and family flexibility. during one observation, the mother was overheard telling her daughter, ―you can read aesop when we go to the orthodontist.‖ during an interview, the father posited that one of the best things about home schooling was flexibility regarding vacations. according to mr. smith, ―one of the major differences i really love is vacation. we can take vacation any time we want. it still is like school, because they still learn where we go, like the capitol building.‖ interestingly, though this family can be described as conservative, they operate their home school by incorporating a mixture of progressive and traditional beliefs and practices. this current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 was evidenced by comments mrs. smith made such as, ―critical thinking makes them think logically and be able to understand what they read.‖ it was observed that for the smith family, there was a desire to go beyond the basics and teach the children to become lifelong learners, but the family did also focus on memorization of facts, poems, and bible verses. the mother justified memorization by saying, ―you memorize things that are in your head and at a later point they remember it. they put things together. it‘s training for self discipline.‖ the point of memorization, for this family, was for later use as information to draw on for critical and creative thinking. their motivations to home school directly influenced this family‘s curriculum choices. because of their religious education priorities, they elected to align themselves with a home school cooperative made up of a group of religiously conservative families. the cooperative operated on a classical education model, and it focused on helping families educate their children from a christian worldview. the cooperative‘s curriculum centered on religious teachings, and the bible was a primary text used in many of the students‘ assignments. the bible was also used as a primary text in the smith‘s home for the study of both literature and history. the johnson family the johnsons were initially motivated to home school because of conflicts with the public schools. the father was a constitutional lawyer and represented conservative religious families in cases against public schools throughout the nation. their children attended public schools until there was a conflict over outcome based education (o.b.e.) and practices the parents felt were in opposition to their religious beliefs. the mother described one practice she was offended by as follows: making the transit ion 17 at our son‘s elementary school one year during earth day, one classroom had a board that said, ―ask mother earth to forgive us.‖ i felt that violated everything i believed about god, and that was a different religion to me. my children … did not attend earth day. we were always opting them out of things. like the smiths, the johnsons said that they tried to reconcile their differences with the school district. they transferred their child to another school and tried to find teachers they believed to be more conservative or traditional in their instructional practices. the decision to actually leave the public school system did not come until several years later when they had more children in school and the school system reorganized. the mother articulated her frustration with the school‘s reorganization by stating, ―i would have been at three different schools!‖ their youngest child at the time was scheduled to start kindergarten the next year. when mrs. smith requested a transfer for that child, it was denied. again, she expressed her frustration by stating, ―i would have had four kids at four different schools. i had said, ‘lord if you don‘t want me to continue this then don‘t grant the transfer‘.‖ for the family, the school system‘s denial of the transfer was the catalyst they needed to finally make the decision to home school all four of their children. although the mother and father readily agreed that the initial conflict with the school over religious beliefs and o.b.e. were the reasons they started to home school, when questioned further they admitted that an underlying reason was that they ―wanted our children to be raised in a christian home and [we] felt home schooling was the best way to do that.‖ additional evidence of the johnsons‘ inherent desire for a religious education for their children emerged when the parents arranged for the older children to attend a creation science seminar at a nearby church. the stated purpose of the seminar was to ―educate children in nature, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 nurture, and admonition of the lord‖ and to ―use the bible to explain dinosaurs rather than fitting dinosaurs into the bible.‖ similarly to the smiths, the johnsons mentioned the flexibility of home schooling as a reason to continue to home school. the father related that ―one of the great things of home schooling is there is a real freedom in the natural kind of pursuit of knowledge and new things and understanding more deeply.‖ the family reported that they had the freedom of taking vacations during the school year because they were not tied down to a school district‘s calendar. also like the smiths, finances were described to have played a role in their decision to home school. in one interview, the mother stated, ―i would have been pleased to send my kids to a private school, but we could not afford it at $3,000 a kid.‖ she quickly stated, however, that that might not be totally true, because she felt that home schooling was a better environment for her children than any traditional school setting. with respect to their instructional approaches, the johnson family utilized a combination of traditional and progressive curriculum and teaching strategies. the father indicted the public schools saying, that‘s one of our greatest frustrations with the public school approach, the way they tinker with pulling out phonics and the whole language approach and all this spelling is another … it almost appears as if there is a concentrated effort to keep kids from learning how to read and reading quality material. comments such as these provided evidence for mr. johnson‘s disdain for much of what he perceived to be progressive in public education. ironically, however, when discussing the ways they operated their home school, some rather progressive techniques were described. for example, he stated that ―the word we like to utilize is integration. in our history we try to making the transit ion 19 integrate with our science, which we integrate with our literature, and hopefully it all ties together so that they‘ll understand.‖ observation of the johnson children at their home school indicated that the family operated a home school that allowed children to move about freely during their studies. there was little control exercised over when something was studied, especially for the secondary-aged children. the mother provided them their assignments at the beginning of the week and they worked at their own pace and in their own order. there were no set study periods. these practices supported one of the reasons cited by the family for continuing to home school, which was their desire to encourage their children to become independent learners. the harbor family the harbors reported that they initially home schooled for pedagogical reasons that stemmed from difficulties their oldest son was having in public school. the mother explained, i really promise you i was not mad at the public school, but i was seeing my own child sort of fall between the cracks. by this time he was not reading toward the end of his first grade year and he was just not really picking up and catching on. she first decided to begin teaching her son at home after school in an effort to supplement the instruction he received at the public school he attended. eventually, however, she decided that if she was going to have to re-teach him everything after school, she might as well assume total responsibility for teaching her son at home and save him from what she perceived as wasted time at school. though this was the initial motivating factor, it was revealed that there was another, equally strong factor. as the mother explained, ―the reason to home school is not [for] knowledge itself, because i would say that education encompasses a lot more than knowledge; it includes skills. it was important imparting our values to them.‖ she indicated that it upset her current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 that she was not the primary influence in her daughter‘s life, ―i would say things to her and she would say, ‗well, my teacher said this‘ – just the real pull of somebody else's influence holding more weight with her than what we said.‖ though the reason to home school for this family was pedagogical, there was also evidence of a religious conflict between the family and the public schools. when asked why they home schooled, the oldest son responded, ―because of the lack of god inside the public school system, and i came out of first grade not being able to read.‖ when pressed as to why parents choose to home school, the mother ordered the motivations as follows: ―i know a lot of people will say religious reasons to home school was the reason they started, but for us it wasn‘t the reason we started, but it is the reason we stayed.‖ this family also exhibited progressive and traditional educational beliefs and practices. they were traditional in the sense that they believed in a great books curriculum and classical education. according to the mother, what we are having them read is not just fun or entertainment but actually to teach them how our culture developed. why we are where we are. why we think the way we do. those kinds of things. those shaping influences have shaped the people who have gone before us. the mother went on to explain, however, that their children‘s education was not limited to the things their family believed. to illustrate her point she said, ―we are even exposing them to ideas that we wouldn‘t necessarily agree with their stance or their philosophy. they greatly influenced the people before us so for that reason we do a whole lot of reading.‖ an observation of the books in the house confirmed the mother‘s statement about allowing her children to learn about ideas that were divergent from their beliefs. making the transit ion 21 like the smiths and the johnsons, the harbor family operated their home school in a way that was indicative of the motivating factors that drove them to home school. this family was concerned with their son falling through the cracks in the public schools, and they decided to address his individual needs and academic shortcomings by home schooling him. after administering a standardized achievement test to their son, the parents realized that he was a grade level behind in spelling. the next year the mother focused instruction on remediating his spelling deficiencies and his problems with spelling were corrected. this supported the family‘s contention that home schooling provides a flexibility that public schooling does not, and this was a reason they cited for deciding to continue to home school their children. the riley family the initial motivation to home school for the riley family was conflict with the public school over sex education. mrs. riley did not agree with the content of the program or the way it was implemented. she said she obtained a copy of the sex education curriculum and found that there was a long list of things you had to do and couldn‘t do. if you gave them up for adoption there was half the problems. when you got to abortion, there was nothing. so if you have an abortion, you don‘t have to face all the problems. it said if you and your partner decide to have sex, it never said husband and wife. i saw a clip of the video they show. my kids were not happy with this and wanted to be home schooled again. she reported that she tried to address the issue with the school district by attending a meeting, but she said she and her husband ―were treated like we were idiots.‖ the parents explained that their children had been in home school, private school, and public school before the final decision to return to home schooling. the family did not resort to home schooling until after the children attended a private religious school. the reason they opted current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 for home schooling was that they found the home school cooperative and it was using a classical approach to education from a christian perspective. the mother stated that she would have continued to send her child to a private school if there had been one that offered a classical education. the mother indicated that the primary reason they chose to home school was that they ―wanted our children to have a christ-centered education and see a whole complete picture revolved around christian principles.‖ this, combined with their pedagogical motivation for a classical education, is what pushed the family into home schooling. the family combined progressive and traditional educational practices in their home school. reading was observed to be the primary mode of instruction, and the mother, who was a certified teacher and school administrator, reported that ―they read all the time, books and articles. i feel the more they read the better the student is.‖ on the progressive front, the mother was trying to foster independence in her son. as evidence of this she said, ―he is more independent. so he gets his assignments out on monday and chooses what he wants to do. we don‘t have a set thing on times or a set schedule.‖ the mother stated that she did not make out a weekly schedule for her son, but gave him the freedom to organize his education. one of the reasons this family said they continued to home school was the flexibility it provided them. over a period of two years, both her father in-law and her parents had been extremely sick. during that time, she was able to continue teaching her children as well as let them have increased visitation time with their sick grandparents. the family was able to care for their family and maintain their educational efforts. the mother explained, ―my mother was here and we took care of her. what was so wonderful was i would go stay with her at her little apartment, and my son would go with me and i still did his schoolwork. it was a blessing.‖ discussion making the transit ion 23 the families that were a part of this study reported similar motivations to home school as those present in the literature (basham, 2001; collum, 2005; knowles, 1991; knowles et al., 1994; princotta & bielick, 2006). the findings of this study, however, reveal nuances in the way the dual motivations – ideological and pedagogical – work together to pull a family out of a public school setting and into home schooling. the smith, johnson, and riley families experienced direct conflict with the public schools their children attended while the harbor family‘s break with public schooling stemmed more from disappointment than conflict. in reality, however, the conflicts and disappointment were simply catalysts that caused them to begin to think seriously about resorting to home schooling. while all of these families attempted to reconcile their differences with the public schools, in the end their efforts at reconciliation proved unsuccessful in large part because they were simultaneously being influenced by other motivations, and in each case the parents ultimately resolved to remove their children from the public schools. for the smith, johnson, and riley families, it was either religious beliefs or family issues that cemented their decisions to resort to home schooling. they all shared the belief that home schooling was what they should do because it was the best thing for their families. they wanted to raise their children in keeping with their religious beliefs, and they determined they could best do that by educating them at home. the harbors, on the other hand, were initially motivated from a desire to address an academic shortcoming. this, combined with their desire to be the primary influence over their children on all issues, pushed them to begin home schooling. for the harbors, the religious motivations became a motivation to stay in home schooling, rather than the reason to start home schooling. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 a closer inspection of these families‘ motivations suggests that home school proponents cannot so neatly be grouped into the two domains identified in previous studies, that is, an ideological group and a pedagogical group (basham, 2001; knowles, 1991; knowles, muchmore, & spaulding, 1994). for each individual family, the motivations to home school play out in different ways. each motivation can serve either as a catalyst that sparks an interest in home schooling or as a latent or underlying motivation that is actually the primary reason to home school. the findings of this study also reveal that these motivators also reinforce, and therefore play a significant role in, families‘ decisions to continue to home school. for the smiths the catalyst was conflict with public schools over perceived new age practices, but the latent motivation was family reasons influenced by religious beliefs. the johnsons were initially motivated by conflicts over o.b.e. practices, but the added inconvenience of taking their children to different schools combined with religious beliefs that they should teach their children at home were the latent motivators. academic issues with their oldest son was the catalyst that prompted the harbors to consider home schooling, but the desire to be the primary influence over the children was the latent motivator and religious reasons are the reasons that the family continues to home school. the rileys were initially prompted to home school because of a conflict over sex education, but the latent motivator was a combination of religious beliefs and a desire to give her children a classical education. the results of this research also reveal that the motivations to home school influence the way that families teach. the families all expressed a desire to foster independent, lifelong learners, and this was seen in the way that they approached their children‘s education. the parents were less teachers and more organizers and taskmasters for learning activities. in the words of one child, ―our parents aren‘t really our teachers – it‘s kind of, they‘ll give us the making the transit ion 25 material and then the books themselves are the teachers. our parents are kind of just there to enforce.‖ the parents provided the environment, resources, and motivation for the children to learn and the children do the learning. observation, weekly logs, and interviews of all families indicated that the secondary-aged children spent about seventy percent of their learning day reading. another way that motivations were found to influence learning was that the curriculum was very much focused on their religious beliefs. all of the families used the bible as a primary source for history and literature. three of the families attended the creation science event. the assignments and activities that the students completed and participated in were oftentimes related to comparing their christian worldview to the dominant (i.e., contemporary) worldview. this connects to the work of carper (2000), klicka (2002), and pearson (as cited in martin, 1997). an appreciation of the complexity of these families‘ motivations challenges the myths that home school families are anti-public school. these families were found to be independentminded families who were guided by both deeply religious and educational beliefs. in other words, these families viewed home schooling as a positive, personal educational choice, not necessarily as an overt rejection of public schooling. this finding agrees with the findings of parker (as cited in medlin, 2000) and medlin (2000). a statement made by the mother in the harbor family effectively speaks directly to this conclusion: it‘s not always a statement that public schools are bad you know, but it‘s just what we want to do and what we feel is best for us and our families, and it‘s not necessarily meant as a statement against what you do. of significant interest in this study is that even though the conflicts with public schools that served as catalysts for these families to home school were rooted in the conservative current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 religious and political beliefs of the families, in practice the home schools these families operated exhibited much that could be considered exemplars of progressive education. they desired that their children become independent learners, be exposed to ideas that are contrary to their beliefs, value critical and creative thinking, and be allowed freedom of choice in courses studied. in addition, the parents fostered an atmosphere that allowed their children, as students, to determine when and what they would learn on most days, considered by most to be a true mark of progressive education. another interesting finding of this study was the importance of flexibility as a motivator for the families to continue to practice home schooling. whether it was because they could address the individual learning needs of their children without concern for curriculum constraints or they could have the ability to take ―learning vacations‖ whenever they pleased, all of the families in this study cited flexibility as one of the realized benefits of home schooling. this single, unanticipated finding may give pause to policymakers whose efforts over the past two decades to micro-manage the public school curriculum have not only lengthened the school day and the school year, but have seemingly also, and ironically, resulted in the institutionalization of a system that in many ways limits authentic learning opportunities for students of both basic and enrichment instructional material. conclusion the families who agreed to participate in this study were motivated to leave public schools because of ideological and pedagogical concerns. having decided to home school their children, each family elected to operate their home school with a mixture of traditional and progressive educational practices, but each with a decidedly religious focus. it can be concluded from this study that the families were not just disillusioned with public schooling, but rather they making the transit ion 27 felt they were driven to make major life style changes and create learning environments for their children that aligned with both their ideological and pedagogical beliefs. in many ways, the home schools they established operated qualitatively differently than public schools. most notably was the flexibility each family derived from home schooling their children, and in each case, it was the flexibility factor that ultimately became a primary motivation for them to continue to home school. perhaps a better understanding of the nuanced and complex motivations to home school can help public schools better meet the needs of families considering home schooling, thus serving to keep them enrolled. further, a clearer understanding of parents motivations to home school can lead to the educational establishment specifically and society in general modifying the view of homeschoolers as a radical fringe, discontented with the greater society, and to see them as individual families that are acting on multiple motivators to do what they feel is best for their children. public schools might consider becoming more flexible and allowing families some of the freedoms that home schooling offers. traditional schools can learn from the individualized nature of home schooling and potentially transform into institutions that support independent learning rather than act as dispensers of knowledge. traditional schools can also learn from the mixed traditional and progressive methods that the homeschoolers use in their curriculum and instruction. schools can look back to the past for material, inspiration, and guidance and also develop students who are independent minded both grounded in the traditions of the past yet looking to the future for better things to come. while this study revealed new and interesting insights into the motivations of homeschoolers, further research is needed into the day-to-day operation of home schools and current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 28 how families manage and evaluate home schooled children‘s learning. further research is also needed into the support structures, including technology and cooperatives that home school families rely on to educate their children. finally, research is needed to expand the finding that flexibility is an important motivator that contributes to families‘ decisions to continue home schooling their children. references american psychological association. 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(report no. ed 415-984). mcdowell, s. a., & ray, b. d.(2000). the home education movement in context, practice, and theory: editors‘ introduction. peabody journal of education, 75(1/2), 1-7. retrieved july 23, 2007 from http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/peabody_journal_ of_education.xml. medlin, r. g. (2000). home schooling and the question of socialization. peabody journal of education, 75(1/2), 107123. merriam, s. b. (1998). qualitative research and case study application in education (2 nd ed.). san francisco: jossey-bass. morgan, d. l. (1993). successful focus groups: advancing the state of the art. newbury park, ca: sage publications. neuman, a., & aviram. a. (2003). homeschooling as a fundamental change in lifestyle. evaluation and research in education, 17(2/3), 132-143. princiotta, d., & bielick, s. (2006). homeschooling in the united states: 2003, (nces 2006 042) u.s. department of education. national center for education statistics, washington, dc: 2005. http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/peabody_journal_%20of_education.xml current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 30 ray, b.d. (2000). home schooling: the ameliorator of negative influences on learning? peabody journal of education, 75(1/2), 71106. retrieved july 23, 2007 from http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/peabody_journal_of_education.xml. roberts, l. (2005). can we play, too? parks & recreation, 40(9), 112115. retrieved july 21, 2007 from http://www.nrpa.org sherman, r. r., & webb, r. b. (1988). qualitative research in education: focus and methods. philadelphia, pa: the falmer press. vaughn, s., schumm, j. s., & sinagub, j. (1996). focus group interviews in education and psychology. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. zehr, m.a. (2006) u.s. home schoolers push movement around the world. education week, 25(16), 8. http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/peabody_journal_of_education.xml http://www.nrpa.org/ making the transit ion 31 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers xxx 32 debby zambo microsoft word 809_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 january 20, 2013 issn 1099-839x relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitudes toward academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students in ondo state, nigeria l. o. gbore and c. a. daramola adekunle ajasin university this study investigated the relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitude towards academic achievement in biology among senior secondary schools in ondo state, nigeria. it involved descriptive survey research and ex-post facto research designs. the sample, 360 respondents which consists of 180 biology teachers and 180 senior secondary school three students were randomly selected from 36 senior secondary schools from the three senatorial districts of ondo state using stratified random sampling technique. teachers’ teaching attitudinal scale, science oriented attitudinal scale and an inventory which requested for data from records on students’ senior secondary school certificate examination grades in biology were used for data collection. data collected for the study were analyzed using correlation matrix and multiple regression analysis. the results showed that significant relationships existed among the independent variables and students’ academic achievement in biology. also 62.5% of the variance observed in students’ achievement in biology was explained by linear combination of the five predictor variables. students’ attitude was the most potent contributor to the prediction. teachers’ workload was the least contributor to the prediction. it was recommended that constant workshops and seminars should be made available by government for teachers to attend for the improvement of their teaching skills. teachers and students were also charged to change their attitudes positively towards the teaching and learning of biology. keywords: relative contributions, teachers’ variables, students’ attitude, prediction, biology, academic achievement, secondary school students success in certain endeavors may be contingent upon certain factors. this may also be true of achievement in schooling. good achievement in schooling could be the partial contributions of an individual’s gender sensitivity, cognitive, affective (attitude) and psychomotor domains. adodo (2007) argued that one key overriding factor for the success of students’ academic achievement is the teacher. in the same vein, ibrahim (2000) believed that teachers’ qualifications and exposure can go a long way to bring about pupils’ high academic achievement. it is probably for this reason, ibukun (2009) asserted that no education system can rise above the quality of its teachers. considering the assertions of ibrahim (2000), adodo (2007), and ibukun (2009), it implies that teachers’ role in the preparation of students to succeed in examinations cannot be undermined. usman (2003) argued that shortage of qualified teachers is responsible for the poor academic achievement observable among the students while ademulegun (2001) current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 argued that students taught by more qualified and experienced teachers in terms of knowledge of the subject matter perform better than those taught by less qualified but experienced teachers. the educational analysis recently carried out in nigeria by the national economic empowerment and development strategy (needs, 2005) indicated that more than forty nine percent (49%) of the teachers in nigeria are unqualified. this revealed the quality of teachers teaching various school subjects to the secondary school students. the teachers teaching biology as a subject in the various secondary schools would probably be among the said over forty nine percent unqualified teachers. as important as knowledge of biology is to human beings, it appears students’ achievement in this subject at the secondary school level is becoming worse than in the other science subjects. ibe and maduabum (2001) argued that candidates performance at the senior school certificate examinations (ssce) conducted by west african examination council have consistently remain poor, with biology having the highest enrolments and the poorest results over the years. looking at the importance of biology to the national development and considering the state of poor academic achievement in this very subject at the secondary school level which incidentally serves as the foundation for advance learning and professional courses in fields such as medicine, pharmacy, nursing and other allied courses, the poor academic achievement observable in the biology results of the students should be a thing of serious concern to any citizen of nigeria. the teachers’ attitude (ta), teachers’ qualifications (tq), teachers’ workload (tw) in terms of number of students handled by teachers and the experience possessed by teachers (te) teaching biology as a subject to the students coupled with the students’ attitude (sa) toward the subject may be responsible in part for the downward trend in achievement observed in the results of the students in the subject. attitude as a factor could be viewed as the totality of an individual’s inclination towards object, institution or idea. attitude could be learned or formed and acquired from members of the family, teacher and peer group. the learner acquires from the teacher’s disposition to form attitude towards learning which could positively or negatively affect his performance. teachers are role models to the students because as they act, so do the students demonstrate and perfect such act or behaviour. it is very unfortunate that little did many teachers realize that the manner they handled the teaching of biology as a subject, behave and interact with the students as biology teachers could produce major effect on students’ achievement. for instance, when teachers frequently absent from the classroom, such negative attitude can cause the students at the foundation laying to lose interest in science as the delivery of the subject matter handled by such teacher has to be done by an array of substitute teachers who may not be a specialist in basic science. according to finlayson (2009), the resultant effect of such teacher’s absenting from school is negative correlation between students’ performance and high teacher absenteeism. some teachers seem to have developed negative attitude towards teaching the students this subject (biology) that is very vital to human living. this may have been responsible for the negative attitude developed towards learning biology by the students. other factors, according to adodo (2005), identified to be related to students’ attitude in science include: teachers’ teaching method, teachers’ attitude, age, students’ cognitive style, interest of students and social implication of science among others.. ali and aigbomian (1990) have argued that the extent a student prefers a subject, to that extent the student works hard to achieve in it. a close examination of the submissions of ali and aigbomian (1990) and adodo (2005) revealed that academic achievement may be dependent upon positive attitude from the teachers and the students in the teaching/learning processes. in his contribution, okebukola (1986) pointed attention to the quality of biology teachers as the prime factor attributed to the cause of students’ consistent poor academic achievement in examinations. teachers’ effectiveness in a subject may be prime determinant of students’ performance in the subject. ineffective teaching in secondary schools arises probably from the quality of teachers recruited to teach science. in many secondary schools, science subjects are taught by people who are neither interested nor qualified in teaching the subject. for instance, undesirable situations showed engineers teaching mathematics and physics, biochemists teaching chemistry and microbiologists teaching biology. in this kind of situation, students who undertake science and mathematics at school may either end up disillusioned or greatly hampered in the development of the mental discipline which acquisition of scientific knowledge demands. secondary school science teachers need to be professionally qualified to enable them work effectively with pupils in stimulating and directing their growth in desired directions. there are various approaches a teacher can employ to bring about effective teaching. the science of teaching, according to ogunboyede (2011), is referred to as pedagogy while mccaughtry (2005) and sidhu, fook, and kaur (2011) stressed that pedagogical content knowledge refers to the teaching and learning of the subject. houston, haberman and sikula (2002) and sidhu et al. (2011) claimed that even at the integration of pedagogical knowledge into the teachers’ education in malaysia, the methodology being used by some science teachers in schools are not child-friendly, hence, effective learning of science could not take place in the classroom. it is not surprising; therefore, that oloyede (1992) argued that a significant difference exists in the achievement of relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitudes toward academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students in ondo state, nigeria 3 the students taught by professionally trained and nonprofessionally trained teachers in the art of teaching biology. researchers have carried out studies on teachers’ demographic variables such as qualifications, age, experience, gender, attitude and students’ academic performance. for instance, adepoju (2002) reported that a significant relationship exists between teachers’ variables such as gender, area of specialization, possession of academic qualification in education and the learning outcomes of secondary school students, but igwe (1990) found no significant relationship between teachers’ qualifications and students’ achievement in biology, chemistry and physics at senior secondary school certificate level. while ayodele (1997) found a positive relationship between teachers’ qualifications and students’ academic achievement, khan and bertecher (1988) found out that there is a high and significant relationship between teachers’ qualifications and global wastage ratio in basic education in madagascar. nevertheless, ajewole (1990) did not completely agree with these findings and showed passive reservation concerning the relationship between teachers’ qualification and students’ achievement but concluded that there is need to carry out more careful investigations about it. studies have also shown that teachers experience exerts a great influence on the academic achievement of students. banjoko (2001) argued that a good foundation in science is necessary to attract more students into the field of science while oke (2003) stressed that performance in separate science subjects at the senior secondary school may be due to the foundation laid on integrated science learnt at the elementary and junior secondary school level. ilugbusi, falola, and daramola (2007) showed that teaching experience in schools count significantly in the determination of students’ achievement in external examinations such as west africa senior school certificate examination (ssce), national examination council (neco), national business and technical education examinations and the unified tertiary matriculation examination. according to them, inexperienced teachers are easily upset and destabilized by unfamiliar situations. this may imply that inexperienced teachers could get confused, mixed up the content of the topics taught to the students and hence the students will receive wrong information which would definitely lead to poor achievement among the students, while the experienced teachers are already immune to classroom provocative situations and have developed resistance and several solutions against classroom confusion inducing agents. in the same vein, gibbons, kimmel, and o’shea (1997) reported that there was a significant relationship between teachers’ experience and students’ academic achievement since students taught by more experienced teachers achieved at a higher level due to the fact that the experienced teachers have mastered the subject content and acquired cumulated classroom management skills and strategies to handle and cope with different classroom problems. literature has also indicated that teachers’ attitude and students’ attitude have exerted some influence on the academic achievement of students. for instance, yara (2009) reported that teacher’s attitude towards science has a strong relationship with students science achievement as well as the students’ attitude towards science. onocha (1985) and ogunwuyi (2000) showed that teachers’ attitude towards science is a potent predictor of students’ academic achievement in science and attitude towards science learning, but igwe (1985) reported that the effect of students’ attitude on achievement in mathematics is not as strong as the effect of teachers’ attitude on students’ achievement in mathematics. studies of researchers such as ajayi (1999), revealed that no significant relationship exists between teachers workload and students academic achievement while kolawole (1982) found that a negative relationship exists between the academic performance of students and class size, but walberg (1969) argued that a significant and consistent relationship exists in the academic achievement of students in small classes of between 1-20 students that obtained higher scores in science tests than their counterparts in large classes of more than 20 students. the rate of interaction between teachers and students in the classroom where students’ population is far above the normal or recommended number of pupils per class by unesco would be very stressful. a situation where sixty or more students are packed in one classroom does not provide for effective teaching and learning to take place. in situation as this, work might become cumbersome for the teachers in terms of attending to individual student’s needs, marking students’ class work, home-works / assignments, hence, the teacher may decide to continually reduce the amount of work that should be given to the students to avoid been stressed. the over loading of teachers with congested classes would invariably end up in high reduction of efficiency while students’ performance bears the consequences. olaleye (2006) claimed that some schools have the problem of overcrowded classroom. this has serious implication for academic performance of the students. teaching process involves planning learning activities, preparing learning materials, using time and keeping general order. teaching effectiveness, according to agharuwhe and nkechi (2006) has assumed a multidimensional construct because it measures different aspects of teaching such as subject mastery, effective communication, lesson preparation and presentation. in the contribution of ofoegbu (2004), poor academic performance of students in nigeria could be due to poor current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 teachers’ performance in terms of accomplishing the teaching task, negative attitude to work and poor teaching habits which have been attributed to poor motivation. statement of the problem it has been shown that researchers have investigated many factors considered to affect students’ learning (ayodele, 2009). at the heart of this line of inquiry is the core belief that teachers make a difference, but the extent to which the extant teacher-effectiveness can be trusted to identify characteristics of effective teachers become obscured. few attempts have been made to directly measure the influence of individual teachers on the academic progress of large population of students using database of measurement available from records. it is observed that previous studies also centered attention mainly on investigating the difference or relationship between individual (single) teachers’ variables and students’ academic achievement. apparently, further studies are required to investigate the combined contribution of teachers’ qualification (tq), teachers’ attitude (ta), teachers’ workload (tw), teachers experience (te) and students’ attitude (sa) towards students’ academic achievement at the senior secondary school level. therefore, the problem of this is will academic achievement in biology, at the ssce level, be better explained by the combined influence of teachers’ qualification, teachers’ workload, teachers’ experience, teachers attitude and students’ attitude? in addressing this situation, the following research questions were generated to guide the study. (i) are there any relationships among teachers’ qualifications, teachers’ workload, teachers’ attitude, teachers’ experience, students’ attitude and students’ academic achievement in biology at the ssce level? (ii) to what extent would teachers’ attitude, students’ attitude, teachers’ workload, teachers’ experience and teachers’ qualifications when taken together predict students’ academic achievement at the ssce level? (iii) what is the relative contribution of each of the teachers’ workload, teachers’ attitude, students’ attitude, teachers’ experience, and teachers’ qualifications to the prediction of academic achievement of the senior secondary school students at the ssce level? methodology this study is designed along the line of both descriptive research of the survey type and ex-post-facto research design. the descriptive research of the survey type was adopted by using questionnaire to obtain information about the teachers’ attitude, work load, qualification, experience and students’ attitude towards the teaching / learning of biology in the school. ex-postfacto was used because the researcher does not have control on both the independent and dependent variables. the ex-post-facto design is neither completely descriptive nor completely experimental but involves a systematic procedure that utilizes observation of variables as found in their actual natural state (bandele, 2004). this type of design was employed by campbell and stanley (1966) in a desperate bid to solve the problem of randomization and control of variables in educational research. part of the data involved in this study (senior school certificate examination results) was observed and used as found in their natural state because the cause and the effect have already occurred. there was no treatment and manipulation of subjects rather it involved collection of data from records. the population of the study comprised all the biology teachers and the senior secondary school class three (sss iii) students in ondo state, nigeria. the sample for the study consisted of 360 respondents made up of 180 teachers and 180 sss iii students randomly selected from the three senatorial districts of ondo state (ondo south, ondo central, and ondo north) using stratified random sampling technique. the 180 teachers selected for this study have at one class been assigned to teach the content of the syllabus of west african examination council on biology to the sampled students between 2007 – 2010 either in senior secondary school class one (sss1) or senior secondary school class two or class three (sss2 or sss3) to prepare the students ready for external examination in the year 2009/2010 academic session. the results of these students also served as database for this study. the instruments used for the study were: science oriented attitudinal scale (soas) adopted from omirin (1999), teachers teaching attitudinal scale (tas) adapted from craig, franklin, and andrew (1984) locus of control of behaviour scale, and tschannel-moran and woolfolk-hoy (2001) teacher sense of efficacy scale and an inventory, which requested for data on students’ senior secondary school certificate examination grades in biology. both the teachers teaching attitudinal scale and the soas were re-validated by the researcher. the estimates of construct validity and internal consistency reliability for the tas and soas as depicted by the cronbach coefficient alpha values were 0.68 and 0.72 respectively. the academic achievement of the participating students was measured by their grades in the senior secondary school certificate examination collected from records. procedure each of the 360 respondents (180 teachers and 180 students) was given a copy of their questionnaire respectively to respond to for thirty-five minutes. for the purpose of data analysis, the completed copies of the questionnaire were collected from the respondents and scored while the senior secondary school certificate letter grade for biology was converted to point for each participating student. the range of scores of the relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitudes toward academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students in ondo state, nigeria 5 respondents in the tas and soas fell between 20-100 and 30-135 respectively. data analysis the following statistical methods were used to answer the research questions. correlation analysis (matrix) was used to estimate the relationships between teachers’ experience, teachers’ workload, teachers’ qualification, teachers’ attitude, students’ attitude and students’ final grade (sgb) in biology. multiple regression analysis was used to determine the extent to which the independent variables explain the criterion (final grade in biology) variable. standardized regression coefficients (beta) showed the relative contributions of the predictor variables to the criterion variable while unstandardized β weight shows the predictive strength of the predictor variables on the criterion variable. results the results of the analysis are shown in tables 1, 2 and 3. in table 1, it is observed that a moderate and positive significant relationship exists between teachers’ variables (ta and sgb, tq and sgb), and students’ grade in biology with ta versus sgb = 0.536 and tq versus sgb = 0.579. students’ attitude also depicted that significant relationship exists between it and students’ grades in biology. however, teachers’ workload and teachers’ experience exhibited low significant relationship with students’ grades in biology (tw versus sgb = 0.420 and teachers’ experience versus sgb = 0.407) at 0.05 level of significance. table 2 shows that there is linear positive relationship between the predictor variables (teachers’ workload, teachers’ attitude, students’ attitude, teachers’ experience, and teachers’ qualifications) and the criterion variable (sgb) achievement in biology among the senior secondary school students. the table indicates that the multiple r was 0.792 which implies that there is high positive relationship among the predictor variables and the criterion variable. as much as 62.5% (as indicated by r square of 0.625) of the variation observed in the achievement in biology among secondary school students was explained by the combination of the predictor variables while the standard error of 0.55612 indicates that on the average the predicted achievement in biology will deviate from true value by 0.55612 limits of that measure. the analysis of variance for the multiple regression data yielded an f-ratio of 152.14 which was significant at p < 0.05. this implies that the combination of the five predictor variables (tw, ta, sa, te and tq) have significant influence on achievement in biology among secondary school students. from table 3, the regression equation derivable is: achievement in biology (sgb) = 5.716e.02 (tw) + 0.194 (ta) + 0.342 (sa) + 0.127 (te) + 0.185 (tq) – 0.110. hence, students’ attitude indicates the best predictor to achievement in biology. the table also reveals the relative contribution of each of the predictor variables to the prediction as shown in the values of the regression coefficients which ranged from 0.070 (7%) to 0.453 (45.3%) while the standard error ranged from 0.020 to 0.030 and the t-values ranged from 1.830 to 12.282. table 1 correlation matrix showing the intercorrelation among the variables tw ta sa te tq sgb tw 1.00 ta 0.417 1.00 sa 0.413 0.563 1.00 te 0.264 0.305 0.241 1.00 tq 0.249 0.318 0.205 0.325 1.00 sgb 0.420 0.536 0.615 0.407 0.579 1.00 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 table 2 summary of regression analysis of the predictor variables on the criterion variables (sgb) multiple r 0.792 source of variance ss df ms fc ftab r2 0.625 regression 188.216 5 47.054 152.14 2.23 adjusted r2 0.623 residual 111.956 354 0.309 standard error 0.55612 total 300.172 359 table 3 test of significance of regression coefficients b seb beta t teachers workload (tw) 5.716e.02 0.030 0.070 1.830 teachers attitude (ta) 0.194 0.022 0.317 8.346 student attitude (sa) 0.342 0.027 0.453 12.282 teachers experience (te) 0.127 0.020 0.209 6.015 teachers qualification (tq) 0.185 0.021 0.394 8.853 constant -0.110 0.139 -0.787 p< 0.05 critical t = 1.960 the t-values associated with teachers’ attitude, students’ attitude, teachers’ experience and teachers’ qualification were significant at 0.05 alpha level. from table 3, the regression equation derivable is: achievement in biology (sgb) = 5.716e.02 (tw) + 0.194 (ta) + 0.342 (sa) + 0.127 (te) + 0.185 (tq) – 0.110. hence, students’ attitude indicates the best predictor to achievement in biology. the table also reveals the relative contribution of each of the predictor variables to the prediction as shown in the values of the regression coefficients which ranged from 0.070 (7%) to 0.453 (45.3%) while the standard error ranged from 0.020 to 0.030 and the t-values ranged from 1.830 to 12.282. the t-values associated with teachers’ attitude, students’ attitude, teachers’ experience and teachers’ qualification were significant at 0.05 alpha level. discussion the results above showed that the predictor variables in predicting academic achievement in biology among the senior secondary school three students could not be attributed to chance factor. the relationship between the predictor variables (tw, ta, sa, te and tq) in predicting academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students is reflected in the value of coefficient of multiple regressions (0.792) and in the adjusted r-square (0.623) as shown in table 2. the fratio value of 152.14 which is significant as the 0.05 level of significance attested to the fact that predictive capacity of the independent variables could not be attached to the effect of chance factor. the findings of this study showed that there were positive significant relationships among the teachers’ variables and students’ attitude. this finding relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitudes toward academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students in ondo state, nigeria 7 is in agreement with the findings of yara (2009) and adodo (2005) who claimed that teachers and students attitude toward teaching and learning respectively go side by side to record achievement in science. this is because good or bad professional conduct on the part of the teachers goes a long way to stimulate, influence and encourage student to develop positive or negative attitude respectively to the studying of biology. demonstration of good professional teaching behaviours probably stirred up the potentials in the students to manifest positive attitude to learning. by implication, positive and effective relationship between the teacher and the pupils will perhaps show positive interrelationship with educational performance in the school subjects on the part of the pupils. the findings also revealed that moderate and positive relationships exist between the teachers’ variables and students’ academic achievement and grade points in biology. statistically, students achievement and teachers attitudes are both tending towards the same direction, this may not signify high academic achievement because negative attitude on the part of teachers would also breed negative attitudes on the parts of the students that can lead to lackadaisical behaviour and frustration in learning the subjects. hence, the students will automatically return poor achievement in their academic work in the subject. again, attitude towards learning a subject may be positively correlated with achievement in the subject but that is not enough a yardstick to conclude that the cause of such achievement is completely attitude. it could be that such achievement assisted in shaping the students attitudes towards the subjects. the findings did not undermine omotayo (2002) argument that students bring into classroom acquired attitude which could hinder or facilitate learning. by implication, pedagogical teachers, should as a matter of necessity, make great effort and sacrifice in terms of time to design and inculcate attitude-shaping behaviours into the teaching/learning processes for the benefit of the learners in the school. this finding is in line with the finding of adepoju (2002), ogunwuyi (2000), and gibbons et al. (1997). the low and significant relationship observable between teachers’ workload, teachers experience and students achievement in biology could be due to lack of commitment on the part of the teachers, as well shallow knowledge of application of methodology and psychology of imparting the biology course content by the teachers into the students. this finding further gave credence to the fact that attitude towards teaching subject is a strong and potent weapon that can influence achievement in learning. the result of this study further indicated that 62.5% of the variance in the academic achievement in biology among secondary school students was explained by linear combination of the teachers’ attitude, qualification, experience, workload and students’ attitude. it also shows that students’ attitude has the most potent contribution to the prediction followed by the teachers’ qualification and the teachers’ attitude while the teachers work load shows the least contribution to the academic achievement in biology. this finding corroborate the findings of (onocha, 1985; mukerjee, 2002; houston et al., 2002; and sidhu et al., 2011) who reported that attitude to mathematics explained more of the total variance than the children intelligence and that attitude of students towards science were linked with some personality factors through relationship with teachers. this finding have shown that students’ attitude, teachers’ qualification and teachers’ attitude were the most important factors than the other independent variables in the prediction of academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students. the result that students’ attitude showed to be the most potent contributing factor among the variables to the prediction can be explained from inter-relationship between the students and the teachers. teachers are supposed to be a role model to the students, and if teachers’ attitude towards studying biology is positive, such teacher(s) should device all methods entice students to develop positive attitudes to learning the subject. this suggests that teachers should not bring into the teaching/learning situations behavior that can jeopardize the development and acquisition of positive attitudes towards the learning by the students. teacher qualifications are another factor identified as making contribution to the prediction. the contribution is not as weighty as students’ attitudes because teachers’ qualifications deal with the mastery of secondary school biology content alone and could not guarantee appropriate and effective transmission of acquired body of knowledge. yet, the combination of appropriate training of personnel and application of appropriate methodology of teaching can achieve it. teachers, therefore, need to develop positive healthy work ethics, attitude and zeal towards their teaching job, and by implication, it becomes imperative that a would-be teacher should receive training on pedagogical teaching and educational psychology to guide would-be teachers in the “art of teaching”. conclusion therefore, there is need for both the students and teachers of biology in senior secondary schools to have positive attitudinal change towards learning and teaching of biology accordingly to improve on the learning outcomes of secondary school students in biology. government, both at the federal and states ministry of education level, should as a matter concern, organize regular seminar and workshops for the teachers to refresh their memories about new developments and skills currently in use in the field of teaching biology to current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 secondary school pupils in order to improve the quality of teaching strategies of the teachers as well as improving the learning processes of the students. references ademulegun, d. 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(2009). relationship between teachers’ attitude and students’ academic achievement in mathematics in some selected senior secondary schools in south west, nigeria. european journal of social sciences, 11(3), 364-369. . current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 article citation gbore, l. o., & daramola, c. a. (2013). relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitudes toward academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students in ondo state, nigeria. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/809 author notes l. o. gbore, ph.d department of guidance and counseling adekunle ajasin university akungba-akoko ondo state, nigeria drglawolu@yahoo.co.uk dr. l.o. gbore is currently working as a lecturer in the department of guidance and counseling, faculty of education, adekunle ajasin university, akungba akoko, ondo state, nigeria. his areas of interest include test, measurement and evaluation, applied statistics, psychology and research methods. c. a. daramola, ph.d department of guidance and counseling adekunle ajasin university akungba-akoko ondo state, nigeria dr. c. a. daramola is currently working as a lecturer in the department of guidance and counseling, faculty of education, adekunle ajasin university, akungba akoko, ondo state, nigeria. his areas of interest include psychopathology and culture and special education. manuscript received: 9/20/2011 revisions received: 11/11/2012 accepted:11/24/2013 relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitudes toward academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students in ondo state, nigeria 11 volume 16, number 1 january 20, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 771-2858-2-le.docx 1 volume 14, number 2 june 5, 2011 issn 1099-839x effects of daily read-alouds on students’ sustained silent reading lauren a. pegg frederick j. bartelheim university of northern colorado this action research project investigated the effects of daily teacher read-alouds on first graders’ ability to sustain silent reading for an extended length of time. students’ enjoyment of silent reading was also investigated. the data on ability to sustain silent reading was collected from timed silent reading experiences, and a pre and post survey completed by students on their enjoyment and performance during silent reading time. the findings of the study suggest an increase in the length of time students silently read to themselves as a result of daily teacher read-alouds. additionally, survey comments suggested an increase in enjoyment of silent reading as a result of the daily read-alouds. keywords: read-aloud, sustained silent reading, action research currently, read-alouds are utilized sporadically as a fun, relaxing and educational part of the classroom (laminack, 2009). however, having a very busy academic schedule, it can be difficult to find as much time as one would prefer to read aloud to students for enjoyment. it can also be a challenge to assure that students are sustaining silent reading with proper behavior such as continuously being engaged in a book, and quietly reading the entire time, as long as they should without receiving proper modeling daily. this action research project investigated the effects of daily teacher read-alouds on first graders’ ability to sustain silent reading for an extended length of time, and their enjoyment of silent reading time. the timed silent reading experiences were evaluated for an increase in time during and after the implementation of the daily read-alouds. students also completed a pre and post survey that measured their level of enjoyment of silent reading. the survey results were analyzed to evaluate if there was an increase in student enjoyment after the implementation of daily read-alouds. the timed silent reading experience data was analyzed to see what impact the daily read-alouds had on the amount of time students were able to sustain silent reading, and for a change in on and off task behavior during that time. review of the literature many teachers schedule time for their students to engage in reading books they choose for an extended period of time to enhance literacy skills in their classroom. such programs as sustained silent reading (ssr), or drop everything and read (dear), or daily uninterrupted reading time (dirt), have been shown to increase students’ tendency to enjoy reading and the frequency of which they engage in reading for pleasure (chua, 2008). siah and kwok (2010) found a positive correlation between the amount of time students spend reading for leisure and current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 students’ values and attitudes towards reading. this suggests that providing students with the opportunity to listen and leisurely enjoy books their teacher reads aloud may impact students’ attitudes towards silent reading. according to harvey and goudvis (2007) an interactive read-aloud is a teacher lead activity that allows students to listen, talk and think about the story being read. in addition to providing time for students to reflect on a text, read-alouds are often students’ favorite and most memorable part of the school day (allen, 2000). whether the text read aloud is chosen by the students, or the teacher, the act of listening to someone read a text has been shown to have many effects on the listener. according to allen (2000) increased word knowledge, motivation to read, syntax knowledge and genre knowledge are some of the many effects listening to a read-aloud can have on students. most often, teachers choose books for read-alouds that are above their students’ average independent reading level, providing students with exposure to content and texts they might otherwise never experience (allen, 2010; fisher, flood, lapp, & frey, 2004). when a teacher reads aloud, students are free to listen and enjoy the story without worrying about constructing meaning from a text that may be beyond their independent reading level. even if a book is chosen for a read-aloud to expose students to a new genre or series of books, the experience has the ability to open new doors for readers of all ages by providing a dedicated time to sit, listen, and enjoy a story (boyd & devennie, 2009). through a read-aloud, children are able to experience books that they may never have picked up on their own. these experiences may hold the power to engage students in a new love for reading (fisher et al., 2004). read-alouds are an important tool used not only to enhance skills, but create enjoyment within students’ learning experiences (braun, 2010). read-alouds have also been shown to increase students’ motivation in content area studies and reading in general (allen, 2000; braun, 2010; santoro, chard, howard & baker, 2008). braun (2010) stated that when teachers read, students listen, and when students can see their teacher responding passionately, they too will share those feelings. providing students with the opportunity to see someone excited and engaged in reading is important to ensure that they too will find joy in reading. allen (2000) discusses how a proper read-aloud model can hold the power to motivate students of all ages to pick up a new book and read it for entertainment, and enjoyment leading to numerous new learning opportunities. in addition to exposure to a variety of texts, and increasing student motivation for reading, read-alouds have also been shown to have numerous other academic benefits. barclay (2009) discussed the effects that read-alouds have on students’ fluency, vocabulary, and phonological and phonemic awareness. these skills are necessary for students in order to develop proper oral reading styles and strategies. read-aloud activities such as questioning, and using comprehension strategies to incorporate engaging discussions into reading can also positively impact students’ background knowledge, listening, and comprehension skills (beck & mckewon, 2001; santoro et al., 2008). in a study conducted by braun (2010) readalouds were used to introduce vocabulary, hook the students on a topic, and portray the notion that science was an important and exciting subject to learn about. braun (2010) discovered that read-alouds were an effective method to get students’ focus and attention, build motivation for the subject, and help them relate concepts to real life. read-alouds provide students with a model of fluent oral reading and the opportunity to gain exposure to new vocabulary and knowledge. mcgee and schickedanz (2007) studied the effects of repeated read-alouds in primary classrooms. they stated that simply reading aloud to students is not enough to increase vocabulary and comprehension skills and suggest having a systematic approach such as a repeated interactive read-aloud technique, as the best way to strengthen student’s skills. there is not sufficient research on read-alouds and their direct impact on students’ ability to enjoy and participate in ssr time. with the current research supporting classroom read-alouds and ssr time for a variety of academic and motivational purposes, there will confidently be a connection between daily read-alouds and students’ ability to participate in and enjoy ssr time. research questions this action research project addressed two questions. the first one being, how will daily teacher readalouds impact the length of time and frequency of on and off task behaviors of students during silent reading? the second question that was investigated was how daily teacher read-alouds will impact students’ enjoyment for silent reading time. methods participants this action research project took place at an elementary school in a first grade classroom. the school is part of a public school district located in a mid-size, suburban town. the majority of students come from middle class households. there were a total of 21 participants; 11 female, and 10 male. four of the students received daily english language acquisition (ela) support. procedure every day over a two week period students experienced an additional teacher read-aloud averaging 18 minutes per day. the style of read-aloud that was implemented for this study was a teacher chosen interactive read-aloud for the purpose of enjoyment. students asked questions during the reading, and discussed their thoughts on the text afterwards. the silent reading procedures from the daily five (2006) reading program were utilized in this study. according to boushey and moser (2006) the entire class effects of daily read-alouds on students’ sustained silent reading 3 participates in silent reading by following a set of instructions including, reading the whole time, not moving from one spot, not using the restroom or getting a drink, and no talking to others. prior to the study beginning, data on the length of time students sustained silent reading, and their behaviors during that time were collected. recordings of the time the class as whole spent silently reading and anecdotal teacher notes indicating observed on and off-task behaviors during the time were collected. during the two week period in which the daily read-alouds were implemented, the class participated in five extended silent reading experiences. resembling the baseline collection data on time spent reading and notes on observed student behavior were collected during each experience. the data on time spent reading and behavior while reading was evaluated for an improvement in duration, and on task behavior during the implementation of the daily read-alouds. in addition to baseline data on silent reading time and behavior, a short teacher-created survey was completed pre and post study by the students. students were asked to rate the level of enjoyment they had for silent reading time, and how long they believe they read. there was also an open-ended opportunity for students to explain their answers at the bottom of the survey to provide students the opportunity to share how they truly feel (see figure 1). the silent reading timed data, and the survey data collected was analyzed to discover the impacts the daily read-alouds had on the duration the class was able to sustain silent reading, and their behavior during that time. in addition the survey results were used to evaluate an impact on student enjoyment. limitations in this study time was a significant limitation. the daily read-alouds were implemented for a two week period of time. during the two weeks in which the study took place, the class had five extended periods for silent reading data to be collected. the daily read-alouds would have optimally been implemented for at least a four to six week period for the students to become accustomed to the routine. in addition to the limited length of time of the study, the class the study was conducted in does not represent a random sample of students in the school district. because of this, it is difficult to say whether or not individual background knowledge, socioeconomic status, or reading level had an effect on the results. the ability of a first grader to complete a survey with accurate meaning may have also been a limitation to this study. it is difficult to control and assess whether or not the young participants fully understood how to properly portray their feelings thorough a survey. this could have altered the findings of the study. data analysis and results as depicted in table 1, the length of time students sustained silent reading increased. specifically, the amount of time that the class as a whole sustained silent reading increased by nine minutes during the time in which they experienced the daily teacher read-alouds. in this study, this represents a significant increase for the two week period. name___________________ 1) during read-to-self do you: read the whole time read most of the time read a little bit of the time 2) do you: love read-to-self like read-to-self not like read-to-self ☺ � � why ________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ figure 1. pre and post survey current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 table 1 pre and post intervention reading times (in minutes/seconds) for the total subject group ___________________________________________________________________________ mean sd sem n _____________________________________________________ pre intervention 15.06 1.0 0.21 21 post intervention 24.30** 0.0 0.00 21 ___________________________________________________________________________ **p< .01 table 2 pre and post survey responses for the total subject group pre intervention post intervention ______________________________________________________________________________ n % n % _______________________________________ q1: during read-to-self do you: read the whole time 18 .85 17 .81 read most of the time 2 .10 3 .14 read a little bit of the time 1 .05 1 .05 ______________________________________________________________________________ n % n % _______________________________________ q2: do you: love read-to-self 14 .67 13 .62 like read-to-self 7 .33 7 .33 not like read-to-self 0 .00 1 .05 the total subject group increased the amount of time they stayed on task silently reading by approximately nine minutes over the course of the two week period. at the baseline collection the class was able to sustain silent reading for approximately 15 minutes. by the last data collection the class read for 24 and ½ minutes with an overall change of nine minutes. in addition to the increased time spent reading, there was also a significant decrease in observed off-task behaviors during silent reading time. during the baseline silent reading data collection there were three students observed occasionally looking around the room during reading time. not only were a few students occasionally looking away from their reading, there were also three students that had a restroom break during the baseline silent reading session. by the final silent reading session there was no one who attempted to use the restroom during the 24 minutes of silent reading. the number of students observed looking around and not reading, steadily decreased eventually ending at zero during the last session. not only did the off-task behavior decrease the overall sense in the room during silent reading was much more intense and meaningful at the end of the study. it was clear that the entire class was deeply engaged in the literature they had in front of them and were enjoying the quiet time reading alone. this could suggest that the students developed a greater appreciation and enjoyment for reading due to the increased teacher read-alouds. table 2 indicates the students’ responses to the two survey items. as depicted in table 2, only a slight difference, or approximately two students, indicated a change in their level of enjoyment they had for silent reading time, and how long they believe they read. the open ended responses from the pre and post surveys were categorized into like groups and evaluated comparatively. only one subject did not provide responses to the open ended response portion of the pre and post survey. effects of daily read-alouds on students’ sustained silent reading 5 table 3 pre and post open ended survey responses for the total subject group pre intervention ___________________________________________________________ n % _________________ love reading 4 .20 like reading 8 .40 reading is fun 8 .40 ____________________________________________________________ post intervention n % ___________________ cool books 4 .20 quiet reading time 4 .20 learning from reading 4 .20 reading is fun 8 .40 as table 3 indicates, the responses on the presurvey were rather generic in nature. the majority of the students simply stated they liked to read as their justification for their response. the post-survey responses were of a more elaborate, and meaningful nature. on the post-survey students stated reasons such as enjoying the quiet time to read, learning from the books, and enjoying the fun books and pictures as some of the reasons why they enjoy silent reading. the nature of the comments on the post-survey clearly express a greater appreciation and level of enjoyment for silent reading compared to the pre-survey, suggesting an increase in enjoyment as a result of the daily read-alouds. discussion and implications discussion this study showed evidence of a change in students’ ability to sustain silent reading time and their enjoyment of silent reading time based on the daily teacher read-alouds. teacher observations and student comments, in addition to the increased time spent silently reading, suggests a significant impact of the daily read-alouds. it is the researcher’s belief that after experiencing the increased daily teacher read-alouds, the students developed a greater enjoyment for books both read to them, and read on their own during silent reading time. after one week of reading aloud every day one student commented “wow! you have a lot of good picture books!” in addition to spoken comments, the reasons students stated to justify their survey response on silent reading on the post-survey showed a greater appreciation for reading compared to the pre-survey. more responses were based on a nature of an enjoyment for reading and how it is beneficial on the post-survey. it is the researcher’s belief that increasing the amount of time spent listening to reading through a teacher read-aloud, increased students’ enjoyment for reading on their own and therefore showed an increase in duration of silent reading time. the researcher believes the comments, observations and increased silent reading time showed sufficient data to justify a replication of this study. the impact of the read-alouds was significant over a two week period of time, however in the follow-up study the duration of the intervention and data collection should be increased to more accurately assess the effects. in addition to increasing the duration of the study, the increased daily read-alouds should be implemented throughout various grade levels to investigate if age and developmental reading level played a part in the effectiveness of the current study. implications this action research project found that implementing daily teacher read-alouds had an impact on the length of time that students sustain silent reading. in addition to lengthening the amount of time students read silently, comments and behavior about silent reading time also improved. with the shift towards standards based, content packed curriculum, teachers may need to realize it is acceptable and beneficial to slow down and read aloud to their students. not getting caught up in the whirlwind that can be created by demanding curriculums and standards, but according to this study and the supporting literature, taking the time to enjoy books with students can have benefits as well. with the results of this study in mind, it is advised that teachers increase the frequency of which they read aloud to their students. not only do children deserve current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 6 to be provided with time to listen to and enjoy quality literature, but the daily read-alouds implemented during this study showed additional benefits of reading aloud to students. references allen, j. (2000). yellow brick roads: shared and guided paths to independent reading 4-12. portland, me: stenhouse publishers. barclay, k. (2009). click, clack, moo: designing effective reading instruction for children in preschool and early primary grades. childhood education, 85(3), 167. beck, i. l., & mckeown, m. g. (2001). text talk: capturing the benefits of read-aloud experiences for young children. the reading teacher, 55(1), 10. boushey, g., & moser, j. (2006). the daily 5: fostering independence in the elementary grades. portland, me: stenhouse publishers. boyd, m. p., & devennie, m. k. (2009). student voices and teacher choices: selecting chapter book readalouds. childhood education, 85(3), 148. braun, p. (2010). taking the time to read aloud. science scope, 34(2), 45-49. chua, s. (2008). the effects of the sustained silent reading program on cultivating students' habits and attitudes in reading books for leisure. clearing house, 81(4), 180. fisher, d., flood, j., lapp, d., & frey, n. (2004). interactive read-alouds: is there a common set of implementation practices?. the reading teacher, 58(1), 8-17. doi:1o.1598/rt.58.1.1 harvey, s., & goudvis, a. (2007). strategies that work: teaching comprehension for understanding and engagement. 2 nd edition. portland, me: stenhouse publishers. laminack, l. (2009). unwrapping the read aloud: making every read aloud intentional and instructional. new york, ny: scholastic. mcgee, l. m. & schickedanz, j.a. (2007). repeated interactive read-alouds in preschool and kindergarten. the reading teacher, 60, 742-751. santoro, l. e., chard, d. j., howard, l., & baker, s. k. (2008). making the "very" most of classroom readalouds to promote comprehension and vocabulary. the reading teacher, 61(5), 396-408. siah, p., & kwok, w. (2010). the value of reading and the effectiveness of sustained silent reading. clearing house, 83(5), 168. effects of daily read-alouds on students’ sustained silent reading 7 article citation pegg, l. a.., & bartelheim, f. j. (2011). effects of daily read-alouds on students’ sustained silent reading. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/771 author notes lauren a. pegg laur.pegg@gmail.com lauren a. pegg is currently an elementary education teacher in northern colorado. frederick j. bartelheim university of northern colorado mckee 216 greeley, colorado 80631 frederick.bartelheim@unco.edu frederick j. bartelheim is a professor of educational foundations and curriculum studies in the school of teacher education at the university of northern colorado. he is also the coordinator of the m.a.t: curriculum studies program. current issues in education vol. 14 no.2 8 volume 14, number 2 june 5, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers perceptions_final volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x perceptions of teachers and students regarding the middle school honors program selma testa pennsylvania state university citation testa, s. (2010). perceptions of teachers and students regarding the middle school honors program. current issues in education, 13(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this study examined the perceptions held by 40 teachers and 304 students regarding a middle school honors program. the sample population represented an equal number of honors and nonhonors participants. two surveys were analyzed using thematic coding for qualitative questions, while t test and descriptive statistics were used for quantitative results. the results confirm college and high school findings regarding the academic perceptions of the honors students, the reasons for and against their enrollment, satisfaction with the program, and the overrepresentation of female and white students, but reject specific identified characteristics of an honors student. middle school honors students do not have the same qualities as high school and college honors students. keywords: honors program, middle school, perceptions, student qualities current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: selma testa affiliation: pennsylvania state university email: selma.t@netzero.net biographical information: selma testa, m.a. in community psychology and social change from penn state university, has taught at the middle school level for several years prior to conducting the research on the honors program. she advocates the use of a participatory-based research approach to improve all educational settings. thus, she would like to thank the students and educators who made this research possible. middle school honors program perceptions 3 the number of middle schools in the united states that have adopted an honors program has increased, yet research on the programs at this level has lagged behind. the need for research specific to middle school honors programs is imperative due to the social, physical, and mental developmental differences between the adolescent student and the collegiate student on whom current honors program research centers. school districts using an honors program, or, those considering its use, need information regarding the middle school honor students’ characteristics to better facilitate the proper selection of students for the program. the purpose of this study is to close the gap in research into middle school honors programs and then compare those research findings with existing research done in high schools and colleges. an honors program is a planned set of experiences through which the academic needs of talented and able students are better served than they can be within the regular classroom (halverson, 1973). it is used by schools as a means for encouraging and challenging the highachieving student. research has focused on collegiate honors programs. herr (1992a) point out a lack of such studies on high school honors programs within the united states. middle school honors programs have received little attention from researchers, and are only occasionally included in tracking studies. this study looks at the differences between honors and non-honors middle school students as perceived by the students and their teachers as well as on the honors program. literature review college level in a survey of 19 collegiate honors programs, mckeauge (1984) found that 88% required more reading and discussion, 81% more writing, and 75% stressed a higher level of critical thinking than the equivalent non-honors classes. in 1994 the national collegiate honors council current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 developed guidelines for “basic characteristics of a fully developed honors programs” to enable more consistent programming in higher education. when first semester college students were asked about their expectations of the honors college, they stated that these included challenge, honors housing, good professors, special advisement, relationships with other honors students and professors, and personal recognition (christopher, 2005). participants interviewed for this case study reported that the honors college met their social, emotional, and academic needs. in one of the earliest studies of perceptions of honors students, as rated by their non-honors peers, waggoner (1963) found that honors students were characterized as more intellectual, studious, thorough, precise, accurate, persistent, industrious, logical, responsible, orderly, and capable: all of which are traits of successful students. socially, they were found to be self-confident, alert, mature, stable, dependable, economical, friendly, sympathetic, tolerant, charming, and less sloppy. negatively they were described as unimaginative, reckless, unreliable, implosive, inept, egotistical, fault-finding, moody, sarcastic, argumentative, lonely, nervous, rigid, annoying, more critical, and less humorous than non-honors students. when looking at the long-term effects that honors programs can have on students, studies have examined the performances of these students while in colleges. even students who were placed into an honors program for just their first two years of college showed drastic differences in career ambition in comparison with students who were not in such a program (rinn, 2005). when the academic achievement, aspirations, and self-concepts of gifted college students enrolled in an honors program were compared with those of gifted students not enrolled in an honors program, rinn (2007) found that honors students exhibit both higher academic achievement and higher academic self-concept than their non-honors counterparts. college middle school honors program perceptions 5 students in an honors program perform better on tests of critical thinking, mathematics, and composite cognitive development (seifert, pascarella, colangelo, & assouline, 2007). in 2005 george mason university’s study administered the cooperative institutional research program freshman survey to 1,709 freshman students and found that the differences between the honors students and their non-honors counterparts to be higher grade point average (gpa) and less need for remedial work during high school (gentemann, zhou, zamon, & mcshery, 2006). in addition, the honors college students rated their personal qualities as being more driven to achieve; higher in academic, mathematical, and leadership ability, in writing, and in public speaking, than their non-honors peers. while, honors students rated themselves as higher in intellectual self-confidence, they rated themselves lower in cooperativeness and social self-confidence. mason’s honors freshmen reported that improving their understanding of other countries and cultures was their top aspiration, while non-honors freshmen reported that being very well off financially was their top priority. non-honors freshmen rated being in charge of others, being well off, and becoming a successful entrepreneur more highly than the honors college students (gentemann, et al., 2006). college level research generally focuses on the implementation of the program in colleges, selection of students into an honors program, shortterm evaluation of the program, and the perceptions of students and teachers regarding the program. high school level many high schools have adopted honors or advanced classes, the latter being presented as advanced placement courses (ap), dual enrollments, or international baccalaureate (ib) programs. over 50% of high schools in the u.s. offer either honor programs or advanced current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 placement courses (mansfield & farris, 1992). a lack of research into the honors courses in the united states’ high schools has been reported by herr (1992a). some research has been done on this area: in 1992, kulik & kulik showed that the participation and discussion that occurs in honors courses are much higher than that occurring in a regular, non-grouped classroom. in examining high school english classes, gamoran (1986, 1992a) found that honors classes include more reading of classic literature, more writing assignments, and greater participation of students in class discussions about the literature than non-honors classes. science teachers of honors classes report that these classes offer them the chance to work with students who are more stimulated and creative than those in regular classes; in addition, the teachers have an opportunity to learn more from these students (herr, 1991, 1992a, 1992b). researchers also found that higher track teachers are more involved in preparation and tend to be more enthusiastic (oakes, 1991; rosonbaum, 1976). in foreign language honors classes, students participate more in communication activities than they do in regular classes (morris, 2005). teachers hold honors students to higher expectations of maturity, ability, and motivation (morris, 2005). these findings are supported by numerous studies on tracking. tracking studies found that the higher tracked honors classes promote more independence and self-expression among students (oakes, 1985; oakes, gamoran, & page, 1992). overall, a national survey of 10th to 12th graders showed that academically tracked students, which includes honors and advanced streams, tested higher for vocabulary than students in general classes (gamoran, 1987). although tracking studies provide some insight into honors classes, comprehensive research is lacking about high school honors programs, forcing school districts to rely on the collegiate findings when creating honors programs for high schools. middle school honors program perceptions 7 middle school level in middle schools, students must be trained for ap and ib classes if they are to become successful in these courses in high school. some schools use names such as pre-ap, academic plus, or acceleration track to group students together, while others use the term honors program to meet the needs of top students. these students typically score advanced or proficient on their grade-level standardized tests and excel academically within the regular education classroom. in honors programs, students tend to be grouped with peers of higher ability and motivation, so that enrichment and acceleration can occur. students face an increased set of demands in these honors classes, and they may also be asked to participate in special projects, field trips, college trips, and individual research projects. since there are no national regulations for these programs at the middle school level, each district is free to design its own version of the program. usually, these programs are styled after the collegiate model of forming honors sections from regular classes. the massachusetts department of education measured the initiatives for academically advanced students and found that the subject of advanced instruction mirrors the subject matter of regular k-8 classrooms, with greater emphasis on mathematics and reading (driscoll, 2002). however, in grades six to eight, students who are academically advanced are just as likely to receive advanced instruction through differentiated instruction within a heterogeneously grouped classroom as through separated advanced and accelerated courses (2002). even in a heterogonous middle school classroom, taking advanced mathematics showed positive correlation with higher career earnings later in life (rose & betts, 2004). research into a mathematics pre-algebra course in missouri junior high school indicates that placement of average 8th grade students into a higher track improves these students’ scores on the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 comprehensive assessment program achievement series test more than being in a regular mathematics class (mason, schroeter, comps, & washington, 1992). in addition, more of these students enrolled in advanced mathematics courses in high school. even average achievers benefited from being placed in higher achieving classes and were 91% more likely to complete a two-year sequence of preparatory college mathematics courses in high school (gamoran, porter, smithson, & white, 1997). research based upon a six-year longitudinal study in mathematical acceleration, comparing honors and non-honors students from 7th to 12th grade, showed that being in the accelerated program made a greater difference to non-honors students than it did to honors students (ma, 2003). the research showed that regular students benefited the most from having algebra earlier in middle school (ma, 2005). this type of study needs to be conducted in other subjects, especially in a comparison of honors and regular students, to validate the existence of the honors programs in middle schools. since acceleration and enrichment are the primary characteristics of the honors program, their effect on all students should be tested to improve the overall standard of education. adolescent development adolescence is characterized by drastic developmental changes that occur to individuals including physical, emotional, psychological, and social changes. early adolescence occurs between ages 12 to 15, where the growth spurt occurs. this is a time where the effort to define the self is the primary personality issue (erikson, 1968). adolescents have trouble with these changes and may feel uncomfortable and self-conscious because of their inability to adjust to these rapid changes, so they turn to peers as a source of emotional support and acceptance. middle school honors program perceptions 9 understanding the appropriateness of developing honors programs in middle schools is critical, due to the extreme vulnerability adolescents’ face while searching for identity (kelly, 1990). in early adolescence emotional development, feeling may override reason due to immature brain development, thus leading to poor choices (yurgelon-todd, 2002). at this stage of development the frontal cortical system, which deals with motivations, impulsivity, and addiction, is underdeveloped. this may help to explain why so many adolescents have trouble focusing on long term goals, and choose thrill seeking behaviors (bjork, knutson, fong, caggiano, bennett, & hommer, 2004; chambers, taylor, & potenza, 2003). thus, their perceived personal characteristics may reflect differently than the college students’ characteristics. at the psychological level, adolescents enter a formative stage of development, according to piaget (1972), which is characterized by the ability to think abstractly. learning vocabulary and other aspects of language improves in adolescence, and at this stage, hypothetical-deductive reasoning occurs where the adolescent has the ability to develop, consider and test hypotheses (piaget, 1972). elkind’s (1984, 1998) research found adolescent immaturity in six areas of psychological development. first, idealism and criticalness in their thinking leads them to become super conscious of hypocrisy as they find faults in everything. second, apparent hypocrisy leads them to believe that there is no difference between ideals and reality. third, indecisiveness is another characteristic of adolescents as they come up with many alternatives, yet lack ability to choose an effective one. fourth, argumentativeness occurs where adolescents look for opportunities to show their reasoning abilities during an argument. the fifth characteristic is self-consciousness; adolescents are so preoccupied with their own thinking, that they assume everyone else is thinking the same thing. in addition, they seem to think that there is current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 an imaginary audience concerned with their thoughts and behavior. the sixth characteristic is specialness and invulnerability, where the adolescents think of themselves as unique, special and exempt from following rules, which explains why they take more risks. due to these immaturities within their psychological development, honors program participation may not have the same effect on adolescents as it does on the college students. research has been so focused on college level honors programs that the middle school and high school students, who are at a lower developmental level from college students, are placed into these classes without research support. to accept collegiate honors programs research and apply it to middle schools, perceptions of the honors students, as compared to the regular students, should be similar to college students in terms of academic ability, learning habits, and aspirations. the college honors students tend to rate higher in all of these areas by their own self-reporting, so the assumption is that this will occur at the middle school level. thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of the middle school honors students and to compare them to the non-honors students. in addition, this study will report the perceptions regarding the middle school honors program as experienced by teachers and students both in and out of the program. method this study was conducted using a survey of teachers and students in four middle schools, which was designed to measure the perceptions of participants in and out of the middle school program that was implemented during the 2007-2008 school year in a school district located in south central pennsylvania. the research used surveys of the students who were attending the middle school in the district and teachers who taught these students. the study was conducted in a racially diverse urban district located in south central pennsylvania with 11,761 students, and middle school honors program perceptions 11 four middle schools. the number of honors students in each middle school grade level was approximately 25% of all students. the honors program was in its first year of development in this district. participants there were multiple informants involved in this study. first, data were collected from seventh and eighth grade students inside and outside of the honors program. second, teachers in and out of the honors program were also surveyed. all students in seventh and eighth grade had a chance to participate in the study, however since about 25% of the students were enrolled in the honors program, a random sample was drawn of non-honors students based on the number of completed surveys by the students in the honors program. the teachers selected for this study were honors teachers in the middle schools. currently only two honors classes were offered at the middle school level, communication arts classes and social studies classes, with a total of 24 teachers teaching these classes. therefore, teachers who taught the honors students, and the same subject teachers who did not teach the honors students, were compared. instrument the closed questions survey was based on the cooperative institutional research program’s (cirp) college freshman survey, which is a part of a national longitudinal study established in 1973 by the american council on education in higher education research institute (1966). however, some of the wording was adjusted accordingly to match the psychological development of the adolescents. synonyms from a thesaurus were used to simplify vocabulary unfamiliar to the middle school students. the teacher survey contained open-ended questions and quantitative questions. due to the lack of an existing testing instrument, the opencurrent issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 ended questions were designed by the researcher. the survey was designed with a quantitative item to triangulate results between groups. this cirp freshmen survey had been tested and used in over 700 college evaluations of honors programs in the last 40 years. the reliability of the survey instrument performed by heri and repeat participation was at about 90 percent. the confidence interval means, if replicating the survey using the same size sample, the expected resulting percentage would fall between 18.3 percent and 19.1 percent 95 times out of 100. for the sample of 500 participants, the estimated standard of error at 99% is .445. to calculate the validity of the instrument, austin (1991) found the scale reliability coefficient exceeded .70. procedure the data were analyzed using the thematic coding method for any commonalities and differences between honors and non-honors students who participated in the study. statistics were used to describe responses as pertaining to themes. data from open-ended student responses and teacher surveys were analyzed by a consistent comparative method of analysis (glaser & strauss, 1967). this method involves reviewing all responses for descriptive categories and refining each category by seeking examples until no new information emerges (1967). this is called the saturation of the category. moustakas’ (1994, p.122) seven steps of analysis were used to guide the researcher through this type of analysis. for the quantitative portion of the survey, coding developed by the researcher was similar to heri analysis and entered into statistical package for the social sciences, which is a program used for analysis. specifically, t test was used to evaluate the difference between honors and non-honors participants along with mean, standard deviation, and variance for each quantitative item. the independent variable included honors or non-honors placement. results description of the sample teachers participating in this study were divided into two groups: an honors teaching group and a non-honors counterparts group, which served as the comparison sample totaling 40 participants. the number of student participants in the survey was 304; half were enrolled in the honors program and the other half were not. the student demographics include gender, grade, school, age, language, grade point average, race, remedial needs, honors program interest, and parents’ level of education. based on the responses provided, noticeable differences exist in the grade point average, which is higher for honors students. the percentage of honors students who had an a or b average amounted to 87.7%, compared with 65.2% of non-honors students with the same average. significant differences between the two groups were also noted in the racial background: caucasian (37.5% to 21.7%), asian american (6.6% to 1.3%), and other students (9.9% to 5.3%) as participants in the honors program, while there were fewer african american (17.8% to 27.6%) students participating in the district’s program. more non-honors students needed remedial assistance overall in the areas of reading (15.1% to 7.9%), mathematics (37.5% to 23%), and science (14.5% to 3.3%), while honors students stated that they needed more help in english (9.25 to 3.9%). the parents of honors students had higher education overall than the parents of non-honors students. the percentage of mothers who held educational credentials beyond high schools totaled 55.3% for honors and 36.9% for non-honors students, while 44.7% of honors students’ fathers held these credentials, as compared to 24.2% for the non-honors group. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 the differences among the honors students’ and non-honors students’ personal qualities the students were asked to rate their qualities as compared with the average person their age. the likert scale was used to determine whether the students felt they were at the lowest 10% of their age group, below average, average, above average or in the highest 10%. the qualities included academic ability, artistic ability, competitiveness, computer skills, cooperativeness, creativity, motivation to achieve, emotional health, leadership ability, mathematic ability, physical health, public speaking ability, intellectual self-confidence, social self-confidence, self-understanding, spirituality, understanding of others, and writing ability. the t test, used to determine the level of significance between the self-reported ratings of honors and non-honors students, found academic ability, artistic ability, computer skills, cooperativeness, creativity, motivation to achieve, emotional health, leadership ability, mathematical ability, physical health, and intellectual self-confidence to be higher in the honors students’ ratings, as shown in table 1. ________________________________________________________________________ table 1 self-reported differences between honors and non-honors students’ personal qualities ________________________________________________________________________ quality mean t df p ________________________________________________________________________ academic ability h-4.17 -5.518 302 0.000 nh-3.59 artistic ability h-3.40 -2.082 302 0.038 nh-3.14 computer skills h-3.86 -2.251 302 0.025 nh-3.59 cooperativeness h -4.09 -3.656 302 0.000 nh-3.66 middle school honors program perceptions 15 creativity h-4.26 -3.497 302 0.001 nh-3.88 motivation to achieve h-4.41 -5.058 302 0.000 nh-3.88 emotional health h-3.96 -2.603 302 0.010 nh-3.63 leadership ability h-4.14 -2.416 302 0.016 nh-3.86 mathematical ability h -4.13 -6.390 302 0.000 nh-3.33 physical health h-4.14 -2.734 302 0.007 nh-3.82 intellectual h-4.34 -2.358 302 0.019 selfconfidence nh-4.09 ________________________________________________________________________ note. means (m) for honors students were represented with h, and for non-honors students with nh. ________________________________________________________________________ academic ability for the honors students had a mean rating of 4.17, which was above average, while non-honors students had an average score of 3.59. in artistic ability, both groups were average, with honors being at 3.40 and non-honors only slightly lower at 3.14. honors students were average to above average in computer skills, while non-honors students rated slightly lower. creativity was rated at 4.26, which is above average, for honors and at 3.88, average to above, for non-honors. similarly, in motivation to achieve, the mean of the honors students was 4.41, which was also well above the average, while the non-honors mean was 3.88. in emotional health, the honors students rated at above average and non-honors fell between an average and above average rating. leadership ability was above average for honors students (m=4.14), while being average to above for the non-honors (m=3.86) group. the mean in cooperativeness for honors students was 4.09, which was above average, as compared to an average of 3.66 for non-honors students. the largest difference in qualities between the two groups was in mathematical ability, with the mean of the honors students at 4.13 and the noncurrent issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 honors at an average level of 3.33. even in physical health, the honors group rated themselves as above average (m=4.14), while the non-honors group (m=3.82) was slightly behind. the last significant difference in personal qualities was in intellectual self-confidence, where both groups were above average with honors at 4.34 and non-honors at 4.09 rating. a significant deference between the two groups for other qualities was not shown. next, students rated their learning habits within the last school year to determine whether there were any significant differences between the two sample groups in asking questions in class, supporting opinions with facts, seeking solutions to problems and explaining them to others, revising papers, taking a risk, seeking solutions, researching topics on their own, accepting failure as part of learning, and asking for feedback on schoolwork. honors students self-reported their tendency to support their opinions with facts more often than the non-honors students’ reporting (t=-3.568, df=302, p<0.000), while all other learning habits were similar. measuring hours per week spent outside of schools on various activities by students, the differences were found in studying and homework (t=-2.725, df=302, p<0.007), partying (t=2.952, df=302, p<0.003), participating in student clubs (t=-3.272, df=302, p<0.001), reading for pleasure (t=-2.418, df=302, p<0.016), and participating in online social networks (t=3.287, df=302, p<0.001). the honors students spent 3 to 5 hours a week on studying and homework, while non-honors spent 2 to 3 hours. the honors students’ mean for student club participation was 2.17, which amounted to over 2 hours, as compared to a mean of 1.40, which amounted to less than 1 hour per week for the non-honors students. reading for pleasure amounted to between 2 to 3 hours per week for the honors and almost 2 hours for the non-honors group. participating in online social networks was very popular for both groups of students, with honors students spending from 3 to 5 hours and non-honors students spending 6 to 10 hours per week middle school honors program perceptions 17 enjoying this activity. in each of these activities, the non-honors students surpassed the honors students in the amount of time they spent on leisure activities, while the honors students spent more time on schoolwork-related activities. other leisure activities, including socializing with friends, performing household duties, exercising, playing video games, and watching television, were not significantly different between the two groups. in addition, there were no differences reported on time spent on schoolwork-related activities including talking with teachers outside of class and volunteering. looking at the aspiration goals, there were differences between importance of being skilled in their future career and becoming successful in a business of their own. all other goals, including becoming respected in a future career, raising a family, being wealthy, being in charge of others, helping others, creating original works, cleaning environments, promoting racial understanding, and understanding other cultures, were similar for both groups. the honors students rated higher the importance of being skilled in their future careers (t=-2.410, df=302, p<0.017), while non-honors students expressed that being successful in a business of their own was more important to them personally (t=3.154, df=302, p<0.002). honors students believed that becoming skilled (m=2.76) in their future career was very important and even necessary, but the non-honors students thought becoming skilled (m=2.60) was important, but not as necessary. being successful in a business of their own (m=2.44) for non-honors students was very important to even necessary, compared to (m=2.13) being very important for honors students. honors students’ perceptions of the honors program based on the responses provided by the honors students, 74% decided to enroll in the program due to their desire to learn and be challenged beyond the regular classroom. the students believed that the program would help them prepare for honors and ap classes in high school and college (14%), and some felt that the program would benefit their future (18%). in current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 reference to the question regarding the importance of doing well in school, the majority of the honors students (98%) valued education due to the belief that it will benefit them in the future. one student summarized his thinking as, “i believe that education is very important because my parents work very hard to have food on the table, and i see them wanting a better life for me and my sister. i also want to support them when they get old and can’t support themselves.” a small group of students (7%) were encouraged by their parents to join the program, and 6% were placed in the program by a teacher or an administrator and actually not aware of the program at first. other responses included a desire to be in advanced classes with students who want to succeed, or to be in classes with friends. according to the honors students in the survey the perceived benefits of the program included challenge (40%), higher level of learning (30%), preparation for the future (23%), special activities (17%), being a part of a great program (13%), higher level of teacher support (8%), and friendships with better students (4%). the negatives expressed by the students enrolled in the first year of the program included too much work (49%), pressure from higher expectations (17%), too much of a challenge (28%), unmotivated peers (7%), disorganization (5%), friendship with students who feel negatively about not being in the honors program (3%), boring teachers (3%), and being labeled as nerds (1%). non-honors students’ perception of the honors program the students who were not in the honors program described their feelings about the program very similarly to the honors students. non-honors students decided not to enroll in the program due to 41% not being ready for the challenge, 15% applied but did not get in, 14% believed that their grades were too low, 9% were not aware of the opportunity that existed, 5% liked their regular classes, 3% believed it was too nerdy, 3% were too busy for extra work, and middle school honors program perceptions 19 1% believed that the students in the honors program were elitist. eighty percent of these students also expressed that education was very important, 14% believed it somewhat important, and 3% claimed it was not important. the non-honors students did saw positives of the honors program, which included learning at a higher level (34%), preparation for high school and college (24%), special activities, which include projects, privileges, field trips, and extra support (18%), smart peers (8%), higher expectations (7%), and recognition (3%). the negatives expressed included more work (33%), increased work difficulty (26%), superiority (10%), stress (5%), boredom (3%), and a difficult adjustment to a faster-paced work environment (3%). perceptions of honors and non-honors students by their counterparts and each other most non-honors students (49%) ranked themselves as average for their section or above average (41%), but believed that the honors students were higher in academic ability. eighty-two percent of the students believed that the honors students were higher in academic ability, intelligence, motivation, and social skills, while 16% believed they were average in all categories. twenty-two percent of non-honors students believed that in spite of being in honors, the honors students’ social skills were not above average, 4% believed they were elitist, and 4% saw them as smart and hardworking. other labels expressed included fast thinkers, overachievers, and nerds. honors students compared themselves as average (60%) or above average (34%) in their honors class. seventy-six percent saw themselves as higher than an average student in academic ability, motivation, intelligence, and social skills, and 18% claimed they were average. eleven percent saw their peers’ within the honors group as not having higher social skills than an average student, in spite of the higher characteristics in motivation, intelligence, competition, and responsibility. teachers’ perceptions of the honors program current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 teachers supported the honors program due to the need to challenge students who need and want the challenge; it tapped into creative and enriching opportunities for students; it prepared students for high school; it raised the bar across all levels; and it was rewarding to both students and teachers. when asked about having an honors program specifically at the middle school level, 16 (80%) honors teachers agreed it was beneficial for all students, and 4 (20%) sixth grade teachers stated that it should be implemented in 7th grade, after a strong foundation building, including study habits, work habits, and organization in sixth grade. non-honors teachers had similar answers, with 17 (85%) supporting the program’s existence at the middle school, and 3 (15%) opposing it due to tracking that occurs within the program. challenging work, preparation for high school and in-depth study of topics were mentioned most frequently as the benefits of the program by teachers. additional benefits for honors students participating in the program included a higher level of work, enriching opportunities, creativity, higher expectations, respect, developing a work ethic, having an academic peer group, and not being slowed down by standardized tests or less proficient students. the disadvantages mentioned most frequently included stress from a higher workload and an elitist attitude that may come with the honors label. other disadvantages for honors students, included lack of flexibility in scheduling and choosing of honors classes, failing students, perceived entitlement, and large class size. the strengths for teachers in the honors programs included creativity, a challenging curriculum, interest level, supportive parents, inspiring students, higher levels of participation, access to materials, training, student achievement, and collaboration with other honors teachers. the weaknesses for teachers were large classes requiring multiple curriculum preparations, unmotivated students, various levels of student abilities, keeping true to the honors expectations, middle school honors program perceptions 21 a higher level of pressure, lack of curriculum, and lack of input in the program’s decision making. honors students’ characteristics (ideal versus real) identifiable expectations for the characteristics of honors students were brought into the middle school level. when teachers were asked how they view an ideal middle school honors students, their responses were recorded in by the frequency mentioned. most teachers mentioned that higher academic, learning, and personal abilities should be present in honors students. academic ability was expected to be average to above average in reading and writing. in addition, the honors students needed to have high grades, complete assignments, use higher levels of thinking, seek challenges, and to perform to the best of his/her ability. they were expected to be competent, independent and quick learners, as well as, show high interest and high performance on standardized tests. the ideal honors student’s learning goals needed to be higher; also, the student should be an intrinsic learner who was motivated to learn, be involved in class, helpful, goal-oriented, and willing to struggle to learn. personal habits desired in the honors student by teachers included valuing learning, staying on task, meeting deadlines, having higher study skills, and completing homework. teachers described an ideal honors student as hardworking, competitive, creative, organized, prepared, considerate, responsible, disciplined, diligent, cooperative, and intrinsically motivated. next, the teachers rated their average honors student’s qualities as compared to the average non-honors student their age. the likert scale was used to compute their answers with means reported for honors and non-honors teachers’ responses. the score of 1 meant that the students were in the lowest 10% of their grade, 2 meant below average, 3 was average, 4 above average, and 5 highest 10% of the grade. both the honors and non-honors teachers rated the honors students in their building similarly, as shown by the means (m) in table 2. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 ___________________________________________________________________ table 2 rating of honors student’s qualities as compared to a non-honors student in the district by teachers and honors students ________________________________________________________________________ variable non-honors honors honor non-honors teachers’ m teachers’ m students’ m students’ m ________________________________________________________________________ academic ability 4.2 4.35 4.17 3.59 artistic ability 3.39 3.45 3.40 3.14 competitiveness 4.05 3.85 3.77 3.66 computer skills 3.83 4.05 3.86 3.59 cooperativeness 4.0 4.1 4.09 3.66 creativity 3.65 4.1 4.26 3.88 drive to achieve 4.37 4.1 4.41 3.88 emotional health 3.72 3.8 3.95 3.64 leadership ability 3.94 3.9 4.14 3.86 mathematical ability 4.19 4.05 4.13 3.33 physical health 3.27 3.55 4.14 3.82 public speaking 3.67 3.9 3.54 3.53 self-confidence 4.22 4.15 4.34 4.09 (intellectual) self-confidence 3.65 3.95 4.23 4.22 (social) self-understanding 3.82 3.75 4.13 4.11 understanding of 3.63 3.8 4.24 4.1 others writing ability 4.32 4.1 3.89 3.9 middle school honors program perceptions 23 ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ based on the rating of the honors students by honors and non-honors teachers, academically related characteristics, including writing ability (m=4.32, m=4.1), mathematical ability (m=4.19, m=4.05), computer skills (m=3.83, m=4.05), intellectual self-confidence (m=4.22, m=4.15), and academic ability (m=4.2, m=4.35), had scores that were close to or well above average. social skills, including understanding of others (m=3.63, m=3.8), social selfconfidence (m=3.65, m=3.95), public speaking ability (m=3.67, m=3.9), leadership ability (m=3.94, m=3.9), competitiveness (m=4.05, m=3.85), and emotional health (m=3.72, m=3.8) were only slightly above average for their age group. personal habits, including physical health (m=3.27, m=3.55), creativity (m=3.51, m=4.1), and artistic ability (m=3.39, m=3.45), fell between average and above average with the exception of cooperativeness (m=4, m=4.01) and drive to achieve (m=4.37, m=4.1), which rated above average for honors students. in general, honors students were lacking superior characteristics that teachers expect from the honors students, which were shown very similarly by both the honors and non-honors teachers’ scores. however, the honors students rated their physical health (m=4.14), social self-confidence (m=4.23), self-understanding (m=4.13), and understanding of others (m=4.24) as being above average for their age group, which was higher than teacher perceptions. non-honors students’ ratings of themselves were shown in comparison to the honors students, with significant differences (p<0.005) shown in academic ability, artistic ability, computer skills, cooperativeness, motivation to achieve, emotional health, leadership ability, mathematical ability, physical health, and intellectual self-confidence, which was explained in table 2. all other characteristics were rated as a non-significant difference between honors and non-honors students in self-reporting. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 furthermore, the honors teachers compared the honors students they taught to non-honors students in their classes, and results showed similar findings. the greatest differences appeared in the work ethic and higher level thinking that honors students were able to express. an honors teacher explained: they seem to have entered into abstract thought (many of them) and they are very aware of their own world. they seem to have a sense of right and wrong and can give rationales for why they think what they think. so overall, they seem to be critical thinkers, better writers, and better readers. most teachers reported that even though their honors students are capable of high performance, many at the middle school level seemed to lack habits of personal responsibility and motivation. this was indicated by teachers of the honors students: most are average, as far as being independent learners, with not accepting responsibility for completing work. they are more concerned and aware about grades, but some seem to be okay with getting a c in the class; learning goals for most are a little above average; they are more focused on how things today will affect their future (long term goals); and academically, they are higher than regular students. overall, the honors students tended to be stronger academically than the regular students; however, some were unmotivated. honors teachers focus more on enriching opportunities instead of remedial reading and writing skills, since most students in the honors classes are reading on their grade level. as explained by an honors teacher: “students are more willing to interact and have discussions with peers they are not friends with. they are more focused and on-task. they have already mastered eligible content, so higher order thinking is at the middle school honors program perceptions 25 forefront.” teachers stressed that mastery of background knowledge makes teaching more enjoyable and rewarding. teachers’ were able to dive deeper into content, without having to slow down, as explained by this honors teacher: i include less time for guided teaching (reading, note-taking, review) and more time for supplemental content (more connections to modern day, more projects, and more discussion). i require considerably more work. the climate tends to be more workfocused, though there are two significant behavior problem students who bring down the class climate. also, the honors students were slightly more mature socially, which made the class climate more conducive to learning due to fewer disinterested and disruptive students. yet, personal habits left more to be desired from these students and should be addressed in the middle school curricula. discussion this study provides an overview of the middle school honors program in a district located in south central pennsylvania following its first year of implementation. the study confirms that the middle school honors students’ characteristics differ from college students in social skills and maturity. in this middle school study, the general perceptions of an honors program were similar to college level findings. the benefits of the program are experienced by both teachers and students enrolled in the program, and the honors classes are perceived as more challenging than non-honors classes. middle school honors teachers report the use of more discussions, projects, and exploration of in-depth content through more challenging materials in their honors classes, as opposed to their regular classes. this is consistent with kulik and kulik’s (1992) findings in high schools and mckeauge’s (1984) finding in colleges. ideally, in the middle schools, teachers have higher expectations of maturity, ability, and motivation for honors students, which is reported by morris (2005) for high schools as well; however, the reality for the middle school is current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 different. the honors students in this study are perceived higher academically and in motivation by teachers and students, but not in maturity. an inference that the middle school student does not necessarily increase in maturity, simultaneously with their increase in academic ability and motivation, can be drawn from the responses of the teachers and the students in this study. cohen’s (1985) evaluation of the college hp found that faculty and students benefit from honors classes by having minimal commitment, smaller class sizes, increased exposure to higher ability students, and overall satisfaction. in middle school, teachers are satisfied with the program and are exposed to higher ability students; however, their commitment is higher due to an increased amount of work and lack of curriculum. in addition, the class size is much larger than in their non-honors classes. most middle school honors students wanted the increased level of work that the program offers; however, their commitment to the program may be lower due to the lower social maturity of the middle school students. they may desire to do well; yet controlling their impulsiveness may prove to be more difficult, thus reflecting in decreased performance at school. even within the first year of the implementation, there are noticeable differences in students who take the opportunity that the program offers. darity et al. (2001) found that a majority of high school students decline placement in honors courses due to a lack of willingness to work hard and conflicts with class schedules, extracurricular activities, or employment. the middle school students have some similar reasons, including not being ready for the challenge and time conflicts; in addition, they believe that their grades are too low, some were not aware of the opportunity, some like their regular classes, several believe hp is too nerdy, and a few report that the students in the honors program are elitist. as the program becomes institutionalized and more students learn about it, it would be interesting to reevaluate this finding. middle school honors program perceptions 27 from the honors teachers’ responses in teaching differences for the honors classes as opposed to their non-honors classes, the honors classes receive more projects, discussions, and in-depth content. even if the standard curriculum is lacking, the teachers make modifications for their honors students in order to challenge them further than the regular class allows, which is the objective of the hp. from this finding, it can be concluded that teachers know the goals of the program, and even without the support they need, they feel obligated to accommodate their honors students by providing them with higher educational opportunities that mirror their increased academic abilities. the middle school honors students think that doing well in school is more important, have higher overall grade point averages, and have higher-educated parents. the students who choose to enroll in the program do so because they feel the need to be challenged at a higher rate than is offered in a regular classroom, and believe that the program will help in preparing them for honors and advanced placement classes in high school, and, eventually in college, which are the goals of the hp. they also believe that the program will expose them to better teachers and peers and offer more recognition. the first semester college student’s expectations of the honors college were identical to the middle school expectation of the hp, except, of course, in housing (christopher, 2005). the expectations of the honors programs seem to be carried down from college and high school to middle schools. rinn (2007) found that gifted honors students have both higher academic achievement and higher academic self-concepts than their gifted non-honors counterparts. there were no differences in the aspiration of these college students. this study, however, found academic achievement and grades to be higher in middle school honors students, as pertaining to academic self-concept in areas of academic ability, artistic ability, computer skills, cooperativeness, creativity, motivation to achieve, emotional health, leadership ability, mathematical ability, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 28 physical health, and intellectual self-confidence. in this selfreported study, middle school honors students reported higher in the belief that doing well in school is very important. with aspiration, the difference was found in honors students’ desire to be skilled in their future career, as opposed to non-honors students’ desire to succeed in their own business. in the george mason university’s (2005) study, which used the same quantitative survey questions as this study, the major difference was that the honors students had a higher gpa and needed less remedial work in high school than their non-honors counterparts. this holds true for the middle school honors students as well. mason’s honors college students rated their personal qualities as more driven to achieve, higher in academic, mathematical, writing, public speaking, and leadership ability than its non-honors peers. this finding was confirmed for motivation to achieve, academic ability, leadership ability, and mathematic ability for the middle school honors students. in addition, honors college students rated themselves as higher in intellectual self-confidence and lower in cooperativeness and social self-confidence (gentemann, zhou, zamon, & mcshery, 2006). gmu honors freshmen reported that improving their understanding of other countries and culture is their top aspiration goal, while non-honors freshmen reported being very well off financially is their top priority. non-honors freshmen rated being in charge of others, being well off, and becoming successful in a business of their own, as higher than the honors college students (gentemann, et al., 2006). besides becoming successful in a business of their own, these personal goals are different from the goals of the middle school students in this study. when comparing the perceptions of the college honors students as rated by their nonhonors peers, waggoner (1963) found that honors students were characterized as more intellectual, studious, thorough, precise, accurate, persistent, industrious, logical, responsible, middle school honors program perceptions 29 orderly, and capable, all of which are traits of successful students. comparing that to responses provided by middle school non-honors students, honors students were described as being higher in academic ability, intelligence, motivation, social skills, and critical thinking. other labels used are elitist, overachieving, nerdy, and hardworking, which is consistent with general pattern of waggoner’s findings. however, with regards to socialization, the responses of both honors and non-honors students were not as similarly favorable, with many students believing that honors students are just average in social skills. this may be due to the individual developmental stage of each middle school student. some of these students are just entering the formative stage of development, while many others are in the concrete stage. this may explain why socially they lack the maturity that honors college students possess. both teachers and students agree that middle school honors students rated higher academically compared to their non-honors counterparts. this is based on the criteria needed to enter an honors program, in which this school district includes high grades, high scores on standardized tests, teacher recommendations, and a writing sample. it is not confirmed whether these middle school students continue with the high performance on the standardized tests after their enrollment in the program, which was found in kulik’s (1982) study in high school honors students. however, socially, there are no screening criteria used to determine the student’s level of psychological development. as a result, many students lack good personal habits, due to immature brain development (yurgelon-todd, 2002). with the frontal cortical system being underdeveloped, students lack motivation, and tend to be highly impulsive. even these honors adolescents have trouble focusing on long term goals, including the value for education (bjork, et al., 2004; chambers, taylor, & potenza, 2003). a majority of students reported value in education due to a belief that it will help them in the future. however, many are making poor current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 30 choices even in the honor’s program, as reported by both student and the teacher participants. with the implementation of the honors program in the middle school, it is important to understand that the students are just searching for identity and tend to value their peers more than their parents, so the program must try to help students move to the last developmental stage. these social and personal habits are the main quality difference between findings for middle school students, as opposed to college students, who tend to rate higher than their non-honors counterparts in both areas. college students have reached formative stages of development, which may explain the difference in social maturity demonstrated between collegiate and middle school students. this study supports the finding that minority students are underrepresented in the honors program even within this urban district, which has a high number of minority students. lucas, hull, and brantley’s (1995) finding, which shows that majority of honors program participants are white and female, was true in this district. based on the district’s demographics, white students were overrepresented in the honors program at 37.5%, while 19.5% of the white students are enrolled in the district. asian american students were overrepresented (6.6%), since asian and other students make up only 2.3% of the total students in this district. overall, many of the findings for college and high school honors programs are confirmed in this study: the benefits of the program, with the exception of the class size and curriculum; student and teacher satisfaction with the hp; teacher’s teaching methods, with the exception of independence and self-expression; perceptions of the honors students academically; reasons for and against the enrollment; and the overrepresentation of female and white students in the program. the differences in benefits for teachers in the middle school program are lower personal and social skills (maturity) than expected from the honors students. middle school honors program perceptions 31 the hypothesis that the middle school honors, like college and high school students rating in the areas of academic abilities, personal habits, and aspirations, will be higher than the non-honors students was confirmed in a few areas. the areas of academic ability, artistic ability, computer skills, cooperativeness, creativity, motivation to achieve, emotional health, leadership ability, mathematical ability, physical health, and intellectual self-confidence were higher for the honors students. negative personal habits of partying and participating in online social networks are higher for non-honors students, while positive habits of reading for pleasure, completing studying and homework, and participating in student groups are higher for honors students. honors students’ positive personal habit of supporting opinions with facts is higher than in the non-honors students. in addition, being respected in their future career is more important to honors students, while being successful in a business of their own is more important to nonhonors students. all other areas of academic, personal, and aspiration ratings were similar for the two groups, which is different from college students reporting, which is higher for honors students in all areas. middle school honors students do not have the same qualities as high school and college honors students, which reinforces the need for further research on the middle school hp. there are limitations for this study, the largest one being the overall population of the district which is diverse and urban, thus not representing all districts. limitations include the ability to generalize findings to other populations who may not have the same characteristics as the diverse urban community in this district. the validity of the survey instrument may be questioned due to its initial design that is intended for honors colleges and additional questions that were generated without a statistical pilot test. more research is needed on the middle school honors program as these programs continue to be implemented, thus impacting the students who choose to take advantage of the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 32 academic challenges provided through the program. these programs shape personal and social identities of the high school students enrolled in these classes (yonezawa, wells, & serna, 1992), which may hold true at the middle school level as well. this study provided a crucial step in measuring perceptions of the honors program in general by teachers and students; however, future studies should focus on the long-term effects of this program on students and communities. are middle school students truly better off when they are enrolled and complete the program, like high school students who take ap classes (creech, 1995)? do they make more money, have a better education, and succeed later in life? the performance of students who are enrolled in this program should be continued and some tracking studies have begun this process. including interviews of students in the program would provide useful and enriching data for measuring the whole experience of being in the honors program at the middle school level. finding a more standardized test of measure would be useful with the comparison in performances of the students in the middle school. having a national organization similar to the national collegiate honors council would be extremely beneficial in developing a standardized way of implementing the hp in the middle school, measuring honors performance, training the teachers, and providing a clear set of expectations for all schools. this communication would be a tremendous assistance to schools, teachers, students, and parents as they decide to become a part of this growing program. middle school honors program perceptions 33 references american psychological association. 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(2002). inside the teen brain. retrieved september 18, 2007, from http://www.pbs./org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/ interviews/todd.html. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 38 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word 786-2891-3-le.docx 1 volume 14, number 2 june 21, 2011 issn 1099-839x a brief overview on using technology to engage students in mathematics joan m. raines linda m. clark middle tennessee state university incorporating and using technology in teaching mathematics can encourage students to become active participants in the classroom. this paper gives a brief overview of several technologies that can be used to enhance learning and motivate students to become engaged in the learning process. the technologies discussed include graphing calculators and computer-based tools such as presentation software (powerpoint) and computer/webbased instruction and practice. appropriate use of technology will get more students to think and reason mathematically; but, technology in and of itself is not a panacea that will resolve all students’ struggles. keywords: technology in mathematics, web-based instruction/practice, enhancing mathematics learning, graphing calculator technology, teaching/learning strategies motivating students in mathematics courses can be a challenging task. research findings suggest that when students are actively involved in the learning process, it leads to increased student learning and persistence, higher grades, and more thorough questioning (felder, 1992; bonwell & eison, 1991). incorporating and using technology in the teaching of mathematics can encourage students to become active participants in the classroom. several studies (ng & gunstone, 2002; dunham & dick, 1994; pomerantz, 1997) found technology could motivate students to learn mathematics. souter’s (2001) action research study examined five algebra classes involving four teachers and 92 ninth-grade students. he compared the effects of technology-enhanced algebra instruction with traditional algebra instruction and determined that integrating technology into mathematics can increase student achievement and motivation, foster positive student attitudes, and enhance student outcomes. after in-depth interviews and classroom observations of five middle school teachers from three middle schools in rural pennsylvania, kim, grabowski, and song (2003) concluded that using internet resources leads to active learning and motivates students to engage in the learning process. when graphing calculators are included in the learning process, students can approach problems using techniques that suit them best, which results in better performance and increased confidence (quesada, 1996). presentation software such as powerpoint leads to increased student motivation and better positive attitudes when students attend lecture classes (susskind, 2005). within the past few decades, the use of technology in the classroom has been rapidly increasing. the use of calculators and computers is widespread and technologyenhanced classrooms are more prevalent. in principles and standards for school mathematics (2000), the national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm) states “technology is essential in teaching and learning mathematics; it influences the mathematics that is taught and enhances students’ learning” (p. 24). they feel technology should be accessible to all students, but should not be used to replace basic understandings. the use of technological tools “cannot replace conceptual understanding, computational fluency, or problem-solving skills” (nctm, 2008, p. 6). however, “when technological tools are available, students can focus on decision making, reflection, reasoning, and problem solving” (nctm, 2000, current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 2 p. 24). recent evaluation studies suggest that instructional technology is thriving and can also make teaching more effective (kulik, 2003). various other research studies have examined the impact of technology on student learning and found its use is associated with skill development, content mastery, and increased exam scores (strayhorn, 2006; hofman, 2002; kulik & kulik, 1991). wenglinsky (1998) analyzed data from the 1996 national assessment of educational progress (naep) in mathematics, which included 6,227 fourth-graders and 7,146 eighth-graders. in his quantitative study, he found that technology did make a difference in academic achievement. wenglinsky also found that how the technology was used and teachers’ professional development in technology mattered. in his quantitative study, strayhorn (2007) used nationally representative data from the national study of postsecondary faculty to examine how and to what extent higher education faculty used technology in the classroom, and found there was room for improvement. using a sample of approximately 1400 higher education faculty, he found that 59.4% of all higher education faculty used email rather than websites or a combination of the two. strayhorn (2007) suggests faculty should create course websites to enhance student learning and use more than one form of technology in their teaching. a number of different technologies are being used in mathematics classrooms with varying degrees of success. the term “technology” can mean a variety of things from pencil and paper drill and practice exercises to tutorials on computers. in this paper, technology refers to graphing calculators and computer-based tools such as presentation software and computer/web-based instruction and practice. graphing calculator technology the first hand-held calculators appeared in the early 1970’s and could perform basic four-function operations. these simple calculators have evolved into ones that graph functions, manipulate algebraic expressions, solve systems of equations, and differentiate and integrate. graphing calculators are more prevalent in the classroom than other forms of technology due in part to affordability and accessibility. these calculators are valuable tools that allow students to achieve higher levels of conceptual understanding and expand their problem solving and critical thinking skills. however, teachers still debate whether or not to include the use of graphing calculators in the classroom. many research studies have confirmed the value of calculators in the classroom. dunham’s (2000) review of research confirms graphing calculators can enhance mathematical instruction, empower students to become better problem solvers, facilitate improved teaching and learning, and increase mathematical achievement. in their meta-analysis of 79 studies to assess the effects of calculator use on student achievement and attitude, hembree and dessart (1986) reported that students who use calculators along with traditional instruction maintain their paper and pencil skills with no apparent harm, and calculator use improved the paper and pencil skills of students regardless of their ability levels. their quantitative analysis also found testing with calculators produced higher achievement scores in both basic computational skills and problem solving. research analyzing the results of a metaanalysis of 88 studies on the effects of pre-college calculator use reported that calculator use did not hinder students’ acquisition of conceptual knowledge (hembree & dessart, 1992). additionally, calculator-enhanced instruction in the classroom increased test scores for low and average students. smith’s study (as cited in barton, 2001) extended the results of hembree and dessart’s research and concluded calculator usage had a positive effect in problem solving, on increasing conceptual knowledge, and in computation. his review of over 30 studies from 1984 to 1995 found students who used calculators had significantly higher achievement in mathematics and a significant difference also existed in students’ attitudes. smith also found calculator usage did not hinder the development of paper and pencil skills. waits and demana (2000) feel a balanced approach of using paper and pencil along with calculators is essential to the teaching and learning of mathematics. traditional arithmetic and algebraic skills are still important; however, students should understand why procedures work on an intuitive level before resorting to using the calculator (waits & demana, 2000). technology, such as the graphing calculator, allows students to explore more difficult problems and mathematical concepts in more detail. graphing calculator usage reduces time spent on tedious paper and pencil computations and allows students and teachers to spend that time developing deeper conceptual understandings and problem solving skills. when students use graphing calculators, they are more willing to engage in problem solving, use more strategies for solving problems, and increase their achievement (suydam, 1985). in a quasiexperimental study involving three eighth-grade general mathematics classes in a southeastern virginia middle school, merriweather and tharp (1999) investigated the effect of instruction with graphing calculators on students’ attitudes and ability to solve algebraic problems. students in the experimental and control groups were given surveys to assess their attitudes towards mathematics and calculator use. merriweather and tharp found students were able to solve problems with the calculator that they could not previously solve, saw the usefulness of mathematics, and were more excited and involved in their learning. through their review of research studies, dunham and dick (1994) also suggested students had more flexible approaches to problem solving, and were more willing to engage in problem solving and stay with it longer when calculators were available. a brief overview on using technology to engage students in mathematics 3 graphing technology also allows for the examination of multiple representations, and mathematical modeling using real data is possible due to the availability of these calculators. chandler (as cited in merriweather & tharp, 1999) found support for the position that there is a positive increase in understanding and achievement when students are able to visualize their work. kastberg and leatham (2005) maintain graphing calculators allow students to explore problems using graphical, numerical, and symbolic strategies and make links between these strategies. dunham (1993) concurs that these calculators lead to a better understanding of the connections among different representations. in addition, students who use graphing technology are better able to read and interpret graphical information and relate graphs to their equations. the nctm states that technology “enriches the range and quality of investigations by providing a means of viewing mathematical ideas from multiple perspectives” (nctm, 2000, p. 25). graphing calculators can help students realize that mathematics has value. instead of solving contrived problems, students can be given more interesting problems using real-world data. calculators simplify tasks but they do not do the real work. it is up to the student to read the problem, understand what is being asked, determine the appropriate approach to use to solve the problem, and interpret the solution to determine if it makes sense. graphing calculator technology should be used to enhance the study of mathematics and foster basic understanding, not replace it. calculators are learning tools, not computational crutches, that permit worthwhile explorations of mathematics. presentation software the use of presentation software, such as powerpoint, can provide structure to a lecture and aid in pacing and summarizing material presented. yet, there is some debate about the benefits of using this type of presentation software in the classroom (levasseur & sawyer, 2006; sugahara & boland, 2006). research regarding the impact of the program on academic achievement is mixed and research on using powerpoint in mathematics is scarce. however, many research studies have shown that using presentation software effectively could be beneficial to students (apperson, 2000; susskind, 2005; clark, 2008). research suggests that purposeful and welldesigned use of presentation software can enhance student learning since it can allow teachers to vary their method of delivery and appeal to students with a variety of learning styles. in a qualitative study, clark (2008) surveyed 46 college students to explore the impact of the use of powerpoint in lectures and found that students preferred powerpoint when used as a tool in the lecture. of the students surveyed, 89.13% indicated they believed powerpoint enhanced their learning. clark stated that students indicated the visual stimuli provided in a powerpoint presentation helped to gain and maintain their attention. she also noted that students viewed the use of presentation software as effective only when it was welldesigned and used by an interesting presenter. pearson, folske, paulson, and burggraf (1994) conducted a two year study of 168 students enrolled in a course that used computer-assisted multimedia presentations. their research indicated knowledge retention of material by students was greater with the use of presentation software than in traditional lecture classes. additionally, 94% of the students reported they enjoyed the course and two-thirds reported they learned more when powerpoint was used. szabo and hastings (2000) reported on earlier studies using powerpoint during lectures and the findings suggested the presentation software would increase students’ grades, improve class attendance, and reduce some disruptive behaviors during lectures. in their quantitative study of 155 students, szabo and hastings found students preferred powerpoint lectures but the use of the presentation software did not lead to better academic performance. they did find powerpoint lectures might benefit memory retention better than traditional lectures. apperson, laws, and scepansky (2006) echo the findings of szabo and hastings in that there were no significant differences in grades but students believed powerpoint facilitated their learning. investigating the benefits and effectiveness of instructional technology, data was collected from five faculty members and from students enrolled in ten different classes across two semesters. apperson et al. surmised that using powerpoint made for a better class experience for students from their point of view. while student engagement is increased with focus, instructors should be sure to design presentation software slides in a manner that allows them to communicate concepts and engage students in the material being taught (clark, 2008; stryker, 2010). students need to realize they cannot understand mathematics by observation alone; therefore, how the slides are designed and how much information they contain is critical when incorporating them into the lecture (stryker, 2010). mathematical content and pedagogy should not be compromised. discussing the use of presentation software in mathematics, stryker suggests creating slides with a minimal amount of information that allow the lecturer to control the technology and create an interactive learning opportunity. when teaching mathematics, it may seem difficult to incorporate presentation software. however, it can be done in a variety of ways. for example an instructor can use presentation software to create slides to publish for class notes or handouts to facilitate studying outside of the classroom. in the classroom, presentation software can be used to enhance a lecture when used to introduce or explore concepts or to provide creative opportunities to review material before exams. proponents of using powerpoint in class believe it improves learning through enhanced attention and improves current issues in education vol. 14 no. 2 4 recall of material presented. merely replacing traditional lecture with powerpoint does not improve academic performance, but it is an efficient ancillary that can improve learning. much of the research indicates students prefer it and feel they do better in classes that make use of the software. clearly, the research suggests that, as with the graphing calculator, presentation software should be used as a tool and not as that which drives a lecture. as with any technology, it should not be used in ways that can distract from the underlying mathematics. computer/web-based instruction and practice numerous studies have shown that computer technology, such as software and computer-based instruction, has a positive impact on and assists students in learning mathematics concepts. when used purposefully, computers can be important tools for improving student proficiency in mathematics and can enhance student outcomes (wenglinsky, 1998; souter, 2001). king (1997) performed a meta-analysis of 30 studies published from 1986 to 1995 to investigate the effect of computer-enhanced instruction on college level mathematics and student achievement. his results showed there was a positive influence on student achievement when computers were used either in the classroom or a lab setting and when students were allowed to use technology while testing. king also found that using computers in instruction, including for demonstrations, was most beneficial. kulik and kulik’s (1991) meta-analysis of findings from 254 controlled evaluation studies that compared student learning in classes taught with and without computer-based instruction showed that computer-based instruction had positive effects on student exam scores and attitudes. in kulik’s (2003) review of literature, five of six evaluation studies comparing a computer tutoring group with a control group found the effects of the computer tutoring was “statistically significant and educationally meaningful” (p. 59). other studies have shown that students who use computer-based instruction or web-based practice find doing math more enjoyable, participate more in class, and have less anxiety concerning mathematics. nguyen and kulm’s (2005) quantitative study on web-based instruction involved two different middle schools in southeast texas with 95 students from six mathematics classes. students were randomly assigned to an experimental group using web-based instruction and practice and a control group that did paper and pencil practice. nguyen and kulm’s results revealed that students who used a web-based approach to instruction had significantly higher mathematics achievement on posttests than those using paper and pencil approaches. their results indicate web-based practice and instruction can improve student learning, aid in self-motivation in learning math and in problem solving, and allow students to have independent practice. student evaluation of web-based practice shows they are willing to spend the time it takes to improve their scores and gain better understandings of the mathematical knowledge required to solve problems (nguyen & kulm, 2005). hodge, richardson, and york (2009) investigated the effects of using a web-based homework tool on student motivation and perceptions of learning in a college algebra course. their quantitative study collected survey data from 1394 students. they found students felt the web-based homework increased their mathematical understanding more than conventional paper and pencil work. their results also suggest students were motivated to complete more homework possibly due to the immediate feedback they receive (hodge, richardson, & york, 2009). mavrikis and maciocia (2003) discovered that immediate feedback is one of the most important issues in web-based practice. immediate feedback encourages low-achieving students to practice more and builds confidence in students unsure about their understandings of mathematical concepts and procedures. additionally, students are able to master material by correcting their own mistakes. web-based courseware can be used to provide tutorials and practice with immediate feedback, teach and reinforce concepts, review, and check solutions. speckler (2007, 2008) states web-based courseware improves students’ success rates including higher levels of success in subsequent mathematics courses. furthermore, using webbased courseware for practice and instruction motivates students to do more homework, engages students in active learning, and improves retention rates. white’s (2006) study examined final exam scores of students in a finite mathematics course who used web-based courseware with those who did not, and found significant differences in performance between the two groups. the sample for her quantitative study consisted of 193 students from three of sixteen centers at a florida college during fall 2004 and spring 2005 semesters. white’s results found the final exam scores for those using the online courseware were significantly higher than those not using the courseware. technology alone will not improve instruction, but web-based instruction and practice have been shown to motivate students to complete homework leading to mastery of mathematical concepts. using web-based homework tools provides instant feedback to students regarding the correctness of their work, while allowing them to rectify their mistakes. conclusion technology affects mathematics and teachers in many ways. according to quesada (1996), technology is “forcing us to reevaluate not only what topics we teach, but also in what order we teach them, and what approach we follow while introducing a topic” (p. 162). ellington (2003) concurs, stating “technology and the pedagogical changes resulting from it have a decisive impact on what is included in the mathematics curriculum” (p. 433). this sentiment is also reflected by the nctm in the principles and standards for school mathematics. how mathematics is taught and learned as well as what math is taught and a brief overview on using technology to engage students in mathematics 5 when are now being influenced by technology (nctm, 2000). therefore, educators need to consider how technology will affect what mathematics will be taught. many teachers find it challenging to incorporate technology into their courses and some are still reluctant to even use it. the reluctance to let students use technology as a mathematical tool promotes inequities that can affect them throughout their mathematical careers. while effective use of technology can improve student learning and teaching, just having the technology available does not automatically mean better instructional outcomes. teachers need to decide what, how, when, and where technology will be used, and if it will enhance or hinder student understandings. additionally, teachers need to be provided with opportunities to become knowledgeable regarding the various technologies that are available and to dispel any misconceptions or doubts regarding the use of technology. they need to learn not only how to use the technology, but also why its use is important. the incorporation of technology often provides opportunities to engage all learners, and its potential in the teaching and learning of mathematics is unlimited. the appropriate use of technology will get more students thinking and reasoning mathematically (pomerantz, 1997). but, technology in and of itself is not a panacea that will resolve all students struggles. technology, in any form, is a tool for achieving instructional goals. as with any teaching tool, it can be used effectively or poorly. references apperson, j.m., laws, e.l., & scepansky, j.a. 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(2000). calculators in mathematics teaching and learning: past, present, and future. in m.j. burke & f. r. curcio (eds.), learning mathematics for a new century: 2000 yearbook of the national council of teachers of mathematics (pp. 51-66). reston, va: nctm. wenglinsky, h. (1998). does it compute? the relationship between educational technology and student achievement in mathematics. (report no. pictechnolog). retrieved from educational testing service website: http://www.ets.org/media/research/pdf/pictech nolog.pdf white, j.a. (2006). significant differences in student performance between students who do and do not utilize coursecompass. florida scientist, 69(4), 236-241. a brief overview on using technology to engage students in mathematics 7 article citation raines, j. m. & clark, l. m. (2011). a brief overview on using technology to engage students in mathematics. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/786 author notes joan m. raines middle tennessee state university p.o. box 16, murfreesboro, tn 37132 jraines@mtsu.edu joan m. raines, ed.d., is an assistant professor at middle tennessee state university where she teaches mathematics. some of her research interests include using technology to enhance learning and using active learning to engage at risk students. linda m. clark middle tennessee state university p.o. box 16, murfreesboro, tn 37132 lmclark@mtsu.edu linda m. clark, ed.d., is an associate professor at middle tennessee state university where she teaches mathematics. some of her research interests include using technology in teaching, student success, and access to higher education. current issues in education vol. 14 no.2 8 volume 14, number 2 june 21, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp anglea hines younsu kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 2, number 5 september 30, 1999 issn 1099-839x effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking barry leshowitz kristen eignor dicerbo scott symington arizona state university this article describes a college course in critical thinking. offered in the psychology department at arizona state university, this active-learning course provides instruction in how to apply principles of (scientific) methodological reasoning and optimum decision making to problems faced in everyday-life situations. students learn to evaluate statistical and scientific evidence, clarify personal and societal values, and anticipate the consequences of their actions in dealing with personally significant issues. crime and punishment, societal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, alcohol abuse, and racial stereotypes comprise a partial list of topics addressed in the class. using internet links to recorded classroom discussions archived on the world wide web, the article provides qualitative support for a three-level model of critical thinking. this model attempts to account for the progression of methodological reasoning skills and related dispositions that takes place over the course of the semester. [realplayer needed to view video clips in this article.] a special note from the authors our paper makes extensive use of webcasts (broadcasts of the class transmitted over the internet). these video clips allow the reader to see active-learning teaching methodology, student reactions, and changes in students' critical thinking skills that occurred in the course. the videos show the progress of students over time lend credibility to our analysis of the teaching and learning process. we would not have been able to display with visual images this longitudinal progression in a standard paper format. we believe that video clips are also valuable because communication is more than just words; people speak to us through facial expressions, body language, and voice tone. the webcasts allow readers to witness for themselves what the students are communicating. one specific situation that leant itself to display in a webcast was the development of graphic analysis of data. the readers can observe the students' progress analyzing claims in terms of dependent and independent variables. we observe students determining how the variables were measured, what subjects comprised the sample, and other details of the particular study. a standard paper format would be adequate for displaying the graph, but the videos allow for an examination of the process that led to the graph. finally, the videos break up with some entertaining moments what might otherwise be a somewhat tedious presentation of a program of classroom instruction. introduction "the goal of instruction should be to allow students to deal sensibly with problems that often involve evidence, quantitative consideration, logical arguments, and uncertainty; without the ability to think critically and independently, citizens are easy prey to dogmatists, flimflam artists, and purveyors of simple solutions to complex problems" (american association for the advancement of science, 1989). unfortunately, the results of any number of national and international studies indicate that few high school graduates (or entering college students) are able to http://www.real.com/ current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 2 apply higher-order thinking skills to problems faced in everyday life (see e.g. nsf, 1996). controlled studies in psychology and education confirm this finding. they indicate that most students have difficulty in (a) identifying and defining problems from multiple perspectives; (b) detecting gaps in knowledge and information; (c) establishing cause-effect relationships; (d) distinguishing facts from opinions or personal values; (e) accepting unfavorable information; and (f) evaluating costs and benefits of risky decisions (arons, 1979; baron, 1988; fiske & taylor, 1991; gigerenzer, 1996; kahneman & tversky, 1996; leshowitz, 1989; leshowitz & yoshikawa, 1996; nisbett & ross, 1980; stanovich & west, 1998; whimbey & lockhead, 1986). in an exhaustive study evaluating the thinking of students in high school, college, and graduate school and comparison groups of nonstudents, perkins (1985) has reached similar conclusions. post-primary education appears to have little impact on students' reasoning about everyday events, and number of years of education is only a borderline significant predictor of reasoning ability. one explanation for the poor performance of students in reasoning and other higher-order thinking skills is the nature of the educational experience typically encountered in our classrooms. educational researchers have long observed that instruction at all levels does not emphasize information-processing skills. instead of making the development of reasoning a priority, most instruction forces a large fraction of students into blind memorization. for the great majority of high school and college students, education is limited to reproducing isolated facts that they have been taught are "true"(aaas, 1989; adey, 1988; jungwirth & dreyfus, 1990; goodlad, 1983; layton, 1986; loria, mantovani & nasi, 1984; thelen, 1987; nsf, 1966). unschooled in the processes of inquiry, it is hardly surprising that many students do not know how to seek evidence for claims or evaluate data so as to extract meaningful conclusions in their effort to make informed decisions and solve problems. these limitations of instruction have not gone unrecognized by the educational establishment. to remedy this situation in k-12 education, state and federal departments of education under the leadership of blueribbon panels of educators have introduced inquiry-based standards in history, math, science, and art, among other areas. the science-education community has been especially active in educational reform. at the college level, for example, the national science foundation, the american association for the advancement of science, and the national academy of sciences have cooperated closely in launching a nation-wide effort aimed at facilitating inquiry-based instruction in science, math, engineering, and technology (nsf, 1996). in the past decade, advocates of instruction in critical thinking also have been active in the education reform movement at all levels and across the curriculum. reflecting many of the concerns of science educators, proponents of critical thinking have focused on higherorder reasoning skills and related thinking dispositions as the major goal of instruction (paul, 1990). halpern (1989, p. 5) has used the term "critical thinking" to describe the cognitive processes "involved in solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihood, and making decisions." lipman (1988) has written extensively on the criteria for evaluating critical thinking. he has defined critical thinking as thinking that meets accepted criteria within the discipline, is sensitive to context, is self-corrective, and is manifested as a propensity to give sound reasons in reaching judgments, making decisions, solving problems, and taking action. the close correspondence between the dimensions of critical thinking described by halpern and lipman and many of the practices of the inquiring scientist is noteworthy. this observation has had important implications for the development of my (the first author's) program of instruction in critical thinking and provides the point of departure for the present paper. below we describe a course in effective thinking that attempts to facilitate the development of the skills of critical thinking through practical instruction in methodological reasoning. methodological reasoning refers to the rules of the scientific method that emphasize posing questions in terms of relationships between variables, formulating alternative hypotheses, testing these hypotheses, collecting data, drawing (causal) inferences, reaching warranted conclusions, and making informed decisions. these "are the kinds of skills that people must have in some measure in order to live effectively in the world" (lehman et al., 1988, p. 441). in collaboration with students over several years, i have developed and demonstrated programs in critical thinking for college and high school students (leshowitz, jenkens, heaton, & bough, 1993; leshowitz & yoshikawa, 1996). the cornerstone of my instruction is the application of elements of methodological reasoning to relevant, often emotionally charged problems confronted in everyday life. these practices include the methods for identifying problems, proposing alternative hypotheses, conducting scientific studies, using descriptive statistics and graphs to analyze data, doing causal analysis, and making valid inferences. in addition to instruction in methodological reasoning, my class addresses the role of personal values, ethical and moral beliefs, and cost/benefits in normative (or optimal) decision making. these personal, social, and historical factors provide the background or context for making evidence-based decisions. the overall goal of my instruction in critical thinking is to prepare students to take action based on what is objectively known and what they subjectively value. preliminary empirical support for the effectiveness of my instruction has been presented elsewhere effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking 3 (leshowitz, 1989; leshowitz & yoshikawa, 1996; leshowitz, dicerbo & okun, 1999). (detailed findings evaluating my program will be included in future papers.) briefly, the results of several nonequivalent-control-group studies indicate that methodological reasoning, metacognitive insights, skepticism, reliance on intuition, cognitive bias, and resistance to attitude change, among other dimensions of critical thinking, change significantly over the course of the semester. a psychology course in effective thinking a principal focus of this article is to illustrate the active-learning, discovery-based instructional techniques that i use in my psychology course, effective thinking. the course is an elective that meets arizona state university's general studies first-level requirement for literacy and critical inquiry. a course in finite mathematics or statistics and introductory psychology are prerequisites for the course. about 25 students, representing psychology majors and nonmajors in about equal proportions, comprise the course's enrollment each semester. emphasizing problems of direct concern to college students to encourage personal involvement, the course provides hands-on, real-world-based experience in dealing with everyday-life situations (de sanchez, 1995). the following is a partial list of the personally meaningful, often highly-charged issues addressed in the course: the psychological effects of divorce on children, use of untested drugs for terminally-ill patients, formation of racial stereotypes, binge drinking in college students, and acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle in the local community. the goal of the course is to help students understand how to use methodological reasoning in gathering, analyzing, and integrating information for the purpose of making informed decisions in everyday life. to illustrate how the class learns to apply methodological reasoning to everyday problems, we present a vignette used in the class. imagine that pete smith, a typical college freshman, decides to "party" excessively in response to peer pressure. in a few weeks, he reports that he has made lots of friends and attributes his acceptance to his willingness to party in the manner his pals deem appropriate. this judgment is reached despite the fact that many events have taken place during this periodhe has dated a young woman in the "in" group, he is a good athlete, he has a keen sense of humor, and he seems to do well in class with minimum effort. pete's subjective validation of the effects of partying with alcohol on his sociability is not soundly reasoned since the effects of alcohol have not been isolated. in a discovery-based, highly interactive discussion that may include role-playing, the instruction addresses pete's flawed, "make-sense" thinking. in a rational investigation of what really is "so," the instructor might begin by asking the students to describe the scenario's major claim (or hypothesis) in terms of a relation between the antecedent (independent variable; alcohol) and the consequent condition (dependent variable; popularity). depicting the claim pictorially in a fully labeled graph helps students focus on the underlying claim and its empirical basis. students learn that an observed comparison between two groups is essential for establishing an association between variables. often students' preconceived ideas about the validity of the underlying claim lead them to assume the existence of a comparison when in fact none is available. in the course of the discussion, students discover that there is little objective support for pete's (and perhaps their own) firmly held views on the effects of alcohol and that their beliefs on the issue are essentially "illusory." during the course, students complete a plethora of written assignments. in-class and take-home exams (about 4), daily homework assignments (brief essays), at least three substantial papers of about five pages in length, and a cumulative final exam constitute a partial list of writing exercises. students complete about 45 writing assignments, totaling well over 100 pages. completion of these assignments, which requires about two hours of outside work for each hour of class time, involves gathering, interpreting, and evaluating information. popular media, such as newspaper and magazine articles and videos, along with students' own personal experiences constitute the sources of information analyzed. there is no assigned textbook. realistic communication formats, such as memoranda, letters-to-the editor, structured interviews, and investigative reports, are used whenever possible. final grades are determined by assessing the general level of performance (numerical averages are not computed), paying special attention to progress in the late stages of the course. asking students to confront highly controversial issues in a classroom environment can lead to frustration in some students, especially at the outset of the course. to help overcome this problem, i enlist the assistance of peer tutors. each semester, i select outstanding undergraduates from previous semesters to serve as peer tutors. given course credit for their participation in the program, peer tutors provide assistance in all aspects of the course. by providing detailed written comments and assessments of assignments, the peer tutors help their students explore the assumptions on which they base their personal opinions and beliefs. peer tutors may ask for clarification of terms, reasoned support for opinions, acknowledgment of the influence of a personal bias, advantages of the opposing viewpoint, and/or consideration of values that might be affecting their thinking process. in-depth feedback on daily written assignments, we find, solidifies the relationship among the instructor, the peer tutors, and the students (mackeachie, 1986). in this highly supportive learning environment, the peer tutors and i help our students to realize that their ideas, contributions, successes, and frustrations are taken into account by all of the participants. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 4 qualitative evidence the course relies heavily on active-learning and discovery-based techniques that facilitate development of the skills and dispositions underlying critical thinking. in an attempt to demonstrate these active-learning techniques and the students' reactions to the course's instruction, we present below internet links to archived audio/video clips of class discussions recorded in my classroom. these segments examine problematic situations, ranging from simulated mock-jury deliberations and investigations of untested drugs, to an examination of gay marriage in a local community. the clips illustrate how i attempt to reduce active learning in critical thinking to classroom practice. these clips also serve as qualitative evidence that allows researchers to "seek explanation of what the program is doing, why it follows the course that it does, how recipients respond, and why they act in ways they do" (weiss, 1998, p.265). we believe that video clips are more valuable than words because communication is more than just words; people speak to us through facial expressions, body language, and voice tone. the readers can witness for themselves what the student is communicating. readers can also experience the classroom and the evolution of critical thinking with their own eyes. in effect, the clips provide people with a flavor for the environment in which we teach higher-order thinking in an active-learning environment. elaine yoshikawa, a returning undergraduate in psychology, and i developed a three-level model of cognitive development for the purpose of organizing our observations of my students' thinking at various critical junctures in the semester (leshowitz & yoshikawa, 1996). the three levels of cognitive development were expanded into descriptive categories so the audio/video clips could be coded accordingly (weiss, 1998). an entire semester of the class was videotaped as webcasts (broadcasts of the class transmitted over the internet). the webcasts were then sorted according to which level was exemplified by the students' responses. inclusive and exclusive examples of each level facilitated the sorting of the clips. we also analyzed the clips in terms of teaching techniques demonstrated. techniques available for viewing include socratic dialogues, collaborative problem-solving exercises, and role-playing scenarios. in order for a clip to be included in the paper, it had to perform one of the following functions (guba, 1978): (a) identify new elements of importance (e.g., characterize a particular level of cognitive development; (b) reinforce existing information, but not to the point of redundancy; (c) explain information that is already available; or (d) exemplify the nature of the category. in searching for clips, we at times found ourselves examining hours of tape for a minute of relevant dialogue. in some measure this difficulty was heightened by the fact that we had a very limited set of clips from which to select tape. also, the level of students' thinking displayed inconsistency at times, which is an inevitable consequence of the instructional process. this inconsistency made it difficult to code clips in which students exhibited various levels of thinking. however, we believe that the clips we selected for this paper do present the classroom realistically. for any particular student they show a progression in mastering the principles of critical thinking along with instances of regression to earlier ways of thinking. (to view the clips of the archived webcasts, the user must have either a pentium pc running windows 95/98 or windows nt or a power macintosh computer. the most current web browser must also be used; the latest version of netscape (4.5) or microsoft internet explorer version 4.0 is required. both may be downloaded from their respective vendors free of charge. in addition, the most current version of real networks realplayer g2 software will be needed to view the clips of the class discussions. if needed, the reader may download realplayer g2. select the archived clip to view by clicking on the url. at this point, the realplayer software should automatically start and after a few seconds, begin playing the video. to exit the clip, click on the x at the upper right-hand corner of the realplayer window.) instructional model guiding my program of instruction is a threelevel cognitive model that describes the emergence of critical thinking and associated dispositions in most students over the course of the semester. many of the initial observations which led to this model came from a qualitative analysis of students' comments in daily class reviews. similar to entries in a student journal, these personal essays are analogous to contributions to portfolios and structured diaries which are currently being used as evidence of students' change, growth, and responsiveness to instruction (collins, 1993; delongis, hemphill & lehman, 1992). this analysis led to the emergence of the theoretical framework described below. students enrolled in my effective thinking course generally proceed through three levels of development. kitchener and brenner (1990) and kuhn (1993; kuhn, 1999) have proposed similar approaches to the development of reflective judgment in adulthood. although the three levels of the model are presented here sequentially, the postulated transformations rarely occur in linear sequence. however, it is our contention that this model elucidates and clarifies the ways in which reasoning skills, cognitive strategies, and associated dispositions are modified over time. additionally, the model provides a framework for describing the events experienced by the majority of my students, peer teachers, and their instructor in the course. level 1: pseudo-knowing student characteristics. the first level of "pseudo-knowing" reflects the typical entering student's http://www.real.com/ effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking 5 willingness to accept or reject new information with a modicum of questioning or critical evaluation. the first clip presents an illustrative example of level-1 thinking. in an introductory discussion, the student expresses in a forthright manner his strong preference for opinions over facts. the student indicates that opinions are "fun," while facts are "boring." at the beginning of the semester, the great majority of students do not actively engage in questioning, evaluating, or critically analyzing information. rather, the students passively assimilate unsubstantiated claims into their knowledge base of "known facts," especially those claims posited by "experts" or appearing in print (leshowitz, okun, & dicerbo, 1999). moreover, they are generally unaware that many of their beliefs are unsupported and speculative (leshowitz, 1989). in the next clip, one student defends his reliance on the personal experience of respected individuals in his hometown as a source of reliable information on attending college. he believes this approach to serious decision making is preferable to gathering facts for himself. strong, emotional, and generally unsupported opinions dominate the students' analysis of information in the early stages of the course. consistent with these classroom observations, investigators in social psychology have empirically established that it is difficult, perhaps impossible, for many individuals to evaluate objectively information that contradicts their beliefs (nisbett & ross, 1980). the next clip presents an example of this common cognitive bias. in a discussion on gay issues, this student argues that no fact could change his opinion about gay marriages; what he feels (values) is on a "grander scale" that is not open to scrutiny. the student made these comments in an introductory "ice-breaking" dialogue where the students discussed various sources of information on which they rely, and rated their confidence in these sources. the aim of this dialogue is to help the students begin to identify the underlying basis of their beliefs and personal opinions. rarely mentioning standards or criteria for evaluating information, the students make few distinctions among statements of fact, opinion, belief and theory. in large measure, the goal of the course is to help students recognize these differences in their thinking. teaching techniques. the class uses reflective dialogue is to build scaffolding on past experiences and knowledge of the participants and to facilitate insights into past and present thinking. toward this end, i anchor the dialogue on specific points or "windows." allowing students to follow their own path through the dialogue's windows gives rise to a class discussion that develops spontaneously. when the class dialogue goes well, it resembles a one-on-one personal conversation. the dialogue in the next clip illustrates this instructional process. following the presentation of a tv magazine segment on an "expert" who claims he can teach people to think "intuitively," the class assesses the usefulness of "gut instinct" in decision making. in response to the students' confidence in their powers of intuition, i direct the discussion toward the concepts of hindsight bias, rational thinking, fast (intentional) processing, and proof. i also encourage the students to examine their personal experiences as they relate to the issue at hand. the following clip presents a group discussion on the merits of using intuition in decision making. one student relates how she has used intuition (or gut-level feelings) in deciding everything from selecting a flavor of ice cream, to what college to attend, to decisions regarding whether to go out with a particular person. by rigorously challenging students' unquestioned opinions and beliefs, i try to inspire in them the desire and motivation to learn more generally accepted ways of assessing what they believe as fact. the early dialogues may appear confrontational to some students; many of these students have never had their strongly held beliefs intellectually confronted in a classroom setting. in my dialogues with students, i attempt to communicate to the individual students that their contributions are significant and valued and that they should not fear embarrassment or judgmental responses. however, even with students with whom i have established a strong mentoring relationship, i may fail to adequately affirm the student's contribution. the following interchange illustrates a situation where my effort to challenge one student's use of (limited) personal experience as a source of valid information fell short of my high standards for conducting reflective dialogues. level 2: destabilized knowing student characteristics. uncertainty, confusion, and self-doubt regarding what or whom to believe characterizes "destabilized knowing." in the next clip, a student wonders how one goes about checking the factual basis of opinions, especially when they appear in books. in preparation for a lengthier consideration of the matter, the instructor responds, "use your head." in level 2, students are uncertain how to determine who, what, or why to believe. what constitutes valid and reliable information, minimal inference, expert testimony, and reasonable speculation take on major importance. students discover that standard journalismbased criteria for evaluating information, while helpful, are too imprecise to deal substantively with issues they care about. they are uncertain about definitions of "reliable statistics," "expert witness," and "appropriate language." adding to their discomfort and diminishing confidence in their old ways of thinking is the realization that good information is absolutely necessary for solving problems and making sound decisions. at this juncture, i find that most students are prepared emotionally to make the serious commitment to fundamentally changing their http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/031199.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/031199.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/092298.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/031199b.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/092298a.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/012899.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/031199a.smil http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#level2 current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 6 knowledge-assessment and decision-making strategies. they understand that their standard ways of thinking and deciding are in need of improvement. they know they can make better, more informed decisions. teaching techniques. my objective at this point is to provide my students with the opportunity to become aware of and confront their misconceptions (garfield, 1993). toward this end, i attempt to elicit feeling-level reactions to controversial issues in an attempt to lessen the students' propensity to respond as they think is expected. expressions of core beliefs and attitudes, i find, prepare the students to deal seriously with personally significant issues. the following illustrates the frustration of one student toward the media. he asserts that people are afraid, and the media play to this fear. exercises in legal reasoning are especially useful in encouraging students to reconsider their ways of forming beliefs and rendering judgments. in our society, the courtroom serves as a public arena for exhibiting our thinking skills. in the legal adversarial process that takes place in the courtroom, we often display some of our best and worst examples of human cognition. from an instructional standpoint, the mock-jury exercise enables me to increase the stakes students place in developing their thinking. one particular exercise i have used with good success is a fictitious civil case involving steroid abuse in intercollegiate athletics. many students report the resolution of this case represents a watershed in their understanding of the principles of effective thinking. in this case, a highly talented freshman football player has committed suicide immediately after abruptly ending his use of steroids. his family (the plaintiff) holds the university and coach (defendants) responsible and has instituted a lawsuit for negligence in the death of their son. in addition to the transcript of the trial, students (jurors) receive the oral testimony of a teammate roleplayed by a member of the class. to encourage active involvement in the trial, the jurors get an opportunity to cross-examine the teammate. this courtroom interrogation of the teammate, role-played by a female student, is depicted in the next clip. the probing questions of the "jury" indicate the high degree of student involvement elicited by this real-world, problem-based exercise. in this trial, the jury also examines several media reports that have been placed into evidence. these pieces describe the effects of anabolic steroids on the psychological well being of young men and women. as part of its deliberation, the jury must determine whether this medical evidence is methodologically sound and of probative value in the case. for example, one illustrative print article, entitled "of muscles and mania," begins as follows: "paranoia, hallucinations, delusions of grandeur, and random violent tendencies are frightening whenever they appear. . . . bodybuilders using steroids may be prone to such psychotic and manic symptoms, according to ongoing research. . ." to underscore the claim that steroids cause harmful psychological effects, the journalist presents several vivid anecdotes of steroid use. for example, we are informed, a steroid user deliberately drove his car into a tree at 40 miles per hour while his friend videotaped the crash. corroborating these anecdotal reports, the article presents the results of a study conducted by two psychiatrists at the harvard medical school. based on interviews of 41 steroid-using bodybuilders and athletes, the study found that "psychiatric problems were far more pronounced than the physical ones . . . fortunately, the psychotic and manic symptoms disappeared promptly when steroid use was discontinued." lacking a control group, this study clearly does not permit one to draw any inferences about an association between steroids and psychological disorder. it can be seen in the next clip that one student found complete agreement with the article's claims of the harmful psychological effects of steroids. she reports that her past experiences with users of steroids are totally consistent with the three (anecdotal) case studies, the (cursory) statistics, and the findings of the (methodologically flawed) study reported in the article. falling-back to earlier ways of thinking is common at this stage as students wrestle with their habitual ways of thinking. regressing to level-1 thinking, she confidently attributes emotional outbursts ("roid rages") she has observed in high students to the effects of steroids. in her view, her personal observations validate the purported psychological effects of the steroids. employing a discovery method of instruction, in the next clip i attempt to facilitate a close examination of the questionable medical evidence linking steroids to psychological disorders. a student applies a methodological examination of the evidence in the next clip. using graphic analysis, he argues that, without a control group, the study's findings do not meet the criteria for causality. unable to establish in evidence that steroids are a "general" cause of psychological disturbance, the student concludes that steroids were not involved in the death of the student athlete. furthermore, he argues that if steroids have not been shown in scientific investigations to cause suicide, then the coach's failure to act does not constitute legal negligence in the death of the athlete. he may have been derelict in his responsibility to the team, but he probably did not contribute in any way to the demise of the athlete. in their deliberation, the jurors consider the following questions: what do i "know?" how do i know it? what else do i need to know to reach justified conclusions about the effects of steroids and the legal negligence of the coach? somewhat dejected by their inability to reach a consensus on answers to these questions, some students voice the view that there is little left to be said. this http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/110398.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/102298.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/102998a.smil http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#level1 http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/102998b.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/102998c.smil effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking 7 "ruminating" and "guided frustration" are crucial for arousing students' desire to engage in the learning process. without a strong (even emotional) commitment toward examining one's thinking process, i have found that the most one can hope for is a superficial technical understanding of the processes underlying effective thinking. level 3: reasoned knowing student characteristics. methodological analysis of all available evidence characterizes the final level of cognitive development achieved in this course. the importance of separating evidence and values in decision making is illustrated in the next clip. the student observes that by emphasizing personal values rather than hard (tangible) evidence, the plaintiff's attorney in the steroid case loses credibility. at this juncture, students are able to abandon their reliance on unsupported opinion and untested beliefs and hunches, and understand the benefits of basing decisions on facts, evidence, and what is known, according to commonly accepted standards. gradually, students become aware of the intrusions of their values, biases, theories, opinions, and personal beliefs on what they thought they knew as factual. reflection on one's own thinking, which is termed metacognitive reasoning, is an essential component of reasoned knowing (kuhn, 1991). the purpose of such "rhetorical argumentation" is to coordinate objective evidence with the theories and knowledge claims one has personally constructed to make sense of the world. critical thinkers are individuals who not only think with their theories, but also think about their theories. in the next clip a student reflects on how her theories and intuitions should be tested against data and other information. willing to look for facts to explain her intuition to others, she no longer is driven by her gut-level feelings. along with the development of metacognitive and methodological-reasoning skills, these students evince signs of a pronounced skeptical disposition. the observed changes in the attitudes of the students toward information accord closely with the theoretical categorization of methodological versus systematic skepticism (bunge, 1991). earlier in the course, reflecting level-2 thinking, some students refused to believe in the justifiability of any knowledge. having witnessed numerous flawed claims and the precarious nature of what they thought they knew as fact, students displayed discomfort with information sources they had earlier accepted without hesitation. thissystematically skeptical stance resulted in rejection of the possibility that verifiable, certain knowledge is ever attainable. as the course progresses, i typically observe that most students' systematic skepticism is replaced by more finely tuned reasoning, level-3 skills that engender thoughtful, methodological skepticism. the methodologically skeptical individual deems claims that derive strong support from empirical findings as acceptable knowledge. without substantive proof of claims, this individual will suspend judgment and postpone taking action. not only does the methodologically skeptical individual demonstrate a "show me" attitude toward the theories of others, which we might call "external skepticism," they also display "internal skepticism." in the next clip, students display healthy skeptical dispositions toward an "expert" who has appeared on several tv talk shows to discuss his book on the "power of intuition". unimpressed with the expert's "bs," the students want to see evidence. the students are now about to enter the final leg of their cognitive journey. now able to recognize that their normal ways of knowing lack precision and explicit rules for application, they ask for more powerful tools of analysis. teaching techniquesapplying practical methodological reasoning skills. in the final phase of instruction, my goal is to make explicit the principles of methodological reasoning and to show their wide applicability to virtually all areas of everyday life. in response to the ground swell of demand for better methods for evaluating evidence and rules for reaching sound judgments, i direct the class toward the principles of methodological reasoning. in a group of exercises, the students reduce the rhetoric in persuasive communications to simple claims relating the antecedent condition (independent variable) to the consequent condition (dependent variable). depicting the claim in a fully labeled graph helps the students focus on the communication's bottom-line conclusion and its empirical justification (leshowitz, jenkens, heaton, & bough, 1993). the principal goal of methodological analysis is to determine whether the observed effects are attributable to the antecedent or causal condition. to make this determination, one must control for (or eliminate the influence of) third (confounding) variables or other possible causes (rival hypotheses).the following is an excerpt from a class discussion where the students discover that correlation between variables does not imply causation. unable to establish the (causal) connection between obesity and success in life, the students are unwilling to recommend losing weight to an individual who wishes to attain personal success. they recognize that too many other factors may play a greater role in determining success. in classroom exercises and real-world-based investigations, the students discover that knowledge of causal relations allows one to predict and control future events. this knowledge is fundamental to making the informed decisions that underlie effective problem solving. although the students readily accept the importance of methodological analysis for decision http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/102998.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/021899.smil http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#level2 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#level3 http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/110398a.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/101598.smil current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 8 making, they also wonder whether it will be of very much practical use. they observe that rarely are (causal) data from true experimental designs available for the kinds of rapid decision making required in everyday-life situations. hoping to deflect this criticism, i point out that the need to research all claims is not nearly as onerous as might appear at first glance. looking back at issues that we have examined over the semester, i ask whether there is even a shred of evidence to support the assertions of of the various purveyors of questionable claims. the goal of methodological analysis in everyday-life situations is to detect "big zero's." with a little practice, students can detect "smoke and mirrors" almost reflexively. however, there is no escaping the fact that some effort is required and that "the devil is in the details." teaching techniquesintegrating evidence and values in decision making. after considerable practice, frustration and soul-searching, most students come to realize the benefits of extracting and analyzing an issue's empirical or evidential support. at this point, i return to the students' questions about the practical value of methodological reasoning. pulling the intellectual rug out from under them, i ask whether decision making based on principles of rational analysis of evidence is too limited. to underscore this point, i often ask the class to identify situations where a great deal of statistical/scientific evidence points to a certain course of action that is ethically or morally unacceptable. for example, i ask them whether they would be willing to implement the policies of certain other countries that severely punish, and often execute, all distributors, and sometimes users of illegal drugs. somewhat confused, but generally relieved, students examine the possibility that critical thinking entails a methodological analysis of evidence as well as an assessment of non-evidential factors such as personal values, ethical/moral principles, and cost/benefits of decision outcomes. the need to integrate all relevant evidenceand value-based information in problem solving has been noted by others (see e.g., arambula-greenfield, 1996). to facilitate this process, i present to the class the following formula: e x v = a. useful in decision making, this formula integrates independent estimates of values and evidence. the quantity e represents the strength of the empirical evidence assessed through methodological analysis. the quantity v represents the strength of all non-evidential factors, such as personal values of the decision maker, and cost/benefits of the outcome of the contemplated action (a). although the assumption of complete independence between evidence and values is difficult to maintain in many situations, my students report that it helps clarify and categorize the objects of their thinking. according to this qualitative model, if a exceeds the individual's "threshold" for action, the particular course of action is recommended or warranted. when alternative actions are under consideration, that alternative yielding the highest value of a is recommended. in the next clip, a student grapples with the relationship between values and evidence in decision making. holding very strong (religious) values about the negative consequences of using marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco, she cannot envision any kind of evidence (displayed in a graph) that could alter her beliefs or behavior. capstone dialogue. one topic that generates a powerful confrontation between reason and emotionbased thinking is the treatment of terminally ill patients. in an effort to bring together the principles of critical thinking and informed decision making, i ask the students to confront a life-and-death scenario. in the course's capstone dialogue, i ask the students to react to the following article: alzheimer's dilemma this week the u.s. medical research community dropped a bombshell guaranteed to cause thousands of people to call their family doctors for more information. a researcher at a major university announced that a drug that he had administered to 17 patients with alzheimer's disease had caused significant improvement in 16 of them. "of these 17," he said, "four of them got dramatically better, seven got clearly better, and five of them got better to anybody's eye." the results with the drug, called tha, were indeed remarkable. one alzheimer's victim is again playing golf; another went back to work part time. another drives her car again, cooks and takes care of her own house. these results are simply mind-boggling to the many people in this country who have become familiar with the dreadful nature of alzheimer's disease. between 1.5 million and 3 million people have it; about 100,000 people die of it annually. quite obviously the announcement will mean that husbands, wives, and children of alzheimer's disease will call the family doctor to find out how soon the drug will be available to them. and the family doctor will tell all of them essentially the same thing. you can't get it. the doctors will say that the drug hasn't been approved for sale yet by the u.s. food and drug administration. the fda requires many tests to assure that the drug is safe and effective. and that the process can't be completed for years. many of the callers to their doctor will reply, "but my father will be dead by then, and he and we are already living in hell with this disease." in this exercise, i ask the students to imagine they had a father in the early stages of alzheimer's disease. based on the information in the article, would http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/111298.smil effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking 9 they be willing to take their father to this physician for treatment? through role playing, first in self-directed exercises in small collaborative groups and later in a larger class discussion, the students explore the issue through the perspective of the patient, his family, the fda administrator, the family doctor, an alzheimerdisease activist, and an ordinary citizen presently unaffected by this affliction. this role-playing exercise seeks to create a moral dilemma between what they know (scientifically) and what they feel and value. the primary question addressed by the family in this exercise is the following: should they give their father a "shot" and allow him to receive an untested, "promising" drug? at the outset of the discussion, moved by their desire to preserve life at all costs, two students recommend to a loved one that they take this totally untested drug. in table 1, we apply the e x v = a model to the alzheimer's dilemma in an attempt to understand how of the parties can reach justified (though different) decisions. table 1. e x v = a model for the alzheimer's dilemma * * although this theoretical framework is not a computational model, for purposes of illustration, we present quantitative estimates of e and v. role e v action patient .01 life maintained 106 family member .01 doing everything possible 105 doctor .01 conflicted between "interests" of patient and scientific evidence 103 103 fda official .01 scientific evidence, public safety 10-3 citizen (unaffected directly) .01 compassion 10? first, we assume that the results of the physician's preliminary study (e) can be evaluated objectively. the small size of this study's sample, biased observations of the drug's effectiveness, lack of a control group, and a failure to consider side effects all suggest the evidence is very weak at best. of importance to the application of this model is the assumption that estimates of e (based on a rational evaluation of the evidence) do not change as from participant to participant. the first student in the next clip cannot imagine ever being able to disregard his role in society in evaluating evidence. a second student, however, disagrees. she readily accepts the need to evaluate evidence objectively, and declares "the evidence doesn't change….those are the facts." next, we examine the (non-evidential) value factors (v). clearly, the parties to the dilemma will differ greatly in their perception of moral obligations, legal rights of individuals, compassion, and societal benefits of rigorous medical testing. in contrast to estimations of e, there will be no agreement on the v factor. thus, there will be no consensus on an appropriate course of action (as seen in table 1). indeed, often individuals will re-evaluate their initial commitment to act as they continue to evaluate the possible outcome of their decision. the class addresses this point in the next clip. you will note that we have expanded the discussion to include the related controversy issue of untested aids drugs. students understand that there is little or no evidence of the drug's effectiveness. however, the students have different values about how long they would wish to live with the disease, and therefore reach different courses of action. paralleling this personal dilemma is the consideration of the government's policy on compassionate (early) release of experimental drugs to terminally ill patients prior to fully establishing efficacy and safety through the arduous procedure of randomized clinical trials. the class examines the ethical/moral values of this societal concern in the final two clips (clip 1 & clip 2). are the rights of the patient violated by the government's interest in preserving scientific purity? how do we reconcile http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu/media1/leshowitz/120898.smil http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#table1 http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/120898b.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/120898b.smil http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#table1 http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/120898c.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/120898d.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/120898e.smil current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 10 feelings of compassion and rational thought in matters of life and death? students (i.e., unaffected citizens in the role play) express varying opinions about whether they would sign a petition mandating that the fda release untested drugs to terminally ill patients: one student says "no" based on the lack of evidence showing effectiveness. a second student believes it is her right to be treated in the manner she deems most appropriate. another student wants to "look into it." and the final student concludes "it would not be in the best interest of everybody" and that these drugs should not be released. final comment students in the class are led through instruction that results in conceptual change. they move from a position of unquestioning acceptance of information to one of methodological skepticism and assessment of nonevidential factors. table 2 summarizes the changes in students' conceptions of knowledge, metacognitive strategies, and methodological reasoning. table 2. levels of development level knowledge claims source of knowled ge dispositio n instructio nal events level of epistemolog ical understandi ng (kuhn, 1999 ) critical thinking 1. pseudoknowing undifferentia ted fact/ opinions/ values; truth is knowable direct observatio n (experienc e); authority biased information assimilation reflective dialogue and confrontatio n of present ways of thinking absolutist little or none 2. destabiliz ed knowing opinions only accountable to their owners; nothing can be known diversity of sources; all knowledge is equal; subjective systematic skepticism expose beliefs/valu es in realworld, problembased exercises multiplist thought to be irrelevant 3. reasoned knowing statements of evidence and opinion are distinguishe d; evidence meets criteria; uncertain knowing is a process methodolog ical skepticism methodolog ical (scientific) reasoning exercises; integrating evidence and values in optimal decision making evaluative valued to promote informed decision making, effective problem solving, metacogniti on, and personal control http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#table2 effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking 11 that such conceptual change can occur in a classroom environment may be surprising to some readers. thagard (1992) wrote that conceptual change can occur by discovery or instruction. in the case of instruction, the instructor must, "develop rules and procedures that are sufficiently coherent... to supplant the existing rules that otherwise would take precedence" (p.58). thagard explains that consistently using the new conceptual system builds up the strength of all of the rules of the system to the point where they are stronger than the pre-existing rules. in this case, using the rules of methodological reasoning repeatedly strengthens them so the students come to rely on them instead of intuition and gut reaction. conceptual change does not occur easily in all students. as my role of instructional leader is reduced and i am no longer perceived as the primary source of knowledge, some students may express feelings of incertitude, frustration, and self-doubt. however, once they conceptually organize their ideas about these new thinking processes and begin to get the "big" point of the discussions, the students experience gratification and selfsatisfaction. this observation is consistent with the line of research supporting the constructivist approach to education, which posits that active discovery, construction and integration is the basis for effective learning (garfield, 1993; gill-perez, 1996; resnick, 1987; von glaserfeld, 1987). in order to produce the conceptual changes described here, i have found this active discovery method essential. summing up, this course in effective thinking does not provide shortcuts to solving problems. rather, it encourages participants to perceive problematic situations through the perspective of others and encourages an enlightened pluralism in the context of the critical thinking process. references adey, p. (1988). cognitive acceleration: review and prospects. international journal of science education, 10(2), 131-134. american association for the advancement of science. (1989). science for all americans. washington, d.c. arambula-greenfield, t. (1996). implementing problembased learning in a college science class. journal of college science teaching, 88, 26-30. arons, a. b. (1979). some thoughts on reasoning capacities implicitly expected of college students. in j. lochhead & j. clement (eds.), cognitive process instruction. philadelphia: franklin institute press. baron, j. (1988). thinking and deciding. cambridge, england: cambridge university press. becker, h.j. (1998). running to catch a moving train: schools and information technologies. theory into practice, 37, 20-30. bunge, m. (1991). a skeptic's beliefs and disbeliefs. new ideas in psychology, 9, 131-149. collins, a. 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(1990). diagnosing the attainment of basic inquiry skills: the one hundred year old quest for critical thinking. journal of biological education, 24, 42-49. kahneman, d., & tversky, a. (1996). on the reality of cognitive illusions. psychological review, 102, 582-591. kitchener, k. s., brenner, h. g. (1990). wisdom and reflective judgment: knowing in the face of uncertainty. sternberg, r. j. (ed.), wisdom: its nature, origins and development. cambridge: cambridge university press. kuhn, d. (1991). the skills of argument. new york: cambridge university press. kuhn, d. (1999). a developmental model of critical thinking. education researcher, 28, 16-26. layton, d. (1986). science, technology and society courses: problems of implementation in school systems. in d. layton (ed.), innovations in science and technology education, vol. 1. paris: unesco. leshowitz, b. (1989). it's time we did something about scientific illiteracy. american psychologist, 44 (8) 1159-1160. leshowitz, b., jenkins, k., heaton, s., & bough, t. (1993). effectiveness and benefits of an instructional program for developing critical thinking skills in students with learning disabilities. the journal of learning disabilities, 26,483-490. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 12 leshowitz, b. & meyers, j.b. (1996). application of decision theory to dui assessment. alcoholism: clinical and experimental research, 20, 11481152. leshowitz, b., okun, m, & dicerbo, k.e. (1999). the effects of methodological reasoning on biased information processing and attitude polarization. manuscript submitted for publication. leshowitz, b. & yoshikawa e. (1996). on instructional model for critical thinking. inquiry, 15, 17-37. leshowitz, b., reich, j., meyers, j, brown, s & chavez, a. some consequences of knowing how to know. submitted to: inquiry. lipman, matthew (1989). critical thinking: what can it be? resource publication series 1, no. 1. upper montclair, nj: institute for critical thinking. loria, a., mantovani, s., & nasi, r. (1984). a piagetian analysis of the cognitive levels of science teachers.european journal of science education, 4, 199-208. mckeachie, w. j. (1986). teaching tips. boston, ma: d.c. heath and company. national science foundation. (1996). shaping the future: new expectations for undergraduate education in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology. nisbett, r.e., & ross, l. (1980). human inference. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. paul, r. (1990). critical thinking: what every person needs to survive in a rapidly changing world. rohnert park, california: center for critical thinking and moral critique, sonoma state university. perkins, d. n. (1985). postprimary education has little impact on informal reasoning. journal of educational psychology, 77 (5), 562-571. thagard, p. (1992). conceptual revolutions. princeton, nj: princeton university press. thelen, l. v. (1987). values clarification: science or nonscience. science education, 71 (2), 201-220. stanovich, k. e., & west, r. f. (1998). individual differences in rational thought. journal of experimental psychology: general, 127, 161188. whimbey, a., & lochhead, l. j. (1986). problem solving and comprehension. hillsdale, nj: erlbaum, inc. effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking 13 1999 article citation leshowitz, b., dicerbo, k. e., & symington, s. (1999, september 30). effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking. current issues in education[on-line], 2(5). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number5/. author notes the research described here was supported by a grant from the college of liberal arts and sciences, arizona state university. the authors thank marc van horne in the college of extended education for his help with editing and archiving the video clips.department of psychology, arizona state university,tempe, az 85287-1104. correspondence may be sent to the first author: barry leshowitz. barry leshowitz is an associate professor of psychology at arizona state university where he teaches courses in effective thinking and research methods. he actively researches, develops, and demonstrates college and high school programs of instruction that enhance the inquiry, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills of students. kristen eignor dicerbo is a doctoral student in school psychology at arizona state university. kristen eignor dicerbo can be reached via e-mail at kristen.dicerbo@asu.edu. scott symington is currently enrolled in the ph.d. program in clinical psychology at fuller theological seminary in pasadena ca. scott symington can be reached via e-mail at symington@aol.com. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 3, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation leshowitz, b., dicerbo, k. e., & symington, s. (2011). effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking. current issues in education, 2(5). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/ article/view/831 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html mailto:leshowitz@asu.edu mailto:kristen.dicerbo@asu.edu mailto:symington@aol.com http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 14 cie template 1 volume 7, number 1 january 20, 2004 issn 1099-839x the netgeneration: the internet as classroom and community jennifer hendricks arizona state university classroom practice in the real world has become increasingly incommensurate with the lived experience of students. policy dictates, packaged curricula, the commodification and commercialization of the classroom, along with high stakes testing have objectified students. young people, consisting of all age cohorts and class fractions, have never known their world to not include the internet. they are well versed and completely comfortable with negotiating its space. they have been utilizing this technology since before they started kindergarten, whether it was in games that they played or internet sites they logged on to. much has been made of the internet's potential to wrest power from the interests that dominate it. the internet allows ordinary citizens to spread the word and organize resistance as a form of popular culture. in short, to fight power. as a technological artifact and a popular image, the internet provides a site for exploring and positioning "the world.” it is necessary to recognize and critically examine other sites and or institutions as places of knowledge learning. and where do the technology savvy teens go to learn? they utilize the internet as a major pedagogical site. as john street (1997) contends, "…culture neither manipulates nor mirrors us; instead we live through and with it" (p. 4). it seems that we are not compelled by culture to imitate it but rather to immerse ourselves in it. in studying the culture of emerging (trans) national cybersocieties, we have arrived at a new moment in history: a moment in which such terms as class, race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and ideology are no longer useful (because they assume singular "identities" for example). we are, according to postmodern theories, now in a culture that is post-national, post-ideological and post-class--a culture shaped not by "production" (labor) but by our social relations of shopping ("consumption"). in an argument related to the idea of virtual communities, internet scholars often relate the internet to the idea of the 'public sphere', as developed by habermas (1989). in an ideal public sphere, citizens would discuss issues of concern and arrive at a consensus for the common good. habermas did not feel that we have an effective public sphere in western societies, partly because commercial mass media had turned people into consumers of information and entertainment, rather thanparticipants in an interactive democratic process. additionally, gramsci‟s theory of hegemony (1988), which borrows from hegel the idea that particular interests are concretely determined within material culture and undergo a process of universalization that leads to the creation of collective subjects, is an important theory when attempting to understand that participation in various hegemonic sites is a consensual process. for gramsci, deliberation about matters of social concern and the entire decision-making process in an authentic democracy must be based on a "consensual inter-subjective interaction" (p. 98) and without consensus, websites or communities can become paces of mere reproduction, much like physical classrooms are now. this puts into question our familiar notions not only of "identity" but also of "subjectivity" and "self-hood"; it argues that there are no "pure" (i.e. "absolute") identities and that all cultural practices such as "growing up" are instances of hybridity: a "difference" that is in all social phenomena. in his groundbreaking book,the postmodern condition (1984), jean francois lyotard points to this hybridity when he writes, "one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats mcdonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears paris perfume in tokyo and "retro" clothes in hong kong...." perhaps more so than any other contemporary theorist, baudrillard (1981) provides a provocative concept for "navigating" this hyperreal terrain. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 1 2 although he has not addressed worldwide networking and internet in the specific in his writing, his comments on telematics, along with his more general critiques of modernity, provide an interesting means for exploring the metaphoricity of internet. thus the internet is best thought of as a place, which is far more than a highway. it is a destination, a place where we can create new social designs, where we can dissolve and reconstruct the classroom. by the mid 1990s, cyberculture was well underway, focusing primarily on virtual communities and online identities. since howard rheingold published the virtual community in 1993, much has been written about communities on the internet. before the internet, communities were people who lived or worked close to each other. sometimes the community would be of likeminded people, although it was unlikely that they would bet a very compatible group all in the same place. the global internet transforms this for those, as always, who have access to it because it enables like-minded people to form communities regardless of where they are located in the physical world. before the internet, teens had little contact with other teenagers outside of their high school, or school district. meanwhile, fans of obscure bands would have little to do with their counterparts elsewhere, and people interested in certain hobbies, or artists, or skills, could only feed their interest through one-way communication processes such as reading a magazine or newsletter about it. the internet changed all that. now, regardless of where they are in the world, teens with similar interests, or with similar backgrounds, or with similar attitudes, can join communities of like-minded people, and share views, exchange information, and build relationships. in practice, what these communities look like are teenagers sending electronic text to each other. most of the studies of virtual communities are about groups exchanging messages on newsgroups and e-mail discussion lists, or groups who often meet in the same chat rooms. the studies seem, so far, to have ignored the communities, which develop amongst similarly themed websites and their creators, which in many ways may be stronger, more permanent and more complex. after all, the internet surpasses the restrictions of fixed locations such as schools and opens up a new world of understanding and knowledge. participants in cyberspace may come and go, but the websites will remain. thus, the opportunity for counter education exists on the internet. as giroux (1995) contends students, as well as teachers, and their empowerment as radical intellectuals change the concept of school as a part of a general struggle over essential social change (p. 30). in giroux‟s concept, education is a political arena with a major role in producing discourse, meaning and subjects, as well as control and distribution. in comparison, the internet as classroom and community does much the same thing. it is a place that has the capacity to open up an infinite number of opportunities to connect with individuals, knowledge and experiences. the internet offers students boundless possibilities for exploration and exchange of ideas (westera and sloep 2001). on the internet, students are free to „log on‟ at any time and place of their choosing. they are ultimately free to explore in a new construction of the „classroom.‟ technology makes possible a reconfiguring of school; a refocusing of everyday life, and the use of the tools and techniques of computer and image technologies expands the field of politics and culture. to a meaningful extent, technology is revolutionary. the battles of the future may well be fought not only in the streets, factories, or other sites of past struggle, but on the internet as well. and as the members of the “netgeneration,” teenagers today are more adaptable than other sectors of society and in general are quicker to adapt to the new technologies. to some extent they are the innovators, the forces of change in a new community landscape. references baudrillard, j. (1981). simulacra and simulation: the body in theory. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. giroux, h. (1995). "radical pedagogy as cultural politics: beyond the discourse of critique and antiutopianism." in peter mclaren (ed.), critical pedagogy and predatory culture: oppositional politics in a postmodern era. london: routledge. gramsci, a. (1988). a gramsci reader: selected writings, 1916-1935. edited by david forgacs. london: lawrence and wishart. habermas, j. (1989). the structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into bourgeois society . translated by t. burger & f. lawrence. cambridge, ma: mit press. (original work published 1962). ---. (1992). further reflections on the public sphere. in c. calhoun (ed.), habermas and the public sphere (pp. 421-461). cambridge, ma: mit press. lyotard, j. (1984). the postmodern condition: a report on knowledge. translation from the french by geoff bennington and brian massumi. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. mclaren, peter. (1991). critical pedagogy: constructing an arch of social dreaming and a doorway to hope. the sociology of education in canada 173: 137-60. rheingold, h. (1993). the virtual community: homesteading on the electronic frontier. reading, ma: addison-wesley pub. co. street, j. (1997). politics and popular culture. philadelphia, pa: temple university press. westera, w. and sloep, p. (2001). the future of education in cyberspace. in l. vandervert & l. shavinina (eds), cybereducation: the future of long distance learning. new york: liebert publishers. the netgeneration: the internet as classroom and community 3 2004 article citation hendricks, j. a. (2004, january 20). the netgeneration: the internet as classroom and community. current issues in education [on-line], 7(1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number1/ author notes jennifer hendricks arizona state university tempe, az 85287 jennifer.hendricks@asu.edu jennifer a. hendricks, is a doctoral candidate in the interdisciplinary ph.d. program with a focus on curriculum and cultural studies in the college of education at arizona state university. jennifer has a b.a. in art history and archaeology with a minor in studio art. she also holds an m.a. in art education from the university of maryland at college park. her research interests include the use of narrative methodology to empower students' life stories of school and alternative artsbased forms of research and research representation. her current research focuses on how teens create a political curriculum outside of the increasingly anarcharistic classroom, specifically concentrating on the internet as a site of empowerment. she may be contacted via e-mail at jennifer.hendricks@asu.edu. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article‟s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article‟s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation hendricks, j. a. (2011). the netgeneration: the internet as classroom and community. current issues in education, 7(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number1/ jennifer.hendricks@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word novice teachers and their acquisition of work-related information.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x novice teachers and their acquisition of work-related information kyoung-ae kim korea advanced institute of science and technology & gene l. roth northern illinois university citation kim, k. & roth, g. (2011). novice teachers and their acquisition of work-related information. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this qualitative case study explores types of work-related information that novice teachers seek out and learn that is related to their daily work tasks. eighteen experienced k-6 teachers offer their reflections about the dynamics of seeking and interpreting work-related information during their initial years of teaching. in-depth interviews were used to ask participants to reflect on their pathways of finding and using work-related information when they were novice teachers. the participants described nuances of their school settings that provided catalysts and barriers to gaining and using work-related information. keywords: teachers’ work-related information, information acquisition, novice teachers, information sharing current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: kyoung-ae kim affiliation: korea advanced institute of science and technology (kaist) address: 119 munijiro, yuseong-gu, daejeon, 305-732, republic of korea email: kaykin2006@gmail.com biographical information: kyoung-ae kim is a senior researcher with the global institute for talented education at kaist. she received her doctoral degree in adult and higher education from northern illinois university. author: gene l. roth affiliation: northern illinois university address: counseling, adult and higher education, niu, dekalb, il. 60115 email: groth@nin.edu biographical information: gene roth is a distinguished teaching professor at niu in the adult and higher education program. novice teachers 3 novice teachers and their acquisition of work-related information new graduates of formal teacher preparation programs frequently encounter difficulties when they experience the practical realities of schools. teacher education programs tend to predominantly orient pre-service teachers either theoretically or practically (nottis, feuerstein, murray, & adams, 2000) and the type of orientation can affect the success of beginning teachers. the satisfaction that teachers experience in performing their daily routines is linked to factors such as job attrition and sense of self-worth (pillay, boulton-lewis, wilss, & lankshear, 2003). the daily work within schools is embedded in contexts, and novice teachers experience unexpected events and situations that occur daily in school life (lowery, 2002). this study asks experienced teachers to reflect back on their novice experiences, and describe the types of workrelated information that could help them perform their jobs and survive in their new schools. for the purposes of this study, work-related information means job-specific information that can help new teachers perform tasks (e.g., getting children to line up orderly in the hallways, restoring order after recess, interacting with parents). little is known about experienced teachers’ perceptions of work-related information that can benefit novice teachers. furthermore, little is known about how a school setting can help or hinder a novice teacher’s acquisition of work-related information. the purpose of this study is to provide practitioners and researchers insights regarding work-related information that can benefit novice teachers. these insights are gleaned from the recollections of experienced teachers who described work-related information from their years as novice teachers. the following question guided this study: what are the recollections of experienced k-6 teachers regarding their experiences with work-related information as novice teachers? current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 novice teachers and work-related information as a preliminary step of this study, attention was given to the term “novice teacher.” novice teachers, beginning teachers, neophytes, and pre-service teachers are depicted in many studies that focus on teachers who have difficulties dealing with their tasks at work. for the purposes of this study, the term novice teacher is defined as a teacher with less than five years of teaching experience. experienced teachers were asked to reflect on their daily activities and experiences in schools. because this study is about long-term processes that led to the achievement of current status, this study required experienced teachers to deeply reflect and search for insights. in this study, work-related information helps to form the task-based knowledge that teachers need to perform their jobs. task-based knowledge is defined as general work (basic tasks) that teachers perform as part of their daily routines, including both explicit tasks and implicit tasks. explicit tasks are those imposed by the rules within a school setting, and implicit tasks are those carried out autonomously. explicit tasks in school settings can be articulated by the school principal or in written policies and procedures. implicit tasks are typically more difficult for novice teachers to learn because they may be shrouded in ambiguities of the work setting and not easily shared by peer workers. in this study, experienced teachers explain circumstances that affected their interactions with work-related information when they were novice teachers. situating work-related learning of novice teachers in the context of schools one may argue that the learning by teachers within their school contexts is a neglected area of inquiry. researchers outside of the school context are typically not privy to the learning processes used by teachers in action. they cannot observe how teachers access and learn from work-related information. a few scholars have examined how teachers have evolved as learners novice teachers 5 in their workplaces. mclaughlin (1993) views the school context as a professional learning community for teachers in terms of social and psychological growth. flores (2004) emphasizes that teachers develop sociologically and psychologically in schools and that schools can be professional learning communities in which teachers collaboratively learn from one another and develop their knowledge and skills. however, these claims are rarely highlighted in the literature, perhaps because of the unofficial and invisible phenomena that influence teacher learning in school contexts. schools are workplaces for teachers, but schools are also places of their informal learning. this informal learning begins when new teachers enter the building for the first time and begin to seek out work-related information that can help them perform their jobs. campbell, evans, neill, and packwood (1992) assert that minimal research has been conducted on the experiences of beginning teachers in schools. an often cited refrain of new teachers is that a gap exists between the relevance of their professional education and the demand of their work realities. as a result, both new and experienced teachers often access informal pathways to acquire work-related information that is relevant to their jobs. powell (1998) observes that an enormous amount of the teacher’s information and knowledge resides in their minds, and unfortunately, barriers within school settings can restrict teachers from sharing and learning from each other. experienced teachers tend to take for granted the work-related information that they have accessed and learned over time, and they may be unclear of its origin. the practical knowledge that they have formed from this information may not be readily transferable; it is different from the “official” knowledge that can be located in a textbook or a “how to” manual. teacher education pre-service programs are unable to supply all of the work-related information that novice teachers need to perform their work roles because much of this information is context current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 specific within the school setting. novice teachers may not encounter the need to seek out and learn from this type of information until they are immersed in their school situations. the experienced teachers of this study provide a glimpse of the topics and related types of information that affected their early years as novice teachers. experienced elementary teachers reflecting back on their novice years this study sought out the reflections of experienced k-6 teachers regarding their interactions with work-related information. teachers with at least five years of practical field experiences served as participants of this study. the use of the experienced teachers as the primary source of data in this study was based on assertions in the literature. according to beginning teacher developmental theories, the concerns of novice teachers are quite different from the concerns of experienced teachers. experienced teachers are more focused on long term professional tasks, whereas the concerns of novice teachers are driven more by emotion and their short term survival in the work context. these new teachers are swimming in a sensory overload with new co-workers, a new physical environment, and new students. survival is the metaphor that is often used to depict the new teacher experience. novice teachers typically struggle to sort through all of the new information they face early in their job tenure, and they can experience disconnects between their prior knowledge and the pressing problems of their work reality. pope, smith, goodwin, and mort (2003) provide logic for the use of experienced teachers in this current study: what happens when you are very junior, is that you don’t recognize abnormal because you are not used to normal, and experience teaches you what is normal, as much as what is abnormal. so you know when things aren’t going the way they should be. (p. 652) novice teachers 7 taking these points into account, experienced teachers who had already worked through the confusing period of their early teaching years were selected to serve as the primary sources of data in this study. the reflective narratives of past experiences of these teachers are used for the reconstruction of their own developmental resources. conversely, as noted by eisenhart and borko (1991), novice teachers have few opportunities to be reflective in the workplace. several authors (colley, 2002; gidwitz & wish, 2001; herbert & ramsay, 2004; luekens, lyter, & fox, 2004) note that beginning teachers with less than five years experience have a high rate of turnover. from these studies, one can surmise that novice teachers face many challenges in their work context within their first five years. methods of the study this study was conducted in a north-central region of illinois, usa. in-depth interviews with 18 experienced teachers provided the main source of data in this case study. these experienced teachers taught in middle to upper-middle class schools. other sources of data were used to support the interview data and help to confirm the emergent themes. they included reflective journals, formal documents, observations, and field notes. two to three interview sessions were conducted with each study participant, and a consent form was signed by each study participant. the early segment of the initial interviews focused on general career information and the participants’ recollections of their entry into the teaching profession. the next segment of the interviews asked teachers to comment on their daily work tasks and their recollections regarding the routines or processes they utilized to gain work-related information that was relevant to their daily work tasks. in essence, experienced teachers were requested to reflect on their interactions with work-related information. prior to each interview, i made a rough outline of the interview sequence and prepared alternative questions in case there were current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 unexpected reactions from participants. after each interview, i recreated field notes concerning the interview, and later constructed a personal journal that highlighted my feelings, observations, dilemmas, or other information worthy of documenting. during the interview, i focused on active listening and maintaining a comfortable atmosphere that allowed the participants to narrate their experiences. the participants were asked to reflect on their early period of practical field experiences as novice teachers. chain sampling was used to include teachers who had more than five years of teaching experience. study participants were sought after approval of the study by the institutional review board (irb). table 1 illustrates the 18 participants’ basic information, and the pseudonyms of the participants. table 1 profile of participants name years of teaching experience grade level (current position) emily 6 years 3rd grade emma 18 years 5th madison 18 years 1st isabella 15 years 1st and 2nd (multi-age class) ava 18 years 1st abigail 35 years 6th olivia 10 years principal (after 10 years-teaching) hannah 30 years 5th sophia 15 years 2nd samantha 16 years 2nd elizabeth 9 years full-time graduate student ashley 20 years kindergarten mia 8 years 6th alexis 11 years 5th sarah 20 years 1st~5th (special ed. teacher) natalie 20 years 5th grace 24 years 5th chloe 15 years kindergarten novice teachers 9 analysis of data all interviews were tape recorded after the participants’ permission was obtained. the recorded tapes were transcribed verbatim and the written data were later analyzed. i carefully listened to each interview tape and identified the dominant or recurring themes that were linked with other cases for triangulation. an appropriate software program (n-vivo) was used to conceptualize data coding. data analysis strategies included concept maps and themes and linkages within the frameworks that were suggested above. according to eraut (2000), workplace learning is a challenging topic of inquiry because of the difficult nature of drawing out the issues from the participants. therefore, multiple sources of data were gathered, and the analysis of data was thorough. data analysis was peer-reviewed by an experienced qualitative researcher, and member checks were used after the transcription of interviews to ensure that my interpretations were accurate. cross-checking with my observations, field notes, and my own personal reflections as an elementary school teacher also contributed to the triangulation of data. from these multiple sources of data, a thick description was built to provide a telling portrayal of the nature of this inquiry (yin, 1994). minimizing threats to trustworthiness rubin and rubin (1995) explain that different techniques are needed to provide credibility to qualitative inquiry compared to quantitative inquiry. an important issue with qualitative research pertains to consistency that is obtained with data collection tools (lindolf & taylor, 2002). consistency is established by examining whether emergent themes are in accord with themes in other data and cases (rubin & rubin, 1995). triangulation (source-methodresearcher agreement) is often sought in qualitative inquiry, and it can involve several strategies (e.g., member-checking, rich and thick description, self-reflection, presenting negative or current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 discrepant information, spending prolonged time, peer debriefing, and external auditor review) (creswell, 1994). in this study, select strategies were applied. first, themes were carefully categorized and compared to other contexts, and data from transcripts and other supplemental data were scrutinized. a compelling narrative was crafted to support the interpretations of the multiple data sources. the study considered and adapted several frameworks that have been previously applied by researchers. findings of the research were thoughtfully analyzed by asking contrasting questions. positionality of the researcher as an undergraduate student majoring in education, i believed that upon graduation i would be able to professionally perform workplace tasks without much difficulty. when i later encountered difficulty in handling many professional tasks in practice, i still believed that a graduate degree in education would provide the information i needed to survive in the workplace. with a master’s degree in education, i put myself into the role of elementary school teacher and i experienced considerable conflict between unexpected work realities and my base of knowledge related to teaching. i found that i was struggling to understand aspects of my job, and the information that i seemed to need was mysteriously embedded in the work context – difficult for me to access and sometimes challenging to interpret. i came to believe that novice teachers (such as myself), regardless of their educational backgrounds, seemed to suffer from similar problems that stemmed from the conflicting realities of their work and their expectations about teaching that were groomed in formal educational training. i wondered about the observable differences between experienced teachers and novice teachers; one group seemed to novice teachers 11 succeed in practice, while the latter group struggled to cope on the job. with this sense of wonderment, i began this inquiry. school settings as sources of work-related information for novice teachers environmental characteristics of schools can be key factors that affect how novice teachers seek out information that is relevant to performing their jobs. novice teachers go through processes of observing cultural phenomena in their attempts to understand the knowwhy (cause-and-effect relationships) of incumbent teachers’ common behavioral patterns. school settings can be dominated by unwritten or implicit information that may be difficult to unearth and interpret. because novice teachers lack deep contextual knowledge, they tend to try to find sequential logic in the experienced teachers’ performance. as a result, novice teachers can experience confusion and frustration in their new work settings. socialization involves transferring values and norms of a certain group “through observation, imitation, and practice” (nonaka & takeuchi, 2004, p. 55). schoonmaker (2002) notes that socialization is a powerful process that influences the development of novice teachers. the socialization process is a natural way for novice teachers to acquire work-related information from their colleagues and other stakeholders (lortie, 1975/2002). lortie emphasizes that this process takes place through “doing-while-doing” (p. 60). the following sections provide excerpts from the data in which the study participants describe their interactions with workrelated information when they were novice teachers. the first section pertains to information relative to the various stakeholder relationships that novice teachers encounter. stakeholder relationships schools consist of multiple, close stakeholder relationships: principal (and other administrators), parents, community representatives, students, and teachers themselves. teachers current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 are the main decision makers within their own classrooms; however, the principal affects the whole school atmosphere at the school level. the parents do not actually work for the school but they can strongly affect the climate and culture of the school. the students are a core concern of teachers’ decisions in schools because teachers judge situational conditions based on students’ needs. isabella, who was working in a different profession and changed her career to teaching, points out this relationship. she states that teaching is dealing with parent-child-teacher triangles, a relationship that is different from what she encountered in the business world. the biggest difference is in most professions you are dealing solely with adults. when you're in the teaching profession, especially in middle school and down, you're dealing with children. so you're dealing with behaviors that wouldn't exist in the adult population. you're also dealing with the parent-child-teacher triangle which you don't have when you're in the business world. it's a very different type of situation. alexis describes job tasks and daily routines of the teaching profession as “juggling many plates.” she says that a main concern is striking a balance among these multiple stakeholder relationships. that’s experience to me gained by having different jobs, going out and just gaining work experience. oh, it’s complex….you’ve got administration, the principal, you’ve got other teachers, you’ve got parents, you’ve got the school board, and then you have the kids, which is why you are there....you are juggling many plates....so, a lot of balance. parents make up one group of the many stakeholders with which new teachers learn to interact. parents of children can influence the work routines of teachers and the school culture. they do not work for the school or spend a great deal of time at the school, but they exert considerable influence on the work of teachers. although students are considered to be the novice teachers 13 teachers’ direct customers, parents play a strong role in the school. this issue triggers stress for novice teachers, especially during their initial interactions with parents. novice teachers seek out information from more experienced teachers so as to better navigate the tricky waters of parentteacher interactions. most participants recalled ‘how to deal with parents’ as a very challenging task for a novice teacher to learn. they were not prepared for or experienced in this task before they became professional teachers. ashley gives an example of how a parent can make her job difficult. that’s how it is here, that’s why some teachers don’t last because parents often come and say “i want to see how you gave my kid grades.” they confront teachers. they have high teacher turnover, that’s what you find in places like smithville and jonesville, and those areas. the parents go and actually try to get teachers fired. the previous paragraphs stress the importance of parents in schools, but the main stakeholders for teachers in schools are the students. in this study, the participants based their decision making on their students’ needs. even if the school or state policy mandates a certain direction, if the participants believed that it was counter to their students’ needs, then they would tend to neglect the rules to follow their real beliefs. hannah believes that finding students’ needs and filling their needs are teachers’ responsibilities. she explains how novice teachers come to understand these responsibilities over time. good teachers know what is useful, and what’s not. teachers know what’s good for kids because of the relationships. “why do they not understand?” the relationships that help new teachers survive and prove their craft are, “what’s going to help kids to learn?” school settings involve bureaucratic-style organizations because school districts have highly hierarchical structures and teachers are supposed to follow rules. however, the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 participants reveal that they are independent rule decision makers; that is, teachers make independent judgments to serve their students’ needs. the participants note multiple stakeholder relationships, and they note that their practical tasks and work routines closely rely upon the principal, parents, and student stakeholders. some of these work routines and tasks are considered to be the most challenging tasks by the participants, and some require significant assistance from their mentors. however, the ultimate decision makers regarding their work tasks are the participants themselves in the moment, even though their interactions involve multiple stakeholders. given the ambiguities and complexities of their roles and their work environments, novice teachers seek out and interpret work-related information from their environments that can help them make sound judgments. in the next section, participants describe how the isolated nature of teaching affects their interactions with others. isolated environment school settings have been characterized as work settings of isolation and individualism (hargreaves, 1992; flores, 2004). however, teachers explore and discover pathways for finding work-related information that can help them with their daily routines and job tasks. for example, participants in this study explain that teachers in the same grade level are able to get together to share ideas, swap materials, and/or team-teach. isabella describes interactions among teachers at the same level, even though they teach in different schools. well there are always, i think, little factions in larger school settings like this. it was very different in the building where there were only five of us. there really weren't any factions to perceive, but i think whenever you have a larger staff, when you are dealing with like 30, 40 people on the staff, you have certain groups that you know do things socially together. novice teachers 15 the degree to which teachers can interact is affected by many variables, such as the size of the school, its policies and procedures, and the school climate. in some cases, an isolated physical environment and the school climate can create barriers to information sharing both physically and emotionally among teachers. madison provides her viewpoints of these phenomena: i know teaching is such an isolated profession. when you get to school, you really don’t know what's going on next door. you make your own business, too. over the past, i had opportunities to team teach with other teachers where we really did get to see their styles and learn from it. sarah raises an internal problem that blocks the sharing of work-related information with her colleagues. according to her, even though it appears to be welcoming or friendly on the surface, the real culture of her school was not as it seemed. her colleagues were uncomfortable with sharing and exposing their spaces, so they closed the doors. probably, people in the building were friendly, and they seemed very welcoming, but they were not open. i never felt welcomed to go to them with problems and say “hey, i don’t know what to do about this.” the classrooms of the participants are basically self-contained. according to the participants, they mostly close their classroom doors, even after class. that is to say, the participants’ work environments are physically isolated. however, they point out they are isolated not only physically but also psychologically. they believe that their colleagues are more comfortable working alone in closed self-contained classrooms. in the next section participants recall how groups of influential teachers influenced interactions among teachers. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 “core group” kardos, johnson, peske, kauffman, & liu, (2001) describe two different school cultures that new teachers encounter: veteran-oriented and novice-oriented cultures. however, results of this study do not indicate novice-oriented cultures. most participants of this study described a core-group culture within their work settings. it was typically comprised of a senior group of influential teachers. aligned with the findings of this study, schoonmaker (2002) describes teacher cultures as “notorious centers of gossip about children, their families, [and teachers]” (p. 108). the participants of this study describe one of these hidden cultural components, a core group which can strongly influence the nature of the work setting, and thus, affect the sharing of work-related information among novice and experienced teachers. abigail explains that there has always been a core group that has been dominant regardless of the school during her entire teaching career (35 years). therefore, when teachers enter a school, the participants suggest digging into an important kind of work-related information -finding out who are the people they should get along with or who they should avoid. this kind of work-related information can be difficult for new teachers to distinguish and interpret. that seniority culture, oh you learn that fast. i learned by observing that it exists in every single school, every school and every workplace. there is a little core group of people who are in there… they are sort of go to people. i mean if you want to know the gossip, you go to them. if you want to know the latest scoop on anything, you go to them, but also you know that if you don't want to be gossiped about, you stay away from them. hannah supports the notion that this core group is developed by a seniority culture. teachers can stay at the same school for a long time, and the teachers who have senior status can novice teachers 17 become a center group. considering the work-related information that can be transferred from person-to-person, the informants who provide the backdrop of this information automatically stand on higher ground than the receiver; hence a seniority culture emerges. novice teachers may easily fall prey to this culture because they are ignorant of the culture’s undercurrents. hannah emphasizes the importance of reading the culture and interpreting the hidden cultural information: i think to be a good teacher you have to read the culture. you have to read the other teachers and see what they are doing, see how they are behaving, see how they are fitting in so you know what to do and what not to do. i mean you just have to be a very good social observer. when i first went to that school, there was a certain table you never sat at, because that’s where the old ladies sat at, played cards and smoked cigarettes during lunch. this is a long time ago! they would give you the eye or they would like let you know non-verbally that you couldn’t sit there. according to the participants, the core group culture is commonly connected to political issues that exist in schools. based on the participants’ narratives, trust is a serious issue among teachers. novice teachers can struggle with interpreting who may be trusted within power circles of the school setting; therefore, novice teachers may struggle with interpreting some of the workrelated information and making judgments about the information’s utility for their work tasks and daily routines. the participants offer negative perceptions about the existence of core group cultures in schools. they believe that senior teachers dominate the atmosphere of a school, and novice teachers are required to implicitly read those hidden cultures. from these readings, novice teachers try to determine the usefulness and applicability of work-related information that they current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 glean from their interactions with these core groups. the participants warn that novice teachers should carefully assess the nature of core groups. on the one hand they can be a good source of useful work-related information, but on the other hand they can be sources of gossip or dissent. in the next section participants describe how the ages of select stakeholders of school settings can affect how novice teachers access work-related information. age culture the participants describe an age culture in schools that has a different meaning from seniority culture. the age culture can be revealed between teachers and parents, or among teachers themselves. the participants explain a tendency to get along with stakeholders within similar age groups. age seems to be relevant to the participants when they connect with others to share information in school or build personal relationships that are relevant to their jobs. hannah shares her experiences of how the age issue influenced personal relationships in the school. happy hour! there are a lot of happy hours on friday nights. there's a place that they go to, and one of the teachers had a swimming party to get together this summer. but these teachers are a lot younger than the ones that i was working with in blakeville. those were mostly older veteran teachers....i was a lot younger than most of them, and i got married during that first semester that i taught here. i had no children, so i didn't have that in common with any other teachers. i think it was just the age gap. olivia’s age affected how others perceived her teaching expertise. olivia’s beliefs were rejected in the school context because of her relatively young age. this age factor is not limited to interactions with teachers or administrators, according to olivia it also influences parents’ perceptions of the skills and abilities of novice teachers. novice teachers 19 that was one of my biggest challenges, of course. when you are a first year teacher they don’t respect your opinions as much as if you are teaching for say ten years. then they assume that maybe you do know what you are talking about, so i think i ran into that as a first year teacher, too. i wasn’t always respected and believed by either administration or parents. i think that it takes a while to learn. another dynamic is you know when you are in your twenties and the parents are in their thirties, they tend to think that they know more than you do just because they are older, so as you get older that automatically changes. this preceding finding is aligned with the research of day, johnson, chen, wallace, and ricketts (2010). for example, they note that younger teachers are more likely to experience parental aggression than some of their teaching counterparts. synthesizing the participants’ narratives, the age level is very important for the novice teachers to select a group with which to share their time and work-related information. the participants recalled how they were most comfortable sharing time with similarly aged people. this age culture limits novice teachers from developing in their jobs because they limit their span of influence in regard to other teachers, principals, or parents. in the next section, participants describe their interpretations of mandatory volunteer work within the context of their schools. mandatory volunteering for work according to demarrais and lecompte (1999), schools are very special organizations that consist of a lot of unwritten job expectations that are not depicted by official job descriptions. connell (1985) also pinpoints this characteristic by describing teaching as a process of labor that does not have an object. for example, teachers are commonly expected to balance current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 heavy committee duties beyond their established workloads. committee work is a volunteer job, but the participants of this study were implicitly expected to volunteer as novice teachers regardless of their willingness. the participants view committee roles as a political or fitting-in strategy to visibly show they are filling the expectations held for novice teachers within the school. chloe did not know that several committee duties are included in the teaching profession before she graduated from college. chloe explains how she eventually took on committee work in her school. you don’t really know about this when you leave college. there is committee work that you are expected to participate in….the building committee and district committee and curriculum committee and school improvement plan....you are not forced to do it, but you are expected to do it, encouraged strongly (laugh) to go ahead and make sure that you are doing it. that’s a part of being a team member at the school. everybody has to take on some of those things. the participants volunteered for several committees as a means of fitting in, but they explain that they took on those tasks as an unwritten expectation of the school culture. they did not know this cultural component before they entered the schools, but they came to learn these expectations through the socialization processes. the participants used the contexts of the committees as useful and meaningful places to expand their insights about their schools; that is, they were able to access work-related information and learn things about their schools that were unattainable within their classrooms. novice teachers 21 in the next section, participants explain the importance of novice teachers learning about additional types of informal work relationships that can affect their success with daily routines and performing their work tasks. get on the good side of support staff finally, participants explain an implicit type of work information that resides in the schools. the participants commonly emphasize one component that is not directly relevant to teaching but that significantly affects their daily routines and performance of their job tasks: good relationships with custodians and secretaries. on the surface, secretaries and custodians do not appear to be vital to a novice teacher’s success because they are not in decision making positions that directly influence the teachers’ jobs. as a result, novice teachers might easily overlook the significance of these relationships. however, the participants acquired this workrelated information either from family members who were teachers or other teachers who cared about their welfare. in other words, those who have worked in schools understand the importance of these relationships. for example, madison’s father (and educator) helped her become aware of this hidden cultural factor: my dad said to me when i became a teacher, “you know, madison, i want to tell you who the most important people in the school are: the custodian and the secretary. (laughing) they run the school, and really, they are part of the family at our school, they really are.” ashley specifically explains how custodians or secretaries can affect teachers in the school. she also gives some tips of how to be conscious about these factors in school life. your contact is always the secretary, so you need to know secretaries' day or you always need to take care of your secretary because the secretary is the one who decides if you get current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 messages or you don’t get messages. if you need something, they are the ones who know where it is. you have to be conscious of the janitor. if you do not clean your room or something happened to your classroom, they may take the time to come to see you, or if you need something to be fixed, they are going to take the time. so you need to cover your context and make sure that you get them cards for christmas or whatever. just be conscious of them because they are not teachers but they are very important as far as your success. the participants are conscious of this hidden cultural component that makes their tasks easier or helps them become successful teachers. they have specific strategies on how to deal with this work-related information, and they agree on its importance for novice teachers. the preceding sections highlighted the predominant themes that emerged from the data. although school environments may vary from school to school and district to district, based on the participants’ narratives, these common thematic findings are representative of the types of work-related information embedded in school contexts. from these contexts the participants depict types of work-related information from which they learned as novice teachers. in summary, a school consists of multiple stakeholder relationships, and teachers’ workplaces are isolated not only physically but also psychologically. a “core group” can significantly influence the overall atmosphere of a school, and an age culture can also exist in the school. the participants describe the importance of mandatory volunteer work. and finally, they note the importance of establishing good relationships with school staff members. for these participants, accessing and learning from these types of work-related information occurred over time and through different channels. novice teachers 23 discussion, concluding thoughts, and suggestions for future research the participants of this study believe that teaching is a lengthy and endless learning process. they believe that their established routines and work tasks are affected by multiple factors, and broad capabilities are needed to successfully carry out these tasks. the participants of this study explain that developing an understanding of the school setting helped them to seek out work-related information and to learn from it, and nuances of the school culture can facilitate or obstruct information sharing among teachers. school settings are characterized by a number of features that coexist, such as being comparing and competitive, autonomous and hierarchical, individualistic and collaborative, silent and interactive. as flores (2004) notes, school environments are commonly very paradoxical, and no two of them are exactly alike. therefore, the approaches for accessing workrelated information and learning from it will probably vary from one school to the next. an important finding of this study is that teachers’ contexts are dominated by unwritten or implicit information. therefore, novice teachers who tend to look only at the surface can become frustrated trying to figure out why things are done the way they are done in a school. because novice teachers may not understand the backdrop of this information and are unable to interpret it, they try to seek logic in experienced teachers’ performance. however, confusion can set in for them as they become immersed in a school culture that they may not understand. schools can be heavily influenced by bureaucratic organizational structure; however, several of the participants of this study emerged as rule-independent decision makers for which their bottom-line criteria were their students’ needs. in this study, unlike what flores (2004) describes, the participants demonstrated that unless they had common beliefs or philosophy, collaboration and commitment to each other was not likely to occur. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 this study provides school-based contexts from which experienced teachers reflected on work-related information, some barriers and pathways for accessing it, and personal learning that was connected to it. the narratives of these teachers provide insights regarding the types of work-related information that can help novice teachers succeed in their entry to the profession. this study relied on the abilities of experienced teachers to accurately recall their time as novice teachers. however, confidence in the accuracy of their recollections is based in the premise that teaching is a reflective practice. additional studies could be conducted that are based on the reflections of novice teachers who are engaged in acquiring work-related information. studies could be conducted on the learning-in-action that is based on recently accessed work-related information. comparative studies can be conducted that examine the barriers and catalysts to information sharing among novice teachers and experienced teachers across disciplines and other boundaries that exist within school systems. a limitation of this study is that its participants taught at middle to upper-middle class schools. findings may have been considerably different, for example, if participants had been socialized as novice teachers in urban schools in poor neighborhoods. therefore, additional studies are recommended that can broaden this line of inquiry to other types of school settings. finally, additional research is encouraged that can provide new conceptual frameworks for examining work-related information. research is needed that can be easily interpreted by novice teachers who are trying to access work-related information and learn from it. the high attrition rate of novice teachers is a well known problem in the profession. additional research is needed that can help novice teachers read cues in their work settings and survive their early professional struggles. novice teachers 25 references campbell, r., j., evans, l., neill, s. r. s. j., & packwood, a. 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(1994). case study research: design and methods (2nd ed.). beverly hills, ca: sage publishing. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 28 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word 819_final_1.doc 1 volume 15, number 1 april 10, 2012 issn 1099-839x exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study kemal sinan özmen gazi university this paper presents a four-year longitudinal study of student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching over the course of an english teacher education (elt) program. the study attempts to track possible changes in the beliefs and to analyze the impact of an elt pre-service program by taking the program itself as a dynamic variable. interviews were conducted with 49 student teachers for four years, and the data were processed through a mixed-method design. the results of the study indicate that different phases of the program resulted in various changes at certain degrees. student teachers’ engagement in the teaching practicum seems to have a higher impact on the development of the beliefs about language learning and teaching. the findings may be influential in developing and designing more effective elt programs. keywords: teacher beliefs, pre-service teacher education, beliefs about language learning and teaching beliefs of language teachers about language learning and teaching have a significant impact on their practice. the studies on student teachers’ (sts) beliefs highlight that sts carry with them some strong ideas and beliefs about education influencing the way in which they process the input during their program (pajares, 1992). furthermore, sts are believed to use their previous educational experiences to interpret the input provided in their teacher education program (kagan, 1992). as much of the research indicates, the previously-constructed beliefs are likely to remain unchanged after graduation (peacock, 2001; powell, 1992; wubbels, 1992). such findings have led us to focus on two critical issues: the mechanics of sts beliefs’ change should be studied empirically in different countries and contexts, and the findings of those studies must be utilized to reshape the current content and structure of teacher education programs. while we still do not have a crystal clear portrait of how beliefs are constructed during sts’ educational lives, the findings of some promising studies provide persuasive evidence. for example, nettle’s (1996) findings indicated both change and stability in sts’ beliefs during their program. later, nettle (1998) confirmed these findings in his study in which the firstyear sts’ beliefs were analyzed after the practicum. in this respect, the literature concerned may be broadly classified into two kinds of studies: some research emphasizes changes in the beliefs of sts (winitzky & kaucak, 1997), while others do not (tillema & knoll, 1997). one reason why the findings are quite different from each other may be that we generally possess little or no information about the program of study and content of english language teaching (elt) programs in which belief studies were conducted (mattheoudakis, 2007). bramald, hardman, and leat (1995) rightfully mention that the nature and the quality of teacher education programs are not taken into consideration as an influential variable in studies about sts’ beliefs. those programs are mostly regarded as a constant rather than as a dynamic variable (cabaroglu & roberts, 2000). current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 2 along this line of thinking, this paper presents a longitudinal study on sts’ beliefs about language learning and teaching. the details of the elt program are also discussed to explain how the structure and the content of a program may influence the findings. thus, the study aims at enriching our perception of the development of sts’ beliefs by pointing to the correlation between belief changes and the phases of the elt program at gazi university in turkey. student teachers’ beliefs as is generally acknowledged, sts’ beliefs can be tracked back to early experiences, from primary education up to tertiary level. besides, the beliefs of university teachers about the learning and teaching may exert a notable impact on the educational experiences of students in tertiary contexts (calderhead, 1996; errington, 1985, 2001; hofer & pintrich, 1997; mcdiarmid, 1990; pajares, 1992; richardson, 1996; tatto, 1998). as for teacher education programs, the leading question underlying most of the research into sts’ beliefs is whether these programs result in drastic cognitive developments, and if so, whether these developments influence the classroom behavior of novices and their approach to education in general. surely, the assumption of the researchers is that sts’ beliefs and ideas on how learning and teaching should be conducted will shape sts’ practices in classroom teaching. although teachers’ beliefs are characterized in various ways, the literature is centered around two major categories; namely, (1) teaching as a process of knowledge transmission, and (2) teaching as a process of knowledge construction (entwistle, skinner, entwistle, & orr, 2000; kane, sandretto, & heath, 2002; samuelowicz & bain, 2001; teo, chai, hung, & lee, 2008). the transmissive view addresses the tendency of teachers toward didactic teaching during which students adopt a passive role. in this view of teaching, the teacher is the source of knowledge and the authority, identifying the objectives, pace of teaching and methodology, also known as traditional teaching. the other view is the constructivist view of teaching, stressed by chai, teo, and lee (2009) as “the importance of students’ efforts to make sense of their experiences and the teachers’ role in facilitating this process” (p. 353). generally, most of the studies have revealed that students adopt an eclectic approach integrating traditional and constructivist views of teaching (brooks, 2002; entwistle et al., 2000; minor et al., 2002; van driel, bulte, & verloop, 2007). second language teacher education (slte) and sts’ beliefs the content and context of teacher education programs and specifically the ratio of theoretical and practical courses vary significantly depending on the nature of the program, the cultural values, norms and expectations of the society. richards (1990) notes that the second language teacher education (slte) programs should provide opportunities for the novice teachers to acquire skills and competences of effective teachers. to this end, elt programs offer both theoretical courses and practical courses. these programs usually have a teaching practicum module in the last year. freeman and johnson (1998) point out that “learning to teach is a long-term, complex developmental process that operates through participation in social practices and contexts associated with learning and teaching” (p. 402). this statement implies that there is a need for the adoption of a constructivist view of teaching in slte. similarly, crandall (2000) mentions the changing trends in slte in the 1990s, referring to (1) a theoretical shift from behaviorism to constructivism, (2) the heavy influence of sts’ prior learning and beliefs, (3) the realization that slte programs did not adequately prepare sts for real classroom teaching and (4) the growth of professionalism among elt practitioners. we can infer that the critical role of sts’ beliefs and the need for sts teaching in real classrooms have been understood clearly over the last two decades. however, wright (2010) laments that “research on the interactions of sts’ prior knowledge and beliefs about language learning and teaching, and program goals, course content and teacher educators’ cognitions and pedagogy in ongoing slte programs is almost nonexistent” (p. 269). although the tendency in the current literature acknowledges the importance of sts’ beliefs in shaping their teacher identities and practices, only a limited number of studies have reported a modification in slte programs. even though sts’ beliefs still await being taken into consideration in slte, changing winds have surely challenged the transmissive and behaviorist pedagogies. the growing evidence indicates that experiential (dewey, 1938), constructivist, and social constructivist views of learning (lantolf, 2000) have been adopted, which in turn has led to the widespread implementation of reflective practice in slte pedagogy (schön, 1983, 1987; wallace, 1991). the reason why slte does not adequately benefit from the studies that address the critical role of sts’ beliefs leads us to focus on the discussion of teaching theoretical courses like second language acquisition (sla). sla courses, which normally must have a vital role in shaping the sts’ beliefs, are claimed to remain too theoretical and abstract (markee, 1997). therefore, most of the sts cannot associate these courses with the practical methodology courses and the teaching practicum. lightbrown (1985) notes that sla studies can actually convince sts to adopt communicative approaches to elt and help understand why communicative approaches are more effective than behaviorist or purely cognitivist methods. macdonald, exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study 3 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 1 three phases of the elt program phases courses offered in the elt program phase 1 year 1 & 2 academic english (four skills separately), educational sciences (around 10 credits), linguistics i and ii, language acquisition, techniques and principles in language teaching i and ii, special teaching methods i phase 2 year 3 special teaching methods ii, teaching english to young learners i and ii, creative drama, teaching language skills i and ii, educational sciences (6 credits) phase 3 year 4 practicum i and ii, testing, material design and adaptation, elective courses (discourse analysis, pragmatics, semantics, sociolinguistics), educational sciences (6 credits) ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ badger, and white (2001) confirmed the suggestion mentioned above in their study in which sla courses were found to have a significant impact on sts’ beliefs. however, the extent to which such theoretical courses contribute to a change in sts’ beliefs depends on the nature of teaching, the syllabus, and the curriculum of the program. within this theoretical frame of sts’ beliefs and slte pedagogy, the present study analyzes the impact of the phases of a typical elt pre-service program and aims to explore the influences of each phase on sts’ beliefs about language learning and teaching. the structure and content of the program in which the study was conducted in four years were also taken into account so that the program itself as a dynamic variable could be included in the data analysis process. the findings may illuminate our thinking about what aspects of a slte program should be modified to support sts’ belief change. the study context the present study emerged from our need to explore the impact of the elt pre-service education program at gazi university, gazi faculty of education in ankara. the elt program at gazi university offers a national curriculum that is based on a constructivist view of education and reflective approach in pre-service teacher education. among many other reasons such as the general trend in teacher education and impact of national academicians, the major reason behind offering a constructivist program is the language teaching policy of the european union adopted and currently implemented in turkey (çakır & balçıkanlı, 2012). sts at gazi university elt program have to complete a one-year teaching practicum in the fourth year. the practicum is carried out at state primary or secondary schools. sts are assigned to a particular classroom for each semester. english as a foreign language is a compulsory subject in both primary (starting by 4th grade) and secondary schools in turkey, and the number of teaching hours varies from 4 to 10, depending on the grade and type of school. in the practicum, sts are to stick to the prescribed curriculum that is developed and run by the ministry of education. the first semester practicum is based on observation of the students, teachers and the school system. in the second semester, sts start out teaching every week for one course hour (40 or 45 minutes). the methodology trainer observes each st twice during the semester. however, sts are to write reflections and submit them weekly to their trainer. sts also plan their own lessons, prepare original materials and submit them weekly. the one-day practicum is supported with a st and trainer interaction (called "feedbacksessions"). the elt program at gazi university has two major limitations. the first: sts’ prior language learning experience is mostly based on a grammar-based and an exam-oriented secondary school system. in order to be accepted to an elt program, the students in turkey need to take an examination called “foreign language examination” (fle) that is offered by student selection and placement center nationwide. the fle includes 80 multiple-choice test items assessing grammar, academic vocabulary knowledge with some sub-skills of reading. the examination has been proven to exert a negative washback effect on students (yıldırım, 2010). the second, the program is the most crowded one with a population of 1,260 undergraduate students in 2011. the number of faculty is only 38. this study attempted to analyze the content of a typical elt program in terms of certain phases that were identified by the author (table 1). three phases were utilized to observe how the program influenced belief development. phase 1 covers the first two years of the program during which sts are introduced to academic english courses, some educational sciences courses and applied linguistics courses. in phase 1, the only practical course is “special teaching methods i” (4 hours per week) offered in the spring semester of the second year. phase 2 represents the third year of the program in which the current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 4 courses are completely practical and based on the performance of the sts in teaching attempts. phase 3 includes the practicum as well as some methodology and linguistics courses. participants among 243 students enrolled in the program in 2007, 60 sts were invited randomly by email, but only 49 sts wanted to take part in the study. thus, 49 participants were followed up from the first year (september 2007) until the end of the program (may 2011). their age ranged between 18 and 21. forty-four of the participants were female (89.8%), which is common in elt programs in turkey. attempts were made to ensure homogeneity among the participants. specifically, the variables that might influence the results, such as educational background, socio-economic demography and their aim to attend an elt program were tightly controlled before the research. the trainers who taught the methodology courses were taken into consideration during the study, which means all the participants took 16 credits of core methodology courses and the complete practicum from the same trainer. on the other hand, the study has various limitations. the sample of 49 sts may not represent the whole population. the number of participants was limited due to the nature of the qualitative design. also possible idiosyncratic differences among participants cannot be controlled in any way. taking these limitations into account, the results should be interpreted with caution. research objectives the aims of the present four-year longitudinal study are listed below, as follows: • identify the current status of the sts’ beliefs about language learning and teaching when they enter the elt program in 2007, • track the changes in sts’ beliefs about language learning and teaching during four years of the elt program, • explore the impact of each phase of the elt program on sts’ beliefs about language learning and teaching, • examine the areas of the elt curriculum which have a low, a high or a neutral impact on the sts’ belief development. data collection the study is based on a mixed-method design. to explore in greater depth the sts’ belief development, two different semi-structured interviews were conducted with the set of questions given in the appendix. all the interviews were conducted by the author in english. the first interview was conducted at the end of each academic year starting by may 2008. the first interview was also utilized at the beginning of the program (september 2007) with the newcomer sts. the aim of this first interview was to gather data concerning the beliefs of the participating sts about learning and teaching a foreign language. the second interview was applied only once when the participants completed the program in may 2011. the second interview aimed at gathering data that related to the ideas of sts about the curriculum of the program and their experiences as sts during four years. two pilot interviews were conducted during the summer school in 2007 and some of the interview questions were refined accordingly. forty-nine sts participated in the interviews. each st was invited to the research and they were informed about their rights to secure the ethical grounds of the study. the participants were assigned nicknames to secure their privacy. each interview lasted around 30 minutes. all of the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. as for collecting data concerning the demographical features of the participants, a short questionnaire was developed and administered in 2007 when the participants were enrolled to the program. this questionnaire included items about age, gender, motivation for becoming a teacher, socio-economic status and educational background. data analysis the software nvivo was used to assist in organizing the gathered data derived from the transcriptions of the interviews. the data were categorized under the major educational views on teaching a foreign language, namely, traditional view, constructivist view (wright, 2010), and the mixed view. one more category, “other,” was added to classify the data that were neither related to other categories nor clear enough to code them safely as a finding. these categories were also utilized to classify the data in terms of (1) learning, (2) teaching and (3) being a learner/teacher. in the process of data analysis, three scholars cross-checked the coding of the transcriptions, and refined the categorized data in light of a cyclical reading process. consensus was achieved upon discussions on differences and flaws. the trustworthiness of the data was enhanced through this process (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2000). the demographic data gathered through a questionnaire were analyzed using computer software. descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage were utilized for the analysis. the demographic findings were referred to ensure the homogeneity and identify the characteristics of the sample group. however, those specific data were not exploited to categorize or compare the findings. results demography the analysis of the sts’ answers to the questionnaire showed that the participants were quite a homogeneous group in terms of their educational and exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study 5 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 2 results of the interview sessions in september 2007 traditional/ transmissive constructivist mixed other beliefs about f % f % f % f % learning 44 89.8 5 10.2 teaching 37 75.5 7 14.2 5 10.2 learner/teacher 41 83.6 3 6.1 5 10.2 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ socio-demographic background, and their motivation in enrolling an elt program. they all were native speakers of turkish who learned english as a foreign language after the age of nine or ten in state primary schools. following their primary education, they all chose an english major in secondary education. this is typical in turkey since the only way to get prepared for the “foreign language examination” is to choose english as a major in upper secondary education. the age of the participants in 2007 ranged between 18-20 (sd 0.3). forty-four (89.8%) of the sts were female and the remainder of 5 (10.2%) were male. they mostly came from the middle class families. all student teachers were full-time undergraduates in gazi faculty of education, english language teaching program at gazi university. findings the discussions of the qualitative data were organized in terms of the research objectives, shorter versions of which are as follows: (1) identifying the current status, (2) tracking the changes in sts’ beliefs, (3) exploring the impact of the program, and (4) examining the elt curriculum. the verbal data were quantified through coding and categorization in order to illustrate the change more clearly. critical remarks and ideas of the participants were also presented in quotations for providing an in-depth discussion of each research question (rq). research question 1: identifying the current status the findings used to test the first research question were based on the first interview sessions held in 2007 when the sts enrolled in the program (table 2). the first interview results indicated that most of the sts held a transmissive/traditional view of language teaching and learning (f=44, 89.8%). the details are presented in table 1. 89.8% of the sts believed that learning a foreign language effectively was a result of memorizing vocabulary items and practicing grammar so as to construct an infrastructure to develop the communicative skills. they mostly perceived foreign language learning as a set of some cognitive operations. only 5 participants (10.2%) mentioned various socio-affective language learning strategies and study skills that help develop communicative competence in the target language. as for the beliefs regarding teaching, 75.5% (f=37) had a transmissive /traditional view of teaching l2. while around 14% held a mixed view (f=7), the views of 5 participants (10.2%) were either vague or incomprehensible, thus categorized as ‘other.' the sts believed that an english teacher was the source of the knowledge and had the complete authority in managing the classroom and deciding on what and how to learn. the findings about the learning/teacher were parallel with those of learning and teaching. the sts referred to the traditional teacher roles in defining a typical english teacher (f-41, 83.6%). similarly, the participants viewed the language student as a passive learning who rarely practices language in a constructivist way (f-3, 6.1%). in 2007, only 5 (10.2%) possessed a mixed view about learners' and teachers' roles. research question 2: tracking the development when the sts were asked to reflect on the source of these beliefs in 2007, unanimously and normally, they all referred to their l2 learning experiences in primary and secondary school education. the influence of the secondary school, during which they had studied for a grammar-oriented examination (fle) to be accepted to an elt program, was heavier than that of the primary school. some critical highlights of the interviews are as follows: in order to speak english, first we must have some grammar and vocabulary knowledge. after learning some grammar and vocabulary, we can start practicing speaking. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 6 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 3 classification of the beliefs at the beginning of the elt program (2007) area of questioning (semi-structured questions) see appendix core relevant narrative formed from quotation (key content summarized through relevant quotations and linked by formulated meaning statements) emergent themes (initial themes arising within quotation) sum of constructivist mixed views f % beliefs about language learning language learning should start with learning grammar and vocabulary. (st2, st25,st26, st30, st39, st43) transmissive and traditional view of teaching 5 10.2 beliefs about language teaching teacher explains grammar rules and translates reading passages. (st2, st7, st11, st23, st28, st32, st37, st40, st49) grammar translation method, behaviorist applications of language teaching _ _ beliefs about being a language learner students should memorize rules and vocabulary items. learning how to speak english can be realized in an english speaking community. st4, st10, st14, st19, st33, st42, st47) rote learning, memorization, short-term study habits 2 4.08 beliefs about being a language teacher teachers provide exercises and tests. (st17, st23, st31, st41, st49) source of knowledge, knowledge transmitter 1 2.02 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ i generally memorize rules and structures so that i can use them when necessary. in lycee [high school], we needed to memorize thousands of vocabulary items and rules to achieve in the university exam. in the academic year 2008-2009, the sts did not display a significant change in their beliefs. the first phase of the program offers only 8 credits of practical methodology courses and 6 more on theoretical aspects of elt methods and approaches. in exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study 7 addition to such courses, the sts take many academic english courses, such as “speaking i and ii and reading and writing i and ii” in the first year. many (f=43, 87.7%) reported that the methodology that the instructors of these courses adopted was quite ‘unusual’ for them: in all of the courses, we need to speak english. this is difficult. honestly, we did not practice speaking in lycee [high school] since we did not have time for that. when our teacher wanted us to speak in the classroom, we usually reminded her that we needed to focus on the exam and practice tests. in our method courses, our trainer talks about ways of teaching english and shows us some activities which are completely strange and interesting. i do not know whether such activities work in a real classroom. the third year of the program (2009-2010), which was categorized as phase 2, is heavily based on a practiceand a student-oriented syllabus that provide opportunities for the sts to perform micro and macro teaching demonstrations. at the end of this phase in may 2010, the sts displayed a significant change in their beliefs about language teaching and learning. this remarkable change can be observed in the sharp increase of the mixed view (f=29, 59.1%). seventeen (24.4%) of the sts seemed to hold views categorized as ‘other,' which was unexpected. however, it was found that the sts were confused about the teaching principles and techniques they performed because very few sts witnessed that such innovative techniques (typical tasks and activities of communicative approaches) worked in practice: this year i have prepared and presented more than ten demonstrations. well, we simply learn to teach english different than our learning experiences. we will see if they are really useful in the future. we cannot give instructions in turkish. we don’t talk about grammar rules directly because we need to do elicitation. we don’t write turkish equivalents of the unknown words. we don’t translate reading passages for our students, and we do not do reading aloud. i mean these all describe the way i learned english. now i need to believe that all these are wrong. perhaps they are. i need to see it for myself. in the last year (2010-2011), the third phase of the study, the sts began to teach in the practicum. the results indicated that the practicum had a significant impact on the sts beliefs. thirty-two (65.3%) of the participants reported a constructivist view of language teaching, and 11 (22.4%) seemed to hold a mixed view. the number of 'other view' decreased to 6 participants (12.2%), which was promising. table 3 displays the classification of the sts beliefs at the beginning of the teacher education program (in 2007) with frequencies and percentages of the constructivist and mixed views in this year. the core narrative represents the commonly referred statements in sts’ defining learning, teaching, being a learner and a teacher. one can infer that sts in 2007 viewed language learning and teaching under the influence of the traditional high-stakes examination. thus, the negative washback of the “foreign language examination” can be regarded as rote learning, memorization, and low order thinking skills among students, which were also found as the emergent themes in 2007. table 4 below shows the classification of the sts beliefs at the end of the teacher education program (in 2011) with frequencies and percentages about the constructivist and mixed views. at the end of the program, the change in sts beliefs approximated to an academic perspective; for example, most of the sts viewed language learning as a process through which individuals tried to develop their communicative competence. in addition, the non-linguistic elements, such as motivational factors or the roles of the teachers can be categorized under a constructivist view of language learning, as sts believed the teacher is a mentor and a counselor. the common response to the interview questions in the last year was that “it was convincing to see that all of those activities, tasks and games worked in practice” (i̇pek, last interview in 2011). the reason why the practicum was so influential might be found in another comment of a participant: “we practiced and rehearsed teaching english in the third year...even how to use our body language and voice. and witnessing that what we learned is applicable and realistic has made me feel secure and confident” (burçak, last interview in 2011). many of the participants (f=45, 91.8%) noted that the weekly reflections that they wrote after their teaching attempt in the practicum and the feedback of the trainer and the peers were influential in shaping their beliefs. “generally, the response of our trainer to my reflections referred to our sla or methodology courses. she always answered my questions by leading me to think about the academic knowledge” (samet, last interview in 2011). the impact of reflective writing and feedback sessions throughout the practicum seemed to help sts associate their teaching experience with the elt literature and make sense of their actions in front of real students. also, the sts (f=39, 79.5%) underlined that feedback sessions encouraged and convinced them to use those “unusual teaching techniques." current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 8 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 4 classification of the beliefs at the end of the elt program (2011) area of questioning (semi-structured questions) see appendix core relevant narrative formed from quotation (key content summarized through relevant quotations and linked by formulated meaning statements) emergent themes (initial themes arising within quotation) sum of constructivist mixed views f % beliefs about language learning students should be led to become inquisitive and open to communicate. (st7, st13,st21, st34) developing communicative skills, contextual learning, socio-affective strategies, interaction with authentic materials 43 87.7 beliefs about language teaching teachers use written or oral contexts and guide students to discover language use and usage. (st1, st9, st22 st23, st29, st32, st36, st45, st48) using tasks, contextual teaching, language competences, being humanistic, promoting use of l2 in the class 44 87.7 beliefs about being a language learner learners try to develop their communicative competence. (st6, st9, st19, st23 st25, st35, st40, st41, st46) motivation, diminishing affective filter, personalizing language learning, use of real life resources, developing language skills 40 81.6 beliefs about being a language teacher teachers are patient, resourceful, fun and friendly. (st3, st8, st14, st18 st20, st28, st39, st44) facilitator, mentor, counselor, critical thinker 41 83.6 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ research question 3: exploring the impact of the program the findings that helped examine the rq 3 were parallel with those of rq 2. the participants believed that the most influential phase of the program was phase 3 (f=47, 95.9%). nineteen participants (38.7%) agreed that phase 2 followed phase 3 in terms of its effect on their belief change. one participant pointed out that “we simply learned everything which we put into practice in the last year.” as for the second year (as the part of phase 1), 17 of the sts (34.6%) believed that this year had some impact, mostly reminded them of the methodology course they took in the second semester. however, the first year of the phase 1 had little or no impact (f=3, 6.1%). again the sts unanimously agreed that the practicum was influential, and the interaction with the trainer and the exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study 9 peers supported the experiential learning process. one st noted: we brought many new teaching techniques to the efl classes in state schools. the students were quite surprised at first, but then they begun to react positively because they saw our effort and sincerity. i wish i had learned english the way we taught in the practicum. although the responses of the sts have led us to infer that the phase 3 is the most influential one, we should underline that the program is complementary in nature. in other words, the first year, which was found to have the lowest impact on the belief development, is actually critical in developing the l2 communicative competences of the sts. moreover, the theoretical courses that were repeatedly reported to be boring and irrelevant were found effective in the feedback sessions during practicum. therefore, an inference that the phase 1 and 2 are weak and limited may not be accurate. research question 4: examining the elt curriculum the fourth research question aimed at exploring what phases and components of the elt program should be modified to help sts develop more effective beliefs. in examining the research question, the data gathered through the first and second interviews were exploited. therefore, the suggestions are based on merely the participating sts’ perspectives. the sts agreed on the three major limitations of the program, presented in table 5. educational sciences courses are around 20 credits (with the electives) in the elt program and taught in turkish. the participating sts believed that these courses were about general educational sciences, quite generalized and irrelevant to their education. they also reported that the lecturers of those courses had no background in elt, which means the teaching principles and techniques taught in these courses are not related to teaching l2. the sts suggested these courses be taught in english by the lecturers with a background in elt or be excluded from the program. the sts take various language skills courses in the first year, and the participants believed that these courses might be replaced with some field courses. some suggested that a content-based approach be applied to these courses. on the other hand, they also acknowledged that these courses helped develop the necessary academic language competences that were critically important in attaining success in the following years. the sts also regarded the intensity of the third year as a weakness and repeatedly mentioned that they could not find enough time to get prepared for the teaching demonstrations, the number of which is around ten per semester. the sts are to prepare a detailed lesson plan, original materials and the demonstration that is performed in front of peers and the trainer. some believed that stress and tiredness negatively affected their performance. discussion the present study has revealed that the sts of gazi university, elt program start out their teacher education with various common beliefs and ideas about language learning and teaching. those beliefs were constructed during their previous education, based on their experiences as language students. because this group of sts had to take a grammar-based and a traditional test to be accepted to the program, the nature of their preconceptions about learning and teaching l2 were mostly transmissive/traditional. however, the courses specifically that they took in the third and fourth year (phase 2 and 3) of the program enabled them to change their beliefs about how language learning should be facilitated and what kind of teacher identity they should develop to become an effective efl teacher. reflective writing and post-feedback sessions during the practicum were reported to help them build attitudes and actions on a well-established theoretical ground; that is, the practicum actually enabled them to make sense of the theoretical courses such as linguistics, sla and other applied linguistic courses (see table 1). rq 1 investigated the current status of the sts beliefs in 2007 when they first entered the program. the sts beliefs were found to base on a transmissive/traditional view of learning. rote learning, memorization, and short-term study habits were observed as the major learning strategies that they developed previously as a student. similar cases were reported in only one study (e.g. mattheoudakis, 2007). very few seemed to demonstrate socio-affective learning strategies (f=5, 10.2%). the reason the sts developed such beliefs can be tracked back to the national grammar-based examinations offered even in primary education. sts in english teacher education programs in turkey are offered high-stakes examinations at every level of education. these examinations are based on a traditional view of language testing and offer questions in multiple-choice format that assess grammar and vocabulary knowledge in isolated and artificial test items (özmen, 2011; yıldırım, 2010). foreign language students taking these examinations generally follow a preparation period through which they learn about grammar and vocabulary with some exam strategies, and they hardly find time to develop their communicative competences. therefore, the study skills and learning strategies they develop are mostly based on viewing language as a subject matter to be memorized (balçıkanlı, 2010) and used in examinations to enroll in better schools and teacher education programs. a recent study on sts beliefs conducted in turkey (altan, 2012) confirms these findings. rq 2 tracked the developmental process of the current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 10 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 5 suggestions of sts for possible program modifications area of questioning (semi-structured questions) core relevant narrative formed from quotation (key content summarized through relevant quotations and linked by formulated meaning statements) emergent themes (initial themes arising within quotation) f % courses on general educational sciences should be parallel with the elt courses. they should be either excluded or modified (st2, st4, st11, st18, st24, st27 st39, st42 and st48). educational sciences courses, inconsistency of general education courses, instruction language of education courses [l1] 41 83.6 first-year academic english courses should be replaced with some field courses (st3, st8, st9, st12, st18, st23, st24, st29, st31, st36, and st42). language skills courses in the first year, content-based approach to english courses, field courses, first year general courses 40 81.6 what phases and components of the elt program should be modified to help sts develop more effective beliefs? third year is very intense. some courses should be given in the fourth year (st1, st4, st5, st16, st23, st29, st33 st34, st37, st43, st46 and st49). intensity of the third year, overloaded method courses [3rd year] 38 77.5 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ sts beliefs during four years of the elt program. each year, the participants were interviewed at the end of the year and the data were analyzed and compared with the previous years. the findings were similar with the previous research indicating that the models of teacher education based on knowledge transmission do not contribute to sts’ belief development (lamb, 1995). phase 2 was found to be influential, and at the end of this phase sts reported a mixed view of language learning and teaching that borrows from both traditional and modern views. nettle (1998) in his seminal study reports both stability and change may be observed in students’ beliefs about learning a language, depending on many variables. some of these variables may be the nature of the professional context and the cultural factors (sang, valcke, tondeur, zhu, & van braak, 2012). similarly, prosser and trigwell (1999) point out that the same teacher may adopt different approaches to teaching in different settings mostly due to the contextual factors. thus, although sts in phase 2 seemed to change their beliefs in a significant degree, its impact may be observed in their future teaching situations. phase 3 was found to have the most influential impact on the belief development of the sts. the participants held that the practicum, the humanistic approach of the trainer, feedback sessions, reflective writing and feedback obtained at the end of the teaching attempt in the practicum enabled them to make sense of their teaching experience and build up their own style of teaching a foreign language. in a study conducted on the exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study 11 same group of student teachers, balçıkanlı (2010) found that a significant change in sts’ beliefs contributes to their level of autonomy as teacher candidates. tercanlıoğlu (2005) revealed similar findings in her research in which beliefs of students were analyzed in terms of gender. what was also critical in this study was the impact of sla and linguistic courses on sts’ beliefs. if they remained as an intellectual input, such courses are known to have little or no impact on sts’ beliefs (chin & benne, 1985). however, in the context of this study, those courses did have an impact on the sts’ beliefs. although the interviews conducted in the spring terms of 2008, 2009 and 2010 displayed a low impact of these theoretical courses, the participants reported some significant impacts of those courses in the last interview in 2011, when they were able to associate their teaching actions with these courses thanks to the feedback of the trainer in the feedback-sessions. cephe (2009) claims that a reflective approach to teacher education promotes an effective belief change in sts during pre-service teacher education. because cephe (2009) conducted his study in the department in which the present study was carried out, we can possibly infer that a constructivist view of second language teacher education enables a context in which sts may adopt effective beliefs about language learning and teaching. this is quite a critical finding for the slte studies and more research should be conducted to investigate whether a teaching practicum in a reflective atmosphere results in acquiring effective teacher behavior. considering the homogeneous group of this study and the rich qualitative data gathered in four years, we can safely assume that this critical hypothesis is confirmed in this specific study. rq 3 focused on the impact of the elt program. actually it is not surprising that the findings of the rq 2 and 3 were similar in that high and low developments tracked during the phases of the program also illustrated the particular impacts that the program made on the participating sts. teaching practicum year (phase 3) was regarded as the most influential phase of the program. also the third year (phase 2) was claimed to provide the knowledge and skills that were necessary in the practicum. therefore, the experiential and practical phases of the program were regarded as the most influential ones. as lamb (1985) suggests, teacher education programs should give extra attention to an educational strategy that helps sts reshape their beliefs about learning and teaching. in this respect, the findings are in line with the suggestion of lamb (1985). also wright (2010) notes that teacher education programs generally neglect the belief change process of sts and that so little has been done up to now. in this study, however, the department at focus seems to achieve what wright views as a problem by applying a constructivist curriculum with the techniques of reflective approach in teacher education. a similar study conducted in greece by mattheudakis (2007) reported a low impact of teaching practicum on the belief development of pre-service efl students. mattheudakis (2007) reported that the reason for this low impact might be attributed to the transmissive/traditional nature of the efl curriculum and also the grammar-based and certificate-oriented english learning structure of greece. this study, however, reported on different results gathered in an elt program that is based on a constructivist view of education. rq 4 addressed the suggestions of the sts on possible changes that may be necessary to shape the program for a better impact on the belief development. the sts believed educational sciences courses conducted in turkish should be either excluded or modified to relate them to the elt field. these courses were structured mostly by referring to rational-experiential strategies and have already proven ineffective (joram & gabriele, 1998). also the intensity of the third year should be considered in that sts reported a negative effect of this intense year. further research should investigate this case in detail. however, the intense programs like celta are harshly criticized (wright, 2010). conclusion the aim of this study was to investigate sts’ beliefs about language learning and teaching in an elt program by identifying the current status when they first entered the program, tracking the changes in those beliefs during four years, and by exploring their ideas about the impact of the program on their belief development. one of the aims was to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the program from the sts’ perspectives. the findings of this study revealed that a teacher education program based on a constructivist view of education might have a significant impact on the belief development of the pre-service sts. although the first two years were not found significantly influential, the following years led sts to display a significant change in the beliefs, which also indicated a radical difference between the first and the last year of the program. when the theoretical courses are associated with the teaching experiences of the sts in the practicum, they may be influential and convincing in adopting an academic approach to developing effective teacher behavior. the truth is that beliefs, sts beliefs or any other ones, do not change overnight (richardson, 1996). the relevant studies were convincing enough to plan a longitudinal study to investigate the transformation of teacher beliefs and to measure the change in beliefs in a long period of time. the current trend in slte pinpoints the vital role of reflective practice in belief development; however, little has been done up to now to achieve this goal (wright, 2010). in this respect, the present study might be complementary to the literature. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 12 further research may track the sts in their professional careers and measure whether an effective elt program contributes to teaching contexts of these novices. such a study would be complementary because prosser and trigwell (1999) note that the approaches to teaching that teachers adopt in a given context are seen as being contextual or relational; therefore, the approach adopted by a teacher in one context may not be similar with the approach in a different context. understanding the real influence of the belief change or development in initial teacher education requires an observation of teachers from their pre-service education to their professional teaching contexts. these and similar findings may also enlighten the studies of the in-service trainers and decision-makers, who possess inadequate information about this issue. references altan, m. z. 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(2010). second language teacher education: review of recent research on practice. language teaching, 43(3), 259-296. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 14 wubbels, t. (1992). taking account of student teacher preconceptions. teaching and teacher education, 8(2),137–149. yıldırım, ö. (2010). washback effects of a high-stakes university entrance exam: effects of the english section of the university entrance exam on future english language teachers in turkey. asian efl journal, 2(12), 92116. retrieved from http://www.asian-efljournal.com appendix first interview 1. about learning: a. please explain how you study english. what strategies, study skills do you use to practice four skills, grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation? b. how do you define learning a foreign language? 2. about teaching: a. how should a teacher teach english? please describe the principles, techniques, some ways and views. can you give specific examples of activities, exercises, tasks, assignments? b. what are the effective teaching strategies, skills and techniques you prefer as a student? what do you expect from an english teacher to help you improve your english? 3. about learner: a. who is a good language learner? what are her characteristics? b. what are the specific strategies that a good learner employs? 4. about teacher: a. who is a good language teacher? what are her characteristics? b. what specific attitudes does an effective language teacher display? for example, how does s/he approach to the students? what kind of activities and exercises does s/he use to teach english? second interview 1. influence of the elt program: a. what aspects, years or courses of your program have had the most influential impact on your beliefs about language learning and teaching? b. how did the influential aspects of the program affect your thinking? for example, what were the content of the specific course(s) that made you reconsider your ideas about language learning and teaching? 2. strengths and weaknesses of the elt program: a. what are the strengths of the program in terms of your beliefs about language teaching? b. what are the weaknesses of the program in terms of your beliefs about language teaching? 3. necessary modifications on the elt program: a. do you believe that some courses of the program should be modified to help you become a more effective teacher? b. which courses should be modified? c. do you think that there are some courses in the program that were inadequate in terms of their impact in your belief development? exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study 15 article citation özmen, k. (2012). exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/819 author notes dr. kemal sinan özmen gazi university, gazi egitim fakultesi, c-blok, c122, 06500 besevler-ankara, turkey sozmen@gazi.edu.tr dr. özmen works at gazi university, english language teaching program in turkey, and teaches tesol methodology, second language acquisition and creative drama. he has completed his ba, ma and ph.d. degrees in english language teaching at gazi university. he also studied at university of rochester in new york as a fulbright doctoral researcher. his research interests include ‘teaching as a performing art,’ ‘teacher identity and belief development’ and pre-service english teacher education. acknowledgements the author would like to thank the editors and the reviewers of current issues in education for their selfless efforts, and for providing a highly professional editorial process that was a genuine learning experience. manuscript received: 10/1/2011 revisions received: 3/20/2012 accepted: 3/27/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 16 volume 15, number 1 april 10, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1121_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 19, 2013 issn 1099-839x on the effect of learning style on scholastic achievement rahmatullah bhatti national university of modern languages, islamabad, pakistan william m. bart university of minnesota the present study was designed to explore the influence of learning styles on scholastic achievement levels. the participants in this study were undergraduate students studying social sciences at a division 1 research university, the frequencies of the participants in the four learning style categories are the following: convergent (n = 28), divergent (n = 49), assimilator (n = 76), and accommodator (n = 40). the instruments used in the study were the kolb learning style inventory and a demographic form. the major findings of the study are that the dominant learning style was assimilator and that learning style and gender influenced academic achievement. keywords: academic achievement, social sciences, learning styles. learning styles are characteristic ways of perceiving and processing information. considering the importance of learning styles, educational organizations have assessed the learning styles of students and tailored instruction to fit student learning styles. in a comprehensive review of learning style literature, pashler, mcdaniel, rohrer, and bjork (2008) concluded that there is little evidence that matching instruction with learning styles produces superior learning. however, there is also research that indicates that learning styles can influence student academic performance (e.g., hayes & allinson, 1998; kolb & kolb, 2009; matthews, 1996; rasmussen, 1998; riding & grimley, 1999; ross & schultz, 1999; snyder, 2000; tinajero & paramo, 1998; zhang & sternberg, 2006). in addition, reynolds and gerstein (1992) found that teachers and administrators are able to improve the quality of instruction in their schools when they are aware of the learning styles of their students. one prominent model of learning styles is that of david kolb (1984) that posits four learning styles: (1) converger; (3) diverger; (3) assimilator; and (4) accommodator. the kolb learning styles are combinations of two ways to process experience, abstract conceptualization (ac) and concrete experience (ce), and two ways to transform experience, active experimentation (ae) and reflective observation (ro). the convergent thinker is someone who is personally best at solving problems with single correct solutions. the convergent learning style makes use of abstract conceptualization to process experience and abstract experimentation to transform experience. convergers tend to take abstract ideas and actively experiment with them to find the best solutions to problems. such thinkers perceive abstractly and process actively. this style has advantages in completing traditional intelligence tests and in making decisions. persons with this learning style tend to do well in technical tasks and less well in interpersonal relations. the divergent thinker is different in being someone who is able to generate and explore multiple answers to problems. to kolb (1984), the divergent learning style depends on concrete experience to process reality and reflective observation to transform reality. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 divergers perceive concretely and think reflectively and imaginatively. divergent thinking is related to fluency (i.e., the ability to produce multiple ideas in response to a task rapidly), flexibility (i.e., the capacity to consider multiple approaches to a problem), originality (i.e., the tendency to produce novel ideas in response to a task), and elaboration (i.e., the ability to consider the implications and consequences of ideas). divergent thinkers tend to choose the liberal arts and humanities. a third learning style is that of the assimilator who perceives information through abstract conceptualization and transforms that information through reflective observation. assimilators tend to be rational, unemotional, and more interested in abstract concepts than in people. they tend to be solitary and avoid practical activities. finally, accommodators perceive information through concrete experience and process it through active experimentation. they base their decisions on feelings and prefer to work with people. in summary, the four kolb learning styles result from different combinations of perception, abstract conceptualization (ac) vs. concrete experience (ce), and subsequent information processing, active experimentation (ae) vs. reflective observation (ro). there is a difference in learning styles of male and female. females prefer to perceive new information from concrete experience; whereas, males prefer to perceive new information through abstract conceptualization. females tend to be accommodators and/or divergers; whereas, males tend to be assimilators and/or convergers (philbin, meier, huffman, & boverie, 1995). much of the research on kolb’s learning styles has focused on the assessment of individual learning styles (kolb & kolb, 2009). because of the possible effect of learning styles on student achievement, there is a definite need for research to address the relationship between kolb’s learning styles and academic achievement (cano-garcia & hughes, 2000). this study provides an investigation of that relationship among undergraduates enrolled in the social sciences. the following questions guided this research: (1) what are the primary learning styles of undergraduate students enrolled in the social sciences?; (2) do learning styles affect academic achievement?; and (3) do gender and learning style interact? method participants the participants were undergraduates at the university of minnesota from three randomly selected classes in sociology. instruments the instrument used in the study to identify the learning styles of the participants was the kolb learning style inventory (kolb, 2005). kayes (2005) reported internal consistency values ranging from .78 to .84 for the four scales with a sample of 221 undergraduate and graduate students in business. weistra and dejong (2002) reported similar relatively high internal consistency values ranging from .78 to .84 for the four scales with a sample of 101 business employees and students. wilcoxson and prosser (1996) found levels of high internal consistency for the four scales of the instrument with a sample of 187 arts and science undergraduate students from australia. as for the validity of the kolb learning style inventory, wilcoxson and prosser (1996) found four factors in a factor analysis of test data to confirm the two hypothesized bipolar dimensions underlying the instrument. that finding provided evidence for the construct validity of the instrument. data from a normative sample for the inventory version 3.1 indicated a linear relationship between amount of education and abstraction (kolb, 2005). that finding provided additional support for the construct validity of the inventory. those prior studies are only some of the studies discussing the psychometric features of the kolb learning style inventory. some research has questioned the reliability and validity of the instrument (e.g., cornwell & manfredo, 1994; sims, veres, & shake, 1989); whereas, other research has supported its reliability and validity (e.g., kayes, 2002). the studies critical of the reliability and validity of the kolb instrument tended to be critical of earlier versions of the instrument and those criticisms led to improvements in the reliability and validity evident in the instrument used in this study, i.e., kolb learning style version 3.1 (kolb, 2005). however, from a review of learning style inventories, hawk and shaw (2007) recommended further research on the reliability and validity of all learning style instruments intended to enhance student learning and that includes the kolb learning style inventory. the kolb learning style inventory describes the way an individual learns and deals with ideas and daily situations. it consists of 12 sentences. each sentence has a choice of four endings. individuals are asked to rank the endings for each sentence ranging from “4” for the sentence that best describes the way that he/she learns to “1” for the sentence that least describes the way that he/she would learn. the four endings correspond to the four learning modes of active experimentation (ae), concrete experience (ce), reflective observation (ro), and abstract conceptualization (ac). in addition to four primary scores that measure one’s preference on the four learning modes, there are two combination scores that measure one’s emphasis for action over reflection (ae-ro) and abstractness over concreteness (ac-ce). kolb (2005) used these scores to identify convergers, divergers, assimilators, and on the effect of learning style on scholastic achievement 3 table 1 gpa descriptive statistics for four learning styles learning style mean se 95% confidence interval for mean lower bound upper bound converger 3.399 .097 3.207 3.591 diverger 3.163 .070 3.025 3.300 assimilator 3.325 .053 3.221 3.430 accommodator 3.099 .089 2.923 3.275 accommodators. accompanying the inventory was a short demographic form on which each participant could provide information as to personal gender (sex) and gpa. participants were instructed to provide that information prior to completing the kolb learning style inventory. procedure researchers requested participation from various social science departments at a large midwestern division 1 research university. those departments were education, sociology, social work, curriculum and instruction, educational psychology, family social science, organizational leadership, policy, and development, postsecondary teaching and learning. only the department of sociology agreed and participated in the research. a sample of 200 undergraduate students received the consent forms for this study. 193 students completed the consent forms and agreed to participate in the study. those participants were then given the kolb learning style inventory to complete. results all 193 participants completed kolb learning styles inventory. among the 179 participants who indicated their gender, there were 108 females and 71 males. 174 of the participants indicated both their gpa and their gender (sex). spss software was used in the analysis of the resulting data. the frequencies of the participants in each learning style category and their respective percentages of the total sample are the following: 76 assimilators (39.4%), 49 divergers (25.4%), 40 accommodators (20.7%), and 28 convergers (14.5%). more of the participants had the assimilator learning style than any other learning style. among the 108 female participants, the frequencies of females in each learning style category and their respective percentages of the female subsample are the following: 35 assimilators (32.4%), 29 accommodators (26.9%), 28 divergers (25.9%), and 16 convergers (14.8%). among the female participants, the assimilator learning style category claimed the largest frequency. among the 71 male participants, the frequencies of males in each learning style category and their respective percentages of the male subsample are the following: 38 assimilators (53.5%), 17 divergers (23.9%), 8 convergers (11.3%), and 8 accommodators (11.3%). the assimilator learning style category claimed the largest frequency among the male participants as it did among the female participants. a two-way analysis of variance and chi-square test of independence were performed with gender (two categories) and learning style (four categories) being the two factors and gpa being the dependent variable. there was a statistically significant main effect for gender with f(1, 166) = 6.17, p = .014, partial eta-squared = .036. the partial eta-squared value of .036 indicates a small effect (cohen, 1988), as the gender factor accounted for only approximately 3.6% of the variance in the dependent variable gpa after partialling out other effects from the model. females had a mean gpa of 3.345 with a standard error of .045 and a 95% confidence interval of (3.255, 3.435); whereas, males had a significantly smaller mean gpa of 3.145 with a standard error of .065 and a 95% confidence interval of (3.020, 3.276). there was also a statistically significant main effect for learning style with f(3, 166) = 2.92, p = .036, partial eta-squared = .050. the partial eta-squared value of .050 indicates a close to modest effect, as the learning styles factor accounted for approximately 5.0% of the variance in the dependent variable gpa after partialling out other effects from the model. table 1 provides the gpa means, standard errors, and 95% confidence intervals for the four learning styles. the converger participants had the greatest mean gpa. the interaction effect was not statistically significant. the r-squared value for the model was .091 with an adjusted r-squared value of .052. these values indicate that the model accounted for a relatively small amount of the variance in the gpa variable. the chisquare test of independence showed that the relationship between gender and learning styles is significant, χ2 (3, n = 180) = 10.72, p = .013 discussion results of a two-way anova indicated that there is a significant difference between the scholastic achievement of males and females, (p = .014). the females had a higher gpa mean, on the average, than the males. in addition, the hypothesis that the gpa means for the four learning style categories were equal was rejected current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 with p = .036. the individuals with the converger learning style had a higher gpa mean than the other learning style groups. there was no statistically significant interaction effect (p = .229) between gender and learning style with gpa as the dependent variable. moreover, the dominant learning style in this sample is assimilator. dominant learning style of students in this sample enrolled in sociology is the assimilator learning style. these results are in line with the views of kolb and boyatzis (1999), and kolb and kolb (2009). according to them, individuals with the assimilator learning style prefer sociology, economics, mathematics, and chemistry. nevertheless, the converger group performed better than the assimilators. this may be due to the methods applied for assessment of performance of students project completion, written assignments, multiple choice questions, class tests, and class participation. this format favors the converger learning style (danili & reid, 2006). females performed better than males. this finding may be due to superior linguistic skills, better work habits, better study skills, and better class attendance of females than that of males (kimball, 1989; lao, 1980; leonard & jiang, 1999; wainer & steinberg, 1992; wilberg & lynn, 1999). findings of this study suggest that current undergraduate teaching tends not to accommodate students of diverse learning styles. a prominent finding in this study is that undergraduate students taking classes in sociology who have the converger learning style had a higher mean gpa than comparable students with the other learning styles. many undergraduate courses may be employing instructional methods that favor and better fit the converger learning style. as a result, many students with non-converger learning styles such as the dominant assimilator learning style many not be performing as well as converger students. this state of affair is unacceptable. to cope with this situation, courses and programs in the university should be designed with a consideration of multiple student learning styles. accommodation to learning styles of students could likely facilitate student learning. in this regard, we believe, contrary to the summary judgment of pashler et al. 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(2013). on the effect of learning style on scholastic achievement. current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1121 author notes rahmatullah bhatti national university of modern languages islamabad, pakistan ismailbhatti@gmail.com rahmatullah bhatti is a phd scholar at the national university of modern languages in islamabad, pakistan. william m bart university of minnesota minneapolis, mn 55455 bartx001@umn.edu william bart is a professor in educational psychology at the university of minnesota, usa. this research was supported in part by the higher education commission of the state of pakistan and by the department of educational psychology at the university of minnesota. manuscript received: 11/11/2012 revisions received: 04/02/2013 accepted: 07/13/2013 on the effect of learning style on scholastic achievement 7 volume 16, number 2 august 19, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template 1 volume 17, number 3 november 28, 2014 issn 1099-839x blended instruction: the roaring twenties meets coursesites.com diane l. waldron eli whitney technical high school hamden, connecticut the action research study described in this report outlines the design and implementation of a unit of blended instruction in a traditional high school english classroom. twenty technical high school students in an 11th grade honors english class engaged in a variety of internet-based activities in conjunction with traditional learning activities while studying the great gatsby, fitzgerald’s (1925) classic novel set during the roaring twenties. use of internet resources, online discussion forums, and other 21st century learning tools made this old favorite more accessible to modern young minds. keywords: action research, blended instruction, coursesites.com, computers in education, high school, technology in education the great gatsby (fitzgerald, 1925) with its vivid depictions of life during the “roaring twenties” seemed a solid choice of novel to study with my eleventh grade honors english class. but how could i draw my students into fitzgerald’s exciting world of bootleggers, flappers, fast fortunes, and loose morals (“the roaring twenties,” 2010) while also tackling the less scintillating details of the novelist’s master craftsmanship? how could i unite past, present, and future in a meaningful and engaging unit of instruction that would also lead my students toward mastering content standards and further enhance the knowledge base they will need if they are to successfully meet the challenges of post-secondary education? i had been studying the impact of technology in the classroom, and i wondered if i could design a unit of instruction integrating technology that would motivate my students while enhancing their learning experience. blended instruction using an online component at the post-secondary level has increased in recent years (banerjee, 2011; hyo-jeung & bonk, 2010; massoud & stockley, 2011), and i wondered if high school students could also benefit from this relatively new method of instruction. i decided to conduct an action research study to explore the impact of blended instruction on high school students. educators have utilized available educational technologies since before the invention of the chalkboard (dunn, 2011). as bonk (2009) points out, “books, crayons, pencils, overhead projectors, tape recorders, and blackboards have not disappeared entirely, but learners are increasingly relying on online resources” (p. 14). today’s educators have access to far more sophisticated instructional technologies; computers allowing students to access the internet lead current trends (bonk, 2009; hyojeung & bonk, 2010). this report examines the effects of creating a blended instructional environment, in which internet-based learning experiences are combined with face-to-face learning experiences. guided by a professional educator, students engage in face-to-face or online discussion and problem-solving to further their understanding of content they have interacted with or will interact with through the online instructional mode. considering the current emphasis on differentiating instruction and meeting the needs of individual learners, the potential for increased time to better support personalized learning is a compelling argument in favor of blended instruction. additionally, blended instruction can provide high school students with opportunities to use computers to access the internet for educational purposes rather than as a source of entertainment. through the online instructional mode, current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 2 students can learn how to navigate online learning management systems, how to communicate with others effectively in an online discussion forum, and how to collaborate productively within online groups. the development of internet communication skills will benefit students whether they choose to continue their education or enter the job market immediately following graduation. as tucker (2012) points out, modern high school graduates need to be critical thinkers and creative problem solvers who are able to communicate both in person and in the digital world. the integration of computers to access internet resources into traditional classroom instruction supports student acquisition of 21st century communication and learning tools while simultaneously supporting student mastery of content knowledge and skills. according to mckinstry (2012), instructional integration that includes accessing the internet using computers also increases the possibility that students will continue to engage in learning throughout their lifetimes (p. 30). the national council for teachers of english (ncte) also advocates student acquisition of 21st century computer and internet communication skills. according to the ncte, to succeed in an increasingly global society, students must develop the following skills:  “develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology;  build intentional cross-cultural connections and relationships with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought;  design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes;  manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information  create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts;  attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments” (national council of teachers of english, n.d.). these 21st century skills as defined by the ncte go hand-in-hand with the national education association (nea) “four c’s” (nea, n.d.). the nea considers “critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity” (nea, n.d.) to be the four most important skills for students today. as students prepare to enter a global workforce, they will need to be innovative thinkers who can engage in culturally sensitive communication, making sound judgments and decisions as they work effectively with others (nea, n.d., pp. 824). the action research study described in this report details how i designed and implemented a unit of blended instruction for my class of twenty eleventh grade students. i chose coursesites.com, a free version of blackboard learn, for the unit’s online instructional platform. this 21st century educational technology became the portal for my students to travel back in time while studying f. scott fitzgerald’s (1925) classic depiction of the roaring twenties in his novel the great gatsby. literature review while the concept of blending traditional instruction with some technological component is not brand new, advances in technology have literally placed a world of learning within students’ reach. as bonk (2009) shares, through advances in internet technology learners can now learn “about nearly any topic in any discipline” (p. 12). learners can connect to the internet virtually any time and place to experience learning when it is convenient for them. this flexibility could potentially allow blended instruction to transform how learning happens both in and out of the classroom. according to motteram and sharma (2009), blended instruction could increase learning time and learner time on task by facilitating learning both within and also outside of the walls of the classroom. no hard and fast rules exist regarding precisely how much of blended instruction should be delivered face-to-face and how much should be delivered online. however, several definitions for blended instruction have emerged in recent years. perhaps one of the most precise definitions comes from staker (2011) who claims that blended learning can be defined as: a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through online delivery of content and instruction with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace and at least in part at a supervised brickand-mortar location away from home. (p. 5) massoud, iqbal, and stockley (2011) describe blended instruction as an environment which involves learners sharing and discussing ideas through a variety of internet-based and face-to-face interactions while the teacher in this environment moderates in both learning modes to support learner development of “critical discussion and reflective thinking” (p. 6) skills. as watson (2008) discusses, many definitions of blended instruction currently exist; however, most people generally agree that “blended learning combines the best elements of online and face-to-face learning” (p. 3). staker and horn (2012) define in detail four models of blended instruction: the rotation model, the flex model, the self-blend model, and the enriched-virtual-model. within the rotation model category, staker and horn (2012) further define four sub-models of blended instruction: station rotation, lab rotation, flipped classroom, and individual rotation (pp. 8-15). as gonzalez and vodicka (2012) explain, the rotation model involves students rotating “between teacher-led instruction and online computer learning” (p. 9) while the flex model involves students using computers blended instruction: the roaring twenties meets coursesites.com 3 to access online instruction. teachers are available to provide face-to-face support as needed by individual students. the self-blend model allows students to extend their studies by using a computer to access an online course of their choosing, while the enriched virtual model is a “whole-school experience in which students divide their time between attending a brick-and-mortar campus and learning remotely, using online delivery of content and instruction.” (gonzalez & vodicka, 2012, p. 9). gonzalez and vodicka’s (2012) descriptions of the four models of blended learning corroborate with staker and horn’s (2012). staker and horn (2012) further break down the rotation model into four sub-models. station rotation, according to staker and horn (2012) involves students within a particular class or course rotating “on a fixed schedule or at the teacher’s discretion” (pp. 8-9) between online learning using a computer and other classroom activities. in the station rotation model, all students are expected to visit each station; in other words, the rotation schedules are not individually designed for each student. in the lab rotation model, students also rotate on a fixed schedule; however, the computers for the online station are in a physically different location within the school other than the classroom, for example, in a learning lab. the flipped classroom model is also considered a rotation model as students rotate between teacher directed activities at school, then access a computer to experience “online delivery of content and instruction of the same subject from a remote location (often home) after school” (staker & horne, 2012, p. 9). flipping allows students some control over their learning, as they choose when and where to access the online portion of instruction. the fourth rotation model described by staker and horn (2012) is the individual rotation model. students in this model also rotate on a fixed schedule; however, their schedule is “individually customized” (p. 9). students in the individual rotation model only visit those stations which are included on their customized schedule. at one of those stations, the student will use a computer to access online instruction (staker & horne, 2012, p. 9). the potential benefits of blended instruction are numerous and well-documented. pape (2010) describes as an advantage of blended instruction the potential for appealing to “diverse learning styles” (p. 23) for instructional delivery as well as for student demonstration of knowledge. pape (2010) cites as further benefits a broader learning experience that allows students to construct deeper meanings from their learning experiences (p. 25). watson (2008) makes similar assertions, stating that blended instruction offers opportunities for meaningful discussion and reflection among students and teachers (p.3-4). he also explains that blended instruction facilitates differentiation by making personalized instruction possible in classrooms full of diverse students (watson, 2008, p.4). yapici and akbayin (2012) identify three components of blended instruction that benefit students: use of multimedia, pre-class preparation provided by online material, and communication both with other students and with the instructor (p. 128). musawi (2011) identifies three benefits of blended instruction including: flexibility for the learner; content accessibility; and feasibility of use. the latter is true particularly regarding cost, since many internet-based resources are either low cost or free, assuming that computers and internet connections are already in place. integrating technology into a traditional classroom setting and creating an effective blended instructional environment requires careful consideration in order to positively impact student learning. as musawi (2011) points out, factors such as analyzing the needs of learners should be considered when designing any learning environment. hyo-jeong and bonk (2010) acknowledge the positive learning potential of blended instruction methods but simultaneously advocate the critical necessity for careful design of blended instruction along with appropriate use of computers with access to internet resources to enhance student learning. while careful planning is part and parcel of any good instruction, the purposeful integration of computers with access to internet resources requires that instructors plan in even greater detail. when designing effective blended instruction the instructor strives to create a productive balance between the face-to-face component of instruction and the computer accessed internet component of instruction (yapici & akbayin, 2012) aligning these two modes of instruction in a way that will optimize student learning (hyo-jeong & bonk, 2010; jinyuan, fore, & forbes, 2011; yapici & akbayin, 2012). jinyuan et al. (2011) describe the importance of making “classroom teaching relevant to the e-learning content [while using] technologies to further engage students and increase their interaction” (p. 28). effective blended instruction incorporates access to online instruction as a necessary component. the integration of internet resources delivered via computer technology into traditional instruction means engaging students in active collaboration with the computer, with the internet, with the instructor, or with other learners. tucker (2012) explains that collaborative online learning is a powerful application of blended instruction as the collaborative nature of the discussion board provides opportunities for students to build knowledge together. according to tucker (2012) online discussion potentially gives every learner the opportunity to share his or her thoughts, an opportunity which may not be available for every learner during face-to-face class discussions in part due to learner personalities, and in part due to the dynamics of a classroom. another benefit tucker (2012) credits to online discussion is the “time and space to consider a question, articulate a response, current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 4 and read the responses by their peers” (p. 31). tucker (2012) claims that this added time allows learners to develop an awareness of other learners’ positions, cultures and individual experiences, an awareness that is necessary for students to be “college and career ready” (p. 31). blackmon (2012) defines the purpose of discussion boards as a venue through which students “interact and discuss components of the course” (p. 2). blackmon (2012) asserts that online discussion between students can improve student learning by providing students with opportunities for reflection and leading to deeper thinking about the concepts being studied. meyer (2012) maintains that the discussion board is a “critical component of any learning management system” (p. 117), adding that discussion board discussions are created and intended for instructional purposes (p. 118). moreno (2011) mentions convenience as one characteristic of asynchronous (delayed) communication in a discussion forum over synchronous, or real-time communication (p. 161). asynchronous discussion allows the student to access the discussion board whenever and wherever it is convenient for him or her personally. further, moreno (2011) points out that discussion boards provide students with opportunities to practice writing skills (p. 171 & 173) as well as opportunities to collaborate with their peers (p. 162). chu and borsting (2009) found that students appreciate the “ability to continually access course material” (p. 79) in an online learning management system. they believe that the student-centered nature of this continual access increases both student motivation and student learning (chu & borsting, 2009, p. 79). despite the explosion of using computers to access the internet for instructional purposes at the secondary level, relatively few studies exist documenting the impact of blended instruction on high school students (hyo-jeong & bonk, 2010; yapici & akbayin, 2012). while blended instruction has been studied extensively at the post-secondary level, more research is needed into the use of blended instruction in the high school classroom. could high school students learn to use an online learning management system, in this case, coursesites.com, to augment a unit of blended instruction? would students from a title i school, the majority of whom live below the poverty level, have a computer and internet access at home from which to enter the online learning management system? and, most important to me as a teacher, would the addition of an online component enhance the learning experience for high school students? would the online component motivate high school students to take ownership of their own learning? as a novice researcher but a veteran teacher, i set out to conduct an action research study that would attempt to address these questions. action research is a natural fit for teachers, being practical (creswell, 2012) research which allows the researcher to “explore a practical problem with an aim toward developing a solution to a problem” (p. 576). for educators, action research leads to reflection, ultimately improving student learning and teacher professional practice (creswell, 2012). creswell (2012), blakemore (2012), and beaulieu (2013) all acknowledge that action research is viewed by some in the research community as nothing more than teacher professional development, an “informal process of research” (creswell, 2012, p. 578), not quite scientific or legitimate. beaulieu (2013) asserts that whether in an educational or a community setting, “action research is about improving the quality of human life, acquiring knowledge to become better practitioners, and developing strategies to address problems” (p. 33). blakemore (2012) believes that “research conducted by practicing teachers can be both empowering and illuminating” (p. 59). action research “is an ongoing process, with each stage or cycle of research informing the next” (beaulieu, 2013, p. 33), making action research different, and perhaps less “neat, orderly, and linear” (cresswell, 2012, p. 571) than other, more scientific research designs; however, no less valid. in choosing the practical action research design (cresswell, 2012, p. 579), i was seeking to resolve a potential problem by making a difficult text accessible to my students in a brand new way. i was hoping to enhance their learning experience and motivation, and also to better my own teaching practice by trying something neither i, nor my students, had previously done. method participants i teach and conducted this action research study in a regional technical high school that is located in a suburban new england community. because we are a regional state technical high school, students enroll from eight different sending towns. at the time of this study, out of a school population of 491 students, 70.4% were eligible for free or reduced price meals, indicating that students come from communities with a lower socioeconomic status. the student population represented the following ethnic backgrounds, as reported on the strategic school profile: 36% african american, 58% hispanic, 6% caucasian, and 1% asian american (about whitney tech, n.d.). the 20 eleventh grade students who participated in this study (8 female and 12 male) were of mixed ethnic backgrounds, with 7 hispanic students, 12 african american students, and 1 asian american student. of these students, 16 students owned smart phones with which they could connect to the internet. 1 of these 15 students chose not to use his smart phone for this unit. 1 student owned an ipod which connected to the internet, and 1 student had access to an ipad in addition to a smart phone, which she brought to school twice during the blended instruction: the roaring twenties meets coursesites.com 5 course of the unit. 3 students, 1 of whom was absent for the first two weeks of the unit, did not own smart phones. procedure designing the blended instructional unit. in designing this unit, i intended to use what staker and horn (2012) would identify as the flex model of blended instruction. in its original conception, i planned to bring my students to the library media center, where each student would use a computer to access the online content and instruction. i had planned to be able to work with individual students as they moved through the online unit at their own pace. i also intended to supplement computer access in the library using the flipped model; i expected students to access the online learning platform outside of the classroom on their own time, either during study hall or after school at home or at the library. in this way, i hoped to be able to maximize my limited resources and extend student learning beyond the classroom as much as possible. as i describe in the implementation section, unanticipated obstacles led to a different delivery of the online content instruction, although i was still able to use a flexible blended learning model. after researching several online learning platforms, including edmodo and moodle, i ultimately decided upon coursesites.com, a free version of blackboard learn as the online learning platform for the blended instruction unit. coursesites.com is more sophisticated than either edmodo or moodle as it allows more flexibility and a higher degree of structure when creating instructional activities for students. coursesites.com allows the creation of online discussion forums and blogs for student cooperative learning experiences, as well as online quizzes and surveys. because coursesites.com looks and works much like blackboard learn, which many postsecondary educational institutions use for their online courses, experience with coursesites.com would give my students a better opportunity to assess whether or not they might consider online postsecondary courses or programs. while moodle and edmodo are also useful online learning platforms, for the purpose of this unit and this study, coursesites.com seemed a more appropriate choice. to design instruction in coursesites.com, i first had to create a course folder. i then created a chapter activities folder for each of the great gatsby’s (fitzgerald, 1925) nine chapters. using the common core state standards as a guide, i chose appropriate eleventh grade literary concepts to study along with the novel, associating one focus study concept with each chapter of the novel. for each chapter folder i designed and included the following: a focus concept instructional video; links to the university of adelaide online text and audio version of the novel, dictionary.com, and chapter vocabulary list; a discussion forum prompt; and vocabulary and content quizzes. i used the coursesites.com rubric feature in order to create a rubric for student discussion forum posts. i enabled the feature that allowed students to view the rubric which included 5 areas of assessment: analysis of question or topic; responses to classmates; respect; mechanics; and length. the four levels of mastery on this rubric included novice, competent, proficient and advanced. the rubric can be viewed in figure 1. figure 1. discussion board rubric. this figure illustrates how student initial posts and response posts were assessed. this figure illustrates an example of what students encountered when engaging online with coursesites.com. within the course folder, i also created a prereading folder with pre-reading activities to give students a meaningful way to become familiar with using coursesites.com. appendix a includes the pre-reading survey. figure 2 illustrates a student’s view of the prereading folder contents. additionally, i created a post-reading folder, which included a post-unit reflection survey. this survey was a four-point likert-type scale allowing students to strongly agree, disagree, or strongly disagree with 14 statements about their experience with the online classroom. question 15 was open-ended. the survey questions, including responses to question 15, are included in the “results” section of this report. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 6 figure 2. a student’s view of the first unit activities page. implementing the blended instructional unit. when i planned this action research study, i anticipated being able to use the library media center computers or to use the laptop cart to supplement my nine classroom computers to provide all students with daily computer access to the online classroom. however, upon approaching the library media specialist to schedule library computer time and use of the laptop cart, i discovered that the class time i needed in the library was already booked by another instructor for the remainder of the year and the laptop cart was defunct. i had surveyed students prior to beginning the study, and based upon student responses i decided to move forward with the study by supplementing my nine student computers with student smart phones. of the twenty students in the study, sixteen owned smart phones, although one student did not use the smart phone in class. one student owned an ipod. three students had neither a smart phone nor an ipod. one student owned an ipad and used it in class although not every day. on the survey, all students indicated that they had internet access at home either with their cell phone, ipod, or ipad, or with a family desktop computer or laptop. during the first week, which was abbreviated due to the capt testing schedule and a snowstorm, students took the online pre-reading survey, and tried their first discussion forum. students varied in their ability to navigate the online classroom; some students spontaneously became teachers, helping their peers to log in and use the online classroom. we soon found that smart phones were adequate for online surveys and quizzes but the screen size was too small for reading or for discussion forum writing. in an attempt to provide all students with enough classroom time in the online classroom, i divided students into two groups. each group participated in 25 minutes of online instruction and 25 minutes of traditional instruction during each class session. by the end of the second week, which was also shortened due to the capt testing schedule, students had completed chapter one online activities and finished reading through chapter two of the great gatsby (fitzgerald, 1925). following our school schedule, students left academics to attend shop classes for two weeks. during this two week period, i made two changes to the online course in response to student requests. one change involved lengthening quiz time limits as students expressed frustration when they were in the middle of a quiz and the class ended or the internet became disconnected. the second change involved allowing students to edit their discussion forum posts; once students realized that their writing would “published” for all of their peers to read they were more conscientious with their writing. when the students returned from shop, the librarian suggested that we try the ipod cart; however, the ipod’s small screens proved to be as unsuitable as the smart phone screens had been. at this point, the librarian suggested the netbook cart. though slightly smaller than laptops, the netbooks have a significantly larger screen than the ipods and they provided portable, individual internet access to the online classroom. the combination of my nine classroom computers and internet access using the netbooks provided all students with equal in-class time in the online classroom. procuring the netbook cart for class presented some difficulties, though. the library is upstairs, halfway down the main hallway so the cart had to be picked up in the library, wheeled down the hallway away from my classroom in order to use the elevator and then wheeled across the school back to my classroom. at the end of class, the cart had to be returned to the library, a reverse odyssey. nine students could begin working in the online classroom immediately upon entering class, with a tenth student working on my computer. however, students who were going to use netbooks had to wait for the cart to be brought from the library, then wait for me to unlock the netbook cart, turn on and check each netbook then assign the netbooks to each individual. the fact that the netbooks were individually numbered helped when i assigned and collected the netbooks. at first the process of distributing the netbooks was cumbersome, but it became easier as two things happened. first, i created a list of functioning netbooks blended instruction: the roaring twenties meets coursesites.com 7 so that i did not have to turn on and check each netbook as i assigned them. second, students very quickly developed a preference for either the classroom computer or the netbook, which facilitated the distribution process. using the netbooks was not without its frustrations. they were not equipped with mice, which kept some students from trying them. additionally, the netbooks disconnected more frequently from the wireless network connection, and on more than one occasion students lost work due the interruption of the internet connection. despite these obstacles, by week four the blended classroom was running smoothly. students had developed their own patterns of working either individually or in small groups. when the unit was completed, students shared their mixed reactions to their experience with blended instruction. while some expressed a desire to work in the online classroom again, others expressed relief that the unit was over. results student time spent in the online classroom data, quiz data, discussion forum data, and end of unit survey data collected by the coursesites.com tracking feature proved useful in analyzing the impact of using blended instruction with my class of high school students. the tracking feature collected data about exact dates and times students accessed the online classroom to take quizzes, to write in the discussion forum, or simply time logged in to coursesites.com. table 1 student weekly engagement with coursesites.com, in minutes student week 1 week 2 +/week 3 +/week 4 +/total minutes 1 6 10 +4 84 +74 176 +92 276 2 41 48 +7 145 +97 80 -65 314 3 36 55 +19 64 +9 19 -45 238 4 55 35 -20 54 +19 66 +12 210 5 21 60 +39 218 +158 87 -131 386 6 14 110 +96 246 +136 181 -65 551 7 28 49 +21 164 +115 40 -124 280 8 30 34 +4 27 -7 127 +100 219 9 58 85 +27 52 -33 89 +37 284 10 37 65 +28 148 +83 126 -22 415 11 26 31 +5 256 +225 27 -229 340 12 46 51 +5 65 +14 126 +61 288 13 14 60 +46 65 +5 134 69 273 14 17 31 +14 9 -22 61 +52 118 15 7 48 +41 127 +79 130 +3 313 16 53 33 -20 172 +139 136 -36 394 17 12 43 +31 112 +69 137 +25 284 18 15 11 -4 29 +18 125 +96 180 19 0 0 0 228 +228 47 -201 275 20 0 0 0 84 +84 118 +34 202 total 516 859 +343 2,349 +1,49 0 2,032 -317 5,756 note: +/compares minutes engaged on coursesites.com between weeks 1 &2, 2 & 3, and 3 & 4 note: data provided by the tracking feature of coursesites.com note: students 19 and 20 were absent and had no access to coursesites.com during weeks 1 & 2 the student engagement data shows a gradual increase in the number of minutes students spent logged in to coursesites.com from week one to week four of the study. this increase most likely reflected the increased number of minutes that computers or netbooks with access to the internet were available to students within the classroom as the student engagement data shows that students did not log in regularly outside of school despite their having reported having internet access outside of school. one area of further study might be to examine why my students did not make use of the online classroom outside of school. while motivation could play a factor, another plausible concern lies in students’ inability to access the online classroom from home. table 2 student engagement, quiz, and discussion forum data student total minutes engaged % quizzes taken quiz average % discussion forum participation discussion forum average 1 276 35 45 20 13 2 314 85 76.2 90 73 3 238 40 18 50 38 4 210 30 18.1 10 8 5 386 100 90.4 100 82 6 551 95 77 90 70 7 280 40 13 20 17 8 219 50 35.5 50 35 9 284 30 23.5 40 32 10 415 90 74.3 50 41 11 340 50 42.9 60 56 12 288 65 44 20 5 13 273 70 48.5 50 42 14 118 15 9.1 30 27 15 313 90 83.1 30 23 16 394 60 40 80 63 17 284 80 63 40 34 18 180 40 24.5 50 34 19 275 35 15.5 20 15 20 202 30 50 20 16 note: data provided by the tracking feature in coursesites.com note: students 19 and 20 were absent and had no access to coursesites.com during weeks 1 & 2 note: averages of quiz & discussion scores are based on a 100 point scale quiz data i analyzed student quiz data collected through the tracking feature of coursesites.com to determine how consistently and how well students were able to take online quizzes in coursesites.com. as presented in table 2, the quiz data showed a wide disparity from student to student in quiz score averages and the number of quizzes attempted. the data shows that only six students completed at least eighty percent of the online quizzes in the unit. this raised concerns anew about student computer and internet access outside of school. although students indicated in the pre-unit survey that they could access the internet from home, they had anticipated being able to use their smart phones or ipods, which turned out to be unsuitable for use with the online classroom. another concern lay in my not having established firm deadlines by which students should complete the various online activities. i have to wonder if students would have made more efforts to use local community center or library computers to access the internet in order to complete online activities had they been given firm deadlines to meet, rather than relying on time within the physical classroom. discussion forum data i analyzed the discussion forums data collected from the tracking feature in coursesites.com to discern current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 8 each student’s ability to communicate within an online discussion venue. i hoped to learn whether or not the use of a written discussion forum would encourage less vocal students to share their ideas more freely with their classmates than they would during traditional classroom discussion. as with the quiz scores, and as presented in table 2, participation in the discussion forums varied considerably from student to student. only five students completed at least sixty percent of the discussion forums. the question of why students were unable to complete the online activities has been raised already in this report; what is important to note here is that the lack of completion is not limited to only one activity or type of activity, but seems to have affected all online activities. one of the questions guiding this study involved the potential for student engagement in online collaboration and discussion. while student participation may not have occurred with anticipated frequency, all students did demonstrate at least one time the ability to communicate effectively in an online discussion forum. table 3 student responses to the end of unit survey question strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree unanswered 1 2 3 2 1 1 2 2 4 2 0 1 3 3 3 2 1 0 4 2 3 3 1 0 5 2 4 3 0 0 6 2 3 3 1 0 7 1 3 3 2 0 8 5 3 1 0 0 9 4 1 2 2 0 10 3 4 1 1 0 11 4 4 0 1 0 12 2 5 2 0 0 13 4 2 1 2 0 14 3 3 2 1 0 end of unit survey questions. 1. the online content presentations (videos, power points) helped me to understand the literary concepts we studied in the great gatsby. 2. participating in the discussion forums allowed me to deepen my understanding of the novel. 3. i accessed the online classroom when i was outside of school. 4. the design of the final project gave me the opportunity to creatively express my thoughts about the novel while also learning to use a new technology. 5. i enjoyed interacting with my classmates in the online classroom. 6. i like learning online more than learning from my teacher 7. i enjoyed working on the final project. 8. the online unit was organized and easy to use. 9. i would like to use the online classroom again. 10. the online classroom gave me more opportunities to share my ideas than when we have discussion in the classroom. 11. i prefer taking quizzes online rather than with paper and pencil. 12. the discussion forum rubric was fair and it helped me improve my initial posts and my responses to my classmates. 13. when i go to college, i will feel confident about choosing classes that are offered partly or completely online. 14. i would have liked more computer time during class. 15. this is your chance to share about anything you particularly liked or disliked about using coursesites.com. responses to question 15 (student misspellings maintained). “the online site was easyer to use than it is to do classwork with a pencil and paper, i would like to work online more often” “i dislike……..” “i didn’t like this online classroom thing. it wasn’t that it was the work that made it hard its just that it being online made it harder to get the work done, it made me feel like i could procrastinate and not do it when i was supposed to and u would say & quot; i can do it at any time & quot; i just feel like if i had a physical paper, i would have done more and one time. truthfully i don’t ever want to take an online class ever again.” “coursesites is a great site for online learning. what i like most about it, is the organization within the format, that makes it easier to learn, use and understand. i will say however that this site is the best used on a solid connection. i find that sometimes this website doesn’t save your answers like it claims it does. all in all it’s a great site.” “awesome!!!!!!!!!!” “i have no real reasons not to like using the coutsesites it was straight.” three of the students who took the survey did not answer question fifteen. i analyzed anonymous student responses to the end of unit survey to determine student reactions to the blended learning experiences and to using coursesites.com. i designed the end of unit survey questions to elicit responses from students that would provide clear direction regarding whether or not to attempt future blended instructional experiences, and what changes would improve future attempts at blended instruction. the survey was a simple four point likert type scale allowing students to strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree with each of fourteen blended instruction: the roaring twenties meets coursesites.com 9 statements about the blended learning experience. question fifteen asked students to write a final comment about their experience with blended learning and coursesites.com. while some students reported that they enjoyed the challenge of learning in an online classroom, there were students who did not enjoy the experience at all. two students expressed a dislike for the online learning; one expressed a dislike of any kind of reading; two did not verbally express their dislike, but their lack of participation could be interpreted as a negative perception of the blended instruction experience. in designing future blended instruction units, i will take into account those students who may not appreciate blended instruction using an online learning management system. different activities, or a menu of activity choices; improved computer availability; closer monitoring during activities; direct instruction in using the online classroom; even a different reading assignment all could affect the experience of an individual student. i would encourage students who are reluctant to embrace online learning to keep trying, as the necessity of building 21st century computer communications skills is so vital to today’s learners. however, i could differentiate, making changes to accommodate each student’s individual learning preferences. there is no real reason why differentiation in such a manner could not occur in the modern classroom. some students could use the online classroom while others, who prefer traditional methods, could be involved in more teacher-directed activities not incorporating the online classroom. these latter students could still be expected to use the internet for various activities; however, their responses and assessments would be with paper and pen, and their discussions would occur face-to-face. the third comment for question fifteen is a valid complaint: “i didn’t like this online classroom thing. it wasn’t that it was the work that made it hard its just that it being online made it harder to get the work done, it made me feel like i could procrastinate and not do it when i was supposed to and u would say & quot; i can do it at any time & quot; i just feel like if i had a physical paper, i would have done more and one time. truthfully i don’t ever want to take an online class ever again.” i had no idea how to pace students while working in the online classroom therefore set no strict deadlines for activity completion. while some students were able to self-monitor their pace and complete activities independently in a timely manner, clearly other students required more structure. this is not surprising; even in the traditional classroom students tend to have preferences toward more or less structure in completion of assignments, and it is something to take into consideration for my next blended instruction adventure. one response gave cause for concern about the reliability of the results of the survey; only one student actually finished the unit during the time allotted for the study, and actually began working on the final project. however, questions four and seven, which asked about student perceptions of the final project, had five and four positive responses, respectively. it is possible that students responded based upon their reactions to reading about the final project, rather than actually completing it. overall, student responses seemed genuine, and thoughtful. effect of the digital divide there are several possible reasons for students not completing all online activities; i did not use the deadlines feature in coursesites.com, so students had no sense of needing to finish by a particular date. firmer deadlines might have increased student participation. during the course of the study, one problem became crystal clear. too many students could not access the internet from home on a suitable device, such as a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet. although students all indicated on the pre-unit survey that they could access the internet from home, they had anticipated being able to work on their smart phones or ipods, which later proved unsuitable for working in the online classroom. when access to information and communication technology (ict) interferes with student learning, we realize that the digital divide does indeed still exist in america. salpeter (2006) cites a 1995 u.s. department of commerce ntia report to define the digital divide as “gaps in the levels of technology available to different households in the u.s.” (para. 1). in this same report, salpeter finds evidence that ethnicity and educational level both affect the likelihood of a family having access to ict. as salpeter (2006) writes, the 2003 ntia report evidenced a continued inequity in access to ict based on ethnicity, with white households most likely to have ict access, and latino households least likely to have ict access. african american households were less likely than white households and more likely than latino households to have ict access (salpeter, 2006, para. 8). salpeter (2006) also refers to the 2005 pew internet and american life project, which corroborates the finding that white households were more likely than african american households to have ict access (para. 8) and which also demonstrates that college graduates are far more likely to have ict access than high school graduates, with those lacking a high school diploma least likely to have ict access (para. 8). smith (2014, p. 2) and lopez, gonzalez-barrera, and patten (2013, p. 1) report that the ethnic divide in ownership and usage of ict has narrowed from 2009 to 2012, although white households still lead in ownership of a desktop or laptop computer and use of said ict current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 10 device to access the internet, perhaps as a result of more white households having internet access at home. one trend lopez et al. (2013) report is that persons from all ethnicities aged 18-29 with some college experience and higher income were more likely to report owning a desktop or laptop, having broadband in the home, and accessing the internet more frequently (p. 1). lopez et al. (2013) also discern inequities in the latino population based upon country of birth and dominant language. latino computer or desktop owners and ict users were more likely to be u.s. born and bilingual or english dominant, young and highly educated. latinos without high school diplomas who were spanish dominant, regardless of being native or foreign born, were less likely to own computers or desktops (lopez et al., 2013, p. 1). ono and zavodny (2008) also find that “disparities in informational technology access and use persist along racial and ethnic lines” (p. 1455), expressing concerns that these disparities negatively affect immigrant families both economically and socially. according to ono and zavodny (2008), while increased ownership of computers along with “availability of computers in libraries and computer centers” (p. 1456) have been steps toward bridging the digital divide between natives and immigrants, “substantial gaps” (p. 1456) in ict use between these two groups remain. greenhow, walker, and kim (2010), whose research specifically addresses low-income urban high school students and their use of technology, determine that although families of low-income students may own computers, those computers are usually shared by other members of the family, therefore the individual student is limited in his or her use of the computer. greenhow et al. (2010) further point out that while a computer may be available in the home, the family may be unable to afford internet connection (p. 66). the factor that most affected my research study lay in student lack of access to the internet at home. 95% of the students in my study were latino or african american. their inability to use ict at home, whether due to lack of access to a tablet, desktop or laptop computer or due to an inability to access the internet in 2013 makes plain that the digital divide still exists in the u.s. the basis of this divide is both ethnic and economic. lack of access to ict continues to create inequity in opportunities for students from low-income, ethnically diverse schools, perhaps now more than ever as u.s. education embraces the necessity for students to learn digital communications skills. a last thought about the digital divide in the u.s., particularly as it is exacerbated by issues of income and ethnicity, comes from reinhart, thomas, and toriskie (2011), who claim that “there exists a second level digital divide that has profound implications for the persistent technological marginalization of economically disadvantaged students” (p. 189). on the surface, access to ict is largely an economical issue: those who can afford computers and internet access are at an advantage. however, reinhart et al. (2011) discuss another, more subtle inequity regarding technology in education, a concept they dub the “second level digital divide” (p. 181). this sldd refers to the types of activities students are likely to engage in for school using computer and internet technology. reinhart et al. (2011) find that teachers in schools with a higher percentage of economically disadvantaged students are less likely to use computer and internet technology in ways that will foster critical thinking skills or develop 21st century computer technology skills (p. 183-190). closing the digital divide involves more than providing access to computers and an internet connection. teachers, specifically teachers of socio-economically disadvantaged students, must acquire the skills necessary to use available technology in ways that will promote both developing ict skills in students along with higherlevel thinking skills. blended instruction provides teachers with one way to use ict to develop critical thinking and internet communication and technology skills. however, it would be wrong to assume that recent efforts to provide all students with computers, laptops, or tablets to access the internet has fixed the problem of the digital divide in terms of physical equipment. need and lack still exist, perpetuating a digital divide that feeds an achievement and opportunity gap which must be addressed before equity for students of all ethnicities and socio-economic statuses can be considered a reality. conclusion the design and implementation of a blended instructional unit proved more challenging than i had expected. i wanted to know how blended instruction would impact student learning, and i am not sure i have a clear answer to that particular question. however, i do know that students learned how to use an online learning management system; even those students who did not enjoy the online classroom were able to learn how to use it. the ability to navigate learning in an online classroom will help those students who enroll in post-secondary programs as increasingly more post-secondary institutions offer fully online, hybrid, and blended certification and degree programs. i learned several practical concepts about utilizing blended instruction which i will put into place the next time i use coursesites.com. first, i will ensure equal student computer and internet access within the classroom from the first day of the unit to the last. ipods and iphones may be adequate for quizzes and surveys, but they are impractical for reading and writing in an online classroom. it is essential that each student can access the internet on a computer, laptop, netbook or tablet during class meeting times for the duration of the unit. blended instruction: the roaring twenties meets coursesites.com 11 second, i will use a more specific pre-unit computer and internet availability survey. it is vital to know whether students have an appropriate device, for example a desktop computer, laptop computer, or tablet upon which they can regularly access the internet when outside of school. this knowledge will help me to pace the unit more practically and in a manner that is fair to all students. if even one student does not have an appropriate device with internet access available outside of school, then planning should not include computer and/or internet related homework tasks. with clear knowledge of the amount of time students will have available to work in the online classroom, i will be able to set firm deadlines for completion of online learning activities. the lack of deadlines was a serious drawback in my project, a mistake that should not be repeated. when in doubt, set long deadlines; in any case, do set deadlines to which students must adhere. finally, in considering deadlines and pacing, four weeks did not give students enough time to complete the many activities i had created within the unit. this is evidenced by the many students who were unable to complete all of the unit activities. in future, i will both allot more time overall in the classroom for students to complete the unit but also hold students to stricter deadlines for both online and offline learning assignments. i think that there were some students who took ownership of their learning, and whose experienced was enhanced by using the online classroom. however, i would have liked to see more students take advantage of the opportunities for learning in the online classroom. i hope that the changes outlined above, when applied to future blended instructional units, will make the experience more rewarding for all students, not just a handful. the action research study described in this report is admittedly small in size and scope, focusing as it does on one class of high school juniors. however, the lessons i learned during its design and implementation will hopefully guide my own and other high school teachers’ future ventures into blended instruction. the results of this study may prompt further and larger studies with similar goals of determining how blended instruction affects secondary learners and how to design blended instruction so that it is appropriate to and effective for enhancing the learning experiences of secondary school students. update two things of note have occurred since i completed this action research study last year. first, one of my students, now a senior, recently asked if we would be using the online classroom again. on further conversation, he expressed that he had enjoyed the experience, and was eager to try online learning again. second, our use of the netbooks has led to other teachers taking advantage of them. the library media specialist can barely keep up with teachers who want to use the netbooks in their own classrooms. references about whitney tech. 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(n.d.). ncte comprehensive news. retrieved march 29, 2014 from http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcen tframework ono, h., & zavodny, m. (2008). immigrants, english ability and the digital divide. social forces, 86(4), 1455-1479. pape, l. (2010). blended teaching and learning. education digest, 76(2), 22-27. qing, l., & keshan, w. (2010). a study on student reflection in asynchronous online text-stimulated discussion. chinese journal of applied linguistics, 33(6), 109-126. reinhart, j. m., thomas, e., & toriskie, j. m. (2011). k 12 teachers: technology use and the second level digital divide. journal of instructional psychology, 38(3), 181-193. salpeter, j. (2006). inside the divide. technology & learning, 26(8), 22-24. smith, a. (2014). african americans and technology use. pew research centers internet and american life project rss. retrieved april 6, 2014, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/01/06/african americans-and-technology-use/ staker, h. (2011). the rise of k-12 blended learning: profiles of emerging models. retrieved from http://www.innosightinstitute.org/mediaroom/pu blications/education publications/blended_learning_models blended instruction: the roaring twenties meets coursesites.com 13 appendix a chapter one pre-reading survey questions students chose: strongly disagree, disagree, agree, or strongly agree 1. when two people get married, they should stay together no matter what. 2. wealthy people are happier than poor people. 3. it is never all right for a man to hit a woman. 4. a person can feel alone, even in the middle of a crowd of people. 5. if you truly love someone, you will take the blame for a crime that person committed. 6. a criminal can be handsome and charming. 7. you should only go to a party if you have been invited. 8. people get married because they love one another. 9. only poor people commit crimes. 10. men drive better than women do. these questions were devised as they address specific issues and events in the novel. if you are not familiar with the great gatsby, some issues include: marital infidelity; marriage for money; social division based upon socio-economic status; physical violence in relationships; isolation of the individual; protecting loved ones, even from themselves; deceptive appearances; motivations for criminal activities. the events in the novel include numerous affairs, an accidental death, gatsby’s rags-to-riches story, a murder, and gatsby’s countless and mysterious business dealings. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 14 appendix b chapter one discussion board question in chapter 1 of gatsby, you met four of the main characters: nick carraway, tom buchanan, daisy buchanan, and jordan baker. for each of these characters, based only on what you read in chapter one, respond to the following: 1. is this character a complex character? answer “yes” or “no”, then explain your decision. 2. what is this character’s conflict? 3. what motivates this character? you may revisit the video or refer to your notes. students were expected to address the discussion board question for each chapter by writing a 100 to 150 word original post that was both accurate and detailed. this post should demonstrate that the student both read and understood the chapter as well as the literary concept assigned to that chapter. students were expected to write correctly according to the conventions of good grammar and spelling, and they were expected as well to respond respectfully to one another. after publishing their initial post to the forum, students were expected to respond to the postings of two students in class. students were encouraged to respond in ways that would further the discussion. examples of discussion forum posts to the chapter one prompt student a. nick carraway. 1: no, nick is not a complex character and rightfully so considering the fact that so far i have only read one chapter. he more over seems to be the doll of everyone’s problems. someone the other characters can vent to. an example is when daisy pours her guts out to nick, about how unhappy her marriage is. nick does not seem to undergo any sort of change in personality. 2: nick so far does not have a conflict in the story, or at least not one based off of what i read that is highlighted or touched on in the story. he seems to be a very neutral party so far. 3: nick isn’t said to have much real motivation as far as the story goes and, as said early, seems to be a very neutral character. tom buchanan. 1: i do think tom is a complex character because not only does he contribute to one of the few plots that the story has revealed so far, but he undergoes changes in the story based off of his interactions with each character. tom human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 15 speaks respectfully to nick, as if trying to impose his own views on the character, however he talks to daisy as if she’s an ignorant female, even to the point where cheating on her is deemed acceptable. 2: i don’t believe that tom has much of a conflict because so far he deems what he does ok, and so far has not been challenged by any of the characters on his actions. this is evident by the fact that daisy has not left him even though it is clear he is cheating on her. 3: tom's motivation is not quite clear in the story, however it can be implied that he wants to be more powerful and richer than those around him. money seems to be his motivation as he is rather supercilious and cocky towards the other characters that have less than he does, though he has not come in contact with those that are upper class like him in the story yet. daisy buchanan. 1: yes daisy is a complex character because not only does she contribute to one of the stories plots, but she also showes multiple personalities, as she acts differently towards certain characters. when around tom she tends to act docile, and not challenge his decisions. however when around nick, she was able to spill her guts out about her marriage and just how poor it had been. 2: daisy's conflict is spawned by her want to be a sosphisticated female, who can make her own decisions but not being able to. her husband tom is an imposing force who has complete control over her life to the point that its almost suffocating. furthermore, she wants the best life for her daughter, however knows that under tom she will end up much like herself, and even though she claims she wants her to grow up as a " beautiful little fool " you can imply as a mother and based of her conflict she doesn’t want this and simply knows what’s coming. 3: daisy does not have much positive motivation in the story besides the urge to be her own person, she seems more motivated to stay with tom and the reason for that has not been highlighted yet. i can imply though that the reason for this is because she will have nothing without him, she has really spawned most of her life with him, and it would be hard to start over. there is also the fact that tom might get the daughter, or even, the fact if she left, that her daughter might have a difficult life. jordan baker. 1: no jordan is not a complex character because she does not contribute to any of the plots in the story so far, she seems to just be "there” so far. though she does seem to have some background roots. 2: jordan baker does not have an illustrated conflict as of yet. she is somewhat neutral current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 16 3: jordan baker does not seem to have much motivation that has been illustrated, it is said she plays a sport however not why she is motivated to do so, or even why she is around tom and daisy.” student b. “honestly i think that nick is a complex character because he seems to have problems within himself... well maybe he doesn't have problem but he just act weirdly around the other characters. he doesn't really have a conflict at this point. tom buchanan is a complex character because he is a white supremacist. that might be me putting him in high because of my opposition towards that view. he has a mistress while he has a wife. he is also violent and abuses his wife. daisy buchanan is another complex character she has to deal with a violent husband and his mistress. i think she is motivated by the fact that she has a very controlling husband and she wants to be as free as a bird. jordan is just a spectator as of this point.” one response to student b’s post. “i agree with jordan being a spectator at this point in the story. they don’t really illustrate much change with her, nor does the story show any sort of conflict she may have or why she is even in the story so far. however nick to me is just a supporting character, he does not contribute to the plot and instead just seems to tell the story. not to say he is not important but, his worth to the story besides telling it and supporting other characters by letting them vent to him (an example is daisy) has not been distinguished at this point.” a second response to student b’s post. “i agree with you that tom and daisy are complex characters. problems are a huge role in a marriage. in their marriage tom is having an affair with his mistress and daisy wants does not want to be seen as a fool. however, she is has a daughter so she has no other choice.” human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 17 article citation waldron, d. l. (2014). blended instruction: the roaring twenties meets coursesites.com. current issues in education, 17(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1235 author notes diane l. waldron eli whitney technical high school 70 jones road, hamden, ct 06514 diane.waldron@ct.gov diane waldron is currently enrolled in educational technology m.s. in education at central connecticut state university. she has an m.a. in education, teaching & learning from post university, completed in may 2013, and a b.s. in english from southern connecticut state university, earned in 1989. diane has served as an english teacher at eli whitney technical high school since oct. 1998. manuscript received: 05/08/2013 revisions received: 04/13/2014 accepted: 04/23/2014 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 18 volume 17, number 3 november 28, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell authentications editors lisa marie lacy tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson tray j. geiger section editors rikkilynn archibeque tray j. geiger laura beth kelly kevin j. raso evelyn concepcion baca darlene michelle gonzales priyanka parekh isaac lamont bickmore megan hoelting niels piepgrass faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1281-5824-2-le.doc 1 volume 17, number 1 february 04, 2014 issn 1099-839x assessment of a reading comprehension instrument as it relates to cognitive abilities as defined by bloom’s revised taxonomy lorraine dagostino, james carifio, jennifer d. c. bauer, and qing zhao university of massachusetts at lowell nor h. hashim universiti sains malaysia more often than not, the assessment of literacy has focused upon how well readers attain various levels of reading comprehension or demonstrate proficiency with specific reading skills rather than reveal a reader’s cognitive abilities as reflected in conceptual frameworks such as bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson, et al., 2001). where tests of reading comprehension have classified test items by type for the purposes of item analysis, it usually is only by reading skill. the focus of this study is to change from this functional approach to one that examines how well, if at all, a test created in malay, and translated into english, that was developed for primary and intermediate grade readers, may also be able to determine cognitive levels of understanding as described by bloom’s revised taxonomy – the cognitive dimension (hashim et al., 2006). to accomplish this task, the raters evaluated the questions from both malay tests using bloom’s revised taxonomy of cognitive abilities. by using the bloom’s revised taxonomy as a system of classification, the researchers were able to more accurately pinpoint the specific cognitive abilities being assessed by each test item. these findings suggested that classification by cognitive level allows one to measure specific cognitive abilities as defined by bloom’s revised taxonomy. this is significant because bloom’s revised taxonomy gives us objectives for classifying the learning, teaching and assessing of the cognitive dimension of thought that is central to instruction in most subject areas, and in relationship to our work in reading comprehension as an aspect of assessment of literacy in a way that differs from most current measures of reading comprehension. keywords: reading comprehension; cultural background; cognitive process; bloom’s revised taxomony more often than not, the assessment of literacy has focused upon determining how well readers attain specific levels of reading comprehension, such as literal meaning, inferential meaning or applications of what is understood, or how well readers demonstrate the attainment of particular reading skills, such as decoding, reading for the main idea and significant details, the tone of a passage, or drawing conclusions (cain & oakhill, 2006; storch & whitehurst, 2002). where tests of reading comprehension have classified items by type for the purposes of scoring or/and item analysis it usually is only by reading skill type, and thus operationally such tests are skill views and skill definitions of reading comprehension. (by skill views and skill definitions we refer to the theories that define reading comprehension as a set of particular skills – such as decoding, letter knowledge, and current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 2 phoneme awareness – that must be mastered and applied in order for the reader to comprehend text.) this functional approach has been helpful, but represents only one view of reading comprehension and the reader’s ability to read either fiction or non-fiction with a range and various degrees of understandings. a different view and perhaps more significant concern is how the reader’s general (qualitative) cognitive processing abilities, as characterized by say bloom’s revised taxonomy of the cognitive dimension (anderson et al., 2001), relate to reading comprehension, and how well, if at all, these general cognitive processing abilities (hereafter termed “cognitive abilities” in this article) are actually being considered in the assessment instrument when determining how well the reader ascertains the meaning of text (mcnamara & kendeou, 2011; winstead, 2004). although there is a sense in the research literature that a reader’s cognitive abilities influence reading comprehension levels and abilities, little work has been done in the last few decades to determine how well assessment instruments for measuring reading comprehension evaluate the cognitive abilities that are being assessed by individual test items, as it is not a view that is consciously attended to and allowed to emerge explicitly in the skill views and definitions of reading comprehension. obviously, both views are needed, and explicitly knowing both views and their relationships for a given reading comprehension instrument would give a far more powerful and comprehensive characterization of that instrument, as well as reading comprehension per se and research done on reading comprehension in general and specifically. also, being able to characterize a given set of reading comprehension test items according to multiple views and theoretical frameworks would also allow far more efficient and powerful research designs and study, and thus our interest in this topic and problem. previous work previously, we completed a study evaluating the comparability of two reading comprehension tests written to assess the reading ability of malaysian primary (1-3) and intermediate (4-6) grade readers with its english translation in terms of reading skills and reading comprehension levels according to a conceptual framework of reading comprehension developed by dagostino and carifio (1994) that proved to be quite useful for evaluating the nature of the test items in reading comprehension instruments (see dagostino, carifio, bauer, & zhao, 2013). that research was able to establish strong correlations across the two versions of the tests on the classification of reading skills and levels of reading comprehension. the original tests were written in malay for a nationwide study of reading comprehension in malaysia. we then translated both tests into english for the purpose of determining the relationship of classifications of reading skills and levels of reading comprehension in two different languages. while the tests were not constructed with the cognitive dimensions of thought as part of the test item specifications (i.e., bloom’s general cognitive [processing] abilities), we thought that this factor would be an interesting dimension to explore in further work, and thus became the focus of the present study. present work the present study extended our previous study to examine the english version of the above described test further to see if this version of the test in any way could be reasonably and usefully characterized in terms of general cognitive processes and abilities. therefore, the purpose of the present work was to determine if test items on the english versions of malay tests reflected the categories of general cognitive abilities described in bloom’s revised taxonomy of the cognitive dimension (anderson et al., 2001) by evaluating inter-rater judgments of the 100 test items on two tests developed for evaluating the reading comprehension abilities of primary (grades 1-3) and intermediate (grades 4-6) grade readers in malaysia. consequently, with this purpose in mind, we set out to explore the following research question: what is the inter-rater agreement for each test item classified using bloom’s revised taxonomy of the cognitive dimension (anderson et al., 2001) when the judgments of all three raters are analyzed as a group? organization of the article with the above goals mind, we will begin with a description of the malay tests, their development, and the work of the present study. then, bloom’s revised taxonomy of the cognitive dimension (anderson et al., 2001) will be described, as well as its application to the present study. next, we detail the components of the study itself, including the parameters and limitations, methodology, procedures, results and subsequent data analysis. we then finish with an overall summary and final comments on the implications of this work. the malay tests this next section of the paper, describing the malay tests, was originally published as part of the author’s previous study (see dagostino, carifio, bauer, & zhao, 2013). the description and construction of the malay tests the original two malay tests, constructed by a team of researchers at the universiti of sains malaysia, were developed for the purpose of evaluating reading comprehension abilities of students in the primary grades (test i for grade 1-3, test ii for grades 4-6) in malaysia (norhashim, 2004). the following section of this article describes the process for the development and the content of these tests. steps for design and content of the malay instruments using the dagostino-carifio model (1994) of reading comprehension as a theoretical basis, the assessment of a reading comprehension instrument as it relates to cognitive abilities as defined by bloom’s revised taxonomy 3 table 1 table of specifications for malay reading comprehension tests with this general template being the same for test i and test ii reading comprehension category code reading skills literal (l) l1a, l1b, l1c identifying meaning of word/ phrase/ sentence l2 identifying main idea l3 identifying important point l4 making comparison l5 identifying cause-effect l6 identifying sequence of ideas/events inferential (f) f1 interpreting main idea f2 interpreting important point f3 interpreting comparison f4 interpreting cause-effect f5 making a conclusion critical creative (k) k1 evaluating k2 making a conclusion k3 internalizing k4 identifying the moral of the story/lesson development of the test focused on three components: a) defining and selecting the category of the comprehension level as well as of the comprehension skill, b) selection and development of the reading texts, and c) the development of the test questions and the answers. the two tests were designed by conducting a preliminary survey that included a discussion with malay teachers, a review of teaching learning materials and observations of teachers teaching in a classroom. once the survey was completed, a first draft was developed for test i and for test ii. the writing of the first draft was accomplished through a series of workshops with malay language teachers, experts from curriculum development center, administrators from the district education office and state education department, lecturers of school of educational studies from the universiti sains malaysia (norhashim, 2004). as a result of this work, the researchers established the following table of specifications (table 1), which outlines the relationships between the reading comprehension levels and reading skills underlying the construct of both tests. defining the reading comprehension levels and the reading comprehension skills the reading comprehension levels and the reading skills determine the difficulty and the nature of the reading texts and the test items. the malaysian tests have three comprehension levels defined as follows (norhashim, 2004): (a) literal (message extraction) reading comprehension, which refers to the memorization of facts in texts where information is explicitly stated at a basic level of thinking; (b) inferential (message interpretation) reading comprehension which refers to the ability of students to interpret meaning where they need to use overt information along with intuition, reasoning, and experience to attain the higher level of thinking assessed by the malay tests; and, (c) critical/creative (message evaluation) reading comprehension, which refers to the student’s ability to do an overall critical evaluation of certain information or an idea that has been read in terms of the precision and/or suitability of the given information of a new idea, encountered. this critical evaluation may require some divergent thinking and depend to some degree upon the knowledge and personal experience of the student, but it focuses mostly on convergent critical thinking being done by the student. reading comprehension skills. there are ten reading comprehension skills that are assessed by the malay tests (norhashim, 2004): (a) identifying meaning of word/phrase/sentence; (b) identifying the main idea; (c) identifying the important point; (d) identifying the causeeffect relationship; (e) identifying the sequence of ideas/events; (f) making a comparison; (g) drawing a conclusion; (h) evaluating; (i) internalizing; (k) identifying the moral of the story/lesson. these ten skills range from simple reading comprehension to what is called deep or deeper understanding, which is a first step towards what is called evaluative reading. these skills are the ones that usually constitute the classification of items assessed in most reading tests. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 4 types and contents of reading texts there are several types of text that make the text broad in scope and representative of various types of reading of non-technical materials that are encountered in daily reading situations (norhashim, 2004). there are essays, fiction, reports, letters, poems, biographies, speeches, dialogues, and news reports. there are 12 texts for test i and 12 texts for test ii. there are various subjects (literature, history, etc.) the individual texts are 100 words of less for test i and 100 words or more for test ii. the passages in the test for grades (1-3) are simpler in structure as well as expectations for level of reading comprehension than those used for grades 4-6. a research group, 3 expert teachers, teacher trainers, psychometric and experts from the university developed the texts, with ideas for the texts coming from books and magazines. development of the test items the question and answer formats for the tests took various forms such as a) sentences from text that needed completion with a choice of answers, b) items that needed a choice of answers in multiple choice form, and c) instructions and blanks to be filled in with multiple choice form. an item specification table was developed to categorize the types of items in the test (norhashim, 2004). each test consists of 50 multiple choice items designed to evaluate reading comprehension with consideration given to reading skill ability and reading comprehension level. some specific things were considered in the item development. they are as follows: a) arrangement of each item was based upon reading comprehension skill (forms, style, pupils’ existing knowledge), and b) implicit information and inferential definition. in the case of implicit information, the text considers information in the text and students’ background. in the case of inferential definition the test considers an integrated synthesis of literal with existing knowledge, intuition and reader’s imagination. the following two table of specifications include the classification by reading comprehension level and reading skill for each test item. both malay tests were built from the same general table of specifications, but classification by reading skill varied for each test (table 2 and 3). table 2 malay table of specifications including test items by classification for test i reading comprehension level code reading skills item numbers literal (l) l1a, l1b, l1c identifying meaning of word/ phrase/ sentence 8 13 41 46 l2 identifying main idea 1 5 9 47 l3 identifying important point 2 6 l4 making comparison 10 14 15 l5 identifying cause-effect 3 7 11 42 l6 identifying sequence of ideas/events 4 12 16 inferential (f) f1 interpreting main idea 21 25 29 43 assessment of a reading comprehension instrument as it relates to cognitive abilities as defined by bloom’s revised taxonomy 5 f2 interpreting important point 17 26 48 f3 interpreting comparison 18 22 30 31 49 f4 interpreting cause-effect 19 23 27 32 f5 making a conclusion 20 24 28 44 critical creative (k) k1 evaluating 33 40 45 k2 making a conclusion 34 37 38 k3 internalizing 35 39 k4 identifying the moral of the story/lesson 36 50 table 3 malay table of specifications including test items by classification for test ii reading comprehension level code reading skills item numbers literal (l) l1a, l1b, l1c identifying meaning of word/ phrase/ sentence 1 5 41 46 l2 identifying main idea 9 13 42 l3 identifying important point 2 10 47 l4 making comparison 6 14 15 l5 identifying cause-effect 3 7 11 16 l6 identifying sequence of ideas/events 4 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 6 8 12 inferential (f) f1 interpreting main idea 17 21 25 29 f2 interpreting important point 18 22 26 30 f3 interpreting comparison 27 31 43 48 f4 interpreting cause-effect 19 23 32 44 f5 making a conclusion 20 24 28 49 critical creative (k) k1 evaluating 33 38 50 k2 making a conclusion 34 37 39 40 k3 internalizing 35 k4 identifying the moral of the story/lesson 36 45 design and choice of answers and distracters a multiple-choice format was used because it was considered as most objective. each answer had 4 options (a, b, c, d for each item with each option coded a=1, b=2, c=3 and d= 4). the correct answer was scored 1, and the wrong answer was scored 0. the design of the answers and distracters required a) the suitability of choice of answers relative to the cognitive task that was related to the content and the texts, and b) syntax and semantic forms needed to be different from the texts so that students could be assessed on how well they understood the context of the meaning (norhashim, 2004). reliability measures of the two malay tests the malay researchers examined three types of internal consistency reliability estimators for both tests with the results being almost identical for both tests. the first internal consistency (of test-taker overall performance) reliability estimator computed was the cronbach alpha coefficient, which was r=+.66 (n=2763) for test i and r=+.61 (n=4101) for test ii. as is well known, test length, sample size, and test content and item type heterogeneity affect and limit the size of the cronbach alpha one will observe in any given context. as test content and the cognitive levels and operations assessed are so heterogeneous for both tests, the cronbach alphas observed for each test are quite good to excellent given that test lengths (50 items each) and sample sizes (n=2763 and 4101+) and are in the range that one would expect given the qualitative characteristics of both tests. the second internal consistency reliability estimator the malay researchers computed was the guttman reliability coefficient, which assess the degree to which students’ performances on the test are hierarchical in character (i.e., students who do well on low level items are not doing well on high level items and vice versa), which performances should be for test i and test ii given how they were constructed and their qualitative characteristics. the guttman reliability coefficient for test i was r=+.77 (n=2763) and for test ii was r=+.72 assessment of a reading comprehension instrument as it relates to cognitive abilities as defined by bloom’s revised taxonomy 7 (n=4101), which are excellent to outstanding and indicate that this particular qualitative characteristic of both tests are as hypothesized and purported. the third internal consistency reliability estimator the malay researchers computed was the kuderrichardson odd-even items reliability coefficient, which assess the degree to which items types and their characteristics are evenly balanced across the test, as well as students’ performances on the items on the test. for example, the kuder-richardson reliability coefficient would be low if all of the odd items were easy (or recall) items and all of the even items were difficult (or skill) item, or if all of the poorly constructed and nonfunctioning items were easy items as opposed as opposed to this characteristic being evenly balanced across both the odd and even items. the kuder-richardson odd-even items reliability coefficient for test i was r=+.77 (n=2763) and for test ii was r=+.73 (n=4101), which are good to excellent and indicate that the various types of items and their various characteristics were evenly balanced across each test as were student performances. as one administration internal estimates of various types of consistencies in student performances across each of these two tests and thus internal consistency reliabilities estimates, the results obtained by the malay researchers of the three different indicators of internal reliabilities estimates were excellent. high onetime internal consistency estimates of reliabilities, however, are no guarantee that test-retest reliabilities will be equally high as they could actually be lower or higher which is why the malay researchers are currently collecting the data to generate the test-retest reliability coefficients as these coefficients are key in the assessment of change across time on these measures. but to date, the reliabilities estimates for each test that are available are excellent and particularly so given the internal complexity of each test, and each is also initially supportive empirically of specific aspects of the construct validity of each test, although not as direct or strong evidence as other analyses might indicate. bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson et al., 2001) and its application to the present study bloom’s original taxonomy was designed to help teachers establish objectives for instruction, learning and assessment. this revised taxonomy has served to guide the design and the implementation of accountability programs and standards-based curriculum. the revision of the original taxonomy that was in the present study has been refined to incorporate new knowledge into the original framework. this revised taxonomy gave us a good conceptual framework for determining the cognitive levels and ability reflected in test items on the reading comprehension test that the researchers’ expect to use as an assessment instrument in subsequent studies. the test already has been examined for general levels of reading comprehension and reading skills. what we hoped to accomplish in the present study was to see if the test items also reflected levels of the specific cognitive abilities as defined by bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson et al., 2001). this taxonomy was chosen from other ways to evaluate cognitive abilities because it is most applicable, familiar and understandable to the classroom teacher, yet detailed enough to give valuable insight into cognitive processes that are considered necessary to learning and to the assessment of success in instruction and learning (anderson et al., 2001). further work is planned to compare bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson et al., 2001) with other classification frameworks for measuring cognitive abilities as they may manifest themselves in tests of reading comprehension. using bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson et al., 2001) gave us a standard, well-recognized classification system for our immediate goals, and it also should be useful for guiding instruction and curriculum guidelines that may be generated by our present work. this consistency across these tasks should simplify the work of the classroom teacher and the researcher. in sum, bloom’s revised taxonomy gives us definitions for classifying the learning, teaching and assessing of the cognitive dimension of thought that is central to instruction in most subject areas, and in relationship to our work in reading comprehension as an aspect of assessment of literacy in a way that differs from most current measures of reading comprehension. what follows here is a table of bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson et al., 2001), and descriptions of the categories that were used in the present study. table 4 definitions of the categories of bloom’s revised taxonomy – the cognitive dimension (remembering, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create) remembering recognizing involves retrieving relevant information from long-term memory in order to compare it with presented information. also identifying recalling involves retrieving relevant information from long-term memory when a prompt is given. the prompt often is a question. also retrieving. understand interpreting occurs when a student is able to convert information from one representation to current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 8 another representation. also translating or paraphrasing. exemplifying occurs when a student gives a specific example or instance of a general concept or principle. also illustrate. classifying occurs when a student recognizes that something belongs to a certain category. it is a complementary process to exemplifying. summarizing occurs when a student suggest a single statement that represents presented information or abstracts a general theme. also generalize or abstract. inferring involves finding a pattern within a series of examples or instances. the student abstracts a concept or a principle that accounts for a set of instances. also extrapolating or concluding. comparing involves detecting similarities and differences between two or more objects, events, ideas or situations. also contrasting, matching. explaining occurs when a student is able to construct and use a cause-effect model of a system. the model may be derived from a formal theory or may be grounded in research and experience. also constructing a model. apply executing occurs when a student routinely carries out a procedure when confronted with a familiar task. also carrying out. implementing occurs when a student selects and uses a procedure to perform an unfamiliar task. it is carried out in conjunction with understand. also using. analyze differentiating occurs when there is a determination of the relevant or important pieces of a message in relation to the whole structure. organizing occurs relative to the way the pieces of a message are organized into a coherent structure. attributing occurs when the underlying purpose or point of view of the message is related to the entire communication. evaluate checking involves testing for internal consistencies or fallacies in an operation, product, or communication to see whether data support or disconfirm hypothesis or conclusions as well as the accuracy of facts. critiquing involves judging a product, operation or communication against externally imposed criteria and standard. create generating occurs when a problem is represented and alternatives and hypothesis that meet certain criteria are produced. planning occurs when a solution method is devised that meets a problem’s criteria for developing a plan for solving the problem. producing occurs when a plan is carried out for solving a given problem that meets certain specifications. what creates difficulty in assessing reading comprehension is the various ways the construct of reading comprehension has been conceptualized and discussed in the research literature as well as in the way those constructs have been applied to instruction. these variations also influenced our thinking by creating an incongruence and dissonance in the results in previous work thus leading to the present study. early in the paper we indicated that the more traditional view of reading comprehension based in a behaviorist view has driven the field of assessment of reading comprehension for some time (cain & oakhill, 2006; storch & whitehurst, 2002). because of this influence of a behaviorist view we think that having an assessment instrument that focuses on assessing the reader’s ability to get the meaning of a text has been lost. this traditional view of reading comprehension is very much reflected in part of the way the malay researchers implemented a construct of reading comprehension through a skills perspective that is aligned with this behaviorist thinking. what this view may represent, along with the more current discussion of strategies, is how students may go through of reading the text to try get to meaning, but not what the reader actually comprehends from the text. one may think of this behavior as going through the motions of trying to comprehend rather than actually using strategies to uncover the meaning in the text. the dagostino-carifio model (2004) attempts to extend this view by focusing on the continuously evaluative nature of the reading process as integral to assessing reading comprehension, and looking at levels of reading comprehension. it is a more holistic view of reading comprehension reflective of assessment of a reading comprehension instrument as it relates to cognitive abilities as defined by bloom’s revised taxonomy 9 cognitive ability with the requirement that an evaluative process be considered part of the construct of reading comprehension, and in fact central to it. this reshapes the construct of reading comprehension considerably to begin to include an additional cognitive dimension that begins to suggest the cognitive abilities reflected in the third way in which the construct of comprehension may be applied to reading comprehension that we have focused upon in this study – that is a cognitive framework such as bloom’s revised taxonomy. while we acknowledge that the malay test considered levels of reading comprehension, it was not really the information that is applied to subsequent instruction. instead the emphasis still is on skills. again, while we acknowledge that the malay test was developed for younger readers, we believe that some of what we are saying about assessing reading comprehension still may apply, and that the construct of reading comprehension in the dagostino-carifio model (2004) is a more comprehensive view. in then moving forward by using the cognitive view reflected in bloom’s revised taxonomy of cognitive abilities, we are very much shifting the focus to the thinking processes and levels of intellectual development of the reader that focuses much more on getting meaning rather than going through the motions that reflect the behaviorist view. it also should be noted that the cognitive ability of understanding in the revised bloom’s taxonomy is only a subset of the construct of reading comprehension as it is used to direct the present work. what we may see in the progression in these constructs of reading comprehension is a movement towards an emphasis on meaning derived from an integration and synthesis of reading skills rather than on the behaviors reflected in the reading skills. with this movement towards meaning we see the reader able to make sense of a text, both explicitly and implicitly. the dagostino-carifio model (2004) begins to bridge this gap from focusing on behaviors to focusing on getting meaning from the text at various intellectual and cognitive levels (see figure 1). further, moving to the bloom’s revised taxonomy makes the shift to assessing cognitive abilities an even better way to determine how well the reader has gotten meaning from text. figure 1. the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension (2004) as a conceptual bridge between behaviorist and cognitive models of reading comprehension. unlike the behaviorist approach, which emphasizes skills as a means of understanding a text, or the cognitive approach, which places emphasis on thinking processes, the dagostino-carifio model acknowledges a need for both reading skills and evaluative processes in or for the reader to derive meaning from a text. malay construct of reading comprehension behaviorist strategies/skills to get to meaning dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension reading skills and evaluative processes to get to meaning bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension cognitive thinking processes that gets to meaning current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 10 this study parameters and limitations the present work applies to the novice (grades 16) reader who may be approaching the early stages of formal reasoning rather than to the expert (grades 7-adult) reader who may be into the early stage of formal reasoning. the reading materials considered in this study are non-technical, such as essays, fiction, poetry, journalistic writing, rather than technical, such as expository scientific or mathematical content. the nature of cognitive thinking considered is primarily convergent, critical thinking rather than divergent, creative thinking. lastly, the focus of this study was to determine what levels of bloom’s revised taxonomy of cognitive processes actually are reflected in these tests to see if in fact the test taps cognitive abilities in any way. methodology the translation process as previously stated, the original tests used in this study were developed in malaysia by a team of researchers at the universiti sains malaysia for the purpose of evaluating reading comprehension abilities of students in the primary grades (1-6) in four regions (north, east, middle, south) in malaysia. the two tests (test i grades 1-3, test ii for grades 4-6) were developed for and administered to this population in a national assessment study from april to may 2004. the two tests were translated into english for our present work by a professional translation center. the original tests were forwarded intact to a native speaker of malay who was a communication student at the university of massachusetts amherst. upon completion of the translation, a native speaker of english reviewed the text. any revisions or questions were noted using the track changes feature in ms word, and the file was returned to the original translator to either accept or reject the changes. the final file in ms word was then submitted to the university. the lead researcher who developed the malay version of the tests verified the accuracy and the appropriateness of the translations then reviewed the translations. the lead researcher is bilingual in malay and english. the translations were judged by the malaysian researcher to be satisfactory (dagostino, carifio, bauer, & zhao, 2013). procedures three of the current authors independently rated each items on the two tests according to bloom’s revised taxonomy as a first step in the process. the raters had either a ph.d. in language arts and literacy, or were completing work for that degree. one of the raters spoke both english and chinese, and another works with young children from several cultures and language backgrounds. previous ratings by these same raters had judged the items for skills and levels as described earlier in this article with excellent results (see dagostino et al., 2013 for details). the three raters evaluated each test item from both malay tests based and classified each test item using bloom’s revised taxonomy of cognitive abilities. the three expert raters completed their individual judgments by first reading each item of test i and test ii independently, and then determining the bloom’s revised taxonomy level of cognitive ability they felt best applied to the dimension of reading comprehension being tested. the categories for classification were as follows: 1) remember, 2) understand, 3) apply, 4) analyze, 5) evaluate, and 6) create. (see table 4 for definitions of each category). after independent readings and ratings of the test items using the bloom’s revised taxonomy were completed, the raters compared their judgments with each other for all their of ratings. there was not a need for a reconciliation process among the raters based upon this discussion because of the high level of agreement among the three raters. after the quantitative analysis of the ratings was completed, the raters met again to discuss the results to evaluate the meaning of the raters’ agreements on the item ratings. results and data analysis the analysis and results section of this article presents the data and its interpretation for the research question: what is the inter-rater agreement for each test item classified using bloom’s revised taxonomy of the cognitive dimension (anderson et al., 2001) when the judgments of all three raters are analyzed as a group? the procedure used to analyze the data was the calculation of inter-rater correlation coefficients. this coefficient was computed by first getting the percentage of agreements between the three raters for a given judged (which is the explained variance) and then taking the square root of that percentage which would be the interrater correlation or reliability coefficient. to judge the effectiveness of using bloom’s revised taxonomy as a means to classify each test item, each rater individually judged every question, and then compared their answers. the agreement rate was 98% (r>.99) for test 1, and 99% for test 2 (r>.99). once these analyses were complete, the raters gathered to compile the quantitative data and examine the results. the raters’ discussion on the items relative to disagreement did not show a clear pattern as to type of disagreement. the research question addressed was, “what is the inter-rater agreement for each test item classified using bloom’s revised taxonomy when the judgments of all three raters are analyzed as a group?” table 5 presents a comprehensive look at the frequencies and percentages of rater agreements about the bloom taxonomic level of each item for both test i and test ii. the square roots of the agreement percentages approximate the inter-rater correlation coefficients. assessment of a reading comprehension instrument as it relates to cognitive abilities as defined by bloom’s revised taxonomy 11 table 5 test 1: rater agreements percentages of rater agreements of classification of test items by bloom’s taxonomy type of agreement frequency percent cum. percent r 1. raters agreed on classification 48 .96 96 .98 2. raters disagreed on classification 2 .04 100 50 100% test 2: rater agreements percentages of rater agreements of classification of test items by bloom’s taxonomy type of agreement frequency percent cum. percent r 1. raters agreed on classification 47 .94 94 .99 2. raters disagreed on classification 3 .06 100 50 100% as can be seen from table 5, agreement between the raters was very high in regard to their classifications of test items by bloom’s revised taxonomy (r>.98). this high degree of inter-rater agreement indicates that each individual test item can be reliably classified using bloom’s revised taxonomy, which is a highly positive result as bloom’s revised taxonomy can provide reading researchers with a drastically different measure of reading comprehension abilities than are traditionally assessed through skills-based only characterized reading tests. current reading comprehension measures only include specific reading comprehension skills, whereas applying the framework of bloom’s revised taxonomy to the structure of a test might allow reading researchers to expand their understanding of the nature of reading comprehension, as well as to identify the potential use and application of cognitive strategies by readers during the reading process. all of these points may also apply to other tests of achievement and understanding, but further research would be needed to confirm this point empirically. findings and discussion these findings demonstrate that levels of bloom’s revised taxonomy of the cognitive dimension may reliably classify reading comprehension test items even when the items were written and validated according other views and frameworks of reading comprehension. the general bloom characterized cognitive processes required to perform the item, therefore, are manifest in the item itself and the item’s particulars, and constitute an ignored latent view (and rival theory) of the item and the test as whole similar to the unique (as opposed to the common or joint) portion of generalized tripartite item variances in factor analysis and factor analytical models of and results for instruments (see harman, 1976 for details). this specific point means that additional unique and important information may be extracted and gained from the item and item set using this latent view or frame that will contribute significantly to finding and understandings using the test and students’ performances when the test is double scored or matrix scored using the multiple frames of reference with its built in rival hypotheses tests. such characterizations and analyses of reading comprehension tests will produce a much better, deeper and fuller understanding of reading comprehension as well as a methodology for test makers to check the quality their own work. however, there are also further benefits. the empirical findings and facts above are also significant because bloom’s revised taxonomy gives us sets of explicit objectives for classifying the learning, teaching and assessing of the cognitive dimensions of thought and reading comprehension that are central and generalized to instruction in most subject areas, and in relationship to our work on reading comprehension as an aspect of assessment of literacy in a way that differs from most current measures of reading comprehension. while many theories of reading comprehension present the process of reading as a hierarchal set of skills that are learned and applied by the reader, and thus seek to measure those particular skills (such as speed, fluency, and decoding), the dagostino-carifio model (2004) diverges from this viewpoint and is most comprehensive. while acknowledging the skills view of reading and the legitimacy of identifying such skills, particularly as part of the reasoning process of reading, the dagostino-carifio model (2004) proposes that reading skills are not necessarily applied in a strict sequential and hierarchical current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 12 fashion, but that they may be more fluid in nature. it also suggests that there is an evaluative process and comprehension and higher order cognitive processes that are occurring during the reading process that are more akin and better characterized by bloom’s revised taxonomy. furthermore, the dagostino-carifio model (2004) considers these cognitive processes and cognitive processing to be essential to understanding as well as perhaps measuring reading comprehension abilities. as we initially stated, this study was undertaken because we believed that the traditional skill view for classifying reading comprehension test items could be significantly improved by considering a different conceptual framework for reading comprehension. the alternative view chosen focused on classifying reading comprehension test items by cognitive ability levels as well as skill levels or just either view alone. the results suggest that this alternative view is a viable and useful approach and view that may actually test reading in a more useful and comprehensive manner. future research little has been done to examine how the measurement of the reader’s cognitive abilities, as determined by bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson et al., 2001), correlates with the other characterization and classification constructs, such as those delineating reading skills or reading comprehension levels as defined by more functional views of reading for categorizing test items. in our next study, we will begin to compare and analyze the relationship, if any, between the original malay classification system and bloom’s revised taxonomy. once that comparison is complete we hope to examine additional classification schemes for cognitive abilities to see if they too are comparable measures of performance on this instrument. anderson, l. e., & karthwohl, d. (eds.). (2001). a taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessment. new york: longman. bloom, b. (1956). taxonomy of educational objectives: handbook i, cognitive domain. new york: davis press. cain, k., & oakhill, j. (2006). assessment matters: issues in the measurement of reading comprehension. british journal of educational psychology, 76, 697–708. dagostino, l., & carifio, j. (1994). evaluative reading and literacy: a cognitive view. boston: allyn and bacon. dagostino, l., carifo, j., bauer, j., & zhao, q. (2013, february). cross-cultural reading comprehension assessment in malay and english as it relates to the dagostino and carifio model of reading comprehension. current issues in education, 16(1), 1-16. harman, h. h. (1976). modern factor analysis. chicago: university of chicago press. hashim, n. h., lah, y. c., ahmad, m. z., yaakub, r., aziz, a. r. a., mohamed, a. r., … ramli, i. (2006). reading comprehension in malaysia primary grades 1-6. penang, malaysia: universiti sains malaysia. (research grant). mcnamara, d. s., & kendeou, p. (2011). translating advances in reading comprehension research to educational practice. international electronic journal of elementary education, 4(1), 33 – 46. storch, s. a., & whitehurst, g. j., (2002). oral language and code-related precursors to reading: evidence from a longitudinal structural model. developmental psychology, 38 (6), 934-947. winstead, l. (2004). increasing academic motivation and cognition in reading, writing, and mathematics: meaning-making strategies. educational research quarterly, 28 (2), 30 – 49 assessment of a reading comprehension instrument as it relates to cognitive abilities as defined by bloom’s revised taxonomy 13 article citation dagostino, l., carifio, j., bauer, j. d., zhao, q., & hashim, n. h. (2014). assessment of a reading comprehension instrument as it relates to cognitive abilities as defined by bloom’s revised taxonomy. current issues in education, 17(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1281 author notes lorraine dagostino university of massachusetts at lowell o'leary library 519, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854-3047 lorraine_dagostino@uml.edu lorraine dagostino is a professor at graduate school of education in the university of massachusetts lowell. her research interests include literacy, critical thinking and evaluative reading, theoretical issues in reading and literacy, and literature issues. james carifio university of massachusetts at lowell o'leary library 527, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854-3047 james_carifio@uml.edu james carifio is a professor in psychology and research methods at the university of massachusetts lowell. he has done extensive research and publishing in the respective fields. jennifer d. c. bauer university of massachusetts at lowell jennifer_bauer@student.uml.edu jennifer d. c. bauer teaches digital media and visual art at lowell high school, and english at the phillips academy, andover summer session. additionally, she is a doctoral student at the university of massachusetts at lowell, pursuing her ed.d. in language arts & literacy. her research interests include visual arts and literacy, digital/new literacies, language variation, urban education, and culturally responsive pedagogy. qing zhao university of massachusetts at lowell o'leary library 512, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854-3047 qing_zhao@uml.edu qing zhao recently earned her ed.d. in language arts & literacy from the graduate school of education, university of massachusetts lowell in 2013. her research interests currently include the study of teaching and learning english as a foreign/second language (efl/esl) and development of efl/esl learners' language proficiency in both north american and asian learning context. nor hashimah hashim universiti sains malaysia shimah@usm.my nor hashimah hashim is a professor of education at the universiti sains malaysia her research interests include preschool education, primary school education, and curriculum studies. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to jennifer bauer at jennifer_bauer@student.uml.edu, or qing zhao at qing_zhao@student.uml.edu current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 14 manuscript received: 09/04/13 revisions received: 11/30/2013 accepted: 12/02/2013 assessment of a reading comprehension instrument as it relates to cognitive abilities as defined by bloom’s revised taxonomy 15 volume 17, number 1 february 04, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors elizabeth calhoun reyes constantin schreiber assistant executive editor kevin jose raso recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editor elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik aaron bryant darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell younsu kim anna montana cirell kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber melinda thomas faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template 1 volume 7, number 2 january 20, 2004 issn 1099-839x monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? john a. huss northern kentucky university a descriptive study examined the degree to which middle level teachers in grades 6-8 in three states accept the tenets of the middle school philosophy. the guiding questions were: (1) does a cross difference in variables exist among teachers from different organizational settings or grade configurations in respect to the teacher’s acceptance of the tenets of the middle school philosophy? (2) does a cross difference in variables exist among teachers who hold different types of certification or licensure in respect to the teacher’s acceptance of the tenets of the middle school philosophy? based on the overall data, the middle school movement appears to be making steady progress. data in this study suggest substantial teacher acceptance of the middle school philosophy across the various organizational settings. pearson chi square values denoting significant differences across building configurations were revealed for eight of the 20 survey questions. a greater sense of uniformity existed across certification or licensure types with significant differences uncovered for four of the 20 questions. many could argue the middle school movement is walking in molasses as an increasing number of districts show renewed interest in k-8 alignments or otherwise abandon key elements of the middle school concept. determining the relative success of the 40-year middle school movement and its well crafted ethos would be much easier to do if “middle school” were a single entity that meant the same thing to all people. let’s face it; teachers interact with middle level students in a variety of settings. in addition to so-named middle schools, the list includes junior high schools, k-8 schools, and elementary schools. these same teachers also possess a variety of certification or licensure types, ranging from elementary to middle grades to secondary. amidst such a cacophony of confusion, do some teachers view “middle school” as a culture with its successful operation dependent upon teachers’ attitudes and approaches, while others view it as a mere configuration dictated primarily by programmatic characteristics? simply put, do all teachers of middle level students exhibit the same philosophical commitment to the middle school model? sustaining the growth of the middle school movement becomes a daunting task indeed if the very practitioners who lead the classrooms do not identify or align themselves with the middle school philosophy, or fail to understand the tenets underlying this philosophy. according to this we believe, a seminal document generated from the national middle school association (1982, 1995, 2003), the middle school “philosophy” provides a clear set of guiding characteristics for successful, developmentally responsive middle schools to embody. among these are: a shared vision; educators committed to young adolescents; a positive school climate; an adult advocate for every child; family and community partnerships; and high expectations for all students, buttressed by an integrative, exploratory curriculum. yet if teachers consider only certain building configurations to be bonafide “middle schools” or are professionally prepared in areas other than a middle level specialization, the result could be a wide gap in middle level education wherein the middle school concept is not practiced, or is attempted with indifference simply because current issues in education vol. 7 no. 2 2 of the name chiseled on the building marquee or the grade denotations printed on a state certification. according to mizell (2000a), so long as these divisions of belief and practice exist among middle level educators, it is not likely there will be the consensus of conviction and action necessary to have a major impact on student learning. revisiting this gray area involving teacher attitudes toward the middle school philosophy may provide valuable information to help gauge whether the middle school movement is making an impact where it ultimately matters most, in the hearts and minds of the middle level teachers. while uniqueness may be fascinating for snowflakes and thumbprints, it brings only dissonance and fluster to an educational movement dependent upon adherence to an unequivocal set of underlying beliefs. if teachers universally accept the aforementioned middle school philosophy and believe that “middle school” is an ideathat should be discernible wherever transecent students are being taught, the tenets can serve as a common denominator or shared vision for middle level teachers, thus effectively negating any differences that may arise from variables such as organizational setting or certification/licensure type. conversely, differing perceptions across building configurations or certification lines as to what constitutes a “middle school teacher” could signal an inconsistency in how early adolescent students experience “middle school” in the classroom. the carnegie report (1989, 2000) recommends that middle schools be staffed with teachers who are expert at teaching early adolescents and who have the education and training necessary for the assignment. it is reasonable to postulate that the degree to which a particular school setting is consciously or unconsciously aligned with the middle school philosophy, or the extent to which a building configuration actually resembles a “complete” middle school, may have a bearing on the extent to which the teachers in that setting feel a sense of urgency to likewise adopt the philosophy, are encouraged to adopt the philosophy, or are provided with adequate professional development to adopt the philosophy. schools, after all, are both socially conditioned and subject to political influences (woods and bagley, 1996). the professional preparation of middle level teachers might be the x factor in determining the ultimate acceptance of middle school tenets in a given school or district. the importance of specialized middle grades preparation can certainly not be overstated. stahler (1996) compared a group of middle level student teachers that were prepared in a middle school teacher education program with a group of middle level student teachers that were prepared in an elementary or a secondary teacher education program. these student teachers (n=34) completed a questionnaire about their attitudes toward middle level learners and middle level teaching. results of analyses showed the student teachers with special middle school preparation knew more about early adolescents, were familiar with the literature, prepared lesson plans that included more practices appropriate for middle level learners, taught more highly rated lessons, and had a better attitude toward middle level teaching than those who had been prepared in a more general program. several studies, however, have suggested that fewer than one in four middle grades teachers have received specialized preparation before they begin their careers (mcewin, dickinson, & jenkins, 1996; scales, 1992; scales & mcewin, 1994). this practice of staffing middle level schools with teachers and other professional personnel who lack special preparation for working with young adolescents appears to be a perennial roadblock to excellence in middle level education. in short, preservice teacher programs, state departments of education, and the profession itself have struggled to divest themselves from the elementary-secondary mindset and, thus, have largely failed to recognize the essentiality of introducing specific preparation programs for middle level teachers. as a result, many unwitting middle grades teachers fail to put serious effort into becoming adept middle level instructors because they are waiting to be elevated to the high school or assigned to elementary classrooms to teach primary children. with a prevailing attitude of “no special know-how required,” many middle level teachers forgo opportunities to improve their skills and dispositions focused directly on the middle level environment. in many states, for example, the only requirement for obtaining a middle school license is to have an elementary or secondary credential and teach one year at the middle grades level (jackson & davis, 2000). likewise, the patterns of “grade overlaps” (k-8, 6-9, 7-12) found in many teaching licenses negate the alleged significance of a separate middle school license and send a message that the middle grades option is relatively unimportant inasmuch as both elementary and high school teachers are also licensed for the middle grades classroom (mcewin & dickinson, 1996). as an example, one state's current plan includes the following options: grades pre k-3, 1-8, 4-8, 7-9 and 7-12. presented with these choices when considering future employment possibilities, many prospective teachers select programs leading to licensure in grades 1-8 or 7-12 because these grade spans make them more “marketable” (mcewin and dickinson, 1995). a study was conducted to examine the degree to which middle level teachers in grades 6-8 in three states accept those basic principles, ideas, and ideals which grow out of a belief that “middle school” is an educational response to the needs and characteristics of youngsters during transecence. two questions guided the study: (1) does a cross difference in variables exist among teachers from different organizational settings or grade configurations in respect to the teacher’s acceptance of the tenets of the middle school philosophy? (2) does a cross difference in variables exist among teachers who hold different types of certification or licensure in respect to the teacher’s acceptance of the tenets of the middle school monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? 3 philosophy? knowing the extent to which middle level teachers endorse and are committed to the middle school philosophy could provide a yardstick for teacher educators, school administrators, and middle school researchers who are often answerable for difficulties encountered with innovations in education. a review of related literature in the 1970’s, wiles and thomason (1975) commented on the state of germinal research efforts in middle level education and described it as being of “remarkably low quality” (p. 421). hopefully, we are now coming of age in middle level research by identifying an agenda for research that can inform and extend our agenda for action. we are also raising common questions and beginning to identify the types of studies we need to address those questions (strahan, 1992). the inaugural literature on middle level education is concerned almost exclusively with the emanation of the junior high model and the subsequent inability of the junior high school to effectively fulfill its mission and meet the academic and social needs of pre-adolescent students. the pioneering works of koos (1927) and gruhn and doulgass (1956) are particularly noteworthy. the perceived failure of the junior high school is quite significant and represents the beginning of an unfortunate pattern of instability throughout middle level education that continues to the present day. within the body of literature focusing on middle level education, variables such as grade organization and building configuration are found in abundance. jenkins and mcewin (1992) point out that grade organization has remained a controversial topic in american education for over 80 years. indeed, beginning in 1918 with a survey by the north central association of colleges and secondary schools to determine the most common grade configuration in america’s junior high schools, and continuing into the new millennium, the quest to expose the “best” physical arrangement for the middle grades has left us with data to literally support any combination one would care to advocate. a gradual transition from the junior high to the middle school arrangement has, however, clearly emerged with each passing decade. for instance, several studies documented the growth in the percentage of schools organized in the 6-7-8 pattern from 15% (valentine, clark, nickerson, and keefe, 1981) to 40% (alexander and mcewin, 1989) to 50% (valentine, clark, irvin, keefe, and melton, 1993) to 55% (mcewin, dickinson, and jenkins, 1995). in a 1993 national study, 65% of the principals reported that their schools had moved to a 5-8 or 6-8 grade level configuration, as compared to 25% in 1981 reporting such a change (valentine, et al, 1993). nonetheless, the recent work of paglin and fager (1997) now hints at a revivification of the k-8 format (often referred to as the “elemiddle school”). in the same vein, offenberg (2001) compared the effects of attending public philadelphia k-8 schools or public middle schools on eighthand ninth-grade achievement and discovered students attending k-8 schools had higher reading, mathematics, and science achievement than students attending middle schools serving similar communities. similarly, a study of baltimore city public schools reveals that students in k-8 schools produced significantly higher reading, language arts, and mathematics scores than did students in 6-8 schools (connolly, yakimowski-srebnick & russo, 2002). such vacillation on the “configuration of choice” may have a role in the ongoing challenge of the middle school philosophy to engender a strong sense of identification among classroom teachers who are employed within such a diversified collection of “middle school” arrangements. despite the perpetuity of this debate, the overall literature suggests that when considering the “proper” arrangement of grades for the middle years of schooling, the grade level configuration alone appears to bear little consequence on student learning, school adjustment, and personal growth. according to norton and lewis (2000), it is the execution of appropriate programs delivered in the best institutions that will provide the most responsive education for the young adolescent. hough (1999) insists a bona fide middle school is not an organizational structure consisting of a specific grade level configuration and a name that includes the word middle, rather it is a set of characteristics that meet the needs of the emerging adolescent. roeser, et al (2000) suggest that it is the integration of specific instructional and interpersonal dimensions that create effective middle schools. nevertheless, some research has inferred that “complete” middle schools may foster higher teacher efficacy, which leads to positive student attitudes (warren and payne, 1997). further, teachers in “complete” middle schools tend to perform better and have a more positive, humanistic attitude toward teaching and student control than do their counterparts in the junior high school and other middle level settings. studies of teacher thinking have revealed that if teachers’ implicit theories about learners or their mental images of effective teaching are contrary to that embodied in a new curriculum or teaching method, they may be unlikely to bring the innovation alive with great enthusiasm, thoroughness, and persistence. as represented in the literature, teacher thinking can be described as a set of moderating contextual factors that influence substantially the outcomes of teacher effectiveness and curriculum effectiveness (clark and peterson, 1986; cochran-smith (1990); richardson, 1996). a study by vulliamy (1997) agrees that teachers' beliefs, values, and practices are powerful mediators of their interpretations and responses to imposed changes. to many teachers, middle schools are not compelling, and the purpose of middle schools is fuzzy and clouded by jargon that, to them, has little relevance to the day-to-day challenges of teaching and learning (mizell, 2000b). current issues in education vol. 7 no. 2 4 recent middle grades research has specifically isolated a need for teacher attitudes that embrace the concepts of the middle school model. dickinson and butler (2001) uncover six elements of the transition to middle schools that ultimately hinder full implementation of the middle school concept in many schools: use of an incremental stage implementation model, lack of teacher education programs, lack of curriculum development, inadequate leadership, a paucity of research, and misunderstanding of the middle school concept. similarly, pitton (2001) discusses the need for changing teacher perceptions of middle school students in order to create a welcoming school and classroom environment that fulfills the goals of the middle school concept. teachers and school districts are encouraged to focus on students' changing needs by making connections to the middle school model. indeed, trends beginning in the early 1990’s indicated an increasing number of middle level schools were implementing programs recommended to align more closely with the developmental needs of early adolescents (epstein and maciver, 1990; valentine et al., 1993). is this enough? despite sporadic studies on the classroom implementation of middle school principles, a deficiency exists in solid research on how middle level teachers actually encircle and accept the tenets of the middle school concept, either in a general sense or as the tenets apply to their own unique educational environments. the mere reported implementation of a classroom practice could be misleading. as the research on teachers’ thought processes alludes, if teachers do not embrace or give credence to a specific practice, the desired outcomes may still fail to be realized, even though, on paper, the program component appears to have been “implemented.” the components are, in fact, implemented without integrity. what is lacking then in the literature is a study or series of studies to examine organizational setting and its relationship to teacher acceptance of the middle school philosophy. similarly there is a lack of studies that examine teacher certification/licensure and its relationship to teacher acceptance of the middle school philosophy. without the proper expectations and support by classroom teachers, the status of the middle school movement is precarious at best and the vision of middle level settings that are scholastically excellent, developmentally responsive, and socially equitable will remain as little more than fodder for academia. statement of hypothesis the null hypotheses (ho) for this study were twofold: 1. there will be no significant difference in how middle level teachers from four distinct building configurations (teachers from schools referred to as “middle schools,” organized with some combination of grades 6-8; teachers from schools referred to as “junior high schools;” teachers who teach middle level grades in k-8 or 1-8 schools; and teachers who teach 6 th grade in an elementary k-6 or 1-6 building) accept the tenets of the middle school philosophy. 2. there will be no significant difference in how middle level teachers possessing various types of teaching certification or licensure (elementary, middle, secondary) accept the tenets of the middle school philosophy. method the sample for this study consisted of 200 randomly selected middle level teachers in three states from the four dominant organizational settings in which one typically finds grades 6-8, or some combination thereof: (a) 50 teachers from schools specifically referred to as “middle schools,” organized with some combination of grades 6-8; (b) 50 teachers from schools designated as “junior high schools;” (c) 50 teachers who teach middle level grades in k-8 or 1-8 buildings in which the elementary and middle level grades share a common structure; (d) 50 teachers who teach 6 th grade in an elementary k-6 or 1-6 building. the states of indiana, kentucky, and ohio were selected for the study because these states provide ”heartland” moderation with a desirable balance of urban/rural districts. some studies, for example, have suggested that very rural or very urban school systems are often incompatible with the middle school, for explanations ranging from a perceived loss of “community identity” to a prevailing lack of socioeconomic “fit” (becker, 1987; deyoung, howley, & theobald, 1995). a total of 280 questionnaires were mailed (70 in each category of building configuration; 112 to indiana, 91 to kentucky, 77 to ohio) with 204 being returned (53 elementary, 50 junior high, 51 middle school, 50 k-8), an overall 73% return rate. forty-two percent of the questionnaires were returned from indiana teachers, 31 percent were from kentucky, and 27 percent were from ohio. to provide homogeneity and simplify comparisons, only the first 200 returned questionnaires (50 in each category of building configuration) were used for analysis. the average years of classroom experience for the teachers who responded were: junior high (13), middle school (15), elementary (15), and k/8 (13), for a combined average of 14 years. the measuring instrument for this study was a researcher-generated questionnaire that made use of a 1-to5 likert scale (1=strongly agree, 5=strongly disagree). respondents were also asked to denote the type of building in which they teach as well as the type of professional certification/licensure held. survey questions were compiled from desirable middle level attributes as articulated by such landmark sources as wiles and bondi (1981), carnegie council’s turning points (1989; 2000) and the national middle school association’s this we believe (1982, 1995, 2003). survey questions (and the category of the middle school philosophy apposite to each questions were as follows): monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? 5 1. the entire school program should offer many opportunities for physical movement meeting the needs of emerging adolescents 2. the school schedule should be flexible and permit time for recreation breaks or special activities meeting the needs of emerging adolescents 3. parents should have a role in governing the school (e.g. through school site councils, decision-making teams, etc.) parental cooperation 4. each learner should able to identify one teacher to whom he/she may turn for support and guidance meeting the needs of emerging adolescents 5. each learner should have the chance to explore a wide range of interests through exploratory courses, mini-courses, activities, etc. meeting the needs of emerging adolescents 6. students should be given directed practice in the use of materials and the “ways of knowing” appropriate to the subject (e.g., studying history as a historian would) instruction for middle level learners 7. the use of interdisciplinary teams does not improve the quality of learning among students in grades 6-8 instruction for middle level learners 8. the use of multiage groups improves student learning instruction for middle level learners 9. team planning time should be scheduled during the day instruction for middle level learners 10. learning tasks should be individualized instruction for middle level learners 11. i believe students should be grouped by ability instruction for middle level learners 12. students should be housed in smaller areas, which enable them to identify with a smaller group meeting the needs of emerging adolescents 13. teachers should have special training for middle school a staff of middle school teaching provided by the school system specialists 14. administrators and teachers should understand and be committed to the middle school concept a staff of middle school specialists 15. each curriculum area should have a prepared statement of goals and a continuum of objectives planning for continuous progress 16. evaluation of learner progress should be keyed to the goals and objectives planning for continuous progress 17. instruction should match the adopted goals and objectives planning for continuous progress 18. textbooks should be used seldom or never instruction for middle level learners 19. reports to parents concerning learner progress should be multidimensional,relying more on narrative accounts and less on letter or numerical "grades" planning for continuous progress 20. i consider myself to be a middle school teacher self identification current issues in education vol. 7 no. 2 6 data analysis was accomplished through the use of the two-dimensional chi square in the form of 4 x 3 and 3x 3 contingency tables with each middle level setting being compared with each of the other middle level settings, and each certification type compared with each of the other certification types. the chi-square is a nonparametric test of significance appropriate when the data are in the form of frequency counts. it can also be used to determine whether two variables are independent by comparing their observed joint occurrence with their expected joint occurrence, assuming independence. to both acknowledge minimum frequency thresholds of certain cells and to streamline the reporting of data, survey categories were “lumped” or “collapsed” to achieve this efficiency: “strongly disagree (sd)” and “disagree (d)” were logically combined as “disagreement” while “strongly agree (sa)” and “agree (a)” were merged into “agreement.” certification categories were likewise synthesized to reflect “elementary,” “middle,” (which includes teachers with precise middle school certification and teachers with a so-stated middle school endorsement, acquired through an approved program of studies), and “secondary.” such aggregation preserved the integrity of the data as originally collected. cross difference in variables among organizational setting and middle level teacher acceptance of the middle school philosophy: a summary of findings data in this study suggest substantial teacher acceptance of the middle school philosophy across the various organizational settings. there were, for example, no significant differences revealed on the following items: the school schedule should be flexible and permit time for recreation breaks or special activities; each curriculum area should have a prepared statement of goals and a continuum of objectives; evaluation should be keyed to the goals and objectives; instruction should match the goals and objectives; students should be given directed practice in the use of materials and the “ways of knowing” appropriate to the subject; and the value of interdisciplinary teams. such findings are consistent with earlier published research summaries from the national middle school association that concluded effective programs and practices, not grade configuration, determine quality schools (lucas and valentine, 2001). pearson chi square values denoting significant differences among building configurations were, however, revealed for eight of the 20 questions on the survey (see table 1). this lack of symmetry on 40 percent of the items would suggest someassociation between school setting and how teachers accept the tenets of the middle school philosophy. the items with significant differences may serve to isolate those tenets that have, perhaps, made less headway in gaining universal acceptance by middle level teachers in all settings. cross difference in variables among certification or licensure type and middle level teacher acceptance of the middle school philosophy: a summary of findings a greater sense of uniformity existed across certification or licensure types than building configurations. efforts by teacher education programs and districtsponsored professional development to emphasize experiential, student-centered, cognitive approaches to learning may slowly be blurring the lines between elementary, middle, and secondary certification. pearson chi square values indicating significance among certification types were uncovered for four of the 20 survey questions (see table 2). additional findings: middle level teachers as a group with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the 200 middle level teachers who participated in this survey (with a combined average of 14 years classroom experience) were in agreement as an aggregate with 15 of the 17 questions for which an affirmative response would be viewed as consistent with the beliefs of the middle school philosophy. similarly the teachers disputed two of two statements for which a negative response was consistent with the beliefs of the middle school philosophy. nonetheless, the items where teacher responses were incompatible with middle school beliefs can certainly not be disregarded or discounted. in fact, these responses are very telling, especially when placed in juxtaposition with the idea that 61 percent of the participants considered themselves to be “middle school” teachers. the teachers, for example, rejected the notion that reports to parents concerning learner progress should be multi-dimensional, relying more on narrative accounts and less on letter or numerical grades (62% disagreed or were unsure). teachers disagreed textbooks should be used seldom or never (75% disagreed), demonstrating a reluctance to subjugate the textbook even within a classroom philosophy based around learning that really matters, higher-order thinking skills, authentic contexts, and demonstrations that engage students in role performances. in addition, the teachers were collectively unsure about the use of multiage groups to improve student learning (58% unsure). the argument can be made the aforementioned tenets are more than incidental components of the middle school concept. in many ways these tenets represent much of the kernel of the middle school movement. discussion based on the overall data, the middle school movement appears to be making steady progress. the first phase of the movement was obviously the creation and development of middle schools themselves. the second phase, currently in progress, emphasizes increased knowledge and skills for principals and teachers, the strengthening of curriculum and the significant reform of education for young adolescents. the level of agreement by teachers with the tenets of the middle school philosophy monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? 7 table 1. organizational setting and teacher acceptance of middle school philosophy question from instrument x 2 / probability significant difference 3) parents should have a role in governing the school 13.8 0.002 elem (46% a, 26% u), jh (60% a, 10% u), mid (56% a, 24% u), k-8 (54% a, 36% u) jh vs. k-8 5) each learner should have the chance to explore a wide range of interests through exploratory courses, minicourses. 8.62 0.044 elem (54% a, 32% u), jh (80% a, 10% u), mid (80% a, 10% u), k-8 (72% a, 18% u) elem vs. jh, elem vs. mid 10) learning tasks should be individualized. 8.22 0.016 elem (66% a), jh (36% a), mid (56% a), k-8 (56%) elem vs. jh, mid vs. jh, jh vs. k-8, 11) i believe students should be grouped by ability. 13.1 0.041 elem (22% a, 30% u), jh (34% a, 24% u), mid (46% a, 18% u), k-8 (22% a, 42% u) elem vs. mid, mid vs. k-8 12) students should be housed in smaller areas, which enable them to identify with a smaller group. 14.5 0.025 elem (70% a, 18% u), jh (78% a, 12% u), mid (62% a, 18% u), k-8 (50% a, 38% u) jh vs. k-8 13) teachers in grades 6-8 should have special training for middle school teaching provided by the school system. 15.0 0.020 elem (54% a, 36% u), jh (68% a, 14% u), mid (80% a, 10% u), k-8 (58% a, 24% u) elem vs. mid, elem vs. jh 14) administrators and teachers should understand and be committed to the middle school concept 15.2 0.002 elem (68% a, 22% u), jh (72% a, 16% u), mid (80% a, 10% u), k-8 (50% a, 40% u) jh vs. k-8, k-8 vs. mid 20) i consider myself to be a middle school teacher. 16.4 0.000 elem (36% a), jh (72% a), mid (80% a), k-8 (60% a) elem vs. mid, elem vs. jh, elemvs. k-8 note. elem is abbreviation for elementary, mid is abbreviation for middle school, jh is abbreviation for junior high, a is abbreviation for agreement, u is abbreviation for undecided. terms in bold print indicate pairings of significant differences. *p < .05 df=6 current issues in education vol. 7 no. 2 8 table 2. certification / licensure type and teacher acceptance of middle school philosophy question from instrument x 2 / probability significant difference 1) the entire school program should offer many opportunities for physical movement. 11.7 0.020 elem (76% a, 9% u), mid (75% a, 10% u), sec (53% a, 31% u) elem vs. sec, mid vs. sec 4) each learner should be able to identify one teacher to whom he/she may turn for support and guidance. 9.68 0.046 elem (72% a, 13% u) mid (87% a, 8% u); sec (66% a, 19% u) elem vs. mid, mid vs. sec 9) team planning time should be scheduled during the day 15.6 0.004 elem (79% a, 11% u), mid (86% a, 7% u), sec (53% a, 25% u) elem vs. sec, mid vs. sec 9) team planning time should be scheduled during the day. 14.3 0.006 elem (39% a), mid (71% a), sec (56% a) elem vs. mid note. elem is abbreviation for elementary, mid is abbreviation for middle school, sec is abbreviation for secondary, a is for agreement, u is for undecided. terms in bold print indicate pairings of significant differences. *p < .05 df=4 (building configuration and certification type notwithstanding) shows recognition that the disparate needs of young adolescents were not being adequately met within the context of previous administrative units. teachers are expressing widespread agreement with those program components that align with key recommendations from the literature on middle school education. perhaps most encouraging was the lack of significant differences between the attitudes of teachers in buildings called “middle schools” and the attitudes of teachers in buildings called “junior high schools.” the junior high school, with its reputation for a sterile fixed curriculum and didactic approach to instruction, has been perceived for decades as an antithesis to the organizational flexibility, individualization, and humanistic sensitivity of the middle school. both organizational settings appear to be moving closer together in the attitudes they exhibit toward meeting the developmental and social needs of young adolescent students. interestingly the questionnaire items which produced significant differences for certain pockets of middle level teachers were those items concentrated in clusters of tenets most explicitly representative of a middle school structure (e.g. meeting needs of emerging adolescent, instruction for middle level learners, parental cooperation, staffing in middle school). despite the absence of a clear trend regarding those groupings that revealed significant differences, the data suggest that some strong and traditional schooling cultures might still exist. teachers who teach sixth grade in an elementary building, teachers who are elementary-certified, teachers who teach middle level grades in a k-8 building, and teachers who are secondary-certified appear to be the most vulnerable to a departure from the tenets of the middle school philosophy. targeting the improvement of teachers’ learning through consistent and high quality middle school-specific staff development holds promise as an effective intervention. teachers who teach sixth grade in the elementary school, for instance, must be made aware of the value of student exploration and the wisdom of special training for middle school teaching provided by the district. most importantly, these teachers need to identify themselves as middle school, not elementary, teachers. likewise, it is important for teachers who are elementary-certified to align themselves with the middle school philosophy if they are teaching middle level students. otherwise, the teachers may defer to an “elementary” predisposition and fail to adequately acknowledge the needs of “tween-agers.” k-8 teachers were irresolute about the value in housing middle level students in smaller areas. such buildings may benefit from a variation of the “school within a school” or “small school” concept to personalize teaching monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? 9 and learning. to avoid sacrificing middle level educational needs to elementary or high school program priorities, educators should provide separate bell schedules, faculty, and budget categories for the middle level program as well as staff development based on the separate needs of the middle level staff. teachers should be involved in the planning and reorganization of the middle level school curriculum and programs. ninety percent of k-8 teachers were either opposed to or undecided about the tenet that administrators and teachers should understand and be committed to the middle school concept. such a scenario is quite unsettling and should be a cause of great concern to those who are in leadership roles within the middle school movement. teachers in k-8 schools also need to understand the value of parental involvement in the governance of the school (k-8 teachers led all building configurations with more than 1/3 of respondents “undecided”); this sharing of authority with parents clearly helps to establish a coordinated home-school effort. teachers with secondary certification should come to recognize the importance of physical movement, team planning, and, like elementary-certified teachers, the ability of students to identify one teacher to whom they can go for guidance and support. junior high teachers in the sample were unconvinced about the need to individualize instruction, thus effectively disregarding the premise that students are always unique, even in classes of supposedly homogeneously grouped students. strikingly, middle school teachers led all organizational settings in their agreement with ability grouping, and, therefore, must work to create a culture of detracking in which the right and ability of students from every background to learn from the best kind of curriculum is respected. the common practice of pacing instruction to the “average” student must be reevaluated. while the affirmation that middle level schools should be about the business of developing a true identity has not been fully realized to date, there is certainly room for optimism. true, some middle level settings and professional certification types display evidence of “blended outcomes” as they reconcile traditional structures with the components of the middle school philosophy, yet the teachers as a whole appear to be moving toward greater implementation of middle school programming. such findings should inspirit middle school advocates who frequently face a significant communications challenge as they attempt to inform educators as to the reasons why middle schools exist and why the experiences they should provide for young adolescents are different from those at the elementary and secondary levels. this study serves to isolate areas of concern, while simultaneously articulating the tenets where little disagreement by teachers exists. in this way, precious professional development time can be utilized in strengthening those areas where attitudes of middle level teachers may conflict with the middle school philosophy rather than continually revisiting those components where concurrence is already in evidence. limitations of the study the attributes represented within the questions on this survey describe effective middle schools. they do not necessarily present a recipe for making any given school more effective. quite simply, they are “artifacts of effectiveness” or things produced by effective schools. thus, the questionnaire can provide only arbitrary, albeit research-based, indicators of what exemplary middle school programs might (and, perhaps, should) look like. the questionnaire cannot regard the level of consistency within, passion for, or integrity to an educational model that may or may not be present at the various and sundry schools where the responding teachers practice their crafts. the results of this study, then, represent only one aspect of a middle school profile. it is the whole of the interactions in any given school environment that ultimately determines the effectiveness of that school. as noted earlier, computation of the chi square values in this study required the collapsing of likert categories in order to meet the assumption of adequate cell sizes, although recent scholarship in this area (e.g. howell, 1998) is suggesting that previous assumptions of this nature may be overly conservative and perhaps unnecessary. nevertheless, the lumping of categories removed the original distinctions between “strongly disagree” and “disagree” and “strongly agree” and “agree.” the same is true for certification types (“elementary + middle” and “secondary + middle” were included under the larger umbrella of “middle and middle endorsed”). for purposes of analysis, merging these graduated distinctions affected the data very little (if at all), with acuteness of description more than statistical contribution being sacrificed. the selection process was limited to those middle level schools for which a roster of teachers could be attained with reasonable effort after a particular school was randomly selected. while a randomly selected school was disqualified in less than one percent of the cases, consumers of this study should be aware of the inherent sampling bias. the data, of course, are limited to those teachers who received a questionnaire and returned it. while the sample size for this study was adequate, generalizability of the results should not be overstated. being a cross-sectional study, the results sought to represent all relevant subgroups in the population, but, like heraclitus who could not step into the same river twice (lecompte & preissle, 1993), data collected in this study represent, at best, a snapshot of teachers in three states at a particular time and their attitudes toward various tenets of the middle school philosophy. as with any questionnaire, respondents can be unduly influenced by the scope of their general understanding and private interpretations of question content, any anticipatory mindset that may be present (“what am i supposed to say?”), and the amount of time devoted to thoughtfully completing the instrument. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 2 10 future research needed the endeavor initiated with this study calls for further expansion. as noted earlier, it is generally accepted that the middle school philosophy is followed more aggressively in certain regions and geographic districts and less so in others. the question begs if the tendencies exposed in this study are a territorial peculiarity or a national trend. enlargement of the study into other sections of the country, along with increased sample sizes, would serve to capture the attitudes of more and more teachers, thereby helping to determine if independent investigators, in fact, detect similar relationships. studies using likerttype survey instruments and chi square analysis, however, do not effectively answer the question of “why” middle level teachers feel the way they do about the various tenets of the middle school philosophy. a demographic of particular interest might be the subjects taught by the middle level teachers who respond to a future questionnaire. this additional information might serve to reveal whether teachers in certain content areas are more prone to agreement or disagreement with the middle school philosophy. a future qualitative study in the form of an interview study might focus on the in-depth perceptions of teachers in the various building configurations. two interviewing approaches would be germane for this research question: one-on-one and/or focus group. according to gay and airasian (2003), interviews have a unique purpose, namely, to acquire data not obtainable in any other way. there are certain things, which simply cannot be observed or quantified, including (but not limited to) past events, events, which occur outside of the researcher’s sphere of observation, and mental processes. also, according to kvale (1996), there is a move away from obtaining knowledge only through external observation and experimental manipulation of human subjects, toward an understanding by means of conversations with the humans to be understood. as glesne and peshkin (1992) assert, "you cannot, except through interviewing, get the actor's explanations. the opportunity to learn about what you cannot see and to explore alternative explanations of what you do see is the special strength of interviewing in qualitative inquiry" (p.65). a focus group interview of middle level teachers in which participants are given latitude to expand on the middle school philosophy may provide excellent insights into teacher attitudes and how these ideas are manifested in the classroom. according to mcmillan (1989), interviewing more than one person at a time sometimes proves very useful. some people need company to be emboldened to talk; and some topics are better discussed by a small group of people who know one another. summary with no significant differences among teachers on 12 of the 20 questionnaire items when compared by building configuration, and no significant differences among teachers on 16 of the 20 questionnaire items when compared by certification or licensure, data in this study suggest the middle school movement is advancing satisfactorily throughout middle level education. no clear patterns were established for those items where significant differences were revealed, although teachers who teach sixth-graders in an elementary building, teachers who are elementary-certified, teachers who teach middle level grades in a k-8 building, and teachers who are secondarycertified appear to demonstrate the greatest divergence between middle school ideology and teacher attitude. teachers and administrators can no longer say there are no models, no best practices, no techniques, no assistance, or no high performing schools to see or from which to learn. identifying sites with high implementation of middle level programming concepts for the purpose of having practitioners visit those sites should be encouraged (russell, 1994). high-quality, comprehensive staff development is paramount. this study recognizes that self-report descriptive research of this nature cannot establish cause-and-effect, or answer “why” middle level teachers feel the way they do about the various tenets of the middle school philosophy. resolution of such issues would require conducting additional studies using other research designs. final conclusion by accepting key characteristics of the middle school philosophy as a part of everyday schooling, teachers who teach middle level grades are attempting to address the needs of young adolescents, irrespective of the grade span organization in which they teach or the type of certification/license they hold. teachers are expressing widespread agreement with those program components that align with key recommendations from the literature on middle school education and are shedding those residual practices that are inconsistent with the spirit of the middle school philosophy. by recognizing the need for developmentally appropriate teaching strategies and strategies which enhance teacher efficacy, the notion that middle school is an “idea” and middle school students are “unique” may finally be on the cusp of realization. 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(2004, january 20). monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? current issues in education [on-line], 7(2). available:http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number2/ author notes dr. john a. huss is an assistant professor in the college of education at northern kentucky university. his background is in curriculum and instruction and middle grades education. dr. huss has also taught fifth and seventh grades language arts. he can be reached by email at hussj@nku.edu or at (859) 727-2809 by phone. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation huss, j. a. (2011). monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? current issues in education, 7(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/823 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number2/ hussj@nku.edu  http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word 813-4192-3-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 3 september 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x learning from myself: avatars and educational video games melissa lewis hobart saginaw valley state university this research explores which conditions for video game play are more effective in producing outcomes such as knowledge retained, involvement, behavioral intention, enjoyment, and self-efficacy. additionally, given that identification with a model increases positive learning results and given the history of avatar use showing that people tend to idealize themselves in avatar form, expectations are that an ideal-self avatar would yield the greatest learning outcomes, followed by real-self avatar (both conditions that offer extreme identification), and lastly the third-party avatar. self-efficacy was higher in the enactive condition. the ideal self condition resulted in the highest levels of involvement and enjoyment of game, learning, and avatar, indicating that the ideal-self avatar may have the stronger relationship with these variables. keywords: avatars, learning, educational video games, social cognitive theory, observational learning, enactive learning, self-efficacy the debate over how people learn best is constantly evolving. do we learn best by diving in headfirst, a trial-by-fire approach? or is it best to observe someone else first and then imitate that behavior? researchers have differing opinions, and so we are left with two very different theoretical approaches to learning. social cognitive theory (sct) places the greater emphasis on observational learning, or learning by watching a model produce a behavior before doing it oneself (bandura, 1977, 1989). other researchers purport that experiential learning, or learning by doing, results in stronger learning (kolb, 1984). much research has been done regarding learning outcomes under both theories, but application of these theories to video games (a relatively new educational development) is scarce. translating sct and experiential learning into the world of video games requires a look at how the two theories view models (or avatars, in video game terminology). according to sct, learning will be optimized if the learner closely identifies with the model, while experiential learning does not include a model. in educational gaming, an experiential approach would take a first-person perspective, casting the player in the role of the main character, while a social cognitive approach would require players to watch a character on the screen and then reproduce the behavior themselves. two questions arise when considering observational and experiential learning in the context of educational video games: is observational learning more effective than experiential learning when applied to video games? and if so, with what would we feel the most similarity: our actual self, our ideal self, or some third party character? this paper discusses an original experiment intended to provide preliminary answers to these questions. the experiment uses an electronic video game that manipulates both agency and similarity as the stimulus material. observational versus experiential learning every human being has at least some capacity for learning, but how that learning occurs can be explained in different ways. sct, developed by albert bandura (1986), explains learning and behavior as a current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 combination of behavioral, personal, and environmental interactions. observation, according to bandura, is the key to learning (lerner & steinberg, 2004). how well an individual learns depends on how carefully that person observes what some other person (the model) is doing (ferrari, 1996). visual demonstration is one of the most powerful ways to communicate behavioral and cognitive patterns (wesch, law, & hall, 2007). therefore, watching someone do something clarifies the expectations for the behavior to follow. observational learning can also be more efficient than enactive learning (adams, 1986; ferrari, 1996; lee & white, 1990; pollock & lee, 1992; weeks & anderson, 2000). learners make fewer mistakes when there is a model for observation first. as well, learners have an idea of what the outcome of their behavior will be if they have observed a model (bandura, 1986; ferrari, 1996). the effectiveness of modeling (in other words, observation) has been shown numerous times in research, especially with regard to children (bennett, farrington, & huesmann, 2005; farrington, 1998, 2001a, 2001b). observational learning is effective for learning mathematics (schunk & hanson, 1985, 1989a, 1989b; schunk, hanson, & cox, 1987), writing (graham & harris, 1994; graham, harris, & troia, 1998; schriver, 1992), speaking and listening (sonnenschein & whitehurst, 1983, 1984), and reading and writing (couzijn, 1999). similarity between the model and the individual, one of the aspects of observational learning, impacts learning outcomes (schunk, 1987). as the perceived similarity between the individual and the model increases, the influence that the model has on the subject’s behavior increases as well (bandura, 1986). in plainer terms, the more similarity there is between learner and model, the better the potential for learning. for instance, weak learners learn better when they have weak models on which to focus. better learners learn more by focusing on stronger models (braaksma, rijlaarsdam, & van den bergh, 2002). subjects that are high in similarity to the model with regard to background produce more modeled behavior (rosekrans, 1967; schunk, 1987). related to this, observational learning can also affect a number of other variables, including motivation to change, or to perform a behavior (wesch et al., 2007). it can also increase motivation, or involvement, with the activity (clark & ste-marie, 2007). additionally, observation can increase self-efficacy in observers (bandura, 1986, 1977; schunk & hanson, 1985, 1989a). watching others succeed can increase one’s own belief that he or she can succeed, which can in turn influence learning. whereas observational learning involves watching a model and then using that information to engage in a behavior, enactive learning refers to the process of attempting a behavior oneself using one’s own abilities and skills without prior observation of behavior. kolb (1984) developed the experiential learning cycle, composed of four stages. first is the concrete experience stage (where the individuals actively do something), then the reflective observation stage (the individual thinks about and reflects on what just happened), the abstract conceptualization stage, and finally, active experimentation. learning by doing is not a new idea. behaviorists like skinner (1953) explain that behavior is reinforced by consequences, known as shaping. experiential learning theory holds that learning is most effective when it is based on personal experience (spencer, 2003). this type of learning is often used effectively for subjects such as marketing (bobbitt, inks, kemp, & mayo, 2000; gremler, hoffman, keaveney, & wright, 2000; hoffman & bateson, 1997; lovelock & wright, 1999; wright, bitner, & zeithaml, 1994) and medicine (maudsley & strivens, 2000; stanton & grant, 1999). indeed, experiential learning may allow people to form adequate skills, but not optimal skills (bandura, 1986). but what happens when we can do both at once? video games allow players to have both observational learning (through observing the character they are controlling) as well as experiential learning. would the sheer presence of a model (the presence of an avatar) be enough to make a difference regarding learning? it is impossible to have a truly observational condition in a video game, as games need players, rules, and goals as indicated by smed and hakonen (2003). if player input is eliminated, it is no longer a game. however, just the appearance of a model might make a difference. lee et al. (2007) discuss the effect of a co-learner in an electronic environment, citing that many children's television programs such as sesame street and blue's clues present on-screen characters not only as instructors but as co-learners, learning the information along with the children while at the same time passing on the information, and serving as a model for the target behavior. in the case of video game avatars, the avatar becomes a co-learner of sorts. so taking the sct stance, it would be expected that the presence of a model (the colearner, or avatar) would lead to more learning. thus: h1: learning with a model present will lead to (a) more knowledge retained, (b) more enjoyment, and (c) more involvement with the topic than experiential learning (without the model). the role of self-efficacy in learning self-efficacy is defined specifically by bandura (1997) as the belief in one’s capability to engage in a particular course of action to achieve important attainments. bandura (1977) describes four sources of efficacy expectations: verbal persuasion, emotional arousal, vicarious experience, and performance accomplishments. the two more effective sources of self-efficacy are vicarious experience and progressive learning from myself: avatars and educational video games 3 mastery. vicarious experience explains how we learn by watching others (linked with observational learning). performance accomplishment, or progressive mastery of a task, is the best source of efficacy information, as it is individually tailored and tends to reduce future negative effects (linked with experiential learning). the opportunity to rehearse behavior is a strong predictor of self-efficacy (thomas, cahill, & santilli, 1997) resulting in learning gains (bandura, 1990). video games offer these hands-on chances for behavior rehearsal. additionally, self-efficacy can predict future behavior better than past performance (bandura, 1986; bennet, lyons, winters-stone, nail, & scherer, 2007; ludman et al., 2000; mackenzie & peragine, 2003). selfefficacy increases the likelihood that people will actually enact these behaviors (basen-engquist, 1994; fruin, pratt, & owen, 1992; rippetoe & rogers, 1987; rimal & real, 2003; turner, rimal, morrison, & kim, 2006). if experiential learning is the better source of self-efficacy in previous research, the same should be true for video games. h2: experiential learning will lead to higher levels of self-efficacy than learning with a model. consequently, if self-efficacy increases the likelihood of engaging in a behavior, it would also be logical to assume that an increase in self-efficacy due to learning type would extend to intention to engage in behavior. h3: experiential learning will result in greater intentions to perform safe online behavior than learning with a model. the case of avatars one of the major reasons why researchers posit that electronic games work can be explained using the entertainment education paradigm (eep), which links the enjoyment of being entertained with the learning and processing of education, and is defined as “the intentional placement of educational content in entertainment messages” (singhal & rogers, 2002). turning learning into a game can encourage less interested individuals to take an active part in learning, as well as give the already motivated a new and exciting way to study the material (amory, naicker, vincent, & adams, 1999; bosworth, 1994; egenfeldt-nielsen, 2007; egloff, 2004; kafai, 1994; lieberman, 2001; ritterfeld & weber, 2006; singhal, cody, rogers, & sabido, 2004; subrahmanyam & greenfield, 1994; thomas et al., 1997; walshe, lewis, kim, o’sullivan, & wiederhold, 2003; yoon & godwin, 2007). the skills learned in computer games may transfer to other areas, lending themselves to increases in overall technological literacy (gee, 2003; lieberman, 2006; prensky, 2005). one of the big attractions of video games is the ability to use avatars. avatars are “digital models driven by real-time humans” that may either look like or behave like the humans controlling them (bailenson, yee, merget, & schroeder, 2006, p. 359). avatars have been studied with regard to persuasive communication in the advertising realm (wood, solomon, & englis, 2005). consumers preferred idealized images of avatars to realistic ones, and if an individual disliked the avatar, that dislike extended to the product. we can relate this to the video game arena and hypothesize that if an individual likes the avatar, then that extends to the game content. the avatar may not even have to physically resemble the individual for adequate levels for identification to be reached (bailenson, blascovich, & guadagno, 2008). in other words, people might identify with an avatar that does not physically resemble them, just because they believe that avatar to be an extension of themselves. sct explains that people imitate characters they find attractive; they learn and reproduce the behavior of those to whom they are drawn. but what happens when the model is an electronic representation of one’s self in a game? sct has much to say about modeling, but the case of an avatar is a new horizon in sct research. avatars give individuals the opportunity to see themselves externally. research is scarce, but one study by fox and bailenson reported that, when participants viewed a virtual self running on a treadmill, a virtual other running, or a virtual self loitering, those who viewed virtual selves running exercised significantly more 24 hours later than those who viewed themselves loitering, and those that viewed some other individual running (2009). the use of self as a model in an electronic environment appears to motivate the individual more than the use of another as a model. the idea of reproducing the behavior shown in a video game is also part of the explanation for those that believe that violent video games cause increased aggression (sherry, 2001). players identify with the model and then “learn” that behavior; they transfer the aggression to real life. the potential exists for self-efficacy and involvement (and subsequently learning) to increase when an individual sees himself being successful. prior research has determined that a match between a celebrity and a consumer’s ideal self leads to a more positive response to persuasive messages (choi & rifon, in press). however, even when people are not aware of it, seeing themselves to a degree in another’s image increases positive response (bailenson, iyengar, yee, & collins, 2008). but which is the more effective self—ideal or real? part of the attraction of playing a game with a customizable avatar is that users can create idealized versions of themselves and act through those idealized versions in the video game. bessiere, seay, and kiesler (2007) found that people prefer to make idealized avatars. if the use of an idealized avatar increases enjoyment (as opposed to the use of a real-self avatar), then it might also increase attention paid to the game, including the information contained within the game (singhal & current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 rogers, 2002). perceived similarity increases message effectiveness (andsager, bemker, choi, & torwel, 2006), but there has been no research to date on whether or not the perceived similarity must be between the actual self and some external other. perhaps similarity between the ideal self and some external other is what makes the difference. as indicated earlier regarding sct, as the perceived similarity between the individual and the model increases, the greater the influence of the model on the subject (bandura, 1986). again, the more similarity there is between model and learner, the more learning there will be. thus, identification with a subject should lead to greater learning (bandura, 2001; weber, ritterfeld, & kostygina, 2006). research suggests that the most effective models should be similar but slightly better than the learner in intelligence, socioeconomic success, and competence (bandura, 1969), similar to the learner in social status (miller & dollard, 1941), and in possession of the power to reward (bandura, ross, & ross, 1963). this seems to point to the creation of an idealized version of oneself: similar in status but with more power and intelligence. it is possible that, for educational games regarding a topic about which the player is not very involved, if the player has a connection to the source (i.e. the game character), then the message (the educational portion of the game) may get through regardless of interest. given the propensity of individuals to choose avatars reflecting idealized versions of themselves and sct’s propositions that similarity increases attention and modeling behavior, it is likely that the ideal-self avatar, defined here as the self that one wants to be but currently is not, will have the greatest impact on the outcome variables, followed by the real-self avatar. and finally, a third-party avatar that is not the individual will have the smallest impact, as identification with that avatar will be lower. h4: the ideal-self avatar will be the most effective in terms of knowledge retained, involvement, enjoyment, and self-efficacy, followed by the realself avatar and the third-party avatar. method sample a sample of 314 subjects was obtained through two waves of random sampling of students attending a large midwestern university. of the total 314, 180 were female (57.3%), 124 were male (39.5%), and 10 did not indicate a response (3.2%). ages ranged between 18 years and 48 years, with the greatest percentage being 21 years old (23.6%) and a median age of 22 years. the stimulus instrument the current experiment uses an educational video game created specifically for this project that is based on the curriculum developed through the i-safety project. the i-safety project, in progress since 2005, has been funded by the national science foundation as well as microsoft (wirth, rifon, larose, & lewis, 2007). the purpose of the project, in part, was to develop a curriculum that will teach individuals of any age how to be safe online. the curriculum has been tested numerous times, using various subject populations, from teenagers through adults, and has been verified through experiments and data analysis to contain valuable, valid information that does indeed teach people how to protect themselves against online threats such as phishing attacks, spyware, identity theft, and more. research indicates a steady trend that adolescents lack knowledge about online safety. a comparative study of adolescent females in the united states and new zealand found that a significant percentage of girls were engaging in risky behavior online, including sharing personal information; results indicated a lack of education about safety online (berson & berson, 2005). the uk children go online project determined that only two in five adolescents said they could fix a problem with their computer; less than one in five reported that they can set up a filter on their computer or remove a virus (livingstone, bober, & helsper, 2005). four-fifths of those ages 10-17 are concerned about their privacy online, but most are also willing to yield sensitive information if sufficiently incented (turow & nir, 2000). in a sample of high school students over 60% failed to regularly look for privacy policies, 58% did not clear their browser history, 37.7% failed to check if online forms are secure and 50% did not set their browsers to reject cookies (quilliam, rifon, larose, & carlson, 2006). to carry out this research, it was necessary to use a computer game that would teach and educate users on testable subject matter that they were not likely to know and would allow for some kind of identification with the avatar. unfortunately, this type of game does not exist. games that allow customization of avatars are typically not educational video games, and educational video games are usually targeted toward younger children (grade-school age) or do not contain the necessary components of avatar inclusion. it was necessary, then, to create a game from scratch. because of the timeliness of the i-safety project and the prior testing of the effectiveness of the information contained in the curriculum, the game was based on this information. the game engine uses a simple combination of adobe flash interactions as well as actionscript 2, a programming language specifically for adobe flash cs4 professional, the program in which the entire video game was created (adobe, 2008). all portions of the game were designed and implemented by the author, allowing for complete control over the game and the information contained within, as well as the ability to track game players’ actions. the game, safetynet, begins by informing players that they have just been given a new job: a security guard for their family’s computer. learning from myself: avatars and educational video games 5 figure 1. accepting a non-invasive cookie in the video game with an avatar. figure 2. changing the pop-up blocker status in the video game without an avatar. however, before they officially earn their job title of online security expert and become qualified to protect the family computer from outside attacks, they must complete several levels of the game to earn their badge. the game environment is a 2d representation of the computer desktop. entering and exiting various portions of the computer, using a browser, accessing the internet, and other navigational activities are done by pointing and clicking the mouse in much the same way that a user would interact with his or her computer. each level of the game corresponds to a different “threat zone”. players begin with the more simple tasks and move on to more difficult tasks. external threats to safety in the form of spyware, phishing attacks, cookies, etc., are represented with avatars as well (the cookies actually appear as chocolate-chip cookies, for instance). in order to battle these threats, players must have knowledge of how to be safe online. when a decision is made and action taken in the game, a dialogue box or the game character will appear on the screen to explain either (a) why what the player did was the safe thing to do, or (b) why what the player did was the unsafe thing to do and, more importantly, what the appropriate course of action would be. thus, players might experience a set-back, but they are not left without the proper safety information. once players have successfully completed all three levels, they are awarded their security expert badge and have won the game. two current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 representative screenshots are shown in figure 1 and figure 2. the avatar manipulation while most games give players the opportunity to physically manipulate their avatar to make it look like what the player wants, the physical appearance of the avatar in this research remained constant. while this might seem counterintuitive, the major reason for not allowing physical customization of the avatar was to avoid confounding any results with the various customization options. for example, hairstyle might have been the defining physical characteristic that allowed one player to identify with an avatar, but eye color might have been the defining physical characteristic for another game player. however, there would be no way of knowing which piece was the key. in order to eliminate these confounds, all players playing with the avatar were given the same avatar. indeed, research even suggests that just believing the avatar is a representation of self can allow identification to take place between avatar and individual, even if the avatar doesn’t physically resemble the individual (bailenson et al., 2008). however, rather than allowing physical customization, players were shown a block of text prior to entering the game where they were asked to imagine that the avatar they were presented with (a two-dimensional figure with human body and limbs and the head of a dog) was one of three things: their ideal self, their real self, or a friend of theirs. (six different avatar heads were pretested to determine which was most effective.) an animal head was used to eliminate cultural biases as well as the potential for closer matching in appearance to some players and not to others that use of a human avatar would have meant. for instance, if six types of hairstyles were given as options, they may have matched certain players’ real or ideal hairstyle more closely than other players’, creating less of a match between what players wanted and what was available. only giving players one option for an avatar attempted to eliminate matching the avatar to some participants more closely than others. as well, textual priming has been used in numerous studies to great effect. typically, these priming activities involve giving participants tasks to groom them to respond in certain ways. as an example, one strain of research demonstrates that people can be primed to think of themselves as individuals (independent selves) or as group members (interdependent selves) (gardner, gabriel, & lee, 1999; kühnen & oyserman, 2002). thus, it is possible to prime people to think of themselves in different ways. however, priming research is usually concerned with doing this in a way that masks the true intent; participants don’t know how they’re being primed to think, but the text is enough to get them to think it. research by hess, henson, and statham (2004) deals with priming regarding aging and stereotypes, but also discusses explicit priming—priming where the individual is aware of the prime. guiding participants with words or tasks can cause them to respond in different ways according to aspects of their personality. in sum, the literature suggests first, that individuals may identify with an avatar that is physically different from them, and second, that it is possible to prime individuals to think of themselves in certain ways. therefore, this experiment utilized explicit priming, asking participants before they began the game to think of their real selves (who they are right now), their ideal selves (the kind of person they wish they could be), or a third party (a friend of theirs). then they were asked to attribute those characteristics to the avatar with which they would be presented and play the game. procedure subjects were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions. after entering their log-in name to the online application, participants were randomly sent to a webpage for one of the four conditions (ideal self, real self, friend, or the no-avatar enactive condition) that contained instructions regarding how the individual was to play the game. those in the enactive condition were not asked to imagine that they were playing as anyone but rather were presented with an avatar-free game. those in the observational condition were playing as a character and were instructed to either imagine that this character was their ideal self, their real self, or a friend of theirs. after completing the game, players were then asked to fill out an online questionnaire during which the dependent measures as well as the measures for similarity ratings were taken. measures variables to be measured were behavioral intentions, self-efficacy, knowledge retained, involvement, enjoyment of the game, enjoyment of learning, enjoyment of the avatar, general demographic variables, and measures of the character and the players’ real and ideal selves as well as the players’ friends in the third-party condition in order to obtain the similarity measure. similarity (whether to ideal, actual, or other) was measured using a distance analysis. the method for measuring this congruence is based on choi and rifon’s measure for estimating ideal congruence (in press) which was in turn based on other research using the absolute distance formula (ericksen, 1996; graeff, 1996; sirgy, 1985). the distance formula is as follows: n ∑ ⎢ aij iij ⎢ i = 1 aij = avatar image (i) of individual (j) iij = ideal self-image (i) of individual (j) knowledge retained was measured using ten objective questions based on the information contained in the game. two incorrect answers and one correct answer learning from myself: avatars and educational video games 7 were provided for options. self-efficacy was measured using items created based on bandura’s (2006) guide for constructing self-efficacy scales. subjects were asked to rate how much they agreed, on a 7-point likert-type scale (1 being “strongly disagree” and 7 being “strongly agree”) with statements such as “i am confident that i can recognize a phishing attack”. enjoyment was measured by asking participants to rate how much they enjoyed playing the game, learning the information, and playing with the avatar on a seven-point likert-type scale (1 being “not at all” and 7 being “a great deal”). involvement was operationalized and measured using a five-item semantic differential scale based on a scale developed by ohanian (1989). time on task was a simple measure of how long it took players to complete the game, measured using information recorded by the online survey application created for the i-safety project. intention to enact behaviors was based on questions previously created for a separate research project regarding the i-safety project asking participants to rate, on a 7-point scale from very unlikely to very likely, how likely it was that they would enact the behaviors learned in the game (larose & rifon, 2007). the character rating scale resulted in a cronbach’s alpha of .87 with a mean of 14.77 and a standard deviation of 11.44. the ideal-self scale had an alpha of .80, mean of 24.59, standard deviation of 8.59. the real-self scale had an alpha of .86, mean of 12.45 and standard deviation of 11.25. the friend scale yielded an alpha of .84 with a mean of 16.04 and a standard deviation of 10.82. self-efficacy yielded an alpha of .95 with a mean of 42.60 and a standard deviation of 8.01, behavioral intentions resulted in an alpha of .88 with a mean of 41.90 and standard deviation of 12.43, and the alpha for involvement was .85 with a mean of 10.11 and standard deviation of 4.62. alpha values greater than .8 typically indicate a high level of reliability. the ten knowledge questions resulted in a mean of 7.92, sd = 1.38, and a kuder-richardson formula 20 value of .50. a kr-20 value of greater than .9 indicates high homogeneity. results the textual manipulation (the prime) was successful in 184 cases (41 cases of the 80 in the ideal group, 41 of 77 in the real group, and 28 of 77 in the friend group, as well as the 74 cases in the enactive group which did not contain an avatar). success was determined by examining distance measures between standardized scores (calculated by subtracting the overall mean score from each individual’s score and dividing by the standard deviation) for ideal self and character, real self and character, and friend and character. if the standardized distance was smallest in the pair that was the assigned condition, the manipulation was deemed successful. a correlation of successful versus unsuccessful manipulations with the various dependent variables yielded no significant results, indicating that success of manipulation was not the cause for results found. a multivariate analysis of variance was conducted using the general linear model menu in spss with dependent variables of enjoyment of learning, enjoyment of game, behavioral intentions, total number of correct answers, and self-efficacy; involvement as a covariate (as involvement is likely to remain constant); and condition as the independent variable. although type of condition did not result in any significant findings (though involvement had a significant effect on all dependent variables except self-efficacy), a planned contrast between observational learning and enactive learning was still examined, as planned comparisons can offer more power than traditional manova followed by post hoc tests (kwon, 1996). results are reported in table 1. although it was hypothesized that knowledge, enjoyment, and involvement would be higher in the model-present condition, none of these reached significance. therefore, hypothesis 1 was not supported. hypothesis 2 indicated that self-efficacy would be higher for individuals in the enactive condition than for those in the model-present condition. the self-efficacy scale was not normally distributed and a transformation of log10 was made to the data. self-efficacy was found to be higher in the experiential condition than in the modelpresent condition. effect size for self-efficacy using cohen’s d was .24. hypothesis 2 was therefore supported. hypothesis 3 posited that individuals in the experiential learning condition would report greater intentions of performing safe online behaviors that they had learned in the video game than would those in the model-present condition. the multivariate analysis of variance did not result in a significant difference between groups on the behaviors. hypothesis 4 stated that the ideal-self avatar would be the most effective in terms of knowledge retained, involvement, enjoyment, and self-efficacy, followed by the real-self avatar and the third-party avatar. again, planned comparisons were used to detect specific group differences between ideal, real, and friend conditions. the planned contrasts did not show significant differences (though the means on enjoyment of learning, involvement, and behavioral intentions were all highest in the ideal condition). however, when the standardized distance measures between avatar and other (ideal self, real self, and friend) were used as continuous variables and correlated with the dependent variables in a post hoc analysis, significant correlations were found. correlations and steiger’s z values, based on the test designed by meng, rosenthal, and rubin (1992) for testing the significance of correlations between correlated variables, are reported below in table 2 between the conditions. examining all of these results, hypothesis 4 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 table 1 significance values for planned comparisons between enactive and avatar conditions dependent variable value of contrast t df significance (one-way) knowledge gained 1.49 2.72 302 1.00 self-efficacy .10 1.64 298 .05 involvement .51 1.35 298 .91 future behavior .59 1.06 300 .15 enjoyment of game .62 1.13 300 .86 enjoyment of learning .72 1.38 300 .92 table 2 correlations between distances and dependent variables ideal-avatar real-avatar friend-avatar ***steiger’s z value (idealreal) enjoyment of game **-.41 (p < .01) **-.33 (p < .01) **-.33 (p < .01) 1.39 enjoyment of learning **-.31 (p < .01) **-.24 (p < .01) **-.24 (p < .01) 1.11 enjoyment of avatar **-.34 (p < .01) *-.15 (p = .02) *-.15 (p = .02) 3.08 involvement **-.28 (p < .01) **-.20 (p < .01) **-.20 (p < .01) 1.28 knowledge retained .12 (p = .06) .10 (p = .14) .10 (p = .14) both correlations not significant self-efficacy (transformed) .13 (p = .64) *.03 (p = .64) *.03 (p = .06) one correlation not significant behavioral intentions **-.17 (p = .01) *-.16 (p = .02) *-.16 (p = .02) .29 *p is significant at the .05 level ** p is significant at the .01 level ***one-tailed z-critical is 1.28 for p < .10 and 1.65 for p < .05 learning from myself: avatars and educational video games 9 is therefore partially supported. discussion while several of the hypotheses were not supported (though the results are promising and merit further investigation), the results that were significant, in particular the results of hypothesis 4, could have important implications pertaining to education. specifically they give educators and game designers a preliminary picture of what could be important in designing video games intended to teach. hypothesis 1 showed that the simple presence of a model, or avatar, was not significant enough to create differences in knowledge gained, enjoyment, and involvement. thus, these outcomes were similar regardless of category. the same was true of behavioral intentions, and self-efficacy was higher in the no-avatar condition, so it may be tempting to say that the presence or absence of an avatar doesn’t matter, or even that we might be better off without an avatar. however, when hypothesis 4 was examined, the correlation analysis showed that enjoyment of the game, enjoyment of learning the material, enjoyment of the avatar, and involvement were all higher when players were playing as their ideal selves. there was not the expected differentiation between the real-self and the third-party conditions (the correlations between the realself scores and the friend scores with the dependent variables yielded the same values). but the ideal-self condition consistently indicated more enjoyment and greater involvement with the material, indicating that the ideal-self avatar may have the stronger relationship with these variables. even if game players using their idealself avatar do not experience more learning or higher levels of self-efficacy, the fact that they enjoy the experience more and are more involved suggests that they will return to the material (ritterfeld, weber, fernandes, & vorderer, 2004; vorderer & ritterfeld, 2003). the point is not that learning and self-efficacy are not of primary importance; indeed, they are. but if we can design a learning experience where there is more enjoyment of the learning process and more involvement with the material, then we may ultimately produce learners who are eager to return and learn more. making learning into a game makes the learning intrinsically motivating (lepper & cordova, 1992). according to deci and ryan (1985), intrinsic motivation means doing something for its own sake. conversely, extrinsic motivation means doing something to get some separate goal met. numerous studies have cited the positive effects of intrinsic motivation (ferrer-caja & weiss, 2000). if we can increase enjoyment and involvement with a video game through the simple act of asking learners to imagine the avatar as their ideal selves, then we have created intrinsic motivation by turning learning into something fun, enjoyable, and rewarding. lepper and cordova (1992) conducted several studies and found that intrinsic motivation “can include increased learning and retention of the material, greater generalization of that learning, heightened subsequent interest in the subject matter, enhanced confidence in the learner, and improvements in the actual process of learning” (p. 203). it may not be the ultimate goal to turn every learning experience into a game, nor should it, but knowing what could influence unmotivated learners may help educators reach that population with more success. in sum, this research has begun to paint a picture of what can be done to have a better educational experience with video games designed to teach. educators struggle to reach students who do not want to learn. if the avatar conditions result in a similar amount of learning across them, but greater enjoyment and involvement with the material in the ideal-self condition, this may be one way to entice unengaged students to learn. one way educators might approach this when using electronic games as teaching tools is to help students identify with the game character, regardless of personalization options. if the educator simply instructs learners to imagine that the game character is an ideal representation of themselves, as this research indicates, the suggestion is enough to create the connection between character and ideal self. enjoyment increases, encouraging reluctant learners to engage as well as encouraging them to continue with learning and return to the game. as well, involvement with the material increases, too, strengthening the connection between the learner and the material. in simpler terms, students will care more about the material and feel it is more important to them when they make this connection with the game character. from a technical perspective, game designers of educational video games may use this information to strengthen the connection between player and character. one method might be to ask game players to describe their ideal selves using their own words (including a name) and then plugging those specific words into dialogue throughout the game. being able to plug in the player’s name and attributes may make the connection stronger as players progress. a second, more complicated option is to allow players to personalize the physical appearance of the character. even an interface as simple as nintendo’s wii, which allows players to create versions of themselves, known as miis, to be used in various games, has options for gender, skin tone, height, weight, hair color and style, eye color and shape, nose shape, mouth color and shape, clothing color, and name. asking players to create a physically ideal version of themselves may strengthen the connection, because most research regarding similarity and identification has been done using physical similarity to make the connection (bandura, 1989, 2001; wood et al., 2005). the final technical option to be offered here is a combination of the two above suggestions coupled with current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 an advanced form of computer programming that can take the descriptive words and physical choices and create a very specific character that behaves according to the descriptive adjectives and looks like the physical creation. the stronger the connection between the player and the character in the form of the player’s ideal self, the more the learner will enjoy and, even more importantly, feel involved with the material. this research cannot indicate which of these possibilities is the strongest option for maximizing the connection between the character and the player, but it does give designers a starting point to optimize the learning experience in terms of enjoyment and engagement. limitations and future directions it is difficult for gamers to form an instant bond with a video game character; the connection between player and character strengthens as the player spends more time with the character (lewis, weber, & bowman, 2008). because participants only had one opportunity to play the relatively short video game, exploring results when individuals are allowed repeat exposure to the avatar in the game is needed. another study might employ two lengths of exposure, but still with the three types of avatar. individuals in the first set of conditions (ideal-self avatar, real-self avatar, other avatar) could be instructed to play the game only once while the second triad of conditions could be instructed to play for a certain length of time, to play through a certain number of times, or even to offer them a chance to play other games in between time with the educational game. this would allow comparisons between the connection with type of self (or third party) and avatar gained in a short time versus a longer time. as well, extended time would allow for a stronger connection to develop between the player and a neutral third party character. related to the above, use of a friend condition rather than a totally neutral third party may have negatively affected results. most individuals choose friends based on attraction to that which is similar to themselves (byrne, 1971), so any differences between one’s real self and the chosen friend would likely be minimal (as the data show) compared to potential differences if a third party unknown to the player prior to game play was used. however, the use of a friend was chosen to attempt to balance the limitation created by only having players play the game once, creating a situation that would be relatively equivalent across the three avatar conditions. because it takes time to form a connection with a game character, using a friend that the game player already has a connection with allowed players to more adequately have an impression of the character. rather than risking random answers for the similarity distance measure due to the player not having a strong connection to the character, participants were asked to think about a friend and rate the friend with the assumption that they would have a better grasp of the friend's personality. finally, research on modeling in sct suggests that for models to be the most effective, they should first be similar to the individual, but they should also be slightly improved versions of the individual. however, when models are too far above what is attainable by the individual, outcomes may suffer. although results of the correlation were consistent with hypothesized relationships for enjoyment and involvement, the relationships for knowledge and self-efficacy were not. this may have been caused by a lack of true similarity between avatar and player. similarity in social cognitive theory is usually physical similarity (bandura, 1989, 2001; wood et al., 2005). in line with similarity research, physical similarity may have yielded different results. future research should better explore the use of technology that allows for better quality avatars that are personalized for each respondent, potentially utilizing an exacting image of the individual to be placed within the game, such as using virtual reality. subjects in the idealself condition could then alter their images to look like what they would like to look like. but perhaps players do not need to be physically convinced about the similarity of their avatars to themselves. perhaps players need to be psychologically linked to their avatar in order to experience the greatest positive learning outcomes, and linked using their ideal selves. if self-efficacy was higher in the enactive (no avatar) condition, but enjoyment of the game, enjoyment of learning, enjoyment of the avatar, and involvement were correlated most strongly with distance 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(2012). learning from myself: avatars and educational video games. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/813 author notes melissa lewis hobart, ph.d. 325 brown hall, saginaw valley state university 7400 bay road, university center, michigan, 48710, mllewis@svsu.edu melissa lewis hobart is an assistant professor of communication at saginaw valley state university. she earned her ph.d. in media studies from michigan state university. an earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 2009 consumer culture and the ethical treatment of children conference in east lansing, michigan. manuscript received: 9/14/2011 revisions received: 1/22/2012 accepted: 8/6/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 16 volume 15, number 1 september 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1135_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 3 september 18, 2013 issn 1099-839x implementing an additive, college access and readiness program for latina/o high school students in the u.s. carla amaro-jiménez and holly hungerford-kresser university of texas at arlington in this article we draw on the experiences of a diverse group of 34 first-generation college students, collected over a year, who served as peer mentors to minority and latina/o high school students enrolled in four title i (low-income) high schools in the southwest u.s. the article identifies the successes and challenges of implementing an additive, college access and readiness program that aimed to not only reduce their dropout rates but to increase the number of traditionally underserved minority and latina/o high school students seeking a post-secondary education. implications as well as suggestions for further research are provided. keywords: college access and readiness; latina/o students; mentoring; successes and challenges; go centers increasing the number of culturally and linguistically diverse students in post-secondary education is imperative (garcia, 2001). in the u.s., for example, latina/os not only leave the system at higher rates than their mainstream/white counterparts (oseguera, locks, & vega, 2009), but statistically they remain the most underachieving group in the nation (kewal ramani, gilbertson, fox, & provasnik, 2007; u.s. department of labor, 2003). in fact, it is believed that 41% of this population do not have a high school diploma (fry, 2010), and only 10% of latina/os aged 24-64 will graduate from four-year institutions (oseguera et al., 2009). in addition, it is predicted that latina/os in the 18-24 year old range will be under-represented by 500,000 students in u.s. universities by the middle of the 21st century (macdonald, 2004). while researchers have described the impact of college access and readiness programs for college-bound students (see e.g., worthy, hungerford-kresser, & hampton, 2009), little is known about programs catered to students who are not perceived by others as collegebound. in other words, these are students who (1) may have not taken college-level or advanced placement classes, (2) may have not considered a post-secondary education as a viable alternative for a variety of reasons (e.g., finances, family circumstances or needs), and/or (3) may have misconceptions of what seeking a postsecondary education entails, among others. these students often lack the necessary access to information related to college as well as the guidance they need to pursue a postsecondary education. in this article we describe the initial results of an ongoing qualitative investigation that identifies the successes and challenges of implementing an additive college access and readiness program—one which is aimed at preparing and increasing the number of culturally and linguistically minority high school non college-bound students seeking a post-secondary education (pse), with a special emphasis on latina/o high school students. the program exists at our university as part of the state of texas’ closing the gaps initiative (2010), whose purpose is to increase the number of students seeking a pse through providing mentoring and assistance to high school students and their families in university-manned offices called go centers. more specifically, in this study we draw on the experiences of a culturally and linguistically diverse group of 34 predominantly first-generation college students, collected current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 2 over a year, who served as mentors to over 3,600 predominantly latina/o high school students (2,424 out of 3,600 students) at go centers in four title i (lowincome) high schools in the southwest. as it will be shown later on, an analysis of this program demonstrates the potential effectiveness of additive frameworks in college readiness initiatives for latina/o high school students, especially when first-generation and minority students themselves act as their mentors. the two research questions that guided this study were: (1) what are first-generation college students’ perceptions of the successes of implementing a college access and readiness program for minority high school students? (2) what are first-generation college students’ perceptions of the challenges faced in implementing a college access and readiness program for minority high school students? conceptual framework one avenue for increasing the numbers of college-ready secondary students is to facilitate college readiness initiatives within schools. these initiatives intend to provide a variety of scaffolds that these future post-secondary students will need to succeed. these programs vary on structure and funding but often begin with students as early as elementary school and continue through high school graduation. beginning early is considered to be part of the quest towards creating a “cradle to college” pathway for all learners (u.s. department of education, 2010); such a pathway aims to prepare students for college as early on as possible, by putting key individuals, like parents, at the center of the conversation. it is believed that by partnering with others and starting early students will be exposed to a collegegoing culture beyond that of the school, which will lead to students who are college-ready. definitions of college readiness and/or what being college-ready entails abound. one highly used definition is that of conley (2010) who suggests that college-ready students are those who have the appropriate preparation needed to successfully complete coursework without any necessary institutional scaffolds (e.g., remediation). to this end, conley (2010) describes four dimensions or areas that these students ought to master to successfully navigate in a post-secondary environment. these four key college readiness dimensions include being able to explicitly use strategies for doing collegelevel work, mastering the academic content needed in their coursework, exhibiting appropriate academic behaviors, and understanding the college’s culture. however, most college readiness definitions, including conley’s, often fail to ignore the very unique experiences of first-generation college students – that is, the experiences of those students who are the first in their families to go to college, just like the mentors in this study. moreover, as we and others have argued (hungerford-kresser & amaro-jiménez, 2012; pascarella et al., 2004), minority and first-generation college students have culturally specific struggles (oseguera et al., 2009; solorzano, villalapando, & oseguera, 2005) that may support or hinder their success in college such as being expected to tend for their siblings and having to live at home, among others. as such, a variety of college access and readiness programs and initiatives are available nationwide. two programs often touted are avid and gear up. advancement via individual determination, also known as avid, aims to equip students with the skills they need to succeed in college and beyond (e.g., mehan, villanueva, hubbard, & lintz, 1996); some of these include time management, test-taking and study skills. avid and initiatives like it are remarkably successful at assisting first-generation college students in their admission to four year universities, in particular. according to avid (n.d.), three out of four avid graduates were accepted to four year colleges and universities in 2011-2012. in addition, program evaluation data they have collected have shown that avid seniors complete four year college entrance requirements at a rate at least two times higher than their peers nationally. the comparative statistics gathered by avid clearly show an improvement in access for avid students, who are largely minority and first-generation college students. however, more often than not, students who participate in initiatives like avid are considered “college-bound” before they become a part of the program, or at least are considered college “able”— meaning teachers, counselors or other school staff find them to be college material but in need of some assistance and more rigorous coursework. some of these collegebound students are those who have not only already made the decision to go to a community college or a four year university, but they have been preparing to go to college from early on (conley, 2010, 2005). in other instances, they might choose to prepare for college later in their secondary careers, but they make that choice (considered “individual determination” in the avid acronym) and then become a part of the program. on the other hand, gear up, which stands for “gaining early awareness and readiness for undergraduate programs” (standing, judkins, keller, & westat, 2008; texas center for educational research, 2012), aims to reach wider groups of students and prepare them to be college-bound. services with gear up grants start no later than seventh grade and continue through graduation. this cohort model serves and entire grade of students, without selecting a particular group of students like avid. all students enrolled in the grade level cohort at a particular school receive services, and early research shows a positive impact on students successfully enrolling in pse. the large scale studies are being released, and they are quick to cite data as preliminary, but positive implementing an additive, college access and readiness program for latina/o high school students in the u.s. 3 correlations are pointed out. it is important to remember that gear up schools serve predominately low-income students, those who typically are far behind their peers in post-secondary applications and access (see e.g., texas center for educational research, 2012). with programs like gear up, students are exposed to college and career readiness from an early age, and an attempt is made to change the culture of a school through the saturation of the program in a particular grade level cohort. the program discussed in this manuscript, the go centers, is different from gear up, simply because all students within a school containing a go center can participate. any student who wants to receive services can, and the student can receive as much or as little help as he/she chooses. avid works to make sure their data is backed up from outside research agencies, and they are also quick to cite statistics that are collected from other research studies. outside of the large reports, commissioned as part of the awarding of gear up funds, there is little research on the gear up program. therefore, we would be remiss if we did not point out the fact that research on gear up and avid is gathered, collected and disseminated largely by the organizations themselves. there has been some outside research (more so on avid because the gear up project was longitudinal and is still so preliminary), but the work we mention comes predominately from these organizations. a central tenant in the college access program we facilitate, much like avid and gear up, is its additive framework. valenzuela (1999, p. 269) gave substance to the concept of “additive schooling.” she explained: most fundamentally, additive schooling is about equalizing opportunity… albeit through a bicultural process. in this world, students do not have to choose between being mexican or american; they can be both. this pluralistic model of school builds on students’ bicultural experience—which all minority youth bring with them to school—to make them conversant, respectful, and fluent in as many dialects and languages as they can master. the perfect starting point is with those they already possess (or on the verge of already possessing). while valenzuela is talking exclusively about mexican students in the above quotation, her definition of additive schooling is vital to providing quality education for minority students in general, many of them firstgeneration college students. in addition to the need to be bicultural in a literal sense—american and a home culture included—there is an additional challenge with acquiring academic literacies necessary for navigating a variety of post-secondary opportunities. as hungerford-kresser and amaro-jiménez (2012) have demonstrated, even when many of these students may have had the college readiness skills deemed as needed to succeed in higher education, their transition from high school to a pse can confounded by culture-specific issues such as having to take care of siblings, living at home with parents, etc. furthermore, for many of these students, additive schooling is not realized given that many of them are expected to assimilate to the norm, thus leaving their prior experiences, their culture and their languages behind. as such, no matter how seemingly strong the initiative, whether it is catered to college-bound or non college-bound students, ignoring the deficit-oriented perspectives that surround these students and their families (valencia, 1997; valenzuela, 1999) limits their opportunities to pursue a pse. examples of deficit perspectives about these students include, for instance, assuming that the latter group will struggle academically more than the former group, assuming that the latter group not succeed in a pse environment because they will not be able to take the “right” classes (e.g., ap or pre-ap courses), and assuming certain students do not need to have access to college-related information because they are not as prepared as their peers, among others. unfortunately, these deficit perspectives are not only socially constructed, but often are reinforced by those who are the recipients of them (hungerford-kresser, 2010; hungerford-kresser & amaro-jiménez, 2012; valencia, 1997). thus, as it will be shown later, an additive college access and readiness model thus positions these students, and the experiences they and their families bring with them, positively and as part of a redefined mainstream (moll & gonzález, 2004; valenzuela, 1999), as opposed to what many latina/o scholars refer to as “whitestream” (urrieta, 2009). as garcía and ortiz (2006) point out, in an additive environment, …educators reject interpretations of student failure that place the responsibility and blame on families and … appreciates the funds of knowledge among all families, including those with limited resources...these efforts communicate to families that their language and culture are valued, their educational goals for their child are important, and educators are committed to working within the family’s cultural comfort zone. (p. 6) we believe an additive framework of college access and readiness takes into account first-generation college students and their families’ experiences, perceptions and beliefs, and builds upon all these to create meaningful opportunities for all students to succeed despite other people’s perceptions of their potential, especially for those who have been labeled by their school as being non college-bound. methodology in this study we employed a qualitative, interpretative approach using data collected from 34 firstgeneration, bilingual college students who participated in current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 4 a program that attempted to enact an additive framework towards college access and readiness. as it will be fully detailed next, we draw heavily on their written reflections/personal narratives (see riessman, 1993), activity logs (e.g., tally of what activities took place at go centers) and artifacts to describe some of the successes and challenges experienced when participating in such program. about the program, schools and mentors the college access and readiness program described in this article is part of a statewide initiative that aims to increase the number of students seeking a pse in texas. the goal of the closing the gaps by 2015 initiative (2010) is to “close educational gaps within texas and between texas and other leading states by focusing on the critical areas of participation, success, excellence, and research” (p. i). increasing the number of latina/os who not only complete high school but who pursue and complete a post-secondary degree are two critical areas. to do so, institutions of higher education (ihe), including ours, have partnered with local schools to develop go centers. these go centers are dedicated spaces at high schools where college-level students act as mentors to high school students throughout the year. these spaces include a dedicated or shared classroom, an office space shared with the school’s counselors, and a computer lab, for example. each go center is equipped with several computers, ample workspace and collegerelated information. a school counselor is designated as the point person or sponsor at each site. the ihe is responsible for manning or providing the personnel (i.e., mentors) for the go centers as well as for the ongoing training and preparation of the mentors. in keeping with an additive framework, all students, not only those who are considered college-bound by others (e.g., teachers, counselors), visited the go centers. moreover, given that the majority of high school students who visited the go centers were not traditionally considered college-bound, the mentors also tutored them in specific subjects such as mathematics and physics to ensure that the students were prepared to successfully take college entrance exams (e.g., sat) as well as state-mandated, end-of-the-year examinations. as can be seen in table 1, all four schools where the program was implemented in the 2009-2010 academic year were considered minority-majority schools; that is, these are schools in which minority groups account for most of the student population. in fact, in all four schools, latina/os represented the largest group of minority students; at johnson high school (pseudonym, the same is true of all other names used in the manuscript), latinos had already become the majority population (see table 2 for the number of latina/o students served by classification at the go centers). moreover, the percentage of “at-risk” as well as economically disadvantaged students at each of these sites was over 40%. in the 2009-2010 academic year, the program had a total of 34 mentors (19 females, 15 males); 29 out of 34 mentors were latina/os, three were caucasian, two were african american and one was asian. all but two of the mentors were first-generation college students. all but one of the mentors was bilingual (i.e., english-spanish, table 1 demographics of students in high schools served by college access/readiness program g o c en te r (p se ud on ym s) a fr ic an a m er ic an la tin a/ o w hi te n at iv e a m er ic an a si an / pa ci fic is la nd er a t-r is k po pu la tio n ec on . d is ad v. tomás hs 14.8% 35.5% 45.7% 0.4% 3.6% 56.5% 43.2% guadalupe hs 19.8% 30.9% 44.5% 0.4% 4.4% 54% 42.8% sabine hs 19.7% 29.3% 46.6% 0.4% 4.0% 58% 41.8% johnson hs 18.7% 49.8% 27.6% 0.4% 3.5% 48.1% 55.8% implementing an additive, college access and readiness program for latina/o high school students in the u.s. 5 table 2 number of latino high school students served per go center/school in 2009-2010 year go center (pseudonyms) freshman sophomore juniors seniors classification not indicated total # individual students served per year el paso hs 21 29 129 184 26 389 guadalupe hs 9 47 187 299 39 581 sabine hs 48 133 169 254 82 686 johnson hs * 315 201 207 45 768 * freshman attend other campus total number of latino students served: 2,424 english-mandarin, english-french). the mentors were majoring in various disciplines (e.g., mathematics, engineering, nursing) and had different classifications (e.g., sophomore, junior). on average, these mentors worked at one of the four high schools go centers for 15 hours every week on average (mentors were not allowed to work more than 19 hours per week due to their student status); the mentors spent a total of 10,567 hours collectively working at their designed high school sites. mentors were assigned to a school site/go center at the beginning of the year and they remained at their assigned site for the duration of the academic year. designating a site where to work was based on three aspects: the mentors’ availability (e.g., class schedule), the go centers’ hours of operation, and the mentors’ familiarity and personal experience(s) with a specific school site (or not) prior to working for the program. mentors who had attended one of the local partnering high schools themselves were given priority for placement at those sites as they were already familiar with not only school personnel and students, but with the school’s culture. as it will be shown in our findings, doing so also allowed the program to explicitly integrate tenets of an additive framework as the high school students were able to clearly see that being considered college-bound is not (or should not) be predetermined by their socioeconomic status, ethnicity and/or others people’s perceptions of these students’ potential. data collected in this paper we draw on written reflections, activity logs, and artifacts collected from the 34 mentors who were part of the program in the 2009-2010 academic year. each type of data collected is detailed below. written reflections. to collect data for this study, participants were asked to candidly reflect on all the activities carried out at the go centers, the successes experienced, and the challenges they confronted on a daily and monthly basis as mentors. all written reflections, which varied in length from one to two singlespaced pages each, were open-ended and were turned in at the end of every month. at the beginning of the year, mentors were asked to respond to the following prompt when writing their reflections: “how are things going at your go center – the good, the not so good and the ugly – and how can we make the program better?” as such, mentors chose what to write about and many did so candidly, which is exactly what we had aimed for. throughout the year participants were also asked to reflect on the personal, academic and professional gains, if any, they felt they had experienced as a result of participating in the program. activity logs. as part of the program, mentors/participants were asked to report the number of times (frequency) each of them took part in specific tasks at their go center site per day. some of these tasks included providing assistance to the high school students on how to complete financial aid forms (e.g., fafsa), how to locate and apply to various discipline-specific scholarships, and how to identify students’ career interests, among others. these activity logs were used to determine also staffing needs (e.g., how many mentors were present at a given time) and overall student traffic (e.g., how many students visited on a given day). two types of activity logs were used in the analyses: personal logs and go centers’ logs. the former provided information about each individual mentor’s work at their designated site. these data gave a snapshot of individual performance and tasks carried out while at the go center. the latter logs provided a glimpse into all activities carried out by all mentors as well as the overall traffic to the go centers; these logs were also critical in determining what types of activities were frequently being done at the campuses, such as the information depicted in figure 1 of the tasks performed by the mentors at one of the go centers, sabine’s high school. artifacts. data were also collected in the form current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 6 of artifacts the mentors produced throughout the year as well as items that were of relevance to the work the mentors conducted. some of these artifacts included flyers and posters they created to advertise the program among the high school students, staff and faculty at each of the sites, thank-you notes the high school students had written for the mentors, and recommendation slips students, counselors and teachers wrote and deposited in a recommendation box at each site throughout the year. all the artifacts, which were converted into an electronic format (especially those that were only originally in paper), were stored in a shared folder which all mentors and program personnel had access to. doing so proved beneficial given that a flyer, for example, could be modified to suit the needs of more than one school. data analyses we used grounded theory and the constant comparative method (strauss & corbin, 1990) to code all the data for this study. in the first round of analysis each one of us coded the collected data (reflections, logs and artifacts) figure 1. percentage of time spent by month on college-related activities at sabine's go center. implementing an additive, college access and readiness program for latina/o high school students in the u.s. 7 separately and identified grand, emergent themes across the multiple sources of data we were analyzing. some of these grand themes included challenges mentors faced at their go center, rewards that mentors were experiencing overall, and programmatic issues that had to be addressed as part of the program (e.g., lack of staffing at certain times). once we both had come up with these grand themes independently, we began the process of identifying subthemes and patterns across our individual work (lincoln & guba, 1985). in the second round of analyses we thus discussed our salient themes and found similarities/differences in the coding, and agreed upon categorical descriptions for the main areas of foci for this paper; that is, we focused on the successes that the mentors reported experiencing and the challenges that faced as mentors at the four high schools. findings successes experienced. findings suggest the participants/mentors found the program to be highly successful at reaching its goal of continuing and oftentimes beginning the conversation about the possibility of pursuing a pse among all students, especially among latina/o students (garcia, 2001). one of the two indicators the mentors used to judge the program’s effectiveness was the number of unique college applications submitted by the high school students they worked with. these were numbers that were provided by the state and which the mentors had access to throughout the year. for instance, at sabine high school, only 253 college applications were submitted by the class of 2009. in the year when the program was first implemented (class of 2010), however, the number of applications reached 349. interestingly, even though the mentors were cognizant that an increased number of applications did not imply that more students had been admitted to community colleges or four year institutions, they felt that those numbers were an indication that they had been able to promote a college-going culture at the four high school campuses – the second indicator of their success. although working with students of all ethnic backgrounds as well as classifications (e.g., freshman, junior) was part of their duties as mentors, latina/o students were one of their priorities given that these were the students who, according to school personnel, had the least access to this information outside the school and go center. one of the ways in which they were able to increase the number of latina/o students served at the go centers was by creating surveys specific to their classification. as ana wrote on her reflection for april, the survey for seniors: …asked simple questions like, “have you applied to college?” “do you plan on attending college?” “if you have applied, have you been accepted?” “have you done the fafsa?” “have you filled out scholarships?” “do you need help with college related items?” once these surveys were handout out during classes and filled out, we went through them and pulled the ones marked who looked/asked for help and called them to the go center one by one and talked to them and had one-on-one conversations about their future. her reflection focuses on a common theme among the mentors. even the seemingly most basic questions, stated in a simple survey, gave the mentors a starting place for working with these students. they were the impetus for the “one-on-one conversations about their future”— conversations many of these students had never had with anyone outside of their family. while the surveys were deemed successful, creating a college-going culture at the schools was a challenge at first. some students like jaime, a freshman majoring in political science, indicated, “some students don't even know what to expect when going to college, but after talking to use they see that college is actually a fun part of life; we motivate them to want to go to school more.” we highlight jaime’s quotation because it is indicative of the challenges associated with being one of the first to talk with someone about college (“some students don’t know what to expect…”), and the mentor’s role (“we motivate them…”). daphne (senior majoring in history) commented that in order to bridge that motivation gap, they had to begin by developing rapport with the students they served and by finding commonalities in their life experiences (delgado bernal, aleman, & garavito, 2009). this rapport, however, was something they considered had to be nurtured throughout the year, with both interested students and those who at first seemed uninterested in pursuing a pse. as she stated, the first few weeks were slow, in that we did not get all of the students to come to ask for help. we began spreading the word about who we are and why we are here by going to various classes, to kind of get a feel of what type of students will need us the most. two weeks later, we had about 6-10 students on average daily seeking help. we built a relationship with the students so that they would feel more comfortable coming to us and talking about anything college related. daphne’s comment is indicative of a challenge (“…we did not get all of the students to come and ask for help”), resulting in an ultimate success (“…6-10 students on average daily seeking help”). as javier, a mentor majoring in anthropology, stated, being a mentor is to be a person that will try all to aid students in even the smallest question so that they can possibly achieve great things. not only a mindless drone that can print off scholarships and hand it to people but to have a kind heart and an open ear so that you can hear current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 8 the cries of uncertainty and give them the answers they so desperately seek. to go not only above and beyond to better your team and center but to go settle down so that everyone can share in success of the center. most importantly to think of others especially the high school students nobody has cared about, no matter who he/she are or what grade level he/she might be in over yourself and your needs a chance to a better future. mentors found that building rapport with all students, even for those whose “cries of uncertainty” could be heard from, were imperative to any sort of additive model for working with students. likewise, understanding that the target population being served at the go centers were those who were not necessarily considered college-bound proved to be key in developing the college-going culture they all talked about, because they saw every student as college-able even in cases when the high school students themselves were unsure as to whether going to college was a possibility for them. there were also high school students who knew they wanted to go to college, but had no idea what that desire entailed. jim (junior in electrical engineering) and tatiana (undecided major), experienced that first-hand with many of the students with whom they worked: a lot of students come in and really want to go to college, but have no idea where to start. making ourselves available to them and guiding them to the right path really helps them out. it’s a great feeling when you help out an individual student and then they come back and grow a greater bond and really get to know their situation and really make a difference. (jim) some of the teachers are realizing that we’re open during the times they need us. their classes come in and check out some colleges. even the freshmen are starting to pick up what they want to do and all! so excited! more people to go to college! (tatiana) some of the successes of the program are seemingly the most basic—taking the idea of college and making it more of a reality. this is what develops that “bond” jim writes about. tatiana’s enthusiasm is indicative of the mentors’ desire to help and to guide. the majority of the mentors also spoke about the great potential of developing rapport and the trust needed with the students’ families to provide the information they needed to support their children’s efforts in going to college. for instance, javier, a senior majoring in nursing, discussed the profound impact that working with the parents has had on him. knowing that the hispanic community is still in need of help in various subjects such as financial aid information, career choices, computer skills, etc. and knowing that i can assist them in some way just made me cheerful and i would love to help again anytime. i would even do this for free because i just know that there are people in need of help. but what also shocked me was that there are people who want to know more about higher education and have the passion to want their kids to succeed. javier, perhaps unknowingly, is discussing one of the most important elements of an additive college readiness program, the inclusion of the family and the value of the home culture of the students participating. we have found it equally important for the mentors to share these experiences, so there will be less “shock” about “people who want to know more about higher education and have the passion to want their kids to succeed.” research indicates this is the norm, rather than an aberration (delgado bernal et al., 2009), and making sure the mentors hear, know, and share these stories goes a long way in making the program successful. additionally, mentors attributed part of the success of being able to create a college-going culture to being able to relate to the issues and challenges that the high school students served at the sites. the mentors’ unique experiences allowed them to talk from their own experiences to motivate the high school students to stay in school, as many of them had even considered dropping out of school at one point. some, for example, described how little they knew about financial aid and scholarships back in high school, and how this lack of knowledge had prevented them from attaining the kind of financial support they now know they needed; however, because of their experience as a mentor they are now able to share this information with the high school students who attend the go centers. as miguel mentioned, “when i was in school, i had no idea what the fafsa was, or how i could get money. i didn’t know about the million different scholarships you can get… it was a very hard and stressful process” (reflection, october). in fact, as shown next, the mentors drew on these challenges that they had experienced as high school students to provide advice and support to those students being served. for instance, juan, a nursing sophomore, commented: wow, it’s crazy how i can see myself in each of these high school seniors as they all are scared, nervous and above all excited to graduate! i remember …not caring much about what was going on. i almost didn’t make it. i remember with the school year coming to an end, and just feeling there’s nothing i can do about it! i now tell them, “you gotta be prepared for the ‘real world’ and cherish the rest of the moments you have… i wish i had done that in high school.” the program is strengthened by the myriad life experiences represented. it is imperative that the mentors implementing an additive, college access and readiness program for latina/o high school students in the u.s. 9 are willing to share their stories, and when they do, they become powerful narratives for the secondary students in the program. in fact, some of the mentors also discussed how their own struggles as high school students had actually led them to be where they are today and how they were using these skills (in this specific case tutoring) now in their professional careers. as mariana, who was an undecided major when she started working for the program, described, i remember doing taks [required state-wide examination] in high school. and i especially remember the tough times it had on me and my teachers. i swore to myself i would never become a teacher, due to taks. but now, my major is math education … what did i get myself into??!!! i love it. this is what [program] has done for me. lol! the students in the public schools still take this exam, and her past struggles culminating in a successful college career is a powerful example for the students she serves. over and over again, we read reflections connecting past, present, and future educational experiences. knowing these stories have been shared with secondary students is exciting and once again highlight the impact of integrating one’s (in this case the mentors’) lived experiences as part of an additive college access and readiness program. as seen above, the mentors who worked for the program were able to find success in promoting a collegegoing culture at the sites where they worked. while many believe that starting a conversation with students about their futures was instrumental in their efforts to promote the idea that anyone, regardless of background or perceived potential, can be successful if they are determined to do so, others were able to rely on what they had gone through as high school students themselves to facilitate a college-going culture among all students involved. doing both proved that enacting an additive framework that sees every student as college-material while facilitating and implementing explicit strategies (e.g., survey) to remove institutional barriers is needed. this is especially the case when, as it will be shown next, the barriers are not only put in place by school administrators (e.g., counselors) but by the students themselves. challenges experienced mentors had no difficulty in pointing out the challenges they experienced. some of these challenges included: (1) having consistent schedules at the go centers so the high school students would know which and when the mentors were expected to be there (“i just want people to stick to the program and come when they say they’re gonna be here”), (2) being able to have access to concrete resources (e.g., copier) at the campuses to create materials they needed (“it really frustrates me when i need something and can’t go and ask for it here and have to go to the university to get ‘em”), and (3) being seen as mentors rather than peers or other high school students (“it makes me mad when the teachers or counselors treat me as if i were another high schooler. i’m not. i’m a college student and they should treat me like one, a professional”). even though the participants were appreciative of the support they had received from some staff members, especially those who were the designated liaisons at the school, they felt that the greatest challenge or frustration they experienced was the lack of support that was shown by school personnel and teachers at the four campuses. interestingly, analyses suggest that they were confronted with multiple levels of resistance (valenzuela, 1999). one level of resistance stemmed from the teachers who had these high school students in their classrooms. according to the participants, there were two main reasons why some teachers did not feel that sending these students to the go centers was worthwhile: (1) these students were not college material and (2) having to spend time on making them get there (e.g., filling out a pass) was actually a waste of their own instructional time. mentors felt that “they simply didn’t care” (derry, junior in architecture) and “those teachers really thought that these kids didn’t have a chance. i was and still am upset about this, because i was one of those kids not long ago” (marta, junior in education). in other words, the mentors felt that some of the schools were perpetrating a subtractive atmosphere (valencia, 1997; valenzuela, 1999). in light of this, the mentors were able to see the importance of the job they were doing. they made plans to help students. interestingly, mentors spoke about the opportunities they had to create in order to attract those who would otherwise not frequent the go center. one of these opportunities involved setting aside tutoring time every day. pablo, a senior in engineering, commented, many (students) now come for help in school work, while others come and talk to us. we have also made "new friends" who love to come to the go center. [name of student] is one of these students. he's a freshman and a really bright young man; he loves to come after school and do his homework. i know that if this center was not here, he might not be doing educational things, as he told us. also, the mentors described how some of these challenges they confronted began to disappear as they shared with others what their roles at the schools were and as they also began to search for alternatives to give all the students an opportunity to visit the go centers. as lina explained, because some of the teachers didn’t want to let them come over, all the mentors here talked to [the principal] to see if he would allow us to sign the permission slips, even if it was just once a month. and yes, he agreed it was a current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 10 good thing as long as we had proof of what we had done during that time. so one of the great, phenomenal things, that have happen [sic] at the center is that now students come during lunch and request us to write a permission slip to get out of their elective classes and come the go center to work on their college applications. it is nice to see how motivated they are on learning and looking forward towards a new chapter into their future, regardless of what the teacher has told them. (lina, reflection, february) the mentors were often proactive with administration at schools, like in the above reflection where lina shares a conversation with a principal. the result was a “great phenomenal thing.” this highlights another important theme that ran through their reflections, taking a challenge and using it as a starting place for a successful change or suggestion in the program. other mentor-created, alternative plans for assisting the secondary students have included giving presentations to entire groups of students to reach more students at once, giving information about deadlines for scholarships while holding students to them, and having students complete key tasks during the morning announcements, which is normally “dead time” on campus. one of the mentors even recalled an instance when deadlines were looming and the students were not allowed to “get out of classes.” she wrote: i worked this month helping students with proofing their essays by email because they weren’t allowed to get out of classes and we needed to get them ready to submit. plus the deadlines for their scholarships were approaching, so we had to get them done. so, we communicated back and forth using [name of email software used by the district] to get their application ready and we submitted on time. (teresa, reflection, march) when there were face-to-face on campus barriers, the mentors used alternative resources, like email, to help students meet their goals and deadlines. this was a common theme in the data. interestingly, another level of resistance stemmed from the high school students themselves, as others had told them that they simply could not pursue a pse (hungerford-kresser, 2010; hungerford-kresser & amaro-jiménez, 2012; valencia, 1997). it appeared, to many of the mentors, that the high school students had adopted the negative attitudes about the college-going potential, simply because they had not ever been considered college-bound by the authority figures at school. at the same time, many students were also facing societal barriers, and made many assumptions about their limitations in this country. josef, a senior majoring in civil engineering, recalled the first time he had the opportunity to work with john. according to josef, john had expressed an interest in becoming an engineer yet he was nervous about seeking help and visiting the go center, as he explains below: … as he rocked back and forth in his chair, as he rubbed the sweat off of his hands. he finally gained the courage to tell me what was on his mind as he scooted close to me and whispered in my ear, “the problem is, i’m an illegal alien.” he had been told he would never be able to go to college and would have to spend the rest of his life working small jobs... he felt he could never be the engineer he had always dreamt of being. i immediately comforted him and explained that america still wants to give every student the opportunity to do something great with their lives, how no child is left behind, and how even being an illegal immigrant he had scholarships available for him. the smile that he had on and the way his face lit up after i told him, it was just indescribable… every day, i come in here, ready and waiting for another student… like john; finding out that everything they ever wanted is truly possible, and all they had to do was come into the go center to find out. john “had been told” what he would never be able to do, and his status as an “illegal alien” (a problematic phrasing on its own), were enough to convince him that he was not going to be able to do what he wanted with his life. his mentor helped him begin asking different questions about his options for his future. breaking free from this resistance is an ongoing challenge. however, mentors understand how the path to a pse can start by simply having a conversation a frank conversation where mentors are able to listen to others and share their own successes and challenges while drawing on their own personal experiences as firstgeneration college students (hungerford-kresser, 2010; hungerford-kresser & amaro-jiménez, 2012; valencia, 1997). discussion and conclusion it is clear that for any program, there are challenges (mehan et al., 1996; texas center for educational research, 2012), and it is important to try and deal with them aggressively and proactively. while it is common for major college readiness programs to study their implementation activities and collect regular data, it is also important to point out both the challenges and successes. for us, this means we can make better programmatic decisions, but it also offers opportunities for other organizations and programs to do similar work, building on what we know works and implementing new strategies to help overcome the challenges. the successes and challenges of our program are hard to separate. like the narratives of the mentors themselves, they are woven implementing an additive, college access and readiness program for latina/o high school students in the u.s. 11 together and it is difficult to extricate clean pieces. the mentors meet challenges on a daily basis. thus, they are experiencing the challenges, but are a real part of any success, be it large or small. even the fact that they feel capable of confronting the challenges that they face in the schools is in itself a success. it is this human element of the program that is the most difficult to analyze, but the most important to discuss. the literature clearly demonstrates that increasing the number of latina/o students in pse is a significant goal, not only because the u.s. and other countries rely on a skilled workforce, but because it is predicted that the number of both latina/o and minority students will continue to grow until they will become the majority in our schools (u.s. census bureau, 2009). moreover, students, regardless of ethnicity, will need to possess a college degree (or similar experience) to be competitive and succeed in the future (u.s. department of labor, 2003). thus, understanding the experiences of those who work with these students is vital, as these can help us understand what can be done to facilitate college access and readiness initiatives that can enable all learners, and not just those who are considered collegebound, succeed and pursue a pse. the mentors who work for programs like the one being reported here have the difficult, daily conversations with these students. their reflections and narratives help us understand what the secondary students need. this kind of work is an important first step. there were daily challenges, including scheduling issues and the treatment of mentors by adults on campus, but despite the daily hindrances, mentors could see their roles facilitating change on campuses. in fact, mentors clearly referenced, across the board, an improvement in the college-going culture on these campuses, with a particular focus on the latina/o and underserved students at the schools. when they described the “why,” it was the additive elements of the program that seemed to be the most effective. for example, including parents in the program and process was highlighted regularly by mentors. our research certainly indicates that the program is not without its issues, but they are issues worth studying and pursuing. while it supports the work of delgado bernal et al. (2009), which demonstrated the positive effects of mentoring, it also expands the work by focusing on partnerships between first-generation college students and underrepresented first-generation minority secondary students. more studies that look at the possibilities among such partnerships are needed. additive frameworks (valencia, 1997; valenzeula, 1999) have the potential to strengthen college readiness programs, and ultimately increase the numbers of latina/os pursuing a pse (oseguera et al., 2009). we also believe that examining the experiences of those who were considered not to be “college material” and are currently serving as mentors for those in high schools could potentially lead us to better understanding how to increase others’ opportunities for a pse in the u.s. and abroad. likewise, working closely with teachers, counselors and administrators can give us an opportunity to listen to their needs, to identify the (mis)conceptions some of them may hold about the potential (or lack thereof) of their students, and the ways in which they can work together to give all students to opportunity to continue their studies beyond high school. moreover, allowing for initiatives like the one described here to be implemented in schools can lead to not only an increase in the number of college applications submitted and potentially the number of students pursuing a pse, but can lead to providing equal opportunities for all learners to accomplish the goals they have set for themselves. in fact, as was shown earlier, many of the students who were served at these go centers wanted to pursue a pse, but they had been told at one point or another they were not college material. though a program like the one discussed in the article was not available for them when they were in high school, these students were determined to succeed regardless of other people’s perceptions of their potential. we believe that removing institutional and perception-related barriers and involving those who work with latina/o and minority students on an on-going basis in initiatives like the one mentioned in this article can help ensure that developing a college-going culture is something that can be achieved from early on. in fact, having the frank conversations about students’ futures and careers ought to start before students begin high school, thus developing and promoting a college-going culture for all children, regardless of who they are and where they come from. doing so will allow us to re-imagine the promise and potential of these students, the programs created to assist them, and educational research that works to disrupt the policies and politics often saturated with deficit perspectives. references advancement via individual determination (avid). 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(2009). tracking and ability grouping. in l. christenbury, r. bomer, & s. smagorinksy (eds.), handbook of adolescent literacy research (pp. 220-236). guilford: new york. implementing an additive, college access and readiness program for latina/o high school students in the u.s. 13 article citation amaro-jiménez, c. & hungerford-kresser, h. (2013). implementing an additive, college access and readiness program for latina/o high school students in the u.s. current issues in education, 16(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1135 author notes carla amaro-jiménez dept. of curriculum & instruction, college of education and health professions university of texas at arlington 502 yates st. arlington, tx 76010 amaro@uta.edu dr. carla amaro-jiménez is an assistant professor in the department of curriculum & instruction at the university of texas at arlington. her publications have focused on equity issues related to the schooling of latina/o, english language learners, on preparing teachers for working in culturally and linguistically diverse environments, and on the integration of technology in the classroom. holly hungerford-kresser dept. of curriculum & instruction, college of education and health professions university of texas at arlington 502 yates st. arlington, tx 76010 hhkresser@uta.edu dr. holly hungerford-kresser is an assistant professor of english education in the department of curriculum & instruction at the university of texas at arlington. her research and publications have focused on issues related to urban schools, college readiness, and identity. acknowledgements: the go centers initiative reported in this article was funded by grant number 07120 from texas higher education coordinating board (thecb). this research study was made possible by a research enhancement proposal grant awarded to the authors by our university. this publication and research disclosed in this article are solely our responsibility and do not necessarily represent the official views of thecb or the state of texas. manuscript received: 11/29/2012 revisions received: 08/24/2013 accepted: 08/26/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 14 volume 16, number 3 september 18, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis elizabeth calhoun reyes assistant executive editors bonnie mazza constantin schreiber recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell nichole hugo sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker bonnie mazza kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 963-4078-3-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x general education students’ changing perceptions of students with special needs ashley d. novak boulder valley school district frederick j. bartelheim university of northern colorado schools are becoming more inclusive and more students with special needs are accessing general education classrooms than ever. this action research study investigated general education students changing perceptions of students with special needs through the use of various interventions (e.g., classroom discussions, organized games, buddy reads, peer tutoring, etc.) over a four week period of time. this study was conducted in a second grade classroom setting. two questionnaires were designed and administered to collect data about the participants’ perceptions of students with special needs during the four weeks of the study. the questionnaire responses were analyzed to determine if a shift toward more positive perceptions of students with special needs occurred. results of the data analysis indicate that the general education students’ perceptions of students with special needs did improve, or evolve, as a result of the inventions employed in this study. keywords: peer perceptions, students with special needs, action research policy makers, educators, and parents have been working to improve education for children with special needs for many decades. as time has progressed, laws affecting children with special needs have become more defined about the type of education that is most beneficial for academic and social learning. with the most recent update to the individuals with disabilities education act (idea) in 2004 more students with special needs are accessing general education classrooms, rather than being solely restricted to self-contained classroom settings. this action research study examined general education students’ perceptions about students with special needs. specifically, this study investigated the effect of weekly interventions designed to change general education students’ perceptions of students with special needs, as well as educating general educations students about individuals with disabilities. data was collected by the administration of two questionnaires. the first questionnaire was open-ended which was verbally administered individually to each participant at the beginning and the end of the study. the second questionnaire was also administered at the beginning of the study, and then each week at the conclusion of each intervention for the duration of the study. results of the data analysis indicate that the general education students’ perceptions of students with special needs did improve, or evolve, as a result of the inventions employed in this study. review of the literature many classrooms include both general education students and students with special needs. teachers can play an important role in how general education students feel about and act towards special needs students because, current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 in part, children tend to learn behavior by observing the adults in their world (diamond & hong, 2010). children’s ideas about individuals with disabilities can be associated with emotional responses that influence their behavior. for example, innes and diamond (1999) investigated preschool children’s ideas about disabilities, and their interactions with their peers with disabilities, based on mothers’ comments about children with physical disabilities and down syndrome. the results of this study revealed, in part, that the preschool children’s observed social interactions were more positive with their peers with disabilities when mothers made fewer comments in regards to children with disabilities. bunch and valeo (2004) investigated upper elementary grades and middle school settings where relationships among general and special needs students were not specifically encouraged. in this study, the general education students reported fewer relationships with students with special needs and more negative views towards them. also, this study found that when teachers treat children with special needs differently from their classroom peers, general education students may receive a message that students with special needs are different from them and should be treated differently. merely placing students with special needs in general classroom settings is not enough to create social interaction amongst all students. putnam, markovchick, johnson, and johnson (1996) investigated the effects of cooperative learning on general education students’ acceptance of classmates with special needs. in this study, two classroom environment conditions (cooperative learning and competitive learning) were explored over an eight month period of time in grades five through eight. over the course of the study, general education students rated the desirability of working with their peers with disabilities within both classroom environments. results indicated that positive ratings occurred more frequently in the classrooms where cooperative learning conditions were present versus the classrooms where competitive learning conditions existed. as such, inclusive classroom settings where teachers do not encourage or foster positive interactions, students with special needs may endure teasing, prejudice, stereotyping, and even rejection (putnam et al., 1996). according to frostad and pijil (2007) teachers must take the responsibility to carefully structure interactions between students with and without special needs. their study explored the difficulties students with special needs can have in building relationships with their general education peers in inclusive education settings. the study’s results indicated that up to 25% of students with special needs were not socially included in general education peer groups due to the lack of age-group appropriate social skills. based on the study’s results, frostad and pijil (2007) suggest that structured socials skills instruction within the classroom can support the development of relationships between general education students and students with special needs. in the absence of such structured interactions, students with special needs may feel isolated from peer groups and experience difficulty in forming friendships (estell, jones, pearl, & van acker, 2009) which may adversely affect feelings of self-worth in adulthood (bagwell, newcomb, & bukowski, 1998). some studies conducted in preschool and elementary settings where young children have regular contact with special needs children typically have more positive attitudes toward individuals with special needs (innes & diamond, 1999; teigland, 2009). for example, kalyva and agaliotis’ (2009) study explored sixth grade general education children’s understanding of and attitudes towards children with physical disabilities in inclusive settings. the participants in this study were divided into two groups; children who had contact with children with physical disabilities, and children without such contact. both groups completed two questionnaires to measure their understanding of disabilities and attitudes toward the inclusion of children with disabilities. results indicated that the children with regular contact (versus limited or no contact) with peers with physical disabilities tended to understand that disabilities are not always easily identifiable, but were able to articulate what a disability or special need is, and demonstrate more empathetic behavior toward peers with disabilities. also, this group of children expressed more positive attitudes towards the inclusion of peers with disabilities when compared to the children without regular contact. according to bunch and valeo (2004), children who learn empathy and acceptance of children with special needs at an early age will be less likely to demonstrate abusive behavior, and in some instances advocate for individuals with special needs. as such, providing opportunities for socialization and friendships in early school settings may foster better peer relationships among general education and special needs students. innes and diamond (1999) suggest the use of targeted interventions, such as structured play and children’s literature, as means of positively impact young children’s perceptions of individuals with disabilities. read alouds and classroom discussions can also be effective for increasing young children’s acceptance of peers with special needs (martinez & carsepecken, 2006). in this study, the effect of weekly interventions designed to change general education students’ perceptions of special needs students, as well as educating general educations students about individuals with disabilities was investigated. research question this study investigated the following question: will general education students adopt a more positive general education students’ changing perceptions of students with special needs 3 perception of students with special needs as a result of a four week intervention? methods participants this study was conducted in a suburban public elementary school in a medium-sized school district in a western state. all of the participants, 12 males and 12 females, were in a second grade classroom setting that included three students with specific learning disabilities. procedure since the intent of this study was to change not only general education students’ perceptions of their peers with disabilities, but to identify activities that would engage both students with and without disabilities in a second grade classroom setting, an action research design was employed. action research provides research techniques that allow classroom teachers opportunities to improve upon the education environment in the classroom (reason & bradbury, 2008). the primary researcher of this study was also the classroom teacher in the second grade setting at the time of this study. this study took place over a four week period of time. at the beginning of the study, two questionnaires were administered to collect data about the participants’ perceptions of students with special needs. figure 1. pre and post verbally administered questionnaire. figure 2. weekly questionnaire. name__________________________ date___________________________ 1) what does it mean for a person to have special needs? 2) what do you think about people with special needs? 3) do you know anyone with special needs? what is his/her name? 4) what do you do when students with special needs pass you in the hall? 5) if you saw someone with special needs being teased, what would you do? name____________________________ date_______________ 1. do you think people with special needs can learn? yes no i’m not sure 2. do you think people with special needs should be treated the same as other students? yes no i’m not sure 3. would you be willing to work with students with special needs in our classroom? yes no i’m not sure 4. would you play with a child with special needs on the playground? yes no i’m not sure 5. would you invite a student with special needs to sit with you at lunch? yes no i’m not sure 6. if someone was teasing a student with special needs, would you help? yes no i’m not sure current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 the first questionnaire was open-ended and was verbally administered individually to each participant at the beginning and the end of the study (figure 1). to prevent participants from formulating responses based on others’ opinions, each participant met with the research assistant outside of the classroom setting during each administration of this questionnaire. the second questionnaire was also administered at the beginning of the study, and then each week at the conclusion of each intervention for the duration of the study (figure 2). the participants completed this questionnaire on their own. however, during each administration of this questionnaire, the questions were read aloud to all participants as a means of increasing the understanding of those who might not be able to read the questions on their own. privacy folders were used to keep participants from formulating responses based on other participants’ responses. throughout the four week period of this study, 30 minute targeted interventions were employed. during the first week, participants were read a book about varied disabilities as a catalyst for classroom discussion. also, the participants toured the school’s intensive learning center where some students with special needs receive additional support outside of the general education classroom. the intervention for week two included the participants and students with special needs playing organized games together. for example, one game required pairs of students (both general education and their peers with special needs) to hold hands and attempt to tag another pair within particular boundaries. this game allowed the students to have physical contact with each other and work together in their tagging efforts of others. during week three, organized games continued, as well as team building activities with both the participants and the students with special needs. for example, each participant was paired with a student with special needs for peer tutoring in reading or math. this team building activity allowed the participants an opportunity to bond with their peers with special needs. during week four, students with special needs came to the general education classroom setting to “buddy read” with the participants. the students with special needs brought their own books to read. both the participants and the students with special needs took turns reading to each other. this activity allowed the participants an opportunity to equally engage with their peers with special needs. limitations one limitation of this study was time. data was only collected over a four week period; this may have limited the effects of the interventions. also, the number of participants (n = 24) and the specific grade level in the study may limit the generalizability of the findings. the participants’ ability to fully understand the items on the questionnaires may have been a limitation. it is difficult to control and assess whether or not young participants are able to portray their perceptions through questionnaires. data analysis and results the pre and post verbally administered questionnaire responses were analyzed to determine the type of responses (positive, negative, ambiguous, or uncertain) given for the total participant group. as depicted in tables 1 and 2, each response on the questionnaire given at the end of the study indicates a shift toward more positive perceptions when compared to the initial questionnaire responses at the beginning of the study. as such, by the end of this study the participants generally were able to identify a special needs characteristic, spoke more positively about individuals with special needs, indicated that they now know someone with a special need, changed their hallway behavior towards students with special needs, and indicated that they would intervene if a student with special needs was being teased. as depicted in table 3, the participants’ perceptions of students with special needs evolved during the course of this study. in other words, the participants’ perceptions began to shift after the first week’s interventions and each subsequent week thereafter. item 1 and 6 on the weekly questionnaire demonstrated the most significant shift in the participants’ perceptions. as such, by the end of the week 1 and 2 interventions, all of the participants believed that students with special needs can learn and would intervene if they were being teased in some manner. although items 2, 3, and 4 demonstrate a general shift in the participants’ perceptions, a small percent of the participants were not sure if individuals with special needs should be treated the same (4.2%), or if they would work with peers with special needs in the classroom setting (16.7%), or would play with their peers with special needs (16.7%). item 5 indicates a moderate shift in the participants’ perception in regards to inviting a peer with special needs to sit with them at lunch, with 37.5% still not sure. an analysis of the data from both the verbally administered questionnaire and the weekly questionnaire did not yield significant differences based on the gender of the participants. discussion and implications discussion this study’s results are encouraging. planned, specific interventions greatly shifted the participants’ perceptions of their peers with special needs. general education students’ changing perceptions of students with special needs 5 table 1 verbally administered questionnaire results for the total participant group – beginning of study ________________________________________________________________________________ type of q1* q2* q3* q4* q5* response n % n % n % n % n % __________________________________________________________________ positive response 6 25.0 3 12.5 8 33.3 9 37.5 20 83.3 negative response 0 0 10 41.6 12 50.0 8 33.3 1 4.2 ambiguous response 0 0 1 4.2 1 4.2 1 4.2 1 4.2 uncertain response 18 75.0 10 41.6 3 12.5 6 25.0 2 8.3 _________________________________________________________________________________ *note: see figure 1 for questionnaire items. table 2 verbally administered questionnaire results for the total participant group – end of study ___________________________________________________________________________________ type of q1* q2* q3* q4* q5* response n % n % n % n % n % _____________________________________________________________________ positive response 22 91.0 15 62.5 23 95.0 23 95.0 24 100 negative response 0 0 4 17.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ambiguous response 0 0 4 17.0 1 4.2 1 4.2 0 0 uncertain response 2 9.0 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 ____________________________________________________________________________________ *note: see figure 1 for questionnaire items. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 table 3 results of the weekly questionnaire for the total participant group ________________________________________________________________________________ beginning of end of end of end of end of study week 1 week 2 week 3 week 4 n % n % n % n % n % __________________________________________________________________ q1*: yes 21 87.5 22 91.6 22 91.6 24 100 24 100 no 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 not sure 2 8.3 2 8.3 2 8.3 0 0 0 0 q2*: yes 20 83.3 21 87.5 21 87.5 22 91.6 23 95.8 no 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 not sure 3 12.5 3 12.5 3 12.5 2 8.3 1 4.2 q3*: yes 13 54.0 13 54.0 14 58.3 16 66.6 20 83.3 no 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 not sure 10 41.6 11 45.8 10 41.6 8 33.3 4 16.7 q4*: yes 9 37.5 14 58.3 14 58.3 15 62.5 20 83.3 no 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 not sure 14 58.3 10 41.6 10 41.6 9 37.5 4 16.7 q5*: yes 7 29.2 10 41.6 11 45.8 14 58.3 15 62.5 no 2 8.3 2 8.3 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 not sure 15 62.5 12 50.0 12 50.0 10 41.6 9 37.5 q6*: yes 23 95.8 24 100 24 100 24 100 24 100 no 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 not sure 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 _________________________________________________________________________________ *note: see figure 2 for questionnaire items. in other words, this study showed evidence of change in general education students’ perceptions about students with special needs after a four-week intervention. for example, the participants were able to define or name characteristics of individuals with special needs and articulate what it means to have special needs. they also indicated that all students with special needs can learn, and indicated an improvement in their hallway behavior towards their peers with special needs by saying “hi” or waving. by the end of this study, all of the participants indicated they would intervene if a student with special needs was being teased in some manner. these findings support the results of similar studies at other grade levels, or school settings (bunch & valeo, 2004; frostad & pijil, 2007; kalyva & agaliotis, 2009). interventions employed in this study, such as playing organized games together and various team building activities, helped to facilitate acquaintances and friendships for some general education students and their peers with special needs. prior to this study, the participants did not spend much time getting to know their peers with special needs. however, the participants’ indicated weekly positive changes in their perceptions of students with special needs, with some reporting empathic general education students’ changing perceptions of students with special needs 7 feelings for their peers. upon completion of this study, many participants inquired as to when they would spend time with their “buddies” again. targeted interventions in this study required a minimum of 30 minutes of instructional time each week, suggesting an attainable goal for any classroom. however, effective collaboration between the special educator and the regular educator is important in the planning and implementation process of interventions. implications according to putman et al. (1996), general education students’ perceptions of students with disabilities can be fixed and rigid throughout the school year. they suggest that instructional methods where students can work together over an extended period of time can shift the perceptions of students with disabilities by their general education peers. the results of this study suggest that when teachers integrate targeted interventions within the classroom, general education students’ perceptions of students with disabilities can shift to more positive and accepting attitudes. without such positive shifts in attitudes or perceptions, students with disabilities may face major barriers to successful inclusion in general education classroom settings and/or schools. epstein (2007) states that teachers often use an intentional approach for teaching academics, but could also adopt an intentional approach to support peer social relationships between students with and without special needs. effective intentional strategies, such as the interventions employed in this study, would support more interactions among students with and without disabilities (hollingsworth, 2005). in part, the intent of inclusive classrooms and/or school settings is to develop or increase the positive perceptions of students with disabilities by their general education peers. the intention of this study was to not only change general education students’ perception of their peers with disability, but to also provide activities that would engage and benefit both students with and without special needs. with time for effective planning and collaboration between the general education teacher and the special education teacher, the interventions implemented in this study could be replicated in any school to provide general education students and students with disabilities the opportunity to make friendships and to become more empathetic towards each other. by taking an intentional approach to supporting peer relationships between general education students and students with disabilities, classrooms and/or school settings can support the intent of inclusion; stronger academic achievement, peer acceptance, and friendships. in the end, these goals are what inclusive classroom and/or school settings should be about. this study also suggests a number of opportunities for future work in this area. for example, follow-up studies could increase the duration of the interventions and/or implement additional interventions to more accurately assess the effects. others have suggested that children with special needs should have opportunities for interaction with their general education peers before third grade as a means of benefiting from inclusive classroom settings (innes & diamond, 1999; teigland, 2009). research at the first grade or preschool level could help determine if there is truly an optimal age to educate students about special needs and to form peer groups. additionally, other grade levels beyond the elementary setting could be explored with a larger sample size and/or a control group to determine the effect of various interventions on peer relationships between students with and without disabilities. references bagwell, c. l., newcomb, a. f., & bukowski, w. m. (1998). preadolescent friendship and peer rejection as predictors of adult adjustment. child development, 69, 140-153. bunch, g., & valeo, a. (2004). student attitudes toward peers with disabilities in inclusive and special education schools. disability & society, 19(1), 61-76. diamond, k. e., & hong, s. y. (2010). young children’s decisions to include peers with disabilities in play. journal of early intervention, 32(3), 163179. epstein, a. s. (2007). the intentional teacher: choosing the best strategies for children’s learning. washington, dc: national association for the education of young children. estell, d. b., jones, m. h., pearl, r., & van acker, r. (2009). best friendships of students with and without learning disabilities across late elementary school. exceptional children, 76(1), 110-124. frostad, p., & pijil, s. j. (2007). does being friendly help in making friends? the relation between social position and social skills of pupils with special needs in mainstream education. european journal of special needs education, 22(1), 1530. hollingsworth, h. l. (2005). interventions to promote peer social interactions in preschool settings. young exceptional children, 9(1), 2-11. individuals with disabilities education improvement act. (2004). 20 u.s.c. chapter 33, section 1412(5)(b), individuals with disabilities education act. conference report on h.r.1350. innes, f. k., & diamond, k. e. (1999). typically developing children’s interactions with peers with disabilities: relations between mothers’ comments and children’s ideas about disabilities. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 topics in early childhood special education, 19(2), 103-111. kalyva, e., & agaliotis, i. (2009). can contact affect greek children’s understanding and attitudes towards peers with physical disabilities? european journal of special needs education, 24(2), 213-220. martinez, r. s., & carspecken, p. (2006). effectiveness of a brief intervention on latino children’s social acceptance of peers with special needs. journal of applied school psychology, 23(1), 97-115. putnam, j., markovchick, k., johnson, d. w., & johnson, r. t. (1996). cooperative learning and peer acceptance of students with learning disabilities. the journal of social psychology, 136(6), 741752. reason, p., & bradbury, h. (eds.). (2008). the handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice. 2nd ed. thousand oaks, ca: sage. teigland, c. (2009). what inclusive education means for overall student achievement. tash connections, 35(3), 12-13. general education students’ changing perceptions of students with special needs 9 article citation novak, a. d. & bartelheim, f. j. (2012). general education students’ changing perceptions of students with special needs. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/963 author notes ashley d. novak eisenhower elementary school boulder valley school district boulder, colorado 80303 ashley.novak@bvsd.org ashley d. novak is currently a second grade teacher in the boulder valley school district in boulder, colorado. frederick j. bartelheim university of northern colorado mckee 216 greeley, colorado 80631 frederick.bartelheim@unco.edu frederick j. bartelheim is a professor of educational foundations and curriculum studies in the school of teacher education at the university of northern colorado in greeley, colorado. he is also the coordinator of the master of arts in teaching: curriculum studies program. manuscript received: 3/25/2012 revisions received: 5/24/2012 accepted: 8/02/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 10 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 17, number 3 november 23, 2014 issn 1099-839x secondary pre-service teachers' perceptions of an ideal classroom environment frederick j. bartelheim and daniel r. conn university of northern colorado the classroom environment can impact students’ motivation and engagement, and can influence students’ academic learning. in some cases, pre-service teachers’ influence on the classroom environment may not always be conducive for student learning. this exploratory study investigated pre-service teachers’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment. specifically, this study focused on the effect of a 16 week initial field experience, and the school level (high school or middle school) of the field experience on secondary pre-service teachers’ perceptual changes of an ideal classroom environment. as a means of collecting data to address the focus of this study, the participants completed the classroom environment scale (form i) on three different occasions during the initial field experience. results of the data analysis revealed that the participants’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment remained consistent but were focused on attributes that contribute to a classroom environment conducive to academic success. keywords: classroom environment, secondary pre-service teachers, classroom perceptions, field experiences the classroom environment is often considered a predictor of students’ academic achievement and school satisfaction (pickett & fraser, 2010; fraser, 2007). as patrick, kaplan, and ryan (2011) note, the classroom environment impacts students’ motivation, engagement, and achievement. efforts of reform in teacher preparation programs have focused on the need to address classroom environments as part of pre-service teachers’ training. generally, this need is addressed through initial, intermediate, and advanced field experiences that focus, in part, on pre-service teachers’ observations of classroom practices conducive to academic and social learning. initial field experiences can represent a viable means of gathering information about pre-service teachers’ perceptions about classroom events (montecinos et al., 2011; clift & brady 2005). the initial field experience was used in this study to investigate secondary pre-service teachers’ perceptual changes of an ideal or preferred classroom environment. in this study, an ideal classroom environment was defined as a classroom environment that maintains such attributes as student involvement, positive relationships between students and teachers, planned activities, organized functions, varied class activities, creative thinking, and the use of new and/or varied instructional techniques. these attributes have been found to contribute to academic success by various studies that have investigated classroom environments (allodi, 2010; meece, anderman, & anderman, 2006; patrick, kaplan, & ryan; 2011; zedan, 2010). as a means of gathering information about the perceptions of an ideal classroom environment, the participants in this study completed the classroom environment scale (form i) (moos & trickett, 1986) on three different occasions during a 16 week initial field experience. the classroom environment scale (ces) was selected because form i of the instrument addresses value orientations by measuring perceptions of an environment ideally liked or preferred (fraser & fraser, 1986). current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 2 results of the data analysis revealed that the participants’ perceptions of an ideal or preferred classroom environment remained consistent during the initial field experience. however, their preferences focused, for the most part, on attributes that contribute to a classroom environment conducive to academic success. review of the literature research has shown that the classroom environment can be a predictor of students’ academic achievement and school satisfaction (evans, harvey, buckley, & yan, 2009; larocque, 2008; fouts, 1990) and that a positive classroom environment will encourage students to be more excited about their school experience and their learning (evertson, emmer, & worsham, 2006). others have found that the classroom environment can strongly influence affective, behavioral, and cognitive learning outcomes, and that the environment of the classroom is a teaching construct that consistently influences academic learning (fraser & tobin, 1991). if teachers positively impact the classroom environment, they positively motivate students’ academic success (evans et al., 2009). classroom environments can affect teachers as well. grayson and alvarez (2008) found that the classroom environment can contributed to teacher burnout, especially with regard to emotional exhaustion. negative events in the classroom and/or school setting are likely to impact a teacher’s decision to leave the profession (martin, sass, & schmitt, 2012). high rates of teacher turnover can affect a school’s effectiveness (darling-hammond, 2003) and have a detrimental impact on student learning (guin, 2004). as such, supportive and friendly classroom environments are critical for retaining effective teachers (pickett & fraser, 2010). given the complexity of the classroom environment, pre-service teachers are often uncertain about how to mentally process and make decisions about classroom events. studies that have investigated preservice teachers and classroom environments have found that pre-service teachers’ impact on the classroom environment may not always be conducive for student learning. in some cases, a classroom environment established by a pre-service teacher may tend to be low in academic achievement, low in objective thinking, low in practical applications of a skill or subject matter, and high in authority problems (larocque, 2008; phifer, 2007). additionally, some university field supervisors and mentor teachers report that pre-service teachers, who are unsuccessful in their practicum, or field experiences, are not able to create a classroom environment conducive to academic, emotional, and social learning (moore, 2003; skrobola & knowles, 1992). phifer’s (2007) study of unsuccessful student teaching experiences found that classroom climate factors, over content knowledge factors, were cited as the primary reasons pre-service teachers were removed from the classroom. often a gap exists in teacher preparation programs between what teacher educators tell pre-service teachers regarding “life” in the classroom and what actually exists. as such, field experiences represent a component of teacher preparation generally focused on assisting preservice teachers in connecting theory and practice (fletcher & luft, 2011). however, field experiences can have different intentions with regard to their purpose, objectives, and settings (wilson, floden, & ferrini-mundy, 2001). some field experiences tend to focus on procedural concerns and routine tasks (e.g., lesson planning, management) (fletcher & luft, 2011), while others focus on teaching as an inquiry-oriented practice (moore, 2003). kagan (1992) notes the importance of changing pre-service teachers' beliefs during their field experiences, as effecting personal beliefs makes effecting teacher behavior possible. for example, ng, nicholas, and williams (2010) found a significant shift among the preservice teachers in their study from an initial belief that good teaching means being in control, to a belief in good teaching means building relationships with students. as allodi (2010) and zedan (2010) found, the climate in educational environments is often shaped by the relationships between teachers and students, and among students themselves. many research studies on field experiences tend to focus on the student teaching phase, moderately on intermediate field experiences, with fewer investigating initial field experiences (montecinos et al., 2011). research focused on the effect and impact of field based coursework in teacher preparation needs to be broad-based, inclusive of all phases of field experiences (clift & brady 2005; wilson, floden, & ferrini-mundy, 2002). in this study, the initial field experience was used to collect data on the participants’ perceptions of an ideal or preferred classroom environment. specifically, this study investigated the effect that an initial field experience and the school level of the field experience had on the participants’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment. research questions two research questions were investigated in this exploratory study: 1. what changes, if any, in secondary pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the ideal classroom environment changed as a result of an initial field experience? 2. what effect, if any, does the school level (high school or middle school) have on secondary preservice teachers’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment? method participants this study took place at a mid-size university in a western state whose primary mission is teacher education. thirty-six secondary pre-service teacher education secondary pre-service teachers' perceptions of an ideal classroom environment 3 students, 16 males and 20 females, participated in this study. the participants ranged in age from 19 to 26, with a median age of 20. at the time of this study, all of the participants were sophomores or juniors enrolled in the university’s secondary teacher education program. also, the participants were completing a 16 week initial field experience in either a public high school (grades 9-12) or a public middle school (grades 7-8). twenty-four of the participants were completing the field experience in a high school setting, and twelve of the participants were completing the field experience in a middle school setting. all of the schools in this study are located in a mid-size suburban school district with over 20,000 students. sixty-five percent of the students represent various cultural backgrounds inclusive of hispanic, asian/pacific islander, and african-american. the median household income for families in this district is approximately $52,000 with over sixty percent of the students qualifying for free or reduced lunch programs. procedure each participant in this study completed the classroom environment scale (form i) (moos & trickett, 1986) on three different occasions during a 16 week initial field experience. specifically, the participants first completed the classroom environment scale (form i) during week one of their field experience, again during week eight of their field experience, and again during week sixteen of their field experience. at the time of each administration, all of the participants were completing a field experience in a high school or a middle school setting. the overall goal of the initial field experience in the university’s secondary teacher education program is to provide teacher candidates an authentic school environment to observe everyday teaching practice. teacher candidates are placed in classrooms with certified teachers in their area of content. at the beginning of the field experience, teacher candidates observe the classroom setting and instruction being provided. as the semester progresses, teacher candidates participate with the classroom students under the direction of the classroom teacher. generally, this participation includes providing individual, small group, or large group instruction based on the teacher candidate’s comfort level. instrumentation in this study, the classroom environment scale (ces) form i (moos & trickett, 1986) was used as a means of gathering information about the participants’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment during an initial field experience. since its development, the ces has been widely used in studies to capture perspectives about educational environments. for example, raviv, raviv, and reisel (1990) used the ces to investigate teachers’ and students’ perceptions of an actual and preferred classroom environment in 78 sixth grade classroom settings. also, baek and choi (2002) used the ces to measure the psychological characteristics of the classroom environment. mceachron, baker, and bracken (2003) investigated the relationship between academic disciplines and teacher/student interactions using the classroom environment scale. the ces (form i) was selected for this study because the instrument addresses value orientations by measuring perceptions of an environment ideally liked or preferred (fraser & fraser, 1986). the ces (form i) is divided into three conceptual dimensions of the classroom environment; relationship, personal growth/goal orientation, and systems maintenance and change. the relationship dimension addresses student involvement in the classroom, as well as feelings of friendship between students, and teachers’ support of students. the personal growth/goal orientation dimension emphasizes completing planned activities, as well as students’ competition for recognition and grades. the systems maintenance and change dimension addresses organized and coherent functions in the classroom and the amount of variety in class activities. the higher the mean on a conceptual dimension indicates a preference for this classroom dimension in an ideal classroom environment. the lower the mean would indicate that this classroom dimension is least preferred in an ideal classroom environment. the mean on each conceptual dimension of the ces (form i) can range from 1 to 10. the ces (form i) contains nine subscales (involvement, affiliation, teacher support, task orientation, competition, order and organization, rule clarity, teacher control, and innovation), each containing 10 true/false items representing the three conceptual dimensions (figure 1). examples of items on the ces (form i) are: “students will put a lot of energy into what they do here.” (involvement), and “the teacher will explain what will happen if a student breaks a rule.” (rule clarity), and “students in this class will get to know each other really well” (affiliation). the nine ces subscales internal consistency range from .67 to .86. test-retest reliabilities range from .85 to .95; content validity was established by independent raters’ agreement of the items for the three conceptual dimensions (moos & trickett, 1974; trickett & quinlan, 1979). the higher the mean on a subscale indicates the participants’ preference for this classroom component in an ideal classroom environment. the lower the mean would indicate that this component is least preferred in an ideal classroom environment. the mean on each subscale of the ces (form i) can range from 1 to 10. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 4 ces dimensions and related subscales subscale definitions relationship involvement affiliation teacher support the extent to which students are attentive and interested in class activities (i.e., participate in discussions, completing work on their own). level of friendship students feel toward each other (demonstrated by peer assistance, working together). the help, friendship, and interest the teacher displays toward students. personal growth/goal orientation task orientation competition emphasis on completing planned activities and staying on the subject matter. the degree that students compete with one another for grades and recognition. system maintenance and change order and organization rule clarity teacher control innovation emphasis on students behaving in an orderly and polite manner; the overall organization of assignments and classroom activities. establishing and following clear classroom rules; the extent students know consequences of not following rules. the degree the teacher enforces the rules and the severity of punishment for rule violations. student contributions to planning classroom activities; the extent to which the teacher implements new techniques and encourages creative thinking. figure 1. ces dimensions and related subscales. adapted from the first and second editions of the ces manual (moos & trickett, 1974, 1986). data analysis and results when using the classroom environment scale, means and standard deviations are commonly reported; means are examined for any statistical significance (for example, see raviv et al., 1990). the data in this study was generated by the completion of form i of the classroom environment scale (ces) on three different occasions during the participants’ 16 week initial field experience. means and standard deviations for each of the three ces conceptual dimensions and the nine subscales within each dimension were calculated for the total participant group. in addition, the calculated means and standard deviations of the ces dimensions and the related subscales were categorized based on the school level field experience setting (high school, middle school). in this study, differences for the means in the aforementioned cases were analyzed by the use of a onefactor repeated measures anova (p<.05) to detect any overall differences between the related means. this statistical test was used because this study investigated perceptual changes of the participants over three points in time and employed the same instrument each time. the statistical analysis revealed that no significant changes were found in the perceptions of an ideal or preferred classroom environment for the total participant group. this would suggest that the initial field experience did not necessarily influence their perceptions of an ideal classroom environment. however, an examination of the means and standard deviations on all ces dimensions and related subscales did reveal a consistent preference of an ideal classroom environment among the total participant group. in other words, the participants remained comparatively consistent on all three dimensions and the related nine subscales of the ces and were focused mainly on attributes that contribute to a classroom environment conducive to academic success. as table 1 indicates, the participants’ of this study relatively prefer a classroom environment that supports student involvement, a feeling of friendship between students, and teacher support of students (as measured by the relationship dimension). an emphasis on completing planned activities, as well as a moderate level of competition among students for recognition and grades (personal growth/goal orientation dimension), appears to be preferred by the participants of this study. finally, organized and coherent functions in the classroom, and a variety of class activities as measured by the system maintenance & change dimension indicates a reasonable preference for these participants. table 1 means and standard deviations of the ces dimensions for the total participant group (n = 36) ces dimension week 1 of the field experience week 8 of the field experience week 16 of the field experience m sd m sd m sd relationship 7.17 2.12 7.33 2.24 7.54 2.18 personal growth or goal orientation 6.68 2.05 7.21 1.77 7.06 1.75 system maintenance & change 7.22 1.97 7.11 2.10 6.94 2.02 means and standard deviations for each of the nine ces subscales were also analyzed for the total participant group. as table 2 indicates, six of the nine subscales, secondary pre-service teachers' perceptions of an ideal classroom environment 5 (involvement, affiliation, teacher support, task orientation, order & organization, and rule clarity) represent a relative preference of these components in an ideal classroom environment. in other words, the participants prefer classrooms where students participate in classroom activities, have a sense of friendship among class peers, experience teacher support, complete planned activities, maintain a level of order and organization, and have established rules and procedures. three of the nine subscales (competition, teacher control, and innovation) represent a more or less emphasis on these components in an ideal classroom environment. as such, the participants prefer a classroom with moderate levels of student competition for grades and recognition, teacher control, student contribution in classroom activities, as well as the teacher’s use of new techniques and encouragement of creative thinking. table 2 means and standard deviations of the ces subscales for the total participant group (n = 36) ces subscales week 1 of the field experience week 8 of the field experience week 16 of the field experience m sd m sd m sd involvement 7.39 2.31 7.67 2.70 7.92 2.49 affiliation 6.36 2.70 6.86 2.47 7.31 2.30 teacher support 7.78 1.35 7.47 1.54 7.39 1.76 task orientation 7.53 2.31 8.08 1.79 8.00 1.87 competition 5.83 1.78 6.33 1.74 6.11 1.63 order & organization 8.28 2.06 8.36 1.81 8.11 1.86 rule clarity 8.64 1.55 8.22 1.76 8.31 1.79 teacher control 5.42 2.06 5.58 2.37 5.06 2.19 innovation 6.56 2.20 6.28 2.46 6.28 2.24 data in this study was also grouped and analyzed based on the school level experience (high school and middle school). the statistical test revealed that no significant changes were found in the perceptions of an ideal or preferred classroom environment based on the school level experience (table 3). as such, the participants remained somewhat consistent on the all three ces dimensions. table 3 means and standard deviations of the ces dimensions by school level of field experience* ces dimension by school level week 1 of the field experience week 8 of the field experience week 16 of the field experience m sd m sd m sd relationship high school 7.33 1.95 7.32 2.16 7.46 2.08 middle school 6.83 2.44 7.36 2.44 7.69 2.36 personal growth or goal orientation high school 6.67 2.09 7.15 1.88 6.96 1.93 middle school 6.71 2.02 7.33 1.54 7.25 1.39 system maintenance & change high school 7.09 2.00 7.08 2.07 6.88 2.01 middle school 7.48 1.87 7.17 2.13 7.06 2.07 *high school n = 24; middle school n = 12 table 4 means and standard deviations of the ces subscales by school level of field experience* ces dimension by school level week 1 of the field experience week 8 of the field experience week 16 of the field experience m sd m sd m sd involvement high school 7.75 2.05 7.75 2.83 7.71 2.69 middle school 6.58 2.68 7.50 2.54 8.33 2.06 affiliation high school 6.38 2.48 6.79 2.45 7.13 2.11 middle school 6.33 3.20 7.00 2.63 7.67 2.71 teacher support high school 7.88 1.33 7.42 1.21 7.54 1.44 middle school 7.58 1.44 7.58 2.15 7.08 2.31 task orientation high school 7.42 2.39 8.08 2.04 7.88 2.07 middle school 7.75 2.22 8.08 1.24 8.25 1.42 competition high school 5.92 1.79 6.21 1.72 6.04 1.78 middle school 5.67 1.83 6.58 1.83 6.25 1.36 order & organization high school 8.21 1.98 8.13 1.92 7.88 1.92 middle school 8.42 2.31 8.83 1.53 8.58 1.73 rule clarity high school 8.42 1.82 8.25 2.03 8.38 1.97 middle school 9.08 0.67 8.17 1.11 8.17 1.40 teacher control high school 5.25 2.05 5.63 2.20 5.04 2.14 middle school 5.75 2.14 5.50 2.78 5.08 2.39 innovation high school 6.50 2.17 6.33 2.14 6.21 2.00 middle school 6.67 2.35 6.17 3.10 6.42 2.75 *high school n = 24; middle school n = 12 finally, the data in this study was also examined in regards to the nine subscales of the ces based on the school level field experience setting (high school and middle school). as table 4 indicates, the participants current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 6 were somewhat consistent on the subscales of involvement, affiliation, teacher support, task orientation, order & organization, and rule clarity indicating a relative preference of these attributes in an ideal classroom environment. the three subscales of competition, teacher control, and innovation indicate a preferred classroom with moderate levels of these components. the analysis of the data based on the participants’ content major and gender did not yield any significant and/or statistical differences. discussion the focus of this exploratory study was to investigate the effect of a 16 week initial field experience, and the school level of the field experience, on secondary pre-service teachers’ perceptual changes of an ideal classroom environment. although relatively consistent throughout their initial field experience, these perceptions, or preferences, focused mainly on attributes that contribute to a classroom environment conducive to academic success. the analysis of the data regarding the three dimensions of the ces for the total participant group indicates that the perceptions of an ideal classroom environment includes preferences for a classroom that supports student involvement, a feeling of friendship between students, and teacher support of students. this finding is similar to allodi’s (2010) study on the climate in educational environments and zedan’s (2010) study on classroom climate. both studies’ results revealed that classroom environments are influenced by relationships among students, the relationships between teachers and students, and a sense of involvement. additionally, completing planned activities, organized and coherent functions in the classroom, and a variety of class activities indicates a reasonable preference of an ideal classroom environment for the participants of this study. the analysis of the data regarding the nine subscales reveals a more in-depth view of the participants’ preferences of an ideal classroom environment. these preferences include classrooms where students participate in classroom activities, have a sense of friendship among class peers, experience teacher support, complete planned activities, maintain a level of order and organization, and have established rules and procedures. one additional finding based on the nine subscales indicates that the participants prefer a classroom with moderate levels of student competition for grades and recognition, teacher control, student contribution in classroom activities, as well as the teacher’s use of new techniques and encouragement of creative thinking. two of these preferences, student competition for grades and recognition along with teacher control, may not necessarily be optimal for student success in the classroom (nichols & zhang, 2011). since these preferences emerged during an initial field experience, intermediate and advanced field experiences may influence these preferences. as kagan (1992) states, field experiences represent an important opportunity for changing pre-service teachers' beliefs that may lead to more effective teaching behavior. however, students’ contributions in classroom activities, and new techniques and encouragement of creative thinking have been reported as classroom components for student success (patrick et al., 2011; meece et al., 2006). as with any research endeavor, the findings of this exploratory study should be considered in light of some limitations. first, the sample size (n = 36) in this study may limit the generalizability of the findings. future research could increase the participant number as a means of presenting a broader view of pre-service teachers’ perceptions of an ideal classroom setting as measured during an initial field experience. second, data was only collected during an initial field experience. although a viable level of field experience to investigate, additional research in this area could follow and collect data as the participants complete intermediate and advanced field experiences. this may provide useful information regarding the effect these levels of field experiences have on pre-service teachers’ changing perceptions, or preferences, of attributes that contribute to a classroom environment conducive to academic success. finally, the initial field experiences that the participants in this study completed did not represent an even distribution among the school settings. this may also limit the generalizability of the findings. future research could focus on just one school level which may provide a more extensive view of pre-service teachers’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment at that particular school level. since research has shown that a positive classroom environment affects students’ academic achievement, the classroom environment is an important issue to focus on during initial, immediate, and advanced levels of field experiences in teacher preparation. in this study, the participants’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment focused primarily on those attributes that contribute to academic success. this suggests that teacher education programs design field experiences that assist prospective teachers’ in establishing classroom environments that positively motivate students’ academic learning. field experiences are a critical component of teacher preparation and can benefit pre-service teachers in multiple ways, including the opportunity to connect the conceptual and theoretical knowledge gleaned from teacher preparation coursework. given the level of the field experience, the focus for the pre-service teacher may vary. however, field experiences must be carefully structured to provide the learning desired and the learning that encompasses all aspects of the professional role (hanline, 2010). secondary pre-service teachers' perceptions of an ideal classroom environment 7 in addition to procedural concerns and routine tasks, field experiences that address aspects of the classroom environment will better prepare prospective teachers for their future classrooms and schools. as fraser and tobin (1991) have found, the environment of the classroom is a teaching construct that consistently influences academic learning. references allodi, m. 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(2001). teacher preparation research: current knowledge, gaps, and recommendations. seattle: center for the study of teaching and policy, university of washington. zedan, r. (2010). new dimensions in the classroom climate. learning environment research, 13, 7588. human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 9 article citation bartelheim, f. j., & conn, d. r. (2014). secondary pre-service teachers' perceptions of an ideal classroom environment. current issues in education, 17(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1267 author notes frederick j. bartelheim university of northern colorado school of teacher education mckee 284 greeley, colorado 80639 frederick.bartelheim@unco.edu frederick j. bartelheim is a professor in educational foundations and curriculum studies in the school of teacher education at the university of northern colorado. he is the coordinator of the masters of arts in teaching: curriculum studies program. his research interests include teacher preparation, educational foundations, curriculum, and web-based teaching. daniel r. conn university of northern colorado school of teacher education mckee 216 greeley, colorado 80639 conn0906@bears.unco.edu daniel r. conn is a doctoral student in the school of teacher education at the university of northern colorado, pursuing his ed. d. in educational studies: curriculum, innovations, and education reform. his research interests include teacher preparation, curriculum, rural education, and web-based teaching. manuscript received: 07/19/2013 revisions received: 05/07/2014 accepted: 05/07/2014 mailto:frederick.bartelheim@unco.edu mailto:conn0906@bears.unco.edu current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 10 volume 17, number 3 november 23, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell authentications editors lisa marie lacy tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson tray j. geiger section editors rikkilynn archibeque tray j. geiger niels piepgrass evelyn concepcion baca darlene michelle gonzales kevin j. raso isaac lamont bickmore megan hoelting faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1052_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 11, 2013 issn 1099-839x criterion-referenced exit examinations: an institution’s internal process for psychometric analysis cristian lieneck, eileen morrison, and larry r. price texas state university-san marcos the texas state university-san marcos undergraduate healthcare administration program requires all bachelors of health administration (bha) students to pass a comprehensive examination to demonstrate their knowledge of specific core competencies. this also demonstrates completion of their didactic coursework in order to enter a practical internship or residency experience. since this examination provided important documentation of student learning, the program conducted a detailed psychometric analysis of its three most recent undergraduate comprehensive exit examinations. in order to determine the value of this examination psychometrically, an evaluation of item validity evidence, between-exam reliability, and related assessment of descriptive statistics with regard to overall exam results and individual healthcare administration competency outcomes was necessary. using classical test theory (ctt) as a methodological framework, the psychometric analysis involved calculating item-level indices that assessed descriptive, validity, difficulty, and discrimination characteristics. this allowed the program’s faculty to better interpret student exam outcomes at the overall exam and within-exam competency levels. additionally, this analysis provided an evaluation of the score reliability of the three alternate exam forms, as well as withinexam healthcare administration competency items, furthering the program’s comprehensive exit exam test development process. the outcomes of the analysis included an increased awareness of potential non-equivalent test forms for the total exam and within each exam (competency) level, increased level of interpretation the descriptive results for each exam, and the establishment of a more robust test development process to guide future comprehensive examination efforts. keywords: healthcare administration, alternate form reliability, comprehensive exit examination, test psychometric analysis. the impetus for this article resulted from the collaboration of university faculty interested in conducting a criterion-referenced exit exam for the bha undergraduate program of study, located in the school of health administration at texas state university. these faculty members initially did not have sufficient experience in conducting the sophisticated psychometric analyses necessary to evaluate exam outcomes. often, exam outcomes of this type are sent to a third party statistical analysis firm for ensuring that an exam exhibits adequate evidence of score reliability and validity. however, because of increased budget constraints and the requirement for university programs to further understand their exam quality, the school of health administration conducted an internal psychometric evaluation of their exam examinations. the findings of this study provided guidance for the school of health administration specific to future steps to ensure successful comprehensive exit current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 examinations in their undergraduate healthcare administration program. the psychometric process was conducted using classical test theory (ctt); a psychometric test theory that can be utilized for any field of study. the study’s limitations, while thoroughly addressed in the results section, primarily highlight the impact of small sample size on the integrity of psychometric analyses. to this end, exam descriptive statistics are analyzed, while further psychometric analyses serve as a demonstration of the process of item level analyses conducted on the program’s comprehensive exit exam. literature review healthcare administration competency the field of healthcare administration possesses several types of competencies required of healthcare administrators (calhoun, davidson, sinioris, vincent, & griffith, 2002; calhoun et al., 2004; healthcare leadership alliance, 2005; maurer & grazier, 2001; national center for healthcare leadership, 2010; robbins, bradley, & spicer, 2001; stefl, 2008). additionally, the wide range of careers available for healthcare administrators, as well as extensive range of competency domains in healthcare administration led to numerous certifying bodies and related assessments. these evaluations methods assess the competency of their respective membership and often grant fellowship, or other credentialed status upon completion of a specialized examination or similar assessment instrument (american college of healthcare executives, 2011; american college of medical practice executives, 2011; healthcare financial management association, 2011). these certifying bodies often describe the successful completion of their competency assessment process as “board certification,” thus allowing potential healthcare administrators who have demonstrated a specific level of competency the privilege of calling themselves, “board certified” in their respective association’s area of specialization. the history of “board certification” in health care the concept of board certification has primarily surrounded the field of medicine and allied health professions. medical doctors, doctors of osteopathic medicine, specialty physicians, pharmacists, nursing, as well as many other clinical professions offer board certification examinations in order to discriminate among those candidates who have met a specific level of competency related to their field, and those who have not. furthermore, the board certification examination certifies that an individual has successfully completed a course of study and possesses the required knowledge and skills for that specialty (american board of medical specialties public education program, 2011). the method to establish one’s ability to master a specific level of competency is usually applied through the use of a certifying examination, which may include a written and/or practical examination, depending on the course of study. for all board certification assessments, including those previously mentioned for the field of healthcare administration, a similar concept exists: the instruments are utilized to effectively discriminate among applicants who do possess a minimum level of competency in the field, against those who do not. the criterion-referenced exam and confirmation of minimal competency levels cohen and swerdlik (1999) and ebel and frisbie (1991) define a criterion-referenced examination as one that effectively describes the behavior expected of an individual, or their relationship to a specific subject matter. additionally, the passing of a criterion-referenced examination is often necessary prior to furthering the student learning experience through a practical learning context (ebel & frisbie, 1991). because of this, the course of study subject matter is used to determine evaluation criteria. in addition, those individuals who become “board certified” must achieve a score that is representative of a particular level of mastery on a criterion-referenced examination (i.e., a “cutoff score”) (ebel & frisbie, 1991, pp. 37-38), thus demonstrating their knowledge of the specified material. for healthcare administration education, undergraduate programs may require a comprehensive exit examination at the end of students’ didactic study to objectively confirm students’ retention of a minimal level of knowledge prior to entry into their internship/residency fieldwork experience, or prior to graduation. as a result, a key objective for this examination is to evaluate students’ overall competency in the field of healthcare administration. in addition, criterion-referenced examinations also evaluate specific individual healthcare administration competencies. to this end, the examinations are also expected to reflect evidence of content, construct, and rational validity (american educational research association, american psychological association, national council on measurement in education, 1999). in the context of the program evaluation presented here, exam items were developed in consideration of establishing evidence of intrinsic rational validity (ebel & frisbie, 1991) based on healthcare content domains identified by faculty and course objectives designed to measure the content for each course. the underlying concept of the exam was to affirm that students retained the basic concepts of each course prior to the beginning of their external residency experience. therefore, this program’s exit exam closely resembles the characteristics of the previously described board exam. interpretation of the results for a criterionreferenced examination differs from the routine, in-class examination. for a criterion-referenced comprehensive exam in healthcare administration, it is expected that the criterion-referenced exit examinations: an institution’s internal process for psychometric analysis 3 students have already mastered the content on the exam if they have successfully passed these required courses leading up to the exam itself. this posits the assumption that the students are able to successfully demonstrate their knowledge of each course (or overall competency) by performing well on all sections on the exam that correspond with their previous classes. the verification of overall knowledge in each criterion-referenced section of the exam is necessary to ensure students are prepared to exit the classroom setting and enter their practical fieldwork experiences with adequate competency in each domain of healthcare administration. since all exam items should link to the subject matter and specific course objectives, scores on the instrument should technically produce low levels of discrimination among higher and lower scoring students, as they are expected to have retained a minimum level of knowledge for each competency present on the exam. in other words, students are expected to do well on the comprehensive exit examination if they retained a minimum level of knowledge from their course of study, yet still have the potential to score poorly on the exam if they did not retain a minimal level of knowledge from their undergraduate experience. this objective measure ensures that students are not entering their practical fieldwork experiences without first demonstrating a minimal knowledge level of healthcare administration competencies set forth by the school of health administration. other reasons for an undergraduate comprehensive exit exam while there is a strong requirement for healthcare administration undergraduate students to be highly knowledgeable in the prescribed healthcare administration core competencies upon completion of their studies, previous research suggests that a minimum level of competency is not completely established prior to fieldwork and/or practical experience (hartman & crow, 2002; helfand, cherlin, & bradley, 2005; hudak, brooke, & finstuen, 2000; mecklenburg, 2001; pointer, luke, & brown, 1986; schneller, 1997; white & begun, 2006). additionally, educational accreditation bodies require empirical evidence demonstrating not only that the undergraduate curriculum encompass specific healthcare administration core competencies, but also that it demonstrates the mastery of competencies at the individual student level (association for university programs in health administration, 2011). while the course of study in a healthcare administration program may provide learning in the necessary core competencies, the use of a comprehensive exit exam empirically demonstrates overall competency in healthcare administration by evaluating each individual’s competency in core areas, well as his or her overall competency in healthcare administration prior to program completion. assessment of an undergraduate comprehensive exit exam at texas state history and development of alternate exam forms the use of a comprehensive exit examination at the texas state school of health administration’s undergraduate program has been a form of competency assessment for many years. successful completion of this examination is required before the students begin their residency program. the intent of this requirement relates to quality assurance. the school wants to assure preceptors and future employers that the students who graduate from the program exhibit evidence of cognitive or knowledge-based competencies related to their degree. in addition, faculty members can use the student results on their section of the examination to affirm that their course content is correctly specified according to course objectives and test specifications. during a recent review of the exam process, a decision was made to increase faculty involvement in question development and to link the examination closer to terminal objectives for each course (course objectives). a process was developed to facilitate this decision. the first part of this process was to establish a cutoff score that represented a pass or fail status for the exam. the angoff method, which is often utilized for certification and licensing exams, was implemented by subject matter experts (program faculty) conducting a review of each test item and evaluated the likelihood that a minimally competent student would respond to each item correctly (zieky, 2008). implementing this method, as well as the standard criteria used to delineate passing versus failing courses in the healthcare administration major, resulted with an acceptable cutoff score to be set at 70%. therefore, students who met this overall exam result requirement successfully passed the examination. additionally, there was no ranking of students by exam score for this examination because its goal is not to discriminate between the highest performing students and the lowest performing students. similar to professional board exams, this examination’s purpose is to measure or verify basic competency in the associated field of study, therefore allowing for mutually exclusive, dichotomous groups to be established upon completion of the exam: pass and fail. next, the length and scope of the exam was assessed. after a careful review of the time allotted to take the exam, as well as student performance variables and logistics, the length of the exam was established at 200 questions (items). the scope of the exam involved (a) consideration of the 16 courses included in the core curriculum of the undergraduate program and (b) the need for all courses to be equally represented. therefore, each course contributed 12 questions to the overall examination, (16 healthcare administration courses x 12 questions per course = 192 questions) with the remaining eight questions covering areas of common knowledge and current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 professionalism. these final eight questions also serve as potential test (experimental) items for future exams, as well as questions directly related to previous semester events applicable to all students such as guest lectures, student healthcare administration organizational events, and/or other important current events. the test development coordinator (internal to the department) requested multiple-choice format examination questions from each primary faculty member for all of the 16 courses in the bha curriculum. the faculty member designed his or her questions to measure content specified on the course syllabi through specified terminal course objectives. multiple-choice questions were the only item format to be constructed by the individual faculty members; haladyna (2004) item creation and form guidelines served as a standard reference for all faculty. faculty submitted their questions to the test development coordinator who assembled the questions into a test format, which included attention to stem and foil integrity, specific wording, answer sequence, and duplication (haladyna, 2004). after specific item-level adjustments to address overall exam flow and formatting, the test coordinator asked each faculty member to review his or her questions for both accuracy and design. the test coordinator used this process to (a) link the content of the exam with the concepts and details provided in the curriculum and (b) to provide the opportunity for establishing content validity evidence by expert review (aera/apa/ncma, 1999). the school of health administration conducted its undergraduate exit exams at the end of the fall and spring semesters. due to the frequency of these examinations as well as test security purposes, there was a need to develop a minimum of three exit examinations. the process for developing these examinations was the same for each examination. this process provided a stable methodology for test construction since each test involved the same faculty members, course objectives, and review process. methodology the test development process and psychometric analysis as previously noted by calhoun et al. (2002) solid preparation and establishment of psychometric protocols in art of measurement and the science of testing is important to quality test development. initially, the school of health administration lacked these sophisticated psychometric protocols. therefore, program faculty members decided to conduct an internal review of the psychometric properties of the tests after administration of the three comprehensive exit examinations. the rational for waiting until there were three tests was to verify that the test development process yielded multiple forms of a test that produced scores that meet the requirements of equivalence. this was a complex task. specifically, the process involved ensuring that tests were targeted to produce equivalent scores, were constructed to the same explicit content and statistical specifications, and were administered under identical conditions (aera/apa/ncme, 1999). for example, content experts must (a) work diligently to ensure that test items reflect the overall universe or domain of all possible items that a test could be composed of; and, (b) that items are constructed in light of the goals and objectives for the courses comprising the curriculum. once the issues of content and statistical specification are delineated, scores on parallel forms of a test can be psychometrically evaluated for their equivalence in terms of (a) item-level and total score descriptive statistics, (b) score reliability for the total test, and (c) score validity at the level of the item and the total test. the aforementioned steps are conducted with regard to individual student healthcare administration competency levels. since the school of health administration recently established three new alternate forms of the exit examination, a test development process similar to the guidelines offered above was conducted. once test scores were obtained from the pilot sample of examinees, psychometric analyses were performed on each comprehensive exit exam to assess score equivalence for the three forms of the test. the test development process item-level analyses are essential to understanding how scores obtained from examinees on test items are functioning in relation to the goals of the test. as previously mentioned, the case study presented herein is based on classical test theory (ctt) (crocker & algina, 1986). a shortcoming of classical test theory is that test and item-level statistics are sample dependent. because ctt-based statistics are sample dependent, aligning scores on different test forms is difficult, if not impossible. thus, the sample-dependency issue was identified as a major problem for the program. cohen and swerdlik (1999) and schmeiser and welch (2006) suggest the following steps in the test development process: • test conceptualization; • test construction; • test tryout; • test analysis; • test revision. focusing on principles of quality assurance and improvement, this process contains a feedback loop which allows for test revision after analysis of data, including descriptive and psychometric exam statistics, followed by subsequent test tryouts over future testing periods. after development of three semesters of exit examinations (fall 2009, spring 2010, and fall 2010 semesters), and considering the process used to develop alternate forms of the examination, it can reasonably be concluded that the criterion-referenced exit examinations: an institution’s internal process for psychometric analysis 5 department has successfully engaged in the first three steps of the test development process. in order to understand each exam’s characteristics and level of competency measurement in healthcare administration, a more complete review of the examination, including descriptive statistics and specific psychometric analyses was necessary. this analysis can direct the future test revision processes within the department. psychometric analysis the data collection and/or tryout sample acquisition process involved gaining access to each semester’s exit exam raw data. the test development coordinator provided the university’s testing center with the key, student examinations, and any other required information. all three comprehensive exit exams items consisted of a multiple choice format and were administered using scantron forms. all of the raw data was made available in electronic format (ms excel) by the university’s testing center. the test development coordinator used this information to determine which students passed the exit examination and informed students individually of their results. confidentiality was maintained throughout the score reporting process. the testing center provided a number of assessments for each examination, including some descriptive, item, and test-level psychometric statistics, as well as returning each exam’s raw data file to the test coordinator. it was from these initial raw data files that additional item-level psychometric indices were calculated using ms excel to establish item-level difficulty and discrimination characteristics. a brief summary of each psychometric statistic calculated for each exam form is listed below. 1. kuder-richardson formula 20 (kr-20 statistic) – an evaluation of internal reliability for measurements with dichotomous results (correct answer, incorrect answer on item-level responses). a kr-20 coefficient > 0.90 indicates an internally consistent test structure (kuder & richardson, 1937; crocker & algina, 1986). statistical package for the social sciences (spss) was used to calculate the statistic. 2. item-difficulty index (p) – an item-level analysis that describes the proportion of test takers that scored an individual item correctly (ebel & frisbie, 1991; nunnally & bernstein, 1994). directionality assessment: high values (0.5 to 1.0) indicate an item that most of the students scored correctly. low values (0.0 to 0.49) indicate an item that most of the students scored incorrectly. formula: p = (# of subjects scoring the item correctly) / (# of subjects taking the exam) 3. item-discrimination index (d) – an item-level analysis that compares the performance on an item with the upper and lower regions of the continuous overall exam scores (ebel & frisbie, 1991; cohen & swerdlik, 1999). directionality assessment: negative discrimination indices indicate an item with a stem or foil problem and require immediate revision or omission altogether. formula: d = pu – pl, • where pu = proportion of the upper 25% who answered the item correctly; • p1 = proportion of the lower 25% who answered the item incorrectly. 4. point-biserial correlation coefficient (rpbi) – an additional method for evaluating discrimination among items and how they separate better performing students on each section of the exam with the lower performing students in that same section of the exam (crocker & algina, 1986; ebel & frisbie, 1991). directionality assessment: the higher the rpbi correlation, the better the item is at discriminating among examinees. formula: rpbi = mp – mq / st (√pq) • where mp = the whole-section mean (12 questions) for students answering the item correctly, mq = the whole-section mean (same 12 questions) for students answering the item incorrectly; • st = standard deviation for the same 12 question section; • p = proportion of students answering correctly; • q = proportion of students answering incorrectly. results limitations there are several limitations relevant to current study. these limitations are highlighted to provide guidance for future work in the area of examination development and validation for health care administration programs. the first limitation is the composition and size of the sample used for tryout analyses. as with any quantitative study, sample size is critical to ensure accurate estimation of score reliability of the instrument. the sample used herein served as a working example in order to establish future department-level psychometric protocols. to this end, improving the psychometric processes employed in the school of health administration addresses the important goal of furthering the program’s quality assurance initiative and evaluation current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 of student healthcare administration competencies before the fieldwork experience (internship/residency in healthcare administration). with the progression of each future spring and fall semester, additional subjects and their related scores will be continuously evaluated and thus increase overall sample size for the established process. for reasons previously mentioned, an in-house process to evaluate the exam was necessary and the faculty employed principles based on classical test theory (ctt), understanding that sample size will grow with future student matriculation, yet also utilizing caution when interpreting and inferring item-level psychometric indices upon such an initial, small sample. the second issue concerns the suggestion or recommendation for using items interchangeably across test forms when the item statistics are clearly sample dependent. in this study each sample item-response pool (semester) provided less than 30 subjects; a number representing the number of alternate forms evaluated between semesters. therefore any psychometric statistics were calculated and based (interpreted) on the sample size from which they originated. with limited and varying sample pools between semesters, it is important to note the limitation and interpret these indices with caution also, until future semesters progress through the exam process and further increase overall sample size. once an adequate sample size is available, the program should employ item response theory (irt) (deayala, 2009) to calibrate all items in the pool onto the same metric. in this way, parallel forms of the test will be easily assembled for future use. a third concern relates to the validity (kane, 2006) of the examinations used by the school of health administration. due to sample size constraints, evaluation of construct validity using confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) (brown, 2006) was not possible. programs should plan on conducting cfa to provide evidence of construct validity of their exams once an appropriate sample size is achieved. descriptive analysis initial analysis of each comprehensive exit exam began with the descriptive results. these values, calculated using the raw data from each exam, provide an initial, broad review of the exam results. the descriptive statistics shown in table 1 were used for initial interpretation of exam results. table 1 healthcare administration exit exam descriptive statistics by semester semester mean standard min max median deviation fall 2009 75.3 6.51 64.5 91 74.3 n=22 spring 2010 69.1 7.30 58.0 81 69.3 n=14 fall 2010 76.2 4.24 68.5 83.5 76 n=19 notes: total n=55. criterion-referenced exit examinations: an institution’s internal process for psychometric analysis 7 table 2 item-level difficulty and discrimination indices for each healthcare administration exit exam (single course) course name item number difficulty index (p) discrimination index (d) fall 2009 spring 2010 fall 2010 fall 2009 spring 2010 fall 2010 n=22 n=14 n=19 n=22 n=14 n=19 healthcare organization and delivery 1 0.09 1.00 0.89 0.16 0.00 0.40 2 0.95 0.92 0.94 0.00 -0.25 0.00 3 0.09 0.50 0.89 0.16 0.25 0.20 4 0.50 0.92 0.05 0.50 -0.25 0.00 5 0.72 0.42 1.00 0.83 0.75 0.00 6 0.86 0.28 1.00 0.16 0.50 0.00 7 0.54 0.35 0.52 0.66 -0.75 0.80 8 0.95 1.00 0.73 0.00 0.00 0.40 9 0.77 0.78 0.89 0.33 0.50 0.20 10 0.50 0.28 0.94 0.50 1.00 0.20 11 0.41 0.78 0.36 0.33 0.25 0.80 12 0.86 0.92 0.94 0.00 0.25 0.00 demonstration of a single course’s difficulty and discrimination indices at the item-level to allow for both horizontal and vertical analyses. central tendency was evaluated by comparing the total mean score for each semester. two semesters’ total exam means were very close in average score (the fall 2009 and fall 2010 semesters) while the spring 2010 semester’s total mean fell below the “c” letter grade level (i.e., a score of 70). while variability was quite similar among exams, with the fall 2010 semester exam possessing the lowest variance (4.24) and the spring 2010 semester exam having the largest variance (7.30), further descriptive analysis demonstrates overall variability among exam forms. for example, while the range of total scores within each semester showed low variance, the spring 2010 semester’s minimum score fell within the “f” letter grade range and the other two semesters’ minimum scores fell within the “d” letter grade range. similar variability exists with regard to maximum and median scores for each semester. initial observation of the overall results by semester may suggest that either the spring 2010 students were not as competent in the healthcare administration criterion-referenced material, or the exam that semester was more difficult. but, this conclusion cannot immediately be made based upon the overall descriptive statistics for each semester in table 1, especially because each semester’s comprehensive exit exam consisted of different test items and therefore were mutually exclusive. further item-level analysis was required to thoroughly investigate potential differences in student overall score and individual competency levels on each of the three exit exams. psychometric results the kuder-richardson formula for internal consistency was computed for each 200-item exam using spss, as it is analogous to cronbach’s alpha in evaluating internal consistency, except that cronbach’s alpha is not sensitive to continuous variables (cortina, 1993). the dichotomous data (correct versus incorrect student responses for each item) for each exam resulted in kr-20 reliability statistics of 0.83 (fall 2009), 0.84 (spring 2010), and 0.65 (fall 2010). while it is expected for students with a high level of knowledge in the healthcare administration content domain to answer a high number of items correctly on the exam, and students with a low level of knowledge in the content domain to answer a low number of items incorrectly, the statistic did not reach the preferred 0.90 coefficient to demonstrate homogeneous exams (crocker & algina, 1986). however, further evaluation of the kr-20 reliability statistic is recommended for future study. sensitive to item difficulty, range of exam scores, and length of the exam, current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 8 table 3 point-biserial correlation coefficients by semester (single course) course item number point-biserial coefficient (rpbi) fall 2009 spring 2010 fall 2010 n=22 n=14 n=19 healthcare organization and delivery 1 0.273 a 0.491* 2 0.042 -0.326 0.042 3 0.273 0.141 0.347 4 0.384 -0.143 -0.042 5 0.693** 0.543* a 6 0.170 0.535* a 7 0.432* 0.679** 0.608** 8 0.042 a 0.305 9 0.410 0.532 0.204 10 0.320 0.743** 0.436 11 0.296 0.188 0.687** 12 -0.017 0.404 0.042 demonstration of a single course’s point-biserial coefficient index results at the item-level to allow for both horizontal and vertical analyses. a = correlation cannot be computed because one of the variables is a constant. **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level. *. correlation is significant at the 0.05 level. bold items represent an effect size range from 0.30 to 0.60. increased sample size may posit more interpretable kr20 coefficient results (horst, 1953). additional comprehensive results for the study included both descriptive (table 1) and psychometric analyses at both the semester and individual student level (lieneck, 2011). to facilitate interpretation of the itemlevel analyses, comparative data tables were created in order to allow both vertical analyses of each exam’s psychometric statistics, as well as horizontal analysis across semesters. this allowed for evaluation of individual competencies within exams, as well as comparison of competency analysis results across the three alternate forms (semesters). table 2 provides an example of an abbreviated results table. it demonstrates how to format the results of both the difficulty and discrimination indices for a single course (competency) in the healthcare administration program (lieneck, 2011). table 3 demonstrates the format utilized to allow for within exam, as well as across exam investigation into the point-biserial correlation coefficient results (lieneck, 2011). analysis of psychometric results calculation of psychometric statistics at the item-level creates an abundance of data relevant to effective interpretation of results. therefore, data summary tables may be created to easily interpret results at a comparative level. one approach to creating a smaller, summary table of psychometric results is to display frequencies of items not meeting specific criteria by healthcare administration competency. this step allows for immediate identification of exam items that require additional review. several psychometric index characteristics (provided in the next section) provide metrics for further interpretation of exam items, student scores specific to each item, thereby informing the test development process regarding potential item revisions and/or omissions. negative discrimination indices schmeiser and welch (2006) and cohen and swerdlik (1999) define an effectively discriminating item as one that most of the high scorers answer correctly and the low scorers answer incorrectly. in theory, this allows criterion-referenced exit examinations: an institution’s internal process for psychometric analysis 9 for effective discrimination at the item level between more competent students and less competent students. therefore, a negative d index value identifies an extremely poor exam item, resulting in the lower scoring group answering the item correctly and the better performing students answering the item incorrectly. this instance, termed a “nightmare” by cohen and swerdlik (1999, p. 207) could be a result of several issues, including the possibility of a confusing or poorly worded item stem and/or item distracters (also known as foils). immediate identification, revision, and/or item omission is required. table 2 demonstrates three negative discrimination indices, all falling within the spring 2010 exam. individual, item-level analysis of these three items is required by the test coordinator. furthermore, as sample size continues to increase, a more detailed examination of student responses for items with negative discrimination indices may provide further insight into their occurrence. as a criterion-referenced comprehensive mastery exam in healthcare administration, it is expected that the students have already mastered the content on the exam and are therefore able to successfully demonstrate their knowledge of each course (overall competency) by performing well on all sections on the exam, for both upper and lower performing groups. this verification of overall knowledge in each criterion-referenced section of the exam (course level) is necessary to ensure the students are prepared to exit the academia setting and enter their practical fieldwork experiences with a strong level of competency in healthcare administration. therefore, low discrimination indices are expected to occur on this type of criterion-referenced examination, with the lower scoring group answering several items correctly, as did the upper scoring group. low difficulty indices as a criterion-referenced comprehensive exit exam, the overall goal is not to perfectly discriminate the student population, or otherwise maximize the variance of scores (crocker & algina, 1986). if this were the case, then the exam would successfully result in an estimated number of students failing the exam on a regular basis, based on the prescribed level of overall item difficulty for each exam. instead, this program’s comprehensive exit exam was established to verify the retention of healthcare administration competency knowledge prior to the field experience. therefore, it is an assumption that if each student has established a specific level of competency in each competency assessed, low difficulty indices should not occur. if low difficulty indices result, several variables exist that can be evaluated to address the items with poor difficulty indices (crocker & algina, 1986): • potential instructional effectiveness on this healthcare administration competency item may be inadequate at the instructor and/or program level. • item specification may be inadequate at either the stem and/or foil level. • other potential confounders may exist that have yet to be determined, based upon specific circumstances and individual analysis of each item with a low difficulty index (other unknown reasons not mentioned above). at the school of health administration, difficulty index results were also provided from the texas state university testing center and form the basis for a test review and question revision. there was a review of questions missed by 50% or more of the students each semester (d values < 0.50) and these questions were changed or replaced by the faculty members who initially wrote them. table 2 demonstrates nine difficulty indices falling below the 0.50 difficulty cutoff score (fall 2009 exam=3; spring 2010 exam=4; fall 2010 exam=2). as each exam was completed, there was a repetition of this process. the intent of this repetition was to improve reliability and validity of the examinations. continued matriculation of students will further enable the study to approach an adequate sample size, allowing for further investigation into suspect items with difficulty indices < 0.50 by analyzing the percentage of students who chose each response option. the test development coordinator also gave faculty members feedback on the results of their individual section on the examinations. this provided them with information to review their course objectives, teaching styles, classroom testing, and other areas that affect retention of information. using this technique, an understanding of the results of individual course sections on the exit exam can improve teaching and content retention in the curriculum. lessons learned implications with non-parallel, alternate forms and sample characteristics when non-parallel alternate forms are found to exist, it is inappropriate to assume equivalency of descriptive statistics (example: means, medians, and standard deviations) across exam versions. as a result, an individual’s overall score of 70% on the program’s comprehensive examination cannot be accurately compared to another individual’s overall score of 70%, when both subjects took different versions of the exam with varying psychometric analysis results. additionally, sample size and homogeneity were limiting factors specific to the psychometric quality of the scores acquired on the test forms. both item difficulty and item discrimination values must be taken into consideration before concluding that one student’s score (or a group of students’ mean score) describes a specific level of healthcare administrative competency when compared to another student’s (or group of students’) overall score when alternate forms exist. based on these evaluations, methods to verify score equivalence using the psychometric results of the scores acquired from examinees taking the exams be used by following current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 10 aera/apa/ncme (1999) and cohen and swerdlick (1999) test development process. therefore, by offering a comprehensive exit examination to assess competency in healthcare administration prior to students entering their fieldwork experience, the undergraduate program possesses a duty to understand the descriptive and psychometric statistical properties of each form and assure equivalence. development of an item pool for constructing parallel test forms the final step of cohen’s test development process is to revise suspect items on the exam after psychometric analysis and enter a continuous feedback loop to reconstruct, tryout, and then analyze results after administration of each exam. items may also be interchanged by using an item pool that contains questions with similar psychometric characteristics (schmeiser & welch, 2006). therefore, item specification characteristics are calculated (as described by the psychometric indices) and each exam should possess items that can be used interchangeably, based upon their specific psychometric characteristics. ultimately, this process will continue to improve and refine the creation of parallel (i.e. alternate) exam forms, specifically with regard to item difficulty and discrimination (crocker & algina, 1986). using the test development process outlined by cohen and swerdlik (1999) and crocker and algina (1986), as well as quantitative item analysis tools to investigate equivalency of alternate forms as discussed in anastasi and urbina (1997), the program’s exam forms may be revised or substituted (at the item level) to possess similar difficulty and discrimination results, therefore establishing optimal reliability among forms. since most students from the healthcare administration program for the current study usually only take the exam once, the single test administration method of assessing reliability among several versions of exams is necessary, with an overall goal of establishing internal consistency across each alternate form (crocker & algina, 1986). this is done by calculating difficulty index composite scores for each section (or competency tested) within each exam, therefore assessing the average level of difficulty for each section (competency) across multiple forms (cohen & swerdlik, 1999). similar reliability assessments and composite scores may be completed for discrimination indices (cohen & swerdlik, 1999). based on the psychometric analysis results for each exam, those items not meeting specific criteria can then be either revised or omitted from the exam altogether (cohen & swerdlik, 1999). revision may entail rewording a single distracter of a specific item, to rewording or replacement of the entire item stem (cohen & swerdlik, 1999). item-level revision allows for those items not meeting specific psychometric properties to be addressed. once completed, the newly revised forms can then be entered back into the test development process for new students taking the comprehensive exit exam. furthermore, this continuous process (test tryout, analysis, revision, back to test tryout, etc.) will eventually allow for cross-validation to occur, establishing reliability from a new sample of test subjects with which new psychometric findings for each sample can be compared (cohen & swerdlik, 1999). when alternate forms of the healthcare administration comprehensive exit exam exist with equivalent reliability, only then can descriptive statistics be examined across multiple semesters. based on the results of this study, the school of health administration has already begun the continuous process of test tryout, analysis, revision, and test tryout to improve reliability. exam construct validity for continued item and competency refinement in addition to furthering the premise of establishing equivalent forms, construct validation is then required in order to assess each exam form and the extent to which it measures specific theoretical constructs, or competencies, in healthcare administration. cohen and swerdlik (1999, p. 197) further defined a construct as, “…unobservable, presupposed traits that a test developer may invoke to describe test behavior or criterion performance.” in other words, each form should be evaluated to determine if it is measuring what it is intended to measure (cohen & swerdlik, 1999), in this case specific healthcare administration competencies. if the test serves as a valid method of evaluating the constructs (competencies) related to healthcare administration, those individuals who pass the exam will have the knowledge level as predicted. therefore, one can assume that they possess the specific level of knowledge in healthcare administration necessary for them to matriculate from the classroom learning environment to the practical fieldwork experience. the intended goal for the school of health administration was to establish multiple equivalent forms that assess the same competencies in healthcare administration, as well as similar levels of assessment for each individual competency evaluated. due to the current study’s sample size limitation, the validity estimates are not possible because the low statistical power disallows inferential analyses (crocker & algina, 1986). in the meantime, the program will continue to establish validity of the examinations by ensuring that all items are directly related to each course’s learning objectives, as well as expert review by faculty members. in order to further the rigor of psychometric analysis and obtain both convergent and discriminant evidence, an identification of constructs present within each comprehensive exit examination is required. once sufficient data is collected for each alternate form, factor analysis may be utilized to further assess validity. factor analysis is an appropriate method of identifying these criterion-referenced exit examinations: an institution’s internal process for psychometric analysis 11 latent constructs, therefore evaluating the interrelationships of behavioral data (anastasi & urbina, 1997). the factors, or common traits identified within each exam can then be assessed among exams to establish content validity and increased equivalency (anastasi & urbina, 1997). each factor is identified and the weight or loading of each factor assesses the contribution of that underlying concept towards the overall test. cohen and swerdlik (1999) describe the factor analysis procedure as highly complex and recommend a computer program to assist with construct identification. as an ongoing task, the assessment and refinement of each comprehensive exit exam will improve upon criterion-related validity as sample size increases. to this end, it will allow a healthcare administration program to effectively judge the utility of the exam regarding the assessment of each student’s ability on the criterion-referenced measures (cohen & swerdlik, 1999), in this case competency in healthcare administration. conclusion the requirement for undergraduate healthcare administration students to successfully complete a criterion-referenced exit examination is one part of a process that does not end after creation of the initial exam. the feedback loop of cohen and swerdlik’s (1999) test development process illustrates the critical steps necessary to create alternate exam forms that exhibit adequate validity and reliability evidence for each examination so descriptive exam results may be interpreted 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(2013). criterion-referenced exit examinations: an institution’s internal process for psychometric analysis. current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1052 author notes cristian lieneck, phd, facmpe, fache, fahm texas state university-san marcos 601 university drive, room 250a, office #272 san marcos, texas 78666 clieneck@txstate.edu dr. lieneck has over 10 years of experience in the field of healthcare administration with a focus in medical group practice management. initially entering the field as a medical service corps officer in the united states army, dr. lieneck led a medical clinic and evacuation platoon in an armored cavalry unit. as a captain, he served as an executive officer and company commander, managing four dental practices and one hospital-based oral surgery clinic. as a civilian, dr. lieneck held positions of leadership in organizations such as the texas medicaid-waiver program (texas dads), austin radiological association (ara), as well as serving as the medical group practice administrator of an austin-based physiatry and pain medicine group practice, consisting of multiple locations and an outpatient procedure suite in central texas. dr. lieneck is a fellow and board certified in medical group practice management by the american college of medical practice executives (acmpe), the credentialing body of the medical group management association (mgma). he is also a fellow and board certified in healthcare management by the american college of healthcare executives (ache), and a fellow in the academy of healthcare management (ahm). eileen morrison, edd, mph, ches, lpc texas state university-san marcos 601 university drive, room 250a, office #268 san marcos, texas 78666 emorrison@txstate.edu dr. morrison has her edd in counseling & administration from vanderbilt university and her mph from the university of tennessee. prior to joining the texas state university faculty 2004, dr. morrison had extensive experience in curriculum design, course development, and teaching in graduate programs in health administration. she also holds several licenses that include dental hygiene, licensed professional counselor, and certified health education specialist. her health administration experience involves positions in corporate and public health. dr morrison has served as a consultant to the u.s. department of justice, the united states public health service, head start, and the united states army. she also writes in the field of health administration and education and including two textbooks on ethics published by jones and bartlett. a new book on health care ethics issues is under contract. larry r. price, phd texas state university-san marcos 601 university drive, asbs #325 san marcos, texas 78666 lp11@txstate.edu dr. larry price is professor of psychometrics & statistics and director of the interdisciplinary initiative for research design and analysis at texas state university. prior coming to texas state university, he served as a senior psychometrician and statistician for the emory university school medicine, departments of psychiatry & behavioral sciences. dr. price was employed at the psychological corporation in san antonio as a senior psychometrician during 1999-2002. he is a fellow of the american psychological association, division 5 – evaluation, measurement & statistics, and a member of the american statistical association, the psychometric society, the american educational research association and the american mathematical society. he has published extensively with over 90 peer-reviewed articles, presentations, books and book chapters in journals and books such as: structural equation modeling, journal of educational & behavioral statistics, psychological assessment, psychological methods, elementary school journal, journal of experimental education, and the journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology and the oxford handbook of quantitative methods. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 14 manuscript received: 08/13/2012 revisions received: 03/30/2013 accepted: 04/26/2013 criterion-referenced exit examinations: an institution’s internal process for psychometric analysis 15 volume 16, number 2 august 11, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume pre-s citation hodge, a te abstract both tea program classroom been fou discussio teachers their con data show a more re keyword secondar 13, numbe service t a. (2010). pr eachers. cur t cher educato s prepare te m. pre-servi und to influe on and unde by examini ntent area wh w that some eform-orien ds: teaching ry education er 4 teachers’ n re-service tea rent issues i ors and rese achers to tak ice teachers ence their te erstanding of ng the expe hile comple e of the prented stance. g visions, pr n. win changin orient ang north dako achers’ chan in education earchers hav ke on the ro ’ visions of aching. the f how pre-se riences of 1 ting their un service teac re-service te nter 2010 ng vision ted teach gie hodge ota state un nging visions n, 13(4). retr ve been tryin ole of “refor f themselves e purpose of ervice teach 1 pre-servic ndergraduat chers from th acher educa ns of them hers e niversity s of themsel rieved from ng to ensure rm-oriented” s as future cl f this study w hers envision ces teachers te education his cohort sh ation, mathe is mselves a lves as reform http://cie.as e that teache ” teachers u lassroom tea was to furth n themselve s who taught n. interviews hifted their ematics educ sn 1099-83 as reform m-oriented u.edu/ er education upon enterin achers have her the es as future t a course in s and survey visions tow cation, refor 39x mn g the e n y ward rm, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves as reform-oriented teachers the role of pre-service teachers’ visions of themselves as future teachers is a current issue of study by many (hammerness, 2003; shulman & shulman, 2004; urzua & vasquez, 2008; wilke & losh, 2008). shulman and shulman even claim that the vision someone has about his/her future teaching influences his/her teaching practices. hence, we as educators have a responsibility to help pre-service teachers create visions of their future teaching that align with our visions of how we want them to teach in the classroom. currently, the hope that most teacher educators hold is that our pre-service teachers will become reform-oriented rather than traditional teachers. in mathematics, the national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm, 2000) views this as a teacher who engages students in their learning and helps them to discover the knowledge on their own. the traditional teacher, on the other hand, tells students the information acting like the “sage-on-stage.” in this study i examine an atypical teaching experience that afforded one cohort of pre-service secondary mathematics teachers the opportunity to obtain a more reform-oriented vision of themselves as teachers. it should be noted that even though the subjects in this study were studying mathematics, this experience is seen as valuable to all pre-service teachers. reform-oriented teaching although there is some debate on whether reform-oriented teaching is the best method of instruction for all students, the reality is that these are the standards our teachers are being held to in the classroom. therefore, for the purposes of this article, i am using reform-oriented teaching as one goal of teacher education programs. discussing field of education in general, korthagen et al. (2006) writes about how traditional approaches to teaching pre-service teachers are being critiqued and how teachers need pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 3 to do more than learn just theory to become non-traditional (reform-oriented) teachers. this is also true in the field of mathematics where the first standard for the professional development of mathematics teachers found in nctm’s (1991) professional standards for teaching mathematics states within a teacher education program pre-service teachers should “experience good mathematics teaching” (p. 127) in order to learn and understand how they too can teach in reform-oriented ways. by experiencing teaching similar to what is expected of them in their future classrooms, pre-service teachers may develop visions of themselves as non-traditional, reform-oriented, teachers. this notion of good teaching is referred to as reform-oriented teaching in this document. to clarify what was meant by reform-oriented the nctm standard stated: mathematics and mathematics education instructors in pre-service and continuing education programs should model good mathematics teaching by: 1. posing worthwhile mathematical tasks; 2. engaging teachers in mathematical discourse; 3. enhancing mathematical discourse through the use of a variety of tools, including calculators, computers, and physical and pictorial models; 4. creating learning environments that support and encourage mathematical reasoning and teachers’ dispositions and abilities to do mathematics; 5. expecting and encouraging teachers to take intellectual risks in doing mathematics and to work independently and collaboratively; 6. representing mathematics as an ongoing human activity; 7. affirming and supporting full participation and continued study of mathematics by all students. (p. 127) current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 although this list contains aspects of teaching, all of which appear valuable for preservice teachers to experience, more research needs to be implemented related to this conception of reform-oriented teaching and pre-service teacher’s visions of themselves as future teachers. teaching visions it is hoped that if pre-service teachers experience reform-oriented teaching, coursework in a specific content area, and authentic experiences in their undergraduate education they will be able to envision themselves as reform-oriented teachers. hammerness (2003) proposed that “understanding teachers’ vision – teachers’ images of their ideal classroom practices may provide a means for us to better appreciate what decisions teachers make and what experiences they have in their classrooms” (p. 45). the hope is that if they are able to envision themselves as reform-oriented teachers, they will be able to engage in reform-oriented practices in their classrooms. if teachers cannot picture themselves teaching in a particular manner, then it is unlikely they will be able to teach in that manner. as stated in the introduction, shulman and shulman (2004) further claimed that teachers’ visions guide their teaching. preliminary observations of a seminar course, given the pseudonym “teaching seminar,” suggested that particular aspects of the seminar course had the potential to shed light on ways to strengthen the education of pre-service teachers in relation to their visions as future teachers. this seminar course allowed pre-service secondary mathematics teachers an atypical opportunity to each independently teach one section of an undergraduate college algebra class at a midwestern university prior to their student teaching. the material in the college algebra course was secondary level algebra, which provided pre-service teachers with the experience of teaching a complete course containing material similar to what many will teach in the future. pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 5 furthermore, the pre-service teachers were provided with daily opportunities for reflection on this experience. specifically, the pre-service teachers concurrently attended the teaching seminar where they engaged in tri-weekly discussions related to their teaching experiences with their peers and a mathematics faculty member. through a collaborative learning experience, pre-service teachers were provided the opportunity to practice and discuss the teaching of mathematical topics before they were taught, as well as reflect upon their actual teaching experiences in the classroom (hodge, in press). i was interested in finding out how the pre-service teachers’ visions of themselves as future teachers, including the role they see themselves as having in the classroom, would change as a result of this experience. an understanding of how the teaching visions of the pre-service teachers changed after taking the course as they engage in such an activity at the undergraduate level will help both researchers’ teacher educators understand the value of these types of learning experiences. research question the purpose of this study was to further the discussion and understanding of how preservice teachers envision themselves as future teachers. this study was guided by the following research question. how, if at all, did pre-service teachers’ visions of themselves as future teachers change after partaking in a unique experience: teaching their own university class and regularly reflecting upon their teaching? current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 methods participants the pool of participants in this study was a cohort (n = 11) of pre-service secondary mathematics teachers enrolled in the teaching seminar course. all 11 pre-service teachers enrolled in the course agreed to participate in the study. from this cohort of pre-service teachers, 4 participants were selected to serve as focal participants in the research study. these focal participants were selected based upon their gender (2 male and 2 female), as i wanted to have equal representation of males and females. all students were traditional-aged students with similar reported exposure to reform-oriented teaching practices, so these variables were not the focus of the study. rather the practical issue of time was another consideration. i had to select focal students who taught at a time that did not conflict with my own teaching responsibilities. these students gave valuable insights on how their visions as teachers changed from this experience. prior to the first day of the semester, each participant was informed of the research goals aligned with this study. they were told the overall goal of the project was to gain an understanding of the experiences afforded to them in the teaching seminar. although this course focused on the teaching of college algebra, this paper will focus on the visions of the pre-service teachers in general. role of the researcher in order to view the setting in the most natural way possible, i served as an inactive observer (patton, 2002) in the teaching seminar classroom and while conducting teaching observations. i sat in a desk near the back corner of the classroom, and observed the happenings of the classroom in an unobtrusive manner. i attended all but two of the seminar sessions to pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 7 establish my presence in the classroom as familiar to the pre-service teachers. my consistent presence also helped to ensure the data collected reflects the day-to-day interactions of the preservice teachers in the teaching seminar and not occurrences that are out of the ordinary. although i was not an active participant in the teaching seminar, my experiences influenced the lens through which i examined the data. my educational work and experiences prepared me to conduct research on pre-service teachers’ experiences in the seminar course and while they were teaching. my undergraduate education in pre-service secondary mathematics education served as a foundational background for my work with pre-service teachers. by completing the mathematics and mathematics education coursework myself, although not at the same university, i developed my own perceptions on undergraduate teacher education programs. i concur with putman and borko (2000) that teachers should be afforded with more experiences that align with their future teaching. hence, the educational experiences afforded to pre-service teachers in the teaching seminar were of interest to me. at the graduate level, i have built upon this foundation in a variety of ways: (a) obtained my master’s degree in mathematics, (b) completed coursework in the field of education, (c) taught general mathematics courses, (d) taught mathematics content courses to undergraduate pre-service elementary school teachers, and (e) supervised pre-service teachers who were student teaching at both middle and high school levels. these experiences helped to give me expertise in the subject matter area, but some may argue that they biases the way i examined the data. to minimize bias, my thesis director and other members of my dissertation committee checked for an agreement with the results i found from the data. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 data collection data collection included multiple modes of inquiry: (a) preand postcourse questionnaires, (b) preand postcourse interviews with each of the four focal pre-service teachers, and (c) videotapes and field notes from the observed teaching seminar sessions. i administered the surveys, conducted the interviews, and recorded all sessions of the teaching seminar except for one session. the questionnaires were used, in part, to determine how all (n = 11) of the pre-service teachers’ visions of themselves changed from the beginning to the end of the semester. the questionnaires contained nine questions (most with multiple parts) concerning both their role in the classroom while they were teaching and the role of their students in the classroom. sample question: pre: describe what you think your role will be in teaching your section of college algebra; post: describe your role in teaching your section of college algebra. pre-service teachers’ responses were used to guide interviews with the focal participants to probe how the teaching seminar altered their current visions of themselves as teachers. two semi-structured interviews (patton, 2002) were conducted with each of the focal pre-service teachers to gain an understanding of how the seminar supported their visions of their roles as teachers. the initial interviews were conducted during the third and fourth weeks of the teaching seminar, and the final interviews were conducted during the last two weeks. to gauge the evolution of their experiences, responses to the first questionnaire regarding their perceptions of themselves as a teacher were stated, and they were asked to respond to how they felt this has changed throughout the semester. these data allowed for triangulation (patton, 2002) with the observed findings from the teaching seminar related to pre-service teachers’ ways of talking about themselves as teachers. pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 9 the pre-service teachers were each observed at the beginning and end of the semester teaching in their classrooms. they were observed on two consecutive days (50 minute class periods) at each time period. in addition, the pre-service teachers were observed indirectly on a regular basis in the teaching seminar. for the purposes of this study, since it focused on visions, observational data were used for purposes of triangulation rather than to make direct claims about the pre-service teachers. data analysis following standard methods of qualitative (e.g., miles & huberman, 1994; patton, 2002) research, i analyzed and interpreted the data. coding (grounded theory approach), case records, and assertion creation were used in the analysis of this study. coding was completed using both the guidelines for coding given in patton (2002) and details of coding found in miles and huberman (1994). results in making comparisons between the preand postseminar questionnaires, i was interested in examining if there were changes in the roles pre-service teachers envisioned themselves having as teachers in relation to reform versus traditional teaching. to determine this, each description of their roles as teachers provided by the pre-service teachers was coded as reform, traditional, or undecided. reform responses were often characterized by envisioning themselves as a facilitator of information, traditional responses as a “teller” of information, and undecided as hard to infer from the information provided. the following table provides the results: current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 table 1: pre-service teachers’ visions as teachers pre-course response post-course response participant traditional traditional 2 males, 2 females traditional undecided 1 male, 1 female traditional reform 1 female undecided undecided 1 male undecided reform 1 male, 2 females using this coding scheme, 7 of the 11 pre-service teachers’ pre-seminar responses were traditional and 4 of the 11 responses were undecided. there were no original responses that fit under the reform style of teaching. although 4 of the pre-service teachers’ descriptions of themselves as teachers remained traditional, 4 of them provided more reform-oriented responses in the post-seminar questionnaires. the other 3 pre-service teachers provided responses that were difficult to decipher and coded as undecided. below are two of the extreme cases. garrett’s responses illustrate both traditional responses, while mandi’s responses shifted from traditional to a more reform-oriented response. garrett (pre): to relay knowledge to the students, and doing what it takes to accomplish that task. garrett (post): i was a provider of information to the students. i didn't make class fun. i showed them what they need to know. mandi (pre): we have a lot of material and not much time i am forced to be the "sage on the stage." i am the one who has to have knowledge. shows the students how to work the problems. we can't get too in depth. mandi (post): my role…hmmm…i am a facilitator of information. i help students decipher the stuff the book is telling them. pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 11 garrett kept his position as the provider of knowledge, while mandi shifted her description of her role as a teacher from one that tells students what they should know to one that helps students understand mathematics. the statements provided by garrett and mandi were consistent with their classroom teaching. garrett asked students for questions they had on their homework and solved the problems for the students. then he gave examples for students to reference for their next set of homework questions. even though mandi also provided help with homework problems in her classroom, she tried to involve the students in the thinking process and recognized that it was not how she wanted to conduct her future teaching. to illustrate a pre-service teacher whose view shifted from one which was hard to categorize to a more reform-oriented view, consider a few excerpts from lisa’s interviews. pre-seminar interview excerpt: author: so in terms of your teaching, can you describe to me a little more your role as a teacher in that class? lisa: i found that i work good with my students when i’m at more of a friendly level instead of an authority level. author: uh, huh. lisa: because i’m not comfortable just kind of feeling mean [laugh] standing up there. author: uh, huh. lisa: as an authority. i like to hear my students talk back and be comfortable with me, so i think i’m better with that. author: so can you give me an example of some teaching that would be in a friendly level and some that would be in authority level? current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 lisa: well more of a friendly level is just asking them, you know, “how’d you guys do on your test?”, and just caring about them and being open to questions and. author: yeah. lisa: you know, if they ask me questions, as long as it’s not like too unprofessional, you know, i can answer pretty much anything and those sorts of things. more of an authority is just like standing up there saying “do this, listen to me.” author: uh, huh. lisa: you know, “be quiet while i teach,” that sort of thing. author: so it’d be fair to say getting their input on things? lisa: yeah. post-seminar interview: lisa: you don’t just want to memorize something because a couple years from now you might not use it enough and forget it… lisa: you know i get that impression from a lot of students and so when you’re in a high school, you know, they’re there, they wanna, they really want to have fun in a class if they can so i would try to do more like games and things like that in a high school class. i mean obviously, like we talked about before, you have to be careful about when fun can just be in the way. author: uh, huh. lisa: so i mean, i would definitely make it more interactive, more student-centered. author: did you do anything to try to make this class student-centered, you were limited by quite a few factors, but is there anything you did, yourself? pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 13 lisa: um, a lot of times what i just tried to do is ask them “how do i do this problem?,” “how do you start this problem?” author: yeah. lisa: that’s the main thing that i do. and then i did that group thing with the word problems and um, i’m trying to think if i did anything else. just, i’ve never really had them come up to the board except for when they did the group things. in lisa’s pre-seminar interview, she did not give a direct inclination on her stance as either a traditional or reform-oriented teacher. rather lisa discussed her rapport with students in the classroom. in her post-seminar interview, however, lisa used the phrase “student-centered” and discussed how she hoped her students would go beyond memorizing procedures. this shift in her discussion of her teaching may be slight, but it is a step in the direction of envisioning herself as a reform-oriented secondary mathematics teacher. once again, her teaching was consistent with her interview responses. lisa did, in fact, as her students for input on how to solve problems that she worked in class. she recognized that her teaching was not one hundred percent student-centered, but it fit the class she was working with and her comfort zone as a first time teacher. yet she also wanted to continue to make her class more interactive as she grew as a teacher. in general, it is important to note that only 4 pre-service teachers provided traditional responses at the end of the teaching seminar. hence, evidence supports some of the pre-service teachers’ visions of themselves as teachers became more reform-oriented after partaking in the experience of teaching college algebra and discussing this teaching in the teaching seminar. in any case, the teaching seminar provided pre-service teachers with an authentic experience of teaching a mathematics course and reflecting upon it with their peers and an current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 experienced mathematics professor. this experience offered pre-service teachers the opportunity to think about and reflect upon their classroom teaching in ways that went beyond most standard teacher education programs. discussion as stated by shulman and shulman (2004), pre-service teachers’ visions are thought, in part, to guide the style of their future teaching. some of the pre-service teachers’ visions of themselves as teachers changed after completing the teaching seminar, while others did not appear to change. data indicated that the pre-service teachers were showing evidence of reform oriented discussions in the teaching seminar. however, when asked about this in questionnaires, not all of them provided descriptions of themselves falling under the national council of teachers of mathematics’ (2000) classification of reform-oriented teachers. this is not surprising, since many have had a least 13 years of experience as a student where most, if not all, of their teachers taught in a traditional manner as opposed to a reform oriented manner. altering the visions of pre-service teachers is not an easy task with the experiences pre-service teachers bring with them to the classroom (shulman & shulman, 2004). after all, the pre-service teachers selected to be in the teaching seminar were deemed successful at mathematics by the department and were taught the subject using traditional teaching methods. in addition, there was little pressure on the pre-service in the teaching seminar to conform to reform-oriented views of teaching. developing a reform-oriented style of teaching was not an explicit goal of the course. rather, it was me who examined pre-service teachers’ visions to find out if they changed after attending the teaching seminar. nonetheless, after attending the teaching seminar 4 of the 11 pre-service teachers did describe themselves as more reform-oriented teachers of mathematics. at the beginning of the semester, none of the pre-service teachers described themselves as pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 15 reform-oriented teachers. by the end of the semester, some of their descriptions of themselves as teachers had become more reform-oriented or had become descriptions that were not as extreme on the traditional side. both the change and lack of change, exhibited in different pre-service teachers’ visions bring about important questions: (a) what was it about the teaching seminar that impacted some of the pre-service teachers in a way that made them alter their visions of themselves as mathematics teachers?, (b) if the teaching seminar were to have pre-service teachers’ visions become reform-oriented as one of its goals, would the results be different?, and (c) what could be done differently to alter pre-service teachers’ visions of teaching to a more reform-oriented stance? if this study were to be replicated, follow up interviews could be done with the preservice teachers to investigate their perceptions of these questions. in addition to bringing about future questions, i envision general education faculty and content specialists gaining perspectives and ideas from this study to design teaching seminars for different disciplines. the general education faculty and content specialists could collaborate more on the design and goals of this seminar to enhance the outcomes in relation to reformoriented teaching. this does not mean that the seminar has to run differently, but it does mean pre-service teachers’ ideas about their visions of teaching could be challenged in the teaching seminar. the discussion of facilitating discourse is one aspect, for instance, that should be added to the teaching seminar. in addition, pre-service teachers could be encouraged to think outside of their normal domain of teaching and attempt new methods for teaching their students more frequently. these ideas, of course, should be investigated further. it does necessitate additional research to be conducted on the teaching seminar at the researched university, as well as trying to establish and research similar seminars at other schools and in other subject areas. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 references hammerness, k. (2003). learning to hope or hoping to learn, journal of teacher education, 54, 43-56. hodge, a. (in press). the design of a teaching seminar for pre-service secondary mathematics teachers. to appear in primus: problems, resources, and issues in undergraduate mathematics: 2011. korthagen, f., loughran, j., & russell, t. (2006). developing fundamental principles for teacher education programs and practices. teaching and teacher education, 22, 10201041. miles, m. b., & huberman, a. m. (1994). qualitative data analysis: an expanded sourcebook (2nd ed.). newbury park, ca: sage publications. national council of teachers of mathematics (2000). principles and standards for school mathematics. reston, va: author. patton, m. (2002). qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed.). california: sage publications. putnam, r., & borko, h., (2000). what do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teaching and learning? educational researcher, 29(1), 4-15. shulman, l., & shulman, j. (2004). how and what teachers learn: a shifting perspective. journal of curriculum studies, 36, 257-271. urzua, a., & vasquez, c. (2008). reflection and professional identity in teachers’ futureoriented discourse. teaching and teacher education, 24 1935-1946. wilke, r. a., & losh, s. c. (2008). beyond belief: preservice teachers’ planned instructional strategies. action in teacher education, 30 (3), 64-73. pre-service about th author: affiliatio address univers email: a biograp teacher undergr inquirylearning e teachers’ c he author angie hod on: north d s: departme ity, ndsu angela.hod phical infor r education aduate mat -based learn g. changing visio dge dakota stat ents of mat mathemat dge@ndsu. rmation: an n at north d thematics e ning in und ons of themse te universi thematics a tics dept #2 .edu ngie hodge dakota stat education, g dergraduate elves ity and teache 2750, p.o. e is an assi te universi gender equi e mathemat r education box 6050, istant profe ity. her res ity in the s tics classes n, north d , fargo, nd essor of ma earch inter stem disci , and pre-s akota state d 58108-60 athematics rests includ iplines, ervice teac 17 e 050 and de cher current is volume authors articles publishe an kr hilla d ju an h mi ssues in educ e 13, num hold the copy s in other jour er and include ngela abeyta rista adams ary andrelch diana barela ulia boukara ndrew darian aiying dong iriam emran cation vol. 13 curr mber 4 yright to artic rnals should b e the url of t provide a hik n n 3 no. 4 rent issu http:// w cles published be addressed t the cie publi ed cie is cred edit exe lor katy e jeffr sec sar mar me amb seo tiff calv linds fac gusta jean deb ues in e /cie.asu.e winter 2010 d in current is to the author. ication. permi dited and cop torial team cutive editor ri ellingford elizabeth his rey i. johnso ction editors rah heaslip rlene hinton elinda hollis ber johnston onghee kim fany o’neill vin richards say richerso culty advisers vo e. fischm nne m. power bby zambo educati edu 0 issues in educ reprints sho ission is here pies are not so m rs d rich on n n s on s man rs on issn cation. reque ould credit cie eby granted to old. ror ta kar luc ker jennife ky n 1099-83 ests to reprint e as the origi o copy any art ry schmitt apati sen ri visconti cy watson rie wilkins er wojtulewi yle wright 18 39x cie inal ticle, icz microsoft word 987.v2.doc 1 volume 15, number 3 september 7, 2012 issn 1099-839x human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games andrew tawfik concordia university chicago joi l. moore, zhenyu he, and ngoc vo university of missouri educational video games present an opportunity to engage learners within immersive problem-solving experiences. despite the potential benefits, educational video games may result in cognitive overload and thus preclude the informal learning benefits for those who lack experience. this study compared five males and five females when playing an educational video game. the goal of the study was to elucidate aspects that factor into the human-computer interaction and the subsequent learning engendered from these pedagogical tools. descriptive data revealed that males improved in posttest scores to a greater degree when compared with females. qualitative data was also gathered to ascertain educational video game aspects that were important to the human-computer interaction. results suggest that concept interaction, sustained challenge, directions, and navigation might serve as instructional design principles for future educational video games construction. keywords: educational video games, cognitive load, grounded theory methodology, gender differences the vast expansion of multimedia technologies provides the field of education with innovative opportunities that instruct the learner through engagement. video games in particular provide an ideal multimedia tool that present concepts in a manner that is engaging, fun, and informal (rieber & noah, 2008; squire, 2008). furthermore, educational video games promote constructivist principles by allowing the individual to engage in immersive worlds and take ownership of knowledge (barab, gresalfi, & ingramgoble, 2010; barab et al., 2009; salen & zimmerman, 2004). a central challenge of educational game instructional design is how to provide engagement in a way that supports learning (barab et al., 2007; squire, giovanetto, devane, & durga, 2005) while accommodating cognitive load for a diverse set of users (heeter & winn, 2008). while emergent forms of multimedia provide novel ways to transfer information, educational technologies are not created equal in their ability to engender learning (paas, van gog, & sweller, 2010; sweller, 2010). elements of the human-computer interaction such as navigation and interface design are often overlooked during the instructional design phases because the impetus of the developmental process has often focused on content conveyance or technical features (wang & wu, 2009). as such, cognitive load may be taxed beyond working memory limitations and thus render the game ineffective for learning. because the research of video game instructional design is very limited (squire & jan, 2007; wu et al., in press), this study implemented a mixed methods design to investigate the human-computer interaction elements that are necessary for instructional designers to successfully create video games that instruct as well as engage users. knowledge of the human-computer interaction elements current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 are essential to inform instructional design theory as it relates to educational video game construction for diverse learning demographics such as gender and video game experience. due to the lack of empirical research, the qualitative portion of this study employed grounded theory to investigate the transcripts of 10 post-secondary science students’ human-computer interactions as they interacted with an immunology educational video game. literature review video games and education despite research that demonstrates how knowledge emerges within a community of practice, previous theories of pedagogy have emphasized the linear and well-structured approach promoted by the didactic model of learning. researchers have argued that knowledge cannot be stripped of context because learning is the interdependence between context, culture, and concepts (henning, 2004; jonassen, 2011; kolodner, cox, & gonzalez-calero, 2005). brown, collins, and duguid (1989) further cautioned that traditional, didactic forms of education merely emphasize skills such as concept recall and thus preclude key components of problem-solving skills. this topic based approach merely provides learners with a general overview about the topics and therefore fails to support contextualized problem-solving (henry, tawfik, jonassen, winholtz, & khanna, 2012; jonassen, 2011). because individuals learn as new knowledge is assimilated with previous experiences, instructional strategies should present concepts in a way that engenders application and problem-solving. however, it remains difficult for educators to administer knowledge that represents the full complexity of an authentic situation. pedagogical multimedia offers opportunities for contextualized learning because of the immersive visualization and potentially interactive elements afforded by the technology (barab et al., 2007). proponents suggest that educational video games in particular promote constructivist principles by anchoring instruction as students solve meaningful problems (corbit, 2005; dickey, 2005). gee (2005) proposed that video games offer a great degree of contextually embodied pedagogical benefits by: empowering learners, providing problemsolving opportunities, and promoting understanding. gee notes that empowering learners through games allows individuals to become active producers of knowledge and engender identity as the individual takes ownership of the learning throughout the game. problem-solving opportunities embedded within games afford the learner a safe place to fail and experiment with the material as learners encounter new knowledge. lastly, understanding describes how knowledge and concepts fits within a broader system of meaning (gee, 2003). the systematic nature of games provides a unique environment for learners to investigate the intersection between objects, attributes, and internal relationships (salen & zimmerman, 2004). o’neil et al. (2005) further suggested that educational video games reveal “complex and diverse approaches to learning processes and outcomes; interactivity, ability to address cognitive as well as affective learning issues, motivation for learning” (p. 455). that is, games consist of rich and immersive contexts that allow meaning to emerge (salen & zimmerman, 2004). educational video games within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (stem) disciples are particularly advantageous (mayo, 2007, 2009) because of the emphasis upon critical thinking skills (dickey, 2005), self-regulated learning (o’neil et al., 2005; squire et al., 2005), causal reasoning (squire & jan, 2007), problem-solving (sun, wang, & chan, 2011), and scientific inquiry (barab et al., 2010, 2009; ketelhut, schifter, & nelson, 2010). an oft-cited potential benefit of educational video games is the ability to generate engagement and intrinsic motivation (annetta, minogue, holmes, & cheng, 2009; bourgonjon, valcke, soetaert, & schellens, 2010; ryan, rigby, & przybylski, 2006). engagement and attraction to video games stem from the goal oriented nature and discovery opportunities situated in an environment of limited negative consequence for risks. to date, emergent empirical research has shown video games to be constructive for various higher order learning outcomes. wang and wu (2011) found that an educational video game of computer science caused the content to be more enjoyable, motivating, and interesting compared with other students who were not exposed to the multimedia. similarly, sindre et al. (2009) found that implementation of a computer science educational video game caused postsecondary students to become more engaged in the learning process when compared with paper exercises. although the authors caution no quantitative results were found to verify the increase in posttest scores, the research suggested educational video games encouraged the learner to voluntarily spend additional time engaged with the content. despite the studies noted above, empirical research to date regarding educational video games is still limited (wu et al., in press). the most persistent criticism is that these tools are often flawed in terms of instructional design (gunter, kenny, & vick, 2007; o’neil et al., 2005; squire & jan, 2007; wu et al., in press). critics have argued that, although motivation to play may increase, educational video games are not advantageous to learning if game progression is not predicated upon mastery of core concepts (gunter et al., 2007; muratet, torguet, jessel, & viallet, 2009). more research is therefore required for instructional designers to understand the core elements of the human-computer human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 3 interaction that promote engagement without compromising pedagogy (barab et al., 2007, squire & jan, 2007; tobias & fletcher, 2012). video games and cognitive load multimedia learning tools such as educational video games enables individuals to foster knowledge as they construct mental representations of concepts (moreno & valdez, 2005). however, cognitive load theory states that that the working memory necessary for meaningful learning includes inherent limitations (sweller, 2010). that is, individuals possess a limited capacity to process and make sense of the information that is received from pictorial and verbal channels (mayer & moreno, 2003; moreno & valdez, 2005). moreover, the limitations of working memory are exacerbated during interactions with unfamiliar information (jonassen, 2011). working memory limitations are therefore key considerations for instructional designers during the educational technology design process. in the context of commercial video games, learners demonstrate various skillsets such as game mastery, navigation, and motor skills as s/he progresses through game objectives that may tax cognitive load (ang, zaphiris, & mahmood, 2007). however, educational video games also necessitate knowledge acquisition and therefore exacerbate the strain upon working memory requirements (ketelhut et al., 2010; nelson & erlandson, 2007; nelson & ketelhut, 2007). although the research of cognitive load has often occurred within 2-dimensional learning environments (nelson & erlandson, 2007), further research is needed for educational video games (squire & jan, 2007). human-computer interaction that disregards the limitations of working memory renders the educational video game ineffective because schema formation necessary for meaningful long-term learning is not completed (paas et al., 2010; sweller, 2010). the research community has proffered some instructional design guidelines for educational video games. aldrich (2009) proposed that games can be designed to facilitate learning by supporting comprehension of accomplishment requirements, identification of causal relationships, application of various tactics to overcome failure, presentation of ‘breadcrumbs’, and application of content to the real world (p. 286). aldrich thus suggested including game features such as failure feedback, resources for users to consume throughout the game, first-person shooter options, and after-action reviews that serve to engage the learner and improve game satisfaction. he further noted that pedagogy is supported in educational tools through intuitive interface features that highlight content and inputs throughout the interaction. similarly, salen and zimmerman (2004) described various failure state scenarios of game design and how users might recover from errors. however, extant research has yet to empirically validate the human-computer interaction elements and instructional design requirements necessary for educational video games (squire & jan, 2007). purpose of the study previous research has shown that individuals with prior commercial video game experience resulted in better performance when playing novel commercial video games (enochsson et al., 2004; frey, hartig, ketzel, zinkernagel, & moosbrugger, 2007). experience not only impacts in-game practices such as strategies, but also knowledge of maneuvering and navigation (hayes, 2005). educational video games in particular may alienate users who may not be accustomed to the human-computer interaction elements necessary for successful interaction. although the preliminary impact of educational video games is encouraging, no empirical research has investigated the human-computer-interaction elements of educational video games that play a role in cognitive load (squire et al., 2005). as to not exclude learner demographics, educational video game research needs to further investigate the human-computer elements that play a role in the cognitive load and subsequent learning for various user groups. therefore, the research questions were as follows: 1.what are the human-computer interaction characteristics that factor into cognitive load for educational video games? 2.based on the knowledge of human-computer interaction, what instructional design guidelines are needed to increase the efficacy of educational video games for diverse learner demographics? methodology immune attack is an educational video game created by the federation of american scientists to instruct high school and early college students about the basics of human immunology. the game provides a hypothetical situation about a female child who suffers from skids disease. the user is charged with navigating a nanobot that fights the elements that contribute to her disease (see figure 1). ideally, as the user plays the game, informal learning occurs as pertinent elements of immunology are encountered. participants five females and five males were recruited to participate for the study. all the participants were first year health science students. introductory health and science students were chosen because the research team reasoned that the 30 minute game session would be most effective with students who had some prior knowledge of the subject matter as opposed to individuals who were interacting with both the video game and immunology concepts for the first time. procedures the data collection took place at a usability lab within a large midwestern university. before the students began the video game, the research team asked the student current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 figure 1. immune attack interface. to complete a survey of demographic information survey (appendix a) as well as an immunology pretest (appendix b). the participant demographic information survey captured information such as age, self-reported video game experience, and perceived video game expertise. the research team recorded video game interactions with morae recorder for each session. upon playing the game for 30 minutes, all participants took part in an eight-question semi-structured exit interview regarding topics related to the interaction. materials pretest/posttest. the pretest/posttest methodology design served to establish a baseline of prior knowledge for which posttest learning gains could be assessed upon completion of the video game interaction. this assessment tool (appendix b) was constructed with the help of the federation of american scientists primary instructional designer of immune attack. the instructional designer was chosen as the subject matter expert because the she had extensive knowledge of the science objectives embedded within the video game. moreover, the instructional designer was also deemed qualified because of her advanced degrees in both biochemistry and microbiology. semi-structured interview. a semi-structured interview (appendix c) was a data collection method employed to investigate various themes. in alignment with grounded theory (corbin & strauss, 2008, fassinger, 2005) interview questions were intentionally designed to elicit open discussion for a myriad of aspects that may have factored into the human-computer interaction. as such, questions ranged from game favorability, opportunities for improvement, and specific features that played a role in the usability of the learning environment. questions were also included to stimulate a discussion about the learning gains and engagement with the game storyline. data analysis because the research team was not aware of any previous research that investigated the human-computer interaction elements of educational video games, a grounded theory approach was chosen (corbin & strauss, 2008: fassinger 2005). upon verbatim transcription, three researchers analyzed the semi-structured interviews for themes related to the video game interaction. an opencoding theme was selected to identify emergent themes not previously discussed within the literature. after organizing the data according to the initial set of codes, the three researchers met to compare results of open coding and to finalize the categories. once completed, the researchers reviewed and re-categorized the transcripts in accordance with the final codes. results descriptive statistics the initial survey data was imported into a spreadsheet for the purposes of generating descriptive statistics of the participants (see table 1). the performance results showed, on average, participants scored a 41% on the pretest (baseline) and improved to human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 5 table 1 mean posttest improvement scores by gender gender mean pretest mean posttest mean improvement female 46% 54% 8% male 36% 72% 36% total 41% 63% 22% table 2 mean posttest improvement scores by video game experience game experience frequency female frequency male frequency average improvement never 1 1 0 0.00 several times a year 3 3 0 3.3% several times a month 3 1 2 26.7% several times a week 3 0 3 43.3% 63% on the posttest that immediately followed the game interaction. the data was further broken down to understand differences based on gender. while the results showed that both male and female groups improved, males increased from 36% to 72% whereas the female group only improved from 46% to 54%, a difference of 8%. despite the improvement in posttest scores, the research team sought to investigate the considerable disparity between male (36%) and female (8%) posttest improvement scores. therefore, the posttest scores were compared with the demographic data regarding selfreported commercial video game experience. quantitative data revealed a synchronous relationship between self reported video games experience and posttest improvement scores. that is, individuals who described themselves as playing video games several times a month or several times a week performed markedly better than those who described themselves as playing never or only several times a year. the data from table 2 also revealed that participants who categorized themselves as having less video game experience were generally female. moreover, all but one of the female participants described themselves as playing never or only several times a year. the study findings of increased male video game experience are consistent with the literature that has underscored the dominance of male gaming experience when compared to those of females (barab et al., 2007; heeter & winn, 2008). qualitative data upon game completion, all 10 participants discussed their game reactions in a semi-structured-exit interview. the interview data revealed the humancurrent issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 computer interaction characteristics that factored into the experience. four themes emerged during the grounded theory analysis: concept interaction, sustained challenge, directions, and navigation. analysis of qualitative data suggested that most participants, regardless of video game experience, expressed an appreciation for the concept interactions and sustained challenge aspects of the human-computer interaction. alternatively, individuals provided disparate perceptions of the directions and navigational elements based on video game experience. concept interaction in line with the multimedia principle (mayer & moreno, 2003), nearly all of the participants noted that one of the most favorable aspects about the video game was the ability to visualize and interact with the abstract immunology concepts. for instance, when asked the best characteristic of the game, a female participant with limited game experience noted: “kind of fun way of seeing [the concepts]. in anatomy, they tell you all that, but you have to build that in your mind. this helps to visualize.” although this particular participant did not significantly progress in the game when compared with others, she still described how the video game assisted her with being able to visualize concepts previously discussed during her lectures. similarly, when asked about the benefits of the game, another participant who played commercial video games several times a week expressed enjoyment in being an interactive participant: “i really enjoy it. i like getting to see it firsthand instead of just watching.” another male participant that played several times a week noted how the visualization helped to elucidate and supplement abstract concepts encountered in course lecture: “i saw something like this in class, but i mean just getting to see it. actually, getting to see it in the video game and being able to see it in real life. that was really interesting to see. just the way the immune system actually works. i mean, just like she [the instructor] was saying, how naturally things may not work and how you have to get things to work. and just how to see different connecting pieces.” it is noteworthy that the above quotes suggest participants enjoyed the ability to visualize immunology using this technology across varying levels of experience. as such, the video game provided participants with an inventive presentation of the concepts that aided in mental model construction. the quotes above lend further credence with the multimedia principle that suggest that words in conjunction with graphics are more effective for learning when compared with text alone (mayer & moreno, 2003). sustained challenge during the exit interview, a question was posed to elucidate aspects that made the video game interaction favorable to the participants. this question was asked to ascertain elements that may be incorporated for future design of educational video games. most learners, regardless of video game experience, noted that the challenge and pace of the game was an essential component of the interaction. when asked about the most important facet in video games a female that described herself as playing video games several times a month commented: “a good challenge. if they are just going to hand it to you, it’s not worth playing. i love tetris and you can play it over and over again. it’s just speed. speeding up the figures makes it a lot harder and fun because it’s challenging.” in describing the most important part of an educational video game, a less experienced video game female participant echoed this sentiment when she responded: “storyline a lot. it has to keep you interested. a lot of people have problems with the same thing over and over again, so just keeping it fresh.” however, when a question was posed to an experienced participant (multiple times a month) about whether he would play this game to study, the participant described how the sustained challenge factored into his perception of the game as a study tool: “i guess it seems like it was pretty slow getting that one point across so i would probably cover more ground studying through the textbook. if it’s too easy, you don’t want to play it again. if it’s challenging, you want to keep playing until you break it or beat it.” it is noteworthy that multiple participants, regardless of video game experience, concluded that a sustained challenge was a critical component to adoption and future interactions with the technology. the above comment in particular suggested the learner perceived time as better spent using other instructional materials if a sustained challenge is not present throughout the humancomputer interaction. directions although participants seemed to generally agree about the favorability of concept interaction and sustained challenge, the feedback was markedly different for directions. the directions posed either a significant problem or minor nuisance during the interaction depending on the level of video game experience. a female who described herself as only playing several times a year questioned the overall goal of the game when she commented: “i didn’t get any objective. i understand they [the nanobots] needed to go a direction, i understand they need to get to the infection site, but what were the little circular things?” this comment underscored how the perceived the lack of direction played a role in her human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 7 ability to fully understand the concepts and learning objectives throughout the interaction. alternatively, those with game experience described the directions as overly redundant and an obstacle to playing the game. one participant who described himself as an adept user that played several times a week complained: “but it also felt it went through the instructions a little slowly. and i thought some of the things i thought could’ve been picked up a lot quicker naturally.” as highlighted by the above comment, experienced users suggested the directions were redundant and impeded the perceived initial challenge and subsequent interaction. for those without familiarity with video game experience, the interaction was diminished because there remained some ambiguity about the goals and elements that the participants could interact with. as such, inexperienced users may have felt cognitive overload and were thus unclear how to progress or process the immunology concepts encountered. navigation as the case with directions, navigation provided either a severe impediment or a minor setback for users depending on previous video game experience. participants with limited game experience commented that they were generally not able to progress as far in the video game. one female user with only limited experience (several times a year) described controls as being a limitation. she underscored her frustration with the navigation when she criticized: “it took me about 20 minutes to get it where i wasn’t staying in the wall the entire time.” alternatively, a male participant who played several times a week described a much different experience when asked about the controls: “i was a little more focused on trying to figure out what i was doing rather than what they were telling me. so if i was to play it again and know what i was doing, i could focus on what the things were called and what exactly they were doing.” the participant with more experience suggested that he could eventually learn to balance the cognitive load between the concept interactions and the direction. other participants with additional video game experience also suggested they eventually overcame the initial barrier of navigation. for instance, a male who played several times a month underscored the initial navigational frustration when he commented: participant: i did like the control setup, but just going up and down was really different. it took a little bit to get used to it. facilitator: do you feel like you were able to get used to it? participant: eventually, yeah, but it was tough to get a feel for it. similarly, a female participant (played several times a month) described how her cognitive effort focused on the game controls reduced her initial ability to focus on the learning aspects of the game: “whenever i was told what to do, i was like ‘uh, okay’. i was just going around. i was so confused what i was supposed to be doing. i was finally able to figure it out.” the differing views of navigation were a common theme throughout the interviews. all participants noted some degree of navigational frustration, but those who rated themselves as more experienced players expressed confidence in their ability to eventually overcome the initial cognitive strain and progress through the learning concepts found within the game. those without game experience suggested the cognitive effort toward navigation was a major deterrent to their overall learning. as such, they were less likely to express a desire to embrace the technology for future instruction. discussion the study revealed that educational video games interactions differed based on a variety of factors. according to the descriptive statistics, participants with increased commercial video game experience improved posttest scores to a greater degree when compared with those participants who did not play commercial video games as frequently. in addition, descriptive statistics revealed that those who rated themselves as less experienced video game players were largely from the female demographic. these results have implications both for instructional designers and school administrators. if educators hastily implement video games in classrooms because they perceive these unique tools as rife with potential for informal learning and motivation, the pedagogical benefits will presumably only extend to users who are already skilled at playing video games. less experienced users may struggle with human-computer interaction factors such as navigation and directions. because males generally have additional game experience (barab et al., 2005; heeter & winn, 2008), the female subset of learners may be inadvertently overlooked. the qualitative research suggested that four instructional design principles may be most pertinent to the human computer interaction with educational video games: concept interaction, sustained challenge, navigation, and directions. the concept interaction and sustained interaction factors in particular indicated educational video games may be a viable pedagogical alternative for concepts perceived by learners as too abstract or unfamiliar. these may be especially true for science and mathematical concepts (annetta et al., 2009). participants suggested that the video games aided in learning by being able to “visualize”, “see it firsthand”, and “see different connecting pieces”. because the concept interaction serves to elucidate concepts and fortify mental models, it is important that this aspect of instructional design include elements necessary for schema formation with respect to working memory current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 limitations. furthermore, the sustained challenge aspect of the interaction not only distinguishes this learning tool from others, but maintains engagement and provides the learner a reason to continually utilize the game. if challenge is absent, learners will most likely perceive the time as better served engaging with other instructional tools. research has shown that cognitive load may be taxed due to demands of essential processing, incidental processing, and representational holding during multimedia interactions (mayer & moreno, 2003). the current research presented suggests that that cognitive load may be exacerbated in educational video games where the learner is not only interacting with the concepts (germane load), but also the interaction elements of the technology (extraneous cognitive load). qualitative data suggests that instructional designers should give particular consideration to the directions and navigation elements throughout the design phases. if users have trouble with the navigation and directions, the subsequent pedagogical benefits will be impeded due to unnecessary demands brought upon by incidental processing and extraneous cognitive load. proficient video game users noted that directions and navigation were minor distractions that “took a bit to get used to” and an aspect they were “finally able to figure it out”. others with less game experience suggested they were “confused what i was supposed to be doing” and attention was diverted to “figure out what i was doing rather than what they were telling me.” that is, the extraneous cognitive load upon working memory by navigation and directions impeded the participant’s ability to understand the overall learning objective of the game. to accommodate the need for sustained challenge for diverse user sets, instructional designers could include the option for learners to select challenge levels in educational video games (e.g. novice, intermediate, expert). this would allow the novice users to gain experience with the human-computer interaction while also allowing experienced users to select challenge level deemed appropriate for their expertise. the findings lend further support to mayer and moreno's (2003) caution that a significant pitfall of multimedia learning is a scenario whereby essential processing is overloaded. the segmentation effect in particular suggests that better transfer ensues when processing is controlled by the user. to accommodate learner’s needs, designers could strategically allow the user to select and replay ‘debriefing’ segments (aldrich, 2009) that advance the storyline and display concepts the learner had encountered in the previous level. this would allow for additional processing time for less-experienced users to visualize the concepts while reducing the cognitive demands brought on by the interaction with the video game. the pretraining effect suggests that transfer is increased when the learner knows behaviors of system components (mayer & moreno, 2003). as such, allowing individuals to view the learning concepts prior to the video game interaction or when the user clicks pause could further reduce the demands upon working memory. in doing so, the user is afforded control and provided time to process concepts without the additional cognitive load imposed by game navigation. a design solution that supports the pretraining effect could also be accomplished in the form of a challenging, yet attainable, introductory level for less experienced users (aldrich, 2009). educational games generally tend to incorporate additional subject matter as the individual progresses to more challenging game stages. however, if users are unable to progress to higher levels due to problems with navigation or direction, they may be severely limited in the concepts encountered. by allowing more uniformity of concepts across game stages, with respect to working memory limitations for novel information (merriënboer & sluijsmans, 2008; sweller, 2010), inexperienced users would still able to visualize and interact with the abstractions. this design feature will also enable the game to be challenging enough for experienced users. conclusions the participants of this study noted that a requirement of educational video games is an engaging experience incited by game challenges. however, this condition adds complexity to instructional designers as they attempt to accommodate differences in technology expertise across a myriad of user demographics. as educational video games become further integrated into the classroom, working memory limitations (sweller, 2005) should not only be considered for the subject matter, but also the entire human-computer interaction. specifically, the results from the study note that concept interaction, sustained challenge, directions, and navigation are potential instructional design guidelines that must be balanced with knowledge acquisition and schema formation. if the additional working memory strains are not considered, the potential learning effects of educational video games may be precluded. the present research suggests that individuals who are adept at playing video games may benefit the most from video games because their familiarity with the technology places less of a strain on working memory. as such, individuals who are unfamiliar with recreational video games may find themselves at a disadvantage to benefit from pedagogical video games. the results of this study provide further empirical validation that suggests females may not employ video games as frequently when compared with males (barab et al., 2007; barab et al., 2010; heeter & winn, 2008). learning benefits may therefore be impeded for an important demographic group because of oversights during the instructional design process. designers should not only consider the chief extant group of users, but consider instructional design elements such as concept interaction, sustained challenge, human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 9 directions, and navigation for diverse learner demographics to increase the efficacy of learning through educational video games. future research the researchers suggest additional studies to build upon the present findings. one such study could include an expansion of the video game experience and gender treatments groups such that the quantitative results are statistically significant. in addition, a longitudinal study could uncover important usage patterns during various parts of the semester as learners become more adept at playing the educational video game (tobias & fletcher, 2012). the study also suggests that participants with educational video experience may be at an advantage to learn from these pedagogical technologies. an additional study could therefore investigate whether training materials such as a tutorial prior to the interaction could reduce some of the interaction gap for novice video game players. this would inform the research community with implementation strategies to engage a diverse set of learners using educational video games. studies could also investigate the efficacy of educational video games as a learning tool in comparison with other instructional methods. for instance, researchers could compare learning gains of educational video games in comparison with a textbook reading or concept mapping task. this research would provide additional validation as to the efficacy of video game pedagogy as it compares with other forms of instruction. references aldrich, c. 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(in press). re-exploring gameassisted learning research: the perspective of learning theoretical bases. computers & education. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 12 appendix a demographic survey 1. age 2. gender male female 3. health sciences major yes no 4. how often do you play video games? (select one): a. never b. several times a year c. several times a month d. several times a week e. everyday human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 13 appendix b pretest/posttest 1. what is one of the first responses of the body to an infection? a. upset stomach b. inflammation c. headache d. none of the above e. i don't know 2. what does the word “macrophage” mean? a. big eater b. natural killer c. antibody d. none of the above e. i don't know 3. how do cells of the immune system get to the site of an infection? a. they travel from lymph nodes b. they reproduce at the site of the invading bacteria c. they exit the blood vessel through spaces between cells d. none of the above e. i don't know 4. how do macrophages summon other cells to help fight an infection? a. they send special macrophage recruits to the lungs b. they send a special chemical signal c. they divide into specialized cells that recruit other cells d. none of the above e. i don't know 5. how do macrophages recognize infectious bacteria? current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 14 a. they identify specific colors that only invading bacteria display b. they recognize molecular patterns displayed on the surface of the invading bacteria c. they recognize cells doing specific behaviors, such as destroying healthy cells d. none of the above e. i don't know 6. what type of cell is a macrophage? a. red blood cell b. white blood cell c. t cell d. none of the above e. i don't know 7. how do cells sense things in their environment? a. cells see everything around them. b. cells feel everything around them. c. cells have specific proteins on their outsides that only bind to certain things around them. d. cells only interact with proteins. e. i don't know. 8. if a cell moves, how does it know which way to go? a. cells do not move. b. cells only move toward food. c. cells move in response to some kinds of chemical signals. d. cells only move in a random manner. e. i don't know. 9. how do macrophages kill bacteria? a. macrophages eat bacteria. b. macrophages keep the bacteria from growing. c. macrophages produce antibiotics that kill bacteria. human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 15 d. i don't know. 10. how big is a human cell? a. about 50 meters (m) wide. b. about 50 micrometers (µm) wide (µm is 1x10-6 meters) c. about 50 nanometers (nm) wide (nm is 1x10-9 meters) d. i don't know current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 16 appendix c exit interview 1. what are your overall impressions of the game? 2. what do you like about the game? 3. what do you not like about the game? 4. what would you like to change in the game? 5. what do you think of the fps (first person shooter) mode? 6. do you feel like you learned anything? if so, what concepts? 7. do you feel like you understood the storyline? 8. what do you are some aspects in other video games that you find favorable? human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 17 article citation tawfik, a., moore, j. l., he, z., & vo, n. (2012). human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/987 author notes andrew tawfik, ph.d. concordia university chicago college of graduate and innovative programs 7400 augusta street, river forest, il. 60305 andrew.tawfik@cuchicago.edu dr. andrew a. tawfik is an assistant professor of instructional design and technology within the college of graduate and innovative programs (gip) at concordia university chicago where he teaches courses in collaborative learning and emerging technologies. dr. tawfik's research interests include problembased learning, case-based reasoning, case library instructional design, human-computer interaction, and computer-supported collaborative learning. he earned his master’s in information science from indiana university and his phd in learning technologies from the university of missouri. joi l. moore, ph.d. university of missouri 303 townsend hall, columbia, mo 65211 moorejoi@missouri.edu dr. joi l. moore is an associate professor in the school of information science & learning technologies at the university of missouri where she manages and teaches courses in the digital media curriculum. dr. moore's current research interests include: online learning environments, performance support systems, usability engineering, and human computer interaction. dr. moore received her b.s. degree in computer science and m.s. degree in management from north carolina state university. she earned her ph.d. in instructional technology from the university of georgia. zhenyu he university of missouri 111 london hall, columbia, mo 65211 zhfff@mail.mizzou.edu zhenyu he is a doctoral candidate in school of information science & learning technologies at mu. her research interest is usability testing and information behavior of people with learning differences. she is also interested the application of pedagogy and technology tools to enhance learning in online learning environments. ngoc vo university of missouri 111 london hall, columbia, mo 65211 ngocvohn@gmail.com ngoc vo is a doctoral student in the department of architectural studies at the university of missouri. she holds a master’s degree in technology and education from the university of missouri and a bachelor’s degree in linguistics. her research interest include the collaborative learning and discovery learning in virtual environments. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 18 manuscript received: 4/23/2012 revisions received: 6/22/2012 accepted: 8/13/2012 human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 19 volume 15, number 3 september 7, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1075_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 february 1, 2013 issn 1099-839x declarations of independence: home school families’ perspectives on education, the common good, and diversity kenneth v. anthony mississippi state university this study examined the perspectives of home school families regarding the rights, interests, and responsibilities of family and state over education. these families viewed the common good differently than critics of home schooling. they believed the diversity of curriculum and worldview in their home schools positively impacts the common good by increasing the overall diversity of society. these families situated the practice of home schooling within the exercise of religion inserting a constitutional challenge into the debate over home schooling. the voices of these families, their declarations of independence from the educational norm in our nation, challenge our views of what really is the common good, what diversity we value, and what activities we include in our definition of the free exercise of religion. keywords: home education; autonomy; religion; parental control; common good; citizenship; diversity home schooling is a growing and controversial phenomenon. ray (2011) estimated the number of children home schooled in the united states was between 1.7 million and 2.3 million. kunzman (2012) reported that the number of home schoolers increased by about 74% between 1999 and 2007. as the number of families who home school their children continues to grow, the movement has been thrust into a larger debate about the relationship between family and society regarding responsibility, interests, and rights over the education of children. missing from this debate are the voices of families who are actively home schooling. the goal of this article is to share the perspectives of four home school families regarding the competing rights, interests, and responsibilities of family and state over education and analyze the impact of their views on the larger debate. philosophical frameworks: locke versus marx the debate over the proper relationship between the family and state regarding education is situated in a much larger frame of reference than education. in 1690, john locke (1960/1952) described the family as the principal or first social order predating the development of the state. he also took the position that parents have sole authority over their children until they reach majority age. locke's classical liberal ideas are held by many home school families who believe that parents have exclusive authority over their children in all things including education. locke's ideas are counter-posed by karl marx (1848/1964), who in 1848 wrote in the communist manifesto that one of his goals was to dissolve the bond between parents and children. this would happen “when we replace home education by social” (p. 88). the idea that education should be conducted by the larger society through special organizations called schools rather than in homes has remained strong. today most americans have been educated in a school setting and accept by default that the school is primarily responsible for education. this point is illustrated by greene (2007) when she wrote that it is hard for us to understand how revolutionary public schools were when current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 the public school movement began because, “now the public schools are thought of as part of the nature of things” (p. 1). the american debate over home schooling the philosophical debate over the proper role of the family versus the larger society is manifested in the american conversation about home schooling. the tension between family and state over control over education is also evident in the debate over the efficacy and legality of home schooling. in his critique of home schooling, lubienski (2000) argued that home schooling undermines the civic foundation of american society. he believed it denies public schools the “singular potential to serve as a democratic institution promoting the common good” (p. 211). apple (2000) and lubienski both bemoaned that home school families place the needs of their children above the needs of the larger society. these arguments highlight the tension between private good and public good. societal versus parental interests it is assumed by many that parents should not have total control over their children’s education. reich (2002) criticized parents' sole control over education. he stated, “home schooling is the apogee of parental control over a child’s education, where no other institution has a claim to influence the schooling of the child.” (p. 4). reich argued that parental limitations restrict students’ access to information that they will need in the future. lubienski (2000) made the claim that home schooling usurps the public's rightful interest and control over education. both reich and lubienski contended that parents limit the public's legitimate interest when they home school their children. they focused on whether home schooling is in the public interest, but others have questioned to what extent home schooling should be regulated and its legal status. regulation of home schooling while all states have made it legal to home school (lines, 2001), there is little consistency on how much home schooling is regulated within the states. there are “three distinct approaches” states have taken when regulating home schools. the least restrictive approach allows the state to regulate only public schools and allows no regulation of private schools including home schools. the second approach requires parents to notify the local school board and register with the state when home schooling. the final, most restrictive, approach requires state permission to home school and requires home school teachers to be certified (campbell, 2001, as cited in waggoner, 2005, p. 32). within these three approaches there is great variance leading to calls for more consistent regulation at the state level and the introduction of regulation at the federal level. there are a variety of reasons given for increased regulation of home schools. yuracko (2008) argued that home schooling should be regulated by the state and federal government to guarantee that children receive a “basic minimum education” (p. 68). she contended that the equal protection clause forces the state to guarantee that children are not receiving unequal educations based upon gender. yuracko (2008) concluded that, “it is clear and uncontroversial that states can regulate home schooling” (p. 68). she also recognized this as an infringement of parental autonomy, but believed it is legally required and desired. home schooling and the law the debate over the legality of home schooling appears to have been settled at the state level with all states recognizing the right of parents to operate home schools (lines, 2001), but there is little agreement if this is an absolute right guaranteed to parents. waggoner (2005) provided a comprehensive discussion of legal cases from 1923 to 2000 that impact the right of parents to control or direct their children’s education. most significant of these is wisconsin v. yoder (1972) in which the united states supreme court allowed an amish family to “educate their children privately” (p. 32) avoiding the compulsory school law. it also reaffirmed the public’s interest in education as it placed a requirement on the parents that the “children must grow up to be literate and self-sufficient” (p. 32). the supreme court also held that the state's interest in universal education is not totally free from a balancing process when it impinges on other fundamental rights, such as those specifically protected by the free exercise clause of the first amendment and the traditional interest of parents with respect to the religious upbringing of their children. (wisconsin v. yoder, 1972) this justification for the decision directly linked the parent’s right to home school to the first amendment. the court specifically cited that the free exercise of religion included directing the upbringing and education of their children. the decision placed the right to free exercise of religion over the state’s interests. the yoder case is also important to the current study because it established that parents who home school primarily for religious reasons have a more fundamental right to home school than those who do so for other reasons. one point that should be clarified is that there exists no explicit right to home school in the constitution of the united states. the supreme court based the right of parents to home school on the fourteenth amendment (waggoner, 2005) and first amendment (wisconsin v. yoder, 1972) of the constitution. a second case that is of relevance to this study is swanson v. guthrie, 1988. the plaintiffs were home schoolers who wanted access to public school programs on a part time basis. the tenth circuit agreed that the parents had a constitutional right to home school, but that declarations of independence: home school families’ perspectives on education, the common good, and diversity 3 the local school board retained the right to direct the type of programs offered in the school district. this meant that the home school family’s right to home school did not place a requirement on the public school to allow them to participate on a part-time basis (waggoner, 2005). the cases waggoner details and the varied regulations in the states affirm that though home schooling is legal in all states (lines, 2001), there are limitations placed on the ability of parents to educate exactly as they please, because states can and do regulate home schools and home school families can and have been denied part time or on demand access to public school programs. support for home schooling though home schooling is legal, there is little consensus on the topic of home schooling. not all scholars believe that home schoolers are undermining civil society. ray (2000) argued that home schooling positively impacts the common good of society. lines (1994) concluded that home school families are not abdicating their proper role as citizens in society, but rather they are affirming their individual rights and building stronger relationships within the community. arai (1999) concluded that home schoolers have a different view of citizenship and citizenship education that emphasizes the importance of family and active participation in public activities. arai argued that this view of citizenship is different but also valid. he wrote that society needs “to account for the fact that children can become good citizens without going to school.” these and others highlight the important of parental autonomy and the positive aspects of home schooling in their efforts to legitimize the practice of home schooling. much has been written on both sides of the issue about the efficacy and legality of home schooling as well as the amount of regulation needed. what is missing are the voices of families who are actively home schooling their children. what are their arguments in favor of home schooling and what are their beliefs about regulation? how do these families' perspectives impact the current debate over home schooling? methods the study sought to fill a gap in the literature by exploring the perspectives of four home school families regarding the competing rights, interests and responsibilities of family and state over education. participants were four home school families active in a home school organization that operated in the southeastern u.s. this study was part of a larger study that focused on motivations to home school, day to day operations of home schools, and challenges home school families faced. this study was a qualitative study of four religiously conservative home school families from northeast mississippi who are active in a local home school organization. the organization is a home school cooperative that takes a classical approach to education. the four families were chosen from a larger pool of families in the cooperative. the criteria for choosing the families were that they had at least three years of home school experience, had children they were currently home schooling, and had at least one child who had completed their home school education and had moved on to college or the work force. this enabled the researcher to get a group with extensive experience with home education that was willing to discuss their motivations, successes, and failures. table one provides demographic details on the sample families including whether their initial motivation to home school was ideological or pedagogical. findings reported in anthony and burroughs (2010) provides detailed information about these families’ motivations to home school. the families in the cooperative based their curriculum on the classical education model. classical education is divided into three stages called the trivium: logic (the art of thinking,) grammar (the art of inventing and combining symbols), and rhetoric (the art of communication) (joseph, 1937/2002). the students progress through each stage as they get older starting with the logic stage in elementary school and ending with the rhetoric stage in high school. wilson (1991) argued that classical education aims to develop a classical mind that is aware of and is grateful for “the heritage of western civilization” (p. 83). according to wilson, the goal of a classical education is to have a conversation with the past that enables learners to become self directed and lifelong learners. glesne (2006) recommended using purposive sampling to describe a subgroup in depth. the researcher used purposive sampling from a home school cooperative in order to find a sample that would provide a rich detailed description of these families perspectives. narrowing of the sample increases the depth of understanding, but also may limit the transferability to other groups which differ from the sample. limitations when studying home school families as mentioned above, one limitation of the study is the population from which the sample was drawn. the nature of home schooling makes it difficult to study the typical home school family. motivations to home school will serve as an example of this problem. families choose to home school for a variety of reasons, but generally these motivations can be divided into two domains: ideological and pedagogical (basham, 2001; knowles, 1991; knowles, muchmore, & spaulding, 1994). ideological reasons are primarily religious and social. pedagogical home schoolers are primarily centered on the process of education. there are similarities between the two domains and a family may have reasons to home educate that include both ideological and pedagogical reasons. the families in this study would be identified by many as home schooling for ideological purposes, but as reported in earlier research (anthony & burroughs, 2010) current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 table 1 sample demographics smith johnson harbor riley family structure intact intact intact intact father’s occupation constitutional lawyer business owner university employee (non faculty) business owner mother’s education level b.s. history some college some college b.s. education/ m.s. education administration children at home school male (16), female (13), female (8), male (6) male (16), male (10) male (15), female (8) male (15) children at college male (20) female (18) female (18) male (18) none adult children out of college or in work force none none none female (26) male (25) children ever in private school? no yes no yes children ever in public school? yes yes yes yes initial motivation to home school ideological ideological pedagogical ideological their decisions to home school included a mixture of ideological and pedagogical reasons. apart from the ideologicalpedagogical divisions, others have identified primary motivations to home school including concerns about the negative environment of traditional schools, to provide religious or moral instructions, and dissatisfaction with academic instruction (princiotta & bielick, 2006). the families in this study all would agree that they home school for these reasons too, but in varying degrees with religious and moral instruction the prime reason from some, but not all. the illustration of motivations could be extended to include the means or approach to home schooling, demographic characteristics, and regional differences. the problem with researching home school families is that there is not a typical home school family. collum (2005) concluded, “this is a heterogeneous population with varying and overlapping motivations. simplistic typologies cannot capture the complexities of home schoolers” (p. 331). because these families may not match other families demographically and in their particular means and motivations to home school the ability to generalize is limited, but this is a problem that naturally exists when studying a decentralized and individualized phenomena like home schooling. data collection and analysis data was gathered through interviews with the parents (three) and children (two as well as informal discussions during and after observations), observation of the families at home (2 per family), observations of home school group activities (two) and collection of artifacts. the study was part of a larger study concerning home school motivations, curriculum choices, and support structures. appendix a includes interview protocols and artifacts collected. data was collected over a period of two school years. data analysis began with an initial set of domains that emerged from the review of the literature. as additional domains emerged during data analysis, the set expanded accordingly. qsr’s nvivo 8 software was used to code the data collected during the interviews and the observations. data charts and matrices were used to analyze the information gathered within and across the four cases that was relevant to the research questions. declarations of independence: home school families’ perspectives on education, the common good, and diversity 5 supporting data from both parents and children as well as from the multiple data sources were identified to elicit major findings of the study. peer review and participant checks were utilized to confirm the trustworthiness of the study’s findings and conclusions. the trustworthiness of the data was also bolstered by the facts that the data were collected over a period of a two years and multiple data points within and across the cases were used to support each finding. appendix b includes a sample analysis matrix for the theme: autonomy and subtheme: differing views of common good. findings this study was part of a larger study of home school operations. during initial data analysis the theme of autonomy emerged. all four of the families indicated a strong desire to raise their children and educate them apart from larger societal influences (anthony & burroughs, 2010). the theme of autonomy also revealed ways in which the children were encouraged to become autonomous learners, the families were able to operate their home school independently from the support of larger society, and the freedom and flexibility that home schooling provided these families. this article focuses specifically on autonomy as it relates to their perspectives. the results of the study indicated two unique perspectives that differ from the prevailing view of society in america: (a) their view of the society's hierarchical structure and (b) their view of the common good. the diverging perspectives directly impacted their home school operations and have significant implications to the larger debate over home schooling in america. family roles versus societal roles in education the four families in the study were fundamentalist christians. this is important in understanding their view of society. at the top of society is god as revealed through scripture; next is family, then the larger society. now many christians and others from different faiths may espouse this or a similar hierarchy, but these families lived it as evidenced by one mother's statement about the primary goal of educating her son, “i am not grooming my child for this society or for this world. i am grooming my child for the lord’s kingdom.” their divergent view of common good was based on this religious belief. they felt that they were properly exercising their religion as spelled out in the bible when they home schooled their children. each parent indicated that their first responsibility was to their children and that it was god assigned. this idea was also found in various books and articles shared with the researcher that had influenced their views on home schooling. books included home schooling: the right choice (klicka, 2002), the underground history of american education: a schoolteacher's intimate investigation into the prison of modern schooling (gatto, 2000), and recovering the lost tools of learning (wilson, 1991). these families also held ideas about society that were similar to locke's in the second treatise of government. they believed that the family was the primary or first societal organization. their loyalty was to the family first then society. this is important when understanding their desire to home school. since the family predates the state or nation, how can the state or nation enforce mandatory schooling on the family? like locke, these families believed that parents had primary responsibility and authority over children while they were minors. they also believed that the state had limited authority over children so long as parents were providing for basic minimal needs. they would not expand the concept of basic minimal needs as far as yuracko (2008) to include a minimal level of education. in response to yuracko, these families would claim that they were providing a more comprehensive and higher quality education to their children and that the onus is on the state to prove that they were not. these families did not believe that society is responsible for educating all children. they disagreed with lubiesnki that the public schools have the “singular potential” (lubiesnki, 2000, p. 211) to promote the common good for civil society. they believed that role belongs to the family based on their philosophical and religious views. their views were summarized well by john gatto (2000) former school teacher and critic of public schooling when he wrote, “government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. it kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.” (p. xxv). these families believed that the traditional school undermines what they believed is the proper role of the family in society. they saw public education as a threat to the family and find much truth in marx's (1848/ 1964) prediction that social education would separate children from the influence of their parents. though their ideas can be understood through a philosophical lens it is more than just a philosophical argument; it is religious. perhaps this is the most important point to understand. when discussing their decisions to home school all of the parents cited various scriptures that compelled parents to teach their children. the act of home schooling their children was directly linked to the exercise of their religion. this is where attempts to regulate, limit or outlaw home schooling collide with the constitution. if home schooling is central to the exercise of their religion it becomes more difficult to justify regulation, limitations, or bans on the practice. much is made of the influence of religion on government and the public sphere, but according to these families this issue focuses on the attempt by government or the public to interfere with the private sphere of the family and the free exercise of religion. others have argued that the government can limit parental ability to make decisions for their children when current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 it can potentially harm the children (yuracko, 2008) or that society has an interest in the education of all children (lubienski, 2000; reich, 2002). these are valid arguments, but they do not address these parents' question about who is responsible for proving that they are harming their children or society by home schooling their children. these families countered that they were improving the common good by increasing the diversity of ideas in society, educating their children to be different and to make a positive difference in society, and exercising their religion through the practice of home schooling. finally these families agreed with reich (2002) that: home schooling is the apogee of parental control over a child’s education, where no other institution has a claim to influence the schooling of the child. parents serve as the only filter for a child’s education, the final arbiters of what gets included and what gets excluded. (p. 4) they would say that is the proper role of the family and that for society to attempt to stop them is a violation of their god given right and responsibility to raise their children. they disagreed with reich's (2002) assertion that they are narrowing the curriculum and excluding ideas counter to their beliefs. they countered that all schools filter what is included in the curriculum and that they are attempting to teach those things that are kept out of the public school curriculum and focus on things that will help their children develop into individuals who will positively influence society based on their own particular worldview. view of the common good and diversity critics contended that families who home school have abdicated their obligation to contribute to the common good (kohn as cited in lubienski, 2000). initial conversations with home school families might lead one to that conclusion as evidenced by one parent's comment when asked about the common good: our “responsibilities are not to the common good. our responsibility is to raise godly children.” this sentiment is found in home school literature cited by all the participants most notably the tools of lost learning: an approach to distinctively christian education (wilson, 1991) where the author reminded parents that god gave the responsibility for raising and educating children to the parents and that parents do not have the option of abdicating this role to others. at first glance it would appear that the critics of home schooling are correct, but further discussion and analysis revealed a deeper and diverging understanding of the common good. these families believed that the act of home schooling positively influences the common good of society. consider the following statement by a parent that is illustrative of the participants' views: i think it’s good for the common good not to have someone trained in the little gerbil/hamster wheel of public education. they are spouting them out with all the same moral, philosophical thoughtsvery important issues, and our kids are probably going to be going against the grain challenging other people, hopefully. these families believed that home schooling adds to the diversity of ideas in society thus providing a benefit, even if or especially if the views and education their children are receiving runs counter to the prevailing beliefs of the traditional educational system and society. this finding reinforces ray (2000) who argued that home schooling positively influences society. the idea that home schooling increases societal diversity is interesting, considering the current focus on diversity in education. one parent made an interesting observation about society's focus on diversity when he said, “we talk a lot about diversity in our society today, but the truth is there is not diversity in thought in public schools and you harm the common good again if everyone thinks in lockstep and is spoon feed what kind of attitudes and beliefs they should have.” interestingly he turned the arguments of home school critics around on them. home school families are accused of educating their children narrowly thus limiting their exposure to varying ideas and beliefs (reich, 2002), but these families believed that the public schools have a narrow curriculum that basically indoctrinates children. the diversity of education these families provided to their children included both negative and positive elements. the families intended to provide an education that shielded their children from certain negative influences and in a sense inoculated them early so they would be prepared when they entered society as adults and had to deal with these negative influences. the families desired to counter-socialize their children. this idea was reinforced by the comments of one child when asked why his parents home school, “so i can be raised in a christian environment. so that basically the people i am around will influence me more and if i am around my parents who are christians i will follow those beliefs.” one parent concluded: i think human experience teaches that what happens is that kids are drawn down to their lowest common denominator at least morally if not intellectually. to throw our kids in the mix would invite them to partake in the behaviors that we are trying to protect against in the home school environment. this idea of negative education protecting, or to use the analogy of one parent providing a nurturing environment like a greenhouse where the children will grow strong before being planted in the wider world, is one way that these parents planned to impact the common declarations of independence: home school families’ perspectives on education, the common good, and diversity 7 good. they wanted to prepare their children to emerge as adults with a worldview different from the prevailing worldview of society in order to challenge and improve society. the diversity of their education also included a positive element. their curriculum was qualitatively different from what was available in both the local public and private schools as reported in anthony and burroughs (2012). their curriculum was based on classical education. when asked to describe their curriculum one parent responded: we follow a classical education. based on ancient grammar and logic. in the 30’s dorothy sayers wrote an article called, “the lost tools of learning”, where she said they are not just a subjects, they are also methods. every subject has its own facts and logic. so everything focuses around history as our centerpiece. we also study biblical history which you don’t get in public schools. then we have arts, science and music revolve around the same time frame we are studying. the families also did not limit their curriculum to one specific program or place rather they established specific learning objectives and then choose from a variety of options to meet those objectives. anthony and burroughs (2012) used the analogy of an educational menu to describe how these families make curriculum choices. their education was not only diverse in terms of worldview, but also curriculum. the families realized that they would be criticized for teaching their children a curriculum that diverged from the traditional school curriculum. they believed that the establishment saw their efforts as a threat as exemplified by one mother's statement that she fears “for home schools, because um...i mean we are teaching things that i don’t think the other side wants our kids to know.” this comment is enlightening in that these families realized that they were teaching something that was different from the traditional schools. they felt that efforts to limit home schooling existed less because of common good arguments, but more because the traditional educational establishment feared the ideas that were being taught and wanted to keep them out of the larger society, in effect, limiting diversity. these families felt they had an obligation to their children and god to teach them knowledge, skills, and a worldview that are not necessarily a part of the traditional school curriculum. they believed that by doing this they were increasing the diversity of ideas in a society that was deliberately limiting the propagation of certain ideas in the schools and by extension in the larger society. their goal was to positively influence society. against charges of attempts to insulate his children from society one father commented, “they are being equipped to influence the world positively. but that equipping has to take place in a more protective environment.” this attempt to add to the diversity of ideas in the larger society stemmed from their hierarchical view of society. this finding reinforces arai (1999) who concluded that these families have a different view of citizenship and common good that is situated in the family and working in the community and that we should appreciate this diversity. what is the proper response by society to the diversity that home school families offer society? in a diverse society that accepts and embraces a variety of different lifestyles and claims to be multicultural, is it proper to criticize this group because they choose to teach and learn differently? is it proper to criticize this group because they teach a world-view that is different from the larger society? if it is, what is the basis of the criticism? if based on their worldview then what of freedom? if their divergent worldview is the basis of criticism and failure to accept the diversity offered by home school families, then perhaps one parent is accurate in his question: aren’t we a free country? what is this where you got mandatory education and they troll the streets for kids who aren’t in school? and once you’re there, and if parents dare to question the curriculum and the assigned reading they are treated like an animal. it’s not exactly a model for freedom. discussion how does our society reconcile these differing views of education and society? does the will and actions of the majority dictate the actions of the small minority who choose to home school? can and should the state limit the rights and activities of the family to educate which existed prior to and after the establishment of the united states and the united states constitution? currently, home schooling is legal in all fifty states with varying degrees of regulation, yet it remains a topic of significant debate among academics, legal scholars, professional educators, and the general public. how our society deals with home schooling will say much about the view of our society towards how to balance individual freedom and collective responsibility, the nature and practice of religious freedom, and respect for the diversity of ideas and practice. the findings that these home school families view the common good differently, see their efforts as increasing societal diversity, and that the operation of their home schools is part of the exercise of their religion provides a clearer view of their motivations to home school and also places them in further contrast with critics of home schooling (apple, 2000; lubienski, 2000, reich, 2002; yuracko, 2008). these findings provide nuance to the idea of what is the common good for society as espoused by lubienski (2000). is it in the common good to have one form of education that all children participate in and receive a common worldview or is it in the best interest of society to have varied forms of education current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 resulting in a diversity of ideas that compete in the larger market place of ideas? that these families saw their home school practices as increasing the diversity of society is an important finding in light of the focus the educational establishment has placed on diversity. this expansion of the definition of diversity to include how and where one is taught as well as the specific worldview and curriculum used presents a challenge to proponents of diversity. does society reject this diversity, because it is based on a worldview that may or may not be generally accepted in the hierarchy of the traditional educational establishment? finally, that these families situated the practice of home schooling within the exercise of religion presents a philosophical and constitutional challenge that extends the debate over the regulation and legality of home schooling into a first amendment issue. placing the operation of home schools squarely within their religious practice potentially places them within the scope of the united states supreme court’s yoder (1972) decision. the yoder decision was narrowly focused on one particular group, but the principle that directing children’s education is a part of religious practice is a direct challenge to the larger societal interests claimed by critics of home schooling. many people interpret or consider the free exercise of religion to equate with freedom of worship. the educational practices of many families who home school for religious reasons and the yoder decision challenge those commonly held interpretations. as home schooling continues to grow as a viable educational option for families, our society will continue to debate its merits as well as its legality and the proper extent of regulation. the voices of these families, their declarations of independence from the educational norm in our nation, will continue to challenge our views of what really is the common good, what diversity we value, and what activities we include in our definition of the free exercise of religion. references anthony, k., & burroughs, s. (2010). making the transition from traditional to home schooling: home school family motivations. current issues in education, 13 (4). anthony, k., & burroughs, s. (2012). day to day operations of home school families: selecting from a menu of educational choices to meet students’ individual instructional needs. international education studies, 4 (4). apple, m. w. (2000). away with all teachers: the cultural politics of home schooling. international studies in sociology of education, 10(1), 61-80. arai, b. a. (1999). home schooling and the redefinition of citizenship. education policy analysis archives, 7(27). basham, p. (2001). home schooling: from the extreme to the mainstream. public policy sources, 51. retrieved june 15, 2007 from academic search premier. bielick, s. (2008). 1.5 million home schooled students in the united states in 2007 (nces publication no. 2009-030). washington, dc: national center for educational statistics. [online] available: http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp? pubid=2009030 (may 1, 2010) blokhuis, j. c. (2010) whose custody is it, anyway?: 'home schooling' from a parens patriae perspective. theory and research in education 8(2), 199-222. collum, e. (2005). the ins and outs of home schooling: the determinants of parental motivations and student achievement. education and urban society, 37, 307-335. gatto, j. t. (2000). the underground history of american education: a schoolteacher's intimate investigation into the prison of modern schooling. new york, ny: oxford village press. glesne, c. (2006). becoming qualitative researchers: an introduction (3rd ed.). boston, ma: pearson education, inc. greene, m. (2007). the public school and the private vision. new york: the new press. joseph, m. (2002). the trivium: the liberal arts of logic, grammar, and rhetoric. philadelphia: paul dry books. klicka, c. (2002). home schooling: the right choice. nashville, tn: broadman and holman publishers. knowles, g. j. (1991). parents’ rationales for operating home schools. journal of contemporary ethnography, 20, 203230. knowles, g. j., muchmore, j. a., & spaulding, h. w. (1994).home education as an alternative to institutionalized education. the educational forum, 58, 238243. kunzman, r. (2012). education, schooling, and childrens' rights: the complexity of schooling. educational theory, 62(1), 75-89. lines, p. (1994). home schooling: private choices and public obligations. office of educational research and improvement, u.s. department of education. lines, p. (2001). home schooling. office of educational research and improvement, u.s. department of education. locke, j. (1952). the second treatise of government. t. pearson (ed.). new york, ny: macmillan. (original published in 1690). lubienski, c. (2000). whither the common good? a critique of home schooling. peabody journal of education, 75(1/2), 207-232. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327930pje751&2_ 12 marx, k., & engels, f. (1964). the communist manifesto. declarations of independence: home school families’ perspectives on education, the common good, and diversity 9 (s. moore, trans.). new york, ny: washington square press. (original published 1848). princiotta, d., & bielick, s. (2006) home schooling in the united states: 2003, (nces 2006042) u.s. department of education. national center for education statistics, washington, dc: 2005. ray, b. d. (2000) home schooling for individuals' gain and society's common good. peabody journal of education, 75(1/2), 272-93. ray, b. d. (2011). 2.04 million home schooled students in the united states in 2010. national home education research institute. reich, r. (2002). the civic perils of home schooling. educational leadership, 59(7), 5659. wilson, d. (1991). recovering the lost tools of learning: an approach to distinctively christian education. wheaton, il: crossway books. wisconsin v. yoder, 406 u.s. 205 (1972). yuracko, k. a. (2008). education off the grid: constitutional constraints on home schooling. california law review, 96(1), 123-84. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 appendix a interview protocols and archival data collected parent interview 1 1. what was the primary reason you decided to home school? 2. if someone told you they were going to home school their children what would you tell them? 3. what are some of the reasons you might consider stopping home schooling? 4. what reasons do you continue home schooling? 5. describe one day of home schooling from this week? 6. compare home schooling to traditional schooling. 7. how much time do you spend in direct instruction a day? 8. overall what has been your experience with the home school group? 9. what benefits do you receive from the home school group? 10. what are some of the initial challenges you had to overcome when you started home schooling? parent interview 2 curriculum questions 1. what role does memorization play in education? 2. how important is reading in education? 3. what role does the accumulation of facts role in education? 4. what is the most indispensable part of the curriculum? 5. what part of the curriculum could be removed if necessary? distractions 1. what things distract the students from their work during their lessons? 2. what things distract the family as a whole from lessons? 3. can you give an example of a distraction that was difficult to overcome? frustrations 1. what are some sources of frustration for you? 2. what are some sources of frustration for your children? 3. can you give an example of a time you were frustrated while home schooling your children? evaluation 1. how do you evaluate your children’s academic progress? 2. can you give me an example of a time when you evaluated one child’s progress and recognized a deficiency and how you responded? parent interview 3 1. what books or literature did you read that influenced you to home school? 2. how much of an influence was literature about home schooling? 3. what is the future of american home schooling? 4. what principles guide your curriculum decisions? 5. how would you describe your instructional methods? 6. how do you determine what to put in your curriculum and what to leave out? 7. how do you handle material/ subjects that are in opposition to your belief system? can you give an example? 8. how do your instructional methods change as a child moves through grades? can you give an example? 9. how does the coop support your educational efforts? 10. what ways do you use technology to teach your children? 11. how do you foster or encourage autonomous learning? 12. other than the coop what other support systems do you use? 13. respond to the following prompt: “if we had leadership, our children could read!” 14. how would you respond to the idea that by home schooling your children you are hurting the common good? 15. do you feel that your children are losing something by not being involved in a larger more diverse community of learners? declarations of independence: home school families’ perspectives on education, the common good, and diversity 11 16. in some literature, home school advocates indicate that home schooling pre dates public schools as the original form of education in america. do you see home schooling in america regaining status as the primary mode of education? 17. would you consider using any public school resources if they were open for your use as a home school parent? child interview protocol 1. what reasons does your family home school? 2. did you and your family discuss the decision to home school? 3. have you ever discussed with your parents not home schooling? 4. what do you like about home schooling? 5. what things do you not like about home schooling? 6. what is hard about home schooling? 7. what is easy about home schooling? 8. how much information do you memorize? what types of things? 9. how do your parents teach you? 10. what part of your schooling would you like to stop doing? 11. what types of things frustrate you in school? 12. what types of things distract you from your studies? 13. how do you get graded? archival data collected 1. student work 2. parentteacher lesson plans 3. photographs taken during observations 4. cooperative website 5. weekly journals completed by participants 6. course syllabi 7. parent teacher planning books current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 12 appendix b sample matrix: differing view of common good theme: differing view of the common good harbor family mother: i think it could go either way, but our responsibilities are not to the common good. our responsibility is to raise godly children. responsibility to family and god first. mother: hurting the greater good or the common good. well, the common good may not be, what people see as the common good may not be the same. you know what i see as the common good and what someone else sees as the common good may not be the same. disagreement over what is the common good. husband: she more or less had a spiritual calling and wanted the children to have a godly upbringing. common good is raising godly children. if we had leadership? um, what do you think they mean by that? i think adult male role models, if the fathers were leaders in the families that are the idea. i think the sign means government. if the children see their fathers wanting to read even if it is reading newspapers or magazines, we read things that talk about it. it opens up conversation. i think that is the kind of leadership the country needs, fathers. common good impacted by more than schools. strong families impact the common good. ... our kids are being exposed to things we don’t want them to be exposed to and i don’t think everything is terrible. diversity of ideas and negative education positively impact the common good. smith father: so, i think the idea of the common good is served not harmed by giving kids like plants in a hot house an opportunity to be nurtured and protected in a more structured environment at home. rather than toss them in with everyone else in an environment that often times one that brings harmful influences their growth. different view of what the common good is combined with negative education and diversity of experience. mother: do believe all religion i mean all education is religious in nature. and the question is which religion, at least being in charge of our own children’s education we know which religion we are trying to infuse and pass along to them. in public schools we were not quite sure, but we didn’t approve much of it. so of course grammar, it doesn’t appear to have a religious nature in it, but i found grammar books that use sentences that were conveying some sort of bias, math books (looking and smiling towards husband) mother: i think it’s good for the common good not to have someone trained in the little gerbil/hamster wheel of public education. they are spouting them out with all the same moral, philosophical thoughts very important issues and our kids are probably going to be going against the grain challenging other people, hopefully. diversity of ideas/ beliefs in the interest of the common good. father: i think it is dead wrong. because, we are not declarations of independence: home school families’ perspectives on education, the common good, and diversity 13 negative education and importance of religion removing them from society, we are creating better citizens. home schooling positively impacts common good through superior education. riley mother: i think ultimately that’s the parent’s responsibility and you can teach a child to read if you just did it in one hour in the evening every day. family is responsible for learning. mother: i am not grooming my child for society or for this world. i am grooming my child for the lord’s kingdom world. differing vision of the common good. god didn’t give me someone else’s child. he gave us our child and that’s where my concern has got to be. and if we had schools where we didn’t have all of this outside agitation and influence or whatever from groups and things… everybody gets to say what they want to except for christians. and you get to celebrate for all these different things but you can’t celebrate christian things family and beliefs over the greater common good. diversity of ideas. johnson so i thought my primary responsibility is to my children. my little ones god has given to me to see about. so the combination of the outward pull with my daughter and seeing my son slip between the cracks and anyway i just came home and told my husband that whole thing and we said we’d try it for a year and if it isn’t working we’ll go back they’re little. that’s when we decided to home school. first responsibility is to the family. the reason to home school is not knowledge itself because i would say that education encompasses a lot more than knowledge it includes skills. diversity of ideas it was important imparting our values to them. like i was talking about earlier compartmentalizing during those years i was converted. i was raised in church and considered myself a christian all those years, but i was really converted later. so i guess i did think more about really being able to teach my children on a daily basis and to live together. diversity of ideas books “government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. it kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.” p. xxv proper role of the family “what we must strive for is an education involving every aspect of the child’s life. the child must be taught how to love the lord god with all the mind. if parents fail at this, a child may pick up a non-biblical worldview from someone else.” p. 49 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 14 (gatto, 2000) diversity of ideas and proper role of the family wilson, 1991 declarations of independence: home school families’ perspectives on education, the common good, and diversity 15 article citation anthony, k. v. (2013). declarations of independence: home school families’ perspectives on education, the common good, and diversity. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1075 author notes kenneth v. anthony department of curriculum, instruction, and special education mississippi state university kva#3@msstate.edu kenneth v. anthony is an assistant professor of education in the department of curriculum, instruction, and special education at mississippi state university. his research interests include home schooling and social studies education. his email is kva#3@msstate.edu. manuscript received: 9/10/2012 revisions received: 1/12/2013 accepted: 1/17/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 16 volume 16, number 1 february 1, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1198_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 september 7, 2013 issn 1099-839x communities as critical partners in teacher education: the impact of community immersion on teacher candidates’ understanding of self and teaching in urban schools jennifer waddell university of missouri-kansas city communities play a critical role in helping teacher candidates understand the social and historical aspects of community and their impact on schools, students and families, particularly in urban communities. communities should be integral and equal partners in preparing teachers for today’s diverse schools. this paper focuses on utilizing the community as a space for preparing urban teachers. it describes a study of an urban community immersion experience in teacher education at a predominantly white institution. this qualitative study was guided by two research questions, “how have these community immersion experiences influenced candidates’ understanding of self?” and “how have these experiences influenced candidates’ identity as a teacher in urban schools?” findings suggest that carefully designed community experiences can have significant impact on teacher candidates’ understanding of self and their identity as teachers in urban schools. keywords: teacher education, urban education, community immersion, field experiences, elementary teacher education, diversity, teacher identity as the student population of schools across the united states shifts to a non-white majority (national center for education statistics, 2010), teacher education programs must become increasingly aware of the need to prepare all teachers to work effectively with diverse student populations. milner (2010) asserts that “preparing teachers to teach is about teachers building a repertoire of knowledge, attitudes, mindsets, belief systems, and skills for success through a teacher journey; teachers develop the cognitive and analytical skills to continue learning through a process of improving their work” (p. 118). this journey must involve opportunities for teacher candidates to understand their own cultural identities, the experiences of their students and communities, and to be able to use this knowledge to create culturally responsive and relevant learning opportunities in their classrooms (gay, 2000, 2010; ladson-billings, 1994, 2001; sleeter, 2001, 2008). preservice teachers often “have limited knowledge of the perspectives and life circumstances of low-income and/or ethnic minority students and caregivers” (amatea, cholewam, & mixon, 2012, p. 802), and lack the skills, dispositions and experiences needed to make meaningful connections with diverse students and families. additionally, many teachers hold deficit views about their students, families of students and urban communities. this deficit thinking can cause teachers to assume that educational and economic inequities experienced by poor students, students of color and linguistically diverse students and families are attributed to deficiencies within the student and the family (valencia, 1997). therefore, in preparing teacher candidates for teaching diverse student populations, advocates agree that it is important for teacher candidates to become aware of their own biases and identity as teachers, learn about cultural differences and consider current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 how those differences may affect the learning environment (cochran-smith, 2004; gay, 2000, 2010; ladson-billings, 1994, 2001). to effectively prepare all teachers and particularly teachers for urban schools, curriculum in teacher education must move from individual courses in diversity to an integrated approach to curriculum in which self-reflection, understanding of diversity and the intersection of culture and teaching is central to all experiences of teacher candidates. milner (2010) identifies the need for teacher educators and teacher candidates to examine thoughts, ideas, images and belief systems “to more deeply understand diversity and its multiple relationships to teaching and learning” (pp. 118119). through a carefully constructed curriculum, teacher candidates can deepen their understanding of self and develop cultural competence to effectively work with parents, families, communities, and students of urban districts (amatea, 2009; cochran-smith, 2004; ladsonbillings, 1994; sleeter, 2001; trumbull, greenfield, & quiroz, 2003). “when preservice teachers stay in university classrooms, they rarely have a chance to interact positively with children from culturally diverse families or children whose first language is not english” (leland & murtadha, 2011, p. 897). yet, real-life experiences can provide an authentic environment for candidates to become more self-aware and reflective about themselves and their views of children, families and communities. in designing course experiences, teacher educators need to be aware of the critical role communities can play in helping teacher candidates understand the social and historical aspects of community and the impact these aspects have on schools, students and families, particularly in urban communities. this paper explores the use of the community as a space for preparing urban teachers. the study examines the impact of community immersion experiences on teacher candidates’ development as teachers through their understanding of self and their identity as teachers in urban schools. specifically, the study was guided by two research questions, “how have these community immersion experiences influenced candidates’ understanding of self?” and “how have these experiences influenced candidates’ identity as a teacher in urban schools?” perspective this study is guided by the concept of selfreflection and cultural critical consciousness, which gay and kirkland (2003) define as, “thoroughly analyzing and carefully monitoring both personal beliefs and instructional behaviors about the value of cultural diversity, and the best ways to teach ethnically different students for maximum positive effects” (p. 182). selfreflection and cultural critical consciousness are prerequisites to becoming a culturally responsive teacher (gay & kirkland, 2003). as such, multicultural education calls on teacher preparation to provide opportunities for teacher candidates to recognize and examine their own cultural backgrounds and values (carpenter-lagattuta, 2004; gay, 2004; ladson-billings, 1994; rodriquez, 1998). as milner (2008) posits, successful teachers in urban schools envision life beyond their present situations; come to know themselves culturally, linguistically, gendered, racially, economically, and socially in relation to others; speak possibility and not destruction both inside and outside of the classroom regarding their students; care and demonstrate that care; and change their negative, deficit, counterproductive thinking in order to change their actions in the classrooms with students. (p. 1574) over the past twenty years, research in teacher education has dictated that candidates get to know their students outside of traditional learning environments (waddell, 2011; gay, 2004; haberman, 2000; ladsonbillings, 1994, 2001; weiner, 1999; zeichner, 2003, 2011). gaining experience of other cultures and the nontechnical aspects of being a teacher through direct experience in alternative learning environments can help the teacher candidate know the students more authentically and can help the teacher candidate gain a better understanding of their own background, of cultural diversity, and of how to better serve diverse groups of students (waddell, 2011; baldwin, buchanan, & rudisill, 2007; ladson-billings, 1994, 2001). however, it is imperative that experiences be designed to help the preservice teacher be able to apply analytical introspection through authentic engagement in critical consciousness and personal reflection (gay & kirkland, 2003). “real life experiences make the learning activities more genuine and authentic, and lessen the likelihood that students will escape the intellectual, emotional, psychological, moral, and pedagogical challenges inherent in reflection and critical consciousness” (gay & kirkland, 2003, p. 186). such experiences can impact teacher identity, with each experience contributing to the understanding of self and the development of a professional identity. olsen (2008) states that, “teacher development is circular even as it is also forward moving: a teacher is always collapsing the past, present, and future into a complex mélange of professional beliefs, goals, memories, and predictions while enacting practice” (p. 24). research demonstrates that teacher identity is developed over time and experiences within teacher education can have a profound effect on this development (gee, 2000; horn, nolen, ward, & campbell, 2008; merseth, sommer, & dickstein, 2008; ronfeldt & grossman, 2008). given the fact that fieldwork serves as a critical component of professional socialization for preservice teachers, teacher educators must be diligent in their efforts to provide field communities as critical partners in teacher education: the impact of community immersion on teacher candidates’ understanding of self and teaching in urban schools 3 opportunities that do not perpetuate negative stereotypes of urban communities but, instead help teacher candidates understand the community, its strengths and challenges, while also providing an avenue for self-reflection and deepened understanding of self and others. communities can provide authentic contexts for candidates to learn more about their students and to create a genesis for talking about issues of race, ethnic diversity, class, power, privilege and social justice. by situating course experiences in communities, teacher candidates are able to discover the strengths and challenges of urban communities rather than be solely informed by preexisting assumptions, societal stereotypes and judgment. while some educators caution against using service-learning as a method of teaching multiculturalism to white students (sperling, 2007), courses that are focused on learning from and about the community through attention to community strengths and social justice, can help prospective teachers better understand themselves and the communities in which they will teach. in such courses, the community is regarded as a valuable resource for teachers and for learning. engagement with community members, understanding of community and self-reflection can help diffuse deficit-thinking through helping candidates develop cultural critical consciousness. calls from the literature support the need for community-based practice in teacher education, not just in the preparation for teaching, but in understanding the complex context of diversity extant in today’s schools (waddell, 2011; cooper, 2007; garcia, arias, harris, murri, & serna, 2010; zeichner, 2006, 2010). learning experiences within urban communities provide exemplary avenues for teacher education programs to help teacher candidates understand the cultures with which they will interact (waddell, 2011; gay, 2004; ladson-billings, 1994, 2001; murrell, 2001; zeichner, 2003). murrell (n.d.) emphasizes the need for community-based practice when stating that an accomplished teacher “possesses and works to build on knowledge of culture, community, and identity of children and families as the core of his/her teaching practice” (p. 2). zeichner (2006, 2010) supports the call for utilizing communities in non-hierarchical ways as critical funds of knowledge for the preparation of teachers. building on this research from education and the humanities, zeichner (2010) identifies the need for third spaces in teacher education, which he defines as “hybrid spaces in preservice teacher education programs that bring together school and university-based teacher educators and practitioner and academic knowledge in new ways to enhance the learning of prospective teachers” (p. 92). gutierrez (2008) introduced the concept of “third spaces” in her work around critical literacies. she described these “spaces” as transformative and rigorous learning environments, moments in the classroom outside of the traditional teaching paradigm, in which the cultural histories and personal experiences of students were valued and students were empowered to make sense of learning by intertwining intellectual knowledge with personal histories and culture (baker & gutierrez, 2008; gutierrez, 2008). in teacher education, zeichner (2006, 2010, 2011) identifies these third spaces as a new paradigm in which we honor schools and communities as equal partners in the preparation of teachers. the university of missouri, kansas city’s institute for urban education and elementary teacher education programs are utilizing the community as a valuable space for preparing urban teachers. purpose this article describes a study of a community immersion experience in an urban focused teacher education program at a predominantly white institution in an urban community. it is an extension of a previous study in which i examined the impact of the course on candidates’ perceptions of urban communities and urban teaching (waddell, 2011). the previous study focused on candidates within the elementary education program during the summer and fall semesters of 2009. the current study examined the course as it exists within the reformed elementary education program and focuses on candidates who participated in the course during the 2011 summer semester. the study responds to the need for community immersion programs to create opportunities for reflection and critical consciousness. therefore, the purpose of the current study was to examine the impact of cultural immersion experiences on teacher candidates’ understanding of self and their identity as a teacher in urban schools. context urban teacher education program the elementary teacher education program involved in this study is part of a teacher quality partnership grant project funded by the united states department of education (waddell & vartuli, n.p.). the participants in this study are the first cohort to participate in a fully reformed, clinical urban teacher education program. the two-year undergraduate professional program is field-based, in which all of the methods courses are taught in urban schools and candidate learning is guided by the experiences they encounter as teachers and teacher assistants in urban classrooms (dewey, 1938). guided by a social constructivist framework, candidates are immersed in the complexity of teaching in urban schools and are provided multiple experiences in observing, discussing, practicing and refining teaching and teacher actions as they construct meaning about effective teaching and form their own professional identity as a teacher in urban schools. the program immerses candidates in social constructivist experiences, in which they learn through the social construction of knowledge via authentic experiences in schools and within a community of fellow learners (richardson, 2003; vygotsky, 1978). current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 eighty-nine percent of all program courses are taught within urban schools and communities. these courses have been developed through a process of examining objectives of previous courses and curriculum standards and juxtaposing those with everyday experiences of teachers in urban schools. the result is courses that center on the field and on relevant connections between theory and practice. courses are connected by essential questions and enduring understandings based on five curricular threads that permeate all phases of the program: (a) diversity and social justice; (b) integrated curriculum; (c) reflective inquiry and problem-solving; (d) culturally relevant and social constructivist pedagogy; and (e) working with students, families and communities. the program culminates in the final year, in which candidates are involved in a closely supervised year-long teaching candidacy in which they spend the entire school year working in a collaborative teaching partnership with a mentor teacher in one of the program’s partner schools. summer community experience. one of the most influential and transformative experiences in the program is the summer community immersion experience. the course, in its fifth year of operation, is a required course for all candidates in the elementary program as well as those in the urban middle school cohort. this course experience was designed to help candidates “gain a better understanding of themselves as teachers in urban schools, gain a better understanding of the urban community including its challenges and resources, and develop a deep understanding of the experiences of the students and families with whom they will work” (waddell, 2011, p. 26). the experience helps candidates understand their role beyond the classroom, helping them understand what murrell (n.d.) identifies as “the situatedness of learningthat the setting, context and fabric of human relationships in which learning occurs is important to the quality and impact of that learning” (p. 3). the summer community experience occurs during the summer between the two professional years and assists candidates in the ongoing construction of their identity as a teacher via experiences and reflection on teaching and working within a diverse community. situated within a midwestern city, the community in which the course occurs faces similar challenges as other urban areas across the united states: “failing school systems, racially segregated communities and socioeconomic divides between the inner city and outlying communities” (waddell, 2011, p. 24; missouri department of elementary & secondary education, 2011). the local news media focuses its attention on the challenges of the inner-city while ignoring similar challenges in neighboring suburban communities. therefore, stereotypes regarding children and citizens of urban communities are often perpetuated by the media and promote the deficit-view of many preservice teachers. this further intensifies the need for field-based programs to help teacher candidates experience the community and understand its strengths as well as the roots of its challenges. in a post-study interview, the instructor of the summer community course defined community as, “the school districts and the neighborhoods surrounding the school districts where they will generally work” (personal communication, december 13, 2012). a goal for the course is to help the teacher candidates “be willing to explore the community in which they will teach” (personal communication, december 13, 2012). as an avenue for creating this willingness, the summer community experience utilizes the community as a third space. through positioning learning experiences outside of schools or the traditional college campus, candidates can gain first-hand experience of the community, learning that there is much more to the community than one may have assumed from limited perspectives and lack of exploration. candidates spend eight weeks immersed in the urban community, discovering the heterogeneity that exists within multiple smaller communities and diverse populations. using the community as the primary location for the course allows the instructor to create opportunities for the candidates to explore, learn about, and question their assumptions about diverse areas within the community. the course is divided into three parts designed to complement and enhance one another and the candidates’ construction of knowledge about self and the community. the three components of the course are opportunities for (a) campus-based experiences, (b) community-based experiences, and (c) community internships. campus-based experiences. within the summer community experience, candidates read, discuss and analyze knowledge and phenomena of the community. while most of these opportunities occur through experiences within the community, there are also designated times for candidates to meet on campus and engage in focused dialogue. on-campus experiences include course readings and discussions about the community’s diverse historical roots, the varied socioeconomic and ethnic populations within the community, and issues of racialization, segregation, and marginalization of some areas within urban communities, guest lecturers to broaden knowledge of available resources and structured dialogue about the strengths and challenges of diverse communities. course readings include topics such as white privilege (mcintosh, 1988), race, real estate and unequal development: the kansas city experience (gotham, 2002), the pedagogy of poverty (haberman, 1991), and the school to prison pipeline (naacp, 2005). community-based experiences. another component of the course is facilitated observations and experiences within the community. community field communities as critical partners in teacher education: the impact of community immersion on teacher candidates’ understanding of self and teaching in urban schools 5 trips, such as visiting and assisting at homeless shelters, exploring diverse neighborhoods, visiting community food banks, and learning about community-based centers and neighborhood associations, are one aspect of this component. candidates also participate in simulations, such as experiencing a day without public transportation or facilitated discussions about community needs and available resources. another activity is neighborhood exploration to develop a deepened understanding of resources within the community. the community-based experiences provide candidates with exposure to new experiences and connections to the role of teacher and teaching in urban schools. the focus is on understanding the strengths of the community as well as understanding the “systemic, institutional, and bureaucratic barriers that can prevent teachers and students in urban education from realizing and reaching their potential” (milner, 2008, p. 1575). candidates learn about the challenges of overcoming institutionalized barriers, such as high numbers of students of color in juvenile detention centers and lack of access to affordable healthcare and/or adequate nutrition. candidates also learn about cultural and historical landmarks within the community and the commitment of community residents to preserving and enhancing the richness and diversity of their communities. community internships. a final component of the course is community internship opportunities in which each student spends 40-80 hours outside of class time working with a community agency. the “internship” component of the course provides individual opportunities for candidates to learn about the network of not-for-profit agencies in the urban core and the interconnectedness of community services and experiences of families in urban communities (waddell, 2011). candidates set their own schedule with the community agency and work with the agency on a weekly basis during the 8-week course. examples of community agencies in which internships occur are the local food bank, domestic violence shelters, community youth centers, retirement centers, community gardens, neighborhood associations, child development centers, homeless shelters, and faith-based organizations. weekly, in class and via written reflections, candidates deconstruct and reflect upon their experiences and construct understanding of community, students and families, and the interface with schools and teachers. course discussions and conversations with the instructor are carefully designed to help candidates to reflect deeply and analytically, to “check themselves” about the topics and “carefully examine their feelings about what they experience” (gay & kirkland, 2003) and think about the implications for teaching. while working in the community, candidates are met with various tasks and challenges. some candidates work with urban youth and children at child development centers or faith-based organizations, while others may provide assistance at homeless shelters and food banks or assist with clerical work at domestic violence shelters and counseling centers. in a post-study interview with the course instructor, who also co-developed the course, she described how working at a community-operated center can be transformative for a candidate: you know, like when the preservice teachers go to [child development center]. when i first went to [child development center], i’m really middle class, so i understand that. i was like, oh my god, they just warehouse kids in here! then you listen to the stories of the children who’ve grown up at [child development center], and realize it was the closest thing to going over to aunt betty’s after school that they’re ever going to have. and then you ask yourself, where would these children be if you didn’t have [child development center]? through community internships the preservice teachers are doing things with the people who are already there. [the preservice teachers] are learning that they don’t have all the answers. they are not bringing in all the answers, although they may be able to add something to the equation. but i feel that what they realize when they’re working with people instead of disregarding what’s already there, they’re learning how to take what’s there and look at what’s positive about it and how to build on it. or how to make their contribution to an equation that’s already working… for example, when we did work with the [neighborhood alliance]. the students just looked at the community and they just didn’t think there was anything going on down there. then they get down there and they realize, “my god, these people have done this, this, this, and this. i can learn from them.” candidates not only discover the hard work needed to work with not-for-profit agencies, but also the wisdom of the people who commit their lives to enhancing and maintaining the authenticity of their communities. one example is the significance of community-based revitalization efforts, born from residents within the community. these discoveries shape the candidates’ readiness for their final year in the program and impact their development as a teacher. methods this study examines the impact of the community experience course on teacher candidates’ understanding of self and identity as a teacher in urban schools. the study was approached qualitatively, combining constructivism and grounded theory approaches by first examining the participants’ current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 construction of knowledge through their perceptions of course experiences. the data were then analyzed in an attempt to develop theory that can inform teacher preparation for urban schools (maxwell, 1996; patton, 2002). participants participants were 36 teacher candidates enrolled in the field-based urban elementary or middle school teacher education program. two candidates were studying middle school education and 34 were in the elementary program. two candidates did not submit all requested data; therefore, 34 participants were included in the data analysis. of these, four were graduate students working on initial teacher certification and 30 were undergraduate teacher education students. three were male and four were students of color: two asian, one identified as hispanic and one as white/hispanic. therefore, 88% of the students were white and 76% were white female. while the self-described backgrounds of the participants varied from “a small rural town [that] was 100% white” to “middle class, suburban community” to “low to middle class community [that] was predominately african american,” 64% of the participants who volunteered background information described their communities as all or predominantly white. thirty-six percent of these communities were described as rural and 45% were described as suburban and middle class, leaving 19% as urban. data sources data were collected throughout the 8-week summer semester through written documents, online surveys and focus groups interviews. all participants submitted written reflections, 16 candidates participated in open-ended surveys and 14 candidates participated in the voluntary focus group interviews. the online surveys were open-ended responses to questions about the course experiences such as, “how have the course expectations and field experience influenced your perceptions of the community and/or community agency?” each participating candidate took part in two focus group sessions, one during the fourth week of the semester and one during the last week of the semester. written documents were in the form of course reflections that candidates were asked to submit twice weekly regarding their experiences and perceptions of teaching in an urban community. responding to a set prompt was not required, but they were all asked to reflect on their experiences. a total of 393 written reflections were collected in addition to results from 16 online surveys and 4 focus group meetings, which were professionally transcribed for data analysis. data analysis preliminary data analysis occurred in which data were managed and analyzed through inductive analysis with an open coding approach. open coding occurs when the researcher is open to patterns and themes that emerge from the data (mcmillan, 2000). data were reviewed through the lens of critical consciousness with the intention of answering the two research questions, “how have these community immersion experiences influenced candidates’ understanding of self?” and “how have these experiences influenced candidates’ identity as a teacher in urban schools?” data were separated into three data sets: reflections, surveys and focus group transcripts, and each data set was analyzed separately. within each data set, content analysis occurred, in which the researcher reviewed the data for recurring words and phrases that related to understanding of self and/or identity as a teacher. data were then grouped into categories and categories were analyzed repeatedly through axial coding until themes emerged from the data (corbin & strauss, 2008). once each data set was analyzed, triangulation was attempted by cross-checking themes across all data sets (patton, 2002). analysis to determine possible themes occurred by the researcher reviewing the data multiple times for words and phrases that related to the candidate’s thought process, awareness of self, emotions and/or examples of metacognition. a second round of analysis occurred through identification of words and phrases related to the candidate as teacher in urban schools. themes were determined by grouping similar categories. at the conclusion of the analysis, a total of three themes emerged relating to the understanding of self and a development of critical consciousness and two themes emerged relating to teacher identity. themes that emerged as prevalent were those that appeared across all three data sets. findings understanding of self three themes emerged related to the candidates’ understandings of self and the development of critical consciousness. the three most prevalent themes were (a) awareness of own naivety, (b) awareness of privilege, and (c) reflection on self and others’ perspectives. awareness of naivety. the most prevalent theme regarding candidates’ understanding of self was the realization of candidates’ own naivety about the community and issues of racialization and segregation. this finding is consistent with gay and kirkland’s (2003) claim that, “some teacher education students even believe that race and racism are non-issues, and are no longer problems in u.s. society and schools” (p. 184). throughout this study, candidates repeatedly described the summer community experience as “eye-opening” and “shocking.” candidates reflected frequently about their “sheltered lives” and the fact that many of the realities encountered in the course were issues they had “never thought about” or were issues of injustice, racialization, segregation and oppression that they did not previously think related to their community. often, candidates communities as critical partners in teacher education: the impact of community immersion on teacher candidates’ understanding of self and teaching in urban schools 7 explicitly stated, “i was so naïve.” in her journal, courtney, a white female from what she describes as, “the whitest of towns,” wrote, “i was extremely sheltered before this class and i never realized it.” likewise, julie, also a white female, wrote, “i was able to see how isolated my life has been and how naive i have been.” with the heightened awareness of naivety, candidates also reflected on the new knowledge they gained as a result of taking this course. reflections in journals included comments about students who learned new information about the community. lisa, a white female wrote, “i’ve realized that i know very little about a place i have lived my entire life. i have learned that [our city] does not just contain umkc and the [upscale shopping area].” similarly, sophie, who describes herself as “white/hispanic” wrote, “i find it shocking how complex [our city] is in regards to social issues. furthermore, i find it shocking that i know so little about it.” courtney echoed her previous comments and demonstrated her new awareness of the strengths of the city, in response to the online survey she stated: i have learned so much i can’t even describe. i have lived in the [city] area my entire life and [our instructor] is showing me things i have never seen before. this class has opened my eyes to a world i’ve looked at but never really seen. samantha, a hispanic female discovered that her naivety came from her new awareness of racial segregation. in a written reflection she wrote: as we toured the facility, i noticed the male population was all african american with only one white male. i began wondering why. there is something wrong with the picture i was seeing… i’m beginning to put together how racially divided the metropolitan area is. although i’ve studied the civil rights movements and would like to think we’ve come so much further with integration of all cultures, i’m beginning to think [our city] missed that boat. awareness of privilege. gay and kirkland (2003) assert that, “[preservice teachers] do not realize the privilege, presumption, and entitlement that are embedded in using their personal outsider knowledge and limited experiences” (p. 183). a second theme, awareness of privilege, demonstrates the community experience brought to surface an understanding of privilege. candidates reflected on their own background and resources and the fact that many had not realized they had lived a privileged life. some candidates were able to name the privilege, such as brooke, who expressed her understanding through her journal in stating, “i have seen how privilege has influenced my life… the ways in which i discover each day how privileged i am have exponentially grown through this experience in this course.” connie, also a white female, reflected on the daily privileges her background has afforded her, i know i take for granted, toothbrush and toothpaste, medical insurance, deodorant, a loving family, etc. it is so easy to assume that everyone has a roof over their heads, food on the table, heating and clean water, access to a shower, clean clothes, etc. other candidates began discovering that they had spent much of their lives privileged by way of their own ignorance and the fact that they lived in communities in which they thought they had been sheltered from everyday injustices. kathy, a white female, responded to an online survey by stating, “i have noticed, however, that i have been isolated from much of the daily happenings of the city. it is easy to have misinformation, and be unknowledgeable about a system, when you never encounter the system from all angles.” robert, a white male, also responded to the online survey; he explained the ways in which privilege and guilt can control what one chooses to reflect upon: most people understand that every community faces a complex web of problems; most of the time we choose to ignore these problems because thinking about them makes us feel guilty; this is because we are exposed to problems via the news, and the news very rarely tells us how to help. this class has exposed us to this web in a very constructive way. by constructive i mean that we are now aware of how to untangle the complex web of problems without feeling guilty. marcie, a white student from a suburban area also grappled with the ways privilege often shelters one from the realities of others: there are so many things i have never thought about simply because i have never experienced them before and didn’t even know i should think about them, but now i have heard it or experienced it and know how to interact with others in a much better way. reflection on self and others’ perspectives. a final theme related to the development of critical consciousness was candidates’ deep reflection of self and other people’s perspectives. gay and kirkland (2003) cite strong (2002) in stating that: “analytical introspection, continuous reconstruction of knowledge, and the recurring transformation of beliefs and skills that are essential elements of self-reflection” (p. 182). as the community immersion course progressed, candidates became increasingly reflective about themselves and others. for some candidates new awareness was discovered through examining their thoughts and current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 8 assumptions about others. experiences throughout the summer provided opportunities for candidates to become more aware of their own thinking patterns andassumptions of others. some of these revelations occurred through course readings and discussions while other revelations were discovered as candidates interacted within the community. some candidates, such as connie, became acutely aware of their own thought processes and the need to become more aware and reflective of their assumptions. in a class journal connie wrote, “though i wish i could say i do not have any prejudices, i do, unfortunately. i catch myself thinking in ways in which i know i should not be thinking, realizing my own prejudices and hoping to stop them in their tracks.” diane, also a white female, discovered her past thought processes and the need to increase her own awareness of her assumptions: i made the assumption that these kids have parents that do not want them or are tied up in drugs and alcohol. i was wrong, [for] some kids this is true, but not all. making these assumptions about these kids is wrong of me to do. i will take this lesson learned into my teaching as well as my life. samantha, a hispanic female, also became aware of her thought processes when writing, “i am so naive. how and why had i come up with these stories in my head about the children of [child development center]? i really don’t know.” in a tearful moment during a focus group interview, marcie shared thoughts about her recognition of thought patterns and underlying assumptions. she stated: i’ve been in class or out when we’re doing things and i just am hit with wrong thinkings or different judgments i had in my own heart that i didn’t realize were there that have been there since i learned when i was little and now i’m having to face them to get rid of them… which is for me a good thing because i don’t want to, i don’t want to walk into a classroom, um, sorry, i don’t want to walk into a classroom with tons of judgments in my heart towards anyone, towards any of my students. as candidates became more aware of their own biases, assumptions and thought processes, they also began reflecting on their own growth and the challenge of interacting with others who may hold different beliefs about diversity and community involvement. as their own deficit lens got smaller, they began becoming aware of the deficit thinking of others. this awareness was revealed as they struggled with other people’s perceptions and the anger or frustration that accompanied these thoughts. candidates reflected about the ways in which their new knowledge, understandings and awareness became a source of empowerment in their conversations with others. in the final focus group interview, julie explained: i think what’s great about it too is, by me experiencing it and learning about it… and now because you’ve experienced it and learned, you can actually talk to them about it, and help them see things clearly too, and that has been awesome too, because there’s just so many people i know that never grew up in the inner-city and it’s not that they wanted to have these wrong views, they just have no paradigm for it, and so i’m able to talk with them and have good discussions and help them see things the right way too, which i think is, the more people that can see things the way they really are, the better, i think. in other situations, candidates reflected about how their new knowledge and passion seemed to place a strain on their relationships with family, friends and coworkers. connie reflected in a journal about her new awareness of other people’s assumptions and her own struggles in talking with them, understanding the danger of judging others as she may have once been judged: then i come across people… and their overwhelming prejudices and discrimination taking over the true right and wrong. again, i am faced with the uncertainty of how to address the peers who show they have lack of understanding of the urban community and the people who come from it. vonda, a non-traditional white female, shared how she has a new sense of confidence when talking to her family about her experiences: and it’s just a misconception that people have, and i feel now that i’m out in the community that i’ve experienced some of that, i’m a lot more educated to stick up for something or talk to them in an educated way and say you know that’s not how it is, you know what i mean, whereas before, i just didn’t know, and it was just an ignorance. imbedded emotions. multicultural educators agree that the development of critical consciousness and becoming culturally responsive educators can be emotionally daunting tasks. as preservice teachers learn about themselves, others and the context of urban education, emotions such as guilt and resistance are common. although not prevalent as themes, imbedded in the aforementioned themes were many strong emotions. within each theme, candidate reflections were underscored with conflicting emotions including shame, anger and excitement. shame. candidates conveyed feelings of shame in their awareness of privilege as well as their awareness of their own perceptions and thought processes. candidates communities as critical partners in teacher education: the impact of community immersion on teacher candidates’ understanding of self and teaching in urban schools 9 indicated or implied their shame and embarrassment of their own naivety and the ways in which they may have taken advantage of privilege even if they were not consciously aware of their actions. this shame was also conveyed as candidates noticed changes in their perspectives and became aware of their previously held assumptions and perceptions of others. anger. throughout the data sets, expressions of anger and frustration were common. most of this anger stemmed from the injustices of which they were becoming aware and/or those to which they were being re-introduced. many of the injustices were related to racialization and segregation in the community or city as a whole, while some anger was directed at those injustices perpetrated against children, such as zero tolerance policies, low expectations and low-level instructional practices, and disparities in health and human services. excitement. throughout the data sets, candidates also conveyed a sense of excitement about teaching in urban communities. many candidates reflected that the experience caused them to want to learn more and become more involved in the community. candidates also shared that their desires to teach in urban schools were confirmed by the summer experience. many of the experiences also caused candidates to feel motivated as teachers and look forward to the opportunities to teach in urban communities, as the experience affirmed their commitment to social justice and to teaching in urban schools. identity and urban teachers throughout the first professional program, candidates participate in activities regarding studentcentered and culturally responsive teaching. however, as they are not yet developing comprehensive lesson plans or working daily with the same group of students, they have not yet fully applied the concepts of culturally-responsive teaching. during the final year of the program, candidates work full-time as a co-teacher in a year-long teaching experience; they learn how to apply the conceptual framework of the program to their teaching. therefore, the summer experience is an opportunity to increase candidates’ readiness for learning and applying culturally responsive and student centered pedagogy. in analyzing the data for word and phrases related to teacher identity, it became clear that the summer experience reinforced and highlighted the importance of teachers knowing their students and using this knowledge to guide their actions as teachers and meet student needs. two primary themes emerged across all data sets: (a) the importance building relationships with students and (b) a reinforcement of individual teaching philosophy. although these areas are connected to one another, each emerged as a critical individual theme in the candidates’ reflection about being a teacher in an urban community. relationships with students. in reviewing the data for possible indicators of the course’s impact on candidates’ identity as a teacher in urban schools, the most prevalent theme, and one that underscores all other themes, is that of the importance of building relationships with students. as candidates reflected and talked about themselves as teachers, their focus was on the importance of relationships with students and the teacher’s critical influence on the lives of their students. the experiences of the course affirmed candidates’ belief that they can only be effective if they have authentic and trusting relationships with students. emma, a white candidate, reflected in a journal by stating, “i need to understand where my students come from in order [for me] to create a personal relationship with them. if there is a personal relationship, then the students will trust me and i can teach them more successfully.” vonda shared similar sentiments when reflecting in the online survey: i believe that every child can learn and every child has the potential to bring something unique and special to the world and to my classroom. i will help children to develop their potential by believing in them and building relationships with them. for many candidates, the importance of knowing students was affirmed, while for others, it became a new or heightened priority for their role as teacher in an urban community. in two separate journal entries a white female named cheryl reflected on the power of knowing students through authentic relationships. in an early journal, when reflecting on her plans for her field placement, cheryl wrote, “i first wanted to build relationships with the kids there-i wanted to know their stories and what made them feel happy, sad, angry, loved, and frustrated. i also wanted to build respect.” the power of relationship building was reinforced by the end of the semester, when cheryl wrote: i felt like today was a really great day in my attempts to build a relationship with the kids at the center... i felt like we got to see each other for who we really were during that time-just a group of people having fun and enjoying one another’s company. today was a really good day-i am realizing how sad i am going to be when this summer ends and i no longer get to see these people. i have had the best time with the staff and getting to know the kids. in my [classroom] i plan on engaging in some intense relationship building with the class i will be teaching in-i want and need relationships built upon respect and caring. kathy summed up the impact of the course on candidates’ understanding of the need for building current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 10 relationships and being student-centered when she reflected in a journal stating: as a future teacher, i am constantly thinking about how i can be an effective teacher. when i first started the program, most of my thinking was centered on curriculum: what lessons would i teach, how would i make them interesting, what will my units be about? as i have continued through the program, i have learned that the first step to becoming an effective teacher is not the curriculum, but the relationship with your class. urban education is not comprised of the elements of my grade school experience; it has to be molded to the children’s lives. reinforcement of individual teaching philosophy. as candidates reflected on themselves as teachers, individual philosophies of teaching were reinforced and expanded. through working with children and youth at various community agencies, reading and learning about the impact of schools on student livelihood, and through opportunities to interact with students and families within the community, candidates reflected on the need to create democratic classrooms with meaningful and active learning opportunities for students. the experiences reinforced the program’s social constructivist philosophy of teaching and affirmed the candidates’ own philosophies of teaching through culturally responsive, democratic and constructivist practices. andrea, who completed her field experience at a summer day camp, wrote about how the experience impacted her commitment to her educational philosophy: i did so by deciding which aspects of the program fit my educational philosophy and also exploring why i believe these elements are essential to how i want my classroom to look, feel like, and also be managed… i am a firm believer in constructivism. this means that students are given opportunities to construct knowledge through new experiences and building off of what they already know. for kathy, the experience allowed her to reaffirm her role as a change agent and activist for educational equity: as a teacher, i have to be a change agent and create a classroom that has an equal authority between the students and me, allowing students a say in what they learn and how they learn. allowing students to become a part of their own learning gives them reason, which elicits motivation. midway through the semester, in a journal entry, robert, a white male, reflected on his commitment to a studentcentered classroom: it reinforces my current belief that… i also need to create a classroom curriculum that continually respects, and incorporates who my children are at their core; this includes meeting there culturally (sic) needs as well as their individual needs. this will not be an easy task, and i may fail many times, but by recognizing this i am already on my way to being a successful educator. although the summer community experience is not a pedagogical course, it was able to provide experiences that illuminated the need for student-centered and culturally responsive classrooms. in a final journal reflection, michelle, a white student from a rural community demonstrated how the course is a precursor to the following semester’s courses in which students will learn to apply this philosophy in their classrooms. michelle sums up the semester in stating, “it also has started my reflection of how my identity and being culturally aware of my students’ identity will help me become a more effective teacher.” limitations as with any study involving a course, limitations to this study existed. although the researcher was not the instructor of the course, she was the coordinator of the urban education programs. the candidates were aware that their journals were being reviewed by the researcher which creates the possibility that candidates will share opinions they believe are “what the instructor wants to hear.” three attempts were made to control for this bias. (1) the instructor and researcher assured the candidates that the content of the journals was not considered in assigning course grades, (2) we communicated that we would not discuss the content of the journals with one another during the course semester and (3) the instructor worked to establish a classroom environment “where candidates feel comfortable sharing thoughts and feelings without the fear of being politically incorrect or judged by others” and environments in which they are given permission to be “who they are” and grow from there” (waddell, 2011, p. 34). another limitation pertains to the long-term impact of the course experiences. since data was collected over the summer the course was delivered, it captures the impact of the course at a point in time rather than the long-term impact of the course on the candidates’ future teaching practices. a follow-up study that will examine the practices and beliefs of the candidates after they begin their teaching careers is currently being planned. discussion the findings of this study make it clear that community immersion experiences can have a profound effect on teacher candidates’ understanding of self and can be critical in the formation of individual candidate’s development of cultural critical conscious as their identity as a teacher in urban communities develops. throughout the course, candidates reflected on the ways in which the course impacted their personal and professional growth communities as critical partners in teacher education: the impact of community immersion on teacher candidates’ understanding of self and teaching in urban schools 11 and affirmed or influenced their understanding of teaching in an urban community. the findings demonstrate that community immersion can impact teacher candidates’ understanding of their own identity and affirm the need for candidates to understand the students, families and communities in which they will teach. the study findings are aligned with the recommendations that opportunities to work and interact in urban communities can influence the ways in which teacher candidates work with students, parents, families and communities. the findings demonstrate that candidates are beginning to understand the “situatedness of learning”, the “view that resists the separation of schooling from the everyday world of students” (murrell, n.d., p. 3). the findings not only affirm the need for teacher education to embrace community-based practice as a significant component in the preparation of teachers, but the findings can also provide a guide into the curricular components that are essential for teacher education. the findings provide support for gay and kirkland’s (2003) recommendations that teacher education design learning experiences focusing on issues of diversity, social justice and power and privilege and that provide scaffolding of analytical and critical self-reflection to help develop cultural critical consciousness. these skills are critical to the development of culturally aware, community-minded and culturally responsive teachers. with the current focus on testing and accountability, many teacher education programs are placing sole or primary importance on the technical aspects of teaching and are at risk of becoming focused on test scores and measures of academic achievement to the detriment of the human and cultural aspects of effective teaching. this position is supported by zeichner (2010) when he states, “these efforts involve a shift in the epistemology of teacher education from a situation where academic knowledge is seen as the authoritative course of knowledge about teaching to one where different aspects of expertise that exist in schools and communities are brought into teacher education and coexist on a more equal plane with academic knowledge” (p. 95). the themes that have emerged from this study indicate that opportunities for candidates to learn and explore communities and the role communities’ play in the lives of urban youth and families can be valuable learning opportunities and aid candidates in their understanding of self and their identity as teacher in urban schools. in the final reflection of the semester, an overwhelming majority of candidates expressed their belief in the value and necessity of the course. this sentiment is captured in the words of marcie, a white female candidate: the community summer experience is of extreme value and importance... it seems irresponsible and prideful to think you could teach anyone without knowing [your students and community]. this program makes each person come face to face with their lack of knowledge and judgments about the inner city, but also helps them see what kind of teacher they want to be and what areas they can grow in to be a better teacher…this class has caused me to grow as a person and as a teacher. each of the themes revealed in the data can inform the teacher education curriculum and shape interactions and opportunities for the development of self-reflection, cultural critical consciousness and teacher identity. however, although community immersion programs are a critical first step in designing community-based teacher education programs, there is danger in thinking that such classes or experiences are the silver bullet in preparing community-minded educators. if left to only one class or isolated experience, there is danger that full processing of experiences and revelations will not occur and instead prejudices, deficit thinking and assumptions may be perpetuated because we did not allow ample time for processing, questioning of self, deep reflection and construction of meaning. each candidate brings varying life experiences and a different professional readiness for understanding him or herself, others and the community. therefore, we must be cognizant of the fact that even with meaningful experiences, if isolated or not placed within a sequence designed to help students understand themselves and others and not done so in a manner than can help candidates become comfortable “checking themselves” and examining their beliefs (gay & kirkland, 2003, p. 184), there is danger that candidates will leave the experience with misconceptions of the context and the experience. for example, as stated previously, the community in this study is extremely economically and racially segregated and some course experiences illuminate this reality. through experiencing other cultures and exposure to different areas of the city, along with careful scaffolding of experiences by the course instructor and opportunities for deep self-reflection, candidates developed a deepened awareness of their own economic and racial backgrounds. many of the 32 white candidates in the sample experienced racial segregation for what they believed to be the first time in their life. for some of these candidates, it was the first time they were not in the racial majority and, therefore, their whiteness became illuminated. james, a non-traditional white male, reflected in his journal stating, “when i finally made it to [street], it was like i was in another world: a world i have never experienced, due to my middleclass, white upbringing.” courtney shared related thoughts when writing, “i lived in a white community, went to school in a white community, and worked in a white community; white communities were all i ever knew until this class.” current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 12 while the awareness of racial diversity and their own backgrounds is an important first step in understanding issues of race, class and diversity, there is danger that candidates will only see the experience through a racial lens. when this occurs, the learning can be diminished and negative assumptions can be unknowingly perpetuated. however, with attention to the development of cultural critical consciousness through a dedicated teacher education program, this obstacle can be overcome. therefore, the placement of such experiences within a teacher education program, the deconstruction of these experiences and the connection between learning that occurs in the community immersion course and other program experiences must be given careful and strategic thought. the non-instructional themes that emerged: awareness of privilege, awareness of naivety, selfreflection and the importance of building relationships with and knowing students, are each significant and developmental discoveries that can and should be themes spiraled throughout a teacher preparation program. these themes are also concepts that must be constructed and developed over time. they cannot be converted to technical pieces of knowledge learned through onedimensional textbooks or memorizing the “facts”, instead, they are each significant repertoires of knowledge that candidates must discover within themselves on their journey to becoming a community teacher. implications for current program within the teacher education program involved in this study, the placement of the course and the connection between this and other courses has been under evaluation since the first year the course was taught. the course was originally part of a small pilot program that was taught during the first summer of the program, prior to the first professional year. previous studies of the course demonstrated impact on candidates’ understanding of self and community (waddell, 2011), yet changes in the course have been warranted. feedback from students, cooperating teachers and faculty supervisors influenced the decision to require the course for all elementary candidates and to move the course to the summer between the two professional programs. the first decision was based on feedback indicating a need for all candidates to have the experience. the change in sequence of the course was based on feedback in examining the appropriate time and candidate readiness for the course as well as the potential for impact of the course on program graduates. placing the course in the summer before the year-long teaching experience allowed the program to strategically place other courses in urban education and diversity before the course, serving as a foundation for the course experiences. sequencing the course before the final year also creates an opportunity for candidates to apply course learning immediately after the experience while in their year-long teaching experience (that occurs during the second year of the professional program). recent changes also include the addition of a pre-requisite course on understanding race, power and privilege. studies of the impact of such program decisions arecurrently in progress. conclusion as teacher education programs continue on the journey of reform, it is important that they engage in selfstudy and evaluate the impact of decisions on candidate learning, development of candidate self-reflection, cultural critical consciousness, candidate identity and the interconnectedness of courses and courses experiences. it is also important to explore how experiences impact the development different candidates; therefore, a study examining the impact of the experiences on students of color as compared to white students and students with urban backgrounds compared to those with suburban or rural backgrounds is needed. although differences in these groups were not apparent in this study, an examination of data collected from cohorts over the past five years would provide a large enough sample to determine if ethnicity and background are a factor influencing the impact of this course. a result of such a study could inform how we are designing experiences that meet the needs of all candidates as we prepare them to teach within diverse communities. as we continue to examine the impact of teacher education and the preparedness of our graduates, we must be deliberate in attending to all aspects of teacher education. a focus on community-based practice, cultural critical consciousness and culturally responsive and community informed teaching must be included along with the technical aspects of learning to teach. the technical aspects of learning to teach can remain significant components of teacher preparation but they must be carefully aligned with opportunities for candidates to grow and develop as individuals as they solidify their identity as beginning teachers. teacher education is not just about the technical aspects of learning to teach, but the development of culturally aware and community-minded individuals who can and will become effective teachers for the nation’s diverse student populations. community-based experiences and a focus on the development of the identity of the community-minded and culturally responsive teacher are essential components of a multifaceted approach to preparing the teachers all children deserve. references amatea, e. 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(2003). pedagogy, knowledge and teacher preparation. in b. williams (ed.), closing the achievement gap: a vision for changing beliefs and practices (2nd ed.) (pp. 99–114). alexandria, va: association for supervision and curriculum development. zeichner, k. (2006). reflections of a university-based educator on the future of college – and university-based teacher education. journal of teacher education, 57(3), 326-340. zeichner, k. (2010). rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college and university-based teacher education. journal of teacher education, 61(1-2), 89-99. zeichner, k. (2011). rethinking college and universitybased teacher education. paper presented at american association of colleges for teacher education annual meeting: san diego. communities as critical partners in teacher education: the impact of community immersion on teacher candidates’ understanding of self and teaching in urban schools 15 article citation waddell, j. h. (2013). communities as critical partners in teacher education: the impact of community immersion on teacher candidates’ understanding of self and teaching in urban schools. current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1198 author notes jennifer h. waddell, ph.d. university of missouri-kansas city 615 e 52nd street, suite 309 kansas city, mo 64110 (816) 235-2443 waddellj@umkc.edu jennifer h. waddell is an assistant professor and the associate director of the institute for urban education at the university of missourikansas city. her research interests include teacher education for urban schools, working with families and communities in teacher preparation and diversity and social justice in urban teacher preparation. manuscript received: 03/05/2013 revisions received: 06/14/2013 accepted: 07/03/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 16 volume 16, number 2 september 7, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template 1 volume 18, number 2 july 25, 2015 issn 1099-839x a literature review of inhibitors and enablers for veterans to complete a higher education brandon moore mclennan community college with almost two million veterans returning from afghanistan and iraq, many of them may be coming to american colleges and universities as a result of the post-9/11 gi bill. these veterans have lucrative education benefits available to them, such as the montgomery gi bill, post-9/11 gi bill and, if they joined from texas, the hazlewood exemption. this literature review provides a short history of veterans’ education benefits and reviews the inhibitors and enablers for veterans to complete college. this literature review informs the discussion of policy on campuses as well as decisions that are made at the national level to serve our nation’s veterans. keywords: veterans; higher education; enablers and inhibitors; post-9/11 gi bill nearly two million veterans will be returning from the iraq and afghanistan theaters of war in the near future (american council on education, 2008, 2009). these veterans are returning to an economy that is still recovering and an unemployment rate of 20% for gulf war-era ii veterans age 18-24 in 2012, there are not enough jobs for returning veterans without some higher education (bureau of labor statistics, 2013). one of the greatest monetary benefits of serving in the united states military is the gi bill, which pays for post-secondary training and education. a majority of veterans do not use this education benefit and the predictors of education attainment are different for veterans than nonveterans (moore, 2014), so a review of the literature on enablers and inhibitors is appropriate. it is important to try to understand the inhibitors that keep veterans from using education benefits for a higher education and the enablers that enable them to complete a higher education program. this literature review seeks to identify the inhibitors and enablers that veterans may face when seeking a higher education after separating from the military. the practical significance of this review is to help improve overall recruitment of veterans to institutions of higher education as well as the most salient approaches to providing services that enable veterans to complete a higher education goal. therefore, this conceptual literature review seeks to “gain new insights into an issue” such as how people have thought about the problem in the past, findings from past research, and possible new directions as a result of this literature review (kennedy, 2007, p. 139). the questions that drove the review were: what are the identified inhibitors for military veterans to complete a higher education program after serving on active duty? and what are the enablers that help military veterans complete a higher education program after serving on active duty? the goal of this literature review was to examine inhibitors that prevent and enablers that help enlisted active-duty oif/oef-era veterans complete a higher education program. in order to accomplish this goal in an effective and appropriate manner, the literature review is organized into the following sections: 1) definition of key terms, 2) the review process, 3) reasons for joining the military, 4) educational benefits for veterans, 5) veterans in college, 6) inhibitors for veterans in college, 7) enablers for veterans in college, and 8) conclusions and recommendations. definition of key terms 1. enabler: the free dictionary (2012b) states that to enable means “a. to supply with the means, current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 2 knowledge, or opportunity; make able. b. to make feasible or possible” (para. 1). the operational definition of enabler is any material, psychological, structural, or institutional factor that helps the student veteran overcome inhibitors and facilitates the completion of a higher education program. 2. inhibitor: according to the free dictionary (2012c), to inhibit means to “to hold back; restrain. to prohibit; forbid” (para. 1).the operational definition of inhibitor is any material, psychological, structural, or institutional factor that prevents or discourages the student veteran from completing a higher education program. 3. oif/oef veteran: an oif/oef veteran is a person “who served on active duty in a theater of combat operations during a period of war after the persian gulf war, or in combat against a hostile force during a period of hostilities after november 11, 1998” (u.s. department of veterans affairs, 2011b). 4. servicemember: the free dictionary (2012d) defines a serviceman as “a man who is a member of the armed forces….also called (feminine) servicewoman a person serves in the armed services of a country” (para. 1). for the purposes of this study, servicemember will refer to a person of either gender who serves in the armed forces of the united states. 5. separated/discharged: according to the free dictionary (2012a), discharge means “dismissal or release from…service….especially from military service” (para. 5). the review process the review process began with a search for peerreviewed articles related to the following keywords: veterans and college, veterans and college attendance, veterans and higher education, veterans in college, gi bill, post-9/11 gi bill, veteran transition to college, and student veterans. there was a dearth of peer-reviewed articles so the search was expanded to include conference papers, proceedings, and reports for any articles related to the topic. within the results, articles that included any type of research on serving student veterans during their transition and through completion of a higher education program were kept for analysis. multiple steps were followed in identifying articles for review: 1. five main databases (education resources information center, academic search complete, jstor, proquest dissertations and theses, and google scholar) for literature published in peerreviewed journals between 2005 and 2014 using the keywords listed above. since the literature was spread across many types of journals and there were not many articles, the search was extended to include articles as far back as 1983. however, the majority of sources are within the past ten years. 2. conference papers, proceedings, and reports were also identified using the same keywords and same databases. again, a dearth of literature extended the range of years to the 1980s. 3. the author read the abstracts of each peerreviewed article, conference paper, proceeding, dissertation or theses, and report identified in steps one and two. each abstract was read to determine if it described veterans in higher education. a total of 32 pieces of literature were included in the review. of these, one doctoral paper, one book chapter, three research reports, three review papers, three mixed-methods research articles, four historical articles, six qualitative studies (one a dissertation), and nine quantitative articles. 4. every article was downloaded and entered into refworks and printed out for reading. each article was then read in full to determine whether to include or exclude it from the review. 5. a record of the complete citation, research design and methods, and findings and conclusions of each included article. research for joining the military there are several reasons for joining the military, and these reasons may have an impact on whether or not the veteran chooses to attend college and is successful in doing so. possible reasons include a sense of pride or service to our country, family history of military service, and even education incentives. in interviews with 25 student veterans, diramio, ackerman, and mitchell (2008) found that the majority of respondents cited the 9/11 attacks as their main reason for joining the military, but other reasons included economic reasons, family tradition, and education benefits. these interviews are not indicative of the population of veterans but help to understand the motivation behind joining the military. according to thomas (2009), “college education is one of the strongest incentives recruiters use to induce enlistment” (p. 116) into the american military. rumann (2010) conducted six qualitative interviews with military veterans at two community colleges who had been deployed to a war zone. he found that the military gave members a sense of purpose and belonging, job training, and that people joined the military for benefits such as the gi bill for education (rumann & hamrick, 2010). rumann and hamrick (2010) interviewed six student combat veterans at a large, public research-intensive university several times to understand individual experience of veterans who had completed some college before being deployed. they found that education benefits for veterans were important because of the great value they provided, allowing veterans to attend college and a literature review of inhibitors and enablers for veterans to complete a higher education 3 find success. these qualitative studies lack in generalizability but help to understand the types of questions that should be asked of student veterans regarding reasons for joining the military and attending college. veterans are an important population to study and existing literature can point to several inhibitors and enablers for veterans to complete a higher education. educational benefits for veterans the original servicemen’s readjustment act of 1944 provided a wide range of benefits to returning war veterans, a large part of which was education benefits (kiester, 1994). since then, veterans have chosen to attend college using education benefits provided to them as a result of military service, according to kiester (1994), who provided a historical account of the original gi bill and its effects on veterans’ education. following the original and korean-era gi bill, several variations of educational benefits for veterans have been enacted. these include the vietnam-era gi bill, the veterans education assistance program (veap), the montgomery gi bill, and finally the post-9/11 gi bill. servicemen’s readjustment act of 1944/korean war gi bill using historical research methods, spaulding (2000) outlined the four major gi bills and their historical impact on veterans in the united states. the original servicemen’s readjustment act of 1944 was the first program of its kind in the united states to provide several types of benefits for veterans, including housing, training, education, and unemployment benefits (spaulding, 2000). education benefits were paid directly to the university and living expenses were provided for the veteran student. the result was that many universities developed alternative admission criteria for veterans, who did not have the characteristics of the typical college student. the original gi bill was extended by president truman in 1952 for veterans who served in the korean war (spaulding, 2000). after the korean-era gi bill came the vietnam-era gi bill. vietnam-era gi bill the vietnam-era gi bill did not keep up with costs of college, and as a result, was not as widely used as the original gi bill (spaulding, 2000). spaulding (2000) suggested that this may be for three reasons: 1) vietnamera veterans were younger, 2) they did not receive adequate counseling upon demobilization, and 3) this gi bill had a low monetary worth. the veterans education assistance program was an unsuccessful education program in effect for a short period of time before being replaced by the better montgomery gi bill. montgomery gi bill the montgomery gi bill (mgib) is a veteran’s education program in effect from 1985 to today that provides a tuition allowance and monthly stipend for up to 36 months for separated servicemembers who served at least three years on active duty. the program requires a servicemember to pay in $100 per month for the first year of service in return for the allowance and stipend upon separation. when the veteran separates from active duty, he or she has 10 years from the date of separation to use the benefits to attend degree and certificate programs, flight training, apprenticeship/on-the-job training and/or correspondence courses (u.s. department of veterans affairs, 2007). the monthly rate for a full-time student for the mgib in 2009 was $1321 (u.s. department of veterans affairs, 2008). the post-9/11 gi bill is the most recent version of the benefit. post-9/11 gi bill enacted on june 30, 2008, the post-9/11 gi bill is an education benefit for all veterans serving at least 90 days of active duty service after september 10, 2001 and who receive an honorable discharge (u.s. department of veterans affairs, 2014). it can be used for vocational/technical training, undergraduate, or graduate degree work, and allows some servicemembers to transfer benefits to their dependents (u. s. department of veterans affairs, 2014). the post-9/11 gi bill is extensive and pays tuition and fees, a monthly housing allowance, an annual book and supplies stipend, and a one-time rural benefit for eligible persons (u.s. department of veterans affairs, 2014). when the veteran separates from active duty, he or she has 15 years from the date of separation to use the allowance and it can be used to provide up to 36 months of education benefits (u.s. department of veterans affairs, 2014). “the post-9/11 gi bill will pay your tuition based upon the highest in-state tuition charged by a public educational institution in the state where the school is located. the amount of support that an individual may qualify for depends on where they live and what type of degree they are pursuing” (u.s. department of veterans affairs, 2014). for this review, the term “gi bill” refers to either the mgib or the post9/11 gi bill. texas offers a benefit called the hazlewood exemption for all veterans who join the military from texas and are honorably discharged. hazlewood exemption veterans who join from texas and serve for 181 days of active service are eligible for a tuition exemption for up to 150 hours of instruction at public colleges and universities under the hazlewood exemption (college for all texans, 2012; moynahan, 2009). according to moynahan (2009), the hazlewood exemption act was modified in 2009 to allow veterans to use both federal gi bill benefits concurrently with the hazlewood exemption, as well as to allow veterans to transfer unused hours to a child. veterans attending college in texas today have a choice between the montgomery gi bill or post-9/11 gi bill, and those who joined from texas have the added education benefit of the hazlewood exemption. each of these programs acts as an enabler for veterans to attend http://www.gibill.va.gov/post-911/post-911-gi-bill-summary/ http://www.gibill.va.gov/post-911/post-911-gi-bill-summary/ http://www.gibill.va.gov/post-911/post-911-gi-bill-summary/ current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 4 college and complete a higher education program. indeed, educational benefits are one reason young people join the military (diramio et al., 2008; thomas, 2009). veterans in college student veterans have a wide variety of backgrounds and attend college in large part because of veteran’s education benefits such as the gi bill (labarre, 1985; stanley, 2003). labarre (1985) conducted a literature review of the literature of veterans as students from world war ii to the early 1980s. historically, veteran students have been mature, experienced, and are successful in college, as outlined by olson (1973), in a historical account of the success of the gi bill. history the original servicemen’s readjustment act of 1944 enabled record numbers of veterans to attend college after their military service, and this is expected to continue in coming years (labarre, 1985). stanley (2003) offered a history of the gi bills offered to veterans, beginning with the original servicemen’s readjustment act of 1944. this gi bill resulted in approximately 7.8 million veterans using education benefits, with a minority in higher education (stanley, 2003). in addition to helping veterans get an education, the original gi bill prevented millions of men from flooding the job market and resulted in 49% of college admissions being veterans in 1947 (“the gi bill’s history,” n.d.). spaulding (2000) declared that the original gi bill allowed veterans to gain admission into college even though they did not meet traditional admittance standards at the time. the fact that veterans were admitted was a result of the gi bill as an enabler. olson (1973) asserted that when veterans started using the gi bill for the first time, they surprised many with their experience, maturity, and success in college. in terms of grades, veterans performed at or above the level of their civilian counterparts in college settings, even though they often did not do as well in high school (labarre, 1985). veterans tended to be career oriented and academically successful, and did not use student services often, even though they reported a lack of information regarding veteran’s benefits (labarre, 1985). labarre (1985) explained that veterans earn up to 1.5 times more money than nonveterans at the same education level. military experience often translates well into college success, labarre (1985) declared, as veterans received some college credit for military education and training. in addition to skills, veterans often had a sense of self-esteem that contributed to success and were aware of personal abilities and weaknesses (labarre, 1985). veterans proved they could be successful in college, with a wide range of enabling factors, but they also faced inhibitors. angrist and chen (2011) conducted ordinary least squares (ols) estimates using data from the 2000 census and noted a strong correlation between military service and college education. they found that vietnamera veterans exhibited similar schooling effects to earlier versions of the gi bill, to include the original gi bill and the korean-era gi bill. chapman (1983) used data from the national longitudinal study of the high school class of 1972 to determine the personal and academic characteristics of gi bill recipients. he reported that veterans from this population were more likely to be older, white, single males and were employed while they were students. although veterans left high school with lower grades and a lower percentile rank than nonveterans, veterans performed as well academically as nonveterans in college (chapman, 1983). spaulding (2000) stated that 5.1 million veterans were enabled to attend college using the vietnam-era gi bill with another 3 million attending training courses using the benefit. he continued, however, that the veterans struggled mightily because of rising costs in living expenses and college costs, both of which were inhibiting factors. contemporary issues ace (2008, 2009) reported that more than 2 million veterans will be coming home from the afghanistan and iraq wars and may be enrolling in america’s colleges and universities as a result of the post9/11 gi bill. in a special issue article on how to create a veteran-friendly campus, rumann and hamrick (2009) indicated that the number of veterans attending colleges and universities across the nation is likely to continue to increase because of the post-9/11 gi bill. these veterans exhibited enabling factors that helped them overcome inhibitors. different maturity levels were reported by student veterans, as veterans described being more goaloriented than their non-veteran counterparts (rumann & hamrick, 2010). student veterans also conveyed more confidence in their abilities and decision-making skills (rumann & hamrick, 2010). murphy (2011) conducted thirteen qualitative interviews to determine the needs of post-9/11 gi bill-era veterans in college. he found that veterans saw themselves at least as focused as and more mature than traditional students in college, with a worldview that influenced by their military experience. these veterans reported that they want their prior training and experience to count for college credit, but this was often not the case, resulting in what murphy described as paying twice for an education. murphy (2011) continued, noting that the veterans were missing a sense of community upon entering college, going to campus for classes and then having little on-campus involvement outside of class. thirteen interviews is a useful number of veterans to interview for a qualitative study, and these findings may not apply to other colleges or universities, but they can be used to inform future research on inhibitors. student veteran participants had time management skills and discipline as a result of military experience that enabled them to be successful in college a literature review of inhibitors and enablers for veterans to complete a higher education 5 (murphy, 2011). the flip side of this, according to murphy (2011), is a sense of being different and of alienation because they were different from traditional students. this resulted in many of the participants seeking to remain anonymous on campus. regarding university resources to meet veteran’s needs, participants noted that campus veteran’s representatives, those responsible for the gi bill administration, were integral and often go above and beyond to help veterans (murphy, 2011). in addition, the fact that the university worked with veterans when payments for tuition were delayed also enabled veterans to continue to attend. finally, according to murphy, personal resourcefulness was noted by participants as a strong reason many were able to meet the challenges college attendance presented. these enablers can combine to help a veteran complete a college program, especially personal resourcefulness and people on campus willing to help veterans. when describing the population of veterans in colleges and universities, ace (2009) pointed out the in 2007-08, 85% of student veterans (undergraduates) were 24 years old or older, more likely to be nonwhite than white, and that women student veterans made up 27% of all military undergraduates. this is astounding because females comprised only 7% of all u.s. veterans in 2006 (rumann & hamrick, 2010). veteran students are unique because they often come to college with credit earned while on active duty and they have educational benefits to help offset the cost of college, both of which are enabling factors. this makes military students unique. brown and gross (2011), using a case study of one university for veteran best practices, define a military student as a “student who is either a member of the active duty, reserve, national guard, or retired military population” (p. 46). some universities have been working to become what is called “military friendly” in order to cater to this large population (brown & gross, 2011). again, the issue of generalizability comes into question with a sample of one, but the findings can be used to inform future research. military friendly institutions are those that “embrace practices that recognize the unique needs and characteristics of these students,” thus enabling them complete a degree program, according to brown and gross (2011, p. 46). the criteria for being designated a military friendly institution include the following:  offering priority registration for military students  simplified or expedited application process  flexible enrollment deadlines  academic and counseling services targeted to military students  special web pages for returning military students  support groups  transfer credit policies that minimize loss of credit and avoid duplication of coursework  limited academic residency requirement of 25% of undergraduate degree programs on campus and 30% for fully online programs  acceptance of ace credit recommendations for learning experiences in the armed forces  awarding of credit for college level learning validated through testing (college level examination program [clep], defense activity for non-traditional education services [dantes] exams, and excelsior college testing (ece)deferred tuition payment plans  veterans lounges and centers  research focus on meeting the needs of military students (brown & gross, 2011, p. 46). while there is no specific number of these criteria which must be met, institutions must have several of these characteristics to be military friendly. student veterans comprised 4% of all undergraduates in colleges in 2007-08 (ace, 2009). regarding where student veterans attended in 2007-08, 43% attended public 2-year institutions, 21% attended public four year colleges, and about 12.5% attended private institutions (ace, 2009). three-quarters of veterans noted that location was a key factor in choosing where to attend college, followed by cost (about 50%). twenty-three percent of student veterans attended full time, 37% attended part time, and those who received benefits such as the gi bill were 15% more likely to enroll full time (ace, 2009). this reveals the enabling effect of the gi bill to help a veteran attend college. the u.s. department of veterans affairs (2011a) indicated that during the decade of 2000 to 2009, a higher percentage of veterans completed some college than nonveterans every year (3-5% more depending on year). even though veterans were getting some college, however, they were not completing a college degree, which indicated that inhibitors likely play a role in this. when comparing bachelor’s degrees, however, nonveterans had a higher completion rate than veterans for every year, although the difference was never more than two percentage points. veterans obtained advanced degrees at higher rates (2-3% more depending on year) than nonveterans across the board (u.s. department of veterans affairs, 2011a). the u.s. department of veterans affairs (2011c), providing a profile of veterans, reported that 35.4% of male veterans and 47.5% of female veterans had some college education. this indicated that veterans, while attending college for a period of time, were not completing because of inhibitors of some kind. this noncompletion of college degrees is more of a contemporary issue, as in the past, veterans were more likely to complete their degree once they started college (angrist current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 6 & chen, 2011; labarre, 1985; olson, 1973). female veterans were more likely to have a bachelor’s degree (18.3%) than male veterans (15%); the same applied for an advanced degree, with 11.6% of women veterans having one while 9.9% of men have one (u.s. department of veterans affairs, 2011c). this signified that females may have either fewer inhibitors or more enablers to complete college. a more detailed account of the inhibitors for veterans in college is provided in the next section. inhibitors for veterans in college there are a number of possible inhibitors for veterans to complete a college degree after separating from the military. a student veteran is likely to face any combination of inhibitors when attending college and to date, there has not been a study that explores both enablers and inhibitors for veterans to attend college or to complete a higher education program. the majority of studies explore where veterans are struggling and how universities, departments, and college personnel can respond to these needs. since the 9/11 attacks, more than 1.6 million veterans have served in combat (ace, 2009), which results in a variety of inhibitors to attending college. with u.s. involvement in the war on terror for most of the first decade of the 21 st century, military personnel, active duty, reserve, and members of the national guard members sometimes faced numerous deployments (rumann & hamrick, 2010). these deployments interrupted college attendance, postponed it, or inhibited individual veterans from completing a higher education program (rumann & hamrick, 2010). selber (2012) offered a description of texas veterans attending texas state university-san marcos: 1) 71% had multiple deployments, 2) 94% had been in combat zones in iraq and 17% in combat zones in afghanistan, 3) 41% were wounded or injured during military service, 4) 44% reported still having trouble with their injuries, and 5) 38% had a health problem related to deployment other than a wound or injury (slide 5). each of these factors can result in inhibiting veterans from being successful in completing a college degree. hawn (2011) insisted that we are likely to see more veterans with combat experience and/or multiple deployments in our higher education system today because of troop drawdowns that are occurring with the wars in iraq and afghanistan (hawn, 2011). again, these are descriptions of veterans at individual universities, which is not necessarily generalizable to others, but veterans have similar experiences, and understanding the inhibitors for these small groups is useful for helping others. selber (2012) provided a useful framework for understanding inhibitors for veterans in college. she outlined several issues that veterans attending college face, which included 1) mental health/health/injury, 2) financial issues, 3) information/bureaucratic issues, 4) family responsibilities, and 5) other issues.this framework will be used to look more closely at inhibitors. mental health/health/injury mental health, health, and injury are grouped together because they are each issues related to health that veterans contend with, whether attending college or not. bauman (2009) noted that many veterans returning to college from deployment have had traumatic experiences that may lead to nightmares or memories triggered by smells, but that counseling is not always readily available to help these individuals. combat stress and/or ptsd can result in strained relationships upon returning from a deployment, resulting in a loss of purpose as well as having “short fuses and being quick to anger” (bauman, 2009, p. 142-143). loud noises and crowded areas can also cause problems for veterans, which can make the transition to college extremely difficult, according to bauman (2009). the transition to college may be made more difficult for veterans, as many veterans may be recovering from post-war trauma and have issues such as posttraumatic stress disorder (ace, 2009; diramio et al., 2008). diramio et al. (2008) insisted that disabilities such as post-traumatic stress disorder, cause problems for veterans attending college, because more combat troops survive injuries today than ever before. rumann and hamrick (2010) found that a majority of respondents reported higher stress levels as a result of combat, such as uncomfortability in crowds and short tempers. health problems or persistent injuries are also inhibitors for veterans in college because these things make consistent attendance difficult or impossible and can contribute to financial issues as well (selber, 2012). financial issues are another inhibitor that student veterans face, regardless of whether or not they are receiving education benefits. financial issues the pressure to get a job and make money upon being discharged from the military service is immediately felt for all veterans, including student veterans. veterans often return home with a clear purpose and are welcomed home, sometimes as heroes, but within weeks can be experiencing unemployment and no sense of purpose (bauman, 2009). in addition, depending on when the veteran returns from deployment or is discharged, enrolling in college may have to wait until the next semester or even the next year because it has already started (bauman, 2009). this delays benefits and may force the veteran to obtain gainful employment and forego college, even though the education benefits are available when the semester begins again. financial issues result in some respondents to consider re-enlisting to keep their benefits (diramio et al., 2008). steele, salcedo, and coley (2010) conducted research on to understand and describe veteran’s using the post-9/11 gi bill for higher education using multiple a literature review of inhibitors and enablers for veterans to complete a higher education 7 methods: these included 1) interviews with stakeholder organizations such as student veterans of america, to inform study design, 2) focus group interviews with 113 student veterans at thirteen universities, 3) 564 survey questionnaires completed with veterans from all over the us, 4) interviews with twenty-seven non-enrolled veterans, and finally 5) 16 interviews with campus administrators. this research project had a wide range of methodological diversity. veterans who have the post9/11 gi bill benefit will have the financial burden of college lessened, but they will continue to deal with other barriers to attendance (cook & kim, 2009; steele et al., 2010). ace (2009) noted veterans often have difficulty financing college and steele et al. (2010) pointed out that late payments have caused financial hardships for student veterans. gwin et al. (2011) reported that veterans are very focused on career development, although 1 in 5 veterans reported considering dropping out of college as a result of the difficulties encountered. speaking from personal experience in his doctoral candidacy paper, hollis (2009) shared that many veterans leave the military with little to no money and families to support, so they often seek a quick career transition. gwin et al. (2011) developed a questionnaire that was completed by 337 veterans at a medium-sized university in texas to determine how to best support student veterans. nearly half (48%) of veterans report having to work 20 or more hours per week, while 31% report working 30 or more hours per week (gwin et al., 2011), which can place a great deal of stress on any person trying to attend college full time. again, the generalizability of these findings at one university are questionable, and the difficulties encountered in this study should be tested on a larger level. financial issues can also be caused by information or bureaucratic issues, both of which are categorized together as another inhibitor. information/bureaucratic issues bureaucratic obstacles seem to abound for veterans, both within postsecondary institutions as well as with the department of veterans affairs, adding to the difficulty of attending college. obtaining college credit for military experience and training was consistently reported as a source of frustration for veterans, as they felt that their military experiences and leadership skills contributed to their abilities (ace, 2008; murphy, 2011; steele et al., 2010). diramio et al. (2008) declared that obtaining college credits for experience and training was confusing. in addition, ace (2009) reported that veterans often felt that information on benefits was not clearly explained to them and many colleges did not have the information at all. overcoming bureaucratic obstacles was too much for some veterans, reported ace (2009). other inhibitors included a lack of awareness of educational benefits, assumptions that the process would be too difficult and confusing information on web-sites, as veterans’ preferred personal interaction to web sites (ace, 2008). moving from a very structured life in the military to a nearly totally unstructured college environment as well as a lack of a chain of command to get answers to questions increased difficulties for veterans (hollis, 2009). rumann and hamrick (2009) explained that services that colleges and universities provided for student veterans vary by institution, resulting in great inconsistencies. “at present, there are no consistent policies and procedures for colleges and universities to follow” to provide services for student veterans (rumann & hamrick, 2009, p. 29). they continued, stating that if there are few veteran faculty or staff members with knowledge of military culture or the effects of wartime service, the transition for veteran students may be made more difficult. cook and kim (2009) surveyed 723 college presidents from a cross-section of colleges and universities in the u.s. to ascertain what methods these institutions are taking to help ease the transition from military to college life for student veterans. as a followup, cook and kim (2009) conducted six focus groups with military students in three cities to hear their stories. of the institutions that responded to the survey, 57% currently provide services designed for veterans, while over half of the colleges were recruiting veterans to their institution (cook & kim, 2009). according to cook and kim (2009), most of the universities surveyed were considering changes to their campuses to make them more veteran-friendly, the top two of which were considering training for faculty and staff and seeking funding sources for campus programs. three-fourths of respondents noted that the two most pressing issues that institutions faced included financial aid and student retention, followed by health care issues (cook & kim, 2009). focus group interviewees reported that the campus programs that institutions have to help veterans did not always match up with veteran needs or desires (cook & kim, 2009). service members, while currently enlisted, reported that they intended to attend college after discharge, but barriers may discourage them from doing so. participants wanted universities to listen and understand the unique circumstances and issues student veterans bring with them to college; they also discussed veteran-friendly colleges they have heard about through word of mouth (cook & kim, 2009). these colleges, participants contended, offered system-wide support for student veterans, such as making enrollment and transfer of credits as easy as possible. the focus group participants insisted that the colleges that reached out to veterans and advertised their veteran-friendly practices were most likely to attract student veterans and enable them to be successful (cook & kim, 2009). this was an excellent research design with both qualitative and quantitative portions and two different perspectives. in addition, the quantitative sample was a national crosscurrent issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 8 section and the qualitative interviews were conducted with student veterans in three different cities. these findings are very useful to inform future studies on enablers and inhibitors for veterans to complete a higher education. family responsibilities are another inhibitor for married veterans or veterans with children. family responsibilities the military pay structure encourages servicemembers to get married, as all branches of the military services offer extra pay for housing and food as well as health benefits for family members (hogan & seifert, 2010). providing for a spouse or a family upon discharge, however, provides additional pressure to find a job and forego attending college, even with educational benefits. being married means that the spouse must support the veteran mentally and often financially in his or her quest for a college education. if the relationship is not already strained, separating from the military and moving will cause strain, and it is possible that going through the process of getting enrolled and attending college is not a possibility for the veteran. using the 2005 american community survey, hogan and seifert (2010) analyzed the data to test the hypothesis that the benefits system in the u.s. military contributed to higher marriage rates. the authors reported that those who have served on active duty for two or more years are nearly three times more likely to be married than comparable civilians. indeed, “more than half of activeduty military members are married” (hogan & seifert, 2010, p. 435). in addition, hogan and seifert (2010) reported that military members had higher rates of divorce than comparable civilians. this is a generalizable sample and provides a good cross-section of the us in the findings. using snowball sampling, yonkman and bridgeland (2009) had 779 oif and/or oef veterans complete an online survey of needs, assets, and potentials. participants were asked to complete the survey and to forward it to others in their network. they found that partly as a result of long (and sometimes numerous) deployments, 1 in 5 servicemembers have filed for divorce since 2001. while snowball sampling is not the preferred method, the yonkman and bridgeland (2009) used the method because obtaining a random sample of veterans is extremely difficult with all the privacy issues. the findings are useful for future research and current policy discussions, however. lundquist (2007) used data from the national longitudinal survey of youth (nlsy) with 1,280 respondents to analyze divorce rates for civilians versus enlisted members of the armed forces from 1978 to 1985 using bivariate and multivariate analysis. lundquist (2007) reported that military enlistees are more likely to marry at younger ages and “when compared to same aged, married civilians in the presence of multiple demographic, religious, socioeconomic, and attitudinal controls, enlistees are still more likely to divorce than comparable civilians” (lundquist, 2007, p. 213). divorced veterans are least likely to graduate from college, according to taniguchi and kaufman (2005), who also used the national longitudinal survey of youth (nlsy79) to determine whether a nontraditional college student completes a four-year degree program. using 6,668 cases, the authors conducted discrete-time logistic event history models to determine the odds of completing a degree in a given year. in addition, the presence of young children (infant or toddler) decreases chances of completion for both men and women by roughly 50 percent (taniguchi & kaufman, 2005). both lundquist (2007) and taniguchi and kaufman (2005) used a good sample from a national dataset, so the findings are generalizable and valid. as of 2007-08, 48% of military undergraduates were married and 47% were raising children, so balancing family responsibilities with college attendance proves difficult for many student veterans (ace, 2009). gwin et al. (2011) reported that 41% of veteran participants attending the university had two or more children, which contributes to family challenges while attending college. ace (2008) reported that family responsibilities could inhibit veterans from completing college, plus there was the lure of finding a job right away because the veteran did not see the need for higher education upon discharge. there are numerous other inhibitors that do not fall into any one particular category. other inhibitors there were other inhibitors mentioned in the literature that certainly affect the propensity for a student veteran to complete college, but that are not sufficiently developed to warrant a section of their own. these other inhibitors included 1) lack of background knowledge and cultural differences between military and college, 2) difficulty in establish relationships and telling others of veteran status, and 3) a difficult transition from military to college life. being first-generation students, students from lower socioeconomic status, and/or delayed college entrance are all three inhibitors for veterans to complete college (ace, 2008). hollis (2009) explained from his own experience of six years in the army that there was a cultural barrier between military and higher education that was exacerbated by low socioeconomic status (ses) students not being ready for college. rumann and hamrick (2010) reported that student veterans were wary as to whom to tell of their veteran status and of their experiences and reported difficulty in making friends and establishing relationships. in addition to this tension, student veterans had to learn how to negotiate their new identity and old one, feeling that they must be careful whom they reveal their veteran status to and what that meant to others (rumann & a literature review of inhibitors and enablers for veterans to complete a higher education 9 hamrick, 2010). the fact that many college students were younger than student veterans exacerbated this problem. transitioning from the military to college was often difficult for veterans, and all of the inhibitors listed above affected the transition as well as the veteran’s propensity to complete college. steele et al. (2010) insisted that the transition to college was difficult for many veterans, as they reported having difficulty balancing responsibilities, meeting academic requirements, and dealing with service-connected disabilities. time management was another issue that veterans were forced to contend with upon entering college because of the lack of structure (ace, 2009). when transitioning to college, diramio et al. (2008) noted that student veterans exhibited a higher level of maturity than nonveteran students due to their experiences, resulting in impatience and frustration with others. gwin et al. (2011) listed several items related to the transition to college that came to light with their questionnaire: 1) issues with admissions and course credit transfer, 2) “stress related to balancing financial, familial, and educational responsibilities” (gwin et al., 2011, p. 15), 3) issues with being in crowded classrooms, 4) access to and understanding veteran’s benefits, and 5) problems with post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) (gwin et al., 2011). in addition, veterans reported anger with what they perceived as disrespect from non-veteran students (gwin et al., 2011). there were a wide variety of inhibitors for veterans attending college outlined in the literature, any combination of which could result in the student veteran leaving college before completing a college degree. these inhibitors included 1) mental health/health/injury, 2) financial issues, 3) information/bureaucratic issues, 4) family responsibilities, and 5) other issues. understanding all of the possible inhibitors is crucial for colleges and universities to be able to help remove them and help student veterans to be successful in a higher education program. there were also enablers that help student veterans continue on in college and be successful, regardless of the presence of inhibitors. enablers for veterans in college there was no specific framework provided by researchers for enablers for veterans to attend and complete college, but a review of the literature revealed five enablers that made college attendance easier for student veterans. enablers included 1) personal characteristics of the veteran, 2) a holistic approach by the university, 3) a veteran-friendly campus, 4) a learning community and orientation for student veterans, and 5) faculty and staff training in veterans’ needs. personal characteristics of the veteran perhaps the best enabler to help veterans remain in and succeed in college was the veteran himor herself. murphy (2011) reported that student veterans using the post-9/11 gi bill declared that their own resourcefulness and tenacity was a strong tool to enable them to overcome obstacles in college. when describing the participants for his study, murphy (2011) noted that many of the veteran participants using the post-9/11 gi bill in their study had prior college experience to enlisting in the military. all of the participants declared that their military experience aided in their discipline, time management, and work ethic, enabling them to be more successful in college. while veterans reported that education benefits made paying for college easier, there were numerous obstacles presented that had to be overcome by the individual. for example, murphy (2011) asserted that respondents felt reliant upon their own resources when seeking help with administrative problems and that there were not safeguards present to help veterans who did not know they needed help. most of the respondents persisted despite this fact, because of personal characteristics to either seek the necessary help or to assert the need for programs and services for veterans. in addition to personal characteristics, the approach the university takes towards student veterans was extremely important. a holistic approach by the university as a result of the issues that student veterans bring to college, diramio et al. (2008) declared that a holistic approach to helping veterans was necessary at the college level. this means that there was follow-up with veterans after admission to ascertain his or her needs, as well as coordinating efforts between all of the offices that can provide assistance across campus. selber (2012) offered a holistic framework for working with student veterans, which included 1) attention to prior military experience, 2) physical and mental health, 3) the university environment, 4) career factors, and 5) family needs. as a result of these factors, the individuals that comprise the irondale state university (pseudonym) advisory council have developed a program for veterans at irondale state university. the holistic framework included a focus on remaining veteran-centered, offering peer-to-peer support, active outreach, counseling services, case management (linked and referral), faculty and staff training and assistance, and an “array of health, behavioral health, [and] adaptive sports activities” (selber, 2012, slide 3). dialogue with veterans in the classroom was beneficial and reduced the culture gap between veterans, professors, and civilian students (hawn, 2011). a part of the holistic approach that can be a great enabler for student veterans is the veteran’s affairs office at the university. veteran’s affairs office at the university murphy (2011) asserted that a key individual was the veteran’s representative that helped administer the gi bill at the university, which could make meeting veteran needs much easier and enable them to remain in college. according to bauman (2009), however, the veteran’s affairs office at the universities where participants for his study attended was “of little use” (p. current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 10 150). these contradictory findings were likely indicative of the range of experiences of veterans across universities in the united states and contribute to the need for more research on the differences and disparities between services offered by different campuses. the quality of assistance offered and provided by offices is no doubt a direct reflection of the individuals working in each office, resulting in inconsistent and dissimilar experiences across universities and colleges. a veteran-friendly campus is another possible enabler for veterans. veteran-friendly campus ace (2008) noted that colleges were most likely to lose student veterans in the first semester; therefore, the college climate should be more welcoming to veterans by making the campus veteran-friendly. campuses that were known as ‘veteran friendly’ were those that removed barriers for military and former military students and help them transition to college life (persky & oliver, 2011). in a mixed methods case study utilizing six qualitative data collection methods followed by a survey of veterans’ needs at a large community college, persky and oliver (2011) outlined five themes important to student veterans: 1) credit streamlining, 2) programs and services, 3) training of faculty and staff, 4) difficulties for veterans, and 5) a veteran-friendly campus. according to ace (2009), there were several ways that universities could become veteran-friendly: 1) listen to veterans, 2) provide a place for veterans to congregate, 3) start a veterans group, 4) provide a veteran student orientation, 5) educate faculty, staff, and students, 6) partner with other organizations, and 7) provide an educated point of contact for veterans. while there was no specific number of these criteria that had to be met to be considered veteranfriendly, several of the above practices had to be in effect. with these actions, ace (2009) declared, universities could serve veterans better and provide a welcoming place for veterans. one way to do this was to offer a specific learning community and orientation for student veterans. learning community and orientation for student veterans veterans indicated that they would like a learning community and orientation for veterans, in order to attend to specific issues and needs veterans have, as well as setting up academic transition programs for specific veteran’s cohorts (persky & oliver, 2011). diramio et al. (2008) and gwin et al. (2011) recommended a veteran-specific orientation to help identify veterans who need assistance and that transition “coaches” (diramio et al., 2008, p. 94) be made available to meet the needs of each individual veteran and enable them to be successful. these coaches could teach transitional skills, such as study skills, financial aid counseling, health care, and counseling (gwin et al., 2011). in addition, respondents desired a veteran resource center, where veterans could meet and study in a comfortable environment (gwin et al., 2011). finally, a student veteran organization was suggested by researchers for veterans to have a sense of camaraderie and shared experiences (diramio et al., 2008; gwin et al., 2011; murphy, 2011). all of the challenges associated with transitioning to college were easier to deal with when veterans provided support to each other, enabling veterans to continue attending (steele et al., 2010). faculty and staff must also be trained in order to help attend to the student veterans’ needs and enable their continuation in college. faculty and staff training in veterans’ needs faculty, staff, and administrators were identified as needing training to deal with sensitive veteran’s issues, such as post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) (persky & oliver, 2011). the authors continue that veterans would like to feel validated by being listened to by faculty, staff, and administrators in order to become aware of veterans’ needs. persky and oliver (2011) recommend using outside resources, such as local mental health centers to help veterans as well as developing programs within the community college (i.e. sociology, psychology) to attend to veteran’s issues. this training and sensitivity to the unique experiences and characteristics of this cohort of college students is imperative if veterans are going to be able to utilize education benefits to their highest potential. just as with inhibitors, there is no specific number of enablers that will guarantee success and completion of college for all student veterans. the possible enablers for student veterans to complete college included 1) personal characteristics of the veteran, 2) a holistic approach by the university, 3) a veteran-friendly campus, 4) a learning community and orientation for student veterans, and 5) faculty and staff training in veterans’ needs. any combination of these enablers may result in the successful completion of a degree program. conclusion and recommendations the goal of this literature review was to examine inhibitors that prevent and enablers that help enlisted active-duty oif/oef-era veterans complete a higher education program. the review of literature explored the background of education benefits for veterans, provided a history of veterans in college to include contemporary issues, and outlined inhibitors for veterans in college. there are numerous possible inhibitors for veterans when making the choice to attend college. these included mental health/health/injury, financial issues, information/ bureaucratic issues, family responsibilities, and other inhibitors. however, along with inhibitors, there are several enablers that can be nurtured and instituted at university campuses to make the transition to college easier as well as increase completion rates for veterans. enablers included personal characteristics, a holistic approach by the university, a veteran-friendly campus, a learning community and orientation for student veterans, a literature review of inhibitors and enablers for veterans to complete a higher education 11 and faculty and staff training in veterans’ needs. there are fewer frameworks offered for enabling veterans to succeed in college than on inhibitors, which is probably due to a few reasons: 1) this is a difficult population to study, 2) focusing on inhibitors allows researchers to suggest specific courses of action, and 3) there are just not that many studies on enablers as of yet. this will likely change as the population of veterans is higher today than it has been in recent decades. college administrators can and should heed the advice of researchers on this topic, making adjustments to programs and offices as needed as well as encouraging research on this topic. although the findings for enablers and inhibitors were often qualitative studies, it behooves administrators to either implement several of the suggestions offered by researchers or to conduct focus groups on individual campuses to ensure individual universities are meeting the needs of their student veterans. more research, both qualitative and quantitative, is necessary on the enablers and inhibitors identified in the current literature to ascertain the generalizability of as well as to confirm the enablers and inhibitors for veterans to complete a higher education program that were identified in this literature review. qualitative studies should focus on individual experiences of individuals and identifying theoretical explanations for veterans being inhibited when attending college. quantitative studies should be designed to test the prevalence and generalizability of the currently identified inhibitors and enablers to attending college. finally, veterans who have never attended college should be sought out to identify the inhibiting factors that were so strong or the missing enablers that kept them from ever making the choice to attend college. college or higher education is not for everyone, and some veterans choose to use skills obtained in the military in gainful employment; those veterans who choose to use the lucrative gi bill and other educational benefits should, however, be afforded all the possible chances at success. references american council on education. 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(2008). the post9/11 veterans educational assistance act of 2008. va pamphlet 22-09-1. retrieved from www.benefits.va.gov/gibill/docs/pamphlets/ch33 _pamphlet.pdf http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/mg1083.html http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/mg1083.html http://www.collegefortexans.com/apps/financialaid/tofa2.cfm?id=579 http://www.collegefortexans.com/apps/financialaid/tofa2.cfm?id=579 http://www.thefreedictionary.com/discharged http://www.thefreedictionary.com/enable http://www.thefreedictionary.com/inhibit http://www.thefreedictionary.com/serviceman http://www.va.gov/opa/publications/celebrate/gi-bill.pdf http://www.va.gov/opa/publications/celebrate/gi-bill.pdf http://www.benefits.va.gov/gibill/docs/pamphlets/ch33_pamphlet.pdf http://www.benefits.va.gov/gibill/docs/pamphlets/ch33_pamphlet.pdf a literature review of inhibitors and enablers for veterans to complete a higher education 13 article citation moore, b. (2015). a literature review of inhibitors and enablers for veterans to complete a higher education. current issues in education, 18(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1286 author notes brandon moore, ph.d. director of institutional research mclennan community college 1400 college drive, waco, tx 76708 brmoore@mclennan.edu brandon moore is the director of institutional research at mclennan community college in waco, texas. he is a marine corps veteran and used his gi bill benefits to obtain his bachelor’s degree. in addition, he currently advises the mcc student veterans of america student group. his dissertation research focused on enablers and inhibitors for veterans to complete a higher education. his research interests include veterans and higher education, public schooling, standardized testing. manuscript received: 08/23/2013 revisions received: 03/09/2015 accepted: 03/23/2015 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1286 mailto:brmoore@mclennan.edu current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 14 volume 18, number 2 july 25, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editors tray j. geiger layout editors constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1056_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 february 3, 2013 issn 1099-839x elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy christa jackson university of kentucky currently, mathematics instruction in u.s. classrooms is far from achieving equity for african american students. this qualitative study reports the results of eight successful elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy, specifically their knowledge of culturally relevant pedagogy, cultural competence, and critical consciousness. teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy was examined using interview data. the results of this study revealed that successful mathematics teachers of african american students have knowledge of equity pedagogy. implications for teacher preparation and professional development programs are discussed. keywords: equity pedagogy, african american students, elementary education w. e. b. du bois, one of the founders of the national association for the advancement of colored people (naacp), envisioned that the education of african americans would equip leaders to protect the political and social rights of the black community. furthermore, he wanted to make the “black people aware of the necessity of a constant struggle… [and] develop an afro-american culture that would blend the african background of former slaves with american culture” (spring, 2005, p. 226). realizing du bois’ vision requires more effective teacher education as well as support structures for teachers. unfortunately, the majority of teachers are not fully equipped to educate a diverse population of students (futrell, gomez, & bedden, 2003). currently, in the best of circumstances we have mathematics teachers who have strong mathematical content knowledge and high levels of pedagogical content knowledge, yet african american students are still underperforming in mathematics (martin, 2009). for example, according to the national center for education statistics, 91% of eighth grade african american students perform below proficient in mathematics (adams, 2008). according to irvine (2003), “students fail in school not because their teachers do not know their content, but because their teachers cannot make connections between subject-area content and their students’ existing mental schemes, prior knowledge, and cultural perspectives” (p. 47). teaching with this level of sophistication requires specialized knowledge and skill in using instructional strategies. further, gay (2000) argues that, “decontextualizing teaching and learning from the ethnicities and cultures of students minimizes the chances that their achievement potential will ever be fully realized” (p. 23). teachers have not had the opportunities to develop sufficient, specialized knowledge related to the ethnicities and cultures of students so that they are successful in mathematics. researchers have described different knowledge bases required for teaching including: knowledge of mathematics content, effective teaching strategies, the general characteristics of elementary students, typical student errors and misconceptions and how to deal with them (ball, hill, & bass, 2005; ma, 1999). yet, limited research has involved understanding teacher knowledge related to equity in teaching mathematics to african american students. the purpose of this article is to report the findings from a study of elementary teachers’ knowledge as it relates to equity in the instruction of mathematics to african american students. the research question is: current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 what specific knowledge related to equity in teaching african american students do eight successful elementary mathematics teachers have? i first discuss the review of literature and conceptual framework that guided the study. i then discuss the research methods and results. i conclude with a discussion and implications for teacher education and future research. literature review related to teaching african american students pedagogy related to equity malloy (2002) defines democratic education as a “process where teachers and students work collaboratively to reconstruct curriculum to include everyone” (p. 21). the democratic mathematics classroom incorporates problem-solving curricula, includes multiple instructional strategies that allow students access to engage in solving problems, provides students equal participation in decisions, and promotes equal encouragement for success. malloy (2002) describes three benefits of democratic education in the mathematics classroom: inclusiveness, mathematics understanding, and application of mathematics to the problems in social justice and equity, where social justice involves developing sociopolitical consciousness, sense of agency, and positive social and cultural identities (gutstein, 2003). bob moses’ algebra project (moses & cobb, 2001) addressed the need for mathematical literacy among african american students as a civil rights issue. in order to be effective and productive citizens in society, moses believed that african americans should have access and participate in algebra. as a civil rights advocate, moses expressed that by learning algebra, african americans would be able to take advantage of numerous opportunities. there is power in learning mathematics, and once students understand that power and how it can be applied to other situations outside the scope of “traditional mathematics” students are able to use their mathematical knowledge as a tool to help solve problems of the poor and powerless – for social justice and equity. thus, in a democratic mathematics classroom students would think critically and use their mathematical knowledge to further understand and change society’s social inequities. furthermore, walker (1996) reports on the importance of teachers knowing their students’ community and knowing how to talk to parents within the community to ensure success for all students. not only were teachers instructed how to communicate with parents in the community, they were encouraged to become part of the community and make themselves known in the community. this made a positive difference in the lives of the african american students. in addition, ladson-billings (1994) conducted a three-year, in-depth ethnographic study that examined the pedagogical practices of eight exemplary teachers. she asserted that teachers must engage in culturally relevant pedagogy that maintains and includes students’ culture and moves beyond the negative effects of the dominant culture. ladson-billings does not offer a prescriptive list of instructional strategies teachers can use to become culturally relevant. instead, she offers characteristics of teachers who practice culturally relevant methods. however, some have argued that culturally relevant pedagogy seems like just “good teaching.” but, situations arise in classrooms in which privileged students interact with african american students, (esmonde, 2009), which affects teachers’ pedagogical practices. for example, malloy (2009) observed her student teacher teach a geometry honors class, which had 13 caucasian, two asian, one african american, and one student who was mixed race. the student teacher instructed the students to work in groups of two or three to complete the assigned activity. everyone in the class had groups to work with, except the african american student. the teachers nor his classmates interacted with the african american student. after the lesson, malloy asked the teachers about the african american student. they informed her that he was not on the same level as the other students in the honors class. malloy immediately pointed out that the other students were working together, but the african american student had no one to help and support his learning, and they did not approach him to offer their support. the teachers were both shocked and embarrassed that they allowed this to happen. if we want african american students to succeed in mathematics, we need to better understand the necessary knowledge base related to equity in teaching african american students. teachers must have knowledge about equity pedagogy specifically related to teaching african american students. instructional strategies typically, in “mixed populated schools” students are educated under a eurocentric paradigm, in which teachers privilege white students and reprimand african american students, negatively affecting the educational experiences and resulting achievement of african american students (parsons, 2005). some instructional strategies implemented with african american students are based on direct instruction. for example, after the school board adopted the discovering mathematics curriculum in seattle, wa, community members brought a lawsuit against the school district claiming that students of color do not learn mathematics best with inquiry-based curricula (porter, mcclaren, & mass v. seattle school district no. 1. board of directors of seattle school district no. 1, & maria goodloe-johnson, 2010). instead, they can only learn and excel with a direct approach to instruction. they believed inquiry-based curriculum privileges a select few (i.e., the mathematically gifted). the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence for a elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy 3 board member to approve the discovering mathematics curriculum. however, direct instruction can deter african american students from high-level thinking and becoming effective problem solvers because the processes are explicitly explained to them. society will continue to encourage african american students to be followers, rather than leaders, consequently, disempowering african american students. haberman (1991) denotes this as “pedagogy of poverty.” this pedagogy includes: “giving information, asking questions, giving directions, making assignments, monitoring seatwork, reviewing assignments, giving tests, reviewing tests, assigning homework, reviewing homework, settling disputes, punishing noncompliance, marking papers, and giving grades” (p. 291). this pedagogy of poverty is typical in schools with large populations of african american students. although evertson, anderson, anderson, and brophy (1980) have shown that gains in urban students’ achievement and attitudes toward mathematics were positively correlated with the time their junior high mathematics teachers spent lecturing/demonstrating, having class discussion, assigning a limited amount of seatwork, and asking both fact related questions (mostly fact) and higher cognitive questions that created opportunities for students to respond, ladson-billings (1994) argues effective teachers of african american students involves more than just these instructional practices. although direct instruction has been used to teach mathematics to african american students, malloy (2009) investigates other instructional strategies that are effective in increasing african american students’ mathematical understanding. in her study, malloy uses both interviews and classroom observations to determine what instructional strategies and teachers’ dispositions help middle grade african american students gain conceptual understanding in mathematics. malloy argues african american students must be visible in the mathematics classroom, which is accomplished by grounding instructional strategies in the learning preferences of african american students and connecting cultural experiences and social justice in african american communities with opportunities to learn. malloy reports that teachers’ instructional practices include: reflecting on practice, building communities of learners, and giving students voice, which all highly correlate with ladson-billings’ (1994) characteristics of culturally-relevant teachers. successful teachers of african american students promote academic excellence and recognize students’ cultural heritage. conceptual framework teachers must develop and draw from numerous knowledge bases to effectively teach mathematics to all their students. several mathematics education researchers have studied knowledge for teaching over the past two decades (e.g., carpenter, fennema, peterson, & carey, 1988; hill, ball, & schilling, 2008; ma, 1999). currently, the conceptualization and research related to the knowledge of equity has not been pursued. as a result, i developed a conceptual framework related to teachers’ knowledge of equity issues, beliefs, and teacher’s knowledge of equity pedagogy (jackson, in review) based on a review of the literature (see figure 1). the conceptual framework outlines the critical components of teachers’ knowledge of equity in teaching. it guided the design and implementation of a larger study (jackson, 2010). in this article, i report the findings related to one component of the framework, teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy. on the left-hand side of the conceptual framework, i include three components within knowledge of equity pedagogy: culturally relevant teaching, cultural competence, and critical consciousness. ladson-billings (1994) defines culturally relevant teaching as a “pedagogy that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes” (p. 17). gay (2000) extends this definition by stating culturally responsive teaching is “using the culture knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning outcomes more relevant and effective for them” (p. 29). culturally relevant/responsive teaching is designed to teach the “whole” child through acknowledging and addressing the child’s race, language, ethnicity, and class through teaching. students’ “identities” are not ignored or subsumed in the deficit model of teaching and learning, but are contributors to the teaching and learning of students. cultural competence includes teachers’ knowledge about their own culture and the role it has in their lives; knowledge of students’ cultures; the necessity to study their students (ladson-billings, 2001); and the ability to communicate (both verbal and nonverbal), understand, and interact with people from different cultures. for example, a teacher of african american students may give a class a certain “look” to quiet them down. in the african american culture, adults generally use facial expressions and eye contact to discipline their children. however, this form of “discipline” is not effective with all african american children. thus, it is important for the teacher to know the students and their background and not overgeneralize the use of specific approaches. critical consciousness engages both teachers and students to critically question, reflect, participate in meaning making, and act in their sociopolitical environment. ladson-billings (2001) suggests teachers who promote critical consciousness: (a) have knowledge of the larger sociopolitical context; (b) invest in students and understand students are important for who they are and who they can become; (c) plan and implement current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 figure 1. knowledge of equity in teaching framework. social processes 1. norms 2. expectations 3. relationships 4. engagement student learning teachers’ knowledge of equity issues 1. structural inequities that persist in larger societal contexts where schools are situated 2. influence of race, ethnicity, language, and class on teaching, learning, and schooling teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy 1. culturally relevant pedagogy 2. cultural competence 3. critical consciousness teachers’ beliefs 1. african american students and how they learn 2. instruction of african americans students 3. themselves elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy 5 academic experiences that connect students to the larger social context; and (d) believe the success of students has consequences for their quality of life. research methods participants eight successful elementary mathematics teachers from the midwest participated in the study. i contacted school district administrators in three districts, webster public schools, khanna public schools, and hartville public schools (all names of districts and people are pseudonyms) to identify participants who met the following criteria: a. they teach mathematics in elementary school (grades 3-6). b. their mathematics class is composed of at least 20% african american students. c. they have a minimum of 4 years of teaching experience. d. they are recommended based on continuous gains in mathematics achievement of african american students over a three-year period on district and/or state assessments. e. they are recommended by knowledgeable mathematics educators. i met with district mathematics coordinators and superintendents to identify teachers whose african american students had high average achievement scores on district assessment (75% and above) and state tests. once the pool of teachers were identified, they confirmed along with the building principals and a mathematics teacher educator who had experience facilitating professional development in the district that these teachers had a positive rapport with their african american students. through their recommendations eight teachers agreed to participate. i provide more descriptive information about each participant in table 1. data collection and analysis the primary data sources for all participants included two semi-structured interviews (merriam, 1988), which allowed me to probe for additional ideas and/or clarification to establish a shared understanding of the table 1 participants teacher ethnicity grade level taught during study school district context percent of african american students enrolled in district years teaching experience mrs. lewis caucasian fifth webster school district, public, small city 22.6% 4 ms. jenkins caucasian third webster school district, public, small city 22.6% 6 ms. hale caucasian fourth webster school district, public, small city 22.6% 4 mrs. knox african american third khanna school district, public, urban 99.2% 11 mrs. mitchell african american sixth khanna school district, public, urban 99.2% 20 plus mrs. savage caucasian fourth khanna school district, public, urban 99.2% 28 mrs. jones caucasian third hartville school district, public, suburban 68.1% 12 mrs. thomas african american third hartville school district, public, suburban 68.1% 13 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 interview established a foundational understanding of the teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy. after the first interview i recorded field notes to inform the design of my second interview, with the goal of gaining a deeper understanding of the teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy (strauss & corbin, 1998). sample interview questions include: (a) how would you describe an effective mathematics teacher of african american students? (b) you have been asked to give a presentation to your colleagues on what facilitates and hinders the success of african american students. what would you discuss? the time lapse between interviews was approximately 2 months. each interview lasted approximately one hour. after conducting audio-recorded interviews, i transcribed the data. the transcripts were coded using a microanalysis approach with nodes related to knowledge of equity pedagogy from the knowledge of equity in teaching framework. i analyzed the data using a data reduction approach (miles & huberman, 1994) along with a constant comparative method (glaser, 1965). using a constant comparative approach to data analysis, i compared incident to incident analyzing the data for similarities and differences (charmaz, 2006). i used the coding categories shown in table 2. after the initial coding, other themes emerged. i then conducted a second layer of coding with these emerging themes. two doctoral students each coded an interview transcript using the coding dictionary. all discrepancies were resolved and clarified. i mapped out the teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy. at this point, i looked for saturation in the data as i categorized the quotes. i then free coded the data to identify themes as the final stage of analysis. reliability was confirmed with another faculty member. results the underlying theme of the equity principle in the principles and standards for school mathematics (nctm, 2000) is all students can learn mathematics. unfortunately, many african american students are consistently demonstrating low mathematical achievement. mathematics educators constantly discuss equity in the classroom, but do we know what knowledge teachers need to teach mathematics equitably to african american students? in this study, i report on eight successful elementary teachers’ knowledge of equity table 2 coding categories for teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy • culturally relevant pedagogy • view themselves as part of a community • help students to make connections between their racial, cultural, local, national, and global identities • establish relationships with students that extend beyond the classroom environment • establish a community of learners • believe knowledge is constantly recycled, re-created, and shared by students and themselves – it is not static • view teaching as students developing their knowledge • use a variety of instructional strategies • cultural competence • knowledge about their own culture and the role it has in their lives • knowledge of students’ cultures • understand the necessity to study their students • ability to communicate (both verbal and nonverbal), understands, and interacts with people from different cultures. • critical consciousness • knowledge of the larger sociopolitical context • invest in students and understand students are important for who they are and who they can become • plan and implement academic experiences that connect students to the larger social context • believe the success of students has consequences for their quality of life elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy 7 table 3 teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy: themes teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy themes culturally relevant pedagogy mathematics lessons must relate to african american students’ lives and experiences. teachers use a variety of instructional strategies teachers establish a positive classroom community. teachers establish relationships that extend beyond the classroom. cultural competence teachers adapt mathematics instruction to meet the cultural needs of african american students. teachers identify with african american students. critical consciousness not only do teachers invest in african american students and have high expectations of them in the classroom, they have high expectations that extend beyond the classroom that influence their quality of life. pedagogy as it relates to teaching mathematics to african teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy related to: (1) culturally relevant pedagogy, (2) cultural competence, and (3) critical consciousness. i summarize the themes for teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy in table 3. culturally relevant pedagogy after analyzing the data for teachers’ knowledge of culturally relevant pedagogy, the themes that emerged across participants were similar to the themes in ladsonbillings (1994) study. theme 1: mathematics lessons must relate to african american students’ lives and experiences. teachers must have knowledge of students’ culture, lives, and experiences to make mathematical learning relevant (malloy, 2009). participants understand that relationships must precede instruction. if they do not take the time to establish positive relationships with their students, learning will not occur (kunjufu, 2002). when establishing relationships, teachers cannot merely go through the motions because students know when teachers are genuine and really care about them. african american students must relate to the teacher and the teacher must relate to them. the teachers realize they must have a relationship before they can make mathematics lessons relevant to the students. they take the opportunity to know their students and discover their motivations and interests. they tailor their instruction with this knowledge. during mathematics instruction, mrs. mitchell focuses on introducing the material to the students’ on their level, and then takes them to the next level by connecting the mathematics to students’ experiences. for example, mrs. mitchell has her students create a cookbook to help them develop an understanding of fractions. the students have to locate recipes to include in the cookbook and explain what they must do if their recipe indicates it will serve six, and they wanted to invite 18 people over for dinner. by having students complete activities that are relevant to them, mrs. mitchell knows her students will experience success. she comments, “if you come in as a low achiever, you’ll go out as a high achiever, or believing that you can do it” (2nd interview, 2009). theme 2: teachers use a variety of instructional strategies. all the teachers stated they use a variety of instructional strategies to meet the needs of their students. their pedagogy does not consist of a watered down curriculum and treating everyone the same because each of their students have different needs and skills. they implement strategies to improve and broaden students’ mathematical knowledge. it would not be effective to use the same approach with all students, so the teachers implement different strategies so all students succeed and build their mathematical understanding. mrs. thomas remarks, “sometimes, unfortunately, you can’t get the students to learn the way that you want them to learn, but you have to find a way to make them successful” (2nd interview, 2010). for example, mrs. jones asked her students to solve a mathematics word problem that involved wanda and jose, but her students had no idea how to work the problem. mrs. jones realized that wanda and jose meant nothing to her students, so she simply changed the names to the names of her students. as soon as she inserted her students’ names, they were interested and were able to solve the problem. mrs. jones asserts teachers have to make it real for the students and change some of the items in the textbook. mrs. mitchell recalls having a couple of students current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 in her mathematics class where no matter what she tried she could not get through to them. but, she did not give up. she eventually discovered that one of the boys was interested in aviation. so, instead of trying to instruct him from the textbook, mrs. mitchell focused several of her mathematics lessons around airplanes and aviation material. this made a dramatic difference in the little boy’s understanding. from that point, the little boy was able to share his mathematical thinking from an aviation point of view. mrs. thomas understands that when she builds on her students’ strengths and makes the mathematical content relevant, her students are successful. but, to accomplish this, she must know her students. mrs. thomas clarifies: i need to figure out you know what do they excel in? what do they do great in? i do that for every student. and so for the african american students, i need to figure out what gets them excited? is it music, clapping, pictures, a funny joke, a story?...what can i do to make sure that jayden is successful while i’m planning this lesson? what can i do to make sure that my derrick is successful? he doesn’t understand subtraction. so how will he understand this? so, in order for them to be successful, i have to see what they can do. you think of the child in mind. (2nd interview, 2010) when designing mathematics lessons with the child in mind, teachers continuously encourage all their students to become active learners. students participate in hands-on activities and math workshops, play mathematical games, solve mathematical problems in at least two different ways, and explain their mathematical thinking. communication is important. mrs. mitchell sometimes has to direct good communication in her mathematics classroom. she emphasizes that her students use the correct mathematical language when they share their thinking. mrs. mitchell explains, “the mathematical language is very important. sometimes we’ll say you’re using a five-dollar word. i need a 100-dollar word” (2nd interview, 2009). for example, in a lesson on fractions mrs. mitchell emphasized she did not want her students saying the “top or bottom number.” instead, she wanted them to use numerator and denominator – the “100-dollar words.” additionally, mrs. thomas wants her students to feel comfortable enough to communicate their misunderstandings so she is able to help them. all the teachers intentionally solve problems incorrectly and have students critically examine them and determine what was and was not correct. mrs. jones also uses this approach to help her students understand it is okay to make a mistake. they are in it together to help each other. when students share an incorrect answer, ms. hale lets them know she values their responses and appreciates their willingness to explain their thinking. she does not embarrass them in front of the class for their wrong answers, but she takes the time to inform them that they “missed this little part” in the problem. she wants them all to be successful. theme 3: teachers establish a positive classroom community. all the teachers establish a community of learners in the classroom, and many see themselves as part of that community of building mathematical knowledge. we are a team, and with every team you have a coach and you have players. you are the players, and i am the coach. i am coming up with the plays that we are going to have and it’s important for you to try to implement them to the best of your ability. (mrs. mitchell, 1st interview, 2009) the teachers see themselves and their students as a team working together. consequently, during mathematics lessons the teachers allow students to work either in pairs or small groups. students rarely work in isolation. if they understand a mathematical concept and their peers do not, they teach their peers the concept so they understand. all students are responsible for ensuring the success of other members in the classroom. african american students have a responsibility to themselves and the class. the teachers realize by having students work with others extends and deepens their mathematical knowledge and understanding. of course, all the teachers recognize creating a community of learners is based on their ability to establish relationships with their students. mrs. jones recalls having an african american boy whom she had a special relationship. she reports, “everybody in the building did not like this kid” (2nd interview, 2009). he was so negative. whenever he was mad at the world, mrs. jones would just look at him, and he would start laughing. her student teacher tried to treat him the same way, but it did not work. her student teacher did not understand why this approach was not working. mrs. jones recalls her saying, “i don’t understand what’s going on? how come he does that to you, but he treats me like crap?” (2nd interview, 2009) mrs. jones explained that you have to honestly build relationships with students. she further elaborated, “it’s hard to build a good relationship if you’re saying things that are making them shut down” (2nd interview, 2009). ms. jenkins feels she has really gotten to know her african american students. she communicates and shows them that she is caring, interested, and supportive. if students “fumble the ball,” the teachers are careful not to embarrass students or make them look dumb in front of their peers. instead, they take the time to pull students aside and have private conversations with them. mrs. mitchell notes she does not do this as a formality. she listens to her students because sometimes elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy 9 students feel like people do not understand them. she then uses this information to help determine the child’s strengths. she does not give up on the child because she says, “that person may be your best group leader” (1st interview, 2009). when the mathematics lessons do not go as anticipated, many of the teachers go home and reflect over the lesson. they contemplate, “well, they probably didn’t get it because i said it this way, so maybe i should try explaining it a different way” (ms. hale, 1st interview, 2009). the teachers never “blame” the students. and when they are tempted to do so, they always refocus it back on themselves. theme 4: teachers establish relationships that extend beyond the classroom. many teachers have extended the relationships with their students beyond the classroom, and they acknowledge it makes a difference. for example, mrs. jones remembers an african american student she had who would not speak for about two years to anyone about anything of value. he noticed one of his peers handing mrs. jones a schedule of her ice-skating performances. as a result, he asked mrs. jones to attend one of his football games. mrs. jones went, and from that point the boy opened up and started communicating. mrs. knox tries to attend every event her students invite her to. she realizes it makes a difference. mrs. mitchell describes: there’s nothing more exciting then to have a child, and i am just in sweat pants on a saturday in the rain watching the game, and the child walk up and introduce me as his teacher to the coach…you know like i said, it’s been fortunate that i’ve been able to attend some of the kid’s games. they’re so happy to see ms. [mitchell] there on a saturday morning at 8:00, you know, out there with one eye open, one eye closed, but i’m there. and that makes a big difference because they then come back to school and say ms. [mitchell] came to my game, you know, it’s okay. (1st interview, 2009) similar to stinson’s (2009) results, teachers establish relationships with their african american students outside the classroom. teachers invest quality time with their african american students, and they realize this makes a difference in the lives of their students, both emotionally and academically. as a result, when they are invited to one of their students’ events, they make every effort to attend. cultural competence after analyzing the data for teachers’ knowledge of cultural competence the following themes emerged across the participants: theme 5: teachers adapt mathematics instruction to meet the cultural needs of african american students. african american students must be visible in the mathematics classroom (malloy, 2009). the teachers pay attention to how african american students learn. they understand that some african american students are generally loud and like to talk. thus, during mathematics instruction the teachers capitalize on the african american students’ strengths by assigning them leadership roles. additionally, teachers incorporate clapping, rhythm, and movement in their mathematics lessons because they understand african american students’ culture. mrs. thomas allows her students to freely move around during instruction. these instructional approaches are similar to the ones reported by peterek and adams (2009) of a successful fifth grade mathematics teacher of african american students. the teachers understand educators cannot be so rigid in instruction and impose the eurocentric style of teaching (i.e., stay in your seats, do not talk unless called upon) on african american students. instead of the teachers imposing eurocentric cultural values on african american students, they allow african american students to impose their cultural norms on them. for example, mrs. thomas contends that her african american students have “unique learning styles” (2nd interview, 2010). she describes a student who constantly hears music when none is playing, and he likes to move. mrs. thomas realizes that if this boy is seated while she explains a mathematical concept, she loses him. as a result, she incorporates movement during her mathematics lessons. she describes: i try to incorporate, you know having the kids move around a lot and do a lot of clapping so they can try to remember the song or do something with rhythms to help them. i think that african american students, they participate more. they say, ‘ooh this is fun.’ they don’t say, ‘this is boring.’…so i think that one of the things that i know is they like to move around because i know i like it. (1st interview, 2009) mrs. thomas recalled teaching a multiplication lesson designed for students to sit at their desks and write items that come in twos, threes, fours, and all the way to twelve. mrs. thomas believed her students would have been bored and unmotivated completing this activity. as a result, she adapted the lesson so the students moved around from group to group identifying items that come in twos, threes, etc. she knew her students would be more engaged in the lesson with this change. she achieved the same goal as the original lesson, and she was able to get her students moving and they were more engaged as a result. many african american students like to stand, wiggle, move, shout out answers, and participate in call and response during mathematics lessons. the teachers adapted these characteristics in their instruction and have found that it positively facilitates the participation of their current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 african american students. theme 6: teachers identify with african american students. many of the african american teachers identify with their african american students. they adjust instruction for students because they personally relate to students. mrs. mitchell identifies with her students. as a result, she adjusts her instruction to capitalize on their strengths and personalities. she explains: i think as an african american i’m kind of able to understand my students a little bit more. because sometimes we get loud, sometimes we like to talk, sometimes we like to move. and one of the things that i try to do is i try to focus in on that strength. okay, you like to talk. okay, you are going to be the reporter…or i give them those leadership roles…depending on what their strength is, i try to key accordingly. (1st interview, 2009) mrs. thomas does not want her students to fail. she identifies with her african american students and seeks to find why they are not performing well in mathematics. she explains: african american students i look at it, i can’t help it because i’m black. but, you know, i do look at the kids that are not doing well on tests. and if they are african american, then i need to know why they’re not doing well because i look at them as if they’re my kids also. if it’s a situation where the african american students aren’t doing well and the caucasian students are doing well, then i have to think okay why is that…so, i look at it and then i see okay, is it because they’re african american or is it because of other factors? (1st interview, 2009) not only do the african american teachers identify with their african american students, ms. jenkins, a caucasian teacher, experienced what it is like to be a minority to help her relate and understand her african american students. she explains: for me, as a caucasian, i had to go into some situations where i was the minority. and it was so interesting for me because i have never felt that. you know you walk into a room, and i guess i didn’t realize that you know because that’s the way it always was for me growing up. in my elementary classes we had one or two african american students. that’s how it always was for me, but to flip it and put it on the other side was an awesome experience. i think i like more of that because you know i felt like i didn’t want to say anything. i just wanted to sit back. i was looking for someone else who looks like me. instead of just getting to know someone. you know when i was put in a large group with me being the only caucasian it’s hard. i mean that’s why i think i try, i try to think about, you know, how did i feel in that situation? is that child feeling like that everyday? what can i do to help them feel like they fit in and you know just as much a part of this as everybody else who might look the same. (1st interview, 2009) ms. jenkins understands the difficulty some african americans may have adjusting when there are not many people who look like them. in her classroom, she is cognizant of this fact. she helps her african american students feel comfortable by initially assigning them partners to work on mathematical tasks. she believes this builds confidence. some teachers emphasize the importance of acknowledging african american students in the mathematics classroom, particularly when they are in the minority. not only do they recognize them, they purposefully plan opportunities for them to contribute and become leaders during mathematical discussions. critical consciousness critical consciousness focuses on having students think critically and take action against oppressive elements in society (freire, 1986). although none of the teachers explicitly alluded to how they instruct their african american students to empower them to make a difference, many of them have knowledge of necessary components of critical consciousness. i discuss the theme that emerged below: theme 7: not only do teachers invest in african american students and have high expectations of them in the classroom, they have high expectations that extend beyond classroom that influence their quality of life. all the teachers expect students to reach their highest potential and be successful. they want to instill in them the confidence and the realization they can achieve. mrs. mitchell wants her students to be able to problem solve no matter what type of problem they encounter. she informs her students they cannot give a work on monday and c work on tuesday. all the teachers expect excellence every day. for example, if mrs. mitchell notices her students are struggling with square numbers, she continuously integrates that idea with other mathematical content she is teaching until her students understand. she not only wants her students to do well in her class, she also expects them to do well and succeed in life. my ultimate goal for all of my students is yes i want them to do good on the [state] test. yes, i want you to do good on the indicator fives, and the unit tests and all of the things that we assess out here in the district, but ultimately i want to see you 10, 20 years from now and you say you own your own business, you’re a doctor, you’re working on elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy 11 your phd, and you are able to count your change, you know. that’s my ultimate goal. (1st interview, 2009) many teachers understand they are not just preparing their african american students for success at the next grade level. therefore, they give students the support they need, and seek out additional support for students so they are successful in mathematics. mrs. lewis comes in before school, spends her lunchtime, and stays after school with students to help them develop their mathematical knowledge. ms. jenkins continually reflects and asks herself, “what other things can i pull? what resources do i have?” (2nd interview, 2009) the teachers want their students to succeed, and they are willing to do whatever is necessary to make it happen. all the teachers want their african american students to successfully compete in today’s global economy. conclusion researchers in mathematics education have explored and studied a variety of methods to raise the mathematics achievement of african american students using what they term as equitable practices. in this study, i chose not to advocate yet another approach for teachers to use in the classroom. instead, i qualitatively investigated successful elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge of equity in teaching mathematics to african american students. i found that teachers who have been successful in teaching mathematics to african american students have knowledge of equity pedagogy. an equitycentered paradigm in mathematics education requires teachers who have specific knowledge about equity and teaching african american students specifically. the participants in this study shared a strong knowledge base related to equity in teaching mathematics to african american students. researchers (ladson-billings, 1994; malloy 2002; 2009; matthews, 2005) argue that teachers who practice equity pedagogy build relationships with african american students, have high expectations for them, and help african american students maintain their identities. the findings from this study build upon their work by examining teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy, which goes beyond the characteristics of “good teaching.” the teachers acknowledged the presence of african american students in their mathematics classroom. with this realization, the teachers used the culture and interests of african american students in their instructional decisions. they truly believe all students can learn and be successful. these beliefs were valued and apparent in their knowledge of equity pedagogy. while focusing on a smaller sample size gives a detailed and meaningful representation of personalized experiences, i realize the sample size, time, and resources limit the study. i interviewed a small sample of teachers, and relied on self-reported data. i did not have the opportunity to observe their teaching practices to determine how they enacted their knowledge of equity pedagogy in their mathematics classroom. thus, i was not able to directly link teachers’ teaching practices with african american student achievement for the teachers in my study. as a result, further research is needed to observe teachers in the classroom to further determine their enacted knowledge of equity pedagogy in teaching mathematics to african american students. yet, this descriptive study provides a glimpse of what specific knowledge related to equity in teaching mathematics to african american students encompasses. if mathematics teachers are unaware of this knowledge base, they potentially run the risk of not fully establishing an equitable mathematics classroom environment for african american students. in other words, they cannot teach what they do not know. thus, it is important for mathematics teacher educators to have this knowledge and use it to positively influence the knowledge base of both pre-service and in-service mathematics teachers. we need to consider improving mathematics teacher education programs and professional development opportunities to address the knowledge base needed for teaching mathematics to african american students. currently, pre-service teachers are required to enroll in a multicultural course in some preparation programs. however, these efforts have been insufficient, as they do not address how to develop knowledge of equity pedagogy in teaching mathematics or other content areas (chval & pinnow, 2010). mathematics teacher education programs should address the needs of african american students specifically. this effort will require new materials such as videos and written cases to facilitate this knowledge development. this study informs the design of teacher preparation and professional development programs, which in turn influences the development of teacher knowledge related to equity in teaching. references adams, c. 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(1998). basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. walker, v. s. (1996). their highest potential: an african american school community in the segregated south. chapel hill, nc: the university of north carolina press. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 14 article citation jackson, c. (2013). elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1056 author notes christa jackson, phd university of kentucky 105 taylor education building lexington, ky 40506 christa.jackson@uky.edu christa jackson is an assistant professor in mathematics education in the stem education department at the university of kentucky. she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in mathematics education. her research conceptualizes teachers’ knowledge of equity, specifically in teaching mathematics to african american students. her work focuses on effective mathematics instruction at the elementary and middle levels, strategies to help students who struggle in mathematics and prospective mathematics teachers’ conceptions of equity. manuscript received: 8/24/2012 revisions received: 12/29/2012 accepted: 1/13/2013 elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge of equity pedagogy 15 volume 16, number 1 february 3, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1059.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 april 22, 2013 issn 1099-839x multicultural teaching models to educate pre-service teachers: reflections, service-learning, and mentoring anni krummel illinois state university the population of pre-service teachers entering university education programs is becoming more diverse. university education departments have the responsibility to understand and prepare current pre-service teachers, especially regarding multicultural education. the purpose of this paper is to understand the different dynamics of white preservice teachers and pre-service teachers of color who are entering education departments. it has been found that pre-service teachers have a fear and are silenced during discussions of race. therefore, university programs and professors have the challenge of opening communication within his/her courses in order to prepare teachers who can have critical multicultural discussions with his/her students. the current trends of preparing pre-service teachers to understand his/her own background and viewpoints include reflecting, service-learning, and mentoring. keywords: pre-service teacher, multicultural education, service-learning, modeling mentoring, diversity elementary and secondary classrooms around the united states are becoming more diverse (nces, 2010). the 2010 united states census documented recordbreaking increases in racial minority categories around the country (apple, 2011; census, 2010; smith, 2009). the census datum demonstrates the increased racial diversity in the united states; however, the racial diversity among pre-service and in-service teachers is not increasing (ford & quinn, 2010). it has been projected that by 2020, fifty percent of the student population will be students of color without a projected increase in teachers of color (gollick & chinn, 2009). therefore, education departments need to provide valuable experiences and pedagogy to their predominantly white pre-service teachers. with this goal in mind, education departments around the united states are taking steps to prepare their pre-service teachers to work with racially diverse populations of students and parents. according to the national council of accreditation of teacher education (ncate), “diversity” is defined as the “differences among groups of people and individuals based on race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, language, exceptionalities, religion, sexual orientation, and geographic region in which they live" (ncate, 2010-2012). each researcher also has his/her own definition of racial diversity, which may undermine research participants’ ability to respond meaningfully to researchers’ questions (taylor & sobel, 2001). racial diversity may be defined differently in different research studies; however a commonality among studies is that racial diversity can be viewed as a range or variety of different racial categories, with other specifications depending on the researcher. there is a need for pre-service teachers to understand how to work with students who are racially diverse. as outlined by metcalf-turner (2009), “one of current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 the recurring and most daunting (threats) is the continued slow or little progress that has occurred in student achievement, particularly for poor and minority students” (p. 464). pre-service teachers appear to be ill prepared to work with minority students. pre-service teachers also lack the skills to implement multiple instructional strategies in order to reach students from different types of students, especially students from different racial backgrounds and cultures (metcalf-turner, 2009). therefore, researchers have investigated pre-service teachers’ beliefs and attitudes regarding diversity. they have also looked at how teacher education programs are addressing multicultural experiences and content around the united states in order to prepare pre-service teachers. overall, multicultural education has been found to be essential to education programs in order to prepare preservice teachers to work in elementary and secondary school environments. the purpose of this paper is to specifically focus on three multicultural models that have been implemented at universities around the country with a concentration on black and white pre-service teachers. the guiding research questions center on the three models, which are reflecting, service-learning, and mentoring. the first question is: how are the models being implemented? the second question is: how do the pre-service teachers feel about his/her experiences within their schools multicultural teaching model? the last question is: what are the pros and cons of each model for black and white pre-service teachers as a racial group? pre-service teachers’ beliefs the majority of pre-service teachers and inservice teachers in the united states are white, middle class, christian females who come with little knowledge regarding diversity (liggett & finely, 2009; silverman, 2010). however, non-white pre-service teachers are also entering education programs. pre-service teachers of color have been found to “bring a commitment to multicultural teaching, social justice, and providing children of color with an academically challenging curriculum” (amos, 2010, p. 31). researchers studying education programs have analyzed the experiences and reflections of both white pre-service teachers and pre-service teachers of color. there are several studies that look at white preservice teachers; however, there is a gap in literature regarding pre-service teachers of color. one study, conducted by silverman (2010), included eighty-eight graduate and undergraduate students in either an educational psychology course or an early childhood course. silverman (2010) found, through data analysis, that “pre-service teachers do not feel personally responsible for multiculturalism and diversity to the extent that they feel teachers in general or the school and community are responsible” (p. 321). teacher education programs also have the responsibility to build an understanding among pre-service teachers that it is his/her responsibility to build racial acceptance in classroom environments. researchers have also found that many teachers entering the field of education feel uncomfortable addressing the idea of diversity. they may express fear and anxiety in working with communities that are extremely different from his/her own upbringing and background (ford & quinn, 2010; he & cooper, 2009). mosley and rogers (2011) conducted a qualitative study with three participants; two females and one male. data was collected during two different semesters. the researchers also used different means to collect the data. they used audiotapes, field notes, and observations. this small study found that the three white teachers remained silent when the issue of multiculturalism and diversity arose in his/her classrooms (mosley & rogers, 2011). silverman (2010) discussed this same silence as a mentality that someone else will take the responsibility to educate students on multicultural topics. one study found pre-service teachers of color were ready and willing to learn about multicultural education, yet were in a state of fear. the pre-service teachers’ state of fear was different than his/her white classmates, however. the fear was of retaliation and ostracism from his/her classmates who, in one particular study, were in denial of his/her whiteness. the denial by white pre-service teachers was forcing the pre-service teachers of color to become silent (amos, 2010). the preservice teachers of color did not feel part of the community, especially when his/her white classmates would not recognize his/her white privilege and were not open to discussing diversity in classroom settings. both sides silenced themselves and each other. vetter and reynolds (2012) researched preservice teachers of color from a different lens. they conducted a case study on a pre-service teacher, james. james identified himself as a “mutt” with a black father, white mother, and indian grandfather. as a multiracial individual, james did not know how to respond to questions regarding his race in the classroom environment with his students. james’ race shaped his student teaching experience. james did not have foundational guidance or curriculum from his university to use as a way to communicate with students regarding race, especially his own. james’ experience illustrates, on a small scale, the importance of multicultural education for non-white students also. three models the need for multicultural education for preservice teachers began as a response to low-achieving poor and minority students (metcalf-turner, 2009). however, the need is expanding, and education departments are continually being pushed to better prepare their outgoing pre-service teachers in the area of multicultural education. many education departments around the country are preparing their pre-service multicultural teaching models to educate pre-service teachers: reflections, service-learning, and mentoring 3 teachers for diverse classroom settings. while some researchers and universities claim they are adequately educating pre-service teachers on the topic of multicultural education (bleicher, 2011; bodur, 2010; davis, beyerbach, & london, 2008; kang, 2010), other professionals and researchers have found teacher program graduates are “without adequate knowledge, skills, and dispositions to teach diverse students” (benton-borghi & cheng, 2011, p. 29). several studies agree upon two essential factors education department programs need to adequately prepare pre-service teachers for diverse environments. the two essential factors are self-reflection and service-learning (chang, anagnostopoulos, & omae, 2011). self-reflection is a common professional practice among teachers and teacher candidates as a way to reflect on experiences, thoughts, as well as challenging one’s own views. pre-service teachers reflect on his/her diverse experiences including articles and/or books, discussions in class, or actual experiences in diverse classrooms (chang et al., 2011). service-learning involves being immersed in the urban/diverse setting (carter, 2009). he and cooper (2009) found that combining these two aspects also led to favorable outcomes and dispositions regarding diversity among pre-service teachers. reflecting self-reflection is the process of meditating and carefully considering one’s experiences and how it relates to, in this case, pre-service teachers’ approach to diversity. reflections can be structured or unstructured, as long as it is meaningful (bleicher, 2011). one type of reflection process universities use to provide a bridge between theory and practice includes the use of narratives, biographies or autobiographies (bleicher, 2011; he & cooper, 2009; kang & hyatt, 2010). through narratives, it was found that pre-service teachers were able to “develop a deeper understanding of and connection with multicultural and diversity issues” (kang & hyatt, 2010, p. 44). they are able to tell the story of his/her experiences through their own eyes. reflections are also a way for professors to understand the dispositions pre-service teachers have when they enter the program. this knowledge is used by professors to target the plan of study for pre-service teachers in the area of multicultural education (ford & quinn, 2010). one study, by laughter (2011), used discussion groups to facilitate conversations regarding race and racism. from his study, at a very minute level, it showed that reflection and dialogue groups (discussion/reflections) help define race and racism for white pre-service teachers (laughter, 2011). overall, any type of reflection is helpful in the development of preservice teachers’ multicultural knowledge (bell, horn, & roxas, 2007; johnson & alkins, 2009; lowenstein, 2009; zozakiewicsz, 2010). service-learning teacher preparation courses also have the objective to educate teacher candidates in a way that seems applicable to real life; otherwise students become bored and disengaged (liggett, 2011). exposure to diverse classrooms settings is one response to combating this boredom or finding relevance to one’s own life. diverse classroom experiences in k-12 settings are often called “multicultural service learning” (msl) and are found to be essential in building multicultural knowledge among pre-service teachers (chang et al., 2011). research has shown that pre-service teachers can be placed in diverse school environments for as little as a week or a much as an entire school year and still build varying degrees of knowledge around diversity and multicultural education (bleicher, 2011; chang et al., 2011). a leading researcher in the field of service-learning and teacher education, rahmia wade (2006), stated, “field experiences with a service-learning component offer preservice teachers and community members exciting opportunities to work together on needs or goals important to the community” (p. 22). carter (2009) found that service learning has been found to be extremely beneficial for both white and african american pre-service teachers. prior to the service-learning experience it was found that african americans also had narrowed views of urban schools due to his/her own experiences and individual backgrounds. most of the involved participants had grown up in urban settings, however they learned through the servicelearning experience that urban can mean many different things. one of the strongest components of the servicelearning experience for these african american teacher candidates was the implementation of self-reflection (carter, 2009). mentoring some researchers describe the importance of service-learning for pre-service teachers as a way to develop an understanding of diversity. however, many researchers emphasize the importance of teacher educators and cooperating teachers supporting the preservice teachers to ensure the experience is one of learning (tellez, 2006). the teacher educators and cooperating teachers can support the pre-service teachers in multiple ways. cooperating teachers and teacher educators can provide support through honest feedback, providing examples of quality teaching, and communicating consistently. this is important because, “stereotypes (can be) proven false by a single case” (bell, horn, & roxas, 2007, p. 130), but they can also be validated by a single case. one researcher found that preservice teachers who experienced students who were perceived to be more urban had negative expectations for his/her students. on the opposite side, those same preservice teachers that had students who were perceived to current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 be less urban had more positive expectations in the classroom environment (watson, 2011). this research solidifies the fact that mentoring and modeling are essential during service-learning and content courses in teacher education programs. with a quality model or mentor, perceptions can be changed or at least challenged. therefore, taking a step back from reflections and experiences, teacher educators also need to be able to model appropriate language and behavior within the coursework and through mentoring (johnson & alkins, 2009; lowenstein, 2009; zozakiewicsz, 2010). preservice teachers need appropriate models and mentors so they are able to confidently enter his/her classrooms. cooperating teachers working in california, usa, reported pre-service teachers were most successful in working with diverse learners when using anchor models and mentors who encouraged and expected active participation in materials and strategies (tellez, 2008). involving pre-service teachers gives them ownership and acceptance of material they may fear because the materials address race. teacher educators should feel they are equipping pre-service teachers with knowledge they will be able to use in a school environment and “work effectively in our (united states) diverse society” (leer, 2009, p. 53). multicultural appropriate behavior utilizes language that is inclusive, qualifying, indirect/direct, and uses clarifying questions. researchers agree that pre-service teachers observing mentor teachers and professors using multicultural appropriate practices is beneficial for preservice teachers. after participating in these observations, pre-service teachers are then able to understand that engaging in appropriate multicultural practices may appear to go against what is currently done in their school buildings, but it will enact positive change (liggett & finley, 2009). recommendations education departments around the united states are actively attempting to educate their pre-service teachers regarding the idea of multicultural education. however, much of the research around multicultural education in education departments indicates these attempts are not working. in the few studies that indicated failures, the researchers identify negative and unchangeable mindsets of the teacher candidates as a hindrance to the teacher candidates’ successful reflection in the courses and programs (davis et al., 2008). the research also shows an inability to equally expose preservice teachers to a variety of diverse settings (chang et al., 2011). however, anderson and stillman (2011) found quality service-learning experiences help pre-service teachers understand “what’s possible” in urban school settings. researchers who state universities are not fully preparing pre-service teachers to teach in diverse classroom settings do have suggestions on how to make the programs rigorous (benton-borghi & cheng, 2011; hopkins-gillispie, 2009.) they suggest integrating multicultural knowledge throughout all courses with faculty that is knowledgeable on the subject (metcalfturner, 2009; smith, 2009). researchers and critics recommend a “teacher education program unit” where reliable measures would be used to measure “candidates’ efficacy to teach diverse students, which (would) provide effective data for teacher education programs to become proactive to improve programs” (benton-borghi & cheng, 2011, p. 29). through integration in all courses, pre-service teachers would be able to fully understand the ”issues of diversity within the context of making pedagogical decisions that lead to increased academic achievement” (metcalf-turner, 2009, p. 464). this integration would also result in a “true understanding of diversity and multiculturalism specific methods and strategies” (hopkins-gillispie, 2009, p. 71). another researcher, gorski (2009), suggests that although it appears that current courses do not prepare teachers for multicultural environments, they are following ncate standards. he challenges that idea and suggests that universities should take ideas from each area described, scaffold a course, and help mold teachers who have a holistic multicultural mindset. however, he also cautions that just exposing pre-service teachers to diversity does not mean they have developed a disposition that is desired in multicultural education. recommendations for future research would expand the current literature regarding multicultural education in education departments around the united states. one recommendation for future research is to implement these three models at equivalent universities. implementing the three described models of multicultural education will provide pre-service teachers with a solid and relevant foundation when entering their own classrooms. a second recommendation for future research is to include studies with larger sample sizes resulting in stronger generalizations. finally, a recommendation for future research is to include closing the literature gap regarding experiences and feedback of pre-service teachers of color in multicultural education programs around the country. the lack of research mirrors the lack of diversity in education programs. however, after studying the experiences of pre-service teachers of color, universities may be able to more effectively educate their students. conclusion one goal of multicultural education for preservice teachers, as stated by bleicher (2011), is to help candidates grow and challenge his/her ideas of racial diversity. bodur (2010) found that “pre-service teachers who received more multicultural preparation held more positive attitudes and based their attitudes more on academic preparation than on personal experiences” (p. 41). as research has shown, there are limitations within multicultural teaching models to educate pre-service teachers: reflections, service-learning, and mentoring 5 multicultural education around the united states. however, research has also shown that reflection and diverse experiences help build confidence and knowledge among pre-service teachers. references amos, y. t. 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(2010). culturally responsible mentoring: exploring the impact of an alternative approach for preparing student teachers for diversity. teacher educator, 45(2), 137-151. multicultural teaching models to educate pre-service teachers: reflections, service-learning, and mentoring 7 article citation krummel, a. (2013). multicultural teaching models to educate pre-service teachers: reflections, service-learning, and mentoring. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1059 author notes anni krummel, ms. ed. illinois state university 2716 w overhill rd. peoria, il 61615 ackrumm@ilstu.edu anni is a doctoral student at illinois state university in the school of teaching and learning (curriculum and instruction). she received her ms. ed at dominican university in 2009. anni is also full-time early elementary special education teacher in central illinois. she is passionate about educational equality and focuses her research on multicultural education and multiracial/biracial students in school environments. manuscript received: 08/21/2012 revisions received: 12/09/2012 accepted: 03/08/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 volume 16, number 1 april 22, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 888-3923-3-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests kelly moser mississippi state university researchers (sandarg & schomber, 2009; wilkerson, schomber, & sandarg, 2004) have urged the profession to develop a new subject-matter licensure test to reflect the best practices in the foreign language classroom. in october 2010, the praxis ii: world language test joined the praxis series. given that this standards-driven test differs significantly from its previous versions, the content knowledge and productive language skills tests, it is unknown how teacher candidates will respond to its unique challenges. this qualitative study examines the perspectives of five prospective foreign language teachers who took one of the versions of the praxis ii subject-matter test. the data revealed that two groups, surprised prevailers and frustrated forgoers, perceived the praxis ii differently. their test experiences may provide foreign language teacher educators with strategies to overcome test challenges and improve curricula. keywords: praxis test, licensure tests, foreign language, certification, standards, ncate, teacher education, assessment, qualitative research through the standards for foreign language learning in the 21st century (national standards in foreign language education project, 1999), (referred to herein as national standards), the foreign language profession identified what students should know and be able to do following a sequence of language instruction. consequently, similar standards for teachers were developed in order to assist students in reaching the goals, or the 5 cs (communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities), of the national standards. one such effort includes the program standards for the preparation of foreign language teachers (actfl, 2002) (referred to herein as program standards), developed by the national council on the accreditation of teacher education (ncate) and the american council on the teaching of foreign languages (actfl), the specialized professional association for foreign languages. at the core of the program standards, which focus on the requirements of foreign language teacher education programs, are the national standards (actfl, 2002). therefore, teacher candidates who successfully complete a teacher education program according to the requirements of the program standards should be able to deliver standards-based instruction by: communicating in the target language, addressing the products, practices, and perspectives of target cultures, connecting to other disciplines, comparing the second language and culture to their own, and understanding the importance of lifelong learning and interacting with target language communities (abbott, m., personal communication, october 2011). regardless of this emphasis on standards-based curriculum design, cheatham (2004) argued that the structure of language courses has changed very little to current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 reflect this paradigm. other researchers (ricardo-osorio, 2008; welles, 1999; 2000) have also cited the resistance of post-secondary educators to use the national standards to modify curricula. departmental insularity plays a fundamental role in this dilemma (fraga-cañadas, 2010; pearson, fonseca-greber, & foell, 2006; schulz, 2000; tedick, 2009). according to tedick (2009), “the lack of thoughtful coordination between the two camps [colleges of education and foreign language departments] that are jointly responsible for preparing teachers is evident” (p. 265). regardless of this dilemma, given the reciprocal relationship between the teacher and student standards, the failure to use the student national standards at the post-secondary level has several implications for foreign language teacher education programs. one such challenge, which directly impacts at least 40 states that rely on the praxis series for teacher certification, involves licensure testing. the praxis series, one of the series of educational tests offered by the educational testing service (ets), consists of the praxis i, a test of basic reading, writing, and mathematics, and the praxis ii, tests that evaluate the pedagogical knowledge of teacher candidates as well as content-specific knowledge (ets, 2012). following the ratification of the program standards, ets and actfl began making significant changes to the praxis ii foreign language subject-matter licensure tests (glisan, 2001). this standards-based praxis ii: world language test (french #5174, german #5183, and spanish #5195) was added to the praxis series in october 2010. this new test was developed to replace previous foreign language praxis ii tests, the content knowledge test (french #0173, german #0181, spanish #0191) and the productive language skills test (french #0171, german #0182, spanish #0192), which did not reflect the best practices as identified by the standards (abbott, m., personal communication, october 2011). establishing a clear connection between the program standards and the world language test, mcclendon (2004) asserted, as post-secondary departments of education begin aligning their courses of study with the national council for accreditation of teacher education (ncate) standards and guidelines, the prospective foreign language teacher will be on track for successfully passing tests that may be required by the state as part of the licensure process and for performing successfully in the classroom as well. (2004, p. 2) thus, assisting teacher candidates in meeting the expectations of the world language test depends on the program’s familiarity with and inclusion of the student national standards and the actfl/ncate program standards. problem statement the effects of the world language test on teacher preparation and licensure are not yet known. the failure to modify curricula and use the profession’s standards at the post-secondary level may impose additional challenges to world language test-takers who are unaccustomed to standards-based instruction and assessment. although previous research (bowen, 2002; sandarg & schomber, 2009; wilkerson, schomber, & sandarg, 2004; zigo & moore, 2002) highlights faculty members’ perspectives of licensure tests, there are few studies (albers, 2002) that provide teacher candidates with a voice regarding their own test-taking challenges. additionally, given the novelty of the world language test, studies that delve into the perspectives of teacher candidates as they relate to this test, their performance, and the teacher preparation program are warranted. the world language test is a complete departure from both the content knowledge test and productive language skills test. whereas the content knowledge test, a paper-based multiple choice test divided into four sections (e.g., interpretive listening, interpretive reading, cultural knowledge, and structure of the language), often focuses on factoids devoid of meaningful contexts, the productive language skills test consists of two sections (e.g., presentational speaking and presentational writing) one of which requires the use of a tape recorder. according to wilkerson et al. (2004), these tests, which are very different in both content and format, fail to reflect the best practices of language teachers given their focus on discrete items, a lack of connection to the national standards, and failure to incorporate language production in meaningful contexts. the world language test addresses several of the concerns pinpointed by wilkerson et al. (2004) given its direct connection to the national standards and program standards in the introductory section of the test at a glance (ets, 2010). this computer-based test is divided into five main sections: (a) interpretive listening, (b) interpretive reading, (c) cultural knowledge, (d) interpersonal and presentational writing, and (e) presentational and interpersonal speaking. additionally, several questions that assess the knowledge of linguistics are embedded in various sections. for additional information regarding the test content and expectations, please see moser (2010; 2012). literature review faculty perspectives much of the research (bowen, 2002; sandarg & scomber, 2009; wilkerson et al., 2004; zigo & moore, 2002) on subject-matter licensure tests relies on the perspectives of faculty members who prior to their personal experience with the tests often relied on the anecdotal recollection of students. research highlights “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests 3 the problematic nature of defining the knowledge and skills required of prospective teachers since faculty members failed to reach a consensus on identifying the subject-matter knowledge in their disciplines. a study by zigo and moore (2002), in which faculty from english collaborated to take and discuss the praxis ii, underscored this specific challenge. according to them, when those of us who are involved in english education, whether in colleges of education or colleges of liberal arts, compared our experiences taking the test and our perceptions of what content knowledge was being tested, we were unsettled by the range of disagreement among us concerning the appropriateness of the content being tested and the format of the questions themselves. (2002, p. 143) furthermore, zigo and moore argued that the praxis ii tests were based on “questions leaning toward theoretical stances that are inconsistent with the theories that undergird ncte’s current professional standards” (p. 141). similarly, bowen (2002) questioned the theoretical nature of the questions on the praxis ii and concluded that it would be difficult to ascertain whether teacher candidates were adequately prepared following a sequence of english coursework. she asserted that content area faculty are unsure of what prospective teachers need to pass licensure exams. according to bowen (2002), to be honest, we often do not think about [teacher preparation]; we assume that the courses and requirements that make a good english major also make a good secondary school english teacher. when our students fail the praxis exams—and too many do—we do not know what they need. (p. 128) as demonstrated in the studies by zigo and moore (2002) and bowen (2002), faculty are often unsure of how to prepare their prospective teachers for the expectations of the praxis ii. although fewer studies are related to the tests used for initial licensure in foreign languages, similar themes emerge. two such investigations include those of wilkerson et al., (2004) and sandarg and schomber (2009). both descriptive studies highlighted the challenges of the praxis ii: content knowledge test and productive language skills test. the authors described in detail both foreign language subject-matter tests and cited several obstacles for test-takers. for example, specific to the content knowledge test, wilkerson et al. (2004) identified three of the four sections as problematic: interpretive listening, structure of the language, and cultural perspectives. they highlighted that in order to respond to test questions in the interpretive listening section, test-takers are only allowed to hear a passage one time. wilkerson et al. (2004) argued that this finding differs significantly from classroom instruction which usually includes multiple attempts to interpret global meaning. the structure of the language section requires students to search for errors which the authors asserted is “a task inconsistent with current teaching practices, which encourage students to speak, errors and all, as they develop proficiency” (p. 34). additionally, wilkerson et al. (2004) defined the cultural perspectives component area as a game of trivial pursuit. they affirmed that “specialized vocabulary and lowfrequency idioms limit students’ ability to make inferences or educated guesses” (p. 34). wilkerson et al. (2004) also highlighted the problematic nature of the productive languages skills test given the testing conditions which appeared to be stressful and distracting for test-takers required to speak simultaneously in a crowded space. furthermore, they stressed, “the proficiency requirements of many of the tasks surpass what is reasonably expected of entry-level teachers, according to actfl recommendations” (p. 35). this finding makes it improbable that teacher candidates can be successful on a test based solely on their productive language skills unless faculty members know how to assist students in achieving high levels of proficiency. sandarg and schomber (2009) responded to this quandary by providing concrete suggestions to assist faculty in this endeavor. student perspectives although research that examines the praxis ii subject-matter tests is relatively scant, only one known study has relied on the perspectives of prospective teachers. from albers (2002), we obtain a glimpse into the teacher candidate’s perspective, specifically the testing issues that led her to claim that the “praxis ii nearly destroyed the qualities in them that we most value in teachers: confidence, knowledge of content, and a desire to work with students in a culturally responsive way” (p. 123). based on these test-takers’ experiences, all of whom were african american, albers underscored several areas of concern. first, teacher candidates were unaware of how to study for such a broad test. this finding corresponds to the research on teachers’ perceptions given their concerns regarding how to prepare their students. second, the candidates were academically prepared and were considered to be high achievers. thus, as affirmed by wilkerson et al. (2004) with regard to foreign language licensure tests, there appears to be a disconnect between coursework and the praxis ii test expectations. third, the author identified that the test produced both economical and emotional burdens for teacher candidates. for example, not only did prospective teachers suffer economically as a result of the cost of repeated attempts, but they also reported feeling embarrassed, incompetent, and unworthy following the outcome of the high-stakes testing experience. although bennett, mcwhorter, and kuykendall (2007) investigated the praxis i test, their qualitative study examined issues that may be present in subjectmatter licensure tests. the authors investigated how current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 concerns related to racial bias in standardized testing and ethnic and cultural identity affected the perspectives of 18 african american and latino praxis i test-takers. the data revealed three categories of test-takers: (a) nervous achievers, (b) passionate persisters, and (c) frustrated resisters. bennett et al. (2007) highlighted that the nervous achievers were good test-takers and were disciplined regarding the steps they needed to take to be successful at the praxis i. the passionate persisters did not prepare for their first praxis i attempts, but they studied for their repeated attempts. furthermore, this group expressed feeling anxious during the testing experience. the frustrated resisters resisted the strategies that the authors suggested to pass the praxis i. these testtakers were angry, frustrated, and criticized their teachers who they believed failed to provide them with the appropriate preparation. additionally, time constraints and inadequate lexical knowledge contributed to the testtakers’ failure to complete the praxis i tasks. based on previous research, it is clear that content faculty play a pivotal role in preparing teacher candidates for the challenges that they will face on subject-matter licensure tests. clearly, when faculty are unaware of the test expectations or the standards involved in developing such tests, it is likely that teacher candidates will have difficulty obtaining initial certification. purpose and gap given that the standards-driven praxis ii: world language test differs significantly from its previous versions, the content knowledge and productive language skills tests, it is unknown how teacher candidates will respond to its unique challenges. since research (cheatham, 2004; ricardo-osorio, 2008; welles, 1999; 2000) has underscored that post-secondary faculty often fail to use the profession’s student national standards or program standards in curricular development, one may assume that the outcomes of this new test may adversely affect foreign language teacher licensure resulting in the certification of fewer language educators even when the demand for these teachers is rather high. this study examines the perspectives of five prospective foreign language teachers, two of which were required to take the productive language skills test and the remaining three were required to take the world language test for licensure in mississippi. the study fills a gap in research in two fundamental ways. first, it addresses the perspectives of teacher candidates regarding mandatory licensure tests. current research regarding foreign language licensure tests has not used qualitative methodology to do so. second, it examines if and how the teacher candidates’ perspectives differ given their experiences with either the productive language skills test or the world language test. method setting and participants this study examined the perspectives of five teacher candidates who were all part of a larger qualitative dissertation study that included six teacher candidates and four faculty members at the same institution. the teacher candidates in this study were purposefully selected based on several criteria: (a) they were spanish language learners; (b) they were seeking licensure in the state of mississippi; and (c) they were undergraduate students. all teacher candidate participants were required to take a minimum of 40 credit hours in professional education courses and 32 credit hours in spanish. there were no program requirements specifically related to foreign language methodology, target language linguistics, or target culture. thus, it may be assumed that this university did not prepare teacher candidates according to the requirements of the actfl/ncate program standards. none of the teacher candidates was required to study abroad; however the university advertises at least one opportunity for all spanish students. additionally, the oral proficiency of table 1 teacher candidate information ______________________________________________________________________________ name praxis ii test attempts most recent test date most recent score gpa ______________________________________________________________________________ initial interview february 2010 alison pls 2 june 9, 2007 passed (177) 4.00 jackie pls 2 june 23, 2003 passed (168) 3.83 initial interview: february 2011 colleen wl 1 october, 19, 2010 not passed (144) 3.95 kelsey pls/wl 3 june 29, 2011 not passed (122) 3.58 rachel wl 1 february, 15, 2010 not passed (137) 3.50 pls denotes the productive language skills test (required score = 155) wl denotes the world language test (required score = 160) “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests 5 teacher candidates was never assessed using the oral proficiency interview (opi), the only assessment used to gauge oral proficiency according to actfl. all teacher candidates were assigned pseudonyms. table 1 provides additional information about the five teacher candidates. data collection interview protocol. this qualitative study included interviews and the collection of relevant documents. interviews were semi-structured since the researcher relied on predetermined questions but was allowed the freedom to digress (berg, 2009). examples of research topics and questions included: when you think about the test, what stands out to you? what would you tell a friend about this test? if you were on a committee to redesign this test, what would you change or leave the same? follow-up interviews were used to delve deeper into the issues that emerged from initial interview sessions. additionally, these guided conversations assisted in examining the teacher candidates’ foreign language coursework and experiences (tell me about the tests that you took in your foreign language classes; tell me about your foreign language learning experience; how did you learn a foreign language best?). all participants were interviewed at least twice and were encouraged to provide additional information via email following interview sessions. interviews were approximately 50minutes in duration and were digitally recorded and transcribed by the researcher. documents. in addition to interview data, the researcher collected both public and private documents which included (a) the test at a glance (ets, 2010), (b) praxis ii score reports, and (c) academic transcripts. the test at a glance was used to prepare the researcher regarding the format of the test and to develop potential questions or topics that might be helpful during the interview. additionally, it should be noted that the researcher registered for and took the productive language skills test and content knowledge test years prior as a prospective spanish teacher and the world language test at the beginning this study. the academic transcripts and praxis ii score reports were collected to provide an additional source of data related to the testing experience and foreign language classroom experience. these documents also provided a way to verify that participants were accurately reporting their praxis ii results and spanish language success during interviews. furthermore, the score report allowed for comparisons to be made on a case-by-case basis with regard to test sections. data analysis data analysis was inductive and occurred simultaneously with data collection. merriam (2009) underscored that “without ongoing analysis, the data can be unfocused, repetitious, and overwhelming in the sheer volume of material that needs to be processed. data that have been analyzed while being collected are both parsimonious and illuminating” (p. 171). the data were analyzed by use of the constant comparison method (glaser & strauss, 1967). strauss and corbin (1990) asserted that this method relies on two analytic procedures that are basic to the coding process: making comparisons and asking questions. an initial list of codes was created based on the research. among others, these included test anxiety, misalignment between course expectations and the test, test preparation, test challenges, and program deficiencies. codes were then collapsed in some cases whereas others were expanded. for example, test anxiety became anxiety while listening and anxiety while speaking. validity and reliability merriam (2009) identified several ways in which a researcher can establish internal validity including triangulation. collecting relevant documents such as the praxis ii score report, the test at a glance, and academic transcripts provided an additional data source for triangulation purposes. the inclusion of faculty members in the larger dissertation study addresses triangulation as well. the incorporation of follow-up interviews assists in establishing validity as well. internal validity was further established through member checking procedures. according to merriam (2009), member checking “is to take your preliminary analysis back to some of the participants and ask whether your interpretation rings true” (p. 217). each participant was granted access to her transcribed interview. none of the teacher candidate participants chose to alter any comments. merriam (2009) also underscored the importance of reliability in qualitative research. given that human behavior is dynamic, qualitative researchers are not concerned with isolating human behavior to yield the same interpretations (merriam, 2009). as merriam explained, “the question then is not whether findings will be found again but whether the results are consistent with the data collected” (p. 221). in addition to the above strategies to ensure reliability, the researcher employed an audit trail. merriam (2009) described the audit trail as “a log as in what a ship might keep in detailing its journey” (p. 223). this log included a detailed description of how data was collected and how teacher candidate categories were formed. i also included reflections throughout the research process. external validity is concerned with generalizability or the extent to which the results can be applied to other situations. merriam (2009) asserted that “probably the most common understanding of generalizability in qualitative research is to think in terms of the reader or user of the study” (p. 226). in order to assist the reader or user, external validity was established by providing a detailed description of the context current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 including the participants and research site. findings the data revealed that two groups of teacher candidate test-takers emerged and experienced the praxis ii in divergent ways. the surprised prevailers, alison and jackie, took the productive language skills test twice before receiving passing scores whereas the frustrated forgoers never passed the world language test. this section will provide interview and document data that reveal how the surprised prevailers and frustrated forgoers perceived the praxis ii licensure tests including their preparation strategies, test challenges, and the subsequent consequences of the test. the following section will be divided into these three main sections and will provide qualitative data that identify how these teacher candidate groups differed. preparation surprised prevailers the surprised prevailers, alison and jackie, offered examples of their productive language skills test preparation that produced either successful or unsuccessful outcomes. before their initial praxis ii attempts, they emphasized that it was a situation of “not knowing what to expect” (jackie, interview 1, february 11, 2010) and “not knowing how to prepare” (alison, interview 1, february 10, 2010). although they recognized that their teachers were not aware of what the productive language skills test entailed, both alison and jackie were proactive in their preparation. following suggestions “to look it up online” (alison, interview 1, february 10, 2010), the surprised prevailers began initial preparation by mimicking the activities completed in class. alison stated, “i just tried to review myself on vocabulary and things like that” (alison, interview 1, february 10, 2010). echoing the same sentiments, jackie affirmed, “i think i just brushed up on some verb tenses and vocabulary and things like that” (jackie, interview 1, february 11, 2010). focusing primarily on grammar-based and vocabulary-related preparation did not benefit alison or jackie, however. both expressed surprise with the format of the productive language skills test. as emphasized in the study by albers (2002), their experience with the test produced emotional consequences since alison and jackie reported feeling useless following initial failure. additionally, it was difficult for these teacher candidates to understand why they were unsuccessful on the productive language skills test. like participants in the study by albers (2002), both teacher candidates were successful in their classes. according to their academic transcripts, neither had received a grade lower than an a in any spanish course, and alison had never obtained a b in her academic history. frustrated forgoers similar to the surprised prevailers, the frustrated forgoers, colleen, kelsey, and rachel, were surprised by the format of the world language test; however they blamed their language teachers for this lack of awareness. according to colleen, “my teachers didn’t know about the praxis [ii]” (interview 1, february 20, 2011). this is consistent with research (bowen, 2002; zigo & moore, 2002) that underscores faculty unfamiliarity regarding the expectations of licensure tests in their disciplines. like the surprised prevailers, the frustrated forgoers relied on grammar-based and vocabulary-related preparation for the world language test. kelsey reiterated, “i found a tutor, and we went through the subjunctive and everything. we did the book, chapter 12 through 16. we did six weeks of review material. it was a lot of grammar. i treated it just like a class” (interview 1, february 22, 2011). the world language test’s focus on using the language in authentic contexts frustrated colleen and rachel who expected a test measuring discrete grammatical knowledge. colleen indicated, i just thought it was going to be grammar. i thought this because i took a test in [one of my classes] and it was all about grammar. it gave you a score and that was how good your language was. then i saw on the website that it was about listening and other stuff and nothing about grammar. obviously grammar, but not testing straight your grammar knowledge, so i freaked out. (interview 1, february 20, 2011) rachel expressed feeling equally frustrated, “i thought i would be tested on what i know. this test just frustrated me” (interview 1, february 22, 2011). kelsey, on the other hand was not as surprised with the structure of the test, since she had experienced it previously. kelsey had been unsuccessful on her first two praxis ii attempts (first with the productive language skills test and then on the world language test). prior to her third attempt, kelsey still focused on grammar and vocabulary since her teachers were unaware of the praxis ii and did not tell her how to prepare differently. she explained, “when we got the scores the second week of november [from my second attempt], my momma and i, we scheduled an appointment with my adviser at the time to talk to her about it, and she didn’t know what to say. we were upset that she didn’t know what to say, what we should do” (interview 1, february 22, 2011). test challenges surprised prevailers alison and jackie were surprised and unprepared when they arrived to take the productive language skills test. by preparing solely through grammar-based and vocabulary review, these two teacher candidates were overcome by the test format and testing administration. in several instances, alison and jackie commented that the productive language skills test was “inaccurate” and “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests 7 “did not test what [they] knew” based on the specific challenges that impeded their spanish production during tasks. jackie highlighted, it was intimidating because they’re [the proctor] staring at you, and you’re supposed to be sitting there and the tape recorder, i think it malfunctioned twice. it made me nervous, and i had to start over, and the fact that the test and the recorder, the recording, you could not stop it at all. so if you got messed up and you were flustered then, it was a timed thing. i wasn’t prepared for the time. i just couldn’t get it out fast enough. (interview 1, february 11, 2010) alison also expressed a similar frustration regarding temporal constraints. “it was just nervewracking. i’ve never been timed while speaking before” (email follow-up, march 14, 2010). the difficulty to overcome time constraints as well as other testing-related challenges adversely affected the anxiety level of both jackie and alison. alison indicated that her anxiety made it impossible to speak in spanish. when i first, when i first took the test, when i first sat down and i went through the first section of the test, i was completely, i just felt completely unprepared to the point that in some portions of it, i hardly said anything because i was so nervous. i was just surprised with the format of the entire test. (alison, interview 1, february 10, 2010) combined with the inappropriate preparation, these surprised prevailers possessed only a modicum level of communicative competence at best. alison described the praxis ii test: i was expected to, for six of the nine questions, you had to perform different tasks. what i mean by that is you had to basically speak into a tape recorder, um, in different situations that the booklet gave you. it was like a sequence of pictures and you had to say what was happening or something to that effect. but, you had to be specific. if you did not know the exact word, you couldn’t do it. (interview 1, february 10, 2010) alison’s debilitating testing anxiety made it difficult for her to employ communicative strategies to transcend her linguistic deficiencies and complete the speaking tasks. similarly, jackie was unable to ignore equipment malfunctions and time constraints to produce spanish through speaking and writing. following additional exposure via study abroad and coursework in the target language, these surprised prevailers opted for a second try at the praxis ii test which they ultimately described differently. although jackie was again afflicted by tape recorder malfunctions, this time her testing anxiety did not consume her. she explained, “the second time i took it, i did pass, but again, they had malfunctions with the cassette recorder which i thought was a really big problem” (interview 1, february 11, 2010). similarly, alison reacted differently to the praxis ii tasks when compared to her first experience. she remembered, i just wasn’t as silent. sure, i didn’t know all the words, but this time i was able to work around it and do other things. i guess, describe or whatever. i know now that they call that circumlocution. and, i used my time more efficiently. i knew what to expect so i knew that i would be timed, and i knew i needed to think of things to say and jot those down quickly before speaking. (email follow-up, march 14, 2010) the descriptions of the praxis ii tasks, especially alison’s comments, allude to an increased level of communicative competence. the ability of both surprised prevailers to overcome testing anxiety, time constraints, and other hurdles allowed them to pass the praxis ii. in fact, alison increased her praxis ii score by approximately 20 points when comparing her first and second attempts. she obtained a 177/200 (speaking: 57/72; writing: 38/48). jackie also performed much better by obtaining approximately 15 points higher on her second praxis ii attempt (168/200). frustrated forgoers colleen, kelsey, and rachel were all plagued by temporal constraints, as were the surprised prevailers, but they faced numerous other challenges on the world language test than did their productive language skills test-taking peers. of all the test sections, these frustrated forgoers expressed the most concern regarding the listening portion of the test. rachel recalled how the allotted time adversely affected her, ... it showed you a question for twenty seconds and then the question went away. then it showed you another question which i hated because some questions i finished in five seconds but others i didn’t even have time to read the whole question. if it is a multiple choice and the (a), (b), (c), and (d) are all lengthy and i’m having to translate in my head quickly and then go back and think of the listening [passage] and choose the right one, it takes more than a couple of seconds. (interview 1, february 21, 2011) their comments regarding this component area also revealed that the frustrated forgoers lacked experience hearing the target language outside of the classroom given that the speed of native discourse impeded their ability to comprehend. as rachel explained, “yes, it was native speakers, but they were speaking way faster than i’ve ever heard in a listening exam. i am not accustomed to that. it was way faster than anything i’ve ever experienced” (interview 1, february 21, 2011). colleen affirmed this same obstacle and affirmed, “well, i feel like when i hear spanish, like when i am talking to people, i can understand, but the audio it was just so fast. it was real native interviews, current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 supposedly, it was real interviews or actual things, and i had so much trouble with it” (interview 1, february 20, 2011). unlike previous versions, the world language test allowed test-takers to hear passages twice and included preview questions in between listening attempts. still, these changes did not appear to have a positive impact on the performance of the frustrated forgoers. in fact, their comments may allude to low levels of communicative competence. for example, rachel described the test section, you know, i feel like if they had just played it a second time without seeing the questions, i wouldn’t have understood much more. i would even take out the first listening without the questions. i’m sure there was a reason that they do that, but i didn’t even listen that time. it was just too much. i was overwhelmed because i had just ran out of my 20-seconds on the previous questions, and then we went right into another passage, and they started speaking again. i just used that time to regroup from one activity to the next. (interview 1, february 21, 2011) her score report reveals that rachel had difficulty with the listening section of the test as well as the other areas (137/200: listening 14/25; reading 13/24; cultural knowledge 7/11; writing 7/18; speaking 4/18). colleen also expressed difficulty with the listening section. she recalled, hearing the passage twice helped a little. i didn’t get much at all the first time. once i was able to see the questions and hear i a second time, i was able to understand better, but i think if i would have had a third time [to listen], i’m sure they don’t give you a third time for a reason, but i‘m sure i would have understood more. (interview 1, february 20, 2011) an analysis of the score reports confirms that although colleen may have understood more than rachel, she had challenges in the other component areas as well (144/200: listening 18/25; reading 15/24; cultural knowledge 7/11; writing 7/18; speaking 2/18). in fact, she was most successful during the listening portion of the test. in addition to the challenges in the listening section, the frustrated forgoers also expressed difficulty with vocabulary. although all three teacher candidates reported preparing for the praxis ii by studying grammar, their lack of linguistic competence may have impeded success on the few grammatical questions on the test. colleen asserted, well, i was thinking that hopefully these language questions would be easier. i’ll be able to get those, you know. some of them i did, but there was one question where i compared two words, and i didn’t even know either of the words so i couldn’t even answer the question. i had never heard or seen those words before. (interview 1, february 20, 2011) rachel also described an integrated writingspeaking task which she believed to be extremely difficult given the abstract nature of the vocabulary: the third task was awful for me. whatever that word that the article was about, you know, the main word. i didn’t know it. so for me, the whole point was lost. it was a really hard article for me to read, and i had a hard time responding. i feel like i wrote 120 words, but it didn’t make any sense. (interview 1, february 21, 2011) kelsey’s comments are especially noteworthy. although she considered herself to have mastered the grammatical structure of the language, following multiple praxis ii attempts, she learned that this knowledge was extremely limited. she remarked, “i think it was just rote memorization. it was just memorizing rules on study guides or tests” (interview 1, february 22, 2011). kelsey obtained the lowest scores in every component area when compared to all other teacher candidates (122/200: listening 11/25; reading 11/24; cultural knowledge 6/12; writing 4/18; speaking 3/18), 17 points lower than her productive language skills attempt and one point lower than her first world language test attempt. a final concern of the frustrated forgoers was their lack of cultural knowledge. rachel and kelsey expressed concern that these questions were included on such an important test, especially considering the treatment of culture in their classes. often, they were unaware of the answers and were forced to guess. rachel declared, i feel like i might have learned some of those [cultural things] at some point in time. i guess they kind of rang a bell, but it wasn’t like, ‘oh i really know about this person.’ i could have gotten it right based on recall, but i could not tell you about any of those people. i just guessed on those questions, really. it was like a 50/50. (interview 1, february 21, 2011) consequences of the test surprised prevailers after the receipt of their initial insufficient praxis ii scores, the surprised prevailers still believed that they could pass the productive language skills test. consequently, as reiterated by successful praxis i testtakers in the study by bennett et al. (2009), alison and jackie altered how they prepared for their initial praxis ii attempts. instead of relying on similar strategies which emphasized grammar and vocabulary in isolation, alison and jackie focused on practical language application. jackie asserted, “i practiced with a native speaker with different scenarios to be able to express something quickly because [time] was a major issue” (interview 1, “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests 9 february 11, 2010). alison remembered another strategy, “one thing that i did the second time that helped me a lot was that i looked at either children’s books or coloring books that had really simple pictures and i tried to describe to myself basically what was going on in the pictures in spanish” (interview 1, february 10, 2010). in addition to practice with speaking scenarios and description, the surprised prevailers also recognized the influence of study abroad and additional coursework which led to higher levels of self-efficacy. for alison, her study abroad and the additional coursework were especially influential regarding her language acquisition and ultimate praxis ii success. i think what really helped me turn a corner in college was the study abroad experience just because it made me feel more comfortable. um, and my, actually, my listening skills improved the most from my study abroad experience. and my speaking abilities did as well. and then, the other thing were my, uh, upper level courses, the more specialized courses in spanish. one for example that helped me a lot was spanish phonetics. it focused really on how you pronounced the words and that, i think, helped me with my accent and even renewed my passion for it because it made me more confident about how i sounded when i spoke spanish. (alison, interview 1, february 10, 2010) like alison, jackie attributed her success to similar decisions. “i definitely learned a lot more in my upper level classes. my speaking skills improved, my writing skills improved. my reading skills, um [improved], drastically from before” (jackie, interview 2, february 17, 2010). she also underscored the influence of the study abroad experience. “and, i went to mexico. it was not required. i just did it on my own” (jackie, interview 1, february 11, 2010). frustrated forgoers unlike the surprised prevailers who believed that the expectations of the productive language skills test were within their reach, the frustrated forgoers considered the world language test to be “so far gone” (rachel, interview 1, february 21, 2011). in simple terms, the challenging nature of the world language test ultimately persuaded these teacher candidates to forego additional praxis ii attempts. rachel’s experience with the world language test made her come to the conclusion that, “. . . it wouldn’t be possible. i didn’t know how to do it or where to begin. that makes it not passable for me” (interview 2, may 5, 2011). failing the praxis ii assisted colleen, who was previously considering an alternate career path. she highlighted, “i wasn’t sure when i took the praxis [ii] if i wanted to be a teacher. after taking it, i knew that i didn’t want to. i was so discouraged” (interview 2, april 14, 2011). kelsey, who was unsuccessful on her first two praxis ii attempts, decided to pursue a summer study abroad opportunity prior to her third praxis ii attempt. following this experience, kelsey continued to disregard the role of practical, communicative preparation by focusing on isolated grammar knowledge. she elucidated, “well failing the test again made me want to study the grammar more” (email follow-up, june 23, 2011). since kelsey continued to focus on grammar prior to her third attempt, it is not surprising that she failed the world language test again (with a score of 122/200). it was at this point that kelsey abandoned additional praxis ii attempts and pursued alternate licensure in a different content area. discussion what can be learned from their experiences with the praxis ii? the data revealed that the surprised prevailers and frustrated forgoers shared common challenges regardless of the licensure test required of them. similar to the findings by albers (2002) regarding the praxis ii tests used for licensure in english, although all were high achievers according to their academic transcripts, all teacher candidates expressed difficulty with the tasks that they believed ran contrary to their spanish coursework. this raises several questions. why is there a dislocation between their coursework and the praxis ii? why do they not receive any preparation for the praxis ii? additionally, although the surprised prevailers ultimately passed the productive language skills test, all teacher candidates had difficulty with speaking tasks. ricardo-osorio (2008) predicted this dilemma given that few institutions assess the oral proficiency of foreign language students. furthermore, a study by fragacañadas (2010) underscored that teachers often feel less prepared in the areas of oral communication. since these teacher candidates were never assessed using the opi, it can only be assumed that they had not reached the advanced-low level, the minimal level of oral proficiency expected on both tests. additionally, the scores of colleen, kelsey, and rachel may imply that these frustrated forgoers are not even close to this goal. the frustrated forgoers were assessed with regard to listening, reading, and cultural knowledge, which were absent categories on the test required of the surprised prevailers. although they were challenged in each area, the frustrated forgoers reported the most difficulty with the listening tasks. this finding is confirmed by fraga-cañadas (2010) who argued that teachers reported feeling less competent with regard to their listening proficiency as well. why are foreign language teacher candidates not exposed to authentic discourse? why are the speed and topics of the listening passages so surprising to these test-takers? additionally, the frustrated forgoers recognized their lack of cultural knowledge which resulted in the use of multiple uneducated guesses. does this imply that culture, one of the 5 cs of the national current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 10 standards, is a lost component in their courses? or, is it limited to superficial factual knowledge that impedes their ability to examine the products, practices, and perspectives of target cultures? why do they not seek opportunities to expand cultural knowledge when they will be expected to teach it to future foreign language students? this proactive behavior is vital considering “that their agency and investment in the learning process is crucial for success. language learning is a long, complex process and much of language acquisition happens outside the confines of the classroom, therefore candidates must seize every opportunity available to them to enhance competencies” (veléz-rendón, 2006, p. 331). implications although the data is merely suggestive at this point and may present more questions than answers, it is clear that these teacher candidates expressed deep concern regarding the misalignment between their classroom experiences and the praxis ii expectations. furthermore, all teacher candidates in this study emphasized that due to faculty unfamiliarity with the praxis ii, they were left to their own devices. one rationale for these findings may be related to this program’s failure to adjust the curriculum according to the program standards. in fact, although these five teacher candidates took different versions of the praxis ii, one that was inconsistent with accepted teaching practices and a second newly designed standards-based test that was developed to ameliorate this issue, the structure of their teacher education program remained unchanged. clearly at this institution, as hypothesized by tedick (2009), departmental insularity is indeed evident. at the very least, this study reveals the likely consequences of insular faculty who fail to acknowledge certification demands and the role of standards in altering instructional practices. meeting the demands of the program standards is required of ncate accredited foreign language teacher education programs. programs must show evidence of meeting their six content standards: standard 1: language, linguistics, comparisons standard 2: cultures, literatures, crossdisciplinary concepts standard 3: language acquisition theories and instructional practices standard 4: integration of standards into curriculum and instruction standard 5: assessment of languages and cultures standard 6: professionalism standards 1 and 2 are the responsibility of the faculty in foreign languages (mcalpine & dhonau, 2007; pearson et al., 2006). when teacher candidates do not pass the world language test, it is unlikely that standards 1 and 2 have been met. according to abbott, the executive director of actfl, the program standards were designed for multiple purposes: (a) to assist students in reaching the goals set forth in the national standards, and (b) to provide language educators and curricula specialists with a template to evaluate the effectiveness of their own programs using candidate data and backward design (personal communication, october 2011). in simple terms, if teacher candidates are unsuccessful on licensure exams, which appears to be the case at this institution, what decisions are made to improve the curriculum based on this data? looking more closely at the program standards, the role of communication in delivering standards-based instruction is clear. they state, candidates are able to communicate successfully in the three modes of communication. . . . undergirding effective implementation of the standards for foreign language learning in the 21st century (1999) is the expectation that teachers will provide effective oral and written input in the classroom. (actfl, 2002, p. 4) consequently, the three modes of communication of the national standards are not only reiterated in the program standards but are directly assessed on the world language test. therefore, teacher candidates and faculty should not be surprised with the expectation that candidates must “comprehend and interpret oral messages including face-to-face and telephone conversation, news broadcasts, narratives and descriptions in various time frames, speech, and debates” (2002, p. 4). although the program standards stipulate that teacher candidates must be able to understand authentic oral and written texts, the comments by colleen, kelsey, and rachel provide evidence that they never heard the target language in these contexts. this has important implications for foreign language teacher education programs. specifically, in addition to focusing on oral communication at the advanced-low level, target language coursework must also incorporate tasks that improve the interpretive capabilities (e.g., listening and reading proficiency) of teacher candidates. courses must include texts, both written and aural, produced by native speakers so that students are accustomed to rapid, authentic discourse in addition to manipulating unknown target language vocabulary in familiar contexts. by doing so, all language learners will be cognizant of how to incorporate reading and listening strategies to overcome gaps in comprehension. regarding cultural knowledge, the program standards expect teacher candidates to understand the connections between the products and perspectives as well as the practices and perspectives of the target culture peoples. this requirement forces foreign language teacher candidates to explore the target culture beyond superficial, discrete facts in order to make pertinent connections to other disciplines and to make literary and cultural texts relevant to a diverse body of students. through cultures, connections, and comparisons, “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests 11 prospective teachers can communicate with speakers of the target language community to promote empathy and create solutions to problems affecting the entire global society. although cultural knowledge is a fundamental component of both the program standards and national standards (as are communication, connections, comparisons, and communities), the frustrated forgoers expressed a lack of awareness in this area. although the data regarding the praxis ii: world language test is troubling at this institution, it is clear that successful programs using the program standards are adequately preparing teacher candidates for the testrelated challenges. for example, mcalpine and dhonau (2007) provided suggestions that led to their program’s success. ultimately, they urged all faculty members to become involved in ncate program reporting through training on the program standards and national standards. by following this example, foreign language faculty will have a better understanding of how to better prepare prospective language teachers in reaching the goals of the program standards and passing licensure tests like the world language test. additionally, although sandarg and schomber (2009) were referring to the previous versions of the praxis ii, their suggestions may still be useful to prepare both prospective teachers and current foreign language faculty for the world language test. finally, pearson et al. (2006) emphasized the role of courses that are tailored to meet the specific needs of foreign language teachers. thus, one course in foreign language methodology is not sufficient. candidates must be cognizant of how to translate the national standards into daily and unit lesson plans and develop assessments that monitor the progress of learners regarding the modes of communication. at the very least, since “the heart of language instruction is the ability to teach students to communicate” (actfl, 2002, p. 4), teacher candidates must know how to use the target language effectively. the outcomes of the world language test, or any praxis ii subject-matter assessment, should not be a surprise to faculty or teacher candidates. instead, concrete procedures and policies must be in place, such as the program standards, to assist teacher candidates during a course of language study in meeting the challenging goals set by the profession. by doing so, we are answering our call to fill our nation’s schools with qualified language educators. references albers, p. (2002). praxis ii and african american teacher candidates (or, is everything black bad?). english education, 34(2), 105-125. american council on the teaching of foreign languages (actfl). (2002). actfl program standards for the preparation of foreign language teachers. retrieved from http://www.actfl.org/files/public/actflncate standardsrevised713.pdf bennett, j., mcwhorter, l., & kuykendall, j. (2007). will i ever teach? latino and african american students’ perspectives of the praxis i. american educational research journal, 43(3), 531-575. berg, b. (2009). qualitative research methods for the social sciences (7th ed.). boston: allyn & bacon. bowen, b. (2002). teacher testing: advice for faculty in literature, rhetoric, and creative writing. english education, 34(2), 127-135. cheatham, r. (2004). using learner and teacher preparation standards to reform a language major. in c. m. cherry & l. bradley (eds.), dimension: proceedings of the southern conference on language teaching (p. 9-17). valdosta, ga: scolt publications. educational testing service (ets). (2010). test at a glance: world language test. retrieved from http://ets.org/s/praxis/pdf/5195.pdf educational testing service (ets). (2012). praxis series information. retrieved from http://www.ets.org/praxis/about fraga-cañadas, c. (2010). beyond the classroom: maintaining and improving teachers’ language proficiency. foreign language annals, 43(3), 395-431. glaser, b., & strauss, a. (1967). the discovery of grounded theory. chicago: aldine. glisan, e. (2001). reframing teacher education within the context of quality, standards, supply and demand. in r. z. lavine (ed.), beyond boundaries: changing contexts in language learning (p. 165-200). boston: mcgraw hill. mcalpine, d., & dhonau, s. (2007). creating a culture for the preparation of an actfl/ncate program review. foreign language annals, 40(2), 247-259. mcclendon, l. (2004). no child left behind in foreign language education. in c. m. cherry & l. bradley (eds.), dimension: proceedings of the southern conference on language teaching valdosta, ga: scolt publications. merriam, s. (2009). qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. moser, k. (2012). does praxis make perfect? a personal journey through the praxis ii world language test. the clearing house, 85(4), 123-128. moser, k. (2010). the praxis ii for world language teachers: an overview. tflta journal, 2(1), 10-24. national standards in foreign language education project. (1996) standards for foreign language current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 12 learning in the 21st century. lawrence, ks: author. pearson, l., fonseca-greber, b., & foell, k. (2006). advanced proficiency for foreign language teacher candidates: what can we do to help them achieve this goal? foreign language annals, 9(3), 507-519. ricardo-osorio, j. (2008). a study of foreign language learning outcomes assessment in u.s. undergraduate education. foreign language annals, 41(4), 590-610. sandarg, j., & schomber, j. (2009). preparing students for the teacher licensure exam: it’s more than just the content. in c. wilkerson (ed.), dimension: proceedings of the southern conference on language teaching (p. 51-64). valdosta, ga: scolt publications. schulz, r. (2000). foreign language teacher development: mlj perspectives—19161999. modern language journal, 84 (4), 495-522. shrum, j., & fox, r. (2010). unifying our profession through standards: writing the actfl/ncate program report. in c. wilkerson (ed.), dimension: communication beyond the classroom (pp. 1-22). roswell, ga: scolt publications. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. newbury park, ca: sage publications. tedick, d. (2009). k-12 language teacher preparation: problems and possibilities. in h. byrnes (ed.) perspectives: modern language journal, 93(3), (p. 263-267). velez-rendón, g. (2006). from student to teacher: a successful transition. foreign language annals, 39(2), 320-333. welles, e. (1999). forum on standards for foreign language learning: part 1. adfl bulletin, 31(1), 70-87. welles, e. (2000). forum on standards for foreign language learning: part 2. adfl bulletin, 31(2), 59-79. wilkerson, c., schomber, j., & sandarg, j. (2004). assessing readiness of foreign language majors to take the praxis exam. in c. m. cherry & l. bradley (eds.), dimension: proceedings of the southern conference on language teaching (p. 29-41). valdosta, ga: scolt publications. zigo, d., & moore, m. (2002). accountability and teacher education: just like everyone else— teaching to the test? english education, 34(2), 137-155. “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests 13 article citation mosser, k. (2012). “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/888 author notes kelly moser, ph.d. department of curriculum, instruction, and special education mississippi state university 310 allen hall, po 9705 mississippi state, ms kmb479@msstate.edu kelly moser (ph.d., mississippi state university) is assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at mississippi state university. her research interests include foreign language teacher preparation, beliefs and practices of foreign language teachers, licensure examinations, and integrating technology in the foreign language classroom. manuscript received: 12/30/2011 revisions received: 6/12/2012 accepted: 6/15/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 14 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 936-3898-3-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x developing and presenting a teaching persona: the tensions of secondary preservice teachers janine s. davis university of mary washington this qualitative, multiple case study investigated the ways that three preservice secondary teachers developed, presented, and considered their teaching personae. data for each participant consisted of three interviews, field observations of both teaching and nonteaching, data collection of lessons and class documents, and four journal reflections. findings show that the participants experienced various tensions as they formed their teaching personae; as they navigated these tensions, they drew on discourses and ideas about good teaching and their various experiences, including the practicum experience. the nature of the interactions between the cooperating teacher and preservice teacher pairs contributed to the preservice teachers’ confidence in and understanding of their enacted personae. implications of the research for teacher training programs include an increased need for reflection on persona and careful matching of cis and student teachers. suggestions for further research include investigating the effect of high-quality teacher education programs on persona development and the effects of personae on pupils. keywords: persona, social roles, preservice teachers, student teaching, social psychology much occurs within the social interactions between teachers and students, including the formation of relationships, the subtle expressions of role expectations, the enactment and adjustment of social roles, and, ultimately, the development of an identity. one’s teacher self often differs from the self that is enacted with family and friends; this aspect of teaching is especially relevant to current efforts to determine what successful teachers do (green, 2010). during student teaching, preservice teachers engage in the process of moving into a new role: the teacher. in the title of her paper, wells (1994) refers to the tension that novice teachers face as “moving to the other side of the desk,” which can lead to confusion or distaste at the emergence of a new teaching identity that differs from one’s previous self (brown, 2006) or “reality shock” whereby the new teacher is surprised and confused that their expectations of pupil behavior and interactions differ considerably from the students’ actual behavior (veenman, 1984). adding to the confusion of taking on a new role are the often-mixed messages from one’s own education, popular culture, and teacher training programs about how a teacher behaves in his or her role (kagan, 1992; lortie, 1975; weber & mitchell, 1995). preservice teachers carry images and memories of teachers with them throughout their lives, and when they become student teachers, many of them work to determine what those images mean and how they fit into their own teaching practice (brown, 2006; kagan, 1992; lortie, 1975). persona means mask; it provides external clues about one’s self-image (sadoski, 1992). symbolic interactionism states that we adopt roles and define our current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 selves depending on our understanding of and response to situations (blumer, 1969; mead, 1982); thus, as applied to teaching, describing one’s persona helps others understand how the teacher views the act of teaching. people—teachers included—adopt daily personae based on their and the audience’s expectations of the setting. this dramaturgical view of social communication, which includes such features as speech, language, clothing, and gestures (brissett & edgley, 1990), provides the basis for the idea that teachers present a persona or play a role onstage in their classrooms; part of that role comes from personal models of teaching, whether fictional or real. especially in secondary classes, content and subject matter knowledge is important to how teachers think of themselves and form their identities (beijaard, verloop, & vermunt, 2000; day, kington, stobart, & stammons, 2006). although empirical literature on teaching persona is scarce, there is a large body of research on teacher identity. both are rooted in the process of social interaction (schlenker, 1980, 1985). identity is seen in the literature as either a goal to reach (erikson, 1970; marcia, 1980) or, more recently, as an ongoing process that is never completed (britzman, 1992; connolly & clandinin, 1999; flores & day, 2005). however, in general, the process of identity formation takes place over an extended time. identity can be difficult to identify, particularly with preservice teachers or in considering professional as opposed to personal identities (beauchamp & thomas, 2009). flores and day (2005) describe forming an identity as “the making sense and (re)interpretation of one's own values and experiences” (p. 220). persona, on the other hand, occurs in the short term, is adaptable, and can be viewed as adopting a role, acting, or even tricking others. in their review of related research, rodgers and scott (2008) highlight the important role of reflection on one’s experience or “storying the teacher self” (elbaz-luwisch, 2002, as cited in rodgers & scott, 2008, p. 748) in modern-day teacher education programs. the idea of the identity and the persona intersect and overlap in the literature. gee (2000) views identity as almost the same as persona, stating that identity is, “being recognized as a certain ‘kind of person,’ in a given context…in this sense of the term, all people have multiple identities connected not to their ‘internal states’ but to their performances in society” (p. 99). certain features of persona increase the likelihood of one’s choice to enact roles in society: taking on a socially recognized role can serve to solidify one’s identity; enacting personae can give order to one’s life because they are comforting and familiar (perlman, 1986). the concept of “professional identity,” although it has been defined in many ways (or even left undefined) in various studies (beijaard, meijer, & verloop, 2004), generally exists at the intersection of identity and persona as it has been defined for this study; that is, the public role that teachers enact in the classroom. there are key differences between experienced and preservice teachers in the realm of persona and identity development. experienced teachers cite persona as a crucial part of their identity and interactions (macdonald, 2004; wells, 1994), and presenting an interesting self is a strategy that some teachers use purposefully (bell & daly, 1984; mccroskey & mccroskey, 1986). hamman, gosselin, romano, and bunuen (2010) used the lens of “possible selves”—both expected and feared—and found differences in preservice and beginning teachers. these researchers call for more investigation into how these kinds of identities develop in new teachers. stronge (2007) links affective characteristics— which are displayed within social interaction—of teachers such as caring and respect with effectiveness. identity leads to action: there is an interrelationship of prior influences, identity before teaching, context, and the newly redeveloped identity, which is generally either a return to traditional methods of teaching or a proactive response to the diverse students in the classroom (flores & day, 2005). ng, nicholas, and williams (2010) that found that over the course of their teacher training program, preservice teachers’ beliefs about what it took to manage a class changed from being a content expert to being charismatic. new teachers often equate charisma with quality (grossman, smagorinsky, & valencia, 1999; virta, 2002), but what does it mean to be charismatic? the definition may vary from person to person. taken together, these findings indicate a need for more study of how persona is created and enacted. teacher educators support preservice teachers as they fine-tune their selfpresentation and engage with students in the classroom, and persona emerges from social interaction, so understanding the initial development of persona during student teaching is important. however, most of the literature that relates to teacher persona is either not empirical, based on veteran teachers’ experiences, or both (macdonald, 2004; weber & mitchell, 1995; wells, 1994). hence, the purpose of this study was to investigate the ways that three preservice secondary teachers developed, presented, and considered their teaching personae during the student teaching practicum. the research questions were 1. how do secondary preservice teachers develop and present a teaching persona? 2. how do secondary preservice teachers describe the development of their teaching personae during the student teaching practicum? in order to provide a foundation for the study, i drew upon multiple research areas; these are outlined in the following section. developing and presenting a teaching persona: the tensions of secondary preservice teachers 3 figure 1. theoretical framework. theoretical framework the theoretical framework of the process of persona development draws on several bodies of literature, including sociolinguistics, symbolic interactionism, and, because studies of teacher persona are rare, leaders’ presentation of self in contexts such as management (gardner & avolio, 1998). all of this work is located within the realm of social psychology; this literature views people as actors who construct certain personae in daily life in many different ways and for various reasons (goffman, 1959; schlenker, 1985). this framework has also been applied to a study of inservice teacher persona development (davis, 2011). as seen in the framework, when creating a persona, one’s consideration of the context or setting serves as a primary consideration (gardner & avolio, 1998; schlenker, 1980, 1985). people construct a persona through their use of discursive and non-discursive actions (goffman, 1959). relationships and social norms influence discursive language because they are a part of the discourses that preservice teachers encounter in their own schooling and teacher training programs (kagan, 1992; lortie, 1975; zeichner & gore, 1990). this process is similar to acting, where the end goal is the same: to create and manage certain impressions for the audience’s benefit. goals can include “desired identity images” (schlenker, 1985, p. 95). for example, charismatic leaders use positive characteristics such as high self-esteem and personal motivation to manage their employee’s impressions of them; that is, to be seen as having these traits (gardner & avolio, 1998). this process occurs in all public settings, but i have developed this framework for observations of teachers in the classroom setting. method data collection after securing irb approval, data collection took place over six weeks in the fall semester of 2009 at wilson high school. located in a suburban area of a small mid-atlantic city, wilson enrolled about 1800 students and employed three levels of academic tracking. caucasians made up the majority of the student body at 70%, followed by 15% african americans and 5% latino students. fifteen percent of students received free or reduced price meals. english language learners (ells) formed about 6% of the student population. the three participants volunteered for the study in response to an email sent to all current student teachers in a teacher education program near the research site; i selected one from the field of science, one from the humanities, and one from foreign language to provide a variety of content area perspectives. data for each participant consisted of three semi-structured interviews with the participants and one with each participant’s university supervisor; field observations; and data collection of lessons, class documents, and four journal reflections. interviews occurred at the beginning, middle, and end of data collection. interview questions were grounded in the theoretical framework and the literature on persona development and included questions about teacher models, relationships with cooperating teachers (the teacher with whom the student teachers were placed) and supervisors (the graduate students from the university who supported and observed the student teachers during the practicum), and interactions with pupils and colleagues. i interviewed supervisors at the end of the semester to verify my initial analyses of the participants’ personae and interactions. observations of each participant totaled 17 hours: 12 hours as they taught lessons and five hours current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 during planning and other non-teaching times (to determine personae “onstage” in the classroom and “offstage” in other settings). running notes from observations were transcribed into digital files within four hours of the observation. the participants completed four emailed journal reflections at weekly intervals during the data collection phase. the reflective journal prompts asked participants about the roles they wanted to present in the classroom, their external appearance while teaching, commonalities and differences between their personae with students and with family and friends, and beliefs about persona and its development. data analysis the data analysis utilized miles and huberman’s (1994) three-step approach of data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification. i developed a start list of codes that was grounded in the literature and added emergent codes during the process of analysis. coding language was drawn from goffman (1959), and included “costume,” “setting,” and “backstage,” as well as codes drawn from symbolic interactionism and sociolinguistics, such as “framing,” and “non-verbal cues.” after uploading data files into the nvivo program, i assigned codes at the phrase level during multiple readings of the data corpus. the analysis proceeded systematically and concurrently with the data collection, which is necessary in case study research because it allows early findings to drive later data collection (yin, 2009). at the coding level, conducting withinand cross-case analyses led to codes for the context, for each case, for major case themes, for cross-case themes, and for assertions across cases (creswell, 2007). in addition to assigning codes to relevant sections of text, nvivo supported later phases of analysis such as the creation of models and matrices of instances of certain key codes across the participants. in the write-up phase, i grouped key common areas that emerged through the matrices and constructed a case portrait of each participant, noting their behavior and beliefs for each area. each participant selected his or her own pseudonym to ensure confidentiality in the final report. finally, i compared these case portraits and created a cross-case analysis that expanded on common themes across the participants. in forming the cross-case analysis, i created a set of descriptive generalizations from the interview responses and observation data for each of the three participants according to the methods outlined by miles and huberman (1994), which involved searching for non-examples that contradicted emerging themes. participants clark. clark wayne, a preservice english teacher in the post-graduate program, had a degree in english from a small college in virginia and was pursuing his master of arts in teaching degree in english education. he described among his interests a love for literature, writing, acting, and film, but he believed that it was too difficult to make a living pursuing the arts as a career choice. clark decided to become a teacher because he liked people and couldn’t imagine being cut off from them in an office or cubicle all day. his unique humor, love of film, and awareness of the relationship between acting and teaching was apparent when he noted, “you have to be like judge dredd one minute and then the next minute you have to be like a cute, furry bunny” (interview 1, october 23, 2009). clark took over the three scripted reading classes and one honors english class of his cooperating teacher, bob. clark felt as if he adjusted his persona for student needs, and valued charisma in his own teacher models. using nicknames, sarcasm, and slang were common in clark’s interactions with students. tina. tina james was a student in the five-year master’s program in teaching for earth science. tina was the youngest of five girls, and teaching ran in her family. tina initially wanted to teach because she loved earth science, but explained that she grew to enjoy the part of the job that involved simply interacting with the students. growing up, tina attended a large public high school and developed a love of order and organization. as she indicated, “i’m always into like neat piles and knowing where stuff is,” (interview 2, november 13, 2009). tina taught the four honors and one standard earth science courses of her cooperating teacher, mary. when not teaching, tina was often setting up labs or cooperative learning stations and discussing lesson plans with her cooperating teacher. tina wanted to appear professional and convey the content, which she found fascinating. she described adjusting her persona for student levels, though she always addressed students by names (never nicknames) and used a question-based approach in most of her lessons and labs. maria. maria was a preservice spanish teacher enrolled in the five-year master’s program. her puerto rican heritage was important to her and shaped her interactions with family and friends; she described her family as “very close and loud and emotional and passionate people” (interview 1, october 30, 2009). she added, “we maintain the part of our cultures where…we eat lots of rice, beans, chicken…we have family nights on sunday nights where we’ll dance salsa” (field notes, november 11, 2009). when a student asked about her plans after student teaching, maria told the student that she was considering moving back near her family or overseas. after moving to the united states as a fouryear-old, maria attended a large public high school, where she took spanish classes even though she spoke the language because she wanted to relearn it in an academic way. her parents were also involved in education: her father as a principal and her mother as a counselor. maria had an unusual placement with three different developing and presenting a teaching persona: the tensions of secondary preservice teachers 5 cooperating teachers: casey, who taught spanish 2; jill, who taught an experimental immigration class for a wide variety of students; and diana, who taught two spanish 4 classes. maria valued warm relationships with her students and used expressive signals such as broad smiles, open-mouthed laughs, fast hand gestures, and physical contact. she adjusted her persona based on the classroom contexts of her three cooperating teachers. results several areas were common to the participants as they developed, presented, and considered their personae and its development during student teaching; while their resulting personae differed, they shared the same process and challenges. recalling the theoretical frame, the process of constructing and presenting a persona involved considering the context and using verbal and non-verbal signals to manage others’ impressions; in this section i will share a subset of my findings. the participants’ shared challenges involved feeling tension when deciding which kinds of personae—or “desired identity image” goals (schlenker, 1985, p. 95)—they wanted to present. the ways that they made sense of their experience of developing a persona and found the personae that worked for them was through their experiences as a student and as a student teacher, teacher training, and relationships with their cooperating teachers. tensions of developing and presenting persona: the balancing act the participants experienced two tensions when considering the kind of personae they wanted to present; these were whether to focus on charisma or content, and whether to focus on being professional or having warm relationships with students. all of the participants expressed working to find the right balance when presenting the self, and these choices were linked to forming relationships with students while also managing the class. deciding to focus on charisma or content. the first dichotomy in goals for self-presentation that participants identified was whether to focus on conveying the content (in this case, english, earth science, or spanish) or on presenting a charismatic persona (that is, appearing outwardly interesting and dynamic). clark tended to focus on charisma. he often perched sideways in a director’s chair at the front of the room, stroked his chin, and shared random personal details, later likening it to slowly and dramatically revealing the details of an interesting character in literature. tina spent her time thinking about and delivering her earth science content. however, she also noted that she didn’t want to bore the students by focusing only on content, saying, “i guess i feel like, i don’t want my classes to be dull, but i’m still learning how to get in all that content and still do really fun experiments that they like…and cool stuff, because a lot of times you hear about science teachers doing that but not really getting in the content, or you’re feeding them the content but they’re bored out of their minds, and i want to learn how to put those two together (interview 3, december 2, 2009). maria had intertwined considerations of charisma and content. she cited a stereotype of foreign language teachers as those who created charismatic personae by being “like the crazy teachers, with the mexican hats, and you always had parties, and you did weird stuff” (interview 1, october 30, 2009) and she presented this persona to a certain degree, although she did not wear mexican hats. she did, however, carefully compose her outfits for visual interest, refer to a certain chair as the “throno,” lead the class in rousing renditions of “feliz cumpleanos,” and participate in a piñatabreaking party in the immigration class. these two stances varied depending on the class context: in his scripted reading classes, clark aimed to present an interesting and charismatic persona by engaging the students with witty or sarcastic comments. he taught a reading curriculum, but he did not make enthusiasm for it a part of his persona. he even publicly equated the program to “taking [their] medicine” (field notes, october 23, 2009). there was more of a focus on conveying content in his honors class because clark felt pressure from students and parents to do so, and his supervisor noted that his charismatic persona became less of a focus because the honors students did not respond to it as well as the reading students. tina made her interest in and knowledge of the content a primary focus in her honors classes, because she thought the class should be challenging and saw the pupils as prepared to handle the content. in contrast, tina made more attempts to appear interesting and friendly to the students in the standard class because she felt that they responded better to a less strict persona. maria’s personal relationship with her content—she grew up speaking spanish and re-learned it in an academic way in high school and college—affected her view of teaching it because she saw it as sharing her culture with the students. she shared relevant personal anecdotes in all classes, including her own immigration story in the immigration class. deciding to focus on professionalism or warmth. the second dichotomy in the balancing act of self-presentation goals was deciding between a professional, strict persona in order to maintain discipline or a warm persona that involved responsiveness to student needs and maintaining close relationships with students. maintaining discipline included feeling in control of the class and students, wanting to appear older and more professional, and teaching the required curriculum. maintaining relationships appeared in such forms as careful listening and responsiveness to student needs such as needing to leave the room for personal reasons. management and responsiveness were major issues for the participants throughout the semester: these two codes occurred with the highest frequency. the participants saw these two elements of the persona as linked to current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 classroom management, because they thought that the pupils’ behavior would match their own. these two kinds of goal personae—the professional and the friend—were opposed in that some methods the participants used to form relationships with students, such as using slang or nicknames, often undermined the professional persona. all three student teachers commented on the need to show pupils the “human” side of themselves to build relationships, although they also wanted to appear professional and the level of personal disclosure differed a great deal for each participant. clark wanted to appear friendly and asked students about their personal lives; he even saw a student perform in a band after school and occasionally shared personal details such as inside jokes from his summer writing program. tina stated, “i think if you act like you’re happy to be there and you’re enjoying yourself, like you want to be there and around the kids, then you’ll get like positive behavior from them too” (interview 1, october 26, 2009), although she rarely shared any personal details beyond the fact that she had exotic pets. by contrast, maria often shared personal anecdotes and commented on how the students noticed her quirky mannerisms. discipline made up another aspect of the participants’ personae to various degrees. clark applied discipline to a moderate degree; occasionally writing students’ names on the board and giving rewards such as free time. he seemed to attempt to stop problems by moving quickly through the scripted lessons. tina spent much of her time explaining activities, asking students to stop talking, or waiting for students to be quiet before she began teaching. tina was very aware of her age and mentioned on multiple occasions that she wanted to appear older so that the students would take her seriously. maria did not often discipline the students or manage the class beyond describing how group activities would be conducted. making sense of the presented persona: finding the balance as they described how their personae developed, there were four ways that the participants made sense of and found the balance between the aforementioned two tensions; this was through experience as a student and student teacher, teacher training, and relationship with their cooperating teacher. they felt as if they were able to set goals for self-presentation and reach them by the end of the practicum. drawing on experience as a student. the participants’ time as students in k-12 and college classrooms exposed them to dozens of teacher models, and this experience provided a baseline of expectations for how teachers could and should behave. each of the participants recalled teacher models, and these choices indicated their personal preferences for how teachers should behave and dictated their behavior differently. while clark preferred teachers who were charismatic, interesting people and aimed to create a similar persona, tina chose these kinds of teachers as negative examples. she liked teachers who focused on teaching facts and skills and worked to do the same in her own teaching. clark chose a charismatic teacher model who accepted a student’s offer to wrestle during class time, echoing his own choice to collapse dramatically on the floor of the classroom. a teacher who encouraged her to speak more in class was memorable for tina. she wanted to hear from quiet students as well, and used names on popsicle sticks to call on all students, not just volunteers. tina also admired a former physics teacher who had displayed lots of enthusiasm; she said that she also tried to show her own love for the content. maria recalled diana’s quirky mannerisms and close, motherly relationships with students when maria was her student several years earlier. maria also shared her personal quirks with the students and got to know them well, often greeting them warmly at the door. drawing on experience as a student teacher. the student teaching practicum lasted one semester (although each of the participants had observed and taught in other classrooms during their teacher education program); during this time the participants gained experience through first observing and then gradually taking over their cooperating teachers’ classes. simply the act of being the teacher for much of the semester cemented the participants’ confidence in their roles. at the end of the practicum, the participants felt as if they had developed their personae over the course of the semester in response to these student interactions, and that they had kept what worked—their positive interactions with students and a certain level of strictness that allowed the class to stay on task—while also eliminating what didn’t work for their particular students. for clark, he thought he had become more authoritarian because the students needed that structure. tina changed her teaching methods to suit her students’ preferences for less lecture and more cooperative grouping. maria described allowing students to have private conversations if there was some downtime, while toward the middle of the semester she had attempted to stop it in an effort to appear professional. ideas about the goals of the course, as defined by the school, cooperating teachers, and student teachers, were important to personae as well. the participants responded differently to students in honors and standard classes, often delivering content in a businesslike way in advanced classes and presenting a more easygoing self to the lower-tracked classes. both clark and tina felt that students in lower-tracked courses responded more to humor and less to strict content delivery, and clark even saw some of his jokes fall flat with the honors class because they wanted to continue talking about their grades. clark had to use a scripted reading program; as a developing and presenting a teaching persona: the tensions of secondary preservice teachers 7 result, he appeared to focus more of his efforts on greeting students and maintaining an interesting persona, and not on planning instruction, because it was already planned for him except for his one honors class. tina taught all honors classes except for one standard class and focused on delivering content—not on revealing much about herself, whether explicitly or implicitly—and on maintaining an organized environment for both her preference and for safety reasons. mary felt strongly that honors classes should be more challenging than standard classes, and tina accommodated this goal by adjusting her lessons to be simpler for the standard classes, including using fewer cooperative learning stations or eliminating choices, which she believed could be more confusing for standard students. maria’s classes were not tracked, but she described a greater desire to focus on content with the more advanced spanish 4 classes. in these classes, she could move more freely and use spanish without having to carefully consider which words she chose because of the students’ higher proficiency levels, while for the lower level students she measured her words carefully and reverted to english more often. she commented on the less academic goals such as self-awareness and social interaction in the immigration class as an influence on her choices to have personal conversations and form warmer relationships with students. the time in the participants’ lives during the practicum but not in the classroom also contributed to their understanding and development of their personae. these relevant areas included participants’ ideas about who they were in everyday life, with friends and family, or in arenas such as facebook. clark noted that his experience with acting informed the ways that he created a character while teaching. tina said that she “cleaned up” her facebook page in order to be more professional in case the students found her there. maria indicated that she wanted to “be herself” when she was teaching, and she did acknowledge that her “trendy” style was a big part of who she was in all arenas of her life. tina, on the other hand, said that she bought “teacher clothes” and cut her hair shorter when the practicum began. drawing on teacher training. ideas about good teaching from the participants’ teacher education program influenced their choices surrounding lesson planning, student interactions, and classroom management; in turn, these choices formed each student teacher’s persona. citing their prior field experiences, methods courses, and content pedagogy courses as factors that influenced their actions while teaching, the participants formed philosophies and used strategies that either drew on or opposed their teacher education program. clark did not enjoy his content area courses, but he did like his supervisor and his general methods courses and valued student input even while using a scripted program. tina used cooperative grouping strategies learned in the program even though she felt that they made classroom management more difficult because she wanted the students to engage with the material; maria also used models and strategies from her general and content area methods classes because she wanted to keep things interesting and thought it was appropriate for foreign language students, who needed to communicate while learning language. they all drew on their training when deciding the kind of teacher they would be, but experience was also a factor; as maria stated, “as far as classroom management goes, i feel like we talked [in teacher education courses] about a lot of problems and different designs of things, but it’s more experiential, i feel like as you go through experience you kind of figure things out…when we learned classroom management, some things are helpful, some things are not” (interview 3, december 1, 2009). drawing on relationship with cooperating teacher. finally, the participants’ relationships with their cooperating teachers were crucial to the development of their personae. specifically, the participants felt either constrained or free to enact the personae they wanted in the classroom because of their cooperating teachers’ influence, preference for certain kinds of personae, or kinds of interaction with the pupils while the student teachers were teaching. bob almost never addressed the class while clark was teaching, but diana, casey, and mary often did speak to the students during their student teachers’ lessons. of the three participants, clark felt the freest to behave how he wished, followed by tina, who had a warm relationship with mary and indicated that she wanted to behave in similar ways because tina found her to be a knowledgeable and nurturing content expert. maria felt constrained in casey’s classroom, but free with diana and jill. forming their personae was a process of trial and error that was shaped to various degrees by reflection and consultation with the cooperating teacher. a requirement of the practicum was at least one weekly meeting to reflect on how the student teachers’ lessons were going; in practice, the pairs generally met much more often. during these meetings, the cooperating teachers listened to their student teachers’ concerns, offered advice, and recommended curriculum or instruction that they had found to be successful. clark’s meetings with bob were brief. bob usually gave general, positive feedback about clark’s performance; he only gave direct feedback about a lesson if clark had made a mistake during instruction— bob saved this feedback for their private meetings, and never interrupted when the mistake occurred. clark rarely planned with bob, but chose to work away from the school instead, even though this opposed the expectations of the program. clark was confident in his persona, and did not change much from the beginning to the end of the experience. tina and mary met often, and carefully planned and reflected on the lessons and assessments that current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 tina delivered. after the chance to reflect on her performance for a semester of these meetings, tina felt confident in her persona and her ability to meet her students’ needs. in maria’s meetings with casey, casey would share ideas about what she wanted maria to teach, and she would get involved with the class if maria did not teach in those ways. diana offered feedback about maria’s lessons, but was generally positive; she even advised maria to form her own unique teaching persona, rather than attempting to copy what worked for other teachers, although maria did borrow successful lessons and strategies from diana. because she had picked up the extra class and served more as an aide, maria rarely met with jill other than to become more familiar with jill’s upcoming plans for the class. her meetings with diana— and her meetings with me—helped maria process her choices and she felt confident at the end of the practicum, though she was also frustrated because of her less successful meetings and experience with casey. discussion the findings show that the participants experienced various kinds of tensions as they formed their teaching personae; as they navigated these tensions, they drew on discourses and ideas about good teaching and their various experiences, including the practicum experience. research supports that discourses from teacher training programs and one’s own upbringing can conflict and affect the ways that novice teachers think about their roles (brown, 2006; cavanaugh & prescott, 2007; mccann & johannessen, 2004). discourse about what makes a teacher effective and how teachers should behave—from teacher training, upbringing, popular culture, and one’s own schooling (kagan, 1992; lortie, 1975; weber & mitchell, 1995) and the specific context where teachers work, particularly the nature of the teachers’ colleagues (smagorinsky, cook, moore, jackson, & fry, 2004; solomon et al., 1993) can determine how teachers present themselves to students, colleagues, and administrators. while they were considering their roles, identities, and possible selves, these related concepts were still beyond the reach of what these preservice teachers did each day. as they negotiated the many tasks they would complete, presenting certain personae (such as warm or professional, or a content expert or a charismatic figure) became one of these tasks. in addition, the language “persona” resonated with the student teachers in interviews because to them it felt less permanent and more adaptable, as opposed to an identity. they were engaged in the process of trying on which personae would fit. in this setting, the participants’ primary colleagues were their cooperating teachers, and these partners were a key form of discourse: they had preferences about how their student teachers should behave (although some were more vocal about these preferences than others), and this affected the resulting personae that the preservice teachers presented to varying degrees. this echoes research findings that show that external observers can contribute to novice teachers’ confidence in their public persona (cavanaugh & prescott, 2007; grossman et al., 1999). the participants worked to balance their content delivery with an interesting persona. content knowledge is important to eventual teacher identity (beijaard et al., 2000; day et al., 2006) and charisma is commonly equated with teacher quality for novice teachers (grossman et al., 1999; virta, 2002). the various ways that the participants thought about who they were figured into their personae: maria shared elements of her culture, so she formed that identity and presented herself based on discourses of what it means to be puerto rican. tina instantly understood the concept of persona when asked to compare who she was on facebook with who she was in the classroom or with family. the participants felt that managing the class was integral to their personae, whether it was deciding whether to appear strict or friendly or responding to the level of class. preservice teachers enact the personae they believe will help them be successful with their pupils (grossman et al., 1999). two forms of classroom management from the findings—maintaining warm relationships with students or appearing charismatic— involved increasing one’s likeability through affinityseeking strategies such as presenting an interesting self or increasing physical attractiveness (bell & daly, 1984; mccroskey & mccroskey, 1986). the participants wanted to maintain control through a charismatic or content expert persona, echoing recent research (ng et al., 2010). another form of classroom management was appearing strict in order to increase the pupils’ cooperation; this recalls the age-old tenet, “don’t smile until christmas”. the particular contexts of the participants drove their choices: clark could not manage the class’s enthusiasm through the content, because it was non-negotiable that he would teach the program, so he attempted to distract and engage students with his persona. because he perceived that his research-based lessons were already planned, he did not take ownership of them. teacher education programs provide a shared set of expectations and values for preservice teachers (rodgers & scott, 2008), and the participants responded to these when presenting various selves. their willingness to use certain strategies at the appropriate times became a part of their personae. more specifically, when tina and maria conveyed their desire to match program strategies with student needs during interviews and during planning with their cooperating teachers, each took on an openminded, resourceful persona. this persona was generally recognizable by audiences who knew the program goals, including the supervisors, cooperating teachers, and me. when they used those strategies, the resulting persona developing and presenting a teaching persona: the tensions of secondary preservice teachers 9 was responsive and engaging, but engaging through the content, and not through interesting aspects of their selves. clark’s rejection of elements of the teacher training program based on his teaching philosophy and his particular situation led to a persona that seemed more focused on presenting material through an interesting self and not through interesting methods. however, clark explained that he wanted to get to know students through his public self, which was partly due to what he had learned in the program. while this kind of visible program influence contradicts much of the research that says that novice teachers revert to teaching the way they were taught (knowles & holt-reynolds, 1991; lortie, 1975; virta, 2002), it is likely that the quality of this particular program (which has been featured in articles about exemplary teacher education programs) was a factor in its level of influence. the quality of the participants as students is also notable. because of its high ranking, the program attracts talented, successful preservice teachers, many of them (including these three participants) from two-parent families and safe, uppermiddle-class communities with excellent schools and many enrichment opportunities. students from these contexts may have more successful teacher models and be better able to understand their actions, reflect upon them, and refine them to present their desired classroom personae. implications persona is complex, and this study has highlighted the need for more investigation into how preservice teachers present a persona in the classroom. there are no existing models to explain teacher persona beyond the one proposed in this study, but this study’s participants were constantly thinking about how others perceived their “teacher selves” in the classroom. most teacher education programs incorporate theoretical research with practical considerations that student teachers navigate in various practicum experiences. however, persona occupies a different realm—it is based not in the traditional theory and practice of education, but in social psychology—but these findings indicate that considerations of the persona are salient for student teachers. written reflection is a crucial step toward identifying how and why one presents oneself in public. thus, teacher training programs may have an increased need for reflection on persona. because the partnerships of these student teachers and their cooperating teachers were a contributing factor to the participants’ final personae, schools of education that do not already do so should consider careful matching of cooperating teachers and student teachers. the participants who felt most comfortable with their personae and their student teaching experience were the ones who were given the freedom to try on different personae without immediate involvement from the cooperating teacher—but with the chance to later process their experiences verbally. further research is needed in several areas. the teacher education program that formed a shared personal context for the participants has been labeled “high quality” in multiple studies of teacher education programs; future studies should investigate more about the effect of high-quality teacher education programs on persona development, or on high-performing students’ capability for adopting certain personae more readily. also, because the participants varied their response to and treatment of students in 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(1990). teacher socialization. in w. r. houston (ed.), handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 329 348). new york: macmillan. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 12 article citation davis, j. s. (2012). developing and presenting a teaching persona: the tensions of secondary preservice teachers. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/936 author notes janine s. davis university of mary washington j9davis@gmail.com janine s. davis is an assistant professor of education at the university of mary washington. she teaches courses in instructional design and assessment, educational research methods, and advanced pedagogy. her research investigates teacher persona and identity development. manuscript received: 2/03/2012 revisions received: 4/30/2012 accepted: 6/04/2012 developing and presenting a teaching persona: the tensions of secondary preservice teachers 13 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 18, number 1 april 26, 2015 issn 1099-839x higher education as a human right: comparing early college approaches to university access for racial minority students in costa rica and the united states leah mcalister-shields and rebecca m. bustamante sam houston state university despite the united nations emphasis on education as a human right for all world citizens, access to higher education by students representing traditionally marginalized racial minority groups, particularly those of african descent, continue to be a challenge in many nations. in costa rica and the united states, early college high schools represent one approach to facilitating college going and retention rates of racial minority students by enhancing college readiness skills and dispositions. demographic profiles of african americans and afro-costaricans, as well as an overview of the educational systems in both countries, provide an important backdrop to the comparative description of early college high schools. strengths and challenges of each approach are presented. emerging concerns also are outlined for further research on the demographic reporting of afrocostaricans as well as the need for further studies on the role of early college high schools in enhancing university access and college success in various nations. keywords: early college high schools; colegios universitarios; college access, racial minorities, afro-costaricans; african americans; educational systems; united states; costa rica countries differ in the extent to which both basic and higher education are viewed as a human right for all citizens. however, the importance of education as a human right is reflected clearly in the policy statements of international organizations like the united nations. for example, human rights proclamations are outlined in the many charters of the united nations and educational scientific and cultural organization (unesco, 2013) which state, “the right of every individual to education is recognized as inalienable.” furthermore, unesco stresses that pathways to college and post-secondary educational attainment must be prioritized by governments and their societies, who, in turn, will benefit from an educated citizenry. according to this point of view, a basic or k-12 education can be considered a necessary, but insufficient, condition for the educated citizenry of a nation. furthermore, college-educated people tend to have higher incomes which allow for greater spending power and an ability to spread wealth among family and community members (kochlar, fry, & taylor, 2011; lloyd, tienda, & zajacova, 2001). this is particularly true for students representing traditionally marginalized groups (kochlar et al., 2011). although u.s. education policy does not explicitly state that access to education is a right of its citizens, this notion is implied in the u.s. department of education’s (usdoe) 2007-2012 strategic plan as, “ all students [should] have the opportunity to fulfill their full academic potential (usdoe, 2009). similarly, educational policies in the central american country of costa rica have focused on improving educational attainment, literacy, equity, and access. moreover, costa rican educators, policy makers, and scholars have stressed that education is goes beyond a citizen entitlement in that education is expressed as “a human right” (costa rica minister of education [mep], 2011; current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 2 national university humanistic school, 2011). much of this language is outlined and delineated throughout the aims, objectives, and strategic plan of the office of the costa rican ministry of education [ministerio de educacion principal de costa rica-mep] (costa rica mep, 2011), which has goals of expanding and sustaining educational attainment that is equitable and accessible to all students. ministry of education efforts include increasing access to college and post-secondary educational opportunities (costa rica mep, 2011). additionally, costa rican educational values of humanism are commonly expressed along with the call for public universities to prepare citizens to be humanistic-oriented professionals who embody a sense of service to country and community through both research and public service (twombly, 1997). therefore, in viewing higher education as a human right, it would seem imperative to improve educational access for students from traditionally marginalized racial groups, such as african americans and afro-costaricans, who continue to attend and complete college at drastically lower rates than whites and other groups both countries (castro, 2005; u.s. national center for edcuational statistics-nces, 2012). as a result of social movements in the united states during the 1960’s and the enactment of political policies in costa rica during the 1940s and 1950s, access to higher education has improved slightly for traditionally marginalized racial groups; however, significant problems persist for afro-descendants in both countries (castro, 2005; harpelle, 2002; lloyd, tienda, & zajacova, 2001). throughout the history of costa rica and the united states, afro-descendants have tended to: (a) be overly represented among those in the poorest socioeconomic strata; (b) experienced systemic exclusion and discrimination; (c) be marginalized from full societal participation in government and economic policy making; and (d) have limited access to higher education (castro, 2005; cresnoe, 2009; orfield & lee, 2007). one educational strategy for addressing these inequities and discrimination while enhancing college access and student success has been what has been called, early college high schools (echs) in the united states or colegios universitarios [university-based secondary schools] in costa rica and other latin american countries. in the united states, early college programs are designed to focus on college preparation and have been identified as a viable and sustainable means of improving higher education access for minority groups (edmunds et al., 2010). moreover, u.s. researchers indicate that programs designed to provide early college experiences to minority high school students (e.g., upward bound, early college high schools) have been successful in increasing student college readiness, access, retention, and completion (american institute of research, 2013). in this article, we provide a comparative description of early college high school (echs) approaches in the united states and costa rica to explore how these programs might improve college preparation and educational access to higher education for traditionally marginalized racial groups, namely those of african descent (e.g., african americans and afrocostaricans). in the united states, echss have been touted as a sustainable approach to expanding higher education access for minority students, namely because partnerships between high schools and colleges/universities have been shown to cultivate cultures of college persistence among echs students (cunningham & wagonlander, 2000; early college high school initiative, 2013). as mentioned above, in costa rica, these high school-college partnerships are commonly referred to in spanish as, colegios universitarios, or university-based high schools. this comparison of early college approaches in the united states and costa rica initially emerged from site visits made in costa rica by u.s. higher education leaders who participated in an international internship. because early college programs are being implemented in both countries, visiting u.s. higher education leaders took an interest in exploring the similarities and differences in echs approaches, particularly as these approaches might lead to the college access and success of traditionally marginalized racial groups. like the united states, costa rica is racially and ethnically diverse, and has a population of people who are of african descent and mixed race. in this comparison, we describe two early college high school approaches most widely used in the united states and costa rica. in the united states, early college high schools tend to partner with community colleges and universities, whereas in costa rica, colegios universitarios typically are based on 4-year university campuses. in comparing early college high school approaches taken in costa rica and the united states, we hoped to reveal potential opportunities and challenges for educational leaders and policy makers to consider in implementing early college models as a means to increase the college access and academic success for students who identify as african americans and afro-costaricans in their respective countries. in a globalized world, higher education leaders might benefit from comparisons of national systems to explore educational strategies and approaches implemented in countries outside their own. in examining pertinent issues in higher education, shahjahan and kezar (2013) stressed a need for scholars to move beyond bordered perspectives of what they termed, methodological nationalism (mn), which keeps researchers and educational leaders encapsulated in a nation-state lens that defines and limits their views of society. in particular, shahjahan and kezar (2013) stress higher education as a human right: comparing early college approaches to university access for racial minority students in costa rica and the united states 3 the importance of adopting more global perspectives in examining issues comprising college student experiences, diversity, and governance. by comparing early college approaches in the united states and costa rica and exploring how these programs might facilitate college access and success of students who are afro-descendants, we hoped to move beyond a bordered perspective. higher education access for afro-descendents costa rica has a population of ticos (nickname for costaricans) that are of afro-caribbean heritage and are often identified as limoneses because the largest concentration of the afro-costarican population lives in the province (state) of limon. although data from the 2000 costa rica census (costa rica national institute of census statistics, 2001) specify costa rica’s afrodescendant population to constitute less than 2% of the overall racial and ethnic demographic make-up of the country, a study by researchers morera, barrantes, and marin-rojas (2003) indicated that approximately 9% of the costa rican population is of african origin, but that afro-costaricans tend to be under-reported. in attempting to research demographic data on afro-costaricans, a number of inconsistencies were found across censusrelated data sources in costa rica. for example, in the census data prior to 2000, costa rica reported the population of afro-descendants in costa rica to be 7.5%. conversely, 2010 census data for costa rica reported the population of afro-descendants to be 1.91% (inec, 2010). this drastic decrease in the number of afrocostaricans reported amounted to a 74% decrease in the population as reported by the instituto nacional de estadística y censos [inec] (2001), the costa rican government entity that oversees administration of the country’s census. no explanation was offered regarding this reported population decrease. however, sanchez and bryan (2003) offer a potential explanation for inconsistencies in reporting the demographics of afro-costaricans by emphasizing how afro-costaricans consistently are undercounted or wholly unrecognized as a race. this under-reporting of afrocostaricans also might reflect an under-recognition of the existence of race and its social ramifications as guised by what many latin american scholars have referred to as the myth of racial harmony or democracy that has been noted to be prevalent in several countries throughout latin america, particularly those with larger populations of afro descendants and indigenous populations (see lasso, 2007; mcgowan, 2007; oliven, 2008; rodriquezcaravito, sierra, & adarve, 2008). the myth of racial harmony essentially purports nationalism over identification with any particular race or ethnic group and reinforces a notion that race is unimportant and has no bearing on privileges that afford economic success, educational access, or access to resources that afford a greater quality of life. for example, in brazil, scholars contend that racial inequalities traditionally have been masked by this myth of racial harmony and democracy (mcgowan, 2007; oliven, 2008; siss, 2002). however, oliven (2008) argued that the myth could best be described as “together, but unequal” (p. 143). since freyre’s (1933) influential book, the myth of racial democracy has dominated cultural rhetoric, both within and outside latin america, and has limited serious public discourse on race and education) in many countries, including costa rica (alves, 2012). in the united states, the 2010 u.s. census report indicated that 12.6% of the u.s. population reported being african american with another nearly 1% describing themselves as mixed race (rastogi, johnson, hoeffel, & drewery, 2011). results from a recent pew research center study indicated that whites possess 20 times more wealth than that of african americans (kochlar, fry, & taylor, 2011). a cited factor contributing to this wealth gap in the united states was the low rate at which african americans enter into college (kochlar et al, 2011; lloyd et al., 2001). african american and hispanic students together comprised less than 25% of overall college enrollment as compared to that of white students, which accounted for approximately 68% of the total undergraduate college enrollment in u.s. colleges and universities (usdoe, 2009). retention and graduation rates of these students are poor. only 20% of african american students who started college in 2002 completed their undergraduate coursework. with regard to college graduation, african american students represented less than 10% of the degrees conferred for the year 2008-2009 (usdoe, 2009). additionally, in the united states, minority college students are largely concentrated in community colleges (jeria & roth, 1992), rather than 4-year universities. according to nces (usdoe, 2009), over 40% of the african americans and 53% of the hispanics categorized as college-going are enrolled in community colleges. these institutions serve a more functional role offering basic college curriculum as well as career/technical training (gardner, 2008). many researchers note that the prevalence of these competing efforts drastically reduces the effectiveness of preparing students, particularly minority students for a successful transition to a 4-year college (gardner, 2008). nora and crisp (2007) and dougherty and kienzl (2006) posited that community colleges lack retention programs that focus sufficiently on the matriculation of minority students into 4-year institutions. instead, they tend to promote baseline standards that lack the true rigor needed to succeed beyond the 2-yr college setting (dougherty & kienzl, 2006; nora & crisp, 2007). therefore, few of these students, if any, go on to complete their coursework at a community college or graduate from a four-year institution. current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 4 a general comparison of the two countries’ educational systems a general overview of structural differences in the educational systems of the united states and costa rica are important to understanding the impetus for the existence of early college high schools as an approach to improving the post-secondary educational opportunities for afro-descendents. brief comparisons of the primary and secondary systems in each country are given, followed by descriptions of each country’s post-secondary education systems, as well as trends in educational equity, policies, investments, and the accessibility of traditionally marginalized racial and ethnic groups to higher education. primary and secondary education education in the united states is compulsory up to age 16 with the majority of students spending 13 years in school including, elementary (kindergarden-5th grade), middle school/junior high school (grades 6-8), and high school (grades 9-12). according to the alliance for excellence in education, among developed nations the united states ranks 18 th in high school graduations and 15th in college graduations (langley, 2009). depending on the higher education route selected, students typically complete a battery of tests ranging from state assessments to national college entrance exams also known as the sat and act. students can opt to pursue an associate’s degree, also known as a 2-year college degree, or a bachelor’s degree (a 4-5 year college degree). college institutions can be either public (state supported) or private. often a student’s decision is based on an area of specialty related to the bachelor degree area sought. many options are available to high school students preparing for post-secondary education. of these options include advanced placement (ap), and dual credit (dc) courses as well as the international baccalaureate (ib) program. students seeking the advanced placement (ap) course option take college level courses while in high school. students receive college credit for these courses through their successful performance on the ap exam. in addition a test/registration fee is assessed for each subject area (i.e., exam) (college board, 2013). similar to that of the ap course option, students involved in dual credit programs enroll in college courses, which are taught by college faculty while in high school to earn both high school and college credit (fisher & abbott, 2010). offering a more traditional approach, international baccalaureate (ib) programs typically consist of a rigorous two-year liberal arts curriculum in which students take courses from a range of subject areas and must successfully complete exit exams in each subject area in order to receive their ib diploma (international baccalaureate organization, 2013; tab, 2002). although completion of the ib program is viewed as a prestigious accomplishment college credit for the completion of the program curriculum is not a guarantee (international baccalaureate organization, 2013; tab, 2002). through these programs, some students enter into college with college credits acquired from taking dual credit and advanced placement courses while in high school, while others acquire college credits through high schools that offer a hybrid experience such as early college. students who complete a bachelor’s degree then might elect to complete an advanced degree ranging from a master’s degree to a doctorate. in comparison, education in costa rica, also known as general basic education is compulsory through the 9th grade, and is separated into iv (i.e., four) cycles. the i (i.e., first) cycle or primary school, consists of kindergarten through grade 4. cycle ii comprise grades 5 and 6, and is followed by cycle iii which includes grades 7 through 9. high school or grades 10 through12 are denoted as the iv (i.e., fourth) cycle. upon completion of the iv cycle students receive what is called a bachillerato, or the costa rican equivalent of a u.s. high school diploma. additionally, students are required to pass a bachillerato exam in order to receive their diploma. score results on the bachillerato exam are also used by costa rican colleges and universities to assess student entry into college. tertiary education options in costa rica consist of a bachelor’s degree (4-5 years) followed by a licenciatura (license-1year), master’s degree (2 years) and then lastly the doctorate (3-4 years). educational equity, policies, and investments in recent years, the values of equity and social justice have received considerable policy attention and have driven research and discussion in the area of higher education (brennan & naidoo, 2008). however, as brennan and naidoo (2008) posit, these concepts have a distracting appeal that conceals the decreased advocacy efforts and funding in education. for example, in the united states, over 24 billion dollars in k-12 education funding have been cut under the new debt ceiling legislation (staff reports, 2011). specific areas proposed for cuts are full day kindergarten, advanced placement programs, and adult education programs like high school diploma and general equivalency diploma (ged) attainment services (bryant, 2011). furthermore, schools continue to remain substantially underfunded at the state level while being expected to meet all provisions as outlined by no child left behind (sunderman & orfield, 2008). policies such as no child left behind (nclb) in the united states that emphasize the assessment of students’ knowledge in key content areas such as reading, writing, and math without alignment to national college readiness standards. some scholars (brown & conley, 2007) claim that this lack of alignment reduces the preparation necessary for u.s. youth to be college-ready. for example, in illustrating this inconsistency in the preparation and rigor among the various states, 44 states have adopted college and career readiness benchmarked standards, yet there is tremendous variation in the degree to which state assessments higher education as a human right: comparing early college approaches to university access for racial minority students in costa rica and the united states 5 determine the college readiness of students (achieve, 2011; brown & conley, 2007). additionally, community colleges are not providing the preparation needed for minority and low income students to matriculate successfully at 4-year institutions, as indicated by the number of students enrolled in developmental or remedial courses who do not persist on to 4-year institutions and complete bachelor’s degrees (nora & crisp, 2007). this college readiness gap also is evidenced by the low rates of academic success of these students (sandy, gonzalez, & hilmer, 2006). as indicated by the results of previous educational-attainment surveys, only 8% of students that start at a community college go on to complete a 4-year college degree (sandy et al., 2006) moreover, where most post industrialized nations are making massive investments in education, the u.s. is not. consequently, for-profit education corporations are capitalizing on the issues of accessibility and equity not currently being addressed by u.s. education policy. from 1989 to 2003 proprietary colleges grew by 844% from 316 to 2983 schools (lee & topper, 2006). many of these private, for profit higher education institutions target their educational products at those groups whose access has been traditionally marginalized. overall, u.s. economic instability appears to underscore the importance of remaining globally competitive by having an educated and skilled citizenry (baily & slaughter, 2008). only a u.s. citizenry with lower high school dropout rates and heightened rates of educational attainment can continue to effectively compete and produce within the global economy (langley, 2009). comparatively, costa rica has committed to greater investment into its public school system, dedicating 16% of its annual gross domestic product (gdp) to the education of its citizens as compared to a u.s. gdp allotment of 4.8%. there are a few characteristics that make costa rica such an interesting and contrasting example to that of the united states, the most profound being literacy. unesco reports that the literacy rate in costa rica is 96%, which is amongst the highest rates in the world. this is especially notable with a large proportion of costa rica’s citizens living in rural areas where limited infrastructure in makes access to schools and colleges especially challenging. nevertheless, costa rica has educational policies that promote educational access to all of its citizens; the results of which have furthered the country’s economic development and increased its role in the global economy. central to this effort is costa rica’s focus on sustaining a public education system focused on heightened innovation and greater access. this access is accomplished through public education that is free and compulsory, and subsidized enrollment in the nation’s public universities. although problems with postsecondary access still exist, costa rica is working to improve educational access in costa rica, through an inclusive and humanistic approach. additionally, educational initiatives such as, avancemos have attempted to ameliorate the institutionalized racism prevalent in the costa rican educational system. such policies and policies reflect an attempt to provide afro-costaricans, who are predominately limoneses (from the state of limon), with equitable primary and secondary education, as well as greater access to costa rican higher educational opportunities (ministerio de educacion principal [mep] de costa rica, 2011). an unexpected consequence of costa rican’s promotion of secondary education as a human right has been a rise in the expectation that all costa ricans should seek postsecondary educational opportunities. as a result, a large number of private universities have surged in growth and popularity. although some of these private universities might meet the immediate educational needs of ticos, some educators believe the growth of private universities has threatened the rank and posture of costa rican public universities (monge-naranjo, 2007). these costa rican educators perceive a threat to the esteem of costa rica’s public universities as well as a growing disparity between richer and poorer ticos in the process of admission to the country’s public universities (mongenaranjo, 2007). as costa rican educators and policy makers recognize the country’s current struggles to meet growing educational demands, educational initiatives like the humanistic school aim to heighten admissions access and learning outcomes conducive for the development of a globally competitive workforce. although costa rica has faced similar challenges to that of the united states in the development of higher education policy, other challenges have surfaced as a result of free post-secondary education. for many costa ricans, intense competition for admission into these institutions has dampened the free access to college sought by many citizens (ganimian, 2006). to better prepare students for the challenge of entering these highly selective institutions, many upper-middle class costa ricans send their children to private college preparatory schools in lieu of public school (ganimian 2006; long, 2010). although costa ricans view the cost of attendance and the admissions process into these private schools as complicated, they also see private school attendance as a necessary pre-condition for successful admission into public colleges and universities (ganimian, 2006; long, 2010). early college high schools interestingly, both the united states and costa rica have implemented early college high school programs as viable means of providing greater access to higher education and to preparing students for collegelevel work. approaches taken in both countries reflect similarities and differences. however, educational leaders’ knowledge of these early college approaches taken in the two countries might inform practice as well current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 6 as provide clues as to how to facilitate postsecondary access, success, and completion of students who are afrodescendents. u.s. approach to echs in a study conducted by fleischman and heppen (2009) over 5000 echs were identified in the united states. early inception of the community college model, the most widely employed of all echs, dates back to the 1920s (langley, 2009). the successful re-emergence of the program in the late 1970s brought with it a modified version of echs where students take classes on community college campuses rather than solely at the high school site (langley, 2009). the growth in the prevalence of the echs model has been helped along by various supporters, namely the bill and melinda gates foundation. collectively the consortium created by the gates foundation has generated over 130 million dollars to the creation and sustainability of such postsecondary models (early college high school initiative, 2013). often, echs programs have limited course and program availability and opportunities to participate in echs programs are highly selective (regularly dictated by socioeconomic status-ses ) (brewer, stern, & ahn, 2007; fisher & abbott, 2010). these access limitations make it difficult for students interested in attending early college high schools, to fully benefit from participating in such programs (brewer, stern, & ahn, 2007; fisher & abbott, 2010). moreover these scholars have discussed how the traditional u.s. high school model lacks the innovation and rigor needed to meet the impending domestic and global pressure to maintain the united states’ standing as a global power. therefore, early college high schools (echs) have been touted as a viable means to increasing and sustaining access to higher educational opportunities that cultivate a competitively skilled workforce. central to the echs model is a progressive approach to teaching that promotes college retention and matriculation. supporting this approach is a mission that drives to bridge the college-going gap, allowing at-risk and students of low ses to meet their full academic potential. students who might be considered college ready experience fear and trepidation about the transition and acclimation to college. early college high schools not only offer a sustained pipeline to postsecondary education, but also have been found to be instrumental in reducing students’ psychological barriers to college by providing environments that stimulate growth in emotional intelligence and self-efficacy (crisp & cruz, 2009). fleischman and heppen (2009) have been identified several reasons for the dissolution of these barriers. namely, their research has shown that postsecondary success is largely influenced by rigorous academic preparation and a clear understanding of the college expectations. early college high schools impart a more rigorous curriculum, heightened demands, and an opportunity for students to learn in community with college students (langley, 2009). through sound college preparation and access to effective educational resources, the chances for enrollment in remediation courses are significantly reduced (langley, 2009). by embedding a college culture in the minds of high schools students, not only do they become motivated to achieve, but they are well prepared to attain academically (vargas & miller, 2001). although the early-college model serves as a vehicle for providing traditionally underserved students with opportunities to transcend educational obstacles and gain access to a college education, many deficiencies exist. at the center of the adopted approach is the focus on acquiring college credits rather than developing true scholarly engagement. with regard to 4-year college accessibility, researchers point out that extensive problems exist with the transition from community college to a traditional 4-year college or university setting (langley, 2009). a costa rican approach to echs: colegios universitarios and the humanistic high school in costa rica, development and implementation of the echs model might best understood by exploring a colegio universitario model, the universidad nacionaluna (national university) of costa rica’s colegio humanista [humanistic school], which is located in the capital of san jose and is the country’s first echs type model. the humanistic school follows a 4-yr university affiliation approach. this design, according to some researchers, is considered superior to the prevailing 2year early college model most common in the united states (botstein, 2003). the echs of the universidad nacional de america-una (also known as the national university humanistic school) has existed since 2002, and offers a student-centered, constructivist curriculum. students at the humanistic school take courses from faculty with doctorates in their respective fields of study, providing them with heightened exposure to the scholarly demands and expectations of a 4-year college setting. moreover, employing the use of university faculty and university resources the humanistic school offers an effective pedagogical methodology where curricula are designed to engage students in challenging academic pursuits (botstein, 2003). humanistic constructivism pedagogy directs curriculum development at una. among the specific goals of the humanistic curriculum is to foster a learning environment that encourages the development of students as global citizens (national university humanistic school, 2011). global citizens that are aware of value and worth of human beings as the center of any effort of knowledge (national university humanistic school, 2011). another aim of the humanistic constructivist curriculum is to promote research as an extension of learning and building new knowledge. an example of this is the common practice higher education as a human right: comparing early college approaches to university access for racial minority students in costa rica and the united states 7 of teaching each other what they have learned through the creation and instruction of lessons steeped in critical thinking and depth of knowledge. additionally, the humanistic school hosts an annual research symposium planned and organized by the students. students present research projects and are judged by their colleagues. this encourages heavy involvement in the development and presentation of research, an aspect lacking in the common u.s. echs model. eighty percent of the students enrolled at the humanistic school are of low ses, and originate from rural areas of costa rica. students can fully utilize university common areas like the library and dining facilities. this utilization of college services and resources helps to better acclimate students to their new role and lessens the stress commonly associated with the transition to college. working and interacting alongside una college students has helped humanistic school students to build relationships with their university colleagues providing positive opportunities for academic and social mentoring. additionally, an existing strength of the humanistic school, which is unique to the university setting, is a commonly established identity. contrastly, the community college affiliated early high schools lack the intrinsic connection to the institution due to high rates of transience and attrition. although the humanistic school is one of two echs in costa rica, it is evident that costa rica is establishing an educational tradition centered on 4year college matriculation and success. costa rica’s robust approach to sustained and heightened educational funding has successfully resulted in a growingly competitive and literate citizenry. strengths and challenges of echs approaches countries like costa rica have chosen to promote echs experiences that best expose students to a university environment and the educational demands of a 4-year college setting. as expressed by langley (2009), the best early college high school models provide symbolic messages to students of their academic potential; whereas, traditional u.s. high schools, as well as 2-year affiliated echs, do not maximize students’ educational potential or preparation beyond a baseline standard. thus, as suggested by representatives of the u.s. echs initiative, there is more work that needs to be done in order to successfully accomplish and exceed the five core echs design principles: (a) purposeful design, (b) professionalism, (c) personalization, (d) college readiness, and (e) powerful teaching and learning. with regard to future echs implementation, researchers from the 2009 air and sri suggested that placing early colleges on a college campus as opposed to a traditional high school campus led to greater academic outcomes for students. in addition, for those students attending echs located on college campuses, engagement in both on campus and academic activities were increased as compared to those students attending echs located in traditional high school settings (air & sri, 2009). placing students on college campuses resulted in increased institutional engagement, which according to air and sri (2009) allowed for better transition from high school to college. placing emphasis on 4-yr college matriculation promotes higher rates of retention and increased opportunities for the upward mobility of racial and ethnic minority groups. the una humanistic school in costa rica stands as a great example of how a well-designed early college program can exceed the expectations of these principals and provide continuing access to higher education for all (botstein, 2003). more common in costa rica, is partnership of early college high schools like that of the una humanistic school to 4-yr institutions. the colegios universitarios (echs) and 4yr. university partnership, which is common in costa rica, is in contrast to the “typical” 2-yr. affiliated early college high school model most often employed in the united states. as earlier described, examples of echss such as the una humanistic school, allow for greater college exposure, heightened student engagement, and opportunities for students to take courses from faculty with doctorates in their respective fields of studycreating an expectation for scholarly achievement that meet the expectations of a 4-year college setting. an emergent observation the purpose of the present paper was to examine comparatively early college high school approaches within the educational contexts of costa rica and the united states to illustrate how echs programs potentially enhance higher education accessibility for students representing traditionally marginalized racial groups, namely students who are considered afrodescendents (african americans and afro-costaricans). however, as we carried out this comparison, an issue emerged that merits additional scholarly consideration in furthering conversations of race and access to higher education; namely, the general dearth of information regarding afro-costaricans, in general, and their enrollment in higher education and echss, in particular. overall, we discovered a general lack of scholarly publications about academic afro-latinos in both spanish and english journals, and even less in english language journals. moreover, limited information on afro-costa ricans was available in data bases and reports of multinational organizations such as the united nations education, scientific, and cultural organization (unesco), the world bank, the interamerican development bank (idb), and the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd). this lack of information was especially problematic in gathering data on the educational experiences for students of afro-caribbean descent in costa rica. current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 8 we found substantially more information regarding the experiences of afro-descendants in other latin american countries such as brazil, colombia, honduras, and nicaragua, but fewer publications in english, spanish, and portuguese focused on afrocostaricans. most attainable academic literature was written in spanish. in these academic publications, scholars highlighted an ever growing disparity in educational access, inequity in wealth and income distribution, and the marginalization of afro-costaricans in the costa rican political system (caamano-morua, 2007; delgado montoya, 2007). interestingly, we observed that english language journals tended to highlight the academic successes of afro-costaricans. this contrasted with costa rican societal characterizations of afro-costa ricans as dangerous, infantile, and lazy when contrasted to white costa ricans and whiteness which endears positive connotations of culture, class and civility. this dichotomist view of race as suggested by townsend-bell (2009) deeply underscores the denial and contradictions surrounding educational access and inclusion of afro-costaricans. in costa rican journals, we found a few articles by costa rican authors who used their writing to dispel the claims of racial homogeneity and racial democracy implicit in many of the english-language journals. although some costa rican scholars have brought forth discussions that challenge the myth of racial harmony and democracy in costa rica, including herrera’s (2007) article, between hate and laughter, which describes costa ricans’ often racialized humor when referring to nicaraguan immigrants, an overall dearth of contemporary academic articles addressing racial inequities in costa rica remains. further examination and comparison of the amount of coverage and content of articles and reports on afro-costa ricans published in both english-and spanish-language journals is needed in order for educational leaders and scholars to obtain a better understanding of how to approach issues of race, access and retention in higher education in costa rica. conclusion although unesco firmly states that education and educational access for all children is a basic human right, the disparity in educational attainment and lack of sustainable paths for college success for racial minority students continue to exist in costa rica and the united states. moreover, unesco emphasizes that education should involve values that promote and secure social justice, equality, respect and human dignity for all (unesco, 2013). to this end, expanding access to higher education is integral to expanding the rights of all world citizens. in costa rica and the united states, educational initiatives like echs and colegios universitarios have the potential to make some significant inroads in increasing access to higher education for students representing racial minority groups. programs such as these motivate students who lie on the periphery of college access to be involved in a high school environment that promotes college matriculation. however, even with approaches such as echss, underlying myths and institutionalized racism continue to threaten the upward mobility of racial minority groups by perpetuating systemic racism and negatively impacting the educational access of these groups in both the united states and costa rica (caamano-morua, 2007; campbell, 2012; delgado montoya, 2007; harper, 2012). furthermore, in order to better recognize opportunities for increased access to higher education, educational researchers have to be willing to look outside their national lenses when making critical comparisons of higher education issues (shahjahan & kezar, 2013), including issues relevant to educational access and retention programs, such as comparative early college high school (echs) programs for racial minority students. becoming comfortable with adapting more inclusive and global perspectives is imperative to the examination and comparison of effective practice and scholarship in higher education. more importantly, when analyzing issues of higher education, integration of global perspectives and comparisons contribute to rigorous examinations of higher educational issues important to the future of all global citizens. similarly, as indicated by the contrasting characterization of afro-costa ricans by english and spanish journals, it was evident that a shortage of depth and perspective concerning afrocostaricans in higher education existed. clearly, there is a need for more research on this population and, in general, more studies on early college high school models in countries around the world and how these approaches might enhance access for students who represent traditionally marginalized racial groups. ideally, a global knowledge base, centered on notions of humanism and social inclusion, would enhance the ability of higher education leaders to better 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(2015). human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games. current issues in education, 18(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1292 author notes leah mcalister-shields sam houston state university lym004@shsu.edu leah mcalister-shields is an academic program manager at the university of houston and a doctoral student in educational leadershiphigher education administration at sam houston state university. her research interests include college access, college readiness, social and cultural capital of minority students, and the matriculation and persistence of racial and ethnic minority college students. she is also interested in research involving mixed methodology, and pragmatist research approaches. leah has presented and served on discussion panels at the national uteach conference, southwest educational research association (sera), and advances in qualitative methods (aqm) conference. also, ms. mcalister-shields copresented a workshop in the area of focus groups at the thinking qualitative (tq) conference. ms. mcalister-shields is the recipient of the 2012 dean’s award for a paper entitled, college readiness: factors related to the achievement of stem majors, and was selected as a 2013 ucea david clark scholar. leah holds a bs in political science and sociology and a masters of social work from the university of houston. rebecca m. bustamante sam houston state university rmb007@shsu.edu rebecca m. bustamante (ph.d., university of san diego) is an associate professor of educational leadership at sam houston state university in texas. dr. bustamante’s scholarship focuses on preparing culturally responsive leaders, international perspectives on educational leadership, assessing organizational cultural competence. she has held administrative and faculty positions in both the united states and latin america. manuscript received: 09/01/2013 revisions received: 03/04/2015 accepted: 01/25/2015 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1292 mailto:lym004@shsu.edu mailto:rmb007@shsu.edu higher education as a human right: comparing early college approaches to university access for racial minority students in costa rica and the united states 13 volume 18, number 1 april 26, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editors tray j. geiger layout editors constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1086_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 13, 2013 issn 1099-839x whose opinions count in educational policymaking? joel r. malin and christopher lubienski university of illinois at urbana-champaign the success of some advocacy organizations in advancing their preferred policies despite questionable evidence of the effectiveness of these policies raises questions about what contributes to successful policy promotion. we hypothesize that some education-focused organizations are advancing their agendas by engaging media, with individuals who may not possess traditionally defined educational expertise. using two distinct expert lists, we examined relationships between measures of expertise and educational impact. we found non-significant positive relationships between these measures with a list of experts complied by a conservative think tank, while a second list from a university-based center showed a significant positive relationship. we conclude that media impact is at best loosely coupled to expertise. this issue should be explored in greater depth because deleterious outcomes are more likely if individuals are more successful in shaping policy discussion based on criteria outside of expertise. keywords: agenda setting, decision making, educational policy, expertise, information dissemination, political influences, politics in recent years, american public education has been experiencing a period of notable pressure to adopt far-reaching reforms; buttressed by a familiar narrative of public school failure, specific and significant reforms have been advanced as necessary to improve student learning (ravitch, 2010; brill, 2011). for example, race to the top, a four-plus billion dollar federal competition sponsored by the u.s. department of education, has been designed to advance major, specific policies across the states (“race to the top fund”, 2012). a significant concern centers on the degree to which reforms are advanced on the basis of evidence versus, for instance, popularly held “common sense” notions, or viewpoints that are assumed to be true in elite policy circles. in this paper, we examine whose facts and opinions are most frequently cited in media accounts and by policymakers, and how this relates to these individuals’ backgrounds and actual educational expertise. we hypothesize that many education-focused organizations in the u.s. are successfully advancing their agendas by using individual actors who may have more acumen in terms of media engagement than in terms of research expertise. in the current environment of educational reform, we have seen the rise of many entities characterized by varying levels of expertise or reliance upon research. debray-pelot, lubienski, and scott (2007) provide depth and historical context in their analysis of the u.s. institutional landscape, focused upon interest group politics around vouchers and other forms of school choice. in so doing, they present compelling evidence that a confluence of factors have given rise to an increasing of interest groups in terms of numbers and activities, and an increased complexity of interest group politics, including the no child left behind act of 2001 (nclb) and the landmark 2002 u.s. supreme court ruling on the constitutionality of the cleveland voucher program (debray-pelot et al., 2007). still, subsequent local, state, and national political events underscore that issues surrounding school choice remain hotly contested. these authors provide evidence that new opportunities, current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 and efforts to counter them, ultimately have enhanced the importance and complexity of advocacy coalition efforts; coalitions, for instance, have formed between groups who share certain core beliefs but do not necessarily agree on secondary aspects (sabatier & jenkins-smith, 1999). meanwhile, unprecedented philanthropic dollars are being applied to these lobbying and advocacy efforts, in an effort to gain leverage over the direction of public spending and policy (confessore, 2011). thus, the current educational landscape is complex, and many individuals and groups have organized to make a policy impact. to what extent are these individuals and groups advocating reforms that are empirically supported? to what extent are they rigorously questioning their premises? this is a critically important topic. for example, major reform efforts, such as charter schools, vouchers, and no child left behind, are based significantly on the premise that private organizations are more effective at improving student outcome (lubienski, 2008). however, recent findings challenge this premise; for instance, lubienski and lubienski (in press) found public school achievement gains to be greater than those of demographically comparable catholic school students. likewise, betts and tang (2008) synthesized findings across 14 studies of schools’ impact on student achievement. they limited their analysis to studies that utilized student-level data, and the median effect size (0.005) across these studies was barely distinguishable from zero (ravitch, 2009; raymond & center for research on education outcomes, 2009). many others have pointed to examples of major reform efforts that appeared to be based more on perceptions and politics than empirical evidence, including the effort to create comprehensive high schools, the small schools movement, the progressive education movement, and so forth (bestor, 1953; chubb & moe, 1990; conant, 1967). when there is a substantial divide between the empirical record and policymaking, problems can result; for instance, regulation of carbon emissions is a current issue in which expert-generated knowledge is often trumped by political operatives (oreskes & conway, 2010; specter, 2010). it is essential that we policy researchers consider both the empirical basis for such grand reforms as well as the political agendas advocating for policies. one way to do this is to consider the degree to which advocates for such reforms have discernible expertise around the policies that they promote. an instrumentalist perspective on policymaking would suggest that individuals with true expertise around these policy issues are more likely to advocate for policies that are empirically substantiated; therefore, they are preferable as policy influencers to individuals who do not possess high levels of expertise (davies & nutley, 2008). particularly when policies and related beliefs hold consequences for others’ welfare, beliefs arguably should be substantiated and firmly grounded (bridges & watts, 2008). the role of expertise in education policy kingdon (2003), in his classic work, explored policy and agenda setting. although kingdon does not focus on educational policy, his conclusions can be extrapolated into that context. the complexities of these topics are made eminently clear: multiple forces interact to determine which issues reach the agenda, and what new laws subsequently survive the policymaking process. scientific research is but one of many potential influences on the policy process, and may be a relatively less important factor among many. for instance, researchers/academicians were rated as “very important” by only 15% of insider respondents, whereas lobbyists were rated as “very important” by fully one-third of these respondents. meanwhile, various uncontrollable events and conditions influence agenda setting. thus, more powerful actors or events often overshadow scientists and their research (gormley, 2011). indeed, this is one of the commonly cited reasons why the relations between research, policy, and practice are tenuous (granger, tseng, & wilcox, n.d.). compounding this, at times policy windows open, presenting an opportunity for advocates of various proposals to push their favored solutions (kingdon, 2003). currently, just such a policy window appears to be open in educational reform in the united states, owing largely to a prevalent viewpoint that traditional approaches are unacceptably ineffective for today’s students. the federal government is incentivizing this process: race to the top has been designed to advance major, specific policies across the states (“race to the top fund,” 2012). against this reform-happy backdrop, forces aside from research may be particularly formidable in the effort to advance favored solutions that may or may not be supported by robust research. meanwhile, as noted previously, interest groups have increased in number, scope, and complexity, and philanthropic dollars have increased to unprecedented levels (debray et al., 2007). thus, as a result of several factors in the current educational climate, a policy window appears to be open; as such, a forceful and increasingly intricate effort to advance policy ideas ensues. as policy advocates form a greater consensus around the notion that the “status quo” is ineffective, they may promote innovations (even untested ones) with increased vigor and persuasiveness. further, research often presents rather nuanced viewpoints on topics, and circumstances like these arguably favor more black-and-white, confident “solutions.” following the advocacy coalition framework (acf; see sabatier & jenkins-smith, 1999), it appears that for many it may be more important to secure changes aligned with core beliefs in any way possible than, for example, to simply produce well-researched but easily ignored policy briefs. it may be more incumbent whose opinions count in educational policymaking? 3 on would-be policy influencers to form partnerships and pursue strategic approaches than to carefully and painstakingly consult the literature on a topic, some of which may conflict with a more coherent and confident narrative that begs for change. within such a context, “proofiness” techniques, where manipulative statistical sleight-of hand devices are employed in deceptive support of half-truths, are likely to be particularly prevalent (seife, 2010). educational think tank reports labeled “research,” for instance, have been critiqued on several grounds, including: they present oversimplified viewpoints; they lack firm research grounding; and/or they are authored by individuals lacking sufficient expertise (welner, 2011). mucciaroni and quirk (2006) found that, while evidence is often misrepresented in congressional debates, accuracy tends to be greater when issues are of low or moderate public importance or visibility. also, even when research is utilized, it is often used simply to justify pre-determined policy preferences (whiteman, 1985). therefore, research-policy relations are likely to be particularly tenuous at these times; an opportunity is present for some to capitalize upon certain reforms provided that sufficient force and persuasiveness are applied. potentially, this could involve neglect of substantive empirical support. presently, a familiar narrative about schools is prevalent, and appears to be consistent with policy: american public schools, as presently structured, are failing (in spite of ample and increasing funding); teaching deficiencies are largely responsible for this, as powerful unions protect many poor teachers; alternatives to public schools (i.e., charter schools) are necessary to save many students (particularly poor, often minority students in urban areas; ravitch, 2010; see, e.g., brill, 2011). the documentary film waiting for “superman” (chilcott & guggenheim, 2010) effectively advanced viewpoints such as these more deeply into the public consciousness; however, other groups vigorously counter these positions (e.g., see ravitch, 2010). interestingly, this discourse serves only to further fuel calls and support for changes, many of which are quite dramatic from a historical perspective, yet which appear to be rational when the presupposition that the present system is failing students is accepted — that is: not only must the system change within such a narrative, it must change quickly. passion, in other words, may supersede reason when an urgent need for reform is popularly perceived. in any case, the strength of the narrative suggests that some level of bias or power imbalance is in operation. if, for instance, a diversity of viewpoints regarding u.s education were commonly presented, it would seem more likely that a more nuanced or wideranging set of views would be evidenced within the public (bushaw & lopez, 2012). we would expect similar outcomes if media regularly sought out education scholars on policy-related educational topics. therefore, in this analysis we examine the extent to which those who are most frequently cited on these topics have training or acumen in research on topics for which they are (self-) identified as experts. is there a discernible content bias (see mcquail, 1992), such that media disproportionately represents one side or position? we expect to be able to directly address the former question, while touching indirectly upon the latter one. to do so, we rely upon two recently constructed expert lists (welner, mathis, & molnar, 2012; hess, 2011) for names, while drawing upon several of the criteria of a third, educational impact list (hess, 2012). in an effort to offer a more ideologically diverse pool of sources for education reporters, rick hess (2011), of the conservative american enterprise institute, created a list of “republican and/or conservative (and/or libertarian) edu-thinkers” that could be solicited by journalists for expertise when writing about gop proposals or candidates. subsequently, welner et al. (2012) created a list on behalf of the purportedly liberalleaning national education policy center (nepc) with the intention of pointing out to reporters the names of individuals who can speak to “the overall knowledge base” in given areas of policy. this was likely predicated on a desire to enhance the quality of reporting regarding educational issues. the intents and purposes of these lists are substantially different; however, we expect that in combination the two lists yield a useful number and variety of educational experts and thinkers for the purposes of the current study, which aims to assess the current relationship between educational expertise and media impact. we rely on several variables described and utilized by hess (2012) in the publication of his 2012 rhsu edu-scholar public presence rankings, published annually in education week. each is described in detail in the methods section. the research question is significant from theoretical and pragmatic perspectives. a loose relationship between expertise and solicited media or policy input, for instance, would be suggestive of content bias, and would cast increased doubt upon the use of evidence to inform and influence these debates. this, in turn, would raise questions about what is, in fact, driving the solicitation and selection of experts or pundits by the media? are media and/or policymakers selecting wouldbe commentators on the basis of “justification” of a particular viewpoint, or “balance” between apparently opposing viewpoints, above any desire to present an objective view? if, alternatively, a strong relationship is discovered, confidence in present media coverage and policymaking surrounding these issues might justifiably be increased or maintained. in either case, the vast and far-ranging implications of current national educational policy in the united states are clear. it is therefore important that we enhance our understanding of the strength of the current relationship between research current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 evidence and both media coverage and policymakers’ considerations. based upon the literature we have discussed above, we expect generally to find weak and/or negative relationships between our measures of expertise (independent variables) and our measures of media impact (dependent variables). the current climate surrounding education reform is more conducive to the solicitation of individuals better characterized as pundits than as individuals with bona fide expertise in relevant areas. also, we expect to find distinction in expertise and media impact between the two lists that we used to derive names — specifically, that hess’s (2011) list will show a pattern of individuals with higher impact and lower expertise scores, and that welner et al.’s (2012) nepc list, by contrast will show the reverse. such patterns are predicted based upon welner’s (2011) observation that conservative groups appear to be more willing to fund activities that directly engage with the political process. the individuals on hess’s (2011) list were explicitly chosen based upon conservative ideology, and therefore we might expect to find relatively more individuals whose primary concerns are oriented toward direct policy engagement or impact; by contrast, the nepc list (welner et al., 2012) is not explicitly weighted toward a particular political ideology but appears to be more heavily weighted toward college/university researchers and academics, whose primary concerns may be oriented more toward demonstrating expertise (e.g., scholarly publications), although they might be accused of representing a more liberal bias. the nepc list is organized by policy topic and lists, for each topic, several individuals who could speak as experts regarding the quality of the research evidence related to a particular policy (welner et al., 2012). altogether, we expect that these comparisons may yield a clearer view of the type and quality of contributions to public opinion and policy within various forums. methods in this study, we examined the extent to which media, including blogs, are soliciting or otherwise citing individuals with expertise in their coverage or examination of educational policy. in order to do so, we relied on two recently constructed expert lists and drew upon the criteria used within a third, while adding one criterion of our own: educational attainment, represented by highest degree earned. this process led us to identify ninety-seven individuals, none of whom were named of both lists: all individuals but one (95) were included in the final analysis; for this individual, we were unable to identify educational background. we treated three criteria—education press mentions, blog mentions, newspaper mentions—in combination as a dependent variable representing “media impact.” we included blog mentions because we view blogs as a form of (social) media, and as one important means of making a media impact. hess (2011) also used each of these variables as measures of “impact.” we treated four criteria— educational attainment, google scholar-listed publications, book points, and highest amazon ranking— in combination as an independent variable representing “expertise.” our independent variable represents our attempt to quantify displays of expertise: educational attainment, scholarly articles, and books (both number and popularity). the book metrics may be limited in that not all books are meant to be scholarly, nor do they necessarily display expertise, since scholars in some fields tend to prefer other publication formats. to address this, we repeated our regression analyses using a narrower independent variable comprised only of educational attainment and scholarly articles. our dependent variables represent our attempt to quantify media impact. initially, we had intended to include citations in the congressional records as had hess (2011). however, we abandoned this variable because we reasoned that congressional records mentions are not clearly measures of media impact. also, upon review we discovered that only a small percentage of individuals on our lists were mentioned in the record during the duration of this analysis. education press mentions, blog mentions, and newspapers in combination represented our effort to capture three of the most influential forms of media. we acknowledge the potential limitation of exclusion of other forms of media, such as television and radio media. by examining the correlations between our independent and dependent variables, we aimed to ascertain the relationship between expertise and opportunities to weigh in on current educational policy debates. measures aside from the first measure to be described, educational attainment, we modeled all other measures after the approach outlined by hess (2012). we departed from hess only in that we modified the date ranges to be consistent with the timeframe of our study. hess’s study examined this measure up to december 21 or 22, 2011; in the present study, we used march 1, 2012 as our end date for all measures, except where otherwise noted. for all measures, as a final precaution we examined our obtained values in relationship to values that hess (2011) reported. although we used different date parameters and therefore expected to see somewhat different results, we reasoned that significant departures would raise the possibility of a flawed search. also, for all measures we used middle initials in secondary searches for some individuals with relatively common names, in an effort to cull out same or similarly named individuals. below, we provide substantial detail about each measure; the reader is whose opinions count in educational policymaking? 5 advised to refer to hess (2012) for more detail. independent variables educational attainment. via google searches conducted in early march 2012, we located and recorded the highest level of educational attainment of each individual. we treated juris doctor, doctor of philosophy, and doctor of education degrees as equivalent, and the highest level of attainment possible. next, we treated all master’s degrees as equivalent, followed by all bachelor’s degrees. these were coded as twelve, eight, and four points, respectively. we did not award points for coursework that did not eventuate in a degree. we assigned point values in this manner in an effort for this metric to carry moderate weight in the combined “expertise” variable. initially, we had planned to account for specific area of study, but abandoned this when we concluded that all members of the combined list completed an area of study that was at least tangentially related to educational policy. the majority of individuals (83.15%) on the combined list had attained the highest level of educational attainment. google scholar metric. up to march 1, 2012, we examined articles, books, or papers each individual had authored or co-authored, utilizing the following technique: first, the individual’s name was entered under the “author” filter in advanced google scholar search, limited to “business administration, finance, and economics” and “social sciences, arts, and humanities.” like hess (2012), we took care not to count works by similarly named individuals; we inspected each record to ensure that the author listed was the same individual who we were seeking, and we conducted secondary searches using the individuals’ middle initial in many cases. descending each individual’s works according to the number of times each was cited, we counted the number of works up to the point at which this number exceeded the cite count. for instance, an author who had three works that were cited at least three times, but whose fourth work is cited three or fewer times, would score a three. this measure was intended to measure the breadth and impact of a scholar’s work (hess, 2012). on this measure, individuals’ scores ranged from zero to 76 points (m = 17.39, sd = 16.58). book points metric. up to march 1, 2012, we recorded the number of books each individual had authored, co-authored, or edited, based on an amazon author search. similar to hess (2012), we awarded each person two points for a single-authored book, one point for co-authored book in which he or she was the lead author (and one-half point if not the lead offer), and onehalf point for an edited volume. also, like hess (2011), we used an “advanced books search” for the scholar’s name, and the format searched “printed books” so as to avoid double counting. in a few instances, we also used middle initials as method of avoiding duplication with same/similarly-named authors. only published and available books were included. on this measure, individuals’ scores ranged from zero to 37.5 points (m = 5.44, sd = 7.00). highest amazon ranking metric. as of march 15, 2012, we recorded the author’s highest-ranked book on amazon. similar to hess (2012), we subtracted the highest-ranked book from 400,000, and divided the resulting number by 20,000. in this way, each individual achieved a score between zero and twenty. we completed this measure from the amazon site, searching for books written by each of the individuals, and (if applicable) identifying the individual’s top rated book. we included co-authored or co-edited books by the individual. we found that it was easiest to carry out the task when going to the individual’s “amazon author page,” if it existed. this measure, hess notes, is substantially volatile and biased in favor of recent works; however, we agree with his position that it nonetheless conveys useful information. on this measure, individuals’ scores ranged from zero to 19.9 points (m = 2.48, sd = 5.17). the majority of individuals on the combined list (75.79%) achieved zero points on this measure. dependent variables education press mentions. like hess (2012), we recorded the total number of times each individual was quoted or mentioned in either education week or the chronicle of higher education. we counted quotes or mentions from the time period between december 1, 2011 and march 1, 2012, similar to hess (2012), we divided the total number of appearances by two to yield a final measure. we searched by using each scholar’s first and last name, using the search tool available at each site. on this measure, individuals’ scores ranged from zero to 14.5 points (m = 1.72, sd = 2.96), with 24.2% of individuals earning zero points on this measure. blog mentions. we followed hess (2012) by recording the number of times a scholar was referenced in a blog between december 1, 2011 and march 1, 2012. departing from hess, we searched with a combination of the individual’s name and several words linked to education, separated by “or” connectors (name and education or school or schools or learning or reform or charter or vouchers). this was done in an effort to cull out references to similarly named individuals. like hess (2012), we divided the total number of references by four in arriving at a final figure, which we capped at fifty points. on this measure, individuals’ scores ranged from zero to fifty points (m = 23.06, sd = 20.53). twenty-six individuals (27.4%) earned fifty points on this measure. newspaper mentions. like hess (2012), we used a lexis nexis search to record the number of times each individual was quoted or mentioned in u.s. newspapers. we used the date range of january 1, 2011 to march 1, 2012. similar to hess (2011), we divided the resulting number of mentions by four, to yield a final measure per individual. on this measure, individuals’ current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 scores ranged from zero to 35 points (m = 3.34, sd = 5.64); 10.53% of individuals earned scores of zero points. results values of each of four previously described independent measures were added for each individual, to create a single independent measure of “expertise.” likewise, values of each of four previously described dependent measures were added for each individual, to create a single dependent measure of “media impact.” as noted previously, we hypothesized that we would find weak and/or negative relationships between our measures of expertise (independent measures) and our measures of media impact (dependent measures). in order to test our hypotheses, we performed several linear regression analyses using pasw® statistics18.0 software. first, we examined the overall relationship between our broad expertise variable and our impact variable. in partial support of our hypothesis, we found a non-significant figure 1. the relationship between “expertise” and “media impact” for individuals identified on either list (combined list). figure 2. the relationship between “expertise” and “media impact” for individuals identified on the welner et al. (2012) list. whose opinions count in educational policymaking? 7 positive relationship, such that increases in expertise loosely and non-significantly associated with increases in media impact among these individuals — expertise explained just 2% of the variance in media impact (r2 = 0.02, f(1,93) = 1.86, p = 0.18), as shown in figure 1. second, we examined the overall relationship between our more constrained expertise variable (encompassing only educational attainment and scholarly articles measures) and media impact. in this case as well, we found a non-significant positive relationship, such that increases in this measure of expertise loosely and nonsignificantly associated with increases in media impact among these individuals (r2 = 0.01, f(1, 93) = 1.08, p = 0.30). third, we examined the relationship between expertise, broadly defined, and media impact for individuals named on the welner et al. (2012) nepc list. in this case, we found a significant positive relationship between our measure of expertise and our measure of media impact, r2 = 0.42, f(1, 60) = 12.87, p = 001. individuals on this list tended to score higher on the measures of expertise (m = 46.09, sd = 24.51) than on the measures of media impact (m = 23.08, sd = 23.53), as shown in figure 2. finally, we examined the relationship between expertise, broadly defined, and media impact for individuals named on the hess (2011) list. in this case, we found a non-significant positive relationship, such that increases in expertise were loosely and non-significantly associated with increases in media impact, r2 = 0.28, f(1, 31) = 0.88, p = 0.36. also, we found a nonsignificant positive relationship between the narrow measure of expertise and media impact, r2 = 0.06, f(1, 31) = 1.90, p = 0.18, as shown in figure 3. in contrast to the prior list, individuals on the hess list tended to score higher on the media impact measure (m = 37.57, sd = 26.94), and lower on the broad (m = 18.55, sd = 17.44) and narrow (m = 15.85, sd = 13.18) expertise measures. figure 4 provides a graphical representation of the differences in mean values across the expertise and broad media impact measures, by list. table 1 includes a summary of statistics for each of the separate regression analyses we performed, using broadly defined expertise. figure 3. the relationship between “expertise” and “media impact” for individuals identified on the hess (2011) list. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 8 figure 4. mean values of “expertise” and “media impact” (broad measure), by expert list. table 1 summary of separate regression analyses of expertise (by expert list: individual and combined) and media impact variable b se(b) ß t sig.(p) expertise – hess (2011) list (n = 33) 0.26 0.27 0.17 0.94 .36 expertise – welner (2012) list (n = 62) 0.40 0.11 0.42 3.59 .00* expertise – combined list (n = 95) 0.14 0.10 0.14 1.36 .18 note. p = .001 discussion we were interested to review the current relationship between indicators of educational expertise and measures of media impact. we suspected that we would find generally weak and negative relationships, basing this expectation on our review of the literature and our understanding of the contemporary pressure to reform education, a pressure that is in keeping with a dominant narrative that current educational models in the u.s. are unacceptably ineffective. results were partially consistent with our main hypotheses. while our variables were not negatively associated as predicted, they were in nearly all cases weakly associated and/or statistically non-significant. this is consistent with a general perspective within the literature that we reviewed, which suggests that media impact (e.g., opportunities for citation) would not be tightly related to educational expertise. we find this troubling, particularly within a broader context which is conducive to educational reform. it would be better if media (and, potentially by extension, policy) influencers possessed true expertise, or were connected with experts (willingham, 2012). interestingly, expertise significantly predicted media impact when we constrained our analysis to the nepc list. this list is distinct in that it exclusively includes academics, whereas the hess (2011) list includes some academics and many who are outside of this sphere. we reason that many academics tend to be primarily concerned with scholarly output and related endeavors, and thus many do not necessarily seek media exposure. within such circumstances, perhaps their output holds some predictive power over whether they will be “sought out” in the media. yet some academics actively avoid whose opinions count in educational policymaking? 9 this time of engagement. on the other hand, the hess (2011) list contains a substantial number of individuals who are likely to be primarily focused on making a public impact (e.g., through the media or otherwise), often irrespective of expertise as traditionally measured. if true, this would explain the distinction of results when the lists were taken separately. also, it is interesting to note basic distinctions across the two lists in terms of expertise and media influence. specifically, individuals on the welner et al. (2012) list tended to score higher on the expertise variable and lower on the media impact variable. by contrast, individuals on the hess (2011) list tended to score higher on the media impact variable and lower on the expertise variable. this pattern of results is consistent with our expectations and is, we believe, worthy of future study. it is consistent with welner’s (2011) observation that conservative groups tend to be more willing to directly engage with politics on educational questions. conservative individuals are more heavily represented on the hess (2011) list. if there is a tendency toward interest in policy engagement (and, we expect, media impact) amongst this sample, there may be a tendency among academics (who appear to be more heavily represented on the welner et al., 2012 list) toward greater interest in establishing expertise. also, “media impact” is likely quite variable as a function of what is important at a given time; at one time, for example, school funding may be a popular topic, whereas at another teacher quality may be an area of emphasis. presumably, different individuals would be tapped into depending on the topic. limitations one important limitation of the study is that it draws from somewhat constrained lists of educational experts and pundits. it is also biased somewhat in favor of academics, who are exclusively listed on the welner et al. (2012) list, and conservatives, who are exclusively listed on the hess (2011) list. this sets up a questionable dichotomy of two sets of experts, where academics are presumed to be liberal, and think tank types are of a more conservative bent — yet we know that the actual universe of educational expertise is much more diverse. indeed, many of the individuals who are frequently quoted in the media on educational topics (e.g., those from the fordham institute or the american enterprise institutes) are not included in our analyses. had the lists been constructed differently and included such individuals, perhaps our results would be different. finally, our measures of expertise focused on academic preparation, and did not take into account other factors, such as experience, that could contribute to expertise. directions for future study still, this study suggests several potential directions for future research. the results, suggesting that media impact is at best loosely coupled to expertise, are troubling and point to the responsibility of the media to vet experts before citing them or their work — an issue that should be explored in greater depth. meanwhile, the suggestion from acf that media impact may differ somewhat as a function of strategies by groups of different ideologies and backgrounds is interesting, and is tentatively supported in this study. future study should be aimed to better understand the contours of this situation. lastly, we would like to join the growing chorus of individuals who seek to re-establish tighter relations between research, policy, and practice. a high quality education is immensely beneficial for individuals and states/nations (alexander, 1976), and policy changes should be carefully discussed and weighed prior to implementation. this is most likely to occur when individuals with true expertise, who may be more grounded by empirical findings related to particular reforms, are positioned to inform the process. references alexander, k. 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(1985). the fate of policy analysis in congressional decision making: three types of use in committees. western political quarterly, 38, 294-311. willingham, d. t. (2012). when can you trust the experts? how to tell good science from bad in education. san francisco: jossey-bass. whose opinions count in educational policymaking? 11 article citation malin, j., & lubienski, c. (2013). whose opinions count in educational policymaking? current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1086 author notes joel malin university of illinois 338 education building, 1310 s. 6th st. champaign, il 61820 jrmalin2@illinois.edu joel malin is a doctoral student at the university of illinois. he is also a school district administrator for lake forest school district 67 (illinois). his research focuses on educational policy analysis and educational assessment. christopher lubienski university of illinois 338 education building, 1310 s. 6th st. champaign, il 61820 club@illinois.edu christopher lubienski, phd is associate professor of education policy, and director of the forum on the future of public education at the university of illinois. his research focuses on the political economy of education reform, with a particular interest in the equity effects of markets in education. manuscript received: 09/23/2012 revisions received: 02/24/2013 accepted: 05/17/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 12 volume 16, number 2 august 13, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1223_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 3 september 28, 2013 issn 1099-839x demography as destiny: the role of parental involvement and mathematics course taking patterns among 9th grade students kate m. degner university of iowa this study uses data from the national center of education statistics (nces) high school longitudinal study of 2009 (hls:09). parent responses to the parent involvement survey, given as part of the nces study were considered, along with their child’s socio-economic status (ses) and self-reported level of mathematics course enrollment during their ninth grade year of high school. the purpose of this study is to identify parent behaviors that result in their child enrolling in upper level mathematics coursework in high school, regardless of ses. seven, two-factor anova tests were conducted to determine interaction effects between types of parent behaviors and level of ninth grade mathematics course enrollment. the interaction effect between child activities and ses was found to be significant. the main effect of ses, as well as school choice, parent involvement (school), parent involvement (home), and child activities were also found to be significant. the main effect of a student’s ses was significant, in terms of level of ninth grade mathematics course enrollment. the findings from this study suggest that when students from lower ses background are grouped homogenously in a school related setting and out of school experiences, the level of mathematics course enrollment is lower in comparison to their middle and upper class counterparts. the findings from the study are also consistent with previous studies, noting the profound effect ses has on a child’s schooling experience. keywords: mathematics, education, course taking, ses, parent involvement parent involvement in a child’s school experience can influence both the quality and length of a child’s schooling. success in school depends on a family’s involvement in preparing their children for the beginning of formal education and the extended involvement of parents once formal schooling begins. inversely, parents of school children also must depend on schools to provide their students with a quality education and give them the tools to be successful after formal k–12 schooling is complete (lareau, 2004). numerous studies have been conducted on the ways parents become involved in the school-lives of their children (lareau, 2002, 2004; lareau & cox, 2011; mcfarland & rodan, 2009; payne, 2005; reigle-crumb & grodsky, 2010) and the implications of such involvement. many of these same studies have found that while most parents are involved in the school-lives of their children, parents from higher socio-economic status (ses) backgrounds and those with more education tend to employ more effective methods of involvement in the school-lives of their students, as measured in grades in school, track placement, course selection, and persistence toward high school graduation. these all lead to a more meaningful educational experience for their children, in terms of both long and short term achievement effects as well as positive social experiences with teachers and other school personnel within their child’s school experience. payne (2005) and lareau and cox (2011) explain current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 2 the connection between parent involvement and demography, as it relates to the school experience of their children. payne (2005) focuses on the “hidden rules” of the middle class that parents and students must be able to employ in order to effectively work within the confines of the public school. payne (2005) defines hidden rules as the rules families are expected to play by in the institution of school. that is, school personnel expect that conversations will be conducted in the formal register (joos, 1967) of speech. additionally, the school expects to converse with parents and students in what she calls an “adult voice”, that is being able to negotiate with other adults in the school building without providing value judgments or becoming emotional. in general, payne (2005) asserts that because parents and students from lower ses backgrounds tend not to understand how to play within the rules of the school they have less success navigating the school system, which in turn means less success in school. lareau and cox (2011) classify the importance of parental involvement in the institution of schooling in global and case-specific ways. when parents participate in their child’s schooling globally, they understand the education system as a whole. for example, parents understand that enrolling their students in the highest tracks available, regardless of the academic area or grade level will likely produce larger dividends at the end of the child’s school career. parents also interact with their child’s school in case-specific ways, including coming in to a teacher’s classroom to discuss a specific incident at school that the parent thinks needs more attention. lareau and cox (2011) find that middle class families tend to possess more global and case-specific knowledge about their child’s school and academic performance, than their working and lower class counterparts. they are able to use this knowledge to “untie knots” in their child’s school experience. through personal correspondence with professor lareau (october 17, 2011), she points out that the act of parents untying knots for their children in one case when dealing with the school may or may not have an impact on the overall educational outcome of their students. however, it is knowing when to untie these knots and the succession of intervention that ultimately differentiates the way middle class parents influence their child’s school experience, compared to working and lower ses parents. crosnoe, mistry, and elder (2002) found that parents from economically disadvantaged backgrounds tend to be more pessimistic about the chances that their children will be able to attend college in the future. they found that this sense of pessimism tended to enter into conversations about schooling, sending the message to students that regardless of their course taking decisions or academic performance, they would not be able to attend college or do well in school because of their ses background or other life experiences. battin-pearson et al. (2000) found that parents tended to convey the message to their children that their experience in school would be like their own. hill et al. (2004) also determined that children from lower ses backgrounds were more likely to model their parents’ lower levels of educational attainment. in many cases, low ses families have not experienced the benefits of earning a quality education, both during their k–12 schooling experience and after high school, thus making it harder for them to portray or understand the importance of a quality education to their children. in contrast, the parents in tyson’s (2011) study largely blamed their lack of academic success on themselves instead of the school. similarly, payne (2005) finds that even when parents try to convey a positive message about school and the possibility of upward mobility, they lack the resources to make this a reality for their children. mathematics course taking and parental involvement many national studies highlight the importance of mathematics course-taking in high school as it relates to persistence toward degree attainment in college, future salary potential, and high school achievement (adelman, 2006; sadler & tai, 2007). students enrolling in advanced coursework (that is coursework beyond the algebra ii level), are more likely to both attend and finish college, more likely to enroll in a selective four-year university (riegle-crumb & grodky, 2010), and more likely to have high educational goals for themselves and take more rigorous classes in high school regardless of subject area. (oztuk & singh, 2006; schornick, 2010). because mathematics course selection is so strongly correlated to these aspects of post-secondary success, the disparity between low ses and middle and upper class student course-taking patterns is especially alarming. it appears as though students are selecting out of these courses, and by doing so they are selecting themselves out of key opportunities for post-secondary success. lee and burkam (2005) used a large national dataset-the ecls-k (nces, 2000) to examine the relationship between ses and mathematics achievement at the beginning of a child’s formal schooling career. they found that nearly one fifth of the total variance in mathematics achievement in kindergarten is explained by a family’s ses. according to their study, a student’s ses accounts for the largest variance in mathematics achievement among kindergarten students, even after types of parent involvement are considered. the disparity in student course selection is perhaps the most notable in advanced mathematics course taking among students. caro, mcdonald, and willms (2009) found that while an achievement gap exists between the upper quartile and lower quartile of students, according to ses, this difference doubles in mathematics achievement by age 12 (about halfway through their formal k–12 schooling) and continues to widen until graduation. this difference in mathematics achievement demography as destiny 3 likely becomes more pronounced because of exposure opportunities to advanced mathematics course-work, peer group influences, and because of student attitudes toward schooling, and advanced mathematics course taking. children who have parents involved in course taking decisions about secondary mathematics classes tend to have children who enroll in a higher level of mathematics coursework, compared to children who are left to make course taking decisions on their own (brantlinger, 2003). crosnoe and schneider (2010) found that discussions about mathematics course taking in high school occurred less frequently among students, teachers, and parents when children were from lower ses backgrounds. brantlinger (2003), crosnoe and schneider (2010), and tyson (2011) assert lower level course enrollment among students from low ses backgrounds is a result of parents from these backgrounds being less involved in the school lives of their children. purpose of the study the purpose of this study is to identify factors that may explain the enrollment patterns in mathematics curriculum tracks, especially as they affect children from lower ses settings. this study used data obtained from the 2009 high school longitudinal study (hsls:09) (ingels et al., 2011) to identify parent behaviors that correlate with enrollment in upper level mathematics courses. the specific activities these parents engage in are identified as parental involvement. the hypothesis is that parents, whose parenting behaviors can be characterized as pro-school, what lareau (2004) and cheadle and amato (2011) call concerted cultivation, will be more likely to have children who enroll in upper level mathematics course work at the beginning of their high school career, regardless of ses. additionally, the study asked whether, middle and upper class parents are more likely to engage in certain forms of parental involvement, thus offering an explanation for their particular higher enrollment in upper level mathematics courses. the research questions for this study are: 1. what relationship does parental involvement have with the mathematics course-taking decisions of school children? 2. are middle and upper class parents more involved in school than their lower and working class counterparts? 3. is there a profile of characteristics to a particular form of parental involvement that explain the mathematics course taking decisions of school children? research instrument the survey used for this study was designed by the national center for education statistics. public access data was used for this study. four different groups of people participated in the data collection of the overall hsls:09, including ninth grade students, school counselors or administrators, school mathematics, science, and english teachers, and parents of the 9th grade students selected for the study. because the focus of this study is on parental involvement, only survey responses from the parent involvement section of the parent questionnaire were considered. these survey results were matched with their child’s responses for their ninth grade course-taking patterns. of the 28 parent responses on the parent involvement section of the questionnaire 12 were tested for reliability. only those questions not included in previous nces studies and questions whose responses were not anticipated to have changed over the course of three months were tested for test-retest reliability. eight of the 12 questions were at or above the reliability threshold of 85%. four of the items included in the parent questionnaire had reliability between 65% and 85% (ingles et al., 2010). information about the student’s 9th grade mathematics course enrollment was reported by the students on the student survey. students were instructed to select all the mathematics courses they were enrolled in during ninth grade using the following options; algebra i, geometry, algebra ii, trigonometry, review/remedial mathematics, integrated math i, statistics, integrated math ii, pre-algebra, analytic geometry, advanced mathematics, no mathematics course enrollment, and other. all information collected about each student, including all survey responses and test scores were aggregated at the student level and reported out by the nces according to assigned student identification numbers (ingles et al., 2011). sample students were selected to participate in this study through a 2-stage identification process. first, 1,889 schools were selected from a stratified random sample of school districts in the united states. the strata for this first stage of selection were defined by the cross section of three variables; school type (public, private-catholic, private-other), region (northeast, midwest, south, west), and locale (city, suburban, town, rural). then, students from each of the identified schools were randomly selected for participation in the study. this process resulted in 25,206 students who participated in the study (ingles et al., 2011). parents who completed the questionnaire were selected because their students had been identified to participate in the study. only one parent completed a survey for each student. parents chose which parent would complete the questionnaire. the instructions to the parents indicated that the parent who was most involved in their ninth grader’s schooling should complete the survey. of the 25,205 eligible parents, 16,995; 67.5%, of parents completed the parent questionnaire for their ninth grade child. non-response bias tests were run to by nces, the results of the tests found that the non-response current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 4 bias for the parent questionnaire were negligible (ingles et al., 2011). procedure a two-factor design was used to measure the influence of parental involvement on mathematics course taking. the use of a two-factor design controlled for a student’s ses and accounted for the variety of parent responses on the surveys. for this study, the main interest was in the interaction effects between parent activities and ses of survey participants. this study also considered the main effects of factor a (parent activities). previous research indicates that there is a strong main effect of factor b (ses). the nces reported participant’s ses levels as quintiles. the students in the lowest quintile were assigned an ses score of 1, middle low = 2, middle = 3, middle high = 4, high = 5. because of the widely noted “catholic school effect,” (borman & dowling, 2010; coleman, 1987; willms, 2003) all student and parent responses from children who attended catholic and private schools in ninth grade were omitted. a total of 3,933 surveys were omitted because they were from private or catholic schools. small public schools, or rural public schools were included as part of the dataset. the “catholic school effect,” speaks to the limited number of courses offered in a school setting, thus eliminating the number of tracks available to students in high school. additionally the catholic school effect notes the impact that a close knit community of parents, students, and teachers can have on students from backgrounds with parents who are not involved in the lives of their children. because the focus of this project is to try to identify parent behaviors that lead to higher level mathematics course enrollment it seemed that both of these factors associated with catholic school attendance would not accurately portray the influence that parents have over mathematics course-taking in this setting. surveys of students who did not indicate their ninth grade mathematics course placement and surveys of students whose parents either did not complete any part of the parent questionnaire or who completed parts of the parent questionnaire, but did not complete the parent involvement section or only completed part of the section were also omitted. partially completed parent questionnaires were omitted because the nces did not recommend imputing data for any variables measured in the parent questionnaire part of the survey (ingles et al., 2011). the sample of research participants totaled 21,445; 16% of the total sample consisted of the lowest quintile ses background, 17.3% were from the low middle quintile, 19.7% from the middle quintile, 21.2% were from the middle high quintile, and 25.7% were from the highest ses quintile. after omitting the surveys described above, there were 10,968 study participants. about 18.3% of this sample made up the lowest ses quintile, 18.4% were from the lower middle quintile, 18% from the middle quintile, 18.8% from the middle high quintile, and 25.6% of the student participants were from the highest quintile. mathematics course-taking patterns were divided into 3 categories; standard, midlevel, rigorous. each level was assigned a value of 1 – 3. standard level course taking = 1, midlevel = 2, and rigorous = 3. these levels are defined by nord et al. (2011) as follows; a student in the standard mathematics track has earned three credits in mathematics throughout their high school career, but none of the credits earned are past geometry. the midlevel course-taking pattern includes geometry and algebra ii course taking, as well as earning at least three credits in mathematics. rigorous course taking is defined as enrolling in one other mathematics course, beyond geometry and algebra ii, as well as earning at least three credits in mathematics. mcclure (1997) makes the distinction that years of mathematics course taking should not be the only determining factor when considering the level of course taking. since schools offer a variety of mathematics courses, it is possible for students to take four years of mathematics classes and still not enroll in any class beyond geometry. kelly (2007) also makes note of this phenomenon as a way schools have responded to increased carnegie unit requirements for graduation in mathematics. nord et al. (2011) defined these levels of mathematics course-taking as a way to classify a student’s academic level at the end of their high school career. because this study only had access to freshman year course enrollment, freshman-level courses were used to classify students according to where their entrance in the mathematics pipeline might take them. since the majority of states require three carnegie units in mathematics for graduation, a student’s starting mathematics placement was used and then a likely placement in mathematics at the end of three years of mathematics course taking was projected. for the purposes of this study students enrolled in pre-algebra, remedial/review mathematics, or other as freshman were considered to be at the standard level of mathematics course-taking; students starting in algebra or integrated mathematics i enrolled in a mid-level coursetaking pattern, and those students enrolled in geometry, algebra ii, integrated mathematics ii, advanced mathematics, statistics, or analytic geometry were considered to be taking mathematics at the rigorous level as freshman. students who reported not being enrolled in a mathematics course at all during their freshman year were assigned a value of zero. some students reported that they were enrolled in more than one mathematics course during the fall of their freshman year. students enrolling in more than one course were assigned the value associated with the most advanced course reported. demography as destiny 5 additional descriptive statistics were also used in order to describe specific parent behaviors that may result in upper level mathematics course enrollment as freshmen. this study looked at the mean and standard deviation for all parent behaviors listed among the 7 survey questions. for these statistics, average course table 1 description of 2-factor anova categories and variables name of variable survey question responses category for anova school choice is your child’s school assigned or chosen? assigned, chosen assigned, but would have chosen 0 = assigned 1 = chosen & assigned, but would have chosen parent participation (school) since the beginning of this school year have you or other adults in your household . . . attended a general school mtg? attended pto mtg? gone to p/t conference? attended class event? volunteered at school? participated in fundraising? met w/school counselor? yes, no 0 = 0 – 1 “yes” 1 = 2 – 4 “yes” 2 = 5 – 7 “yes” frequency of hmwk help during this school yr, about how many days/wk do you or another adult in your household help w/hmwk? would you say . . . never, <1, 1 – 2, 3 – 4, 5 or more 0 = never, <1 1 = 1 – 4 2 = 5 or more confidence in hmwk help how confident do you feel about your ability to help w/the hmwk this year in math? very confident, somewhat confident, not at all confident 0 = not 1 = some 2 = very gender in general, how would you compare males and females in math? females are much better, females are somewhat better, females and males are the same, males are somewhat better, males are much better 0 = females some/much 1 = same 2 = males some/much child activities during the last 12 months, has [your child] participated in any of the following activities outside of school? arts organized sports religious studies scouting/club academic instruction math/science camp another camp none of these 0 = none – 1 1 = 2 – 4 2 = 5 – 7 parent activities (home) during the last 12 months, which of the following activities have you or another family member done with [your child]? visited museum/zoo computer fixed something attended science fair helped w/ science fair project discuss stem issues visited a library attend live show none of these 0 = none – 1 1 = 2 – 4 2 = 5 – 8 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 6 table 2 two-factor anova for child activities with mathematics course enrollment and ses background source sum of squares d.f. mean square f sig. ses quintiles 526.301 4 131.575 171.690 .000 child’s activities 24.103 2 12.052 15.726 .000 ses by child’s activities 14.143 8 1.768 2.307 .018 error 8374.696 10928 .766 enrollment for all combined ses backgrounds were calculated. a t-test was used to identify means that were statistically significant. an alpha level of .05 was used to test for significance. with an alpha level of .05 and a sample size of 10,968 the power of the anova is 81% (statistical power calculator, 2010). typically any statistical test with power greater than 80% is acceptable (gatti & harwell, 1998). the purpose of this study is to find parent behaviors that may lead to persistence in upper level mathematics course enrollment in high school. by allowing the alpha level to be more liberal, the two-factor tests are more sensitive to finding potential parent behaviors that may lead to higher-level mathematics course enrollment. this may indicate areas for further study, related to parent involvement and mathematics course taking. parent responses to seven questions on the parent involvement survey were the variables in this study. table 1 identifies the seven variables tested as well as the categories used in the two-factor anova. a complete questionnaire is included in the appendix. the variables parent participation (school), parent participation (home), and child activities are the categories used by cheadle and amato (2011) in their use of ecls data to analyze the idea of concerted cultivation (lareau, 2004). however, cheadle and amato (2011) divide concerted cultivation into three components, parent participation, child activities, and academic resources. this study divides their term parent participation to distinguish between activities that parents participate in at home and at school. this distinction is reasonable because the national dataset that cheadle and amato (2011) used only asked about parent participation at school. results child activities the variable child activities was shown to significantly interact with mathematics course enrollment and ses background at the .05 level. it seems that the frequency with which children engage in these types of activities plays out differently in terms of level of mathematics course taking with children from differing ses backgrounds. the means for this category indicate that the number of behaviors associated with involvement, may impact the mathematics enrollment levels of students in different ways across ses levels. according to the collected data, as students from the middle low (ses 2), middle (ses 3), middle high (ses 4), and high (ses 5) backgrounds enroll with greater frequency in these child activities, the mean level of freshman mathematics course enrollment increases. the simple main effects follow up to this test also indicate a significant difference in level of course enrollment between levels of frequency of child activity behaviors for quintiles two, four, and five of ses. for students from the middle-low and middle-high quintile of ses, the follow up test for simple main effects indicated that the difference in course level enrollment when students participate in 2 – 4 activities, or 5 – 7 activities, is significantly higher than the students in the same table 3 simple main effects of child activity ses quintiles sum of squares d.f. mean square f sig. 1 1.919 2 .960 1.252 .286 2 11.071 2 5.535 7.223 .001 3 1.869 2 .934 1.219 .295 4 11.904 2 5.952 7.767 .000 5 11.483 2 5.742 7.492 .001 demography as destiny 7 table 4 two-factor anova for child’s activities with respect to parent involvement source type i sum of squares df mean square f sig. corrected model 564.547a 14 40.325 52.619 .000 intercept 44781.757 1 44781.757 58434.961 .000 ses quintiles 526.301 4 131.575 171.690 .000 child’s activities 24.103 2 12.052 15.726 .000 ses quintile * child’s activities 14.143 8 1.768 2.307 .018 error 8374.696 10928 .766 table 5 two-factor anova for parent involvement (home) source type i sum of squares df mean square f sig. ses quintiles 526.301 4 131.575 171.100 .000 pi (home) 5.625 2 2.813 3.657 .026 ses quintile * pi (home) 3.709 8 .464 .603 .776 error 8403.607 10928 .769 table 6 two-factor anova for homework help source type i sum of squares df mean square f sig. ses quintiles 526.301 4 131.575 172.195 .000 hmwk help 55.029 2 27.515 36.009 .000 ses quintiles * hmwk help 7.746 8 .968 1.267 .256 error 8350.167 10928 .764 quintile who participated in 0 – 1 of these activities. for students in the highest quintile of ses the difference in course level enrollment is statistically significant when students participate in 2 – 4 and 5 – 7 activities, compared to students participating in 0 – 1 activities. students in the highest quintile of ses who enroll in 5 – 7 activities, compared to 2 – 4 activities also enroll in a significantly higher level of mathematics coursework. main effects as expected the main effects of ses are significant. that is, there is a significant difference in level of mathematics course enrollment according to the ses quintiles used in this study. the average course enrollment level for a student from the lowest quintile was 1.70, while the average course enrollment level for a student from the highest quintile was 2.34. recall that according to bozick and ingles (2008), the standard level of enrollment that is needed for college admittance and high school graduation in most states, is two. the descriptive statistics for level of mathematics course enrollment indicate that as the mean level of course enrollment increases, the standard deviation for level of mathematics course enrollment decreases. that is, not only are children from higher ses backgrounds enrolling, on average, in a high level of mathematics coursework they are also doing so with less variability. this means that students from the highest ses quintile are enrolled in high-level mathematics classes, on average, and that there are fewer students in a substantially lower course placement track. in many cases the main effects of parent behaviors were also significant. in particular the frequency with which children engaged in child’s activities and parent involvement (home) positively current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 8 table 7 frequency of parent behaviors by ses parent behavior ses quintiles 1 and 2 ses quintiles 3, 4, and 5 school choice 42% 44% parent involvement (school) 76% 88% homework often 49% 38% child’s activities 47% 70% parent involvement (home) 88% 96% table 8 average level of course enrollment by participation in activities type of activity/activity yes no parent involvement (school) general school mtg* 2.05 1.88 pto mtg 2.03 2.01 attend p/t conferences 2.01 2.02 attend school event* 2.09 1.88 school volunteer* 2.14 1.98 school fundraiser* 2.11 1.93 mtg with a school counselor* 1.98 2.04 child’s activities participation in the arts* 2.14 1.96 participation in sports* 2.10 1.93 religious group* 2.05 1.99 another club/scouting* 2.08 2.00 attend academic program 2.04 2.02 attend math/science camp* 2.28 2.01 attend another camp* 2.18 1.97 parent involvement (home) go to museum/zoo* 2.08 1.95 working w/ child computer* 2.03 1.94 built/fixed something 2.00 2.03 attend school science fair* 2.11 2.00 helped with a science project 2.00 2.03 discussing stem issues* 2.07 1.92 going to the library* 2.04 1.97 attending a live show* 2.10 1.90 activities with * are statistically significant influenced their child’s course enrollment, as did whether or not parents selected their child’s school. the frequency with which parents helped their children with mathematics homework, however, had a significant negative impact on level of mathematics course enrollment, meaning the more often parents helped their children with homework, the lower the level of ninth grade mathematics course taking. frequency of parent behaviors the second question addressed in this study is whether parents from middle and upper ses backgrounds engage in parental involvement more frequently. previous research indicates that parents from middle and upper ses are involved in their children’s schooling more frequently then those in lower ses settings (crosnoe & mistry, 2010; gamoran, 2002; kelly, 2004; oakes, 2005; demography as destiny 9 tyson, 2011). the data collected from this study are mostly in line with previous findings. to address this question of parent involvement frequency, parent responses from the lowest and middle low quintile were grouped together as were parent responses from the middle, middle high, and highest quintile. then, proportions of the frequency with which parents indicated they participated in at least two activities from each category of parental involvement were compared. the frequency with which parents from various ses backgrounds selected their child’s school, does not seem to vary much, based on ses. the descriptive statistics indicated that students from the lowest quintile enroll in a higher level of mathematics coursework when their parents have selected their school. the benefits for children from upper level ses backgrounds were negligible. although parent involvement (school) did not show a significant difference in level of mathematics course enrollment, parents from middle and upper level ses backgrounds tend to participate in parent involvement (school) more frequently. parents from lower income backgrounds indicated that they help their child more with mathematics homework, compared to parents from middle and upper class backgrounds. the data also indicate that students from lower income backgrounds tend to be enrolled in lower level mathematics courses when compared to their middle and upper class counterparts. profile of parents engaging in parental involvement although the specific activities parents engage in were not listed for the two-factor anova as part of this study, descriptive statistics were used to try to identify the types of activities that might be the most beneficial for parents to participate in with their child. in other words, what are the specific behaviors (instead of the frequency of the types of behaviors) that result in a higher average mathematics course enrollment in freshman year mathematics class? to analyze these data, this study looked at the average level of mathematics course taking for students/parents participating in the activities from the parent questionnaire. many activities classified as parent participation either in the home or the school, as well as numerous child activities, resulted in statistically significant means, in terms of average level of course enrollment. discussion this study sought to identify factors that may explain the enrollment patterns in mathematics curriculum tracks, especially as they affect children from lower ses settings. although the findings of this study are mixed, various implications for schools and parents can be considered. the interaction tests speak to the phenomenon of concerted cultivation (cheadle & amato, 2011; lareau, 2004), in which lareau argues that parents who understand the importance of social capital and the way it relates to their child’s school experience carefully select their child’s out of school experiences and purposefully interact with their child’s school. the findings from this study support lareau’s (2002) claim that parents from higher income backgrounds may engage in these types of activities more frequently. this study also confirms the findings from cheadle and amato (2011). in fact, only 3% of parents from the lowest quintile of ses responded that they enrolled their child in 5 – 7 of these activities in the last year. in comparison, nearly 10% of the parents from the highest ses quintile indicated that they had enrolled their child in 5 – 7 of the child’s activities in the past year. the mean levels of mathematics course enrollment also support lareau’s (2004) finding that among students from higher ses backgrounds, participation in these activities seems to positively impact their mathematics course enrollment decisions. the results of the simple main effects test indicate that the various levels of participation in parent involvement (home) activities become more important, in terms of course level enrollment among students in higher ses quintiles. in particular, the level of participation in activities results in a significant difference in level of mathematics course enrollment among the highest quintile of students for all three different activity levels. the findings from this study may indicate that when parents from lower ses backgrounds understand the importance of selecting out of school experiences for their students, they are also able to positively impact course enrollment. it is possible that parents from lower ses backgrounds who understand the importance of enrolling their students in these types of out of school experiences have more social capital than other peers from their same economic background (as shown in the follow up test for the middle-low quintile). that is, even within social classes there is a type of social hierarchy, and parents who are able to navigate this hierarchy can make concerted cultivation work for them in the school lives of their children. payne (2005) describes living in poverty as “the extend to which an individual does without resources.” (p. 7). she identifies such resources using 8 different categories (financial, emotional, mental, spiritual, physical, support systems, relationships/role models, and knowledge of hidden rules). it is possible that those students from lower ses backgrounds are able to participate in such activities because they have more of these resources at their disposal, when compared to other school children from the same ses. for example, children in the middle low ses category may do without financial resources, but if they are still participating in such activities may have strong support systems or role models. although enrollment at the highest level of these types of activities seems to negatively impact the level of mathematics course enrollment for students from the current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 10 lowest ses backgrounds, the findings from this study indicate that some enrollment in these types of activities could still positively associate with mathematics course enrollment decisions of students from the lowest ses level. it is clear that when parents from the lowest ses quintile enroll their students in 2 – 4 of these types of activities the average course enrollment increases. the significance of a child’s participation in these activities has also been discussed explicitly by entwisle, alexander, and olsen (1997, 2001) and caro et al. (2009). they claim that a child’s out of school experiences on the weekends and during school breaks play a bigger role in the widening of ses achievement gap, than does anything that happens during a child’s k – 12 schooling experience. the types of experiences that entwisle et al. (1997, 2001) and caro et al. (2009) describe as being advantageous are also the experiences described in the parent involvement (home) part of the hsls:09 (ingles et al., 2011). participation in these activities also speaks to the catholic school effect described by coleman (1987) and willms (2003). both coleman (1987) and willms (2003) assert that even when children are raised in a home in which the parents might not have much social capital, when the children are involved in a community of other supportive adults, those children are able to benefit from the social capital of other adults and children with whom they interact. the activities of participating in music, art, dance, or theater; organized sports lead by an adult; a religious youth group or organization; scouting or another club activity; academic instruction outside of the school; a math or science camp; or another camp all put children into meaningful contact with adults. presumably, the adults leading each of these activities are interested in the lives of children and may be able to help fill the void for children who may not otherwise have interaction with adults who support the idea of doing well in school. additionally, by being involved in these activities, children are more likely to interact with other children who may be speaking with parents and teachers about post-secondary plans, and the importance of doing well in school. according to walker (2006), when children have “near-peers” (friends or family members a little older then them), the “near-peers” can serve as an important support system, encouraging children to do well in school. in fact, in her analysis “near-peers” served as a replacement for parental encouragement for the mathematics achievement of students. akos, lambie, milsom, and gilbert (2007) and ryan (2001) highlight the importance of a child’s friendships in terms of their course taking decisions. akos et al. (2007) found that children are able to use their friends and their friend’s beliefs about schooling and the importance of course selection as another source of social capital. ryan (2001) also found that as students get older and move farther along in school, they tend to take academic cues from their friends, rather then from their parents, particularly if their friends seem to have more knowledge about the school experience. in this way, students from lower ses backgrounds who may otherwise be isolated socially in their school or neighborhood are given another way to interact with adults and students with varying educational experiences. when parents involve their children in these types of activities they are also interacting with other adults who presumably value participation in out-ofschool organized activities. this is another source of social capital not only for the children but also for the parents of children involved in the activities. lareau and cox (2011) outline the importance of “untying knots,” for their children throughout their school experience. they describe this skill as something a parent acquires from speaking with other adults about school related issues, or by watching their parents do this for them during their school experience. part of the reason lareau and cox (2011) and epstein and dauber (1997) argue that parents from lower ses backgrounds struggle with this is because they are not exposed to other adults who are engaging in this type of behavior. by having their children participate in organized activities with other children, such parents are also interacting with other adults from whom they may be able to take social cues about navigating their child’s school experience. these results also speak to the implications of school choice and the hyper segregation (kozol, 1995) of poor students that results. ravitch (2010) speaks to the power school choice programs have in re-segregating schools, both in terms of race and ses. previous research (coleman, 1987; gamoran, 2000) finds that partitioning school experiences according to social class hurts students from low ses backgrounds, in terms of academic achievement, and does not have a large impact on students from high ses backgrounds either way. given the fact that this study finds that children from the lowest ses quintile enroll in a higher level mathematics course during their freshman year when parents select the public school they attend, this study seems to indicate that heterogeneity among students in schools could benefit lower income students in terms of course enrollment. children from low ses backgrounds whose parents select their public school are presumably deciding not to send their child to the neighborhood public school (otherwise they would have indicated this choice on the parent survey). often the neighborhoods children live in reflect their own ses. if parents from low-income backgrounds are selecting a different school for their children to attend, it is reasonable to assume that they are probably sending their child to a school with a different demographic from the one their child would be attending by default. this decision on behalf of the parents likely moved their child from a school with a higher amount of poverty to a lower poverty school. although the course demography as destiny 11 enrollment means indicate that there may be more advantage to students from lower ses backgrounds, parents tend to select their child’s school at about the same amount of frequency. the data from this study also illustrate that forms of parent involvement (school) that are beneficial for middle and upper income parents are not necessarily beneficial to parents from low ses backgrounds. lareau (2004) finds that both teachers of low-income students and parents of these same students are frustrated by they way these groups of adults work with each other. it seems that middle and upper class parents make forms of parent involvement (school) work for them by interacting with their peers in the workplace, through casual conversations with school personnel outside of the school day, or by following the example of their parents. an interesting follow up to this study would be to examine the specific parent participation home and school behaviors, as well as the child activities. this study has indicated specific parent and student behaviors that result in significant differences in level of mathematics course enrollment during a student’s ninth grade year in high school. it would be meaningful to determine whether or not these activities pay out the same way for every level of ses, in terms of level of mathematics course taking. it would also be interesting to access the nces follow-up data to this base year data collection to determine mathematics course taking patterns throughout the student’s entire high school experience. additionally, the parent activities of frequency of homework help and confidence in homework help did not significantly interact with ses and level of mathematics course taking. because both of these activities seem to be pro-school behaviors, it might be interesting to further explore this form of parental involvement and the implications it may have among older students. finally, the “catholic school effect” for small or rural public schools, as well as, charter schools has not been well established in research literature. it would be interesting and important to determine whether the effect observed by coleman (1987) and gamoran (2000) exist in these schools and to determine whether or not the “catholic school effect” still exists among parochial and non-parochial private schools. conclusion just as mathematics course taking has been described as” traveling along a trajectory” or “entering a pipeline”, can a student’s school experience be determined by their demographics before they even enter the schoolhouse doors? if one looks at the central tendencies, the answer to both of these questions seems to be yes. the problem of poverty is considerable and not even a social agency as large as public schools can equalize effects. schools do yield meaningful individual success stories. the problem is that there just have not been enough of them. this study only considered one small part of a child’s k – 12 schooling experience, their freshman level mathematics course taking patterns and the predicted trajectory of the rest of their secondary mathematics experience. however, past research has shown that mathematics course taking is also related to college attendance and degree attainment and other indicators of post-secondary success such as employment status after both college and high school (adelman, 2006; sadler & tai, 2007). because mathematics course taking can be an indicator of so many other academic and social behaviors, not related to mathematics, measuring the level of mathematics course enrollment may indicate other important academic behaviors in high school and beyond. the findings from this study indicate that the way parents interact with the school and other organizations on behalf of their child have an impact on the course enrollment level of their child. this study also finds that these parent behaviors affect children from differing ses backgrounds in various ways. in part there is not one single parent behavior that benefits all children at all times, in terms of level of mathematics course enrollment. however, regardless of ses there are particular behaviors that may benefit children’s course taking enrollment levels in mathematics. one of the main outcomes of this study, which has been confirmed in other bodies of research, is that the school works best for children when parents are adept at making it work for them. for parents from lower ses backgrounds, this may mean that when parents have the social savvy to select their child’s school, they are giving them the largest benefit in terms of level of mathematics course enrollment. although particular parent behaviors were found to lift the mean mathematics course enrollment level for children according to their ses, there were not any parent behaviors engaged in by parents from the lowest quintile of ses that raised the mean level of course enrollment to equal any other quintile’s mean course enrollment level. for certain quintiles (especially the middle, middle high, and highest), course enrollment means were fairly consistent, sometimes one mean was slightly higher than the other, indicating that once parents attained a certain level of income and job status, it was likely a function of their local and global knowledge (lareau & cox, 2011) of schooling, and their ability to secure an improved school experience for their child. although tyson (2011) found that parents from lower income backgrounds understand the importance of schooling, her findings and the statistics from this study indicate that they are unable to “crack the code” of ensuring that their child has a meaningful and rigorous school experience. the disparity in mathematics course enrollment and effectiveness of parent behaviors points to the larger current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 12 problem of poverty as a whole. this study is detecting a “poverty problem” which is playing out as a “school problem.” poverty does present a problem in schools, but the misconception is that poverty is more of a problem with regards to schooling than it is in any other aspect of a child’s life. the problem of deep, debilitating poverty in the united states is one that no government agency, on a large scale, has been able to effectively combat – the public school being among them. there is no single parent behavior that results in children enrolling in upper level mathematics course work. rather, it is an accumulation of many parent behaviors, as well as a child’s interaction with the community around them, that lead to course selection in middle and high school. to find one parent behavior that leads to success for all students in the classroom is about as unlikely has finding one particular mathematics program (or leadership style, or class size, or style of teaching) that will result in all students achieving the same result in mathematics. however, the data in this study and in other studies are consistent in one aspect. when students from low ses backgrounds are able to interact with peers, teachers, parents, and other adults who have high expectations for achievement, they, in most cases, rise to the challenge and benefit from the normative influences that follow from those interactions. references adelman, c. 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(2003). ten hypotheses about socioeconomic gradients and community differences in children’s developmental outcomes. applied research branch strategic policy human resources development canada. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 14 appendix parent’s involvement survey human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 15 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 16 u.s.�department�of�education� � high�school�longitudinal�study�of�2009� � national�center�for�education�statistics� � omb�no:��1850ͳ0852� � �during�the�last�12�months,�which�of�the�following�activities�have�you�or�another�family�member�done� with�[your�9th�grader]?� (check�all�that�apply.)� ��������visited�a�zoo,�planetarium,�natural�history�museum,�transportation�museum,�or�a�similar�museum� ��������worked�or�played�on�a�computer�together� ��������built�or�fixed�something�such�as�a�vehicle�or�appliance� ��������attended�a�school�science�fair� ��������helped�[your�9th�grader]�with�a�school�science�fair�project� ��������discussed�a�program�or�article�about�math,�science,�or�technology� ��������visited�a�library� ��������gone�to�a�play,�concert,�or�other�live�show������� ��������none�of�these��� ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~� � � � human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 17 article citation degner, k. m. (2013). demography as destiny: the role of parental involvement and mathematics course taking patterns among 9th grade students. current issues in education, 16(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1223 author notes kate m. degner belin-blank center, university of iowa 600 blank honors center, university of iowa iowa city, ia 52240 katherine-degner@uiowa.edu kate degner is the administrator for arts and innovation at the belin-blank center for gifted education and talent development at the university of iowa. she earned her phd in curriculum and supervision with an emphasis in mathematics education in 2012. her research interests include stem opportunities for students in small or rural schools, and the sociology of mathematics education. manuscript received: 04/10/2013 revisions received: 06/26/2013 accepted: 08/16/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 18 volume 16, number 3 september 28, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis elizabeth calhoun reyes assistant executive editors bonnie mazza constantin schreiber recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell nichole hugo sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker bonnie mazza kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 897-3980-4-le (1).doc 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x the role of teacher education in introducing action research into the education system: a case study of an education college orly sela and miriam harel oranim academic college of education, israel the study presents a case of a teacher education college which took upon itself the role of providing teachers with an opportunity to study their work as part of their professional development studies in three different frameworks. the objective of the study was to examine the role of the college as promoting research carried out by practicing teachers regarding their own work, from the teachers’ point of view. in all three frameworks the teachers had to conduct a study of their own work, following which they were asked to write a reflective text regarding the research process. these texts were analyzed using the grounded theory approach, resulting in three major categories. in-depth examination of the categories led to insights related to the responsibility academia can and should take upon itself in assisting teachers in developing their abilities to combine practice and theory and evolve from knowledge consumers to knowledge creators. keywords: action research, teacher education, professional development, qualitative research, grounded theory over the past two decades, research done by teachers has taken quite a meaningful place in educational research (clarke & erickson, 2006). lately, more and more teachers have begun to take up research of their own work, thus contributing to the construction of a knowledge base in this domain and the improvement of their own work. action research has taken a central role in this area, and is perceived as empowering teachers and contributing to their status as professionals (mcniff & whitehead, 2002). however, practicing teachers still find research to be a complex and difficult task for many reasons. they are not taught how to do academic research, and their working conditions often do not allow them to spend the time, effort and money necessary to engage in it (reis-jorge, 2007). the present study describes the case of a teacher education college which took upon itself to act in this direction, with the outcomes specifying the action which needs to be taken by the colleges in order to improve the situation. literature review teachers’ research for the past 15 years or so the focus of educational research has been directed more and more towards research done by teachers examining their own work (clark & erickson, 2006). this trend originates in the understanding that teachers’ voices and the questions that concern them need to be heard in the context of research on teaching (cochran-smith & lytle, 1992). cochran-smith and lytle (1999) relate to this perception which has become prevalent over the past few years as a movement rather than a temporary fashion in education. within this movement they identify several central trends: more and more studies are carried out on topics of teacher education, professional development and educational change; theories regarding teachers’ research are developing within a conceptual framework; teachers’ studies are disseminated beyond local contexts; and some teachers’ studies affect different aspects of academic culture. some theoreticians claim that the central problem of educational research is its relatively minor influence on educational practice (shkedi, 2000; tamir, current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 1991). academic educational research does not usually stem from practice, and it is researchers rather than practitioners who determine its content. there is a gap between researchers and practitioners, as the latter often feel that educational research is irrelevant outside of academia and does not contribute to improvement of education in schools (hargreaves, 1996). in other words, practice and theory are perceived as two separate worlds (gomm & hammersley, 2002). zeichner (2007) also describes this gap, calling for the use of self-study (including action research, which he positions as a type of self-study) in bridging it. at the same time the perception of research and teaching as two inseparable domains is growing stronger, placing the teacher-as-researcher concept at the core of the teaching profession, positioning it as a powerful tool for understanding classroom reality. teacher-led research creates potent knowledge and is used to differentiate between teaching as a profession and teaching as a technical skill (clark & erickson, 2006; darlinghammond & baratz-snowden, 2005). the combination of these two domains – research and practice, is necessary both for academia and for classroom practice (alpert & kfir, 2003). teaching is perceived as a domain where practice and theory both feed and lean on each other (maaranen & krokfors, 2008; silberstein, 1998). according to this perception teachers at all levels and at all stages of professional development – pre-service teachers, practicing teachers and teacher educators, are expected to carry out research, defined in the literature as inquiry carried out in a manner that is “… systematic, public, voluntary, ethical and contextual” (mclean & mohr, 1999, p. 23). the idea is that teachers themselves can make a meaningful contribution to the creation of knowledge and not only to its implementation when created by others (delong, 2004). today we expect teachers to be more than merely a source of knowledge for their pupils; they must carry out systematic reflection and research which will guide their classroom practice (hahs-vaughn & yanowitz, 2009). much of the teacher education literature relates to pre-service teachers as researchers examining their own work. the assumption is that experience in implementing teaching strategies is not sufficient for the pre-service teacher to become familiar with the complex, vague and dilemma-filled character of the teaching profession. sim (2006) deals with the importance of constructing a ‘community of practice’ where pre-service teachers are afforded the opportunity to research and analyze the complex situations which contribute to effective teaching and learning. she feels that teacher education institutions should be committed to assisting pre-service teachers to develop as professionals who are able to engage in critical analysis and value the connection between theory and classroom practice. one of the purposes of teacher education is to develop in its graduates the confidence and the ability to research their work and contribute knowledge to the field of education. in addition, conducting research may help pre-service teachers deal with the previous perceptions which they have brought with them to the teacher education process (darlinghammond & baratz-snowden, 2005). this approach demands that teacher educators trust the pre-service teachers’ ability to accept more responsibility for their own learning (loughran, 2004). belanger (1992) feels that the contribution of research done by teachers is multidimensional: politically it is a powerful teacher empowerment tool, practically it places teachers in the best position for ascertaining what the most effective teaching methods are, and professionally it helps teachers grow as reflective practitioners controlling their own learning. hahs-vaughn and yanowitz (2009) summarize the findings of many studies regarding the extremely positive effects of teacher research on teachers, and english (2006) presents teachers’ research as a way in which we can get ‘inside information’ regarding the educational field, which she feels is sorely missing today. in addition, teachers’ studies are perceived as contributing to teachers’ professional development in a meaningful manner. kincheloe (2003) claims that only through engaging in complex critical research, will teachers rediscover their professional status and improve the quality of their classroom teaching. at the same time teachers are enlarging the scope of their professional development and can later on in their professional careers serve as educational leaders and researchers (diezmann, 2005). action research action research is described as a type of teacher research conducted by professionals in order to investigate a problem in their work (crockett, 2006; mcniff & whitehead, 2002; zeichner & noffke, 2001). this type of research was first discussed by kurt lewin in the 1940’s. lewin, who was a social psychologist, came up with the idea as a way through which different groups of people could resolve their disagreements in a nonviolent manner (zellermayer, 2001). later on action research was adopted by educational researchers, and has been flourishing in that domain ever since (huber & savage, 2009). the literature describes several ways of categorizing educational action research, but what they all have in common is the view of action research as based on deep reflection and divided into several stages creating a circle or a spiral through which the teachers-researchers examine their work and try to come up with ways of improving it (foreman-peck & murray, 2008; smith & sela, 2005). somekh and zeichner (2009) did a metaanalysis of 46 action research studies published between 2002 and 2008, dividing them into five types – (a) action research in times of political upheaval and transition, (b) the role of teacher education in introducing action research into the education system: a case study of an education college 3 action research as a state sponsored means of reforming schooling, (c) co-option of action research by western governments and school systems to control teachers, (d) action research as a university-led reform movement, and (e) action research as a locally sponsored systemic reform sustained over time. the fourth type, action research as a university-led reform movement, relates to cases where a higher education institution initiated an action research project within the local education system in order to improve it, sometimes (but not always) based on a socialpolitical background. this is done through professional development courses for teachers, school-university ties, or groups of teachers who study towards a graduate degree while continuing to teach. delong (2004) describes five aspects through which action research contributes to the education system: (a) benefit to the pupils, who are the main reason for conducting action research, (b) benefit to the teachers who gain confidence regarding their knowledge and ways of acting in their classes, (c) benefit to the school as an institution adopting the culture of inquiry where the knowledge, skills and values of pupils, teachers and parents are evaluated, (d) benefit to the education system which develops a commitment to ongoing change processes, and (e) benefit to teaching as a profession. the bodies of knowledge created through action research studies give teachers a voice, which previously had often been silenced, taken over by academia, by the educational establishment or by political leadership. foreman-peck and murray (2008) describe a wide-scoped action research project conducted in great britain which found the following benefits for teachers: (a) improvement of creativity in teaching, (b) more willingness to use professional judgment and a better ability to self-criticize, (c) development of a common professional language for all people conducting research, and (d) development of the ability to observe and analyze educational events. in addition, benefits were found for those teachers’ pupils, particularly in learning improvement, classroom participation, and transference of learning between classes. however, there were no clear findings regarding the influence of teachers’ action research on pupils’ achievements in standardized tests. elsewhere, action research was found to help teachers develop as reflective professionals, able to collect and analyze data (darlinghammond & baratz-snowden, 2005). it is also at present beginning to enter graduate degree programs in education (huber & savage, 2009). difficulties and dilemmas in addition to the contribution of teacher research to teaching and teachers’ professional development, the literature also describes the ensuing difficulties. the most basic difficulty has to do with the fact that teachers’ first and central responsibility is to their pupils’ achievements and not to research, therefore no resources (time and/or money) are allocated for this purpose (alpert, 2006). teachers continuously study their work in an intuitive manner; they ask themselves questions regarding their work, collect data regarding their pupils through tests, different projects, learning logs, etc., and come to conclusions based on the collected data. the difficulty lies in mobilizing them for systematic research processes (babkie & provost, 2004; goldberg-kaplan, alon, & boltzer, 2003). in order to conduct high level studies one needs to have high level research skills. teachers often lack the necessary skills to conduct academic research (diezmann, 2005; lunenberg & willemse, 2006). teacher educators also have little experience in conducting research in comparison with their teaching experience (unlike lecturers in other academic domains), which limits their ability to carry out studies of the teacher education process, and perhaps teach their students – the pre-service teachers – how to conduct research appropriately. this situation is beginning to change with the growth in numbers of teacher educators who recognize the value of self-study for the examination of their practice (heiman, 2004; loughran et al., 2004; zeichner, 2007). pre-service teachers acquire methodological knowledge during their teacher education process or while studying for a graduate degree. as members of a professional community one of the aims of teacher educators is to provide their students with research tools which would assist them in observing their work and as teachers researching their own practice. regarding teachers in graduate programs, they need the close academic support and guidance of teachers researching their own work. many of them perceive practice and research as two completely different domains. in order to bridge the gap between these two domains and support their insights regarding the research process they must be allowed to take small, measured steps supported by both academia and the education system (goldberg-kaplan, alon, & boltzer, 2003). another dilemma has to do with publicizing teachers’ studies. by its very nature research disseminates new knowledge and exposes itself to critical discussion. studies conducted by teachers usually remain private and are not exposed to others. this may be a serious limitation, as these studies do not benefit the wider community of academics and practitioners, only the researchers themselves (diezmann, 2005). one of the ways of encouraging the use of action research in the education system is through teacher education of all types, both pre-service and in-service (goldberg-kaplan, alon, & boltzer, 2003). the present study examines a case of a teacher education college which took this task upon itself through three groups of teachers – experienced teachers taking an in-service course, experienced teachers studying towards a graduate degree, and novice teachers in their first year of teaching, i.e. at the end of their pre-service teacher education. these three groups were assigned an action research project as a current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 major part of their academic assignments, and the study presented here examines the success of this project through a close reading of the teachers’ reflective writing. research question: what is the role of the teacher education college in embedding action research in the education system? the study in light of the fact that action research is perceived today as an important topic with the potential for advancing the education system (foreman-peck & murray, 2008; huber & savage, 2009; mcniff, 1998), the question remains – how can this be done in practice? one of the possible ways of achieving this aim is through teacher education colleges taking responsibility for this. this is a natural step in light of the role of these institutions as leaders in the field of education, and as the place where theory and practice are bridged (korthagen, 2001; sela, 2009). two teacher educators in a large teacher education college decided to take this role upon themselves, in recognition of the importance of action research for both teachers and the educational field, and comprehension of the significance of the college as a large body able to assist in initiating change and introducing it into the education system. both have long term experience in conducting action research themselves and guiding their students in doing so, and believe that it is a powerful tool in furthering the cause of continuing teacher education and teacher empowerment. research method the study makes use of qualitative methodology which describes and explains phenomena through the participants’ eyes (guba & lincoln, 1994; silverman, 2004), using the case study approach. case study is a research strategy focusing on a specific, defined case; that is – a study describing and interpreting a particular segment of a phenomenon which is identified, defined and examined. the case has borders defined by time, place and participants, allowing one to enter the participants’ world and study it in depth (stake, 1998; yin, 1994). the present case study examines an intervention program initiated by a teacher education college, during which students/teachers conducted action research projects in the schools they were working at, alone or in collaboration with colleagues. three courses using this strategy are discussed in the present study, each numbering 20-30 students: a. practicing teachers taking an in-service course and conducting action research as the main course requirement. b. teachers studying towards an m.ed. degree taking a qualitative research course which includes the option of conducting an action research study as the main course requirement. c. teachers in their first year of teaching, which is also their last year as pre-service students, conducting action research as the seminar paper requirement for their educational seminar course.1 as can be seen from the list, two of the courses are part of in-service teacher education (with one of them including graduate students), while the third spans both in-service and pre-service teacher education. thus, the three courses ‘cover’ the main stages of teaching as described by the life-long learning approach which advocates continuous learning by teachers throughout their careers (aspin & chapman, 2000; day, 1999). research population the present study included 30 teachers who studied in the three courses described above, 10 teachers in each course. the teachers were selected at random, with no preference regarding gender, ethnicity, age or attitude towards the research topic. generally speaking, the 30 research participants reflect the teacher population, i.e. a large majority of women and an ethnic division reflecting that of the entire country. while taking these courses they were all working as teachers in varied contexts schools and kindergartens of different types in the k-12 school system. data collection the present study makes use of document analysis as a data collection tool. the action research project each teacher conducted included a reflective writing component which encouraged the participants to engage in the three levels of reflection: technical, practical and critical (van manen, 1977), while also relating to the emotional aspect of their practice (korthagen & vasalos, 2005). the teachers were asked to reflect in writing regarding both the product and all stages of the process (choosing a topic, dealing with the literature, collecting data, analyzing it, coming to conclusions): e.g. what did i think, what did i find difficult, who/what helped me, what is now clearer to me about the research method, etc. the reflective writing texts were collected from 10 teachers in each course at random, i.e. 30 documents altogether. the documents were 1-3 pages long on average. data analysis the teachers’ reflective writing was analyzed using qualitative content analysis (strauss & corbin, 1990) at two coding levels – three stages of first level coding and a fourth stage of second level coding, in order to create grounded theory (charmaz, 2006; shkedi, 2005). grounded theory is a central method of data analysis and theory construction in qualitative research. it describes 1 unlike most western countries, in this context preservice students begin their formal (paid) teaching career in their last year of college. thus, they spend one full year being both students and teachers. the role of teacher education in introducing action research into the education system: a case study of an education college 5 phenomena and interprets reality from the participants’ point of view, thus was considered suitable for the present study. "grounded theory methods consist of systematic, yet flexible guidelines for collecting and analyzing qualitative data to construct theories `grounded` in the data themselves" (charmaz, 2006, p. 3). at first each researcher analyzed her own students’ writings, and at a later stage the texts and the researchers’ analysis of them were integrated into one whole data bank, which both researchers examined and re-examined, attempting to come up with insights regarding the research question. in the first stage (open coding) each text was read separately and the different analysis units (sentences, paragraphs) were named according to the topics present in the reflective writing texts. this stage provided the researchers with a general orientation regarding the texts’ content but also the relationships among them. the categories were collected from all the texts in parallel fashion, with the relationships and hierarchies among the categories and sub-categories exposed. this stage allowed the researchers to perceive a full picture of the data’s potential, leading to the third stage (selective/focused coding), where the three main categories were discovered. the fourth stage integrated the findings with the research literature, and an interpretive analysis was conducted to create grounded theory. this analysis assisted the researchers in suggesting ways through which a teacher education college can overcome the difficulties described and effectively introduce action research into the education system. research limitations as the data collected was taken from a random rather than a representative sample of the texts composed by the participants, it may not be indicative of all the issues teachers are concerned with when conducting research of their own work. the lack of triangulation may also be a potential problem in the present study, forcing the researchers to focus on the participants’ words only, without verification from additional sources. findings content analysis of the reflective writing texts produced three main categories: (a) motivation for choosing the research topic, (b) questions and difficulties, and (c) the study’s contribution. despite very rich findings, due to constraints of topic and space we report below only those findings which relate directly to the topic of the present article – the role of the teacher education college in promoting action research in schools. the original research objective was to examine the teachers’ point of view regarding their experiences of researching their own work. following the rich and varied data base the research texts produced, the researchers of the present study realized that one main theme within this data base was the issue of the place and role of academia in furthering the cause of teacher research. the research question was constructed during the data analysis process, as is characteristic of qualitative research which is nonlinear and often changes during the research process (givton, 2001; maykut & morehouse, 1994). the teachers’ reflective texts discussed two basic types of motivation for choosing the research topic, the wish to deal with practical issues in order to improve their work and the wish to deal with issues they find interesting and/or worrying, not necessarily related to their work. the first type of motivation was prominent with all three groups of teachers. most teachers from each group picked research topics from their daily educational practice, which worried or upset them. however, this was not an easy process. most often teachers only selected their research topics after much consideration and discussions with the lecturers. the support provided by the lecturers allowed them to come up with appropriate topics, which in turn helped them to use their professional and researchrelated abilities to the fullest. we had different opinions and could not agree amongst ourselves, and as a result finished the meeting with no decision. but we all agreed to meet dr. m. [course lecturer] to consult her on this issue. in a meeting held again at the library we consulted with her, and she led the way and was very helpful in choosing a research topic. (n – integration of a special needs child in a regular class) i felt very confused and maybe a little helpless, mostly because we were unable to define the research question. i was so relieved when we managed to reach a joint research question which each group member will research from her point of view. actually, it was the meeting with m [course lecturer] which helped us identify the problem, define it, describe it, and ask the research question. (m – interpersonal communication within the staff) most teachers began the research process with concerns, expressing feelings of insecurity and doubt regarding their ability to fulfill the task. in addition to difficulties related to their new roles as researchers, many teachers also found their roles as academics stressful, displaying pressure, panic and much difficulty when first encountering the academic literature. “the most difficult part was trying to find material, which was almost impossible, as my topic is quite esoteric. in the end i managed to find my way around this problem by doing observations and interviews” (a – integrating deaf students into a mainstream class). the teachers related in their reflective writing to the varied skills needed to write the literature review: separating main ideas from supporting details, focusing on the central theme, integrating materials, organizing the information, etc... “the due date came closer and i was still deep in doubt regarding integration of the material. stuck in the literature review. it was frightening. would i be able to cope?” (t – feedback sessions in guiding an current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 intern teacher). many teachers needed much assistance throughout the project, both academically and in the collection and analysis of data; and they were very pleased to receive this assistance from the course lecturers. … in a meeting with m [course lecturer] we decided on the stages of the study and the number of observations based on the research needs. m gave us her opinion regarding the observations we had already done… the action plan was constructed according to the research needs… m recommended we cut out the last two points on the first observation page and use them in the second observation stage… at last i felt the research was taking shape. (m – interpersonal communication within the staff) d, who researched her own personal narrative, emphasized her need for intensive guidance both within the group and personally, in her quest to acquire the skills necessary for data analysis, and the satisfaction she felt when receiving this support: …that’s why what we learned in the course matched my needs so perfectly. finally i was exposed to how data should be presented. i heard in class what others have done with their research materials, now i had to do something with mine. here the lecturer came to my aid, and in a personal meeting helped me to stop worrying about the materials. she demonstrated how i should work with interviews and observations, and i continued from there. many of the students reported different types of difficulties relating to acting as researchers within their own schools. for example, the teachers who studied their colleagues’ work rather than their own found it difficult to recruit colleagues who would agree to be observed and interviewed, due to fear of exposure. one of the difficulties i faced was that the sports teacher did not cooperate at the beginning of the interview, saying: ‘are you criticizing my work?’ he was closed-mouthed. but happily he agreed to cooperate once i explained that i was conducting research as part of my m.ed. studies, and that the work was for me only. (v – the place of school breaks) some teachers who needed their school’s support discovered to their surprise that it was not forthcoming. t, who studied an empowerment project of new immigrant youth, described the opposition he encountered: from the minute i decided to begin the exploratory process i encountered the project leader’s cool reaction. she claimed that the group is in a vulnerable place and she doesn’t feel this should be exacerbated by a foreign element whose presence might raise suspicions. the study only began when t managed to convince the leader that the study might become useful, having consulted the course lecturer as to the best way in which this can be done. luckily the project leader knew me from a time when we had worked together as counselors in the same school, thus i was able to convince her of the study’s importance and the fact that it will do no harm and might even do some good. throughout the process the teachers described the difficulty of integrating research with their professional commitments at school. “during the writing process we had ups and downs. we were tired and sometimes despaired – there was pressure to complete school tasks, personal tasks, and the action research tasks” (n – mainstreaming). the lecturers were always sensitive to these difficulties, allowing for delayed deadlines when necessary. while these difficulties, as well as many others not reported here, did hinder the participants’ research efforts, the data analysis also shows that teachers from all three groups were keenly aware of the great contribution the study made to them at both the personal and professional levels. clearly they had learned much, not only in the specific subject area they had researched but also regarding ways of working, relating to others and personal growth. i discovered that action research caused a fundamental change in my professional development process. i felt i had made a real change: i examined myself, understood what i had to change, and improved my feedback sessions with my colleagues. i felt relief and appreciation of the necessary change i had made. (p – giving feedback within a staff) for example, some of the teachers were happy to see that their research project directly contributed towards a solution, even if only a partial one, to a problem they had been suffering from for a while. in addition, the fact that other teachers may enjoy their research was perceived as extremely meaningful. this research project helped me achieve deep comprehension of a problem i had encountered professionally and did not have the tools to solve or even understand properly. i learned how to turn the idea of change into a more pleasant and less threatening experience… its importance is more than just as a course paper, but with the usefulness the study may bring to readers in general and teachers particularly regarding dealing with changes more effectively. allow other teachers to learn more about the process of accepting changes in methodology. (l – teachers’ perceptions regarding changes in teaching methodology) many teachers were favorably surprised by the relevance of the professional literature they had read during the research process, both for their study and for the role of teacher education in introducing action research into the education system: a case study of an education college 7 their work in the field. they discovered how important these reading were, and were very grateful to the lecturers for leading them in this direction. “i believe in what the literature says. sometimes i felt it was very irrational, but then surprisingly many things the literature offered were actually quite helpful” (r dealing with classroom management issues). an important issue mentioned was the support of the school establishment. the few teachers who asked for and received this felt it was very important, both practically and motivationally. the principal was a full partner and allotted resources for the research, and the educational counselor who was an integral part of the educational staff often gave her opinion regarding important issues which contributed to the action research process. without this cooperation it’s hard to conduct a study in school. without the cooperation of the leading elements in school you cannot teach, do research and make a difference. (l – mainstreaming in the arab sector) in one of the courses the teachers presented their studies to the group, sharing the knowledge they had gained during the process. these presentations, which were often accompanied by many fears and close guidance by the lecturer, brought about feelings of satisfaction, growth and pride. presenting my action research today makes me feel proud, as i am realizing my potential. i am actually doing this. it is not only my student who has developed as a self-directed learner, i did too, and maybe the audience as well! (n – student guidance) a, who studied english teachers’ perceptions of vocabulary teaching, related to the importance of publication and dissemination of the research findings. in my opinion, many teachers would be happy to discover which techniques are useful and efficient in teaching vocabulary. these findings can help me as an english teacher, and maybe others as well. if i can share my insights following the research… l, a teacher counselor, studied teachers’ perceptions regarding changes in teaching methods. she also felt that there is a need for dissemination of knowledge gained through her action research project. “…the importance of this study is not only as a course paper, but in its usefulness to readers in general who wish to know more about the process of accepting changes in the education system…” quite noticeably, in their reflective writing the teachers discussed the study they had conducted as ‘an appetizer’ for continued learning and researching in different frameworks. “the process i have undergone while conducting my research has shown me that in case further learning problems arise i can always research them and find remedies accordingly” (n improving students’ reading skills). discussion over the past two decades the professional literature has engaged in intensive discussion of teachers researching their own work, particularly emphasizing the contribution of this type of research to the teachers themselves, the educational field, and educational research in general. teachers researching their own work widen their knowledge of education and develop both personally and professionally (hans-vaughn & yanowitz, 2009; zeichner & klehr, 1999). the educational field benefits from the fact that teachers become more professional and their work is based on self-study and action research rather than on intuition alone (delong, 2004); and educational research benefits from the unique knowledge created by teacher-conducted research (clark & erickson, 2006), perceived today as necessary for the integration between academia and the educational field (mertler, 2006; mertler & charles, 2005; postholm, 2008). the present study describes a case in which a teacher education college took upon itself the role of encouraging the use of action research in the education system by intentional use of it as the main course assignment in three courses for practicing teachers at different stages of their professional careers. analysis of the reflective texts written by the participants while conducting action research and after the completion of the process shows that they gained much from the research process, but also encountered quite a few difficulties and problems. it is important to note at this point that the data analysis of the texts used for the present study can be read as leading in several different directions. we have chosen to follow it in the direction of discussing the role of the teacher education college as leader of the ‘teacher as researcher’ notion, through deliberate action in both preservice and in-service teacher education. choosing which theme to follow of all the themes emerging from the texts during the data analysis process is described by givton (2001) as a choice to be made during the research process rather than prior to it, as is the practice in quantitative research. according to the findings of the present study action research does, indeed, contribute to the teachers themselves, the educational field, and educational research in general. as can be seen in the findings section, the participants reported new insights they had come to as a result of doing action research, at both the personal and the professional level. for example, s, who researched improvement of interpersonal communication, says: “this intervention brought about only good things, mostly a tool for the planning of behavior modification, which benefitted teachers, pupils and parents. this tool was so successful that other teachers adopted it as well.” these findings match those described in the literature regarding the collaborative discourse taking place among the teachers who share amongst themselves insights and practical ideas regarding problems they face on a daily basis, but do not base this discourse on current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 theoretical knowledge (postholm, 2008). most teachers in the present study reported feelings of personal and professional satisfaction and success, as well as expressing hope that they will be given an opportunity to continue conducting research while engaging in educational practice. this is echoed in l’s words: “this research project helped me achieve deep comprehension of a problem i had encountered professionally…it may allow other teachers to learn more about the process of accepting changes in methodology…” these findings are also supported by the relevant literature (e.g. zeichner & klehr, 1999). another very important point emphasized by the participants was the enormous amount of help they received from the course lecturers, without which they could not have completed the action research project successfully. this is clearly echoed in several of the quotes presented in the findings section. however, despite the general agreement that teacher research has much to contribute to all concerned, it has not become prevalent in the educational field, and teachers who attempt to engage in it face serious difficulties. they are unskilled and untrained in conducting research; they are often faced with opposition to change and an unwillingness to admit the existence of problems; and the educational establishment does not allot sufficient resources (time and money) for this purpose, as it believes that teachers should teach rather than do research (alpert, 2006; ary et al., 2009). as m, who studied teacher feedback, said: the more i related to the writings [literature review], the more frustrated i became. this frustration was due to lack of time. i began to carry out the action research, and the teachers were under pressure to teach the material, meet standards, prepare for national exams, etc. thus, the conditions allowed me to carry out only a minimal plan. the present study describes an attempt to change this less than desirable situation by positioning the teacher education college in an active role of initiating and encouraging an educational change. as somekh and zeichner discuss in their article from 2009, university-led reform movement is a recognized ‘variation’ within the field of educational action research, and the action the teacher education college took, described in this article, positions it as part of this ‘variation’. higher education institutions turning in this direction see their role not only as teaching and conducting research, but also as having a social role and leading change in society in general and in the education system specifically. in order to realize its active role, the college used action research as the course assignment in several courses catering to teachers at different stages of their professional careers, with the hope of making action research part of the regular ‘tool box’ of all experienced teachers. in light of the study’s findings we feel this direction of positioning teacher education colleges as supporters of educational action research should be strengthened. teachers work in a demanding environment, within a complex, vague, dilemma-filled situation, in which they come up against practical problems, considerations and questions, and are expected to make decisions on a daily basis (calderhead, 1995). the regular in-service courses the system provides are perceived as keeping the teachers updated regarding news and innovations and providing practical ‘tips’ given by experts. in order for the teachers to integrate research into their work, a fundamental change needs to take place in their learning culture related to the character of the research process – a move towards a culture of systematic, structured, on-going, process-based learning, not necessarily a linear one (zeichner, 2007). the teachers who participated in the present study described coming up against many difficulties in their effort to integrate the study and all it entailed within the school environment, mainly due to the fact that it was so unusual within school culture. lack of support from peers and principals also hindered their progress as novice researchers. we feel conducting research should become part of the teachers’ learning culture, beginning with preservice teacher education and throughout their professional careers. this does not mean more courses need to be added. it is possible to use existing courses and designate action research studies as their main course evaluation projects. teachers who have acquired research skills and gained experience in conducting research during the teacher education process will bring their positive stance regarding the theoretical literature to their work, will be equipped with the necessary knowledge to conduct a study, and will have fewer fears, thus being in a better position to implement their research abilities. conducting a study will no longer be a college or university one-off episode, and they will be able to become a leading force in this regard in their schools, together with teachers who have graduate school experience, including doing research. the participants of the present study reported that having done research, they did, indeed, see themselves as leading additional studies in their schools. as n put it, “the process i have undergone while conducting my research has shown me that in case further learning problems arise i can always research them and find remedies accordingly.” this finding strengthens the claim that teachers who experience this are often interested in continuing to integrate research into their work in the future. postholm (2009), who led research processes in a norwegian school in his position as an academic in a similar manner to the present study, describes how the teachers in the school expressed a wish to continue conducting research after he had left. his conclusion was: "…teachers can the role of teacher education in introducing action research into the education system: a case study of an education college 9 develop a research stance, meaning a disposition to examine one`s practice critically and systematically" (postholm, 2009, p. 563). thus, teachers will become change agents in their own schools, bringing in the idea of action research and leading groups of teachers wishing to try out this ‘new’ idea. today, the most common model in using action research in organizations (both in business and in education) is that of external researchers from academia, called ‘outside agents’ (coghlan, 2004). these academics come to the field, guide the school staff in the research process, and lead the change as external researchers (dickson & green, 2001). in the present study we present an alternative model, one in which the active change agents in the schools are the teachers themselves, i.e. selected staff members act as ‘insider action researchers’ (coghlan & brannick, 2005, p. 61). they receive their training as researchers in academia and lead the research in the organization while being supervised themselves by academics. they become ‘practitioner-scholars’, influencing the construction of knowledge in the organization over time (sarah & haslet, 2007). our recommendation is that the emphasis in the school be gradually shifted from external experts to internal ones from amongst the school staff, which lieberman and pointer-mace (2009) call ‘accomplished teachers’ acting within professional learning communities. these are teachers who possess the ability to study practice seriously, comprehend its complexity and the meaning of exposing the product of their learning to others, and mobilize colleagues towards collaborative inquiry and learning activities. this is precisely the place of the teacher education college, whose role it is to assist the teachers in the field move from the role of practitioners who implement the knowledge they had learned from academics to that of practitioner-scholars who help bridge the gap between theory and practice, exactly as action research does, as its name clearly implies. the college can and should make teachers acquainted with research as it is reflected in action research which is considered ‘teacherfriendly’, guiding and supporting them stage by stage as they conduct their first study. at the end of the process, assuming it is as positive as it was for the participants of the present study, the college should not leave things as they are, but rather discuss with the teachers how they can pass on the knowledge they had gained regarding research to their colleagues in school, thus becoming change agents in the area of teacher research. in order for the knowledge constructed following the studies to be able to do more than remain between the four walls of the school, become exposed to critical discussion and benefit a wider community, different frameworks of meetings, conferences and study days need to be established, allowing an educational-research dialogue to take place, side by side with publication in hard copy and online journals which teachers are exposed to (zeichner, 2007). in addition to the professional benefit these studies will bring, each in its own domain, teachers will thus be exposed to their colleagues who have successfully conducted research, and gain the confidence necessary to also engage in the research process. the findings section above demonstrates that the participants in the present study clearly stated their wish to do so as well as their great satisfaction with the publicizing of the study, even if only within the academic course community. the teacher education college needs to lead this process of knowledge publication, as the teacher educators in the college are routinely engaged in academic publication (smith, 2005) and are skilled at it, while school teachers do not generally publish the knowledge they had accumulated. the recognition that this knowledge is worthy of publication and dissemination amongst the academic and professional community is one of the topics the college must promote, mostly through active practical action – setting up study days for teachers and academics together where both present their research, and initiating suitable publication outlets such as journals, collections of articles in book form, etc. this movement from the personal to the public is a necessary one, if we expect action research to be taken seriously by both the academic community and the political establishment (zeichner, 2007). while we feel very strongly about the premise presented in this article – that teacher education colleges should take an active role in changing the educational landscape through initiating and encouraging practicing teachers to conduct action research projects regarding their own work, we recognize that the evidence presented in the present study only partially supports this premise. we have shown earlier in the discussion section how the teachers’ words have led us in this direction, at times directly and at times in a roundabout manner. a follow-up study might investigate this issue from the college’s point of view, interviewing college staff in an attempt to understand their point of view in this matter. another possibility for a follow-up study would be to examine the school’s point of view, attempting to discover how principals and other school personnel view the possibility of making action research a meaningful part of the education system. conclusion inviting and encouraging teachers to conduct studies regarding their own work as part of their ongoing professional development is a topic which has become central in educational academic discussions, and somewhat more slowly in the education system itself. the recognition that teacher research assists teachers in changing from passive consumers of theory created by others into professionals creating complex, varied and current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 10 dynamic knowledge of their own, integrating theory and practice, is becoming more and more acceptable by academics and at a much slower pace by teachers themselves. the study described in this article demonstrates how action taken by a teacher education college may contribute towards change in the education system. by bridging the gap between theory and practice the colleges may make a meaningful contribution to the education system instead of remaining in the academic ivory tower. references alpert, b. 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(2012). the role of teacher education in introducing action research into the education system: a case study of an education college. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from: http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/897 author notes dr. orly sela oranim academic college of education, israel 9 nurit st., metulla, 10292, israel orlysela@oranim.ac.il a lecturer and teacher educator at an academic teacher education college. head of the practical final paper division of the med program and head of the promotion of excellence in teaching unit. received her phd from haifa university. research interests include action research, tefl and online teaching and learning. dr. miriam (miri) harel oranim academic college of education, israel 19 sold st., kiryat bialik, 2738, israel miriharel100@gmail.com a lecturer at the faculty of education and the med program, and a pedagogical advisor in an academic teacher education college. received a phd degree from the school of education at the hebrew university in jerusalem. research interests include teachers’ knowledge, teacher as researcher, professional ethics and novice teachers. manuscript received: 01/10/2012 revisions received: 04/03/2012 accepted: 6/05/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 14 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1240_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 3 december 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? yi-lee wong chinese university of hong kong this paper seeks to address why in-grade retention rates are so high in macao by examining the operation of its education system. to this end, i shall draw on data from a qualitative research project on educational inequality in macao, referring specifically to criteria for in-grade retention set by different schools, the related practices of schools and teachers, and the schooling experiences of students. this examination leads me to argue that in-grade retention rates of macao are so high mainly because its education system is a system of private schools without effective state governance. this argument, then, urges us to rethink the belief that a privatized schooling system allows competition between schools and thus provides more parental choices; therefore it is efficient and effective in providing quality education. the case of macao suggests that competition does not necessarily guarantee more school choices for parents or the provision of quality education. keywords: education system, in-grade retention, macao, private schools, quality of education, school regulations in-grade retention rates of macao are one of the highest among organisations for economic co-operation and development (oecd) countries: the percentages of repeaters at primary and secondary levels are 6% and 12% respectively for the year of 2009 (unesco, 2011). these figures echo macao official statistics: table 1 shows that over the last decade, in-grade retention rates at primary level have been consistently above 5%, ranging from the lowest 5.2% in 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 to the highest 7.3% in 1999-2000; in-grade retention rates at junior secondary level have been roughly around 15%, ranging from the lowest 13.8% in 2009-2010 to the highest 16.7% in 2001-2002; and, in-grade retention rates at senior secondary level are on average about 7%, ranging from the lowest 5.9% in 2003-2004 and 20092010 to the highest 8.2% in 2000-2001. the accumulative effects of such high in-grade retention rates at different levels are that over 40% of 15-year-olds in macao participating in the programme for international student assessment (pisa) 2009 have been retained and about 15% of them have repeated more than once (oecd, 2010), and that about 76% of senior-secondary-form-three students (students doing the final year of three-year senior secondary education in macao) of a local secondary school are found to have been retained (yuen, 2012). in short, in-grade retention is a rather common experience for students in macao. then, why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? and, what can we learn from the case of macao? this paper seeks to address the issue of why ingrade retention rates are so high in macao from a sociological perspective: situating this inquiry against a post-colonial period of macao, i shall examine the operation of the education system in order to identify structural reasons for such high rates of in-grade retention. to this end, data of a qualitative research project will be used for illustration. in what follows, i shall first provide a brief account of the history of education in macao so as to enable readers to have a better grasp of the context against which this inquiry is situated. i shall, then, discuss the design of the qualitative research project and some of its data used to address the current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 2 table 1 in-grade retention rates in macao, 1999-2010 (%) academic year 1999/ 2000 2000/ 2001 2001/ 2002 2002/ 2003 2003/ 2004 2004/ 2005 2005/ 2006 2006/ 2007 2007/ 2008 2008/ 2009 2009/ 2010 primary level 7.3 6.9 7.0 5.9 5.7 5.5 5.5 5.6 5.9 5.2 5.2 junior secondary level 15.6 16.3 16.7 15.7 14.7 14.9 15.3 15.6 15.4 13.9 13.8 senior secondary level 7.6 8.2 8.1 7.4 5.9 6.5 7.0 7.3 7.1 6.6 5.9 source: chan (2010; table 4.10, p. 230) issue here. and i shall go on to discuss the operation of the macao education system by referring to some specific data: the criteria for retention set by different schools, the relation between such criteria and the practices of teachers and schools, and the schooling experiences of students. i shall argue that in-grade retention rates are so high in macao largely because its education system is a system of private schools without effective state governance. against this context, schools and teachers are encouraged to retain students for non-academic reasons in general and for administrative reasons in particular; this thus boosts up in-grade retention rates in macao. and finally, i shall conclude this paper by using the case of macao to urge us educators to rethink the following belief: a privatized schooling system allows competition between schools and thus provides more choices for parents and their children; therefore, such system is efficient and effective in providing quality education. education in macao: colonial legacy basically, the education system in macao is a system of private schools. there are 75 schools in total in macao; all except 11 are private schools and the share of students in private schools is over 95% (the website of macao dsej). the fact that most students are studying in private schools could be seen as a colonial legacy: the colonial neglect of education for the local chinese by the portuguese. macao was a portuguese colony but was returned to the people’s republic of china (prc) in 1999. true, during the colonial rule there were government schools in macao; but, they were meant to provide education for the children of the portuguese in macao. at the time, the provision of basic education for the chinese in macao essentially fell on the shoulders of the civil society; private schools for chinese students were funded and managed by a variety of organizations: individuals, religious institutions, trading associations, and civil organizations (such as neighborhood associations, lineage associations, or the federation of labour union) (clayton, 2009). during the colonial period, basic education for the chinese in macao was not free or compulsory but was provided by private schools, run by different organizations. private schools had to rely on donation and school fees for survival. because of their different missions and political orientations, two major types of schools could be distinguished: religious schools and nonreligious schools. religious schools were basically run by the catholic church, although there were one or two schools run by the christian church or the buddhist organization; their missions were to spread a particular religious belief in macao through education. schools in the non-religious sector were basically organized by individuals, trading organizations, and various kinds of civil organizations. before 1966, this sector of schools could be seen as a battleground for the prc and the kuomintang (kmt) to compete for their political influence in macao through education. after 1966, schools run by kmt-related organizations withdrew from macao; from then on, schools of the non-religious sector were organized by so-called traditional organizations and they were basically pro-prc. in addition to their different missions, the management of private schools and their quality of education varied tremendously. there was simply no coordination among different schools or educational institutions in macao; the education system was rather chaotic. as shown in table 2, there were four educational models in macao during the colonial period, each consisting of primary and secondary education with various differentiations of different numbers of years: a modified portugal model (4+2+3+2+1), a modified prc model (6+5), a modified taiwanese model (6+3+3), and a modified hong kong model (6+5+1). as a consequence, schools of the education system did not follow any common standards nearly in every aspect, from administration – like school calendar (including school holidays), criteria for retention and its consequences, and policies of teacher hiring (e.g. the entrance requirement of teachers) and student recruitment – to educational practices – like educational model, curriculum, and assessment. ironically, not until the preparation for the 1999 why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 3 table 2 different educational models in macao before the 1999 handover model description a modified portugal model (with reference to the portugal model in the 1980s) 4 years of primary education + 2 years of preparatory secondary education 3 years of junior education 2 years of senior education + 1 year of matriculation a modified prc model 6 years of primary education 5 years of secondary education a modified taiwanese model 6 years of primary education 3 years of junior education 3 years of senior education a modified hong kong model 6 years of primary education 5 years of secondary education 1 year of matriculation handover, the colonial portuguese government did not make any effort to provide education for the chinese. basic education finally became freely available right before the 1999 handover: the act of seven-year free and compulsory education (decree no. 29/95/m) and the act of ten-year free and compulsory education (decree no. 34/97/m) became effective in 1995 and 1997 respectively. since the 1999 handover, basic education has become more and more institutionalized in macao. since then, the macao special administrative region (sar) government has invested a great deal of resources in education, such as giving subsidies, of various types, to private schools so as to provide school-aged students with a better basic education, and also has made attempts to govern and standardize the practices of private schools. at present every student in macao is entitled to a fifteenyear free and compulsory basic education. however, the basic laws guarantee private schools in macao the freedom of running themselves in their own style; consequently, the attempts of the macao sar government to change the old practices or to standardize some diverse practices have been resisted against by schools in the name of defending such freedom. true, with some progress, instead of having a multi-track system of schools (e.g. bray, 1992), as summarized in table 2, the educational model of all schools in macao has been standardized since 2006 to become a system of six-year primary education, threeyear junior secondary education, and three-year senior secondary education (6+3+3). however, this move does not change the fact that the majority of schools in macao are private schools and that their right to design their own curriculum and assessment is guaranteed by the basic laws. up until now, there are still no standardized curriculum and common/public examinations in macao. schools in macao could still follow a prc or taiwanese or hong kong curriculum using corresponding textbooks and have students sit their own school examinations at the end of six-year secondary education. put simply, despite investing a lot in education, the macao sar government still could not effectively monitor and/or assess the quality of education provided by different schools. research design and data: a qualitative research project in order to address the issue of why in-grade retention rates are so high in macao, i shall draw on data from a qualitative research project on educational inequality in macao that i have been conducting since 2009. in addition, i shall also supplement the data with some clippings from a major local newspaper and my personal communications with teachers (while teaching the courses ‘sociology of education’ and ‘youth culture’ of an educational program for in-service teachers in macao) so as to provide readers with a view of opinions from different stakeholders on the issue. the qualitative research project consists of three parts: school regulations, secondary-school students, and teachers. the first part is to collect school regulations and carry out content analysis so as to examine the qualities that schools intend to cultivate in students and investigate the roles of school regulations in the operation of the education system in macao. school regulations of all 75 day schools in macao are collected (consisting of 64 primary schools and 43 secondary schools and 9 evening schools). the number of schools is calculated by referring to the number of licenses for running school; even with one license, schools could run separate sections of primary and secondary education and also “recurrent education” (see below). the second part of the qualitative research project is to recruit senior-secondary-form-three students and conduct interviews with them individually so as to examine school effects on their schooling experiences and investigate how they make choices for higher education. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 4 table 3 composition of the student sample of the qualitative research project school number of students top-ranking secondary school 19 middle-ranking secondary school 13 low-ranking secondary school 16 evening school 18 (6 in junior secondary form three) total 66 in recruiting secondary-school students, i first selected three day schools (out of 43) according to their ranking – each from top-ranking, middle-ranking, and low-ranking schools – and an evening school (out of 9). in macao, nearly all secondary schools are day schools that are designed for students of the relevant age group; in contrast, evening schools are designed to provide a basic education for students of any age who have missed an opportunity for education but would like to return to education – i.e. called “recurrent education” in macao. after selecting the schools, using quota sampling, i aimed to recruit 15 senior-secondary-form-three students from each school. finally, 66 students in total were recruited (only 6 of them were junior-secondary-form-three students): 48 senior-secondary-form-three students from the three day schools (19 students from the top-ranking school, 13 from the middle-ranking one, and 16 from the low-ranking one), and 18 students from the evening school (12 of them from senior secondary form three and 6 from junior secondary form three), as summarized in table 3. interviews were conducted between july 2010 and december 2011. in each interview, the 66 students were asked to talk about their schooling experiences and relationships with classmates and teachers, their relationships with parents and parental support received, their educational aspirations and educational plans, and their views on the macao education system and social competition in macao. the third part of the qualitative research project is to recruit teachers and conduct focus-group interviews with them so as to examine how they view the regulation of teachers and students by schools in general and school regulations related to in-grade retention in particular. four types of schools are distinguished according to the similarity of school regulations, as summarized in table 4. to repeat, schools run by traditional organizations (i.e. trading organizations and civil organizations) are proprc; they make it explicit that the teaching of patriotism is their educational mission. schools organized by the catholic church make it clear that their educational mission is to transmit the teaching of catholicism. the educational mission of government schools could somehow be seen as colonial legacy: it is in line with the stance of the former portuguese government. the educational missions of other schools (e.g. schools organized by the christian church, 1 buddhist school, and 1 international school) are set by their respective funding organizations. it is certainly important to investigate how the respective educational missions of the four types of schools influence the design of school regulations but this is not the main focus of this paper; the point here is that the school regulations of the same type of schools are similar in many aspects. using quota sampling, i sought to recruit 5 teachers from each type of school for focusgroup interviews. however, given the small number of government schools, as shown in table 4, it was very difficult to recruit teachers teaching in government schools. in the end, only 13 teachers were recruited but none of them were from government schools: table 4 reports that 5 teachers are from schools run by traditional organizations, 4 from schools organized by the catholic church, and 4 from other schools. two taped focusgroup interviews were arranged for teachers from schools of the same type so that they could share and discuss their views on in-grade retention and their practices related to retention at school. in total, six focus-group interviews with teachers from the three types of schools were conducted between march and june 2013. this qualitative research project is designed to examine a number of issues related to processes underlying educational inequality in macao rather than investigating the issue of in-grade retention only. for the present purposes, i shall focus on examining criteria for in-grade retention set by different schools, and refer to the relevant practices of schools and teachers and the related schooling experiences of students to substantiate my argument. before moving on to our discussion, i shall first take a brief look at how in-grade retention is generally viewed in macao. in-grade retention in macao the issue of high in-grade retention rates has been hotly discussed in macao: while some local teachers sought to defend the practice of in-grade retention, others attempted to criticize it (e.g. several clippings from macao daily, 2009-2012). but, serious examinations or debates over the issue are rare in macao. nevertheless, two viewpoints could be derived from such general discussion. first, in-grade retention is viewed as a common practice of some use. the logic behind is rather circular: in-grade retention has been practiced for a long why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 5 table 4 four types of schools in macao and composition of the teacher sample of the qualitative research project school type number of primary schools number of secondary schools number of teachers recruited schools organized by traditional organizations 23 15 5 schools organized by the catholic church 23 16 4 government schools 5 3 0 other schools 13 9 4 total 64 43 13 time, so it must be of some use; otherwise it would not have been practiced for so long. second, in-grade retention is viewed as a useful practice that allows students to repeat a grade they have not adequately mastered and thus helps them to strengthen their academic foundation. the reason is that with a weak academic foundation, students will find it hard to keep up later on even if they get promoted to the following grade; so, it is better to retain them sooner than later. in short, the practice of in-grade retention is seen as a means for quality assurance of education. in fact, many teachers and students of this qualitative research project also share these two viewpoints; the following quotations are two examples. in-grade retention is practiced for students’ benefits; this practice makes sure that students are up to the standards. otherwise, macao would have been like hong kong, where all students automatically get promoted grade by grade. (male teacher) we’ve practiced retention in macao for a very long time. there must be some uses; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been practiced for so long. … i think, this practice is good for students. for example, if students fail to live up to the standards of secondary form one, why should they get promoted to secondary form two when their foundation is so weak? can they handle it even if they get promoted? so, we’re doing this in students’ interests. (female teacher) in short, the general public in macao, especially many local teachers, as will be further discussed below, do not question but support the practice of in-grade retention; many even believe that the practice is synonymous with quality assurance of education. but, academically speaking, do macao students really perform much better than their counterparts in other regions/countries? their performances at the pisa do not seem to support this view. true, as summarized in table 5, the average scores of 15-year-olds at the pisa-macao in mathematics and science in 2003, 2006, and 2009 are all slightly higher than the international averages. but they do not seem to perform exceptionally well; besides, their average score in reading at the pisa 2009 is only 487, even lower than the international average. in other words, with the practice of in-grade retention, macao students do not seem to be doing extraordinarily well. regardless of students’ academic performances, such prevalent positive attitude towards in-grade retention is, however, not sufficient for explaining such high rates of in-grade retention in macao. let us now turn to the operation of the macao education system. a system of private schools to repeat, even after the 1999 handover, when basic education has become free and compulsory, the education system in macao remains a system of private schools without much centralized state governance. what this means is that despite getting subsidies from the government, schools could still set their own criteria for retention. so, perhaps unsurprisingly, although there are only 75 schools in total in macao, more than 100 systems of retention could be distinguished (opinions of parents in macao, 2011), meaning that criteria for retention differ not only between schools but also between different sections – primary education, secondary education, and “recurrent education” – of the same school. table 6 provides several examples of some major criteria for retention adopted by 43 secondary schools. in deciding whether to retain a student, secondary schools differ in at least three aspects: first, whether to take into count students’ conduct grade; second, setting their own academic standards (including setting different passing marks and deciding whether to differentiate core and periphery subjects or give extra weightings to the core subjects); and third, having their own specific concerns (such as setting the maximum number of subjects or weighting units students could fail without being retained and the maximum number of retention allowed). let us discuss in turn how each of these three criteria could play a role in contributing to such high rates of in-grade retention. conduct to reiterate, the practice of in-grade retention is generally supported because it is believed to strengthen students’ academic foundation. despite such concern, some criteria for retention set by 10 (out of 43) secondary current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 6 table 5 performances of 15-year-olds at pisa-macao subject pisa 2003 pisa 2006 pisa 2009 average score of macao international average score average score of macao international average score average score of macao international average score reading 498 494 492 492 487 493 mathematics 527 500 525 498 525 496 science 525 500 511 500 511 501 source: chan (2010; table 4.13, p. 232) table 6 examples of criteria for in-grade retention used by 43 secondary schools criterion for in-grade retention remarks conduct poor conduct (e.g. below grade b or c) could lead to in-grade retention in 10 schools. academic standards 1. passing marks 2. weighting schools set different passing marks, ranging from 40 to 60 out of 100 marks. all except 8 schools differentiate core subjects from the others or give more weighting to core subjects (e.g. core subjects are usually weighed with a greater number of units). chinese, english, mathematics are usually three core subjects or subjects with double weightings. specific concerns 1. the maximum number of units/subjects students could fail without being retained 2. maximum number of retention allowed this number ranges from one unit of a core subject to six peripheral subjects. 7 schools require students to repeat a grade if they fail the same subject in two consecutive years. all except 7 schools do not set the maximum number of retention. 6 schools allow students to get retained only once; when asked to be retained for the second time (not necessarily in the following year), students should quit the school. about half of the schools ask students to quit the school when the students are to repeat the same grade again in a consecutive year. schools are, however, irrelevant to academic performance but are about students’ conduct. for example, table 6 shows that in 10 secondary schools, students will be retained if their conduct grade is below grade b or c. there are no elaborations on how students’ conduct is evaluated and thus graded, and there are also no descriptions about what each conduct grade represents. what is puzzling is how in-grade retention could improve a student’s conduct. regardless, what is at issue is what constitutes a so-called well-behaved student from the perspective of schools and teachers. we could probably get some ideas about this issue by taking a brief look at school regulations concerning students’ behavior in classroom. to repeat, four types of schools are distinguished according to the similarity of their school regulations. table 7 lists a sample of school regulations from the four types of schools. it is not my intention here to analyze the qualities of students that are to be cultivated by dissimilar regulations designed by the four types of schools. why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 7 table 7 examples of school regulations from four types of schools in macao school type school regulations about students’ behaviour in classroom government schools respect and obey teachers be attentive and obey classroom rules in classes and submit assignments on time keep the same seat after being assigned by the form teacher schools run by traditional organizations be quiet in classes, respect teachers, work hard get into classroom immediately after the recess and wait quietly for the next class queue up quickly, quietly, and orderly to get off school schools organized by the catholic church respect and obey sisters and teaching staff no sleeping and talking in classes be attentive, polite, self-discipline, and cooperative in classes other schools be cooperative in classes should not read other books or assignments in classes should not disturb the class table 8 responses to questions on lessons: ‘how often do these things happen in your [test language] lessons?’ pisa 2009 – a comparison of macao and oecd average question response macao (%) oecd average (%) there is noise and disorder. never or hardly ever some lessons most lessons all lessons missing 24.23 61.09 11.66 2.53 0.49 20.48 47.25 22.23 8.97 1.06 the teacher has to wait a long time for students to quieten down. never or hardly ever some lessons most lessons all lessons missing 26.93 56.34 13.01 3.2 0.52 28.53 42.58 19.68 8.02 1.19 students do not start working for a long time after the lesson begins. never or hardly ever some lessons most lessons all lessons missing 23.51 55.61 16.12 4.24 0.52 32.53 41.38 17.62 7.52 1.13 nevertheless, table 7 seems to suggest that what qualities constitute a well-behaved student in most schools in macao are compliance and obedience, which are seen as crucial to making a disciplined classroom. indeed, many teachers of this qualitative research project also expressed that they made a lot of effort to exert strong control over their classrooms. this finding is actually consistent with what is reported for macao in pisa (2009) concerning students’ perception of classroom after such strong control is exerted over students. table 8 reports a comparison of the percentages of students in macao selecting each of the four responses to questions concerning their classroom with the corresponding averages of the valid percentages of students in oecd countries participated in pisa. compared with other oecd countries, greater proportions of macao students choose the options of ‘never or hardly ever’ and ‘some lessons’ to such questions as ‘there is noise and disorder,’ ‘the teacher has to wait a long time for students to quieten down,’ and ‘students do not start working for a long time after the lesson begins.’ such responses indicate that classroom seems more controlled and disciplined in macao than in many oecd countries. regardless of the genuine intention behind cultivating such qualities in students, how to define compliance and obedience could be rather subjective, if current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 8 table 9 responses to questions on teachers: ‘how much do you disagree or agree with each of the following statements about teachers at your school?’ pisa (2009) – a comparison of macao and oecd average question response macao (%) oecd average (%) i get along well with most teachers. strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree missing 2.45 14.11 69.43 13.78 0.22 3.71 11.49 59.55 24.38 0.87 most teachers are interested in my wellbeing. strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree missing 4.28 31.61 56.46 7.34 0.30 6.83 26.30 54.12 11.49 1.27 most of my teachers really listen to what i have to say. strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree missing 7.93 38.39 48.21 4.96 0.52 6.20 26.28 55.51 10.79 1.22 most of my teachers treat me fairly. strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree missing 7.58 21.48 61.74 8.85 0.36 5.12 15.87 61.35 16.39 1.27 not downright arbitrary. yet, despite such ambiguity in defining compliance and obedience, operationally speaking, by compliance and obedience many schools actually mean that students should not challenge the authority of teachers. as such, this could leave room for teachers’ abuse in enforcing such subjective or arbitrary school regulations (e.g. willis, 1981; bourdieu, 1984; aronowitz & giroux, 1985). indeed, the schooling experiences and observations of some students of this qualitative research project confirmed that this was the case; as were implied in the following quotations, teachers had absolute power to decide which students were misbehaved and thus should be graded poorly in conduct. i don’t understand what’s wrong with boys having long hair? actually my hair wasn’t long; my hair just touched the collar of my shirt. but a teacher insisted that i didn’t look like a decent boy, and threatened to give me a demerit if i didn’t have my hair cut. … when i asked the teacher to explain why i had violated school regulations, she didn’t explain; she just said that i shouldn’t have talked back. … and that was why i got retained for the first time – because of my poor conduct. (male eveningschool student) i’m so scared of teachers. … you just don’t know when they’d give you a hard time. … i remember an instance: a student was warned by a teacher that his hair was too long and should have it cut; otherwise the student would get a demerit. … the following day, that student had all his hair cut – a skin-head like style. but he still got a demerit. the teacher said that although he didn’t violate the school regulation concerning hair length, his action itself was a challenge to teacher’s authority. … so, you see, teachers are the law – they decide what should be punished even if there is no such regulation in black and white. (female middle-ranking day-school student) that is, some students of this qualitative research project consider that some teachers are coercive imposing their subjective judgments on them and some even do not treat them fairly. such views of teachers are consistent with some findings of pisa (2009) for macao with regard to students’ perception of teachers. table 9 reports that when compared with their counterparts in other oecd countries, a higher percentage of students in macao strongly disagree or disagree that ‘i get along well with most teachers’ (16.56% vs oecd 15.20%), that ‘most teachers are interested in my well-being’ (35.89% vs oecd 33.13%), that ‘most of my teachers really listen to what i have to say’ (46.32% vs oecd 32.48%), and that ‘most of my teachers treat me fairly’ (29.06% vs oecd 20.99%). the discrepancy between macao and oecd average is particularly great with regard to the proportion why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 9 of students consider that their teachers are not really listening to them and that their teachers are not fair in treating them. in other words, students in macao seem less likely than their counterparts in many oecd countries to see their teachers as someone who cares about them and are therefore more distanced to their teachers. in short, it is unclear why some schools take conduct into account when considering whether to retain a student; and, it is also unclear how in-grade retention could improve a student’s conduct. but, in the existing education system in macao, without effective state governance, schools are not required to provide rationales for such practice. what is crystal clear is that such criterion for retention is a punitive threat that puts students’ future at the mercy of teachers; this, then, leaves much room for teachers’ coercive control of students (raby, 2012). this finding also lends support to the view that schools are an oppressive institution (holt, 1969; giroux, 1981). i argue that taking conduct into account in deciding whether to retain a student could leave much room for teachers’ discretion, thus manipulation, in grading students’ conduct, and hence would somehow contribute to high rates of in-grade retention in macao. academic standards to reiterate, the practice of in-grade retention is widely seen as a synonym of the quality assurance of education in macao (leung, 2011). but, when there is no commonly agreed academic reference, it is unclear what academic standards that schools in macao seek to uphold through the practice of in-grade retention. given the colonial legacy and the freedom of schools to run themselves with their own style guaranteed by the basic laws, curriculum and assessment of different schools in macao are not standardized. besides, there are no common examinations or standardized assessments in evaluating and thus comparing the level of academic standards of students across schools. rather, each school arranges their own graduation examination for their senior-secondary-form-three students at the end of a sixyear secondary education. in addition, as summarized in table 6 above, each school sets their own passing mark and decides whether to differentiate between core and peripheral subjects giving more weighting to the former. furthermore, in many schools in macao usually the same teacher teaches the same subject to students of the same grade (personal communications with some local teachers), meaning that this teacher not only sets but also grades all assignments, tests, and examinations of students of the same grade. and, in operation, oftentimes the academic standards of the assessments, of all kinds, set by this teacher and the quality of this teacher’s grading are not subject to any professional review or evaluation. given all these practices, the academic performances of students are simply not comparable across schools. under the macao education system, it is rather difficult to make sense of the meanings attached to even the same passing mark set by different schools. a sense of arbitrariness is involved. needless to mention, it is next to impossible to compare the academic standards represented by different passing marks. in addition, some schools would retain students who fail even only one unit of a core subject (e.g. in some schools there are several units of the english language, including writing, reading, listening, and speaking), although it is not clear why students should demonstrate that they are equally capable of handling all aspects of the subject in order to get promoted to the next grade. and, the validity and reliability of assessments of each subject that are done by the same teacher without being subject to professional review are in serious doubt (lam, 2011). besides, the practice of having the same teacher teach the subject for all students of the same grade without being subject to professional review implies that teachers could grade students unprofessionally but would not necessarily be noticed. it is not unheard of that some teachers could abuse such practices so as to retain students they do not like, as a student recalls: you never know how teachers grade us. … for example, my classmate sitting next to me and i got the same answer in a test; but he got 3 marks and i got zero. and there is no way you can argue with teachers why this is the case. … i’m so scared about being picked on by teachers; so, i keep a record of all tests and examinations to check if the final scores are accurately calculated. … i remember, a classmate of mine was quite sure that she passed a subject (60 marks or above) but the final score in her report card was 59.4; and she had to be retained. this kind of thing indeed happens. (female middle-ranking day-school student) put simply, without effective mechanisms for assuring academic standards within each school, and without any common standards serving as a professional reference to evaluate all schools in macao, we cannot be sure of what sort of academic standards each school seeks to uphold; there are simply no objective standards, however defined, in deciding whether students are not up to the academic standards and deserve retention in macao. consequently, although many local teachers consider ingrade retention to be a necessary mechanism for upholding decent academic standards, what actually constitutes such academic standards could involve a measure of arbitrariness: a student is judged to deserve retention in one school could well have got promoted in another school. i argue that this measure of arbitrariness would leave room for teachers to judge students’ academic performances unprofessionally and could current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 10 somehow contribute to such high rates of in-grade retention in macao. apart from the possibility of teachers’ abuse of some leeway in the education system to treat students unprofessionally, in-grade retention could also leave room for schools’ manipulation for administrative purposes. true, since the 1999 handover, the macao sar government has invested a lot in education, particularly giving a considerable amount of resources to schools in the form of subsidies, of various kinds. however, to repeat, this move does not change the very fact that most schools in macao remain private schools and their survival depends very much on student enrolments. schools are still required to compete for students, or more accurately their parents. academic reputation of schools is of utmost importance in such competition. but, without any common standardized examinations that could be used as a professional yardstick, on what basis could schools claim that their academic standards are higher and thus make themselves attractive to students and their parents? in-grade retention rates are then viewed as an important indicator of the academic standards of schools to students and their parents. many parents in macao, as well as the majority of students and teachers of this qualitative research project, believe that schools with high in-grade retention rates are upholding higher academic standards and are thus more competitive and desirable for their children (opinions of parents in macao, 2009). for instance, a male student of this qualitative research project, as with the female teacher quoted above, has a similar view on ingrade retention. i think in-grade retention is good for us. it makes sure that every student who gets promoted is up to the standards. … this practice could differentiate the capable and the industrious from the incapable and the lazy. (male middle-ranking day-school student) what is also suggested by this male student is that in-grade retention is viewed as a device for social selection: differentiating the capable from the incapable. such view is confirmed by the following male teacher: he makes it crystal clear that when there are no standardized examinations, some school principals actually use ingrade retention as a means of social selection and a device for boosting up the market reputation and visibility of their schools and thus for increasing student enrolments. most schools are private schools here and their survival depends on student enrolments. then, how could schools attract students, actually their parents? no one wants to admit it, but it’s an open secret that many school principals use in-grade retention as a device to get rid of socalled poor students. … some years ago, when a principal increased drastically the retention rate retaining a great number of students who would’ve been promoted in many other schools, the principal was severely criticized for sacrificing students’ futures for the sake of building up the school reputation. just a few years’ time, this school has become one of the top schools in macao that many parents desperately want to send their children there; now, who else still remember those severe criticisms? … many schools actually follow suit in the hope that they could boost up their school reputations. (male teacher) in addition, currently, nearly all schools join the so-called school-net whereby schools could get class subsidies from the macao sar government (decree no. 21/2010); the amount of the subsidies depends on class size: at present, the amounts of annual subsidies for every class of 35-45 students in junior secondary forms and in senior secondary forms are 730,000mop and 840,000mop (1us=8mop) respectively. it is not unheard of that some school-net schools would retain students purely because of their administrative concern about having at least 35 students in every class so as to get the class subsidies (personal communications with some local teachers, the following quotation is an example). in order to get the class subsidies, the principal has to make sure that there are at least 35 students in each class. but, such thing won’t happen naturally. sometimes, manipulation is required. … for example, when there are only 34 students in secondary form two in the coming year, the principal would manipulate the marks of the student who is ranked the last in existing secondary form two so that the student has to repeat a grade staying in secondary form two in the following year. (male teacher) without effective state governance on setting common academic standards as a professional reference, schools in macao could decide their own academic standards. and, it is apparent that many schools in macao do not rely on any reliable and valid yardsticks to assess the academic standards of students and decide whether they deserve to get retained. rather, in the name of upholding academic standards, some teachers could treat students unprofessionally and cover it up with the practice of in-grade retention, and some schools could manipulate in-grade retention for the sake of boosting their school reputation or getting subsidies from the government. either teachers or schools are using the practice of ingrade retention for their own purposes but at the expense of the students’ interests. i argue that without effective state governance, the practice of in-grade retention in macao is actually not meant for assuring the quality of education, and that the ways in which the practice of ingrade retention is implemented in macao could leave why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 11 much room for teachers’ unprofessional acts or schools’ manipulation; and, such unprofessional acts and manipulation would boost up in-grade retention rates. specific concerns even if we accept that in-grade retention is practiced for the sake of upholding academic standards, what remain puzzling are why some specific criteria for retention listed in table 6 above are set. some schools require students to be retained if the students fail the same subject in two consecutive years, and/or to quit school if they are to be retained for the second time. what schools in macao owe the public is an explanation for such practices (opinions of parents in macao, 2011). such practices are actually defended. with regard to the practice of making students repeat a grade when they fail the same subject in two consecutive years, some teachers somehow believe that this practice could strengthen the academic foundation of students as to mastering that particular subject (personal communications with some local teachers). however, no one ever elaborates on why failing the same subject in two consecutive years deserves retention and how ingrade retention could help students to do better in that subject. put simply, it is unclear what academic purpose could be served by doing so. but what is clear is that such criterion for retention makes it easier for students to get retained and thus could boost up the rates of in-grade retention. with regard to the practice of making students quit the school when they are to be retained for the second time, some local teachers assert that when students do not do well, a change of environment may help students to do better (opinions of parents in macao, 2009). the reasoning of such teachers is this: students who have been retained do not do well because they cannot change their bad learning habits in a familiar learning environment (i.e. their familiarity with the practices of their teachers and classmates); a totally new learning environment may alert students to the fact that they have to turn a new leaf. and, given that schools in macao are so diverse in terms of academic standards, it is believed that students should go to a school with an academic standard compatible with that of the students. therefore, some teachers believe that this practice is actually designed in students’ interests providing them with additional assistance. however, there are no examinations of how effective are such two specific practices related to retention in terms of improving students’ subsequent academic performances. nevertheless, from what has been reported for the west, in-grade retention could hamper students’ subsequent academic performances and damage their self-esteem (e.g. weis et al., 1989; eccles, 1990; beru et al., 2007). indeed, as reported in table 10, the pisa (2009) for macao shows that the mean achievement scores of students who have been retained are much lower than those of students who have never been retained, and that the more often students get retained the lower their scores. for example, let us take a look at students’ score in reading shown in table 10: students who have been retained once would score about 52 marks lower than those who have not; students who have been retained twice would score about 95 marks lower than those who have not; and, students who have been retained thrice would score about 122 marks lower than those who have not. such dramatic drop in score is statistically significant. similar stories could be seen for their scores in mathematics and science. i suspect that the academic setback of being asked to quit the school may have a similarly negative effect on students’ self-esteem and subsequent academic performance. true, whether hampered performance and damaged self-esteem would lead to further retention should be open to further empirical scrutiny; but, it is doubtful if the practices of asking students who fail the same subject in two consecutive years to repeat a grade and of asking students who are required to be retained for the second time to quit the school could really be seen as additional assistance for students. despite the finding reported for the west that ingrade retention would hamper students’ subsequent academic performances, many teachers in macao believe that in-grade retention could strengthen students’ academic foundation. some teachers and students of this qualitative research project even assert that in-grade retention has become necessary for motivating students to study hard, as articulated in the following quotations: somehow i think free and compulsory education isn’t good for students. you know, not every student values the opportunity for education. … when students don’t work hard, retention would do them good. (female high-ranking day-school student) nowadays every student is entitled to a free and compulsory basic education. these days students just don’t cherish the opportunity for education any more. they don’t work hard for they don’t need to pay for education. no matter what, they could stay on at school for 15 years. i take in-grade retention as a trump card that could make students work hard. (male teacher) again, it becomes apparent that in-grade retention is practiced not for the sake of upholding valid and reliable academic standards. rather, some teachers take in-grade retention as their trump card to make socalled lazy students study; and many students, including those having been retained, buy this idea very much. this confirms further my view that the practice of in-grade retention could leave room for teachers’ unprofessional acts, including an abuse of power coercing students to yield to teachers’ authority. indeed, it is not uncommon to hear that students who have been retained would be labelled or picked on by teachers in classes; the schooling experiences of some evening-school students of this current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 12 table 10 the mean achievement scores of students who have been retained and those who have not in the pisa (2009) for macao experience of retention mean achievement score reading mathematics science students who have never repeated 516.66*** (1.28) 558.75*** (1.31) 539.43*** (1.25) students who have been retained once -52.28*** (2.11) -58.39*** (2.37) -50.03*** (2.31) students who have been retained twice -95.16*** (2.84) -106.57*** (3.20) -88.65*** (2.91) students who have been retained thrice -122.76*** (7.48) -133.90*** (8.33) -117.14*** (7.22) standard errors in parentheses; *** p<0.001 qualitative research project illustrate how that happens. life at day school is stressful. ... i’m seen as a lazy bone. … (t)eachers … would pick on me for no reasons. … for example, i got the same answer as my neighboring classmate in a test; but, the classmate got a mark deducted and i got three marks deducted. … so, i asked the teacher about that; he said that was how he graded. … this kind of thing happened to me nearly in every test and examination for two years. then, i didn’t argue with teachers anymore. … i felt that however hard i tried, i wouldn’t succeed. … in the end, i was required to repeat another year for i failed english – i needed 1.5 more marks to get a pass. (male evening-school student) i have repeated four times. … i repeated for the first time in primary form four. that was because of my poor conduct. i was too naughty as a boy. … then, in primary form five, i repeated because of my poor academic performance. … and then i was seen as incapable. … in junior secondary form one, i found schoolwork very difficult and i couldn’t cope; so, i repeated another year. … one year after, i was promoted to junior secondary form two, but many teachers already saw me as hopeless and always assigned me to sit at the corner of the classroom. … teachers just ignored me and i wouldn’t get any academic help. … finally, i didn’t do well and had to repeat again. (male evening-school student) in brief, it is unclear what academic purposes, if at all, could be served by the two abovementioned specific criteria for retention. and, without effective state governance, schools in macao again are not obliged to provide rationales for such practices. but, it is clear that such specific criteria make it easier for students to get retained and leave room for teachers to treat students unprofessionally. the schooling experiences of these students, together with those quoted above, are consistent with what is discussed in the literature concerning student-teacher interaction in relation to the labelling effects and self-fulfilling prophecy operating within the classroom in two ways (e.g. sharp & green, 1984; jackson, 1990; metz, 2000; rothstein, 2004). the first is labelling leads to retention and self-fulfilling prophecy. initially, students deviated from the teachers’ expectations of what a well-behaved student should be like; and therefore, teachers saw them as not merely incompliant or disobedient, but also incapable. after being labelled as such, the students were then evaluated (actually graded) as such in their examinations and in the end got retained and/or fulfilled their teachers’ prophecy. the second is retention leads to labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy. after being retained, students were then seen as incapable or hopeless; and graded as such in subsequent examinations and may get retained and/or fulfil teachers’ prophecy again. given the possibilities for teachers’ unprofessional treatment of students, i argue that teacher-student interaction of such kinds somehow plays a role in explaining the high rates of in-grade retention in macao. the future of retained students? then, what are the educational outcomes of retained students vis-à-vis those who have never been retained? although data about the final educational outcomes of retained students are not available, the experiences of the evening-school students of this qualitative research project could somehow shed lights into this query. all eighteen except three evening-school students are actually students who fail to stay in a day school (i.e. they were retained and finally got kicked out why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 13 of day school) and resort to studying in evening school. this observation suggests that ‘recurrent education’ actually serves as the last resort for those retained students being pushed out of day schools. this speculation is consistent with the following official statistics that over the last five years the majority of evening-school students are actually not mature students but students of the relevant age group (the website of macao dsej): from 2007 to 2010, over 60% of eveningschool students are aged between 15 and 24 (two categories: 15-19 and 20-24); and from 2010 onwards, because of different age categories used, nearly half of evening-school students are aged between 15 and 20. and, it is generally observed that evening-school students are more likely not to make it to the completion of a senior secondary education and thus to fail to obtain a high-school diploma (personal communications with a number of teachers teaching in evening schools). what these speculation and observation seem to suggest is that not only are retained students likely to score lower at pisa, as already shown in table 10 above, but some of them are also likely to be retained again and finally get pushed out of day school first and the system of formal education altogether. if the practice of in-grade retention is intended to strengthen students’ academic foundation and thus provide additional academic assistance for them, then retained students would be somehow directed to an educational success of some kind. but, what seems happening is that retention does not lead students to an educational success but the following educational path, as pointed out by some teachers of this qualitative research project: retention in a day school is likely to lead to further retention in the same school, then to studying in another day school of a lower ranking (if lucky) and then probably having retention there, and eventually to studying in an evening school, and finally to an incompletion of a secondary education. it certainly requires more empirical work and data to demonstrate how statistically representative of this educational path to retained students in macao. but the observation of this educational path for some retained students suggests that contrary to the view that the practice of in-grade retention helps students academically, retention could be seen as a device of screening off students leading them towards an educational failure. conclusion in-grade retention is generally accepted and commonly believed to be synonymous with quality assurance of education in macao. but such prevalent attitude towards in-grade retention alone cannot fully explain why the rates of in-grade retention are so high in macao. in this paper, i seek to argue that the main reason is that given colonial legacy the education system in macao is a system of private schools without effective state governance, albeit with lots of government subsidies. as private schools operating in such a context where their freedom of running the school in their own style is guaranteed, schools could decide their own criteria for retention and are not required to provide the public with any rationales for the criteria they set. this setup also leaves much room for teachers to treat students unprofessionally without being caught. in order to survive in such a context, private schools are required to compete for students so as to get class subsidies from the government. academic reputation is thus of utmost importance to private schools. but there are no common academic standards serving as a professional reference to assess students from different schools. in-grade retention rates are then treated as one significant indicator of the academic standards of schools. in order to increase their market reputation and visibility to students and their parents, many schools would actually manipulate in-grade retention rates. and, in adjusting the class size in order to get class subsidies from the government, many schools would also manipulate the operation of in-grade retention. put simply, against this setup, with these purposes irrelevant to the quality assurance of education, many schools could and would set up their own criteria for retention, however arbitrary or unreasonable they seem, in the name of upholding decent academic standards. meanwhile such criteria for retention could somehow leave room for subjective interpretations in enforcement, and thus room for teachers’ unprofessional treatment of students. in sum, this setup of a system of private schools without effective state governance allows schools’ manipulation and teachers’ unprofessionalism; this plays an important role in explaining why in-grade retention rates in macao are so high. the case of macao could actually provide an opportunity for us to reflect on the neoliberal discourse currently dominant in education. it is believed that a national schooling system is inefficient and ineffective and should be replaced with a cost-effective privatized schooling system. the keywords for such advocacy are market, competition, parental choice, and the quality of education. under a national schooling system, the practices of all school are governed by the state and thus standardized; all schools are by and large the same, meaning that there is not much choice for parents and their children; and without competition, the quality of teaching of schools would not be improved. in brief, with much state governance and standardization, such system of school is neither efficient nor effective in the provision of education; the quality of education is simply not guaranteed. by contrast, in a privatized schooling system without much state governance and standardization, schools could have much room for innovation and individuality in materializing their different missions, in that they could design their own curriculum and assessment that they consider work well to meet the needs current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 14 of their targeted student bodies. the room for innovation and individuality makes it possible for private schools to run themselves in their own styles. consequently, schools with their different styles could compete freely and openly for students and their parents with different needs in the market of education. given such a variety of schools, students and their parents could have many choices and ultimately could choose a school that fits them best. besides, competition between schools is believed to be conducive to boosting the overall quality of education. put simply, in a privatized schooling system, schools offering a high-quality education would win out attracting more students and schools failing to do so would be forced to leave the market of education. ultimately, not only do students and their parents benefit individually from competition between quality schools and poor schools, but the society as a whole would in a long run benefit from an increasing quality of education resulting from such competition. however, the case of macao urges us to rethink the potential benefits of a privatized schooling system where education is seen as a market and students and their parents are viewed as customers. contrary to what neoliberal discourse would have us believe, in order to increase their market visibility and reputation so as to attract more students, schools and teachers do not necessarily make effort to be more innovative in teaching or to develop their niches to meet different needs of students. rather, different schools and their teachers could still be doing the same thing: they could and would resort to manipulations of various kinds wherever and whenever necessary to promote students’ academic achievements and to boost their academic reputation so as to make them look attractive to students and their parents. to this end, it is the in-grade retention rates that are manipulated in the macao case; such manipulations and related practices are not necessarily beneficial to individual students or conducive to improving the overall quality of education. on one hand, when all schools are doing similar things to promote students’ academic achievements so as to boost up their academic reputation, schools do not seem to cater different needs of parents and their children and therefore parents do not seem to have much school choice; and on the other hand, given schools’ manipulations regarding their in-grade retention rates, it is difficult for parents to make an informed decision of school choice for their children. in sum, the case of macao suggests that in a privatized schooling system the practices of schools and their teachers could actually cause damages to students and such practices per se could be the very reason for a low quality of education. i do not mean to say that a privatized schooling system is all wrong or to defend that a national schooling system is the only way out. rather, my point is that letting the practices of schools be regulated by the market of education rather than the state and emphasizing competition between schools do not necessarily guarantee more choices and efficiency and effectiveness in the provision of education, let alone the provision of quality education. references aronowitz, s., & giroux, h. a. 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(2000). classroom interaction: principled conflict. r. arum and i.r. beattie (eds.). the structure of schooling: readings in the why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 15 sociology of education, new york: mcgrawhill. oecd. (2010). pisa 2009 results. volumes 1-5. opinions of parents in macao. (2009, september 1). reprinted in macao daily. retrieved from http://forum.cyberctm.com/forum.php?mod=vie wthread&tid=401938 opinions of parents in macao. (2011, february 27). reprinted in macao daily. retrieved from http://news.qoos.com/%e5%ae%b6%e9%95% b7%e5%86%80%e5%ad%b8%e6%a0%a1 %e5%a2%9e%e8%b3%87%e8%a8%8a%e9 %80%8f%e6%98%8e%e5%ba%a6973696.html raby, r. (2012). school rules: obedience, discipline, and elusive democracy. toronto: university of toronto press. rothstein, r. (2004). using social, economic, and educational reform to close the black-white achievement gap. new york: teachers college press. sharp, r., & green, a. (1984). social stratification in the classroom. a. hargreaves and p. woods (eds). staffrooms: the sociology of teachers and teaching, london: open university press. unesco. (2011). global education digest 2011: comparing education statistics across the world. unesco institute for statistics. weis, l., farrar, e., & petrie, h. (eds). (1989). dropouts from school: issues, dilemmas, and solutions. new york: state university of new york press. willis, p. (1981). learning to labour: how working class kids get working class jobs, new york: columbia press. yuen, k. s. (2012, november 12). roots of students’ disaffection in macao (in chinese). macao daily. retrieved from http://www.macaodaily.com/html/201211/12/content_749693.htm. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 16 article citation wong, y. (2013). why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? current issues in education, 16(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1240 author notes wong, yi-lee assistant professor department of educational administration and policy faculty of education chinese university of hong kong shatin, new territories hong kong yi-lee.wong@graduate.hku.hk or wongyilee@cuhk.edu.hk yi-lee wong is a sociologist with research interests in social inequality, social stratification and mobility, education, and the youth. over the last few years, i have been doing research projects on educational inequality in contemporary hong kong and macao. the project in hong kong is about the institution of community college and its students. referring to in-depth interview accounts of community-college students in hong kong on how they make educational decisions in order to stay on in higher education and how they evaluate their educational careers and achievements, i seek to examine the roles of emotions in the reproduction of educational inequality and the roles of self-evaluations in the legitimation of a system of educational inequality. there are various concerns of the projects in macao; for example, one is about school regulations and regulations related to in-grade retention, another is about how high-school students make educational choices, another is about the narratives of evening-school students and dilemma facing them, and another is about the schooling experiences of school-dropouts. this paper is a piece based on the data of those projects in macao. i have been using such rich data to address a number of issues against the context of post-colonial macao. manuscript received: 0517/2013 revisions received:10/30/2013 accepted: 11/12/2013 why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 17 volume 16, number 3 december 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis thomas elizabeth calhoun reyes assistant executive editors bonnie mazza constantin schreiber recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell nichole hugo sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker bonnie mazza kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 863-4146-4-le v2.docx 1 volume 15, number 3 september 7, 2012 issn 1099-839x an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services david c. may mississippi state university corrie rice and kevin i. minor eastern kentucky university for many parents and educators, school safety is one of the most important issues in the united states. despite anecdotal evidence that students receiving special education services are often negatively stereotyped by school administrators and educators for behaviors threatening school order and safety, and despite increased media attention to the interaction between students receiving special education services and law enforcement officers in schools, no research has examined perceptions of school resource officers toward these students. because school resource officers are now a permanent part of the school culture, and because disproportionate numbers of students receiving special education services are disciplined (e.g., school suspensions and arrests) each year, research is needed to examine attitudes of sros regarding the presence and behaviors of students receiving special education services. data collected from 130 school resource officers (sros) in kentucky revealed that large portions of sros perceived that behaviors of students receiving special education services had a negative impact on the school environments and these perceptions had little association with the sro’s demographic and experiential variables. implications for policy and future research are addressed. keywords: school resource officers, students receiving special education services, special education america has witnessed a growing awareness of school violence within the past two decades. as public concern has grown, school administrators have been prompted to take action. technological devices, frequent locker checks, and school uniforms are just a few of the many practices that public schools are using to promote safety. one response to school safety concerns has been the implementation of school resource officers (sros). although sros have become more prevalent in recent years, mulqueen (1999) reported that the first sro program began in flint, michigan in 1953; by 1998, 40 states had sro programs. these programs have continued to grow rapidly nationally. according to a 2005 publication of the u.s. department of justice, office of community oriented policing, over 6,500 school resource officer positions have been funded through the cops in schools (cis) program (u.s. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 department of justice, 2005), and some estimates put the number as high as 20,000 officers patrolling the nation’s schools (brown, 2006). in theory, sro’s improve community-law enforcement relations, prevent crime, and educate students on law related issues. the office of community oriented policing services (cops), through its cops in schools (cis) program, has awarded more than $753 million to law enforcement agencies to fund sro’s (u.s. department of justice, 2005). however, despite public approval and the millions of dollars spent, there is scant evidence as to the actual effectiveness of sro programs. mayer (2008) called for standardized data collection systems to promote reliable and valid evaluations and identified a “strong need for rigorous causal research demonstrating effects of sro programs in schools” (p. 1). although no attempt is made to ascertain the effectiveness of sros in this study, perceptions of sros regarding behavior and treatment of students receiving special education services in schools are examined herein. this effort is important for three reasons. first, and most importantly, no research examining the sros’ perceptions about and interactions with students receiving special education services is currently available. second, media and advocacy groups periodically report accounts of students receiving special education services being “tasered” (oregon advocacy center, 2005) and “beat up” (cop caught on camera, 2010) by police officers in the school setting. third, because students receiving special education services have a wide variety of emotional and psychological developmental needs, and because these students present a wide range of behaviors that are often unexpected in the school setting, there is a strong likelihood that sros may be called by teachers or school administrators to assist in efforts to guide these students into more acceptable behavior. the attitude of the sro (or any other adult) toward the students involved in these situations will often impact the strategies chosen by that sro to deal with the situation. thus, school administrators, teachers, parents, and law enforcement officers seeking to understand the interaction between these two groups currently have no research to examine to further their understanding about the interaction between sros and students receiving special education services, or the attitudes of sros toward these students. this research is an attempt to fill that gap. sro responsibilities although sros have become increasingly popular components of school safety programs (theriot, 2009), not all sros perform the same duties. the responsibilities vary from state to state and even within states. for example, chicago public schools implemented the safe school program that focuses on character qualities such as honesty and integrity, while the sro program in fresno, california emphasizes community relations (johnson, 1999). the sros in each of these programs are required to perform different tasks in order to target the desired goal. while some sros focus more on building relationships with the students, others act as liaisons between law enforcement agencies and the students in order to stay informed about possible problems. there are several formal definitions for sros that address the roles and responsibilities of the sro. the federal definition, as defined by the u.s. federal code 20 u.s.c. §7161 (2012) states that an sro is, “a career law enforcement officer, with sworn authority, deployed in community-oriented policing, and assigned by the employing police department or agency to work in collaboration with school and community-based organizations” (p. 1). a second definition of sros was developed by the center for the prevention of school violence (n.d.): an sro is a certified law enforcement officer who is permanently assigned to provide coverage to a school or a set of schools. the sro is specifically trained to perform three roles: law enforcement officer; law-related counselor; and law-related education teacher. the sro is not necessarily a dare officer (although many have received such training), security guard, or officer who has been placed temporarily in a school in response to a crisis situation but rather acts as a comprehensive resource for his/her school. the national association of school resource officers (nasro) adds that, in addition to their law enforcement role, sros should also (a) act as a liaison between the school, the police and the community, (b) teach law-related education classes, and (c) counsel students (u.s. department of justice, 2001). as implied in the definitions of sros, the job encompasses a wide range of duties and tasks. kennedy (2000) stated that an sro must combine three elements: law enforcement, education, and counseling. sros serve as armed police officers, counselors to help answer students’ questions, and teachers of the law. they are responsible for establishing trust with students so that others will be deterred from crime and delinquency. the extant research supports the multifaceted nature of the sro role. lockyer (2000) and kennedy (2000) found many duties of an sro including: preventing vandalism, reducing truancy, investigating allegations of crime, teaching classes about law enforcement and drug prevention, attending school activities, working with vice principals on discipline matters, and acting as liaisons to law enforcement agencies (kennedy, 2000; lockyer, 2000). may, cordner, and fessel (2004) determined that while sros often fulfilled all three roles in the sro triad (law enforcement, law-related counseling, and law-related an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services 3 education), the majority of their time was spent in law enforcement duties and other duties that might be more accurately labeled “school bouncer” duties (e.g., monitoring hallways, helping teachers control classroom behaviors). perhaps the most significant task of a school resource officer is to be a mentor and counselor to at-risk students, a disproportionately high number who display special education needs (minor, williams, & minor, 1997). sros are assigned to schools to not only reduce and prevent crime, but to act as role models to those students who need it most. by establishing a trusting relationship with students, there is a greater chance that potential problems will be reported and information will be shared. sro effects on student behavior previous research on the effectiveness of sro’s in schools has relied primarily on opinion surveys and research designs that do not provide solid evidence of actual impact (mayer, 2008). for example, the virginia department of criminal justice services (2001), using content analysis of reports submitted by 78 sro programs in the state, determined that sro’s were effective in reducing school crime. results indicated that 37.3% of sros and 82% of school staff stated that a reduction in fighting at the school where they served since the sro arrived. in addition, 99% of staff and 91% of the students either agreed or strongly agreed that they “support having a sro assigned to my school…” (virginia department of criminal justice services, 2001, p. 3). information collected via surveys by nasro at their national conference during the spring of 2001 indicated that 99% of the sro’s felt their presence increased school safety. two in three sro’s reported that they had prevented a student or other individual from assaulting a teacher or staff member during their employment as an sro. respondents also indicated they had good relationships with administrators at the schools where they worked (trump, 2001). in a study of the impact of an sro program on school violence and school disciplinary programs, johnson (1999) found evidence that sros were meeting their goals of reducing school crime. her evaluation of sro programs in a southern city included data collected from a number of sources at four high schools and one middle school from 1995 to 1996. results indicated that school fights, gang activities, possession of drugs, suspensions, and minor and major offenses decreased after sros were assigned to school (johnson, 1999). while all of these studies suggest that sro programs are effective at increasing school safety, the limitations cannot be ignored. although studies may demonstrate a correlation between the placement of sros and improvements in students’ behaviors and attitudes, other possible causal factors of behavioral and/or attitudinal change are not taken into account. in other words, the placement of sros may not necessarily have caused students’ behavioral changes. there may have been other impulses for such changes that also need to be measured; therefore, future research should control for such variables. students’ perceptions of sros student reactions are a helpful tool to measure sro program effectiveness. students may be resistant to the presence of sros if they do not hold a positive view of sros. on the other hand, students could be neutral to the idea but actually develop a negative view as a result of being around the sro. according to johnson (1999) school officials in alabama stated that students, as well as their parents, were generally supportive of sros. most students felt that sros provided a sense of security and were necessary to reduce the availability of guns, drugs, and gang-related activities. they also appreciated the actions taken when disciplinary problems arose and their support in dealing with disciplinary problems (johnson, 1999). hopkins and hewstone (1992) described the importance of youths’ attitudes toward police. policeschool liaisons emphasize the relationship between the police and youth and therefore, must improve the image youth hold of the police. because sros are highly visible in schools, they have an opportunity to correct or change stereotypes students may have about police. hopkins and hewstone found that while females held more positive views of the police than males and that students in schools that have an sro display less positive attitudes and general liking of the police than those in schools without an sro. over time, the approval for the officer significantly decreased; however, the students held a more positive image of the sro than the police in general. although this study had negative implications, research has indicated that student attitudes become less positive toward authority figures between the ages of 14 and 16 (hopkins & hewstone, 1992). in other words, resistance to authority is typical during adolescence, suggesting that negative attitudes toward police may be something youth simply grow out of. additionally, students’ perceptions of sros may be influenced by their contact with police outside of school. school officials’ perceptions of sros in general, school officials are supportive and optimistic about the effectiveness of sro programs (may, fessel, & means, 2004) california’s school officials noted the program is a huge success in effectively reducing school crime and truancy as well as building mentoring relationships with the students. at-risk juveniles on probation are less likely to commit more serious offenses because of the sro/probation officer’s intervention and their recommendations to the court. overall, california’s school administrators seem enthusiastic about the program (lockyer, 2000). current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 johnson’s (1999) study revealed similar findings. the majority of school officials (76.5%) thought police officers were very effective and should be placed in school. teachers felt comfortable, but some thought sros should assist more in the classrooms and hallways. school officials reported that they would like more than one sro assigned to each school and sros assigned to the schools should work well with the student population some administrators (41.2%) suggested sros should make themselves more visible to improve their services. in general, officials were satisfied with school resource officers’ performance. may, fessel, and means (2004) further explored perceptions of school administrators regarding the presence of sros in their schools. in general, may, fessel, and means (2004) found that school administrators indicated that sros were valuable additions to school safety in their schools. however, these investigators also found significant gaps in communication between principals, sros, and law enforcement supervisors regarding the nature of the sro role at school. the perceptions school officials’ hold of sros is significant because vital information must be communicated between the two groups. if sro programs are to be successful, consistent interaction between all parties involved is a necessary component. although sro’s now appear to be permanent fixtures in schools, there is little research exploring sros’ perceptions of school officials (may et al., 2004a; may et al., 2004b) and no research examining sros’ perceptions of students as indicators of their effectiveness. perceptions that sros hold of students receiving special education services are of particular interest, given that these students are such a unique and often stigmatized population. students receiving special education services teachers must possess adequate training to meet the needs of students requiring special education services. teachers often attribute the failures of students receiving special education services to factors unique to the individual student (e.g., faulty social judgment, difficulty processing social clues) (sprouse, hall, webser, & bolen, 1998). this may lead to the development of a poor selfconcept among these students (hastings, hewes, locke, & witting, 1996). in an effort to test this idea, sprouse et al. (1998) found that students with learning disabilities did not misperceive nonverbal social cues significantly more than students without learning disabilities. however, teachers rated them as having greater social perception difficulties (sprouse et al., 1998). research by cook (2001) concluded that teachers also spent less individual time with students with severe disabilities. poor academic performance and stigmatization and harassment from other students can cause students receiving special education services to have poor attendance and even drop out of school (winters, 1997). lack of educational success is associated with juvenile crime because these youth may feel they have no other outlet for gaining money or status. youth receiving special education services account for 28% to 43% of the juveniles in correctional centers (winters, 1997). the most frequently represented needs among juvenile justice clients include learning disabilities, mental disabilities, and emotional and behavioral disorders. in comparison to the general population, all of these conditions appear to be overrepresented among youth involved with the juvenile justice system (minor et al., 1996). these learning disabilities have serious implications for involvement in the juvenile justice system. as winters (1997) stated, “ld students may be at risk for future incarceration if their disability is not remediated or at least lessened in severity so that they become self-sufficient and participate fully in all economic and social opportunities that are available to the nonhandicapped…” (p. 8). this research portrays an overwhelming correlation between learning disabilities and juvenile delinquency (see also minor et al., 1996). proper intervention and adequate resources are essential for addressing the problems of learning disabled students. sros and students receiving special education services according to the center for evaluation and education policy (rausch & skiba, 2006), a study conducted in the indiana school system found that students receiving special education services were suspended more often than general education students. this finding was mirrored in other states as well (may & chen, 2011). in indiana, students identified with emotional and behavioral disorders (ebd) were at a higher risk of being removed compared to students with other types of disabilities, while in kentucky, students who had an individualized education plan (iep) were suspended at higher rates than their counterparts without ieps. because students receiving special education services are disproportionately at-risk for disciplinary action in the school setting, sros can serve as effective and positive role models for educational development and success. likewise, students receiving special education services may feel less de-valued and be deterred from delinquent involvement as a result of a positive relationship with a sro. thus, sros have the potential to improve these students’ attendance at school, counsel them about personal problems, and even help them with their schoolwork. on the other hand, sros may actually do more harm than good with students who receive special education services. without the proper knowledge of special education, coupled with skills and attitudes appropriate for working with special education an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services 5 populations, sro’s may find themselves ill-equipped for the challenges that can arise, and the frustrations that can ensue, in dealing with such students. additionally, if sros witness teachers and/or staff negatively stereotyping these students, they may, in turn, form similar perceptions and treat these students in the same manner. negative views of students receiving special education services could lead sros to ignore, reject, or treat these students more harshly than other students, possibly resulting in higher numbers of students receiving special education services receiving suspensions or being arrested. the individuals with disabilities education improvement act (idea) of 2004 is especially pertinent when discussing sro’s and students receiving special education services. idea contains regulations applicable to students with disabilities who are facing disciplinary action. the act’s provisions are intended to ensure that schools use an approach to discipline that balances the need to protect the rights of children with disabilities against the need to provide orderly and safe schools (united states office of special education and rehabilitative services, 1997). intended to protect students’ right to an education, idea provides procedural safeguards before students receiving special education services can be removed from their current educational placement due to disciplinary action and allows school officials to consider the unique circumstances of special education in their disciplinary decisions. sros’ perceptions of students receiving special education services in kentucky are investigated in this study. although some of the aforementioned research has examined school officials’ perceptions of both students receiving special education services and sros, as well as students’ perceptions of sros, we were unable to uncover any study that examined sro attitudes toward students receiving special education services in schools. because students receiving special education services are overrepresented in juvenile justice agencies and instances of school disciplinary action, and because prior research is lacking in this area, it is important to explore sros’ perceptions of these students. this is particularly relevant because, as suggested above, sros may be uniquely positioned in the school environment to help students receiving special education services avoid behavior that could lead to disciplinary action. research questions sros play an important part in maintaining the safety and security of the schools where they serve. given the wide variety of circumstances they encounter, one of the most important traits of sros is their discretion. while there are a number of positive aspects of discretion for the sro, if sros perceive that students receiving special education services are responsible for a disproportionate amount of problem behaviors, then they may use their power of discretion to treat students receiving special education services differently than they would if they had a different attitude about these students. thus, understanding sro attitudes about the involvement of students receiving special education services in problem behaviors is an important endeavor. given the lack of extant research on this subject, the following research questions (in place of hypotheses) are used to guide the study: 1. to what extent do sros perceive students receiving special education services as being responsible for a disproportionate amount of problem behavior in school? 2. to what extent do sros believe that students receiving special education services who exhibit problem behaviors should get less punitive treatment for these behaviors than they currently receive in schools? 3. to what extent do sros perceive students receiving special education services as using their status as an excuse for problem behaviors and to avoid accountability for their actions? 4. what demographic and experiential differences exist among sros in these perceptions? method data collection in early april of 2004, researchers at the kentucky center for school safety (kcss) conducted the third phase of a panel study examining the attributes of sros throughout the state of kentucky. using an existing database created in 2002, a letter was mailed to all sros in the database notifying them that they would be receiving a self-report questionnaire in approximately two weeks and requesting their participation in the study. a questionnaire and cover letter explaining the importance of the project was then mailed two weeks later. a second letter and questionnaire were mailed to those who did not respond to the original questionnaire. a final questionnaire and letter were mailed to nonrespondents three weeks later. of the 216 sros who received a questionnaire, 132 responses were received, for a response rate of 61.1%. thus, approximately three in five sros in the state of kentucky provided data for this report. the final sro survey in 2002 was eight pages long and required approximately 40 minutes to complete. based on responses to those questionnaires, and reviews of extant research and policy, the survey was revised again for 2004. the questionnaire used to collect the data for this study was seven pages long, requiring approximately 30 minutes for completion. data analysis after electronically coding the questionnaires, the data were analyzed using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss). frequencies and descriptive statistics were first estimated. these results are presented in tables 1 and 2. given the nature of the dependent current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 variables utilized herein, and the exploratory nature of this work, the spss bivariate correlations procedure was then used to estimate the association between the four dependent variables and the demographic and contextual factors about sros that might predict their perceptions of students receiving special education services. those results are presented in table 3. results the descriptive statistics for the sample are presented in table 1. the vast majority of the respondents were male (90.8%) and white (88.5%). approximately one in four officers were high school graduates, while almost one in four was a college graduate. three in five (59.5%) worked primarily in high schools, while one in five worked primarily in middle schools and 1 in 10 worked in more than one school. over half had not received either academic training (58.8%) or in-service training (56.5%) on special education issues. the average sro was about 43 years of age, with 16 years of law enforcement experience and over 3.5 years as an sro. sros estimated that about one in three (36.75%) of their law related incidents involved students receiving special education services. the average sro spent the majority (55.57%) of their time as a law enforcer, with smaller proportions of their time being spent as a law-related counselor (26.51%) and a law-related educator (16.06%). sros were also asked four questions about their perceptions of students receiving special education services in the educational environment. table 1 descriptive statistics for sample variable n % gender male female 119 12 90.8 9.2 race white nonwhite 116 15 88.5 11.5 education high school graduate some college college graduate some graduate work missing 36 49 29 14 3 27.5 37.4 22.1 10.7 2.3 type of school sro supervises elementary middle high more than one school in district missing 9 27 78 13 4 6.9 20.6 59.5 10.0 3.1 received academic training on special education issues yes no missing 52 77 2 39.7 58.8 1.5 received in-service training on special education issues yes no missing 52 74 5 39.7 56.5 3.8 mean age 43.38 mean years as law enforcement officer 16.24 mean years as school resource officer 3.53 mean percent of law-related incidents involving students receiving special education services 36.75 mean percentage of time spent as law enforcer 55.57 mean percentage of time spent as counselor 26.51 mean percentage of time spent as educator 16.06 an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services 7 table 2 school resource officer’s perceptions of students receiving special education services variable strongly agree agree somewhat agree somewhat disagree disagree strongly disagree special education students are responsible for a disproportionate amount of problem behaviors at my school. 10.7 26.0 18.3 7.6 26.7 4.6 including kids with special education needs in classrooms with other students is detrimental because of the problem behaviors of the special education students. 11.5 16.8 26.0 17.6 15.3 16.9 students with special education status who exhibit problem behaviors should receive less punitive treatment for their problem behaviors than they currently receive in the schools. 3.1 4.6 8.4 13.7 41.2 24.4 some students in the school where i work use their special education status as an excuse for their problem behavior to avoid accountability for those actions. 34.4 34.4 16.0 .8 6.1 3.8 the wording of those questions is included in table 2. approximately 55 percent of the sros agreed that “students receiving special education services were responsible for a disproportionate amount of problem behaviors at school,” and 54.3 percent agreed that “including students receiving special education services in classrooms with other students is detrimental because of their problem behaviors.” while most sros (79.3%) disagreed that “students receiving special education services should receive less punitive treatment for their problem behaviors,” the vast majority (84.8%) at least somewhat agreed that “some students receiving special education services used their special education status as an excuse for their problem behavior to avoid accountability for their actions.” bivariate correlations between the sros’ responses to the questions included in table 2 and the demographic and experiential variables presented in table 1 were then estimated. findings appear in table 3. sros that spent more time in law enforcement activities and less time in law-related education at school were significantly more likely to feel that including students receiving special education services in the regular classroom was detrimental because of their problem behaviors. male sros were significantly more likely to feel that students receiving special education services use their special education status as an excuse for their problem behaviors. finally, those sros who spent more time in law-related education as part of their role as an sro were less likely to feel that students receiving special education services were responsible for a disproportionate amount of problem behavior at school1. ____________________ 1multivariate linear regression models were estimated for all four dependent variables. only age was significant and it was significant in only one model. given the lack of significant findings in the multivariate models, we limit our discussion to the bivariate models included here. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 table 3 bivariate correlations between perceptions of students receiving special education services and predictor variables variable including se kids is detrimental se students should receive less punitive treatment se students use status as an excuse se students are responsible for disproportionate amount of problems race (w=1) .048 -.034 -.143 -.101 gender (m=1) -.043 .029 -.148* -.117 age .091 .001 -.099 -.012 education .130 -.029 .051 .118 l.e. experience .069 .083 .075 -.033 size of school -.071 .024 -.042 .027 sro experience -.100 .094 .020 -.039 academic training -.080 .118 -.021 -.005 in-service training -.140 -.006 -.023 .019 percent leo .163* -.010 .040 .112 percent lrc .025 -.051 .029 .046 percent lre -.204** .004 -.088 -.209** * p<.10 ** p<.05 discussion data from 132 sros in kentucky were utilized to examine perceptions of students receiving special education services and the demographic and contextual predictors of those perceptions. regarding the research questions that guided the study, the majority of sros who responded agreed that (1) students receiving special education services are responsible for a disproportionate amount of problem behaviors at school and (2) including students receiving special education services in classrooms with other students is detrimental because of their problem behaviors. the vast majority of respondents also suggested that (1) students receiving special education services who exhibit problem behaviors should not receive less punitive treatment for these behaviors than they currently receive at school and (2) some students receiving special education services use their special education status as an excuse for their problem behavior to avoid accountability for their actions. this is indicative of a pattern of negative stereotypes held by many sros toward students receiving special education services. moreover, there were few significant demographic and experiential differences across sros in these perceptions; in general, the demographic and experiential variables examined were not predictive of variations in sros’ perceptions of students receiving special education services. one possible explanation for negative sro perceptions of students receiving special education services could be a lack of understanding and knowledge of the unique characteristics and needs of this population. this, in turn, might be rooted in the law enforcement training and orientation of many sros. consistent with this interpretation, our data revealed that sros who reported spending more of their time in the law enforcement role were significantly more likely to see inclusion of students receiving special education services in the regular classroom as detrimental, while sros who reported spending more time in the law-related education role were significantly less likely to perceive students receiving special education services as disproportionately responsible for troublesome behavior at in the school. with a disproportionate number of students receiving special education services being disciplined by school officials (kresmien, leone, & achilles, 2006; miller et al., 2011; rausch & skiba, 2006), disciplining itself could, across time, conceivably instill, solidify, and expand negative perceptions of students receiving special education services among sros. as such, to avoid both real and perceived net widening of the police in schools already being put forth (justice policy institute, 2011; thierot, 2009) it is essential that sros receive specialized training to develop the necessary knowledge and skills for effectively understanding and working with the students receiving special education services. sro training programs and education requirements differ throughout the united states. according to the national association of school resource officers’ training guidelines (n.d.), the current basic sro training (40 hour training) devotes eight hours an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services 9 to cover topics including counseling, adolescent emotional issues, child abuse, dysfunctional families, and special education. nevertheless, none of this training directly addresses the unique challenges students receiving special education services pose. additionally, although little is known about training of sros throughout the united states, we do know quite a bit about sro training in kentucky. currently, sros in kentucky are required to attend the department of criminal justice training academy or a regional training academy (in jefferson county, bowling green, or lexington) as part of their eligibility to serve as law enforcement officers. the training is intensive and includes a wide variety of courses on law, investigation, use of force, and many other topics. working with students receiving special education services in a school environment, however, is only now being considered to be part of kentucky sro’s required training and/or education. the findings presented here suggest that lack of training is not the only cause of these perceptions. we found that the two training related variables (representing whether or not the sro had received academic training on special education issues and whether or not they had received in-service training on special education issues) did not significantly predict sro’s perceptions of students receiving special education services. in other words, those sros who had received training about working with students receiving special education services did not have significantly different perceptions of students receiving special education services than their counterparts without such training. thus, it could be that negative perceptions are so strong among officers that training cannot offset those perceptions. it could also be that the type and/or duration of the training the sro’s received in the area of special education was inadequate. these questions cannot be answered with data from the present study but are important to consider in future research and training design initiatives. in view of the negative perceptions of students receiving special education services uncovered in this study, it seems possible that law enforcement agencies should be more selective in their choice of officers for sro duty. the consortium to prevent school violence (mayer, 2008) recommends that officers selected for sro duties be highly motivated and a good fit for the program. additionally, the findings presented here suggest that selected officers should be screened for amenability to at least partial role transfer, away from the traditional law enforcer dictums toward the educator role. in the present study, officers who were more oriented toward law enforcement and less oriented toward law-related education were more likely to perceive efforts to mainstream students receiving special education services as being detrimental to regular classrooms, something potentially problematic given the national trend toward greater use of mainstreaming. by contrast, those officers more oriented toward law-related education were less likely to see students receiving special education services as disproportionately responsible for problem behaviors in the school setting. this suggests that these officers may “find” fewer problem behaviors from students receiving special education services precisely because they are not expecting them from the outset; approach can direct response. one important initial step in addressing negative perceptions sros may have toward students receiving special education services is to increase interaction between sros and each school’s resident expert on these students—the school’s special education teacher(s). informal conversations, question and answer sessions, and even formal training sessions with these teachers may assist sros in gaining a better understanding of the challenges faced by students receiving special education services and may also help sros find ways to serve as law-related educators and mentors to help the youths navigate those challenges. when attempting law-related education and mentoring with students receiving special education services, it is critical that functional assessments and functional curricular approaches be utilized (minor et al., 1997). functional assessments are meant to identify the specific skill deficits underlying a given student’s impaired educational performance, and assessment outcomes are used to structure curricular and instructional approaches in a manner tailored to meet the student’s special needs (lewis & sugai, 1996). it is important that instructional approaches be modified and adapted to the needs of the learner, lest the student receiving special education services be prematurely (and often mistakenly) judged recalcitrant and therefore deserving of discipline. special educators can readily convey to sros what assessment information is most essential and the types of instructional modifications and adaptations that are in order for a given special education learner; in many instances, modifications and adaptations need only be slight as opposed to drastic. in this manner, sros can become contributing members to multidisciplinary teams assigned to particular students receiving special education services (especially those diagnosed with behavioral disorders), rather than persons who special educators perceive as members of another group unfairly biased against special education learners. limitations of the study the present study is not without limitations. the findings derive from a single state and can be generalized to other contexts only to the extent that sros in those contexts display characteristics similar to the characteristics of respondents in this study. additionally, we had insufficient data on the type and duration of special education training received by sro respondents. the most important limitation of this work revolves around the measurement of the perceptions of students current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 receiving special education services. because this effort was not the primary focus of the original research project, only four measures of sro perceptions of students receiving special education services were employed. additionally, because of the exploratory nature of this research, the instrument used in this work did not clearly distinguish between the range of students receiving special education services (e.g., students with learning disabilities, students with behavior disorders) when examining the sros’ perceptions of the students. doing so may have more clearly articulated differences in sros’ perceptions of these students. additionally, we only examined a limited range of potential predictors of these perceptions. future research in this area should aim for clearer distinctions and definitions of the student population in question; doing so would allow for richer data regarding the sros’ perceptions of these students and predictors of those perceptions. researchers should also use expanded perceptual measures and larger numbers of participants in the future. this would permit multivariate modeling with a greater number of potential predictor variables, including improved proxies for special education training as well as measures of communication with school counselors and special educators. conclusion the findings presented here reveal some insight into the relationship between sros and students receiving special education services in the educational environment. in general, sros in this sample had a relatively negative view of students receiving special education services and this perception was particularly acute among male sros and those sros that view themselves as primarily law enforcers. on the other hand, those sros that spent more time in law-related education as part of their role as an sro were less likely to share those negative perceptions of students receiving special education services. no other variables (e.g., tenure as an sro, training about special education topics, education level) had an impact on these negative perceptions. the results presented indicate that (1) additional training about the intricacies of special education in the school setting is needed among sros and (2) sros should work closely with special education teachers in an attempt to gain a better understanding of this world. nevertheless, like many exploratory studies, the results presented here provide more questions than answers. research is needed in this area to better understand not only perceptions of sros regarding students receiving special education services, but sros’ treatment of students receiving special education services. this work serves as a foundation for these efforts. references brown, b. 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(2012). an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/863 author notes david c. may mississippi state university department of sociology and social work p.o. drawer c200 bowen hall mississippi state, ms 39762 dmay@soc.msstate.edu david c. may is an associate professor and criminology program coordinator in the department of sociology and social work at mississippi state university. he has published numerous articles and books in the areas of responses to school violence, perceptions of the severity of correctional punishments, fear of criminal victimization, and weapon possession and use among adolescents. corrie rice eastern kentucky university training resource center mattox 229 521 lancaster avenue richmond, ky 40475 corrie.rice@eku.edu corrie rice is the research advisor for the university training consortium (utc) at eastern kentucky university (eku). her research interests include organizational development, organizational climate, and occupational training and development. she holds a m.s. degree in criminal justice from eku and a ph.d. in educational leadership and organizational development from the university of louisville. kevin i. minor eastern kentucky university department of criminal justice 521 lancaster avenue stratton 467 richmond, ky 40475 kevin.minor@eku.edu kevin minor is a professor in the department of criminal justice at eastern kentucky university. he has published various books and articles in the areas of adult corrections, juvenile justice, and applied/evaluation research. acknowledgements: the authors would like to thank the kentucky center for school safety for allowing us to use the data analyzed in this study. the views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of the kentucky center for school safety staff and administration. an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services 13 manuscript received: 11/27/2011 revisions received: 5/2/2012 accepted: 8/20/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 14 volume 15, number 3 september 7, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 2, number 3 september 8, 1999 issn 1099-839x developing technology competencies in a college of education bob algozzine lonnie r. bateman claudia p. flowers john a. gretes c. dane hughes richard lambert university of north carolina at charlotte colleges of education across the country are implementing initiatives to promote new and more effective teaching methods grounded in information technology and the improvement of teaching skills of graduate and undergraduate students in professional education programs. the goals for participating faculty members are to integrate information technology competencies into not only the content of the courses that they teach, but also into their instructional methods of teaching. an initiative grounded in existing coursework, extant resources, and prior experience is described in this article. working from a state-accepted list of basic and advanced instructional technology competencies, a course-by-competency matrix was articulated to support the development of instructional technology competencies among faculty and students. faculty and student development activities to infuse technology into teaching, using existing resources and facilities, were designed, field-tested, and evaluated. the activities were modified for use in subsequent semesters as vehicles for building or extending competencies of undergraduate and graduate students preparing for professional positions as teachers, administrators, and counselors. to support continued implementation and improvement, practical, hands-on experiences were supervised by information technology specialists, knowledgeable faculty members, and graduate students with demonstrated competence. a team of professionals with expertise in instructional technology monitors all faculty and student development activities. the effort provides a comprehensive, practical model for addressing the growing need for altering instructional methods to accommodate technology innovations for school personnel in meaningful ways. the information age has created increasing needs for teachers and other school personnel at all levels of education to develop, use, and disseminate skills for including technology as the driving force behind integrated, cross-disciplinary learning experiences that prepare students for life in the "real" world (bailey, ross, & griffin, 1996; petrakis, 1996; stanley, linauer, & petrie, 1998). technology has a significant foot in the door of america's classrooms, and the schools will never be the same (fisher, 1997; funnell & owen, 1992; lowther, bassoppo-moyo, & morrison, 1998; lumley & bailey, 1996; mehlinger, 1996). yet, most educators are provided little training in how to use new technologies so it is no surprise that many of them continue doing what they were doing rather than spend time learning how to use the innovations that are being provided for them (bailey, ross, & griffin, 1996; furst-bowe, 1996; hill & somers, 1996; hunt, 1995; ley, 1997; stanley, linauer, & petrie, 1998). too often, technology innovations go unnoticed, ignored, or seldom used in today's schools; and, the effects of failing to keep up continue to downgrade america's educational system. the exclusion of information technology from the processes of planning, managing, and implementing curriculum innovations keeps change in education moving at a snail's pace and serves to maintain stagnant, sometimes mediocre instruction as the rule in efforts to "reform" the schools (morton, 1996). there is a growing and continuing need current issues in education vol. 2 no. 3 2 for systematic efforts to infuse instructional technology in relevant ways in all professional education programs preparing administrators, teachers, and counselors (hill & somers, 1996; kitagaki, 1995; northrup & little, 1996; otter, 1992). while the evidence for need is widespread and overwhelming, models and illustrations providing practical steps to take in bringing technology into professional education programs are less pervasive (bailey, ross, & griffin, 1996; fisher, 1997; hill & somers, 1996; hunt, 1995; ley, 1997; petrakis, 1996). in other words, the problem has been identified, but the solution is still under construction. in this article, we describe an effort to enhance the professional education programs in a college of education through learning experiences designed to assist university faculty members and students, as well as practicing public and private school teachers, counselors, and administrators, to master and use information technology competencies in relevant ways in schools. the project was designed to address problems associated with inadequate preparation of educators. it offers a well-reasoned model for others in professional development schools to consider when addressing information technology education needs. project design and workplan the first step in successful implementation of any innovation is commitment on the part of representative stakeholders (mehlinger, 1996). supported by a statewide initiative to assist public schools by increasing the technology-related competence of the educational workforce of approximately 80,000 educators, the schools and departments of education on the campuses of the university system committed to ensuring that all faculty members who prepare professional educators and all graduates of professional education programs can use information technology to enhance instruction. for purposes of this effort, technology not only included computers but also computer networks and telecommunications multimedia and hypermedia, camcorders and vcrs, instructional television and interactive video, cd-rom and videodisk players, graphing calculators and video microscopes, telephone and voice mail technologies. the goals of the effort were: 1. to enhance basic and advanced information technology knowledge and productivity of faculty and students related to computer operating systems, word processing, spreadsheet programming, database management, page layout and design, internet resources and use, presentation software, statistics and data processing, and instructional design courseware. 2. to develop instructional modules to help faculty members infuse information technology content into the teaching and learning processes that are the foundation of all professional education coursework. 3. to evaluate improvements in faculty member and student competence and productivity that result from these efforts to enhance information technology use in instruction. responsibility for designing, implementing, and coordinating this response was assigned to a team composed of eight individuals responsible for teaching research, evaluation, and technology courses. seven implementation objectives (see figure 1) and formative evaluation activities drove the team's effort to accomplish the overall goals: (1) clarify and refine technology competencies, (2) articulate curriculum linkages, (3) acquire necessary information technology resources, (4) develop faculty member competence, (5) assess faculty member competence, (6) develop student competence, and (7) assess student competence. members of the team organized and chaired a series of task forces to design, implement, and evaluate faculty and student development activities related to each of seven implementation objectives. to ensure adequate representation of the perspectives of those who would be affected by the activities, each task force included an appropriate mix of faculty and students who were directly involved in teacher, counselor, and administrator education programs (each department in the college was represented on each task force). the design and workplan for implementation objectives are described below. the article concludes with a discussion of expected benefits and recommendations to support others' efforts to initiate and implement change toward developing information technology competencies among professional educators. technology competencies two clusters of technology competencies served as overall guiding principles in developing learning objectives: basic competencies represented entry-level skills related to basic computer operation and the use of an array of software that supports and enhances professional productivity. advanced competencies extended the application of basic competencies to teaching, administration, and counseling and to other professional activities of both students and faculty. the value of and commitment to these competencies was enhanced by the statewide mandate that required their demonstration for initial licensure of teachers and administrators; the former, by means of a state test, and the latter by means of a portfolio assessment. significant overlap existed between these developing technology competencies in a college of education 3 competencies and those identified as "recommended foundations in technology for all teachers" by the international society for technology in education (see figures 2 and 3 for representative examples). working from the state's list of basic and advanced technology competencies, a task force clarified and refined the specific information technology competencies that professional education faculty members and students were expected to have and use in their teaching and education programs. the "basics" included knowledge and skills in the following areas: computer operating systems, setup, maintenance, and troubleshooting; word processing and introductory desktop publishing; spreadsheets and graphing; databases; networking, telecommunications, media communications, and multimedia integration. advanced information technology competencies enable teachers and other education professionals to use multiple forms of technology to enhance learning in their classrooms (e.g., using school television resources to support teaching, using technology tools that are specific to a discipline, using technology to design and manage learning environments and resources). curriculum articulation to support the development of information technology competencies among both faculty and students, a second task force developed a course-bycompetency matrix that identified which competencies ought to be developed, enhanced, and applied in each course or other instructional activity in each professional education program (i.e., elementary, middle, secondary, special, and counselor education and school administration). each course in the college was evaluated relative to each competency to determine goodness-of-fit between the current curriculum and the intended technology-enhanced agenda. this activity served as the basis for all subsequent planning and implementation efforts. this provided a conceptual and logical base on which to evaluate existing activities, identify information technology instructional needs, and plan faculty and student development efforts. technology resources and facilities in collaboration with the college's information technology advisory committee (itac), a third task force developed policies, procedures, descriptive materials, and other mechanisms to ensure that professional education faculty members and students had access to the technology resources and facilities they needed to develop, enhance, and apply their growing repertoire of instructional technology competencies. these facilities and resources included:  networked desktop computers in faculty offices.  an instructional technology classroom with 20 pc computers, instructional workstation, ceiling mounted sound and video projection equipment, and networked laser printers.  an information technology lab with 19 pc computers, 10 macintosh computers, networked laser printers, a color scanner, and a color printer.  a faculty development lab with two multimedia pc and two multimedia macintosh computers, networked laser printers, a black and white scanner, 2 color scanners, and a color printer.  a "high-end" multimedia production lab available for faculty member use and located in the university library.  a suite of one large and five small interactive video labs with networked video cameras and vcrs, a roof mounted satellite dish for itv reception, duplex intercom system, and a video feed to ceiling mounted video monitors in a large "smart" classroom.  two model classrooms for teaching methods courses -one focused on teaching science and the other focused on teaching reading, language arts, and social studies -each with four computers, instructor's workstation, portable projection equipment, and networked laser printer.  four college novell servers to operate the technology classroom, the technology lab, and the model classrooms, provide access to special school-based courseware using ibm classroom lan administration system (iclas), and provide shared network services (printing, file sharing, and an administrative database). the task force and college information technology committee continuously monitor resources and carry on additional efforts to address needs required to maintain, enhance, and expand information technology capabilities. in addition to a portion of the college's operating budget, resources are being sought from internal (i.e., a university student computing fee) and external (i.e., grants from federal and state agencies as well as businesses and industry) sources. faculty member competencies assessment and development a fourth task force reviewed the basic and advanced information technology competencies and developed a survey instrument (available upon request) to determine the faculty members' perceptions of their capabilities within broad areas (e.g., word processing, communications, desktop publishing), their levels of use of information technology, and their opinions about priority areas for faculty development activities. results of this assessment were used by a fifth task force to design, develop, and implement group training programs, current issues in education vol. 2 no. 3 4 computer-assisted instruction activities, print learning materials, peer tutoring, short courses, and workshop presentations by which faculty enhanced their mastery and use of the expected technology competencies. for example, higher levels of competence were indicated for basic skills related to disk operating system functions (e.g., making backup copies) and word processing (e.g., editing or creating headers) and lower levels of skills were evident for database functions. relative to ratings for use, operating systems, word processing programs, and internet programs reflected higher levels of use and ratings for database programs, multimedia programs, presentation programs, and statistical processing programs reflected lower levels of use. in response to evidence of these needs, a series of individual and group professional development activities was planned and delivered to interested faculty. participants were provided general information as well as specific suggestions for how to use the technology (e.g., databases, multimedia and presentation programs) in their courses. additionally, a "help-desk" was established as a vehicle for identifying needs and problems and formulating alternatives and solutions. case study illustrations and templates were also an important part of the professional development activities. the same assessment protocols and procedures were used for determining and documenting both formatively and summatively the degree to which professional education faculty members in the college acquired and used the state's basic and advanced technology competencies (and any others refined or added in the future) in their teaching and other professional activities. student competencies assessment and development a sixth task force reviewed the competencies and developed a second survey instrument (available upon request) for use in evaluating students' perceptions of their abilities within broad areas (e.g., word processing, communications, desktop publishing). this information served a needs assessment function and provided baseline data for subsequent formative and summative evaluations. analyses of these data led a seventh task force to the design, development, selection, acquisition, and modification of an array of methods, programs, activities, materials, and other mechanisms some "courseimbedded" and others "stand-alone" by which students could develop and enhance their mastery and use of the expected information technology competencies. these same assessment protocols, as well as a portfolio assessment procedure currently in the conceptual stage of development, were used within the college for determining and documenting both formatively and summatively the degree to which students have and use the state's basic and advanced technology competencies (and any others refined or added in the future) in their professional education courses and in their own teaching. formative evaluation and feedback using appropriate models (e.g., kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation), data were collected to evaluate the efforts to achieve the seven implementation objectives and the overall goals for infusing information technology content in existing and planned teacher education curricula and classrooms. formative evaluation reports were prepared at the end of each semester and these evaluation data were used in a feedback loop to refine the seven implementation objectives and the associated activities. a faculty member within the college of education with extensive experience in quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods was responsible for overseeing the design, execution, and reporting of this aspect of the project. the following questions guided the evaluation effort: 1. to what extent are attitudes toward and knowledge about information technology (including, but not limited to, word processing, spreadsheets, data base management, statistical processing, presentation software, internet use) similar for faculty members and students participating in innovative training experiences and their peers not participating in training? 2. to what extent are the proposed training experiences provided to students appropriate and beneficial? is instruction presented effectively? do faculty and students receiving it produce products that meet accepted functional and practical standards? do students demonstrate mastery of the basic and advanced competencies as measured by the state information technology test and through portfolio assessment? a pretest/posttest control group design was used to address questions about attitude and knowledge; an expertise-based evaluation was conducted to address questions about the value of products (gall, borg, & gall, 1996). a total of 15 faculty members participated in the proposed instructional activities each semester. faculty with comparable general levels of knowledge in all of the education disciplines will be available to serve as a notreatment control group to be included in development activities in subsequent years. since random assignment is not possible, statistical equivalence of the control group will be established on key moderator variables (e.g., age, prior content knowledge, area of education expertise) using matched selection criteria. conclusions and recommendations because information technology has the potential to stimulate learning, because it is more and more pervasive in schools and society, because computer-based skills must be taught to children, because of the speed at which computers support and stimulate change, and developing technology competencies in a college of education 5 because of the expanded vision computers and their related technologies provide teachers and students, it is surprising that colleges of education often exclude technology-based learning experiences from curriculum enhancement efforts (morton, 1996). feedback from school representatives and the public in general indicates that competence in information technologies is important, but all too often lacking in teachers, counselors, and administrators in public and private schools. hill and somers (1996) described how one college of education was working toward making better use of technology in the preparation of future educators. their position paper focused more on the process for arriving at valued goals than on efforts, plans, or models for attaining them. in concluding, they echoed the widely recognized need for a common theme in colleges of education grounded in modeling and providing instruction in the educational use of technology (cf. bailey, ross, & griffin, 1996; lumley & bailey, 1996). the project we described addresses that need by illustrating how one college of education is enhancing basic and advanced information technology knowledge and productivity of faculty and students. this goal is being achieved by following a model emphasizing careful planning and evaluating of improvements in competence and productivity that result from enhanced information technology instruction. the following benefits have been or are expected to be accrued:  systemic change within the college concerning the ways in which faculty members teach and manage instruction.  enhancement of the information technology competencies for participating faculty members in a non-threatening manner.  the skills of graduate and undergraduate students to use information technology as an instructional tool in the schools are not taught in isolation but are integrated into coursework across the teacher preparation curriculum.  assisting inservice educators (i.e., teachers, administrators, counselors) to master competencies for the infusion of information technology into their professional activities.  preparation of a set of integrated instructional modules for use in developing and extending the information technology skills of graduate and undergraduate students.  preparation of innovative, computer-assisted assessment methods to determine the mastery of specific information technology competencies.  preparation of continuing education workshops showing professional educators how and when to apply information technology to specific content and skill areas in the curriculum.  preparation of continuing education workshops showing counselors and administrators how and when to apply information technology to the instructional support functions of the schools.  making graduate and undergraduate students aware of the range of educational applications of information technology, including ones to which the schools may not as yet have access.  adopting and adapting computer-assisted instruction projects required of students in a master's degree program in instructional systems technology for use in training faculty and students in professional education programs in the use of information technology.  providing opportunities for students in a master's degree program in instructional systems technology to design, direct, and evaluate information technology workshops for faculty and students in professional education programs.  building excitement and increasing anticipation of professional educators for the use of information technology to enhance instruction in schools. selected relations between these benefits and activities and evidence of change within a college of education implementing technology change are illustrated in table 1. in general, the unc charlotte experience offers direction and reflects a successful process for addressing the need for enhancing technology competencies in institutions of higher learning. while future research illustrating effects of this and similar efforts is needed, there is promise evident in this effort. references bailey, g. d., ross, t., & griffin, d. l. (1996). barriers to curriculum-technology integration in education. educational considerations, 23(2), 417. fisher, m. m. (1997). the voice of experience: inservice teacher technology competency recommendations for preservice teacher preparation programs. journal of technology and teacher education, 5, 139-147. funnell, p., & owen, j. (1992). developing and measuring competence. aspects of educational and training technology series, 25, 27-32. furst-bowe, j. a. (1996). an analysis of competencies needed by trainers to use computer-based technologies and distance learning systems. performance improvement quarterly, 9(4), 57-78. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 3 6 gall, m. d., borg, w. r., & gall, j. p. (1996). educational research (6th ed.). white plains, ny: longman publishers. hill, r. b., & somers, j. a. (1996). a process for initiating change: developing technology goals for a college of education. journal of teacher education, 47, 300-306. hunt, n. (1995). bringing technology into the pre-service teaching field experience.computers in the schools, 11(3), 37-48. kitagaki, i. (1995). technology literacy in the immediate future and educational technology. journal of educational technology systems, 23, 369-381. ley, k. (1997). facing ncate review or just looking for technology standards?techtrends, 42(4), 41-42. lowther, d. l., bassoppo-moyo, t., & morrison, g. r. (1998). moving from computer literate to technologically competent: the next educational reform. computers in human behavior, 14, 93109. lumley, d., & bailey, g. d. (1996). creating staff development programs: a leadership perspective. educational considerations, 23(2), 9-13. mehlinger, h. d. (1996). school reform in the information age. phi delta kappan, 77,400-407. morton, c. the modern land of laputa: where computers are used in education. phi delta kappan, 77, 416-419. northrup, p. t., & little, w. (1996). establishing instructional technology benchmarks for teacher preparation programs. journal of teacher education, 47, 213-222. otter, s. (1992). developing and measuring competence. aspects of educational and training technology series, 25, 99-100. petrakis, e., (1996). using a portfolio to assess preservice teachers' technology competence. journal of computing in teacher educaion, 13, 12-13. stanley, r. b., lindauer, p., & petrie, g. (1998). factors that influence teachers' use of computer technology. ers spectrum, 16(3), 42-46. developing technology competencies in a college of education 7 appendix table 1: examples of benefits and activities/evidence benefit activities/evidence changes in how faculty members teach and manage instruction multimedia technology based presentations replace stand-alone lecturing and traditional overhead transparencies. electronic gradebooks replace pencil and paper records. internet feedback replaces individual conferences, often difficult to schedule and use effectively within a typical course. on-line course materials, practice tests, and review materials used to broaden interactions and instructional opportunities. enhancement of competencies in a non-threatening manner individuals and small groups of faculty solve problems grounded in their current and future teaching assignments. faculty and students work collaboratively in addressing important educational issues. solutions are based on practical rather than presumed needs. skills to use technology are not taught in isolation future teachers learn to use electronic resources in doing research. future teachers learn to use technology for presentations and projects. future teachers learn to use technology to replace traditional tools. inservice educators master competencies for infusion into their professional activities practicing educators learn to use electronic resources in doing research. practicing educators learn to use technology for presentations and projects. practicing educators learn to use technology to replace traditional tools. students are aware of the range of educational applications available first year teachers enter profession with latest knowledge. new inductees in teaching profession take key positions in relation to technology and innovation. faculty and students are engaged in adopting and adapting projects relations between faculty and students reflect cooperation. collaboration becomes effective means for solving problems. providing opportunities for students to design, direct, and evaluate workshops in professional education programs students receive "on-the-job" experiences under supervision. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 3 8 figure 1: implementation objectives and formative evaluation activities developing technology competencies in a college of education 9 figure 2: basic technology competencies for all north carolina educators 1.0 computer operations skills essential knowledge and skills demonstrate these skills: 1. start up and shut down computer system and peripherals o use correct startup/shut down procedure according to computer type o start up and shut down printer o start up and shut down cd-rom o start up and shut down scanner 2. identify and use icons, windows, menus o point, click, double-click, click and drag with mouse o maximize and minimize a window o use pull-down and expanded pull-down menus o select, open, and move an icon o select, open, move, and close a window o resize a window and title/stack windows o scroll up/down, left/right within a window o make a window active/inactive 3. start an application and create a document 4. name, save, retrieve, revise a document o name a document o save a document using both the save and save as commands o retrieve a document from floppy disk o retrieve a document from hard drive o rename a document o edit and re-save a document 5. use printing options 6. insert and eject floppy disk and cd-rom 7. initialize, name/rename floppy disk and hard disk 8. copy document from hard disk to floppy disk and vice versa 9. create and name/rename subdirectories/folders 10. save, open, place documents inside subdirectories/folders 11. open and work with more than one application at a time 12. use special operating features for people with disabilities current issues in education vol. 2 no. 3 10 figure 3: international society for technology in education iste recommended foundations in technology for all teachers the national council for accreditation of teacher education (ncate) is the official body for accrediting teacher preparation programs. the international society for technology in education (iste) is the professional education organization responsible for recommending guidelines for accreditation to ncate for programs in educational computing and technology teacher preparation. i. foundations. the iste foundation standards reflect professional studies in education that provide fundamental concepts and skills for applying information technology in educational settings. all candidates seeking initial certification or endorsements in teacher preparation programs should have opportunities to meet the educational technology foundations standards. a. basic computer/technology operations and concepts. candidates will use computer systems run software; to access, generate and manipulate data; and to publish results. they will also evaluate performance of hardware and software components of computer systems and apply basic troubleshooting strategies as needed. 1. operate a multimedia computer system with related peripheral devices to successfully install and use a variety of software package. 2. use terminology related to computers and technology appropriately in written and oral communications. 3. describe and implement basic troubleshooting techniques for multimedia computer systems with related peripheral devices. 4. use imaging devices such as scanners, digital cameras, and/or video cameras with computer systems and software. 5. demonstrate knowledge of uses of computers and technology in business, industry, and society. b. personal and professional use of technology. candidates will apply tools for enhancing their own professional growth and productivity. they will use technology in communicating, collaborating, conducting research, and solving problems. in addition, they will plan and participate in activities that encourage lifelong learning and will promote equitable, ethical, and legal use of computer/technology resources. 1. use productivity tools for word processing, database management, and spreadsheet applications. 2. apply productivity tools for creating multimedia presentations. 3. use computer-based technologies including telecommunications to access information and enhance personal and professional productivity. 4. use computers to support problem solving, data collection, information management, communications, presentations, and decision making. 5. demonstrate awareness of resources for adaptive assistive devices for student with special needs. 6. demonstrate knowledge of equity, ethics, legal, and human issues concerning use of computers and technology. 7. identify computer and related technology resources for facilitating lifelong learning and emerging roles of the learner and the educator. 8. observe demonstrations or uses of broadcast instruction, audio/video conferencing, and other distant learning applications. c. application of technology in instruction. candidates will apply computers and related technologies to support instruction in their grade level and subject areas. they must plan and deliver instructional units that integrate a variety of software, applications, and learning tools. lessons developed must reflect effective grouping and assessment strategies for diverse populations. 1. explore, evaluate, and use computer/technology resources including applications, tools, educational software and associated documentation. 2. describe current instructional principles, research, and appropriate assessment practices as related to the use of computers and technology resources in the curriculum. 3. design, deliver, and assess student learning activities that integrate computers/technology for a variety of student group strategies and for diverse student populations. 4. design student learning activities that foster equitable, ethical, and legal use of technology by students. 5. practice responsible, ethical and legal use of technology, information, and software resources. http://www.iste.org/standards/index.html developing technology competencies in a college of education 11 1999 article citation algozzine, b., bateman, l. r., flowers, c. p., gretes, j. a., hughes, c. d., & lambert, r. (1999, september 8). developing technology competencies in a college of education. current issues in education [on-line], 2(3). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number3/. author notes authorship is listed in alphabetical order. these six individuals constitute the team responsible for implementation of the technology initiative described in this article and participated equally in the preparation of the manuscript. the authors acknowledge the efforts of richard antonak and butch smith in the initial development of the model. dr. algozzine is a professor in the educational administration, research, and technology department at the university of north carolina at charlotte. he is serving as evaluator for the project. his other research interests include effective teaching, assessment, and improving the lives of individuals with disabilities. bob algozzine can be reached via e-mail at rfalgozz@email.uncc.edu. mr. bateman is an information technology specialist in the office of information technology at the university of north carolina at charlotte. he provides technical assistance to faculty, staff, and students in the college of education in all matters related to technology. lonnie bateman can be reached via e-mail atlrbatema@email.uncc.edu. dr. flowers is an assistant professor in the educational administration, research, and technology department at the university of north carolina at charlotte. she developed instruments for assessing student competencies. her other research interests include teacher evaluation, scale development, and individualized assessment methods. claudia flowers can be reached via e-mail atcpflower@email.uncc.edu. dr. gretes is a professor in the educational administration, research, and technology department at the university of north carolina at charlotte. he is faculty coordinator for the office of information technology in the college of education. his other research interests include educational evaluation, course development technologies, and computerized-testing. john gretes can be reached via e-mail atjagretes@email.uncc.edu . mr. hughes is director of the office of information technology at the university of north carolina at charlotte. he supervises all technology-related activities and provides technical assistance to faculty, staff, and students in the college of education. dane hughes can be reached via e-mail at cdhughes@email.uncc.edu. dr. lambert is an assistant professor in the educational administration, research, and technology department at the university of north carolina at charlotte. he is serving as qualitative evaluator for the project. his other research interests include large-scale evaluation, effectiveness of preschool programs, and applied measurement statistics. richard lambert can be reached via e-mail atrglamber@email.uncc.edu. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number3/index.html mailto:rfalgozz@email.uncc.edu mailto:lrbatema@email.uncc.edu mailto:cpflower@email.uncc.edu mailto:jagretes@email.uncc.edu mailto:cdhughes%20@email.uncc.edu mailto:rglamber@email.uncc.edu http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu current issues in education vol. 2 no. 3 12 2011 article citation algozzine, b., bateman, l. r., flowers, c. p., gretes, j. a., hughes, c. d., & lambert, r. (2011). developing technology competencies in a college of education. current issues in education, 2(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/827 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word 1070-4638-3-le_corrected.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 january 14, 2013 issn 1099-839x college-readiness is not one-size-fits-all wally barnes and john r. slate sam houston state university the purpose of this article is to provide a critical analysis of the one-size-fits-all collegereadiness agenda that now guides curriculum and expectations in our nation’s secondary schools. although president obama, in 2010, emphasized the need for collegeand career-readiness for all high school graduates, the emphasis is clearly on collegereadiness, at the exclusion of other educational alternatives. collegeand careerreadiness may be the mantra for the 21st century, but politicians and educational leaders tend to lean heavily on college-readiness when curricular requirements are increased and accountability measures become more stringent, which tends to anchor academicpreparedness. in this article, educational policy reports, legislative acts, and scholarly journal articles were examined and discussed to illuminate the one-size-fits-all collegereadiness agenda and explore the extent to which students should be college-ready. in the review of recent collegeand career-readiness literature, the indication is that, in all likelihood, the one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda is a dichotomous variable rather than a continuum, which would allow students to make more informed decisions about college goals and career aspirations. keywords: one-size-fits-all, college-readiness, career-readiness, literature review in today’s society, graduating from high school, enrolling in college, and obtaining a bachelor’s degree are seen as the primary means of increasing one’s cultural capital and upward social mobility (barnes & slate, 2010; barnes, slate, & rojas-lebouef, 2010; leonhardt, 2005, 2011). additionally, symonds, schwartz, and ferguson (2011) stated, “education beyond high school is the passport to the american dream” (p. 2). however, a plethora of college-readiness researchers (barnes & slate, 2010, 2011; barnes et al., 2010; conley, 2010; greene & winters, 2005; kahlenberg, 2010; symonds et al., 2011; leonhardt, 2005, 2011; ravitch, 2010; zhao, 2009a, 2009b) have reported that students in our nation’s high schools are earning diplomas, but they are graduating without the knowledge, skills, and metacognitive strategies needed to be successful at postsecondary institutions. although college-readiness is an ambitious, viable tenet for student success at the postsecondary level, federal and state policy makers must understand that students and patterns of college attendance are changing rapidly (symonds et al., 2011). the diversity of students, coupled with the numerous avenues of college attendance, requires that law makers and school administrators look beyond high-stakes testing, stringent accountability measures, and mountains of statistical data as indicators of college-readiness. according to college-readiness researchers, the federal government’s one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda has resulted in students who do not graduate from high school or in students who graduate but are not academically prepared or college-ready (barnes & slate, 2010, 2011; barnes et al., 2010; berliner, 2006; kahlenberg, 2010; ravitch, 2010; rosenbaum, stephan, & rosenbaum, 2010; swanson, 2008; symonds et al., 2011; zhao, 2009a). current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 purpose of the study in this article, we reflect on the historical events that led to the reality of college readiness as the dominant value influencing the high school curriculum. moreover, we examine the issue of college-readiness with the regard to the one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda. specifically, we argue that that college-readiness is itself a continuum and not a dichotomous variable (i.e., collegeready or not college-ready). moreover, we contend that individuals may be college-ready for one level of postsecondary education but not necessarily for other levels. finally, we discuss the broad dimensions of college-readiness. the road to one-size-fits-all for over 50 years, state and federal political leaders, higher education and secondary school (i.e., middle and high school) administrators and local community advocates have sought to improve student achievement at all levels. also, the aforementioned groups have striven to increase high school graduation rates, college-readiness rates, and higher education degree attainment. to accomplish these extremely important goals, stakeholders at all political and educational levels have pushed to increase academic rigor and to set high expectations for all students. although national legislation and federal policies mandated for public school systems since the 1950s have appeared to be in the best interest of student learning, most of the decisions to increase academic rigor were predicated on fear, which allowed the federal government a stronghold in public education, and whether intended or not, has created a stifling, ineffective one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda (berliner, 2006; ravitch, 2010; zhao, 2009a, 2009b). the first political maneuver on the road to the one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda in public education began in 1957 with the launch of sputnik, a small inconsequential, artificial satellite, by the soviet union, which directly challenged the eminence and prowess of the scientific research and development community in the united states, leading to the national defense education act (ndea) of 1958 (flattau et al., 2006; zhao, 2009a). the enactment of the ndea infused large sums of money into the american educational system to encourage students to study math, science, computer technology, and foreign languages, thereby allowing the federal government to, ever so benignly, create the road map for america’s public education system. in the 10-year journey following the enactment of the ndea (i.e., 1958-1967), the now one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda began to change the nation’s academic landscape. standardized tests administered to elementary and secondary students increased from 10 million to 45 million, and standardized testing in high school increased from one-third of the student population to nearly 100% (flattau et al., 2006). the second major political maneuver on the road to a one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda came in 1983 when the national commission on excellence in education presented then-president ronald reagan with a nation at risk: the imperative for educational reform (a nation at risk). in a nation at risk, the commission reported that “american prosperity, security, and civility” were in serious jeopardy because the educational foundation on which the united states was built was rapidly eroding (national commission on excellence in education, 1983, p. 7). ravitch (2010) stated that the statistics cited in a nation at risk indicated declining scores on national standardized achievement tests and poor performance on international assessments, which were rationalized as debilitating roadblocks by economic and political leaders. according to zhao (2009a), president reagan, whose decision was to abolish the u.s. department of education and who initially was not interested in the report but needed to bolster his chance of reelection, manipulated the information in a nation at risk to foreshadow impending economic doom and ensure the public that he and the republican party would change the course of america’s educational system on the national forefront and in the international academic arena (ansary, 2007). schrag (2000) reported, that reagan-era conservatives, “with the help of business leaders like ibm chairman lou gerstner, managed to convert a whole range of liberally oriented children's issues . . . into a debate focused almost exclusively on education and tougher-standards school reform" (p. 3). through his use of the information in a nation at risk, president reagan clearly delineated the direction of america’s education system, driving the nation’s education system more steadfastly toward the present one-size-fits-all agenda as mandated by the no child left behind act (nclb) of 2001 (ansary, 2007; ravitch, 2010; rosenbaum et al., 2010; tienken & zhao, 2010; zhao, 2009a). the nclb act, although long and complex, exhibits a fairly simple policy premise: better academic outcomes for all students. specifically, the nclb act requires that schools close the achievement gaps between middleand upper-socioeconomic white students and their urban and rural lower-socioeconomic counterparts (goldrick-rab & mazzeo, 2005). in a departure from previous revisions of the elementary and secondary education act of 1965, the nclb act mandates that schools meet proficiency targets or face sanctions, including restructuring and eventual closing (goldrickrab & mazzeo, 2005). although the nclb act was explicitly aimed at changing academic achievement in the k-12 educational arena, it may have longer-term implications, particularly for collegeand workforcereadiness (educational policy institute, 2005; rosenbaum et al., 2010; symonds et al., 2011). for example, organizational and instructional reforms in schools— college-readiness is not one-size-fits-all 3 crucial to the success of academic achievement—are also likely to have an effect on how well students are prepared for access to and success in college (goldrick-rab & mazzeo, 2005). although the basic premise of educating all students appears to be an equitably sound choice, the nclb act has drastically changed the climate and culture of public education by utilizing high-stakes standardized test scores as the primary measure of student learning and school quality, disregarding most other positive attributes of students and professional educators and administrators. with high-stakes standardized state tests and harsh, punitive accountability measures as the supposed motivators for learning, students may become adept at test-taking, but they will be unprepared to be academically successful in postsecondary institutions (american college test [act], 2010, 2011; amrein & berliner, 2003; barnes & slate, 2011; symonds, 2011; zhao, 2006, 2009a, 2009b). college-readiness research most policy makers, administrators, advocates, researchers, and practitioners agree that rigorous academic preparation is essential for today’s young people to meet the demands of the 21st century global society (achieve inc., 2007, 2009, 2011; act, 2007, 2011; nclb, 2002; ravitch, 2010; swanson, 2008; symonds et al., 2011; zhao, 2009a, 2009b). however, with the one-size-fits-all agenda that has evolved as a result of the high-stakes testing and punitive accountability measures mandated by the nclb act at the federal, state, and local levels, the present reality is that far too many students falter at various stages of their academically rigorous journey from middle and high school through college without much understanding of how and why this life-changing phenomenon occurred (rosenbaum et al., 2010; savitz-romer, jager-hyman, & coles, 2009). noddings (2010) commented that “simply stating what students must know and be able to do is not enough to ensure the desired outcomes. when standardization is taken to mean universalization, the result may well be lower achievement for many students” (p. 29). test scores reported by the act (2011) in the annual college-readiness report indicated that only 25% of high school students nationally who took the act in 2011 were considered college-ready on all four collegereadiness benchmarks. from the same report, the act (2011) revealed that the college-readiness rates in arizona, florida, and texas (i.e., states with similar demographics), as measured by the four benchmarks, were 18%, 17%, and 24% respectively. in an investigation of college-readiness rates in texas for school years ending in 2007, 2008, and 2009, 27 inferential research questions were analyzed to determine college-readiness rates of black, hispanic, and white high school graduates in reading, math and in both subjects (barnes & slate, 2011). all public high schools in texas that reported college-readiness data for the aforementioned subgroups were included in the study, utilizing data from the texas education agency’s academic excellence indicator system college readiness indicators, which reflect the use of standardized test scores. of the 27 statistical analyses of college-readiness, statistically significant findings were present, revealing 19 large effect sizes, one near-large effect size, one moderate effect size, and six small effect sizes (barnes & slate, 2011; barnes et al., 2010). differences in college-readiness rates were revealed for black and hispanic high school graduates for the 3 school years. greater differences were exhibited between white and hispanic high school graduates than between black and hispanic high school graduates over the 3-year period. further, when college-readiness data were examined, the largest difference in college-ready graduate rates was between black and white high school graduates. although the college-readiness rate of white students was much higher than the college-readiness rates of their black and hispanic counterparts, collegereadiness rates for reading, math, and both subjects across the 3-year period were low for all students included in the texas study (barnes & slate, 2011). ten years after the implementation of the nclb act, findings of annual act (2010, 2011) college-readiness reports, similar findings from the texas college-readiness study (barnes & slate, 2011), and results of other studies (braun, wang, jenkins, & weinbaum, 2006; carpenter, ramirez, & severn, 2006; greene & winters, 2005; konstantopoulos & hedges, 2005; moore et al., 2010) throughout the first decade of the 21st century clearly indicate that the highstakes testing and stringent accountability measures, which have perpetuated the one-size-fits-all collegereadiness, agenda are not working. the nclb act may have positive implications for collegeand workforce-readiness; however, many researchers have argued that high-stakes testing and punitive accountability measures are detrimental to student learning, closing the achievement gap, lowering the dropout rate, increasing graduation rates, and preparing students for access to and success in academic endeavors beyond high school (barnes et al., 2010; berliner, 2006; marchant, paulson, & shunk, 2006; moore et al., 2010; ravitch, 2010; rosenbaum et al., 2010; savitz-romer et al., 2009; symonds et al., 2011; tan, 2010; tienken & canton, 2009; tienken & zhao, 2010; zhao, 2009a, 2009b). berliner (2006) stated that he and colleagues (i.e., amrein & berliner, 2002; nichols & berliner, 2006, 2008; nichols, glass, & berliner, 2005) argued that “high-stakes testing programs in most states were ineffective in achieving their intended purposes, and causing severe unintended negative effects, as well” (p. 950). these unintended consequences which berliner (2006) outlined in his research still persist (barnes et al., 2010; moore et al., 2010; ravitch, 2010; rojas-lebouef current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 & slate, 2011a, 2011b; rosenbaum et al., 2010; savitzromer et al., 2009; symonds et al., 2011; tan, 2010; tienken & canton, 2009; tienken & zhao, 2010; zhao 2009a, 2009b). high-stakes testing and the punitive accountability measures mandated by the nclb act have been instrumental in creating the present one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda. another major issue that drives the nclb act and propagates the one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda is the supposed performance gap on international standardized tests that exists between students in the united states and students in other countries (baker, 2007; berliner, 2006; ravitch, 2010; tan, 2010; tienken, 2008; tienken & zhao, 2010). policy makers have used international tests results, on which american high school students typically do not fare well, to disseminate ideas created a half century ago and perpetuated through different political iterations until now. baker (2007) and zhao (2009a, 2009b) indicated that the results of students’ performance on international tests and their or their nations’ economic well being is somewhat speculative. in his empirical study, baker (2007), a retired u.s. department of education executive, examined the relationship of students’ performance on international tests and several indicators of their countries’ economic well being, the findings of which indicated a negative correlation or no correlation between the two variables. in a number of empirical studies the relationship between scores on international tests and the economic strength of the 17 strongest economies in the world is actually negative, or lack the statistical strength to provide a cause and effect relationship between the two variables (baker, 2007; bils & klenow, 1998; bracey, 2003, 2005; krueger, 1999; psacharopoulos & patrinos, 2002; ramirez, luo, schofer, & meyer, 2006; tienken, 2008). although superficial and without practical significance according to the aforementioned empirical studies, the organisation for economic co-operation and development (2009) reported that the united states accounted for 25% of top science achievers among 15 year-olds worldwide, almost doubling the closest competitor. fearfully, erroneously, and somewhat unethically, policy makers, corporate leaders, and the media have reduced the quality of education to standardized test scores that allow comparisons of students and school systems across state and international boundaries, which appeals to our society’s need for simplistic, yet sometimes misleading, information, thereby strengthening the one-size-fits-all collegereadiness agenda (baker, 2007; berliner, 2006; ravitch, 2010; rojas-lebouef & slate, 2011a, 2011b; tan, 2010; tienken & canton, 2009; tienken & zhao, 2010; zhao, 2009a, 2009b). in 2009, arne duncan, secretary of the u.s. department of education, addressed the reauthorization of the no child left behind act, stating the need to continue to increase learning standards and performance expectations within schools and school districts to improve the academic achievement of all students (u.s. department of education, 2009). however, with the continued presence of low student academic achievement scores, low college-readiness rates, excessive high school dropout rates, and the wide and stable student achievement gap over the past decade, president obama plans to ask congress to amend the nclb act (dillon, 2010). dillon (2010) reported that the obama administration was proposing sweeping changes in the nclb act in an effort to ensure that u.s. high school students graduate collegeand career-ready (ccr). of utmost importance, the 2014 date for the adequate yearly progress (ayp) of 100% pass rate by all students, which has been branded as a “utopian goal,” would be eliminated (dillon, 2010, p. 2). additionally, the ayp measure would be revised to remove the harsh sanctions placed on underperforming schools by offering more positive incentives to promote higher student academic achievement in all subgroups, in an attempt to narrow the achievement gap between middleand upper-class white students and their ethnically diverse counterparts (dillon, 2010). an administrator from the u.s. department of education stated, “the administration will propose to replace the accountability system established in no child left behind with a new system built around the goal of helping students graduate high school collegeand careerready” (dillon, 2010, p. 1). although president obama, in 2010, emphasized the need for collegeand career-readiness for all high school graduates, the emphasis is clearly on collegereadiness, at the exclusion of other educational alternatives. further, adelman (2012) stated that the u.s. department of education’s “policies rightly say that collegeand career-readiness needs to mean that students are actually college ready,” which indicates that the onesize-fits-all college-readiness agenda is the standard by which all public high school students in the united states are measured. unintended consequences of one-size-fits-all college-readiness the one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda of high-stakes standardized testing and punitive accountability measures as mandated by the nclb act has created a paradox in one of its primary tenets— greater academic achievement for all students, especially students of poverty and culturally diverse backgrounds. instead of creating the new equitable, academic environment, whereby all students must be given the same opportunity to learn, the opposite has occurred to perpetuate the learning environment it was mandated to stop (ryan, matheson, & morgenthau, 2003; zhao, 2009a, 2009b). students from the wealthiest families, along with students of families whose household incomes college-readiness is not one-size-fits-all 5 fall into the middleand upper middle-socioeconomic ranges, typically score well on standardized tests (nichols & berliner, 2008; zhao, 2009a). these wealthy groups of students who do not attend private schools usually attend public schools that, on a day-by-day basis, are not bothered by the high-stakes testing and punitive accountability measures because the pass rates of students are extremely high (berliner, 2006, 2008). high-stakes standardized tests hit our lower-socioeconomic and most ethnically-diverse students hardest and thereby forces the kind of education on the neediest group of students that disallows them to compete successfully with the children of families in the middleand upper-socioeconomic groups (anyon, 2005; berliner, 2006; nichols & berliner, 2008; rojas-lebouef & slate, 2011a, 2011b; zhao, 2009a, 2009b). narrowing curriculum, teaching to the test, and repetitive benchmarking that are present in schools for lowersocioeconomic, ethnically-diverse students do not prepare them for quality job training programs or for the better universities in the nation, which makes room for the children of the more privileged at elite universities (berliner, 2006; leonhardt, 2004, 2011; nichols & berliner, 2008). according to leonhardt (2004), researchers at the university of michigan, and other major universities, have indicated that students attending the university of michigan and similar state flagship universities were from predominantly wealthy families. leonhardt (2004) reported, overall, at the 42 most selective state universities, including the flagship campuses in california, colorado, illinois, michigan and new york, 40 percent of this year’s freshmen come from families making more than $100,000, up from about 32 percent in 1999. . . . nationwide, fewer than 20 percent of families make that much money. (p. 2) in 2011, leonhardt stated that 67% of the freshman class at 193 of the most selective colleges and universities in the united states came from the top fourth of the income distribution bracket, with only 15% of freshmen coming from the bottom half of the bracket. these statistics indicate that at many selective postsecondary institutions across the country students from the wealthiest families outnumber lower-, middle-, and upper-middle socioeconomic class students (leonhardt, 2011). additionally, the college board (2011) reported that sat verbal and mathematics composite scores for students in the highest income brackets (i.e., $100,000 and higher) ranged from 1065 to 1154. scores for students in the lowest income brackets ($40,000 or less) ranged from 896-944, indicating a gap of 169-210 points (college board, 2011). because the status quo for children from advantaged families is somewhat preserved though the one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda, middleand upper-class families have no reason to oppose high-stakes testing openly for academic accountability because they know that their children will do well. another dilemma created by the one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda is that all students are placed on the same rigorous academic track. collegeand careerready may be the new buzz words or catch phrase of the 21st century, but with the political, economic, and educational focus and society’s bandwagon mentality, the emphasis is clearly on college-ready (i.e., a 4-year baccalaureate degree) (asch, 2010; rosenbaum et al., 2010; savitz-romer et al., 2009; symonds et al., 2011; zhao, 2009a, 2009b). although collegeand careerreadiness is the 21st century mantra, “the word college is used as a synonym for bachelor’s degree” (rosenbaum et al., 2010, p. 3), and the word career is too often deemphasized (asch, 2010; rosenbaum et al., 2010; symonds et al., 2011). presently, with the only measure of college-readiness primarily being standardized tests, college readiness may be more aptly defined as academicpreparedness (barnes & slate, 2010, 2011). according to rosenbaum et al. (2010), 89% of all high school graduates in 2004 planned to earn a bachelor’s degree regardless of preparation and academic achievement. although large numbers of students aspire to go to college, only 30% of young adults who attend college earn a bachelor’s degree by their mid-twenties (symonds at al., 2011). today’s one-size-fits-all collegereadiness agenda has been promoted by business and economic leaders and perpetuated with political acumen to an american society that is willing to embrace the ideas of education and prosperity for their children, which is somewhat misleading. in 1983, the national commission on excellence in education stated “that all schools, colleges, and universities adopt more rigorous and measurable standards and outcomes for academic performance” (p. 73). also, a major tenet of the improving america’s school act of 1994 was that all students would leave the 12th grade having mastered challenging subjects, including: (a) english, (b) math, (c) science, (d) foreign languages, (e) civics and government, (f) economics, (g) art, (h) history, and (i) geography (paris, 1994). according to achieve, inc (2011), most states now have collegeand career-readiness curriculum guidelines in place for secondary students. curricular guidelines typically follow a format similar to the academic guidelines suggested by the national commission on education excellence (1983), including: “(a) 4 years of english; (b) 3 years of mathematics; (c) 3 years of science; (d) 3 years of social studies; and (e) one-half year of computer science, and (f) 2 years of foreign language” (national commission on excellence in education, 1983, p. 70). to enhance collegeand career-readiness, primarily college-readiness, a few states have increased current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 academic requirements for graduation to include 4 years of mathematics, english, science and social studies (achieve, inc., 2007, 2011). for example, texas legislators enacted the texas administrative code (tac), 19, §74.63 in 2006 to increase course requirements for high school graduation by mandating that students entering the ninth grade in the 2007-2008 school year would be required to take four courses in english, mathematics, science, and social studies (i.e., the 4 x 4 plan) to graduate (texas higher education coordinating board, 2008). although researchers agree that students should be collegeand career-ready, the one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda is stultifying to many students who have aspirations beyond high school but fail to graduate because they cannot or will not meet the academic requirements placed on them (asch, 2010; rosenbaum et al., 2010; symonds et al., 2011). zhao (2009a) questioned the viability of the same strict academic requirements for all students, stating that “the solution is not more math, science, and reading, more testing; and more accountability as prescribed by nclb. in fact, nclb could lead america into deeper crisis” (p. 18). it is highly unlikely that increased curriculum requirements will have any effect on academic achievement, including reducing dropout rates and lessening the achievement gap. simply increasing academic requirements and stating what students must know is not enough to ensure positive outcomes. according to asch (2010), “college prep has become a one-size-fits-all approach to secondary education, and some students simply do not fit” (p. 35). although common core classes are relevant in elementary and junior high school, older adolescents must be provided with a broad range of curricular options to keep them engaged in their educational pursuits of career goal aspirations. “in 21st century america, education beyond high school is the passport to the american dream. but how much and what kind of post-secondary is really needed to prosper in the new american economy” (symonds et al., 2011, p. 2)? high schools should be designed and curriculum should be structured to help all students graduate, including students who plan to earn an occupational certificate, attain an associate’s degree, or complete a 4-year bachelor’s degree. as the one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda pushes students toward primarily 4-year baccalaureate degrees, at the exclusion of other viable educational options, those students who fail to measure up to the curricular expectations are implicitly told that they are not good enough. as the academic bar is arbitrarily raised and more tests are required to ensure that all students will be college-ready, more students will not be college ready. many of these students, thinking that college is their only option, enroll in college without the academic preparation, interest in the subject matter, and knowledge of what success in college requires; only to dropout before realizing the american dream. in their report, help wanted: projections for jobs and education requirements through 2018, for the georgetown university center on education and the workforce, carnevale, smith, and strohl (2010) revealed that postsecondary credential requirements for the workforce will increase steadily, but that 14 million middle-skill job openings will be filled with workers who earn an associate degree or occupational certificate. surprisingly, 27% of jobs filled by workers with occupational certificates and licenses, but short of an associate’s degree, will earn more than average bachelor’s degree holders (executive office of the president council of economic advisers, 2009; rosenbaum et al., 2010; symonds et al., 2011). for approximately 30 years, policy makers have devised and promoted several iterations of curriculum requirements, high-stakes testing, and punitive accountability measures, which have led to the one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda, but in reality, college-readiness is not a dichotomous variable (i.e., college-ready or not college-ready), but rather a continuum, which implies that college-readiness is not one-size-fits-all advocates for national curriculum and highstakes testing insist that all students will be better prepared for postsecondary education and have more opportunities to live a prosperous and fulfilling life if they are required to meet the same curricular guidelines (achieve inc., 2011). however, to accomplish this daunting task, all students must be placed in traditional academic classes regardless of interests, aptitudes, and attitudes. although george w. bush was correct in stating that the united states should no longer allow “the soft bigotry of low expectations” (as cited in asch, 2011, p. 35) by offering a quality education to all students; however, he may have inadvertently propagated the onesize-fits-all college readiness agenda, creating the “bigotry of inappropriate expectations” for many students (asch, 2010, p. 35). robert schwartz, dean of the harvard graduate school of education, stated that college, in the traditional sense of the institution, was not for every high school graduate (as cited in baron, 2011). further, symonds and colleagues (2011) reported that “only about 4 in 10 americans have obtained either an associate’s or bachelor’s degree by their midtwenties…roughly another 10% have earned a certificate” (p. 6), indicating further that the one-size-fits-all collegereadiness agenda is not appropriate for all students. some researchers (e.g., conley, 2007) argue postsecondary education is different from high school and college readiness is fundamentally different from high school competence. over the last decade, although the high school graduation rate has remained the same, the overall percentage of students who have left high school college-readiness is not one-size-fits-all 7 able to attend college has improved by only 9% (greene & winters, 2005). at the national governors association, bill gates warned the audience that american high school education was obsolete (de león, 2005). conclusion standardization, as mandated by the nclb act, and homogenization of curriculum, as a result of the nclb act’s stringent accountability measures, has not decreased the dropout rate, lessened the achievement gap, increased graduation rates, or improved college-readiness rates (balfanz, 2009; balfanz & legters, 2004; ravich, 2010; roderick, nagaoka, & coca, 2009; rosenbaum et al., 2010; symonds et al., 2011; zhao, 2009a, 2009b). as a result, college graduation rates have not improved because policy makers, educational leaders, and classroom teachers, either knowingly or unknowingly, have reverberated that college equals success, but simply stated, many students do not fit well in the one-size-fitsall college-readiness agenda. one vital step in quelling the aforementioned academic dilemmas may be differentiation; offerings of a variety of well-developed, clearly-focused, career-path options linked to community college and 4-year university majors. visible, viable options, embedded with rigorous academic curriculum related to those options, would allow students to make informed choices that piqued their interests and enhanced their talents for specific careers; especially those students who have career aspirations that are alternative to the traditional 4-year baccalaureate degree. perhaps, with more focus on college-and career-readiness options, more clearly-focused pathways to their chosen career, avenues for completion could include less pitfalls and roadblocks, thereby allowing more students to complete their academic journey through high school and college. educators, educational leaders, and policy makers, starting with grade 6 students, need to play a major role in ensuring that students are prepared for some sort of postsecondary education. efforts to encourage such preparation could occur through encouraging parent involvement, providing college and career planning information, and assisting students in the planning for their postsecondary education (wimberly & noeth, 2005). such planning should be for going to college or for planning for a career. we believe that it should not be focused entirely on going to college. references achieve inc. 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(2009b). comments on common core standards initiative. american association of school administrators journal of scholarship and practice, 6(3), 46-54. college-readiness is not one-size-fits-all 11 appendix definition of terms college readiness the cognitive skills and strategies gained through successful completion of rigorous high school coursework, while at the same time, facilitating students’ development of the requisite set of metacognitive skills and strategies necessary for college success—creativity, critical thinking, self-efficacy, self-confidence, and self-regulation, which will allow them to develop an awareness and understanding of the academic and non-academic expectations of entering and succeeding at postsecondary institutions, thereby internalizing a college-going attitude, constitutes college readiness. one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda policy makers, educational leaders, and classroom teachers, either knowingly or unknowingly, have reverberated that a college degree equals success, and all secondary students, regardless of postsecondary aspirations are required to complete the same rigorous coursework, where success is measured by grades and standardized test scores current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 12 article citation barnes, w., & slate, j. r. (2013). college-readiness is not one-size-fits-all. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1070 author notes wally barnes reading center, sam houston state university wbb001@shsu.edu wally barnes, ed.d. is director of the reading center at sam houston state university. his research interests are in college readiness and developmental education issues. correspondence regarding this article may be directed to dr. barnes at wbb001@shsu.edu john r. slate department of educational leadership and counseling, sam houston state university jrs051@shsu.edu john r. slate, ph.d. is a professor in the department of educational leadership and counseling at sam houston state university where he teaches basic and advanced statistics, academic and professional writing, and proposal writing. his research interests are in the use of state and national educational databases for school reform manuscript received: 8/30/12 revisions received: 10/11/12 accepted: 12/26/12 college-readiness is not one-size-fits-all 13 volume 16, number 1 january 14, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template 1 volume 17, number 3 december 22, 2014 issn 1099-839x transformational school principal leadership behavior and its impact on school climate edward leroy myers temple university during the last two decades, researchers and theorists have offered a variety of conceptual designs and empirical findings regarding school leadership conduct, as it relates to organizational climate concerns. as a supplement to the literature, this paper will examine the intentions, decisions, behaviors, and school outcomes associated with one senior high school principal who endeavored to recreate his school organization. the purpose of this paper is to further the understanding of how transformational leadership manifests in the school organization, and to determine how it impacts school climate. the study’s findings may be beneficial for school leaders and scholars who wish to better understand the school transformation process. keywords: school leadership, organizational climate, ethic of care, emotional intelligence, transformational leadership within the educational domain, various researchers have discussed the wellestablished notion that a relationship exists between leadership, school climate, employee commitment, and effective schools (bryk & schneider, 2002; durrah, 2009; kelley, thornton, & daugherty, 2005; mccroskey, 2007). kelley et al. (2005) emphasized that principals may influence a school’s climate a great deal if “they can develop feelings of trust, open communications, collegiality, and promote effective feedback” (p. 23). as gimbel (2001) discussed, one way of doing so is by sustaining one-to-one relationships with teachers and demonstrating supportive behavior. within this realm, the principal’s interpersonal exchanges are critical, since they hold the capacity to produce a school that is built on a foundation of collegiality, dialogue, and relationships (sciarappa, 2007). due to the power of school principal conduct, it is necessary to explore the intentions, potentialities, activities, and outcomes that are associated with school leadership behavior. in doing so, better understandings may develop, as to the competencies and limitations of actual school leadership practice in today’s schools. in turn, rich depictions of the organizational interplay that transpires within schools can be produced, and the actual effects of school leadership practice can be better understood. purpose of the study the purpose of this study was to examine the intentions and behaviors of a particular school principal who sought to transform the school’s climate. this study worked to explore the lived experiences of the school leader, subordinates, and stakeholders who were involved with the school organization. the focus was initially placed on gathering a description of the intentions of the school principal and then examining his actual leadership decisions and behaviors, and determining whether such behavior impacted the school’s climate. specifically, the research question this study addressed was whether the competencies, tendencies, and behaviors of a particular school principal matched his intentions of implementing a form of leadership that was capable of altering the school’s climate. the perceptions of administrators, teachers, staff, parents, community members, and recent graduates were utilized to gather an understanding of both the principal’s leadership behavior and perceptions of school climate. this process was set in current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 2 order to generate an understanding of the capability of leadership behavior in changing the school environment. literature on organizational climate and school leadership in shaping an organization’s climate, fineman (1993) revealed that the construction process “is intensely subjective and personal” (p. 13). as similar subjective constructions take place among an organization’s workforce, a clear organizational climate develops. reichers and schneider (1990) defined organizational climate as: the shared perception of “the way things are around here.” more precisely climate is shared perceptions of organizational policies, practices, and procedures, both formal and informal. climate is a molar concept that is indicative of the organization’s goals and appropriate means to goal attainment. (p. 22) as stringer (2002) explained, organizational climate is measured indirectly through the perceptions of the members of the organization and consists of six distinct dimensions: 1) structure: reflecting the employees’ sense of being well organized or having a clear definition of their roles and responsibilities, 2) standards: measuring the feeling of pressure to improve performance and the degree of pride employees have in doing a good job, 3) responsibility: reflecting employees’ feelings of being in control and not having to doublecheck decisions with others, 4) recognition: indicating employees’ feelings of being rewarded for a job well done, 5) support: reflecting the feeling of trust and mutual support that prevails within a work group, and 6) commitment: reflecting the employees’ sense of pride in belonging to the organization and their degree of commitment to the organization’s goals. the importance of school climate resides in the fact that it has been shown to be a primary determinant of worker motivation and organizational performance (stringer, 2002). as ali and patnaik (2014) discussed, climate may be influenced by the various conditions of the organization, in terms of systems, structure, and managerial behavior (p. 3). therefore, a single determinant of organizational climate may not exist. instead, various sources may combine to create the climate, including: 1) the external environment, 2) leadership practices, 3) organizational structure and arrangements, 4) the background and personal characteristics of the workforce, 5) the physical environment, 6) equipment, technology, and resources, 7) managerial policies, 8) the organization’s image, 9) historical underpinnings, and 10) the organization’s vision, values, norms, goals, and strategies (ekvall, 1983; farokhi & murty, 2014; stringer 2002). however, research has consistently shown that by far the most important determinant of climate is leadership (goleman, boyatzis, & mckee, 2002; stringer 2002). in fact, leadership is responsible for many of the other associated factors, since leaders determine the organization’s goals, lay down the organization’s structure, control the physical environment, create patterns of communication and decision-making processes, and shape the organization’s norms and values (farokhi & murty, 2014). regarding organizational leadership, various researchers and theorists have explained that the process of climate change requires a socio-emotional aptitude, on the part of the leader, in order to transform an organization (bass, 2002; boyatzis & mckee, 2005; george, 2000; goleman, 1998a; goleman et al., 2002; higgs & dulewicz, 1999; jordan, ashton-james, & ashkanasy, 2006; zeidner, matthews, & roberts, 2009). in this realm, zeidner et al. (2009) revealed that transformational leaders “lead from the heart” and are “in touch with their own and their follower’s feelings” (p. 270). goleman (1998b) argued that in order to be successful, emotional intelligence is a necessary ingredient for leaders to possess. feldman (1999) reiterated this view, in stating, “emotionally intelligent leadership is about fully developing and applying our emotional and social skills to effectively influence constructive endeavors in others. it’s the personal and ‘people skills’ that are crucial ingredients to effective leadership” (p. 4). the results of particular research studies provide evidence that certain leadership styles and aptitudes are capable of leading the organizational transformation process. meyer and allen (1997) found that when the work experience communicates an organization’s support for employees and enhances employees’ sense of personal importance, workers become more committed and emotionally tuned into the organization. kahn (1993) discovered that as organizational leaders demonstrate caring behavior, such as empathy and compassion, employees become replenished and more emotionally engaged. ozcelik, langton, and aldrich (2008) found that leadership practices that facilitate a positive emotional climate in an organization have a significant effect on the organization’s performance. various researchers have studied the ethic of care, and its relation to effective school leadership practice (bennett, 2008; johnston, 2002; kropiewnicki, 2000; robbins, 1998; robbins, 2006; sernak, 1993; thompson, 2005; troy, 2009). according to held (2006), the ethic of care is focused on meeting the needs of others, for whom one takes responsibility (p. 10). sernak (1998) suggested that a sense of community is established through the ethic of care, which is centered on responsibility and relationships, rather than rights and rules. in studying school capacity, bendick (2003) found that a principal who leads out of the ethic of care is central to the development of an organizational relationship structure that successfully increases a sense of school community and institutional potential. sagnak transformational school principal leadership behavior and its impact on school climate 3 (2010) found a link between the dimensions of principal transformational leadership behavior and the development of a caring organization that possesses a specific ethical climate of benevolence. other research efforts have found leader benevolence to be a key ingredient for trust building in principal-teacher relationships and that the ethical principles of mutual respect, empathy, service, and the development of others are important to the principal’s efforts in facilitating school improvement (lewis, 2008; schultz, 2005; wilson, 2008). indeed, there are other leadership components and styles that may be helpful in creating organizational success. as researchers such as goleman et al. (2002) and fullan, cuttress, and kilcher (2009) revealed, effective leaders sometimes need to command, coach, set the pace, manage, distribute, and evaluate; however, the activities of care, empathy, and compassion may be the fundamental elements for connecting the leader with the organization, creating a resonant organizational climate, and improving organizational performance (boyatzis & mckee, 2005; goleman et al., 2002). beck (1994) and sernak (1998) argued that within the school environment, the ethic of care, when practiced by the school leader, is the necessary component for school renewal and transforming the educational environment. methodology this study focused on the concepts of leadership behavior and school climate in terms of organizational change. since the study worked to detail the perceptions of school stakeholders, qualitative methods were utilized. the investigation was set to explore not only the tendencies and abilities of the school principal, but also to determine the school’s climate, according to the perceptions of school stakeholders. in this way, leadership in the social sphere was fundamental to the study’s purpose, as determinations were made regarding the school principal’s ability to put forth a style of leadership that was capable of altering the climate of the school. sample this study employed single site case study methodology in order to allow for in-depth analysis of the problem area. the site selection process involved critical assessment procedures that ensured a suitable location in terms of school principal philosophy, school principal tenure, school district characteristics, and stakeholder involvement. initially, thirty-one school districts were solicited for involvement in the study. a scale down process ensued, as the researcher communicated with and visited sites to determine whether the principal held a distinct philosophy of leadership that contained specific leadership tenets, and had the intention of transforming the school organization. in making this determination, the researcher utilized an on-site one-on-one interview session with potential participants that focused on discovering the principal’s leadership intentions, actions, and beliefs. additionally, during this process, the researcher sought to determine whether stakeholder involvement was available at the site. the chosen site was a semi-rural school district in the mid-atlantic region that met the study’s requirements. the senior high school consisted of approximately 2,100 students. at the time of the study, 89% of graduating students pursued postsecondary education, 10% of graduates entered the workforce, and 1% entered a branch of the military. the school faculty and staff consisted of approximately 165 members. the school district involved in this study worked on a school improvement process over an eight-year period, in which one particular principal was in command. immediately prior to this span, the school district developed a strategic plan that sought to make vast improvements in the high school’s facilities, educational programs, level of faculty involvement, and rates of student achievement. this was due to inadequacies in facilities, standardized testing performance, educational offerings, and staff/student engagement. at the onset of this period, the school principal possessed a five-year administrative tenure, which included stints as an assistant middle school principal and junior high school principal. prior to his administrative work, the school principal completed five-years of teaching service. data collection data collection procedures for this study occurred over a five-month period, at the end of the eight-year school improvement process. data collection began with an in-depth ninety-minute interview with the school principal in order to acquire a detailed description of his leadership philosophy. from there, the leader’s behaviors were examined through researcher observation, archived documents, a series of interviews with school stakeholders, and follow-up principal interviews. school stakeholder perceptions of the principal and the school organization were gathered through a semi-structured interview format. for this purpose, a total of thirty administrators, faculty members, parents, community members, and recent high school graduates were selected for participation. specifically, participation occurred in the form of: four school administrators, seven teachers, one guidance counselor, eight parents, two community members, and eight recent graduates. the researcher utilized semi-structured interview questionnaires as the primary data collection mechanism, and focused on gathering rich descriptions about the school leader’s tendencies and behaviors by asking each respondent for details and clarification about past happenings, current events, and perceptions of school climate issues. more specifically, questions were aimed at gathering stakeholder perceptions of the most valued attributes of the school principal; what degree and/or type of impact the principal had on the school; the type of relationships that individual school stakeholders held with the school principal; the communication style(s) of the principal; the current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 4 principal’s response to stakeholder concerns; the levels of trust and openness that existed within the school; the levels of care, support, commitment, appreciation, and school pride that existed with the school principal and among the school stakeholders; and, examples of personal encounters that school stakeholders had with the principal, which best described his leadership style. triangulation of data occurred through on-site researcher observations and document analysis efforts that were centered on gathering an understanding of the school principal’s behaviors, organizational outcomes, and perceptions regarding the school’s climate. a discoveryoriented approach remained constant throughout the data collection process as participant interviews, on-site observations, and document analyses were conducted. for observational purposes, the researcher attended various events, including: athletic contests, school board meetings, faculty meetings, administrative staff meetings, faculty and staff social gatherings, parent forums, student forums, and school program information nights. documents were compiled by accessing various print and web-based archives, including: the principal’s memorandums to school stakeholders; website communications; extra-curricular program materials; faculty and staff meeting minutes; principal quotes from local newspaper articles; and principal letters to staff, parents, and students. data analysis throughout the five-month data collection phase of the study, the initial stage of data analysis occurred as i, the researcher, transcribed interviews, listened to the audio versions of each interview, wrote notes that revealed apparent connections, read and reflected upon my field notes, analyzed my thoughts about what i was hearing, seeing, and reading, engaged in preliminary thematic construction, and compared my data and apparent themes to related research literature. such activity aligned with maxwell’s (1996) and patton’s (1990) assertions that data analysis for the qualitative researcher should begin immediately after finishing the first interview and/or observation and should continue throughout the field research process. at the conclusion of the twenty-week on-site investigation, and after verifying the interview data with each participant, i advanced the process by developing categories and themes, which, according to hatch (2002), is central to the inductive approach of qualitative research. here, i employed both aspects of the cross-case analysis method, which patton (1990) discussed: 1) “grouping together answers from different people to common questions”, and 2) “analyzing different perspectives on central issues” (p. 376). beyond this, i progressed with auerbach and silverstein’s (2003) method, as i: 1) read through the raw text and underlined the relevant passages of each interview, 2) extracted the relevant text according to the study’s concerns; 3) organized preliminary themes and grouped repeating ideas into coherent categories; 4) revamped and finalized the thematic construction process, by making sure each category could be properly filtered into a theme; and 5) created a thematic and theoretical narrative by retelling the participants’ stories. methods of verification i implemented several measures that supported and bolstered the internal validity of the study, which included: the solicitation of feedback, triangulation, collecting rich data, prolonged engagement and persistent observation, member checks, the maintenance of a case study database, a search for discrepant evidence and negative cases, and comparison. each of these strategies has been mentioned as a specific tactic to allow the qualitative researcher to increase the credibility of conclusions (creswell, 1998; maxwell, 1996; merriam, 1998; patton, 1990; yin, 2003). the timeframe reserved for data collection strengthened the verification process, as it allowed me to consider what might be pertinent to the study and offered a variety of activities and events to explore. furthermore, this period allowed me to review and clarify participant responses with each interviewee and extend my dialogue with the school principal, as i worked to deeply explore organizational expressions, activities, procedures, and events with him. results the findings gleaned from the perceptions of stakeholder participants who had a long-standing relationship with the school suggested that, under the direction of this school principal, the organizational climate changed from a closed, non-trusting environment to one that was open, positive, and trusting. according to these participants, the conduct of prior school principals led to the creation of a non-trusting, closed, and fragmented organizational system. the stakeholder participants suggested that the investigated school principal was able to alter this climate, through his leadership practice. the perceptions of school stakeholders were reinforced through researcher observations and institutional documents that suggested the school operated in a caring, ambitious, stable, positive, and open manner that reflected the intentions and values of the school principal. furthermore, the results of this study suggest that particular organizational characteristics developed in time, under the leadership of the school principal. these attributes reflected the principal’s core beliefs and values, and were recognized by the stakeholder participants as particular school changes that stemmed from the leader’s conduct. therefore, in the following sections, the school principal’s philosophy and actions, and the school’s key attributes, will be revealed and then tied to literary findings that relate to transformational leadership behavior. transformational school principal leadership behavior and its impact on school climate 5 findings according to this study’s school principal, particular tenets of his leadership philosophy were instilled from the very beginning of his tenure at the school. the school principal asserted that his philosophy stemmed from the knowledge he gathered through the study of leadership theory along with his personal reflections. along with this philosophy came a particular leadership style, which he adapted as time moved on. as he explained, [early on] i was much more of a micromanager…the way to make sure it was done the way i wanted it was to work with people, but essentially, also, to do it myself. i know that sounds like a paradox, but it was to be involved with every little thing that went on in the school…and, change and positive growth is really slow in that stage, because you are involved with everything. and now that i think there is some trust and knowledge, and i think people are on the same page, a lot more happens much more quickly and much more positively because i don’t need to be there all the time. along with his hands-on leadership approach, relationship and trust building were two areas of focus for the principal. he stated that one key is for the faculty and staff to know that he is “behind them, and, in front of them, when need be to lead”, and when this is done, “they are more willing to work with you toward a common cause.” he went on to say that leadership is: mainly about working with people and empowering others. and, it’s a lot of hard work up front, when you’re building trust, which is the first piece, getting to know each other and building trust. and, once that’s done, you can really work with each other well, and much more efficiently, and you can also distribute that leadership much more. as he revealed, the desire to create a particular school climate was a long-term goal: “it’s all about setting. having a climate for success and safety and trust. that takes a long time to build.” for the school principal, the tenets of: 1) supportive relationships, 2) risk-taking, 3) empowerment, 4) teamwork, 5) a common vision, 6) private and public acknowledgement of good work, 7) high expectations, and 8) communication served as the underpinnings for the school organization. each area of focus was connected, in some way, to the principal’s primary philosophy on leadership, which he succinctly stated: “leadership ultimately is about working with others, not doing to them.” regarding the particular function of the principal position, the school leader presented his viewpoint in the following way: to guide people, to keep people on track toward our vision…to set the vision, to get people to take risks and play around until we get it right. and, my feeling is that we are on the right track, regardless of how we do it, as long as we are moving in the right direction…we’ve modeled and focused on good relationships and student engagement. we certainly have focused on the art of teaching and building relationships with kids much more than on testing and programming and i’m proud of that. with a clear vision in mind, the school underwent change during the principal’s eight-year tenure at the school. according to stakeholder perceptions, four translucent attributes marked the school organization via the principal’s enduring beliefs and actions. in time, the school’s stakeholders espoused the school principal’s value system, which was vital in developing the school’s character. the congruent attitudes that the school stakeholders held in relation to the school’s attributes strongly influenced the school’s ability to develop standards of operation. in this way, the vision set forth years ago came to fruition through a certain climate that suggested the school functioned through positive, open, and cohesive action. one school administrator described the process that he had seen unfold as the school principal installed his vision: what [the principal] does very well in meetings is that he establishes norms of belief. here’s what we believe in the organization, and here’s what we do not believe, and how do we act off of that…so, it’s modeling and reinforcing, and those types of things…and, you find yourself then not necessarily echoing [his] exact words in meeting with an employee, but you can echo and reinforce organizational norms. and, you can just see the staff members react to that in a very positive way, because they feel safe and they feel they are aligned with the language of what’s going on. and, that can be from pacing of change, that can be from employee relations, that can be from how to handle parents or how to handle kids…and, of course, we focus on relationships too. and it’s relationships, relationships, relationships, and so it’s such a key theme. and, we hire off of that, we staff develop that, and then we see that really play in. attribute #1: high standards one teacher revealed how the principal’s expectations and his standard of performance led to ‘unspoken norms’ within the school, which were constantly reinforced through the principal’s efforts in recognizing the faculty for good work: it’s a host of unspoken expectations for certain things. it’s like, we know we’re supposed to give our best every day, and we are. it’s a positive thing where, [he’s] like, “you guys are awesome current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 6 to work with. you are great with this, and look at the achievements you’ve made. keep that up.” …and, the expectation is to be the best…it’s just the way it is…it’s stated, it’s restated...the overall expectation is “we’re here, we’re going to be the best we can be. let’s go.” we are gogetters. i like to think so, anyway. an administrator reverberated this thought and provided an analysis of the principal’s style and capability of instilling a standard among the school’s faculty and staff. he explained that in order to meet the standard, a proactive, rather than a reactive mode was required, and that: to be proactive, you got to get out, you got to establish those norms, you got to have the language consistent from faculty meeting to cabinet meeting to staff development session, and then you got to echo that kind of language through formal and informal walk through observations, and otherwise. and then when individuals or teams of teachers are doing it well, then you hit it big with full-scale emails or faculty meeting celebrations of here is what we’re doing and you come back to that same language. but, that’s proactive, that’s knowing your language, it’s knowing where you want to go with an organization. and, [he] does that very, very well. another administrator watched the principal’s vision come to fruition, through the school leader’s efforts, along with the efforts of the school’s faculty. he explained that the principal holds high expectations for everyone and has a step-by-step plan for meeting the expectations. furthermore, the principal walks the staff through the plan to make sure they have what they need in order to implement it. one administrator provided a particular example of how the focus on setting a standard of performance, and then recognizing others for meeting it, allowed the school to prosper in the form of high student achievement: a piece where people feel rewarded is ap. if you look at our ap scores, there again, they’re going through the roof. we got more kids than ever taking ap level courses and scoring very well on them. i think that’s because the culture here is, look, we can’t give you a raise, but we commend you as who you are as learners, leaders, and teachers. you try to find those intrinsic motivators and reconnect [people] with why they had a love for education in the first place. attribute #2: relationships matter according to one faculty member, the relationship that the faculty and staff had with the school principal allowed all other concerns to fall into place: we all want to work with him. we all want to please him. we all want to do well. what you feel when you walk into a situation, this is a big building with a lot of kids, a lot of teachers, a lot of personalities, there are a lot of strong personalities, he makes it for us, he gets us to a point where we want to do well for him and it’s a positive relationship. it’s a positive culture. his willingness to not always have the power and to empower us is what makes that relationship a two-way relationship and also a relationship that, again, you want to perform for. another teacher revealed how the relationship building process trickled down to the student body, and proposed that this aspect was the most significant tenet in the building. according to this teacher, the number one priority is relationships and the school recognizes that without the relationships with students, and without students feeling really good about their school, nothing can be accomplished. therefore, the emphasis is on building relationships with teachers, building relationships between students and teachers, and also building relationships between students. one school administrator discussed what he had seen at the school, as far as the constant effort in getting various types of kids involved and how this created a caring community: i think this school is made up of people that try their best to tap all kids and not exclude. and, [the principal] makes it a part of his day to see those kids and he taps us to see those kids. and again, i am not talking about the star athletes or the superstar band and super smart kids, i am talking about the tech kids and i am talking about kids that don’t even have a social group. by design, we try to reach out to these kids…you know, bad things happen every day. we get it, but we do try to connect with kids and make a difference. i’ll tell you this, this building goes out of its way to make kids feel good as best it can for this kind of situation. so, i feel pretty good about that. one teacher assessed the relationship piece from a professional community perspective: everything we do is about teamwork…we do a lot of things with professional learning communities, so a lot of things we do come from that teamwork and the consensus of what the team has to say. that’s been something that i think has really trickled down and caused some positive feedback because all of a sudden we sort of get this idea that we have a voice and that’s important. we’ve got the character as a high school...we’ve got a lot of great teachers, a lot of great staff members that come together to really put forth what’s best for the kids, and we put ourselves out there a lot of times to talk with them and try to get to a good space with kids. transformational school principal leadership behavior and its impact on school climate 7 they [the administration] encourage that…so, from a couple different angles, we’ve hit that and [the principal] impressed on us how important that is. and he’ll do it for us. he’ll stop in, “how’re you doing? what’s up? how’s everything going?” actually all of them do, and they check in and check with the kids, and, so, you just see it. it’s everywhere. attribute #3: a stabilized work environment among the professional staff at the school, there was a consensus that the climate that developed under the principal’s leadership resulted in fewer organizational disturbances, in comparison to prior administrations. in this way, the principal’s vigorous effort in establishing behavioral norms paid off. one teacher talked about how the school’s climate was built upon certain operational and communicative procedures and systems, which, in turn, resulted in a lower degree of turbulence, in comparison to what occurred in other district buildings: the culture we have, it’s very good…we [union representatives] go to these meetings with all the other people across the district…and we walk away from the meetings going “oh man, our principals are so good.” some of the other buildings, they’re dealing with these really silly problems…for whatever reason, the teachers don’t feel comfortable going right to their principal and saying, “hey, i have a question. i have a concern. what should i do about this?” we have that…we have that, big time. another teacher provided backing for this sentiment through a description of her first encounter with the principal, and an explanation of how the relationship developed from there: [the principal] and i started by me walking in and being like “i don’t agree with what you just said. i don’t agree with the way this went down. you need to fix it.” and, that was him looking at me going, “holy crap. i never met you before, but you’re in my face.” and, i walked in and i took a huge risk that day. but, i said what i needed to say and he was like “okay, let’s start over. what did i do? tell me.” and, i just laid it out there and he was like “alright.” and, the thing he said to me was “i hope you can always speak to me this way.” and, i never forgot that, and i’ve never changed that. so, with him, it’s always brutal honesty whether i agree with him or not. so, it’s hard not to trust and buy into it when that’s your starting point and you’ve seen good things. one long-term faculty member echoed the analyses and experiences of the others, with his own description of what he has experienced at the school: this has been the most cohesive and fair leadership i have ever experienced in education. like, i would love to retire and go out with this team…i have been through some pretty darn dysfunctional administrations [at this school] and it’s not fun. you don’t want to be in the situation where people are basically just closing their doors and keeping their heads down and doing their own thing. and, you want to be able to have your door open. he [the principal] came in on the heels of some dysfunction. and, i think what he wanted to do was just provide or establish stability and consistency and fairness. all three of which were pretty absent at the end of the administration prior to him. so, just by being those three things, it helped a lot. it helped an awful lot. attribute #4: a cultivated school environment according to various school stakeholders, the type of school environment that developed under the direction of the school principal grew due to the leader’s aptitude and willingness to do the things necessary for the school to flourish. one administrator explained that the principal had an aptitude for seeing the organization as a whole and effectively delegate. the administrator reported that this allowed the principal to relinquish control, share the vision, and get others to buy into his ideas. as the process progressed, the principal simply “supported from all angles.” one teacher described the school’s power structure, in terms of teacher/administrator relationships, and explained how it reflected the principal’s disposition along with that of the wider school community: i think the school tries very hard to have the power come from the bottom up. i don’t think it always happens, but i think of all the principals that have been here in the twenty plus years that i’ve been here, [he] tries very hard to get everybody talking and communicating with others about what’s going on and i think that builds trust. i’ve never felt that i’ve said something to him that he has used against me, and i sometimes think there are principals who you’re reluctant to say anything to for fear that the next time they’ll hold it against you. i don’t think he does that. i feel pretty free saying what i think he needs to hear. i don’t do it often, but he wants to know what people are thinking, and is very attuned to the climate and how people are feeling about things. it is testimonials like these that suggest the “drawing in” process is a key element of the principal’s leadership work. in turn, a “cultivated organization” of some sort was produced at the school, in the sense that the school’s stakeholders were given, and accepted, the invitation to be an active part of a caring, progressive organization. one assistant principal explained that teachers now come to him with creative ideas on how to current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 8 move a program or activity forward, and are willing to do so in a way that goes beyond their contract or a paid supplemental position. according to him, it translates into them really believing in the organization and the students. in this sense, “they just see a need for it and they make it happen.” another administrator explained that, in its transformation, the school learned how to make intentional decisions, based on the organization’s goals: you always have to have the global perspective. you have to know the goals and we’ve adopted the learning criteria and some goals within the building for those learning criteria. that’s kind of like our window panes and our filter for things. so, it’s constantly going back to “does that fit into the filter?” “does that fit through those panes?” if not, then let’s put it on the side burner. [it’s] very similar to the southwest airlines model of, “are we going to be the cheapest airfare around”, and if not, then it’s off the table, we’re not discussing it and that’s kind of the way he [the principal] does it. you take it back to that, to that goal statement, and if it fits great, if it doesn’t, we’ve got to re-evaluate or we got to trash it altogether. one of the school’s former students described the development of the school’s climate in the following terms: [the principal] kind of set the tone and then the teachers would carry that on and then [came] the atmosphere. it was like caring, trustworthiness, that kind of thing, so they really strived to, i think, carry those on throughout the day. like, create a community to make students feel at home. i thought they were always committed to seeing us succeed…i think there were a lot of deep connections. i actually invited them, when i graduated, to my graduation party. i made a great connection with them. i always thought it was a caring place. they really were looking out for their students. it wasn’t just like an operation. they kept us in mind all the time. along with the students, who fondly talked about: being recognized for their work, the focus on relationships, and the school being a place where “teachers always presented themselves as somebody more than just a teacher”, the parents presented their own descriptions of the school. one parent, who was involved with the school for an extended period of time due to having three children move through the building, provided details of the differences she observed over the years, as the school administration changed: there’s been a lot more evening activities for parents. getting your kids off to college, and psychology [topics]. they brought in some people who can talk to what your kids are going through, like bullying and things like that. i think they’ve done a lot of that. that’s what i think shows that they care about the parents, too. they’ve tried to find things that will help us better equip our students. i think that’s the concern i see. i’ve seen that in the change; more forums, more community forums have been happening here then did before. i feel like i can come in here at any time and feel like i could walk around here and ask questions. i feel a sense of belonging. even back-to-school night. just coming here for that and seeing the parents and teachers, it feels like, “this is good. they care.” another parent commented on the experiences she has had with teachers, who demonstrated a penchant for positive communications: i have had notes for my daughter and the teachers have called. again, it’s the environment, its more, “let’s reinforce positives.” and, so, i think for us, that’s been really good. we can see if our kids are doing something that we need to address differently, but it is really great when a teacher calls and says, “hey, you know, [daughter’s name] did a great job on this and we just wanted you to know.” so, that’s very different from, “your child didn’t turn in a paper or something,” so, it’s more along the lines, let’s show positive reinforcement. such accounts mirror the school principal’s desire for his school to offer a particular story. as he revealed: it’s the script tape or the stories that people tell and the symbols that are so important. and, i think that’s who we are… we joke around and people know that relationships and helping all kids matters most and helping each other… we do have a culture of recognition. informal and formal, catch someone doing good, like, i have colleagues telling me what their colleagues are doing. that’s awesome. i constantly am copied on emails. not to protect people, its never defensive, its celebratory… it’s that recognition and thank you, and making sure the boss knows so he can say it too, that’s part of it. because they see that that’s the culture. they feel that we are more like a family around here. discussion of findings from this study’s perspective, the perceptions disclosed by the school’s stakeholders suggest that an open, positive climate existed in the organization, which transmitted the distinct cultural tenets of “high standards” and “positive relationships.” the findings suggest these served as the values of the organization, which were transmitted through the principal’s diligence in installing a particular school vision. from a leadership perspective, kouzes and posner transformational school principal leadership behavior and its impact on school climate 9 (2007) asserted that research has shown that excellent leaders “model the way” (p. 15). the process is brought to life as the leader: communicates clear and strong personal beliefs, affirms shared values, sets an example, teaches others to model the organization’s values, confronts critical incidents, frames critical incidents as teachable moments, and reinforces the behavior that he or she wants repeated. the school principal regularly applied the tenets associated with kouze and posner’s (2007) model the way principle. as the study’s leadership themes revealed, the principal worked to: exert his presence throughout the building, set high standards, recognize stakeholders’ efforts, demonstrate encouragement, show appreciation for his staff’s accomplishments, and build a united professional team. through consistent behavior, the principal extended his vision by embedding it within the everyday workings of the school. in turn, each of the school’s stakeholders became well aware of the school’s mission and his expectations, and worked cohesively and positively toward the aims of the organization. according to this study’s school stakeholder participants, institutional activity reflected involvement in and appreciation for the organization’s vision, which suggested the existence of a resonant emotional climate. the study’s field observations supported this conclusion, since observed school activity indicated high levels of stakeholder commitment, involvement, and positive professional relations. written documents, in the form of memorandums, personal notes, and website communications, also served as a significant data piece to this conclusion, since they signified a clear communication of the school’s values and revealed consistent execution of those values. for instance, the school principal routinely sent celebratory letters to faculty and parents, while highlighting the good work being done by professionals and students alike. handwritten notes of encouragement were given by the principal to those who were experiencing difficult times. website communications included the district mission statement, which mentioned the school’s “partnership with family and community”, the “safe and nurturing environment”, and the “commitment to excellence and innovation.” the high school webpage showcased the “best high schools” ranking that was recently attained from the u.s. news and world report and the college boards ap district honor roll status, which included recent consecutive years of distinction. such forms of communication produced a channeled network of care, concern, and celebration that was enacted in times of personal need, achievement, and success. as glaser (2005) mentioned, true leadership speaks of the leader who is able to: set the context for change, create an atmosphere of collaboration and trust, unite the organization, collaborate through the sharing of best practices, learn what world-class organizations do, and find better solutions to problems (pp. 39-40). when necessary, true leadership works to change a toxic environment that is characterized by its closed communications, competition for resources and recognition, and malnourished spirit (pp. 40-41), to an open, healthy system that feeds off: the organization’s vision, strategic dialogue, common goals, sensitivity among stakeholders, the proper deployment of resources, and ideas for the future (p. 42). in turn, rather than a dissonant state that involves organizational conflict, unrest, frustration, and antagonism (boyatzis & mckee, 2005), and a “downward cycle that affects students’ academic interest and achievement, teachers’ sense of efficacy and commitment to excellence, and the emotional well-being of both groups” (beck, 1994, p. 42), a resonant state is created that leads to a positive institutional spirit along with personal and group renewal (boyatzis & mckee, 2005; goleman et al., 2002). the results of this study indicate that the school principal’s leadership behavior was instrumental in creating a resonant environment, which was flavored heavily with acts of care, concern, strategy, and competence. the result was a positive, vibrant school climate that played its part in producing results at a higher level than ever before. the results of this study suggest that the school principal’s approach to leadership aptly produced climate change in the school. figure 1 exhibits the process that transpired in the school organization. the school principal’s leadership behavior, which involved fifteen key practices, is closely aligned with the transformational leadership practices that have been cited in the literature. this form of leadership is concerned with defining and articulating a vision for the organization and having the followers accept the credibility of the leader (bass, 1997; burns, 1978; kark, shamir, & chen, 2003). in this context, the leader seeks potential motives and hidden capacities of subordinates and then attempts to enhance those motives and capacities through transformational influence (burns, 1978). transformational leadership is said to transform followers into leaders and leaders into change agents as the followers’ senses of self-worth and confidence along with the need for opportunities are addressed in order to gain true commitment and greater involvement in the organization’s efforts (avolio et al., 1991; bass, 1997; bass & riggio, 2005; burns, 1978). carey (1992) argued that in order for a leader to become transformational, there must be a shift to universal, transcendent values that results in the “leader’s choice to be in relationship with others rather than to control them” (p. 232). bass and avolio (1993) provided a framework for examining organizations, while incorporating a transformational leadership model that consisted of four specific leadership behavioral components: 1) charisma or idealized influence, 2) inspiration, 3) intellectual current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 10 stimulation, and 4) individualized consideration. this work asserted that transformational organizational cultures, rather than transactional or non-leadership environments, would “provide the context for more effective organizational and individual performance” (p. 121). according to avolio et al. (1991), idealized influence is the element of this model that allows the leader to develop extensive personal rapport and influence with followers by treating them with respect, and, in turn, “building their confidence and trust in the overall mission” (p. 15). the results of this study suggest that the school principal’s transformational leadership behavior was capable of altering the climate of his school in distinct ways. conclusion this study considered the climate-related effects of transformational school leadership conduct. the results indicate a highly resonant climate existed in the organization, which was due to the transmission of clearly established values and actions throughout the school. this led to feelings of empowerment, excitement for school initiatives, advanced understandings of organizational norms, appreciation for being a part of the organization, acts of care and concern among stakeholders, productive work-related activity, and a stabilized environment. the conclusion to be drawn is that transformational leadership behavior holds the power to alter the feelings and conduct that transpire within a school organization and create synergy, as the school stakeholders accept, aspire to, and match the school leader’s values, beliefs, and actions. while the results of this study illuminate the power of transformational leadership practice, and demonstrate its impact on school climate, further qualitative inquiry is necessary in order to study, critique, and explain the leadership processes that are being instilled in k-12 schools. through such inquiry, scholars and practitioners may come to better understand how the leadership process plays out in the school organization, how it affects school climate, and what needs to be accomplished in terms of leadership training and remediation. references ali, a., & patnaik, b. 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(2014). transformational school principal leadership behavior and its impact on school climate. current issues in education 17(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1278 author notes edward l. myers temple university 1518 n. 15th street reading, pa 19604 edmyers1@mac.com dr. edward myers has an extensive and diverse background in the education and behavioral health fields. ed earned his doctorate from temple university’s college of education, within the department of psychological, organizational, and leadership studies. his doctoral work included a dual focus in education policy and leadership practice. previously, he earned b.s. and m.ed. degrees from east stroudsburg university. ed also completed a post-graduate certification program in educational administration at alvernia university, and he completed post-graduate work in education, behavioral health/special education, and research at saint joseph’s university. currently, ed serves academia as an adjunct professor of educational administration & policy studies at temple university and a lecturer of adolescent development, secondary education, and school administration at alvernia university. for the past nineteen years, ed has gained valuable professional experience as a school administrator, adjunct professor, teacher, and counselor in the public high school, college/university, and community agency settings. his areas of research and academic interest include: leadership & organizational behavior, philosophy & policy of secondary schools, adolescent learning & development, and qualitative research methods. manuscript received: 08/11/2013 revisions received: 10/06/2014 accepted: 10/29/2014 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 14 volume 17, number 3 december 22, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell authentications editors lisa marie lacy tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson tray j. geiger section editors rikkilynn archibeque tray j. geiger laura beth kelly kevin j. raso evelyn concepcion baca darlene michelle gonzales priyanka parekh isaac lamont bickmore megan hoelting niels piepgrass faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1142-5563-3-le.doc 1 volume 17, number 1 january 21, 2014 issn 1099-839x how do i get in? criteria shaping the high school course recommendation process philip e. bernhardt metropolitan state university of denver academic tracking is a common practice in american high schools. while its impact on the lives of teachers and students is well documented, few studies pay close attention to the criteria used to determine high school students’ academic trajectories or how teachers select and apply these criteria. this review, which examines the types of criteria guiding high school teachers’ course recommendation decisions, is organized into four parts. first, the literature search process is described and the terms tracking and ability grouping are defined. second, the significance of course placement is addressed through an examination of the relationship between tracking and the opportunity gap. third, research drawing attention to the meritocratic and non-meritocratic criteria guiding secondary teachers’ course recommendation decisions is examined. the review concludes by offering recommendations for making school-based course placement policies and the criteria driving teachers’ decisions more consistent and transparent. keywords: ability; grouping; tracking; decision-making; teachers; k-12; school; coursetaking; recommendations; course-placement tracking students according to academic capability is a common practice in american schools. although its impact on both teachers and students has been widely documented (darling-hammond, 2010; gamoran, 1992; gamoran & brends, 1987; hallam & ireson, 2001; kelly, 2007; oakes, 1985; oakes & guiton, 1995; oakes, gamoran, & page, 1992; rosenbaum, 1976; wantanabe, 2006), few studies pay specific attention to the criteria used to determine high school students’ academic trajectories. to date, a majority of the research on tracking and ability grouping has focused on its impact in four areas: student achievement, socioeconomic and racial segregation, differences in classroom practices, and affective outcomes. little of this research explicitly (or deeply) examines the criteria influencing teachers’ course placement recommendations or how these criteria are selected and applied. developing a more informed understanding of these dynamics is important for three of reasons. first, numerous researchers have found course enrollment in the years surrounding the transition into high school plays a critical role in determining students’ academic pathways (see darling-hammond, 1995; lucas, 1999; mickelson & everett, 2008; oakes, 2005). in fact, kelly (2008) found students enrolled in low-track classes early in high school tend to still be taking low-track classes at the end of high school. learning more about factors shaping the course placement process will certainly help to illuminate the practices helping to maintain this consequential academic pattern. additionally, this understanding may provide valuable guidance to practitioners working to identify and more effectively change school-based academic tracking practices. second, enrollment in a rigorous academic curriculum is a significant predictor of college readiness and enrollment (adelman, 1999; choy et al., 2000; king, 1996). the sheer existence of this relationship suggests current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 2 there is a need to better understand the process used to assign students to classes. additionally, the empirical link between course-taking and future educational outcomes becomes even more significant when considered within the context of research documenting low-income students’ traditional underrepresentation in high-track classes considered part of a college preparation course of study (kelly, 2008; oakes, 2005) and four-year colleges (nces, 2010). finally, public school districts throughout the united states are embracing de-tracking strategies advocated by education reformers like jeannie oakes (2005) and carol burris and delia garrity (2008). as a result, many middle and high schools have begun to implement open course enrollment policies to increase opportunities for students to experience international baccalaureate (ib) and advanced placement (ap) classes. however, even with the establishment of initiatives to increase student enrollment in high-track classes, much more needs to be understood about criteria being used by teachers to recommend student placement in order to more effectively move this vision forward. the following review of literature is organized into four distinct, but interrelated parts. first, the literature search process is described and the terms tracking and ability grouping are defined for use in this review. second, a discussion of the relationship between tracking and “the opportunity gap” provides context for why more attention needs to be focused on the criteria influencing how high school students are assigned to classes (darling-hammond, 2010, p. 28). third, research drawing attention to the meritocratic and non-meritocratic criteria guiding teachers’ course recommendation decisions is examined, findings from this analysis, which are purposely integrated within the discussion of literature, reveal the process for selecting and applying criteria is complex, context-specific, and has a tendency to be inconsistent and not clearly documented,. the review concludes by discussing the significance of findings and offering recommendations for making school-based course placement policies and the criteria driving teachers’ decisions more consistent and transparent. the literature search process two systematic strategies were used to search for relevant literature and to make certain that the maximum extent of relevant research was considered. first, eight resources, spanning the course of 25 years, were analyzed to identify relevant research. these publications include keeping track (oakes, 1985/2005), crossing tracks (wheelock, 1993), tracking inequality (lucas, 1999), ability grouping in education (hallam & ireson, 2001), social class and tracking within schools (kelly, 2008), neotracking in north carolina (mickelson & everett, 2008), and the flat world and education (darling-hammond, 2010). additionally, oakes, gamoran, and paige’s (1992) extensive review of curriculum differentiation was carefully examined. second, a series of searches within several electronic databases including ebscohost, eric, jstor, psychinfo, google scholar, and proquest digital dissertations were conducted. various combinations of the following terms were used to identify empirical and theoretical literature: tracking, ability grouping, course placement, criteria, teacher decision-making, policies, teacher beliefs, advanced placement (ap), and honors classes. this search yielded over 150 articles; the titles, abstracts, and authors were reviewed to determine both relevancy and accessibility. seventy articles were identified in this initial review, of which the introductions, theoretical/conceptual frameworks, research design, and findings sections were considered to identify germane publications. this analysis narrowed the field to a group of 40 articles. research included in this review was selected because it focused on one or more of the following: school differences in course placement practices; the demographics of track placement; the dynamics shaping tracking decisions; course taking patterns; the implementation of tracking policies; factors influencing how teachers make decisions; teacher involvement in tracking; teacher beliefs about tracking, student ability, or student achievement. this search was limited to english-language peer-reviewed journals. no date restrictions were used and although academic grouping is prevalent in grades k5, only studies at the secondary level were considered. although the majority of research included in this review was conducted in the united states, hallam and ireson’s (2001, 2003, 2008) recent work on ability grouping in british secondary schools was included. additionally, secondary analyses were omitted if they did not utilize longitudinal survey data such as the national education longitudinal study (nels) or the high school and beyond study (hsb). theoretical literature was included if it informed the researcher’s understanding of the constructs under investigation. study quality was addressed by evaluating both quantitative and qualitative studies to determine the presence of a clear research question(s), whether research design was discussed in a substantive manner, if the study provided clear information about data collection procedures and sample selection, and the alignment between the data, findings, and conclusions used. study quality was also judged by drawing on two different appraisal frameworks in an effort to increase analytic consistency when drawing conclusions about which study’ to include in the review. although the researcher acknowledges decision-making can never be completely divorced from one’s subjectivity, every effort was made to ensure the review process was both criterion-based and comprehensive. qualitative studies were reviewed using criteria articulated by lincoln (1995); these include: how do i get in? criteria shaping the high school course recommendation process 3 relationality, positionality, community, voice, critical subjectivity, reciprocity, and sacredness. quantitative studies were judged by the principles put forth by fink (2005); these include design, sampling, internal and external validity, and data collection. review of literature defining tracking and ability grouping prior to 1970, tracking took the form of students being placed into overarching academic programs specifically designed to prepare students for career opportunities or entry into post-secondary education. however, as the civil rights movement began to influence education policy, highly institutionalized, rigidly defined comprehensive tracking programs were gradually replaced by more flexible, less standardized subjectspecific pathways through school (lucas, 1999). today, this practice continues in nearly all middle and high schools (hallinan & kubitschek, 1999; lucas, 1999; oakes, gamoran, & paige, 1992). this shift, which lucas (1999) refers to as the “unremarked revolution” because it was never fully documented in the literature, delineates a major transformation in the nature of academic grouping. as a result, the terms tracking and ability grouping are often discussed and defined inconsistently within the literature (hallinan & kubitschek, 1999). for example, while good and brophy (2008) and oakes (1987) make a clear distinction between tracking and ability grouping, lucas (1999) and loveless (1999) rely primarily on the term tracking to discuss any assignment of students to different curricular pathways. mickelson and everett (2008), however, developed the term neotracking to explain the combination of “older versions of rigid, comprehensive tracking with the newer, more flexible within-subject area curricular differentiation” (p. 536). additionally, numerous researchers do not identify the difference between tracking and ability grouping. although it is acknowledged that tracking and ability grouping are traditionally separated in terms of form and function, similar assumptions shape both practices. deever (1995) suggests, “when we differentiate between tracking and ability grouping, we are merely talking about different ends of the same horse” (p. 87). hence, for the purpose of this review, tracking and ability grouping are used interchangeably to refer to any practice of sorting students into classes for instructional purposes. why are we still talking about tracking? the opportunity gap. when teachers recommend students for academic classes, they are making a decision that has the potential to influence students’ high school academic trajectories (kelly, 2008), college readiness and enrollment (adelman, 1999; choy et al., 2000; king, 1996), and future employment and income (rose & betts, 2004: spring, 2009). because lowincome students tend to populate low-track classes (kelly, 2008; oakes, 2005) and enroll in college at lower rates than their more economically advantaged peers (nces, 2010), it can be argued the course placement process has, over time, expanded the “opportunity gap” present in many secondary schools (darling-hammond, 2010). this gap, which darling-hammond describes as “the accumulated differences in access to key educational resources-expert teachers, personalized attention, highquality curriculum opportunities, good educational materials, and plentiful information resources-that support learning at home and school,” is one well-documented outcome of curricular tracking and deserves additional consideration within the context of the course placement process (p. 28). oakes’ (1992) theory of tracking, which details its technical, political, and normative dimensions and informed the development ad organization of this review, provides a practical context to consider the intimate relationship between the opportunity gap and academic grouping. this connection is examined through a close analysis of the educational environment created by ability grouping, the students this practice traditionally disadvantages, and the assumptions supporting its maintenance. three specific areas of research are addressed: the stratification present in american public high schools (technical dimension of tracking); lowincome students’ limited access to a high-quality, rigorous course of study (political dimension of tracking); and the lack of evidence supporting the widespread use of tracking at the secondary level (normative dimension of tracking). academic stratification. the technical dimension of tracking can be described as both the process and criteria used to separate students into classes according to academic capability. this academic differentiation, oakes (1992) argues, “continues throughout the grades through variations in the curricular content, pace, quantity, culminating in distinct collegepreparatory and non-college preparatory programs and finer distinctions among levels within the two” (p. 12). two outcomes related to the technical dimension of tracking deserve attention. first, many high schools in the united states have explicit policies and organizational structures which dictate the assignment of students to different curricular tracks for instructional purposes. while few would argue this point, darling-hammond (2010) suggests these differing academic pathways result in the rationing of high-quality education. oakes (1987) argues students experience school differently because established curricular paths “form a hierarchy in schools with the most academic or advanced track seen as the top” (p. 4). writing about stratification in schools, apple (2004) argues schools serve as mechanisms to distribute select knowledge and cultural resources to certain students in order to separate them from others. consequently, as students progress through school they are not only provided with different sets of experiences and varying current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 4 degrees of institutional access, but are also situated into an academic hierarchy which influences educational outcomes and disadvantages students placed in low-track classes. while this sorting process certainly differs school to school, tracking is entrenched within school culture, which makes it difficult to challenge or alter (darlinghammond, 2010; oakes, gamoran, & paige, 1992) and “continues to be one of the most common sources of race and class stratification of opportunities to learn in american schools” (mickelson & everett 2008, p. 536). second, it is difficult for students, especially after 9th grade, to move from a low-track class to a hightrack class. rosenbaum (1976) found opportunities for movement from low-track classes to high-track classes during high school are often limited; upward mobility was practically non-existent. although subsequent research has found more curricular movement among students, the lack of mobility identified over 25 years ago still exists in many schools. oakes (2005) reported 8th and 9th grade course placements “launch students onto academic trajectories that most of them follow throughout high school” (mickelson & everett, 2008, p. 544). both darling-hammond (1995) and lucas (1999) confirm after the first two years of high school, opportunities for movement into high-track classes are limited. additionally, only a small proportion of students enrolled in low-track classes transition into college preparatory classes during high school and remain enrolled (kelly, 2008). consequently, students entering high school in low-track classes are likely to also finish in low-track classes. because these initial assignments set a ceiling on how far students can progress it is important to not only take note of the various levels of differentiation with a particular discipline, but to also pay close attention to its position within the curricular hierarchy (oakes, gamoran, & paige, 1992). considered together, this research illuminates the importance of understanding the role of teachers in shaping students’ academic pathways and the process teachers use to assign students to academic classes during the first two years of high school. curricular access and academic attainment. numerous researchers have identified the academic differences encountered by students enrolled in different curricular tracks and how this pattern disadvantages certain students while privileging others (darlinghammond, 2010; kelly, 2008; oakes, 2005; oakes, gamoran, & paige, 1992; wheelock, 1992). to better understand how this disparity is maintained, it is useful to consider the political dimensions of tracking, or those policies and organizational dynamics shaping teachers’ course recommendation decisions. the following discussion situates the importance of paying close attention to how these factors influence both academic attainment and curricular access among low-income students. despite significant gains over the past 30 years, college participation rates among low-income students still lag well behind their middleand upper-class peers. in almost every year between 1972 and 2008, the immediate college enrollment rates of students from lowincome families trailed the rates of those from highincome families by at least 20 percentage points (nces, 2010). among the percentage of high school completers in 2008 who were enrolled in twoor four-year colleges the october immediately following high school completion, 81% were from families in the highest income group, 63% from middle-income families, and for those in the lowest income group the rate is below 52% (nces, 2010). additionally, for students growing up in low-income families, fewer than 9% of these students earn a bachelor’s degree by age 24 (haycock, 2006). this data supports natriello, mcdill, and pallas’ (1990) assertion that “the sorting of students in elementary and secondary school into ability groups and curricular tracks [is] a mechanism that can perpetuate or exacerbate education disadvantages” (p. 15). numerous researchers have documented the close relationship between enrollment in high-track classes and college readiness and attendance. many lowincome students face multiple challenges that make it difficult to adequately prepare for and gain access to college. these factors include, but are not limited to, an inability to secure financial aid, a lack of support in the application process, and insufficient academic preparation. conducting research for the united states department of education, adelman (1999) found academic preparation is the most significant predictor of college success, and enrollment in a rigorous curriculum in high school prepares students with the knowledge, skills, experiences, and academic mindset institutions of higher education expect. similarly, studies conducted by both king (1996) and choy et al. (2001) identified enrollment in advanced classes improved the likelihood of enrolling in additional higher-level classes and attending college. unfortunately, low-income students are traditionally underrepresented in classes considered part of a college preparation course of study (oakes, 2005; oakes & lipton, 1992; oakes, gamoran, & paige, 1992) and are less likely to be programmed into a rigorous college preparation sequence (haycock, 2006). other researchers have also found low-income students disproportionately represented in low-track classes (darling-hammond, 2010, kelly, 2008; lucas, 1999, mickelson & everett, 2008; oakes, 1990, 2005; oakes, gamoran, & paige, 1992). writing about this dilemma, wheelock (1993) posits: in many districts course enrollment patterns inside individual schools replicate this patternwith poor, african-american, latino, and students who are recent immigrants largely absent from course that offer access to the how do i get in? criteria shaping the high school course recommendation process 5 higher-level knowledge needed for education success and broadened life opportunities. (p. 9) summarizing the consequences of these patterns mickelson and heath (1999) conclude, “tracking creates a discriminatory cycle of restricted educational opportunities for minorities that leads to diminished school achievement that exacerbates racial/ethnic and social class differences in minority and majority school outcomes” (p. 570). over the last 25 years a large body of sociological and educational research has drawn attention to the inequities associated with course enrollment patterns. low-income students, however, are still highly underrepresented in classes considered part of a highquality, rigorous academic curriculum. the myth underlying tracking. the final goal of this introductory discussion is to briefly examine the widely-held belief regarding the academic benefits of tracking. this dynamic, identified as the normative dimension of tracking, encompasses the beliefs, assumptions, and perceived truths supporting curricular tracking. although tracking remains deeply rooted in a majority of american schools, empirical research does not support its widespread use. for example, slavin’s (1990) analysis of ability grouping at the secondary level found few advantages for students in tracked classes over those of comparable ability in non-tracked classes. even though the studies included in slavin’s review were conducted prior to 1970, its continual citation by important scholars suggests his findings have both merit and relevance. lindle’s (1994) review of more than 500 articles on tracking and ability grouping revealed similar results. she writes, the literature clearly shows the inadequacy of ability grouping/tracking as an obsolete practice based on antiquated notions of intelligence, learning, and the structure of knowledge….more than 70 years of research on ability grouping/tracking has failed to establish any obvious benefits for any group of students, except the highest groups. (p. iii) although gamoran and mare (1989) also found that academically advanced students benefit from tracking, oakes (1992) argues these advantages are associated with access to enhanced academic opportunities and highquality teachers rather than a result of homogenous grouping. in addition to the lack of data supporting tracking, numerous academic and policy organizations have called for an end to this practice. the national association of school psychologists (2005), the national council for the social studies (1992), and the national forum to accelerate middle grades reform (2001) have each published policy statements supporting the use of heterogeneous grouping. the naacp legal defense fund, the aclu, and the children's defense fund all suggest tracking is a second-generation segregation issue (oakes, 1992). likewise, the carnegie council on adolescent development, the national governors’ association, the college board, and the national education association have also recommended schools abandon traditional tracking practices (wheelock, 1993). even in the face of well-documented empirical evidence demonstrating the ineffectiveness of ability grouping and condemnation from prominent academic and political organizations, this practice remains deeply entrenched in the majority of secondary schools. course assignment criteria three themes specifically related to course assignment criteria emerged from the review of literature: major theoretical perspectives situating meritocratic and non-meritocratic criteria; the importance of understanding the environment in which these criteria are applied; and the myth of meritorious criteria. these themes, which shed light on the technical dimensions of tracking, are directly linked to the dynamics shaping how teachers recommend students for academic classes. theoretical perspectives. two theories consistently appear in the literature on tracking. these theoretical orientations offer important insights about the process of sorting students into academic classes. human capital theorists argue that tracked schools are aimed at preparing students for positions in the workplace, provide fair competition for academic advancement, and allocate students into curricular positions based on “objective assessments of relevant abilities, effort, and interest” (oakes & guiton, 1995, p. 5). this interpretation brings social and cultural institutions such as the school and family into the realm of economic analysis (bowles & gintis, 1975). within the context of tracking, this perspective suggests students who are motivated, determined, and ambitious can use schooling to increase knowledge and skills, improve status, and directly benefit from labor. oakes (1985) points out when individual advancement is not achieved explanations often include a “lack of individual motivation, cultural deficiencies, or genetic handicaps” (p. 199). conversely, critical theorists such as apple (2004) and bowles and gintis (2011) conceptualize tracking as a sorting mechanism that reproduces societal patterns of race and class stratification. from this perspective schools are understood as institutions that legitimate and distribute certain knowledge. in contrast to human capital theory, which suggests fair meritocratic competition determines academic mobility, reproduction theory maintains schools are constructed around hierarchies of power that disadvantage historically marginalized identities and provide significant benefits for those children in positions of advantage. these advantages can be understood as one’s access to culturally valued resources, knowledge, and experiences that confer status, power, and have “specific laws of accumulation, exchange, and exercise” (swartz, 1997, p. 8). while current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 6 research incorporating these two theoretical perspectives often differs in its purpose, findings, and conclusions, both orientations acknowledge that academic mobility, culturally valued resources, and high status knowledge are unequally distributed among members within society and those with access are in positions of social, political, and economic advantage. meritocratic and non-meritocratic placement criteria. every year teachers are tasked with the responsibility of recommending students for academic classes. oakes, gamoran, and paige (1992) argue this practice traditionally relies on the selection and application of a combination of meritocratic and nonmeritocratic criteria. additionally, it is not uncommon for schools, academic departments, and even individual teachers within these departments to rely on different placement criteria (kelly, 2007). meritocratic criteria traditionally refer to rigid and objective determinants of ability and intelligence like standardized test scores, grades, and prior course placement. a reliance on these measures of ability is intended to remove teacher-centered conceptions of aptitude and emphasize standardized achievement as the central element guiding recommendations. nonmeritocratic criteria, on the other hand, tends to rely more on demographic characteristics such as race, ethnicity, and social class, and other factors like student choice, parental preference, and teacher recommendations. teacher recommendations frequently take into account a variety of considerations such as an individual’s academic potential, prior academic performances, behavior, motivation, personal interests, attitude, and/or family background. while some researchers suggest course placement is based solely on meritorious criteria such as academic attainment (archbald, glutting, & qian, 2009) and/or prior course placement (hallinan, 1992), other studies conclude the opposite, emphasizing race, class, and subjective conceptions of ability influence student assignments (darling-hammond, 2010; kelly, 2008; oakes, 1995). because the literature supports each of these arguments, there is a need to consider the possibility that meritocratic and non-meritocratic criteria cannot be, to use oakes’ (1987) language, “disentangled” from one another (p. 10). oakes, ormseth, bell, and camp’s (1990) research sheds light on this assertion. in their investigation of 6,000 elementary and secondary math and science teachers they found “assessments of academic ability, placement in different tracks or ability-grouped classes, and the reduced educational opportunities that characterize low-track classes often parallel race and social class differences” (oakes et al., 1990, p. 8). research suggests once students get to high school, the race and class-based stratification associated with coursetaking patterns has already taken root and recommendations can no longer be seen as purely meritorious. school context. researching school differences in tracking structures and track assignments, hallinan (1991) noted, “the constellation of factors used [to place students] and the importance attached to each reflect the assignment policy employed in a particular setting” (p. 245). kelly’s (2007) research on course assignment policies in 92 north carolina public schools found a diversity of placement criteria being used. course recommendations, he writes, rely on a “host of requirements, both objective and subjective,” and “implementation occurs at both the school and classroom level” (kelly, 2007, p. 28). similarly, using mixed methods to research students’ assignment to honors english classes in the transition from middle to high school, gamoran (1992) reports a variety of meritocratic and non-meritocratic criteria influence the course placement process. while halinan’s (1991) research suggests characteristics of the student body may affect the criteria used to make recommendations, spade, columba, and vanfossen’s (1997) examination of the placement procedures in six high schools suggests in schools higher in social class, the process of student placement in math and science was more systematic and included broader assessments of student ability. although these findings are drawn from small samples, they emphasize the importance of investigating school context, teachers’ specific course placement practices, and how they differ in the weight they attach to recommendation criteria. two particular findings from kilgore’s (1991) research, which drew on data from the high school and beyond longitudinal study to examine tracking patterns in secondary schools, support this assertion. first, kilgore’s (1991) findings point out assignment criteria often create a continuum of placement practices ranging from highly restrictive to less restrictive. while highly restrictive practices include quota systems, rigid scheduling, and standardized tests, less restrictive approaches avoid test placements, allow overrides after course assignment, encourage “catching up” in the summer, and convey an overall lesselitist philosophy. second, organizational exigencies, such as school and teacher expectations for students, number of track options within a discipline, student involvement in selecting courses, and the range of placement criteria being used need to be investigated to better understand how teachers recommend students for classes. the myth of meritorious measures of ability. while there is little consensus in the literature regarding which student characteristics or criteria consistently contribute to course placement, there is evidence suggesting teachers commonly rely on non-meritocratic criteria when making course recommendations. for example, researching the course enrollment processes in three comprehensive high schools located, oakes and how do i get in? criteria shaping the high school course recommendation process 7 guiton (1995) found recommendation criteria relied on conceptions of intelligence and motivation as fixed, beliefs that schools should accommodate ability rather than alter academic trajectories, and perceptions of students’ suitability for curricular tracks based on “race, ethnicity, and social class” (p. 17). these findings, drawn from teacher interviews and observations and an analysis of student handbooks, course descriptions, and master schedules, are especially significant when considered in the context of research documenting the disproportionate presence of low-income and minority children in lowtrack classes. while numerous studies demonstrate track placement, grades, and test scores are common determinants of course placement, student assignments are often colored by other non-meritocratic judgments (kelly, 2008; oakes & guiton, 1995). in a study of student access and achievement in mathematics and science, oakes, joseph, and muir (2004) found in addition to meritocratic criteria, educators frequently relied on “highly subjective judgments about students’ personalities, behavior, and motivation” (p. 79). echoing this finding, cesario’s (2006) qualitative study of 13 secondary math teachers revealed certain groups of students are consistently disadvantaged because many schools do not have clearly established criteria for placing students in ability groups. in a review of 92 high school curriculum guides, kelly (2007) noted that while criteria for placing students into honors classes may appear meritocratic, it was actually highly subjective because teachers were not provided with strategies to objectively measure academic motivation, independent thinking, oral communication skills, and composition skills. the presence of vague placement criteria forces teachers to develop individual strategies for applying criteria. emphasizing this problem, mickelson (2001) writes: assignment to tracks is based formally on multiple meritocratic criteria and choices by students and their families. in practice, however, nonmeritocratic factors influence track placement informally as well….consequently, the tracking process is typically far from meritocratic. (p. 221) wantanabe (2007) found all six urban teachers participating in her qualitative case study defined what the term tracking meant and how it was implemented differently. this lack of understanding highlights another problem associated with the selection and application of course placement criteria. if teachers, especially those who teach the same subject, do not understand their colleagues’ beliefs and understandings about tracking or the criteria they use to make recommendations, developing fair and consistent course placement policies is difficult. additionally, teachers often make recommendations without sufficient information about available school resources or students’ academic needs and potential, personal interests, or desires (riehl, natriello, & aaron, 1992). while kilgore (1991) suggests teachers have a distinct advantage in access to students’ standardized test scores, past performance, interests, and aspirations, lortie (1975) and ingersoll (2006) note the isolation of classroom teachers from teaching colleagues, counselors, and school-based policy makers. hallinan (1991) found teachers often place students in classes without in-depth information about their prior tracking history. consequently, teachers often make course placement decisions in isolation of one another and with limited knowledge about students’ academic history. as a result, these decisions frequently rely on a mix of student characteristics and incomplete academic records, and rarely incorporate student interests, personal initiative, or potential. ability grouping, which restricts certain students’ opportunities to learn, continues even in the face of tremendous opposition and a lack of empirical support. a more informed understanding of the criteria teachers utilize to make recommendations, how they are applied, and why particular measures, whether meritorious or nonmeritorious, are selected provides important understandings about why this practice still exists and how it functions within schools. conclusions three themes, which emerged from the review of literature, deserve additional consideration. first, even though there may not be consensus in the research about the various ways teacher implicitly and explicitly assess and evaluate students when making course recommendation decisions, they are in fact constantly making judgments about characteristics such as academic ability, aptitude, achievement, and motivation. it is important to note that these judgments are not value-free and should bot be treated that way. hence, it is important that teachers, administrators, and parents pay closer attention to the relationship between the meritocratic and non-meritocratic criteria being used to make course placement decisions and how it is being decided, defined, and applied throughout a school. it is, however, important to also keep in mind is that often, this relationship is not clear, cannot be easily mapped, and as demonstrated throughout this review, is shaped by an array of dynamics. second, in addition to illuminating the variation in which students are sorted and placed into academic classes, research focused on tracking also suggests teachers need to play a more central role in facilitating changes in how this process unfolds. wantanabe (2007), for example, demonstrates the need for and importance of teachers engaging in meaningful conversations about the meaning, purpose, and implications of tracking, the criteria being used to impact course placement, and the role of teachers in influencing students’ academic current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 8 trajectories. although course placement criteria is not a topic commonly discussed in school and department meetings, teachers need to be encouraged to not only consider the criteria they (and their academic department) use to recommend students for classes, but to also reflect on how and why certain criteria are selected. although these conversations will not likely erase the presence of ability grouping in schools, they may in fact lead to new understandings about how course placement criteria advantages and disadvantages certain students, restricts entry into higher-track classes, and limits certain students’ opportunities to adequately prepare for higher education. encouraging teachers to reflect on their experiences, decisions, and actions has the potential to shift their beliefs and teaching practices (richardson, 1996). third, because tracking is such a pervasive practice in american schools, it can be argued that those individuals tasked with providing professional development to teachers need to pay closer attention to the political, technical, and normative implications associated with this practice (oakes, 1992). providing both novice and experienced teachers with meaningful opportunities to critically examine the relationship between and among academic grouping, the opportunity gap, and the purpose of schooling not only stresses the significance of these issues, but it also challenges teachers to begin exploring their beliefs about teaching and learning and consider how these might emerge in the classroom. exposing teachers to the various dimensions of tracking will make it more likely these issues become a part of their curricular and instructional conversations once they move into the classroom. although the potential impact of this work can only be imagined, many of the issues addressed in this literature review are absent from the conversations common in many public schools. with these concerns in mind, a number of final recommendations for high school administrators, department chairs, and teachers to consider are discussed below. recommendations for further action communication of course placement policies and criteria. it is clear from the literature that course placement is contingent on context. while this process often differs from district to district and school to school, it can also vary across academic departments within individual schools. as a result, there seems to be a tremendous amount of inconsistency as it relates to both the academic placement process and the types of criteria informing teachers’ course recommendation decisions. as a way to begin addressing these issues, three strategies need to be thoughtfully considered. first, school leaders must facilitate opportunities for school personnel to discuss the school’s current course placement practices. these interactions will provide a forum for sharing ideas about how to ensure the course placement process is more consistent and transparent. second, consensus needs to be reached about whether policies related to course placement should be developed and implemented within each individual department or at the school-level. once this is clarified, specific decisions need to be made about four specific issues: the timeline and process for making recommendation decisions, the types of recommendation criteria that should be considered, how information about courses is disseminated to students, and the roles and responsibilities of both teachers and counselors. finally, course placement policies and criteria need to be made public so that school personnel, parents, students, and other community members have a clear understanding about how students are recommended for and placed in classes. additionally, information about this process needs to be distributed to parents and students and included in handbooks given to teachers, course catalogs, and on the school’s website. clear articulation of academic expectations. when making decisions about the types of criteria informing recommendation decisions, teachers need to have frank discussions about the academic expectations associated with each track within a subject area. for example, there needs to be a clear understanding among all teachers within a department about what skills, prior knowledge, and academic dispositions students need to have in order to be successful in a 9th and 10th grade advanced-level class or an 11th and 12th grade ib course. with this clarity teachers will be able to make more informed decisions about the types of students who can likely make a successful jump from a standard-level class to an advanced-level class. when this common understanding is absent, teachers are forced to rely on their own assumptions and beliefs when making decisions (bernhardt, 2012). professional development. teachers generally have little knowledge of the research on tracking. hence, it should be made available to them. because a large body of research documents the impact of tracking on teachers’ pedagogical practices, the allocation of instructional resources, and student achievement and postsecondary opportunities, schools should address this practice as part of their professional development agenda. this could include a focus on broader issues such as the origin of tracking and its social and academic consequences, or more localized concerns like placement practices, recommendation criteria, and course enrollment patterns. perhaps most importantly, school-wide professional development opportunities need to assist teachers to understand their role in the current system of organizing students for instruction. one way to support this aim is to not only add action research to a school’s professional development agenda, but to also ensure that local school districts and state boards of education value this work. this could be demonstrated by making how do i get in? criteria shaping the high school course recommendation process 9 research an important component of the recertification process. by no means should teachers be forced into conducting research; however, they should certainly be encouraged. enabling teachers to conduct research in their own schools has the potential to not only enhance professional development, but to also provide meaningful opportunities for teachers to play a major role in the transformation of the educational environment in which they work. creating a personalized education environment. for schools to begin altering how students are placed classes, teachers need to not only be involved and invested in developing these new practices, but they also need to have increased opportunities to learn about their students’ lives. this knowledge has the potential to lead to deeper understanding, fewer assumptions, and more personal guidance and academic support for students. to create an environment in which this is possible, school leaders need to adopt structural changes that not only provide a more comprehensive support system for students, but also create small, more personalized learning communities. this would enable teachers to make more informed decisions. for example, an advisory period that meets every other day for 30-45 minutes could be utilized to promote the development of student-teacher relationships and create opportunities for teachers to learn about their students both academically and personally. during this block of time teachers could provide additional academic support and advise students about course-taking, postsecondary opportunities, and possible career options. the national association of secondary school principals (nassp) report break ranks: changing an american institution (1996) offered several recommendations for developing a more personalized education environment. these include assigning every student a specific mentor during high school, requiring every student to develop a personal plan of action that includes academic progress and goals, and creating a more flexible master schedule that allows for the integration of innovative approaches for encouraging interactions between teachers and students. examining k-12 intervention programs aimed at increasing the college-going rates of its participants, gandara (1999) concluded, “the single most identified feature of success with individual students was a close, caring relationship 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(1996). the role of attitudes and beliefs in learning to teach. in j. sikula (ed.), handbook of research on teacher education (2nd ed., pp. 102−19). new york: macmillan. riehl, c., natriello, g., & aaron, m. (1992). losing track: the dynamics of student assignment processes in high school. baltimore, md: center for research on effective schooling for disadvantaged students. rose, h., & j. r. betts (2004), the effect of high school courses on earnings. review of economics and statistics, 86, 497-513. how do i get in? criteria shaping the high school course recommendation process 11 rosenbaum, j. (1976). making inequality. new york, ny: wiley & sons. slavin, r. e. (1990). achievement effects of ability grouping in secondary schools: a best-evidence synthesis. review of educational research, 60(3), 471-499. spring, j. (2009). american education (13th eds.). columbus: mcgraw-hill. spade, j., columba, l., & vanfossen, b. (1997) tracking in mathematics and science: courses and courseselection procedures. sociology of education, 70(2), 108-127. swartz, d. (1997). culture and power: the sociology of pierre bourdieu. chicago, il: university of chicago press. watanabe, m. (2007). lessons from a teacher inquiry group about tracking: perceived student choice in course-taking and its implications for detracking reform. teachers college record, 109(9), 2136-2170. wheelock, a. (1993). crossing the tracks: how 'untracking' can save america's schools. new york, ny: the new press. u.s. department of education, national center for education statistics. (2010). the condition of education 2010 (nces 2010-028). retrieved september 1, 2010 from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2010/section3/in dicator20.asp. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 12 article citation bernhardt, p. e. (2013). how do i get in? criteria shaping the high school course recommendation process. current issues in education, 17(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1142 author notes dr. philip e. bernhardt metropolitan state university of denver 1201 5th street, cb #21 denver, co 80204 pbernhar@msudenver.edu dr. philip bernhardt is currently an assistant professor of secondary education and department chair of secondary education, educational technology, and k-12 education at metropolitan state university of denver. philip has spent well over a decade working in public schools, including eight years as a secondary social studies teacher. additionally, philip has presented at national education conferences on a variety of issues relating to the barriers to higher education, college readiness, curriculum development, and teacher preparation, induction, and mentoring. philip earned his m.a.t from boston university in social studies education and b.a. in communication studies from the university of north carolina, chapel hill. he received his doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the george washington university in washington, dc. manuscript received: 05/13/13 revisions received: 08/13/2013 accepted: 08/31/2013 how do i get in? criteria shaping the high school course recommendation process 13 volume 17, number 1 january 21, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors elizabeth calhoun reyes constantin schreiber assistant executive editor kevin jose raso recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editor elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik aaron bryant darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell younsu kim anna montana cirell kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber melinda thomas faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word #904.docx 1 volume 15, number 1 may 04, 2012 issn 1099-839x invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts sonja gedde colorado state university the transformative power of dialogue has the potential to serve as a healthful alternative to unproductive strategies for problem-solving in many communication contexts (ryan & natalle, 2001). sadly, educational contexts emerge as contexts in dire need of such communicative reconstruction, evidenced by the alarming increase in incidences of hostile caregiver/educator communication. offering a new paradigm for educators affected by hostile communication, this essay proposes the application of invitational rhetoric, a theory and practice developed in the field of communication studies, aimed at the civil “disarmament” of hostile communication, rooted in dialogue and openness. illumining how the tenets of invitational rhetoric -value, safety, and freedom – may be employed in potentially destructive caregiver-educator communicative exchanges, this essay provides relevant illustrations demonstrating how these tenets could diffuse hostile communication in educational contexts. the marriage of this theory from the field of communication studies with the field of education is a sensible and productive step toward assimilating another strategy that educators may use to better serve students. keywords: invitational rhetoric, dialogue, parent-teacher communication, aggressive communication, communication strategies, bullying, teacher victimization, feminist theory, case study the ability of educators and school personnel to communicate effectively with those involved in a student’s “circle of support” is critical to the welfare of students, the efficacy of the educational experience, and the morale of the educational context and climate. literacy professor patricia schmidt aptly notes that sentiments such as “we are all connected,” and “it takes a village to raise a child” (2005, p. xi) undergird the belief that the creation of a supportive educational context is a collaborative endeavor that involves students, parents, school administrators, community members, and even state and national policy-makers. federal policy such as that substantiated by the no child left behind act and programs like goals 2000 also encourage home and school collaboration, placing “great emphasis on increasing parental involvement in order to enhance student achievement” (thompson, 2008, p. 202; schmidt, 2005; de carvalho, 2001; keller, 2006; lewis, 2002; rogers, 2006). it is not surprising to note that research also suggests that schools must foster collaborative relationships with parents and communities, as these efforts will profoundly affect the welfare of students (heath, 1983; trueba, jacobs, & kirton, 1990; ladson billings, 1994, 1995; edwards, 2004; stafford, 1987). evidently then, educators’ communicative skills are critically important to foster not only effective instruction and classroom management strategies, but also in regard to the relational duties involved with the profession of teaching. despite this need for communicative effectiveness, many educators are not well prepared or trained for communicative interactions, in particular, for 2 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 those interactions that occur with parents/caregivers (dotger, 2009). often times, communicative exchanges with caregivers occur only sporadically and rarely in a proactive spirit, as many communications are predicated upon a reaction to a situation that may be concerning and/or negative (i.e. a grade concern or a disciplinary measure enacted). moreover, because the art and practice of teaching is often best developed “on the job,” it can be difficult to anticipate the varying collection of communicative incidences for which an educator must prepare. this lack of training becomes particularly troublesome over the past decade as educators have faced a substantial rise in the level of confrontations between caregivers, teachers, and school administrators and an increase in documented reports of aggressive caregiver behavior toward educators (jaksec, 2003, 2005). such moments often incite “crucial conversations,” or those in which stakes are high, opinions are varied, and emotions run strong; these communicative exchanges are a customary responsibility of the “communicative work” of educators, so it becomes imperative that educators have a burgeoning set of strategies for negotiating communication of this consequentiality (patterson, grenny, mcmillan, & switzler, 2002, p. 3). consequently, educators must recognize the need for strong communication skills are of critical importance and unprecedented urgency as incidents of aggressive caregiver communication are plausible and reoccurring regularities in public education. while educational literature is replete with many suggested models and templates for the constructive handling of aggressive communication in educational contexts, this study posits an additional alternative approach: asserting that the interdisciplinary approach of invitational rhetoric, which stems from a rhetorical/feminist perspective in the field of communication studies, may be a tool that can help educators and school personnel more effectively navigate complex communicative interactions with parents and caregivers. this approach, embodied through the communicated tenets of value, safety, and freedom, is predicated upon civility and understanding as the ultimate communicative goals (griffin & foss, 1995). though every communicative exchange is unique and no one tool is unequivocally successful, awareness of a variety of communication perspectives will only enhance educators’ effectiveness in mediating and diffusing complex situations and interactions. in the spirit of inquiry then, this essay will briefly outline current research regarding communication in caregiver/educator relationships, exposing the need for further study of confrontation dynamics in these relationships, and it will then systematically ally this research with the communicative paradigm known as invitational rhetoric (foss & griffin, 1995). after introducing this approach, its application in the field of education will be explored, illustrating how invitational rhetoric may be utilized as a tool for mediating challenging caregiver/educator interactions. these illustrations will be grounded in a discussion of the three most commonly cited tenets of invitational rhetoric: value, safety, and freedom -and examples will be provided to demonstrate the application of these tenets in potentially hostile communicative exchanges. no teacher left behind: impetuses for aggressive caregiver-educator communication to effectively mitigate confrontational communicative interactions is undoubtedly important in any relationship. miretzky (2004) argues that caregiver educator relationships are no different, reinforcing student achievement as the primary goal of these relationships, recognizing that the importance of talk between parents and educators is critical to the maintenance and sustainment of democratic communities that support school improvement. as risko and walker-dalhouse (2009) also demonstrate, the far-reaching effects of positive caregiver/educator communication are profound. when caregivers feel positive about their school involvement and relations with school personnel, their children’s interests, learning, and aspirations are typically increased while the morale and self-confidence of school personnel are augmented as well (fan & chen, 2001; henderson & mapp, 2002). thus, teachers’ professional communication skills are “important as they work with parents to promote the success of all children in the classroom” (dotgers, 2009, p. 93). despite these benefits of positive caregiver/educator communication, it is important to recognize that many societal and cultural dynamics have shifted which impact the nature of this communication. to illustrate, whereas contact between caregivers and educators used to happen spontaneously as educators were more regularly a part of a family’s community outside of the school (rotter & robinson, 1983), schools are now more centralized and computer-mediated communication has had to become firmly established within instructional contexts, thereby limiting face-to-face interactions between educators and caregivers (thompson, 2009). though computer-mediated communication does have advantages, it can be problematic from a communicative standpoint as cue restrictions cause difficulty in the interpretation of messages (walther, 2008), and research demonstrates that this type of communication is often focused primarily on negative topics such as grade complaints or behavior issues (thompson, 2008). changes in the roles educators play in communities and the channels through which educational communication occurs are only a few of the potential factors which contribute to the rise in hostile caregiver/educator communication. garrett’s (2009) study also reveals another important point of consideration: perception. simply, 3 invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts caregivers’ and educators’ perceptions of what constitutes “valuable communication” have significantly changed, creating larger gaps between what each party finds pertinent, useful, and meaningful. additionally, perceptions regarding through which methods communication should occur are also variant, underscoring the need for increased dialogue and attention to the fostering of sensitivity in these complex communicative relationships. in the face of such challenges, savoy (2010) argues that just as in society, in the educational system, “our private and public discourse is becoming increasingly more hostile and rude; we are losing civility and respect for each other” (p. 4; see also banathy, 2003). warranting attention, this argument is supported on a consistent basis, as headlines assert the stories of caregiver/educator communication gone wrong; stories in which aggressive and sometimes violent interactions between caregivers and unassuming educators are cause for alarm. to corroborate, a nationwide poll of school violence conducted in canada reveals that the canadian teachers federation learned that 59 percent of principals across the country had witnessed at least one parent verbally abuse a teacher, and 23 percent had seen a parent physically assault or intimidate a teacher (2001, montreal gazette). the notion of “abuse,” “assault,” and “intimidation” cannot go unchecked. similarly, educators in england cite an increase in work-related stress, asking for new training in communication and mediation after incidences dealing with parents who are “unacceptably rude,” “increasingly aggressive and demanding,” and even “physically aggressive” have resulted in the need to call local police into school contexts (sharkey, 2008, p. 5). it is no wonder this training has been requested, as schools in london reported that over 140 parents had been arrested in the year 2001 alone “for assaulting teachers after their children had gotten into trouble” (lee, 2001, p. 12). sadly, incidences such as these are not limited to foreign ground. documented incidences of parental aggression toward educators in the united states are also numerous. a study reveals that philadelphia public schools reported 57 instances of parental assaults against teachers in just one six-month period of observation (may, johnson, chen, hutchinson, & ricketts, 2010). another study of school administrators in a florida county finds that 70% of respondents had been threatened by a parent through one of three primary types of threats: verbal threats accompanied by intimidation, non-contact threats accompanied by intimidation, and intimidation with physical contact (trump & moore, 2001). it is not surprising to recognize, then, that the strain of dealing with parents has been cited as one of the primary reasons new teachers elect to leave the profession (phillips, 2005). with these implications in mind, in a cultural moment where the demand for student success is ever increasing, the pressures for teacher efficacy are mounting, and confrontational communication can be cultivated and enacted through a multitude of channels, it becomes imperative to first understand the impetus from which this type of communication may stem. may, johnson, chen, hutchinson, and ricketts (2010) tackled this very question in an extensive study prepared for the journal of current issues in education, designed to unearth the causes of adversarial parent teacher relationships. this longitudinal, exploratory study revealed that, “most teachers are likely to experience somewhat regular, if primarily verbal, conflict with parents” (p. 23). coupling this conclusion with a more specific evaluation of other factors influencing parent teacher communication conflict, it is acknowledged that, “younger teachers were more likely to experience incidents of parental aggression or other problematic interactions than their older counterparts, as were teachers working in larger communities,” and: teachers with more advanced degrees were more likely to experience incidents of parental aggression or other problematic interactions than their counterparts without those advanced degrees [because] …teachers who return for additional graduate courses are more willing to experiment with innovative educational practices and theories that…may make parents that are unfamiliar with these strategies uncomfortable and thus more likely to confront these teachers. (p. 25 26) frustratingly, this information reveals that novice educators are most likely to become targets of hostile communication and that those educators who explore alternative and/or creative approaches to teaching and learning should be poised to anticipate opposition. certainly, we must utilize this information to provide a framework through which school personnel can begin to proactively anticipate potentially aggressive communicative exchanges between caregivers and educators and diffuse these situations before they become inappropriately inflammatory. jaksec (2003) also contributes to the body of extant research on aggressive caregiver communication behavior, claiming that several factors are generally recognized as main contributors to parental aggression. these factors include: financial stress, patterns of family violence, unstable family environments, previous negative school experiences, school personnel attitudes, a parent’s mental instability, or even a fear that he or she is losing control of his or her child. (p. 19) 4 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 unfortunately, as is clearly demonstrated, the myriad of reasons a caregiver may become hostile toward an educator create challenge when surmising the impetus for such behavior. however, jaksec (2003) and brandt (1998) illumine that paring down these generalized triggers in lieu of a more specific evaluation of the following few factors could prove fruitful in better understanding the dynamics involved in these types of exchanges; this includes addressing the lack familiarity some caregivers have with school personnel and/or school activities which postures a caregiver in a “stranger” identity when dealing with potentially emotionally charged issues, addressing the inaccurate perceptions caregivers may have of school personnel and the accompanying skepticism that often ensues, and addressing the lack of civility policies that should regulate and govern behavior and communication in academic settings. with these characteristics sensitively located at the forefront of an educator’s communicative barometer, it can be readily seen that the myriad of reasons caregivers may engage aggressive communication toward school personnel are vast and complex. thus, educators who have the disposition, abilities, and skills to sense, monitor, mediate, and proactively engage and empower diverse families and communities will be able to contribute most effectively to students’ academic and social development, fostering healthful communicative exchanges wherever possible. the ability to elucidate and craft a communicative relationship predicated upon trust, vision, credibility, service, and influence will mitigate those inevitable occasions when caregivers and educators disagree about curriculum, assignments, peer relationships, homework, and/or teaching approaches (kozik, 2005). it is clear, then, that a strategy predicated in open, civil, and equitable communication could be invaluable for resolving differences in educational contexts (katz, aidman, reese, & clark, 1996; willis, 1995). proposing new communicative paradigms: invitational rhetoric, an overview as demonstrated, many aggressive communication exchanges that occur between caregivers and educators stem from issues that relate to the exertion of power and/or the forcing of change. inevitably, much of the content of these exchanges is unproductive and often detrimental to all parties involved: caregivers, educators, school personnel, and most importantly, students. embedded in efforts to exert power or force change is the innate desire for control and domination, which, if left unchecked, may result in forms of violence – in its literal, discursive, and/or rhetorical sense(s) (foss & griffin, 1995). responding to this growing concern of the implicit conceptions of rhetoric and persuasion that are manifested in daily communication exchanges, feminist communication scholars recognized that a new approach to understanding the role of persuasion and rhetoric was long overdue. offering the concept of “invitational rhetoric” as an alternative communicative option, foss and griffin (1995) theorize that invitational rhetoric is an “invitation to understanding as a means to create a relationship rooted in equality, immanent value, and self determination” (p. 5). through this paradigm, communicators are invited to enter into one another’s world to see it as the other does (foss & griffin, 1995). this communication paradigm suspends judgment and denigration in lieu of openness, civility, respect, and validation of others’ opinions, experiences, and world views. because of the “nonhierarchical, nonjudgmental, non-adversarial framework established for the interaction,” understanding becomes the ultimate goal for the process of communication and product of communication exchanges, engendering appreciation, value, and a sense of equality (foss & griffin, 1995, p. 5). this form of rhetoric differs from attempts to win over an opponent or to advocate the correctness of any one particular position (bone, griffin, & scholz, 2008). rather, it is based in an earnest desire to exchange with one another, in the spirit of dialogue, utilizing thoughtful, civil language, through the creation of an environment where growth and change can occur naturally. as bone, griffin, and scholz (2008) argue, “to engage invitational rhetoric is to exchange ideas from positions of mutual respect and equality” (p. 437). gaining currency through the past decade, this form of rhetoric proves valuable in a variety of contexts and mediums ranging from public discussions and deliberations, to work-place communication, to the construction of visual artifacts that may evoke dialogue. its essence, however, must stem from individual communicators’ choice to abandon their tendencies toward hierarchy, defensiveness, and/or argument in lieu of the desire to listen, learn, and understand others’ perspectives. to further clarify, foss and foss (2012) offer the following eight “key assumptions” which characterize invitational rhetoric, helping to provide a framework for the ways moments of communicative difference can be transformed into occasions of resource: 1) understanding is the purpose of communication in invitational rhetoric; 2) participants in invitational rhetoric listen with openness; 3) in invitational rhetoric, speaker and audience are viewed as equals; 4) invitational rhetoric involves power-with instead of power-over; 5) participants change only when they choose 5 invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts 6) to change in invitational rhetoric; 7) participants enter invitational rhetoric wiling to be changed; 8) invitational rhetoric creates a world of appreciation for differences; 9) invitational rhetoric is one of many options in a communicative “toolbox.” (p. 10) in the genuine spirit of learning and growth. with this, i invite all communicators to be immersed in a new communicative perspective through these illustrations, seeking to open doors for understanding and the enhancement of the relationships between and among those we serve. illustrations of invitational rhetoric: value, safety, and freedom this framework illumines the three most commonly cited tenets of invitational rhetoric: safety, value with anticipation and palpable excitement, a value, and freedom, which can be seen as external conditions that must be created by a communicator for the promotion of a successful invitational communication exchange (bone, griffin, & scholz, 2008). this framework helps to situate invitational rhetoric as a viable tool for the mediation of potentially conflicting communicative exchanges between caregivers and educators. clearly, proponents of invitational rhetoric would acknowledge that this is one potential communicative paradigm that should traverse disciplinary boundaries, as its institution in educational contexts may assuage many of the hostile communicative exchanges that strain the relationships between and among school personnel and caregivers. to this end, the three conditions of invitational rhetoric serve as an appropriate foundation for the exploration of several brief examples and illustrations whereby invitational rhetoric could be utilized in educational contexts in order to allay tensions between caregivers and educators. the illustrations serve as a modified form of holistic, multiple case analysis (yin, 2012). by employing this methodological framework, everyday educational phenomenon can be illumined, in hopes that consumers of this research may be able to generalize from these instances and create meaning that is applicable to their particular contexts and situations (yin, 2012). recognizing that sharing individualized accounts of educators who have used invitational rhetoric in their communicative encounters may inappropriately showcase or compromise the relational work that has been done to nurture these relationships, anecdotal examples will instead be provided to illustrate instances that may be “common” instigators of aggressive caregiver/educator communication. after the provision of a relevant anecdote, one of the three conditions of invitational rhetoric will be discussed while suggestions are provided for the integration and maintenance of invitational rhetoric as a suitable strategy for de-escalating aggressive communication in educational contexts. in these illustrations, the role, response, and responsibility of the educator is emphasized, as educators ultimately have little control over the behaviors of their communicative counterparts. more productively, educators should always strive to model healthful, positive communication teacher prepares her honor’s english students for an upcoming unit where they will be exposed to and immersed in various forms of holocaust literature. convinced that the typical apathy displayed by many students in regard to reading is partially the product of a lack of engaging curricular materials, she is eager to expose students to visceral first-person accounts and narratives of survivors from concentration camps, using these texts to anchor an engaging study of figurative language, point of view, and the genre of memoir. thankful that the school district for which she works not only supports, but requires the study of such literature, she was remiss to the notion that these curricular choices might be met with hesitation. as such, she is literally stunned to open her email inbox at the onset of the unit, only to be welcomed by an aggressive and accusatory message from a parent concerned about the “political agenda” of the unit of study. this parent, armed with her own interpretation of the learning goals for the unit as well as staunchly engrained political perspectives, demands an immediate meeting, and has spared no time in copying the email to school administrators, district literacy coordinators, and even the superintendent. without warning, the excitement of launching an authentic and engaging unit of study transforms into an elevated fear-filled journey into an already hostile communicative situation which has drawn the attention of many officials within the educational context. if exercised appropriately, educators who wish to operate from an invitational perspective will prioritize the condition of value that must be present within invitational exchanges. bone, griffin, and scholz (2008) argue that: value is the acknowledgement that audience members have intrinsic or immanent worth…and when value is present, rhetors recognize that the views of the other person or people, although different from one’s own, have inherent value; that is, rhetors communicate that they will step outside their own standpoint in order to understand another’s perspective. (p. 437) simply, this is what benhabib (1992) calls “the principle of universal moral respect” (p. 29) and what barrett (1991) describes as “respectfully affirming others” while at the same time “one affirms oneself” (p. 148; also 6 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 cited in foss & griffin, 1995). as illustrated, one prominent example where the condition of value may play a critical role regards opinions surrounding curricular programming, which are among the most frequently cited impetuses of confrontation between caregivers and school personnel. caregivers may resist a particular text being utilized in a classroom, a unit of study at large, a curricular requirement, or an assessment strategy. at times, these concerns are warranted as some educators have not thoughtfully engaged the parameters of appropriateness and/or purpose that should undergird every curricular choice. in other instances, even in light of the most thoughtful intention and the support of district and state policies and standards, educators can become the target of unwarranted and sometimes vicious communication regarding the curricular “happenings” of their classrooms. these attacks are often unleashed with very impassioned, assuming language and may represent a mobilized cohort of caregivers banned together in an effort against a particular teacher and/or school. this case illustrates a tenuous, but common situation. at the heart of the case are often unknowing students who are trapped between the preferences of their assertive caregivers and the expectations of a school’s curriculum. clarification and justification may not suffice to satisfy the caregiver, as no amount of rational explanation can combat the staunchly embedded mores and values that inform the caregiver’s opposition. this is precisely where the paradigm of invitational rhetoric and the condition of value may become particularly useful. in this sense, an educator faced with a caregiver who is resisting a particular curricular choice need not abandon his/her own perspectives regarding the value of a chosen curriculum, but should additionally place emphasis on understanding the resistance from a more visceral level, asking questions that are not steeped with the undertones of defensiveness, but rather enlightened with the spirit of inquiry. priority should be placed on affirming and valuing alternate opinions and perspectives, seeking to listen as much as seeking to be heard. foss and griffin (1995) assert that value is created when “rhetors approach audience members as unrepeatable individuals” and eschew “distancing and depersonalizing…attitudes” (p. 11, as cited in walker, 1989, pp. 22, 23). when communication is enacted in this way, communicators feel their identities are not “forced upon or chosen for them” and the technique of “absolute listening” (gendlin, 1978) can be employed, whereby communicators do not interrupt or insert anything of their own perspective as others tell of their experiences, ideas, preferences, and choices (foss & griffin, 1995). educators wishing to enact the condition of value in their invitational exchanges with potentially aggressive caregivers will model and prioritize listening and moral respect, allowing caregivers to express the deeply personal preferences that motivate their visceral reactions to aspects of the educational process, while looking for synonymous moments where values may, in fact, be aligned. sometimes, the simple act of reserving face time for a concerned caregiver and the provision of a genuine forum through which concerns may be openly expressed and honored is enough to diffuse a potentially aggressive situation. safety tired and worn from a long day at school, a group of literacy teachers gather together for their monthly collaborative meeting. nervous about the impending news he will report, the department chairperson tentatively reveals that the district for which they work has decided to institute additional standardized testing measures for all students in literacy-based classes. groaning with despair and panic, a lengthy and heated conversation ensues whereby the teachers question how they will incorporate time for yet another test and how they will defend the validity of instituting yet another assessment measure outside of curriculum. predicting the onslaught of student and parental disapproval in a district where state tests already consume over two weeks of instructional time, the teachers feel blindsided, undermined, and confused. the seemingly endless battery of required standardized tests is quickly becoming one of the most frequently contested issues in this community as it regards public education. adding additional days of required assessments will certainly push the pot to its boiling point, rendering defenseless teachers as targets for public ambush. a second condition embodied by the invitational process is that of safety. in their seminal work, foss and griffin (1995) argue that safety involves “the creation of a feeling of security and freedom from danger,” and communication contributes to a feeling of safety when it “conveys…that ideas and feelings…will be received with respect and care” (p. 10). additionally, rhetoric that contributes to a feeling of safety also provides a means of coherency for communicators, such that they can be open to new perspectives and ideas, trusting that their communicative counterparts are working with and not against them (foss & griffin, 1995). it is clear to see how much of the hostile communication that occurs between caregivers and educators could stem from a lack perceived safety. in many instances, school personnel are unknown or known only superficially by caregivers, with quick meetings at back-to-school nights or parent-teacher conferences providing the only real introduction to one another. often, the communication between caregivers and educators occurs electronically, thereby reducing the personal nature of the relationship as well. this is coupled with the reality that a student may have as many as seven or eight different teachers in a given school day, and the roster of teachers may change each semester or 7 invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts each school year, rendering families with the responsibility of placing trust in literally hundreds of educators over the course of a student’s career in k-12 settings. these relational factors culminate, contributing to the delicate structure that surrounds caregiver-teacher relationships. beyond this, several other factors exist in educational settings where communicative safety may be a concern. the swinging pendulum of educational policy renders many caregivers and educators with a sense of constant change. it can seem that each school year is accompanied with a set of new policies, standards, programs, best practices, assessments, and initiatives that are often mandated by local and state governing bodies. lack of control, and frequently, lack of information, can create a tenuous relationship between schools, school districts, and caregivers. inundation is never a means through which to gain compliance, yet the subversive nature of educational policy sneaks up on all those affected, causing panic, frustration, and angst for many. educators negotiate the anger and confusion of caregivers who do not understand the rationale for policies that have been implemented, and in some cases, as illustrated in the preceding anecdote, educators themselves have not been communicated with appropriately in order to be the liaison necessitated. educational policies may be as simple as the institution of a new summer reading program or an application process for gifted and talented programming, or as complex as the introduction of a new battery of mandated state standardized tests, as demonstrated above. regardless of the specific nature of the policy, when order is threatened and individuals do not feel they have a safe space to express voice, the reaction is often opposition. to an extent, educators can work both proactively and reactively to manage hostile communication that could be the result of a breach in safety. from a proactive perspective, relationship-building is paramount. the spirit of invitational rhetoric would propose that working to establish trust and familiarity with families will create a safe encasement through which communication can thrive. being an educator with credibility who has built ethos with other community members and demonstrated character will also assist in buffering potentially aggressive communication exchanges. beyond these proactive measures, as complex situations arise, invitational communicators will strive to acknowledge the potential fear or dis-ease that may permeate a crucial conversation, quelling the fear with an assurance that open communication will be maintained and all ideas will be respected and listened to. by affirming that fear or anxiety is natural and defining the parameters of the communication exchange so that all parties will have voice, individual communicators will feel less threatened and more open to the exchange of ideas and eventual reaching of understanding. freedom scanning the room, a history teacher notices the stealth movements of a student quickly averting his glance away from another’s test paper at a neighboring desk. after issuing a global verbal warning regarding integrity, the same suspicious behaviors ensue. repeatedly, the teacher observes a pattern indicating that the student is clearly “borrowing” answers from a classmate’s test, and this suspicion is confirmed when, upon seizing the documents in question, both students have identical answers and identical errors. saddened and frustrated by this incident, the teacher decides to conduct an individual conference with the student in question, but is met only with resistance, tears, and denial despite the concrete evidence provided. the student is dismissed, with indications that further consequences will be pursued by school administration, as per school policies on academic integrity. within a matter of hours, the teacher’s classroom telephone rings, and upon answering, he is greeted by an enraged parent demanding to know why her son is being accused of cheating and victimized in such an unjust manner. regardless of the evidenced presented, she is convinced that her son has been wronged and his reputation is stained, demanding immediate apology. a final tenet upon which invitational rhetoric is predicated is freedom, also known as self-determination. freedom, or the power to choose or decide, is a condition whose presence is a “prerequisite for the possibility of mutual understanding” (foss & griffin, 1995, p. 12). by removing restrictions and opening dialogue to all ideas, all participants are able to, in barrett’s (1991) words, “speak up, to speak out” (p. 148; also cited in foss & griffin, 1995, p. 12). freedom is further cultivated when communicators provide opportunities for others to develop and choose options, facilitating rich and complex dialogues that foster the co-creation of meaning. an invitational communicator who subscribes to the condition of freedom recognizes that it should not be a communicator’s responsibility or desire to force, mandate, or require the upholding of a particular ideology, belief, or choice. rather, an invitational communicator acknowledges that we are each the experts of our own lives and will freely follow the courses that seem most appropriate to us, based on our own motivations and information sources. releasing the responsibility to persuade and instead offering information for voluntary consumption, an invitational communicator gives others the space and choice to choose for themselves without coercion, force, fear, or pressure. this condition may feel contradictory to the nature of order that must prevail in an educational context. clearly, there are rules that need to be adhered to, and obviously, certain facets of behavior and student 8 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 productivity are non-negotiable. the condition of freedom does not insinuate that anything is universally acceptable, nor is invitational communication the appropriate form of communication for every communicative encounter. however, there are many communicative instances between caregivers and educators where the proverbial butting of heads could be easily avoided by utilizing principles of freedom and self-determination in an invitational manner. simply, as educators navigate aggressive communication with caregivers, relinquishing control and placing control back into the hands of the caregiver can be a surprisingly effective technique for diminishing hostility and working toward a productive outcome. for example, if a caregiver is upset with a particular discipline technique exercised in a classroom, an educator may simply ask, in the spirit of inquiry, “do you have suggestions for discipline techniques that you have utilized in the home that i might employ?” if communicated in a genuine, civil manner, this simple question places freedom back into the hands of the caregiver, allowing s/he to demonstrate the right to contribute to the appropriate course of action. typically, many caregivers are not necessarily in disagreement about the offense committed by a student, but may be in disagreement about the consequence or manner in which the offense was handled. this could be due, in part, to caregivers’ desire to exercise right to freely choose how their children are raised, especially as it pertains to instances of misbehavior or right versus wrong. in a similar example as described previously, navigating the difficult discussion of students caught plagiarizing or cheating may be arduous as parents often experience a combination of shame, anger, and confusion regarding such incidences. even when all evidence corroborates student wrongdoing, some parents may resist this conversation or the consequences therein, even shifting blame back onto the educator. in this instance, an educator might again propose a series of questions that allows the caregiver to exercise the right to assist in creating the appropriate course of action for the guilty party. such questions might include: “given the evidence we have gathered, what might you suggest as an appropriate consequence?,” or “do you have ideas regarding the way we might address this?” in short, when freedom is exercised in invitational communication, the “principle of egalitarian reciprocity” can exist, which allows communicators the same “symmetrical rights to various speech acts” (benhabib, 1992, p. 29). either an acceptance or rejection of a perspective is a viable outcome, and regardless, the relationship remains intact and mutual respect is prioritized. at worst, both parties have gained insights into one another, developed new perspectives, and have established a positive, civil foundation for the process of continual advancement toward agreement if agreement is necessitated. toward an invitational future the transformative power of dialogue has the potential to serve as a rational alternative to increasingly violent and unproductive strategies for problem-solving in many communication contexts (ryan & natalle, 2001). sadly, educational contexts do emerge as contexts that are in dire need of communicative “reconstruction.” as presented, the variance in student populations, the inconsistent nature of student home lives, the increasing demands placed on students and educators, the cultural tendencies to shift away from personal communication toward computer mediated communication, and the unique nature of the educational process all posit educational contexts as complex sites of inquiry that have the potential to cultivate both rich and meaningful communication exchanges, as well as unhealthy and destructive communicative exchanges. this essay has chosen to focus on the latter by offering a new paradigm for the consideration of those affected by aggressive or hostile caregiver-educator communication. after justifying the urgency for this evaluation and reviewing some of the possible impetuses for aggressive caregiver-educator communication, the essay proposed the introduction of the theory of invitational rhetoric, a theory developed by feminist scholars in the field of communication studies. though this theory is not, in and of itself, new, the marriage of this theory from the field of communication studies with the field of education is a sensible and productive step toward assimilating another strategy that educators may use to better serve students. illumining how the tenets of invitational rhetoric – value, safety, and freedom – may be embodied in potentially destructive caregiver-educator communicative exchanges, this essay provided relevant illustrations demonstrating how these tenets could diffuse hostile communication in regard to curriculum, parental lack of familiarity with school personnel, inconsistencies of educational policy, generalized angst regarding educational change, disagreement over discipline policies, and management of student academic integrity: all fodder for potentially charged caregiver-educator communication. certainly no one technique will be fool proof in mediating all types of aggressive communication, and at times, some communicative exchanges need to follow certain parameters that may not align with the spirit of invitational communication. this proposal is not intended to suggest that invitational communication is the appropriate form of communication for all aggressive caregiver-educator communicative exchanges. it merely proposes another viable tool from which educators can glean suggestion regarding ways to mitigate some of the 9 invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts less desirable moments of the teaching and learning journey, and it does this by embodying some of the most revered tenets of education itself: dialogue, inquiry, civility, and understanding. as foss, griffin, and foss (1999) argue, “interaction with others produces change” (p. 125). it is my hope that interactions among caregivers, school personnel, and community members will foster positive change and growth for all, so that our students may see us as living examples of that which we allege to teach. references banathy, b. h. (2003). dialogue: the method of choice in collective communication. educational technology, 43(2), 11-18. barrett, h. (1991). rhetoric and civility: human development, narcissism, and the good audience. new york: state university of new york press. benhabib, s. (1992). situating the self: gender, community and postmodernism in contemporary ethics. new york: routledge. bone, j. e., griffin, c. l., & scholz, t. m. l. (2008). beyond traditional conceptualizations of rhetoric: invitational rhetoric and a move toward civility. western journal of communication, 72(4), 434-462. brandt, r. (1998). engaging parents and the community in schools. educational leadership, 55(8), 1-7. de carvalho, m. e. (2001). rethinking family school relations: a critique of parental involvement in schooling. mahwah, nj: erlbaum. dotger, b. h. 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(2006). forces of accountability? the power of poor parents in nclb. harvard educational review, 76, 611-641. rotter, j. c., & robinson, e. h. (1983). parent-teacher conferences: what research says to the teacher. national education association, 1-33. ed 222487. ryan, k. j., & natalle, e. j. (2001). fusing horizons: standpoint hermeneutics and invitational rhetoric. rhetoric society quarterly, 31(2), 69 90. savoy, m. r. (2010, january 1). getting to dialogue: parent/teacher communication in a school-based involvement. proquest llc; 2010. available from: eric, ipswich, ma. accessed april 8, 2012. schmidt, p. (ed.) (2005). preparing educators to communicate and connect with families and communities: a volume in literacy, language, and learning. greenwich, connecticut: information age publishing. sharkey, m. (2008, february). teachers stressed by pushy parents: training course welcomed. south wales echo, p. 5a. stafford, l. (1987). eric/rsc reports: parent-teacher communication. communication education, 36(2), 182-87. thompson, b. (2008). characteristics of parent-teacher email communication. communication education, 57, 201-223. thompson, b. (2009). parent-teacher email strategies at the elementary and secondary levels. qualitative research reports in education, 10(1), 17-25. trueba, h. t., jacobs, l., & kirton, e. (1990). cultural conflict and adaptation: the case of the hmong children in american society. new york: the falmer press. trump, k. s., & moore a. (eds.). (2001). deal effectively with hostile visitors to the front office. inside school safety, 6(2), 1-10. walker, m. u. (1989). moral understandings: alternative “epistemology” for a feminist ethics. hypatia, 4, 15-28. walther, j. b. (2008). social information processing theory of computer-mediated communications: impression and relationship development online. in l.a. baxter & d. o. braithwaite (eds.), engaging theories in interpersonal communication: multiple perspectives (pp. 391 404). thousand oaks, ca: sage. willis, s. (1995). when parents object to classroom practice. education update 37(1), 1-8. yin, r. k. (2012). applications of case study research (3rd ed.). los angeles, ca: sage. 11 invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts article citation gedde, s. (2012). invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/904 author notes dr. sonja gedde, special assistant professor colorado state university 210 eddy building, fort collins, co 80523 sonja.gedde@colostate.edu dr. sonja gedde serves the communication studies and university honors program at colorado state university where she has taught courses in public communication, instructional communication, and pedagogy. she is also proud to serve concurrently in poudre school district in fort collins, co. dr. gedde wishes to extend special thanks to dr. cindy griffin, a mentor and friend whose theories of invitational communication have inspired much of her scholastic interest and daily living. manuscript received: 1/15/2012 revisions received: 4/18/2012 accepted: 4/22/2012 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/904 mailto:sonja.gedde@colostate.edu 12 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 volume 15, number 1 may 04, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers volume 15, number 1 may 04, 2012 issn 1099-839x sonja gedde no teacher left behind: impetuses for aggressive caregiver-educator communication proposing new communicative paradigms: invitational rhetoric, an overview illustrations of invitational rhetoric: value, safety, and freedom value safety freedom toward an invitational future article citation author notes volume 15, number 1 may 04, 2012 issn 1099-839x executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt meg burke angela hines carol masser lucinda watson lisa lacy ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca lauren preston stephanie quintero kelly rubel dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 940-4104-4-le_2.doc 1 volume 15, number 3 august 21, 2012 issn 1099-839x transfer of active learning strategies from the teacher education classroom to prek-12th grade classrooms kaye pepper, sarah blackwell, and ann monroe the university of mississippi shawn coskey east stroudsburg university in this study, researchers investigated the influence of modeling active learning strategies in an introductory foundations teacher preparation course: 1) on teacher candidates' perceptions of participating in active learning in the college classroom, 2) on participants' acquisition of course content, and 3) on participants’ later use of active learning strategies in their classrooms as practicing teachers. results revealed there was a significant difference in teacher candidates' acquisition of course content in the course sections that incorporated active learning (al) and ones that incorporated a traditional lecture format (tl). in addition, on a follow-up survey of participants who are now practicing teachers, there was little difference in the use of the active learning strategies; however, there was a difference in the level of conceptual understanding of the theories of human development and diversity and how that knowledge was utilized by the al and tl groups in their classrooms. keywords: teacher education, active learning, transfer of learning, cooperative groups, problem-based learning, educational foundations research indicates that the use of active learning strategies, such as cooperative learning groups and problem-centered learning, positively influences student learning in the classroom for prekindergarten (prek)-12th grade students as well as university students (cherney, 2008; dewey, 1916; mccarthy & anderson, 2000; schmidt, 2010). this has important implications for teacher educators who are responsible for preparing prospective teachers to be successful in elementary, middle, high school, and special education classrooms. implementation of active learning strategies in an introductory foundations course within a teacher preparation program facilitates teacher candidates' understanding of the developmentally and academically appropriate instructional strategies needed to promote prek-12th grade student success. in addition, prospective teachers develop a better understanding of the effectiveness of the strategies when they have the opportunity to experience the strategies as a student. this experience could enhance teacher candidates' conceptual understanding of the content and influence these future teachers to implement the strategies in their prek-12th grade classroom. this article presents a study designed to determine the effectiveness of this concept. instructors of a human development and diversity foundations course incorporated a semester-long active learning project which included cooperative learning groups and problemcentered instructional strategies for university students beginning a teaching preparation program. the researchers sought to determine (1) teacher candidates' perceptions of the use of the active learning project in teaching, (2) their acquisition of content related to the current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 theories of human development and diversity, and (3) the transfer of active learning strategies to their practice as career teachers. effectiveness of the active learning approach michael (2007) points out that the constraints of time placed on the college professor often lead to a lecture only format with little investment in active learning. however, research on learning indicates that if the goal is to help people act and reflect responsibly, then learning should take place at a much higher level than simple memorization of facts (bransford, derry, berliner, & hammerness, 2005). dewey (1916) avowed that students flourish in an active learning environment where they have the opportunity to experience and interact with the curriculum to answer questions and solve problems. in addition, his theories indicated that the teacher should serve as a facilitator and guide students to discover meaning in the skills or concepts to be learned. eggen and kauchak (2007) acknowledge that educators have been guided by the views of social constructivism for years and often use the benefits of peer interaction to support student learning in the prek-12th grade classroom. prince (2004) noted that the effectiveness of collaborative learning in the college classroom has been studied by many researchers with results showing considerable support for the use of this particular pedagogical technique. in fact, walker (1996) found that most college students enjoy working in collaborative groups and find the experience to be interesting and motivating. the rationale for using dewey's social constructivist teaching strategies in the college classroom was outlined by hanson and sinclair (2005). they stated that these methods of instruction “(1) help students to construct a deeper understanding of theoretical concepts that is better connected with practical experience; (2) help students to develop skills in performing the routine problem-solving tasks of their intended profession …; and (3) develop students’ knowledge creation capacity – the capabilities and dispositions for engaging in collaborative problem-based inquiry…” (p.169). in addition, bransford et al., (2005) noted that a "community-centered" classroom provides a supportive environment where students can learn from one another in cooperative groups. student learning is more effective when they are allowed to use the resources of their peers, when students believe their efforts matter to the success of their group, and when they have the opportunity to link their life experiences to learning within the classroom. active learning is an instructional process that engages students in higher-order thinking tasks. according to meyers and jones (1993), active learning is based on two assumptions: learning is an active rather than passive process and different people learn in different ways. when students are involved in active learning, they are doing more than simply listening to a lecture; they are discovering, processing, and applying information. cherney (2008) contends that students in undergraduate programs have better recall of information learned through active learning exercises than other modes of instruction. cherney’s two studies involved 314 undergraduate students at a liberal arts college in the midwestern united states. the purpose was to examine students’ memory of instruction and level of understanding for material taught in introductory classes and advanced classes in an undergraduate program. the first study involved 250 students enrolled in introductory courses and the second study involved 64 students enrolled in higher level courses. the instructors asked participants in both studies to list ten concepts learned during the semester. across all class levels, the most frequently listed items were concepts introduced through active learning exercises. meyers and jones (1993) offer activities such as informal group work, cooperative student projects, problem-solving exercises, simulations, case studies, and role playing as ways students can be involved in active learning. cooperative learning, through informal group work and cooperative student projects, is a teaching strategy in which small groups use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. group members are responsible for learning what is taught and for helping teammates learn as well. tsay and brady (2010) conducted a study with 24 undergraduate students at a large northeastern university in the u.s. to examine the relationship between cooperative learning and academic performance in the higher education setting. the findings of this study indicated that students who fully participated in group activities were more likely to earn higher test scores and course grades at the end of the semester, which supports the notion that cooperative learning is an active pedagogy that promotes higher academic achievement. mccarthy and anderson (2000) took an empirical look at active learning in the college classroom, specifically the impact role-playing and collaborative activities had on student achievement in a college history class and a political science class. both exercises emphasized the active participation of the students in the learning process. these activities were alternatives to the standard passive lecture and teacher-centered discussions. the results of the study showed that the students involved in the role-plays and collaborative activities did better on a standard assessment of knowledge than their peers taught through a traditional lecture technique. these results suggest that, in addition to being more engaging for the students, active learning techniques may more effectively communicate information than traditional formats. whicker, bol, and nunnery (1997) conducted a study to determine high school mathematics students' achievement and attitudes toward cooperative learning. transfer of active learning strategies from the teacher education classroom to prek-12th grade classrooms 3 students in the first class studied the material in cooperative groups while the students in another class studied the material independently. three chapter tests assessed student achievement and a questionnaire was administered to the class studying in cooperative groups at the end of the study to assess their attitudes toward the cooperative learning process. students in the cooperative learning group had increasingly higher scores on the chapter tests than the class that studied independently. student responses on the questionnaire were generally favorable, but suggested that group membership should alternate rather than remaining with the same group for all work. salinas and garr (2009) found that learnercentered classrooms and schools had a positive impact on the academic performance of elementary students from minority groups (african american, latino, and american indian). participants included 236 students from six learner-centered and six matched control schools across the u.s. results of student performance on standardized achievement tests were utilized to determine student academic performance; however, students were also assessed on other constructs such as creativity, motivation, cooperative skills, and openness to diversity. findings revealed that students from minority groups who studied in learner-centered classrooms and schools had test scores that were statistically equal to those of their non-minority peers. in addition, these students had higher scores on measures of other constructs such as tolerance and openness to diversity. in addition, there is evidence to suggest that problem-centered or problem-solving approaches which are paired with peer interaction have the greatest impact on student learning. merrill and gilbert (2008) point out that the give and take between peers coupled with the structure of problem-centered instruction leads to enhanced understanding, the ability to make connections across theories, and increased rates of knowledge retention. furthermore, bransford et al., (2005) note that as students work together in groups, they learn from one another in a variety of ways as they share their understandings and reasoning with one another. this helps to develop their problem-solving and critical thinking skills as well as build their store of knowledge. in a study designed to examine improvement in high school students' inquiry capabilities in scientific literacy through a problem-based environmental curriculum, kang, dechenne, and smith (2012) found that students involved in the problem-based, inquiry curriculum performed better than the comparison group in posing inquiry questions and generating hypothesis-driven approaches. in addition, tarim (2009) found that preschoolers' verbal mathematics problem-solving ability was enhanced through the cooperative learning approach. in addition, skills related to cooperation, sharing, listening, and self-regulated learning improved as well. active learning in teacher education implementing an active learning project in an introductory teacher education class can be a powerful learning experience for prospective teachers. these students, new to teacher preparation, have spent at least twelve years in traditional classroom settings and have developed preconceived ideas about teaching from these experiences. the learning theories and principles of teaching taught in teacher preparation programs may be quite different from the ideas about teaching these teacher education students bring with them. gaining an in-depth understanding of the theories of learning, of teaching, and the transfer of learning is vital for prospective teachers as they prepare to teach prek-12th grade students (bransford et al., 2005). learning course content through instructional strategies that are also effective with prek12th grade students may be the most powerful form of teacher education prospective teachers can experience. successful teacher education programs include strong coursework on child and adolescent development closely linked to field experiences that foster child observation and analysis of learning within a school (horowitz, darling-hammond, & bransford, 2005). important understandings that teacher candidates must have to facilitate effective instructional planning are related to the developmental progressions, individual differences, and diverse nature of the students in the prek-12th grade classroom. this knowledge helps new teachers realize how the instruction they plan can support the development of students (bransford et al., 2005). it also allows them to determine when students are prepared to accomplish new goals. in order to meet the needs of the students in their classrooms, new teachers must understand the importance of thinking about the learners' diverse needs rather than focusing on subject matter only according to bransford et al. (2005), teacher candidates benefit greatly from experiencing what it is like to learn in classrooms that implement the learning principles and type of strategies they are expected to utilize in the prek-12th classroom. in an effort to incorporate active learning strategies within a human development and diversity foundations introductory course in teacher education, instructors created the “develop-a-child” project. the semester-long develop-achild project enabled teacher candidates to apply human development and diversity principles and theories to a "fictional child" in the areas of social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development. two active learning strategies, cooperative learning groups and problemcentered learning, were woven throughout the project. to support learning in the university course, teacher candidates spent twenty-five hours during the semester in a field-based classroom experience observing and working with small groups. they also developed a threeday written lesson plan and taught one of the lessons to a small group in the prek-12th grade setting in which they were placed. this experience provided the opportunity for current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 the teacher candidates to conceptualize and apply theories related to human development and diversity learned in the foundations course to students in an actual classroom. investigating the perceptions of teacher candidates related to participation in the project, their acquisition of course content, as well as the transfer of learning to their practice in the field may provide important information to assist in improving university instruction. teacher candidates’ perceptions of the effectiveness of active learning projects may also impact the types of instructional strategies they use in their future prek-12th grade classroom. project description the develop-a-child problem-centered activity implemented in the foundations class provided the opportunity for teacher candidates to consider theories of human development and diversity in reference to a specific child. this exercise was further enhanced through class and group discussions related to the prek-12th grade students in their field placement classrooms. in addition, cooperative groups were given the opportunity to analyze how theories may impact their specific child and then justify their analysis to the class. through informal discussions with the participants, instructors learned that this was the first opportunity that some junior-level teacher education candidates had had working in groups at the university level, as revealed in their responses to a questionnaire at the end of the foundations class, this opportunity helped them to realize that the use of this instructional strategy can be a powerful learning experience. in addition, instructors incorporated theories such as scaffolding, multiple intelligences, and human development and diversity into class curriculum to enhance the experience. as they modeled the active learning instructional strategies, the instructors used guiding questions related to the field experience to solidify understanding of the theories of human development and diversity for the teacher education candidates. teacher candidates chose to participate in gradelevel groups (pre-k, primary, elementary, middle, and secondary) based on their area of interest and their field placement. each group of four to five teacher candidates decided the gender, age, name, and ethnicity of their "child" and drew a life-size model to represent the child. rather than including socio-economic status in the characteristics candidates assigned their child, the influence this attribute has on development and issues of diversity was discussed with each new theory and particularly during discussions of students with whom they worked in field placements. course content was presented by the instructor through powerpoint presentations and guided discussion. as new developmental stages and accompanying theories were introduced by the instructor, group activities were completed by the teacher candidates allowing them to apply the new information to the chosen characteristics of their child. the groups added to the model based on the theories and the specific characteristics of the child. presentations were made by each group to explain the significance of the content as it related to their child's developmental level and aspects of diversity. by having group presentations that addressed pre-k through high school-aged children coupled with experiences in a field placement, the teacher candidates were provided the opportunity to recognize and conceptualize the stages of human development and diversity principles covered in the class. the first activity and presentation followed content instruction that explained piaget's theory of human development, vygotsky's theories of the role between learning and human development including the zone of proximal development, and erikson's stages of psychosocial development. teacher candidates met in their group to decide how these theories might influence their child, considering the gender, age, and ethnicity. incorporating their knowledge of the students in their field-placement setting, they determined how their child might react in certain situations, what they might say and do, or what would impact a child's decision on things such as what they would wear. once the characteristics of the developmental level of their child were determined, this information was added to their model in a creative way chosen by the group. some groups used conversation bubbles to relate what their child might say or dressed their child based on their age level. presentations were made by each group to explain the rationale for the decisions they made. following a study of learner differences and discussions linking this information to the children in their field placement, groups were asked to select an ageappropriate literature book that carried a specific message related to an issue of diversity. diversity was defined as topics related to culture, gender, learning abilities, physical handicaps, behavior, or language. groups were to identify ways the specific issue of diversity might impact their child. groups were instructed to select two “intelligences” as identified by gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences that might be evident in their child. the groups then planned a learning activity with these intelligences in mind that would effectively teach the message of diversity found in the children’s book to their fictional child. depending on the specific intelligences they identified for their child, the learning activity might include music, writing, and spatial activities, or students might be able to select whether they worked in groups or alone. as before, during the presentation to the class, teacher candidate groups justified their decisions. in order for teacher candidates to conceptualize the theories of the behaviorist view of learning, social cognitive learning theory, and cognitive learning theory, each group was provided with a specific scenario that transfer of active learning strategies from the teacher education classroom to prek-12th grade classrooms 5 related to their child. teacher candidates were asked to determine how these theoretical concepts might impact their child in relation to their developmental level and asked to determine solutions for the scenario based on information about the theoretical stances found in the text. as the teacher candidates considered the students in their field placements, class discussions after each group presentation assisted them in realizing how these theories of learning impacted students at different age levels and had the opportunity to make comparisons to their own child. in addition, considerations of the student gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic status were part of discussions. each group also examined the role the classroom teacher plays in a child’s success in conceptualizing new information in the learning process. to demonstrate an understanding of the characteristics of constructivism, each group planned a learning activity for their child based on his/her developmental and individual needs. relating the characteristics of constructivism to the students in their field-experience classrooms, the groups identified three ways they could ensure meaningful encoding of new information by their child. in the learning activity, the groups provided examples the teacher might use to make the information relevant for the child. during the presentation, they identified ways cognitive and social constructivism theories were addressed in the activity. they also explained ways the activity promoted high levels of quality interaction, how it connected to the real world, and how the activity was assessed. when studying motivational views and associated behaviors, teacher candidates were instructed to think about the developmental characteristics exhibited by the students in their field-placement classrooms and the factors needed to increase motivation for those students. the theory focus for each group was different: pre k– extrinsic/intrinsic motivational theory; primary – maslow’s deficiency needs theory; elementary – maslow’s growth needs theory; middle – attribution theory; and high school – goal theory. each group then designed a motivational poster for their fictional child based on the view of motivation that directly impacted that age group – the behavioral views of motivation, the humanistic views of motivation, or the cognitive views of motivation. a final presentation was made by each group at the end of the semester that encapsulated the theories and concepts learned during the class. the final life-size models of their fictional children were hung side-by-side which enabled teacher candidates to draw conclusions about the developmental stages. during class discussions led by the instructors, comparisons of the models were made to help teacher candidates better understand the significant characteristics of a child at each stage. by the end of the semester, the candidates had an opportunity to understand how personality characteristics emerged within specific grade and age levels and how teacher behaviors may impact student psychological and emotional development. numerous discussions throughout the semester related to the field-based experiences incorporated within this class provided opportunities for teacher candidates to enhance their understanding of the significance of being an effective teacher as well as their understanding of how the knowledge of the developmental levels and learning theories impacted the individual differences evident in students. methodology this study used a combination of descriptive survey and quasi-experimental research designs to determine candidates' perceptions of the active learning instructional strategies utilized in the develop-a-child semester-long project, candidates' comprehension of the theories of human development and diversity, and graduates' perceptions of the implementation of active learning strategies in their classrooms as career teachers. the following guided the study and addressed the three purposes outlined above. •what impact did the incorporation of active learning strategies in designated classes of the introductory foundations course have on the teacher education candidates' perceptions of the use of these instructional strategies in teaching? • there is no significant difference in the scores of teacher education candidates in the sections of the introductory foundations course which incorporated active learning strategies on the praxis ii principles of teaching and learning test and the teacher education candidates in sections that used traditional lecture methods. •to what extent did teacher education graduates who completed the introductory foundations course which incorporated active learning strategies and graduates in sections that were taught with traditional lecture method utilize active learning strategies in their prek-12th grade classrooms two to three years after graduation? the study was completed in three phases as indicated in table 1. phase i descriptive survey research (creswell, 2012) was utilized to address the question posed for the initial phase of the study. upon completion of the introductory foundations course in classes in which the active learning strategies were incorporated, a questionnaire was administered to volunteers to ascertain the teacher candidates' perceptions of the use of active learning as an instructional strategy (appendix a). a space to include comments after each questionnaire item was provided current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 table 1 phases of transfer of active learning strategies study phase i a questionnaire was administered to teacher candidates only in introductory foundation classes in which the active learning strategies were incorporated to determine their perceptions of the active learning instructional strategies. phase ii comparison of praxis ii-principles of teaching and learning scores (overall and subtest scores) of teacher education candidates in introductory foundation classes in which the active learning strategies were incorporated and teacher education candidates in classes where the traditional lecture approach was utilized. quasi-experimental (nonequivalent control groups posttest only) phase iii a survey was administered to the teacher education graduates of both groups described in phase ii two to three years after becoming teachers to determine perceptions of their use of active learning strategies in the prek-12 grade classroom. encouraging respondents to further explain their responses concerning the benefits or drawbacks of the strategies utilized in the develop-a-child project, the impact this project had on their acquisition of course content, and whether they felt the strategies would be useful in their teaching. for two semesters, questionnaire data were collected from candidates (n=128) enrolled in two sections of classes in which active learning was incorporated. phase ii a quasi-experimental nonequivalent posttestonly design (gribbons & herman, 1997) was utilized in phase ii to determine whether the hypothesis in the study was supported or not supported. to determine the longterm impact of the project on teacher candidates' understanding of the developmental theories and issues related to diversity, the praxis ii principles of teaching and learning (plt) scores for the teacher education candidates in the classes that incorporated active learning (n=128) were compared to teacher education candidates' scores who completed the same course in a traditional lecture format during the same semesters (n=120) the traditional lecture instructors used the same syllabus and the same textbook as the instructors who taught using the active learning strategies. activities in the traditional lecture classes included powerpoint presentations with lecture, whole-class and small-group discussions, online assignments, and individual research papers completed by the candidates rather than problem-centered activities or cooperative group projects in class activities. the traditional lecture classes were designated as the control group. approximately 98% of the students from phase i completed phase ii of the study, teacher candidates took the praxis ii plt test during the student-teaching semester, approximately 18 months after completing the foundations course. phase iii descriptive survey research (creswell, 2012) was utilized in phase iii of the study to address the final question posed. teacher education graduates who were in the classes that incorporated active learning strategies and graduates who were in traditional lecture classes who held a teaching position within the state were contacted. these teachers who had been practicing teachers for two to three years were sent a follow-up survey (appendix b) to determine perceptions of their use of active learning strategies in the prek-12th grade classroom. the followup survey also sought to determine whether the instructional strategies in the foundations course helped them to make connections between developmental theories and their students' learning styles, preferences, and age levels, and whether the instructional strategies in the course had an influence on their implementation of active learning strategies in their classrooms. participants the participants, in their first semester of the teacher education program at the university of mississippi, were enrolled in a one-semester introductory foundations course which covered principles and theories of human development and diversity. in phase i, 128 teacher education candidates enrolled in the junior-level course participated in the classes that incorporated the active learning strategies. the classes were used as intact groups, thus no random selection of participants took place. all candidates participated in the develop-a-child project as it was part of the course design for these transfer of active learning strategies from the teacher education classroom to prek-12th grade classrooms 7 sections of the course. the groups spanned two semesters with group 1 (first semester) having 59 candidates and group 2 (second semester) having 69 candidates. demographics of the candidates revealed that 95% were caucasian (104 females/17 males), 5% were african american (6 females /1 male) and the mean age was 22 years. in phases ii and iii, follow-up data were collected on the participants of the classes that implemented active learning strategies, as well as teacher candidates who completed the foundations course taught in a traditional lecture format (group 1-54 candidates, group 2-66 candidates). classes were identified as treatment and control groups based on the method of instruction utilized by the instructor. again, intact classes were used for candidates in the traditional lecture format. all candidates participated in this instructional format as part of the course design for these classes. the demographics of candidates participating in the traditional lecture format classes were comparable to the candidates in the classes that incorporated active learning strategies. demographics of this group revealed that 88% were caucasian (94 female/12 male), 9% were african american (10 female/1 male), 1% was hispanic (1 female/1 male), and 1% was asian (1 female). the mean age of the traditional lecture group was 21.25 years. instrumentation the questionnaire in phase i was administered to teacher education candidate volunteers in the classes that incorporated active learning strategies. volunteers completed the instrument at the end of the last class session of the semester and were asked to place them in a large envelope to ensure anonymity. twenty-four volunteers (41% of 59) completed the survey the first semester (group 1) and 30 (43% of 69) the second semester (group 2). the group was considered to a good representation of the overall classes. this questionnaire included items that sought to determine teacher candidates' perceptions of the use of the active learning project in teaching, understanding of concepts and theories of human developmental and diversity, and transfer of learning to their practice in the field. the instrument consisted of 12 questions to which participants responded by circling “yes” or “no.” the researchers designed the questionnaire so respondents made a positive or negative choice related to the item, but included a comment section with each item allowing participants to explain their response. the researchers felt the written responses would provide valuable information to aid in the analysis of the forced-choice items. the items on the questionnaire were reviewed by a panel of education faculty to insure content validity. researchers analyzed the data by quantifying results for “yes” and “no” responses and coding written explanations by sorting comments into categories to ascertain patterns and themes related to the three areas of focus of the questionnaire. in phase ii, approximately 18 months after completing the course, during the student teaching semester, participants took the praxis ii principles of learning and teaching test which is required for certification in the state. this test assesses content understanding and addresses the second focus of the study: acquisition of content knowledge. according to information on the educational testing service website, the plt is "designed to assess a beginning teacher's knowledge of… areas such as educational psychology, human growth and development, classroom management, instructional design and delivery techniques, evaluation and assessment, and other professional preparation" (educational testing service, nd). the test includes subtests in the areas of students as learners, instruction and assessment, teacher professionalism and communication techniques. part of the test is composed of four case studies related to a particular teaching situation in which candidates respond to short-answer items. the short-answer items require examinees "to demonstrate understanding of the importance of an aspect of teaching, demonstrate understanding of the principles of learning and teaching underlying an aspect of teaching, or recognize when and how to apply the principles of learning and teaching underlying an aspect of teaching" (educational testing service, nd). in addition, the test contains multiple-choice questions covering the areas noted above. the overall total score and the percent of correct responses for each subtest score were obtained for participants’ enrolled in classes implementing the active learning strategies and compared to the same scores of teacher education candidates who completed the class in the traditional lecture format. phase iii, the follow-up portion of the study, was related to the third focus, perceptions of implementation of active learning strategies in the prek-12th grade classroom. teacher education candidates in the foundations courses in which active learning and traditional lecture formats were used and who held teaching positions within the state were located with the assistance of the state department of education. participants included in group 1 of the study were in their third year of teaching and participants included in group 2 were in their second year of teaching. these groups contain elementary, middle school, and high school teachers, as well as special education teachers. the follow-up survey contained five items that sought to determine participants' current teaching grade level, how often they used active learning strategies in their teaching, and the impact that instruction in the foundations class had on their understanding and willingness to utilize active learning strategies. likert-type response options suitable to each question were current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 suitable to each question were included on the survey. a panel of teacher education faculty reviewed the questions for clarity and to determine whether they would provide the information to help the researchers answer the study questions. the electronic survey was created using surveymonkey. a cover letter that included the link to the survey was emailed to participants. groups 1 and 2 were combined and treated as one group for this exercise. of the active learning participants, 58 emails were sent with 13 being returned as undeliverable. for the traditional lecture group, 67 emails were sent with 10 being returned as undeliverable. nineteen teachers (42%) who participated in the active learning class responded to the survey. thirteen teachers (23%) who participated in the lecture-only class responded. researchers analyzed the data by quantifying results of the response choices and coding written explanations by sorting comments into categories to ascertain patterns and themes related to the three areas of focus of the questionnaire. results because the develop-a-child questionnaire administered in phase i was directed solely at the active learning strategies used in specific sections of the introductory foundations course, only teacher education candidates enrolled in these sections were provided the opportunity to respond. the results yielded valuable information related to the three focal areas of the study. the results of the responses on the questionnaire are grouped according to the three research areas of interest in the study. in addition, results of follow-up activities in phases ii and iii related to the three areas of focus are discussed in the corresponding sections with the results of the initial questionnaire. 1) teacher candidates’ perceptions of an active learning approach as an instructional strategy. phase i: develop-a-child questionnaire results. the responses in research area one are based on yes/no responses and clarifying written responses to survey questions 6, 7, 9, 10, and 12. these five questions asked participants to determine whether the use of the active learning project, which incorporated cooperative learning and problem-centered activities, was an effective instructional strategy. as noted on table 2, teacher candidates were very favorable when responding to each question except the final one which asked if they felt there were drawbacks or negatives to participating in this project. group 1 responded equally positively and negatively toward this item; however group 2 was much more positive. this change may be due to adjustments in the instructors' group participation instructions from one semester to the next. the written responses revealed interesting information. written comments for the two groups were combined and analyzed by categorizing responses as favorable and not favorable. eighty-one percent (44) of the teacher candidates responding indicated that the active learning experience was very enjoyable and beneficial. according to the written responses, the teacher candidates stated that the develop-a-child project combined visual representations with auditory presentations that met their learning needs and allowed for creative expression. in addition, they felt the activities kept them on-task and actively involved with the content. they encountered creative teaching ideas and discovered that it enhanced team building as they got to know their classmates and learned from one another. they added that more professors should include cooperative learning activities in their instruction, because no matter what content is being taught, this is an effective way to teach it. nineteen percent (10) of the teacher candidates across the two groups felt there were drawbacks to participating in the project. written responses by these candidates noted that some members of their groups did not contribute enough to the project. they also pointed out that although it was enjoyable and they knew a lot about their own group's child, some candidates had difficulty remembering about the other children that were developed. three participants felt strongly that education courses use too much group work and preferred to learn the information through a direct instruction model. 2) teacher candidates' comprehension of the theories of human development and diversity phase i: develop-a-child questionnaire results. the responses in research area two are based on yes/no and written responses to survey questions 1, 5, and 8. these three questions asked participants to respond to the effectiveness of the develop-a-child project on their comprehension of course concepts and theories of human development and diversity. yes/no responses to these three items on table 3 indicated very positive responses to these questions. again, responses from group 2 were more positive than from group 1 perhaps indicating a difference in the groups over the two years or a possible change in the way material was presented as a result of instructor reflection on the course activities from the previous year. the written responses of the two groups provided more clarification to the yes/no responses. eighty-six percent (46) of teacher candidates responding indicated the “develop-a-child” project was an interesting way to learn how prek-12th grade students develop. a summary of their written responses indicated that it helped spark their interest in the content since they realized they had to understand the content in order to successfully create the child and present the child to the class. they liked being able to interact with the content rather than simply studying it in the textbook. the active learning experience gave them an opportunity to thoroughly develop an understanding of the concepts and connect the concepts from the book to real-life situations. transfer of active learning strategies from the teacher education classroom to prek-12th grade classrooms 9 table 2 perceptions of active learning as an instructional strategy develop-a-child questionnaire items group 1 n=24 group 2 n=30 yes no yes no 6. did you feel the instructor for the course modeled effective instructional strategies while presenting the course content during the semester? 95.8% 23 4.2% 1 100% 30 0% 0 7. do you think all professors in higher education should provide opportunities for cooperative group activities? 91.6% 22 8.4% 2 90.0% 27 10.0% 3 9. do you feel the develop-a-child project was suited to your personal learning style? 83.3% 20 16.6% 4 86.6% 26 13.4% 4 10. did you enjoy participating in the develop-a-child project? 87.5% 21 12.5% 3 90.0% 27 10.0% 3 12. do you feel there were drawbacks or negatives to participating in this project? 50.0% 12 50.0% 12 16.6% 5 83.4% 19 table 3 teacher candidates’ comprehension of theories of human development and diversity develop-a-child questionnaire items group 1 n=24 group 2 n=30 yes no yes no 1. did the develop-a-child activity help you learn the course content (examples: emotional, social, physical, cognitive developmental theories) 83.3% 20 16.6% 4 90.0% 27 10.0% 3 5. did participating in the activity motivate you to learn the course content? 66.6% 16 33.3% 8 93.3% 28 6.7% 2 8. did working cooperatively help you learn the content? 87.5% 21 12.5% 3 90.0% 27 10.0% 3 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 they indicated that the hands-on learning activities helped them learn the content because it made it easier to see how the developmental theories applied to an actual child at a given age. they also indicated the project helped them to connect more closely to the students in their field placement setting. teacher candidates noted that assigning an age, grade, gender, personality traits, interests, and background experiences helped them see how these factors impact development. explaining the information to the rest of the class also seemed to be helpful to some of the candidates since it required them to summarize the information that was included on the develop-a-child poster. they benefitted from different perspectives and found that in some cases, different candidates within the group had a better understanding of the content and were able to explain it to their peers in a way that made it easier to understand. most participants were positive about learning the content through the active learning experiences, yet 14% (7) of the teacher candidates commented the project was a hassle and their goal was to complete the assignment rather than focusing on the content. others stated that although it was fun and motivating, being in a group wasn’t the reason they learned the content; their real motivation was their desire to get a good grade. perhaps the active learning approach did not match their learning styles or the personalities and learning styles of the members in their group were not a good fit. phase ii: follow-up: praxis ii plt results. available praxis ii plt scores for active learning study participants (al) (group 1, n=44; group 2, n=33) as well as scores for candidates who completed the course the same semesters in a class that utilized a traditional lecture format (tl) (group 1, n=33; group 2, n=36) were compared. figure 1 displays the average overall scores for groups 1 and 2 of the al and tl groups. figure 2 displays the average percent of correct items on the subtests of the praxis ii plt for groups 1 and 2 of the active learning and traditional lecture groups. exact percentages of the correct responses on the subtests are found on table 4. after analyzing the overall scores and the subtest scores of the two groups, independent samples t-tests were conducted to statistically compare the overall scores and the percent of correct responses on subtests of candidates in the al group to candidates in tl group. table 4 reveals significant differences between the overall scores of the groups, as well as on three subtests. al group scores were higher on overall score averages for both groups 1 and 2. in addition, the percent of correct responses for the subtests were higher for the al group on almost every subtest. for the overall scores results, findings revealed a significant difference in the scores of the al and tl groups for both group 1: al (m=173.66, sd=8.6) and tl (m=169.46, sd=9.8); t(75)=2.03,p=.046 and group 2: al (m=175.66, sd=9.66) and tl (m=169.11, sd=9.04); t(73)=3.027,p=.003). this finding supports previous research which indicates that candidates completing a course which incorporates active learning strategies retain the content more effectively than those completing the traditional lecture course. these results also support the perceptions of teacher candidates on the develop-a-child questionnaire. when considering the subtest scores, the percent of correct responses for the al and tl groups for groups 1 and 2 were revealed in table 4. after considering the differences, an independent samples t-test was conducted to determine whether there was a significant difference in the scores of the al and tl groups for groups 1 and 2 on each subtest. findings revealed a significant difference in the subtest scores of the al and tl groups for group 1 in instruction and assessment (short answer/case study items) and in teachers as professionals (short answer/case study items). results on the subtest instruction and assessment (16 items) for group 1 indicated: al (m=11.91, sd=2.49) and tl (m=10.27, sd=3.73); t(75)=2.34,p=.022. results on subtest teachers as professionals (8 items) for group 1 indicated: al (m=4.91, sd=2.17) and tl (m=3.81, sd=2.25); t(75)=2.17,p=.033. for group 2, findings revealed a significant difference in the subtest scores of the al and tl groups on subtest students as learners (short answer/case study items). results on subtest students as learners (16 items) for group 2 indicated: al (m=10.87, sd=3.39) and tl (m=9.11, sd=2.80); t(73)=2.43,p=.017. it is interesting to note that there were significant differences on all three of the short-answer item tests related to the case studies. according to popham (2007), assessing students using the short-answer format requires them to develop their own correct response rather than choosing a response from a list of possible answers. thus, this type of assessment item is more cognitively demanding than multiple-choice items. a significant difference on scores related to the short answer items on the case studies may indicate that the participants of the al groups have a better conceptual understanding of the concepts and theories of human development and diversity and are better able to verbalize those understandings. this also supports teacher candidates' perceptions on the develop-a-child questionnaire. 3) teacher candidates’ implementation of the active learning strategies in their classrooms as practicing teachers. phase i: develop-a-child questionnaire results. the responses in research area three were based transfer of active learning strategies from the teacher education classroom to prek-12th grade classrooms 11 figure 1. praxis ii plt average overall scores. average overall praxis ii plt scores for groups 1 and 2 of the active learning and traditional lecture groups. figure 2. praxis ii plt-percent of correct responses on praxis ii plt subtest items for groups 1 and 2. *mc-multiple choice; sa-short answer; al-active learning; tl-traditional lecture. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 12 on yes/no and clarifying written responses to survey questions 2, 3, 4, and 11. these four questions asked participants to respond to the effect of the develop-achild project on their ability to connect developmental theories and diversity principles covered in class to field experiences and whether they felt they would use these activities in their future classrooms. yes/no responses to these items revealed on table 5 were, as a whole, not as positive. perhaps this is because the teacher candidates were enrolled in an introductory class and spent only 25 hours in the field working with small groups. because of their limited experience, teacher candidates were understandably unclear as to whether the develop-a-child activity would assist their decision-making as a teacher, what impact the experience had on their work with children in the field experience setting, and whether it would impact their teaching in the future. the written comments provided a clearer explanation of their ideas. sixty-nine percent (37) of teacher candidates responding indicated that the visual representation of their child made it easier to make connections between developmental theories and the children in their classrooms. analysis of the written responses revealed one teacher candidate who pointed out that some groups made stronger connections than others, which benefitted all candidates when they made their group presentations. another teacher candidate enhanced her own learning by thinking about specific students in the field experience classroom while working on the “develop-a-child” activity. overall, teacher candidates indicated that the active learning experience helped them relate to prek-12th grade students better as they further developed their understanding of how children think and why they behave as they do. they acknowledged that their interaction with prek-12th grade students changed as they learned how a student’s background experiences impacted their behavior. they also began to set more ____________________________________________________________________________________________ table 4 praxis ii plt results: average overall score and percent of correct responses on subtests praxis iiplt average overall score student as learner mc* instruction assessment mc teacher as prof mc student as learner sa* instruction assessment sa comm tech teacher as prof sa group 1 al n=44 173.77+ 76.57% 72.83% 69.36% 69.29% 74.46%+ 69.57% 61.41%+ tl n=33 169.46 72.94% 76.17% 66.28% 65.91% 64.20% 67.42% 47.73% group 2 al n=39 175.66+ 73.95% 77.56% 73.36% 67.95%+ 72.76% 72.44% 57.69% tl n=36 169.11 71.43% 72.92% 67.14% 56.94% 65.97% 70.83% 52.08% *mc-multiple choice; sa-short answer + indicates tests with significant differences in scores between the two groups. transfer of active learning strategies from the teacher education classroom to prek-12th grade classrooms 13 appropriate expectations for the prek-12th grade students and demonstrated more understanding toward the students as a result of participation in the project. teaching was impacted as some teacher candidates’ eyes were opened to the different phases of development and how development affects the ways in which prek-12th grade students learn, therefore, determining ways in which they might be taught. one important realization was noted by teacher candidates when they acknowledged that the learning experience helped them to become more sensitive to the diversity in the classroom and the importance of meeting diverse educational needs. participants stated that this project was different from other group activities in which they had participated and that it reinforced the idea that active learning is a great way for prek-12th grade students to learn the content. most participants indicated they would implement group projects in their classrooms as an effective way to teach prek-12th grade students. they also thought this experience would help them choose the right kind of activities that best fit their prek-12th grade students’ needs. on the other hand, participants noted that since the project was hypothetical, they did not always relate information back to experiences they encountered in the classroom. one teacher candidate stated that more learning occurred from observing the field experience classroom teacher than participation in the active learning project. phase iii: follow-up: survey to practicing teachers. forty-five of the al groups and 57 of the tl groups received emails with a link to the follow-up survey. the survey, which targeted practicing teachers, contained five items that sought to determine their current teaching grade level, how often they use active learning in their teaching, and the impact that the type of instruction in the foundations classes had on their understanding and willingness to utilize active learning strategies in classroom instruction. nineteen teachers (42%) who participated in the active learning class responded to the survey. thirteen teachers (23%) who participated in the lecture-only class responded. table 6 provides results for the survey. responses to items on the survey revealed interesting information. the first item asked how often practicing teachers used active learning strategies. both al and tl groups indicated they used active learning often in their classrooms. the majority used these strategies at least once a week and many used them more often. the group that implemented the strategies less often included secondary and special education teachers. when asked in item two which of the active learning strategies they used in their classrooms, teachers’ responses indicated that all three were used with cooperative groups used the most often. problem-based table 5 perceptions of implementation of active learning strategies in classrooms as practicing teachers develop-a-child questionnaire items group 1 n=24 group 2 n=30 yes no yes no 2. did the activity help you make connections between developmental theories and your k-12 field experiences? 70.8% 17 29.2% 7 86.6% 26 13.4% 4 3. did the activity inform your decision-making as a teacher? 37.5% 9 62.5% 15 66.6% 20 33.3% 10 4. did the activity have an impact on how you interacted with students in your field experiences? 79.1% 19 20.9% 5 53.3% 16 46.7% 14 11. do you think participating in this project will impact your decisions about implementing group projects in your future classrooms? 62.5% 15 37.5% 9 86.6% 26 13.4% 4 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 14 table 6 follow-up: survey to practicing teachers 1. how often do you incorporate active learning strategies into your curriculum during a grading period (6-weeks, 9-weeks)? group more than 9 times 5-9 times 1-4 times never al (n=19) 47.4% (9) 36.8% (7) 15.8% (3) tl (n=13) 69.2% (9) 30.8% (4) 2. which of the following active learning strategies do you use in your classroom? (may choose more than one.) group problem-based learning cooperative groups group presentations al (n=19) 57.9% (11) 94.7% (18) 57.9% (11) tl (n=13) 84.6% (11) 100% (13) 62.9% (9) 3. instruction in the edci 352 course prepared me to make connections between developmental theories and my current students' learning styles, preferences, and age levels. group strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree al (n=19) 5.3% (1) 73.7% (14) 21.4% (4) tl (n=13) 23.1% (3) 61.5% (8) 15.4% (2) 4. instructional strategies used in the edci 352 course positively influenced my decisions about implementing active learning strategies and group projects with my current students. group strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree al (n=19) 26.3% (5) 52.6% (10) 21.0% (4) tl (n=13) 30.8% (4) 30.8% (4) 30.8% (4) 7.7% (1) 5. in which of the following academic areas do you teach? (may choose more than one.) group elementary middle school secondary special ed mixed levels al (n=19) 42.1% (8) 36.8% (7) 10.5% (2) 10.5% (2) sec/sped 5.2% (1) sec/mid 5.2% (1) tl (n=13) 46.1% (6) 30.8% (4) 15.4% (2) 7.7% (1) elem/middle 7.7% (1) transfer of active learning strategies from the teacher education classroom to prek-12th grade classrooms 15 learning and group presentations were not far behind the cooperative group percentages. responses for the third item indicated that 84.6% (11) of the tl group and 79% (15) of the al group agreed or strongly agreed that instruction in the introductory foundations course prepared them to make connections between developmental theories and their current students' learning styles, preferences, and age levels. however, in the fourth item which asked whether the instructional strategies used in the edci 352 course positively influenced their decisions about implementing active learning strategies and group projects with their current students: 79% (15) of the al group and 61.1% (8) of the tl group agreed or strongly agreed. finally, the number of respondents teaching at specific grade levels for each group was comparable with elementary and middle school teachers responding most often. written comments from the two groups revealed an interesting difference. it appeared that the al group responses revealed a deeper conceptual understanding of the theories of human development and diversity than the tl group. two respondents from the tl group included comments with their survey related to their current elementary classrooms. one elementary teacher wrote, “in the three years that i have been teaching, i have found that my students enjoy group projects, co-op style learning, and are engaged in the learning process. they are less critical if one of their peers makes a mistake and instead of criticizing, they actually help their peers focus on clue words in a problem.” the second elementary teacher indicated, “i incorporate lots of the activities that we used in class, but it is hard to spend the time on those neat projects.” responses from the al group provided additional insight. an elementary teacher wrote, “i teach pre-k until noon and my afternoons are spent conducting tier iii interventions for grades 4, 5, and 6. the develop-achild activity provided me with information about the various developmental stages of students. i face two very different age groups daily: the abundantly energetic and the hormonally charged! knowing the reasons behind why they act the way they do is extremely beneficial to my career.” another elementary teacher indicated, “working in cooperative groups gives teacher candidates the opportunity to apply theories and gain understanding of them with others. it also provides an opportunity for future teachers to understand what it takes to work in groups to complete a task in an effective way.” a secondary teacher revealed, “my knowledge gained through the university of mississippi greatly helped me to understand the various learning styles in the typical classroom as well gain an understanding of developmental theories to scaffold our students along the way. this has made a significant impact on my classroom.” and a special education teacher wrote, “develop-a-child helps me now to understand where my students are in comparison to where the "average" student is in their development. i teach a class of developmentally delayed students and it's easier to describe to parents behavior of their child in relation to children who are the same age.” responses supplied by the tl group centered on implementation of active learning strategies and that students enjoyed the opportunity to work together. in addition, the opportunity to work in cooperative groups enhanced the classroom environment. responses of the al group included discussion of the developmental levels of students, learning styles, scaffolding learning experiences, and application of the theories in the classroom. the knowledge learned in the foundations class helped them to understand the developmental levels of students and assisted them in talking with parents. the language used by the four respondents of the al group was much richer and included terminology learned in the foundations class. these teachers seemed to internalize the concepts learned and were able to transfer the knowledge to their own classrooms on a deeper level than the two respondents of the tl group. discussion and implications for future research the develop-a-child activity implemented the active learning approach through the combination of cooperative learning and problem-based learning strategies. this approach was implemented in the introductory foundations class to enhance teacher candidates’ understanding of concepts and theories of human development and diversity and how knowledge of those concepts can impact prek-12th grade student learning. the study focused on three specific research areas: 1) teacher candidates’ perceptions of an active learning approach as an instructional strategy, 2) teacher candidates' comprehension of the theories of human development and diversity, and 3) graduates' perceptions of the active learning strategies in their prek-12th grade classrooms as practicing teachers. on the develop-achild questionnaire administered following the foundations course, the teacher candidates’ revealed positive perceptions concerning the use of active learning in all three research areas of the study. group 2 perceived the activity as more effective than the group 1 participants. this could be due to changes in implementation of the project after instructors studied group 1 candidate comments on the questionnaire and reflected on instruction the previous semester. some respondents were not positive about the active learning current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 16 approach implemented with the develop-a-child project, noting that not all students participated in the same way and that they preferred a more direct instructional approach. results of the praxis ii plt indicated a statistically significant difference in the content knowledge of candidates who took the course with instructors that modeled the active learning strategies and candidates who took the class in a traditional lecture format. this supports previous research about the use of active learning strategies and the impact on acquisition of course content. the perceptions of the teacher candidates as they completed the course supported this as well. in relation to the third research area, teacher candidates were not as positive on the initial questionnaire when asked if this activity would impact their own instruction in the classroom. if the study is conducted again, consideration should be given to revising this portion of the survey as it would be difficult for students in an introductory course to determine what strategies they would actually use in the future. responses on the follow-up survey of practicing teachers revealed that both groups of participants incorporated active learning strategies into class instruction regularly. comments from both groups of respondents indicated that courses and experiences in their senior year of the teacher education program helped to strengthen the knowledge learned in the initial foundations course. in addition, professional development and expectations of the school setting where these teachers were employed may be a factor in the use of active learning strategies. and although, both al and tl groups implemented active learning activities in their current classrooms approximately the same amount of time, responses indicated that the al groups had deeper conceptual understanding of the theories of human development and diversity taught in the class. results of this research revealed that use of active learning strategies in the teacher preparation program did have a positive impact on the conceptual understanding of the participants. more importantly, the results revealed that teacher candidates who participated in active learning instructional strategies during the introductory foundations class applied the theories with greater understanding in their own classrooms when they became teachers. important information could be gained through researcher classroom observations to examine the effectiveness to which teachers implement active learning strategies in instruction. it would also be interesting to study the impact of the use of these strategies on prek12th grade student learning. conclusion the goal of every teacher is to have a positive impact on student learning. this is as true in the college classroom as it is in the prek-12th grade classroom. proven strategies that engage learners and require them to cooperate, communicate, and collaborate with peers in problem-solving situations can benefit learners at all levels. teacher candidates’ perceptions of the impact of active learning projects on their own learning is important because they are more apt to use strategies with their prek-12th grade students if they feel the strategies are effective. this study provided encouraging results which supports the use of active learning experiences in the university classroom. the results also support the idea that teacher educators can positively influence prospective teachers through modeling appropriate instructional practices. but perhaps the most significant finding is the impact these experiences in an introductory education course can have on the interactions between future teachers and their students. references bransford, j., darling-hammond, l., & lepage, p. (2005). introduction. in l. darling-hammond and j. bransford (eds.). preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. (1-39). san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. bransford, j., derry, s., berliner, d., & hammerness, k. (2005). theories of learning and their roles in teaching. in l. darling-hammond and j. bransford (eds.). preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. (40-87). san francisco: jossey-bass. cherney, i. d. (2008). the effects of active learning on students’ memories for course content. active learning in higher education, 9, 152-171. creswell, j. w. (2012). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ed.). upper saddle creek, nj: pearson education, inc. dewey, j. (1916). democracy and education: an introduction to the philosophy of education. new york: the macmillan company. educational testing service. (nd). principles of teaching and learning: k-6: topics covered. retrieved december 15 from http://www.ets.org/media/tests/praxis/taag/05 22/topics_1.htm eggen, p., & kauchak, d. (2007). educational psychology: windows on classrooms (7th ed.). upper saddle river, nj: pearson prentice hall. gribbons, b., & herman, j. (1997). true and quasiexperimental designs. practical assessment, research, and evaluation, 5(14). washington, dc: eric clearinghouse on assessment and evaluation. [ed421483]. hanson, j. m., & sinclair, k. e. (2008). social constructivist teaching methods in australian universitiesreported uptake and perceived transfer of active learning strategies from the teacher education classroom to prek-12th grade classrooms 17 learning effects: a survey of lecturers. higher education research and development, 27, 169186. horowitz, f. d., darling-hammond, l., & bransford, j. (2005). educating teachers for developmentally appropriate practice. in l. darling-hammond and j. bransford (eds.). preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. (188-125). san francisco: jossey-bass. kang, n., dechenne, s. e., & smith, g. (2012). inquiry learning of high school students through a problem-based environmental health science curriculum, school science & mathematics. 112(3), 147-158. mccarthy, j. p., & anderson, l. (2000). active learning techniques versus traditional teaching styles: two experiments from history and political science. innovative higher education, 24, 279294. merrill, m. d., & gilbert, c. g. (2008). effective peer interaction in a problem-centered instructional strategy. distance education, 29, 199-207. meyers, c., & jones, t. (1993). promoting active learning: strategies for the college classroom. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass publishers. michael, j. (2007). faculty perceptions about barriers to active learning. college teaching, 55, 42-47. popham, w. j. (2007). classroom assessment: what teachers need to know. fifth edition, upper saddle river, nj: pearson prentice hall. prince, m. (2004). does active learning work? a review of the research. journal of engineering education, 93, 223-231. salinas, m. f., & garr, j. (2009). effect of learnercentered education on the academic outcomes of minority groups. journal of instructional psychology, 36(3), 226-237. schmidt, m. (2010). learning from teaching experience: dewey's theory and preservice teachers' learning. journal of research in music education; 58, p 131-146. tarim, k. (2009). the effects of cooperative learning on preschoolers’ mathematics problem-solving ability. educational studies in mathematics, 72(3), 325-340. tsay, m., & brady, m. (2010). a case study of cooperative learning and communication pedagogy: does working in teams make a difference? journal of the scholarship of teaching and learning, 10, 78 – 89. walker, a. j. (1996). cooperative learning in the college classroom. family relations, 45, 327-335. retrieved from http:www.jstor.org. whicker, k. m., bol, l., & nunnery, j. a. (1997). cooperative learning in the secondary mathematics classroom. journal of educational research, 91(1), 42. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 18 appendix a develop-a-child questionnaire this survey will require you to reflect on the develop-a-child activity. respond to the following items by circling either yes or no and explain your answer in the space provided. explain your response: 1. did the develop-a-child activity help you learn the course content (examples: emotional, social, physical, cognitive developmental theories)? yes no 2. did the activity help you make connections between developmental theories and your k-12 field experiences? yes no 3. did the activity inform your decision making as a teacher? yes no 4. did the activity have an impact on how you interacted with students in your field experiences? yes no 5. did participating in the activity motivate you to learn the course content? yes no 6. did you feel the instructor for the course modeled effective instructional strategies while presenting the course content during the semester (powerpoint, discussion, cooperative learning groups, group presentations, etc.). yes no 7. do you think all professors in higher education should provide opportunities for cooperative group activities? yes no 8. did working cooperatively help you learn the content? yes no 9. do you feel the develop-a-child project was suited to your personal learning style? yes no transfer of active learning strategies from the teacher education classroom to prek-12th grade classrooms 19 10. did you enjoy participating in the develop-a-child project? yes no 11. do you think participating in this project will impact your decisions about implementing group projects in your future classrooms? yes no 12. do you feel there were drawbacks or negatives to participating in this project? yes no current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 20 appendix b follow-up survey mark your response to the items and include additional comments related to your experience in edci 352-education, society, and the k-12 learner. 1. how often do you incorporate active learning strategies into your curriculum during a grading period (6-weeks, 9weeks, etc). a. more than nine times b. 5-9 times c. 1-4 times d. never 2. which of the following active learning strategies do you use in your classroom? (may choose more than one.) a. problem-based learning b. cooperative groups c. group presentations 3. instruction in the edci 352 class prepared me to make connections between developmental theories and my current students' learning styles. a. strongly agree b. agree c. maybe d. disagree e. strongly disagree 4. participations in activities in the edci 352 class positively influenced my decisions about implementing group projects with my current students. a. strongly agree b. agree c. maybe d. disagree e. strongly disagree 5. in which of the following academic areas do you teach? (may choose more than one.) a. elementary b. middle school c. secondary d. special education additional comments: transfer of active learning strategies from the teacher education classroom to prek-12th grade classrooms 21 article citation pepper, k., blackwell, s., monroe, a., & coskey, s. (2012). transfer of active learning strategies from the teacher education classroom to prek-12th grade classrooms. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/940 author notes kaye pepper, ph.d. the university of mississippi school of education department of curriculum and instruction p. o. box 1848 university, mississippi 38677 (662) 915-3996 kpepper@olemiss.edu kaye pepper, phd is an associate professor and the school of education director of assessment. her research interest is focused on the use of program assessment results to facilitate program improvement. sarah blackwell, ed.d. the university of mississippi school of education department of curriculum and instruction p. o. box 1848 university, mississippi 38677 (662) 915-5037 sblackwe@olemiss.edu sarah e. blackwell, edd is an assistant professor and the assistant chair of the department of curriculum & instruction at the university of mississippi. her research interest is focused on effective teacher preparation. ann monroe, ed.d. the university of mississippi school of education department of curriculum and instruction p. o. box 1848 university, mississippi 38677 (662) 915-5250 amonroe@olemiss.edu ann monroe, edd is an assistant professor and the coordinator of elementary undergraduate programs in the department of curriculum & instruction at the university of mississippi. her research interest is focused on emotions in the classroom setting and their effect on cognition. shawn coskey, ed.d. east stroudsburg university college of education department of reading 200 prospect street east stroudsburg, pa 18301 (570) 442-3415 scoskey@po-box.esu.edu shawn coskey, edd is an assistant professor of reading at east stroudsburg university in pennsylvania . her primary research interests center around reading comprehension, motivation, and reading/writing strategies that promote literacy acquisition. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 22 manuscript received: 02/07/2012 revisions received: 04/30/2012 accepted: 06/23/2012 transfer of active learning strategies from the teacher education classroom to prek-12th grade classrooms 23 volume 15, number 3 august 21, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 956-3896-3-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x exploring “the ripple in the pond”a correlational study of the relationships between demographic variables and the teacher change agent scale karrin lukacs shenandoah university as a result of the proliferation of standardized testing and academic standards, there are new expectations for teachers and the role(s) they play in improving student learning and achievement (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; garet et al., 2001). however, little is known about teachers who initiate positive changes outside of their own classrooms and even less about what they “look like.” as such, this study was designed to determine whether there was a relationship between the demographic variables of age, gender, years of teaching experience, grade level taught, and primary teaching responsibility and scores on the teacher change agent scale (tcas), its subscales, and individual items. bivariate correlations and means comparison (anova) were used to analyze the responses of 652 teachers. results indicate that: a teacher’s age is negatively correlated with teacher change agency and membership in a professional community, grade level influences a teacher’s overall mean score, and teachers of all ages need support in working effectively with their colleagues. given that teachers are being charged with making schools “work” for all students, these findings represent a meaningful contribution to the teacher change agency research. keywords: teacher change agent, tcas, school improvement many believe that either school administrators or the government should make change “happen” in schools, but it is teachers themselves who are best situated to initiate school improvement efforts (i.e., elmore, 2004). still, the assumption that “the only job of teachers is to teach students and to consider the classroom, at best, as the legitimate extent of their influence” (urbanski & nickolaou, 1997, p.244) persists, and the overwhelming majority of current research remains fixed in the view that teachers can only serve one of two roles when it comes to school improvement – they can be either recipients of change initiatives (see richardson & placier, 2001) or implementers of reform efforts prescribed by administrators (e.g., buchanan, 2003). while the majority of the current literature focuses on the “teacher leader,” further analysis of this popular phrase reveals that, despite its proactive tone, its use typically underscores the role of the teacher as either a recipient or as an implementer of external mandates. in short, little is known about the teachers who possess the ability to initiate school reform efforts and even less about any demographic variables (i.e., age or gender) which they may have in common. this information would be particularly useful for teacher education programs; for example, knowing who among their students would (or would not) be a likely teacher change agent would allow faculty to provide each teacher candidate with access to the resources s/he needs in order to be successful. therefore, using the definition of “teacher change agent” as a classroom teacher who chooses to initiate actions in support of an improvement in teaching and/or student learning beyond his/her own classroom, the purpose of current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 this study was to determine whether any relationships exist between the demographic variables of gender, age, years of teaching experience, grade level taught, and primary job responsibility and teacher change agency. review of literature identifying a teacher change agent is a difficult task, which seems due largely to the fact that the meaning of teacher change agent is highly dependent on who is using it. for example, teacher change agents have been described alternatively as “transformer[s] of the present social order” (cobb, 2001, p.91), school stewards (lovingfoss, molloy, harris, & graham, 2001), and as positive deviants (fullan, 2002). these alternate descriptors do little to clarify the exact nature of the teacher change agent’s role in school reform, yet even when more clearly defined, discussions of the role(s) of teacher change agents in school reform result in lists of requisite teacher behaviors (cobb, 2001) or imply a gobetween status (buchanan, 2003; havelock 1995), in which the teacher is seen as the implementer, facilitator, sponsor, or coach charged with being the “champion” for a reform effort mandated from the top down. in addition, the majority of teacher change agent literature has examined how teachers work to effect change in their own curricular areas, individual classrooms, or specific teaching skills rather than on how they pursue wide scale change efforts (i.e., wasley, 1991), and no attention has been paid to trying to identify an archetypal teacher leader (or teacher change agent) in terms of age, gender, etc. more recently, discussion of teacher leaders sometimes includes reference to leading change efforts. for example, rossman, rallis, phlegar, and abeille (1995) include the task of being a “changemaker” in their discussion of the possible roles that teacher leaders fulfill in their schools. since both teacher leader and teacher change agent are often ill defined in the literature, it can be difficult to determine how they differ from one another, especially in terms of the role of each in school reform efforts. in essence, while there is little empirical support for such a claim, the assumption in the literature seems to be as chapman (2006) remarks: “teacher leaders are often change agents by default” (p.32). as a result of both the ambiguity surrounding the term “teacher change agent” and its overlap with the teacher as leader literature, very little is known about the teachers who possess the capability to make change “happen” in their schools. however, efforts have been made to detail the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed by teacher change agents in order to initiate school reform efforts; for example, lukacs and galluzzo (in press) discuss the need for teacher change agents to have working understanding of a school’s culture, advocacy skills, and the willingness to take risks, but these are abstract traits rather than concrete identifiers. just as teachers are encouraged to be aware of the cognizant of the shifting demographics of their schools (i.e., hodgkinson, 2001), there is a need for teacher educators to know more about the demographics of their own students and about the relationships that exist between these demographics and students’ willingness to initiate school reform efforts as well. in addition, such a profile would not only be helpful in clarifying the difference(s) between teacher leaders and teacher change agents, but it would also allow teacher education faculty to make available the resources needed by students to be successful in their efforts. thus, this study was designed to determine whether a strictly demographic profile for a “typical” teacher change agent could be developed. method despite calls for teachers be on “the front lines” of school reform (darling-hammond, 2003), little is known either about teachers’ capacity to initiate change efforts or whether there is a “typical” teacher change agent. this study was designed to determine whether or not there are any statistically significant relationships between teacher change agency and age, gender, grade level taught, and years of experience. participants participants (n = 652) in this study were practicing teachers in two school districts in the midatlantic region. the typical respondent was a 37-year-old female classroom-based middle school teacher with 13.3 years of experience. table 1 summarizes demographic information of the respondents. a more detailed discussion of how participants were contacted can be found in the following section. instrument designed to measure teachers’ willingness to be change agents, the teacher change agent scale (tcas; appendix) is a 15-item scale with likert-style response choices include four options ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. possible scores on the tcas range from 15 to 60. in a study detailing its initial development and validation (lukacs, 2009), the tcas was found to have an overall cronbach’s alpha coefficient of α = .82, and the scale’s construct validity was demonstrated by estimating the relationships between and among the items. the tcas consists of three independent subscales: content/pedagogical knowledge, professional community membership, and collaborative expertise. respectively, they measure teachers’ self-reported understanding of teaching techniques in general as well as the ones specific to the subject(s) they teach (items 4, 5, 7, and 11; α = .71) with a score range of 4 to 16; teachers’ self-reported membership in a community of like-minded others (items 1, 9, 10, 12, and 13; α = .73) with a score range of 5 to 20; and teachers’ self-reported collaborative skills such as influencing or motivating their colleagues (items 2, 3, 6, 8, 14, and 15; α = .72) with a score range of 6 to 24. exploring “the ripple in the pond”a correlational study of the relationships between demographic variables and the teacher change agent scale 3 table 1 demographic information of tcas respondents (n=652) n % gender female 534 81.9 male 118 18.1 age 20-29 138 21.2 30-39 164 25.2 40-49 138 21.2 50-59 176 27.0 60+ 36 5.5 years of experience 1-5 160 24.5 6-10 157 24.1 11-15 133 20.4 16-20 60 9.2 21-25 46 7.1 26-30 40 6.1 31-35 39 6.0 36-40 14 2.1 40+ 3 .5 grade level pre-k 213 32.7 k-5th 188 28.8 6th-8th 107 16.4 9th-12th 144 22.1 primary job responsibility classroom-based 283 43.4 resource (i.e., esol, reading) 147 22.5 “specials” (i.e., art, pe) 222 34.0 data collection two school districts in the mid-atlantic region were contacted about the distribution of the tcas. in one, permission was granted to send the invitation to participate directly to teachers themselves; in the other, principals were contacted and given the choice of whether or not to send the invitation to their building’s staff members. the online version of the tcas was available for a one month period, and one reminder email was sent two weeks after the original invitation. a total of 729 teachers responded to the tcas. data analysis since this study focused on teachers’ total tcas or subscale score as the dependent variable, cases with missing values were excluded (n = 77). the data were then analyzed using descriptive, correlational, and inferential statistics. the descriptive evaluation included the calculation of means and standard deviations in order to determine the variability of overall tcas score, scores on subscales, and demographic variables. using the recommendations outlined by hinkle, wiersma, and jurs (2003), a scatterplot was used to determine the general nature of the relationship between participants’ overall tcas scores and the demographic variables of gender, age, years of teaching experience, grade level taught, and primary job responsibility. anova tests were used to compare the means of the various groups that were established by selected demographic variables. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 results overall tcas scores as can be seen in table 2, there were no statistically significant correlations found between teachers’ total scores on the tcas and gender, primary teaching responsibility, grade level, or years of experience. a weak but statistically significant negative correlation was found between age and total score on the tcas (r = -.09, p = .03). anova tests were conducted to determine if there were significant differences in mean overall tcas score by demographic variable. results showed a significant difference [f(3,648) = 9.05, p = .00)] in overall tcas score by grade level after applying tukey’s honest significant difference (hsd) test. mean overall tcas score was found to differ significantly between both preschool (m = 48.20, sd = 5.18) and secondary (m = 48.13, sd = 4.98) teachers’ scores and the scores of elementary (m = 46.11, sd = 5.25) and middle school (m = 45.93, sd = 5.52) teacher with preschool and secondary teachers having a score nearly 20% higher than the scores of either elementary or middle school teachers. dtcas subscale scores as can be seen in table 3, there were no statistically significant correlations between scores on the subscales and gender, primary teaching responsibility, grade level, or years of experience. a weak but statistically significant negative correlation was found between age and professional community membership (r = -.12, p = .01). table 2 means, standard deviations, and correlations for total score on tcas and demographic variables m sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 __________________________________________________ 1. age 37.00 1.22 --.69** .04 .14** .05 -.09* 2. years of experience 13.33 9.84 --.05 .08* .06 -.03 3 grade level 2.28 1.14 --.07 .15** -.02 4. primary teaching 1.91 .88 --.28** -.06 responsibility 5. gender 1.18 .39 ---.02 6. total score 47.20 5.31 -- note: *correlation significant at p<.05 level (two-tailed). **correlation significant at p<.01 level (two-tailed). equal variances not assumed. exploring “the ripple in the pond”a correlational study of the relationships between demographic variables and the teacher change agent scale 5 table 3 means, standard deviations, and correlations for subscale scores and demographic variables m sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. age 37.00 1.22 -- .69** .04 .14** .05 -.03 -.12** -.04 2. years of experience 13.33 9.84 -- .05 .08* .06 .00 -.04 -.01 3 grade level 2.28 1.14 -- .07 .15** -.06 .01 -.03 4. primary teaching 1.91 .88 -- .28** -.07 -.06 .00 responsibility 5. gender 1.18 .39 -- -.04 .02 -.02 6. content/pedagogical 13.04 1.94 -- .43** .73** knowledge 7. professional 15.86 2.19 -- .43* community membership 8. collaborative 18.08 2.63 -- expertise note: *correlation significant at p<.05 level (two-tailed). **correlation significant at p<.01 level (twotailed). equal variances not assumed. anova tests were conducted to see if there were significant differences between mean subscale scores and the demographic variables. results showed a significant difference [f(4,648) = 2.75, p =.00] in the mean score for professional community membership with respect to age. after applying tukey’s hsd test, post hoc adjustment, mean professional community membership score was found to differ significantly between 20-29 year olds (m = 16.3, sd = 2.19), 30-39 year olds (m = 15.96, sd = 2.05), 40-49 (m = 15.767=, sd = 2.13), 50-59 year olds (m = 15.52, sd = 2.27), and 60 and older (m = 15.69, sd = 2.44) teachers with the mean score of 20-29 year olds on the professional community membership subscale up to 20% higher than those of their counterparts. discussion this study was designed to determine whether there was a relationship between the demographic variables of gender, age, years of experience, primary job responsibility, and grade level taught and both teachers’ overall and subscale scores on the tcas. it was found that there were statistically significant relationships between age and overall tcas score, grade level and mean tcas score, and age and professional community membership. in addition, further data analysis suggests that there is at least one area in which all teachers need support in order to be successful in their efforts to change their schools. age and teacher change agency while the initial data analysis suggested that the younger the teacher, the more likely s/he is to be a teacher change agent, further examination of the scores for each age level item by item revealed additional insights. in particular, there appeared to be age-related “phases” of teacher change agency in which both the youngest and oldest teachers are more likely to initiate change efforts. although many studies have documented the phases through which a teacher’s career progresses, the majority of these have focused on teachers’ years of experience rather than their age (i.e., margolis, 2008). thus, this study’s finding that age matters while years of experience do not is a particularly puzzling one, especially when one considers that age and years of teaching experience were highly correlated with one another, but that the latter was not correlated in any way with overall tcas score. in a sense, it seems counterintuitive; it is simply easier to imagine a “bright-eyed, bushy-tailed” and idealistic young teacher than it is to envision an older one with the same level of eagerness to change his/her school. what, then, can explain this finding that age is more important than years of experience when it comes to teachers’ willingness to change their schools? current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 a likely explanation is that of what some have called the “life cycle” of teachers. for example, while teachers who are 20 to 29 might feel as though they have “everything to gain” and thus are willing to be teacher change agents as a byproduct of youthful enthusiasm, the older teachers’ life experiences might cause them to feel as though there is “nothing to lose” by attempting to make a change. indeed, this “fear of routine” (huberman, 1989, p. 352) might explain why older teachers are willing to become more incorporate “activism” into their careers. since teachers’ level of ambition and sense of investment can be much lower than those of younger or older teachers during this period (huberman, 1989), the “life cycle” of teaching also explains why teachers between the ages of 40 to 59 have the lowest overall tcas scores. in other words, teachers in this group may no longer feel as though they need to “prove” anything to their colleagues and as such are more accepting of the status quo than are their younger or older counterparts. in addition, since many 40to 59-year olds may also be raising their own families, it could be that demands on their time and energy are already too numerous, and thus initiating school change is a low priority in their lives. another possible explanation might be that of career switchers. while estimates of the average age of a career switcher can vary widely, alternative teacher education programs in the geographic area in which this study was conducted report that students range from their 50s to mid-70s (freedman & goggin, 2008). therefore, it is plausible that career switchers might account for the unexpected finding that teachers over 60 may be more likely to be teacher change agents than are teachers who are 30 to 59. whatever the reason, we should remain cognizant of one key point when it comes to a teacher’s age and his/her ability to be a teacher change agent – namely that no teacher should be “written off” simply due to his/her age. while we may dismiss younger teachers as being overeager, consider older ones as ready to be “put out to pasture,” or deem the ones in between as too complacent, it can be argued they all have something to offer in terms of school reform. however, if we hope to encourage teachers between the ages of 40 and 59 to “rise up and take charge of their professional landscape” (clandinin & connelly, 1995, p.163), we need to provide substantial support to help them become more motivated to do so. grade level and teacher change agency the finding that there is a statistically significant relationship between teachers’ overall score on the tcas and the grade level at which they teach and specifically that a teacher working at either the prekindergarten or secondary (9th-12th grades) level was more likely to have a higher score on the tcas than would one working at either the elementary (k-5th) or middle school (6th-8th) level is again a puzzling one. however, while at first it is hard to conceive that teachers of young children have much in common with those who teach young adults, one commonality may explain why they are both more likely to have positive views of teacher change agency in general. regardless of the grade level at which they teach, teachers often report that they chose their field because they wanted to “make a difference” (castro & bauml, 2009, p.115), and both preschool and high school teachers do this by stressing self-awareness, interpersonal skills, and creative problem-solving (i.e., stipek & byler, 1997; beland, 2007), albeit for different reasons. while preschool teachers emphasize these skills to help young children transition into the new world of school, high school teachers do so to help students transition out of it. since both preschool and high school teachers also consider being a role model an important aspect of their work (i.e., lara-cinisomo, fuligni, daugherty, howes, & karoly, 2009; mclaughlin & talbert, 2001), one explanation for their more positive outlook on teacher change agency could be that they have internalized the values they seek to instill in their students and as such, these values have “carried over” into their own professional lives. in other words, because these teachers are facilitators of change and uncertainty in their own classrooms, they tend to practice what they teach in the larger school context. age and professional community membership given that younger teachers depend upon their colleagues more than older teachers do (mccormick & barnett, 2008), the weak but statistically significant finding that age is related to professional community membership is perhaps unsurprising. yet while many advocate the importance of the professional community in teaching (i.e., seglem, 2009), this study’s weak but statistically significant finding suggests that teachers over 60 are less interested in being a part of a professional community than are those who are younger. in fact, on item 1, “i enjoy working collaboratively with other teachers,” teachers over 60 had the lowest mean score (m = 3.58, sd = .55). in other words, although these teachers report that they can help others with their teaching skills, it would seem that they don’t want to. one possible explanation for this finding might be that while teachers over 60 may feel capable of sharing their expertise, they may also feel that the particular school context in which they find themselves is not conducive in allowing them to do so. for example, since principals “hold the reins” (cranston, 2009, p.1) in terms of whether or not a professional learning community will be successful in a particular school, it is possible that the negative opinions with regard to professional community membership of teachers over 60 is due to the fact that they do not trust the principal’s leadership (cranston, 2009). exploring “the ripple in the pond”a correlational study of the relationships between demographic variables and the teacher change agent scale 7 it could also be that “the generation gap” (johnson & kardos, 2005) between older and younger teachers explains why older teachers are less likely to be active members of a professional community. as rinke (2009) notes: “teachers working next door to each other in today’s schools tend to come from different generations” (p.12), and generational differences result in conflicting views on the importance of working with others. for example, while younger teachers are “products” of teacher education programs which tend to emphasize working with colleagues (i.e., oakes, franke, quartz, & rogers, 2002), older teachers often choose to remain isolated from their peers (little, 1990). thus, it may be that these differences in worldview and life experience cause tension between younger and older colleagues, the latter of whom may withdraw from the professional community as a result. yet whether the negative correlation between age and score on the professional community membership subscale is related to lack of trust, “the generation gap,” or something else entirely, this finding suggests that we need to find new, more effective ways of ensuring that older teachers are able and willing to share their particular teacher change agent strengths (i.e., speaking out or risktaking) with younger teachers. however, this study’s findings also suggest that it is not only teachers over 60 who need assistance in working collaboratively. supporting all teachers although data analysis suggests that elementary and middle school teachers between the ages of 40 and 59 need substantial support in order to become teacher change agents, this study’s findings also suggest that all teachers need support in at least one area if they are to be successful in school reform efforts. as table 4 demonstrates, there were four teacher change agent scale (tcas) items for which all age groups had a mean score of less than three: “i know how to influence my colleagues” (item 6); “i [don’t] prefer to work alone” (item 9); “i am [not] reluctant to rely on others” (item 10); and “i know how to motivate my colleagues” (item 14). these four items clearly relate to working with others, but where items 6 and 14 suggest that teachers have doubts about themselves, items 9 and 10 suggest they have doubts about the people with whom they work. in short, while it is true that younger teachers may have fewer doubts than do their older counterparts when it comes to actively working with colleagues, the low means of these items’ responses indicate that all teachers feel as though they are unable to collaborate effectively within a professional community, which is cause for concern. school-wide change cannot take place without the cooperation of others, and so teachers must be part of a joint effort in order for the change to extend beyond their own classrooms (louis & marks, 1998; maeroff, 1993). in other words, if a change is to extend beyond one’s own classroom, the participation of others in implementing that change is essential. however, since collaboration often requires negotiation, compromise, and at times, the ability to persuade others, working with others is often not easy. as such, changes rarely happen in school without some form of “backstage activity” which is inherent in nearly every social context. in order for teacher change agents to accomplish their goals, they must have a sophisticated understanding of formal/informal power (blase & blase, 1997). put another way, a well-developed knowledge of the intentions, desires, and viewpoints of others and the ability to use this knowledge efficiently allows teachers to be successful in their pursuit of change. teacher change agents must have this micro-political expertise; if they do not, they will be unable to work actively and effectively with others in their quest for reform, and it is unlikely that their intended change(s) will ever be realized (miles, saxl, & lieberman, 1988). in short, since it is doubtful that teachers who work alone to affect changes beyond their classrooms will be successful in their efforts, we need to provide all teachers with tools/strategies which will help them to work more effectively with their colleagues. for example, courses focusing on negotiating skills, how to identify like-minded peers with whom they could work towards school change, or the “art” of persuasion would be particularly beneficial to any teacher. limitations as with any study of this type, it is important to remember that correlation does not equal causation. put simply, it would be inappropriate to think that just because a teacher is 52, s/he is unlikely to be a teacher change agent or that it is a foregone conclusion that a preschool teacher will be. also, while this study did not find any significant correlations between the demographic variables of gender, years of experience, or primary job responsibility and either overall tcas or subscale scores, further research with larger sample sizes might indicate otherwise. however, despite these limitations, this study does represent an important first step in making the identification of teacher change agents possible, which may prove useful to any stakeholder in the education community who wishes to see change “happen” in schools. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 table 4 means and standard deviations by item m (sd) item 1 3.67 (.53) item 2 3.32 (.74) item 3 3.03 (.70) item 4 3.55 (.52) item 5 3.45 (.52) item 6 2.79 (.59) item 7 3.24 (.72) item 8 3.16 (.69) item 9 2.81 (.71) item 10 2.57 (.73) item 11 3.02 (.70) item 12 3.49 (.58) item 13 3.32 (.75) item 14 2.74 (.58) item 15 3.04 (.61) references beland, k. 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(1991). teachers who lead: the rhetoric of reform and the realities of practice. new york: teachers college press. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 10 appendix teacher change agent scale directions: please indicate your level of agreement by circling one of the following choices for each statement: sa = strongly agree a = agree d = disagree sd = strongly disagree 1. i value working collaboratively with other teachers. sa a d sd 2. if i feel it is necessary, i will speak out and express my views to my colleagues. sa a d sd 3. i am known as a person who is not afraid to take risks. sa a d sd 4. i can adapt to the needs of my students when necessary. sa a d sd 5. i am able to assess/evaluate student understanding using a variety of techniques. sa a d sd 6. i know how to influence my colleagues. sa a d sd 7. i invest time in understanding my students’ learning styles and interests. sa a d sd 8. i can help other teachers with their teaching skills. sa a d sd 9. i prefer to work alone. sa a d sd 10. i am reluctant to rely on others. sa a d sd 11. i can’t get through to the most difficult (i.e., at-risk) students. sa a d sd 12. i believe that when teachers work together, they are able to influence practice in their schools. sa a d sd 13. i believe that in order for change to be successful, teachers must work together. sa a d sd 14. i know how to motivate my colleagues. sa a d sd 15. i am resistant to suggesting changes. sa a d sd exploring “the ripple in the pond”a correlational study of the relationships between demographic variables and the teacher change agent scale 11 article citation lukacs, k. (2012). exploring “the ripple in the pond”a correlational study of the relationships between demographic variables and the teacher change agent scale. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/956 author notes karrin lukacs, phd shenandoah university 1460 university drive, winchester, va 22601 klukacs@su.edu karrin lukacs is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at shenandoah university. her research interests include teacher change agency, how teaching and learning are portrayed in film, and mothers who return to school to become teachers. manuscript received: 3/13/2013 revisions received: 5/10/2012 accepted: 6/2/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 12 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 945.doc 1 volume 15, number 3 october 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x investigating characteristics of award-winning grades 7-12 mathematics teachers from the shandong province in china su liang california state university at san bernardino sarah glaz and thomas defranco university of connecticut international comparison studies indicate that chinese students outperform many of their peers in mathematics tests and competitions. since teaching is a major determinant in students’ learning gains, it is reasonable to hypothesize that this learning gap is associated with their teachers. the development of teaching expertise has not received sufficient attention in research investigations in mathematics education. by examining a group of award-winning grades 7-12 mathematics teachers from the shandong province in china, this study identified the characteristics of these teachers and illuminated how their expertise had been developed over the years. the findings provide an insightful view of effective teaching practices in china from an international perspective. keywords: award-winning teachers; teaching competition; teaching research; teacher collaboration; systematic lesson preparation. international comparison studies indicate that chinese students outperform many of their peers from other countries in mathematics tests and competitions (siegler & mu, 2008; stevenson et al., 1990; stevenson, chen, & lee, 1993). researchers attributed the learning gap in mathematics to three factors: cultural variations (andreescu, gallian, kane, & mertz, 2008; cai, 2003; hess, chang, & mcdevitt, 1987), curriculum (askey, 1999; newton, 2007; schmidt, houang, & cogan, 2002), and mathematics teachers’ content knowledge (ma, 1999; stevenson & stigler, 1992). however, little has been done to examine the teaching practices and characteristics of mathematics teachers in china. over the last decades, research indicates that teachers have a greater effect on students’ learning than many other factors such as student ethnicity, family income, schools, and class size (nye, konstantopoulos, & hedges, 2004; rivkin, hanushek, & kain, 2005; sanders & rivers, 1996). rivkin and his colleagues (2005) gathered data on more than 10 million texas students in grades k-12 during the period of 1990-2002. when they compared the performance of similar students in the same schools who had different teachers, they found that students’ achievements were significantly affected by their teachers’ quality. a question arises: what defines a teacher’s quality? in other words, what are the characteristics of an effective teacher? according to the center for public education (2005), research provides evidence showing that effectiveness of teaching is positively related to the following factors: 1) a teacher’s profound content knowledge (daring-hammond, 1999; ma, 1999; rivkin, hanushek, & kain, 2005), 2) a teacher’s years of teaching experience (fetler, 2001; greenwald, hedges, & laine, current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 1996), 3) a teacher’s formal training and credentials (darling-hammond, 1999; felter, 1999; fuller & alexander’s, 2004), 4) a teacher’s higher academic ability (ferguson & ladd 1996; greenwald, hedges, & laine, 1996). it is commonly agreed that a teacher’s preparation influences how he or she teaches. in the u.s, mathematics teacher preparation relies on university or college classes and several months of student teaching in classrooms. having little support from the school and the society after completing their college degree, many new teachers struggle alone to survive in the educational system (han, 2008). in most american schools, teachers work alone for most of the time, spend most of their school time teaching, and have little time to collaborate with other teachers (stigler & hiebert, 1999) or engage in teaching-related research. teaching-related research and teacher collaboration are missing components in u.s. teacher training. a number of studies have documented that teacher collaboration helps improve students’ achievement significantly (darling-hammond, 1995, 1997; garet & porter, 2001; hiebert, gallimore, & stigler, 2002; stigler & hiebert, 1999). stigler and hiebert (1999) found that “compared with other countries, the united stated clearly lacks a system for developing professional knowledge and for giving teachers the opportunity to learn about teaching” (p. 12). furthermore, they argue that there exists a teaching gap between our expectations for good teaching and the lack of resources and opportunities for improvements of teachers’ teaching. this teaching gap threatens to have increasingly more serious implications in the future. to date, teacher collaboration is still a local phenomenon at american schools. however, the growing consensus among educators regarding the benefits of teacher collaboration raises hopes of establishing a school system where teacher collaboration will serve as a tool for improving teaching and learning. to this end, it is beneficial to study the mathematics teachers’ practices in countries, such as china, where teacher collaboration plays an important role. the purpose of this study is to examine the characteristics of a group of award-winning grades 7-12 mathematics teachers from the shandong province in china and to investigate the characteristics of these teachers. the findings provide a global perspective of effective teaching practices and the characteristics of the high-quality middle and high school mathematics teachers in china from a different cultural perspective. background of the study according to zhou and reed (2005), “the chinese central government is the most powerful authority in the governance structure of teacher education. teacher education institutions have less authority and they always implement central government policies passively” (p. 211). as a result, teacher education and practices are very similar across all schools in china. an established model of teacher education has been well developed in the past thirty years. the chinese model of teacher education has two major components: pre-service training and in-service training. the responsibilities of pre-service training and in-service training are clearly divided. pre-service training educates future teachers emphasizing mathematics content knowledge, while inservice training improves the teaching performance of onthe-job teachers focusing on their teaching practice. however, both components work together as a whole and form a coherent system of teacher education. pre-service training is conducted at normal universities, colleges or normal schools. four-year normal colleges or universities train high school teachers; three-year normal colleges train middle-school teachers; and normal schools train elementary and kindergarten teachers. in-service training is classified as continuing education that is designed to help teachers expand, improve, and update their knowledge and skills (mei, 2008). educational institutes at province level focus on high school teacher training; educational institutes at city level focus on middle school teacher training; teachers’ enrichment schools at county or district level focus on kindergarten and elementary teacher training (huang, 2003). because in-service training in china is closely examined in this research, we introduce an outline of this system below: in-service training or continuing education of teachers has been actively promoted to improve the quality of teachers in china. the teachers in every school in china are organized into teaching research groups (trg) and teaching preparation groups (tpg). a trg is a group of teachers who teach the same subject (e.g. mathematics teachers). a tpg is a group of teachers who teach the same subject at the same grade level (e.g. 10th grade mathematics teachers). the purpose of these groups is to study and improve the quality of teaching by sharing teaching ideas and resources, discussing teaching content, collectively preparing lesson plans, and observing and evaluating lessons together. teachers work collaboratively in trg and tpg to conduct research that focuses on improving teaching. during the last 50 years, the teaching research network has been formed by members of the province-level teaching research office, the county-level teaching research office, and the schoollevel trg and tpg. the goal of the teaching research network is to organize a variety of in-service training activities (yang et al., 2008). teaching research is the most important component of in-service training. in china, there is an established system in place that recognizes expert mathematics teachers. teachers who received such recognition usually go through a series of teaching competitions at the school, district, city, province, and national level. the winner of the school investigating characteristics of award-winning grades 7-12 mathematics teachers from the shandong province in china 3 level teaching competition moves to the district level competition; the winner of district level competition moves to the city level competition; the winner of city level competition moves to the province level competition; and the winner of the province level competition moves to the national level competition. teaching in the teaching competitions is conducted in front of a classroom of students assigned by the authority. the topic of each teaching competition is different. participants are given several topics to prepare in advance. the final topic of each competition is drawn by the participants from these topics on the day before the competition. winning the competitions is recognized as an important accomplishment for a teacher. the following is a sample of the teaching competition rubric used to judge the competition. • the purpose of the lesson: the depth and breadth of content knowledge, skill, ethics and learning psychology. • material selections: choosing texts aligned with instructional purposes, emphasizing basics and innovation, knowledge and application, and balance between texts and instruction. teachers must select sections, examples, and exercises based on students’ needs. • instructional process: reflecting on the teaching and learning process that is revealed by providing students with appropriate background material, encouraging students to engage in the learning process, cultivating students’ creativity and innovative thinking, and responding appropriately to students’ feedback during classroom instruction. • instructional tools: the use of appropriate modern instructional technology, including charts, models, slides, videos, and computers. • instructional methodology: designing lessons appropriate to students’ cognitive ability and psychological developmental stage, implementing accurate instructional principles and learning theories, being flexible to appropriately apply instructional strategies, and emphasizing development of effective study skills. • basic dispositions of teachers, as reflected in a. language: accurate, comprehensible, simple, and powerful. b. handwriting: accurate, neat, and well-balanced on the blackboards. c. observation: responsive to students’ expressions and abilities. d. listening: listening to, and answering students’ questions. e. manners: responsible, kind, and persuasive. (national teaching competition for middle and high school novice mathematics teachers, scoring rubric, draft). research questions this study intends to answer the following research questions: • what are the characteristics of the award-winning grades 7-12 mathematics teachers in the shandong province of china? • how had their teaching expertise been developed? our answers provide an in-depth view into effective teaching practices in china, which, we hope, will be useful for educators in their own teaching practices and also will be of interest when considering mathematics teacher preparation in the u.s. method guided by the research questions, this study used a qualitative research method to examine the characteristics of award-winning grades 7-12 mathematics teachers in china, and provided an insightful view of mathematical teaching and teacher preparation in a different cultural contexts. we used in-depth interviews as the major data collecting method, with document review as a supplemental method for data collection. criterion sampling and intensity sampling were utilized to choose teacher samples. criterion sampling requires the selection of all cases that meet some predetermined criteria (miles & huberman, 1994; patton, 2002). a selected sample, based on the criteria can provide rich information related to the research inquiry (liamputtong, 2009). guided by the research question, we selected participants who met the following three criteria: 1) the participant must be a mathematics teacher teaching middle school or high school level mathematics. 2) he/she has been awarded recognition for his/her achievements in teaching mathematics as noted by the different levels: school, district, city, province, or nation. 3) his/her students have achieved high average scores in college entrance exams or in high school entrance exams among the classes at the same grade level. selections based on the criteria followed the intensity sampling strategy. intensity sampling seeks samples with rich information related to the investigated phenomenon. according to miles, intensity sampling is associated with “information-rich cases that manifest the phenomenon intensely, but not extremely” (miles & huberman, 1994, p. 28). typical case sampling was used to select the province of shandong. typical case sampling is described as a technique for highlighting what is normal or typical (patton, 2002). following this guideline, we wanted to choose a province that represented a common case among all the provinces in china. as stated previously, china has a centralized education system which determines that every province has similar educational practices. shandong represents a typical chinese province with a big population. it is located on the east coast of the north current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 china plain, and has a population of 95.79 million, ranked the second largest province of china. the gdp (gross domestic product) of shandong was ranked number 9 among 23 provinces (national bureau of statistics of the people’s republic of china, 2005). convenience was another reason to choose shandong as the sample province, since we happened to have a contact person who could help recruit the participants in shandong. in order to identify the qualified participants, we used a key informant who was an administrator working in the educational system in the shandong province of china. a key informant is someone who is specifically knowledgeable about the inquiry setting and can serve to identify who and what is typical for the research (patton, 2002). based on the description of sample selection criteria, the key informant chose the qualified teachers from schools located in different cities in shandong and contacted them to ask if they were willing to participate in this research. after he confirmed with them about their participation, he emailed the first author the list of all of the teachers with corresponding contact telephone numbers. the first author contacted these ten teachers through phone calls. on the phone, the first author explained the purpose of this study, confirmed their willingness to participate in the study, and exchanged email addresses with the participants for future correspondence. below is a table of participant information and the detailed background about each participant. all the names appearing in the table are pseudonyms. nine participants graduated from normal universities, earning a bachelor degree in mathematics. one participant, who taught middle school, attended a three-year college and received a diploma in mathematics. in china, there are three levels of professional ranks in middle school and high school. from low to high, the ranks are second level, first level, and high level. after working for three years, a novice teacher is entitled to apply for promotion to the second level; after holding the second level for five years, a teacher could apply for promotion to the first level; after holding the first level for five years, table 1 participant information name gender age education (highest degree earned) grades taught location professional rank years of teaching yun female 43 bachelor 10-12 jinan high level 20 hui male 42 bachelor 10-12 jinan high level 19 long male 36 bachelor 10-12 jining first level 12 yong male 41 bachelor 10-12 weifang high level 18 gang male 33 bachelor 10-12 huantai first level 11 xi male 45 bachelor 10-12 rizhao high level 24 hua male 43 bachelor 6-9 jinan high level 21 yan female 39 3-year college diploma 6-9 laizhou high level 17 di male 32 bachelor 7-9 dezhou first level 11 cheng male 40 bachelor 7-9 binzhou high level 17 investigating characteristics of award-winning grades 7-12 mathematics teachers from the shandong province in china 5 a teacher could apply for promotion to the high level. the time period allows a teacher to apply for promotion while teaching performance, awards and honors received and evaluation comments are recorded so a decision can be made as to whether a teacher has earned a promotion. seven of the teachers in this study hold the highest professional rank; three of the teachers hold the intermediate level rank. telephone interviews were conducted through skype – an internet telephone device. telephone interviewing is widely and productively used in qualitative research (sturges & hanrahan, 2004). comparing the transcripts of the face-to-face interviews to those of telephone interviews, sturges and hanranhan (2004) found that there were no significant differences in the interviews. their finding was also supported by stephens’ study (2007). according to these studies, telephone interviews indeed are as effective as face-toface interviews when being utilized to conduct qualitative research. the in-depth, semi-structured (patton, 2002) interview protocol was designed following a literature review of research in this area, a pilot study, and the collection of research documentation relevant to the research question. the interview protocol included 49 questions in total, covering topics such as personal background information, college preparation, classroom practice and philosophy, and in-service training. twentynine questions were asked about in-service training. the interview questions were designed to capture the common characteristics of these award-winning teachers and the development of their expertise over the years of their teaching practice. each interview lasted about one hour. follow-up phone calls and emails were made to verify some descriptions and comments with the participants. the interviews were tape-recorded and the recording of each interview was transcribed into english. the collected data was analyzed using an inductive analysis approach which generates findings and themes directly from the data. several analysis strategies and methods were employed in the process, including constant comparison (corbin & strass, 2008), matrices (miles & huberman, 1994), coding (boyatzis, 1998; miles & huberman, 1994; patton, 2002), and making graphs (miles & huberman, 1994). line-by-line coding was conducted for each interview. following the process, a long list of codes was produced. the codes were examined by constantly comparing and reflecting on the data, and were reduced to 4 categories that correlated to the research question – passion for mathematics and teaching, participation in teaching research, application of teaching technology, and expansion of professional opportunities. results this study revealed that in-service training is connected with teachers’ merit assessment and promotion in china. as a result, teachers are motivated to participate in a variety of in-service training activities. schools support teachers involved in in-service training by offering time and financial incentives. in this study, we found that the teachers in the shandong province of china teach about two classes each day. those who teach grades 6 – 11, teach 10 classes per week; those who teach grade 12, teach 12 classes each week. after classroom teaching, the teachers use their time to prepare lesson plans, to observe other teachers’ classes, to collaborate with other teachers, and to conduct teaching research. schools encourage teachers to conduct research that addresses teaching, with the aim of improving the teaching of mathematics; they regularly have teachingresearch seminars and teaching-research-achievement report meetings. additionally, every school maintains a one-on-one mentoring system that pairs new teachers with experienced teachers who teach the same subject. there are many mutual classroom observations and after-class discussions between the new teacher and the experienced mentor. one-on-one mentoring helps new teachers grow fast and become expert teachers. analysis of the data identified the following characteristics: 1) these award-winning teachers are passionate about mathematics and enjoy sharing that passion through teaching; 2) they actively participate in teaching research through application of teaching research in the classroom, collaboration with peers, and systematic lesson preparation; 3) they apply technology to teaching; 4) they engage in teaching research in order to expand their professional opportunities. passion for mathematics and enjoyment in sharing that passion through teaching one of the characteristics of these teachers is their passion for mathematics and enjoyment in sharing that passion through teaching. cheng, for example, loved mathematics since he was very young. he said: when i was a student in the middle school, i already liked math and was ranked 4th in the mathematics competition held in our city, binzhou. i think math is a very interesting subject, involving fun and intelligent activities. likewise, yong expressed his passion for mathematics, “i have loved studying mathematics since i was kid.” when asked if he likes teaching mathematics, yong answered: yes, very much! teaching mathematics is fun. being with students is fun. other people may think mathematics is a very boring subject, but, when you succeed making your students enjoy learning it, you have a real feeling of achievement. hua tries to let his students “appreciate the unique charm only the subject of mathematics can have.” but, he also realized, “as a teacher, it is not enough to current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 have a passion for teaching and a love for students. the passion and love need to be transformed into effectively instructing students and motivating them to learn mathematics.” hua told his students, “mathematics is not only for smart students to learn, it is a subject that makes everyone who learns it smarter.” in his classroom, he promotes the creation of “an educational environment that stimulates students’ interest, inspires students’ thinking, and develops students’ talents.” he wants his students “to learn when exploring and to explore when learning.” long described his passion for mathematics and teaching in this way: standing in front of the classroom with students’ watching me, i forget everything but the teaching and the feeling of happiness it gives me. i enjoy teaching very much. some people made fun of me and said: “you are happier standing in front of a class than if someone gave you a hundred thousand bucks.” i love teaching from the bottom of my heart. all the other teachers in this study shared similar sentiments about mathematics and the teaching of the subject. active participation in teaching research every teacher in the study actively participated in teaching research through the application of teaching research in the classroom, collaboration with peers, and systematic lesson preparation. application of teaching research in the classroom. each teacher either joined a team for a teaching-research project or conducted an individual research project that applied a certain learning theory to classroom teaching. they found that the process of engaging in teaching research had significant impact on their teaching. for example, di played an important role in the research project, “participation and discovery”, that investigated models of teaching that would engage students in the teaching and learning process. he found that his involvement in the project had a significant impact on his teaching. di explained, the result of this project has been widely promoted as an exemplary teaching model in the shandong province. in order to help implement our teaching model of “participation and discovery”, that shows how to motivate students to participate in the teaching and learning process and how to lead students to discover [knowledge] on their own, we gave many open classes to demonstrate the model. all the open classes were taught by me. having participated in the research project “mathematics methodology”, gang realized that it is crucial for a mathematics teacher to foster students’ interest in learning and to create an environment that encourages students to explore and discover mathematics rules or principles. one of cheng’s research projects was a study that promotes the idea of students’ collaborating with each other while learning mathematics. cheng divided his class into small groups. whenever there was a disagreement about a certain problem in class, he asked students to discuss the problem in groups. after each small group reached an agreement, the problem was discussed further by the entire class. cheng noted: collaborative learning meets students’ psychological needs. students want to build up friendships with their peers and collaborative studies offer a platform for students to learn from each other, while building friendships. they learn mathematics and also learn to be tolerant and appreciate others. yong participated in the research project about students’ self-assessment. part of this project asked students to write exams and test and grade themselves. at first, several very good students joined the teachers in creating exams and learned the procedure of writing an exam. after that, these students wrote an exam on their own to test other students. then, each class was divided into small groups, with each group taking turns to write a set of exams for the class. yong found that, “once students are involved in giving exams, they master the content tested very well. if they don’t understand the material clearly, they are not able to write an exam.” each teacher had actively taken part in at least one research project. yan mentioned that she and her colleagues finished the project, “effective integration of information technology and mathematics teaching & learning”, and have been doing another one, “discovering learning”, which will be completed in 2012. hui listed two research projects he was involved in: “writing the national, provincial, or city exam problems” and “teaching models”. in hua’s case, he participated in four research projects. eight out of ten participants in this study published numerous teaching research papers or books. in the most extreme case, through his teaching research, cheng published more than 500 articles in newspapers and more than 100 papers in the twenty national popular journals. all the teachers in this study recognized that active involvement in teaching-research projects helps them become better teachers and teach in more effective ways. collaboration with peers. all the teachers in this study collaborated with other teachers, especially with teachers who taught the same grade. the collaboration is conducted through collective lesson preparation, classroom observations, and afterobservation discussions. every teacher recognized the important role that collaborating with other teachers investigating characteristics of award-winning grades 7-12 mathematics teachers from the shandong province in china 7 played in their teaching. for example, yong noted that his achievements in teaching are due in large part to his collaboration with other teachers and gave credit to the teachers in his teaching research group for his winning prizes at teaching competitions. before each teaching competition, yong discussed how he was going to teach his topics with all the teachers in his teaching research group. he regarded himself as only an actor presenting the research result produced by all the teachers in his teaching research group. similarly, yun pointed out, “the lesson presented in a teaching competition is not prepared only by the teacher who attends the competition, but is a joint work and the outcome of collective intelligence.” all the participants are actively involved in collective lesson preparation, class observations, and after-observation discussions and most of them lead weekly meetings of collective lesson preparation. they all agreed that the weekly meetings helped produce welldesigned teaching plans and promoted more effective teaching. xi noted that in their meetings they discuss problems arising in their teaching, share good teaching methods, and exchange teaching experiences; that is, “we learn from each other.” new teachers learn from veteran teachers, and vice versa. every participant was paired with a new teacher, forming a one-on-one mentoring group. classroom observations and after-observation discussions are regularly held between new teachers and veteran teachers. some of the teachers noted that they also learn something from new teachers through this process. yun pointed out, “young teachers also have their own ways and ideas worth learning from.” xi noted, “we learn from each other and improve together.” cheng described it in this way, “…new teachers have their own strengths. for example, they are usually good at new teaching technologies and bring some fresh ideas from college. i should say that we help each other to improve teaching. systematic lesson preparation. every teacher in this study carefully prepares each lesson before class and has developed his or her own preparation system that has been formed over the years. in addition to actively participating in collective lesson preparation with their teaching research group, they prepare lessons for their own classes because they face different students. they believe that lesson plans developed by their teaching research group should be adjusted to meet the needs of the particular students in each class. over the years, each of the teachers has established their own system of lesson plan preparation. for example, yan described how she prepared her lessons: i have a 4-5-6 lesson preparation theory that i have shared with other teachers: • 4 indicates four factors: textbook, classroom, pedagogy, and students. this means carefully study the textbook, consider students’ learning abilities in the classroom, choose the most appropriate teaching methods, and differentiate among students who have different levels of talent. • 5 indicates five studies: study classroom timing issues, study important and difficult knowledge pieces, study resources from the internet, study the design of homework problems, study the assessment that should diagnose how much students learned from the class and the homework problems. that way, i know which piece of knowledge is not mastered by students and know that i need to make up for it. • 6 indicates six details: carefully design pedagogy, carefully instruct students how to study, carefully design the structure of a lesson, carefully design homework, carefully handle the grading results, carefully write the after-class reflection yun summarized her way of lesson preparation: • at first, if the textbook has some changes, i need to know what changes were made and what the new curriculum standards are, including the requirement of this section in the college entrance exams. so, the first thing i do is to get to know the textbook well. • second, i decide what knowledge i should present to students in this class. • third, i think how to present the knowledge. for example, should i raise a question and ask students to discuss the possible answers? of course, i have to consider the students, too. the advanced class i taught in the past is different from the common class i am teaching now. in my current class, 1/3 of the students are good students, 2/3 of them are average. when i ask a question, i would consider how many students know how to solve it, and realize that some students may need hints to solve the problem. some students may not be able to solve it at all. i try to make most students master as much of the material as possible by further explanations or through class discussion, so, i need to prepare a lesson by going through the textbook, taking the students into consideration, and thinking about the pedagogy. summarizing the process of all the teachers’ lesson preparation, we see the following common themes: they carefully study the five factors including textbooks and references, students, pedagogical approaches, questions raised in class, and example and homework current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 problems. some teachers also mentioned writing afterteaching reflections, which are then used as a reference for their future lesson preparation. application of technology to teaching every teacher in this study makes use of teaching technology in their classes. as xi reported, “we utilize educational software and have a projector in the classroom. voice and pictures can be sent out through multimedia. our class has a very rich content. i often use powerpoint and sketchpad in my teaching.” gang pointed out that using multimedia can increase the capacity of a lesson. for example, he stated, “in review classes, i often use powerpoint to avoid spending too much time writing on the blackboard.” di mentioned that he used flash and powerpoint in his class. he said, “when we teach geometry, we would make use of technology to help students understand change of shapes better”. finally, hua described the way he uses teaching technology as follows: “i utilize educational technology when teaching certain contents of mathematics such as three dimensional geometry and change of shapes. i often use sketchpad and z+z superpad”. based on the description of all the teachers, sketchpad, z+z supersketchpad, power point, and flash are technology tools they often use in teaching their classes. six participants mentioned that as a teaching aid, technology should be used appropriately, taking into account the content of the course. hui said, “i use it whenever i need to. it depends on the context of teaching and learning. for example, i use educational software to show geometrical pictures, students’ work, and afterexam analysis, etc.” long explained: i often utilize mathematics teaching software for my class. based on the content of a lesson, i use super sketchpad (developed by a teacher, jingzhong zhang), sketchpad, and power point. super sketchpad is a very good software with many good functions. each type of software has advantages and disadvantages. usually, i combine them to prepare my lesson plans. cheng pointed out: we use it when it is appropriate. when it helps students understand [the content] in depth and helps them overcome the difficulty of a piece of knowledge, we need to use it. we also need to consider when and where to use it. it should not be used through the entire class time. if a class is just a show of educational technology, students would feel visually tired. this is not good for learning. two teachers in this study also emphasized that writing on the blackboard cannot be replaced by technology. for example, hua used sketchpad, z+z superpad to teach classes involving three-dimensional geometry or the changing of shapes. however, he does not use technology for every class. he explained: the characteristics of mathematics determine that teachers’ classroom actions, such as writing on the blackboard, drawing graphs, and exploring together with their students, are precious in classroom teaching. by conducting these teaching activities, teachers set examples of the ways of learning mathematics for their students. engagement in teaching research in order to expand professional opportunities the teachers in this study take an active role in teaching research. when actively conducting teachingresearch projects, most of them are the leaders of their teaching research group, and they published numerous research papers sharing their research results with other teachers. although all teachers are required to do teaching research, the teachers in this study took a leading role in teaching research and went beyond minimum expectations. di enjoys the professional gains he receives from engaging in teaching research. he shared his experience: in the beginning, i really didn’t want to do [teaching research]. gradually, i started receiving benefits from doing teaching research. our school offers some awards to encourage us to do teaching research. for example, our school selects the subject leaders or gives honor titles in consideration with performance in teaching research. on the one hand, i must meet the school’s requirements; on the other hand, i have tasted the sweet. in fact, research really has helped me improve my teaching and in recent years i have conducted teaching research without being pushed by our school. yong realized that teaching research often involves collaborating with other teachers and the outcome generated by “collective intelligence” facilitated his “learning faster and saving time”. he also pointed out that he was motivated to take an active part in teaching research, because “your achievement in teaching research is useful for your future honor and promotion. if you don’t have any research papers, you will have a problem being promoted to a higher professional rank.” similarly, gang stated, “i must do teaching research. that helps me understand the textbooks at a deeper level and prepare better lessons. on the other hand, we also need to conduct teaching research for promotion to a higher professional rank.” cheng has published more than 100 research papers in national magazines and about 500 articles in newspapers. he also edited many teaching reference books. this is how he explained his reasons for investigating characteristics of award-winning grades 7-12 mathematics teachers from the shandong province in china 9 conduction teaching research: by doing teaching research, i published my research results. my teaching has improved constantly, and my achievement has been recognized by society. this recognition encourages me to continue conducting teaching research… teaching research helps me teach more effectively in class and improve student’s grades. when i see my students’ grades are increasing and students are developing in a good direction, i am very happy. like cheng, long published many papers and several reference books. he is a columnist for the magazine 数学天地 (mathematics field). when asked what motivated him to do teaching research, he responded, “i am a kind of person who always wants to do my best. teaching research can update my knowledge. i wouldn’t know the developing trends of education without active involvement in teaching research.” he also made the comment, “the process of research is hard, but also sweet.” long noted a very close relationship between teaching research and teaching: “teaching research helps improve teaching, while teaching gives me ideas for teaching research.” he gave an example from his own experience: … when i taught probability, i gave an example in class: “how many ways are there to put 3 different balls into 2 different boxes, each box having at least one ball?” (this problem is easy to solve; to reach the goal that each box has at least one ball, we must put two different balls into the same box and put another ball into the other box. so the number of ways is 2 1 2 3 1 2c c a⋅ ). after the class, a very smart student came to me and asked “how many ways are there if 100 different balls are put into 10 different boxes and each box has at least one ball?” this is a reasonable question. however, once i thought about it, my head was about to explode, because reaching the goal of at least one ball in each box, dividing 100 different balls into 10 groups is very complicated. i did not solve this problem! i had thought for one week, still i could not solve it. i realized that this is a valuable question. i made this problem more general: to put n different balls in m different boxes, each box having at least one ball (m<=n)? after research, i reached this result: there are 1 ( 1) n k n k n n k c k− = −∑ this result led me to study the problem further with the given condition: “put n balls into m boxes. both boxes and balls can be chosen to be the same or different, and a box can be either empty or not.” by studying this problem, i became familiar with the second mathematical deduction method and some related probability formulas, and got many interesting conclusions. good performance in teaching research may create more development opportunities. six of the teachers in this study had been selected to attend professional training workshops organized by the authorities. for example, hui participated in a leading teacher training at the national level; yun attended a leading teacher training at the province level; xi and yan went to a leading teacher training in weifang city and yantai city, respectively. these kind of professional training opportunities are only provided to the limited number of teachers who have high achievement in teaching and teaching research. three teachers mentioned that they competed for “qilu famous teacher” (齐鲁名师) selection. as one of the winners, yun described: the “qilu famous teacher” selection is also a professional training. after we are selected, we have to study and do some work for a period of time and then our title “qilu famous teacher” is finalized. if you are selected, you are given 60,000 chinese yuan for your studying expenses. you can go to a university to study. we went to china east normal university, where some people were active in education research. there, expert researchers present talks on how to conduct teaching research while teaching. we also visited some schools that were doing well in research and learned how they conduct research and what they have done. i had been in the united states and visited their high schools and elementary schools. several groups were sent to the united states to observe their classrooms and learned what education reform they have completed. during the study period, we are required to hand in a reflection paper that states what we learned through the study. the better teaching research a teacher conducts, the more professional opportunities are provided to him/her. all the teachers interviewed have benefited from taking an active role in teaching research. they noted that teaching research leads to a professional life that makes them happier. the positive effect motivates them to keep going. as long explained, “once you’ve gained a good reputation, you want to maintain it by improving your current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 teaching even more. this is a really a healthy cycle. when you are good, you want to be better.” conclusion and discussion one theme emerging from this study is that inservice training played a significant role in building these teachers’ teaching expertise. teaching research, as an important component of in-service training, was conducted continuously throughout the teachers’ entire professional life. teaching research is accomplished by activities such as collective lesson preparation, teaching research projects, and seminar participation. all the teachers in this study participated actively in teaching research and either had published numerous research papers in journals or had presented their research in the professional conferences in order to share their findings with other teachers. they were motivated to conduct teaching research, because it helped them improve their teaching and provided them with a greater sense of profession satisfaction and with professional advancement. this study indicates that the schools in china encourage teachers to conduct teaching research and reward those who perform well in teaching research by giving honors or early promotion, and more opportunities for professional development and advancement. these incentives reinforce the teachers’ motivation of active involvement in teaching research. the award-winning teachers in this study consider teaching research a vehicle that helps them become more effective teachers and expands their professional opportunities. the process of teaching research benefits, not only the teachers who engage in it, but also the teaching profession as a whole. the sharing nature of teaching research offers a channel for teachers to preserve and pass on their good insights and experience to the present and future teachers. according to the teachers interviewed, teaching research is often conducted through teacher collaboration. teaching research and teacher collaboration are integrated activities. teacher collaboration can motivate teachers to think reflectively about their teaching. when teachers work together and have regular discussions, they must engage in reflective thinking. discussion itself is a process of teachers’ collective reflection, which helps generate effective instructional strategies. teaching research and teacher collaboration reinforce each other and play a powerful role in improving teaching effectiveness. both are fundamental for an in-service training system geared toward improving teaching. this study is limited in that it provides an insight into the characteristics and teaching practices of ten award-winning mathematics teachers from the shandong province 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(2012). investigating characteristics of award-winning grades 7-12 mathematics teachers from the shandong province in china. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/945 author notes su liang, ph.d. california state university college of natural science department of mathematics 5500 university parkway san bernardino, ca 92407 (909) 537-7349 sliang@csusb.edu su liang, ph.d., is an assistant professor in the department of mathematics at california state university. her research interests include k-12 mathematics teacher preparation and mathematics teaching and learning. sarah glaz, ph.d. graduate director for instructional development university of connecticut department of mathematics, u-9 storrs, ct 06269 (860) 486-9153 sarah.glaz@uconn.edu sarah glaz, ph.d., is a professor and graduate director for instructional development at the mathematics department of the university of connecticut. her research interests in education include the use of art in the mathematics classroom, and teaching assistant training and development. tom defranco, ph.d. neag school of education department of mathematics university of connecticut storrs, ct 06269 (860) 486-3815 tom.defranco@uconn.edu thomas c. defranco, ph.d., is dean of the neag school of education and holds a joint appointment in the department of mathematics at the university of connecticut. his research interests include mathematical problem solving as well as the teaching and learning of mathematics at the k-16 level. investigating characteristics of award-winning grades 7-12 mathematics teachers from the shandong province in china 13 manuscript received: 02/15/2012 revisions received: 07/23/2012 accepted: 09/24/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 14 volume 15, number 3 october 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1290_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 3 october 30, 2013 issn 1099-839x an analysis of teacher efficacy and perspectives about elementary literacy instruction joy abernathy-dyer villa del rey elementary, baton rouge evan ortlieb monash university, australia earl h. cheek jr. louisiana state university at the core of every teacher is a set of beliefs and knowledge regarding teaching and learning. as a teacher develops her expertise, curricular practices are refined and selfefficacy is enhanced. teachers possess varying degrees of efficacy and perceptions that impact literacy instruction within their classrooms. yet, often times they are mandated to teach in certain ways to achieve desirable student outcomes, even when they may not agree with the methods or processes wholeheartedly. the purpose of this study is to explore some of the issues that change teachers’ instructional practices in the classroom and to reveal some of the issues that influence as well as hinder instructional reform within that setting. this qualitative case study uses observations, interviews, and questionnaires to highlight teacher efficacy from four first-grade teachers. testing data indicate students achieve both because of instruction and teachers’ willingness to implement the reading program with fidelity. findings from this study can assist in setting up professional development, serving as a guide for providing warranted support for student learning and teacher knowledge, and fostering considerations for including teachers in the important stages regarding the planning and implementation of classroom literacy instruction. keywords: teacher efficacy; literacy; reading; perspectives; elementary education targeted skills and instructional approaches in literacy education have changed over the last century; however, the reading teacher’s role in the classroom has remained much the same. the teacher has the primary role for accelerating literacy growth of elementary school readers (ainsworth, ortlieb, cheek, pate, & fetters, 2011; ortlieb & cheek, 2008). barone and morrow (2003) note that a “recent study of schools in 32 nations found that the most critical element in building an effective reading program is the teacher” (p. 16). the u.s. educational school system relies on efficient teachers to provide the most effective, successful reading instruction to improve students’ education. during a time of reform and accountability, school districts closely monitor teachers' instructional decisions, practices, and classroom environments (cassidy & ortlieb, 2011). yet, the question remains: how do teachers make sense of policy context, school site, content, and student demographics current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 2 that affect the ways in which they educate elementary learners? several studies have shown that individual teacher beliefs and values play a vital role in shaping the objectives, goals, curriculum, and instructional methods of schools (duffy-hester, 1999; hitchens-smith, ortlieb, & cheek, 2011; hoffman, 1998; morrow, tracey, gee, woo, & pressley, 1999; rivkin & hanusheck, 1998; rosenshine & stevens, 1986; sanders & rivers, 1996; terry, minor, onwueglouzie, & witcher, 2002). results of research studies show such beliefs and values can spell success or failure for any reform effort imposed by a school or district. a school may publish its goals, objectives, and standards to represent its intended purposes and subject matter coverage; however, any uniformity outside of published lists is largely mythical. the purpose of this study is to explore some of the issues resulting from attempts to change teachers’ instructional practices in elementary classrooms, including issues that may influence as well as hinder instructional reform. the following questions guided the exploration of this study: 1. what is the relationship between teacher beliefs about standard, prescribed reading instruction, and their practices in elementary classroom settings? 2. what role, if any, do teachers play in developing the how’s and why’s of literacy instruction in their classroom? 3. what factors do teachers believe are essential for providing effective reading instruction in an elementary school setting? how do these factors affect reading instruction in the elementary classroom? review of literature need for standards-based reading reform the first tenet of standards-based education is that learning goals, known as standards, are specified (mccombs, kirby, barney, & maghee, 2004). standards, simply defined, are statements of what students should know and be able to do. in a non-standards-based classroom, individual teachers may not be clear about what they think students should know or the best way to implement instruction. some teachers argue that standards can create holdbacks and restrict the “teachable moments,” while others view achievement standards as a means of communicating and informing others teaching the same grade or course have the same ideas about what students should learn. other teaching professionals base decisions on individual preferences, and in some cases, what they know best (fetters, ortlieb, & cheek, 2011). one purpose for the standards movement was to address this lack of articulation among teachers at the same grade level, within buildings, and across districts. as one teacher interviewed noted: “when i worked at the elementary school in another district, it was interesting listening to teachers say: ‘this child came from this school; this child came from this [other] school’” (mccombs, kirby, barney, & maghee, 2004, p. 8). they could tell which schools focused more on reading, which focused more on writing, and which focused more on standardized tests. it was further communicated that by using standards-based education, it would not matter what third grade classroom the child was in (mccombs et al., 2004). even though some teachers appreciate the consistency that standards can bring to an education program, many do not know about this benefit, or do not appreciate the implications. before teachers commit time and energy to making the shift to fully embracing standards-based education, they need to understand what standards-based education comprises. they also need concrete reasons for creating these initiatives like national reading panel (nrp) report and reading first initiatives or the common core state standards. reading first schools are those that are financially supported to implement scientifically based reading practices alongside instructional and assessment tools deemed to be appropriate by the u.s. department of education (cassidy & ortlieb, 2013). the nrp was instrumental in providing the foundation of the research in the publication, preventing reading difficulties in young children (snow, burns, & griffin, 1998). the text summarized research literature that made claims about identifying critical skills, ideal classroom and environmental settings, and key interactions that would aid in assisting a student to acquire primary reading skills (nrp, 2003). the expanded efforts of the national institute of child health and human development (nichd) and nrp led to the following goals: 1. to comprehend rich but diverse research and data 2. to communicate the findings to inform parents, teachers, educators, publishers and others who are involved in the instruction of children 3. to provide advice by compiling and transferring the findings at conferences and other learning events the rising demands for literacy and higher order thinking skills have been cited as factors that are responsible for the reading difficulties (ortlieb, 2012). the most significant changes concern teachers, testing, and accountability (cassidy & ortlieb, 2011, 2012, 2013, in press; cassidy, ortlieb, & shettel, 2010/2011). as for teachers, the no child left behind (nclb) act required that title i schools hire only “highly qualified” teachers for all subjects, and that veteran teachers in such schools demonstrate they are “highly qualified” by 2005–2006 (nclb, 2001). the act also reaches beyond title i schools and requires that all teachers of “core academic subjects” (english, reading, language arts, math, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, an analysis of teacher efficacy and perspectives about elementary literacy instruction 3 arts, history, and geography) must be “highly qualified” by 2005–2006. pursuant to the nclb and accompanying regulations, teachers are considered “highly qualified” if they are fully certified and have demonstrated competency in the subjects they teach. competence is assumed if the teacher majored in the subject in college, or alternatively, if it can be demonstrated by passing a state test, or for existing teachers, by convincing state evaluators that they know the subject areas (nclb). teacher beliefs and reform implementation teacher beliefs in effectiveness consistently predict desired student outcomes. bandura (1993) reported it is believed that the achievement impact of teacher efficacy (te) arises from goal-setting and attribution processes. teachers who anticipate that they will be successful set more challenging goals for themselves and their students accept responsibility for the outcome of instruction, and persist through obstacles. bandura’s 1993 findings suggested student achievement of cognitive and affective goals can be enhanced by strengthening te. the hypothesis that school improvement will flow from enhanced te has been tested in a variety of skill-development projects with mixed results. it is proposed that skill-development approaches be augmented by attending to teacher beliefs (particularly about the mutability of intelligence) and to conditions of teacher work. in 1989, rosenholtz described research on te as being in its infancy. understanding of the origins and outcomes of teachers’ beliefs about effectiveness has grown substantially since then, but the use of these findings in teacher development programs has not. as stated previously, the purpose of the present study is to highlight findings that surround what influences te as a mechanism for how teachers implement the literacy curriculum. the first of the following sections provides a definition of te, and is an outline of its roots in social learning theory, distinguishing it from related notions. the second section is a review of evidence of a consistent association of te with student outcomes and presentation of an argument for interpreting these correlations within a causal chain. the final section describes teacher development strategies that have been or could be used to strengthen teacher beliefs as competent literacy instructors, and provides an argument that these strategies must be augmented with attention to teacher beliefs and conditions of teacher work. teacher efficacy and role in curriculum implementation teacher efficacy is a type of self-efficacy that can be distinguished from related constructs such as outcome expectancy, locus of control, and self-concept. te measures the extent to which teachers believe efforts will have a positive effect on student achievement. te as a form of self-efficacy, and as defined by bandura (1993), is an individual judgment of the ability to complete future actions. appraisals are based on personal interpretations of past actions, rather than on external criteria. over time, these interpretations stabilize as persistent, but not static, performance expectations. expectations can be modified by new information, especially judgments about the results of subsequent efforts of oneself or peers undertaking similar tasks (cramer, ortlieb, & cheek, 2008). verbal persuasion (attempts by peers or supervisors to convince subjects that they are competent to perform the target actions) and physiological responses (physical symptoms communicating an inability to perform effectively) also contribute to expectations about future performance. in bandura’s theory (1995), self-efficacy is a regulatory mechanism that influences behavior in four ways: through (a) enactment of cognitive processes, (b) adoption of loftier goals, (c) creation of increased goal commitment, and (d) expectancy that goals will be achieved despite setbacks along the way. through motivational processes, high self-efficacy subjects take responsibility for the outcome of actions, and attribute success and failure to efforts rather than to factors beyond their control (ortlieb & marinak, 2013). through affective processes those with high self-efficacy develop coping strategies, enabling them to turn off negative thoughts that lower performance. through selection processes, self-efficacy shapes lives by influencing the selection of activities and environments (doepker & ortlieb, 2011; ortlieb & doepker, 2011). in social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory (1986), bandura further contended that human development reflects the complex interaction of the person, the person's behavior, and the environment. the relationship between these elements is called reciprocal determinism. a teacher’s cognitive abilities, physical characteristics, personality, beliefs, attitudes, and other factors influence both behavior and environment; these influences are reciprocal. a person's behavior can affect feelings about self and attitudes and beliefs about others. similarly, much of what a student knows comes from environmental resources such as television, parents, and books. environment also comes from contextual resources such as television, parents, and books. environment also affects behavior because what a person observes can powerfully influence what that person does (ortlieb, 2008). in a classroom setting, a person's behavior also contributes to the environment in the following ways. teachers must provide a chance to observe and model the behavior that leads to positive reinforcement and desired outcomes. educators must encourage collaborative learning, since much of learning happens within important social and environmental contexts. a learned behavior often cannot be performed unless there is the right environment. educators must provide the incentive and the supportive environment for the behavior to happen as current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 4 otherwise, assessment may not be accurate and future outcomes may be made based on false judgments. teacher efficacy, student standards, and literacy characteristics bandura (1993) found causal attributions are closely linked to self-efficacy. individuals with high selfefficacy, in contrast to those with low self-efficacy, attribute the outcomes of actions to themselves rather than to factors beyond their control. from this theory, one could predict that teachers with high professional efficacy would set higher standards for students, would make students accountable for behavior, and would persist until the students had met goals. available research supports these predictions. personal te has been consistently linked to pupil-control ideology, particularly in pre-service training. wilson and wineburg (1998) reported teachers with high personal te tend to promote student autonomy, are more likely to confront student management problems than to respond permissively, and are more successful at keeping students on task. those with high general te have more confidence in classroom-management techniques and rate management problems as less severe (bandura, 1995; bullough & stokes, 1994; scheiner & carver 1994). they are more humanistic in orientation and less reliant on custodial methods to control a class. if te contributes to achievement-oriented student-management strategies, then higher achievement is likely to be the result. teachers with higher te may be more successful in producing student achievement because they attend to the needs of lower-ability students more closely. ashton (1986) found that low te teachers concentrated efforts on the upper-ability group, and they had less regard for lower-ability students, viewing them as potential sources of disruption. in contrast, those with high te had positive attitudes toward low achievers, built friendly relationships with them, and set higher academic standards for this group than did teachers with low te. midgley (1989) observed that te had a bigger impact on low than on high achievers, suggesting that lower-ability students are less certain about personal competence and are more likely to be influenced by teacher expectations. characteristics of high teacher self-efficacy there is consistent evidence that teachers with high te are more willing to develop programs for specialneeds pupils within classrooms, rather than referring these cases to special services. although these findings are based on teacher responses to hypothetical case studies, leu and kinzer (2002) argued teachers who exhibit high levels of effectiveness in literacy instruction have been identified as having the following characteristics: 1) possess insights. insightful teachers use appropriate materials, methods, and management to ensure literacy instruction is optimal. 2) teach decoding skills. integrate a systematic program that includes phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonic knowledge, context use strategies and fluency. 3) use exceptional works of literature. offer students a variety of text types that are linked to background knowledge and personal experience (rennie & ortlieb, 2013). 4) integrate reading and writing. reading and writing are taught together in most instances to develop the language process and support literacy. 5) use vocabulary knowledge to aid in comprehension. vocabulary instruction builds background knowledge to increase reading achievement (ortlieb, perkins, & verlaan, 2012). 6) teach reading comprehension. enhance comprehension through instructional strategies as well as accessing background knowledge. 7) teach reading using different kinds of texts. use different strategies to read different types of text. 8) use good assessment strategies. monitor student progress through use of reading assessment such as criterion-referenced tests, individual skills assessments, and interest surveys. 9) meet individual needs. provide small group instruction, and work stations that address various learning styles and skills. 10) organize and manage classroom environment. provide an environmental system that promotes literacy learning for all involved. integrate computer and technology in literacy instruction. use technology that prepares and enhances all facets of communication that ultimately aid in promoting multiple literacies. 11) engage in professional development. provide evidence of state-of-the-art competencies of teacher behaviors and responses during implementation of literacy instruction both in and outside of the classroom although the characteristics are limitless (block & pressley, 2002; collins & cheek, 1999; darlinghammond, 1996; fontas & pinnell, 2001; fuller & brown, 1976), most teachers have echoed that the mandates that are outlined in the literacy reforms present in today’s elementary classrooms present difficulties (krashen, 2005; proctor, 1984; snow, burns, & griffin, 2005; strickland, gankse, & monroe, 2002; taylor, 1999; u.s. department of education, 2004). by increasing expectations for lower performers and providing greater instructional support, teachers with high te may create changes in student perceptions of their academic abilities (ortlieb, 2010). as student efficacy becomes stronger, students may become more enthusiastic about schoolwork an analysis of teacher efficacy and perspectives about elementary literacy instruction 5 and more willing to initiate contacts with the teacher, which are processes that impact directly on achievement. evidence that te has a delayed impact on student achievement (i.e., high correlations between teacher efficacy and achievement months later) is congruent with this view. methods design the design for the study was an exploratory, qualitative ethnographic case study. a qualitative study was deemed appropriate because its design is central to inspecting both procedures and mandates geared towards changing instruction, but also how participants, in the present study, elementary teachers, perceive accountability measures. stake (1995) argued that researchers should think like an artist and embrace the many facets of realities that might arise from a question. this process may emerge and evolve as the researcher tells the story or interprets the case in context. one would identify the issues brought in by the researcher (etic), and those defined by the individuals involved in the study (emic) on a constant basis. yin (2009), on the other hand, prefers to employ the use of hypotheses intended to be used as a guide to explain a particular instance. such designs and discoveries that result provide the uniqueness of conducting case study research. ethnography is a qualitative research method rooted in anthropology that is an attempt to describe people's perceptions of meanings and events within the context in which they take place (lincoln & guba, 1985; spradley, 1979). rather than form questions that will largely predetermine the answers, this approach generates hypotheses from participant "rich descriptions." ethnography requires that investigators learn from people as "informants," rather than regard them as "subjects" (spradley, 1979). teachers become informants for ethnographers, who attempt to bridge the participant’s "meaning world" with a professional audience's meaning world through an ethnographer's meaning world (miles & huberman, 1984). ethnographic research is unique in that the goal is theory development rather than theory testing. theoretical concepts are generated directly from the detailed interviews with and observations from the participants themselves within the setting of interest. hypotheses are not predetermined, but generated at the end of the ethnographic study after all data have been gathered and analyzed. typical data collection techniques in ethnographies include both participant and nonparticipant observations in the form of field notes and transcribed interviews from informants. use of multiple sources provides researchers with triangulated data sources. typically, triangulation includes the use of multiple data sources, data collection techniques, analysis methods, and investigators to enhance the reliability and validity of study findings (lecompte, preissle, & tesch, 1993). participants/data collection four schools were selected to participate in the study using intensity case sampling (patton, 2002). an equal number of reading first and non-reading first schools were selected for inclusion. hollow brook elementary and willow lane elementary are currently receiving funding and functioning as reading first schools (pseudonyms are used throughout the study to preserve the anonymity of participants). green meadows elementary and winding trail elementary are schools that shadow the reading first model in similar aspects, but are labeled non-reading first schools due to lack of complete funding for staff and resources. through the use of intensity sampling and stratified purposeful sampling (patton, 2002), the district’s curriculum coordinator was asked to suggest schools with integrity and good intentions for the purposes of the present study. the four first grade teachers were chosen on the same basis with recommendations from the principals. information gathered reflected the grades, status, school performance score, growth label, and ranking as identified by academic assistance from the beginning of that particular school year. at the time of study, these are the data the school would use to drive the instructional goals in the school improvement plan. data analysis to investigate the relationship between teacher efficacy, beliefs, and curriculum, the participants were administered a questionnaire consisting of instruments measuring each variable. the pre-observation survey and reading coordinators site visit tools were used to document observations, classroom environment, and activities involving the literacy curriculum implementation. the planning and evaluation tool for effective school-wide reading programs devised by the college of education at the university of oregon was instrumental in providing a structure to measure elementary school-wide reading initiatives and implementation, as well as for developing the mid-study survey. the questions for the pre-observation protocol, question for the pre-observation interview, and the fixed response measure for teachers' beliefs and survey were developed based on weinstein's (1989) open-ended questionnaire to examine beliefs and actions. these forms were used in conjunction with artifacts such as “teaching moments” and “student responses/reactions” as noted by the observer and peers. also, additional questions that emerged from the study were used at the end of the study. some of the questions required teachers to respond on a five-point likert scale from “well below average” to “well above average.” in the reading first schools, recorded observations and the reading coordinators’ checklists were used to conduct classroom observations. these guides assisted in further communicating the purpose and current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 6 rationale of the study’s findings. these tools were used in combination with the questionnaires and surveys to illustrate what was observed during each designated time period. the information was analyzed to note similarities and insight into the variances of each setting. the observer used an adapted version of the qualitative observation quadrant to list and report findings in summary with the adaptation from what makes professional development effective?: analysis of a national sample of teachers (2002). to investigate the relationship between teacher efficacy, beliefs, and possible impact on the literacy implementation, the participants were interviewed periodically and individually asked to address questions that emerged throughout the study. the importance of this qualitative study was to provide the reader with collected data and research to discover what teachers’ beliefs and actions were within classroom with respect to teacher efficacy. results each school had a standard, and attempted to provide what was interpreted to be the best reading instruction on varying levels (school, administrators, teachers, students, instructional materials, and execution). as the data began to be revealed, differences in demographics and teacher perspectives became obvious. both young and brown were teaching in reading first schools and had the least amount of experience. these schools had low performance scores and received additional instructional support. hill and wells, on the other hand, had been teaching first grade in their schools for several years, were holders of advanced degrees, participated in school professional development opportunities, and had commendable school performance scores. it was also noticeable in the level of students that these teachers were instructing. about half of the students in the reading first classes were reading on or above grade level at the beginning of the year, while well over 90% of the students in the non-reading first schools had already met the goal at this time. testing data indicated students achieved both because of instruction and teachers’ willingness to implement the reading program with fidelity. although two distinct frameworks were employed for the discussion of the research, each teacher individually communicated her beliefs and uniqueness in working with students. the views expressed by all four teachers suggest that teaching is a passion, and that what underpins teaching is a combination of teacher knowledge and what teachers come to believe as “what works well” with their students. each school principal believed in the importance of looking at each teacher in the natural setting of their perspective classrooms. interactions among teachers, students, and literacy leaders helped to develop an understanding of practices in reading instruction. observations, interviews, and site visits allowed understanding and exploration of details that unveiled discoveries from one teacher to the next. the instruction that was observed in all four first grade classes reflects similar dynamics in the teaching of the skills of learning to read (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension). the consistency in this area was altered, however, due to the differences of materials in the reading firsts schools versus the materials in the non-reading first schools. this notion was being addressed at the district level by formulating a team to adopt a comprehensive reading program that all schools will use in the future to deliver reading instruction. teachers in the non-reading first schools were allowed to combine skills and add more of their teaching preferences in their reading lessons because of the slightly disjointed reading program and assessments. teachers in all four schools possessed levels of competencies that reflected their individual teaching styles while incorporating the model of reading instruction for the district. it was also noticed that the teachers went beyond the program to provide rigor, critical thinking opportunities, and extensions to the reading program whenever possible. in the reading first schools, materials were not an issue due to an abundance of funding. however, in the non-reading first schools, teachers were expected to fill-in gaps of instruction with the use of materials that were similar in skills and context. overall, the teachers’ efforts were geared towards making certain that students were equipped with the foundational skills needed to become successful readers regardless of the student level or circumstances surrounding the schools where they worked. instructional approaches the diagnostic/prescriptive approach to reading instruction is currently being advanced as an effective means of improving reading achievement in schools across the country (ortlieb & cheek, 2012). the basic idea of this approach is to rationalize the teaching of reading by providing teachers with a hierarchical sequence of well-defined reading skills around which to organize their reading instructional program. reading experts differ on what this sequence of reading skills should be, but, in general, the skill hierarchies that have been developed specify that teachers should begin with simple reading readiness skills and build up progressively to more advanced vocabulary, word analysis, and comprehension tasks (becker, mclaughlin, bass, pauly & zimmerman, 1986; block & pressley, 2002; bogdon & biklen, 1998; ortlieb, cheek, & verlaan, 2013). once a hierarchy of skills is selected, the diagnostic/prescriptive approach involves specifying diagnostic tests for each skill in the hierarchy, administering these tests to children to diagnose their reading skill deficiencies, and finally prescribing specific reading activities to children on an an analysis of teacher efficacy and perspectives about elementary literacy instruction 7 individual basis based on the results of these tests. as discovered in pelican school district, all teachers across the district were expected to teach according to the guidelines outlined in the newly adopted prescribed program. theoretically, the diagnostic/prescriptive approach leads to reading improvement through logical ordering and individualization of the sequence of reading activities presented to students. one important function of this manner of teaching stemmed from using the reading coaches to serve as change agents in assigned schools to support teachers in transitioning their instructional methods to meet the structured demands of teaching reading (reading first schools). in this role, reading coaches worked both formally and informally with the teachers on a one-to-one basis to interest them in adopting the diagnostic/prescriptive approach and in finding solutions to individual problems during implementation. the formal in-service training and the tangible elements of the principal and coach generally appeared to have served a significant role in changing teacher behavior. in the non-reading first schools, teachers working together with the principal and the reading coach decided to implement the diagnostic/ prescriptive approach solely on the basis of the formal in-service training and whatever written instructions were provided. in the case of the non-reading first schools, the first grade reading teachers were not monitored as closely by the district when it came to lesson delivery, formation of intervention groups, and topics of professional development at grade level. as success was achieved, all four teachers shifted their efforts to learn more about the district’s reading initiative and tried to make it work in their classrooms. the reading first teachers used the closely monitored guidelines, while the non-reading first teachers combined the new guidelines with ideas that they used in the past and made the change to the diagnostic/prescriptive approach. initially it was more of a challenge for the non-reading first teachers because they were expected to follow the district’s plan using two programs inclusive of missing components, whereas reading teachers in the reading first schools used fully outfitted programs (see table 1). although all teachers seemed apprehensive about what was expected at first, they were all willing to learn and would have appreciated having a say in the rollout of the new initiative, as well as time for more research on the development of the mandate prior to the start of school. all four teachers spent considerable time working towards the needs of the school by listening to those who seemed successful, becoming familiar with the new initiative on a greater level, and discovering how this new way of teaching reading would ultimately impact student achievement. each teacher in the study felt some sense of success and accomplishment in fulfilling the goals in reading for their students. they all felt that it took them just about the entire school year to change all of their teaching practices, and each teacher had suggestions on how to embrace the reading mandates for next year (ortlieb, 2013). all of the teacher participants had changed their pedagogical approach because of working with the reading coach and consultant on a one-to-one basis or being forced into changing by the mandates outlined by the new implementation authority structure of the new reading initiative. after a presentation of the formal elements of in-service held by the district, the first grade teachers typically started to achieve change by working with their principal and/or reading coach (if assigned), grade level teams, and working with their students to implement diagnosis and prescription in their classrooms. to understand the variance in practice among the four teachers’ classrooms, one must understand something about these teachers’ opportunities to learn table 1 summary of results results type relationship b/w beliefs and practices teacher role in developing instruction essential factors hollow brook rf high fidelity minimal; provided by reading coach ample support mechanisms willow lane rf high fidelity minimal; provided by reading coach ample support mechanisms green meadows nrf teacher autonomy customized but must scour for materials minimal inst. coaching winding trail nrf teacher autonomy customized but must scour for materials minimal inst. coaching current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 8 about their reading instruction and practice. certainly, the district mobilized an extensive array of opportunities for teachers to learn about reconstructing their practice including workshops in reading, new instructional materials, and curricular guides. to understand teachers’ learning opportunities, however, one must focus on more than the “curriculum” (workshops, curriculum guides, and curricular materials) that district administrators mobilize to help them change. what teachers understand from these opportunities is shaped by their prior knowledge, beliefs, and experiences (educational evaluation and policy analysis, 1990). just like students, teachers’ opportunities to learn about reconstructing their teaching are shaped in important ways by what they bring (knowledge, dispositions, and commitments) to their learning. we must, then, look at more than the district’s extensive reform efforts. we must also explore who these teachers are as learners about language arts teaching, especially their personal resources—commitments, dispositions, and knowledge—for learning. the reading first teachers and non-reading first teachers’ dispositions to learn about revising their reading instruction varied slightly from one another. although all teachers were committed to reconstructing their instructional practices, the way they arrived at the knowledge was different. the reading first teachers were given the information and received on-site assistance, while the non-reading first teachers felt as if they were being told to do the program with minimal say or support on how to work with all levels of students. they reported that new ideas and dramatic changes in their practice left many unanswered questions, and lacked a rationale for doing so in the beginning. as time went on, teachers began to understand the new initiative and its purpose; thus, the transition to alternative teaching methods was embraced. wells reported “i’m always trying to improve,” she explained, “that’s just something that i do.” wells was committed to learning more about reading pedagogy (wells personal interview, 2008) wells partakes in a teacher-advance program in education. hence, at the time of our study, ms. wells was very interested in reflecting on her reading instruction, but like many veteran teachers, she tried to remain calm when dealing with a variety of teaching concerns, mostly classroom management and how to juggle the district’s mandates and the program guidelines. hill, in contrast, believed that she had little space in her life to seriously consider nuances of her reading instruction. she commented that most teachers were still playing catch-up, needing to master what she already knew because of her school and on-site education. these dispositions influenced the manner in which these two teachers viewed the district’s reform efforts. although they both attended the same district reading workshops, they interpreted these opportunities differently. mrs. wells thought a main focus of these workshops was reading and saw them as valuable opportunities for learning new ideas about her teaching. in contrast, hill said she did not find district workshops as helpful because they explained practices she perceived to be “what i already do.” she commented: i already do a lot of these things, so therefore, i try to put a spin on the concepts to appeal to my students while using a teaching style within the parameter of the school’s requirements and our principal’s allowances. (hill’s personal interview, 2008) hence, it was revealed that all four teachers exhibited levels of teacher efficacy and related those factors through the interviews, surveys, and observations. each teacher ultimately taught the curriculum in sequence and as outlined to the best of her ability. the end result in the levels of their students was pivotal in how they felt about themselves as teachers. interestingly enough, all four teachers had students reading at or above first grade and only a few students did not meet the end of the year (study) goals. teacher ideas about reading instruction emerged as they became more familiar with the program and were able to associate how reading instruction should be implemented similarly with what they believed. in the end, it was noted that young had the most confidence in the program “as is” and expressed that she was willing to learn and gain all that she could. her eagerness to please the administrators and instructional leaders at her school was the key to motivating and giving her students instruction based on what they needed using what was given. brown, on the other hand, had to work out the challenges of being monitored and working in a new grade level on top of learning the new reading program. her issues stemmed from dealing with the nuances of balancing classroom management while instructing the students according to the strict pacing guide. hill discovered that this way of teaching reading was very similar to her philosophy once the academic year commenced. she constantly referred to materials and strategies that mimicked the outline of the new program that was part of her routines in years past. hill felt as if the district was not as straightforward about the rationale behind the new instructional program, which left a lot for teachers to assume initially. however, wells, like hill, also embraced this format of teaching, and found a way to incorporate more literature-response opportunities for students. both hill and wells felt as if materials and messages should have been differentiated in the initial training to allow teachers to situate their thinking and practice in fulfilling the mandates of the district’s new reading plan. all four teachers agreed that the plan offered “good first teaching” opportunities and that “the reading first model” can and should be adapted for each individual school. although materials were not an issue in the reading first schools, it became quite the challenge an analysis of teacher efficacy and perspectives about elementary literacy instruction 9 for non-reading first schools to carry out due to the lack of an inequitable distribution of materials. (note: the nonreading first schools were expected to use two programs to teach the concepts. the phonemic awareness and phonics program was distributed as new and was completely furnished. however, the fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension program parts were expected to be instructed using a six-year old program that was already in schools. hence, pieces were missing and not replaced. teachers were expected to combine all of the skills and fill in the gaps using the comprehensive curriculum as a third source to meet the required grade level expectations). another interesting factor that became apparent during the study was how the dimensions of teacher efficacy (ashton, 1984, p. 29) began to overlap and merge as the responses and observations began to develop; these include: • sense of personal accomplishment • positive expectations for student behavior and achievement • personal responsibility for student learning • strategies for achieving objectives • positive affect • sense of control • sense of common teacher-student goals • democratic decision-making the subjects involved in the study seem to tap into two or more of the dimensions during their participation and deepened as their understanding developed. from the surveys, observations, and interviews, most of the information received helped to capture the true essence of each participant regardless of the school and years of experience. limitations and implications for future research there are a few limitations to this study that suggest direction for future research. first, the relatively small sample of teachers consisted of four first-grade teachers, four principals, and four reading coaches/contacts from pelican school district. although the subjects offered information that varied due to reading first policy and non-reading first policy, the population represented a small fraction of the district’s entire profile. adding to this concern was the fact that observations were only made in first grade classrooms. although first grade is considered to be the most important grade that impacts the student in moving from learning to read to reading to learn, there is certainly value in expanding the study to include teachers of regular, gifted, and exceptional students. future variations of this study could be included to better distinguish specific abilities within the construct of teacher efficacy as it pertains to teaching reading to students in grades k-5. additionally, all participants in this study were chosen based on grade placement, principal recommendation, and willingness to participate. future research needs to examine the beliefs of all teachers and offer opportunities to express specific teacher needs and input as it relates to implementing literacy initiatives. additionally, a study of this caliber would possibly be more informative if the time frame commenced at the very beginning of the school year (including an analysis of teacher efficacy prior to inservice) and followed throughout the school year. this would give a broader spectrum towards understanding how teachers view the instructional practices related to reading at varying points of the school year. lastly, more research could provide valuable evidence regarding whether all of the instructional materials used to teach the model were similar between both reading first and non-reading first schools. although the structure and routines were basically identical, the fact that non-reading first teachers had to use pieces of a program to be in compliance caused uncertainty in delivering the instruction as outlined. therefore, these teachers longed for a program with all parts present while the reading first teachers struggled to get everything in and wished that they had time to expose students to more content of interest while incorporating other subject areas using their teacher autonomy. conclusion in summary, implementation of the diagnostic/prescriptive approach appeared to occur through a process of infiltration of the reading plan to teachers into the social structure of the school rather than through formal training activities. new insight into the relationship between teacher beliefs about reading instruction and their practices was revealed alongside adding substantial data to support the role teachers play in developing the how’s and why’s of literacy instruction in their classrooms. other factors were also found to be relevant to effective reading instruction, according to the teacher participants in this study. finally, some questions emerged from the study including the following: 1. which is more important—content or process, discipline or self-esteem, student respect for the teacher or mutual respect? 2. how can the most important factors from moment to moment be determined? for example, if a child is noticed sleeping in class when explaining a key skill or concept, what should the teacher do? stop what is going on and wake the child up so she won’t miss the content of today’s reading lesson, or continue with the whole-class instruction? 3. would it matter which child it was (low socioeconomic status, affluent background, mentally or emotionally challenged)? how would the interest level of the rest of the class influence one’s decision? in other words, what current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 10 is valued most highly at that moment? 4. how could the district offer support that is valuable to utilizing best practices in reading instruction? would this include teacher input or would teachers rely on the so called experts in the area and have confidence that what they recommend is good enough for her and her students? as in the case the four teachers in this study, teachers in general are very inquisitive and seek to know “why?” when it comes to curriculum and instructional decisions regarding their students. each teacher adapted her perspective of the new curriculum due to district mandates within the literacy initiative, but the change became more apparent once the discovery of ‘why” was made in progress with the students. hence, teachers can serve as crucial informants and motivators of a program when they approve and disapprove using firsthand experiences. future studies in the area of reading instruction, teacher efficacy, and teacher impact on student achievement could investigate how a teacher's sense of efficacy is directly affected by perception of control over instruction in the classroom, indirectly affected by faculty influence on school instructional policy, and directly affected by perception of students’ ability to learn. these data can be used to indicate that teacher efficacy is affected by teacher beliefs about students' ability to learn, faculty influence over school policy, and faculty beliefs about student behavior, which are extensions from previous research findings. teacher efficacy studies in these areas can also serve as a springboard to the development of related groups that state to what degree teachers are involved in decisions regarding curriculum and student grouping for instruction. other studies could explore specific student variables by asking the participant to imagine a particular student when responding to items rather than considering her or his ability to achieve an outcome for the classroom as a whole. future versions of the study should consider student variables as dependent variables rather than some imagined student the teacher may not have in her or his classroom. because teachers do influence students through their beliefs, attitudes, and values—their individual mental "maps"—is it not time to bring those things into consciousness? how many of our fellow teachers could clearly articulate their most deeply held beliefs and values about education? how many are aware that other teachers, principals, or supervisors may not share those beliefs and values? just because everyone uses words such as thinking, understanding, learning, or teaching, there is no guarantee those words have the same meaning for each person. it is one’s own beliefs and values that influence her work, not necessarily what is printed on the pages of a manual. who better to explore the geography of the mental landscape than educators? an individual’s beliefs, values, and metaphors, and the meaning attached to words and actions generally exist outside of conscious awareness. on a day-to-day basis, these factors drive teacher behavior automatically without their attention. that is not all bad. imagine what it would be like if teachers had to stop and consciously go through the decision-making process all day long. the point is a teacher’s behaviors frequently spring, not from higher-level thinking processes, but from habit and beliefs s/he may exhibit. after all, these habitual factors may unconsciously influence instruction and the beliefs which guide those practices. references ainsworth, m., ortlieb, e., cheek, e., pate, r., & fetters, c. 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(2013). an analysis of teacher efficacy and perspectives about elementary literacy instruction. current issues in education, 16(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1290 author notes joy abernathy-dyer, ph.d. elementary school principal villa del rey elementary baton rouge, la, 70806 united states 1-225-924-1606 jabernathy@ebrschools.org joy abernathy-dyer currently serves as a principal in east baton rouge parish. she is dedicated to improving reading instruction as evidenced by her many years of classroom teaching and her recent work with the east baton rouge parish school board. evan ortlieb, ph.d. faculty of education, monash university frankston, victoria, 3199 australia +61 03 9904 4661 evan.ortlieb@monash.edu evan ortlieb is an internationally recognized leader in the field of literacy education whose expertise centers on struggling readers. his research furthers the development of reading remediation and preparing teacher educators to provide optimal reading instruction. earl h. cheek jr., ph.d. executive director of the school of education louisiana state university baton rouge, la, 70803 united states 1-225-578-6017 echeek@lsu.edu earl h. cheek, jr. has substantially added to the field of diagnostic and prescriptive reading education as evidenced by over 100 peer-reviewed publications over his career. his areas of expertise include remedial reading instruction, reading teacher preparation, and best practices in primary/adolescent reading education. manuscript received: 08/28/2013 revisions received: 10/19/2013 accepted: 10/19/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 14 volume 16, number 3 october 30, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda hollis thomas elizabeth calhoun reyes assistant executive editors bonnie mazza constantin schreiber recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell nichole hugo sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker bonnie mazza kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template 1 volume 18, number 1 march 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x icts in language and literacy education in bangladesh: a critical review sardar m. anwaruddin university of toronto, canada the advancement of information and communication technologies (icts) has challenged the traditional notion of literacy as print-based reading and writing. in this article, i discuss why integration of icts into language and literacy curricula is important from the perspectives of the pedagogy of multiliteracies and sociocultural theories of learning. after reviewing the state of ict use in language and literacy education in bangladesh, i argue that the use of icts does not automatically guarantee improved student learning. on the contrary, it may reify transmission models of education and situate teachers and students in certain identity positions as passive consumers of pre-packaged curricula. building on althusser’s notion of interpellation, i give an example of how a top-down ict-integrated curriculum may severely restrict teachers’ and students’ agency to interrogate assumptions about power and politics around schooling and to develop a language of critique and hope. i conclude the article with a call for integrating the principles of critical pedagogy into teachers’ professional development programs so that teachers may learn to use icts in liberatory ways. keywords: ict, language, multiliteracies, critical pedagogy, bangladesh recognizing the importance of information and communication technologies (icts) in modern societies, both inter-governmental organizations, e.g., unesco and oecd, and state governments have prioritized the integration of icts in school curricula. although icts are supposed to be used across all subject areas, science and mathematics teachers use them more frequently than teachers of other subjects such as language arts (martinovic & zhang, 2012). nevertheless, scholars of language and literacy education have shown how icts that children use in their daily lives can improve their literacy practices (mills, 2010; gee, 2003; kress, 2003). many believe that technology has “the potential to transform education if teachers reform their instructional practices to engage students in meaningful learning and use of 21st-century knowledge and skills” (morrison & lowther, 2010, p. 4). research institutions such as the mit media lab have been designing various models of technology and literacy development (see, e.g., cassell, 2004). underscoring the importance of icts in language and literacy development, professional organizations such as the international reading association (ira) and the international society for technology in education (iste) have called for ict-integration into language and literacy education. one of the arguments underling this call is that language and literacy curriculum has opportunities to utilize icts, e.g., using the internet to find contextual backgrounds of a text. because of strong directives from governments and recommendations from educational scholars, language and literacy teachers—like those of other subjects—have been increasing the ict use in their classrooms (hutchison & reinking, 2011). despite the increase in ict use, i argue that the integration of technologies into the curriculum does not automatically promote student learning. what matters is how teachers create a learning environment in which appropriate uses of various technologies scaffold students’ learning. using this argument as the premise of this article, i focus on ict use in language and literacy education in bangladesh. i ask two questions in order to current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 2 understand the topic under review. first, to what extent do language and literacy teachers use icts in their teaching practices and professional development activities? second, how can teachers use icts to foster students’ critical consciousness about power and domination, rather than perpetuate a transmission model of education? in order to shed light on these questions, i present a brief discussion of the pedagogy of multiliteracies as a background to the “digital turn” in language and literacy education. then, i discuss ict use in language and literacy education from a sociocultural perspective. this section is followed by a discussion of the state of ict use in bangladeshi schools. finally, i discuss critical pedagogy’s offerings to teachers’ professional development in order for them to disrupt an identity imposed on them as a compliant implementer of top-down curricula. the digital turn in language and literacy education notions of literacy have dramatically changed over time. today, many scholars maintain that to be literate in the 21 st century, one must be proficient in the new technologies of our time. teachers are now faced with various challenges to prepare students for digital literacy skills, in addition to the traditional print-based literacy skills. one of the earliest traces of this digital turn was the use of computers in language and literacy education. this trend is frequently referred to as computer assisted language learning (call), which has been used since the 1960s. warschauer and healey (1998) divide the history of call into three stages: behavioristic call, communicative call, and integrative call. behavioristic call, practiced mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, was informed by the behavioristic learning models such as repetitive language drills. this paradigm of call viewed the computer “as a mechanical tutor which never grew tired or judgmental and allowed students to work at an individual pace” (warschauer & healey, 1998, p. 57). the next stage—communicative call—emerged in the late 1970s when personal computers were being popular and customized for individual use, and when theorists and practitioners were rejecting behavioristic approaches to language learning and teaching. proponents of this paradigm stressed that call “should focus more on using forms than on the forms themselves, teach grammar implicitly rather than explicitly, allow and encourage students to generate original utterances rather than just manipulate prefabricated language” (warschauer & healey, 1998, p. 57). the third stage—integrative call—grew out of a criticism of communicative call that it was being used in a disconnected way. critics argued that call activities needed to engage learners in authentic tasks and to help them learn to use technologies as a continuous process of learning. thus, the integrative call sought “to integrate various skills (e.g., listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and also integrate technology more fully into the language learning process” (warschauer & healey, 1998, p. 58). the principles and practices of call were closely intertwined with what would later be called the pedagogy of multiliteracies in the 1990s. pedagogy of multiliteracies many believe that the digital turn in language and literacy education is a natural consequence of globalization and the advancement of communication technologies. in recent decades, researchers have extended their focus beyond print-based literacy practices and studied other modes of text many of which are mediated by icts. proponents of the new literacy studies (nls) advocate that research and education of literacy involve “a repertoire of changing practices for communicating purposefully in multiple social and cultural contexts” and literacy practices should be regarded “as constructions of particular social groups, rather than attributed to individual cognition alone” (mills, 2010, p. 247). advocates of the nls also argue that we need to rethink about the theories of literacy (e.g., reading and writing) that have traditionally influenced our understanding of what literacy means. for instance, in the early twentieth century, most teachers and scholars took a “look-and-say” approach to literacy education. the main purpose of this approach was to read for meaning, which required no or very little intellectual engagement of students. in this period, we also saw the use of the phrase “functional literacy,” which was used to refer to a very basic level of literacy needed to perform menial jobs. the 1950s and 1960s saw little progression toward instructional strategies that focused on children’s ability to decode print-based materials. it was hoped that if children learned to decode, their “understanding and comprehension would follow easily and naturally” (glasgow & farrell, 2007, p. 3). other noteworthy developments that took place in the 1980s included the reading recovery and the whole-language approaches to literacy instruction. in the 1990s, theorists and proponents of nls argued for re-conceptualization of language and literacy education because the traditional components of literacy curriculum were not sufficient enough to represent all modes of communication. they believed that traditional linguistic forms were partial bearers of human communications. in the late 1990s and early 2000s, scholars called for a paradigm shift in the field of literacy education. this shift was from a theory of linguistics to a new theory of semiotics—“from a theory that accounted for language alone to a theory that can account equally well for gesture, speech, image, writing, 3d objects, color, music and no doubt others” (kress, 2003, p. 36). the new theory emphasized the needs and interests of the meaning-makers. this emphasis naturally encouraged integration of available icts that individuals used in their everyday lives. for this reason, lankshear and knobel (2003) focused on “literacies and issues about knowledge icts in language and literacy education in bangladesh: a critical review 3 associated with the massive growth of electronic information and communications technologies… [and also] new literacies associated with contemporary changes in our institutions and economy” (p. 17). thus, the nls re-conceptualized the nature of literacy, focused not only on acquisition of literacy skills but also on understanding literacy as a social practice, and recognized “multiple literacies, varying according to time and space” (street, 2003, p. 77). the nls witnessed a paradigm shift when educators and researchers went beyond the traditional notion of literacy as mono-modal linguistic skills. in 1994, a group of 10 educators met in new london, new hampshire, usa. these educators—now known as the new london group—proposed a new conceptualization of literacy, and argued that the traditional views of literacy were unable to respond to the demands of globalization and the advancement of communication technologies. they proposed a pedagogy of multiliteracies to include various multimodal texts such as visual, auditory, spatial, and gestural. the two main goals of the new london group’s (1996) proposal were: first, we want to extend the idea and scope of literacy pedagogy to account for the context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalized societies, for the multifarious cultures that interrelate and the plurality of texts that circulate. second, we argue that literacy pedagogy now must account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies. (p. 61) the new london group decided to use the word multiliteracies to encapsulate the outcomes of their meeting, debates, and discussions. this word denotes two important arguments of the new london group: “the first argument engages with the multiplicity of communications channels and media; the second with the increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity” (cope & kalantzis, 2000, p. 5). the first argument is particularly relevant to the topic of this article, i.e., icts in language and literacy education. the proliferation of new digital technologies and people’s dependency on them for everyday communication has shaken the very foundation of traditional notion of literacy as print-based reading and writing. as mills (2009) asserts, “educators and researchers worldwide are rethinking literacy pedagogy to enable students to participate fully in our dynamic, technological and culturally diverse societies” (p. 103). thus, the divide between literacy of print-based texts and literacy of the new multimodal, electronic texts—highlighted in the works of the new london group—has resulted in an increasing interest in ict use in language and literacy education. this interest in icts may be further understood through the lens of sociocultural theory of learning, to which i now turn. sociocultural theory of learning sociocultural theory of learning lends a useful framework to understanding the use of icts in language and literacy education. as street (2003) argues, we must understand literacy practices in terms of “broader cultural conception of particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing in cultural contexts” (p. 79). some may find this perspective problematic because educationists and social scientists rarely agree on the meaning of “culture.” nevertheless, i adopt a perspective that views culture in terms of the “components of human societies that are created by human groups to meet their survival needs” (banks, 2008, p. 133). along this line of argument, bullivant (1993) defines culture in terms of a group’s survival devices needed to adapt to various environments, one of which is the geographical and physical environment. in other words, any social group adapts to or modifies this environment “through its technology; this constitutes the tools, skills, and knowledge used to achieve practical results” (p. 30). if we consider today’s students as a social group, one of the primary tools that they use to adapt to their environment is ict of various types. moreover, due to the dynamic nature of culture, social groups constantly change their cultural tools. for example, we keep our tools up-to-date (e.g., using the latest technologies) in order to meet what bullivant (1993, p. 33) calls “new adaption pressures.” icts—as cultural tools—may become important learning tools when seen from the perspective of sociocultural theory, which posits that learning occurs through participation in social activities. theorists in this tradition draw heavily on the works of vygotsky (1978), who believes that individuals learn by internalizing various cultural aspects such as language, tools, and symbols. individuals transform their practices by negotiating meaning with others and situating their individual actions within collective activity. this sociocultural perspective views learning as embedded within social events in which individuals interact with other individuals, objects, and events. one of the key principles of this sociocultural theory is: the idea that the cultural tools and artifacts that people encounter as they participate in the activities of daily life are critical to the nature of the learning and development that arises…because these tools and artifacts are culturally produced and represent cultural innovations and changes, as we internalize their use, our thought is undeniably cultural in nature. (nasir & hand, 2006, p. 461) therefore, if we want to understand learning, we need to focus on how individuals draw on cultural artifacts and tools to participate in social activities or to solve problems. recent developments of sociocultural theories in language education research have challenged our understanding of the traditional cognitive and current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 4 behavioristic approaches to teaching and learning (cross, 2010). the sociocultural turn focuses our attention on the situated nature of learning, context in which it takes place, and various tools used for learning. in summary, the theory of multiliteracies and the sociocultural theory of learning are among the major propellers of ict use in language and literacy education (ncte, 2005; somekh, 2008; mills, 2010). however, it should be noted that opinions regarding the usefulness of ict use in school curriculum are polarized. the optimistproponents argue “that ict can change the nature and raise the quality of teaching and learning” (reynolds, treharne, & tripp, 2003, p. 151). such optimist-claim has inspired massive government and non-government investments in ict integration into education—of both teachers and students. while the proponents see ict as the panacea for all educational ills and as the necessary fuel for the engines of the “knowledge society,” others see it as the lever to turn huge profits on privatized and corporatized education systems (see, e.g., cummins, 2000). recognizing the complexity of and debates about ict use in schools, some scholars are cautious about any generic and transferable effect of ict and about an “easy assumption that because children like using technology, this in and of itself gives them the confidence and motivation that enhances learning” (livingstone, 2012, p. 12). keeping these nuanced arguments in mind, i now turn to the state of ict use in bangladesh, with a focus on language and literacy education. icts in bangladeshi schools unlike the 20 th century technologies such as telephone and television, the 21 st century technologies like computer and mobile phone have penetrated comparatively rapidly in both urban and rural areas in bangladesh. recently, the bangladesh government has decided to increase ict use in all spheres of civic life, including schools. the government is implementing a large project designed to improve the english language skills of 25 million bangladeshis by 2017 (bbc janala, 2014). furthermore, initiatives have been taken for professional development of language teachers who are using portable digital media players such as ipods and cell phones to acquire new knowledge and skills (shohel & power, 2010). although there are arguments for and against the use of icts in education in the global south, many governments in asia, africa, and south america are investing huge amount of resources to integrate icts into school curricula (shohel & power, 2010). like other southern countries, bangladesh has decided to improve its education sector through integrating modern icts. the government of bangladesh is implementing a nine-year (2008-1017) project aiming at improving the country’s language and literacy education. the project, known as english in action (eia) and funded by the ukaid, is trying to use “a combination of existing and new methods, including interactive audio technology, mobiletechnology, print and ict based materials” to enhance the learning of primary and secondary students, teachers, and adults (english in action, 2014, para. 2). although english has been in the school curriculum since the british colonial era, most students in bangladesh lack communicative competence in english. grammar-translation has been the dominant method of instruction, which has resulted in more competence in reading and writing than in speaking and listening (hasan, 2004). to overcome this situation, the government collaborated with various overseas organizations such as the british council and the uk’s department for international development (dfid). in collaboration with them, bangladesh made a comprehensive plan known as english language teaching improvement project (eltip). in the late 1990s, the government introduced communicative language teaching (clt) approach to teaching english in grades 1-12. other initiatives of the eltip included hiring foreign experts to train and supervise teachers and to advise curricular reforms. however, after one decade of investing various types of resource, the goals of the eltip have remained largely unattained (hamid & baldauf, 2008). other challenges in bangladeshi education sector include a lack of rigorous teacher education programs. a unesco report published in 2006 stated that one in five teachers in bangladesh has no teaching qualification (unesco institute for statistics, 2006). moreover, the process of teacher recruitment does not seem to select qualified and competent teachers. in the recruitment exams, candidates are tested on general knowledge such as language, current affairs, basic mathematics, and subject matter knowledge in the candidates’ chosen fields. such exams do not test teacher candidates’ pedagogical knowledge and skills (anwaruddin, 2012). additionally, many teachers’ “own experience of education, both at school and college, is as recipients of a transmission mode of teaching which emphasizes the learning of facts and repetition rather than engaging in higher order thinking” (thornton, 2006, p. 182). although some in-service teachers receive b.ed. training, it often fails to develop their professionalism because large class sizes and emphasis on memorization during the trainings perpetuate the transmission mode of teaching (thornton, 2006). most teachers use old-fashioned, chalk-and-talk approaches to classroom procedures. various components of teacher-centered “pedagogy remain the norm in bangladeshi school culture where students are in a passive role, limited to memorizing facts and reciting them back to their teacher” (shohel & power, 2010, p. 201). despite these challenges, bangladesh is implementing the eia project to improve the english language skills of students and professional knowledge of teachers. this project heavily emphasizes ict integration icts in language and literacy education in bangladesh: a critical review 5 in classroom teaching and teachers’ professional development activities. for example, walsh, shreshtha, and hedges (2011) report on an eia project that utilizes mobile technologies for teachers’ professional development. they find that this intervention was significant for enhancing english teachers’ professional knowledge. furthermore, shohel and banks (2010) describe school-based professional development trainings using icts, and conclude that “school-based support systems combined with technology enhanced open and distance learning (odl) are contributing significantly to tpd [teachers’ professional development] as an inservice training” (shohel & banks, 2010, p. 5483). this intervention was to support skills of communicative language teaching. english language teachers were provided with media players, preloaded with video and audio language learning resources, along with batterypowered speakers for use in the classroom. the authors claim that “materials on the ipod touch, especially audios and videos, are impacting on teachers’ personal and professional development” (shohel & banks, 2010, p. 5489). besides training teachers to utilize icts in the classroom, open language learning programs have been established. for example, bbc janala (janala = window in bengali) is an english language teaching service that incorporates multiple platforms to reach out diverse populations. it includes mobile phones, websites, television, and print-based media. since 2009, bbc janala has been using mobile phone as a low-cost educational technology to provide short audio lessons and text-message quizzes to any subscriber of one of 6 mobile phone providers in bangladesh. the organizers claim that “it is the largest, multiplatform innovation to improve basic english language skills anywhere in the developing world” (bbc janala, 2014, para. 8). anybody possessing a mobile phone may have access to this multiplatform language learning service. by dialing 3000 from any mobile phone, a user can learn english lessons such as essential english, pronunciation, or english for work. bbc media action and all six mobile phone providers have made an agreement to charge a reduced tariff for this language learning service. how icts are used in the classroom: an example as mentioned above, english in action is a massive nine-year (2008 to 2017) program aiming at developing english language skills of 25 million bangladeshi people. this £50 million-project is working closely with the ministry of education and the ministry of primary and mass education of the bangladesh government. the project also works in collaboration with other partners such as the open university, bbc media action, and two local ngos—the underprivileged children’s educational program and friends in village development bangladesh (walsh et al., 2013). the primary goal of the eia project is “to contribute to the economic growth of bangladesh by providing communicative english language as a tool for better access to the world economy” (walsh et al., 2013, p. 189). the eia project takes a school-based professional development (sbpd) approach to its activities. the project leaders claim that their ict-integrated professional development activities based on the principles of sbpd have “impacted positively on both teachers’ and students’ lives by significantly increasing their english language competence. teachers have learned and embodied new communicative language teaching (clt) practices and adopted robust student centred teaching approaches that have transformed classrooms across bangladesh” (shaheen, walsh, power, & burton, 2013, n.p. [my underline]). to shed light on whether or not this claim reflects the reality of ict use in the classroom, i searched for and watched video clips published by eia. below is an example of how a teacher used a technology-integrated curriculum supplied by eia. (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spzhyjkk9s [accessed: september 16, 2014]) the classroom shown in this video is part of the english in action project. here, the teacher uses a prerecorded classroom conversation between a teacher and her students. as you see in this clip, the classroom teacher has very limited instructional roles to play other than turning on the audio device. students talk to each other and hardly pay attention to the recorded conversation. reification of the transmission model of education as we see in this video, both the teacher and students are supposed to parrot what they hear in the recording. the use of technology in this case reifies the “transmission mode of teaching which emphasizes the learning of facts and repetition rather than engaging in higher order thinking” (thornton, 2006, p. 182). this model of education has traditionally been the dominant mode of teaching in bangladesh. what is crucial in the example cited above is that it is not only the students who are subject to the transmission model of teaching. the teacher has also become a compliant learner in the transmission pedagogy. she assumes a passive role while http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp-zhyjkk9s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp-zhyjkk9s current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 6 technology transmits packaged bits of information. this is, in fact, one of the major problems of over-reliance on technology while dealing with social affairs (heidegger, 1954). the human desire to use technology—be it a stone weapon or a cell phone—is driven by what habermas would call an instrumental rationality. this form of rationality is embedded in (i) over-reliance on science and rationality to control and manipulate both natural and social worlds, (ii) appeals to and use of knowable and measurable objective facts and laws of and causal relations in these natural and social worlds, and (iii) the ability to choose most appropriate and effective means for a given end (edgar, 2006). thus, the use of technology as a means to control the social world leads to a certain kind of decisionism, i.e., “the inability to reflect upon and assess values and goals” (edgar, 2005, p. 57). i argue that a certain kind of decisionism is at work in the classroom shown in the video. the way technology is used here restricts the teacher’s ability to not only reflect upon her pedagogical practices, but also exercise her agency as an educator. technology’s contribution to students’ literacy development is prioritized over the teacher’s contribution to it. this may be compared to a factory context where “the machines appear to do the work, rather than the craftsmen who designed the routine and the toolmakers who developed the machine” (shannon, 1987, p. 314). therefore, the classroom culture that we see in the video clip does not seem to allow the teacher to achieve the kind of agency required to act as an agent of change. indeed, the teacher shown in the video exemplifies what many critics have described as a low capacity for agency in terms of curriculum development within modern educational systems. this could be seen as the result of such systems having been subject for at least 2 decades to the combined influence of prescriptive national curricula and the use of outcomes steering, both backed by rigorous inspection regimes and the quantitative use of attainment data. (priestley, edwards, priestley, & miller, 2012, p. 192) thus, the modern education systems that adopt an instrumental rationality to achieve quantitatively defined outcomes do much more to erode teacher agency than to encourage teachers to work as curriculum makers. consequently, the teacher’s lack of agency hinders her from modifying official curricula “to suit the specific and changing situations...to have the greatest possible benefits for students” (marsh, 2009, p. 103). when the integration of technology into the curriculum curtails teacher’s agency, i argue that the teacher occupies a particular subject position within the sociopolitical power structure. below i draw on althusser’s notion of interpellation to discuss how the teacher’s subject position with its accompanying identities may result in pedagogical dysfunction when technology is used in ways shown in the video clip. althusser’s notion of interpellation louis althusser delineates his conception of interpellation in his seminal essay “ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes towards an investigation)” (althusser, 1971). in this essay, he explores how ideology functions as a mediator between individuals and systems of power. althusser shows that hegemonic power reproduces itself and attempts to blur various forms of oppression. through the process of interpellation, individuals learn to recognize themselves as subjects and gradually become complicit in their own domination. thus, an idea that i have (for example, using ict to teach literacy is desirable) is not merely on my own idea. it is presented to me and for me just to accept it. the process of interpellation works in a way that predetermines the individual’s response. althusser (1971) gives an example of a police officer who shouts “hey, you there!” as soon as an individual recognizes this call, he/she becomes a subject relative to state ideologies of law and crime. the individual who hears the cop’s call is forced to make a choice. although it may seem that the individual is a free subject and is given a formality of choice, the freedom is only to freely accept his/her subjection. as choi (2013) describes: whether it [the subject] should turn around or not is already decided in advance because, as althusser says, if it runs, then the cop—the ideological state apparatus—will immediately turn into a repressive apparatus and chase after it. still, the formality of choice (strictly understood as a structure of apparatus) is required because that is what differentiates the operation of the ideological state apparatus from that of a repressive one; althusser both discriminates and combines these two types in the figure of the cop. (pp. 29-30) thus, althusser’s notion of interpellation illustrates how individuals recognize themselves as subjects by acknowledging and responding to ideologies. as the above example shows, the pedestrian apparently has freedom to respond or not to respond to the cop’s shout. however, the pedestrian knows that the cop will chase after him/her if he/she does not respond to the cop. therefore, the pedestrian actually does not have any other choice but to turn around and occupies a subject position in the structure of power as represented by the cop. through this process of interpellation, individuals become subjects within the power structure and acquire necessary attributes that determine their social placement. when the teacher responds to a top-down call for using technology in a strictly prescribed way, she/he enters into an interpellated relationship with those in the upper tier of the power structure. while the teacher apparently has the “freedom” to refuse to use the icts in language and literacy education in bangladesh: a critical review 7 technology in the prescribed way, her/his response is predetermined—like the pedestrian in althusser’s example. if the teacher does not respond to the call, she/he will be labeled as a resister, as a bad teacher. her/his job will be in jeopardy. thus, in actuality, the education system does not offer the teacher any choice other than responding to its hegemonic call. as moje and luke (2009) explain, key to interpellation is the power of the call to invoke a response that situates the respondent in a particular subject position embedded in particular ideologies and knowledge systems. note the importance of others’ recognition—or positioning—in althusser’s conception of the call and response of interpellation. the respondent’s recognition of self is less critical than is the caller’s recognition of the respondent because it is the caller’s recognition that spurs the process. (p. 425) in short, the curriculum policy makers’ call presupposes the teacher’s response and thus puts the latter in a subordinate subject position. being situated in this position, the teacher becomes a puppet in the hands of policy makers, and carries out pedagogical work while being “judged by narrow notions of fidelity to policy intentions” (priestley et al., 2012, p. 210). as we have seen in the video clip, the particular way technology is used in the classroom does not pay attention to the ecological factors that may affect the teaching and learning in the classroom. therefore, it is important that we take a look at technology-integrated curricula and conceptualize teacher agency in a broad sense. in priestley et al.’s (2012) view, teacher agency is largely about repertoires for manoeuvre, or the possibilities for different forms of action available to teachers at particular points in time. these are dependent upon temporal aspects—the iterative and projective, as well as the practical evaluative possibilities afforded by the material and social configurations of the present context. (priestley et al., 2012, p. 211) this notion of agency brings us back to the sociocultural theory of learning that i discussed in the beginning of this article. although the integration of icts in education is partly influenced by the sociocultural theories of learning, technology-integrated curricula are often implemented in ahistorical and de-contextualized manners. in the video clip, we have seen how a one-sizefits-all approach has been taken to using technology in the classroom. we, therefore, need to (re)think about how teachers and students can use icts as helpful tools to achieve practical and context-specific pedagogical goals. below, i discuss how critical pedagogy may be helpful for teachers to avoid being interpellated subjects within the macro power structure in which schooling is regarded as a process of preparing students as obedient and skilled workers to run the engine of global capitalism (giroux, 1999; apple, 2006). implications for critical professional learning as i have argued, the use of icts does not automatically guarantee students’ successful language and literacy development. the teacher is key to creating an environment where icts may facilitate student learning. therefore, teachers need to understand the complex relationships among content, pedagogy, and technology. they also need to develop a critical understanding of technology-integrated curricula, which are often used as effective tools to perpetuate a transmission model of education that aims to prepare students as particular kinds of citizens who are uncritical of (or, unable to recognize) oppressive social and political structures (anwaruddin, 2013). therefore, teachers’ critical consciousness is important to teach students to reflect upon their “world” and to take action to transform it (freire, 1970, 1973). how can teachers develop this kind of critical consciousness? various models of professional development have been proposed to increase teachers’ ability to use technology in pedagogically meaningful ways. educational researchers have emphasized the importance of using icts in ways that are appropriate to contents they teach and contexts in which they work. as law (2010) states, “pedagogical ict competence, which is the teachers’ ability to make appropriate selection and use of ict tools in different curriculum contexts for different pedagogical purposes, is the most crucial determinant of actual ict use in instruction” (p. 211). thus, there is a general agreement that teachers need to be equipped with necessary knowledge and skills to make appropriate uses of available icts. building on shulman’s conception of pedagogical content knowledge, mishra and koehler (2006) propose a framework, which is being widely used to conceptualize the development of teachers’ technological and pedagogical content knowledge. the following visual illustrates the components of this model of professional development. figure 1. tpck model (mishra & koehler, 2006, p. 1025). in this model, mishra and koehler focus on teachers’ multifaceted and situated knowledge required for technology integration in teaching. naming their current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 8 framework technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpck), they illuminate the complex interplay among technology, pedagogy, and content. they argue that: developing good content requires a thoughtful interweaving of all three key sources of knowledge: technology, pedagogy, and content. the core of our argument is that there is no single technological solution that applies for every teacher, every course, or every view of teaching. quality teaching requires developing a nuanced understanding of the complex relationships between technology, content, and pedagogy, and using this understanding to develop appropriate, context-specific strategies and representations. (mishra & koehler, 2006, p. 1029) i agree that teachers’ knowledge of these three elements—technology, pedagogy, and content—are very important for them to create environments conducive to students’ learning. however, what is missing in this framework is the discussion of teachers’ and students’ development of critical consciousness (freire, 1973) about technology use. for example, who benefits from the use of icts in the curriculum? how does technology position the teacher and the student? whose voices are heard? whose are unheard, or silenced? to find answers to these questions, i now turn to the offerings of critical pedagogy. critical pedagogy has many meanings to many people. historically, critical pedagogy was heavily influenced by the frankfurt school. paulo freire was one of the most influential educators and thinkers who popularized the concept of critical pedagogy. most proponents of critical pedagogy argue “that every dimension of schooling and every form of educational practice are politically contested spaces” (kincheloe, 2008, p. 2). they point to how various (often invisible) forces operate in (the name of) education in oppressive ways. therefore, critical pedagogues aim to reveal how approaches to schooling “instantiate a formulaic repetition of sameness and reify a world order that represents itself as natural and commonsensical” (mclaren, 1994, p. 321). in this article, i adopt a conceptualization of critical pedagogy that aims to develop a language of critique and hope, and thus to achieve social justice for all (shannon, 1995). from this perspective, teachers and students who embrace critical pedagogy strive to “empower themselves for social change, to advance democracy and equality as they advance their literacy and knowledge” (shor, 1993, p. 24). however, we need to ask an important question: how can teachers and students “do” critical pedagogy? in other words, what does it mean to engage in critical pedagogy? to answer this question, i draw primarily on henry giroux’s notion of critical pedagogy. giroux (1983, 1988, 1992) discussed a number of principles of critical pedagogy. one of these principles is particularly relevant to my purpose in this article. this principle suggests that teachers move from a narrow language of professionalism toward a language of critique. giroux (1992) also suggests that teachers adopt practices that reveal historical, social, and ideological parameters that frame educational discourses and their “implications for the self, society, culture, and the other” (p. 79). this is important because teachers work at sites that are inextricably tied to the issues of power, control, and domination. schools are not neutral institutions that pass on objective knowledge to students. for giroux, they are fundamentally political institutions because they prepare students as particular kinds of agents with particular political and economic roles in the society. therefore, giroux argues that teachers need to work as intellectuals and disrupt the hegemonic structures of schooling that perpetuate domination and control. as giroux (2012, n.p.) argued: …by viewing teachers as intellectuals we can begin to rethink and reform the traditions and conditions that have prevented teachers from assuming their full potential as active, reflective scholars and practitioners. i believe that it is important not only to view teachers as public intellectuals, but also to contextualize in political and normative terms the concrete social functions that teachers have both to their work and to the dominant society. thus, giroux’s notion of critical pedagogy and teachers-as-intellectuals may help teachers acquire critical consciousness of power and domination in education. by embracing this principle of critical pedagogy, teachers may become actors in, rather than spectators of, education (freire, 1970). the model of teacher education and development that mishra and koehler (2006) have described as technological pedagogical content knowledge is important, but not enough to prepare teachers who will use icts in liberatory ways. as we have seen in the video clip above, the teacher uses technology in a way that not only perpetuates the transmission model of education, but also positions the teacher and students as uncritical consumers of pre-packaged materials. technology is used as a tool to communicate isolated bits of information to students and to reduce the teacher’s agency to teach students in ways that are meaningful and socio-culturally relevant to them. thus, the “technocratic and instrumental rationalities [that] are also at work within the teaching field…play an increasing role in reducing teacher autonomy with respect to the development and planning of curricula and the judging and implementation of classroom instruction” (giroux, 2012, n.p.). therefore, it is important that the spirit of critical pedagogy be integrated into various models of teacher education such icts in language and literacy education in bangladesh: a critical review 9 as the tpck of mishra and koehler (2006). when teachers develop the language of critique and hope (shannon, 1995), they are likely to refuse various identity positions imposed on them and on their students. they are also likely to avoid entering interpellated relationships (as in the case of althusser’s cop and pedestrian example) with those in the upper tier of power structures. in this way, critical pedagogy has the potential to encourage teachers to challenge and refuse subject positions imposed on them that characterize teachers as conduits between pre-packaged curricula and their students. critical pedagogy shows the teacher that “the commonsense values and beliefs that guide and structure classroom practice are not a priori universals, but social constructions based on specific normative and political assumptions” (giroux, 1983, p. 46). a critical pedagogy approach to teacher education—both preand inservice—may serve as a powerful form of “resistance against the forces that have stripped teachers of their professional power and dignity” (sprague, 1992, p. 189). it may also open up a possibility for classroom teachers to resist managerial control over their work and to work toward professional autonomy (forrester, 2000). thus, professional learning informed by critical pedagogy holds important implications for teachers to become transformative intellectuals (giroux, 1988) and to work as an agent of social change. conclusion the social futures ushered in by the technological advancement have changed the traditional conceptions and practices of language and literacy education. for example, the pedagogy of multiliteracies, advocated by the new london group, has challenged us to go beyond the print-based texts and focus on multimodal, electronic texts and forms of language. moreover, an increasing attention to sociocultural theories of learning in educational research has invited us to consider the roles of everyday icts in language and literacy development. when seen through a vygotskian lens, icts are cultural tools for today’s students, and these tools have great impacts on how they engage in social activities and internalize the use of various tools and artifacts. as a result, there is a global call for ict integration into school curricula. i have shown in this article how bangladeshi education sector is prioritizing ict use in classrooms as well as in teacher development programs. though very few would doubt the usefulness of new technologies to enhance language and literacy development, i have aligned my argument with those who maintain that “merely introducing ict into schools will not in itself lead to enhanced learning” (sutherland, robertson, & john, 2009, p. 30). furthermore, i have argued that teachers need to develop critical consciousness (freire, 1970, 1973) about technology use in the classroom in order to guard against the reification of transmission models of education that prepare students as uncritical consumers of isolated bits of information and as obedient workers to run the machine of neoliberal capitalism (anwaruddin, 2013). as we have seen in the video example of the classroom, the teacher’s agency is extremely restricted and she is seen as a mere tool for implementing a top-down, pre-packaged curriculum. building on althusser’s (1971) notion of interpellation, i have argued that by responding to the call for using technology-integrated curricula, both the teacher and her students have situated themselves in a particular subject position that denies their agency to develop a language of critique and hope (freire, 1970; shannon, 1995). the use of technology in the classroom does not seem to free the teacher and the students from repressive pedagogies that have long dominated the educational landscape in bangladesh (anwaruddin & pervin, 2015; thornton, 2006). therefore, i have proposed that the principles and spirit of critical pedagogy (giroux, 1983, 1988, 1992) be incorporated into programs of teachers’ learning and professional development. it is my hope that by embracing and engaging in critical pedagogy, teachers will be able to challenge any assumptions about technology-integrated school curriculum as a neutral tool to transmit “objective” knowledge to students. references althusser, l. 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(eds.), enhancing learning through technology (pp. 152-166). heidelberg, germany: springer. warschauer, m., & healey, d. (1998). computers and language learning: an overview. language teaching, 31(2), 57-71. http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/multimodalliteracies http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/multimodalliteracies current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 12 article citation anwaruddin, s. m. (2015). icts in language and literacy education in bangladesh: a critical review. current issues in education, 18(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1282 author notes sardar m. anwaruddin oise, university of toronto 252 bloor street west, room 11-267, toronto, on m5s 1v6, canada s.anwaruddin@mail.utoronto.ca sardar m. anwaruddin is a phd candidate in curriculum studies and teacher development at the ontario institute for studies in education (oise) of the university of toronto. he is recipient of the aesa-taylor & francis outstanding graduate student research award (2014). sardar’s articles have appeared in a number of journals, including asian efl journal, canadian journal of action research, asiatic, transnational curriculum inquiry, policy futures in education, professional development in education, educational philosophy and theory, and journal for critical education policy studies. manuscript received: 08/17/2013 revisions received: 06/01/2014 accepted: 09/12/2014 mailto:s.anwaruddin@mail.utoronto.ca icts in language and literacy education in bangladesh: a critical review 13 volume 18, number 1 march 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editors tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word #870 final layout.docx 1 volume 15, number 1 march 16, 2012 issn 1099-839x teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in florida’s title i elementary schools natasha a. vernaza barry university teachers are catalysts to the success of high-stakes accountability policies, yet noticeably absent from previous studies is an examination of teachers’ responses toward being held accountable for their students’ performance on state-mandated, high-stakes assessments in low socioeconomic status (ses) school settings. an on-line survey instrument was used to determine how third grade, title i classroom teachers in two southeastern florida school districts believed they were capable of being held accountable for their students’ knowledge of reading and mathematics standards assessed on the florida comprehensive assessment test. open-ended survey responses received from 61 respondents acknowledged the need for teacher accountability in terms of contingencies, students’ academic growth, and teachers’ instruction, but raised significant concerns regarding the fairness of high-stakes accountability policy and shared accountability for student achievement. keywords: accountability, florida comprehensive assessment test (fcat), highstakes, socioeconomic status (ses), title i nearly two decades after the birth of the standards-based reform movement, high-stakes testing and accountability remain issues of concern throughout our nation’s public schools. research continues to document teachers’ perceived pressures to demonstrate gains in student achievement on state-mandated, highstakes assessments (assaf, 2006; barksdale-ladd & thomas, 2000; bomer, 2005; moon, brighton, jarvis, & hall, 2007; pedulla et al., 2003). moreover, educators teaching in title i schools (i.e., schools receiving federal financial assistance due to the high enrollment of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds) face additional pressures of preparing “economically and educationally disadvantaged children” (jennings, 2000, p. 516) in becoming proficient with tested content. teaching in the dual context of a state that emphasizes high-stakes assessment, as well as a school whose demographic population may lack fundamental skills, potentially poses a significant concern for educators (booher-jennings, 2005; diamond & spillane, 2004). research has already established that children from low socioeconomic (ses) backgrounds generally enter school less ready to learn in comparison to their middle class peers (lee & burkam, 2002), and that ses plays a role in determining students’ academic achievement (baker & johnston, 2010; borg, plumlee, & stranahan, 2007; cunningham & sanzo, 2002). yet noticeably absent from previous studies is an examination of title i teachers’ responses toward being held accountable for their students’ performance on highstakes tests. this gap in the literature demands urgent attention since title i teachers possess firsthand experience with state accountability policy on a daily basis, and are held professionally responsible for the academic achievement of the disadvantaged students they are entrusted to educate. hence, the purpose of this study was to elicit classroom teachers’ perspectives regarding current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 2 the ways in which they believed they were capable of being held accountable for their students’ high-stakes test performance in florida’s title i elementary schools. by allowing title i teachers a voice as stakeholders accountable for their children’s education, the broader educational community can gain vital information regarding teachers’ daily occupational realities of highstakes policy implementation within low ses school settings. effects of state-mandated assessment a broad body of research conducted throughout the united states has consistently documented similarities in teachers’ perceptions of the effects of state-mandated assessment. such perceived effects have commonly included narrowing of the classroom curriculum and instruction, whereby teachers have devoted the majority of their instructional time to specific subject areas in which their students are tested. other effects have included changes in teachers’ instructional strategies aligned with test preparation, as well as a decrease in teacher morale and student motivation (barksdale-ladd & thomas, 2000; berry, turchi, johnson, hare, & owens, 2003; boardman & woodruff, 2004; jones & johnston, 2004; jones et al., 1999; parke, lane, & stone, 2006; pedulla et al., 2003; taylor, shepard, kinner, & rosenthal, 2003). one additional effect of state-mandated assessment relevant to the current study is teachers’ perceived feelings of test-related pressure to improve student achievement. teachers in multiple states have reported feelings of increased pressure from various individuals, ranging from district superintendents and principals to students’ parents. research has documented teachers’ feelings of test-related pressure regardless of the level of stakes associated with state-mandated tests (pedulla et al., 2003), as well as teachers’ feelings of constant stress and pressure to ensure students’ success on these exams (barksdale-ladd & thomas, 2000). in particular, teachers’ perceptions of test-related pressure are not uncommon in schools serving students from predominantly low ses backgrounds. a national study of elementary through high school educators showed that teachers working in schools with higher levels of poverty felt more pressure to raise students’ test scores (moon et al., 2007). moreover, interview data from teachers working in an impoverished urban texas neighborhood conveyed their perceptions of test-related pressure to increase students’ scores as one of the most significant effects of testing, whereby low-performing students were perceived as liabilities (booher-jennings, 2005). other studies have also documented teachers’ frustrations over being compared with educators of middle-class students when held accountable for their economically disadvantaged students’ test scores (wright, 2002), as well as teachers’ agreement that test-related pressures have led good educators to flee the teaching profession altogether (hoffman, assaf, & paris, 2001). such perceptions of test-related pressure in low ses communities seem to warrant justification. according to hertert and teague (2003), “poverty is the single best explanation research has found for why children differ in ways that affect school performance, both before they enter school and once they are enrolled” (p. 5). in fact, a positive relationship has been shown to exist between students’ ses and their performance on standardized tests (cunningham & sanzo, 2002). recent research has shown that low ses students attending title i schools were less likely to pass high-stakes tests than higher ses students attending non-title i schools (baker & johnston, 2010), and that ses was a key indicator of students’ success in attaining the minimum test scores necessary to meet graduation requirements (borg et al., 2007). teachers’ responses to accountability although previous research indicates that teachers seem to share similar perceptions of test-related pressure, several studies have established that teachers throughout the united states are not opposed to accountability. for instance, e-mail data from teachers in texas showed they were not against accountability, yet contended that classroom assessment served as a more valuable tool in informing their instruction rather than high-stakes tests (flores & clark, 2003). in another study, most educators surveyed in texas indicated that teachers should be held accountable for their teaching, yet did not believe their state’s high-stakes achievement test was an accurate measure of students’ learning (reese, gordon, & price, 2004). similarly, interview data from teachers in illinois indicated that although most agreed with being held accountable for their students’ knowledge of state standards, they also disagreed with the amount of emphasis placed on high-stakes testing (stitzlein, feinberg, greene, & miron, 2007). finally, almost all of the teachers interviewed in six other states recognized the importance of accountability, yet were in disagreement with the negative effects they perceived their state accountability systems had on curriculum and instruction (berry et al., 2003). teachers’ perceived feelings of test-related pressure do not appear to prevent them from favoring accountability in general, yet research simultaneously suggests that most teachers do not favor specific aspects of their state accountability systems. the critical question remains as to how teachers envision a favorable accountability system to which they are fully capable of being held professionally accountable for their students’ test performance. hence, this study attempted to ask title i teachers this question as a means of building the foundation for a new literature base on high-stakes accountability. in order to provide the context for the teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in florida’s title i elementary schools 3 present study, the following sections provide a brief overview of florida’s accountability system and outlines teachers’ responses to the policy documented thus far. high-stakes accountability in florida florida’s accountability policy, the a+ plan for education (section 1008.34, f.s.), was enacted by the state’s legislature under the leadership of then-governor jeb bush in 1999. labeled as “the nation’s most aggressive test-based accountability measure” (greene, winters, & forster, 2004, p. 1124), the plan called for increased accountability through school grades (ratings from “a” to “f”) based on elementary and secondary students’ performance on the state-mandated florida comprehensive assessment test (fcat) a criterionreferenced test that measures students’ learning performance on selected benchmarks from florida’s learning standards (i.e., sunshine state standards). [additional information regarding the fcat, as well as the revised fcat 2.0, is available at http://www.fldoe.org/.] in 2002, the school grading system was adjusted to incorporate an annual learning gains component so that school grades reflected student performance and learning gains equally. thereafter, florida’s public schools were assigned a letter grade based on: the percentage of students meeting high standards in reading, writing, and mathematics; the percentage of students making reading and mathematics learning gains; and the percentage of the lowest 25% of students who make reading learning gains (florida department of education, 2007). florida’s state board of education later added three more components to the school grading system: the percentage of students meeting high standards in science was measured, as well as the percentage of the lowest 25% of students making mathematics learning gains. in addition, high schools with at least 50% of 11thand 12th-grade students who retook the grade 10 fcat and met graduation requirements were eligible to receive additional school grade bonus points (florida department of education, 2007). in particular, third graders are unique from students in other elementary grades in florida since they must earn a level 2 or above (on a scale of one to five) on the reading portion of the fcat in order to be promoted. according to the florida department of education (2007), fcat scores are not adjusted for students’ ses: “schools are responsible for teaching all students, regardless of their socioeconomic status. all students are capable of making adequate learning progress, and all schools are held to equally challenging performance standards” (p. 20). data show that a combined total of 49% of all students eligible for free or reduced price lunch in two florida counties being surveyed in this study scored a level 1 on the fcat reading during the 20072008 school year (florida department of education, 2008). teachers’ responses to accountability in florida. sparse research has examined classroom teachers’ perspectives regarding florida’s accountability system. however, those studies that do exist convey similarities in teachers’ dissatisfaction. shortly after the plan’s implementation, survey and interview data from elementary through high school teachers and administrators throughout florida showed that the majority of the educators acknowledged feelings of intimidation by the fcat and school grading system, and disagreed with schools being rated based solely on students’ fcat scores (inman, 2001). thereafter, the national board on educational testing and public policy conducted a survey of elementary and secondary educators in 47 states in 2001 (pedulla et al., 2003), including 167 teachers from florida (abrams, 2004). the majority of florida’s teachers (80%) reported feelings of pressure from district superintendents to raise test scores. approximately 60% also indicated that the use of fcat scores to make promotion or retention decisions was inappropriate. similarly, focus group interview data derived between 2001 and 2003 from third and fourth grade teachers of english language learners and low ses students in an urban school district in florida also revealed their increasingly negative perceptions of accountability (shaver, cuevas, lee, & avalos, 2007). teachers complained about the misuse of students’ test scores to award school grades, and were even more concerned about the unfairness of retaining third grade students based on fcat reading scores. in addition, jones and egley’s (2004) on-line questionnaire of third through fifth grade teachers across florida in 2002 also documented teachers’ concerns regarding the unfairness of using test scores to compare students and judge teaching ability due to factors beyond the teacher’s control, such as students’ ses, cognitive abilities, emotional stability, cultural values and norms, as well as students’ parents and home life. other uncontrollable factors cited included students not being good test takers, or simply not performing well on the day of the test. included in the same theme were teachers’ perceptions regarding a lack of student and parent accountability. one additional theme that provided the impetus for the current study was jones and egley’s (2004) finding that although none of the teachers surveyed indicated they were opposed to accountability, more than 10% raised the concern that they did not favor the means by which they were being held accountable. since the survey did not elicit teachers’ views of a revised accountability system, the field of education has yet to understand teachers’ beliefs regarding their perceived ability to adhere to favorable state accountability measures. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 4 purpose of the study the purpose of this study was to investigate third grade reading and mathematics classroom teachers’ responses to high-stakes accountability policy in florida’s title i elementary schools. specifically, this study addressed the following research question: in what ways do third grade teachers believe they should be held accountable for their students’ knowledge of reading and mathematics sunshine state standards assessed on the fcat? methods participants participants were derived from the estimated population of approximately 720 third grade teachers in two school districts’ title i schools in southeastern florida. third grade teachers teaching in title i schools were labeled title i teachers for the purpose of this study. a total of 92 elementary schools having title i status and eligibility to participate in research studies for the 20082009 school year were identified from both school districts’ websites. charter schools were not included. once permissions to conduct research were received from both school districts’ research departments, access to participants was sought through school administrators. ninety-two principals in two school districts were mailed a packet containing a cover letter and a consent form. consent forms sought principals’ permission to allow their third grade reading and mathematics classroom teachers to participate in this study. follow-up packets were mailed two to three weeks later to principals who did not initially respond to the first mailing. of the 53 principals from both school districts who responded, 27 (51%) agreed to their teachers’ participation and returned the following written information to the researcher via u.s. mail: the name of a school contact person (not in a supervisory role); the contact person’s school e-mail address; the exact number of third grade reading and mathematics classroom teachers at the principals’ schools; and principals’ signatures as proof of permission. a total sample size of 184 teachers was attained. of the 184 teachers assumed to have been forwarded a survey via e-mail by their school’s designated contact person, 68 (37%) responded to this study’s survey. the majority of respondents (80%) were experienced teachers with five or more years of full-time teaching experience, while 20% were novice teachers with fewer than five years of teaching experience. most teachers (62%) indicated that the highest degree they obtained in education was a bachelor’s degree, whereas 38% held a graduate degree. most of the participants (86%) were employed in one of the two school districts surveyed. instrumentation a web-based survey instrument, entitled highstakes accountability in florida, was developed by the researcher. several survey items were adapted from two existing instruments (i.e., hamilton et al., 2007; parke et al., 2006). face and content validity were established by consulting with a panel of individuals who had expertise in developing surveys. each individual examined the survey items’ representativeness, clarity, and comprehensiveness. instrument revisions were made based upon their recommendations. the survey was then given to classroom teachers for the purpose of providing feedback to the researcher to ensure the instrument’s usability, whereby further revisions were made. an alpha coefficient value of .94 was obtained. overall, a combination of 44 openand closedended items elicited information about the following topics: demographic information; context and capability beliefs regarding professional development, instruction, and instructional resources; and perceptions regarding accountability. this article specifically discusses participants’ responses to one of the open-ended items that asked, “in your opinion, in what way(s) should third grade teachers be held accountable for their students’ knowledge of reading and mathematics sunshine state standards assessed on the fcat?” participants typed their responses into a text box provided within the on-line survey. overall, the survey required a maximum of 15 minutes to complete. procedure data collection occurred between october, 2008 and january, 2009. once consent forms were received by the researcher from principals allowing their teachers’ participation, cover letters inviting teachers to participate in this study were sent twice via school e-mail by the researcher to principals’ designated contact persons in 27 title i elementary schools in two southeastern florida school districts. the e-mail requested that the contact person forward the cover letter to all third grade reading and mathematics classroom teachers at their schools. cover letters indicated that the teachers’ participation may contribute to the field of education and literature focusing on the impact of high-stakes accountability policy. anonymity of teachers’ identity, internet protocol (ip) addresses, and survey data were assured. teachers who responded to the e-mail accessed the survey through an active link contained in the cover letter. all survey data were stored in an on-line database. data analyses sixty-eight web-based surveys were initially analyzed; however, two were discarded due to excessive missing data. frequency distributions were computed using the statistical package for the social sciences to obtain information regarding sample demographics. coding and a search for themes were used to analyze teachers’ open-ended responses. the coding process involved identifying and bracketing text that related to single concepts, and assigning codes that succinctly described the meaning of the text. codes were teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in florida’s title i elementary schools 5 examined for overlap; similar codes were regrouped and redundant codes were eliminated. three categories of codes were developed: teacher accountability (ta), other accountability (oa), and contingency-based accountability (cb). a codebook containing a list of 22 operational definitions corresponding with each code was developed. codes that occurred most often were grouped into broad themes that formed major concepts; similar themes were grouped and interrelated. interrater agreement was used to establish the dependability of teachers’ open-ended responses. one peer reviewer external to the study independently coded survey responses and searched for subsequent themes that emerged from the data. coding results and themes were then compared to the researcher’s to determine whether similar interpretations were made. this resulted in a 94% rate of agreement across all open-ended survey responses. results a total of 61 participants responded to this study’s open-ended survey item. preliminary analysis of teachers’ responses revealed that the majority of respondents acknowledged a general need for teacher accountability, a finding consistent with previous studies conducted throughout the united states (berry et al., 2003; flores & clark, 2003; reese et al., 2004; stitzlein et al., 2007). an examination of participants’ responses resulted in the identification of three themes: contingency-based accountability, accountability for student growth, and instructional accountability (see table 1). contingency-based accountability the most frequently recurring theme emerging from teachers’ open-ended responses was contingencybased accountability, whereby the majority of respondents indicated that teacher accountability for third grade students’ fcat reading and mathematics performance should be contingent or dependent upon the consideration of certain factors. such responses were usually signaled by words and phrases such as “if…, then,” “depending on,” “unless,” “only,” and “rather than.” in particular, three types of contingencies in need of consideration were noted: accountability for others; personal student factors beyond the teacher’s control; and students’ level of academic performance upon entering third grade. table 1 title i teachers’ proposed views of accountability in florida proposed views examples contingency-based accountability 1. accountability for others students, parents, previous teachers 2. factor beyond teachers’ control ability, home environment, behavior 3. students’ academic level mastery of second grade skills accountability for student growth 4. students’ knowledge of students gain one year’s worth of learning standards knowledge instructional accountability 5. implement instruction of the curriculum evidence of effective instruction current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 6 accountability for others. several respondents referred to accountability for others (in general) as a contingency upon which teacher accountability should be based. as noted by two respondents, “i don’t mind be [sic] held accountable, but i do mind being the only one accountable;” and “there are so many factors that contribute to learning that it would be unfair to hold one person accountable. it takes a village to raise a child.” other respondents identified specific individuals (in addition to third grade teachers) who should also be held accountable for students’ knowledge of florida’s reading and mathematics standards. for example, a few respondents referred to the need for student accountability in addition to teacher accountability, as noted in the following comment: “they [teachers] should be accountable for what they teach, but so should the students in the learning process.” accountability for previous teachers was also mentioned: “it is not just up to the third grade teacher – the previous teachers should also be held accountable because they must teach foundations upon which third grade teachers build knowledge.” also, a need for parent accountability was cited: “i think we should have to show a reasonable amount of growth per child per year. if you hold me accountable then the parents should also be held to the same accountability.” simultaneous accountability for multiple individuals was suggested: “i think it is a 50/25/25 teachers, students and parents should be held accountable for a child’s knowledge.” less than a handful of respondents shunned teacher accountability altogether: “third grade teachers should not be held accountable no [sic] shape or form.” personal student factors beyond the teacher’s control. consideration of student factors beyond the teacher’s control was the second most commonly cited contingency upon which respondents believed teacher accountability should be based. the majority of respondents referred to student ability (including capability, disabilities, and reading ability) as one such factor. corresponding statements included, “they [teachers] should be held accountable for the progress the students make, depending on the student’s [sic] capability;” “teachers should be held accountable to a certain degree. all students should be able to show gains in the academic areas, unless there is a severe disability;” “if the students are not reading at a third grade level due to their inability then the teacher should not be held accountable for the student recieving [sic] a 1 on the fcat.” several respondents also referred to uncontrollable factors or issues stemming from students’ home environments, including “reinforcement of [learning standards] from home,” “divorce, negligence,” and “social/home issue [sic].” other factors included students’ behavior; testing factors (“the child could have a bad day or could also be a nervous test taker”); and students’ backgrounds (“the population of the students should also be considered”). students’ level of academic performance upon entering third grade. the third type of contingency respondents believed teacher accountability should depend on was students’ level of academic performance upon entering third grade. related responses included, “students who are missing skills from second grade come into third with a disadvantage. i think teachers should be accountable for those who are ready to learn all third grade reading and math skills as tested on the fcat;” “if a student enters the third grade below level [sic] we should not be held responsible.” other respondents further elaborated: “many students arrive in 3rd grade unprepared for the course work. it is difficult to get all of the curriculum under their belts in 7 months and be 100% accountable for what they are able to do or not do;” “if i receive a student who arrives to me on a beginning 2nd grade reading level, it is hard to expect for my student to effectively pass the fcat which is at a level of an ending of the year for a third grade student.” these findings are similar to those previously obtained by booher-jennings (2005), whereby elementary teachers viewed below-level students as a “liability rather than an opportunity to promote individual growth” (p. 254). moreover, these responses appear to be consistent with the opinions of those who indicate that test scores themselves are not limited to reflecting students’ current learning experiences. as kohn (2000) states, “it seems difficult to justify holding a … teacher accountable for her students’ test scores when those scores reflect all that has happened to the children before they even arrived at her class” (p. 20). accountability for student growth a second theme emerging from participants’ responses was teacher accountability for students’ academic growth. several participants indicated that they should be held accountable for their students’ knowledge of florida’s reading and mathematics standards by demonstrating that their students gained a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s length of time (as is consistent with the plan’s underlying premise). such responses were similar to the following: “we should be accountable to show one year of growth in students’ knowledge of reading and mathematics.” other participants discussed students’ academic growth in more general terms: “i think we should have to show a reasonable amount of growth per child per year;” “third grade teachers should be held accountable for overall growth.” one respondent indicated that growth should be determined by each student’s point of academic origin upon entering third grade [“we should be held accountable for moving our students. we should be expected to move our students a minimum of a year from where they came to us”], whereas another respondent indicated that the performance of the whole class should teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in florida’s title i elementary schools 7 be considered versus looking at each individual child [“third grade teachers should be held accountable to the fact that their class as a whole has made progress. we can not guarentee [sic] how each individual child does on one test”]. finally, one respondent suggested, “there should be a growth model,” but did not provide additional details. instructional accountability a final theme emerging from participants’ survey responses was their description of teacher accountability for third grade students’ performance on the fcat in relation to whether or how teachers implement instruction of florida’s learning standards. such comments included: “teachers should be held accountable for effectively teaching the … reading strategies, and math concepts;” “they should be held accountable to the degree that each standard was taught and assessed prior to the fact [sic];” “in my opinion if i’m teaching by what the sss [sunshine state standards] are based, then i’m 100% accountable for student learning.” a few respondents even suggested the need for documentation as proof that instruction of the standards occurred: “teachers should be held accountable by having all the necessary documents showing what they did with that particular student and how they helped them [sic] better prepare for the fcat;” “if the majority of students have scored on or above grade level on the test, that should be sufficient to prove the skills had been taught and learned.” comments derived from this theme, as well as the accountability for student growth theme, are somewhat consistent with the basic tenets that characterize state-level accountability systems: teachers are responsible for focusing their lesson design and instruction on state learning standards based on the conviction that every child can learn and no child should be left behind. thereafter, high-stakes achievement data then serves as evidence to determine if students have met high standards and made learning gains. all but two teachers had some perception of what they envisioned teacher accountability should look like in the state of florida. one respondent stated, “i haven’t seen a truly effective way for teachers to be accountable for student’s [sic] knowledge. student’s [sic] knowledge depends on many factors including a good teacher, parental involvement, behavior issues, language issues, developmental issues, etc.” another teacher commented, “i agree that we should have some form of accountability through standardized data, but not in the form we have right now.” discussion and conclusion whereas previous studies have shed light on teachers’ dissatisfaction regarding various aspects of florida’s accountability policy (inman, 2001; jones & egley, 2004; pedulla et al., 2003; shaver et al., 2007), the current study provided an alternative focus by addressing the one question that researchers had yet to ask: in what ways do title i teachers believe they are capable of being held accountable for their students’ academic achievement on state-mandated, high-stakes assessment? the three subsequent themes derived from the survey data (contingency-based accountability, accountability for student growth, instructional accountability) confirmed previous research indicating that teachers are not opposed to accountability (berry et al., 2003; flores & clark, 2003; jones & egley, 2004; reese et al., 2004; stitzlein et al., 2007). many of the teachers’ comments began with phrases such as “third grade teachers should be accountable…” and “we should be held accountable…,” and revealed that most participants had preliminary conceptions about how teachers should be held accountable for their students gaining at least one year’s worth of knowledge in one year’s length of time. despite evidence documenting the relationship between ses and students’ academic achievement (baker & johnston, 2010; borg et al., 2007; cunningham & sanzo, 2002), teachers in this study did not refer to ses as an uncontrollable factor that should be considered when held accountable for their students’ high-stakes test performance as has been noted in previous research (jones & egley, 2004; wright, 2002). instead, they referred to uncontrollable factors related to students’ backgrounds and home environments. these comments mirror those derived from elementary teachers surveyed in florida shortly after the implementation of the fcat (jones & egley, 2004), and appear to be aligned with the views conveyed in the national association of school psychologists’ (2003) position statement on the consequences of high-stakes assessments: administrators and teachers are rewarded or sanctioned based on student test performance, despite having little or no influence on some factors that significantly impact student achievement, such as student mobility and parent involvement….myriad factors can impact the performance of any one student at a single point in time, significantly reducing the reliability of test scores. (pp. 2, 4) however, two significant results emerged from this study’s survey data. first, participants raised a concern regarding the fairness of high-stakes accountability systems in that a true disadvantage exists with students who enter third grade lacking previous grade level skills. such a concern merits further attention since teachers who are responsible for educating such students would essentially have to help their students gain more than one year’s worth of knowledge in one year’s length of time in order to become proficient with tested learning standards. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 8 a second result emerging from the survey data was teachers’ concerns regarding a perceived lack of shared accountability for students’ knowledge of florida’s learning standards. participants’ responses indicated they were clearly in favor of shared responsibility (linn, 2003) rather than one-way accountability (berliner, 2006), and confirmed previous research documenting the pressures teachers experience when held accountable for their students’ academic achievement based on one high-stakes test score (barksdale-ladd & thomas, 2000; booherjennings, 2005; moon et al., 2007; pedulla et al., 2003). participants’ responses supported the notion that in order for accountability to truly contribute to the improvement of education, the focus on accountability must be shared across all groups including teachers, students, and parents, as well as administrators, policymakers, and educational researchers (linn, 2003). although this study contributes preliminary findings to a new literature base on accountability in title i schools, several limitations must be recognized. small sample size may be partially attributed to responses not received from 39 elementary principals in 2 school districts solicited by the researcher. in turn, teachers at those school sites were not provided an opportunity to have a voice in this study. moreover, lack of teacher representation can also be attributed to an unanticipated restriction on the number of title i elementary schools deemed eligible to participate in this study by one school district’s research department. specifically, 49% of that district’s title i schools were labeled as “restructuring schools” and prohibited from participating in research studies, thereby limiting the total number of potential participants from that school district. thereafter, a low rate of returns was achieved. nonetheless, this study raises new questions regarding high-stakes accountability in title i schools: are title i teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in other school districts different from those elicited from this study’s respondents? do title i teachers in other school districts consider students’ ses a factor that influences their ability to be held accountable for their students’ high-stakes test performance? do title i teachers in other school districts have concerns related to the fairness of accountability policy in addition to those raised in this study? gaining further understandings of title i teachers’ perspectives is urgently needed since teachers are catalysts to the success of any accountability system. although the findings of this study are not intended to be generalized to other schools serving low ses populations, this study demonstrates the value of conducting research in title i schools throughout the state of florida as well as the rest of the nation. researchers may seek to build upon the current findings since accountability in title i elementary schools has yet to be systematically studied. future survey research may benefit from using follow-up or focus-group interviews as a means of allowing teachers to clarify and elaborate on their written concerns. based on the current findings, policymakers are now equipped with preliminary data that can be used to examine the specific ways in which florida’s accountability policy holds teachers responsible for their third grade students’ reading and mathematics achievement on the fcat in title i schools. the three accountability-related themes that emerged from participants’ responses confirm that teachers have voices that must be recognized at the policy level (debard & kubow, 2002; shaver et al., 2007), and possess valuable insights that are worthy of further discussion. survey data emphasized the need for dialogue between policymakers and educators, and suggest that title i teachers should have a voice in improving accountability systems so that they can assume greater ownership of high-stakes assessment policies. references abrams, l. m. 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(2003). a survey of teachers’ perspectives on high-stakes testing in colorado: what gets taught, what gets lost (rep. no. cse-tr-588). los angeles: university of california, center for the study of evaluation; national center for research on evaluation, standards, and student testing. wright, w. e. (2002). the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners. current issues in education, 5(5). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in florida’s title i elementary schools 11 article citation vernaza, n. a. (2012). teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in florida’s title i elementary schools. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/870 author notes natasha a. vernaza school district of palm beach county 3300 forest hill boulevard, west palm beach, fl natasha.vernaza@mail.barry.edu natasha a. vernaza is a recent graduate of barry university’s doctoral program in curriculum and instruction in miami shores, florida. she is currently a resource teacher for the school district of palm beach county. her primary research interests include high-stakes assessment, accountability policy, and self-study. manuscript received: 11/30/2011 revisions received: 3/1/2012 accepted: 3/4/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 12 volume 15, number 1 march 16, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 2, number 6 november 1, 1999 issn 1099-839x web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 1 jenifer l. wheeler todd m. miller henry m. halff mei technology corporation ruben fernandez sam houston high school, san antonio, texas lawrence a. halff bitmovers communications, inc. elizabeth g. gibson thomas n. meyer mei technology corporation this paper describes the development and evaluation of web places, a prototype web-based template system that allowed students at risk of academic failure to publish meaningful projects on the internet. the objective of this study was to assess the feasibility of the web places concept in the context of at-risk education. seven at-risk high school students used the prototype system to develop and publish a project on the internet. preand posttest data about the students' attitudes toward web places, learning, and technology were collected. the results indicated that web places was a useful tool for teaching and motivating the students. web places' potential for future development, evaluation, and application is discussed. the number of students at risk for educational failure is increasing, and often, schools are unable or unwilling to accommodate them (brown, 1986). however, at-risk students have the potential to succeed if their needs are recognized and addressed. at-risk children who are able to succeed despite their disadvantages can become adults with higher self-esteem and better qualifications for the workforce. unfortunately, the number of youth is decreasing in proportion to the remaining population, while the educational requirements for jobs at all skill levels are increasing (brown, 1986). these trends indicate that, to maintain our status as leaders in the global economy, we must ensure that a larger percentage of students gain higher levels of skills and knowledge. focusing on at-risk education may also help to reduce the magnitude of some social problems, as many of these problems are partially the result of inadequate education. the national coalition of advocates for children's 1988 report states that failing to properly educate children could result in increased government dependency and serious financial and social burdens for american taxpayers (wheelock, 1985). society can work to avoid costly future problems by investing in the development of today's children (ogden & germinario, 1988). this paper describes web places (http://www.web-places.com/), a system that was designed to contribute to the enhancement of at-risk education by providing at-risk students (and their teachers) with opportunities to participate in and publish educationally rich projects. for the purposes of this study, at-risk students were those who had less chance of http://www.web-places.com/ current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 2 succeeding in school than average students do because of factors such as economic status, race, parent marital status, and family circumstances (these factors were provided to us by the department of education, who funded this project). user-friendly templates alleviated the technical burden of developing a web page and allowed students and teachers to concentrate instead on learning and producing instruction for others. at-risk education teachers of disadvantaged students tend to focus almost exclusively on basic skills using traditional instructional methods such as whole-group lecture, repetitive drill-and-practice, and simple remedial exercises (means, chelmer, & knapp, 1991; blumenfeld, soloway, marx, krajcik, guzdial, palincsar, 1991; knapp & turnbull, 1990). using these instructional methods exclusively is uninteresting to most students and results in reduced educational opportunities, which in turn leads to learned helplessness, decreased motivation, and decreased chances of success (means, et al, 1991). more importantly, at-risk students often are not given the opportunities to learn the advanced skills needed for problem-solving and critical thinking. all students, but especially at-risk students, must have opportunities to participate in interesting and challenging education that focuses on advanced skills as well as basic skills. education research indicates that project-based learning activities can help at-risk children learn and practice a variety of skills and improve their attitudes toward learning (means, 1994; duttweiler, 1992), inducing them to actively participate in their own learning. the most beneficial project-based learning activities include six characteristics: opportunities to explore domains of interest; active, interactive, and attractive instruction; project orientation; collaboration with peers; opportunities to act as learner as well as designer; and opportunities to practice and develop fluency for advanced skills (means, 1994; duttweiler, 1992). integrating technology with curricula can enhance at-risk education (means, et al, 1993; means & olson, 1994). for example, technology can help provide authentic learning environments, better opportunities for collaboration, and interesting, innovative learning environments. technology also allows students easier access to information and more efficient ways to organize and display information. students who have the opportunity to use technology are also becoming more prepared for the job market, as an increasing number of jobs are becoming technology-oriented. finally, students who use technology in school tend to improve their school performance and problem-solving abilities and increase their motivation in reading, writing, and mathematics (bialo & sivin, 1990; reed, 1996). all of these factors have the potential to contribute to an increased self-esteem in at-risk students. an increasing number of educational programs and schools are integrating technology with their curricula, especially to fulfill the objectives in the goals 2000: educate america act and president clinton's technology literacy challenge. two examples of such programs include the accelerated learning lab and sweetwater union high school's advanced curriculum through technology. web places web places is a web-based template system in which students, without needing special technical skills, are guided in producing and publishing their own projects on the web. this paper describes the development process of a prototype web places template and describes the results of its feasibility study. although template designs are used in many contexts of web page development, they are most often used to aid in the development of home pages rather than educational projects. the web places concept is unique because its templates provide explicit organization and structure for project content, allowing students to produce quality educational projects. therefore, students can not only publish web-based projects without special technical knowledge, but they can also learn advanced skills associated with their projects (e.g., problem solving or critical thinking). this system allows teachers to attend to more complex student issues, such as group dynamics or discussions about potential topics. in addition, the nature of the web places concept provides students with a learning environment that includes the six characteristics (listed above) of an effective project-based learning activity. web places' applications of these characteristics are described in more detail below. opportunities to explore. the web already provides the opportunity to browse diverse sources of information, participate in simulations, and view and contribute to online artistic creations. web places extends this opportunity by allowing users the ability to enter and organize information obtained off-line. students have the freedom to explore any domain and to create on-line environments that can be explored by others. active, interactive, and attractive instruction. the combination of the web's interactive nature and web places' student-directed nature allows at-risk learners to both view and create interesting, attractive instruction. project orientation. traditional approaches to at-risk instruction often do not provide the learner with a project orientation (a meaningful context for learning). as a result, at-risk students sometimes have difficulty understanding the applications of their learning activities. the project-based instructional approach used in web places is designed to help students form a project orientation. by allowing students to create original, interesting projects, web places has the potential to help students feel empowered and perhaps motivated because they understand the goal and importance of the learning activity. http://nis.accel.worc.k12.ma.us/ http://intergate.suhsd.k12.ca.us/actnow/overview.html http://intergate.suhsd.k12.ca.us/actnow/overview.html web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 3 peer collaboration. collaborating with other students to produce a product promotes individual responsibility and facilitates shared expertise and specialization (scardamalia, berieter, mclean, swallow, & woodruff, 1989). collaboration and communication skills are crucial for success in all aspects of society, especially the workplace. in addition, collaborative learning allows students of varying abilities to learn from each other as they work together to produce a common goal. collaboration is an integral part of web places because students must work with others in the group to develop their project. learner as designer. learning is more meaningful when students function as producers as well as consumers of information (the cognition and technology group at vanderbilt, 1994). students who teach other students take an active role in learning and develop better academic and social skills. in web places projects, students not only learn about their chosen domain by conducting research, but they also teach about their domain by selecting and designing instructional materials. focus on advanced skills. embedding basic skills into real-world contexts that involve advanced learning activities can help students learn advanced skills as well as basic skills. the project-based learning environment offered by web places allows students to use and develop many different types and levels of skills, such as teamwork, research, writing, or organization. conceptual design of the web places template structure in our conceptual design, the heart of a web places installation is an intranet/internet server that hosts web places software and project data. the server may be a dedicated computer in the school, or it may run on an internet service provider's system. students and teachers interact with the server using standard internet clients running on desktop computers in the schools or at home. materials are entered into the project using a variety of portable equipment and facilities available in the school itself. the internet server also serves as the school's link to the internet, providing students with access to materials on the web, serving as a publication vehicle for projects, and linking the installation to a central web places community site, web places central. once the template is selected, it is configured for the project according to the number of students involved, the volume of material, time spans, and other pertinent data. as shown in figure 1, the configuration includes one or more interactive, web-based project manuals, an interactive web-based facilitators' guide, a repository for project materials, and a web-site for publication of the materials. all of these elements are resident on the installation's intranet/internet server. developing the project involves simply filling in the infrastructure with content. a dynamic, web-based project manual created at the beginning of the project guides students in this work. the project manual combines instructions on content development with interactive forms for entering that content. as materials are entered into the project's repository, a publication system creates a web site for the project. through a system of access restrictions, the site is first reviewed by the project team and then by teachers or administrators. when deemed ready for publication, the site is opened for general access, publicized through search engines and links to related sites, and included as a link in web places central. the conceptual design of a project template consists of the elements listed in table 1. figure 1: web places project template components http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure1 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#table1 current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 4 table 1: elements of a web places template design element description general goals types of projects supported by the template (e.g., virtual art galleries) project development process steps to be taken in planning the project, collecting materials, editing, publication, and maintenance materials types of materials that make up the project content, their formats and the vehicles used to collect them implementation requirements hardware and software requirements, staffing, administrative procedures possible project configurations ways the project can be configured for different numbers of students, different time frames, etc. project manual structure structure of the intranet site used to guide project development and collect parameters instructor's guide structure structure of the intranet site used by teachers to oversee and support project development project web site structure structure of the web site used to publish project content materials repository structure structure of the database used for storage and retrieval of project content prototype design of the web places template structure a prototype version of the template was developed and implemented for the current study. (a partial version of the conceptual design shown in table 1 was implemented as the prototype. the implementation provided the core elements, the project manual, facilitators' guide, project web site, and materials repository in a single configuration. each of these elements was skeletal, with rough placeholders instead of finished text and graphics.) this implementation provided the project manual, facilitators' guide, project web site, and materials repository in a single configuration. bitmovers communications, inc. developed this template based on bitproject 2 , a system for developing web-based collaborative information-sharing environments. bitproject provides the capability to equip a web site with data forms of the sort needed for web places' templates. these forms allow users to enter items of a particular type, edit those items, and view the items added by others. access to bitproject's data is controlled by a system of groups and privileges that allow for the implementation of the concept illustrated in figure 1. thus, web places' prototype project web site gave the public viewing permission for all areas of the web site and permission to contribute to the discussion forums. the project manual gave students permission to contribute items to the site, edit or delete their own contributions, and view the contributions of others. the facilitators' guide gave teachers permission to edit material throughout the project. bitproject associated each participant with his or her privileges so that students and other participants were automatically given the permissions appropriate to their roles. the graphical design of the web site was developed in parallel with the prototype template. at the end of the project the two were integrated so that the project web site offered an attractive graphic design. the same design was presented in the template, allowing editors to see how their material would appear to viewers. research objective the main objective of this study was to determine the feasibility of implementing the web places concept in an at-risk educational setting. the following research questions were formulated to evaluate this objective. 1. to what extent does the web places concept attract and engage at-risk students? http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#table1 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#table1 http://www.bitmovers.com/ http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#endnote2 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure1 web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 5 2. what kinds of materials and content do at-risk students develop for web places projects? 3. do the core web places elements (table 1) provide sufficient support for development of web places projects? 4. what critical issues arise in the course of web places implementation? 5. what are the effects of web places (in its prototype implementation) on individual students and the school as a whole? method participants. a local high school was used as a test site for the prototype development. the representative from the school selected four female and five male students, aged 15 to 17 years and of diverse ethnic backgrounds, to participate in the web places project. all nine students were considered at-risk for reasons such as economic status, race, parent marital status, and family circumstances. these characteristics were provided to us by the united states department of education. six of the nine students were participants in a technology magnet program hosted by the school. time constraints caused one student to withdraw from the project. another student was expelled from school and, therefore, could not continue with the project. thus, seven students participated throughout the entire project. procedure a pretest-posttest research design was used to evaluate the research questions outlined above. before introducing the students to the concept of web places, we administered a structured interview (developed in-house), a computer experience questionnaire, and the self-esteem index (brown & alexander, 1991) to each student privately. the structured interview was designed to collect information about each student's background information, perceptions about academic competence, and attitudes about school, learning, technology, and the web places project. the interviews took approximately 40 minutes each to complete. while the interviewers had a set of prepared questions, students were not discouraged from exploring other topics. as part of the structured interview, students were asked to complete a series of six questions (self-assessment of relevant academic skills, also designed in-house) designed to assess their perceptions of academic competence. specifically, students were asked to rate, on a 1-5 point likert scale with anchors, their confidence in problem solving, research, organization, planning, project work, and teamwork. the computer experience questionnaire was designed to collect information about the students' usage of computers. using a 1-5 point likert scale with anchors, students rated their frequency of computer use, confidence in computer abilities, and enjoyment derived from computer use. items representing these entities were composited to form pretest and posttest estimates of individual frequency of use, confidence, and enjoyment. the self-esteem index is a standardized measure of self-esteem normed against an 818 year-old referent population (brown & alexander, 1991). it consists of 80 items that provide a general measure of self-esteem and sub-indices quantifying familial acceptance (fa), academic competence (ac), peer popularity (pp), and personal security (ps). measures of internal consistency ranged from .80 to .93 on these indices. the general sei score is the best overall measure of a person's self-esteem. at the completion of the project, we also conducted a focus group to gain more information about the students' and the teacher's perception of the project. the focus group questions encompassed project concept development, template design and use, research, and general experiences with the project. two researchers conducted the focus group and five students attended. results and discussion the results obtained for each research question are described below. question 1: to what extent does the web places concept attract and engage at-risk students? the results of the focus group provided information about the students' perceptions and ideas about the web places project. the students' comments from each of the discussion's subdivisions are described below. project concept development the students chose to develop a project on the media's portrayal of issues that affect teenagers, including the treatment of gay students, teenage pregnancy and daycare, standardized tests, and school uniforms (this concept is discussed in more detail under question 2 below). the students had mixed feelings about the project selected. one student mentioned that the project concept was "boring at first" but more enjoyable later. all of the students stated that they enjoyed being a part of the concept development process; however, they indicated that they had too many choices and would have benefited from more guidance. they suggested that being presented with more structured topics of study in which to develop projects would have helped them in the concept development process. during this phase of the project, the teacher who organized the student group did not have time to give them a great deal of guidance. therefore, it may be beneficial in the future to integrate projects with classroom activities, where it would be part of the teacher's job to provide guidance. template design and use all of the students agreed that the templates were easy to use. although they could not suggest many ways to change the templates, one student suggested the developers capitalize on collaboration opportunities by providing the capability for site visitors to enter their own materials into the templates. another student mentioned http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#table1 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#question2 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#question2 current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 6 that he would have liked a spell checker integrated with the templates. research the students stated that, at the beginning of the project, they felt somewhat uncomfortable with the interview and questionnaire process. however, once they became more familiar with the team members, they felt more at ease. although the students did not mind completing the computer experience questionnaire, they questioned the relevance of the sei and expressed discomfort at having to complete it. general project experience three themes emerged from this portion of the focus group. personal experience. several of the students indicated that working on the project helped them improve their research skills and learn about new topics. the project also gave them the opportunity to meet new people. the students felt that they learned the importance of time management. in addition, they enjoyed being exposed to an office environment, learned work-related skills, and learned new perspectives on their topics. teamwork. the students stated that, initially, they were apprehensive about working on the team because they did not know each other. once the project began, however, most of the students enjoyed working with the other team members and learned about the importance of teamwork. some students learned to be more patient with others and to be more open-minded. one student admitted that he might not have felt as motivated to work if he had not been a part of a team. ownership. all of the students had spoken to or shown the project to their peers, teachers, and parents. most of their peers expressed interest in working on similar projects. the students' teachers and parents were proud of the students' work and effort. question 2: what kinds of materials and content do at-risk students develop for web places projects? to promote feelings of ownership and empowerment in the students, we guided them in designing their own project concept. we provided the students with several project ideas and criteria for an acceptable project. the criteria were that the project should be fun and interesting for all team members; unique and creative; academically relevant; appropriate and consistent with their school's academic philosophy; useful to others in the school, the community, and beyond; interactive; practical; and replicable. over the course of three sessions, the students produced three possible project ideas: censorship, the effects of media on behavior and attitudes, and technology and art. by the third session, the students had decided to pursue a project on the effects of media on attitudes and behavior. the students were particularly concerned about the media's portrayal of their school and of social issues that affect american teenagers. with this concern in mind, the students chose to study how four issues are portrayed in the media. these issues included the treatment of gay students, teenage pregnancy and daycare, standardized tests, and school uniforms. each of these issues was of particular concern at the test school. for example, the school's daycare center for children of students is a source of considerable controversy in the community. the students' ideas for the site were considerably more in-depth and significant than those we envisioned. the nature of the chosen project required that the students collect a variety of multimedia materials reflecting two sides of the issue for each topic (a point and counterpoint). students collected stories from newspapers, magazines, and the internet, and also investigated the portrayals of each of the topics in the entertainment media. in addition, students developed analyses of and reactions to their findings. the final published project can be viewed at web places. question 3: do the core web places elements provide sufficient support for the development of web places projects? the partial implementation was functional and allowed materials to be entered through the project manual, reviewed via the facilitators' guide, and published via the project web site. table 2 summarizes the prototype implementation of each template element, and figure 3 illustrates the project web site. table 2: elements of prototype template design element description prototype implementation general goals types of projects supported by the template (e.g., virtual art galleries) the general goal of the template was to present points and counterpoints (using text and supporting media) on chosen issues. http://www.web-places.com/ http://www.web-places.com/ http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure3 web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 7 project development process steps to be taken in planning the project, collecting materials, editing, publication, and maintenance (e.g., virtual art galleries) the project development process consisted of four steps. first, a set of four issues was identified. second, materials were gathered that make up the content of the site. third, the materials were entered into the student guide at the web site. fourth, the site was reviewed and published. the result of this process is available at web places. materials types of materials that make up the project content, their formats and the vehicles used to collect them the required materials consisted of several examples of the media's treatment of an issue (e.g., a newspaper article) to support the students' points and counterpoints, a student-generated reaction to or analysis to each example, and ancillary materials such as web links, student interviews, and video clips. implementation requirements hardware and software requirements, staffing, administrative procedures implementation requirements for the site development were minimal. text materials could be entered through any browser. graphics, video, and sound were digitized and added to the site by the site developers (bitmovers, inc.). possible project configurations ways the project can be configured for different numbers of students, different time frames, etc. the template could be configured for any number of issues and could accept contributions from any number of (authorized) contributors. project manual structure structure of the intranet site used to guide project development and collect parameters the project manual allowed students to add and edit content to the web site and is identical to the project web site, with the addition of a single form that students can use to edit and/or add topics. instructor's guide structure structure of the intranet site used by teachers to oversee project development the instructor's guide was identical to the project manual. however, an individual logging on as an instructor can edit any contribution, whereas a student can only edit her own contributions. project web site structure structure of the web site used to publish project content the project web site was the published version of the project. the structure of the project web site was hierarchical (see figure 2). a home page provided an overall introduction to the site. visitors could then choose a particular issue to investigate and, within that issue, browse any of its topics. each topic consisted of a point, counterpoint, and supporting links or media. a discussion forum on each issue was also available where visitors could voice their reactions. materials repository structure structure of the database used for storage and retrieval of project content the database was hierarchical in form and reflected the structure of the materials. http://www.web-places.com/ http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure2 current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 8 figure 2: project web site structure the main forms in the site are shown in figures 3 and 4, which show the project web site and the project manual. figure 3: project web site http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure3 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure4 web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 9 figure 4: project manual question 4: what critical issues arise in the course of web places implementation? by examining the processes that the students used to deal with the project development process, we gained considerable insight into the issues that arise when working with at-risk students and the strengths and weaknesses of the initial design. although the students were given a preliminary task list to help them assemble folders with relevant research materials, the students did not completely understand the task and were not able to adequately prepare for the next meeting. therefore, we developed specific goals for the students' project and assigned specific tasks to each student. the students felt that they had a better understanding of their goals and began to conduct research and collect materials. students were given a task inventory form to help them stay organized. this form allowed the students to categorize their sources and describe the relevance of their research. time constraints and general confusion among the students prevented them from collecting an adequate amount of quality material. as a result, the group scheduled a supervised trip to the local public library where the students were introduced to the library's automated search facility and taught basic research skills. while this visit improved the quantity and quality of materials collected, students still had difficulty analyzing and abstracting raw materials into the larger framework of the project. however, project-related time constraints required that students begin data entry. the students spent two days entering materials into the template. on these occasions, we provided guidance on how to improve the quality of current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 10 student input (e.g., how to structure paragraphs and provide evidence). under this direction, students were better able to produce quality work. lessons learned the issues described here have implications for the future design of web places. first, the students involved in this study were busy people. a serious problem in the implementation of web places, or in any program designed to enhance at-risk students' academic experiences, will be allowing time for these activities. the next version of web places will involve projects that can be incorporated into existing curricula, so that students can have scheduled time for their projects and receive more teacher guidance. second, the students had serious concerns about complex issues. participating in a project in which they could study those issues provided them with an orientation for their learning and allowed them to practice advanced skills, such as research and writing. similar projects that focus on more trivial issues may not be as attractive or beneficial for at-risk students. finally, at-risk students cannot be expected to come to projects with all of the research skills needed to complete them. the next version of web places will offer extensive support in the form of research guides for both students and teachers. it will also contain tools such as connections to appropriate search engines that make project research easier. question 5: what are the effects of web places (in its prototype implementation) on individual students and the school as a whole? qualitative data were collected from the structured interview and descriptive statistics were calculated for the remaining measures. due to the small group sample, calculating inferential statistics was deemed inappropriate. structured interview this section provides an aggregate summary of the interview results, separated by the instrument's subdivisions. background information before the beginning of the project, each student discussed a wide variety of interests and extracurricular activities, including church choirs, sports, the national honor society, computer activities, and school-sponsored expeditions. in addition, many of the students worked at part-time jobs or volunteered at organizations such as nursing homes or park maintenance facilities. because the students were already active in extracurricular and volunteer activities at the beginning of the project, little change in activity was observed between the pretest and posttest interview sessions. perceived academic competence and attitudes toward school in general, the seven students involved in web places enjoyed school and considered themselves competent, hard-working students. five of the seven students were members of the technology magnet school, a program they considered challenging and rewarding. favorite classes included visual media, english, math, and various computer classes. several students planned to attend college, and one student planned to join the air force. the students did not express a change in attitude or perceived academic competence between pretest and posttest interview sessions. attitudes toward technology all seven students were comfortable using computers before becoming involved with the web places project and regularly used them for schoolwork, games, and e-mail. the students agreed that computers make schoolwork easier, and some indicated that computers allow people equal access to information. the students stated that, although some of their teachers are timid about using computers, most are enthusiastic about them and use them in many aspects of teaching. in fact, the teacher who organized the student group was the coordinator of technology magnet school and had an enthusiastic attitude toward computers. the structured interviews did not reveal a change in attitude toward technology between pretest and posttest sessions. project expectations and perceived benefits the students got involved in the web places project mainly to learn about computers, the internet, and technology. in addition, the students wanted to do something that would help improve their school's image, which they perceived as negatively distorted. other reasons included receiving recognition, having fun, facing new challenges, meeting new people, and improving communication skills. the students perceived many benefits from working on web places. for example, they indicated that they learned to do research, work on a team, and manage their time. they also learned about the issues they chose to investigate and gained new perspectives about them. in addition, they learned the benefits of technology, met new people, got exposure to an office environment, and learned job-related skills. finally, the students felt that the project helped to educate people about their chosen issues and helped to improve their school's image. structured interview: self-assessment of relevant academic skills although the students reported project benefits during the interviews, the self-assessment of relevant academic skills demonstrated a slight reduction in confidence in problem-solving, research, organization, planning, project work, and teamwork skills over the course of the study (see table 3). two potential explanations seem plausible for this finding. first, at posttest, some of the students were busy studying for the state's standardized achievement test and final exams. many were involved in several extracurricular activities in addition to web places. it is possible that the students http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#table3 web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 11 were simply overburdened at the time the questions were asked. it is also possible that the students had unrealistic perceptions about these skills. the web places experience required them to plan, research, synthesize, and organize content with other team members. perhaps the demands of this situation caused them to rethink their previous answers. table 3: self-assessment of relevant academic skills shaded areas reflect differences in pretest-posttest responses. designates a decrease in a respondent's confidence. designates an increase in a respondent's confidence. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 12 computer usage, confidence, and enjoyment as a result of the sample selection procedures employed in this study, the students scored high on the computer experiences indices at both pretest and posttest (participants were primarily from the technology magnet school). in general, there was a small, but consistent, decrease in computer use, confidence, and enjoyment. this decrease is not likely due to the introduction of web places. rather, it is most likely linked to changes within the school regarding computer use. school officials placed severe restrictions on all computer use, especially student e-mail and internet access, as a result of several student pranks in the school. reported usage of various forms of software declined from pretest to posttest. despite this decline in use, student ratings of the enjoyment of e-mail and the internet in general remained unchanged. it seems these findings are related to systemic changes and not to the introduction of web places. self-esteem index it was proposed that the introduction of web places would facilitate improved self-esteem by providing the students with a sense of ownership and purpose. because all of the students on the web places project were considered at risk, their self-esteem scores were expected to be low (see figure 5). this was generally not the case. the overall total self-esteem scores (percentiles) on the pretest ranged from 37 to 99; however, most students scored above the 50th percentile. in general, selfesteem scores increased from the pretest to the posttest. the overall total self-esteem scores (percentiles) on the posttest ranged from 58 to 99. overall scores on the academic competence (ac) and peer popularity (pp) subindices showed the largest increase from pretest to posttest. overall scores on personal security (ps) decreased. it is possible that working on web places helped increase the students' feelings of academic competence because they constructed a meaningful project and helped increase their feelings of peer popularity because they successfully collaborated with others in the group to produce a quality project. perhaps months of doing homework and extra projects, taking standardized tests and finals, and doing extracurricular activities caused stress and lowered their sense of physical and psychological well being. figure 5: average self-esteem scores by scale. http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure5 web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 13 conclusion web places integrated technology and education by encouraging students to use technology to publish a meaningful and educational project about the effects of the media on issues important to teenagers. in addition, web places provided students with the opportunity to collaborate with other students they may not have previously had the opportunity to contact. as students used web places and benefited from these advantages, they felt that they improved their advanced skills (such as research, writing, and teamwork) and self-esteem by participating in meaningful projects. the next phase of web places development will address the issues encountered during the prototype development. for example, future implementations will integrate a wizard, a search tool, an improved system for collaboration, and more flexible and sophisticated data entry and revision tools. in addition, future web places projects will be integrated with curricula and incorporated as class activities. students will still be able to choose their specific project, but their teachers will choose the domain in which they work. in addition to increasing the amount of guidance students receive, integrating the project with class activities may promote effective peer tutoring, as more heterogeneous groups can be formed. future work will also incorporate a more robust research plan, using a larger number of subjects, a control group, and more web places templates. the number of templates will continue to grow and be added to web places central, a main site serving the web places community. if successful, web places will become a nationwide, self-sustaining community dedicated to expanding the range of project-based educational activities. this study demonstrated that web places shows promise in fulfilling its short-term goal of providing an effective mechanism for improving the chances for at-risk youth to succeed in school. notes 1. this material is based on work supported by the u.s. department of education under contract number rw97076118. any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the department of education. 2. bitproject is based on frontier, a cross-platform scripting system. bitproject, in its next version will be xml compliant and therefore provide all benefits of next-generation web browsers. references bialo, e., & sivin, j. (1990). report on the effectiveness of microcomputers in schools. new york: interactive educational systems design. blumenfeld, p., soloway, e., marx, r., krajcik, j., guzdial, m, & palinscar, a. (1991). motivating project-based learning: sustaining the doing, supporting the learning.educational psychologist, 26, 369-398. brown, r. (1986). state responsibility for at-risk youth. metropolitan education, 2, 5-12. brown, l., & alexander, j. (1991). self-esteem index: examiner's manual. austin, tx: pro-ed, inc. cognition and technology group. (1994). multimedia environments for developing literacy in at-risk students. in technology in educational reform: the reality behind the promise. barbara means (ed.) san francisco, ca: jossey bass publishers. duttweiler, p. c. (1992). engaging at-risk students with technology. media and methods, 29(2), 6-8. knapp, m.s. & turnbull, b.j. (1990). better schooling for the children of poverty: alternatives to conventional wisdom: vol 1. summary. washington, dc: u.s. department of education, office of planning, budget, and evaluation. means, b. (1994). using technology to advance educational goals. in b means (ed.).technology in educational reform: the reality behind the promise. san francisco, ca: jossey bass publishers. means, b., blando, j., olson, k., middleton, t., morocco, c.c., remz, a.r., & zorfass, j. (1993, september). using technology to support educational reform. washington, dc: u.s. department of education, office of educational research and improvement. available online: http://www.ed.gov/pubs/edreformstudie s/techreforms/ means, b., chelmer, c., & knapp, m.s. (1991). teaching advanced skills to at-risk students: views from research and practice. san francisco: josseybass. means, b. & olson, k. (1994). tomorrow's schools: technology and reform in partnership. in b. means (ed.), technology in educational reform: the reality behind the promise. san francisco, ca: jossey bass publishers. ogden, e.h., & germinario, v. (1988). the at-risk student: answers for educators.lancaster, pa: technomic publishing company. reed, w. m. (1996). assessing the impact of computerbased writing instruction.journal of research on computing education, 28, 418-437. scardamalia, m, beriter, c., mclean, r.s., swallow, j., & woodruff, e. (1989). computer supported intentional learning environments. journal of educational computing research, 5(1), 51-68. wheelock, l. (ed.) (1985). barriers to excellence: our children at risk. boston: national coalition of advocates for students. http://www.ed.gov/pubs/edreformstudies/techreforms/ http://www.ed.gov/pubs/edreformstudies/techreforms/ current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 14 1999 article citation wheeler, j. l., miller, t. m., halff, h. m., fernandez, r., halff, l. a., gibson, e. g., & meyer, t. n. (1999, november 1). web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth. current issues in education [on-line], 2(6). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number6/. author notes contact information: jenifer wheeler, mei technology, 8930 fourwinds drive, suite 450, san antonio, tx, 78239, (210) 655-8911. jenifer wheeler is an instructional designer and research scientist at mei technology. she has conducted instructional and interface design and evaluations for several projects involving training software and intelligent tutoring systems for both teenagers and adults. ms. wheeler received her m. s. in industrial/organizational psychology from st. mary's university. jenifer wheeler can be reached via e-mail atjenifer@meitx.com. todd miller is an instructional designer and research scientist at mei technology. for the past six years, he has worked on the fundamental skills training project, a multi-year air force effort to build and evaluate advanced training technologies and to transition these technologies to public education and industry. he has also participated in surveys of effective teaching behaviors for implementation in intelligent-computer assisted instructional systems (icai), and of distance learning providers and technologies. he has contributed to the design and development of two computer-based adventure games for training, one for technical training, and the other for teaching children about the psychophysiology of stress. mr. miller received his m. a. degree in industrial/organizational psychology from st. mary's university in san antonio, tx (1993). todd miller can be reached via e-mail at todd@meitx.com. henry m. halff is a senior scientist at mei technology corporation. he served as principal investigator for web places and for high level simulation with instructional design expertise (hiside), an air force sponsored project aimed at implementing knowledge-based generative computer-based training systems. hiside was an outgrowth of his recent success with another air force project, the advanced instructional design advisor (aida) which also addressed techniques for generative computer-based training. his other projects at mei technology have included a project on the design of a computer game to teach logistics and adventure games for science education. dr. halff received his ph.d. in psychology from the university of texas at austin in 1969 and completed an nimh post-doctoral fellowship the following year at the university of michigan's human performance center. henry m. halff can be reached via e-mail at henry@texas.net. ruben fernandez is the coordinator of the technology magnet school at sam houston high school. mr. fernandez served as the liaison between mei technology and his school during the web places project. ruben fernandez can be reached via email at rfernandez@saisd.net. lawrence halff is a software designer with experience in website development, web database and application development, multimedia software design, and multimedia research. he is currently a managing partner at bitmovers communications, inc, which focuses on developing customized internet communications solutions. mr. halff received his m.a. in education from the university of british columbia. lawrence halff can be reached via e-mail at halff@bitmovers.com. elizabeth gibson is a research psychologist at mei technology, where she provides research planning and support for various training systems projects. dr. gibson earned her ph.d. at the university of oregon. elizabeth gibson can be reached via e-mail at gibson@tri.sbc.com. thomas meyer is a research scientist at mei technology. for the past four years, he has worked on the fundamental skills training project, a multi-year air force effort to build and evaluate advanced training technologies and to transition these technologies to public education and industry. mr. meyer received his m.a. in industrial/organizational psychology from st. mary's university. thomas meyer can be reached via e-mail at nick@meitx.com. http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html mailto:jenifer@meitx.com mailto:todd@meitx.com mailto:henry@texas.net mailto:rfernandez@saisd.net mailto:halff@bitmovers.com mailto:gibson@tri.sbc.com mailto:nick@meitx.com web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 15 note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation wheeler, j. l., miller, t. m., halff, h. m., fernandez, r., halff, l. a., gibson, e. g., & meyer, t. n. (2011). web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth. current issues in education, 2(6). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/830 http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 cie template 1 volume 7, number 3 february 5, 2004 issn 1099-839x teaching a 'humanistic' science: reflections on interdisciplinary course design at the post-secondary level marcia jenneth epstein university of calgary development of post-secondary curriculum in emerging interdisciplinary fields presents particular challenges in course design and resource utilization, especially when the field is interdisciplinary by nature of its inherent breadth. a new course at the university of calgary, designed to introduce undergraduate students to the methods and philosophy of acoustic ecology --the study of sound and its effects on health, cognition and culture - exemplifies both the challenges and some practical solutions. following a brief history of the concept and its philosophy, a summary and critique is presented from the first offering of the course as a pilot project. conclusions drawn include the necessity of an integrative approach to interdisciplinary fields of study that are true 'interdisciplines', the utility of experiential fieldwork, and the advantages presented by a student group with diverse academic backgrounds. introduction: mapping the territory the development of new post-secondary courses in established disciplines allows the course designer to follow a path – one that may have many branches and options, but a path previously taken by other course designers and instructors with some success. the development of new courses in interdisciplinary contexts, and in new disciplines, requires a somewhat different process of exploration, largely without maps. literature searches may turn up few truly relevant results. precedents may be incompletely applicable to the situation at hand. unexpected attendance -or lack of it – at the first class may suddenly turn a lecture course into a seminar, or vice versa. the course designer and/or instructor‟s task is to turn uncertainty into an advantage. this requires 1) flexibility in planning; and 2) a pedagogic focus on conveying to students how andwhy the integrated field of study (or „interdiscipline‟; klein 1990) answers questions that cannot be answered by its predecessors or its component disciplines. the latter task is crucial, since it demonstrates the necessity of integrative thinking to the understanding of emerging fields of study that do not segregate the traditional categories of sciences, social sciences and humanities. it is my purpose here to describe one such exploration and to show its significance to the philosophy and pedagogy of interdisciplinarity, in the hope that it may serve as an example to curriculum designers and other administrative decision makers of the advantages of interdisciplinary approaches. the implications of such approaches for administrative structures will be discussed in the concluding section. in order to clarify the significance of interdisciplinarity to the discussion presented here, it is useful to distinguish among the terms multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and interdisciplinarity. according to theorist julie thompson klein, the distinction is crucial. she describes multidisciplinarity as “a juxtaposition of disciplines”(klein 1990, p.56), such as the teaching of social history with history of the arts. multidisciplinary frameworks may in time give rise to interdisciplinary ones, or to new disciplines (e.g. performance studies, gender studies). transdisciplinarity is defined as describing “conceptual frameworks that transcend the narrow scope of disciplinary world views...signif[ying] the interconnectedness of all aspects of reality” (ibid., p.66), e.g. rhetoric, phenomenology, and sociobiology. interdisciplinarity, however, is not associated with a current issues in education vol. 7 no. 3 2 specific category of subject matter or method. in fact, klein suggests that its definition tends to flex with the uses to which it is put in the service of scholarship and pedagogy. it is rather a process of integrating methods and information, which may be, derived from particular disciplines into a unified approach that is not limited by any particular canon. from this concept comes klein's use of her coined term 'interdiscipline', which is particularly useful to the emerging category of fields which begin as interdisciplinary networks rather than growing from a multidisciplinary base. for purposes of discussion here, i propose to limit its use to the description of fields of study that are fully integrated; that cannot be broken into component disciplines without distortion. examples of such interdiscipline are urban planning (integration of history, architecture, art, geography, demographics, design, engineering), choreography (physiology, kinesiology, history, literature, music, aesthetics), and environmental studies (geography, biology, geology, anthropology, chemistry, resource management). the designation of 'interdiscipline' also applies to an emerging branch of environmental studies, a field called acoustic ecology, which integrates acoustics, cognitive psychology, aesthetics, geography, sociology and music. acoustic ecology may be called a "humanistic science" -- its roots lie at the intersection of music composition and the science of acoustics with social movements toward environmental awareness. it encompasses the study of sound in human and natural environments (including noise, music, speech, animal communications, and silence) as it interacts with issues of cognition, community, culture, and health. as a field which transcends traditional categories of study, including the division between fine arts and sciences, it represents an evolving interdiscipline which is relatively new to academic scrutiny and to inclusion in curricula. for this reason, it provides a useful example of the challenges involved in developing interdisciplinary courses based on integrated subject matter rather than a combinative multidisciplinary perspective precedents in pedagogy the literature of interdisciplinary education in its general sense of including more than one discipline is extensive and inclusive, but often of limited relevance to the teaching of fully integrated subject matter at the postsecondary undergraduate level. the majority of it refers to multidisciplinary collaborations at the secondary level; e.g. using art, literature, and/or geography to teach history. most studies, too numerous to cite here, focus on the successes and failures of specific programs. accounts of secondary and undergraduate pedagogy may present interdisciplinarity as an administratively imposed task that requires team teaching (meister and nolan 2001, frank and schülert 1992, bartell 1979). the notion of interdisciplinarity as a concept inherent to some fields of study is rarely given emphasis. even fields of study that began in the 1960s and '70s as interdisciplines, e.g. communications and women‟s studies, developed in the 1990s to include disciplinespecific canons of literature and methodology. thus, the question of „what is an interdisciplinary subject?‟ imposes itself on the process of course design. literature on interdisciplinary pedagogy at the level of university undergraduate programs is focused on three principal areas: definition, defense, and evolution. a distinction between multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches is drawn by squires (1992), who cites "integrative degrees" such as medical sociology as examples of fully realized interdisciplinarity motivated by new categories of employment. hagoel and kalekinfishman (2002), working from within the perspective of medical sociology, trace the expansion of disciplinary concepts in the sciences, citing environmental studies and medicine as fields in which interdisciplinary conceptualization and collaboration are crucial, but sometimes resisted both by discipline-oriented scholars and by students. lombardo (1992) discusses problems of definition inherent in the founding of new disciplines, since traditional disciplines may change with time to encompass aspects of others. as an example, she traces the development of cultural studies as a socio-political response to the limitations of traditional english departments and suggests that such developments may be facilitated by a focus on problem solving and teamwork. the defense of interdisciplinarity as equal in value to the method-centered approach of traditional disciplines is a recurring theme, apparently because such defenses are considered necessary to overcome administrative barriers in educational institutions. interdisciplinarity may be regarded as “counter-factual”, although this does not necessarily inhibit cooperation (weingart and stehr 2000, p.111). newell (1992) argues that undergraduate education in a specific discipline need not precede interdisciplinary approaches, since "the wholistic perspective of interdisciplinarity allows disciplinary literature to be read as representative of a perspective, rather than definitive in itself." the integration of knowledge and methods from widely differing disciplines into a seamless unity requires respect, imagination and lateral thinking. for disciplines based in the methods of science, the task of integration with non-scientific fields is particularly problematic, since it may involve accepting the validity of alternative methods of proof. in a defense of multi-disciplinary and integrative approaches from a scientist‟s point of view, stephen j. kline presents a series of hypotheses based in systems theory. the second of these is: “honor all credible data. in multidisciplinary work, we need to honor all credible data from wherever they arise. (this includes not only data from various disciplines and from our laboratories, but also from the world itself, since we have no labs from which we can teaching a 'humanistic' science: reflections on interdisciplinary course design at the post-secondary level 3 obtain data for many important purposes.)” (kline 1995, p.6) newell's view (op.cit.), as well, is directly applicable to the integration of scientific with non-scientific methods in education. students of art history, for example, need not learn the mathematical principles of engineering in order to understand why the ceiling of a gothic cathedral is vaulted -the builders of the time did not have access to algebraic formulas, either. they do need to know that forces are exerted on load-bearing walls, and that the success of a given design depends on an understanding, whether mathematical or experiential, of those forces. thus, an appreciation of disciplinary canons sufficient to motivate the interdisciplinary scholar or student to ask for assistance from a specialist is appropriate, while full facility with the specialist's discipline is not usually required. the designer of an interdisciplinary course would be well advised to request specialist colleagues to review drafts of the course proposal and syllabus. acoustic ecology as interdisciplinary pedagogy the literature of post-secondary education in environmental studies, itself a developing interdiscipline, gives particular emphasis to the necessity for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches (pawson and dovers 2003; belsky 2002; hamelin 1995) and to the advisability of presenting environmental topics within the framework of social and ethical perspectives drawn from the humanities (foster 1999). so does acoustic ecology, the study of sound (including music, noise, and silence) and its effects on health, cognition and culture. like all ecological studies, it shares the characteristics of a science (physical properties and measurement of sound), a social science (human perception and social attitudes toward sound) and a branch of the humanities (aesthetics of sound, definitions and vocabularies used to describe sound). still in its infancy as an academic research field, acoustic ecology is at this time practiced primarily by musicians, composers, music educators, broadcasters, and recording technicians. their observations combine art and science, a constant reminder not to concretize this rich field of inquiry into static methodologies. 1 the philosophy and methods of acoustic ecology are still in their developmental stages, as recent writers acknowledge (dietze 2000, karlsson 2002, truax 2001). as such, the field affords opportunities for the development of interdisciplinary pedagogy from the standpoint of basic structural decisions: what are the operative categories of knowledge? how are they defined? how can principles and methods derived from different disciplines be combined? how do combinative and integrative approaches differ, and what are the effects of each on student comprehension? in 1999 i was presented with the opportunity to develop a new interdisciplinary course for the university of calgary. called “introduction to acoustic ecology”, it began as a block course 2 designed to present the basic concepts of the subject and some of its potential applications. my intention was to design a course that would give students a background in an emerging interdisciplinary field that combines scientific with humanistic modes of thought and learning, and consequently to expose university undergraduates to a form of study that would embody the nature of interdisciplinarity by merging several categories of learning. the first step was to ponder the scope of disciplinary connections. physics (acoustics), engineering (design), architecture and planning (indoor and urban soundscapes), geography (natural soundscapes), psychology and neurology (audition), musicology (connections between soundscapes and musical aesthetics; musico-linguistic connections, uses of music as a therapeutic mode), and sociology (effects of taste and attitude on noise-induced stress) were all significant. each discipline, however, bristled with specific methods that were impossible to impart to undergraduates in one week. the solution was to base the course on experiential exercises that would demonstrate the principles of the various component methodologies without requiring a thorough knowledge of any one of them. experiential learning would provide a bridge between the factual domain of science, the interpretive domain of the social sciences and the imaginative domain of the humanities (figure 1). thus, experiential exercises would have to be combined with references to theoretical and methodological approaches derived from disciplinary knowledge. they would include developing attention to auditory information (listening exercises), perceiving and describing soundscapes on the campus (sound mapping and sound journaling, which require attention to acoustics, auditory perception, design and geography), and producing sounds (improvisations, which require attention to acoustics and aesthetics).figure 2 illustrates the connection of exercises with related categories of knowledge introducing acoustic ecology to undergraduates acoustic ecology is an emerging field of study that weaves together aspects of physics, health sciences, communication theory, education theory, psychology, biology, neurology, anthropology, sociology, musicology, and aesthetics. first defined by canadian composer r. murray schafer, it is the study of sound (including noise, music, and silence) in natural and social environments, its effects on listeners (human and otherwise), and its history and evolution. --preface to university of calgary course syllabus,‟ introduction to acoustic ecology‟, 2000. a brief history of the field is now necessary, as it provides the rationale for specific pedagogical decisions. canadian composer and music educator r. murray schafer pioneered the development and dissemination of acoustic ecology, as well as coining its title. working in the late 1960s and 1970s at simon fraser university, schafer began the practice of sound mapping, a technique for describing the ambient noises in a given locale through graphic maps. his vancouver soundscape project, a prototype for the http://cie.asu.edu/volume7/number3/index.html#note1 http://cie.asu.edu/volume7/number3/index.html#note2 4 figure 1: categories of learning for "humanities / science" integration figure 2: integration as demonstrated by acoustic ecology concept of sound mapping, categorizes and quantifies sounds of all types in vancouver neighborhoods 3. schafer‟s objective was to make the music community as well as the general population more aware of their auditory surroundings. schafer‟s followers, particularly composer barry truax, continued his work at simon fraser and are now active in promoting the concept of acoustic ecology worldwide 4. . the idea of considering the world as a vast soundscape -the auditory equivalent to a landscape, a crucial concept in acoustic ecology -is now promoted by the world forum for acoustic ecology (wfae), with affiliate branches in canada, the united states, germany, switzerland, france, the united kingdom, ireland, japan, and australia 5 . founded in 1993, the wfae began publishing a journal in 2000 and now keeps educational resource lists and articles on its website. the course plan for the university of calgary was not directly modeled on the simon fraser university courses of schafer and truax. the basis for this decision was the fact that i would be working with undergraduates who would not necessarily have any background in music or in communication theory, as the sfu students did. more significantly, the block course format would allow one week for all aspects of the course except the final fieldwork project, which was due only four weeks later. providing the technical background for the component disciplines of acoustic ecology was not feasible under the time restraints. thus, my principal objective with the course was to provide http://cie.asu.edu/volume7/number3/index.html#note3 http://cie.asu.edu/volume7/number3/index.html#note4 http://cie.asu.edu/volume7/number3/index.html#note5 teaching a 'humanistic' science: reflections on interdisciplinary course design at the post-secondary level 5 a brief introduction to the ideas and weltanschauung of the field, along with exercises that would give a taste of the practitioner‟s experience. in effect, the purpose of the block course was to be a pilot project, a justification for a more fully developed offering in the future. in its first manifestation, the introductory course was offered to third and fourth-year undergraduate students through the faculty of communication and culture in january 2000. the block course format was deemed appropriate for an experimental course that required spans of time for fieldwork. of the 20 students enrolled, five were music majors (set 1), two were from the faculty of science (set 2), eight from the program of communications (set 3), and the remaining five, majors in social sciences and management, signed on for a credit option with no initial preference for the topic (set 4, “unclassified”). 6 because acoustic ecology is a relatively new field, literature suitable for a brief introductory undergraduate course was hard to come by. i assigned some excerpts from schafer (1992) along with material on the wfae website, and recommended books by schafer (1994) and attali (1985), but presented most material in the form of lectures, demonstrations, and auditory exercises. students were told that because the course had a concentration on auditory concepts, they would be expected to listen rather than read as their primary mode of information intake--reading supplemented lecture and discussion, rather than the reverse. most had little difficulty in adapting, and those that did were encouraged to ask for help. students were requested to report any hearing difficulties that might interfere with their ability to do the assigned exercises; none did. the course content was structured around four central questions, each introducing a series of related concepts and techniques. in the first unit ‘what is hearing?’ introduced lectures on the physics of sound and the physiology of hearing, along with a history of ambient noise derived from schafer‟s speculations in the soundscape (1994) as well as my own investigations. “ear-cleaning exercises” from schafer (1992), designed to enhance auditory attention, were also introduced in conjunction with my own audialization exercises (a sample is given in the appendix, below). 7 the question ‘how is sound described?’ led to considerations of vocabulary drawn from music and physics, and to the social-scientific concepts of sound as cultural unifier, boundary delineator, commodity, and communication system. the third question, ‘what are the ambient sounds of this campus?’ introduced instruction in sound-mapping techniques and observations of sound in outdoor and architectural spaces. in the afternoon of the second day i led students on a soundwalk through the university of calgary campus so that they could practice sound-mapping techniques in preparation for their assigned fieldwork projects. the walk began inside a building composed of classrooms and faculty offices, then proceeded through a landscaped outdoor quadrangle, the student union building, an engineering facility, and a music department practice room wing. at each location, the students took notes on their impressions and drew a sound map. these were shared in a discussion at the end of the day. finally, ‘what is your unique experience of listening?’ led to experiential exercises in language as sound, the body as resonator, rhythm as measurement, and music as ambience. in the first set of exercises students experienced language as a series of sound patterns and visited the campus linguistics laboratory for a tour of the “sounds of the world‟s languages” software. 8 some „body as resonator‟ exercises included listening to their own speech through stethoscopes and creating improvised percussion with handclaps, footsteps, knee slaps, finger snaps, tongue clicks, and abstract vocalizations. improvisation with voices and “found instruments” (keys, beverage bottles, shoes, notebook covers, binders, pencils) was also practiced in a particularly resonant stairwell. the purpose of these exercises was to expand students‟ perceptions of how sound is created, as well as their awareness of how much ambient sound they usually “screen out” --a recognition of what is physically heard but not attended to, and the ways in which such ignored sounds can influence their responses to speech, their mood and their ability to concentrate. the element of play, rarely made available to adult students, was an additional factor. a few students found it difficult to participate at first; all but two (both management students from group 4) joined in once the musicians showed obvious enthusiasm. commentary on course assignments assignments for the course included a group project (fieldwork paper and presentation), and sound journals. the group project was designed to encourage cooperative decision making about venue and methodology, while the sound journal, a diary of sounds heard in daily life, provided a focus on the act of listening consciously. both were exercises in experiential learning, based on the premise that any study of an environmental science must include contact with the environment (colascibetta 2000; covington et al. 2000). simply reading about the mathematics of acoustics, or the neurology of hearing, does not in itself produce an understanding of acoustic ecology. nor does recording give a true indication of ambient sound, since even the best equipment (which is rarely if ever available for purposes of instruction) will distort the intensity and spatial location of sound signals. experience of the place being studied, including its spatial properties, is essential. group fieldwork projects the group fieldwork project required each self-selected team of two to four students to find a local venue for fieldwork in which they would describe and map the ambient sounds of the venue as well as suggesting possible alterations to the acoustic ambience. 9 preliminary research and scouting of possible venues was reported in an outline, http://cie.asu.edu/volume7/number3/index.html#note7 http://cie.asu.edu/volume7/number3/index.html#note8 http://cie.asu.edu/volume7/number3/index.html#note9 current issues in education vol. 7 no. 3 6 which each group discussed with the class in order to share ideas about methods of approach. fieldwork was scheduled for the fourth day of the block week, with the class dismissed at 11 a.m. so that groups could spend the rest of the day at their research venues. they were required to report to the rest of the class the next day on their findings and their plans for the written project, which was due four weeks later. each written project had to include graphic sound maps of the venue and some brief examples of ambient sounds on audiotape, as well as a description of methods, processes, findings, and suggestions for further investigation. the fieldwork projects chosen by student groups demonstrated considerable range of focus as well as methodology. within the general guidelines given, students were free to adapt their methods to the circumstances of the venue and the tools available to them, since standardization of measurements was not possible due to lack of equipment. thus, a group of science students with occasional access to an oscilloscope were able to take precise measurements of sound frequencies in their project, while most groups concentrated on a combination of verbal descriptions, maps modeled on the schafer literature, and sample audio clips. fieldwork venues chosen were primarily public areas, on campus or within the city of calgary. one group concentrated on the university library, noting the differences in ambient noise and human activity on different floors, e.g. the reserve reading room (frequent entrances and exits), the music library (soft humming and tongue-clicking by readers of musical scores), and the mechanical floor midway up the 13-storey library tower. another group mapped and described the human and electronic noises of the “campus cove” recreation area and pub in the student union building, concluding that while many of the noises were intrusive, they defined the character of the place. “consider a place like the cove and imagine it having no sound at all: would we really feel comfortable in an arcade with no noise or a library where talking is allowed?” . 10 two projects stood out as particularly demonstrative of the utility of fieldwork. one, by a group that contained one music major and two communications majors, analyzed the ambient noises in the calgary children‟s hospital. the group recorded and mapped auditory activities in the admitting area, the x-ray area, and the cafeteria. noting the intensity of sound in the waiting room for admitting, they realized that the noise of children interacting with toys placed there, and with each other, was not an aberration but an intentional circumstance designed to relax the children. another surprise was the sound of a buzz saw piercing the quiet ambience near the x-ray area: it was used for removing casts, and caused noticeable anxiety in some children waiting nearby. in a list of suggestions to the hospital included at the end of the paper, the students recommended that the room containing the saw be equipped with additional sound insulation. 11 the opportunity to critique an actual working ambience gave these students the chance to apply what they had learned, and validated their observations. the other project, carried out by the two science majors and one student from social sciences, investigated the soundscapes of three religious communities in calgary by visiting a mosque, a synagogue, and a small buddhist monastery. one science student with a particular interest in buddhist chant obtained permission for the group to spend a full day at the monastery with audio recording equipment, then produced computer generated sonograms of chants and ambient noises. he observed that the interaction of sound and space was crucial to the ambience, demonstrated his assertion with sonograms of recordings taken at particular locations within the room, and surmised that disconnecting sound from space was liable to distort perception of the soundscape: "in our experience of the great compassion repentance ceremony at avatamsaka monastery, the resonance of the room formed part of the experience. certain frequencies were accentuated, and thus changed as we moved throughout the room –there was a physical interaction with the space." 12 the interdependence of resonance (sound) with resonator (spatial setting) is in fact one of the key concepts in acoustic ecology as it is in physics, and the student‟s experiential recognition of the phenomenon was undoubtedly worth more than any explanation he could have received from a textbook. for this reason, fieldwork is essential to any course of this type. sound journaling students were also required to keep a sound journal to record conscious listening experiences outside of class time, approximately one hour each evening. the journaling process is idiosyncratic by nature, since descriptive words for sounds are not well standardized in english (one person‟s “crunch” is another‟s “crackle”) and individual perceptions vary. instructions for the process may be complex, with attempts to classify sounds into distinct categories discussed and agreed upon by the group, or open-ended; e.g. ”write a description of everything you hear, in terms that make sense to you.” in the block course, the latter decision was made. open-ended journaling, while not particularly productive for quantitative research, is satisfying to the imagination. it builds confidence in students not previously accustomed to describing sounds. as expected, the music majors in the class had considerable range of vocabulary as well as awareness of their own auditory attention. one, a flute player, catalogued the vocalizations of her pet canaries into a musicallinguistic grammar, using onomatopoeic descriptors (“chirp, peep, warble, squawk”) and imitations (“bee-aaabee-aaa!, chee-erp”) interspersed with the technical vocabulary of musicians (“tempo, pitches, rubato, teaching a 'humanistic' science: reflections on interdisciplinary course design at the post-secondary level 7 accentuation”). 13 another, a singer, spent time sitting on a bench at a shopping mall with eyes closed, taking note of the voices of passers-by in conversation and documenting her emotional responses: “some male voices had a warm tone that was soothing and portrayed a comforting energy. other male voices had a sharp edge that overpowered the warmth of the low [tones]. the female voices were most definitely higher in pitch and many had a sweet, innocent tone.” 14 one communications major concentrated less on direct description of sounds and more on explanation of circumstances causing the sounds: “i can hear the tv from downstairs. i can tell that some sort of sport is being watched because i can hear a crowd of people moan and groan in anticipation as they await a goal or score. the volume of the crowd has increased but there is no goal because i can hear a unified sigh of disappointment (ahhh). the crowd is getting louder again. their cheers are indiscernible. they get louder. there are two sharp and high-pitched toots of a whistle. the announcer then announces that there has been a goal.” 15 the interweaving of auditory with other sensory images was also quite common among journal entries; e.g.: “the wind was blowing full gusto and this whistling and whirling was most definitely the prominent noise. it danced with my hair and moved gently through the surrounding bushes and shrubs.” 16 in general, the journaling exercise was effective in focusing attention on the conscious perception of ambient sounds. such attention led most students into greater consideration of the amounts of noise to which they are exposed on a daily basis and the range of emotional responses that noise can evoke. preliminary assessments outcomes from the initial course offering showed some minor discrepancies among the disciplinary background sets. sets 1 and 2, the musicians and science majors, showed the highest levels of performance on assignments, both on powers of observation of sound as demonstrated by journal entries and by research design for the field work projects. music majors were also the most inventive in the experiential exercises: this was not surprising, given their professional training in relating individual sounds to larger structures, as well as their performing experience. set 3, being the largest group, varied most in course performance. some individuals made the adaptation to aural emphasis easily, others were challenged. set 4, predictably, was the least successful in terms of observational skills and course performance, but the individuals reported gaining greater awareness of their auditory surroundings, particularly the high levels of noise in recreational areas on campus. all students but one reported enjoying and learning from the course; the dissenter felt that the experiential exercises were inappropriate. some specific challenges were presented in the development of the first acoustic ecology course at the university of calgary. the first was lack of familiarity on the part of administrators as well as students. an interdisciplinary course can be difficult to justify at a time when budget restrictions threaten all but courses deemed “core” to programs, even in a faculty dedicated to interdisciplinary instruction. since the field is not yet well known in academic circles, the idea had to be presented as an experiment despite extensive precedent at another university. since funding was provided that year for the development of block courses, a format not yet in extensive use, the course was given support as a pilot project. a second challenge was the diversity of student backgrounds. this was overcome without much difficulty by turning it to an advantage. if a common set of assumptions and approaches was lacking, students could share their backgrounds as a way of demonstrating the diversity of approaches possible in an interdisciplinary field of study. this was accomplished during guided class discussions by setting sample problems and asking students from various backgrounds to describe how they would approach solutions. contributing students were then led by questioning to explain how previous experiences shaped their perspectives on the problem. finally, the preponderance of questions over established answers, typical of an emerging field of investigation, became ground conducive to the growth of speculative thinking about such issues as noise regulation, cultural influences on auditory attention and musical taste, noise-related causes of hearing impairment, and the scarcity of silence in urban public venues. the course has not to this date been repeated on the undergraduate level, reportedly as a result of budget constraints. it has subsequently been redeveloped for graduate students in architecture and environmental design (see postscript, below). improvements to future versions of the course should include access to equipment that can enable precise measurement of sound. a wish list would encompass decibel meters to measure sound intensity (loudness) and oscilloscopes to measure frequencies, as well as sound analysis software. since these are expensive items, such access would most likely necessitate collaboration with faculty members in engineering or physics, or with technicians in the noise control industry. portable audio recorders would ideally be supplied to student groups doing fieldwork, preferably all http://cie.asu.edu/volume7/number3/index.html#note14 current issues in education vol. 7 no. 3 8 of the same type and specifications so that measurements are comparable. conclusions and implications for the teaching of interdisciplines the course in acoustic ecology presented here demonstrates an experimental method for conceptualizing and teaching in an interdiscipline, a fully integrated field for which a multidisciplinary (discrete, non-integrated) approach is not well suited. such a course may indeed employ more than one instructor, but the crucial difference between multidisciplinary and fully interdisciplinary teaching is that the latter does not separate component disciplines as discrete units within the subject area. instead, it requires an inquiry-based approach that defines the subject area by means of strategic questions, which often bypass traditional methodologies. methods may thus become combinative, layering aspects of physical description and measurement, social significance, and assignment of cultural or personal meaning (refer to figures 1 and 2, above), as exemplified by the exercises of sound walks and mapping. it is tempting to speculate that the integration of methodology along with content may well be essential to the successful teaching of interdisciplines; further research and reporting of examples are needed to complete this picture. however, the teaching of interdisciplines, particularly those that involve integrations of science and humanities, may be problematic at many institutions for administrative reasons if not philosophical ones. support for the development of such courses may be hard to find in the first place because administrative barriers must first be overcome. one of these is the usual housing of courses in a single department or faculty. cross-listing, a possible solution, looks precarious when the example of acoustic ecology is used: a course cross-listed for students in music, psychology, engineering, environmental studies and architecture – with the possible addition of sociology, geography and health sciences – is almost certain to cause objections at the registrar's office, if not in the departments listed. for this reason, a small college may find it easier than a large university to mount such a course. potential budgeting problems include the allotment of funds to departments and faculties sharing a cross-listed course, particularly if more than one instructor is involved. finally, students may be wary of being graded by instructors who comes from outside their home disciplines. because objections by administrators are likely to result from lack of familiarity with the concept of integrated pedagogy, the simple desire to teach one course may suddenly project the planner into the arena of administrative reform. course and curriculum designers may need to introduce the concept of interdisciplines cautiously, citing precedents from interdisciplinary theory (see bibliography, below) and from such relatively established interdisciplines as environmental studies and biomedical engineering. in this way, newly emerging fields of study can be legitimized, developed, and passed on to students. whether motivated by philosophy of inquiry or by the employment markets of the near future, post-secondary institutions are gradually opening to such possibilities. postscript in 2001, a second version of the “introduction to acoustic ecology” pilot was offered in the graduate faculty of environmental design, which houses programs in architecture, community planning, and environmental sciences. six students enrolled – four in architecture, one in landscape design, and one with a double concentration in planning and law. the structure was similar to the undergraduate version, but less time was spent on experiential exercises and more on investigation and discussion of how acoustic ecology could be applied to the students‟ areas of professional concentration. applications included municipal planning and zoning, municipal noise bylaws, and architectural design. at the conclusion of the course, students reported unanimously that a four-day intensive block course offering provided insufficient time to gain background and to investigate problems, and that they would support expanding the content. the course is now under development for regular scheduling as an offering in the faculty of environmental design. 17 ideally, it will be open to selected graduate students in music, cognitive psychology and health sciences as well as those in environmental design, in order to encourage multidisciplinary interaction as well as an interdisciplinary approach. appendix: sample audialization exercise rationale: the following list of sound “images” is designed to develop auditory memory (recall of sounds heard in the past) and imagination (auditory imaging of unfamiliar sounds; essentially speculative and analogous to visualization of scenes described in words). both processes, though different in nature, may be classified under the heading of “audialization”. the development of both memory and imagination in auditory contexts is applicable to encouraging attention to the heard environment: ambient noise, aural signals, foregrounding and backgrounding of sounds, auditory distracters, and conscious listening. audialization exercises may also stimulate memory of emotional states, so a quiet and safe environment is important. instructions to students: please close your eyes and rely on your ears. as you hear the description for each sound, take a moment to “hear” it in your memory or imagination, as you would visualize an image described to you. many of you will visualize at the same time – that‟s typical, and it‟s fine. sound “images” (to be read aloud by the instructor) 1. opening and closing a car door. 2. opening and closing the door of a house you lived in as a child. 3. a dog walking on linoleum. 4. a school playground. teaching a 'humanistic' science: reflections on interdisciplinary course design at the post-secondary level 9 5. a familiar body of water. 6. a familiar recreational facility. 7. a gathering storm. 8. a language (known or unknown) other than the one you commonly speak. nb – these are examples only. the list may be altered or extended according to the instructor‟s objectives. it is advisable to avoid mentioning sounds that can trigger anxiety in individuals with a history of trauma associated with noise: for example, particular care must be taken if the class includes refugees from war zones. 18 commentary: it is helpful (and enjoyable) to encourage discussion of the group‟s experiences after the exercise, as long as contribution to the discussion is optional. images 2, 5 and sometimes 8 are particularly evocative of positive childhood memories, while 6 may raise awareness of noise levels in everyday life. in my experience, most students enjoy sharing their stories notes 1. for discussion of the current methodological dynamics of the field, see henrik karlsson (2001), "the acoustic environment as a public domain" in soundscape vol.1, no.1. 2. block courses at the university of calgary are held one week before the regular schedule of classes for fall or winter term begins. they run for four or five days of sixhour classes, and are best suited to subjects that require intense focus and experiential components. 3. for further information about the acoustic ecology movement and the vancouver soundscape project, see the website of the world forum for acoustic ecology (wfae). 4. for an example of truax‟s work, see his acoustic communication (2001). 5. wfae website text. 6. each of these disciplinary background groups will henceforth be described as “sets” 1 4, to distinguish them from project groups (“groups”). 7. audialization is directly analogous to visualization: it is the imagining of a sound stimulus in a specific ambience. 8. the software, from ucla, catalogues and presents all known sound patterns from all languages, giving international phonetic alphabet symbols and sound recordings as well as information about demographics. i find it to be an excellent tool for developing students‟ awareness of the functions of the human voice, as well as the auditory aspects of communication. 9. the idea of improving or altering soundscapes by reducing noise is controversial within the acoustic ecology movement. one point of view is that the public right to (relative) silence is crucial, and that public spaces should be designed to be acoustically neutral with a minimum of traffic noise, music, and other stimuli. another is that noise is an intrinsic part of the public space, and that it should be recorded and described but not changed in any way. for the undergraduate course i chose the former philosophy, after presenting both, because it would give students an exercise in speculative planning. 10.project paper: l.cheng, d. fournier, a. joncic. 11.project paper: j. chapin, d. gutfriend, j. price. 12.project paper: j. heumann, m. mcdonald, c. quillian. 13.sound journal entry, c.harrington, january , 2000. 14.sound journal entry, j.welling., january 3, 2000. 15.sound journal entry, s.halasz., january 3, 2000. 16.sound journal entry, j.welling, january 6, 2000. 17.collaboration with professor tang lee of the faculty of environmental design, who teaches architectural acoustics. 18.it is easy to imagine applications of audialization to therapeutic situations, analogous to guided imagery techniques. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 3 10 references attali, jacques (1985). noise: the political economy of music. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. translation (translator not specified) of bruits: essai sur l’economie politique de la musique, presses universitaires de france, (1977). bartell, shirley miller (1979). “a model for crosscultural and interdisciplinary teaching” in improving college and university teaching vol. 27; 34-37. belsky, jill (2002). "beyond the natural resource and environmental sociology divide: insights from a transdisciplinary perspective" in society and natural resources vol. 15 no.31; 264-275. colascibetta, f., l. campanella and g. favero (2000) “an aquarium as a means for the interdisciplinary teaching of chemistry” in journal of chemical education, vol. 77, no.10 ; 1311-1313. covington, wallace, peter fule, thomas alcoze and regina vance (2000). "learning by doing: education in ecological restoration at northern arizona university" in journal of forestry, vol. 98 no. 10; 30-34. dietze, lena (2000). “learning is living: acoustic ecology as a pedagogical ground” insoundscape vol.1, no.1; 20-22. foster, j. (1999). "what price interdisciplinarity?: crossing the curriculum in environmental higher education" in journal of geography in higher education, vol. 23, no. 3; 358-366. frank, andrea and jürgen schülert (1992). "interdisciplinary learning as social learning and general education" in european journal of education, vol. 27, no.3; 223 -37. ghnassia, jill dix and marcia bundy seabury (2002). "interdisciplinarity and the public sphere" in journal of general education vol. 51, no. 3; 153-172. hagoel, lea and devorah kalekin-fishman (2002). "crossing borders: toward a transdisciplinary scientific identity" in studies in higher education vol.27, no.3; 297-308. hamelin, r. (1995). "chemistry and environment – a field of interdisciplinarity" inqimica nova, vol. 18, no. 1; 68-73. karlsson, henrik (2000). “the acoustic environment as public domain” in soundscapevol.1, no.2; 10-13. pre-publication copy also available on the wfae website. klein, julie thompson (1998). "the discourse of interdisciplinarity: perspectives from the handbook of the undergraduate curriculum " in liberal education vol. 84, no.3; 4-11. kline, stephen jay (1995). conceptual foundations for multi-disciplinary thinking.stanford, ca: stanford university press. lombardo, patrizia (1992). "cultural studies and interdisciplinarity" in critical quarterlyvol. 34, no. 3; 3-10. meister, denise g. and jim nolan jr. (2001). “out on a limb on our own: uncertainty and doubt in movingfrom subject-centered to interdisciplinary teaching” in teachers college record vol. 103, no. 4; 608-633. newell, william h. (1992). "academic disciplines and undergraduate interdisciplinary education" in european journal of education vol. 27, no.3 ; 211-221. pawson, eric and stephen dovers (2003). "environmental history and the challenges of interdisciplinarity: an antipodean perspective" in environment and history, vol. 9, no. 1; 53-75. schafer, r. murray (1994). the soundscape: our sonic environment and the tuning of the world. rochester, vermont: destiny books. first edition published as the tuning of the world, new york: knopf, 1977. ---(1993). voices of tyranny, temples of silence. indian river, ontario: arcana press. ---(1992). a sound education. indian river, ontario: arcana press. ---(1977). european sound diary. vancouver: world soundscape project. ---( 1977). five village soundscapes. vancouver: world soundscape project. squires, geoffrey (1992). "interdisciplinarity in higher education in the united kingdom" in european journal of education, vol. 27 no.3; 201210. truax, barry (2001). acoustic communication, 2d edition. westport, connecticut: ablex. weingart, peter and nico stehr (2000). practicing interdisciplinarity. toronto: university of toronto press teaching a 'humanistic' science: reflections on interdisciplinary course design at the post-secondary level 11 2004 article citation epstein, m. j. (2004, february 5). teaching a humanistic science: reflections on interdisciplinary course design at the postsecondary level. current issues in education [on-line], 7(3). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number3/ author notes dr. marcia jenneth epstein is a cultural historian, musicologist and musician with an interest in the effects of sound and music on health and culture. she teaches in the faculty of communication and culture at the university of calgary, and serves as an adjunct professor for the faculties of environmental design and nursing. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article‟s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article‟s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation epstein, m. j. (2011). teaching a humanistic science: reflections on interdisciplinary course design at the post-secondary level. current issues in education, 7(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/ cieatasu/article/view/822 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number3/ http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word 900-4040-3-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x job design for special education teachers amanda e. major alabama state university and university of phoenix special education teachers, especially those that teach students with behavioral/emotional challenges, have high attrition rates stemming from stress, job dissatisfaction, and low motivation. the external factors in the school setting and job contribute to special education teachers’ attrition and disengagement. a relationship between motivation and satisfaction to job characteristics is explored and applied to special educator’s role to determine the optimal job design. designing the job of the special education teacher for participatory empowerment to address the factors associated with attrition, such as stress, lack of motivation, and low job satisfaction is recommended. this participatory effort requires a commitment from school administrators, professional development initiatives, and special education teachers. keywords: job design; special education; participative management; teacher retention; teacher stress; teacher job satisfaction; teacher motivation teachers of high-risk children have become high risk themselves (emery & vanderberg, 2010). special education teachers have a greater chance of leaving their schools than their counterparts in education, especially those that teach children with behavioral and emotional challenges (katsiyannis, zhang, & conroy, 2003). although a shortage exists among qualified special educational teachers in general, a higher shortage persists for qualified educators who teach students with emotional and behavioral challenges (katsiyannis, zhang, & conroy, 2003). retaining those qualified educators are particularly challenging given the stress they experience from the design of their jobs, involving the greater likelihood of working in separate settings and working with the same children all day than other special educators (henderson, klein, gonzalez, & bradley, 2005). in addition, many special educators of emotionally challenged children experience stress due to teachers’ perceived role in their jobs, derived from a lack of skills/experience, according to a review of the literature (henderson, klein, gonzalez, & bradley). the lack of skills/experience includes fewer hours of teaching, less credentials, more alternative sources of credentials, and less pre-service preparation than other special educators (henderson, klein, gonzalez, & bradley, 2005). some believe that the problem of high attrition rates stem directly from this lack of adequate preparation, insinuated by the suggestion to end alternative special education teacher certification avenues (katsiyannis, zhang, & conroy, 2003). others counter that internal psychological work by special education teachers, such as that of acceptance and values, can slow the attrition rate (emery & vanderberg, 2010). this addresses the fact that high attrition rates of special educators are associated with stress-related burnout (billingsley, 2003). the idea is for special educators to stay grounded in their values yet flexible in mindfully accepting events. acceptance requires the special education teacher to willingly embrace internal experiences and remain psychologically flexible and adaptable. values compose of relatively stable life directions. therapy evoking the importance of values and acceptance in internal constructive and process-oriented work can ameliorate burnout, yet it ignores the external causes of stress, including better management of the external environment. for example, a quantitative analysis of trends revealed that retention of special education teachers should improve with current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 improvements in the organization and management of public schools (boe, cook, & sunderland, 2008). in addition, emery and vanderberg’s (2010) intervention recommendation recognizes the intense emotional work of the special educator, especially apparent in the work with behavioral and emotionally challenged children whose needs are much more complex than other children’s. the complex emotional, behavioral, physical, and mental needs of special needs students comprise a small part of many aspects of special educators’ external working conditions. working conditions describe the climate of a particular workplace experienced by employees. the occupational outlook handbook adds clues to the attrition puzzle, describing the working conditions: special educators encounter considerable stressors from the heavy workloads, reams of administrative tasks, and special demands of the student, which drains teachers physically and emotionally (bureau of labor statistics, u.s. department of labor, 2010). if an individual or group can alter working conditions to influence the work of the special educator teacher then they have altered the design of the special education teachers’ job. the job design of a special educator position is the interrelated systems and structures that facilitate the accomplishment of major work objectives so that a well-trained, interested special educator can manage the work successfully (gersten, gillman, morvant, & billingsley, 1995). although both internal and external factors contribute to attrition of special education teachers, such as teacher characteristics, personal factors, teacher qualifications, work environments, and teachers’ affective reactions to work (billingsley, 2003). however, the focus of this paper is to conceptually explore the connections between the work environment and stress, the challenge of staying engaged with work while experiencing stress, which coincides with a lack of satisfaction and intent to quit. furthermore, the focus of this paper hones in on the role of job design as a solution to retain special educators, or at the very least to increase more proximally-related factors, such as work engagement, motivation, and satisfaction. the importance of job design for special education teachers lies in the acknowledgement that the school system, the school administrators, and the special education teachers can stymie the high teacher turnover rates (or attrition rates). stress and disengagement in a thorough review of the literature, it states that special educators were “prone to low job satisfaction, low self-efficacy, as well as increased stress and burnout” (emery & vanderberg, 2010, p. 126). employees experience a high degree of emotional exhaustion when the job scope is very low or very high and lower levels of emotional exhaustion when job scope is optimal (xie & johns, 1995). those employees with complex jobs, perceiving that the demands of their job and their abilities do not fit, experience more anxiety and stress than those who perceive a fit (xie & johns, 1995), hence the high attrition rates of new special education teachers and uncertified teachers, who are often in high demand areas like special education (billingsley, 2005; gersten et al., 2001). not every educator experiences stress under the same conditions. some thrive where others shrink; but, regardless of individual differences, “high levels of prolonged stress lead to teacher dissatisfaction, withdrawal from work, burnout, health problems, and attrition” (billingsley, 2005, p. 171). staying engaged during stress remains challenging for special educators, yet the school contributes to the challenge. lack of administrative support, collegial support, on-the job learning options, and autonomy intensifies special educators experience of role dissonance, lack of commitment, and stress due to job design (e.g., paperwork burdens, student needs, and discipline concerns) (gersten et al., 2001). furthermore, role conflict and lack of role clarity often relate to stress (billingsley, 2005). without the support and decisionmaking latitude to change conditions and relieve rolerelated concerns, special educators experience stress and disengage from their work. in my opinion, students gain very little educational benefits from a teacher suffering intense job-related stress and who disengages from their work. contributing to the stress, special educators often struggle with a mismatch of their expectations and the actual job (i.e., role dissonance) (gersten et al., 2001). this mismatch could stem from several factors, including barriers to identifying the needs of the student, identifying the instruction, and carrying out that instruction in an environment conducive to this process. first, knowing their students’ cognitive, social, and emotional needs becomes challenging. often special educators encounter a lack of time to understand students’ needs (billingsley, 2005; plash & piotrowski, 2006). the second challenge entails educators’ understanding of what students need to learn, which involves concerns about the curriculum (pollak, 2009). third, they need to know how to successfully transfer the learning. special educators may have some understanding of best pedagogical practices and behavior management but the setting, their experience, and their skills in other areas besides behavioral management hinder their ability to apply it (henderson et al., 2005), especially if they do not have adequate planning time and practical professional development opportunities, including supervised practice (billingsley, 2005). for this reason, administrators and the school structure also play a part in the gap between what educators expect and the actuality of their jobs (billingsley, 2005; gersten et al., 2008). job design for special education teachers 3 lack of satisfaction and attrition if stress continues from the mismatch of what the special educator thinks that he or she can do and what can actually be accomplished, satisfaction will also likely decline. role dissonance predicted special educators’ stress due to job design and dissatisfaction with their positions (gersten et al., 2001). those employees who do not feel satisfied with their jobs are more likely to intend to leave their jobs (spector, 2008). a special educators’ intent to leave was a good predictor of them leaving their positions within 15 months (gersten et al., 2001). if employees perceived that could gain more rewarding employment than their current position, then they were likely to apply for open positions and increase their chances of getting a new job (spector, 2008). many job design factors directly vary with attrition. work factors related to attrition include a lack of support, isolation, and teacher role problems (billingsley, 2005). also, a small survey of highly-qualified special educators found that stress related to the job and excessive paperwork mostly accounted for their attrition or relocation (plash & piotrowski, 2006). other reasons for highly qualified special educators leaving their schools included threats of litigation, which may pertain to job design, and spousal relocations (plash & piotrowski, 2006). in 2010, federal litigation pertaining to special education frequently materialized in the areas of disciplinary actions, evaluation and assessment of the student, placement of the student in the least restrictive environment, and postsecondary transition planning (katsiyannis, losinski, & prince, 2012). if the job is not designed to expose and allow for mitigation of litigation issues, then special education teachers are left vulnerable to such threats. other reasons unrelated to job design that employees in general leave their professions include general family obligations, health-related reasons, or debilitating injuries (spector, 2008). job design for motivation and satisfaction designing the special education teacher job for retention involves addressing both motivation and satisfaction. to understand the relationship of motivation and satisfaction to job design, a review of several prominent theories is presented. maslow (2001) explained that motivation involves a hierarchy of needs. as a lower level need is fulfilled, the next higher level need serves as a motivator (maslow, 2001). the higher level needs of maslow’s hierarchy (i.e., esteem and self-actualization) overlap with herzberg’s motivator factors, and maslow’s lower order needs (i.e., physical, safety, and social needs) overlap with herzberg’s hygiene factors (r. lindahl, personal communication, march 7, 2011). herzberg (2001) espoused in his two-factor theory that an individual (e.g., a special education teacher) must have hygiene factors met, alleviating dissatisfaction, before motivator factors can lead to motivation and job satisfaction. although educators can feel motivated by higher level needs, such motivation does not depend on fulfilled lower level needs; motivation can occur out of order and simultaneously (alderfer, 2001). in fact, an optimal degree of job design features exist in relation to work outcomes (johns, 2010; xie & johns, 1965), so tasks that minimize or overshadow the purpose of educators’ work (e.g., too much paperwork, inadequate planning time, or excessive caseloads) can undesirably impact outcomes. job enrichment focuses on job design for optimal internal motivation. job enrichment involves high levels of the following: autonomy (or job freedom), accountability, task identity (or the ownership over a natural unit of work), periodic job feedback, skill variety (which is similar to growing the job scope and assigning increasingly specific tasks) (hackman, oldham, janson, & purdy, 1975; herzberg, 2001), and task significance. oldham and hackman (2010) found that these job characteristics increased the likelihood that jobholders found their work meaningful, personally felt responsible for outcomes, and realized the results of their work. furthermore, herzberg (2001) found that the combination of the characteristics resulted in improved performance and attitudes toward the job. oldham and hackman explained job design for internal motivation by a combination of the job characteristics, the affective factors, and the individual differences, leading to an increase in satisfaction and outcomes over time. regarding important individual differences, the job holders must value professional development or have a high growth need (oldham, hackman, & pearce, 1976) and have the knowledge and skills to perform their work (oldham & hackman, 2010). fulfilling needs and administering the right combination of job characteristics tend to rely on using authority to dispense a series of rewards based on hopeful results. this can result in complications that may not reward the intended behavior, and even if it does, that intended behavior may fail to propagate the hoped for results (kerr, 2001), failing to bolster student outcomes. mcgregor (2001) concurred, explaining that this management of employees fails to harness their full potential. instead, he espoused designing the workplace for employees’ self-direction using a theory y design. mcgregor suggested that theory y design, contrasted with a theory x design, offers more autonomy to employees, assumes that employees have the capacity and will to improve their performance, and proffers management that evokes more participative rather than authoritarian guidance. this type of organizational design involves decentralization, empowerment, job enlargement, participative management, and self-evaluated performance appraisals (mcgregor, 2001). an organization adopting this theory y design, he explained, activates motivator factors, resulting in internal employee motivation, higher productivity, and greater job current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 satisfaction. essentially, he espoused that a decentralized organization where teamwork flourishes empowers employees to take ownership of their work, thus resulting in job enrichment. one downfall of the theory y organization entails a flatter hierarchy. team members who compete with each other for the position on the next level of the hierarchy may sabotage team members’ work to gain the competitive edge. to support this notion, teamwork, given the larger context, does not always result in greater effectiveness (johns, 2010). yet in public schools, special educators’ salary and job responsibilities remain more stable than for-profit organizations where employees compete with their co-workers for higher salaries and promotions (brower & balch, 2005). another concern about implementing theory y in special education settings involves enlarging the already large scope of the educators’ roles. herzberg (2001) explained that job design for job enrichment addresses psychological growth but does not involve enlarging the job, unless the type of work enhances the jobs’ meaningfulness (johns, 2010; oldham & hackman, 2010). for example, loading the special education teacher with more tasks will not engage them, unless the extra work, such as attending individual education plan meetings, personalizes their work with students, and adds meaning to their jobs. job enlargement may attenuate motivation rather than enhance it, depending on the added tasks’ meaningfulness. since the inception of job enrichment theories (e.g., mcgregor, 2001; oldham & hackman, 2010; herzberg, 2001) jobs have become more social, participative, dynamic, and more restrictive for some professionals, including educators (oldham & hackman, 2010). the social, participative, and dynamic demands of special educators’ work involve a community. much of the educators’ job involves adapting to and working with a team of specialists, educators, the school system, administrators, parents, and the community to maintain students’ progress (billingsley, 2005). restrictions, federal legislation, and state regulations hold teachers more accountable for testing and qualifications. increasing accountability combined with the large job scope of educators’ jobs may result in such a combination not conducive to outcomes nor satisfaction, as johns (2010) suggested and as evidenced by the high attrition rates of special educators related to individuals with disabilities education act compliance demands (plash & piotrowski, 2008). furthermore, johns (2010) and xie and johns (1995) found that combined job characteristics resulted in both positive and negative outcomes, not all positive outcomes as herzberg (2001) and oldham and hackman (2010) found. these findings add credence to the model that job characteristics are moderated by larger context (johns, 2010). one easy solution to this is a participatory setting in a theory y organization, as mcgregor (2001) espouses and herzberg (2001) insinuates. job design and environmental conditions overlap in participatory decision-making school settings because as special education teachers design their jobs, they also design the support from and structure of their schools. for the most effective outcome in a participatory setting, designing a job conceptually depends on the organizational structure, national culture (oldham & hackman, 2010; somech, 2010), organizational processes, effective teamwork, educator personality, and leader member exchange (somech, 2010). because administrators have little control of neither educators’ individual differences (e.g., high growth need and personality) nor the national culture, the focus of the administrator should involve adapting the organizational structure and developing strong relations with special educators towards participatory empowerment. implications for practice administrators retain special education teachers by empowering their staff via providing support, addressing role-related issues and restrictive conditions, and enabling professional development. empowerment entails changing conditions to engage educators (pollak, 2009) and relates to teacher satisfaction (zembylas & papanastasiou, 2005). administrators have the ability to influence intrinsic motivation. for example, although the extrinsic rewards (i.e., working conditions and salary) influenced job satisfaction for university teachers, administrators had the ability to influence only the intrinsic motivators of professional autonomy, level of professional challenge, and interaction with colleagues (kim & loadman, 1994). supporting staff involves listening and addressing what special education teachers need in order to assess, plan, and implement instruction. for instance, bozonelos (2008) suggested that administrators not only provide instrumental support by assigning special educators reasonable administrative duties, lessening caseloads, and providing resources to educators, but also providing emotional support, informational support, and appraisal support. in addition to providing support, administrators can address role-related issues and restrictive conditions to curb stress and disengagement by facilitating change management in participatory job design, roles, and policies. to achieve this structural change, administrators willingly abdicate control over issues important to educators while maintaining the structure to enable educators to meet the students’ needs. for example, principals can counteract stress from role dissonance by clarifying roles and assuring structural supports (billingsley, 2005). as another example, administrators can give up control over aspects of the curriculum, as needed, to allow teacher adaption of it, which overwhelmingly improves student engagement (pollak, job design for special education teachers 5 2009). if value-laden or highly technical decisions must be made, then delegating decision making to teachers can complicate the task at hand to an unyielding crux. yet, a leader behavior approach offers employees a voice in the decision making process, thereby acknowledging the value of employees’ input without relinquishing the decision completely and complicating the task (spector, 2008). with a process for change, special education teachers can adapt to the dynamic needs of their students. a process for change would also enable a responsive, dynamic professional development program that involves self-evaluation or participatory appraisals. this type of program both empowers educators and addresses the importance for special education teachers to have the knowledge and skills to perform the work for optimal performance. empowering teachers involves enabling them to take ownership of their own development via continuous identification of context changes, continuous improvements based on that identification, and problem solving via collaboration, innovation, and trust among participants (watts, 2009). such opportunities to learn on the job have been shown to be important to retention (gersten et al., 2001). furthermore, observing classroom instruction of other educators at their school and learning from other educators through such informal and formal development opportunities also addressed the immediate needs of educators in a practical way (pollak, 2009; billingsley, 2005). billingsley also suggested a responsive induction with individualized support and active mentorship to address attrition of new teachers. she conceptualized that this creation of positive work conditions and this fostering of professional development leads to special educator effectiveness, which elicits work rewards. she explained that both the work rewards and the positive work conditions lead to teacher commitment and retention. just as administrators have a responsibility to empower special education teachers, these teachers have a responsibility to influence school outcomes as well, which involves a dyadic, dynamic model of change. educators can seek professional development opportunities, ask for feedback, collaborate, and craft their jobs (i.e., altering their job by using a participatory or bottom-up approach, hackman & oldham, 2010). such may involve teacherinitiated cooperative planning and professional learning communities. educators can also volunteer to serve as a teacher leader to enrich their jobs. those teachers expressing a strong growth need and interest in policies can find satisfaction with their additional teacher leadership roles (ribbens, 2002). furthermore, based on the same principle of empowerment, special educators and schools can effectively empower their students to participate in curriculum planning, within defined parameters (jagersma, 2010). after all, schools have the capacity to not only retain some special educators via empowerment, but also to retain some students via empowerment, which is worth further investigation. limitations of the recommendations for practice include a lack of empirical evidence for participative, bottom-up interventions as a solution for retaining special education teachers. perhaps the lack of evidence stems from a distal relationship between empowerment efforts and the decision of the special educator to remain in his or her position. further investigation is needed about the relationship between the more immediate relationship or the predictive power of participative approaches to leadership of special educators and job satisfaction or motivation. conclusion of all the educators, special education teachers experience the particularly pressing challenges: stress, motivation, job satisfaction, retention, and, general engagement with their jobs. overcoming these challenges involves removing the barriers to identifying and meeting the instructional needs of students, in a way that involves the resources of a team of professionals, thereby tapping into the potentials of human capacity. intervening can involve analyzing the work environment to dynamically design special educators’ jobs for motivation, involving empowerment of special educators to adapt their jobs. empowerment involves influencing internal motivation and facilitating change management with a participatory approach. developing staff for continued engagement also involves a participatory approach to professional development. educators, too, have a responsibility to change the school environment to a more engaging, participatory environment to reach the unique educational needs of the special education students. references alderfer, c. p. 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(2009). enabling school structure, mindfulness, and teacher empowerment: test a theory (doctoral dissertation). retrieved from proquest dissertations and theses. (3390602) xie, j. l., & johns, g. (1995, october). job scope and stress: can job scope be too high?. academy of job design for special education teachers 7 management journal, 38(5), 12881309. retrieved from general onefile via gale database. zembylas, m., & papanastasiou, e. c. (2005). modeling teacher empowerment: the role of job satisfaction. educational research & evaluation, 11(5), 433-459. doi:10.1080/138036105001461 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 article citation major, a. e. (2012). job design for special education teachers. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/900 author notes amanda e. major alabama state university and university of phoenix 2415 seaton cir, montgomery, al 36116 amanda_major@live.com amanda major, cplp, capm, instructs asynchronous industrial/organizational psychology courses at the university of phoenix while working towards her doctorate in educational leadership, policy, and law at alabama state university. as a learning and performance professional, she contributed 10+ years to corporate, academic, and educational accomplishments. she has also earned certificates as well as two certifications, the american society of training and development's certification in professional learning and performance and the project management institute's certified associate in project management. special thanks to dr. ronald a. lindahl, professor at alabama state university, and karen hamilton, senior director of counseling and student support services at wake county public school system. manuscript received: 5/26/2012 revisions received: 7/03/2012 accepted: 7/15/2012 job design for special education teachers 9 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template xxx 10 educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 11 volume 15, number 1 march 13, 2012 issn 1099-839x using the think-aloud strategy to bolster reading comprehension of science concepts evan ortlieb megan norris texas a&m university – corpus christi comprehension of text is developmental in that it begins with a child’s ability to listen and make sense of language. though listening comprehension is often the predecessor towards reading comprehension; some children maintain difficulties in listening comprehension throughout schooling and into adulthood. this quasi-experimental study investigated the effectiveness of using a think-aloud strategy to improve students’ reading comprehension in science within a kindergarten classroom. results indicate that using think-alouds as a during-reading activity significantly increases a student’s comprehension of science concepts. findings provide relevant information about employing think-alouds as an instructional tool for teachers in the primary grade levels. keywords: comprehension, think-aloud, prevention, science, literacy, kindergarten current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 higher education tuition and fees in china 1 2 3 comprehension is one of the five core components of reading, which has been a hot topic for the last few years (cassidy & ortlieb, 2011; cassidy, valadez, & garrett, 2010; dymock, 2007). teachers are always in search for enhanced methods of comprehension strategy instruction. comprehension is a complex process that requires students to use multiple cognitive skills, such as auditory processing (huey, 1908/1968; anderson, hiebert, scott, & wilkinson, 1984). students also need to have direct instruction of strategies, which can help develop reading comprehension (loveless, 2012). comprehension consists of a variety of strategies that children must know and manipulate in order to understand readings; struggling readers often have difficulty comprehending texts that they are reading because they lack these skills. although it is also difficult for teachers to teach strategies, according to dymock (2007), there could possibly be more improvements in students’ understanding when reading text, because of the increase of teachers making a point to teach strategies. many children do not have the foundational skills such as word recognition, vocabulary development, and prior experiences that are considered necessary to connect text with meaning (pardo, 2004). one way teachers can augment students’ comprehension strategy use is through think-alouds. the think-aloud method has been widely used as a strategy of instruction by teachers to model for students the thinking process (dunston & headley, 2002); this in turn can help promote comprehension (block & israel, 2004). the think-aloud helps to enhance students’ abilities of the thinking process and understand what they comprehend, and it allows for the reader to connect meaning and understanding with the text. block and israel further that students feel that think-alouds are beneficial to their thinking process when the correct method is taught to them and it allows for teachers to become better educators. teachers show their thinking process and how their thoughts are occurring during the reading for students who are struggling with comprehension. through using a think-aloud teachers are able to vocalize how they think as they read (davey, 1983). although its utility is widespread, existing quantitative research evidence for its effectiveness is limited and as a result, additional investigation is needed to investigate its importance in the early grades. ericsson and simon’s (1980) approach to collecting think-aloud data has been used in many studies since the early 1980s. however, it has been criticized as doubts have been raised about its validity. the purpose of a think-aloud is to extend ericsson and simon’s work by modeling what good readers do before, during, and after reading. it is used to elicit prior knowledge of a subject, determine word meanings, and allow for readers to connect with the text, providing an example of how to be expert readers and has been proven that students can read with greater understanding (block & israel, 2004). the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of a teacher think-aloud strategy using nonfiction science texts on oral reading comprehension of kindergarten students. students need teachers to explain their thinking and reading processes (block & israel, 2004), while teachers need an expanded evidence base of this strategy’s usefulness in the classroom environment for promoting the comprehension skills that many students are lacking. theoretical framework this research investigation is grounded in theories of using schema to build comprehension. schema is a concept that describes how knowledge experiences are stored and play a role in the comprehension process (anderson, reynolds, schallert, & goetz, 1976; bartlett, 1932). schema theory states that all knowledge is organized into units; furthermore, students’ varied background knowledge and experiences lead to different levels of understanding of a text or different interpretations (anderson, reynolds, schallert, & goetz, 1976). readers have to make sense of the new knowledge gains by connecting it with prior knowledge by using logical inferences. vygotsky proposed that with adult supervision children could accomplish tasks that they would not normally be able to without assistance (dickson, chard, & simmons, 1993). scaffolding is the process through which needed support is given until eventually one gains the ability to use skills independently (rosenshine & meister, 1992). although most students need the support of an adult when learning a new skill or concept, eventually the teacher shifts the responsibility for learning to the child; the teacher provides less support as the student gains proficiency (pearson & gallagher, 1983). scaffolding is a temporary structure for the teacher to support students and minimize their struggles. it is a bridge that is used between students’ supported and independent levels. dixon (1994) provides a scaffolding example for scaffolding with a gradual release of assistance. he warns that premature removal of support for the student can result in “serious intellectual injury” which is difficult to rehabilitate. the ultimate goal of teaching the think-aloud strategy to students is to allow them to use it when completing reading tasks on their own for their own comprehension. review of literature scaffolding and think-alouds stone (1998) cites several studies in which scaffolding has been proven to be effective through his observations. cazden (1979) also states that parents play games with their children at home and use a scaffolding model; taking turns. a similar scaffolding process is seen in middle and high schools, in which teachers use a question-answer session with their students as a scaffold to see if mastery is accomplished. even as adults, it is commonplace to use a variety of scaffolding methods in everyday learning situations. larkin (2001) completed several observations on teachers who used a scaffolding model, finding it led towards the development of independent learners; she noted several elements that teachers incorporated into learning that proved to be very successful. some of these guidelines include establishing what the learner already knows, beginning with what students can do, and knowing when it is time to stop (larkin, 2001). as a teacher, you want your students to feel successful and have a sense of accomplishment. scaffolding works best when the teacher knows the students learning abilities and is there to provide support for students to encourage successful learning. the think-aloud is a strategy that allows a teacher to verbalize thoughts while reading orally, modeling for students how the process of comprehension works (harris & hodges as cited in block & israel, 2004). the think-aloud strategy can be used as a scaffolding model to develop higher thinking and learning, and allows for the clarifications of difficult concepts or tasks. according to tierney and readence (2000), teachers can use the think-aloud strategy as a way to scaffold students reading comprehension. in a think-aloud, teachers model their own thinking and reading strategies for the students as they need. the goal of the think-aloud strategy is that eventually students will develop a similar thinking process when they are reading independently, thereby improving their comprehension. listening comprehension studies involving the relationship between listening and reading comprehension have been extensively researched (curtis, 1980; hoover & gough, 1990; singer & crouse, 1981; stanovich, cunningham, & feeman, 1984; sticht et al., 1974). insights from the field of cognitive psychology emerged, especially pertaining to schema theory, leading reading researchers to concentrate on how background knowledge of a topic and the semantic features of the language affected comprehension (pearson & johnson, 1978). the syntactic features of the language can be transferred via read alouds and oral language. hart and risley (1994) demonstrated large disparities in reading ability are already evident by 1st grade based on the qualitative and quantitative differences in oral language that children from different ses backgrounds are previously exposed. to develop comprehension skills that transfer to independent reading, listening comprehension should be explicitly taught in primary grades. since the 1970s, little research has been conducted to further sticht's highly influential work. explicit comprehension strategy for more than three decades, research has been conducted on explicit comprehension strategies (dymock, 2007). comprehension strategies need to be taught explicitly and modeled long term for students at all grade levels (block & pressley, 2002). opportunity to practice these strategies with assistance should be allotted until they understand the strategy and how to use it correctly. comprehension can even be modeled in the first few years of human development, allowing students to see how good readers think and interact with texts (gregory & cahill, 2010). the comprehension revolution (1970-1990) provided us with the notion that comprehension was more than decoding and word recognition (duke, 2001; gregory & cahill, 2010), leading towards increasing numbers of studies being conducted on comprehension. still, there are minute amounts of research available on explicitly teaching comprehension strategies to younger students (gregory & cahill, 2010) because of the ongoing emphasis of word decoding and reading skills. in one study, gregory and cahill (2010) followed a kindergarten teacher to see if comprehension was developed through explicitly teaching strategies. the teacher activated schema for students by making connections, visualizing, and asking questions. by using schema theory as the basis for her comprehension strategy instruction, the teacher delivered instruction to her kindergarten class that would ordinarily be used with older students. her successes suggested that explicit comprehension strategies can be taught successfully to young students. knowledge of strategies is important for students to select a thinking process that aids in their comprehension (block & israel, 2004). knowing several strategies allows for students to select the appropriate comprehension process to use for the task at hand. when comprehension strategies are taught explicitly for students, they learn how to select the appropriate strategy. comprehension should be taught separately and collectively. effective think-alouds show how good readers do things before, during, and after readings which assist students in their own learning. comprehension is the process in which readers construct their meaning though text. the more background knowledge that a reader has to help connect to while reading the text, the easier it is for the reader when it comes to understand what is being read (pardo, 2004). comprehension in content areas along with hands on learning, learning from text is an important aspect of any content area (neufeld, 2005). if students are taught comprehension strategies explicitly, this can help them to read more effectively in other content areas. according to neufeld, comprehension strategy instruction will be the most effective if it is being taught in context with what students are learning. if they are expected to read something, then they need to be taught the comprehension strategies that will help them understand this new concept. to be successful at mastering content in areas such as science or social studies, students need to comprehend the text that they are reading as it relates to knowing something or applying that knowledge. students are incredibly involved in reading and writing throughout subject area classes (knipper & duggan, 2006); comprehension is demonstrated not only through reading but also through writing. teachers need to be knowledgeable in comprehension strategy instruction, regardless of the content area. content area reading should begin in early grades so that students are prepared for reading and comprehending advanced texts of increasingly difficult readability and concepts (moss, 2005). content area comprehension no longer just refers to reading and writing, but to all aspects of literacy that are involved in these subjects. this includes technology such as e-mail, internet sites, or electronic messaging (moss, 2005). a literacy event is made by students engaging in some form of text (pardo, 2004). according to duke (2000) the average first grade student spent only 3.6 minutes per day with informational texts. students are not being taught using a variety of genres. classroom libraries contain more narrative texts than any other genres. in schools, reading instruction needs to be integrated into content areas to help students learn at the same time they are reading. research on the think-aloud strategy is now a hot topic. duthie (1996) suggests that it is possible to associate instruction in reading with comprehension instruction in expository texts, teaching young readers how to relate to the text and choose which comprehension strategy is most appropriate for the subject they are learning. methods participants a title i public school in south texas was the site of this study. students from pre-kindergarten to current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 using the think-aloud strategy to bolster reading comprehension of science concepts 1.give an example of light energy (one source) 2. give an example of sound energy (one source) 3. give an example of heat energy (one source) 4. what is something that interacts with a magnet? 5. something that does not interact with a magnet? 6. describe the location of an object (using the term above, below, behind, beside, and in front of.) figure 1. pre-test/post-test. fifth grade are educated in this school. they have the following ethnic composition: 73% hispanic, 16% native american, 9% white, and 3% african american. a majority of the families are from an economically disadvantaged background and 91% qualify for free and reduced lunch. there were 37 kindergarten participants in this study. two separate classes were selected; in group a there were 17 students and in group b there were 19 students. students in group a were randomly assigned to the experimental treatment group and received science instruction through think-alouds in nonfiction text as well as regular instruction from the schools’ adopted curricular program of the texas education service center curriculum collaborative, called cscope. this curriculum support system is fully aligned to the state standards to provide a common language, process, and structure for curriculum development. its adoption is widespread throughout the state of texas. meanwhile, group b served as the control group and received science instruction through the schools adopted curriculum of cscope. materials both groups were given a pre-test before the study began using the final evaluations taken from the cscope curriculum (see figure 1). these questions were asked orally and were scored as either correct or incorrect answer. if they could give a suitable example they received one point, whereas if they could not give an example, they received zero points. the pretest consisted of six questions over the topics that would be taught during the five week duration of the study derived from the cscope curriculum. nonfiction science books were chosen based on their relation to the topic that was being taught during the week’s lessons. the books were chosen by the researchers based on their knowledge of grade level appropriate nonfiction texts suitable for think-alouds. procedures the unpaired t-test results from pretest scores of both the control and experimental group found no statistically significant differences between the two classes t(34) = 0.01, p = 0.98. scores for the control group (m = 1.05; sd = 1.08) were comparable to those of the experimental group (m = 1.06; sd = 1.05). random assignment of treatment was provided as one group would serve as the control group, while the other as the experimental group. the independent variable was the method in which nonfiction books were presented in the classroom setting. intervention. the experimental group received instruction from the regular curriculum and supplemental instruction from the use of think-alouds in nonfiction science books. students received instruction from the think-aloud method for 15 minutes a day, three days a week in addition to the regular 20 minutes of cscope science time. to perform a think-aloud a teacher must model for the students how their thinking strategies occur: 1) choose a trade book that is grade-level appropriate for the topic of study; 2) preview reading material to find any unfamiliar vocabulary or parts in the story that can confuse students; 3) give background knowledge on the topic at hand. then take a book walk (flipping through the pages) to look at illustrations and nonfiction features; 4) while reading, pause and make comments about what you are thinking in order to clarify for students how comprehension is taking place; 5) verbalize predictions, confusing parts, or connections with prior knowledge to help show comprehension of the text (in an effort to lead children to make predictions); 6) close the lesson with a strong connection to the book, or short review of the purpose of the story. (vacca & vacca, 2010) one specific vignette from the proceedings of a teacher performing a think aloud using the text, the very hungry caterpillar, is as follows: t: today, we are going to read the book – the very hungry caterpillar. it was written by eric carle, one of my favorite children’s book authors. you may have seen caterpillars before on the playground or at home. we are going to find out all of the things the caterpillar eats! but first, let’s look at some of the vocabulary words that you will come across in the book. to “nibble” means to bite or chew something. you nibble when you eat a piece of a granola bar for instance. how many of you have nibbled on something today? the next word is “push.” pressing against something or shoving is other words for push. i want you to extend your arms against your desk and push. see if you can move the desk a few inches. very good, now you understand the action of pushing. and finally, our third word today is “come.” each of you arrived at school this morning. you come here each day. someone might ask you to come over to play after school. t: let’s take a look at the book. as i flip through the first few pages, what do you notice that’s different about this book. look at the holes in the pages and the different sizes of the pages. here on page 6, what do you think the caterpillar is doing? remember to look at the pictures for clues. caterpillars can touch, taste, smell, and see just like we can. they have tiny antennae which sense smell. they eat at night and during the day and have three pair of legs. they can even change colors! t: now i will begin reading the story to you, stopping along the way to tell you what i am thinking about while i read aloud the book. so let’s begin. t: on monday, he ate through 1 apple but he was still hungry! (i can relate; eating just one apple would leave me still hungry too!). on tuesday, he ate through 2 pears but he was still hungry! (hmm, this caterpillar sure does like fruit. i wonder if he didn’t eat dinner on sunday night and that’s why he is so hungry on monday and tuesday. show me how you lay down for a rest). on wednesday, he ate through 3 plums but he was still hungry! (ok, 3 plums seem actually less than 2 pears in size so that’s not too odd to see. but i think he should eat other foods to balance out his diet. i wonder if caterpillars eat chicken and veggies like we do. i am also noticing a pattern that the caterpillar eats one more fruit per day than the previous day. i bet he will eat four peaches next. i wonder when he will get full too! can you nibble like the caterpillar?) . . . t: now that we have finished the wonderful book – the very hungry caterpillar, what action words describe what that caterpillar is doing? can you think of another way to say that?) t: now let’s talk about the science words on page 8, what season of the year is it in the picture? how can you tell? what season is next? finally, let’s compare the foods that the caterpillar ate to see which ones are healthy: apple, pear, plum, strawberry, orange, chocolate cake, ice-cream cone, pickle, swiss cheese, salami, lollipop, cherry pie, sausage, cupcake, watermelon, and green leaf. i know all of these may have sounded tasty to you but as we go through them, let’s put a “check” next to the healthy ones and an “x” next to those that are not healthy foods. the control group received regular instruction according to the district curriculum adoption; these science lessons are designed to be 20 minutes long, five days a week. the topics taught were energy, magnets, motion, and location. data collection and analysis the pre-test and post-test consisted of six questions that were taken from cscope. the questions were modified to be answered orally. the questions for the pre and post test have construct validity from their derived origin within the cscope curriculum. teacher observations were recorded for duration of study to provide an extension of quantitative data results. at the end of the five weeks, the post-test questions were given to each student orally to measure the growth, if any, from the pretest. data from group a and group b were then compared using an unpaired t-test to see if there was a statistical significance, and a cohen’s d effect size was calculated to measure the effect of the comprehension intervention. results the aim of the study was to determine the effect of using an explicit think-aloud approach to aid in comprehension development of kindergartens in the science classroom. results indicate that among the kindergartners at an elementary, title i school in south texas participating in the study (n = 36), there was a statistically significant difference between the gains in the two classes, class a (m = 4.06, sd = 1.56) and class b (m = 2.63, sd = 1.57), t(34) = 2.74, p≤ .05, ci.95 .37, 2.49. therefore, the null hypothesis is rejected that there is no difference in comprehension scores between kindergarten students. further, cohen’s effect size value (d = .41) suggested a moderate to high practical significance. discussion this study examined the effectiveness of using a think aloud to develop oral reading comprehension in a kindergarten classroom. the primary purpose was to examine if students receiving the intervention would experience greater comprehension of the subjects being taught than students who did not receive this treatment. the data showed that there was a statistical difference between the control group and the experimental group. the students in the control group gained 2.5 questions correct on average compared to the experimental group which had an average gain of 4 questions from the pre to post test (see table 1). table 1 mean of improvement by groups. instructional group mean of pre-test mean of post-test mean gain of improvement sd group a 1.06 5.48 4.06 1.56 group b 1.05 3.68 2.63 1.57 students obtained higher gains on comprehension in the experimental group than students who did not receive the treatment. the results show that there was an educationally meaningful difference between the two classes involved in the study. the findings suggest that students have a higher comprehension of subjects taught when they are involved in extra instruction such as think-alouds than students who just received the daily cscope curriculum. from teacher observations, students appeared engaged more than usual during the think-aloud sessions rather than when taught strictly by cscope. they were also more aware of the nonfiction texts and were eager to listen to the books. students often asked to look at the nonfiction texts during their free time. the present study suggests that young children’s performance, when involved in think-alouds is important for their comprehension of text, stated by davidson, vogel, and coffman (1997). the results of this study shed light on the usage of the think-aloud strategy during read aloud sessions. limitations results of the present study should be interpreted with consideration of the following limitations. factors such as the small sample size and the group studied were a sample of convenience. there was not a random sample of populations, which can limit the ability to generalize the intervention effects found in the current study. the 15 minutes of additional instruction time three days per week allocated to read alouds may have factored into increased success of experimental group’s increases in reading comprehension of scientific concepts. more studies in a diverse population needs to be performed in order to generalize the findings. implications the findings of this study suggest that elementary teachers can better support their students’ reading comprehension in science with the direct instruction using think alouds. due to the lack of research in the area of supplemental uses with think-alouds, there are many other areas that should be explored. the current study focuses on one area of comprehension – science. this study could be replicated for different content areas to help increase comprehension in other subjects. this current study was done during whole group study for 15 minutes a day, three times a week for five weeks. it is unclear how much additional time is needed to optimize the best outcome for students. this study was completed as a supplemental approach, and not as a small group intervention. it is unknown how this would provide additional support for students if implemented in small groups or even one on one. further study for further research, this study should be replicated in an older grade within the same content area (science). this would provide research as to what age groups the comprehension strategy of a think-aloud would support. more studies could be conducted if the content is only taught through think-alouds, if teachers were not limited in their guided curriculum. researchers could determine if the implementation of think-alouds could provide enough context support that teachers could use to fully support their teaching strategies. a replication of this study using a larger sample size and a longer duration time of study would provide the context for 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(2010). content area reading: literacy and learning across the curriculum, 10th ed. columbus, oh: allyn & bacon. article citation ortlieb, e., & norris, m. (2012). using the think-aloud strategy to bolster reading comprehension of science concepts. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/890 author notes evan ortlieb, ph.d. texas a&m university – corpus christi college of education early childhood development center 219h 6300 ocean drive unit 5834 corpus christi, texas 78412-5834 (361) 825-3661 fax (361) 825-2562 evan.ortlieb@tamucc.edu dr. evan ortlieb is the undergraduate reading program coordinator and an assistant professor at texas a&m university – corpus christi, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in elementary reading and literacy research. his scholarship focuses on struggling readers and remediating reading difficulties in elementary learners. he is also very interested in literacy clinics and preservice teacher education. most recently, he has begun publication of an international book series entitled literacy research, practice, and evaluation. megan norris texas a&m university – corpus christi college of education early childhood development center 6300 ocean drive unit 5834 corpus christi, texas 78412-5834 (361) 825-3661 fax (361) 825-2562 mnorris@islander.tamucc.edu megan norris is a kindergarten teacher in the corpus christi, texas area, where she focuses her research efforts of reading improvement and comprehension development in the content areas. manuscript received: 09/12/2011 revisions received: 12/21/2011 accepted: 1/13/2012 volume 15, number 1 march 13, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines lisa lacy copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero katherine ronan kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers image2.jpeg image1.png microsoft word 1061-4544-4-le_final.docx 1 volume 15, number 3 december 1, 2012 issn 1099-839x misuse of high-stakes test scores for evaluative purposes: neglecting the reality of schools and students peter clyde martin ithaca college the article examines high-stakes test scores in washington, dc that are used to evaluate school quality for ayp purposes. on the basis of analyses of school scores in terms of subpopulations and neighborhood income, it is found that there are, district-wide, significant correlations between test results and students’ economic status, special education status, and english language proficiency. furthermore, there is evidence that schools with a majority of students considered to be economically disadvantaged experience more pervasive testing failure. these findings contradict the premise of nclb that we ought to ignore differences in student factors when evaluating instructional quality. the article suggests that while test scores may provide useful information regarding a given school, they are not valid for accountability purposes. keywords: high-stakes testing; teacher evaluation; school accountability; equity upon the publication of a nation at risk in 1983, there was a sense of urgency to address the many deficiencies of us public schools in the context of problems entrenched in our society. this seminal report spelled out the need, among other things, to emphasize the “twin goals of equity and high quality schooling” (the national commission on excellence in education, 1983). in many ways, the direct, and appropriately bold, response on the part of lawmakers was the no child left behind act of 2001, that purported to ensure henceforth that all students would be taught effectively and that states, districts, schools, and teachers would be held accountable for the achievement of every student. in order to ensure this accountability, students would be assessed on standardized tests that would eliminate contextual considerations and ensure that we truly look at academic achievement. according to the enforcement arm of nclb— adequate yearly progress (ayp)—schools are responsible for the achievement of all students as measured by yearly standardized tests. based on their scores, students are or are not determined to be “proficient” in reading and math. schools have to meet benchmarks that establish what percentage of their overall population ought to score proficient. they also have to meet this benchmark for subpopulations of students— different ethnic groups, students who are economically disadvantaged, students with a disability (swd), and english language learners (ell), notably. schools that do not make adequate yearly progress (ayp) are publicized and required to take increasingly prescriptive corrective action. through more recent initiatives such as race to the top, the federal government has also at least tacitly encouraged states to grade public school teachers according to their students’ test scores, thus promoting the view that students’ high stakes test results are the consequence of specific teachers’ instruction. in washington, dc there has been a considerable push toward higher test scores, with an ongoing debate on how much teacher and administrator retention or salaries ought to be tied to test scores. in many ways, dc has been at the forefront of much of the push provided by nclb and, consequently, also of the increasingly loud backlash against a law that many now claim actually contributes to the very inadequacies it was supposed to remedy. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 purpose the purpose of this article is to examine how, in fact, ayp results—which are viewed as indicators of school and teacher quality—are a mirror of differences in the lives of children who are schooled in the same city. by comparing test scores across population groups, the study examines to what extent these scores can indeed— as the law mandates—serve as a way to hold schools accountable for educational quality, and to what extent they are instead a testimony for how not all students face the same challenges and a reminder that we need to consider students’ differing situations in how we approach their schooling. to this effect, the article seeks to examine how pervasiveness of test failure is in fact related to pervasiveness in adversity beyond the classroom. the study examines school proficiency rates on nclb-mandated assessments for public middle school students in washington, dc, in order to determine what non-instructional factors affect scores. the aim is to investigate whether it is indeed accurate to make judgments on a school’s instructional success based on test scores—as nclb and ayp measures currently dictate—or whether, instead, the reporting of test scores should be reconfigured to show what factors school staff in a given situation are in fact contending with. the no child left behind act: purpose and central provisions when nclb was enacted, equity issues in school quality had become a major public concern (hall, wiener, & carey, 2003), with a sense that funding needed to be allocated to serve those schools most in need and, at the same time, that schools needed to be held accountable for what they achieved (mcentire, 2010). there was a sense that, especially in areas with large poor and minority populations, there was a general lack of rigor and focus on educational outcomes (mcentire, 2010; hall et al., 2003). while many states were already putting in place standards to underlie curricula, few systematically, universally, and specifically assessed whether these standards were in fact being met (linn, baker, & betebenner, 2002). in many ways, nclb was designed to be a catalyst for changes that would raise the general quality and international competitiveness of american education, promote equity, and hold schools accountable for reaching measurable outcome standards in ways common in the private sector (the education trust, 2004). in this way, the law was intended not to embody educational reform in itself, but to cause further reforms on the state, district, and school levels. the impetus, or muscle, for getting schools to change their practice in this case was related to funding. indeed, nclb mandated that in order for states to receive funds allocated under title 1, they commit themselves to getting all their students, regardless of demographic group, to be on grade-level by 2014. accordingly, states became required to define benchmark goals to determine whether or not schools were making adequate yearly progress (ayp) toward reaching this eventual universal proficiency. in this way, the ayp mandate set a standard for defining educational success that had previously been missing. the ambition of nclb, then, was to force states to close the achievement gap and ensure that schools no longer had students who were in fact invisible—and that, indeed, every student counted. under nclb, states have been held responsible for setting grade-level content standards and implementing an assessment tool that measures students’ performance relative to these standards on an annual basis in grades 3 through 8 and at least twice in high school. a further requirement was established that specific scores be determined on the math and reading tests that mark whether students are or are not deemed to be proficient (the education trust, 2004). in recent years this notion of a single-point passing score that all ayp measures are based on has been challenged and a number of states are now working on using additional student improvement measures. as required by nclb, states set their own beginning proficiency target rate for 2003 based on previous baseline data and have been raising this target incrementally in order to reach 100% in 2014. a key provision of the law is that the same annual target rates are to be set for the total school population and for the different subgroups tested (by gender and ethnic group as well as low-income and limited english proficient students and students with disabilities). it has been required that at least 95% of students participate in the assessment. finally, states were also asked to select one additional measure of academic progress, with most opting for attendance rates in elementary and middle schools and graduation rates for high schools. schools that do not meet these benchmarks but present a 10% decrease in students who did not score proficient over the year before receive a ‘safe harbor’ (sh) designation that temporarily freezes their ayp status, indicating that while their progress is not deemed adequate, it is recognized that they are taking steps in the right direction. if a school does not make ayp for even one of its measures and subgroups, a series of increasingly prescriptive corrective measures are required, with a possible eventual restructuring of the school. measuring and reporting ayp in the district of columbia the d.c. comprehensive assessment system (dccas), the high-stakes test that is used to assess at least 95% of students in grades 3 through 8 and 10 in reading and math, is given in all dc public schools and charter schools every spring. using pre-determined single-score cut-off points, scores are determined as below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced. only misuse of high-stakes test scores for evaluative purposes 3 some students with severe disabilities are exempt from taking the test in its standard form and students with disabilities (swd) and english language learners (ells) are permitted to have specific accommodations that do not significantly alter the test. scores for ells who have been in the u.s. for less than one year are not counted toward ayp. schools are then issued a one-page “ayp report” that is publicized in the local media. it indicates the percentages of students who were assessed and who scored proficient or above. these are given for the total student population and for subgroups based on ethnicity, special education classification, ell classification, and for students who are considered to be economically disadvantaged. standard scores, analyses of the student population, and measures of statistical validity are not given. the ayp report then concludes whether the school reached the statewide proficiency target for each student category. for 2011 these benchmarks were set at 73.69% proficient in reading and 70.14% in math. assessing student differences rather than student learning a substantial body of research points to the impact that student background has on high-stakes test scores, thus in effect undermining the claim that these are indicators of instructional quality (welner, 2005; hershberg, 2008; koretz, 2008; jennings & corcoran, 2009). according to welner (2005), “the truth is that each—school and student—bears some responsibility, along with the state, the school district, the family, the community, peer groups, libraries, and various other people and institutions including the federal government. and the truth is that if it were possible to measure the actual contributions of each to student test scores, we would find varying proportions for each community, family, student, teacher, and school. a more rational nclb would acknowledge both of these truths.” what this means, then, is that ayp essentially fails to do precisely what it was designed to do, which is to provide a fool-proof tool with which to assess the results of instruction and hold schools accountable for student learning (koretz, 2008; martin, 2011). economically disadvantaged students, english language learners, and students with disabilities research indicates that some of the population groups that are specifically singled out in assessment of school performance are likely to receive lower scores across schools. indeed, there is evidence that schools with high percentages of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch receive lower average scores than do schools with wealthier students (escamilla, mahon, rileybernal, & rutledge, 2003; jennings & corcoran, 2009). while there does not seem to be an obvious, single explanation, scores are found to be linked to socioeconomic factors and not just quality of instruction. inherent limitations in the validity of using test scores to measure educational quality are perhaps even more evident in the case of schools with large populations of ells. nclb requires that after being enrolled in us schools for one calendar year all ells take the same english-language test as other students regardless of their english language proficiency. this has been a ground for concern as to the validity both of assessing ells in this way and in using the results to assess the performance of schools results (government accounting office, 2006; menken, 2008). it has been argued that for ells, in fact, any such standardized assessment of academic achievement is instead above all a test of english language proficiency (menken, 2008, 2009). the consequence, then, is that schools are at a disadvantage relative to ayp if they even have a subpopulation of ells. there are indications that students with limited english proficiency have significantly lower scores than their peers (government accounting office 2006; abedi, 2009), which means that ultimately the ayp provision punishes schools for serving large numbers of ells (escamilla et al., 2003; ga’ndara & baca, 2008). similarly, schools are hurt in terms of ayp for serving large numbers of students with disabilities (swd). abedi (2009) finds that special education students score significantly lower than their general education peers and cole, eckes, and swando (2009) point out how common it is for schools not to make ayp only because of the test results of their swd subgroup. indeed, it has been found that standardized test results for special education students as a group are especially meaningless given huge gains and drops from one year to another that essentially make it impossible to trace a significant performance trend (thurlow, quenemoen, altman, & cuthbert, 2008). in fact, the very notion of standardized tests, based as they are on premises of homogeneity and reliability of testing behavior, seems to be at odds with the notion of disability. because students are typically performing at least two years below grade level to even be labeled as having a disability, they would be required to make much faster progress than other students in order to make ayp, which seems especially nonsensical given the particular challenges they face (eckes & swando, 2009). it has also been shown that the assessment accommodations special education students typically receive have little impact on their performance (bowen & rude, 2006). as is the case for students considered to be economically disadvantaged and for ells, analyses of test results of swd confirm that it is largely the nature of the student population rather than the quality of instruction that determine whether a school makes ayp (eckes & swando, 2009). testing for teacher accountability because of this close relationship between test scores and demographic factors, there have been calls to current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 abandon attempts to tie assessment results to teacher evaluation. in a discussion of value-added measurements, au (2010) explains that while it appears that teacher quality has some effect on test scores, this cannot be accurately interpreted to mean that individual teachers are responsible for the results of individual students or that standardized tests are a simple reflection of instruction. in their study on using test score gains to evaluate teacher performance, schochet and chiang (2010) remark that over 90 percent of variation in scores is attributable to factors specific to the student and unrelated to the teacher. baker et al. (2010) also point to yearly fluctuations in teachers’ test results as evidence that students’ test scores do not reliably reflect the quality of a specific teacher. research questions and methodology a major emphasis of nclb has been to hold schools accountable for all students’ learning outcomes as measured on yearly standardized tests, eventually reconstituting schools that persistently fail to make ayp over time. a central question, of course, becomes whether this entails holding schools accountable for factors they have no control over. caine (2011), writing about new york city schools, renders this logic as follows: close a failing school with many failing kids and it’s the end of the problem, right? new york city will have no more failing students, no more gangs, no more struggling families, no school-age children living in shelters, no more students with post-traumatic stress disorder, no more undiagnosed learning disabilities. (p. 50) in order to examine the relationship between high stakes assessment results and contextual factors, available dccas results were collected for all dc public schools and charter schools that served grades six through eight (from the dc office of the state superintendant of education, 2011). three schools were omitted from the data because all or almost all of their students took an alternative assessment especially designed for students with severe disabilities instead of the dccas. data were collected from a total of seventy schools, thirty-two belonging to the dc public school system and thirty-eight to the dc public charter school system. it was decided to focus specifically on the middle grades because not all elementary and high school grades are tested. however, not all grades six through eight in dc are served in separate middle schools. instead, some are grouped with elementary or high school grades. table 1 presents the breakdown of schools focused on by the grade range they served the year of the study. a limitation of the data, then, is that not all school test results reflect scores from exactly the same grades. in order to understand whether contextual factors, as opposed to instructional quality, are significantly related to school-wide test scores, the following research questions are considered: 1) is there a significant difference in test scores if students have what the ayp report singles out as a 'challenging factor'? it is to be noted here that nclb does not mandate reports for groups of students considered not to have such ‘challenging factors.’ instead, these are only given as embedded in the total school population. 2) which supposed “challenging factors” have the most significant impact on school-wide scores? 3) among schools that did not make ayp, there is a difference in pervasiveness of test failure based on whether they failed because of the scores of the total student population or only because of particular subgroups. how do such differences in pervasiveness of test failure correlate with the percentage of students considered to have “challenging factors”? 4) in the case of neighborhood schools, are there differences in test scores across neighborhoods with different mean family incomes? for each school, proficiency scores were considered for the total population, students with economic disadvantages, swd, and ells. subtracting the number of each of these subpopulations from the total population of each school, the researcher also arrived at scores for students without economic disadvantages, students without disabilities, and students who were not ell. furthermore, schools were categorized according to their neighborhood cluster. median family income for each neighborhood cluster was noted and schools were sorted accordingly. table 1 number of schools by grades served and grades tested grades served pk-12 pk-8 k-8 3-8 4-8 5-8 6-8 6-9 7-8 6-12 7-12 number of schools 1 36 1 1 3 4 16 2 4 1 1 grades tested all school levels all elementary and middle school some elementary, all middle school all middle school some middle school all middle and high school some middle, all high school misuse of high-stakes test scores for evaluative purposes 5 statistical analyses were then performed to test for significant relationships between each of these subpopulations and variables and the overall test results. data presentation differences among subpopulations disaggregating and comparing the means of proficiency rates of students who were and were not found to have a particular “challenge,” it is clear that students not categorized into one of the ayp-defined subgroups almost always have consistently higher proficiency rates, with a highly significant measure of statistical confidence (see table 2). the one exception is math scores for ells, which are not significantly different from scores of students who are not ells. perhaps math is a testing area where language proficiency matters less as a contextual factor. the limitation of these findings, however, is that while the public data allow us to calculate the percentages for students without specific “challenges” based on the subgroup data that are presented, the ayp reports do not allow us to determine results for students who do not have any “challenges.” those students, then, where obvious contextual factors might have the least impact on test scores, are those who are the most effectively hidden in the data. in order to highlight this omission, the table below features a row for these students that is of course left blank since the data are not made available to the public. most significant challenges swd are the subpopulation that is lowest in absolute terms and in relationship to their peers (15.7% proficient contrasted with 40.12% in reading and 21.96% proficient contrasted with 52.72% in math), suggesting the likelihood that the very fact that they have a disability—irrespective of particulars of instruction in a particular school—has a significant impact on their scores. as shown in table 3, however, students with economic disadvantages constitute the majority of students in most schools (sixty-four out of seventy) and a large minority in almost all others (five out of six). in addition to scoring lower than students who are not considered economically disadvantaged within the same schools, they also score significantly lower if one simply compares the proportion of all students with economic disadvantages who score proficient with the proportion of students who are not economically disadvantaged and who do so (with a z value of 27.96 for reading and 23.59 in math, and a p value of less than 0.000 for both). table 2 average school dccas proficiency rates by student subgroup (in schools where subgroups>25) “challenge” subject tested number of schools average subgroup proficient score (students with “challenge” vs. student without) probability of no difference resulting from a one-tailed ttest (α=.05) economically disadvantaged vs. not economically disadvantaged reading 56 42.66% vs. 51.9% p=0.003 math 56 46.85% vs. 53.89% p=0.028 students with disabilities vs. students without disabilities reading 46 15.7% vs. 40.12% p<0.0001 math 46 21.96% vs. 52.72% p<0.0001 english language learners vs. fluent english proficient students reading 14 38.52% vs. 57.74% p<0.0001 math 14 47.49% vs. 58.69% p=0.073 no significant difference students with an identified “challenge” vs. students without an identified “challenge” reading data not made public math table 3 prevalence of students considered economically disadvantaged schools where they constitute a testing subgroup (>25 students) schools where they constitute the majority students with economic disadvantages 69 64 swd 45 1 ells 14 0 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 given their lower scores, the contextual challenges of students with economic disadvantages are likely to have a significant negative impact on total scores for schools as a whole. simply put, the poverty of most of the students in most schools, as determined on the ayp reports, significantly hurts the testing profile of the entire school district. differences in pervasiveness of test failure while the law itself does not discriminate between reasons for not making ayp, there are arguably important practical differences between schools whose determination of failure on high stakes tests is pervasive, defined as school-wide, and others where low scores are limited to certain segments of the population. this has implications for the kind of improvement plan schools are held accountable for implementing following a failure to make ayp. if the school fails for the score of its total population, the whole program may need to be revised, whereas if it fails for only one specific subpopulation, specialized services might be targeted. there is also a difference in the public portrait that ayp paints of a school. if one has a child who does not have a disability, one may be reluctant to enroll her/him in a school where the total population is determined to have failed, yet one may have fewer misgivings if the school failed only because of the scores of its special education students. scores are therefore also examined to determine to what extent such relative pervasiveness of ayp failure is related to the makeup of the student population. here, too, the connection is confirmed, although its significance is hard to ascertain given the small sample size. simply stated, it may be that the less students in a school are subject to recognized contextual challenges, the less pervasive ayp failure is. the more challenges students enter the school with, the more likely it may be that the school will completely fail in terms of ayp (see table 4). data here are analyzed in regard to the percentage of students in a school who are considered economically disadvantaged. because of the smaller number of schools that have swd and ell sub-groups, this analysis is not performed to account for those factors. as a rule, schools where less than half the population is considered economically disadvantaged meet the ayp target for the total population. in cases where they do not make ayp it was mostly because of specific subgroups only. conversely, the large majority of schools where most students are labeled economically disadvantaged fail to make ayp for their total population. ayp failure, then, is often central and pervasive for schools where most students are poor and peripheral, limited to small subgroups for schools where students are wealthier. from an outside perspective, then, pervasiveness of testing failure mirrors the economic context of the students. differences across neighborhoods enrollment in the schools belonging to the local school system is primarily based on the neighborhood of residence. to account for income segregation among neighborhoods, the study examines the relationship between the mean income of the school’s neighborhood and test scores. for this the researchers used data on average family income for the neighborhood cluster of each school (urban institute, 2011). overall, these figures range from $41.510 to $288,541. performing a regression analysis to examine the relationship between test scores and average family income for the neighborhood cluster, one finds a very significant correlation (with an f-statistic of less than 0.0001 for both reading and math). in other words, the neighborhood of the school and the income of its population are significant factors in determining the proficiency scores of the school. table 4 pervasiveness of ayp failure as it relates to economic disadvantage percentage of students considered economically disadvantaged 0-25% 25.150% 50.175% 75.1100% test statistic (∞=.05) schools that did not make ayp for total population in both reading and math (40 out of 70 total) 0 1 12 27 chi2=47.4 p<0.0001 schools that did not make ayp for total population in either reading or math (19 out of 70 total) 0 0 6 13 chi2=24.16 p<0.0001 schools that did not make ayp only for subpopulations in reading and/or math (13 out of 70 total) 2 5 3 3 chi2=1.46 p=0.6915. in addition to confirming the null hypothesis, the results are not reliable due to the value in each frequency. misuse of high-stakes test scores for evaluative purposes 7 discussion and implications there are legitimate questions as to exactly what information assessment scores give us. based on this study, and on others, it seems that some of this information has to do with the impact of non-instructional factors on student performance on specific academic tasks. if we are to better understand how we ought to teach and understand the needs of our students, this information might be valuable indeed—as formative information to help us consider our practice and differentiate for specific groups of students in specific contexts. however, given that this information pertains to student situations, it does not qualify as an appropriate tool for assessing the performance of their teachers. unless we want to hold teachers at least partly accountable for their students’ family income, home language, and disabilities, it seems to be a mistake to use high-stakes test scores for teacher and school accountability purposes. if anything, low scores would seem more likely to drive schools to try to change their students than their instructional practices—or, in the case of teachers, to change schools. indeed, these assessment scores tend to describe that economic segregation, for example, is alive and well and that it is embodied in our public schools. given a choice, then, ayp reports as they are formulated would seem to encourage families and teachers to try to move out of poorer neighborhoods and into wealthier ones. this cannot be what a nation at risk had in mind and, one would hope, not what no child left behind intended, either. perhaps this misuse of test scores exemplifies what could be a general tendency to gloss over contextual factors that underlie our inequities rather than address them. indeed, within each of these ayp “subgroups” there are numerous dynamics that need to be addressed and that belie the notion that everyone can simply be tested in the same way in the hope that the tests always mean the same thing. this reductionism to single-method quantification is a way to deny context—at best out of the mistaken belief that considering contextual factors would keep us from getting to the core of the issue. couldn’t it be, however, that these contextual factors are in fact the core of the issue that needs to be described, highlighted, discussed, and addressed—that they are a part of the formative information teachers ought to consider as they plan instruction? and isn’t it also true that by focusing primarily on judging schools not for what they do but for what they contend with constitutes yet another instance of a lack of support to institutions we say we think are important? dunn (2005) expresses it with the following: the stresses that students and teachers encounter in schools today should evoke compassion and admiration from the public; unfortunately, quite the opposite occurs, and this troubles me even more. test results are released and inner-city students and their teachers are ridiculed in bold headlines. (p. 179) this study therefore suggests the following recommendations: • these differences need to be understood, acknowledged, and highlighted, rather than glossed over for the sake of accountability if nclb is to truly perform its self-declared duty of ridding our public schools of their inequities. • going along with that, the social inequities that are reflected in the test results should not be ignored in order to focus on the work of educators. instead, they should be regarded in order to reemphasize that if we truly want educational success for all, inequities outside of the world of school need to be addressed head-on. • high-stakes tests should be considered as formative rather than summative assessment information to benefit instruction. • if we want to examine the work of teachers and the impact of instruction, standardized tests are the wrong measure. • by highlighting rather than hiding contextual factors, we may actually use this kind of data to identify how a school is unique and define goals, expectations, and practices for that particular context. instead of forcing us into a one-size-fitsall model, high-stakes assessment scores can help us differentiate for individual schools and children. • non-“challenged” students ought to be counted as a sub-group. • schools should cease to be judged on the demographic they teach. • effectively, assessments as used and put in practice promote the very inequities nclb was designed to redress. • for further research, the possible connection between pervasiveness of test failure and demographic makeup of the student population ought to be examined further on a larger scale. the point is not that the testing data are necessarily meaningless or shouldn’t be used as one of many tools to inform our educational planning. they describe something, some kind of a reality that may be pertinent. what exactly this reality is certainly warrants further investigation and discussion. the point is that they are useful as one descriptor among many, as a valuable albeit limited and flawed informant. they are certainly not, however, meaningful as a tool for evaluation. we need to move away from our frenzy to evaluate and try a little more to describe and understand the reality. on the contrary, it may be that this emphasis current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 on accountability actually discourages us from developing what senge, scharmer, jaworski, and flowers (2004) term “the courage to see freshly” because we are too worried about how this seen reality will reflect on us (p. 35). for this type of understanding, contextual factors in students’ lives are crucial. for teacher evaluation, however, they are in the way, making us only want to dismiss them as a potential smoke-screen. references abedi, j. (2009). english language learners with disabilities: classification, assessment, and accommodation issue. journal of applied testing technology, 10(2). au, w. (2010). neither fair nor accurate. rethinking schools, 25(2), 35-38. baker, e. l, barton, p. e., darling-hammond, l., haertel, e., ladd, h. f., linn, r. l., ravitch, d., rothstein, r., shavelson, r. j., & shepard, l. a. (2010). problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers. (issue brief, 278). washington, dc: economic policy institute. retrieved from: www.epi.org/page//pdf/bp278.pdf bowen, s. k., & rude, h. a. (2006). assessment and students with disabilities: issues and challenges with educational reform. rural special education quarterly, 25(3), 24-30. caine, w, (2011). my failing school. rethinking schools, 25(4), 48-51. cole, c. (2006). closing the achievement gap series: part 3. what is the impact of nclb on the inclusion of students with disabilities? bloomington, in: center for evaluation and education policy, indiana university. d.c. office of the state superintendant of education (2011). ayp reports. retrieved from: http://www.nclb.osse.dc.gov/index.asp dunn, b. (2005). confessions of an underperforming teacher. in nieto, s. (ed.), why we teach. new york, ny: teachers college press. eckes, s. e., & swando, j. (2009). special education subgroups under nclb: issues to consider. teachers college record 11(11), 2479-2504. escamilla, k., mahon, e., riley-bernal, h., & rutledge, d. (2003). stakes testing, latinos, and english language learners: lessons from colorado. bilingual research journal, 27(1), 26-50. ga’ndara, p., & baca, g. (2008). nclb and california’s english language learners: the perfect storm. language policy, 7, 201-216. government accounting office. (2006). no child left behind act: assistance from education could help states better measure progress of students with limited english proficiency. washington, dc: author. hall, d., wiener, r., & carey, k. (2003). what new “ayp” information tells us about schools, states, and public education. washington, dc: the education trust. hershberg, t. (2005). value-added assessment and systemic reform: a response to the challenge of human capital development. phi delta kappan, 87(4). jennings, l. j., & corcoran, s. p. (2009). “beware of geeks bearing formulas”: reflections on growth models for school accountability. phi delta kappan, 90(9), 635-639. koretz, d. (2008). a measured approach. american educator, fall 2008. linn, r. l., baker, e. l., & betebenner, d. w. (2002). accountability systems: implications of requirements of the no child left behind act of 2001. educational researcher, 31(6), 3-16. martin, p. c. (2011). selecting one story and hiding others: how ayp chooses the portrayal of a school. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ mcentire, n. (2010). legacy of no child left behind. childhood education, 87(1),57-58. menken, k. (2008). english learners left behind: standardized testing as language policy. clevedon, avon: multilingual matters. menken, k. (2009). policy failures: no child left behind and english language learners. in s. groenke & a. hatch (eds.), critical pedagogy and teacher education in the neoliberal era: small openings. berlin, germany: springer. schochet, p. z., & hanley, s. c. (2010). error rates in measuring teacher and school performance based on student test score gains (ncee, 20104004). washington, dc: national center for education evaluation and regional assistance, institute of education sciences, u.s. department of education. senge, p., scharmer, c. o., jaworski, j., & flowerd, b. s. (2004). presence: exploring profound change in people, organizations, and society. new york, ny: currency doubleday. the education trust (2004). the abcs of “ayp.” raising achievement for all students. washington, dc. thurlow, m., quenemoen, r., altman, j., & cuthbert, m. (2008). trends in the participation and performance of students with disabilities (technical report, 50). minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota, national center on educational outcomes. the national commission on excellence in education (1983). a nation at risk: the imperative for educational reform. a report to the nation and misuse of high-stakes test scores for evaluative purposes 9 the secretary of education. united states department of education. washington, dc. urban institute (2011). neighborhood info dc. retrieved from: http://www.neighborhoodinfodc.org/nclusters/nc lusters.html welner, k. g. (2005). can irrational become unconstitutional? nclb’s 100% presuppositions. equity & excellence in education, 38, 171–179. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 article citation martin, p. c. (2012). misuse of high-stakes test scores for evaluative purposes: neglecting the reality of schools and students. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1061 author notes peter clyde martin, ed.d ithaca college phillips hall 194c 953 danby road ithaca, ny 14850 (607) 274-1076 pmartin@ithaca.edu dr. martin is on the faculty of the education department at ithaca college. he holds a doctoral degree in bilingual special education from the george washington university. his research interests focus on the areas of teacher education and differentiated instruction, teacher collaboration, educational equity, vision-based and transformational schooling, and serving the needs of english language learners considered to be at risk of educational failure. manuscript received: 8/26/2012 revisions received: 11/6/2012 accepted: 11/8/2012 misuse of high-stakes test scores for evaluative purposes 11 volume 15, number 3 december 1, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1035-4640-4-le_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 january 16, 2013 issn 1099-839x development of the oldenburg epistemic beliefs questionnaire (oleq), a german questionnaire based on the epistemic belief inventory (ebi) manuela paechter a, karin rebmann b, tobias schloemer b, bjoern mokwinski b, yvonne hanekamp b, and martin arendasy a karl-franzens-university, graz a carl von ossietzky university, oldenburg b the present research describes the development of a german questionnaire for measurement of domain-general epistemic beliefs. pre-studies on the psychometric properties of a german version of the epistemic beliefs inventory (ebi) had emphasized the necessity to develop an instrument that is especially constructed for german-speaking samples. the new questionnaire, the oldenburg epistemic beliefs questionnaire (oleq), is based on the epistemic beliefs inventory and includes original ebi items as well as newly developed ones. the investigation of the psychometric properties of the questionnaire in a german-speaking sample showed a factor solution in which nearly all items loaded on the theoretically assumed dimensions. the stability of the factor solution could be confirmed by means of confirmatory factor analysis in another sample. retest reliabilities of the different questionnaire dimensions were satisfactory. the dimensions of the new instrument correlated significantly, yet to a moderate to weak degree, to the use of learning strategies. keywords: epistemic beliefs; psychometric properties of the oldenburg epistemic beliefs questionnaire (oleq); learning strategies. epistemic beliefs are personal beliefs about knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge. as subjective theories of an individual, they have the function of directing and controlling actions. therefore, they are linked to numerous aspects of academic learning, how students approach learning processes, which learning strategies they use, or how they view their role as learners (bråten & strømsø, 2005; bråten, strømsø, & britt, 2011; bromme, kienhues, & porsch, 2010; buehl, 2003; buehl & alexander, 2005; cavallo, rozman, blickenstaff, & walker, 2003; hofer & pintrich, 1997; hogan, 2000; paulsen & feldman, 2005; schommer-aikins, 2002; strømsø & bråten, 2009). schommer (1990, 1993a, 1993b; schommeraikins, 2002) developed a concept of epistemic beliefs that consists of five independent dimensions: (1) structure of knowledge, (2) stability of knowledge, (3) source of knowledge, (4) control, and (5) speed of knowledge acquisition. each of these dimensions describes a continuum from a naïve to a sophisticated, welldeveloped belief, which illustrates the assumed process of development (duell & schommer-aikins, 2001). within current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 these dimensions complex as well recursive developments are possible. the dimension “structure of knowledge” ranges from a naïve position that knowledge is simply structured and consists of isolated components to a sophisticated position that knowledge is complex and interrelated. the dimension, “stability of knowledge,” can be characterized by a position that knowledge is absolute and stable over time on the one side and by a position that knowledge is subject to a constant process of development on the other side. the dimension, “source of knowledge,” ranges from the position that there is an omniscient authority to impart knowledge to a position that knowledge is acquired through individual experiences. the dimension, “control of learning processes,” describes a continuum ranging from the view that the ability to learn is fixed at birth to the view that the ability to learn is acquired through experience. the dimension, “speed of knowledge acquisition,“ extends from the view that learning is a process which succeeds on an ad-hoc basis or not at all to the view that learning is a gradual process. the five dimensions can be ordered into two categories: into beliefs that refer to the nature of knowledge (structure, stability, and source of knowledge) and into beliefs that refer to learning processes and the acquisition of knowledge (control of learning processes and speed of knowledge acquisition) (bråten et al., 2011; schommer-aikins, 2002). while most models of epistemic beliefs would agree on the first three dimensions as core dimensions of epistemic beliefs there is lower consensus whether beliefs on the acquisition of knowledge should be included (greene, azevedo, & torney-purta, 2008; hofer, 2001; hofer & pintrich, 1997). yet, when individuals are concerned with the nature of knowledge they very likely also activate cognitions on the nature of learning (pintrich, 2002). especially, when epistemic beliefs are investigated in the context of learning and teaching it seems reasonable to include beliefs on knowledge as well as beliefs on the acquisition of knowledge. elby and hammer (2010) advocate the inclusion of both categories because: what we see students doing in class… almost always involves aspects of both. because we are ultimately interested in how students approach knowledge and learning in situations such as these, it serves us to treat knowledge and learning together as part of epistemic cognition. (p. 421) especially in the context of education and learning it seems worth to measure both categories. however, when analyzing and interpreting research results one should keep in mind that the categories describe distinct concepts and they should not be treated as if they were one construct. schommer (1990) developed a standardized questionnaire, the schommer epistemological questionnaire (seq), with 63 items for the measurement of the above five dimensions of epistemic beliefs. in her questionnaire, individuals rate on a 5-point likert scale the degree to which they agree or disagree with certain views on knowledge and knowing. however, investigations of the internal structure of the seq showed various inconsistencies. several studies could not verify the assumed 5-factor structure of the set of 63 items but yielded a 4-factor solution with the dimensions “structure”, “stability”, “control”, and “speed of knowledge acquisition” (without the dimension “source”) (schommer, 1990; schommer, crouse, & rhodes, 1992; schommer & dunnell, 1994). internal consistencies, cronbach’s α coefficients, reported in two of these studies ranged from .51 to .78 and from .63 to .85 respectively (schommer, 1993b; schommer, calvert, gariglietti, & bajaj, 1997). also, schommer’s methodological approach can be called into question because she carried out factor analyses on 12 a-priori defined subsets of the 63 items and not on the 63 items themselves; the aggregation of items into subsets was based on experts’ evaluations (bråten & strømsø, 2005; schommer, 1990, 1993a). several studies attempted to analyze the factor structure of the 63 items themselves but found inconsistent factor solutions. quian and alverman (1995) found a 3-factor solution with the factors “speed of knowledge acquisition”, “structure”, and “control of knowledge.” bråten and strømsø (2005) found a similar solution plus the factor “certainty of knowledge.” schraw, bendixen, and dunkle (2002) found a solution with two of schommer’s original factors and three additional factors. schraw et al. (2002) note that one of the main problems to investigate epistemic beliefs lies in the lack of reliable and valid measurement instruments. they aimed to develop a questionnaire that would measure all five dimensions of epistemic beliefs described by schommer but that would be shorter than the seq and show better psychometric properties. their first version of the epistemic beliefs inventory (ebi) consisted of 28 items with statements on knowledge and learning which are rated on a 5-point likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). higher scores indicate more sophisticated epistemic beliefs while lower scores indicate less sophisticated beliefs. the final ebi version includes 15 items with five subscales based upon the factors outlined by schommer (1990): omniscient authority (the dimension “source” in schommer’s concept), simple knowledge (structure), certain knowledge (stability/certainty), fixed/innate ability to learn (control), and quick learning (speed). in a validation study, schraw et al. (2002) could confirm these five dimensions by means of exploratory factor analysis with orthogonal as well as with oblique rotation. in a variety of subsequent studies the assumed 5-factorial development of the oldenburg epistemic beliefs questionnaire (oleq), a german questionnaire based on the epistemic belief inventory (ebi) 3 structure of the ebi could be confirmed (bendixen, schraw, & dunkle, 1998; hardre, crowson, ly, & xie, 2007; nietfeld & enders, 2003; ravindran, greene, & debacker, 2005; teo & chai, 2011). in these studies, the ebi showed similar internal consistencies as did the seq, e.g., ranging from .54 to .78 (ravindran et al., 2005), from .53 to .80 (nietfeld & enders, 2003), or from .50 to .76 (hardre et al., 2007). while in these studies the initial factorial structure could be confirmed, there are also some studies in which the 5-factorial structure could not be confirmed (bell, 2006; debacker, crowson, beesley, thoma, & hestevold, 2008; nussbaum & bendixen, 2003). problems with reliability and validity may arise when questionnaires on epistemic beliefs are transferred into another language and/or educational background. up to now, only few attempts have been made to develop a questionnaire for the measurement of epistemic beliefs in german-speaking samples. in a survey on german instruments for the measurement of epistemic beliefs, priemer (2006) describes only four instruments for adult populations. three of them are based on the seq by schommer (moschner & gruber, 2005; moschner & schiefele, 2003; rehrl, gruber, & renkl, 2003). one is based on the epistemological beliefs instrument by jacobson and jeng (pieschl, stahl, & bromme, 2006). all instruments are only broadly outlined in abstracts in conference proceedings. the instruments face the same test-theoretical difficulties as their english counterparts. in a series of preliminary studies, rebmann and her research group translated the ebi into german and investigated its internal structure in several samples of german-speaking students. in these studies, the translated ebi version partly showed unsatisfactory psychometric properties such as inconsistent factor solutions in different samples or varying and often small amounts of explained variance. table 1 shows six of the studies conducted with the translated ebi version. in the studies, 3-factorial, 4factorial, as well as 5-factor solutions were found. in some studies, items that belonged to different factors in the original english ebi version were grouped into one factor. besides, the factor “certainty of knowledge” consistently did not show in the factor analyses. the preliminary studies reached an explained variance of 34.87% up to 62.72%. cronbach’s α coefficients ranged from .41 to .88 for the single factors. table 1 studies with a translated version of the epistemic beliefs inventory (ebi, 28 items) and results of the original ebi author(s), year participants (n) itemsa factorsb reliability variance in % bünnemeyer (2009) 154 14 4 sp, c/s, str, s .41 < α < .69 42.20 hanekamp, mokwinski, & rebmann (2010) 157 21 4 sp, c, str, s .56 < α < .73 42.56 kuhlmann (2009) 154 18 5 sp, c, s/c, st/str, str/s .45 < α < .68 47.18 mokwinski (2011) 314 18 3 sp, str, s .50 < α < .88 44.30 müller, rebmann, & liebsch (2008) 52 16 4 sp, c, st/str, s .61 < α < .88 62.72 wortmann (2009) 158 14 4 c, str/sp, s, s/sp .43 < α < .68 34.87 original ebi (schraw et al., 2002) 160 15 5 sp, c, s, st, str .58 < α < .68 60.00 original ebi (bendixen et al., 1998) 154 15 5 sp, c, s, st, str .67 < α < .87 54.00 a number of items remaining in factor solution b speed (sp), control (c), source (s), stability (st), structure (str) current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 altogether, the results of these studies advise the development of a new german instrument. three studies were carried out in the process of the development of the questionnaire: firstly, an initial questionnaire version with partly new items was developed and its psychometric properties (item difficulties, factorial structure, and retest reliability) were investigated. secondly, it was investigated whether the factorial structure can be confirmed in other samples. lastly, the relationship between the factors of the new questionnaire and the application of learning strategies was investigated. development of a german questionnaire for the measurement of epistemic beliefs and test of its psychometric properties (study 1) item development as a first step in the development of a german questionnaire based on the ebi, it had to be decided which of the original ebi items were to be included into the new questionnaire. after an analysis of their psychometric properties in the six preliminary studies (see table 1), 14 out of the 28 original ebi items were adopted. these items had shown satisfactory item difficulties and high item-to-factor loadings in each of the preliminary studies. in a second step, new items were developed in an empirical study with qualitative interviews. a repertory grid technique was used to interview students on their views on knowledge and knowing (fromm, 1987; kelly, 1955). the interviewees were to imagine successful, average, and unsuccessful students in terms of academic achievement and grades. the interviewees were to describe in which constructs students who differ with regard to their academic success might differ from each other and in which constructs students in the group of successful respectively average respectively unsuccessful students might resemble each other. altogether, 30 students were interviewed. to summarize and to categorize students’ answers, a computer-assisted content analysis was carried out on all statements. altogether, 160 statements that referred to epistemic beliefs were sampled. two coders allocated the statements to the dimensions of epistemic beliefs. of the 160 statements, 30 were allocated to the dimension “source”, 15 to the dimension “structure”, 38 to the dimension “control”, and 72 to the dimension “speed”. hardly any statements (n = 5) were allocated to the dimension “stability of knowledge.” in a next step, within each dimension statements that describe the same aspect were grouped together by the coders. new items were developed on the basis of these groupings. based on the results of the content analysis and on the preliminary studies on the original ebi, a revised german version of the ebi was developed. it consisted of 14 items of the original questionnaire and 11 new items (altogether 25 items). the items refer to four dimensions of epistemic beliefs, namely “source”, “structure”, “control”, and “speed.” each factor is described by six items, except the factor “speed” which is described by seven items. participants are asked to indicate the extent to which each of them is true using a scale ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree). items are scored such that a high value on a particular subscale indicates a more sophisticated epistemic belief. the new questionnaire was called oldenburg epistemic beliefs questionnaire (oleq). investigation of the item properties, the factorial structure, and the retest reliability of the oleq participants and measurements. psychometric properties and the factorial structure of the revised ebi were investigated in a sample of 471 university students from social sciences and economics at the universities of oldenburg and kassel (germany). the sample included 210 males (44.6%) and 261 females (55.4%). their mean age was 24.32 years (sd = 3.55). excluding one missing case most of the students were undergraduates (414, 88.0%), 12.0% (56) were graduates. all students spoke german as a first language. participation in the study was voluntary and all participants were assured that the information they provided would be confidential. a subsample of 163 students filled in the oleq again one month after the first testing. this subsample included 81 males (49.7%) and 82 females (50.3%). the mean age was 26.06 years (sd = 3.40). excluding one missing case most of the participants (111, 68.5%) were undergraduates, 31.5% (51) were graduates. results. all items showed satisfactory item difficulties between 0.20 and 0.80. orthogonal exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation was carried out to uncover the underlying structure of the variables. as a criterion factor loadings above the .30 level were defined as significant (see table 2). bühner (2011) as well as bortz (1999) consider sufficient sample size as an important requirement for conduction of factor analysis. a sample size of n = 471 as in the present study can be regarded as a “very good” pre-condition for conduction of factor analysis (bühner, 2011, p. 343). the factor analysis showed a solution with 20 out of 25 items and four factors with eigenvalues greater than 1, ranging from 1.27 to 3.80: speed (nine items), control (four items), structure (four items), and source (three items). the factors explained 40.74% of the total sample variation. for the calculation of the internal consistency of the four factors, cronbach’s α as well as guttmann’s λ4 coefficients were calculated (osburn, 2000; raykov, 1997a, 1997b). factor labels, item-to-factor loadings, eigenvalues, cronbach’s α, and guttmann’s λ4 coefficients for each of the four factors are shown in table 2. cronbach’s α coefficients for the data associated development of the oldenburg epistemic beliefs questionnaire (oleq), a german questionnaire based on the epistemic belief inventory (ebi) 5 table 2 factor structure of the oleq, items and factor loadings (n = 471) structure speed control source too many theories just complicate things.a .640 instructors should focus on facts instead of theories.a .632 the best ideas are often the most simple.a .584 things are simpler than most professors would have you believe.a .554 if you haven’t understood a chapter the first time through, going back over it won’t help. a .699 if you don’t learn something quickly, you won’t ever learn it.a .595 even if you learn slowly, you can understand the essence of a topic.b .659 working on a problem with no quick solution is a waste of time.a .605 if two people are arguing about something, at least one of them must be wrong.a .559 you learn things better when you can relate them to your own experiences.b, c .566 i would feel uncomfortable if i rely on only one source of information when preparing a presentation.b, c .525 the ability to learn is a skill that can be developed.b, c .516 if two people are arguing about something, one of them quickly agrees with the other.b .459 smart people are born that way.a .764 people’s intellectual potential is fixed at birth.a .715 how well you do in school depends on how smart you are.a .541 really smart students don’t have to work as hard to do well in their course.a .405 usually you can rely on the knowledge of instructors.b .772 most things in textbooks are trustworthy.b .690 when someone in authority tells me what to do, i usually do it.a .580 eigenvalue 1.53 3.81 2.27 1.27 guttmann’s λ4 .65 .77 .66 .51 cronbach’s α .56 .76 .57 .50 a paraphrased/translated from schraw et al. (2002) b developed by content analysis of 30 repertory grid interviews c raters had allocated the item to the dimensions source and control current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 table 3 descriptive statistics of the oleq and the list for studies 1, 2, and 3 sample study 1 (n = 471) retest sample (n = 163) sample study 2 (n = 364) sample study 3 (n = 835) m sd m sd m sd m sd oleq factors structure 2.72 .58 2.77 .58 2.91 .63 2.80 .61 speed 4.15 .50 4.10 .49 3.60 .82 3.91 .71 control 3.43 .96 3.32 .74 3.25 .74 3.30 .70 source 2.86 .63 2.89 .63 2.88 .73 2.87 .67 list factors memorization 3.90 .93 elaboration 3.86 .86 critical thinking 3.22 .89 with the factors ranged from .51 to .77; guttmann’s λ4 coefficients were .65 for the factor “structure”, .77 for “speed”, .65 for “control”, and .51 for “source”. test-retest correlations were r = .50 (p < .01) for the factor “speed”, r = .80 (p < .01) for the factor “control”, r = .70 (p < .01) for the factor “structure”, and r = .62 (p < .01) for the factor “source” (n = 163). table 3 shows the descriptive statistics for the four factors for the initial sample and the sample in which retest reliability was measured. discussion three parameters for assessing the quality of the new questionnaire had been calculated, item difficulties, factorial structure, and internal consistency. factor analysis of the new questionnaire revealed four factors. out of 25 items, four items had to be excluded due to insufficient factor loadings, another item had to be excluded in order to increase the respective factor’s internal consistency. all remaining items, but three, loaded on the factors for which they had been originally developed. these three items had been allocated to the factors “source” and “control” by two raters but in the empirical investigation they loaded on the factor “speed” (table 2). the (empirical) judgment of the participants of the study is comprehensible because all three items are related to the question whether learning is a slow, gradual process that needs time and effort or whether learning occurs immediately. altogether, the oleq shows a factor structure that fits to the theoretical concept of the dimensions of epistemic beliefs. cronbach’s α coefficients for the four factors of the oleq ranged from satisfactory (α = .77 for speed) to low coefficients (α = .51 for source) (see table 2). cronbach’s α coefficient, however, assumes tauequivalent measurements, i.e., approximately equal factor loadings for all items (osburn, 2000; raykov, 1997a, 1997b). especially for factors with a smaller number of items violations of this assumption lead to an underestimation of the internal consistency. therefore, guttman’s λ4 coefficients were calculated. simulation studies showed that they are more robust against violations of tau equivalence. however, similar to cronbach’s α, the size of guttman’s λ4 depends on the development of the oldenburg epistemic beliefs questionnaire (oleq), a german questionnaire based on the epistemic belief inventory (ebi) 7 mean inter-item correlations and on the number of items belonging to a scale (osburn, 2000). by choice of a more appropriate coefficient the internal consistency of the factors “structure” and “control” could be increased. yet, guttman’s λ4 value for the scale “source” still reflects the small number of items belonging to the factor. lower internal consistency coefficients may also point at the heterogeneity of a factor and the aspects measured. for future revisions of the scale “source” it is advised to increase the number of items. all in all, internal consistency coefficients resemble those reported in studies on the original english ebi version (hardre et al., 2007; nietfeld & enders, 2003; ravindran et al., 2005). retest reliability was recorded because one would expect that changes in general epistemic beliefs occur gradually over the course of learning experiences and as a result of an individual’s interactions with learning content, instructors, and/or other learners (ferguson, bråten, & strømsø, 2012). on the other hand, epistemic beliefs can be changed by instructional interventions. tsai (2008) could show that high school students’ epistemic beliefs changed to an at least moderate degree after a month-long intervention of an inquiry-teaching program in science. in the present study retest reliability was measured one month after the first testing. retest reliability was high for the factors “control” and “structure”. lower, but still acceptable reliabilities were found for the factors “speed” and “source”. the coefficients partly exceed the retest reliability coefficients found by schraw et al. (2002) for the english ebi version (coefficients between r = .62 to r = .66 for the factors “structure”, “speed”, “control”, and “source”). replication of the factorial structure in another sample (study 2) participants and measurements in study 2, it was investigated whether the factorial structure of the oleq found in study 1 can be replicated in another sample. the stability of the factor structure was investigated in a german-speaking sample of 364 students at the university of graz (austria) from different majors from social sciences and economics. the sample included 70 males (19.2%) and 294 females (80.8%). their mean age was 24.34 years (sd = 4.33). all participants spoke german as a first language. excluding 89 missing cases most of them were graduates (252, 91.6%), 23 (8.4%) were undergraduates. results confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the model fit of the factorial structure found in study 1. calculations were carried out with plus mplus 5.21 (muthen & muthen, 2009). the maximum likelihood estimation method was used. confirmatory factor analysis showed the following model fit indices: rmsea = .05, cfi = .96 and srmr = .067. generally, values of rmsea < .05, cfi ≥ .95, and srmr ≤ .11 can be considered indicators for acceptable fit (hu & bentler, 1999; schermelleh-engel, moosbrugger, & mueller, 2003; tinsely & brown 2000). the items measuring the dimension “structure” loaded with weights between .319 and .620, the items measuring “speed” loaded with weights between .513 and .916 on this factor, the items measuring the dimension “control” loaded with weights between .093 and .802, and the items measuring the dimension “source” loaded with weights between .524 and .687 (see table 4; see descriptive statistics in table 3). discussion confirmatory factor analysis was calculated to test the stability of the factorial structure in another sample. global fit indices were in the proposed range and speak for the tested model (see hu & bentler, 1998). for the factor “structure” the initial solution from exploratory factor analysis can be confirmed with four items loading on the factor (all original ebi items, see table 3). a closer view to the items suggests two facets of beliefs on the structure of knowledge, “complexity of knowledge resulting from multiple theories” and “meaning of simplicity and probability of a simple truth.” the last two items of the factor seem to tap into the latter facet. in the initial exploratory factor analysis (study 1) these items had received high factor loadings (see table 2). the items show lower but still significant weights in the confirmatory factor analysis (p < .01 for “the best ideas are often the most simple” and p < .05 for “things are simpler than most professors would have you believe”). due to their weights in exploratory factor analyses and the significance of the loadings in confirmatory factor analysis the items were retained in the factor solution. the structure of the factor “speed” remained unchanged with nine items (all significant weights above .50). as in exploratory factor analysis, four items (all original ebi items) load on the factor “control”. the last item (“really smart students don’t have to work as hard to do well in their course”) had an acceptable factor loading of .405 in the exploratory analysis but obtained a very low loading of .093 in the confirmatory factor analysis. however, a confirmatory factor analysis without the item showed lower fit indices indicating that the item contributes to global fit. a closer view to the content of the items suggests two facets of beliefs on the control of knowledge acquisition: beliefs whether ability is innate and beliefs whether individuals with high ability nevertheless need to work hard for success. of the four items, only the last one taps into the latter belief. in future investigations, it is advised to enlarge the item pool by further items that reflect this facet and by exchanging the last item. the item pool of the factor “source” should be also enlarged. even though the initial composition of current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 table 4 standardized factor loadings for the 4-factor model tested by confirmatory factor analysis (n = 364) structure speed control source too many theories just complicate things. .620 instructors should focus on facts instead of theories. .617 the best ideas are often the most simple. .328 things are simpler than most professors would have you believe. .319 if you haven’t understood a chapter the first time through, going back over it won’t help. .938 if you don’t learn something quickly, you won’t ever learn it. .885 even if you learn slowly, you can understand the essence of a topic. .916 working on a problem with no quick solution is a waste of time. .815 if two people are arguing about something, at least one of them must be wrong. .839 you learn things better when you can relate them to your own experiences. .843 i would feel uncomfortable if i rely on only one source of information when preparing a presentation. .640 the ability to learn is a skill that can be developed. .854 if two people are arguing about something, one of them quickly agrees with the other. .513 smart people are born that way. .802 people’s intellectual potential is fixed at birth. .757 how well you do at university depends on how smart you are. .498 really smart students don’t have to work as hard to do well in their course. .093 usually you can rely on the knowledge of instructors. .687 most things in textbooks are trustworthy. .656 when someone in authority tells me what to do, i usually do it. .524 development of the oldenburg epistemic beliefs questionnaire (oleq), a german questionnaire based on the epistemic belief inventory (ebi) 9 items to the factor has been confirmed by the confirmatory factor analysis and factor loadings are adequate it is advised to supplement the three items of the factor by new items. it can be concluded, that the confirmatory factor analysis mainly confirmed the structure found in study 1 (with the exception of one item belonging to “control”). this is an important result because in former studies on the ebi and in studies on the translated ebi version the inconsistency of factorial structures was a test-theoretical problem (bråten & strømsø, 2005; qian & alvermann, 1995; schraw et al., 2002; tsai, ho, lian, & lin, 2011). relationship between the dimensions of the oleq and the application of learning strategies (study 3) current concepts of validity (e.g., borsboom, mellenberg, & van heerden, 2004) distinguish different strategies to investigate the validity of measurements, including construct and criterion validity. distinguishing between construct validity in terms of the nomothetic span of a measure and criterion validity can often be conceptually complex, particularly if the model allows researchers to deduce the structural relations between criterion measures and predictor variables on theoretical grounds. in the present study, the validity of the oleq was assessed by criterion validity due to the following reasons: (1) the structural relations between criterion measures such as the ones used in the present study and epistemic beliefs have already been evaluated in the literature, (2) the theoretical model allowed to deduce structural relations between criterion and predictor measures; thereby allowing to evaluate aspects of the validity of the newly constructed measure, (3) evaluating construct validity in terms of nomothetic span would require simultaneous convergent and discriminate measures, i.e. comparisons with measures that assess the same construct versus comparisons with measures that asses a construct not related to epistemic beliefs (see borsboom et al., 2004). since no measure of epistemic beliefs is available in german-speaking countries thus far, a more theory-based evaluation of the criterion validity was chosen. various researchers point at a relationship of epistemic beliefs with students’ learning behaviors (bråten & strømsø, 2005; hofer, 2002; hofer & pintrich, 1997). epistemic beliefs may function as implicit theories that can give rise to goals for learning and guide the selection of self-regulatory strategies (hofer & pintrich, 1997; pintrich, 2002). in the context of learning at university it might be especially interesting how students process learning material and which learning strategies they prefer. rodriguez and cano (2006) showed linkages between different dimensions of epistemic beliefs and the application of deep-level and surface-level learning strategies. more simplistic and naïve beliefs were related to more reproduction-oriented, i.e. surface learning strategies while more sophisticated epistemic beliefs were related to more meaning-oriented, i.e., deep-level strategies. this result was partly confirmed by schommer (1993b) who found that the more students believe in quick learning (dimension “speed”) the less they attempt to monitor their learning processes. other studies point at linkages between the dimension “structure” and surfacelevel learning strategies. pupils and students who advocated positions such as "knowledge is seen as best characterized by isolated facts” preferred surface-level strategies such as memorizing facts over more complex strategies in which information is integrated (koeller, 2001; schommer et al., 1992). research has mainly found evidence for relationships of the dimensions “speed,” “structure,” “source” with the application of surface-level or deep-level learning strategies (koeller, 2001; rodriguez & cano, 2007; schommer, 1993b; schommer et al., 1992). studies on the relationship between “control” and learning strategies often showed ambiguous results. students with sophisticated beliefs on the dimension “control” rather employ a wide range of different strategies and do not rely on only a few strategies or a single strategy (dweck & leggett, 1988; rodriguez & cano, 2007; schommer, 1993b). while the aforementioned literature assumed a direct relationship between epistemic beliefs and the application of learning strategies, other research implies that the relationship between these two concepts is moderated by conceptions and views of learning (tsai et al., 2011) or metacognitive knowledge on types of tasks and learning strategies (bromme, pieschl, & stahl, 2010). yet, all of these studies would agree that at least to a certain degree epistemic beliefs may function as a lens through which a student may interpret learning material and learning demands imposed upon her or him and that therefore epistemic beliefs are related to the use of learning strategies. due to these deliberations, it was investigated to which degree the four dimensions of the oleq are related to students’ application of deep-level and surface-level learning strategies in their studies. participants and measurements the relationship between the dimensions of the oleq and the use of learning strategies was investigated in a combined sample of study 1 and 2. it included 835 students who had filled in the oleq and a questionnaire on the use of learning strategies. the sample included 280 males (33.5%) and 555 females (66.5%) with 437 undergraduate students (58.5%) and 309 graduates students (41.5%) (missing cases n = 89). the participants’ mean age was 24.33 years (sd = 3.91). the participants’ epistemic beliefs were measured by the four dimensions of the oleq. the application of learning strategies was measured by the questionnaire “lernstrategien im studium” (list [learning strategies in academic studies]; wild, 2000), a german adaptation of a selection of mslq scales current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 (motivated strategies for learning questionnaire; pintrich, smith, garcia, & mckeachie, 1991). in several studies, the instrument showed satisfactory reliability measures (cronbach’s α) and a stable factorial structure (boerner, seeber, keller, & beinborn, 2005; schiefele, streblow, ermgassen, & moschner, 2003; wild, 2000; wild & schiefele, 1994). the scales of the instrument are modular and can be selected according to specific research purposes. in study 3, measurement focused on the application of surfaceand deep-level cognitive strategies. students were asked to indicate on 5-point likert scales ranging from “very seldom” (1) to “very often” (5) how often they apply specific learning strategies. as a surface-level strategy, memorization was measured by seven items (example item: “i learn rules, technical terms, or formulas by heart”). the internal consistency (cronbach’s α) of this scale was .76. deep-level strategies were measured by the scales “elaboration” and “critical thinking.” elaboration strategies describe cognitive processes in which learners relate new information to already known information, in which they pull together information from different sources, or draw connections between different sources of information (mayer, 1996; pintrich, 1999). the scale “elaboration” consisted of eight items (example item: “i try to find links between new concepts or theories and those i already know”). internal consistency (cronbach’s α) of this scale was .84. critical thinking strategies describe cognitive processes in which students try to evaluate or to challenge ideas or conclusions, e.g., by questioning the ideas in a text book, by finding evidence for or against an argument, or by reflecting from different perspectives. the scale consisted of eight items (example item: “i develop my own ideas, based on the study materials i am actually working on”). the internal consistency (cronbach’s α) of this scale was .87. results students’ epistemic beliefs contributing to the application of learning strategies were investigated. a multiple regression analysis was carried out with the four dimensions of epistemic beliefs as independent variables and three learning strategies as dependent variables (see descriptive statistics for these variables in table 3, summary of multiple regression analysis in table 5). a linear relation between independent (predictor) and dependent (criterion) variables was assumed meaning that increases in one variable should be related to increases or decreases in another one. mplus 4.21 was used for the multiple regression analyses because it supports the investigation of the relationship between a set of independent and dependent variables in one single regression analysis (muthen & muthen, 2009). table 5 summary of multiple regression analysis for learning strategies regressed on students’ epistemic beliefs (n = 835) epistemic beliefs: use of: elaboration critical thinking memorization b se b β b se b β b se b β speed 0.08 0.04 .08 0.10 0.03 .09 .10 .03 .10 control 0.05 0.03 .05 structure 0.12 0.03 .12 0.10 0.03 .11 -.10 .03 -.10 source 0.15 -0.03 .11 -.15 .03 -.15 r2 .03 .07 .06 note: all reported regression coefficients are significantly different from zero (p < .05). development of the oldenburg epistemic beliefs questionnaire (oleq), a german questionnaire based on the epistemic belief inventory (ebi) 11 as expected, the dimension “structure” is positively related to both deep-level learning strategies, elaboration (β = .12, p < .01) and critical thinking (β = .11, p < .01), and it is negatively related to the surface learning strategy of memorization (β = -.10, p < .01). the dimension “speed” contributes positively to all learning strategies, the use of elaboration (β = .08, p < .05), the use of critical thinking (β = .09, p < .01), and the use of memorization strategies (β = .10, p < .01). the dimension “control” contributes with a low but significant positive weight to elaboration (β = .05, p < .05). the dimension “source” is mainly negatively related to the application of the surface-level learning strategy “memorization” (β = .15, p < .01) and positively related to the use of critical thinking (β = .11, p < .01). for all three types of learning strategies only smaller amounts of variance can be explained by the four dimensions of epistemic beliefs (r2 between .03 and.07, see table 5). discussion in order to assess criterion-related validity the relationship between the dimensions of the oleq and the use of learning strategies was investigated. all four dimensions of epistemic beliefs showed significant regression weights for the application of learning strategies. for the dimensions “source”, “structure”, and “control” more sophisticated epistemic beliefs were related to the use of deep-level learning strategies whereas more naïve beliefs were related to the use of surface-level learning strategies. also, the dimension speed was positively related to the use of deep-level learning strategies. this dimension, however, was also positively related to the more frequent use of memorization strategies and it probably can be characterized by a wide use of all learning strategies. for the dimension “control” only a weak relationship to the application of elaboration strategies could be found. items belonging to this dimension refer to the belief whether individuals can improve their capacity to learn or whether the capacity to learn is rather innate and cannot be changed. the connection between these items and learning strategies is also less obvious. it is possible that this dimension is more strongly related to aspects such as effort and motivation. when interpreting the results of study 3 one also has to consider that epistemic beliefs explain a significant, yet a small amount of the variance (r2 = 0.03 to r2 = 0.07). then again, similar results are reported by tsai et al. (2011) who found significant but moderate to low relationships between epistemic beliefs and conceptions of learning such as viewing learning as a memorization process as opposed to viewing learning as making sense of information. epistemic beliefs seem to be one variable in a variety of others that may influence the application of learning strategies. for future studies, the relationships between the dimensions of the oleq and learner characteristics such as metacognitive knowledge (bromme et al., 2010), self-efficacy (tsai et al., 2011), or motivation and goal orientation (paulsen & feldman, 2005) should be included. it also might be a methodological problem that students only had to describe how they generally learn for their studies. relationships between these two concepts might have been higher if students had been asked to describe their learning behavior in a more concrete situation (e.g. for a certain subject or in a specific time interval). also, studies in which actual behavior is recorded, e.g., by observing students’ processing of learning materials, are to be recommended. general discussion and conclusion research on test adaptation indicates that the construct validity of an adapted (e.g., translated) version of a questionnaire cannot be taken at face value and therefore additional research examining its psychometric characteristics is needed (for an overview: hambleton, merenda, & spielberger, 2006). in a series of preliminary validation studies by rebmann and her workgroup it was not possible to obtain satisfactory psychometric properties of a merely translated form of the epistemic beliefs inventory (ebi) (schraw et al., 2002). therefore, a new version for measurement of epistemic beliefs in germanspeaking samples of university students was developed, the oldenburg epistemic beliefs questionnaire (oleq). of the original ebi, 13 items could be retained; seven new items had to be developed, especially for measurement of the dimensions “source” and “speed”. the new instrument, the oleq, showed several advantages over the ebi version that had been translated into german. the main problem of the translated version had been the inconsistency of the factorial structure in different samples. inconsistencies had occurred with regard to the number of factors as well as with regard to the composition of items into factors (see table 1). in contrast, the oleq showed a stable factorial structure in a cross-validation approach with two samples from different universities. in several instances, the oleq showed advantages over or was at least comparable to the original (english) ebi. the new instrument exceeded the translated ebi version somewhat with regard to its internal consistency measures. however, for both instruments internal consistency still should be improved. retest reliability of the oleq was satisfactory and comparable to that of the ebi. for some scales retest reliability was higher than for the corresponding ebi scale (e.g., control r = .80), for some scales it was somewhat lower. however, it was not possible to completely replicate the original factor structure of the ebi. neither in the present studies on the development of the oleq nor in preliminary studies with a translated ebi version a factor/dimension “stability” could be confirmed. this dimension describes beliefs whether knowledge remains current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 12 stable over time or whether knowledge is subject to a constant process of change and development. failure in proving this factor might be due to characteristics of the investigated student samples (predominantly students from studies in economics and social sciences such as education, psychology), their learning experiences, and the structure of their studies. in fields such as education, psychology, or economics, students (should) learn how scientific theories are related to each other, evolve of each other, and are subject to a constant change. thus, students in the here-mentioned investigations might have taken it for granted that knowledge is changeable over time and the investigated samples might have been too homogeneous with respect to their beliefs on this dimension. then again, researchers such as greene et al. (2008) generally question the existence of a separate dimension “stability” and argue against a fine-grained distinction of the dimensions “stability” and “structure”. in their view, both dimensions belong together as both concern the ontology of knowledge. for a thorough investigation of the breadth of epistemic dimensions it seems necessary to carry out further studies. as a first step, the empirical basis should be enlarged by students from other fields of science. it can be concluded, that with the oleq, a step forward in the development of an instrument for measurement of epistemic beliefs in german-speaking samples has been taken. the new instrument is partly based on the ebi (schraw et al., 2002) but also includes new items. investigation of the psychometric properties of the instrument showed a stable factorial structure and satisfactory retest reliabilities. however, the instrument should be improved with regard to internal consistency of certain scales by developing further items and thus enlarging the number of items in each factor. references bendixen, l. d., schraw, g., & dunkle, m. e. 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(1994). lernstrategien im studium. ergebnisse zur faktorenstruktur und reliabilität eines neuen fragebogens [learning strategies in the course of study. results of the factor structure and reliability of a new questionnaire]. zeitschrift für differentielle und diagnostische psychologie, 15, 185-200. woortmann, k. (2009). der einfluss von epistemologischen überzeugungen der schülerinnen und schüler auf ihre präferierten unterrichtsmethoden und sozialformen [influence of pupils’ epistemic beliefs on their preferred teaching methods]. unpublished master thesis, university of oldenburg, oldenburg, germany. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 16 article citation paechter, m., rebmann, k., schloemer, t., mokwinski, b., hanekamp, y., & arendasy, m. (2013). development of the oldenburg epistemic beliefs questionnaire (oleq), a german questionnaire based on the epistemic belief inventory (ebi). current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1035 author notes manuela paechter department of psychology, educational psychology unit, karl-franzens-university, graz, austria universitaetsplatz 2, 8010 graz, austria manuela.paechter@uni-graz.at manuela paechter is a full professor of educational psychology at karl-franzens university of graz. her primary research interests focus on individual traits and attitudes relevant for learning (anxiety, self-concept, beliefs), on learning with digital media, and on competence development and modelling. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to manuela paechter. karin rebmann department of business administration, economics, and law, carl von ossietzky university, oldenburg ammerlaender heerstraße 114-118, 26129 oldenburg, germany karin.rebmann@uni-oldenburg.de karin rebmann is a full professor at the institute of vocational training and business education at carl von ossietzky university in oldenburg. her primary research interests center around epistemic beliefs of learners and teachers/instructors, learning in vocational contexts, didactics of business education, vocational education for sustainable development, and competence development and modelling. tobias schloemer department of business administration, economics, and law, carl von ossietzky university, oldenburg ammerlaender heerstraße 114-118, 26129 oldenburg, germany tobias.schloemer@uni-oldenburg.de tobias schloemer is an assistant professor at the institute of vocational training and business education at carl von ossietzky university in oldenburg. his primary research interests center around epistemic beliefs of learners and teachers/instructors, learning in vocational contexts, didactics of business education, vocational education for sustainable development, and competence development and modelling. bjoern mokwinski department of business administration, economics, and law, carl von ossietzky university, oldenburg ammerlaender heerstraße 114-118, 26129 oldenburg, germany bjoern.mokwinski@uni-oldenburg.de bjoern mokwinski is a post-doc lecturer and researcher at the institute of vocational training and business education at carl von ossietzky university in oldenburg. his primary research interests focus on epistemic beliefs and motivational tendencies of learners. yvonne hanekamp department of business administration, economics, and law, carl von ossietzky university, oldenburg ammerlaender heerstraße 114-118, 26129 oldenburg, germany yvonne.hanekamp@uni-oldenburg.de yvonne hanekamp is a doctoral student at the institute of vocational training and business education at carl von ossietzky university in oldenburg. her primary research interests center around epistemic beliefs of teachers and instructors in vocational education and training. development of the oldenburg epistemic beliefs questionnaire (oleq), a german questionnaire based on the epistemic belief inventory (ebi) 17 martin arendasy department of psychology, psychological methodology and computer-based modeling unit, karl-franzens-university, graz, austria universitaetsplatz 2, 8010 graz, austria martin.arendasy@uni-graz.at martin arendasy is a full professor of psychological methodology and computer-based modelling at karl-franzensuniversity, graz. his primary research interests focus on automatic item generation and cognitive modelling by itemresponse theory. manuscript received:7/7/2012 revisions received: 11/2/12 accepted: 12/20/12 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 18 volume 16, number 1 january 16, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 986_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 march 3, 2013 issn 1099-839x personality profile of a typical indian female primary teacher: taking a psychoanalytic object relations approach jyotsana shukla amity university uttar pradesh, india research on primary teachers fall into two major categories i.e. pedagogy and the personal characteristics of teachers. empirical evidence indicates that a teacher's personality influences the classroom climate, students' behaviors, and their interpersonal relationships. although the effect of a teacher's personality on students' psychological well-being has long been stressed in many studies, very little is known about the actual personality characteristics of indian in-service teachers. the purpose of this study was to allocate the characteristics that best describe the personality of indian female elementary school teachers through rorschach inkblot test. this study intends to be part of the endeavor of describing and understanding the possible foundations of teachers' behavior. the sample consisted of 100 female elementary teachers, who completed the rorschach inkblot test. the test responses of all the teachers in the sample were scored using paul lerner’s psychoanalytic object relations approach (lerner, 1991). the typical personality profile was then arrived at by combining all the 100 rorschach test profiles. the typical personality has been discussed in terms of core character and level of personality organization, in the light of object relations theory (lerner, 1991). holt’s classification of primary process manifestations (lerner, 1991) was also applied on the content of the 100 protocols, to better understand her object relations. the findings indicate that the typical indian primary teacher may be more cognitive than affective in her object relations, which may be a possible indication of a core character of the obsessive compulsive nature, with sub features of hysterical, depressive, and schizoid characteristics, of a typical indian female primary teacher. implications of the study for students’ behavior and for teacher development are discussed. keywords: personality, rorschach test, object relations, teacher development, holt’s primary and secondary process manifestations practitioners and scholars commonly classify the teaching profession as a highly stressful occupation (farber, 1991). teachers’ judgment of their capability to impact student outcomes has been consistently related to teacher behavior, student attitudes, and student achievement (tschannen-moran & woolfolk hoy, 2007). teacher self-efficacy has been linked to the amount of stress experienced in teaching (smylie, 1988).teachers often find themselves beleaguered by disruptive and nonachieving students, are held accountable for their students’ attainments and wellbeing, and depend on others, for example, parents, colleagues and the principal, to accomplish things. they are also affected by various psychological and social factors, and must function under conflicting expectations, pressures and demands (chan, 1998). research has indicated that numerous factors influence teaching performance, including non-academic current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 traits such as personality attributes, self-concept, commitment to teaching, and gender (baldwin, 1990). the field of teaching has only recently begun to focus on the importance of student engagement and to develop strategies to cultivate it. in the absence of any core technology, teachers have been left to their own creativity and strength of personality to cultivate strategies for student engagement or to manage in its absence. student engagement is a more developmentally advanced task for teachers (meister & melnick, 2003; pigge & marso, 1997). empirical evidence has revealed that a teacher's personality influences the classroom climate, students' behaviors, and their interpersonal relationships (wu, hughes, & kwok, 2010). it has been suggested that personality styles need to be recognized to meet individual students’ needs. understanding personality profiles allows educators to be proactive in determining a better fit for each student (richardson & arker, 2010). richardson and arker (2010) also suggested that overall productivity can be enhanced by bringing together individuals with similarities. davis (2006) and mccombs and miller (2006) emphasized that good relationships between students and teachers often lead to increased student performance. they implied that examining the relationship between the student and teacher would provide a good predictor of the learners’ motivation to achieve academically. levin’s (2006) study made reference to assessing teacher personality and the effects on academic achievement, but the focus of that study was on the leadership component and its effects on student learning. moscoso and slagado (2004) examined negative types of personalities, which they refer to as the dark side and its effect on job performance. the study showed that there were seven types of personality styles that negatively impacted job performance shyness, suspiciousness, sadness, pessimism, suffering, eccentricity, and riskiness. teaching involves multiple, simultaneous decisions related to content pedagogy, student relationships, praise and discipline, materials of instruction, and interactions with colleagues (griffin, 1999). people are highly variable in the degree to which they can meet these multilevel demands. personality characteristics are likely to be important predictors of this ability (decker & rimmkaufman, 2008). in an article written by hadas (2011), ortega (2009) describes personality as “stable traits or qualities in a person, as more dynamic moods that are related to the cognitive processing of emotions, or even as predispositions that have been learned through social experience” (p. 193). this description of personality explains the correlation between personality and cognition, as well as perception. according to hadas (2011, p.3), “personality influences one’s perception of the world around them and how they interact within that world”. in conjunction with this description of personality, ayan and kocacik (2010) explain how personality is developed as “under the influence of the inherited characteristics of the individual and the environment, in which s/he takes place in.” in the area of self image of teachers, image has been defined as “a personal meta level knowledge, in that act embodies a person’s experience, finds expression in practice and is the perspective from which new experiences are taken (clandinin, 1986). teachers who experience close relationships with students reported that their students were less likely to avoid school, appeared more self-directed, more cooperative, and more engaged in learning (birch & ladd, 1997; klem & connell, 2004). students reported liking school more and experiencing less loneliness if they had a close relationship with their teachers. students with better teacher-student relationships also showed better performance on measures of academic performance and school readiness (birch & ladd, 1997). teachers can directly promote positive social behaviors by orchestrating the relationships within a classroom in a positive manner (battistich, schaps, & wilson, 2004). teachers can use positive teacher-student relationships indirectly to promote peer relationships and this also helps enhance students’ engagement. positive teacher-student relationships improve student-to-student acceptance in both current and future years (hughes & kwok, 2007). relatedness and connection are important and are experienced by all among the same relational dimensions. each individual is mainly related with himself and his relations with himself decide how he would relate with others. this self other relatedness is developed as a process of interaction with others (josselson, 1996). thus, the teachers who establish a personal and caring relationship and foster positive social interactions within their classrooms meet their students’ needs for relatedness (or social connection to school). teacherstudent relationships contribute to students’ resiliency. in fact, class size, teacher experience or availability of instructional supplies, are not as important as positive relationships. studies point to an important message: across ages and in virtually all classrooms, students will be more engaged and motivated if teachers meet students’ essential need for social connection (rimm-kauffman, 2011). exploring the personality of primary teachers has been an endeavour for around forty or fifty years now (feshbach, 1969; getzels & jackson, 1963; victor, 1976). however, personality research has recently seen a shift since these earlier studies were conducted. the greatest change has been the acceptance of the big five factor model of personality (john & srivastava, 1999). teacher’s personality has been explored through tests e.g., big five factors, eempi, 16pf, mbti, kiersey personality profile of a typical indian female primary teacher: taking a psychoanalytic object relations approach 3 temperament sorter ii, and forced choice scale (pennock & moyers, 2012, roussi-vergou, angelosopoulou, & zafiropoulou, 2009; sears & kennedy, 1997; kenny & kenny, 1989; cooper & benis, 1967). object relations the most vital and important relationship of a person is with himself/herself which would determine how he/she would relate with others for he/she carries within him/her the phenomenal reality (mishra, kharkwal, kilroy, & thapa,1996). object relations theorists hold that personality development takes place in terms of changes in structures/patterns/units of object relations, and not in terms of oral and genital stages. from the psychodynamic perspective, the term “object relations” is roughly equivalent to “past relationships”. conceptually, it refers to how people develop patterns of living from their early relations with significant others, particularly their mothers (sue et. al. 1990). the nature/pattern of these object relations has a significant impact on personality development, including secure early attachment to the mother or other care giver, gradual separation from the object of attachment and finally the ability to relate to others as an independent individual (roy, srull, & wilkins, 1988). it is in the above context that exploring the personality of a primary teacher in terms of paul lerner’s psychoanalytic object relations approach (lerner, 1991) assumed significance for the researcher. what is the personality organization of teachers? what and how are their object relations? the primary teacher’s personality has not been explored through rorschach ink blot test. the present study makes an endeavor to fill this gap by exploring the personality profile of indian female primary teachers in terms of their self other relatedness through object relations using rorschach inkblot test. method measure the rorschach test. as children most have looked at clouds, mountains and trees and imagined them to be animals, persons and objects around us. that’s what rorschach test does. a set of 10 vague looking blots are shown to the person whose personality we are trying to understand. he/she is then requested to tell us what these blots look like: “what might this be?” based on what is seen (e.g. humans, animals and household objects and what factors have influenced whatever is seen (e.g. shape of the blot, its color and shading), inferences are made about his personality, e.g. a) cognitive resources, b) emotions, and c) relation between cognition and emotion. since whatever is ‘seen’ and/or ‘experienced’ on the blots is based on how that person has conceptualized his /her world, the percepts have a symbolic, representational significance. the objects seen signify something. they represent a part of the world outside his/her internal world, her object relations (mishra et al., 1996). paul lerner’s psychoanalytic object relations approach to rorschach test hermann rorschach, the pioneer of this test, was more interested in how the blots were seen. his psychoagnostics first published in 1921, (rorschach, 1975) focuses on the process of perception, but later on he also talked about the significance of looking at the content and its clinical significance in personality assessment. lerner’s approach doesn’t minimize the importance of process, but it stresses more on the critical role of the product: the content. whenever we see something we compare it with something we are familiar with based on our past experiences. comparing an object to other object appears to be an effective way of making them meaningful (mishra et al., 1996). the experiential aspect of the rorschach process is personal to the testee as well as meaningful and phenomenologically real. underlying and associated with the rorschach test responses is a content which is a vast wealth of a testee’s inner world: personally and emotionally charged experiences involving culture, myths, archetypes, folklores and fairy tales (mishra et al., 1996). since this approach combines the formal features with the psychoanalytic object relations approach, this approach has been taken in the present study. paul lerner’s scoring system lerner (1991) looks at the protocols (the rorschach tests responses of a testee) most comprehensively from a clinically rich perspective without compromising scientific rigor (mishra et al., 1996). lerner (1991) creatively synthesizes the quantitative components of the rorschach responses with the advances in the psychoanalytic system e.g., self psychology and the object relations approach. lerner (1991) recommends what may be called a level based core character framework for conceptualizing personality emerging out of a rorschach protocol. the main features of lerner’s system include: 1) relatively less emphasis on quantitative scores, 2) identifying responses for (a) form level, (b) kinaesthesias (the number of responses in which the subject saw or experienced movement), and (c) responses with human content, 3) detailed response by response analysis for evidence of character features of personality and level of personality organization, thought organization, affect organization and core dynamics, 4) examining the sequence, 5) examining the content and, 6) developing an integrated personality picture of the subject. his system may be described in terms of: (i) psycho diagnostic scheme: lerner suggests eight representative core characteristics for a diagnostic scheme: a)hysterical, b) obsessive compulsive, c) depressive, d) masochistic, e) infantile, f) narcissistic, current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 g) schizoid, h) paranoid; and (ii) levels of personality organization: the six levels of personality organization are: a.) level of instinctual development, b.) manifestation of ego weaknesses, c.) level of defensive organization, d.) level of internalized object relations, e.) level of superegodevelopment, and f.) level of ego identity (kernberg, 1970), 7) inference process: inferences about the personality of the testee in the lerner’s system are drawn at two tiers: a) first order inferences: the first order inferences are drawn at three levels: i) level of form, ii) kinaesthesia, iii) human responses; b) transformation process: the transformation process involves ‘translating’ data into narrative statements. holt’s classification of primary process manifestation throughout the years, several instruments have been developed to measure primary and secondary process thinking. these instruments focus on specific content and/or on formal characteristics of text materials or responses to tests. an example of a method assessing both content and formal characteristics of primary processes manifestation is holt’s classification of primary process manifestations (lerner, 1991). besides the rigidity of the thought processes, the protocols also have an evidence of psychic shifts in primary process thinking. for getting an insight into this, holt’s classification of primary process manifestations (holt & havel, 1960; lerner 1991) was applied on the content of the 100 protocols. holt makes a major distinction between responses reflecting drives with implied libidinal wishes and those with aggressive aims. the libidinal category is further classified in line with the psychosexual stage of development while the aggressive category is dealt with in terms of whether it is the subject (aggressor), the object (victim) or the result (aftermath). further, holt takes into account two levels level 1 pertains to responses which are primitive, blatantly drive dominated, socially unacceptable and focal to a drive relevant organ. on the other hand, responses reflecting a more civilized, contained/ socially acceptable content constitute level 2 responses (lerner, 1991). in the present study holt’s classification of primary process manifestations (lerner, 1991) was also applied on the content of the 100 protocols. participants the focus of the study was the indian female primary teacher. a total of 100 female primary teachers served as the sample out of which 50 were from government primary schools and 25 each from aided and private primary schools in lucknow city of india. government primary schools are totally owned and run by the government of india. private schools are the schools owned and run by private entities and receive no aid from the government. aided school refers to a recognized private school which is receiving aid in the form of maintenance grant from the central government, administrator or a local authority or any other authority designated by the central government administrator or a local authority. the schools were randomly selected from various areas within the vicinity of lucknow city. prior permission was obtained from the authorities of each of these schools for conducting the study. teachers were then contacted and requested to be the part of our study. the teacher selection, at this stage, depended on the willingness of the particular teachers to participate in the study. as a result of this, a number of teachers were contacted but not everyone was available, so only the willing and available ones were part of the study. the rorschach inkblot test was then conducted on the date and time mutually decided by each teacher and the researcher, individually. all the teachers in the sample were females. the age range of the sample was 21 -58 years. 13% were between 21-30 years, 17% were 31-40 years, 34% were 41-50 years, and 36% were 51-58 years. 85% of the teachers in the sample were married and the rest were single. 19% of the sample was the eldest child and 49% were middle born with respect to their birth order in the family. 49% of the sample belonged to nuclear family and 59% belonged to nuclear family. procedure rorschach inkblot test was administered to every teacher in the sample individually. the ten cards in the test are numbered 1-10. the first card was presented first followed by the second and so on. with the present of every card, it was told, “tell me please, what do you see?”, “what might this be?” with this began the free association phase in which the teacher would tell what she saw. in case of rejections where the subject is not forthcoming with any verbalizations for a card, then he was to be encouraged to try for about two minute. this was followed up with inquiry. inquiry was done after each card, not at the end when all 10 cards have been responded to. verbatim record of the responses was done by the tester. notes were also made of the behaviors/ attitudes. responses were coded for location, determinants, form level, content, deviant verbalizations and special scores. the 100 rorschach protocols were combined and responses tabulated in terms of frequencies and percentage for particular scoring categories in the lerner’s scoring system. this was followed with qualitative analysis and interpretation in the light of lerner’s psychoanalytic objects relations approach (lerner, 1991). holt’s classification of primary process manifestations (holt & havel, 1960; lerner, 1991; mishra et al., 1996) was also applied to all the responses in the 100 rorschach protocols. results the authors analyzed the typical personality profiles, in terms of rorschach test profiles, of the three different type of primary teachers (from government, personality profile of a typical indian female primary teacher: taking a psychoanalytic object relations approach 5 aided and private schools) and found no visible differences in these profiles and hence, a typical personality profile, combining all the 100 primary teachers in the sample, was prepared, to arrive at the typical personality profile of an indian primary teacher encompassing all three school types. “s” is the name that has been given to this profile. typical profile of primary teacher ‘s’ in terms of lerner’s psychoanalytic object relations approach the purpose of taking lerner's approach was to get an insight into the object relations of the teachers. besides thought processes, the rorschach protocols also help show psychic shifts in primary process thinking. for getting an insight into this, holt’s classification of primary process manifestations (lerner, 1991) helped to arrive at an understanding of primary process manifestations of a typical indian primary teacher. for easy understanding ‘s’ is the label being given to this typical profile. it was assumed that the primary teachers would be more cognitive than affective in their object relations. the typical profile of an indian female primary teacher ‘s’, obtained through rorschach inkblot test, is explained here in the light of lerner’s psychoanalytic object relations approach and holt’s classification of primary process manifestations. quantitative analysis total number of responses and spoiled form responses (fs). the total responses were arrived at after summing up all the card responses, of all the 100 teachers, including the fs (spoiled form). spoiled form refers to the responses where the form mentioned was not clear. all other responses were those responses which could be located on the particular card, and had a clear determinant emerging in the ‘inquiry’ phase. thus, there were a total of 2100 responses, out of which only 2 responses were of fs. form level. form level refers to the degree of perceptual fit between the response and the area chosen. the congruence of fit between response and the perceptual characteristics of the area chosen reflects a basic ego function i.e. reality testing, and the initial control, a feature inherent to thinking. the form level scores are employed and are based on mayman’s (1967) extension of rappaport’s initial scoring categories (lerner, 1991). the form level of responses is given in table 1. the distribution of responses according to form level needs some elaboration. according to lerner (1991), the form responses indicate: a) the active attitude, a detailed processing to ‘fit’ the inkblot to the memory images and a ‘typical attitude’ in which form is used in a cut and dry routine manner and b) the perceptual hold i.e. how strongly or feebly does the subject grasp the image aroused by the blots. in the light of above explanation for form level, the distribution of form levels of primary school teachers’ indicates that out of a total of 2100 responses, 1954 (93.06%) (table 1) responses are form based, which table 1 distribution of total responses according to the form level form level frequencies percentage f+ (a sharp, convincing, accurately perceived, well-articulated response 23 1.17% fo (an accurate but easily seen response that requires little effort). 640 32.75% fw+ (a weak and acceptable response but not convincing). 371 18.98% fw(response that is weak and barely fits the chosen area) 123 6.29% f(response that is weak and barely fits the chosen area) 689 35.26% fv (the form intrinsic to the percept is vague) 111 6.29% total form responses 1957 93.06% [total responses with form as determinant (n=1957)] current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 shows a clear dominance of form as a determinant of their response. this is giving some indication about the rigidity of thought processes and a delay in discharge of impulses in s. however, the form level, which is an index of reality testing, shows that the highest percentage of responses (35.26%) fall at flevel, which only suggests a somewhat poor goodness of fit & reality orientation. this is followed very closely by fo (32.75%), which shows the presence of some balancing, by good perceptual hold. kinesthesia. kinesthesia, that is the precise movement ascribed (e.g. fighting, dancing, clinging) is an aspect of movement response. while other rorschach writers (schactel, 1966), have discussed the movement response broadly as an indication of self-experiences and self-concept, mayman (1977), has suggested that it is the kinesthesia which find their way into a person’s movement responses, that are drawn from a repertoire of kinesthetic memories which express some of his core experiences of selfhood”. a second aspect of the movement response identified by mayman (1977), applicable to a broad array of responses is kinesthesia, or the action component of a response. for mayman (1977), kinesthesias that find their way into a movement response are drawn from a repertoire of kinesthetic memories, and involved in these memories are core self experiences. for lerner (1991) all kinesthesia on record, not simply those expressed in human movement are, a potentially rich source of information and may provide clues to vital self experiences, including subjective feelings of selfhood and of object relating. in the protocols of hundred primary teachers, only 192 (9.15%) responses had kinesthesia in them out of a total of 2100 responses. here all movements irrespective of the content (human, animal) were noted. out of these 192 responses, m (human movement responses) predominate (6.76%), followed by fm (animal movement) responses (1.86%). the share of ant (anticipatory movement) responses and that of m (inanimate movement) responses is quite insignificant (0.33% and 0.17%, respectively). a detailed look at the kinesthesia as expressed in the protocols of the teachers (table 2) shows two major themes(frequencies in parentheses), one of relating with others in positive terms which is seen in the experience of talking (20), entertaining (2), kissing (20), looking (16), joining of feet, hands, back (50), speaking (2), touching (2), and the other with negative loading in relationships viz., fighting (20), pulling (3), hunting (2), killing (1), pressed (3), lifting (14). however when we look at the frequencies given in the brackets (table 2), we find that a greater need for positive contact with people is present. further, s also reflects joyous themes of laughing (5), jumping (5), dancing (28), blooming/emerging (18), blowing the trumpet (1). human content. the human content of the protocol reflects the experiential world of the individual and lerner (1991) gives a lot of emphasis in his system to analysis of content in order to give a complete picture of personality. in the present study the content is being analyzed in terms of lerner’s scoring system wherein we first identify the human content and then subsequent analysis of the other content is performed. out of 2100 responses, 377 responses (17.19%) have human percept. out of these (n=377), 296(13%) responses of h (whole human figure) and 81(4%) responses of hd (part of a human figure) are evident, while the rest of the responses 1623 (83%) have nonhuman content. on the whole, it is the large number of non human responses which mark the protocol of s. this is a remarkable finding in this study. analysis of content a person who takes the rorschach test links ink blots with the object he/she is acquainted with. whatever is seen (content) is a sample o his/her psychological world; the world inside him/her. the process by which inkblots are connected with the outside world reflects his/her personalized, unique way of seeing the world around him/her. underlying and associated with the content is the vast wealth of the testee’s inner world: personally and emotionally charged experiences involving culture, myths, archetypes, folklores and fairytales (mishra et al., 1996). in analyzing content lerner (1991) recommends looking at (a) the whole verbalizations of the subject (both during inquiry and free association phase), (b) embellishments, (c) specific links between the data and the inferences drawn and (d) conceptualizing content as a way of accessing the subject’s internal object relations (mishra et al., 1996). lerner (1991) uses three out of five criteria of mayman (1977) namely, embellishment (the role of fantasy in shaping content), self-experience (kinesthesia as indicative of self experience) and object representation (actual figures involved in movement), for the analysis of content. analysis of content of s’s responses is being given under each of the three criteria. embellishment. movement is not the only response that draws upon fantasy. certain form responses can be equally rich, vivid, compelling and lively. common to these responses is a prevailing tendency to embellish a percept with affective and associative elaboration. embellished responses are potentially laden with meaning. the tendency to embellish responses may also express an openness to different type of experiences, a capacity to relax tight controls and a strict adherence to reality, and a freedom to indulge in what freud (1955) referred to as "primary process thinking" (lerner, 1991). embellishment responses include fabulized (fab) response with undue but acceptable affective elaboration or too great a specificity; confabulized (confab personality profile of a typical indian female primary teacher: taking a psychoanalytic object relations approach 7 response that is so overly embellished with fantasy and affective elaborations that the subject loses touch with the reality of the test and replaces it with the created fantasy); and fabulized combination (fab-comb in which two or more accurately seen percepts are combined in an unrealistic, arbitrary, and illogical way). out of a total of 2100 responses, 135 (6.43%) responses were colored with embellishment interestingly, out of a total of 2100 responses, it is the fab responses (3.76%) which supersede the confab (2.38%) responses. embellishment works as a cover to dress up the painful reality. self –experience. phenomenally, s experiences the world around herself at both secondary and primary level, the latter dominating the former. at a regressive primary level self is experienced as playing, kissing, dancing indicating a joyous mood along with shades of self as in a turmoil i.e. fighting, pulling, killing and being pressed with. echoes of vulnerable and passive self are experienced as lying, dead, burning, burnt out, breaking, melting, hanging, falling and, clinging for support, raised hands etc. the contact with other people is experienced at a realistic level also, in terms of talking, looking and working together. the self is also experienced as flying, running, hiding, seeking solace from the regressive drive into primary process. lastly, sucking and holding in mouth indicate an experienced need for incorporation (table 2). object representation. a third component of movement response, according to mayman (1977), is the figure carrying out the action, the object representational aspect. this component too can be applied to all content, to see if it is a human or an animal carrying out the action or it is a non living object that has been seen. one has to take into account the type of content used to express the internal object relation (lerner, 1991). lerner (1991) also emphasizes that object representations are unconscious images of others that are rooted in early object relations and provide a substratum for all subsequent relationships. out of a total of 2100 responses, one thing which is rather significantly emerging about the self is 1623 non human responses which mark the scene (83%) and only 377 human responses (17%). out of the non human responses, the maximum number of responses cluster around the content of animals (a = 44.58%), followed by non living (nature, objects, cloth etc.) content (38.23%). thus self is primarily experienced as animals with little human content. as the animal content and non-living content predominates, a look at the kind of animal and non-living content would be necessary (table 3). the vulnerability of the self is reflected where the self has been seen as small birds (191), fish, frog, earthworm like creatures (97), cat, rat, mongoose, squirrel etc. (120), and as small insects (55). the self at places is seen as weak, small, helpless and vulnerable, whereas at other points the self emerges as big powerful, scary and full of grandiosity, when we look at the type of animal content (table 3). this suggests that the self image appears to be small, inadequate and weak. it has been suggested that in rorschach test, the defense of compensation table 2 kinesthesia expressed in s’s responses grandiosity victim aggressor joyous self escape relationship with others friendly suspicious/ guarded blooming/ emerging (18) flowing (17) expanding (11) pressed (3) dried (2) burning (20) melting ( 3) lying flat (3) pinned down (1) dead (8) hanging (48) falling (13 ) lifting( 14) bending/ kneeling(26) burnt out (2) fighting (20) exploding (2) sucking (1) pulling (3) going up (2) hunting (2) killing (1) laughing (5) swimming (17) entertaining (2) jumping (5) driving (3) resting (1) swinging (2) sleeping (1) bathing (1) moving ahead (3) raised foot (2) flying (94) going (8) running (15) talking (20) entertaining (2) playing holi (1) speaking (2) joining of mouth/kissing (20) touching (2) looking (16) dancing (28) working together (15) joining hands (40) joining back (7) hiding (1) signalling (1) [total number of responses with kinesthesia (n=192)] current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 table 3 object representation categories of percepts emerging in rorschach responses of s (n=1623) object representation categories percepts frequencies butterfly butterflies 78 birds small birds 191 big birds(vultures, eagles) 20 rodent (animals) bear, bear like 73 tiger, lion, leopard, wolf, elephant, dog 139 cat, rat, squirrel, monkey 120 aquatic animals octopus, cobra, snake, crocodile, crab 65 fish, frog, worms 97 insects small insects 55 dangerous insects 55 nature mountain, clouds, rocks, river, lake, sun 117 botany landscape, bushes, leaves, plants 77 tree, flowers, fruits, vegetables, gardens 62 cloth cloth 12 objects inanimate material objects 188 blood (bl) blood 15 plays a very significant role in facilitating one to hold on reality, despite turmoil of inadequacy within. this could speak for the perceived self-image being big and powerful, and compensating for weak, helpless, inadequate self image at the core. thus there is evidence in the protocol of tiger, lion, leopard, wolf, elephant, dog etc. (139), octopus, cobra, snake, crocodile, crab (65), big birds 20) and dangerous insects (55) (table 3). the object representation becomes rich and meaningful when the self-image is also seen in terms of the quality assigned to it as reflected in free association as well as inquiry phases of the response to the cards in the test. one finds in the responses of the teachers that the self image besides being vulnerable and inadequate, at times, is also marked by experiences of being dreadful, passive, dead/as good as dead, flying, severed, etc. there are a number of responses marked with morbidity, aggressiveness, and with a self that is disintegrated, killed, struggling, hanging, melting, hands tied, pinned down to be operated, dried, burning, rising and falling, and sucking. there are themes of self seen as mutilated and self in loneliness. besides, the self is also rejoicing in celebration, shows grandiosity, and is dancing, in some responses. all this indicates a lot of emotional turmoil within these teachers. however, anxiety and depression are not so marked although traces of the same are there (table 2). out of the total responses (2100) of s, there were 15 bl (blood based responses) (0.90%), 19 c (color is the sole determinant) responses (0.90%), suggestive of somewhat poor impulse control. some degree of anxiety and depression is seen in 26responses of c’ (blackness is the determinant) (1.26%), and 5repsnses of ch (shading is the determinant) (0.24%) and 27 responses of cl (cloud) (0.24%). inference first order inference. the first order inference on the data of 100 protocols, was made for a typical indian female primary school teacher, referred here as s, to help in identification of the core character and the level of personality organization. the data reported so far in terms of thought processes, affective makeup, kinesthesia, self-experience, and object representation helps us gain meaningful insights when inference are drawn from this data. the first thing that hits at the data is the relatively low human content (17%). primarily her internalized object relations are at sub-human level (animals and non living) (83%). personality profile of a typical indian female primary teacher: taking a psychoanalytic object relations approach 9 table 4 classification of s’ reponses based on the holt’s classification of primary process manifestations (libidinal content) content theme levels frequencies n=2100 oral (receptive) level-1(mouth, breasts, sucking, famine) 48 level-2(stomach, kissing, drinking, food) 0 oral (aggressive) level-1(teeth, cannibalism, biting, parasites) 9 level-2(animals feared because of their biting e.g. crabs, spiders, alligators), verbal aggression (arguing) 50 level-1(buttocks, feces, hemorrhoids) 9 level-2(intestines, toilet, disgust, dirt) 2 sexual level-1(sexual organs, ejaculation, intercourse) 3 level-2(kissing, romance, sexual organs of flowers) 4 exhibitionistic/ voyeuristic level-1(nudity, exhibiting) 0 level-2(undergarments, leering, peering, observing, prancing) 0 sexual ambiguity level-1(same sex kissing, persons with breasts) 0 level-2(transvestism, cross dressing) 0 total 128 %age out of total responses (2100) 6.09% thus it may be inferred from this that the major area of conflict for the primary school teachers is the interpersonal relations. this is further corroborated by the kinesthesia (which is predominantly human movement embroiled in either reaching out positively viz., kissing, joining hands, feet, touching positively, or tearing apart in hostile aggressive impulses viz., fighting, pulling, etc). secondly, need for contact is rather strong and contact seems to give a lot of happiness, expressed in human like movement(fm) responses viz., ‘hathi namaste kar rahein hain’ (elephants are greeting with folded hands), hathi soond milaye huey hain (elephants have joined their trunks), ‘bear jaise hath milate huey’ (bears shaking hands) for card ii, ‘ye koi janwar amne samne khade hain, aapas mein baatein kar rahei hain’ (two animals standing and talking to each other) for card vii, etc. the aggressive tendencies in interpersonal relations are manifested in human like animal movement (fm) responses viz., ‘dynasaur ek doosre ko dekh kar gussa ho rahe hain ya jhagra kar rahe hain’ (dynasaurs are either looking angrily at each other or fighting with each other). even passivity and helplessness is evident in responses like ‘cheenti jaise zamin par leti hui si jaise pasri hui si’ (ant flatly lying on the floor), ‘choohe latke huey hain’ (rats are hanging). a need to escape from the reality is also rather pronounced with running (15), and going (8). victimized self appears from experienced self of hanging, burning, melting, etc. most significant is s’s need for relating with others, seeking pleasure in contact like talking (20), dancing (28), joining of mouths (20). this suggests overplay of primary process tendencies. though aggressive impulses like fighting (20), exploding (2), add to the experience of sucking, pulling, killing, hunting reflecting aggressiveness in relations (table 2). s’s impulse control is somewhat high as evident by a dominance of f (form based) responses, thus causing a delay in discharge of impulses. however the form is somewhat oscillating between a poor perceptual hold (f = 35.26%) and reality orientation (fo = 32.75%) (table 4). dominance of f shows increased inhibition and rigidity and compulsive character formation (rappaport & schafer, 1950). out of the total 2100 responses, terms of thought processes d (large detail) responses (66.28%) outnumber current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 table 5 classification of s’ reponses based on the holt’s classification of primary process manifestations (aggressive content) content theme levels frequencies n=2100 attack level-1 (sadistic aggressive) –vivid sadistic fantasies, annihilation of person or animal, torture 17 level-2 (explosions, fighting, fire, frightening figures, weapons, claws) 42 victim of aggression level-1(masochistic)–extreme victimization, extreme helplessness, suicide 18 level-2(person or animal in pain or wounded, frightened persons or animals – figures or objects in precarious balance) 42 results of aggression level-1(aftermath-decayed, putrified, mutilated elements, catastrophy) 7 level-2(injured or deformed persons or animals, parts missing, blood, aftermath of storms or fire 22 total 148 % out of total responses (2100) 7.09% the w (whole figure) responses (21.3%), which implies that s experiences her world in large details and not so much as a whole. rigidity in thought processes is also evident with repetition of some themes in the protocols viz., animals like butterflies, bats, bears, elephants, insects and clouds, plants, etc. (table 3). holt’s classification of primary process manifestations (lerner, 1991) besides the rigidity of the thought processes, the protocols also have an evidence of psychic shifts in primary process thinking. for getting an insight into this, holt’s classification of primary process manifestations (lerner, 1991) was applied on the content of the 100 protocols. holt makes a major distinction between responses reflecting drives with implied libidinal wishes and those with aggressive aims. the libidinal category is further classified in line with the psychosexual stage of development while the aggressive categories is dealt with in terms of whether it is the subject (aggressor), the object (victim) or the result (aftermath). further, holt takes into account two levels level 1 pertains to responses which are primitive, blatantly drive dominated, socially unacceptable and focal to a drive relevant organ. on the other hand, responses reflecting a more civilized, contained/ socially acceptable content constitute level 2 responses (lerner, 1991) (table 4 & table 5). analysis of libidinal content (table 4) shows that the four categories i.e. oral receptive, oral aggressive, anal and sexual, have obtained responses from s. none of the s responses fall into the libidinal content categories of exhibitionistic and, voyeuristic and sexual ambiguity. s appears to be both oral receptive and oral aggressive, the latter dominating the former. the data suggests that there seems to be regressive fixation at oral stage though repression is also evident. s’s discharge of aggressive impulses (148 responses) (table 5) appears to be higher than libidinal impulses (128 responses) (table 4). another important finding here is that s’s discharge of aggressive impulses seems to be more indirect, civilized and socially tolerated (level 2 higher than level 1) (table 5) when compared with the libidinal impulses which have both level 1, the crude and direct, as well as level 2, the socially tolerated, responses (table 5). under aggressive content, self is experienced both as a persecutor and victim, more as a result of aftermath. however, impulses are more socially tolerated at level 2. level 2 of aggressive content being higher than level 1 also corroborates to the finding that s has a controlled affect. hence, it can be inferred that s makes a very conscious effort to rigidly hold to controls, and delay the discharge of impulses/emotions, as also reflected in the personality profile of a typical indian female primary teacher: taking a psychoanalytic object relations approach 11 greater number of form based (f) responses rather than the color (c) responses. the very fact that the form level is somewhat distorted (f= 35.26%) and the fact that some responses are color based (c=.904%, fc=1.33% and cf=1.19%) shows that by and large s has a deliberate, conscious control of the phenomenal world within the self and the reality outside. low c indicates rigid suppression of affect (rappaport & schafer, 1950). however, at times this control gives way to emotional turmoil with streaks of anxiety, depression and arousal (blood = 0.69%). another aspect relevant here is the embellishment tendency, which may also express a capacity to relax tight controls and a strict adherence to reality, and a freedom to indulge in what freud (1955) referred to as "primary process thinking" (lerner, 1991). only 135 (6.428%) responses of s carried embellishment (were fabulized, confabulized, and fabulized combinations), which also corroborates to the controlled affect. on the whole the hypothesis that the primary school teachers will be more cognitive than affective has been supported. their thought process appears to be rigid in terms of repetitive themes (animal content and nonliving content predominate) and detailed responses (d responses more than w responses). b transformation. the transformation process involves ‘translating’ data into narrative statements based on the clinical, qualitative significance of the responses, the formal scores and the examiner testee interactions, the tester attempts to develop an internally consistent and theoretically sound profile of the testee in terms of four areas : a) character structure, b) thought organization, c) affect organization d) dynamics. transformation helps us measure the personality of the typical primary teacher ‘s’ in terms of: a.) core character, and b.) level of personality organization. core character. transformation gives us a clear picture for inference, focusing upon the character structure which seems to emerge out of the data. with reference to thought organization, the data has marked evidence of rigid thinking, repetitions of themes and detailed mindedness, feature of obsessive compulsive character. minute details are also seen. in line with schactel's (1966) viewpoint, low c responses typically show an individual with a habitually rigid and compulsive attitude. besides, the data also shows that s primarily sees the world, to some extent, as it is and then makes modifications to suit her own internal perceptions, dressing it with embellishment for making it more tolerant. s starts seeing things as they are and then a shift of thought in terms of how she feels things are makes it a hysteric’s presentation of the self as part child and part adult. it is the subservient and passive victimized perceived self-image which adds substantial base to the sub feature of depressive personality and finally the inability to have positive personal relations with humans and a tendency to focus more on the internalized world of sub human objects may be at the base of schizoid sub features. s is phenomenally experiencing self as oscillating between regressive shifts of enjoying, the pleasure of contact with others and enmeshed within to survive, fighting for existence. the presence of s (space) in the protocols is also suggestive of doubts about oneself and feelings of inadequacy and principal function of 's' is to minimize and negate threatening implications of underlying impulses as per schafer (1954). the above observations with regard to thought organization, self-image and self-experience lead us to assume that the core character of ‘s’, appears to be that of an obsessive compulsive with sub-features of hysterical, depressed and schizoid characteristics. level of personality organization. reality testing is somewhat poor. s is able to relate to the world only in bits and pieces. the overshadowing by the subjective frame of reference makes the perception of the world different from that which is normally seen by others. despite that, the perception is more cognitive than affective. the strong control is reflected in the use of repression and reaction formation as mechanisms to cope with the threatening reality. a need to be accepted and loved versus a fear of being severed, killed and hurt is the main conflict. s's object relations are fused. the object in most cases is unidentified, that is, s mostly alludes to 'akritiyan' (“forms” or “shapes”), 'log' (people), 'keh nahin sakte janwar hai ya manushya hai' (“can't say if it is human or animal”), etc., which emerge in most of her responses. further, the boundaries between the self and object are not very clear which speaks for why the self-object relations are fused. with reference to the level of personality organization, s appears to be operating at a higher level of organization for instinctual development and impulse control. for defensive organization, s seems to operate again at a higher level with repression and reaction formation as one of the significant defenses. the dominant conflict in external object relations suggests an intermediate level of internalized object relations. similarly, for level of super ego development, the s operates at a higher level. however, the level of ego identity indicates s’s personality organization to be operating at a lower level. thus, the contradictions in personality functioning are rather marked. the boundaries between the self and object are not distinct and thus, are fuzzy. the study leads us to speculate that a typical indian primary teacher would be more cognitive than affective. this suggests that she would ‘think’ more than she would ‘feel’ for her pupils, and given the type of current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 12 object relations emerging for s, she may not probably empathize well with her students, which could be a probable cause for many issues emerging in a teachertaught situation. discussion the findings of this study can be compared with the findings regarding the typical personality of a greek elementary teacher through sixteen cattelian personality factors, where elementary teachers appeared to be quite submissive, cautious, with a tendency to oppose or postpone change. they also scored a low tolerance level against fear and arousal and high tension levels. in the same study teachers seemed to respond to events, ideas, and experiences more with feeling than with thinking (contrary to the findings of the present study) and find it difficult to control their feelings, which results in getting upset easily. they also seem to pay little attention to how they may appear to others and generally do what they feel like doing. elementary teachers also scored low on aspiration level (roussi-vergou, angelosopoulou, & zafiropoulou, 2009). the findings of the present study can be seen in the light of the challenging situation under which a government primary teacher works in india. today, teachers are acutely aware of the negative perceptions about them as government functionaries who draw good salaries and, most importantly, as work shirkers who take no responsibility for the learning of children (synovate and azim premji foundation, 2005). in india, the workload of teachers is often judged in terms of amount and type of work done by them. a sample survey found that 42 per cent of primary school teachers teach two classes or more at a time. about 50 per cent of upper primary/middle school teachers report that they teach four or more subjects. more than 60 per cent of teachers teach about 50 students on average, 34 per cent teach between 51–100 and about 5 per cent more than 100 students. this means that on average about 39 per cent of teachers teach more than 50 students in the primary school. at high/higher secondary levels, however, the teacher-pupil ratio was 1:16 in 1994–95. it is evident that primary school teachers are working under stress, especially those teachers who are handling multi-grade classes (goyal & chopra, 1990). education codes in different states specify the number of class periods teachers at different levels have to teach. a sample survey found that about one-fourth of primary school teachers teach 31–35 class periods and a similar number teach more than 36 class periods a week. besides teaching, elementary school teachers have to spend a fair amount of time on co-curricular activities, especially in private schools. in addition, teachers have to do clerical work and other miscellaneous work like organizing relief work, collecting census data, participating in family planning campaigns, and population control drives, helping in the smooth conduct of elections, etc. (development of education in india, 1996). since the personality characteristics of teachers may be critical to the success of prospective teachers, an investigation such as this may provide valuable information for teacher recruitment and the advising of teacher education candidates (baldwin, 1990). the findings of the present study have implications for theory development, assessment of teacher-student relationships, and teacher professional development. when a child’s or adult’s first teacher is poorly trained and poorly motivated, the very foundations on which all subsequent learning will be built will be unsound. reasserting the importance of teachers in basic education and improving teachers’ qualifications are tasks to which all governments must address themselves. the measures needed to recruit future teachers from among the most motivated students, improve their training and encourage the best among them to take on the most difficult posts need to be determined in relation to the specific circumstances of each country; but such measures must be taken, since, without them, it is unlikely that there will be significant improvements in quality where they are most needed. thus, improving the quality and motivation of teachers must be a priority in all countries (delors, 1996). since the sample includes teachers form aided and private schools also, these findings may also be reflecting on the situation prevailing in those schools too, although the source of stressors in those schools might be different from that of the government schools. subir shukla, who has been closely associated with teacher development programs of the government in district primary education program (dpep), said that, when we work with teachers, the first attitude that changes is about himself/ herself. when they are able to break out of the low self-image, they realize that children are capable of learning. they realize poor children can also learn, children from deprived social groups can learn and they also come to believe that girls can learn. teachers do not always have the emotional security to learn, therefore at each stage we have to give them the inner strength to move to the next stage. self-image is critical, it is an issue of identity, and when we tell them they do not know teaching, they switch off. (ramachandran, bhattacharjee, & sheshagiri, 2008) this observation is very significant in the background of the findings of the present study where the typical primary teacher seems to have a negative self image and the self has been seen in lot of turmoil. there seems to be a need to work on improving this negative self image of the elementary teachers so that this can reflect in their improved relationships with their students. personality profile of a typical indian female primary teacher: taking a psychoanalytic object relations approach 13 while educational reform since the 1980s was strongly focused on schooling and an adequate teachinglearning environment, the late 1990s brought the role of the curriculum into national focus. however, the critical link that binds these four critical elements together— the agency of the teacher continues to be cast aside, by political ideologies of most hues, contemporary curriculum reform efforts and the professional practices of much of the teacher education community (batra, 2005). the study also emphasizes the need to look at the larger system under which the primary teachers are operating. teachers are not expected to exercise their own judgment in determining how best to teach: since both content and instructional methods are defined elsewhere, attempts to deviate from these are actively discouraged. teachers are expected to utilize innovations developed at higher levels of the system, regardless of practical constraints on their implementation. teachers typically ‘follow orders’, ‘cover the syllabus’, ‘fill out formats?’ and so on, irrespective of children’s learning outcomes. it is hard to think of a more damning indictment of the education system than this single fact: teachers do not even conceive of their work in terms of creating an environment where all children can learn. the ability of a teacher to teach creatively and make the classroom childfriendly is not only about teaching-learning materials and textbooks. it is inextricably linked to how the teacher is treated in the system, the autonomy she enjoys and her sense of accountability to children and parents (ramachandran et al., 2008). dyer (1996) sums up the situation as follows: a majority of the teachers he interviewed showed no critical awareness of the relationship between their pedagogical practices, conditions in schools, and teaching problems. the teachers did not accept responsibility for this situation and blamed the local environment: they did not feel that their own pedagogical practices required attention. in the background of the above supportive evidence, the typical indian primary teacher who appears to be more cognitive than affective, with indications of obsessive compulsive characteristic of her personality, with sub features of hysterical, depressive, schizoid characteristic may be more prone to occupational stress and its accompanying harmful impact on her functioning as an effective teacher. therefore the training programs for them need to incorporate such elements as understanding the self, interpersonal relationship management and stress management, to increase their effectiveness as teachers and as individuals. further research in this area is strongly required. future directions the findings of the present study provide an interesting insight into the self image of primary teachers in india in terms of their object relations. such studies need to be carried out globally to look into the inner world and the self image of elementary school teachers in order to understand their relational world, since it has far reaching impacts on the teacher-student relationships and her class room behavior. nevertheless, there are limitations related to the size and the socio cultural background of the sample, in the present study. the working conditions specific to the present sample may not be prevailing elsewhere. the methodology of the present study may serve as a guide to future researchers while exploring the personality of any given sample, through the projective technique of the rorschach test. in future, the personality profile of a primary teacher thus obtained may be studied along with some other variables like her socialization process, her job satisfaction levels, and her hopefulness and future life orientations. this personality profile may be compared and correlated with personality profiles obtained through other measures of personality. the personality profiles may also be compared with personality profiles thus obtained from elementary teachers of other countries, which may help find out the factors contributing to the stressors/destressors of the primary teacher which may have contributed into thus shaping her personality. the personality profile could also be compare with personality profile in terms of object relations of secondary and college/university level teachers. the findings are also critical to recruitment of teachers. personality testing needs to 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(2013). personality profile of a typical indian female primary teacher: taking a psychoanalytic object relations approach. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/986 author notes jyotsana shukla, phd amity institute of behavioral and allied sciences, amity university uttar pradesh lucknow (up), india jsreena@gmail.com dr. jyotsana shukla is an assistant professor of psychology and behavioral science at amity university uttar pradesh, lucknow, india. her work involves teaching and research, besides taking training workshops on various organizational topics. she received her phd in psychology from lucknow university, lucknow. her areas of interest are personality studies, elementary education, organizational behavior, and environmental psychology. manuscript received: 9/07/2012 revisions received: 12/17/2012 accepted: 1/28/2013 personality profile of a typical indian female primary teacher: taking a psychoanalytic object relations approach 17 volume 16, number 1 march 3, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 947-3999-5-le.docx-need hancock bio.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x negotiating first graders’ reading stance: the relationship between their efferent and aesthetic connections and their reading comprehension paola pilonieta and stephen d. hancock university of north carolina at charlotte due to changing demographics, our students are coming into schools with diverse life experiences, which do not always reflect the cultural reality of their schools. given the research on the importance of using literature that is relevant to the students’ background, this study sought to explore how first grade urban students connect to literature that mirrored their personal experiences, but is not always considered appropriate material for classroom read-alouds. it was also of interest to determine how their reading stance, as measured by the type of connections students made, affected their comprehension of the story read. results indicated that students who assumed an aesthetic stance while listening to the story, and made connections based on direct or vicarious personal experiences, scored higher on the comprehension measures. keywords: literacy; primary grades; transactional reading theory; reader stance; comprehension; culturally relevant teaching; multicultural literature each fall, teachers begin the new school year by learning about their students: their backgrounds, likes, dislikes and interests. familiarizing oneself with student interests is important in establishing a classroom community and in helping teachers plan lessons and activities that are relevant for their students. it is especially vital to understand students’ backgrounds when one considers that the face of american schools is changing and becoming more diverse. in fact gay and howard (2000) referred to the increasing diversity in schools as “the demographic divide” (p. 1) as they highlight the contrast between the largely homogeneous teaching force and the large african-american and hispanic population in public schools. according to the 2010 census 29% of the u.s. population is africanamerican or hispanic (u.s census bureau, 2011). however, the changes occurring in our schools’ populations go beyond race and ethnicity, and into areas many of us are not always comfortable discussing. for example, twenty-seven percent of children live in a single parent home and 4% of children live with neither parent (childstats.gov, 2011). approximately 21%, or 15.45 million children, live in poverty – the majority of whom are african-american or hispanic (national poverty center, 2011). additionally, 1.5 million children (now on pbs, 2009), or one in 50 are homeless (cnn, 2009) while more than 1.7 million children have a parent who is incarcerated (fcn, 2009). due to these changing demographics, our students are coming into schools with diverse life experiences, which do not always reflect the cultural reality of school norms. as a result, it is critical that teachers learn about their students in an effort to create lessons based on the knowledge their students bring to school. gay (2000) argues that creating lessons that are relevant to students’ lives enhances their learning. the notion that students use their existing knowledge to support the learning of new information is also based on the research on schema theory (anderson & pearson, 1984), in which “comprehension [acts as] the bridge between the known and the new”(duke & pearson, 2002). making connections is a comprehension strategy that current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 capitalizes on schema theory. while making connections, students use their personal experiences and background knowledge to link it to the text they are reading, thereby facilitating and deepening comprehension (harvey & goudvis, 2007). the purpose of this study is to answer the following questions: 1) in what ways do first grade urban students connect to literature that is relevant to their lives, and 2) what is the relationship between the types of connections first grade urban students make and their comprehension of literature that is relevant to their lives? review of the literature making connections is a comprehension strategy that stems from the extant research on schema theory (duke & pearson, 2002). when readers activate their schema (what they know) on a topic, it helps them comprehend the text more successfully (keene & zimmermann, 1997). personal experiences and prior knowledge become the source of potential connections. by making connections between the text and the reader’s background knowledge and personal experiences, comprehension is facilitated. harvey and goudvis (2007) explain that “the background knowledge we bring to our reading colors every aspect of our learning and understanding. if readers have nothing to hook new information to, it’s pretty hard to construct meaning” (p. 92). efferent and aesthetic reading stances students’ written and oral responses to literature, along with the connections they make while reading, can serve as a window into the stance students adopt while reading a story (martinez-roldán & lópez-robertson, 1999/2000; sipe, 2000). rosenblatt’s (1978) transactional reading theory posits that readers can assume an efferent or an aesthetic stance while reading. in an efferent stance the reader’s main interest is in acquiring and retaining information after it is read, while the reader’s purpose in an aesthetic stance is to experience the feelings and thoughts evoked by the text (rosenblatt, 2005a). although a text may be written primarily for a particular stance, the reader’s stance is not predetermined by the type of text being read, but by the reader’s “selective attention” (rosenblatt, 2005c, p.56). for instance, while reading a poem the reader’s attention may not necessarily be on the aesthetic properties of the text, but on acquiring facts about the setting being described. furthermore, rosenblatt (2005a) notes that reading stance occurs on a continuum. all reading events have aspects of the efferent and the aesthetic. the place where the reading event falls on the continuum determines the proportion of each stance. in the primarily aesthetic half of the continuum, the reader’s attention will be predominantly on the personal and experiential aspects of the text. as you travel more towards the middle of the continuum, the reader’s attention will shift to the more efferent, or cognitive aspects of the text. rosenblatt (2005a) adds that “because all readings tend to have such a ‘mix,’ it becomes important for readers (and writers) to keep their main purposes clear” (p. 37). rosenblatt’s (1978) transactional reading theory has been used to explore how children respond to literature. though few studies have focused on primary grade students (sipe, 2000), martinez-roldán and lópezrobertson (2000) did conduct one focusing on first graders. they analyzed the discussions bilingual first graders engaged in during literature circles. they found that students made aesthetic connections while exploring social issues relevant to their community. a few other studies have been conducted with intermediate and middle school students. these studies analyzed the effects on students’ writing after having a discussion that focused on aesthetic or efferent components of reading. many and wiseman (1992) explored three instructional approaches with third graders. in the first approach students’ discussion after reading focused on the efferent stance, in the second approach third graders focused on the aesthetic stance during their post reading discussion; the third approach did not include a discussion after reading. not surprisingly, when asked to write about the story, the first group’s writing focused on literary elements (efferent characteristics), the second group’s writing focused on personal responses (aesthetic aspects), and the third group wrote a retelling of the story’s events. similarly, wiseman, many, and altieri (1992) conducted a study with third graders in which the teachers guided three different types of discussions after reading: 1) free discussion, 2) teacher-guided aesthetic discussion focusing on students’ personal reactions to the story, and 3) teacher-guided aesthetic discussion along with an efferent components (focusing on literary analysis elements). dispelling rosenblatt’s (2005b) concern that “explicit teaching of skills destroys the aesthetic stance” (p. 44), wiseman, many, and altieri (1992) concluded that there were no statistically significant differences between the responses of the aesthetics only group and the aesthetics plus efferent discussion group. in essence, discussions that include efferent components do not thwart aesthetic responses. when examining the stance and its effect on understanding, many (1991) found that fourth, sixth, and eighth graders who assumed an aesthetic stance while reading had higher levels of understanding. sipe (2000) concurs that including both personal and analytic aspects to reading discussions yields richer understanding of texts. selection of reading materials the selection of the book being read during the reading experience is also an important consideration. “stories close to our own lives and experiences are helpful for introducing new ways of thinking about reading,” (harvey & goudvis, 2007, p. 92). temple, martinez, yokota, and naylor (2002) add that when negotiating first graders’ reading stance: the relationship between their efferent and aesthetic connections and their reading comprehension 3 table 1 books read and topics addressed week book title author topic 1 martin’s big words doreen rappaport racism 2 visiting day jacqueline woodson parental incarceration 3 fly away home even bunting homelessness 4 teammates peter golenbock racism 5 the color of home karin littlewood immigration students see themselves represented in literature they feel more welcomed into the classroom setting and take more interest in the book and in the discussion that follows. keene and zimmerman (1997) state that when deciding whether or not a book is appropriate for a child, the child’s schema for the text content is a key consideration. thus, selecting books that represent the life experiences of the students should facilitate comprehension. given the research on the importance of using literature that is relevant to the students’ backgrounds, this study sought to explore how first grade urban students connect to literature that mirrored some of their personal experiences, but is not always considered appropriate material for classroom read-alouds. it was also of interest to determine how their reading stance, as measured by the types of connections students made, affected their comprehension of the story read. methods setting of the study four first grade teachers at an urban elementary school and their students participated in this study. three of the teachers were white females and one was an african-american male. the student population (n = 68) was predominantly african-american with 5% hispanic, 3% asian and 1% multi-racial. procedure each teacher received five books focusing on nontraditional or sensitive social issues. all of the books were new to the children. the teachers read each book one time, during the course of five weeks. the books were chosen to represent social issues that had relevance to the students in the study: discrimination, homelessness, parental incarceration and immigration. these sensitive social issues were identified by the school principal and teachers as pertinent to the student population. prior to the study, both teachers and the principal were informally asked about the nature of the home environment, cultural reality, and social issues of the participants. informal questioning was employed to garner the perspective of the teachers and principal as it related to sensitive social issues in children’s books, as well as to inform book selection. informal questioning enabled the gathering of anecdotal information without breaching ferpa. table 1 shows the books that were read and the social issue each book addressed. the read-aloud routines did not include any mention or reference to aesthetic or efferent stances of reading. after each read-aloud, the students completed a brief assessment, which included three comprehension questions and two making connection prompts.. this resulted in a total of 155 responses for the study. all four classes were video-taped during the read-aloud of the fourth book. the video-tape was examined to gain insight on the connections students made during the read-aloud. data analysis mixed methods were used to analyze the data in order to fully capture the effects of the study. a qualitative approach was used to code and analyze students’ responses to the comprehension assessment and connection to prompts as well as the stance they took while reading, whereas a quantitative approach was necessary to examine the correlation between the stance taken and the students’ comprehension score. as a qualitative method, grounded theory (charmaz, 2000) was used to assist the researchers in coding and analyzing the comprehension assessment and making connection prompts. rigorous thematic analysis was conducted by the investigators to analyze student responses. further analysis through constant comparison allowed for the data to merge, alter, and self-correct the themes (charmaz, 2000). as a quantitative method, student written responses were quantified by assigning a maximum of 2 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 points for each comprehension question. scores were then tabulated for each students’ three-question comprehension assessment. the making connection prompts were coded for the type of connections made by the students. the connections were coded as: (a) no data (when the student did not make a connection); (b) uncodable (when the writing was illegible or the drawing uninterpretable); (c) off topic (when the connection did not relate to the text); (d) topic based (when the student retold an aspect or fact from the text); (e) vicarious connection (when the student made a connection with the text and an event that did not happen to him or her) or; (f) direct connection (when the student made a connection with the text and an event that he or she personally experienced). each investigator independently scored the comprehension assessments and making connection prompts. when coding disagreements arose, the researchers discussed each issue to reach a common consensus. thus, a 100% interrater reliability was established. the use of multiple data collection methods and sources allowed for triangulation that further strengthened the validity of the data. results were established through a systematic approach to categorizing student responses based on connections. comprehension assessment data was then coded and categorized into three levels of comprehension: high, average and low. frequency counts for each category were conducted. a regression analysis was also conducted to further examine the relationship between the types of connections made by the students and their comprehension score. results for the first research question, in what ways do first grade urban students connect to literature that is relevant to their lives, the students responses to the making connection prompts were coded into: off topic, topic based, vicarious connection, or direct connection. these codes were then systematically classified into new categories that indicated the reader stance reflected by the connections the students made. these new categories were efferent stance (for topic based connections), aesthetic stance (for vicarious and aesthetic connections), and a blended stance (for combinations of efferent and aesthetic connections). figure 1 shows an efferent connection relating the text to their topic of study. after reading about martin being shot in martin’s big words, the child explains that it reminded him of martin luther king jr. the class read and discussed this book, along with other books on the topic, around martin luther king jr. day. figure 2 and 3 show aesthetic connections where children are able to use their personal experiences to make deeper connections to the text. in figure 2, the child makes a personal connection to the book. after reading about the boy’s father trying to find a job (they are currently homeless) the child is reminded of when they had to live with their grandmother. figure 3 also shows the child personally relating to the text when, after seeing jackie robinson being ostracized by his teammates, he relates to not having any friends and remembers an experience in the playground. a blended stance was possible because students were asked to make two connections for each book; thus, one connection could have been efferent while the other connection was aesthetic. results indicate that urban first grade students, who were not being directed to make efferent or aesthetic connections to the text, naturally assumed an efferent, aesthetic, or blended stance when they were read storybooks about topics that were relevant to their lives and the lives of their peers. figure 1. example of an efferent connection made after reading martin’s big words. negotiating first graders’ reading stance: the relationship between their efferent and aesthetic connections and their reading comprehension 5 figure 2. example of an aesthetic connection made after reading fly away home. figure 3. example of an aesthetic connection made after reading teammates. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 table 2 results of regression analysis variable m sd range aesthetic blended efferent comprehension 1.92 1.21 1-5 .46* .19 .20 *. p < .01 in order to answer the second research question, what is the relationship between the types of connections first grade urban students make and their comprehension of literature that is relevant to their lives; data was coded and categorized into three levels of comprehension: high, average and low. frequency counts for each category were conducted. a regression analysis, see table 2, indicated that there was a significant correlation between comprehension and the aesthetic stance (r = .46, p < .01). thus, students who assumed an aesthetic stance while listening to the story, and made connections based on direct or vicarious personal experiences, scored higher on the comprehension measures. twenty-one percent of the variance in comprehension can be accounted for by aesthetic connections. discussion this study suggests several significant findings. first, though there is a body of research that explores how students respond to literature, these studies predominantly focus on older students (sipe, 2000), with the exception of research conducted by martinez-roldán and lópezrobertson (1999/2000) that indicates that children as young as first grade can assume a stance while reading. though many’s (1991) research found that an aesthetic stance can lead to higher understanding in fourth, sixth, and eighth graders, the research to date does not illustrate how the stance a reader adopts while reading affects comprehension of younger students. additionally, the text used in the previous studies has not been an area of focus. this study adds to the research by describing how first grade urban students respond to literature that relates to their lives. second, harvey and goudvis (2007) suggest that children’s schemata should be taken into consideration when selecting books for children. therefore, it is important to know about a child’s background, his or her schema, so that teachers can choose appropriate books for their students. though many teachers may hesitate to choose books about racism, homelessness, or incarceration – even though these may be issues their students are living through – the results of this study supports the use of storybooks about sensitive social issues with children. some teachers feel that it is their responsibility to protect children against adult issues, as these issues may frighten or corrupt children (wollmanbonilla, 1998). the use of socially sensitive literature in this study shows that children were neither frightened, nor corrupted. cai (2008) notes that using multicultural literature can result in a higher level of understanding. the results from this study indicate that using literature that reflects students’ life experiences, not just cultural experiences but social ones as well, allows children to make personal connections which facilitate and enhance comprehension. finally, this study begins to integrate the research on schema theory and making connections with that of transactional reading theory. though the efferent reading stance is often described as the cognitive or academic stance to reading, this study indicates that making personal connections while listening to a story, and therefore assuming an aesthetic stance can contribute gains in comprehension for young students. these findings support rosenblatt’s position for a place for the aesthetic stance in the educational curriculum (rosenblatt, 2005). limitations this study has a few limitations. the study should be replicated with a larger sample, and with a broader selection of books that represent different social topics. it would also be interesting to see if the comprehension of young children would benefit as well when children assume the aesthetic stance while reading independently. in terms of generalization, many teachers work in schools where the curriculum must be strictly adhered to and are therefore limited in the choice of books they can use for reading instruction or read-alouds. these teachers must find other ways to bridge the content for their students. conclusion enisco (2003) concluded that culturally relevant literature can enhance reader engagement and connections for minority students, especially african-americans. since socially sensitive literature is often synonymous with culturally relevant literature, it should be used to support connections and comprehension development for negotiating first graders’ reading stance: the relationship between their efferent and aesthetic connections and their reading comprehension 7 minority students. literature that is closely related to real life events supports a cultural connection to text. research has posited that readers rely on culture to make connections as they engage with literature (lee, 2001). in this study, we introduced first grade students to five socially sensitive children’s books, martin’s big words (rappaport, 2001), visiting day (woodson, 2002), fly away home (bunting, 1991), teammates (golenbock, 1990), and the color of home (hoffman, 2002) that neither frightened them nor corrupted their innocence. in fact, much like keene and zimmerman (1997) suggested, because the children had schemata for these topics via their personal experience, these texts were appropriate for them. while the topics centered on racism, parental incarceration, homelessness, and immigration, the results showed that because the young readers possessed cultural schemata to support connections to the literature they were able to take an aesthetic stance that contributed to gains in comprehending elements of these stories. indeed, we report that similarly to many’s (1991) study of fourth, sixth, and eighth grade students, primary grade students who assumed an aesthetic stance also scored higher on the comprehension measures. children enter classrooms with rich sociocultural knowledge and schemata that are rarely engaged in the curricular and instructional methods. the rich sociocultural knowledge that students bring to school colors their perspective on learning and more specifically on literature (harvey & goudvis, 2007). although there is a belief among some teachers that young children should not be exposed to sensitive topics, our study found that young children were not only able to take an aesthetic stance, they were also able to comprehend story plot and character development. references anderson, r. c., & pearson, p. d. (1984). a schematheoretic view of basic processes in reading comprehension. in p. d. pearson, r. barr, m. l. kamil, & p. mosenthal (eds.), handbook of reading research (pp. 255-291). new york: longman. cai, m. (2008). transactional theory and the study of multicultural literature. language arts, 85 (3), 212-220. charmaz, k. (2000). grounded theory: objectivist and constructivist methods. in n. k. denzin, & y. s. lincoln, handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 509-535). thousand oaks, ca: sage. childstats.gov: forum on child and family statistics (2011). family structure and children’s living arrangements. america’s children: key national indicators of well-being, 2011. retrieved from http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/fams oc1.asp cnn (2009, march). report: 1 in 50 u.s. children face homelessness. cnn. retrieved from http://articles.cnn.com/2009-0310/us/homeless.children_1_homeless-childrenfamily-homelessness-childhomelessness?_s=pm:us duke, n. k., & pearson, p. d. 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(1999/2000). initiating literature circles in a firstgrade bilingual classroom. the reading teacher, 53(4), 270-281. national poverty center (2011). poverty in the united states: frequently asked questions. national poverty center. retrieved from current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 http://npc.umich.edu/poverty/ now on pbs (2009, june). facts and figures: the homeless. now on pbs. retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/526/homelessfacts.html rosenblatt, l. m. (2005c). from "viewpoints: transaction versus interaction". voices from the middle, 12(3), 56-58. rosenblatt, l. m. (2005). from "what facts does this poem teach you?". voices from the middle, 12(3), 43-46. rosenblatt, l. m. (2005a). literature s.o.s.! voices from the middle, 12(3), 34-38. rosenblatt, l. m. (1978). the reader, the text, the poem: the transactional theory of the literary work. carbondale, il: southern illinois university press. sipe, l. r. (2000). the construction of literary understanding by first and second graders in oral response to picture storybook read-alouds. reading research quarterly, 35(2), 252-275. temple, c., martinez, m., yakota, j., & naylor, a. (2002). children's books in children's hands: an introduction to their literature (2nd ed.). boston, ma: allyn & bacon. u.s. census bureau (2011, march). overview of race and hispanic origin: 2010. 2010 census briefs. retrieved from http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c201 0br-02.pdf wiseman, d. l., many, j. e., & altieri, j. (1992). enabling complex aesthetics responses: an examination of three literary discussion approaches. yearbook of the national reading conference, 41, 283-289. wollman-bonilla, j. (1998). outrageous viewpoints: teachers' criteria for rejecting works of children's literature. language arts, 75, 287-295. children’s literature references bunting, e. (1991). fly away home. new york: clarion books. golenbock, p. (1990). teammates. new york: voyager books. hoffman, m. (2002). the color of home. new york: penguin putnam books. rappaport, d. (2001). martin’s big words: the life of dr. martin luther king, jr. new york: hyperion book. woodson, j. (2002). visiting day. new york: scholastic press. negotiating first graders’ reading stance: the relationship between their efferent and aesthetic connections and their reading comprehension 9 article citation pilonieata, p., & hancock, s. d. (2012). negotiating first graders’ reading stance: the relationship between their efferent and aesthetic connections and their reading comprehension. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from: http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/947 author notes paola pilonieta university of north carolina at charlotte 9201 university city blvd. charlotte, nc 28223 pilonieta@uncc.edu paola pilonieta is an assistant professor at the university of north carolina at charlotte. her research interests include early literacy, particularly comprehension, and multicultural education. stephen d. hancock university of north carolina at charlotte 9201 university city blvd. charlotte, nc 28223 sdhancoc@uncc.edu dr. stephen d. hancock is an associate professor of multicultural education and serves as an international visiting professor of global education at the pedagogische hochshule in ludwigsburg germany. his research interest include reading instruction in multicultural settings, teacher education with an emphasis on identity development and academic relationships, and the perspective of african american male teachers in elementary education. manuscript received: 02/27/2012 revisions received: 04/30/2012 accepted: 5/25/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 10 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1058_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 3 december 17, 2013 issn 1099-839x negotiated issues in an early college partnership: description and understanding through interorganizational theory jack leonard university of massachusetts boston early college high schools are one solution to the college readiness challenge, but schooluniversity partnerships are complex and difficult to negotiate. this case study took a close look an early college program between a state community college and a suburban high school and asked what were the negotiable items and how could interorganizational theory help clarify the motives and positions of the negotiators in order to better understand the process? data included transcription and notes from four years of bimonthly planning meetings among institutional leaders along with individual interviews. the results provide a road-map of negotiable “sticking points” for early college high school partnerships and a framework of seven theories to facilitate understanding and successful negotiations. keywords: college readiness; community colleges; early college high schools; interorganizational collaboration; secondary education; resources dependency theory; stakeholder theory; learning theory in recent years, college readiness has emerged as a national priority, taking center stage in the president’s blueprint for reauthorization of the elementary and secondary education act (u.s. department of education, 2010) and in the research literature (conley, 2005; hoffman, 2009; kazis, vargas, & hoffman, 2004). the boundary between high school and college, which is a complex construction of cognitive, social, psychological, and financial factors, is a challenge to college readiness and a threat to post-secondary access and success. a traditional approach is to fortify students to leap the hurdle through rigorous coursework and college awareness activities. a newer approach is to lower the hurdle, which happens when institutions work together to create a seamless transition. early college high schools employ the second strategy through one campus where high school and college faculty work together to introduce college coursework to students as early as ninth grade with ample time and support to ensure success. the idea is that the transition from high school to college will be no more traumatic than earlier transitions from elementary to middle to high school. however, the obstacles to secondarypostsecondary partnerships are numerous and far more complex than the links between k-12 schools. substantial differences in mission, organization, budgets, schedules, and stakeholders present many “sticking points;” each must be negotiated in order to create a seamless transition (brabeck, walsh, & latta, 2003; corrigan, 2000; hoffman & vargas, 2005; mccroskey, 2003; selke, 1996; walsh et al., 2000; weerts & sandmann, 2008). for this reason, early college high schools remain small, few in number, and vulnerable. the idea for this paper derived from the author’s design-based research engagement with a new england early college program. while examining student outcomes, parental engagement, teacher collaboration and the financial structure (leonard, 2012, 2013a, 2013b, 2013d), the author was struck continually by the many complex and diverse negotiations required for a successful partnership. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 2 there is a need, among scholars and practitioners, for closer, fine-grained analysis of a successfully negotiated secondary-postsecondary partnership. the purpose of this paper is twofold. first, the paper explains how interorganizational theory can offer a way to understand the manifold challenges and appropriate the promise of secondary-postsecondary partnerships. a narrow conceptualization of partnering often leads to assumptions that limit the design and prospects of collaboration. secondly, the paper lists the negotiable “sticking points” of an early college partnership, as a guide for other partnerships, and explains how these were discovered. literature review and theoretical perspective early college high schools show promise for college readiness (berger et al., 2013; struhl & vargas, 2012). there are over 300 early college high schools in the united states, many of which were jump-started with funds from the bill and melinda gates foundation in the past ten years (zehr, 2010). early college programs often target students who are underrepresented on college campuses (minority and low-income), yet they are more likely to graduate, attend and complete college than comparison groups (berger et al., 2013). early college high schools are just one example of school-university partnerships, which come in many shapes and sizes (ravid & handler, 2001; slater & ravid, 2010). all such interorganizational partnerships face daunting challenges, which can include power imbalances (corrigan, 2000; weerts & sandmann, 2008), differences in mission and goals (walsh et al., 2000), governance (walsh et al., 2000), structural barriers in organization and management (weerts & sandmann, 2008), cultural differences (selke, 1996), communication barriers (walsh et al., 2000), and unmatched resources (corrigan, 2000) and time (mccroskey, 2003). early college high schools present additional challenges due to key stakeholders; maturing students exercise greater agency and parents are often active participants, as in this case study. despite the challenges, institutions enter into partnerships for various reasons. barringer and harrison (2000) reviewed six theories to explain the motivation behind interorganizational partnerships on a continuum from economic to behavioral interests. while the authors were discussing business partnerships, the theories have application in the education world. siegel (2010) offered a similar list, which focused narrowly on reasons for university partnerships. the combined list of seven addresses efficiency, resource dependence, leverage, learning, legitimacy, stakeholders, and domain focus. efficiency the theories that focus on efficiency, such as transaction costs economics (tce), have as a primary purpose the reduction of production and transaction costs. one company enters a joint venture with another company because the latter is able to provide a vital resource more efficiently. for example, while charter schools can provide their own meals and transportation independently, they sometimes ally with outside partners to save time and money. the limitation of this theory is that it overlooks other reasons for alliances (see below) and ignores the fact that sometimes institutional cultures and/or people just don’t get along. resource dependence resource dependency theory predicates the formation of partnerships on the critical need for resources, which are not available internally. no organization is self-sufficient and independent of the environment. in this case, schools cannot provide their own utilities, so they are dependent on outside providers. similarly, they require partnerships for curriculum and technology. this creates a dependency, which companies try to reduce by gaining control over the resources. so, for example, schools are situated in district partnerships, which can command better prices. large and small companies often form strategic partnerships to gain access to technology, distribution channels, or even “entrepreneurial energy” or to “bring together a larger brain trust than any one firm could muster” (barringer & harrison, 2000, p. 373). with resource acquisition comes power and a competitive advantage in the market. this theory ignores other ways in which an organization might gain vital resources, such as simple purchase. the theory does not explain how partnerships are created and the theory also overlooks non-economic, human factors in partnering, such as friendships and trust. leverage there are other reasons for interorganizational partnerships than just efficiency or resource acquisition. for example, strategic choice theory suggests that institutions may pursue alliances to penetrate new markets, share information, reduce risks or offer a unique service (barringer & harrison, 2000). these theories view organizations “as more entrepreneurial and oriented toward gaining some competitive advantage” (siegel, 2010, p. 39). for example, some schools now offer online courses, giving them access to new students outside their catchment area, leading to larger budgets and greater prestige. this theory encompasses a host of strategic reasons for interorganizational alliances, which can increase market power, political power, internal efficiencies or product/service differentiation (barringer & harrison, 2000, p. 375). the breadth of the theory is also its weakness, since the theory fails to differentiate between various motives. learning many organizations form partnerships to share technical knowledge that is not otherwise available (barringer & harrison, 2000). in addition, a primary motive for interorganizational partnering is to “control environmental turbulence” (borthwick, 2001, p. 28) and reduce uncertainty; hence, the desire to learn. information negotiated issues in an early college partnership: description and understanding through interorganizational theory 3 is often considered a strategic resource, but in some cases organizations partner simply to learn. healthy schools are learning organizations and the pursuit of knowledge comes naturally. learning is facilitated through partnerships: knowledge creation occurs in the context of a community, one that is fluid and evolving rather than tightly bound or static. the canonical formal organization with its bureaucratic rigidities is a poor vehicle for learning. sources of innovation do not reside exclusively inside firms; instead they are commonly found in the interstices between firms, universities, research laboratories, suppliers and customers. (barringer & harrison, 2000, p. 378, quoting powell, koput, & smith-doerr, 1996, p. 118) learning organizations often position themselves in the center of interorganizational networks, where learning and innovation abound. thus, schools often join associations. learning theory implies that some organizations can learn better than others. this is termed “absorptive capacity” and is defined as an organization’s ability "to recognize the value of new, external knowledge, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends” (barringer & harrison, 2000, p. 379, quoting cohen & levinthal, 1990, p. 128). absorptive capacity depends on “prior preparation, which is linked to such things as the quality of a firm's employees, its knowledge base, the quality of its management information systems, its organizational culture, and the presence of learning incentives” (barringer & harrison, 2000, p. 379). absorptive capacity can change; in effect, an institution can learn how to learn. the criticism of learning theory, which one might anticipate from its distance from economics on the spectrum described in the beginning of this section, is that it ignores costs. a cost/benefit analysis is almost impossible to perform when embarking on a new learning curve. legitimacy institutional theory suggests that an organization will reach out and partner in order to gain legitimacy, to raise its public image, or to conform to social norms (barringer & harrison, 2000; siegel, 2010). for example, accreditation is a voluntary process, but most schools willingly partner with a qualified accrediting agency and accede to the standards. in a similar vein, many foundations and funding agencies convey preferences for collaboration or democratic behaviors and institutions readily comply. municipalities expect businesses and educational institutions to contribute to the common good. often, there are rewards attending when institutions meet social expectations. stakeholders stakeholder theory views organizations as situated in networks of relationships. as a result and, in contrast to the theories above where the focus is on economies and efficiency, the “organizations are inclined to form coalitions with stakeholders to achieve common objectives” (barringer & harrison, 2000, p. 376). in this case, self-interest is subsumed in the collective interest. for example, the school site council is a mechanism to give voice to parental and community stakeholder interests. this theory has been a useful tool to understand the ethical obligations of organizations to various stakeholders. the criticism with stakeholder theory is that it is more descriptive than prescriptive, for it cannot predict what kind of alliance would work best. furthermore, there has been little empirical testing of this theory; it just makes common and moral sense. domain focus domain focus refers to large scale “metaproblems,” which are larger than the institution and demand cooperation for resolution. poverty is a typical example. some would argue that the achievement gap is a meta-problem, which cannot be solved by the schools alone (rothstein, 2004). thus, schools partner with community agencies for health, housing, employment, and social services in a community school arrangement (berg, melaville, & blank, 2007; blank, melaville, & shah, 2003; shah & blank, 2004). the meta-problem becomes a “magnet” that draws partners’ together (siegel, 2010, p. 42). these seven theories – efficiency, resource dependence, leverage, learning, legitimacy, stakeholders, and domain focus – outline the manifold reasons for interorganizational partnerships. they are not mutually exclusive, but overlapping. together, they can help describe and predict effective school-university partnerships. methods case study methodology is useful for “how” and “why” questions, when contextual conditions are relevant to the phenomenon under study and the behavior of the participants cannot be manipulated (baxter & jack, 2008, p. 545). while generalizability is limited, case studies can offer fine-grained analysis of a phenomenon. the case for this paper was an early college program (described below); the units of analysis were the negotiations, which occurred primarily in bimonthly planning meetings during the design and implementation phase. the study was bound by setting (one early college program) and time (2009 to 2012). the study asked two questions: a. what were the “sticking points,” which required negotiation in the development of secondary-postsecondary early college partnership? b. how can interorganizational theory clarify current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 4 the negotiation work? this case study sheds light on how interorganizational theory can illuminate the negotiation work. a core proposition is that school-university partnerships are difficult but not impossible, presenting many barriers and challenges, which can be addressed through sound negotiations. the study also describes how the negotiation points were identified, addressed and organized; the final list is offered in the appendix. the case in early 2008, a few leaders from new england community college (necc), a public two-year institution, began meeting with the leaders of agassiz high school (ahs), a nearby public suburban high school, to think about how to increase college readiness. over many meetings, this planning team created an early college program that would offer college courses on the high school campus as part of the regular school day to academically average high school students in the tenth grade. the cost of the program was split between the college, high school and the parents (leonard, 2013b) in a way that was affordable and sustainable.1 students earned as many as 34 transferable college credits. meanwhile, the college began replicating the model in other urban and suburban high schools. the author was invited to join the planning team in early 2009, meeting twice monthly through 2013 (except summers), to provide design-based research services (anderson & shattuck, 2012). data sources and analysis the information for this case study came from several sources. the bimonthly planning team meetings were attended by various representatives from the college (vice president, dean, director of strategic planning, coordinator, registrar, student advisor, college faculty) and the high school (superintendent, principal, vice principal, guidance counselors, teachers) as well as the author. the meetings were digitally recorded and observational notes were collected. the meetings also offered ample opportunity to ask clarifying questions and explore motives. ten team members (administrators, guidance counselors and teachers) were individually interviewed at least once with a semi-structured interview protocol and a digital recorder, which allowed for deeper probing in regards to policy decisions. over four years, close relationships developed, which allowed for countless, informal discussions in the meeting room, classroom, hallways and parking lot. many of these were not recorded, but notes were reconstructed from memory as soon as possible. the recordings were transcribed and all records were analyzed using weft qualitative data analysis software. initial passes through the many records yielded a deductive list of negotiable items, which were topics that required discussion, where differences arose, and contention was possible. these points were then used for a second review, inductively, this time looking for related thematic material (not using the same terminology) and contextual information. then, the negotiation points were analyzed using the seven-part theoretical rubric described above. this exercise brought new negotiation points to light, which had been overlooked. these were also added to the list. results the early college partnership was typical of many school partnerships. on the one hand, the partners had a history of collaboration so there was a foundation of familiarity and trust on which to build. for example, the college was already offering dual enrollment courses at the high school to students who could pay the tuition. the partners were comfortable together and could safely explore new ideas about what they would like to see for students. there was no outline to follow for the planning process; the team was not following a standard proposal format. for this reason, the planning proceeded in a somewhat chaotic fashion at times. most of this section is devoted to five major decisions, which were negotiated over many hours of discussion. given the vast number of decisions that were made in designing an early college program, it would be impossible to apply theory to all the negotiation points. these five examples are presented as illustrations of how theory might inform and guide partnership work. partnering presents many challenges for the adults who must learn to navigate the border between two institutions. early college programs are particularly difficult because students, as well as adults, are engaged in border-crossing work. for this reason, a theoretical perspective offers a way to better understand and appreciate the needs and motives, which lie behind participant interests. the theory of interest-based bargaining suggests that negotiations are more likely to be successful when participants focus on common interests rather than conflicting positions (ury & fisher, 1991). the use of theory to guide negotiations could be particularly helpful in partnerships, such as the one in this case study, where grant funding and a proposal outline for guidance are lacking. in reality, these theories were not employed in the design phase of the early college program for this case study. instead, many of the meetings in the year before the first students entered the program, seemed almost chaotic, with conversations that jumped, rapid-fire, from _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 like all state colleges, necc received state funds to support dual enrollment when the economy was strong, but the funds were inconsistent and unreliable. hence, the development of a program that did not rely on state grants. negotiated issues in an early college partnership: description and understanding through interorganizational theory 5 topic to topic. this reflected the high level of trust in the group, as well as the entrepreneurial nature of the core leaders who were comfortable with high levels of ambiguity and risk (leonard, 2013c). in the early weeks, the investigator was often lost among the acronyms, abbreviations and colloquial language, but emailed inquiries based on the digital recordings and transcriptions filled in the gaps. the leaders had already been meeting occasionally for a year when the investigator joined the team in january 2009. hoping to begin classes in september, the team anticipated a parent recruitment meeting in the spring. over the next three months, this meeting and the accompanying powerpoint slide show became the focal point for decision-making. the leaders were desperate to nail down the outline of the program for at least the entering sophomores. the junior and senior years could be planned later. over the course of many meetings, the principal investigator was continually impressed with the array and complexity of the items that had to be discussed in fashioning a working, sustainable early college program. in the beginning, the meetings raised numerous concerns related to curriculum, cost, student enrollments, student support, selection of instructors, scheduling and other issues. the discussion would move rapidly from one topic to another, often circling back. many ideas were raised in meeting after meeting and slowly solidified as all the contextual details became clear. while the points for discussion and negotiation were not the primary focus of the research investigations, the sheer number and complexity made them an ever-present counterpoint to the main story. looking back over the transcribed minutes of the meetings, one can assemble these negotiation points in logical categories, such as goals, target population, curriculum, costs, staffing and evaluation. (the categorized list of negotiation points is available in the appendix). however, the categories were not obvious in advance. in fact, they arose in an almost haphazard manner, rapidly, almost tumbling over one another, as the team struggled to finalize the design of the program. a short conversation on target students would turn into a discussion of costs and then veer over into student support, choice of instructors, union concerns or accreditation. meeting-by-meeting, new layers of understanding were added to each decision area until everyone was satisfied that a final solution was achieved. the seven theories presented in this paper are not related to the points of negotiation in a one-to-one relationship. in other words, one cannot create a table that lists the negotiation points in one column and the relevant theory in the next. instead, the seven theories promoted a rich, balanced discussion around each negotiation point. often one theory predicted the issue and then other theories offered a different perspective and raised new points of discussion. for all these reasons, the pages below present five main decisions and show how theory informs the discussion. in some instances, quotations are lifted from the meeting notes to demonstrate a participant perspective or to simply indicate the turbulent discussions. in many cases, there was no one quotation that “nailed” the final decision. some decisions were debated over four years of bimonthly meetings, an estimated 80 meetings of an average 90 minutes for a total of 120 hours of negotiation. this does not include telephone and email communications, which were not available to the author. however, the main issues and perspectives were reflected in the bimonthly planning meetings. the results which are presented below are the compilation of hundreds of communications, rather than a selection of individual quotations. the rest of this section uses the theoretical framework to analyze five main topics of negotiation by way of illustration. the decision to have an early college program the high school guidance director first imagined an early college program for her students after reading an article on the topic for a graduate course. starting from a resource dependency perspective, she wanted to increase opportunities for college knowledge for her students. the high school already had a college partner and a dual enrollment program, so the director contacted a trusted college dean and floated her idea. the college was motivated by a mix of concerns. to begin, college readiness was a meta-problem; this was a large-scale problem of national significance that was beyond the ability of anyone institution to solve. thus, a domain focus was sufficient to bring the partners together in a new discussion knowing that they could not solve this problem on their own. secondly, the state was calling on public community colleges to take proactive steps to address college readiness concerns. thus, an early college program would enhance the legitimacy of the college. later, the vice president of academics joined the conversation and raised the efficiency issue. far too many college applicants failed the college entrance exam and required remedial coursework, which was enormously expensive. the vice president remarked, “40 to 60% of students placed in developmental courses don’t even take them. this is the ‘dirty little secret’ at necc.” the students dropped out before they even began. a focus on efficiency could threaten an early college innovation, since these tend to be expensive and sustainable funding is always a challenge (webb, 2004). however, the vice president had a larger view, focusing instead on the mounting cost of testing, remedial coursework and student attrition. finally, this was a learning opportunity for the college. if handled correctly, the college could learn from the process, which might inform other high school partnerships as well as support programs for entering freshmen. long before the first students were recruited current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 6 for the program, the college dean promulgated a request for outside evaluation by a university researcher. in this way, the author of this paper was first engaged. learning theory describes the “absorptive capacity” of organizations, which is defined as the ability "to recognize the value of new, external knowledge, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends” (barringer & harrison, 2000, p. 379, quoting cohen & levinthal, 1990, p. 128). clearly, the initial players in the early college program had high absorptive capacity. the district superintendent soon joined the planning meetings. the superintendent and the college vice president actually protected the other team members from competing distractions (institutional crises, accreditation concerns, competing reform initiatives), thus increasing their absorptive capacity. the next section will demonstrate how absorptive capacity was preserved and guarded early in the innovation. the planning and development team the assembly of the planning and development team, which would take the initial idea of an early college program to full implementation, can best be understood from a leverage perspective. the initial team of two (guidance counselor and college dean) began to engage more members strategically in a way that would balance the need to gain support while avoiding impediments. they turned to the principal, who would be indispensable for the success of the program because of his position and power. he had an entrepreneurial mind (he and his wife ran a chocolate business in their spare time), so he was inclined to think imaginatively. the dean was an accomplished business entrepreneur, now working in the public sector, and she had a good command of strategic planning. resource dependency theory suggests that organizations may sometimes partner to capitalize on “entrepreneurial energy” (barringer & harrison, 2000, p. 373). this was a likely motivation. the dean also called in the college vice president of academics, who was the voice of authority on both financials and curriculum, and also a creative mind. at this point, everyone at the table was entrepreneurially minded, which guaranteed ownership and investment along with a high tolerance for risk and ambiguity. the next team members were also chosen for their positions. the director of curriculum for the district was an indispensable member, since she oversaw any new curricular project. she was not a risk-taker and a possible impediment, but she brought crucial information on budgets, staffing, scheduling, and student support. they invited the superintendent, who proved to be an early supporter, and they also invited the author of this paper.2 the request for on-going documentation and evaluation reflected a learning perspective, as well as a desire to gain leverage through documented outcomes. this team understood well that the only route to sustainable funding was through documented, positive outcomes. lastly, the team invited select teachers, in small numbers, to review the plans for the early college program. the goal of leverage was always in the background as they called in certain teachers – such as the chair of the english department – and avoided others who were perceived as “negative.” at no time was the plan presented to the entire faculty or held up for a vote. in the beginning, teachers were not invited to permanent positions on the planning team. leverage interests often intersect with efficiency and stakeholder interests. as noted above, there were other competing reform initiatives in the high school. for example, the social studies department had been slowly writing a new, two-year american studies curriculum. however, the early college curriculum called for a college course on u.s. history for the sophomores, which would be different. how could the planning team reconcile the two competing curricula? the director of curriculum pointed out, “we need to honor their hard work for two years to pull this american studies together. we don’t want to undo that.” and the guidance counselor (a member of the same union) voiced the concerns of the social studies teachers: if this is a true professional learning community [between ahs and necc], then they would like more than just a week in the summer to get all this ready. they want a true community. “we are the players; why can’t we have a year to get to know necc…why rush? can we teach these courses?” they are excited, but they wonder why there is such a rush. in other words, the engagement of the social studies teachers would delay the start of the early college program by a full year. other members of the planning team overruled. the principal retorted, “you can’t give these people enough time. we can give them time during the year; we can give half days if necessary.” and another teacher added, “you don’t develop relationships by talking about it; you do it.” in the end, the social studies teachers were free to continue their re-design of the american studies curriculum, but they would not be consulted on the early college program, which would develop independently. in this way, momentum was not lost; the early college program would begin in september. this was the planning team for two years, through the design phases and early cohorts of students. the team, which met bimonthly, did not include teachers, parents or students. this was a strategic team _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2the author was a former high school principal who promoted community partnerships in every conceivable way in that position. his particular interest was entrepreneurial leadership. negotiated issues in an early college partnership: description and understanding through interorganizational theory 7 designed to work quickly and efficiently. as the program matured, however, new stakeholders emerged. the students of the first cohort had a very difficult junior year because of some poor staffing choices, so they found ways to make their voices heard. as a result, they gained a formal audience with the planning team, which resulted in significant changes in hiring and staffing the following year. the evaluator interviewed students, parents and instructors and brought their opinions to the attention of the planning team through verbal and written reports. parents grew in their understanding of the program and began to ask critical questions. most significantly, teachers gained experience in the early college classroom and insisted they had important lessons to share with the design team. the high school and college instructors also belonged to unions, which took interest in the project. as a result, in the third year of the program, the teachers were invited to join the planning team on alternate meeting dates to share their ideas and voice their concerns. in effect, as the early college program solidified, the concerns for leverage were replaced by an emphasis on stakeholders. in addition, the attention from the teachers’ unions forced a concern for legitimacy. which students should be recruited the high school already offered a broad array of advanced placement courses and honors-level courses for students in the top academic quartile. the principal argued that students in the two middle academic quartiles lacked special services and were easily overlooked. as he said, “in reality, only 25 to 35% of students are really taking advantage of what is here; we want to raise that number.” he presented himself as a case study of a student who had mediocre grades in high school and needed someone to see his potential. in this way, he adopted a stakeholder approach, which facilitates an ethical perspective. as a result, a decision was made to deliberately target the “middle” students through selective one-on-one recruitment through the guidance office. the superintendent, who attended most of the early meetings, was confident this stance would earn legitimacy with the school committee, which would have to approve the final program design. the high school honors program presented a threat to the early college program. first, select parents were deeply invested in the honors program and would resent any competition for resources. more importantly, it was quite possible that honors students would want to sign up for the early college courses, thereby intimidating and crowding out the middle students. this was an internal resource dependency issue; in effect, various groups of students would be competing for control of the same resources. the planning team had to figure out how to distribute the resources more equitably. one stakeholder asked, “how do we say ‘no’ to the high flyers?” the high school had a complex formula for computing grade point averages, which gave greater weight to honors courses. surely, the early college courses deserved greater weight also, but this would invite academically ambitious honors students who wanted to boost their gpa. in the end, the team decided to award a weight which was higher than normal, but less than the honors courses. in this way, early college students would be rewarded, but honors students would be less inclined to join something that could potentially lower their gpa. by carefully determining the weight of the early college courses, the planning team was able to leverage the program to favor the middle students and solve the resource dependency issue successfully. the high school and college had distinctly different stances in regards to student stakeholders. the high school operated under an inclusive perspective that they should educate every student that enrolled, regardless of academic qualifications. the principal wanted to start small, but he was thinking big: “i can see us starting with 30 to 40 students and, in the future, putting the entire sophomore class through this sequence.” in contrast, the college had entrance requirements, which included a placement exam. students who failed the exam were required to take non-credit-bearing remedial courses to meet the benchmarks. everyone knew the target freshmen, who would be recruited in the coming months, would struggle. the director of curriculum asked, “how realistic is it that ninth graders will pass this?” and the principal stated the obvious: “they will not do well.” the dean responded, if 60 students show up and nobody passes the test, we may still enroll them, since we have twice the normal class time allotted for each course. we don’t know what’s going to happen. the option is for the faculty members to decide if these scores are okay. so, the college lowered the exam benchmark so that academically average ninth graders would be eligible for coursework. they had to be careful, as the dean explained, “we don’t want to set kids up for failure. if we have any reason to believe that kids want to do this but can’t do this, then we need to say ‘no,’ kindly, but we need to say no.” widespread student failure in the first year of classes might convince these vulnerable students that they were not destined for college and would furthermore undermine the legitimacy of the program, so it would perish before it got off the ground. as a result, each year, the guidance counselor met with college representatives to carefully review student portfolios, which included report cards, student writing, teacher recommendations, scores on reading tests and the college placement exam. a college might be hesitant to welcome students who are academic under-achievers, but necc was fully aware that the top quartile students at ahs would be going to other, more prestigious four-year universities. the target students for the early college program were current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 8 their customers, but no one could force the early college graduates to attend necc. for this reason, a resource dependency perspective argued against their investment in this program since they could not truly depend on these customers. however, from a learning perspective, necc lacked access to customer information prior to matriculation. the early college program offered them a first-hand opportunity to explore the attitudes, aspirations, study habits, and college readiness of their customers on the trajectory to college matriculation, even if the students never attended necc. the college offered special support services for students with disabilities, but expressed no particular obligation to recruit them. as a result, in the formative years, they declined to accept students with disabilities into the early college program. the high school, however, operated under a federal imperative to provide equal access to all students. again, this difference in stakeholder perspective had to be carefully negotiated. in time, students with disabilities were accepted into the program. this then presented new challenges. high school teachers are required by law to provide accommodations whereas college faculty are often unaware of accommodations and usually refer such students to an academic support center. when a college faculty member is teaching a college course to tenth graders on a high school campus, what does the law require? legitimacy concerns with state regulations then took the forefront. the decisions about curriculum in the beginning, the early college program was modeled after the literature, which described underachieving students earning an associate of arts degree by the fourth or fifth year of high school. as late as one month before the first parent presentation, the principal stated, “we want to make sure they get the courses they need to the aa requirements.” for this reason, the high school leaders hoped to link subject concentrations, which already existed within the high school – music and early childhood education – with known majors at necc. students could choose their “major” at ahs and then pursue this right through the associate’s degree at necc. in short, the process of designing a program, which would be unique to the needs of this high school and college, was still not complete. this process was a balance between stakeholder interests (what the students could absorb), efficiency costs and the desire of both institutions to manage resources (resource dependency theory). the college was concerned about enrollments, which would impact income. one participant stated, “you won’t get 30 students who want music or early childhood education.” gradually, the curriculum shifted to a generic emphasis on american literature and u.s. history for the sophomores, along with a college success seminar, which was a campus requirement for all students who failed the accuplacer, totaling nine college credits. the principal was particularly interested in bringing the college success course to the high school. this combination seemed more promising; the principal stated, “we know can get 30 to 40 students to sign up for the american studies and college success and, hopefully, more from this group will choose the early college high school options in the future.” in short, student stakeholder interests shaped the final curriculum. the planning team decided to avoid math courses, since students advanced at different rates, and science, which required expensive lab facilities (an efficiency perspective). the team still worried about student success. one member spoke for the stakeholders: “i’m worried that we’re setting these kids up with nine credits without giving them the time to build relationships, gain confidence, and learn the skills.” the principal offered to double the time blocks, but the college vice president spoke from an efficiency standpoint, thinking about the cost of employing adjunct instructors for double blocks all year long: “from our point of view, it’s 83 minutes every day, which seems like a lot to us. we’re going to be challenged on our end to stretch this out over an entire year.” with ample time and supports built into the sophomore year, the design team began planning the junior year in the fall of 2009. at this time, they still believed that sophomores would be capable of taking college courses on the necc campus over the summer. as the dean stated, “nine college credits per year, with six credits per summer after grade 10, 11 and 12. that’s a lot of credits!” they also hoped students would sign up for ap courses in their junior year. these assumptions proved ambitious. while all students succeeded on the sophomore college courses (some barely), everyone knew they were not ready for summer college courses and ap courses yet. the program did not turn underachieving students into academic all-stars overnight. they simply were not ready for these additional challenges. within the first year, the design team abandoned the goal of an associate’s degree in favor of a goal that would be more practical to the stakeholders. the mass transfer program of massachusetts guaranteed that any student who completed 34 credits within a designated block of courses could transfer them automatically, without question, into any state university or college. this gave students leverage and became the goal of the early college program. some students could complete the 34 credits while still in high school and others would complete in their first year at college. the mass transfer block replaced the associate’s degree as the target. how to finance the program one would expect the negotiations around the cost of the early college program to raise theoretical perspectives at the economic end of the spectrum (efficiency, resource dependency). certainly, the high school was looking for some services for the “middle” negotiated issues in an early college partnership: description and understanding through interorganizational theory 9 students, but this was not a driving concern once the planning team was assembled. in fact, for two years the cost structure remained flexible. the planning team was driven forward by a domain focus – “this is a complex and important societal problem which must be solved” – and concerns for legitimacy. as public sector institutions, the college felt an obligation to the state and surrounding community to find creative ways to increase student persistence and the high school felt an obligation to parents, the community and the school committee to address the needs of all children, including the middle students. three decisions dominated the early negotiations. the team determined that sustainability was essential. past experience with state dual enrollment funding demonstrated that government resources were not dependent. a felt obligation to student and parent stakeholders demanded a long-term sustainable program design. team members did not want to invite students into an early college program that could not be sustained from year to year. thus, the entire project would have to be funded locally. they also debated whether parents should share in the costs. the superintendent confessed, “i am disgustingly kid-centered, but i would not let any parents go entirely free. they need to be committed. it makes this more valuable to them and harder to drop out.” the principal, however, objected: “but we have kids who can’t pay for lunch or the bus. these kids get everything for free and they may ask why this isn’t free either? i don’t think they’ll step up to the plate. we’ll lose them.” finally, the team decided that parent and student stakeholders would have greater investment in the program if they were required to pay something. (this eventually turned out to be a critical element for the success of the program. students were less likely to drop out, since the funds were non-returnable and parents were more likely to pressure their children to complete homework assignments and succeed for the same reason). parents would be attracted by the opportunity to save money on the cost of college. the high school and college would make up the difference, which was still unclear. the high school would pick up the cost of books and materials. of course, student enrollments were an important third factor. early estimates suggested a cost $250 per family, but this was when the committee hoped for 60 or more students in the first cohort. the vice president said, we costed out the integrated model…. my original proposal was based on how we normally pay adjunct faculty. this model is three to four times the normal time commitment for each faculty member. we need a minimum 45 students to just cover the costs to our instructors. if the number is less, we will still stand behind this because this is a pilot. gradually, the team settled on smaller enrollments and a higher tuition payment. parents were asked to pay $600 per year for nine to twelve credits and the local educational foundation would support low-income families. the first cohort of 31 students entered the program in september 2009. by spring 2010, the college finally offered a formal memorandum of agreement, whereby the cost of coursework was set at 65% of normal tuition. the high school would pay remaining costs, which would vary according to student enrollments. incidental costs (testing, training, materials, transportation, food) would be split between the two institutions (leonard, 2013b). in effect, economic interests (efficiency and resource dependency) were important, but they were not allowed to dominate the early planning, which concentrated instead on the stakeholders and a larger domain focus. discussion this study began as the author worked alongside the planning team for an early college program. over the course of four years, the pi was impressed with the number and complexity of small decisions which the committee addressed during the design and development process. the college was already replicating the program in other high schools, with varying success, since each site presented unique challenges. a core proposition of this study is that school-university partnerships are difficult but not impossible, presenting many barriers and challenges, which can be addressed through sound negotiations. for this reason, a more universal, allinclusive way to think about the “sticking points” of secondary-postsecondary partnership negotiations was recommended. the first step was to look back over four years of notes to create a list of the many decisions required for a sound program. the second step was to explore a conceptual framework. the use of seven theories, which cover the gamut of motivation for school-university partnerships, provided a way to frame and understand the complex negotiations required. the theoretical perspectives offer scholars a means to analyze and understand all kinds of school-university partnerships, such as those that provide internships, precollegiate activities or professional development schools, for example. this approach may also help practitioners understand and appreciate the differing viewpoints at the negotiation table. often, in the heat of the moment, one’s personal point-of-view can seem like the only sensible opinion. the array of theories highlights competing concerns. the results offered here focused on the early decision to invent an early college program, the assembly of the design team, decisions around student selection, current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 10 choice of curriculum and how to finance the program. the theories have equal application to other sets of decisions addressing staffing, pedagogy, parental engagement, marketing and so on. in some cases, one theory was sufficient to understand a set of decisions. the assembly of the planning team seemed to be dominated by concerns for leverage. thus, there were mutually agreeable decisions to invite some members and exclude others. however, a common theory does not guarantee agreeableness, since participants could have differing interpretations of leverage. the college dean was concerned with team leverage, carefully selecting participants to ensure the viability of the innovation. there were three different district superintendents during the four-year history of this case. at least one superintendent attended the meetings to give the district more individual leverage in the financial negotiations. he knew that the costs would be shared and he wanted to make sure the district was well represented. in effect, the participants were striving for leverage with each other also. in a similar way, the high school and the college had different interpretations of stakeholder interests in the discussion around student selection. the high school emphasized the inclusion of all children. the college negotiators were concerned about faculty stakeholders who might be unfamiliar with accommodations. a shared theoretical perspective was not sufficient to guarantee agreeableness. the definition of stakeholder can even vary with one’s hierarchical position in the institution. for the guidance counselor, stakeholder meant children and parents. in contrast, the college dean believed she was attentive to stakeholders when she invited the district curriculum director. the author pushed for teachers to be included in the planning meetings after interviews with each teacher demonstrated that they had vital stakeholder positions. the negotiation table was also the scene of competing theoretical perspectives. for two years, economic questions rose up again and again as the design work continued. the college had short-term efficiency concerns (how much will this cost?), which were balanced by long-term efficiency concerns (how can we reduce the cost of testing, remedial coursework and student attrition?). the high school was resource dependent; they could not afford to address the college readiness needs of the “middle” students. most of all, they were concerned to address the needs of these underresourced stakeholders. over time, an acceptable balance was found between these competing perspectives. in this case, all seven theories came into play at some point. while this might be true of all early college programs, the same might not be true of other schooluniversity partnerships. some partnering activities might not have a domain focus for example, since they do not address large-scale, complex societal problems. other activities might be relatively inexpensive so the theories at the economic end of the spectrum would be less important. for example, colleges place student teachers in public schools all the time with little expense involved. again, the array of theories provides a way to understand the dimensions of the partnership and the various perspectives that will be encountered in negotiations. theories come with strengths and limitations. each theory is a lens, which brings certain aspects of the negotiation into sharp focus and yet obscures other aspects. when participants enter negotiations with a particular theoretical perspective, they are sharply focused on one concern, but may have blind spots in regards to competing concerns. taken together, the theories offer a means to understand the larger picture of competing concerns. an appreciation of the seven theories can save a negotiator from becoming entrenched in one position. the use of learning theory, in particular, might be expected in a partnership between two educational institutions. however, the history of school reform suggests that schools are no more inclined to be learning organizations than any other kind of institution (hess, 2010; senge, 2006; tyack & cuban, 1995). in this partnership, the opportunity to learn was a constant motivation and a consolation. as a result, the leaders were not threatened by setbacks, but used them as opportunities to gain understanding. over the course of four years, there were numerous mistakes both large and small. parents were placed on a payment plan, which the college sometimes forgot, resulting in threatening letters. one year, the team made poor staffing choices, so the junior students suffered all year. an integrated learning community model meant that students received one grade for all their work on a permanent college transcript, which would threaten their ability to receive financial aid once in college if they did poorly. the planning team intervened to address the mistakes, but also embraced them as a learning opportunity. barringer and harrison (2000) wrote in their discussion of learning theory, “sources of innovation do not reside exclusively inside firms; instead they are commonly found in the interstices between firms, universities, research laboratories, suppliers and customers” (p. 378; quoting powell, koput, & smith-doerr, 1996, p. 118). in this partnership, the participants seemed to be highly attracted to these interstices, which provided an opportunity to learn. curiosity, the opportunity to learn, boundaryspanning and a readiness to bounce back from setbacks are common characteristics of entrepreneurial leaders (leonard, 2013c). entrepreneurial leadership was evident throughout this case study, which is not surprising since these leaders were attracted to innovation. earlier, this paper drew attention to the gradual shift from a leverage perspective to a stakeholder perspective in the assembly of the planning team. this is typical with entrepreneurial start-ups. entrepreneurial leaders work hard to maintain negotiated issues in an early college partnership: description and understanding through interorganizational theory 11 leverage over the budding innovation to ensure that naysayers don’t kill the idea before it can get off the ground. later, an openness to a broader representation of stakeholders is important to ensure assimilation and sustainability. conclusion this case study listed the “sticking points,” which were negotiated in an innovative early college partnership and used interorganizational theory to clarify the motives and positions of the negotiators in order to better understand the process. this information will be helpful to scholars and practitioners in the field of schooluniversity partnerships. nevertheless, this information alone does not guarantee success in partnership negotiations, which are complex and demanding. other factors are also important. for example, the participants must have decision-making authority or little will be accomplished. one replication of this program was less successful in the initial years because top-level administrators failed to attend the meetings. other skills, related to communication and trust-building, are also important. some scholars recommend a designated boundary-spanner (weerts & sandmann, 2008). case studies have inherent limitations such as limited external validity. however, when it comes to understanding the particular dynamics of one kind of interorganizational collaboration, there is no substitute. a second possible limitation was the author’s role as a participant-observer, which, particularly in successful ventures such as this one, can invite cheerleading rather than scholarly investigation. to balance this tendency, data was collected over a period of four years, which allowed for ample triangulation. research results were always shared with the planning team. early college high schools now exist in 43 states and more are under development ("jff: about us," 2012). they are an important component in addressing college readiness. inter-organizational partnerships are a fruitful source of innovation for such complex meta-problems. however, innovation requires leaders to move into unexplored territory, which can seem like a haphazard and chaotic journey. the use of theory, which enlightens motives and interests, offers a superstructure for understanding and mutual respect. the theories outlined in this paper may smooth the pathway for other innovative inter-organizational partnerships. references anderson, t., & shattuck, j. (2012). design-based research: a decade of progress in education research? educational researcher, 41(1), 16-25. barringer, b. r., & harrison, j. s. (2000). walking a tightrope: creating value through interorganizational relationships. journal of management, 26(3), 367-403. baxter, p., & jack, s. (2008). qualitative case study methodology: study design and implementation for novice researchers. the qualitative report, 13(4), 544-559. berg, a. c., melaville, a., & blank, m. j. (2007). community and family engagement: principals share what works (pp. 1-68): coalition for community schools. berger, a., turk-bicakci, l., garet, m., song, m., knudson, j., haxton, c., . . . cassidy, l. (2013). early college, early success: early college high school initiative impact study (pp. 130). washington dc: american institutes for research. blank, m. j., melaville, a., & shah, b. p. (2003). making the difference: research and practice in community schools. washington dc: coalition for community schools. borthwick, a. c. (2001). dancing in the dark? learning more about what makes partnerships work. in r. ravid & m. g. handler (eds.), the many faces of school-university collaboration: characteristics of successful partnerships (pp. 23-41). englewood co: teacher ideas press. brabeck, m. m., walsh, m. e., & latta, r. e. (eds.). (2003). meeting at the hyphen: schoolsuniversities-communities-professions in collaboration for student achievement and well being (vol. 2). chicago: national society for the study of education. conley, d. t. (2005). college knowledge : what it really takes for students to succeed and what we can do to get them ready (1st ed.). san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. conley, d. t. (2008). rethinking college readiness. new england journal of higher education, 22(5), 2426. corrigan, d. (2000). the changing role of schools and higher education institutions with respect to community-based interagency collaboration and interprofessional partnerships. peabody journal of education, 75(3), 176-195. hess, f. m. (2010). the same thing over and over: how school reformers get stuck in yesterday's ideas. cambridge ma: harvard university press. hoffman, n. (2009). bringing college to the high school: ensuring college readiness and postsecondary success. boston: jobs for the future. hoffman, n., & vargas, j. (2005). integrating grades 9 through 14: state policies to support and sustain early college high schools. early college high school initiative. boston ma: jobs for the future. jff: about us. (2012). retrieved july 28, 2012, from http://www.jff.org/about-us kazis, r., vargas, j., & hoffman, n. (2004). double the numbers: increasing postsecondary credentials for underrepresented youth. cambridge ma: current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 12 harvard education press. leonard, j. (2012). amesbury early college program: second-year outcomes 2010-2011 (pp. 43). boston ma: university of massachusetts boston. leonard, j. (2013a). cross-cultural communities of practice for college readiness. teacher development, (publication pending). leonard, j. (2013b). funding early college high school: hold harmless or shared commitment. education policy analysis archives, 13(46). http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/1214 leonard, j. (2013c). innovation in the schoolhouse: entrepreneurial leadership in education. lanham md: rowman & littlefield education. leonard, j. (2013d). maximizing college readiness for all through parental support. school community journal (publication pending), 27. ma dept. of higher education. (2010). masstransfer. retrieved april 4, 2010, from http://www.mass.edu/masstransfer/students/tran sferblock.asp mccroskey, j. (2003). challenges and opportunities for higher education. in m. m. brabeck, m. e. walsh & r. e. latta (eds.), meeting at the hyphen: schools-universities-communitiesprofessions in collaboration for student achievement and well being (vol. 2, pp. 117139). chicago: national society for the study of education. murata, r. (2002). what does team teaching mean? a case study of interdisciplinary teaming. journal of educational research, 96, 67-77. ravid, r., & handler, m. g. (eds.). (2001). the many faces of school-university collaboration: characteristics of successful partnerships. englewood co: teacher ideas press. rothstein, r. (2004). class and schools: using social, economic, and educational reform to close the black-white achievement gap. nyc & washington, d.c.: teachers college & economic policy institute. selke, m. j. (1996). cultural analysis of school-university partnerships: assessing dynamics and potential outcomes. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american association of colleges for teacher education, chicago il. senge, p. (2006). the fifth dimension: the art and practice of the learning organization. new york: doubleday. shah, b. p., & blank, m. j. (2004). making the difference with community schools. principal leadership, 4(7), 32-36. siegel, d. j. (2010). why universities join cross-sector social partnerships: theory and evidence. journal of higher education outreach and engagement, 14(1), 33-62. slater, j. j., & ravid, r. (2010). collaboration in education. new york: routledge. sperling, c. (2009). the massachusetts community colleges developmental education best policy and practice audit: final report. boston: massachusetts community colleges executive office. struhl, b., & vargas, j. (2012). taking college courses in high school: a strategy for college readiness (pp. 44). boston ma: jobs for the future. tyack, d. b., & cuban, l. (1995). tinkering toward utopia. new york city: corwin. u.s. department of education. (2010). a blueprint for reform: the reauthorization of the elementary and secondary education act. washington d.c.: u.s. department of education. ury, w., & fisher, r. (1991). getting to yes. new york: penguin. walsh, m. e., brabeck, m. m., howard, k. a., sherman, f. t., montes, c., & garvin, t. j. (2000). the boston college-allston/brighton partnership: description and challenges. peabody journal of education, 75(3), 6-32. webb, m. (2004). what is the cost of planning and implementing early college high school? (pp. 46). boston ma: jobs for the future. weerts, d. j., & sandmann, l. r. (2008). building a twoway street: challenges and opportunities for community engagement at research universities. the review of higher education, 32(1), 73-106. zehr, m. a. (2010, december 20). cutbacks force some early colleges to close down, education week. retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/12/20/1 5earlycollege_ep.h30.html?qs=cutbacks+force+s ome+early+colleges. negotiated issues in an early college partnership: description and understanding through interorganizational theory 13 appendix negotiable items in secondary-postsecondary early college program the first research question is addressed by means of a list, which includes all the major questions that arose over a four-year period of negotiations. the list is not exhaustive, but illustrative of the wide range and variety of negotiable “sticking points.” there are no absolute answers to these negotiable points. some invite a yes-no response, while others invited multiple solutions. 1. planning team a. who are the members of the planning team? who decides? have you included all the important stakeholders? b. to what degree are top institutional leaders expected to be engaged? c. how often will you meet? who calls everyone together? d. how will you facilitate the meetings? do you need norms? protocols? memorandums of agreement? how do you plan to develop trust among the members? e. who are the boundary spanners? f. will you record the minutes of the meeting? are the meetings public? 2. goals a. what are the goals of your program? who decides? b. are they written? are they public? are they flexible? c. what are the measurable outcomes? 3. theory of change a. what is your vision for the program? b. what common assumptions do you bring to the planning meetings? c. what beliefs do you hold in common in regards to the program? d. what are your non-negotiables? what is the bottom line? what values will not be compromised? 4. evaluation a. how will you evaluate your program? what are the evaluation criteria? b. what are the standards for success? (graduation; credit accumulation; student behaviors) c. who will conduct the evaluation? how often? how much will this cost? 5. admissions a. who will be invited to apply to the program? who are the target students? who will be accepted? what are the criteria (academic, behavioral, parental, financial)? b. will you recruit and accept students with disabilities and english language learners? c. will you accept students in the top quartile, the honors students for example? d. what testing is required? will you use the college placement exams? who will pay for this? who will administer and score the tests? what is the eligibility benchmark? e. how will you attract students who do not have an advocate? f. what is the maximum number of students you can accommodate? what is the minimum number for program viability? 6. course selections a. what courses will you require in the first year? in subsequent years? b. how are students at multiple levels in math achievement best served? what courses do they take? c. are the high school science laboratories adequate for college coursework? d. how will you address academic behaviors and contextual skills and knowledge appropriate for college (conley, 2008, p. 1)? what is the advisability of a college skills course in the first year? how are college skills strategies incorporated in subsequent years? e. how will you address the need to prepare students for high-stakes state assessments? f. what is the role of summer dual enrollment courses, online dual enrollment courses, advanced placement courses, and articulation agreements in the overall plan for credit accumulation? what about dual enrollment courses from other, competing colleges? current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 14 g. what is the target for credit accumulation? what about opportunities such as the mass transfer option?1 7. facilities, room space a. designated space or shared space? b. classroom size, to accommodate a co-teaching methodology. c. at what grade do students begin to attend classes on the college campus? 8. curriculum, materials and technology a. have the instructors created college-type syllabi for each course? b. what textbooks are required? who will pay for these? do students buy their own books and resell them at the end of the year? do students need their own books so they can mark them up? c. what other materials are required? who will pay for these? d. what technology will be needed, both for instructional purposes and for online access to electronic databases, college email or online academic learning platforms? 9. staffing a. what mix of high school and college faculty will teach the courses? b. how are the teachers selected? who interviews? who chooses? c. what will you pay the college faculty? what about extra hours for professional development, parent meetings, and student support? what will you pay the high school faculty? d. who evaluates the teachers, both high school and college? e. what are the implications for contractual bargaining units at both the high school and the college? what is the potential for a high school teacher to be replaced by a college faculty member – or vice versa? f. how do you handle faculty concerns? is there a grievance process in place? 10. faculty support a. how will you schedule the time for the high school and college faculty to learn to work together? who will lead this effort? will you pay the faculty for this time? b. what time is required for course integration or alignment or the development of college-level syllabi? c. will you schedule time for regular common planning time throughout the year? d. what methods or strategies will you use to help teachers learn to work together? 11. teaching a. will the courses be taught individually or integrated, as in the college learning community model?2 b. co-teaching or team teaching? (murata, 2002) c. what is the preferred pedagogy for high school students taking college courses? d. what is the optimal level of rigor and expectations? 12. scheduling a. how many hours are required for each course to meet high school and college standards? how many extra hours are needed for student success? b. what is the optimal schedule for student success – short periods, block schedule? c. what is the best time of the day to offer the courses for maximum success? d. what are the implications for the rest of the high school schedule? where do students go next; do they stay together as a cohort for the entire day? e. what are the implications for the college faculty, who usually work on a semester basis and may teach only once or twice a week? f. how is common planning time scheduled? 13. what supports are in place to ensure student success? a. tutors, before school and after school? b. time allotted for consultations with high school and college faculty? c. guidance supports – what procedures are in place to address a failing student? 14. student performance a. how do you measure student performance (grades, portfolio?) b. what constitutes passing or failure – for hs credit; for college credit? c. what is the nature of the transcript at the hs; at the college? 1 mass transfer is a state program whereby any student who accumulated 34 credits in a tightly prescribed sequence of math, science, social studies, humanities and technology courses would be granted automatic credit transfer rights to any state college or university (ma dept. of higher education, 2010). 2 learning community is a well-known community college strategy involving co-teaching and an integrated curriculum to increase student success (sperling, 2009).   negotiated issues in an early college partnership: description and understanding through interorganizational theory 15 d. when should a student be removed from the program? e. how are parents involved; when are they involved in student performance? 15. student activities a. what access do students have to all the regular high school activities: sports, clubs, games, social gatherings, electives, travel, summer activities? b. what access do students have to regular college student options: sports, clubs, games, social gatherings, electives? 16. student voice a. what is the place and importance of student voice? b. how is student voice engaged in program design, student selection, teaching, counseling, marketing and promotion? 17. finances a. what is the total per student cost of the program? b. what is the college contribution? will there be a reduction in tuition and fees? how is this defensible? c. what is the high school (district) contribution? is this sustainable? how will you justify this in light of the needs of other students? d. what is the family contribution? how will you handle families with financial needs? who decides who has a need? e. what happens if a family fails to pay? f. who handles invoicing and collections (high school or college; what person)? g. are there other community supporters who can underwrite this program? h. how will you handle unanticipated costs? 18. college knowledge a. will students receive id cards? full access to campus-based services for students, such as tutoring, writing centers, the library, electronic resources, the academic learning platform (such as blackboard), and student email accounts? b. when will students visit the campus? will they visit classes? who will arrange this? will you feed them? c. visits to other college campuses? d. when will students take classes on the college campus? will they be in designated cohort classes or will they mix with regular adult students? will you inform the faculty? e. when do students learn about the college schedule, registration, academic advising, the bursar, and other regular aspects of the college environment? f. will students receive authentic, indistinguishable college transcripts? what is the passing grade? what grade is required for college credit? what grade is required for the transfer of credits? g. college advising; what assistance is provided with college selection and applications? h. financial aid advising 19. career counseling a. how are students exposed to career alternatives (and possible postsecondary requirements)? b. who assists student in selecting postsecondary options: technical school vs. twoor four-year college; military service; world of work. 20. marketing a. what means will be used to promote the program among your students and parents and who will be responsible for this? b. how do you plan to share the program with the rest of the high school faculty? c. what need do you foresee to share the program with the larger college community, including the faculty, registrar, bursar, librarian, it people, public relations, board of trustees and so on? d. what is your plan to present the program to the school committee? e. what is your plan to present the program to the media? 21. communication a. how will you communicate with families, college faculty and high school faculty regarding holidays, special assemblies, guest speakers, mcas testing days, parent nights and other special events? who will remember to do this? 22. parental engagement a. what mechanisms are available for parents to learn about the program, to apply, and to enroll their children? b. what mechanisms are available to monitor a child’s progress, to communicate with faculty, guidance and administrators (high school and college)? current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 16 c. how do faculty and the school share student performance (academic, behavioral)? how often? d. will you require college faculty to attend parent-teacher meetings? e. how are parents engaged in college and career counseling; financial aid advisement? f. what is the place of parents in program design and development, marketing, and public relations? g. what voice do parents have in the program? how is their voice solicited; how often? 23. growth and development a. who are your stakeholders? who are your allies? who are potential opponents? who will be helped by the program? who is likely to resist the program? who will be threatened? who will be harmed? who will be asked to give more, work harder or make sacrifices? b. what is your vision for the future? how will you get there? c. what will be the impact of a growing program on the rest of the school community? will there be a competition for resources? d. how will this affect other school-community partnerships? negotiated issues in an early college partnership: description and understanding through interorganizational theory 17 article citation leonard, j. (2013). negotiated issues in an early college partnership: description and understanding through interorganizational theory. current issues in education, 16(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1058 author notes jack leonard university of massachusetts boston leadership in urban schools 100 morrissey boulevard boston ma 02125 jack.leonard@umb.edu jack leonard has served in education for 45 years, from pre-school to graduate school, as a teacher, administrator and school founder. he now serves as assistant professor and director of the graduate programs in educational administration at the university of massachusetts boston. his teaching and research interests focus on urban school leadership, school reform, school-community partnerships, and the history of educational reform. manuscript received: 08/20/2012 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 18 revisions received:08/05/2013 accepted: 11/23/2013 volume 16, number 3 december 17, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda hollis thomas elizabeth calhoun reyes assistant executive editors bonnie mazza constantin schreiber recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell nichole hugo sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker bonnie mazza kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 19 19 dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 988-4266-3-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 3 september 16, 2012 issn 1099-839x fostering the success of new teachers: developing lead teachers in a statewide teacher mentoring program andrea m. kent, andre m. green, and phillip feldman university of south alabama though there may be many reasons for teacher attrition and mobility, results from a recent survey conducted by the national center for educational statistics (nces) suggest that an exceedingly high percentage of teachers who abandoned their careers as teachers may have entered the teaching profession under-prepared, overwhelmed, and under-supported — resulting in frustrated teachers who became burned out after only a few years of teaching (marvel, lyter, peltola, stitzek, & morton, 2006). global research documents that mentoring must be emphasized if teachers are going to experience success during the induction phase of their career and become more likely to remain in the profession. developing teacher leaders that have the dispositions to mentor, such as those in the alabama teacher mentor program, can help meet these challenges as teachers lead teachers through mentoring. the manuscript presents an overview and impact of a statewide mentoring initiative that embraces one role of teacher leaders. keywords: mentoring, mentors, professional development, induction, mentoring programs, global mentoring, new teachers, effective mentoring this manuscript presents an overview of the components of a statewide mentoring initiative that focused on developing teacher leaders and the initial impact of its implementation. the evaluation program attempted to answer these guiding questions: 1. was every new teacher assigned a mentor? 2. how frequent did mentoring occur? 3. was the mentoring based on the needs of the new teacher? 4. was the mentoring professional development effective in providing mentoring strategies to mentors? 5. did the mentoring program help to retain new teachers in the profession? establishing the need for mentoring the center for the study of teaching and policy (ingersoll, 2003) states in its national study of teacher turnover and teacher shortage, is there really a teacher shortage?, that even though the demand for teachers has risen (p. 6), “overall there are more than enough prospective teachers produced each year in the u.s.” (p. 8) in addition, this study concluded that the turnover is not due to teacher retirement increases, but rather that “teachers are moving from or leaving their teaching jobs — and most of this [phenomenon] has little to do with a graying workforce.” (p. 9) retirement accounts for about a third of the public school teachers who leave the field but “when examined in the context of total turnover that public schools experience, retirees are responsible for only 16 percent of the attrition” (alliance for excellent education, 2008, p. 2). during the 2007 and 2008 school year, the nces began conducting the beginning teacher longitudinal study as part of a continued effort to monitor the attrition and mobility rates, and the early career patterns of beginning teachers. initial results from the first three years indicated that out of 1,900 beginning teachers surveyed, approximately 10 – 12 % left the teaching profession entirely in each of the consecutive years (kaiser & cross, 2011). other research has current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 suggested that many teachers leave the profession due to increasing teacher workloads and the growing demands placed upon teachers to improve student achievement and performance regardless of each school’s and each student’s unique circumstances (haberman, 2005). ultimately, students need dedicated teachers who want to be there and who believe that students can learn no matter what they look like or where they come from (wright, 1980). unfortunately, many new teachers have no desire to pursue a career in an academically challenging school environment, often because of fear of failure (darling-hammond, 2006). specifically, less than 36% of new teachers reported feeling “very well prepared” to implement curriculum and performance standards in the classroom (nces, 1999). if action is not taken to alleviate this growing problem, continued dissatisfaction will only increase teacher attrition, thus exacerbating the problem and inadvertently creating a cycle that is likely to continue threatening the framework of america’s education system. teacher leaders: the responsibility of mentoring new teachers are expected to assume the same job responsibilities as skilled teachers who have years of experience, often with little assistance or guidance during their first year of teaching. initiatives to measure and improve teaching effectiveness would have the ultimate payoff if they fueled practices known to support student learning and were embedded in systems that also develop greater teaching competence (darling-hammond, 2012). novice teachers must address the challenges of a new school culture, cope with the emotional ups and downs associated with a new work experience, meet high expectations of the school and the community, and master all the new knowledge that must be acquired about policies and practices of the school district. a quality-mentoring program, with quality teacher leaders, has the promise of assisting new teachers face these daily challenges in a manner that promotes success (breaux & wong, 2003; darling-hammond, 2012). mentoring is not a choice, but the responsibility of every professional within a school who is interested in seeing new teachers become comfortable in their new position. through enhanced professional development of new teachers by mentors, teacher effectiveness increases as teachers become more highly qualified. highly qualified teaching is absolutely essential in promoting effective teaching (barry, daughtry, & wieder, 2010). the result of this action is enhanced student learning, which is the goal of everyone involved. a global perspective of mentoring teacher mentoring has become a global trend. due to the impact of globalization, governments across the world are in the constant state of reviewing their educational systems and reform efforts in order to remain competitive in a global economy (kestner, 1994). in the united states, teacher-mentoring programs have been in existence for approximately 50 years, with more than half the country now requiring mentoring for novice teachers (nces, 2007). some countries are still in the process of refining mentoring programs, while others like new zealand and japan have formally used teacher mentoring for decades (britton, raizen, paine, & huntley, 1999). in japan, beginning teachers were mentored during their first year, which is considered professional development since it precedes certification. asada and uosaki’s (2006) research on the japanese in-set program, a teacher mentoring program that resulted from the national school education act of 1988 in japan, indicated that models used by mentors helped beginning teachers reflect and resolve problems in the classroom. according to ekiz (2006), recent studies show that teacher mentoring in turkey was regarded as a strategy for training student teachers and new teachers alike. taiwan’s “teacher education law” enacted in 1994 requires all newly certified teachers to complete pre-service training with an additional one year of mentoring (chi-tak, 2005). england is widely known for its strict internship policies requiring student teachers to complete a full year statutory period followed by an assessment that must be deemed satisfactory by the school administration (britton et al., 1999). during that time period, intern teachers are monitored and mentored by colleagues. in an international study, britton et al. (1999) found that (academically) high performing countries such as new zealand, japan, and china have successfully implemented teacher mentoring programs designed to help novice teachers transition into their new roles. new zealand is perhaps one of the strongest supporters of teacher mentor practices. their academic performance and high literacy rates are a testament to their investment in novice teachers. new zealand’s mentoring program is unique because it allows the teacher to ease into their new roles to avoid the risk of becoming overwhelmed or burned out too soon. this induction phase is known as the advice and guidance (ag) program (wong, britton, & gasner, 2005). the new zealand government provides funding to schools with new teachers to compensate for release time, mentoring, and professional development (stansbury & zimmerman, 2000). unlike the u.s., countries like new zealand, japan, and china tend to offer a variety of resources during this induction phase instead of relying on one person for assisting teachers (wong et al., 2005). in shanghai, schools provide many learning opportunities for new teachers such as workshops, study groups, and research groups (britton et al., 1999). ultimately, the mentoring programs in shanghai and japan are centered on opportunities to collaborate with other teachers and creating a culture of support and encouragement (wong et al., 2005). however, in the u.s., mentoring programs and goals tend to be ill defined in that they are typically fostering the success of new teachers: developing lead teachers in a statewide teacher mentoring program 3 informal and vary from state to state; whereas other countries have national standards and systematic programs they abide by (tak, 2005). many studies conclude that novice teachers have more needs than the u.s. teacher induction programs typically address (white & mason, 2003). these failed programs were also plagued with unrealistic or unreasonable expectations of both mentor teachers and new teachers. further, these studies suggest that it is not uncommon in the u.s. for mentors to be assigned to a mentee to fulfill a policy requirement and rarely interact with new teachers. findings from britton et al. (1999) suggests that principals have assigned veteran teachers with mentoring roles only as an extra job perk with little or no expectations. the lack of accountability entirely defeats the purpose of the program. thus, history suggests that mentor teacher programs have not yet proved to be a consistent method for increasing teacher success rates. in a study done by darling-hammond, data suggested that individual supervision of teacher learning better promotes self-efficacy of teachers and personal obstacles with mentoring and the teacher/mentor relationship (darlinghammond, 2009). most teacher mentors believe that a teachermentoring program with explicit goals is essential in order to retain beginning teachers in the united states (barrera, braley, & slate, 2010). in order to retain these new teachers, mentors must be highly qualified teachers designed to improve the preservation of new teachers (darling-hammond, 2007, 2009). there is a national deficit in keeping qualified teachers and it is vital to examine the crucial need for teacher-mentoring programs in order to keep facilitating the development of highly qualified teachers. a study was conducted in south texas concerning teacher-mentoring programs, which provided many answers to the lack of the importance of them in the united states (barrera, braley, & slate, 2010). south texas mandated that teacher mentoring programs be implemented to new teachers in order to avoid teacher attrition due to many upcoming vacancies in the district. this study proved that teacher-mentoring programs must provide clear and concise goals for mentors to adhere to in order for teacher-mentors to impart fundamental information and feedback to their corresponding new teachers. a study by ingersall and strong in 2011 suggested that teacher attrition is still very prevalent in the united states. the findings from this study further suggests that teacher-mentoring programs can provide new and incoming teachers with essential information and effective teaching strategies from a mentor that is necessary to succeed past the first years of teaching. the goal of these programs is to improve the retention of new teachers and aid them in gaining a better understanding the classroom that they might not have gained insight into during pre-employment. these programs should not be implemented as a job perk for a principal nor should they be regarded as a failed experiment because teacher mentoring programs can yield new teachers with the information needed that may be vital for their survival in the profession. however, the u.s. was not the only country that had a tendency to inadequately support new teachers. across the globe, studies showed that novice teachers are experiencing the same types of challenges and feelings in their new role (stansbury & zimmerman, 2000). hudson, beutel, and hudson (2009) found in their one year study that mentoring programs were needed to help new teachers transition into their roles so they would remain in the profession. to combat teacher attrition, asada and uosaki (2006) found that the japanese educational reform focused on professional development of new teachers through various forms of mentoring. other countries across asia followed suit by incorporating similar strategies and including more authentic field experiences during their pre-service training. in addition, britton et al. (1999) found that educators in asian countries were widely known for creating a culture of support for new teachers, which plays an important informal role in their induction. it is evident that successful mentoring programs in other countries receive full support from governments, law-makers, and schools alike. these types of programs are formalized and structured requiring participants to be accountable. characteristics of effective mentoring the nea suggested that, if mentor programs are to be effective, they must combine the best aspects of teaching strategies from both the past and the present (feiman-nemser & parker, 1993). mentor teachers must be identified as leaders, therefore, understand and be able to relate important long term professional goals to novice teachers, including helping new teachers uncover the ways in which students think and aiding in the development of students’ sound reasoning skills. giebelhaus and bowman (2002) suggested that teachers who are leaders and receive specific training before working as mentors to novice teachers may have greater success in impacting professional growth, development, and success. also, several reports indicated that highly qualified mentors may be associated with an increase in student achievement, improved student behavior, and greater teacher enthusiasm (white & mason, 2003). thus far, few mentor teacher programs have taken on the responsibility of including, on such an indepth basis guidance for the specific purpose of improving current rates of teacher attrition and mobility within urban school districts from: • a state department of education, • university instructors, • regional professional development centers, • district and school level administrators, and current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 • classroom teachers. the current study described the implementation and the results of the alabama teacher mentor program that was designed to address this very issue. developing lead teachers: the alabama teacher mentor program in an attempt to improve education in alabama, the governor’s commission on quality teaching was established in 2005. the commission worked for two years and, still in operation today, made some initial recommendations in the spring of 2007. while the commission’s recommendations dealt with improving the quality of education in alabama schools, specifically, the commission recognized the importance of mentoring and made a recommendation on its implementation. the alabama state board of education endorsed the recommendation (see figure 1) regarding mentoring and inducting new teachers into the profession. subsequently, the alabama legislature funded the alabama statewide mentoring program. specifically, the purposes of the alabama mentor teacher program were: (a) to provide every first year teacher a mentor to create a successful bridge from pre-service teacher to in-service teacher; (b) to reduce teacher attrition, thereby reducing recruitment and retention costs by implementing a well-planned and well-implemented mentoring program; (c) to provide professional development in mentoring techniques for the mentors; and, (d) to increase student achievement. an overview of guidelines for the alabama teacher mentoring program include six primary components: component 1: each new teacher will receive mentoring for a minimum of two years with an option of a third year based on mastery of competencies. component 2: active teachers will mentor new teachers on a 1 to 1 basis. retired teachers can mentor new teachers on no more than a 15 to 1 ratio. component 3: each new mentor should be chosen by a committee comprised of teachers and administrator(s) and must successfully complete alabama beginning teacher mentor training or an equivalent locally developed training program. in this first year of the alabama teacher mentor (atm) program, individual mentors for each new teacher must be in place by the end of september 2007. component 4: mentors will receive a stipend of $1,000 per year for each new teacher they mentor. component 5: mentors and mentees should strive for an average of 2.5 hours of contact time during each week of the school year. it is understood that contact hours will vary from week to week, but sufficient time should be scheduled to provide the mentee with the appropriate level of support and guidance. alabama statewide mentoring program the governor’s commission on quality teaching recommends the immediate implementation of a statewide mentoring program for every new alabama teacher. the program will include a standard rubric developed by the sde in partnership with leas and colleges of education; required training and compensation for mentors; and, guidelines for implementation. the commission recommends that the alabama legislature fund the program at the amount determined by the implementation committee. figure 1. mentoring recommendation. fostering the success of new teachers: developing lead teachers in a statewide teacher mentoring program 5 component 6: each mentored new teacher will complete regularly scheduled assessments of mentor program effectiveness. critically, alabama department of education identified the success of the program as dependent upon the knowledge and support of the leadership team overseeing its implementation and the ability of the leadership team to ensure that: (a) teacher leaders with mentoring potential being selected as mentors; (b) the right matches are being made between mentors and mentees; (c) mentors and mentees are being provided ongoing support; and, (d) a supportive culture of trust, mutual respect, and collegiality is in place to support the program. in addition, the alabama state department of education (alsde) recognized that some local education agencies (leas) may have an existing mentoring program in place that meets the atm guidelines (stated above). these leas were given the flexibility to use various professional development components of the atm based on their current mentoring capacity. the program was supported by district level mentor coaches, regional in-service (staff development) center mentor liaisons, and personnel from the alabama state department of education. the alabama department of education felt that the success of the program was dependent upon the knowledge and support of district and school based administrators who were overseeing implementation. program details beginning in the fall of 2007, each newly hired teacher was assigned a mentor teacher. a committee comprised of teachers and administrator(s) selected teacher leaders to complete the alabama beginning teacher mentor training. a rubric for selecting mentors is presented in appendix a. in brief, in order to be selected as a mentor, teachers were required to: (a) have a minimum of three years’ successful teaching experience and subject-area expertise. (b) demonstrate effectiveness in classroom instruction via provision of such evidence as: (a) student achievement growth including standardized test scores; (b) portfolio of student work documenting evidence of student learning; and (c) documentation of effective teaching, e.g., results of observations by principals/supervisors, videotaped lesson. (c) model professional learning and growth through participation in (and/or leadership of) jobembedded professional development activities. (d) demonstrate excellence in communicating and collaborating with colleagues. the mentor was compensated $1,000 ($500 per semester) for providing the mentoring for each beginning teacher for the academic year. professional development for mentors during the academic year, mentor professional development sessions were provided throughout the state (see figure 2). a “train the trainers” model was used at the state level for each regional in-service center. representatives, called mentor liaisons, from each of the 11 in-service centers throughout the state met at the state department of education to receive professional development on research-based mentoring strategies. it was the responsibility of the mentor liaisons to provide the professional development throughout the state to the mentor teachers via district level mentor coaches and inservice center consultants. topic roles, responsibilities, and relationships coaching for a high-performance learning environment monitoring and assessing for increased student achievement increasing student engagement to maximize student achievement connecting students to the content figure 2. mentor professional development topics. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 the mentor training in year one took place during five sessions spread throughout the academic year. in year two, the training was streamlined on the same five topics, presented in two days at the beginning of the school year, and again at mid-year for new mentors for newly hired teachers. the training was based on the premise that a well-planned, comprehensive mentoring program would decrease the attrition rate of talented new teachers (alsde, 2007a; alsde, 2007b; alsde, 2007c). all mentors were required to participate in a comprehensive training, regardless of whether the resources available from the alsde were used to enhance an existing program or develop a new mentoring program. mentoring activities. it was the belief of the alsde (2007a) that a well-planned, comprehensive mentoring program increases the instructional effectiveness of new teachers. therefore, the philosophy of susan johnson was adopted, “stated simply, the challenge is to make all schools places where teachers find the support they need to succeed with their students.” (p. 249, as cited in alsde, 2007a). along with a strong commitment to the mentoring process, teacher leaders in the role of mentors were expected to possess knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to support new teachers’ effectiveness with all learners. the alsde suggested that the mentors/mentees engage in two and a half hours of mentoring each week. this engagement takes place in various forms, with the school principal determining specific regulations. in general, mentors were to provide a “beginning-of-year” induction into the school and system’s culture. throughout the year, mentors were encouraged to provide ongoing classroom coaching and assistance to maximize the learning and achievement of all students. though mentors were taught how to conduct observations for the purpose of formative feedback, the mentors were not involved in formal evaluations of new teachers. the mentors used the continuum for learning and performance, a two-sided document that provided an abbreviated version of the quality teaching standards and guidelines for productive conferences, as a tool to help teachers understand the alabama quality teaching standards, and as a framework for feedback. emphasis was placed on confidentiality between the mentor liaison, mentor, and mentee. ultimately, mentor teachers were to provide personal support to the new teacher during their transition into the profession. in addition, local school districts determined the method of documenting mentoring activities. the purpose of requiring the documentation was to create a simple accountability system to ensure that mentoring was taking place. most leas created a form to include mentoring activity, time, and date. the documentation was kept at the district level. beyond the mentor it is recognized that in order to enhance beginning teachers’ effectiveness with all of their students, and to ultimately make a difference in the lives of beginning teachers, the role of additional school personnel was also important (alsde, 2007b; alsde, 2007c). the success of a new teacher’s induction experience heavily depends on the culture of the school. a school culture that is centered around professional learning communities, and mentoring focuses on students and their learning. this culture encourages collaboration, has a faculty that is committed to life-long learning, and has a collective sense of responsibility for the success of all students as well as for the success of all beginning teachers (alsde, 2007b). the principal’s leadership role was defined from the onset as the critical person for communicating the purposes of the atm program to their faculty (alsde, 2007b). the role of the principals in selecting quality teacher leaders who had the dispositions needed to be effective mentors was critical to the atm program because good matches between the mentor and the mentee was essential for a positive experience for both. in arranging appropriate matches, principals were to consider both professional and personal qualities. professionally, consideration was to be made for assigning mentors to mentees at the same school with similar teaching assignments, and common planning periods (danin & bacon, 1999). personal considerations included characteristics such as personalities and learning styles. assigning a workload that was reasonable and doable for beginning teachers was an important consideration for principals. ensuring that mentors participated in the professional development provided was also critical. in addition, the principal was expected to set expectations regarding the interactions of the mentors and new teachers as well as assist in creating the time for mentors and mentees to work together on a weekly basis. the principal was also asked to respect the confidentiality of the mentor-mentee relationship. ultimately, the principal was to provide an environment that supported the development of a positive relationship between mentors and new teachers by creating a culture that was supportive of the mentoring process. methods and modes of inquiry the mode of inquiry for this study is the mixed methods research paradigm, not in an attempt to replace either a pure quantitative or qualitative design, but rather to utilize a model that is perhaps more appropriate for an inquiry that involves both objective and subjective elements. in effort to triangulate the data to get a complete picture of the implementation of the first two years of the alabama teacher mentor program, data sources included: fostering the success of new teachers: developing lead teachers in a statewide teacher mentoring program 7 • electronic surveys, and • focus groups of regional in-service center consultants, district level mentor personnel, principals, mentor teachers, and mentees. quantative and qualitative data from the electronic surveys were examined carefully as the mentor and mentee surveys had matched questions, and information from the focus groups were coded to determine patterns in the responses both within and between groups. data sources electronic surveys in the 2007 – 2008 implementation of the atm program, web based electronic surveys were used to gather information related to the research questions. the survey was constructed based on the evaluation questions by the coordinator of the governor’s commission on quality teaching and the staff in charge of the mentoring program at the state level with collaboration from one of the public universities college of education in the southern part of the state that had been involved with the mentor teacher program from the inception. mentor teachers and mentees throughout the state completed a web based electronic surveys that addressed the match between the mentors and mentees; the amount of support provided to the mentors and mentees; the types and amount of mentoring that took place; and if a supportive culture of trust, mutual respect, and collegiality was in place to support the program. in addition to demographic questions, there were 17 mentoring questions on the mentor survey and 20 questions on the mentee survey. respondents were asked to supply any narrative responses they would like to add following each question. though the highest response rate is sought, considering that a response rate of 30% is considered average (hamilton, 2009), the response rate for these surveys may be considered well above average with 1,518 mentors out of 2,326 (65%) and 1,078 mentees out of 2,355 (46%) responding to the survey. focus groups in the 2008 – 2009 implementation of the atm program, focus group data was collected from a sampling of regional in-service center consultants (n = 26), district level mentor personnel (n = 12), principals (n = 34), mentor teachers (n = 84), and mentees (n = 54). a narrative analysis was conducted to identify those elements of the program that were effective and to determine common areas of concern. focus group questions can be found in appendix b. discussion overall results indicate that the atm program was successful in that the majority of first year teachers received great support in many of the challenges they encountered throughout the entirety of their first year as teachers. these challenges included classroom management and organization, differentiating instruction in order to help meet the needs of all students and thereby reduce the achievement gap, and providing the daily positive encouragement and emotional support that is often missing for a beginning teacher. the atm program was seen as a collaborative effort of regional in-service centers, the alsde, leas, and schools working together to create a strong support system for new teachers. throughout the program, specific goals were designed to implement a team-based approach of developing a cadre of teachers better prepared to meet the educational challenges of teaching today; and to enhance teacher retention by graduating teachers who were better prepared to provide quality teaching instruction to diverse student populations during their first official assignment as a certified teacher. fortunately, as new teachers were experiencing teaching challenges for the first time, they were able to look to their mentors for support and guidance. as previously stated, quality teacher mentors are there to help new teachers endure such challenges and to help them survive and succeed as new teachers. a quality teacher mentor program aims to guide new teachers to success through mentors. the data revealed that the majority of teacher leaders selected that participated in the study adequately fulfilled the role of mentor. select descriptive statistics from the electronic survey completed by 65% of the mentors and 46% of the mentees in year one are presented in table 1. according to the electronic survey data, the mentoring program also helped reduce the number of first-year teachers leaving the profession. between 30%50% of teachers leave the profession within the first five years of employment (darling-hammond, 2006). nationally, 10% of first-year teachers do not return for their second year (nces, 2011). on the mentoring survey, less than two percent of alabama’s first-year teachers indicated that they did not intend to return, which was supported by data from the leas the following school year. the systems that have reported their data indicated hiring 25 percent fewer new teachers for the 2008-2009 school year as compared to the previous year. an analysis of the focus group data revealed the following common themes in year two of program implementation (see appendix b for focus group questions): regional in-service center consultants (a) district level mentor personnel welcomed the atm program (b) logistical issues regarding pay to the mentors caused some confusion for district level mentor personnel (c) the “train the trainers” model used by the state was an effective means of disseminating the professional development statewide (d) the mentoring professional development tools were grounded in mentoring research and were interactive and effective current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 table 1 perception of mentees and examples cited by mentors mentor characteristic mentee perception mentoring examples mentors are important or extremely important 84.2% mentors collaborated with mentees to prepare for principal observations and high stakes tests mentors are enthusiastic about mentoring 79.9% mentors reported enjoying the mentoring process, and expressed a willingness to help new teachers be successful and improve their craft mentors spent more than one hour per week with mentee 72.4% mentors made themselves available to mentee, collaborating with mentee through face-to-face meetings, email, phone calls, etc. mentors observed mentee teaching 65% mentors found innovative ways to organize schedule to engage observations of mentees mentor provided classroom effectiveness assistance 78% mentoring sessions often dealt with instructional planning and strategies to enhance mentee’s teaching mentors provided extensive insights and strategies for classroom management 82.9% mentors gave specific suggestions on how to manage classrooms, and facilitated classroom observations with teachers strong in classroom management mentors provided strategies to assist in identifying and closing achievement gaps 77.8% mentors helped new teachers analyze classroom data, facilitated meeting between new teacher and building based instructional coach, and helped new teachers develop and revise lesson plans to meet the needs of their students mentors provided emotional support and confidence building 88.1% mentors were sincere in their praise as they acknowledged the hard work of new teachers, acknowledged when they noticed improvements in the academic achievement of the students or with classroom management. when novice teachers experienced frustration, they made themselves available to listen, provide encouragement, and help new teacher generate ideas to implement for immediate improvement mentors were important to mentees successful induction to the teaching profession 73.2% mentors spent time with spent with mentees on weekly basis, collaborating with mentees on all dimensions that impacted classroom instruction and student achievement (e) mentor teachers welcomed the mentoring professional development and found it helpful district level mentor personnel (a) the success of the program was highly dependent upon principals, their support of the program, and their selection of teacher leaders as mentors (b) though many districts had informal mentoring programs in place, the initiative the state took had a direct impact on formalizing mentorships (c) the mentoring training was a critical and effective component of the program (d) the number of new teachers in a district was directly related to the complexity of program implementation (e) the process of payment was complicated to some district level administrators principals (a) recognized the value of mentoring in retaining new teachers and impacting student achievement (b) thought the modest stipend was a positive step to help them ensure that actual mentoring occurred (c) were better able to match mentors and mentees in year two given what they learned about creating fostering the success of new teachers: developing lead teachers in a statewide teacher mentoring program 9 the time for mentoring in year one (d) supported the teacher leaders attending the mentoring professional development (e) found it difficult in some cases to create a school culture of mentoring due, attributed to the fact that only the assigned mentor received the stipend mentor teachers (a) finding time to engage in mentoring activities was challenging, especially given they were preestablished as teacher leaders in their own right which came as an addition to other responsibilities (b) the more supportive the principal of the program, the more likely meaningful mentoring was to occur (c) the sharing of ideas between mentors and principals regarding creating time to mentor was beneficial (d) the mentoring training was perceived as helpful (e) documenting mentoring activities was perceived as cumbersome to some mentors mentees (a) found the mentors guidance in determining local school policies and classroom management among the most helpful mentoring activities (b) developed a trusting relationship with mentors (c) felt they received adequate support from their mentors via multiple means of communication (i.e. email, phone conversations, face – to – face meetings) (d) in cases where mentoring lacked, it seemed to be mostly in situations where the mentor had many roles in the school (i.e. chair of various committees, served on other committees, lead special activities, etc.) (e) most mentees felt their mentor was a critical to their survival and level of success in the year of teaching challenges upon implementation of new programs such as the alabama teacher mentor program, challenges often arise. the atm program was no exception as there were several limitations that should be improved upon in any future implementations of this program. first, there were notable variations in the type of mentoring the first year teachers received. some mentors engaged in daily mentoring contacts with their new teachers, planning with them, explaining paperwork, teaching intervention strategies, and generally sharing large doses of their experienced teacher knowledge. other mentors spent much less time mentoring and instead, made brief contact with their mentee, “checking on” them. still others acted as a participant observer unless otherwise requested by the new teacher. though this was not a wide spread problem, it is an issue that must be addressed, beginning with the initial selection of mentors. a plausible explanation of this finding was the fact that the teachers selected as mentors were already leaders in their schools, and may have been over-extended in terms of expectations and time to fulfill the expectations. another challenge arose when there were personality conflicts between the mentors and mentees. although a principal may have selected a person who was qualified to fulfill the duties of a mentor, the new teachers were in fact new, which meant that there were some instances in which the principal did not have adequate insight into a new teacher’s personality in order to make a good mentor match. in other cases the mentors were not excited about the program so they did not willingly engage in mentoring activities. in still other situations, the new teacher had an attitude of not wanting any help. in all cases, if the situation arose to the level that mentoring was not taking place, the success of the situation largely depended upon the intervention of the principal. there were some mentoring matches dealing with specialized subjects that presented unusual circumstances. for example, if the new teacher was a physical education teacher and there was not another physical education teacher at the school, the new teacher would be assigned a physical education mentor from another school or a general education teacher at the same school. in either case, the logistics of mentoring changed. consideration should be made for creative mentoring techniques in these situations, such as assigning the teacher two mentors, a building based mentor and a content area mentor. finally, the complexity of paying approximately 2,000 mentors in 131 districts throughout the state is difficult. the logistics as well as the required documentation was seen as a problem. however, as the program continues implementation, these problems are being worked through. conclusions the evaluation program attempted to answer these guiding questions: 1. was every new teacher assigned a mentor? as previous research supports (darling-hammond, 2009), the data from this program indicated that through implementation of the alabama mentor teacher program, every new teacher was assigned a mentor teacher. while many of the mentors were in the same school and in the same program area as the mentees, in more rural districts, mentors had to travel to several schools to engage in mentoring. also, in some situations, mentor/mentee pairs were not matched regarding content area due to a lack of an available mentor. for example, a there was likely only one foreign language teacher of a specific language in a school, so the mentor may have been in the foreign language department, but not teaching the same content. 2. how frequent did mentoring occur? those that instituted the alabama mentor teacher program suggested that mentors and mentees strived to current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 spend 2.5 hours each week engaged in mentoring activities. the data revealed that 84% of mentees were mentored for at least one hour each week, with 46% percent engaging in mentoring activities more than two hours each week. however, nearly 17% received less than one hour of mentoring each week. 3. was the mentoring based on the needs of the new teacher? it is the responsibility of mentor teachers to help new teachers be able to relate important long term professional goals without ignoring the classroom challenges they face on a daily basis (feiman-nemser & parker, 1993). the data revealed that the mentoring was based on both areas of focus for specific schools as well as the needs of new teachers, which often overlapped. the professional development the mentors received helped to prepare them to objectively observe mentees and utilize questioning techniques to help determine the needs of the new teachers so they could provide mentoring based on needs that were noted. the mentors were trained to avoid questions such as, “do you need anything?” as often new teachers do not know what they need or the questions to ask. 4. was the mentoring professional development effective in providing mentoring strategies to mentors? as giebelhaus and bowman (2002) suggested, mentor teachers should engage in professional development before working as mentors to novice teachers in effort to have a positive impact on professional growth, development, and success of new teachers. the mentor teachers, district-level personnel, and regional in-service level administrators perceived the mentoring as a critical component to the implementation of the program. helping mentors focus on the goals of mentoring is critical for the success of mentoring programs (barrera, braley, & slate, 2010).the professional development provided for the mentors in the alabama teacher mentoring program included researchbased mentoring strategies and techniques designed to engage mentees in reflective conversations, focusing on self-problem solving. mentors were taught to discuss strengths and areas for growth with mentees objectively, without being evaluative, and always including praise for what the new teachers were doing well. 5. did the mentoring program help to retain new teachers in the profession? the examination of this program reveals what has been postulated by mentoring research, that is implementing a quality-mentoring program will likely help new teachers face daily classroom challenges so they are successful (breaux & wong, 2003; darlinghammond, 2012). the data supported that more first year teachers in alabama returned for a second year of teaching, with only two percent of new teachers not returning the following year as compared to the national average of ten percent (kaiser & cross, 2011) of new teachers not returning for a second year in the classroom. policy. in times of economic uncertainty, a focus of establishing, maintaining, and improving mentoring programs must remain central to educational reform. demographic and policy trends now lend greater importance to mentoring programs than perhaps at any other time (nea, 2000). in order for them to be effective, mentor teachers must be intentionally selected, with a focus on providing professional development to enhance the dispositions of mentoring. increasing student enrollments, an escalation of teacher retirements, and the popularity of class-size reduction efforts in many states represent serious challenges to districts seeking to ensure the quality of classroom instruction. concerted action must be taken to assist the anticipated two million new teachers who will enter the profession within the next decade and uncounted numbers of experienced teachers who will assume new assignments. practice. it is imperative that quality mentoring and induction for new teachers be placed at the center of improving our educational system. emerging educators should be provided with a comprehensive induction program that emphasizes methods of best practice for meeting the needs of all students including those who are behaviorally or academically challenging. providing new teachers with intensive mentoring by exemplary lead teachers that possess the dispositions to mentor teachers and concentrated administrative support will likely produce successful new teachers who will remain committed to providing consistent, quality education and instruction on a long-term basis. an argument can be made that the teaching profession each year loses talented teachers because of a lack of proper mentorship in the profession. in order for this attrition to stop, it is crucial for teacher-mentoring program to be mandated. if schools, districts, or states really want to invest in an educational system that benefits students, they should invest more time an effort into the teachers that they employ. “no single principle of school reform is more valid or durable than the maxim that student learning depends first, last, and always on the quality of the teachers” (usdan, mccloud, & podmostko, 2001, p. 1). as stated previously, mentoring is not a choice, but is a responsibility that every professional should possess in order for enhanced student learning to take place. the ultimate impact of these efforts will lead to greater student achievement. future research. the alabama teacher mentor program produced immediate positive results. ensuring the selection of quality mentors, providing research-based professional development for mentor teachers, implementing a mentoring accountability system, and engaging in meaningful mentoring practices in a statewide initiative is powerful. success for new teachers in alabama is sure to breed success for the entire fostering the success of new teachers: developing lead teachers in a statewide teacher mentoring program 11 educational system, experienced teachers, administrators, and most importantly, students. however, since the inception of the program, difficult financial circumstances have diminished the funds used to pay the mentor teachers. research should be done to: • examine the sustainability and impact of the professional development for mentor teachers and the implementation of mentoring without the monetary backing for the mentors; • determine if new teachers hired since the program has been suggested rather than mandated is still being implemented, and if so, what elements and to what extent; • examine effective mentoring practices that can be institutionalized regardless of funding opportunities; • determine how teacher leader programs now prevalent in many institutions of higher education can work collaboratively with school districts and state departments of education to provide opportunities for those earning teacher leader certifications to mentor new teachers. the critical need for quality mentoring does not lessen; rather the need must continue to be the focal point of educational systems globally. references accomplished california teachers. 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(1980). education of minority students: problems and challenges. the minority student in public schools. princeton: educational testing service. fostering the success of new teachers: developing lead teachers in a statewide teacher mentoring program 13 appendix a alabama beginning teacher mentoring program— rubric for mentor selection purpose: the purpose of this rubric is to serve as a tool for individuals charged with recruiting and selecting mentors as well as a reflective tool for prospective mentors. indicators on this rubric supplement basic requirements for mentors, e.g., three successful years of teaching and subject-area expertise knowledge, skill, disposition 3 2 1 professional alabama quality teaching standards (aqts) district and school policies and procedures alabama educator code of ethics continuous learner collegiality and collaborative approach uses the aqts as a tool for personal growth seeks ways to improve policies/procedures consistently aligns behavior with code seeks professional growth experiences; current with research and professional literature actively works with colleagues in promoting the development of professional learning communities is conversant with the aqts adheres to all district & school policies & procedures understands the implications of the code for professional behavior actively participates in professional development; is somewhat familiar with current literature works with colleagues and is not averse to sharing ideas and teaching strategies is not that familiar with the aqst sometimes seems confused about policies/procedures does not appear to be familiar with the code does not seek professional growth opportunities rarely works with colleagues in a collaborative manner personal building and maintaining relationships has positive relationships with all adults and students gets along well with most adults and students has occasional relationship problems personal communications respect for diversity expresses self clearly orally and in writing; exemplary listening, questioning, and nonverbal skills seeks to understand divergent points of view; works well with students and adults of all backgrounds adequate communication skills; is seldom misunderstood demonstrates a basic respect for all individuals, regardless of their background sometimes develops misunderstandings due to communication errors does not always exercise tolerance for different points of view or for individuals of different backgrounds current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 14 problem solving reflecting uses critical thinking skills to identify problems, outline alternatives, seek relevant data, and find evidencebased solutions consistently thinks back on experiences and behaviors for the purpose of selfassessing and learning to continually improve performance usually makes good decisions and/or identifies workable solutions engages in occasional reflection individually and with others oftentimes jumps to conclusions without seeking relevant information does not exhibit reflective approach to practice instructional relationship between identified instructional practices and student achievement curriculum and state standards uses appropriate instructional strategies to improve achievement of all students has deep knowledge of assigned content areas and of state content standards has a repertoire of researchbased practices associated with increased student achievement has good working knowledge of assigned content areas; familiar with state standards does not demonstrate knowledge of research-based best practice does not have mastery of all content assigned content areas and/or of state standards classroom management student assessment differentiated instruction demonstrates exemplary classroom management; handles almost all behavior issues without administrator involvement uses a wide repertoire of strategies to monitor and assess student progress for purpose of providing students with formative feedback; uses a wide range of techniques to evaluate student learning for purposes of grading and reporting uses assessment results to plan appropriate instruction for all learners, making modifications in strategies as appropriate knows best practice in classroom management; experiences few management problems knows the importance of both assessment for learning and assessment of learning and uses a range of assessment strategies knows the basic principles of differentiation does not always exercise effective classroom management does not use a wide range of formative assessment strategies and/or has some difficulty in accurately or appropriately evaluating student progress tends to provide the same instruction to all students, regardless of their prior learning or readiness commitment to mentoring has a strong desire to serve as a mentor; articulates a commitment to inducting new members to the profession is willing to serve as a mentor, but not altogether enthusiastic expresses reservations about ability (or time) to serve in this capacity fostering the success of new teachers: developing lead teachers in a statewide teacher mentoring program 15 appendix b focus group questions regional in-service center consultants 1. how did the district level personnel react to the implementation of the atmp? 2. what is your opinion of the professional development model that is being used to prepare mentor teachers? 3. have you received any feedback from your mentor teachers, principals, or district personnel regarding the professional development? 4. what challenges have you faced in implementing the mentor teacher program at the regional level? district level mentor personnel 1. what were the critical components in the successful implementation of the mentor teacher program? 2. how did the state initiative impact your local mentoring programs, if at all? 3. have you received any feedback from your mentor teachers or principals regarding the mentoring professional development? 4. what challenges have you faced in implementing the mentor teacher program at the district level? principals 1. what were the critical components in the successful implementation of the mentor teacher program? 2. what challenges have you faced in implementing the mentor teacher program at the district level? 3. have you received any feedback from your mentor teachers regarding the mentoring professional development? 4. do you think the mentor teacher program helped to meet the over-arching goal of retaining teachers in your school? mentor teachers 1. what were the critical components in the successful implementation of the mentor teacher program? 2. what challenges have you faced in implementing the mentor teacher program? 3. did you perceive the mentor teacher program professional development as helpful? mentees 1. did you receive adequate support from your mentor? 2. what areas of mentoring did you find most helpful? 3. what challenges did you face with your mentor or the mentor teacher program? current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 16 article citation kent, a. m., green, a. m., & feldman, p. (2012). fostering the success of new teachers: developing lead teachers in a statewide teacher mentoring program. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/988 author notes andrea m. kent university of south alabama 3100 mobile, al 36688 usa, coe ucom akent@usouthal.edu andrea m. kent is an associate professor of literacy education in the department of leadership and teacher education, and the director of field services in the college of education at the university of south alabama. as a former elementary education teacher and reading coach, she enjoys working with preservice and inservice teachers, mentoring and developing best practices in teaching. she is an experienced staff developer with the alabama state department of education, and local school districts. she spends much of her time in schools, recognizing that they are her laboratories. her research interests include literacy development in all content areas, teacher leadership, mentoring and induction, and meaningful technology integration. andre m. green university of south alabama 3100 mobile, al 36688 usa, coe ucom green@usouthal.edu dr. andre green, associate professor of science education at the university of south alabama, is an experienced principal investigator with over $3m in grants management from the national science foundation, alabama state department of education through the amsti project, and various foundations and other governmental agencies. his research interests focus on minority access to the stem disciplines, the training of stem teachers, stem teacher leadership, mentoring, and the induction of educators into the profession. dr. green is the program coordinator for secondary education at usa in the college of education. he has extensive experience in working with minority students from urban environments and has developed educational programs of community outreach to improve the academic achievement of minority students. phillip feldman university south alabama 3100 mobile, al 36688 usa, coe ucom pfeldman@southalabama.edu dr. phillip feldman, professor and associate dean of the college of education at the university of south alabama, has 40 years of experience in teacher education. a former teacher corps intern, dr. feldman is a strong proponent of the use of technology in the classroom. he is an experienced administrator and his funded research includes serving as principal investigator for validating hypermedia in elementary mathematics ($980,000, national science foundation. 1990-1994) and principal investigator for preparing tomorrows teachers to use technology ($1,300,000, us department of education. 1999-2003). in addition, dr. feldman is principal investigator for the alabama math science and technology initiative ($4,500,000 annually, nsf and al department of education. 2005-present). fostering the success of new teachers: developing lead teachers in a statewide teacher mentoring program 17 manuscript received: 4/23/2012 revisions received: 8/9/2012 accepted: 8/20/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 18 volume 15, number 3 september 16, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1001_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 7, 2013 issn 1099-839x the institutional cost of being a professor of color: unveiling micro-aggression, racial [in]visibility, and racial profiling through the lens of critical race theory pierre wilbert orelus new mexico state university drawing on critical race theory, auto-ethnography, and resistant narratives, this article examines systemic forms of oppression that professors of color teaching at predominantly white institutions have been facing. the author incorporates in his analysis his experience as a faculty of color battling multiple forms of micro-aggression (solórzano, 1998). he situates his professional and lived experiences with institutional racism in a larger educational and political context and goes on to analyze the ways and the degree to which this form of racism has affected other professors of color. keywords: professors of color, micro-aggression, racial [in]visibility, racial profiling, resistant narratives, education, critical race theory. teaching in a predominantly white institution is a terrific challenge for many professors of color. in addition to being expected to fulfill professional obligations, such as publishing, teaching, advising students, presenting at conferences, and serving on committees, professors of color constantly have to fight against institutional racism and white hegemony (delgado, 2011). furthermore, they are often subject to various forms of microaggression (solórzano, 1998) like being over complimented for being articulate, as if professors of color are not expected to be intelligent and articulate speakers. moreover, professors of color are frequently rendered invisible at predominantly white institutions, although some are made visible only to be conveniently used by these institutions for diversity propaganda purposes. that is, faces of a few tokenized black and brown professors are often utilized on the website of many colleges and universities for the sole purpose of making the larger public believe that these institutions are racially and ethnically diverse, even though research shows that most of them are yet to be (ahmed, 2010; gause, 2011). to shed light on these issues, i draw on critical race theory, auto-ethnography, and resistant narratives to examine systemic forms of oppression that professors of color teaching at predominantly white institutions have been facing. i incorporate in my analysis my experience as a faculty of color battling multiple forms of microaggression (solórzano, 1998). i situate my professional and lived experiences with institutional racism in a larger educational and political context and go on to show the ways and the extent to which this form of racism has affected other professors of color. autoethnography and critical race theory: an overview i use autoethnography as a self-reflexive inquiry to critically reflect on and critically examine my lived and professional experiences as a faculty of color working in a predominantly white institution. autoethnography is not only personal but also political (holman jones, 2005), and it allows one to retrace one’s journey. moreover, autoethnography, which often comprises of “research, writing, and methods that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural and social (ellis, 2004, p. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 xix), enables one to challenge the “negation of the unrecognized accounts of the postcolonial subject” (lavia, 2006, p. 189). finally, autoethnography helps oppressed groups bring to the fore their authentic voices and stories, which often go unrecognized in the mainstream discourse (alexander, 2005). along with autoethnography, i draw on critical race theory to talk about frustration and even anger stemming from microaggression (solórzano, 1998) professors of color, including myself, have experienced working in predominantly white institutions. rooted in the legal field (bell, 1992; crenshaw, 2002; delgado, 2003; delgado & stefancic, 1995), critical race theory has been used by many scholars with different foci in the field of education and racial/ethnic studies to examine the ways and the degree to which social construction of race and institutional racism have impacted the life of people of color (delgado, 2003; delgado bernal, 2002; gillborn, 2008; ladson-billings, 2000; leonardo, 2009; solórzano, 1998; yosso, 2006). specifically, critical race theorists have interrogated the dominant ideology informing social and historical construction of race and the profound effects of such construction on the lived experiences of people of color, including students and faculty of color. using narratives as a theoretical building block, scholars of critical race theory have examined institutionalized discriminatory practices leading to a lack of access to resources and opportunities that historically marginalized groups have experienced (delgado bernal, 2002; yosso, 2006). these scholars have also examined underlying racially motivated factors preventing marginalized groups from having access to well-resourced schools, quality health care, decent housing and jobs (ladson-billings & tate, 1995; solórzano & yosso, 2002). equally important, they have unveiled the microaggression to which people of color have been subjected in school, at work, and in society at large (delgado bernal & villalpando, 2002; solórzano, 1998; yosso et al., 2009). critical race theorists have been criticized for not including in their analysis class-based oppression (cole, 2009; darder & torres, 2006). although i partially agree with this criticism as i believe all forms of oppression intersect, i argue that class privileges have not and will not protect professors of color from institutional racism and white supremacy. for example, my social class status can change, and it has indeed changed from being a dishwasher and housekeeper to being a university professor. however, i can never change the fact that i am black, and some people will discriminate against me because of my blackness. this realization has led me to conclude that the weight of race and racism that professors of color have been forced to carry on their shoulders throughout their professional journey in a white supremacist world seems heavier than that of classism, although for poor people of color classism can be as hurtful as racism. critical race theory has provided many scholars of color across disciplines with a critical tool to analyze institutional racism and its deep impact on the subjective and material conditions of people of color. more specifically, critical race theory has enabled many scholars and researchers of color to develop a language of critique to unveil many forms of racial oppression that historically marginalized groups have been facing in the united states and beyond. finally, critical race theory has theoretically and ideologically equipped scholars of color to deconstruct, among other things, the colorblind discourse. deconstructing the colorblind discourse the colorblind discourse suggests that skin color does not matter, even though this racial marker has been the tool that racially prejudiced people have used to label, stigmatize, misrecognize, render invisible, and discriminate against people of color, including professors of color (bonilla-silva, 2003, 2010; brown et al., 2003). as a prime example, uvanney maylor (2010), a black british female professor and researcher, narrated a painful racial encounter she had with a white european academic. when she was introduced to this white female visiting professor at her institution, this professor asked maylor if she was one of the helpers. maylor stated: as well as being ignored, there have been times when i have felt that my identity as a black academic researcher has been misrecognized. in one such instance, a white european academic visitor to my university, who when i was introduced to her, asked if i was ‘one of the helpers’. what she meant by this, one can only assume. the european visitor appeared to attribute a lower status position to me on the basis of my skin colour. the belief that was ‘one of the helpers’ would seem to be the result of ‘dominant discursive constructions of intellectual ability conflat(ing) blackness with being less intelligent’ (mirza & reay, 2000, p. 533) and what mirza (2006, p. 147) describes as ‘infantalisation’; a process whereby black staff are viewed as ‘less capable of being in authority. (maylor, as cited in mirza & joseph, 2010, p. 57) sadly, what professor maylor experienced with this white european professor has happened to countless professors of color. the racial controversy stemming from distinguished professor henry louis gates’s arrest in cambridge, massachusetts, by sgt. james crowley is a case in point. the information available to the public suggests that sgt. crowley responded to a call from a woman who reported a possible house break-in by two men. according to what the 911 tapes revealed, that woman said that she saw two men with suitcases on the porch of the house where professor gates lived. she also the institutional cost of being a professor of color: unveiling micro-aggression, racial [in]visibility, and racial profiling through the lens of critical race theory 3 said that one of the men could have been hispanic but she was not sure. as police officer crowley was trying to locate the suspected burglars, he stepped on the porch of the house where professor gates lived, knocked on his door, and asked him to step out. upon the police officer’s request, professor gates showed him his identification card and his proof of residence. apparently, sgt. crowley and professor gates exchanged words, and the latter was arrested for “disorderly conduct.” being arrested for “disorderly conduct” is not unfamiliar to many blacks, latinos, native americans, and other marginalized and racially targeted groups. that is, when these groups challenge officers, who are usually suspicious of and racially profiling them, whether it is on college campus or elsewhere, they are often accused of being uncooperative and violent. this label is usually, if not always, used as a pretext by these police officers to arrest and brutalize them. myriam torres, a latina professor teaching at new mexico state university, had a similar experience with the campus police at her institution. in a moving article, to the margins and back: the high cost of being latina in “america,” she narrated her experience in the following terms: i went to work in my office on a saturday and entered the building with my coded idea card. i had previously entered after 5 pm on weekends and the alarm system had never activated, but this time it did. once in my office i concentrated on my work, so i did not pay attention to the alarm. after a while, an officer came to the building and entered my office. i prompted asked him why the alarm went off this time since i had come to my office on many weekends previously. he answered with a suspicious and somewhat authoritarian voice, ‘you need to go to the security office and ask for a code to deactivate the alarm.’ i insisted, ‘it never happened to me before.’ he looked at me with a bantering expression and said, ‘there is always a first time.’ afterward, i asked people who worked in their offices on weekends about the alarm code. nobody knew about the code, although they also had problems with the alarm once in a while. very often i have to deal with people’s suspicious attitudes. hence, the basic civil rights under which an individual is innocent until the contrary is proved do not work in my case. i often find myself in situations in which i am prejudged negatively and therefore have to prove that people are wrong in their assumptions about me. (torres, 2004, p. 130) these racially motivated cases once more confirm that black and brown professors are not and will not be safe on college and university campuses as long as institutional racism persists. all racial socioeconomic and political indicators suggest that black and brown men’s image has been distorted (noguera, 2008). i argue that the historical misrepresentation of black men from slavery onward continues to be the determining factor that often—if not always—leads to their ill treatment in society. even though slavery has been outlawed, its legacy continues to affect men and women of color (blackmon, 2009); other forms of racial, socio-economic, and political oppression have emerged in the so-called post jim crow era (alexander, 2010; bonilla-silva, 2003). many of these forms of oppression are rooted in the ever-present legacy of slavery. bonilla-silva (2003) has critically unmasked brutal forms of racism embedded in, and promoted by, the colorblind discourse in his widely read book, racists without racism. likewise, journalist douglas blackmon (2009) has painstakingly unveiled disguised forms of racism, chronologically looking at how institutionally racism has been legally redesigned to continue to oppress blacks and other racially marginalized groups. specifically, in slavery by another name, blackmon (2009) illuminates the manner in which slavery was carried out through the civil war to the second world war. blackmon uses a wide range of original documents along with personal narratives to trace the journey of slaves and their offspring in their struggles for freedom and against various forms of servitude after the emancipation proclamation. blackmon’s book reveals the untold narratives of those who fought against the recurrence of exploitation and oppression of african americans occurring through cheapest human labor manifested in the age of neo-slavery he eloquently described. bonilla-silva’s and blackmon’s books provide tangible evidence of the persistence of racism in the united states of america. this argument about the persistent negative effects of colonization and slavery on people of african descent and others have been contested by many so-called marxists, many of whom happen to be white males. for instance, while reviewing a manuscript in which i argued that the legacy of slavery and colonization continues to negatively impact the subjectivity and material conditions of people of african descent, a self-proclaimed white male marxist stated, “despite some efforts on your part to avoid this impression, the essay reads like a kind of progressive moynihanism: privileged whites, from slave owners to the contemporary straight middle class, have fucked up black subjectivity, which is, well, pretty fucked up.” this white male reviewer admitted that he did not finish reading the whole manuscript. he stated that he got through half of it but disliked it enough to stop reading it. when i asked him what part of the article was not substantiated, he could not tell. this reviewer apparently was unwilling to question his white and male privileges. further, he seemed to be triggered by my current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 uncompromising position on, and analysis of the harmful effect of, the legacy of slavery and racism on black and brown men’s and women’s lives. racial profiling: a personal resistance narrative like professor myriam torres and many other university professors, sometimes i go to my office on the weekends to write. the building is usually empty, especially when school is not in session. i sometimes stay late in my office working. given the history of racial profiling against professors of color on campus by the university police, i always fear that i might be racially targeted as a possible burglar. therefore, i always carry my university card and other items that i can use as evidence in the event the university police should stop and interrogate me. there were a few times when i forgot my university identification card, and i suddenly panicked and rushed back home to get it. reflecting the next day on this panic attack, i asked myself: why should i experience this feeling in a country that calls itself democratic? after learning about professor gates’ racial profiling case, i have become even more fearful when working in my office on the weekends. because of the fear of being racially profiled, my office on the weekends does not feel like a space where i, as a university professor, can peacefully and comfortably sit to do my academic work. however, like many professors, i am pressured to publish, in addition to fulfilling other academic obligations like advising students, teaching, presenting papers at conferences, serving on committees, and attending departmental meetings. when professors of color take a stance against racial profiling and harassment at their university, they are often labeled as “angry people” or “complainers.” as one of my female african american colleagues, venus evans-winters, states, “it has not been easy being a professor of color in predominantly white institutions” (personal communication, 2013). this young female african american colleague talked about her experience dealing with three white middle class students who were very disrespectful toward her because they were unhappy with the grade they earned from her class. evans winter was particularly disappointed and frustrated with the high sense of entitlement that these white students displayed through their words. on december 23, 2012, she narrated her experience, via facebook, in the following terms: these last few days are the first time that i considered leaving my academic career full-time. i guess i'm still thinking about it. i'm a certified school social worker and maintain a handful of clients for my psychotherapist practice (who would love me full-time). this contemplation began not with student course evaluations, but as a result of student grade complaints over email. three to be exact. all three earned a "b" but want an "a." it was the tone of the email, which i will interpret as "bitch you smart, but not smarter than me or any of my white professors who give me "a’s." i share my colleague’s sentiment, and i would add that it has been hard for faculty of color not only in the united states but also in the world. for example, what happened to her and professors torres and gates could have happened to them in latin america and europe. the colonial legacy is like a shadow that has followed and haunted black and brown people through their life journey, irrespective of their social class status as university professors. one’s black and brown face is the racial marker that many individuals base on to label black or brown person as “violent”, “lazy”, “savage”, and “stupid”. needless to say, blackness is seen as a pejorative racial marker, while whiteness is often seen as the standard. professors of color: institutional [in] visibility and microaggression despite class privileges that come along with their status as university professors, black and brown faculty have often been treated as the “other,” and they have received ill treatment because of their skin pigmentation. in other words, their race has subsumed and will continue to subsume their social class status as university professors. their social class has not and will never protect them from racial profiling. nor has their class status exempted them from constant invisibility on college and university campuses. one should not ever take for granted one’s social class status as a university professor. but at the same time one should not be so naïve to believe that such status would prevent one from being subjected to racial invisibility. for instance, at the institution where i am currently teaching and doing research i have often been made invisible, like ellison (1995) eloquently described: i am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though i have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. when they approach me they see only surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and nothing except me. nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a biochemical accident to my epidermis. that invisibility to which i refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom i come in contact. a matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. i am not complaining, nor am i protesting either. it is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. (p. 3) the following story illustrates my racial invisibility at this institution. as i was sitting at a table talking to a colleague who happened to be a white male, a former provost at my university came in; she completely the institutional cost of being a professor of color: unveiling micro-aggression, racial [in]visibility, and racial profiling through the lens of critical race theory 5 ignored me and went directly to my colleague and talked to him. this provost behaved as if i was not at the table, even though i was sitting right next to my colleague, and it was only the two of us who were sitting there. gause (2011) argues, “ various researchers point to the ways in which faculty of color are marginalized, erased, silenced, or ignored once hired at predominantly white institutions and how they are simultaneously hypervisible and invisible, seen yet not heard” (p. 56). reflecting on this incident, i asked myself many questions, such as: did this provost ignore me because i am black? or does this provost have an issue with my ideological position because she was known for investigating about the ideology of professors? or was she simply being plainly rude? i went home that day wondering whether i should be looking for a tenure-track position elsewhere, as i felt unsafe as an assistant professor after i experienced this form of racial invisibility. had this high rank person not left the university, she would have been the one making the final decision as to whether or not i should be granted tenure and promotion. likewise, although to a lesser extent, in my department i have experienced some form of microaggression and invisibility from a white colleague who has attempted every year to influence other colleagues to vote against me so i can eventually be terminated from my current faculty position. despite many attempts on my part to reach out to this white colleague, she has been cold toward me. as one would expect since it is customary to do so, this colleague should have welcomed me as a new colleague who joined her and many colleagues in the department. instead, she would turn her face away from me each time we see each other in the hallway. on many occasions, while making copies in the room where the copy machine is located, she would walk in and behave as if i am not there. some trustworthy colleagues believe that the attitude of this white colleague toward me might have much to do with race, even though through empty rhetoric she has portrayed herself as a white ally. this white colleague has earned a reputation for using racist language and xenophobic epithets when referring to colleagues and students of color, particularly those who are not from the united states. at my current institution, when i am not invisible in the eyes of some high rank individuals and racially prejudiced colleagues, i am mistaken for a custodian, a soldier, a basketball player, or a football player. that is the social class status and label, informed by racial prejudice, often associated with me. in some people’s prejudiced thinking or white imagination, i could not possibly be a professor. in other words, my status as a professor is not what crosses people’s minds when they see me walking on the university campus. the questions that i have often been asked from people on campus are the following: are you the custodian? are you in the military? are you playing football or basketball for the university? or are you one of the football coaches? i feel exhausted having to explain to people that i am not a soldier, a football, a basketball player, or a custodian. stanley (2006) points out some of the challenges professors of color face at predominantly white institutions. according to stanley, these professors experience “multiple marginality, otherness, living in two worlds, the academy’s new cast, silenced voices, ivy and glass halls, individual survivors or institutional transformers, from border to center” (p. 3). people’s assumption about faculty of color reflects the historical, educational, and socio-economic struggles of people of color. not many people of african descent have been given the opportunity to earn advanced college degrees, like a doctorate, which would qualify them to hold key positions at universities. millions of them have been incarcerated. alexander (2010) maintains, “more african americans are under correctional control today-in prison or jail, on probation or parole-than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the civil war began” (p. 175). even those with phds often face obstacles to secure a permanent professorship position at universities, or high positions at other institutions, despite the rhetoric about racial diversity and equal opportunities circulated through many institutions. the reality on college and university campuses regarding diversity and racial integration suggests that we yet have to have a fair representation of many races and ethnicities at these institutions. ironically at these institutions, the word diversity is used as a commodity in their website to attract students and faculty of color and other underrepresented groups. as previously noted, many institutions have used a few images of tokenized black and brown professors, students, and staff of color in their websites to mislead people into believing that these institutions are racially diverse. as ahmed (2010) states, the suggestion here is that the appeal of diversity is about looking and feeling good, as an orientation that obscures inequalities, like the obscuring of a rotten core behind a shiny surface. as such, diversity as s term has a marketing appeal; it allows the university to sell itself, by presenting itself as a happy place, a place where differences are celebrated, welcomed and enjoyed. diversity becomes a brand, and a form of organizational pride. not only does this re-branding of the university as being anti-racist and beyond race: as if the colours of different races have ‘integrated’ to create a new hybrid or even bronze face. (p. 44) despite the use of diversity by many institutions, including universities and colleges, to sell themselves to current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 the outside world, the reality is that these institutions are dominated and run by privileged heterosexual white males (blumenfeld, 2006; dei, 1996; jensen, 2004; mcintosh, 1992; orelus, 2011). longing for a transformative change in the paradigm: will this ever occur? for me personally, nothing has fundamentally changed as far as my racial condition is concerned. when i was working as a dishwasher and housekeeper at hotels, nursing homes, and malls, i experienced racism. as both an undergraduate and graduate student, i also experienced racial harassment from police officers on university campus. now as a university professor, i have continued to experience racial discrimination, stigmatization, and invisibility. the conclusion that i have drawn from these experiences is that it does not matter my social status has changed from being a dishwasher, a housekeeper, a bilingual caseworker, a high school teacher, a doctoral student, to being a university professor. my blackness is a racial marker that has made me become a target, regardless of my status as a university professor. because of my blackness, i do not feel safe, not even in classrooms where i have been teaching and preparing future teachers, politicians, and lawyers, let alone walking on the street. in other words, my social class status as a university professor does not mean much as far as facing racism is concerned. like any ordinary black or brown person, i am subject to individual and institutional racism. by saying so, i do not imply that i should receive a different or a better treatment than poor and less educated black, brown, or white people because of my social status as a university professor. rather, what i do mean is that in a racist society black and brown people are not automatically protected because they move from being poor, working-class people doing menial types of jobs at various places, to being university professors. this argument is in line with the racial profiling that the highly respected critical race theorist and legal scholar, richard delgado, experienced. delgado (2011) stated: even dignified, well-dressed professionals encounter police profiling and challenges at work. i’ve been stopped by university police merely for looking out of place in the law building during evening hours. the incident had nothing to do with my income or class, but with my color and race. on other occasions, highway police have pulled me over just to check me out, even though i was driving a sober-looking rental car sedately and on my way back from an academic conference. (delgado, as cited in orelus, 2011, p. 12) i concur with delgado’s statement because when faculty of color are walking on the street or are driving, they are simply black or brown people in the eyes of police officers, particularly racist white police officers. their blackness or brownness is visible, and police officers will base on this racial marker to discriminate against them. to simply put it, their race subsumes their social class status as university professors. for example, when i am waiting for my wife on the street corner or on the sidewalk to come to pick me up, it is my blackness that makes some police officers suspicious of me, assuming that i might be doing something illegal, like selling drugs. it is also my blackness that has made some police officers follow me when i am driving on campus. in this context, my social status as a university professor does not matter much, if matters at all. what happened to prominent african american scholar, cornel west, is a case in point. while driving in a ‘white neighborhood,’ cornel west (1993) was pulled by a police officer who accused him of drug trafficking. west states: years ago, while driving from new york to teach at williams college, i was stopped on fake charges of trafficking cocaine. when i told the police officer i was a professor of religion, he replied, “yeah, and i’m the flying nun. let’s go, nigger!” i was stopped three times in my first ten days in princeton for driving too slowly on a residential street with a speed limit of twenty-five miles per hour. (p. x) these examples of racial profiling are a few among many, as there are many professors and students of color and ordinary black and brown men and women who might have experienced similar, if not worse, forms of racial profiling that we might not be aware of. nonetheless, professors gates’, delgado’s, and west’s experiences with racial profiling clearly illuminate the point that i am trying to make about institutional racism. that is, a black or brown person is often treated as the “other,” regardless of his or her social class, although a middle or upper class person of color can use his or her social class privileges to fight more effectively the racist legal system. for example, in some cases, one’s social class can save one from going to or dying in jail, like in the case of o.j. simpson in 1994. had mr. simpson been a poor black man, most likely he would have ended up in jail and possibly received the death penalty years later. he was able to win the case because of his fame and money. however, his case is one of the few rare cases of black men escaping the racially biased u.s. legal system. facing the color line: teaching challenges in a predominantly white institution the racial maker placed on people of color is done across class and gender lines. for example, a white professor is rarely, if ever, labeled “the white professor.” however, a professor like myself is often called “the black professor.” on many occasions, i had students who approached me and asked: do you happen to know the male black male professor in the college of education? they assumed that i knew who that black professor was because i am black. that black professor sometimes happened to be me. however, i never had any student, the institutional cost of being a professor of color: unveiling micro-aggression, racial [in]visibility, and racial profiling through the lens of critical race theory 7 not even once, ask me this question when they were looking for a white professor. when i asked them for the black professor’s name, sometimes they knew it and sometimes they did not. the reality is that there are not many black professors at my current institution, let alone in my department, which has provided me the space to do critical work, and for which i am grateful. in my department, there are two black professors: one who was the first black dean of the college and resigned from this position a year later. i was told that his forcible resignation has much to do with institutional racism. in the college of education at my institution, there are four visible black professors, including two female african americans, out of 74 professors composing the whole college. black professors and other marginalized professors of color are the invisible minorities on college and university campuses, with the exception of historically black colleges or universities. it is exhausting being one the few black professors on college and university campuses for the following reasons: (1) i am often asked to serve on committees just for the sake of having a black face there; (2) i often feel overwhelmed having to serve as a mentor to students of color who sometimes feel they can relate to me more than other colleagues; (3) whenever a racial or racist incident occurs, i am often called on to give my opinion about it; (4) i am usually seen as the expert on matters related to race; (5) my name and/or picture is often used by the institution to promote their own definition of diversity; (6) i constantly feel the pressure to “keep it together” so my actions would not have bad repercussions on other people of color, especially blacks; (7) because i am one of the few black professors, i often get invited or asked to participate in many activities taking place on campus so that my “race” is represented; and finally, directly or indirectly, i often feel that i am, directly or indirectly, expected to educate whites about myself, my history, and the historical struggles of people of african descent in general. the day when i am labeled a non-conformist black professor, i will rarely, if ever, get invited to the events mentioned above. i anticipate this will eventually happen, possibly after the release of this article. black or brown professors who are “nice,” that is, those who are compliant and do not question the status quo would most likely be invited to represent their race at the predominantly white institution. these types of “nice” black or brown professors sometimes get promoted to key positions to maintain the (dis) order of things benefiting those who control and run universities or colleges, namely privileged heterosexual and able-bodied white males. these black and brown professors are used to make the public believe that some universities or colleges are racially diverse, even though the people who continue to run these institutions tend to be predominantly these privileged white males mentioned here. it is often assumed that faculty of color will fail. when some of them fail because of a lack of support combined with the unbearable weight of institutional racism and white hegemony, their failure is often used as an alibi to stigmatize other professors of color. the common racist argument that those in powerful positions at universities and colleges or other institutions often use to deny professional opportunities to black and brown people is that they cannot find qualified people of color for this or that position. if their assertion is accurate, although in most cases it is not, the question that those running colleges or universities should ask themselves is the following: what are the underlying factors that have prevented many black and brown people and poor whites from obtaining postsecondary degrees, adequate professional trainings, and solid mentorship, which would qualify them for faculty positions or other positions? further, what those who run and control institutions like colleges and universities have failed to realize or have refused to admit is that they have failed to support faculty of color by not providing them with the support that they need so that they can succeed. how can predominantly white universities and colleges expect dynamic and competent young black or brown professors to stay and succeed if they do not receive solid mentorship from senior faculty, the majority of whom tend to be conservative white professors, who sometimes refuse to associate themselves with black or brown professors, let alone to mentor them? it must also be acknowledged that there are some white senior faculty who do mentor and support junior faculty of color. for example, i have been fortunate to have some white colleagues, including the former head of my department and the current dean of the college of education at my present institution, who have been supportive by providing me with extra funding, which has enabled me to present at international conferences and to hire professional transcribers to transcribe interviews for some of my scholarly books. in addition, some of my white colleagues at my current institution have read some of my manuscripts, including grant proposals, and have provided feedback on them. likewise, i have had white colleagues elsewhere who have been extremely supportive of me professionally. unfortunately, there are not many of them in the u.s. academia. despite lack of adequate support, brown and black professors have been hard-pressed to succeed. this pressure has compelled many to labor to a point where there is insufficient quality time left to spend with families and loved ones, not to mention that their health has been affected as a result (gause, 2011; stanley, 2006). for instance, as a tenure track faculty of color, i have gotten sick more often than i had ever gotten sick before i current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 8 became a professor. in addition to being sick, i have gained much weight as a result of many hours i have spent sitting in front of my computer to write so that i can keep up with the pressure of being “productive.” i have felt pressured to overachieve to avoid being seen as merely the beneficiary of affirmative action. specifically, i have felt the intense pressure to be as productive as i humanly can so that some white colleagues do not find any excuse to say that i am at my institution because i am black. because of institutional racism and stereotypes deeply held about people of color, professors of color have been under the white gaze in predominantly white institutions. unfortunately, this is the racial burden, among many others, that many black and brown professors have been forced to carry throughout their journey in the u.s. academia. conclusion it is exhausting teaching and doing research in predominantly white institutions that often do not support professors of color. discriminatory practices at these institutions often push these professors to the margins. consequently, they constantly feel the pressure to prove that they are intelligent, competent, and good citizens, and that they are not irresponsible or angry–racial constructs whose repercussions many have to deal with. it seems that many professors of color have been paying a heavy price for simply being the offspring of african slaves. that is, even before they were born and met the academic credentials that qualified them to become university professors, their racial fate was already configured by a colonial, racist system that has limited life chances of people of color and other racially marginalized groups (abdi, 2005; dei, 1996). this racially constructed reality has unfortunately caused many to feel that being born non-white is being compelled to always be ready to fight against all forms of racial aggression they have faced at work and beyond. i am fully aware that what i have argued throughout this essay may not necessarily reflect the professional reality and lived experience of all professors of color. however, given the history of racism in this country shaping many institutions, including universities and colleges, it is safe to argue that generally professors of color working at predominantly white institutions are often subject to institutional racism often manifested in many forms like earning lower salary than their white colleagues, being denied tenure, or simply being pushed to the margins. references abdi, a. a. 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(1993). race matters. cambridge, ma: beacon press. yosso, t. j., smith, w. a., ceja, m., & solórzano, d. g. (2009). critical race theory, racial microaggressions, and campus racial climate for latina/o undergraduates. harvard educational review, 79(4), 659-690. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 10 article citation orelus, p. w. (2013). the institutional cost of being a professor of color: unveiling micro-aggression, racial [in]visibility, and racial profiling through the lens of critical race theory. current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1001 author notes pierre wilbert orelus assistant professor new mexico state university college of education department of curriculum and instruction p.o. box 30001 las cruces, nm 80003-8001 dr. pierre wilbert orelus, a former high school teacher, is assistant professor in the curriculum and instruction department at new mexico state university. he is the past chair of the post-colonial and education special interest (sig) group at american educational research association. he is currently the co-chair of the paulo freire sig. professor orelus has received several awards and fellowships, including new mexico state dean of education award for excellence in research. professor orelus’ research interests include post-colonial studies; language, race, and gender studies. his most recent books include radical voices of democratic schooling: exposing neoliberal inequalities (palgrave, 2012) with curry s. malott, and the race talk: identity politics, multiracialism, and the hegemony of whiteness (information age publishing, 2012). manuscript received: 8/27/2012 revisions received: 12/3/2013 accepted: 4/26/2013 the institutional cost of being a professor of color: unveiling micro-aggression, racial [in]visibility, and racial profiling through the lens of critical race theory 11 volume 16, number 2 august 7, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1076-4854-3-le_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 march 16, 2013 issn 1099-839x investigating the student experiences of mexican-american pk-12 educators to cultivate authentic latino recruitment strategies jason m. morton fort osage r-i public schools barbara n. martin university of central missouri this collective case study utilized a dual conceptual framework of critical race/latino critical theory and social capital theory to examine the perceptions of pk-12 latino educators (specifically, educators of mexican-american descent) regarding their personal experiences as students in the pk-12 milieu, and how those perceptions impacted their consideration of education as a career. from the data, the following themes emerged: 1) the role of relational support, with the subthemes of: a) educators, b) family, and c) community; and 2) the role of institutional support, with the subthemes of: a) increased student expectations, b) building capacity, and c) cultural and socioeconomic awareness and validation. the implications of this inquiry could affect both k-12 institutions and higher education institutions as they analyze and subsequently modify or eliminate existing practices to infuse the support necessary to address the inverse growth of pk-12 latino educators relative to the american population as a whole. keywords: teacher recruitment, critical race theory, latino critical theory, social capital theory, additive schooling, authentic caring, relational resources, institutional support, latino, mexican-american, educational aspiration and persistence, majoritarian norms, racial nativism, stereotype threat, transformative leadership during the 2010 census, american citizens of hispanic or latino origin represented 16.7% of the population (usa quick facts, 2011). between 2000 and 2010, the population of latinos of mexican origin increased by 54 percent, accounting for roughly 75 percent of the 15.2 million increase in the overall latino population (ennis, rios-vargas, & albert, 2011). moreover, the latino population could rise by as much as 15 percent nationally to upwards of 31.3 percent in 2050 (ortman & guarneri, 2009). gibson (2002) thus posited there is "a pressing need to recruit more latinos into teaching so our teacher force is more reflective of the student population" (p. 247). however, this ideal is far from reality. bracey and molnar (2003) discovered that latinos constitute fifteen percent of the student population, yet only four percent of the teaching population. ramirez (2009) presented this conundrum as a “professional epidemic which requires states, school districts, junior colleges, and all institutions where teacher credentials are recommended to take active measures to increase the number of ethnic minorities entering the teaching profession” (p. 19). ladson-billings (2005) further posited that teacher preparation programs “insist that prospective teachers demonstrate that they can be successful with a diverse group of students” (p. 231). current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 however, we often do not model this maxim in our own professional actions (ladson-billings, 2005), thus suggesting a disconcerting disconnect between the idealism of multiculturalism preached in teacher education programs and the reality of the schools they support. howard (2003) noted that, “at the current rate, many students stand a good chance of completing 12 years of schooling and never coming into contact with a teacher of color..." (p. 150). although howard’s definition of “a teacher of color” dealt exclusively with african-american subjects, its roots in critical race theory apply nonetheless to all marginalized populations, regardless of their race or ethnicity. due to the growing need to bolster the ranks of latino educators, this paper intends to discover ways for pk-16 educational leaders to bolster the recruitment of latino students (specifically, educators of mexicanamerican descent) into the pk-12 education ranks by exploring any possible connections that may exist between consideration of education as a profession and perceptions of the profession based on personal experiences one had as a pk-12 student. the following research questions were thus elicited from the researchers’ literature review to guide the present study: 1) what are the perceptions of pk-12 latino educators of mexican-american descent regarding their own experiences as students in the pk-12 milieu, and how might those perceptions have impeded or facilitated educational aspiration and persistence? 2) do latino educators of mexican-american descent believe that their presence in pk-12 educational institutions can further mitigate negative perceptions of the efficacy and potential of latino youth not only for themselves, but also for those of different races and ethnicities? 3) how can pk-16 educational leaders inform and implement transformational strategies to bolster future recruitment of latino educators in general? conceptual framework the study was guided by three conceptual frameworks: critical race theory (crt), latino critical theory (latcrit), and social capital theory (sct). crt was employed by the researchers to identify institutional structures, policies, and practices (solorzano, villalpando, & oseguera, 2005) in pk-12 schools that encourage or discourage latino students from recruitment into the education ranks, thus illustrating how entrenched majoritarian notions of color blindness and meritocracy inherently disadvantage minorities through racial inequality (bell, 1992; crenshaw, gotanda, peller, & thomas, 1996; delgado & stefancic, 2001; huber, lopez, malagon, velez, & solorzano, 2008; solorzano et al., 2005). a focus was placed on the unique positionality of educators of mexican-american descent. accordingly, the researcher aimed to mitigate some of the ambivalence that exists among latcrit scholars about latino group identity given the fluid nature of race and ethnicity encompassed within the “latino” label (trucios-haynes, 2001). the latcrit framework compels researchers to "investigate the ways in which the dominant culture defines a group…in order to suit its convenience” (trucios-haynes, 2001, p. 3). finally, sct was used to explore means by which pk-16 educational leaders can empower potential latino educators (specifically, educators of mexicanamerican descent) to become agents of social change and social justice themselves (stanton-salazar, 2004). sct emphasizes the importance of social ties, familial cultural capital (yosso, 2005), and extrafamilial networks (portes, 1998) with institutional agents across institutional domains (stanton-salazar, 1997) to generate valued resources (e.g., an education), thus allowing latinos to mobilize and secure the relational resources and institutional support needed "to secure goods and forms of support that facilitate the accomplishment of goals" (stanton-salazar, 2004, p. 25). consequently, latinos can convert social capital gained from that institution into instrumental action that enables them to successfully "exercise greater control over their lives and their futures" (stanton-salazar, 1997, p. 10) and to manage "stressful borders and institutional barriers" (stanton-salazar, 1997, p. 26). methodology the general design selected for the study was the collective case study approach (creswell, 2007), which allowed the researchers to explore in-depth "how individuals experience and interact with their social world" (merriam & associates, 2002, p. 4) to develop meaning. multiple cases (i.e., individual subjects) were selected from multiple sites to collect open-ended, emergent data (creswell, 2003) by holistically capturing “multiple realities that are not easily quantifiable... in a natural setting” (hancock & algozzine, 2006, p. 72). the conceptual frameworks of crt and latcrit served as a conduit for the researchers to explore "how larger contextual factors [e.g., race/ethnicity, power, and oppression] affect the ways in which individuals construct reality" (merriam & associates, 2002, p. 4). moreover, the conceptual framework of social capital theory addressed the exploration of power – “who has it, how it’s negotiated, what structures in society reinforce the current distribution of power, and so on” (merriam & associates, 2002, p. 327). participants the sampling design selected was purposeful sampling (bogdan & biklen, 2007) with specific subjects selected to "best help the researcher understand the problem and the research question" (merriam, 1998, p. 185). the researchers first contacted the human resource offices of multiple school districts in a midwestern investigating the student experiences of mexican-american pk-12 educators to cultivate authentic latino recruitment strategies 3 metropolitan area to solicit names of individuals who might fit the aforementioned criteria and be willing to participate in the study. ultimately, six subjects with whom the researchers had no previous contact were selected from four sites to maximize variation (merriam & associates, 2002; seidman, 2006). the researchers’ logic behind this was that, “if there is some diversity in the nature of the sites selected or in participants interviewed, results can be applied to a greater range of situations by readers or consumers of the research” (merriam & associates, 2002, p. 29). two participants taught at the same urban elementary school, one at an urban middle school, one at an urban high school, one at a suburban high school, and one at a rural high school. four were female, and two were male. all of the participants but one had taught ten years or fewer but one, who was on the verge of retirement. all were educated in the united states except the eldest subject, who was educated in mexico until high school. two were first-generation college graduates. participants were common simply in that they fell under the mexican-american subgroup; otherwise, there was rich variation in pk-12 experiences and personal backgrounds. the researchers intended to abate any concerns of bias by selecting interviewees “whose views reflect different, even contending, perspectives” (rubin & rubin, 2005, p. 64). again, it should be noted that subgroups under the latino umbrella were differentiated by focusing exclusively on educators of mexican-american descent. as garcia and bayer (2005) conjectured, latinos "are frequently lumped into one group, essentially ignoring the differences that may exist between the differing ethnic groups that comprise this larger group, as such, reported findings may yield misrepresentations and potential errors if separate subgroup analyses are not executed" (p. 529). moreover, as hernandez and lopez (2004) noted, when acknowledging the “heterogeneity and the diverse experiences and distinctive histories of each latino group in the united states,” one will find “there are no 'cookie cutter' approaches to increase access and retention rates of the latino community" (p. 54). observation protocol before conducting each initial interview, the researchers spent all or part of a school day in a complete observer role (creswell, 2003), studying each subject in his/her natural professional setting(s) and role(s). these observations served two purposes, as articulated by emerson, fretz, and shaw (1995): 1) they allowed the researchers to become familiar with the setting and to develop a working relationship and rapport with the subject, and 2) they allowed the researchers to share a “day in the life” with the subject and to document this experience in writing. field notes were thus created in order to determine what each respective subject deemed to be significant in his or her collective experiences (emerson et al., 1995). through these field note descriptions, the researchers aspired to actively interpret and make sense of events that may not have necessarily been significant upon initial inspection, thus turning each observation “from a passing event, which exists only in its own moment of occurrence, into an account, which exists in its inscription and can be reconsulted” (emerson et al., 1995, pp. 8-9). interview protocol kohli (2009) posited that the use of a crt/latcrit methodology "must benefit the participants, and the communities they come from” (p. 238). therefore, one-on-one interviews were utilized to generate counterstories or narratives (solorzano & yosso, 2001) from subjects that might yield significant information regarding their individual experiences (hancock & algozzine, 2006) as students in the pk-12 milieu. solorzano and yosso (2009) defined storytelling as the "method of telling the stories of people whose experiences are not often told (i.e., those on the margins of society)" (p. 138). within this paradigm, the use of counterstories can serve four theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical functions as delineated by solorzano and yosso (2001): 1) they can build community among those at the margins of society by putting a human and familiar face to educational theory and practice; 2) they can challenge the perceived wisdom of those at society’s center by providing a context to understand and transform established belief systems; 3) they can open new windows into the reality of those at the margins of society by showing the possibilities beyond the ones they live and demonstrating that they are not alone in their position, and 4) they can teach others that by combining elements from both the story and the current reality, one can construct another world that is richer than either the story or the reality alone. (p. 475) through these functions, the goal was that the counterstories gleaned through these interviews might reveal ways in which subjects might have been oppressed or subjugated in the pk-12 milieu. when viewed through the conceptual framework of crt/latcrit, counterstories serve well as "a tool for exposing, analyzing, and challenging the majoritarian stories of racial privilege” in order to “shatter complacency, challenge the dominant discourse on race, and further the struggle for racial reform” (solorzano & yosso, 2009, p. 138). the interview format consisted of a semistructured interview protocol including main questions, probes, and follow-ups (bogdan & biklen, 2007; merriam, 1998; rubin & rubin, 2005) designed to elicit open-ended responses with clarity and precision (rubin & rubin, 2005) and draw out additional insight from current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 subjects when possible. the main questions were the “scaffolding of the interview” (rubin & rubin, 2005, p. 133), a limited number of questions prepared in advance to develop rapport with the subject (bogdan & biklen, 2007) and ensure comprehensive coverage of the research problem. consequently, follow-up questions were important “for obtaining depth and detail, and… obtaining more nuanced answers” (rubin & rubin, 2005, p. 136). participants were then interviewed individually on one or two separate occasions at their respective buildings of employment in order to elicit relevant details for clarification of any vague assertions made by the subject (rubin & rubin, 2005). data analysis procedures kvale and brinkman (2009) used a miner metaphor to address the epistemological considerations of data analysis, noting that “knowledge is understood as buried metal and the interviewer is a miner who unearths the valuable metal... by means of a variety of data-mining procedures, the researcher extracts the objective facts or the essential meanings" (p. 48). researchers cannot view social phenomena holistically (creswell, 2003) and inductively (merriam, 1998) unless coding methods are utilized that reflect the research at hand with exhaustive, mutually exclusive categories (merriam, 1998) that logically flow from the data collected. after all field notes were completed and interviews were transcribed, coding methods were thus employed that could "capture the complex categories or phenomena" (saldana, 2009, p. 47). weiss (1994) noted that “some coding categories we bring to our studies before ever knowing what the interviews will produce... others we bring with us as readiness to interpret respondents' comments in one way or another” (p. 155). merriam (1998) referred to such classification schemes as etic, or previously created by the researcher. although the researchers certainly had particular classification schemes or typologies in mind for analysis of the research, they specifically sought those of an emic nature that is, those found in the culture of organizations (i.e., pk-12 educational institutions) themselves (merriam, 1998). the researchers also openly sought out in vivo codes, labels that emerged from the exact words used by interview subjects (creswell, 2007). such semantics lend themselves to a much richer and thicker description of the data than would have occurred with preexisting coding labels. consequently, an open coding approach was employed using both inductive and iterative analysis (hancock & algozzine, 2006, kvale & brinkman, 2009; seidman, 2006) allowing for patterns and themes to organically become emergent (creswell, 2003; merriam, 1998). through the conceptual frameworks of crt/latcrit and social capital theory, the researchers simultaneously utilized values coding and narrative coding to analyze the data. values coding, as delineated by saldana (2009), encompasses the “application of codes onto qualitative data that reflect a participant’s values, attitudes, and beliefs, represent his or her perspectives or worldview,” and are suitable for studies “that explore cultural values and intrapersonal and interpersonal participant experiences and actions in case studies (pp. 89-90). narrative coding, as delineated by saldana (2009), is “appropriate for exploring intrapersonal and interpersonal participant experiences and actions to understand the human condition through story, which is justified in and of itself as a legitimate way of knowing” (p. 109). from these, several overarching themes, or "outcomes of coding, categorization, and analytic reflection" (saldana, 2009, p. 139), were gleaned. findings the overarching question guiding this qualitative inquiry was, “how might the pk-12 student experiences of successful pk-12 educators of mexican-american descent (including the presence or lack thereof of latino educators as role models) have impacted their educational aspiration and persistence and, eventually, their decision to opt for pk-12 education as their career of choice?” using the data set, the following themes emerged: 1) the role of relational support, with the subthemes of: a) educators, b) family, and c) community; and 2) the role of institutional support, with the subthemes of: a) increased student expectations, b) building capacity, and c) cultural and socioeconomic awareness and validation. consensus emerged among many of the participants that both negative and positive perceptions of their various experiences as pk-12 students (and now pk12 educators) played a significant role in their educational aspiration and persistence, both during their student years and later as educators themselves. regardless of the obstacles many participants encountered, however, one thing was for certain: the advancement of education beyond high school was never in doubt for any of these intrinsically-motivated individuals. moreover, the desire to encourage similar aspiration and persistence in their students was an underlying constant that permeated the responses of each and every participant. research question 1: what are the perceptions of pk-12 mexican-american educators of latino descent regarding their own experiences as students in the pk-12 milieu, and how might those perceptions have impeded or facilitated educational aspiration and persistence? olivia and staudt (2003) asserted that latino educators consider the social justice implications regarding access to knowledge for marginalized students that may have been overlooked in their own schooling. each participant thus modeled valenzuela's (1999) notion of additive schooling in their pedagogy, using practices that validated and celebrated latino students' culture and language as a strength, not a deficit one must overcome to assimilate within majoritarian (huber et al., 2008) norms. moreover, each participant aspired to reduce stereotype investigating the student experiences of mexican-american pk-12 educators to cultivate authentic latino recruitment strategies 5 threat by: emphasizing optimistic educator-student relationships, challenge over remediation, valuing multiple perspectives, serving as role models, nonjudgmental responsiveness, and building self-efficacy in all of their students (steele, 2009). finally, each participant employed authentic caring that is, practices which liberate and move students "toward realizing their humanity through self, familial, and community critical reflection" (romero, 2009, p. 221). one participant captured the essence of said social justice pedagogy in the following quote: my students are the first thing i have in mind here… because they are individuals. they are going through what i went through. and they need the support, they need the patience, they need the help. and i'm trying to give them as much as i can. much like critical race researchers, each participant refused to remain silent in order to empower marginalized students "in a society determined to cling to established habits of repression" (taylor, 2009, p. 12), regardless of their race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic means. research question 2: do latino educators of mexicanamerican descent believe that their presence in pk-12 educational institutions can further mitigate negative perceptions of the efficacy and potential of latino youth not only for themselves, but also for those of different races and ethnicities? issues of cultural awareness and sensitivity proved to be of greater import to the majority of the participants than the race or ethnicity of an educator. educator role models were cited of various races, ethnicities, and genders; irrespective of these factors, these participants cultivated relational support with their latino students. these educators affirmed the assertion by kohli (2009) that "school staff must be culturally sensitive in order to cultivate and nurture positive selfimages of their students" (p. 245). for instance, bilingual education, or at least the ability to speak spanish within pk-12 institutions, generated oppressive actions towards many participants in their pk-12 student career that could easily be construed as overt discrimination through the repression of one's language. although this may well have been the case in some of these situations, one subject suggested that the fear of the unknown generated by this language barrier was of greater import: as a child, it was somewhat oppressive as far as our ethnic background, because at that time we were not to speak spanish. so it was kind of a repressed thing, you know... “let's not speak spanish...” it was kind of like, “deny who you are...” and you know, that language is a big part of a young person... we were actually disciplined if we were heard in the playground speaking spanish... i think it went back to the number of teachers that maybe did not speak spanish and wanted to make sure they understood what was being said... another subject went to preschool in mexico learning both english and spanish, as his father would always talk to him in english while his mother and her family spoke to him in spanish. upon returning to the states to a catholic school for kindergarten, he encountered similar issues of oppression not only for himself, but also for his spanish-speaking mother: in kindergarten, i got in trouble several times... and the teacher (who was a nun...) pulled my mom aside and told her to stop speaking spanish to me, because she thought i just didn't understand what she was saying. and it wasn't that... i just didn't care. i remember thinking that clearly. it was like, “no, i understand what she's saying, i just don't pay attention.”... i think maybe she just honestly thought that i was lacking in my english skills. and that because my mom was just speaking in spanish to me... i think that's what that was. and maybe it was just her – this nun's educational training, you know – i think she was just trying to encourage english being spoken at home. which i can understand that as an educator now, but at the same time it came across as pretty rough. yet another participant cited several misunderstood "discipline" issues where fellow educators simply dismissed well-intentioned students as being disrespectful. had these educators been able to identify with the cultural norms of these students, they might have considered the possibility that their actions might be quite the opposite: i have teachers here, upper-grade teachers that come to me, totally offended with the student and saying, “can you please ask him to show some respect when i'm talking to him, because he's not even looking at me in the eye and he's just avoiding me. but then, this is a norm at home. we are not supposed to look in the eye because it's daring, it's disrespectful. and if they're not aware of what the culture is, how can be they be identified? how can they understand where the student is coming from? the behaviors? they're just making more angry, you know, the students... no. he was just ashamed... regardless of the deficit in cultural awareness generational differences, language barriers, or cultural norms – significant consequences abound for such pedagogical myopia. contempt for students will, in more cases than not, foment contempt for educators, and the current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 institution of education in return. two participants spoke of themselves or others as being ashamed of their latino identity during their middle and secondary years, years when these individuals started to notice they were "different." when looking back at his middle school years, one recalled the "embarrassment of when you're in a public place with your mom, and she's speaking to you in spanish..." this was merely a proverbial speed bump for the subject, as his ethnic pride grew with age. another subject, however, cited two students who worked actively to repress their latino background, as they were students in a building that was over 95% white. this subject recognized the need to mentor and support these two young men, regardless of the perceived resistance they put up: so what i do try, is to show, you know, that it's okay. my one student that i have... sometimes he kind of wants to deny his background... i don't know what's going through his mind. and so what i try and do is try and put my experiences and say, “this is where i came from,” and show that it's okay. and i have his brother...i'll see him in the hallway, and when i say, “hola” because i say “hola” to all, whether i've had them in class or not he'll just completely ignore me. but if i say “hello,” he'll say “hello.” and it's almost like, you know, “i don't want to speak any spanish,” and yet their mom doesn't know english... it's just that he doesn't want to show, “hey, yes i am! i am of mexican descent... this is who i am, and i am proud..." these students were fortunate to have a latino mentor to inculcate some degree of ethnic pride in them in a community that was virtually devoid of racial or ethnic diversity. it is certainly copacetic for latino students to know that they are different from their majority peers, so long as subordination is not what defines such differences. perspective is not just a byproduct of one's education, but also of one's upbringing and unique cultural and ethnic folkways and mores. one subject spoke to the profound power latino educators can have by inculcating a sense of ethnic pride in their students through their unique perspective towards a curriculum that is traditionally derived and taught from an anglicized point of view: ...i think being from a different culture... anybody other than “you are american” – i think would have given the opportunity to bring out different perspectives of history. because i talk to students about history and they're like, “man i never knew that...” and i'm like, “yeah, because it's not in your history books, because it's from the american perspective.” and if you have that teacher, i think, they'll still teach the curriculum, but they can insert those little things. i think the other place where that might have been seen more would maybe be in an english class. from a literature perspective, maybe reading latin american stories, short stories... because as teachers we work with what we know, and being of a different culture allows you to grab from different things. as a spanish teacher, another subject included studies and research of latino artists in her curriculum not only because it was of interest to her, but also because it was timelier and more accessible for some students. moreover, such studies allow all students, regardless of their race or ethnicity, to see successful latinos in professional roles, leadership roles, and roles that one might consider as "heroic." the subject saw the imperative need for students to see people of all races and ethnicities in positions where their actions clearly had a profound impact on others: i think... what we do here at this school – but i know it's not like this at every school, especially in the suburbs where there are few mexican-americans – we make a point to study [latinos]. like, we have a hero every year, and it's i think the hero's been a [latino] a couple of times. we try to go, we do all...we did buck o'neil, cesar chavez... you know, we do black history month, but we also have a time where we study mexican-americans, and i think that's important to let them know, these people did this... clearly, the ability to see fellow latinos in positions of power and success can serve volumes to motivate young latinos to take the steps necessary to follow their proverbial footsteps. in turn, exposure to these role models can perhaps mitigate some of the “shame” some latino youth may feel towards their heritage. research question 3: how can pk-16 educational leaders inform and implement transformational strategies to bolster future recruitment of latino educators in general? the level of social justice and advocacy that emerged in the data analysis of the pedagogy of the collective cases confirmed an assertion from gomez, rodriguez, and agosto (2008) made in the review of literature: prospective teachers of color also may be more aware than their white counterparts of unjust schooling practices experienced by families of low income and people of color, may be more likely to hold dimensions of a social consciousness and to take responsibility for transforming schools and society, and be more aware of how institutions investigating the student experiences of mexican-american pk-12 educators to cultivate authentic latino recruitment strategies 7 support the status quo of differentiated schooling outcomes, such as tracking. (p. 268) two of the participants in particular spoke of their ongoing struggle with "fighting a system that is not working." for example, one participant lauded the teach for america program as an excellent alternative means of alluring highly qualified teachers (including latinos) to schools with high poverty and minority populations. however, as he further espoused, after the two years, those people go because they realize that they are fighting a system that is not working…. they get some incredible training, and they come through the schools and more stuff is being thrown at them that had nothing to do with what they were doing to help. the leaders in these institutions may not have been overtly aware of adversarial conditions that discounted the humanistic concerns that are paramount to educators with a high degree of social justice and advocacy. nonetheless, such concerns cannot be ignored if one desires to recruit such individuals for future vacancies. finally, nunez and fernandez (2006) posited, “outreach is critical to recruit the diverse population we support, including those who might not necessarily see themselves reflected in the teaching position or might not think they have the means to do it” (p. 51). outreach does not necessarily connote a specific recruitment program, but a conscious effort by educational leaders to provide a reasonable level of relational and institutional support to their latino students during the pk-12 years if those students are ever to consider education as a profession, not an institutional entity they must “fight” to secure the necessary support to succeed and thrive. this mentality of fighting the system, whether perceived or legitimate, was a factor for some participants regarding their decision to pursue education as a career. discussion of findings in tandem, the themes of the role of relational and institutional support paint a vivid picture for pk-16 educational leaders of the sociological impact they can have through the implementation of transformational strategies during the formative years to attract more latino youth to pk-12 education. as delineated in the review of literature, latinos have a unique conundrum. they must expand their social networks in a manner that can enable them to make the transition from high school to college while reconfiguring their existing relationships and social ties (saunders & serna, 2004) without alienating those in their family or community who may not share the same beliefs on the efficacy of a postsecondary education. one of the subjects, a firstgeneration college graduate who was educated in mexico and immigrated to the united states as an adult, spoke on a intimate level regarding her struggles to this effect. in spite of the lack of support from her family, she took the initiative to learn english and attain certification in ell in order to become an advocate for herself, her kids and, as a teacher, for the kids of other immigrant parents: i had a family a mother that i needed to attend because she was sick, and a husband that was not feeling good about me leaving the home in the afternoon to go to school... and my mother was always, “you're crazy, you can't do that. you need to take care of your kids,” you know... and it was very hard, because i remember my kids, my husband, and my relatives trying to say, “you are so...because you are wasting your best years. so and so is getting married this weekend, we have this other party, and you're always looking at those books saturdays and sundays... and everything was hard for me because i didn't have anybody to call and ask for help. in a sense, the teachers and colleagues who persuaded the subject to go to college were her surrogate family, at least when it came to offering her the support necessary to persevere in her decade-long pursuit of a degree. thus the first conclusion, as it relates to determining ways in which transformative pk-16 educational leaders can bolster the future recruitment of latino students (specifically, those of mexican-american descent), is a fundamentally simple one: relationships matter. relational support for the participants was ultimately predicated on one simple tenet: each participant had significant role models and mentors in their pk-12 student years that affirmed latino "cultural values such as familismo (importance of family), personalismo (the preference for personal over impersonal relational styles), conflanza (trust), respeto (mutual respect), and dignidad (care for the dignity of each person)" (gardella, candales, & ricardo-rivera, 2005, p. 42). one participant, for example, recalled a teacher who instilled a service mentality in her students at a young age by clearly going above and beyond for her atrisk students. this mentality has continued to serve this participant well in her efforts as a level 1 ell teacher and mentor for students of her own who are desperately in need of support and stability: well, i do remember this teacher in elementary school... i remember inviting us to her house to do a vegetable garden. and she would divide the garden and we were taking spots and planting different things. after she invited us the first time, she kept inviting more and more students. she took those students who were like mean or...not being so fortunate, i guess. because, i didn't have my mom and my dad, i grew up with family members. and this other girl that i remember, catalina, she didn't have a mom current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 either. she was growing up with dad and all the relatives. so she used to take care of us, in a way that she would teach us things; in the kitchen, outside, and always talking and talking and talking and talking. and i feel like she helped me so much that... she used to teach us with caring. you know, when you take that inside and you want to really communicate to others, help others... she had that. so i guess that's why i decided [to become a teacher]. moreover, effective leaders must employ the moral dialogue (shields, 2004) – both internally and externally in their institution – that is paramount to acknowledging, validating, and adapting to the unique cultural perspective towards education that latino students and educators bring to the table. by doing so, leaders are more likely to embrace the notion that “difference becomes not something to fear, or to avoid, but part of the rich fabric of human existence with which we interact on a daily basis” (shields, 2004, p. 166). ultimately, no student in the twenty-first century should have to have an experience similar to a particular participant during her elementary years: as a child, it was kind of oppressive as far as our ethnic background, because at that time we were not to speak spanish. so it was kind of a repressed thing, you know... “let's not speak spanish...” it was kind of like, “deny who you are...” and you know, that language is a big part of a young person... we were actually disciplined if we were heard in the playground speaking spanish... i think it went back to the number of teachers that maybe did not speak spanish and wanted to make sure they understood what was being said... conversely, the second conclusion suggests ways in which transformative pk-16 educational leaders can bolster the future recruitment of talented latino students (specifically, those of mexican-american descent). institutional agents (stanton-salazar, 1997) must fully utilize not only their trained faculty and staff, but also the familial cultural capital (yosso, 2005) and extrafamilial networks (portes, 1998) available to them through both neighborhood families and the community at-large. if schools cannot develop effective partnerships with the communities they serve, perhaps the community needs to step up to create the relational rapport necessary to meet the needs of its changing student population. another participant spoke to a specific example from her youth when her father rose to such an occasion: it wasn't until i was in fourth grade when there was a distinct switch in the community, and there was an influx of hispanics that moved in, to the point that the school wasn't prepared for it. they didn't have… any form of help for the kids, because they just weren't prepared. it was literally within a summer. there were families that moved in all together, and there was this need, because these kids didn't know any english…. at the time, it appeared that the school in question did not have the cultural capital (anderson, 1996; enwefa, enwefa, banks, jurden, & buckley, 2002; valenciana, weisman, & flores, 2006) needed to serve this growing population, nor did they acknowledge the wealth of cultural capital waiting to be tapped in the surrounding neighborhood. this participant’s father recognized this problem early on and took action: and my dad was involved in the pta at that point, and he started going in for an hour at a time, and helping the students. so he kind of started the english language learning stuff… as this parent helper… [the school] talked about how there was a need and he was the only one that could help. like i said, the new people that were coming in… their parents were in the same position. they didn't know english, so they couldn't help. and those of us that had been in the district for at least five years, those parents could help, but there were only like four, so it was whoever could do it. if educational leaders are to foster the institutional support necessary to promote an authentic commitment to educating an increasingly diverse population, they must ensure their espoused values are commensurate with the underlying beliefs of their institution (schein, 1992) on both on an instrumental and symbolic level (tierney, 1998) in order to foster a community of authentic caring (romero, 2009) conducive to increased expectations for students, building capacity, and improved cultural and socioeconomic awareness and validation. ultimately, all of the institutional support in the world is for naught if the pool of talented latino youth with the potential for excellence as pk-12 educators is shallow at best. pk-16 educational leaders (particularly those at the middle and secondary levels) have an ethical imperative to identify and duly scrutinize both tacit and explicit "policies that marginalize latinas/os” in the educational milieu “by limiting, rather than moving forward, latina/o educational and societal advancement" (gonzalez & portillos, 2007, p. 261). the counterstories of the participants revealed many examples of tacit or explicit institutional policies that fomented cultural deficiency (rolon, 2002) or deficit thinking (kohli, 2009) namely, subtractive schooling through the invalidation of latino culture and/or language (valenzuela, 1999), underrepresentation in advanced courses, and overrepresentation in remedial courses (gonzalez, stoner, & jovel, 2003). for example, the fear of the unknown that investigating the student experiences of mexican-american pk-12 educators to cultivate authentic latino recruitment strategies 9 many participants alluded to regarding the language barrier was also cited by one participant in a recollection from his youth of an instance when he was punished for what was perceived by the teacher to be a language barrier, but in fact was a learning disability that would not be properly diagnosed until decades later: i had a teacher in... second grade, who... i didn't understand what she was telling me. she goes, “mmmmmm-mmm-mmm,” and i go... i said “yes?” she just hit me with a ruler on the hand... cause i understood english; i don't know why i didn't understand her. she just hit me in the hand. furthermore, based on the counterstories that emerged, one might infer that many latino youth with the potential for excellence as latino educators may never realize that potential unless pk-12 educational leaders strive to eliminate a culture of low expectations (kohli, 2009) for latino youth deeply rooted in the majoritarian norms (huber et al., 2008) of many educators. such dismissive pedagogy appears to still be quite prevalent, particularly in districts that service large socioeconomically-disadvantaged latino populations. consider the following observations of a participant regarding low expectations for all minorities in her current school of employment: i would venture to say that our advanced level classes don't have a lot of our samoan population of students in them, don't have a lot of our african-american students, and don’t have a lot of our hispanic students in them. it almost seems like, “well, if you can just get by that's good enough 'cause, darn it, you're here and that's good enough.” ultimately, as the same subject further articulated, it is necessary for all of the cogs within the educational machine to work in tandem to curb generational trends of mediocrity and the perpetuation of low expectations due to the perception that one is not good enough to try at least: i think it's a roundabout thing. i think partially it's the counselors, partially it's the teachers, seeing a student that's got the intellect or the drive and saying, “you can do this, and you can do it!” sometimes it just takes looking at the student and saying, “you can do this. this is not above your understanding; stick with it and you'll be fine.” and part of it is the administrators, saying, “you should not just take basic english. if you have a certain gpa, you really need to be thinking about the... advanced classes. there really isn't a reason for you not to be doing that.” i think it comes from the teachers. the previous quote thus accentuates the need for added institutional support (stanton-salazar, 1997) through the provision of funds of knowledge, particularly in the myriad of institutional obstacles that one must assiduously navigate simply to walk in the door of most postsecondary institutions. one subject, a first-generation college graduate and educator, gave a simple response that many latinos or other disadvantaged populations might echo: "i don't remember teachers mentioning college to me." accordingly, pk-16 educational leaders should heed the suggestion of multiple participants that outreach to latino youth should begin proactively during the formative years of middle school and secondary school, not reactively once (or if) these youth go to college. research affirmed several participant's assertions that educational leaders should offer encouragement and incentives to consider teaching (peterson & nadler, 2009) through authentic programming that respects and validates the motivational variations between latinos and their majority peers (oliva & staudt, 2003). only one participant decided to become a pk-12 educator at a young age; teaching was clearly a second choice for the remaining participants. two participants respectively considered law school and criminal justice before entering their postsecondary education programs, almost by default as one of them recollected: “and i thought, ‘eh...i can do it.’ started taking education classes and i thought, ‘okay, i like it enough,' and i just went through it." as richardson and watt (2005) conjectured, educational leaders must do a better job of educating young people that education can be a career that “fits their skill sets, interests, and future goals” (p. 487). otherwise, many young latinos may never cultivate the desire to become educators themselves during the formative years. conversely, the number of latino youth who view a pk12 educational career "as a prestigious career option with opportunities for supportive interaction with other students and faculty" (ramirez, 2009, p. 21) will remain grossly disproportionate to the demographic shift outside the educational milieu. the conclusions, based on the study findings, illustrate the cumulative effect of a pk-16 educational leader’s actions in further facilitating the acquisition of social capital necessary for talented latino youth to current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 figure 1. conclusions based on study findings. pursue a postsecondary degree in pk-12 education. the cumulative actions of transformative educational leaders via the conduits of relational support and institutional support are thus represented above in figure 1. at the core of this paradigm is the self, where personal values are the leader's initial source for guidance, however laden they may be with biases and imperfections (brown, 2004). ethical leaders must acknowledge that the needs of latino youth are often strikingly divergent from their majority peers. conversely, as opposed to the employment of difference-blind institutionalism (larson & ovando, 2001), leaders must adopt a philosophy of additive schooling (valenzuela, 1999) for all disadvantaged youth, including latinos, if more of these individuals are ever to persist to the postsecondary milieu, much less pursue a career in pk-12 education. limitations as merriam (1998) conjectured, “case studies can oversimplify or exaggerate a situation, leading the reader to erroneous conclusions” (p. 42). to this end, assertions of generalizability could have been enhanced by stratifying the population before selecting the sample to better reflect the true characteristics of the desired population (fowler, 2002). however, a sample of this size was not practicable to the study at-hand. moreover, as merriam and associates (2002) posited, small samples are often “selected precisely because the researcher wishes to understand the particular in depth, not to find out what is generally true of the many” (p. 28). consequently, the researchers followed the guidelines as posited by creswell (2007) for naturalistic generalizations, focusing on six cases (i.e., subjects) from which rich, thick description was gleaned so as to “determine how closely their situations match, and thus whether findings can be transferred” (merriam & associates, 2002, p. 29). undergirding all of this process were the criteria of sufficiency and saturation (merriam & associates, 2002; seidman, 2006). as seidman (2006) articulated, “’enough’ is an interactive reflection of every step of the interview process and different for each study and each researcher” (p. 55). the use of interviews as a central data collection instrument also poses certain limitations. participants may be reluctant to tell of certain incidents. in addition, the use of counterstories as part of the interview protocol can be somewhat problematic. as litowitz (2009) argued, storytelling places more emphasis on the aesthetic and emotional dimensions of narration that can lead in any direction: “if one set of narratives can make us more sympathetic to people of color, it stands to reason that a different set of narratives can make us less sensitive” (p. 303). ultimately, as seidman (2006) espoused, “if the researcher’s goal…is to understand the meaning people in education make of their experience, then interviewing provides a necessary, if not always completely sufficient, avenue of inquiry” (p. 11), so long as the interviewer has the capacity to produce knowledge through his interaction with each conversational partner (kvale & brinkman, investigating the student experiences of mexican-american pk-12 educators to cultivate authentic latino recruitment strategies 11 2009; rubin & rubin, 2005). the use of crt/latcrit as one of the conceptual frameworks of the study also poses certain limitations, specifically the essentialist notion that crt/latcrit researchers simplistically treat all people of color similarly (delgado bernal, 2002; sleeter & delgado bernal, 2003; trucios-haynes, 2001). taylor (2009) expanded on this notion, positing that the framework "can be accused of lacking coherence, since oppressed people are rarely monolithic, and their narratives reflect a wide range of experiences” (p. 12). it is thus imperative that crt/latcrit scholars view race as a fluid and dynamic concept (sleeter & delgado bernal, 2003) and that "one’s identity is not based on...race, but rather is multidimensional and intersects with various experiences" (delgado bernal, 2002, p. 118). the researchers focused exclusively on educators of mexican american descent, thus attempting to construct community among all latino subgroups (trucios-haynes, 2001) by expanding the knowledge base on one subgroup in particular, as opposed to making sweeping (and perhaps invalid) generalizations about the latino population as a whole. finally, if one is to pursue a critical approach to research, it is imperative to appraise one's personal biases before proceeding. rather than trying to eliminate these biases, the qualitative researcher should “systematically reflect on who he or she is in the inquiry,” thus becoming more “sensitive to his or her personal biography and how it shapes the study” (creswell, 2003, p. 182). rubin and rubin (2005) expanded on this assertion when noting, “interviewers are not expected to be neutral or automatons,” yet they have an imperative “to be selfaware, examining… biases and expectations that might influence the interviewee” (p. 30). finally, the crt/latcrit researcher should aim for some modicum of equilibrium in his or her positionality. as litowitz (2009) espoused, "the outside perspective is valuable in the first place because it provides check and balance against the views of the insiders; so that what results is an overall balance between inside and outside. and that is our goal – a balanced view” (p. 307). implications for practice the study findings indicate the paramount need for support on both a relational and institutional basis in order for latinos (and other marginalized populations) to academically persist at the level of rigor necessary to successfully pursue a postsecondary education, much less a degree in pk-12 education. these findings supported the emphasis by lin (2001), portes (1998), and yosso (2005) of the need for latino youth to accumulate at least as much (if not more) social capital as their majority peers, given the deficit of social capital they often bring to the table. with the cumulative accretion of social capital comes the enhanced ability to secure resources through durable social networks that allow these youth to access information, influence, and social credentials while reinforcing and recognizing their latino identity (lin, 2001). moreover, the more substantial the deposit of social capital, the more likely it will be that these youth will have the "instrumental and emotional support to navigate through society's institutions" (yosso, 2005, p. 79) for the long-term. the study findings also suggested a need for heightened critical collaboration among pk-16 educational leaders as well as with the people they purportedly serve, including latino youth who may not have yet been compelled to expect the exceptional in themselves due to the perpetuation of subtractive schooling (venezuela, 1999) practices in their educational institutions. ultimately, no program or policy will bolster the recruitment of talented latino youth to the pk-12 educational ranks unless such programs and policies are predicated upon an authentic commitment to diversity in pk-12 institutions. as schuhmann (1992) asserted two decades ago, future "language used to refer to ethnic minorities in schools... must reject such terms and concepts of the past as remediation and language deficient" (p. 103). educators, regardless of their own race or ethnicity, must be agents of social change and justice and relentless advocates for all of their students, particularly those stuck in the headwaters of pk-12 education (solorzano et al., 2005), those who have yet to visualize the vast ocean on the horizon and its limitless potential. references anderson, g. l. 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(1994). learning from strangers: the art and method of qualitative interview studies. new current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 14 york, ny: the free press. yosso, t. j. (2005). whose culture has capital? a critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. race, ethnicity, and education, 8(1), 6991. investigating the student experiences of mexican-american pk-12 educators to cultivate authentic latino recruitment strategies 15 article citation morton, j. m., & martin, b. n. (2013). investigating the student experiences of mexican-american pk-12 educators to cultivate authentic latino recruitment strategies. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1076 author notes jason morton, ed.d. fort osage r-i public schools district ela curriculum coordinator and teacher at fort osage high school independence, missouri 816-914-3087 jmorton73@gmail.com jason m. morton works as an instructor for the college of education at the university of phoenix (kansas city campus). he has presented on crt and latino issues at regional and national conferences, including aera. barbara n. martin, ed.d. university of central missouri warrensburg, mo 64093 660-543-8823 bmartin@ucmo.edu barbara n. martin is a professor in the educational leadership and human development department at the university of central missouri. she has published and presented on crt, social justice leadership, and technology in the united states, canada and the united kingdom. manuscript received: 9/10/2012 revisions received: 2/6/2013 accepted: 2/10/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 16 volume 16, number 1 march 16, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template 1 volume 17, number 3 december 22, 2014 issn 1099-839x large-scale implementation of the edtpa: reflections upon institutional change in action diana b. lys, mark l’esperance, ellen dobson, and ann bullock east carolina university as national attention on teacher education intensifies, teacher preparation programs (tpps) are faced with the paradox of evolving their practice at institutions that are habitually slow to change. this reflective self-analysis documents how a large, regional tpp elected to adopt and implement the edtpa, moving in four years from one intern in one program to five hundred six interns across fourteen programs. authors highlight the challenges tpps face when attempting transformative change: namely, how to develop an organizational structure and support model for large-scale implementation; how to address program and faculty readiness; and how to promote data-directed program improvement and curriculum development. reflecting on the challenges that arose as the implementation proceeded highlighted the need for faculty training, ongoing discussion and communication amongst all stakeholders, and creating a concise map of how the curriculum needs of planning, instruction and assessment ultimately lead to the final product. while the shift to a national performance-based assessment can be daunting, the collection and analysis of results from the edtpa provides programs with rich and useful data that will lead to successful teacher candidates and programs. keywords: assessment; data-driven; organizational change as the spotlight on teacher education intensifies, teacher preparation programs (tpps) must be able to demonstrate how they document teacher candidate quality and student learning outcomes. however, it is challenging to conceptualize this shift and implement change needed to surge tpps to the next level of assessment. tpps have historically been intransigent institutions that are slow to respond to the evolving educational landscape surrounding them. demands for increased accountability and transformative change made by the national council on teacher quality (nctq) and the national council for accreditation of teacher education (ncate)—among others—have sparked a transformation from the outside, but often fall short of being an internal catalyst. while tpps continue to innovate programs by developing or adopting new assessment methods to increase teacher candidate quality, many faculty remain steadfast in their convictions that current practices and programs produce good teachers. as external forces influence curricular reform and link educator preparation to student achievement, it is critical for tpps to build a foundation for institutional change that supports a cultural shift. in turn, this will lead to improved learning for teacher candidates and ultimately pk-12 students. one meaningful pathway change is to examine the quality of teacher performance assessments, which are employed by tpps to determine a teacher candidate’s readiness to enter the teaching ranks. without valid and reliable assessments, tpps have little documentation for stakeholders about their efforts to prepare strong beginning teachers (darling-hammond, 2010). building upon the legacy of the beginning educator support and training (best) program in connecticut, the national board of professional teaching standards, and the performance assessment of california teachers (pact), the edtpa continues to drive for high quality current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 2 performance assessments in tpps. the edtpa allows tpps the opportunity to implement a valid and reliable assessment instrument with the potential to enact substantive institutional change in the tpp (peck, galluci, & sloan, 2010). in a small pilot setting with planning, leadership, and support, implementing the edtpa is a challenging but manageable task. in larger edtpa implementations, the scale issue can be confounding. issues related to faculty buy-in, program readiness, technical support, and leadership may halt institutional change before it begins—that is, before the performance data that can prove its worth is even collected. this article is not about the edtpa itself, but rather how a specific teacher-producing, large institution adopted and implemented the edtpa. the goal of this reflective self-analysis is to highlight the challenges tpps face when attempting a transformative change such as an edtpa implementation. structured reflection through the lens of organizational and cultural change provides a framework for examining the key roles and activities in relation to principles of change (kezar, 2001). it also identifies potential barriers to overcome in order to successfully implement the edtpa at scale and transform teacher preparation. this self-analysis was conducted at a large regional institution in the southeastern united states that produces nearly 20% of all new teachers in the state annually. while this context is unique to the institution, all tpps implementing edtpa are likely to encounter similar challenges regardless of size or location, particularly as the national spotlight on tpps intensifies. literature review organizational change in higher education change is difficult in higher education, and if judged by past performance, change to enact diverse learning and professional environments is particularly hard. the values and organizational dynamics of higher education are unique and especially problematic for making foundational and cultural change. (williams, berger, & mcclendon, 2005) while national attention on teacher education may convince tpps of the need to evolve their practice, institutional change in higher education is a slow process (scott, 1998; tagg, 2012). in order to achieve effective change in tpps, a subgroup of committed faculty must be willing to adopt new practices while simultaneously shifting from an individual understanding to a collectively negotiated understanding of the practicality and need for change (schien, 1990; tagg, 2012; peck et al., 2009). part of the negotiation process is the need for stakeholders to have a clear conceptualization of the connection between the institutional culture and the understanding of the change process (kezar & eckel, 2002). this connection between institutional culture and the change process becomes clearer as individuals within the institution emerge and are identified by stakeholders as key players. ginsberg and bernstein (2011) identify the roles involved in organizational change in institutions of higher education, including a leader, change agents, and facilitator(s). they offer a tool for outlining the role of each, as illustrated in table 1. each function plays an essential part in building the foundation for change, and through their actions, principles of change may be observed. table 1 roles involved in cultural change (ginsberg & bernstein, 2011) role importance person(s) playing role leader(s) possesses institutional power and influence to help change institutional culture dean of soe change agent(s) possesses passion and substantive knowledge to help make change occur edtpa pilot faculty members facilitator(s) possesses combination of institutional clout and substantive knowledge to help smooth the process of change director of assessment and accreditation technology facilitator/ portfolio manager according to ginsberg and bernstein (2011), the leader of any institutional change effort must have a clear vision of where he or she wants to lead the organization and have the ability to articulate that vision to others. once shared, the visionary leader must command the institutional power and influence to accomplish the vision. the leader is aided by the support of two key groups: the change agents and the facilitators, each with key roles. change agents have the passion and content expertise to actualize the vision of the leader. they are supported by facilitators who have a combination of content expertise and institutional clout that can support and facilitate change efforts. while the research literature in higher education organizational change focuses on the entire institution, organizational change in tpps is not wholly unique. for instance, kezar’s meta-analysis of change theory in higher education in 2001 has evolved into a “complex set of research-based principles” (p. 5) of change that, in isolation or combination, yield a framework for describing organizational change in action. kezar (2001) states, “these principles are derived from the collective wisdom of hundreds of research studies, no recipe is offered; understanding change requires the development of common language and conceptualization of change that is content based” (p. 6). this reflective self-analysis utilizes six of kezar’s principles of organizational change because of their alignment with emerging issues identified through the self-analysis. together, they provide a large-scale implementation of the edtpa: reflections upon institutional change in action 3 framework for reflecting upon the edtpa implementation and a potential model for other tpps embarking on an edtpa implementation. national calls for increased accountability in teacher preparation accountability in higher education is sharpening its focus on tpps and their graduates. no longer can tpps claim their graduates are well prepared; they must also demonstrate that their graduates can positively impact k-12 student achievement. the research literature linking k-12 students’ performance and teacher characteristics is growing as more states connect k-12 student performance to teacher evaluations and tpps (darling-hammond, 1999; goe, 2007; wayne & youngs, 2003; wilson, floden, & ferrini-munday, 2001). there is little argument among educational researchers that a teacher’s preparation and qualifications are the most predictive indicator of student achievement (boyd, grossman, lankford, loeb, & wycoff, 2009; darlinghammond & youngs, 2002; goldhaber & brewer, 2000; wayne & youngs, 2003; wilson, floden, & ferrinimunday, 2001). until recently, there was no standardized assessment that could be used to measure a teacher candidate’s readiness to become a “teacher-of-record.” individual states determine the criteria for teacher licensure. in many states, teacher candidates are required to pass one or more tests to prove their knowledge of basic skills, subject matter, and professional practice (baines, 2006; wilson & youngs, 2005). a majority are “paper and pencil” tests that lack a performance component. in 2001, there were more than 600 aforementioned teacher tests in use (mitchell, robinson, plake, & knowles, 2001). recognizing the link between teacher quality and student achievement, federal and state governments are demanding increased accountability in teacher education. accountability in schools of education has been influenced by the passage of the 2001 no child left behind act (nclb). it requires all teachers who teach core academic subjects to be “highly qualified.” however, the parameters of highly qualified were to be determined by each state, resulting in multiple definitions of the term. therefore, a highly qualified teacher in one state may not be considered highly qualified in another. calls for accountability have also been addressed at the state level. in 1998, california enacted a law requiring all teacher candidates to successfully complete a state-approved performance assessment in order to be eligible for licensure. until recently, connecticut required beginner teachers to pass a performance assessment in their second or third year of teaching in order to be eligible for a professional license. (the requirement was suspended in 2008 due to funding issues.) both assessments have been validated as predictors of student achievement (pecheone & chung, 2006; wilson, hallam, pecheone, & moss, 2007). massachusetts, minnesota, ohio, tennessee, and washington are all on accelerated timelines to adopt a valid and reliable teacher performance assessment as mandated by state law (council of chief state school officers, 2011). national pilot of edtpa recognizing the need to assess teacher candidate readiness, the stanford center for assessment, learning, and equity (scale) set out to create such an assessment. working with the american association of colleges for teacher education (aacte) and teacher educators nationwide, the teacher performance assessment consortium (tpac) was formed. using pact as a model, the consortium developed a new version of the assessment that would be nationally available, the edtpa (darling-hammond, 2012) (edtpa was known as the tpa during the pilot and field test years, but called edtpa in this article for consistency). the assessment is intended to be used for teacher licensure and is comparable to licensing exams in other professions (e.g., medicine, architecture, law) (aacte, 2012). according to linda darling-hammond (2012): “the critical importance of this move for the teaching profession is that it has the potential to dramatically improve how teachers are prepared and to ensure that beginners enter the classroom truly ready to teach” (p. 12). the edtpa was piloted in 2010-2011 and fieldtested in 2011-2012. the national field test involved more than 7,000 teacher candidates in 21 states. a second field test was conducted during the 2012-2013 academic year involving 4,500 teacher candidates from five states. in november 2013, scale released the edtpa technical report establishing the validity and reliability of the assessment (scale, 2013). currently, there are 34 states and the district of columbia involved with edtpa (aacte, 2013). six states have a current policy in place that requires successful completion of a state-approved performance assessment for program completion and/or licensure recommendation, including hawaii, minnesota, new york, tennessee, washington, and wisconsin. the edtpa has been approved for this purpose in these states, while california, georgia, illinois, ohio, and maine are taking steps toward the implementation of edtpa. in 23 other states, the edtpa is being used by at least one teacher preparation provider. in states where the edtpa is required by state policy, student portfolios are submitted to the operational partner, pearson, for official scoring. the edtpa is officially scored by evaluators who are trained and calibrated by pearson, and also have expertise in the subject matter or developmental level of the teaching field under assessment (scale, 2013). the cadre of more than 500 evaluators consists of both university faculty and p-12 educators. other states and teacher education providers are using the assessment for local evaluation only. portfolios are only scored by locally-trained evaluators (scale, 2013). current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 4 a brief history of edtpa implementation in an effort to reform the teacher education program approval process in 2008-2009, the north carolina state department of education (sde) mandated program revisions of all initial licensure programs. this included the submission of an electronic portfolio containing course-embedded evidence products to demonstrate teacher candidate proficiency of the state teaching standards. then, while the revised programs were being implemented, the state university system commissioned a study of the effectiveness of all public tpp graduates as measured by k-12 student achievement scores in the state. this value-added modeling research, which included program by program ranking of teacher effectiveness, was disseminated to the state system education deans and their faculty. following this systemwide study, the dean of the school of education initiated a series of drill-down studies, including validity and reliability analyses of all teacher candidate performance assessments. in this context, a drill-down study was a more focused analysis that examined data at a deeper and more granular level. analyses conducted at the university system level (henry et al., 2014) were replicated at the program level (henry et al., 2013). these studies revealed significant weaknesses in the teacher performance assessments utilized by the tpp, which therefore led the institution to seek a new, more valid, and reliable assessment to implement in its programs. this work at the university system and institutional level coincided with the rollout of the national edtpa pilot. in 2010, the institution was invited to participate in a pilot of the new edtpa, a consortium supported by the american association of colleges for teacher education (aacte), with a goal of providing valid and reliable assessment data to drive program improvement and curricular reform. entry to the edtpa began in spring 2010, with one middle grades education teacher candidate participating in a trial to determine how a potential edtpa implementation would impact program process and curriculum. in spring 2011, three teacher education programs (secondary english education, secondary history education, and middle grades education) entered the edtpa pilot with a group of committed faculty members leading the implementation. approximately 85 teacher candidates piloted the edtpa during the student teaching semester, forming “generation 1” of the edtpa implementation. together, they navigated the many new edtpa requirements, activities, and expectations with their faculty and university supervisors. as part of implementing the edtpa, the faculty, university supervisors, and teacher candidates were required to access a new online portfolio assessment system, record and review video clips of teacher candidate instruction, and score portfolios using the edtpa rubric. workshops were held approximately once a month to provide training to university supervisors. workshops were also held to introduce university supervisors to the rubrics and how to score them. additional workshops focused on the technical aspects of accessing teacher candidates’ portfolios via the department’s electronic portfolio system. table 2 engagement in edtpa pilot, 2010-2013, spring to spring comparison year generation # programs # spring interns total # spring interns % total spring tpp 2009-10 --1 1 -- 2010-11 gen 1 3 94 469 20% 2011-12 gen 2 6 354 459 77% 2012-13 gen 3 14 486 506 96% the scale of the implementation increased significantly in spring 2012 with the addition of the elementary education, music education, and special education programs to the edtpa pilot. this increased the pilot to 354 interns, or 77% of all teacher candidates at the institution. these new programs formed “generation 2” of the edtpa implementation. tripling the size of the edtpa pilot necessitated the development of significant infrastructure (e.g., project management, communication, local scorer training, technology support) to support teacher candidates, university supervisors, clinical teachers, and faculty engaged in the pilot. the dean charged an edtpa leadership team to guide and support the implementation through this expansion. the edtpa leadership team included a faculty member from a pilot tpp, the director of assessment and accreditation, and a technology facilitator/portfolio manager. while the director of assessment and accreditation and the technology facilitator/portfolio manager assumed this role and related tasks as part of their workload, the dean of the school of education provided a single course reassignment for the tpp faculty member supporting of edtpa implementation at the unit level. in addition to the edtpa leadership team, lead faculty in each program began meeting monthly as “pods,” i.e., groups of program faculty and university supervisors at the same stage of edtpa implementation. in spring 2012, there were two pods, one for generation 1 programs and another for generation 2 programs. the two pods met jointly to address issues of importance to the entire group, as well as separately to address generational concerns. in spring 2013, building upon the success of the previous year’s expansion, the edtpa implementation expanded to 486 interns from 13 of the 17 tpps at the large-scale implementation of the edtpa: reflections upon institutional change in action 5 institution. the additional seven programs that comprised generation 3 included: birth-kindergarten education, business education, health education, secondary mathematics education, physical education, secondary science education, and theatre education. the pilot’s distributed leadership model evolved from the pods to include lead faculty from each program engaged in the edtpa at the institution. these liaisons, known as “edtpals,” are key partners with the edtpa leadership team. as new programs join the edtpa pilot, a lead faculty member is identified to serve as an edtpal. they serve as program representatives, participate in collective decision-making for the edtpa implementation, communicate with program faculty about trainings and scoring timelines, and work with program faculty to develop embedded signature assessments in alignment with edtpa language and constructs. this article focuses on the spring 2013 implementation of edtpa and includes all programs in generations 1, 2, and 3. since the majority of programs at the institution only offer the two-semester senior year internship in consecutive fall and spring semesters, the spring 2013 semester offers the larger proportion of teacher candidates and programs engaged in the edtpa implementation. this accounts for approximately 96% of spring semester interns at the institution. having a critical mass of teacher candidates and programs engaged provided additional data for analysis (such as quantitative data and anecdotal feedback from interns, university supervisors, and faculty). while all available teacher candidate performance data is shared with programs annually, the edtpa offered the tpp an opportunity to analyze data across programs and address concerns and issues at the program and unit level. institutional change as a result of an edtpa implementation to support the growing edtpa implementation, a model of distributed leadership was developed to leverage the role of the leader, change agents, and facilitators to enact institutional change in the tpp. the institution’s edtpa leadership team was empowered by the institutional leader (the dean) to lead the edtpa implementation and develop an organizational model utilizing pod leaders and edtpals over time. as the scale-up progressed, many issues emerged (both anticipated and unanticipated) that required action by the edtpa leadership team. how did the tpp address these emerging issues? an analysis of edtpa implementation artifacts led the edtpa leadership team to identify three foundational issues that tpps implementing edtpa must address. the three issues include: 1. how to develop an organizational structure and support model for large-scale edtpa implementation. 2. how to address program and faculty readiness for the edtpa. 3. how to leverage the edtpa to promote datadirected program improvement and curriculum development. table 3 theory to practice reflective framework emerging edtpa issues kezar principle (2001) tpp experience/action 1. developing an organizational structure and support model for large-scale implementation lay groundwork for change be open to a disorderly process create organizational chart to structure edtpa work develop communication protocol provide technology support and anticipate needs 2. addressing program and faculty readiness promote organizational selfdiscovery realize change in higher education is often political create a culture of risk and help people in changing belief systems other portfolios not successfully implemented and/or integrated independent empirical evidence of program strengths and weaknesses develop academic language of edtpa among faculty 1. promoting data directed program improvement and curriculum development construct opportunities for interaction to develop new mental models create a culture of risk and help people in changing belief systems seize opportunities to share edtpa data, teacher candidate work samples, and edtpa-related research by faculty develop curriculum blueprints with edtpa to align with ihe, state, and national accreditation hold edtpa data summits to connect faculty teaching across scope of tpp curriculum to assist tpps in conceptualizing these emerging issues, the six principles of organizational change most relevant to the edtpa implementation provide a framework for reflection and refinement (kezar, 2001). for each issue, a situational context is provided, including a description of how the tpp addressed the issue and the organizational change principle in which it is linked. 1. develop an organizational structure and support model for large-scale edtpa implementation. the development of a distributed leadership model provided an organizational framework that allowed the institution to formalize the operational component of edtpa. the edtpa leadership team was empowered by the dean of the school of education to lead the implementation. responsibilities assumed by the edtpa leadership team include: planning local scorer training, developing help guides for teacher candidates and faculty, communicating with program faculty, and organizing monthly meetings with program contacts. the edtpa leadership team developed an organizational framework to provide structure, clear lines of communication, and a chain of command for clinical practice, faculty development, and technology support. the organizational current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 6 model, which aligned with kezar’s principles (2001), sought to encompass the many factors at work during the capstone experience of student teaching as the edtpa was introduced. in the area of clinical practice, the institution established a system of pod leaders to provide university supervisors with a direct link for questions and issues. pod leaders were full-time university faculty who act as liaisons between the program faculty and the university supervisors in the field. pod leaders met monthly with the edtpa leadership team to review protocols, timelines, and address emerging issues and concerns. the pod leaders helped the edtpa leadership team analyze how university supervisors, clinical teachers, and interns were “taking up” the edtpa. for example, if the same questions were being asked by multiple university supervisors, the leadership team could immediately trace the questions to determine if it was a common widespread issue or a miscommunication within one pod. the strength of the pod leader model was that it balanced both the needs of the faculty (program development and research) and clinical practice (interns and university supervisors). in spring 2012, the pod leader model evolved as more programs entered the edtpa implementation. as eight new programs entered generation 3, the implementation became too large for the edtpa leadership team to support pods at the program level. as a result, the role of the edtpa liaison, or edtpal, evolved. this new role focused on faculty development in three key areas that were not typically linked to the student teaching experience, but were essential to teacher candidate success in that experience. the edtpals met with university supervisors on a regular basis to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of teacher candidates as they entered the field, which provided a forum for interaction and support to lay the groundwork for change. next, by engaging with the edtpa more deeply and collectively, edtpals were able to align their institutional student learning outcomes with the tasks in the edtpa. this allowed faculty to be more strategic in their assessment efforts. in addition, edtpals began to build a collective research agenda around the practice of preparing teachers. technology support in the organizational model stood independent of clinical practice and faculty development, but it supported the efforts of both. the edtpa presented technology issues for teacher candidates, faculty, and edtpa scorers that were both complementary and individual. as an electronic portfolio, the edtpa required online submission of portfolio artifacts for teacher candidates and online scoring for faculty. both stages required targeted training and support that must be built into the teacher education program over time. lacking the opportunity to develop capacity prior to the scale-up phase, technology facilitators held multiple support sessions for teacher candidates and faculty, including focused video support sessions in order to aid the edtpa submission and scoring process. over time, as requisite technology skills are built into and reinforced through course work, and as the video and e-portfolio technology become more pervasive, the role of the technology facilitator will continue to evolve. overall, the organizational model allowed participating faculty to see their role in the edtpa implementation and how they interact with others. individuals participating in new initiatives enter into what doyle and ponder refer to as the “practicality ethic” in decision-making (1977). this timeless concept, aligned with kezar’s (2001) change principle of “be open to a disorderly process,” provides participants with a framework for understanding how they fit as an individual (skill set or position). it also helps them to understand how their participation fits into the larger organizational reform model. participants were aware that the edtpa implementation was an iterative process that would evolve over time and involve a variety of ongoing discussions and revisions to the process. the model provided a foundation upon which further institutional change could be built. for example, between generation 2 and generation 3, the edtpa organizational model shifted focus from the role of the pod leader to that of the edtpal. the organizational model of edtpa implementation provided a foundation for change, yet it continues to develop to ensure ongoing faculty involvement, technological updates, and most importantly, responsiveness to teacher candidate needs. 2. address program and faculty readiness. in this specific setting, micro-political issues were the most significant barrier to implementing the edtpa, which aligns with kezar’s (2001) principle that “change in higher education is often political.” there were three key micro-political issues involved in this tpp’s edtpa implementation. while unique in context, they are not uncommon across the spectrum of higher education institutions. first, with teacher education programs in five colleges across the university, the edtpa implementation had to navigate five different political landscapes. in addition, five of the six edtpa programs in spring 2012 were housed in a large department that was undergoing its own organizational change—a reorganization that would result in three new, separate departments. these micro-political issues at the college and department levels impacted faculty readiness to engage in the edtpa implementation. next, all teacher education faculty were strongly invested in developing teacher candidate evidences for the state-mandated licensure portfolio. considerable time and effort were devoted to the state-mandated program revisions and faculty were very hesitant to replace their products with the edtpa. it was imperative that the edtpa leadership large-scale implementation of the edtpa: reflections upon institutional change in action 7 team “develop a culture of risk” that would empower faculty to change their perspective on the edtpa (kezar, 2001). there was another micro-political issue posing a significant challenge: many faculty members disagreed with or were unaware of the philosophy behind the edtpa, including the role of pearson as the operational partner. team members addressed this issue by embracing kezar’s (2001) principle of self-discovery. the team first provided edtpa information, including news and journal articles, handbooks, and other materials to all participating faculty. the team then provided data from the 2011 pilot to identify and illustrate program strengths and weaknesses. data quickly revealed that teacher candidates in all program areas struggled with academic language and providing assessment feedback. the initial data was eye-opening and served as catalyst for faculty buy-in at several levels. broadly sharing information about the edtpa (including criticism) promoted transparency in the implementation process and opportunities for faculty participation in edtpa-related research. focusing on student outcome data rather than course instruction also kept student learning at the forefront and reduced concerns regarding academic freedom of instruction. in addition, continued dialogue (in both a formal and informal setting) continued with all faculty members across the colleges at many different levels and helped to minimize micro-political issues. finally, maintaining local evaluation of the edtpa at the program and campus levels obviated the need to engage with official edtpa scoring with pearson. however, as the national launch of edtpa continues, more faculty are choosing to become trained and calibrated scorers with pearson because they feel it provides a different perspective of the edtpa and a deeper understanding of the instrument. the major issue the institution faced in addressing program and faculty readiness was not capacity, but rather dispositional readiness. the tpp faculty boasted dedicated and innovative teacher educators, but in north carolina they were weary of change and concerned about how more change would impact their work and their teacher candidates’ success. the unit had to concede that, despite the time and labor intensive process, the revision of the state-mandated program did not yield a more informative assessment of teacher candidate readiness. what was created was no more valid or reliable that what had existed before. secondly, the faculty had to acknowledge that the edtpa was a more effective way to assess teacher candidates, and that it ultimately would be more valid and reliable. once they had accepted the edtpa, program faculty worked through a backward curriculum mapping process in their individual programs to ensure that teacher candidates would successfully complete the edtpa portfolio during their student teaching semester. this process involved revising courses and individual course activities prior to the culminating experience. for example, senior-level pedagogical methods courses developed new formative, embedded signature assessments aligned with edtpa. earlier courses in the program are now also being revised to embed edtparelated language, provide scaffolded support for teacher candidates, and ensure teacher candidate competence. finally, existing program assessment goals and institutional-level assessments needed to be revised or integrated to better align with the edtpa portfolio. models developed in one program in the edtpa implementation were shared with others as the implementation grew. 3. promote data-directed program improvement and curriculum development. during the institution's most recent ncate accreditation visit, the unit was cited for inconsistency in reviewing its teacher performance data on an annual basis. lacking meaningful assessment data, the program faculty completed annual assessment reports as a perfunctory task or academic exercise, rather than a meaningful process to inform program improvement. with the implementation of the edtpa, the tpp has collected high quality teacher candidate performance data to share readily and easily with program faculty. once shared within programs, edtpa’s common language fostered discussions across programs. as the edtpa implementation expands, faculty members are developing their own academic language around the edtpa that links conceptual and skill development throughout the teacher education curriculum and across content areas. kezar’s (2001) principles are a reminder that institutional change in higher education requires institutions to: 1) “construct opportunities for interaction to develop a new mental model;” and 2) “create a culture of risk and help people in changing belief systems.” when promoting data-directed program improvement and curriculum reform, these principles remind unit leaders and facilitators to keep the edtpa in front of faculty in as many venues as possible and to clearly illustrate how the edtpa aligns with and supports assessment and accreditation efforts at the institutional, state, and national levels. one recurring opportunity to highlight the use of edtpa data and its alignment to various sets of national standards is as part of the unit’s annual assessment reporting process. through focused conversation and abundant data, more programs within the tpp are using the edtpa architecture to focus the annual student learning outcomes assessment for regional accreditation. in this example, three program learning outcomes in individual tpps are focused on evidence of planning, content pedagogy, and assessment of student learning—and are all clearly aligned with edtpa tasks. from the series of drill-down studies, including validity and reliability analysis of teacher candidate performance assessments, it became clear that the first current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 8 order was to identify such an instrument that could be used for multiple purposes. the evolutionary process developed by the edtpa leadership team created a comprehensive framework that allowed program areas to implement the edtpa in phases. each phase included collaborative activities that allowed faculty members from within and between program areas to share best practices, reflect on the process, and most importantly, refine and customize professional development activities ranging from scorer training to program development. finally, the “why” of change was continually reinforced in two areas. first, an ongoing analysis that connected student learning to the edtpa and other multiple sets of data (e.g., intern progress report, internship syllabus, early experience activities, teacher quality partnership) provided a framework to establish consistency within and between programs. in addition, a wellspring of research studies focused on student learning allowed both clinical and research faculty to collaborate in an unprecedented fashion (i.e., american educational research association presentation, aacte presentations). the edtpa leadership team promoted data-driven program improvement and curriculum reform in the edtpa scaleup through several key activities. with support from the school of education dean, the edtpa leadership team seized opportunities to share edtpa data, products, and reflections by teacher candidates and faculty. schools of education have many preexisting opportunities to focus their attention on performance data, including college, department, and program level faculty meetings. by making assessment a regular agenda item, interactions with edtpa performance data increased in quantity, quality, and impact. additionally, making performance data available for faculty following these meetings allowed for continued engagement on faculty terms, not forced interactions. curriculum blueprints were also developed to align the edtpa with institutional, state, and national accreditation. historically, institutional assessment activities have been add-on activities, not embedded throughout the curriculum. as part of the edtpa implementation, deliberate efforts to align program approval and accreditation efforts have streamlined assessment tasks and made the assessment of the curriculum as important as curriculum development and implementation. a powerful example of data-directed program improvement was the first edtpa data summit held in june 2013. this event brought together edtpals and other program faculty with the edtpa leadership team to focus on available edtpa from the most recent semester of implementation (spring 2013). data from the semester was aggregated at the unit level and disaggregated at the program level, and was shared with all faculty members. additional data analyses examined edtpa scores by faculty rank, edtpa scores versus internship grades, and other exploratory analyses. the goal of the data summit was to share data openly and broadly with program faculty, and to also develop a set of guiding priorities for the next year of edtpa implementation. the data summit led to four key priorities for the edtpa leadership team and edtpals to address in 2013-2014, including: 1. curriculum mapping where formative and summative assessment is taught in the tpp 2. determining if and how edtpa scores should be used to determine student teacher internship grades 3. working to improve the quality and focus of local evaluator training; and 4. engaging professional studies core course faculty (educational psychology, social foundations, and special education) in the edtpa implementation. while these priorities are currently being addressed, one area in which progress can be reported is the fourth item. faculty who teach professional studies core courses, such as educational foundations and educational psychology courses, are often marginalized from program level curriculum discussions. as the edtpals began their monthly meetings in fall 2013, new edtpals representing each of the professional studies core courses joined the edtpal group. now, faculty teaching across the full scope of the curriculum are connecting through the edtpa in ways that were previously not possible. using the edtpa’s common architecture and language, professional core course faculty and tpp methods faculty have new opportunities to highlight the importance of each course in the program of study as they work to develop well-prepared beginning teachers. discussion and final recommendations while this tpp’s experiences implementing the edtpa are shared by other tpps across the nation, its responses to implementation challenges are contextspecific. as the edtpa implementation expands nationally, the type and complexity of the challenges will continue to evolve. kezar’s (2001) principles of organizational change provide a practical framework for reflection and anticipation that can be utilized by institutions currently engaging in or planning for an edtpa implementation. the principles of change create an effective model for rapid expansion in a large-scale tpp. the change process will not end once the edtpa is implemented in all tpps at the institution because change is a dynamic, ongoing process. as tpps move from edtpa exploration and adoption, to implementation and iterative refinement, kezar’s principles continue to provide a valuable framework for reflecting upon and planning for institutional change. amid policies and practices in teacher education and higher education, the shift to implementing a national performance-based assessment can be daunting. large-scale implementation of the edtpa: reflections upon institutional change in action 9 successful implementation and communication by program leadership team can lead to transformational change. recommendations to tpps include: 1. offer initial training for all faculty members. 2. encourage discussions and communication regarding the components and potential impacts of using a national-based performance assessment. 3. create a curriculum map connecting specific components of planning, teaching, and assessment that leads to the final product. 4. dive in. program leadership must think about ways to build the workload into existing workloads for faculty that relates to implementing the edtpa. it must involve the entire program faculty in the process of a summative assessment. the collection and analysis of results from the edtpa will provide programs with rich and useful data on success of their teacher candidates, as well as areas for improvement. further data analysis will provide tpps and teacher educators with strong data to improve curricula, programs, and the success of teacher candidates. references baines, l. 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(2005). accountability processes in teacher education. in m. cochransmith & k. m. zeichner (eds.), studying teacher education: the report of the aera panel on research and teacher (591-644). mahwah, n.j. : lawrence erlbaum associates. http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/pdfs/teacherprep-wffm-02-2001.pdf large-scale implementation of the edtpa: reflections upon institutional change in action 11 article citation lys, d. b., l’esperance, m., dobson, e. e., & bullock, a. a. (2014). large-scale implementation of the edtpa: reflections upon institutional change in action. current issues in education 17(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1256 author notes dr. diana b. lys college of education, east carolina university speight 102, mailstop 504 greenville, nc 27858 lysd@ecu.edu diana lys is the director of the office of assessment and accreditation in the college of education at east carolina university. dr. mark l’esperance college of education, east carolina university speight building, mailstop 504 greenville, nc 27858 lesperancem@ecu.edu mark l’esperance is an associate professor in the department of elementary education and middle grades education in the college of education at east carolina university. dr. ellen e. dobson college of education, east carolina university speight 102, mailstop 504 greenville, nc 27858 dobsone@ecu.edu ellen e. dobson is the assistant director of the office of assessment and accreditation in the college of education at east carolina university. dr. ann adams bullock college of education, east carolina university speight building, mailstop 504 greenville, nc 27858 bullockv@ecu.edu ann adams bullock is chair and associate professor in the department of elementary education and middle grades education in the college of education at east carolina university. manuscript received: 06/18/2013 revisions received: 08/18/2014 accepted: 09/07/2014 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 12 volume 17, number 3 december 22, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell authentications editors lisa marie lacy tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson tray j. geiger section editors rikkilynn archibeque tray j. geiger laura beth kelly kevin j. raso evelyn concepcion baca darlene michelle gonzales priyanka parekh isaac lamont bickmore megan hoelting niels piepgrass faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1074_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 march 4, 2013 issn 1099-839x everyone has a story: a collaborative inquiry project by five teacher candidates of color and one white professor laura bower-phipps, rachel watanabe tate, sejal mehta, and amanda sature southern connecticut state university initiatives to increase the number of teachers of color in u.s. public schools must be accompanied by culturally relevant teacher preparation for candidates of color. this study is a cooperative inquiry (heron, 1996) conceived, conducted, and analyzed by five preservice teachers of color and one of their professors, a white lesbian. the women met biweekly for a year to co-construct meaning from their experiences in a teacher education program. they analyzed data sources together, including meeting transcripts, autobiographical sketches, and reflective writing on themes from the data. key findings include the complexity of teacher candidates’ identities; the importance of support systems for teacher candidates of color, particularly within predominantly white contexts; the connection between teacher candidates’ backgrounds and their visions as teachers; and the role others’ perceptions, particularly teacher educators, have played in teacher candidates becoming teachers. keywords: diversity, teachers of color, cooperative inquiry, teacher identity when i first started taking education classes, i realized, “wow, i’m the only black person in here!” because i’m part of the minority teacher scholarship program, i knew i had my support system. but i could only imagine not having anybody. of course you can connect with the people in your class who are of different races. but if you have somebody of your race, or people who look like you, or can identify with you, it’s different. (olivia; research meeting) the “demographic imperative,” a belief that teachers’ cultural and ethnic backgrounds should more closely reflect the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of their students, has prompted a great number of initiatives to increase the number of teachers of color in u.s. public schools (achinstein, ogawa, sexton, & freitas, 2010). such efforts are based on research that suggests that students of color may experience greater academic success when their teachers are also individuals of color (dee, 2004). in comparison to their white colleagues, teachers of color tend to have higher expectations for children of color and are more likely to build relationships with families of color (garcia & guerra, 2004; sleeter & thao, 2007). teachers of color serve as important academic role models; increasing numbers of teachers of color has been correlated with greater numbers of students of color enrolling in advanced-level classes and graduating from college (hess & leal, 1997; klopfenstein, 2005). it has been suggested that teachers of color “teach with a greater level of social consciousness than others” (dilworth & brown, 2005, p. 424; su, 1997). as teachers of color tend to possess greater multicultural knowledge (dee & hankin, 2002), they are better poised to teach in culturally relevant ways, taking culture, language, and community into account (ladson-billings, 1995). despite the importance of teachers of color in providing academic role modeling and culturally relevant instruction for the many students of color in u.s. public current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 schools, teacher education continues to focus on preparing white, middle-class, female teachers and remains largely unresponsive to the needs of teacher candidates of color (sheets & chew, 2002; sleeter & thao, 2007). to prepare teachers of color for any school, but particularly schools in which the majority of students are individuals of color, teacher education must be examined from the perspective of teacher candidates of color. the purpose of this study, which was cooperatively conceptualized, conducted, and analyzed by teacher candidates of color and one of their professors, was to understand better the experiences of teacher candidates of color in a predominantly white teacher education program. in understanding these experiences, teacher educators can better support teacher candidates of color. candidates of color in teacher education previous research related to teacher candidates of color and teacher education programs tends to focus on recruitment, with attention to issues of funding, programming, and community partnerships (flores, clark, claeys, & villarreal, 2007; lau, dandy, & hoffman, 2007; ramirez, 2009). such research addresses barriers that prevent teacher candidates of color from entering the teaching professions, including low teacher pay, lack of information about the teaching professions, and high stakes testing (brown, 2005; ramirez, 2009; williams, graham, mccary-henderson, & floyd, 2009). this research also identifies factors that contribute to the decisions of individuals of color to enter teaching, including family support/influence, role models, and a desire to serve their communities (miller & endo, 2005; weisman & hansen, 2008; williams, graham, mccaryhenderson, & floyd, 2009). there is little research regarding the experiences teacher candidates of color have after being recruited to teacher education programs (montecinos, 2004). the existing literature suggests that teacher candidates of color do not see themselves or their experiences represented in teacher education curricula (sheets & chew, 2002). teacher candidates of color feel misrepresented in their classroom interactions with white teacher educators and white peers (gomez, rodriguez, & agosto, 2008). consequently, teacher candidates of color feel less free to talk about race and racism when in a predominantly white teacher education setting (johnstonparsons, lee, & thomas, 2007). despite an increasing focus on social justice in teacher education programs, teacher candidates of color seem ill prepared to identify systemic inequities that have existed within their own educational experiences, and teacher education has done little to enable candidates to do so (kohli, 2008; weisman & hansen, 2008). it seems that the voices of teacher candidates of color are sorely lacking. this study has been designed to highlight the voices of teacher candidates of color through the use of cooperative inquiry (heron, 1996). cooperative inquiry cooperative inquiry aims to “create social and individual change by altering the role relations of people involved in the project” (reinharz, 1992, p. 181). we draw upon cooperative inquiry as both a methodology and a theoretical framework, as this type of inquiry promotes a distributed approach to power. foucault (1978) argued that power can never be unilaterally held, because, “where there is power, there is resistance” (p. 95). rather than setting in opposition the traditional roles of researcher and subject, cooperative inquiry disrupts binaries of researcher and subject, affirming the right of all people involved in a study to make decisions about methodology and about conclusions drawn. from an epistemological perspective, cooperative inquiry minimizes the gap that commonly exists between the concerns, knowledge, inner feelings, and modes of awareness of the people being studied and the thinking of the researcher that studies them (heron & reason, 2001; oates, 2002). “it avoids their being disempowered, oppressed and misrepresented by the researcher’s values implicit in any unilateral research design” (heron, 1996, p. 21). empowering and fairly representing all participants in research is particularly important in studies in which participants come from traditionally marginalized positions. said (1978) developed the term “other” to refer to those positioned as inferior and alien within dominant cultures. similarly, foucault (1978) used the terms “deviant” and “normal” to discuss the tendency of institutional and societal discourses marginalize some identities and ways of being. within teacher preparation programs, teacher candidates of color experience otherness in their divergence from “normal” teacher candidates: white, middle-class women from the suburbs (morell, 2010). cooperative inquiry empowers those who identify as “other” through positioning all involved in the inquiry as decision-makers, as researchers, and (to the extent desired by individuals) as reporters of findings. critics of cooperative inquiry and other forms of participatory research express concerns that “it lacks scientific rigor, confusing social activism and community development with research” (kemmis & mctaggart, 2003, p. 338). most feminist and critical theorists, however, resist the notion that scientific rigor and social activism are mutually exclusive, calling for research that methods that have the potential to “create social and individual change by altering the role relations of people involved in the project” (reinharz, 1992, p. 181). cooperative inquiry’s potential for personal and social transformation is particularly important for studies involving marginalized individuals (kasl & yorks, 2010). the teacher candidates of color who participated in this study did so not only as objects of study, but also as researchers. shared decision making characterized this inquiry, promoting the empowerment of teacher everyone has a story: a collaborative inquiry project by five teacher candidates of color and one white professor 3 candidates of color (heron, 1992). all group members participated in conceptualization, data collection, data analysis, and reporting of findings. the group engaged in cyclical movement between experiencing a teacher education program and reflecting upon those experiences. as detailed in the methodology section, the four stages of a cooperative inquiry are an initial reflection stage, an initial action stage, a stage of continued action with greater awareness, and a second reflection stage. this use of cooperative inquiry to forefront the voices of teacher candidates of color was particularly important given the underrepresentation of teacher candidates of color in teacher education programs and in the literature. methodology this cooperative inquiry began with an invitation from a faculty member (laura), the initiating researcher (reason, 1988), to all of the students in her preservice teacher education courses. five female teacher candidates of color responded to this invitation to explore the experiences of people who are “the other” in teacher education programs. the call was intentionally broad, with the initiating researcher aiming for clarity and flexibility, to allow the group to determine a specific focus of mutual interest (heron, 1996). each group member decided upon her level of involvement. while all members contributed and consented for their stories to be told, three (laura, rachel, and sejal) have collaborated to prepare this manuscript and to reconstruct the voices of the remaining group members. a fourth author (amanda) joined the project to assist with the development of this manuscript. upon gathering to determine our purpose as an inquiry group (heron, 1996), the group created the name the cultural research group (crg) and crafted research questions: how do teacher candidates of color selfidentify? what draws teacher candidates of color to the education professions? in what teaching contexts do teacher candidates of color hope to become teachers? what forms of support and what barriers do teacher candidates of color encounter in their path to becoming teachers? participants and context crg members were part of an education department at a regional state university. during the two semesters over which the study took place, fall 2009 and spring 2010, there were an average of 604 undergraduate students enrolled in the education department. while specific ethnicities were not available, 12.6% were designated as ethnic minority students. the education department had 12 full time faculty members, two of whom identified as ethnic minorities and one of whom (laura) identified as lesbian. in the entire university, there were 7,366 undergraduate students. the majority of students were white, 69.3%; 12.5% were black; 5.6% were hispanic; 2% were asian; 0.3% were native american; 0.5% were designated as non-resident immigrants; and 9.7% were unclassified. there were 407 full time faculty members at the university. sixty-six full time faculty members (16.2%) were ethnic minorities; 0.5% were native american; 6% were asian; 6% were black; 2.7% were hispanic; and 1% were unclassified ethnic minorities. statistics regarding sexual orientation were unavailable. crg members represented diverse backgrounds, with most having complex ethnic identities. they came from urban, suburban, and rural schools and a variety of family structures and socio-economic strata. some were bilingual; others spoke only english. all were educators in varying stages of their careers, and all identified as “the other” in a teacher education program. the student members were women of color and the faculty member was a white lesbian. crg members co-constructed autobiographies during this research. each group member wrote her own story. the group cooperatively refined and edited the stories, which are included here in an abbreviated format. pseudonyms were used for the crg members who did not wish to be authors on this paper. rachel watanabe tate. i come from a very diverse family. my mother is spanish and english. my father is japanese and white. my mother, a paraprofessional, has always taught in urban schools and is one of the few teachers who are bilingual. my mom has been an asset at every school she has worked in. after observing how much my mother was needed, i decided that i wanted to be in a community where i felt i was necessary. the community i fell into place with was the teaching community. my cultural background has played a huge role in my life. that background has inspired my desire to teach in an urban setting. i came from a poor single parent family, but being surrounded by good role models helped develop my good character. i believe that i can offer urban school students the chance to see a positive role model, as i did. i hope to provide them with the knowledge and encouragement they need to thrive and develop into positive role models themselves. olivia. i identify with the african american race. my mother’s side of the family is from the french side of st. martin. her mother descends from europe and her father is from the dominican republic. my father’s side of the family is believed to have come from ethiopia. i think that my cultural background connects to my teaching because i will be teaching to children who look like me. i may be able to connect with them on a different level than teachers who are not a minority. children of color need more role models who are like them. they need to be able to see, talk, and connect with someone who looks like them. this sends a message that they are able to achieve goals and they are able to strive for better. people of color are not failures, they do not need to fit into stereotypes and they are able to help and influence other people of color and give back to their communities. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 sejal mehta. i am an only child, and come from an indian background. both of my parents were born in india, so i am the first generation of my family to be born in the u.s. it is extremely difficult to be a first generation indian-american. at times i find myself struggling with which culture to identify with. many youths in the inner city do not have positive role models or people to believe in them and push them in the right direction. i want to be able to teach children who are going through the same difficulties i did while growing up. i want children to know that they are not alone in their experiences, that they have a teacher who truly understands them. i feel that the urban setting is in need of caring and productive teachers who give their time and energy into molding future leaders and quality citizens. sheena. growing up with a complex hyphenated identity makes it hard to explain what i am sometimes. i am chinese by descent so i am technically chinese, but my family is from taiwan, and i identify with the taiwanese. to make the situation more complex, i was born in the u.s. therefore, technically i am american; but am i taiwanese-american or chinese-american? being asian-american, i am expected either to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or business person. i have never had any intentions of fitting these stereotypes and have no interest in any of these professions, which really disappointed my family. knowing this, i still decided to become a teacher. because i grew up in a very diverse and urban-like community, it feels more natural and comfortable for me to teach in an urban setting. being able to relate to students allows me to have more fun with the students. i believe that only when everyone feels safe and secure does real learning take place. zoe. i was adopted by a spanish family when i was three years old. growing up, i lived in both urban and suburban communities. when i was younger i never wanted my mother to tell me about my biological family, because i did not want to feel like i was an “ugly duckling.” for years my adoption was kept a quiet and a secret. i came in contact with my biological family learned many things about myself including the fact that i am bi-racial, african american and irish. since then i have given my biological family another opportunity and have invited them into my life. i have decided to go into teaching because i enjoy educating others in any way that i can. i have noticed that the people who have gone into teaching are not very ethnically diverse. i want to change the status quo. i have decided that i want to teach in an urban community, because i feel like those communities need better teachers. i intend to work hard to educate students in those communities. laura bower-phipps1. for me, teaching is a family profession. nearly half of the people on both sides of my family are teachers; i am a fourth generation teacher on my mother’s side of the family. while i grew up middle class in a rural area with very little ethnic diversity, i chose to become a teacher in large, urban, culturally diverse schools. i taught spanish in what was the fifth largest school district in the country. as far as i know, i was the only white, non-mormon spanish teacher in the entire school district. i experienced a period of adjustment, but i felt more comfortable in a diverse setting than i had in my homogenous hometown. the reason for this was my sexual orientation; i am a lesbian. in a diverse context, i am one “other” among many. i believe that my sexual orientation heightens my sensitivity to other forms of difference within my classroom. this may be a reason that i sought out students who are the “other” in the education department, so that we could learn together about making teacher education more responsive to all students. stages of inquiry and data sources crg followed heron’s (1996) stages of the cooperative inquiry cycle to move between experiences and reflecting on those experiences. the first stage, as described above, was an initial reflection to determine a purpose for the inquiry, develop research questions, and discuss parameters of the study. crg became what heron (1996) called “a self generating culture” (p. 4). crg was “a society whose members are in a continuous process of cooperative learning, and whose forms are consciously adopted, periodically reviewed, and altered in the light of experience, reflection, and deeper vision” (heron, 1996, p. 4). the second stage was the first action phase, during which members continued to engage in roles within the education program and met once or twice each month, for a total of eleven meetings during the fall 2009 and spring 2010 semesters, to discuss and analyze experiences. record keeping of experiences was accomplished through audio recording and transcribing discussions. heron (1996) described the third stage as “full immersion in stage 2 with great openness to experience” (p. 49). crg accomplished this in part through integrating reflective writing alongside continued meetings. additionally, the practice of meeting while simultaneously engaged in classes prompted group members to view their experiences more deeply. stage four of the inquiry cycle was the second reflection phase in which group members shared data and made sense of the data. part of each meeting was ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1as a white woman and a professor, i continually questioned my place within this group. i felt that the stories of the student members of this group were far more important than mine, which was characterized by various forms of privilege. yet the students and i decided that including my story allowed us to develop important knowledge of each other and to provide context. everyone has a story: a collaborative inquiry project by five teacher candidates of color and one white professor 5 dedicated to this reflection. several group members also contributed written reflections on themes from the data. another element of stage four in the inquiry was planning for and writing several professional proposals and presentations (bower et al., 2010; bower et al., 2011; bower, mehta, watanabe, & chang, 2011). heron (1996) envisioned these stages as cyclical and continuous. crg research meetings tended to incorporate multiple stages of action and reflection. after establishing a purpose as an inquiry group, meetings consisted of four parts: member-checking of transcripts from the previous meeting; response to initial qualitative analysis of transcripts as compiled by the faculty member; discussion of a research question or related discussion question; and selection of a question for the subsequent meeting. the first two parts of the meeting were reflection, the third part was action, and the final part was planning for inquiry. throughout the inquiry, crg gathered three forms of data. the primary data source was transcripts of research meetings. a secondary data source included cultural and professional autobiographies. a third data source was reflective writing completed in relation to various themes from the initial analysis. data analysis following each meeting, the faculty member transcribed the meeting and sent the transcript to all group members. then she created inductive categories for the transcript; these categories were verified with group members at the next meeting. new data from each meeting were added to the previous categories or used to create new categories. together, crg refined the categories, with attention to the name, content, and definition of the category, through a constant comparison method (lincoln & guba, 1985). whenever there was dissention regarding a category name or definition, crg engaged in discussion until reaching an agreement. this process resulted in six categories: complexity of ethnic identity, others’ perception of race, not wanting to disappoint, cultural pride, support systems, and “standing up for what you believe in.” after data collection was complete, crg engaged in a second level of analysis, which involved creating subcategories for each category. this level of analysis allowed group members to refine categories and to move data into more suitable categories. in a final level of analysis, the authors (but not the other members of crg) compared subcategories, regrouping data and finalizing categories to align best with the research questions (merriam, 1992). the authors triangulated these categories with the autobiographies and reflective writing. this process resulted in four categories: identity, vision, challenges, and support. findings four categories of findings were developed to respond to the research questions: identity, vision, challenges, and support. the category of identity addressed the research question pertaining to how teacher candidates of color self-identify. vision corresponded both to the research question about what draws teacher candidates of color to the teaching professions and the research question about the contexts in which teacher candidates of color hope to become teachers. both the support and the challenges categories related to the research question regarding the forms of support and barriers teacher candidates of color encounter in their path to becoming teachers. identity the identities of crg members were evident within their abbreviated autobiographies found in the methodology section of this paper. the unabridged crg autobiographies, in addition to the meeting transcripts, and reflective writing pointed to a complexity of identity and desire to be authentic in self-identification complexity of identity. each group member had a rich, and often complicated, cultural background. sheena captured this in her reflective writing: after dissecting our stories, we found we all have an identity crisis. we are a bunch of prospective teachers and a university professor teaching college students to become teachers, with an identity crisis on our hands. yet it is our dilemmas that make us unique and make us fit to teach students of diverse backgrounds. we have experienced the other side and have struggled to find a place for ourselves in this world. student members self-identified as multicultural individuals. in a meeting dedicated to discussing cultural background, olivia described herself as “a mutt,” yet clarified “i think it’s easier for me. because i know i have a lot in me but i always identified with the black race. that african american umbrella is just easy for me.” many were multiracial, and all group members intentionally lived their lives in culturally diverse settings. in talking about her dedication to diversity, laura stated, “my wife and i like our neighborhood, because it’s a very multicultural neighborhood. we will not send our kids to a school that’s all white. there’s no chance!” crg conversations about identity extended beyond race and culture. during the cultural background meeting, sejal described differences between generations in her families. “my parents, aunts, uncles, they’re like, ‘you have to be like this, you have to follow these rules.’ me and my cousins, we’re growing up in completely different worlds. it’s kind of hard being the first generation here.” sheena described the different expectations in her family for boys and for girls. laura’s experiences with marginalization pertained directly to her identity as a lesbian. gender, generation, and sexual orientation were three factors beyond culture that contributed to the complexity of crg members’ current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 identities. authenticity. despite this complexity, group members want to be authentic and truthful in the way they defined themselves. zoe, during the meeting dedicated to describing cultural background, talked about her desire to be authentic, “i just have this big identity crisis. i really want to tell everyone the truth. but i don’t want my family, my adopted family to feel bad. and i don’t want this other family to feel bad.” sejal talked about making sure she described her background clearly. i knew that i was jain. every time i’d say, “oh, mom, i told someone i was hindu.” she’d be like, “you’re not hindu!” that’s the option on the paper. i check hindu. and that’s another thing; i didn’t know when i was little that india was part of asia. india is india. i didn’t know i was asian. crg members lived a careful balance between simple, authentic, truthful self-identification and honoring the complexity of their identities. vision crg student members had a clear vision of the teachers they wanted to be. this vision centered on teaching in urban schools, being academic role models for children of color, and valuing diversity. urban schools. crg teacher candidates expressed a desire to teach in an urban setting, as evident in their autobiographies. reasons for this desire included comfort, levels of cultural diversity in urban settings, and a desire to support students and promote equity in urban schools. this was further illustrated in a meeting dedicated to talking about the context in which crg student members hoped to teach. zoe suggested, “i think i would feel more comfortable in an urban setting, because i look more like them. and i feel like the students and the parents would just understand me.” in contrast, crg teacher candidates expressed reluctance to teach in suburban settings, as expressed by sheena. i have worked in urban schools, and that’s what i’m comfortable with. if i were to go into a suburban school, i would feel very out of place. i know a lot of people want to go to suburban schools, because they are afraid of the students [in urban schools]. i’m not afraid of the students in the suburban schools. i’m more afraid of the parents. olivia explained, “i like the diversity in the urban setting. plus, that’s what i’m comfortable with. i feel like you have much more fun. you can so many more things when you have a plethora of children in the room.” further, crg teacher candidates wanted to teach in urban settings to promote equity. sheena explained. “i don’t think the urban children have an equal opportunity. i don’t want to sound like i want to go and save them, because that’s not what i want to do. i want to give them the opportunities to be on equal ground with other children.” olivia’s experiences in urban schools fostered her desire to support children in urban settings. being at a public school opened my eyes to different types of families that people come from and the lack of resources and support that people have. some people don’t have any support from their family, but they had this one teacher who really pushed them and helped them and really supported them. they just thrived, and i believe that it’s because of that teacher. if they have one teacher to push them into the right direction, that’s enough to put somebody’s life on track. serving as a role model. crg student members anticipated being role models as teachers in urban settings. sejal explained her perspective that students would see teachers who looked like them as role models when she talked about the students in her fieldwork, “i think that students see, ‘oh, you’re like me, so i want to do well.’ you know, like when you see people who look like you.” and rachel explained her ability to serve as a role model, “a lot of these urban kids come from poor homes, single parent homes. and for a long time, that’s where i came from. i understand a lot of the things that they go through.” these conversations emerged in response to the question, “why did you decide to go into teaching?” crg student members focused in particular on modeling cultural pride, especially as they talked about their own cultural backgrounds. sejal expected to “tell children of our amazing experiences and how we might have had a time when we did not understand why we were different, but we learned that being different is special.” olivia talked about her message for children of all races and ethnicities. you should be proud of who you are. no one has the right to make you feel a certain way. you were born black, you were born white, and you were born asian. that’s what you’re supposed to be. why not have pride [in your race]? valuing diversity. beyond serving as role models, crg believed their openness to diversity made them effective teachers. laura, talking about her identity, said, “i think [me being gay] is another thing that is important to be clear about because it is something that makes you more sensitive to difference and to multiple forms of difference.” the group discussed the importance of openness to diversity during a research meeting. laura: do you think teachers of young children should be colorblind? rachel: you can’t be. no way! sheena: because you’re trying to get them to a level they can perform. you may need to do different things at the younger grades to get them where they need to be. olivia: not only that, just to prepare yourself. everyone has a story: a collaborative inquiry project by five teacher candidates of color and one white professor 7 you have to deal with their families, their problems, their issues. so you need to know their background and cultural customs and different things you’re going to need to be aware of just to get through the day. you can’t be colorblind with elementary kids. part of the group members’ commitment to diversity was a belief in diversity as an asset within a classroom. in talking about teaching aspirations, olivia explained, “each culture has something different to bring to the table. if [teachers] notice that, students can learn more and bring something from their backgrounds, education through the people that you have in your classroom.” as teachers, crg members made a commitment to being open to diversity within their current and future classrooms. ultimately, crg student members’ collective vision was to make a difference in the field of education by teaching in urban contexts, by serving as a role model for children urban contexts, and by valuing diversity. challenges despite crg student members’ clear vision of the teachers they want to be, they faced significant challenges in their paths to becoming teachers. these challenges included insufficient attention to diversity in teacher preparation courses, isolation, tokenism, and silencing. lack of diversity as a topic in teacher preparation curriculum. student crg members had worked with faculty who supported them and integrated diversity into courses; however, they had more experiences in which diversity in general and race in particular were strikingly absent from course discussions. they discussed this during a meeting dedicated to their perceptions of education professors’ perceptions towards teacher candidates of color. olivia: the problem is the professors and the other people in your class, because they’re the majority and they don’t go through what you go through. they see it completely different than how you see it. when you say something or you bring something to their attention, they’re like, “you’re overreacting. it’s not like that.” but it really is. sejal: or the fact that race is not really targeted or talked about. [several]: that’s true. it’s true. rachel: it’s such cliché. don’t bring up religion, don’t bring up race. to be politically correct, you just avoid it instead of it being talked about. sheena suggested, “i think really, professors don’t think about race. it’s mostly about special ed. and special needs, and not so much on preparing teachers for ethnic diversity or cultural diversity or anything else.” olivia shared her perspective of faculty priorities, “i feel like the majority of professors, well it seems like this. they don’t really care about your color. they’re just trying to make you better educators and to learn the field.” crg discussed the importance of teacher educators learning about diversity and promoting classmates’ work in diverse settings. rachel suggested, “i think that there could be written an appropriate curriculum for professors. you guys have your standards you have to meet. i don’t know if diversity falls in there somewhere, but i’m sure it does.” crg student members expected faculty to address diversity in classes, so that teachers were prepared for diverse contexts. olivia explained, “you have to put them in that [diverse] context until they’re comfortable with it and they know it’s not the stereotypes they’ve heard about. if that deepens their stereotypes of diverse children, they shouldn’t be working with children.” sheena expressed, “i think diversity should be a greater dimension in teacher prep courses.” tokenism. at the same time crg members wanted faculty to be aware of their identities, crg student members were wary of teacher educators’ responses to race. these responses were particularly troubling when the responses involved tokenizing teacher candidates of color. in talking about their perceptions of education professors, the student crg members discussed facing tokenism frequently. olivia: i’ve had professor before, she was white and she would bring up racism within the classroom, but to me she was only saying this to make it seem like she’s not racist. and not to say that she was racist, but… [several]: yeah, i’ve had that too. olivia: and then she would use me as an example all the time. [laughter] rachel: we’re the example. sejal: i was just going to say, we’re the example. as evident, crg student members were highly suspect of some faculty members’ motives in discussing diversity. rachel responded to laura’s question about how best to address racial issues in class, “if it was anyone but you in the department asking me that, i would think, ‘you don’t give a shit. why are you even asking me that?’ some of the older caucasian women, i really couldn’t imagine them asking me that.” it was not that crg student members did not want teacher educators to discuss all types of diversity in class. it is simply that they did not want to be the example or the spokespeople for their races. they were willing to assume the role of teacher, as sheena expressed, “i tend to volunteer when it comes to questions like that, because i have experience and other people might not. and it might give other teachers an experience that they don’t have.” but they agreed that they did not want professors to assume that they wanted to talk about diversity. crg student members preferred that professors talk to teacher current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 candidates of color individually rather than publically singling them out. isolation. crg members’ experiences with being tokenized reinforced their existing feelings of isolation. zoe’s experiences, captured as she explained her cultural background, were similar to other group members, “we moved to wisconsin, and that was all suburban. i went to school there. i was the only person of color. everyone else was white. we moved back here, but at this school, mostly everyone is white.” sheena, in talking about her own cultural background, discussed the pressure she has felt as the only person of color in her classes. when i first went in the class, i said, ‘oh, my god, there are so many white people!’ it really does add pressure on you. it takes you out of your comfort zone as opposed to when you know that there are other people like you. rachel, in reflecting upon her perception of education professors’ attitudes towards diversity, complained, “you look at the education department. why aren’t there more students like us? why aren’t there more students with diversity? you look around in one of our lecture classes. everyone’s white but maybe like two.” crg student members felt disconnected from their classmates, their professors, and from class discussions. having different previous experiences and background knowledge made many crg members reluctant to participate fully in class discussions. similarly, in talking about the invisibility of her otherness, laura expressed her feelings of isolation through self-editing, “i’ve had conversations with professors and with friends and with my wife about how out and open i should be. if i’m with my wife, i’ll introduce her to anyone as my wife. but i don’t say anything in class.” another aspect of isolation came from crg student members’ experiences within their cultures and families. no crg student members knew peers from their neighborhoods or cultural communities who were also going into teaching. in talking about her desire to be a teacher, sheena shared that her career goals were culturally transgressive for a first generation asianamerican and caused family conflict. being a teacher is accepted in my country. in taiwan it’s an honorable thing, because you’re teaching children. if i were in taiwan, they would be very happy. in this country, it is not so. some people think that a lot of people who go into teaching don’t have other options. they failed at whatever it was that they originally intended to do. that’s why they became teachers. so with that kind of connotation, it’s not exactly the best. silent advocacy. crg members’ feelings of isolation often translated into silence within coursework and fieldwork. they carefully edited and often silenced their own opinions. this self-silencing was another barrier to crg members achieving their vision of themselves as teachers who would value diversity and serve as role models to children in urban settings. as crg members talked about their vision for teaching and valuing diversity, laura had initially identified a theme of advocacy, but the other members of the group were quick to distance themselves from the title “advocate.” when laura presented themes from the previous meeting for member checking, rachel contested, “i don’t want to call myself an advocate. when you’re trying to protect other people and be an advocate for other people, it shines the limelight on you like you’re perfect.” during the same discussion, olivia expressed her reluctance to advocate for diversity while in university classes, “sometimes i feel like, ‘oh, we’re on this topic [diversity] again. i’m going to keep my mouth shut.’ i don’t want to be the colored person preaching and stuff. i’m just, ‘i’m going to let this go by.’” rachel added, “i won’t speak up, because i don’t want to be the angry minority that’s like, “i went through racism. damn you white people!” [classmates] just remember that stereotype. you’re trying to break stereotypes, but then you are the stereotype.” because of not wanting to reinforce stereotypes, crg members who were visibly identifiable as “the other” because of race tended to advocate surreptitiously. olivia explained her strategy for standing up for “the other.” i think that you don’t intentionally go around trying to be an advocate, especially if it’s your race. but you just being confident in who you are and loving yourself shows up in your personality and who you are and what you do. you secretively put that onto other people, especially the children that you’re teaching. in a way, you’re advocating. but you’re not intentionally advocating. laura, on the other hand, was able to hide her “otherness” by not talking about her personal life or sexual orientation. she justified her reticence as a means to stand up for diversity. the reason i don’t say anything in class is because i’m afraid that the moment i do, when i bring in diverse books, it’s going to be, “oh, yeah, here’s the gay teacher. and she’s only saying we should read these books about diverse families because she’s ‘one of those’.” her identity remained hidden, but her advocacy did not. none of the crg members felt that they could promote understanding and awareness of difference and live a life of difference without being accused of self-promotion and reinforcing stereotypes. crg members continually felt pressed to choose between their identities as teachers, as advocates, and their ethnic or sexual identities. this everyone has a story: a collaborative inquiry project by five teacher candidates of color and one white professor 9 choice was often painful and difficult. choosing between identity and advocacy was one of several challenges faced by crg members. other challenges crg student members faced in their paths to becoming teachers included, isolation in teacher preparation courses, in fieldwork, and from cultural communities; tokenism within teacher preparation courses; and insufficient attention to diversity in teacher education curriculum. support despite the significant challenges faced by crg members in their professional paths, they drew upon multiple forms of support. in navigating experiences as self-identified minorities in a teacher education program, crg members discussed the importance of structural support and communities of people who “could connect on some level”. membership in a community. crg members’ sense of support was often fostered through membership in various communities. as she talked about her cultural background, sejal talked about her communities in terms of family and culture. if i would come home sulking about how i wanted to fit in with other kids or asking why we do things certain ways, my mother’s response would always be, “be proud of your heritage. you are indian. why should you be ashamed?” olivia also talked about her culture, “i love my culture, the food, the music, the people, the attitudes. everything of the people. i just love that.” sheena discussed her academic community, “when you know that there are other people like you, it makes you more comfortable. in the education classes [at a different university], there were a lot of minorities, especially chinese and korean. it made me feel really comfortable in class, because we could connect on some level.” crg members believed that their participation in the cultural research group provided membership in an important community. in reflecting upon the research in the final meeting of the inquiry, rachel shared, “i think that the cultural research group has impacted me profoundly, because when i originally came to [this school], i felt like i was overcrowded by a sea of white people.” zoe also discussed the crg community as a form of support at the final meeting. you realize that you’re not the only one going through these things. that’s how i felt basically all my life. i think it’s made me a little comfortable with who i am. it’s nice to know that other people have the same issues. i didn’t talk about it for a really long time, and not talking about it made me feel like i was the only one experiencing those things. in considering the importance of membership in a community, sheena stated, “that bond with the community, it’s that safe feeling that makes you able to stand up and do something. because we have this group right here, we’re being activists. because we know that there are people just like us who want the same cause. but if you don’t have that, it’s very hard.” structural support. there were specific ways student crg members experienced support through existing programs or policies; there were other ways crg members envisioned increasing structural support. olivia discussed her teacher preparation minority scholarship as a means of support. “when i first started taking education classes, i realized, ‘wow! i’m the only black person in here.’ because i’m part of the teacher prep minority scholarship, i knew i had my support system.” a structural supports that student members found missing pertained to finances, both in terms of salaries and financial aid. sheena explained money as a barrier to entering teaching when she talked about her teaching aspirations. i come from an immigrant family. my parents worked so hard to put me through school so i can have a better life, so i can have more money. because money is what’s emphasized to us. and teaching is definitely not on the top of the list. and rachel, discussing teacher educators’ roles in promoting diversity in teacher preparation programs, insisted that pathways should exist to encourage students from urban schools to attend universities, with attention to the students’ financial means. especially going into urban schools and offering kids that opportunity. going in prepared, though. being like, this is how you do fasa. these are the scholarships that are available. you can’t go in like, “come to [this university]. oh, by the way, it’s about $10,000 a year.” whether support involved financial support or programmatic support, membership in a community, or finding a sense of belonging, crg members found that support was an essential component in becoming and remaining teachers. exploring identities, vision, challenge, and support provided a deeper understanding of the identities of teacher candidates of color, what drew them to the education professions, the contexts in which they hoped to become teachers, and the forms of support and barriers they faced. more importantly, this inquiry provided five teacher candidates of color with a sense of community and belonging and a sense of empowerment. discussion and implications any response to the many calls for an increase of individuals of color in teacher preparation programs and in the teaching professions must be accompanied by a greater understanding of teacher candidates of color, their identities, their visions for teaching, and the support and challenges they have encountered in their paths to current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 becoming teachers. teacher educators must become a key form of support to teacher candidates of color. the cultural research group included members who selfidentified as culturally complex. crg student members wanted to teach in urban settings as a means of serving as role models, valuing diversity, and standing up for what they believed in through challenging cultural norms and race-related expectations. in their journey to realizing this vision, crg student members faced isolation, silence, underrepresentation in teacher education, and tokenism. these challenges were not unlike those reported by other underrepresented teacher candidates, including men (weaver-hightower, 2011), speakers of other languages (gomez, rodriguez, & agosto, 2008; weisman & hanson, 2008), and other groups of teachers of color at predominantly white institutions (johnston-parsons, lee, & thomas, 2007). what sets the crg findings apart was that the teachers of color were the people reporting the findings rather than a researcher doing the reporting on their behalf. the teachers of color were empowered to speak for themselves about their challenges. in contrast to the challenges they faced, crg members experienced support through their communities, existing programs, and participating in this cooperative inquiry. the support that crg members discussed was similar to that reported by williams, graham, mccaryhenderson, and floyd (2009) in their discussion of african american teacher candidates at historically black institutions. it was particularly striking that crg members were able to find these forms of support at a predominantly white institution. understanding the identities, vision, and challenges of teacher candidates of color can allow teacher educators to provide essential support. the teacher candidates of color in this study valued structural support within their university and communities. the implication for teacher educators is the need to become aware of structural supports that exist for teacher candidates of color, including financial aid opportunities and campus and community organizations. financial concerns frequently serve as a barrier to individuals of color entering the teaching professions (ramirez, 2009). equipped with information about scholarships and financial aid, teacher educators can reduce this barrier. supporting and encouraging teacher candidates of color may also involve teacher educators creating structural supports that do not currently exist. cooperative inquiry groups, like the cultural research group, represent one means of doing so. as evident through crg members’ comments, groups such as this one reduce the isolation so commonly felt by teacher candidates of color. another step in supporting teacher candidates of color involves understanding that these candidates’ identities are complex and moving beyond the limited view of diversity as white vs. non-white (dilworth & brown, 2001). crg members struggled with selfdefinition. they wanted to authentically represent themselves, yet they acknowledge their sense of “identity crisis.” this challenge of self-definition was intensified as teacher candidates of color were asked to be spokespeople for their races during class discussions. teacher educators must avoid the practice of tokenism, for it only heightens teacher some candidates’ senses of isolation. in contrast, the teacher candidates in this study appreciated teacher educators who asked teacher candidates of color privately if they would be willing to talk about their experiences. the teacher candidates resented being “used as the example” without their consent. this was similar to findings from johnston-parsons, lee, and thomas’s (2007) study in which teachers of color felt extreme discomfort when asked to serve as “cultural consultants” by teacher educators. the desire to avoid being the example caused crg student members to advocate silently rather than overtly. it is not that crg members did not want to advocate, but rather that they intended to do so discreetly. it may be helpful for teacher educators to understand and be able to discuss perceived challenges of open advocacy. these conversations could center on teacher candidates’ desires to be role models and serve to unpack definitions of role model and of advocate. kohli (2008) suggested the use of critical race theory (crt) as a means to unpack the experiences of teacher candidates of color and to make these teacher candidates more aware of educational inequities they have faced. crt aims “to expose the way in which racial inequality is maintained through the operation of structures and assumptions that appear normal and unremarkable" (rollock & gilborn, 2011, p. 1), making crt an important tool for teacher candidates of color. importantly, teacher educators cannot expect that teacher candidates of color will automatically serve as advocates for children of color simply because of the candidates’ own cultural background. as faez (2012) asserts, shared cultural background and empathy are not sufficient qualifications; teachers must also have proper preparation to meet the needs of diverse learners. another concern regarding the assumption that teachers of color must be advocates is that teachers of color already experience higher rates of attrition than their white colleagues (achinstein, ogawa, sexton, & freitas, 2010). positioning teachers of color, but not white teachers, as advocates for children of color seems unjust and counterproductive (settlage, 2011). in addition to recruiting additional individuals of color to teacher preparation programs, these programs must also focus on developing white teachers who are culturally competent and willing to serve as advocates for all children (sleeter, 2001). in addition to issues of advocacy, teacher educators must spend time learning about teacher candidates’ professional goals to more adequately support them. for teacher candidates of color who hope to teach everyone has a story: a collaborative inquiry project by five teacher candidates of color and one white professor 11 in urban settings, this support should include increased opportunities for fieldwork in urban schools. additionally, crg members challenged teacher educators to include diversity in teacher preparation curriculum. discussions of diversity should move beyond diverse learning styles and special needs to encompass diversity of culture and ethnicity. during these discussions teacher educators must speak to all teacher candidates, not only to teacher candidates who do not have cultural synchronicity with the students they teach. for too long, teacher education has focused on preparing white, middle class teachers to enter culturally and linguistically diverse settings (sleeter & thao, 2007). the teacher candidates in this study shared the goal of teaching in diverse urban settings. to achieve their vision, they need teacher educators who will prepare them to teach in these settings. limitations and future research this inquiry provided a snapshot of the experiences of six women in a teacher education program over the course of one year. this snapshot did not include multiple stages of teacher development. future research could involve cooperative inquiry that commences upon entry into a teacher education program and continues into teacher induction. an additional limitation of this inquiry was that it did not tell the stories of teacher candidates whose voices were similarly absent from teacher education for reasons other than ethnicity. based on crg members’ assertions that they were shaped through membership in a cooperative inquiry group, more diverse inquiry groups could form within teacher education programs. these diverse inquiry groups could be a means of promoting teachers as researchers, as recommended by cochran-smith and lytle (2009) and as a means of empowerment and consciousness raising for teacher candidates. ultimately, these longer, more diverse inquiry groups could represent research that will “create social and individual change” (reinharz, 1992, p. 181). conclusion the vision articulated by teacher candidates of color is encouraging: to teach in urban settings, to serve as role models, and to value diversity. at the same time, this vision cannot be realized without significant support from teacher educators, as expressed by villegas and davis (2007). unless teacher candidates of color are appropriately prepared to draw on this unique knowledge and insight to shape their pedagogy, the yield of those resources will be limited at best. similarly, unless teacher candidates of color are appropriately prepared to act as change agents, their commitment to making schools more equitable and just for students of color is not likely to produce the desired results. (p. 146) teacher educators must recognize that “everyone has a story,” and to work with teacher candidates of color to unpack their stories in ways that prepare them to be role models in diverse settings. references achinstein, b., ogawa, r. t., sexton, d., & freitas, c. (2010). retaining teachers of color: a pressing problem and a potential strategy for “hard-tostaff” schools. review of educational research, 80, 71-107. bower, l. a., mehta, s., watanabe, r., & chang, m. (2011, april). troubling advocacy: a collaborative inquiry project by five teacher candidates of color and one white professor. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, new orleans, la. bower, l. a., mehta, s., watanabe, r., white, m. j., figueroa, j., & chang, m. 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(2008). student teaching in urban and suburban schools: perspectives of latino preservice teachers. everyone has a story: a collaborative inquiry project by five teacher candidates of color and one white professor 13 urban education, 43(6), 653-670. williams, e. r., graham, a., mccary-henderson, s., & floyd, l. (2009). “from where i stand:” african american teacher candidates on their decision to teach. the educational forum, 73, 348-364. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 14 article citation bower-phipps, l., tate, r. w., mehta, s., & sature, a. (2013). everyone has a story: a collaborative inquiry project by five teacher candidates of color and one white professor. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1074 author notes laura bower-phipps southern connecticut state university 501 crescent st. da 116; new haven, ct 06515 bowerl2@southernct.edu laura bower-phipps, phd, is an assistant professor of education at southern connecticut state university. her research centers on diversity in teacher education. previous publications highlighted lesbian mothers’ experiences with their children’s teachers and the identities of mother/educator/lesbians. her current work engages self-identified minorities, including men and individuals of color, in cooperative inquiry groups. rachel watanabe tate southern connecticut state university, alumnus rachel131619@netscape.net rachel w. tate is an autism teacher in the washington d.c. area. she has been a special education teacher for three years and enjoys working with all of her students sejal mehta sejalm12@gmail.com southern connecticut state university, alumnus sejal mehta has been working at nichols elementary school in stratford, connecticut. she will be pursuing her masters degree in special education. amanda sature amandasature@yahoo.com southern connecticut state university, alumnus amanda l. sature has recently graduated from southern connecticut state university. she holds a bachelor of science in elementary education and a bachelor of arts in psychology. ms. sature has previously conducted research on diversity in the elementary classroom. she intends to continue investigating topics in the field of elementary education. manuscript received: 9/10/2012 revisions received: 12/13/2012 accepted: 2/11/2013 everyone has a story: a collaborative inquiry project by five teacher candidates of color and one white professor 15 volume 16, number 1 march 4, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1046_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 january 30, 2013 issn 1099-839x reciprocal teaching of comprehension strategies improves efl learners' writing ability mohammad reza ghorbani university of bojnord, bojnord, iran atefeh ardeshir gangeraj islamic azad university, garmsar branch, iran sahar zahed alavi kosar university of bojnord, bojnord, iran although the importance of reading in developing writing ability is undeniable, few competent readers in efl contexts develop into competent writers. since students are not aware that reading can assist them in writing, this study examined the effect of reciprocal teaching which focuses on four reading comprehension strategies, namely summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting-on improving efl students' writing ability. assessment was made based on an evaluation sheet including five criteria (content, macro structure, micro structure, language range and complexity, and language errors) for evaluating the compositions. in this study, true-experimental design was used to study two classes of 104 randomly selected intermediate learners. the pre-test inter-rater reliability for the two raters who rated the students' compositions was 0.95 and the posttest inter-rater reliability was 0.97. since this study was conducted under the supervision of a supervisor and an advisor, its validity was taken for granted. the results of the independent samples t-test supported the effectiveness of reciprocal teaching of comprehension strategies in improving the learners' writing ability. since teaching comprehension strategies seems to have facilitated the process of writing, its application can be suggested to reinforce efl students' writing ability. the findings of this study imply that students will get motivated to read more if they realize the importance of reading in improving their writing performance. keywords: reciprocal teaching strategies, reading comprehension, writing ability, efl learners reading is one of the most important activities in any language teaching and learning classroom. reading is an interactive process involving the utilization of both real-world and linguistic knowledge (nunan, 2004; khalily & seyvandzadeh, 2008). when we read, we read for a variety of purposes. mostly, we read the text to learn information, perhaps most often we read for general comprehension and persisting supporting information (murcia, 2001). reading requires that the reader focuses attention on the reading materials and joins together current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 background knowledge and skills to comprehend what someone else has written (chastain, 1988). writing is the most difficult skill for l2 learners to master. the difficulty lies both in generating thoughts and ideas and translating these ideas into readable text. l2 writers must pay attention not only to higher level skills of planning and organizing but also to lower level skills of spelling, punctuation, word choice, and so on (richards & renandya, 2002). not only should what one writes be clear in its meaning, it should also make sense beyond the level of the statement; it should make sense as a text. cohesion and coherence are two characteristics of a well written text. cohesion refers to surface level signals that reflect the discourse organization of the text and the intended purposes of the writer. these signals include repetition, synonymy, hyponymy, paraphrase/ restate, anaphora, transition markers, substitution, ellipsis, parallelism, and other lexical relations that link parts of the text (grabe, 2009). coherence refers to whatever links the meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text. although oral language is the natural channel of gaining information, human beings have developed writing systems for communication, too. for some decades reading and writing have been taught separately (langer & applebee, 1986). some research studies have shown that they are very interdependent (durukan, 2011; krashen, 1984; gregg & steinberg, 1980; anderson, spiro, & montague, 1977). their interconnection is like that of the chicken and egg. that is, without one the other cannot exist. according to durukan (2011), reading and writing skills are important from the first phase of education. krashen (1984) believes that a great deal of self-motivated reading leads to writing competence. according to gregg and steinberg (1980) and anderson, spiro, and montague (1977), both in constructivist theory and in research, reading and writing are meaninggenerating activities. it is usually assumed that reading and writing are like two sides of the same coin and a good reader makes a good piece of writing. so, writing can be improved by improving reading. although there is a strong relationship between reading and writing (giuliano, 2001; mcgann, 2001), little attention has been given to the investigation of this relationship (ito, 2011). according to ito (2011), the correlation between efl (english as a foreign language) reading and writing among japanese high school learners is statistically significant implying that efl reading skill has a positive effect on efl composition. alkhawaldeh (2011) studied the effect of efl reading comprehension on writing achievement among jordanian eighth grade students. one main conclusion emanating from the results of this study was that the experimental group students benefited from the reading passage in their writing. yoshimura (2009) mentioned reading and writing are interdependent processes that are essential to each other and mutually beneficial. by improving one skill, the other will be improved. according to cobine (1995), students can organize their thoughts by arranging writing activities before and during reading such as note taking task or infer probable conclusions based upon textual cues. grabe (2001, 2003) and hudson (2007) believed that reading and writing's relationships are important in academic literacy skills, so reading is commonly combined with some type of writing , that involves note taking, summary writing, post reading answers to questions, response papers, paraphrasing of key information from multiple sources (grabe, 2009). thus, the efl writing class can incorporate lessons which assist students in preparing academic writing assignments by using readings as a basis to practice such skills as interpreting, synthesizing concepts, paraphrasing and summarizing. throughout the history of language teaching, different approaches, methods, procedures have been utilized to help learners learn language. in one period the focus of attention was on teaching and teacher-centered classes; in other period the emphasis was on learning and learner-centered classes; they paid attention to meaning and use (nunan, 1999). as the goal of language teaching was shifting, attitudes toward the four skills were changing as well. recently the importance of reading in developing writing ability has been acknowledged. the teaching of writing has been suggested to be incorporated with reading instruction for language learners (murcia, 2001). according to krashen (2004), no matter how much students spend on writing, it cannot be improved beyond their existing knowledge of the language by writing on its own. his alternative way is to read more because it leads to more vocabulary building and better writing style. since understanding the printed text is the result of the interaction between the writer and reader (harris, 2000), reciprocal teaching is supposed to enhance students' reading and writing skills respectively. although it has been in use for the past two decades, most teachers and students in the united states are not familiar with it (williams, 2010). according to slater and horstman (2002), reciprocal teaching helps students prevent cognitive failure during reading. palincsar and brown (1984) mentioned that reciprocal teaching is an instructional activity in which teacher and students take turn having a dialogue regarding the different parts of the text to construct meaning. it provides students with four specific reading strategies, namely questioning, clarifying, summarizing, and predicting. in the prediction phase of reciprocal teaching, readers combine their own background knowledge with what they have understood from the text. in the questioning phase, readers ask some questions to monitor and assess their understanding of the text. in clarifying phase, the identification and clarification of unclear, difficult, or unfamiliar aspects of a text, including awkward structures, unfamiliar reciprocal teaching of comprehension strategies improves efl learners' writing ability 3 vocabulary and unclear references happens. in summarizing phase, the important information, themes, and ideas in the text are integrated into a clear and concise statement that communicates the total meaning of the text. according to rosenshine and meister (1994), the following four important instructional practices are embedded in reciprocal teaching: • direct teaching of strategies • practicing reading strategies with real reading instead of worksheets or contrived exercises • scaffolding of instruction • using peer support for learning reciprocal teaching is an interactive teaching strategy and a cooperative learning instructional method based on vygotsky's (1978) theory of the fundamental role of social interaction and zone of proximal development (zpd) (cited in galloway, 2001) which is used to develop text comprehension. it involves a high degree of social interaction and collaboration in which learners step by step learn to assume the responsibility of helping their peers construct meaning from text (alverman & phelps, 1998).it incorporates four activities: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting (oczkus, 2003; palincsar & brown, 1984) in which students move from spectators to performers. according to hashey and connors (2003), each of these strategies are first taught and modeled for the students over a number of teaching sessions by the teacher. after they are understood by students, they are practiced with peer and teacher feedback. the interaction may happen between teacher and student or between students. the teacher collaborates with the students and hands over the control of the group to the students in the end (allen, 2003). according to choo, eng, and ahmad (2011), interactive, cognitive-constructivist, and social constructivism theories underpin reciprocal teaching. based on vygotsky’s (1978) socio-cultural theory, learning occurs in an interactive environment in which the knowledge constructed from the text is negotiated through interactions between both teacher and students or student and student (gergen, 1999a, 1999b). teaching cognitive strategies (rosenshine & meister, 1994) and giving appropriate feedback (oczkus, 2003) facilitate learning and develop monitoring skills which improve motivation (palincsar, david, & brown, 1989). pearson and fielding (1991) found that the instruction of comprehension strategies is more helpful for learners with poor comprehension skills. a metaanalysis of 16 studies on reciprocal teaching by rosenshine and meister (1994) indicated that reciprocal teaching is effective not only for older learners but also for those who show poor comprehension. a series of studies by palincsar and brown (1985) determined the effectiveness of reciprocal teaching for middle school students in pairs and small groups averaging five. the students who were very poor in comprehension were instructed over a period of 20 consecutive school days. they had to read passages about 450 to 500 words in length. then, they were evaluated by having them answer 10 comprehension questions from recall. pilonieta and medina's (2009) study in the united states indicated that that rt benefited even younger children. yang (2010) conducted a study in taiwan to develop a reciprocal teaching/learning strategy. his study showed students’ reading progress in remedial english reading classes incorporating the rt system suggesting that it is helpful for teachers to encourage their students to interact with other. reciprocal teaching which is a contemporary application of vygotsky's theories (mcleod, 2007) comprises summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. each of these strategies helps learners construct meaning from text and monitor their reading. they help learners not to wander off or miss the meaning of the text. they may also inform them that they are not predicting well what is coming up or they are not learning what they are expected to (bruer, 1993). these strategies are supposed to facilitate group work between teacher and students as well as among students as a means of aiding them to construct meaning from text. the concept of reciprocal teaching is described below based on palincsar (1986). summarizing helps students to identify, paraphrase, integrate, and organize the most important information, themes, and ideas appearing in the text into a clear and concise statement. it is the driving force to bring into existence a context for comprehending the specific purpose of a text (doolittle et al., 2006). the students follow the procedure at the sentence, paragraph, and passage levels, respectively. they monitor and assess their comprehension by asking themselves questions about unclear parts. this helps them explore the text more deeply and construct the intended meaning (doolittle et al., 2006). identifying significant information that is the substance for a question helps the students to generate questions about the text and re-processing the information into appropriate questions to figure out the main idea reinforces the summarizing strategy. clarifying unclear, difficult, or unfamiliar aspects of a text remedy confusion. for clarifying difficult points in the text, the students engage in critical evaluation of the parts that are confusing and unclear. when there is a segment that students do not understand, they may re-read, use context clues, ask someone for help etc. the students will then use headings, sub-headings, questions imbedded in the text, and the title as a clue to hypothesize about what happens next in the text. they combine their own background knowledge with their new knowledge from the text to create, confirm or disconfirm their hypotheses (doolittle et al., 2006). so they read with anticipation and expectancy and check their hypotheses during reading current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 (stricklin, 2011).their inability to predict correctly is usually supposed to be due to inadequate comprehension. according to palincsar (1986), five requirements are to be satisfied to teach the four strategies (summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting) to students successfully. these requirements are: 1. teachers need to make these strategies explicit by modeling them for the students. 2. teachers should not teach these strategies in isolation from the context in which they are used. 3. teachers should make students aware of the reasons and situations they should use particular strategies. 4. teachers should give feedback to their students about their success regardless of their level of performance. 5. teachers should ensure that students can use these strategies spontaneously and transfer the comprehension responsibility to the students gradually. in summary, based on the above-mentioned literature, reading and writing skills are closely connected and complement each other. since many efl learners are not aware of this connection, this study is aimed at investigating the impact of reciprocal teaching of reading comprehension on their writing performance in order to shed more light on the ways reading helps students in improving their writing. to achieve this objective, the following research question and hypothesis were formulated: • does reciprocal teaching of reading comprehension have any effect on improving efl learners' writing ability? • ho: reciprocal teaching of reading comprehension has no positive effect on improving efl learners' writing ability. method research design and subjects in this study, true-experimental design was used to study two classes of 104 randomly selected learners. a total number of 150 female students at the intermediate level from daneshpajoohan, shomal, and asia language institutes in amolsat for a placement test. the participants answered the preliminary english test (pet). they were ranked based on their scores. after omitting the extreme scores, 104 students whose scores were one standard deviation around the mean in normal curve were randomly assigned to two groups of 52 subjects. only those two subjects with similar scores were randomly assigned to the experimental and control group each time to select homogenous groups. due to time constraint limitations, it was not possible to have more than two groups. the subjects were between fifteen to twenty three years old. the following diagram summarizes the design. the dotted line represents equivalent groups. in this diagram ga and gb stand for experimental and control groups, respectively. t1 stands for the test before applying the treatment. t2 stands for the test after the treatment and x stands for treatment. ga t1 x t2 ------------------------------------- gb t1 t2 instruments the subjects sat for three tests in this study. the pet (the preliminary english test) was used for the placement test. this standardized test consisted of 35 questions related to two skills of reading and writing in which the first 5 questions had three choices, the next 15 questions had two choices (correct or incorrect), and the last 15 questions had 4 choices. the mean score and standard deviation of which was 20 and 16.1 respectively. table 1 inter-rater reliability of the pre-test intra-class correlation 95% confidence interval f test with true value 0 lower bound upper bound value df1 df2 sig single measures .905 .847 .942 20.107 60 60 .000 average measures .950 .917 .970 20.107 60 60 .000 reciprocal teaching of comprehension strategies improves efl learners' writing ability 5 table 2 inter-rater reliability of the post-test intra-class correlation 95% confidence interval f test with true value 0 lower bound upper bound value df1 df2 sig single measures .952 .922 .971 40.974 60 60 .000 average measures .976 .959 .985 40.974 60 60 .000 the first composition written by the subjects before the intervention was considered as pre-test and the second composition after the treatment was used as posttest. the topic of the composition chosen from the book “select reading” is provided in the appendix. two experienced and competent university professors rated the compositions by using yoshimura (2010) checklist which considers criteria such as content, macro structure, micro structure, language range and complexity and language error. each of the criteria is explained thoroughly in the checklist mentioned in the appendix. raters were supposed to assign the particular score related to the met criteria in the subjects' compositions (excellent to good: 910, fair to poor: 5-6, good to average: 7-8, very poor: 14). the final score in each composition was the sum of the scores assigned to five mentioned domains. as indicated in table 1, the inter-rater reliability for the two raters who rated the students' compositions on the pre-test was 0.95 meaning that the two raters enjoyed statistically significant inter-rater reliability. since this study was conducted under the supervision of a supervisor and an advisor, its validity was taken for granted. as indicated in table 2, the inter-rater reliability for the two raters who rated the students' compositions on the post-test was 0.97 meaning that the two raters enjoyed statistically significant inter-rater reliability. the passages from the book "select readingsintermediate" by lee and gundersen (2004) were used for the treatment. they were taught and practiced for 15 one and a half hour sessions. this book was used because, as lee and gundersen mentioned, its highinterest, authentic reading passages act as springboards into reading comprehension activities, reading skills development, vocabulary building, grammatical analysis and practice, and thought-provoking discussion and writing. the passages represent a wide range of genres such as newspaper, essays, book excerpts, on-line discussion and interviews. the book provided some practices for both control group and experimental groups in the following sub-skill areas: • reading • identifying the topic • identifying supporting points or examples • identifying words and phrases appropriate to the context • identifying the relationships between sentences and paragraphs • understanding academic vocabulary • comprehending explicit and implicit information • following a logical or chronological sequence of events procedure this study was implemented in four phases: placement test, pre-test, treatment, and post-test. the independent variable was the impact of teaching four reading comprehension strategies: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. the dependent variable wa5s the improvement of efl learners' writing ability. the pet was administered to 150 students as a placement test in order to select two groups of students as control and experimental groups. the result of pet was used to screen the subjects into two homogenous groups on the basis of the dispersion of scores around the mean. based on the mean score plus and minus one standard deviation the students whose scores fell within the range of 14 and 26 were selected. then, the sample was randomly assigned to two groups of 52 subjects. after administering the pre-test to capture the initial differences between the two groups, the experiment was carried out in 15sessions. each group attended the class for a period of one and a half hours. one week after the last session, the participants sat for the post-test. the treatment is described below. the researcher began by teaching and modeling the four comprehension strategies. at first she led the passage. as the subjects became more proficient with the strategies, she gradually faded out and allowed them to current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 assume leadership. the researcher taught and modeled the predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing strategies explicitly as a way to improve the students' comprehension skills. once students were able to apply all four strategies, they were encouraged to annotate examples of all four strategies in the margins. then, they shared their annotations and constructed their own meaning of the text. they added commentary to their annotations to improve their understanding of the text. the researcher circulated the classroom to guide the students' discussion. she also asked follow-up questions to enrich their activities. the teacher bookmark by oczkus (2003), which had prompts for each reciprocal teaching strategy, was used to help students work their way through texts and reciprocal teaching discussions (see appendix). the subjects were introduced to the expectations of four roles: questioner, clarifier, predictor and summarizer. as a questioner, they asked questions (such as did the author mean it? ,when? , where? ,who?, how? ,what? ,why? ,and what if?) to help their group to improve their understanding of the text before, during, and after reading. as a clarifier, they looked for and highlighted the parts where the meaning was not clear using sentences like: i’m not sure what it means. i think that word means …. does anyone know what it refers to? why do you think so? as a predictor, they guessed what might be ahead in the text, confirmed or rejected their predictions using sentences like: i wonder if…, what do you think will happen if…?, why do you think…?, i think the passage will tell us about …., what might happen in this section of the text? as a summarizer, they located key words in the text and used their own words to talk about the most important parts of the text using sentences like: the key arguments in the text are …, the most important ideas are … the main ideas in this text are. both groups were required to identify the topic, supporting points, examples, words and phrases appropriate to the context, and the relationships between sentences and paragraphs. they were expected to comprehend explicit and implicit information and follow a logical or chronological sequence of events. however, only the experimental group received the treatment regarding the four reading comprehension strategies. first, the subjects in the experimental group were taught and asked to summarize the main points they encountered in the text. second, they were asked to raise questions about the text and answer them on their own. third, they were asked to clarify ambiguous points of the text. and fourth, they were asked to predict what would come next in the text. the combination of these strategies helped the subjects not to wander off or miss the point. the subjects in the control group focused on the passages and practiced the reading comprehension activities in the book. the intervention began in april and concluded in early july, 2010. statistical analysis and results to answer the research question, the raw scores taken from the pre-test and post-test were submitted to the computer software statistical package of social sciences (spss version 15), using t-test. independent samples t-test was conducted to compare the possible differences between the means of the experimental and control groups based on the gain scores from the post-tests. the research question and the corresponding hypothesis in this study are as follows: • does reciprocal teaching of reading comprehension strategies have any effect on improving efl learners' writing ability? • ho: reciprocal teaching of reading comprehension strategies has no positive effect on improving efl learners' writing ability. the following tables indicate the summary of ttests. an independent samples t-test was conducted to compare the scores of the experimental and control groups before the treatment. as indicated in table 3, there was no significant difference between the experimental group (m =16.96, sd = 3.99) and the control group [m = 16.25, sd = 2.97; t (102) = 0.418, p. > .05] before the treatment. table 3 the independent samples t-test for the experimental and control groups (pre-test) group n mean stddev df t sig. experimental control 52 52 16.96 16.25 3.99 2.97 102 .418 0.677 reciprocal teaching of comprehension strategies improves efl learners' writing ability 7 table 4 the independent samples t-test for the experimental and control groups (post-test) group n mean stddev df t sig. experimental control 52 52 36.71 17.87 3.47 3.93 102 -25.87 0.000* *sig. p < .05 the second independent samples t-test was conducted to compare the scores of the experimental and control groups after the treatment (post-test). as indicated in table 4, there is a significant difference between the experimental group (m = 36.71, sd = 3.47) and the control group (m = 17.87, sd = 3.93; t (102) = -25.87, p< .05). this final result shows that the mean score of the experimental group after the treatment is more than the control group. that is, the participants who received comprehension strategy instruction performed significantly better than those who didn't. since there is a significant difference between the means of the two groups, the null hypothesis (reciprocal teaching of reading comprehension strategies has no positive effect on improving efl learners' writing ability) is rejected. therefore, the reciprocal teaching, which consists of teaching four specific reading strategies, may have an effect on the students’ writings. conclusion this study investigated the effect of reciprocal teaching of reading comprehension on the writing performance among female students at the intermediate level in amol, iran. primary data were collected by conducting a placement test, a pretest, and a post-test. the result of the independent samples t-test analysis from the post-test administration indicated that the experimental group had a better performance than the control group. this suggests that comprehension strategy instruction through reciprocal teaching be useful for the improvement of writing ability. the findings of this study confirm the effectiveness of instruction through four comprehension strategies which are in line with the previous studies (krashen, 2004; rosenshine & meister, 1994; pearson & fielding 1991; palincsar & brown, 1985). since writing is such a skill that requires attention to higher level skills of planning, meaning and organizing (richards & renandya, 2002), improving these higher level skills can improve writing. as reciprocal teaching emphasizes on four strategiesnamely summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predictingand these strategies are dealing with planning, meaning and organizing and help learners not to wander off or miss the meaning of the text (bruer, 1993), its implementing can improve writing ability indirectly. according to krashen (2004), reading more leads to more vocabulary building and better writing style. and as harris (2000) mentioned reciprocal teaching is supposed to enhance students' writing skills. since understanding the printed text is the result of the interaction between the writer and reader. the findings also support krashen's (1984) view that reading functions as a primary model for writing skill. since teaching comprehension strategies seems to have facilitated the process of writing, its application can be suggested to reinforce efl students' writing performance. the implications from the findings of this study suggest that if comprehension strategies are incorporated into the curriculum and instructed in efl classes, efl learners' writing skill may improve. therefore, teachers should provide their students with such strategies to facilitate their learning process. it is hoped that students will make reading their free time hobby by getting aware of the connection between reading and writing performance. it is also hoped that efl teachers can design reading activities which lead to improvements in students' writing performance. material developers can also introduce the reading strategies in reciprocal teaching through exercises to help students improve their writing skill. this study was restrained by some limitations. it was performed in intermediate level of proficiency, therefore the other proficiency levels of the learners such as elementary or advanced levels were not investigated. the subjects in the study were females in institutes. so, it is not clear what the results of this study with males are. the reliance on only two readers was another limitation of this study. this study is the outcome a master thesis which had to be finished in due time. therefore, the findings should be generalized with great caution. further research studies can be conducted to investigate the effect of reciprocal teaching on males. other research studies can also be done to investigate the effect of reciprocal teaching on other students with primary and advanced level of proficiency. the effect of reciprocal teaching on the improvement of other skills (listening and speaking) can also be a topic for further research studies. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 references alkhawaldeh, a. 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(2001). vygotsky's learning theory. in m. orey (ed.), emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. available website:http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.p hp?title=vygotsky%27s_constructivism gergen, k. j. (1999a). an introduction to social construction. boston: sage. gergen, k. j. (1999b). agency/social construction and relational action. theory & psychology, 9, 113115. grabe, w. (2001). reading-writing relations: theoretical perspectives and instructional practices. in d. belcher & a. hirvela (eds.), linking literacies: perspectives on l2 reading-writing connections (pp.15-47). ann arbor mi: the university of michigan press. grabe, w. (2003). reading and writing relations: second language perspectives on research and practice. in b. kroll (ed.), exploring dynamics of 2nd language writing (pp.242-262). cambridge: cambridge university press. grabe, w. 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(1984). writing: research, theory, and applications. oxford: pergamon. langer, j., & applebee, a. (1986). reading and writing instruction: toward a theory of teaching and learning, review of research in education, 13, 171_194. lee, l., & gundersen, e. (2004).select readingsintermediate. oxford: oxford university press. mcgann, j. j. (2001). reading fiction/teaching fiction: a pedagogical experiment. pedagogy, 1(1), 143– 165. mcleod, s. a. (2007). simply psychology: vygotsky. retrieved 6 april, 2011 from http://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html murcia, m. (2001). teaching english as a second or foreign language (3rd ed.): copyright by heinle and heinle, a division of thomson learning, inc. 153-205. nunan, d. (1999). second language teaching and learning. boston: heinle & heinle. nunan, d. (2004). task-based language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. oczkus, l. d. (2003). the four reciprocal teaching strategies. in reciprocal teaching at work: reciprocal teaching of comprehension strategies improves efl learners' writing ability 9 strategies for improving reading comprehension (pp. 13-28). newark, de: international reading association palincsar, a. s. (1986). reciprocal teaching. in teaching reading as thinking. oak brook, il: north central regional educational laboratory. palincsar, a. s., & brown, a. l. (1984).reciprocal teaching of comprehension fostering and comprehension monitoring activities. cognition and instruction, 1(2), 117–175. palincsar, a. s., & brown, a. l. (1985). reciprocal teaching: activities to promote read(ing) with your mind. in t. l. harris & e. j. cooper (eds.), reading, thinking and concept development: strategies for the classroom. new york: the college board. palincsar, a. s., david, y. m., & brown, a. l. (1989). using reciprocal teaching in the classroom: a guide for teachers. unpublished manual. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan. pearson, p. d., & fielding, l. (1991).comprehension instruction. in r. barr, m. kamil, p. mosenthal, & p. d. pearson (eds.), handbook of reading research: volume ii (pp. 815-860). white plains, ny: longman publishing. pilonieta, p., & medina, a. l. (2009). reciprocal teaching for the primary grades: we can do it too!. the reading teacher 63 (2), 120–129. richards, j., & renandya, w. (2002).methodology in language teaching. an anthology of current practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. rosenshine, b., & meister, c. (1994). reciprocal teaching: a review of the research. review of educational research, 64(4), 479-530. slater, w. h., & horstman, f. r. (2002). teaching reading and writing to struggling middle school and high school students: the case for reciprocal teaching. preventing school failure, 46(4), 163. stricklin, k. (2011). hands-on reciprocal teaching: a comprehension technique. the reading teacher, 64(8), 620–625. vygotsky, l. s. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. m. cole, v. john-steiner, s. scribner, & e. souberman (eds.), cambridge, ma: harvard university press. williams, j. (2010). taking on the role of questioner: revisiting reciprocal teaching. the reading teacher, 64(4), 278–281. yang, y. f. (2010). developing a reciprocal teaching/learning system for college remedial reading instruction. computers and education, 55, 1193–1201. yoshimura, f. (2010). treatment of errors in an efl writing course. in a. m. stoke (ed.), jalt 2009 conference proceedings. tokyo: jalt. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 appendix composition topic “what problems worry you about the future?” evaluation sheet please use the following criteria and evaluate the compositions. criteria score content excellent to good knowledgeable, substantive, thorough development of thesis good to average some knowledge of the subject, adequate substance, limited development of thesis fair to poor limited knowledge of the subject, little substance, inadequate development very poor not show knowledge of the subject, non-substantive, or not enough to evaluate macro structure excellent to good idea clearly stated and supported, well-organized, logical sequencing good to average loosely organized but main ideas stand out, somewhat logical fair to poor ideas confusing or disconnected, lacks logical sequencing very poor does not communicate, no organization, or not enough to evaluate micro structure excellent to good fluent flow, detailed description good to average somewhat fluent flow, somewhat detailed description fair to poor choppy, ideas not connected well, few or no details very poor does not communicate, or not enough to evaluate language range and complexity excellent to good effective complex construction, sophisticated range of vocabulary, effective word/idiom choice and usage good to average simple construction, adequate range of vocabulary, somewhat effective word/idiom choice and usage fair to poor limited range of construction and/or vocabulary very poor no mastery of sentence construction and/ or little knowledge of vocabulary, or not enough to evaluate language errors excellent to good few errors in sentence constructions and/or word choice/form good to average minor problems in sentence constructions and/or word choice/form fair to poor major problems in constructions and/or word choice/form very poor no mastery of english construction and/or vocabulary, or not enough to evaluate reciprocal teaching of comprehension strategies improves efl learners' writing ability 11 excellent to good: 9-10 fair to poor: 5-6 good to average: 7-8 very poor: 1-4 be the teacher bookmark directions: this bookmark has prompts for each reciprocal teaching strategy and can aid students as they work their way through texts and reciprocal teaching discussions. lori d. oczkus. © 2003 international reading association predict use clues from the text or illustrations to predict what will happen next. i think...because... i’ll bet...because... i suppose...because... i think i will learn...because... question ask questions as you read. ask some questions that have answers in the text. use the question words who, what, where, when, why, how, and what if. try asking some questions that can be inferred. use clues from the text plus your experiences. clarify how can you figure out a difficult word or idea in the text? reread, reread, reread! think about word chunks you know. try sounding it out. read on. ask, does it make sense? talk to a friend. summarize using your own words, tell the main ideas from the text in order. this text is about... this part is about... current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 12 article citation ghorbani, m. r., gangeraj, a. a., & alavi, s. z. (2013). reciprocal teaching of comprehension strategies improves efl learners’ writing ability. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1046 author notes mohammad reza ghorbani university of bojnord, bojnord, iran iran, bojnord, university of bojnord mrg872@yahoo.com dr. mohammad reza ghorbani is assistant professor of teaching english as a second language (tesl) at the university of bojnord, bojnord, iran. he has worked as an efl teacher and researcher in iran, japan, and malaysia since 1990. he has published three books on educational issues and one in germany as well as fourteen articles in specialized international journals. he has also presented six papers in international conferences. his interests are english teaching, learning, testing, and evaluation. he is currently the president of state university of kosar. atefeh ardeshir gangeraj islamic azad university, garmsar branch, iran mazandaran, amol khyabane talebamoli, daryaye 43, kode posti 4617975163 atefeh.ardeshir@yahoo.com atefeh ardeshir gangeraj got her m.a. in tefl from islamic azad university, garmsar branch, iran. she has been teaching various english courses in different universities and english institutes in amol, iran. sahar zahed alavi kosar university of bojnord, bojnord, iran iran, bojnord, daneshgah kosar sahar_alavi87@yahoo.com sahar zahed alavi got her m.a. in tefl from sabzevar teacher training university in 1388. she has been teaching various english courses in different universities and english institutes. she is interested in areas of teaching, sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. manuscript received: 8/22/2012 revisions received: 12/9/2012 accepted:1/20/2013 reciprocal teaching of comprehension strategies improves efl learners' writing ability 13 volume 16, number 1 january 30, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1053_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 11, 2013 issn 1099-839x developing a professional learning community among preservice teachers nathan bond texas state university this action research study examined the development of a professional learning community (plc) among 20 preservice secondary teachers as they met regularly during a semester-long, field-based education course to share artifacts of learning from their professional portfolios. the plc model described by hord and tobia (2012) served as a framework for the implementation of this collaborative approach. the findings indicated that some aspects of the preservice teachers’ plcs worked well while others did not. the participants enjoyed meeting with classmates, offering emotional support, and sharing their experiences from the university course and cooperating teachers’ classes. however, they struggled with focusing attention on their high school students’ learning, selecting a plc leader, managing their time, and offering constructive feedback to other group members. the results suggest that the hord and tobia model of plcs is useful and deserves further consideration from teacher educators working with preservice teachers. keywords: preservice teacher education, professional learning communities, secondary education leading scholars are calling for teachers to become more collaborative in the way they learn, work, and grow professionally. lieberman and mace (2006) advise educators to abandon isolationist behaviors and embrace learning “from and with their fellow teachers” throughout their careers (p. 227). emphasizing the rationale, darling-hammond (2006) explains, “preparing teachers as classroom researchers and expert collaborators who can learn from one another is essential when the range of knowledge for teaching has grown so expansive that it cannot be mastered by any individual” (p. 305). if collaboration is to become the norm, then preparation programs must socialize preservice teachers early in their careers to this preferred way of operating. one method for teaching teachers to collaborate is to establish professional learning communities (plcs), which have the potential to teach novice educators about the power of collaboration and even to change the profession as a whole. mclaughlin and talbert (2001) elaborate, “building learning communities into the workload of american high school teachers is fundamentally a problem of re-culturing the profession⎯changing the ethos of teaching from individualism to collaboration, from conservatism to innovation” (p. 125). through learning about and experiencing collaboration during the preparation period, preservice teachers can avoid having to learn, unlearn, and relearn what teaching and learning look like (klein, 2008). the benefits of plcs for practicing teachers is well documented (fullan, 2001; hord, 2004; mclaughlin & talbert, 2006; senge et al., 2000; servage, 2008; stoll, bolam, mcmahon, wallace, & thomas, 2006). plcs remove physical and psychological barriers of isolation and create opportunities for colleagues to engage in ongoing, job-embedded, and personalized professional development (dufour, dufour, & eaker, 2008). teachers who participate in a plc advance in three specific ways: they add to their knowledge base (andrews & lewis, 2007), they improve their delivery of instruction (little, 2002), and, more importantly, they facilitate increased student learning (wiley, 2001). if current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 plcs help practicing teachers, would they have the same positive effect on preservice teachers? the purpose of this action research study was to investigate the implementation of hord and tobia’s (2012) model of plcs with a group of preservice secondary teachers in a field-based teacher preparation course. after setting professional goals, the 20 participants formed smaller five-member plcs and met four times during the 15-week semester to share artifacts of learning from their portfolios. the plcs served as a framework the participants could use to analyze their experiences and support one another as they learned to become teachers. guiding this investigation were the following research questions: what is the nature of preservice secondary teachers’ engagement with plcs in a field-based education course? what are preservice teachers’ perceptions of plcs? what happens when hord and tobia’s plc model is applied during the teacher preparation stage? review of literature this study is positioned at the intersection of three areas in the scholarly literature: plcs with preservice teachers, plcs at the secondary level, and plcs based on the hord and tobia (2012) model. the following sections showcase key empirical research in the three areas and explain the important parts of the hord and tobia plc model. preservice plcs at the heart of the study in this article are plcs comprised of preservice teachers. a review of the literature uncovered three such studies (gemmell, 2003; kent & simpson, 2009; rigelman & ruben, 2012). in her doctoral dissertation, gemmell (2003) followed a cohort of 10 graduate-level preservice teachers who participated in a peer-coaching plc model over a twosemester period. the participants first learned about peer coaching and pedagogy as part of their university coursework and then taught in their mentors’ classrooms, videotaped lessons, reflected on learning, and shared insights with classmates in a plc. the study found that “peers served as both a sounding board and a reality check as interns’ thinking processes became more rigorous, complex, and reflective” (gemmell, 2003, p. 138). in addition, the preservice teachers appreciated the emotional support and the professional reflective interactions with classmates. providing explicit instruction on giving and receiving feedback was recommended as a way to improve the collaborative learning. in a published study, kent and simpson (2009) examined a plc that developed over a two-semester period among undergraduates who were preparing to become elementary teachers. the study focused on a plc model that emphasized mentoring. unlike the previous study, in which participation in the plc was required, this study looked at preservice teachers who volunteered. they met each week with a university supervisor to reflect on their experiences, learn strategies related to effective teaching, and connect learning theories and methodologies to classroom practice. the study found that the preservice teachers were “excited by the opportunity to learn through reflecting on their experiences, gaining from the experience of others, and preparing for the first time they will have their own classroom and can call themselves a ‘real teacher’” (kent & simpson, 2009, p. 703). in addition, the university supervisor played an instrumental role in mediating the experience for the plc participants. in another published study, rigelman and ruben (2012) organized a cohort of elementary preservice teachers in highly structured plcs in their field-based setting. namely, the teacher candidates were divided into fourto five-person critical friends groups (cfg) and learned specific cfg protocols that guided their reflective dialog. the study found that the preservice teachers valued the feedback from their colleagues, felt confident in their abilities to teach, and acknowledged the importance of collaboration in their ongoing professional development. in summary, these research investigations were similar to the study presented here in that all focus on preservice teachers who participated in a plc while completing a field experience in a local school. the differences, however, are more pronounced. first, the plcs in the gemmell (2003) study and the rigelman and ruben (2012) study were structured around widely accepted approaches: peer coaching and critical friends groups respectively. on the other hand, the plc in the study described here was structured loosely around the development of portfolio goals, artifacts, and conferences. next, participation in the kent and simpson (2009) study and in this study was voluntary; in all others, required. finally, the three studies above involved preservice teachers at the elementary level; in the current study, at the secondary level. plcs in secondary schools in addition to plcs with preservice teachers, scholarship in the field of secondary education provided guidance for the current study. a review of the literature yielded four related studies that described the implementation of plcs by practicing secondary teachers. linder, post, and calabrese (2012) investigated the implementation of plcs developed around teacherselected topics. when teachers met, they discussed journal articles related to the plc topics and shared curricular activities created for their courses. the study showed that the participants valued three plc components: “studying a selected topic in depth, having the assistance of a university faculty member, and selecting, implementing, sharing and discussing results of developing a professional learning community among preservice teachers 3 activities with each other” (linder et al., 2012, p. 18). as in the previous study, nelson, lebard, and waters (2010) investigated secondary mathematics and science teachers who implemented plcs. the researchers identified three aspects to making plcs successful: a collaborative inquiry cycle to guide the work, deep conversations among teachers, and a focus on student work. although the plcs in these studies were successful, others were not. craig (2013) described secondary teachers who participated in a principalmandated plc. her study showed that the natural, informal sharing of ideas between teachers decreased. similarly, in an earlier study, o’malley (2010) discovered that plcs did not thrive when administrators took an active role. plcs thrived when administrators relinquished some authority and new teachers took responsibility for growing professionally. in summary, these studies also share similarities with the study presented here. the published studies indicate that participants prefer to select the focus of the collaborative work, receive an appropriate amount of assistance, and assume ownership of the plc process. these aspects were incorporated into the implementation of the plcs in this study. the major difference is that participants in the published literature often use student work as a focus of the plc. participants in this study did not; they shared artifacts of learning, such as lesson plans, observations of other teachers, and materials developed as part of the course requirements. hord model of plcs two studies appear in the scholarly literature that employ the hord model. maloney and konza (2011) developed plcs using the model with a group of elementary teachers in australia. the researchers determined that the five dimensions of the model succeeded to varying degrees. namely, the plcs were somewhat unsuccessful in the two areas of shared practice and shared values and vision. a few teachers did not perceive the plc as a priority, and some teachers dominated the conversations, thus squelching the contributions of the quieter teachers. in another study, wells (2008) studied six high schools in the early phases of plc implementation. the researcher administered a survey based on the hord model to distinguish the implementation levels of the various plc concepts by teachers after one year of training. the survey results indicated four implementation levels: isolated analyzers (worked in isolation and focused on student learning), collaborative learners (collaborated and focused on student learning), isolated planner (worked in isolation and focused on teacher learning), and collegial managers (collaborated and focused on teacher learning). in summary, these studies, as well as the one presented here, implemented the hord model. a difference is that the two studies mentioned above implemented an earlier version (hord, 1997), while the study in this study implemented a more recent version (hord & tobia, 2012). in this latest iteration, hord and tobia view plcs as a way to strengthen the professional part of a teacher’s work. educators are professionals because they possess the ability to engage in “continuous learning and improvement, around both subject matter and instruction” (hord & tobia, 2012, p. x). conceptual framework the researcher of this study purposely selected the plc model of hord and tobia (2012) for two reasons. first, shirley hord is a noted scholar in the field and has published journal articles and books on plcs throughout her career (hord, 1997, 2004, 2009; hord & tobia, 2012). second, the model is research-based. working with fellow staff members at the southwest educational development laboratory in the 1990s, hord “reviewed the knowledge base on effective professional learning communities and visited schools where plcs were reported to exist” (hord & tobia, 2012, p. 25). from the analysis emerged a model with five dimensions: supportive and shared leadership, shared values and vision, intentional collective learning and application of learning, supportive conditions, and shared practice. each dimension is explained below. tobia later joined hord and updated the model by placing a greater emphasis on teacher professionalism (hord & tobia, 2012). supportive and shared leadership. an integral part of a successful plc is the support that the principal or person in charge provides the group. the administrator shares leadership, power, and authority by inviting the members of the plc to share their ideas and participate in the decision-making process (hord & tobia, 2012). the leader exudes confidence and a sense of security in his/her own leadership abilities, supports the participants and their work, and avoids dominating the group’s interactions. the leader is responsible for creating a continuous learning environment for the participants (hord, 1997). shared values and vision. improving student learning is the ultimate goal of a plc. teachers working collaboratively cultivate an unwavering commitment to student learning, and this vision is consistently implemented in the work of the teachers and administrators (hord & tobia, 2012). educators in plcs regularly examine the faculty’s expectations for student learning, study best practices to meet expectations, and hold colleagues accountable for student learning results. intentional collective learning and application of learning. teachers in plcs intentionally collaborate in order to gain new knowledge and apply it to their instruction. the term intentional implies that the learning is purposeful. after identifying a significant problem in the school, teachers unite, study related information together, and develop common plans to address the current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 problem. the process yields empowered, self-directed professionals who take charge of their own learning. teachers embrace the collaborative approach because they know it will translate into high-quality instruction for their students (hord & tobia, 2012). supportive conditions. supportive conditions play an integral role in the success of plcs. hord and tobia (2012) divide this dimension into two categories: physical conditions and relational conditions. physical conditions are logistics and physical requirements for teachers working together, such as time and place to meet and material and human resources. teachers need time to plan instruction together, observe one another’s classrooms, and share feedback. relational conditions refer to the human capacities that encourage a collegial atmosphere for collective learning. participants in the plc develop rapport; build trusting, supportive, and caring professional relationships; and utilize effective communication skills when sharing, disagreeing, and resolving conflicts (hord, 2009). shared practice. the plc dimension of shared practice “involves the review of a teacher’s behavior by colleagues and includes feedback and assistance to support individual and community improvement” (hord & tobia, 2012, p. 26). teachers can share their practices informally by simply telling colleagues about instructional activities they have developed and taught or formally by inviting colleagues to visit their classes and observe lessons in progress. in addition to the actual sharing of practice, the feedback after the discussion or observation is important. feedback consists of open and candid conversation aimed at creating a transparent atmosphere. feedback improves the individual and the organization (hord, 2009). method the researcher, who also authored this manuscript, received written approval from his university’s institutional review board and from the participants to conduct this qualitative, descriptive action research study in his college course. the study examined 20 undergraduate preservice teachers seeking licensure in a variety of content areas at the secondary level. the preservice teachers maintained professional portfolios, met regularly to share their artifacts and reflections with one another, and developed plcs based on the hord and tobia (2012) plc model. action research methodology was chosen because “action research is a distinctive approach to inquiry that is directly relevant to classroom instruction and learning and provides a means for teachers to enhance their teaching and improve student learning” (stringer, 2008, p. 1). often associated with k−12 teachers, action research can be used by university professors as a research methodology even though some scholars claim that it disrupts the separation of pure research and teaching. as cochran-smith and lytle (2009) note, “we found that something different results when one’s professional work is the research site and one’s own emerging issues and dilemmas are the grist for systematic study” (p. 100). these researchers continue, “the insider status of the researcher is regarded as an asset to be capitalized on and mined, given the emic perspective, the unique insight, and the longitudinal viewpoint the researcher brings to the topic of study” (cochran-smith & lytle, 2009, p. 101). even though action research is discounted by some scholars, it informs university professors’ teaching practice. the action research cycle outlined by stringer (2008) guided the steps of this research study. the researcher first designed the study by focusing on his teaching, the feedback shared by his students, and reading the literature on plcs, portfolios, and teacher preparation. he then formulated a research question and developed appropriate data collection instruments to gather the data. throughout the study, he analyzed the data and recorded the findings. at the conclusion of the study, he used the findings to make improvements to the next iteration of the course. the researcher maintained rigor throughout the study by faithfully implementing the original plan without making any deviations, carefully collecting and analyzing the data, and seeking objective input from two colleagues not directly involved in the study. issues of validity are discussed in the section below on trustworthiness. researcher for this study, the author assumed two roles. first, he was the professor who taught the education course and observed the participants teaching lessons in the cooperating teachers’ classes. mentoring preservice teachers in schools has been part of his university responsibilities for the past thirteen years. in his second role, he was the qualitative action researcher who designed the study, collected and analyzed the data, and wrote this manuscript. in short, he had to carefully balance his roles as professor and researcher. simultaneously, he had to support his students to ensure their learning while remaining detached and objective to maintain the study’s integrity. his past experiences positively biased him toward plcs. when he was a high school teacher fifteen years ago, he and his colleagues in the foreign language department formed an informal plc. they voluntarily met each week during lunch to share instructional strategies that they had developed and to discuss the impact of their instruction on student learning. setting the participants attended a large public university located in the southwestern united states and classified as an emerging research institution and a hispanic serving institution. the education department at the university follows the professional development school (pds) model of teacher preparation (teitel, 2004). the teacher licensure program for secondary education developing a professional learning community among preservice teachers 5 table 1 study participants by group, professional goal, and licensure area participant professional goal licensure areas plc group 1 william technology english olivia technology english jack technology social studies and mathematics sophie diversity english and business emily curriculum and instruction special education plc group 2 ethan curriculum and instruction social studies elizabeth curriculum and instruction social studies oliver classroom management social studies and physical education joshua literacy mathematics samantha literacy special education plc group 3 madison diversity physical education noah diversity physical education and mathematics cooper diversity physical education and business lisa diversity social studies abigail curriculum and instruction spanish hannah technology special education plc group 4 thomas classroom management physical education and business chelsea classroom management physical education mark classroom management physical education sarah classroom management english current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 table 2 timeline of events week event 1 introduction to the course and teambuilding activities 2 lessons on plcs, portfolio assessment, and reflection 3 selection of professional goals 4 first plc meeting – participants formed plc groups and shared goals 8 second plc meeting – participants shared portfolio artifacts 11 third plc meeting – participants shared more portfolio artifacts 15 fourth plc meeting – participants shared completed portfolios with plc group and researcher typically lasts three semesters and requires preservice teachers to spend the first semester at the university, the second in a high school pds, and the third student teaching at a non-pds high school campus. this study was conducted during the second semester of this fieldbased sequence. preservice teachers were at the pds two days a week for eight hours each day, spending four hours with the professor learning pedagogy and four hours with cooperating teachers assisting with instructional responsibilities in their classes. the study was situated in a large, urban pds that had had a ten-year partnership with the university. the campus population was diverse in terms of ethnicity, socio-economic level, and native language. according to the state’s data management system, the student composition of the approximately 2700 students attending the high school the year of this study was 70 percent latina/o, 20 percent african-american, and 10 percent white. twenty percent of the students were english language learners. participants the 20 participants were fairly homogeneous, being mostly white undergraduates in their early twenties⎯75 percent white and 25 percent latina/o. fifty-five percent were female while forty-five percent were male. the participants were more heterogeneous in terms of their licensure areas. some participants were pursuing one teaching license; others, two. table 1 provides an overview of the participants by the plc group they formed, their professional goals, and their licensure areas. information about professional goals will be explained later in the procedure section. all names are pseudonyms. timeline of events the participants received ongoing support from the researcher during the study. for example, he taught them explicit lessons that focused on plcs, portfolios, and reflections early in the semester; reviewed upcoming assignments during class; and fielded questions in person and via e-mail about the assignments. after selecting professional goals, the participants met in their plcs four times during the semester. table 2 provides an overview of the major events in the study. procedure hord and tobia’s (2012) model served as a guide for the study. the researcher attempted to implement the model as faithfully as possible throughout the study. the following section explains how the model was implemented in accordance with the published literature. included in the implementation process were the model’s five dimensions: supportive and shared leadership, shared values and vision, intentional collective learning and application of learning, supportive conditions, and shared practice. during week 1, the participants received an overview of the education course in the pds and completed several teambuilding activities to create a positive learning environment. these activities fostered the supportive relational conditions required in the hord and tobia (2012) model. during week 2, the researcher taught several lessons that introduced the ideas of plcs, portfolio assessment, and reflection. as part of the instruction, participants read and discussed plc articles written by hord. the purpose of these activities was to facilitate the participants’ understanding of the plc model. developing a professional learning community among preservice teachers 7 at the beginning of week 3, the participants studied a list of seven possible professional goals that had been predetermined by the researcher and chose one to focus on for the remainder of the semester. the seven professional goals corresponded to the major themes specified in the official curriculum that the professors in the department had developed and approved. the goal areas were curriculum and instruction, assessment, classroom management, diversity, literacy, technology, and professionalism. the goal served as the participant’s semester-long inquiry (cochran-smith & lytle, 2009), which addressed the dimension of intentional collective learning and application of learning in the hord and tobia (2012) model. after the participants had selected an individual goal and submitted it to the researcher in writing, they began thinking about the fellow participants with whom they wanted to form a plc. the entire class discussed the advantages of various choices, such as working only with people who shared the same licensure area, working only with people who shared the same goal, or working with a mixed group with various licensure areas and goals. table 1 above shows that participants varied in the types of plc groups they formed. two of the groups had five members each, one group had six members, and one group had four members. at the beginning of week 4, the participants held their first plc meeting. this step corresponded to the shared practice dimension of the hord and tobia (2012) model. the participants initially worked on their own to form groups of four to six classmates of their own choosing. using their portfolios as focal points of their conversations, the newly formed groups initially met for 45 minutes to get more acquainted with one another on deeper personal-professional levels. they explained why they had selected their professional goals and brainstormed ways they could document their learning in their particular goal areas. as the participants talked in their newly formed plc groups, the researcher moved unobtrusively about the room and from group to group listening briefly to the conversations and recording in his research notes a few of the comments and his observations of the groups’ interactions. he refrained from interjecting his comments into the groups’ conversations. once the meetings finished, the participants debriefed as a whole class and responded to follow-up questions that expanded their thinking about professional goals and about ways to document meeting their goals. during week 8, after a month of working independently toward reaching their goals, the groups met again for 45 minutes for their second plc meetings. participants shared artifacts that depicted growth in the goal areas and prepared written reflections explaining what they had learned. the researcher again remained silent, moving from plc to plc, listening to the comments, and recording observations in his field notes journal. after the meetings the participants wrote reflections on what they had experienced, what they had learned from their fellow participants, and what changes they could make to improve the plcs. during week 11, the participants held their third plc meetings, following the same procedure they had used for the second meetings. at the end of the semester during week 15, the plcs met a fourth time. for this final plc, the groups met at different times, and the researcher attended each group’s meeting. he asked them to share their completed portfolios with all artifacts. the difference between this fourth meeting and the three previous ones was that he attended and took a more active role by asking questions after the participants had finished their discussions. data sources throughout the study, data came from four sources: (1) written documents produced by the participants, (2) one-hour telephonic interviews with key informants, (3) the official course curriculum and assignments, and (4) researcher field notes. the written documents included the following items prepared by each of the 20 participants: four portfolio artifacts, four reflections, four post-plc meeting reflections, and a final reflection at the end of the semester on the entire contents of the portfolio. the written documents also included 12 total sets of minutes taken by a member of each plc during the meetings. the minutes recorded key ideas and comments shared by the participants. taking written minutes was chosen over audiotaping the meetings in order to minimize the fear that one’s comments were being recorded word for word. the minutes captured the essence of the conversation and attempted to document the participants’ points of view. written documents served as a data source because they allowed participants the freedom to choose their own words, which uncovered new emergent topics and revealed complexities among ideas in the research (lujan & day, 2010). the researcher conducted semi-structured telephonic interviews at the end of the semester with five key informants. the individual interviews lasted 60 minutes and were audiotaped and transcribed by the researcher. the purpose of the interviews was to gather more in-depth information about the plcs from the participants’ perspectives. semi-structured interviews allowed the researcher to probe for details and spontaneously change the line of questioning and gave participants the opportunity to share their perspectives (lujan & day, 2010). the official course curriculum and assignments provided data for the study. the curriculum included the course syllabus and readings associated with plcs and the assignment that introduced the participants to the idea of plcs. this last document served as a type of support for the participants throughout the process because it current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 8 explained the step-by-step process to follow in a plc. it also contained background information about plcs, the rationale for the project, the questions to answer in the written reflections, and the general guidelines for the plc meetings. researcher field notes were the fourth data source. as the plcs met, the researcher circulated among the groups and listened to their comments. he recorded some of the participants’ comments and his observations of their interactions, along with his ideas and ongoing analyses of the experience. bailey and guskey (2001) recommend that leaders take a non-participatory and facilitative approach during conferences. data analyses and trustworthiness a deductive approach was utilized to analyze the data systematically. since the number of studies in the area of preservice teacher plcs was limited, the initial analysis was kept as broad as possible. first, the researcher read through the data to “gain a sense of the whole” (mcmillan & schumacher, 2001, p. 464) and generated tentative topics using open coding. he drafted memos to record the reflections and tentative ideas about his discoveries and to focus his coding (corbin & strauss, 2008). as he coded the raw data, he looked specifically for topics that related to each dimension outlined by hord and tobia (2012). this constant comparative method (glaser & strauss, 1967) was repeated until all related ideas and subcategories were identified and a clear picture of the situation emerged. the researcher continued reading, re-reading, comparing and contrasting, interpreting the sources, and collecting data until saturation was reached and the topics were refined into the categories. to ensure trustworthiness, the researcher triangulated the data by cross-validating the sources and finding regularities in the data (denzin & lincoln, 2000). when a theme appeared at least three times in the four data sources, it was labeled as a major theme and included in the findings section. themes mentioned once or twice were classified as minor themes and were omitted. to strengthen the aspect of trustworthiness, the researcher created an audit trail to record the analytical steps, the techniques, and the conceptual chain of logic that was followed (drew, hardman, & hosp, 2008). furthermore, he audiotaped and transcribed the interviews with the key informants, producing five hours of audiotape and 25 pages of transcription. afterward, he member checked the data with each interviewee to ensure accuracy. the researcher also asked two colleagues to review the data and manuscript as a way to confirm the findings. findings the data analysis revealed that some aspects of the plcs worked well while quite a few aspects did not. the participants enjoyed meeting with classmates, offering emotional support to one another, and sharing their experiences from the university course and cooperating teachers’ classes. with regard to the negative aspects, some participants did not readily buy into the idea of a plc in the beginning although they did for the most part later in the study. some who liked the idea of a plc tended to focus on themselves rather than on their high school students’ needs. many groups struggled with issues of identifying a leader or facilitator in the group, providing feedback to other group members when sharing portfolio artifacts, and managing their time in the plc. in the following sections the findings are elaborated and organized according to hord and tobia’s (2012) plc model. supportive and shared leadership according to the data, the participants struggled to select leaders. the plc assignment for the first meeting directed each group to choose a person to facilitate the meetings and record the minutes. during the telephone interview, elizabeth identified samantha as the leader because she recorded colleagues’ comments and kept the group working at an efficient pace. joshua, a member of the same plc, recalled the situation differently. he claimed to be the “de facto” group leader because he had the most dominating personality and he had volunteered to share first. these differing viewpoints suggested that group members did not clearly know who was in charge. even though the groups felt unsure about leadership roles, most participants were cordial to the person ultimately chosen. one of the four groups, however, did not function well. in a post-conference reflection, emily described her experience as the leader and scribe in her group. when she tried to move the discussion along, she received some resistance from her colleagues. she wrote, “i tried to find a way to participate in a meaningful way by keeping track of time, but my colleagues weren’t very receptive to this role and it turned into a very negative experience.” the negativity led her eventually to change plcs. the participants commented in their final reflection that they liked the fourth or last plc meeting the best. elizabeth explained why a more knowledgeable person should serve as the leader. she stated: you [the researcher] should mediate all of the meetings because you know all of it already and we’re still learning. you know the principles of education and it’s nice to have somebody there who has experience and can relate to us or question us. you will ask us questions to make us think, rather than questions that someone asks that we don’t know. it was nice to talk to you during the last conference. it was refreshing to have someone guide us through it. the findings suggest that the participants were eventually able to select a leader and act cordially to the person, but they would have preferred to work with a leader who had developing a professional learning community among preservice teachers 9 more experience and credibility. shared values and vision the participants apparently misunderstood the purpose as well as the process of plcs. although the participants had read and discussed the importance of plcs to k−12 student learning, they were unclear about the reasons for meeting. in his telephone interview, joshua acknowledged that the researcher had stressed the importance of the plcs through his comments and explanations in class and through his grading system, but joshua wished the researcher had emphasized more the real-world importance of teachers building communities. the value of plcs did not become clear until “later in the semester.” furthermore, the low number of artifacts submitted during the first conference suggests either confusion or a lack of buy-in by the participants. only 55 percent (11 of 20) of the artifacts were submitted during the first conference, but 85 percent (17 of 20) were submitted during the third. when asked to explain their reasons for not completing the assignment, the majority of participants responded, “i forgot.” finally, a further analysis of the artifacts shared revealed that the participants had focused more on their own problems than on their students’ learning. an analysis of the plc minutes confirmed that the conversations focused primarily on problems the participants encountered during the lesson, not on their students’ learning. progress, however, still did occur over the course of the semester. twenty-five percent (5 of 20) of the participants wrote about the importance of their high school students’ learning in their reflections at the end of the semester. noah wrote, “the main goal is that it is not about improving my own knowledge, but the main goal should be about the students.” by participating in the reflective and interactive plc discussions, the participants were beginning to shift their focus from themselves to their students. in addition to the confusion about the purpose of the plcs, the participants were unclear about the process. samantha was confused about what to do during the plc meetings. to address that issue in the future, she suggested better modeling of expected behavior during the plcs she wrote: you [the researcher] might show us how you would exactly prefer that we go about it because i think that we were put into those groups and told to share about your artifact and what you do and then you wanted everyone to give feedback. i think that people didn’t know how to do that for a large part, so maybe modeling it or being very specific on ways to give feedback so people know. the participants would have liked to have the researcher directly teach them about plcs and the ways to interact with others in the group. intentional collective learning and application of learning the participants demonstrated their intentional collective learning by setting professional learning goals for the semester. they each selected a goal from a prescribed list that corresponded to the major concepts outlined in the university’s official course curriculum. an analysis of the goals revealed that five participants chose classroom management; five, diversity; four, curriculum and instruction; four, technology; and two, literacy. no one chose assessment or professionalism. when asked to explain their goal selection, the participants offered a variety of reasons for their choices. some participants based their decision on prior experience. madison chose diversity because, “my high school was not very diverse, and i do not feel prepared to teach in a diverse environment.” participants recognized that their backgrounds were different from the current school context in which they found themselves, and they viewed the plcs as a way to expand their knowledge of schools. personal beliefs about teaching influenced some participants’ decisions. after selecting diversity as her goal, lisa commented, “all children come from different backgrounds and we need to understand how to teach them using appropriate methods.” personal beliefs were particularly influential when it came to classroom management. mark said, “if you don’t have classroom management, then you can’t give the students the time they deserve.” the participants viewed involvement in plcs as an opportunity to refine their beliefs about students and teaching. at the end of the semester the participants reflected on their learning and named a new goal to pursue in the future. an analysis of the goals revealed that six participants picked classroom management; five, technology; four, curriculum and instruction; one, diversity; one, professionalism; and three, no response. the participants who completed the assignment cited their growing awareness of the principles of teaching as the reason for selecting the new goals. in summary, the plc provided a framework the participants could use to set goals, reflect on their experiences, and strive toward future areas of growth as educators. supportive conditions the participants encountered problems regarding the structural conditions for implementing a plc, primarily related to the issue of time. the amount of time for each meeting, 45 minutes, was too short. thomas and olivia wrote respectively in their post-plc reflections, “we need more time,” and “we did not have enough time to discuss all our insights.” the participants felt rushed. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 10 the groups also struggled with their management of the allotted 45 minutes. emily wrote in a post-plc reflection, “i attempted to remind my colleagues that we can’t spend all our time on one person, but it did not go over well. two colleagues hogged most of the time while the others split four to six minutes.” lisa proposed a possible solution when she wrote, “there might be too many of us because we ran out of time.” decreasing the number in each plc would afford more time. another related problem was the time of day when the plcs occurred. the first meeting took place during the middle of the morning; the second, at the end of the day. meeting at the conclusion of a long, busy day caused problems because the participants were tired and wanted to go home rather than stay and talk as evidenced by mark, who wrote, “it was at the end of the day, and the conversations were quick.” conducting plc conferences at the beginning or in the middle of the day may be more effective. furthermore, the composition of the plcs was a problem for some participants. although they decided with whom they would work, some participants noted that the group composition was not ideal. it seemed that each person preferred a different type of group composition. some wanted plcs comprised of colleagues with same goal; some wanted colleagues with the same licensure area; some wanted colleagues with the same licensure area and goal; and some expressed no preference at all. the participants could switch groups if they wanted, and one did. even with these problems, some structural conditions aided the plcs. the participants were comfortable with the location of the meetings. they arranged their desks in small circles in the rooms where they met. the participants also valued having internet access, which allowed them to share electronic documents easily with fellow group members. the participants encountered very few problems with the relational conditions. for the most part, the participants treated one another respectfully during the plcs. when asked in the post-conference reflections about what had worked, the participants mentioned the positive nature of the interactions. after the first conference, cooper wrote, “our conference ran very smoothly. we stayed on topic and built great rapport with each other, which leads to an open discussion.” in all reflections, only two negative comments surfaced. jack wrote after the second plc meeting, “emily needs to be removed from our group.” in her reflection, emily provided more insights into the group dynamics. she tried to keep the conversation moving forward, but the other participants did not like her nudging. the researcher tried to help emily resolve the conflict by discussing various solutions. hoping to empower her, he encouraged her to do what was best for her professional growth. emily met with the same group for the third conference but switched groups for the fourth one. shared practice conversations played a positive role in the plcs. the participants learned pedagogical information in discussions with classmates. throughout the semester the participants studied many topics such as lesson planning, test development, classroom management techniques, and modifications for special education learners and english language learners. when they met in their plc groups, they talked about their understanding of these concepts. according to the participants’ reflections, the abstract ideas became more concrete and real after the lessons and plc meetings. ethan wrote that preparing to talk with his plc members forced him to think carefully about his understanding of lesson planning. he had to consider what he was going to say during the meeting. in addition to gaining new information, the participants deepened their understanding of the pedagogical ideas by listening to others’ perspectives. each plc group member had a slightly different understanding and unique way to apply the information to his/her content areas. samantha commented, “there are many facets to teaching and we all approach them from different angles. when we combine our approaches and insights, it can help us to make our instruction more effective.” during the plc meetings the participants were supposed to focus on their portfolio artifacts and their students’ learning; however, they interjected personal stories of problems they were facing in their cooperating teachers’ classes. as scribe, joe recorded in his group’s minutes the problems that were discussed. the list included some issues with high school students talking about inappropriate topics, refusing to complete work, feigning sickness, and texting on their cell phones. similar important and instructive side conversations appeared in all groups’ minutes. although the participants regarded plc conversations positively, they experienced a few negative aspects when interacting with group members. giving feedback was a challenge because it was either shallow or non-existent. ethan elaborated: as far as constructive criticism, there could have been more. i never heard any constructive criticism. i wonder if it’s a matter that everyone is on the same page and into everybody else’s ideas or if there is some sort of inhibiting factor about being critical. everyone throughout the semester was aware of that dynamic. people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are getting ready for a job realize on some level that constructive criticism among peers is helpful. if we’re getting ready for a job and career, then we can be a little harsher, developing a professional learning community among preservice teachers 11 but give honest opinions without hurting others’ feelings. the participants struggled with giving and receiving feedback because they did not know how and why to give feedback. discussion the findings from this study add to the literature on plcs by offering concrete advice for teacher educators who want to implement hord and tobia’s (2012) plc model with their preservice secondary teachers. successful as well as unsuccessful aspects of implementation emerged from the data. successful aspects of implementation preservice teacher plcs gave the novices opportunities to engage in instructive and supportive conversations with colleagues who were at the same career stage. these conversations were beneficial because preservice teachers were able to verbalize their thinking about pedagogical concepts, ask questions to clarify misconceptions, and deepen their understanding of ideas. the findings in the study affirmed the power of professional conversations, which is well-documented in the literature for both in-service and preservice teachers. working with experienced teachers, clark (2001) explained that a professional conversation is “not only a satisfying end in itself, but also a medium of support, advice, sense making, and encouragement for teachers to continue to learn how to serve their students” (p. 7). likewise, kent and simpson (2009) in their study of plcs in teacher preparation programs found that student teachers wanted to share their experiences with others in groups. in addition to learning pedagogical information, the conversations provided important emotional support, which emerged as a prominent recurring theme and appears to be a new contribution to the field of preservice teacher plcs. granted, other scholars, such as hord and tobia (2012), have discussed the relational support needed among teachers in plcs; however, the idea of emotional support was particularly valued by the preservice teachers in this study. novices early in their careers have to learn large amounts of new information in a fairly short amount of time and apply it in unfamiliar classroom settings. as a result of the pressure, they often doubt their abilities and feel anxious and insecure. they are “swimming in a sensory overload with new coworkers, a new physical environment, and new students. survival is the metaphor that is often used to depict the new teacher experience” (kim & roth, 2011, p. 6). meeting in plcs allowed preservice teachers in this study to share their fears, console one another, see that they were not alone, and receive encouragement. hopefully, these novices will develop these types of support systems when they are practicing teachers. studies examining beginning teachers during their induction years show that emotional support from mentors and colleagues yields increased job satisfaction, greater commitment to the profession, and higher retention rates (ingersoll & strong, 2011). beginning teachers remain in the profession when they “feel supported and are buoyed by a professional culture that encourages professional interaction” (kardos, 2004, pp. 139−140). plcs might be a way for teacher educators to help preservice teachers begin developing support systems. unsuccessful aspects of plc implementation and implications for teacher educators the hord and tobia (2012) plc model was implemented in a loosely structured way around professional goals and portfolios. following this approach, problems surfaced in four areas, all of which are discussed in the following section. possible solutions based on research are offered to scholars who want to implement this plc model in the future. first, although the ultimate goal of a plc is to focus on k−12 students’ learning (dufour, dufour, & eaker, 2008; hord & tobia, 2012), preservice teachers tended to focus on their own teaching. it was not surprising that the novices in this study centered on themselves. the structure of the course inhibited a shift of focus from self to the high school students. the preservice teachers spent only eight hours total per week in their cooperating teachers’ classes and taught three short lessons. as a result, they felt a weak commitment to their students’ learning because they were not fully immersed in the high school classes. fuller’s (1969) classic study of the stages of teacher development concludes that preservice teachers are naturally predisposed to focusing on themselves. fuller suggests that giving them experiences with k−12 students will remedy the situation and move them from selfcenteredness to student-centeredness. fuller’s advice would indicate that the act of teaching itself may address this issue in preservice teacher plcs. another solution that could help them focus more on their students is to require them to collect student data from preand postassessments administered during their lessons in their cooperating teachers’ classes and use this information as the focus of their plc conversations. using assessments in that way would orient their conversations in the plcs to examining their students’ learning and researching best practices to improve student learning (hord & tobia, 2012). giving and receiving feedback was another area that did not work well in the preservice teacher plcs. the participants in the study were respectful of colleagues and tended to avoid confrontation. consequently, a culture of politeness appeared to yield few benefits. in her dissertation, gemmell (2003) advised teacher educators to teach students how to give and receive feedback. likewise, this study confirmed previous research by affirming that the novices did not know how to give or current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 12 ask for feedback. they had not yet learned this pedagogical technique. early in the process, teacher educators should explicitly teach novices how to give and receive high-quality feedback. perhaps following specific protocols, like those used in the preservice plc study by rigelman and ruben (2012), would ensure that feedback is given in a professional and consistent way. identifying leaders in the preservice teacher plcs posed problems. for the most part, the groups functioned satisfactorily because the group members were cordial, polite, and respectful to one another and because they were at the same point in their careers. previous studies show that beginning teachers value working with peers and seek out such collaborations because they gain as much as they give in such interactions (gellert & gonzalez, 2011). working with more experienced teachers and administrators is also beneficial. in their research, hord and tobia (2012) found that in-service teachers in successful plcs worked closely with their administrators to learn leadership skills and develop a “personal and professional comfort level” sharing the decision-making process (p. 101). the principal modeled appropriate leadership and then shared decision making with teachers. as found in the studies on plcs in secondary schools (craig, 2013; o’malley, 2010), teachers and their administrators must find an appropriate balance when sharing plc leadership responsibilities. moreover, preservice teachers need to know how to select a leader among their peers when working in a shared leadership setting. the participants in this study stated that the fourth portfolio conference, the meeting led by the researcher, ran more smoothly because there was someone clearly in charge. therefore, the approach for this fourth conference should be used for the first conference. a more experienced person, such as a professor, can model and scaffold as preservice teachers learn about leadership and plcs. the process of selecting a leader from the peer group should also be taught. finally, time affected the success of the plcs. the participants in this study reported that they wanted more than the allotted 45 minutes. to give all participants more time to share artifacts and discuss their learning, teacher educators need to set aside an hour or more for the meeting or else reduce the number of group members from five to three or four. technology, including online discussion boards or blogs, might help resolve the issue of time. studying the implementation of plcs with practicing teachers, lujan and day (2010) also found that the meeting time must be sacred and treated as a high priority. limitations and unanswered questions the study’s findings should be considered in light of several limitations. first, the duration of the study was a limiting factor. ideally, a longitudinal study lasting from the preservice stage through the induction stage would yield a clearer picture of the role of plcs in teacher development. this study spanned one semester in order to identify the steps that teacher educators must take to introduce preservice teachers to a collaborative way of working with colleagues. the goal was to avoid requiring teachers early in their careers to learn, unlearn, and relearn information (klein, 2008). according to the data, as time progressed, the participants better understood the purpose and process of the plc and also shifted their thinking from themselves to their students. second, the findings of this case study may not be generalizable to other contexts. this study focused on 20 participants in one particular school. with all qualitative studies, readers must decide the applicability of the results to their specific context. the study was intended to generate ideas and possibilities for scholars to replicate in other settings. third, since this study was exploratory by nature, open-ended data collection instruments were used. therefore, future studies should take formal steps to determine the degree to which participants embrace the plc idea. coincidentally, shirley hord collaborated with fellow researchers to develop the concerns-based adoption model (cbam), which measures how teachers perceive and implement a new idea and how facilitators adjust their interventions to advance the change process successfully (hall & hord, 1987). cbam includes written surveys, observation protocols, and structured interviews that assess the stages of concerns, levels of use, and implementation process of the new approach. these assessments cannot be administered retroactively to the participants because the study described here has ended. however, based on the collected data, it appears that most participants reached the middle levels of these measures. in other words, the participants did not fully embrace the plcs, but they did not fully reject them either. researchers in future studies may want to examine each participant’s experience more closely using cbam to identify the specific changes that must be made when implementing plcs. besides the questions related to cbam, this study generated additional unanswered questions that could be pursued in future research studies. for example, what is the earliest point that plcs can be implemented in a teacher preparation program? can teacher educators implement plcs in courses that do not include a field component in k−12 settings? finally, how can preservice teachers be taught to give constructive feedback? it seems that the study raised more questions than it found answers. conclusion research shows that plcs help practicing teachers to increase learning for their students and create collaborative settings for professional development. based on the findings of this study, developing plcs with preservice teachers shows glimpses of promise. although developing a professional learning community among preservice teachers 13 many problems surfaced when plcs were implemented with preservice teachers, these difficulties can be minimized by teacher educators designing future plcs. thessin and starr (2011) state, “as schools and districts race to implement plcs to provide teachers with time to collaborate, they are also realizing that learning how to work in teams does not just magically happen. districts must be deliberate in their efforts to teach teachers how to collaborate” (pp. 49-50). likewise, teacher preparation programs, in addition to teaching pedagogical information, must introduce plcs to preservice teachers in the early stages of their careers. with some modifications, the hord and tobia’s (2012) model is a good starting point for developing plcs among preservice secondary teachers. references andrews, d., & lewis, m. 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(2000). schools that learn: a fifth discipline fieldbook for educators, parents, and everyone who cares about education. new york: currency doubleday. servage, l. (2008). critical and transformative practices in professional learning communities. teacher education quarterly, 35(1), 63-77. stoll, l., bolam, r., mcmahon, a., wallace, m., & thomas, s. (2006). professional learning communities: a review of the literature. journal of educational change, 7(4), 221-258. doi: 10.1007/s10833-006-0001-8 stringer, e. (2008). action research in education (2nd ed.). upper saddle river, nj: pearson prentice hall. teitel, l. (2004). two decades of professional development school development in the united states: what have we learned? where do we go from here? journal of in-service education, 30(3), 401-416. thessin, r. a., & starr, j. p. (2011). supporting the growth of effective professional learning communities districtwide. phi delta kappan, 92(6), 48-54. wells, c. (2008). a conceptual design for understanding professional learning community implementation. catalyst for change, 35(2), 2537. wiley, s. d. (2001). contextual effects of student achievement: school leadership and professional community. journal of educational change, 2(1), 1-33. developing a professional learning community among preservice teachers 15 article citation bond, n. (2013). developing a professional learning community among preservice teachers. current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1053 author notes nathan bond, ph.d. texas state university department of curriculum and instruction, 601 university drive san marcos, tx 78666 nathanbond@txstate.edu dr. bond has teaches undergraduate and graduate education courses in one of his university’s professional development schools. his areas of expertise include teacher leadership, portfolio assessment, and foreign language pedagogy. acknowledgement: the author thanks kathleen magor for her feedback on this manuscript. manuscript received: 08/13/2012 revisions received: 04/11/2013 accepted: 05/13/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 16 volume 16, number 2 august 11, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1084_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 12, 2013 issn 1099-839x does social background influence political science grades? gizachew tiruneh university of central arkansas this paper tests a hypothesized linear relationship between social background and final grades in several political science courses that i taught at the university of central arkansas. i employ a cross-sectional research design and ordinary least square (ols) estimators to test the foregoing hypothesis. relying on a sample of up to 204 undergraduate students that i taught in 2008 and 2009, and controlling for attendance, gpa, gender, test scores, and number of credit hours, i found no linear relationship between social background and grades. a notable finding of this paper is that the social backgrounds of students born to families of lower and moderate education and their political science grades have a curvilinear relationship. in addition, there seems to be no relationship between the social background of students who come from families of higher education and their grades. on the other hand, students' class attendance and gpa seem to have positive influences on their final grades. gender and students' number of credit hours are not, however, related to students' final grades. keywords: social background, political science grades, academic performance the relationship between social background and academic performance has been debated by scholars for the past several decades. many scholars have contended and empirically found that family income and education levels, attributes of social background, contribute to the academic success of students who attend college (demie, butler, & taplin, 2002; gayle, berridge, & davis, 2002). other scholars disagree and provide counter findings: social background and academic performance are not causally related (bakker, denessen, & brus-laeven, 2007; leman, 1999). yet, as rego and sousa (1999, p. 93) have suggested, “[i]t is possible that on some courses (like law, political science, sociology, etc.) academic performance may depend, to a greater degree, on the family’s social and cultural background.” thus, the question of determining the relationship between social background and academic performance remains open (ashe higher education report, 2007; lavin, 1965). the main purpose of this study is to test the existence of a relationship between social background and final grades in the political science courses that i taught at the university of central arkansas between 2008 and 2009. using a cross-sectional research design and a sample of up to 204 undergraduate students, i tested the impact of social background on final grades. i found that students’ social background has no linear and significant effect on political science grades. a notable finding of this paper is that the combined social background data of students born to families of lower and moderate education and their political science grades have a curvilinear relationship. on the other hand, there seems to be little or no correlation between the social background of students born to families of higher education and their political science grades. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 literature review social background and academic performance according to coleman (1988, p. s109), family’s wealth influences academic performance because it provides students with the “physical resources that can aid achievement: a fixed place in the home for studying, materials to aid learning, the financial resources that smooth family problems.” wealthy families can facilitate the educational success of their children by sending them to quality schools or paying for out-of-school tutors (marks, cresswell, & ainley, 2006; see also chiu, 2010; chiu & khoo, 2005). students who come from resourcerich families will also likely have access to books that are necessary for them to excel in their studies (rego & sousa, 1999). in addition, family education fosters cognitive environment that aids student learning (coleman, 1988). for instance, because of the discrepancy in financial, moral, and informational support that parents provide to their children (ashe higher education report, 2007), students whose parents were first-generation college students achieved lowered grades in colleges compared to students whose families (one or two of them) had at least a bachelor’s degree (pike & kuh, 2005; see also pascarella, pierson, wolniak, & terenzini, 2004). other scholars have found that mothers’ education tends to affect their children’s studies more than does fathers’ education (scott, 2004). for instance, mothers read more to their children than do fathers (cheung & anderson, 2003). in addition, given that mothers are the primary caregivers and also tend to lead single-parent families, their involvements in their children’s studies influence their children’s current and future academic successes (pettit, yu, dodge, & bates, 2009; scott, 2004). however, the positive effect of social background on academic performance is disputed by other scholars. leman (1999) found weak and insignificant impact of social class on grades among cambridge university undergraduate students. similarly, rego and sousa (1999) found no statistically significant relationship between socioeconomic background and academic performance in higher education in portugal. in addition, pascarella et al. (2004) found no statistically significant difference in second-year writing skills or in third-year reading comprehension or critical thinking between first-generation and other students. more often than not, no theoretical explanations are given with regard to the absence of a positive correlation between social background and academic performance. this is because, in some of these cases, social background was used as a control variable. in others, the data did not support the hypothesized positive effect of social background on performance. the foregoing contradictory findings seem puzzling. according to lavin (1965), the apparent contradiction in the studies that have tested the relationship between social background and academic performance is due to problems in model specification: the relationship between ses [socioeconomic status] and academic performance is positive through most of the ses range, but at the upper ses levels, it is inverse. when the ses sample does not include this upper segment, positive relations will be found. when the sample does include the upper range and does not go below the middle class, inverse relations will be found. (p. 126) lavin (1965) has argued that the inconclusive findings about the relationship between socioeconomic status and academic performance can be theoretically explained by the presence of a discrepancy in the levels of motivation among students who come from the various social classes. specifically, students who come from families of lower and middle-classes may be motivated to succeed in their academic and career endeavors than those who are born into the upper classes, who would just be content with graduating from college (lavin, 1965; see also grehan, flanagan, & malgady, 2011). having found no statistical relationship between social background and academic performance, rego and sousa (1999) also argued that the two variables might be mediated by, among other things, motivational profiles. more specifically, the authors provided two propositions for future studies: students who come from richer families can perform better if they are educated to value academic performance and those who come from poorer families can do better in their studies when educated to go beyond their families’ socioeconomic positions. moreover, some scholars have argued that the relationship between social background and academic performance may be indirect. according to coleman (1988; see also ashe higher education report, 2007), families affect the academic success of students indirectly by providing them with social capital. social capital entails the relations between children and family members. the amount of time and support that family members give to children tend to facilitate student learning. for instance, mothers’ involvements in their children’s studies, including reading to them and helping them with their homework, is believed to influence their children’s current and future academic successes (cheung & anderson, 2003; pettit, yu, dodge, & bates, 2009; scott, 2004). children are, on their part, expected to learn and be aware of various forms of social capital, including personal obligations and social norms, if they are to succeed in dealing with their teachers and peers. such intangibles could, in turn, help children to do well in their studies. in addition, children should benefit from the flow of valuable information from family members and society, including learning the importance of staying in high school and acquiring a college education (coleman, does social background influence political science grades? 3 1988). moreover, parental interest, encouragement, and involvement in their children’s education tend to mediate inequalities in skills between students from lower and higher social classes (cheung & andersen, 2003). school effects or social background? other scholars have argued that school effects (such as the quality of schools and teachers) determine student learning (heyneman & loxley, 1983; konstantopoulos, 2006; konstantopoulos & borman, 2011). for instance, heyneman and loxley (1983) have found that the impact of family background on academic performance is weak in societies with lower level of economic development. this is because in poorer countries, access to school is limited. the school is also considered a place where students are prepared for jobs. thus, regardless of social status, all families strive to make sure that their children do well in school. on the other hand, school effects are found to be the main determinants of student learning in poorer countries (heyneman & loxely, 1983). in general, if schools have adequate financial resources, they will likely hire enough and well-trained or effective teachers. the quality and quantity of teachers would, in turn, foster the academic performance of students (koshal, koshal, & gupta, 2004; yuhong & yongmei, 2008). other scholars have, however, contended that a higher level of development is not an impediment to students’ academic performance. for instance, wealthier countries, such as the united states, tend to have more public resources like museums and libraries (aspect of school effects) that can provide more opportunities to student learning (chiu, 2010). wealthier countries also tend to produce richer families and resourceful schools; and such resources may be used to foster student learning (chiu, 2010; see also chiu & khoo, 2005). in other words, the wealth of a country may indirectly contribute to student achievement by directly affecting social status and school effects (see also konstantopoulos, 2006; konstantopoulos & borman, 2011). other possible predictors of academic performance although social background and school effects may be two of the most important variables that can explain student learning, there are several other factors that could be controlled for. according to moore (2003), class attendance fosters students’ learning. for instance, students who attend classes regularly would benefit from class discussions; they would also learn when teachers go over assigned materials. although there are some counter arguments (chung, 2004; durden & ellis, 2003), several empirical studies have confirmed the hypothesis that attendance and grades are related (launius, 1997; moore, 2003, 2005; tiruneh, 2007). students’ gpa also seems to play a major role in academic performance. in general, students with higher level of gpa are likely to possess the skills, experience, and motivation needed to be successful in earning higher grades. empirical findings seem to support the impact of gpa on grades (krieg & uyar, 1997; moore, 2005; tiruneh, 2007). another variable that is believed to play a role in students’ academic performance is gender. male and female students are believed to have different kinds of interests and motivations towards learning. it is argued that politics requires aggressiveness (as in the case of making difficult decisions, like a declaration of war) and such behavior is well suited to males than to females; consequently, girls are raised and socialized to be less interested in politics than are boys. stereotypes such as ‘politics is a male domain’ and other cultural norms seem, despite the abolishment of legal barriers, to affect the involvement and interest of women in politics (hedlund, freeman, hamm, & stein, 1979; see also bernstein, 2005). if politics is, indeed, a male domain, males should outperform females in political science exams. moreover, according to the psychological literature, females tend to mature earlier than males, giving the former a comparative advantage in higher verbal skills over the latter; males, in contrast, seem to manifest greater spatial and quantitative skills than females (didia & hasnat, 1998). in sum, male and female students’ academic performance may be shaped by both socialization (as in the case of boys’ interest in politics) and natural characteristics (as in the case of girls’ verbal abilities). of the 204 students in my classes, 114 of them (55.9%) were males, suggesting that males are more interested in politics than are females. the general empirical evidence is, however, mixed: most seem to find that females perform better in their exams than do males (lavin, 1965; lekholm & cliffordson, 2008; scott, 2004), while some have observed no statistical differences (didia & hasnat, 1998; tiruneh, 2007; wilson, 2002). furthermore, students’ class status (being a freshman, a sophomore, a junior, or a senior) seems to matter for academic performance. for instance, upperclassmen are expected to perform better in exams than are lowerclassmen because the former are least affected by test anxiety and also have longer experience in college work (gohmann & spector, 1989). on the other hand, tiruneh (2007) has found no statistical relationship between class status and grades. some scholars also have argued that doing well in tests, quizzes, and homework contributes to overall class performance. according to belcheir (2002), midterm grades predicted the probability of a passing grade. whereas recitation exams determined course achievement (thompson & zamboanga, 2004), quizzes and homework grades predicted students’ final grades (kruck & lending, 2003; tiruneh, 2007). other variables that may affect academic performance include anxiety and confidence (chung, 2004; grehan et al., 2011), enjoyment of a class (launius, 1997), professors’ teaching methods (didia & hasnat, current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 1998), ethnicity (gayle et al., 2002; leman, 1999; wirt et al., 2002), course prerequisites (eskew & faley, 1988; urban-lurain & weinshank, 2000), day or evening classes (marcal & roberts, 2000), fall or spring semester (krieg & uyar, 1997), class size (hancock, 1996), intelligence (furnham, 2012; lavin, 1965), scholastic aptitude /assessment test (sat) scores and other standard exams (eskew & faley, 1988; krieg & uyar, 1997), hours spent on employment (krieg & uyar, 1997), and time spent on studying (didia & hasnat, 1998). research design and model specification using a sample of up to 204 undergraduate students that i taught at the university of central arkansas between 2008 and 2009, i tested the impact of social background on political science final grades. given that the social background data that i collected from my students were only for 2008 and 2009, i combined the data and employed a cross-sectional design. the data for the final grades [will be called final-grades hereafter] are compiled from several requirements: two tests, a research paper, class participation, and a final exam. i measure social background by the levels of education and income of students’ families. family education [will be called fam-educ hereafter] is measured by the number of years that parents spent in school. for instance, if a father and mother were high school graduates, this family would receive a score of 24 (12 years of education each). because the combined family education data are employed in the ensuing analyses, single-parent students’ data (which numbered only less than ten) are omitted. family income (which will be referred to as middle-income and upper-income for middleand upper-income families, respectively, hereafter) is specified as an ordinal variable. specifically, if the combined income of a family was less than $40, 000, between $40,000 and $70, 000, and greater than $70, 000, it was categorized as lower-, middle-, and upperincome, respectively. the lower-family income is used as the baseline variable. given that the median household income of arkansas was about $38, 758 in 2007 (u.s. department of agriculture), the above categories of income groups (although arbitrary) seem fairly reasonable. the data for the education and income of students’ families were obtained from the survey that i conducted in each of my classes. of the 204 students, those who came from families of lower-, middle-, and upper-income were 22%, 37%, and 41%, respectively. in addition, students who came from families of lower, moderate, and higher education were 19%, 60%, and 21%, respectively. while the number of control variables that could be used to explain final-grades is very high, i included those which i had data for: class attendance, gpa, gender, tests, and number of credit hours. i had taken attendance (will be called attendance hereafter) during all class meetings. i obtained the data for students’ gpa and the number of credit hours (will be called gpa and credithours, respectively, hereafter) from the university’s sources. i specify gender as a dichotomous variable; males get a score of 1 and females 0. test scores are measured by the two tests that i had given to most of my classes (seminars being the exception) each semester. they will be referred to as test #1 and test # 2 hereafter. class status may be measured by student age or by freshman–senior classification, or by number of credit hours. i have specified class status in this paper as the number of credit hours that students have taken. table 1 provides the full description of the independent and dependent variables. model estimation and analysis i used the spss module and employed ordinary least squares (ols) to estimate final-grades. in table 2, i showed the correlation matrix of the independent and dependent variables. i did not observe any potential multicollinearity problem between the independent variables; r is less than or equal to 0.63 and greater than or equal to -0.65 in all of the cases. interestingly, the two-highest correlations occurred between test # 1 and test # 2 (r = 0.63) and between middle-income and upper-income (r = -0.65). that is, as the value of test # 1 increases, the value of test # 2 increases. and as the value of middle-income increases, the value of upperincome decreases. table 2 also foreshadows that the impact of the social background variables on students’ political science grades might be relatively weak. specifically, the correlation between fam-educ and final-grades is 0.05. and the correlations between students born to middle-income and upper-income and final-grades are 0.01 and 0.08, respectively. model 1 of table 3 shows that social background variables were not related to final-grades. when i added gpa to the social background variables in model 2, this variable had a statistically significant impact on finalgrades. the social background variables were not significant, however. when i replaced gpa with test # 1 in model 3, only test # 1 was statistically significant. still excluding the gpa variable from the analysis, i replaced test #1 with test # 2 in model 4. upper-income and test # 2 showed a statistically significant impact on final-grades. in addition, fam-educ was significant but at the 0.10 level. in model 5, i included both test 1 and test 2 (but not gpa) with the social background variables. both test # 1 and test # 2 were related to final-grades. it is interesting to note that the magnitude of the slope of test # 2 (0.41) is a bit larger than that of test # 1 (0.32). in addition, as table 1 shows, the correlations between test # 2 and final-grades and test 1 and final-grades are 0.76 and 0.73, respectively. these results suggest that my students did better in the second test, perhaps because when preparing for test # 2, they seemed to have learned how and what to study from the test format that i used in test # 1. given the foregoing, it does social background influence political science grades? 5 table 1 description of independent and dependent variables independent variables description of independent variables fam-educ education data of families with lower, moderate, and higher education fam-educ-mh education data of families with moderate and higher education [used in table 4] fam-educ-lm education data of families with lower and moderate education [used in table 4] fam-educ-pol1 polynomial education data of families with lower, moderate, and higher education [used in table 4] fam-educ-pol2 polynomial education data of families with lower and moderate education [used in table 4] middle-income income data of middle-income families upper-income income data of upper-income families attendance student class attendance gpa student gpa gender student gender test # 1 first test taken by students test # 2 second test taken by students credit-hours number of credit hours taken by students dependent variables description of dependent variables final-grades students overall or semester grades final-grades-mh overall or semester grades of students who come from families of moderate and higher education [used in table 4] final-grades-lm overall or semester grades of students who come from families of lower and moderate education [used in table 4] table 2 correlation matrix f-edu m-inc u-inc attend gpa gen t # 1 t# 2 c-h fam-educ 1.0 middle-income 0.02 1.0 upperincome 0.33** -0.65** 1.0 attendance 0.02 -0.02 0.02 1.0 gpa 0.001 0.03 0.01 0.22** 1.0 gender 0.12 -0.05 0.12 -0.10 -0.21** 1.0 test # 1 0.03 -0.004 0.05 0.20** 0.60** -0.06 1.0 test # 2 0.09 0.06 -0.03 0.30** 0.48** -0.02 0.63** 1.0 credit-hours 0.09 -0.07 0.07 -0.17** -0.02 0.06 0.09 0.01 1.0 final-grades 0.05 0.01 0.08 0.28** 0.31** -0.03 0.73** 0.76** -0.23** *: p < 0.10; **: p < 0.05 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 table 3 ols estimates (dependent variable: final-grades) model 1 b model 2 b model 3 b model 4 b model 5 b model 6 b model 7 b intercept 71.77** (6.23) 50.21** (7.69) 26.70** (4.49) 29.80** (3.87) 17.92** (3.77) 17.94** (3.78) 4.62 (3.95) fam-educ -0.002 (0.23) 0.02 (0.22) -0.01 (0.10) -0.16* (0.10) -0.11 (0.08) -0.11 (0.08) -0.10 (0.08) middle-income 3.17 (3.00) 2.52 (2.86) 1.47 (1.33) 1.73 (1.24) 1.52 (1.09) 1.50 (1.09) 1.63* (0.97) upper-income 4.47 (3.10) 3.91 (2.96) 2.27 (1.39) 3.96** (1.29) 3.19** (1.14) 3.18** (1.14) 3.15** (1.01) attendance 2.15** (0.31) gpa 6.85** (1.55) 0.24 (0.75) -0.28 (0.68) gender -0.41 (0.70) test # 1 0.59** (0.04) 0.32** (0.05) 0.32** (0.05) 0.33** (0.04) test # 2 0.61** (0.04) 0.41** (0.04) 0.41** (0.04) 0.35** (0.04) credit hours -0.003 (0.01) n: r-squared: 188 0.01 188 0.11 177 0.54 177 0.60 177 0.69 177 0.69 177 0.77 *: p < 0.10; **: p < 0.05; bs are unstandardized betas; standard errors in parentheses. would be interesting to know if professors in other colleges and universities also observe the same finding. moreover, of the three social background variables, only upper-income was statistically significant in model 5. i added gpa, test # 1, and test # 2 with the social background variables in model 6. only upperincome, test # 1, and test # 2 became statistically significant. the effect of gpa on final-grades disappeared (as was also the case in model 6) when test # 1 and test # 2 were included in the model. gpa also added virtually nothing to the variance explained in finalgrades. in model 7, i included all of the independent variables in the analysis. upper-income, attendance, test #1, and test # 2 became statistically significant at the 0.05 level. and middle-income was significant at the 0.10 level. on the other hand, fam-educ, gpa, gender, and credit hours were not significant. it should also be noted that the variances explained by the models in table 3 ranged from 1% to 77%. for instance, the r-squared value in model 7 suggests that the nine independent variables included in the model explained 77% of the differences in final-grades. note that most of the social background variables were statistically insignificant in the models does social background influence political science grades? 7 analyzed in table 3. the only exception was upperincome (save middle-income and fam-educ, which were each significant at the 0.10 level in only one model), which was statistically significant in four of the seven models. although upper-income showed some influence on final-grades in the four multivariate models, the correlation between the two variables was low and statistically insignificant (r = 0.08; p = 0.3). given the foregoing, i tested lavin’s (1965) hypothesis: that the association between socioeconomic status and academic performance is non-linear. lavin’s hypothesis can be tested by specifying both linear and polynomial familyeducation variables. and if lavin’s hypothesis is, indeed, correct, the slopes of the linearand polynomial-education variables will be positive and negative, respectively. i show the model in eq. 1, where y = a + b1 x1 + b2 (x2)2 + e eq. (1) y = final-grades, a = the y-intercept, b1 = the slope of the linear family-education variable, x1 = the linear family-education variable [fam-educ], b2 = the slope of the polynomial-education variable, (x2)2 = the polynomial family-education variable [fam-educ-pol1], and e = the error term. figure 1 also shows a hypothetical polynomial or curvilinear model of academic performance. model 1, in table 4, shows that although the parameters in the equation had signs as hypothesized by lavin (1965), both fam-educ and fam-educ-pol1 were statistically insignificant. in addition, the variance explained in final-grades by the two variables was only 1%. recall lavin (1965) has also argued that when the social background data do not go below students who came from the middle class, an inverse relationship exists between the two variables. to find out if he was correct, i, first, parsed the family-education data into three arbitrary but fairly organized categories: students who came from families of lower education (0-24 years of education), those who came from families of moderate education (25-32 years), and those who came from families of higher education (greater than 32 years). excluding the data for students born to families of lower education, i then ran a linear regression in model 2. although the social background variable had a negative sign as lavin expected, the model was not statistically significant. the variance explained in the political science grades of the two groups [final-grades-mh] by the students’ social background variable [fam-educ-mh] was also only 0.1%. curious, i ran correlation analyses between the data of students who came from families of lower, moderate, and higher education and their grades, respectively, and found the following: 0.31 (p = 0.05), 0.16 (p = 0.07), and 0.02 (p = 0.88). the foregoing analyses led me to assume that the social background of students born to families of lower and moderate education and their grades may be positively and negatively related, respectively. on the other hand, i assumed that the social background of students born to higher-education families and their grades might not, unlike lavin’s expectation, be related. figure 1. hypothetical polynomial or curvilinear model of academic performance. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 8 consequently, i decided to exclude the latter group from the ensuing analyses. the finding that i obtained in model 3 of table 4 seems to provide some support for my assumptions. specifically, i observed a statistically significant curvilinear relationship between the combined data of students born to families of lower and moderate education and their grades. more specifically, the social background data of students born to families of lower and moderate education [fam-educ-lm and fam-educ-pol2] and final-grades-lm had a positive correlation in the left-side of the curvilinear curve. that is, in this part of the curve, the effect of students born to families of lower education on final-grades-lm was higher (r = 0.31), leading to the positive trend. but as the values of social background increased, the values of final-grades-lm started to decline. that is, in this part of the curve, the effect of students born to families of moderate education on final-grades-lm was higher (r = -0.16), leading to the negative trend. in fact, when i did a manual simulation analysis, it provided support for the foregoing argument. specifically, the peak or highest point on the curvilinear curve occurred when parents’ education was 26.5 years. table 4 ols estimates (dependent variables: final grades; final-grades-mh, final-grades-lm) model 1 b model 2 b model 3 b model 4 b model 5 b model 6 b model 7 b intercept 56.40** (13.81) 82.86** (4.94) -6.07 (25.33) -23.62 (21.14) -21.75 (17.21) -0.85 (16.51) -6.85 (14.63) fam-educ 1.38 (0.91) fam-educ-mh -0.18 (0.16) fam-educ-lm 6.34** (1.90) 4.52** (1.64) 2.43* (1.34) 1.26 (1.30) 0.88 (1.15) fam-educ-pol1 -0.02 (0.02) fam-educ-pol2 -0.12** (0.04) -0.08** (0.03) -0.04* (0.03) -0.02 (0.02) -0.02 (0.02) attendance 2.57** (0.51) 2.42** (0.42) 1.80** (0.41) 1.88** (0.36) gpa 5.59** (0.91) 0.68 (0.93) 2.30** (0.78) -0.004 (0.79) test # 1 0.50** (0.06) 0.32** (0.05) test # 2 0.47** (0.05) 0.34** (0.05) n: r-squared: 204 0.01 165 0.001 160 0.07 150 0.41 140 0.63 140 0.66 140 0.74 *: p < 0.10; **: p < 0.05; bs are unstandardized betas; standard errors in parentheses. does social background influence political science grades? 9 note also that the variance explained in final-grades-lm by fam-educ-lm and fam-educ-pol2 went up from 1% (as was the case in model 1, where the data of the three groups were included) to 7%. moreover, when i included attendance and gpa in model 4 with fam-educ-lm and fam-educ-pol2, all variables became statistically significant. about 41% of the variance in final-grades-lm was explained by the variables analyzed in model 4. i then included test # 1 in model 5, along with gpa and attendance. fam-educlm and fam-educ-pol2 became significant but only at the 0.10 level. attendance was also statistically significant at the 0.05 level. gpa was insignificant, however. when i replaced test # 1 with test # 2 in model 6, however, fam-educ-lm and fam-educ-pol2 became insignificant. gpa and attendance were statistically significant. finally, when i analyzed all of the independent variables in model 7, the social background variables and gpa became statistically insignificant. attendance, test # 1 and test # 2 became significant, however. in sum, given that the correlation between the combined social background data of students who came from families of moderate and higher education and their grades was statistically significant, and given that the correlation between the social background data of students who came from families of higher education and their grades were nearly zero, this work seems to provide only a partial support for lavin’s (1965) hypothesis. moreover, although the social background data of students coming from families of lower and moderate education seemed to have a statistically significant curvilinear impact on their grades, the variance explained in the latter variable was only 7%. in addition, the significance of the curvilinear relationship model seemed to get weaker, even disappear, as more non-social background variables were included in the models. limitations of the study it should be noted that there are some limitations to this study. first, the sample data were collected only from one university. studies with larger sample sizes and that include several more colleges and universities across the united states will more likely confirm or refute the findings of this study. second, the income data employed in this paper are ordinal, which most likely limited the variance explained in the political science grades. in other words, interval-level income data will be more appropriate to use in future studies. third, given the absence of statistically significant positive correlations between students’ grades and their middle-income or upper-income family backgrounds, it will be a worthy endeavor if future studies control for motivation to enhance our understanding of academic performance. lastly, the social background variable may produce larger variance and show stronger significance if it is also specified as an indirect, no just direct, predictor of academic performance. discussion of results the purpose of this paper was to test the impact of social background on the political science grades of the students that i taught at the university of central arkansas. using a cross-sectional research design and a sample of up to 204 students, i found no positive and linear effect of social background on political science grades. a notable finding of this paper is that the combined data of students born to families of lower and moderate education and their political science grades seemed to have a curvilinear relationship. on the other hand, the correlation between the social background data of students who came from families of higher education and their grades were nearly zero. such findings seem to provide a partial support for lavin’s (1965) hypothesis. moreover, this work seems to suggest that the non-finding of a relationship between social background and academic performance by some scholars (see leman, 1999; pascarella et al., 2004; rego & sousa, 1999) may be due to model misspecification. that is, these researchers specified only linear, not polynomial, models. it is also interesting to note the existence of a parallel between the impact of social background and school effects on student learning. on an individual or micro level of analysis, this work has shown that the correlation between the social background of students born to families of lower education and their political science grades is higher than the correlation between the latter variable and the social background of students born to families of moderate and higher education. on the other hand, on a country or macro level of analysis, heyneman and loxely (1983) have found that school effects have more influence on student learning in lower-income countries. if, indeed, scarcity of schools seems to be motivating students’ academic performances in lower-income countries (heyneman & loxely, 1983), the desire for social mobility tends to be enhancing the political science grades of students born to lower-income families. but how can we explain the absence of strong correlation between social background and political science grades in this study? moreover, why was the relationship between the non-parsed polynomial social background data and political science grades statistically insignificant? one possible reason for the foregoing may be that the two variables may have also an indirect, not just direct, relationship. as coleman (1986; see also cheung & andersen, 2003) has argued, families affect the education of their children by indirectly providing them with social capital, which include intangibles like personal obligations, expectation, and social norms. social capital, in turn, could prepare students in dealing with their teachers and peers effectively. social background may also foster the presence of school current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 10 quality, be it greater resources or skillful teachers (chiu, 2010). and school quality is believed to influence academic performance (heyneman & loxely, 1983; see also cheung & andersen, 2003; lee & burkam, 2002). in other words, the impact of social background on academic performance may be fully observed if we specify the former variable both as a direct and indirect predictor of the latter (see also chiu, 2010). in conclusion, if the findings of this paper are correct, it seems reasonable to argue that students who come from families of moderateand highersocioeconomic status do not seem to have an extra advantage in their academic performance. even simple descriptive statistics can show this. the means of the political science grades of my students born to families of lower, moderate, and higher education were 75.8, 77.6, and 76.9, respectively. these mean differences are very small. one clear advantage that students who come from families of moderate and higher education have over those born into the families of lower classes is, however, greater access to college: social background is empirically found to be a major determinant of college enrollment (ashe higher education report, 2007; kim, 2012; planty, hussar, & snyder, 2009; rowan-kenyon, bell, & perna, 2008). evidence also suggests that a higher number of students who come from poorer families tend to drop out of college than do students who come from richer families (see chen & st. john, 2011; tinto, 2006). thus, given that the academic performance of students who come from lower socioeconomic status does not seem to be much impeded by their social background and given that college education is critical for fostering the social mobility this group of students, a major education policy for state and federal governments as well as college administrators should be to find ways that could facilitate the college enrollment and retention of students who come from the socioeconomically disadvantageous families. specifically, colleges may have to secure greater financial resources from government and other sources so that they can recruit more low-income students from high schools by promising them financial support (see also kim, 2012). moreover, increased counseling services in high schools and colleges that stress the importance of college education to low-income students may motivate these students to pursue college education and to stay in and graduate from college (see also lautz, hawkins, & perez, 2005; 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(2002). the condition of education 2002. washington, d.c.: national center for education statistics. u.s. department of education. yuhong, d., & yongmei, h. (2008). student academic performance and the allocation of school resources. chinese education and society. 41(5), 8-20. does social background influence political science grades? 13 article citation tiruneh, g. (2013). does social background influence political science grades? current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1084 author notes gizachew tiruneh associate professor department of political science university of central arkansas 201 donaghey avenue conway, ar 72035 gtiruneh@uca.edu dr. tiruneh is associate professor of political science at the university of central arkansas. his research interests include democratization, globalization, socioeconomic development, and academic performance. his teaching interests include comparative politics, international relations, and political methodology. *an earlier version of this paper was presented at the southern political science association annual meeting, january 7-9, 2010, atlanta, ga. manuscript received: 09/18/2012 revisions received: 01/11/2013 accepted: 05/03/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 14 volume 16, number 2 august 12, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 960-4464-3-le_final.docx 1 volume 15, number 3 december 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x multicultural school climate inventory sherry marx and deborah byrnes utah state university this paper presents the 22-item multicultural school climate inventory (msci), a scale developed to measure students’ perceptions of the multicultural climate of their school. survey questions were generated from a critical understanding of multicultural education, with attention to culturally and linguistically diverse school children. through examination of school climate and multicultural literature, a definition of multicultural school climate was generated. 1511 students at a secondary school (grades 8-9) took the survey over a three year period. grounded in literature, these questions were designed to address the needs of real students attending a specific secondary school. the msci proved to be such a helpful tool for examining and ultimately improving multicultural school climate from the perspective of diverse students that the authors share the instrument here, making it available to school faculty and scholars wishing to examine and thereafter improve multicultural school climate. reliability coefficients and validity measures are reported for the scale, as well as for four subscales that emerged (liking school, educator-student relationships, cultural relevancy, and school success). findings suggest that the scale and subscales have high internal consistency and knowngroup construct validity. keywords: multicultural school climate, diverse students, survey instrument in the united states, the growing ethnic and racial diversity of the population is mirrored in its schools where whites account for just 56% of enrolled students, african americans for 15%, and latinas/os for 21% (planty et al., 2009). the 2010 census reports that 12% of u.s. residents (40 million people) are foreign-born and 11% of the native born population have at least one foreign-born parent (walters & trevelyan, 2011). among the foreign-born population entering the country from 2005 to 2007, 52% were latin american or caribbean and 30% were from asian countries (walters & trevelyan, 2011). given these circumstances, students in the us are more linguistically diverse than ever before, with 21% of school children speaking a language other than english in their homes and nearly 20% of these children reporting difficulties speaking english (aud et al., 2011). nationwide, more than 11% of children receive english-language services in schools (keigher, 2009). these demographic trends have long been established and will continue diversifying the us population well into the future. however, despite this well-understood information, school districts across the united states are often reluctant to proactively address changes in school demographics. rather, it is typical that schools seek to maintain school culture that reflects the whiteness and the homogeneity of years gone by (evans, 2007; marx & larson, 2012; young & laible, 2000), or that perhaps never existed. in this manifestation of school climate, whiteness and english language dominate school culture, including curriculum; reading materials; expectations; décor; interactions with students, parents, and guardians; and understandings of what constitutes a current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 successful educational experience (e.g., banks & banks, 2012; chubbuck, 2004; leonardo, 2009; marx, 2006, 2008a; pollock, 2004). overall, latinas/os, english language learners, native americans, and african americans have higher dropout rates than their white peers, with latinas/os, the largest ethnic “minority” group, dropping out of school at the rate of 17.6% (aud et al., 2011). african american and american indian/alaska native also have high dropout rates of 9.3% and 13.3%, respectively (aud et al., 2011). all these numbers provide a stark comparison to the white dropout rate of 5.2% (aud et al., 2011). they imply that large proportions of students of color, including the growing populations of latinas/os and english language learners, are not experiencing academic success. students having poor schooling experiences are more likely to drop out of school and high dropout rates lead to communities with “high rates of unemployment, crime, ill health, and chronic despair” (balfanz & legters, 2004, p. 1). it is in everyone’s best interest when children are happy and successful in school. until now, a publically available, validated survey instrument built on a critically conceptualized understanding of multicultural school climate has not been available to education practitioners and scholars. in response to this absence and to our own need for such an instrument, we created the multicultural school climate inventory (msci), a 22-item survey instrument that can be used to measure key aspects of multicultural school climate in a given school from the perspectives of students. it is our hope that this survey instrument will help practitioners and scholars learn more about the schools they work with so they can help improve the educational experience they offer diverse students. while our own study participants were primarily latina/o and white, this instrument is based on critical multicultural education school climate issues that are relevant to all diverse students. literature review in seeking to understand and define multicultural school climate, we examined literature in school climate, multicultural education, and social theory, which we discuss below. school climate in their recent literature review of school climate, cohen, mccabe, michelli, and pickeral (2009) write that “there is not one universally agreed-upon definition of school climate” (p. 181). instead, many scholars define school climate loosely as “atmosphere, feelings, tone, setting, or milieu of the school” (p. 181, italics in original); more often, however, school climate is not defined at all. given the importance of this concept to our paper, we use cohen and colleagues’ definition of school climate as “the quality and character of school life” (p. 181). they explain that, “school climate is based on patterns of people’s experiences of school life and reflects norms, goals, values, interpersonal relationships, teaching and learning practices, and organizational structures” (p. 181); it also “recognizes the social, emotional, ethical, academic, and environmental dimensions of school life” (p. 201). the authors break school climate into four dimensions, “safety,” “teaching and learning,” “relationships,” and “environmentalstructural” (p. 184). although school climate is a quality of the entire school, they write that “school climate has a profound impact on individual experience (citing comer, 1980)” (cohen, mccabe, michelli, & pickeral, 2009). multicultural school climate we were able to find just three articles since 1990 that used the term “multicultural school climate” (diaz, 1992; lawrence, 2005; sass-lehrer, gerner de garcia, & rovins, 1997). the diaz (1992) and sasslehrer, gerner de garcia, and rovins (1997) papers are available on the eric database and are not peerreviewed. they are general reports that describe foundational multicultural educational ideas for teachers. the lawrence (2005) article focuses on teacher perceptions of school climate and its impact on antiracist teaching. however, none of these papers define the concept of multicultural school climate nor describe a way to examine it in schools. to better understand what a successful multicultural school climate means, we looked to the field of multicultural education. multicultural education multicultural education is a “broad concept” with multiple dimensions, but it is generally understood as acknowledging the impact of students’ race, gender, sexual-orientation, culture, social class, exceptionality – including the interactions of all these things – on their lives and their schooling experiences (see banks & banks, 2010, p. 20). given the linguistic diversity of american school children today, it is also important to recognize the influences of native language and english language ability (marx, 2006; kubota & lin, 2009; ovando, combs, & collier, 2006), as well as that of families, communities, and histories (gonzález et al., 1993; gonzález, moll, & amanti, 2005). in our conceptualization of multicultural education for the msci, we focus particularly on linguistically, culturally, and racially diverse school children, giving attention to critical multicultural education, a perspective that focuses on the “structural analysis of unequal power relationships, analyzing the role of institutionalized inequities” (sleeter, 2012, p. 572). it is widely acknowledged that diverse students and their families can experience systematic inequities in and outside of schooling that make their schooling experience less equitable and supportive than schooling experienced by their more mainstream classmates. systematic inequality is often veiled in the hidden curriculum and unwritten policies of the school, unspoken but nevertheless present (banks & banks, 2010; ricento & multicultural school climate inventory 3 hornberger, 1996). when constructing the msci, we gave attention to dimensions of multicultural education and social theory that acknowledge systematic inequality and address successful education for linguistically, culturally, and racially diverse school children. in particular, we looked to critical race theory (crt) and critical studies in whiteness, culturally responsive/relevant teaching, educator-student relationships, and the importance of a whole-school investment in multicultural education. each of these subjects will be discussed below. critical race theory and critical studies in whiteness these related social theories have been adopted by the field of education to understand and address systematic racial inequality in schooling (ladson-billings & tate, 1995). they understand racism as "a system of advantage based on race" (tatum, 2003, p. 11), rather than the opinions or actions of individuals acting outside the norms of society. crt recognizes racism as integrated into the norms of society, “endemic in american life, deeply ingrained legally, culturally, and even psychologically” (ladson-billings & tate, 1995, p. 52). critical studies in whiteness compliments crt by examining the unearned privileges of whites in society (kendall, 2006; lea & helfand, 2004; lee, 2005; leonardo, 2009; marx, 2006; pollock, 2004). together, crt and critical studies in whiteness allow scholars and educators to understand inequality in school as a systematic, historical phenomenon that is often times subtle, yet continues to marginalize diverse school children. crt and critical studies in whiteness are appropriate frameworks for studying american education because more than 87% of the teacher workforce and 84% of the principalship are white (national education association [nea], 2010; us department of education, 2007), while nearly half the study body population are children of color (planty et al., 2009). while recent numbers are not available, in 1996, 97% of the teacher population was estimated to be monolingual in english (darling-hammond & sclan, 1996). teachers and administrators in the us are also largely the products of predominantly white schools and white teacher and administrator education programs, as well as a predominantly white society that continually influences beliefs in what is appropriate and right, (e.g., kendall, 2006; ladson-billings & tate, 1995; leonardo, 2009; marx, 2006; ryan, 2003). resistance to recognizing, appreciating, and integrating the rich cultural and linguistic heritages diverse learners bring with them to the us school context can be linked to white cultural norms that position whiteness as raceless and, therefore, neutral (e.g., lipsitz, 2006; marx, 2006; rothenberg, 2011). white and english language norms are also linked to the strong beliefs many educators have in the importance of linguistic, cultural, and even racial assimilation (crawford, 2000; nieto, 2005; sleeter, 1992). students of color and linguistically diverse students are disadvantaged by the reproduction and maintenance of this culture in a school climate that continually places them outside the realm of what is normal. including crt and critical studies in whiteness in our understanding of multicultural education allows us to take a critical perspective on school climate with attention to equity in education. culturally responsive/relevant teaching educators who are aware of systematic inequalities can recognize them and pointedly address them through teaching and learning. the premise of culturally responsive or relevant teaching is that educators develop lessons and strategies that emerge from and are relevant to the lives and cultures of their students (e.g., gay, 2010; ladson-billings, 2009; sleeter, 2012). in the words of gay (2010), culturally relevant teaching “filters curriculum content and teaching strategies through [students’] cultural frames of reference to make the content more personally meaningful and easier to master” (p. 26). in this way, the whole education process, from curriculum to teaching strategies, becomes an equity pedagogy that “facilitate[s] the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, cultural, gender, and socialclass groups” (banks & banks, 2010, p. 22). for students who speak languages other than, or in addition to, english, a critical component of culturally relevant teaching is valuing the languages children bring with them to school (garza, 2009; gutiérrez et al., 2002; szpara & ahmad, 2007). rejection of a child’s native language can be interpreted by the child as a rejection of self, home, family, and support system (delpit, 2006). adding on to a child’s home culture and language, rather than seeking to replace them, is a fundamental component of successfully teaching diverse students (lambert, 1974, valenzuela, 1999). teaching in ways that are culturally and linguistically relevant to students can make schooling more interesting, more comprehensible, and ultimately more meaningful to diverse students (gay, 2010; krashen, 2003; leclair, doll, osborne, & jones, 2009; szpara & ahmad, 2007). by doing so, it can make schooling more successful. although the success of culturally relevant teaching is well documented in education literature, educators and teacher education students are often resistant to the concept, given its departure from teaching in ways that are white-centric or seemingly culturally neutral (marx & larson, 2012; sleeter, 2012). educator-student relationships for students of every linguistic, cultural, and racial group, positive relationships with the educators in their schools are critical to feeling welcome, safe, and a part of the school community. valenzuela (1999) has pointed out that, "relationships with teachers exert a tremendous impact on the kinds of schooling orientations current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 that develop in school... productive relations with teachers and among students make schooling worthwhile and manageable" (p. 30). getting to know students as holistic individuals and family members with rich cultural and familial influences on their lives enables educators to understand children in rich, multidimensional ways that positively contrast with the deficit, one-dimensional understanding of “struggling learner” that many educators hold about immigrant students, english language learners, latinas/os and other students of color (e.g., bishop & berryman, 2007; brown, 2006; garcia, 2001; garza, 2009; gonzález et al., 1993; gonzález, moll, & amanti, 2005; ladson-billings, 2009; marx, 2006; noddings, 2003, 2005; valencia, 1997). an important component of positive educatorstudent relationships is authentic caring, what noddings describes as an empathetic “feeling with” (2003, p. 30). according to noddings, this kind of caring goes beyond being concerned with students’ performances on academic tasks. valenzuela (1999) emphasizes that linguistically and culturally diverse learners often are alienated from schooling because they are not treated with authentic caring by the adults who work with them. similarly, garza (2009) notes that, “educators must develop meaningful, caring relationships with students to provide channels of understanding that establish respect for students” (p. 300). he explains that “for some latino students, respect involves validating their language and cultural identity” (p. 300). many of these scholars note that students who feel welcomed and cared for by the educators in their schools tend to like school and stay enrolled. authentic caring can be defined in many ways and has many nuances. in our study we focus on what we consider to be a critical component of authentic caring: students’ perceptions of being known and cared for as individuals, as well as their feelings that their language and culture are respected aspects of their identity. regardless of teachers’ or administrators’ intentions or practices, it is the students’ experience of those intentions and practices that contribute to a positive school climate. whole-school investment when examining multicultural school climate, it is fundamental to recognize “the school as a social system” with “norms, values, statuses, and goals like other social systems” (banks & banks, 2010, pp. 24-25). thus, a multicultural school climate can only be successful when the whole school, including its leaders, are invested in its fruition. successful leadership for multicultural education in schools is a topic that is not well studied (andersen & ottesen, 2011; ryan, 2003). however, studies by angelides, antoniouu, and charalambous (2010), gillborn (1995), magno and schiff (2010), marx and larson (2012), neische and keddie (2011), scheurich (1998), and zembylas and iasonos (2010), many of them international, show the powerful impact school leaders have when they turn their attention to improving school climate for diverse students. school leaders ensure that policies, curricula, and teacher training, among other important aspects of schooling, are consistent and represent the norms of the school. in this way, school leaders can ensure a whole school investment in diverse students. if they are not dedicated to the topic, they can ensure a whole school disinvestment in diverse students as well. a collective investment is key to pulling the varied dimensions of successful education for diverse school children together into “an empowering school culture and social structure” (banks & banks, 2010, p. 22). literature summary the dimensions of schooling described above are not exhaustive, but highlight important aspects of multicultural education for linguistically, culturally, and racially diverse school children that were considered when forming the msci. all these dimensions are clearly interrelated. educators with a strong understanding of the systematic social inequalities explained by crt and critical studies in whiteness are more likely to address this inequality by adopting curricula and teaching strategies that make use of students’ “cultural frames of reference” (gay, 2010, p. 26). these same educators are likely to develop positive, supportive relationships with their students that ensure students are cared for and feel safe in school. a whole-school investment in the successes of diverse students led by school leaders ensures supportive schooling is available to all diverse students in the school at all times, facilitated by all teachers and administrators. however, this description of a successful multicultural school climate is certainly ideal. in the “real world” of schools, it is the case that many schools and educators do not find this kind of empowering climate valuable or achievable. it is also common that individual teachers create supportive microclimates for diverse students that their larger school structures do not support. at the same time, schools may believe they are creating this environment but, in fact, are not meeting the needs of their diverse students (bondy, 2011; garcia, 2011; marx & larson, 2012). it is important to note that the msci was strongly influenced by these bodies of literature as it was developed. however, these were considered influential literatures, not predictive subscales. indeed, the qualities described above often overlap and some, like culturally relevant teaching, are more overt than others, such as creating an equitable school environment. not surprisingly, the subscales that emerged on the survey are related but somewhat different from the literatures we present in this section. multicultural school climate definition the diverse bodies of literature we present above allow us to construct a definition of multicultural school climate as: the quality and character of school life for diverse schoolchildren, including interpersonal multicultural school climate inventory 5 relationships, teaching and learning, and organizational cohesion that ensure equity, happiness, and success in schooling. this definition highlights the integrated dimensions of general school culture (cohen et al., 2009), the systematic nature of school climate and inequity (may & sleeter, 2010), and the goal of diverse school children succeeding in school through various, integrated aspects of schooling (banks & banks, 2010). it also highlights “diverse schoolchildren,” ensuring they do not get lost under the umbrella of “all” (kubota, 2004; marx, 2009; pollock, 2004). instrument likely because “multicultural school climate” has not been previously defined in education literature, we could find no example of an existing survey tool used to measure such an entity. substituting the term “diversity” for multicultural in our ebscohost database search yielded a few more results, but when applied to school climate, the only relevant result was the mention of the “school diversity inventory” in a brief “guide to new resources” in the journal multicultural perspectives (smith, echols, perkins, bryant, & howell, 2002, p. 51). the sdi was created by a professor at the university of maryland in 2000 and seems to be a substantial survey that measures both faculty/staff and student perceptions of several “domains” of diverse school climate, including “diversity policies and practices,” “openness to diversity,” “inclusion,” and “intergroup relations.” however, subsequent studies of the inventory are missing in the literature, likely because of the expense associated with administrating and scoring the instruments (see the sdi website for more information on the inventory and expenses: http://www.education.umd.edu/edcp/ schoolassess/order.html). in addition, to order materials, one must also complete and submit a “qualification form.” this inventory is clearly aimed at school districts, rather than scholars. given the difficulty in accessing this inventory, we did not consider it in the construction of our own msci. the paucity of existing and available surveys focused on multicultural school climate prompted us to create our own survey, not from existing materials, but from the literature we introduce above. this msci was originally designed to address the needs of real students attending a specific secondary school. it proved to be such a helpful tool for examining multicultural school climate from the perspective of diverse students that we share the instrument here to make it available to other educators and scholars wishing to examine and thereafter improve multicultural school climate. the msci begins with several demographic questions about age, grade, race/ethnicity, gender, and languages spoken in addition to english so analysis can be made on every given indicator or combination thereof. it contains 22 questions written in likert scale format ranging from 1 strongly disagree to 5 strongly agree. we also included the open-ended question: “do you think that being a member of your particular ethnic group (white, african american/black, latino/hispanic, etc.) affects your education here? how?” this question allows those administering the survey to gather a qualitative sense of student perceptions of their own ethnic/racial experience in school. the survey was printed on the front and back of a single piece of paper; it took approximately 15 minutes to complete. the survey is reproduced in table 1 below. setting and participants the msci was given to all students in a secondary school (grades 8-9) in a semi-rural area of the intermountain west (see marx, 2008; marx & larson, 2012). the school has a small but growing latina/o population (about 5.5%) and is otherwise predominantly white. the school setting is important given the growing numbers of latina/o, immigrant, and non-native english speaking students in traditionally white, english-only speaking areas of the united states. while most latinas/os still reside in the “traditional” immigration gateway states of california, florida, illinois, new jersey, new york, and texas, they also account for large and growing populations in arizona (30.2% of state population), colorado (20.1%), washington (25.9%), connecticut (12.1%) and utah (11.8%) (bump, lowell, & pettersen, 2005; pew hispanic center, 2008). the latina/o population in every state in the us has grown since the 1990s, with growth in the less traditional states most rapid (bump et al., 2005). as a result, smaller communities across the us are experiencing unprecedented growth of latina/o immigrants and school children (godziak & martin, 2005). many teachers and administrators in these communities are working with latina/o students, many of whom are english language learners (ells), for the first time in their careers. at the same time, schools and regions with longer experiences working with culturally and linguistically diverse students often have equally long histories of not meeting their students’ academic needs (balfanz & legters, 2004; evans, 2007). thus, while our site school may at first glance seem a nontraditional setting for conducting a multicultural school climate survey, it is actually quite timely and potentially applicable to numerous school districts across the us. the survey was given to all students in the school in spring 2005 and spring 2008. after consultation with the school principal and multicultural education colleagues, we decided to omit two questions that were repetitive and six open-ended questions that were vague and did not prompt useful responses on the 2005 instrument in the 2008 version. the one strong openended question, “do you think that being a member of your particular ethnic group (white, african american/black, latino/hispanic, etc.) affects your education here? how?” remained on the 2008 survey. thus, the survey we present in this paper is the final, current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 table 1 student survey the purpose of the survey is to learn more about how all the students in the school feel about their time at ______. this survey is anonymous and is designed to ask you to share your honest opinions. please do not put your name anywhere on the survey. all answers will remain confidential. please return it to your teacher when you are finished. thank you very much for taking the time to complete this survey. part 1 1. i am 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 years old. 2. i am in 8th / 9th grade. (circle one) 3. i am male / female. (circle one) 4. my ethnic background is: white / african american or black / native american / latino or hispanic / polynesian / african / other (circle one) 5. i do / do not speak a language other than english. (circle one) 6. the language i speak besides english is spanish / navajo / russian / other:___________ (circle one) part ii for the questions below circle the number that best represents your thoughts about the questions asked. 1 = strongly agree 2 = agree 3= don’t have an opinion 4 = disagree 5 = strongly disagree 1. overall, i like attending _____. 1 2 3 4 5 2. i like my teachers. 1 2 3 4 5 3. i like the administrators (principals, etc.) at school. 1 2 3 4 5 4. i feel welcome at _______. 1 2 3 4 5 5. my family feels welcome at _______. 1 2 3 4 5 6. i feel well prepared for school. 1 2 3 4 5 7. i feel that i fit in well with students of other cultural and language backgrounds here at school. 1 2 3 4 5 8. i feel that i fit in well at school. 1 2 3 4 5 9. i think that an important part of succeeding in school is blending into american culture. 1 2 3 4 5 10. an important part of succeeding in school is speaking english. 1 2 3 4 5 11. i am confident that i am doing what it takes to 1 2 3 4 5 succeed in school. 12. my teachers seem prepared to help me succeed in school. 1 2 3 4 5 multicultural school climate inventory 7 13. my teachers seem to understand me and relate to me. 1 2 3 4 5 14. i feel that i can relate to my teachers. 1 2 3 4 5 15. i feel that my teachers can relate well to me. 1 2 3 4 5 16. my teachers include my home culture and 1 2 3 4 5 language in their classes. 17. i see people like me in school text books, pictures, 1 2 3 4 5 posters, and leadership positions around the school. 18. i feel that my teachers know my family well. 1 2 3 4 5 19. i feel that my teachers know me well. 1 2 3 4 5 20. my home culture and home language are valued by the school. 1 2 3 4 5 21. my teachers have had experiences similar to mine. 1 2 3 4 5 22. i know what i need to do to be successful in my classes at 1 2 3 4 5 _________. part iii 1. do you think that being a member of your particular ethnic group (white, african american/black, latino/hispanic, etc.) affects your education here? how? revised 2008 version. all statistical analysis below refers to the items the 2005 and 2008 survey share. surveys were distributed by teachers during their first-period class, with copies of the spanish version given to teachers to pass out at their discretion. given the two year nature of the school, different student bodies completed the survey over this four year period. 825 students responded in 2005 and 867 responded in 2008, for a total of 1,692 student respondents. given the predominantly white and latina/o makeup of the school, students from other ethnic groups combined accounted for less than one percent of students. due to their small numbers, they were not included in the analysis. similarly, students who marked more than one race/ethnicity on the survey were excluded, as were those who marked no race/ethnicity. 1,420 white and 91 latina/o survey responses were analyzed, for a total of 1511. results reliability an internal test of the 22-item survey scale yielded an alpha coefficient of .94 for the overall scale. while a high value for cronbach’s alpha indicates good internal consistency of the items in the scale, it does not mean that the scale is uni-dimensional. to better understand the different dimensions that contribute to a positive multicultural school climate, items were divided into four subscales. subscales the subscales were created by running two factor analyses, one with the latina/o students and one with the white students. the principal components analysis yielded different factors depending upon which group of students was used. this is not surprising given that students in these two groups have been shown to respond differently when responding to school climate questions (marx, 2008; marx & larson, 2012). although all survey items emerged out of our integrated literature framework, the ways students answered them showed us which questions they found inherently connected. in other words, students tended to respond similarly to these items, thus indicating the existence of a subscale within the overall survey. the authors decided to use the latina/o four factor solution as a starting place and then to adjust items based on theoretical concerns coupled with the placement making intuitive sense. the four subscales that emerged were liking school, educator-student relationships, cultural relevancy, and school success. alpha-reliability coefficients for the subscales indicated high internal consistency (see table 2). given that white students greatly outnumbered latina/o students in the sample, alpha-reliability coefficients were run separately for both groups to assure that the subscales were internally consistent for both latinas/os and whites. as shown in table 2, the subscales worked well for both groups with reliability coefficients ranging from .81 to current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 .92. the subscale intercorrelations are reported in table 3. the subscale score intercorrelations are not so high as to suggest multicollinearity, which indicates that the subscales tap different but related dimensions of school climate. means and standard deviations for the total scale and subscales are shown in table 4. table 2 multicultural climate school inventory items and subscales with alpha reliability coefficients subscales and items all students n=1504 latina/o n=91 white n=1413 q # subscale 1– liking school .86 .88 .84 1 overall, i like attending ___. 2 i like my teachers. 3 i like the administrators (principals, etc.) at school. 4 i feel welcome at ___. 5 my family feels welcome at ___. 7 i feel that i fit in well with students of other cultural and language backgrounds here at school. q# subscale 2 –educator-student relationships .91 .92 .91 12 my teachers seem prepared to help me succeed in school. 13 my teachers seem to understand me and relate to me. 14 i feel that i can relate to my teachers. 15 i feel that my teachers can relate well to me. q# subscale 3 – cultural relevancy .83 .87 .83 9 i think that an important part of succeeding in school is blending into american culture. 16 my teachers include my home culture and language in their classes. 17 i see people like me represented in the curriculum, the posters around the school, etc. 18 i feel that my teachers know my family well. 19 i feel that my teachers know me well. 20 my home culture and home language are valued by the school. 21 my teachers have had experiences similar to mine. q# subscale 4 – school success .81 .83 .81 6 i feel well prepared for school 8 i feel that i fit in well at school. 10 an important part of succeeding in school is speaking english. 11 i am confident that i am doing what it takes to succeed in school. 22 i know what i need to do to be successful in my classes at __. multicultural school climate inventory 9 table 3 multicultural school climate inventory subscale zero-order correlations multicultural school climate inventory subscale 2 3 4 1. liking school .694 .689 .719 2 educator-student relationships __ .739 .546 3. cultural relevancy __ .613 4. school success __ note. all coefficients are significant at p < .001. n=1504 table 4 msci scale and subscales scores for latina/o and white students total scale group n mean sd range latino/a 81 63.57 18.37 22-110 white 1265 56.14 15.19 22-110 total 1346 56.59 15.50 22-110 subscales liking school latino/a 90 16.69 5.81 6-30 white 1394 14.78 4.62 6-30 total 1484 14.90 4.72 6-30 educator-student relationships latino/a 89 11.89 4.25 4-20 white 1397 11.10 3.84 4-20 total 1486 11.15 3.87 4-20 cultural relevancy latino/a 87 22.64 6.13 7-35 white 1322 19.58 5.23 7-35 total 1409 19.76 5.33 7-35 school success latino/a 86 12.48 4.80 5-25 white 1358 10.79 3.92 5-25 total 1444 10.89 4.00 5-25 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 validity to support construct validity, the known-group method was utilized. this method involves analyzing responses from two groups whom would be expected to differ in responses on the variables being measured. the literature would suggest that, in a predominantly white school in a semi-rural area, white students would perceive the school climate differently and more positively than a small but growing latina/o population. a finding of such a difference provides additional support for the validity of the scale. one-way anovas were used to test for differences between latina/o and white students on the total scale and each of the subscales. perceptions of school climate differed significantly for the total scale (f [1,1344] = 17.71, p<.001) and on three of the four subscales (liking school, f [1, 1407] = 13.93, p<.001; cultural relevancy, f [1, 1407] = 27.61, p<.001; and school success, f [1, 1442] = 14.6, p<.001). differences approached significance on the fourth scale, educatorstudent relationships (f [1, 1484] = 3.46, p<=.06). spss or other statistical software will nicely account for unequal sample size in an anova if other assumptions regarding the homogeneity of variance and normality of distribution do not occur. in this data set, there were some abnormalities (regarding homogeneity of variance and normality of distribution) and there were unequal groups, thus an appropriate non-parametric alternative, the kruskal-wallis test, was also run in case the typical robustness of anova had been comprised. the kruskal-wallis test resulted in the same statistically significant findings with the exception that the liking school variable was significant at the .002 level instead of .001. for both tests, in all cases, differences were in the expected direction. as can be seen in table 4, latina/o students were less positive about their school climate than white students. limitations the msci has several limitations that those wishing to work with it must be aware. first, it must be remembered that the msci focuses particularly on linguistically, culturally, and racially diverse school children. other dimensions of multiculturalism, such as sexual orientation, economic status, etc., are not included on this instrument. second, the msci was tested in a two-year secondary school with a predominately white and small, but growing, latina/o student body in a semirural area of the intermountain west. although the msci was constructed using the tenets of critical multicultural education and associated multicultural and social theories, it was tested only with white and latina/o students. applicability of the msci for more diverse and/or different student bodies must be determined through additional testing of the instrument. third, the msci only focuses on student perspectives. it does not include surveys for parents and educators, important components of holistic school climate measurement (cohen et al., 2009). it is our hope that future scholars will use the msci as a basis on which to build these further dimensions of inquiry. fourth, we also recognize that a 22-item survey has inherent limitations due to its length. however, the short length offers convenience for educators and children who do not want to interrupt class time in order to take an extensive survey. our site school gave the survey during morning announcement time. quantitative results can be quickly assessed, while the open-ended qualitative question allows educators and scholars the opportunity to learn more about student feelings regarding their racial/ethnic experience in school. conclusion the msci we present in this paper is meant to enable school leaders, teachers, and scholars to assess existing school climate for evidence of multicultural practices and environments that are known to support the learning experiences of ethnically and linguistically diverse school children. examining student responses across ethnicity allows for a quick understanding of school climate aspects that may be working for some students, but not for others, and enables school leaders to focus on important areas of change. the msci can then be used to assess whether changes initiated by schools have an impact on student perspectives across ethnic groups. indeed, schools may be surprised to learn their school climate is not as conducive to the happiness and academic achievement of diverse students as they might hope or imagine. the msci in this situation becomes an important tool for gathering evidence of student perceptions. in our site school, for example, msci results were a catalyst for improving school culture for latina/o and ell students. changes in curriculum, teaching strategies, and overall attitude toward these students and their families brought about positive, measurable change in msci results three years later. over the same period of time, yearly standardized test scores showed that latina/o and ell students made remarkable gains in math, science, and language arts, approximately doubling their passing rates in three years. these increased gains in positive feelings about school and academic success offer more evidence for the integrated nature of school happiness and academic success. more on the msci project at our site school can be found in marx, 2008, and marx and larson, 2012. we suggest that the msci can help schools and scholars better understand the school climate experienced by diverse students in schools and also recognize areas of disparity among students. msci results can be a meaningful catalyst for change that improves multicultural school climate and positively impacts student happiness and success. the msci can then be used again – or at any time – to examine the effectiveness multicultural school climate inventory 11 of changes made. understanding and improving the happiness and academic success of all students in school should be an undertaking all of us, scholars and practitioners, prioritize. a tool as convenient as the msci makes the first step easy. the next step, creating meaningful change, is the real challenge. references andersen, f. c., & ottesen, e. 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(2012). multicultural school climate inventory. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/960 author notes sherry marx, phd school of teacher education and leadership utah state university 2805 old main hill logan, utah 84321 usa sherry.marx@usu.edu sherry marx is an award winning researcher who specializes in examining whiteness and racism in school settings. she teaches classes in multicultural education, esl education, and qualitative research. deborah byrnes, phd school of teacher education and leadership utah state university 2805 old main hill logan, utah 84321 usa deborah.byrnes@usu.edu deborah byrnes has spent several decades studying how we can best develop teachers who are culturally aware and sensitive to the school experiences of all learners. she teaches classes in social studies education and action research. manuscript received: 6/29/2012 revisions received: 10/21/2012 accepted: 10/30/2012 multicultural school climate inventory 15 volume 15, number 3 december 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 906_corrected_mh.docx 1 volume 15, number 1 april 9, 2012 issn 1099-839x teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review sarah n. douglas pennsylvania state university individuals with complex communication needs (ccn) who rely on augmentative and alternative communication (aac) to communicate in school and community activities often have paraeducators1 as communication partners. for individuals who use aac, successful communication often depends upon their personal skills as well as the skills of their communication partners. because the skills of communication partners are critical, and can be taught, a review was conducted to identify the effect of teaching paraeducators to provide appropriate communication supports for individuals using aac using studies that included data for both paraeducators and individuals with ccn. studies were analyzed using the recommendations from the communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005). findings from seven studies suggest that communication partner training to paraeducators can have positive outcomes for the communication behaviors of both paraeducators and individuals using aac. implications for practice and future research directions are addressed. keywords: augmentative and alternative communication, training, paraeducator, communication partner, communication effective communication is essential to inclusion in society and quality of life for individuals with disabilities (downing, 2005; sack & mclean, 1997). however, many individuals with disabilities, especially those with complex communication needs (ccn) including individuals with cerebral palsy, autism, and intellectual disabilities, find communication challenging (beukelman & mirenda, 2006). these individuals often experience difficulty understanding and producing speech (reichle, 1997). as a result, individuals with ccn may be excluded from many communication opportunities (sack & mclean, 1997). 1for the purpose of this article the term paraeducator refers to personnel who support individuals with disabilities in educational, vocational, and human service organizations. paraeducators carry out plans designed by teachers or human service professionals. in the literature paraeducators are also referred to as paraprofessionals, educational assistants, instructional assistants or aides, program staff, carers, etc. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 2 augmentative and alternative communication in order to assist communication interactions, many individuals with ccn are provided with augmentative and alternative communication (aac) including the use of gestures, signs, speech generating devices (sgd), or communication boards (beukelman & mirenda, 2006). however, the provision of an alternative means of communication does not guarantee a successful interaction (calculator & luchko, 1983; schepis & reid, 2003). communication involves two or more persons (reichle, 1997) and both the individual using aac, as well as the communication partner, need to adapt to the skills and needs of each other for the interaction to be successful (mirenda, iacono, & williams, 1990; schepis & reid, 2003). paraeducators to support inclusion in general education, as well as societal participation for individuals with disabilities, paraeducators often are hired as support personnel in the united states (downing, 2005; reid, 2004). human service organizations rely on paraeducators to assist individuals with disabilities in self-care, adaptive living, leisure skills, and communication (wood, luiselli, & harchik, 2007). similarly, educational organizations rely on paraeducators, who work under the supervision of teachers and other professionals (i.e. physical therapists, speech language pathologists), to implement instruction and assess the progress of the individuals they support (pickett, 1999). employment of paraeducators in educational settings has increased dramatically over the past 50 years (french & pickett, 1997). according to the national center for education statistics (2006), from 1995 to 2005, the number of paraeducators employed in the united states increased by 41%; during the same time period, the number of teachers employed in the united states increased by 21%. the roles of paraeducators in the united states have evolved over time as inclusive practices have expanded (french, 1996). traditionally paraeducators engaged in non-instructional roles (e.g., clerical, custodial tasks). however, today many paraeducators engage in delivering instruction (french & pickett, 1997; giangreco, edelman, broer, & doyle, 2001). these increased duties have resulted in paraeducators becoming frequent communication partners for individuals with ccn (beukelman & mirenda, 2006). communication partner strategies when communication partners make use of appropriate interaction strategies (e.g., providing opportunities for communication), they increase the likelihood of a successful interaction and support development of new skills by the individual with ccn (blackstone, 1986; sack & mclean, 1997). unfortunately, past research provides evidence that communication partners of individuals with ccn find it difficult to support communication and often engage in behaviors that reduce the likelihood of a successful interaction and limit development of new skills (mirenda et al., 1990; purcell, mcconkey, & morris, 2000). for example, communication partners may anticipate the needs of individuals with ccn, limit communication opportunities, and fail to recognize communication attempts (mirenda et al., 1990; sigafoos, 1999). in addition, communication partners may ask primarily closed questions such as “yes/no” questions (purcell et al., 2000) and may dominate communication interactions (light, collier, & parnes, 1985; kent-walsh, binger, & hasham, 2010). teaching communication partners (e.g., paraeducators) to utilize more appropriate interaction strategies can help individuals with ccn experience communication success in both current and future interactions (blackstone, 1986; kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005). strategy instruction is a set of instructional procedures used to assist learners as they acquire academic and social skills (ellis, deshler, lenz, schumaker, & clark, 1991). research has demonstrated the effectiveness of strategy instruction to help learners develop and generalize complex cognitive skills (ellis et al., 1991). for example, strategy instruction has been shown to be beneficial in assisting students as they acquire comprehension skills (gersten, fuchs, williams, & baker, 2001), writing skills (graham & perin, 2007), and language skills (chamot, 2005). strategy instruction has also been shown to be beneficial for adult learners (harrison, 2003). based on the strategy instruction model of ellis et al. (1991), which was built off of the strategy instruction research of deshler et al. (1981), a communication partner instruction model was suggested by kent-walsh and mcnaughton (2005) to provide instructional guidelines to aid learners acquire, generalize, and maintain targeted strategies for supporting communication. the communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005) includes eight stages. the first stage of the model is a pretest and commitment to instructional program. this includes a measure of current communication for the individual with ccn, current communication techniques used by partners, and an analysis of how communication could be improved. the partner then commits to participate in the program and learn strategies to improve communication in targeted areas. in the second stage, instructors describe the communication strategy that will be used. this includes a method to help remember the steps involved in the strategy and a discussion about the impact strategy use can have for the partners, individuals with ccn, and their families. the third stage is a demonstration of the strategy with an explanation of each step. after pretest, strategy description, and strategy demonstration, participants begin to practice and implement the strategy. in the fourth stage, participants teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review 3 engage in verbal practice of strategy steps. the fifth stage involves controlled practice and feedback of the strategy by the instructors with gradual fading of prompts. then in the sixth stage advanced practice and feedback are provided by the instructors. the seventh stage involves a post test measure to ensure mastery of the target strategies, and comparison with baseline measures of communicative participation of individuals with ccn and the communication interactions of the communication partner. in this stage, a long-term commitment is made to ensure continued strategy use. the eighth and final stage consists of strategy generalization to a variety of settings. communication partner research reviews past literature reviews in communication partner training have investigated communication partner training to human service staff (smidt, balandin, sigafoos, & reed, 2009) and to communication partners working with individuals with cerebral palsy (pennington, goldbart, & marshall, 2004). smidt et al. (2009) reviewed six studies where training was provided to staff working with individuals with intellectual disabilities. results of the review indicated that in five of the studies behavior changes were noted for staff. however, most studies did not measure communication outcomes for individuals with disabilities as part of the study. the review conducted by pennington et al. (2004) included four studies where communication partner training was provided to parents, teachers, and/or teaching assistants working with individuals with cerebral palsy. results of this review indicated behavior changes by communication partners in three studies, and no changes in the behavior of communication partners in one study. in addition, three studies provided measures of child changes in communication behaviors, while one provided no data related to the communication of children in the studies. the reviews by pennington et al. (2004) and smidt et al. (2009) help provide an initial understanding of how communication partner training might be conducted, and the importance of measuring outcomes for both individuals with disabilities as well as their communication partners. however, to date a review has not been conducted of studies where communication partner training was provided to paraeducators (including support staff) and outcomes for individuals using aac were also measured. given the use of paraeducators in many educational and human service settings (pickett, 1999; wood et al., 2007) and the call for adequate training of paraeducators (french & pickett, 1997), a review in this area is needed. in addition, communication is a complex, but necessary skill for individuals with ccn and may require strategic instruction for communication partners to ensure success (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005). therefore, given the research basis of the communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005) in strategy instruction, the model may be helpful as a standard by which the instructional components of studies might be compared. research questions a review of existing literature was conducted to look at training for paraeducators supporting individuals with ccn. the following five questions were addressed in the review: (a) what are the characteristics (e.g., demographics for paraeducators and individuals using aac, setting, study design) of studies where communication partner training is provided to paraeducators?; (b) what is the paraeducator communication training content and format?; (c) what instructional procedures typically are included in paraeducator training?; (d) what is the effect of communication training on paraeducator behavior (e.g., responding to communicative attempts)?; and (e) what is the effect of paraeducator communication training on the communication performance of individuals with ccn? method to answer the stated research questions, a search was conducted to identify studies in which paraeducators were trained to support the communication of individuals with ccn. inclusion criteria limited the review to studies that met the following five criteria: (a) printed in english; (b) described experimental research; (c) published in a peer reviewed journal; (d) targeted paraeducators or program staff supporting individuals using aac as participants for training; and (e) provided information about the aac system used by the individuals with ccn and data about communication of the individuals using aac. an electronic search of psycinfo, web of science, and jstor databases was conducted using the following keywords (paraprofessional or facilitator or partner or paraeducator or assistant or staff or career) and (augmentative and alternative communication or communication) and (training or education or collaboration). next, ancestral searches of articles meeting inclusion criteria were conducted. then author searches were conducted for authors (i.e. kent-walsh, light, mcnaughton, schlosser, sigafoos, soto, and wood) for whom multiple articles were found in previous searches focusing on training communication partners to support individuals using aac. lastly, hand searches were conducted in the following peer-reviewed journals: augmentative and alternative communication; research and practice for persons with severe disabilities (formerly jash); education and training in developmental disabilities; and language, speech, and hearing services in schools. journals were selected for a hand search when multiple articles were found in previous searches focusing on training communication partners to support individuals using aac within these journals. searches yielded seven studies that met all inclusion current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 4 criteria. results results of this literature review are presented in accordance with the stated research questions: (1) description of studies including demographics of paraeducators and individuals using aac, setting, study design, and data collection methods; (2) content and format of trainings in studies; (3) instructional procedures included in training sessions; (4) outcomes for paraeducators; and (5) communication outcomes for individuals using aac. description of research studies paraeducator demographics. the number of participants within studies ranged from 3 to 18. sixtythree individuals participated in the seven studies; 62 of these individuals were paraeducators (see table 1) and the remaining participant was a teacher participating in a study with paraeducators (duker & moonen, 1985). paraeducator and program staff education levels varied from high school or equivalent through graduate student level. paraeducator experience ranged from no experience to over 5 years of experience. participant roles included: instructional aides, personal attendants, group home staff, day program staff, volunteer staff, health attendants, and habilitation aides. individuals using aac. a total of 41 individuals using aac were included in the studies. age, disability, and type of aac used are presented in table 2. age for individuals using aac ranged from 4 to 26. the disabilities of the individuals using aac included autism, intellectual disability, cerebral palsy, multiple disability, and traumatic brain injury. type of aac system varied among individuals and included speech generating devices (sgd), picture symbols, sign, gestures, and/or objects. setting. studies were conducted in a number of settings including inclusive classrooms, self-contained classrooms, residential facilities, adult day programs, and community settings (see table 1). four studies (bingham, spooner, & browder, 2007; money, 1997; schlosser, walker, & sigafoos, 2006; seys, kersten, & duker, 1990) were conducted in a single setting. two studies provided data collected in two settings (binger, kent-walsh, ewing, & taylor, 2010; duker & moonen, 1985). one study (light, datillo, english, gutierrez, & hartz, 1992) was conducted in a variety of community settings. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 1 characteristics of paraeducator and program staff in studies study n setting education level ages experience binger, kent-walsh, ewing, & taylor (2010) 3 self-contained classroom & inclusive classroom college, graduate student --3-5 years bingham, spooner, & browder (2007) 3 self-contained classroom hs, ged 20, 23, 52 2 ½ 5 years duker & moonen (1985) 12a self-contained classroom & residential program --21-32 -- light, dattilo, english, gutierrez, & hartz (1992) 3 community settings undergraduate, graduate student 20, 29, 25 0 2 years money (1997) 18 adult day program ------ schlosser, walker, & sigafoos (2006) 7 residential program hs, college --1-5 years seys, kersten, & duker (1990) 17 residential program ------ note. dashes indicate information was not provided in the study. hs=high school diploma; ged=high school equivalency. a1 participant in this study was a teacher, the remaining 12 were paraeducators. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review 5 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 2 characteristics of individuals using aac in studies study n age(s) gender disability type of aac binger, kent-walsh, ewing, & taylor (2010) 3 4, 5, 6 2m, 1f id, cp sgd, gestures, sign, pecs bingham, spooner, & browder (2007) 3 8, 12, 16 2 f, 1 m id, multiple disability picture symbols, big mac duker & moonen (1985) 3 11, 13, 14 2 f, 1 m id sign light, dattilo, english, gutierrez, & hartz (1992) 2 18, 26 2 f tbi, cp/id sgd money (1997) 18 ------sign, picture symbol schlosser, walker, & sigafoos (2006) 3 7-10 3 m autism, id objects (reach or lead to objects) seys, kersten, & duker (1990) 9 9-26 7 f, 2 m id gestures note. dashes indicate information was not provided in the study. f=female; m=male; id=intellectual/ developmental disability; cp= cerebral palsy; sgd= speech generating device; pecs= picture exchange communication system. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ study design. two types of research designs were used among studies. six studies used a single subject multiple-baseline design (binger et al., 2010; bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; light et al., 1992; schlosser et al., 2006; seys et al., 1990). two of the multiple-baseline studies were replicated across groups (schlosser et al., 2006; seys et al., 1990), three were replicated across participants (binger et al., 2010; bingham et al, 2007; light et al., 1992), and one was replicated across settings (duker & moonen, 1985). one study (money, 1997) used an experimental group design. data collection. within studies, data were collected using direct observation or video analysis. direct observation for data collection occurred in three studies (bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; seys et al., 1990) and involved direct observation of communication interactions between paraeducators and individuals using aac (e.g., prompts, use of aac). reliability checks between observers also occurred in these three studies (bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; seys et al., 1990). data collection using video analysis took place in four studies and each of these studies also reported data on reliability checks with a mean of 80% to 100% reported in sessions (binger et al., 2010; light et al., 1992; money, 1997; schlosser et al., 2006). in three studies (binger et al., 2010; light et al., 1992; seys et al., 1990), reliability checks occurred over multiple observation sessions and occurred in 10% to 29% of all observation periods. paraeducator training training content. information regarding training content is provided in table 3. all but one study (binger et al., 2010) stated communication functions were covered in training. other training topics included information about aac systems, goal setting, creating opportunities to communicate (e.g., prompting, responding), and supporting participation. in four studies (binger et al, 2010; light et al., 1992; schlosser et al, 2006.; seys et al., 1990) authors provided trainings. three studies did not specify who conducted the training (bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; money, 1997). training format. information was often provided in studies regarding training duration and length (see table 4). training sessions varied from multiple 15minute sessions to a 1-day workshop. one study did not specify the number of training sessions (binger et al., 2010). in one study (binger et al., 2010) length of training sessions was not reported. the number of training sessions in other studies ranged from 1 to 20. duration of the training varied in studies from 1 day to 14 months. six studies (binger et al., 2010; bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; light et al., 1992; schlosser et al., 2006; seys et al., 1990) did not report training duration. instructional components of trainings. instructional components provided within the studies were analyzed and compared to the eight-stage communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005; see table 5). all but one study (seys et al., 1990) included at least 5 of the 10 stages in the model. seys and colleagues implemented three stages of training (i.e. pretest, strategy description, and practice and current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 6 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 3 communication partner training training content study instructor comm. functions aac systems goal setting creating opportunity supporting participation binger, kent-walsh, ewing, & taylor (2010) first author x x x bingham, spooner, & browder (2007) --x x x duker & moonen (1985) --x x x light, dattilo, english, gutierrez, & hartz (1992) first author x x x x x money (1997) --x x x schlosser, walker, & sigafoos (2006) first/second author x x x seys, kersten, & duker (1990) first author x x x note. comm. = communication. x indicates content was included in training. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ feedback). one study (binger et al., 2010) utilized all stages of the model. the stages most often included in studies were: pretest, strategy description, strategy demonstration, controlled practice and feedback, advanced practice and feedback, and post test. all studies included pretest measures during training and provided a description of the strategy included in training. all but one study (seys et al., 1990) provided a demonstration of the targeted strategy and stated that participants were provided with controlled practice and feedback (e.g., modeling, role play). advanced practice and feedback was included in 5 of the 7 studies and posttest measures were provided in 4 of 7 studies (see table 5). several stages (e.g., commitment, verbal practice, and generalization) were often omitted in studies. the study by binger et al. (2010) was the only study to include commitment to instructional program, verbal practice, and commitment to long-term strategy use. three studies (binger et al., 2010; duker & moonen, 1985; light et al., 1992) reported data on the generalized use of communication strategies for paraeducators. outcomes for participants outcomes for paraeducators. behavioral changes (e.g., increase in prompting, increase in responses to requests, increased opportunities for aac use, decreased use of closed questions) for paraeducators were reported in all seven studies (see table 4). four studies reported that after training, paraeducators provided more opportunities for individuals using aac to communicate (binger et al., 2010; duker & moonen, 1985; light et al., 1992; schlosser et al., 2006). one study (bingham et al., 2007) indicated that after training paraeducators increased prompts to individuals using aac. in the study by money (1997) specific types of communication were measured. open ended questions and multi-utterances increased while closed questions and statements decreased for the combination group. the direct and teaching groups reported mixed results (see table 4). seys (1990) also reported mixed group results, but noted an increase in prompting by paraeducators after training in 2 of 3 groups. four studies (binger et al., 2010; bingham et al., 2007; light et al., 1992; seys et al., 1990) provided maintenance data for paraeducators. data were collected anywhere from 2 weeks after training up to 12 months after training. one study (seys et al., 1990) did not specify the length of time between training and collection of maintenance data. studies reported mixed outcomes in maintenance data. two studies (bingham et al., 2007; light et al., 1992) indicated behavior levels for paraeducators maintained, while one study (seys et al., 1990) stated behavior levels decreased when maintenance data were collected. one study (binger et al., 2010) noted mixed results for maintenance data with two paraeducators maintaining communication interaction skills and one decreasing. outcomes for individuals using aac. overall, changes in paraeducator behavior appear to be associated teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review 7 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 4 summary of communication outcomes study training formata dependent variable for paraeducators results for paraeducators outcomes for individuals using aac binger, kent walsh, ewing, & taylor (2010) ---,---,--a) strategy: model, ask questions, prompt, respond a) increased use of strategy for all • increase in frequency of multisymbol messages for all bingham, spooner, & browder (2007) 4, 2 ¼ hours, -- a) prompts provided b) responses to requests a) increase for all b) increase for all • increase in aac use for all • decrease in problem behavior for all duker & moonen (1985) 2, 1 hour, --a) opportunities for comm. a) increase for all • increase in signing for all light, dattilo, english, gutierrez, & hartz (1992) 4, 1 hour, --a) conversational reciprocity a) increase for all • increase in comm. turns for all • slight increase in initiations for all money (1997) direct: 6, 1 hour, 4 months teaching: 5, 1 day, 2 months combination: 11, ½ day, 4 months a) open questions b) closed questions c) statements d) multiutterances a) increase for all b) decrease for direct/teaching increase for combination c) decrease for teaching/ combination increase for direct d) increase for all for combination group: • increase in yes/no, and responses, number of responses, use of additional modalities • decrease in number of nonresponses schlosser, walker, & sigafoos (2006) 1, 1 day, --a) opportunities provided for comm. a) increase for all • increase in requests for all seys, kersten, & duker (1990) 20, 15 min., - a) prompts a) increase in 2 groups, no change in one group • increase in prompted (7 of 9), spontaneous (8 of 9), and different gestures (all) note. dashes indicate information was not provided in the study. comm. = communication; anumber of sessions, average session length, total duration. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ with improved or increased communication for individuals with ccn. all studies (see table 4) reported increased and/or improved communication for individuals using aac. increased use of aac was found in five studies (bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; money, 1997; scholsser et al., 2006; seys et al, 1990). additionally one study (light et al., 1992) noted an increase in initiations by the individual using aac. light et al. (1992) also noted an increase in response complexity (e.g., multiword responses). binger et al. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 8 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 5 inclusion of targeted instructional procedures [as listed in kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005] communication partner instruction stages study 1a 1b 2 3 4 5 6 7a 7b 8 binger, kent-walsh, ewing, & taylor (2010) i i i i i i i i i i bingham, spooner, & browder (2007) i --i i --i i i ---- duker & moonen (1985) i --i i --i ------i light, dattilo, english, gutierrez, & hartz (1992) i --i i --i i i --i money (1997) i --i i --i --i ---- schlosser, walker, & sigafoos (2006) i --i i --i i ------ seys, kersten, & duker (1990) i --i ------i ------ note. dashes indicate it was unclear if the stage was included in the study. 1a = pretest; 1b = commitment to instructional program; 2 = strategy description; 3 = strategy demonstration; 4 = verbal practice of strategy steps; 5 = controlled practice and feedback; 6 = advanced practice and feedback; 7a = post test; 7b = commitment to long-term strategy use; 8 = generalization of targeted strategy use; i = stage included ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ (2010) similarly noted an increase in multi-symbol messages. one study focused on replacing problem behaviors with communication behaviors (bingham et al., 2007). in this study, additional data were provided about problem behaviors (e.g., self-stimulation, aggression, selfinjury, disruption) for individuals using aac. after paraeducator training, a decrease was noted in problem behaviors as well as an increase in communication. in four studies (binger et al., 2010; bingham et al., 2007; light et al., 1992; seys et al., 1990), maintenance data were collected regarding communication for individuals using aac. aac use was maintained from 2 weeks up to 12 months after the end of the intervention in three studies (binger et al., 2010; bingham et al., 2007; light et al., 1992). seys et al. (1990) did not specify when maintenance data were collected. one study (bingham et al., 2007) noted participants maintained level of aac use after intervention. the remaining studies (binger et al., 2010; light et al., 1992; seys et al., 1990) noted mixed results during maintenance. for some participants levels remained steady, for others levels decreased, and for some levels increased after intervention. discussion results of this review add to past reviews in communication partner training and provides evidence of the importance of communication partner training for paraeducators supporting individuals who use aac. in all seven studies (see table 4) implementation of strategies by paraeducators affected communication. specifically, when paraeducators increased use of targeted strategies (e.g., prompting, responding to requests by individuals using aac), communication increased (bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; money, 1997; schlosser et al., 2006; seys et al., 1990) or improved (binger et al., 2010; light et al., 1992). two studies reported mixed results for paraeducators (money, 1997; seys et al., 1990), but still noted an increase in communication for most individuals using aac. from this review, there is initial support to indicate that training for paraeducators who support individuals using aac may be beneficial in changing paraeducator behavior and may affect communication by individuals with ccn. teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review 9 paraeducator training training outcomes. all studies (see table 4) provided evidence that training increased use of communication strategies by paraeducators. however, two studies reported mixed results (money, 1997; seys et al., 1990) for paraeducators and individuals using aac. additionally, when strategies (e.g., prompting, responding to requests by individuals using aac) were implemented by paraeducators an increase (bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; money, 1997; schlosser et al., 2006) or improvement in aac use was shown (binger et al., 2010; light et al., 1992). this seems to confirm existing research that indicates proper implementation of treatment is associated with later positive outcomes (gresham, 1989). positive changes for individuals using aac were noted in all studies. the majority of individuals using aac demonstrated behavior change as a result of the changes implemented by paraeducators after training. however, a small number of participants in two studies (money, 1997; seys et al., 1990) did not demonstrate growth. this may be due to lack of implementation of the trained communication strategies by paraeducators. in both studies (money, 1997; seys et al., 1990) data were reported at the group level for paraeducators and did not connect the paraeducator data to the individuals they were assisting, so it is difficult to make this connection definitively. instructional strategies used in paraeducator training. the reviewed studies included many components from the communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005) for aac training (see table 5). six of the stages were most often included in studies: pretest, strategy description, strategy demonstration, controlled practice and feedback, advanced practice and feedback, and post test. four components were most often omitted in studies: commitment to initial use, verbal practice, commitment to long-term use, and generalization. in the future, it may be beneficial to include these components. gersten et al. (1997) suggested that commitment assists acquisition of new skills by allowing individuals to recognize skills that are not fully developed or areas that need improvement and leads to continued use of trained strategies after instruction is over. therefore, commitment at both initial and final stages of training should be considered. in addition, reviews of effective educational practice suggest that verbal practice in the steps of a strategy assist learners acquire new skills and gain automaticity so they can focus on the strategy rather than trying to remember the steps (rosenshine & stevens, 1986). regarding generalization, ellis et al. (1987) emphasized the importance of this component when learning new skills, as many learners do not make use of new strategies in novel situations. by incorporating a generalization component, use of the strategy in a variety of settings is encouraged. although the majority of studies implemented six of the stages of training (i.e. pretest, strategy description, strategy demonstration, controlled practice and feedback, advanced practice and feedback, post test) from the communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005), one study (seys et al., 1990) implemented only three stages (i.e. pretest, strategy description, advanced practice, and feedback). seys et al. (1990) also reported inconsistent rates of improvement for paraeducator groups after training. it should be noted that use of the communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005) to evaluate current paraeducator communication training studies is not meant to imply there is only one way to provide or evaluate paraeducator training in communication partner skills. indeed other researchers (e.g., granlund) have recommended slightly different approaches (i.e. modeling of collaborative problem solving approaches) for training communication partners and evaluating training (kirkpatrick, 1996; see smidt et al., 2009). however, based on the results of this review, it appears components of strategy instruction exist within reviewed studies, which indicates that strategy instruction may be a promising approach for teaching communication partner skills. limitations several limitations were noted in this literature review. first, the review included only seven studies. although this is an important area of research, limited research exists. in addition, most of the studies reviewed were single subject designs. although single subject designs provide information about the effectiveness for an individual, this information cannot be generalized to other individuals without further replication or more rigorous research (johnston & pennypacker, 2009). given these limitations, additional research is required to strengthen the findings of this review and to confirm the impact of paraeducator training to support the communication of individuals who use aac. future research directions although the use of paraeducators to support individuals using aac has been demonstrated, this review suggests that limited research exists on the topic. as such, any research in the area of training and implementation of effective communication strategies by paraeducators supporting individuals who use aac should be encouraged. future research should continue to address how paraeducator training impacts individuals who use aac. replication of included studies could be conducted to determine if the findings from reviewed studies are generalizable to other settings, students, and paraeducators. in addition, new studies could be designed which address limitations of studies included here (e.g., current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 10 study design). future research in the area of paraeducator training to support the communication of individuals using aac could also be conducted to determine what instructional procedures are most essential in communication partner training to paraeducators. this could be done using the training model suggested by kent-walsh and mcnaughton (2005), or through investigation of communication partner training curriculums. considering only one study included all of the components from the communication partner instruction model, future research could also be conducted to analyze the essential components needed in training by looking at the variance in outcomes when some instructional components are not included. summary this review of training practices provides evidence that training for paraeducators to improve communication supports for individuals with ccn can be effective. educational settings and organizations supporting individuals with ccn typically must address a number of questions when planning communication training for paraeducators. organizations will likely consider the effectiveness, efficiency, and appropriateness of training for paraeducators and individuals who use aac. this review demonstrates that paraeducator communication training can be effective and appropriate to the needs of paraeducators and individuals with ccn. in addition, it should be noted that trainings in these studies often were efficient. training frequently was provided with just a few sessions (bingham et al., 2007; light et al., 1992), over short periods of time (schlosser et al., 2006) or using short training sessions (light et al.; seys et al., 1990). despite the brevity of training sessions, positive outcomes were demonstrated in studies. this indicates that trainings may not need to be lengthy, over long periods of time, or include more than a few sessions to produce change for the communication behavior of paraeducators and individuals with ccn. in addition, given the high turnover rate for paraeducators working with individuals using aac (dobson, upadhyaya, & stanley, 2002; giangreco et al., 2001), it is important for organizations to consider the need for ongoing training as new personnel are hired, or as personnel change placements to work with other individuals (calculator & luchko, 1983). furthermore given some of the concerns with maintaining skills, ongoing training may assist maintenance of communication outcomes. although research in this area is limited, this review provides support for use of paraeducator training to support the communication development of individuals with ccn. trainings that included strategy instruction components (e.g., pretest, strategy description, controlled practice and feedback) lead to the use of effective use of communication strategies by paraeducators (e.g., prompting, recognizing communicative attempts, responding to communicative attempts). when paraeducators used these techniques, benefits were also noted for individuals with ccn (e.g., increased aac activation, increased response complexity, increased initiations). given that support exists for paraeducator communication partner training, best practice would indicate that well designed training should be provided to paraeducators supporting individuals with ccn. references *indicates article included in review beukelman, d. r., & mirenda, p. 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(1990). evaluating a ward staff program for increasing spontaneous and varied communicative gesturing with individuals who are mentally retarded. behavioral residential treatment, 5, 247-257. sigafoos, j. (1999). creating opportunities for augmentative and alternative communication: strategies for involving people with developmental disabilities. augmentative and alternative communication, 15, 183-190. smidt, a., balandin, s., sigafoos, j., & reed, v. a. (2009). the kirkpatrick model: a useful tool for evaluating training outcomes. journal of intellectual and developmental disability, 34, 266-274. wood, a. l., luiselli, j. k., & harchik, a. e. (2007). training instructional skills with paraprofessional service providers at community-based habilitation settings. behavior modification, 31, 847-855. teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review 13 article citation douglas, s. n. (2012). teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/906 author notes sarah n. douglas, phd pennsylvania state university department of educational psychology, counseling, and special education 329 cedar building, university park, pa 16802 snd135@psu.edu sarah n. douglas, phd is an assistant professor at penn state university in the department of educational psychology, counseling, and special education. her research interests include augmentative and alternative communication, education of students with severe disabilities, and training for paraeducators. manuscript received: 10/19/2011 revisions received: 3/27/2012 accepted: 3/29/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 14 volume 15, number 1 april 9, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1213_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x best practices in recruiting and retaining international students in the u.s. osman özturgut university of the incarnate word san antonio, texas the number of international students on u.s. campuses is steadily increasing, and the prospect of the numbers increasing is in the forecast. according to open doors report (2012) the number of international students at colleges and universities in the united states increased by 5% to 764,495 during the 2011/12 academic year. altbach (1991) argued that international students are “among the most important and visible elements of internationalism” (p. 305). this research intended to identify the best practices in recruiting and retaining international students through learning the best practices of the select u.s. institutions with the largest number of international students on their campuses. findings indicated that the key when recruiting and retaining international students is the ability “to relate and communicate effectively when individuals involved in the interaction do not share the same culture, ethnicity, language, or other salient variables” (hains, lynch, & winton, 2000, p. 2). presence of international students on u.s. campuses is significant and the institutions surveyed are providing the best services that they can to make these students feel welcome. however, international students are not simply recipients of services provided to them by these institutions but rather are partners both benefiting from this exchange. keywords: international education, internationalization, student recruitment, retention the number of international students on u.s. campuses is steadily increasing, and the prospect of the numbers increasing is in the forecast. according to open doors report (2012) the number of international students at colleges and universities in the united states increased by 5.7% to 764,495 during the 2011/12 academic year. this year's growth was primarily driven by a 23% increase in chinese student enrollment in the united states to a total of nearly 194,029 students. this is nearly 22% of the total international student population, making china the leading sending country. students from india decreased by 3.5% to a total of nearly 100,270. indian students represent 14% of all international students in u.s. higher education. open doors (2012) further explained that international students contribute approximately $22.7 billion dollars to the u.s. economy through their expenditure on tuition and living expenses. the report further stated that 63.6% of all international students receive the majority of their funds from personal and family sources and almost 70% of all international students' primary funding comes from sources outside of the united states. what the report did not identify is how these institutions are recruiting and retaining their international student populations. this study clarifies and explains some of the methods of recruiting and retaining international students on u.s. campuses that the universities with the largest number of international students on their campuses utilize. significance of the study there is a wealth of research on international students in the u.s. the needs of these students are well researched and defined (hull, 1978; stafford, marion, & salter, 1978; zikopoulos, 1991; huntley, 1993; woolston, 1995; lin & yi, 1997; sarkodie-mensah, 1998; halic, greenberg, & paulus, 2009; özturgut & murphy, 2011; lemke, 2011). altbach (1991) argues that international current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 students are “among the most important and visible elements of internationalism” (p. 305) but the majority of foreign students studying outside their home countries are from developing countries and it is difficult to predict the flow patterns (zikopoulos, 1989; obst & forster, 1995; open doors, 2012). becker and kolster (2012) stated that the united states has no comprehensive national policy in regards to recruiting international students or the internationalization of higher education. even though the association of international educators (nafsa) initiated drafting of a national policy in 2003, these efforts had failed. they further added that the u.s. “competes in the international student market on the basis of sheer size. the country receives the highest number of international students in the world, but on a per capita basis, its performance is modest, despite the fact that it has many of the best and richest universities in the world” (becker & kolster, 2012, p. 35). this argument certainly requires a self-reflection on the practices of recruiting and retaining international students on u.s. college campuses. lemke (2011) argued that with the significant contributions and the roles of international students in the united states, there is an increasing need for more research on this topic. goodwin and nacht (1983) argued that the most u.s. colleges and universities have been admitting international students without having a strong understanding of their purpose and how these international students would fit within their institutions. it is still the case. international students are sought after for their financial contributions (altbach & knight, 2007; bolsmann & miller, 2008; lasanowski, 2009) without much effort to having a plan in regards to how they would make sure that the both sides would benefit from this educational exchange. international students do not only contribute to the u.s. economy but also serve as research and teaching assistants in many fields but mostly in the fields of science and technology. in such areas, many academic programs rely on them. with this in mind, what is missing in the literature is the best practices to recruit and retain these students. the intentions of these institutions certainly differ and this research does not intend to highlight the intentions of these institutions when recruiting and retaining their international student population but rather an exploration of the methods they use to recruit and retain. some institutions are using agents (new york times, may 11, 2008; allen, 2011) and sometimes notso-appropriate practices to recruit these students to include holding crucial information back just to get them to their campuses. some of the institutions are utilizing their current students and online marketing tools to recruit (new york times, may 11, 2008). the issue with retention is that once the students arrive on campus, the academic and social support services can be rather limited or sub-standard: “upon arrival, they find a discrepancy between their social expectations and social reality” (klomegah, 2006, p. 305). it is therefore imperative to identify the best practices for the utilization by other smaller and institutions with less number of international students on their campuses in the u.s. this research intended to identify the best practices for recruiting and retaining international students through exploring the current practices of the select u.s. institutions with the largest number of international students on their campuses. the data for the institutions selected for this research is from the open doors 2010 report. open doors’ 2010 survey lists 1,391 institutions with their numbers of international students on their campuses. one hundred and sixty associates, baccalaureate, master’s and doctorate granting institutions (mccormick & zhao, 2005; carnegie classification, 2005) are selected to be surveyed. top 40 institutions from each category are surveyed to find out what their practices are when recruiting international students and what their practices are in meeting the needs and expectations of these students (retention). the findings may inform other u.s. higher education institutions with a lower number of international students with their efforts in recruiting and retention of international students on their campuses and further inform policy makers about the weaknesses and strength of programs for international students on u.s. campuses: “when social scientists do not get involved, policies are made by others, such as politicians; and when not informed by scientific knowledge, they turn out to be less than adequate” (kagitcibasi, 1996, p. 185). this study further intended to contribute to the policy making efforts in the field of international higher education and internationalization of higher education in the u.s. review of relevant literature knight (2004) defined internationalization as “the process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions, or delivery of postsecondary education” (p. 2). it is “an ongoing, future-oriented, multidimensional, interdisciplinary, leadership-driven vision that involves many stakeholders working to change the internal dynamics of an institution to respond and adapt appropriately to an increasingly diverse, globally focused, ever-changing external environment" (ellingboe, 1998, p. 199; lemke, 2011). even though international student recruitment and retention is one of the aspects of internationalizationing postsecondary institutions, it is a key component. therefore, it is imperative that we study the current practices of higher education institutions in the u.s. in regards to how they respond to internationalization and how they accommodate initiatives, progresses and policies of internationalization. current practices in recruitment of international students on u.s. campuses with the competitiveness of the international student markets and the complexities surrounding each best practices in recruiting and retaining international students in the u.s. 3 country and culture, international student recruitment is becoming a more complex operation than it has ever been (allen, 2011; de luca, 2011; lemke, 2011). traditional recruitments have been done through local agents with local expertise in specific countries. this has been an effective way to recruit students mostly because of the logistics and financial considerations of sending recruiters to each country for recruitment. although u.s. universities are increasingly willing to send recruiters abroad, working with local agents has been the main form of international student recruitment in the recent years. other than logistics and financial considerations of maintaining offices in different countries, cultural nuances and overall expertise in the educational systems of different countries have been handicaps for international student recruitment initiatives of u.s. institutions. for example, recruiting students from china and turkey requires an extensive expertise of the higher education systems of both countries. both countries have complicated higher education systems with extensive government oversight on regulations. additionally, recruiting students from these two countries requires significant understanding of the cultural differences. one example would be that the prospective students in china and turkey would be utilizing family funds for their studies. therefore, an extensive understanding of familial relations is essential. that is, families need to be convinced rather than the students. parents or in some cases extended family members (uncles, aunts, etc.) will be paying for the expenses of these students while they study abroad and therefore should be the main target groups for the recruiters. local agents will have the advantage of insiders within these cultures and are more effective recruiters. examples of successful international student recruitment efforts international student recruitment has been in the agenda for higher education professionals for some time. the forces that are driving universities to invest heavily on international student recruitment are complex. each institution has its specific agenda and specific initiatives within its strategic goals. the cases below are the examples of such initiatives and the motives behind these initiatives: case 1 university of minnesota-twin cities. c. eugene allen, distinguished teaching professor and former associate vice president for international programs at the university of minnesota, explains that: when the university of minnesota-twin cities was facing a decline in the international undergraduate enrolment, they needed to find a way to attract more international undergraduate students. they identified some of the reasons for the decline in the international student enrollment: 1) 9/11, 2) increase in the non-resident tuition, 3) growing global competition, 4) lack of a stable esl program, and most importantly, 5) lack of a recruiting program. as a solution, they established a recruitment committee to meet two to three times a semester to identify the needs, plan activities and hear the reports on recruitment trips, and share recent and relevant information on international student flow trends. this recruitment committee was only one of the several initiatives to increase the number of international students on their campus. they further planned consultations with other institutions, sought student feedback, developed a comprehensive strategic plan with budget, staffing and recruitment goals, and reviewed the campus services for international students. as a result of their initiatives, there was a 105% increase in international freshman and 19% overall increase from 2005 to 2006 (allen, 2011). case 2 international consultants for education and fairs. marisa de luca of the marketing and communications at international consultants for education and fairs (icef) explained that the international education markets represent more than 45 million students but we are currently at 2.7 million students in institutions across the world. this number (2.7 million students) is expected to grow to more than 8 million students by 2025. she argued that utilizing education agents for international student recruitment has several advantages: 1) as the agents know the language and the culture, they provide fast and direct access to specific markets, 2) cost-effective in regards to not having to send university staff for recruitment while also providing a diversity in the number of countries represented and provide local infrastructure and 3) improve the quality of student applications by enforcing the admission criteria. they further utilize value added services as providing counseling for both parents and students, and help with the visa and travel arrangements (de luca, 2011). other relevant cases. adam beeson of the international graduate admissions at university of north carolinacharlotte (unc-c) explained that the international undergraduate student number at unc-c increased by 42 % between 2005 and 2007. international graduate students now represent 16 % of unc-c’s total number of students. the key for unc-c’s success is due to its clear and strong institutional commitment and by establishing mutually beneficial partnerships around the world (beeson, 2011). an international education consultant, tim rogers, explains how effective the fairs can be for international student recruitment. he explains that electronic recruitment methods, online application systems, web-based consultancy are relatively common among international student recruitment initiatives. however, attending fairs is still one of the best practices to recruit international students. these fairs provide a way to connect the students and recruiters and establish relationships. for the attendance at these fairs to be effective, however, publicizing presence, having the right current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 materials, inviting your market to the fair, and following up are extremely important (rogers, 2011). heidi buffington of saint louis university, madrid campus explained that their admission efforts include participation in international education organizations, recruiting tours and developing rapport with counselors, creative use of resources (current students and new technologies, etc.), promotional materials and mailings, and community outreach (buffington, 2011). new york times article (2008) explained that agents are especially crucial in asia. asian parents speak little or no english but have a significant historical trend of wishing to provide a prestigious education to their children. these agents can help them navigate through complex application processes, select an appropriate university, and help with getting visas. for lesser known american universities, using agents is a cost effective way to recruit students from asia (new york times, may 11, 2008). an insidehighered article (2009) explained that even though using agents is an effective and preferred method of recruiting international students, there are still concerns among international educators. they question the fact that these agents have no direct ties to a specific institution and they simply work to increase the number of students they recruit for commission revenue rather than focusing on finding the most qualified and appropriate students (insidehighered, 2009). a more recent article in insidehighered explains that it is important to ensure credibility and integrity among the education agents that are advising students on the education choices in the u.s. mark shay of american international recruitment council suggested certifying recruitment organizations as legitimate and trustworthy based on the certification standards developed by various university members (march 25, 2011). recruitment of international students for u.s. campuses focus on using agents in foreign countries and the issues this method brings with it. however, there is no further information about what other methods, if available, are being utilized for recruitment. it is therefore crucial to compile a list of best practices to inform u.s. institutions in their efforts to further internationalize their campuses through international students. it is especially important for institutions new to this field as there are significant research and decisions to be made before entering and expanding in this market. current practices in retention of international students on u.s. campuses current literature on the retention issues for international students focuses on the challenges that international student face on u.s. campuses. most international students face social problems related to social integration, daily life tasks, homesickness, and role conflicts. they often feel overwhelmed by cultural differences (constantinides, 1992). they also express their concerns about competitiveness, individualism, and assertiveness of american culture (parr, bradley, & bingi, 1992; miller-idriss & worden, 2010; arkoudis et al., 2012). some even feel that american culture is somewhat offensive (heikinheimo & shute, 1986). when the international students come to the u.s. the first time, they feel the absence of their own traditional sources of social support (pederson, 1991). therefore, social support is important not only for self-esteem and selfconfidence but also for helping reduce stress that plays an important part in academic achievement (mallinckrodt & leong, 1992; glass & westmont, 2013). in a study investigating intercultural communication competency, greer and hinchcliff-pelias (2004) explained that interactions between culturally different individuals involve complex understandings, dispositions, and abilities that must be learned if the intercultural communication is to be successful. for this research, data were collected through extensive interviews, focus groups, one-to-one interviews and by reviewing 64 international students’ written personal narratives from 20 nations. although the researchers were aware of the fact that these selected students were not to be considered representatives of their national cultures, greer and hinchcliff-pelias (2004) considered them to be representatives of a contemporary “international student culture” (p. 9). they found that every one of the 64 students interviewed articulated one or more negative experiences related to their past and present intercultural interactions. a recurring theme across students’ responses was the need to reflect on difficult intercultural interactions and then to make the commitment to learn from them. hinchcliff-pelias and greer (2004) concluded that educators of international students are in a position to guide the learning of their international students. because of this, they should take responsibility for helping their students develop better skills that would allow them to communicate more effectively. when it comes to the retention of international students, current literature explains the significance of friendship networks (furnham & alibhai, 1985; arkoudis et al., 2012). furhham and alibhai (1985) explain the friendship networks as international students’ commitment to and level of interest in establishing friendships with host nationals. this is especially significant because when international students have strong social support system, they tend to adjust to college life in the u.s. more effectively and quickly (al-sharideh & goe, 1998; boyer & sedlacek, 1988; schram & lauver, 1988; ray & solem, 2009; glass & westmont, 2013). having friends from the same country or students from other nations over students from the u.s. help them adjust and adapt more easily. however, for all we know, while individuals foster positive self-appreciation as belonging to a specific group, they may also perceive the prejudice and stigmatization from other groups and best practices in recruiting and retaining international students in the u.s. 5 experience exclusion and isolation. research further indicates that when the international students feel isolated and lonely and even feel severe depression (dillard & chisolm, 1983; mori, 2000; owie, 1982; schram & lauver, 1988; yakunina et al., 2013), they tend to focus more on academic achievement (chu, yeh, klein, alexander, & miller, 1971; dozier, 2001). if asked, probably, institutions with international students would argue that they have read the research and are using it to guide practice. in reality, they are doing ‘good things’ when they foster ‘international nights’ or help an international student with paperwork; however, this does not address the root of the problem expressed in the research which dates back to the late 1970’s (stafford, marion, salter, & chu, 1978). specifically, the current research suggests that u.s. citizens and educators do not understand their roles in the acculturation and thus the retention of international students on their campuses. it is therefore another reason, other than the financial contributions and so-called internationalization efforts, to learn about the best practices in the retention of international students. methodology the purpose of this study was to find out the best practices for recruiting and retaining international students on u.s. campuses. qualitative research is used to gather and analyze data. berg (2004) explains that “this type of study may be seen as a prelude to a large social scientific study…this sort of exploratory study may be useful as a pilot study, for example, when planning a larger, more comprehensive investigation” (p. 256). this method is especially suitable for this study as the intention was also identify the best practices of several institutions, which may then put into a larger policy making context. vissak (2010) noted that the “application of this method can be useful for transcending the local boundaries of investigated cases, capturing layers of reality, and developing new, testable and empirically valid theoretical and practical insights” (p. 372). creswell (2009) further added that the qualitative researcher interprets what is seen, heard and understood” (p. 175) and the researcher interpreted the responses as he heard and understood. hundred and sixty (160) u.s. institutions hosting international students with the largest number of international students on their campuses in 2010 are selected for this study (institute of international education, 2010). the annual open doors report (supported by a grant from the bureau of educational and cultural affairs at the u.s. department of state) on international educational exchange presents the latest trends on international education through providing data on international students who study in the united states and american students who study abroad (institute of international education, 2013). to find out current practices and performances in recruitment and retention, top forty (40) institutions with the largest numbers of international students on their campuses from each associate’s, baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral institutions (carnegie classification, 2005) were surveyed. each of the 160 institutions are emailed with a link (surveymonkey™) asking to fill in a survey. two questions were asked for survey: (a) please list five best practices your institution is currently utilizing to recruit international students and (b) please list five best practices your institution is currently utilizing to retain international students for survey and collection of data. survey questions were sent to the university administrative personnel related to international admissions. the participants of the survey were university administrators working with the international students and international academic programs, for example, vice president, director, associate, and assistant directors of international programs, and director, associate and assistant directors of international admissions. responses were kept anonymous and confidential. out of 160 institutions surveyed, 22 doctoral, 14 masters, 9 baccalaureate, and 8 associate’s institutions responded to the survey (n=53). analysis data collected through this study is analyzed inductively and deductively. a list of thematic codes was developed based on an initial read of the survey responses (see tables 1 & 2). inductive analysis was conducted through “discovering patterns, themes, and categories in one’s data” and deductive analysis was conducted through some of the categories developed “according to an existing framework” (patton, 2002, p. 453), which is the review of recent related literature (priori codes). the researcher utilized preliminary research and related literature as the guidelines for the data analysis. “this early grounding and planning can be used to suggest several categories by which the data could initially be coded for subsequent analysis” (marshall & rossman, 2011, p. 209). as the researcher read and reread the data in depth, multiple themes emerged in addition to the themes that “were derived from the researcher’s insider sense of issues that would occur in real life” (marshall & rossman, 2011, p. 211). the codes after the initial read were shifted and modified as the researcher reread and rethought the data (bogden & biklen, 1998; marshall & rossman, 1989). for example, preparing brochures for international student recruitment was categorized under “marketing” theme. providing “counseling services” was categorized under “campus resources” theme. further engagement with the data helped generate the final themes. these themes “then became buckets or baskets into which segments of text are placed” (marshall & rossman, 2006, p. 159) and provided a basis for the analysis. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 findings best practices in recruiting international students the themes emerged in international student recruitment are: 1) providing academic support and utilizing campus resources, 2) attending and participating in international education fairs and recruitment events, 3) partnering with other organizations (colleges and universities, non-profit and governmental institutions, high schools, for-profit organizations), 4) passive marketing (web advertising-online, brochures and booklets, etc.), 5) utilizing staff and faculty, 6) utilizing alumni, 7) utilizing agents, and 8) snowballing (word-ofmouth). these themes are organized and presented through the tables below. these methods are listed under each institution category in the order of utilization. the following table summarizes the prioritized methods of recruitment for the institutions that have participated in this research. it should be noted that the list below is the summary of all responses (see appendices a & b) and shows how each institution category prioritizes its recruitment efforts. a consistency was seen in the responses of survey of 53 institutions across the categories of international student recruitment methods. table 1 summary of utilized methods of international student recruitment in the order of utilization doctoral masters baccalaureate associates passive marketing (online brochures and booklets, etc.) providing academic support and utilizing campus resources attending and participating in international education fairs and recruitment events providing academic support and utilizing campus resources attending and participating in international education fairs and recruitment events partnering with other organizations. providing academic support and utilizing campus resources partnering with other organizations partnering with other organizations passive marketing (online, brochures and booklets, etc.) utilizing international alumni attending and participating in international education fairs and recruitment events utilizing staff and faculty ( international student office, faculty trips) utilizing agents passive marketing (online, brochures and booklets, etc.) passive marketing (online, brochures and booklets, etc.) providing academic support and utilizing campus resources attending and participating in international education fairs and recruitment events utilizing staff and faculty ( international student office, faculty trips) utilizing staff and faculty ( international student office, faculty trips) utilizing alumni utilizing international alumni partnering with other organizations utilizing agents snowballing (word-ofmouth) snowballing utilizing agents utilizing international alumni utilizing agents utilizing staff and faculty ( international student office, faculty trips) snowballing snowballing best practices in recruiting and retaining international students in the u.s. 7 best practices in retaining international students the themes emerged from the data and the review of relevant literature are: 1) international student & scholar services staff, 2) academic programming and support, 3) social and cultural engagement and support, and 4) financial aid, health services, religious support, and immigration support. these themes are organized and presented through the tables below. these methods are listed under each institution category in the order of utilization. the following table summarizes the utilized methods of retention of the institutions that have participated in this research. it should be noted that the list below is the summary of all responses and shows how each institution category prioritizes its retention efforts. in the survey of retaining international students, responses of all participating institutions across different categories were found consistent. table 2 summary of utilized methods of international student retention in the order of utilization doctoral masters baccalaureate associates social and cultural activities engagement and support social and cultural activities engagement and support social and cultural activities engagement and support financial aid, health services, religious support, and immigration support academic programming and support academic programming and support international student & scholar services staff social and cultural activities engagement and support international student & scholar services staff financial aid, health services, religious support, and immigration support academic programming and support international student & scholar services staff financial aid, health services, religious support, and immigration support international student & scholar services staff financial aid, health services, religious support, and immigration support academic programming and support discussion current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 8 findings indicate that there is not one preferred and appropriate method to recruit and retain international students but there are institution specific practices. the recruitment and retention efforts are planned and executed according the demographics of the international student populations at each institution. recruitment of international students brown (2009) explains that there is an intensified competition for international students and this has put pressure on the institutions to “improve their product and to develop internationalization strategies to attract international students and to provide an environment in which domestic and international students can benefit from their confrontation with diversity” (p. 439). bolsmann and miller (2008) point out three major reasons to recruit international students: a) ‘academic internationalism’ that is a tradition of universities to recruit international students, b) international students are viewed as economic resources, providing education and training returns income to universities, and c) to civilizing, controlling, training and developing the international students and build up an ‘academic entrepreneurialism.’ however, there is no simple or one method to recruit international students. research findings indicate that using agents is not necessarily the most preferred method now. even though several institutions utilize agents and it is still one of the strategies for their recruitment efforts, utilizing online marketing is considered to be the most common method with significant results. this passive and low-cost method is explained to produce significant results in the efforts of increasing the number of international students on their campuses. direct involvement of staff and faculty through fairs and other recruitment events is also utilized as an effective method to recruit students. findings further indicate that the institutions are spending more time and effort in recruiting international students than they do for american students. they further utilize significantly more diverse approaches such as providing academic support and utilizing campus resources in addition to online table 3 the summary of the responses from baccalaureate institutions listed in the order of utilization recruitment method examples from the responses attending and participating in international education fairs and recruitment events -attending international student fairs in different countries with members of enrolment staff (including the dean for admissions and the director) -making trips around the world at least twice a year -meeting with college officials, non-academic organizations, and consultants in different countries -participating in virtual fairs in different regions around the world providing academic support and utilizing campus resources -professional staff specifically for international student recruitment -provide scholarships utilizing international alumni -engaging international student alumni, parents of international students and alumni -alumni served as part-time recruiters in several countries marketing (online, brochures and booklets, etc.) -placing advertisements in local media (international locations) participating in virtual fairs in different regions utilizing staff and faculty -full time director of international student recruiting partnering with other organizations -no response utilizing agents -no response snowballing -no response best practices in recruiting and retaining international students in the u.s. 9 marketing and attending international education fairs. for example, baccalaureate institutions responded in survey of best practices in recruiting international students: “attending international student fairs in different countries with members of enrollment staff (including the dean for admissions and director), making trips around the world at least twice a year, meeting with college officials, non-academic organizations, and consultants in different countries, and participating in virtual fairs in different regions around the world” (see table 3). in short, all the methods utilized have merit and the traditional methods of recruiting students are less likely to be modified but simply replaced with the recent technological advances around the world. countries sending students to the u.s. are extremely well-equipped to select institutions among thousands of possible institutions for their students to attend. that is, it is important to understand how these countries use, transfer, and manage information technology. responses from the institutions further suggest that one of the best practices is that they do respond to inquiries from students and agents in a timely manner. developing a research-based recruitment plan is crucial. informing and getting the faculty (and other key stakeholders on campus) involved is equally important in recruiting international students. bishop (2010) states that providing counseling service to prospective students and parents is another approach of recruiting and retaining international students. however, in survey responses, none of the universities mentioned this significant component but providing counseling was a campus resource available for all students. this shows the weakness of the institutions surveyed in providing services for international students through the guidance of research. retention of international students even though bringing international students to the u.s. is getting rather competitive, findings indicate that the institutions spend more time, effort, and finances to retain the international students they recruit. they do focus on social and cultural activities and events more than they do on academic support. for example, these institutions provide orientation sessions to introduce new international students to the university community. they facilitate and advise various cultural sharing programs throughout the year which allow international students to table 4 the summary of the responses from masters institutions listed in the order of utilization retention method examples from the responses social and cultural engagement and support -strong support program for international students -pairing native students with internationals, buddy program match international with domestic students -multicultural office with many events -kitchen and social spaces for international student clubs, support all nations club, friendship family program -bicycle and car rental programs -outings and activities for international students academic programming and support -english language institute -strong support program for international students -english placement test financial aid, health services, religious support, and immigration support -support with visas, work permits, tax laws -employment on campus -in-state tuition for students with gpa's above 2.5 international student & scholar services staff -training faculty in managing classrooms with internationals -high quality international office current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 10 connect not only to the university, but also to the local community, and the multicultural students services – a resource for international students who need assistance with financial aid concerns, housing, tutoring, socialcultural issues, and academic support” (see table 8, appendix b). previous studies on the challenges of retaining international students on u.s. campuses indicated that the issues are commonly focus around the social integration into the life in the u.s. rather than any academic achievement issue (heikinheimo & shute, 1986; mallinckrodt & leong, 1992; özturgut & murphy, 2011; parr, bradley, & bingi, 1992; pederson, 1991). poyrazli and grahame (2007) suggested that international students “face the challenge of making new friends, coping with loss of social support, and developing a new social support system” (p. 30). however, one concern as highlighted in the literature that was not a significant finding of this research is providing personal support to retain international students (dillard & chisolm, 1983; mori, 2000; owie, 1982; schram & lauver, 1988; yakunina et al., 2013). even though international students are acknowledged and supported through various social and cultural activities, the strong need for personal support is a significant shortcoming of the efforts of the u.s. institutions with their retention efforts. zhao, kuh, and carini (2005) suggested that there must be an assessment process to understand international students, have strong teams of administrators and counselors, and arrange the resources at the university to help ease the transition of international students. galloway and jenkins (2005) and zhao et al. (2005) further confirmed that administrators and counselors need to help international students by giving them an opportunity to explore the differences and possibilities in intercultural communication. another concern was that the english language challenges of international students were not expressed in the responses. zhang and mi (2010) explained that even though culture shock, homesickness, lack of study skills, etc. are significant challenges for international students, lack of language skills are the “biggest and the most urgent in the social and academic life of international students” (p. 372). though there were no particular best practices for language skills, several institutions integrated this in academic programming and support: “english language institute and english placement test” (see table 4). therefore, prior to any intervention for the retention of international students through social, cultural, academic etc. programming, it is imperative that a strong language support system be provided (see e.g., barat & huba, 1994; lewthwaite, 1996; wilkins & huisman, 2011;yakunina et al., 2013). developing a model for international student recruitment and retention this study explored the best practices in recruitment and retention of international students on u.s. campuses. the responses indicate that the methods adapted either for recruitment or for retention have to be aligned for both purposes. for example, when institutions utilize academic and campus resources for recruitment, these efforts also contribute to the retention of international students. another example is that when utilizing faculty for recruitment, it is also important to utilize faculty when recruiting and retaining international students. faculty members are crucial in the sense that they do have the most contact with international students on campus and are far more sought after for any questions international students may have. it is therefore imperative that when the institutions develop their international student recruitment and retention efforts, they do consider the interconnectedness of both efforts, include the faculty, and plan accordingly. also, given the fact that each institution has its own reasons for having international students on campus and varied campus resources, they need to identify their reasons for having international students on campus. the proposed model. survey responses did not indicate a systematic method for recruiting and retaining international students. practices were adopted successfully in most cases. however, there is not necessarily a model that guided these institutions. findings indicated a need for systematic analysis and planning for the internationalization of higher education campuses. the model for recruiting and retaining international students begins with institutions’ assessment of the reasons for wanting/needing the presence of international students on their campuses. this assessment (and clarification) ought to connect with the overall strategic plan of the institution. an analysis of current situation will help clarify the relevance of their recruitment and retention efforts. in this, it is important to state the challenge/issue/problem/goal, and identify available resources (campus resources, staff, faculty, and external sources). analyzing the current status of international student recruitment and retention efforts is significant in order not to duplicate but to strengthen the already existing efforts. in this evaluation, a description of the inputs is necessary to ensure the quality of the efforts. these inputs may include the knowledge, skills, and expertise available and needed. inputs are not only best practices in recruiting and retaining international students in the u.s. 11 figure 1. model of recruiting and retaining (rr) international students for u.s. campuses. adapted from theory u: (theory u. cambridge, ma: society for organizational learning, 2007). required from campus constituents (i.e. organize a campus-wide committee to discuss how each stake holder can contribute to the recruitment and retention efforts) but also from other national and international organizations and agencies. external influences are important in the sense that they provide further expertise but most importantly contribute to the resources already available. involving stakeholders all across the community and in national and international levels will help the buy-in from the broader community. further, a fiscal analysis will shape the future efforts in the recruitment retention. evaluating the current situation and describing the inputs will determine the types of activities each institutions will need to help with their recruitment and retention efforts. these activities then will be tied to the overall goal of the institution, also making it easy to evaluate the benefits and shortcomings of their recruitment and retention efforts. figure 1 visualizes the model for recruiting and retaining international students. conclusion u.s. institutions are increasingly aware of the contributions of international students for their internationalization efforts (wilkins, 2011). the key when recruiting and retaining international students is the ability “to relate and communicate effectively when individuals involved in the interaction do not share the same culture, ethnicity, language, or other salient variables” (hains, lynch, & winton, 2000, p. 2). the responses indicate that the presence of international students on u.s. campuses is significant and the institutions surveyed are providing the best services that they can to make these students feel welcome. international students are not simply recipients of services provided to them by these institutions but rather are partners both benefiting from this exchange. however, what is missing is that there needs to be a national international student recruitment policy firstly because the “best and the brightest” students may find other destinations, such as australia and the united kingdom, with “targeted recruitment measures” (becker & kolster, 2012, p. 36). secondly, in order to utilize the experiences of international students to act as ambassadors when they return to their countries, it is important that these students receive the best possible service in their host institutions. this is especially important since 9/11 attacks; the relationships need to be reestablished to help with the image of the u.s. across the world. even though there are various successful practices, recruitment and retention of international students require a personal approach and this was not highlighted in any of the responses. this personal approach requires the involvement of all stakeholders both on and off campus. for example, any effort that fails to take culture into account is bound to give an incomplete and inconclusive understanding of the international student and recruitment in the overall picture of internationalization of postsecondary institutions as it is a complex issue. with the diversity of the stakeholders see, observe programs and activities, and collect data of rr. seeing assess, evaluate, analyze, and strategize. sensing contemplate every component. describe input, stakeholders, resources presencing create and identify new methods or models connecting to mission and strategy of institution creating review, revise and test new method and present for action planning evolving current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 12 involved in such cultural exchanges individual cultural and or national groups have to be treated differently. strategic planning has to be done accordingly. faculty and staff have to be hired and trained accordingly with a specific emphasis on cross-cultural competency. without a personal approach to recruitment and retention, international students will not necessarily be simply attracted to “an american university” but rather, will explore other study 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(1989). open doors 1988-89: report on international student exchanges. new york: institute of international education. best practices in recruiting and retaining international students in the u.s. 15 appendix a table 5 the summary of the responses from doctoral institutions listed in the order of utilization recruitment method examples from the responses marketing (online, brochures and booklets, etc.) -direct use of magazine (ad-based) targeted marketing via third-party vendors to advertise and promote the opportunities for international students -focused development and leveraging of web-based technology as a means to provide international student marketing (and related information) to international students desiring to attend their universities -expanding email outreach to international students -distributing limited and targeted brochures and marketing materials to foreign universities, schools, and agencies that promote study abroad in the u.s. attending and participating in international education fairs and recruitment events -attending fairs and other recruitment events -building relationships with counselors at international high schools -participating in select college and high school recruiting fairs partnering with other organizations -partnering with foreign universities -developing exchange programs to be able to tap into new markets of international students. -working with a local international organizations with ties abroad -networking with community organizations that support people from different regions/cultures -establishing contacts with amideast, fulbright, and usefi -recruiting students sponsored by their home governments utilizing staff and faculty -establishing recruiters familiar with particular regions/countries -adding international recruiting territories to additional counselors -hiring and maintaining full-time professional staff members tasked with recruitment -utilizing international faculty to network in their former home countries -promoting shared recruitment among key campus stakeholders providing academic support and utilizing campus resources -providing academic and cultural sharing scholarship -providing the opportunity to pay the in-state tuition rate -utilizing web-based admissions applications and acceptance process -utilizing hotcourses -utilizing innovative websites that provide institution information to international students interested in studying in the united states -working closely with intensive english language centers (iec) in order to transition graduating iec students to degree-seeking students. this cooperation with iecs helps the institutions offer conditional admission and a combined i-20 utilizing international alumni -working with international alumni to assist with their efforts in recruitment. -opening alumni chapters and recruitment centers abroad to support their recruitment efforts snowballing -drawing from a long tradition of hosting students from particular countries, they benefit from word of mouth attraction -involving current international students in their recruitment efforts utilizing agents -utilizing the services of reputable and fully vetted agents in targeted countries current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 16 table 6 the summary of the responses from masters institutions listed in the order of utilization recruitment method examples from the responses providing academic support and utilizing campus resources -developing programs international students seek -providing free in-house degree and qualification evaluation -offering low application fees -offering a simplified admissions process -providing a high quality international office -following-up with the incomplete applications [through personal communications] partnering with other organizations. -developing joint a dual degree programs with universities abroad -increasing the number of exchange programs (student and faculty exchange programs) marketing (online, brochures and booklets, etc.) -marketing through electronic advertising campaign. -utilizing social media sites such as facebook and youtube -utilizing institution websites. -texting and personal contacts through electronic mediums utilizing agents -utilizing agents for their recruitment efforts attending and participating in international education fairs and recruitment events -participating in recruiting tours organized by for-profit organizations utilizing international alumni -recommendations from current students and alumni snowballing -benefiting from word of mouth recommendations from current students and alumni utilizing staff and faculty -utilizing administrators to travel abroad to negotiate partnerships best practices in recruiting and retaining international students in the u.s. 17 table 7 the summary of the responses from associates institutions listed in the order of utilization recruitment method examples from the responses providing academic support and utilizing campus resources -adequate staffing in international students office -building on retention elements and customer service -targeted counseling partnering with other organizations -advertising with study in the u.s.a. -partnering with local schools and programs -education usa involvement (working with education usa advisors) -networking with 4 year colleges attending and participating in international education fairs and recruitment events -seminars to explain community colleges in various countries -occasional participation in recruitment fairs oversees marketing (online, brochures and booklets, etc.) -active marketing and advertising abroad -advertising with u.s. journal utilizing staff and faculty -targeted counseling -utilizing the director of international student office utilizing agents -organizing agent workshops -utilizing recruitment agencies utilizing international alumni -no response snowballing -no response current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 18 appendix b table 8 the summary of the responses from doctoral institutions listed in the order of utilization retention method examples from the responses social and cultural engagement and support -providing special programming and activities -hosting a semi-annual international student conference -organizing us-culture field trip excursions -providing social support through clubs and organizations, roommate program, buddy program, and friendship family program -host family and other volunteer supports -focused provision of targeted (by academic-level) audiences of international students -providing them with orientation sessions to introduce new international students to the university community -initial & on-going orientation & cultural adjustment programs engagement opportunities(i.e., international house living, int'l coffee hour, int'l culture/friendship program, etc.) -taking an active role through the student organizations and getting involved in campus life and the community -facilitating and advising various culture sharing programs throughout the year which allow international students to connect not only to the university, but also to the local community -providing co-curricular opportunities, programs, services and the environment they need to develop personally, socially and professionally -the multicultural students services a resource for international students who need assistance with financial aid concerns, housing, tutoring, socialcultural issues, and academic support academic programming and support -the ongoing provision of top-quality international advising services to currently attending international students—from matriculation to graduation -"education" orientation to students: service combined with learning -providing quality academic and support services -presentation of well-planned international program informational workshops and seminars for academic, non-academic (e.g., immigration benefits), cultural, and employment purposes -actively engaging with students having academic or personal issues -provide special assistance to graduate students who need speaking practice -providing academic support (tutoring, etc.) -providing special english courses if needed -the academic learning center provides study and reading assistance to international students to help them become more efficient and effective learners. -courses are offered in reading and study strategies and power reading to help students in target areas that they may be lacking the skills to achieve the grades they want -the tutor program offers individual tutoring in general study strategies, time management, and test taking, as well as subject tutoring for some general education courses -through the leadership exploration and development program, international students are able to access leadership exploration, education, training, and development experiences in many different contexts best practices in recruiting and retaining international students in the u.s. 19 throughout the university -engaging in many types of experiences within academics, as part of specific programs, and through co-curricular involvement actively engaging with students having academic or personal issues international student & scholar services staff. -very professional international student/scholars service staff that ensure that the, international students are fully briefed about sevis regulations/restrictions -professional and centralized international center -prompt address of immigration concerns/support needed -highly trained and professional international student advisors -the dissemination of international programs related information through multiple media platforms to international students about the university, including federal and local agency information and requirements financial aid, health services, religious support, and immigration support. -merit and need-based financial aid -offering continuing student scholarships based upon academic merit and involvement on campus -emergency funds and other supports when faced with crises -ensuring that international students have affordable health insurance -providing religious support through programming and staff -feasible tuition rate table 9 the summary of the responses from baccalaureate institutions listed in the order of utilization retention method examples from the responses social and cultural engagement and support -international mentor program -host family program -annual trips to nearby cities -engagement of international alumni with current international students -developing orientation programs for international students international student & scholar services staff -international and multicultural student services staff -very strong director of international student programs -very strong assistant director of international student programs academic programming and support -creating an advising system for international students -learning lab for tutoring international students financial aid, health services, religious support, and immigration support -campus employment -developing orientation programs for international students current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 20 table 10 the summary of the responses from associates institutions listed in the order of utilization retention method examples from the responses financial aid, health services, religious support, and immigration support -counseling access regarding academics and immigration regulations -workshops on immigration issues -improving customer service -communication with other departments (health center) to help students -targeted counseling services social and cultural engagement and support -increase extra-curricular activities -summer academy -fun and social events international student & scholar services staff -keeping a friendly international student office staff -online orientation and multiple power point presentations academic programming and support -workshops on academic issues best practices in recruiting and retaining international students in the u.s. 21 article citation özturgut, o. (2013). best practices in recruiting and retaining international students in the u.s. current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1213 author notes osman özturgut, ph.d. university of the incarnate word dreeben school of education 4301 broadway, cpo #293 san antonio, texas, 78209 ozturgut@uiwtx.edu dr. osman özturgut is currently an assistant professor of doctoral studies at the university of the incarnate word, san antonio, texas. dr. özturgut has worked in the field of international and comparative education for over a decade. he has been an administrator and faculty member in various higher education institutions in turkey, china, and the united states. he has conducted research in china, south korea, japan, turkey, south africa, and the us. he is an expert in international and comparative higher education and leadership studies and has numerous publications and presentations in these areas. manuscript received: 03/28/2013 revisions received: 05/24/2013 accepted: 05/31/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 22 volume 16, number 2 august 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template 1 volume 2, number 1 september 8, 1999 issn 1099-839x editorial — ejournals today: forerunners of the unrealized potential of the digital medium tirupalavanam g. ganesh tara a. jennings arizona state university current issues in education strives to be at the forefront of the electronic journal movement. in its second year of publication, the journal is inviting scholars to take advantage of the opportunities of this new medium. while seemingly simple, the idea of preserving this exchange of research is complex when considered from the notion of time. in a hundred years from now, will this communication be of any value? will it be necessary to preserve it for future generations? e-journals have made it possible to create a virtual space where scholars of diverse backgrounds can engage in a dialogue that transcends the limits of physical space. nevertheless, the preservation of scholarly works over time is a timeless challenge faced from the creation of early libraries to the digital libraries of today. the preservation of human communication beyond the evanescent sound of human voice and memory very likely encouraged the development of writing. writing in turn produced early "books" consisting of stone, clay tablets, papyrus or parchment. careful preservation of these early writings was the genesis of the library. the famous library of classical antiquity—the library at alexandria, founded in the early third century b.c.—was part of the mouseion, the greatest research center of its day. around the museum a great university grew, attracting renowned scholars including euclid, the mathematician; aristarchus of samothrace, the collator of homer's epic poems; and herophilus, the anatomist who performed scientific dissection of human bodies. the library, however, was gradually destroyed beginning with julius caesar's invasion of alexandria (edwards, 1969; johnson, 1976). today, with support from the united nations and other international agencies, the egyptian government plans to build a new library on or near the site of the original (swerdlow, 1999). the creation and destruction of libraries were not limited to egypt. in florence, the famous 15th century medici collection of art, manuscripts, and books was destroyed at the time of the conquest of the city by the french king charles viii. savonarola, a friar of the dominican order, helped overthrow the medicis and a mob sacked their palace (hibbert, 1975). in their heyday, the libraries of alexandria, the medici palace, and other venues provided a place for scholars of diverse backgrounds to meet and exchange ideas (brinton, 1925; canfora, 1989). since then, the function of public and private libraries evolved into their primary modern use of housing collections. today the sense of permanence traditionally associated with libraries has never seemed more threatened: the degeneration of paper over time and the destruction of libraries and museums through natural calamities or opposing political and religious forces attest to this. while the destruction of individual libraries is possible, the idea of a library once established has served an important communicative role throughout space and time. the advent of the internet and electronic media has begun to exert a drastic change in the role of libraries as archives of print-on-paper. now, at the seam of the millennia, we are envisioning the use of the internet via electronic journals and digital libraries as respectable, reliable places for scholarly exchange and archives. yet, the ease with which an e-journal can be destroyed—a few keystrokes—makes the medium tenuous. the longevity of magnetic or digital media is approximately fifteen years at best; it can be argued that digital archives are perhaps more ephemeral than print-on-paper. however, supported by a global network of librarians, multiple digital archives of ejournals can be created worldwide providing better and more equitable access to the collected wisdom of scholars. the construction of such a network of digital archives, now in its pre-infancy, is quite probable in the years to come. the internet makes e-journals an opportune global mode of communication for scholarly exchange in which national and international borders are erased. the appeal of e-journals is enhanced by the power of the electronic current issues in education vol. 2 no. 1 2 medium to open up possibilities hitherto impossible. the complex, dynamic, multidimensional world can be represented in rich visual experiences using this medium. moreover, a digital library does not have to exist in a particular point in space, such as alexandria. through digital archives, the libraries of classical antiquity and the great modern libraries of today can exist on one's desktop. the interactivity afforded by electronic media will help change the nature of scholarly communication. for instance, effective use of video and audio clips with text will alter the nature of the scholarly reports. the ability to make large data sets available at relatively low cost allows other scholars to conduct further analyses on the data. opportunities like these challenge scholars to prepare research reports that are not mere imitations of print-onpaper reports in electronic format. one important challenge of editing an on-line scholarly journal is facilitating this appropriate use of technology. what innovative things can be done with new technology? are we, in fact, making effective use of the medium? the unique capabilities of electronic reporting—such as providing hyperlinks, presenting a forum for discussion, increased interactivity, use of video, audio, and data sets— need to be considered. yet the challenge of preserving electronic scholarly communication for future generations exists. will the future present a network of digital archives of e-communication? there is hope that new applications will arise as the world of technology advances rapidly. we invite you to continue the dialogue by responding with your ideas and by submitting to current issues in education. references brinton, selwyn. (1925). the golden age of the medici. london: methuen & co. ltd. canfora, luciano. (1989, translated by martin ryle). the vanished library. london: hutchinson radius. edwards, edward. (1969, originally published: 1865). libraries and founders of libraries.new york, ny: burt franklin. hibbert, christopher. (1975). the house of medici: its rise and fall. new york, ny: william morrow & company, inc. johnson, elmer d. & harris, michael h. (1976). history of libraries in the western world. metuchen, nj: the scarecrow press, inc. swerdlow, joel l. (1999, august). tale of three cities. national geographic magazine, 196 (2), 34-61. editorial — ejournals today: forerunners of the unrealized potential of the digital medium 3 1999 article citation ganesh, t. g. & jennings, t. a. (1999, september 8). ejournals today: forerunners of the unrealized potential of the digital medium. current issues in education [on-line], 2(1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number1/. author notes tirupalavanam g. ganesh is a doctoral student in the interdisciplinary studies ph.d. program in the division of curriculum and instruction, college of education at arizona state university. he has consulted with arizona school districts on several demographic studies with the college's bureau of educational research and services. his academic preparation includes a b.e. (bachelor of engineering) in computer science and engineering from the university of mysore, india, and an m.c.s. (master of computer science) from arizona state university. his research interests include using technology in k-12 teaching for understanding, mathematics and science education, and scholarly communication of research. tirupalavanam may be reached at ganesh.tg@asu.edu. tara jennings is a doctoral student in the measurement, statistics and methodological studies program at arizona state university. she is currently working on projects related to data visualization, geographic information systems, and issues surrounding assessment of academic achievement. her research interests include classroom psychosocial environment, teacher and student expectations, and self-concept among school aged children. tara may be reached at tara.j@asu.edu. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation ganesh, t. g. & jennings, t. a. (2011). ejournals today: forerunners of the unrealized potential of the digital medium. current issues in education, 2(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/825 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number1/ mailto:ganesh.tg@asu.edu mailto:tara.j@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word 1232_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 3 december 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x “more than just farmers”: rural agrarian university students’ sense of community morgan chesbro kansas state university this study utilizes narrative inquiry to interrogate the differences between the home and academic literacies of rural agrarian students. in particular, i have investigated how they navigate those differences in order to function successfully in more urbanized university settings. using purposeful survey and convenience sampling, two rural agrarian students were identified for participation. data from in-depth interviews and observations were woven into a narrative for each student. the study revealed that both participants formed communities of fellow rural students. these rural agrarian communities served as sources of friendship, support, and familiarity, and thus contributed to their perceived success. although further research is needed to confirm these findings, educators of all levels are encouraged to promote the formation of rural peer groups and to encourage rural agrarian students to embrace and share their backgrounds, cultures, and unique skills and interests. keywords: rural, agrarian, literacy community, rural student, agrarian student, theory of place, narrative inquiry, university community i grew up on a hog farm and then went off to a small private college close to home. there, i felt out of place and, though i befriended the one other farm girl in the university, i remained quiet in class. i had lots to say, but it was immediately and painfully obvious that the values i had been raised with did not match those of my classmates and professors. i distinctly remember sitting in silence in the back row listening to my classmates talk about how the united states should go to year-round schooling, wondering if my family’s way of life was really so outdated. when i asked, “what about farmers?” the reply was chilling: “don’t we want our kids to be more than just farmers?” at the time of my experience, i believed that, as a rural student, i was a minority and my experiences were unimportant. although rural students are less likely to attend college than their urban or suburban counterparts (byun, meece, & irvin, 2012; grimard & maddaus, 2004; mcgrath, swisher, elder, & conger, 2001), rural student college attendance rates have increased in recent years (byun et al., 2012; snyder & dillow, 2010). with a rising number of students, particularly agrarian or rural, enrolling in the university, it is essential that educators understand their unique backgrounds and assist them in acquiring additional functional skills. these functional literacies are necessary not only within academia but also in their chosen careers, even if that career is farming. it is equally important that educators see such home-based knowledge as useful in the classroom and do not attempt to stamp out non-academic knowledge to create a mass of “ideal” students who possess only the knowledge and skills deemed acceptable or useful in universities. to do so would be to erase individualism and render students unable to return, in many cases, to the homes they have left behind. academic researcher bell hooks (1994) recalled having observed students “become unable to complete their studies because the contradictions between the behavior necessary to ‘make it’ in the academy and those that allowed them to be comfortable at home, with their families and friends, are just too great” (p. 182). i current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 2 investigated these contradictions and how rural agrarian university students cope with those differences in an effort to complete their degrees. definitions of “rural” vary widely. the u.s. department of commerce (2010) defines rural as “all population, housing, and territory not included within an urban area,” which means areas with fewer than 2,500 residents qualify as rural. similarly, the office of management and budget defines rural areas by exclusion from metro and micropolitan areas (united states department of agriculture, 2012). donehower, hogg, and schell (2012), however, remind us that “it is important to define rural not only demographically and geographically, but culturally as well” (p. 7). therefore, they “define ‘rural’ as a quantitative measure, involving statistics on population and region as described by the u.s. census; as a geographic terms, denoting particular regions and areas or spaces and places; and as a cultural term, one that involves the interaction of people in groups and communities” (donehower, hogg, & schell, 2007, p. 2). given the broad reach of the “rural,” i have limited this study to “agrarian” students. similar to thompson’s (2010) definition of “agrarian” as referring to independent family farms, i define “agrarian” as having grown up living and/or working on a farm, ranch, dairy, or other food production business. this allows me to eliminate those people who live in the country but whose livelihoods are not dependent upon the land. i choose to eliminate these potential participants because they present possible confounding variables for this study. for example, someone who has moved to the country but does not farm will likely require different strategies for comfort and success in college than someone who has lived there most of his/her life and is dependent upon the land for survival. further, mcgrath et al. (2001) divided participants into groups based on parent employment (farmers, professionals, and other) and found that there were differences in college enrollment between the groups. it therefore seems logical to explore differences in agrarian students’ experiences at college as well. thus, the goal of this study was to explore how the home-based, and primarily land-based, skills of agrarian students are utilized to aid them in feeling comfortable and successful at the university. literature review agrarian literacy research literacy is a term whose meaning is often difficult to pin down. one of the clearest definitions describes literacy as “the skills and practices needed to gain knowledge, evaluate and interpret that knowledge, and apply knowledge to accomplish particular goals” (donehower et al., 2007, p. 4). the ability to achieve goals is applicable to college students, who are working towards a degree, though their motivations for doing so vary. this definition of literacy as skills utilized to accomplish goals is supported by earlier “work in literacy studies [that] has led to a rethinking of student writing and a recasting of the field of study skills as academic literacies” (barton, 2001, p. 93). the literacy of rural students within their chosen university, then, determines their success or failure. literacy, when defined as the strategies needed to accomplish goals, is essential to the lives of all those with aspirations beyond their current situation. social literacy skills are extremely important for students transitioning from home to college. social skills fit with the aforementioned definition of literacy as skills needed to achieve goals, as college requires successful socialization with peers and faculty. in fact, “social life is mediated by literacy,” even in such common areas “as communication, organising life, leisure activities and social participation, people’s activities were mediated by literacy” (barton, 2001, p. 100). “being literate therefore involves an understanding not just of how to de-code alphabetically, but also involves being aware of all kinds of social ‘stuff’ that surrounds texts. one needs to decode cultural and social context clues” (davies, 2012, p. 20). rural literacy studies in the united states are scarce and tend to focus on k-12 students (e.g.: durham & smith, 2006; eppley, shannon, & gilbert, 2011; keis, 2006; lester, 2012; stockard, 2011; wake, 2012), although some are more generalized and do not focus on any one level of education (donehower et al., 2007, 2012; mcgrath, 2001). these studies examined the differences between literacy in urban and rural students and some presented classroom strategies for improving literacy. durham and smith (2006), in examining the literacy skills of kindergarteners, discovered that metropolitan students scored higher than agrarian students (p. 641), and stockard (2011) proposed and tried a reading intervention program for rural schools, with positive results, although the designation of “rural” in both studies was based on school location rather than individual backgrounds. similarly focused on school location, lester (2012) suggested the use of place-based education to improve literacy instruction in rural schools. eppley et al. (2011) discussed the pen pal interaction of rural elementary students with preservice teachers. shockingly, they found that some “preservice teachers went so far as to discipline the children's advocacy for rural life” (eppley et al., 2011, p. 293), indicating a discomfort for literacies unlike their own. however, keis (2006) indicated that children’s literature may be used to give voice to minority cultures, including agrarian cultures. donehower et al. (2007) were primarily concerned with literacy as it relates to sustaining rural life, and thus promoted agricultural education both in and out of the traditional classroom. their 2012 collection of essays was similarly focused on “reclaiming the rural” with an emphasis on literacy and teaching, again, both inside and outside the traditional classroom (donehower et al., 2012). some rural literacy research has also addressed technology literacy, though it “more than just farmers”: rural agrarian university students’ sense of community 3 is typically addressed only as it pertains to reading and writing, as in wake’s (2012) work on digital storytelling. certainly some of these articles contain information applicable to postsecondary education, but they fail to address such postsecondary concerns as leaving home to pursue education. while there are a fair number of studies and articles concerning the literacies of rural k-12 students, very few studies address the literacies of rural or agrarian students in post-secondary education. those studies which do address rural students and post-secondary education tend to focus on educational aspirations and enrollment and graduation rates (antos, 1999; byun, irvin, & meece, 2012; byun, meece, & irvin, 2012; grimard & maddaus, 2004; mcgrath et al., 2001). even within such a relatively narrow focus as aspirations, enrollment, and graduation rates, there are some noteworthy contradictions. for example, mcgrath et al. (2001) revealed that, overall, agrarian students’ rates of enrollment in college did not vary widely from rates of non-agrarian students (p. 253), while grimard and maddaus (2004) argued that “rural youth are less likely to attend college than youth from metropolitan areas, and that this statistical gap is growing” (p. 30). antos (1999) bemoaned the lower enrollment rates of rural students and attributed it, in part, to the lower educational aspirations of rural students. enrollment rates aside, college success is of great concern. suburban students are 61% more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than rural students, and urban students are a shocking 106% more likely to earn their bachelor’s degree than rural students (byun et al., 2012, p. 425). byun et al. (2012) cited church attendance and parents of students knowing each other as unique predictors of rural students’ college success (p. 429), thus paralleling findings that social supports helped to determine whether or not agrarian youth would enroll in college (mcgrath et al., 2001, p. 260). guiffrida (2008) suggested that secondary school counselors be more active in helping rural students choose colleges and in preparing them for the difficulties they may encounter if they choose a large university. amidst the varying views and findings of literacy and agrarian research, there is one commonality: the importance of place. studies cited the importance of returning home for visits (byun et al., 2012; guiffrida, 2008), home and college location (grimard & maddaus, 2004; guiffrida, 2008), and homebased social support (byun et al., 2012; guiffrida, 2008; mcgrath et al., 2001) as essential to rural student enrollment and success in college programs. while these studies are a starting point, there is more to learn about how agrarian students function and succeed in the university so that educators can guide our agrarian students to strategies and communities that will assist them in being successful. in short, all of the aforementioned studies acknowledge the importance of “place” in the lives of rural students in one fashion or another. theory of place existing research concerning rural and agrarian students makes clear that place is important, but what exactly does “place” mean? the obvious answer would be reference to a physical locale. however, doreen massey (1994) encouraged us to think of places as “not so much bounded areas as open and porous networks of social relations” (p. 121), thus eliminating the requirement that “place” refer to any specific physical location. malpas (2004) explained that, even when place is thought of as a physical location, it can also be thought of as “having a character and identity” (p. 34). furthermore, “the idea of place cannot be reduced to the concept merely of location within physical space nor can place be viewed simply in relation to a system of interchangeably locations associated with objects” (malpas, 2004, p. 34). for the purposes of this study, place refers both to physical location and to social relationships research participants identify as desirable or useful. although the social relationships are not necessarily tied to a specific physical location, they do reflect the kind of place participants prefer. though a theory of place has obvious relevance to fields such as geography, it is much more, because “maps and estimations do not describe the places themselves, or what may happen in them. they do not tell us if they are places where people ‘hide and love and cry’” (canter, 1977, p. 105). when discussing a theory of place as it relates to education, we cannot ignore the influence of architecture. after all, “when we see a school building for the first time we respond to it in relation to all the other experiences of similar buildings. this in turn will influence whether we perceive the school as big or small, old or new, good or bad” (canter, 1977, p. 17). why does this matter in education, though? “the nature of the space in which teaching and learning occur is an important factor in shaping the educational experience” (fain, 2004, p. 1) and it is thus essential that we carefully consider how each student will see and respond to the space we create. in fact, malpas (2004) notes that “while it is not an exclusively european or western notion that human identity is somehow inseparably bound up with human location is nevertheless an idea that has been especially taken up in western culture” (p. 4). this western link with place indicates that a student’s very identity may be threatened if they are displaced from the place they associate themselves with. different strategies for success, that is, different literacies, are required based upon how a student feels in the college environment. if a student perceives the college as being hostile to an agrarian culture due to modern architecture, for example, that student will have to employ strategies to overcome the perceived hostility in addition to other cultural current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 4 adjustments. although a theory of place is often applied to rural peoples and areas (azano, 2011; casemore, 2008; kitchens, 2009), existing literature on theory of place focuses on the south. take, for example, twelve southerners’ (1930/1962) work, which asserted the importance of place – the south specifically – in the agrarian tradition. casemore’s (2008) work contributed to both rural literacy and theory of place research, but the focus on the south limits the ability to apply his theories elsewhere. it is true that “identity runs deep in every individual, especially when, as woodward (1993) describes, that individual is carrying the burden of an entire region” (pérez, fain, & slater, 2004, p. 177). however, a theory of place has application beyond the american south. literature addressing theory of place in the midwest is limited. one exception is wood’s (2008) book titled survival of rural america: small victories and bitter harvests. wood (2008) utilized and addressed theory of place, though he did not do so explicitly. in focusing on the midwest, kansas in particular, to describe the danger rural america finds itself in as well as ideas and strategies for escaping those dangers, wood (2008) asserted the importance of place to identity no matter the location. methods this article utilized a narrative inquiry approach because stories are, after all, “the linguistic form uniquely suited for displaying human existence as situated action” (polkinghorne, 1995, p. 5). specifically, i have chosen to conduct a narrative analysis, that is, to tell the stories of my participants, rather than an analysis of narratives, which uses only pieces of their stories intermingled with researcher words and analysis (polkinghorne, 1995, pp. 56). it was important to me to tell their stories so that i might “retain the complexity of the situation in which an action was undertaken and the emotional and motivational meaning connected with it” (polkinghorne, 1995, p. 11) and thereby avoid distorting evidence or reducing my participants to numbers. it is important to note that the narrative analysis format does not consist of only the participants’ words or of a single narrative constructed by the participants. rather, narrative analysis requires utilizing all available data to write narratives representative of the participants and focusing on answering the research questions posed by the researcher. i recognize that choosing narrative analysis is a calculated risk, knowing that my readers’ “backgrounds, inclinations, values, worldviews, and purposes for attending to the work” (barone & eisner, 2012, p. 113) all heavily influence how they perceive my work. nonetheless, it is a risk i feel safe taking, as the stories produced by narrative analysis have the power to unite people around a cause because they provide “powerful, authentic evidence of the need for political and social change” (pinnegar & daynes, 2007, p. 24). data collection entailed in-depth, qualitative interviews, lasting approximately one hour each as well as observations of one participant’s classroom interactions and another’s workplace interactions. observations were particularly focused on social interactions with both agrarian and non-agrarian peers. the initial interview protocol was the same for both participants, and included questions and prompts such as: 1. describe where you grew up 2. describe what the transition from your home to college was like 3. what kinds of people do you try to befriend? why? 4. what do you value? 5. what, if any, differences have you noticed between yourself and your non-agrarian peers? following transcription, i combined quotes from in-depth interviews and information from interviews and observations into one cohesive story for each participant. any information provided by participants which was pertinent to the topic of college acculturation was retained for use in the stories. quotes were chosen for their particularly strong evidence of the participant’s voice, such as harley’s, “it’s nice to meet a rural kid who isn’t all gung-ho about teaching people about agriculture” and bryce’s, “shoot, even grandpa’s hooked on the hunger games trilogy.” in some cases, these direct quotes were pivotal to understanding participant views of agriculture; in other cases, the voice was so strong that it felt necessary to include it to help paint a picture of the participants for the reader. in the rare case where interview data and observation data conflicted, the contradiction was acknowledged in the participant’s story. for example, harley initially seemed quite dismissive of agriculture and agricultural endeavors, but later expressed its importance. while this contradiction is only a brief mention in the story, given the focus on harley’s acculturation to college rather than his views on agriculture, the contradiction has been addressed. while i did not alter participant information except for confidentiality purposes, the resulting stories may be thought of as creative nonfiction for their blending of the various interviews and observations into one short story. additionally, the styles of narratives constructed were carefully chosen to reflect the personalities of the participants. harley’s narrative is a self-reflective monologue to display his quiet, serious manner. bryce, on the other hand, was an energetic extrovert, and so i presented a social situation in his narrative. location and selection “more than just farmers”: rural agrarian university students’ sense of community 5 research was conducted at a large midwestern state university. the university itself, though more urban than what the participants had lived in before, is surrounded by open space, farms, and ranches. still, the university is set in a city, and rural students are a minority in general education classes. purposeful sampling was conducted via surveys and convenience sampling strategies. i sent out surveys to freshman and sophomore level writing classes at the university in order to find participants, but only one agrarian student, harley, was willing to participate and responded to my request to set up interview times. no female respondents identified as both agrarian and willing to participate. i then moved to convenience sampling by asking bryce, a former student of mine who i knew fit the requirements of this study, to participate, and he agreed. although various sampling methods were employed, all were undertaken with a purposeful sample in mind. credibility following initial drafting of the article, i met with a colleague who, while not involved in my research or similar research, had read the draft and had access to interview transcripts. after reading the article draft, we met on several occasions to discuss the strengths, weaknesses, and necessary alterations to the write-up. this peer debriefing resulted in significant changes, particularly to the findings section. while the peer did not dispute my interpretation of the data, she did offer other suggestions, such as expanding participant descriptions to offer more background information for readers to draw upon when forming their own conclusions about the data. participants i observed harley, a computer science major from the rural midwest, in the context of his writing classroom twice. these observations proved valuable for learning about his personality and his relationships with peers. i then conducted one hour long interview in person in my office, one hour long in-depth interview in a coffee shop, and one email interview exchange. harley is a very quiet, very soft-spoken young man, and seemed more comfortable being observed or emailed than directly interviewed. though he grew up on a horse ranch and then a farm, he did not participate in the work except occasionally when he was young. he asserted that the ranch and farm, while important to his identity when he was younger, did not define him now. bryce is an extremely social, outspoken young man from the rural midwest. bryce was not raised on a farm, but when i asked where he was raised, he said, “i like to consider that i did” grow up on the dairy back home where he has worked since sixth grade. therefore, though he was not born into a farm family, it is where he locates his identity. i interviewed bryce in-depth first at the school library. then, he invited me to spend some time with him at the school dairy, where he works, and so i observed and conducted a less formal interview there. finally, i wrapped up my information gathering with a formal interview in my office. i also drew on informal email exchanges. after performing interviews and spending time with each participant, i transcribed the interviews and typed up extensive field notes from observations. then, as described above, i wove the information i had gleaned into stories to complete the narrative analysis. what follows are first-person narratives created out of the interviews, observations, and email exchanges, portraying the experiences of two agrarian students at a midwestern state university. findings harley’s story: social literacy from farm to town i know what you’re thinking: “he grew up on a ranch in the middle of nowhere and then a farm in the middle of nowhere and now that he’s living in a bigger city he’s probably really confused.” but you’re wrong. yes, i grew up on a ranch and a farm, but city life wasn’t hard for me to adjust to. my friends and i did all the same things the city kids did growing up. we played video games and watched tv and listened to music. in fact, i didn’t even work on the farm or ranch. i just lived there. i don’t want to go back. it’s not really a big part of who i am. i don’t hate farming, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not my thing. i guess i did ask to go back to the farm to finish high school, but that was just because i didn’t like the kids at the high school here in smithville. my classmates weren’t farm kids. they weren’t friendly at all. but college is different. same town, sure, but different people. the university is big enough that i can find rural friends. i just look for people who are nice, down-to-earth, real, friends. you know, farm kids. i may not plan to go back to the farm, but my fellow farm kids have the same values as me, and the same knowledge, so those friendships just work for me. take my friend jake, for example. when i moved into the dorm, i figured i should find some friends with the same major so we could help each other out with homework. i met jake because he lives across the hall, and we really hit it off. i wasn’t surprised at all to find out that he grew up on a farm. he still goes back to help out every break, and lots of weekends, too. he doesn’t want to farm, though, so we’re both leaving that life behind. it’s nice to meet a rural kid who isn’t all gung-ho about teaching people about agriculture. i mean, i think agriculture is important, i’m just not going to be an advocate. it seems like all the guys i’m closest to are like that – farm kids with no intention of going back. i guess we just click easier than i would with urban kids or farm kids headed back to the farm. see, the hard part isn’t moving from the ranch or farm to a more urban area, not that smithville is all that big. the hard part is that there aren’t really that many of us rural kids around. i know how to function in college, current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 6 but it would help if there were more rural people to hang out with. we just understand each other. i tried to explain to this city kid in my class that i’m from a farm, but i’m not going back and he said, “oh, so you hate farming, huh? i’ve heard a lot of farm kids hate it.” i wasn’t quite sure how to respond. i mean, i don’t hate it, but i don’t like it, either. i don’t want to go back, but i still think agriculture is important. since that conversation, i don’t talk much in class. i’m trying to learn and soak it all in, for sure, but there also just aren’t that many people i want to talk to, either. it’s not that i don’t like them, but i get along better with rural people, probably because i understand them. plus i don’t have to struggle to explain who i am to them. but, i’m doing fine, and i’m happy that i’ve found some good rural friends to help me in classes and to just have fun with. bryce’s story: a collision of literacies “miss menefee, i am so sorry!” i burst into the literature classroom twenty minutes into a fifty minute class. i was still wearing my dairy muck boots and work clothes, smelled of dairy, and was covered in a mixture of manure and blood. “it’s okay, bryce, really, just pull up a chair,” miss menefee said. “the girl who worked after me was sick and we had a calf to pull, so i couldn’t leave and i swear i got here as fast as i could,” i explained, as i threw my bag into the corner and pulled my chair into the discussion circle, drawing chuckles from my farm buddies, luke and david, and looks of disgust and annoyance from several city kids. “what do you mean you had a calf to ‘pull’?” asked amanda, who was scooting her chair further away from me. i was a little confused. seemed like a simple concept to me. “well, sometimes the cow has trouble, so we pull the calf. you just hafta reach in and—” “bryce, maybe we need a little less detail,” miss menefee interrupted, when she saw the horrified faces of some of my city classmates. “right. sorry,” i grinned. “it’s just assisting in the birth like you would if a human had trouble,” i explained in language i knew wouldn’t offend amanda, and turned to luke and david. they seemed surprised that i’d come to class even when i was late and hadn’t cleaned up. they wouldn’t have been if they’d known my family. my brother’s always got his nose in a book, and so does dad. shoot, even grandpa’s hooked on the hunger games trilogy. “dude, why are you here? you missed most of class anyway,” luke asked. “yeah, and there are city kids here who don’t appreciate your stench,” david wrinkled his nose. “in fact, i don’t like it a whole lot at the moment.” “i think it was more the explanation of pulling the calf they didn’t appreciate,” luke pointed out. “not something i think they wanted to become literate in.” “right. gotta work on that,” i said, as i flipped my book open to the day’s story. “can’t very well help people become ag literate if they think i’m totally socially illiterate.” “i think the first step might be not bringing the dairy to the classroom,” suggested luke, laughing. “ha. maybe just bringing it in a different way,” i said. having two social literacies will be helpful once i’m a teacher. but i’m not so sure an occasional collision of the two wouldn’t be helpful for introducing them to my world, either. it certainly made them ask questions, and that’s where education starts. discussion i hope that these vignettes, though extremely brief, have offered a glimpse into the lives of these two agrarian college students. understand, though, that it is just a glimpse. this study focused on the gap between their home, agrarian literacies and the literacies they need for success in college. i chose this focus because “the increased complexity of agricultural business has led many career farmers to enroll in local two-year colleges. four-year colleges, however, typically require rural youths to move away from home and demand a more distinct break from the rural environment and culture” (mcgrath et al., 2001, p. 250). the “distinct break” from their homes indicates the need for agrarian students to develop new literacies to cope with their new environment. topics that were previously dinner table conversation, such as pulling calves, mucking stalls, or vaccinating animals would be considered wildly inappropriate, and potentially even offensive, to bryce and harley’s non-agrarian peers. what i discovered, and have endeavored to show in the above narratives, was evidence that both participants had developed a way to maintain their agrarian literacies while nearly seamlessly acquiring and using college literacies, such as debate skills and familiarity with what non-rural students will find strange, offensive, or shocking. in short, it has never been clearer that “identities are situated and accomplished with audience in mind” (riessman, 2008, p. 106), and so are literacies. bryce, especially, has learned to carefully adjust his words and actions so as to be able to persuade and inform his urban counterparts, rather than offend them. for example, bryce revised his explanation of pulling a calf to better suit his non-agrarian audience. this revision constituted suppressing his home place-based literacies in order to adapt to the non-agrarian literacies surrounding him at college. harley’s case is a bit different. his family is an example of one “that traditionally depended on agriculture for economic sustenance [that] have had to position their children for adult success through higher “more than just farmers”: rural agrarian university students’ sense of community 7 education” (mcgrath et al., 2001, p. 246), albeit due to harley’s own choice not to farm rather than financial necessity. he grew up in an agrarian community and continues to value qualities such as honesty and friendliness, which he associates with agrarian people, but he is far less interested in informing his urban counterparts about rural life than bryce. although harley grew up on a ranch and farm, and thus understands the life, values, and literacies of the agrarian community, he does not currently root his identity there. therefore, he finds it easier to adopt non-agrarian literacies, rather than fighting to maintain both agrarian and college literacies. although harley and bryce come from different backgrounds, a horse ranch and dairy respectively, their college experiences bear one striking similarity: both surrounded themselves with agrarian friends, either purposefully or by instinct. the success of agrarian students has been shown to be related to maintaining “strong connections to members of their home communities” (guiffrida, 2008, p. 15), but rather than make frequent trips home, harley and bryce formed community connections at the university. they found agrarian communities in which their literacies, backgrounds, and values were understood and affirmed, bringing them comfort and security. while one study has shown that the support of the agrarian community is an important factor in encouraging agrarian student enrollment in college (mcgrath et al., 2001, p. 260), the importance of social support can clearly be extended to the time agrarian students spend in college. for harley, this meant a community of farm students in which he was comfortable, which is notable due to his previous decision to return to a rural community for high school rather than remain in a more urban district. bryce found a community which would support his teaching others about agrarian literacies. perhaps they sought out such communities because “the significance of our surroundings, geographical or architectural, is crucial to our sane survival” (canter, 1977, p. 6). i would argue further, though, that the people we find in our surroundings are equally essential to “sane survival” of new circumstances. it is also interesting to note that, in a 2008 study, 53% of rural students attended college in a rural area (guiffrida, 2008, p. 4), just as harley and bryce chose to do. perhaps this concentration of agrarian students at rurally located universities explains the ease with which harley and bryce found agrarian communities. although both harley and bryce are physically and socially out of place in the university setting due to the cityscape and smaller number of agrarian community members, they still seek out a place they can feel comfortable, a place to call their own. in my own experience, as a college freshman, i could find only one agrarian friend in the college setting due to its urbanized location. this is why i floundered, while harley and bryce thrived. my sane survival was, and often still is, jeopardized by a lack of agrarian community, while harley and bryce were able to create the sense of the agrarian in an urbanized setting. in this way, they managed to maintain their home-based literacies while also growing into new literacies that allowed them to function in their new settings. conclusion the social literacy gap for agrarian students entering the university is large. it is not necessarily that agrarian students are unable to befriend, get along with, or work with non-agrarian students, but finding students with similar values and literacies to form tight-knit social groups approximating their home communities can be challenging, as can learning the social literacies required to interact successfully with non-agrarian students. not only does this ability to communicate impact the college performance and experience of agrarian students, but also their future work and social lives. in short, although agrarian students are equally as academically prepared as their non-agrarian peers (guiffrida, 2008, p. 8), their social literacies remain different and are thus a difficult area of adjustment for agrarian college students. still, it is worth the effort to learn and engage agrarian students’ literacies; they are far more than “just farmers,” whether or not farming is their career, and they have much to contribute to our classrooms. implications for educators the fact that social groups form communities which can help agrarian students to succeed even when they are displaced holds tremendous opportunity for increasing their success. k-12 educators and counselors, as suggested by guiffrida (2008), may encourage students to prepare for these transitions by making contact with other students they know going to the same university. once agrarian students arrive at their universities, it is important that faculty and staff encourage agrarian students in several ways. first, instructors should encourage and assist, where possible, in student self-awareness of their socialization styles and personal literacies. this kind of awareness could facilitate effective communication and community formation, particularly for students whose literacies differ drastically from the university’s “norm.” such self reflection would also encourage agrarian students learn to effectively socialize with non-agrarian students in a way that will increase the knowledge of both parties. rather than viewing those agrarian students returning to the farm as “just farmers,” faculty, staff, and other students would thus be encouraged to see farmers as essential to their own economy and everyday life. teachers, in particular, should be careful not to denigrate (or allow other students to denigrate) agriculturally-oriented career paths. university faculty and staff should acknowledge the presence of agrarian students as a sub-culture in the classroom. this may mean creating opportunities for students to share their backgrounds, placing agrarian and current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 8 non-agrarian students into groups together to give them opportunities to interact, and being careful not to denigrate any particular background or career choice. further research this study was limited by a small sample size consisting only of white males. these limitations were due to lack of participant response; consequently, different sampling techniques need to be applied to elicit a more diverse sample. research into the role gender plays in agrarian literacies and communities at the college level is needed. no female agrarian students responded to my call for research participants. this is interesting, since “males living in rural communities are less likely to aspire to and pursue a college education than rural females” (grimard & maddaus, 2004, p. 31). also, only caucasian agrarian students responded to my call for participants. it is possible that this is due to the fact that the majority of the university population is caucasian (76%), with the next two largest ethnic groups being hispanic/latino at only 5% of the university population and african american at 4% (state university office of the registrar, 2012). regardless, the concerns of those who are both agrarian and racial minorities certainly deserve further research. it is essential that we continue to investigate what causes rural and agrarian students to be successful at the college level. the fact that rural students are drastically less likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than their urban or suburban counterparts is concerning (byun et al., 2012, p. 425). while some difference may be ascribed to rural youth who decide they would rather farm and thus return home, i believe that we can decrease the gap if further research into success strategies is conducted and applied. it is certainly true that our country can no longer be described as primarily agrarian. however, agrarian students do still exist, and, whether they plan to return to the farm or take up a more urban-based career, as educators, it is our responsibility, our honor, to ensure their success at whatever level of education they choose to pursue. furthermore, i believe it is our role to encourage pursuit of any career path, even if it is to be “just” a farmer. references antos, k. 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(2008). survival of rural america: small victories and bitter harvests. lawrence, ks: university press of kansas. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 10 article citation chesbro, m. (2013). “more than just farmers”: rural agrarian university students’ sense of community. current issues in education, 16(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1232 author notes morgan chesbro kansas state university 1420 beechwood terrace # 1 manhattan, ks 66502 mchesbro@ksu.edu morgan chesbro is a doctoral candidate in curriculum & instruction at kansas state university. she also serves as an online adjunct instructor in teacher education for ottawa university. her research interests center around rural farm youth attending college, with particular attention to the importance of place identity. manuscript received: 05/02/2013 revisions received: 09/06/2013 accepted: 11/28/2013 “more than just farmers”: rural agrarian university students’ sense of community 11 volume 16, number 3 december 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis thomas elizabeth calhoun reyes assistant executive editors bonnie mazza constantin schreiber recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell nichole hugo sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker bonnie mazza kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1176_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 19, 2013 issn 1099-839x the perception of educational software development self-efficacy among undergraduate ceit teacher candidates adem uzun, rüçhan özkılıç and aysan şentürk uludag university the objective of this study was to analyze self-efficacy perceptions for education software development of teacher candidates studying at department of computer education and instructional technologies, with respect to a range of variables. the educational software development self-efficacy perception scale was used as data collection tool. sixty teacher candidates participated in the study. independent sample ttest and canonical correlation were used as the data analysis techniques in the study. at the end of the study, it was determined that there is a weak correlation between teacher candidates’ general academic performance and their self-efficacy perception for educational software development, and self-efficacy perception does not vary with gender. a significant difference in favor of 4th year undergraduates was established with respect to year of study. also, a positive correlation was found between teacher candidates’ self-efficacy perceptions in sub-dimensions of the scale and their achievement in the relevant courses. keywords: self-efficacy, self-efficacy perception, educational software development, computer and instructional technologies, teacher candidates today, computers are becoming tools commonly used in many educational institutions and courses. however, it has been discussed since the date computers have entered into the education sector that some teachers are more willing to use computers whereas some avoid using them (bitner & bitner, 2002). indeed, since use of computers as a teaching tool in educational institutions is a feature that is expected from teachers, teacher competencies specified by higher education council (hec, 1999) in turkey include benefiting from information technologies. computer i, computer ii and instructional technologies and material development courses are included in teacher education programs so that teachers gain this competence, aiming to ensure that teacher candidates effectively use information technologies during teaching process, when they become teachers. although this situation is applicable for all teacher candidates in different departments studying at faculties of education, teacher candidates studying at department of computer education and instructional technologies (ceit) are expected to perform much better in use of information technologies. ceit departments were opened for the first time in turkey in 1998 pursuant to “restructuring faculties of education” and teacher competencies of the department have been defined or updated by the ministry of national education (mne) since then (mne, 2002, 2006). accordingly, job definition of teachers graduated from this department has changed over time. because ensuring that the students acquire knowledge and skills related to development of educational software is one the fundamental objectives of the department, graduates of the department can work as "computer teacher" in both primary and secondary education as well as in institutions current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 or organizations where they can work on the development of teaching materials (aşkar & dönmez, 2004). multi-faceted expertise is required by educational software development so course schedule of ceit departments include more than one course on educational software development. examples of such courses can be instructional design, authoring language in pc environment, instructional technology and material development, programming languages i and ii, using materials in education, authoring language in the internet environment, and design and evaluation of educational software. advances in the field of education as well as changes in the internet and distance education have led to an exponential increase in the need to develop educational software (roschelle et al., 1999) and recently a famous project called “movement for increasing opportunities and improving technology” was brought to the agenda by the ministry of national education in turkey. with this project, 42,000 schools and 570,000 classes will be turned into computerized education classes equipped with latest information technologies. this project has 5 components; providing equipment and software infrastructure, providing educational e-content and management of econtent, effective usage of the ict in teaching programmes, in-service training of teachers, conscious, reliable, manageable and measurable ict usage. with respect to this project, the quality of ceit teachers is expected to increase in turkey. educational software development concept includes any software that is developed for use in teaching activities and runs on computers or computerbased systems. according to johnson and schleyer (2003), effective software development training requires a systematic process conducted by a team of experts. steps of this process are analysis, design, development, implementation, maintenance and evaluation and the team may include teaching designers, web specialists, multimedia producers and programmers. students may face some difficulties while developing educational software. for example, all students may not have sufficient knowledge and skills to use pieces of software such as captivate, visual studio required to develop educational software or to develop database applications. naturally, they may need to develop strategies to overcome the difficulties. individuals’ perceptions for whether they will efficiently use the strategies they have developed to overcome the difficulties or whether they’ll be successful are associated with self-efficacy (pajares & schunk, 2001). self-efficacy theory is an important component of bandura's social cognitive theory. selfefficacy means an individual’s own judgment about his capacity to organize and successfully perform activities necessary to demonstrate a certain performance (senemoğlu, 2000). self-efficacy covers much more than knowledge and skills, and also incorporates the individual's own ability to efficiently use his/her own capacity (bandura, 1977). self-efficacy refers to selfperceptions or beliefs of capability in order to perform a task at a specified level (bandura, 1986). however, the individual can not have the same perception of efficacy with regard to each case because self-efficacy is not a general pattern and may vary depending on the circumstances of the individual, the subject and the work (bandura, 2001). therefore, it is observed that in recent years, there’s been an effort to determine self-efficacy for a specified area and performance such as “computer selfefficacy.” compeau and higgins (1995) define computer self-efficacy as the individual’s judgment on his ability to use a computer. it was reported that any attitudes towards computer technologies are related to the concept of computer self-efficacy, which is an important variable in understanding frequency of computer use by individuals and their performance in using computers (compeau & higgins, 1995; delcourt & kinzie, 1993; kinzie, delcourt, & powers, 1994). as seen in the studies on self-efficacy in computer field in the literature, it is apparent that most of the studies have focused on computer usage skills. in one of these studies carried out within the scope of effectiveness of information literacy program by kurbanoğlu and akkoyunlu (2002), at the end of a teaching process, a moderate relationship was found between teacher candidates’ computer self-efficacy perceptions and their information literacy skills, and it was concluded that teacher candidates need more information in the areas of information literacy. a supporting study by köseoğlu, yılmaz, gerçek and soran (2007) for the purpose of investigating the effect of a computer course on achievement, attitude and selfefficacy beliefs on computers concluded that the course has a significant effect on developing computer selfefficacy of students. orhan (2005), however, found a high positive relationship between computer usage self-efficacy perceptions of ceit teacher candidates and their computer teaching self-efficacy perceptions as a result of a study conducted on a total of 296 students from 8 different universities. usluel and seferoğlu (2004) investigated the relationship between computer usage levels of 186 academics working in faculties of education and their self-efficacy perceptions regarding computer use and established that most of the participants use information technology and have in general a sufficient level of self-efficacy perceptions regarding computer use. in addition to this, it was emphasized in this study that the problems experienced by the participants in the use of information technology arise from reasons such as hardware, physical conditions and lack of education. in a study by akkoyunlu and orhan (2003) investigating the correlation between computer use self efficacy belief of ceit students and their demographic characteristics, it was concluded that self-efficacy does the perception of educational software development self-efficacy among undergraduate ceit teacher candidates 3 not make a significant difference by gender, a meaningful difference appeared in favor of general high school graduates in terms of alma mater, and self-efficacy increased over time within teaching activities. despite high number of similar studies in the literature (ekici & uzun, 2007; kutluca, 2009; kutluca & ekici, 2010; seferoğlu & akbıyık, 2005), there is rather limited number of studies on self-efficacy perception regarding educational software development. in one of these studies, ateş (2010) examined the change in self-efficacy perception for educational software development of 46 ceit students after they took the course, design development and evaluation of educational software, which was found to have provided a significant improvement in students' self-efficacy perception for educational software development, and the study also determined that while there was a significant difference in favor of male participants and the participants who have prior knowledge of programming before the course, such difference disappeared at the end of the course. in another study, demirer, özdinç and şahin (2009) analyzed ceit teacher candidates’ self-efficacy perceptions for educational software development using variables of gender, alma mater, and year of study and concluded that self-efficacy perceptions for educational software development do not vary with gender and a significant difference arose in favor of graduates from vocational high schools and students at higher year of study. i̇mer and özkılıç (2009) studied sub-dimensions of self-efficacy perception for educational software development in 296 ceit teacher candidates with respect to gender variable, and reached to the conclusion that no significant difference was caused by gender in subdimensions of project management and instructional design, graphic design and programming, and a significant difference in favor of male participants was observed in sub-dimension of animation audio-video design. given the studies on this subject, a significant correlation is observed in general between self-efficacy perception of an individual and his/her performance in that area. moreover, it is possible to say that there is a positive relationship between self-efficacy perception and experiences. limited number of studies conducted on self-efficacy perception for educational software development show that this perception has been generally investigated using variables, including gender, type of alma mater and experience. however, among these studies, there is no study that investigates the relationship between courses taken by teacher candidates for educational software development within their curriculum and sub-dimensions of self-efficacy perception for relevant educational software development. by virtue of this unique aspect, this study is expected to contribute to the literature related to teacher training. in addition, considering that one of the main targets of ceit departments is to ensure that teacher candidates gain educational software development skills, it is reasonable to state that the studies to be conducted on the candidates’ self-efficacy perceptions for educational software development are important in terms of quality of teacher training. based on these considerations the aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between ceit teacher candidates’ self-efficacy perception for educational software development and their performance in the courses, namely instructional design, authoring languages in pc environment, graphic design and programming languages. accordingly, research questions were structured as follows: 1. is there a significant relationship between undergraduate teacher candidates’ general academic performance and their total scores in educational software development self-efficacy perception (esdsep) scale? 2. does undergraduate teacher candidates' selfefficacy perception for educational software development vary with gender? 3. does undergraduate teacher candidates' selfefficacy perception for educational software development vary with year of undergraduate study? 4. what is the correlation between undergraduate teacher candidates’ scores for sub-dimensions of esdsep scale such as project management and instructional design, graphic design, animation audio video and programming and their achievement scores for instructional design, authoring language in pc environment, instructional technology and material development and programming courses which are thought to be related with the sub-dimensions? method this study is a survey model type research. in the following sections, study group, data collection tools, data analysis techniques and procedure will be explained. study group we sent e-mails to a total of 90 teacher candidates who were 3rd and 4th year undergraduates from uludağ university, department of ceit to invite them to participate in the study. the teacher candidates (27 females and 33 males) replied to the invitation and constituted the study group. twenty nine participants were 3rd year and thirty one participants were 4th year students. data collection instruments the participants’ gender, year of undergraduate study, general grade point average and final exam scores in the courses of instructional design, authoring languages in pc environment, instructional technology and material development and programming languages were collected as demographical data. in addition to these, esdsep scale (aşkar & dönmez, 2004) was current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 applied to the participants. during the course of developing esdsep, researchers first examined software development process in institutions developing educational software and sought opinions from specialists. they determined sub dimensions of educational software development process in accordance with these opinions and wrote expressions related to these dimensions, indicating self efficacy perception. the scale was developed by participation of a total of 283 teacher candidates studying at ceit departments of 4 different universities in turkey. the results of principal components analysis showed that 22 items grouped under 4 factors with an equity value larger than 1. these factors were called as project management and instructional design (10 items), animation audio video design (6 items), graphic design (3 items) and programming (3 items). according to the data obtained, these four factors explain 68.3% of test scores. participants give points to each item in the scale according to the scale of 100 (“0”, i never rely on, “100” i always rely on). as a result of the points given by the participants, a total score reflecting self-efficacy perception for the process of educational software development as well as scores reflecting the perception regarding the sub-dimensions can be calculated. aşkar and dönmez (2004) calculated reliability coefficient as .92 according to the total score of the scale. the reliability coefficients of project management and instructional design, animation audio video design, graphic design and programming sub-dimensions were calculated as .91, .90, .80, .85 respectively (aşkar & dönmez, 2004). we found the reliability coefficient of the total scale as .89, and for project management and instructional design, animation audio video design, graphic design and programming sub-dimensions as .83, .81, .79, .80 respectively in the pilot study conducted on 126 students studying in the department of ceit, for the purpose of using the scale in this study. the scale has been used by various researchers in turkey since its development (i̇mer & özkılıç 2009; demirer et al., 2009; akyüz & kurt, 2010). this scale was used in this study because it was particularly developed to measure self-efficacy perception of teacher candidates from a ceit department for developing educational software, and was also used for the same purpose in the literature. data analysis during the investigation, data comprising participants’ self-efficacy perception, gender, year of undergraduate study, general grade point average and their final exam scores in the courses of instructional design, authoring languages in pc environment, graphic design and programming languages were collected. independent sample t-test was used for demographic variables such as gender and year of study. the correlation coefficient between total score of esdsep scale and general grade point average was calculated. the correlation between sub-dimensions of the scale and student’s performance in the courses regarding these sub-dimensions were analyzed by canonical correlation analysis. canonical correlation analysis is one of the multivariable analysis methods used to study the correlation between two variable sets. it is a statistical technique developed by hotelling (1936). it is used as a statistical method investigating the mutual correlation between many independent and dependent variables (pugh & hu, 1991). although it is not a necessity in this method, one of the variable sets is considered as dependent and the other is considered as independent set of variables. the method aims to obtain new canonical variables from the linear components of variables available in each set. this analysis method is a complex method investigating a large number of variables in two sets of variables in terms of the correlations among themselves as well as with the variables in the other set. in canonical correlation analysis, canonical weight is the basic linear correlation between the original variable and its own canonical variable. this allows determination of the extent of contribution of such variable to its own canonical variable, thus to the canonical correlation coefficient. factor loading represents basic linear correlations between original variables available in variable set 1 (e.g., on the left) and canonical variables on the right or basic linear correlations between original variables available in variable set 2 (e.g., on the right) and canonical variables on the left (lorcu & bolat, 2009). procedures in the study, we transferred information form prepared to collect demographical data of the participants and esdsep scale to the internet by google documents. google documents is a web-based service which is provided free of charge by google and helps to store online data, create files such as electronic tables, presentations, etc. as well as electronic forms. this service was recently renamed as google drive. we sent teacher candidates invitation e-mails including the web address link of data collection tool drawn up as an electronic form in online medium. sixty teacher candidates who volunteered to participate in the study completed the transferred data online by the link in their invitation e-mails. we drew up this data by transferring them to excel spreadsheets through google documents interface. we analyzed the data by excel and spss programs. results the findings of the survey are presented in this part of the study. firstly, we examined the distribution of the responses given by participants to esdsep scale, by kolmogorov-smirnov test for single sample in order to decide on statistical data analysis techniques to be conducted on the responses. as known, single sample the perception of educational software development self-efficacy among undergraduate ceit teacher candidates 5 table 1 kolmogorov-smirnov test results of esdsep scale n s z p 60 66.12 17.57 1.004 .266 table 2 esdsep scale t-test results of by gender groups n s t p female 27 63.67 17.802 -.977 .333 male 33 68.12 17.392 table 3 esdsep scale t-test results by year of study groups n s t p 3rd year 29 56.59 17.352 -4.748 .000 4th year 31 75.03 12.497 kolmogorov-smirnov test is used to determine whether the data distribution is normal or not. test results are given in table 1. when the data in table 1 were examined, it was seen that the distribution of responses given by the students to esdsep scale was normal (p>.05). therefore, it was decided that parametric tests are suitable for analyzing this data. first research question was “is there a significant relationship between teacher candidates’ general grade point average and their total scores in esdsep scale?” in order to find an answer to this question, pearson correlation coefficient calculated between these variables was found as .174. therefore, it can be concluded that there is a very weak correlation between these two variables. in order to find an answer to the second research question “does teacher candidates' self-efficacy perception for educational software development vary with gender?”, we used independent sample t-test to determine if there is any significant difference between self-efficacy scores of female and male students. according to the data in table 2, p value (.333) is larger than .05. hence, it is not possible to reject h0 hypothesis. in other words, there is no significant difference between female and male students’ total scores of esdsep scale. third research question was represented as “does undergraduate teacher candidates' self-efficacy perception for educational software development varies with year of study?” in order to answer this question, we used independent sample t-test to determine if there is any significant difference between self-efficacy scores of undergraduate teacher candidates in 3rd and 4th year. according to the data given in table 3, a significant difference was found between 3th and 4th year undergraduate teacher candidates (p<.05). in other words, teacher candidates studying at 4th year feel more confident than teacher candidates studying at 3rd year on educational software development self-efficacy. fourth research question of the study is on the correlation between 4 sub-dimensions of esdsep scale and the students’ achievement scores in 4 courses related to these sub-dimensions. we performed canonical current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 table 4 eigen values of canonical correlation results for left and right side and their variances root 1 root 2 root 3 root 4 eigen values .314 .188 .030 .000 explained variance left .687 .123 .105 .083 right .222 .302 .216 .260 table 5 wilk’s lamda test results of canonical roots canonical r canonical r2 x2 sd p wilk’s lambda root 1 .561 .314 33.655 16 .006 .539 root 2 .434 .188 13.091 9 .159 .786 root 3 .175 .030 1.727 4 .786 .969 root 4 .028 .001 .042 1 .838 .999 correlation analysis in order to find an answer to this research question. in this analysis, left side represents 4 sub-dimensions of esdsep scale, namely project management and instructional design (pmid), graphic design (gd), animation audio-video design (aavd) and programming (p), and the right side represents 4 courses associated with these dimensions, namely instructional design (id), authoring languages in pc environment (alpe), instructional technology and material development (itmd) and programming languages (pl), which are included in course schedule of department of ceit. table 4 shows eigenvalues (roots) obtained from this analysis and their variances. considering table 4, it is apparent that the number of eigen values obtained from this study is four. explained variances of the left side dramatically decreases as from root 1. however, there is no such thing for the right side. moreover, it is obvious that explained variance of the left side for root 1 is much higher than the explained variance of the right side. wilk’s lamda test results used to test statistical significance of canonical roots in table 4 are given in table 5. data in table 5 demonstrate that only root 1 is statistically significant (p<.05). in other words, only one statistically significant canonical root was found to describe the correlation between two sets of variables. therefore, since the other roots were not found statistically significant, they won’t hereinafter be taken into account in the analyses. canonical weights for the right and left sides are given in table 6 and table 7, respectively. from the canonical weights in table 6, it is apparent that pl has the highest positive correlation, followed by itmd. similar results were obtained for factor loading. in other words, it is revealed that correlations of pl and itmd original variables on the right side with their own canonical variable as well as their canonical component on the left are high. the perception of educational software development self-efficacy among undergraduate ceit teacher candidates 7 table 6 table of canonical weights for the right side right side canonical weights factor loading id -0,426803 0,029994 alpe -0,331923 -0,255403 itmd 0,605869 0,490103 pl 0,827792 0,762377 table 7 table of canonical weights for the left side left side canonical weights factor loading pmid 0,390363 0,911462 gd 0,803604 0,968928 aavd -0,083522 0,753134 p -0,111394 0,642158 from the canonical weights in table 7, it is apparent that gd has the highest positive correlation. in other words, gd original variable has the highest correlation along with its own canonical variable. correlations of the other three variables (left side) with their own variables were found to be pretty low. however, according to table 7, it is clear that all original variables on the left correlate rather high with canonical variables on the right. according to these results, there is clear evidence that itmd and pl variables on the right correlate well with their own canonical variables as well as the canonical component of the left side. on the contrary, it is evident that the variables on the left do not correlate with their own canonical variable (except for gd), however, that they correlate well with the canonical variable on the right side. discussion promoting the use of technological products such as smart boards, tablet computers in educational institutions during teaching-learning activities lead to a growing need for educational software. this change will lead ceit teacher candidates to the duty of encouraging the students in educational institutions they’ll work in the future to develop their computer literacy skills, use computer-assisted teaching as well as to the field of educational software development. when ceit teacher candidates' self-efficacy perceptions for educational software development are high, they’ll make more effort to accomplish their work, and work more in a patient and persistent manner to solve the difficulties they face. according to the findings obtained from this research, it is apparent that there is a weak correlation between teacher candidates’ general academic achievement and their total scores in esdsep scale. given the studies investigating the correlation between self-efficacy and academic achievement, it is evident that a positive strong correlation exists between these two variables. for example, in a study by doğan, beyaztaş and koçak (2012), it was stated that self-efficacy scores current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 8 of the students is a strong indicator for predicting their achievement in the social sciences course. in the investigation by yıldırım (2011), it was concluded that self-efficacy has a positive influence on performance in mathematics. according to these results, it is remarkable that self-efficacy for a course correlates well with academic achievement in that course. however, our study cannot fulfill the expectation that there must be a stronger correlation between self-efficacy perception for educational software development and general academic achievement. according to another result obtained from the research, it was apparent that there is no significant difference between self-efficacy perception for educational software development of female students and male students. this result is supported by the findings obtained from the studies by akkoyunlu and orhan (2003), demirer et al., (2009) and ateş (2010). it is possible to encounter studies in the literature which concluded that gender variable causes a significant difference (i̇mer & özkılıç, 2009). therefore, our findings on this matter are in line with some of the studies in the literature, however, contradict with others. therefore, much different studies should be performed on this subject. as known, self-efficacy perception shows an increase within teaching activities over time (akkoyunlu & orhan, 2003). indeed, a significant difference was observed between self-efficacy perception for educational software development of teacher candidates studying at 3rd and 4th year. the difference was in favor of 4th year undergraduate teacher candidates. these findings show similarity with many studies in the literature (akkoyunlu & orhan, 2003; ateş, 2010; demirer et al., 2009; köseoğlu et al., 2007). in other words, 4th year undergraduate teacher candidates are more likely to have higher self-efficacy feelings since they studied educational software development topic longer than 3rd year undergraduate teacher candidates did. canonical correlation analysis was applied to determine the relationship between sub-dimensions of esdsep scale (left side) and final exam scores of the courses thought to be in relation with such dimensions (right side). the results of the analysis obtained for the right side showed that two of the canonical weights were high and positive (itmd and pl), while the remaining two were low and negative (id and alpe). this suggests that the scores obtained from the scale can be used to explain achievement scores in itmd and pl courses. it appears that grades obtained from id and alpe courses could not be explained by scale scores. in other words, there is a positive correlation between the students’ performance status in these courses (itmd and pl) and their self-efficacy perception for educational software development. however, it should also be noted that all these statements are limited by a variance of .222 in table 4. the results of the analysis obtained for the left side showed that two of the canonical weights were high and positive (pmid and gd), while the remaining two were low and negative (aavd and p). this demonstrates that gd and pmid subdimensions of the scale have high canonical weight than other dimensions in explaining course performances. it is evident that neither aavd nor p can be used to explain course performances. when compared with analysis results of right side, it is apparent that the variance (.687) explained for the left side is significantly high (table 4). therefore, the variables on the left side have a greater effect in explaining canonical structure compared to the variables on the right. in this respect it was concluded that the training program and teaching activities in the department should be reviewed once more. in existing curriculum, teacher candidates take 46 courses with a total of 150 credits. total hours of practice in these courses are 53. only 8 of these courses are aimed at teacher candidates’ abilities to develop educational software. these courses have 26 credits and 12 hours of practice in total. as can be seen, number of courses and hours of practice for developing a significant skill for ceit teacher candidates are very limited. in particular, increasing number of courses, their credits and hours of practice would significantly contribute to teacher candidates' self-efficacy perceptions for developing educational software. the findings of this research point to a need for reviewing contents of the courses, including id and alpe, teaching methods, and their assessment methods. for example, instructional designs that allow for group works while these courses are being taught, use of project-based teaching and preparation of higher number of educational software projects should be created. designing learning environments of the courses in the department by placing the students in the center of learning activities, encouraging them for cooperative learning activities and providing them real-life experiences in their projects may contribute to achieving this target. as known, it is not possible to match one-to-one the contents, goals and learning gains of the courses selected in the study with relevant sub-dimensions of the scale, however, a match was made based on the course titles. in addition to this, measuring and evaluation activities applied during the courses were also not planned according to the scale used. moreover, ceit training program, which was in practice during the period of the study, does not contain courses that are fully compatible with all sub-dimensions of the scale. all these factors can explain the lack of any strong correlation between all subdimensions of the scale and the courses thought to be related with these sub-dimensions. it appears that relevant courses in the program and the scale should be the perception of educational software development self-efficacy among undergraduate ceit teacher candidates 9 reorganized, their content analyses should be done and new investigations are required. in consideration of the major project called as “movement for increasing opportunities and improving technology”, the selfefficacy perception for educational software development will be much more important for future ceit teacher candidates. because, “providing educational e-content and management of e-content”, one of the components of the project, is directly related to the ability of developing educational software. even though the measurement tool meets the necessary criteria in terms of reliability and validity, it should be considered as one of the limitations of the study that it measures a complex structure like self-efficacy. moreover, participants of the study are limited to 60 teacher candidates studying for a bachelor’s degree in uludag university, faculty of education, department of ceit. considering the number of all teacher candidates studying in departments of ceit in faculties of education throughout turkey, this number is rather low to make a generalization. for these two reasons mentioned above, it is evident that new research studies in which measurement tool is used on larger samples are needed to be able to generalize the findings of the research. references akkoyunlu, b., & orhan, f. 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[development, learning and instruction]. ankara: pegem akademi. usluel, y. k., & seferoğlu, s. s. (2004). öğretim elemanlarının bilgi teknolojilerini kullanmada karşılaştıkları engeller, çözüm önerileri ve özyeterlik algıları. [obstacles that faculty members face while using information technologies, solutions they propose and their computer selfefficacy]. educational sciences and practices, 3(6), 143-157. yıldırım, s. (2011). self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, anxiety and mathematics achievement: findings from turkey, japan and finland. necatibey faculty of education electronic journal of science and mathematics education, 5(1), 277291. the perception of educational software development self-efficacy among undergraduate ceit teacher candidates 11 article citation uzun, a., özkılıç, r., & şentürk, a. (2013). the perception of educational software development self-efficacy among undergraduate ceit teacher candidates. current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1176 author notes adem uzun, ph.d. uludag university faculty of education 16059 gorukle / bursa / turkey adem.uzun@gmail.com adem uzun is a lecturer at computer education and instructional technologies department in the uludag university faculty of education. his research interests include blended learning environments, web-based learning, learning materials, learning styles and software development. he teaches undergraduate courses in programming and computer literacy. rüçhan özkılıç, assist. prof. uludag university faculty of education 16059 gorukle / bursa / turkey ruchan@uludag.edu.tr rüçhan özkılıç studies at department of educational sciences in the uludag university faculty of education. her research interests include teaching methods, bullying at schools, teacher self-efficacy and teacher education. aysan şentürk, assoc. prof. uludag university faculty of education 16059 gorukle / bursa / turkey aysan@uludag.edu.tr aysan şentürk studies at computer education and instructional technologies department in the uludag university faculty of education. his research interests include computer literacy, evaluation of educational software and data mining. manuscript received: 02/01/2013 revisions received: 06/28/2013 accepted: 07/01/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 12 volume 16, number 2 august 19, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1179_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 28, 2013 issn 1099-839x predictors of intent to pursue a college health science education among high achieving minority 10th graders katarzyna a. zebrak, daisy le, bradley o. boekeloo, and min qi wang university of maryland minority populations are underrepresented in fields of science, perhaps limiting scientific perspectives. informed by recent studies using social cognitive career theory, this study examined whether three conceptual constructs: self-efficacy, perceived adult support, and perceived barriers, along with several discrete and immutable variables, were associated with intent to pursue college health science education in a sample (n = 134) of minority youth (67.2% african american). a paper-and-pencil survey about pursuit of college health science was administered to 10th graders with a bor better grade point average from six high schools in an underserved community. results indicated that the three conceptual constructs were bivariate correlates of intent to pursue college health science. only perceived adult support and knowing whether a parent received college education were significant predictors in a multiple regression model. these results build on previous research and provide further insight into youth decision-making regarding pursuit of college health science. keywords: minority, youth, self-efficacy, adult support, college education, health science the population of the united states is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, yet professionals in fields of science do not reflect the same level of diversity (u.s. census, 2008; balogun, sloan, & hardney, 2005; u.s. bureau of labor, 2005; library index, 2012). currently, minorities make up approximately 33% of the population (u.s. census, 2008). of note, 17% of african american, 11% of latino, and 12% of native american adults aged 25 and older earn a college degree, compared with 28% of white, non-latino adults (babco, 2005; u.s. census, 2000). ethnic minorities constitute about 33% of the population; however, less than 15% of most health profession positions are filled by ethnic minority members (balogun et al., 2005). african americans make up 14% of the u.s. population, but they make up only 6% of physicians, 10% of registered nurses, 3% of dentists (library index, 2012; u.s. bureau of labor, 2005). furthermore, african americans make up 4% of biological scientists, 8% of medical scientists, 4% of environmental scientists, 7% of psychologists, and less than 1% of sociologists (library index, 2012; u.s. bureau of labor, 2005; u.s. census, 2008). such a lack of scientists from diverse backgrounds may limit science and its applications. minority physicians, and most likely other minority science-related professionals, are more likely to serve minority populations (institute of medicine, 2003). minority youth and pursuit of college health science education the underrepresentation of minorities in sciencerelated careers may be caused by lack of access to accredited programs, lack of exposure to career opportunities, an inadequate pool of role models with whom they can identify and who can serve as mentors, poor performance of minority students on standardized tests, and poor preparation of minority students in mathematics, reading, and science (healthy people 2020). young minority students are a source from which current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 potential future scientists and related professionals can be found. however, interest in science is often not nurtured and these students turn to more traditional options for future careers including education and law enforcement (balogun et al., 2005). science programs targeting high school students may increase the number of scientists since students’ interest in the sciences may start to develop during this time in their adolescence (winkleby, 2007). programs may encourage students to make the necessary preparations, such as taking appropriate courses, for acceptance into college health science programs during their high school years (cohen, 2006). self-efficacy, perceived barriers, perceived adult support, and demographic/immutable characteristics in the social cognitive theory framework theories that focus on the relationship between cognitive and contextual factors and career development are limited. however, one such theory is the social cognitive career theory (scct), which incorporates albert bandura’s social cognitive theory principle of triadic, reciprocal causation of human behavior (lent, brown, & hackett, 1994; lent, brown, & hackett, 2000). the central concept and assumption behind scct is that human behavior is in large part the result of personenvironment interaction that is dynamic and situation specific (lent et al., 1994; lent et al., 2000). in this theory, personal attributes, environmental factors, and overt behavior affect one another bi-directionally. in essence, people are products and producers of their environments (lent et al., 1994; lent et al., 2000). self-efficacy is one of the central constructs of scct and has been studied extensively (lent et al., 1994; lent et al., 2003). self-efficacy is defined as one’s personal cognitive evaluation of ability to execute a particular behavior (bandura, 1986). in the context of scct, this perception is considered a cognitive personal attribute (lent et al., 2000). findings have strongly supported the theoretical relationship of self-efficacy with education and career pursuits (ali & mcwhirter, 2006; fouad & smith, 1996; kerpelman, eryigit, & stephens, 2008; kerpelman & mosher, 2004). lent et al. (1994) assessed research on the relationship between selfefficacy beliefs and career interests and presented a metaanalysis suggesting that the average effect size of this relationship is .53. as much of the previous research using scct has focused on examining personal attribute components of scct, particularly self-efficacy, less is known about the roles of contextual or environmental factors in the theory (lent et al., 2000). perceived supports and barriers can be considered perceived aspects of the environment, or objective environmental factors that are subjectively construed by the individuals (lent et al., 2000). such contextual influences are theorized to exert a degree of influence on educational and career goals (lent et al., 1994; lent et al., 2000; lent et al., 2003). the relative importance of perceived supports and barriers has been re-examined on several occasions as scct underwent refinement with emerging research evidence (lent et al., 2000; lent et al., 2003). however, research that includes aspects of the environment, such as perceived environmental supports and barriers, along with selfefficacy in scct models is relatively underdeveloped and lacks clear results (lent et al., 2000). thus, more research is needed to clarify their role in predicting academic and career goals. aside from the aforementioned constructs, scct also highlights the importance of more distant background factors such as person inputs (e.g., predispositions, gender, race/ethnicity, disability and health status), and background contextual affordances (e.g., opportunities, emotional and financial support, and cultural and gender role socialization) (lent et al., 1994; lent et al., 2000). in the scct framework, demographic and immutable characteristics potentially relevant to college health science pursuit by minority youth, such as youth’s gender and birth/immigration status, could be viewed as person inputs, while parents’ birth/immigration status and parental education could be considered background contextual affordances. person inputs and background contextual affordances are hypothesized to have an indirect influence on educational and career goals, through other more proximal measures (lent et al., 1994; lent et al., 2000). however, several extant sources suggest that gender (kerpelman et al., 2008; trusty, robinson, plata, & ng, 2000), parental education (kerpelman & mosher, 2004; lambert, zeman, allen, & bussière, 2004; mcwhirter, torres, salgado, & valdez, 2007), and immigration status (baum & flores, 2011; erisman & looney, 2007; fuligni, 2006) may have a more direct link to educational outcomes. thus, it may be especially important to elucidate the relative importance of these covariates in the context of educational plans related to health science education, and to adjust for their effect when examining the contribution of self-efficacy, perceived barriers, and perceived adult support to pursuit of a college health science education. the current study as few theories have been examined to help explain underserved youths’ decision-making about college health science and related education and career choice, the overall goal of this study is to further examine scct in this regard. specifically, this study will examine whether the three conceptual constructs, self-efficacy (a cognitive personal attribute), perceived adult support (a perceived environmental factor), and perceptions of barriers (a perceived environmental factor) independently or jointly predict pursuit of college health science education among an underprivileged, academically high achieving 10th grade population. these conceptual constructs will be examined as independent variables along with several discrete and immutable demographic predictors of intent to pursue a college health science education among high achieving minority 10th graders 3 variables, namely youth’s gender and birth/immigration status, as well as parents’ birth/immigration status and education. based on past studies of scct, we hypothesize that self-efficacy will remain a predictor of intent to pursue a college health science education after controlling for all other study variables. findings will elucidate the centrality of self-efficacy, and the relative contribution of scct-defined environmental factors, person variables, and background contextual affordances in this application of the theory. methods background this analysis utilized baseline data collected as a part of a larger study, climbing up & reaching back (curb). curb was a three-year project designed to identify predictors of pursuit of health science careers and test educational materials and face-to-face mentoring interventions to increase interest in health science careers among underprivileged minority high school students living in prince george’s county, maryland. institutional review board (irb) approval was obtained for this research. recruitment and data collection. eight high schools in a defined geographic area (prince george’s county neighborhoods bordering washington d.c.) with predominantly minority race/ethnicity and low socioeconomic neighborhoods were selected for this study. six of the eight schools ultimately participated as two school principals failed to coordinate with a staff person to conduct recruitment within the necessary timeframe. to be eligible for recruitment to participate in curb, students had to be listed in administrative data bases as enrolled in the 10th grade at one of the participating six high schools, having a cumulative grade point average of b– or higher as of november, 2009, and free of any designation indicating developmental disabilities requiring special classroom teaching assistance. participating school principals and assigned administrative staff received lists of eligible students based on current school system records. if a student met the necessary requirements, designated staff members who had signed study protocol agreements, privately approached each eligible student, provided a detailed explanation of the consent and enrollment process, and provided consent materials. all students who provided a signed assent form and a parent-signed consent form by initiation of the study were eligible for curb (n = 167). eligible students were then offered the curb paper-and-pencil baseline survey at the beginning of a study initiation session. the study initiation session was held at the researcher’s university, to which all student participants were bused from their respective high schools. the university was in the same inner beltway area as the high schools. students who did not attend this session were allowed to come to the university study office after the initiation session to complete the survey. all survey participants received $10 as an incentive. in total, 134 students completed the baseline survey, which provides the data being analyzed in this study. survey development. the baseline survey instrument was designed by a team of researchers including behavioral scientists, university students, and community members, using existing items whenever possible. new items were also developed for the survey. the survey was pretested with high school students not involved in the study to assess student ease of completion, comprehension, and acceptability. several revisions and a second round of review and pretesting were conducted before the survey was administered for this study. measures self-efficacy to overcome barriers to enrollment in college health science. self-efficacy was measured using a 5-item scale created by the researchers. after study data collection, an explanatory factor analysis of the items was conducted. the factor analysis indicated that all items contributed to the total score and loaded on one factor. the 5-item measure was then assessed for reliability and it was found to be adequate (cronbach alpha = 0.75). students were asked about their level of agreement (1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree) with the following statements: “i can always find a way to pay for college”, “i can earn good enough grades to be accepted into college health science”, “i’m sure i can do a good job at completing college applications”, “i can get a high enough sat score to be accepted into college”, and “i can take the right high school science courses to get into college.” to obtain the multi-item scale score, the mean value across items was calculated for each participant. the scale scores were interpreted as: the higher the average scale score, the higher the participant’s self-efficacy. the range for the scores was 4.60. the mean score for self-efficacy scale was 5.86 (sd = 0.94). the median score was 6.00. perceived adult support. this measure was obtained using a 4-item scale created by the researchers. after study data collection, an explanatory factor analysis of the items was conducted. the factor analysis indicated that all items contributed to the total score and loaded on one factor. this 4-item measure was then assessed for reliability and it was found to be adequate (cronbach alpha = 0.71). students were asked about their level of agreement (1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree) with the following statements: “i know adults who encourage me often”, “i know adults who encourage me often in sciences,” “most of the adults i know are good role models for me,” and “i have good adult science role models.” to obtain the multi-item score, the mean value across items was calculated for each participant. the scale scores were interpreted as: the higher the average scale score, the higher the participant’s perceived adult support. the range for the scores was 5.75. the mean current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 score for perceived adult support scale was 5.66 (sd = 1.12). the median score was 5.75. perceived barriers to enrollment in college health science. perceived barriers were measured using a 5-item scale created by the researchers. after study data collection, an explanatory factor analysis of the items was conducted. the factor analysis indicated that all items contributed to the total score and loaded on one factor. this 5-item measure was assessed for reliability and it was found to be adequate (cronbach alpha = 0.73). students were asked about their level of agreement (1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree) with the following statements: “college tuition is very expensive”, “good grades are necessary to be accepted into college health science”, “the college application process is very complex and meticulous”, “high sat scores are necessary when applying to college”, “you have to take the right high school science courses to get into college health science programs”. to obtain the multi-item scale score, the mean value was calculated across items for each participant. the scale scores were interpreted as: the higher the average scale score, the higher the participant’s perceived barriers. the range for the scores was 3.80. the mean score for perceived barriers scale was 6.11 (sd = 0.78). the median score was 6.20. plan to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a science-related field. this variable was a single item (i now plan to pursue bachelor’s degree in a sciencerelated field). students were asked about their level of agreement (1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree). the variable was interpreted as: the higher the item score, the higher the participant’s intent to pursue college health science education. the range for the scores was 6.00. the mean score for the single-score item of plan to pursue a bachelor's degree in a science-related field was 5.04 (sd = 1.86). the median score was 6.00. selected demographic and immutable variables. the demographic variables were coded for the analysis as follows: gender (male=0; female=1), parents’ place of birth (outside the united states=0; within the united states=1), participant’s place of birth (outside the united states=0; within the united states=1), father’s/male guardian’s highest level of education – the original 6-category variable was collapsed into a 3category variable to maximize the number of observations in each category, while isolating the potential effect of father’s post-secondary education on student’s intent to pursue college health science (less than college [high school or less/trade or vocational school]=0, college or higher [associate’s degree/college degree/master’s degree/doctoral degree]=1, i don’t know [participant not knowing father’s education]=3). because the “i don’t know” category included a substantial percentage of responses, we believed that labeling this category as missing and excluding and/or imputing the missing values could have resulted in potential bias by erroneously assuming missingness at random, and possibly masking diverse reasons behind the participants’ choice of this category. in order to include this categorical variable in the linear regression model, we employed dummy coding selecting “i don’t know” as the reference category, and creating two dummy variables (not knowing father’s education=0 versus reporting father’s education as less than college=1, and not knowing father’s education=0 versus reporting father’s education as college or above=1). mother’s/female guardian’s highest level of education variable was coded and transformed in an identical way. analytic plan all data were double entered for data entry reliability into microsoft excel and converted to pasw (spss) for analysis. discrepant entries were checked against the hard-copy survey before creating the final data set. because the total number of missing values for our variables was 4 across all study variables, we did not employ any imputation techniques to replace the missing values. instead, listwise deletion method was used in the regression models to remove the missing values from the analysis. the analyses were completed using ibm pasw 17.0 and ibm spss 20.0. correlation matrix with pearson product-moment coefficients was generated to examine the correlations between all continuous and binary independent variables (excluding the two categorical variables: father’s education and mother’s education). point-biserial correlation was adopted for correlations between binary and continuous variables. simple linear regression was used to investigate bivariate relationships between each conceptual independent variable of interest and the dependent variable. sequential multiple regression with block entry was used to investigate the relationships between all the predictors and the dependent variable. the first block included selfefficacy as the key conceptual variable of interest, based on past research and theoretical relevance. perceived barriers and perceived adult support were both entered in the second block. all of the discrete, immutable demographic variables were entered in the third and final block. the variables were added into each block using the enter method. using sequential multiple regression we estimated 1) standardized beta coefficients (β) to examine the association between each predictor and the outcome, while controlling for the effect of all other variables in the model (block 3), 2) squared semi-partial correlations (sr2) to evaluate the unique explanatory contribution of each predictor in the final model including all independent variables (block 3), 3) the overall explained variance (adjusted r2) for the final model including all independent variables (block 3), and 4) change in explained variance (r2 change) between the successive blocks of the sequential multiple regression. predictors of intent to pursue a college health science education among high achieving minority 10th graders 5 results the majority of participants were female (62.7%) and born in the united states (67.2%) (table 1). additionally, the majority of participants’ parents were born outside of the united states (64.7%). when asked about the educational level of their fathers or male guardians, 32.8% of the participants knew their father or male guardian had less than college level of education, 26.1% knew their father or male guardian had earned at least an associate’s degree, and 41.0% did not know the highest paternal level of education. in regard to their mothers, 37.6% knew their mother or female guardian had less than college level of education, 33.1% knew their mother or female guardian had earned at least an associate’s degree, and 29.3% did not know the highest maternal level of education. table 2 shows the correlations for all continuous and binary independent variables used in the sequential multiple regression model. several of the predictor variables were significantly associated with each other. specifically, positive correlations were observed for selfefficacy and perceived adult support (r = 0.359, p < 0.05), self-efficacy and perceived barriers (r = 0.338, p < 0.05), perceived adult support and perceived barriers (r = 0.276, p < 0.05), and for parents’ and participants’ place of birth (r = 0.486, p < 0.05). table 1 characteristics of the study sample frequency (%) total gender male 40 (29.9%) 134 (100%) female 94 (70.1%) place of birth (both parents) outside of the united states 86 (64.7%) 133 (100%) within the united states 47 (35.3%) place of birth (participant) outside of the unites states 44 (32.8%) 134 (100%) within the united states 90 (67.2%) father’s or male guardian’s education level less than college (incl. trade school and/or < hs) 44 (32.8%) 134 (100%) college or above (at least an associate’s degree) 35 (26.1%) i don’t know 55 (41.0%) mother’s or female guardian’s education level less than college (incl. trade school and/or < hs) 50 (37.6%) 133 (100%) college or above (at least an associate’s degree) 44 (33.1%) i don’t know 39 (29.3%) current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 table 2 correlations among independent variables measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 1. self-efficacy 1 2. perceived adult support 0.359* 1 3. perceived barriers 0.338* 0.276* 1 4. participant’s gender 0.093 0.031 0.056 1 5. parents’ place of birth 0.089 -0.042 -0.006 0.073 1 6. participant’s place of birth 0.053 -0.150 -0.080 0.065 0.486* 1 note. *p < 0.05 table 3 results of bivariate analyses (n = 132 for each analysis) b se b t β self-efficacy 0.48 0.17 2.82 .24* perceived adult support 0.82 0.13 6.50 .50* perceived barriers 0.65 0.20 3.20 .27* note. self-efficacy r² = 0.06; perceived adult support r² = 0.24; perceived barriers r² = 0.07. *p < 0.05 the bivariate analysis for each conceptual construct and the outcome variable (table 3) indicated that increasing self-efficacy to overcome barriers to enrollment in college health science was correlated with increasing intent to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a science-related field (b = 0.48, p < 0.05). increasing perceived adult support was correlated with increasing intent to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a science-related field (b = 0.82, p < 0.05). in addition, increasing perceived barriers to enrollment in college health science was correlated with increasing intent to pursue college health science education (b = 0.65, p < 0.05). detailed results of the sequential multiple regression analysis are presented in table 4. predictors of intent to pursue a college health science education among high achieving minority 10th graders 7 table 4 summary of sequential multiple regression predicting a current plan to pursue bachelor’s degree in a science-related field (n = 130) block 3 (final model) b se b β sr2 p self-efficacy 0.16 0.16 .08 0.005 n.s. perceived adult support 0.65 0.14 .39 0.118 <.05 perceived barriers 0.26 0.19 .11 0.009 n.s. participant’s gender -0.05 0.30 -.01 0.0001 n.s. place of birth (both parents) -0.14 0.32 -.04 0.001 n.s. place of birth (participant) -0.55 0.33 -.14 0.014 n.s. father’s educ. less than collegea 1.29 0.37 .33 0.062 <.05 father’s educ. college or abovea 0.70 0.43 .16 0.013 n.s. mother’s educ. less than collegea -1.44 0.40 -.38 0.067 <.05 mother’s educ. college or abovea -0.64 0.44 -.16 0.011 n.s. note: a student not knowing their parent’s education = reference. educ. = education. adjusted r2 for the final block (block 3) = 0.34 the final prediction model (block 3: selfefficacy, perceived adult support, perceived barriers, participant’s gender, parents’ place of birth, participant’s place of birth, father’s education level, and mother’s education level) was significant, f(10, 119) = 7.64, p < 0.05. all variables were retained in the final model due to the use of enter method for all blocks. the results indicated that increasing perceived adult support was significantly related to increasing intent to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a science-related field (β = 0.39, p < 0.05), controlling for all other variables in the model. perceived adult support uniquely accounted for 11.8% of explained variance in the intent to pursue college health science (sr2 = 0.118). after adjusting for all other variables, two of the parental education variables were significant predictors of the intent to pursue college health science. specifically, students who reported their father’s education was less than college had higher intent to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a science-related than those who did not know their father’s education (β = 0.33, p < 0.05). this variable uniquely explained 6.2% of variance in the intent to pursue college health science (rs2 = 0.062). participants who reported their mother’s education to be less than college had lower intent to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a science-related field compared to those who did not know their mother’s education (β = -0.38, p < 0.05). this variable accounted for 6.7% of explained variance in the intent to pursue college health science (rs2 = 0.067). the remaining variables, including self-efficacy, perceived barriers, participant’s gender, parents’ birth place, participant’s birth place, and the two remaining parental education current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 8 variables were not significantly associated with the intent to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a science-related field in the final model. the final model (block 3) explained approximately 34% of variance in the intent to pursue college health science (adjusted r2 = 0.34). examining the changes in explained variance in the intent to pursue college health science education between subsequent blocks of the sequential regression model, there was a significant change in explained variance when perceived adult support and perceived barriers were added to the model in block 2 (between block 1: self-efficacy and block 2: self-efficacy, perceived adult support, and perceived barriers) (r2 change = 0.21, p < 0.05). when the demographic and immutable characteristics were added to the model in block 3, the change in explained variance in the intent to pursue college health science between block 2 and block 3 (with all independent variables) was also significant (r2 change = 0.12, p < 0.05). discussion based on past research on the scct, we hypothesized that after controlling for other variables in the model, self-efficacy to overcome barriers to enrollment in college health science would predict intent to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a science-related field in a sample of high achieving minority 10th graders from an underserved area. nevertheless, we found that this cognitive personal attribute was no longer significant when various other personal attributes and environmental or contextual variables were included in the prediction model of intent to pursue college health science education. in the sequential multiple regression model including all study variables, we found that perceived adult support and knowing whether the educational level of both one’s mother and father included college were significant predictors. in regard to our theoretical scct framework for the study, these findings suggest that adults/parents may serve as important environmental influences on 10th graders' interest in college health science education while other variables, including personal attributes, do not appear as influential. perceived adult support in the context of pursuit of college health science perceived adult support was a significant predictor of a plan to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a science-related field when controlling for all other variables (cognitive and personal attributes, as well as environmental factors) in the model. in one of their seminal articles on the scct, lent et al. (2000) discussed the potential importance of perceived support to forming educational and carrier plans. they also mentioned a relative scarcity of studies investigating this contextual influence in relation to academic and career outcomes, and pointed out the need for further investigations. our finding mirrors the findings of the few existing studies that have investigated perceived social support (e.g., from parents and teachers) and found it to be associated with academic, educational, and career outcomes (e.g., flores & o’brien, 2002; kenny, blustein, chaves, grossman, & gallagher, 2003; mcwhirter, hackett, & bandalos, 1998; schaefers, epperson, & nauta, 1997). evaluations of mentoring programs suggest that the availability of support-providing adult mentor figures is an important factor in social, emotional and behavioral development and functioning of youth, particularly in disadvantaged or at-risk circumstances (jakielek, moor, & hair, 2002). for example, having a mentor as a source of support has been linked to higher academic achievement and first-year college attendance rates immediately after high school completion (johnson, 1997; thompson & kelly-vance, 2001). however, researchers point out that it is not merely the presence, but also the quality of supportive relationships with adult figures providing mentorship that may be of particular importance in relation to positive outcomes (dubois, neville, parra, & pugh-lilly, 2002; rhodes, 2008). the results of our study with regard to perceived adult support suggest that parents and other role models may be especially relevant to formation of immediate educational plans among early high school students. as such, the concept of perceived adult support could be an important measure to collect and target in interventions aiming to influence the educational and career choices of high-achieving underprivileged youth. self-efficacy to overcome barriers to pursuit of college health science while self-efficacy was related to intent to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a science-related field in bivariate analysis, the variable was not a predictor in the final multiple regression model that included the constructs perceived adult support and college barriers. the lack of significant predictive power of self-efficacy in the context of these two other constructs was a surprising finding given its importance in the scct (lent & brown, 1996; lent et al., 1994). others who have investigated the relationship of career/educational self-efficacy and various educational and career outcomes and found strong associations between the two measures (ali & mcwhirter, 2006; fouad & smith, 1996; kerpelman et al., 2008; kerpelman & mosher 2004). one reason for the finding of non-significance of self-efficacy as a hypothesized predictor of educational plan could be that our outcome variable did not measure general college enrollment plans, but a very specific plan to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a science-related field. it is possible that specificity of the outcome measure may also have contributed to the non-significance of selfefficacy when compared directly with perceived adult support. furthermore, even though the geographical area from which the sample originated has relatively lower socioeconomic indicators than surrounding areas, the surrounding areas include affluent suburbs, the seat of the federal government, and numerous higher education predictors of intent to pursue a college health science education among high achieving minority 10th graders 9 institutions (including historically african american institutions). thus, individual self-efficacy among the economically disadvantaged youth residing in this area may not be as much of an influence as it might be in less resource-rich regions (e.g., ali & mcwhirter, 2006; kerpelman & mosher, 2004). perceived barriers to pursuit of college health science controlling for all other variables in the model, the measure of perceived barriers was not a predictor of intent to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a science-related field. lent et al. (2000) addressed the relevance of this contextual influence to educational and career outcomes in the context of scct. they pointed out that the measure of perceived barriers has been investigated in previous studies and yielded conflicting evidence with regard to prediction of educational and career outcomes. for example, while some researchers found significant associations between perceived barriers and educational and career outcomes (e.g., ali & mcwhirter, 2006; kenny et al., 2003), the findings of other investigations have not supported the presence of such associations (e.g., mcwhirter et al., 2007; mcwhirter et al., 1998). perhaps some of the potential explanations provided above for non-significance of self-efficacy also apply to this construct. additionally, lent et al. (2003) found that perceived barriers were not directly related to educational and career outcomes; instead the relationship between perceived barriers and educational pursuits was mediated by self-efficacy. it is possible that the relationship between perceived barriers and intent to pursue college health science education is mediated by another variable not examined here. limitations and future directions this study has several potential limitations. the study sample was not randomly selected, thus limiting the generalizability of our findings. only selected constructs of the scct theory, for which data were available in this secondary analysis, were investigated. examining the theory in its entirety, i.e., using the full set of constructs included in the scct, and estimating relationships among the variables with methods like structural equation modeling may have yielded different results. in addition, we were only able to investigate student-reported (perceived) adult support and perceptions of barriers, as opposed to elements of actual (objective) support and barrier structures existing in the environment. yet another limitation is that our outcome variable consisted of a single item, and thus was not amenable to factor analysis. future studies could address some of the aforementioned limitations by investigating the sources, types, and frequency of both actual and perceived adult support as potentially important contextual measures that could be targeted by interventions with youth. the addition of other potential mediators and moderators, and examining the relationships among the scct constructs longitudinally could greatly enhance future investigations and enable researchers to link educational plans with actual educational choices that follow. scct guided investigations could also examine the relationships among the important constructs in more diverse samples. references ali, s. r., & mcwhirter, e. h. 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(2007). the stanford medical youth science program: 18 years of a biomedical program for low-income high school students. academic medicine, 82, 139-145. predictors of intent to pursue a college health science education among high achieving minority 10th graders 11 article citation zebrak, k. a., le, d., boekeloo, b. o., & wang, m. q. (2013). predictors of intent to pursue a college health science education among high achieving minority 10th graders. current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1179 author notes katarzyna a. zebrak department of behavioral and community health 2387 sph building, valley drive university of maryland college park, md 20742 kzebrak@umd.edu ms. zebrak is a doctoral student in the department of behavioral and community health at the university of maryland school of public health. her principal research interest involves interrelationships of substance use, mental health and other health-related behaviors and outcomes among urban african americans, particularly when examined over the life course. daisy le department of behavioral and community health 2387 sph building, valley drive university of maryland college park, md 20742 daisyle@umd.edu ms. le is a doctoral student and graduate research and teaching assistant with the department of behavioral and community health at the university of maryland, college park. her primary research interest is in sexual and reproductive health amongst minority populations, particularly with community-based participatory research on cervical cancer prevention, care, and control within the inner-city southeast asian and adolescent populations. currently, ms. le is working in the champ research lab in the areas of cancer, health disparities, and health communication among others. bradley o. boekeloo department of behavioral and community health 2360 sph building, valley drive university of maryland college park, md 20742 boekeloo@umd.edu dr. boekeloo is a professor at the university of maryland school of public health, department of behavioral and community health, as well as a director of prevention research center. dr. boekeloo is also a principal investigator on the climbing up and reaching back project, which provided data for the current study. his research interests include youth development, hiv/std, and risk behaviors. min qi wang department of behavioral and community health 2373 sph building, valley drive university of maryland college park, md 20742 mqw@umd.edu dr. wang is a professor at the university of maryland school of public health. dr. wang has 20 years of experience in providing statistical, data management, programming services to a variety of academic institutions including areas of national surveys, research design, sampling, linear and nonlinear models, large and complex data analysis using sas, spss, stata, mplus, sudaan, and lisrel. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 12 this project was supported by a grant from the national institute of general medical sciences, #r01gm094574 and a cooperative agreement from the centers for disease control and prevention, prevention research centers program, #u48dp001929. opinions expressed herein are solely those of the authors and may not reflect those of the supporting agencies. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to bradley o. boekeloo, department of behavioral and community health, university of maryland, college park, 20742. e-mail: boekeloo@umd.edu. manuscript received: 02/04/2013 revisions received: 06/27/2013 accepted: 07/10/2013 predictors of intent to pursue a college health science education among high achieving minority 10th graders 13 volume 16, number 2 august 28, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1302-6087-2-le.doc 1 volume 17, number 1 june 06, 2014 issn 1099-839x teaching cooking skills to young women with mild intellectual disability: the effectiveness of internet websites hanadi hussain alqahtani university of tabuk naomi a. schoenfeld rivier university the purpose of this preliminary study was to evaluate the effectiveness of using streaming video websites to improve, maintain, and generalize the cooking (mealmaking) skills of four young women (18-22 years old) diagnosed with intellectual disabilities. a pre-experimental design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of a webbased multimedia program. instruction consisted of supported viewing and imitation of cooking videos available online, with students searching for a video of the desired recipe, viewing it, and then imitating the video’s sequence of steps to complete the cooking task. results were assessed by means of a questionnaire administered to each participant’s primary caregivers, and indicated that the structured use of the websites was effective in improving students’ meal-making skills. implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed. keywords: cooking, video modeling, intellectual disabilities, websites, life skills curriculum for students with intellectual disabilities should emphasize skills that are both functional and useful, leading to the greatest possible levels of self-reliance and self-determination. given the increasing presence of digital technology in the lives of many children, including computers, smart phones, internet websites and chat rooms, electronic toys, and learning games (parette, horcade, boeckman, & blum, 2008; alqahtani, 2013), it is becoming increasingly necessary that skills acquisition take into account the complexities of navigating a technology-rich world. one skill that has been identified as especially important to independent daily living is that of meal preparation, or cooking (arnold-reid, schloss, & alper, 1997; graves, collins, schuster, & kleinert, 2005; mechling, gast & field, 2008; sigafoos et al., 2005). in addition to the more obvious benefits of being able to prepare one’s own meals, these skills can be an important aspect of self-independence. according to the national longitudinal transition study-2, the most common workstudy jobs for secondary students with disabilities were in food service related positions (cameto, marder, wagner, & cardoso, 2003). cooking can also provide important exposure to a variety academic and functional skills, such as reading, budgeting, shopping and food purchasing, item identification, measurement, and sequencing, as well as choice making, self-determination, and other skills necessary to independent living (madaus et al., 2010; mechling, 2008; morse & schuster, 2000). within the context of a cultural setting or country that places value on a young woman’s skill in providing nourishing meals to her family, the ability to participate in meal preparation can take on even greater importance. the use of video and multimedia has been a current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 2 natural partner in teaching meal preparation skills to individuals with intellectual and other disabilities. sturmy (2003) described video technology as “a novel and expanding technology for providing positive behavior support” to this population. more specifically, video modeling has been found to be particularly effective in teaching independent performance of multistep tasks to persons with disabilities (delano, 2007; mccoy & hermansen, 2007; mechling et al., 2008; mechling et al., 2009; mechling & gustafson, 2008). using video modeling, a student watches another person perform a complete chain of steps and then imitates the behavior. a person may also watch a video made from the participant’s point of view as if he/she were performing task, or watch a task being performed, step by step, and complete each step in sequence before moving onto the next video clip. as technology has progressed, video modeling has increasingly utilized computers and personal digital devices to become interactive in nature, permitting flexibility and personalization to fit individual student needs. this interactive form of video modeling has been shown to be effective in supporting such diverse activities as independent completion of job-related tasks (e.g., furniss et al., 2001; van laarhoven et al., 2009), long-term maintenance of vocational skills (e.g., cihak, kessler, & alberto, 2007), and a variety of social, communication, and daily living skills. (ayres & langone, 2005; bellini & akullian, 2007; metchling, 2004; mechling & gustafson, 2008; murzynski & bourret, 2007; sigafoos et al., 2005). multimedia video modeling has been found to be effective in regard to food preparation skills. in a study combining multimedia and a system of least prompts (slp), mechling et al. (2008) utilized a portable dvd player within the kitchen environment to teach multi-step cooking tasks to youth with intellectual disabilities. similarly, metchling and gustafson (2008) compared the efficacy of static picture to video prompts in teaching cooking related tasks to students with developmental disabilities, and found that participants who utilized video prompts exhibited a greater degree of independence in task completion. however, while such studies demonstrate the efficacy of utilizing multimedia in cooking instruction, they do not address an important aspect of meal preparation – namely, the ability to independently prepare new, or novel, foods, that were not explicitly addressed in the structured curriculum. one of the limitations of pre-packaged cooking instruction is that the cooking repertoire of participants is limited to recipes chosen, task-analyzed, and turned into video footage by support personnel. while certainly an important step forward from being unable to cook at all, this strategy provides only limited self-determination, since the student cannot explore or choose dishes outside those videotaped for them. to best foster individual independence, therefore, meal preparation must be considered to consist not just of mastery of a predetermined list of specific dishes, but rather, of the ability to successfully prepare new dishes on one’s own. unlike the more static nature of researchercreated video modeling materials, the internet provides a wealth of cooking instruction via streaming video, that is created by other internet users and uploaded to constantly evolving collections such as youtube and google videos. these online collections come with their own set of instructional difficulties, however, for not only do they vary widely in format, vocabulary, and quality, but before they can be used they must be successfully located using standard internet searching protocols. as such, individuals with disabilities who might utilize online content for video modeling of meal preparation must master two sets of skills instead of one: first, they must master the basic cooking tasks (e.g., measuring, cutting, mixing) that may appear in a given recipe, and second, they must be able to independently search for streaming video that can serve as video models for recipes they might want to prepare. the development of skills does not happen in a vacuum. rather, it takes place within a social and cultural context that determines what interventions are appropriate, what individuals should be involved in teaching and learning, and who within a family should be turned to for information. all these variables, and more, provided the context for this study, strengthening it in some ways, and requiring methodological compromises in others. the study was conducted in an arabic-speaking location, and all participant interactions, curriculum, websites, and measures were originally in that language. parents and guardians were deeply involved in both intervention and measurement of progress, as appropriate to the surrounding family structures, but at the same time harming the degree to which internal validity can be assumed. the resulting methodology is pre-experimental in nature, but nonetheless provides a valuable glimpse into both the effectiveness of a particular intervention, and the ways in which intervention can be incorporated into the family lives of young women with intellectual disabilities in saudi arabia. this preliminary study builds on current understanding of the effectiveness of video modeling in teaching cooking skills by addressing the following question: does training in finding and using online cooking videos (e.g., youtube content) as video models for meal preparation increase participant independence in subsequent meal preparation? to address this question, the study provided instruction in searching for, finding, and following models provided in youtube cooking videos, and measured participants’ cooking-related skills before and after the instruction occurred. teaching cooking skills to young women with mild intellectual disability: the effectiveness of internet websites 3 method utilizing a pre-experimental one group pre-test post-test design, this study examined the degree to which training in the use of websites with cooking related multimedia content would affect autonomy in subsequent cooking activities. four participants were provided with one-on-one daily training in the use of youtube to locate video tutorials on the preparation of family-selected dishes, and in using the videos as a model to prepare the dish themselves. a questionnaire regarding cookingrelated skills was administered to each participant’s mother before and after the training, and the results compared to evaluate participant progress. data collection a 17-item questionnaire regarding cookingrelated skills was created by the researcher, in collaboration with the participant’s classroom teachers. this questionnaire was administered to each participant’s mother before and after the training, and the results compared to evaluate participant progress. participants and setting students. participants were four young women with mild intellectual disabilities, who were attending public school in tabuk, in the kingdom of saudi arabia (ksa). participants were selected informally from among female students in the school’s program for young adults with intellectual disabilities, aged 18-22, whose vision and hearing were within the typical range and whose educational objectives (e.g., life skills, cooking skills) were compatible with the skills that would be taught during the study. participants also met the following prerequisite criteria, as indicated by their educational files: a) ability to read simple words and short sentences b) no identified attentional deficits c) emerging or established basic computer skills (e.g., pointing and clicking with a mouse, keyboarding) in keeping with their literacy abilities d) previous experience with computer-based and multimedia instruction. all students had previously participated in rudimentary meal preparation training as part of their education, which included preparing specific food items, cleaning vegetables, and identifying ingredients in a recipe. individual characteristics are shown in table 1. table 1 participant characteristics participant age iqa disability strengths identified in educational records areas of need a 20 65 down syndrome counts up to 50 reads approximately 120 words speaks in full sentences very social cannot prepare meal independently cannot use money independently cannot tell time b 22 70 intellectual counts up to 100 reads approximately 250 words. good money and cleaning skills cannot prepare meal independently cannot create a menu cannot tell time c 19 75 intellectual reads on a 4th grade level spells on 2nd grade level can tell time can count money cannot use money independently needs assistance in kitchen. d 20 68 intellectual reading on a 3rd grade level spells on a 2nd grade level can identify basic foods short attention span cannot tell time note: participant characteristics were taken from the students’ educational files. a reported iq scores are as measured by testing conducted by the participants’ school as part of the special education process. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 4 table 2 sample course options provided by participants’ families main course soup drink dessert kabsa vegetable apple/ orange juice caramel potato kubbeh bean ice tea jelly okra stew, bamiah lentil watermelon ice cream rice, pasta, potato island lemon with mint knafa chicken, meat, fish carrot fruit cocktail basbosa setting. instruction took place individually, twice per day and 5 days per week, in the kitchen in each participant’s home. a laptop computer with the necessary capabilities (keyboard, external mouse, speakers, and high-speed internet access) was positioned on the kitchen table directly in front of the student. the instructor sat to the right of the participant. kitchen contents varied, but all included a stove, oven, refrigerator, and basic cooking tools (i.e. bowls, cutting boards and knives, cooking pots, and measuring utensils) as appropriate to the participant’s family. at the start of the study, each participant’s family was asked to supply a list of five food selections in each of four course categories – a main course, soup, beverage, and dessert – that were appropriate to their tastes and eating habits. (see table 2 for an example of a week’s menu.) the researcher then searched youtube to ensure that videos of each dish being prepared could be found using a keyword search. the resulting individualized lists of courses were then used during the intervention phase. staff. the intervention was conducted by classroom teachers who held bachelor degrees in special education, and had at least three years experience in the classroom. the mothers of the four students also participated in supporting roles, as their schedules allowed. intervention once the menus had been set, participants then practiced towards mastery of a meal each day, with the modeling and guidance of an instructor. each day’s meal preparation activities followed a set sequence. with the guidance of the instructor, the participant would: 1) select courses from the supplied list 2) prepare a shopping list of the needed ingredients 3) use the supplied laptop to visit the youtube website, search for, find, and watch a video of the dish being prepared 4) gather the needed cooking utensils 5) prepare the meal the modeling and support was unscripted, with instructional choices and interactions made based on the expertise of each instructor. results overall, parent report of participant meal preparation skills, as measured by the 17-item questionnaire, increased from a mean of 1 skill (5.9%) to a mean of 11.75 skills (68.8%). figure 1 provides a comparison of preand post-intervention questionnaire responses. see tables 3 and 4 for a list of included questions and summary of results. at the start of the study, participant a was rated as exhibiting mastery of none of the skills in the questionnaire. she was unable to prepare a meal, use money, or tell time independently. after the intervention, participant a’s areas of competency had risen from 0 to 13. she was rated as able to shop for ingredients, and to complete many of the steps of independent meal preparation, unaided. she remained unable to tell time. participant b was familiar with youtube as a cooking resource prior to the intervention, and had good money skills; however, she was unable to shop unaccompanied, to put together a menu, or to complete most cooking tasks unassisted. after the intervention she remained unable to shop independently or to tell time, but exhibited an increase of independence working on food preparation tasks. like participant a, participant c was rated initially as exhibiting of none of the skills in the questionnaire. she was unable to prepare a meal, use money, or tell time independently. after the intervention, participant a’s areas of competency had risen from 0 to 13. she was rated as able to go food shopping, and complete many of the steps of independent meal preparation unaided. she remained unable to tell time. teaching cooking skills to young women with mild intellectual disability: the effectiveness of internet websites 5 at the start of the study, participant d had good money skills, and was able to search youtube for cooking videos. she was rated as unable to complete any of the other questionnaire tasks. after the intervention, participant d’s areas of competency had risen from 2 to 9. she remained unable to tell time. figure 1. number of items selected as ‘yes’ on preand post-intervention skills questionnaires completed by the participants’ parents. table 3 pre-intervention questionnaire and results participant item a b c d 1 can go to the supermarket unaccompanied x x x x 2 can use money x yes x yes 3 can buy groceries without help x x x x 4 can put together a menu without help x x x x 5 can select recipes without help x x x x 6 can clean vegetables without help x x x x 7 can prepare food quantities without help x x x x 8 can prepare the meat for cooking without help x x x x 9 can use cookbooks without help x x x x 10 can use cooking websites without help x x x x 11 utilizes youtube for cooking x yes x yes 12 can choose between multiple recipes without help x x x x 13 can cook what she sees on youtube without help x x x x 14 can follow modeled instructions x x x x 15 can tell time x x x x 16 can use a clock x x x x 17 can use a kitchen timer x x x x total yes 0 2 0 2 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 6 table 4 post-intervention questionnaire and results participant item a b c d 1 can go to the supermarket unaccompanied yes x x yes 2 can use money x yes yes yes 3 can buy groceries without help yes x x x 4 can put together a menu without help yes yes yes yes 5 can select recipes without help yes yes yes yes 6 can clean vegetables without help yes yes yes yes 7 can prepare food quantities without help yes yes yes yes 8 can prepare the meat for cooking without help yes yes yes x 9 can use cookbooks without help yes x yes x 10 can use cooking websites without help yes yes yes yes 11 utilizes youtube for cooking yes yes yes yes 12 can choose between multiple recipes without help yes yes yes x 13 can cook what she sees on youtube without help yes yes yes x 14 can follow modeled instructions yes yes yes yes 15 can tell time x x yes x 16 can use a clock x x yes x 17 can use a kitchen timer x x x x total yes 13 11 14 9 discussion this study explored the degree to which the ability to access online cooking videos would affect participant’s overall ability to prepare meals independently. all four participants exhibited an increase in their ability to independently select menu items and to prepare them. after the completion of the intervention, participants’ parents rated them as more successfully completing a variety of independent tasks related to cooking, including shopping, recipe selection, and food preparation. there was no change in participant mastery of skills that were unrelated to the cooking intervention, such as clock use or time-telling skills. while the experimental design dictates that only limited conclusions be drawn, the data are promising. participants demonstrated a greater degree of freedom to choose and complete self-selected meals than they had in the past, along with an increase in general cooking skills. this suggests that online videos can be successfully utilized for video modeling purposes, freeing both participants and educators from the limitations of locally created video materials and providing a degree of selfdetermination that has not been possible in the past. limitations this study presents a number of important limitations. first, practical and socio-cultural considerations (e.g., choice of participants, selecting acceptable skills, the need to provide training n a way that met the school schedule) made it necessary to use a preexperimental design, which can provide only weak internal validity. as such, the improvement in cooking skills may potentially have resulted from unidentified cooccurring variables. second, the data are drawn entirely from parental report, with the same parent completing preand postchecklists for a given participant, and in some cases, aiding in the intervention. lastly, the items on the questionnaire were operationally defined to those who completed it, and so it is unlikely that all responders shared similar definitions of phrases such as ‘without help’ or ‘use a cookbook’. these limitations are not insignificant; however, given the precedent for the use of high quality quasi-experimental and pre-experimental designs within special education (gersten et al., 2005), the results nonetheless provide information that is of value to the wider body of intervention literature. future studies might focus on implementing a more robust experimental design, examine additional skill sets where online videos might be utilized to support video modeling instructional techniques, or explore the ways in which internet skills are generalized by participants into other areas of their lives. future research might also gather more specific information about how the videos were found and utilized (e.g., if the participants were able to type in related search terms, if they selected the most relevant videos, and so forth), that might be used to increase the effectiveness of the intervention. conclusions when providing instruction to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, discreet skill acquisition must be paired with instruction on using those teaching cooking skills to young women with mild intellectual disability: the effectiveness of internet websites 7 skills to enhance the independence, dignity, and selfdetermination of the individual with disabilities. the widespread availability of online streaming video has made possible a new step in the evolution of video modeling as an instructional tool. with the ability to access streaming video that can be used as a video modeling tool, individuals with intellectual disabilities can be freed from the constraints of materials provided to them by researchers, educators, or organizations, and take personal ownership of another important area of independent 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(2013). introduction to severe and multiple disabilities. dar-al zahra publishing and distribution, riyadh, saudi arabia. arnold-reid, g. s., schloss, p. j., & alper, s. (1997). teaching meal planning to youth with mental retardation in natural settings. remedial and special education, 18(3), 166-173. ayres, k., & langone, j. (2005). intervention and instruction with video for students with autism: a review of the literature. education & training in developmental disabilities, 40, 183–196. bellini, s., & akullian, j. (2007). a meta-analysis of video modeling and video self-modeling interventions for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. exceptional children, 73(3), 264-287. cameto, r., marder, c., wagner, m., & cardoso, d. (2003). nlts2 data brief. reports from the national longitudinal transition study, 2(2). retrieved from http://www.ncset.org/publications/viewdesc.asp? id=131 cihak, d. f., kessler, k. b., & alberto, p. a. 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(2009). the effectiveness of using a video ipod as a prompting device in employment settings. journal of behavioral education, 18, 119 –141. teaching cooking skills to young women with mild intellectual disability: the effectiveness of internet websites 9 article citation alqahtani, h. h., & schoenfeld, n. a. (2014). teaching cooking skills to young women with mild intellectual disability: the effectiveness of internet websites. current issues in education, 17(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1302 author notes hanadi hussain alqahtani university of tabuk college of education and arts dr. hanadi alqahtani is currently an assistant professor of special education and department chair of special education at the university of tabuk in the kingdom of saudi arabia. additionally, hanadi has presented at national and global education conferences on a variety of issues relating to the barriers to e-learning, special education, curriculum development, and teacher preparation. hanadi earned her b.a. and m.a in special education (intellectual disabilities) from jordan university. she received her doctorate in special education, with a focus on teaching language skills, from the ain shams university in cairo, egypt. naomi a. schoenfeld rivier university division of education 420 s. main street nashua, nh 03060 nschoenfeld@rivier.edu dr. naomi a. schoenfeld is currently associate professor at rivier university, where she teaches and advises in the areas of special education, emotional/behavioral disorders, and research methodology. dr. schoenfeld holds teaching certifications in special education, a ph.d in curriculum and instruction from arizona state university, a m.ed in special education from the university of arizona, and a b.a. in psychology from queens college, cuny. her work focuses on effective practices in special education, including positive behavioral supports, teacher training and professional development, and enhancing practice-to-research. . manuscript received: 01/18/2014 revisions received: 04/17/2014 accepted: 04/21/2014 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 10 volume 17, number 2 june 06, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors elizabeth calhoun reyes constantine schreiber assistant executive editors kevin jose raso recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik aaron bryant anna montana cirell laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell younsu kim melinda thomas kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1132_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 march 31, 2013 issn 1099-839x universal design for learning: university faculty stages of concerns and levels of use a faculty action-research project diana j. larocco and danielle s. wilken university of hartford increasingly, students with disabilities are attending postsecondary schools. as with any form of diversity, there are also pedagogical challenges and opportunities that go beyond accommodation and support the goal of learning for all. this paper describes the results of the data collection phase of a faculty action-research project that grew from a core group of university faculty members’ concerns about how best to support students with disabilities on campus. a researcher-developed survey was used to identify faculty members’ stages of concern about and use of nine universal design for learning guidelines in their classes. findings reveal that the 46 respondents were at the stage of being largely concerned with learning more about the nine guidelines. the results provide a snapshot of initial stages of concern. recommendations for action are provided. keywords: students with disabilities, universal design, faculty concerns, level of use background federal laws, such as the individuals with disabilities education improvement act (idea; 2004) and the landmark americans with disabilities act (1990), have affirmed the rights of persons with disabilities to equal protection and access to the u.s. educational system. these policies are exemplars of a shift in society’s attitude toward and acceptance of “disability as a natural and normal part of the human experience” (silverstein, 2000, p. 1695). over time, the number of students with disabilities in higher education has trended upward, at least in part, because of federal policies and the changing zeitgeist. recent data indicate that “eleven percent of undergraduates reported having a disability in 2007-2008” (snyder & dillow, 2011, p. 282). while these students were similar to their peers in terms of race, gender, age, and schools attended, they reported having a wide range of disabilities (u.s. gao, 2009). the challenges faced by postsecondary institutions in supporting students with disabilities cover a broad range of issues, among them helping students and faculty to understand students’ legal rights and providing accommodations and specialized services that cover a multitude of disability related challenges that students might face. the significance of the challenges faced has been described in a u.s. gao (2009) report with one outcome being a federal workgroup that undertook the task of developing and implementing coordinated technical assistance for schools. as with any form of diversity, there are also pedagogical challenges and opportunities that go beyond accommodation and support the goal of learning for all. local context and purpose of the study so too, anecdotal information from the first author’s university faculty, staff, and students underline significant challenges faced by several undergraduate students with disabilities on campus as well as the faculty members who teach them. the identified issues—both large and small—include barriers to physical mobility, use of various educational technologies, and adapting current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 instruction. this study grew from concern, on the part of a core group of five faculty members in one of the university’s colleges, on how best to serve students with disabilities. specifically, a disability focused learning community was formed to provide campus-wide learning opportunities for faculty, staff, and students. to this point in the time, there had not been a faculty driven effort of this type. an initial focus of the learning community was faculty concerns about instructing students with disabilities. hall and hord (2006) explained concerns are not necessarily fears, anxieties, or worries, but rather “the composite representation of the feelings, preoccupation, thought, and consideration given to a particular issue or task” (p. 138). as one illustration, a mathematics professor had described having difficulty understanding how to deal with a student with asperger's syndrome selfregulating in class. in response, the paper’s lead author, and a member of the learning community, called upon a colleague, who is considered a national expert on students with asperger's syndrome in higher education, to provide a brief introductory workshop. the lead author has been involved in disability issues throughout her professional career in, among other capacities, as a certified special education and an advocate. while the workshop was well received, it was apparent that a more systematic approach to understanding faculty concerns about differentiating instruction and making accommodations for students with disabilities was needed. the second author has a particular interest in studying adoption of innovations. here, innovation refers to anything that is new to individuals such as the implementing instructional strategies that might make curriculum accessible to all students, particularly those with disabilities. concomitantly, the second author was particularly interested in learning about and applying the principles of universal design as it applies to learning in her own postsecondary setting and in her doctoral research. universal design, as used here, is the intentional design of curricula, implementation of instruction, and assessment of learning so all students have equal access to learning, not simply equal access to information (center for applied technology [cast], 2011). with all of this, we set out to conduct faculty action research that would simply describe faculty members’ stages of concern about and levels of use of innovative curriculum and instructional strategies that would meet the diverse needs of various student populations. this paper presents the results of the data collection phase of the action research. hall and hord (2006, 2010) have conducted extensive work on the implementation of change and innovations, and their model was selected as the framework for this study. the three principles and nine guidelines of universal design for learning (udl; cast, 2011) were employed as a point of reference for faculty thinking about instructional innovations that would meet the needs of a diverse student body. each of these models is explained next. the concerns based adoption model the concerns based adoption model (cbam; hall & hord, 2006, 2010), which is evidence-based (anderson, 1997), focuses on describing, measuring, and explaining the experiences of those attempting to implement an innovation. the model acknowledges that implementation of an innovation is a highly personal experience and assumes most individuals go through predictable stages. each is characterized by questions and concerns about the innovation as it unfolds. emphasis is on the diverse and unique meanings that individuals assign to the innovation. cbam (hall & hord, 2006, 2010) has several elements that interact dynamically. they are the external environment (e.g., federal policies), the culture of the organization, the resource system, the change facilitator, ongoing diagnosis, and implementation of tailored interventions. there are three diagnostic dimensions: (a) stages of concern (soc), levels of use (lou), and innovation configurations (ic). the responsibility for overseeing the innovation rests with the change facilitator, or agent. while the role can often be assigned to a single individual in a formal leadership position, hall and hord (2006) suggest that the “optimal arrangement for an organization is to have a leadership team” (p. 269). key tasks for the team include addressing personal aspects of change, building supportive conditions by attending to organizational efficiencies, and acting strategically (hall & hord, 2010). the team would use both informal and formal tools to gather diagnostic information about how they might use resources and intervene to support individuals as they implement the innovation. more specifically, diagnosis would include: administering the soc questionnaire (george, hall, & stiegelbauer, 2008) to understand individual concerns related to the change process; developing lou (hall, dirksen, & george, 2008) profiles to determine what individuals or groups are doing related to the innovation; and constructing and using ic maps, which chart a continuum of ways in which individuals might operationalize the innovation components, to document and assess fidelity of implementation (hord, stiegelbauer, hall, & george, 2008). in postsecondary settings, research employing various components of cbam (hall & hord, 2006, 2010) has focused largely on the adoption of technology (dobbs, 2004; javeri & persichitte, 2007; wickersham & mcelhany, 2010) with apparently no research that has applied this model to postsecondary faculty members’ concerns about using teaching practices that are inclusive of students with disabilities. in k-12 settings, several researchers have used hall and hord’s model to examine teachers’ concerns about educational practices that are inclusive of students with disabilities (pedron & evans, 1990; van den berg, sleegers, geijsel, & vandenberghe, universal design for learning: university faculty stages of concerns and levels of use 3 2000; wade, welch, & jensen, 1994). regardless of the setting or foci, findings across both bodies of research reveal that when an individual’s stage of concern about adopting an innovation such as udl (cast, 2011) is identified and addressed the person is more apt to implement related practices. the focus of the investigation was on faculty members’ reports of their stages of concern and levels of use of the three udl (cast, 2011) principles and the related guidelines in their classrooms; therefore, only the related cbam (hall & hord, 2006, 2010) components were applied and they are explained next. stages of concern. the stages of concern component comprises seven developmental stages of concern that cluster into four categories: unrelated, self, task, and impact (hord, rutherford, huling, & hall, 2006). individuals at the unrelated stage either show no interest in the innovation or have interests related to other things. as the name implies, self-concerns are focused on oneself and learning about the innovation and acquiring the personal capacity for implementing the innovation. task concerns are about managing the day-to-day aspects of the innovation. impact concerns encompass those related to collaborating with others and making adjustment to or improving the innovation. table 1 contains a summary of the stages of concern. levels of use. the levels of use component covers eight characterizations of distinctly different observable patterns of individual behavior related to using the innovation and acquiring related knowledge and skills (hall et al., 2008). the eight levels are clustered into two categories, nonusers and users. nonusers are individuals who have not yet adopted or engaged in applying the innovation. users are individuals who are actively engaged with the innovation. table 2 contains a summary of the levels of use. universal design in education burgstahler (2008) described universal design as an approach to developing environments, processes, or instruction that addresses the broadest array of abilities possible. the concept as it applies to physical environments and architectural barriers gained prominence in the 1980s (banfield-hardaway, 2010; izzo, murray, & nova, 2008; orr & hammig, 2009). over time, the notion of universal design evolved to not only include physical spaces and products, but also the design, implementation, and assessment of curriculum and instruction; student services; and information technology (burgstahler, 2008). juxtaposed to the provision of educational accommodations, which is more of a reactive approach to disability, universal design is “proactive and has as its goal the full inclusion of all students— regardless of gender, race, place of origin, first language, learning style, culture, background knowledge, disability and other characteristics” (burgstahler, 2008, p. 24). earlier research on universal design in education was conducted more often in k-12 settings. research in postsecondary settings has been building steadily since the 1990s (chodock & dolinger, 2009; izzo et al., 2008; silver, bourke, & strehorn, 1997) with many of the studies focused on the preparation of teachers for k-12 settings (evans, williams, king, & metcalf, 2010; schelly, davies, & spooner, 2011; spooner, baker, harris, ahlgrim-delzell, & browder, 2007). today, there are several well-known approaches to the application of universal design in education that have built upon what is table 1 cbam: stages of concern (hall & hord, 2010) categories stage of concern stage description impact 6. refocusing the individual is thinking about broader benefits of the innovation, including the possibility of introducing major changes or replacement of the innovations. 5. collaboration the individual focuses on coordinating and collaborating with colleagues to improve the use of the innovation. 4. consequence the individual focuses attention on the students affected by the innovation within his or her immediate sphere of influence. task 3. management the individual has shifted focus to the various processes and tasks required by the innovation. the focus is on efficiency, managing, and scheduling. self 2. personal the individual is uncertain about his or her ability to meet the requirements of the innovation, as well as his or her role in the innovation. 1. informational the individual has a general awareness of the innovation and has an interest learning more. the interest is focused on substantive aspects of the innovation, not on his or her role in the innovation. unrelated 0. unconcerned the individual shows little or no concern about the innovation. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 table 2 cbam: levels of use (hall & hord, 2010) categories level of use description users 6. renewal individual holistically re-evaluates the innovation to determine if major modifications would improve student learning and outcomes. individual is considering alternative innovations as part of the process. 5. integration individual is collaborating with colleagues to improve student learning and outcomes. 4b. refinement individual varies the use of the innovation to improve student learning and outcomes. 4a. routine individual has been using the innovation for some time and the application of the innovation is consistent, with little or no changes. little reflection is given to improving the application of the innovation or improving student outcomes. 3. mechanical individual is using the innovation with a focus on short-term, day-to-day use of the innovation. there is little time for reflection, activities are often disjointed and superficial, and changes in use benefit the individual, rather than the students. nonuser 2. preparation individual is preparing to use the innovation for the first time. 1. orientation individual has recently acquired or is trying to acquire information about the innovation. the individual may also be acquiring information about the personal demands of the innovation. 0. nonuse individual has little or no knowledge of the innovation, and the individual is not doing anything toward becoming knowledgeable or involved. known about effective instructional strategies for students with varying abilities (burgstahler, 2008; cast, 2011; higbee & goff, 2008; rose, harbour, johnston, daley, & abarbanell, 2006; scott, mcguire, & foley, 2003). although the models have varied emphases, at their core is the principle that the problem is with the environment not individual students. of all the approaches, udl (cast, 2011) was chosen expressly as a means to illustrate inclusive curricular strategies for faculty participating in this study because references to udl appear in several federal mandates and policy documents. in idea (2004), the term universal design for learning is defined as it is in the assistive technology act of 1998. udl is also mentioned in the u.s. department of education’s (2010) blueprint for reauthorizing the elementary and secondary education act, which identifies udl as necessary for supporting all learners in literacy and mathematics. germane to the present investigation, udl is referred to by name and is written into in several sections of the higher education opportunity act of 2008. the act also provides a statutory definition of udl in section 103(a): (24) universal design for learning.—the term ‘universal design for learning’ means a scientifically valid framework for guiding educational practice that— (a) provides flexibility in the ways information is presented, in the ways students respond or demonstrate knowledge and skills, and in the ways students are engaged; and (b) reduces barriers in instruction, provides appropriate accommodations, supports, and challenges, and maintains high achievement expectations for all students, including students with disabilities and students who are limited english proficient. an underlying assumption of udl (cast, 2011) is that students learn best when provided with multiple opportunities and a variety of methods to access and apply knowledge. udl encompasses three broad principles that center on using a variety of ways to: (a) represent and teach important course concepts, (b) engage students in learning, and (c) have students demonstrate their knowledge or skills. each principle has three guidelines that apply to instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments and provide a framework from which faculty can build a flexible, inclusive learning environment to scaffold and differentiate learning for a broad range of students. table 3 contains a summary of the principles and guidelines. finally, udl (cast, 2011) was also selected universal design for learning: university faculty stages of concerns and levels of use 5 table 3 principles and guidelines of universal design for learning (cast, 2011) principles and guidelines descriptors principle i: provide multiple means of representation provide content and materials in a variety of formats, including physical, symbolic, and linguistic examples. guideline 1: provide options for perception offer content and materials in multiple, flexible formats (audio, visual, tactile). guideline 2: provide options for language, mathematical expressions, or symbols clarify language, mathematical expressions, or symbols and scaffold understanding with alternative or multiple representations. guideline 3: provide options for comprehension build on or supply background knowledge, emphasize important ideas, and support cognitive and metacognitive strategies. principle ii: provide multiple means of action and expression provide multiple and varied opportunities for students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills. guideline 4: provide options for physical action use varied and alternative ways for students to physically interact with instructional materials or complete instructional tasks. guideline 5: provide options for expression and communication offer multiple media, tools, opportunities, and formats for students to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of a subject. guideline 6: provide options for executive functions support students’ goal setting, planning, information and resource management, and progress monitoring. principle iii: provide multiple means of engagement provide students with multiple and varied opportunities to develop and sustain interest in a topic, as well as monitor their skill and knowledge development. guideline 7: provide options for recruiting interest present relevant learning activities with authentic opportunities for students to make choices, while reducing threats and negative distractions. guideline 8: provide options for sustaining effort and persistence build in reminders, vary the level of task demand, and foster collaboration among students. guideline 9: provide options for self-regulation foster self-reflection present opportunities for students to monitor their knowledge and skill development. for use in this study because the three principles are based in neurological research and “three spatially and functionally distinguishable brain systems”—recognition, strategic, and affective (myers & rose, 2000, p. 40). the brain’s recognition system enables us to sense and assign meaning to patterns such as voice (auditory patterns) or letters and words (visual patterns) among others (myers & rose, 2000; rose, 2001). the brain’s strategic system enables us to plan, execute, and self-monitor actions and skills (myers & rose, 2000; rose, 2001, p. 66). the affective system is responsible for evaluating patterns and assigning emotional significance to them (myers & rose, 2000; rose, 2001). rose (2001) explained “each principle aims to minimize barriers and maximize learning by flexibly accommodating individual differences in recognition, strategy, or affect respectively” (p. 66). importantly, individuals differ greatly in how each of these systems function; and philosophically underpinning udl is the notion that, from the beginning, curriculum, instruction, and related products should be developed to be flexible enough to accommodate these differences. study design and methods the design of this inquiry was faculty action research. action research is an approach in which a researcher focuses on identifying “an appropriate solution for the particular dynamics at work in a local specific situation” (stringer, 2007, p. 5). this type of investigation involves a cycle of inquiry in which the researcher looks, thinks, and acts in an effort to current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 table 4 sample survey items and alignment of response choices with stages of concern and levels of use sample stage of concern item response alignment with stage of concern which of the following statement best describes your stage of concern about providing students with options for perception in your instruction? • i have provided options for perception but i think i have found something that would work even better. 6. refocusing • i am concerned about how my providing options for perception relates to my colleagues’ instructional practices. 5. collaboration • i am thinking about how providing options for perception is affecting my students. 4. consequence • i feel like i am spending all of my time getting material ready to provide options for perception. 3. management • i am thinking about how providing options for perception will affect me. 2. personal • i am interested in learning how to provide options for perception. 1. informational • i am not interested in or concerned about options for perception. 0. unconcerned sample level of use item response alignment with level of use which of the following statements best describes your level of using options for perception in your instruction? • i have been using options for perception for an extended period. at this time, i am looking to make major improvements in the way i use it. 6. renewal • i have been using options for perception to improve outcomes and i am sharing my experiences with colleagues. 5. integration • i have been using options for perception for a while and i am beginning to make changes to improve outcomes. 4b. refinement • i am comfortable using options for perception and it has become a part of my routine instructional strategy. 4a. routine • i am using options for perception with a focus on short-term actions, as i have little time for reflection. 3. mechanical • i am preparing to use options for perception for the first time. 2. preparation • i have recently learned about how to use options for perception. 1. orientation • i have little or no knowledge about how to use options for perception. 0. nonuse understand how and why individuals act as they do (stringer, 2008). the action-research inquiry process encompasses five main processes: (a) designing the study, (b) collecting data, (c) analyzing data, (d) communicating outcomes, and (e) taking action (stringer, 2008). the design phase of this inquiry involved identifying an issue worthy of investigation and developing an ethical, trustworthy (i.e., quality) plan for how the study would be conducted (stringer, 2007, 2008). the background and rationale for studying faculty members’ stages of concern and levels of use udl in their classrooms were explained earlier. the research proposal was reviewed and approved by university’s human subjects committee for the conduct of ethical research. the remainder of this section provides a description of how the study was conducted. the outcomes of the study are shared in the section on results, and a broad recommendation for action is provided in the final section of the article. data collection data collection is the look part of the inquiry cycle (stringer, 2007, 2008). the process used for gathering information was a researcher-developed survey (wilken, 2011) that was administered via an online survey service. the survey contained 18 questions that queried respondents about their stage of concern with universal design for learning: university faculty stages of concerns and levels of use 7 table 5 ranges: characterization of udl principle scores according to the stages of concern and levels of use soc categories stage of concern soc score range lou categories level of use lou score range users 6. renewal 22-24 impact 6. refocusing 19-21 5. integration 19-21 5. collaboration 16-18 4b. refinement 16-18 4. consequence 13-15 4a. routine 13-15 task 3. management 10-12 3. mechanical 10-12 self 2. personal 7-9 nonuser 2. preparation 7-9 1. informational 4-6 1. orientation 4-6 unrelated 0. unconcerned 3 0. nonuse 3 implementing udl and their level of use of udl (cast, 2011) in their classrooms. the questions were organized under the three udl principles and the nine guidelines. there were three items for each principle. descriptions of udl and each of the principles and guidelines were provided. for each guideline, participants were asked to respond to two questions—one about their stage of concern and one about their level of use. modeled after the work of hall and hord (2006), which is the framework that guided the investigation, the stage of concern questions had seven response choices and the level of use questions had eight response choices. table 4 contains sample items and depicts the alignment of the item response choices with the associated cbam component (hall & hord, 2010). the key informants for this study were university faculty. three e-mail contacts were made with roughly 300 individuals using e-mail addresses that were readily available on the university’s website. there was no way to determine in advance which addresses belonged to faculty and which did not belong to faculty. the e-mails contained a link to the informed consent form and a link to the survey, which was a unique url that was automatically created for each potential respondent. this url was encrypted with ssl for added security during survey taking. the second and third e-mails were sent only to non-respondents. the linked informed consent form was used because the online survey e-mail system does not allow attachments. data analysis the data analysis, or the think part of the inquiry cycle (stringer, 2007, 2008), was implemented as follows. the raw survey data were downloaded online to a comma separated value (.csv) file and imported into microsoft® excel®. data were inspected and imported into spss for further analysis. scoring the instrument involved assigning numerical values to each of the response choices. each of the seven response choices for the stages of concern items was assigned a value of 1 through 7 (i.e., 1 = unconcerned, 2 = informational, 3 = personal, 4 = management, 5 = consequence, 6 = collaboration, 7 = refocusing). each of the eight response choices for the level of use items was assigned a value of 1 through 8 (i.e., 1 = nonuse, 2 = orientation, 3 = preparation, 4 = mechanical, 4 = routine, 6 = refinement, 7 = integration, 8 = renewal). a stage of concern score and a level of use score for each udl principle was computed in spss® by summing the values for related items, with the range of possible scores for any given principle 3-21 and 3-24 respectively. data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and frequencies and percentages were calculated. to better report and qualitatively describe the survey results, respondents’ principle scores were characterized according to hall and hord’s (2006, 2010) seven stages of concern and eight levels of use. table 5 contains a summary of the ranges. the cut offs for characterizing the soc and lou principle scores were established in the same way, and an example for each follows. for an soc principle score to be characterized as falling within the informational stage of concern range, the sum of the values for the three related items for any given principle had to be greater than 3 and less than or equal to 6 (i.e., 4-6). to be characterized as falling within the orientation level of use range, the sum of the values for the three related items for any given principle had to be greater than 3 and less than or equal to 6 (i.e., 4-6). sample. in all, 75 faculty members responded to the survey; 46 surveys were complete, and only those surveys were used in this analysis. of the 46 respondents, 61% (n = 28) were males, 31% (n = 18) were females, 89% (n = 41) were full-time, and 11% (n = 5) were parttime faculty members. fifty percent (n = 23) had been at the university more than 10 years and 80% (n = 37) had a doctoral degree. results table 6 contains a list of the principles and guidelines along with the most frequently selected current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 table 6 respondents’ (n = 46) primary stage of concern and level of use: udl guidelines soc/lou n % principle i: provide multiple means of representation guideline 1: provide options for perception i am interested in learning how to provide options for perception soc 1 24 52% i have little or no knowledge about how to use options for perception lou 1 22 48% guideline 2: provide options for language, mathematical expressions, and symbols. i am interested in learning how to provide options for language, mathematical expressions, and symbols soc 1 23 50% i have little or no knowledge about how to use options for language, mathematical expressions, and symbols lou 1 26 57% i have little or no knowledge about how to use options for comprehension lou 1 22 48% principle ii: provide multiple means of action and expression guideline 4: provide options for physical action i am interested in learning how to provide options for physical action soc 1 26 57% i have little or no knowledge about how to use options for physical action lou 1 30 65% guideline 5: provide options for expression and communication i am interested in learning how to provide options for expression and communications soc 1 25 54% i have little or no knowledge about how to use options for expression and communication lou 1 24 52% guideline 6: provide options for executive functions i am interested in learning how to provide options for executive function soc 1 21 46% i have little or no knowledge about how to use options for executive function lou 1 22 48% principle iii: provide multiple means of engagement guideline 7: provide options for recruiting interest i am interested in learning how to provide options for recruiting interest soc 1 25 54% i have little or no knowledge about how to use options for recruiting interest lou 1 21 46% guideline 8: provide options for sustaining effort and persistence i am interested in learning how to provide options for sustaining effort and persistence soc 1 22 48% i have little or no knowledge about how to use options for sustaining effort and persistence lou 1 23 50% guideline 9: provide options for self-regulation i am interested in learning how to provide options for self-regulation soc 1 27 59% i have little or no knowledge about how to use options for self-regulation lou 1 24 53% note. soc 1 = self, informational stage of concern; lou 1 = non-user, orientation level of use. table 7 frequencies and percentages of respondents’ (n = 46) stages of concern principle scores categorized by stage of concern udl principle 1 udl principle 2 udl principle 3 stage of concern n % n % n % impact 6. refocusing 5 10.9 3 6.5 4 8.7 5. collaboration 2 4.3 1 2.2 7 15.2 4. consequence 4 8.7 6 13.0 0 — task 3. management 7 15.2 7 15.2 8 17.4 self 2. personal 8 17.4 6 13.0 4 8.7 1. informational 18 39.1 21 45.7 21 45.7 unrelated 0. unconcerned 2 4.3 2 4.3 2 4.3 universal design for learning: university faculty stages of concerns and levels of use 9 figure 1. percentage of faculty at each stage of concern. response choice. for all udl guidelines, 46% (n = 21) or more of respondents (n = 46) indicated they were at the informational stage of concern (soc 1). george et al. (2008) explained that individuals at this stage have more of an impersonal interest in learning about “substantive aspects of the innovation, such as general characteristics, effects, and requirements for use” (p. 8). similarly, 46% (n = 21) or more of respondents (n = 46) reported being in an orientation state (lou 1) for all udl guidelines. individuals at this level of using aspects of an innovation are beginning to explore the innovation and acquire information (hall et al., 2006). table 7 depicts the frequencies and percentages of respondents’ (n = 46) stage of concern principle scores categorized by stage of concern. for each of the principles, a majority of respondents largely reported their stage of concern centered on themselves. self-concerns reflect an “egocentric frame of reference in terms of what the experience will be like for ‘me’ and whether ‘i’ can succeed” (hall & hord, 2006, p. 135). figure 1 provides a picture of the relative intensity of respondents’ (n = 46) stage of concern for each udl principle and depicts a nonuser profile overall. table 8 depicts the frequencies and percentages of respondents’ (n = 46) level of use principle scores categorized by level of use. overwhelmingly, respondents indicated they were nonusers with the majority at an orientation level of use for each principle. at this level, “the behaviors of the individual are related to learning more about the innovation, but no decision has been made to use it” (hall & hord, 2006, p. 162). implications for practice and action steps this paper presents the results of the data collection phase of a faculty action-research project that grew from university faculty members’ concern about how best to serve students with disabilities. the udl principles and guidelines (cast, 2011) were used as a point of reference for faculty to begin to think about proactively designing curricula, implementing instruction, and assessing what students’ know and are able to do so all students have equal access to learning, not simply equal access to information. for each of the udl principles, the survey respondents largely indicated they were at a stage of concern that centered on themselves. at this stage, individuals are most often thinking about how an innovation will affect them personally, and what is current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 table 8 frequencies and percentages of respondents’ (n = 46) level of use principle scores categorized by level of use udl principle 1 udl principle 2 udl principle 3 level of use n % n % n % users 6. renewal — — — — — — 5. integration — — — — — — 4b. refinement — — — — — — 4a. routine — — — — — — 3. mechanical 6 13.0 — — — — nonusers 2. preparation 15 32.6 — — — — 1. orientation 24 52.2 40 87.0 36 78.3 0. nonuse 1 2.2 6 13.0 10 21.7 figure 2. percentage of faculty at each level of use. required on their part in terms of effort, time commitment, and knowledge and skill development. similarly, faculty overwhelmingly reported that they were nonusers with the majority at an orientation level of use for each principle. in other words, study participants were generally not applying the principles of udl in their classes. the emergence of a nonuser profile might be attributable to the fact that there had not been any campus-wide initiatives to provide faculty with training or information about udl. additionally, faculty might not be familiar with udl or have been exposed to the concepts because the research and literature on its application in postsecondary settings is less robust than the work that has been done in k-12 settings. successful implementation of any innovation begins at the individual level with an understanding of a universal design for learning: university faculty stages of concerns and levels of use 11 person’s stage of concern relative to the innovation (hall & hord, 2006; hord et al., 2006). the results from data collection phase of this faculty action-research project provide clear indications that the survey respondents were interested in learning more about udl. baseline information about respondents’ relative stages of concern with applying and using inclusive curricular strategies as defined in the survey provides a starting point for tailoring professional development experiences that could meet individual needs. concerning communicating the outcomes of the study, or the first step in the act part of the inquiry cycle (stringer, 2007, 2008), a report detailing the survey results has been shared with the assistant provost and dean of faculty development. consideration is being given to how these data will be used to inform faculty development initiatives focused on quality learning experiences for all students and to the specific actions that will be taken. these deliberations represent a first step toward taking action (stringer, 2007, 2008). to achieve the greatest chance of success with faculty development and by extension implementation of udl (cast, 2011) in faculty classrooms, it is recommended that faculty learning-experiences be founded in what is known about effective professional development. several researchers have identified important features of professional development that leads to success (guskey & yoon, 2009; trivette, dunst, hamby, & o’herin, 2009; wei, darling-hammond, andree, richardson, & orphanos; 2009; wei, darlinghammond, & adamson, 2010; yoon, duncan, lee, scarloss, & shapley, 2007). of note, professional development is most effective when it is focused on curricular and instructional strategies that are needed to teach all students effectively. this includes helping participants identify a clear and direct link between their classroom work and their own professional learning. the learning experience should be sustained and intensive over time (i.e., 11 hours to 40 hours) and include followup sessions that explicitly connect initial and on-going training. moreover, the learning experience should be designed to actively engage participants in activities that are meaningful for them and incorporate what is known about adults as learners (knowles, holton, & swanson, 2011). research has demonstrated that adults learn best when they understand why they need to know something, can connect new learning to and draw on their personal experiences, recognize a current need for the new learning, and can identify learning goals and objectives suited to their particular needs and learning style (knowles et al., 2011). structured learning opportunities such as action research, study groups, and other forms of collaborative inquiry have been shown to be effective ways to present professional development (easton, 2008). the study has several limitations including its design, the small sample size, the use of a researcherdeveloped survey, and the fact that faculty self-selected to participate. while the survey provided clear profiles of faculty stages of concern and levels of use, additional research should be conducted to refine and validate the survey. a study that employs a mixed methods approach in which this survey and individual interviews or focus group discussions are employed would provide a much richer and more detailed picture. other researchers could also incorporate the survey into professional development as a pre-post measure. references americans with disabilities act (ada) of 1990. pl 105220, 42 u.s.c. §12101 et seq. anderson, s. 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(2009, october). higher education and disability (gao-10-33). retrieved from http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d1033.pdf universal design for learning: university faculty stages of concerns and levels of use 13 van den berg, r., sleegers, p., geijsel, f., & vandenberghe, r. (2000). implementation of an innovation: meeting the concerns of teachers. studies in educational evaluation, 26, 331-350. wade, s. e., welch, m., & jensen, j. b. (1994). teacher receptivity to collaboration: levels of interest, types of concern, and school characteristics as variables contributing to successful implementation. journal of educational and psychological consultation, 5(3), 177-209. wei, r. c., darling-hammond, l., & adamson, f. (2010). professional development in the united states: trends and challenges. dallas, tx: national staff development council. retrieved from http://www.learningforward.org/ wei, r. c., darling-hammond, l., andree, a., richardson, n., & orphanos, s. (2009). professional learning in the learning profession: a status report on teacher development in the united states and abroad. dallas, tx: national staff development council. retrieved from http://www.learningforward.org/ wickersham, l. e., & mcelhany, j. a. (2010). bridging the divide: reconciling administrator and faculty concerns regarding online education. quarterly review of distance education, 11(1), 1-12. wilken, d. s. (2011). campus climate and universal design for learning survey. unpublished instrument. yoon, k. s., duncan, t., lee, s. w.-y., scarloss, b., & shapley, k. (2007). reviewing the evidence on how teacher professional development affects student achievement (issues & answers report, rel 2007–no. 033). retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 14 article citation larocco, d. j., & wilken, d. s. (2013). universal design for learning: university faculty stages of concerns and levels of use; a faculty action-research project. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1132 author notes diana j. larocco, ed.d. doctoral program in educational leadership department of education college of education, nursing and health professions university of hartford 200 bloomfield avenue hartford, ct 06117 dlarocco@hartford.edu dr. diana j. larocco is faculty in the doctoral program in educational leadership at the university of hartford. she has extensive experience working in the field of developmental disabilities and is actively involved in related service on the state and national levels. dr. larocco also directs the university-chartered center for public health and education policy. danielle s. wilken, m.s. assistant vice president for academic affairs goodwin college one riverside drive east hartford, ct 06118 dwilken@goodwin.edu ms. danielle s. wilken is a doctoral candidate in the doctoral program in educational leadership at the university of hartford. her research interests focus on postsecondary faculty meeting the instructional needs of all students. ms. wilken is the assistant vice president for academic affairs at goodwin college in hartford, connecticut. manuscript received: 11/18/2012 revisions received: 1/20/2013 accepted: 3/12/2013 universal design for learning: university faculty stages of concerns and levels of use 15 volume 16, number 1 march 31, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 954-4070-2-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x peeking inside pandora’s box: one university’s journey into the redesign of teacher educator preparation frank dykes, brenda k. gilliam, joanna neel and kathleen everling the university of texas at tyler in the last two decades, there have been various calls for reform in teacher education programs to address the needs of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and students with disabilities. consequently, many teacher education preparation programs are reviewing and redesigning their programs to meet the needs of the teacher of the 21st century. this manuscript will describe the development and implementation of a new certification program that integrates preservice teacher preparation, special education and english as a second language into a 123 hour degree program. keywords: esl, special education, teacher education, collaboration there are many variations of the greek myth of pandora who was given a box by zeus and asked to never open it. in her haste to uncover the contents of the box, pandora opened the box releasing hate, anger, sickness and every bad thing in the world. pandora was able to slam the box lid trapping the last evil that remained in the box: hopelessness. so today, when everything seems to get tough, every human still has hope. the state of teacher education is analogous to the myth of pandora. opening the box requires teacher educators to scrutinize teacher education in relation to the pressures of high stakes testing, the growth of alternative certification programs, the lack of funding, and the increasing diversity of the student population. while these obstacles seem insurmountable, teacher educators maintain hope and work to provide an education that prepares teacher candidates with the tools needed in the 21st century. critics of teacher education programs have argued that teacher education programs are not intellectually challenging and act as deterrents to young people entering the classroom (fin & kastoroom, 2000). there have been waves of national reform reports heralding the decline of teacher education: a nation at risk (national commission on excellence in education, 1983); a nation prepared (carnegie task force on teaching as a profession, 1986); a call for change in teacher education (national commission on excellence in teacher education, 1985) and doing what matters most (darlinghammond, 1997). each of these national reports focuses on the need for a quality teaching force and on the appropriate preparation of teachers. in the last two decades, there have been various calls for reform in teacher education in order to meet the needs of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and the increasing needs of students with disabilities placed in general education classrooms (brownell, sindelar, kiely, & danielson, 2010; darling-hammond, 2010). consequently, many teacher education programs have now “opened“ pandora’s box beginning the arduous task of reviewing and redesigning programs to meet the unique needs of the 21st century teacher. crucial conversations are beginning to take place among faculty, requiring them to question their own practices and to think and lead boldly to prepare culturally responsive teachers. the landscape facing the future educator of the 21st century is daunting. twenty-five percent of students live in poverty; 10-20% have identified learning current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 difficulties; 15 % speak a language other than english; and about 40% are members of minority groups, many of them recent immigrants from other countries (darlinghammond, 2006). in order to meet the pressing needs of the 21st century educator, schools of education must break out of the factory, or “egg carton” model of preservice educator preparation (national commission on teaching and america’s future, 2007). darling-hammond (2006) noted the restructuring of teacher preparation programs must help teacher candidates “understand a deeply wide array of things about learning, social and cultural contexts, and teachers should be able to enact those understandings in complex classrooms” (p. 3). schools of education cannot continue to operate using the same outdated policies and programs. restructuring of teacher preparation programming must occur to prepare professionals to arrive at their respective schools ready to work, not practice. this requires schools of education to examine curriculum frameworks and assessments and understand what they imply for teaching and for learning to teach (boe & cook, 2006; darling-hammond & berry, 1999). these fundamental reforms will deeply impact the role of general educators, who now have taken over many of the responsibilities that were once the purview of special education and esl teachers. policymakers and researchers recognize a need for a new breed of teacher, yet few articles have been published regarding designing teacher candidate programs to prepare this new type of educator. the teacher of the 21st century must realize that basic skills are necessary but not sufficient for the 21st century learner. the partnership for 21st century skills (2009) recommends a specific framework that can be used to develop a vision for student success. the partnership notes that the teacher of the 21st century must blend content knowledge with the essential skills needed in today’s world including critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration. based on the recommendation of the partnership for 21st century skills (2009), teacher educator preparation programs should strive to devise a sequence of courses that adequately prepare teacher candidates to meet these essential skills. this will require teacher preparation programs to examine current policies, procedures, and standards. segregation of instructional divisions (i.e. regular education and special education) within teacher education programs at the university perpetuates the idea that certain types of students need specially trained teachers (piper, 2007). this belief causes some educators to excuse themselves from teaching all students and some institutes of higher education to maintain the status quo. integrated teacher preparation is one way that universities can seek to prepare teacher candidates to meet the unique needs of the 21st century student. piper noted, “it stands to reason that if we create integrated learning opportunities for students of all ages, our professions and society may become more accepting of differences” (p. 176). additionally, programs that seek to increase the number of teachers with english as a second language (esl) and special education certifications may assist in addressing the chronic shortage of teachers with these specializations and may impact the academic success of students. in this article, we describe the process devised by the university of texas at tyler to develop and implement a new pre-service teacher preparation program integrating general teacher preparation coursework, special education coursework and english as a second language (esl) coursework into a 123 hour degree program. courses in each of the areas prepare students to take examinations required for certification. background the university of texas at tyler (ut tyler) is located in the northeastern part of texas. the college of education and psychology at the university of texas at tyler was restructured in 2008. prior to this restructuring, the college comprised 4 separate academic units: (1) curriculum and instruction, (2) educational leadership, (3) early childhood, reading, and special education, and (4) psychology and counseling. in the fall of 2008, the school of education (soe) was created merging curriculum and instruction and early childhood, reading and special education into one instructional department. the school of education provides undergraduate and graduate programs. undergraduate students within the soe who planned to work in elementary schools specialized in a bachelors of science in interdisciplinary studies degree and were able to be certified to teach in early childhood through grade 4 (ec-4) prior to the initial restructuring of the program. these ec-4 students who also wanted be certified in special education or esl either took supplemental courses at the end of their program or simply waited until they graduated and took the certification exams without any coursework or field experience in these specializations. in texas, any fully certified teacher can become certified to teach esl or special education simply by passing the required state exams. in 2009, the 81st texas legislature passed senate bill 174 which mandated the state board of educator certification (sbec) make available via a website, the extent to which teacher education programs prepare teachers including general and special education teachers to effectively teach students with disabilities and students with limited english proficiency. this requirement impacts all preservice educator programs in the state. not unlike other states, sbec encouraged universities and colleges to seek ways to implement esl and special education preparation as part of teacher preparation. the soe at the university of texas at tyler viewed this mandate from the state of texas as a catalyst peeking inside pandora’s box: one university’s journey into the redesign of teacher educator preparation 3 to review our current teacher education program and to open dialogue between faculty members. from this dialogue, an initiative to develop a new teacher preparation program blending esl, special education and general teacher preparation (early childhood through grade 6) was formulated. the remainder of the article focuses on the process we followed to integrate courses, the lessons learned as a result of the process, and recommendations we have for institutions of higher education beginning this journey. impetus for change the change process at the university of texas at tyler commenced following the review of online survey data conducted with teacher candidates who had graduated from the teacher educator program along with surveys of stakeholders in the community (administrators, teachers, parents, and business leaders). the survey data indicated that graduates and constituents wanted the teacher educator program to provide more instruction in areas that would prepare teacher candidates to meet the needs of all children in the general education classroom; this included students with cultural and linguistic differences and those with disabilities and other diverse needs. after reviewing survey data, we examined the demographics of teacher candidates enrolled in the school of education. as noted in figure i, the school of education population is predominately female and caucasian. next, we reviewed demographic and programmatic data from the texas education agency which succinctly showed an increasing diverse population of students being served in bilingual, esl and special education programs. this data is provided in figure 2. the information gleaned from the survey, along with the subsequent review of the teacher education program demographics, state programmatic data and a review of research (brown, welsh, hill, & cipko, 2008; goodwin, 2002; neisler, 2000; nieto, 2000), supported and validated the urgent need to revise the program to prepare teacher candidates to effectively meet the diverse learning needs of students in the general education classroom. the revision of the teacher education program required a group of individuals willing to devote time and expertise. ultimately, the committee consisted of the director of the school of education, two faculty from elementary education, two faculty with special education training, and two faculty members with an understanding of esl training and issues. we established a timeline goal of completing the entire process of change and new program approval within one year. we met weekly for several hours during the fall semester, hammering out all of the details for a new program. after reviewing all of the data, the idea of developing a single program that would lead to graduates being able to obtain certification in three areas early childhood through grade 6 (ec-6) generalist, special education, and english as a second language was born. since the state of texas does not specify specific course content leading to certification, we were committed to developing courses which would prepare teacher candidates to meet the diverse learning needs of 21st century students and to pass the examinations for the ec 6 generalist and the all level certification exams for esl and special education. during this review of data, we volunteered for various responsibilities and brought new information to the table at each meeting. total male female african american asian hispanic white native american 217 5 212 15 3 19 177 3 figure 1. enrollment totals for school of education teacher candidates. enrollment lep students bilingual students esl students economicallydisadvantaged students title i students special education students 4,998,579 838,418 496,047 313,807 3,013,442 3,298,934 440,744 figure 2. total enrollment counts in student programs (texas education agency, 2012). current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 the data we gathered addressed these questions: •what kinds of programs and certifications are offered by other major higher education institutions in the state? •how much coursework in special education and esl is required in the existing programs? •how many semester credit hours (schs) are other teacher educator programs requiring? •what are the standards for the certification examination for esl and special education? once this data was obtained and examined, syllabi for all of the courses within the university of texas at tyler’s existing programs were obtained. because it was necessary to reduce the number of existing courses offered in order to add all of the information related specifically to esl and special education, we examined syllabi for commonalities and redundancy. committee members reviewed courses to ascertain if any courses could be combined. we also considered adjusting the number of schs allotted to some of the courses. the challenge was to include all of the content information needed for the two additional certifications without going substantially over the desired 120 schs total for a degree program. the ec-6 planning committee met with the entire soe faculty late in the semester and presented a goal for the program and the data findings that led to the recommendation of a combined program. the entire faculty unanimously agreed to move forward with the development of the new combined program. in the spring, serious work on syllabi revision, course combining, and course reduction began. we examined state certification requirements for each of the three programs and determined which courses addressed each of those requirements. for courses that could be combined, faculty members who taught similar courses were asked to collaborate and develop a syllabus, which would address all of the content the students needed. moreover, we maintained fidelity to the interstate teacher assessment and support consortium (intasc) standards in syllabi development. once all courses were examined, and the necessary revisions and adjustments were made, we developed three different options to present to the soe faculty for consideration. each option varied slightly in the number of courses and the manner in which some of the concepts would be addressed. at that meeting, the soe faculty determined that the proposal that required 123 schs was the one that they wanted to submit to the texas education agency’s state board of education certification (sbec) for approval. this proposal increased the number of courses for special education and esl to include the following: introduction to special populations, language and literacy acquisition, managing classrooms and behavior in school settings, assessment for instruction, instructing diverse learners, english language learners and collaborating with families and community. these courses were developed based on best practice and standards required by the texas examination of educator standards (texes) and intasc. in addition to the new courses, modules related to special education and esl were developed to be implemented throughout the education curriculum. these modules examined topics including diversity, language differences vs. learning disabilities, basic interpersonal communication skills (bics) and cognitive academic language proficiency (calp). the new combined ec-6 program was approved, requiring the ec-6 committee to start to address issues related to implementation of the new program while allowing existing students to complete the previous program. an issue that we examined closely was how field experiences would be provided, for faculty members and the community desired a field-based program with significant numbers of hours of field. we continued to meet in late spring and summer in order to make these determinations. the soe offered the initial courses for the first phase of the program in fall, 2011. the full implementation of the program began in spring, 2012. due to reduced funding from the state of texas, no additional monies were available to implement the new program; that means no additional staff members were hired. the implementation has not been without a few complications as an existing program was phased out and the new one started. input thus far, from teacher candidates and community stakeholders, has suggested that this combined program is one that is highly desired by the constituents of the university of texas at tyler. implementing the new program successful implementation of the new teacher preparation program was achieved based on three critical variables. these variables included (1) personnel, (2) open lines of communication and (3) organizing courses into a phase structure. in addition to the director of the school of education and the full-time faculty members in the program, key positions aided students in the progression through the educational phases. these positions included a single advisor for all teacher education certification programs, a clinical experiences supervisor and a certification officer. faculty members served as phase team leaders and meet periodically to discuss specific needs of students and to discuss required updates in each of their respective areas. generally, the transition to the new program has been implemented via an established framework specifically aimed at addressing any student and faculty concerns. peeking inside pandora’s box: one university’s journey into the redesign of teacher educator preparation 5 communication was a second key variable necessary for successful implementation of the new program. communication included, but was not limited to: •a very detailed on-line student handbook; •student e-mails; •orientations for each phase; •phase meetings with student elected representatives; •blackboard communications set up and color coded for each phase; and •announcements and updates posted on blackboard. a third key element that has made the transition successful is the fact that the teacher education program is made up of four distinct phases. each phase has specific requirements that must be completed prior to progressing to the next phase, including a specific course sequence and key assessments. phase 1 is comprised of 21 schs. the course content for phase i comprises introductory courses such as introduction to the teaching profession and introduction to special populations. successful completion of this phase, along with key assessments, is required prior to admission to the teacher education program. phase 2 occurs following admission to the teacher education program. within this phase, students fulfill a requirement of 15 schs and are required to complete 30 hours of field experience. some of the courses comprising this phase include managing classrooms and behavior in school settings, teaching skills and assessment for instruction. students successfully complete phase 2 when all courses, field experiences, and assessment have been completed with a minimum grade point average (gpa) of 2.5. in phase 3, teacher candidates complete courses in methods of teaching math, science, social studies and language arts. in addition, 60 hours of field experience are required for this phase. to move to the final phase, students must successfully complete courses, key assessments, field experience and maintain a gpa of 2.5. phase 4 is the culminating clinical experience in which teacher candidates student teach for a full semester. the teacher candidate has the opportunity to observe a teacher and students, plan lessons and assess student learning and eventually take on the responsibility of full day teaching. teacher candidates are required to be observed on three separate occasions by university superiors and must have a rating of proficient on each evaluation. students are allowed to apply for certification following student teaching and successful completion of the texes, the state certification examination. a key component to each phase is the student advisory council (sac). the sac is comprised of student elected representatives and faculty that meet twice a semester to discuss any concerns. this communication has allowed for changes in the phases as needed and provided a conduit for student concerns to be addressed in an effective and timely manner. lessons learned the transition from a generic ec-6 program to a focused ec-6 special education/esl program was not an overnight process. during the review of the program, we discovered considerable overlap in course content. while some overlap was essential for building and developing concepts, most courses were adapted, combined, or deleted. only a few new courses were added. as the planning continued, presenting the information to the faculty incrementally, rather than all at once, allowed for input and aided in securing approval from all faculty members. once the program changes were approved, it was necessary to review the qualifications of faculty in order to assign faculty to courses. certification and experience in the course content was critical. the director of the school of education reviewed the background and experience of the faculty and began the necessary steps to have faculty members teach courses they had never taught before. during this review, it became clear that some courses like the assessment for instruction course, required faculty members with expertise in special education, general education and esl assessments. with no one faculty member qualified to provide the in-depth instruction needed in all three areas, the decision was made to team teach this course with specialists from each area working together to provide quality instruction. three faculty members were chosen to teach the assessment in instruction course. the team included a reading instructor, special education instructor and an instructor with specialization in esl. the instructors developed a common syllabus. each instructor taught for a total of 5 weeks. during this time, the reading instructor focused on reading assessments, particularly running records. the esl instructor devoted instructional time to explaining the english language proficiency standards (elps) and the related assessments while the special education instructor focused instruction in the area of curriculum based assessment (cbm) and basis descriptive statistics. in addition, on-going professional development, especially in the areas of special education and esl, were needed for all faculty members to provide program alignment and cohesion. this was achieved through on-going presentations during faculty meetings and distribution of current research articles. transitioning from the old program to the new program has not been without difficulties. the year after the change, some students were enrolled in the old program while students just starting were beginning the new program. this provided a challenge in scheduling because some courses moved from one phase to another. in addition, the faculty was teaching in multiple phases and with variations of similar courses. for example, in the current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 old program the course on integrating the arts was in the second phase. in the new program, it is in the first phase and includes integrating physical education as well as the arts. although the courses are similar, with the additional course requirements, the course had to be redesigned. with the same faculty member teaching both courses, this put an unforeseen strain on scheduling. in order to address the issues that arose from implementing the new program, the director of the school of education instituted phase team meetings. since students took courses in certain blocks or phases, the director selected a faculty member from each phase to serve as the phase team leader. additionally, a student representative from each section of each course in the phase was elected by the students in the course to serve as the student advisory member to the phase team. during these meetings, students and faculty discuss concerns such as scheduling, course requirements, key assessments and other pertinent issues. following the completion of the meeting, each phase team leader compiles the issues discussed and meets with the director. these meetings have proven to be productive and instrumental in the change process. for example, student representatives noted a need for better communication regarding the course requirements between the new ec-6, esl and special education certification program and the old ec-4 program. from these discussions, faculty members were able to dispel the confusion students were experiencing. in addition to scheduling conflicts and designing new courses, during the implementation phase, it became apparent to us that work on horizontal and vertical alignment was needed. to ensure the quality and rigor of instruction, we examined each course to determine if the standards are being introduced or developed and to what degree of rigor. it was during this period that esl and special education modules were embedded as components of the other coursework. as a result of revising our program, we have learned the following: •start crucial conversations early. •disseminate information in incremental steps. •include key personnel from ec-6, special education and esl in planning. •review current program and courses for overlap and similarities. •plan using standards (intasc & state standards). •place the needs of the students first. •review the qualifications needed for faculty for each course. •provide on-going professional development for all faculty. •ensure vertical and horizontal alignment of curriculum. •keep quality and rigor high. recommendations growing pains are a normal part of any change. keeping an open mind and being flexible and willing to grow with the program are essential to a smooth transition. if the needs of the students are in the forefront of the planning process and the faculty is committed to the essential components of the program, the transition from one program to the next will be easier. some recommendations we have for universities considering the implementation of a program change to include general education (ec-6), esl and special education are: •examine the needs of your stakeholders to determine if it is appropriate. •review your current program and the standards needed for the new program. •hold crucial conversations early and frequently to ensure faculty support. •include pivotal personnel in planning. •keep egos in check – everyone must understand that the students’ needs supersede the faculty’s specializations or favorite courses. •understand that it is a process and that planning is only the beginning. •be willing to adjust the plan once implementation starts to ensure a smooth transition. change is never easy, but it is often worth the effort. having gone through the growing pains that accompanied this new program change, teacher candidates at the university of texas at tyler are becoming increasingly aware of the need to understand how to work with diverse populations. faculty members have weathered the small storm of change and the subsequent rebuilding process. the university of texas at tyler education program is stronger than ever before. the faculty and students are now appropriately prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century. it is worth the risk to open pandora’s box occasionally, for out of the chaos, change and growth can occur, especially when the end result is a new program that better prepares teacher candidates to meet the needs of all students in the general education setting. despite the criticism faced by teacher preparation programs, hope remains. it is hope for the next generation of teachers that prompts teacher education preparation programs to retool and revise to meet the changing demands of the profession. references boe, e. e., & cook, l. h. (2006). the chronic and increasing shortage of fully-certified teachers in special education and general education. exceptional children, 72, 443-460. brown, k. s., welsh, l. a., hill, k. h., & cipko, j. p. (2008). the efficacy of embedding special education instruction in teacher preparation programs in the united states. teaching and teacher education, 24(8), 2087-2094. brownell, m. t., sindelar, p. t., kiely, m. t., & danielson, l. c. (2010). special education peeking inside pandora’s box: one university’s journey into the redesign of teacher educator preparation 7 teacher quality and preparation: exposing foundations, constructing a new model. exceptional children, 76(3), 357-377. carnegie forum on education and the economy task force on teaching as a profession (1986). a nation prepared: teachers for the 21st century. ny: carnegie foundation. darling-hammond, l. (2010). teacher education and the american future. journal of teachereducation, 61(1-2), 35-47. darling-hammond, l. (2006). constructing 21st-century teacher education. journal of teachereducation, 57(10), 1-15. darling-hammond, l., & berry, b. (1999). recruiting teachers for the 21st century: the foundation for educational equity. journal of negro education 68(3): 254–279. darling-hammond, l. (1997). doing what matters most: investing in teacher quality. ny: national commission on teaching and america’s future, teachers college, columbia university. fin, c. e., & kanstoroom, m. (2000). better teachers, better schools. washington, dc: thomas b. fordham foundation. goodwin, a. l. (2002). teacher preparation and the education of immigrant children. education and urban society, 34(2), 156-172. national commission on excellence in education (1983). a nation at risk: the imperative for educational reform. washington, dc: u.s. department of education. national commission on excellence in teacher education (1985). a call for change in teacher education. washington, dc: american association of colleges in teacher education. national commission on teaching and america’s future. (2007). the high cost of teacher turnover (policy brief). retrieved from http://www.nctaf.org neisler, o. j. (2000). how does teacher education need to change to meet the needs of americas schools at the start of the 21st century? journal of teacher education, 51(3), 248-255. nieto, s. (2000). placing equity front and center: some thoughts on transforming teacher education for a new century. journal of teacher education, 51(3), 180-187. partnership for 21st century skills (2009). framework for 21st century learning. retrieved from http://www.21stcenturyskills.org piper, a. w. (2007). what we know about integrating early childhood education and early childhood special education teacher preparation programs: a review, a reminder and a request. journal of early childhood education, 28, 163-180. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 article citation dykes, f., gilliam, b. k., neel, j., & everling, k. (2012). peeking inside pandora’s box: one university’s journey into the redesign of teacher educator preparation. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/954 author notes frank dykes, ed.d. the university of texas at tyler 3900 university blvd tyler, texas 75799 fdykes@uttyler.edu dr. frank dykes is an assistant professor in the school of education at the university of texas at tyler. his research interests include teacher educator preparation, diversity, and effective intervention strategies brenda k. gilliam, ph.d. the university of texas at tyler 3900 university blvd tyler, texas 75799 bgilliam@uttyler.edu dr. brenda gilliam is recently retired from the university of texas at tyler. her research interests include special education assessment and teacher preparation. joanna neel, ed.d. the university of texas at tyler 3900 university blvd tyler, texas 75799 jneel@uttyler.edu dr. joanna neel is an assistant professor in the school of education at the university of texas at tyler. her research agenda includes early literacy and assessment, differentiated instruction in the primary grades and literacy development. kathleen everling, ph.d. the university of texas at tyler 3900 university blvd tyler, texas 75799 keverling@uttyler.edu dr. kathleen everling is an assistant professor in the school of education at the university of texas at tyler. her research involves social justice and equity in bilingual/esl education. manuscript received: 3/06/2012 revisions received: 5/20/2012 accepted: 7/20/2012 peeking inside pandora’s box: one university’s journey into the redesign of teacher educator preparation 9 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1111_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 13, 2013 issn 1099-839x primary school attendance and completion among lower secondary school age children in uganda peter moyi university of south carolina at the world education forum in dakar in 2000, governments pledged to achieve education for all by 2015. however, if current enrollment trends continue, the number of out-of-school children could increase from current levels. greater focus is needed on lower secondary school age (13 – 16 years) children. these children are not included estimates of the number of out-of-school children. it will be difficult to reduce the number of out-of-school children if we continue to overlook children of lower secondary school age. therefore, using 2006 uganda demographic and health survey data this study examined school attendance and grade 5 completion of lower secondary school age children in uganda. the study found that poverty, low education among heads of households, and disability continue to limit continued access to and progress through school. keywords: sub-saharan africa; uganda; school attendance; school completion school enrollment in sub-saharan africa has slowed in recent years (unesco, 2011). the 2011 efa global monitoring report warns, “if current trends continue, there could be as many as 72 million children out of school in 2015 – an increase over current levels.” (p. 40). in 2008, there were an estimated 67 million children out of school; however, these estimates do not include all out-of-school children (unesco, 2011). the number of out-of-school children reported and used to monitor progress towards universal education includes only children of primary school age (6 – 12 years). if we expand our definition of “out-of-school children” to include children of lower secondary school age1 (13 – 16 years), the number of out of school children is significantly higher. the 2010 efa global monitoring report acknowledges, “there are some 71 million children of lower secondary school age currently out of school. many have not completed a full primary cycle and face the prospect of social and economic marginalization.” (p. 55). many lower secondary school age children (13 – 16 years) have either dropped out of school or are not progressing smoothly through the education system. it is important to focus attention on lower secondary school age children for three reasons. first, the number of out-of school lower secondary age children is very large; about 77% of lower secondary age children in sub-saharan africa are either out of school or still in primary school (bruneforth &wallet, 2010). many are still be in primary school because they delayed school entry and/or repeated grade(s). delayed school entry and grade repetition are still prevalent in sub-saharan africa (glewwe & jacoby, 1995; lloyd & blanc, 1996; fentiman, hall, & bundy, 1999; bommier & lambert, 2000; wils, 2004; ainsworth, beegle, & koda , 2005; 1the official lower secondary school ages in uganda are 13 to 16 (isced, 1997). http://www.uis.unesco.org/education/iscedmappings/pages/default.aspx current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 brophy, 2006; ndaruhutse, 2008; grogan, 2009; hungi, 2010; moyi, 2010, 2011). second, the pressure to drop out of school is much higher among older children because of the higher cost of secondary school, the additional household responsibilities, and the increased risk of pregnancy (lloyd & blanc, 1996; colclough, rose, & tembon, 2000; vespoor, 2008). finally, out-of-school children will grow into functionally illiterate adults (unesco, 2010). these adults are unlikely to secure employment; this will lead to another generation of out-of-school children because household access to resources is crucial to the schooling of children (colclough & lewin, 1993; lloyd & blanc, 1996). unesco (2010) argues that one of the reasons technical and vocational education has not reached more people is that few children reach secondary school. since countries face different challenges in providing education, it is important to understand the school participation patterns of lower secondary school age children in different national contexts if we are to design effective policy interventions. policy makers, researchers, and other stakeholders need to identify vulnerable children and monitor their progress. this paper uses the 2006 uganda demographic and health survey (udhs) to examine school attendance and grade 5 completion of lower secondary school age (13 – 16 years) children in uganda. the paper seeks to extend our knowledge of the school attendance and primary school completion patterns of lower secondary school age children in uganda. schooling in uganda after independence from britain in 1962, uganda experienced a period of peace and stability; however, a 1971 coup by idi amin ushered in a period of political instability, economic decline and social disintegration. the amin years and the subsequent civil wars significantly reduced government spending on education. the world bank (1993) found that, “by 1985 government expenditure on education and health, in real terms, amounted to about 27 percent and 9 percent respectively of the 1970s levels.” (p. 3). in 1986, yoweri museveni came to power and brought some stability to uganda. in 1987, the government established the education policy review commission (eprc) to examine the state of education and recommend measures to improve the sector. the eprc recommended the government provide free universal primary education by 2000 (ministry of education and sports, 1999). however, the free universal primary education policy was implemented in 1997. under the free education policy the government paid teachers’ salaries, bought instructional materials, built basic physical facilities in schools, and paid tuition fees for four children per family (ministry of education and sports, 1999). the policy was amended in 2003 to benefit all children in a family. the elimination of tuition fees increased enrollment by 58% from 3,068,625 in 1996 to 5,303,564 in 1997 (ministry of education and sports, 1999). the ministry of education and sports (1999) reported that gross enrollment rate (ger), “jumped from 77% in 1996 to 137% in 1997 and the figures for net enrollment rate (ner) went up from 57% in 1996 to 85% in 1997.” (p. 11). the increase in the number of children attending school was especially evident in poor households (deininger, 2003). unfortunately, the growth student enrollment outpaced the growth in teachers and schools. in 1980, there were 305 children for every school, but this number increased to 722 children for every school in 1999 (ministry of education and sports, 1999). the ministry of education and sports (1999) further reported that, “pupilteacher ratio changed from 37.62 in 1996 to 51.83 in 1997 and continued to decline to 63.63 in 1999.” (p. 12). a brief review of the obstacles to schooling in subsaharan africa sub-saharan africa lags behind the world in educational enrollment and attainment. unesco (2010a) describes the reasons children are out of school as, “the product of a mixture of inherited disadvantage, deeply ingrained social processes, unfair economic arrangements and bad policies.” (p. 10). many children in the region are victims of extreme poverty, geographic isolation, discrimination (based on ethnicity, language and disability), hiv and aids, corruption and ineffective use of resources and conflict (caillods, phillips, poisson, & talbot, 2006; unesco, 2010a). household poverty is one of the biggest obstacles to school participation. whether or not a child is sent to school depends on the direct and indirect costs to the household (bommier & lambert, 2000; chernichovsky, 1985; colclough & lewin, 1993; lloyd & blanc, 1996; unesco, 2005). children who live in the poorest households are more likely to be out of school than those in the richest households (lloyd & blanc, 1996; unesco, 2005, 2010a). why do the poor have limited access to school? first, poor households have fewer resources to invest in their children’s education. the school fees, textbooks and uniforms are some of direct costs that poor households cannot afford. even with free education, some households cannot afford to let children attend school because they are needed at home to care for younger siblings or work to supplement household income. older children are more likely to work because they are more physically developed, can obtain higher wages, and face higher schooling costs. second, schools may not be easily accessible for some poor households. for example, the world development report 2004 found that, “in rural nigeria, primary school attendance and completion among lower secondary school age children in uganda 3 children from the poorest fifth of the population need to travel more than five times farther than children in the richest fifth to reach the nearest primary school, and more than seven times farther to reach the nearest health facility.” (p. 21). even if the schools are available, they are often of poor quality due to poor policies and/or corruption (world bank, 2004; caillods et al., 2006; okech, mutisya, ngware, & ezeh, 2010; bruns, filmer, & patrinos, 2011). bruns et al. (2011), in a study of six african countries, found that, “more than 30 percent of education spending benefited the richest 20 percent, while only 8 to 16 percent benefited the poorest 20 percent.” (p. 7). besides household poverty, some children are out of school because they face discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, race or culture. progress towards gender parity has been slow and uneven (unesco, 2009, 2003/4). with few exceptions, unesco (2003/4) reports that, “the lower a country’s primary enrolment ratio, the greater the proportionate inequality between male and female enrolments. in the great majority of cases, such inequality is to the disadvantage of girls.” (p. 117). in some countries girls are married off early and those who remain at home are expected to perform household chores to support the household. gender discrimination in education is in part rooted in religious and cultural beliefs that determine different roles for girls and boys. for example, pastoralist groups rely on their girls for domestic chores and the boys for tending livestock. the karamojong of uganda, like many pastoralist groups, struggle to educate their children in a school system that is unresponsive to their nomadic lifestyle (krätli, 2006). children living in urban slums, rural areas, and conflict regions are also disadvantaged. slum dwellers are forced to attend poor quality public or private schools (okech et al., 2010). rural areas have to contend with poor quality schools, poor infrastructure, and greater concentrations of poverty that make it difficult for children to attend school (world bank, 2004; unesco, 2010b; bruns et al., 2011). conflict is a significant obstacle to schooling. conflict diverts resources away from the education sector (world bank, 2003). in sub-saharan africa, 10 of the 17 countries that experienced declines in education enrollment in 1990s were countries recovering from or still in conflict (caillods et al., 2006). the impact of conflict falls disproportionately on the poor and girls (kirk, 2003; undp, 2005). for example, about 2 million of the approximately 3.5 million out of school 6 to 11 year old children in the democratic republic of congo are girls (kirk, 2003). many children also do not attend or fully participate in school because they have some form of disability. unesco (2010b) describes disability as, “one of the least visible but most potent factors in educational marginalization.” (p. 181) many disabled children never enter school, when they do they make slow progress and eventually drop out. the review highlights the complexity of schooling; the factors that affect schooling are interrelated and require interventions at all levels – the household to the national level. methodology data this study used the 2006 uganda demographic and health survey (udhs) data to examine the school attendance and grade 5 completion of lower secondary school age children in uganda. the 2006 udhs is a nationally representative survey with a sample of 9,864 households. one of the objectives of the 2006 udhs was to measure key education indicators including school enrollment, attendance, repetition, and dropout rates. the other objectives of the survey were to provide policymakers and researchers with detailed information on reproductive health; fertility and family planning; adult and child mortality; maternal and child health; and domestic violence. the sample was selected in two stages. first, 368 clusters were selected from a list of clusters sampled in the 2005-2006 uganda national household survey and internally displaced peoples (idps). second, households in each cluster were selected – both randomly and purposively. because respondents were chosen with differing probabilities, the data was weighted to obtain unbiased estimates of the parameters of interest for this study. the standard errors of the estimates and regression parameters were corrected for the use of cluster sampling ii using the survey command in the stata software package. descriptive statistics uganda uses a 7-4-2-3 system of education; seven years of primary school, four years of lower secondary school, two years of high school, and three years of tertiary. the official age of school entry is 6; therefore 6-12 years (primary school), 13-16 years (lower secondary school), 17-18 years (high school) and 19-21 years (tertiary). the sample used in the study consisted of 4,695 children aged 13 – 16 years2. to determine whether or not a child had enrolled and attended school respondents were asked the following questions: has (name) ever attended school? did (name) attend school at any time during the 2006 school year? they were asked the second question if they reported they had attended school. surprisingly, the gender gap was larger 2the official lower secondary school ages in uganda are 13 to 16 (isced, 1997). http://www.uis.unesco.org/education/iscedmappings/pages/default.aspx current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 table 1 school participation of rural/urban children by age and gender girls boys attending school dropped out never enrolled total attending school dropped out never enrolled total rural 13 91.42 4.91 3.67 100 93.01 4.06 2.93 100 14 88.10 9.00 2.90 100 90.32 7.19 2.48 100 15 81.42 16.00 2.59 100 80.95 15.89 3.16 100 16 68.19 27.92 3.89 100 72.50 25.10 2.40 100 total 83.66 13.08 3.26 100 85.24 12.02 2.74 100 urban 13 89.88 7.47 2.65 100 98.75 0.00 1.25 100 14 84.94 15.06 0.00 100 93.57 4.86 1.57 100 15 80.51 19.49 0.00 100 81.38 17.01 1.61 100 16 76.14 22.59 1.27 100 83.95 11.69 4.36 100 total 83.43 15.40 1.17 100 89.70 8.25 2.05 100 in urban areas. about 13% of rural girls and 23% of urban girls reported they had dropped out of school compared to 12% of rural boys and 8% of urban boys. about 3% of rural girls and boys and about 1 – 2% of urban girls and boys had not yet enrolled in school. if they do enroll, research shows they are more likely to repeat grades and drop out before completing the school cycle (colclough & lewin, 1993; fentiman et al., 1999; glewwe & jacoby, 1995; unesco, 2005; wils, 2004). second, there was a sharp increase in the proportion of urban and rural children who drop out of school after age 14; however, urban girls reported a sharp increase from age 13. the dropout rate was highest among rural 16 year-old-children, where about 28% of rural girls and 23% of urban girls reported they had dropped out of school compared to 25% of rural boys and 12% of urban boys. on average over 80% of the children in the sample reported they attended school. in poor countries, like uganda, with limited ability to enforce compulsory schooling laws, households play a key role in the timing and duration of school participation (colclough & lewin, 1993; lloyd & blanc, 1996). therefore, table 2 presents school participation by household factors: child’s relationship to the head, education level of the head of household, wealth quintiles, and region of residence. table 2 shows that heads of households were more altruistic towards their own children or close relatives. children who reported they were not related to the head of the household were the most disadvantaged; about 65% of girls and about 64% of boys had dropped out; compared to about 9% for children of the head of household. it is possible that those children who were not related to the head of household resided in these households to provide domestic labor. households with an uneducated head had the highest proportion of out-of-school children; about 25% of the children in these households were out of school. the higher the education level of the head of household; the lower the proportion of out-of-school children. this survey did not collect information on household income, but they used information on household assets to create an index representing the wealth of the households. household wealth is positively associated with greater demand for education. children from households in the lowest wealth quintile faced significant disadvantage; about 12% of girls and 10% of boys reported they had not yet enrolled in school; compared to about 1% of girls and boys in the wealthiest quintile. primary school attendance and completion among lower secondary school age children in uganda 5 table 2 household characteristics and school participation girls boys attending school dropped out never enrolled total attending school dropped out never enrolled total relationship to the head of household son/daughter 87.25 9.45 3.30 100 88.39 8.78 2.82 100 adopted/foster 89.41 8.69 1.90 100 93.61 4.72 1.66 100 grandchild 85.31 12.36 2.33 100 83.87 13.65 2.48 100 other relative 76.08 21.82 2.10 100 81.07 17.52 1.41 100 unrelated 29.19 64.65 6.16 100 25.11 64.27 10.62 100 total 83.62 13.40 2.98 100 85.73 11.60 2.67 100 education of the head of household no education 75.28 15.93 8.79 100 76.48 15.02 8.50 100 incomplete primary school 83.73 14.10 2.18 100 83.98 14.46 1.56 100 completed primary school 90.96 7.34 1.70 100 92.03 7.61 0.36 100 incomplete secondary school 92.63 7.37 0.00 100 93.50 5.87 0.63 100 secondary+ 95.46 9.04 0.50 100 96.49 3.51 0.00 100 total 83.71 13.34 2.95 100 85.67 11.73 2.60 100 household wealth poorest 69.31 18.85 11.84 100 80.54 9.83 9.63 100 second poorest 82.37 14.11 3.52 100 84.55 13.90 1.56 100 middle 84.23 14.40 1.37 100 85.04 13.21 1.75 100 richer 92.49 7.37 0.14 100 85.09 14.18 0.73 100 richest 92.33 6.90 0.77 100 92.10 6.82 1.08 100 total 83.63 13.40 2.98 100 85.73 11.60 2.67 100 region central 1 83.86 13.87 2.27 100 79.61 19.94 0.45 100 central 2 87.82 11.54 0.64 100 87.86 11.40 0.74 100 kampala 79.93 18.52 1.55 100 91.73 5.83 2.43 100 east central 88.34 9.90 1.76 100 89.87 9.42 0.71 100 eastern 92.51 6.99 0.50 100 91.79 7.61 0.60 100 north 70.79 16.26 12.94 100 82.07 7.85 10.07 100 west nile 82.96 14.06 2.97 100 89.59 10.05 0.36 100 western 84.96 13.64 1.39 100 84.38 14.16 1.46 100 southwest 82.60 17.15 0.25 100 81.83 14.32 3.85 100 total 83.63 13.40 2.98 100 85.73 11.60 2.67 100 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 it is also important to look at regional patterns of enrollment because, like other countries in the region, uganda is likely to have differences in resources and infrastructure between administrative regions. furthermore, since the current government came to power in 1986, there have been internal conflicts in northern uganda. in 2004, the united nations described the situation in northern uganda as, “the world's worst humanitarian crisis.”3 the udhs data break down the 4 regions of uganda into 9 sub-regions: central – central 1, central 2 and kampala; eastern – east central and eastern; northern – north and west nile; western – western and southwest. the northern region had the highest proportion of 13 – 16 year old children who reported they had never enrolled in school; about 13% of girls and 10% of boys had not yet enrolled in school. the northern region was the only region where the proportion that had never enrolled was greater than the proportion that had dropped out of school. this supports the finding from previous research that majority of out-of-school children in regions that experience armed conflict have never enrolled in school (lewin, 2009). armed conflict has a negative impact on schooling (world bank, 2003). children from the conflict-affected northern uganda faced significant disadvantages. for example, about 30% of the children come from households where the head had no education and about 57% came from households in the lowest wealth quintile; compared to the central 1 where about 15% came from households where the head had no education and 5% in the lowest quintile. tables 1 and 2 indicate that rural girls, poor children, northerners, and rural children had less access to school. another big but less visible obstacle to schooling is disability. unesco (2010b) notes that, “beyond the immediate health-related effects, physical and mental impairment carries a stigma that is often a basis for exclusion from society and school.” (p. 181). table 3 presents children’s disability (difficulties with seeing, hearing, walking or climbing stairs, in remembering or concentrating, in self-care, and in communicating) and school participation. according to the udhs report (2007) the questions used to determine disability were, based on a tool that was being developed by the un washington group on disability statistics (wg). the wg is one of several city groups formed under the auspices of the united nations statistical commission, and it is mandated to develop tools to measure disability in censuses and sample surveys. the wg’s questions focus on a person’s functional abilities rather than physical characteristics. (p. 22) therefore, to determine disability respondents were asked the following questions: does (name) have difficulty seeing, even if he/she is wearing glasses? does (name) have difficulty hearing, even if he/she is using a hearing aid? does (name) have difficulty walking or climbing steps? does (name) have difficulty remembering or concentrating? does (name) have difficulty (with self care such as) washing all over or dressing, feeding, toileting etc.? does (name) have difficulty communicating, (for example understanding others or others understanding him/her) because of a physical, mental or emotional health condition? about 12% of children aged 13 – 16 years reported they had some form of disability. table 3 shows that a higher proportion of children with some form of disability were out-of-school. the most disadvantaged were those with difficulty with self-care, and communicating. for example, about 35% of children with a lot of difficulty with self-care and 40% of children with a lot of difficulty communicating had never enrolled in school; however, only 3% of children without a disability had never enrolled in school. the highest school rates were found among the physically disabled children; about 67% were attending school compared to about 38% of those who faced with a lot of difficulty communicating or self-care. table 3 indicates that the more severe the disability the greater the proportion of out-of-school children. table 1 showed an increase in the dropout rate after age 14. if these children remained out of school they more likely to be poor. the extent of the poverty would partly depend on the quantity and quality of education they received before dropping out. table 4 presents the proportion of children who reported they had completed grade 5 by gender and rural/urban residence. successful completion of grade 5 is often taken as the threshold for acquisition of literacy and numeracy (unesco, 2005). all respondents who reported they had enrolled in school were asked the following questions: what is the highest level of school (name) has attended? what is the highest grade (name) completed at that level? less than a third of children between 13 – 16 years have successfully completed grade 5. a closer look at table 4 indicates that a greater proportion of girls had completed grade 5; this was the case in rural and urban areas. in rural areas about 27% of girls and 26% of boys had completed the grade 5; in urban areas about 54% of girls and 52% of boys had completed grade 5. 3“top un relief official spotlights crisis in northern uganda,” un news service (11 november 2004). retrieved from: http://www.un.org/news/dh/pdf/english/11112004.pdf primary school attendance and completion among lower secondary school age children in uganda 7 table 3 child disability and school participation attending school dropped out never enrolled total difficulty seeing even with glasses no difficulty 75.15 21.60 3.24 100 yes some difficulty 77.76 20.33 1.91 100 yes a lot of difficulty 56.11 27.95 15.94 100 difficulty hearing even with hearing aid no difficulty 75.19 21.69 3.13 100 yes some difficulty 80.64 17.36 2.00 100 yes a lot of difficulty 54.91 24.49 20.60 100 difficulty walking or climbing stairs no difficulty 75.21 21.58 3.20 100 yes some difficulty 74.76 23.64 1.60 100 yes a lot of difficulty 71.52 11.82 16.66 100 difficulty remembering or concentrating no difficulty 75.56 21.39 3.04 100 yes some difficulty 74.46 22.16 3.38 100 yes a lot of difficulty 41.78 36.86 21.36 100 difficulty with self-care no difficulty 75.25 21.61 3.14 100 yes some difficulty 83.98 9.57 6.45 100 yes a lot of difficulty 34.16 26.74 39.11 100 difficulty communicating no difficulty 75.60 21.44 2.97 100 yes some difficulty 63.32 31.71 4.97 100 yes a lot of difficulty 34.71 24.82 40.47 100 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 8 table 4 proportion of rural/urban children who have completed grade 5 by age and gender girls boys grade 5 incomplete grade 5 completed total grade 5 incomplete grade 5 completed total rural 13 90.57 9.43 100 90.51 9.49 100 14 76.12 23.88 100 79.33 20.67 100 15 65.49 34.51 100 67.74 32.26 100 16 49.39 50.61 100 53.00 47.00 100 total 72.76 27.24 100 74.41 25.59 100 urban 13 70.83 29.17 100 70.87 29.13 100 14 49.41 50.59 100 55.56 44.44 100 15 34.40 65.60 100 43.57 56.43 100 16 21.62 78.38 100 12.93 87.07 100 total 46.05 53.95 100 48.09 51.91 100 table 4 shows that many children were not in the age-appropriate grade; this may have been due to combination of delayed school entry and grade repetition. hungi (2010) found that 53% of grade 6 students in the sacmeq iii project reported that they had repeated a grade at least once since they started school. moyi (2011) found that delayed school entry continues to be a problem in uganda. multivariate analysis results the objective of this study was to examine the schooling patterns of lower secondary school age children in uganda. therefore, the dependent variable was a nominal response variable with three categories; attending school, dropped out of school, or never enrolled in school. because there were three possible outcomes and multiple independent variables, the study used multinomial logistic regression. the multinomial logistic model is similar to a logistic regression model, except that the probability distribution of the response is multinomial instead of binomial. a multinomial logistic model involves a nominal response variable with at least three categories. a response variable with n categories will produce n-1 equations; therefore, in this study we have two equations. these equations are binary logistic regressions that compare one category with the reference category. in the multinomial logistic models, the reference category was the children who reported they are currently attending school. the models include the following independent variables: child’s gender, age, disability, number of household members below age 5, relationship to head of household (child of head, relative of head, unrelated to head), female head of household, education of the head of household (none, incomplete primary, primary, incomplete secondary), wealth quintiles, regions. these independent variables were based on previous research on determinants of education in sub-saharan africa. the results of the multivariate analysis are presented in table 5. table 5 reports the relative risk ratios for each variable in the model. the relative risk ratio (rrr) is the ratio of the probability of choosing one outcome category over the probability of choosing the reference category (attending school). a value of rrr that is greater than 1 indicates that the predictor variable will lead to an increase in the child being involved in that activity relative to the child not attending school. conversely, a value of rrr that is less than 1 indicates that the predictor variable will lead to a decrease in the child being involved in that activity relative to attending school. for example, in table 5 the 1.355 rrr for disability means that children who reported some form of disability were significantly more likely to drop out of school than those who reported no disability. primary school attendance and completion among lower secondary school age children in uganda 9 table 5 relative risk ratios of school attendance general model girls model boys model dropped out never attended dropped out never attended dropped out never attended female 1.195 1.082 age 2.040** 1.084 2.031** 1.128 2.104** 1.042 disability 1.355+ 2.173** 1.460 2.674* 1.235 1.669 number of children under 5 years 1.086+ 0.958 1.199** 0.924 0.997 1.014 female head of household 0.882 0.489** 0.954 0.321** 0.792 0.680 relationship to head1 other relative 2.996** 1.063 3.247** 1.169 2.917** 0.832 unrelated to head 48.206** 39.409** 48.123** 26.626** 45.776** 23.888** adopted/foster 0.772 1.063 0.913 1.210 0.601 0.781 grandchild 1.528* 0.714 1.470 0.574 1.698* 0.859 rural 0.736 0.710 0.887 1.283 0.578 0.373 region2 central 1 2.456** 0.414* 1.552 0.795 4.029** 0.141* central 2 1.445 0.220** 0.975 0.201 2.155* 0.325+ kampala 1.544 0.829* 1.641 1.786 0.933 0.692 east central 1.089 0.277* 0.787 0.402+ 1.655 0.162+ eastern 0.661+ 0.071** 0.403** 0.066* 1.055 0.087** west nile 0.990 0.253** 0.947 0.456 1.097 0.057** western 1.448 0.256** 1.094 0.212* 2.018* 0.384+ southwest 1.830* 0.357** 1.962* 0.041** 1.784 0.960 education of the head of household3 incomplete primary education 0.827 0.197** 0.852 0.193** 0.797 0.180** complete primary education 0.383** 0.088** 0.355** 0.111** 0.431** 0.038** incomplete secondary education 0.421** 0.033** 0.615+ 0.065** 0.262** 0.072** secondary+ 0.349** 0.022** 0.550+ 0.051** 0.156** 0.001** (table 5 and footnotes are continued on the next page). current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 10 table 5, continued wealth quintiles4 second 0.750 0.344** 0.548* 0.416* 1.131 0.194** middle 0.601** 0.251** 0.510* 0.248** 0.787 0.185** fourth 0.416** 0.074** 0.189** 0.022** 0.830 0.096** highest 0.285** 0.132** 0.251** 0.083** 0.317** 0.121** n 4676 2345 2331 notes: +p<0.10, *p<0.05,**p<0.01 1: reference group for relationship to head of household is son/daughter 2: reference group for region is northern region 3: reference group for education of head of household is no education 4: reference group for wealth quintiles is poorest in table 5 the general model includes all children aged 13 – 16 years. girls were more likely to drop out and never attend school but the results were not significantly different from the boys. results from the analysis indicate that older children had a greater risk of dropping out of school. children who reported some form disability have greater odds of never enrolling and dropping out of school than those who reported no disability. lloyd and blanc (1996) found that presence of children under age 5 increased the time needed for childcare. the general model also shows that the greater the number of children under age 5 in a household, the greater the odds that lower secondary school age children would drop out. lloyd and blanc (1996) highlight the important roles played by mothers and fathers. in this sample about 33% of the children resided in female-headed households; these female-headed of households were poorer (19% are in poorest quintile compared to 15% for male-headed households) and less educated (37% reported no education compared to 12% of the male heads). despite these challenges, there was no statistical difference in school attendance between children in female-headed households and those in households headed by men; however, children from female-headed households had a lower probability of never enrolling. the child’s relationship to the head of household has a strong effect on schooling. children who are not related to the head of household were about 39 times more likely than children of the head to never enroll and 48 times more likely to drop out of school. grandchildren and other relatives were also disadvantaged compared to children of the head; however, there was no statistical difference between children of the head and fostered children. the descriptive statistics showed a large proportion of children from the northern region of uganda never enroll; the general model shows that children from all the other regions were less likely than those from the north to never enroll in school. the effects of the education of the head were compared for children who resided in households headed by someone with no education, with incomplete primary schooling, with complete primary school, with incomplete secondary school, and with at least complete secondary school. the decision whether or not to send a child to school depends on the cost of schooling (chernichovsky, 1985; colclough & lewin, 1993; lloyd & blanc, 1996; unesco, 2005). therefore, the resources of the household have a strong and significant effect on enrollment and current attendance. table 5 shows a strong relationship between the wealth levels and the school enrollment and attendance. the more educated the head of household, the more likely the children would have enrolled and were still in school. the next two models in table 5 explore girls and boys separately. lloyd et al. (2008) found that girls and boys had different time use patterns; these differences affected their ability to enroll and attend school. the greater the number of children under 5 in a household, the greater the probability that girls of lower secondary school age children would drop out; however, the number of children under age 5 did not increase the probability that boys would drop out. this suggests the presence of younger children increased the need for childcare, and the greater responsibility largely falls on older girls. girls who were not related to the head faced a much greater disadvantage than boys. lloyd et al. (2008) also found that girls carry a heavier domestic workload; this may help explain the differences in enrollment patterns primary school attendance and completion among lower secondary school age children in uganda 11 between girls and boys. the resources of the household had a strong and significant effect on enrollment and current attendance for girls and boys. the impact of the education of the head of household was stronger on girls than boys; the boys in households with an uneducated head faced a greater disadvantage compared to girls in similar households. however, the difference in access to school between children in the poorest and richest households was greater for girls; girls in the poorest households faced a greater disadvantage than boys in similar households. this suggests that poor households were more likely to keep girls home than boys. in summary, table 5 presents a very complex schooling pattern for girls and boys. the households access to resources, as measured by the education of the head and wealth have the most significant and consistent effect on schooling. however, the relationship to the head of household had the strongest effect on schooling. it is likely that the children who reported they were unrelated to the head of household were residing in these households to provide domestic support. the objective of the second part of the study was to estimate the probability of completing grade 5. parents/guardians were asked the following question: what is the highest level of school (name) has attended? what is the highest grade (name) completed at that level? a dichotomous outcome variable (1=completed grade 5, 0=grade 5 incomplete) was generated from their responses. because the outcome variable is dichotomous, logistic regression was used to calculate the probability of children completing grade 5. if children enroll in school at the required age of 6 and progress successfully they should complete grade 5 by age 10. hence those who had not completed grade 5 had dropped out, delayed enrollment and/ or repeated classes. table 6 presents the three models. the general model indicates that girls were marginally more likely to complete grade 5; however, this difference was not statistically significant. this is an interesting finding because girls carry a heavier domestic load in households (lloyd et al., 2008), yet there is no difference in educational attainment with boys. as expected, older children were more likely to complete grade 5. children who reported some form of disability were less likely to complete grade 5. increasing number of dependents (number of children under age 5) reduced the odds of a child completing grade 5. female-headed households were poorer and less educated, but children who resided in these households had greater odds of completing grade 5. lloyd and blanc (1996) also found that female-headed households are more likely to invest resources to support children’s schooling. female-headed households spend a larger proportion of their resources on children than male-headed households. looking at the child’s relationship to the head of household, the findings show that children who were unrelated to the head were less likely to reach grade 5. in terms of regional differences, children in five regions had greater odds of completing grade 5. however, children in the west nile region had lower odds of grade 5 completion. an increase in the education level of the head of household was associated with an increase in the probability of completing grade 5. a child in a household whose head had at least completed primary school had greater odds of completing grade 5 compared to a child from a household whose head had no education. children from households in the two wealthiest quintiles had greater odds of completing grade 5; a child from the wealthiest quintile had 4.5 times greater odds of completing grade 5 compared to a child from the poorest quintile. the effect of household wealth had the greatest effect on whether or not the child completes grade 5. girls and boys were also examined separately because of the gender differences in time use (lloyd et al., 2008). for many of the variables the effects on girls and boys are similar. however, there were differences worth noting. the education level of the head of household and the wealth of the household had a greater impact on the grade 5 completion on girls than boys. a girl whose head had incomplete secondary had 2.7 times greater odds (p<0.001) of completing grade 5 than a girl whose head had no education; a boy whose head had incomplete secondary had 1.3 times greater odds (p<0.10) of completing grade 5 than a boy whose head had no education. similarly, a girl from the wealthiest quintile had 5.9 greater odds of completing grade 5 than a girl from the poorest quintile; a boy from the wealthiest quintile had 3.9 greater odds of completing grade 5 than a girl from the poorest quintile. the resources of the household had the greatest impact on the probability that children would complete grade 5. table 6 odds ratios of completing grade 5 general model girls model boys model female 1.093 age 2.265** 2.334** 2.236** disability 0.555** 0.567** 0.529** current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 12 table 6, continued number of children under 5 years 0.848** 0.814** 0.876* female head of household 1.398** 1.294+ 1.522** relationship to head1 other relative 0.963 0.802 1.200 unrelated to head 0.360** 0.510+ 0.137** adopted/foster 0.993 1.295 0.593 grandchild 1.259+ 1.321 1.224 rural 0.831 0.858 0.841 region2 central 1 1.878** 2.915** 1.292 central 2 1.490+ 1.794+ 1.267 kampala 2.084* 2.761** 1.673 east central 1.640* 2.222** 1.148 eastern 1.476+ 1.793* 1.314 west nile 0.496** 0.234** 0.785 western 0.770 0.698 0.824 southwest 1.035 1.403 0.813 education of the head of household3 incomplete primary education 1.003 1.253 0.818 complete primary education 1.675** 1.888** 1.481+ incomplete secondary education 1.909** 2.774** 1.355+ secondary+ 2.436** 2.903** 2.085** wealth quintiles4 second 1.147 2.086 0.703 middle 1.333 1.642+ 1.167 fourth 2.530** 3.850** 1.901* highest 4.537** 5.957** 3.921** n 4444 2226 2218 notes: +p<0.10, *p<0.05,**p<0.01 1: reference group for relationship to head of household is son/daughter 2: reference group for region is northern region 3: reference group for education of head of household is no education 4: reference group for wealth quintiles is poorest 4http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/gti.htm#goal2 primary school attendance and completion among lower secondary school age children in uganda 13 discussion and conclusion the international community set a target to achieve universal primary education by 20154. despite progress, unesco (2011) warned that the number of out-of-school children could rise by 2015 if countries do not redouble their efforts to increase enrollment. there were about 71 million children of lower secondary school age (13 – 16 years) out of school (unesco, 2011). clearly, more needs to be done to increase educational access for lower secondary school age children. the findings of this study demonstrate that the household structure, disability, wealth and the education of the head of household have significant effects on schooling. the study found that children from households with economic resources were more likely to remain in school, whilst those from poorer households were less likely to ever enroll, and more likely to drop out before completing the primary school cycle. children from wealthier households had a better chance of going to school and progressing through grade 5 than children from poorer households. the government of uganda is not reaching the poorest households. this limited access to schooling is evident despite the free primary school policy. this may be because the government pays tuition but households are still responsible for school meals, exercise books, and transportation (ministry of education and sports, 1999). other social policies are needed to augment government efforts in the education sector this means that policies aimed at wealth creation could raise child enrollment and attendance. because wealth creation takes time, therefore, it is necessary for the government of uganda to also pursue policies that are likely to have a more immediate impact such as conditional cash transfers. can conditional cash transfers encourage the poorest households to keep their children in school? conditional cash transfers could provide cash payments to poor households that keep their children in school. the cash transfers could boost household income and offset the direct and indirect costs of school enrollment and attendance. for example, bangladesh has a means-tested conditional cash transfer program, food for education (ffe). an evaluation of the ffe by the international food policy research institute found that school enrollment in bangladesh increased among the poor families (ahmed & del ninno, 2002). besides the socioeconomic status of the household, children who reported some form of disability also face significant obstacles. this study found that these children, especially those who had difficulty communicating or difficulty with self-care, were more likely to be out of school. the data suggest that the uganda government has not been able to reach the children with severe disabilities. uganda will not be able to achieve universal education if it cannot reach these children with disabilities. more research is needed to understand child disability and education in uganda. for example, in this study we were unable to establish the distribution of children with disabilities. the lack of reliable data on disability is not surprising; durkin et al. (2008) report that, “relatively little is known about the situation of children with disabilities globally, and in developing countries in particular.” (p. 5). one of the most interesting findings was that only about a third of the children in the sample had completed grade 5. the household wealth and the education of the head of household had the largest impact on grade 5 completion. this indicates that despite enrolling in school, majority of the children are not successfully progressing through school. this slow progression is likely to affect the quality of schooling because in addition to teachers dealing with multi-age classrooms, they face increased class congestion. previous research shows that the quality of ugandan schools has deteriorated significantly in recent years (byamugisha & ssenabulya, 2006; kasirye, 2009). more research must be undertaken to understand why so many children are not progressing through school successfully. it is clear we do not know enough about the obstacles some children face. the study raises many important questions. how can schools in uganda better serve the needs of all children? are poor children not progressing through school because they attend schools that offer poor quality education? if the government offers quality education, will the poor attend and progress? what does quality education in uganda look like? how is disability manifested in ugandan society? references ahmed, a. u., & ninno, c. 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(2003). breaking the conflict trap: civil war and development policy. washington, d.c. oxford university press/world bank. world bank. (2004). world development report 2004. washington dc: world bank. world bank. (2005). expanding opportunities and building competencies for young people: a new agenda for secondary education. washington, dc: world bank. . current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 16 article citation moyi, p. (2013). primary school attendance and completion among lower secondary school age children in uganda. current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1111 author notes peter moyi department of educational leadership and policies, college of education university of south carolina 305 wardlaw college columbia, sc 29208 moyi@mailbox.sc.edu peter moyi is an assistant professor of education in the department of educational leadership and policies. his research interests include: children's schooling, family structure and children’s well-being, poverty and income inequality in subsaharan africa. manuscript received: 10/26/2012 revisions received: 05/20/2013 accepted: 05/24/2013 primary school attendance and completion among lower secondary school age children in uganda 17 volume 16, number 2 august 13, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template 1 volume 7, number 4 may 4, 2004 issn 1099-839x what do students expect to learn? the role of learner expectancies, beliefs, and attributions for success and failure in student motivation christine galbreath jernigan university of new south wales this study uses the foreign language classroom to examine students' beliefs about learning, perceptions of goal attainment, and motivation to continue language study. survey and interview results indicated students’ attributions for success and failure and their expectations for certain subjects’ learnability played a role in the relationship between goal attainment and volition. it appears that over-effaciousness negatively affected student motivation. for other students who felt they were "bad at languages," their negative beliefs increased their motivation to study. suggestions for how these results apply to other disciplines and interventions for increasing student motivation are offered. introduction "life is largely a matter of expectation." horace (65 bc-8 bc) over the past decade, second language acquisition researchers have added greatly to their understanding of motivation. their discoveries are often relevant to educational disciplines outside language learning, but are rarely mentioned in academic journals or texts for more general education. the present study looks specifically at language student expectation and motivation to see how student expectations relate to their motivation for continued language study. this paper examines several affective aspects of expectancy. these include students’ attributions for success and failure as well as students’ self-efficacy defined as "assurance of capabilities" (bandura, 1994). these aspects were chosen because they are under the learners' control and can therefore be changed through interventions (weinstein, 1994). the relationship between expectations and motivation is relevant for educators in disciplines other than language learning, particularly for instructors or researchers of mathematics. in studying language, much like studying math, students come to the class with preconceived notions of their abilities to succeed. just as students of math "tend to see themselves as either mathematically inclined or disinclined" (watson-acosta, 2003), language students tend to decide early in their studies whether or not they have the "special gift" of language learning ability (horwitz, 1989). a brief history of motivational theories is offered, followed by the study’s significance to current literature. theoretical framework value-expectancy theories most relevant to this study is the social-cognitive approach to motivation, a theory generally used by educational psychologists. it emphasizes the influence that students' beliefs and interpretations of their experiences have on cognitive processes (weiner, 1986 in pintrich et al, 1993). the decisions involved in goal setting are influenced by the degree to which individuals expect their goals will be met and by their beliefs about the importance of effort and abilities. described formulaically, the attraction to a certain subject or task equals the value the person places on it "times the apparent probability it will be attained" (klinger, 1977, p. 303). value levels affect both initial and continued motivation. learners’ reactions to difficulties faced throughout the goal attainment process are influenced by whether or not they feel what is gained from their efforts is worthwhile-meaning, is the effort put forth moving current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 2 them in the direction they want to go (helping them make a certain grade, giving them a sense of accomplishment, etc.) (noels, 1999). the importance a task holds for an individual relates to what goal theorists term "goal orientation." orientation involves the reasons affecting students' initial choice, the degree and direction of effort, and whether or not students persist in that activity (nam yung, 1996). individuals may be oriented towards learning goals (also called mastery goals) or performance goals (covington, 2000). students with learning goals demonstrate an incremental belief about ability, wherein ability level is perceived as changeable, not fixed. they acknowledge the possibility for growth and focus their attention on mastery instead of just trying to get by. those with performance goals, conversely, demonstrate an entity belief about ability, wherein ability is fixed and not affected by increased effort. they tend to avoid difficult tasks for fear of failure. learning orientations have been shown to affect motivation and student achievement. mastery goals have been shown to lead to more active engagement in learning than performance goals (pintrich, 2000). students who are less cognitively engaged employ fewer learning strategies and self-regulatory practices which in turn affect their achievement (covington, 2000). schommer (1990) sees a direct link between beliefs and achievement. her study found college students who perceived knowledge as "fixed" demonstrated less appropriate, overly-simplistic writing styles compared to students who saw learning as more incremental and multi-dimensional (schommer, 1990 in mori, 1997). this is perhaps because those self-regulating strategies that help students try multiple solutions to challenges are the same strategies used in the complex thought of writing tasks (diener & dweck, 1980). self-efficacy and attribution the connection between student beliefs and volition has received little attention in language learning motivation research. further investigation could aid instructors and program developers in determining how to best meet students’ needs. albert bandura’s work in aptitude beliefs is the cornerstone of self-efficacy research. he asserts that highly efficacious students see difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered, not threats to be avoided: "such an efficacious outlook fosters intrinsic interest and deep engrossment in activities" (bandura, 1994, p. 73). self-efficacious students employ more strategic planning towards accomplishing their goals (oxford, 1994). efficacy levels also affect the type of linguistic information they choose to pay attention to, which in turn affects proficiency (mori, 1997). student efficacy often comes from vicarious experiences (schunk, 1991). for example, students may assess their language learning ability based on ‘myths’ propagated by classmates or on advertisers' promises of quick success. many university students expect to be fluent after one or two years of study (horwitz, 1989). they become frustrated when they do not progress that quickly and often discontinue study of the language when their expectations go unmet (horwitz, 1989; altman, 1985). bandura (1994) argues that the resulting frustration lowers self-efficacy and makes students "slacken their efforts and give up quickly in the face of difficulties" (bandura, 1994, p. 8). this frustration is not unique to language study. the negative stereotype about women and math, for example, affects students’ efficacy. female students are so averse to reinforcing the stereotype that they become overly anxious in math courses, impairing their performance (oswald & harvey, 2003). their lowered self-efficacy makes them use fewer autonomous learning behaviors necessary for achievement (greene et al, 1999) and causes attrition in future math-related courses (oswald & harvey, 2003). clearly, however, not all students desist when faced with challenges. to explain this variability, researchers in educational psychology point to student attributions, defined as perceived causes for success or failure (schunk, 1991). "locus of control," a generalized control over outcomes, describes how individuals perceive success or failure as either independent of their own actions and thus "externally controlled" or dependent on the way they behave and thus "internally controlled" (rotter, 1966 in schunk, 1991). an attribution such as "motivation" or "effort" would most likely be considered "controllable," whereas "luck" or task difficulty would be considered uncontrollable (weiner et al., 1983 in schunk, 1991). whether students believe they have control over learning outcomes affects how much effort they expend in learning and how long they persist in their efforts (oxford, 1994). according to dolinger’s (2000) study of college students’ locus of control, students who feel they have internal control may be more successful learners because they are more perceptive of their environments: "internals more readily acquire and utilize information that is relevant to their goal situation" (dolinger, 2000, p. 1). other studies show that students with internal attributions of control demonstrate higher achievement because they are better at planning how to complete academic tasks (biggs, 1987 in hall, 2001). conversely, attributions of low ability negatively affect long-term success and student retention, as students desist in the face of lower self-esteem and a sense of helplessness (graham, 1990 in tse, 2000) in recent years, these causal attributions have been more frequently mentioned in interpreting results of foreign language studies (nam yung, 1996; wen, 1997). yet few foreign language researchers have included attributional theories in the design of their studies. the present study operationalizes the concept of attributions within the context of the foreign language classroom. significance and objectives this study will examine university students of portuguese, a population chosen for two reasons. what do students expect to learn? 3 portuguese is the world’s eighth most widely spoken language (family education network, 2003) and is considered a "critical language" for the federal government. survey figures, however, show portuguese language programs in u.s. universities are not keeping up with other language programs in terms of growth (national security education program, 2001; silva, 2000). students of portuguese were also chosen as participants for examining expectancies and attributions since changes in beliefs may be most needed for students of languages that are less commonly taught (lctls). overefficaciousness has been shown to be problematic for students of more commonly taught languages such as french and spanish (horwitz, 1989). it can be even more problematic for students of lesser commonly taught languages because they have generally had less exposure to the language before its introduction in the classroom. they therefore have less real world experience on which to base their assumptions. of the limited studies on lctl students, several found that students were not aware of the level of difficulty of the language; the ensuing over-efficaciousness proved a barrier to continued motivation (wen 1997, p. 236). in fact, two years of instruction, the amount required in most universities, leaves the lctl student at only the very beginning stages of the language (mcginnis, 1994). in the case of portuguese students, many already know a bit of spanish and therefore may hold unrealistically high expectations of reaching advanced levels of portuguese within a short amount of time. this study seeks to answer the following research questions to see how students’ expectations, attributions, and beliefs about learning affect their motivation and their decisions to continue or discontinue formal study of the language: 1. what are students’ expectations for goal attainment? 2. what are students’ attributions for success and failure in meeting their language learning goals? what are their beliefs about language learning? 3. what role, if any, might students' perceived goal attainment play in students’ motivation and their decision to continue studying the language? methodology and procedures a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to survey a large pool of participants while also obtaining more in-depth data from open-ended questions and interviews. if we consider qualitative and quantitative research as two ends of a continuum rather than two completely distinct methods, this study would fall closer to the qualitative end of the spectrum. the study is therefore more exploratory than confirmatory. it offers a new perspective on this student group, but avoids the causal "certainties" that purely quantitative data pursues. the various types of data in this exploration worked together. numerical survey data (appendices a and b) gave general background information on students and an overview of their goals, expectations and motivations. it also helped determine which students to interview (a full description of this decision process is found in the "participants" section of this work). the more qualitative open-ended survey items added details to responses to the more numerical survey questions. they also pointed out key informants to interview and helped guide interview questions. for example, several students mentioned an advisor who had told them how easy it was to learn portuguese. i therefore interviewed this advisor to find out more about her interaction with students. post-survey interviews asked students to elaborate on their survey responses and thus obtained a more in-depth picture of students’ beliefs and motivations. these measures were developed through a series of pilot studies. measurements and pilot studies several pilot studies at the university of texas at austin (u.t.), where the actual study would be performed, elicited information about students' motivations. this information helped formulate interview questions and modify previously used survey instruments to fit this specific population. in the first pilot study, the researcher observed 30 class hours at the university of texas to become familiar with the portuguese classroom setting. opening and closing interviews were performed to see how students would articulate concepts like goals and goal attainment. the next pilot used three portuguese classes as its subjects. students were given an open-ended questionnaire that asked them to brainstorm their reasons for taking portuguese and their goals for their class. they then circled their three most important reasons and goals. the reasons students gave were coded and used to modify the motivational survey "reasons for studying spanish" (ely, 1986), which after further pilot testing became the survey section "reasons for taking portuguese" (appendix a part ii). similarly, the goals students mentioned were used to modify a goals survey previously used with students of french and spanish (harlow & muyskens, 1994). at the close of the semester, students completed speiller’s (1988) questionnaire "factors influencing students to continue or discontinue language study" and were asked to comment on any confusing or non-applicable parts of the study. based on students’ comments, the survey was broken down into two separate surveys, one for continuers and one for discontinuers. the third pilot study administered the revised surveys to students in two other portuguese classes. results indicated the importance of students' expectations to their perceived goal attainment. though no specific hypotheses were made based solely on pilot data, some preliminary assumptions served as a skeleton for examining patterns, current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 4 testing the conditions of various relationships, and building theories. to gain richer data and ensure that students’ individual responses would be elicited, the open-ended questions were added to the surveys. to test this combination of open-ended and likert scale items, the modified surveys were piloted. the actual study would begin soon, so this version of the surveys was given to a group of spanish students at another texas university to avoid having students see the surveys in both the pilot and in the actual study. this pilot was helpful in ensuring that students would understand the survey’s breakdown of cultural items. cultural items were broken down into four elements, as recommended by the american council for the teaching of foreign languages. the council notes that the culture taught in the classroom is not just one entity. instead, it consists of both products distinct to different countries and cultural patterns as well as the actual understanding (perspectives) of those products and patterns of behavior. in the surveys, the breakdown was described as follows:  country's products (e.g. books, art, music, political systems, etc.);  cultural perspectives on those products (attitudes explaining why certain products exist and are valued);  cultural practices (how people use cultural products; patterns of behavior such as how people celebrate, dress, etc.); and  cultural perspectives on those practices (i.e. the attitudes and ideas that explain why people behave as they do) (national standards in foreign language, 1999). this breakdown is important to avoid problems faced in previous research on foreign language goals. a prime example is found in alalou’s (2001)'s questionnaire on students' perceived needs in foreign language courses. as alalou admits, since the term "culture" was not defined, results were difficult to interpret: although in this study, 'culture' is understood in its broad sense, referring to both high and popular culture,..we know very little about students' definition of 'culture' because students in this study were not asked to provide a specific definition of the term (alalou, 2001, p. 461). in concluding this description of measure development, it should be noted that before beginning the actual study, the researcher realized the limitations of using self-report measures. one could argue, for example, that students may say that in the next few weeks they plan to register for another portuguese class and continue their studies, when in fact they may not actually register for that class when the time comes. this study examines students’ motivations, however, as opposed to all the many factors that affect course registration (illness, finances, etc.). as such, self-report measures appear to reveal the data necessary to better understand what encourages students to want to learn more. participants participants in this study included 101 lowerdivision portuguese students at u.t. austin, their instructors, and four student advisors. the research was reviewed and passed by the university’s human subjects review board. before any surveys or interviews were completed, the subjects received a consent form discussing the purpose of the research, their anonymity as subjects, and that their participation/non-participation would not be discussed with their instructors or otherwise affect their standing in the department. information on individual student participants was gathered through the background questions completed by eighty-four studentsforty-three females and forty-one males. most students were undergraduates (71.3%) with most of those sophomores or seniors, 26.2% were graduate students, and two students had already graduated. nearly half were humanities majors with the remaining students studying sciences or registered as ‘undeclared.’ well over half of the students were caucasian (63.1%). a large percentage were hispanic (29.8%). other students described their ethnicity as asian-american, africanamerican, or "other." most spoke english as a first language though over half of all respondents had studied spanish formally for over two years. twenty percent spoke spanish as a first language. just over half were taking the portuguese to fulfill a requirement. data collection data sources included surveys and interviews with students, instructors and advisors. in the actual study, the first week of class, the researcher administered the first survey on students' backgrounds, initial motivations, goals, and expectations (see appendix a). the second survey, administered the antepenultimate week of class, examined students' perceived goal attainment and reasons for (dis)continuing formal study (appendix b). telephone interviews were conducted with the following student groups: seven of the eight students who dropped the class before the end of the semester; all six students who were auditing courses; and five ‘extra’ students whose survey responses merited further inquiry. in addition, thirty students taking the course for a grade were selected to do both opening and closing interviews (see appendices c and d). these thirty subjects were selected using a stratified purposeful sampling technique (mertens, 1997) based on students' goal values and expectations ratings. groups were formed by coding goal value and expectation sections from the first surveys (appendix a part iii c and d). using excel, students were divided into four groups: those with a tendency to have low-valued goals paired with low expectations, those with low-valued goals paired with high expectations, etc. participants were separated into level (beginner, intermediate, etc.). each what do students expect to learn? 5 class was separated into the four groups and participants names were then randomly chosen from each group. to follow up on students’ responses, the researcher interviewed four teachers and four administrators whom students mentioned as having influenced their decision to study the language. data was also collected at tulane university to compare their students’ motivations for taking portuguese with university of texas students. tulane was chosen because it is a small private university (12,000 students) compared to the university of texas, a large public institution (49,000 students). the purpose of tulane’s inclusion was not to show that results from the university of texas study are transferable to all other universities. instead, by comparing u.t.’s data to a different university, it was useful in giving thicker description of u.t.’s population and environment. this may aid readers in deciding the degree of transferability this study has to their own situations. survey and interview measures and selection procedures were identical to those used with the university of texas sample, except that the second survey was not administered to the tulane population. thirty-five participants from tulane took part in the study. judging from non-participant observation, course descriptions and syllabi, and instructors' and students' comments, u.t. and tulane’s first and second semester courses seemed fairly similar in content. one tulane course, a portuguese literature class with five students, was not offered to u.t. undergraduates, and was therefore not included in the results. data analysis survey data analysis used the statistical software spss and included frequencies, means, and standard deviations, and factor analysis of likert scale responses. these figures and the reliability for each scale are found in the results section of this work. qualitative analysis used the qualitative research program "qsr nud*ist" (qualitative solutions and research pty ltd.’s non-numerical unstructured data: indexing, searching, and theorizing). it is a code-based theorybuilding program useful in forming and describing categories, making connections between categories, constructing theories, and validating or rejecting theories about categorical relationships. its flexible searching features were helpful in working with large amounts of text and coding. its compatibility with spss helped link the quantitative and qualitative data. as the data were collected, i transcribed interviews and employed a grounded theory approach for analysis and for analysis of the qualitative survey responses. i used strauss and corbin's (1990) analysis method: a "systematic set of procedures to develop an inductively derived grounded theory about a phenomenon" (strauss & corbin, p. 24). grounded theory involves going into a research situation (in this case, a college classroom) and finding out what is taking place and how the people relate to that situation. the first stage of procedures involved the "opencoding" of interview data, defined as "breaking down, examining, comparing, conceptualizing, and categorizing data." (strauss and corbin, 1990, p. 61). all 60 transcripts from the thirty main interviewees, along with those from the seven "drop" and the five "extra" interviews, were read for emerging commonalties and patterns. i used a line-byline approach analyzing each sentence and separating data into categories relevant to students' motivation. categories were given descriptive names like "beliefs about learning culture," and the categories were described in memos. throughout the coding process, i reread category names, their descriptions, and their coded information to ensure new information fit the categories. often times these rereadings, coupled with the constant addition of new data, prompted the collapse of two similar categories into one. or the addition of new data prompted the expansion of one category into several, for a richer description of the phenomenon. for example, at first i had only one category for students’ beliefs. later, however, this category was expanded into two categories: one for "beliefs-aboutlanguage-learning" (with subcategories for beliefs about "natural ability," the importance of "early exposure", etc.) and one for "beliefs about learning culture" (with students’ comments about how culture was learned separately from the language, how teaching culture was laden with bias etc.). the split was made as it became obvious, in analyzing student responses, that patterns emerged differently under those two categories. the next step involved "axial coding" in which connections were formed among the categories found in open coding. a tree-like structure contained each category, with "motivation" as the root from which branches (categories) and limbs (sub-categories) emerged. the tree diagram was modified as i worked and reworked the connections among categories, confirming relationships with data from other sources such as teachers' and administrators' interview data or responses to open-ended survey items. there was a constant interplay between the interview data and responses to questionnaire items to validate and refine relationships among categories. the tree sketches were helpful when interpreting and confirming quantitative findings. for example, i was not surprised when, during factor analysis, a survey item about students’ desire to "translate portuguese" clustered with less practical items such as "enjoy myself" and "improve my accent." interview data had similarly shown that many students whose goals fell into a "hobby/fun" category also had more "practical goals" and wanted to put portuguese to work-related use. data analysis took place both during and after data collection, in line with creswell’s (1998) emphasis on a zigzag approach between data gathering and its analysis. it was essential that the analysis begin during data collection current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 6 because the patterns, commonalties and differences that emerged early in the collection process could then be examined in further detail in later interviews, follow-up emails or extra interviews. results research question 1: student expectations reasons for taking the class: initial motivation to give a better idea of students’ expectations for goal attainment, it is important to examine why students initially decided to take the class. the "reasons for studying portuguese" section consisted of thirty items, including an "other" item; each item was ranked in importance ranging from 0-3. rankings of the top 10 means for responses for the "reasons for studying portuguese" section appear in descending order in table 1 below. the scale was subjected to an internal consistency reliability analysis. very few students responded to the "other" item so it was not included in determining internal consistency. the cronbach alpha was .73 which is somewhat low, suggesting multidimensionality within the survey items. as such, some clusters of items may tend to vary together more than others, bound by an underlying commonality (spss, 1999). a factor analysis was performed (tables 2-7) to show the underlying factors that link certain survey items. factor analysis was chosen over principal components analysis since it is recommended in cases where items are correlated. in fact, items did appear to be correlated as shown by the .718 kaiser-meyer olkin measure sampling adequacy. maximum likelihood extraction method with a promax rotation was used as it is suggested for use in cases where items are correlated (rennie, 1997). there were nine eigenvalues greater than 1.0. i decided to set the number of factors at six rather than nine since, judging from the scree plots, there appeared to be a leveling off after six factors, indicating that six factors were sufficient to account for the variance. values lower than .3 were suppressed. it is questionable in a confirmatory factor analysis to include variables whose correlations with the other variables are below .4 in absolute value (hedderson, 1993, p. 174). however, since this was an exploratory factor analysis and since the two variables with loadings just under .4 appear to fit conceptually, i felt the information gained from including the two variables outweighed any reservations about relatively low values. six factors accounted for 45.4% of the total variance and the factor correlation matrix showed a low correlation of .28, indicating that the six factors, or clusters, were distinct. these groupings of items were helpful in interpreting survey responses because items clustering together could be considered part of the same underlying concept. for example, the first factor to emerge was labeled "cultural interests" since it housed items related to students' interests in the target countries' cultures, including their history and their importance among other countries in the world. table 2 illustrates the questionnaire items that form this cluster and the factor loadings. this cluster accounted for 17.81% of the total variance and the cronbach alpha for this factor was .87. the second cluster of items that emerged was labeled "career/academic advancement." the total variance explained by this cluster was 7.96% and the cronbach alpha for this factor was .73. the items and loadings for this cluster are listed in table below. though it may appear that the "portuguesespeaking friends" item is illogically grouped among more practical motivations, interviews with students revealed that this cluster is not purely pragmatic in nature. the following student quotes show how work and pleasure cannot be so easily divided. the future career wasn't at all important at first. i was just interested in being able to understand what my (brazilian) girlfriend was thinking. but the sounds, i always liked..the cultural items came up later. then after taking the language, i started moving in the company towards latin american and then became interested..in latin american and brazil. (the main reason i am taking portuguese is that) i wanted to learn another language and have covered the western hemisphere with english and spanish.i never considered the job part. the job part i didn’t think of until later when it was like, ‘if i keep doing this, i could put it on my resume.’ i'm a spanish speaker and i inherently love the (portuguese) language and there's a trilingual fascination because of business which grew out of my love for spanish and brazil. so it (my reason for studying portuguese)does have to do with love of other cultures and brazilian friends, so i love to sell brazil. the third cluster, "requirement motivation," had a cronbach alpha of .37 and accounted for 7.55% of the total variance. the "travel for pleasure" item loaded positively for "requirement motivation" while other variables loaded negatively. the sign difference indicates that as interest in "travel for pleasure" increased, interest in "requirement" and "scheduling" decreased and vice versa. the fourth cluster, "language as hobby," accounted for 4.99% of the total variance and its cronbach alpha was .71. its items were characterized by a love of language study due to ease, experience, and intrinsic interest. the fifth cluster, "fun," accounted for 3.98% of the total variance and its cronbach alpha was .73. items in this cluster described students' desire to enjoy learning portuguese due to its interesting sounds and to the fact that is less commonly taught than spanish or french. what do students expect to learn? 7 table 1: top 10 students' ranking for reasons for studying portuguese survey item: reasons for studying portuguese mean standard deviation 9. because i feel it may be helpful in my future career 2.27 .97 1. because i want to use portuguese when i travel for pleasure to a portuguese-speaking country 2.21 .88 27. because i thought it might be fun 1.92 .92 7. because i am interested in (a) portuguese-speaking country's(ies') cultural practicess (how people use cultural products; patterns of behavior like how people celebrate, dress, etc.) 1.90 .91 3. because i am interested in (a) portuguese-speaking country/countries' history 1.80 .98 8. because i am interested in (a) portuguese-speaking country's (ies') cultural perspectives on those practices (i.e. the attitudes and ideas that explain why people behave as they do) 1.76 .90 2. because i want to able to converse with portuguese-speakers in the u.s. 1.76 .90 5. because i am interested in (a) portuguese-speaking country's(ies') products (e.g. books, art, music, political systems, etc.) 1.75 1.07 6. because i am interested in (a) portuguese-speaking country's (ies') cultural perspectives on those products (attitudes explaining why certain products exist and are valued) 1.65 1.10 15. because it may make me a more competitive job candidate or graduate school candidate 1.64 1.23 table 2: factor loadings for the "cultural interests" cluster (for tables 2-9, see appendix a part ii for full survey items) cultural interests loading 6. perspectives on products 0.904 7. cultural practices 0.881 8. perspectives on practices 0.828 5. cultural products 0.723 3. history 0.549 19. study in subject involving portuguese 0.487 17. important language in the world 0.396 current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 8 table 3: factor loadings for the "career/academic advancement" cluster career/academic advancement loading 10. study or business abroad 0.697 9. future career 0.56 15. competitive job/grad school candidate 0.529 21. connection to major 0.503 11. portuguese-speaking friends 0.475 table 4: factor loadings for the "requirement motivation " cluster requirement motivation loading 12. requirement university -0.658 4. requirement major. minor scholarship -0.631 18. scheduling -0.472 1. travel for pleasure 0.457 26. dissatisfied with study of another language -0.347 table 5: factor loadings for the "language as hobby" cluster language as hobby loading 24. languages come easy 0.872 23. love languages 0.734 25. easier given my background in spanish 0.523 table 6: factor loadings for the "fun" cluster fun loading 27. fun 0.765 20. sounds of portuguese 0.64 22. something different 0.558 table 7: factor loadings for the "heritage" cluster heritage loading 17. communicate with relatives 0.751 13. heritage 0.614 what do students expect to learn? 9 the final cluster, "heritage," accounted for 3.08% of the total variance and its cronbach alpha was .62. (see table 6.) these results indicate that students were taking portuguese for a variety of reasons, in particular future career and travel-for-pleasure plans; cultural reasons were also frequently mentioned. (see table 7.) tulane university’s results for initial motivation in comparing tulane’s results of the reasons section of the survey, independent sample t-tests found that only eight of the twenty-nine reasons were significantly different, and all eight were related either to language requirements, language-as hobby-items, or cultural items. the table that follows compares the ranking of means of u.t. and tulane students' reasons for enrolling, with the statistically significant reasons highlighted for the university with the higher mean. the table shows that tulane students placed less emphasis on the language requirement than u.t. students. interviews with administrators at the university of texas and with professors at tulane suggested that u.t. students use portuguese to fulfill the language requirement more than tulane students. this is most likely due to larger u.t. enrollments which cause spanish classes to fill up early. students therefore turn to portuguese as a viable option for meeting their requirements. since tulane is a smaller, private university, it has fewer problems with students' demands exceeding course openings. u.t. also has a longer language requirement of 4 semesters where tulane’s is three. tulane students’ ranking of "easier given spanish background, "love languages, and "languages come easy" as higher than u.t. students may owe to differences in language backgrounds of the two populations. table 9’s background survey results show that with the exception of the "over 2 year" category, tulane students tended towards greater exposure to spanish language than u.t. students. the background section of the survey also showed that tulane students had spent more time in a wider variety of spanish-speaking countries than u.t. students. perhaps differences in experience with spanish, be it formal study or travel/work abroad, could account for the higher number of tulane students noting that portuguese and language in general come easily to them. survey responses showed a general tendency for a broader range of responses from the university of texas population. results from the independent sample t-tests of the "reasons for studying portuguese" section showed higher standard deviations for u.t. than for tulane responses. examination of boxplots of responses from both populations indicated that this range of response from u.t. was not caused by outliers. these results could indicate that tulane is a more homogeneous sample. it could be argued, therefore, that the university of texas sample, with its wider dispersion of responses, gives a broader cross section of the larger population of portuguese students. though the nature of this study as a whole is exploratory, these results are helpful for researchers interested in conducting more confirmatory type analyses and for readers deciding how this study’s results transfer to their own situations. they indicate that u.t.’s population gives evidence of being a somewhat representative sample, offering diversity of responses that may be found in other university settings. goals for the course on the goals section of the survey (appendix a part iii), students ranked each goal item from 0-3. the scale was subjected to an internal consistency reliability analysis. the cronbach alpha was found to be .85. rankings of the top 10 goals are listed below. to have a clearer picture of patterns emerging from students' responses, survey items underwent a factor analysis. i used a principal axis factoring extraction method with a direct oblimin rotation. this extraction and rotation are recommended in cases where the items are correlated. there were only three eigenvalues greater than 1.0. i decided to set the number of factors at four rather than three, however, since scree plots showed more of a leveling off after four factors than after three. values lower than .3 were suppressed. four factors accounted for 56.2% of the total variance. again, clusters were labeled according to the underlying factor they appeared to represent. each factors’ percentage of the total variance (ptv) is listed in each table along with its cronbach alpha. it was obvious from survey results that several students’ goals followed from their reasons for taking the course. the four skills of "speaking," "listening," "writing," and "reading" ranked as the most important goal categories. this fits logically with the highly ranked reasons for studying portuguese "future career" and "travel for pleasure." meeting goals within the four skills categories would facilitate work-related contact with native speakers and travel to portuguese-speaking countries. it makes sense that the goal category "enjoy myself" ranked highly given the high ranking of "fun" as a reason for taking portuguese. it is important to note, however, that in many cases, students’ reasons for taking portuguese were different from their goals. the most marked difference was that of culture, ranked as an important reason for taking the class, but not ranked as highly as an actual goal for the course. expectations and perceived goal attainment results from the second survey indicated students felt most of their objectives were met except those involving speaking and cultural goals. the rankings for the top 10 goals attained are found in table 15. using a scale from one to ten, students ranked the degree to which they felt their goals for the semester were met. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 10 table 8: reasons and tulane reasons rankings (sd=standard deviation) u.t. rankings mean sd tulane mean sd future career 2.35 0.97 future career 2.57 0.65 travel for pleasure 2.2 0.87 travel for pleasure 2.43 0.61 cultural practices 1.91 0.91 cultural practices 2.29 0.79 fun 1.78 0.96 love languages 2.23 0.91 cultural products 1.78 1.07 perspectives on practices 2.23 0.88 competitive job/grad school candidate 1.76 1.2 competitive job/grad school candidate 2.2 1.08 perspectives on practices 1.76 0.98 easier given spanish background 2.17 0.92 perspectives on products 1.75 1.04 fun 2.06 0.87 history 1.75 1 cultural products 1.97 1.07 love languages 1.65 1.09 converse with speakers in u.s. 1.94 1.03 requirementmajor/minor/scholarship 1.62 1.45 perspectives on products 1.91 1.04 converse with speakers in u.s. 1.6 0.89 history 1.91 1.01 portuguese-speaking friends 1.56 1.08 sounds of portuguese 1.8 0.99 sounds of portuguese 1.55 1.09 portuguese-speaking friends 1.77 1.17 study or business abroad 1.49 1.3 connection to major 1.77 1.19 important language in the world 1.45 0.86 important language in the world 1.77 0.77 easier given spanish background 1.44 1.13 languages come easy 1.74 0.98 connection to major 1.42 1.32 study or business abroad 1.71 1.3 something different 1.22 1.03 study in subject involving portuguese 1.43 1.2 requirement-university 1.16 1.42 something different 1.11 1.02 languages come easy 1.05 1.03 requirement-major/minor/scholarship 0.97 1.18 study in subject involving portuguese 0.76 1.1 requirement-university 0.49 0.92 scheduling 0.42 0.88 faculty encouraged me 0.32 0.73 communicate with relatives 0.33 0.9 advisor encouraged me 0.26 0.79 classes less demanding 0.31 0.69 communicate with relatives 0.26 0.78 dissatisfied with study of another language 0.29 0.71 heritage 0.17 0.57 advisor encouraged me 0.25 0.75 scheduling 0.14 0.6 faculty encouraged me 0.22 0.71 classes less demanding 0.11 0.53 heritage 0.18 0.58 dissatisfied with study of another language 8.57e02 0.28 what do students expect to learn? 11 table 9: u.t. (in comparable classes to tulane participants) and tulane participants' formal study of spanish formal spanish study percentages of u.t. participants* percentages of tulane participants native spanish-speaker 25.90% 42.90% over 2 years 61.10% 48.50% 2 years or less 1. 8% 8.50% no previous study 11.10% 0% table 10: students’ top 10 goal value rankings goal category mean std. deviation 4. speaking 2.44 0.96 2. listening 2.24 1.04 1. writing 2.23 1.01 3. reading 2 1.2 13. enjoy myself 1.81 1.28 12. grade 1.71 1.34 5. cultural products 1.39 1.18 10. accent 1.25 1.26 11. translating 1.23 1.24 14. language requirement 1.19 1.41 table11: factor loadings for the "four skills" cluster four skills ptv 46.05% cronbach alpha .86 loading writing 0.778 listening 0.809 reading 0.374 speaking 0.929 current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 12 table 12: factor loadings for the "culture" cluster culture ptv 11.2% cronbach alpha .84 loading cultural products 0.605 perspectives on products 0.818 cultural practices 0.605 perspectives on practices 0.837 table 13: factor loadings for the "requirement" cluster requirement ptv 5.4% cronbach alpha . 52 loading grade 0.754 language requirement 0.45 table 14: factor loadings for the "linguistic hobby" cluster linguistic hobby ptv 3.5% cronbach alpha .73 loading compare portuguese -0.463 accent -0.619 translating -0.666 enjoy myself -0.534 table 15: rankings for students' perceived goal attainment item n minimum response maximum response mean standard deviation language requirement 26 4 10 9 1.62 grade 45 0 10 8.27 2.58 enjoy myself 50 2 10 7.72 2.42 compare portuguese 28 0 10 7.64 2.67 reading 52 0 10 7.08 2.33 listening 58 0 10 6.38 2.44 writing 58 0 10 6.17 2.44 translating 37 0 10 6.11 2.16 speaking 61 0 10 5.93 2.68 accent 38 0 10 5.89 2.71 what do students expect to learn? 13 ranking relatively low were goals of speaking (ranking 9 th ), accent (10 th ), and the four cultural items (ranking 11 th -14 th ). students interviewed were asked about these specific items. responses indicated that they either lowered their expectations as the semester progressed especially with respect to speaking goalsor they held low expectations for these goals from the outsetparticularly for meeting cultural objectives. these trends in expectations deserved further inquiry. speaking goals interview results showed that portuguese students, like students of more commonly taught languages, believed it is best to learn how to speak the language "naturally" in the target country rather than by taking classes (wenden, 1987). instructors of other disciplines may find that students hold similar beliefs about subjects such as art, music, social studies, etc. students may come to the class with preconceived notions that such topics lend themselves only to "learning in the real world" and thus may not see them as learnable in the classroom. one might assume that after actually spending time in class, students would come to see the classroom as a workshop for experiential learning. they would thereby increase their expectations for meeting goals they had previously thought were incompatible with the classroom setting. yet students in this study often times held even lower expectations for meeting speaking goals as the class progressed. this was due to not getting many opportunities to speak the language in class and not finding native speaker contacts to practice with outside of class. instructor interviews indicated teachers felt they were giving students the chance to practice and the opportunity to have a hand in their own learning. the activities teachers cited as practice, however, were often seen by students as rote, time-wasting exercises. for example, one teacher gave a biweekly answering machine assignment that he felt "motivated students to work on their own". however, several students described the activity as "silly," and one student said she felt "it wasn't really applying.. it was more like putting the words together from the vocabulary list". nearly half of the students interviewed felt that portuguese pronunciation itself and their speaking goals in general were more difficult than expected. surprisingly, many of these students spoke spanish. the following citations are only a few examples of comments that demonstrate how spanish slowed students’ learning. it's a little more difficult for spanish speakers because the accent is tough for spanish speakers to grasp. (researcher: that's interesting because you thought a spanish background would make it easier to learn portuguese.) right, the grammar, the reading is not hard but the actual speaking is difficult. it's more difficult than i expected. the spanish helped with sentence structure but the pronunciation is hard whereas in spanish, when you read it, every letter is the same as it is written. it's strange because it seems it should be easier than it is, but phonetically it is a challenge. it still amazes me the differences (in spanish and portuguese) and it's difficult. with non-native spanish speakers it's brand new but we (native spanish speakers) have a lot of problems. to us, it's not right. i have to say it over and over and unteach myself (the spanish way) to say it in portuguese. interestingly, students in this study mentioned that university advisorsinstead of helping them make more realistic expectations about learning to speak portuguese, had instead overstated the ease with which they would learn the language. one undergraduate advisor was interviewed because her name in particular was mentioned as having suggested portuguese as an "easier" alternative to spanish. in the interview, the advisor said that she recommended portuguese to students for "practical reasons," explaining that the structure of portuguese is very similar to spanish, that the vocabulary is 70-85% identical to spanish, and that portuguese grammar was "easier than spanish grammar". based on these comments alone, students may come to portuguese class with the idea that spanish will be more helpful than it actually is, and they may set goals that are not attainable within the time frame they expect. another reason behind some students’ difficulty in learning to speak was their anxiety. spanish-speaking students in particular mentioned anxiety as a stumbling block. students who acquired spanish at home felt that they did not have the language learning tools that other students had. their comments below were revealing: they (non-native spanish speakers) learn.. with like "predicate" yada, yada, yada and i learned it by.. hearing people and knowing that's the way you say it whereas in a language class, they teach you "this person," "that person," structurally, i guess so i learn it different..i don't know how to get into that. from my standpoint, i've never had to learn a new language.. so it's completely new to me..so it's actually more difficult than i expected. i find myself being very frustrated at times. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 14 cultural goals interview responses on expectations for cultural goals revealed that many did not expect to learn culture in the classroom: i was going into the course understanding that if you're not in the society or with the group of people, you're not going to really learn much. you can only learn so much about cultural aspects before you go. you have to live there for awhile. importantly, students’ expectations of what is learnable in the classroom had obvious effects on the degree to which they valued certain goals: i'm interested in learning, but i haven't kicked in..my attitude's not in the mood to learn. it's hard because i have the mentality that in a classroom, it's more difficult to learn the language than in the country because that's how i always saw it. only one of the four portuguese teachers interviewed mentioned culture in his response to the question, "what are your goals for this portuguese class?" after discussing his goals of communication, he added, "also i like to teach a lot of culture and have them teach each other culture, so every friday we had cultural presentation". though the teacher's intent was to help students know more about brazilian culture, the "friday's only" nature of its inclusion only reinforced the idea that learning culture is not integral to learning the language. as one student said, learning culture is "extra" and as another noted, it can be learned "secondary to learning the language." when students who had listed low expectations for meeting cultural goals were asked about their low ratings, many said they felt classroom instruction on culture would be biased: with somebody teaching about cultural issues, they're going to filter it through their point of view so it's gonna be like a little biased on how they're presenting things. you really have to be in the society in order to really get a good perspective of the whole culture..it could be in some way biased by the beliefs of that one person. students mentioned native portuguese-speaking teachers as giving a "better cultural perspective" than nonnative speakers. as one student put it, "you pick up a lot from observing a culture, but you know a lot more when you participate in it". another student explained how it is more difficult for non-native speakers to teach about cultural perspectives since "you won't learn those things if you're not in direct contact with people of the actual culture". research question 2: student attributions learners attribute success or failure to effort, ability, luck or task difficulty (schunk, 1991). open-ended survey and interview responses as to why students did or did not achieve their goals revealed a combination of these attributions at work. the following categories emerged as reasons students felt they attained their goals: ‘self’ (including effort and attendance), ‘teacher,’ ‘class itself’ (the curriculum and the structure of the class), and ‘peers’ (enthusiasm and participation of classmates). students who met their objectives described themselves as self-motivated, felt they worked hard, and said they were constantly exposing themselves to the language. as to attributions for failure, two categories emerged: ‘class’ (not enough time in class to practice speaking/listening or to focus on culture or reading) and ‘self’ (lack of motivation and work, lack of attendance). over half of the attributions fell into the latter category with comments such as "i figured i would have more time, but it's turned out to be a really tough semester" or "i needed to put more time in it myself". interviewees often mentioned not being good at learning languages, but it was rarely blamed as the cause for not meeting their language goals. to further understand why it wasn’t considered a cause, twenty-nine of the thirty selected interviewees and four of the early drop students were asked, "are some people inherently good at learning languages?" four categories of students’ beliefs about language learning emerged, with some students falling in more than one category: ‘natural ability,’ ‘early exposure to the language’ (such as growing up with a parent who spoke a second language), ‘general exposure to other languages’ (learning a second language after childhood), and ‘motivation.’ twenty-two of the total thirty-three students asked this question in interviews felt that some learners were better due to natural ability. they made comments such as "the language side of the brain is where some are talented so it's inherent without a doubt", or "some people just naturally pick it up faster for no other reason-even if they study, some people can't pick it up as fast". only six students were in the ‘early exposure’ group. they felt that some learned languages better than others because they had exposure to a second language as a child. ten felt ‘motivation’ made some individuals better language learners than others because their mindset pushed them to succeed: "it's more of a psychological attitude.. all people can learn if they open their mind to it". and "it (natural ability) has a little to do with itit’s how open-minded you what do students expect to learn? 15 are about learning and how much you think it'll benefit you later on." if grouped along the lines drawn by goal theorists, ‘motivation’ and ‘general exposure’ attributions are incrementally oriented, in that students feel they have some control over their learning. the ‘natural ability’ and ‘early exposure’ attributions display an entity or ‘learning-isfixed’ view. particularly interesting, however, was the crossover of students who felt both natural ability and motivation were at work. two examples of mixed attributions responses are as follows: there may be a genetic predisposition to learning languages but also there's differences in motivation. i have a step brother who can be in any country and in two months pick up the language..it's a freak of nature, but for most people i know, the ability to learn the language is dependent on motivation and that's it..interest determines aptitude in that aspect. it appears these students have one set of beliefs about learning languages that is more entity-oriented- believing that some people are born with a language learning "gene". they have another set of beliefs they hold for general learning that is more incrementally oriented believing that success is still possible through hard work. their motivation-is-key beliefs about general learning may to some degree temper their ‘fixed aptitude’ beliefs about language learning. this would explain why many students whose beliefs fell into the ‘natural ability’ category still took the credit for their success and the blame for their failures. to explore this possibility, interviewees were asked "how do you see yourself as a language learner?" of the twenty-five students responding, sixteen felt they were "not good" or "average", two felt they were "somewhat good" but had to work very hard, while only seven felt they were good at learning languages. one student who felt he was "not good" at learning languages felt he had to "go through the motions, prodding ahead". interestingly, he added, "while others have an inherent ability, i’m highly motivated so i overcome my lack of ability". similarly, another student said he was "certainly not" good at languages, adding, "i'm inherently very interested, but not inherently talented. i have to workit doesn't come naturally". research question 3: goal attainment responses to survey items and to subsequent interview questions offered insight into whether or not students’ perceived goal attainment during the semester influenced their decision to continue or discontinue studying portuguese. one might assume that students would continue or discontinue taking courses based on decisions made before the present course. in fact, according to first and second survey background questions about students’ intentions for subsequent semesters, 42% of students changed their minds about continuing or discontinuing over the course of the semester. the ‘continuance/discontinuance’ section of the second survey asked students what factors affected their decisions to continue or discontinue taking portuguese (appendix c). forty-five students completed the ‘continuance section’ of the second survey while 19 students completed the ‘discontinuance section.’ the rank order of the top 10 reasons students offered for continuing portuguese are given in table 16 below. according to likert scale items on progress and goal attainment, nearly half of the continuing students were continuing because of their low level of progress and just over a third noted that "goals not being attained" influenced their decision to continue. interview follow-up questions concerning these counter-intuitive responses pointed out the importance of why students felt their goals were not met. students whose surveys were coded as "low perceived goal attainment" were asked directly how they felt about not meeting those specific goals. those who had decided to continue echoed comments like the following: "that (achieving objectives in portuguese) is just gonna take a lot of time and whether they're met or not won't mean i'm frustrated because i know they're gonna take awhile and i would need to work on it." this student did not let his lack of goal attainment influence him to discontinue. instead he was continuing because he credited that lack of success both to his own effort and to the difficulty of learning a language. another student’s response to the same questions was as follows: "you can't give up so easily. language is sometimes a question of practice. you have to keep trying." she attributed not meeting her speaking goal to not having sufficient time in a one-hour class to practice enough each day. her later comment, "yet, joshua (portuguese teacher) did a very good job," coupled with her assertion that language learning is a question of practice, showed that she attributed her lack of success to the very nature of learning a language. table 17 shows the rankings by descending means of the reasons students felt influenced their decisions to discontinue taking portuguese. the most mentioned reason, "graduating", leaves little room for intervention. the second reason"language learned better in portuguese-speaking country" deserves further attention, however, and will be examined further in the discussion section of this work. over half of the discontinuers noted the influence of this belief in their decision to discontinue. another interesting item in the second survey’s top reasons for discontinuing portuguese was "goals attained". as one student put it, "a little more (in the area of writing skills) wouldn't hurt, but i feel like i have adequate knowledge to do what i want to do right now". his rationale current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 16 table 16: top 10 reasons for continuing (for full survey items, see appendix b, part iii) continuance scale items n=45 mean standard deviation 1. travel for pleasure 2.4 0.99 14. future career 2 1.09 14. requirement-major/minor/scholarship 1.98 1.31 30. connection to major 1.82 1.32 29. sounds of portuguese 1.8 1.1 36. fun 1.78 1.13 22. important language in the world 1.76 0.98 3. history 1.71 1.04 26. satisfaction with class 1.71 1.08 7. cultural practices 1.71 1.01 table 17: top 10 reasons for discontinuing (for complete survey items, see appendix b, part iv) discontinuance scale items n=19 minimum maximum mean standard deviation 8. i'm graduating this semester 0 3 1.58 1.54 11.language learned better in portuguese-speaking country 0 3 1.16 1.26 2. fulfilled language requirement-major/minor/or scholarship 0 3 1.11 1.49 12. classload full 0 3 0.89 1.33 1. fulfilled language requirement-university 0 3 0.79 1.36 19. goals attained 0 3 0.58 1.02 7. level not fitting (too easy/difficult) 0 3 0.58 0.96 18. goals not attained 0 3 0.32 0.82 4. dissatisfied with teacher 0 2 0.26 0.65 15. other students at a different level 0 2 0.21 0.54 is indicative of a general trend among students whose goals were met "to the extent" they felt they needed, so they were not continuing their studies. some students who had already learned spanish as a second language-as opposed to those who acquired spanish from childhood-had the advantage of having already learned a language. they sometimes found that after one or two semesters, they could communicate enough to be understood and were satisfied with their level of proficiency. this reason for discontinuing may be shared by students of other disciplines (courses in computer skills or photography, for example) in which an introduction to the topic may be all what do students expect to learn? 17 students feel is necessary, since prior knowledge helps fill in the gaps. survey data indicated that a greater majority of students who decided to discontinue language study, however, were influenced by a more negative factor: not meeting their goals for reasons they felt were out of their control. for example, the survey reason "level not fitting" had half its respondents ticking the "level too high" option. the item, "other students at a different level" had all its respondents ticking the "other students at a higher level" option (see appendix b part iv numbers 7 and 15 for full survey items). the textbook appeared to be a major reason why these students were not able to bridge the gap between their knowledge and other students’ knowledge. one student berated the texts’ lack of "communicative activities" and "non user-friendly" nature, while another said she had to "fumble through the homework" with no helpful explanations. a particularly frustrated student called it "a rotten book", and several others said they had to have the teacher’s help to grasp text material. one teacher described the text as "horrible" and the other three teachers expressed similar disappointment. it simply did not allow for selfhelp. another external attribution for failure emerging from the data was the ‘dissatisfaction with the teacher,’ ranking as ninth out of twenty in importance in the surveys and mentioned at length in interviews. interviewees said the dissatisfaction stemmed from not seeing the relevance of the activities teachers chose. again, complaints about the friday culture reports were mentioned. one of several students who complained said he skipped fridays to avoid hearing other students’ "bad portuguese". another student hated that the teacher kept showing "cheesy telenovelas" that were too difficult to understand: "they're just annoying!" discussion and recommendations many students in this study appeared to have two types of beliefs: one for general learning in which they felt their actions affected outcomes and another belief for language learning, in which people either have or don’t have a natural ability to learn languages. some students demonstrated, however, a crossover of these beliefs. they felt that with hard work, lack of "natural ability" could be overcome. similarly, mori’s (1997) study with university students of japanese found that in some cases "knowledge beliefs in general were transferred into the domain of language learning" (mori, 1997, p. 14). however, general learning and language learning are "independent constructs, which indicates the existence of domain specific belief dimensions" (mori, 1997, p. 14). interestingly, students in this study who felt they did not have the language learning "gift" did not let that lower their motivation-quite the contrary. students were perhaps demonstrating a strategy that garcia (1995) describes as defensive pessimism, wherein students envision the worst case scenarionot attaining their goal of a higher grade for example, and use the anxiety the negative image evokes to fuel them to work harder. instead of feeling empowered by a higher sense of self-efficacy, many of these students "gain some degree of control over the riskiness of evaluative situations" by becoming "emotionally prepared in the event they do actually do poorly(garcia, 1995, p. 30). for students who attribute success not only to ability but also to motivation, this volitional strategy may buffer the blow of non-attainment of goals, diffusing frustrations that could have otherwise lead to decreased motivation. kuhl (1986) explains this phenomenon by saying that volition is metamotivational, meaning that it deals with students' "wanting to want" to reach a goal and thereby helps students focus their energy on attaining goals they feel are difficult to reach (kuhl, 1986 in corno, 1993, p. 16). these forces would not be necessary if goals were easy to attain (corno, 1993). yet, students with lower self-efficacy, in noting their "deficiency in language learning", make goal attainment a carrot that is difficult to reach, thereby rallying their motivational forces to attain the goal. as concerns student attributions for success and failure and continued motivation, over a third of continuing students said they decided to continue because they did not attain certain goals. they recognized their objectives were not accomplished because they failed to engage motivational strategies to get the work done. therefore, they did not blame the teacher or the course for not attaining their goals. these students continued to have high expectations for meeting their goals, noting that if they tried harder in future courses, they could reach them. concerning student motivation and the reasons students listed as affecting their decision to discontinue taking portuguese, many showed a decrease in their motivation to continue taking portuguese when they felt other students were at a higher level than they were. rosenthal and bandura (1978) would argue that these students are "gauging their own efficacy through knowledge of how other students are performing in the class" (rosenthal and bandura, 1978 in schunk, 1991, p. 123). classroom practices such as grading on a curve or playing highly competitive games overemphasize the varying levels of different students. teachers should instead "instill in students that they are still acquiring knowledge and skills" such that the gap in abilities at the outset of the class may level out throughout the course (rosenthal and bandura, 1978 in schunk, 1991, p. 123). teachers might consider, for example, implementing portfolio assessment to encourage students to see how far they have come. this will emphasize the "self-comparison of progress" rather than comparison with other students (bandura, 1993, p. 125). students also felt frustrated that the textbook did not enable them to "catch up" to other students because it did not help them learn on their own. self-efficacy specialists would argue that without this control providing current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 18 "a major cognitive mechanism to sustain motivation", students may feel helpless, become frustrated, and desist (bandura, 1994, p. 7). an obvious solution is for teachers and students to dialogue about in-class and homework materials to ensure any problems are solved early on. students should also be made aware of resources other than the textbook that would help them attain their goals. these might include language tutors or student mentors in higherlevel classes, online language resources, or supplementary texts. also beneficial are group study sessions before exams or quizzes. an in-class discussion of any such sessions should take place once students receive test results to determine if the session was helpful. such meta-analysis helps students connect their efforts to the outcomes as opposed to feeling predestined for success or failure. students also suffered a decrease in volition when their goals were not attained due to perceptions that class activitiesnamely cultural and speaking activitieswere "time-consuming and of little practical benefit", (verlie and rosenthal, 1981 in woloshin 1983, p. 356). such results fit with the literature on more commonly taught languages. one of students’ top complaints about language courses was the mismatch between their objectives and the activities chosen by the instructor (harlowe and muyskens, 1994). this "mismatch" involves three issues that have implications for educators, administrators, and teacher trainers. the first deals with teachers having difficulty knowing what students’ goals are. this study showed that students ranked culture as an important reason for taking the class, but did not rank it highly as an actual goal for the class. it is common practice, early in the semester, for teachers to ask students why they have decided to take a university course. it may be difficult, however, for this method of inquiry to determine students’ objectives; reasons for taking a class may help formulate objectives, but they cannot be considered the goals themselves. asking more specific questions about students’ short term goals similar to those asked in the goals section of surveys used in this workcould better determine student objectives. also important for curriculum planners was the interesting mix of responses for reasons why students were taking the course. in the "career advancement" factor analysis cluster of students’ reasons for taking portuguese, students demonstrated a blurred line between work and pleasure. if educators hand out note cards asking students for their majors and why they are taking the course, they may only receive the "socially acceptable" career-oriented responses (copa, 1991). course content may thus fail to target students’ hobby-like interests, losing valuable motivating aspects of the curriculum. the second issue deals with knowing how to tailor the class to meet the objectives of the students. this tendency to "miss the mark" with targeting the activity to the students is particularly difficult for new language teachers (copa, 1991). yet even experienced instructors may have trouble deciding on activitiesthe difficulty being that just because a certain task should help students meet their objective does not mean that it is an activity that will be well received by that student group. for example, harlow and muyskens' (1994) study of university students of intermediate french and spanish found students rated speaking as one of their top three goals in the foreign language class, yet rated two types of speaking activities (partner conversations and presentations to the class) at the bottom of their list of preferred activities. university students in tse’s (2000) study said that they wanted to focus on oral communication, yet they strongly disliked certain speaking activities such as having to speak in front of the class (tse, 2000, p. 80). oftentimes teacher training programs themselves are at fault for not preparing prospective teachers to meet these individual "quirks" among student populations. instead, teaching approaches and activities are presented as universally applicable and do not take into account the diversity of the classrooms teachers will enter (schleppegrell, 1997). teacher education courses should include hands-on training to help teachers learn how to adapt teaching methodologies and customize classroom activities. instead of having student teachers do an internship at only one location, for example, training might include a rotation system to expose future teachers to a variety of student groups. the third issue deals with not communicating to students how the activities of the classroom meet student objectives. previous research indicates that adult language learners often "do not connect the goal to the activities of the language classroom" (bassano, 1986, p. 17) and are frustrated by what they see as purposelessness activities. for example, students in this study ranked tasks like the answering machine activity or watching telenovelas as "silly" and "irrelevant", while the instructor perceived these tasks as quite beneficial. regardless of how well instructors think a task meets students’ goals, it is ultimately how students perceive the tasks that affects motivation. though most teacher training courses emphasize the importance of knowing what objectives a class period will try to meet, many fail to train teachers how to clearly show students the connection between activities and objectives. teachers must learn how to include "meta-discussions" on how certain tasks meet specific needs. research shows that underscoring this relationship is imperative. otherwise, students may highly value and feel very motivated toward certain goals, but the utility value may be low for certain tasks, resulting in less cognitive engagement (pintrich, 1993) and lower motivation. results of students’ beliefs and expectations for learning culture show how their perceptions of the teacher influenced their motivation to learn culture. this included not only their perceptions of the teachers’ expertise on the topic, but also how much they felt teachers emphasized culture in the classroom. many students held expectations that native speakers would be better teachers of culture what do students expect to learn? 19 because native teachers do not "filter" cultural aspects through their own perspectives. this view fits with previous research on teaching culture wherein students were concerned over the differences in "objectivity" of native and non-native teachers, demonstrating apprehension with having the culture filtered through a non-native teacher's perspective (jernigan & moore, 1997). as such, it appears that some students view learning culture as the teacher imparting information that is either accurate or inaccurate. perry (1968) found that students, as they first enter college, tend to see knowledge as absolute and handed down by some higher authority. as students learn more about a certain topic, they perceive that there are a variety of opinions and that learning is relative to context (perry, 1968 in mori, 1997). to help students make this leap in perspective, instructors must emphasize that cultural information, whether it be in print or from the lips of a native speaker, is loaded with the "biases" of the speaker and then perceived through the listener's cultural paradigm. students should discuss how to critically view culture and how to recognize the ubiquitous nature of the cultural "filter". from many students’ perspective, teachers did not make culture a focus in the classroom. when it was included, it was an adjunct "friday-culture day" activity, and not an integral part of the course. this only reinforced many students’ view that culture is not learnable in the classroom setting. both this study and previous work on learning culture (root, 2003; jernigan and moore, 1997) indicate that teaching culture in the language classroom is challenging. every educational discipline has its challenging aspects, and instructors must be aware that the "sin of omission" may be sending students unintended messages about certain concept’s learnabilty. in contrast with students’ low expectations for learning culture were their high expectations for learning to speak portuguese. results showed that several spanishspeaking students’ felt frustrated because they held higher expectations for their learning than they were able meet. educators must be aware that prior knowledge may actually confuse students and should take care not to push students into goals that are out of their reach. past researchers in other disciplines such as math have found that over-rating ones ability can lead to decreased effort (greene, 1999, p. 14). schunk (1991) notes that "challenging but attainable goals raise motivation and efficacy better than easy or hard goal (schunk, 1991, p. 120)". by helping students make realistic objectives, teachers are pre-empting future disappointment and lowered motivation. in this study, it was unfortunate to see that overeffaciousness was sometimes caused by student advisor’s misrepresentation of courses. it is ineffective advertising for administrators to represent a course as "easy" if it leads to student frustration and decreased motivation. communication between instructors and student advisors concerning class descriptions is essential if incoming students are to be presented with accurate information on which to base their expectations. students in this study who grew up bilingual from birth found themselves feeling anxious in class because they had never really learned, but had rather acquired, another language. instructors must be cognizant of the fact that though it may appear students have prior experience in a certain context, they may still feel anxious in thelearning situation. they may be even more anxious than other students, as they may feel expectations for their fast progress are higher. in a variety of disciplines, anxiety has been shown to interfere with processing of information, inhibiting performance (ashcraft & kirk, 2001). lowering anxiety in the foreign language classroom aids acquisition by allowing students to actually focus on language input (tse, 2000). implementing relaxation techniques or using group work have been suggested as ways to release tension and help students feel less alienated and more supported in the classroom (higbee & thomas, 1999). one final reason why students decided to discontinue formal study was that they felt languages are better learned in a portuguese speaking countrynot within the artificial confines of the classroom. one could argue that the classroom did not offer them a feeling of "real world" learning. similar research in other disciplines like math and statistics notes that students avoided or dreaded courses because they did not feel coursework was relevant to everyday life (gal & ginsburg, 1994). this points to the need for the classroom to be structured in such a way that students feel they are gaining experience applicable in the outside world. in the case of language courses, bringing in native speakers to the classroom and linking students to native speakers outside the classroom in coffee houses or online chat sessions could help students see their learning as experiential. this focus on relevance and authenticity is essential to motivation in all disciplines. teachers should continually brainstorm with their students, with other teachers, and with administrators over how to expand the four walls of the classroom. limitations the results of the study should be understood in light of several limitations. self-report measures should be interpreted with caution. in many cases, verbal reports for students' reasons for their motivational decisions were given after the actual decisions were made. students are having to rely on their memory to report their reasons. students may also be giving motivations they feel are logical instead of reporting their true motivations. in addition, goals and motivation are complex constructs that students may have trouble defining, much less describing in interviews or rating on surveys. just one example would be that students were asked about "short term goals for the semester", but separating short from long term goals is a complex task that will hold individual differences among students. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 20 finally, the current study is limited in that its scope is only exploratory, not confirmatory. further research is needed to determine causal relationships among the complex phenomena of students’ expectations, attributions, and continuing motivation. future directions as concerns other recommendations for future research, this study encourages us to see how language students’ expectations compare to students of other disciplines. many of us know from our own experiences that it is not uncommon for a student to assume, "i flunked that test!" only to receive an "a". it would be particularly interesting to see if students of other disciplines use "defensive pessimism" to increase their volition and protect themselves from the threat of failure. this study opens the door for future research comparing language learning to the learning of mathtwo topics with tendencies for lower student motivation and higher student anxiety. language learning research has claimed that higher anxiety is due to student identity and self-expression being more closely tied to language than to other academic subjects: the importance of the disparity between the ‘true’ self as known to the language learner and the more limited self as can be presented at any given moment in the foreign language would seem to distinguish foreign language..probably no other field of study implicates selfconcept to the degree that language study does. (horwitz, 1986, p. 28). yet research in topics such as statistics and engineering that are gender stereotyped with respect to perceived ability has shown similar identity issues with students’ perceptions of self-concept and self-efficacy (clark, 1999; gal & ginsberg, 1994). women experiencing "stereotype threat" in math-related courses, for example, are said to "disidentify with math in order to protect the self" from fulfilling the stereotype of girls not being good at math (oswald, 2003, p. 139). opening a dialogue between these disciplines may increase possibilities for helpful interventions as regards student motivation. finally, the students of this study were asked to consider their goals for the current semester, but these may be inextricably linked to their future goals. distant goals such a career opportunities are often contingent upon completing certain courses but are not contingent on actual performance of the tasks in the course (greene et al, 1999). some evidence has been provided that a positive relationship exists between these future goals and students’ monitoring of their own learning, which may then affect performance (miller et al, 1996). future investigation is needed to determine specifically how future goals interact with short-range goals and how they affect students’ motivation and achievement in the classroom. notes 1 for the full background section of either survey or any other survey details, please contact the author at christinejernigan@yahoo.com references alalou, a. 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"the undergraduate curriculum: the best and the worst." modern language journal 67(iv): 356-364. http://positivepractices.com/ what do students expect to learn? 23 appendix a: first survey part i: background information 1 part ii: reasons for studying portuguese please rate the degree of importance to you of the following reasons for studying portuguese. circle your rating using the following scale. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 24 part iii: your goals in this class a. what are your goals for this semester of portuguese? though you may also have long-range goals that differ from those you plan to accomplish in this class, please consider only your goals for the current semester. (space provided) b. the first column below contains categories of goals that some portuguese students have mentioned as important for them. if the goal category in column 1 is an important area you want to work on in your portuguese class this semester, write what specifically you hope to accomplish in that area on the blanks in column 2. you may write more than one specific goal if you like (see example). if the goal category in column 1 is not something that is your goal this semester, write "none" on the blank in column 2. what do students expect to learn? 25 current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 26 c. please look back over column 2 in part b. if you wrote more than one specific goal for a category, circle the one that is most important to you. an example is given at the bottom of this page. d. look back again to part b and rate your estimate of the importance for each specific goal you wrote. circle your rating in column 3 using the scale below (put "n" for "not important" if you put "none" in column 2). if you had more than one specific goal for a certain category, do your rating for the goal you circled. an example is given below. e. what would you estimate is the probability that during the course of this semester you will achieve your specific goals you rated as slight, moderately, or highlyimportant in part d? below are written only the goal categories ("writing," for example) but please answer based on the specific goals you listed for each category in column 2. if you listed more than one specific goal for a category, do your probability rating for the one you circled. circle the expected probability for each outcome. (please circle only one number per item.) what do students expect to learn? 27 appendix b: second survey part i: background information 1 part ii: goal attainment this semester a. goal attainment ratings below are handwritten the specific goals you listed on the first survey. (if you listed more than one goal per box, only your circled goal appears below). in column 4, please rate the degree to which you feel your specific goal in column 2 was attained this semester. 16. for goals you feel were attained, to what do you attribute the success? (space provided) 17. for goals you feel were not attained or were attained to a lesser degree, to what do you attribute that lack of success? (space provided) current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 28 b. goal modifications refer to columns 2 and 3 in part a above. in your first survey, you rated your specific goals for the semester as: what do students expect to learn? 29 c. continuing or discontinuing portuguese study 1. do you definitely plan to take another portuguese class (meaning a class where the language spoken is portuguese). please check yes or no. then check any applicable letter(s) below your response. 2. if you answered yes above, continue to part iii and respond as a "continuing student." if you answered no above, please skip to part iv and respond as a "discontinuing" student. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 30 part iii: factors influencing continuance of portuguese study a. 1. what in particular do you feel has influenced your decision to continue taking portuguese? (space provided) b. please rate each factor as to the amount of influence it had on your decision tocontinue taking portuguese. what do students expect to learn? 31 appendix c: first interview questions (30 selected students) current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 32 1. i appreciated so much your responses on the survey about why you've decided to study portuguese but i'm also curious as to what you would say is the main reason(s) for taking portuguese? 2. on your survey you listed as goals for the portuguese class you're taking as ___ (list goals the student mentioned on survey). have you modified these goals in any way? (if yes) how have they changed? in what ways specifically have these goals changed? (if yes) what was the impetus for this change? 3. have your interests changed throughout the semester? (if yes) in what ways specifically? (if yes) what would you say are the reasons behind your increased interest in ___? a. thus far in the semester, do you feel your goals of ___ are being met? b. (for goals student said were met) to what do you attribute the success with meeting your goals of ___? c. (for goals not met) to what do you attribute the lack of success in meeting your goals of ___? 4. do you feel your goals of ___ are similar to or different from teacher's? 5. (if have previous portuguese and/or spanish experience-first survey background section numbers 11 and 12) you listed on your survey that you had previous portuguese experience in ___ (list class or country visited) and spanish experience in ___ (list class or country visited). i'm curious if you also have experience in other languages besides spanish or portuguese? (ask specifics for each: high school including number of years, university, travel/living abroad, native speaker exposure and their relation to the interviewee, other) 6. (if had previous language classesfirst survey background section numbers 11 and 12) a. in your past language classes, did you feel they met your expectations? b. do you have an overall positive or negative impression from your past language classes? 7. a. you said in your survey you're a _____ major (list their major from first survey background section number 11). when you were in the process of deciding your major, would you have considered majoring in portuguese? (if they're a portuguese major) what factors went into this decision? (if not) what would you say were the reasons for not considering being a portuguese major? (if considered, but decided to not major in portuguese) could you describe the process behind your decision? b. would you have considered majoring in another language? 8. a. do you feel some people are inherently good at language learning? what do students expect to learn? 33 b. where would you say you fit in with that? c. why would you say more students don't take portuguese? 9. how motivated do you feel at this point? i'll give you a five point scale to choose from: ___ not at all ___ not very ___ somewhat ___ very ___ extremely (if rating has changed since first survey, mention their previous rating and ask them how they might account for the increase or decrease, or if it's just coincidental.) 10. how do you feel about the class so far? a. has the class been what you expected... or more... or less... than what you expected? b. is there anything you would like to change about the class? 11. how would you rate your level of satisfaction at this point in the semester, on a five-point scale __very dissatisfied __dissatisfied __somewhat satisfied __ satisfied __ very satisfied 12. are you planning to take a portuguese class next semester? (if yes) which? when? 13. a. is portuguese about the level of difficulty you expected it to be? b. if it's more or less, what would you say you'd based your previous assumptions on? c. you'd said on the survey you thought you should study ___ hours and that you planned to study ___ hours (first survey background question numbers 22 and 23 1 ?). have you had to study about ___ hours as you thought? *questions 14-19 are for only for students with specific responses on their surveys. *14. on your survey you described portuguese as "different" a. could you explain how you felt it would be different? b. has it proved so far to indeed be something different? *15. (for students who have already taken a semester of portuguese) you listed the following reasons for taking portuguese this semester: _________________, ________________, ______________ . . . (list reasons student gave on the survey). would you say that the reasons you had for taking this semester are the same as those you had for taking portuguese your first semester--when you were just starting-or were some of your reasons different then? *16. you'd listed as a reason for taking portuguese that you were dissatisfied with another language course. in what way(s) did the other language course not meet your expectations? *17. you'd mentioned as a reason for taking portuguese that it might help with your future career. in what current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 34 ways specifically might portuguese be an advantage in your area? *18. a. your expectations for ___ were relatively high compared to your other expectations. to what do you attribute this higher response? (if there were several items, go through them separately.) b. your expectations for ___ were relatively low compared to your other expectations. to what do you attribute this lower response? (if there were several items, go through them separately.) *19. you'd listed as a reason for taking portuguese that you thought it might be fun. fun in what respect? (try to see if they meant the language, the culture, language classes in general, etc.) 20. is there anything else that i didn't ask, anything you would like to add or discuss in further detail? closing statements: thank you so much for you time and your thoughtful responses. if you have any questions, feel free to contact me...(give contact phone/email information.) what do students expect to learn? 35 appendix d: second interview questions (30 selected students) 1. motivation type some say there are basically 4 types of motivation when it comes to learning languages. i'd like to read the 4 types and then ask if you feel you fit into one or more of these groups or if your motivation does not fit in any of these groups. i'll repeat the names and main ideas of the 4 groups at the end so don't feel you have to remember the specific names. the first is called an... integrative motivation based on a personal interest in the people and culture of the country external (instrumental), meaning you're motivated by the practical value to learning the language or by financial advantages or with greater future opportunities like getting into grad school or securing a job. internal (intrinsic) motivation that comes from inside you--love of the language, the sounds, internal curiosity that is learning just for learning's sake resulting from success (resultative) motivation is a result of the success you're had in learning the language (after the student has had time to think, repeat "the first, integrative...meaning a love of the culture," the second, "external which is more practical," the third, "internal, a love of the language," and the fourth, a result of your success.) 2. goal modification a. i touched on this question in the first interview but more time has passed so i'll ask it again. would you say that since the beginning of the semester you have any new goals or interests? b. (if they’ve modified their goals) how would you account for the change in your goal/interest? 3. additional questions for specific students *3. (for apparent instrumental motivates) parrot student’s response from the first survey "reason's" section for the following items: career item number 9, study item 10, study a subject involving portuguese item 19, grad/job candidate item 15. then ask the following: a. this question is purposefully vague to avoid asking a more direct, leading-type question. when asked about your motivations for taking portuguese, you responded that you were interested in _________________ (cite the career they mentioned). yet if i went back one more step and asked why it is you are motivated to pursue this career in _________________, what would be your reason? b. (if response to question "a" is practical/instrumentally leaning, do a member check and continue to number 4. if a's response appears rather intrinsic, ask) would it safe to say then that though your motivations of _________________ (cite career again) for taking portuguese appear rather practical and external to yourself, that in fact you have a more intrinsic motivation for doing _________________(cite career)? *4. if student was a continuer and some goals were unmet (second survey continue section item a17), but student's attributions were not due to own effort, ask: a. your goals of _______ were not met to a very high degree this semester. how do you feel about that? current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 36 b. it has not made you decide to discontinue. why did this shortcoming not affect your decision to continue? c. do you feel the goals were realistic? d. some of your goals this semester went unmet. some argue that students of a lesser commonly taught language like portuguese are more frustrated if the class differs from what they expect because students of less commonly taught languages come in with specific things they want to accomplish. (pause because they may have a comment already.) others argue they are more flexible as far as not being frustrated if the class differs from what they expect. which, if either, would you say is a truer picture of you as a portuguese student? *5. if had any exposure to portuguese previously (first survey background section number 11), ask: you mentioned in your survey that you had had exposure to portuguese in ______. did this exposure help you have more realistic expectations or was it misleading as far as expectations? *6. if student is a discontinuer and gave as a reasons that portuguese is time-consuming (second survey discontinue section 9) or that their class load was too full (second survey discontinue section 12 ), ask: some argue that lack of time, be it due to course load or other reasons, is somehow indicative of a lack of interest. in your particular situation, how would your respond to this. *7. (if portuguese is not a requirement according to first survey item 17) will you have to stay in school any longer because you took portuguese? *8. for students who on the first survey or in the first interview described portuguese as "more difficult" than they had expected or said they had to study more than had thought (first survey 23/ second survey 5/ first interview number 13) you mentioned on your survey that portuguese was more difficult than you expected. so how, if at all, did you have to modify? in other words, did you change your study habits to meet the higher level of difficulty? (ask for specifics of those changes, if any). *9. if goals were modified (second survey second section) a. i noticed on your surveys that your goal(s) of _______________ increased as the semester went on. why would you say that is the case? prompt: what would you say was the source of these new interests or increased interest? b. if the following are true:  if student's goals were modified  if, in the first interview, the student gave a clear idea of what they felt the teacher's goals were  and if on the second survey goals section, the goals that increased in importance were those they felt the teacher emphasized, (look at first interview question number 4 and second survey second section -see if similar to teacher's), then ask: i noticed there was a similarity in the increased importance of your goal(s) of _______________. this goal is the same one you mentioned as a goal the teacher had for the class. how would you account for that-is it just a coincidence? what do students expect to learn? 37 4. representative do you consider yourself representative of your classmates? in other words are you similar to the other students or would you say you are different from them? current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 38 2004 article citation jernigan, c. g. (2004, may 4). what do students expect to learn? the role of learner expectancies, beliefs, and attributions for success and failure in student motivation.current issues in education [on-line], 7(4). available:http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number4/ author notes christine galbreath jernigan, ph.d curriculum and instruction: foreign language education, holds research interests in student motivation and the affective factors that influence learning. she has taught critical thinking and research skills courses at the university of new south wales in sydney, australia. she has also taught elementary and secondary teacher education at the university of texas at austin. she is currently writing a guidebook for parents raising their children to speak their second language. she can be contacted at christinejernigan@yahoo.com by email or (603)963-6488 by fax. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation jernigan, c. g. (2011). what do students expect to learn? the role of learner expectancies, beliefs, and attributions for success and failure in student motivation. current issues in education, 7(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/824 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number4/ christinejernigan@yahoo.com  http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word 905_final.docx 1 volume 16, number 1 february 25, 2013 issn 1099-839x examining the support of modern athletic reform proposals developed by the coalition on intercollegiate athletics in response to higher education athletic reform: a case study wade w. zimmerman university of north texas leah e. wickersham texas a & m universitycommerce this study was conducted to determine the success for the diffusion of the coalition on intercollegiate athletics (coia) white paper framing the future: reforming intercollegiate athletics. the stages of concern questionnaire (socq) and personal interviews were utilized to collect data and purposeful sampling was used to identify one ncaa division i university in the state of texas. athletic personnel and faculty senate members were asked to complete the socq and participate in an interview for the study. findings provide evidence that the participants share common concerns in relation to the adoption of the coia white paper such as creating a balanced approach to academics and athletics, increasing campus pride, and academic integrity. participants also felt that meaningful collaboration among faculty and staff members can prove beneficial to helping individuals take ownership in the adoption process. keywords: athletic reform, case study, faculty senate, athletic personnel intercollegiate athletics have undergone many changes over the past century. these changes have occurred as a result of reform movements in education and intercollegiate athletic programs. societal changes occurring during this time period were another factor that contributed to these changes. maintaining academic integrity, the proper alignment of academic mission statements, the “athletics arms race,” and the increasing concern regarding the commercialization of high profile intercollegiate athletics remains a challenge for many intercollegiate athletic programs. literature review role of athletics in education for over a century in the united states alone, athletics have forged an unparalleled path into the higher educational systems we have today. there are many explanations supporting the integration of athletics into the american higher education system. supporters claim that “college sports are significant in defining the essence of the american college and university” (toma, 1999, p. 82). according to miller (2003), there are basically three main reasons for the inclusion of athletics into the educational setting. first of all, sports aid to the overall development of young people. secondly, sports contribute to increased academic performance and upward occupational/socialmobility. lastly, athletic programs can help increase a school’s overall student enrollment and revenue. (p. 33) participation in intercollegiate athletics has long claimed to help students achieve a well-rounded education. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 athletes can acquire many beneficial skills through their participation in sports that can be used off the playing field as well. miller (2003) suggests that “higher education is financed publicly because it is thought to have a positive externality” (p. 34). so, the question becomes: how have sports enabled young adults to contribute to a more productive society? duderstadt explains that “in theory at least, college sports have provided an opportunity for teaching people character, motivation, endurance, loyalty, and the attainment of one’s personal best-all great qualities of great values to citizens” (p. 70). participation in athletics also requires a delicate balancing act between being able to prioritize one’s athletic, academic, personal, and social life. in order to be successful in the classroom and on the playing field, college athletes must be able to properly balance classes, games, practice, travel, and devoting a sufficient amount of time to study for each class. as far as intercollegiate athletics and enrollment are concerned, statistics have shown that college athletic programs can help increase a school’s overall studentbody enrollment. over the past century, many have believed that fielding a nationally-competitive athletic program is favorable to an institution’s enrollment and general well-being. with the enormous amount of exposure many of today’s high profile athletic programs are receiving from competing in bowl games and postseason tourneys, it is not surprising that these schools are experiencing an increase in enrollment. for example, “the university of south carolina had a 23% increment in its pool of applicants in 1985; a year following its most wins in football. wake forest had a 14% increase in applicants in 1995 credited largely to the success of its basketball and football teams (folkenflik, 1995). the type of national exposure that these elite athletic programs receive through media, ticket, and merchandise sales opens up the door to a diverse population of potential students who may not have been familiar with the school, but identify with the particular sports program. even the academically prestigious northwestern university experienced an increase in applicants after its football team went to the rose bowl in 1996 (selingo, 1997). furthermore, the enrollment statistics above suggest that athletic programs can play a significant role in the collegiate atmosphere. supporters claim that intercollegiate sports play a vital role in defining the american colleges and universities. additionally, supporters emphasize benefits associated with athletic programs, such as financial donations (grimes & chressanthis, 1994; rhoads & gerking, 2000), public perceptions of graduates (lovaglia & lucas, 2005), and local community service and goodwill (toma, 1999). however, balancing such positive claims is not an easy task, as many athletic departments are condemned for bringing down the university’s core academic mission, engaging in excessive commerciallydriven behavior, and permitting unethical behavior (bok, 2003; shulman & bowen, 2001). current issues & challenges in intercollegiate sports maintaining academic integrity, the proper alignment of academic mission statements, and the increasing concern regarding the commercialization of high profile intercollegiate athletics has been a challenge for many intercollegiate athletic programs. as far as commercialism is concerned, “big time college sports today more closely resemble the commercialized model appropriate to professional sports than they do the academic model” (knight foundation, 2001, p. 9). several polls over the past twenty years have shown that public perception of intercollegiate athletics has been depicted in an unfavorable light. according to the knight foundation commission (1991), three out of four americans believed television dollars, not administrators, controlled college sports, while eight out of ten americans believed intercollegiate sports are “out of control” and athletic programs are corrupted by big money. additionally, the poll found that americans felt that many cases of serious rules violations undermine the traditional role of universities as places where young people learn ethics and integrity (knight foundation commission, 1991). in 2006, another poll was published by the knight commission that found 74% of americans believed that a conflict exists between the commercialization of college athletics and academic values. the same poll further noted that many americans believed that commercial interests often prevail over academic values and traditions. the results of these polls suggest that further examination of the reform efforts of intercollegiate athletics is needed. finding innovative ways in which to fund intercollegiate athletics programs has remains a challenge for many institutions. aside from private donors and alumni, universities have used a combination of sources to help fund and maintain their athletic programs, such as: club and suite sales, concessions, corporate sponsorships, facility naming rights agreements, facility rental fees, game guarantees and ticket sales. however, it has been reported by sperber (2000), that the majority of american universities subsidize their athletic programs out of the general funds, thus funneling money that could be used for educational pursuits into intercollegiate athletics. this claim can be supported as annual budgets for athletic department expenses increase by approximately ten percent each year (hall & mahoney, 1997). zimbalist (1999) asserts that there is little, if any relationship between the success of a school’s athletic program and contributions to the general fund. additionally, others argue that the revenues raised from athletic booster organizations are at the expense of contributions to the university’s academic fund (shulman & bowen, 2000). university student fees have also been a key source to help subsidize many institutions. gillum, uptom, and examining the support of modern athletic reform proposals developed by the coalition on intercollegiate athletics in response to higher education athletic reform: a case study 3 berkowitz (2010) found that more than $800 million in student fees and university subsidies are being used to support athletic programs at the nation's top sports colleges, including hundreds of millions in the richest conferences. ensuring the proper alignment of academic mission statements with intercollegiate athletics is a concern for many universities across the country. many cite the educational mission of the university as a contradiction to intercollegiate athletics, referred to as the “mission drift” (shulman & bowen, 2001, p. 278). universities have lowered academic standards in order to admit some student-athletes who would not normally be accepted. to help ensure athletic success, specific numbers of places are commonly being set aside for high profile recruited athletes, and admissions directors are often lowering academic standards to fill them (fiske, 2001). a recent study involving the university of oregon has further found a relationship between declining grades and success on the field (lindo, swensen, & waddell, 2011). modern intercollegiate athletic programs have become a major commercial endeavor in american society and have helped to contribute to higher education through aiding in the overall development of students, allowing for increased visibility/marketability, resource acquisition in the form of capital, and by helping to increase a school’s overall student enrollment. intercollegiate athletics have further developed as the most significant commercially driven auxiliary enterprise at many of today’s larger universities. however, as today’s colleges and universities continue to receive less state and federal financial backing, the place of athletic programs in higher education is being examined. athletic reform has been a constant in intercollegiate athletics for more than 100 years. within the last twenty years there has been a number of reform initiatives aimed at returning academic values to the realm of intercollegiate athletics. recent proposals have called on faculty to become more involved in intercollegiate athletic reform and to spearhead policy formulation both on their campuses and at a national level (bernard, 2003; coalition on intercollegiate athletics, 2004; coalition on intercollegiate athletics, 2005; splitt, 2003). established in 2002, the coalition on intercollegiate athletics (coia) was formed as an independent grassroots organization seeking to provide a faculty voice in the future of college sports. the coia is currently comprised of an alliance of 57 division 1-a university faculty senates whose chief aim is to promote comprehensive reform of intercollegiate sports. the coia has developed several policy papers and reports addressing comprehensive intercollegiate athletic reform. in 2007, the coia issued its most recent white paper titled framing the future: reforming intercollegiate athletics. the white paper identified some of the “current major challenges facing intercollegiate athletics and offers a set of proposals that are meant to enable college sports to be integrated into the overall academic mission and remain a positive force on our campuses” (coia, 2007, para.1). the white paper also provided 28 proposals which cover four primary areas of concern: academic integrity and quality, student-athlete welfare, campus governance of intercollegiate athletics, and fiscal responsibility. according to the coia, the level of implementation local, conference, and/or national–is identified for each proposal. this white paper is intended to stimulate dialog at these various levels with the ultimate goal of having these proposals accepted as standard working policies and practices. (2007, para. 3) addressing the issue of comprehensive athletic reform is not an easy task and requires the attention of all the stakeholders involved (coaches, athletic directors, faculty athletic representatives, faculty members, university presidents, and governing bodies). thus, the coia has been making a concerted effort to work with the national collegiate athletic association (ncaa) and a number of constituents at the higher education level in order to help develop a plan of action for the coming decade (coia, 2007). purpose of the study the purpose of this case study was to determine the success for the diffusion of the coia’s framing the future: reforming intercollegiate athletics white paper (2007) at an ncaa division i member institution in the state of texas. the study investigated how ncaa division i university administrators and athletic personnel manage the implementation of the many proposals encompassed in the white paper at the selected university. specific purposes included the following: 1. determine whether or not the institution had a structure in place for facilitating the adoption of modern athletic reform proposals developed by the coalition on intercollegiate athletics (coia). 2. determine whether or not the athletic and academic mission statements were aligned. 3. determine whether or not the university had initiatives promoting academic integrity in intercollegiate sports. 4. determine whether or not the concerns of athletic personnel differed from those of university faculty senate members regarding the adoption of athletic reform proposals developed by coia. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 research questions the following research questions were used to focus the study on its purpose related to athletic reform and academic integrity: 1. how is the institution conforming to contemporary athletic reform white papers and reports developed by the coia? 2. how are institutional leaders aligning athletic rules of integrity with academic mission statements? 3. what initiatives promote academic integrity in intercollegiate sports? 4. what are the perceptions of athletic personnel and faculty senate members in regards to the adoption of athletic reform proposals developed by coia? the first research question was addressed via semi-structured interviews with members of the faculty senate and athletic personnel to determine how the institution is conforming to athletic reform. the second and third research questions were addressed via document analysis to determine if the athletic rules of integrity and academic mission statements align. and the fourth research question was addressed via the cbam instrument in combination with semi-structured interviews to determine where athletic personnel and members of the faculty senate are in their intensity of concern regarding athletic reform and academic integrity. theoretical framework in response to over a decade of highly visible scandals in intercollegiate sports, the knight commission on intercollegiate athletics was established by the john s. and james l. knight foundation in 1989. in the early 1990s, the knight commission focused much of its attention on involving university presidents in athletic affairs; however, recent proposals have called on faculty to become more involved in reform and to spearhead policy formulation both on their campuses and at a national level (bernard, 2003; coalition on intercollegiate athletics, 2004; coalition on intercollegiate athletics, 2005; splitt, 2003). however, according lawrence, hendricks, and ott (2007), “little systematic information has been collected nationally that can inform efforts to enlist faculty assistance” (p. 8). faculty involvement in the realm of intercollegiate athletics has been minimal for many reasons. frey (1994) acknowledged that there are various factors inhibiting faculty from being involved in the governance of intercollegiate athletics. some of these reasons include the following: faculty members are often uncomfortable with the nonacademic nature of athletics; there are few rewards for faculty who get involved in the governance of college athletics; and there is a risk of losing status among their peers and colleagues. lawrence et al. (2007) explained that “the most commonly cited impediment to becoming involved is the high time commitment that faculty perceive is required, and some also worry that they do not have the necessary competencies and skills” (p. 8). additionally, frey (1994) found that university presidents often tolerate deviant behavior, therefore, placing faculty in a difficult position. by understanding the various reasons, universities may be able to help bridge the gap in communication between faculty and intercollegiate athletics. lawrence et al. (2007) found the following: faculty members believe intercollegiate athletics is an auxiliary enterprise and that faculty oversight is weak. while most think that administrators on their campus consult with faculty governance groups about academic matters (54%), the largest portion of respondents also believe it is not common practice for administrators to consult faculty governance groups on intercollegiate athletics decisions (48%). they are inclined to believe that faculty governance roles in this domain are ill defined and tend to be dissatisfied with the nature and impact of their involvement. (p. 80) the findings from lawrence et al. (2007) further suggested that faculty may feel disconnected from intercollegiate athletic institutional decision-making. the study also found that “faculty members believe external groups that influence campus decisions about intercollegiate athletics have minimal regard for their universities’ academic missions” (lawrence et al., 2007, p. 81). the cultural divide between academics and athletics can make achieving meaningful reform a complex task. according to the roundtable on intercollegiate athletics and higher education (2006): too few academic leaders understand college sports, and athletic leaders commonly do not appreciate academe. both sides criticize the other without really knowing the contexts in which the other operates, and neither recognizes that trends and issues in both academe and athletics are often more alike than they are different. (p. 2) encouraging collaboration between academic and athletic leaders is a key component to achieving meaningful adoption of the coia proposals. over the past century, numerous athletic reform white papers and reports were developed to address concerns about commercialization, professionalization, and academic integrity in collegiate sports; however, there has been a great deal of resistance to the adoption of these reform efforts at many institutions. as far as commercialism is concerned, “college athletics has been transformed into a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry that has compromised the academic mission of examining the support of modern athletic reform proposals developed by the coalition on intercollegiate athletics in response to higher education athletic reform: a case study 5 the university” (shapiro, 2000, para. 3). conforming to modern athletic reform proposals while also finding a balance between athletics and academics has been an ongoing challenge for today’s institutions of higher education. there is a current need to examine the level of adoption of modern athletic reform initiatives at institutions of higher education in order to help bring about lasting structural and cultural changes. according to the knight foundation (2001), big time college sports today more closely resemble the commercialized model appropriate to professional sports than they do the academic model (p. 9). competition at the national collegiate athletic association (ncaa) division i level has been fierce in order to attract sponsors, donors, and contracts. in 2010, the ncaa announced a new 14-year television deal with cbs sports and turner broadcasting to present the division i men’s basketball championship for more than $10.8 billion. tucci (2004) explained that “with this comes television’s control of game times and dates along with game interruptions due to commercials” (p. 16). competitions for national exposure also lead colleges and universities to fight for television time and money. the knight foundation (2001) stated that “the schools more in demand by network schedule makers―get richer; the poor get deeper in dept” (p. 20). there has also been competition among institutions to attract students, faculty, and coaches, which has forced colleges and universities to become entrepreneurial in the academic programs and student amenities they offer. this in turn has led to significant increases in coach’s salaries and facilities. in 2007, a study by the knight commission on intercollegiate athletics found that “three in four faculty members say salaries paid to their schools’ head football and basketball coaches are excessive. the majority of faculty members also believed athletics financial needs get higher priority than academic needs” (p. 6). there are many reasons for the inclusion of athletics in higher education. institutions of higher learning are constantly seeking new and innovative ways to attract students in today’s large educational marketplace. smart and wolf (2000) recognized that “colleges and universities are finding themselves competing more aggressively for students and faculty and for the increasingly scarce monetary resources needed to provide a superior educational experience” (p. 136). this competitive atmosphere has in turn taken its toll on intercollegiate athletics. that is, athletics can positively influence a university's climate, culture, and reputation and can contribute to the loyalty of important constituencies (e.g., students, alumni, and legislators). such resources (culture, reputation, loyalty) are intangible and, therefore, are difficult to imitate and not easily traded among institutions. (smart & wolfe, 2000, p. 137) intercollegiate athletics in the united states have become an increasingly expensive enterprise at many of today’s institutions of higher education. the term “arms race” is generally used to describe any competition where there is no absolute goal, only the relative goal of staying ahead of the competition. in the realm of collegiate athletics, maintaining a competitive advantage has been an ongoing battle, which has created an “athletics arms race” across the nation. institutions across the country are striving for ways in which to build upon the success of their athletic programs and maintaining an edge on their competition. the intense pressure to recruit high caliber student-athletes and attract well-connected donors has escalated the ongoing “athletics arms race.” with the escalating cost of coach’s salaries and an increasing need to divert more financial resources to keep athletic programs competitive, universities have been driving up costs to maintain a competitive advantage on the national stage. the “athletics arms race” is not limited to coach’s salaries but includes everything from upgrading athletic facilities to fringe benefits offered to coaches and staff. athletic programs that have had success on the national stage have facilitated the acquisition of more tangible resources (i.e., human resources and financial resources). this in turn has allowed successful athletic programs to create a competitive advantage. bridging the gap between academics and athletics has been one of the many concerns of the coalition on intercollegiate athletics (coia). gaining knowledge and an understanding of the many factors inhibiting the adoption of athletic reform proposals and reports at the higher education level are essential if institutions expect to conform to contemporary athletic reform models. by understanding the concerns of the stakeholders (head coaches, athletic directors, faculty athletic representatives, faculty senate members, and students) involved in the adoption process, institutions will be able to help identify barriers to change and incorporate feasible solutions to current athletic reform proposals and reports. thus, it is important for all of the stakeholders (head coaches, athletic directors, faculty athletic representatives, faculty senate members, and students) at each institution to be able to work collectively to help bring about meaningful change. method the purpose of this case study was to identify concerns of athletic personnel and faculty senate members in relation to the diffusion of the coia’s white paper framing the future: reforming intercollegiate athletics. purposeful sampling was used to select one ncaa division i school in the state of texas. by utilizing purposeful sampling, the researcher was able to target key current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 informants who had direct involvement with the diffusion of the paper at the school. the key informants in this study included: four head coaches (non-revenue producing sports), the athletic director, the faculty athletic representative, and three members of the faculty senate. the main objective of purposive sampling is to focus on particular characteristics of a population that are of concern. the stages of concern questionnaire (socq) and interviews were used by the researcher to collect the data. the socq is one of three diagnostic tools of the concerns-based adoption model or cbam, a framework for measuring implementation and for facilitating change in schools (george, hall, & stiegelbauer, 2006). for the purposes of this study, the innovation is the white paper developed by the coia in 2007 titled framing the future: reforming intercollegiate athletics. the socq allows researchers to assess concerns of individuals about innovations that are introduced in an educational setting. george et al. (2006) noted, “implementation researchers may also use the cbam tools to build knowledge about how teachers make sense of reform policies and resulting innovations” (p. viii). additionally, the questionnaire plays an important role in helping to understand and address the concerns of adopters in order to assess the extent to which implementation has occurred and to know how to effectively guide adopters through the change process. the socq identifies seven specific stages of concern using a 35-item questionnaire with strong reliability estimates and internal consistency (hall & hord, 2001). the second instrument used for the study was an interview protocol consisting of 11 open-ended questions developed by the researcher to obtain additional information from participants in the study in relation to faculty concerns, campus governance of intercollegiate athletics, and academic integrity at the institution. additional data were also retrieved by the researcher for document analysis to include the ncaa academic progress rates (apr), self-study reports, and the financial records from the athletic departments. an audit trail, accessible only by the researcher, was developed in order to ensure confidentiality of the participants in the study to include the participant’s name, school mailing address, email address, and a participant code assigned by the researcher. a copy of the socq with the assigned participant code was mailed to the participants along with a letter of informed consent and a self-addressed, stamped return envelope. interviews were conducted with individuals who agreed on the informed consent to provide additional information. returned socqs were electronically scored by calculating the raw scores for each of the seven stages, or percentiles, and then locating the percentile score for each stage in a table. results of the socq were used to determine the intensity of concern of all participants at each stage of concern in regards to the white paper. these results were also used to make comparisons between the concerns of athletic personnel and faculty senate members at the university. prior to conducting the interview, the researcher prepared a socq profile based upon the results and gave the profile and interpretive summary to the participant at the start of the interview session. additional questions were added to the interview protocol based upon the socq results and the document analysis. interviews were conducted either by electronic mail or face-to-face depending upon the preference of the participant. the interview protocol (see appendix) consisted of questions related to faculty/staff concerns, campus governance of intercollegiate athletics, and academic integrity at the institution. interview data, socq interpretations, and collected documents were analyzed via the constant comparative method (bogden & biklen, 1998) to compare data across categories, construct meaning, and to develop naturalistic generalizations allowing the researcher to isolate the most important aspects of the data. categories were developed by the researcher based upon the patterns that emerged from the data. findings a completed stage of concern questionnaire (socq) was returned by nine members of the athletic personnel and faculty senate. of those who returned completed questionnaires, six were from members of the athletic personnel and three were from members of the university faculty senate. although, this study was distributed to head coaches of revenue and non-revenue producing sports, only head coaches of non-revenue producing sports programs chose to participate in the study. the researcher scored each returned socq and prepared an individual socq profile of the peak stage scores. peak stage scores were calculated for each stage of concern for the university. the calculations indicated the level of intensity of concern for each of the seven stages of concern. the seven stages of concern include stage 0 “awareness,” is when the individual is aware of the innovation, but is not concerned about it or does not understand how it will affect them. stage 1 “informational” is when the individual wants to know more about the innovation. stage 2 “personal” is when the individual wants to know how using the innovation will affect them personally and stage 3 “management” is the stage were the individual has the perception that they spend all of their time managing the innovation. stage 4 “consequence” is when the individual spends less time managing the innovation and more time learning how the innovation affects others. stage 5 “collaboration” is when the individual can actually start to relate what they are doing to what others are doing with the innovation, and stage 6 “refocusing” is when the individual begins to examining the support of modern athletic reform proposals developed by the coalition on intercollegiate athletics in response to higher education athletic reform: a case study 7 refocus and come up with other ideas as to how the innovation can work better. the intensity of concern was highest at stage 0 (99%), followed by two stages of concern similar in intensity of concern, stage 1 (97%) and stage 2 (96%). additionally, first and second highest stage score interpretations were performed on the individual and group data. the highest stage of concern for most individuals of the total faculty senate/athletic personnel group at the university was stage 0 at 84%, stage 1 at 82%, or stage 2 at 84%. the highest stage of concern for the group of athletic personnel was at stage 0 at 81% and stage 2 at 83%. this indicated that the group of athletic personnel was presently not concerned about the innovation or was unclear as to what the innovation entails (stage 0: unconcerned). “stage 2 (personal) concerns deal with what frances fuller (1969) referred to as self-concerns. respondents are most concerned about status, rewards, and what effects the innovation might have on them” (as cited in george et al., 2006, p. 33). individuals recording a high score in this stage (stage 2: personal) also indicated ego-oriented questions and uncertainties about the innovation. additionally, the majority of athletic personnel respondents scored a slightly higher stage 2 score than the stage 1 score (known as a “negative onetwo split”). a “negative one-two split” is indicative of various degrees of uncertainty and potential resistance to an innovation. respondents with this type of response are also typically more concerned with job security or personal position than the desire to learn more about the innovation. the highest stage of concern for the group of faculty senate members is stage 0 at 92% and stage 1 at 93%, indicating that the faculty senate respondents are presently not concerned about the innovation or they are still unclear as to what the innovation entails (stage 0: unconcerned). stage 0 scores help “provide an indication of the degree of priority the respondent is placing on the innovation and the relative intensity of concern about the innovation” (george et al., 2006, p. 33). a high score in this stage indicated that the respondents are currently concerned with other initiatives, tasks, and activities other than the innovation (stage 0: unconcerned). stage 1 scores focus on the structure and function of the innovation. a high score in this stage (stage 1: informational) indicated that the respondents would like to know more about the innovation. figure one provides a snap-shot of the socq result comparing athletic personnel and members of the faculty senate. in order to progress to higher concerns earlier concerns must first be resolved. timely provision of affective experiences and cognitive resources can help individuals progress to develop higher concerns. analysis of the socq indicated that the greatest concerns of the athletic personnel and faculty senate members at the university as a whole are in the area of “self” (stages 0, 1, 2). separate analysis of the socq for athletic personnel and faculty senate members indicated that only a few athletic personnel members are beginning to transition into a higher stage of concern. figure 1. university athletic personnel and faculty senate stages of concern, fall 2008 through spring 2009. 81 76 83 76 36 50 55 92 93 86 90 29 48 59 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 r el at iv e in te ns ity stages of concern athletic personnel faculty senate current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 in order to progress to higher concerns earlier concerns must first be resolved. timely provision of affective experiences and cognitive resources can help individuals progress to develop higher concerns. analysis of the socq indicated that the greatest concerns of the athletic personnel and faculty senate members at the university as a whole are in the area of “self” (stages 0, 1, 2). separate analysis of the socq for athletic personnel and faculty senate members indicated that only a few athletic personnel members are beginning to transition into a higher stage of concern. document analysis (i.e., ncaa academic progress rates [apr], self-study reports, and athletic department financial records) prior to the interview found that the university has been taking measures to improve upon its current intercollegiate athletics facilities. in almost ten years the university has constructed ten new athletic venues. the “athletics arms race” seems to be evident at the university as another large athletic facility is being built. a combination of sources will be used to help fund and maintain the new facility such as: club and suite sales, concessions, corporate sponsorships, facility naming rights agreements, facility rental fees, game guarantees, private donations, ticket sales, and student athletic fees. additional funding for the new stadium was raised from private donors and alumni. prior to the interviews, the researcher also researched the university’s academic progress rate (apr). the apr was established in 2005 by the ncaa as a means to help measure term-by-term academic achievement and retention of ncaa division i teams and is separate from the graduation success rate (gsr). according to the ncaa (2008), “each student-athlete earns one point for staying in school and one point for being academically eligible. a team's total points divided by points possible is the team’s apr score. programs that fall below the minimum apr score of 925 may face scholarship reductions and other penalties” (para. 1) a score of 1000 is a perfect team apr score. apr data helps to provide a real-time snap shot of athlete retention and advancement in a four-year period. results from the latest (2007-2008) ncaa division i apr public report shows improvements in many of the sports programs at the university. the majority of the sports programs posted multi-year rates at or above 955 in addition to having seven perfect single-year scores in recent years. during that same period, all but three athletic programs at the university showed improvements from the previous year. interviews were conducted members of the athletic personnel and members of the faculty senate at the university consisting of three head athletic coaches, one faculty athletic representative, and three members of the faculty senate. of the seven participants, six chose to respond via electronic mail, while one elected to participate in a face-to-face interview. the researcher used the same interview protocol questions for both athletic personnel and faculty senate participants. the following themes emerged from the athletic personnel and faculty senate member interviews: support, budgetary issues, common vision, external influences, and a commitment to excellence. athletic personnel concerns focused on budgetary issues related to expanding facilities and programs to compete at a high level, while faculty senate members did not express similar concerns. the “athletic arms race” is apparent at the university as athletic personnel are seeking to expand and upgrade athletic facilities to maintain a competitive athletic program that can keep pace with schools at the same level. additionally, athletic personnel shared that administrative support was necessary to ensure everyone is working together to achieve a common vision to accomplish the objectives of the athletic mission statement. faculty senate concerns focused on budgetary issues aimed at reducing intercollegiate athletics spending and increasing fundraising efforts. faculty senate members also wanted to see more transparency in athletic budgets. other faculty senate concerns focused on external influences and the emphasis placed on winning at the university. faculty senate members also felt that commercial interests may have the unintended consequence of separating athletics from academics. additionally, faculty senate members shared that winning athletic programs tend to help promote the university as a whole; however, as the cost of maintaining these programs increases, it is unclear if the cost of winning is taking its toll. athletic personnel and faculty senate members shared common concerns in several areas such as a balanced approach, increasing campus pride, and academic integrity. both groups felt that a balanced approach to academic and athletic affairs was essential in order to ensure the development of each student-athlete. athletic personnel and faculty senate members also recognized that campus pride could be improved by gaining more support from the overall campus body and community. both groups confirmed that the university has taken the initiative to promote academic integrity in intercollegiate athletics. faculty senate members further added that each of the mission statements at the university reflects the institution’s commitment to academic and athletic success. conclusions & recommendations identifying the issues and assumptions apparent in today’s realm of college sports is essential in order to achieve meaningful reform. this study attempted to determine the success of the diffusion of the coia’s framing the future: reforming intercollegiate athletics white paper at an ncaa division i member institution in the state of texas. the results of the stages of concern questionnaire (socq) discovered that the participants in examining the support of modern athletic reform proposals developed by the coalition on intercollegiate athletics in response to higher education athletic reform: a case study 9 this study at the university are not progressing to levels of concern beyond those associated with the management of the innovation. moving beyond the management stage (level 3) of the socq is essential in order to achieve full adoption of the innovation. additionally, athletic personnel and faculty senate perceptions will not change unless they see the potential of the innovation in helping to maintain the proper alignment of educational goals with intercollegiate athletics. if athletic personnel and faculty senate members at the institution are to preserve academic integrity and the proper alignment of educational goals with intercollegiate athletics, they must be able to internalize academic values, embracing them even when inconvenient. meaningful collaboration among faculty and staff members can also prove beneficial in helping individuals take ownership in the adoption process. furthermore, achieving comprehensive athletic reform is a complex task and requires a concerted effort in order to bring about meaningful change. recommendations for further study include expanding this study to include various institutions of size and scope. replication of this study would provide opportunities to determine if athletic personnel and faculty senate members at public universities possess the same concerns regarding athletic reform and academic integrity as athletic personnel and faculty senate members at private institutions. additionally, due to the small number of participants in this case study, the researcher was unable to generalize the findings to other institutions; therefore, it is recommended that this study be replicated using a broader number of faculty senate members, athletic personnel, and include students. another recommendation is to include athletic personnel from both revenue and non-revenue producing sports programs. despite the low number of participants, the researcher was able to provide some insight and clues into what may be happening at some institutions in regards to adopting and diffusing modern athletic reform proposals and reports. references bernard, p. 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(1999). unpaid professional: commercialization and conflict in big-time perspectives. dissertation abstracts international, 65(09), 3306, (umi no. 3147883). examining the support of modern athletic reform proposals developed by the coalition on intercollegiate athletics in response to higher education athletic reform: a case study 11 appendix interview protocol faculty/staff concerns 1. when you think about the present status of intercollegiate athletics at your campus, what are your concerns? 2. what would it take to reduce your concerns regarding the current status of intercollegiate athletics at your institution? 3. how is your institution conforming to contemporary athletic reforms developed by the coalition on intercollegiate athletics (coia)? 4. do you consider there is a need for athletic reform at your campus? why or why not? 5. how has the economy (recession) affected intercollegiate athletics on your campus? campus governance of intercollegiate athletics 6. who at your institution is responsible for oversight and supervision of intercollegiate athletics at your institution? 7. does your institution have a structure in place for the adoption of modern athletic reform proposals and reports? 8. how often do faculty governance bodies review data about enrollment patterns and athletes' grades and compare them to general enrollment and grades? 9. what level of input do faculty members have in the fiscal expenditures of campus intercollegiate athletics? 10. how consistently aligned are the athletic department’s budgets, revenues and expenditures with the mission, goals and values of your institution? academic integrity 9. what initiatives has your institution taken in order to promote academic integrity in intercollegiate sports at your institution? 10. are institutional leaders aligning athletic rules of integrity to academic mission statements? 11. how often are the academic progress rates (apr) and graduation success rates (gsr) reviewed by campus faculty governance members at your institution? current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 12 article citation zimmerman, w. w. & wickersham, l. e. (2013). examining the support of modern athletic reform proposals developed by the coalition on intercollegiate athletics in response to higher education athletic reform: a case study. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/905 author notes wade w. zimmerman, ed.d. university of north texas 1155 union circle # 311397 denton, tx 76203-5017 wade.zimmerman@unt.edu wade w. zimmerman, ed.d. is the assistant women's tennis coach at the university of north texas. his research and professional interests include the history of college sports, modern athletic reform, and the role of athletics in higher education. he has worked in the athletics field the past ten years at the collegiate, club and secondary levels. he attended sul ross state university in alpine, texas, where he received a bachelor of science degree in 2001 and a master of education degree in 2002. leah e. wickersham, ph.d. texas a&m university-commerce 2600 south neal street, commerce, tx 75428 leah.wickersham@tamuc.edu leah e. wickersham, phd is an associate professor in the department of agriculture sciences at texas a&m university – commerce. her research and professional interests include critical thinking and building learning communities in the online learning environment, formative and summative assessment of student learning outcomes via electronic portfolio development, and diffusion and adoption of technology in systems. she teaches graduate courses in instructional design, technology and learning theory, technology integration, research methods, and technological change. manuscript received: 01/22/2012 revisions received: 05/18/2012 accepted: 8/07/2012 examining the support of modern athletic reform proposals developed by the coalition on intercollegiate athletics in response to higher education athletic reform: a case study 13 volume 16, number 1 february 25, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 996-4066-3-le_2.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x the influence of local politics on educational decisions gary bigham west texas a&m university jan ray university of hawai’i at hilo this ex post facto, causal-comparative research study examined student reading performance data within a school district before and after a school district-wide decision to alter the reading curriculum in response to local political pressure from parents. data analysis revealed that test scores dropped to a significantly lower level, especially for students who were economically disadvantaged, after the reading curriculum was altered. this study underscores the importance of making data-driven, rather than politicallyinfluenced, decisions related to pedagogy, curriculum, instruction, and assessment by educational leaders. keywords: local politics, reading, reading curriculum, reading assessment working through the political dynamic in the public school systems falls within the realm of school leadership. politics are present at every level of the school leader’s involvement in the educational process, ranging in scope from local to national. the challenge facing the school leader is to acknowledge the reality that politics is a part of the daily routine and to work with that process to ensure that educationally sound decisions ultimately result for the students in the school. politics isn’t some evil, dark discipline. it’s just one more way to use relationships to get things done. good leaders understand this and use politics to their advantage. this requires understanding power structures and learning when to negotiate and when to draw the line. (ramsey, 2006, p. 80) the term “politics” is commonly found in the organizational context, and often carries with it a negative connotation. so, exactly what is politics, where is politics found, and how is politics recognized? according to ramsey (2006), “wherever there is power to be had, resources to be divided, recognition to be earned, or influence to be brokered, there is politics” (p. 79). furthermore, ramsey (2006) went on to say, “wherever there are leaders and followers, there is politics” (p. 79). thus, throughout any school system, politics must be everywhere, but that is not necessarily all bad. ramsey (2006) added that “politics is another basic tool that all successful leaders use to achieve goals through other people” (p. 79). the decisions made by school leaders, regarding educational processes for students in the school, potentially have a greater overall impact than the decisions made by other certified personnel in the school district. moreover, the level of political involvement is likely the greatest at higher administrative levels. with these two thoughts in mind, there is no question that extreme caution and good judgment must be exercised in the final decisions that are made with respect to student learning. while recognizing the importance of nationallevel politics, most experienced educational leaders would attest to the statement that local politics are very real and have the ability to influence decision-making processes. the responsibility of educational leaders is to ensure that current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 students learn, regardless of political implications. ultimately, the educational decisions made must be based on what is best for the students in the school. background this ex post facto study was conducted in a u.s. school in the state of texas. for purposes of confidentiality, the name of the school will remain anonymous. the data examined for the study spanned two school years. as can be seen in figure 1: ethnic backgrounds of students, demographically, within the school’s student body, 60 percent of the students were hispanic, 38 percent of the students were white, and 2 percent of the students were african american (tea, 2011a). figure 1. ethnic backgrounds of students. figure 2. a comparison of economically disadvantaged students in the school, the region, and the state. hispanic   60%   white   38%   african  american   2%   0   10   20   30   40   50   60   70   school   region   state   pe rc en t  o f  e co no m ic al ly   di sa dv an te d   st ud en ts   the influence of local politics on educational decisions 3 figure 3. educational service center (esc) regions in the state of texas (tea, 2011c). figure 4. composite percentage of students meeting the state-wide standardized reading/ela assessment passing standard in the school, the region, and the state prior to reading curriculum changes. the data presented in the histogram in figure 4, is organized in three columns. the first column represents the percentage of all students tested in the school district who met the standardized reading/ela assessment passing rate established by the state for that year. the second column represents the percentage of all students tested in the esc region, within which the school was located, who met the state-established standardized assessment passing rate. the third column represents the percentage of all students who met the state-established standardized assessment passing rate across the state of texas. the student subpopulation of particular interest in this study was the economically disadvantaged students, and the academic discipline of interest was reading. during the first school year of this study, the school's overall (all students) reading/ela passing percentage was 98 percent. although the school’s students were performing exceptionally well in reading achievement, a growing level of parental opposition existed with regard to the methods by which reading was being taught. the school relied heavily on a specific reading program as an integral part of the reading curriculum throughout the district, but the political 0   10   20   30   40   50   60   70   80   90   100   school   region   state   pe rc en t  o f  s tu de nt s  p as si ng  in  y ea r  1   current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 adversaries argued that the reading program was not being implemented correctly and that the assigned reading demands placed on students were excessive and unreasonable. the reading program used by the school district was designed to be supplemental to the school's reading curriculum, extrinsically motivating students to read through a point accumulation and reward system (renaissance learning, 2011). in the school's implementation of the reading program, students were initially assessed by means of a computer administered standardized test to establish their reading levels. the students were then encouraged to read fictional and nonfictional books that were written at or slightly above their reading achievement levels. upon completion of the reading of each book, the students were tested via a standardized computer administered examination to assess their comprehension of the material in the books they read. a designated number of points were awarded through the computerized process for correctly answered questions. through this process, the teachers had access to a computerized printout that revealed the number of points attained by each student and a comprehension score to reveal the student's intellectual growth (renaissance learning, 2011). procedures established by the school permitted students to "spend" their points for various rewards. although conflicting views existed between the school and certain factions of the community with regard to using reading points for grading students, the school used these reading points as a percentage of the students' final grade calculations. the school's philosophy was that in order for the students to improve their reading, much like developing a winning athletic team, practice and repetition was required. while some students enjoy reading and are intrinsically motivated to do so, others are not. by requiring a minimal number of points for students to attain a certain grade, all students were literally "forced" to read, thus obtaining the needed practice and repetition for improvement and growth, and all students were able to enjoy the privileges of the reward system. the school's design required a minimum quantity of reading from every student while encouraging those who were motivated, either extrinsically or intrinsically, to surpass the minimum requirements. these students reaped the largest educational benefit from the reward system. after hearing numerous parental complaints about the amount of reading required of the students, the school's leadership scheduled a public meeting at the beginning of the second school year in this study to allow parents to voice their concerns. prior to the meeting, all of the school's reading teachers were asked to compile their past rules and procedures with specific regard to their implementation of the reading program and to consider alternative rules and methods if possible. while a sizable percentage of parents attended the public meeting, according to school officials, the student subgroups were not equally represented. interestingly, although the white students made up only 38 percent of the student body, the majority of the parents in attendance were white. school officials estimated that of the total attendees, roughly 1/8 were hispanic. no parents of african american students attended, and it was noted that the representation of the economically disadvantaged students, who made up the majority of the student body, was virtually non-existent. after hearing the concerns and complaints from the parents in attendance, the decision was made by the school leadership to reduce the total number of reading points required of students at every grade level in every grade category (accumulated points) while leaving the respective grade received by the student constant. for example, prior to the public meeting, if 10 points were required for the grade of a, 8 points for the grade of b, and 6 points for the grade of c, after the public meeting, 5 points were required for the grade of a, 4 points for the grade of b, and 3 points for the grade of c. (these points and grades are presented for demonstration purposes only and do not reflect the actual point and grade scale used in the school). the reduction in the point requirement ultimately resulted in less reading required of the students. the unfortunate complement to the reduction in the reading requirement was a decline in student performance as measured by the reading/ela state-wide assessment scores. the problem the reading/ela composite student passing rate conveyed on the school’s aeis report dropped from the previous year's passing rate following the decision to decrease the required reading in the reading program. while the reduction in student performance was the observable and most immediately pressing issue, the underlying problem appears that an educationally unsound decision was made by the school to reduce the amount of reading required of students in the reading curriculum in response to political pressures imposed by local adversaries. purpose of the study the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a politically imposed decision by the school to make curricular changes in the district's reading program from one school year to the next, and to determine the soundness of that decision. the ramifications of the decision to reduce the amount of reading required of students were analyzed through an examination of changes in student performance on reading/ela statewide assessments from one year to the next in overall student performance and in student performance by selected student subpopulations. research hypotheses for statistical testing purposes, null hypotheses were developed. using state standardized test results, as conveyed on the district's aeis reports, the overarching hypothesis focused on the reading/ela performance of the influence of local politics on educational decisions 5 all students in the school following the decision to decrease reading requirements in the curriculum. subsequent hypotheses addressed the performance of designated subgroups of students, including the hispanic and white ethnicities of the student population and of the economically disadvantaged subgroup. african american student performance was not analyzed due to the minute number of students in the school. the four null hypotheses were: 1. ho: the politically influenced decision to decrease the amount of reading required of students will have no effect on the reading/ela composite passing rate for all students in the school as conveyed on its aeis report. 2. ho: the politically influenced decision to decrease the amount of reading required of students will have no effect on the reading/ela composite passing rate for hispanic students in the school as conveyed on its aeis report. 3. ho: the politically influenced decision to decrease the amount of reading required of students will have no effect on the reading/ela composite passing rate for white students in the school as conveyed on its aeis report. 4. ho: the politically influenced decision to decrease the amount of reading required of students will have no effect on the reading/ela composite passing rate for economically disadvantaged students in the school as conveyed on its aeis report. methodology research design the research design selected for this study was causal-comparative, also known as ex-post facto, meaning after the fact. the ex post facto design was most appropriate because the study was developed after the occurrence of the events described in the background section of this study. there was no experimentation on the part of the researchers; however, it so closely followed a quasi-experimental design that it was a study most worthy of conducting. in causal-comparative research, or ex post facto research, the researcher attempts to determine the cause, or reason, for existing differences in the behavior or status of groups of individuals. in other words, it is observed that groups are different on some variable, and the researcher attempts to identify the major factor that has led to this difference. such research is referred to as ex post facto because both the effect and the alleged cause have already occurred and must be studied in retrospect. (gay, mills, & airasian, 2006, p. 217) causal-comparative studies attempt to identify cause-effect relationships, typically involve two or more groups and one independent variable, and involve comparison (gay, mills, & airasian, 2006). the causeeffect relationship sought in this study centered on determining whether the reduction in the amount of reading required of students caused any significant difference in student performance as measured by the reading/ela state-wide assessment. the groups were identified as the year one and year two student groups. within that categorization, comparisons were made on all students, as well as the hispanic, white, and economically disadvantaged subgroups. the independent variable was the reduction in the amount of reading required of students from the previous school year and the dependent variable was student performance on the year two reading/ela state-wide assessment. in framing this study, reading/ela standardized test score data from year one were used to establish a baseline for comparison. the public meeting that prompted the curriculum change in the reading program was held just prior to the beginning of year two. this causal-comparative study is unique in that the only treatment (independent) variable identified was the reduction in the amount of reading required of students from one school year to the next. all other variables remained constant from the previous year. with no resignations, retirements, or teacher replacements, there were no changes in the reading faculty at any level. every reading teacher throughout the entire school district held the same assignment in year two that they held in year one. there were no changes in the length of the school year, nor were there changes in the class schedule, thus making the amount of class time in year two identical to what it was in year one. the same reading curriculum was taught with the only change being the reduction in points required of the students. of course, as with all educational research that extends from one year to the next, confounding variables, including students progressing from one grade level to the next, seniors graduating, and new students entering into the early childhood grade levels must be mentioned. moreover, migration of students into and out of the school district was normal. lastly, there are always the confounding variables associated with personal issues that every student has, such as family matters, illnesses, deaths of loved ones, etc., all of which potentially affect student performance on any given day. data collection the sources of the data collected for this study included the school district's aeis reports (tea, 2011a), the school district's state accountability rating data table (tea, 2011b), and informal interviews of key personnel who were employed in the school during the scope of the study. the aeis reports revealed reading/ela data from both school years during the study. the interviews provided insight into the political dynamics surrounding the reading program issue and the method by which current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 changes were made to the reading curriculum. the information gained from these data sources provided invaluable insight that could not have been gained solely from the analysis of test scores. the school's year one and year two aeis reports (tea, 2011a) were accessed to obtain state-wide assessment results in the discipline of reading. the layout of the test results in the aeis reports was such that it listed the percentage of students who met the state's passing standard in each subject tested by grade level starting at the third grade and ending with the eleventh grade. within each grade level grouping, the aeis report revealed, from left to right, the passing percentage, by column, for the state, esc region, district, each ethnic subgroup of students, student genders, and other subgroups, including economically disadvantaged, special education, lep, and at risk. at the time of this study, texas required students in grades three through nine to be tested with a reading test, and the reading component for the tenth and eleventh grade students was incorporated into the reading/ela test. at the conclusion of the assessment results by grade level in each aeis report was a section titled "sum of all grades tested," which combined all grade level scores for each category into one composite score for the school district. since the focus of this study was at the school district level, all scores reported were derived from this composite score section of the report. the school district's state accountability rating data table (tea, 2011b) contained basic assessment results. the one piece of information that the accountability data tables contained that the aeis reports did not was the total number of students tested in each group of interest in this study. since that critical piece of information was needed for the statistical analysis of the student performance data, the accountability rating data table served as another integral source of data used in this study. from the informal interviews, insight was gained regarding the types of complaints parents voiced about the reading program, which parents were the most vocal, the dynamics of the public meeting, who attended the public meeting, the changes made in the reading requirements for the students, etc. the data gained through this collection process enriched the entire study by demonstrating how powerful the local political process truly was, why certain decisions were made, the ramifications of the decisions, and how students were affected in the end. data analysis to methodically analyze the data in a non-biased fashion, it was necessary to first choose a quantitative research method to apply to the study followed by the selection of an appropriate data analysis technique. although the data collected for this study encompassed more than numerical assessment data, the numerical data were the only data appropriate for statistical analysis. since individual students’ state-wide assessment results were not available to the researcher, the overall passing percentages reported on the school's aeis report were used. this reduced the analysis to two categories of students—those who passed and those who failed the state-wide assessment. since only passing percentages were reported on the aeis reports, the need for the accountability data tables came into play, because they furnished information regarding the numbers of students tested. through simple mathematical procedures, frequencies were calculated to determine the total number of students who passed and the total number of students who failed the year one and year two state-wide assessments. based on the categorical assessment results, the chi-square test was selected for the purpose of quantitative data analysis. the chi-square test is a nonparametric test that uses frequency counts rather than actual test scores. since the data being analyzed consisted of numbers of students passing and failing the reading/ela assessment, the chi-square for goodness of fit was the most appropriate statistical test. the chi-square test for goodness of fit uses sample data to test hypotheses about the shape or proportions of a population distribution. the test determines how well the obtained sample proportions fit the population proportions specified by the null hypothesis. (gravetter & wallnau, 1996, p. 548) the null hypotheses stated that the independent variable (treatment) has no effect on the dependent variable for the population. for the purposes of this analysis, the independent variable or treatment was the required amount of reading assigned and the dependent variable was the composite state-wide reading/ela assessment passing rate. two methods of setting up the chi-square test for goodness of fit are (1) no preference, where nothing is known about the potential outcome, and all categories are weighted equally, and (2) no difference from a comparison population, where information is known about the probable outcome based on prior knowledge (gravetter & wallnau, 1996). since the null hypotheses stated that no change would occur in the passing rate from year one to year two, "no difference from a comparison population" was deemed most appropriate for this analysis. the obtained frequencies from the year two administration were compared with the expected frequencies, which were derived from the year one results. the expected frequencies defined an ideal hypothetical situation where 98 percent of the students tested in year two would pass, while the remaining 2 percent would fail. a rigorous alpha level of α = 0.01 was used for the level of significance, and with only two the influence of local politics on educational decisions 7 categories--passing and failing--the degrees of freedom equaled one. for df = 1 and α = 0.01, the critical chisquare value is 6.63 (gravetter & wallnau, 1996). the establishment of expected frequencies resulted in two categories, representing the 98 percent of students who passed in year one, which calculated 192 of the 196 students tested in year two, and the 2 percent of students who failed in year one, which calculated 4 of the students tested in year two. the year two obtained frequencies were compared to the expected frequencies and the chisquare statistic was calculated. in each of the four hypotheses tested, when the chi-square value fell into the critical region, the null hypothesis was rejected and it was concluded that the reduction in the amount of reading required of students significantly affected student performance. the hypotheses tests resulted in four chisquare analyses, each of which is discussed in the findings section. findings the sources of data for analysis consisted of student performance test score data measured by the statewide assessment that was reported on the school district’s aeis reports, and interview data obtained from school personnel involved in the process that prompted this study. throughout the findings section, the numerical data was graphically organized by means of histograms and linear graphs. the four research hypotheses were tested and all findings were organized by hypothesis test. all students the data analyses began with an examination of the effect of the politically influenced decision to reduce the amount of reading required of all students on their state-wide reading/ela assessment performance. the analysis was tested by means of a chi-square test where a comparison was made of the assessment results from the prior year. an initial review of the raw data revealed a drop in test scores for all students in the school district from 98 percent passing to 95 percent passing, as shown in figure 4. these results suggested that the curriculum change may have adversely affected student performance. while a 3 percent drop in scores of all students in the school from year one to year two did not appear to be significant on the surface, a real point of interest was that during that same test administration, both the regional and the state averages rose. however, the rise in the regional and state scores was small—1 percent and 2 percent respectively. as statistics will show, caution must be exercised in the interpretation of the meaning of these changes even though they were small. figure 5. comparison of state-wide reading/ela assessment passing percentages from year 1 to year 2 for all students. 98 95 89 90 87 89 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 year 1 year 2 st ud en ts m ee tin g st an da rd (i n pe rc en t) test administration year school region state current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 figure 6. five-year trend comparison of state-wide reading/ela assessment passing percentages for all students. table 1 observed and expected frequencies of passing rates on the year 2 state-wide assessment for all students frequencies pass fail 𝑓o: 187 9 𝑓e: (.98) 196 192.08 (.02) 196 3.92 holding all variables constant, except for changes in the state-wide examination itself, a reasonable expectation would be that the passing rates of the school district, the region, and the state would all respond similarly. that assumption prompted a deeper probing of test score results. an examination of five consecutive years of test data held that the assumption appeared true. as revealed by the data plotted linearly in figure 5, the passing percentages of the school district, the region, and the state responded similarly to the perceived changes in the state-wide examination for the four years prior to the final year of analysis in this study. however, the school district responded negatively from year one to year two of the study, whereas the region and the state responded positively. one hundred and ninety-six students were tested with the state-wide reading/ela assessment in the school district during the year two test administration. the passing percentage from year one to year two dropped by three percentage points—from 98 percent to 95 percent. the chi-square test was utilized to determine the significance of that drop. the null hypothesis stated: ho: the politically influenced decision to decrease the amount of reading required of students will have no effect on the reading/ela composite passing rate for all students in the school as conveyed on its aeis report. the observed and expected frequencies are shown in table 1. the chi-square calculation yielded 6.71765, which exceeded the critical value of 6.63 at a 0.01 alpha level. based on these results, the null hypothesis was rejected, and it was concluded that the decrease in passing rates for all students in the school district from year one to year two on the state-wide reading/ela assessment was a 90 98 94 98 95 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 prior yr 1 prior yr 2 prior yr 3 year 1 year 2 % m et s td school region state the influence of local politics on educational decisions 9 table 2 hypotheses test results for hispanic, white, and economically disadvantaged student sub-populations student sub-group n % passing 𝑓o 𝑓e χ2 crit χ2 significant yr 1 yr 2 pass fail pass fail hispanic 96 96 94 90 6 92.16 3.84 6.63 1.27 no white 95 100 98 93 2 95 0 6.63 0.04 no ed 93 96 90 84 9 89.28 3.72 6.63 7.81 yes statistically significant decrease. the treatment variable attributable for the change was the reduction in the amount of required reading from the students. student subgroup performance as reported in table 2, the application of the same analysis pattern for the hispanic, white, and economically disadvantaged student subgroups as was applied to “all students,” revealed decreased performance in every subgroup, but with significantly reduced performance being found only in the economically disadvantaged students. consequently, the null hypothesis was rejected regarding the economically disadvantaged subgroup of students, whereas the decision was to fail to reject the null hypothesis specific to the hispanic and white student groups. summary, conclusions, and implications summary in summary, the causal-comparative research design was used to study the phenomenon of a u.s. public school district in its struggle to maintain an exemplary level of student reading performance while simultaneously attempting to maintain local political harmony. whereas extensive discussion was devoted to student performance before and after the district-wide decision was made to alter the curricular reading requirements of students, it is particularly germane to note that the focus of the study was on the role of local political processes that influenced decision-making. while the use of the reading program in the curriculum and associated state-wide assessment results were integral to the study, it must be emphasized that the study was not about the reading program, reading instruction, or student performance on state-wide assessments. however, all of these components warranted attention as they were obvious tools of measurement in the analysis of the decision to make curricular changes based on local political pressures. conclusions the data analyzed in this study revealed that local political pressure coerced a misguided decision by educators in the school. reading/ela test scores on a school district-wide basis indicated that the curriculum that was in place and the methods used to deliver it were highly effective—assuming that a 98 percent passing rate of all students on the state-wide assessment was desirable and indicative of the level of learning sought. immediately following the decision to reduce the required amount of reading of students, state-wide assessment scores dropped to a significantly lower level in accordance with the rigorous level of the statistical test applied in this study. worse yet, the subgroup of students who made up the majority of the student body—the economically disadvantaged students—suffered the most, according to assessment results, and was the least represented group in the political process. implications regardless of political pressures that exist, educators must never forget that they have been trained and are typically the most knowledgeable individuals in their community about pedagogy, curriculum, instruction, and assessment. moreover, decisions to make curricular changes should be far more data driven than politically influenced. while acknowledging and understanding that local politics are very real and present at many levels, good educational leaders must use politics to their advantage. “this requires understanding power structures and learning when to negotiate and when to draw the line” (ramsey, 2006, p. 80). educational leaders must keep in mind that though it may bear a negative connotation, “politics is another basic tool that all successful leaders use to achieve goals through other people” (ramsey, 2006, p. 79). references gay, l. r., mills, g. e., & airasian, p. (2006). educational research: competencies for analysis and applications. upper saddle river, nj: pearson. gravetter, f. j., & wallnau, l. b. (1996). statistics for the behavioral sciences. st. paul, mn: west. payne, r. k. (2003). understanding and working with students and adults from poverty. retrieved from www.usd253.org/respect/documents/povseriespart si-iv.pdf ramsey, r. d. (2006). lead, follow, or get out of the way: how to be a more effective leader in today’s schools (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: corwin. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 10 renaissance learning (2011). accelerated reader enterprise. retrieved from http://www.renlearn.com/ar/ texas education agency (tea) (2011a). academic excellence indicator system. retrieved from http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/aeis/ texas education agency (tea) (2011b). accountability rating system for texas public school districts. retrieved from http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/account/ texas education agency (tea) (2011c). education service center (esc) information. retrieved from http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=21474 94810 the influence of local politics on educational decisions 11 article citation bigham, g., & ray, j. (2012). the influence of local politics on educational decisions. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/996 author notes gary bigham, ed.d. west texas a&m university 2304 russell long boulevard canyon, tx 79015 gbigham@wtamu.edu gary bigham is an assistant professor of educational leadership at west texas a&m university. his professional background includes twenty years of public school experience as a teacher, principal, and superintendent prior to assuming his current position at the university level. jan ray, ed.d. university of hawai’i at hilo 200 west kawili street hilo, hi 96720 janetray@hawaii.edu jan ray is an assistant professor of education at the university of hawai’i at hilo. her professional background includes twenty-five years of teaching experience in the public schools and at the university level. manuscript received: 5/01/2012 revisions received: 7/30/2012 accepted: 7/30/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 12 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1102_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 january 26, 2013 issn 1099-839x rising college costs and an illinois effort to control them: a preliminary review teresa lynn north university of phoenix, school of advanced studies rising college costs are of increasing concern. at the 12 public universities in illinois, average increases in tuition were modest, generally in the 4% range, until 1999 when individual campuses begin to increase tuition at double digit rates. in 2002-2003, the overall average increase in tuition/fees more than doubled at 13.79%. in an effort to provide students/families with a more predictable college education cost and moderate the rising costs of a college education, wiu began a 4-year tuition, student fees, and room/board (all-costs) rate guarantee program in fall 1999. following the perceived success of this model, which is ascertained in this study, the state mandated that all public universities in illinois offer a 4-year guarantee for tuition beginning fall 2004. keywords: college tuition, controlling college costs, guaranteed tuition program the problem toutkoushian (2001) noted the cost incurred by students attending both public and private u.s. colleges and universities increased at 2-3 times the rate of inflation during the 1980s. harvey, williams, kirshstein, and wellman (1998) likewise noted that tuition rates increased 400% between 1976 and 1996. despite these increased costs, a college degree remains a wise investment. lifetime earnings differentials of college graduates compared to high school graduates increased from 47% in 1963 to a stable 75% since 1990, with students having degrees in computers, engineering, and business experiencing even higher average earning differentials (paulsen, 2001b). yet, the public is understandably concerned about the rising cost of higher education. this is especially a concern as financial aid has turned largely to loan programs, with grants declining from 56% of aid in 1980 to only 40% in the mid-to-late 1990s (paulsen, 2001b). as important as attaining a college degree is, its rising cost seems on the brink of excluding all but the wealthiest and brightest students, or requiring students to incur greater levels of financial debt. the cause using empirical data combined with microeconomic theory, paulsen (2001a) concluded that there are several factors behind college tuition increases that have exceeded the rate of inflation since 1980. these factors include: (a) decreased share of institutional revenue from state government appropriations, (b) increased administrative expenses, (c) increased student services, (d) increased instructional expenses, (e) increasing numbers of potential college-bound students, and (f) increased need for institutional-based financial aid. of these factors, most seem to agree that the decrease in state funding has been the major cause of increased college tuition (mumper, 2001; pearson & baldi, 1998; winston, 1998). in 1974-75, society contributed 87% of the cost of a public 4-year college education, with students paying the remaining 13% in tuition expenses. just 20 years later, society’s contribution decreased to 80.7% (paulsen, 2001b). the national center for education statistics (1999) reported that 1980 state appropriations supplied 44% of public higher education institutional revenue. however, by the 1995-96 term, this current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 had fallen to 32.5%, forcing institutions to increase tuition to cover expenses. this direct link between decreased state support and higher tuition costs has resulted in less equitable opportunities to obtain a college education. declining state support of higher education does not ignore the public good of higher education that far exceeds the individual student benefit. for example, leslie et al. (1992, as cited in paulsen, 2001b) estimated that each $1 million of spending from a 4-year college budget generates $1.8 million in business spending and 53 additional jobs in the community. pencavel’s 1993 study (as cited in paulsen, 2001b), concluded that 14.6% of american economic growth between 1973 and 1984 was a direct result of investment in higher education. paulsen’s (2001b) own research found that each 1.0% increase in high school graduates who obtain figure 1. tuition/fees for full-time undergraduate students enrolled at each of the 12 public universities in illinois from the 1994-95 through 2002-03 academic year (ibhe, 1995-2003). rising college costs and an illinois effort to control them: a preliminary review 3 college degrees contributes a 1.2% increase in the state’s workforce productivity. yet, the devolution of federal programs to state responsibility has placed states in a difficult fiscal position as they attempt to balance their budgets. since 1990 there were increases in all major state expenditure categories except higher education…. state policy makers were trapped between pressures to increase k-12 education, prisons, medical care, and welfare on one hand and pressures to hold down taxes and legal requirements to balance their state budgets on the other. given these cross pressures, many policy makers felt as though higher education was the only place they could reduce spending. (mumper, 2001, p. 329) in fact, mumper (2001) reports that between 1990 and 1995, state medicaid expenditures increased 10% per year, expenditures for prisons increased 8.5% per year, k-12 expenditures increased 3.7% per year, and welfare and family support expenditures increased 1.6% year, while state expenditures for higher education decreased 0.6% per year. public university tuition/fees in illinois information provided by the illinois board of higher education (ibhe) in their annual reports of tuition and mandatory fee totals for full-time, in-state, undergraduate students allow for comparisons at the 12 illinois public universities (illinois board of higher education [ibhe], 1995-2003). as is apparent in figure 1, for the most part each of the illinois public universities exhibited fairly modest annual tuition/fee increases from 1994-95 to 2001-2002, but tuition/fees began a more rapid rise in 2002-03. table 1 provides a more detailed look at the relative size of these annual tuition/fee increases (ibhe, 1995-2003). while there were individual circumstances leading to some anomalies, the average rate of tuition/fee increase was very modest until 2002-03, with the annual increase in tuition/fees for all 12 public illinois universities ranging from 3.27-6.10% between 1995-96 and 2001-02. however, for the 2002-2003 academic year, the average increase in tuition/fees more than doubled at 13.79%. only four of the universities did not see double digit tuition/fee increases for the 2002-03 term, and only western illinois university (wiu) did not exceed the prior 6.10% threshold. a western illinois university cost guarantee solution in fall 1999, wiu debuted a unique and innovative cost guarantee program to simplify college expense budgeting and to help control the rising costs of higher education (board of trustees [bot], 1998-1999). while this initially resulted in a higher than previous tuition/fee increase to provide amatorized 4-year tuition projections (ibhe, 1995-2003), each newly matriculating table 1 annual rate change for undergraduate tuition/fees 1995-95 through 2002-03 university academic year 95-96 96-97 97-98 98-99 99-00 00-01 01-02 02-03 chicago state university 3.79 2.72 17.60 3.90 6.56 3.30 6.73 8.78 eastern illinois university 3.46 4.61 5.96 5.00 12.96 4.57 12.65 8.07 governors state university 3.25 4.77 2.73 2.66 2.59 3.20 2.93 20.90 illinois state university 3.75 5.00 6.69 2.95 3.03 3.09 3.18 12.48 northeastern illinois university 4.39 4.40 4.48 1.34 2.47 3.08 -1.63 14.77 northern illinois university 5.34 5.42 4.41 2.13 4.13 4.54 5.06 7.48 western illinois university 3.64 4.00 8.08 4.87 4.77 19.06 7.78 1.61 southern illinois university carbondale 4.90 5.51 4.88 3.44 3.01 4.52 -11.67 33.87 southern illinois university edwardsville 3.89 4.93 4.78 3.02 2.96 9.58 9.44 12.70 university of illinois chicago 9.52 5.38 4.05 3.07 3.47 3.14 17.08 17.30 university of illinois springfield 3.42 4.12 3.01 3.45 4.76 2.88 6.36 11.02 university of illinois urbana/champaign 7.50 4.99 5.28 3.36 5.45 4.00 15.22 16.51 average 4.74 4.65 6.00 3.27 4.68 5.41 6.10 13.79 note. percentage tuition/fee increases for full-time undergraduates at each of the 12 public universities in illinois from the 1995-96 academic year through the 2002-03 academic year (ibhe, 1995-2003). current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 wiu student was guaranteed no increase in tuition, fees, or room/board for the 4-year duration of their degree program, an all-costs guarantee (bot, 1998-1999). majors that required longer to complete, such as teacher education programs, had their cost guarantee extended to the normal length of their program. billed as a one-of-akind program, it immediately attracted considerable student and family interest. a 2001 survey of new freshmen and their parents, with nearly 700 responding for a 34% response rate, found that 99.7% of respondents felt that wiu should continue to offer the all-costs (tuition, fee, and room/board) guarantee (north, 2002). under the wiu all-costs guarantee program (bot, 19981999), no longer are students met with yearly tuition, fee, and room/board increases as the institution tries to balance their declining state revenues with greater student-generated revenue. rather, once students enroll, they know what the total cost of their degree program will be, making budgeting for college expenses a much easier proposition for students and their families (bot, 19981999; north, 2002). wiu’s all-costs guarantee (bot, 1998-1999) also attracted considerable attention from the state legislature which had taken notice of the public’s concern about the rising cost of higher education. on july 22, 2003, illinois governor rod blagojevich signed public act 93-0228 into law, legislating a 4-year tuition guarantee for all new students entering illinois public colleges and universities beginning with the fall 2004 academic term. this new legislation did not, however, follow wiu’s all-cost model that also prevented increases in fees and room/board during the student’s normal degree completion timeframe (bot, 1998-1999). rather, public act 93-0228 limited only tuition increases, failing to protect students from increases in fees and room and board. sec. 25. limitation on tuition increase. this section applies only to those students who first enroll after the 2003-2004 academic year. for 4 continuous academic years following initial enrollment (or for undergraduate programs that require more than 4 years to complete, for the normal time to complete the program, as determined by the university), the tuition charged an undergraduate student who is an illinois resident shall not exceed the amount that the student was charged at the time he or she first enrolled in the university. however, if the student changes majors during this time period, the tuition charged the student shall equal the amount the student would have been charged had he or she been admitted to the changed major when he or she first enrolled. (illinois public act 93-0228, illinois general assembly, § 25, 2003) has the western illinois university cost guarantee worked? given the preceding average tuition/fee rates and the annual increases at each of the 12 public universities in illinois as shown in figure 1 and table 1 (ibhe, 19952003), attention can now turn to the special case of wiu to determine whether their unique all-costs guarantee has helped to moderate rate increases, or if the benefit resides solely in the opportunity it affords students and their families to determine the cost of a college degree at the outset of a student’s initial enrollment. historical data for this analysis were obtained directly from information provided by wiu in the 1994-1995 board of governors report and subsequent 1995-2004 board of trustee reports (institutional oversight changed from a statewide board of governors to a campus level board of trustees in 1995-96). numbers may differ somewhat from those presented earlier that were based on ibhe information (1995-2003) because ibhe standardizes to full-time enrollment status to provide better cross-university comparison. prior to the fall 1999 semester, all wiu students were subject to annual increases in tuition, fees, and room/board (bot, 1998-1999). consequently, a student’s sophomore year expenses were higher than they had been their freshmen year, and so on. beginning with new students who enrolled fall 1999 or later, all costs (tuition, fees, and room/board) were guaranteed to remain constant during the conventional 4-year degree completion timeframe. each year, annual tuition, fee, and room/board increases affected only new students, i.e., new freshmen or transfers, or those who had not finished their degree program in the 4-year normative degree time limit. thus, by the time of the guarantee’s full effect in the fourth year of the program, any published tuition, fee, and room/board rates would affect only about 30% of students, i.e., the new incoming class (bot, 1998-1999). figure 2 helps ascertain the effect these guaranteed rates had on annual increases. as shown in figure 2, when wiu moved to an all-costs rate guarantee beginning fall 1999, there was not an increase in the rate at which either fees or room/board rates increased, with both continuing their same rate of growth. however, while tuition increases ranged from 3.47-3.88% between fall 1994 and fall 1997 and held steady in fall 1998, the first year of the rate guarantee in fall 1999 saw a major increase of 28.82% as the university adapted to realigned budgeting scenarios (board of governors [bog], 1994; bot, 1995-1999). however, the tuition increase for new students in fall 2000 was back to 3.02% (bot, 2000). rising college costs and an illinois effort to control them: a preliminary review 5 figure 2. wiu tuition, fee, and room/board rates for the academic terms beginning fall 1994 through fall 2004 (bog, 1994; bot, 1995-2004). figure 3. cost of a 4-year degree at wiu, including tuition, fees, and room/board for students who began their degree in fall 1994 through fall 2004 (bog, 1994; bot, 1995-2004). current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 unfortunately, fall 2001 tuition rates coincided with the beginning of the statewide and national economic downturn, resulting in an emergency 6.03% increase compared to fall 2000 rates (bot, 2001). as the situation continued to affect the economy, wiu’s share of state appropriations also began to decrease. based on information reported by the ibhe (1995-2003), wiu’s funding declined $320,800, or 0.34%, for the 2002-03 academic year while total state public higher education appropriations increased almost $3.2 billion, or 1.52%. for 2003-04, the total state appropriation to public higher education declined by more than $4.1 billion or 1.97%, thus falling below the 2001-02 level (ibhe, 2002). wiu’s loss was even greater, totaling almost $3 million, or 3.14% (ibhe, 2002). consequently, wiu began to see double digit tuition increases beginning with the 2002-03 academic term, as can be intuited from figure 2. fall 2002 tuition rates increased 16.20% over those in fall 2001, fall 2003 tuition rates increased 12.99%, and fall 2004 tuition rates increased 15.90% (bot, 2002-2004). however, one should keep in mind that these rate increases affected only new wiu students, because students were guaranteed their tuition, fee, and room/board rates at the time of their enrollment. a major benefit of wiu’s all-costs rate guarantee for tuition, fees, and room/board is that students and their families are assured of the total cost of their 4year degree when they first enroll. consequently, it is perhaps most telling to look at what the cost of a degree program was for students who enrolled as freshmen from fall 1994 to fall 2004, as is shown in figure 3. figure 3 shows that except for the beneficial decrease for the first class of students who entered under the initial year of the all-costs rate guarantee program in fall 1999, the total cost of a degree program grew each year. however, the percentage increases approximated those prior to the rate guarantee program until fall 2002 (bog, 1994; bot, 1995-2002). there were double digit tuition increases for the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 academic terms, an aspect that resulted from the significant decreases in state appropriations mentioned above. this decline in state funding for public higher education in illinois led to a more rapid increase in the total cost of obtaining a degree for those who began their program in fall 2002 and after (bot, 2002-2004). as can be seen in figure 4, using fall 1994 as the initial base, wiu 4-year degree completion total costs, including tuition, fees, and room/board, increased between 5.36% and 7.39% for each year’s new matriculants from fall 1995 to fall 1998 (bog, 1994; bot, 1995-1998). the inaugural class of the all costs guarantee program in fall 1999 actually saw total degree completion costs decrease 2.44% (bot, 1999). for new matriculants between fall 2000 and fall 2003, the 4-year degree completion total costs did continue to increase, but these increases of 4.31-8.73% were comparable to those figure 4. percentage increase in the total cost of a 4-year degree for wiu students beginning their degree programs from fall 1994 through fall 2004 (bog, 1994; bot, 1995-2004). rising college costs and an illinois effort to control them: a preliminary review 7 seen prior to wiu’s implementation of their all-costs rate guarantee program (bot, 2000-2003). only the incoming class in fall 2004 saw a double digit increase of 10.61% in the combined tuition, fees, and room/board costs of their degree program (bot, 2004). the future in illinois wiu’s all-costs 4-year tuition, fees, and room/board rate guarantee program has not only simplified student and family financial budgeting for degree completion, it has also helped to moderate degree completion increased costs. however, the ultimate effect of public act 93-0228 (2003) in legislating a 4-year tuition guarantee for all new students entering all illinois public colleges and universities beginning with the fall 2004 academic term remains to be seen. while officials at these newly affected institutions are notably concerned about having to accept a 4-year risk when establishing the fixed tuition rate new students will pay throughout their degree program, perhaps the greater risk is placed on the student. although tuition rates are guaranteed at these other institutions as per public act 93-0228 (2003), there is no state mandate to control student fee and room/board rates. thus, these other institutions can generate greater revenue while still observing the guidelines of public act 93-0228, by simply increasing student fees or room/board rates. if this happens, not only will the students and their families suffer, but the very intent of the act in terms of moderating the increasing costs of higher education will have been blatantly disregarded. certainly this issue and its ramifications deserve continued study by the ibhe and other interested parties. references board of governors. (1994). meetings minutes. springfield, il: illinois board of higher education. board of trustees. (1995). meetings minutes. macomb, il: western illinois university. board of trustees. (1996). meetings minutes. macomb, il: western illinois university. board of trustees. (1997). meetings minutes. macomb, il: western illinois university. board of trustees. (1998). meetings minutes. macomb, il: western illinois university. board of trustees. (1999). meetings minutes. macomb, il: western illinois university. board of trustees. (2000). meetings minutes. macomb, il: western illinois university. board of trustees. (2001). meetings minutes. macomb, il: western illinois university. board of trustees. (2002). meetings minutes. macomb, il: western illinois university. board of trustees. (2003). meetings minutes. macomb, il: western illinois university. board of trustees. 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(2001). data book on illinois higher education. springfield, il: author. illinois board of higher education. (2002). data book on illinois higher education. springfield, il: author. illinois board of higher education. (2003). data book on illinois higher education. springfield, il: author. illinois public act 93-0228, illinois general assembly, § 25. (2003). mumper, m. (2001). state efforts to keep public colleges affordable in the face of fiscal stress. in m. b. paulsen & j. c. smart (eds.), the finance of higher education: theory, research, policy and practice (pp. 321-354). new york, ny: agathon press. national center for education statistics. (1999). digest of education statistics. washington, dc: u.s. department of education. north, t. l. (2008, november). major findings from the cost guarantee study. paper presented and the western illinois university board of trustees meeting, macomb, il. paulsen, m. b. (2001a). economic perspectives on rising college tuition. in m. b. paulsen & j. c. smart (eds.), the finance of higher education: theory, research, policy and practice (pp. 183-254). new york, ny: agathon press. paulsen, m. b. (2001b). the economics of the public sector. in m. b. paulsen & j. c. smart (eds.), the finance of higher education: theory, current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 research, policy and practice (pp. 85-122). new york, ny: agathon press. pearson r. j., & baldi, s. (1998). student aid and tuition: toward a causal analysis. in j. harvey, r. m. williams, r. j. kirshstein, & j. v. wellman (eds.), straight talk about college costs and prices (pp. 93-101). washington, dc: national commission on the cost of higher education. touthoushian, r. k. (2001). trends in revenues and expenditures for public and private universities. in m. b. paulsen & j. c. smart (eds.), the finance of higher education: theory, research, policy and practice (1-28). new york, ny: agathon press. winston, g. c. (1998). college costs: subsidies, intuition, and policy. in j. harvey, r. m. williams, r. j. kirshstein, & j. v. wellman (eds.), straight talk about college costs and prices (pp. 117-127). washington, dc: national commission on the cost of higher education. rising college costs and an illinois effort to control them: a preliminary review 9 article citation north, t. l. (2013). rising college costs and an illinois effort to control them: a preliminary review. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1102 author notes teresa lynn north, phd university of phoenix, school of advanced studies 1713 w. adams rd. macomb, il 61455 teren1956@gmail.com dr. north earned a phd in nutrition from the university of california – davis in 1984 and a phd in higher education leadership from capella university in 2007. from 1984-2012, dr. north served as a faculty member and later assessment coordinator at western illinois university where this research was conducted. now an adjunct online doctoral faculty member for university of phoenix, dr. north is able to make the results of previous work at western illinois university public and will continue to review efforts in illinois to rein in the escalating costs of public higher education. manuscript received: 10/12/2012 revisions received: 12/27/2012 accepted: 12/29/2012 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 volume 16, number 1 january 26, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1265-5743-2-le.doc 1 volume 17, number 1 january 21, 2014 issn 1099-839x trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions gary d. bigham and mark r. riney west texas a&m university as educational needs of students change in response to changing demographics, economic factors, workforce needs, and school accountability requirements, school leaders must continually monitor and adjust curricula and associated methods of instructional delivery to increase student learning. the analysis of student performance data is a critical component of curriculum decision-making processes, and the purpose of this study is to demonstrate an application of trend analysis techniques in making curriculum and instruction decisions using historical student performance data. the techniques are demonstrated in relation to a real school problem and are transferrable to similar problems facing other schools. this study underscores the importance school leaders should place on analyzing data when making decisions related to curriculum and instruction. keywords: trend analysis, school leadership, curriculum and instruction, assessment, data-driven decision-making as educational needs of students change in response to shifts in demographics (e.g., the national economy, politics, stateand federal-level accountability requirements, workforce needs, etc.), school leaders must continually monitor curricula and associated methods of instructional delivery to make appropriate adjustments in meeting the needs of students. the no child left behind legislation increased federal, state, and local scrutiny of schools in that by the 2014-15 school year, all students are expected to be academically “proficient.” as a result of the increased pressures on schools to improve student performance on state-mandated standardized assessments, vendors are continually producing new products including teaching tools, classroom supplies, curriculum supplements, and even entire curricula to appeal to faculties and administrations of school districts (cuban, 2012; david & cuban, 2010). moreover, alternative class scheduling patterns have been implemented in schools to facilitate enhanced curriculum delivery. while these products or alternative scheduling patterns may meet the needs of some schools, others excel without them. nonetheless, when it appears that all of the neighboring school districts have purchased or adopted a given product, or made various scheduling changes or adjustments, the temptation of some school leaders is to question whether or not their schools should do the same, even though historically many curriculum innovations and reforms have not increased student learning as promised (payne, 2010; ravitch, 2010). rather than trying to “keep up with the jones’ next door” in determining whether such changes are appropriate, school administrators must meticulously analyze student academic performance data to determine ways to improve both curriculum benchmarks and classroom instruction to increase student learning (darling-hammond, 2013; slavin, cheung, holmes, madden, & chamberlain, 2013). background data for this study were collected from publicly accessible state reports for a small, rural texas school district. the school district’s total student enrollment current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 2 ranged from 370 to 431 with an average enrollment of 393.6 over the ten-year period from which data were collected. although the data in table 2 are restricted to state-assessed reading scores, they provide a sense of the high levels of success the school district had experienced with its student population over the decade covered by this study. the school district was considering a middle school scheduling change, with unknown, but potential ramifications for student achievement in its reading and english language arts (ela) curriculum. prompting the potential curriculum change was the fact that many school districts in the same geographical region were adopting a designated, comprehensive curriculum addressing all core subjects. based on the nature of reading and ela components of curricula being considered for adoption, a middle school curriculum and scheduling change specific to reading and ela became the focal area in this study. reading instruction had historically been heavily emphasized school-wide. beginning at the early childhood level, intensive phonics instruction had traditionally been emphasized, followed by the incorporation of a reader program to enhance students’ reading comprehension skills. the school district’s reading philosophy revealed that just as practice is needed by any athletic team to improve and become more competitive, “practice” is also needed in reading to improve students’ reading skills and use of reading strategies as tools to obtain and critically analyze ideas and information, and to increase students’ levels of language acquisition (noddings, 2013). many schools combine the subjects of reading and ela into a single class at the middle school level. however, given this school district’s reading philosophy, reading instruction had been emphasized by designating reading as a class in and of itself in students’ class schedules throughout their middle school years. problem middle schools often find themselves as literal battle grounds for competing interests. pressure is exerted to avail course offerings in the disciplines of fine arts, career and technical education, and sports and exercise sciences. moreover, with advanced high school graduation plans, middle schools have witnessed an impetus to move other courses such as health, algebra, and technology education onto their campuses to provide more advanced options to students as they move into high school (harris, 2011; national middle school association, 2003; wormeli, 2011). while embracing the foundational nature of reading and its contribution to every academic discipline, with the external pressures to move other courses into the middle school, school leaders may be tempted to combine the reading and ela disciplines into a single course at the middle school campus to provide students opportunities to take other courses. similarly, comprehensive curricula designed for purchase by school districts often combine the reading and ela components such that middle schools may be encouraged to combine the two into a single class. yet, recognizing the emphasis placed on reading by both state and federal accountability measures, the problem lies in risking a student performance decline on reading assessments as a result of combining reading with ela instruction into a single class. purpose the purpose of this study is to demonstrate trend analysis techniques that may be useful to school leaders in making decisions affecting curriculum and instruction. specific to the circumstances identified in the school selected for this study, trend analysis techniques will be used to determine the relationship between the scheduling scheme practiced in the middle school and student reading achievement assessed via the state-mandated standardized reading assessment. the information yielded by this type of analysis should prove to be valuable to school leaders in making these critical decisions. research hypothesis through trend analyses of tenand five-year reading performance data obtained from the school district’s academic excellence indicator system (aeis) (tea, 2013) reports, mean student passing percentage scores were computed by grade level and by campus. the calculated data were analyzed to answer the following question: “does a middle school departmentalized scheduling scheme requiring that reading and ela instruction be delivered to students in two separate classes demonstrate any relationship to student performance on the state-mandated standardized reading assessment?” considering the case study parameters, (i.e., a single school district and the ex post facto nature of the data collected), the answer to the question was sought through hypothesis testing by comparing student reading achievement, aggregated by campus, among the three campuses within the same school district. while obvious extraneous variables were at play, the single distinguishing variable that was isolated among the three campuses was the scheduling scheme utilized in the delivery of each campus’s reading and ela curriculum. this question was therefore addressed through the testing of two null hypotheses, from both tenand five-year data compilations, that read: ho: a middle school departmentalized scheduling scheme requiring that reading and ela instruction be delivered to students in separate classes will demonstrate no significant relationship to student performance on the statemandated standardized reading assessment, aggregated by campus, as compared with equivalent aggregated student reading performance resulting from an elementary school delivery of reading and ela instruction through trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions 3 scheduling schemes varying from self-contained to semi-departmentalized. ho: a high school departmentalized scheduling scheme requiring that reading and ela instruction be combined for delivery to students in a single class will demonstrate no significant relationship to student performance on the state-mandated standardized reading assessment, aggregated by campus, as compared with equivalent aggregated student reading performance resulting from a middle school departmentalized scheduling scheme requiring that reading and ela instruction be delivered to students in separate classes. review of literature reading and literacy because of the foundational nature of reading, student success in all academic subjects, including mathematics, is predicated on their ability to read, comprehend, and interpret information. consequently, additional instructional time devoted to reading and writing enriches the school curriculum and enhances students’ levels of language acquisition and their abilities to learn more effectively in all subject areas (mcconachie et al., 2006). a designated reading class in addition to an ela class provides teachers more instructional time to focus on total language development. for instance, students are taught various reading strategies (e.g., mapping stories, baumann & bergerson, 1993; outlining and summarizing texts, marzano, pickering, & pollack, 2001) to enhance their reading comprehension. equally important, a separate reading class allocates more time for instruction in vocabulary development, which improves students’ reading comprehension (kelley, lesaux, kieffer, & faller, 2010; lesaux, kieffer, faller, & kelley, 2010; marzano, 2007), but which is taught infrequently in many classrooms (hiebert, 2005). furthermore, a separate reading class provides opportunities for reading teachers to collaborate with content area teachers to teach content specific reading strategies for their respective content areas including ela (lesaux et al., 2010; morrow, pressley, smith, & smith, 1997; siegel & fonzi, 1995) in addition to spending more time teaching students how to read analytically and how to make inferences to establish purposes for their reading (gomez & gomez, 2007). over the past twenty-five years, researchers have documented the reciprocal nature of reading and writing (newell, 1998; shanahan & shanahan, 2008; wittrock, 1984). for example, teachers often use texts not only to teach students reading strategies, but also as springboards of discussion and topics for compositions. conversely, when students write analytically about complex content they are reading, their understanding of the given concepts and their relationship among ideas is enhanced (kelley et al., 2010; newell, 1998). similarly, reading and writing are intertwined in that teachers often use texts as models of the type of writing students are to complete, and these models serve as instructional scaffolds to guide students through planning and composing processes (vygotsky, 1986). accountability literacy and mathematics instruction were regarded as top priority at the initiation of the no child left behind (nclb) act as indicated on adequate yearly progress (ayp) targets established for schools in the united states. these targets have been measured by their respective state-mandated standardized reading assessments in grades three through eight and ten. the ayp targets as reported in table 1 were established at the outset of the nclb legislation for all u.s. public schools. ayp reading/ela targets were consistently set above math targets from the 2002-03 to the 2012-2013 school year. in texas, from 2002-03 to 2010-11, the literacy target was measured by the reading texas assessment of knowledge and skills (taks) from the 3rd grade through the 9th grade, and the reading/ela taks after the 9th grade. beginning with the 2011-12 school year, the state’s assessment changed from taks to the state of texas assessment of academic readiness (staar). however, since the staar is so new, data collected in this study were limited to that obtained from state assessments prior to the staar. reading and math were also emphasized on the texas accountability system, the academic excellence indicator system (aeis), and these subjects were tested annually in grades three through eleven. table 1 ayp targets for u.s. schools pursuant to the nclb act 02-03 03-04 04-05 05-06 06-07 07-08 08-09 09-10 10-11 11-12 12-13 14-15 rdg/ela 46.8% 53.5% 60.1% 66.8% 73.4% 80.1% 86.7% 93.4% 100% math 33.4% 41.7% 50.0% 58.3% 66.6% 74.9% 83.2% 91.5% 100% current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 4 methods research design the descriptive research design was employed in this study. “descriptive research is a type of quantitative research that involves making careful descriptions of educational phenomena” (gall, gall, & borg, 2003, p. 290) at its most basic level, and it “seeks to find answers to questions through the analysis of variable relationships” (best & kahn, 2006, p. 133). consequently, the descriptive research design was the most appropriate selection since this study endeavored to determine the relationship between the scheduling scheme practiced in the middle school (the independent variable) and student reading achievement (the dependent variable) assessed via the state-mandated standardized reading assessment. because the collected data consisted of historical student performance on state-mandated standardized reading assessments as reported on state accountability reports over tenand five-year periods of time, the trend study methodology – a derivation of the descriptive research design – was designated as the most appropriate method for this study. “trend studies describe change by selecting a different sample at each data collection point from a population that does not remain constant” (gall et al., 2003, p. 292). the population was defined as students in grades three through nine, or ten, in the school district over tenand five-year periods of time. as identified by gall et al’s (2003) description of a trend study population, this study’s population changed from year to year as a result of the normal progression of students from grade to grade and campus to campus. the samples were defined as the students enrolled in each grade level. thus, with data collection occurring once each year at the designated grade levels, the samples changed each year as well. then, the comparison groups used in the statistical analyses were defined as the students enrolled in each campus at each data collection point, which also was an annually changing dynamic. nonetheless, the examination of reading performance scores over time aids in revealing trends and determining the effectiveness of certain system-level practices in relation to student performance, and this method parallels the trend study methodology described by gall et al. (2003). data collection ten years of state-mandated standardized reading assessment data, measured by the texas assessment of academic skills (taas) from 2000 through 2002 and texas assessment of knowledge and skills (taks) from 2003 through 2009, were extrapolated from the school district’s aeis reports published on the texas education agency’s (tea) website. the aeis reports student performance as the percentage of students meeting the state standard, hereinafter referred to throughout this study as the passing rate. these reading performance data were collected and organized on a spreadsheet in columns by grade level and in rows by calendar year as displayed in table 2. table 2 percentage of students meeting reading taas/taks standard from 2000 through 2009 year elementary middle school high school 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2000 93 100 90 100 100 100 96 2001 91 97 96 88 100 100 100 2002 94 92 100 100 93 100 100 2003 100 97 88 100 100 100 100 2004 96 100 100 96 100 100 100 2005 100 82 95 94 86 100 95 2006 90 81 95 100 100 96 95 2007 100 76 78 86 100 91 93 2008 80 96 84 89 81 96 83 2009 88 70 96 84 80 85 92 ta as ta ks trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions 5 the texas statewide assessment shifted from the taas to the taks from 2002 to 2003. another notable change is that, in high school, reading as a separate subject was tested with the taas in the tenth grade, but with the taks, it was moved to the ninth grade. at the inception of the taks, reading was assessed beyond the ninth grade although it was done so in conjunction with ela with the reading/ela taks. since this study focused primarily on reading, reading/ela data were not used in the calculation of any results. accordingly, for purposes of measuring reading achievement of students in high school, only tenth grade taas scores and only ninth grade taks scores were used. data analysis two separate data analyses were conducted. the first analysis encompassed all ten years of data collected, whereas the second analysis pulled only the most recent five years of data reported in table 2. the two separate analyses were conducted because the statewide assessment change from taas to taks reflected the move to a more rigorous assessment. from a sample size perspective in the application of a statistical power analysis, the ten-year aggregated data resulted in a population of n = 2073 students enrolled in the grade levels tested and the five-year aggregated data resulted in a population of n = 1012 students enrolled in the grade levels tested. obviously, the ten-year analysis resulted in greater sample size power, but the five-year analysis reflected more current information in alignment with the taks. a benefit of the duplicated analyses was the enhanced validity of findings. identical procedures were employed in both analyses. mean scores were calculated for each grade level reported in table 2, reflective of percentages of students passing the reading assessments over the measured time periods. then, campus-level mean scores for the elementary and middle school were calculated by averaging grade-level mean scores for grades three through five and grades six through eight respectively. since high school reading was assessed by the taas in the tenth grade and by the taks in the ninth grade, the three tenth grade scores from 2000 through 2002 were added to the seven ninth grade scores from 2003 through 2009 and divided by ten to derive the ten-year high school mean score. the five-year high school mean score was computed by simply averaging ninth grade passing percentage scores from 2005 through 2009. these gradeand campus-level mean scores were reported numerically in tables 3 and 4, and the numerical data were then converted into graphical format to facilitate the visual identification of evolving trends. the data were combined into a single graph whereby the grade-level scores were plotted linearly and campus-level data were plotted by histogram in figures 1 and 2. to methodically analyze the findings in a nonbiased fashion, the application of a quantitative data analysis technique was employed. individual students’ state-mandated standardized reading assessment results were not available to the researchers, thus data collection was limited to the combined percentages of students passing the reading assessments as displayed on the school's aeis reports. this effectively reduced the analysis to two categories of students – those who passed and those who failed the state-mandated standardized reading assessment. since only passing percentages were reported on the aeis reports, the need for enrollment data came into play to calculate an estimated number of students tested. these data were also collected from the aeis reports. however, it should be noted that student enrollment per grade level, as reported on the aeis reports, did not necessarily represent the exact number of students who were actually tested in all cases. for example, an enrolled student could have been absent on the day of an assessment. although this is problematic from a strict academic research perspective, the purpose of this study is to demonstrate these methods to school leaders and not to make generalizations, therefore it ceases to be a problem because school leaders will have access to their exact enrollment and test participation counts which should obviously be used in place of the more general and publicly accessible enrollment data reported on aeis documents as used by the authors of this study. consequently, for demonstration, in accordance with the stated purpose of this study, these calculations included all enrolled students in the frequency counts as test takers. simple mathematical procedures were used to calculate passing and failing frequency counts by campus. percentage passing rates were multiplied by the respective student enrollments in the tested grade-levels on each campus to determine a total number of students passing the assessments. then, by subtracting this number from the total enrollment counts, the total number of students failing the assessment per campus was derived. these techniques were applied in both the tenand five-year analyses. based on the categorical assessment results (passing or failing per campus), the chi-square test was used to quantitatively analyze the data. the chi-square was the most appropriate statistical test, because the data being analyzed consisted of frequency counts (calculated from percentages) of students passing and failing (categories) the state-mandated reading assessment. as noted by gravetter and wallnau (1996), the chi-square test for goodness of fit uses sample data to test hypotheses about the shape or proportions of a population distribution. the test determines how well the obtained sample proportions fit the population proportions specified by the null hypothesis. (p. 548) the null hypotheses stated that no relationship would exist between the independent and dependent variables for the population. for the purposes of this current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 6 table 3 ten-year mean scores reflecting the percentage of students meeting the passing standard in grades 3 through 8 and 10 on the reading taas and in grades 3 through 9 on reading taks from 2000 through 2009 campus: elementary middle school high school grade: 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 % passing 94.4 91.6 91.5 95.3 95.6 98.3 95.1 98.7 92.5 96.4 96.2 analysis, the independent variable was the middle school scheduling scheme requiring delivery of reading and ela instruction in two separate classes with the dependent variable being student performance on the state-mandated standardized reading assessment. two methods of setting up the chi-square test for goodness of fit are (1) no preference, where nothing is known about the potential outcome, and all categories are weighted equally, and (2) no difference from a comparison population, where information is known about the probable outcome based on prior knowledge (gravetter & wallnau, 1996). since the null hypotheses stated that no relationship would exist between the middle school scheduling scheme and student reading achievement as compared with equivalent elementary and high school reading assessment results, "no difference from a comparison population" was deemed most appropriate for this analysis. the obtained frequencies derived from mean passing and failing frequency counts by campus were compared to test the null hypotheses. in testing the first null hypothesis, the elementary passing and failing percentages were applied to the middle school enrollment to calculate expected passing and failing frequencies – thus in applying the “no difference from a comparison population” chi-square methodology, the elementary served as the comparison population against which the middle school results were analyzed. likewise, in testing the second hypothesis, the middle school served as the comparison population against which the high school results were analyzed. the obtained passing/failing frequencies for the elementary, middle, and high schools were 838.05/67.95 where n = 906; 836.75/31.25 where n = 868; and 287.64/11.36 where n = 299 respectively for the ten year analysis where n = 2073. for the five-year analysis the obtained passing/failing frequencies for the elementary, middle, and high schools were 371.90/44.10 where n = 416; 417.88/25.12 where n = 443; and 142.60/10.40 where n = 153 respectively where n = 1012. the expected frequencies defined an ideal hypothetical situation. for the ten-year analysis the passing/failing ƒ = 802.90/65.10 for the middle school and ƒ = 288.24/10.76 for the high school. similarly, for the five-year analysis, the passing/failing ƒ = 396.04/46.96 for the middle school and ƒ = 143.33/8.68 for the high school. a rigorous alpha level of α = 0.005 was used for the level of significance, and with only two categories – passing and failing – the degrees of freedom equaled one. for df = 1 and α = 0.005, the critical chi-square value was 7.88 (gravetter & wallnau, 1996). results the findings were organized into two main categories. the first category reports ten years of student reading assessment data organized by campus and by grade level as measured by the reading taas and taks. the second category reports five years of reading assessment data organized by campus and by grade level as measured by taks. ten-year grade level and campus findings in objectively analyzing the relationship between the scheduling scheme practiced in the middle school and student reading achievement assessed via the statemandated standardized reading assessment, as compared with student performance on equivalent elementary and high school reading assessments, the ten years of reading taas/taks student performance data collected from aeis reports resulted in n = 2073 students beginning in 2000 and ending in 2009. the data reported in table 3 were obtained from campusand gradelevel mean trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions 7 figure 1. ten-year cumulative mean scores by grade level of all students tested in grades 3 through 8 and 10 on taas and in grades 3 through 9 on taks who met the passing standard established by the state of texas for reading from 2000 to 2009. the data from table 3 were converted into graphical format in figure 1 to reveal the linear trends that evolved by grade level, while campus scores were plotted via histogram. a grade level examination of the data revealed an initial drop in passing percentages from the third to the fourth and fifth grades, followed by successive increases to the eighth grade. there was a difference of 6.8 points from the fifth grade low score of 91.5 to the eighth grade high score of 98.3. the eighth grade high score was then followed by a 2.1 point drop as students moved into high school. by campus, the ten-year cumulative data revealed that the percentage of students passing the reading taas/taks climbed from the elementary through the middle school years, followed by a slight decline as they moved into high school. the chi-square test for goodness of fit was used, as describe in the methods section, to determine the significance of the differences observed in the campus mean scores. setting up the chi-square test in accordance with the “no difference from a comparison population” method, resulted in the testing of two hypotheses. the first null hypothesis stated that there would be no significant difference from the elementary score to the middle school score, and the elementary score served as the comparison population for determining the probable outcome of the middle school score. similarly, the second null hypothesis stated that there would be no significant difference from the middle school score to the high school score, and the middle school score served as the comparison population for determining the probable outcome of the high school score. with only two categories of analysis—passing and failing—the df = c – 1 = 2 – 1 = 1 and with the the rigorous alpha of α = 0.005, the critical chi-square of χ2 crit = 7.88. the results of the chi-square tests are reported in table 4. consequently, pursuant to standard hypothesis testing procedures, the decision was to reject the null hypothesis stating that maintaining two separate classes for reading and ela in middle school will have no impact on student reading achievement as measured by the reading taas/taks. once students moved from the middle school campus to the high school campus, even though the percentage of students passing the reading taas/taks dropped, the statistical test indicated that the drop was not significant, thus the decision was to fail to reject the null hypothesis stating that combining the subjects of reading and ela into one course in high school will have no impact on student reading achievement as measured by the reading taas/taks. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 8 table 4 chi-square results in testing the goodness of fit using the “no difference from a comparison population” methodology applied to ten years of compiled data campus n o e χ2 χ2 crit significant passing failing passing failing elementary 906 (.925)(906) 838.05 (.075)(906) 67.95 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a middle school 868 (.964)(868) 836.75 (.036)(868) 31.25 (.925)(868) 802.90 (.075)(868) 65.10 19.03 7.88 yes high school 299 (.962)(299) 287.64 (.038)(299) 11.36 (.964)(299) 288.24 (.036)(299) 10.76 0.03 7.88 no totals 2073 1962.44 110.56 1091.14 75.86 table 5 five-year mean scores reflecting the percentage of students meeting the passing standard in grades 3 through 9 on the reading taks from 2005 through 2009 campus: elementary middle school high school grade: 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 % passing 94.0 86.0 88.2 93.8 92.6 96.6 93.2 92.5 96.4 96.2 figure 2. five-year mean scores reflecting the percentage of students meeting the passing standard in grades 3 through 9 on the reading taks from 2005 through 2009. trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions 9 five-year grade level and campus findings the next analyses employed identical processes described in the preceding section, but with five, in place of ten, years of reading taks student performance data. there were n = 1012 students enrolled in the grade levels from which these data were collected beginning in 2005 and ending in 2009, as reported in the aeis documents. as in the preceding section, mean scores, representing five years of test results were calculated and reported in table 5. the data in table 5 were converted into graphical format in figure 2 to reveal the linear trends that evolved by grade level, while campus scores were plotted via histogram. a grade level examination of the data revealed an initial drop in passing percentages from the third to the fourth grade, followed by successive increases to the sixth grade, a slight decline in the seventh grade, and a notable increase in the eighth grade. this was followed by a decline in the ninth grade. there was a difference of 10.6 points from the fourth grade low score of 86.0 to the eighth grade high score of 96.6. the eighth grade high score was then followed by a 3.4 point drop as students moved into high school. by campus, the five-year cumulative data revealed that the percentage of students passing the reading taks climbed from the elementary through the middle school years, followed by a slight decline as they moved into high school. in following the pattern established with the tenyear data set, to determine the significance of differences observed in the five-year campus mean scores, the chisquare test for goodness of fit was used. the two null hypotheses mirrored those tested in with the ten-year data set, where the first null hypothesis stated that there would be no significant difference from the elementary score to the middle school score, and the second null hypothesis stated that there would be no significant difference from the middle school score to the high school score. the same two categories of analysis—passing and failing— were used, thus the df = c – 1 = 2 – 1 = 1 and χ2 crit = 7.88 resulted from the selection of the rigorous alpha of α = 0.005. the results of the chi-square tests are reported in table 6. while the numbers obviously varied, the results of the hypothesis tests for the five-year data set were the same as those for the ten-year data set. the findings from elementary to middle school were significant, whereas the findings from middle school to high school were not. table 6 chi-square results in testing the goodness of fit using the “no difference from a comparison population” methodology applied to five years of compiled data campus n o e χ2 χ2 crit significant passing failing passing failing elementary 416 (.894)(416) 371.90 (.106)(416) 44.10 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a middle school 443 (.9433)(443) 417.88 (.0567)(443) 25.12 (.894)(443) 396.04 (.106)(443) 46.96 11.36 7.88 yes high school 153 (.932)(153) 142.60 (.068)(153) 10.40 (.933)(153) 143.33 (.0567)(153) 8.68 0.024 7.88 no totals 1012 932.38 79.62 539.37 55.64 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 10 discussion and conclusions in summary, ten years of state-mandated standardized reading assessment data were collected and trend analyses were conducted. the first analysis captured the full ten years of test results through the calculation of campus-level mean scores and the second analysis captured the five most recent years of test results through the calculation of campus-level mean scores. both analyses yielded similar patterns when plotted linearly, where scores rose from the elementary to middle school, followed by a drop in high school. the compilation of third, fourth, and fifth grade scores into a single campus score revealed that the lowest performing campus in the tenand five-year analyses was the elementary. however, there was a statistically significant growth from the elementary to the middle school—perhaps a sign of history, maturation, and more test-wise skills to some extent as described by gall, borg, and gall (1996), but also indicative of increases in students’ levels of reading achievement as a result of additional time allocated in the school curriculum for direct instruction in reading and other aspects of ela. the compilation of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade scores into a single campus score revealed that the highest performing campus in the school district was the middle school. although the drop in test scores from the middle school to the high school was not statistically significant at the 0.005 alpha level, from the perspectives of school leaders, declining scores will still raise pragmatic concerns. while several explanations may be offered for the improvement in students’ reading achievement from the elementary to the middle school, for researchers external to the school district, it is imprudent to overlook the purposeful separation of reading and ela in separate classes as a major contributor. the advantage school leaders have over external researchers is an intimate working knowledge of the internal environment. reiterating that the purpose of this study is to demonstrate trend analysis techniques for use by school leaders, in this final section of the study, the researchers, external to the school, can only speculate on factors leading to the student performance differences observed from campus to campus. nonetheless, those speculations should serve as a guide for school leaders to use as they engage in these same processes with the added benefit of internal organizational knowledge. for example, while the clear separation of reading an ela is obvious to a researcher viewing a class schedule, there is no way to know from an external view how reading and ela are structured (combined or separated) in the self-contained elementary classroom. however, school leaders have the advantage of being privy to that type of information to better inform the conclusions they draw. from the vantage point of the external lens through which the researchers viewed these findings, the decline in students’ reading achievement from middle school to high school may be accounted for by at least two factors that should be investigated proactively by school leaders. first, the transition from middle school to high school is a big step for students involving changes in expectations, maturity, faculty and administration, supervision, and participation in extracurricular activities (national middle school association, 2003), and these factors may have contributed to the reduced performance on the reading assessment. second, it is possible that high school content area teachers (other than ela teachers) need to devote more instructional time to reading instruction to increase students’ literacy development in the absence of separate reading and ela classes. in conclusion, school leaders must use data from state assessments to take direct action to improve classroom instruction and curriculum development (slavin et al., 2013). while the separation of reading and ela into separate courses at the middle school level is not mandated in texas, the data in this study would initially suggest to school leaders in this district that the additional time devoted to reading instruction in the middle school resulted in increased passing rates on statemandated standardized reading assessments. consequently, it seems prudent, especially to middle school leaders, to continue to allocate additional time to reading instruction in the school curriculum. in terms of the decline in reading performance at the high school level, although not significant, proactive school leaders may consider measures for staff development in 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(2014). trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions. current issues in education, 17(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1265 author notes gary d. bigham west texas a&m university p.o. box 60208 canyon, tx 79016-0001 gbigham@wtamu.edu gary bigham is an assistant professor of educational leadership at west texas a&m university. his professional background includes twenty-five years of experience in texas public schools and universities holding the positions of teacher, principal, superintendent, adjunct professor, and assistant professor. mark r. riney west texas a&m university p.o. box 60208 canyon, tx 79016-0001 mriney@wtamu.edu mark r. riney, a former language arts and history teacher, is an associate professor and chair of curriculum and instruction at west texas a&m university. he teaches courses in curriculum theory and analysis, multicultural education, foundations of education, and secondary methods. manuscript received: 07/16/2013 revisions received: 11/15/2013 accepted: 12/14/2013 trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions 13 volume 17, number 1 january 21, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors elizabeth calhoun reyes constantine schreiber assistant executive editors kevin jose rasa recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik aaron bryant darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell younsu kim anna montana cirell melinda thomas kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template volume 18, issue 3 september 28, 2015 issn 1099-839x collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education chin-wen chien national hsinchu university of education, taiwan abstract: this study analyzed 24 pre-service elementary school english teachers’ design and delivery of remedial education to the fifth and sixth graders in the collaboration between the university preservice teacher education program and the local elementary school in a city in northwest taiwan. the pre-service teachers were encouraged by the elementary school fifth and sixth graders’ improvement in english and their positive attitude toward learning english. however, these preservice teachers lacked insufficient competence and skills in classroom management, teaching small groups, carrying out class activities, and using the target language. scheduling of the remedial education as pre-service teachers’ field experience should be taken into consideration for collaboration between elementary school english teachers and language teacher education programs. a model on the effective collaboration between elementary school english teachers and the language teacher education program is recommended. keywords: collaboration, field experience, language teacher education, pre-service teachers, remedial education apa-style citation: chien, c.-w. (2015). collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education. current issues in education, 18(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1327 accepted: june 5th, 2015 teaching english to fifth and sixth graders in taiwan elementary schools became compulsory in the fall semester of 2001 (ministry of education, 2001). in the fall of 2005, english education was extended to the third grade (ministry of education, 2005). the resulting “two-peak phenomenon” in elementary school english education has become a burning issue in taiwan (chang, 2006) because, in any given elementary school class, while about one third of students have never learned english before, another third of students can already read harry potter in english. english remedial education seems to be the solution to this “two-peak english phenomenon.” through the remedial education, elementary school students who fall behind the regular standard must master at least 108 words for production, sixty percent of the required words of production mandated for regular students by the ministry of education (2001, 2006, 2012). of all current issues in education, 18(3) 1 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1327 chien: collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education these 108 words, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders should be able to spell and say 24 (i.e. a, an, apple), 26 (i.e. am, are), and 38 (i.e. bedroom, bathroom) words for production respectively. moreover, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders should be able to ask and answer three (i.e. what’s this?), four (i.e. how old are you?), and five (i.e. are you a student?) whand yes-no questions respectively. fifth and sixth graders must be able to use phonics rules to sound out cvc (consonant-vowelconsonant) words (i.e. c-a-t) and words with simple rules (i.e. smart). moreover, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders must be able to understand nine (i.e. good morning), nine (i.e. how are you?), nine (i.e. may i go to the restroom?), and six (i.e. excuse me?) basic english expressions respectively. with the required teaching hours and other responsibilities, elementary school english teachers are not able to fully devote themselves to english remedial education for students at the low proficiency level (tseng, 2008; wu, 2007). only half of the 206 elementary schools in taipei county have a school-wide remedial instructional program (chang, 2006), whilst in the city of keelung few teachers in 51 elementary schools provide remedial instruction (yang, 2006). a total of 2244 elementary school pre-service teachers were enrolled in teacher education programs in taiwan in 2010 (ministry of education, 2011a). pre-service teachers in teacher education programs in universities in taiwan who receive scholarships are required to provide educational services, such as remedial education for those elementary school students who fall behind their peers in their studies. however, these pre-service teachers are found to lack english teaching competence, particularly in classroom management and instructional strategies (ministry of education, 2011b). therefore, the ministry of education in taiwan highly recommends that training on remedial education should be provided for these pre-service teachers. pre-service teachers’ field experiences are regarded as a way to enhance pre-service teachers’ teaching practice (catapano, 2006; farrell, 2003; goodfellow & sumsion, 2000; hudson, ngueyn, & hudson, 2007; mule, 2006). pre-service teachers who take teaching english to speakers of other languages (tesol) method courses often complain that they lack field experience. they cannot say whether their lesson and activity designs are practical in real classrooms. an instructor in a language teacher education program (ltep) in a city in northwest taiwan collaborated with a local elementary school english teacher in the spring semester of 2013. the pre-service elementary school english teachers in the instructor’s ltep learned how to design activities for remedial english education. then they delivered in the form of the remedial english lessons to the fifth and sixth graders in a cooperating teacher’s local elementary school. this study focuses on the collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on the designs and delivery of remedial education. a model on effective establishment and implementation of collaboration between elementary schools and language teacher education programs on remedial english education is provided. literature review it takes time and an increase in a teacher trainer’s workload to establish a collaborative relationship and develop mutual trust between language teacher education programs and another institution or agency (fisler & firestone, 2006; guo, 2013). in order to make a field experience effective and meaningful for pre-service teachers, bower, klecka, and silva (2010) suggested that facilitating a partnership during the field experiences must be the intention and collaboration between local schooland university-based teacher education educators should be established. lemieux and allen (2007) indicated that criteria should be provided to guide the practice and assure the effectiveness of the successful collaboration. in keeping with the need for criteria, three characteristics of a successful partnership are identified as teachers’ involvement in the current issues in education, 18(3) 2 chien: collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education development, clear and agreed-upon goals, and benefits for all parties (guo, 2013; williams, 2009). practicum and integration of service learning into teacher education program can provide field experience and facilitate pre-service teachers’ professional learning and development (chiang, 2008; cooper, 2002; cleary, 2005; guo, 2013). college students in guo’s (2013) study performed their field experience by providing a one-hour english program to local elementary school children in a nearby library in taiwan. college students gained experience beyond the university classroom and made a connection between the second language teaching theories and practice. thirteen participants in the tefl method course in chiang’s (2008) study claimed that field-based learning in two nearby high schools constituted valuable learning experiences for them; in particular, field based learning advanced their instructional strategies and professional knowledge. chiang (2008) concluded that integrating fieldwork components into tefl method courses increased their understanding of the field, enhanced the efficacy of teaching english, and affirmed the chosen career paths of the student teachers (p. 1283). pre-service language teachers in tomas, rai, and haslam’s (2008) study did their practicum in an english as a foreign language (efl) context in the czech republic. having many opportunities to teach allowed these pre-service teachers to discover their own teaching styles. cleary (2005) examined the integration of field experiences into two literacy courses taken by twelve second year pre-service teachers at a regional australian university. this study highlights the positive impact that partnerships between regional university campuses and local schools can have on pre-service teachers, particularly their teaching skills. roberts (2006) proposes the model of interactions in the student teaching experience as in figure 1. student teachers’ learning is constructed through the interactions between student teacher, the students, the cooperating teacher, and the university supervisor. figure 1. model of interactions in the student teaching experience (roberts, 2006, p. 2). russell, mcpherson, and martin (2001) suggest that theory and practice should be tied into the collaboration between student teachers, local schools, and university-level teacher education programs. university supervisors can model the lessons in the cooperating teacher’s classroom. pre-service teachers should be taught strategies and rationales before observing modeling teaching. the cooperating teachers along with the university supervisors lead these pre-service teachers to observe, debrief, and put these strategies into practice. the cooperating teachers’ characteristics influence their relationship with pre-service teachers and the effectiveness of collaboration (killian & wilkins, 2009). roberts (2006) study concludes that cooperating teachers must demonstrate four characteristics including teaching and instruction (i.e. has a good subject matter knowledge, good classroom management), current issues in education, 18(3) 3 chien: collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education professionalism (i.e. a role model, effective communicator), relationship (i.e. provide clear expectations, share resources), and characteristics (i.e. responsible, cooperative). moreover, cooperating teachers should play four important roles as good communicators between student teachers and practicum supervisors, demystifiers for making invisible teaching procedure visible, catalysts for identify shifts for helping student teachers from classroom observers to classroom teachers, and mentors who guide and advise student teachers (payant & murphy, 2012). cooperating teachers should receive systematic preparation for communication skills needed for hosting conferences as well as proving student teachers or pre-service teachers with feedback and written evaluation (killian & wilkins, 2009). there are books and studies on the importance of the practicum for tesol method courses or programs and its implementation (chiang, 2008; clearly, 2005; crookes, 2003; guo, 2013; janopoulos, 1991; mule, 2006; richards & crooks, 1988; tomas et al., 2008). no empirical studies in taiwan have focused on the collaboration between local elementary schools and language teacher education programs for providing pre-service language teachers with field experience in remedial english education. this study identifies and analyzes challenges and posits implications of pre-service elementary school english teachers’ design and delivery of remedial english education to elementary school students as their field experience. method this is a qualitative case study. this study focuses on the collaboration between a university language teacher education program and the local elementary school in terms of preservice teachers’ design and delivery of remedial education. this study discusses the following issues. first, what was pre-service elementary school english teachers’ and the collaborating teacher’s attitude toward this collaboration program? second, what were the benefits and shortfalls of such collaboration program? setting and participants case study research is effective in providing intensive descriptions and analyses of a single unit or bounded system such as an individual, program, or group, because a case study focuses on developing an in-depth analysis of a single case and it requires researchers to set boundaries and prove that they have engaged in a purposeful sampling strategy in meeting those boundaries (creswell, 2009). the case was the collaboration program established by a university instructor and elementary school english teacher. the instructor in a tesol methods and materials course in a teacher education program collaborated with an english teacher (jessie, pseudonym) in gate elementary school (pseudonym), an urban elementary school in a city in northwest taiwan. the participants included 24 pre-service english teachers enrolled in the tesol methods and materials course. the participants included 23 females and 1 male with an average of 21.1 years old. two participants were from the department of education and three participants from department of music instruction. the rest of the participants were three seniors and 17 juniors with major in english instruction. the class met for one hundred minutes each week. of jessie's students, three male fifth graders and three male sixth graders needed to have english remedial education. these six elementary school students were chosen for receiving this remedial education program because they were on the lowest 5% of their class in terms of their english proficiency. these 24 pre-service english teachers signed up to and took turns in teaching these six students every tuesday at noon for eleven weeks. current issues in education, 18(3) 4 chien: collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education data collection the data collection lasted for eleven weeks during one semester from march to may 2013. data in this study included (1) pre-service teachers’ reflections and beliefs about designs and delivery of remedial education, (2) the cooperating teacher’s feedback on pre-service teachers’ instruction and this collaboration program, and (3) videos and teaching aids of the classroom practice. the first two types of the data were used to answer the first research question “what was pre-service elementary school english teachers’ and the collaborating teacher’s attitude toward this collaboration program?” the first and the third data were used to answer the second research question, “what were the benefits and shortfalls of such collaboration program?” at the beginning of the semester, the instructor in this teaching methods and materials of english in the elementary school class gave a lecture on theoretical concepts of remedial education and english remedial education provided at a summer school program in the united states. two pre-service teachers signed up as a team and one taught three fifth and the other taught three sixth graders. two teams consisted of three pre-service teachers, so one taught three fifth and the other two taught three sixth graders. each pre-service teacher designed a 40-minute lesson plan on the given language focus (words, sentence patterns, dialogue) of the assigned unit. one of the limitations of this study was that each pre-service teacher was given only one session of giving remedial education among elementary school students. twenty-two videos were recorded. eleven videos were the delivery of english remedial instruction among three fifth graders and the other eleven videos were the recording of the remedial instruction taught among the three sixth graders. each video lasted for forty minutes. each pre-service teacher taught these elementary school students and videotaped the instruction from twelve-thirty to one o’clock on tuesdays. during that period of time, jessie was grading homework, preparing her lessons, or giving remedial education to other fifth and sixth graders with lower english proficiency in the same room. pre-service teachers shared their teaching practice with jessie right after the instruction. they were required to hand in one or two pages of reflection, including how well they did in the lesson and how they would improve the lesson. a total of 24 reflections and 114 artifacts including 24 worksheets and 70 teaching aids were collected. data analysis names in this study are pseudonyms. qualitative researchers typically gather multiple forms of data, such as interviews, observations, and documents, rather than rely on a single data source (creswell, 2009). data in this study included pre-service teachers’ lesson plans, worksheets, pictures or videos, and reflections. the data was coded in the following stages as in figure 2. first, the researcher read through all the data and marked the data by a code (e.g. improvement, activity designs, classroom managements). secondly, while reading through these codes, the researcher assigned tentative categories (e.g. attitude, lessons learned, problems). the data were sorted on the basis of its fit into topics that reflected the research questions. a set of codes for thematic analysis was constructed that captures the meaning expressed by the data (flick, 1998). to increase the validity and credibility of the study, triangulation using multiple sources of data is to compare and cross-check data collected through videos, teaching aids, as well as the feedback given by pre-service teachers and the cooperating teacher. member check is another strategy for ensuring the validity and credibility (merriam, 2009). following the data collection, member checking was conducted by reporting the preliminary findings to pre-service teachers and current issues in education, 18(3) 5 chien: collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education the cooperating teacher, inviting a critical commentary on the findings, and potentially incorporating the critiques into the findings. figure 2. data analysis. findings the analysis focused on pre-service english teachers’ and cooperating teacher’s attitude toward collaboration program, lessons pre-service teachers learned from their involvement in the remedial education, problems of the designs and delivery of the remedial education, and the shortfalls of this collaboration program. attitude toward collaboration program all pre-service english teachers and jessie in this study had positive attitudes toward designs and delivery of the remedial education collaborated with an elementary school english teacher and language teacher education program. jessie wrote, i was touched by these pre-service teachers’ passion and enthusiasm about teaching english. their teaching aids and worksheets were well-designed. these fifth and sixth graders enjoyed the lessons taught by these pre-service teachers and they looked forward for the lessons. each time after the lesson, they ask me, “will these big brothers and sisters come and teach me next week?” sharon particularly identified her reflection: “english teachers have to provide opportunities for students to succeed in learning english in class, so these elementary school language teacher education program design and delivery of remedial education as field experience field experience collaboration program problems of design and delivery of remedial education shortfalls of the collaboration program touched attitude appreciative learners’ improvement games, activities lesson learned sessions classroom management over-planned grammar teaching aids schedule under-planned english only current issues in education, 18(3) 6 chien: collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education students know that they could make it and make progress.” all pre-service teachers felt happy when they saw the small improvement and progress these elementary school students made in english. while zoe wrote, “i was touched when i saw these students working so hard. all my efforts paid off, yvonne also wrote, “i was glad that i could help these students to develop their english abilities and self-confidence in thirty minutes. i examined myself. i want to be a competent english teacher, so i can help students in need. like college students in guo’s (2013) study, pre-service teachers in this study felt that serving and helping these children was rewarding. teacher attitude has been identified as a critical variable in teaching (krashen, 1981). teachers’ attitude is a stance toward the self, activity, and others that links interpersonal dynamics with external performance and behavior (freeman, 1989). according to smith (1971), there is little doubt that the attitudes a teacher has towards himself influence his behavior in the classroom. and there are strong reasons for believing that the teacher’s attitudes towards his pupils—e.g., his expectations of them—will influence their achievement. (p. 8) lessons learned from designs and delivery of remedial education these pre-service teachers reflected on their designs and delivery of remedial education in terms of the areas where they did well and what they could do better for the future. tina identified the importance of games and activities in elementary school english instruction as she wrote in her reflection as “elementary school students enjoyed learning english through different games and activities, such as board games, bingo, or i-pad online games. i was so touched when those who are reluctant to speak english uttered a few english words. having everything ready before the class was important for teachers as sarah wrote, “next time i will try to be in class earlier, so i can settle down and get my teaching materials ready. i will wait in class and welcome these students.” all pre-service teachers appreciated for having the chance to teach remedial education in gate elementary school. they were thankful for jessie for sharing her experience and her observations after the teaching practice. rita wrote in her reflection as follows: these elementary school students did not have the grammatical concept about third person singular. after two drill practices, one seemed to be able to identify the differences between “do” and “does,” but the other one still made mistakes. i asked jessie why these students had difficulties with the third person singular. jessie said that the concept “third person singular” is new to these students and third person singular is not used in mandarin chinese. more activities should be designed for elementary school efl learners to practice this grammatical concept. pre-service teachers like rita should know their learners’ proficiency levels before design and delivery of remedial education. they should explore learners’ existing understands and seek strategies of bringing new understanding (clarke & jarvis-selinger, 2005). issues that cooperating teachers usually share with the student teachers and pre-service teachers are classroom management, relationship with learners, and learners’ profiles (clarke, 2001). cooperating teachers are encouraged to praise student teachers or pre-service teachers when appropriate (roberts, 2006). olivia was excited because the cooperating teacher complimented her well-designed teaching aids revealed in figure 3 as she wrote in her reflection “jessie identified the strengths (i.e. well-designed flashcards, worksheets, and teaching aids) and current issues in education, 18(3) 7 chien: collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education weaknesses of my teaching practice (i.e. teach words insolated). she also provided me some suggestions (i.e. teach words in context). figure 3. teaching aids on clothing. the pre-service teachers’ responses and attitudes to cooperating teaching are in accord with akcan and tatar’s (2010) study. constructive and adequate feedback is always desired by preservice teachers (akcan & tatar, 2010; roberts, 2006). in this study, feedback provided by elementary school cooperating teachers during pre-service english language teachers’ teaching practice helped these pre-service teachers evaluate their lessons more critically. therefore, effective and experienced cooperating teachers are adept at providing student teachers with corrective objective feedback before problems occurred (killian & wilkins, 2009; riesky, 2013). moreover, the cooperating teacher’s feedback tended to be more situational, focusing on certain instances that occurred in the classroom. crandall (2000) suggested that language teacher education should shift from the mere application of pedagogical knowledge to encouraging teachers to reflect on classroom practice and make adjustments accordingly. therefore, pre-service english teachers should be equipped with competence and skills in remedial english teaching and education in terms of instructional strategies, models, content, programs, material design, and so on. cooperating teachers can also help pre-service teachers shape their reflective skills and prepositions about receiving constructive criticism for improving their teaching effectiveness (killian & wilkins, 2009). problems on the design and delivery of remedial education when the pre-service teachers taught english remedial education, they faced some problems in terms of the lesson design for the remedial education, classroom management, and use of english as the media of instruction. first, with regard to the activity design, they included too many activities in the 40 minutes and they ran out of time before they finished them as in ginny’s reflection “i designed activities for reviewing words and sentence patterns. i couldn’t finish all the activities. next time, i should focus on words only.” on the other hand, some of the pre-service teachers did not have sufficient activities to carry out in forty minutes. betty said, “i finished teaching the lesson in thirty minutes. i did not know what to do in the last ten minutes, so i had to review the words again.” below was the conversation between betty, a pre-service teacher, and two fifth graders, jerry and joseph: betty: we finished all the activities today. let’s review these phrases. repeat after me “do you have any old lamps on sale?” current issues in education, 18(3) 8 chien: collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education jerry and joseph: (they looked bored.) do you have any old lamps on sale? betty: yes, we do. let me show you. jerry and joseph (fifth graders): yes, we do. let me show you. the conversation from the videotape showed that john, the elementary school student, complained about playing the same activity designed by the pre-service teacher, tim as below: tim: let’s review these phrases “cleaned the table, cooked the dinner, played a game, climbed a tree, watered the flowers, painted the fence.” tim: i will point to the flashcard. john, look at the picture, do the action and say “did you___?” mark, watch john’s action and answer “yes, i did” or “i didn’t.” john: you shi zhe ge. shang zhou wan guo (again? i played this game last week.) the above-mentioned dialogue revealed that john got bored by doing the same activity all the time. maintaining a drill for half an hour definitely exhausts both learners and teachers. therefore, language teachers should always prepare extra activities and vary activities over a period of time. teachers have to ensure that learner roles are not always the same (harmer, 2007). harmer (2007) gave an example of varying the reading comprehension, “sometimes students might compare answers in pairs; sometimes they might interview each other about the texts; sometimes they might do all the work on their own” (p. 29). with regard to classroom management, the pre-service teachers reflected that they only taught in a large class of 30 students, but they had not taught children individually or in small groups of two to three. children sometimes became too excited when playing games or they could not concentrate on learning after the physical education classes as in the following reflections written by helen, cindy, and amy: “i used to teach the whole class. i did not know how to teach one or two students, so i was afraid that these students were not motivated to play games,” “when playing games, the students were too excited. the class became chaos,” and “students had a hard time concentrating in class after the physical education class. i had to remind them to pay attention in class.” the pre-service teachers in this study also mentioned that these elementary school students could not understand the instruction when explanations and teaching were completely in english as in betty’s reflection “i spoke english and talked very fast. the students looked at me puzzled.” with regard the media of instruction, english teachers are encouraged to use english as often and much as possible in their english classrooms, but not to spend too much time talking in the learners’ first language (l1) (harmer, 2007, 2012). harmer (2007) made the following suggestions for giving instructions in the target language or learners’ first language: once we have given instructions for an activity, for example, we can ask students to repeat the instructions back to us in the l1—and this will tell us whether they have understood what they have to do. when we have complicated instructions to explain, we may want to do this in the l1, and where students need individual help or encouragement, the use of the l1 may have very beneficial effects (p. 39) current issues in education, 18(3) 9 chien: collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education shortfalls of the collaboration program two major shortfalls of the collaboration program occurred. the first was related to the limited chance that pre-service teachers could teach these fifth and sixth graders as in daisy and jim’s reflections “i only had one chance to teach these students for a 40-minute lesson this semester. i wish i could teach these students twice or three times. i want to see more about their improvement in english” and “i only had one chance to do the remedial education. i gained some new instructional strategies from my experience and suggested by jessie. i want to put them into practice and see if these strategies work well or not.” based on the above-mentioned examples, more opportunities for delivery of english remedial education should be provided for pre-service english teachers during the language teacher education program. local elementary schools and university teacher education programs should develop collaborative partnerships, so pre-service teachers will be given more highly structured opportunities to work in a classroom setting, to prepare and deliver high quality lessons, and teach these lessons to diverse groups of students. these opportunities can support pre-service teachers’ preparation as teachers, so they may be likely to become highly qualified to teach (heath, 2011). clifford and jardine (2003) recommend online environment as an alternative for cooperating teachers and pre-service teachers to design activities for the classroom practice and work out the difficulties of practice together. the second shortfall was related to the delivery time of the remedial education as preservice teachers’ field experience as written by lily “i really wanted to have a deep discussion about my classroom practice with jessie. i had afternoon classes and i did not feel like skipping the classes.” the remedial education was scheduled from twelve thirty to one o’clock on tuesdays. pre-service teachers had other classes scheduled at one-ten. it was the fifteen-minute walking distance from gate elementary school to the university. pre-service teachers had to skip the first period and even the second period of their tuesday afternoon classes if they had the discussion with jessie about their teaching practice. tina also wrote, when these pre-service teachers and i discussed their classroom practice, we had long discussion. we talked about classroom management, lesson plan, activity designs, english teacher’s competence and recruitment, etc. we could keep on talking. it was pity that we had to stop the conversation because these pre-service teachers had to leave for their afternoon classes. pre-service teachers and cooperating teachers encounter a huge degree of constraint on their time and have so many other demands on their plates (heath, 2011). therefore, scheduling is an important issue that needs to be taken into consideration when the teacher educators plan the collaborative program between elementary school english teachers and language teacher education program. discussion and implications the pre-service teachers and cooperating teacher in this study had positive attitudes toward remedial teaching during the collaboration program between elementary school english teachers and the language teacher education program. the pre-service teachers were excited to see elementary school children improve their english skills and english learning attitudes. such collaboration arouses pre-service english teachers’ passion and love for english education. through the involvement in the elementary school english remedial education, these pre-service teachers in this study learned from their own experience, the instructor, and the cooperating teacher in terms of instructional strategies and activity designs for remedial english education. however, current issues in education, 18(3) 10 chien: collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education the problems of the designs and delivery of remedial education was the pre-service teachers’ insufficient competence and skills in classroom management, teaching small groups, the smooth flow of carrying out class activities, and use of the target language. the limited time of delivering remedial education and the scheduling issue of the collaborative program were the issues that needed to be solved for effective collaborative program between elementary school english teachers and language teacher education programs. figure 4. collaboration on english remedial education between elementary school english teachers and language teacher education program. based on the above findings, figure 4 depicts the model on the effective collaboration between elementary school english teachers and the language teacher education program on remedial education. through the training on models and instructional strategies for english remedial education in language teacher education program, pre-service teachers are equipped with some english teaching competences and skills. moreover, the collaborating teacher’s provision of clear and complete profiles of learners’ english proficiency and goals to be achieved in the remedial english education guide these pre-service english teachers to design activities and instructional strategies, particularly for these learners. three issues are discussed in terms of knowledge base and instructional strategies for remedial education to be covered in language teacher education, importance of field experience, as well as collaboration between elementary school and teacher education programs. knowledge base and instructional strategies for remedial education freeman (1989) proposed that the knowledge base for teaching includes both knowledge and skills. knowledge includes what is being taught (the subject matter), to whom it is being taught (the students: their backgrounds, learning styles, language levels, and so on), and where it is being taught (the sociocultural, institutional, and situational contexts). moreover, teachers need skills such as in presenting material, giving clear instructions, correcting errors in various ways, managing classroom interaction and discipline, and so on. pre-service teachers in this study encountered difficulties in managing students’ behavior and maintaining a classroom environment current issues in education, 18(3) 11 chien: collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education conducive to effective teaching and learning. this finding supports the claim made in the previous research that classroom management is most challenging for pre-service teachers during their practicum or field experience (bromfield, 2006; gan, 2013; reupert &woodcock, 2010; riesky, 2013). richards (2011) proposed ten core dimensions for competence in language teacher education comprising developing appropriate linguistic competence, acquiring relevant content knowledge, developing a repertoire of teaching skills, acquiring contextual knowledge, developing a sense of identity as a language teacher, developing learner-focused teaching, acquiring specialized cognitive skills, learning how to theorize from practice, developing a community of practice, and becoming a language teaching teacher professional. therefore, these ten dimensions of competence, with their integration into remedial teaching, should be included in the training of pre-service english teachers for developing their competence and skills in remedial education. with pedagogical content knowledge, richards (2011) claimed that language teachers should be able to do things such as understand the learners’ needs, diagnose learners’ problems, plan suitable instructional goals for lessons, select and design learning tasks, evaluate students’ learning, design and adapt tasks, evaluate and choose published materials, or evaluate their own lessons (p. 6). therefore, these pre-service teachers need to be trained to acquire pedagogical reasoning skills in terms of identifying specific linguistic goals in the areas of listening, speaking, reading, or writing that can be developed from the chosen content. importance of field experience into language teacher education through teaching elementary school fifth and sixth graders remedial education as the field experience, while some pre-service teachers over planned, others under planned lessons. they also faced problems in terms of classroom management, teaching small groups, the smooth flow of carrying out class activities, and use of the target language. such field experience helped them bridge the gap between the theories and classroom practice. therefore, chiang (2008) claimed that incorporating field experience into traditional training courses is an empowering pedagogy for language teacher education (p. 1271). in addition to practicum, language teacher educators endeavor to search for new ways of providing pre-service english teachers with field experience for their professional learning (chiang, 2008; cooper, 2002; fang & ashley, 2004). collaboration between elementary schools and teacher education programs it is crucial for teacher educators to build collaboration between elementary schools and language teacher education programs. according to richards (2011), while experience is crucial in developing pedagogical reasoning skills, working with more experienced teachers through shared planning, team teaching, observation, and other forms of collaboration can also play an important role in helping less experienced teachers understand the thinking processes employed by other more experienced teachers. (p. 21) pre-service teachers and cooperating teachers can do some activities together, such as share philosophy of teaching and classroom management, plan and teach a unit together, share miniactivities, observe classroom instruction, or keep journals for reflection (boreen, johnson, niday, & potts, 2009). therefore, pre-service english teachers can make observations of remedial education provided by the cooperating english teachers, so the pre-service english teachers will get acquainted with elementary school children and obtain a clear picture of the design and delivery of current english remedial education. the cooperating teacher should provide profiles of elementary school students’ english proficiency levels and clear goals on the remedial education. current issues in education, 18(3) 12 chien: collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education followed by the delivery of the remedial education, the cooperating teacher should provide these pre-service english teachers with constructive feedback for better improving their classroom practice. cooperative teachers are considered as important elements in the collaboration between university-level teacher education programs and local schools (killian & wilkins, 2009). in addition to teaching experience and professionalism, cooperative teachers must have right personality and attitude toward working with pre-service teachers. they must be prepared to work hard as cooperating teachers (clarke, 2001). cooperative teachers should work closely with the university supervisor and receive formal preparation for mentoring pre-service teachers (killian & wilkins, 2009). conclusion this study focuses on twenty-four pre-service elementary school english teachers’ design and delivery of remedial education to the fifth and sixth graders in a local elementary school collaborated with a university language teacher education program in the northwest part of taiwan. the pre-service teachers’ involvement in the remedial education aroused their passion toward teaching english, because they were encouraged by the elementary school fifth and sixth graders’ improvement in english and the positive attitude to learning english. however, due to their incompetence in remedial education, they found that they either over or under planned for the remedial education. the findings and suggestions from this empirical study could provide the instructors and educators of language teacher education programs with a framework for integrating collaborative elementary school english remedial education programs as field experience into language teacher education courses. as the number of the participants in this study was very small (only 24 participants), the findings of this case study cannot be generalized to a bigger pre-service teacher population. the rich data collection can be used to explain the pre-service elementary school english teachers’ design and delivery of remedial english education to the fifth and sixth graders in their field experience in terms of their teaching competence and attitude. this study focused only on the collaboration with one elementary school english teacher. a further study could focus on the establishment of collaboration with more english teachers in different schools. a further study could also examine whether the elementary school learners’ different english proficiency levels, english teachers’ different teaching styles, and elementary schools’ different cultures influence the effectiveness of the collaboration. references akcan, s., & tatar, s. 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(unpublished master’s thesis), southern taiwan university, tainan county, taiwan current issues in education, 18(3) 16 chien: collaboration between the university pre-service teacher education program and the local elementary school on english remedial education author notes chin-wen chien national hsinchu university of education 521 nanda rd., hsinchu city 300, taiwan chinwenc@ms24.hinet.net chin-wen chien received her doctor of education degree from the university of washington (seattle, usa). she is an associate professor in department of english instruction of national hsinchu university of education in taiwan. her research interests include language education, language teacher education, and curriculum and instruction. volume 18, issue 3 september 28, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez terrence mctier priyanka parekh lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers current issues in education, 18(3) 17 mailto:chinwenc@ms24.hinet.net microsoft word 1144_final_revised.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x math and reading differences between 6-8 and k-8 grade span configurations: a multiyear, statewide analysis david m. clark pearson corporation john r. slate, julie p. combs, and george w. moore sam houston state university we analyzed the effect of grade span configurations (i.e., 6-8 versus k-8) on reading and math performance in texas public schools for the last 5 school years. participants in this study were 628 texas schools (i.e., 314 middle schools and 314 k-8 schools) distributed across the 5 school years examined. schools configured as k-8 schools were matched to middle schools using a rigorous distance-based formula. all 15 reading comparisons (i.e., grade level by school year) yielded statistically significant results, with effect sizes ranging from small to large. eleven of the 15 math comparisons yielded statistically significant results, with all of the effect sizes being small. regardless of student grade level or school year examined, students who were enrolled in k-8 schools had higher average passing rates on the taks reading and math assessments than did students enrolled in middle schools. implications of our findings are discussed. keywords: k-8, middle schools, grade span configuration, reading, math, texas the history of grade span configurations concerning adolescent students has been characterized as the “the longest-running debate in middle level educational research” (maciver & epstein, 1993, p. 520), and the “most extensive educational reform movement in the united states” (lounsbury, 2009, p. 68). spanning more than a century, the middle grades debate can best be described “as [the] ongoing search for the appropriate combination of school organization, curriculum, and instructional practices for young adolescents” (mcewin, dickinson, & jacobson, 2004, p. 1). however, researchers (elovitz, 2007; paglin & fager, 1997) have noted that those individuals involved in this endeavor have raised more questions over the life of the debate than they have answered, and, as a result, an optimal configuration for adolescent education has yet to be identified. beginning in the 1980s, researchers (e.g., blyth, hill, & smyth, 1981; eccles & midgley, 1989; simmons & blyth, 1987) began examining the effectiveness of middle schools in response to criticisms that the schools were not meeting the needs of adolescent students. though various nonstandardized student variables (e.g., grades, social-emotional well-being, attendance, and perception) were initially studied, only results pertaining to the social-emotional well-being of students were significant in relation to the organizational structure of the school (eccles, lord, & midgley, 1991; simmons & blyth, 1987; weiss & kipnes, 2006). more specifically, in well-controlled comparative studies (anderman, 2002; eccles et al., 1991; moore, 1984; reddy, rhodes, & mulhall, 2003; simmons & blyth, 1987; weiss & kipnes, 2006), students in middle schools had lower levels of selfcurrent issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 esteem and felt less secure in their environment as opposed to students in other grade span configurations (i.e., k-6 and k-8 school settings). however, these findings, which raised serious concerns in relation to the formation of adolescent students, led to very little in the way of school reform. in the 1990s, the national assessment of educational progress (naep) and the trends in international mathematics and science study (timss) programs began testing eighth-grade students against national and international standards (nces, 1999, 2011a). results on the naep assessments during the 1990s revealed that roughly one third of students were proficient on standards set by the national assessment governing board (nagb) of the united states in reading, mathematics, and science (nces, 2009, 2011b, 2011c). additionally, timss assessment results in the 1990s in mathematics and science placed student performance in the united states in the bottom half of the participating countries (with scale scores only slightly above the average) in relation to international standards set by multiple content experts, education professionals, and measurement specialists from countries around the world (nces, 1999). even after the advent of the no child left behind act (u.s. department of education, 2001), results on the naep and timss assessments over the last 10 years have remained static (nces, 2007, 2009, 2011b, 2011c). public criticism of the grade span configuration of middle schools began shortly after initial naep and timss results were reported and sharply escalated after the passage of the nclb act (u.s. department of education, 2001). middle schools were described as “the wasteland of our primary and secondary landscape” (tucker & codding, 1998, p. 153), and “the great disaster of the education system” (jonas, 2007, p. e1). yecke (2006), the former chancellor of k-12 public schools for the florida department of education, declared that “u.s. middle schools [were] where student academic achievement goes to die” (p. 20). despite poor national and international assessment results among adolescent students, and in the midst of harsh criticisms of middle schools, research related to the effects of grade span configurations on academic achievement has always been very limited (coladarci & hancock, 2002). of the more than 3,700 studies pertaining to middle schools published between 1991 and 2003 (hough, 2003), many researchers “decried the paucity of research related to the impact of grade level configuration on student academic success” (schafer, 2010, p. 20). of the research that did exist, most studies were plagued with errors related to design and reporting (klump, 2006), and those studies that were statistically sound established either no significant relationship between academic achievement and grade span configurations or had effect sizes that were extremely small (byrnes & ruby, 2007). in regard to the state of texas, only one study (combs et al., 2011) was uncovered pertaining to grade span configurations and academic achievement. however, though a large and significant relationship was present between school configurations and student performance in that study favoring fifth-grade students enrolled in grades k-5 schools, combs et al. (2011) did not address the topic within the context of adolescent students and typical middle school configurations (and grades k-5 and 5/5-6 school configurations were examined). in the early 2000s, a massive school reform movement was launched in several states and several large school districts where school boards and administrators converted several hundred middle schools to a k-8 configuration (hough, 2005). byrnes and ruby (2007) noted that although the k-8 reform movement was “gaining steam” across the country, the “subject matter [at that] point lacked the large and rigorous statistical research needed to provide scientific evidence for supporting such [policies]” (p. 102). in addition, byrnes and ruby (2007) commented that even though researchers examining “social engagement and attitudinal outcomes” (p. 104) had established a strong connection between results and grade span configurations, subsequent assertions made by the k-8 reform movement regarding academic achievement and school configurations had merely been implied from the previous research, under the assumption that negative results pertaining to the social-emotional well-being of students naturally affected academic performance. questions surrounding the optimal setting for adolescents with regard to academic achievement have never been adequately answered (elovitz, 2007). given the gap between recent reform policies and educational research, realistic expectations regarding school conversion policies (e.g., costs, resources required, and expected outcomes) cannot be detailed without more research. in addition, howley (2002) has stressed the need for more state level research on grade span configurations and academic achievement, noting that most policy decisions regarding school organization are made at the state and local level. as such, this study was conducted in one state to examine the academic achievement of grade 6, 7, and 8 students attending two different configurations (i.e., grades 6-8 and k-8). conceptual framework during the course of the grade span debate, two conceptual frameworks have consistently been utilized. more specifically, school transition and instructional environment have been used by policy-makers, researchers, and reformers to frame aspects of adolescent education pertaining to grade span configurations. for the purpose of this research, transitions were used as a framework for researchers to compare grade configurations (e.g., 6-8 or k-8) with different numbers of math and reading differences between 6-8 and k-8 grade span configurations: a multiyear, statewide analysis 3 transitions for students. students in the 6-8 middle school may have changed schools two or more times, whereas the grade 6 students in the k-8 setting have not changed schools. moreover, the same is true for the conceptual framework instructional environment framework because researchers (e.g., jackson & davis, 2000; mcewin, dickinson, & swaim, 1996; national forum to accelerate middle grades reform, 2002) have suggested different configurations may influence the instructional environment. according to burkam, michaels, and lee (2007), grade span configurations are “inextricably linked” to school transitions “because grade spans dictate to a large degree when children will move between schools” (p. 290). anderman and midgley (1997) observed that students faced transitional effects when moving from grade to grade and teacher to teacher, but experienced the most effects when moving from school to school. these transitional effects include adjusting to new buildings, faculties, schedules, instructional configurations, and the student’s new position in the social pecking order (combs et al., 2011; simmons & blyth, 1987). in the context of the grade span configuration debate, school transitions were initially seen as a benefit to adolescent students by providing them a middle tier of schooling that would prepare them for the rigors of high school (bedard & do, 2005). however, in the last 20 years, numerous researchers studying various socialemotional aspects of middle schools have come to associate the negative outcomes they have observed with the effects of school transition (anderman & midgley, 1997; arcia, 2007; bergquist, bigbie, groves, & richardson, 2004; cook, maccoun, muschkin, & vigdor, 2008; cromwell, 1999; kennedy, 1993; malaspina & rimm-kaufman, 2008; mendez & knoff, 2003; simmons, black, & zhou, 1991; weiss & kipnes, 2006). in addition, researchers noticing declines in student confidence, leadership capabilities, and overall maturity levels would link these findings back to the phenomenon of social stratification, a by-product of school transition (coladarci & hancock, 2002; herman, 2004; simmons & blyth, 1987; yakimowski & connolly, 2001). although the effects of grade span configurations on academic achievement have yet to be determined with any level of confidence in literature, conducting this study under the conceptual framework of school transitions is appropriate given the prominence the theory has played in the examination of other student variables throughout the history of the debate. the instructional environment of a school encompasses a large number of school characteristics and processes such as departmentalization, climate, curriculum, class size, grading practices, homework policies, and teaching styles (wihry, coladarci, & meadow, 1992). in the context of grade span configurations, researchers have speculated that certain organizational structures can affect schools by making them more conducive to instructional environments that foster and support best practices in education (juvonen, le, kaganoff, augustine, & constant, 2004). in the early stages of the grade span configuration debate, the organizational structures of junior high and middle schools were identified as being optimal for producing the best instructional environment for adolescents (epstein & maciver, 1990; hough, 2005; lee & smith, 1993; midgley, 1993). however, in the last 20 years, researchers have suggested that just the opposite might be true. more specifically, researchers analyzing various staffing practices in middle schools have observed that they suffer from lower rates of teacher retention, lower rates of teacher certification, and have less experienced teachers overall, when compared to elementary and high schools (jackson & davis, 2000; mcewin, dickinson, & swaim, 1996; national forum to accelerate middle grades reform, 2002). in addition, erb (2006) noted that the problems associated with staffing at the middle school level had a negative impact on a school’s ability to foster a positive instructional environment. finally, a number of researchers (byrnes & ruby, 2007; coladarci & hancock, 2002; hough, 2005; offenberg, 2001; yakimowski & connolly, 2001) compared instructional practices between middle and k-8 schools and observed that strategies such as team teaching, professional learning communities, and mixed level classrooms were more commonly present in the k-8 school setting than in the middle school setting. purpose of the study and research questions the purpose of this study was to determine the effect of grade span configurations on academic achievement in middle (grades 6 through 8) and k-8 (grades ee/pk/kg-8) texas public schools. more specifically, academic achievement was examined and compared between two different school settings (i.e., middle schools and k-8 schools) for sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students. academic achievement was measured by assessing the passing rates of students in grades 6, 7, and 8 on the texas assessment of knowledge and skills (taks) reading and mathematics assessments for the 2006-2007, 2007-2008, 2008-2009, 2009-2010, and 2010-2011 school years. these years were selected because they were the most current data available at the time of this study and we wanted to determine if the results were consistent from year to year. the following research questions were addressed: (a) what is the difference in reading achievement between middle and k-8 school settings as a function of grade level (i.e., grade 6, 7, and 8)? and (b) what is the difference in math achievement between middle and k-8 school settings as a function of grade level (i.e., grade 6, 7, and 8)? both of these research questions were repeated for each of the 5 years of data analyzed. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 method selection of participants participants in this study consisted of 628 texas schools comprising 314 middle schools (grades 6-8) and 314 k-8 schools (grades ee/pk/kg-8), drawn from 5 school years, 2006–2011. middle schools were selected for this study because they currently serve more sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students combined than any other grade span configuration in texas. grades k-8 schools were selected because they represent the most prevalent grade span configuration in the national school organization debate. total populations of texas sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade students combined are detailed by grade span configuration and year in table 1 (tea, 2007, 2008a, 2009, 2010, 2011a). to conduct dependent statistical analyses on student achievement data for the campuses (field, 2005; gall et al., 2005; howell, 2007; sprinthall, 2003), k-8 schools were matched to middle schools using a rigorous distance-based (difference) formula developed by clark (2009). this distance-based formula accounted for the following campus variables: (a) school size, (b) percent of black students, (c) percent of hispanic students, (d) percent of white students, (e) percent of students with low socioeconomic status, and (f) campus mobility rates. therefore, campus compositions were very similar for the two groups (grades 6-8 and grades k-8). instrumentation the taks reading and mathematics examinations, which are comprehensive statewide assessments, were used to measure the dependent variables in this study (tea, 2011c). campus passing rates in mathematics and in reading have a possible range of 0 to 100 and represent the percentage of students who met the minimum passing requirements for each examination (tea, 2011c). for accountability purposes, participation thresholds must be met before any taks examination is used in the overall evaluation of a campus (tea, 2008b). however, evaluation purposes aside, the aeis includes taks results for any grade level subject where at least five students on a campus have taken a test (tea, 2011b). these non-evaluated results comprised a critical component of this study, because a large number of k-8 schools in texas had entire grade cohorts that contained fewer than 30 students (tea, 2007, 2008a, 2009, 2010, 2011a). procedures for this study, middle schools were classified as those schools containing grades 6 through 8, and k-8 schools were classified as though schools containing grade levels kindergarten and/or pre-kindergarten and/or early education through grade 8. campuses that did not fall into these classifications were excluded from the study. datasets for each school in one of the four classifications coded by the tea (i.e., grade span 6-8, ee-8, pk-8, kg-8) were formed from the aeis database for each of 5 school years, 2006-2011. all middle and k8 school campuses were reclassified into one of two categories (i.e., 6-8, k-8) and consolidated into a single dataset. in addition, campuses classified as charter schools and alternative education campuses by the aeis were excluded from the study, as were campuses that did not meet the minimum aeis reporting threshold of five students in any of the taks tests examined. the number of k-8 and middle schools available in the matching pool are shown in table 2. table 1 total student population of grade 6, 7, and 8 by grade span configuration in texas by year in 1,000s grade span 2006-2007 2007-2008 2008-2009 2009-2010 2010-2011 6-8 640.8 653.1 668.3 690.4 707.6 7-8 179.2 164.5 171.8 170.8 168.7 5-6 42.7 41.5 45.7 47.4 48.4 kg-6 39.6 34.5 32.4 32.2 32.8 5-8 18.2 21.1 21.9 16.9 16.5 6-6 13.7 14.6 14.3 14.8 13.9 kg-8 10.4 9.6 10.6 11.3 12.7 kg-12 9.4 9.2 9.7 10.3 11.6 7-9 9.4 14.1 9.5 8.5 11.2 math and reading differences between 6-8 and k-8 grade span configurations: a multiyear, statewide analysis 5 table 2 number of k-8 schools and middle schools in the matching pool by year school year # of k-8 schools # of middle schools in the matching pool 2006-2007 66 886 2007-2008 65 926 2008-2009 60 938 2009-2010 62 971 2010-2011 61 988 in an attempt to isolate the effect of grade span organizational patterns on student achievement and to enable the use of dependent statistical tests later in the study (field, 2005; gall et al., 2005; howell, 2007; sprinthall, 2003), clark’s (2009) distance (i.e., smallest difference) based formula was used to match all middle and k-8 schools using a procedure with the following five steps: (a) select the matching variables, (b) identify and account for any missing data, (c) standardize the matching variables; (d) find optimal matches for each target school, and (e) validate the matching procedure. each of these steps was used in this study as a matching technique pairing a target school (i.e., k-8 school) to another school (i.e., middle school) in a comparison pool by calculating the distance (i.e., smallest difference) between the target school and all schools in the pool with respect to one or more matching variables, and then selecting the school that yielded the smallest difference to serve as a match. as such, this technique was repeated until all target schools were matched (clark, 2009). data analysis analysis of standardized skewness coefficients and standardized kurtosis coefficients for the taks campus passing rates on the grade 6, grade 7, and grade 8 reading assessment for the 2006-2007, 2007-2008, 2008-2009, 2009-2010, and 2010-2011 school years revealed numerous deviations from normally distributed data, with coefficients for standardized skewness ranging from -6.14 to 8.64 and coefficients for standardized kurtosis ranging from -6.34 to 9.93 at their most extremes (onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002). given the predominance of deviations from normally distributed data, nonparametric statistical procedures were selected for answering each of the research questions related to reading achievement posed in this study. more specifically, wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranked tests were conducted between the matched pairs of middle and k-8 schools for the taks reading assessments for each of the 5 school years selected for use in this study. analysis of standardized skewness coefficients and standardized kurtosis coefficients for the taks campus passing rates on the grade 6, 7, and 8 mathematics assessment for the 2006-2007, 2007-2008, 2008-2009, 2009-2010, and 2010-2011 school years revealed numerous deviations from normally distributed data, ranging from -6.29 to 9.49 at their most extremes (onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002). given the predominance of deviations from normally distributed data, nonparametric statistical procedures were selected for answering each of the research questions related to mathematics achievement posed in this study. more specifically, wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranked tests were conducted between the matched pairs of middle and k-8 schools for the taks mathematics assessments examined for each of the 5 school years selected for use in this study. results reading passing rates to determine the effect of grade span configurations on academic achievement in grade 6 reading over a 5-year period, five individual wilcoxon’s tests were conducted. in all five school years examined, grade 6 students attending a k-8 school had statistically significantly higher scores in reading than did grade 6 students attending a middle school with large to moderate effect sizes (2006-2007, z[66] = -2.76, p = .006, d = 0.42; 2007-2008, z[65] = -4.43, p < .001, d = 0.85; 2008-2009, z[60] = -3.42, p = .001, d = 0.51; 2009-2010, z[62] = 2.23, p = .026, d = 0.40; 2010-2011, z[61] = -3.03, p = .002, d = 0.59; see table 3 for detailed results). grade 6 students attending a k-8 school had higher average reading scores than grade 6 students attending a middle current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 table 3 descriptive data for grade 6, 7, and 8 taks reading passing rates by grade span configuration and school year grade level and school year 6-8 school setting k-8 school setting m sd n m sd n grade 6 2006-2007 90.48 7.18 66 93.55 7.29 66 2007-2008 91.40 5.45 65 95.95 5.29 65 2008-2009 91.83 4.59 60 94.58 6.26 60 2009-2010 83.32 8.39 62 86.71 8.39 62 2010-2011 82.05 9.00 61 87.16 8.19 61 grade 7 2006-2007 83.53 9.99 66 90.27 9.05 66 2007-2008 86.15 7.02 65 90.48 8.62 65 2008-2009 85.70 6.51 60 91.65 9.64 60 2009-2010 85.10 8.63 62 88.15 10.28 62 2010-2011 85.66 8.44 61 91.18 7.46 61 grade 8 2006-2007 88.47 6.40 66 92.24 8.02 66 2007-2008 94.05 4.59 65 97.15 4.21 65 2008-2009 94.82 3.44 60 96.42 4.84 60 2009-2010 90.52 5.73 62 93.31 7.46 62 2010-2011 88.75 6.78 61 92.64 7.98 61 table 4 results for grade 6, 7, and 8 taks reading passing rates by year grade level and school year outcome effect size highest passing rate grade 6 2006-2007 significant 0.42 (small) k-8 schools 2007-2008 significant 0.85 (large) k-8 schools 2008-2009 significant 0.51 (moderate) k-8 schools 2009-2010 significant 0.40 (small) k-8 schools 2010-2011 significant 0.59 (moderate) k-8 schools grade 7 2006-2007 significant 0.71 (moderate) k-8 schools 2007-2008 significant 0.55 (moderate) k-8 schools 2008-2009 significant 0.72 (moderate) k-8 schools 2009-2010 significant 0.32 (small) k-8 schools 2010-2011 significant 0.69 (moderate) k-8 schools grade 8 2006-2007 significant 0.52 (moderate) k-8 schools 2007-2008 significant 0.70 (moderate) k-8 schools 2008-2009 significant 0.38 (small) k-8 schools 2009-2010 significant 0.42 (small) k-8 schools 2010-2011 significant 0.53 (moderate) k-8 schools math and reading differences between 6-8 and k-8 grade span configurations: a multiyear, statewide analysis 7 school in all 5 years studied. descriptive statistics for the grade 6 taks campus passing rates in reading between the matched campuses are presented in table 3. summarized in table 4 are results from the five wilcoxon’s tests conducted for the grade 6 taks reading assessments for the 5 years studied. summary statistics are detailed by year and present findings relative to statistical significance and effect size. to ascertain the effect of grade span configurations on academic achievement in grade 7 reading over a 5-year period, five individual wilcoxon’s tests were conducted. in all 5 years examined, grade 7 students attending a k-8 school had statistically significantly higher scores in reading than did grade 7 students attending a middle school with moderate effect sizes (2006-2007, z[66] = -4.66, p < .001, d = 0.71; 20072008, z[65] = -3.56, p < .001, d = 0.55; 2008-2009, z[60] = -4.11, p < .001, d = 0.72; 2009-2010. z[62] = -2.35, p = .019, d = 0.32; 2010-2011, z[61] = -4.25, p < .001, d = 0.69; see table 3 for detailed results). grade 7 students attending a k-8 school had higher average reading scores than grade 7 students attending a middle school in all 5 years studied. detailed in table 4 are results from the five wilcoxon’s tests conducted for the grade 7 taks reading assessments for the 5 years studied. summary statistics are detailed by year and present findings relative to statistical significance and effect size. to determine the effect of grade span configurations on academic achievement in grade 8 reading over a 5-year period, five individual wilcoxon’s tests were conducted. in all 5 years examined, grade 8 students attending a k-8 school had statistically significantly higher scores in reading than did grade 8 students attending a middle school with moderate effect sizes (2006-2007, z[66] = -3.64, p < .001, d = 0.52; 20072008, z[65] = -4.08, p < .001, d = 0.70; 2008-2009, z[60] = -2.48, p = .013, d = 0.38; 2009-2010, z[62] = -2.71, p = .007, d = 0.42; 2010-2011, z[61] = -3.10, p = .002, d = 0.53; see table 3 for detailed results). grade 8 students attending a k-8 school had higher average reading scores than grade 8 students attending a middle school in all 5 years studied (see table 3 for detailed descriptive results). depicted in table 4 are the results from the five wilcoxon’s tests conducted for the grade 8 taks reading assessments for the 5 years studied. summary statistics are detailed by year and present findings relative to statistical significance and effect size. in summary, for reading the effect of grade span configuration on taks passing rates revealed statistically significant differences in all 15 grade/year categories (i.e., 5 years for three grade levels) examined. effect sizes ranged from small to large, with the majority of the effect sizes being moderate (cohen, 1988). in all of the grade/year categories analyzed for reading, students in a k-8 school setting had higher average passing rates than did students in a middle school setting. table 5 descriptive data for grade 6, 7, and 8 taks mathematics passing rates by grade span configuration and school year grade level and school year 6-8 school setting k-8 school setting m sd n m sd n grade 6 2006-2007 74.82 15.65 66 80.88 15.25 66 2007-2008 79.12 12.57 65 85.29 12.80 65 2008-2009 80.68 9.99 60 81.43 14.50 60 2009-2010 78.71 12.14 62 82.95 12.63 62 2010-2011 80.90 9.78 61 84.38 12.05 61 grade 7 2006-2007 73.83 14.79 66 79.74 16.47 66 2007-2008 77.40 12.44 65 81.37 13.81 65 2008-2009 79.52 12.83 60 84.88 12.72 60 2009-2010 80.71 11.96 62 84.27 15.83 62 2010-2011 81.34 11.11 61 85.74 9.97 61 grade 8 2006-2007 69.82 13.62 66 77.08 15.76 66 2007-2008 78.17 10.86 65 82.14 15.67 65 2008-2009 80.78 12.60 60 83.98 13.55 60 2009-2010 81.63 10.77 62 84.47 13.73 62 2010-2011 79.69 11.22 61 85.21 13.99 61 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 8 table 6 results for grade 6, 7, and 8 taks mathematics passing rates by year grade level and school year outcome effect size highest passing rate grade 6 2006-2007 significant 0.39 (small) k-8 schools 2007-2008 significant 0.49 (small) k-8 schools 2008-2009 not significant k-8 schools 2009-2010 significant 0.34 (small) k-8 schools 2010-2011 significant 0.32 (small) k-8 schools grade 7 2006-2007 significant 0.38 (small) k-8 schools 2007-2008 not significant k-8 schools 2008-2009 significant 0.42 (small) k-8 schools 2009-2010 significant 0.25 (small) k-8 schools 2010-2011 significant 0.42 (small) k-8 schools grade 8 2006-2007 significant 0.49 (small) k-8 schools 2007-2008 not significant k-8 schools 2008-2009 not significant k-8 schools 2009-2010 significant 0.23 (small) k-8 schools 2010-2011 significant 0.44 (small) k-8 schools mathematics passing rates to ascertain the effect of grade span configurations on academic achievement in grade 6 mathematics over a 5-year period, five individual wilcoxon’s tests were conducted. in 4 of the 5 years examined, grade 6 students attending a k-8 school had statistically significantly higher scores in mathematics than did grade 6 students attending a middle school with a small effect size (2006-2007, z[66] = -2.48, p = .013, d = 0.39; 2007-2008, z[65] = -3.18, p = .001, d = 0.49; 2008-2009, z[60] = -0.78, p = .435; 2009-2010, z[62] = 2.28, p = .023, d = 0.34; 2010-2011, z[61] = -2.15, p = .032, d = 0.32; see table 5 for detailed results). grade 6 students attending a k-8 school had higher average mathematics scores than grade 6 students attending a middle school in all 5 years studied (see table 5 for detailed descriptive results). summarized in table 6 are results from the five wilcoxon’s tests conducted for the grade 6 taks mathematics assessments for the 5 years of data analyzed. summary statistics are detailed by year and present findings relative to statistical significance and effect size. to determine the effect of grade span configurations on academic achievement in grade 7 mathematics over a 5-year period, five individual wilcoxon’s tests were conducted. in four of the five school years, statistically significant findings were revealed (2006-2007, z[66] = -2.14, p = .032, d = 0.38; 2007-2008, z[65] = -1.32, p = .187; 2008-2009, z[60] = 2.61, p = .009, d = 0.42; 2009-2010, z[62] = -2.11, p = .035, d = 0.25; 2010-2011, z[61] = -2.62, p = .009, d = 0.42; see table 5 for detailed results). grade 7 students attending a k-8 school had higher average mathematics scores than did grade 7 students attending a middle school in all 5 years studied (see table 5 for detailed descriptive results). detailed in table 6 are results from the five wilcoxon’s tests conducted for the grade 7 taks mathematics assessments for the 5 years studied. summary statistics are detailed by year and present findings relative to statistical significance and effect size. to ascertain the effect of grade span configurations on academic achievement in grade 8 mathematics over a 5-year period, five individual wilcoxon’s tests were conducted. in three of the five school years examined, grade 8 students attending a k-8 school had statistically significantly higher scores in mathematics than did grade 8 students attending a middle school, with small effect sizes (2006-2007, z[66] = -2.95, p = .003, d = 0.49; 2007-2008, z[65] = -1.73, p = .084; 2008-2009, z[60] = -1.39, p = .163; 2009-2010, z[62] = 1.96, p = .05, d = 0.23; 2010-2011, z[61] = -2.90, p = .004, d = 0.44). grade 8 students attending a k-8 school had higher average mathematics scores than grade 8 students attending a middle school in all 5 years studied (see table 5 for detailed descriptive results). summarized in table 6 are the results from the five wilcoxon’s tests conducted for the grade 8 taks mathematics assessments for the 5 years studied. summary statistics are detailed by year and present findings relative to statistical significance and effect size. discussion results herein support previous researchers who math and reading differences between 6-8 and k-8 grade span configurations: a multiyear, statewide analysis 9 have demonstrated statistically significant relationships between grade span configurations and academic achievement, with results favoring k-6, k-7, and k-8 school settings over the middle school setting (e.g., becker, 1987; byrnes & ruby, 2007; collins, 2006; connolly, yakimowski-srebnick, & russo, 2002; fink, 2010; franklin & glasscock, 1996; offenburg, 2001; schafer, 2010; tucker & andrada, 1997; wihry et al., 1992). however, in comparing methodologies and reporting practices between this present study and past research, several differences are apparent. existing studies pertaining to the effect of grade span configurations on academic achievement have been plagued with errors related to methodology and reporting (klump, 2006). in several past studies (e.g., collins, 2006; connolly et al., 2002; sanders-smith, 2009; tucker & andrada, 1997), researchers did not attempt to control for student and campus level variables known to have a significant effect on academic achievement. in addition to controlling for variables that influence achievement, the current literature base on grade span configurations is extended by this research study by the introduction of a new methodology for matching campuses with differing grade span configurations for examining the influence school configuration has on academic achievement. though the matching process employed in this study was used once previously in combs et al. (2011), that process was expanded and refined herein by adding additional statistical measures around determining which matching variables require standardization within their school classification. other key differences between the results of this study and past research pertain to the breadth of significant findings and effect sizes associated with those results. whereas past researchers have documented statistically significant findings for the majority, if not all, of the research questions they have posed in relation to grade span configurations and academic achievement (e.g., becker, 1987; byrnes & ruby, 2007; collins, 2006; connolly et al., 2002; franklin & glasscock, 1996; offenberg, 2001; schafer, 2010; tucker & andrada, 1997; wihry et al., 1992), the results of this present study revealed statistically significant findings in almost all of the statistical analyses. students in this study who were in a k-8 school setting had higher average taks reading and math passing rates in all grades and years examined than did students in a middle school setting. concerning effect sizes, in cases where past researchers reported effect sizes for their findings (e.g., byrnes & ruby, 2007; tucker & andrada, 1997), the detailed effect sizes were extremely small (cohen, 1988). in contrast, the statistically significant findings observed in this study yielded small to large effect sizes, with the majority falling into the moderate range (cohen, 1988). the closest match to the present study in the body of literature was research conducted by combs et al. (2011). in both studies, campuses in texas were paired on several campus variables using clark’s (2009) matching process prior to analyses of the effect of grade span configurations on academic achievement. in addition, taks passing rates were used in both studies as the instrument for measuring academic achievement, and similar effect sizes were present with respect to size and distribution in their results. combs et al. (2011) detailed effect sizes in the small to moderate range, whereas in the present study effect sizes ranged from small to large (cohen, 1988). however, one key difference distinguishes the two studies from each other. the key difference is that combs et al. analyzed scores from grade 5 students in k-5 and 5-6 grade span configurations in the subjects of mathematics and reading, whereas scores from grade 6, 7, and 8 students in k-8 and 6-8 school settings in the subjects of mathematics and reading were examined in this investigation. during the course of the grade span debate, two conceptual frameworks have consistently been utilized. more specifically, school transition and instructional environment have been used by policymakers, researchers, and reformers to frame aspects of adolescent education pertaining to grade span configurations. the matching process used in this study enabled the use of dependent inferential statistical tests and controlled for campus variables known to have a significant effect on academic achievement (byrnes & ruby, 2007; juvonen et al., 2004). by using clark’s (2009) matching process, possible linkages of statistically significant findings to the conceptual frameworks of school transition and instructional environment were sought. though no direct cause and effect relationships can be established using a causal-comparative research design (gall et al., 2005), after controlling for school size, ses, ethnicity, and mobility in this present study, statistically significant results can be causally connected back to both conceptual frameworks. given the “inextricable link” (burkam et al., 2007, p. 290) between school transition and grade span configurations, as a result of this study it is apparent that the grade configuration offering fewer transitions (i.e., k8) is linked with higher student achievement. however, in attempting to relate the results from this study back to the conceptual framework of instructional environments, it is important to note that no attempt was made in this study to determine the instructional practices of the participating campuses. as a result, a recommendation for future research is detailed in the following section to examine further the connection of results in this study to the framework of instructional environment. implications and conclusions given that research is limited related to grade span configurations, policymakers (e.g., state education current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 10 officials, legislators, local school board members, superintendents, and district administrators) should view the findings of this study as a starting point for future discussions about an optimal school configuration for adolescent students. even though students in the present study had higher average passing rates in mathematics and readings in all grades and years examined in a k-8 school setting than did students in a middle school setting, the severe lack of a comprehensive body of research pertaining to this topic should preclude state and local decision makers from assuming any justification for implementing a school conversion policy. having noted this concern, we echo the words of one of the reviewers of this article. given that decisions about grade span configuration are being made, what is the basis upon which those decisions are made? if grade span configuration decisions are currently being made on the basis of no empirical research, we do not believe that to be a wise practice. though we certainly believe that our findings need to be replicated, we also believe that they do provide some evidence for policymakers to use in making grade span configuration decisions. superintendents and school boards who may be considering grade-span configurations for restructuring and/or for future facilities needs are encouraged to read this study and other studies regarding elementary and middle schools grade configurations. as presented in this study, several researchers have analyzed the influence of grade span or grade configuration and student achievement. granted, facility and organization decisions are often based more on financial reasons than achievement reasons; therefore, we suggest superintendents and school boards look at achievement concerns as well as economies of scale. in regard to future research, a study is needed, which could serve as a follow-up to this present study, to examine the instructional environments between pairs of matched campuses to determine the extent to which certain strategies such as team teaching, professional learning communities, and mixed level classrooms are present as a function of a school’s grade span configuration. past researchers (e.g., byrnes & ruby, 2007; coladarci & hancock, 2002; hough, 2005; offenberg, 2001; yakimowski & connolly, 2001) have reported that such instructional practices were more commonly present in k-8 school settings than in middle schools, and further validation of this observation for schools in texas would strengthen the conceptual framework concerning the role of instructional environment in student achievement. finally, to expand the nation-wide body of literature pertaining to grade span configurations, further studies should be replicated in other states. after more than 10 years of post-nclb state assessments, the data for such studies are readily available. if such studies were conducted, a preponderance of evidence might point educators, researchers, and policy-makers to an optimal school configuration for adolescent students. furthermore, research related to grade span and economies of scale may provide all stakeholders with additional information from which to make decisions about facilities and grade organization. references anderman, e. m. 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(2013). math and reading differences between 6-8 and k-8 grade span configurations: a multiyear, statewide analysis. current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1144 author notes david m. clark, ed.d. person corporation dave.joshuatree@gmail.com david m. clark received his doctoral degree in educational leadership from sam houston state university in august 2012. his doctoral dissertation was titled, a comparative analysis of grade span configurations and academic achievement among 6-8 and k-8 public schools in texas. dr. clark currently serves as vice president of state services for pearson corporation, assessment and information (a&i), vice president of state services. john r. slate, ph.d. sam houston state university box 2119, huntsville, tx 77341 jrs051@shsu.edu john r. slate is a full professor in the educational leadership and counseling department at sam houston state university where he teaches courses in basic and advanced statistics, academic and professional writing, and proposal development. to date, he has published over 350 refereed journal articles and 7 books. he is currently serving as co-editor of research in the schools. julie p. combs sam houston state university box 2119, huntsville, tx 77341 jcombs@shsu.edu julie peterson combs is associate professor in the educational leadership and counseling department at sam houston state university. previously, she worked as a school principal for 10 years. she currently serves as the director of the doctoral program in educational leadership where she teaches academic writing and research methods to doctoral students, along with leadership courses in the principal certification program. in addition to maintaining an active research agenda focused on stress and coping, academic writing, and the role of the school principal, she has written over 50 journal articles, 6 book chapters, and co-authored three books, the trust factor; managing conflict: 50 strategies for school leaders and examining what we do to improve our schools: eight steps from analysis to action. george w. moore sam houston state university box 2119, huntsville, tx 77341 gwm002@shsu.edu george w. moore is an associate professor at sam houston state university where he is teaches courses in research methods and program evaluation in the graduate programs in educational administration and leadership. his research interests include advanced placement participation and performance, college readiness, and instructional leadership. dr. moore has served as a reviewer for several journals and for aera proposals. math and reading differences between 6-8 and k-8 grade span configurations: a multiyear, statewide analysis 15 manuscript received: 12/10/2012 revisions received: 04/12/2013 accepted: 05/19/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 16 volume 16, number 2 august 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1098_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 february 14, 2013 issn 1099-839x “oh god, she is looking at every little thing i am doing!” student teachers’ constructions of the observation experience victoria b. fantozzi manhattanville college this qualitative study examines the variance in the ways that four student teachers made meaning of the experience of being observed by their cooperating teachers and university supervisors. using kegan’s (1994) theory of cognitive development, the study focuses on the differences in the ways the teacher candidates constructed the prospect of being observed, and the varied ways they received and interpreted feedback. the study found that for two of the participants feedback from a mentor was very important to their teaching identity; because of this observations were both significant and anxiety inducing. however the second two participants were able to remove their identities from feedback and thus felt observations were an opportunity to think about how to improve their teaching. the participants also differed in whether they expected the post observation conference to be a time to receive expert knowledge or to discuss solutions and best practice. keywords: student teaching, university supervisor, cooperating teacher, mentor, cognitive development student teaching is by nature a complex endeavor. preservice teachers enter student teaching with their own expectations for and visions of teaching, which do not often match the reality of their student teaching placement (cole & knowles, 1993; doppen, 2007). student teaching is further complicated because it involves negotiating the ideas and opinions of three key people: the student teacher, the cooperating teacher, and the university supervisor. this triumvirate, referred to as the student teaching triad, is meant to be a support system for preservice teachers as they learn how to be teachers. however connecting three people, each with his or her own ideas about the purpose of student teaching, can be a difficult endeavor. teacher education programs expect student teachers to take initiative, and demonstrate their knowledge of best teaching practices; while cooperating teachers recognize these students as novices with much to learn (fimian & blanton, 1987; koerner, rust, & baumgartner, 2002). from its inception the possibility for conflicting goals and expectations in student teaching is high because the connection between the universities and the schools is weak (zeichner, 2010; darling-hammond, 2009). the negotiation and communication in the student teaching triad is further complicated by the fact that university supervisors and cooperating teachers may feel that their role has not been clearly defined (gardiner, 2009; steadman & brown, 2011; valencia, martin, place, & grossman, 2009). it is common for cooperating teachers to know nothing of the practices and approaches to teaching advocated at the university level, and for the supervisors to be unfamiliar with the goals and methods of the school districts (zeichner, 2010). although discrepancies and difficulties still arise in individual programs, as a field, we have moved toward a better picture of the university supervisor and cooperating current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 teacher roles in the student teaching triad. there are attempts across the country to make better connections between the schools and universities as a way to make supervisors and cooperating teachers more connected and aware of goals for best practices (zeichner, 2010). however, with few exceptions, researchers have not been as diligent in including student teacher's voices and perspectives on this triumvirate (clift & brady, 2005). specifically there has been little research on how student teachers make meaning of the observation experience. although the number of observations vary from program to program, having a mentor give a student teacher feedback on a lesson is generally accepted as an important part of learning to teach and learning to be a reflective practitioner (schon, 1987). rippon and martin (2003) asserted that is important to consider the power structure inherent in the mentor mentee relationship; the nature of observations brings the inherent power imbalance to the forefront. both the university supervisor and the cooperating teacher play the role of evaluator at some point, creating an inherent power imbalance in the triad in which the student teacher may feel that she is powerless in relation to the other members. valencia et al. (2009) found that student teachers devise ways to negotiate this relationship by using teaching strategies or presenting personalities that they think align with their cooperating teachers expectations; the cooperating teachers are often unaware that the student teacher may be uncomfortable or unsure of a specific practice or method. it has oft been lamented that in post observation discussions the members of the triad do not often engage in critical discussions of pedagogy (borko & mayfield, 1995; dinkleman, 1998; griffin, 1989; valencia et al., 2009); this void has been attributed to the improper training and resources of the cooperating teachers and supervisors, but this might not be the only explanation. chubbuck, clift, allard, and quinian (2001) found that novice teachers were more comfortable discussing issues of pedagogy with their peers than with mentors or others in an evaluatory role. it may be that the lack of discussion has to do with the way the student teachers (or possibly other members of the triad) construct their roles and relationships in the observation and post observation conference. the purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which student teachers construct meanings of the observation experience, including the prospect of being observed, their thoughts during the observation, and the ways they value feedback from their cooperating teachers and university supervisors. conceptual framework this study uses kegan’s (1982, 1994) constructive developmental framework as a lens through which to examine student teachers’ interpretations of the observation experience. rodgers and scott (2008) presented kegan’s (1982, 1994) constructive developmental theory as a useful lens for examining the internal cognitive states of teacher candidates and understanding their personal epistemologies. fantozzi (2012) also found that kegan’s framework could help explain the differences in the way that student teachers defined success in student teaching. kegan’s framework examines how individuals make sense of the influences, relationships, and sources of knowledge in their world. at the center of this framework is the idea that, as humans, each day we engage in making meaning of our experiences and relationships. kegan delineates meaning making into five orders of consciousness with six substages between each order (or threshold) of meaning making. at each order of consciousness kegan considers how individuals construct knowledge and navigate relationships. specifically he notes that individuals making meaning from different orders of consciousness vary in the way that they receive feedback from others, particularly how they interpret critical or constructive criticism. kegan’s focus on the way individuals make meaning of feedback makes it a useful lens for examining the way student teachers interpret the observation experience (see kegan, 1994, for more detail). kegan’s theory of constructive development drawing the work of jean piaget and lawrence kolhberg, kegan posits that the way humans make meaning of their experiences is not static, but develops over a lifetime. he separates this trajectory of meaning making into five orders of consciousness. each order describes a threshold of meaning making which addresses an individual’s ontology, epistemology, and approaches to both intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships. kegan’s stages begin in infancy and childhood (the first order of consciousness), and continue into adulthood, although individuals may never evolve to the fifth stage in their lifetime. at the second order of consciousness individuals are unable to reflect on their needs and wants; they are concerned with the “facts” and tend to see the world in dualities of “right and wrong,” or “cause and effect.” at the third order an individual’s sense of self becomes more abstract and removed from their needs; it is instead directed toward loyalty to ideas or the groups to which one belongs. people are able to think abstractly about their ideas, but since their construction of self is coconstructed with ideas or with others, they look to external sources of authority for ideas, values, and standards. at the fourth order of consciousness individuals are the author of their inner psychological lives. people are able to separate themselves from relationships realizing that, they control their own actions, but they are not in control or responsible for others’ actions or feelings. this does not lead to an ignoring of others’ feelings or a lack of empathy, rather at the fourth order one is able to step back and examine the relationship with one’s own internal values, beliefs, and loyalties in mind. the fifth order of consciousness individuals reflect not only on their own values, but on “oh god, she is looking at every little thing i am doing!” student teachers’ constructions of the observation experience 3 the way those values and beliefs are shaped by the systems in which they participate. as discussed later, the participants in this study were at or near the third and fourth order of consciousness. this was expected of these college aged student teachers because although constructive development is not directly tied to age, prior research indicates that most college students are functioning from the stages, and substages between and including the third and fourth order (baxter-magolda, 1999; kegan 1994). the third order of consciousness is also referred to as the socialized perspective, indicating that the self is defined by the reactions and expectations of others. at this stage, individuals feel responsible for others’ feelings and hold others responsible for their feelings. of particular note in this study, at the third order criticism is received as commentary on the self not on the actions, as those operating from the socialized perspective do not divorce others’ opinions of their actions from their identity. the fourth order of consciousness is also referred to as a self-authoring perspective because, at this stage, an individual’s values and beliefs are central to the self. relationships, affiliations and outside perspectives are separate from one’s identity and as such are more easily reflected upon and manipulated. criticism is received as a point of view to take into account along with other points of view and ones’ own assessment. at the fourth order, individuals have a clear sense of self and thus are able to distinguish others’ evaluations and expectations from their own internal standards and gauge how they match up. perhaps more importantly for student teachers, at the fourth order individuals are able to divorce the other’s opinions or expectations from their constructed identities. feedback then is received as a comment on the act or event that was observed rather than a judgment of the individual. kegan (1994) argued that the modern world demands self-authorship from people. rodgers and scott (2008) suggested that teacher education programs may have a hidden expectation that their teacher candidates are functioning from the fourth order of consciousness. it seems functioning in this way would be an asset in navigating the student teaching triad relationships, particularly when considering the power relationships inherent in student teaching, and specifically in the observation experience. the very structure of student teaching positions the cooperating teacher in particular, but also the university supervisor, as authorities on teacher knowledge and practice. in placing students in specific classrooms and assigning them a liaison to the university, a teacher education program marks these mentors as experts on teaching (davies, 2005; butler & cuenca, 2012). teacher education programs, however, would like student teachers to make instructional decisions independent from or at the least in concert with their expert mentors. examining these authorities using kegan’s constructive developmental theory highlights the difficulty student teachers operating from the third order consciousness might have. at the third order or socialized perspective, one’s identity is intertwined with external authority, making disapproval or the possibility of disapproval difficult and anxiety inducing. from this perspective the power differential inherent in student teaching is difficult to navigate, and may be one that they choose not to try, but rather choose to align themselves with their cooperating teachers. from a fourth order perspective, mentors are still acknowledged as an authority, but their identity is not intertwined with external approval, but with their own beliefs and values. disapproval or feedback from a mentor is less costly to their developing identities, rather they are able to see feedback as a part of their learning, and thus able to receive or reject it. the observation experience brings the hidden expectation of fourth order consciousness to the forefront. in a way a student teacher must be able to receive criticism as removed from the self in order to get the most benefit from post observation feedback. student teaching, and particularly observations, seems to have an intrinsic power structure and an expectation that students will be able to adeptly navigate this structure. this study aims to use kegan’s theory as a framework to examine the similarities and differences in the ways student teachers’ who were operating at differing orders of consciousness make meaning of the observation experience. methods this was a qualitative study using the subject object interview (soi), an instrument developed by kegan and colleagues (lahey, souvaine, kegan, goodman, & felix, 1988) to measure an individual’s order of consciousness, and using analytic induction with kegan’s framework as a guide, to examine themes both within and across cases. this study was not only focused on the results of the soi, but also ensuring that the data represented the teacher candidate’s interpretation of their experiences over the course of their student teaching. as such i gathered data through focus groups and interviews multiple times in the study. context the participants in this study were enrolled in a nationally recognized secondary education program at a mid-atlantic state university; all teacher candidates in this five-year program work towards a bachelor’s degree in a content area and a master’s of arts in teaching. the student teaching internship in this program took place over the course of 16 weeks in a high or middle school placement in the surrounding county. each participant had one cooperating teacher and one university supervisor who observed, evaluated, and advised them throughout the placement. none of the participants shared a cooperating teacher, but some shared current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 a university supervisor. the cooperating teachers were provided with a manual describing their and the student teacher’s responsibilities and suggesting possible timelines for student teachers to gradually take responsibility for instruction as well as release it back to the cooperating teacher. the cooperating teachers were all invited to a professional development session on supporting student teachers in their classrooms. the university supervisors were all graduate students who had completed a two-day training session in observing and supporting student teachers; this training was supplemented by follow up meetings during the semester to discuss successes and challenges. in this case, each university supervisor was in their second year of supervising student teachers. following the expectations of the program their university supervisors completed six formal observations, collected weekly journals, and met with the student teacher and cooperating teacher for three triad meetings. both the university supervisor and the cooperating teacher completed midterm and final evaluations of their respective student teachers. at the time of the study i was a graduate student at this institution and as such i had some access to the student participants. although i was not a secondary university supervisor, i had knowledge of the program language and expectations, and had supervised elementary student teachers. my experiences with these students also let me see that cooperating teachers, university supervisors and student teachers do not necessarily interpret of the events of student teaching in the same way. rather than balance the differing perspectives i chose to privilege the interpretations of the student teachers, and as such i purposely did not have any contact with the cooperating teachers or university supervisors. instead i focused on gathering the student teachers’ constructions through multiple focus groups and interviews. participants there were four participants in this study. all were white women in their early twenties, and history majors in the social studies education program in a school of education recognized for its excellence (darling-hammond, 2006). with the exception of katelyn, each student teacher was observed by both her cooperating teacher and her university supervisor; katelyn’s cooperating teacher never completed a formal observation. their university supervisors were doctoral students in the social studies education department at the school of education. in addition, kara and jamie shared the same university supervisor, as did katelyn and jessica. data collection i gathered data through two methods: focus groups and interviews. the four focus groups occurred about a month apart throughout the duration of the teacher candidates’ student teaching internships. the three semistructured interviews, the soi (lahey et al., 1988), and two follow up interviews, took place at the middle and end of their student teaching. kegan and his colleagues developed the soi as a means of testing the validity of kegan’s theory and as a tool for further research. the soi interview process uses a set of ten cards with one or two words on each (for example, “anxious,” “torn” or “success”). each participant was given the set of ten cards and was then asked to recall or jot down a short note about a recent experience related to the word on the card. for example, when the participant was given the card “success,” she was prompted with the following: “if you were to think of some times when you felt triumphant or that you had achieved something that was difficult for you or especially satisfying, that you were afraid might come out another way, or a sense that you had overcome something, recall or jot down a few words to remind you of those times.” after the participant thought about all ten cards, i asked her to choose one of the ten cards to talk about. probing questions were used to clarify the structure of the participants’ answers, not the content. for example, if a participant said she felt success when she received an award, the interviewer might have asked, “why did this award make you feel successful?” or “what would have happened if you did not have this award?” the questions attempted to elucidate why something is important, or how the participant constructed meaning rather than to focus on the what of events or feelings. the focus groups and second and third interviews were semi-structured. the questions focused on the participants’ experiences in student teaching and evolved as the study progressed. the questions for subsequent interviews and focus groups were written in response to the comments the participants had made during earlier focus groups and interviews. this evolution of questions helped establish the content of each student teaching experience, including their thoughts and feelings about the relationships in the student teaching triad. in addition, i also asked follow up questions based on the soi, such as “why does that bother you?” or “what about that made it an indicator of success?” to probe the way they made meaning. each interview and focus group was audio-taped; the taping was then transcribed and sent to the appropriate teacher candidate for member checking. data analysis data were analyzed using two processes: soi scoring (lahey et al., 1988) and analytic induction (lincoln & guba, 1985). the soi is a tool used to investigate the meaning making structures of individuals’ constructive developmental perspective, otherwise referred to as their order of consciousness. therefore, as i analyzed the soi interviews, i read and reread the transcript of the interview, looking for patterns in the structure of an individual’s meaning making rather than the content of their statements. i marked off sections of “oh god, she is looking at every little thing i am doing!” student teachers’ constructions of the observation experience 5 text that gave evidence for a certain underlying order of consciousness and made note of the order i thought it evidenced or if it seemed to rule out another order of consciousness. after this initial reading, i made a hypothesis about the interviewee’s order of consciousness. then, i went back through the transcript searching for evidence to negate this hypothesis. i then gave the interviewee a score based on my analysis of the transcript. each soi interview was also scored by an independent rater. my co-rater was a trained, reliable rater, and has worked with dr. kegan and colleagues on a longitudinal study of validity of the soi. she rated each of participants’ sois without the knowledge of my scores. i then compared respective scores and used her notes to reconcile any discrepancies in our analysis. the soi has 21 possible scores representing the five orders of consciousness and the six distinctions that can be made between any two orders. reliability for this measure has been evidenced by lahey’s (1986) example of test-retest reliability (r= .836, p=.0001), and villegas’s (1988) example of interitem consistency (.96). in addition, studies using the measure have found acceptable levels of inter-rater reliability ranging from 63% to 100% agreement within 1/5 of a stage (bar yam, 1991; lahey, 1986; villegas, 1988; villegas-reimers, 1996). i checked my scoring of the interviews with an independent trained reliable rater. for the larger study this rater and i scored within 2/5 of a stage on 100% of the interviews, within 1/5 of a stage on 75% of the interviews and were an exact match on 50% of the interviews. the data from the focus groups and second and third interviews was analyzed using a process of analytic induction (lincoln & guba, 1985). data were examined for themes both relating to the content of their experiences (relationships with their cooperating teacher, university supervisor, observations, moments of success, or failure), and evidence of the way they made meaning of these experiences and relationships. the data corps was read and reread in multiple iterations both during and after data collection. using cross case comparisons, i formed hypotheses about the way the difference in their order of consciousness was, or was not, related to the way they made meaning of the observation experience. i tested each hypothesis by looking through the data for supporting evidence and also evidence to disprove the hypothesis. findings all of the women identified their cooperating teachers and university supervisors as important actors in their student teaching internships. in addition, they all discussed observations as important events. part of the importance of observations may have been due to the design of the program’s evaluation of student teaching. as in many teacher education programs, the formal observations are used as a form of evaluation for the teacher candidates; although they do not receive grades on these evaluations, if a teacher candidate were to perform poorly repeatedly with no signs of improvement or learning, she would not pass her student teaching. beyond this, however, the participants all identified the observations as an opportunity to learn and grow as teachers. they differed however in their emotional reactions to the prospect of being observed and in the ways they thought they could learn from feedback. these differences were related to the variance in their orders of consciousness. the results of the soi showed that two of the women, kara and katelyn (all names are pseudonyms), were operating firmly at the third order of consciousness, and that two, jessica and jamie were operating at a middle stage between the third and fourth order (3/4) where there were some signs of fourth order consciousness, but many of the third order ways of making meaning are still present. the prospect of being observed third order perspective. for kara and katelyn, both operating from the third order of consciousness, the observations by either their cooperating teachers or university supervisors where at the same time critical to their development as teachers, and what they described as nerve-wracking experiences. as kegan (1994) explains, “ the ultimate goal [from the perspective of the third order] is being in alignment with – being in good faith with a value-creating surround” (p.171); as such those operating from the third order perspective are ardently aware of evaluators around them and strive to be in alignment with expectations. kara was keenly aware of her cooperating teacher’s presence in the classroom; she noted her anxiety on several occasions: when i have been teaching she will usually sit there and observe and type up notes, which is sometimes kind of nerve racking because i think “oh god she is looking at every little thing that i am doing!” i just, i feel like i’m always scared that i am messing up … i think, “i hope she doesn’t think i am saying something really stupid right now.” if i do say something kind of off she sometimes will jump in and say, “oh no this is it” so the students are still getting the info they need and they’re still learning the right stuff. so i am not worried about that, i just don’t want to i don’t know come across as being a bad teacher, i guess. i feel like when she is there, there is always kind of in the back of my mind – don’t mess up, don’t mess up. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 kara was very concerned about her cooperating teacher’s opinion of her as a teacher. she did not want a possible mistake to cause her cooperating teacher to think that she was a bad teacher. her concerns were not related to specific feedback or comments her cooperating teacher had made, but rather a general sense that she did not want her cooperating teacher to disapprove of something that she did. she even acknowledged that if she made a mistake her teacher would not reprimand her or be upset, but the prospect of “messing up” in front of her cooperating teacher was still a daunting prospect. operating from the third order of consciousness, others’ opinions are part of the self, and this makes the prospect disappointing a mentor anxiety inducing. at the same time the prospect of an observation was also an opportunity to confirm alignment with expectations. observations were very important for kara because she used these as an opportunity to define her success as a teacher. (my university supervisor will say) ‘you have really great teacher presence’ and it’s good to know that somebody, my university supervisor, thinks that and it kind of makes me more confident and i think, ok now i know i can do this. the feedback kara received helped her define herself as a teacher, so her university supervisors comment that she had good presence, helped her confirm that she was successful in the classroom. like kara, observations were a cause for anxiety for katelyn; she was so nervous before her university supervisor’s first observation she could barely eat the day before. in constructing the observation she focused on a didactic notion of success. when asked why observations were important to her she said, “(it’s important) that my (university supervisor) thinks that i do a good job, i mean as simple as that.” katelyn wanted the general sense of approval that she had done a “good job” or was a good teacher. observations then are not solely constructed as times to learn, but as opportunities to confirm or (in a prospect that caused anxiety) dissuade the idea that she was a good teacher and was meeting expectations. katelyn had a different relationship with her cooperating teacher because she was often out of the room and never did a formal observation of katelyn. she was both upset by her cooperating teacher’s absence because she thought she was missing opportunities for feedback, and somewhat grateful because she knew that the presence of her cooperating teacher would occupy her mind. she said, “i just would not want to be thinking, ‘ok, is what i said right? oh my gosh is she giving me a look?’ i feel like my entire focus would be on that instead of on the kids and what they are doing.” like kara, when katelyn is observed she is nervous and her thoughts are occupied with what the observer is thinking about her, to the point where she wonders what a gesture or a glance might be. perhaps because of this, when katelyn’s university supervisor suggested that she specifically ask her teacher to observe her she did not want to saying that she “would probably say no anyway.” 3/4 perspective. jessica and jamie, however, saw the prospect of being observed much differently than katelyn and kara. they were both more at ease with their cooperating teachers and with their university supervisors, and saw observations as an opportunity to get a different perspective. neither of the women had a cooperating teacher that they would have described as overbearing. jessica reported that her cooperating teacher complimented her teaching. she felt confident in her teaching and felt her cooperating teacher shared this confidence. she said, “ (my cooperating teacher) writes me emails saying ‘good job’, and tells me to let her know if i am doing something interesting so she can watch.” her teacher expresses confidence in her and jessica shares that confidence. jamie reported that her cooperating teacher was often out of the classroom. whereas katelyn balked at her university supervisor’s suggestion to ask her cooperating teacher to observe a lesson, jamie was not nervous about asking for help. she said: (my cooperating teacher) is the type of person where you have to ask for her opinions or her critique and then she is willing to give it but i had to ask “hey mary, can you observe me tomorrow during this period? i am having trouble with this” and then she will; she will sit down and watch and then afterwards we’ll talk about it. jamie saw her teacher as a resource that she could draw on if she needed help with an aspect of teaching. moving towards a fourth order perspective in which she was more able to see herself and her actions as removed from other’s opinions, jamie’s construction is markedly different from kara and katelyn’s because she saw the her teaching practice, not her identity as a good teacher, as the focus of the observation and the subsequent feedback. this makes the prospect of feedback much less daunting, and jamie does not only ask to be observed, but is able to ask her teacher to observe something that she thinks she might not be doing well. perhaps because of this different view neither jessica nor jamie were nervous about their university supervisors visits. jamie specifically said that she knows that some student teachers get nervous about observations, but she felt differently. she said: it doesn’t bother me… knowing that (the university supervisor) is there to help you, they are not grading you. it’s not a grade they are just giving you feedback so even if you mess up it doesn’t matter because they are going to have good advice for helping you fix the problem. “oh god, she is looking at every little thing i am doing!” student teachers’ constructions of the observation experience 7 jamie was very matter of fact in her approach to being observed by her university supervisor, her presence did not cause her anxiety. much like her approach to her cooperating teacher, she saw her university supervisor’s visits as opportunities to get support and outside advice. jessica also valued outside advice, and like jamie was not nervous about being observed by either her cooperating teacher or university supervisor, but she constructed the opportunity of being observed slightly differently. she said: the only way you are going to grow as a teacher is if you are forced to make a list of what is going well and what is not going well. i thought that to an extent every day anyway, but it’s more of a – yes that went well but why did it go well?... it worked because of this so i can continue doing that next time. (emphasis added) like jamie, she saw observations as an opportunity for growth, and she also placed slightly more emphasis on her role in this opportunity. where jamie focused on the help she is would receive in the observation, jessica saw observations as a push to remind her to be reflective in her practice, and figure out not just that she was successful, but what, in particular, was effective practice. learning from and receiving feedback the student teachers all acknowledged that the purpose of the observations was to receive advice from their university supervisors or cooperating teachers. however, the ways they constructed the post-observation conference varied according to their orders of consciousness. baxter magolda (1999) and perry (1970) note that college age students tend to share an epistemological perspective of knowledge as static and as held by external experts. this epistemic viewpoint can make certain activities, such as self reflection, which asks the student teachers to be the creator, or co-creator of knowledge can be difficult and even frustrating for students because it challenges their view of the way knowledge (and by way of that learning) should take place. baxter magolda (1999) links this specifically to students’ orders of consciousness noting that students at the third order begin with a static epistemic view and must be supported in evolving towards the fourth order with an epistemology which involves a more constructive view of knowledge and one that identifies the individual as a creator and evaluator of knowledge. this difference in epistemologies is reflected in the way an individual receives and participates in receiving feedback. third order perspective. katelyn saw feedback as an opportunity to improve as a teacher, something which she did not think that she would be able to do on her own. she said: i really crave feedback so that i can get better and this is like the one shot of getting better because who is going to observe me when i am a teacher, like an administrator once a year? so i really wanted that feedback so i could remember “ok do this, this way now” because every time (my university supervisor) gave me feedback i could incorporate it. katelyn feared that this was her “one shot” at learning how to be a teacher, and that she would not be a better teacher without this feedback. this statement demonstrates her desire for direction, rather than aid with reflection and constructing her own solutions. she wanted to be given expectations to meet and guidance on how to become a better teacher. indicative of the third order epistemological perspective, katelyn did not see herself as an source of knowledge about teaching, even about her own challenges with teaching. one of her anxieties about asking her cooperating teacher to observe her was her university supervisor’s suggestion that she ask her to come observe something specific. katelyn did not feel able to make this request, as she said, “every time (my university supervisor) comes he pulls out stuff i have never even thought of so it’s like you can’t ask for something – i have no idea of anything to ask her specifically to look at.” she felt, that without others, it was difficult even to find the areas of teaching with which she struggled. katelyn valued the feedback she received after observations because she did not feel that she would be able to gain new knowledge about teaching without an outside evaluator or authority giving her knew knowledge or insights about her practice. kara also looked to her teacher education program and to her cooperating teacher to tell her how to become a better teacher. she exemplified this in the way she talked about her difficulties in teaching her students how to respond to a document based question (a form of essay used in history classes, particularly ap history classes). she realized that some of her students had problems formulating a thesis, but found that she had no direct strategies for addressing this; she said, “i wish (my social studies methods teacher) had given us methods to do because this is very different than any other writing they will do.” she also looked to her cooperating teacher for help, they did not plan the first lesson together, but kara hoped “next time we do a big writing assignment we’ll collaborate more because she has been doing this and she knows kind of what they should be doing.” kara was able to recognize that she had a problem, but did not see herself as a part of finding the solution; instead she sought out knowledge from those she saw as authorities on the subject. she respected her methods teacher and she appreciated the knowledge her cooperating teacher has from experience. like katelyn, and from a third order perspective, kara did not position herself as a co-creator in developing her teaching, but rather looked to others to current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 give her better methods. as such the post observation conferences were times to receive ideas, tips, and tricks for teaching. while kara did appreciate and value the ideas she received from her cooperating teacher and university supervisor, at times it was difficult for her to receive the feedback if it was critical or constructive. she readily acknowledged that her cooperating teacher was not a harsh critic and gave good feedback, but the critical feedback she received was still hard for her. she said: it’s just one of those things where it’s a blow to your confidence i guess. where you think, “this is a pretty good idea, i think it’s going to work, and i think the kids are going to like it”… it’s just hard to have somebody be like “yeah your big plan you had didn’t really work – it’s just like ugh (sounds like she just received a punch in the stomach). observations and the feedback she received helped kara define herself as a student teacher. as such, the feedback she received was not just a comment about a lesson, but about her identity as a good teacher; critical feedback was an assault on her sense of self. kara was also not an active evaluator of this feedback, if someone (in this case her cooperating teacher or her university supervisor) said that her plan would not work, then she accepted this; she did not talk about what she thought of the lesson or what she brought to the evaluation. feedback was a one-way street; she received it, as truth, from her mentors. 3/4 perspective. for jessica and jamie the feedback they received from their cooperating teachers and university supervisors was part of a more transactional relationship, one in which they would take part in evaluating their teaching, rather than just be evaluated. jessica explained that the feedback was particularly helpful if a lesson did not go well. she said, “maybe i don’t think (a lesson) went well and (my university supervisor) can help me figure out why it didn’t go over well and what we can change for next time.” jessica constructed her role as an active participant in evaluating her own teaching. in her statement she marked herself as the person who will decide that a lesson did not go well and referred to “we” in the process of deciding what to do for next time. for jessica feedback and the solutions to her identified problems would be coconstructed. she did not deny that feedback is useful to her, but she also was not simply a passive receiver of her supervisor’s advice. jamie also positioned herself as an active participant in solving any problems she might encounter with her teaching. she often talked about meeting with her cooperating teacher and with other teachers on her grade level team. in fact she seemed to view it quite simply, “we have a meeting and…we discuss the problem and discuss the solution like as a whole so i don’t feel like i ever have to figure something out on my own that is beyond my capability.” jamie did feel the need to get outside opinions, but like jessica she used the word “we” in her descriptions of working to find a solution. she also noted that she has a certain level of capability to begin with. while not completely self-authors, both jamie and jessica saw themselves as participants in creating their growing knowledge of teaching. in addition, both women felt that they could evaluate feedback in order to reject it or to manipulate it. jessica in particular liked her cooperating teacher, but felt that her teacher could do more engaging activities with the students. her cooperating teacher often said that the students would not be able to understand or behave in some of the cooperative learning jessica planned. jessica was undaunted, despite even her students’ initial protests. i had a sense that… my students could try a little bit more because you really don’t know until you try it. and while some of the things we’ve done may have required a little more guidance on my part with them; they have also been able to accomplish a lot more than my cooperating teacher said they would be able to. while her teachers’ opinion is certainly still important to her, jessica felt that she had her own values about teaching, and that she could apply those values despite her cooperating teachers resistance. jamie was less bold than jessica, but she also felt that the teaching in the class was shared and that she could be a contributor to improving instruction. unlike jessica however, jamie felt she had to be careful with her feedback. i don’t contradict [my cooperating teacher] really, but i just give a suggestion, like ‘maybe tonight we should write the directions on the board and have them write them down’… i mean she listens, she is receptive i just kind of state things maybe we should do this because i’ve heard about this – or i kind of like maybe oh someone told me this works really well. jamie demonstrated that she did not want to upset her cooperating teacher, she still valued her cooperating teacher’s opinion of her, but she was still able to offer suggestions for improvement. both jessica and jamie wanted their mentors’ approval of their teaching, but at the same time they also had developing teaching beliefs that were important to their teaching selves; they negotiated the line of seeking approval and staying true to what they thought was best practice. discussion each of the participants discussed observations as an important part of their student teaching. they all reported that the feedback they received was helpful and supported them in becoming better teachers. kara: i feel like [all the student teachers in the cohort] say, “oh my god... it’s going to “oh god, she is looking at every little thing i am doing!” student teachers’ constructions of the observation experience 9 be awful they are coming to observe me!”, but it’s really not a bad thing at all… it’s actually probably the most helpful thing. katelyn: i like that there is someone who is like cheering me on to be better and you know helping me and giving me resources. jessica: just the validation that you know that you are doing a good job. because you can think all you want that you are a good teacher, but you are never really going to know unless someone else can give you some kind of feedback of that sort. jamie: i think also getting observed it definitely helped me feel more confident …its affirming that i am not crazy (laughs)… these kids aren’t going to fail out or anything. the women shared a common theme of observations as a positive part of their student teaching experience, but the way they talked about observations and the feedback they received, or wanted, varied according to their order of consciousness. from the third order perspective, observations were viewed in a didactic manner; they could either go well and prove that they were good teachers, or it could be a crushing blow. despite the fact that they both felt that they could learn from feedback, the prospect of earning the disapproval of their mentors from a failed lesson was daunting for kara and katelyn. the way they felt about student teaching and defined their success was closely tied to their mentor’s feedback. from the 3/4 perspective, jamie and jessica still highly valued outside perspective as a way to know that they were good teachers, but they saw the observations as more transactional experiences. they could receive feedback, evaluate it, and add their own thoughts. in this way the observations were inherently less stressful, the prospect of failing was not one that either of the women hoped for, but at the same time they knew that if this did happen they could learn from the experience. for kara and katelyn, observations were constructed as situations in which they will get feedback that would define their teaching. for jamie and jessica, the feedback they received was just one source (although and important source) of a myriad of sources of information that they would use to make their own decisions about their teaching. the four women where participating in student teaching with similar power structures, however the ways that they navigated these structures, or asserted their own power, varied according to their order of consciousness. teacher educators lament that post observation discussions and triad meetings focus more on the microissues of teaching rather than dealing with larger pedagogical issues and approaches (borko & mayfield, 1995; dinkleman, 1998; griffin, 1989; valencia et al., 2009). rather than focus on the short fallings of the cooperating teachers, there is some evidence in these findings to suggest that part of this phenomenon might be that the cooperating teachers and university supervisors are giving their student teachers the type of feedback they desire. kara and katelyn, operating from the third order, had an epistemological view of teaching knowledge as something they would receive from experts. they expected that they would get advice, teaching tips and techniques from those in the authoritative positions in their student teaching internships. from this perspective the post-observation conference was not a time to discuss larger issues, but to receive authoritative feedback. moving towards the fourth order of consciousness, jamie and jessica saw themselves as more active participants in the post observation conference. certainly they were also looking for advice, but as they constructed themselves as able evaluators of their own teaching and pedagogical methods, they seemed more prepared to have discussions about larger pedagogical issues. these conferences were not recorded so i cannot know if their post-observation discussion delved into more significant educational issues than the participants reported; this is an area for further study. rodgers and scott (2008) assert that a teacher’s developmental capacity is not necessarily an indicator of success in teacher education; “to determine whether developmental capacity… is an asset or a risk, consideration must be given to the developmental demands of the context… and the available supports” (p. 742). reviewing the findings of this study, it does seem that operating at a higher order of consciousness helped the student teachers in this study to have less anxiety about being observed, and report that they have a more active role in evaluating their teaching. this does not mean that kara or katelyn were not successful in their student teaching both women expressed satisfaction with their performance and learning in student teaching, and both were evaluated as successful by their teacher education program. there is, however, some question as to whether their order of consciousness was an asset or risk considering “developmental demands of the contexts… and the available supports” (rodgers & scott, 2008, p. 742). the women in this study shared university supervisors and a common structure for the post observation context, but they had different ways of interpreting the feedback they received, as well as varying concerns and anxieties associated with the observation experience. it may be useful for teacher education programs to explore differentiated support for student teachers; going beyond increasing or decreasing the number of observations, but also considering the way that students engage in the feedback and reflection process. kegan (1994) states: current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 the requirement to be self-evaluating and self-correcting demands an internal standard… it requires a theory of philosophy of what makes something valuable, a metaleap beyond the third order. our loyalty is transformed from adherence to a value to the process of originating or inventing what is valuable. (p. 169) using kegan’s lens we can see that the self-reflection that is often expected of student teachers sets an expectation for clear internal teaching values and philosophies; it is a hidden expectation that student teachers are at least moving towards fourth order consciousness. jamie and jessica reported being ready and able to engage in reflective discussions of their practice, while kara and katelyn seemed to be waiting for solutions. it seems that they might benefit from differentiated approaches to the post observational conferences and reflective journals; approaches that took into account differences in their epistemological views on teaching, and their readiness to reflect on their teaching practices. conclusion cognitive development is not static, but it also does not progress without any impetus to do so. cognitive growth can occur when an individual is given appropriate challenges and support (kegan, 1994). studying another form of cognitive development, theis-sprinthall (1984) found that inservice teachers who were involved in a program that provided supportive opportunities for the students to role play, continuous and guided reflections, classroom and field experiences, increased their cognitive awareness of the complexity of their situation and augmented self-awareness about their role in creating their situations. likewise, glassberg and sprinthall (1980) found that preservice teachers who took part in a teacher education program designed to promote reflection in a variety of forms were more likely to increase their stage of ego development, ethical development, and have an internal locus of control. these two studies suggest that teachers can progress to higher levels of cognitive development through the use of strategies and supports provided by teacher educators. indeed, reiman and theis-sprinthall (1998) suggest that cognitive development should be taken into account by teacher supervisors as they consider the type of support the preservice teacher needs. rogers and scott (2008), however, caution that teacher educators should not assume that a higher level of cognitive development will necessarily result in a better experience in student teaching or in the teacher education program as a whole. there is a need for more research into the ways a teacher candidates’ cognitive developmental perspective relates to their experiences and performance as student and novice teachers. despite the need for more research, there is evidence from this study suggesting that teacher education programs might revisit their procedures for observations in student teaching to question whether the structure of this process is supportive for all of their student teachers, or whether a differentiated approach is more appropriate. it may be useful for programs to explore various approaches to the post-observation conference including one that supports student teachers who may be expecting tips and tricks rather than participating in creating solutions to their teaching dilemmas. further, programs might explore a variety of forms for reflection. the most common reflective journal operates with the assumption that student teachers are drawing an internal system of teaching beliefs and values to evaluate their performance, and that they see themselves as able evaluators of performance. this assumption may not be apt for all student teachers. alternative options such as individual reflective interviews or scaffolded reflective journaling could include supporting questions such as: what was successful in this lesson? why was this evidence of success for you? or, what important goal or value do you keep in mind when you reflect on a lesson? how did this lesson reflect those values or goals? these kinds of supports might support student teachers operating from a third order perspective to begin to reflect on their own beliefs and the way that their teaching actions align with these beliefs. finally, this study is limited in its focus on four student teachers in a specific context, and limited in that i did not interview other members of a triad or observe observations or post-observation conferences. however in these limitations may lie the freedom to focus on how these observations are meaningful for the teacher candidates; the observations were no less or more powerful to the students because i did not see them, and they were no less real because i could not triangulate their experiences with my observations. it is very possible and probable that the participants’ cooperating teachers and university supervisors would have given decidedly different pictures of the observations. ultimately, despite our procedures and intentions, our interactions with student teachers will be interpreted and constructed through the lens of their meaning making structures. as such, the way teacher candidates make meaning of student teaching must be valued and examined as an inherent part of the student teaching internship, and a partof improving student teaching. references bar-yam, m. 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(2010). rethinking connections between campus courses and field experiences in college and university-based teacher education. journal of teacher education 61(1–2), 89–99. doi: 10.1177/0022487109347671 zeichner, k., & liston, d. (1987). teaching student teachers to reflect. harvard educational review, 57(1), 23-48. “oh god, she is looking at every little thing i am doing!” student teachers’ constructions of the observation experience 13 article citation fantozzi, b. v. (2013). “oh god, she is looking at every little thing i am doing!” student teachers’ constructions of the observation experience. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1098 author notes victoria b. fantozzi manhattanville college school of education 2900 purchase st. purchase, ny 10577 victoria.fantozzi@mville.edu victoria fantozzi is an assistant professor with a dual appointment in the departments of early childhood education and curriculum and instruction at manhattanville college. her research interests include student teaching, teacher education, and developing literacies in preschool. manuscript received: 10/9/12 revisions received: 1/24/13 accepted: 1/26/13 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 14 volume 16, number 1 february 14, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1118_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 3 october 21, 2013 issn 1099-839x opting out: examining teacher’s beliefs when faced with core reading programs tynisha d. meidl st. norbert college this qualitative study focused on how teachers in a small, urban elementary school in pennsylvania negotiate their beliefs and instructional delivery the classroom. in the area of literacy instruction, there has been an increased reliance on core-reading programs in elementary school. classroom teachers, caught in the middle, are charged with the responsibility to raise test scores, plan curriculum, motivate students, and provide a welcoming learning environment for all students. in this article, teachers’ beliefs about meeting the needs of urban students amidst nclb were explored, in relation to curriculum planning. a case study approach guided this research, using interviews, observations, and document analysis. data from participant statements and researcher observations, illuminate the reasons why teachers “opted-out” of having a sense of fidelity towards the mandated curriculum. according to the researcher opting-out was a means to equalize the discord between meeting student academic needs while adhering to the mandated curriculum and pacing guide. keywords: curriculum planning, linguistically and culturally diverse student populations, teacher beliefs as demographic cultural and ethnic diversity continues to shift in the united states (us), so do educational efforts, educational reforms, and public school classroom demographics. living in an era in which a system of standards/objectives drives instruction and curricular options, students are assessed against their knowledge of state standards, testing anchors, and objectives. the educational focus at the national level has been on establishing uniformly high academic standards in curriculum, practice, and assessment (national reading panel, 2000; no child left behind, 2001; common core state standards, 2010). with this emphasis, inadequate or inappropriate curriculum has profound implications for students and teachers (allington, 2002; coles, 2003). a continuing and fast occurring public school demographic shift has significantly added stress to classrooms using traditional pedagogy (u.s. department of education, 2003) with increased challenges to address the needs of diverse learners present in classrooms. in addition, there has been a significant drive towards increasing teacher accountability by using students standardized test scores. these policy changes have lead to an increased effort to improve student achievement through effective teaching. however, schools serving low-income students, linguistically and culturally diverse student (lcd) populations continue to be under the microscope. in many urban contexts, the neighborhood school is a direct reflection of community demographics. the site of this study was just that. the site of study was nestled in a neighborhood of predominately individuals from latino/a descent whose first language was not english and therefore the school population mirrored. unlike other schools in this urban center in the state of pennsylvania, students received current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 2 bilingual and transitional support to ensure success on the pennsylvania system of school assessment (pssa). in addition, this school has maintained a small student population and serves children living in the neighborhood, meaning all students are able to walk to school. as a result of increased pressure for higher test scores, many teachers have been forced to teach from prescribed curriculum. in the area of reading, many schools have adopted core-reading programs, which are aligned to state standards and state assessments. these programs were once known as basal readers, but have undergone a name change to reflect their purpose, the core for effective reading instruction. as a result, these programs have dictated to teachers what to teach, when to teach, and for how long to teach and not how to teach. the responsibility of curricular program in contexts such as this is out of the hands of teachers, yet accountability in the form of test scores rests on the teacher’s shoulders. the purpose of this case study was to explore what teachers do at the early testing grades of 3rd and 4th grades specifically in the areas of reading instruction, when the reading program is decided at the district level. in this school specifically, teachers are forced to adhere to the core-reading program as well as the districtpacing schedule, which is directly tied to district-mandated and created benchmark assessments. in an effort to understand how teachers are making sense of their practice and prescribed curriculum, this study sought to explore how teachers negotiated their own beliefs about teaching and learning in an under-performing urban school. the author examined: (a) why teachers have opt-ed out of using the core reading program and (b) how they attempted to do what is best for children despite curricular mandates. the reemergence of core-reading programs standards and objectives from the national, state, and local district levels are translated into curricula: materials, binders, and scopes and sequences. these curricular resources are geared to creating a common curriculum and set of learning experiences, which are assessed on state tests (mclaren & farahmandpur, 2001). as a result, the scope of curricula has become quite narrow and in many instances, prescriptive and formulaic (gallagher, 2009; garan, 2002, 2004). this has caused districts to implement curriculum-pacing schedules and timelines for grade levels to ensure standards and testing objectives are taught. core-reading programs have been around for decades as a form of standardized curriculum. in the 1980’s they were known as the basal reader. much research has been done on their effectiveness and their ability to facilitate the process to teach children how to read. since the passing of nclb, funding has been provided at the national level to support the use of corereading programs because of their completeness and alignment to state standards and state assessments. according to education market research (2007), 73.2% of the schools surveyed stated that they either closely follow the core-reading program or use it selectively, whereas only 25.1% reported not using a core-reading program. core-reading programs have established the content and organization of instruction, thus removing teachers from the decision-making process (marsh & willis, 2007). as a result, nclb has allowed policy makers to take credit when there are successes and blame schools, teachers, and students when goals are not met, with the insinuation that the program was not followed, co-opting the phrase, ‘with fidelity’ (meidl, 2011). many scholars (apple, 1986; baumann & heubach, 1996; shannon, 2007) have argued that basal reading programs put limitations on teachers’ freedom as it relates on what to teach and tailoring instruction to meet the needs of students. deskilling (shannon, 2007) has been used to describe this process. since many teachers have expressed discontent with core-reading programs being referenced as teacher-proof curriculum materials, secured by being grounded in research and evidence associated with goals of the standards-objectives movement (maslin, 2007). baumann and heubach (1996) sought to find out if basal readers deskilled teachers and they found that teachers saw the basal reader as an instructional tool. they surveyed elementary educators regarding their use and opinions of basal reading programs. they used both quantitative and qualitative methods, from a random sample of 553 teachers. however, their results are questionable considering the current state of education. baumann and heubach (1996) found that basal readers “empower teachers by providing them instructional suggestions to draw from, adapt, or extend as they craft lessons” (p. 511). however, since this work there have been several policy shifts in relation to accountability as well as the evidence and/or research base of core-reading programs. in the last decade core-reading programs have made changes to their product to ensure the content is aligned to state standards. despite the alignment, dewitz, jones, and leahy (2009), in their study of comprehension strategy instruction in core-reading programs, found gaps in curricula and pacing. they conducted a content analysis of five “best-selling” core-reading programs as identified by the educational market research group. the researchers analyzed each lesson for a total of 90 lessons. they found that skills and strategies did not always relate to one another nor provided enough practice to ensure skill mastery (dewitz et al., 2009). learning was not scaffold or concepts did not build on one another. in fact, they found that many lessons did not provide ample scaffolding or guided practice as a means to prepare students to self-monitor their own learning. dewitz et al. (2009) have concluded that “fidelity to a flawed program is not a virtue,” and argue for teachers to engage in more thorough instructional practices through modeling and guided practice. opting out: examining teacher’s beliefs when faced with core reading programs 3 in this climate of standards/objectives based reform, teachers experience pressures in attempting to meet the needs of underperforming student populations within the confines of prescribed curricula and instruction. despite the pressures of prescribed curriculum and subsequent methods of instruction, educators have to seek ways to address diversity in classrooms and employ practices that concentrate on the needs various student populations. teacher beliefs and curricular decision making beliefs and how beliefs are enacted in classrooms constitute the theoretical underpinnings driving the study. individuals’ beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions about learning draw on a combination of psychological, philosophical, sociological, political, and scientific principles. teachers develop philosophical and pedagogical understandings based upon knowledge of students, language, cultural backgrounds, learning styles, and instructional needs (ladson-billings, 1994; soto, 2002). phillips and soltis (2004) discuss teachers’ articulation of beliefs about teaching and learning coming from personal values, assumptions, and viewpoints. teachers’ beliefs influence teachers’ actions, according to shinde and karekatti (2012) teachers’ beliefs influence how they feel about teaching, the methods employed, as well as student achievement. they argue that teachers shape curriculum according to their own beliefs, but if that autonomy is taken away, then do teachers operate in accordance with their own notions of teaching and learning. the intellectual desire to understand the relationship between beliefs and action has been studied for almost a century. dewey, for example (1916/1938) described beliefs as “ all the matters of which we have not sure knowledge and yet which are sufficiently confident to act upon and also the matters that we now accept as certainly true, as knowledge, but which nevertheless may be questioned in the future” (p. 6). since, his early writing there has been a renewed focus on teachers’ beliefs about teaching learning influence classroom practices (fang, 1996; yero, 2002). commins and marimontes (2005) discussed the realization of how understanding beliefs influences decision making and quality instruction. teacher expectations play a vital role in student success and day-to-day practices. teacher beliefs are critical to promoting meaningful educational experiences because their beliefs about teaching and learning guide their practice (soto, 2002). clandinin (1986) proposed “a teacher’s special knowledge is blended by the personal background and characteristics of the teacher and expressed by her in particular situations” (p. 361). fang (1996) stresses that teachers’ daily interactions with children are guided by personal philosophies and/or an internal belief system. teachers’ beliefs are influenced by the understandings and experiences educators bring to the classroom. beliefs are constructed based on theories of how the world works, as well as teachers’ social and cultural backgrounds–– combined, these act to mold teachers’ thoughts about teaching and learning. teachers’ beliefs are complex because they are individually constructed. these beliefs influence curriculum planning and pedagogical approaches used daily in their classrooms. study methods the intention of this investigation was to explore how teachers negotiate between their beliefs about teaching and learning in urban classrooms and what influences teachers’ curricular decision making and lesson planning in order to meet the academic needs of students. other study-related goals included the following: (a) to ascertain ways that teachers articulate the needs of lowincome urban students, and (b) to discover how teachers adapt curricula to meet the needs of their students within the current system of standards/objectives-based. the context for this study was in an urban elementary school in the state of pennsylvania. investigation site the elementary school featured in this case study was chosen as the bounded case (yin, 2009) based on convenience sampling and criterion sampling as outlined by (collins, onwuegbuzie, & jiao, 2007). the school serves a low-income, spanish speaking community in an urban area, which is of interest to the primary investigator. the interest stems from the researcher’s teaching experiences at an elementary school in a rural low-income spanish speaking community. the researcher grew up in an urban low-income community not far from the site of investigation. similar to other urban schools, this school site was representative of the “dismal sate of school in most of our urban cities” (anyon, 1997, p. 9). the building was over one hundred years old and was built to serve 125 students, but home to 334 students at the time of the research. there were only two classrooms of each grade level and the average class size was 22 students. this was a title 1 school meaning the school received additional funding for the number of students who received free and reduced lunch. the school also received title iii funding due to the large latino/a population. the largest demographic group represented in the school was latino/as at 93.4%, while the remaining population was 4.3% african american and 2.3% caucasian. this school has the largest percent of students who identify as latino/a than any other school in the district. although the student population was largely spanish-speaking, all classes are taught in english with an emphasis on english as a second language (esl) strategies. participants the participants invited to participate in this research study were state certified thirdand fourth-grade teachers, who graduated from a 4 year undergraduate institution with teaching certification. those invited to current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 4 participate had to have over 3 years of classroom teaching experience. there were two participants in the study due to the size of the teaching staff in the third and fourth grade and parameters set by the researcher. this eliminated two additional participants. the participants hold elementary teaching certificates in pennsylvania. each worked in this school for a minimum of four years but both have over ten years of teaching experience. both teachers identified as caucasian and are from the geographic area but did not live in the community of the school. mr. joseph (pseudonym) has been at urban elementary for 5 years and 5 years prior taught at another school in the district. he teaches 4th grade at urban elementary. ms. pearl has been teaching at urban elementary for 4 years and teaches 3rd grade. she taught 1st and 2nd grade in the district. ms. pearl and mr. joseph both have master’s degrees in education. ms. pearl’s degree is in reading education from a local university. mr. joseph’s degree is in esl and he speaks spanish fluently. mr. joseph is also holds national board certification. data sources this study employed three data sources: daily observations that yielded field notes, in-depth semistructured interviews, and documents. of these three sources, observations were the primary data source. observations the focus of the research was on teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning in urban classrooms and how teachers’ beliefs influence curriculum decision for low-income urban student populations. the purpose of observations was to understand the instructional intersections between the written curriculum, curriculum planning, and instructional delivery. observations began the first day of school. they occurred every day that school was in session until thanksgiving break. the first observation day was the first day of school. school began on a monday during the last week of august until wednesday the week of thanksgiving, totaling 13 weeks. there were two teachers in the study making it easy for the researcher to plan daily classroom observations for the district mandated ninety-minute literacy block. on a weekly basis author spent 450 minutes each classroom for a total of 900 minutes each week observing teachers during instructional time over 8 weeks. this was the average of minutes due to days the literacy instructional time was compromised for fire drills or assemblies. for example on september 11, the school met together on the play yard to do the pledge of allegiance and have a moment of silence in the morning, reducing the minutes of instruction in the 4th grade classroom that day by 15 minutes. the observations established a contextual basis for understanding, validating, and interpreting participant statements from the interviews. interviews a primary source of data for teachers’ perceptions was in-depth semi-structured interviews. teachers were interviewed to collect information about their experiences and assisted the researcher in understanding beliefs and philosophies about teaching and learning. interviews were scheduled at the end of the school day at the school site. follow-up interviews however, took place during planning periods during the school day. these 30-minute daily interviews were grounded in observations and data from the initial interview. follow-up interviews allowed teachers’ to explain their instructional delivery. the explanations created an understanding on how teachers negotiate between their beliefs and the needs of their classrooms in planning and delivering instruction. documents in this study, the researcher collected documents relevant to curriculum planning. this included documents such as district time lines, also called pacing schedules as well as textbooks. these documents were available on the district’s website and were expected to be used by teachers in daily classroom instruction. data analysis yin (2009) noted the most preferred strategy for analyzing the case data is relying on the theoretical propositions of the case. in this case, this investigation focused on how teachers negotiate their beliefs, teaching materials, and instructional delivery in urban classrooms. analyzing interviews, observations and documents using yin’s (2009) analytic strategies for observations and interviews, a descriptive framework for organizing this case study was developed. first, interviews and field notes were transcribed. the researcher searched for patterns of behavior and outcomes that generated a list of categories. after categories were identified, the data was manually coded to visually denote patterns and contradictions. merriam (2002) pointed out, “the strength of documents as a data source lies with the fact that they already exist in the situation; they do not intrude upon or alter the setting in ways that the presence of the investigator might” (p. 13). the purpose of engaging in document analysis was twofold: to corroborate the researcher’s observations and interviews, making the findings trustworthy, and to investigate the documents guiding and influencing teacher pedagogy. documents were used planning for planning instruction. results two major themes emerged as it related to the influence of the mandated curriculum and the role of testing. these themes help to draw connections between how teachers constructed their beliefs. their beliefs are contextualized vis-à-vis the instructional approaches in classrooms. beliefs about teaching and learning are opting out: examining teacher’s beliefs when faced with core reading programs 5 grounded in lived experiences of these teachers in this particular school. participants’ reflections regarding teaching and learning and their student population, highlighted connections to personal experiences as a salient influence on pedagogical approaches and instruction. teachers participating in the study used their personal experiences to articulated their beliefs. the participants described the district’s “core curriculum” required for instruction as, “mandated curriculum based on the state standards.” as participants thought about how they planned for instruction often they referred to the district’s pacing guide or pacing schedule. all participants criticized how the mandated curriculum “may not always fit every student or every classroom because student needs, academic and social needs, are not taken into account.” the “core curriculum” outlines instructional standards and materials used in the content areas. teachers described tension from attempting to address learning needs of individual students, their own beliefs about teaching and learning, and what the mandated curriculum intended for them to teach and their ability to do so. the mandated curriculum the curriculum published by the district is called the planning and scheduling timeline. teachers use the following: the pacing schedule, pacing guide, or core curriculum interchangeably when discussing the document. the planning and scheduling timeline was informed by the state standards for content areas and the adopted basal reading series. mr. joseph described the curriculum as, “mandated curriculum based on the state standards.” the pacing schedule reflects the content for district’s benchmark testing which occurs every six weeks. although the study focused on literacy, when asked about the curriculum, teacher discussed reading and math equally. reading and math were conceptualized together. the primary focus of state assessments for third and fourth-grades are these content areas. the majority of instructional minutes is spent on math and reading leaving little room for science and social studies. the mandated curriculum as described by mr. joseph is “used for the benchmark that is distributed by the district.” although an outside agency creates the test, the district expects teachers to follow the pacing schedule because that is what will be tested on the benchmarks given every six weeks, “to inform instruction as to what needs more attention and what concepts students grasped.” “students are scored similar to the state assessment; below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced. the mandated curriculum “does not always have what we need” and “needs more open ended writing in the curriculum,” he explained. the curriculum has “no flow with it,” ms. pearl added. she stated, “it is missing great strategies; inferring, questioning and visualization.” she elaborated, “as a teacher, a professional, [you] know what’s best for your students, your class and what works.” continuing, “teachers know what students need in their heart.” despite one of the mr. joseph’s criticisms of the core curriculum, he expressed the idea, “you don't want to have them leave your room and not feel you've done the best possible job you could just because the curriculum says do this. you need to give them what they need to be lifelong learners.” mr. joseph in his explanation of the core curriculum stated, on paper, [the core curriculum is] awesome, higher ups have said it's one of the best curriculums they have seen. if you ask the teachers who are actually implementing it covers everything, you know. it covers everything that they are going to test you on; they're going to test the children on. however, i don't know how many teachers were involved with creating this curriculum. and if there were, i don't know where they taught. curricula meant to address skills emphasized by state and district standards leave teachers struggling to provide learning experiences meeting the needs of their students. ms. pearl described, “they [students] need the structure, and they welcome it. it [the curriculum] appears to be; it is structured, if you know the skills already. but i'm very unhappy with it. that is what the district wants you to use, and i'm going to leave it at that.” as she continued to talk about deficiencies within the mandated curriculum, she elaborated: as far as the literacy, as far as the literacy curriculum, we use an anthology, trophies, which is actually just used for our shared reading piece, and our grammar, and word study pieces. they just offer lessons on that, and writing. we follow the writing, the lessons for that in the trophies book. but then we are expected to have guided reading every day. teachers’ beliefs about mandated curricula led one teacher to posit an inequality between materials provided to support the curriculum of the lower elementary grades and materials provided for the upper grades. the researcher, based on informal discussions and observations, concluded the lack of equity is a consequence of funding for the reading first curriculum. the reading first grant supports k–3 with additional funds for books and literacy resources. ms. pearl responded: if you are in k-3 that would be great, because they give you all kinds of books and all types of everything if you are k-3. and if you are in fourth-grade and you're pretty much "good luck" getting your books. so, actually the principal, we had my first year here, got fourthgrade books and they are the books we've had since. so if you need a level anywhere below current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 6 what you have, you need to go find books on your own. whereas in k-3 they get new books every year, so we kind of pick up their old books, which is fine. whatever, books are books. not only was the mandated curriculum seen as unsupported by materials, but also perceived as over utilized when it came to district assessment. the participants extrapolated as to how outside companies analyze the mandated curriculum and create tests assumed to accurately assess learning. mr. joseph described the assessments as: every six weeks there is what they call a benchmark test. what i gather is they look at the curriculum and they see what is supposed to be taught. what is supposed to be learned in the six weeks, they create a test using those skills. he continued to explain how the results are then used to evaluate teachers’ instructional ability rather than any other factors (i.e., background knowledge of students, test bias and validity, etc.) as stated: however, and when we get the test back, we are supposed to look at what the children are weak at and work on that, which is great. i think that is an awesome thing; however, it is not used properly throughout the district. because when it [the results] comes back that children are weak in main idea. it is automatically assumed that the teacher did not do a good job in teaching main idea. i believe the benchmarks in this district are used for teacher accountability. throughout the years it has been, not so much said, but implied that's what they are using these for. it always comes back on us, it never comes back on, well why didn't little joey learn this? and what is it about little joey that he can't get this? it's, what did you do as a teacher that he didn't get this? which, i agree, and in some cases teachers need that, because there are some teachers that don't do anything. participants discussed the mandated curriculum as including, “everything you need,” but “it does not leave room for every child in the district or creativity.” the data show how teachers experienced dissonance between the planning and scheduling timeline, which help guide the learning of students for teachers, and meaningful learning experiences as formulated via teachers’ beliefs. participants shared not only the challenges of the curriculum, but identified various positive statements about the curriculum. in explaining the curriculum, ms. pearl explained: if someone [a student] leaves the room and goes to a different school, they will go and are doing the same thing that i am doing. a lot of children do move often around here. everyone is using the same materials. we are using story town this year. it is helpful to know what a new child is supposed to know. you are not working with nothing. it is helpful to know what they should have done already. in planning and coordinating learning goals, mr. joseph shared: i love the fact that the standards are delineated. that is helpful to me. the stories are okay that they chose for the basal that we use. they are okay; the stories are pretty good. i use them as a base. i like the literacy curriculum; it tells me what skills i need to teach. as demonstrated here, even the participants who liked the literacy curriculum did not fully embrace all parts of it. testing in the curriculum each teacher described the impact that testing has on the pacing schedule. mr. joseph shared how the mandated curriculum “covers everything that they are going to test the children on.” because of the correlation between the curriculum and benchmarking participants described pressure to teach “a lot of test prep with the kids.” ms. pearl described learning strategies designed to help students with testing, “i do a lot of open ended writing practice with them, reading text and going back in and taking information out by being detectives. sadly enough, that is what they need to do at the end of the year for the test.” the researcher observed students practicing to speak using full sentences after students’ speech were corrected through the modeling from ms. pearl. she discussed using this practice so, “they [the students] sound intelligent” but “also for test taking skills.” “they [the students] have to be able to write in full sentences,” she responded. “they [the students] have to take a question and turn it [the question] around,” for the test. “a lot of children write the way they talk,” she stated. these statements continue to demonstrate teachers’ perceptions about state and district tests as being accurate assessments of students’ learning, but not necessarily students’ academic needs. in several observations the participants engaged in “test prep” with their students. test prep was explained by mr. joseph. “it [test prep] does teach the kids a lot of the skills, the strategies you want them to have to become successful readers and writers.” test prep was not seen as “an add-on even though it sounds like it is.” observational data recorded by the researcher established most instances of test prep included teacher made materials rather than premade materials. many of the teachers created worksheets targeting the skills tested on either the benchmark or the state test. mr. joseph would regularly give the “sample assessment item” or “point question constructed response,” from the planning and opting out: examining teacher’s beliefs when faced with core reading programs 7 scheduling timeline. the teacher modeled, for the students, how to complete this form of response using a strategy called tag. students were expected to first t-turn the question into a statement, a-answer the question, and g-give details. mr. joseph also referred to an old and worn process chart hanging on the wall to describe this strategy. the teacher explained: i think the whole tag [t-turn the question in to a statement, a-answer the question, ggive details] thing in the open ended questioning is important. it helps them become better readers, because they are in and looking back for information in the story to make sure they understand the text. it forces them to go back and check, is this really happening or not? so, i like it for that. on the test “ they have to take a question and turn it around.” based on several observations of participants engaged in test prep with their students, the pressure to perform well on the tests for both students and teachers was obvious. during interviews, participants justified the use of test preparation to teach skills, “because it [test prep] does teach the kids a lot of the skills, the strategies you want them to have to become successful readers and writers.” participants struggled with the decision to utilize test prep as an instructional practice because of dissonance between having students ready for tests based on mandated curriculum and personal beliefs about teaching and learning and students’ needs, both academic and social. the need for test prep demonstrates teachers’ constructs of teaching and learning being influenced and driven by standards/objectives and high stakes testing. opting-out the findings from this case study provide depth into charlesworth et al’s (1993) research on teachers’ beliefs not aligning with their practices. district-mandated curriculum guided instruction in the school investigated for this study. participants expressed that the mandated curriculum “does not always have what we need,” “needs more open ended writing,” and has “no flow with it.” the missing elements of the curriculum included, “…great strategies; inferring, questioning and visualization.” ultimately, “you as a teacher, a professional, know what’s best for you students, your class and what works.” despite the positives and challenges of the core curriculum, ms. pearl stated, “you don't want to have them [students] leave your room and not feel you've done the best possible job you could just because the curriculum says do this. you need to give them what they need to be lifelong learners.” classroom instruction was influenced by participants’ beliefs about teaching and learning, addressing student academic needs, and district and state tests used to evaluate instruction and learning at the school. students were benchmarked every six weeks as means to monitor accountability. these assessments did not inform instruction as demonstrated by the lack of flexibility for revisiting past objectives and standards in the planning and scheduling timeline. as a result, daily instruction mirrored test-prep. mandated curriculum created a baseline from which teachers perceived students as being deficient or not based on ability to perform certain skills. the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning interwoven with a mandated curriculum caused pedagogical dissonance. the expressed discord reinforced the claims of henkin and holliman (2009) of how the power of the mandated curriculum decreased teachers’ ability to make professional and autonomous decisions in their classrooms. both participants described the curriculum used in their classroom as a “mandated curriculum based on the state standards.” consequences were evident when participants state “student needs are not taken into account” or that “the pacing schedule does not always fit every student or every classroom.” the research also reinforced deemer’s (2004) notions of how the curriculum has significant implications on the ways teachers instruct and how learners and learning experiences were developed. learning environments are structured around the beliefs of the curriculum and curriculum designers, not teachers or students (deemer, 2004). the curriculum assumed all students should be at the same level. the viewpoints participants expressed towards the curriculum were mixed because they saw the value and role of the curriculum differently. for instance, mr. joseph indicated “that the pacing schedule is great because students move around the district.” teachers across the district were expected to teach the same content on the same day. this provided schools with knowledge of what students across district should know and be able to do. conclusion curricular control at district levels transformed and distorted teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning, which were constructed through personal and professional experiences. teachers’ instruction revolved around a district-developed curriculum that fails to acknowledge their professional ability (darder, 1997). in fact, teachers in this study felt they were doing an injustice by teaching to standards. teachers were compelled to do so because a perception that an even greater injustice would be to leave students unable to pass tests required for promotion and eventually render them unable to graduate. teachers continue to be left with the monumental task of educating children in an environment where curriculum mandates constricted a teacher’s ability to build relationships, meet students’ needs, and scaffold learning. teachers readjusted, scaffold learning and attempted to make connections to and with the curriculum current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 8 based using their best judgment, and at times “opted-out.” rather than challenging the curriculum, participants opted-out of implementing all curriculum mandates, as a means of meeting student needs. opting-out was exemplified when there was a disparity between beliefs and practice. when the theories and practices espoused by the mandated curriculum contradicted with teachers’ philosophies about teaching and learning, teachers optedout. the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning interwoven with mandated curriculum caused pedagogical dissonance. mandated curricula may create high educational expectations for all students, but will be met with resistance if they do not allow room for change, creativity, and professional judgment. district-created curriculum and learning experiences rarely allows for the teachers to leverage the community and culture of students in the curriculum. overemphasizing skills-based instruction does not allow for students to make connections between their learning and their world. this study unveiled the power of the mandated curriculum on curriculum planning. the curriculum forces teachers to operate at a technical level in which content and skills are the predictors of the outcomes and goals of students as measured by benchmarks and the state assessment. teachers are struggling, as professionals, to make pedagogical decisions meant to address the unique needs of their students. teachers understand of their students, their language, their culture, and their lives. this study attempted to understand the beliefs of teachers and their role in curriculum planning and instructional delivery. more research on the nature of teachers’ beliefs in environments in which standards and mandated curricula drive what teachers do in the classroom is needed. future studies should explore innovative ways in which teachers identify and meet the needs of their students, specifically in low-income contexts. studies of how teachers’ beliefs have changed while working in environments in which the curriculum is either highly scripted or mandated as a means of raising test scores would be beneficial. understanding teachers’ reflective process for navigating the curriculum and creating classroom environments and lessons to meet the diverse needs of their students is imperative, including collaborations and co-teaching to explore “best practice” pedagogy. although this was a snapshot of one school, findings would be even more meaningful through the lens of a cross-comparative case study. research that compares and contrasts schools across the nation serving urban and low-income students could deepen understanding of how teachers’ beliefs change due to curricula, experiences with urban students, and professional development. continuing with research that compares and contrasts schools, an understanding of how teachers who must use a constrictive curriculum manage to infuse innovative methods in classrooms to create positive learning environments for underserved classrooms could guide strategies taught in teacher preparation programs and during professional development. references anyon, j. 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(2013). opting out: examining teacher’s beliefs when faced with core reading programs. current issues in education, 16(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1118 author notes tynisha d. meidl st. norbert college 100 grant street, de pere, wi 54115 tynisha.meidl@snc.edu dr. t. meidl is an assistant professor at st. norbert college in teacher education. her research focuses on literacy, preparing pre-service teachers for the reading classroom, and academic service learning in teacher education. she has spent time as an elementary classroom teacher in urban and rural settings serving diverse student populations. manuscript received: 11/06/2012 revisions received: 05/19/2013 accepted: 08/28/2013 opting out: examining teacher’s beliefs when faced with core reading programs 11 volume 16, number 3 october 21, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis elizabeth calhoun reyes assistant executive editors bonnie mazza constantin schreiber recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell nichole hugo sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker bonnie mazza kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 836-3919-3-le_revis2.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x understanding the educational lives of community college students: a photovoice project, a bourdieusian interpretation, and habitus dissonance spark theory amanda o. latz ball state university too little research exists that provides windows into the day-to-day lives of community college students. the purpose of this paper is to explicate one finding and concomitant grounded theory derived from a photovoice project aimed at understanding the educational lives of community college students. participants saw the community college as a means to obtain a freer life, in the broadest sense. an integration of bourdieusian thought and scholarship on role theory led to the creation of a constructivist grounded theory termed habitus dissonance spark theory, which suggests that community college enrollment is prompted by habitus dissonance, or discomfort with perceived levels of social agency, or freedom, in life. this paper outlines the finding and resultant grounded theory and its implications. keywords: community college students, photovoice, cultural capital, habitus community colleges serve almost half of all undergraduate students in the united states (american association of community colleges, 2011). moreover, boggs (2011) noted that “because they are the largest, most accessible, and fastest-growing sector of higher education, community colleges have a substantial role to play in increasing the national level of educational attainment” (p. 2). despite this, too little research exists that provides insights into the educational lives of community college students today. goldrick-rab (2010) noted: “a much more rigorous research agenda focused on community college students is needed to inform and evaluate future actions” (p. 454). community colleges are often perceived as being at the periphery of the american system of higher education (dougherty, 1994). moreover, “community colleges are perceived as offering a second-best educational experience that penalizes students intellectually, socially, occupationally, and economically when compared to those students who attend four-year institutions” (pascarella & terenzini, 1998, p. 155). according to grubb (1999), community colleges were developed to be subordinate to four-year institutions, and their open access mission has made them questionable. these institutions have even been referred to as “high schools with ashtrays” (grubb, 1999, p. 210). goldrickrab (2010) noted that “the role of snobbery in perpetuating community college outcomes is often neglected. since the founding of the public 2-year sector, many have cast this sector as lesser than its counterparts” (p. 442). the media has portrayed negative images of community colleges and their students (bourke, major, & harris, 2009; lapalia, 1994). and some students have internalized these perceptions (caporrimo, 2008). caporrimo (2008) found that “80% of the sample [community college students] indicated agreement that a community college education is less valued by society [than a four-year institution education]” (p. 34) and concluded that “both faculty and students recognize the need for a more supportive, nurturing environment for current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 community college students” (p. 35). despite their marginalized status, community colleges are playing an increasingly important role in american higher education during these difficult economic times (lothian, 2009). these institutions provide education at a fraction of the cost of most fouryear institutions, and offer programs, certificates, diplomas, and degrees that enable students to enter directly into the workforce. as a diverse influx of recent high school graduates and displaced workers flood community college classrooms, the need to understand and best serve these students is paramount. too little research exists that provides windows into the educational lives of community college students today. in addition, too little research exists regarding the workings of community colleges generally (goldrick-rab, 2010; kane & rouse, 1999; pascarella & terenzini, 1998). considering the current prominence of the community college, the lack of research in this area is a significant problem. specifically, we must better understand the lives of community college students to best support them. this study addressed the aforementioned problem to some degree. the guiding research question for this study was: how do community college students construct their educational lives? research in this area is critical so that students’ needs may be adequately met through academic programs, pedagogical strategies, and student services. rich qualitative research that explores the lives of community college students can assist policy makers as they make decisions related to funding, student support services, curricula, pedagogy, personnel, recruitment, retention, fundraising, lobbying, and so forth. the overarching purpose of this study was to understand how some community college students construct their educational lives. the photovoice methodology (photovoice, 2011; wang & burris, 1994, 1997) was utilized. this paper focuses on one of the four major findings of the larger study: freedom. participants saw the community college as a means to a freer life. habitus dissonance spark theory, a constructivist grounded theory developed from this finding, is also a point of focus. habitus dissonance spark theory (hdst), which is fully explained in subsequent sections of this work, can help us to better understand why individuals make the decision to enroll at the community college. better understanding what drives individuals to enrollment may lead to a better understanding of persistence decisions among students. moreover, faculty, student services personnel, academic advisors, and administrators may be better able to reach students pedagogically and otherwise if they are aware of students’ motivations for college attendance. it should be noted here that this paper does not include a literature review in a traditional sense. grounded theorists often reject a full immersion into the literature prior to data collection. despite this, through my adoption of a constructivist grounded theory analytical frame (charmaz, 2006), my review of literature took place before, during, and after data were collected. as such, literature is inserted throughout this piece in keeping with the literature immersion process i underwent throughout the duration of the project. theoretical frames constuctivism (e.g., guba & lincoln, 1994) and social interactionism (charon, 2010) were the broad frameworks for this photovoice project. photovoice (photovoice, 2011; wang & burris, 1994, 1997), a qualitative research methodology, is a form of participatory action research (bogdan & biklen, 2007; kemmis & mctaggart, 2003; whyte, 1991). by documenting aspects of their lives through photography, participants express their lives on their own terms. there are three major goals of this methodology: (a) to allow participants to document their lives through photography, (b) to raise critical consciousness among participants, and (c) to reach policy makers with the project outcomes (wang & burris, 1997). three influences underlie the approach: (a) freire’s (1974/2007) work on critical consciousness building with oppressed groups, (b) feminist thought (e.g., collins, 2009; gilligan, 1982; mohanty, 2003), and (c) documentary photography (e.g., ewald, 1985, 1996, 2000; hubbard, 1994). versions of photovoice have been used within k-12 (e.g., davison, ghali, & hawe, 2011) and higher education (e.g., douglas, 1998; goodhart et al., 2006; harrington & schibik, 2003) but not with community college students specifically. photovoice is an innovative research methodology that endeavors to acknowledge and highlight the perspectives of marginalized groups. this method was utilized because i consider community college students to be marginalized in a whole host of ways, including the lack of attention from researchers. in addition, the use of this method was driven by the overarching research question. methods and data sources participants were my former students from one of two courses i taught at middle west community college (mwcc) [pseudonym]: cultural anthropology (ant) or first year seminar (fys). each participant had been in one of my sections between the fall of 2009 and 2010. they were enrolled in courses (not mine) at mwcc during the time of each interview (fall of 2010 and spring of 2011). seven students comprised the sample [see table 1]. they were recruited via email, and participation was on a first come, first served basis. over 20 students expressed interest in participation, but only seven persisted. participants were asked to document various aspects of their educational lives through photographs in response to prompts, or questions. example prompts are: what motivates you to reach your educational goals?, what is a typical day in your educational life like?, and understanding the educational lives of community college students: a photovoice project, a bourdieusian interpretation, and habitus dissonance spark theory 3 what obstacles do you face in achieving your educational goals? data came from two sources: participants’ photographs and transcriptions of interviews with participants. photographs were used as elicitation devices during the interviews; participants assigned meanings to the photographs they took. participants were giveen one disposable camera with 27 exposures and a list of prompts in preparation for the first interview. cameras were returned to me, and the photos were developed prior to each interview. this process was replicated, but with different prompts, for the second interview. each participant was interviewed twice, except marie who was interviewed once. thirteen interviews were conducted in total, which ranged from 27 to 80 minutes in length. a constructivist grounded theory approach (charmaz, 2003, 2005, 2006) was used for the analysis. as such, an implicit purpose of this study was to generate, or construct, substantive theory to address the paucity of theory about community college students. however, it should be noted that the determination, or construction, of the finding elucidated below preceded the construction of the grounded theory also outlined below. the interview transcriptions were coded in triplicate through the use of open (strauss & corbin, 1998), axial (strauss, 1987; strauss & corbin, 1998), and theoretical coding (charmaz, 2006). a symbolic interactionist perspective (charon, 2010) undergirded the analysis. this study was approved by the institutional review boards at mwcc and ball state university. in addition, all participants and individuals photographed signed photo consent and release forms thus giving permission for the photos to be published. table 1 participants’ information participant age gender class/ semester major career goal school work children crispy 39 f fys/ spring 2010 nursing nurse full-time no 5 (living at home) lythria 29 f ant/ fall 2009 liberal arts with a focus on psychology psychiatrist full-time part-time 2 (living at home) frank 45 m fys/ spring 2010 paralegal studies paralegal full-time part-time (odd jobs) 2 (living at home) [multi-gen home]* marie 47 f fys/ fall 2009 physical therapist assisting physical therapist assistant full-time part-time 2 (not living at home) san=man 20/ 21 m fys/ spring 2010 general studies with a focus on psychology psychologist full-time part-time 0 louise 19 f fys/ fall 2009 biology marine biologist full-time part-time 0 [multigen home]* baby girl 25 f fys/ fall 2010 business management business owner full-time no 3 (not living with her) note. majors are listed in language used by participants. some of these majors may be articulated differently by mwcc. all names are pseudonyms, self-assigned by each participant. *multi-gen home means a participant is living in a household consisting of three generations of family members. throughout the duration of the project, i composed over 50 analytic memos (charmaz, 2006). analytic memo writing allowed me to understand my position in relation to the participants (as their former instructor), and it also allowed me to infuse personal memories and thoughts about each participant’s educational life into the analysis. qualitative researchers have discovered “writing as a method of inquiry to be a viable way in which to learn about themselves and their research topic” (richardson & st. pierre, 2005, p. 959, italics in original). analytic memo writing is a critical piece of the grounded theory approach as the memos current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 “form the infrastructure” (lempert, 2007/2010, p. 247) of the research process. this was particularly true for me. my memos ranged in length from less than one to 17 single-spaced pages. i created memos during every stage of the research process. these memos were reflections on meetings, emails, discussions, and other various exchanges. memos also included analytical writings on interview transcripts, readings, theme building, and the writing process. charmaz (2006) stated that analytic memos are a “place for making comparisons between data and data, data and codes, codes of data and other codes, codes and category, and category and concept for articulating conjectures about these comparisons” (pp. 72-73). while i used memos for the purposes described above, i also used them to further my understanding of the contextual nature of the data. because the past gives context to the present self as noted by chang (2008), mining personal memory data was a critical part of my understanding of the meanings i assigned to the data as well as the grounded theories i created. charmaz (2006) also suggested that “your memos [should] read like letters to a close friend; no need for stodgy academic prose” (p. 85). the analytic memos were conversational, informal, and nonacademic, but also rich with description. pillow (2003) argued for researchers to move toward “reflexivities of discomfort” (p. 188). qualitative research can be messy and uncomfortable. as such, pillow (2003) noted: thus a reflexivity that pushes toward an unfamiliar, towards the uncomfortable, cannot be a simple story of subjects, subjectivity, and transcendence or selfindulgent tellings. a tracing of the problematics of reflexivity calls for a positioning of reflexivity not as clarity, honesty, or humility, but as practices of confounding disruptions – at times even a failure of our language and practices. (p. 192) discomforting reflexive writing was certainly a part of this research project. i self-scrutinized with each step of the research process. because i was a community college faculty person during the study, i had access to participants and on-campus facilities, as well as a voice with policy makers. i grappled with my roles, responsibilities, and ethical obligations as an instructor/researcher through memo writing. in sum, the analytic memos assisted my own understandings of how and why the research unfolded in the way it did, from conception to final product. shah and corley (2006) noted that “qualitative researchers use formal and systematic methods for data collection and analysis to ensure that the trustworthiness of their work is unassailable” (p. 1824). the creation of a (public) work that espouses to be unassailable is quite a lofty goal, and i question whether or not a researcher can ensure and espouse trustworthiness (lincoln & guba, 1985) with such totality. however, the extensive use of analytic memo writing and self-scrutinty certainly bolstered the present study’s trustworthiness (lincoln & guba, 1985). findings four major findings were generated through this project: (a) freedom, which is fully explained below; (b) roles (participants played many roles within their lives, in addition to a student role); (c) academic integration (participants were woven into the fabric of the institution through academic means, rather than social means); and (d) on process (this was a methodological theme that suggested photovoice be bifurcated with one branch focused on critical consciousness building and the other focused on reflective consciousness building). however, this paper focuses on one: freedom. each of the participants viewed the community college as a vehicle for freedom, in the broadest sense. participants saw the community college, attending and obtaining some credential, as a means to traverse their lives in a freer way. there were six sub-findings: (a) familial freedom (creating more life options for family members), (b) employment (gaining access to specific types of employment), (c) freedom from youth (moving toward adulthood), (d) freedom from public assistance (becoming financially self-sufficient), (e) housing, transportation, and mobility (having more options for the aforementioned), and (f) consumer freedom (being able to make a wider range of purchases). some sub-themes have sub-themes within them, which i have termed microthemes. freedom, as a concept, finding, and theme, was a core category that bound the aforementioned sub-theme and micro-themes together. familial freedom all participants were members of some type of family structure. attending community college was a way for participants to create and secure more freedom, not just for themselves, but also for members of their families. this sub-theme is most pointedly seen through my interviews with frank. he said: “but what does having a college degree mean to you? that was kind of easy. it means i’ll be able to take care of my family, first and foremost in my mind.” understanding the educational lives of community college students: a photovoice project, a bourdieusian interpretation, and habitus dissonance spark theory 5 figure 1. series of four photos by frank. figure 2. photo of a 50-dollar bill, taken by baby girl. figure 3. a photo of daughter’s volleyball equipment (left) and a photo of paper money (right) by crispy. frank described the images included in figure 1: okay, like i said, so this one here, having a college degree, what does it mean?—you know, my bank, that’s who i bank with. clothes on our back. keeps us clothed. keeps us fed. keeps a roof over our head. for frank, being in college was, first and foremost, a way for him to provide for his family. his sentiments about this were overtly evident in both interviews. baby girl, crispy, and frank spoke about increasing or maintaining opportunities for their children, and louise spoke about creating opportunities for her niece and nephew. about figure 2, baby girl said: “i know moneywise that i’ll be set [upon pursuing a higher education and receiving a degree] you know for my kids and you know just future, you know, finances.” crispy was the mother of five children, all of whom were living at home and attending school (elementary to current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 high school age) during the time of her involvement in the study. her children were able to participate in activities, but at times the activities were a financial strain. she hoped to gain more of an income so that her children could remain involved. she said this about figure 3: that’s kind of like what [the volleyball equipment photo] is as well like kids being involved in sports and activities and it’s kind of expensive and it feels like a greater financial need. and so that’s one of my motivations which goes along with [paper money photo] as well for why, why i’m attending, why am i enrolled, what motivates me, what do i hope to gain, more financial—more of an income. for frank, perpetuating family traditions and being able to celebrate holidays were important parts of his educational pursuits. frank said this about figure 4: i’ve read about a lot of people that have—that are having to explain to their children why they can’t have a christmas this year. and i’ve still been able to swing it so that’s why the christmas tree is in there because i’ve still been able to swing it for my kids. [i’m] taking care of it. and having that degree will mean that i’ll keep being able to do this every year. i don’t have to fight with it anymore. louise was a first generation college student. she was very close with niece and nephew, both young children not yet in kindergarten. louise said this about figure 5: i’m not the only person that is doing it [pursuing a higher education] and that is something that i, that i really like is i’m carrying them [niece and nephew] with me, i’m not the only one getting it. i’m doing it for them and me. me being number one but, um, and that’s why they’re here [in the photos], um, because when i get—i push through that door and i open it up for them to do the same, um, and kinda set the bar because i don’t want them to feel like, you know because they live where they live or because they are part of a family who no one has made it that they can’t. they don’t—that’s something that i had to go through, um, just kinda feeling in a dead end, like that’s a dream kinda thing, and no one ever, no one in my family ever successfully got that dream to become reality. and um i don’t want that for them, um, they shouldn’t have to have that limitation, that feeling. figure 4. a photo of the family christmas tree taken by frank. figure 5. a photo of louise’s nephew. understanding the educational lives of community college students: a photovoice project, a bourdieusian interpretation, and habitus dissonance spark theory 7 figure 6. photo of a ‘box-o bills’ by san=man. figure 7. photo of paper money and coins by marie. figure 8. photo by san=man. employment the obtainment of a credential from a community college meant greater employment opportunities for all participants, which translated into financial freedom. such employment opportunities would be accessible either directly after the community college experience or after the obtainment of subsequent degrees, for which their community college credential was a prerequisite. this sub-theme is made up of two microthemes: (a) financial freedom through employment and (b) employment access. financial freedom through employment for all participants, the community college experience meant access to employment, which in turn, meant a higher level of financial freedom. what follows is an excerpt from my conversation with san=man about figure 6. and then having a degree would also mean having a better job to pay bills. and i got a big old box of bills. and it really is like a box of bills. it’s like verizon, at&t, the hospital, doctor’s offices, you know, just bills. like i’ve got utility bills in there. i think i have four electric bills in there right now. they’re all past due. for marie, there was also a keen awareness of her earning power through employment post-degree. about figure 7, marie put it simply: “i’ll make money when i finish. i’ll be able to do that.” san=man saw his community college experience as a way to build his career. he also acknowledged that his economic situation was manageable because he was a college student, and most college students do not have much financial freedom while attending. he commented on figure 8: current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 i think what i hope to gain by going to middle west is kind of like the same things as why i’m enrolled. because it’s like, like one thing is like career builders and you know just like i want to go farther and this is my chance. you know like, i’ll be broke now, but you know all college students are generally broke so that’s ok with me. i’ll never really have a lot of money. so i don’t mind that. employment access participants’ wanted to obtain a career in which they can be happy, a job they love. for frank, his decision to enroll in mwcc was prompted by an unanticipated fork in his career path. he was no longer able to continue doing what he had been doing, and he had to decide what to do next. he explained: i mean, that is, that’s the only reason i came to school. i already had that career in the medical field as an emt or paramedic and then after my time in the guard and the surgeries, i’ve not been able to do that stuff. that is the reason i came back to school because i had to segue into a new career because i couldn’t do that anymore. crispy entered my first year seminar course and mwcc with a bachelor’s degree in hand. she had a teaching license in physical education. however, after her youngest child entered school, she decided to return to higher education in order to pursue a new career. while crispy was a teacher at heart, she felt as though nursing was a better fit: but then i had a friend who said but you could teach that, you could make your class whatever you want you could incorporate that into your pe [physical education] class. but so i was always interested in the body the all that stuff. but, nursing is probably a better fit for me as far as um ya, serving, helping people and you still do teaching in nursing. . . . it’s about a job that’s more fulfilling. crispy was able to reconceptualize the nursing profession as a form of teaching thereby combining the elements most important to her in a career: teaching, serving, and the human body. marie wanted to gain access to a career in which she had more contact with people, one in which she felt like she was positively impacting the lives of others. she captured a number of images through her photos to augment this point. marie said this about figure 9: i felt like—like, and i’ve kind of alluded to that, but my job is a dead end. i mean what i’m doing now is a dead end. it doesn’t, it’s not, it’s, it’s not taking me anywhere. it’s not growing me in any way. . . . [photo on right] this is a picture of my office at work because this is what i’m leaving behind when—when i, i mean i hope, i hope that it’s something that i’ve given a lot of years to and i think i’ve done it very well but i’m ready to leave the typical office with the you know computer and files and all the paperwork behind and to do something that actually touches people. and, the fact that this is an empty office and there’s no one in it, is kind of representative of that, of leaving it behind, but also that fact that i don’t—i don’t have contact with people. . . . i walk in there every day and i think that i’m not going to be doing this forever now. marie viewed her career at the time as a dead end and being enrolled at mwcc allowed her to view that career as temporary. figure 9. two photos taken by marie: one of a dead end sign (left) and one of her office at work (right). understanding the educational lives of community college students: a photovoice project, a bourdieusian interpretation, and habitus dissonance spark theory 9 freedom from youth two of the seven participants were traditional age college students (approximately 18-24 years of age): louise was 19, and san=man was 20 at the time of interview one and 21 at the time of interview two. both of these participants viewed their community college experiences as a rite of passage into the next phase of their lives: adulthood. or rather, the community college signified a departure from youth, freedom from youth. this is typical among recent high school graduates headed to the community college. cox (2009) found: “students fresh from high school, for instance, indicated that the transition into [community] college represented a crucial threshold to adulthood” (p. 21). louise’s comments were illustrative: no one helped me enroll. no one helped me do financial aid, register for my classes. i did it all on my own, and that was the first time that i had ever really done anything that big. and that would definitely be a high for me because it was kind of my passage into adulthood and taking care of things on my own and not relying on my parents. i think that was definitely a high and something that i hold in high regards because i did it on my own. and it has helped because now instead of procrastinating, because i still have a problem with that, i know i can do it, i just have to put forth the effort. san=man had similar comments: it’s like we’re not in high school, we’re not 16 or 17 anymore and mom and dad can’t make us go to school. and they can’t make us do our homework so maintaining is really all on us now and i think that’s really the biggest obstacle is having the—we have to be able to make the time. freedom from the past. baby girl cited her entrance into the community college as a motivator for her to maintain a drug-free life, something she had struggled with in the past. prior to his entrance into mwcc, san=man had been incarcerated. for san=man, attending the community college represented a second chance, freedom from his past. he explained: like there are times when like—after like i dropped out of high school when i got my ged it was like—kind of like am i going to have that chance? you know and like, with the incarceration—this is like—you know it’s kind of like just sitting there like do i have that chance? you know and it’s like my career options were limited but really not so much because it wasn’t a violent or drug felony or anything so—you know so i wasn’t so limited but it was like, damn, like can i do it? so like actually starting school and just saying well i want this degree [was the highest point in my educational journey]. figure 10. a photo taken by lythria. figure 11. a photo taken by san=man of his residence. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 10 freedom from public assistance lythria expressed that having a college degree meant freedom from public assistance. in addition, it represented freedom from being labeled as an individual receiving public assistance. about figure 10, she said: “[having a college degree] means getting off welfare.” in addition, frank expressed his desire to go back to work thereby relinquishing the need for unemployment benefits: you know i’d rather be working . . . i’d rather—i have an opportunity at a job, using some of my paralegal abilities that i’ve learned i guess, my knowledge. so i’ll probably do [that] about next week or so i’ll be leaning toward that—see if we can start that the first of the year. yeah i’d much rather be working a regular job than doing what i’m doing right now. housing, transportation, and mobility for most participants, attending the community college became a way to assert more control over their physical surroundings (housing), ability to get from one place to another (transportation), and prospect of relocating or moving away (mobility). san=man photographed his home, of which he was proud. as he narrated this image, it became clear that this residence was a stepping stone to him. he expressed a desire to assert more general agency and control over the manipulation of the home. the parameters set forth by a rental agreement were something from which he sought freedom. he said this about figure 11: i mean i feel like it [rented house] is an achievement because it’s the biggest house i’ve ever moved into, but it’s like, i can do better. i know like i’ll move somewhere better where i can color the walls and i can have any kind of dog i want. crispy photographed her front steps (see figure 12). during our interview, she pointed out the needed repairs and said this served as one motivator for her to reach her educational goals. increased access to reliable transportation and decreased reliance on public transportation was an important motivator for san=man. figure 12. a photo taken by cripsy of the front steps of her home. figure 13. photo of the local bus station taken by san=man. understanding the educational lives of community college students: a photovoice project, a bourdieusian interpretation, and habitus dissonance spark theory 11 about figure 13, san=man noted “and then, what motivates you to reach your educational goals? it’s kind of like all the things that i could have—like not having to ride the bus.” the capacity to move away to a new city or state was important to lythria, marie, and louise. lythria best exemplified this particular sub-theme. she said: “as soon as i get the credentials to get a job elsewhere, i will go anywhere—well hopefully some place warmer than [state].” lythria made a direct connection between the obtainment of credentials and the capacity to move away. as such, the community college was positioned as a “way out.” consumer freedom for crispy and frank, the community college represented access to heightened freedom as a consumer. frank stated this about figure 14: see this camaro right here, or that one there, or that one there, or that one there? actually my wife’s the camaro fan, i’m a challenger fan; i like dodge. but i mean we got nice vehicles now. she’s got a focus; i’ve got a durango. but uh i’d like to get us at least one nice sports car. you know, that midlife crisis thing that guys go through—i gots to have me a sports car. frank expressed a desire to purchase a “sports car” not because of its functionality but for what it represented. crispy also photographed a car and made similar comments. crispy made these comments on figure 15: what does having a degree mean to you? this popped in my head. . . . i want a cute car. they’re [car owners, this photo was taken in a parking lot] not thinking like what’s the best gas mileage or that it’ll work best in the snow or will it fit all my kids in there—and travel across the country in this thing. they are just like i want something cute to drive that makes me feel happy so i don’t know it just kind of like exemplified like yea, they just feel happy; they feel a little bit of freedom. figure 14. row of chevy camaros, a photo taken by frank. figure 15. photo of a volkswagen beetle, taken by crispy. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 12 constructing meaning and theory symbolic interactionism at this point, it is vital to revisit one theoretical perspective that undergirded the design of and analysis with this study: symbolic interactionism. blumer (1969) noted that symbolic interactionism rests on three basic premises: (a) “human beings act toward things on the basis of meanings that the things have for them,” (b) “the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, social interaction that one has with one’s fellows,” and (c) “meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters” (p. 2). the basic mechanics of the study included the following, which took place in chronological order: i provided participants with camera and prompts, participants took photos in response to the prompts, and the participants and i engaged in an interview regarding their photos. six of the seven participants engaged in this process twice. this three-step process can be understood through the three premises put forward by blumer (1969). first, let us consider that “human beings act toward things on the basis of meanings that the things have for them” (blumer, 1969, p. 2). once i provided the participants with the camera and prompts, these two things became the tools of research, a means by which the participants would engage in this project. during our first meeting, participants, as a result of their interactions with me, developed these new meanings of the two things i provided them. as such, their actions toward these two things were predicated on the new meanings assigned to them. next, let us consider that “the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, social interaction that one has with one’s fellows” (blumer, 1969, p. 2). the various ways in which the participants addressed each prompt was mediated through the meanings of the things they captured through photos. these meanings were constructed through social interaction, both between participants and others and within participants as they recall their various social interactions regarding the thing at hand. and finally, let us consider that “meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters” (blumer, 1969, p. 2). this premise was evident during my interviews with participants. as they viewed their photos for the first time, they were flooded with the memories of social interactions, including their interaction with me at the time of the interview, which led to their taking of each photo, while they narrated their images in the back drop of each prompt. marie’s photo of a dead end street sign, which is shown in figure 9 within the findings section, provides an example. my role as the researcher was not to assign meaning to the photos. meaning was assigned to the photos by each photographer/participant. my role, as researcher, was to analyze, interpret, and assign meaning to participants’ narrations of their photos. however, the photos were considered a data source because they are integral to contexualizing the participants’ narratives. i saw the photos before the participants saw them. viewing the photos before listening to the participants’ stories about them was like watching a musical without the music. i had ideas about what the photos might mean, but these ideas were mine alone. it was only during my social interactions (interviews) with participants that the authentic meanings of the photos were created. the assignment of meaning was a joint process, led by the participants. as the two of us engaged in an interaction surrounding a photo, both of us were flooded with past social interactions and made meanings of the symbols before us. marie linked the dead end sign to her current job. we both drew on what we knew about the figure of speech, “dead end.” we both understood that dead end road signs are placed to warn drivers that certain pathways lead to nowhere. as such, marie established meaning for her dead end sign photo within my presence in a way that we both could agree on albeit without formally doing so. my analysis and interpretation of the interview transcripts is also illustrative of the symbolic interactionist perspective. the coding schema i employed, the findings i put forward, as well as the literature i selected through which i presented my interpretations of the findings, are all a result of my own intra-personal social interactions (i.e., calling on memories and past experiences), pseudo social interactions (i.e., interacting with various authors’ ideas through reading their work), and social interactions (i.e., interacting and testing out ideas with other people about this project). the utility of the theoretical frameworks that shaped and guided the study was apparent, as articulated above. next, an exploration of research and theory related to the freedom theme will provide context for the concomitant grounded theory: habitus dissonance spark theory, a full elucidation of which is forthcoming. pierre bourdieu, social class, and community college students because of their open-access admissions policies and affordable costs, community colleges have become viable destinations for many americans, notably those of the poor and working classes and those from racial and ethnic minority groups. for many students, the community college represents an opportunity to obtain the necessary skills, knowledge, and credentials to create the potential of upward social mobility. karabel (1977) elaborated: americans have not only believed in the possibility of upward mobility through education, but have also become convinced that, in a society which places considerable emphasis on credentials, the lack of the proper degrees may well be fatal to the realization of their aspirations. in recent years higher education understanding the educational lives of community college students: a photovoice project, a bourdieusian interpretation, and habitus dissonance spark theory 13 has obtained a virtual monopoly on entrance to middle and upper level positions in the class structure. (p. 233) it was clear to me that all of my participants were propelled toward the community college in pursuit of a freer life, which can be recast as the pursuit of upward social mobility. this goal of upward mobility is fairly standard for community college students. cox (2009) also found that “[community college] students explained their participation in higher education as a means to earn a decent living and reach financial stability” (p. 42). economic, cultural, and social capital. to bring context to this theme, freedom, an application of pierre bourdieu’s notions of capital is helpful. while a number of other scholars have used his work as an analytical frame (e.g., walpole, 2003) and applied his work to college-going (e.g., tierney, 1999) and the community college sphere specifically (e.g., valadez, 1993), this application will be unique. bourdieu, a french sociologist, argued that social class is far more complex and far-reaching than a simple calculation of an individual’s monetary worth. rather, he asserted that cultural processes are critical to the understanding of social stratification (bourdieu, 1984). income levels are not universal indicators of social class, nor are money or wealth the only ways in which class status is maintained. the concept of social class is immeasurably multifarious. levels within social class or caste hierarchies (e.g., lower, middle-, and upper-class) are differentiated by an abundance of factors, many of which are irrespective of money or wealth. according to bourdieu (2007), there are three forms of capital: economic, cultural, and social. class membership is based upon the obtainment and preservation of the various forms of capital. as such, an individual’s (e.g., community college student) actions cannot be wholly understood outside of the larger classbased structural context (lin, 2001). while economic capital is rather selfexplanatory, the concepts of cultural and social capital require further explanation. cultural capital exists in three forms: the embodied, objectified, and institutionalized states. the embodied state refers to dispositions of the mind and body, which may include manners, attitudes, postures, and gestures. it requires a great deal of socialization for an individual to acquire embodied cultural capital; it is the least easily transmitted and also the least visibly recognized. the objectified state refers to access to and ownership of objects, or cultural goods, such as machines, technology, and art. economic capital is a prerequisite for the acquisition of such cultural goods. however, cultural capital in its embodied state is a prerequisite for certain appropriations of such cultural goods. in sum, securing cultural capital in its objectified state first requires economic capital, and to fully mobilize cultural capital in its objectified state, some level of embodied cultural capital is necessary. finally, the institutionalized state refers to the obtainment of various qualifications, and specifically, academic qualifications such as certificates, diplomas, and degrees. in essence, institutions recognize the cultural capital of individuals by granting credentials. the more scarce the credential, the more cultural capital associated with that credential (bourdieu, 2007). social capital refers to an individual’s association with social groups, which provides “each of its members with the backing of the collectively-owned capital, a ‘credential’ which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word” (bourdieu, 2007, p. 88). the amount of social capital available to an individual depends on his or her social connections as well as the capital, in all its forms, had by those with whom the individually is socially connected. belonging to specific social groups can be orchestrated by the individual (e.g., joining a country club) and can also be by default (e.g., being born into a family). group membership is initiated and maintained, both consciously and unconsciously, by the back and forth transmission of capital in its various forms. some examples are money, gifts, information, correspondence, and affirmation. according to lin (2001), bourdieu postulated that social capital was the mechanism by which the dominant class maintains its position within the overall social hierarchy. conversions. throughout the course of an individual’s life, the various forms of capital are converted into other forms of capital. these conversion decisions are predicated on an individual weighing the outcomes of such decisions. the individual must assess the level of risk and potential returns associated with conversions. bourdieu (2007) stated that: economic capital is at the root of all other types of capital and that these transformed, disguised forms of economic capital, never entirely reducible to that definition, produce their most specific effects only to the extent that they conceal (not least from their possessors) the fact that economic capital is at their root, in other words – but only in the last analysis – at the root of their effects. (p. 91) essentially, he has stated that all attempts at conversion are, at their core, a means to amass additional economic capital. even the conversion of economic capital to cultural or social capital is a means through which the individual seeks to ascertain, more or less in the long term, more economic capital, which may entail a series of very complex and calculated conversions of capital. for example, the decision to enroll in postsecondary education requires the individual to relinquish economic capital in some way (pay tuition, sacrifice time spent at work) to gain some level of cultural capital, and perhaps also some level of social capital. over time, gained cultural and social capital can be current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 14 converted into economic capital through an employment opportunity that was obtained through the attractiveness of an individual’s credentials, interview performance, or relationship with existing employee(s) within the hiring entity (i.e., cultural and social capital). habitus. bourdieu’s notion of habitus aims to encapsulate the “ways in which individual actions and societal structures are linked” (perna & titus, 2005, p. 490). an individual’s perception of social agency is grounded in class membership, in addition to a variety of other variables such as, but not limited to, gender and race (dika & singh, 2002). habitus refers to internalized normative inclinations about what individual actions are possible, acceptable, and appropriate in any given situation based on the individual’s sense of his or her placement within the given social structure (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992; horvat, 2001; mcdonough, 1997). in other words, an agent's habitus is an active residue or sediment of his past that functions within his present, shaping his perception, thought, and action and thereby molding social practice in a regular way. it consists in dispositions, schemas, forms of know-how and competence. (crossley, 2001, p. 83) the individual’s actions, attitudes, and even thoughts, conform to the societal and external expectations placed upon his or her based possessed levels of capital and accordant social class position. habitus, then, is the individual’s perception, or frame of mind, about his or her social agency which literally dictates the individual’s life course. it is the individual’s embodied representation of a perceived place in the world. and as such, habitus implies that the expectations of the individual for him or herself and the expectations of society for that individual are or become somewhat isomorphic. habitus dissonance sparks. for each one of the participants involved in this study, there existed enough habitus dissonance (e.g., costello, 2005, however i use the phrase dissimilarly here), or dissatisfaction with their present levels of social agency, to mobilize each of them in the direction of the community college as a gateway to a freer life (i.e., upward social mobility). this finding was not unique as valadez (1993) found that “[students] perceived the community college as their opportunity to rise out of poverty and to attain the essential skills for entering high paying professions” (p. 36). moreover, bryant (2001) noted that “community colleges offer opportunity and access, providing students with social mobility as well as the chance to flourish academically and personally” (p. 89). community colleges tout themselves, and are touted by others, as places of opportunity. all participants of the present study viewed some level of community college credential as institutionalized cultural capital, which could, in time, be converted to economic capital through access to employment, which could expand the participants’ habitus. as is evidenced by the various sub-themes under the major freedom theme, participants viewed economic capital not as an end in and of itself. rather, what they were all seeking was an increase in habitus, which in most every case was dependent on greater levels of economic capital. the conversion of capital. each participant’s habitus dissonance spark, or trigger of the habitus dissonance, led to the conversion of economic capital (in some form) to gain entrance into the community college. this entrance was a springboard for the obtainment of cultural and social capital. these new forms of capital could then be converted back to a greater level of economic capital which leads, ideally, to habitus expansion. crossley (2001) said: [bourdieu] emphasizes the role of both competence and improvisation in his account of habitus. the schemas of the habitus function like an underlying grammar that allows for a multitude of innovative forms of expression, [bourdieu] argues. social agents are like players in a game, actively pursuing their ends with skill and competence, but always doing so within the bounds of the game. what this analogy with games also serves to bring out, moreover, is the strategic element that enters into habitual action and that . . . bourdieu has observed in his own fieldwork. habituses predispose agents to act in particular ways without reducing them to cultural dopes or inhibiting their strategic capacities. like game-playing skills, the structures of the habitus facilitate the competent pursuit of specified goals. (p. 84) this game-play metaphor provided by crossley helps to shed light on the fact that the participants of this study were not simply automatons within the social structure where they each exercised their habitus; they were not mere cogs in a social machine. rather, they each possessed the skill and competence to recognize their situations and take the necessary steps to create change within those situations, a change which they perceived as being positive. enrollment in the community college was a game-changing action. it ought to be noted, however, that the enrollment decisions were all within the bounds of each participants’ game. the outward movement of participants’ habitus boundaries is addressed next through an exploration of what led to participants’ decisions to enroll. habitus dissonance spark effects. the participants’ habitus dissonance spark(s) led them to enroll in the community college to alleviate the felt dissonance. each participant had a unique habitus dissonance spark. for some participants, a series of small sparks culminated in their decision to enroll. examples of habitus dissonance sparks for participants include: recognizing the lack of access to optimal employment, understanding the educational lives of community college students: a photovoice project, a bourdieusian interpretation, and habitus dissonance spark theory 15 resenting a reliance on public transportation, feeling tethered to a specific physical location (home, town), feeling condemned by past actions, or sensing that a family member had a constrained sense of habitus. as seen in figure 16, the individual’s (i.e., participant’s) habitus is bound by the internal oval within the larger oval representing the societal structure. as the habitus dissonance spark “works on” the individual, there becomes a need to move the boundaries of the individual’s habitus outward so that the individual may express agency within a larger portion of the society in which the individual is bound. the participants in this study bumped against and challenged their habitus boundaries through their enrollment at the community college. one unique feature of this study is the way in which participants’ freedom-seeking orientations to the community college were captured through photos. because of this, tacit features of this bourdieusian theoretical overlay of the freedom theme are more apparent and visceral. consumers of this work can literally “see” the habitus dissonance sparks unique to each participant: san=man’s image of the bus station, marie’s image of her desk at work, frank’s image of his family’s christmas tree, and crispy’s image of her daughter’s volleyball equipment. as seen in figure 17, individuals (i.e., participants) hoped to obtain a freer life through the obtainment of their educational goals. the figure illustrates a “freer life” as an enlargement of habitus. along their educational journeys, participants actively push the boundaries of their habiti out toward the boundaries of their societal sphere(s). many participants, all of whom had not yet reached their ultimate educational goals during the course of data collection, were able to build cultural and social capital through the course of their time at mwcc. as such, they are able to move slightly more freely around within the area of their society, which has its own set of boundaries. figure 16. the initial habitus dissonance spark. this model provides a visual of the individual’s initial interaction with the habitus dissonance spark. habitus dissonance spark(s) societal structure individual’s habitus individual current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 16 figure 17. envisioned outcome of enrollment at the community college. this model provides a visual of the participants’ intended outcome of the decision to enroll at the community college in an effort to ameliorate their habitus dissonance: an enlarged habitus. habitus dissonance spark(s) and role accumulation. participants took on the role of student (role accumulation) in an attempt to secure a freer life (alleviation of habitus dissonance). in a sense, participants’ have upheld sieber’s (1974) ideas about role accumulation—that the accumulation of roles has distinct benefits. in fact, sieber argued that role accumulation, rather than role strain (see goode, 1960), could be the glue which holds societies together. he noted that “since it is obvious that humans are not incapacitated by role strain, and that society is not characterized by disorder, some process must be adduced by role theorists to account for the absence of social havoc and psychological dismay” (sieber, 1974, p. 568). none of the participants would have taken on the role of student if they did not perceive a direct (and usually future) benefit. and, this makes good sense as sieber (1974) reminded that “before entering into discussions of mechanisms that combat role strain, it would be well to ask whether multiplicity of roles actually creates more strain than gratification, or more potential for disturbance than potential for stability” (p. 568). however, the accumulation of another role did cause some level of strain within each participant. johnson, schwartz, and bower (2000) noted: “an adult’s decision to return to [or enroll into] a community college to expand his or her education is clearly stress-producing event” (p. 290). there is always some level of pain or grief associated with change. however, that strain, from the start of their educational journeys to the time of data collection, had not been painful enough for participants to terminate their student roles. among participants, these habitus dissonance sparks both initiated the decision to accumulate another role and have sustained the management of that new role. as such, the habitus dissonance sparks served both as catalysts and motivators. a constructivist grounded theory: habitus dissonance spark theory recent trends in the social, political, and economic landscapes of the united states have resulted in various agencies advocating for a more educated citizenry. as such, there is a distinct push for individuals to enter, persist, and obtain a credential from a community college. this push has come in the form of the obama administration’s american graduation initiative (brandon, 2009) and the lumina foundation’s goal 2025 initiative (lumina foundation, 2010). goode (1960) asserted that role strains provide the glue that binds society together. sieber (1974) contended that “we would suggest that the larger social order is determined moreso by the efforts of individuals to acquire and enjoy the normal, net benefits of role accumulation” (p. 569). so, from sieber’s perspective, role accumulation efforts bind together society. he said: “the demand for equality seems to include a desire for access to the profits and pleasures of role accumulation” (sieber, 1974, p. 577). role accumulation is necessary to meet the goals set forth by the obama administration’s american graduation societal structure individual’s habitus individual with credential understanding the educational lives of community college students: a photovoice project, a bourdieusian interpretation, and habitus dissonance spark theory 17 initiative and the lumina foundation’s goal 2025 initiative. more people in us society will have to accumulate another role, the student role. habitus dissonance spark theory (hdst), a constructivist grounded theory derived from this study, provides scholars with an important theoretical framework in at least two ways. first, scholars can use hdst heuristically to build research projects that aim to better understand students’ decisions to enroll in the community college. in addition, attrition can be explored through this theoretical frame as well. second, hdst provides scholars with a mechanism of interpretation to analyze data generated from such research projects. in sum, hdst asserts that individuals are propelled toward community college enrollment due to habitus dissonance, a discomfort in levels of perceived agency. the spark(s) of habitus dissonance is multifarious and can include a number of things. once the dissonance reaches a certain point, the individual makes the decision to accumulate another role in an attempt to alleviate the dissonance. in the cases of all participants, the role of community college student was accumulated. while role accumulation may be difficult to manage, the perceived (future) benefits outweigh any accumulation strains. an individual’s decision to convert economic capital into cultural and social capital through community college enrollment, with the eventual hopes of converting the new capital into higher levels of economic capital, also seem worth the strain. conclusion it is my assertion that the use of the photovoice method (wang & burris, 1997) was successful in addressing the overarching research question: how do community college students construct their educational lives? through an understanding of the freedom theme and the theoretical interpretation exhibited here, enrollment and persistence impetuses are made overt. additionally, hdst, along with additional applications of bourdieusian thought regarding community college students, can help to further unearth the largely contested question of whether or not community colleges promote social mobility or replicate and reinforce the existing class-based stratified society. perhaps this work can serve as a catalyst for other researchers to continue to delve into this line of inquiry. hdst may be a starting point for such exploration. there may be cases where the habitus dissonance is so extreme for those in poor or working classes that it evolves from motivational to overwhelming and draining. this may be a cause for why students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to complete college. it could also be argued that what i have termed habitus dissonance sparks are actually versions of environmental push and pull factors (nora, barlow, & crisp, 2005). there are multiple environmental factors that push and pull students toward and away from college such as employment and parenthood. each of these factors can influence how students experience integration with the college environment. i postulate that environmental push and pull factors did impact the participants of the present study. but it was their internal reactions, sentiments, and perceptions of those external factors which ultimately led to their enrollment (and persistence, since each students was in semester two at the time of each interview, at least) decisions. it was not the environmental push and pull factors alone, irrespective of the students’ reactions to them. for example, not having access to optimal employment was identified as a habitus dissonance spark. this “factor” alone was not enough to “push” students toward the community college. i argue that the habitus dissonance it created in the student was what actually moved the student toward enrollment. further work on hdst and its connection (or disconnection) to environmental push and pull factors is imperative. further research on this grounded theory is imperative. only through scrutiny will hdst be moved toward or away from formal theory, one that has some level of applicability beyond the data within which it is presently grounded. i encourage other researchers to engage in such work. references american association of community colleges. 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(2012). understanding the educational lives of community college students: a photovoice project, a bourdieusian interpretation, and habitus dissonance spark theory. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/836 author notes amanda o. latz ball state university 2000 west university avenue teachers college muncie, in 47306 aolatz@bsu.edu amanda o. latz, ed.d is an assistant professor of adult, higher, and community education within the department of educational studies at ball state university. manuscript received: 10/15/2011 revisions received: 2/28/2012 accepted: 6/11/2012 understanding the educational lives of community college students: a photovoice project, a bourdieusian interpretation, and habitus dissonance spark theory 21 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1163-5014-3-le_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 april 26, 2013 issn 1099-839x leading inquiry in schools: examining mental models of data-informed practice jo beth jimerson and marla w. mcghee texas christian university in order to learn more about the ways in which educators in various roles construe “data” and “data use,” we conducted a study in a small school district in central texas, collecting survey data from n=154 educators in august 2012. analyses revealed that while all educators reported using some form of evidence to inform practice, the terms used to describe that evidence varied. further, more teacher participants attached mixed connotations to the terms, as compared to district leaders and campus leaders. teachers whose survey responses suggested broader, more improvement-oriented mental models of data use reported slightly higher levels of commitment to data-informed practice. we review models of data-rich collaborative inquiry that provide approaches similar to “datadriven decision making” but which may avoid accountabilityand compliance-laden language that appears to heighten anxiety among some teachers. keywords: data use; data-informed decision making; data driven decision making, school accountability, inquiry in schools data needs a facelift. it needs a new name that people are excited about. let’s not call it “data” anymore. let’s call it “party time” and then everybody would be excited about it. it gets a bad rap. people don’t want to talk about data sometimes, you know. it’s useful to look at these numbers. but i think that people get overwhelmed and tired of hearing that word. (middle school teacher in jimerson, 2011, p. 291) in what may be a paradox of the current “age of accountability,” research suggests that teachers often embrace the underlying concept of educational data use (i.e., learning more about students’ needs) yet describe feelings of mistrust, uncertainty, or reticence toward formal “data use” (earl & fullan, 2003; jimerson & wayman, 2012; louis, leithwood, wahlstrom, & anderson, 2010). for some, this may be a matter of practicality: data systems are often difficult to navigate, and can contribute to frustration in a teacher’s alreadybusy day (wayman & cho, 2009; wayman & stringfield, 2006). for others, reticence may trace to prior experiences of the misuse or abuse of data by leaders (earl & fullan, 2003). in this paper, we address this issue by examining the meanings teachers and school leaders attach to the terms “data” and “data use,” and the consequences those differences in meaning have for teacher commitment to improvement efforts. to frame this exploration, we contend that teachers in the united states have always used educational data. even in iconic “one room schoolhouses,” teachers gave assignments, used assessments, and issued grades and promotions accordingly. what makes the current context different is an ever-increasing pressure from state and federal accountability policies requiring more formal and systematic decision-making steeped in data use (honig & venkateswaran, 2012; mandinach, 2012). in this environment, teachers are pressed to use data more current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 frequently and in more complex ways than ever before. however, teachers do not act in a vacuum—quality teaching is affected by the quality of leadership in the school (anderson, leithwood, & strauss, 2010; datnow, park, & wohlstetter, 2007; louis et al., 2010). we, therefore, should not expect robust data use among teachers to be the norm in contexts where school leaders lack the ability to build and sustain capacity for such. or, as wayman, cho, and johnston (2007) succinctly put it, “data use lives and dies in the principal’s office” (p. 55). because the role of principals and district leaders in building and sustaining data use is key, we think it important to consider how the words and actions of these leaders may influence how teachers think about data and data use. unfortunately, research on leadership for data use suggests that principals (who oft transition to district leadership) are often ill-equipped to effectively lead for data use (means, padilla, debarger, & bakia, 2009; wayman, jimerson, & cho, 2012; wayman, spring, lemke, & lehr, 2012). we also find that research on leadership for data use frequently focuses on structural or systemic supports for data use (e.g., kerr, marsh, ikomoto, darilek, & barney, 2006; wayman, jimerson, & cho, 2012; wayman spring et al., 2012) rather than deep examinations of how language or modeling by leaders hinders or encourages teacher engagement in data use. one pathway to examining this intersection of leader modeling with teacher engagement involves the consideration of alternative models for talking about educational data. at present, much research orients toward the “data-driven decision making” (dddm) model (mandinach, honey, & light, 2006; marsh, mccombs, & martorell, 2010; marsh, pane, & hamilton, 2006). because the roots of dddm privilege quantifiable outcomes that enable system-level comparisons, we should not be surprised that dddm typically results in a high degree of attention to achievement outcomes in the form of accountability exams. these data permit not only the tracking of progress, but for comparisons across time, classrooms, student groups, and systems (marsh et al., 2006). however, teacher needs orient toward classroomlevel data focused on specific students, rather than systems (means et al., 2009; schildkamp & kuiper, 2010). such needs fit well with models of inquiry that make use of evidence without privileging broad-scale data and without relying on the accountability-laden verbiage that has become associated with “dddm.” for example, literature parallel to research on “data use” yet focused on teacher decision-making frequently references action research, professional learning communities, and collaborative inquiry (calhoun, 1994; copland, 2003; tucker, 2010). these models share characteristics of datadriven practice (e.g., the importance of question formation to drive investigation and the use of multiple streams of data to inform conclusions), but aim for a fine-grained, highly contextualized perspective. to that end, we wondered whether a mismatch exists between dddm models and how teachers think about their roles and about the day-to-day practice of teaching. we further wondered whether an alternative model for data-informed inquiry might better fit teachers’ beliefs and philosophies about practice. to learn more about the ways in which educators think about “data use,” and thereby to ascertain whether non-“dddm” models may provide educational data use with the “facelift” suggested by the middle school teacher in our epigraph, we conducted a study to examine the ways in which teachers and school leaders conceptualize “data” and “data use.” the study was guided by two questions: (1) what meanings do educators attach to “data use?” and (2) how are particular ways of thinking about “data use” related to teacher investment in data-informed practice? data use and related models: background and context teachers have long been users of data to make professional decisions about their work. over the past twenty-five years, however, accountability policies and high stakes consequences have colored the ways teachers and administrators view and use data at the classroom, school, and district levels. in several popular models for continuous improvement (other than dddm), data is central to decision making and can powerfully impact practice while avoiding a hyper-focus on mandated state or federal testing. the use of these models and perceptions and attitudes toward data use rely heavily on guidance and modeling by campus leaders. in the following sections, we outline the research surrounding these issues. we explore the rise of the accountability movement and how associated pressures have affected the ways in which educators understand “data use,” describe data-rich inquiry practices, and discuss the critical role leadership plays in facilitating constructive models for data use. data use as a centerpiece for accountability “reform” where the classroom teacher had once been the primary individual responsible for assessing and documenting a student’s progress over time (typically via the individual report card), the late 20th century brought a dramatic shift in thinking concerning educational data collection, use, and reporting. in the state of texas, for example, comprehensive reform meant sweeping educational changes—a statewide curriculum framework, criterion-referenced assessments, and public reporting of outcomes and information. a facet of the texas model that made it unique was a focus on individual student results rather than data reported in the aggregate. “since education systems have traditionally served some, but not all, students well, a focus on the aggregate level would leading inquiry in schools: examining mental models of data-informed practice 3 probably not result in meaningful change. an explicit focus on each student was necessary” (nelson, mcghee, slater, & meno, 2007, p. 703). while others in the united states were just beginning to ponder the differences in academic performance across various student groups, texas was creating and installing a data-rich reform model specifically focused on addressing educational inequities in its public schools (nelson et al., 2007). although originally well-intentioned, the texas model evolved over the years, producing a series of unintended consequences (booher-jennings, 2005; holme, 2013; holme, carkum, & snodgrass rangel, in press). beyond informing school improvement efforts at a systemic level, the texas model, deeply rooted in highstakes testing, publicly ranks and sorts schools into four categories, from “academically unacceptable” to “exemplary.” in many contexts, the pursuit of higher test scores (and thus higher ratings) effected a narrowing of the curriculum to focus on tested subjects, a shift from diagnostic to summative testing, and “gaming” practices aimed at mitigating or masking the performance of particular student groups (holme, 2013; valenzuela, fuller, & vasquez heilig, 2006; vasquez heilig & darling-hammond, 2008). despite intense criticism leveled at the altered texas system, it nonetheless became a model for the nation under president george w. bush in the form of the federal no child left behind (nclb) act signed into law in 2002. state and federal accountability systems tied to funding and high profile consequences for not achieving annual yearly progress or prescribed performance targets can and do dominate data discourse (colyvas, 2012). and, once large-scale measurement systems or performance metrics of this type are made public, they are challenging to substantively change or undo, even if not widely embraced (colyvas, 2012; goren, 2012). additionally, the nclb act and initiatives related to the law frequently refer to “scientifically-based research” and “scientifically-based evidence,” practices grounded in replicable experimental or quasiexperimental studies. this stance privileges controlled trials and quantifiable data. because the policy dialogue around “scientifically-based” or “research-based” practice is heavily oriented toward large-scale, quantifiable data— or numbers—many practitioners have come to equate “data-driven” practice with the use of large-scale data sets that carry a mantle of legitimacy from the state and federal government. ergo, “data” or “data use,” to many educators, means results of mandated test scores and district endorsed benchmark examinations, as these datasets are highly valued by administrative decision makers. more often than not, however, these results arrive to teachers in formats that are not particularly helpful and far too late in the academic year to actually inform instructional decisions. as tucker (2010) notes: in education, state and district officials want data that shows broad trends so they can assess a school’s or a district’s overall effectiveness. (this is accountability data.) teachers want additional information, such as results from classroom assessments that may track weekly progress. (p. 3) herein lies the problem: even where educators are intentional about the importance of using multiple measures of data to inform decision-making, “dddm” is often so inextricably entangled with nclb and state accountability policies that the overall effect is one of refocused attention to system-level, broad-scale data that enables comparisons across context (e.g., mandinach, 2012; marsh et al., 2006; marsh et al., 2010). while dddm-models themselves have great potential for positive application and for catalyzing subsequent improvement at multiple levels, the foregrounding of test scores and broad-scale data may have the unintended effect of seeming less-than-relevant to teachers yearning for timely studentand classroomspecific data (ingram, louis, & schroeder, 2004; firestone & gonzales, 2007; marsh et al., 2006; valli & buese, 2007). that is, the dddm model itself is not as problematic as the (mis)understanding among educators that dddm equates to monitoring test scores and determining how to raise test scores, rather than using multiple forms of data as clues to how best meet each child’s complex and changing needs. it is within this context that we ask: “has the term ‘data-driven’ become too shopworn to recapture? is it time to replace it with a term that conveys the same intent but which casts a broader conceptual net?” in the next section, we examine models of data-informed inquiry we perceive as up to this task in that they promote robust and broad use of multiple data streams while eschewing language inextricably tied to accountability testing. these models—action research and collaborative inquiry —may hold promise for those seeking to promote data use in ways that create greater buy-in from teachers and more effectively address the needs of learners. data use as nested in inquiry the research on data use is replete with models that set out multi-phase cycles. supovitz (2010) suggested a four-part framework for knowledge-based organizational learning that examined how district-level leaders used data through phases of data capture, meaning-making, information-sharing, and knowledge codification. the data wise process (boudett, city, & murnane, 2005) moves participants through an eight-step process that involves preparation, inquiry, and action based on “digging deep” into sources of student data. for our exploration of the literature, we wanted to focus on current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 models that may have, to this point, been noted only tangentially in the data use literature, but which situate data use at the heart of teaching and learning (i.e., classroom or school level) and which emphasize an improvement-orientation rather than one that focuses primarily on “accountability” or “dddm.” action research. one process that places data use at the center of systematic continuous improvement is the action research cycle. this inquiry model is ideal for the educational setting in that it can be adapted to any context and used to study larger, schoolwide issues as well as smaller areas of focus or concern. the presence (and importance) of data is pervasive throughout the action research process. as illustrated in figure 1, solid arrows represent primary movement through the action research steps whereas the dashed lines indicate the common practice of returning to data sources again and again throughout the cycle for additional information, clarification, and refinement. several facets of action research make its treatment of data unique as compared with other potential data use strategies. in step two of the process, data collection, calhoun (1994) suggested that both on-site, school information (internal data) and professional literature and research (external data) be collected, organized, analyzed, and interpreted. this means that as we move to the action-taking phase, “we combine and apply” (calhoun, 1994, p. 89) what we are discovering from studying on-site or school-based data and compare it with our findings in the professional literature and research. in the words of calhoun (1994), “we use the knowledge gained from these collective studies to select innovations and develop initiatives that have the best chance of improving student learning” (p. 89). this quality of the action research cycle could help plug critical gaps in educator data use, as studies suggest that school and district leaders frequently neglect to search for external data or to thoughtfully attend to external data or research in actual decision-making processes (coburn, honig, & stein, 2009; coburn & talbert, 2006). additionally, because the action research process is a systematic approach to data use, problem solving, and solution generation, it requires triangulation in regard to data sources. triangulation, or, “the act of bringing more than one source of data to bear on a single point” (marshall & rossman, 1999, p. 146) helps to create a more vivid and accurate picture of the circumstances at hand (glanz, 2003; supovitz & klein, 2003; wayman & stringfield, 2006). it also enhances the validity and credibility of the work (hendricks, 2009; shen & cooley, 2008). using multiple data sources is essential both in clarifying the focus area or research question as well as corroborating findings or outcomes. related to accessing and using a variety of data sources, calhoun (1994) further suggested that action researchers not overlook existing archival data that may be immediately accessible. grades, attendance records, promotion and retention figures, enrollments in special programs, demographic data and the like are generally readily available, require little work to acquire and provide “ an immediate picture of the educational climate of the school” (calhoun, 1994, p. 53). collaborative inquiry. tucker (2010) spotlights a model that is both data-focused and team-oriented in its approach. in the collaborative inquiry model, (see figure 2) teams of educators, made up of teachers and administrators, focus specifically on a small group of struggling learners. the inquiry team examines student work, related assessment data, and instructional approaches used with students. the team then constructs figure 1. the action research cycle. (source: calhoun, 1994, p. 2) leading inquiry in schools: examining mental models of data-informed practice 5 theory of action as to why the students are not prospering academically. in this model, as in action research, ongoing data collection, reflection, and analysis are central to the work. these cyclical processes are in effect “sandwiched” between a readiness procedure and collective recognition and celebration of accomplished work. and, like action research, the inquiry cycles include resources and information external to the classroom and/or school that may further inform the area of focus. moreover, the collaborative inquiry model can be used to address highly contextualized classroom-level instructional issues as well as general schoolwide matters. the principal: a linchpin in successful data use? in both models, educators are placed in proactive roles as they establish questions around problems of practice and collect data appropriate to those questions, rather than simply reacting to accountability demands or examining available data. models such as the action research cycle and collaborative inquiry are flexible in practice, yet offer parameters and expectations for data use. in both models, the prominent role of data is clear as those engaged in inquiry collect, analyze, and make meaning of information vital for decision making and improvement. however, by highlighting a process of collaborative inquiry to inform practice, rather than being “data-driven,” both models avoid unnecessary entanglement with the language of nclb or state-level accountability mandates. both models situate the use of data within an improvement-oriented teaching and learning context. while the inquiry models presented above can be operationalized without central office intervention or support, in reality, schools exist within systems and rely heavily on these systems for resources and services, including matters related to meaningful data use. when the practice of data use can be viewed as a system-wide endeavor, we acknowledge the fundamental ways in which different levels of the system are inextricably linked and dependent upon one another (coburn & turner, 2012; wayman, cho, jimerson, & spikes, 2012). honig and venkateswaran (2012) submit that, “central office staff matter to school-level evidence use, and to some extent school staff are important participants in central office evidence-use processes” (p. 216). no one person is the sole provider of leadership at the campus level (copland, 2003; park & datnow, 2009; wayman spring et al., 2012); however, campus leaders are uniquely situated to provide consistent instructional support for classroom teachers. this includes collecting, analyzing, and using data as “…it is naïve to believe that teachers will use assessment data to inform instruction without the coaching and support they need to begin the process” (buhle & blachowicz, 2008, p. 45). although support for teachers’ data use may start with a figure 2. nyc schools collaborative inquiry model. (source: tucker, 2010) current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 series of district-sponsored activities or meetings with district data coaches, the principal is the individual who can sustain a focus on data use in practice (datnow et al., 2007; wayman et al., 2007). “understanding the practice of data use not only can help us explain the outcomes of data use but also provides insight into when and under what conditions data use acts as a productive pathway to educational improvement and when it does not” (coburn & turner, 2012, p. 100). developing and maintaining a vibrant vision for learning includes understanding and using data in ethical and appropriate ways. by the very nature of their work, principals are deeply knowledgeable about their schools and communities, and understand the school’s areas of strengths as well as targets for improvement. principals serve as role models for those on their campuses and help to establish and shape the working culture and atmosphere across the school (louis et al., 2010; wayman spring et al., 2012). likewise, principals are generally quick to seek assistance from district-level staff members when help is needed. as goren (2012) asserts: data means different things to different people. school practitioners can learn from central office administrators and central office staff can learn from school practitioners. and indeed, what is necessary at all levels is the presence of individuals with the capacity to interpret, understand, and broker the information for appropriate use. (p. 235) at the campus level, we believe this person to be the principal. no individual located at the school site is better suited to represent the school and its unique needs or to serve in the role of “information broker.” what remains unclear is how the choices school leaders make in how they model data use—through word and deed— encourages or dissuades teachers from investing the time and energy needed to engage in data-informed practice. theoretical framework our approach to this study was informed broadly by organizational theory and specifically by morgan’s (2006) description of complexity theory and senge’s (2006) concept of “mental models.” in describing how organizations function and change, morgan (2006) noted that organizations are characterized by inherent complexity due to the multiple actors, programs, procedures, and internal/external pressures that are at constant interplay. morgan asserted that order emerges from this complexity because the systems “get caught in tensions…falling under the influence of different attractors” that help define context and establish norms for actors in the system (p. 254). attractors can cement norms and patterns in an organization, or disrupt norms and patterns, pushing a system to change (for better or worse). senge (2006) took a slightly different approach in describing how leaders might catalyze change, and focused on learning in terms of “mental models,” or “deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action” (p. 8). he noted that in a learning organization, members are committed to unearthing the mental models held throughout the system, to holding these up to new questioning and evidence, and to reforming those mental models as needed. we considered how these theories apply to current thinking about data use. viewing the research through this theoretical lens gave rise to three assumptions that helped us consider the intersection of data use and professional learning about data use: 1. educators hold particular “mental models” about data use—i.e., what they think data use is about and how they believe data ought to be used. 2. how educators engage in data use is affected by their “mental models.” 3. because mental models and patterns of organizational behavior are malleable, the ways in which educators frame and engage in data use is likewise malleable. method the present study draws from an ongoing project in pence school district1, a small district located in central texas. the broader project is driven by two overarching purposes: (1) to learn about teacher perceptions and attitudes toward data use; and (2) to provide the participating district with information to support planning and improvement initiatives. in this section, we provide information on the context of the study district and describe our procedures for data collection and analyses pertinent to this study. study context pence school district was selected in part as a sample of convenience (access was eased by the desire of district leaders to obtain useful information to support ongoing improvement initiatives) and in part because the district’s performance under current texas accountability system measures suggested room for improvement in terms of data use. to wit, the district as a whole was rated “academically acceptable”2 for the 2010-2011 school year, though two of the four campuses in the district were rated “academically unacceptable.” __________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 pseudonym 2 under current accountability system structures, schools in texas may be rated “exemplary,” “recognized,” “academically acceptable,” or “academically unacceptable.” leading inquiry in schools: examining mental models of data-informed practice 7 table 1 selected longitudinal data, texas assessment of knowledge and skills (taks). source: texas education agency academic excellence indicator system exam/population 2003 pass rate 2011 pass rate district change, 2003-11 taks all tests taken all students african-american white 41% 28% 47% 60% 48% 71% +19% +20% +24% taks reading/ela economically disadvantaged hispanic 59% 55% 79% 77% +20% +22% taks mathematics african-american white 40% 60% 62% 79% +22% +19% taks science all students hispanic 29% 13% 73% 72% +44% +59% also, the small size of the district (approximately 3,000 students) and number of campuses (four) provided an appropriate setting for an early study of the issues addressed in this paper. to understand the context of pence schools in relation to data use, it is important to examine how the district has changed over the last several years. in the notdistant past, pence would have been considered a rural district on the outskirts of a city home to a regional university. twenty years ago, pence educators worked with a student population that was predominantly white and working class (i.e., 25% of students were nonwhite and just under 40% of students were considered eligible for free-or reduced price meals). today, those demographics have shifted considerably, as the outer rings of the nearby city have expanded: pence educators in 20113 worked with a population predominantly composed of students of color and a mix of working-class and poverty-level homes (60% of students are latino or african-american and nearly 80% qualify for free or reduced price meals). in brief, pence educators are striving to meet the needs of a rapidly changing community. due in part to these changing demographics, and in part to increasingly rigorous accountability exams and policy requirements,4 pence educators have worked diligently to effect improvements in teaching and learning. state-level data on attendance, state-mandated exams, and dropout rates evidence steady progress between 1994-2002 (when taas was in effect) followed by an overall drop in performance and subsequent improvement with the inauguration of the more-difficult taks exams (see table 1 for data to illustrate this trend under taks). despite marked improvements in student achievement outcomes over the past decade, the rate of progress has not kept pace with increasing accountability requirements under nclb and the texas accountability system. as a result, district leaders have become even more “data-driven,” both in efforts to be strategic about improvements in teaching and learning and in response to requirements under the texas accountability system and under nclb. while achievement data over time suggest that pence educators are making headway in their improvement efforts, we also think it important to note that the pressure to escape accountability sanctions weighed heavily on pence educators’ minds. for example, in an early interview, one district leader detailed how, because of accountability sanctions from the state and federal government, district and campus leaders were being required to implement eight different “improvement plans”: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 3 the most recent data available via state-level academic excellence indicator system reporting. 4 in the last 20 years, texas has moved from the texas assessment of academic skills, or taas, through the texas assessment of knowledge and skills (taks), and now to the state of texas assessments of academic readiness (staar). each iteration has been more rigorous than the past, and high-stakes (i.e., promotion in certain grades and graduation from high school) are linked to various exams. programs monitoring system. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 each of the four campuses had a state-required campus improvement plan, the district had a required district improvement plan, each of the campuses tagged as “academically unacceptable” were required to work with a professional service provider to implement additional improvement plans to address state and ayp compliance issues, and the district had a separate required improvement plan associated with a state-level special additionally, one campus was “close to becoming” academically unacceptable in the coming year, so district leaders were preemptively working with to address concerns at that campus via another improvement plan. as one leader told us, so many required “improvement plans” created a context of “…putting out fires. and what you’re doing is basically charting, ok, which [report] is due when? which deadline is what? it becomes a logistics nightmare.” as to whether data use was more a complianceor improvement issue, the leader was emphatic in wanting data use to be about improvement— not just about testing. but, the leader noted: as far as i’m concerned, it’s a compliance issue because what it does, it doesn’t give you time to do the other things. what i tell the people that struggle with all of this is, ‘what they’re doing is making us do what the exemplary districts were already doing—it’s just they got to do it their way because they were proactive in doing it, whereas we have to do it the bureaucratic way.’ terms it is important to define two terms we used in framing this study. in line with wayman cho et al. (2012), we consider “data” to be any information that can assist educators in knowing more about students and their needs. further, we consider data to be information which has the potential to be codified and shared, even though, in practice, not all data are formally codified. in line with schildkamp and kuiper (2010), we take “data use” to be a process of “systematically analyzing existing data sources within the school, applying outcomes of analyses to innovate teaching, curricula, and school performance, and, implementing (e.g., genuine improvement actions) and evaluating these innovations” (p. 482). instrument to inform our research questions, we obtained an overview of the perceptions and attitudes of district and school personnel via the survey of data use & professional learning (jimerson, 2012) a 66-item instrument which included likert-style items as well as open-ended response items. prior research (jimerson, 2011) was used to inform initial construction of the instrument, and measures were taken to strengthen content validity and to assure stability of items over time. to wit, in june and july 2012, 12 ec-12 practitioners (four teachers, four campus principals, and four school district administrators) engaged in a series of cognitive interviews (see desimone & lefloch, 2004) to refine the instrument in terms of wording, clarity, and ordering of items. as a result of that process, the instrument was revised. to ascertain the reliability of items on the survey, a panel of n=31 practicing ec-12 educators from a variety of roles were administered the survey twice, 10-14 days apart. items were analyzed via bivariate correlation; only items that correlated at statistically significant levels (p<.05) were included in analyses for the purposes of this study. procedure the instrument was distributed online to all pence educators during a two-week window in august, 2012. table 2 denotes overall response rate as well as response rates by job role. although most survey items were designed to enable comparisons via the use of reported levels of agreement on likert-scale items, all personnel were invited to respond to several open-ended items as well. these responses provided an additional layer to our analysis and to our ability to interpret the data as a whole. all personnel in pence isd were invited to complete the survey electronically. response rates are reflected in table 2. measures likert-type items were used to inform quantitative analyses. open-ended items from the online survey were used to inform qualitative analyses. educational role was used as a category by which to compare educators on aspects of data use. role was table 2 study participation and survey response rates, by role survey data n response rate district-level leaders 12 88.9% campus-level leaders (principals, asst. principals) 11 93.3% professional support (e.g., inst. coaches, specialists) 13 92.9% teachers 118 81.4% total 154 83.5% leading inquiry in schools: examining mental models of data-informed practice 9 evaluated by a survey question that asked, “how would you best classify your current job?” resulting categories for comparison included district-level (i.e., central office) leaders, campus-level leaders (i.e., principals and assistant principals), “professional support,” a category comprised of certified professionals who acted in a support role (e.g., counselors, librarians, instructional coaches), and teachers. a limitation that we acknowledge is the small cell size for persons in non-teaching categories; we interpreted analyses for these categories with caution, though we worked to bolster our interpretations of data via triangulation with open-ended survey responses. scales. individual survey items were set on a 5point likert scale (1=strongly disagree; 2=disagree; 3=neither agree nor disagree; 4=agree; 5=strongly agree). we used three scales in the analyses pertinent to this paper. the construal of data scale was comprised of three items that assessed perceptions regarding whether educators used elements beyond intuition or hunches to inform instruction. this scale included the items: “i use a variety of data to inform my teaching and/or daily practice”; “i use a variety of evidence to inform my teaching and/or daily practice”; and “i use a variety of information to inform my teaching and/or daily practice.” the alpha reliability of this scale was 0.85. the beneficence of data scale comprised four items that assessed the participant’s perception that data use holds promise for positive good as pertains to teaching and learning efforts. this scale included the items: “data use helps me make informed decisions”; “data use helps me make ethical decisions”; “data use benefits educators and students”; and “data use is about continuous improvement in the classroom.” the alpha reliability of this scale was .78. the data anxiety scale was comprised of three items that assessed participants’ level of concern regarding possible misuse or abuse of data. this scale included the items: “i worry that data will be used to shame or punish teachers at my school”; “i am concerned that data use will increase unhealthy competition among educators at my campus”; and “i am concerned that data use will increase unhealthy competition among educators in my district.” the alpha reliability of this scale was .88. analyses to inform our research questions, we examined survey data to determine whether our intended scales were reliable, and to what degree. spss was used for all statistical analyses. we selected three scales (see table 3) that we interpreted as pertinent to informing our research questions. we created a composite variable for each scale, and examined scale means by role (appendix b contains an index of variables used in the course of this study). this comparison helped us understand some general patterns by role in terms of how respondents perceived “data” and “data use.” we used a one-way anova to examine differences among scale means by role. to further illuminate this analysis, we analyzed responses to two open-ended response items: “when you hear you are going to be involved in ‘data use’ or will be ‘working with data,’ what comes to mind?” and “please describe your last learning opportunity (formal or informal) that related in any way to data use.” responses were categorized by role and coding was facilitated by atlas.ti software. to strengthen the validity of our analysis of open-ended survey data, we began by following the suggestions for anchoring early codes in existing research (miles & huberman, 1994). we then followed the systematic procedures outlined by merriam (2009) to guide thematic coding and the eventual merging of codes into themes. we also note that throughout this process, we worked to triangulate developing themes by examining our emerging coding scheme in light of other survey data and in light of project notes and clarifying conversations with district personnel (see appendix a for the final coding scheme for our analyses). to examine the relationship among teacher investment in data use and ways of thinking about data use, we conducted three analyses. first, we used a oneway anova to examine differences in the means by role on the “beneficence of data” scale. for all analyses, the threshold for statistical significance was established at p<.05. next, we used the item “if no one (on my team/in my department) wanted to use data, i would still make the effort to do so” as a proxy for commitment to data use. we recoded this variable to isolate two groups: those who reported “high” levels of commitment (i.e., those who responded “agree” or “strongly agree”) and those who reported “low/lukewarm” levels of commitment (all other responses). we recoded the beneficence scale to isolate three groups: those who attributed “low” beneficence to data, those who attributed “moderate” beneficence to data, and those who attributed “high” beneficence to data. focusing on the survey responses of teachers, we conducted a pearson’s chi-square analysis to examine the relationship between reported level of commitment and the degree to which teachers attached beneficent characteristics to data use. last, we used another pearson’s chi-square analysis to examine the relationship between reported level of commitment to data use and the degree to which teachers considered data use to be “all about accountability ratings.” to accomplish this, we leveraged the survey item, “data use is all about accountability ratings” and recoded the responses into three categories: “low” agreement, “moderate” agreement, and “high” agreement. because we calculated multiple chi-squares in the course of the analyses, we used the bonferroni current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 adjustment in order to maintain the error rate with a level of significance of p<.05. results in what follows, we present our findings in two sections: (1) meanings of “data” and “data use” and (2) teacher investment in data-informed practice. meanings of “data” and “data use” upon beginning the study, one working hypothesis was that educators would construe “data” as conceptually different from “evidence” or “information,” that the term in and of itself would be construed more negatively than would “evidence” or “information,” and that these differences in construal might present a barrier to efforts to promote teacher buy-in to data-informed practice. however, analysis of survey data indicates that this was not the case among pence educators. in fact, the alpha reliability of the “construal” scale suggests that the underlying concept is that educators—regardless of role— use something to inform practice, and that this something is more than mere instinct or hunch. we learned that some practitioners felt comfortable referring to this “something” as “data,” whereas others preferred “evidence” or “information,” but most respondents— across job roles—either “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that they used at least one of these three to inform daily practice (see table 3). to further examine these differences among scale means, we conducted a one-way anova, and observed no statistically significant differences among scale means by job role on the “construal” scale f(3, 146)=1.99, p>.05. we similarly observed no statistically significant differences among scale means by job role on the “data anxiety” scale f(3, 146) =1.92, p>.05. however, we did observe statistically significant differences among scale means by job role on the “beneficence of data scale” f(3, 147) = 3.24, p<.05: here, post-hoc tests revealed a difference between the means of central office leaders and teachers of .52 (with 95% certainty that the true mean difference fell between .05 and .99). we initially interpreted these analyses to suggest that pence educators are generally more alike than not across job roles when it comes to perceptions and attitudes about data use. first, scale means tended toward the positive end for educators in all job roles as most reported the use of something other than intuition or hunches to inform practice. second, educators in pence tended towards neutrality or slight disagreement on the data anxiety scale (i.e., worry that data would be misused or would catalyze unhealthy competition among educators). and, third, educators in pence tended to agree with statements that asserted a positive potential for data use to support teaching and learning efforts. although scale data suggested only slight differences among roles in how educators in pence construed the elements used in informing practice (see table 3), open-ended survey data suggested more stark divides. this may suggest that some teachers responded to likert-style items in ways they thought were expected of them as professional educators, rather than in ways that more accurately reflected their perceptions, but it could also be that perceptions on data use are complex, and only within the formats that allowed for greater depth of answers (i.e., open-ended survey items and interviews or focus groups) were disparities revealed. table 4 presents a breakdown of the content of comments by role. district-level leaders tended to be uniformly positive about the potential of data to inform instruction for improvement purposes. when asked what “comes to mind” regarding the terms “data use” or “working with data,” none of the 11 respondents produced negative models, related a negative experience, and only one commented about accountability testing, specifically. however, we note that when asked about recent professional learning experiences related to data use, four of the 11 district leaders cited examples that related to the use of accountability exams, accountability data, or the use of data to address ayp or state accountability concerns. table 3 selected scale means and standard deviations by role role construal α=.85 data anxiety α=.88 beneficence of data use α=.78 district-level leaders m= 4.45, sd=.52 m= 2.09, sd=.93 m= 4.43, sd=.53 campus-level leaders m= 4.00, sd=.50 m= 2.57, sd=.67 m= 4.05, sd=.54 professional support m= 3.95, sd=.38 m= 2.82, sd=.90 m= 3.79, sd=.76 teachers m= 3.97, sd=.70 m= 2.77, sd=.95 m= 3.92, sd=.56 overall m= 4.00, sd=.66 m= 2.71, sd=.94 m= 3.95, sd=.58 leading inquiry in schools: examining mental models of data-informed practice 11 table 4 frequencies of coded text (open-ended survey items) by role   role n of participants offering any comments comments suggesting a negative/frustrated perspective toward data/data use comments suggesting a positive/embracing attitude toward data/ data use comments linked to state testing or accountability requirements district leaders 11 0 7 5 campus leaders 6 2 2 3 professional support 12 5 2 7 teachers 102 37 24 28 total 131 44 35 35 responses from campus-level leaders were mixed. some linked the terms “data use” and “working with data” to curriculum planning, and to looking at problem areas and areas of strength. one participant noted that the terms engendered both “excitement and frustration.” and, a few more negatively connoted phrases crept in at the campus leader level: “not so much in the ‘fun’ department!” and “pouring through lots of figures and numbers” were cited as immediate thoughts upon hearing one was going to be “involved in data use.” this suggests that for some, “data use” was associated with “numbers” and quantifiable measures. in response to the item asking about prior data-related professional learning experiences, several campus leaders cited accountability-oriented activities: “we learned how to spot holes in instruction using taks data,” noted one, while another noted a recent “data dig” in which departments examined “…what objectives were the lowest and highest on the most recent taks/eoc.” persons in professional support roles were mixed in how they construed “data use,” and we observed an increase in negative or skeptical responses. of the 12 persons who offered comments, seven referenced state testing requirements. these were couched in less-thanglowing terms (“confusing numbers and over testing of students,” “a very long and arduous meeting. lots of things that have to be interpreted by someone who knows how to read the data”). one stated that when working with data, “i get stressed and lack confidence.” the trajectory from uniformly positive and predominantly improvement-oriented models for data use to decidedly more mixed perspectives reached an apex with teachers. to be sure, many teachers were generally positive about data use. these teachers spoke to the ability of data to inform improvement efforts at the campus and classroom levels. comments included “that we will look at data to better understand why students [perform] at certain levels and how we can use that information to address areas of need”; “trying to find where the weaknesses and strengths are. where can we improve?”; and “i want to immediately know exactly how my students have performed so that i know what my strengths and weaknesses as a teacher are.” however, many comments were skeptical. for example, one teacher said the term brought to mind, “hopefully, useful information that clearly shows us strengths and weaknesses of our students to guide instruction… a fear that we will be gathering so much data that we lose sight of the fact that we need to teach the objectives being tested.” other teachers noted outright frustration or hostility toward data use. one noted that data use was “tiresome” and another admitted, “sometimes i worry about data-about my own students [data] being viewed by fellow coworkers.” another said what came to mind is “fear…of looking at the data and feeling like a failure.” one admitted, “i feel like it will be bad because our scores are low. i never look forward to going to look at data” while yet another offered a one-word response: “punishment.” another noted that when told she would be “involved in ‘data use’ or ‘working with data’”: i think of columns of numbers that do not really have a true understanding of the student or of their performance. i think that sometimes we get so focused on numbers that we forget about the individuals behind those numbers. we need to remember that this was one test given in a few hours on one day of that child's life. they are inundated with “real world” issues every day, and to assess a child's learning based on a multiple choice test given with so many restrictions does not, in my opinion, give us an accurate assessment of what that child has learned. we note that of these comments, tinged by frustration or hostility, several were focused on state testing and accountability issues rather than “data use” in and of itself; however, as the question posed specified “data use,” not “accountability testing,” we found the number of responses among teachers that defaulted to an accountability-oriented model telling. in sum, analysis of likert-type items suggested that all educators (regardless of role) used various elements to inform practice. further, these data suggest that to a large degree, educators (across roles) in pence isd reported that data use has some positive attributes current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 12 and offers a degree of promise in terms of informing teaching and learning efforts. however, when we examined open-ended survey data, we found that there are nuanced meanings associated with the terms “data” and “data use” that dredge up negative associations and accountability-dominated themes among teachers at greater rates than for district-level leaders. investment in data-informed practice our second guiding question focused on the intersection of teacher commitment to or investment in data-informed practice and various mental models of data use among teachers. to explore this issue, we focused on teacher responses and conducted three analyses. commitment to data use and beneficence. the first analysis examined the relationship among level of beneficence attributed to data use and reported commitment to data use among teachers. reported commitment to data use among teachers differed by the degree of beneficence attached to data use (see table 5). we observed that teachers who attributed higher levels of beneficence to data use were overrepresented among those who reported high commitment to data use (see table 5). of the 116 teachers surveyed, 64 attached a high level of beneficence to data use, and of those, 53 (82.8%) reported a high level of commitment to data use. this suggests that among pence teachers, those who attach positive intent to data use also perceive data use to be worthwhile enough to warrant investment of time and effort. commitment to data use and accountabilitydominant orientation. the second analysis examined the relationship among level of agreement that data use is “all about accountability ratings” and reported commitment to data use among teachers. we found that reported commitment to data use differed by the degree to which teacher responses suggested an accountability-dominant orientation towards data use (see table 6). upon closer examination, we observed that persons whose responses suggested they did not equate “data use” strictly with “accountability ratings” were overrepresented among those who reported high commitment to data use. of the 39 teachers in our sample whose responses indicated a low or non-accountability-dominant orientation for data use, 27 (87.2%) reported high commitment to data use, whereas only five (14.3%) of the teachers who reported lower levels of commitment to data use indicated a nonaccountability dominant orientation. this suggests that among pence teachers, those who reject a “data use equals accountability ratings” model also perceive data use to be an enterprise worthy of commitment. table 5 degree of beneficence attributed to data use by reported commitment to data use reported commitment to data use pearson chi-square test low-lukewarm high x2(df= 2) p level of beneficence attributed to data use n % n % 11.67 .003 low (n=3) 1 33.3% 2 66.7% moderate (n=49) 23 46.9% 26 53.1% high (n=64) 11 17.2% 53 82.8% table 6 accountability orientation by reported commitment to data use reported commitment to data use pearson chi-square test low-lukewarm high x2 (df= 2) p degree of accountability orientation n % n % non-accountability orientation (n=39) 5 12.8% 34 87.2% 9.58 .008 neutral orientation (n=38) 17 44.7% 21 55.3% accountability orientation (n=39) 13 33.3% 26 66.7% leading inquiry in schools: examining mental models of data-informed practice 13 table 7 anxiety about data use by reported experience of data misuse/abuse reported anxiety about data use pearson chi-square low-no anxiety moderatehigh anxiety x2 (df= 2) p reported personal experience with data misuse or abuse n % n % has never experienced data misuse/abuse (n=40) 40 100.0% 0 0.0% 51.21 .000 neutral (n=9) 7 77.8% 2 22.2% has experienced data misuse/abuse in one or more work contexts (n=13) 13 26.5% 36 73.5% anxiety about data use and prior bad acts. last, we examined the relationship among level of anxiety over data use reported by teachers and whether teachers reported having worked in one or more schools where data were used to “shame or punish” teachers. to this end, we created a two-level variable from the data anxiety scale. persons who scored 2.5 or lower were considered to evidence low levels of anxiety about data use. persons who scored 3.5 or higher were considered to evidence moderate to high levels of anxiety about data use. for this analysis we excluded those whose responses indicated neutrality in terms of anxiety over use (i.e., those who scored between 2.5 and 3.5). we found that reported anxiety about data use differed by whether teachers reported having worked in a school where data were misused/abused (see table 7). upon closer examination, we observed that teachers who reported having worked in one or more contexts where data were used to shame or punish teachers were overrepresented among those who scored at levels of moderate to high anxiety. of 98 teachers, 38 reported moderate or high levels of anxiety about data use, and of these, 36 (94.7%) reported having worked in a context of data misuse/abuse. conversely, of the 40 teachers who reported having never worked in a context of data misuse/abuse, none scored at levels of moderate to high anxiety about data use. from these findings we drew two overarching conclusions. first, pence teachers who have experienced misuse or abuse of data are significantly more likely to report anxiety or concern about data use. second, prior knowledge or experience with data use has consequences for how teachers think about and model “data use.” we note that our survey item did not inquire as to whether these teachers had experienced data misuse/abuse in pence, but whether they had worked in “one or more contexts” over the course of their careers. this suggests that even if current principals do not engage in destructive patterns of data use, they may have to engage in “make up” work to negate the prior bad acts of leaders in other schools or districts. discussion this study was not conceived in an attempt to generalize findings to all public schools, but to describe and provide insight into the context of data use within pence isd. however, we do think our findings may prove useful to leaders in other contexts as they consider factors that may impact their efforts to improve data-informed practice. to that end, in this section we ask, “what broader lessons might we take from the situation in pence isd, as a starting point for further research and discussion?” when we examine our findings through the lens of our theoretical framework, we contend that there are three such lessons: (1) educators hold nuanced differences in how they think about and respond to the terms “data” and “data use”; (2) leaders have an opportunity to reframe mental models of data use to engender increased commitment to data use among teachers; and (3) because different school contexts are comprised of actors with varying conceptions of “data” and “data use,” the onus is on school leaders to facilitate the co-construction of shared mental models for data use. nuanced differences in mental models for data use educators across pence isd appear to grasp the expectation that they should use evidence to inform what happens in the classroom. and, they appear to have taken ownership of this expectation to a large degree. even in the face of some anxieties about data use, a substantial number of educators across job roles in pence isd report using a variety of data to inform efforts related to teaching and learning, though some may refer to “evidence” or “information” rather than “data” in describing what they indeed use. the mental models associated with the terms “data” and “data use” ranged from positive (i.e., the current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 14 central office leader who was “thrilled” by data use) through neutral to negative (i.e., those who associated the terms with “punishment,” said the terms evoked the thought, “yuck,” or admitted that, “i feel like it will be bad because our scores are low. i never look forward to going to look at data”). for some educators, these models may be triggered by a lack of confidence in skills relating to data use. this fits with existing research that suggests that although data use has been part of the education landscape for decades, teachers and school leaders still struggle to make sense of copious amounts of data in ways that inform practice (earl & fullan, 2003; kerr, et al., 2006; means, chen, debarger, & padilla, 2011; wayman et al., 2007). additionally, as suggested by the open-ended survey items, many teachers seem to equate “data use” with the use of accountability test scores. in this case, mental models may be skewed by prior bad experiences with leaders who misused data in some way: many educators in pence isd reported having worked in one or more contexts where they perceived data were used to shame or punish teachers. these findings align with research documenting data misuse/abuse by some school leaders (earl & fullan, 2003; ingram et al., 2004; valli & buese, 2007). we note that while accountability systems predicated largely upon the results of exams may indeed bring needed attention to patterns of underachievement or to needed improvements in teaching, our concern with an over-identification of “data use” with “test scores” and the use or misuse of these particular types of data is twofold. first, where teachers’ mental models equate “data use” with “test scores,” they may unwittingly lock attention onto standardized exam data to the exclusion of other, valuable data (e.g., classroom-based assignments, quizzes, portfolios, parent feedback) in the course of practice. research suggests that a key component of effective data use is leading teachers away from this narrowed mindset and encouraging a broader construal of “data”—one that is inclusive of multiple elements (coburn & turner, 2012; schildkamp & kuiper, 2010; spillane & miele, 2007). second, when teachers are overly anxious about how data may be used, they may fall into routinized data use that serves to shore up short term gains, but at the expense of broader improvements that necessitate contexts of trust and sharing among colleagues. such patterns of threat rigidity have been explored in connection with school reform efforts (daly, 2009; olsen & sexton, 2009; spillane & miele, 2007). senge’s (2006) work with mental models suggests that diverging mental models are not particularly problematic for an organization if the actors in the organization are committed to carefully examining the varying models with an aim toward creating some shared understandings from which to operate. whatever the cause of these diverging mental models in pence isd, teachers seemed to be mixed in terms of how they referenced “data” and “data use”: some embraced the term “data” (as well as ‘information’ and ‘evidence’), and others embraced the concept but seem suspicious of or hostile to the terms “data” and “data use.” although we are encouraged that so many teachers embraced the underlying concept of using multiple elements to inform instruction, we posit that in leaving these mental models unexamined, school leaders and teachers may unwittingly talk past one another in planning and decision-making. simply engaging in sporadic discussions about data will not alleviate all issues related to the complexities inherent in using data well. still, we think that if leaders would engage teachers in ongoing dialogues about student needs vis-à-vis collaborative inquiry or action research models, both parties could take a positive step towards improved collaborative data use. senge’s work (2006) suggests that such dialogues are essential in getting members of an organization to create authentic and shared goals. he notes: the purpose of a dialogue is to go beyond any one individual’s understanding. … individuals gain insights that simply could not be achieved individually. … in dialogue, a group explores complex difficult issues from many points of view. individuals suspend their assumptions but they communicate their assumptions freely. the result is a free exploration that brings to the surface the full depth of people’s experience and thought, and yet can move beyond their individual views. (pp. 223-224) specific to data use, park and datnow (2009) found that purposes for data use are actually co-created in a nuanced give-and-take among leaders and teachers. that is, by engaging in dialogue on what “data” means and how “data use” looks in practice, the mental models of all parties are likely to change. reframing mental models for data use because the terms “data” and “data use” evoke negative or anxiety-producing mental models for a good number of teachers in pence isd, leaders could opt to reframe data use using a related model (e.g., action research or collaborative inquiry), hopefully eschewing the negative connotations with “dddm” or “data use” while increasing buy-in to a data-informed process. here we build on morgan’s (2006) notion of using disruptors to “jar” the attractors around which organizational patterns of action or thinking are oriented. if we operate on the assumption that, for some teachers, prior experiences with data misuse/abuse cause them to associate the terms “data” and “data use” with accountability exams and broad scale assessments (to the detriment of including other forms of data), then we open up the possibility that responsible, constructive modeling of data over time by existing leaders can broaden the construal of “data use” leading inquiry in schools: examining mental models of data-informed practice 15 for these teachers (see kerr et al., 2007; spillane & miele, 2007). efforts to broaden the scope of what “data use” entails may also avoid what daly (2009) termed “rigid response”—or the tendency to respond in limited and generally non-innovative ways to accountability pressures, with less than optimal results. we noted that survey data indicated that teachers with higher reported commitment to data-informed practice tended to more strongly associate data use with continuous improvement, to credit data use with supporting informed and ethical decisions, and to push back on the notion that data use is all about accountability ratings. by working to reframe data use as beneficial to teaching and learning, and by refraining from misusing and abusing data, leaders may be able to increase the numbers of teachers who view themselves as committed to data-informed practice. in a similar vein, leaders who shift the focus from what they are monitoring to what they are modeling may be able to “jar” the mental models from models that privilege data use to those that highlight collaborative inquiry with data use being a critical component. in other words, instead of “leading data use” by compiling or highlighting reports and presenting test score data in faculty meetings, leaders might shift toward active engagement in collaborative groups with teachers and teacher leaders. in this way, the “leader” becomes the “co-learner,” examining multiple forms of data, asking questions, brainstorming instructional solutions, and evaluating outcomes. this type of positive leader modeling has been linked routinely to effective data use in the literature (copland, 2003; datnow et al., 2007; kerr et al., 2007; louis et al., 2010; park & datnow, 2009; wayman spring et al., 2012). to effect better data use, leaders must make the turn from simply managing (i.e., monitoring and requiring reports) to modeling (working alongside teachers to address problems of practice). principals and district leaders in pence isd might thus opt to subsume “data use” in another model— i.e., “collaborative inquiry” or “action research”—rather than focusing on convincing teachers to be involved in “data-driven” practice. these models (as noted in our review of the literature) get to the heart of the concept itself: they promote the use of multiple measures of data (thereby getting away from “data” being understood only as “test scores”). they prioritize collaboration around data (which helps create a culture of shared rather than isolated practice). and, these models elevate data as a resource to inform the work of localized and continuous improvement driven by professionals, rather than identify “data use” with strict monitoring and compliance-driven activities that can mutate into data misuse/abuse. building shared mental models for data use as one of our priorities in undertaking this study in pence isd was to identify ways that school and district leaders could leverage professional learning to support improved data use, we also note the value of educators from all job roles spending time in dialogue with an aim of creating common understandings related to data use. the importance of devoting time and effort to uncovering assumptions about data use and building toward common understandings about data (e.g., “what counts as ‘data’?” “what data shall we use, and to what ends?” “how will we collaborate around data?”) appears frequently in research on effective data use (hamilton et al., 2009; park & datnow, 2009; wayman et al., 2007; wayman, jimerson, & cho, 2012). similar processes for building shared mental models appear in literature on professional learning communities (dufour, eaker, & dufour, 2005; hord, 1998; thessin & starr, 2011). given our findings that suggest overlapping yet nuanced construals of “data” and “data use” among educators in pence isd, our stance is that district leaders and principals might be well-served by applying senge’s (2006) work on both mental models and shared vision to data use efforts in more explicit fashion. the alternative to this intentionality in practice is to assume that educators come to the table with similar understandings, biases, and perspectives related to data and data use, and neither our research in this context, nor other research in the broader data use literature, suggests that this is the case. conclusion in pence isd, educators across job roles reported using various elements to inform daily practice; however, analysis of survey data (including open-ended items) revealed nuanced differences in the terms they used to describe these elements. further, we found a range of construals attached to educators’ mental models for data use: some models seemed rooted in constructive, positive construals of “data use” while others seemed to tightly couple “data use” with accountability and compliance activities. teachers who attached more positive attributes to data use also reported increased commitment to using data to inform practice. educators in all roles are pressed to use more and more formal data in the pursuit of improved student outcomes: we suggest that school leaders might actually increase teacher ownership of and commitment to data-informed practice by, ironically, downplaying “data use” or “dddm” and highlighting inquiry-oriented models that avoid accountability-laden language in favor of a tight focus on student-centered problems of practice. references anderson, s., leithwood, k., & strauss, t. 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(2006). technologysupported involvement of entire faculties in examination of student data for instructional improvement. american journal of education, 112(august), 549-571. leading inquiry in schools: examining mental models of data-informed practice 19 appendix a coding scheme for open-ended survey items prior bad acts (pba) reference to negative experiences with data, examples or narratives of data misuse or abuse, or assertions of first-hand experiences with data being used to shame or punish teachers or schools. rationale i comments associated with data use being primarily purposed for continuous improvement, classroom/teaching improvement, or schoolwide improvement initiatives. rationale a/c comments associated with data use being primarily purposed for fulfilling complianceoriented requirements, for meeting accountability standards (with no mention of improvement efforts), of “teaching to the test” or of goal orientations regarding accountability ratings (state or federal) positive leader modeling comments or narratives/examples regarding learning about data use through modeling of another leader—learning about data use in a way that created a motivation to emulate the principal/campus leader. negative leader modeling comments or narratives/examples regarding learning about data use via non-example of a leader—i.e., witnessing a type of data use that repulsed or repelled the educator from wanting to use data in similar ways. positive/embracing attitude comments that reflect enjoyment of data use, embracing of data for general good, or a valuing of the data use process negative/frustrated attitude comments that reflect a resistance to data use, a dislike or reticence toward the process, or a pushback against using data to inform instruction genesis comments that describe where a teacher or leader’s mental model for data use originated (e.g., leader, teacher or leader prep program, self-study) definitions delineations among the words “data,” “evidence” and “information” testing any references to testing or state tests following a question that asked about “data use” current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 20 appendix b variables index construal composite variable composed of the three items on the “construal of data” scale, range from 1 (strongly disagree to 5 (strongly agree) • i use a variety of data to inform my teaching and/or daily practice. • i use a variety of information to inform my teaching and/or daily practice. • i use a variety of evidence to inform my teaching and/or daily practice. beneficence composite variable composed of four items on the “beneficence of data” scale; range from 1 (strongly disagree to 5 (strongly agree) • data use helps me make informed decisions. • data use helps me make ethical decisions. • data use benefits educators and students. • data use is about continuous improvement in the classroom. anxiety composite variable composed of three items on the “data anxiety” scale, range from 1 (strongly disagree to 5 (strongly agree) • i worry that data will be used to shame or punish teachers at my school. • i am concerned that data use will increase unhealthy competition among educators at my campus. • i am concerned that data use will increase unhealthy competition among educators in my district. commitment to data use 2-level variable generated by recoding responses to the question, “if no one (on my team, in my department) wanted to use data, i would still make the effort to do so). • 1=”low/lukewarm commitment” included responses of 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree) and 3 (neither agree nor disagree) • 2=”high commitment” included responses of 4 (agree) and 5 (strongly agree) rounded beneficence 3-level variable generated by rounding the composite variable “beneficence” • 1=”low beneficence” (responses ranging from 1-2.99) • 2=”moderate beneficence” (responses ranging from 3.00-3.99) • 3=”high beneficence” (responses ranging from 4.0-5.0) accountability orientation 3-level variable generated by recoding responses to the item, “data use is all about accountability ratings.” • 1=”non-accountability oriented) (responses of “strongly disagree” or “disagree”) • 2=”accountability neutral” (responses of “neither agree nor disagree”) • 3=”accountability oriented” (responses of “agree” “strongly agree”) anxiety level 2-level variable generated by recoding the composite variable “data anxiety” • 1=low/no anxiety (1-2.75) • 2=moderate/high anxiety (3.25-5) • responses between 2.75 and 3.25 were excluded in the creation of this variable because those represented scores near the “neither agree nor disagree”—or neutral—midpoint of the scale. reported data misuse/abuse 3-level variable generated by recoding the item, “i have worked in one or more contexts where data were used to shame or punish teachers” • 1=not experienced data use/misuse (responses of “strongly disagree” and “disagree”) • 2=neutral (responses of “neither agree nor disagree”) • 3=experienced data misuse/abuse (responses of “agree” and “strongly agree) leading inquiry in schools: examining mental models of data-informed practice 21 article citation jimerson j.b., & mcghee, m. w. (2013). leading inquiry in schools: examining mental models of data-informed practice. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1163 author notes jo beth jimerson, ph.d. texas christian university tcu box 297900 fort worth, texas 76912 817-257-6777 j.jimerson@tcu.edu jo beth jimerson serves as an assistant professor of educational leadership at texas christian university, where she works with aspiring school leaders and studies issues related to educational data use and school improvement efforts. marla w. mcghee, ph.d. texas christian university tcu box 297900 fort worth, texas 76912 817-257-6777 m.mcghee@tcu.edu marla mcghee is an associate professor of educational leadership at texas christian university in ft. worth, texas where she focuses her work on action research for school improvement, instructional leadership and supervision, and leadership practices that promote information literacy and effective school library media programs. acknowledgements: the authors wish to thank judy groulx and annie nguyen for their support and input on earlier drafts of this paper, as well as the anonymous reviewers who provided constructive suggestions in the review process. we also thank the educators of “pence schools” for the time they so graciously gave to participate in this study. manuscript received: 01/08/2013 revisions received: 03/27/2013 accepted: 04/04/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 22 volume 16, number 1 april 26, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template 1 volume 2, number 2 september 8, 1999 issn 1099-839x commentary — a new day in how scholars communicate gene v. glass arizona state university since the founding of the royal society (of london for improving natural knowledge) in 1660—an event that some mark as the beginning of science as it is known in the modern world—the production and consumption of scientific writings have been subject to economic necessities that have forcefully shaped the very nature of knowledge. (the earliest members of the royal society paid an "admission fee" of 10 shillings at each wednesday afternoon meeting, which went to subsidize the publication of philosophical transactions, the world's first scientific journal which dates from 1664.) the costs of printing and transporting paper have exerted a tremendous influence over which scientific writings are made public and who constitutes the public for whom they are published. when a hundred years ago the cultural and intellectual strains of positivism/operationism were conveniently joined with the professionalization of science in the university and the economics of industrialized capitalism, modern scholarly communications assumed its present form. a reader in the year 2000 browsing a scientific journal from the year 1910 will find the environs thoroughly familiar. about ten years ago, the economics of publishing and communicating writings over vast distances were radically changed by the emergence of the internet, i.e., telecommunications utilizing small, cheap computers. the effects of this revolution in telecommunications have yet to change the way scholars publish and who reads their writings. three and a half centuries of custom and entrenched economic interests will not yield readily to a new day. the work of scholars can now be shared almost instantly with literally ten-fold or a hundred-fold more persons than could access such works in the past. and yet, there are those who would squelch this revolution if they could. the economic interests of publishers of scholarly journals are obvious. less obvious is the fact that their profits—variously estimated as high as 30% to 40%—are the envy of the business world, and that scholarly publishers are now working frantically to find ways of owning the communications among scholars, arguing that the "value added" by their editing and formatting justifies their continued intermediary role between scholars and their audience. many non-profit scholarly societies owe a good portion of their income to paper publications and are indistinguishable from commercial publishers in regard to their wish to maintain things as they are. the editors of current issues in education,as well as editors of other electronic journals, will attest to the fact that professional quality editing and formatting can be achieved by individuals working in public institutions and making their efforts freely available to the world for the public good. recently, the majority of the faculty at cal tech signed a petition vowing that they would no longer cede copyright of their work to commercial journal publishers. more difficult to understand, perhaps, are the motives and attitudes to toward electronic telecommunications of scientists and scholars themselves, particularly those who occupy influential positions in universities and scholarly societies. william j. brand (1999), in his dissertation research on electronic scholarly journals, interviewed nearly three dozen prominent researchers in physics, mathematics, psychology and education on the subject of their practices and attitudes toward electronic publication. surprisingly, the "softer" the discipline (education and psychology being considered much "softer" than physics and mathematics), the more insistent the researchers were that all publication be rigorously refereed and the less concerned they were with timely release of work. educational researchers worried that any compromising of the highest academic standards would permit errors to enter the body of knowledge about education. some even expressed the somewhat supercilious opinion that it is desirable for manuscripts to lie around for months or even a year to give the authors time to mull over their work. (those who expressed these opinions were professors long ago tenured, it bears noting.) physicists, on the other hand, said, "give me the article as soon as it's written; i can make up my own mind if it is right or not." and so they do, as any visit to http://xxx.lanl.gov/, where physicists and many other scientists archive their "preprints," will quickly show. (the british have already http://xxx.lanl.gov/ current issues in education vol. 2 no. 2 2 established a "preprint" archiving service for educational researchers called education-line.) now the issue of "peer review" in the production of scholarly writings and the issue of access to those writings by the public are easily separated. and i hesitate to continue down the road that leads to a severe critique of peer review, particularly since i do not wish to infect my colleagues who edit current issues in education with the virus of "low standards," the virulent kiss of death in the academic world. so permit me to say just a few words about access. the great joy of this new world of electronic publication comes at least once a day to those who edit scholarly ejournals. the same computers that "serve" out the publications also record the location (nation, for sure, sometimes the university or organization) of the recipient (the personal identity of the recipient is generally ambiguous, though not always). by scanning the daily access logs, one can see the locations of persons who visited the journal that day and downloaded articles. current issues in education is still a bit young to have established clear patterns of usage. on a good day, cie will be visited by about 100 persons, but a look at a more established ejournal, education policy analysis archives, will show the breadth of access to scholarly writings that beggars by comparison the distribution of paper journals. the access logs for epaa for one weekday in august 1999 (a notoriously slow month for academic work in the northern hemisphere) revealed the following features among the nearly 1,000 persons who visited the journal that day: location number of persons aol.com 156 canada 42 australia 42 united states school districts 29 united kingdom 16 netherlands 16 malaysia 15 saudi arabia 12 singapore 11 mexico 8 japan 6 new zealand (aotearoa) 6 philippines 4 turkey 4 taiwan 4 thailand 4 columbia 3 hungary 3 hong kong 3 indonesia 3 http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ http://epaa.asu.edu/ http://epaa.asu.edu/ commentary — a new day in how scholars communicate 3 france 2 nepal 2 portugal 2 cyprus 2 mauritius 2 brazil 2 chile 2 italy 1 brunei 1 belarus 1 numbers like these are not simply gratifying, they are also very informative. the more than 150 persons visiting the journal from america online represent mostly persons not connected to the traditional academic community; many teachers and administrators maintain aol accounts, as well as school board members and interested citizens. it is difficult to imagine this number of such individuals making their way to the stacks of the nearest university library to find a research article on education policy. the connections from the philippines, turkey, thailand, columbia, hungary, indonesia, nepal, mauritius, brazil and chile represent accesses to scholarly literature that has often been beyond the reach of these individuals, because commercial publishers charge libraries as much as $200 u.s. for journals of fewer than 300 pages. the remaining nearly 600 persons accessing the journal on that day were from universities in the u.s. the journal, epaa, competes for attention with three other journals in its field whose combined subscriptions total about 5,000. one article in epaa has been downloaded 25,000 times in three years. a national survey of home schooling was published in the journal on march 23, 1999, and surpassed 9,500 downloads on august 1, 1999. the new age of scholarly communications immediately promises wide access at low cost. on a day now not even dimly foreseen, it promises to reshape what scholars mean by "publication" as well as the very nature of their work. that day cannot come too soon. references brand, w.j. (1999). papyrophiles, philistines and electroncentrics: the slow growth of electronic scholarly journals. doctoral dissertation. tempe, az: arizona state university. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 2 4 1999 article citation glass, g. v. (1999, september 8). a new day in how scholars communicate. current issues in education [on-line], 2(2). available:http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number2/. author notes gene v glass is associate dean for research of college of education at arizona state university. he has had extensive experience editing print journals dating back to 1968, and has edited and published education policy analysis archives (epaa)http://epaa.asu.edu/ a scholarly electronic journal since 1993. dr. glass may be reached at glass@asu.edu. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation glass, g. v. (2011). a new day in how scholars communicate. current issues in education, 2(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/826 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number2/index.html http://epaa.asu.edu/ mailto:glass@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 cie template current issues in education, 20(1) 1 volume 20, issue 1 march 20, 2017 issn 1099-839x an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education hyunjung (flora) cho idaho state university & dickinson state university cynthia lee pemberton colorado mesa university beverly ray idaho state university abstract: this study employed purposive sampling across 20 se idaho schools to explore pk-3 educators’ perceptions regarding the value and importance of creativity education in the early childhood education setting (pk-3). a survey instrument and semi-structured interview protocol were developed for use. surveys were distributed by mail and through on-site meetings, interviews were conducted in one-on-one settings. seventy-three pk-3 educators were surveyed and eight took part in the interviews. the findings indicated that while pk-3 educators valued the concept of creativity, there was a discrepancy between teachers’ claims of valuing creativity and the realities of their classrooms. barriers to increasing creativity education were identified as a lack of educators’ understanding of creativity, children’s freedom of expression, curricular restrictions, and the high-stake testing environment. needed supports included loosening regulations associated with standardized tests, more curricular flexibility and space for free-play activities, and a clearer, shared understanding of creativity. keywords: creativity, supports, barriers, early childhood teacher education, preservice education, standardized testing apa-style citation: cho, h., pemberton, c. l., & ray, b. (2017). an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education. current issues in education, 20(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1537 accepted: november 20th, 2016 an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education in the pk-3 education setting creativity, imagination, and the ability to engage as individuals acting as centers of choice and evaluation (greene, 1995) are essential dispositional skills needed to prepare citizens to thrive in an increasingly complex 21st century (beghetto, 2015; eisner, 2002; greene, 1995; http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1537 cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 2 wells & claxton, 2002). creativity and imagination help assure citizens are prepared for the unprecedented changes, global challenges and risks, and an uncertain future faced by our nation and the world (eisner, 2002; friedman, 2007; friedman & mandelbaum, 2011; greene, 1995; world economic forum, 2006). according to gardner (1993) children are born with creative potential, with 3 to 5 years of age being critical in terms of creativity development. fostering creativity and imagination serve to nurture and support a lifelong love for learning, thereby potentially enabling children to lead more enriched and creative lives (eason, giannangelo, & franceschini iii, 2009). epstein (2008) discussed how encouraging creativity supports children’s academic performance, learning processes, and lifelong learning and stressed the growing importance of creativity, imagination, and divergent thinking in the classroom. despite evidence that creativity development, and what greene (2017) described as social imagination—“…the capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be…” are associated with enhanced learning potential and life enrichment (eason et al., 2009; epstein, 2008; gardner, 1993) they are often conceptualized as independent and separate from academic curricular goals (beghetto, 2015; beghetto & kaufman, 2009; eisner, 2002). a 2010 newsweek article by bronson and merryman noted that too often early childhood education curricula does not provide or foster an environment conducive to unlocking and supporting children’s creativity development. a longstanding and compelling body of literature supports concerns that creativity development in the k-12 education setting has been and is, not only threatened but deteriorating (beghetto, 2010; berliner, 2009; bronson & merryman, 2010; eisner, 2002; greene, 1995, 2007). guilford (1950) gave a presidential address to the american psychological association (apa) during which the importance of developing the creative potential of school-age children, along with concerns about creative thinking being “seriously discouraged” in schools and classrooms, were raised (p. 448). likewise, according to torrance (1959) “we have seen many indications in our testing of first and second grade children that many…seem to have been subjected to concerted efforts to eliminate fantasy from their thinking…” (p. 313). more recently, bronson and merryman (2010) noted that existing school curricula typically do not provide or foster an environment conducive to unlocking and supporting children’s creativity development. they further reported that creativity scores of u.s. children in kindergarten to sixth grade have inched downward since the 1990s. similarly, using the torrance test of creative thinking (ttct) research conducted by kim (2011) showed that creative thinking scores among children in kindergarten through third grade had decreased significantly when compared to scores from 1974 to 1990. the ttct measures five elements of creative thinking: (a) fluency, (b) abstractness of titles, (c) originality, (d) elaboration, and (e) resistance to premature closure (torrance, 1966). the steady and persistent decline in ttct scores indicates that creative thinking has declined over time, especially among children in kindergarten through third grade. because of the role of creativity and imagination in a future characterized by uncertainty and change, and the critical age-range for creativity development noted by gardner (1993), declines associated with developing children’s creative competence must be addressed and reversed (beghetto, 2015; wells & claxton, 2002). this study sought to better understand this issue by exploring pk-3 educators’ perceptions of the value and importance of creativity education; and identifying educator perceptions of barriers and supports associated with creating and fostering education environments conducive to developing creativity. the latter, perceived barriers and supports, are the primary foci of this paper. cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 3 barriers and supports high-stakes testing narrows the curriculum and detracts from nurturing creativity in the classroom (berliner, 2009). according to berliner, high stakes testing detracts from and limits liberal arts education because of the time that ends up being spent on test preparation and the focus on right-answer multiple-choice items often devoid of critical thinking, problem solving, debate, and project method approaches. this narrowing restricts teachers’ opportunities to teach creatively and to support creative skills, restricting children’s freedom to experiment and question, as well as hindering creativity and critical thinking engagement and development through play (dacey, 1989; eisner, 2002, gardner, 1993; ginsburg, 2007; meador, 1992). as noted, too often creativity and academic learning are conceptualized and compartmentalized as separate curricular goals (beghetto, 2015; beghetto & kaufman, 2009; eisner, 2002); and given the pressures associated with high stakes testing, educators may perceive and rely on gifted and talented and after school programs, or other extracurricular activities to suffice to teach, foster and nurture creativity development (beghetto, 2010). also, despite increasing interest in creativity in education, there seems to be a lack of a clear and consistent definition of creativity in education (cropley, 2000; feist & runco, 1993). furthermore, research by skiba, tan, sternberg, and grigorenko, (2010) indicates that there is a discrepancy between teachers’ claims of valuing creativity and the realities of their classrooms. with the above in mind, the questions emerge as to what educational barriers and/or supports may be driving the apparent disconnect between the importance of creativity development and the reality of declining evidence of creativity among pk-3 students. methodology sampling and respondent demographics this study employed purposive sampling. participants were delimited to pk-3 teachers and school leaders employed across 20 schools located in southeastern idaho during the 20122013 academic year. one hundred and sixty-four survey opportunities were provided to public, private and charter school educators. of those, 73 surveys were completed and returned resulting in a response rate of 44.5%. of the respondents, 92% were female, with an age distribution slightly skewed toward midto late-career teachers. over two-thirds indicated they held a bachelor’s degree (68.5%). approximately one-third noted they had been teaching for between one and six years, with almost 40% indicating they had 15 years or more teaching experience. five teachers and three administrators participated in a semi-structured interview conducted in follow-up to the surveys. interviewees consisted of one male and seven females ranging in age from 26-30 to 51-55, with a range of teaching experience of four to 26 years. instrumentation and procedures the study employed a survey instrument developed to address the research questions, with item prompts informed by the literature. the instrument queried educator perceptions about the value, importance, barriers, and supports associated with creativity in the early childhood (pk-3) education setting. once drafted it was subject to content verification by the researcher, followed by expert review by an early childhood educator in the college of education at the researcher’s institution. the instrument was then piloted with four early childhood educators in a neighboring school district. the instrument was modified to reflect both expert review and pilot test feedback. two open-ended questions, one addressing barriers and one addressing supports, were also included. in terms of value and importance, item prompts ranged from direct queries (e.g.., “i value creativity,” “creativity can be measured” and “i value creative behaviors”) to perception queries cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 4 about educator and curricular agency in recognizing, nurturing and teaching creativity (e.g., “…students’ creativity can be developed in the regular classroom;” “developing creativity should be one of the main goals of early childhood curriculum;” “educators are very important in enhancing students’ creativity;” and “the school where i teach/administrate places emphasis on fostering student creativity” ). literature by beghetto (2010), berliner (2009), bronson and merryman (2010), eason, giannangelo and franceschini (2009), feldhusen and treffinger (1975), and runco and johnson (2002), provided the foundation for these item queries. building upon this literature, barrier and support queries were designed to move from value-based perceptions to educator views about pedagogy, curriculum and the teaching and learning environment regarding what gets in the way (barriers) and what they need (supports) to enhance creativity education in pk-3 classrooms (longo, 2010; luftig, 2000; miller & almon, 2009; robelen, 2012; skiba et al., 2010). the link between survey items and the literature was further substantiated by the emergent themes evidenced in the interview data (see tables 2, 4 and 6), further strengthening the researcher’s confidence in the instrument use. the semi-structured interview protocol consisted of sets of questions in categories aligned with those used in the survey instrument. the interview protocol was drafted after the surveys were returned and analyzed. a 30-minute interview was conducted and recorded in the interviewees’ office, classroom or other location of their preference. interviews were conducted in a quiet and comfortable place with a mp3 recorder placed between the participant and researcher. recordings were transcribed by the researcher and transcripts analyzed using a general inductive approach to derive codes and themes (thomas, 2006). these data served to explicate the quantitative survey data. analysis and results educators’ perceptions regarding the value and importance of creativity education provide a foundational context to the primary foci of this paper, the barriers and supports. the frequency response findings are displayed in table 1 and reveal five themes: (a) educators’ valued creativity; (b) educators’ recognized the importance of creativity especially in early childhood education; (c) educators’ recognized their role to nurture students’ creativity; (d) educators’ perceived creativity as helpful for academic learning; and (e) they perceived hardship in terms of measuring creativity. relative to recognizing value and importance almost 95% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they valued creativity, and a strong majority agreed or strongly agreed that it was important, especially in early childhood education (90.4%). similarly, 80% believed there are key educational developmental periods in cultivating creativity, and 86.3% indicated that developing creativity should be one of the main goals of early childhood education curriculum. over 90% “agreed” and “strongly agreed” that educators’ role was important to nurturing creativity (95.8%); and, that it was the teachers’ responsibility to develop students’ creativity in the regular classroom. these data indicated that: (a) students’ creativity can be developed in the regular classroom (91.8%); and (b) regular classroom teachers are responsible to help students develop their creativity (90.4%). relative to views regarding creativity education as essential for academic learning, 95.8% “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that it was very important. likewise, just over 75% indicated core knowledge was essential to nurturing creativity (75.4%), and 95.9% believed that accountability can coexist with creativity. however, regarding measurement of creativity, over half of the respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that creativity could be measured (53.4%) and that that measured results could be reliable (57.5%). cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 5 table 1 educators’ view and value of creativity in early childhood education in terms of importance value/importance of creativity education strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree not applicable wave 1 i value creativity. 0(0.0%) 1(01.4%) 10(13.7%) 59(80.8%) 0(0.0%) students’ creativity can be developed in the regular classroom. 0(0.0%) 4(05.5%) 16(21.9%) 21(69.9%) 0(0.0%) creativity is genetically endowed. 9(12.3%) 25(34.2%) 20(27.4%) 16(21.9%) 1(01.4%) developing creativity should be one of the main goals of early childhood curriculum. 1(01.4%) 6(08.2%) 33(45.2%) 30(41.1%) 1(01.4%) i believe there are key educational developmental periods in cultivating creativity. 1(01.4%) 9(12.3%) 41(56.2%) 17(23.3%) 3(04.1%) ages three to five are critical years for the development of creativity. 0(0.0%) 4(05.5%) 31(42.5%) 35(47.9%) 2(02.7%) creativity is essential for enhancing student academic learning. 1(01.4%) 2(02.7%) 31(42.5%) 39(53.4%) 0(0.0%) educators are very important in enhancing students’ creativity. 1(01.4%) 2(02.7%) 25(34.2%) 45(61.6%) 0(0.0%) regular classroom teachers are responsible to help students develop their creativity. 1(01.4%) 6(08.2%) 34(46.6%) 32(43.8%) 0(0.0%) the school where i teach/administrate places emphasis on fostering student creativity. 1(01.4%) 14(19.2%) 25(34.2%) 33(45.2%) 0(0.0%) creativity can be measured. 6(08.2%) 33(45.2%) 21(28.8%) 5(06.8%) 7(09.6%) the results of creativity measurement can be reliable. 6(08.2%) 36(49.3%) 12(16.4%) 4(05.5%) 13(17.8%) educators are very important in recognizing students’ creativity. 1(01.4%) 2(02.7%) 35(47.9%) 35(47.9%) 0(0.0%) i value creative behaviors. 0(0.0%) 1(01.4%) 30(41.1%) 42(57.5%) 0(0.0%) accountability can coexist with creativity. 0(0.0%) 1(01.4%) 32(43.8%) 38(52.1%) 0(0.0%) core knowledge is essential to nurturing creativity. 0(0.0%) 11(15.1%) 38(52.1%) 17(23.3%) 0(0.0%) liberal arts subjects (e.g., history, social studies, civics, geography, art and music, foreign language can strengthen creativity. 0(0.0%) 1(01.4%) 29(39.7%) 42(57.5%) 1(01.4%) creativity can be defined as the interaction among aptitude, process and environment by which an individual or group produces a perceptible product that is both novel and useful. 0(0.0%) 3(04.1%) 41(56.2%) 17(23.3%) 7(09.6%) lack of free-play can negatively influence children’s creativity development. 0(0.0%) 5(06.8%) 31(42.5%) 34(46.6%) 2(02.7%) unlocking creativity supports academic success. 0(0.0%) 3(04.1%) 31(42.5%) 37(50.7%) 1(01.4%) psychological freedom unlocks creativity. 0(0.0%) 6(08.2%) 30(41.1%) 22(30.1%) 8(11.0%) note. n = 73. survey response range was from 1= strongly agree, 2= agree, 3= strongly agree, to 4= not applicable. cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 6 these data were supported by the narrative interview data, through which six sub-themes emerged: (a) recognizing the importance of creativity, (b) accountability can coexist with creativity, (c) difficulties in measuring creativity, (d) essential to academic learning, (e) important role of administrators, and (f) teachers’ responsibilities to nurture creativity. table 2 displays these themes and the number of interviewees (out of eight) whose comments were coded with each theme. explanations and exemplars of these themes follow. table 2 emergent theme frequencies among eight participants emergent themes frequency number of participants making statements coded as fitting the theme recognizing importance of creativity 14 8 accountability can coexist with creativity 4 4 difficulties of measuring creativity 2 2 essential to academic learning 4 3 important role of administrators 4 3 teachers’ responsibilities 5 4 all interviewees recognized the importance of creativity. one respondent related its importance to preparing for the future in terms of career and college readiness. she stated: “helping a child to be ready to live and compete in this world. that is what employers are looking for, whether they think out of the box or not, so it is very important!” some respondents related its importance in terms of brain development. as one female teacher said, “it is [especially] important in younger ages, because as far as brain development, that’s where their brains are built and encouraged to grow in different ways.” four out of eight believed that accountability can coexist with creativity. the school leader said, “when we look at an effective instructional strategy in the classroom, we look at accountability as being an endpoint where we get to, but [in terms of] the options along the way…we have to provide more options for children to get there.” he went on to say: we have to get results, but there are many paths we can take. i think there are many learning styles along the way…. teachers want… [and need]…to release some autonomy to their students…not “this is what you have to do” or “it is going to look like this” but instead to say “this is what we are going to come to, how do we arrive there?” so, definitely, accountability and creativity can coexist. respondents indicated that measurement of creativity was difficult. one participant stressed this through the following comment: creativity is not necessarily the thing we grade on or report to parents about…but it something that we all recognize as important and try to nurture….the whole idea of perceiving creativity is, cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 7 well, we all think we can recognize it, but at the same time when it comes to grading it, it is much, much less clear. both teachers and leaders noted creativity as essential to academic learning. one leader mentioned, “creativity is not only for high-achieving students. in fact, creative opportunities can help students become more high-achieving.” a teacher emphasized the role of creativity for enhancing students’ learning. she said, “they are excited for those classes, so they want to come to school. so i think having creativity in the classroom makes students get more involved in their learning. it really helps our classrooms.” likewise, three respondents commented on the important role that school leaders play in fostering and supporting creativity education. one teacher said, “no matter whether the school is public or private, the principal plays huge factor in what happens in the schools, including creativity in the curriculum…. [the leader] sets the tone for the school.” another leader elaborated, stating: “in terms of a model of school expectations, the administrator sets the bar….as administrators, i think we have to set an example and what our expectations are [for developing creativity].” four respondents believed nurturing creativity was and is the teachers’ responsibility. out of these four, three were leaders. an elementary school teacher said, “i believe it is every teacher’s responsibility to pull the creativity out of students.” likewise, the school leader mentioned her expectations for teachers. she said, “teachers want to allow students to have opportunities to be creative, but they have to teach state standards under lots of pressures, and get high scores.” she went on to state: “…teachers really need to work on nurturing students’ creativity as well as developing academic learning. i do have that expectation for my teachers.” overall, respondents noted that nurturing creativity in the classroom was important to students’ academic learning, and they perceived it as the teachers’ responsibility, supported by school leaders/administrators. they were less clear when asked about identifying and measuring creativity in the classroom. barriers what barriers do educators perceive relative to increasing creativity education in an early childhood education curriculum? data addressing this question were explored using factor analysis. factor analysis is a statistical analysis tool used to identify underlying variables and investigate their relationships, allowing the researcher to collapse a larger number of variables into factors based on their correlation to each other (ary, jacobs, razavieh & sorensen, 2006). the alpha reliability of the barrier items was .895, indicating strong inter-item reliability. using the kaiswer-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy (kmo-test) and bartlett’s test of sphericity, both of which are used to examine the appropriateness of factor analysis the sample was deemed adequate for factor analysis. the value of kmo was greater than .06 (.773), and bartlett’s test was highly significant (p < .001). the extraction communalities (i.e., the amount of variance in each variable) for barriers were the lack of creativity metrics in assessment (.340), and educators’ belief that nurturing creativity would be addressed in gifted programs or other extracurricular activities (.282). excepting these two items, communality values were welldefined by this factor solution, therefore the researcher decided to extract these two items. loadings under .50 were left blank. table 3 displays these findings. three major groupings of barriers were extracted. these were: (a) lack of educators’ understanding of creativity, (b) lack of children’s freedom of expression and choices, and (c) curriculum restriction and high-stakes testing environments. in particular, the first factor was associated with lack of teachers’ understanding of the definition of creativity, lack of agreement cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 8 between teachers’ understanding of creativity education and that of administrators’, and educators’ lack of understandings of identifying students’ descriptive creative-behaviors. the second factor corresponded most strongly to restricted choice for children, and suppression of creative expression. the third factor was most associated with a high-stakes testing environment and a narrowing of the curriculum associated with a lack of liberal arts subjects. because of their moderately large correlations with both the first and second factors, lack of teachers’ professional development opportunities specific to projectand problem-based learning, lack of curriculum flexibility, and lack of play activities bridged the “lack of educators’ understanding of creativity” and “lack of children’s freedom of expression and choices” groups. table 3 loadings of barriers to increasing curricular emphasis on creativity education variables barriers factor 1 factor 2 factor 3 high-stakes testing environments .690 lack of liberal arts subjects among curriculum .734 lack of teachers’ understanding the definition of creativity .886 lack of agreement between teachers’ understanding of creativity education and that of administrators .812 educators’ lack of understandings of identifying students’ descriptive creativebehaviors .894 competition .613 .559 restricted choice for children .647 .904 suppression of creative expression .633 .830 lack of teachers’ professional development opportunities specific to project-and problembased learning .876 lack of curriculum flexibility .851 lack of play activities .852 qualitative data supported these findings, particularly relative to lack of children’s freedom of expression and choices, and curriculum restrictions and high-stakes testing environments. the interviewees identified the following themes: (a) getting high scores on standardized testing, (b) lack of collaboration with teachers, (c) lack of resources (money, and teacher aides), (d) disconnect between early childhood education and elementary education, (e) lack of parents’ support, and (f) time constraint. table 4 displays these findings. explanations and exemplars of the emergent themes follow. cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 9 table 4 emergent barrier theme frequencies among the eight interviewees barriers factor 1 factor 2 factor 3 high-stakes testing environments .690 lack of liberal arts subjects among curriculum .734 lack of teachers’ understanding the definition of creativity .886 lack of agreement between teachers’ understanding of creativity education and that of administrators .812 educators’ lack of understandings of identifying students’ descriptive creativebehaviors .894 competition .613 .559 restricted choice for children .647 .904 suppression of creative expression .633 .830 lack of teachers’ professional development opportunities specific to project-and problembased learning .876 lack of curriculum flexibility .851 lack of play activities .852 getting high scores on standardized testing. having standardized tests and achieving high scores were seen by respondents as key barriers to increasing creativity education in early childhood education. all of the interviewees indicated they perceived that the pressure associated with standardized tests was a strong barrier to devoting time and curricular space to creativity education. according to an elementary school teacher: test scores and standardized testing are driving the activities that i put in my classroom. my job, the amount of money that i make to feed my family and take care of myself depend on my students, their results and their scores. having that pressure is a huge barrier. another respondent commented on no child left behind stating: “creativity has been stifled for so long with the no child left behind legislation. a lot of teachers feel forced to channel their curriculum to teach to a test.” she went on to say: “we just don’t have time for nurturing creativity.” not only teachers, but also leaders perceived the pressures associated with high-stakes standardized tests as strong barriers to increasing creativity education. one school leader said, “teachers have to work in a highly structured and test-driven environment…that pushes the creative part aside.” cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 10 lack of collaboration with teachers. regarding perceptions that lack of collaboration with other teachers hindered them from nurturing creativity, five respondents noted that while they used to engage in collaboration with other teachers, increasingly teaching resources seem to have become tools for competing to get higher scores. as a result, according to one respondent, collaboration has all but disappeared: “i am concerned about the way education is moving…the collaboration piece is getting smaller and smaller.” lack of resources (money and teacher aides). four respondents indicated that lack of resources was a barrier for nurturing creativity in schools. one teacher said, “let’s say we are going to create something we have learned about. the responsibility to buy all the stuff is on me….it is not provided.” similarly, another related lack of funding and help in the classroom (e.g., teacher aides) as barriers to developing and devoting time and space to increasing creativity education. disconnect between early childhood education and elementary education. this theme was best expressed by the preschool director. he pointed out that, in his view, elementary school teachers were not as aware of constructivism as early childhood education teachers were. he stated: “[e]ducators who have gone through early childhood education programs are aware of constructivism…but as a principal at an elementary school, i didn’t see teachers who necessarily came with that sort of mindset.” he explained his observations as follows: “when they [elementary education teachers] take over a first or second grade classroom, it tends to be a more traditional approach to education, such as drilling…this is not what i see in the preschool setting.” lack of parental support. three respondents commented on a lack of resources associated with parental support as a barrier to increasing creativity education. one said, “we are dealing with a high percentage of low income students…. 85% of our students are not getting much interaction with their parents because they are busy working two and three jobs.” elaborating on this idea, another talked about the role of the parent-teacher association (pta). she said, “my husband, who is working at… has an art-mom. pta pays for [her]…. parents’ support is the place where creativity happens.” time constraints. consistent with the concerns regarding high-stakes testing, respondents pointed out the time constraints associated with curricular rigidity. a teacher commented: “we have to provide 90 minutes of specific core instruction…30 minutes of math instruction… [then there are] certain children who need extra time and help…. there is no compromising in that. it makes me feel really tight.” all three of the factor groupings were represented in the qualitative data. specifically, factor 1 was expressed through the disconnect theme, factor 2 through the lack of resources theme, and factor 3 through pressures and constraints associated with time and high-stakes standardized testing. supports what supports do educators need to nurture creativity education in an early childhood education curriculum? factor analysis was again used to summarize and describe the data by grouping variables that were correlated with each other. the alpha reliability of the support survey items was .828, indicating strong inter-item reliability. communality values were welldefined by this factor solution, with all variables exceeding .45. kmo. bartlett’s tests confirmed that this sample was also appropriate to conduct factor analysis. the value of kmo was greater than .06, (.647) and bartlett’s test was highly significant (p < .001). perceptions specific to creativity education supports in early childhood education emerged clustered into four factors. cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 11 these results accounted for 71% of the variance. loadings under .50 were left blank. table 5 displays these findings. table 5 loadings of supports to increasing curricular emphasis on creativity education variables supports factor 1 factor 2 factor 3 factor 4 loosen the regulation of state standardized tests .735 include more liberal arts subjects among curriculum teachers’ clearer understanding of the definition of creativity .808 there is an agreement between teachers’ understanding of creativity education and that of administrators’ identify students’ descriptive creative behaviors .839 include creativity metrics in assessments .537 educators’ belief that nurturing creativity should be addressed in general curricular activities .720 loosen competition teachers respect students’ choices .785 making children feel comfortable showing creative expressions .702 provide teachers with professional development opportunities specific to projectand problembased learning .557 increase curriculum flexibility .756 more space for free-play activities .831 the first factor consisted of identifying students’ descriptive creative behaviors, educators’ belief that nurturing creativity should be addressed in general curricular activities, teachers respect for students’ choices, making children feel comfortable showing creative expression, and providing teachers with professional development. the second factor contained loosening regulations associated with standardized tests, including creativity metrics in assessments, and increasing curricular flexibility. the third factor consisted of teachers’ clearer understanding of the definition of creativity, and the fourth, more space for free-play activities. from these findings the factor groupings were derived as: (a) educators’ attitudes toward creativity and efforts to nurture it, (b) flexible curriculum and including creativity metrics in assessment, (c) educators’ clearer understanding of creativity, and (d) free-play activities. because of their moderately large correlations with both the first and second factors, lack of cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 12 teachers’ professional development opportunities specific to projectand problem-based learning, lack of curriculum flexibility, and lack of play activities bridged the “lack of educators’ understanding of creativity” and “lack of children’s freedom of expression and choices” groups. findings from the qualitative data revealed four emergent support themes. table 6 displays these findings. explanations and exemplars of the support themes follow. table 6 emergent support theme frequencies among the eight interviewees emergent themes frequency number of participants making statements coded as fitting the theme collaboration among teachers 5 5 having common core (having more spaces for teaching) 3 3 college preparation program 6 4 having more teaching aides 4 3 collaboration among teachers. a majority of respondents pointed out having more collaboration among teachers could nurture creativity. one teacher said, “effective collaboration with teachers will be a support… having more collaboration with teachers would be really powerful.” leaders also believed educators need to have time and space to collaborate to enhance creativity education. commenting on this, the school leader said, “teachers need to work together. some of our lower grade teachers are best at looking at ways to enhance creative elements for children…creating time and space to collaborate among teachers would help share this knowledge.” impact of common core. respondents believed that having common core standards would enhance creativity education. one respondent stated: “once we have common core standards [next year] we will have clear guidelines for the big ideas to teach children.” she went on to explain that this clarity would help her create time and space for more creativity in terms of her pedagogy. she said, “…but we can use different things…different ways of teaching to address them.” college preparation program. this theme emerged across six of the eight interviews. in terms of support, four respondents pointed out that colleges should provide more creativity training for teachers coming into the teaching profession. the other respondents indicated that there should be a better connection between early childhood education curricula and elementary education programs. the school leader explained as follows: i was an elementary school principal in this school district and then came to this position [preschool director]. i realized what a small degree of understanding i had about early childhood education. now i have better understanding so i can share with my colleagues and principals at the elementary school levels. he went on to say: college preparation programs for elementary school teachers should look closely at constructivist and creativity learning cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 13 approaches, especially in early childhood education. this needs to be part of the curriculum. the support themes: collaboration among teachers, perceptions of content clarity benefits associated with a common core, college preparation programs that specifically address creativity education and the early childhood education setting, and having more resources and supports (e.g., teaching aides), were further supported the quantitative data in terms of collaboration (i.e., factor 1: educator’s attitudes toward creativity and efforts to nurture it); common core and flexibility (i.e., factor 2: flexibility), teacher preparation (i.e., factor 3: educator understanding), and teaching aide resources (i.e., factor 4: flexible schedules and free play activities). discussion the discussion presents the creativity value and importance findings, followed by the barrier and support perception findings discussed relative to the literature and purpose of the study. creativity education value and importance the respondents in this study clearly recognized the value and importance of creativity education. by combining the percentage of strongly agree and agree categories, more than 70% concerning the importance of creativity education. over 90% believed that they valued creativity and creative behaviors, and more than 80% recognized its importance in early childhood education. these findings are consistent with those reported by runco and johnson (1993, 2002) and runco (2003), who found that most of their participants (teachers) valued creative students and a creative classroom atmosphere. nearly all the respondents (95.9%) in this study believed that creativity is an essential skill for academic learning, and conversely, that academic learning enhances children’s creativity (75.4%). in sum, awareness of the importance of nurturing creativity in the classroom and recognizing their (i.e., educators) roles in working to develop children’s creativity, and believing that creativity is an essential skill for academic learning and vice versa, were evident and valued among the pk-3 educators surveyed and interviewed. even so, while they believed they knew it when they saw it (i.e., creativity), they were less clear and positive about assessing creativity. just under one-third of respondents thought that creativity could be assessed; only 21.9% believed that the results of creativity measurements could be reliable. from the interview data, the researcher found that even though some respondents agreed that creativity could be assessed, they felt that they did not have clear, concrete criteria or sufficient guidance on how to measure creativity in their classrooms. these results conveyed that pk-3 educators considered that while creativity could be developed in the classroom, a majority expressed uncertainty about clear, consistent identification and assessment of creativity. this finding was consistent with research by beghetto (2010, 2015) and skiba, tan, sternberg and grigorenko (2010) regarding creativity assessments as limited at best. barriers the extracted barrier factors were: lack of educators’ understanding of creativity, lack of children’s freedom of expression and choices, and curricular restrictions and high-stakes testing environment. the total variance accounted for by these factors was 69.01%. the first factor was related to a lack of educators’ understanding of creativity. during the interviews respondents tried to clarify the question by asking “what kind of creativity do you mean?” the researcher interpreted this to imply that for educators describing and defining creativity was somewhat less than concrete. according to baer (1997) and cropley (2000) there was and remains uncertainty in defining creativity. qualitative data explicated the researcher’s interpretation. interviewees cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 14 mentioned they wanted to help students nourish their own creativity, but said they had limited knowledge about educational strategies they could use to cultivate creativity. respondents’ believed that a lack of understanding of identifying students’ creative behaviors acted to inhibit creativity in their classrooms. the second factor was associated with a lack of children’s freedom of expression and choices. this finding was consistent with the literature (darling-hammond & snyder, 1992; ginsburg, 2007; luftig, 2000; murfee, 1995; nicol, 2010; smith, 1996) in terms of fostering creativity in pk-3 education settings through play-based activities and processes where children engaged free-play, imagination and fantasy. the third factor focused on highstake testing and curricular restrictions. the respondents in this study believed that school time is barely sufficient to cover core-knowledge and to prepare students for taking tests. even though they recognized the importance of creativity education in early childhood education, they were hesitant to include activities that foster creativity due to concerns that time spent nurturing creativity took away from time needed to prepare for mandatory tests. this finding was consistent with the literature in terms of the curricular narrowing effect of high-stakes testing (berliner, 2009; deke & haimson, 2006, eisner, 2002). the interview barrier findings reinforced the quantitative data in terms of time and curricular pressures associated with high-stakes testing, increasingly limited teacher collaboration time and space, resources and supports, and a perceived disconnect between teacher preparation and fostering an educational environment and curriculum for creativity education. a preschool director noted that he believed this disconnect contributes to a lack of understanding of creativity. supports when asked which supports they perceived increased creativity education four factors emerged: educators’ attitudes toward creativity and efforts to nurture it, flexible curricular schedules and creativity metrics in assessment; educators’ clearer understanding of creativity, and free-play activities. the total variance accounted for by these factors was 70.53%. the first factor addressed attitudes toward creativity and efforts to nurture it. respondents believed that identifying creative behaviors and constructing circumstances where children feel comfortable showing their creative expressions served to support opportunities for increased creativity. this finding was consistent with research by smith (1996), sternberg and lubart (1999), and sparks (2001) who found that children’s creativity could be nurtured and developed by educating teachers to espouse positive beliefs and perceptions about creativity, and to acquire techniques or methods to support classroom creativity. the second factor was associated with loosening standardized testing regulations and increasing curricular flexibility. this factor showed that respondents’ perceived great pressure associated with standardized testing, and that this hindered them from nurturing classroom creativity. respondents believed that having more flexible schedules could increase opportunities for creativity development. the third factor was related to educators’ understanding of creativity, and implied that the pk-3 educators in this study may not have a clear and consistent understanding of the meaning of creativity or identification of creative behavior in the context of school. finally, the fourth factor was having more space for free-play activities. this result was also supported by findings from the literature. a clinical report by ginsburg (2007) concluded that play was essential to development, allowing children to use their creativity while developing their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength. likewise, luftig (2000) argued there is “…a strong indication that creative thinking [is] facilitated by involvement in the arts” (p. 223); as did bequette (2012) and wynn and harris (2012) relative to stem education, art and design. while this study did not delve into cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 15 educator perceptions regarding the pk-3 pedagogical approaches (e.g., art, music, etc.) employed in classrooms, given the arguably strong association between play, arts education, and creativity, this would be a fruitful area of further inquiry. like the barrier findings, the interview support findings reinforced the quantitative data. specifically the interview data emphasized the importance of creating time and space for teacher collaboration, using a common core foundation to guide but not limit curricula, and the need for increased resources and supports (e.g., teaching aides). in terms of teacher preparation programs, interviewees noted that colleges should provide more creativity training for pre-professional teachers. implications for action the barrier and support findings were mutually reinforcing, which lends strength to the implications that may be derived. barrier factor 1 (educators’ understanding, attitudes toward creativity and efforts to nurture it) and support factor 3 (educators’ clearer understanding of creativity) addressed issues associated with teacher attitudes and understanding. the respondents did not have a clear or concrete understanding of creativity, and perceived that their problematic and somewhat ineffectual conceptualization of creativity hindered them from nurturing it in their classrooms. with respect to subsequent action, we propose that teacher education programs and ongoing professional development need to provide an appropriate definitional foundation from which pk-3 educators can build their lesson plans and advance their teaching to more specifically target creativity education. in terms of specific teacher-training, preservice teachers in particular need to see these pedagogies modeled for them and be able to engage and implement activities and pedagogical strategies during scaffolded clinical experiences designed to nurture and develop creativity. barrier factor 2 and support factor 4 focused on freedom of expression, choices and the importance of free-space and play. related to this, barrier factor 3 and support factor 2 targeted the same issues from the perspective of curricular rigidity and high-stakes testing. respondents perceived their current early childhood education curricula as interfering with children’s freedom of expression and choice, restricted in large measure by the pressures associated with high-stakes testing that serve to shape, in limiting ways, the daily learning environment of pk-3 classrooms. because of this, it is critical that we draw attention and focus to the value of creativity education. it is also important to make clear the impact high-stakes testing is having on pk-3 setting. efforts need to be engaged to establish a shared understanding of creativity as essential to, as opposed to in conflict or competition with academic learning. such an understanding would potentially create an underlying will to balance acts of teaching and arts of teaching, making creativity development and the inherent enhanced and enriched living/learning potential an integrated part of the curriculum (beghetto, 2015; green, 2013). ultimately, efforts such as these could and we believe would culminate in creating greater time, space, flexibility, and motivation for including explicit creativity education and activities. given the importance of creativity development, especially when children are young (dacey, 1989; gardner, 1993; khatena, 1971, as cited in meador, 1992), the current high-stakes testing environment and curricular rigidity that often accompanies it, education leaders and decision-makers (e.g., local and state school boards, legislatures and other policy makers) must be brought into this conversation. likewise, issues negatively impacting creativity learning must be made clear to those decision makers at the state and national levels, if positive 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(2012). toward a stem + arts curriculum: creating the teacher team. art education, 65(5), 42-47. retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/docview/1076740050?accountid= 14816 http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/12/14/14creative.h31.html?qs=nurture+students'+creativity http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/12/14/14creative.h31.html?qs=nurture+students'+creativity https://members.weforum.org/pdf/summitreports/turkey2006/turkey/turkey2006.pdf http://search.proquest.com.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/docview/1076740050?accountid=14816 http://search.proquest.com.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/docview/1076740050?accountid=14816 cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 19 author notes hyunjung (flora) cho, m.ed., dickinson state university 291 campus drive, dickinson, nd 58601. chohyun@isu.edu hyunjung (flora) cho completed interdisciplinary studies in college of education, idaho state university. her research interest includes nurturing creativity in learning and this article is part of her thesis. she is now at dickinson state university. cynthia lee a. pemberton, ed.d., vice president for academic affairs colorado mesa university cynthia lee a. pemberton is the vice president for academic affairs at colorado mesa university. dr. pemberton has conducted research, published and presented locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. her record of scholarly achievement includes two books, a chapter in an international adult learning compendium, over 30 refereed and/or limited review publications/proceedings, numerous invited publications, over 40 regional/ national/ international presentations, and well over 100 local/university and community presentations. beverly b. ray, phd. professor college of education idaho state university beverly b. ray, phd., is professor of education in the college of education at idaho state university. dr. ray has conducted research primarily in the area of technology for learning. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to hyunjung (flora) cho using the contact information listed above. mailto:chohyun@isu.edu cho, pemberton, & ray: an exploration of the existence, value and importance of creativity education current issues in education, 20(1) 20 volume 20, issue 1 march 20, 2017 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team interim executive editor constantin schreiber copy editors lucinda watson layout editor constantin schreiber stephanie mcbride-schreiner microsoft word 1269_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 3 november 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x adjunct faculty: who are these unsung heroes of academe? gail d. caruth and donald l. caruth eastfield college a trend in hiring adjuncts exists. adjuncts bring real-world perspectives to students, provide scheduling flexibility for department heads, and are a cost savings for colleges and universities. the purpose of this paper was to examine the role of af within the overall professorate. who are these part-time instructors? this research study was an archival quantitative, data mining study using data from the integrated postsecondary education data system (ipeds). this study identified full-time and part-time faculty according to gender and race from a total of 4,426 degree-granting universities in the united states. examination of the data revealed that adjuncts represented 50 percent of the total faculty in degree-granting institutions in the united states for the year 2011. implications from this study have a bearing on institutional morale, turnover, productivity, student service, community relations, employee relations, and institutional image. keywords: adjunct faculty, adjuncts, part-time faculty, full-time faculty, non-tenured faculty employment of adjunct faculty in colleges and universities maintains the employment of full-time faculty. one university official even compared adjuncts to fine wine at discount prices (halcrow & olson, 2008). adjunct faculty (af) are part-time employees who can be classified as either non-tenured or non-permanent; paid by course or on a year-by-year appointment; receive little or no health insurance or retirement benefits; experience few raises or advancement opportunities; have very little or no say in college or university governance; and may have earned a doctorate, master’s degree, or bachelor’s degree. adjuncts are hired as a cost savings for colleges and universities because they are compensated at a rate of roughly one-third that of full-time faculty. moreover, there is a large pool of instructors willing to be hired parttime with lower wages and few if benefits making this an attractive hiring alterative for institutions of higher learning (halcrow & olson, 2008; morton, 2012). student enrollment is on the rise in higher education. offering the number of classes necessary to meet the student demands extends beyond acceptable workloads for tenured/tenure track faculty and institutions are not able to meet these demands. as a result, higher education is hiring part-time faculty to teach the overcrowded, preparatory courses. furthermore, senior faculty at research institutions are less interested in teaching these lower level courses leaving these courses available for part-time instructors (halcrow & olson, 2008). the professorate today is divided into two separate faculty segments (altbach, berdahl, & gumport, 2005; halcrow & olson, 2008). the problem with having the two segments is the eventual disillusionment and lack of motivation of af. these instructors receive substandard compensation and are not well integrated into the system. as instructors, adjuncts tend to rely on traditional pedagogical methods of teaching and seldom incorporate new teaching methods because they receive little or no professional development opportunities as compared to their colleagues. ultimately, quality problems could exist such as substandard teaching from the af who may be currently well qualified for teaching. according to halcrow and olson (2008), this could also result in the overall decline in the merit of instructors in higher education due to the unwillingness to maintain the current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 2 status of all faculty. furthermore, instructors without tenure become fearful of anything that might upset students for fear of losing their jobs. studies have demonstrated that graduation rates decrease as the rates of hiring af increases. this finding, as maintained by the researchers, is the result of the disincentives for af rather than substandard teaching. apparently it is common practice in higher education to keep af in the rank of part-time status thereby guaranteeing flexibility for academic departments. department chairs are prepared to continue this practice indefinitely. af are often excluded from reaching 50% or better workloads to remain disqualified for receiving institutional benefits, for example. some colleges and universities will even interrupt the continuity of the full-time teaching loads of af to prevent the appearance of de-facto tenure. moreover, adjuncts often have larger course loads than the full-time faculty receiving benefits (halcrow & olson, 2008). af maintained that they receive minimal support and resources, if any, from their departments and are seen as transient by institutions. as a result, af are generally required to work in cramped spaces or to meet their students in hallways; lack any form of job security; feel they receive no respect; and are omitted from opportunities for involvement. many af, however, have willingly accepted their second-class citizenship status and substandard compensation to teach for personal growth, to share real-world experiences, or to earn extra income. this practice continues because there are a large number of af willing to accept these conditions, even though many express anger and frustration over their limited career opportunities and the general lack of appreciation. however, as a result of the cost savings and flexibility that adjuncts provide, higher education has become dependent upon the use of adjunct or part-time faculty (halcrow & olson, 2008). it is ironic that differentiation of the “haves” and “have-nots” even exists in higher education. since the mid 1950s higher education has promoted opened doors and claimed to provide equal playing fields for all students. colleges and universities have promoted diversity for their students. then, to be charged with disadvantaging any group would be odious for any institution of higher learning. halcrow and olson (2008) maintained that that is exactly what is happening to parttime faculty, the invisible or disposable segment of the overall faculty. the purpose of this paper was to examine the role of af within the overall professorate. who are these part-time instructors? are there specific groups within the overall af that are disadvantaged? a review of the literature presents a compilation of research, peer-reviewed journals, non-peer reviewed journals, books, and online sources on af. the academic databases used were from the online library of texas a&m university-commerce and included, but were not limited to, academic search premier, ebsco, education research complete, eric, proquest, and sage publications. the key descriptive term used for this research was adjunct faculty. review of the literature there is a trend in higher education. the number of full-time tenured/tenure track or non-tenured faculty is on the decline, as department heads hire more af to teach classes (altbach et al., 2005; ballantyne, berret, & harst, 2010; duncan, 1999; langen, 2011; thyer, myers, & nugent, 2011). langen maintained that this trend in hiring adjuncts may exist in part because adjuncts bring realworld perspectives to students and provide scheduling flexibility for department heads. additionally, adjuncts come at a reduced cost (ruiz, 2007). the digest of education statistics provides statistical data that covers the broad field of american education. the digest includes a compilation of information from various resources consisting of surveys and activities conducted by the national center for education statistics (nces). the nces, a part of the u.s. department of education and the institute of education sciences, is designed to collect and analyze data related to education in the united states. a comparison of part-time faculty numbers from 1970 of 104,000 to 761,996 in 2011 represented an 86 percent growth in af (nces, n.d.). charlier and williams (2011) studied the impact of institutional type (rural, suburban, urban) on dependence on and need for af. findings suggested that rural institutions depend less on adjuncts, whereas both rural and urban institutions reported large numbers of unmet needs in particular disciplines. even though the percentage of af surpassed 60% for all types of community colleges, chief academic officers claimed that af handled a much smaller percentage of the overall instruction. therefore cautioned the researchers’, evaluating dependency and need of adjuncts in higher education on the basis of percentage of the overall faculty alone does not accurately reflect the role of af in institutions. omitting workload differences results in exaggerated illustrations of dependence and need on af. this inflation of dependence and need of af through inadequate measurements of assessment, claimed the researchers, has the potential to aggravate the negative views of af without addressing the positive impact adjuncts have on the academy. it is anticipated that there will be an ongoing need for af in higher education. for example in schools of nursing, hiring adjuncts is essential to meet the changing course loads each semester and is a definite cost savings for institutions. af frustrations, due to expectations and role ambiguity, can lead to job dissatisfaction and employee turnover. understanding the needs and minimizing any obstacles to teaching is essential to increasing job satisfaction, reducing turnover, adjunct faculty: who are these unsung heroes of academe? 3 and enhancing teaching quality (forbes, hickey, & white, 2010). status of adjunct faculty. the continued status of af is problematic for higher education due to the substandard compensation, according to morton (2012). the average salary for af is not enough to live on and therefore they are forced to eventually leave the profession. according to the author, it is not the compensation or benefits that tie af to part-time teaching in higher education. adjuncts teach because of a devotion to teaching. despite some of the concerns, halcrow and olson (2008) suggested that some af view their role as one of opportunity as opposed to being disadvantaged. furthermore, adjuncts elect to teach online at multiple institutions. with sufficient personal drive some af even believe that there is potential to make a decent living at teaching where institutions do not require much if any research or service (smallwood, 2001). quality of instruction may be at risk, cautioned the researchers, due to the large number of students being taught by most af (halcrow & olson, 2008). halcrow and olson (2008) maintained that the majority of adjuncts originally agree to accept their positions with determination and enthusiasm. they take teaching positions due to their affection to the subject matter, the profession, and the students. the academy views it the same way. one provost stated that adjuncts were like fine wine at bargain prices that could be poured down the drain in the event of a problem. in spite of the fact that most af are viewed as well qualified, devoted, and hard working, according to the researchers, they will ultimately feel deprived due to the division between the "haves" and the "have-nots.” colleges and universities are encouraged to take responsibility for embracing these devoted teachers in their respective institutions. this can be accomplished through a number of opportunities, such as: • orientation, addressing secretarial support, classroom assignments and access, office space, phone and email, mail distribution, and class material distribution. • adequate training, providing mentoring programs, tracking the progress of af, and conducting evaluations. • sense of belonging, supplying office space, providing name plates, offering name badges that are also given to full-time faculty, communicating necessary information, making available training material and opportunities, inviting adjuncts to attend events (meetings and other celebrations), and including af names in course schedules. • recognition of quality work, supporting scholarship (research, writing, and service) and contributions made to the various disciplines. an effective af "roadmap" (jacobson, 2013, p. 11) provides part-time faculty with opportunities to be included in helping institutional missions leading to student success. this in turn enhances af effectiveness in the classroom and personal satisfaction in reaching institutional goals. the planned development and continued retention of af allows higher education to reap the benefits of effective teamwork throughout the institutions. effective roadmaps include: • strong starts in teaching through orientation programs that make or break the success of newly hired faculty, • strong senses of community though the establishment of instructional teams among the faculty departments, • strong "one-stop-shop resource centers" (p. 11) through the creations of effective instructor support areas for faculty, • strong committed support through the availability of someone able to answer questions and provide direction as needed, and • strong logistical considerations through flexibility with schedules to enhance af success with teaching. responsibility of higher education. should higher education not take responsibility for hiring adjunct it can expect af to take legal action or leave the profession. for example, some adjuncts have taken a stand against this substandard treatment through the court system. since 1998, two different class action lawsuits were filed to stop exploitation of part-time faculty. members of the part-time faculty association of washington state community and technical colleges, for example, are one group of part-time faculty who brought a lawsuit against the state of washington. they elected to unite in class-action litigation to confront faculty exploitation. as a result of this lawsuit, benefits were improved and the state has been looking into the overuse of part-time faculty, job security for af, and faculty salary rates. this type of legal confrontation is rare but addressed the frustrations that adjuncts deal with across the nation (ruiz, 2007). in another situation, a part-time instructor who wanted to remain anonymous decided that after five years of part-time teaching she was throwing in the towel to do something different. at the time she had no idea what that would be. her leaving higher education was not just about her, it was about how the hiring system in colleges and universities was not working. to the college or university employing her she was only part-time and her exit from teaching would "cause barely a ripple...no farewell parties. no mentions in the department newsletter" (para. 4). keep in mind that she was part-time and therefore disposable (smallwood, 2004). a year earlier this part-time instructor started a current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 4 popular weblog (http:// www.invisibleadjunct.com) called "invisible adjunct" (smallwood, 2004, para. 19). in an early entry she stated that she felt "like a ghost in the department" (para. 21). she claimed that she died a “small death” (para. 2) when she explained to office personnel that she needed them to unlock a door so she could meet with students. this was time for which she was not paid. the academic profession has declined she claimed. higher education is producing too many graduates who cannot get sufficient jobs, which is an indication of a system problem and not the fault of the graduates. for example, even if the graduates are not of the quality to secure positions the academy is still at fault for producing substandard faculty. if these adjuncts are not of high enough caliber to be hired full-time by colleges and universities, then the graduate schools are still the failures, not the students (smallwood, 2004). furthermore, part-time instructor advised her blog readers to: read through a year's worth of invisible adjunct posts and you will get a good glimpse at what's happening in higher education, at least in terms of graduate school, the job market in the humanities, and the adjunct world. (para. 33) colleges and universities are encouraged to include af in student learning outcomes assessments. these adjuncts represent a sizable percentage of course loads. one community college (danley-scott & tompsett-makinm, 2013) experimented with assessments by part-time faculty. findings suggested that peer mentoring and communication were better predictors of part-time faculty participation than stipends, adaptable assessment prompts, or administrative pressure. results demonstrated that stipends did not encourage involvement, administration’s mandate pressured some af to be involved, and mentoring relationships were the strongest indicators of participation in design and implementation of student assessment. two adjuncts who regularly participated in the student learning outcomes assessments both had frequent communication and mentoring relationships. af with no mentoring relationships tended to ignore e-mails and seldom participated. these findings suggested that full-time faculty should develop relationships with af. collegial relationships promote a sense of belonging and contributions from an important segment of the professoriate (danley-scott & tompsett-makinm, 2013). moreover, the academe grumbles that it needs more excellence in its af to support teaching loads but falls short with accepting its responsibility to the part-time faculty employed in higher education. some institutions have claimed that adjuncts are substandard to tenured/tenure track faculty. morton (2012) maintained that this is not true. in fact, there are numerous af available to serve, teach, research, and write who will be of benefit to both the students and the institutions who hire them. there is a dilemma. on the one hand institutions greatly benefit from the af but, how much if any do af benefit from the employing institutions? research suggests that when instructors are compensated and involved student learning, retention, and completion rates rise. quality of teaching. af may be better instructors because they generally have jobs in addition to teaching in colleges and universities. it might be wrong to assume automatically that tenured faculty are the better teachers. af provide opportunities to teach specialized courses and there is no evidence to suggest that af are substandard instructors. in fact, in a study conducted by thyer, myers, and nugent (2011), findings demonstrated that there were no significant differences in 294 course evaluations between full-time and part-time faculty. a study by langen (2011) was conducted to determine how the performance of af is evaluated. langen gathered data from academic administrators in michigan (a large and diverse population of higher education institutions) to identify what sources of information were used to evaluate af. in addition, the researcher wanted to see how this same information was utilized by administrators during evaluations and reappointment decisions. the underlying goal was to develop a better understanding of current evaluation practices. a better understand would provide higher education administrators opportunities to ensure that quality learning is available in the classroom. the findings revealed that there are many procedures in higher education for evaluating af. some of the information used by the universities to evaluate adjuncts included: student evaluation tools, classroom observations, syllabus reviews, review of teaching materials, informal faculty feedback, peer evaluations, grade reviews, informal student feedback, and instructor self-evaluations. however, a number of these procedures do not follow accepted decision-making concepts. administrators are encouraged to establish guidelines, follow the established guidelines, and clearly define evaluation procedures. without the establishment and compliance the evaluation guidelines and procedures, faculty evaluation will have little meaning or value. evaluating af is too important to employ ineffective assessment tools and procedures (langen, 2011). faculty development. in 2006, members of maryland consortium for adjunct faculty professional development (mcapd) conducted a survey to determine what professional development opportunities af wanted. the 2004-2005 results of that study, based on 810 responses, suggested offering at least one yearly, costeffective, statewide professional development conference created specifically for af. attendees indicated popular topics of interest that have helped with faculty adjunct faculty: who are these unsung heroes of academe? 5 professional development and verification that maryland was taking appropriate steps. in 2009 a second survey of 1, 645 adjuncts was conducted five years after the first report by the mcapd. this survey sought to determine what trends exist in af. the survey focused on af members’ opinions and demographic information, including degrees and credentials, number of adjunct positions held, number of courses typically taught, and types of professional development offered for adjuncts in their higher education institutions. implications for current practice, especially in professional development, and future research were included in the report (dolan, hall, karlsson, & martinak, 2013). due to the increase in af, colleges and universities are encouraged to train and retain af in order to continue to operate efficiently. the demands on teaching cannot be achieved without af. continued faculty development is important to the quality of education and should be offered to af as well as full-time faculty. dolan et al. (2013) maintained that af desire and warrant opportunities for professional development from their respective employers. faculty support and communication. in a study conducted by ballantyne et al. (2010) findings revealed that minimal support from full-time faculty or administration exists to include af in the governing process at franciscan institutions while there is some encouragement for adjuncts to attend departmental meetings. apparently adjuncts are consulted on occasion regarding some departmental curricular needs. according to the researchers, af might have opportunities to have their issues dealt with if they are permitted to attend faculty council/senate meetings or are represented by an af spokesperson. in order for this to occur, change in attitude of full-time faculty and administration is necessary. adjuncts are in need of support and resources to teach students in the foreign language program at longwood university, according to scott and edwards (2012). professional development designed to enhance connections with the campus departments and full-time faculty contributed to demonstrations of support for these instructors. additionally, designing opportunities for af to collaborate on the challenges of teaching resulted in improved communication of student learning experiences. performances of students with disabilities have demonstrated improved academic success. the design of professional development catered to the needs of adjuncts, resulting in improved learning experiences for students with disabilities. in a discourse analysis study (thirolf, 2012) examining faculty identities, findings suggested that af enjoy teaching and interacting with students and feel most satisfaction when dealing with students. positive reactions, however, are deficient when interacting with peers. therefore, adjuncts do not tend to interact with full-time faculty. this lack of interaction results in a deficiency in faculty professional development. consequently, relationships between part-time and fulltime faculty can be disadvantageous. a grounded theory qualitative research study (dolan, 2011) investigated experiences of 28 adjuncts working at the same university. the researcher examined their positions regarding the affect of occasional meetings on motivation and the quality of education offered to students. of all the suggestions provided by instructors, many included the need for unambiguous, regular, and broad communication. a number claimed that face-toface meetings of faculty would improve relationships. administration is encouraged to generate opportunities for all faculty to collaborate together on institutional issues and goals resulting in improved student learning, experiences, and outcomes. research indicates that adjuncts are appreciated and provide opportunities for smaller programs to meet curricular demands. according to clark, moore, johnston, and openshaw (2011) however, there are indications that departments may depend too much on the availability rather than on teaching experience. therefore, this confirms the importance of continuous faculty development, training, support, and evaluation once faculty are hired. hiring, integrating, and keeping skilled part-time faculty can be improved with sufficient preparation. creating opportunities for integrating af into the academy should increase their effectiveness and the success of the programs hiring them. accreditation. to assure quality of faculty in the educational process, accreditation was designed more than a century ago by colleges and universities. its basic purposes included quality assurance and improvement in the educational system. accreditation is a process of selfregulation by means of peer and professional review. currently there are more than seven thousand institutions who voluntarily go through intermittent accreditation reviews by nineteen institutional accreditors and sixty-one programmatic accreditors with more than twenty thousand programs all aimed at serving twenty-four million students. accreditation is nongovernmental. it relies on financial support from colleges, universities, and programs. accreditation relies on unpaid assistance from institutions who take part in self-studies, function as peer and professional reviewers, and work on accrediting associations’ executive bodies (american association of university professors, n.d.b). over time these organizations have dealt with many issues in american higher education. it could then be expected that these organizations would be on top of the issues with af. they are not. accreditors, moreover, have very different definitions of full and part-time faculty. even though the organizations are hesitant to address these differences, they agree that af must be supported and integrated into the institutions (american current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 6 association of university professors, n.d.a). concerns by the accrediting bodies have surfaced regarding the qualifications of af who work in the midst of perpetual turnover and are frequently employed at the last minute as a result of the increase in af in the academy. it would be reasonable to assume that warning signals would be set off with non-tenure track faculty reaching 68 percent giving rise to a significant reliance on af. apparently this is not the case either (american association of university professors, n.d.a.). the accrediting bodies do address student education and support, faculty development, and the importance of maintaining instructors included and informed in all accreditation handbooks in spite of the collective avoidance of af issues. the trouble with these general statements is that their elusiveness provides opportunities for institutions to put a spin on their compliance reports. it would be much more effective to require colleges and universities to report on part-time teaching no more than two courses per semester, for example, rather than requiring them to just comment on their use of part-time instructors. unfortunately the public is in the dark about the problems surrounding af due to the limited amount of information provided by these accrediting bodies (american association of university professors, n.d.a). in summary, a review of the literature revealed the following main themes: • universities are hiring more af and full-time tenured/tenure track or non-tenured faculty is on the decline (american association of university professors, n.d.a; altbach et al., 2005; ballantyne et al., 2010; clark et al., 2011; dolan et al., 2013; duncan, 1999; langen, 2011; thyer et al., 2011). • af are hired as a cost savings for higher education (american association of university professors, n.d.a; clark et al., 2011; danley-scott & tompsett-makinm, 2013; forbes et al., 2010; halcrow & olson, 2008; morton, 2012; ruiz, 2007; smallwood, 2004). • af receive substandard compensation, minimal support, and little or no opportunities for professional development (altbach et al., 2005; american association of university professors, n.d.a; clark et al., 2011; danley-scott & tompsettmakinm, 2013; dolan, 2011; forbes et al., 2010; halcrow & olson, 2008; morton, 2012; smallwood, 2004). • universities are encouraged to provide support and opportunities for integration and professional development for af (american association of university professors, n.d.a; ballantyne et al., 2010; clark et al., 2011; danley-scott & tompsettmakinm, 2013; dolan, 2011; dolan et al., 2013; jacobson, 2013; morton, 2012; scott & edwards, 2012). with colleges and universities hiring af at increasing rates, it seems prudent to focus on this segment of the faculty receiving substandard support, compensation, integration, and opportunities for professional development. who are these part-time teachers? once it is determined who these adjuncts are, plans can be made to meet their needs more effectively. providing part-time faculty with opportunities for involvement within the academy can then lead to improved student success. this in turn could also improve instruction in the higher educational classrooms and overall faculty satisfaction. furthermore, planned professional development for adjuncts could ultimately lead to continued faculty retention resulting in opportunities for higher education to reap the benefits from improved teamwork throughout the institutions (jacobson, 2013). method of procedure this study was an attempt to identify who these part-time instructors are in higher education. af are growing in number and therefore deserve to be recognized as significant players in the higher educational system. this research study was an archival quantitative, data mining study using data from the integrated postsecondary education data system (ipeds) of the nces. this study identified full-time and part-time faculty according to gender and race from a total of 4,426 degree-granting universities in the united states. data for this study were extracted from ipeds, a system of interrelated surveys compiled each year by the nces. ipeds was selected for several reasons. first, ipeds provides an extremely large database. it gathers information from colleges, universities, and technical and vocational institutions that are involved in federal student financial aid programs. second, ipeds offers a higher degree of confidence for researchers. the higher education act of 1965, as amended, requires institutions that are involved in federal student aid programs to submit data on enrollment, program completion, graduation rates, faculty and staff, finances, institutional prices, and student financial aid (the higher education act of 1965). thirds, ipeds is open to the public to for general scrutiny. these data are made available to the public through the ipeds data center. fourth, ipeds was selected because such a study had not been done before. data were extracted for faculty according to gender and race in degree-granting universities in the united states. the data were downloaded from ipeds and converted into an excel document. the excel document was formatted and cleaned up. findings the findings revealed the following information shown in table 1 about full-time and part-time faculty according gender and race for the year 2011. adjunct faculty: who are these unsung heroes of academe? 7 table 1 2011 full-time and part-time faculty according to gender and race gender/race part-time faculty full-time faculty total faculty total 759,103 762,523 1,521,626 women 398,419 334,844 733,263 men 360,684 427,679 787,244 total american indian 3,686 3,533 7,219 total black 63,358 41,640 104,998 total hispanic 33,829 31,348 65,177 total white 559,029 564,162 1,123,191 total asian 28,358 65,504 93,862 total native hawaiian 1,598 1,449 3,047 total race/ethnicity unknown 54,751 17,146 71,897 specifics about the variables in table 1 include the following: • full-time and part-time faculty were listed in ipeds as "instruction/research/public service" • gender numbers included american indian or alaska native, black or african american, hispanic or latino, native hawaiian or other pacific islander, white, and race/ethnicity unknown as listed in ipeds. • gender numbers excluded “two or more races and nonresident alien” as listed in ipeds. discussion and conclusion examination of the data revealed that adjuncts represented 50 percent of the total faculty in degreegranting institutions in the united states for the year 2011. for every full-time instructor there was one parttime instructor. females comprised 52 percent of the total part-time instructors and 44 percent of the total full-time instructors. whites represented 74 percent of both parttime and full-time faculty. american indian or alaska native, black or african american, hispanic or latino, native hawaiian or other pacific islander, white, and race/ethnicity unknown combined accounted for the remaining 26 percent of the faculty in higher education. vast differences exist in working styles, outlooks, remuneration, and responsibilities between instructors from one college or university to another, from one discipline to another, and from one faculty status to another. with the changing nature of faculty in higher education it is increasingly more difficult to think of the professorate as a unity. altbach et al. (2009) encouraged colleges and universities to address the growing adjunct component of the faculty. for example, only 50 years ago total faculty were comprised of whites, males, and protestants. the number of women in faculty positions has been increasing steadily and represented 48% of all faculty (44% full-time and over 52% of part-time). blacks/african americans (over 7% full-time and 8% part-time) and hispanics/latinos (over 4% fulltime and 4% part-time) continued to remain proportionately low. in 2011 asians represented over 6% of the total faculty and over 4% of the part-time faculty. however, the united states census bureau announced in 2013 asians were the fastest-growing race or ethnic group in the united states during 2012. asians grew 2.9 percent to 18.9 million, hispanic/latino population grew 2.2 percent to just over 53 million, native hawaiians and other pacific islanders grew 2.2 percent to about 1.4 million, american indians and alaska natives grew 1.5 percent to a little over 6.3 million, and blacks or african-americans grew 1.3 percent to 44.5 million. therefore, future faculty numbers are likely to be quite different from those of the present. an examination of the numbers and a review of the literature suggested that american colleges and universities cannot operate without using af. colleges and universities rely on adjuncts to keep their doors open. adjuncts are subsidizing colleges and universities through their acceptance of inadequate compensation. adjuncts are in effect the unsung heroes in higher education. implications adjuncts have experienced an 86 percent increase in employment since 1970 (national center for education statistics, n.d.). identifying who these part-time employees are has a number of implications for institutions of higher education. one implication from this study is that it will enable colleges and universities to customize professional development training with more informed knowledge on who the adjuncts are in higher education as identified in this study. this is important to colleges and universities because training and development has an important impact on institutions. a college or university, for example, having a reputation for offering first-rate professional training and development may discover that it easier to attract and retain qualified faculty. turnover also may be reduced because faculty are hesitant to depart from a college or university that offers the required knowledge, skills, and learning opportunities. productivity can also be improved because adjuncts are current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 8 better able to perform and assume positions of higher responsibility as positions become available (caruth et al., 2009). another implication is that this information will assist institutions in examining their hiring practices with a view toward creating an appropriate mix of talent. hiring practices affect the overall institution in a number of ways. some of the evident influences hiring has on institutions include morale, turnover, productivity, student service, community relations, employee relations, and institutional image. if hiring is performed effectively, morale will tend to be high, turnover will tend to be low, and productivity will tend to be above average. if hiring practices are ineffective, student service will tend to suffer, community relations can be affected negatively, institutional image could be damaged, and employee relations may be negative. caruth, caruth, & pane (2009) maintained that it is very important to higher education that hiring practices be conducted to improve the positive impacts on colleges and universities and minimize and potential negative impacts. recommendations for further study it is recommended that additional studies be conducted on af to verify the results of this study. it is also recommended that additional studies be conducted on af in the various types of institutions to determine if adjuncts are concentrated in one type versus another. in addition, studies could be conducted on other characteristics of af such as age, level of degree held, etc. to identify further adjuncts in higher education. another study could be conducted on course loads of adjuncts to compare the number of af to the individual course loads of af to discover if a difference exists and to what extent. finally, cost analysis studies could be conducted to ascertain the financial impact of adjuncts in colleges and universities. references altbach, p., berdahl, r., & gumport, p. (2005). american higher education in the twenty-first century (2nd ed.). baltimore, md: johns hopkins university. american association of university professors. (n.d.a). looking the other way? accreditation standards and part-time faculty. washington, dc: author. american association of university professors. (n.d.b). accreditation and the federal future of higher education. washington, dc: author. ballantyne, s., berret, b., & harst, w. (2010). fulltime faculty perceptions of leadership in adjunct faculty to maintain franciscan identity. research in higher education journal, 9, 1-9. caruth, d. l., caruth, g. d., & pane, s. s. (2009). staffing the contemporary organization: a guide to planning, recruiting, and selecting for human resource professionals (3rd ed.). westport, ct: praeger publishers. charlier, h. d., & williams, m. r. (2011). the reliance on and demand for adjunct faculty members in america’s rural, suburban, and urban community colleges. community college review, 39(2), 160–180. doi: 10.1177/0091552111405839 clark, h. g., moore, b. a., johnston, l. b., & openshaw, l. (2011). using adjuncts in social work education: challenges and rewards. social work education, 30(8), 1012–1021. doi: 10.1080/02615479.2010.534450 danley-scott, j., & tompsett-makinm d. (2013). balancing optimal assessment with part-time faculty participation: a discipline's dilemma. community college journal of research and practice, 37(1), 64-67. doi: 10.1080/10668926.2012.715265 dolan, d. m., hall, m. s., karlsson, c. r., & martinak, m. l. (2013). five years later: maryland adjuncts tell us (again) who they are and what they want. the journal of continuing higher education, 61(1), 35-45. doi: 10.1080/07377363.2013.758552 dolan, v. (2011). the isolation of online adjunct faculty and its impact on their performance. international review of research in open and distance learning, 12(2), 62-77. duncan, j. c. (1999). the indentured servants of academia: the adjunct faculty dilemma and their limited legal remedies. indiana law journal, 74(2), 513–521. forbes, m. o., hickey, m. t., & white, j. (2010). adjunct faculty development: reported needs and innovative solutions. journal of professional nursing 26(2), 116–124. doi: 10.1016/j.pronurs.2009.08.001 halcrow, c., & olson, m. r. (2008). adjunct faculty: valued resource or cheap labor? focus on colleges, universities, and schools, 2(1), 1-8. the higher education act. 20 u.s. c. §1001. (1965) jacobson, k. n. (2013). building the roadmap to adjunct faculty success. techniques: connecting education & careers, 88(4), 10-11. langen, j. m. (2011). evaluation of adjunct faculty in higher education institutions. assessment & evaluation in higher education, 30(2), 185–196. doi: 10.1080/02602930903221501 morton, d. r. (2012). adjunct faculty embraced: the institution's responsibility. christian education journal, 9(2), 398-407. national center for education statistics. (n.d.). digest of education statistics, 2012, chapter 3: postsecondary education enrollment, table 290. washington, dc: author. adjunct faculty: who are these unsung heroes of academe? 9 ruiz, e. a. (2007). the stone that struck goliath: the part-time faculty association, washington state community and technical colleges, and classaction lawsuits. new directions for community colleges, 140, 49−54. doi: 1002/cc.304 scott, s. s., & edwards, w. (2012). project linc: supporting lecturers and adjunct instructors in foreign language classrooms. journal of postsecondary education and disability, 25(3), 253-258. smallwood, s. (2001). less whining, more teaching. chronicle of higher education, 47(47), 12-15. smallwood, s. (2004). disappearing act. chronicle of higher education, l34, a10-11. thirolf, k. q. (2012). the faculty identities of community college adjuncts teaching in the humanities: a discourse analysis study. community college journal of research and practice, 36(4), 269278. doi: 10.1080/10668926.2012.637864 thyer, b. a., myers, l. l., & nugent, w. r. (2011). do regular social work faculty earn better student course evaluations than do adjunct faculty or doctoral students? journal of teaching in social work, 31(4), 365–377. doi: 10.1080/08841233.2011.597674 u.s. bureau of the census. (2010). asians fastestgrowing race or ethnic group in 2012. retrieved from http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archi ves/population/cb13-112.html. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 10 article citation caruth, g. d. & caruth, d. l. (2013). adjunct faculty: who are these unsung heroes of academe? current issues in education, 16(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1269 author notes gail d. caruth, ed.d. 1876 oak bend drive rockwall, texas 75087 gail.caruth@dcccd.edu gail d. caruth, ed.d., is a member of the adjunct faculty at eastfield college. she is a former human resource manager as well as an organizational consultant specializing in training and development. she holds the professional designation of senior professional in human resources (sphr). she is the coauthor of staffing the contemporary organization, 3rd ed. and her articles have appeared in a number of academic and trade journals. donald l. caruth, ph.d. 1876 oak bend drive rockwall, texas 75087 donald l. caruth, ph.d., is an independent human resource management consultant who taught hr courses at the university level for many years. he is a senior professional in human resources. he is the coauthor of staffing the contemporary organization, 3rd ed. and his articles have appeared in numerous academic and trade journals. manuscript received: 08/28/2013 revisions received: 10/18/2013 accepted: 10/22/2013 adjunct faculty: who are these unsung heroes of academe? 11 volume 16, number 3 november 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda hollis thomas elizabeth calhoun reyes assistant executive editors bonnie mazza constantin schreiber recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell nichole hugo sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker bonnie mazza kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1063_final.docx 1 volume 16, number 1 february 14, 2013 issn 1099-839x cross-cultural reading comprehension assessment in malay and english as it relates to the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension lorraine dagostino, james carifio, jennifer d. c. bauer, and qing zhao university of massachusetts at lowell the review of existing literature suggests that few researchers have adopted crosslanguage comparisons to explore how cultural background affects the assessment of reading comprehension of students. in this present study, the researchers independently reviewed and rated all the items of two reading comprehension tests translated from malay into english. the original tests, based upon dagostino-carifio’s (1994) model of reading comprehension, were developed in malaysia for the purpose of evaluating reading comprehension abilities of k-6 students in malaysia. results indicated that some information in the test material are culturally based and are lost in translation. findings imply the possibility of employing comparable tests with valid translation to evaluate reading comprehension abilities of second language (l2) students. keywords: reading comprehension, cultural background, cognitive process in a world of increasing globalization and crosscultural communication, how differences in cultural background affect the assessment of reading comprehension has become of interest to many researchers and educators (read & rossen, 1982; reynolds et al., 1981; porat, 2004). more specifically, previous research has considered the effects of general background knowledge as determined by culture on reading comprehension (steffenson et al., 1979; reynolds et al., 1981). other research has considered the effect of the structure of the reader’s language (porat, 2004; rajabi, 2009), the reasoning processes often used in the culture (goetz, 1979; thorndike, 1917; pritchard, 1990), and variations that may exist in the instruction and assessment in different cultures (johnston, 1984; garcia, 1991; medina, 2010). however, the designs of these studies did not use controlled or direct cross-cultural or cross-language comparisons, nor were the language equivalencies of the assessment used ascertained, this point being the more important of the these two points and a contributing factor to the significance of the present study. as the initial step in the area of cross-cultural comparative research on this topic, the focus in the present study was to see how aspects of cultural background bear on the assessment of reading comprehension of students in the primary grades (1-6) of school using two malaysian based tests of comprehension (hashim et al., 2006) that were based upon the dagostino and carifio (1994) model of reading comprehension (test i for grade 1-3, test ii for grades 4-6). in english translations of these two tests, the items were independently rated by three expert judges according to the elements of the dagostino and carifio reading comprehension and understanding model to see if the independent classifications of the translated test items agreed with the classifications of the original ones done by the malay test makers, thus validating qualitative design characteristics of the tests (a type of qualitative construct validity) in both malay and english, as well as the process used to translate the tests from malay to english. validating translations of tests relative to the equivalencies of the softer qualitative psychometric properties of the test is not typically done in multicurrent issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 language versions of tests, thus making this study important and so relative to the meaning of scores obtained from the test in either language, or any comparisons done. therefore, this study focused on this validation first by completing the independent classification process of correct answers, reading comprehension levels, and skills for each test item; next, by examining the nature of the agreements of the ratings by expert raters; and third, by considering how the ratings reflect concepts underlying the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension and understanding. this process allowed us to address the following research questions: • what is the inter-rater agreement when the judgments of reading comprehension levels and skills of all raters are analyzed as a group? • how do the three raters’ judgments of levels and skills for each test item compare with the malaysian table of specifications? with this sense of the purpose and the significance of the study, we turn to a description of the theoretical perspective that is the underpinning of this study – the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension. the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension the original research, using the malay version of the reading comprehension tests used in the present study, was based upon the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension. this model is described here, and then discussed in relationship to the present study. core principle of the model the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension is organized around the principle that the process of message evaluation is integral to reading comprehension, and that it is used constantly throughout the reader/text interaction. this view that message evaluation occurs constantly and continuously is a general tenet of the cognitive view of information-processing and learning underlying what we say here (see carifio, 2005). it permeates the concept of literacy that underlies our concept of reading comprehension. this idea of constant interaction contrasts with a strict sequential, hierarchical view of reading comprehension, which suggests a direct progression from literal to inferential/interpretive comprehension, and then to message evaluation of a text, followed by appreciation and application in well-known step-like depictions of “levels of comprehension” (e.g., bloom et al., 1956; johnson & pearson, 1968; pearson & fielding, 1991; anderson & krathwohl, 2001). the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension represents the synthesis of hierarchy and interaction, or skills and schema. in the case of a skills view, the subskills of evaluation are specified clearly in lists of skills and levels of comprehension. in a schema view, reading evaluatively may be a more general process where the analytical skills and metacognitive strategies have been assimilated and synthesized to function as part of a less explicit evaluation process. the dagostinocarifio model is an attempt to synthesize these two views of the reading process in relationship to reading comprehension and evaluation of text. what also is key to the discussion is that while more recent discussion have shifted focus to sociocultural perspectives, our discussions focus on the mind of the individual reader (mcvee, dunsmann, & gavaleck, 2005). the visual that follows is a representation of the model of reading comprehension (see figure 1). key terms. the following definitions of terms and subsequent text should help you to understand the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension. message evaluation. message evaluation of a text is part of a reader’s response to what s/he exhibits in an interpretation of the text’s message. the expectations for a text may influence a reader’s response, and in turn, bias the message interpretation and message evaluation of the text. further, an interpretation of the meaning may bias message evaluation. thus, there is a dynamic nature to these processes. the reader’s evaluation of a text also may vary with 1) the degree of objectivity and distance maintained, 2) the stringency of the application of criteria, and 3) the latitude of the selected criteria. this variation in the depth of message evaluation may be attributed to a reader’s purpose in reading (narveez, vanbroeck, & rutz, 1999). also message evaluation skills may vary as function of cognitive development as well as learning and experience. these terms are described here as they apply to the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension and the malay tests. in general, message evaluation requires the reader to apply criteria to the text, and make judgments about the text and the message of the text. message evaluation most closely describes the critical/creative level of comprehension used in the malay tests. message interpretation. message interpretation of a text is an intermediate response in the process of message evaluation of what a reader comprehends in a text. message interpretation of the text may take at least two directions. first, when there is a mix of explicitness of text and closed, convergent thinking, message interpretation becomes closed, text-bound, perhaps even literal in nature. second, a mix of implicitness of text and open, divergent thinking may lead to multiple message interpretations that are speculative in nature (rosenblatt, 1978). the two important parts of message interpretation are closed, convergent thinking cross-cultural reading comprehension assessment in malay and english as it relates to the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension 3 figure 1. the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension. and open, divergent thinking. both of these parts of message interpretation are described next even though this study was focused only upon closed, convergent thinking. closed, convergent thinking. closed, convergent thinking is a style of processing text that limits the direction the reader takes in drawing conclusions. this pattern of thinking and processing usually leads the reader to a logical focused and limited set of conclusions or predictions about the meaning, interpretation, and evaluation of the text. the term closed suggests certain expectations and specified criteria that may influence thinking in a particular way. open, divergent thinking. open, divergent thinking is a style of processing text that multiplies the directions the reader takes in drawing conclusions or establishing explanations and interpretations of a text. the terms open and divergent suggest the possibility of other than conventional reasoning or structuring of the details in developing a synthesis of information or ideas. open and divergent do not rule out systematic thinking. however, interpretation may be other than generally expected, and perhaps more creative in nature where creative means a novel structuring of information or novel explanation of events. a reader’s thinking may be internally consistent, but logically unexpected. in general, message interpretation moves beyond the literal reading of a text to making inferences of various types. it begins to use reasoning in the form of convergent, closed thinking to ascertain the meaning of a text, and it also may require applying what is understood of the message. message interpretation most closely describes the inferential level of comprehension used for the malay tests. message extraction. in general, message extraction is simply getting the literal meaning from the text, with little or no inferencing/interpreting involved. it is the most basic level of comprehension in most representations of reading comprehension. message extraction is most closely described by the literal level of comprehension used in the malay tests. text. text represents the author’s message through degrees of explicitness and implicitness. the degree to which the text is explicit or implicit influences how the reader comprehends and interprets the message of the text. reader. the experience with reading, in general, or with a specific text, style, or form, combined with the reader’s knowledge of the topic and his ability to reason appropriately, varies with each reader and across readers (anderson, reynolds, schallert, & goetz, 1977). a trio of characteristics (knowledge and experience, intellectual abilities, and attitudes and dispositions) influences where the reader enters the literal/interpretive scale of comprehension. maturity is the fourth variable, which encompasses the other three attributes. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 reading comprehension. the process of reading comprehension demonstrated by the reader moves along a continuum of literal to inferential/interpretive understanding in a manner that parallels the explicitness or implicitness of the text’s message. what the reader understands of the text at this level is constructed by the reader and also provides the basis for message interpretation and message evaluation. if elements of the text are not comprehended, they may not be included in either the open, divergent thinking or the closed, convergent style of processing text. in turn, both message interpretation and message evaluation fluctuate because some of the information was not processed on one occasion but is on another. learning and experience, among other things, can lead to the inclusion or exclusion of information from processing. in general, it should be noted that message extraction is the main component for the concept of comprehension illustrated in the model and message interpretation and message evaluation are the main components for the concept of overall evaluation illustrated in the model. the relationships of the components of the model of reading comprehension with reference to figure 1, we can think of message extraction, message interpretation, and message evaluation as horizontally shifting components of the model that move independently and interdependently. message extraction covers the territory of reading comprehension from literal comprehension and recall to the beginning of inferential/interpretive processes based upon direct experience, general and specific knowledge, and reasoning. although never completely separate from reader background, message extraction is more closely related to the cues in the text that carry the message and shape the presentation as developed by the author to be apprehended by the individual reader. the trio of circles and the surrounding rectangle represent the reader. primarily, the trio and the rectangle represent the interaction of knowledge and experience, attitudes and dispositions, intellectual abilities, and maturity. these interactions influence literal comprehension, inferences/interpretation and evaluation. message interpretation and message evaluation draw on and act on message extraction. that is, they rely heavily on the reader’s information and thinking, perhaps schema; yet, there is still a dependence on the text message and the way the reader’s schema creates and shapes its interpretation of the text (rosenblatt, 1978). each component has different goals. message extraction depicts comprehending the message and its clearly implied conclusion. message interpretation and message evaluation depict evaluating, with specific criteria, the message of the text. message interpretation and message evaluation are the response part of the model where the response may be personal, subjective, or criteria objective, given the reader’s purpose and the criticalness of the judgments to be made. when we look carefully at the reader in relationship to the process depicted here, we see the reader’s ability to evaluate shifts dramatically depending on the subject matter or the form of the text. this feature characterizes it as a dynamic, process model. it is hoped that the mature reader will develop sufficient skill to raise general evaluative questions so that some sense of veracity of the text can be determined, regardless of the subject matter. however, this model implies that as the reader’s knowledge base and thinking skills equal or surpass that of the text, message evaluation with specific criteria operates constantly so that the criteria can operate both before and after inferences are made. the criteria operate while the reader selectively and judiciously chooses and evaluates what is stated directly and implicitly derived from the text. the occurrence of this interaction means that an evaluation schema also may shape interpretation. message interpretation plays an important part in this model because it is here that we see message evaluation shaping comprehension. here is where the reader’s background selects relevant details for his or her purpose, and then constructs a whole that is meaningful. this meaning, or interpretation, may or may not be justifiable in light of the text’s consistency of structure or the intent of the author. however, it is this meaning derived from the text, which the reader responds to evaluatively. finally, a shifting horizontally of the message extraction and message interpretation and message evaluation components depicts the uneven, dynamic nature of the comprehension/evaluation interaction. it is here that we see that as the reader has different purposes and goals in mind, he or she may elect a different set of criteria for message evaluation and, depending on the criticalness of the decision, that is, what is at stake, apply the criteria stringently, or leniently. in the model of reading comprehension, both message evaluation and message interpretation are part of our response to the text, perhaps one following the principles of logic and one following the aesthetics of language and themes. when both the mindset for message evaluation and the mindset for message interpretation are working simultaneously, the reader is able to respond to thought structure and style simultaneously and evaluate if the language is used effectively to sustain the thinking and the emotion of the writer. both message evaluation and message interpretation are central to reading evaluatively as they relate to the variety of literate worlds envisioned by this model and the present work. in this model of reading comprehension, readers must become aware of themselves as readers so they do not simply accept the text. for readers to achieve a satisfactory evaluation of the text, they must cultivate an intellectual style that prompts cross-cultural reading comprehension assessment in malay and english as it relates to the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension 5 them to be self-conscious about the assumptions and the goals of their reading as well as to read deliberately from a different perspective. the model’s relationship to the study the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension was the primary theoretical construct for the development of the malay test, and in turn, should be the basis for the translation of the english version. it is the basis for the test for its view on having message evaluation as the main goal of higher-level reading comprehension. it also frames the levels of comprehension construct that shapes the levels of comprehension used in the malay test. while the model does not identify specific skills explicitly, it acknowledges the skills view of reading and the legitimacy of identifying such skills, particularly as part of the reasoning process of reading. what it does propose with regards to skills as well as to levels is that they may not be represented in a strict sequential and hierarchical fashion, but that they may be more fluid in nature. what a classification process of a translation process examines is how fluid and dynamic the relationships among skills and between levels actually may be. so with this understanding of how the comprehension levels and skills transfer to the model, we move on to the present study. the study parameters and limitations of the study the present work applies to the primary (grades 1-6) reader who may be approaching the early stages of formal reasoning rather than to the expert (grades 9-adult) reader who may be into the stage of formal reasoning. the materials considered in this study are non-technical, such as essays, fiction, poetry, journalistic writing, rather than technical, such as scientific or mathematical. the nature of cognitive thinking considered is convergent, critical thinking rather than divergent, creative thinking. the malay test the description and construction of the malay tests. the original two malay tests, constructed by a team of researchers at the universiti of sains malaysia, were developed for the purpose of evaluating reading comprehension abilities of students in the primary grades (test i for grade 1-3, test ii for grades 4-6) in malaysia. the following section of this paper describes the process for the development and the content of these tests. steps for design and content of the malay instruments. using the dagostino-carifio model as a theoretical basis, the development of the test focused on three components: a) defining and selecting the category of the comprehension level as well as of the comprehension skill, b) selection and development of the reading texts, and c) the development of the questions and the answers. the two tests were designed by conducting a preliminary survey that included a discussion with malay teachers, a review of teaching learning materials and observations of teachers teaching in a classroom. once the survey was completed, a first draft was developed for test i and for test ii. the writing of the first draft was accomplished through a series of workshops with malay language teachers, experts from curriculum development center, administrators from the district education office and state education department, lecturers of school of educational studies from the universiti sains malaysia. as a result of this work, the researchers established the following table of specifications (table 1), which outlines the relationships between the comprehension levels and skills underlying the construct of both tests. defining the comprehension levels and the comprehension skills. the comprehension levels and the skills define the difficulty and the nature of the reading texts and the test items. in the present study, the comprehension levels of the test correspond to message extraction (literal), message interpretation (inferential), and message evaluation (critical/creative) of the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension. comprehension levels. (a) literal (message extraction) – refers to memorization of facts in texts where information is explicitly stated at a basic level of thinking; (b) inferential (message interpretation) – refers to the ability of pupils interpreting meaning where they need to use overt information with intuition and experience requiring a high level of thinking assessed by the malay tests; (c) critical/creative (message evaluation) – refers to ability to do an overall evaluation towards a certain information or idea which is read, precision or suitability of the given information of a new idea; needs divergent thinking outside literal/inferential depends upon knowledge and personal experience of the pupils, but focuses on convergent critical thinking. comprehension skills. there are ten comprehension skills that are assessed by the malay tests: (a) identifying meaning of word/phrase/sentence; (b) identifying the main idea; (c) identifying the important point; (d) identifying the cause-effect relationship; (e) identifying the sequence of ideas/events; (f) making a comparison; (g) drawing a conclusion; (h) evaluating; (i) internalizing; (k) identifying the moral of the story/lesson. these ten skills range from simple comprehension to what is called deep or deeper understanding, which is a first step towards what is called evaluative reading. selection and development of reading texts types and content of the texts. there are several types of text that make the test broad in scope and representative of various types of reading of non-technical materials that are encountered in daily reading situations. there are essays, fiction, reports, letters, poems, biographies, speeches, dialogues, and news reports. there are 12 texts for test i and 12 texts for test ii. there are various subjects (literature, history, etc.) the individual current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 table 1 table of specifications for malay reading comprehension tests comprehension category code skills literal (l) l1a, l1b, l1c identifying meaning of word/ phrase/ sentence l2 identifying main idea l3 identifying important point l4 making comparison l5 identifying cause-effect l6 identifying sequence of ideas/events inferential (f) f1 interpreting main idea f2 interpreting important point f3 interpreting comparison f4 interpreting cause-effect f5 making a conclusion critical creative (k) k1 evaluating k2 making a conclusion k3 internalizing k4 identifying the moral of the story/lesson texts are 100 words or less for test i and 100 words or more for test ii. the passages in the test for grades 1-3 are simpler in structure as well as expectations for level of comprehension than those used for grades 4-6. a research group, three expert teachers, teacher trainers, psychometric and experts from the university developed the texts, with ideas for the texts coming from books and magazines. development of the items. the questions and answers for the tests took various forms such as a) sentences from text that needed completion with a choice of answers, b) items that needed a choice of answers in multiple choice form, and c) instructions and blanks to be filled in with multiple choice form. an item specification table was developed to categorize the types of items in the test. each test consists of 50 multiple choice items designed to evaluate reading comprehension with consideration given to skill ability and comprehension level. some specific things were considered in the item development. they are as follows: a) arrangement of each item was based upon comprehension skill (forms, style, pupils’ existing knowledge), and b) implicit information and inferential definition. in the case of implicit information, the text considers information in the text and students’ background. in the case of inferential definition the test considers an integrated synthesis of literal with existing knowledge, intuition and reader’s imagination. the following table of specifications includes the classification by reading comprehension level and skill for each test item. both malay tests were built from the same table of specifications (table 2). design and choice of answers and distractors. a multiple-choice format was used because it was considered as most objective. each answer had 4 options (a, b, c, d for each item with each option coded a=1,b=2,c=3 and d= 4). the correct answer was scored 1, and the wrong answer was scored 0. the design of the answers and distracters required a) the suitability of choice of answers relative to the cognitive task that was related to the content and the texts, and b) syntax and semantic forms needed to be different from the texts so that students could be assessed on how well they understood the context of the meaning. reliability measures of the two tests. the malay researchers examined three types of internal consistency reliability estimators for both tests with the results being almost identical for both tests. the first internal consistency (of test-taker overall performance) reliability estimator computed was the cronbach alpha coefficient, which was r=+.66 (n=2763) for test i and r=+.61 (n=4101) for test ii. as is well known, test length, sample size, and test content and item type heterogeneity affect and limit the size of the cronbach alpha one will observe in any given context. as test content and the cognitive levels and operations assessed are so heterogeneous for both tests, the cronbach alphas observed for each test are quite good to excellent given that test lengths (50 items each) and sample sizes (n=2763 and 4101+) and are in the range that one would expect given the qualitative characteristics of both tests. the second internal consistency reliability estimator the malay researchers computed was the cross-cultural reading comprehension assessment in malay and english as it relates to the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension 7 table 2 malay table of specifications including test items by classification, with this general template being the same for test i and test ii comprehension category code skills item numbers literal (l) l1a, l1b, l1c identifying meaning of word/ phrase/ sentence 8 13 41 46 l2 identifying main idea 1 5 9 47 l3 identifying important point 2 6 l4 making comparison 10 14 15 l5 identifying cause-effect 3 7 11 42 l6 identifying sequence of ideas/events 4 12 16 inferential (f) f1 interpreting main idea 21 25 29 43 f2 interpreting important point 17 26 48 f3 interpreting comparison 18 22 30 31 49 f4 interpreting cause-effect 19 23 27 32 f5 making a conclusion 20 24 28 44 critical creative (k) k1 evaluating 33 40 45 k2 making a conclusion 34 37 38 k3 internalizing 35 39 k4 identifying the moral of the story/lesson 36 50 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 guttman reliability coefficient, which assess the degree to which students’ performances on the test are hierarchical in character (i.e., students who do well on low level items are not doing well on high level items and vice versa), which performances should be for test i and test ii given how they were constructed and their qualitative characteristics. the guttman reliability coefficient for test i was r=+.77 (n=2763) and for test ii was r=+.72 (n=4101), which are excellent to outstanding and indicate that this particular qualitative characteristic of both tests are as hypothesized and purported. the third internal consistency reliability estimator the malay researchers computed was the kuderrichardson odd-even items reliability coefficient, which assess the degree to which items types and their characteristics are “evenly balanced” across the test, as well as students’ performances on the items on the test. for example, the kuder-richardson reliability coefficient would be low if all of the odd items were easy (or recall) items and all of the even items were difficult (or skill) item, or if all of the poorly constructed and nonfunctioning items were easy items as opposed as opposed to this characteristic being evenly balanced across both the odd and even items. the kuder-richardson odd-even items reliability coefficient for test i was r=+.77 (n=2763) and for test ii was r=+.73 (n=4101), which are good to excellent and indicate that the various types of items and their various characteristics were “evenly balanced” across each test as were student performances. as one administration internal estimates of various types of consistencies in student performances across each of these two tests and thus internal consistency reliabilities estimates, the results obtained by the malay researchers of the three different indicators of internal reliabilities estimates were excellent. high onetime internal consistency estimates of reliabilities, however, are no guarantee that test-retest reliabilities will be equally high as they could actually be lower or higher which is why the malay researchers are currently collecting the data to generate the test-retest reliability coefficients as these coefficients are key in the assessment of change across time on these measures. but to date, the reliabilities estimates for each test that are available are excellent and particularly so given the internal complexity of each test, and each is also initially supportive empirically of specific aspects of the construct validity of each test, although not as direct or strong evidence as other analyses would that are currently being done. methodology procedures the malay versions of the tests were translated into english, and three expert raters completed the inter-rater judgments of answers, levels and skills. the next section of this paper describes this translation process as well as the raters’ process for classifying test items by answer, level and skill. the translation process the original tests used in this study were developed in malaysia by a team of researchers at the universiti sains malaysia for the purpose of evaluating reading comprehension abilities of students in the primary grades (1-6) in four regions (north, east, middle, south) in malaysia. the two tests (test i grades 1-3, test ii for grades 4-6) were developed for and administered to this population in a national assessment study from april to may 2004. the two tests have been translated into english for our present work by a professional translation center. the original tests were forwarded intact to a native speaker of malay who was a communication student at the university of massachusetts amherst. upon completion of the translation, a native speaker of english reviewed the text. any revisions or questions were noted using the track changes feature in ms word, and the file was returned to the original translator to either accept or reject the changes. the final file in ms word was then submitted to the university of massachusetts lowell. the lead researcher who developed the malay version of the tests verified the accuracy and the appropriateness of the translations then reviewed the translations. the lead researcher is bilingual in malay and english. the translations were judged by the malaysian researcher to be satisfactory. procedures for the inter-rater judgments of the english version of the two tests the raters have either ph.d. in language arts and literacy, or were completing work for that degree. one of the raters speaks both english and chinese, and another works with young children from several cultures and language backgrounds. the three raters began their evaluation of the english tests by first meeting to discuss the relationship of the components of the dagostinocarifio model of reading comprehension and the two malay tests, as well as the procedure for rating each test item with regards to answers, comprehension, and skills. the three expert raters completed the inter-rater agreements by first reading each item of test i and test ii independently, and then answering each test item by selecting what they thought was the correct answer from the four choices provided. next, each rater then classified individual test items by level of comprehension that they were testing. the levels of comprehension were 1) literal, 2) inferential/interpretive, and 3) critical/creative, a category comparable to evaluation in the dagostinocarifio model of reading comprehension and understanding. finally each rater classified individual test items by reading comprehension skills that they were testing. the skills were classified using to the malay table of specifications (i.e. main points, word meanings, etc.). after the independent readings and ratings were cross-cultural reading comprehension assessment in malay and english as it relates to the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension 9 completed, the raters compared their judgments for all three types of ratings – answers, comprehension levels, and skills. after the quantitative analysis of the ratings was completed, the raters met again to discuss the results to evaluate the meaning of the raters’ agreements on item ratings. the test content was studied in relationship to the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension to see how the tests reflect the concepts that are central to the model. finally, there was further discussion on the influences of translating texts from one language to another on the ability to rate the items with regards to cultural differences in the test such as references to place, customs or language use, as well as how the tests may be interpreted by any individuals taking these tests. results and data analysis the results and data analysis section of this paper presents the data and its interpretation for two questions. these questions are: • what is the inter-rater agreement when the judgments of reading comprehension levels and skills of all raters are analyzed as a group? • how do the three raters’ judgments of levels and skills for each test item compare with the malaysian table of specifications? the procedure used to analyze the data was the calculation of inter-rater correlation coefficients. this coefficient was computed by first getting the percentage of agreements between the three raters for a given judged (which is the explained variance) and then taking the square root of that percentage which would be the inter rater correlation or reliability coefficient. to judge the accuracy of the translation of both tests, each rater completed the tests individually, and then compared their answers. the agreement rate was 98% for both tests (r>.98), indicating that the translation did not affect the meaning of the test. with the stability of the translation confirmed, the raters individually used the malay table of specifications to assign a comprehension level and skill to each test item of both test i and test ii. once this work was complete, the raters gathered to compile the quantitative data and examine the results. the first question addressed was, “what is the inter-rater agreement when the judgments of reading comprehension levels and skills of all raters are analyzed as a group?” table 3 presents a comprehensive look at the frequencies and percentages of rater agreements for both test i and test ii, further broken down by levels and skills. the square roots of the agreement percentages approximate the inter-rater correlation coefficients. as can be seen from table 3, agreement between the raters was very high in regard to their classifications of test items by comprehension level and skill (r>.91). table 3 agreement of inter-rater classification of test items by comprehension level and skill test i: rater agreements test ii: rater agreements percentages of rater agreements by classification of comprehension levels type of agreement frequency percent cum. percent r 1. raters agreed on level classification 48 .96 96 .98 2. raters disagreed on level classification 2 .04 100 50 100% percentages of rater agreements by classification of skills type of agreement frequency percent cum. percent r 1. raters agreed on skill classification 41 .82 82 .91 2. raters disagreed on skill classification 9 .18 100 50 100% percentages of rater agreements by classification of comprehension levels type of agreement frequency percent cum. percent r 1. raters agreed on level classification 49 .98 98 .99 2. raters disagreed on level classification 1 .02 100 50 100% percentages of rater agreements by classification of skills type of agreement frequency percent cum. percent r 1. raters agreed on skill classification 47 .94 94 .97 2. raters disagreed on skill classification 3 .06 100 50 100% current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 table 4 comparison of raters’ classification of test items by comprehension level and skill with the malaysian table of specifications for test i and test ii test i: raters’ classification compared to malay classification of test items test ii: raters’ classification compared to malay classification of test items percentages of agreement by classification of skills type of agreement frequency percent cum. percent r 1. raters agreed with malay classification 44 .88 88 .94 2. raters disagreed with malay classification 6 .12 100 50 100% percentages of agreement by classification of comprehension levels type of agreement frequency percent cum. percent r 1. raters agreed with malay classification 33 .66 66 .81 2. raters disagreed with malay classification 17 .34 100 50 100% percentages of agreement by classification of skills type of agreement frequency percent cum. percent r 1. raters agreed with malay classification 27 .54 54 .73 2. raters disagreed with malay classification 23 .46 100 50 100% percentages of agreement by classification of comprehension levels type of agreement frequency percent cum. percent r 1. raters agreed with malay classification 41 .82 82 .90 2. raters disagreed with malay classification 9 .18 100 50 100% after completing this analysis, we next asked, “how do the three raters’ judgments of levels and skills for each test item compare with the malaysian table of specifications?” table 4 presents a comprehensive look at the frequencies and percentages of rater agreement with the malaysian table of specifications for both test i and test ii, further broken down by levels and skills. the square roots of the agreement percentages approximate the correlation coefficients. as can be seen from table 4, for test i, the raters assigned 66% of the items the same comprehension level as the malay table of specifications; for test ii, the agreement rose to 82%. when evaluating skills, the raters assigned 54% of the items the same comprehension skill as the malay table of specifications for test i; for test ii, the agreement rose to 88%. what these results indicate is that the classification of the difficulty of a task is very different than finding the correct answer to a particular question. it is possible that the classification of the skill and level of each individual test answer is not as easily done as merely determining the answer itself because these things are not as discrete as one would think. one’s background and cultural knowledge most certainly could affect how he or she interprets a question, and therefore how he or she would classify what the question is asking the test-taker to do in terms of skill. conclusions, discussion and implications summary of raters’ discussion regarding relationship between test content and model one issue that came to light while discussing the results was that the classification of skills is not as discrete as we would think, or would like them to be. what skills are literal versus evaluative are often differentiated by a fine line. for example, reading for the “main idea,” is dependent on the question and the reading passage, which could be asking for a literal interpretation as ascertained by the test, or an inferential interpretation based on the presumed prior knowledge of the reader. furthermore, another concern was that as raters we are not primary or middle school students, therefore we may have a greater store of prior knowledge or reading schemas than the students for whom the test is geared. we raters then applied this prior knowledge when selecting our answers for each test question. as a result, we may interpret a question differently than the students taking the test, which results in a greater number of discrepancies between the judgments of the raters and the malaysian answer key. the dagostino-carifio model supports this finding. the interaction of knowledge and cross-cultural reading comprehension assessment in malay and english as it relates to the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension 11 experience, attitudes and dispositions, intellectual abilities, and maturity affects how a reader evaluates a text; therefore adults read a test that is geared toward primary school students differently. it might be hard assessing the evaluative skills of the primary school reader because they are so interwoven with cognitive thinking abilities and dependent on knowledge beyond just basic literal reading skills. we might not see this particular type of interconnectedness in the test because test is focused on the primary school reader and the model is geared more toward the expert reader and higher thinking skills. additionally, we are dealing primarily with non-technical texts of literature, rather than text of a scientific or math nature. at the heart of the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension is a focus on evaluation, a skill not usually mastered by the primary school reader. summary of raters’ discussion regarding translation concerns a concern shared by the raters was the prospect that one’s level of knowledge could possibly affect his or her understanding of a translated version of the test. the specific nature of background knowledge that is entrenched in culture can affect the test taker’s response. for example, in test i, the reading passage used for questions 21-24 is a letter to a father from his son. in the letter, the son describes a trip he took approximately one week after independence day. question 22 then asks, “the visit was held in ______?” and gives four options: a. june, b. july, c. august, and d. september. an american student taking the test would answer “b,” as independence day in the united states is celebrated in july. however, a malaysian student would answer “c,” as the malaysian independence day is in august. this is a clear example of how cultural differences do not necessarily translate appropriately. the events, activities, objects and timeframes referred to in the test material are very culturally based and end up lost in translation. however, this point clearly suggests that the details of multiple language versions of many tests should be tailored and customized to the culture in which the test is going to be used and particularly if international comparisons are going to be made. future implications one question that arose during the discussion was, “could this translation process be applicable to many tests across many languages?” if the translation process were valid, it would allow us to make reliable cross-cultural comparison because you could get past issues of culture and prior knowledge. in this world of increasing globalization, it is important for us to explore how people can handle a second language because you can then give them more comparable tests if you have detailed answers on this particular point. by applying a different measure for comprehension level, perhaps one that looks at cognitive levels of understanding rather than the more traditional measures of reading comprehension, it may be possible to more precisely classify the comprehension level and skill of each test item. one such measure or framework would be the most recent version of bloom’s revised taxonomy. both of these avenues could be explored in future studies. 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(tech report no. 201). urbana: university of illinois, center for the study of reading. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 201 991). rosenblatt, l. (1978). the reader, the text and the poem: the transactional theory of literary work. carbondale, ill.: southern illinois university press. steffensen, m. s., joag-dev, c., & anderson, r. c. (1979). a cross-cultural perspective on reading comprehension. reading research quarterly, 15, 10-29. thorndike, e. l. (1917). reading as reasoning: a study of mistakes in paragraph reading. journal of educational psychology, 8, 323-332. cross-cultural reading comprehension assessment in malay and english as it relates to the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension 13 article citation dagostino, l., carifio, j., bauer, j. d. c., & zhao, q. (2013). cross-cultural reading comprehension assessment in malay and english as it relates to the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1063 author notes lorraine dagostino university of massachusetts at lowell o'leary library 519, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854-3047 lorraine_dagostino@uml.edu lorraine dagostino is a professor at graduate school of education in the university of massachusetts lowell. her research interests include literacy, critical thinking and evaluative reading, theoretical issues in reading and literacy, and literature issues. james carifio university of massachusetts at lowell o'leary library 527, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854-3047 james_carifio@uml.edu james carifio is a professor in psychology and research methods at the university of massachusetts lowell. he has done extensive research and publishing in the respective fields. jennifer d. c. bauer university of massachusetts at lowell 50 father morissette boulevard, lowell, ma 01852 jennifer_bauer@student.uml.edu for the past eleven years, jennifer d. c. bauer has taught digital media and visual art at lowell high school, an inner-city public school in massachusetts. additionally, she is a doctoral student at the university of massachusetts at lowell, pursuing her ed.d. in language arts & literacy. her research interests include visual arts and literacy, digital/new literacies, language variation, urban education, and culturally responsive pedagogy. qing zhao university of massachusetts at lowell o'leary library 512, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854-3047 qing_zhao@uml.edu qing zhao began her graduate study at graduate school of education, university of massachusetts lowell in 2006. she is currently a doctoral candidate and a research assistant in the language arts and literacy program. her research interests currently include the study of teaching and learning english as a foreign/second language (efl/esl) and development of efl/esl learners' language proficiency in both north american and asian learning context. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 14 manuscript received: 8/26/12 revisions received: 1/8/13 accepted: 1/12/13 cross-cultural reading comprehension assessment in malay and english as it relates to the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension 15 volume 16, number 1 february 14, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1072-5216-3-le_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 12, 2013 issn 1099-839x state assessments: does a charter school truly demonstrate higher proficiency than its public counterpart? corinne m. kindzierski, ali ait si mhammed, and nancy wallace canisius college christina lesh tapestry charter school this project compared annual mandated assessment results for an urban charter school, two comparable urban schools and the encompassing urban district. scores in grades three through eight in the target school were analyzed to determine the percentage of students scoring at proficiency levels three and four (scores of one and two are considered failing). these scores were then compared to the surrounding district as well as two other schools with similar demographics using a z-test for estimation of a proportion. the results indicated although the number of students who performed at proficiency in the target school seemed to be higher, once corrected for the disparity in population size, these students perform the same, or worse than, students in comparable schools. further, the scores are more inconsistent between grades in the target school than the scores in the lower performing schools. suggestions for remediating the inconsistency and addressing the problems for consistently low percentage of proficiency scores are provided. keywords: charter schools, mandated assessments, proficiency scores this joint research project was an outcome of a professional development school (pds) relationship between an urban k-8 charter school and a private jesuit college. looking at student results on three years of language arts and math assessments, both partners noted a declining trend in proficiency scores, specifically in the middle school grades. this prompted us to further inquire if students in the charter school were performing as well or better than students in the surrounding district and comparable schools. anticipating a large increase in students from the district the following school year, we wanted to know if the charter school was getting better results on state assessments. if so, we planned to design and provide some tier 2 interventions for the students who would be entering the school from the district. if not, we wanted to determine which grades were not passing the assessments and identify instructional practices to implement so the majority of students would pass at each grade level. mandated assessments and outcomes-based curriculum over two decades ago, the national commission on excellence in education declared our country as a “nation at risk” (united states department of education, 1983). the report cited america’s students were not meeting minimum standards to lead productive lives in today’s competitive world, nor were they adequately prepared for college academia requirements. in response to these findings, former president george bush signed into action the elementary and secondary education act, or nclb as it is more commonly known (united states department of education, 2001). nclb was designed to increase accountability for student learning, close the achievement gap between minority, disadvantaged and atcurrent issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 risk students, and establish mandatory annual testing of all students. additionally, the use of evidence based teaching practices for writing, reading, and mathematics are now required in schools. while these outcomes are primarily focused at the classroom level, nclb also impacts policies at a school-wide level. schools who fail to meet adequate yearly progress (ayp) targets may have to alter curriculum, change teaching materials, or restructure school days and staff. under nclb, all schools are required to meet ayp goals, not just title i schools as in the past. additionally, the ayp targets for proficiency have become more stringent. despite these new accountability mandates, students in the united states continue to perform poorly on both reading and mathematics assessments. according to results from the 2009 national assessment of educational progress (naep), only 32 and 33 percent of our nation’s 8th graders obtain proficiency in reading and mathematics tasks, respectively (united states department of education institute of education and sciences, 2009). in 2009, according to new york’s english language arts assessments 68.62 percent of new york’s 8th graders were proficient (new york state education department of information and reporting services, 2009). this is a stark contrast to new york’s 33 percent of 8th graders students’ performance on the naep. in response, the new york state education department released a 2010 memo citing the standard with which they had evaluated students’ performance levels was set too low. the memo quoted, regents chancellor merryl h. tisch (2010) as saying: for the past several years, we have seen more and more students scoring ‘proficient’ or better on our state tests. at the same time, however, their performance on the naep exam – the gold standard in testing – has remained essentially flat. we haven’t been testing the right things in the right ways. ‘proficiency’ on our exams has to mean something real; no good purpose is served when we say that a child is proficient when that child is not. (para.1) in response, new york state raised the ‘cut scores’, requiring higher scaled scores to be considered proficient (table 1). faced with the inevitability that the new “cut” scores would result in less students scoring at proficiency, school leadership teams examined previous assessment data with a new lens. the crucial question became whether students who previously scored at proficiency continue at proficiency with the adjusted ‘cut’ scores? schools who were slightly above “in need of improvement” could now find themselves faced with the threat of acquiring that status. additionally, charter schools, already under the scrutiny of a trustee board, now had to consider how this new standard could affect their charter renewal. table 1 scale score comparison for the ela assessment 08/09-09/10 level 1 level 2 level 3 level 4 — grade 3 475-475 616-643 650-662 720-694 grade 4 430-430 612-637 650-668 716-720 grade 5 495-495 608-647 650-666 711-700 grade 6 480-480 598-644 650-662 696-694 — grade 7 470-470 600-642 650-664 705-698 grade 8 430-430 602-627 650-659 715-669 state assessments: does a charter school truly demonstrate higher proficiency than its public counterpart? 3 the rise of charter schools in the wake of widespread dissatisfaction with the perceived failures of this nation’s public schools (a nation at risk, 1983) and public posting of standardized assessment scores, attention turned to a major overhaul of america’s schools. emphasis was placed on school choice and autonomy, spurring the rapid growth of charter schools. charter schools are public schools that are free from many of the regulations applied to traditional public school yet are held accountable for student performances. the ‘charter’ itself is an outcome based contract in essence that details the schools mission, program, goals, assessment and student population. in theory they are autonomous with a wide control over their own curriculum, type of instruction, budget, and internal structure (finn, 2000). these schools are paid for with tax dollars and must be open to any student in the district. the ‘stakeholders’ who approve a schools charter can review, monitor and audit progress, hence some would argue charter schools have a ‘double’ accountability. the charter movement became a controversial catalyst for school reform as new schools with private ownership decreed they had a better way to educate america’s students. currently in america over 40 states have enacted charter laws with a recent estimate of well over a million children being served in charter schools (center for educational reform, 2012). in the city of buffalo, new york as of 2013 there are fourteen charter schools (buffalo public schools, 2013) serving over fifteen percent of eligible school age children. further, the average waiting time for the high-performing charter schools in buffalo is three years (buffalo public schools, 2013). charter versus public: differing perspectives on student achievement advocates of charter schools have long argued that they are an efficient and effective alternative for children who reside in predominately low income areas. proponents believe that charter schools have the opportunity to provide innovative and ‘cutting edge’ educational practices, being freed from the bureaucracy of public education. this debate has ensured for many years and in 2004, the american federation of teachers (a skeptic if not opponent) issued a report that found that district public schools outperformed charter schools nationally (nelson, rosenberg, & van meter, 2004). following this, a group of education reformers publically denounced the report, citing design errors and sloppy data analysis (ny times, 2004). in response, the united states department of education conducted its own study and concluded that students in public schools had overall better achievement in fourth grade reading and mathematics (usde, 2006), for those charter schools who were unaffiliated with public school districts. other researchers, such as hoxby (2004), and miron and nelson (2002), pointed out that such studies do not control for student background factors and have made attempts to control such factors with some success. however, miron and nelson (2002) concluded that we simply do not know enough about student achievement in charter schools and often do not have the data necessary to draw valid conclusions. it is in this context that we decided to undertake a small scale study with our intention being to see if a partner charter school performs better on state assessments while controlling for population factors by applying a z-test. although we have multiyear data, we don’t have the type of student level data necessary to measure the value added effects of schools. we did have authentic student data, however, which framed our context for the study by applying the principles of data driven instruction within the scope of responsive literacy and response to intervention data driven instruction. data-driven instruction describes a method of using actual classroom data to encourage teachers to make sound pedagogical decisions based on student performance. as schools continue to be under scrutiny for assessment scores and use of evidence-based practices, several are seeing substantial improvements in student learning and achievement as they incorporate data-driven instruction. while definitions may vary, the underlying constructs do not. within the research, the common major elements of data-driven instruction are good baseline data, measurable instructional goals, frequent formative assessment, professional learning communities, and focused instructional interventions (marshall, 2009). teachers in such schools are finding that frequent and practical uses of data can improve their instruction, re-energize their teaching, and increase their feelings of job satisfaction (gersten & keating, 1995; mcmaster, fuchs, fuchs, & compton, 2005). data-driven instruction (ddi) may require a paradigm shift for teachers. their thought process shifts from one that is focused on day-to-day instruction to one where daily practices are evaluated for their direct impact on student learning. when first implementing ddi, some schools find that without extensive professional development and training, teachers quickly feel overwhelmed. on-going support from administrators, higher education institutes or outside trainers can assist with the responsibilities until teachers feel as if data collection and analysis are part of their daily teaching repertoire. data-driven teachers understand the need for multiple measures when assessing school and student success (marshall, 2009). for example, simply looking at data from a single statewide test do not give teachers the specific information they need to enhance student learning. information from supporting assessments is necessary for teachers to design appropriate interventions. data-driven teachers need to apply both formative and current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 summative assessments to make sense of when and how the data can drive instruction. responsive literacy. one theoretical framework that supports data driven and differentiated instruction is responsive literacy instruction. this theory is aligned with cognitive theory which includes elements of modeling, guided practice, scaffolding supports, fading supports and prompts as students gain independence over their learning (mathes & torgenson, 2005; simmons, kame’enui, stoolmiller, coyne, & harn, 2003). in combination with this pedagogical approach, responsive literacy can be couched in the underpinnings of vgotsky (1978) and cognitive-constructivist approaches in that the social aspect of any type of learning cannot be separated from the actual process of learning, therefore calling upon teachers to create learning environments that encourage and promote both. the process of responsive literacy is comprised of five components; word work, fluency, assessment, supported reading, and supported writing (denton & hocker, 2006). using data collected from frequent assessment, those students who continue to struggle receive explicit instruction in phonics skills and text strategies while modeling and using scaffolds as students acquire these skills. response to intervention. with the implementation of universally high standards for all students, including those with disabilities, the practice of documenting students’ responsiveness to high quality, research based intervention becomes eminent (individuals with disabilities act, 2004). many students who are currently receiving specialized instruction often have reading difficulties (haager, klinger, & vaughn, 2007) in the areas of phonics, fluency and comprehension (lovett et al., 2000). the council for exceptional children (cec, 2007) posits that applying the principles of response to intervention (rti) may help provide effective early instruction, provide diagnostic information and can reduce the impact of one’s disability. rti addresses these needs at three levels or tiers. tier one consists of highquality classroom instruction for all students. students not demonstrating progress through frequent on-going assessment may need tier 2 intervention which is supplemental instruction. some students may need more intensive and frequent instruction, which may be delivered via special education services or tier 3. the focus of our study was to examine the effectiveness of tier 1 instruction. participants target school (ts) the target school in this study is a public charter school for children, parents and teachers who believe in weaving together the humanities, sciences, arts and social responsibility. the school received approval from the state university of new york board of trustees and the new york state education department to open in september, 2001. the school serves 230 students in grades k-8. there are nine individual classrooms with 5 rooms offering support services. there are three consultant teachers; two in literacy and one in math. additionally, the school employs six teaching assistants, each certified in childhood or special education. there are about six percent of teachers with less than three years’ experience, and a turnover rate fewer than five percent for teachers with less than five years’ experience. additionally, the k-8 building plans to expand its’ current enrollment by 150 students in the 2011-2012 school year. beginning next year, fifty kindergarten students will be added, and twenty five new students will enter grades one, five and six. each subsequent year fifty more kindergartners will be accepted. the school includes diversity in its mission and philosophy towards human growth and development. students within the school represent various ethnicities with 57% of students identified as white, 33% as african american, seven percent as hispanic, and one percent asian and american indian, respectively. further, students bring various socio-economic levels into the school community. we used the percent of students receiving free or reduced lunch to determine students at the poverty level. there are approximately 34% of students who receive a free/reduced lunch and 66% of students at full pay. it should be noted, however, that these numbers pertain to the k-8 building, as numbers and demographics change with regard to the high school. surrounding school district. currently, there are 78 public schools in the district including a growing number of charter schools. as of 2010, the total enrollment was 41,089 students with a student-teacher ratio around 19 to 1. the graduation rate was 51% in 2010, up from 45% in 2009, and 50% in 2008. more than 27% of teachers have a master's degree or higher and the median amount of experience in the field is 15 years. the district serves a diverse student body with an ethnicity breakdown of 57.7% students of african american descent, 25.7% of students identify as caucasian, 13.9 students list hispanic as their identified race and 1.5 % are native american. the schools have approximately 6.20 % of learners as english language learners. comparison school one (s1). one of the two comparison schools was selected because of the similar student demographics and the geographic location of the school. it a public magnet school located in the same urban area as the target school with a sample population of around 486 students in grade k-8. the average class size is 24 students, with only 3% of teachers with less than three years’ experience. there is a teacher turnover rate of around ten percent for teachers with fewer than five years’ experience. similar to the mission at the target school, s1 believes that students need to become problem solvers with effective oral communication skills in order to be lifelong learners. the curriculum includes themestate assessments: does a charter school truly demonstrate higher proficiency than its public counterpart? 5 based units where students are actively engaged in authentic experiences integrated with the visual and performing arts. these units are similar to the arts integrated expeditions at the target school. further, s1 is also a partner in a professional development school with a local state institution. the student body is diverse with 44% african american, 34% white, 14% hispanic, six percent asian or other pacific islander and one percent american indian. there are eighty seven percent of students who qualify for a free or reduced lunch and twelve pay full cost. comparison school two (s2). the second surrounding school was selected for the similarity to both the target school and s1. the authors note that the comparison is not an exact math, but both surrounding sample schools had the closest demographic, geographic and curricular focus as the target school. further, the target school will experience an influx of 150 students in the upcoming school year, which will more closely resemble the demographics of the surrounding district. s2 also focuses on developing problem solving skills through authentic, hands-on activities that are designed to promote whole child development. the curriculum at sample school two emphasizes inquiry based learning and hands-on, minds on lessons that are relevant to students’ lives. again, similar to the thematic unit based pedagogy at s1 and the expeditionary learning at the target school. this school includes integrated center-based learning to design their lessons and also weaves the arts into their student-focused instructional plans. class size averages 25 with three percent of teachers having under three years’ experience and zero percent of teachers with less than five years of teaching experience. students in s2 represent various ethnicities including 77% of students identified as white, fourteen percent at african american, five percent as hispanic, two percent as asian of other pacific islander, and one percent as american indian. forty-five percent of students are eligible for a free or reduced lunch, while 55% pay full cost. table 2 comparison of students who qualify for free or reduced lunch across district, target school and surrounding schools for 2009-2010 table 3 demographic comparison of students in district, target school and surrounding schools for 2009-2010 ethnicity district (bps) target (ts) school 1 (s1) school 2 (s2) % american indian 1 1 1 1 % black or african american 57 33 44 14 % hispanic or latino 14 7 14 5 % asian or other pacific islander 2 1 6 2 % white 26 57 34 77 *source: new york state education department district and school performance report 2009-10. lunch district (bps) target (ts) school 1 (s1) school 2 (s2) % free /reduced 77 34 88 45 % full cost 23 66 12 55 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 purpose of the study and research questions the purpose of this study was to examine state assessment data in order to determine: (a) how the overall student population of the sample school performed in comparison to similar public schools and (b) what additional supports might be needed to improve instruction. the research questions were: 1. controlling for obvious differences in population size, is there a significant difference between the ela and math assessment scores of the target school and the encompassing district? if so, what factors may contribute to this disparity? 2. given the target school and two comparable urban public schools, is there a significant difference between two ela and math assessment results? if so, what factors may contribute to this disparity? 3. given the state assessment results from the target schools, is there a significant difference in performance at certain grade levels and what factors may help explain such differences? data analysis and results the analyzed data included student english language arts and math scores from years 2007-2010 for the target school, encompassing district and the comparable public school. these scores included the percentage of students scoring at each proficiency level, one through four. to begin, researchers examined the scores from the target school to gain an overall picture of how well students have been performing over the past three years. table 3 shows the ela scores from a three year period in grades three through eight for the target school. data show that 89% of third grade students are in levels 3 and 4. the results are consistent for the three years period for fourth grade students with a percentage of 87%. the percentage of students at proficiency levels dropped in grades 6 and 8. it should be noted that in 3rd grade, less than 11% of students are scoring below the minimal acceptable level , those percentages remaining relatively consistent in grade 4 and 5 (13%, and 18% respectively). the concern arose as students began 6th grade, where more than 20% of students did not achieve passing scores and 25% in eighth grade. interestingly, in 7th grade only 16% of students did not pass, though still higher than the primary grades. we discuss possible reasons for this disparity in our discussion section. table 4 percentage of each performance level for grades 3-8 ela scores in target school* grade # tested each year percentage of each performance level 3years% for levels 3 and 4 level1 level2 level3 level4 3 25 2.60 8.30 58.00 31.00 89.00 4 25 0.00 13.30 72.00 14.60 87.00 5 25 5.30 13.20 73.60 7.80 81.00 6 25 2.60 20.00 74.60 2.60 77.00 7 25 0.00 16.70 72.50 11.00 84.00 8 23 3.00 22.00 66.00 8.40 74.00 *source: new york state education department district and school performance report 2009-10. state assessments: does a charter school truly demonstrate higher proficiency than its public counterpart? 7 table 5 comparison between target school and the district percentage of performance results in ela scores for 2009-2010 _____________________________________________________________________________________________ grade percentage of performance levels 3 and 4 in bps and ts _____________________________________________________________________________________________ l3and 4 bpsela l3 and 4tslea _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 3 14.00 80.00 4 14.00 80.00 5 13.05 60.00 6 15.85 68.00 7 12.75 63.00 8 13.35 41.00 to determine if any significant differences existed between the target school, the encompassing district and comparable surrounding schools, the researchers extended this analysis with two other urban public schools with similar geographic location, student demographics and curricular focus (see tables 1 and 2). for this analysis we specifically focused solely on students who scores at or above proficiency. for this research, we wanted only to compare the percentage of students who scored at or above proficiency in our target and surrounding schools. we hoped subsequent research would examine the disparities between the specific levels on the ela assessment as a diagnostic-prescriptive tool. table 4 indicates that the percentage of students who scored at proficiency on ela in the target school (ts) ranged between 70-80% for grades 3 and 4; but these percentages decrease and are lowest in 8th grade with a percentage of only 41% in ela. comparatively, the percentage of students scoring at proficient levels in district schools (referred to as bps) is lower, ranging between 13 and 16 percent. while the percentages differ, it is interesting to see that overall the grade level percentages are more consistent to one another. in ts, however, the students’ scores consistently decrease as grade levels get higher. percentages of students passing their ela scores are as high as 80% in 3rd and 4th grade; yet as low as 41% in 8th grade. a comparison of sample proportions using twotailed z-test shows a statistically significant difference among grades 3 and 4 in ts and bps in ela scores with a proportion of 80% in ts as compared to 14% in bps (p = .000). using the z-test comparison, the results of approximately 60% of students in ts who passed ela scores was not enough to exceed the proportion from bps even though it looks lower and it is consistently below 15%. to strengthen the point of comparison and to see whether the target school’s lower performance in the upper grades would remain consistent, we ran a comparison between ts and two schools in the same geographic and demographic area as previously described (s1 and s2). an average of 60 students took the ela tests in s1, and an average of a 100 students took the ela tests in s2. since the samples are derived from the same population in bps, we used the same z test for estimation of the proportion of the population to look more closely at the results. as displayed in tables 6 and 7, the percentage of ts students scoring at levels 3 and 4 and the percentage at s1 are significantly different in all grades except for grade 8 where s1 outperforms ts with proportions of 41% in ts and a proportion of 31.15% for s1. for grades 3-7, results current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 8 table 6 comparison of the estimation of the population between target school and the district percentage of performance results in ela scores for the school year 2009-2010 _______________________________________________________________________________________ grade percentage of performance levels 3 and 4 in bps and ts _____________________________________________________________________________________________ l3and 4 bpsela l3 and 4tslea p-value based on estimation of population _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 3 14.00 80.00 0.00 4 14.00 80.00 0.00 5 13.05 60.00 0.82 6 15.85 68.00 0.51 7 12.75 63.00 0.74 8 13.35 41.00 0.00 table 7 comparison between target school and s1 and s2 in percentage of students scoring at proficiency levels 3 and 4 in english language arts for 2009-10 school year for grades 3-8 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ g tsela s1ela s2ela _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 3 80.00 33.60 6.25 4 80.00 34.50 10.00 5 60.00 27.20 9.00 6 68.00 35.00 11.45 7 63.00 22.65 11.05 8 41.00 31.15 9.85 _____________________________________________________________________________________________ state assessments: does a charter school truly demonstrate higher proficiency than its public counterpart? 9 table 8 comparison of the estimation of the population of students scoring at proficiency levels 3 and 4 between target school and s1 and s2 in ela with significance level for the school year 2009-2010 grade tsela s1ela p-value ts&s1 s2ela p-value ts&s2 _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 3 80.00 33.60 .91 6.25 0 .00 4 80.00 34.50 .00 10.00 0.82 5 60.00 27.20 .04 9.00 0.78 6 68.00 35.00 .07 11.45 0.94 7 63.00 22.65 .00 11.05 0.94 8 41.00 31.15 .41 9.85 0 .00 show a statistically significant difference in favor of ts. while the results of s1 are consistent throughout the grades (see table 6), ts—even with better performance of students in grades 3-7—has not achieved consistent results. to show this discrepancy, we computed the standard deviation (based on grades levels 3-8 with n=6), finding that ts has the highest standard deviation (mean = 65.33; sd = 14.58). the standard deviation for s1 (mean = 30.68; sd = 4.87) is higher than the standard deviation of s2 (mean = 9.60; sd = 1.86), demonstrating that the results on assessments in ts are not consistent across grades; while results in s1 and s2 are reasonably consistent. discussion the most consistent results found were significant differences between the target school and comparable public schools in grade levels 3, 4 and 5. as students entered grade six and above, there is little or no significant difference between the target school and comparable public schools. these findings indicated that in the early elementary years the majority of ts students not only scored at proficiency on the state assessments, but also significantly outperformed their peers in surrounding public schools. on the other hand, this trend does not remain consistent as students’ progress grade levels. it should also be noted that the target school sample had been in the same school for the majority of their education. to clarify, most students tested in grades five through eight entered the target school at the kindergarten level and have remained, showing that their sole instruction occurred in the same school. with regard to the results, it appeared that students in our target school do not score any better on assessments than students in lower performing schools when results were based on the corrected estimation of a proportion. though the target school initially showed higher percentages of students at all grade levels who scored at proficiency levels 3 and 4, when ‘leveling the playing field’ for disparity in numbers, this finding generally only held true in grades three, four and five. further, although the results of the research questions certainly demonstrate that the target school; more often than not; outperforms student performance in comparable schools, internally the results are inconsistent, as demonstrated by the high standard deviation (14.58). we suggest further research to determine why the internal inconsistency occurred, and to more closely why charter schools do not produce significantly better scores than the public counterparts, as one might expect. recommendations and implications for future practice the purpose of this study was to determine (a) controlling for obvious differences in population size, is there a significant difference between the ela and math assessment scores of the target school and the encompassing district? if so, what factors may contribute to this disparity? (b) given the target school and two comparable urban public schools, is there a significant difference between two ela and math assessment results? if so, what factors may contribute to this disparity? and (c) given the state assessment results from the target schools, is there a significant difference in current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 10 performance at certain grade levels and what factors may help explain such differences? based on the review of the data and knowledge of the current school structures, there are several recommendations that may improve student achievement and lessen the performance gap. organized within the principles of data driven instruction (marshall, 2005), our research indicated that there was not a true greater performance on the state tests by our target school. further, upon closer examination we noted that there appeared to be greater disparity at the upper grades and a rather steady decrease in student performance. from this, we hypothesized that more intense instruction may be needed for students after fourth grade. we felt this recommendation is supported within the responsive literacy theory (mathes & torgenson, 2005; simmons et al., 2003) and response to intervention (cec, 2007), both of which are driven by frequent assessment and direct instruction in areas where students are struggling. although our results didn’t yield such specific data, we were able to identify target grade levels where tier 2 interventions may be required. specifically, we would recommend the target school provide some enrichment and remediation beginning in grade five, using a direct instruction approach enveloped within responsive literacy instruction. again, the responsive literacy theoretical approach (mathes & torgenson, 2005; simmons et al., 2003) is based on principles of cognitive theory such as schema activation, modeling, scaffolding and gradual release of teacher responsibility (mathes & torgenson, 2005). we would support a literacy intervention such as this to be a part of the literacy curriculum for the target school, with an emphasis in the later elementary years. another of our implications would be to encourage principals and other school leaders to support practices of ddi as an ongoing part of daily instruction. though we acknowledge certain schools may or may not do as well on assessment comparatively, we do concur with other research which lends support to the idea that teachers have the greatest impact on student performance (darlinghammond, 2000; goldhaber & brewer, 2000; papay, west, fullerton, & kane, 2012). examining our student data allowed us to determine which students need greater assistance, and subsequently change instructional practices. references buffalo public schools. (february, 2012). student demographics. http://www.buffaloschools.org/ council for exceptional children. (october, 2007). cec’s position on response to intervention (rti): the unique role of special education and special educators. center for education reform. (2006). about charter schools. http://www.edreform.com/charterschools/ darling-hammond, l. (2000). teacher quality and student achievement: a review of state policy evidence. education policy analysis, 8(1), 73114. denton, c., & hocker, j. (2006). responsive reading instruction: flexible intervention for struggling readers in the early grades. longmont, co: sophris west. finn, c., manno, b., & vanourek, g. (2000). charter schools in action. princeton, nj: princeton university press. gersten, r., & keating, t. (1995). the burden of proof: validity as improvement of instructional practice. exceptional children, 61(6), 510-519. goldhaber, d., & brewer, d. (2000). does teacher certification matter? high school teacher certification status and student achievement. educational evaluation and policy, 22(2). 129145. haager, d., klinger, j., & vaughn, s. (eds.). (2007). evidence based reading practices for response to intervention. baltimore, md: brookes. howard, n., rosenberg, b., & van meter, n. (2004). charter school achievement on the 2003 national assessment of educational progress. washington, d.c., american federation of teachers, august, 2004. individual with disabilities improvement act. (2004). public law 108-446december 3, 2004. 118 stat.2697. lovett, m., lacerenza, l., borden, s., frijters, j., steinbach, k., & depalma, m. (2000). components of effective remediation for developmental reading disabilities: combining phonological and strategy-based instruction to improve outcomes. exceptional children, 76(4), 394-416. marshall, k. (2009). what data driven instruction should really look like. teacher magazine, june 2009. retrieved from http://www.theteachermagazine.org mathes, p., & torgenson, j. (2005). sra early intervention in reading, colombus, oh: sra/mcgraw. mcmaster, k., fuchs, d., fuchs, l, & compton, d. (2005). responding to nonreaders: an experimental field trial of identification and intervention methods. exceptional children, 71(4), 445-463. miron, g., & nelson, c. (2002). what’s public about charter schools? lessons learned about choice and accountability. thousand oakes, ca: corwin press, inc. new york state education department information and reporting services. (2009). english language state assessments: does a charter school truly demonstrate higher proficiency than its public counterpart? 11 arts and mathematic assessment results. retrieved from http://www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/ela-math/ new york state education department. (2010, july). regents approve scoring changes to grade 3-8 math and english test. albany, ny: merryl t. tisch. new york times. (2004). advertisement by critics of the aft charter school study. august 2004. papay, j., west, m., fullerton, j., & kane, t. (2012). does an urban teacher residency increase student achievement? early evidence from boston. educational evaluation and policy analysis, 34(4), 413-434. simmons, d., kame’enui, e., stoolmiller, m., coyne, m., & harn, b. (2003). accelerating growth and maintaining proficiency: a two year intervention study of kindergarten and first grade children at risk for reading difficulties. in b.r. foorman (ed.) preventing and remediating reading difficulties. baltimore: york press. united states department of education. (1983). a nation at risk: the imperative for educational reform. retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/natatrisk/index.html united states department of education. (2001). the elementary and secondary education act: no child left behind. retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/107110.pdf united states department of education. (2006). a closer look at charter schools using hierarchal linear modeling. washington, d.c.: u.s. department of education. united states department of education, institute of education and sciences. (2009). the national assessment of educational progress. retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ vaughn, s., mathes, p., linan-thompson, s., cirono, p., & francis, d. (2006). effectiveness of an english intervention for first grade english language learners at-risk for reading problems. elementary school journal, 107, 153-180. vgotsky, l. s. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge. ma: harvard university press. wells, a. (ed.). (2002). where charter school policy fails: the problems of accountability and equity. new york, ny: teachers college press: columbia university. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 12 article citation kindzierski, c. m., mhammed, a. a. s., wallace, n., & lesh, c. (2013). state assessments: does a charter school truly demonstrate higher proficiency than its public counterpart? current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1172 author notes corinne m. kindzierski teacher education department canisius college, 2000 main street buffalo, new york 14208 kindziec@canisius.edu corinne m. kindzierski is an associate professor of special education at canisius college. her research interests include assessing student performance of students with special needs in charter schools, the quality of teachers serving students with significant special needs and measuring the impact of pre-service teachers on student achievement. ali ait si mhammed teacher education department canisius college, 2000 main street buffalo, new york 14208 aitsima@canisius.edu ali ait si mhammed is an assistant professor of adolescent education at canisius college. his research interests include school-wide assessment and policy impact, working with diverse students and statistics. nancy wallace teacher education department canisius college, 2000 main street buffalo, new york 14208 wallacen@canisius.edu nancy wallace is an associate professor of early childhood education at canisius college. her research interests include professional development schools, the inclusion of the arts in education and pre-service teacher preparation. christina lesh tapestry charter school 65 great arrow drive buffalo, new york 14214 clesh@tapestryschools.org christina lesh is the school principal of tapestry charter elementary school. her research interests include professional development schools, high-stakes accountability and expeditionary learning. state assessments: does a charter school truly demonstrate higher proficiency than its public counterpart? 13 manuscript received: 09/06/2012 revisions received: 04/04/2013 accepted: 06/14/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 14 volume 16, number 2 august 12, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template volume 18, number 2 may 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x nurturing cooperative learning pedagogies in higher education classrooms: evidence of instructional reform and potential challenges tefera tadesse jimma university, ethiopia robyn m. gillies university of queensland, australia this article reports on a case study that examined the nature and extent of students’ participation in a cooperative learning (cl) intervention, and its effects on students’ learning, satisfaction and gains. the participants included 58 undergraduate students and 2 teachers. the quantitative results showed that 4 inter-correlated pedagogical factors: cooperative interaction, task orientation, academic challenge, and teaching effectiveness, together accounted for 69% and 52% of the variance in students’ learning satisfaction and gains scores, respectively. each factor significantly predicted students’ learning satisfaction and gains, β ≥ .27. also, the qualitative results demonstrated that the teachers were able to incorporate cl pedagogies to existing instructional practices. correspondingly, students found that they were more focused on their learning, experienced more interaction and enjoyment, and gained more academically than they had achieved before being involved in this initiative. however, the academic culture and local constraints were negative influences on implementation; findings provide an initial evidence-base that demonstrate how shifting the focus of classroom instruction from a content-centred form to a learning-centred form impacts not only the quality of teaching in class but also the quality of learning and other important indicators of students’ success. keywords: cooperative learning; ethiopia; higher education; pedagogical factor quality teaching and learning has taken center stage in the on-going educational reforms in higher education as promoting learning has become a major issue of concern to the 21st century university (schleicher, 2011). creating instructional conditions that promote quality learning are challenging for many higher education teachers (haggis, 2006) since they commonly rely on the lecture as their main form of teaching (fink, 2013). the situation is compounded in the developing countries, particularly africa because of rapid expansion of higher education, difficulties with accessing resources, and the constraints associated with internal capabilities (schweisfurth, 2011; teferra & altbach, 2003). if teachers are not supported to change their instructional practices, it is more likely that many of the challenges they face will remain too great to overcome (ramsden, 2003). to cope with these constraints and promote teaching quality, the primary focus needs to be on understanding the complexity of teaching and learning (loughran, 2013), and transforming teachers attitudes and beliefs that change work habits (goos, dole, & makar, 2007). a more realistic strategy may be the establishment of new pedagogies that are adaptive to local needs and constraints while at the same time providing the necessary support for teachers during implementation (penuel, fishman, yamaguchi, & gallagher, 2007). 1 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 various pedagogic approaches exist to promote quality teaching so that teachers can transform classrooms into more engaging and more supportive learning environments, and one such approach is structured smallgroup learning. structured small-group instruction, here referred to as cooperative learning (cl) pedagogy, provides teachers with an alternative toolkit, to help them effect such changes (smith, 2006; yamarik, 2007). an extensive body of research provides evidence on the effectiveness of cl to improve the quality of teaching and learning in higher education (smith, sheppard, johnson, & johnson, 2005; springer, stanne, & donovan, 1999). research at the undergraduate level indicates that cl is more effective than traditional forms of teaching in terms of promoting quality learning demonstrated in students’ greater academic achievement, more positive attitudes towards learning, and increased social outcomes (johnson & johnson, 2002b; johnson, johnson, & smith, 1998, 2007). in this study, the term cl refers to an approach to small-group work that maximizes the quality of learning that results from quality teaching (gillies, 2007). rationale attempts to promote quality teaching by imposing expectations on academics are likely to result in a compliance culture (au, 2011) which , in turn, could impact negatively on them as they felt that they had lost ownership and control over their academic work, compounding their negative feelings about the changes they were expected to embrace (shulman & shulman, 2004). part of the concern is that, quality teaching represents human behavior and can only be changed at an individual level when the individual wants to change (biggs, 2012). from a developmental perspective, a focus on quality teaching through establishing a conducive and supportive culture is evolutionary (squire, makinster, barnett, luehmann, & barab, 2003) and cannot be dictated from above (ramsden, 2003), but rather it needs to evolve from within the institution (gosling, 2006). even if most institutions of higher learning and quality assurance agencies have not ignored the quality of teaching and learning occurring in classrooms, the concern remains that they have not seen it as crucial in their efforts to promote quality learning (trowler, fanghanel, & wareham, 2005). this, in part, may be because the students’ learning experiences and classroom culture are not considered critical for quality learning. research has shown that the lecture is still the dominant pedagogy in higher education classrooms (chisholm & leyendecker, 2008; kezar & kinzie, 2006) which does not help quality learning as “the lecture rarely, if ever, supports learner engagement in inquiry, discussion, and/or expository learning” (hennessy & evans, 2006, p. 99), key elements in successful learning. even good lecturing has been found to be inadequate to develop quality learning expressed in terms of students ability to apply information that has been mastered in new situations and promote higher-order cognitive skills among students (fink, 2013). these and other studies results suggest that lecturing alone is not working very well. most of the time, efforts to promote quality teaching result in the adoption of instructional techniques without full understanding of the prevailing conditions and the pedagogical reasons for the use of such techniques (tabulawa, 2003). however, this stance appears misguided in the light of accumulated evidence over the years that reflect teachers’ professional learning as a complex process rather than a linear one (gravani, 2007; webster-wright, 2009). in the ethiopian higher education system, most teaching is characterized by a high degree of teacher control, student passivity and powerlessness (desta, 2004; fisher & swindells, 1998; tadesse, manathunga, & gillies, 2012; zerihun, beishuizen, & van os, 2012). the other issue is that, teachers continue to use instructional practices that are not effective at promoting quality learning. the reason for these shortcomings appears to be with the policy as it sets unrealistic expectation to promote the learner-centered approach in the system, without a corresponding focus on how to cope with the challenges of widespread implementation (assefa, 2008), and without transforming the academic culture which appears to be quite resistant to change. however, there are top-down initiatives but these alone were often found to be insufficient to achieve deep and lasting quality in university teaching and learning (areaya, 2010). additionally, research shows that the inservice teacher professional development program that has been implemented has not brought about the anticipated changes in pedagogical approaches in ways assumed by the program planners (moges, 2010; piper, 2009). compounded by these and other problems, the quality of higher education in ethiopia is continually deteriorating (tadesse et al., 2012). in response to the status quo in ethiopia, a preliminary study was conducted to examine whether the process and contents of cl intervention constitute a substantial means by which ethiopian higher education institutions can improve the quality of their teaching and learning. the primary purpose of the current study was to investigate the pedagogical factors that facilitated the quality of students’ learning, and further assess the local constraints that surrounded the implementation process. operational definition in this study, quality teaching is defined as an aggregation of the effective teaching components of good teaching, appropriate interaction with the students, and fair and constructive assessment and feedbacks. quality learning is defined in two ways: as an active process that builds upon significant learning experiences of the students and as an attainment of learning outcomes demonstrated in terms of increased knowledge and skills and satisfaction. 2 nurturing cooperative learning pedagogies in higher education classrooms: evidence of instructional reform and potential challenges conceptual framework this study conceptualizes cl pedagogy, in a very general sense, referring to the design and implementation of courses according to a cl approach (smith, 2006; smith, et al., 2005). guided by this, the study applied curriculum-based innovative course design, and adapted implementation using a process as a way to structure learning (hunter & scheirer, 1988). under these influences, the notion of experience being central in learning is emphasized, and the role of the process as a way to integrate curricular components is clearly demonstrated (cornbleth, 1988). the philosophical roots of the argument for the cl pedagogy emanates from the epistemological and pedagogical stances as described in the works of scholars, particularly learning as doing (dewey, 1963), learning as social participation (lave & wenger, 1991), learning as environmentally and culturally situated activity (vygotsky, 1978), and learning as participation with other learners (rogoff, turkanis, & bartlett, 2001). thus, cl is considered as a pedagogy that promotes the quality of teaching and learning. cooperative learning as a pedagogy of quality teaching and learning two critical features, are often cited in the literature to distinguish cl from other forms of small group instruction: positive interdependence and individual accountability (johnson & johnson, 2009). a sense of individual accountability forms the basis for a significant interaction among students. the notion of interdependence is established through structuring the learning environment for all members of a cl team. this helps the group members to share mutual responsibilities for learning and develop more positive relationships (johnson et al., 2007). one strategy to effect this sense of mutual responsibility is through providing learning materials that must be shared among group members. a second way is assigning different materials to each expert team to master as in the jigsaw strategy (aronson, blaney, stephan, sikes, & snapp, 1978). once the materials have been studied by each expert team, the members return to their original (home) groups to share learning with their teammates. finally, group cohesion can be promoted through assigning a team, a joint goal with the group being collectively rewarded for their team performances. cooperative learning has been shown to be effective in improving the quality of learning (sharan, 2010a). while less able students appear to benefit significantly from their engagement in cooperative groups (wilkinson & fung, 2002), high achievers do not appear to be disadvantaged and actually benefit from the opportunity of teaching peers (webb, 2008). benefits can, under certain conditions, accrue to both those giving and receiving help (gillies, 2003). in heterogeneous peer-led groups, students of lower and higher ability can benefit mainly due to an informal teacher–learner relationship formed between the group members (cohen, lotan, scarloss, & arellano, 1999). in addition, a multiplicity of other benefits including promoting friendships amongst students, improving self-esteem, and so forth have been highlighted (cohen, 1994). cl not only promotes student learning but it also, helps teachers to improve their teaching. as a tool to help transform teaching, cl is very attractive, as it has a firm research base, while on the other hand, it does not require expensive curricular resources (johnson & johnson, 2009; sharan, 2010a). however, achieving positive results depends on the context in which it is implemented, providing staff development for the teachers involved (ferguson-patrick, 2011), explicitly describing the roles of the teacher, carefully designing the learning tasks, and ensuring students learn appropriate social skills (gillies, 2004). above all, it depends on understanding, commitment, and continual practice on the part of teachers who implement cl (smith, 2000). method research design this study used a case study method (stake, 1983), particularly an evaluative case study (stenhouse, 1988), emphasizing directly the design and implementation of cl pedagogies. both quantitative and qualitative data (guba & lincoln, 1983; scriven, 1983) were used to gain a holistic picture of the implementation process and the results outcomes. the qualitative data included an exploratory case study of a cl intervention. this aspect of the study has the objective of identifying strengths and weaknesses associated with the cl intervention. similarly, the quantitative data comprised an explanatory factor analysis dealing with variables representing aspects of the cl implementation. this explanatory analysis was intended as a preliminary study for pointing to important variables for further investigation; and testing a tentative pattern of relationship between important variables identified from the literature. this evaluative case study does bring into focus fundamental questions relating to the process and outcomes of the cl intervention as used in the ethiopian university classroom setting. thus, the study did not include a comparison group and random assignment. a quantitative study model and a qualitative analysis framework were developed as theoretical frameworks that informed the analysis and interpretation of study results in subsequent sections. participants instructors for two undergraduate courses in two different disciplines were purposefully selected to participate in this pilot study. the courses included: 1) psychology: psychological testing and 2) sport sciences: measurement and evaluation in human performance. in these two courses, a total of 65 students (30 students of 2nd year, sport sciences major and 35 students of 3rd 3 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 year, psychology major) participated (mean age 21.26 years, sd + 1.72 years; 83% were male). the student sample included 58 students (26 sport science major and 32 psychology major). however, the researcher excluded 7 of the respondents from the analysis due to excessive information loss. regardless of this, the researchers handled the random missing values across the different scales using list-wise deletion. two teachers and eight purposively selected students participated in the interview. the student interviewees included four students from each discipline with a representation of students by gender and cgpa (high & low). in this study, the teacher participants received one-on-one training on how to use cl methods in their classrooms based on a brief discussion about the nature and purpose of the study. furthermore, different scaffolding techniques were employed in the process of cooperatively developing the cl lessons with the teachers, including (a) providing information and simplifying the task, (b) providing on-the spot feedback, (c) providing clues, options, and explanations, and (d) using probing questions to further elicit concepts and ideas. in addition, the first author tried to work collegially with the participant teachers on the design and implementation, assisted in guiding the teachers’ practices, and closely supervised and monitored activities in the implementation process. thus the entire design and implementation of the cl lessons was a cooperative endeavor. the nature and contents of the interventions the main focus of this intervention is the incorporation of cl pedagogies into to existing instructional practices of two major courses in the department of psychology and the department of sport sciences. in these two courses, informal cl methods such as “think-pair-share” and “formulate-share-listen-create” were implemented, and the formal cl, the jigsaw strategy (aronson et al., 1978) and group investigation (cohen, 1994) were employed. the students participated in the cl activities each week for four weeks during the first semester of 2011/12 academic year. in one of the cl lessons, students of psychology identified the different scales in psychological testing and measurement; and defined different scales such as percentage, percentile rank, and z score as an introductory think-pair-share activities. similarly, these students change draw scores into percentile ranks; and further changed raw scores to different linear scales as culminating activities in the end of the cl lesson. in the jigsaw lesson, psychology students dealt with “the reliability or consistency of test scores”. the students discussed and deliberated among themselves on issues of test score theory; methods of test score reliability estimation; main factors influencing reliability of a test; and basic considerations in estimating the reliability of test scores. in the final lesson, the psychology students engaged in group investigation to estimate reliability scores using different methods. in one of the cl lessons, the sport science students engaged in listing out different flexibility exercises as an introduction to measuring flexibility and agility through a think-pair-share activity. as a culminating activity, these students did engage in and formulate-share-listen-create activities to identify different types of flexibility exercises and list them under “relative flexibility” and “absolute flexibility” using a table presented by the class teacher. in the jigsaw lesson, these students did engage in discussing the nature and use of different skill related to fitness measures. in the last lesson, these students engaged in a group investigation to determine and give reasons for using different instruments to measure skill related fitness. the informal cl activities were designed to stimulate interest at the beginning of a lesson, and in a culminating activity to enable students to discuss the materials learned and thus acquire deeper understandings of it. these activities follow a three stage procedure, beginning with an individual learning activity, for example, defining the term then pair work, and finally teacher-led whole class discussion. with the individual work, every student takes responsibility to do the assigned learning task and write down something possible in preparation for the pair-work. with the pair-work, students share understandings and co-construct knowledge to arrive at a mutually shared learning product. while the individual work promotes personal accountability for learning, the pair-work promotes mutual interdependence through a commonly shared action of pair members. finally, the whole class discussion is used for the sharing of group understandings more widely and this promotes social interdependence through the participation of students in the instruction. the jigsaw lesson was designed and implemented for a double period as the activities needed more time to complete. for this, a single chapter of each course was considered, in the psychology major, the chapter “reliability estimation” and in the sports sciences major, the chapter “skill-related physical fitness measures”. students received hand-outs from these chapters in the previous week so that everyone had an opportunity to read the material in advance. this task helped students to exercise mutual autonomy, creativity, and collective decision making. subsequently, in each jigsaw group, members had the opportunity to share the synthesized material from each expert’s short presentation, ask questions and seek clarifications, and identify difficulties for further discussion with the teacher. this allowed jigsaw members to draw connections across the different topics of the chosen chapters while at the same time exercising individual accountability and social interdependence within the jigsaw group. in this lesson, students’ were randomly assigned to the different jigsaw 4 nurturing cooperative learning pedagogies in higher education classrooms: evidence of instructional reform and potential challenges groups and to the topics of expert groups. heterogeneous membership was maintained by ensuring that students of mixed achievements and gender were included in each group with the main focus on promoting fairness and equity through establishing randomized heterogeneous groups. to achieve practical implementation of the concepts covered in the jigsaw lessons, the last cl lesson was designed for students’ participation in a group investigation and group marking using scoring rubrics. in this way, students experienced the full implications of positive interdependence within cl while at the same time they were provided with the opportunity to practice “assessment for learning”. for this final lesson, the jigsaw group structure was maintained. each jigsaw group worked on two-clustered assignment questions out of the possible seven-to-eight questions, and these assignments were randomly allocated to the different jigsaw groups. through random assignment of questions and by including heterogeneous group members in each jigsaw activity, fairness and equity issues were addressed. the students completed the group investigation assignment out-of-class. at the start of the last cl lesson, the teacher distributed a scoring rubric to the different jigsaw groups to refine their assignment work and prepare them for the intergroup peer assessment and marking. the main task of intergroup peer assessment was to assess the work of the other jigsaw members, based on a scoring rubric, and provide some written feedback to them. the teacher assisted in the different jigsaw groups by clarifying the contents of the scoring rubric and what they were required to do with it. following the students’ experience of finalizing the assignments and scoring in small groups under the close supervision of the teacher and the first author, they received their group marks; the lessons were then reviewed to gain an understanding of their impressions of their experiences of the group assignment and marking. structuring and organizing groups the group structure is the building block of a cl pedagogy that determines the classroom norms (gillies, 2003). in this study, group structure was formed using standard small group norms, for example, group size between two to four members and heterogeneity of members in each group (cohen et al., 1999; gillies, 2004). this study also used context specific criteria for selecting group members (sharan, 2010b), for example, gender, cumulative grade point average (cgpa), and teachers’ professional judgment. the teacher’s professional judgment refers to the determination of the composition of the small group based on the students’ knowledge and skill, their personality characteristics, and their levels of interactivity in the class. in this way, the researchers ensured that the group formation has both theoretical justifications as well as practical desirability. these are important characteristics of group organization that are considered here to be both theoretically and practically desirable. after structuring the groups, different small group tasks were organized. group organization focuses on specifying small group learning tasks, assigning responsibilities, and managing students small group work (cohen et al., 1999; sharan, 2010a). data collection questionnaire. student participants of this study completed a survey questionnaire largely modified from the australasian survey of student engagement (coates, 2010) and an earlier built local teaching effectiveness instrument (tadesse, 2006). this earlier instrument was prepared by the first author for the purpose of measure teaching effectiveness. through the different items, participants were asked to think about their experiences in the cl activities, and perceptions regarding learning satisfaction and educational gains. while reading statements, participants indicated how true the statements were for them. teaching effectiveness items began with, ‘based on your experience in the cooperative learning activities of this course, please rate the quality of teaching on the following points?’ and were scaled 1 (poor) to 4 (very good). levels of academic challenge items began with, ‘during the cooperative learning lesson to what extent your coursework emphasized the following intellectual activities?’ and were scaled 1 (very little) to 4 (very much). cooperative interaction and task orientation items began with, ‘during the cooperative learning lesson, about how often have you done each of the following?’ and were scaled 1 (never) to 4 (very often). satisfaction items began with, ‘how would you evaluate the level of satisfaction you and your class students obtained from the learning you experienced in this course?’ and was scaled 1 (very little) to 4 (very much). the remaining educational gain items began with ‘to what extent has the learning experience in the cooperative learning lesson contributed to your learning and development in the following ways?’ and were scaled 1 (very little) to 4 (very much). semi-structured interview. the teacher and student participants were interviewed separately using the first author’s semi-structured interview protocol. we conducted one-on-one interviews with teachers and students as one source of data collection. interviews ranged between 20 to 30 minutes and focused on a series of questions that asks the participants for their views on the following themes: (1) general perception about their experience in the cl lessons; (2) aspects of cl they have seen as strength; (3) examples that reflect this strength; (4) the teacher’s roles and the students’ responses in the cl lessons; (5) some of the challenges they have faced; and (6) their general comments about the cl lessons in general. 5 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 specifications of the quantitative study model in the realm of evaluation of instruction, the probable nature of the relationships among instructional conditions ascribed to facilitate students learning and development can best be determined by taking a core set of variables based on insights gained from the literature and empirical evidence (cronbach, 1983). the most salient features of this relationship can be defined through pathways among the variables to indicate which predictor variables influence the outcomes (bollen, 2002). adding other variables to the model tests the stability of the model (ahlfeldt, mehta, & sellnow, 2005) and expands its dynamic responses and counterfactual effects (bentler, 2007). the theoretical underpinnings of these interactions, particularly embedded in the higher education research literature provide a rather simple framework for testing the predictive relationships of the pedagogical factors with the student outcomes (carini, klein, & kuh, 2006; steele & fullagar, 2009). seen from a cl perspective, researchers such as gillies (2007), johnson, johnson, and smith (2007), and sharan (2010a) intended a causal link when they made a distinction between the cl condition and academic and social outcomes. in this scenario, the condition indicates the pedagogic tools and instructional practices that facilitates (smith et al., 2005; webb, 2008) while the outcome represents students’ personal reactions as a result of exposure to the proposed instructional condition (sharan, 2010a). this implies the separation of the instructional process and outcome (yamarik, 2007). this makes it quite clear that students deal with the cl condition in some way before any positive responses to it occur in terms of outcomes (yamarik, 2007). there is empirical evidence about the practical benefits of a cl model for the university classroom instructions (johnson & johnson, 2002a; johnson et al., 2007; smith et al., 2005; thanh, gillies, & renshaw, 2011; yi & luxi, 2012). therefore, this study’s quantitative model draws from the broader literature on student engagement theory related to the learning experience of undergraduate students (coates, 2006; kuh, 2009) and the cl theory related to pedagogical practices in the undergraduate students’ classrooms (johnson & johnson, 2002b, 2009; smith et al., 2005). the literature suggests multifaceted pedagogical frameworks and the importance of the classroom culture for influencing how classroom practices could be shaped and adopted in the context. building on these, the current study, attempted to map out a quantitative model by drawing direct path connections from the pedagogical variables to the student outcomes, with an expectation that these constructs may relate positively. the model has six sub-components: cooperative interaction (copi), task orientation (tori), academic challenge (acha), teaching effectiveness (teff), satisfaction and gains (figure 1). figure 1. the quantitative study conceptual model with 4pedagogic variables and 2-criterion outcomes. ovals represent latent variables. ε1 and ε2 denote residual terms representing unmeasured influences on endogenous latent variables (satisfaction and gains). the pedagogical components: copi, tori, acha, and teff are “predictor” variables and were measured by 4 composite factor scores. the cooperative interaction subscale consisted of 5 items (α = .86), the task orientation subscale consisted of 5 items (α = .82), the academic challenge subscale consisted of 3 items (α = .75), and the teaching effectiveness subscale consisted of 3 items (α = .80). similarly, the two “outcome” variables: satisfaction and gains were measured by two composite factor scores, and cronbach's alpha for the 5 satisfaction and 6 gains items were .88 and .81, respectively. overall, these reliabilities are well above the minimum coefficient alpha (α = .70) that is recommended for social sciences research (nunally & bernstein, 1994). confirmatory factor analysis and correlation analysis the quantitative model has been employed, primarily to provide explanations about why students participate in the cl activities and to suggest strategies for better results of such participation. this study obtained multiple measures for variables said to constitute the pedagogical components of participation in the cl activities. because the pedagogical variables in this quantitative model are explanatory, their construct validity must be supported before we can have confidence that explanations based on this quantitative model reflect reality. for this, we used confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) and correlation analysis. we used a principal component analysis (pca) with varimax rotation, to assess the factor structure and identify the pedagogical components of the 24scale variables. the kaiser-meyer-olkin measure for this group of measured variables has shown the sampling adequacy for the analysis (kmo = .73) (kaiser, 1974). also, bartlett’s test of sphericity, x2(276) = 837.68, p < .001, indicated that correlations between the items were sufficiently large for pca. items in each scale were 6 nurturing cooperative learning pedagogies in higher education classrooms: evidence of instructional reform and potential challenges retained in the model if they had a loading of at least 0.4 on one factor and if at least three items measured it, regardless of its eigen value. an initial analysis was run on the 24 items to obtain eigen values for each factor in the data; four factors comprising 16 items had an eigen value over kaiser’s criterion of 1 and had items 3 and above, and explained 69.23% of the variance. based on kaiser’s criteria components and the scree plot inflexions that justify retaining 4 factors, the final analysis retained the following four factors: cooperative interaction, task orientation, academic challenge, and teaching effectiveness. table 1 shows the number of items that make each subscale, and the associated variance. table 1 factor loadings (pattern matrix) and unique variances for the pedagogical indicator items (n =54) scale copi1 tori2 acha3 teff4 uniqueness5 copi1 .80 .18 .22 .13 .26 copi2 .68 .35 .02 .14 .40 copi3 .84 -.07 -.03 .28 .20 copi4 .71 .14 .08 .29 .38 copi7 .78 .27 .15 .00 .29 tori1 .21 .74 .33 .16 .28 tori2 .30 .47 .36 -.22 .51 tori3 .16 .83 -.03 .24 .23 tori4 .31 .69 .11 .33 .31 tori5 -.04 .74 .31 -.09 .35 acha3 .19 .11 .78 .06 .34 acha4 -.09 .26 .83 .07 .23 acha5 .21 .02 .78 -.01 .35 teff1 .35 .34 -.04 .72 .24 teff4 .06 .00 .13 .84 .27 teff5 .27 .20 -.01 .78 .29 percent of variance 21.67 18.51 14.69 14.36 eigen value 3.47 2.96 2.35 2.28 note. factor loadings > .40 are in boldface. 1copi = cooperative interaction; 2tori = task orientation; 3acha = academic challenge; and 4teff = teaching effectiveness. 5uniqueness refers to the variance that is ‘unique’ to the variable and not shared with other variables in the model. as shown by the standardized score loadings of the set variables in table 1, all items loaded on the four pedagogical factors well above the recommended level. for example, item 1 loaded at .80 on the factor, cooperative interaction, and item 5 loaded at .78 on the factor, teaching effectiveness. thus, all item loadings exceeded .70, except for a few. moreover, the uniqueness of each variable, representing the variance not shared with other variables in the factor model ranges from .20 to .51. these low levels of uniqueness, together with, the high factor loadings for most of the items used in the scales confirmed that each of the four pedagogical components was well defined by its set of items. the correlations among the pedagogical factors ranged from .15 to .52 (figure 2). figure 2. the correlations among the latent variables in the four-factor model. ovals represent latent variables. square represents observed variable. ε1, ε2, ε3, and so forth denote residual terms representing unmeasured influences on observed variables. double head arrow represents correlations between latent variables. the high positive correlation between teaching effectiveness and cooperative interaction, r = .59, p < .05, confirmed that the more teachers’ demonstrate effective teaching roles, the better their students interact cooperatively in classroom learning. however, the weak correlation between teaching effectiveness and academic challenge, r = .15, p < .05, indicated that the teachers' effective teaching roles has minimal or a weak relationship to the emphasis placed on academic challenge. in contrast, the high correlation between academic challenge and task orientation, r = .52, p < .05, indicated that the higher the emphasis teachers placed on academic challenge, the more task oriented the students become. quantitative and qualitative data analyses we compared the scores for the six areas and examined the correlations of the pedagogical factors with the students' outcomes. we also performed two separate multiple regression analyses for the two outcomes to determine, if the pedagogical components were effective overall, and to assess the strength of each pedagogical factor in predicting the outcome. the researchers used prior research to develop coding schemes to guide the analysis and interpretation of the qualitative interview data. the codes were research driven codes used by others, and their findings provide the most direct help in developing codes for the present study. during the coding process, each interview transcript was analyzed in sentences or groups of sentences reflecting single ideas. these units were given a code to reflect that idea or concept (strauss & corbin, 1998) and the codes developed by other researchers helped as a reference point. through constant comparative analysis (merriam, 2002), each participant’s response was compared and connected to others across the emerged categories and descriptors based on the coding frame of others. 7 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 results quantitative results the descriptive statistics showed that the two courses achieved higher scores in all the six components: cooperative interaction, task orientation, academic challenge, teaching effectiveness, satisfaction, and gains (table 2). although we emphasized all these six areas equally well, the descriptive results showed differential outcomes with the highest mean score being the teaching effectiveness scale(m = 3.38, sd = 0.66). descriptive statistics and correlation analyses for the six areas are shown in table 2. table 2 means, standard deviation, partial and semipartial correlations for scores on pedagogical variables as a function of satisfaction and gains (n = 54) pedagogical predictor satisfaction gains m sd partial corr.1 semipartial corr.2 partial corr. semipartial corr. cooperative interaction 0.68 .52*** 0.61 .52*** 2.82 .81 task orientation 0.62 .44*** 0.52 .41*** 3.07 .73 academic challenge 0.02 .01 0.32 .23* 2.87 .74 teaching effectiveness 0.64 .47*** 0.34 .24* 3.38 .66 m 2.97 3.07 sd .75 .71 note.1correlation between each predictor and an outcome measure controlling for all other predictors; 2correlation between each predictor and an outcome measure controlling the effects of all other predictors from the specific predictor, but not from the outcome measure. means and standard deviations for the instructional variables are presented in the vertical columns, and means and standard deviations for satisfaction and gains are presented in the horizontal rows. significance levels. *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001 the partial correlation between each pedagogical variable and the student outcome was positive. moreover, the semi-partial correlations between three of the four factors with satisfaction were statistically significant (p < .001) and ranged from .44 to .52. this indicated that, approximately 19% to 27% of the variance in satisfaction, in the sample, can be accounted for by any of the three pedagogical factors. similarly, the semi-partial correlation of each pedagogical factor with learning gain was statistically significant (p < .05) and ranged from .23 to .52. this indicated that, approximately 5% to 27% of the variance in learning gain in the sample can be accounted for by the four pedagogical factors. two separate multiple regression analyses were conducted, simultaneously to test, if the pedagogical factors significantly predicted participants' ratings of satisfaction and gains over and above students’ major field, age, and gender. guided by the quantitative study model (figure 1), our interest with these analyses was in identifying those pedagogical factors that may relate with the student outcomes. specifically, we tested the following hypotheses: hypothesis 1: sense of satisfaction attributed to students’ participation in the cl condition are positively associated with a combined effect of four pedagogic measures, over and above the students’ major field age and gender. hypothesis 2: perceived gains in learning and personal development attributed to students’ participation in the cl condition is positively associated with a combined effect of four pedagogic measures, over and above the students’ major field, age and gender. predictor variable: cooperative interaction, task orientation, academic challenge, teaching effectiveness, major field, age, and gender. in order to include major field and gender in the regression models, one dummy variable was constructed for each. the base category for the gender dummy was male while that of major field was sport science. dummy variables for gender were (0 = male, and 1 = female) and major field (0 = sport science, and 1 = psychology). the summary of regression results are shown in table 3. the first regression model revealed that the four pedagogic variables, together accounted for a significant proportion of the satisfaction variance, r2 = .73, adjusted r2 = .69, f(7, 46) = 17.58, p < .001. similarly, the second regression model revealed that the same pedagogic variables, together accounted for a significant amount of the gains in variance, r2 = .58, adjusted r2 = .52, f(7, 46) = 9.04, p < .001. each measured pedagogical variable appeared to be a significant positive predictor of the students’ gains scores (β = .27, p = .016), as did teaching effectiveness (β = .29, p = .007), task orientation (β = .43, p < .001), and cooperative interaction (β = .61, p < .001). similarly, cooperative interaction significantly positively predicted the students’ satisfaction scores (β = .59, p < .001), as did task orientation (β = .48, p < .001), and teaching effectiveness (β = .49, p < .001). the variable cooperative interaction made the highest predictions of satisfaction and gains (.59 ≤ β ≥ .61, p < .001). however, it seems that emphasis on academic challenge did not significantly relate to student satisfaction. of the three controlling variables, only gender contributed for the predictions of satisfaction (β = .17, p = .048) such that male students reported greater satisfaction than female students. regardless of this significant contribution, the other 8 nurturing cooperative learning pedagogies in higher education classrooms: evidence of instructional reform and potential challenges table 3 multiple regression analyses for variables predicting student satisfaction and gains (n = 54) predictor model 1 (satisfaction) model 2 (gains) b se3 β t b se β t major field1 0.09 0.19 .04 0.45 0.34 0.24 .17 1.41 age -0.05 0.05 -.08 -0.92 -0.02 0.06 -.04 -0.36 gender2 0.44 0.22 .17* 2.03 0.16 0.27 .06 0.58 cooperative interaction 0.60 0.09 .59*** 6.72 0.62 0.11 .61*** 5.55 task orientation 0.49 0.08 .48*** 6.09 0.44 0.10 .43*** 4.35 academic challenge 0.00 0.09 .00 -0.04 0.28 0.11 .27* 2.5 teaching effectiveness 0.50 0.08 .49*** 5.92 0.30 0.11 .29** 2.84 r2 .73 .58 adjusted r2 .69 .52 f change 17.58*** 9.04*** note. 1sport science is reference group; 2male is reference group. 3standard error. significance levels. * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001 9 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 controlling variables did not contribute for the predictions. results of qualitative interview conceptual framework for qualitative analysis. in this study, the students’ and teachers’ interview transcripts were organized into three major themes: 1) general perceived values and attitudes on cl pedagogies (gillies, 2006; sharan, 2010a), 2) participants' lived transformative experiences as a result of participation in the cl classroom practices (gillies, 2004; johnson & johnson, 1999); and 3) difficulties faced during implementation and ways to alleviate them (gillies & boyle, 2010; johnson & johnson, 2004; sharan, 2010b). these conceptualizations provide theoretical outlines of the qualitative data and guide analyses in subsequent sections. in this analysis, the interview participants have been divided into two groups: 1) the teacher group (t) represents teachers’ participants in the pilot intervention; and 2) student group (s) represents the students who participated in the interviews. participants’ perceived values and attitudes. in the views of the interviewed teachers, the cl pedagogy created a positive learning environment for students to interact with, and encouraged cooperation in small groups. for example, one of the teachers (t2) said that the learning activity made students more comfortable as it gave them the opportunity to sharpen their ideas before sharing them with the whole class. the other teacher (t1) reported that the cl approach created a relatively easier learning atmosphere for the very shy and uncertain students to feel more confident and better prepared for the whole class discussion. all the interviewed students saw their experiences with cl activities positively. they described that the cl activities were more enjoyable, more interesting, and more important. the participant students described different aspects of the cl experiences as being important. of the stated items, the most prominent ones include sharing, positive relationships, increased interactions, active engagement, teacher support, and student-centeredness. participants’ lived transformative experiences. the interviewed teachers acknowledged that the cl pedagogies were student-centered and provided opportunities for students to engage in different learning experiences. they also highlighted some teaching advantages, as well. as one of the interviewed teachers (t2) commented, the cl pedagogies offered support for teaching effectiveness by creating possibilities for coverage of a broader content, the sharing of teaching responsibilities with the students, and maintaining vertical integration that could help students to see the logical relationship between related ideas and concepts. in support of the latter issue, the other teacher (t1) added that the jigsaw structure enabled the flow of content to be unimpeded. however, the teacher interviewees’ noted differences in the level of participation amongst the students; in such a way that some students participated more actively than others. regardless of this notable difference, their students reacted to the cl pedagogies quite positively. for example, they showed a willingness to work with other classmate, sometimes providing support in arranging the classroom, and they were interested in learning. students’ interview accounts verified that their participation in this initiative was their first exposure to cl. one male student (s4) described that engaging in the cl activities gave them the chance to get involved in one of the pedagogical approaches that are used to promote student-centered learning. another female student (s1) clearly highlighted the desired changes when she says: changing from the previous (traditional) approach of teaching where we were expecting everything from the teacher, to an approach where we tried to work with our own. it was very interesting to sit and work together with other students instead of always sitting in front of the teacher and having contact only with the teacher. also, a female student (s5) noted: “normally the teacher use to lecture, so we expect everything, from the teacher but in the small group learning we were encouraged to express ourselves rather than expecting from the teacher.” in support of this and revealing engagement in challenging learning experiences, a female student (s2) explains: in the small group learning, sharing what you know whereas other students may not know was very interesting. for example, the concept ‘internal consistency’ started with a discussion among the group members in the class and further discussion in dormitory around the assignment given. such type of experience was an opportunity for us to learn new ways of approaching teaching and learning. the interviewed students commented that there was increased student-student interaction in the cl activities. for example, a student (s6) describes: in the jigsaw lessons – i explained about cardiovascular tests while other members of my jigsaw shared about other aspects of skill-related physical fitness such as strength, flexibility and speed. in those small-groups learning, we were given the chance to express ourselves, and that may be considered beneficial for the improvement of communication skills. as one of the interviewed female students (s8) commented, through the cl activities, it was appealing and useful to see the active participation of those students who were low achievers, shy or silent listeners. on top of 10 nurturing cooperative learning pedagogies in higher education classrooms: evidence of instructional reform and potential challenges this, the teacher encouraged them to accomplish the given learning tasks, and supervised their work and sometimes provided hints and additional information when needed. another female student (s2) particularly stressed the importance of lessons designed in a way to promote students active involvement throughout the lesson. difficulties in implementation and ways to alleviate them. the interviewed teachers expressed their opinions regarding the challenges. one of the interviewed teachers (t2) commented: “the cl lessons took more time maybe that is because my students and i did not experience that before. in addition, the students’ interactions needed time and the culmination points needed to be meaningful.” to the other teacher, challenge was attributed to the nature of the subject matter. for example, in the jigsaw lesson, the learning contents of ‘reliability estimation’ were tough for students to understand. regardless of this, the teacher interviewees highlighted that some students did not meet their expectations of accepting individual responsibility while some others had a type of dependency syndrome. one of the interviewed teachers (t1) commented: there was a dependency on the part of some students, which may be attributable to their learning styles. for example, some students might be auditory and would like to listen. the other attribution may be ability difference and the resulting difference in self-esteem. when you combine students of low academic ability with students of high academic ability, the students of low ability may have low self-esteem leading them to give more chances to speak to the able ones. the teacher participants also affirmed that part of the reasons for students’ inability to take individual responsibility was because of teacher limitations in carrying out their facilitative role. for example, one of the interviewed teachers (t1) pointed out: “many students of the different groups raised their hands simultaneously asking for help, which was difficult to be managed by a single teacher.” also, the other teacher (t2) commented on his own teaching approach in the cl lessons: at the start, i was more inclined to lecturing than thinking of the students learning experience. that might be one of the reasons for the less engagement of my students and some confusion created at the start. i recognized many of the responsibilities of a facilitator quite after sometime. being able to facilitate my students learning through the cl activities was appealing and useful. in addition, the interviewed teachers noted that the classroom set up was not suitable to conduct the cl activities due to inconvenient chair arrangements and untidy black and white boards. the boards inhibited the implementation of cl lessons, in terms of clearly communicating instructions for the different learning tasks and the provision of brief information. the participant teachers utilized different strategies to alleviate challenges including, reduced provision of direct answers, instead adding more probing questions while they monitored and followed up students’ small group work. they also perceived that their students made additional efforts, frequently pursued clarification on the discussion points, and helped each other by explaining and further elaborating issues. moreover, it was suggested that, at the course design stage, the researcher should spend more time understanding the epistemology of the subject and endeavoring to differentiate pedagogies since that would provide the opportunity to maximize students learning. it was also suggested that students be included in the lessons review, at least, for the first 2-3 lessons. interviewed students identified four major challenges affecting the implementation of cl classroom practices. these include difficulty of the cl tasks, time constraints, students lacking background and necessary preparation, and teachers’ oversights in not concluding discussions. in terms of the cl tasks, a male student (s1) confirmed that the cl tasks were challenging since they demanded that they complete specific learning tasks, and thus were more time consuming compared to the regular activities in the lecture sessions. also, another male student (s3) noted the challenge that originated from the required learning tasks because they were often unfamiliar to them. as one interviewed female student (s2) and another interviewed male student (s8) described, all students were supposed to be responsible for their own learning, share responsibilities, and work towards a common goal, but a few students did not seem to be accountable for that. another interviewed male student (s4) commented that the teacher sometimes did not conclude the lesson after taking different concepts or answers from students. also, the interview participants gave general comments about the project and its future directions. an interviewed male student (s4) and another female student (s6) suggested that students need to be orientated to the cl pedagogies earlier. they also recommended that the cl activities should be embedded in lessons more than they were in their course, and other course teachers need to adopt a cl approach. other comments about cl included, more opportunities for engagement of medium and low ability students and silent listeners, as opposed to teacher-led instruction. discussion this study examined the quality of teaching and learning of two courses developed according to a cl approach to instruction. before the main analyses, the study explored the characteristics of the variables used in the scales. this study obtained an inter-correlated fourfactor solution corresponding to the proposed pedagogical domains representing the construct. these multiple 11 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 indicators of cl pedagogies were shown to have strong convergent validity within each subscale (table 1), as well as, discriminant validity from one another (figure 2). the moderate correlation between teaching effectiveness and cooperative interaction might be due to their intimacy and integration. as students become aware that their teachers genuinely care about their learning, they respond positively by exerting greater effort to reach their potential (lumpkin, 2007). in contrast, the existing weak relationship between teaching effectiveness and academic challenge might be due to practical differences that effective teaching is about caring and interaction (shulman & shulman, 2004) while academic challenge is intellectual or a cognitive process (hennessy & evans, 2006). in effect, this may be because effective teaching is predominantly what the teacher does while engagement in academic challenge is exclusively what the student does (biggs, 2012). the descriptive statistics showed that cl pedagogies had meaningful benefits in terms of creating quality learning experiences for the students. these benefits largely emanated from cooperative interactions among students, their task orientation, emphasis on academic challenge, and teaching effectiveness. when these influences interact with instructional processes they greatly facilitated the students learning in class and increased their satisfaction and gains. the regression findings of this study offered support for the hypothesized relations between academic challenges, teaching effectiveness, task orientation, cooperative interaction, learning satisfaction, and gains. findings of the current study showed that aspects of quality teaching in the cl instruction were significant predictors of quality learning as described in terms of satisfaction and gains among students for the two departments’ subgroups. all the independent variables included in the study were found significant as a predictor of learning satisfaction and gains for the sample groups. therefore, both hypotheses 1 and 2 were supported. for the sample students of both subgroups, scores on academic challenge, teaching effectiveness, task orientation, and cooperative interaction predicted scores on learning satisfaction and learning gains. stated differently, the quality of teaching effectiveness, academic challenge, task orientation, and cooperative interaction had a meaningful impact on the learning satisfaction and gains of students. this is consistent with previous findings in the literature on the field of cl in higher education. there is empirical evidence that shows the richness of diversity of cl methods and their multiple effects (bullard & bullock, 2004; cavanagh, 2011; johnson et al., 2007; sharan, 2010a; yamarik, 2007). in a meta-analysis of 117 intervention studies, johnson and johnson (2002a) reported differential effects of cl upon multiple students’ outcomes including academic achievement, interpersonal relationship, social support, attitude and self-esteem. the finding from the study reported here indicated that the relationships among pedagogic variables and the measured outcomes show differential effects. for example, the students’ perceived academic challenge in the cl activities seemed to have a significant positive effect on their self-reported gains, whereas no relationship was found on their satisfactions with the cl environment. umbach and wawrzynski (2005) presented similar results: emphasis on higher-order activities does not significantly relate to perceptions of support or satisfaction, however, undergraduate students reported greater gains in general education in those institutions where teachers emphasized higher-order activities in their courses. as the interviewed students noted, their learning experiences in the cl activities provided them several benefits. of the stated items, the major ones include: the variety of activities, increased interpersonal relations, participating in small-group and whole-class discussion, and the teacher’s support. also, there are teaching benefits identified by the teacher participants, in terms of, increasing teaching effectiveness via creating opportunities for wider coverage of content, sharing teaching responsibilities with the students, and integration of ideas and concepts. these findings suggest that cl pedagogies enhance the ways teachers teach, and students engage with meaningful learning experiences. however, there are local constraints hindering the implementation of cl activities such as time, unfamiliarity, lack of preparation, and lack of equally sharing responsibilities for common goals. in ethiopian universities, classroom instruction takes a traditional content-centred approach, without due concern for the learning experience of the students (moges, 2010). moreover, there is a shortage of empirical work that shows whether changes in the approach to classroom instruction makes a difference (kenea, 2009). the cl approach applied in this study, and the identified positive results for the students of the two courses provide an initial evidence-base to promote changes in classroom instruction from a traditional content-focused approach to a cl approach. also, it used to be the case in the ethiopian universities that the assessment of teaching quality assumes predominantly teaching behaviours and course contents (zerihun et al., 2012). thus, universities did not consider other parameters of teaching quality with quantitative assessment. this study found that the different aspects of cl implementation and the resulting outcomes could be effectively measured, and their relationships could be assessed. therefore, these six areas can be included as important aspects of quality teaching and learning. 12 nurturing cooperative learning pedagogies in higher education classrooms: evidence of instructional reform and potential challenges study limitations and future directions findings of the current study have implications for assisting students through the development of strategies that could facilitate the promotion of quality learning experiences as well as outcomes among students with the two sample subgroups. however, the study has limitations and therefore caution must be exercised in generalizing the findings of this study to other groups of undergraduate students in the studied context. the current study relied exclusively on self-report measures for its data. in addition, the lack of comparison group and random sampling coupled with a small sample size may have contributed significantly to bias in the design. lastly, the inclusion of only students of two departments in the sample of the current study also limits the generalizability of the findings. to help offset these limitations, future research should employ larger and more randomized samples across different departments to help improve the generalizability as well as decrease bias in the design. the incorporation of considerable numbers of female students into future research designs would also add to the overall scope of the findings and allow for further comparative analysis between genders and for the examination of any interaction effects between gender and discipline type that may exist. it may also be valuable in future research designs to obtain more demographic information regarding socioeconomic status, parental occupation, financial resources, language spoken at home, and social support networks. this information could provide greater clarity regarding the myriad of variables that contribute to quality teaching and learning. longitudinal research designs would also help to better assess the influence of the cl conditions. conclusions the quantitative and qualitative findings of the current study supported the contention that the cl intervention would help to improve the quality of teaching and learning within the undergraduate courses in psychology and sport sciences programs. in addition, the findings suggest that an aspect of cl intervention predicts learning satisfaction and gains for students of psychology and sport sciences who attended classroom instructions via cl pedagogies. in support of the cl literature, the findings of this study lend further assertions to the multidimensionality of cl intervention (condition) and to the utility of effective educational practice as an influence on the quality of learning outcomes. in addition, these findings further extend previous notions of cl that were considered imperative aspects of quality teaching and learning in earlier studies. these positive results 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(2015). nurturing cooperative learning pedagogies in higher education classrooms: evidence of instructional reform and potential challenges. current issues in education, 18(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1374 author notes dr. tefera tadesse jimma university, ethiopia p.o. box 5110 teferatadesse@gmail.com dr. tefera tadesse phd is assistant professor of curriculum and instruction in the college of education and behavioral sciences, jimma university, ethiopia. dr. tadesse’s major research interests are in the higher education, quality teaching and learning, student engagement, classroom instruction, equity, and social justice in education. professor robyn gillies university of queensland, australia brisbane 4072 r.gillies@uq.edu.au robyn m. gillies phd is a professor in the school of education at the university of queensland, australia. professor gillie’s major research interests are in the learning sciences, classroom discourses, small group processes, classroom instruction, and student behavior. she coordinates the master of educational studies (guidance and counselling) program and teaches courses in counselling, guidance, and classroom management. acknowledgements this article is part of the phd research project of the corresponding author, which is fully funded by the school of education, the university of queensland. we are grateful to the institutional support. moreover, we are indebted to the two teachers and second year psychology and third year sport sciences students of jimma university who actively participated in the implementation and evaluation processes. also we would like to express our appreciation to dr. michael boyle for his unreserved editorial support. manuscript received: 02/04/2014 revisions received: 02/07/2015 accepted: 02/07/2015 17 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1374 mailto:teferatadesse@gmail.com mailto:r.gillies@uq.edu.au current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 volume 18, number 2 may 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editors tray j. geiger layout editors constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers 18 microsoft word 1161_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x observing classroom instruction in schools implementing the international baccalaureate programme beverly l. alford university of mississippi kayla braziel rollins, jacqueline r. stillisano, and hersh c. waxman texas a&m university the international baccalaureate (ib) programme utilizes an inquiry-based multidisciplinary approach and focuses on the teaching of critical-thinking skills. the ib programme is growing at a rapid rate within the united states, with the overall number of ib schools having more than doubled in the last five years. the purpose of the present study was two-fold: (a) to specifically focus on classroom instruction and students’ behavior within texas ib schools, and (b) to highlight the importance of systematic classroom observation as an evaluative method; in particular, the simultaneous use of three observation instruments to illustrate the importance of examining instruction from multiple perspectives. systematic observations of 85 classrooms from eight texas ib schools revealed that instruction in most of the schools was active, with teachers often engaging students, exploring new skills and key concepts, explaining, elaborating, and evaluating. overall, the general instructional practices and student behaviors/activities observed were favorable and were higher than those found in similar classrooms in texas schools. the amount of time that students were observed as being on-task was dramatically higher than the amount of student on-task time measured in other observational studies. keywords: international baccalaureate, ib, systematic classroom observation, student behavior, instructional practice although there has been a dramatic increase in the number of schools implementing international baccalaureate (ib) programmes, limited research has emerged about the ib programme. the ib programme utilizes an inquiry-based, multi-disciplinary approach and focuses on the teaching of critical-thinking skills. the ib programme is growing at a rapid rate within the united states, with the overall number of ib schools having more than doubled in the last five years. the purpose of the present study was two-fold: (a) to specifically focus on classroom instruction and students’ behavior within texas ib schools, and (b) to highlight the importance of systematic classroom observation as an evaluative method; in particular, the simultaneous use of three observation instruments to illustrate the importance of examining instruction from multiple perspectives. history of the ib programme the international baccalaureate organization (ibo) originated in 1968 at the international school of geneva with the diploma program (dp; ibo, 2011c). current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 the programme was designed by an assembly of teachers whose students typically moved around the world, due to their families’ internationally affiliated professions (hill, 2002). the mission of the international baccalaureate (ib) programme is to “create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect” (ibo, 2011a). ib proponents contend that the concept of globalization ought to be integrated into a school’s daily curriculum; thus, the ib programme has made global citizenship a key component of its students’ education (stewart, 2007). currently more than 967,000 ib students attend 3,300 schools in 141 countries (ibo, 2011a). the first ib school authorized in the united states opened in 1971. today, the ib programme in the u.s. is growing at a rapid rate, with more than one-half of the world’s ib students who take the ib diploma programme (ibdp) examination based in the u.s. (bunnell, 2011b). in recent years in particular, there has been dramatic growth in the number of schools in the u.s. that have implemented the ib programme (bunnell, 2011a, 2011b; conner, 2008). over the 10-year period from 1999-2009, the number of ib schools in the u.s. increased at an average rate of 73 schools per year (bunnell, 2011b), and the total number of ib schools has more than doubled in the last five years (bunnell, 2011a; cech, 2007). in the u.s., there are currently 1,308 ib schools; the majority of the programmes are dp (n=753), but 448 are middle years programme (myp) and 292 are primary years programme (pyp). about 90% of ib schools in the u.s. are public, with about 30% receiving title i funding (i.e., financial assistance to local educational agencies and schools with high percentages of children from low-income families; u.s. department of education, 2011). schools wishing to become an international baccalaureate (ib) world school undergo a rigorous authorization process in which school personnel complete application documents, create strategic programme plans, participate in extensive training, and host ib-appointed panels for school site visits. in spite of the intensive authorization process, the number of ib world schools and students enrolled in those schools has increased dramatically over the past decade. the dp was designed for high school students, with a goal of providing an international education that promotes an “understanding and appreciation of other cultures, languages, and points of view” (ibo, 2011b). the idea was that the ib curriculum could be translated to and implemented in any international school. considering its background, it is interesting to note that the ibdp has become especially popular in many low-income urban schools (connor, 2008). moreover, many universities accept the ib diploma for university course credit. ibo created the myp for 11to 16-year-old students in 1994, and in 1997 added the pyp for 3to 11year-olds. the mission of all three ib programmes is to “encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right” (ibo, 2011d). in the myp, five interdisciplinary perspectives are addressed in various subject areas: approaches to learning, health and social education, community service, environment, and human ingenuity. serving as a framework for the entire myp are the ideas of holistic learning, intercultural awareness, and good communication and critical thinking skills. in may 2012 this transdisciplinary approach was practiced in 945 schools in 78 countries (hill, 2012). the pyp also takes a holistic approach towards the education of young children, considering both the inside and outside of the classroom. although a child’s cognitive outcomes are unquestionably at the heart of the pyp, the social, physical, emotional, and cultural needs of children are also important (chmelynski, 2005). additionally, pyps go a step beyond the classroom and into alternate societal viewpoints, incorporating the personal issues of perspective, responsibility, and reflection (singh, 2002). furthermore, all pyps instruct students in an additional language, encouraging children to become students of the world. this inquiry-based, multi-disciplinary emphasis of ib programmes was, in fact, one of the models on which the u.s. national education standards and common core were based, thereby drawing recent attention to ib (sparks, 2013). ib schools focus on teaching critical thinking skills and tend to assess students using approaches such as writing research papers and giving oral presentations, rather than assessing students with the typical multiple-choice testing method used by many nonib schools (cech, 2007). an ib pyp school in colorado, for example, incorporated its students’ family histories for the purpose of teaching and assessing a unit on migration patterns (singh, 2002). additionally, an ib school in florida integrated the teaching for understanding framework, a constructivist approach to learning, with a focus on student inquiry and individualizing the learning environment (graffam, 2003). research on ib schools although there has been a dramatic increase in the number of schools implementing ib, limited research has emerged about the ib programme; and a substantial segment of the research literature regarding ib schools addresses current and former students’ perceptions of the program. taylor and porath (2006) conducted a survey study looking at the perspectives of recent ib programme graduates. when asked, 94% of ib programme graduates felt that they had learned to think critically and flexibly as a result of their enrollment in the ib programme. additionally, 88% of ib programme graduates considered themselves to be more prepared for their introductory post-secondary courses than did other, non-ib programme high school graduates. the findings of this study are observing classroom instruction in schools implementing the international baccalaureate programme 3 supported by other studies (culross & tarver, 2011; tarc & beatty, 2012), in which both current and former students of the ib indicated that their experiences in the program led to increased depth and breadth of knowledge, strong critical thinking skills, good study habits and time management skills, and better written and oral communication skills. teachers also have responded positively regarding their perceptions of the ibdp, identifying a focus on global issues, higher level thinking skills, and a broad range of topics as strengths of the program (culross & tarver, 2011). although teachers in this study felt that teaching in the ib program required significantly more preparation for them, they believed that participation in the program had improved their teaching skills. some studies have documented higher sat scores, college acceptance rates, college completion rates, and college gpas for current and prior ib diploma programme students than for the general student population (ibo, 2003). culross and tarver (2011), for example, found that top colleges and universities actively recruit students with an ib diploma, perceiving the degree as an indicator of a student’s likelihood of postsecondary success. burris et al. (2007) conducted a study of former students who had completed ib english and ib mathematics classes in rockville centre, ny. the researchers found that taking ib mathematics and ib english was strongly associated with completing college in 4 years: of those students who had taken both courses, 88% graduated from college in 4 years, while only 32% of those who took neither course graduated in 4 years. other researchers (daniel & cox, 1992; grexa, 1988) who examined post-secondary data for ib graduates have found that they experienced higher grade point averages than non-ib students, as well as higher post-secondary graduation rates (caspary, 2011). recently, 36 of the top 100 schools in newsweek’s america’s best high schools were ib schools (ibo, 2009). a limited number of studies have examined the efficacy of the pyp and the myp and the value that these specific programmes add to teaching and students’ education. a notable exception to this dearth of research focusing on younger students in ib programmes is a group of studies conducted by a colorado school district. these longitudinal studies found that student participation in a pyp and myp had a small positive effect on reading and mathematics achievement outcomes (kiplinger, 2005a, 2005b). although selection effects need to be considered in understanding the colorado school district’s pyp and myp outcomes, a follow-up case study of the school district’s ib programmes considered the extent to which the unique attributes of the ib programme contributed to these positive outcomes (rose, 2007). findings from this qualitative study concluded that the ib programmes’ focus on critical inquiry, student agency in learning, and instructional consistency across grades and programmes appeared to contribute to the success of students in the school district’s ib programmes. few researchers, however, have specifically examined the important instructional aspects of the ib programme as previously described, the ib programme is unlike other programs, due to its multi-disciplinary approach and its emphasis on developing students’ perspective, responsibility, and reflection. the present study addressed the following research questions: (a) what does classroom instruction and students’ behavior within texas pyp and myp ib schools look like? and (b) how can systematic classroom observation—along with the simultaneous use of three observation instruments that examine instruction from multiple perspectives—be used as an evaluative method? methods participants a total of eight schools (i.e., cases)—four pyp (fannin elementary, juan seguin elementary, richard coke elementary, wheatley elementary [pseudonyms]) and four myp (ace academy, bowie academy, kennedy academy, william p. hobby [pseudonyms])—were carefully selected for inclusion in the current study. not only did these eight schools meet the ib criteria of the study (e.g., ib schools in texas), but also school demographics and geographical areas were key factors in case selection (e.g., percentages of economically disadvantaged students, percentages of limited english proficient students, student socioeconomic statuses and ethnicities). furthermore, researchers wanted a representative sample of the types of schools that were implementing the pyp and myp programmes in the state of texas. about two-thirds of the students from the eight schools were either african american or hispanic/latino. in addition, over one-half of the students were classified as economically disadvantaged (i.e., enrolled in free or reduced lunch programs). for the most part, the four pyp schools chosen for this study were racially and ethnically diverse. richard coke elementary was the only school with a white majority population and the only school with a relatively small proportion of its students identified as economically disadvantaged by the state. the four myp schools chosen for this study are also racially and ethnically diverse. none of the schools has a white majority population. hobby, with a 6-year average white population of slightly over 21%, had the largest percentage of white students. two schools were selected from the rio grande valley of texas, two from the northeast area of the state, and four from the state’s midsoutheast region. three of the four schools from midsoutheast texas were chosen because they represented a feeder pattern of elementary, intermediate, and middle schools. approximately 10 teachers from each school were randomly selected and observed (n=85); and in most current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 schools, 2-3 students from each classroom were randomly selected and observed (n=175), stratifying student selection by both sex and ethnicity. two schools in the sample allowed researchers to observe teachers and classrooms but did not allow researchers to observe students in the classroom. instruments. three observational instruments were specifically developed for this study: the classroom observation schedule for ib schools (cos-ibs), the teacher roles observation schedule for ib schools (tros-ibs), and the overall observation of features for international baccalaureate programme (ofibp). the tools were based on ib programme features, as well as on previous classroom observation research (waxman, 2003; waxman & padrón, 2004; waxman, hilberg, & tharp, 2004). the cos-ibs was designed to systematically obtain information on students' classroom behaviors. it was adapted from the student behavior observation schedule (waxman, wang, lindvall, & anderson, 1988) and was used to document observed student behaviors in the context of ongoing classroom instructional-learning processes. individual students were observed with reference to: (a) the type and purpose of their interactions with teachers or other students, (b) whether teachers or students had an opportunity to choose or select the classroom activity, (c) the type of activity on which the student was working, (d) the setting in which the observed behavior occurred, (e) whether the student was onor offtask, and (f) whether the student language was either english, spanish, or a combination of both (in several instances, spanish was utilized by both teachers and students for instructional clarification). approximately three students were observed in each classroom for ten 30-second intervals during each 40-minute data collection period. the tros-ibs was designed to systematically obtain information on teachers’ classroom behaviors. it was adapted from the teacher roles observation schedule (tros) (waxman, wang, lindvall, & anderson, 1990) and is a systematic observation schedule designed to document observed teacher behaviors in the context of ongoing classroom instructional-learning processes. teachers were observed with reference to: (a) their interactions with students, (b) the instructional setting in which an observed behavior occurred, (c) the language used, (d) the purpose of the interaction, (e) the nature of the interaction, and (f) teachers’ instructional practices. each teacher was observed for 10 30-second intervals during each data collection period. the ofibp was used to examine the extent to which (a) teachers’ general instructional practices, (b) student behaviors and activities, and (c) features of ib programme instruction and the ib trans-disciplinary themes of global significance (e.g., who we are, where we are, how we express ourselves) were observed in the ib classrooms. the ofibp was adapted from the classroom observation measure (com) (ross & smith, 1996), which measures the extent to which certain effective instructional strategies are demonstrated during a class period. the com has been used in a number of studies and found to be reliable and valid (ross, smith, lohr, & mcnelis, 1994; ross et al., 1997). the com has been adapted and used in many recent studies (waxman, padrón, franco-fuenmayor, & huang, 2009). the ofibp was used at the end of the class observation to measure, on a 3-point scale (1=none, 2=some, and 3=extensive), the extent to which certain instructional processes were observed during a class period. some of the ib programme indicators that were included on the instrument were (a) lesson began with what students already know from home, community, and school; (b) teacher provided opportunities for students to assume responsibility and initiate classroom activities; (c) teacher assisted students in connecting and applying their learning to home and community; (d) teacher varied styles of conversation and participation to include students’ cultural preferences; (e) teacher varied activities to include students’ preferences; and (f) teachers provided opportunities for students to learn about their global environment. another important component of the ofibp was that it allowed observers to record field notes at the classroom and school level. this aspect of the ofibp was similar to other recent teacher observation instruments that incorporated both qualitative and quantitative data, which provide rich, detailed, meaning-centered accounts (knight & smith, 2004; waxman et al., 2004). procedure detailed descriptions and operational definitions of the categorical variables listed under the main constructs used in the classroom observation instruments were developed into a manual that was used to train observers. observers were required to read the manual in its entirety before beginning the training sessions. they also reviewed the manual prior to their initial observations. five experienced university faculty members and doctoral students from a college of education at a major research university within the state of texas conducted the observations. all observers had extensive training on the instruments during piloted professional development sessions. for the present study, the inter-observers' agreements (cohen's kappa) were excellent: the inter-observer reliability coefficient was .93 for the tros-ibs, .95 for the cos-ibs, and .86 for the ofibp. the trained researchers observed reading/language arts or mathematics classes in eight selected ib schools during fall 2009. teachers were notified of the specific day when observers would be in their schools; however, they were not told the exact time an observer would visit the class. arrangements were made to observe regular classroom instruction, so that observing classroom instruction in schools implementing the international baccalaureate programme 5 classes devoted to special activities (e.g., standardized testing, laboratories, etc.) were avoided. each student and teacher was observed for approximately 10 intervals during the 40-minute data collection period. at the end of each observation, the ofibp was completed. results table 1 displays the overall descriptive results from the tros-ibs, indicating the percentages of time that teachers were observed on the instructional variables measured. teachers were observed interacting with students on instructional activities about 68% of the time, and they were observed interacting with students on managerial issues about 14% of the time. teachers were only observed not interacting with students about 11% of the time. whole-class instruction was the most prevalent instructional setting (62%), followed by small-group instruction (15%), and individualized setting (12%). in terms of instructional practices, teachers were observed using verbal representations about 33% of the time, followed by using concrete models (15%), using table 1 overall mean percentages and standard deviations from teacher observations (n=85) teacher interaction m sd no interaction 10.80 20.43 with student(s), instructional 68.39 31.95 with student(s), managerial 13.73 20.85 with student(s), social/personal 1.00 4.28 with student(s), collaborative 3.91 11.09 other 1.59 9.07 setting m sd whole class instruction 62.38 35.85 small group instruction (more than one student) 15.04 27.04 individual 12.04 25.37 traveling 6.19 15.25 other 2.52 12.12 instructional practices m sd uses concrete models 15.32 28.94 uses pictorial representations 13.18 26.38 uses verbal (oral or written) representations 32.90 39.48 uses tabular or graphical representations 6.69 27.79 uses symbolic or numeric representations 8.37 23.95 uses area models 0.62 4.16 uses linear models 1.68 11.76 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 uses technology to present material 14.00 29.89 nature of interaction m sd questioning (process) 23.43 30.97 questioning (content) 39.93 30.95 explaining 45.52 27.86 commenting (e.g., general discussion about sports) 8.41 14.54 listening 19.49 44.58 cueing or prompting 21.19 22.36 modeling/demonstrating 11.15 19.59 other (specify) 4.26 14.29 purpose of interaction m sd focus on content (i.e., subject area content) 53.99 31.74 focus on process 30.78 32.83 focus on product (e.g., outcome) 20.45 26.47 connect content to other disciplines 7.18 14.93 connect content to global communities 11.20 21.82 present multiple perspectives on topic 7.33 15.17 redirect student thinking 15.62 20.17 show interest in student work 14.76 21.45 show personal regard for student 5.05 11.85 encourage students to help each other 5.43 13.61 encourage students to succeed 8.57 17.77 encourage students to question 3.02 8.26 encourage extended student responses 14.40 20.58 encourage student self-management 6.37 13.87 praise student behavior 6.64 14.62 praise student performance 14.57 23.26 correct student behavior 12.69 18.19 observing classroom instruction in schools implementing the international baccalaureate programme 7 correct student performance 6.72 17.69 other 2.89 13.07 language used m sd english 89.06 28.48 spanish 13.84 32.85 source. tros-ibs. table 2 overall mean percentages and standard deviations from student observations (n=175) student interaction m sd no interaction 64.97 36.45 with teacher, instructional 13.67 23.21 with teacher, managerial 0.54 3.57 with support staff 0.34 2.60 with other student(s), instructional 17.39 30.04 with other student(s), social/personal 3.32 10.41 setting m sd whole class instruction 56.56 41.09 small group instruction (more than one student) 24.19 35.24 individual 18.45 33.04 manner m sd on-task 86.93 23.35 waiting for teacher 3.54 13.66 distracted 6.97 14.35 disruptive 0.13 1.21 other 0.29 3.78 activity types m sd working on written assignments 27.69 34.47 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 8 interacting/instructional (e.g., discussing) 11.41 23.27 sharing thinking/learning processes with peer (process, solution, etc.) 3.07 12.49 participating in student-led discussions/activity 1.49 9.74 reading content-related texts 5.67 19.46 getting/returning materials 1.59 6.47 painting/drawing/creating graphics/coloring 8.53 24.38 working with technology to learn basic skills (e.g., drill and practice) 0.38 3.55 working with technology to learn 21st century skills (e.g., problem solving) 2.23 14.63 playing content-related games 1.00 9.42 presenting/acting 1.24 7.37 experiential/hands-on learning 10.80 26.00 tutoring/explaining things to peers 0.14 1.89 working kinesthetically 1.69 7.12 answering teacher-posed questions 12.95 21.09 answering peer-posed questions 1.11 6.37 presenting own questions 1.13 6.58 answering own questions 0.29 3.78 relating learning to other disciplines 1.57 8.95 reflecting on learning 1.41 10.37 planning action based on learning 0.43 5.67 listening/watching 39.25 38.26 not attending to task 5.21 14.04 no activity/transition 4.03 13.26 other 0.61 4.97 content m sd working with concrete model (e.g., manipulatives) 10.13 27.84 working with pictorial representation (e.g., pictures of quantities) 11.14 27.03 working with verbal representation (e.g., use of words) 20.40 36.78 observing classroom instruction in schools implementing the international baccalaureate programme 9 working with symbolic or numeric representation (e.g., algorithms) 5.69 19.79 working with tabular or graphical representation (e.g., tables/graphs) 11.35 27.65 using area models (e.g., colored tiles) 0.57 7.56 verbalizing solution process (e.g., student think-aloud) 0.66 5.17 working on basic skills (e.g., 2+2=4) 3.01 13.05 working on problem solving 7.68 23.33 language used m sd english 94.28 21.28 spanish 6.81 23.55 source. cos-ibs. technology (14%), and using pictorial representations (13%). explaining (46%) was the most prevalent nature of interaction observed, followed by questioning about content (40%), questioning about process (23%), and cueing or prompting (21%). the most prevalent purpose of interaction was focusing on content (54%), followed by focusing on the learning process (31%) and focusing on the product or outcome (20%). with regard to instructional language used, english was spoken 89% of the time, and spanish was spoken 14% of the time. standard deviations for nearly all the items on the trosibs were large, indicating great variance on the degree to which teachers were observed on these items. table 2 displays the descriptive results from the cos-ibs, indicating the percentages of time that students were observed on the instructional variables measured. students were observed interacting with the teacher on instructional activities 14% of the time. they were observed interacting with other students on instructional activities about 17% of the time. students were observed not interacting about 65% of the time. the most prevalent instructional setting was whole-class instruction (57%), followed by small-group instruction (24%) and individualized work (18%). with regard to their manner, students were observed on-task about 86% of the time. the predominant student activity type was listening and watching (39%), followed by working on written assignments (28%), answering teacher-posed questions (13%), interacting (11%), and doing experiential, hands-on activities (11%). the most prevalently observed content was working with verbal representations (20%), working with graphical representations (11%), working with pictorial representations (11%), and working with concrete models (10%). concerning language used, students spoke english 94% of the time and spanish 7% of the time. standard deviations for nearly all the items on the tros-ibs were large, indicating great variance on the degree to which students were observed on these items. table 3 displays the mean values for the teacher, student, and ib programme items by school and the overall means values from the ofibp. for purposes of these analyses, a 3-point scale was used, with 1=not observed at all, 2=observed to some extent (once or twice), and 3=observed to a great extent (three or more times). the results for the general instructional practice variables revealed that instruction in most of the schools was active, with teachers often engaging students, exploring new skills and key concepts, explaining, elaborating, and evaluating. the highest overall mean value was teachers provided feedback, followed by teachers were engaged. the third highest mean value was teachers initiated experiences, discussions, and activities. most teachers were also observed connecting ideas and concepts, allowing students to develop concepts or procedures, providing feedback, and distributing feedback evenly to all students. the behaviors that were not extensively observed included teachers providing students with options for problem solving, teachers assisting students in generalizing learning to other situations, and teachers integrating technology into the lesson. teachers at coke, wheatley, and fannin were observed exploring more with students than were teachers at other schools. teachers at coke and wheatley were also observed elaborating more than were teachers at the other schools. teachers at coke and hobby were observed acting as a coach or facilitator more than were teachers at the other schools. finally, teachers at hobby were observed integrating feedback and assessment into the instructional cycle more than were teachers at the other schools. overall, teachers at coke and wheatley current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 10 were observed using more effective instructional practices, while teachers at ace, seguin, and bowie were observed using fewer effective instructional practices. the results for the student behaviors and activities displayed in table 3 showed that students were observed to a great extent as engaged in classroom activities. the next highest indicator was students connected ideas and concepts. students were also observed to some extent initiating and assuming responsibility for experiences, discussions, and activities; connecting ideas and concepts; and participating in learner-centered activities. students were not often observed demonstrating meta-cognitive strategies, utilizing different ways to answer, participating in problem solving, using technology to learn 21st century skills, and using technology to learn basic skills. students at coke were observed using metacognitive skills more than were students at the other schools, and students at wheatley were observed more frequently using different ways to answer than were students at the other schools. overall, students at coke and hobby were observed using more effective student behaviors and activities, while teachers at ace, seguin, kennedy, and bowie were observed using fewer effective student behaviors and activities. the results for the ib programme features and transdisciplinary themes reported in table 3 revealed that most of these ib programme features and themes were not observed. to some extent, teachers provided opportunities for students to assume responsibility and initiate classroom activities, and teachers varied activities to include student preferences. the highest indicators were (a) teacher provided opportunities for students to assume responsibility and initiate classroom activities and (b) lesson began with what students already know from home, community, and school. very few of the ib programme features and transdisciplinary themes were observed in the schools. table 3 overall mean percentages and standard deviations from classroom behaviors of ib schools (n=85) instructional practices m sd teacher engaged 2.47 .62 teacher explored 2.13 .74 teacher explained 2.37 .64 teacher elaborated 1.98 .75 teacher evaluated 2.31 .66 teacher connected ideas and concepts 2.22 .63 teacher initiated experiences, discussions, and activities 2.44 .69 teacher acted as coach/facilitator 2.11 .79 teacher allowed students to develop concepts or procedures 2.06 .71 teacher provided students options for problem solving 1.64 .69 teacher provided feedback (i.e., answers, information, etc.) 2.50 .59 teacher assisted students to organize thinking 2.07 .73 teacher assisted students generalize learning to other situations, problems, etc. 1.89 .76 teacher integrated technology into lesson 1.55 .81 teacher integrated feedback and assessment into instructional cycle 2.16 .73 observing classroom instruction in schools implementing the international baccalaureate programme 11 teacher distributed feedback evenly 2.29 .69 teacher redirected student thinking 1.89 .76 lesson began with what students already know from home, community, and school 1.69 .76 teacher provided opportunities for students to assume responsibility and initiate classroom activities 1.96 .78 teacher assisted students in connecting and applying their learning to home and community 1.54 .71 teacher provided opportunities for parents/families to participate in instructional activities 1.06 .31 teacher varied activities to include students’ preferences 1.61 .76 teacher varied styles of conversation and participation to include students’ cultural preferences 1.41 .70 teacher provided opportunities for students to learn about their global environment 1.54 .75 teacher provided opportunities for students to learn about physical, social, and emotional health 1.16 .45 teacher provided opportunities for students to develop creativity 1.49 .72 student behaviors m sd students initiated and assumed responsibility for experiences, discussions, and activities 1.98 .75 students connected ideas and concepts 2.18 .55 students demonstrated meta-cognitive strategies 1.47 .66 students utilized different ways to answer 1.51 .69 students participated in problem solving 1.67 .75 students used technology to learn 21st century skills 1.17 .52 students used technology to learn basic skills 1.27 .60 students were engaged in classroom activities 2.44 .64 student activities were learner-centered 2.13 .72 ib transdiciplinary themes m sd who we are 1.39 .73 where we are in place and time 1.35 .71 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 12 how we express ourselves 1.36 .71 how the world works 1.30 .63 how we organize ourselves 1.21 .53 sharing the planet 1.10 .34 source. ofibp. note. 3-point rating scale was used, with 1=not observed at all, 2=observed to some extent (once or twice), and 3=observed to a great extent (three or more times). teachers at hobby were observed varying styles of conversation and participation to include students’ cultural preferences and using the themes “how we express ourselves” and “how the world works” more than were teachers at the other schools. overall, teachers from hobby were the only teachers observed to some extent incorporating ib programme features and themes. discussion when considering the research question, what does classroom instruction and students’ behavior within texas pyp and myp ib schools look like, systematic classroom observations of 85 classrooms revealed that instruction in most of the schools was active, with teachers often engaging students, exploring new skills and key concepts, explaining, elaborating, and evaluating. overall, the general instructional practices and student behaviors/activities observed were favorable and were higher than those found in similar classrooms in texas schools (waxman & padrón, 2004; waxman, padrón, franco-fuenmayor, & huang, 2009). the amount of time that students were observed being on-task (87%), for example, was dramatically higher than the amount of student on-task time (73%) observed in a similar study examining fourthand fifth-grade classrooms in texas elementary schools (waxman et al., 2009). students were systematically observed and coded as being on-task when they appeared to be engaged in classroom activities and/or were attending to classroom instruction and activities. other aspects of the overall quality of instruction observed in ib schools were also found to be more favorable than the quality of instruction in similar schools in texas. teachers in the present study, for example, were observed using more questioning, modeling, and cueing/prompting than teachers observed in similar studies (waxman et al., 2009). to a great extent, students in ib classrooms were observed as engaged in activities. they were also observed to some extent initiating and assuming responsibility for experiences, discussions, and activities; connecting ideas and concepts; and participating in learner-centered activities. conversely, students were not often observed demonstrating meta-cognitive strategies, utilizing different ways to answer, participating in problem solving, using technology to learn 21st century skills, and using technology to learn basic skills. most ib themes were not directly observed. the most-observed ib indicators were (a) provide opportunities for students to assume responsibility and initiate classroom activities and (b) lesson began with what students already know from home, community, and school. overall, hobby was the one school observed implementing ib features and themes to some extent. these findings should be viewed cautiously, however, since they were based on a limited number of observations at each school. the present study highlights the importance of systematic observation as an evaluative method. the use of the observational instruments provided reliable, quantifiable data that accurately described the degree of programme implementation and overall effectiveness of the programme. the results were also examined for grade-level differences, which provided valuable feedback to the programme developers and to the ib trainers. that is, the findings from the present evaluation suggest that the use of systematic observation can inform developers and trainers about ways to improve their decisions regarding professional development and implementation of the ib programme. the research question, how can systematic classroom observation—along with the simultaneous use of three observation instruments that examine instruction from multiple perspectives—be used as an evaluative method was addressed via the three observation instruments used in the present study, which illustrated the importance of examining instruction from multiple perspectives. other instruments and/or observation methods observation could possibly reveal different aspects of classroom instruction that were not highlighted in the current study. more qualitative observational approaches to classroom instruction could also contribute to a more comprehensive perspective of what occurs during instruction in ib classrooms. further observational research on ib schools is needed to explore how these instructional behaviors are related to students’ cognitive and affective outcomes. more theoretical, conceptual, observing classroom instruction in schools implementing the international baccalaureate programme 13 and empirical work is also needed to examine how ib practices can improve the quality of education for all students. it may be important, for example, to examine how the concepts of the ib programme relate to emergent research on technology-supported learning (reimann & aditmo, 2013) and teaching and learning with technology (lee, waxman, wu, michko, & linn, 2013). 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(1988). classroom observation schedule technical manual (rev. ed.). philadelphia: temple university, center for research in human development and education. waxman, h. c., wang, m. c., lindvall, c. m., & anderson, k. a. (1990). teacher roles observation schedule technical manual (rev. ed.). philadelphia: temple university, center for research in human development and education. observing classroom instruction in schools implementing the international baccalaureate programme 15 article citation alford, b. l., rollins, k. b., stillisano, j. r., & waxman, h. c. (2013). observing classroom instruction in schools implementing the international baccalaureate programme. current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1161 author notes beverly l. alford university of mississippi department of teacher education guyton hall, 49 rebel drive, university, ms 38677 beverly.alford@gmail.com beverly l. alford, ph.d. is assistant professor of early childhood education at the university of mississippi. her research interests focus on student engagement, the impact of play in learning, and systematic classroom observation. kayla braziel rollins texas a&m university department of teaching, learning, and culture 4232 tamu, college station, tx 77843-4232 kcbraziel@tamu.edu kayla braziel rollins, ph.d. is an assistant research scientist at the education research center at texas a&m university. her research interests focus on early childhood education, systematic classroom observation, and the use of technology in schools. jacqueline r. stillisano texas a&m university department of teaching, learning, and culture 4232 tamu, college station, tx 77843-4232 jstillisano@tamu.edu jacqueline r. stillisano, ed.d. is co-director of the education research center at texas a&m university. her research interests focus on adult learning, including online teaching and learning and effective professional development for teachers. hersh c. waxman texas a&m university department of teaching, learning, and culture 4232 tamu, college station, tx 77843-4232 hwaxman@tamu.edu hersh c. waxman, ph.d. is director of the education research center at texas a&m university and professor in the department of teaching, leaning, and culture at texas a&m university. his areas of research include: urban education, improving the education of students placed at risk of failure, and educational resilience. support for this research was provided by the education research center at texas a&m university but does not necessarily represent the views of the organization. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 16 manuscript received: 01/07/2013 revisions received: 04/09/2013 accepted: 05/31/2013 observing classroom instruction in schools implementing the international baccalaureate programme 17 volume 16, number 2 august 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 938-4263-3-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 3 september 21, 2012 issn 1099-839x professional faces: pre-service secondary teachers’ awareness of issues of self-disclosure on social-networking sites erin a. mikulec illinois state university an important component of teacher education is the emphasis on what it means to be a professional in the field. teacher educators must help pre-service teachers recognize that what may be acceptable in their lives now may not be when they are looking for their first job or once they are in the classroom. one such issue is the use of social networking websites, such as facebook, and how the information that teachers post can affect them as professionals. this paper discusses the results of a study of 68 pre-service secondary teachers and their understanding of the impact of self-disclosure on social networking as future educators. the results suggest that while pre-service teachers found many of the issues at hand to be common sense, they developed a deeper understanding of the ramifications of unprofessional self-disclosure on social networking sites after being presented with a number of case studies and examples. keywords: pre-service teachers, secondary education, social networking, teacher education as social networking sites such as facebook and myspace continue to become a larger part of daily life, pre-service teachers must be aware of how to manage their use of such sites as they transition from student to professional. a fundamental element of responsibly managing one’s social networking page is an understanding of the professional and societal expectations of secondary teachers. in general, we expect teachers to be role models for their students both in the classroom and in the community. although some might consider certain activities “typical” of the undergraduate experience, such as drinking alcohol and engaging in wild behavior, posting narratives and photos of such activities in a public space such as facebook does not promote a professional image. however, it is the matter of what users post and share during their time spent on social networking sites that has raised concern as stories continue to appear about teachers who have been fired on suspended for such actions. therefore, it is important that pre-service teachers begin to think critically about their own personal use of facebook, what they post, and what it means for them as they exchange student life for that of a professional teacher. the purpose of the present study was two-fold. first, it sought to establish a level of awareness of preservice secondary teachers of the impact on them as future educators of self-disclosure on social networking sites such as facebook. second, this study aimed to develop this level of awareness further by providing the pre-service teachers with an intervention of articles and examples of specific instances of self-disclosure by practicing teachers, who in some cases were dismissed from their positions. facebook as an educational tool facebook is a social networking site that allows users to create a profile, network with friends, post and share pictures and videos and join various common interest groups (ewbank, foulger, & carter, 2010). a current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 number of studies (baran, 2010; bosch, 2009; charlton, devlin, & drummond, 2009; lim, 2010; madge, meek, wellens, & hooley, 2009; mazer, murphy, & simonds, 2007; mazman & usluel, 2010; selwyn, 2009) have looked at facebook as a teaching tool in a variety of educational contexts. roblyer, mcdaniel, webb, herman, and witty (2010) found that in a higher education setting, students were more inclined to view and use facebook as an instructional tool, whereas faculty viewed it more strictly as a means of social interaction. there are, however, concerns about the use of social networking sites as educational tools when it comes to middle and high school students. while some believe that social networking sites are useful tools to connect students worldwide, the need to monitor students’ activity and safety in such environments must not be ignored. for example, couros (2008) asserts that teacher control over the social network site specific to a class is imperative and that “creating and administering a private social network is an excellent method for establishing safe social learning environments” (p. 22). the notion of “digital citizenship”, defined as learning, understanding and practicing appropriate behavior online is quickly becoming an issue that teachers may need to include in their curriculum. weaver (2010) states that it is necessary for students to learn digital citizenship because “all the privacy settings in the world will not protect, if you share information with ‘friends’ who pass it on. teenagers need to be conscious of the need to be protective about what they share” (p. 28). villano (2008) discusses the importance of creating good digital citizens and stresses that educators must show their students how the rules of responsible behavior translate into the virtual world. facebook, teachers and professionalism although many would agree that there is a critical need to teach students about digital citizenship, what about educators? as hur and brush (2009) discovered, some online communities can be excellent tools for professional development for teachers in terms of sharing ideas and communicating with other professionals. in fact, they concluded that the anonymity that online environments provide is helpful for teachers to reflect on difficult situations since their online counterparts are neither personally nor emotionally invested in them the same way a colleague might be. however, pre-service and in-service teachers are also participating in social networking sites on a personal level and it has begun to create issues and questions surrounding appropriate professional behavior. over the past few years there have been numerous reports of teachers having been dismissed from their jobs or disciplined for pictures or comments posted to their social networking sites (collier, 2012; melancon, 2012; malinconico, 2012; norfleet, 2012; nott, 2012: solocheck, 2012). these reports have sparked a national debate as to what is professional and appropriate for teachers to post to their personal social networking sites, at home and after school. while some instances of selfdisclosure are clearly inappropriate, turley (2012) points out that in some cases, teachers are being disciplined and even fired “for perfectly lawful behavior during offhours.” in response to what would appear to be a neverending string of such cases, states and school districts are scrambling to develop and implement policies and guidelines for employees to follow. in iowa, the waukee community school district’s proposed regulation 413.18: employee use of social media includes points such as not accepting current students as “friends” as well as not to post information that could be considered confidential about the school district, students, alumni or employees. the document also states that employees are expected to “consider whether a particular posting puts your professional reputation and effectiveness as a district employee at risk” (waukee community school district, 2012). the state of missouri went so far as to pass a bill that “banned electronic communication between teachers and students, but the legislature revised the law after a judge warned it infringed on free speech” (gutierrez, 2012). with districts trying to catch up to the technology with policies and guidelines, teachers must be even more mindful of what they post, or what friends post for or about them, as the courts now try to make legal sense of it all. ethical and legal issues there are numerous implications for understanding the ramification of self-disclosure on social networking sites when it comes to pre-service teachers entering the profession. as carter, foulger, and ewbank (2008) point out, “whether we like it or not, teachers are held to a higher standard of moral behavior than is the population in general” and that “as new teachers enter the profession, they are just as accountable as veteran teachers for decisions related to professional conduct” (p. 684). principals and those in charge of hiring new teachers are also beginning to use social networking sites such as facebook and myspace to find out more information about applicants. in a study of school administrators, sluder and andrews (2010) found that 33% of the participants had searched for an applicant on social networking sites during the hiring process. furthermore, 87% of the participants cited that “pictures of alcohol consumption, nudity, those that are sexual in nature, and using obscene language were all considered factors that might negatively impact an applicant” (p. 79). again, this raises the issue of privacy, however, as some pre-service and in-service teachers have discovered, privacy goes out the window as soon as someone posts information to a public forum. as elzweig and peeples (2009) report, stacy snyder from millersville university in pennsylvania, “was dismissed from her job as a student teacher at a high school and denied her teaching credential when officials from the university were made professional faces: pre-service secondary teachers’ awareness of issues of self-disclosure on social-networking sites 3 aware of a photograph and a post on her myspace.com site” (p. 27). the case went to the supreme court, which ruled that snyder posted the image and caption as a public employee, and therefore, first amendment protection did not apply to the case. this has left administrators at the state and school levels scrambling for policies to establish guidelines for teachers when it comes to social networking sites. for example, estrada (2010) discusses the elmbrook school district of wisconsin and the state of missouri, who have both enacted policies banning student-teacher communication via social networking sites. the issue of free speech and privacy versus professional conduct on facebook and myspace is also becoming part of a larger legal discourse. two terms in particular, exemplar and nexus are often at the heart of this discussion. as de mitchell, eckes, and fossey (2009) argue, teachers as exemplars are held to a higher standard of personal conduct than the average citizen because of their relationships to students. their actions away from school are judged as if their conduct would set an example for how students should act. (p. 68) while certainly no one would argue that teachers are in fact role models for young people, there is debate about at which point a teacher is still a private citizen and entitled to conduct his or her life privately without it becoming a reflection on him or her as a professional. de mitchell, eckes, and fossey (2010) point to the 1969 case of morrison v. state board of education, which ruled that an employer, namely a school board or district, could punish or sanction a teacher for conduct away from school only if it interferes with the teacher’s ability to perform his or her job duties or the learning environment. in other words, there must be a certain degree of equilibrium between a teacher’s professional and personal life. as the authors state, this “nexus seeks, in many ways, to balance competing legitimate interests – the private life of a teacher and the school district’s strong interest in protecting the school community” (p. 75). after reviewing a number of cases also related to teachers and social networking sites, fulmer (2010) supports this idea of nexus when she concludes that: although it reasonable to expect teachers to behave in a professional manner when they interact with students, it is unreasonable for teachers to be subject to professional discipline for their private behavior when the conduct for which they are disciplined is in conformance with all applicable laws. (p. 30) therefore, it would appear that not only school districts are attempting to draw a line between the personal and professional lives of teachers, but lawyers and policy makers as well. where then, does this ambiguity leave teachers and at what point should this discussion become part of their preparation? as russo, squelch, and varnham (2010) suggest, “student teachers should be informed that in light of their professional duties such as preparing lessons, teaching classes, grading papers and attending faculty meetings, they will be treated as employees rather than students” (15). while student teachers certainly must be made aware of these expectations, their first day of work should be neither the time nor the place to begin to consider them. facebook and pre-service teachers in response to a warning from the ohio education association (oea) about teachers’ use of facebook, kist (2008) interviewed pre-service teachers about their own activity on social networking sites. he found that many of the pre-service teachers were largely ignoring the advice put forth by the oea that stated “teachers who make inappropriate postings on web sites risk losing their licenses or facing other punishment” (associated press, 2007). these pre-service teachers felt that their personal privacy should not be up for debate simply because they were going to be teachers. interestingly enough, kist also found that some of the preservice teachers interviewed admitted that while they would keep their social networking sites once they become teachers, they would carefully assess and remove any possibly questionable content. nonetheless, preservice teachers who are transitioning from student to professional must not ignore the impact that information posted on facebook and myspace can have. debatin, lovejoy, horn, and hughes (2009) found that all 119 participants in their study “agreed that facebook fueled gossip and rumors, but they seemed to see this as mere side-effects of their facebook usage and not as a main component” (p. 97). while this may suffice on a college campus, in the professional world, especially in the field of public education, this “mere side-effect” can have drastic consequences. peluchette and karl (2010) found that undergraduates who were ok with either their family or employers seeing their profile, compared with those who are not, were significantly less likely to post inappropriate profile content and to portray an image that would be considered sexually appealing, wild, or offensive. (p. 33) these findings would suggest that undergraduate pre-service teachers are aware to some degree that what they post on social networking sites can indeed affect their future employment. furthermore, karl, peluchette, and schlaegel (2010) found that u.s. students were more likely than their german counterparts to post risqué or professionally inappropriate information to their social networking sites. they go on to speculate as to whether or not this trend would continue once the students begin their professional careers. miller, parsons, and lifer (2010) describe a “posting paradox” in their study that current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 found that although undergraduates are uncomfortable with potential employers seeing their facebook pages, they continue to post inappropriate content that those same potential employers might see. they concluded that, “students appear to know what they should be doing, but their behaviors do not reflect this knowledge” (p. 381). they also found that freshman tended to post more inappropriate content than did seniors in college and hypothesized that as the time for finding a job draws nearer, students are more likely to be conscious of what they post. in a study of over 300 pre-service elementary teachers, coutts, boyer, dawson, and ferdig (2007) found that nearly half of them provided their full residential address on their facebook page. furthermore, the participants “readily provide information via facebook on topics traditionally off limits in traditional classroom settings (i.e. religious views, political affiliations and sexual orientation)” (p. 1939). they concluded that teacher educators must address with preservice teachers that what they post is and can become public. olson, clough, and penning (2009) studied the public profiles of over 400 pre-service elementary teachers and coded the information as inappropriate, marginal or appropriate. they found that when one of the researchers discussed some of her concerns over what she had seen with her pre-service teacher students, they “became angry that a professor had been viewing their profiles” (p. 465). the researchers went on to conclude that the participants in their study “who posted inappropriate items on facebook clearly did not consider that their conduct outside of their school-based experiences had anything to do with their role as a teacher” (olson, clough, & penning, 2009, p. 466). both of these studies focused on pre-service elementary teachers, however there is a lack of similar research for pre-service secondary teachers. mazer, murphy, and simonds (2009) found that college freshmen who viewed the facebook page of an instructor (created by the researchers) with high levels of self-disclosure, viewed the instructor as more competent, trustworthy and caring. however, given the professional and societal expectations placed on teachers, high levels of selfdisclosure from a high school teacher may not have the same favorable effect. this is especially true of new secondary teachers who are traditionally no more than several years older than some of their students. the need to differentiate themselves from their students is critical in establishing classroom authority and developing a safe environment conducive to learning. however, new secondary teachers may feel that in order to do this they must appear to their students as “cool” and “laid-back”. the idea of interacting with their students on facebook and myspace may seem like a good way of doing just that. furthermore, secondary teachers will likely be involved as faculty sponsors or coaches of school clubs, organizations and teams and therefore could view the use of facebook and myspace as a means of effectively communicating with students. piesing (2007) however, states that using facebook could lead to a loss of face or control in the classroom since such online interaction can blur the lines between teacher and friend. it therefore becomes imperative that teacher educators begin to help pre-service teachers understand the ramifications of using facebook, both personally and as a professional educator. method in order to understand the participants’ awareness of teacher self-disclosure on facebook, the researcher developed the following guiding questions for the study. for the purposes of this study, the researcher determined that it was necessary to understand the starting point of the participants in terms of awareness of the complex nature of teacher self-disclosure on social networking sites in order to provide a comparison after the intervention. for this reason, the researcher designed the pre-intervention survey to gather a general understanding of teacher self-disclosure and to what degree the participants had even considered it a factor in their transition from student to professional. 1. as pre-service secondary teachers transition from student to professional, how do they view the personal and professional use of social networking sites such as facebook and myspace? 2. how aware are pre-service secondary teachers of the potential consequences of posting inappropriate material on a personal social networking site? 3. how do these views change given an intervention of readings and class discussions about real-life examples of the issues associated with teachers using social networking sites? participants the participants in the present study were 68 sophomore, junior and senior undergraduate secondary education students at a large midwestern university during the fall semester of a course on general secondary instructional methods and assessment and one section of an introduction to secondary education course in the spring. the content area specialty for the participants included, but was not limited to, english, history, biology, chemistry and agriculture. for the majority of the students enrolled in the fall semester courses it was their final semester prior to student teaching. for all of the students enrolled in the spring semester course, it was their first teacher education course in a sequence of three. procedure the participants were all students in the researcher’s courses on the introduction to teaching and general secondary methods. the intervention surveys, readings and class discussion were part of the regular course activities. there was a 100% rate of consent among the participants. although the participants received class points for completing the assigned professional faces: pre-service secondary teachers’ awareness of issues of self-disclosure on social-networking sites 5 activities, in order to minimize coercion, all intervention survey responses were anonymous. while participants did provide their name in order to receive credit for completing the online intervention surveys, the names were not linked in any way to the actual responses. for the in-class discussion, participants were randomly assigned to groups and they submitted their written responses as a group, without names. to minimize the risk that the instructor-researcher would recognize students by their responses, the data were not analyzed until one month after final grades for the courses were submitted. given no previous research in this area, the researcher developed the preand post-intervention surveys as well as the in-class discussion questions. the surveys were piloted in another section of the general methods course prior to the intervention event in the researcher’s section. both intervention surveys and the in-class discussion questions can be found in appendices a and b. pre-intervention. the participants first completed an online pre-intervention survey in which they responded to questions about their personal use of facebook and myspace as well as open-ended questions about the use of such social networking sites by secondary teachers. the pre-intervention survey consisted of three questions regarding the participants’ use of social networking sites as well as their current privacy settings and one open-ended question about the participants’ views on the use of social networking sites by teachers. the researcher kept this initial question general so as not to lead the participants in any one direction and to gauge the issues that the participants thought of with prompting. following the open-ended question were 14 likert-type items that focused on more specific issues of teachers use of and self-disclosure on social networking sites, such as whether it was a good way to communicate with students and if a teacher is personally responsible for what they post to their page on their own time away from school. intervention. after the pre-intervention survey, the participants read several articles that detailed various issues surrounding the use of facebook by in-service teachers, ranging from dismissals because of posting inappropriate content or pictures, discussions about privacy and emerging school policies. the participants read seven articles in all. the first article by simpson (2008) is a synopsis of a number of teachers who faced disciplinary action because of photos or comments they had posted to their myspace or facebook pages. another article by steffenhagen (2008) told the story of a canadian principal who was suspended and investigated as a child abuser because of a nude photo of him on a beach, taken by his wife while the two were on vacation. the participants also read an article (henry, 2009) about a school in houston that was just beginning to tackle the fallout in the classroom that resulted from comments made about teachers and students on facebook from home. two other articles (helms, 2008; clasen-kelly, 2008) focused on the ongoing investigation of a charlotte-mecklenburg teacher who had posted comments about her students on facebook and the ensuing debate of teacher privacy in the face of societal expectations of educators. the final set of articles described a warning issued by the ohio education association (eschoolnews, 2009) and the actual warning itself (ohio education association, 2009). the participants then engaged in a guided a onetime in-class discussion about the articles and completed a post-survey at home. the participants completed these activities as part of a regular class assignment for which they received points; regardless of whether or not they consented to having their responses used in the study. since professionalism was a major topical component of both courses, the goal of the in-class discussion was to provide the participants with the opportunity to recognize the importance of being mindful of what they post as they move into student teaching and eventually into the classroom. the discussion took place in small groups of three to four students in order to give all participants an opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas. post-intervention. following the class discussion, the participants completed the postintervention survey online outside of class. in this final measure of data collection, the participants were asked how their views of secondary teachers using social networking sites had changed. the participants also responded to the same 14 likert-scale items a second time in order to assess how the intervention influenced their beliefs about specific behaviors and topics related to secondary teachers using social networking sites. as with the pre-intervention survey, the participants’ responses were anonymous. data analysis the researcher compiled the data and looked for patterns in thinking in the preand post-intervention responses, as well as changes in the ideas about and perceptions of secondary teachers using facebook and myspace. the researcher performed a content analysis of the free-response data to find common themes and issues among the participants and to determine how their ideas and beliefs about teachers using social networking sites had changed as the result of reading the articles and engaging in the class discussion. working within the framework of symbolic interaction, defined by patton (2002) to mean that “human beings act toward things on the basis of meanings that the things have for them” and that “the meaning of things arises out of the social interactions one has with one’s fellows” (p. 112). in the present study, the meaning that social networking sites such as facebook hold to pre-service teachers may be affected by how they view themselves as students or current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 emerging professionals and that a shift in this meaning may come about as the result of discussing it with their peers. results table 1 shows responses to the questions about the type of account the participants had and their rate of usage. for this study, the researcher defined usage as accessing the site and participating in the account through posting comments, responding to or “liking” comments or photos, sending messages or chatting with friends. the results indicate that the participants in the study were active users of social networking sites, primarily facebook, with 85% of them being regular users by accessing and participating in their social networking sites at least once a week. the participants in this study therefore had sufficient experience with social networking sites to engage in the study. these data indicate that the participants knew how the sites work and were able to give informed opinions on its use. furthermore, these data are consistent with similar findings of usage. pempek, yevdokiya, and calvert (2008) found that undergraduate students spent at least thirty minutes per day on facebook while aghazamani (2010) found that of 595 students polled, 81% connected to the site more than once a day and 74% of them spent more than one hour a day using it. research done by kirschner and karpinski (2010) showed that of 219 undergraduate and graduate students, 65% of them access their social networking sites at least once a day and often more than once to look for new messages and posts. furthermore, hafner (2009) reports that facebook’s 350 million members “collectively spend 10 billion minutes there every day, checking in with friends, writing on people’s electronic walls, clicking through photos and generally keeping pace with the drift of their social world.” pre-intervention survey free response questions the pre-intervention survey indicated that many of the participants felt cautiously optimistic about using facebook as a private citizen. after reading the responses to the pre-intervention survey question “what is your view on the use of social networking sites such as facebook or myspace by high school teachers?” the researcher identified four common themes among them. for example, 65% of the participants reported that the use of social networking sites by high school teachers is acceptable so long as they maintain a high level of professionalism and good judgment in the management of their pages. some of the ways they identified maintaining professional behavior included keeping privacy settings set to the highest level possible, not posting or allowing inappropriate content and that teachers not “friend” students. the participants qualified their responses with the following: table 1 social networking site accounts and usage __________________________________________________________________ account usage type at least three to five once rarely n=68 once a day times a week a week _______________________________________________________________________________ facebook only .84 .43 .26 .16 .15 myspace only - facebook & .13 myspace neither .03 professional faces: pre-service secondary teachers’ awareness of issues of self-disclosure on social-networking sites 7 i think teachers have to know how to allow only certain groups of friends to see certain things like photo albums. i believe high school teachers can have a facebook but it is highly inappropriate to be “friends” with students. it crosses a personal and professional boundary. another 38% of the participants felt that the use of social networking sites would be appropriate for communicating with students so long as they maintained a professional page separately from a personal one. the participants viewed the use of a social networking site as a potential tool for communication with students to remind them of upcoming assignments or as a means for students to speak with their teacher outside of school if they have questions about homework. the participants also stated that pages on such sites could be maintained for clubs or sports teams. it could be a good tool to have if you worked with a club at school and wanted them to create a facebook page for it. i plan to keep the one i have now but make a new one for my students to remind them about homework and things. the participants also indicated awareness of the potential issues that could arise from the use of facebook and myspace. for instance, 37% of the participants stated that teachers need to understand the possible hazards associated with the personal or professional use of such sites, particularly when it comes to photos that are posted online. the participants indicated that even with high privacy and security settings, their professional image could be tarnished by not only what they might themselves post, but also what others may post about them. they also indicated that ultimately it is the responsibility of the individual to carefully monitor such settings as well as posts in which they are tagged or identified and that there is always the possibility that students, parents and administrators may still view them. it is important to remember that students, administrators or parents do find them sometimes. any teacher that made it through college and found a job should have the sense that high school students will try to find out as much personal information about their teacher as possible. foulger, ewbank, kay, popp, and carter (2009) state that “teachers are sometimes asked to adopt a higher standard of conduct than the regular public because of their position” (p. 17). these results indicate that the participants recognized this very idea and that they must be aware of what they are posting to their pages and how it can reflect on them as teachers. the final common theme was that of teachers simply not placing themselves in the situation of having the contents of their social networking site come back to haunt them. of the participants, 15% felt that the use of social networking sites with students is not appropriate under any circumstances. the participants stated that the use of such sites to communicate with students was simply a risk not taking and that it blurs the line between being a friend and being a teacher. while the participants did see the value in using the internet to communicate with students about their class, they recognized that there are other tools for doing this where there is no danger of personal information being conveyed by either teachers or students. facebook is for private lives outside of school. if a teacher wants to communicate with the class through the internet they should use blackboard or wikis. not smart. i’ll delete it once i start looking for a job. it’s a big waste of time. post-intervention survey free response questions based on the common themes gathered from the pre-survey responses, the participants in the study clearly had some strong opinions on high school teachers using facebook and myspace both privately with friends and family and as a means of communicating with students. the post-intervention survey results indicated that after reading the articles and discussing them with classmates, their views on teachers using facebook were either substantiated by what they had read or that their views had changed and that they now had more things to think about than before. in the post-survey responses, 35% of the participants indicated that their views had not changed and that they still believed as public figures, teachers must take care to portray a professional image even in their lives outside of school. furthermore, the participants stated that it was simply a matter of common sense and that if there is the slightest question about whether or not something is professional, it should not be posted at all. i feel basically the same, if a teacher is going to have a facebook or a myspace they have to exercise the utmost care and privacy. i can’t say my opinions changed that much. i still believe that as teachers we should be role models but at the same time, we should be allowed to live our own lives. other participants, however, stated that reading the articles and discussing them with classmates did have an impact on their views of high school teachers using facebook and myspace both privately and professionally. for example, 65% of the participants reported that the articles and the discussion presented them with new issues to consider. many of the participants reported that they had not been aware of the serious consequences to their employment as a result of posting inappropriate material current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 on a personal social networking site. the participants also acknowledged that while one’s privacy settings are set to the highest level possible, there is no guarantee that posts or photos remain private. furthermore, the participants stated that reading and discussing the articles made them more aware that teachers are held to higher standards in terms of professional behavior and attitudes. i am a lot less sure that is it okay for teachers to use facebook. it is too dangerous, something could go wrong and you could lose your job. i am surprised how quickly people were fired for comments that are similar to comments that may occur in the school’s hallways or cafeteria. i guess once you put it out there it can’t be taken back. this is consistent with foulger et al. (2009) who found “a contemporary struggle for pre-service and inservice teachers alike regarding a clear code of teacher conduct in a networked world” (p. 13). the results indicate that pre-service teachers do in fact want to know what schools expect from them and what the rules are as these issues continue to develop in the educational community. foulger et al. (2009) also discuss the social contract, which they define as “requiring the agreement of all members of society or not allowing a social practice even when one person does not agree” (p. 10). when joining and participating in a social-networking site, users may be under the impression that what they post will stay within the context of their “friends” and “wall”, especially since they have chosen who will see and have access to such information. however, the researchers remind readers that facebook and myspace are in fact privately owned and that “participants give up their rights to the information they post by agreeing to be part of this online community” (p. 16). in their study, they found that all but one of the participants in their study failed to address the issue of social contracts connected to social networking sites. neither did this arise in the present study, save the one student who commented that some of the remarks that teachers made and were fired for were in many ways no different from what teachers might say to one another. perhaps one of the most interesting results of the post-intervention survey responses was that 35% of the participants voluntarily took action in regards to his or her own facebook or myspace account. this was neither a requirement of the class assignment nor the research study. what’s more is that of the participants who voluntarily made changes to their social networking sites, more than half of them were in the third and final course of the sequence and were closest to student teaching. for these participants, the reality of their professional life truly beginning, rather than being an abstract topic of class discussion, had a more meaningful impact on their interpretation of the readings. the participants reported that they had a better understanding of what was inappropriate within the context of being a public school teacher and that they would need to be more careful in the future about what they posted. in addition to updating privacy settings, a number of participants also reported removing their last name from their profile in an effort to add another layer of security. i deleted 200 pictures when i got home. i was probably being paranoid about some, but i don’t want to take any chances now. knowing some of my friends, i wouldn’t put my job on the line just so they can make an inappropriate joke. i told them to clean it up and even deleted some. discussion the present study sought to identify pre-service secondary teachers’ awareness of the potential hazards of posting to social networking sites as they transition from the role of university student to that of professional educator. given the numerous incidents that have been reported, and the consequences that some teachers have faced as a result of posting pictures or comments to social networking sites, it is important that pre-service teachers have a clear understanding of the expectations placed on them not only by students, administrators and parents, but by society as well. to return to the guiding questions of this study, as pre-service secondary teachers transition from student to professional, how do they view the personal and professional use of social networking sites such as facebook and myspace? the pre-intervention survey results showed that most of the participants in the study demonstrated a strong level of awareness of the issues and professional ethical concerns associated with secondary teachers using social networking sites in both their personal and professional lives. for the most part, while some participants felt that the use of social networking sites like facebook and myspace were for the private lives of teachers, some also indicated that there was the potential to use them as tools in the classroom. for example, some participants indicated that maintaining a facebook page for a teacher’s class could be a valuable tool for communicating with students about assignments or as a way to provide extra help outside of class. the participants also reported that they understood the need to remain “professional” at all times. nonetheless, the participants’ definition of professional was somewhat limited in terms of what exactly is considered “professional” when it comes to pictures and comments posted on social networking sites. how aware are pre-service secondary teachers of the potential consequences of posting inappropriate material on a personal social networking site? this awareness increased in the post-intervention survey questions after reading the articles that described real-life accounts of incidents involving teachers and social networking sites. of the articles read, the participants professional faces: pre-service secondary teachers’ awareness of issues of self-disclosure on social-networking sites 9 focused heavily in their discussions on the principal who was suspended and investigated as a pedophile because of a picture his wife had taken of him on a nude beach while on vacation. while the participants agreed that his wife did not use good judgment in posting the picture, they were concerned at how quickly parents and the community were to jump to the conclusions that he could potentially act inappropriate with students because of it. while the participants acknowledged that some teachers that had been fired or disciplined had not been professional in their comments or pictures that they had posted, they began to understand the moral standard to which teachers are held by the public. many of the participants reviewed their own facebook and myspace pages and reported that they suddenly understood how some material could be construed as unprofessional and made changes to their privacy settings and removed certain items. while initially the participants stated that they believed it was acceptable for teachers to maintain social networking pages in their personal lives, they were also able to more clearly define what it meant to represent oneself as a “professional” at all times. how do the views of pre-service secondary teachers towards the use of social networking sites change given an intervention of readings and class discussions about real-life examples of the issues associated with teachers using such sites? again, the participants identified the need to represent themselves consistently as professionals but still thought that such sites could serve as an effective means of communicating with students so long as the teacher maintained a professional page that was separate from their personal one. one issue with this approach that the participants did not raise is that although a teacher may maintain separate pages, they cannot assume that students will do the same. in other words, if a teacher creates a facebook or myspace page for his or her class, the teacher and all of the teacher’s “friends” are still privy to the information posted by students, as it will appear on all the friends’ newsfeeds. this means that everyone linked to that teacher’s page, whether or not the content relates to the teacher’s class, will see all information, comments and photos posted there. the teacher now finds him or herself in a situation in which he or she must decide how to act upon information posted to the page that affects his or her learning environment. the level to which teachers and schools are responsible for what students say online away from school is still under legal development. the question of guidelines for appropriate conduct and the legal ramifications surrounding the cases discussed in the study also helped the participants to understand how farreaching these issues are. many participants expressed concern that some districts would go so far as to say that as an employee teachers are not even allowed to have a personal social networking page. it also became clear to the participants that the issues are present at school, district and state levels and that administrators and lawmakers alike are scrambling to reconcile these issues and to develop and implement policies to address them. many of the participants reported that this made them feel somewhat uneasy; that they would not want the lack of clear guidelines for them to follow once they were hired to result in any kind of disciplinary action. as the results indicate, pre-service teachers need to engage in discussions about these current and emerging issues. by presenting students with current examples and case studies, teacher educators can further develop preservice teachers’ sense of professional ethics and help them to understand fully the reality of becoming a secondary teacher in the digital age. furthermore, teacher educators as well as pre-service teachers need to stay abreast of developing policies created by and instituted in school districts as these issues continue to evolve. by doing this, pre-service teachers can begin to understand that once they are hired, it is their responsibility to know and act in accordance with school and district policies when it comes to social networking sites. it is important to remember as teacher educators that while our students may come to us tech savvy it is still part of our responsibility to show them how to best practice these skills in the workplace. limitations this current study has several limitations. first, the sample size of the study was limited to two sections of one course and one section of a second, which consequently makes generalizability difficult. while this study focused on pre-service secondary teachers, future work needs to expand to include pre-service middle school and junior high teachers in order to assess the needs of these populations as well. another limitation is that the majority of the participants in this study were nearing the end of their teacher preparation, making it important that pre-service teachers who are earlier on in their coursework consider these same issues in order to develop an awareness of professional issues as soon as possible. therefore, this study needs to be replicated with a larger sample size of pre-service secondary teachers. and, given that privacy settings are constantly changing on facebook and myspace as are district and even state level policies, it is imperative that future work take into account these new and ever-changing phenomena. another limitation of the study is the instructorresearcher factor that could have contributed to the 100% rate of consent participants to use their responses from their class assignments. while this has been addressed in the methods section, it is important to reiterate the all of the online responses were anonymous and that the participants working in groups and submitting written responses as a group and without names minimized the risk of recognizing participant responses in the in-class discussion portion. the researcher did not analyze any current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 data until one month after final grades for the courses had been submitted. a final limitation to the study is the issue of testretest, in which the participants remembering their preintervention survey responses when completing the postintervention survey could skew the responses. although there was a lapse of one week between the preand postintervention surveys, for the purpose of this study, it was important that the participants be able to reflect on this information in order for the researcher to gauge the impact of the intervention. nonetheless, a direction for replicating this study in the future would be a longitudinal study of the effects of the intervention, which would reduce the impact of carryover. conclusion the results from the present study suggest that before reading the articles and discussing them in class, the participants were aware to some degree that what teachers say and post on social networking sites should be matter of common sense. yet, after reading and discussing real life cases, the participants became more aware of the gravity that such actions can have on one’s professional career, whether intentional or not. furthermore, the participants came to understand that these issues are not localized to a personal level, but rather also to the district and state levels as more organizations are working to develop policies and guidelines in response to them. given the continually changing landscape of the educational environment, both in schools and online, preservice teachers must be aware of how their words and actions made public and in print through social networking sites can affect them now and in their future classrooms. understanding and presenting a professional self in public is an integral part of the transition from student to teacher and must be addressed in teacher educator programs. the issues that have arisen from teacher self-disclosure on facebook is not simply limited to ethical behavior on the part of adults who interact daily with children, but are now also the basis for a number of legal cases, which are in turn impacting public school policy. these policies will be in place when pre-service teachers enter the profession and all faculty, both novice and veteran, are expected to understand and adhere to them. in a secondary setting, the age difference between new teachers and students is considerably less than in an elementary situation. in order to be taken seriously as an authority figure, new teachers must make every effort to distinguish themselves as the adult in the room. to accomplish this, pre-service teachers must have a clear definition of professionalism and the expectations that come with their job title. part of this definition is the understanding that what may be acceptable to them, and others, as an undergraduate student, will not be acceptable as high school teachers. this process begins well before a new teacher is hired and it is no longer sufficient simply to tell pre-service teachers what they should or should not post to such 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(2010). facebook and other pandora’s boxes. access, 24(4), 24-32. professional faces: pre-service secondary teachers’ awareness of issues of self-disclosure on social-networking sites 13 appendix a pre-intervention survey questions 1. do you have a facebook or myspace account? 2. how often do you update your status or post comments to your facebook or myspace page(s)? 3. which privacy setting is currently active on your facebook or myspace page(s)? 4. what is your view on the use of social networking sites such as facebook or myspace by high school teachers? post-intervention survey question 1. after discussing the articles you read before class, how have your opinions about the use of social networking sites such as facebook and myspace by high school teachers changed? explain. the follow questions were administered preand post-intervention and discussion using a likert scale. strongly agree (1) agree (2) neutral (3) disagree (4) strongly disagree (5) 1. social networking sites such as facebook and myspace are a good way for high school teachers to communicate with their students. 2. high school teachers cannot be held accountable for anything they post on facebook or myspace on their own time using their own computer. 3. high school teachers should never use facebook or myspace to communicate with students in any way. 4. school districts have the right to deny access to facebook or myspace to teachers and students on school computers. 5. if high school teachers want to use facebook or myspace to communicate with their students, they should maintain a separate page that is used only for that purpose. 6. high school teachers should always be careful not to post any pictures or content on their personal facebook or myspace page(s) that could show them in an unprofessional light. 7. if a high school teacher has a personal facebook or myspace page, and the privacy settings are at the highest level, there is no way anything he or she posts could be seen by students, parents or school administrators. 8. school districts have the right to ban any and all teacher-student interactions on facebook and myspace. 9. a high school teacher cannot be held accountable if inappropriate content is posted on his or her personal facebook or myspace page by a non-work-related friend. 10. if a high school teacher chooses to use facebook or myspace to communicate with students, he or she must establish rules and guidelines with students for the use of that page. 11. a high school teacher cannot be held accountable for content posted to his or her personal facebook or myspace page by another teacher or work-related friend. 12. it is okay to use facebook applications such as yoville or cafeworld with students because it develops positive rapport that will carry over into the classroom. 13. a high school teacher cannot be held accountable for any content that he or she posted under a high privacy setting that was not observed by one of his or her online friends. 14. it is appropriate for high school teachers to use facebook or myspace as a means of communicating with the parents or guardians of their students. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 14 appendix b in-class discussion questions 1. what was your initial reaction to the articles you read? which one most surprised you? 2. discuss the district of elmbrook’s decision to ban the use of social networking sites between teachers and students. is this policy justifiable? why or why not? 3. discuss the suspension of principal clessen. what questions do you have regarding this case that aren’t addressed in the article? in your opinion, was the case handled fairly? why or why not? 4. discuss the case of the charlotte-mecklenburg teachers. why do you think the teachers in the article would post these comments on facebook? in your opinion, were these cases handled fairly? was appropriate action taken? why or why not? 5. discuss the cases of the teachers in colorado, florida and virginia. in your opinion, are these issues of privacy or professional conduct? 6. discuss the warning to teachers issues by the ohio education association. to what extent do you think this warning is necessary? in your opinion, is this good advice or common sense? explain. 7. why do you think that teachers engaging in social networking applications such as yoville or cafeworld with students might be considered inappropriate or unethical? 8. reflect on your own social networking site page, or those that you have seen. is there any content that could in the least bit paint you in a negative or unprofessional way if seen by students, parents or administrators? how will you manage your personal pages when you begin student teaching and your first teaching job? professional faces: pre-service secondary teachers’ awareness of issues of self-disclosure on social-networking sites 15 article citation mikulec, e. a. (2012). professional faces: pre-service secondary teachers’ awareness of issues of self-disclosure on socialnetworking sites. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/938 erin a. mikulec illinois state university campus box 5330 normal, il 61790-5330 emikule@ilstu.edu dr. mikulec is an assistant professor of general secondary methods at illinois state university. her research interests include the development of teacher identity, the teaching of classroom management and the use alternative clinical experiences in teacher education. the research reported in this paper received approval from the institutional review board at illinois state university in november 2009. manuscript received: 2/6/2012 revisions received: 6/11/2012 accepted: 8/29/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 16 volume 15, number 3 september 21, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template current issues in education, 19(2) 1 volume 19, issue 2 august 8, 2016 issn 1099-839x using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience kerry k. fierke, gardner a. lepp, karen bastianelli, lisa vogelsang, & ladona tornabene university of minnesota abstract: the article describes a student-centered approach to generating meaningful learning outcomes in a short-term study abroad program. a practice named intention/reflection (i/r) was used to help students to identify, articulate, and reflect upon learning objectives that were personally meaningful, within the broader framework of the intended outcomes of the course. secondarily, this exercise was intended to limit the potential cultural and logistic obstacles of the travel experience, and enhance the students’ overall experience. this process included three distinct reflective writing periods: prior to travelling, during the trip, and after the trip. the i/r practice encouraged the students to engage in, and take partial ownership of the quality of their learning experiences through a self-directed learning component while abroad. qualitative data collection revealed student focus on their future professions. the evaluated effects of the student-selected activities that emerged from the i/r practice, and how other instructors may incorporate i/r for study abroad, are also discussed. keywords: intention, reflection, engagement, international student-centered learning, self-directed learning apa-style citation: fierke, k. k., lepp, g. a., bastianelli, k., vogelsang, l., & tornabene, l. (2016). using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience. current issues in education, 19(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1441 accepted: may 6 th , 2016 according to the institute of international education (iie), the rate of us students studying abroad had tripled in the last two decades and rose 3.4% just between the 2010-11 and 2011-12 academic school years (iie open doors fast facts, 2013). the bulk of research on study abroad has historically been in the context of foreign language learning (engle & engle, 2004; segalowitz et al., 2004), intercultural learning experiences (engle & engle, 2004; jackson, 2005) or in the area of student learning and development (hadis, 2005; ingraham & peterson, 2004). understudied is the effect of student-directed formative assessments and reflective writing in study abroad programs, in which students are encouraged to articulate and reflect upon their unique interests in such an experience. furthermore, study abroad research has primarily focused on mid-length (one or two quarters or one semester) or long-term (one academic or calendar http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1441 fierke et al.: using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience current issues in education, 19(2) 2 year) study abroad programs (mckeown, 2009). however, increases in students in study abroad programs are predominantly in short-term programs (summer or less than 8 weeks) while midlength and long-term study abroad programs have been showing slight decreases over the last several years. currently, short-term programs (59%) comprise a larger percentage than midlength and long-term programs combined (41%) (iie open doors fast facts, 2013). traveling for an extended period in a foreign land offers obstacles unforeseen by many college students. they may not be prepared to handle vastly different experiences in their choices of available food, different languages, lodging standards, and many other cultural idiosyncrasies (lenz & wister, 2008). when confronted with such differences, some students may regress in their thinking to simply technical or pragmatic tasks involved mainly with getting through the days. they can experience what some researchers have titled, “culture shock” when in such new environments (adler, 1975). when this occurs, a rich learning experience can be missed because students may not be able to fully process their experiences. missing such educational moments can be a distressing and frustrating outcome, for both student and instructor. students often spend thousands of dollars on these experiences, and rightfully expect a rich learning experience. instructors may be frustrated by students’ inability to truly embrace the experience because of the practical day-to-day obstacles. this is especially true when one considers the potential benefits to student learning that occur as a result of even short-term international travel (ingraham & peterson, 2004; lenz & wister, 2008; mapp, 2012; mckeown, 2009; mclaughlin & johnson, 2006; tarrant & lyons, 2011). in an attempt to offset or mitigate these challenges of a study abroad learning experience, the authors used an i/r practice, as outlined below. intention/reflection practice defined the process of reflection, along with the purposeful act of reflective writing, has been promoted as meaningful and effective learning activities for decades. research highlighting the benefits of reflective writing ranges across a wide spectrum of educational disciplines and environments. according to carlson, chu, denial, and lyons (2007), “when students spend time thinking about the work they have done and then documenting it in a written journal, they are able to connect abstract concepts to the critical thinking that is so necessary in clinical care” (p. 44). examples of how this can has been used in study abroad programs include blogs (elola & oskoz, 2008; lee, 2012), essays, open-ended questionnaires, and other forms of reflective writing (lens & wister, 2008; mapp, 2012; mckeown, 2009; mclaughlin & johnson, 2006; tarrant & lyons, 2011). worthy of mention is the assertion that benefits of reflective writing extend beyond a particular course or discipline. students have remarked how a journal assignment prepared them to respond to questions asked during professional interviews, and influenced the types of learning that occurred for them (cisero, 2006). journal writing can become a thread from one experience to the next as each entry is connected to the following entry (maloney & campbellevans, 2002). this connection of learning experiences can be especially important in a study abroad program, given the distractions and challenges mentioned above. joshua mckeown (2009) discussed how reflective writing contributed to the intellectual development of first-time travelers in a short-term study abroad program. he defines intellectual development thusly: intellectual development measures a student’s ability to think in complex ways, to view and interpret information in a diverse and pluralistic world, to embrace multiple and relativistic viewpoints fierke et al.: using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience current issues in education, 19(2) 3 instead of rigid ‘black-or-white’ arguments, and ultimately to commit to beliefs and ways of thinking that reflect both a more sophisticated intellect and a more responsible worldview. (mckeown, 2009, p. 3) however, as leijen, valtna, leijen, and pedaste (2012) point out, student reflection can vary dramatically in terms of quality, which affects the overall learning experience. improving the quality of reflection – sometimes referred to as the breadth and depth of thinking (lucas, 2012) – is consistent with overarching goals of higher education. honesty and lack of a clear purpose are other issues that have been identified with reflecting writing activities (duckett, 2002; williams & wessel, 2004). the design of the i/r practice attempts to mitigate these potential pitfalls by allowing the learner to identify their own purpose and then connecting it to course learning objectives, as outlined below. by definition, reflective writing activities rely on learning experiences that have occurred in the past. in a study abroad program, students may find varying degree of value or interest in the broad range of these experiences. to narrow the focus on the most valuable experiences, the researchers used an i/r activity to help students identify their own learning goals or intentions. it should be noted that this short-term study abroad program included several non-structured hours each day to allow students opportunities to see and experience more and varied activities during their limited time. anecdotal evidence from previous years suggested that students wished they had used their unstructured time more effectively, and taken time before the trip to learn more about various places they were going to visit. as noted by fierke and lepp (2015), adult learners have a desire to understand why they are learning something, and how that knowledge or skill translates to their immediate or future professional work (knowles, 1980). when this occurs, adult learners are likely to be more engaged, proactive, and focused in acquiring the necessary knowledge or skill (brookfield, 2000). knowles (1980) and brookfield (2000) are not the first to suggest that student intent is important in the learning process. piaget’s (1969) work in educational psychology, which many argue was the basis for constructivism, suggests that students who are actively involved in identifying, acquiring, and applying needed information are more likely to achieve intended outcomes. if the experience is successful, research suggests that learners are likely to repeat the process (von glasersfeld, 1984), thereby beginning a positive 3-step cycle of intention, learning activity, reflection, and then back to intention. with this in mind, the authors employed the i/r practice in an effort to link students’ intentions and reflections in a unified activity. as fierke and lepp (2015) note, “a student who has identified learning goals (intention) and then is able to document the achievement of those goals (reflection) may be more likely to engage in the learning process repeatedly” (p. 50). through this i/r practice, the authors hoped to mitigate some of the obstacles inherent in a foreign language learning environment, and promote student focus and engagement to maximize learning outcomes. methods i/rs were introduced in 2013, 2014, and 2015 during a short-term study abroad threecredit graduate/undergraduate course, “historical perspectives of community health through culture and art in italy.” an essential core of the course curriculum requires students to analyze the impact of social and cultural factors on community health and to relate to aspects of preventative health care in the present. it is also intended to connect students to their future role in health care professions. the course was offered during may term where students travel three fierke et al.: using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience current issues in education, 19(2) 4 weeks throughout italy. students are from various graduate and undergraduate programs and the number varies from year to year. the i/r questions were designed by researchers and faculty involved in the course. questions were designed to facilitate the student's ownership of the learning process. in addition to the learning objectives of the course, questions were developed to help students seek what they were most passionate learning about their role as future health care professionals in anticipation of and during the class. completed i/rs were to be at least one to two pages in length. in advance of implementation of the i/r practice, the questions were informally tested with a group of eight pharmacy and graduate students. the test group answered the questions based on an imagined trip they were about to take, or a trip they had taken in the past. the final i/r questions were then adapted (from the test group responses) to invoke greater depth of thought among the students. students were to complete three phases of i/rs regarding their expectations and experiences with the course. the first i/r was done before students left on the trip, the second occurred mid-point during their time in italy, and the third phase was finished upon return to the united states. pre-excursion the first phase was meant to capture students’ expectations and goals for what they would like to accomplish during the study abroad course. it was assumed that students would be interested in deep learning, as opposed to surface learning. this approach to learning, identified by baxter, mattick, and kuyken (2012), suggests that students who are intentional about what they hope to gain from a learning experience are more likely to engage in deeper thinking, which provides more meaningful outcomes for the learner. additionally, students were informed that identifying very broad goals may not allow them the opportunity to feel fulfilled during the experience, and being too narrow and specific may not allow the opportunity to be open to additional experiences. questions of phase 1: (pre) 1.1 describe your previous domestic and international travel experiences. 1.2 what experiences have you had with cultures other than your own? 1.3 why are you engaging in this international learning experience? 1.4 identify at least 3 specific areas of interest you want to explore further while you’re in the “historical perspectives of community health through culture and art in italy" course. please take photos depicting these specific areas of interest when in italy as they will need to be included in your post excursion write-up. 1.5 in what ways do you feel this experience will affect you in your future profession? 1.6 how can you best prepare yourself to be healthy during the international learning experience (physically, mentally, and emotionally)? 1.7 share any additional thoughts/questions/revelations. figure 1. phase 1 (pre) intention/reflection exercise. mid-point the second phase was designed to help capture what students had done to that point during the experience, and highlight any changes that might enhance overall learning while still abroad. the questions were designed specifically to build from the responses given in the preexcursion exercise. fierke et al.: using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience current issues in education, 19(2) 5 questions of phase 2: (mid) 2.1 at this point in the trip, what experiences have provided the most value for you, personally and professionally? please take photos depicting these experiences when in italy as they will need to be included in your post excursion write-up. 2.2 what are some things that you didn’t expect? what surprised you about yourself? 2.3 based on the 3 specific areas of interest that you identified prior to departure (question 1.4) that you wanted to explore, describe those you have currently experienced. what did you learn from those experiences? please take photos depicting these specific areas of interest when in italy as they will need to be included in your post excursion write-up. 2.4 if you haven't experienced them, why not? if you still would like to experience those learning opportunities, what are your plans for achieving that goal? 2.5 describe any new areas of interest you would like to explore further while you are on this international journey. how will you achieve these? please take photos depicting these new areas of interest when in italy as they will need to be included in your post excursion write-up. 2.6 how can you continue to keep yourself healthy during this international learning experience (physically, mentally, emotional)? 2.7 share any additional thoughts/questions/revelations. figure 2. phase 2 (mid) intention/reflection exercise. post-excursion the third phase was designed to “close the loop” on the intentions of the student. questions prompted students to compare their expectations to what they actually experienced, and reflect on reasons for any differences. additionally, this phase helped to capture how students plan to use these learning experiences in their future practice (i.e. how they may carry these experiences forward in their lives). questions of phase 3: (post) 3.1 of the interest areas that you previously identified as important in question 1.4 and question 2.5, please include a photo of each one that you experienced. write a brief explanation of each experience. what did you learn from each experience? also, please describe how (or if) each experience affected you. please include the photos depicting these specific areas of interest that you experienced into a word file with each photo at the top followed by a brief explanation of the experience, what you learned and how it affected you. 3.2 were there areas of interest that you discussed in questions 1.4, 2.4 and 2.5 that you never experienced? if so, was this by choice? discuss why you did not experience these and how you feel about it. 3.3 what was the most influential thing you learned during your international experience? what are some things you didn’t expect? what surprised you about yourself? 3.4 how will you apply the learning experiences from “historical perspectives of community health through culture and art in italy" course in the future? share how this course (readings, tours, presentations, travel, etc.) might influence you in your future profession. 3.5 describe how you kept yourself healthy during the international learning experience (physically, mentally, emotionally)? identify additional ways that could have improved your well-being. 3.6 share any additional thoughts/questions/revelations. figure 3. phase 3 (post) intention/reflection exercise. results after the courses concluded, faculty conducted a qualitative analysis of the completed i/rs. responses to each of these items were de-identified, and analyzed using nvivo 10 software. specific questions, 1.5 and 3.4, were analyzed to connect students to their future role within health care professions. these i/r questions offered students the opportunity to explore in fierke et al.: using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience current issues in education, 19(2) 6 advance their own specific and pointed areas of interest and connect them with their most influential experience(s) throughout the short term international study abroad program. responses to questions 1.5 and 3.4 were thematically analyzed for 51 students who took the “historical perspectives of community health through culture and art in italy" course in 2013, 2014, and 2015. descriptive coding was applied to each sentiment within the response, so as to capture the main thoughts of the student (sub-themes). the main thoughts, or sub-themes, were then grouped together into broader ideas (themes) by questions in order to identify major concepts. the resulting analysis examines the number of students who touched upon each subtheme and theme. question 1.5, “in what ways do you feel this experience will affect you in your future profession,” was answered at the beginning of the course. in response to this question, four themes emerged: professional skills or development, patient care, personal development, and career (table 1). more than two-thirds of students referred to professional skills or development in some way, and a little more than half referenced a concept related to patient care. more specifically, the most prevalent response from students is that they thought the experience would enable them to relate to patients from another culture. one student wrote, “i think that this experience will help me to better accommodate future patients with diverse backgrounds. i will be able to use what i learn about other cultures in my future practice in order to provide better care for my patients.” another common sub-theme that emerged related to patient care was being able to incorporate practices from another culture to enhance care. an increase in cultural knowledge/competency and cultural awareness/sensitivity were also mentioned frequently by students as learning that would affect them in their future profession. table 1 in what ways do you feel this experience will affect you in your future profession? theme sub-theme representative example # (%) of students professional skills or development 34 (68.0%) increased cultural knowledge/competency “i think this experience will affect me in my future profession by furthering my cultural competence.” 14 (28.0%) increased cultural awareness/sensitivity “i think this experience will affect me in my future profession in that it will help to make me a more culturally aware individual.” 11 (22.0%) international travel experience “as far as my future profession, i think this experience will provide me a better understanding of travelling outside of the country, which is a part of what i want to do for a career.” 6 (12.0%) understanding history of the profession “knowing the history of my profession gives me background and knowledge to see how it has progressed and see how it’s still changing in profound ways.” 6 (12.0%) integrate concepts “i feel as though this course will show me that two things that may seem unrelated, like art and health, can in fact greatly impact each other and shape our cultures and communities” 1 (2.0%) patient care 28 (56.0%) relating to patients from different cultures “it will allow me to experience a culture of people within their own setting and could allow me to better relate to people from different backgrounds.” 18 (36.0%) incorporate practices from another culture “i believe that it will be good to compare to the us to see what is better and what is not and then hopefully bring ideas back to implement into my future practice.” 14 (28.0%) community or public health “i anticipate that being immersed in a culture with such deep roots will give me a greater appreciation for the public and for 4 (8.0%) fierke et al.: using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience current issues in education, 19(2) 7 theme sub-theme representative example # (%) of students public health.” art therapy “i also hope to gain a better appreciation for how art can exert a therapeutic effect, and when combined with medication therapy, can help improve patient health outcomes.” 3 (6.0%) folk medicine “i hope to use these experiences to inform how to navigate american folk medicine and current pharmaceutical practices.” 1 (2.0%) language barriers “i think the language barrier is something that i can also apply later in practice, as the us has a wide variety of languages commonly spoken.” 1 (2.0%) individual person care “when i am a pharmacist i will have patients that are different from me…it is important, to accept each patient for who they are.” 1 (2.0%) personal development 10 (20.0%) open mindedness “i think in the future this experience will allow me to be more open-minded by knowing that there is more than one way to look at things and more than one way to do things…” 5 (10.0%) more responsible and mature “i think i will also come back more responsible and matured, which will definitely help me out in my future.” 2 (4.0%) coping with different situations “…i think i may run into a lot of obstacles while i am abroad, and it will be great for me to learn how to cope with unfamiliar situations in a different country.” 2 (4.0%) confidence and selfawareness “i feel that an experience like travelling to a completely new country will help boost my confidence and self-awareness.” 1 (2.0%) more well rounded “every traveling experience i learn more about myself and become a more well-rounded individual.” 1 (2.0%) career 4 (8.0%) job searching “i also think this experience will affect my future profession in the sense that i will stand out from my peers when employers are looking at my resume.” 4 (8.0%) total # students responding 50 note: comments may fit into more than one theme/sub-theme, so the sum of percentages may exceed 100%. percentages reflect the proportion of the total number students responding with comments related to a particular theme/sub-theme. question 3.4, how will you apply the learning experiences from “historical perspectives of community health through culture and art in italy" course in the future,” was answered at the end of the course. the same four themes emerged as in question 1.5, but, instead of professional skills or development being the predominant theme, it was patient care (table 2). thirty students or 75% of those students affiliated with the short term study abroad experience identified their focus on patient care. the ability to relate to patients from different cultures was confirmed as a learning experience, with a quarter of students referencing it as an application. however, the most commonly mentioned application was related to art therapy, whereas only a few students mentioned it at the start of the course. one student wrote, “the most intriguing things i learned came from exploring the hospital in sienna where artwork was on the walls to help the patients. i strongly believe in this concept and plan on implementing it in my future practice.” an area that wasn’t identified at the beginning of course that was noted at the end by several students was an increased excitement about their profession. one student reflected, “i also feel like i can relate my drive, passion, and interest in pharmacy back to michelangelo’s drive and passion for sculpture. his innovation is something that i hope to carry forward with me as i set out to make changes and push the pharmacy profession forward.” fierke et al.: using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience current issues in education, 19(2) 8 table 2 how will you apply the learning experiences from “historical perspectives of community health through culture and art in italy" course in the future? theme sub-theme representative example # (%) of students patient care 30 (75.0%) art therapy “i think this class has made me a believer in art therapy.” 11 (27.5%) relating to patients from different cultures “in the future, when i encounter patients from a different cultural background, i will be more able to connect with them through the things we have in common instead of letting our differences put distance between us.” 10 (25.0%) community/public health “… depending on an individual’s community health aspect will determine the kind of care they will receive.” 9 (22.5%) herbal or folk medicine “stemming from the aboca experience, i would like to learn more about herbals and natural medicine and see how i can apply that knowledge to pharmacy practice.” 5 (12.5%) language barriers “i have gained an appreciation for a translator for the need to know exactly what is going on for my patient.” 4 (10.0%) individual person care “i think my future patients will appreciate any effort i put in to understand from where they are coming, but i think they will appreciate it even more if i treat them as individuals.” 3 (7.5%) professional skills or development 20 (50.0%) excitement about profession “this trip got me even more excited about the profession that i have chosen to pursue. i think this course really helped me see how truly passionate i am about health.” 6 (15.0%) increased cultural awareness/sensitivity “this class helped me to achieve my academic and personal goal of becoming a more well rounded and culturally aware individual. 6 (15.0%) increased cultural knowledge/competency “i feel that i have become a lot more culturally competent. 3 (7.5%) learning history of health “i also learned a lot about current and past health. this will help me in my future career in the health field.” 3 (7.5%) communication skills “the presentation portion definitely will influence my future profession because i will have to be good at public speaking when working with people.” 2 (5.0%) ability to travel internationally “i think that i will be able to apply this class when travelling and exploring areas of foreign places in 2 (5.0%) fierke et al.: using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience current issues in education, 19(2) 9 theme sub-theme representative example # (%) of students a smart and attentive way.” research skills “the readings i did might influence my future profession because i may need to do research on a topic in order to do my job.” 1 (2.5%) note taking skills “the tours could benefit me because i learned to take notes on the fly.” 1 (2.5%) leadership skills “first off, this course made a better leader. leadership is essential to my future.” 1 (2.5%) ability to prepare students “i think that will help me as a teacher because i will know how to prepare my students for field trips and other activities.” 1 (2.5%) not fitting the mold “he [michelangelo] inspires me to not fit the mold, rather to make my own mold and be the change i want to see in the world.” 1 (2.5%) personal development 9 (22.5%) ability to handle stress or getting out of comfort zone “this experience will influence me in my future profession because i will be able to handle stressful situations appropriately and patiently.” 2 (5.0%) more well rounded “this trip has made me more rounded as a person.” 2 (5.0%) self-confidence “i know this trip has definitely brought out a brighter and bolder side of me that has been hiding for way too long.” 2 (5.0%) open mindedness “this experience will help me keep an open mind when working with patients from a different cultural background than my own.” 1 (2.5%) people skills and adapting to new environments “dealing with and working with people i may not get along with… working with people of other cultures and practices, and adapting to different environments.” 1 (2.5%) appreciating beauty “i’ve learned that i have to slow down and appreciate my surroundings, both the beauty around me and the company that i surround myself with.” 1 (2.5%) career 5 (12.5%) career or school path “i loved the trip to aboca, and am really considering going into the environmental and sustainability field.” 3 (7.5%) job search “in the future i will use my experience when finding a job…” 2 (5.0%) total # students responding 40 note: comments may fit into more than one theme/sub-theme, so the sum of percentages may exceed 100%. percentages reflect the proportion of the total number students responding with comments related to a particular theme/sub-theme. fierke et al.: using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience current issues in education, 19(2) 10 conclusion a study abroad class can transform a student’s thinking. capturing their own reflections in a systematic way is another way for students to lead their own experiences, especially when identifying ways it will affect them in their future profession. as self-directed learners in the i/r practice, students were in charge of articulating what they were interested in experiencing, adapting when necessary throughout the travels, and finally reflecting on their overall experience of what they learned and what they can continue to learn as they prepare to become health care professionals. i/rs also allow the faculty an up-close look at where their students are in the learning process. the i/rs can reveal a more intimate view of the student’s perspective, confirm the learning methods, and point to gaps or areas that need further refinement. i/rs also give faculty a chance to make modifications during the trip in order for students to get the most out of the travel abroad experience and provide them additional insight to customize opportunities that they can use in their future careers. the purpose of the study was to provide a student-centered learning opportunity to emphasize students as leaders/owners of their own learning beyond the classroom. the learning was an evolution beyond the syllabus and course objectives to enhance the overall experience and show how to connect it back to their lives and their preparation as professionals. the i/r practice continues to be used in various online and traditional classrooms as well as other shortterm study abroad programs. references adler, p. 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(2009). the first time effect: the impact of study abroad on college student intellectual development. oswego, ny: state university of new york press. mclaughlin, j. s., & johnson, d. k. (2006). assessing the field course experiential learning model: transforming collegiate short-term study abroad experiences into rich learning environments. frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 13, 65-85. piaget, j. (1969). the mechanisms of perception (2 nd ed.) (g. n. seagrim, trans.). new york, ny: basic books, inc. segalowitz, n., freed, b., collentine, j., lafford, b., lazar, n., & díaz-campos, m. (2004). a comparison of spanish second language acquisition in two different learning contexts: study abroad and the domestic classroom. frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 10, 1–18. tarrant, m., & lyons, k. (2011). the effect of short-term educational travel programs on environmental citizenship. environmental education research, 18(3), 403–416. doi: 10.1080/13504622.2011.625113 http://acen.edu.au/2012conference/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/acen-2012-national-conference-proceedings.pdf#page=163 http://acen.edu.au/2012conference/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/acen-2012-national-conference-proceedings.pdf#page=163 fierke et al.: using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience current issues in education, 19(2) 12 von glasersfeld, e. (1984). an introduction to radical constructivism. in p. watzlawick, the invented reality: how do we know what we believe we know? (pp. 17-40). new york, ny: norton. williams, r. m., & wessel, j. (2004). reflective journal writing to obtain student feedback about their learning during the study of chronic musculoskeletal conditions. journal of allied health, 33(1), 17-23. fierke et al.: using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience current issues in education, 19(2) 13 author notes kerry k. fierke, ed.d. university of minnesota, college of pharmacy 215 life science, 1110 kirby drive, duluth, mn 55812-3003 kkfierke@d.umn.edu gardner a. lepp, ph.d. university of minnesota, college of pharmacy galepp@d.umn.edu karen bastianelli, pharm.d. university of minnesota, college of pharmacy bast0067@d.umn.edu lisa vogelsang, ph.d. university of minnesota duluth lvogelsa@d.umn.edu ladona tornabene, ph.d. university of minnesota duluth ltornabe@d.umn.edu mailto:kkfierke@d.umn.edu mailto:galepp@d.umn.edu mailto:bast0067@d.umn.edu mailto:lvogelsa@d.umn.edu mailto:ltornabe@d.umn.edu fierke et al.: using an intention/reflection practice to focus students towards future professions in a short-term international travel experience current issues in education, 19(2) 14 volume 19, issue 2 august 8, 2016 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh niels piepgrass bethany richmond olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 875-4003-4-le.doc 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x faculty’s perceptions of students’ characteristics: a for effort please sharon stevens and debra miretzky western illinois university this pilot study explored how undergraduate students are perceived by higher education faculty regarding their initiative and abilities. faculty tended to agree that students are engaged in class, but more specific skills and attitudes needed to perform successfully in college are not as apparent to them. around half of faculty respondents with at least 10 years experience in higher education agreed these skills and abilities are declining. emergent themes from comments suggest faculty believe students’ skills and work ethic have declined while their sense of entitlement (e.g., to high grades) has increased. comments also suggest faculty believe the decline is a result of a lack of preparation in basic skills from secondary school, the overall culture and politics of secondary education, students’ unrealistic perceptions of the expectations in higher education, and students’ active lifestyles outside of classes. keywords: higher education, student characteristics, faculty perceptions, student initiatives, student abilities “today the students expect an a for effort, not achievement” ~professor, survey respondent a 2009 new york times article touched off a flurry of discussion about students’ sense of entitlement— specifically, the belief on the part of college students that showing up for class, and perhaps doing the readings for said class, ought to be sufficient for a high grade (roosevelt, 2009). the study discussed in the article (greenberger, lessard, chen, & farruggia, 2008) found that a third of students at the university of california, irvine expected b’s for attending class and 40% percent expected b’s for reading assigned work. one of the professors interviewed for the times article noted that many of his students challenged his explanation of a c, which he defined as “if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements.” instead, he told the reporter, “they see the default grade as an a.” as faculty members at a medium size public university in the midwest, we have experienced similar expectations from our own students. in our classes, we both find that students who have never received “anything less than an a” are no longer rare. it is not unusual, perhaps even typical, for our students to express a belief that the amount of time spent on a paper or project should have a direct correlation to the grade they receive. in other words, any attempt at a paper should lift their grade significantly above a c. colleagues at our university and on other campuses anecdotally confirmed our own experiences with this entitlement as well. as a result, we began to wonder how widespread these perceptions might actually be among faculty; we also wondered what faculty saw as contributing factors to such attitudes. the purpose of this pilot study was to gather data from professors at illinois colleges and universities regarding their undergraduate students’ characteristics (as related to academic achievement), along with how these perspectives have changed over the years, in an effort to consider this tension more effectively. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 higher education: expectations and context outside of their representation in national reports and surveys, there is little in-depth literature that discusses professors’ perceptions of undergraduates’ capabilities and the personality traits and skills that they bring to the college experience. while students have been assessed regarding their expectations of higher education, professors, and preferred styles of instruction and assessment (greenberger et al., 2008; sander, stevenson, king, & coates, 2000; strage, 2008; twenge, 2009), there is little that examines in greater depth the expectations that professors have of students, in terms of performance and engagement. collier and morgan (2007) are one exception; they discuss what they label the “college student role,” which “enables young people to understand their instructors’ expectations and to apply their existing skills to meet those expectations successfully” (p. 425). their sample of faculty agreed that students who understood and met expectations were more likely to be successful in college regardless of their actual capabilities. the struggling students they interviewed, whether first-generation or traditional (students with at least one college graduate parent) students, tended to believe that the professor was not clear enough about assignments or expected behaviors and felt that professors were not understanding of the various demands on their time. there is some evidence that professors are frustrated with many students’ attitudes about what constitutes college-level work and achievement (pitts, white, & harrison, 1999; sanoff, 2006). there is literature that discusses students’ self-assessments of contributions to classes as compared to their professors’ (fassinger, 1996; fritschner, 2000; meyer, 2007), confirming that the two groups’ perceptions of, for example, participation or preparedness, are often very different. most recently, the study by greenberger, lessard, chen, and farrugia (2008) publicized in mainstream outlets like the new york times and usa today documented professors’ perceptions of the “entitlement” of undergraduates who, at least in this data set, appear to believe that good grades should result from modest effort and who unapologetically demand such consideration from their teachers. this disconnect regarding effort and ability on the part of students has been studied by others (see, for example, gaultney & cann, 2001; twenge, 2009; williams & clark, 2004), though hogge (2009) argues persuasively that it is next to impossible to separate effort from mastery entirely when considering how to assess a student overall. there are a number of factors that could impact the differing expectations of students and professors; greenberger et al., (2008), for example, discuss the possibility that student expectations may be a result of increased parental pressure, a sense of competition with peers and family members, and stronger feelings of achievement anxiety. in addition, external factors, including the quality of students’ preparation for college level work (aacu, 2002); the possibility of grade inflation masking actual levels of mastery of content (rojstaczer & healy, 2010), and a lack of rigor in the college experience itself (arum & roksa, 2011), may contribute to the divergence between the two groups. transitions: high school to college recent national reports have sounded an alarm about students entering higher education in the twentyfirst century, reflecting concerns about the secondary experience and the impact of this experience on readiness for college. these reports cite any number of issues, including undemanding classes, poor counseling and direction, low expectations of both students and teachers, excessive reliance on standardized testing, and weak high school senior years (aacu, 2002); “generation me” characteristics such as decreased self-reliance and increased narcissism (twenge, 2009); and the influence of traditional versus non-traditional backgrounds (strage, 2008) on student expectations. after being created by the state higher education executive officers (sheeo), the national commission on accountability in higher education’s thirteen-member panel of governors, legislators, educators, and private sector leaders released a final report in 2005 that bluntly asserted: the lack of compatibility between k-12 and higher education policies and practices is one of the great failings of american education. making the transition from high school to college is neither easy nor smooth. the fundamental disconnection between k-12 and higher education undercuts the high aspirations of hundreds of thousands of young people who want to go to college. (ncahe, 2005, p. 17) one of the suggestions the commission made was to provide secondary students with courses in high school that better prepared them for college-level standards, and they noted, “while recent reports differ about the extent of k-12 progress in improving student preparation, they agree too few students are taking and mastering the core curriculum and the skills required for a successful collegiate career” (2005, p. 23). a recent american college testing, inc. (act) report (2009) echoed concerns about misalignments between postsecondary and high school teachers’ perceptions of student capabilities in terms of readiness for college—specifically, in terms of the impact of state standards and state graduation requirements on achievement; readiness for college level work; and ability to handle college-level reading. the act survey also revealed differences between high school and postsecondary educators’ ratings of what was important within content areas. for example, in english/writing, professors rate proper usage of punctuation higher in importance for incoming students than do high school teachers; high faculty’s perceptions of students’ characteristics: a for effort please 3 school teachers believe writing to analyze literature is a critical skill, while professors downplay its importance for college success. professors feel that mastery of fundamental math topics is much more significant for incoming students, while high school teachers tend to rate advanced topics (e.g., functions) as more important. in essence, high school teachers report that their students are readier to take on more demanding expectations than postsecondary teachers perceive these students as being able to handle. the greater expectations national panel, made up of leading education, private sector, public policy, and community figures and sponsored by the association of american colleges and universities (aacu), spent two years analyzing american higher education, from community colleges to private institutions. the panel concluded in their final report: preparation for higher learning has not kept pace with access. less than one-half of students who enter college directly from high school complete even a minimally defined college preparatory program. only 40 percent of school teachers hold the high expectations for performance that would ready students for college-level work. once in college, 53 percent of all students must take remedial courses. those students requiring the most remedial work are the least likely to persist and graduate. (aacu, 2002, p. viii) finally, the secretary of education’s commission on the future of higher education strongly recommended in their 2006 report that higher education “assume responsibility for working with the k–12 system to ensure that teachers are adequately trained, curricula are aligned and entrance standards are clear” (u.s. department of education, 2006, p. 17). then-secretary of education margaret spellings turned her attention to higher education accountability after the federal no child left behind law was launched as the most significant catalyst for k-12 accountability in american history. this nineteen-member panel, appointed by spellings, was composed of university presidents, ceos, policymakers, and researchers. in its discussion of issues of college access and student success, the panel quotes a chancellor as describing the twelfth grade as a “vast wasteland” (p. 17). among other recommendations, the commission advocated using national assessment of educational progress (naep) 12th grade test data to measure “college and workforce readiness and provide disaggregated data in state-by-state reports” (p. 18), as well as the alignment of k–12 graduation standards with college and employer expectations. ”grade fog”: what does a grade mean anymore? ironically, while concerns about the overall readiness of students for college work have grown, assessments of college students’ work seem to have trended upward (e.g., rising grade point averages; higher numbers of a’s awarded). grade inflation has been recognized as a problem since the 1960s (rojstaczer & healy, 2010), even in elementary and secondary schools, leading one superintendent to coin the term “grade fog”— rewarding compliance and effort rather than mastery of a subject (tyre, 2010). it is arguable that distorted expectations around performance certainly might be one result of distorted assessment practices, influencing students and teachers alike to acclimate to lower standards (whether knowingly or not). some research has found not only undergraduate grades trending upwards, but doing so in the context of shrinking study and preparation time on the part of undergraduates (babcock & marks, 2010; faculty survey of student engagement [fsse], 2009; national survey of student engagement [nsse], 2008). bracey (1994) reported that while there is a great deal of speculation and much anecdotal evidence about grade inflation in lower grades, there is a lack of empirical evidence documenting the extent—or the existence—of the problem. there are certainly indications that scores on k-12 standardized tests have been inflated by a variety of means. reed (2009) compared the standardized test scores of the national assessment of educational progress (naep) test and no child left behind state-mandated tests and concluded that expectations in the form of lowered cut (passing or proficiency) scores were evident for fourth-grade africanamerican students; this means students attained a “proficient” score due to, essentially, the bar being lowered. koretz (2008, 2009) has discussed intense test preparation of students, leading to scores that he suggests are more likely to reflect test-taking competency than actual mastery of the subject. while these are not teachergenerated grades, they may suggest a culture of distortion regarding student assessment. there is some work on grade inflation in k-12 schooling (see, for example, camara, kimmel, scheuneman, & sawtell, 2003; twenge & campbell, 2008, and ziomek & svec, 1997, for high school), though there is more for higher education (see, for example, rojstaczer & healy, 2010; rosovsky & hartley, 2002). a thorough recounting of this research is beyond the scope of this paper. however, there appears to be a growing belief that even in elementary school “grade fog” (tyre, 2010) needs to be addressed. tyre (2010), in a recent new york times article, describes a number of school districts across the country confronting the fact that gaps between teacher-generated grades and standardized examination scores were too large and too persistent to ignore, especially in a data-driven age of accountability. as one principal noted, “over time, we began to realize that many teachers had been grading kids for compliance—not for mastering the course material….a portion of our a and b students were not the ones who were gaining the most knowledge but the ones current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 who had learned to do school the best.” such inflation seems to continue in higher education. a recent report by rojstaczer and healy (2010) shared the researchers’ findings after examining historical and recent grading patterns at american fouryear colleges and universities (comparing contemporary grades from over 160 colleges and universities in the united states with a combined enrollment of over 2,000,000 students with archived grades from over 80 schools). they concluded that the mean grade point average of a given school is highly correlated with the selectivity of its admissions and its status as public or private, and observed: […] it is difficult to ascribe this rise in grades to increases in student achievement. students’ entrance test scores have not increased (college board, 2007), students are increasingly disengaged from their studies (saenz et al., 2007), and the literacy of graduates has declined (kutner et al., 2006). a likely influence is the emergence of the now common practice of requiring student-based evaluations of college teachers. whatever the cause, colleges and universities are on average grading easier than ever before. (rojstaczer & healy, 2010, para. 6) the college culture: are students helped to slide? arum and roksa’s (2011, p. 4) examination of undergraduates who are “academically adrift” reports that students’ lack of academic focus (e.g., decreased time spent studying) […] has had little impact on their grade point averages and often only relatively modest effects on their progress towards degree completion as they have developed and acquired “the art of college management,” in which success is achieved primarily not through hard work but through “controlling college by shaping schedules, taming professors and limited workload.” (from nathan, 2006, p. 113) in addition, arum and roksa discuss kuh’s (2003) contention that there is a “disengagement compact” between professors and students, who share an unspoken agreement to not ask too much of each other. george kuh, founding director of the national survey of student engagement, coined this term to capture the “bargain” made by professors and students, saying, “the existence of this bargain is suggested by the fact that at a relatively low level of effort, many students get decent grades—b’s and sometimes better. there seems to be a breakdown of shared responsibility for learning” (kuh, 2003, p. 28). the disengagement compact, coupled with increased pressure on professors to engage in research and scholarship (bauerlein, 2009) and the increased reliance on student evaluations as a measure of teacher effectiveness, can contribute to an implicit message that hard work and effort that leads to mastery of content may not be critical to degree attainment. purpose of the study as discussed above, there is evidence for real concern regarding the undergraduate experience at american colleges and universities, but we know little about, specifically, professors’ concerns except as collected and reported in large survey research such as fsse or through anecdotes. the purpose of this pilot study was to explore the perceptions of professors in illinois institutions of higher education regarding both their undergraduate students’ characteristics and their perceptions of change in these characteristics over time. understanding more specifically the concerns faculty have about both student skills and attitudes is critical to making decisions about how to address these concerns. in particular, as teacher educators, we cannot minimize the possibility that many students arrive at college having been socialized into an existing paradigm of assessment and achievement that may well have served to reinforce unrealistic expectations. whether due to disconnects between secondary and post-secondary faculty definitions of college readiness, or due to lowered expectations for students that may start prior to matriculation, it is critical to find ways to effectively address the resulting contradictory perceptions. concerns about undergraduate skills and work ethic are found across disciplines, but teacher education has a particular obligation to examine its role in fostering such expectations (zirkel, 1999) and may be well advised to reflect on its obligation to prepare k-12 teachers who are able to consider student assessment through a critical lens. the initial data from this pilot should offer illumination of specific concerns higher education faculty hold about undergraduates and about the challenges they see themselves facing as educators. in addition to this broader purpose, we wanted to examine whether and how well our constructed survey items for this pilot study would fall into two categories, student initiatives and student abilities, and whether faculties’ perceptions of student initiatives would lead to higher perceptions of student abilities. lastly, this research data will also provide a foundation for developing a follow up survey instrument for examining if and how faculty perceptions of students’ characteristics affect choices about classroom instruction and assessment. methods participants the participants in this research were undergraduate faculty in selected disciplines at all 47 illinois colleges and universities (four-year, private and faculty’s perceptions of students’ characteristics: a for effort please 5 table 1 frequency of position by year current position total years teaching total under 10 11-20 years over 20 years full professor 6 77 185 268 associate professor 90 143 59 292 assistant professor 249 50 9 308 non-tenure position 124 55 29 208 emeritus faculty 1 1 18 20 total 470 326 300 1096 public) that have undergraduate teacher education programs1. teacher education, business, biology, chemistry, history, philosophy, physics, psychology, and sociology faculty were included in the survey pool. these were selected to provide a broad range of “hard” and “soft” disciplines2 (biglan, 1973). subjects such as english were deliberately not chosen because of their presumed emphasis on improving skills like writing. response rate and limitations. the respondents who returned 1101 usable surveys included 208 faculty in non-tenured positions, 268 full professors, 292 associate professors, and 309 assistant professors. of these, 470 had been teaching for less than 10 years, while 326 had taught for 11-20 years and 30 had more than 20 years of experience. some participants did not respond to the demographic questions. the response rate for males and females was fairly even. almost half the responses (44%) were from faculty in teacher education and business, with biology and psychology contributing a little over 10% of the responses each, and the other disciplines each comprising less than 10% of responses. the online questionnaire was sent as a link via email to all potential undergraduate faculty in these nine disciplines after email contact information was obtained from college and university department websites. in the case of disciplines such as teacher education and business, this meant inclusion of a range of departments that presumably enrolled undergraduates (e.g., curriculum and instruction and educational psychology; marketing or management). a total of 6903 surveys were sent to faculty across these 47 schools. the total 1101 usable surveys constituted a 16% response rate (american association for public opinion research, 2008). this response rate is partly due to the large survey net cast in an attempt to make sure all possible undergraduate faculty at a given institution were contacted. that net almost certainly “caught” graduate faculty, especially likely at larger institutions; 34 of 47 schools had both undergraduate and graduate education programs. these faculty could not be identified from department websites, but were then sorted out per survey design, so that any responses they may have submitted were not included in the final data analysis. this in and of itself should not skew the data. in addition, the higher number of returns from teacher education and business may simply reflect larger departments with more faculty members, or may skew the findings since other disciplines posted lower response rates. finally, it is possible that those who took the initiative to respond to our survey had strong opinions in either a positive or a negative direction about their students. we are therefore cautious in claiming to be able to make generalizations. 1 as teacher educators, the authors were interested in studying education as a stand-alone discipline and also in comparison to other disciplines. 2 biglan (1973) classified disciplines as hard or soft depending on the degree of paradigm development in the field, resulting in a high or low level of consensus regarding theory, methods, techniques, and problems. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 an additional possible impact on response rate is the nature of online surveys. in a meta-analysis, shih and fan (2009) show that email surveys generally have a 20% lower response rate than traditional mailed survey forms. discomfort may play a part in this; lower response rates could be due to a lack of experience with technology or to concerns about confidentiality or other issues regarding identity or responses, as even anonymous responses can be traced back to ip addresses (evans & mathur, 2005; sax, gilmartin, & bryant, 2003). agreeing to the medium of the survey was a first requirement in whether or not potential respondents chose to participate. instrument and analysis as a section of a larger survey, the data from this pilot study represents responses to items regarding undergraduate students’ characteristics that are related to students’ success in college (e.g., critical thinking skills, writing skills, engagement in class; see table 2 for complete list). after reviewing the limited literature available (for example, faculty survey of student engagement survey items), we hypothesized that students’ characteristics may be perceived by professors in two ways and created survey items to reflect these emphases. one focus is related to students’ initiatives, or the actions students take in order to prepare to contribute meaningfully to the class experience, and another focus is related to students’ abilities, or the knowledge and skills students actually demonstrate through their class involvement and the work they produce (see table 3). faculty colleagues and a consultant trained in research design and data analysis helped to refine the survey items. a total of eleven items related to student characteristics were created, each with a corresponding question about changes in that characteristic over time. responses for each item were on a 5-point scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree,” with the middle option being “no opinion.” response options for questions regarding changes were on a 4-point scale ranging from “greatly decreased” to “greatly increased,” as well as a middle option for “no change.” our quantitative analysis began with an examination of descriptive statistics regarding the percentages of faculty who agreed with the statements in the survey. the percentages reported are based on those who responded to each question, not on the total number of surveys submitted. those who skipped questions, resulting in missing data, are excluded on an item-by-item basis. we then examined descriptive statistics for only those professors with 10 or more years of experience for questions regarding changes in students’ characteristics. next, we ran a factor analysis to confirm how well the selected items fit into the categories we hypothesized. an open-ended question at the end asked for additional comments. these responses were analyzed using a constant comparative coding scheme (glaser & strauss, 1967) to identify additional themes beside those provided in the initial categories (miles & huberman, 1994). we coded the comments using two approaches: miles and huberman’s (1994) “start list” of codes (made up of survey items) and the “grounded” approach (glaser & strauss, 1967), which yielded secondary codes based on comments that emerged from the data. both authors’ analyzed comments, using the start list categories and adding additional secondary codes as seemed appropriate. we then discussed the variations and came to agreement as to whether a code should be retained or not, as well as which codes accrued to particular comments. once the quantitative and qualitative analyses were complete, we examined them for matching or non-matching results. we looked for themes from the qualitative data that could serve as possible explanations for the quantitative results. for example, while the comment “when [students] do not earn an “a” on an assignment they expect detailed explanations/justification for it. when you give them vaild [sic] reasons, they tend to find excuses why they should be excused from the expectations” was categorized under the start list code “effort/success connection,” we also coded it as “entitlement” and “work ethic.” results: what the professors said we explored the percentage of respondents who agreed with statements on the survey about students’ academic characteristics and with statements about changes in students’ academic characteristics. table 2 illustrates the percentage of faculty who agreed or strongly agreed with each of the eleven items about students’ characteristics. for six items, 50% or more agreed that students demonstrate the noted characteristics. five items resulted in less than 50% agreeing that their students have or demonstrate these characteristics. these items are about students’ preparation for class, higher order thinking skills, willingness to struggle with ideas, and writing skills. the two items that generated the highest rate of agreement from professors were questions about students’ perceptions of the worth of the class and about the amount of contact with students outside class. these were followed in frequency of agreement by two broad questions focused on students’ engagement in class and on overall quality of student performance. more explicit questions about students’ skills, such as ability to express complex thought and ability to write satisfactorily, tended to garner less agreement. table 2 also shows the percentage of respondents who reported change in a given characteristic since they began teaching in higher education. for most items, very few faculty indicated an improvement in students’ academic characteristics. the percentage who noted there has been no change in the characteristic is similar to the percentage who noted there has been a decline. writing skills is the area in which the greatest number of faculty perceived a decline in students’ abilities. faculty’s perceptions of students’ characteristics: a for effort please 7 table 2 percentage of agreement with student characteristics (sc) items student characteristics changes in sc agree to strongly agree disagree to strongly disagree increased to greatly increased decreased to greatly decreased students see my course as worthwhile. 82% 13% 14% 12% students contact me outside of class to talk about academic issues related to the class. 70% 30% 16% 24% in general, students are engaged in class (e.g., willing to participate, active listening, and note taking). 63% 36% 11% 41% the overall quality of student performance is adequate. 58% 42% 10% 57% students are able to master challenging work. 56% 42% 6% 43% students demonstrate that they understand the connection between effort and success in the classroom. 52% 47% 5% 46% in general, students prepare for class by completing homework or assigned readings. 44% 54% 4% 47% students display critical thinking skills. 45% 54% 7% 45% in general, students are willing to struggle with complicated ideas and theories. 38% 61% 6% 52% in general, students' ability to present or express complex thought is satisfactory. 36% 63% 5% 55% in general, students' writing skills (e.g., grammar, spelling, sentence structure) are satisfactory. 30% 69% 8% 62% current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 table 3 factor loadings for student characteristic items academic abilities academic initiatives ability to present complex thought is satisfactory .82 writing skills are satisfactory .70 display critical thinking skills .77 overall quality of student performance is adequate .79 are able to master challenging work .73 are engaged in class .73 are willing to struggle with complicated ideas .70 understand the connection between effort and success .68 prepare for class by completing homework .68 see my course as worthwhile .63 contact me outside of class to talk about academics .51 this is followed by perceived declines in higher level thinking, in the ability to present complex thought, and in the willingness to struggle with complex ideas. to explore our hypothesis that faculty perceptions of students may fall into two categories, we ran an exploratory factor analysis (see table 3 for factor loadings). both factors resulted in strong alpha levels, which suggest that the survey items do measure the underlying factors, or, in other words, the broader categories of abilities and initiatives (cronbach’s αs = .73 and 82). the correlation between the two factors is .66 (p < .01, r2 = .43). this is a strong positive correlation, although the initiatives factor is a stronger predictor of faculties’ perceptions of abilities than vice versa. for every one increase in faculties’ perception of students’ initiatives, their perceptions of the students’ abilities increase by .75 points on our five point scale (f(1, 1099) = 835.06, p < .01). abilities were also a significant predictor of initiatives, but the increase in perceptions of initiatives for every one increase in perception of abilities was lower at .58. qualitative findings the qualitative survey data provided additional information on professors’ general perceptions of students’ performance, via 303 comments made in response to open-ended survey questions. respondents appeared to use the comment opportunity to expound on their perceptions and/or to offer ideas about what contributed to the problems they identified. as a result, the themes that emerged from the comments reflected more specific foci than the broader abilities and initiative categories. comments were grouped into four main themes: work ethic, academic skills, other contributing factors, and implications for higher education. the notion of work ethic, in particular, seemed to resonate, as respondents offered observations about the quality of current students’ work ethic or about a decline in students’ work ethic or an increase in a sense of entitlement. the next highest number of responses focused on academic skills; under this umbrella, respondents paid particular attention to changes in skills rather than making direct statements about students’ abilities or inabilities (though basic skills in writing and math were identified by approximately 16% of commenters with some variation on “inadequate” or “terrible”). the third theme reflects statements that suggest reasons for the changes in students’ work ethic and for academic skills in particular. many respondents linked these two, suggesting that changes in skills are related to changes in work ethic and/or a sense of entitlement. a significant number of respondents expressed a belief that these attitudes have some foundation in students’ secondary education experience, or, less often, prior college experience. in the open-ended questions, there were positive observations about students from about 6% (19) of those faculty’s perceptions of students’ characteristics: a for effort please 9 responding, but overall, professors used the option to express concern, frustration, or pessimism. the sections that follow provide descriptions and examples of each of the themes from the qualitative data, concluding with participants’ thoughts about the implications of these limitations for higher education and their own work as educators. work ethic under the work ethic theme, which was reflected in 29% (88) of comments, responses fell into these categories: students’ sense of entitlement (50 of 88 comments); students’ understanding of the connection between effort and success (52 of 88 comments); students’ lack of independence (18) and unwillingness to struggle (33); and students’ engagement with (54) and preparation for (56) class. entitlement. faculty who discussed this perception agreed that there is a broad sense of entitlement among students—that students believe they deserve a passing grade, or even a superior grade, simply because they registered, paid tuition, attended class, and/or turned in homework, with the actual quality of their work being a less relevant factor. additionally, faculty perceived students as having expectations that they (faculty) should be readily available to meet student needs and to share responsibility for students’ performance. • students have a sense of entitlement, that they are here to receive a degree, not to work for it. it has very much become a "customer is always right" situation. • students have more of a sense of entitlement. they don't see you as an expert but as an employee. you aren't deferred too [sic] as much. you are questioned more and not in a good way, but in a way that seems that you are being put to the test. like you have to prove to them that you are worthy of their attention. effort and success. there was a strong sense that more students seemed to have a distorted perception of the connection between effort and success. professors indicated that effort is critical for success, which they defined as mastery of the material, but is not sufficient in and of itself. they complained that students seem to believe that effort should lead to a good grade for the simple reason that students “tried”—regardless of whether the student attained mastery or not. specifically, many respondents felt that students tended to define effort as the amount of time spent on the assigned work. regarding the student perception of the connection between effort and success, i believe many of them do see that connection. however, they fail to see the mediating connection: effort → quality work → success. they fail to recognize that working really, really hard doesn't matter at all if the quality of their product is not improved by that hard work. consequently, many students get upset when they receive a poor grade on a poorly done project that they nevertheless put a lot of effort into. on the other hand, 27 respondents referenced students’ willingness to “get by” rather than to challenge themselves. these faculty felt that many students were less interested in mastering the content and skills needed to succeed than in what one called “jumping through required hoops”; this was an especially significant concern for those faculty who taught general education requirements as opposed to classes in a student’s major. • student interest has shifted to completing degree requirements—check the items off the list and this has displaced a genuine interest in becoming competent in their subject. • i teach general education courses—in general these are presented as mere requirements that you "have" to take—students are not encouraged to see them as the back-bone of their liberal arts education. in theory, these should be the most important, but they see them as classes that they are forced to take, that they should ignore or not put much effort into, and, in general, i see them very resistant to putting any effort in. they see them as easy a classes. willingness to struggle. some respondents made a further connection between the effort/success nexus and what they saw as students’ unwillingness to struggle in order to reach mastery. for some this unwillingness translated into students wanting to be “spoon-fed” the correct responses for tests and other assessments: i also sense widespread satisfaction with a mediocre level of effort and engagement in their learning. it is rare for me to find a student at [my institution] who strives for excellence, genuine excellence. if a student instinctively knows how far off that goal really is, s/he gives up and is easily satisfied with less than excellent. for other respondents the unwillingness meant that students are less willing to tolerate ambiguity, to the point that assignments and expectations include everincreasing amounts of details. progress, especially in the form of “points acquired,” must be documented regularly. many professors, like this one, wrote of students’ lack of independence and initiative: students seem to struggle in reading for information just for what i consider to be basic assignments. they seem to prefer me telling them what to do instead of read[ing]. i am careful to present all assignments with careful regard to visual presentation with generous use of bolding, spacing, and underlining. students tend to blame me for missing a portion of the assignment even when i read the directions back to them that they missed. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 10 low levels of work ethnic, a sense of entitlement, an unwillingness to struggle, and a lack of independence are all attitudes that faculty saw reflected in students’ lack of engagement and preparation for class as well. many faculty complained that students do not participate unless there is some type of credit attached. some faculty reported that students do not complete assigned readings or even buy the required texts for the class. more specifically, professors noted that students openly admit that they only want to read or study what is needed for the exams: they want "what will be on the exam? what is the answer?" i have been challenged in class while going over review questions: "are these the questions that will be on the exam?" me [sic]: of course not; they are similar to the exam questions. student [sic]: "why are you wasting our time?" comments about changes in work ethic over time noted a decline in the effort students are willing to expend; by far this was the biggest change, reported by roughly half of the respondents who identified work ethic as an issue. in my first years, students who were pushed to work hard "pushed back" by rising up to the challenge. (not all of them, but as a whole). now they tend to "break" when pushed (as a whole. thankfully, there are still exceptions who work hard and rise to the challenges.) don't they expect to be pushed in college? academic skills in terms of the theme of academic skills, respondents, whether referencing current students or considering change over time, frequently noted changes in specific skills they perceive as having declined in quality, particularly math skills (20 comments) and writing skills (56 comments). almost half of those responding (150) noted concerns with cognitive skills, specifically with one or more of the following: students’ ability to think critically, students’ ability to present complex thought in written form, and students’ ability to master challenging material. • the students we now see only expect to memorize—there is little critical thinking or mastery of concepts. • many [students] can perform to their own satisfaction on exams without reaching their full potential in the areas of critical thinking and complex argument. • the skills set they arrive with […] hinders their ability to understand complexity, to synthesize information or express either what they know or what they do not know. other contributing factors the explanations offered by respondents as to why students struggle with particular initiatives or abilities fall primarily into two categories: 1) the limitations of k-12 schooling (primarily a perceived lack of preparation for higher education at the high school level and/or the pervasiveness of standardized testing (47 comments) and 2) the demands on students outside of their educational responsibilities (15 comments). overall, however, the majority of the more than 300 open-ended comments reflected complaints and concerns but offered nothing in the way of professors’ ideas about contributing factors. a significant number of faculty did consider their own responsibility, in terms of pedagogical and curriculum choices, in offering thoughts about how to mitigate these challenges. we will discuss these comments below. the k-12 environment. faculty expressed a belief that the decline in student abilities is due to the inadequate preparation students receive, especially in secondary education, for success in college. they presumed a lack of exposure to appropriate content, limited reinforcement of writing skills, and few opportunities to practice higher order thinking skills during this time. some also pointed a finger at a standardized testing culture prompted by the no child left behind (nclb) act of 2001, conjecturing that a focus on testing and test preparation has left students less able to grapple with abstract thought and complex ideas. • students are still mostly unaware of how learning happens when they come to college and they expect to just memorize information, especially in the sciences. high schools have got to quit focusing so heavily on content: if a student has ever pipetted or run a gel in a hs biology lab, they believe they know it all and consider our cell biology core class a waste of time and feel we are being too hard on them. • the emphasis on standardized fact-based proficiency tests seems to be having a negative impact on our students [sic] preparation for study at the college level. this has also translated into limited knowledge about how to study for different levels of understanding concepts and recall of facts. additional demands. in addition, students’ attention is frequently elsewhere, according to some respondents, and it was suggested this could be related to either significant responsibilities in their personal lives or the distraction of social opportunities. there does not appear to be any distinction made between “traditional” (e.g., 18-22 year olds) undergraduates and those returning to school after a break as older students in regards to comments about the use of time and time management. • students are busier than ever; most take too many courses while working outside the university, and the amount of time and attention they can give to each class has diminished. • they place other events in their life before their course work and expect special treatment and scheduling for any personal reason (clubs, faculty’s perceptions of students’ characteristics: a for effort please 11 vacations, weddings, holidays, long weekends off, parties, etc.). implications for higher education some professors discussed their belief that higher education itself contributes to the problems they perceive, acknowledging that students’ prior experiences are not always the sole reason for their lack of engagement or their attitudes. comments in this vein fell into two distinct themes: 1) the belief that some institutions have lowered standards, in the process admitting or retaining a lower caliber of student (21 comments), and 2) reflections on respondents’ own roles in acknowledging and addressing the challenges (53 comments). the latter provide food for thought in terms of conclusions and recommendations, which we will explore below. lowered standards. these respondents (who tended to have had longer careers in higher education) felt that either their own institutions or postsecondary education in general were lowering standards, admitting and/or retaining students who were less prepared or more challenged or “borderline” students than in the past. • years ago many fewer students went to college and they were of over-all [sic] better quality to begin with. i've been teaching for 30 years. today, many, many more students go to college so, of course, lots of signs of academic excellence have gone down since we are herding in the c students with the a and b students now. • while we collectively complain that our students are ill-prepared coming in, we do little to ensure they are well-prepared the first year or two here or on their way out. faculty roles and responsibilities despite, or perhaps because of, beliefs that unprepared and disengaged students are a clear challenge, 17% of professors discussed the changes and adaptations they have made in response. some of these comments appeared to reflect a sense of resignation; others, however, were presented in a positive light that suggested an educator who saw the challenge as a possibility. these responses prompt important questions about the tensions underlying different perceptions of the “college student role,” in particular, where responsibility lies in successfully negotiating these tensions. this will be discussed in more depth in the conclusions. for some professors, the way they approach the class makes a difference. one wrote, “i take a controversial approach to many classes and i find students as willing today as they used to be to engage with the material.” another noted, “in all my classes i stress considerations of the big picture and critical thinking. therefore i see the results in my classroom.” one secondcareer professor wrote, “i’m doing it because it is fun and rewarding. i think students pick up on that and respond positively.” still others now provide more structure— detailed rubrics, detailed notes on assignments, opportunities to re-submit work based on feedback. some faculty noted that they felt they had developed into stronger teachers over time; as one professor wrote, “i honestly believe, if i teach well, they learn well.” some felt that conveying high expectations resulted in students rising to the task; one wrote, “if i stay on them, i usually get improvement across the board.” another stated, “if they [students] are not showing the skills and behaviors you listed, it is largely because we do not teach these skills and expect these behaviors.” conclusions and recommendations we must concern ourselves more with managing the cards we are dealt, and worry less about how the cards were made. ~professor, survey respondent the quantitative results of this pilot study confirm our hypothesis that the survey items group into two factors, or areas of focus. we found that professors may indeed view students differently in regards to their initiatives and their abilities and that perceptions of students’ initiatives is a stronger predictor of how faculty view students’ abilities than abilities is of initiatives. looking at the individual items, we see that almost twothirds of faculty agreed that students are engaged in class. however, when asked about more specific skills (such as writing proficiency and the ability to present complex thought) needed to perform successfully at the college level, less than 40% agreed that students are able to perform adequately. over half of the faculty respondents with more than ten years of teaching experience agreed these skills and abilities are declining in their students. not only do faculty feel that students’ abilities have decreased, but in terms of initiatives, just over half also believe that students’ willingness to struggle with complexity has become more limited—and this lack of willingness has an impact on other factors related to success in higher education, such as preparation for class and an understanding of the connection between effort and success. a lack of work ethic and a decline in the effort students are willing to give to classes were the most commonly mentioned complaints in the written comments. work ethic and related characteristics such as entitlement and dependence were discussed not only as current issues, but also as examples of significant change in student attitudes over time. for many faculty, these attitudes were and are directly related to student skill level and performance. this pattern suggests that respondents do not believe that today’s students are qualitatively different in their ability to learn math, writing, and thinking skills, but rather are being held back by two and perhaps three main factors: weaker skills and less content knowledge upon graduation from high school; problematic attitudes regarding their responsibility for success in college classes; and, possibly, academics as only one of many demands on their time. these concerns are encapsulated in the following comment: current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 12 there have always been unprepared students dating back to the age of socrates and as long as universities have existed. what is new today is that the percent of students that are immature, lacking basic skills and minimum levels of content knowledge is higher than in previous times and that this problem is increasing at an alarming rate. while, as noted, much of the quantitative and most of the qualitative data conveyed significant concern regarding student characteristics, a few of the reflections in the comments stood out for their pragmatism. the professor quoted above went on to say: we must concern ourselves more with managing the cards we are dealt, and worry less about how the cards were made. that the current cohort of students seems less willing to read "naturally," simply means i need to find ways to "nurture" them to want to read. i also am going to have to spend time teaching them how to read until a new cohort comes along that tends to like to read […] that they currently come to us less well-prepared as a cohort doesn't excuse us as a collective faculty for establishing standards, creating a curriculum designed to overcome their shortcomings, and then helping them achieve at our levels of expectations. there are profound questions associated with the issues raised by the perceptions of faculty represented in this data, although it is important to be cautious about generalizations, as respondents may have had particularly strong feelings, both positive and negative, about students. we know already that there are significant concerns about the academic experiences of college students and what they are leaving college actually knowing and able to do (arum & roksa, 2011; nsse, 2008). grade inflation seems to be real, and calls into question what grade point averages really mean (bar, kadiyali, & zussman, 2009; rojstaczer & healy, 2010). other new research concludes that students (other than the highest achieving) seem to value (and be more willing to support in the form of increased tuition) institutional spending on student activities, sports, and dormitories rather than instruction, and suggests that schools are better off investing in these areas if they want to attract and retain students (jacob, mccall, & stange, 2011). what do faculty end up doing when they harbor such deep concerns about their undergraduates? do they “hunker down,” draw the line, and hand out ds and fs? do they hold their noses and pass students who have not mastered the material, particularly if they do not have tenure and are subject to appraisal based on student evaluations? or do they struggle to figure out ways to engage students and bring out the best in them? as a result of this pilot study, the authors will utilize the data for new research and create survey items, targeted to potential respondents via rigorous sampling methods, with an aim towards understanding more deeply how these perspectives shape professors’ instruction and assessment choices in the classroom, particularly when faced with the challenges they describe. given the rise in undergraduates requiring developmental (also known as remedial) classes3, it may prove helpful to examine this new data in light of the percentages of students testing into or enrolled in such classes at the institutions represented by respondents. since the initiatives factor is a predictor of faculties’ perceptions of students’ abilities we will explore how perceptions of initiatives is related to professors’ expectations of students. it is clear that the perceptions of faculty lead to one obvious conclusion: that colleges and universities have tasks beyond academics if they hope to enable students to have a meaningful experience in higher education that truly readies them to be successful once they leave the institution. it would seem that in order for institutions to prepare students to engage with both required and elective content, they must educate students about how to perform in a manner that leads to academic success. without addressing the self-serving attitudes and behaviors that students increasingly exhibit, we will continue to see, as shown in this survey, highly pessimistic and disparaging faculty perceptions of students. this is bound to be a problem if performancebased funding (pbf), which is “a decades-old higher education finance strategy that links state funding for public colleges and universities with institutional performance” (harnisch, 2011, p. 2), takes hold as a viable option. though not particularly successful before, many states now have more sophisticated educational data systems, and influential policy and reform groups such as the gates foundation, the college board, the national governors association, and the education commission of the states are behind pbf as a priority for higher education accountability. illinois, for example, passed pbf legislation in april 2011 and the state’s institutions are just beginning to grapple with the implications. reforms based on these initiatives will have to happen regarding of how successful k-12 public school systems are in addressing their own accountability issues. 3 in 2007–08, approximately 36% of first-year undergraduate students reported that they had taken a remedial course at some point in their college career, and 20% of first-year undergraduates reported they had taken at least one remedial course in the 2007–08 academic year. of that 20%, about 9% reported taking one remedial course, 7% took two, and 4% took three or more (see aud, hussar, kena, bianco, frohlich, kemp, & tahan, 2011, p. 70). faculty’s perceptions of students’ characteristics: a for effort please 13 as we noted earlier, teacher education programs should be preparing teachers who foster appropriate skills and dispositions, such as strong work ethics and comfort with complexity, in k-12 students; however, the pressure to perform to externally imposed high-stakes standards will continue to challenge teachers in such efforts for the foreseeable future. grade inflation and lowered standards, unfortunately, are logical but ultimately imprudent and unethical responses to the dilemma of underperforming student abilities and external accountability demands. with regards to student initiatives—attitudes and behaviors—it is worth noting that york college in pennsylvania may be in the vanguard with their center for professional excellence, which is designed to “teach” students qualities they need to succeed in the workforce. data collected from human resources professionals and business leaders by york faculty indicate that, in line with the findings from this study, attitudes and behaviors like the ability to communicate, respectful listening, courtesy, a strong work ethic, and self-confidence rather than a sense of entitlement are seen as critical—and are also seen as lacking. it seems to make little sense to hope that students will change on their own volition. in a recent online discussion, the president of the southern education foundation, c. kent mcguire (2011) noted: today’s student lives in a world of hyperconnectivity and information exchange. they receive their information in five-minute episodes and it comes in many modalities—sound, text, video. the typical college classroom is a stand and deliver environment that does not foster engagement, interaction or exchange. we might wish today’s student could tolerate this dated approach to instruction. but even if they could, the lives many lead do not conform to our conception of the traditional student […] we are working increasingly with students who face competing demands for their time and attention […] giving students more advice and support and actually explaining to them what we expect them to do would go a long way toward improving student learning outcomes. the answers likely involve change on two tracks. university efforts, incorporating more effective basic skills programs for new students and some sort of organized effort, like york college’s, to deliberately teach student behaviors and attitudes for the workplace, would be helpful in targeting interventions aimed at both students’ abilities and initiatives. the other change would have to come from professors, who must struggle with the need to reach all students in real and meaningful ways while maintaining high expectations and offering challenging curriculum. clearly, there is no one-size-fitsall lesson plan for this; 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(2010, november 27). a’s for good behavior. the new york times. p. wk3. u.s. department of education, a test of leadership: charting the future of u.s. higher education. washington, d.c., 2006. williams, r., & clark, l. (2004). college students' ratings of student effort, student ability and teacher input as correlates of student performance on multiplechoice exams. educational research 46(3), 229239. ziomek, r., & svec, j. (1997). high school grades and achievement: evidence of grade inflation. nassp bulletin, 81, 105–113. zirkel, p. (1999). grade inflation: a leadership opportunity for schools of education. teachers college record, 101(2), 247-260. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 16 article citation miretzky, d., & stevens, s. (2012). faculty’s perceptions of students’ characteristics: a for effort please. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from: http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/875 author notes sharon stevens western illinois university 1 university circle, 115-p horrabin hall, macomb, il 61455 sr-stevens2@wiu.edu sharon stevens is an assistant professor in the educational and interdisciplinary studies department at western illinois university in macomb, illinois. she teaches educational psychology courses for teacher candidates and is interested in how teacher research can improve their instructional and assessment practices. debra miretzky western illinois university 1 university circle, 115-o horrabin hall, macomb, il 61455 d-miretzky@wiu.edu debra miretzky is an assistant professor in the educational and interdisciplinary studies department at western illinois university in macomb, illinois. she teaches education law and policy and social foundations courses for teacher candidates, and is interested in the impact of such courses on teachers and their work in the classroom. manuscript received: 12/08/2011 revisions received: 3/30/2012 accepted: 6/6/2012 faculty’s perceptions of students’ characteristics: a for effort please 17 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1218_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 3 october 31, 2013 issn 1099-839x viewing teacher motivation in the ghana education service through a postcolonial lens inusah salifu and joseph seyram agbenyega monash university in recent times, quality teaching has become the focus of many education systems including that of ghana, and yet little attention has been given to teacher motivation that could ensure quality teaching and improved learning outcomes. drawing on contemporary literature on issues associated with teacher motivation, this conceptual paper critically examines and analyses the context of teacher motivation and professional practice in the ghana education service. it addresses the questions: what are the working conditions that are causing a lack of motivation among teachers in public pre-tertiary schools in ghana? how can teacher motivation in the ghanaian context be analyzed using postcolonial theoretical concepts? it concludes with some recommendations that can lead to improvements in teacher conditions and motivation in ghana. keywords: teacher motivation; ghana education service; postcolonial theory; postcolonial lens education in contemporary period places greater emphasis on quality teaching. in ghana, several initiatives for promoting education have excluded the issue of teacher motivation (agezo, 2010; osei, 2006). as quality is important and has merits for investing in education, attention needs to be given to teacher motivation to ensure quality teaching. in the context of this paper, quality teaching refers to the use of disciplinary knowledge with positive relationships with students in the classroom that lead to desirable learning outcomes. the term teacher motivation has been defined variously by different scholars. velez (2007) has perceived teacher motivation as an inspiration or encouragement of teachers to do their best in the classroom. snowman, mcown, and biehler (2008) have conceptualized teacher motivation as located in the forces that bring about the arousal, selection, direction, and continuation of behavior in the teacher. in this paper, we consider teacher motivation as tangible or intangible working conditions that have the potential to influence teachers positively to demonstrate desirable behavior leading to a high quality professional practice. desirable behavior includes positive attitudes toward students and teaching, positive perceptions of employer and work conditions and beliefs about self as a valuable professional teacher. this conceptual paper draws on contemporary literature on issues associated with teacher motivation to problematize issues of teacher motivation in ghana. our aim for doing this is not to unduly criticize and attack a system which we were once part of, but to take a theoretical stance and interrogate the current ethos of the ghana education service which, from our outsider perspective, is a replication of colonial ideals and principles. we were selective in the literature we used, and the specific sources we consulted for our critical analysis. the body of literature we selected was mainly made up of relevant studies on teacher motivation and professionalism in ghana. we consulted various sources of databases such as eric and scorpus. we made use of secondary sources, conceptual/theoretical papers, anecdotal/opinion papers, including journals and reports. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 2 we used the meta-synthesis approach in our review because we found it useful in helping us integrate, evaluate and interpret findings of multiple qualitative studies. considering the historical significance of the issue of teacher motivation in ghana, our review covered research done from 1968 to 2013. the direction we took for this paper was the postcolonial turn. literally, the words colonial, precolonial and postcolonial pose different meanings. colonial refers to the period europe annexed, partitioned and ruled many countries especially in africa, asia, the caribbean, south and central america for mainly economic and religious gains. pre-colonial, on the other hand, refers to the period preceding the colonial era. postcolonial also refers to the aftermath of the colonial period and describes how colonial orientations have influenced the behavior of people in former colonies (ashcroft, griffiths, & tiffin, 2006). postcolonial theory probes and critiques the general aftermath of colonialism as well as the imperialism that succeeded it (ashcroft et al., 2006). there are myriads of views expressed on postcolonial theory. this paper draws on a lens posited by dirlik (1994), gupta (2006), and slemon (1990) which views postcolonial theory as a discourse informed by the epistemological and psychic orientations of colonization. according to said (2007), the lens generates an examination of how knowledge, beliefs and value systems are used to make meaning for daily life. a postcolonial framing of teacher motivation is socially constructed and examines the complexities of working conditions in which teachers are situated. framed in postcolonial theoretical perspective, this paper therefore examines the working conditions of teachers at the public pre-tertiary level who are employed directly by the ghana education service on behalf of the ghana government. the purpose of this paper is to critically analyze how systems of dominance and oppression threaten effective teacher professionalism and pedagogy. it points out how employer–teacher relations tend to be described almost entirely from the point of view of the employer and not from the point of view of teachers, thereby affecting teachers’ motivation and subsequent reduction in their capacity to deliver quality teaching. the questions addressed in this paper are: what are the working conditions that are causing a lack of motivation among teachers in public pre-tertiary schools in ghana? how can teacher motivation in the ghanaian context be analyzed using postcolonial theoretical concepts? in ghana, the government undertakes to motivate teachers (will be discussed later) in order to make them enjoy their work and develop appropriate dispositions to deliver quality professional practice needed for quality education in the country, however, a lot needs to be done to achieve this aim. for example, available literature (agezo, 2010; george & mensah, 2011; osei, 2006) has shown that the working conditions of teachers in ghana, especially those under the ghana education service, apparently construct them as “slaves” who are serving “a master” (their employer). the burning issues that will be discussed in relation to this situation include authoritarian leadership style, overcrowded class teaching, the lack of adequate teaching resources and perceived low salaries. the discussions in this paper will focus on the historical context of ghana followed by the conditions that are causing a lack of motivation among teachers in public pre-tertiary schools as well as initiatives put in place to address existing challenges. the next to follow will be an explication of postcolonial theoretical concepts and how they are implicated in teacher motivation in the ghanaian context. the paper concludes with some future directions for improving the conditions of teachers in order to enhance the quality of teachers’ professionalism and teaching in postcolonial ghana. the historical context of ghana as a postcolonial developing country in order to critically analyze and problematize the issue of teacher motivation in public pre-tertiary schools in ghana, it is important to briefly illustrate and analyze the historical context of ghana as a postcolonial developing country. a postcolonial framing of developing in this paper seeks to position ghana as a nation striving to achieve a notion of development held by the western world. like all other former african colonies, ghana was once under british colonial rule until 1957 when she attained political independence. prior to this period, the administration of the gold coast (now ghana) was taken over by the british and ruled through a system called indirect rule (boahen, 1975; onwubiko, 1985). under this system, although the traditional chiefs continued to rule their people, the british exerted considerable influence over the local affairs of the indigenous people (ghanaians) through the chiefs and changed the chieftaincy institution to suit their colonial ambition without any regard to the preservation of their norms and traditions. for instance, through series of legislations such as the native jurisdiction ordinance of 1883, chief’s ordinance of 1904 and native administration ordinance of 1927, the british colonial masters usurped the powers of the chiefs and suppressed the voices of the indigenous people (boahen, 1975). they also became the final deciders on issues affecting the social lives of the indigenous people including education (perbi, 2004). currently, the harm this colonial experience has caused to the traditional leadership system of the country manifests in the way the chieftaincy institution is being run on the culture of absolute submissiveness where “a king must exercise his authority over his subjects to demonstrate how powerful he is” (agbenyega & deku, 2011, p. 15). although it is common knowledge that the british colonial masters attempted to put in place some infrastructural developments like roads, schools and viewing teacher motivation in the ghana education service through a postcolonial lens 3 harbors, it has been argued that these initiatives actually served the parochial interest of the british colonial masters (boahen, 1975). consequently, roads built only led to sources of raw materials like gold, timber and cocoa where they were looted from and carried away via the harbors. another important issue worth noting about ghana’s colonial past was that the indigenous people worked on their own farm lands as slave servants and supplied raw materials to feed the industries of their masters in europe (boahen, 1975; onwubiko, 1985). also, the kind of education introduced by the colonial masters basically focused on literacy and numeracy and relegated to the background critical thinking needed for national emancipation (boahen, 1975; perbi, 2004). formal education started as castle schools (i.e., schools housed in castles where forts were built for slaves in the colonial era) and the target students were mainly the "mulattoes" (i.e., children born out of relationships between the whites and the indigenous people). the product of these schools served as intermediaries between the colonial masters and the indigenous people for the purposes of interpretations and clerical assignments (perbi, 2004). these colonial dominance, subjugation and suppression therefore culminated in agitations for ghana’s freedom and brought in its wake the formation of many resistant groups to bring to an end imperial colonial rule. notable among leaders in these nationalist agitations was ghana’s first president, dr. kwame nkrumah (boahen, 1975; perbi, 2004). colonial teaching context in ghana despite the general criticism of the kind of education introduced by the british colonial masters in then gold coast, now ghana (see previous discussion), teachers at the time were arguably better motivated. for instance, the then colonial government under sir gordon guggisberg (1919-1927) undertook several initiatives to improve the conditions of service of teachers in public schools with the aim of motivating the teachers to quality professional practice. one of the initiatives was an improvement in the salaries of the teachers. in fact, it was guggisberg who fixed an appreciable minimum wage of £100-180 a year for teachers (mcwilliams & kwamenapo, 1975; ofori-attah, 2007). another important initiative undertaken by guggisberg to ensure effective performance of teachers was the closure of so-called 150 bush schools which delivered substandard quality education (mcwilliams & kwamena-po, 1975; ofori-attah, 2007). as a follow-up to this initiative, guggisberg kept roll of all registered trained teachers. later, the erzuah committee, which was formed ahead of the accelerated development plan of 1951, brought forth recommendations aimed at addressing issues relating to unfavorable working conditions of teachers in public schools (mcwilliams & kwamena-po, 1975; ofori-attah, 2007). the accelerated development plan was meant to bring education to the doorstep of every ghanaian child. the committee proposed three important initiatives regarding teachers’ salary. the first was that teachers should draw salary scales higher than other professionals with similar or same qualifications, experience and expertise in other fields of national interest. the second proposal was that the quality of teachers’ professional practice should be increased significantly prior to the salary increases. the last proposal was that steps should be taken to ensure that teachers co-operated fully in the implementation of the yet-to-come accelerated development plan (mcwilliams & kwabena-po, 1975; ofori-attah, 2007). in fact, although the colonial era is long gone, traces of some of its harmful legacies are still rife in every facet of national life including education. for example, teachers, especially in public pre-tertiary schools, work in a teaching environment that is characterized by authoritarian leadership style, overcrowded classrooms, and inadequate teaching resources (agezo, 2010; osei, 2006). the accelerated development plan and the universal basic education initiative led to massive school expansions without corresponding resources and adequate teachers to manage these schools. having established the problem this paper seeks to bring to the fore and provided the necessary context, the next section takes a critical look at key issues and analyses them to provide insights into conditions that are causing a lack of motivation among teachers in public pre-tertiary schools in ghana. why are teachers in public pre-tertiary schools in ghana de-motivated in their professional practice? teachers in ghana play a crucial role in the development of the country’s educational system yet available research (osei, 2006; sarpong, 2002) has indicated that many of them, especially at the public pretertiary level, are unmotivated in their professional practice. various reasons have been assigned to the situation. for instance, it has been argued that although teachers in public pre-tertiary schools in ghana are the most important potential agents of change in the ghanaian system of schooling they are unfairly treated as compared to the situation during the colonial period when ghana experienced unfair treatments from its colonial masters (osei, 2006). this unfair treatment relates to many teachers teaching large classes of teacher-pupil ratio (tpr) of 1: 70 instead of the stipulated tpr of 1: 24 (tanaka, 2010). such classes usually have few pieces of furniture and textbooks for students (tanaka, 2010). it can be argued from a postcolonial perspective that, teaching in large classrooms without adequate teaching and learning resources predisposes teachers to hardship and stress which is often the situation when a slave works for his or her master. stressful conditions can result in many teachers being absent from work as a result of sickness (velez, 2007). in ghana, the absenteeism rate among teachers in public pre-tertiary schools is estimated to be as high as 27 percent (mensah, 2011). current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 4 apart from earlier promotion and shorter serving period to qualify for study leave with pay for those teaching in rural areas, there is no other incentive package like hardship allowance for teachers who accept postings to rural areas. it is also argued that teachers who accept postings to rural areas do not receive their salaries on time (osei, 2006). in addition, some of the principals have adopted authoritarian management styles constructed on the basis of colonial rationality. this has made them dictators who often do not involve teachers in decision-making. for instance, they often take unilateral decisions and sometimes issue queries to teachers that are recorded on their files without allowing them any opportunity to explain their lapse (agezo, 2010). at the national level, educational policies are also made without adequate involvement of teachers. an example is the increase of the duration of the senior high program from three to four years; and back to three years without adequate involvement of the teachers (agezo, 2010). although teachers at the public pre-tertiary level of education in ghana are unionized under ghana national association of teachers (gnat) as a professional association to fight subjugation and represent their voices, constraints of power do not allow the association to effectively achieve this aim. furthermore, many of the teachers are currently compelled to take on other jobs like selling of general goods at the market to support themselves and their families because, despite their efforts at contributing significantly to education development in the country what they earn cannot suffice them until another pay time (mensah, 2011). taking on other jobs creates absenteeism in the classrooms because the education system in ghana does not give room for emergency teacher replacement as happens in australia and other developed nations (salifu, 2013). apart from absenteeism, many of the teachers do not allot adequate time to co-curricular activities, teaching notes preparation and marking (mensah, 2011; tawiaarmah, 2010). many others resign, vacate their post or do not resume post after leave of absence or sponsored study leave (mensah, 2011). in a draft report to examine teacher attrition in ghana, a joint research by the ghana national association of teachers (gnat) and the teachers and educational workers union (tewu) has revealed that about 10,000 teachers in public pre-tertiary schools in ghana leave the classroom every year (mensah, 2011). another source (ghana web, 2013) has documented that, as high as 33,185 teachers in public pre-tertiary schools in ghana have vacated posts in recent years in search of greener pastures abroad or in other professions because of low pay, promotion issues and other unfavorable working conditions. given the crucial role teachers play in ghana’s education development, we think the above situation poses a significant threat to the country’s effort at meeting its education for all (efa) goals by 2015. this is because, it is a common knowledge that whenever the education sector of a country records a high attrition rate of professional teachers for an extended period of time, the country experiences a sharp decline in educational standards in terms of students’ achievements and general discipline (agezo, 2010; dolton & marcenaro-gutierrez, 2011). another implication of this attrition situation is that the government may be compelled to spend huge sums of money to train more professional teachers to fill the vacancies created. arguing through a postcolonial lens, one would contend that the working conditions in the ghana education service which sometimes compel teachers to engage in substandard professional practice construct the teachers as slaves who are serving a master because it appears they are exploited and their working conditions mirror colonial relations. their voices and perspectives are often neglected even when it comes to crucial matters that concern their professional practice (alhassan, 2011). colonial relations where teachers are positioned as inferior to their employers or managers also culminate in delays in responding to teachers’ needs. often, by the time employers take steps to address teacher issues some might have been demotivated and therefore left the profession and those that stay behind might engage in substandard professional practice (malmberg, 2006; peisner-feinberg & burchinal, 1997). like some professionals that are deemed selfless, teachers in public pre-tertiary schools in ghana are often told their reward is in heaven yet on earth and specifically in ghana, a number of them remain unhappy because of unfavorable working conditions (osei, 2006). the teaching profession in ghana is not often seen as a financially rewarding one by new generational graduates (claeys, 2011). most ghanaian scholars do not prefer the profession because it is generally perceived as a lowpaying profession and conditions of service are not attractive (george & mensah, 2011). generally, a vast number of people in ghana who go into teaching do so only when they fail to meet their cherished dreams of pursuing other professions and eventually leave when they succeed those professions (agezo, 2010). this development in ghana is not a unique phenomenon. research (akiba, shimizu, & liang, 2012) has shown that financial constraints on teachers, especially in many parts of africa, compel many of them to find additional sources of income and the situation creates divided attention and loyalty to teaching and impacts negatively on academic achievement of students. teacher motivation initiatives in ghana the previous discussion looked at some key issues that have led to the lack of motivation among teachers in public pre-tertiary schools in ghana. this section examines efforts that have been made by stakeholders to improve the working conditions of the viewing teacher motivation in the ghana education service through a postcolonial lens 5 teachers. the ensuing discussion therefore explicates motivation measures put in place so far by the government and local communities to ameliorate the existing challenges. national best teacher award scheme (nbtas). over the years, evidence from the ministry of education documents has demonstrated government of ghana’s commitment to enhancing teacher motivation for subsequent improvement in the quality of teacher professional practice (ofori-attah, 2007). one of these initiatives is the national best teacher award scheme (nbtas), which was instituted in 1995 to acknowledge hard work and dedicated stewardship of teachers (akyeampong & asante, 2005; unesco, 2011). this award involves professional competitions at four stages: school, district, regional and national levels. the competition for this award starts with a nomination of deserving teachers at the school level by their respective principals to compete at the district level. the overall winner of a district competition represents the district at the regional level. similarly, the overall winner of a regional competition represents it at the national level (akyeampong & asante, 2005). at the national level, there are usually ten competitors representing the ten regions. unlike the district and regional competitions that usually have fixed venues at the district or regional capitals, the venue for the national competition determined by the organizers may fall in any of the ten regions but normally in the capital, accra. a lot of criteria relating to professional competence and commitment are taken into account in the choice of a winner of this prestigious award. some of which include the quality of lesson notes, teaching and learning materials, the quality of lesson delivery and classroom management techniques; and performance outcomes of students’ among others (akyeampong & asante, 2005). the prizes at stake for this competition differ in magnitude and quality according to the stage of the competition. for instance, at the school level, winners may receive merit certificates and some small money, usually a hundred ghana cedis (about au$50) (akyeampong & asante, 2005). at the district level, winners normally receive fridges, roofing sheets, bicycles and tape recorders. at the regional level, winners normally receive prizes ranging from motorcycles to small cars. at the national level, the overall winner of the best teacher award normally receives a beautiful two-bedroom house or money equivalent and a car which is more expensive and luxurious than that received at the regional level. the runner-up normally receives a car and cash prize lesser in value though (akyeampong & asante, 2005). this prestigious award has its own setbacks. the unesco synthesis report of 2011 focusing on 2002 presidential report on the national best teacher award scheme has indicated that teacher selection for this award is controversial. many teachers have raised concerns about the selection processes and claimed the award does not extend the government’s appreciation to all teachers who are working hard for the country’s educational development (unesco, 2011). the government of ghana has responded positively by proposing to have a more transparent process of selection and to expand the coverage to include not only teachers but also the schools that facilitate the award winning (unesco, 2011). however, up to date, the government is yet to implement the proposal. teachers’ remuneration. allowances covering accommodation cost, uniform cost and utility bills included in teachers’ salaries also form part of the motivation package for teachers in public pre-tertiary schools in ghana. because of this initiative the government does not provide accommodation, uniform and pay utility bills for teachers. as a result, most of the teachers live in private houses and just a few are privileged to live in government houses and pay rent at the end of the month to the government. an annual medical allowance of about fifteen ghana cedis (about $8.50 in u.s. dollars), which cannot pay for a single consultation with a doctor, is also due a teacher who produces genuine medical reports. a single consultation with a doctor may cost the equivalent of $47.50. as of 2011, a graduate professional teacher up to the professional rank of assistant director ii (the third promotion after recruitment) for instance, takes about eight hundred ghana cedis (about $475) as take-home salary per month depending on the person’s added responsibility like principal of a basic school (primary or junior high school). the other responsibilities that go with such remuneration are: assistant principal (for both basic and senior high schools), senior housemaster/mistress, housemaster/mistress, head of department or form master/mistress (for only senior high schools). within the ghana education service one key determinant of a teacher’s salary is his or her number of years in a rank, technically called step or incremental jump. a step or incremental jump is a yearly salary increase that teachers get on the first of september each year in order to differentiate them from those on the same rank but juniors in terms of job experience. this means that two teachers could be in the same rank but their salaries could differ depending on who between them was promoted earlier. as stated earlier, the condition of low salaries perhaps compels most teachers to involve in part-time teachings and other engagements like selling of general goods at the market to earn extra income to augment what is received from the state to the detriment of their pupils. study leave with pay. the study leave with pay concept in ghana is an opportunity given to teachers to pursue further studies mainly in the universities and still draw salaries during their periods of absence. the current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 6 duration of the leave is normally up to a maximum of four years. the initiative is aimed at enhancing teacher professional development required for quality classroom delivery (agezo, 2010). as a motivation policy, the ghana education service grants the leave to all of its professional teachers. however, preference is given to those who sacrifice to serve in deprived areas (countryside without access to basic social amenities like electricity, potable water, decent accommodation and good roads) to urban areas (cities or towns). in this sense, it takes teachers who serve in deprived areas a minimum of two years to qualify for study leave with pay as compared to a minimum of five years in the case of teachers who serve in urban areas. also, priority is given to those who apply for study leave with pay to study in key areas like mathematics, science, information and communication technology (ict) and english language. teachers who propose to study in other areas like; ghanaian language, social studies, management and accounting studies, home economics, visual arts directly related to classroom teaching and educational administration and management are also considered on a priority basis. teachers’ promotions. a teacher qualifies to be the principal of a senior high school only when the person attains the rank of deputy director (the third highest rank). the various ranks in the ghana education service from the lowest to the highest are: superintendent ii; superintendent i; senior superintendent ii; senior superintendent i; principal superintendent; assistant director ii; assistant director i; deputy director; director ii; and director i. a teacher with diploma certificate begins on the rank of senior superintendent ii whiles a teacher with a bachelor’s degree begins on the rank of principal superintendent. a teacher with master’s degree also begins on the rank of principal superintendent. however, the teacher gets two incremental jumps of salary ahead of the colleagues. qualification for promotion in the ghana education service depends on a number of conditions. first, the teacher must have a satisfactory work history for a minimum of three consecutive years including period of approved leave for those who accept posting and teach in deprived areas; and five consecutive years including period of approved leave for those who teach in urban areas. second, the teacher must have a satisfactory appraisal from his or her supervisor who is normally the principal of the school in which a teacher teaches. if a principal is seeking promotion, the person is appraised by the director of education of the district or province he or she serves. third, the teacher must pass an interview. available literature (agezo, 2010; salifu, 2013; tanaka, 2010), however, has indicated that the promotion initiative has not been effective in achieving its intended purpose of motivating the teachers because it is based on long service. the teachers rather prefer a system of promotion based on academic qualification (salifu, 2013). community support for teachers in the ghana education service. apart from the government of ghana’s efforts at ensuring a motivated teaching profession at the public pre-tertiary level in ghana, it is important to acknowledge also that parents are doing a lot to support teachers at this level. in most parts of ghana, especially in the rural setting, community support is always mobilized to motivate teachers to accept posting and remain at post to offer quality professional practice. in doing this, parents have been collaborating with teachers in many ways including the formation of parents/teachers associations (pta’s). the essence of these associations is to afford parents and teachers the opportunity to meet periodically to discuss issues bordering on academic work and general welfare of teachers. through these associations most teachers, especially those in the senior high schools, have been privileged to have decent and secure accommodation as well as means of transport to and fro school. this initiative has been possible through the payment of termly pta dues and special voluntary contributions by parents. also, through other regular contributions by parents, teachers in some schools get additional income called teacher motivation allowances to supplement their monthly salaries. the money accrued from this contribution is shared at the end of every school term by both teaching and ancillary staff of senior high schools in the ratio of 80% and 20% respectively. how can teacher motivation in the ghanaian context be analyzed using postcolonial theoretical concepts? this section of the paper analyses ethos of the ghana education service based on postcolonial theoretical concepts of identity, agency, power, voice/ representation. our aim for basing the discussion in this section of the paper on the lenses is to further analyze and critique the ethos of the ghana education service which, as shown already, sometimes displays the use of power and dominance with little or no accommodation for teachers’ right to bargain for appropriate wages, improved living and working conditions; and absolute representation to make their voice heard. analyses of these elements are important for unpacking how the teachers perceive themselves as professionals working in the ghana education service, taking into account the conditions that motivate or de-motivate them in their professional practice. it is therefore justifiable to use postcolonial theory through “discursive concepts of identity, agency, power, voice, and representation” (kumar, 2000, p. 82) as a useful framework for appreciating the powerful effects of colonialism on teacher motivation towards professional practice quality in postcolonial ghana. below is a conceptual diagram that viewing teacher motivation in the ghana education service through a postcolonial lens 7 figure 1. conceptual diagram. we have created to illustrate the discussion in this section of the paper. the conceptual diagram in this paper depicts our analysis of the ethos of the ghana education service. it guides the process of critical examination and analysis of key elements that form the focus of the discussions on teacher motivation in public pre-tertiary schools in ghana. it rests on the epistemological assumption of the interpretivists’ paradigm. the interpretivists have argued that the conscience of human beings and their behaviors are affected by the knowledge of the social world, which exists only in relation to human beings (creswell, 2003; creswell & plano clark, 2007). this assumption provides the basis for the use of postcolonial variables such as identity, agency, power and voice/representation (refer to p. 20-27 for explanation), which inform the nature of this conceptual diagram. in education systems the ethos that is composed of values, beliefs, norms, regulations and nature of relationships and communication patterns determines different levels of practices and subsequently influences teachers’ motivation to practice their profession. in this paper, the ethos of the ghana education service has been critically considered within a postcolonial critique to make sense of the genesis of barriers and facilitators of motivation as this pertains to teachers within the service. it is assumed that there is a close link between the ethos of the ghana education service and teachers’ mood, level of satisfaction; and creativity and urge to initiate programs toward improving their professional practice. the mood and satisfaction level of teachers may affect their motivation and subsequently, the quality of professional practice in the ghana education service. teachers’ identity in the ghana education service. drawing on the conceptual diagram, identity is very fundamental to the life of every individual because it affirms one's existence, location and importance in society. in kumar’s (2000) view, identity is the way an individual is classified in terms of one or a combination of the following backgrounds: race, religion, gender, culture, socio-economic, class, education, skin or color. identity is not always a predetermined concept; it can be built, teacher initiative & creativity mood of teachers teacher satisfaction teacher motivation practice quality culture of the ghana education service, e.g. reinforcement, needs, values, norms, beliefs, relationships, communication voice power identity agency current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 8 constructed and shaped along experiences and relationships (kumar, 2000). in this paper teacher identity means professional recognition of teachers as crucial stakeholders in education. in ghana, teachers in public pre-tertiary schools should be identified and tagged initiators of their own social worlds with rights to participate in social processes and decisions that affect them in their employment milieu. however, from a postcolonial perspective, this identification has eluded them. the ethos of the ghana education service constructs the teachers as occupying an inferior position of mere subordinates who have to be dictated to (agezo, 2010). in effect, their role as crucial stakeholders in the education system is not recognized by their employer. loss of professional identity has some serious social repercussions on teacher motivation in ghana. sarpong (2002) has reported that in 2001, of the 228 primary and secondary school teachers who died in the assin area of the central region of ghana, 205 of them or 90 percent resorted to alcoholism and reportedly died out of alcohol-related ailments as a result of frustration. the explanation here is that many liberal religious people in ghana consume alcohol believing that they would be relieved of their anxiety when drunk. the poor among them consume the local gin (akpeteshie) as their preference because it has a very high alcohol concentration and yet it is cheaper to buy. it costs less than one u.s. dollar and may be obtained even on credit and paid for at the end of the month when salaries are received. research has established that although it is not clear why some people abuse alcohol or become addicted to it but the habit of drinking may be influenced by an environment and situations in life such as stress (hamre & pianta, 2001; hunt, 1993; miller, zweben, diclemente, & rychtarik, 1995). these teachers tend to use their meager salary on drinking alcohol perhaps due to depression, lost hopes, frustrations, self-loss and poor self-concept. teachers’ agency in the ghana education service. as illustrated in the conceptual diagram, voice and identity that originate from ethos of one’s workplace contribute to one’s agency. jordão (2008) has defined agency as “the discursive interpolation of different forms of representation (of self and others) and their transformation” (p. 6). in the context of this paper, however, we use the word agency to refer to the capacity of teachers to act with intent and participate in making decisions that affect their professional practice. agency is important because it provides an opportunity for reviving and acknowledging the experiences of the then colonial subjects and applying them to the current circumstances of subordinated individuals like the teachers at the public pre-tertiary level of education in ghana. agency is not based on a pre-established plan to obtain pre-determined results but based on an action that is constructed in the discursive process of meaning-making, in the production and establishment of discourses that define and categorize people, ideas, kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing (jordão, 2008). as this paper is theorized through a postcolonial discursive lens, it is important to draw people’s attention to a postcolonial understanding of how ghanaian teachers’ agency contributes to their motivation. a postcolonial theorization aligns itself to how these teachers’ agency and social capital experiences have been largely isolated by their employer and those designated as supervisors. the isolation may be essentially the direct result of the nature of the ethos of the ghana education service. for example, as indicated earlier, some principals of public pre-tertiary schools in ghana often take unilateral decisions regardless of how the teachers feel (agezo, 2010). the agency view of postcolonial theory also creates a new picture about how to bring modifications in the education system of ghana as a postcolonial society that is still entangled in the legacies of colonial education systems, ideals and practices (agbenyega & deku, 2011). in this regard, it is imperative to make a case thereon that in the use of a discursive analysis, the term postcolonial is not only of external inclination, but a thing harbored from within, as evidenced in the fact that teachers’ agency is viewed only from a particular socio-cultural lens. basically, in a colonial system two groups of people emerge. they are: the agent or oppressor and the oppressed, who have no rights to representation or transformation of their agency, voice and thoughts (viruru, 2005). in a typical postcolonial environment, the oppressed groups are normally subjects considered as deficient, incapacitated and are subdued by the dominant group (viruru, 2005). the ethos of the ghana education service typifies a postcolonial environment because teachers are situated and working in a system that could be described as autocratic and not well resourced. for example, as noted earlier, the teachers are subjected to large class teaching and are not provided with enough teaching and learning materials as well as up-to-date teaching syllabus that would facilitate classroom delivery. also, the teachers’ salaries do not commensurate with their stewardship (tanaka, 2010). in this kind of system, teachers become invisible in practice because they are controlled and manipulated by superior authorities. being manipulated by a superior authority depicts the teachers as objects oppressed by a system that subsumes their agency (viruru, 2005). when teachers are constructed as inferior in a professional a relationship there is a tendency for their professional practice to disintegrate (bhabba, 1994). teachers’ power in the ghana education service. our conceptual framework in figure 1 includes power as an invisible tool used in the ghana education service to control and manage both human and material resources. power resides in people who have and are able viewing teacher motivation in the ghana education service through a postcolonial lens 9 to use positions, agency, voice and representation to their merit. according to postcolonial interpretations, “hegemonic epistemological orientations, dominant languages and privileged discourses generate power for particular groups of people who are constructed as intellectuals and as an expectation for ways of being” (cannella & viruru, 2004, p. 45). in the context of the ghana education service, the use of power gives no room for teachers’ agency, voice and representation, which are essential tools for their motivation, identity and professional practice (osei, 2006; sarpong, 2002). lack of power does not allow the teachers to negotiate for favorable conditions of service. a typical example is the freezing of teachers’ salaries in 2006 for the number of months they had embarked on sit down strike although, according to them, their action became inevitable after several attempts to resolve their grievances amicably with the government had failed (mensah, 2011). we see this as internal struggles within the ghana education service between a superior body, that is, the ghana education service on one hand, and teachers on another. this use of power is a manifestation of dominance and may pose a negative impact on teachers’ identity and de-motivate them to quality professional practice. in a postcolonial environment, the colonizers or dominant group that have power always refer to the colonized and oppressed group as inferior, underdeveloped, unrefined, less capable of thinking and unqualified to present their voices (ashcroft, griffiths & tiffin, 2006; cannella & viruru, 2004). according to foucault (1997), the social positions occupied by the dominant and dominated groups are determined by discourses that set limits to who have the power to speak and be listened to; and whose voice the society recognizes. in terms of teacher motivation, a postcolonial theorization attempts to examine and critique issues of dominance that teachers may experience from their employers or conditions of service that may depict teachers as inferior or subordinates thereby affecting their motivation for quality professional practice (cannella & viruru, 2004). in the context of ghana, positioning the teachers as subordinates may limit their capacity to negotiate for reasonable working conditions. as motivation and the nature of professionalism are closely linked, teachers who may feel oppressed by the ghanaian education system may tend to develop lackadaisical attitudes to their work (cannella & viruru, 2004). on the other hand, if the teachers are recognized as important stakeholders in education who contribute to the success of the school, they could be empowered. teachers who feel empowered are motivated to serve their schools to their fullest potential (jordão, 2008). empowerment of teachers may occur through several means such as giving them voice and representation in key policy decisions that directly affect them. when teachers participate in policy making process they feel motivated to implement those policies and ensure that such policies become functional with good outcomes (jordão, 2008). teachers’ representation/voice in the ghana education service. other important considerations of postcolonial theory, as indicated in our conceptual diagram in this paper, are representation and voice. these two variables are inextricably linked because representation gives room for teachers’ voices to be heard. in a situation where people have no agency and representation they also have no position to speak in their own voices (jordão, 2008; spivak, 1988). lack of representation in the context of this paper entails the positions imposed on teachers in public pre-tertiary schools in ghana in which the teachers are considered powerless and lack the capacity to make contributions to matters affecting their working conditions. this tendency to other teachers can be described in postcolonial theory as colonizing. usually, those who are othered tend to be oppressed and controlled thus leading to oppressed pedagogical practices (ahluwalia,2001; cannella & viruru, 2004). in the context of ghana education service, the only mouth piece of teachers with bargaining mandate is the ghana national association of teachers (gnat), however, as indicated earlier, constraints of power do not allow it to absolutely represent teachers’ voices (lambert, 2004). the ghana national association of teachers (gnat) was formed on 14 july 1962 after secession from the trades union congress of ghana. as an organization, it functions primarily to ensure better conditions of service for its members who are drawn from public pretertiary levels of the education system. the teachers are found in public primary, junior and senior high schools, technical institutes and offices of educational administration units. it is the only teacher union with bargaining certificate (a document which gives a person or group in ghana the legal right to hold salary negotiations on behalf of others with the government) to negotiate directly with the ghana government, however, most teachers are embittered, disgruntled and dissatisfied with the performance of the leadership branding them self-seekers who only satisfy their whims and caprices to the neglect of the rest in the umbrella (alhassan, 2011; obi, 1999). research has demonstrated that the leadership of the ghana national association of teachers has mismanaged members’ dues and funds accrued from investments such as teachers’ hostels built in each of the ten regional capitals, ghana government treasury bills and bonds, insurance companies as well as interest on loans given to members (alhassan, 2011; obi, 1999). this development has brought in its wake the creation and formation of splinter groups within the teaching fraternity (alhassan, 2011). as a result, other teacher groups like the national association of graduate teachers (nagrat) and recently formed concerned teachers current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 10 association of ghana (ctag) have sprung up because of internal disunity within the teaching profession in ghana (alhassan, 2011). the absence of teachers’ voices in policies and programs affects pedagogical practices (lambert, 2004). policies and programs are mostly imposed on them without any recourse to the valuable contributions they can offer and yet are blamed when such initiatives fail (agezo, 2010). an instance is the increase of the duration of the senior high program from three to four years and back to three years without adequate involvement of teachers (agezo, 2010). this manifestation of dominance, which we see as internal struggles within the ghana education service between a superior body, that is, the ghana education service on one hand, and teachers on another, is likely to have an untold negative impact on the latter’s level of motivation with obvious consequences on their professional practice. different cultural practices in which education occurs play a crucial role in how teachers are constructed and the positions they occupy within the education system. thus, theorizing motivation in postcolonial terms provides the intellectual space for delving into how the ghana education service and its teachers enact and negotiate tensions, and contradictions regarding voice and representation. this is critically important for understanding the barriers to and facilitators of teacher motivation in this context. recommendations according to bennell and akyeampong (2007), private school teachers in ghana, particularly those catering for the rich in the society, are usually better motivated than their colleagues in government schools. this is as result of better working and living conditions and more effective management (bennell & akyeampong, 2007). as discussed, teachers in the ghana education service teach children to become the future generation to contribute to national development, yet it appears the majority are not well-motivated. based on this scenario, therefore, it is necessary for the government of ghana to adopt more rigorous measures to revamp education as one of the most important sectors of the economy. we make the following suggestions: firstly, there is the need to ensure that teachers in ghana have strong identity, ample voice and participation in their profession. to achieve this, the teachers or their representatives should be actively involved in education policymaking and supported to deal decisively with student indiscipline. allowing the teachers to participate in policy formulations could motivate them to implement those policies and ensure that the policies become functional with good outcomes. it could also mean they are recognized. furthermore, to ensure that they have the needed agency, their physical and material working environment should be improved by reducing class size for effective classroom management, providing adequate teaching and learning materials to facilitate pedagogical delivery, making available enough furniture to cater for every child, ensuring an opportunity for professional upgrading and paying them salaries that are reasonable enough to guarantee them more decent lives. the above recommendations, if implemented, could enable both the attraction and retention of people of high academic quality into the teaching profession in ghana. conclusion this paper has raised many topical issues relating to teacher motivation in the ghana education service. it has identified that postcolonial theory values good and positive teacher-employer relationships and loathes relationships built on slave-master colonial rationalist 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(2013). viewing teacher motivation in the ghana education service through a postcolonial lens. current issues in education, 16(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1218 author notes inusah salifu peninsula campus, faculty of education monash university, australia inusah.salifu@monash.edu mr. inusah salifu is a professional teacher. currently, he is studying for his phd at the faculty of education, monash university, australia. before enrolling in this program, he had taught english language and literature in english at the pre tertiary level of education in ghana since 1993. until august 2011, he had served as an external examiner for the west african examination council (waec) in english language. he had also engaged in part time tutoring in psychological basis of teaching, sociology of education and special education at the institute for educational development and extension (iede), university of education, winneba, ghana, from 2009 to 2011. seyram joseph agbenyega peninsula campus, faculty of education monash university, australia joseph.agbenyega@monash.edu dr. joseph seyram agbenyega is a senior lecturer in early childhood and inclusive education at monash university, australia. he is also course leader for masters programmes in early childhood education. his research interests focus on the improvement of inclusive practices in early childhood and middle years, social inclusion, child development and safety, and teacher professional inquiry. manuscript received: 04/04/2013 revisions received: 06/20/2013 accepted: 09/23/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 14 volume 16, number 3 october 31, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda hollis thomas elizabeth calhoun reyes assistant executive editors bonnie mazza constantin schreiber recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell nichole hugo sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker bonnie mazza kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1117_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 february 21, 2013 issn 1099-839x first year teachers: certification program and assigned subject on their self-efficacy april g. fox la porte independent school district michelle l. peters university of houston-clear lake in the united states, the demands of increased federal accountability have dramatically impacted the field of teaching. teacher certification programs have been taxed with preparing first year teachers to assist increasingly diverse students to pass high-stakes state assessments. the purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the influence of teacher certification programs and the assigned subject on the self-efficacy of first year teachers. a purposeful sample of 288 first year teachers employed across 20 southeast texas public school districts were administered the teachers’ sense of efficacy scale to assess their level of self-efficacy. results from the independent t-test found insufficient evidence to suggest that teacher certification program and/or the subject matter assigned to teach had any influence on the self-efficacy of first year teachers. teachers from traditional and alternative certification programs noted the importance of experience and mentoring as being crucial elements necessary to support their selfefficacy. keywords: alternative certification program, first year teachers, high-stakes testing, teacher certification, teacher self-efficacy, traditional certification program educating students from increasingly diverse social and economic backgrounds has created a challenging job for school districts in the united states (u.s.). to meet these students’ educational needs may prove to be a daunting task for most teachers (milner, 2010). according to the national center for education statistics (nces)1, student enrollment in u.s. public schools is expected to increase to an estimated 53 million students by 2020 (nces, 2011). when measured in 2006, the number of students who spoke another language other than english at home had increased to approximately 20% of all school age children. as a result, training for teachers to work with english language learners (ells) may very well be a necessity (bunch, aguirre, & tellez, 2009). in addition, considering student racial backgrounds and the effect on student-learning opportunities in the classroom is essential for new teachers (milner, 2012). consequently, teacher-training programs may need to provide the knowledge and learning opportunities to build cultural responsiveness in new teachers so they can confidently meet student’s needs (darling-hammond, 2010). according to the national commission on teaching america’s future (nctaf), it is expected that ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 the national center for education statistics, located within the u.s. department of education and the institute of education sciences, is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the us and other nations (nces, 2012). current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 in the next eight years as many as a million and a half veteran teachers will retire (carroll & foster, 2010). historically, traditional four-year certification programs have provided most of the teacher preparation (steadman & simmons, 2007). given the loss of teachers coupled with rising student enrollments, increased demand for teachers has fueled the growth of teacher alternative certification programs (acps). these programs provide an alternative to the traditional preparation programs for candidates who have already earned a bachelor’s degree (darling-hammond, chung, & frelow, 2002). currently, 48 states have an alternate route to teacher certification and there are 136 state defined acps (national center for alternative certification [ncac]; 2010). the demands of increased accountability have dramatically impacted the field of teaching. since the passing of the federal mandate no child left behind (nclb) act of 2001, student achievement expectations have increased (u.s. department of education, 2002) and thus students in grades 3 through 11 must pass highstakes tests2. the american educational research association (aera) issued a position statement in july 2000 that described the impact of high-stakes testing on students as well as on school districts (marchant, 2004). now students and their respective schools are being judged based on the students’ test performance. if students perform poorly, schools will face significant consequences. given that it is expected that teachers are to positively influence students’ classroom performance, many school districts have considered adding student performance to the teachers’ appraisal system. as a result, school districts may have to give considerable attention to recruiting teachers from certification programs that equip them with the necessary skills to impact student performance (brown, 2010; darlinghammond, 2006). according to darling-hammond (2010), there is a direct relationship between a teacher’s initial effectiveness and job retention rates and their teacher preparation. several studies have examined the effectiveness of acps (ballou & podgursky, 2000; darling-hammond, 2006; steadman & simmons, 2007; wayman, foster, & mantale-bromley, 2003; zeichner, 2006) and the findings reported are mixed. flores, desjean-perrotta, and steinmetz (2004) reported that those teachers who graduate from a traditional teacher preparation program feel better equipped to teach than their acp counterparts. it is well known that traditional programs place a strong emphasis on pedagogy and student teaching experience (darling-hammond, 2010). in contrast, proponents of acps suggest that successful candidates use their work related experiences and knowledge to successfully navigate the challenges of teaching (robertson & singleton, 2010). since 1994, first year teacher attrition has been steadily increasing. during the first five years, over 30% of teachers leave the profession (carroll & foster, 2010). one method for teacher evaluation, when completed within the first several years of teaching, is teacher selfperception. given that this variable is highly correlated with effectiveness, self-perception affords a teacher the opportunity to share information about their perceptions of preparedness (darling-hammond et al., 2002). according to darling-hammond et al. (2002), “teachers’ ratings of their overall preparedness are significantly related to their sense of efficacy about whether they are able to make a difference in student learning” (p. 294). teachers with a high sense of self-efficacy work harder and are more successful with difficult students (redmon, 2007). successful experiences create a strong sense of self-efficacy. a low sense of self-efficacy may be crated if failure is experienced before self-efficacy is established (bandura, 1994). teacher performance and ultimately student achievement are related to teachers’ selfperceptions (darling-hammond et al., 2002; redmon, 2007; tschannen-moran & woolfolk hoy, 2001). recent research addressed the relative effectiveness of traditional and acp teacher preparation programs and examined those that provided the tools and opportunities needed to meet the challenges of teaching a more diverse population (darling-hammond et al., 2002; peterson & nadler, 2009; qu & becker, 2003). since the nclb act and its subsequent reauthorization in 2004, school districts have increased their expectations on those teachers responsible for student performance. first year teachers are held equally accountable for their student’s performances as their veteran colleagues when assigned to teach a high-stakes tested subject. research shows that teacher self-efficacy influences teacher effectiveness; especially in a teacher’s first year (flores et al., 2004; ludlow, 2010; tschannen-moran & woolfolk hoy, 2001) and that teacher self-efficacy levels have a direct relationship to student learning and performance (ballou & podgursky, 2000; goa & stickler, 2008; wayne & youngs, 2003). however, there is inadequate research to determine whether being assigned a high-stakes subject as a first year teacher has any effect on self-efficacy and whether it is influenced by the teacher’s certification program (darling-hammond et al., 2002; flores et al., 2004). as a result, the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of the teacher certification training program (traditional vs. acp) and subject matter assigned to teach (high-stakes vs. non high-stakes) on the selfefficacy of first year teachers. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2tests mandated by nclb that have important consequences, such as promotion to the next grade or graduation from high school, for the individual taking the tests (education.com, 2012). first year teachers: certification program and assigned subject on their self-efficacy 3 related research effective teacher training programs in 1996, nctaf issued a report that had farreaching implications for teacher recruiting and training programs (ballou & podgursky, 2000). the report entitled what matters most: teaching for america’s future charged that public schools employ unqualified teachers because of poorly enforced standards for training and licensing. some of the recommendations cited were mandatory accreditation for all teacher training programs by the national council on accreditation of teacher education (ncate), “master teacher” standards, and the establishment of professional boards in all states to address teacher licensing. in addition, the nctaf recommended that teachers receive better training before they enter the classroom (ballou & podgursky, 2000). teachers are accountable for student performance with more diverse student populations. despite the increasing difficulty of meeting the needs of each student, accountability standards for student performance continue to rise. high quality instruction is not possible without high quality teachers (ball & forzani, 2010; darling-hammond, 2010; hinchey, 2010). according to federal guidelines of the nclb, a highly qualified teacher must have: (a) a bachelor's degree, (b) full state certification or licensure, and (c) subject competency in the subject they teach (united states department of education, 2002). ultimately, each of the 50 states independently governs teacher certification requirements (e.g., prerequisites, teaching certification examinations). strengthening teacher education programs is a focus for training programs (darling-hammond 2006; zeichner, 2006). the need to identify teachers that can increase student achievement has focused the research to prepare effective teachers. ballou and podgursky (2000) examined the relationship between teacher characteristics and student outcomes as well as the evidence to support needed reforms and recommended in a 1996 brief to the nctaf that their needs to be an increase in coursework and pre-service training prior to teachers entering a classroom. the national council for accreditation of teacher education (2008) standards require teacher preparation programs to provide instruction that support teachers’ abilities to increase student performance. the race to the top funds those states that track and compare the impact of new teachers on student achievement. additionally, it links the teacher back to their training program with the goal of improving teacher training programs and to better support student achievement (duncan, 2010). darling-hammond (2006) argued that strategies for evaluating teacher program outcomes have become increasingly important. in her article, assessing teacher education (2006), darling-hammond discusses different tools for evaluating teachers and teacher preparation programs and offers plans for the assessment of new teacher performance. she also describes the importance of tracking new teacher learning that is based on both student performances on preand post-tests and continuous observations and assessments by supervisors and concludes that these strategies must focus on measuring teacher education outcomes to yield improved performance in the classroom. ball and forzani (2010) discussed the criteria necessary to develop an effective teacher citing the importance of content knowledge and opportunities for practice as key elements. recommendations were provided for examining other professional preparation programs, as models for teacher training, where there were requirements to “practice the trade” in clinical settings before being allowed to work directly with clients. the teaching profession allows teacher trainees opportunities to work directly with students and assume the responsibility for their learning. the concern is the impact on student learning with an inexperienced teacher. teacher training programs have also examined the question of how to better prepare teachers for highstakes testing. in a study conducted by costigan (2002), six first year teachers were interviewed to determine how high-stakes testing impacted their practice. the participants related that that they were concerned about the potentially harmful effects of high-stakes testing on their students and the inability to negotiate best practice teaching with having to teach to a test. additionally, the teachers indicated that their teacher training had not prepared them for this type of testing culture. brown (2010) compared teacher candidate experiences with candidate teachers that had taken highstakes tests as students. employing teacher candidates that had taken the texas assessment of academic skills (taas) from 1990-2002, brown asked whether these experiences affected their conceptions of teaching highstakes test subject. findings indicated that even for teacher candidates that had taken high-stakes tests, the instructional strategies required to teach students were not implicit from their own experiences. brown further determined that teacher candidates need to be taught that their job includes teaching what is on the test, as well as how to be effective in their delivery of instruction. abrams, pedulla, and madaus (2003) reported that the threat of district and campus sanctions is the motivating force behind promoting quality of teaching, and that high-stakes testing limits the scope of classroom instruction and thus, student learning. these findings were based on the results from a nationwide survey completed by teachers in states with state-mandated testing programs. additionally, it was determined that the high-stakes test was more of an influence on teaching practices than the state standards. consequently, teachers from high-stakes states spent more time on test preparation activities than did their counterparts from current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 low-stakes states. the authors also reported that almost twice as many teachers in states with high stakes testing wanted to transfer out of those grade levels in which there were state administered tests as compared to states with low-stakes testing. herein lies the difficulty of assessing what teacher effectiveness looks like, as it may look very different for teachers assigned a high-stakes subject to teach versus those assigned a non-high-stakes subject to teach. effectiveness debate between certification programs traditional teacher education programs are undergraduate university based programs designed to provide a teacher certification that require students to meet specific educational degree requirements. in addition, under the supervision of university faculty, teaching pedagogy, methodology, and student teaching are completed (flores et al., 2004). on the other hand, alternative teacher certification programs provide individuals who have already received a bachelor’s degree in another field the opportunity to become certified teachers (national center for education information [ncei], 2012). alternative certification teachers typically are transitioning from a different career for a variety of reasons and have several years of experience from other areas of the workforce (flores et al., 2004)3. according to the ncei (2012), people who have chosen to teach through an acp include more men, tend to be older, and include more people of color. extensive discussions and debates have surrounded the relative effectiveness of acps and traditional certification programs (darling-hammond et al., 2002; flores et al., 2004; steadman & simmons, 2007). proponents of traditional certification programs stress that the traditional certification provides the appropriate and necessary preparation of teachers, which includes rigorous academic coursework with supervised internships. according to darling-hammond (2010), many alternative programs skip student teaching altogether giving their recruits no opportunity to receive direct modeling from expert teachers… one thing that is clear from current studies of strong programs is that learning to practice in practice, with expert guidance, is essential to becoming a great teacher of students with a wide range of needs. (p. 40) although darling-hammond (2010) argues that teacher education programs have the responsibility for preparing teachers to become strong practitioners, she also states that there is a need for acps to meet the gap in providing teachers for minority and low-income schools. campus administrators believe that teachers trained by an acp will need more mentoring (steadman & simmons, 2007)4. steadman and simmons (2007) not only examined the mentoring differences between the different teacher certification programs, but also the amount of time it took experienced teachers to mentor new acp teachers. they shared their concerns that new alternatively certified teachers, not afforded a student teaching experience, would require intensive mentoring. it was also determined that students taught by traditional certification preparation programs out-performed those taught by non-university certified program trained teachers. research on acps documents the benefits of the program. these programs vary in their requirements. according to petersen and nadler (2009), acps open the door for more minority teachers. their research documents the importance of recruiting minority teachers in order to raise the achievement of minority students. they found that “in 14 states, the percentage minority for those alternatively certified exceeds by a wide margin the percentage minority of the state’s teaching force as a whole” (p. 59). wayman et al. (2003) argued that acps must be recognized as an important route for recruiting teachers if they provide quality teachers for hard-to-staff schools. given that the alternatively certified teachers indicated higher levels of work-related concerns, it was recommended that continuous support be provided to these teachers throughout their first year of teaching. these concerns, which appear more specific to the pedagogy and instructional preparation, are similar to what darling-hammond addressed in her research stating that it is important to place teachers, regardless of their training path, in schools where they have an opportunity to practice with strong teachers. acp teacher candidates are often placed for classroom field experiences in schools that have shortcomings, and serve low-income and/or minority students (darling-hammond, 2010). a review of the literature identified many studies that compared traditional teacher training programs with acps (robertson & singleton, 2010; tournaki et al., 2009; viadero, 2010). qu and becker (2003) studied the question of whether teachers that have not earned traditional teaching certificates perform as well as nontraditionally certified teachers. their research review of the literature determined that not all research results support traditionally trained teachers being superior to alternatively certified teachers. however, their research did demonstrate that traditional teacher certificates require the greatest requirements for teachers. alternative certification courses cover content differently than those taken by traditionally certified teachers. participants in acps typically complete coursework during their internship and acps are typically shorter than those of traditional education programs. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 3an exception is teach for america (tfa), which recruits recent college graduates. 4for purposes of this study, campus administrators refer to campus principals and assistant principals. first year teachers: certification program and assigned subject on their self-efficacy 5 findings concluded that alternative teacher training could be as effective as traditional teacher training; however, differences within acps can impact specific program effectiveness. consistent with this conclusion, goe and stickler (2008) reported, “there is too little recent research on alternative preparation programs to generalize findings about the quality of the teachers they produce” (p. 5). the most common concerns expressed about graduates of an acp were the lack of pedagogy and the minimum amount of training completed in a classroom (boyd, grossman, lankford, loeb, & wyckoff, 2006; darling-hammond et al., 2002; nagy & wang, 2007). darling-hammond (2010) acknowledged that there is a need for quality acps since university programs may not necessarily be able to meet the demand for new teachers; especially in hard-to-staff schools. good et al. (2006) examined whether the type of training program made a difference for first year teachers. this study determined that, in general, beginning teachers from both types of preparation programs met the standards defined by the participating school districts. however, elementary teachers from the traditional program scored higher in classroom management measures. robertson and singleton (2010) found no evidence that teachers from the traditional program had an increased ability to handle the stress of teaching compared to the alternatively prepared teachers. teacher self–efficacy according to bandura (1994), a person’s belief in his or her own abilities provides situations with more successful outcomes. “the stronger the perceived selfefficacy, the higher the goal challenges people set for themselves and the firmer the commitment to them” (bandura, 1994, p. 3). having a strong sense of efficacy increases the confidence level to make decisions and approach challenges. teacher self-efficacy is a teacher’s perception of their ability to be effective in a classroom. it is the belief that student learning can be obtained, even with difficult and unmotivated students (tschannenmoran & woolfolk hoy, 2001). teacher efficacy has been associated with significant teacher characteristics such as student motivation, classroom management strategies, and innovative teaching (hoy, 2000; redmon, 2007) and directly linked to teacher performance (flores et al., 2004; ludlow, 2010; tschannen-moran & woolfolk hoy, 2001). several studies have sought to determine if there is a difference in self-efficacy of teachers who graduated from different types of teacher training programs (flores et al., 2004; ludlow, 2010; murshidi, konting, elias, & fooi, 2006; tournaki et al., 2009). murshidi et al. (2006) examined the level of teacher’s sense of efficacy among 328 beginning teachers in sarawak, malaysia. findings concluded that beginning teachers, who graduated from universities, perceived themselves as having a higher sense of self-efficacy compared to beginning teachers who graduated from alternative programs, which were termed teacher education colleges. darling-hammond et al. (2002) examined data from a 1998 survey of nearly 3,000 beginning teachers in new york city regarding their views of their preparation for teaching, beliefs and practice, and plans to remain in teaching. findings demonstrated that teachers prepared in traditional teacher education programs felt significantly more prepared than those who obtained their teaching certification through alternative programs. flores et al. (2004) also examined the self-efficacy of 162 teachers in the public schools that worked with low socio-economic and minority students from traditional and acps and their perceptions about their training programs. results showed that “compared to the alternative certification teachers, traditional route teachers report having greater confidence in their teaching ability to make a difference” (flores et al., 2004, p. 44). the argument is that the teacher’s confidence is more than likely due to the pedagogical training of traditionally certified teachers. ludlow (2010) investigated whether selfefficacy levels differed based on professional development experiences, attendance in an intensive preparation program prior to teaching, participation in district sponsored induction, or assignment of a mentor. collecting data from 164 interns in arizona ludlow concluded that new teacher efficacy was not tied to a specific certification pathway, but rather to individual background experiences. in addition, she determined that professional development was important for acp teachers because of their lack of pedagogical preparation. there appears to be a limited time to affect a teacher’s sense of efficacy (hoy, 2000; ludlow, 2010). research suggests the importance of offering suggestions for improvement shortly after students graduate and that within the first years of teaching the self-efficacy of teachers’ be measured (bandura, 1994). darlinghammond et al. (2002) stated, “since teachers’ practice and views are affected by other professional development the longer they are in the profession, we felt that analyses of program effects would be best examined within 3 years of entry” (p. 289). hoy (2000) studied self-efficacy with 53 prospective teachers. the students completed questionnaires during three phases: before they completed their coursework, after student teaching, and at the end of their first year of actual teaching. the researchers conducted correlations of changes in scores with the participants rating of their success compared to the first year teachers, their perception of the difficulty of the assignment, the available support, and the poverty level of their classroom. hoy (2000) determined that as perceptions of support increased, so did the self-efficacy of the teachers. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 table 1 grade level taught, taks subject taught, and certification program frequency (n) percentage (%) grade level taught elementary (k-5) 127 44.1 secondary (6-12) 161 55.9 taught a taks (high-stakes) subject yes 171 59.4 no 117 40.6 certification training program traditional: college/4 year university 129 44.8 alternative certification program education service center sponsored (hcde/region 4) 159 45 55.2 15.6 school district sponsored 11 3.8 university sponsored 18 6.3 privately sponsored (iteach texas/teach-now) 85 29.5 method participants a purposeful sample5 of 288 new teachers employed across 20 k-12 public school districts comprised from the gulf coast association of school personnel administrators (gcaspa) participated in this study. the gcaspa is an organization comprised of approximately 50 school districts and educational groups in the greater houston, texas area. the school districts range in student enrollment from approximately 2,000 students to more than 200,000 students (gcaspa, 2012). new teachers were identified as all those who were newly employed with the district and did not have any teaching experience. thirty-three of the school districts provided a contact list of their new teachers. table 1 displays the participant demographics regarding grade level taught, taks6 subject taught, and teacher certification program. male participants comprised 17.4% (n = 50) of the sample, while females were in the majority with 82.6% (n = 238). seventy-one percent (n = 205) of the participants reported to be caucasian or white followed by hispanic/latino (15.3%, n = 44) and africanamerican (6.9%, n = 20). elementary teachers comprised 44.1% (n = 127) of the survey participants, while 55.9% (n = 161) reported teaching secondary students. in addition, 59.4% (n = 171) reported teaching a taks subject, whereas 40.6% (n = 117) reported that they did not teach a taks subject. sixty-two percent of participants (n = 106) assigned to teach a taks subject claim to be teaching at the secondary level. of those teachers teaching a taks subject, 42.1% (n = 72) graduated from a traditional certification program and 31.6% (n = 54) from a private acp. approximately 61.0% (n = 78) of the participants teaching at the elementary level and 31.7% (n = 51) teaching at the secondary level graduated from a traditional certification program. instrumentation this study employed a 24-item instrument, the teachers’ sense of efficacy scale (tses), to measure a teacher’s perception of his or her ability to be effective in a classroom (see appendix). the tses was developed in 2001 by megan tschannen-moran of the college of william and mary and anita woolfolk hoy of ohio state university and is sometimes referred to as the ohio state teacher efficacy scale (tschannen-moran & woolfolk ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 5a purposeful sample is a nonrandom sampling technique in which the researcher solicits participants from a population of people possessing specific criteria or characteristics (johnson & christensen, 2010). 6the texas test of assessment of knowledge and skills (taks) is considered a high-stakes test as the results are used to determine district and campus ratings for federal, as well as state, accountability. mathematics, reading, writing, science, and social studies content are assessed by taks and are known as high-stakes subjects (texas education agency, 2012). first year teachers: certification program and assigned subject on their self-efficacy 7 table 2 teacher certification program certification type n m sd t df p-value d traditional 129 173.6 21.60 1.662 286 .098 .20 acp 159 169.1 24.09 hoy, 2001). the tses has been used in recent studies to determine teacher self-efficacy (ludlow, 2010; murshidi et al., 2006). teachers were asked to rate themselves on a 9-point likert scale (1 = nothing, 3 = very little, 5 = some influence, 7 = quite a bit, 9 = a great deal). composite scores can range from 24 to 216; the larger the composite score the higher the teacher self-efficacy. the cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients for this study were 0.95 for the entire instrument, 0.91 for classroom management, 0.88 for instruction strategies, and 0.89 for student engagement. data collection procedures directors of human resources in the gcaspa were sent an e-mail soliciting their help in accessing their new teachers’ names and e-mails. the new teachers from the 33 participating school districts were sent an email stating the purpose of the study, that participation was completely voluntary, and an assurance that identities would remain confidential. administration of the survey was conducted using surveymonkey. a question prior to responding to the survey determined if the corresponding school year was the respondent’s first year ever teaching. if the answer was “yes,” then the respondent was prompted to continue with the survey. if the answer was “no,” then the respondent was directed to exit the survey. results of the survey were downloaded into an excel spreadsheet and imported into spss for further analysis. data analysis quantitative. this study consisted of two categorical independent variables, teacher certification training program and subject matter assigned to teach, and one continuous outcome variable, teacher self-efficacy. teacher certification training program, was originally divided into five categorical groups: (a) traditional college/4-year university program, (b) university sponsored acp, (c) school district sponsored acp, (d) educational service center sponsored acp, and (e) privately sponsored acps. given the issue of small sample sizes obtained for some of the acps, all four acp groups were collapsed into one group. subject matter assigned to teach was also divided into categorical groups: (a) high-stakes and (b) non high-stakes. a twotailed independent t-test was conducted to determine if there was a statistically significant mean difference in self-efficacy between the acp and traditionally certified group and if there was a statistically significant mean difference in self-efficacy between the teachers who were assigned to teach a non-stakes subject and a high stakes subject. cohen’s d was used to assess effect size (cohen, 1988). qualitative. the qualitative analysis followed standard qualitative research procedures (creswell, 2007) drawing broadly on the constant comparative method. data were organized in excel, which allowed researchers to proceed with an emergent coding process (charmaz, 2006; coffey & atkinson, 1996; corbin & strauss, 1998). identification of key themes and patterns was used to organize and manage responses into meaningful pieces of information. as repeated themes surfaced, they were organized into categories and a narrative description of the findings was presented in a detailed discussion of the participants’ perceptions. this information was used in conjunction with the findings from the quantitative data to provide a more in-depth understanding of the self-efficacy of first year teachers as influenced by assigned subject matter and teacher certification training. extensive peerreview coding was done to validate the findings; first by the researchers and then by inputting the data into invivo by a qualitative researcher. results teacher certification program to assess the influence of teacher certification training program on the self-efficacy of first year teachers a two-tailed independent t-test was conducted. table 2 provides descriptive information regarding the certification programs and the influence on self-efficacy. findings indicated that there were no statistically significant mean differences in reported self-efficacy between first year teachers graduating from a traditional certification program as compared to those certified through an acp, t(286) = 1.662, p = .098, d = .20. although the mean self-efficacy of the traditional certification group (m = 173.6) was greater than the mean self-efficacy of the acp group (m = 169.1), there was insufficient evidence to conclude that the type of teacher certification program had an influence on these first year current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 table 3 subject matter assigned to teach certification type n m sd t df p-value d high-stakes 129 169.8 23.12 -1.208 286 .228 .14 non high-stakes 159 173.1 22.98 table 4 high-stakes vs. non high-stakes n m sd t df p-value d high-stakes traditional 72 171.2 21.58 .677 169 .499 .11 acp 99 168.7 24.24 non high-stakes traditional 57 176.7 21.42 1.672 115 .097 .31 acp 60 169.7 24.05 teachers’ self-efficacy. subject matter assigned a two-tailed independent t-test was used to determine if there was a statistically significant mean difference between the two subject matter assigned groups (high-stakes; non high-stakes). results suggested that the subject matter assigned to teach did not influence the self-efficacy of the first year teachers, t(286) = -1.208, p = .228, d = .14. first year teachers assigned to teach a high-stakes (taks) subject reported a lower relative overall mean self-efficacy (m = 169.8) than first year teachers assigned to teach a non high-stakes (non-taks) subject (m = 173.1). the statistical analysis demonstrated that there was insufficient evidence to support a significant mean difference in reported self-efficacy between first year teachers assigned to teach a high-stakes (taks) subject compared to those assigned a non highstakes (non-taks) subject. these results are displayed in table 3. high-stakes vs. non high-stakes teachers assigned to teach a high-stakes subject were separated out from teachers assigned to teach a non high-stakes subject. a two-tailed independent t-test was used to determine if there was a statistically significant mean difference between teacher training programs for (a) high-stakes teachers and (b) non high-stakes teachers. table 4 provides descriptive information regarding the certification programs and their influence on self-efficacy with teachers assigned to teach high-stakes or non highstakes subjects. for part (a), findings suggest that the type of certification training program does not influence the selfefficacy of first year teachers assigned to teach a taks subject, t(169) = .677, p = .499, d = .11. the statistical analysis demonstrated that there were no significant differences in reported self-efficacy between first year teachers assigned to teach a taks subject graduating from a traditional certification program as compared to those certified through an acp. for part (b), findings suggest that the type of certification training program does not influence the self-efficacy of first year teachers assigned to teach a non taks subject, t(115) = 1.672, p = .097, d = .31. the statistical analysis demonstrated that there were no significant differences in reported selfefficacy between first year teachers assigned to teach a non-taks subject graduating from a traditional certification program as compared to those certified through an acp. experience and mentoring a qualitative coding analysis was used to analyze the open-ended responses collected from asking the following question, how do you perceive the teacher certification training you received as influencing your self-efficacy and therefore your confidence in supporting first year teachers: certification program and assigned subject on their self-efficacy 9 your students to pass taks? in reflecting on what increases teacher self-efficacy to support their students to pass the taks test, teachers from across both the traditional and alternative certification programs echoed that their teacher training program was not a factor, but experience and mentoring was critical to their selfefficacy in the classroom. many of the participants felt that regardless of the training program, they did not feel prepared to administer the taks test. a common sentiment expressed by participants assigned a taks subject was expressed in statements such as; “i don’t think any program could fully prepare a first year teacher for the challenges of taks.” and “nothing truly can prepare you for being in the classroom with a room full of students that need your help to pass taks until you jump in the deep end and go for it!” having the opportunity to have experience working with students in the classroom was reported by the participants as the most important criteria to support a positive self-efficacy. i don’t feel as though a college can truly “teach” you how to have the confidence to support your students to pass the taks test. that confidence and self-efficacy can only be developed once you are in the classroom and begin having “true” teaching experiences. opportunities for experience were gained from working as an intern, a substitute teacher, or through a student teaching requirement as part of their training program. these experiences supported feelings of preparedness for working with all types of students. one participant stated, “the certification training played a very minute role, in comparison to my experience over the years as a substitute and youth mentor…” another teacher expressed, “interning was great. the classroom experience and hands on classroom management training helped me a great deal.” while another one commented, “i believe my student teaching had … [the] biggest impact on my self-efficacy.” additional examples of teacher responses emphasizing the importance of classroom experience are provided below. the classes were beneficial, but the most influencing factor of my training was student teaching. getting to experience teaching a taks grade level day to day with an experienced teacher helped build selfefficacy and confidence. i think the program i was involved in did a lot to prepare us for the classroom but, in reality, the actual classroom experience is the only thing that is going to give someone confidence and self-efficacy. i have subbed for the last five years, sometimes as a permanent sub prior to taks testing. these experiences were much more beneficial in preparing me for the taks challenges than anything my tcp offered. as part of my certification, i had to studentteach for an entire year. i truly believe that this gave me an advantage over teachers going through the acp programs. technically i am considered a first year teacher, but i felt coming in that i already had a year of experience. i feel that my college education has helped me to some extent. the one thing that has made the biggest difference in my confidence and readiness is the actual experience of having my own classroom. the other common theme expressed by the participants was the positive support received from being mentored. the different types of mentoring the participants discussed below include support from supervising teachers during student teaching, assigned mentors as first year probationary teachers, and fellow coworkers. the mentoring i received from a universityaccredited program has been invaluable. my mentors definitely made me a better teacher. my mentor in specific was amazing. she kept in touch with me personally and made sure to know what was going on in my personal life as well as in the classroom. i also had a district mentor, a school mentor, and i had regular meetings and lesson planning/co-teach experiences with a curriculum instruction administrator. i feel that between such a wonderful alternative certification program, a wonderful district, and a wonderful campus i was already set up to succeed. i think that i did receive some great information from [alternative certification program], but this first year would have been so difficult if i had not had the support from fellow teachers. my mentor teachers made it possible for me to succeed this year. i don't know what i would have done without them. region 4 prepared me very well for being in the classroom as far as rules/expectations/classroom procedures current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 were concerned. much of the training was related to lesson planning and differentiation of instruction, but i don’t feel like that prepared me or made me feel confident in supporting my students to pass taks. that particular confidence came from my coworkers. they walked me through what needed to be done to adequately prepare my students for taks. several of the first year teachers contributed their success to a combination of experience and mentoring. one participated stated, “i credit my confidence to the experience i gained student teaching and substitute teaching and to an extremely supportive mentor, 5th grade teaching team, and campus administration.” others echoed similar sentiments below. i feel that my self-efficacy and confidence in my students' preparedness to take the taks test comes from attending content team meetings where we addressed the taks objectives and lesson planned together. i feel that most of my training and skills comes from “on the job” training and the mentor program we have at my school. being in a classroom with a mentor teacher for a year i believed made all the difference in the world in how i conduct myself and my classroom...having those first hand experiences in a controlled setting was very helpful. when i started this year it was nice have already had essentially a first year under my belt because i taught a semester under a mentor teacher. my experience to me was very valuable because i had already spent a semester preparing students for a taks test for the subject i now teach. i don't know that i would have faired as well in lesson planning, discipline, differentiation, or daily student interaction if i had not had the first year with a mentor. discussion the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of the type of teacher certification training program (traditional vs. acp) and subject matter assigned to teach (high-stakes vs. non high-stakes) on the selfefficacy of first year teachers. results from the current study indicated that there was not a statistically significant mean difference between the type of certification program and its influence on a first year teacher’s self-efficacy. these results were in agreement with ludlow (2010), good et al. (2006), and tournaki et al. (2009) who concluded that new teacher efficacy was not tied to a specific certification pathway. however, these results contrast with murshidi et al. (2006) who found that beginning teachers who graduated from traditional certification programs perceived themselves as having a higher sense of self-efficacy compared to beginning teachers who graduated from alternative programs. regarding whether the subject matter assigned to teach influenced the self-efficacy of a first year teacher, findings demonstrated that there was not a statistically significant difference between the reported self-efficacy of first year teachers assigned to teach a taks subject compared to those assigned to teach a non-taks subject. research addressing teachers assigned to teach a highstakes grade level demonstrated that teachers managed the added pressure by focusing instruction on test preparation (abrams et al., 2003). however, many of the teachers they surveyed that taught in grades with high-stakes testing wanted to transfer to grades that did not require that testing. abrams (2003) raised concerns with teacher morale being impacted due to testing policies that support accountability sanctions. results of this study determined that first year teacher self-efficacy was not significantly influenced by having to teach a high-stakes subject. as evidenced by the findings of this study, confident teachers will rise to challenges regardless of the teaching assignment. findings also demonstrated that there was not a significant mean difference reported in self-efficacy between first year teachers assigned to teach a high-stakes subject graduating from a traditional certification program as compared to those certified through an acp. new teacher self-efficacy did not appear to be tied to a specific training program. teacher training programs are not preparing teacher candidates to understand high-stakes testing; however, they are also not impacting their selfefficacy in having to teach a high-stakes subject (mulvenon, stegman, & ritter, 2005). teachers may not want to be held accountable for their students passing, but it is not directly impacting their students’ performance. in costigan’s (2002) study, the participants related that that they were very concerned about the potentially harmful effects of high-stakes testing on their students. the teachers indicated that their teacher-training program had not prepared them for this type of testing culture. participants were asked how their teacher certification training influenced their self-efficacy and therefore, their confidence in supporting their students to pass the taks test. qualitative analysis illustrated the importance of experience and mentoring as necessary to support teacher self-efficacy. in addition, many participants from all five types of certification training expressed that they did not feel that their teacher-training program prepared them to support their students to pass a taks (high-stakes) test. responses supported the quantitative analysis demonstrating that the type of certification and subject matter assigned did not significantly influence a teacher’s self-efficacy. as a result, teacher preparation programs may need to focus first year teachers: certification program and assigned subject on their self-efficacy 11 more on helping teacher candidates acquire the tools needed for high-stakes testing so they are better prepared to support their students. one critical function of any school district’s human resources department is to recruit quality teachers who can make a direct impact on student success. according to darling-hammond et al. (2002), campus principals perceive that traditionally prepared teachers are viewed as better prepared for classroom management. results from this study support current research demonstrating that alternative certification training programs do not significantly impact first year teacher’s self-efficacy and thus, do not compromise effectiveness in the classroom. in addition, being assigned a high-stakes subject to teach does not necessarily impact a first year teacher’s self-efficacy and ultimately compromise effectiveness in the classroom. despite the limitations of this study, the findings have important implications and can inform hiring practices for school districts nationally, as well as in texas. first year teachers have a strong self-efficacy regardless of their certified training program. the amount of prior experience as an aide, substitute or student teacher appears to level the “playing field.” student teaching has long been recognized as an integral part of traditional training programs. in a study by caprano, caprano, and helfeldt (2010), they determined that aligning coursework with field experience through a partnership between school districts and universities produced the highest ratings in perceived levels of competence from teacher candidates. hiring authorities should look at prior field experience such as student teaching, substituting, or working as a paraprofessional as opposed to type of training programs to inform hiring recommendations. additionally, without alternative teacher training programs, school districts would likely not meet state and federal mandates for highly qualified staffing requirements. for example, texas recruits approximately one third of its new hires from acps (national center for alternative certification, 2010). alternative certification programs that do not have many opportunities for a student teaching experience should increase opportunities for time in the classroom. unfortunately, many acps provide the pedagogy during a summer session culminating in a test and then place these first year teachers in a classroom, without the benefit of a “student teaching” opportunity. school districts and especially campus administrators become overwhelmed with the mentoring responsibilities (steadman & simmons, 2007). in texas, many districts offer summer school to improve student achievement. this would be an opportunity for teacher candidates to gain some experience with a strong mentor teacher. time spent on fieldwork activities offers teacher candidates opportunities to build feelings of teacher selfefficacy (redmon, 2007). since many teacher candidates obtain their training from acps, ensuring that these acps provide the necessary training practice would support the development of quality teachers. for example, in texas, with the introduction of the state of texas assessments of academic readiness (staar), which appears to be a more rigorous state assessment, and increasing state assessment standards, it is imperative that effective teachers are in all classrooms. in a state that requires assessments for students to be promoted, teacher-training programs should also consider adding to their course requirements one on preparing teachers for high stakes assessments. first year teachers that have an understanding of the accountability system as well as specific assessment requirements will feel better prepared to support their students. recommendations for future research several recommendations are suggested for future research. this study should be repeated with data collected during new teacher induction and then compared with data from the same teachers at the end of the year. survey results may look different prior to having a year of teaching experience and taks testing experience. since research has demonstrated that a strong efficacy is highly correlated with a teacher’s effectiveness, after surveys are completed at the beginning of the year, results could be compared with the student achievement from that teacher’s class to determine if there is a difference as compared with other teachers’ impact at the same school and at the same level. if findings indicate a significant relationship between high self-efficacy scores and student achievement as measured by state assessment results, then future use of this survey should be considered for teacher placement decisions in high-stakes versus non high-stakes assignments. references abrams, l., pedulla, j., & madaus, g. (2003). views from the classroom: teachers’ opinions of statewide testing programs. theory into practice, 42(1), 18-29. bandura, a. (1994). self-efficacy. in v. s. ramachaudran (ed.), encyclopedia of human behavior (pp. 7181). new york: academic press. ball, d., & forzani, f. (2010). what does it take to make a teacher? phi delta kappan, 92(2), 8-12. ballou, d., & podgursky, m. (2000). reforming teacher preparation and licensing: what is the evidence? teachers college record, 102(1), 5-27. boyd, d., grossman, p., lankford, h., loeb, s., & wyckoff, j. (2006). how changes in entry requirements alter the teacher workforce and affect student achievement. education finance and policy, 1(2), 176–216. brown, c. (2010). children of reform: the impact of high-stakes education reform on preservice teachers. journal of teacher education, 61(5), current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 12 477-491. bunch, g., aguirre, j., & tellez, k. 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(2007). the alternate route teachers’ transition to the classroom: preparation, support, and retention. nassp bulletin, 91(1), 98-113. first year teachers: certification program and assigned subject on their self-efficacy 13 national center for alternative certification (2010). alternative teacher certification: a state-by-state analysis. retrieved from http://www.teachnow.org/overview.cfm national center for education information (2012). alternative routes to teacher certification: and overview. retrieved from http://www.ncei.com/alt-teacher-cert.htm national council for accreditation of teacher education (2008). unit standards in effect 2008. retrieved from http://ncate.org/standards/ncateunitstan dards/unitstandardsineffect2008/tabid/476/defa ult.aspx nces (2011). the condition of education: 2011. retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011033.pdf peterson, p., & nadler, d. (2009). what happens when states have genuine alternative certification? education digest, 57-60. qu, y., & becker, b. (2003, april). does traditional teacher certification imply quality? a metaanalysis. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, chicago, il. retrieved from https://www.msu.edu/~mkennedy/tqqt/report s/qubecker03.pdf redmon, r. j. (2007, october). impact of teacher preparation upon teacher efficacy. online submission, paper presented at the annual meeting of the american association for teaching and curriculum, cleveland, oh. retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/pdfs/ed500013.pdf robertson, j., & singleton, j. (2010). comparison of traditional versus alternative preparation of special education teachers. teacher education and special education, 33(3), 213-224. steadman, s., & simmons, j. (2007). the cost of mentoring non-university certified teachers: who pays the price? phi delta kappan, 88(5), 364367. texas education agency (2012). taks revised information booklets. retrieved from http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index3.aspx?id=3693 &menu_id=793 tournaki, n., lyublinskaya, i., & carolan, b. v. (2009). pathways to teacher certification: does it really matter when it comes to efficacy and effectiveness? action in teacher education, 30(4), 96-109. tschannen-moran, m., & woolfolk hoy, a. (2001). teacher efficacy: capturing an elusive construct. teaching and teacher education, 17, 783-805. united states department of education (2002). the no child left behind act of 2001. retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/107110.pdf viadero, d. (2010). draw called over routes to teaching. education week, 29(31), 1. retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/toc/2010/05/12/index .html wayman, j. c., foster, a. m., & mantale-bromley, c. (2003). a comparison of the professional concerns of traditionally prepared and alternatively licensed new teachers. the high school journal, 86(3), 35-40. wayne, a., & youngs, p. (2003). teacher characteristics and student achievement gains. review of educational research, 73(1), 89-122. zeichner, k. (2006). reflections of a university-based teacher educator on the future of collegeand university-based teacher education. journal of teacher education, 57(3), 326-340. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 14 appendix first year teachers: certification program and assigned subject on their self-efficacy 15 article citation fox, a. g., & peters, m. l. (2013). first year teachers: certification program and assigned subject on their self-efficacy. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1117 author notes april g. fox, ed.d. executive director of special programs la porte independent school district 1002 san jacinto street la porte, texas 77571 (281) 604-7034 foxap@lpisd.org dr. april fox is the executive director of special programs for la porte independent school district. her responsibilities include nurses, counselors, special education, and dyslexia services for children. prior to this, she was the coordinator for related services at goose creek consolidated independent school district. dr. fox has spent the bulk of her career at galena park independent school district, which included 22 years as a speech language pathologist. she received her doctorate in educational leadership and a masters in educational management from the university of houston-clear lake. additionally, she received a masters in communication disorders from the university of houston. michelle l. peters, ed.d. assistant professor research & applied statistics university of houston-clear lake school of education 2700 bay area blvd. houston, texas 77058 (202) 321-3752 petersm@uhcl.edu dr. michelle l. peters is currently a tenured-track assistant professor of quantitative research methods at the university of houston-clear lake’s school of education. for the past 13 years, michelle has instructed various statistics, mathematics, and quantitative analysis courses at both the masters and doctoral level. prior to her tenure at uhcl she was the research lab coordinator for the george washington university’s graduate school of education and human development. she holds a m.s. degree in nuclear engineering from the missouri university of science and technology, a secondary mathematics teaching certification from drury university, and a doctoral degree from the george washington university. manuscript received: 11/06/12 revisions received:1/30/13 accepted: 2/1/13 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 16 volume 16, number 1 february 21, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template 1 volume 2, number 4 september 8, 1999 issn 1099-839x book review — american higher education: a history k.b. melear florida state university lucas, christopher j. (1994). american higher education: a history. new york: st. martin's press. pp. xxi + 375. isbn 0-312-12945-9. 15.95 american higher education: a history, by christopher j. lucas is a historical narrative of the origins and development of the system of higher learning in place in contemporary america. it extends and updates earlier works in this area, and provides, as the author had hoped, "a more 'accessible' historical account, useful chiefly for nonspecialists and a more general readership . . ." but is nonetheless a thorough review of the historical underpinnings of american higher education. this work is recommended for students and professionals who seek a broad understanding of contemporary higher education and how it came to pass. christopher lucas' book, american higher education: a history, traces higher education in america from its historical origins to its contemporary status, seeking to define the predicates of our system of higher learning and to delineate the course of events which determined the development of colleges and universities today. it is a critical review of an area previously explored in great detail by two classic works on the history of higher education in america, the american college and university: a history (1962) by frederick rudolph, and higher education in transition: a history of american colleges and universities, 1636-1976 (1976) by john brubacher and willis rudy. the intention of lucas's work, however, is clearly not to displace these prior histories, but to update them in a manner readable by anyone with an interest in the topic. in that regard, lucas has presented, as the final portion of the work, a section on contemporary american higher education in an effort to bridge the gap between the other works and the current status of higher education. this historical narrative, therefore, serves as an extension of earlier works, and accomplishes the purposes delineated by the author to present ". . . a more 'accessible' historical account, useful chiefly for nonspecialists and a more general readership than the audiences for which earlier studies were intended, though without sacrificing essential material." lucas has produced a very smoothly written text which flows logically across time periods, avoiding the technical vernacular and discontinuous framework characterized by earlier works. the book is dubiously titled, as the first of its four major sections (roughly one-third of the actual text of the book, as the final 58 pages are comprised of notes, sources, and indices), entitled "historical origins and antecedents," explores higher education in antiquity. although incongruent with the book's title, the discussion of the effects of ancient education is concomitant to the study of contemporary higher education. in this section, lucas examines the role of higher learning and scholarship from a number of ancient perspectives, including a review of mesopotamian and egyptian scribal schooling and a thorough discourse on the influence of early greek, roman, and christian influences on education, emphasizing the works of plato and aristotle. lucas moves then into the medieval period in european history to examine the rise of the cathedral school and its transformation into the early collegia and its ultimate renaissance. the final portion of this section then current issues in education vol. 2 no. 4 2 examines post-medieval european academe's contribution to the foundation of higher learning in colonial america to provide a conceptual framework for the predicates of the concept of modern higher education. part two "american higher education: the formative period," begins the exploration of our system of higher education by examining the college in existence in colonial and antebellum america. although this work can in no way be considered an institutional history, the necessary progression of institutional origins is outlined in great detail in this section. the early institutions of higher learning in the original colonies were founded on the notion of piety and the universal curriculum was a clear reflection of this ideology. according to lucas, the curriculum was less of an exploration of the available body of knowledge and more of a ". . . repository of knowledge to be absorbed and committed to memory, not criticized or questioned." the american revolution, however, engendered dramatic changes in this philosophy, and students found themselves with a new voice, of which they made frequent use! the college movement began to boom, and the jacksonian mentality of the antebellum years created a move toward practical vocationalism and away from liberal learning. the ensuing vigorous curricular debates are thoroughly discussed in this section. the pernicious effects of the civil war on higher education are examined, and the evolution of the american college and university is developed through a discussion of the birth of the landgrant college, institutions of higher learning for women and black students, and the rise of the elective curricula and graduate education. part three "american higher education: maturation and development," examines the tumultuous changes which took place throughout the course of the twentieth century and their effects on american higher education. colleges and universities were no longer seeking leadership from clergymen—rather, they desired a president with a penchant for business and fundraising to help satisfy the needs of the new areas of research and institutional expansion. particular attention is given to changes in the nature of student life, as universities became ". . . more impersonal, more permissive, less directly engaged in student supervision." indeed, a clearly outstanding difference between institutions of higher learning in this time period compared to their predecessors was size—the twentieth century institution was larger and more focused on graduate education and inquiry, an influence of the german university model. these larger and more diverse schools of higher learning saw many changes take place in the world of academe as professors sought the idea of "academic freedom", students were admitted based upon entrance examination scores, and community colleges began to play a significant role as providers of students who sought a varied curricula. lucas' treatment of curricular changes throughout the course of the development of higher education in america provides the reader with a foundation for a basic understanding of the social and political influences on the prescribed curriculum over time. further study of the curriculum in america should be directed to frederick rudolph's (1977) curriculum: a history of the american undergraduate course of study since 1636. the final chapter of this section focuses on post-world war ii higher learning in america, and emphasizes the effect of growing government involvement in higher education, most particularly with regard to the dramatic increases in enrollments and the changed face of the student population brought about by the g.i. bill. lucas then brings us into contemporary america as he traces the changing role of minorities and women in higher education, and paints a vivid portrait of student life in the tempest of the 1960's and 1970's. part four "contemporary challenges and issues," chronicles the issues facing american higher education today, and lucas takes care to present current topics without inflecting his opinions or interpretation by attempting to examine arguments made from each viewpoint represented. he presents us with the predicating arguments surrounding such issues such as multiculturalism and "political correctness" and the influence of the ideas on american higher education, the fragmentation of the curriculum and the related rise in vocationalism, and the dreaded "publish or perish" doctrine faced by many faculty members. the final chapter of the book brings us full circle by integrating a historical context into lucas' assessment of the condition of higher education today in an attempt to explain where higher education stands today and the events which shaped the course of its arrival. in an intelligent society, we must learn from the triumphs and failures of the past. it is therefore necessary to maintain a working knowledge of bygone events in order to understand our current condition. christopher lucas has provided us with a means of assessing the colorful history of higher education in america so that we may draw our own conclusions regarding our current status and direction for the future. lucas' book is central to the study of higher education for just that reason: it is a concisely written text, devoid of technical verbiage and detail, which opens a window on the past to help us shape our vision for the future. he has achieved his stated goal of creating a work which satisfies the need to develop a sense of context, a ". . . setting within which both continuities and essential discontinuities with the past may be examined fruitfully." lucas' book, for this reason, would serve as an excellent complement to the library of anyone interested in a broad overview of the history and examination of american higher education. book review — american higher education: a history 3 references brubacher, j. s., & rudy, w.(1976). higher education in transition: a history of american colleges and universities, 1636-1976. new york: harper & row. rudolph, f. (1962). the american college and university: a history. athens, georgia: the university of georgia press. rudolph, f. (1977). curriculum: a history of the american undergraduate course of study since 1636. san francisco: jossey bass. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 4 4 1999 article citation melear, k. b. (1999, september 8). book review — american higher education: a history. current issues in education [on-line], 2(4). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number4/. author notes k.b. melear is a doctoral student in higher education at florida state university. his research interests include the history of american higher education, with particular regard to the history of higher education in the south, the influences of politics and policy on institutions of higher learning, and leadership studies. he holds a bachelor and master of accountancy from the university of mississippi. k.b. melear can be reached via e-mail at kmelear@aol.com. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation melear, k. b. (2011). book review — american higher education: a history. current issues in education, 2(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/828 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number4/index.html mailto:kmelear@aol.com http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 cie template 1 volume 18, number 2 august 19, 2015 issn 1099-839x using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument lorraine dagostino 1 , james carifio 2 , and qing zhao 4 university of massachusetts at lowell jennifer d. c. bauer 3 middlesex community college nor hashimah hashim 5 universiti sains malaysia though the designers may claim otherwise, the vast majority of reading comprehension instruments measure a student’s mastery of specific skills, such as decoding or phonological awareness, rather than their ability to extract meaning from text. this article is the third in a series in which the researchers examine two specific malaysian reading comprehension instruments developed by a team of researchers at the universiti of sains malaysia. these tests were developed for the purpose of evaluating reading comprehension abilities of students in the primary grades (test i for grade 1-3, test ii for grades 4-6) in malaysia (hashim, 2006). in the previous studies, we established that the english version of the test was comparable to the malay version, and that bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001), could be used to classify the test items. in this study, we extend our prior work by comparing the malay classification scheme with bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). they found that rarely did questions classified by the malay structure as testing higher-order reading skills, such as evaluation, actually do so. instead, most questions merely identified students’ reading skills, rather than comprehension. thus, more work is needed in order to develop an instrument that actually measures the evaluative abilities of students’ as they interact with texts. keywords: reading comprehension; cultural background; cognitive process; bloom’s revised taxomony for decades researchers in the field of education (and beyond) have attempted to define the term “reading comprehension,” as well as isolate the skills needed to extract meaning from text. in conjunction with this research, models of reading comprehension were (and continue to be) developed, and subsequently tests were designed to assess the reading comprehension skills of students of all ages. however, do these tests actually measure what they purport and reflect models of reading comprehension? with the amorphous definitions of reading comprehension found within reading research literature, is it possible to develop a test that accurately measures a student’s ability to extract meaning from text? previous work prior to this study, we completed two studies using the same series of reading comprehension tests current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 2 developed by a team of researchers at the universiti of sains malaysia. the reason we selected the malay tests is because these tests were constructed using the dagostino and carifio model of reading comprehension (2004), which was developed for the english language. in the first study, we evaluated the comparability tests with their english translations on the basis of skills and levels according to a conceptual framework of reading comprehension developed by dagostino and carifio (2004; dagostino, carifio, bauer, & zhao, 2013). the results of that study showed strong correlations across the malay and english versions of the test on the classification of reading skills and levels of reading comprehension. the second study examined the english version of the test to see if there were any correlations of bloom’s classifications of cognitive dimensions of thought with the classification by reading skill and level of comprehension as determined in our previous work. to accomplish this task, three raters classified the test items using bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). the results demonstrated high-levels of rater agreements among the classification for each test item, indicating that bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) could appropriately be applied as a classification scheme for the tests. these findings were reported at the 2013 annual eastern educational research association (eera) conference. present work after analyzing the results of the first two studies, we felt that more work needed to be done. the primary purpose of the present work was to draw upon the results of the previous studies, and compare and analyze the relationship between the malay tests classification system and bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). with this purpose in mind, we set out to explore the following research question: what relationship, if any, exists between the original malay classification system and bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001)? organization of the paper with this research question in mind, we will begin with a description of the malay tests, followed by an overview of their development and content. next we will describe bloom’s revised taxonomy of the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) and explain its application to the present study. next, we will outline this study, including the parameters and limitations, methodology, procedures, results and subsequent data analysis. finally, we will discuss our findings, their implications, and possible future research. the next two sections of the paper, describing the malay tests and bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension, were originally published as part of the author’s previous studies (see dagostino et al., 2013). the malay tests the description and construction of the malay tests the original two malay tests, constructed by a team of researchers at the universiti of sains malaysia, were developed for the purpose of evaluating reading comprehension abilities of students in the primary grades (test i for grade 1-3, test ii for grades 4-6) in malaysia (hashim, 2006). the following section of this article describes the process for the development and the content of these tests. steps for design and content of the malay instruments using the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension (1994) as a theoretical basis, the development of the test focused on three components: a) defining and selecting the category of the comprehension level as well as of the comprehension skill, b) selection and development of the reading texts, and c) the development of the test questions and the answers. the two tests were designed by conducting a preliminary table 1 specifications for malay reading comprehension tests with this general template being the same for test i and test ii reading comprehension category reading skills reading skills literal (l) l1a, l1b, l1c identifying meaning of word/ phrase/ sentence l2 identifying main idea l3 identifying important point l4 making comparison l5 identifying cause-effect l6 identifying sequence of ideas/events inferential (f) f1 interpreting main idea f2 interpreting important point f3 interpreting comparison f4 interpreting cause-effect f5 making a conclusion critical creative (k) k1 evaluating k2 making a conclusion k3 internalizing k4 identifying the moral of the story/lesson using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 3 survey that included a discussion with malay teachers, a review of teaching learning materials and observations of teachers teaching in a classroom. once the survey was completed, a first draft was developed for test i and for test ii. the writing of the first draft was accomplished through a series of workshops with malay language teachers, experts from curriculum development center, administrators from the district education office and state education department, lecturers of school of educational studies from the universiti sains malaysia (hashim, 2006). as a result of this work, the researchers established the following table of specifications (table 1), which outlines the relationships between the reading comprehension levels and reading skills underlying the construct of both tests. defining the reading comprehension levels and the reading comprehension skills the reading comprehension levels and the reading skills determine the difficulty and the nature of the reading texts and the test items. the malaysian tests have three comprehension levels defined as follows (hashim, 2006): a) literal (message extraction) reading comprehension, which refers to the memorization of facts in texts where information is explicitly stated at a basic level of thinking; b) inferential (message interpretation) reading comprehension which refers to the ability of students to interpret meaning where they need to use overt information along with intuition, reasoning, and experience to attain the higher level of thinking assessed by the malay tests; and, c) critical/creative (message evaluation) reading comprehension, which refers to the student’s ability to do an overall critical evaluation of certain information or an idea that has been read in terms of the precision and/or suitability of the given information of a new idea, encountered. this critical evaluation may require some divergent thinking and depend to some degree upon the knowledge and personal experience of the student, but it focuses mostly on convergent critical thinking being done by the student. reading comprehension skills. there are ten reading comprehension skills that are assessed by the malay tests (hashim, 2006): (a) identifying meaning of word/phrase/sentence; (b) identifying the main idea; (c) identifying the important point; (d) identifying the causeeffect relationship; (e) identifying the sequence of ideas/events; (f) making a comparison; (g) drawing a conclusion; (h) evaluating; (i) internalizing; (k) identifying the moral of the story/lesson. these ten skills range from simple reading comprehension to what is called deep or deeper understanding, which is a first step towards what is called evaluative reading. these skills are the ones that usually constitute the classification of items assessed in most reading tests. types and contents of reading texts there are several types of text that make the text broad in scope and representative of various types of reading of non-technical materials that are encountered in daily reading situations (hashim, 2006). there are essays, fiction, reports, letters, poems, biographies, speeches, dialogues, and news reports. there are 12 texts for test i and 12 texts for test ii. there are various subjects (literature, history, etc.) the individual texts are 100 words or less for test i and 100 words or more for test ii. the passages in the test for grades (1-3) are simpler in structure as well as expectations for level of reading comprehension than those used for grades 4-6. a research group, three expert teachers, teacher trainers, psychometric and experts from the university developed the texts, with ideas for the texts coming from books and magazines. development of the test items the question and answer formats for the tests took various forms such as a) sentences from text that needed completion with a choice of answers, b) items that needed a choice of answers in multiple choice form, and c) instructions and blanks to be filled in with multiple choice form. an item specification table was developed to categorize the types of items in the test (hashim, 2006). each test consists of 50 multiple choice items designed to evaluate reading comprehension with consideration given to reading skill ability and reading comprehension level. some specific things were considered in the item development. they are as follows: a) arrangement of each item was based upon reading comprehension skill (forms, style, pupils’ existing knowledge), and b) implicit information and inferential definition. in the case of implicit information, the text considers information in the text and students’ background. in the case of inferential definition the test considers an integrated synthesis of literal with existing knowledge, intuition and reader’s imagination. the following table of specifications include the classification by reading comprehension level and reading skill for each test item. both malay tests were built from the same general table of specifications, but classification by reading skill varied for each test (table 2 and 3; see appendix a). design and choice of answers and distracters a multiple-choice format was used because it was considered as most objective. each answer had four options (a, b, c, d for each item with each option coded a=1, b=2, c=3 and d= 4). the correct answer was scored 1, and the wrong answer was scored 0. the design of the answers and distracters required a) the suitability of choice of answers relative to the cognitive task that was related to the content and the texts, and b) syntax and semantic forms needed to be different from the texts so current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 4 that students could be assessed on how well they understood the context of the meaning (norhashim, 2006). reliability measures of the two malay tests the malay researchers examined three types of internal consistency reliability estimators for both tests with the results being almost identical for both tests. the first internal consistency (of test-taker overall performance) reliability estimator computed was the cronbach alpha coefficient, which was r = +.66 (n = 2763) for test i and r = +.61 (n = 4101) for test ii. as is well known, test length, sample size, and test content and item type heterogeneity affect and limit the size of the cronbach alpha one will observe in any given context. as test content and the cognitive levels and operations assessed are so heterogeneous for both tests, the cronbach alphas observed for each test are quite good to excellent given that test lengths (50 items each) and sample sizes (n = 2763 and 4101+) and are in the range that one would expect given the qualitative characteristics of both tests. the second internal consistency reliability estimator the malay researchers computed was the guttman reliability coefficient, which assess the degree to which students’ performances on the test are hierarchical in character (i.e., students who do well on low level items are not doing well on high level items and vice versa), which performances should be for test i and test ii given how they were constructed and their qualitative characteristics. the guttman reliability coefficient for test i was r = +.77 (n = 2763) and for test ii was r = +.72 (n = 4101), which are excellent to outstanding and indicate that this particular qualitative characteristic of both tests are as hypothesized and purported. the third internal consistency reliability estimator the malay researchers computed was the kuderrichardson odd-even items reliability coefficient, which assesses the degree to which items types and their characteristics are evenly balanced across the test, as well as students’ performances on the items on the test. for example, the kuder-richardson reliability coefficient would be low if all of the odd items were easy (or recall) items and all of the even items were difficult (or skill) item, or if all of the poorly constructed and nonfunctioning items were easy items as opposed as opposed to this characteristic being evenly balanced across both the odd and even items. the kuder-richardson odd-even items reliability coefficient for test i was r = +.77 (n = 2763) and for test ii was r = +.73 (n = 4101), which are good to excellent and indicate that the various types of items and their various characteristics were evenly balanced across each test as were student performances. as one-administration internal estimates of various types of consistencies in student performances across each of these two tests and thus internal consistency reliabilities estimates, the results obtained by the malay researchers of the three different indicators of internal reliabilities estimates were excellent. high oneadministration internal consistency estimates of reliabilities, however, are no guarantee that test-retest reliabilities will be equally high as they could actually be lower or higher which is why the malay researchers are currently collecting the data to generate the test-retest reliability coefficients as these coefficients are key in the assessment of change across time on these measures. but to date, the reliabilities estimates for each test that are available are excellent and particularly so given the internal complexity of each test, and each is also initially supportive empirically of specific aspects of the construct validity of each test, although not as direct or strong evidence as other analyses might indicate. bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) and its application to the present study bloom’s original taxonomy was designed to help teachers establish objectives for instruction, learning and assessment. this revised taxonomy has served to guide the design and the implementation of accountability programs and standards-based curriculum. the revision of the original taxonomy that was used in the present study has been refined to incorporate new knowledge into the original framework. this revised taxonomy gave us a good conceptual framework for determining the cognitive levels and ability reflected in test items on the reading comprehension test that we expect to use as an assessment instrument in subsequent studies. the test already has been examined for general levels of reading comprehension and reading skills. what we hoped to accomplish in the present study was to compare the classification system developed by the malay test writers with a table of specifications developed using bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). this taxonomy was chosen from other ways to evaluate cognitive abilities because it is most applicable, familiar and understandable to the classroom teacher, yet detailed enough to give valuable insight into cognitive processes that are considered necessary to learning and to the assessment of success in instruction and learning (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). further work is planned to compare bloom’s revised taxonomy with other classification frameworks for measuring cognitive abilities as they may manifest themselves in tests of reading comprehension. using bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) gave us a standard, well-recognized classification system for our immediate goals, and it also indirectly should be useful for guiding instruction and curriculum guidelines that may be generated by our present work. this consistency across these tasks should simplify the work of the classroom teacher and the researcher. in sum, bloom’s revised taxonomy gives us definitions for classifying the learning, teaching and assessing of the cognitive dimension of thought that is using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 5 central to instruction in most subject areas, and in relationship to our work in reading comprehension as an aspect of assessment of literacy in a way that differs from most current measures of reading comprehension directly. it should be noted that although our classification process focuses on the categories of the cognitive process dimension of the taxonomy, it also takes into consideration two categories of the knowledge dimension, that of factual and conceptual knowledge, but not procedural and metacognitive knowledge. however, categorizing test items using the two categories of knowledge (factual and conceptual knowledge) was not part of the present study. in sum, bloom’s revised taxonomy gives us objectives for classifying the learning, teaching and assessing of the cognitive dimension of thought that is central to instruction in most subject areas, and in relationship to our work in reading comprehension as an aspect of assessment of literacy in a way that differs from most current measures of reading comprehension. in table 4 (appendix b) is a chart of the bloom’s revised taxonomy and descriptions of each categories as found in a taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessment (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). methodology procedures the malay version of the test was translated into english, and in a previous study, three expert raters completed the inter-rater judgments of the answers, levels and skills of each test item. in a subsequent study, the raters applied bloom’s taxonomy as a method of categorization for each test item. the raters had either a ph.d. in language arts and literacy, or were completing work for that degree. one of the raters spoke both english and chinese, and another works with young children from several cultures and language backgrounds. previous ratings by these same raters had judged the items for skills and levels as described earlier in this paper with good results (dagostino et al., 2013). the raters first made a comparison between the malay table of specifications and bloom’s revised taxonomy and then derived a ‘cross-walk” from the first malay classification system to the other (bloom’s rt). using the definition of levels and skills as outlined in the malay table of specifications, the raters assigned each individual test item to a level of bloom’s revised taxonomy using the definitions of the levels, which essentially estimated the overlap, intersection or “correlation” of the two classification systems as a results of the 50 items so classified for each malay test. the resulting “cross-walked” joint table of specifications is presented in tables 5 and 6 (see appendix c). next, the raters evaluated each test item from both malay tests and classified them using bloom’s revised taxonomy of cognitive abilities. the three expert raters completed their individual judgments by first reading each item of test i and test ii independently, and then determining the bloom’s revised taxonomy level of cognitive ability they felt best applied to the dimension of reading comprehension being tested. the categories for classification are as follows: 1) remember, 2) understand, 3) apply, 4) analyze, 5) evaluate, 6) create. (as a reminder of each category, see table 4.) after independent readings and ratings of the test items using the revised taxonomy were completed, the raters compared their judgments for all of their ratings. there was not a need for a reconciliation process among the raters based upon this discussion because of the high level of agreement among the three raters. after the quantitative analysis of the ratings was completed, the raters met again to discuss the results to evaluate the meaning of the raters’ agreements on the item ratings. results and data analysis the analysis and results section of this paper presents the data and its interpretation for the following research question: what relationship, if any, exists between the original malay classification system and bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001)? to analyze the data, we compared the crosswalk tables of specifications of test items by malay levels/skills and bloom’s revised taxonomy (tables 5 and 6), which predicted the bloom’s revised taxonomy classification of each test item based on the malay table of specifications, with the actual bloom’s revised taxonomy classifications (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) the raters assigned to each test item. table 7 (see appendix d) represents the comparison between these expected results and the actual results for the evaluation of the test items. as can be seen from table 7, there was a major discrepancy between the predicted results and the actual results. according to the original malay table of specifications, there are three levels of reading comprehension for each test, literal, inferential, and critical/creative. these levels correspond to bloom’s revised taxonomy cognitive processes of remember, understand, and evaluate (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). however, when we sorted each individual test item for both test, they found that only 40% of the items for test 1, and 38% of the items for test 2 matched the predicted results found in the cross-walk tables of specifications of test items by malay levels/skills and bloom’s revised taxonomy (tables 5 and 6). additionally, 22% of the items on test 1, and 16% of the items on test 2, were sorted into categories of bloom’s revised taxonomy that were not on the cross-walk tables of specifications. furthermore, though the malay table of specifications indicates a mix of literal, inferential, and current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 6 critical/creative test items for each test, when we applied the bloom’s revised taxonomy framework (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) to the test items, we found that the majority of the test items fell into the category of understanding (62% for test 1, 58% for test 2 – see the full results in figure 1). figure 1. reconciled answers for each malay test. this figure illustrates the reconciled answers of the three raters when evaluating the individual answers of the two malay tests using bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension as a framework. findings and discussion based upon the results of the analyses, we have found three categories of concerns and questions that should help us focus our discussion. the first category focuses on the comparison of the malay classifications and the bloom’s revised taxonomy classifications (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) by addressing two questions. the two questions are: a) why did the predicted bloom’s and the actual bloom’s classifications not match as we hoped that they would? b) does the bloom’s classification more accurately describe test items than the malay classification, or does it simply refine or transform the malay classification in some way? in response to these questions, we wish to suggest that the mismatch may be attributed to the fact that the predicted classifications are drawn from the malay classification system, whereas the actual classifications were based upon an evaluation of the individual test items using the bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). in this case then, the malay classification of the test items may reflect something quite different from the cognitive processes that we believe are at the heart of reading comprehension and understanding as they are identified bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001), or that the taxonomy intends to do. this discrepancy in the two classifications suggests that each system may actually represent a different view of reading comprehension and point to strengths and weaknesses in these two views. we propose that bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) be considered as a construct for transforming the malay system or levels, as the bloom’s revised taxonomy classifications challenge the malay classification system as a way to measure reading comprehension. we also believe that the bloom’s classifications (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) reflects the dagostino-carifio model (1994) model of reading comprehension, as described in their original work, better than the malay system does, raising questions about how the dagostino-carifio model (1994) was actually applied in the original malay work. what we believe is that this discrepancy reflects the idea that what the malay classifications are doing is reflecting readers’ behaviors rather than the readers’ understanding of the text, where understanding means getting meaning and showing cognitive level of thought. this notion of reading comprehension is part of the substance of the dagostinocarifio model (1994), and will direct our future work. this thinking in addressing the first concern and questions leads us to the second category of concern, which is the question: is the skills model, as reflected in the malay classifications, adequate or too limited for the needs of the reader in today’s world? that is, is looking at behaviors, as has been done for years in the assessment of reading comprehension, rather than at meaning and cognition, misleading us about the readers’ optimal performance in comprehending a text? we believe that it is, and that changes need to be made in the model used for assessing reading comprehension so that it reflects the reader’s understanding (ability to get meaning and cognitive level) rather than the skills reflected in the reader’s behavior. we believe that our data challenges the perception that assessing skills assesses reading comprehension adequately, and raises the question: do we need a different way to test reading comprehension? and what then is the goal in doing so? if we consider the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension (1994), we find the answer that the ability to evaluate a text is a reasonable, attainable and necessary goal for the kind of assessment that we seek. implicit in the dagostino-carifio model (1994) is the principle that evaluation runs constantly throughout the reading comprehension process, and that without evaluation, understanding of the text is incomplete and the reading process quite limited. and it is this dimension of reading comprehension that is missing from the present assessment of reading comprehension, particularly in the instruments like the malay tests, for the primary and intermediate grades. we think that the omission is based upon a limited view of the cognitive abilities of young readers as well as the difficulty of assessing this dimension of reading comprehension with psychometric 0 10 20 30 40 t o ta ls categories of bloom’s revised taxonomy – the cognitive dimension test 1 test 2 using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 7 certainty, particularly given the formats for measurement that are presently used. our belief is that when the content of the passages of a reading comprehension assessment instrument is familiar and relevant to the young reader’s background that they can do the higher-level thinking required to evaluate a text. we also believe that using a classification of test items like bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) will give a better profile of how well a reader understands a text and gets meaning rather than simply reflect the skills applied to processing the text. we acknowledge that some assessment instruments may include items that claim to require some critical or evaluative reading, but we do not believe that, in general, most instruments do it adequately. in turn, instruments do not tell us a reader’s optimal ability, or inform educators as to how well the reader will meet the demands of today’s world. we believe that the results of the present study point in the direction that we need to go to accomplish this goal; that is, to measure higher-levels of thinking as they apply to reading comprehension and find a good format to do so. the third and final category of concern has to do with the possible limitation of our work and whether our analyses of the data gives adequate support to the above discussion and final conclusion about the difficulty and present inadequacy of assessing reading comprehension as we do today. however, if we are correct in our analyses and in concluding that reading comprehension can be better assessed by using bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) for item classification and profiling student reading ability, we will be challenging many of the instruments as well as frameworks such as the common core that are presently used to guide instruction and assessment of reading comprehension. in general, we believe the testing industry needs to shift from a simple behaviorist paradigm to one that reflects the cognitive view as it is reflected in the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension (1994) and subsequently in the bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). our thinking and conclusions do not necessarily mean that the items in this malay test are bad, but that the test does not go far enough in its assessment of a reader’s ability, and that a different classification system may give a better profile of the reader’s optimal performance and ability. further work the next step in our work and our series of studies is to establish a table of specifications that reflects this added dimension of reading comprehension so that such an instrument, or section of an instrument, may be developed. next comes the development and validation of items that can be added to the malay test with their classifications according to bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). this work then can be used to test children in the primary and intermediate grades with an instrument that aims to reflect the goal of assessing higher-level thinking, such as that found in evaluative reading, as it is reflected in reading comprehension assessment instruments. doing this will not only extend educators’ ability to assess optimal performance, but also test the applicability of the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension (1994) for primary and intermediate grade readers. references anderson, l. e., & karthwohl, d. (eds.). (2001). a taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessment. new york: longman. cain, k., & oakhill, j. (2006). assessment matters: issues in the measurement of reading comprehension. british journal of educational psychology, 76(4), 697–708. dagostino, l., & carifio, j. (1994). evaluative reading and literacy: a cognitive view. boston: allyn and bacon. dagostino, l., carifio, j., bauer, j., & zhao, q. (2013). cross-cultural reading comprehension assessment in malay and english as it relates to the dagostino and carifio model of reading comprehension. current issues in education, 16(1). dagostino, l., carifio, j., bauer, j. d., zhao, q., & hashim, n. h. (2014). assessment of a reading comprehension instrument as it relates to cognitive abilities as defined by bloom’s revised taxonomy. current issues in education, 17(1). harman, h. h. (1976). modern factor analysis. chicago: university of chicago press. hashim, h. n. (2006). reading comprehension in malaysia primary grades 1-6. penang, malaysia: universiti sains malyasia. mcnamara, d. s., & kendeou, p. (2011). translating advances in reading comprehension research to educational practice. international electronic journal of elementary education, 4(1), 33-46. storch, s. a., & whitehurst, g. j. (2002). oral language and code-related precursors to reading: evidence from a longitudinal structural model. developmental psychology, 38(6), 934-947. winstead, l. (2004). increasing academic motivation and cognition in reading, writing, and mathematics: meaning-making strategies. educational research quarterly, 28(2), 30-49. current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 8 appendix a tables 2 and 3 table 2 malay table of specifications including test items by classification for test i test item malay classification level skill 1 literal (l) main idea 2 literal (l) important point 3 literal (l) cause and effect 4 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 5 literal (l) main idea 6 literal (l) important point 7 literal (l) cause and effect 8 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 9 literal (l) main idea 10 literal (l) comparison 11 literal (l) cause and effect 12 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 13 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 14 literal (l) comparison 15 literal (l) comparison 16 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 17 inferential (f) important point 18 inferential (f) comparison 19 inferential (f) cause and effect 20 inferential (f) conclusion 21 inferential (f) main idea 22 inferential (f) comparison 23 inferential (f) cause and effect 24 inferential (f) conclusion 25 inferential (f) main idea 26 inferential (f) important point using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 9 27 inferential (f) cause and effect 28 inferential (f) conclusion 29 inferential (f) main idea 30 inferential (f) comparison 31 inferential (f) comparison 32 inferential (f) cause and effect 33 critical creative (k) evaluating 34 critical creative (k) conclusion 35 critical creative (k) internalizing 36 critical creative (k) moral of the story 37 critical creative (k) conclusion 38 critical creative (k) conclusion 39 critical creative (k) internalizing 40 critical creative (k) evaluating 41 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 42 literal (l) cause and effect 43 inferential (f) main idea 44 inferential (f) conclusion 45 critical creative (k) evaluating 46 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 47 literal (l) main idea 48 inferential (f) important point 49 inferential (f) comparison 50 critical creative (k) moral of the story current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 10 table 3 malay table of specifications including test items by classification for test ii test item malay classification level skill 1 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 2 literal (l) important point 3 literal (l) cause and effect 4 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 5 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 6 literal (l) comparison 7 literal (l) cause and effect 8 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 9 literal (l) main idea 10 literal (l) important point 11 literal (l) cause and effect 12 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 13 literal (l) main idea 14 literal (l) comparison 15 literal (l) comparison 16 literal (l) cause and effect 17 inferential (f) main idea 18 inferential (f) important point 19 inferential (f) cause and effect 20 inferential (f) conclusion 21 inferential (f) main idea 22 inferential (f) important point 23 inferential (f) cause and effect 24 inferential (f) conclusion 25 inferential (f) main idea 26 inferential (f) important point 27 inferential (f) comparison using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 11 28 inferential (f) conclusion 29 inferential (f) main idea 30 inferential (f) important point 31 inferential (f) comparison 32 inferential (f) cause and effect 33 critical creative (k) evaluating 34 critical creative (k) conclusion 35 critical creative (k) internalizing 36 critical creative (k) moral of the story 37 critical creative (k) conclusion 38 critical creative (k) evaluating 39 critical creative (k) conclusion 40 critical creative (k) conclusion 41 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 42 literal (l) main idea 43 inferential (f) comparison 44 inferential (f) cause and effect 45 critical creative (k) moral of the story 46 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 47 literal (l) important point 48 inferential (f) comparison 49 inferential (f) conclusion 50 critical creative (k) evaluating current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 12 appendix b table 4 table 4 definitions of the categories of bloom’s revised taxonomy – the cognitive dimension (remembering, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create) remembering recognizing involves retrieving relevant information from long-term memory in order to compare it with presented information. also identifying recalling involves retrieving relevant information from long-term memory when a prompt is given. the prompt often is a question. also retrieving. understand interpreting occurs when a student is able to convert information from one representation to another representation. also translating or paraphrasing. exemplifying occurs when a student gives a specific example or instance of a general concept or principle. also illustrate. classifying occurs when a student recognizes that something belongs to a certain category. it is a complementary process to exemplifying. summarizing occurs when a student suggest a single statement that represents presented information or abstracts a general theme. also generalize or abstract. inferring involves finding a pattern within a series of examples or instances. the student abstracts a concept or a principle that accounts for a set of instances. also extrapolating or concluding. comparing involves detecting similarities and differences between two or more objects, events, ideas or situations. also contrasting, matching. explaining occurs when a student is able to construct and use a cause-effect model of a system. the model may be derived from a formal theory or may be grounded in research and experience. also constructing a model. apply executing occurs when a student routinely carries out a procedure when confronted with a familiar task. also carrying out. implementing occurs when a student selects and uses a procedure to perform an unfamiliar task. it is carried out in conjunction with understand. also using. analyze differentiating occurs when there is a determination of the relevant or important pieces of a message in relation to the whole structure. organizing occurs relative to the way the pieces of a message are organized into a coherent structure. attributing occurs when the underlying purpose or point of view of the message is related to the entire communication. evaluate checking involves testing for internal consistencies or fallacies in an operation, product, or communication to see whether data support or disconfirm hypothesis or conclusions as well as the accuracy of facts. critiquing involves judging a product, operation or communication against externally imposed criteria and standard. create generating occurs when a problem is represented and alternatives and hypothesis that meet certain criteria are produced. using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 13 planning occurs when a solution method is devised that meets a problem’s criteria for developing a plan for solving the problem. producing occurs when a plan is carried out for solving a given problem that meets certain specifications. current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 14 appendix c tables 5 and 6 table 5 cross-walk table of specifications of test items by malay levels/skills and bloom’s revised taxonomy – test 1 test item malay classification bloom’s revised taxonomy classification level skill 1 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 2 literal (l) important point 1. remember 3 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 4 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 1. remember 5 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 6 literal (l) important point 1. remember 7 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 8 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 9 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 10 literal (l) comparison 2. understand 11 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 12 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 1. remember 13 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 14 literal (l) comparison 2. understand 15 literal (l) comparison 2. understand 16 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 1. remember 17 inferential (f) important point 2. understand 18 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 19 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 20 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 21 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 22 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 23 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 24 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 25 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 26 inferential (f) important point 2. understand using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 15 27 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 28 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 29 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 30 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 31 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 32 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 33 critical creative (k) evaluating 5. evaluate 34 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 35 critical creative (k) internalizing 5. evaluate 36 critical creative (k) moral of the story 5. evaluate 37 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 38 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 39 critical creative (k) internalizing 5. evaluate 40 critical creative (k) evaluating 5. evaluate 41 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 42 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 43 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 44 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 45 critical creative (k) evaluating 5. evaluate 46 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 47 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 48 inferential (f) important point 2. understand 49 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 50 critical creative (k) moral of the story 5. evaluate current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 16 table 6 cross-walk table of specifications of test items by malay levels/skills and bloom’s revised taxonomy – test 2 test item malay classification bloom’s revised taxonomy classification level skill 1 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 2 literal (l) important point 1. remember 3 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 4 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 1. remember 5 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 6 literal (l) comparison 1. remember 7 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 8 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 1. remember 9 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 10 literal (l) important point 2. understand 11 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 12 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 1. remember 13 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 14 literal (l) comparison 2. understand 15 literal (l) comparison 2. understand 16 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 17 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 18 inferential (f) important point 2. understand 19 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 20 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 21 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 22 inferential (f) important point 2. understand 23 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 24 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 25 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 26 inferential (f) important point 2. understand 27 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 28 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 17 29 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 30 inferential (f) important point 2. understand 31 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 32 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 33 critical creative (k) evaluating 5. evaluate 34 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 35 critical creative (k) internalizing 5. evaluate 36 critical creative (k) moral of the story 5. evaluate 37 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 38 critical creative (k) evaluating 5. evaluate 39 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 40 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 41 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 42 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 43 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 44 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 45 critical creative (k) moral of the story 5. evaluate 46 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 47 literal (l) important point 1. remember 48 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 49 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 50 critical creative (k) evaluating 5. evaluate current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 18 appendix d table 7 table 7 comparison of the predicted bloom’s revised taxonomy classification for each test item with the actual bloom’s revised taxonomy classification for each test item. item number predicted classification actual classification item number predicted classification actual classification 1 1. remember 2. understand 1 1. remember 2. understand 2 1. remember 1. remember 2 1. remember 4. analyze 3 1. remember 4. analyze 3 1. remember 4 1. remember 4. analyze 4 1. remember 4. analyze 5 1. remember 2. understand 5 1. remember 4. analyze 6 1. remember 1. remember 6 1. remember 2. understand 7 1. remember 1. remember 7 1. remember 2. understand 8 1. remember 2. understand 8 1. remember 4. analyze 9 1. remember 2. understand 9 1. remember 2. understand 10 2. understand 2. understand 10 2. understand 1. remember 11 1. remember 11 1. remember 2. understand 12 1. remember 4. analyze 12 1. remember 4. analyze 13 1. remember 2. understand 13 1. remember 2. understand 14 2. understand 1. remember 14 2. understand 2. understand 15 2. understand 2. understand 15 2. understand 2. understand 16 1. remember 2. understand 16 1. remember 4. analyze 17 2. understand 2. understand 17 2. understand 2. understand 18 2. understand 2. understand 18 2. understand 4. analyze 19 2. understand 2. understand 19 2. understand 2. understand 20 2. understand 2. understand 20 2. understand 2. understand 21 2. understand 2. understand 21 2. understand 2. understand 22 2. understand 22 2. understand 1. remember 23 2. understand 4. analyze 23 2. understand 4. analyze 24 2. understand 3. apply 24 2. understand 2. understand 25 2. understand 2. understand 25 2. understand 2. understand 26 2. understand 4. analyze 26 2. understand 2. understand using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 19 27 2. understand 2. understand 27 2. understand 2. understand 28 2. understand 2. understand 28 2. understand 5. evaluate 29 2. understand 2. understand 29 2. understand 2. understand 30 2. understand 1. remember 30 2. understand 2. understand 31 2. understand 4. analyze 31 2. understand 32 2. understand 2. understand 32 2. understand 2. understand 33 5. evaluate 4. analyze 33 5. evaluate 5. evaluate 34 5. evaluate 4. analyze 34 5. evaluate 35 5. evaluate 2. understand 35 5. evaluate 5. evaluate 36 5. evaluate 2. understand 36 5. evaluate 2. understand 37 5. evaluate 2. understand 37 5. evaluate 2. understand 38 5. evaluate 6. create 38 5. evaluate 5. evaluate 39 5. evaluate 4. analyze 39 5. evaluate 5. evaluate 40 5. evaluate 40 5. evaluate 2. understand 41 1. remember 2. understand 41 1. remember 2. understand 42 1. remember 2. understand 42 1. remember 2. understand 43 2. understand 2. understand 43 2. understand 2. understand 44 2. understand 2. understand 44 2. understand 5. evaluate 45 5. evaluate 2. understand 45 5. evaluate 2. understand 46 1. remember 2. understand 46 1. remember 2. understand 47 1. remember 1. remember 47 1. remember 2. understand 48 2. understand 2. understand 48 2. understand 2. understand 49 2. understand 2. understand 49 2. understand 5. evaluate 50 5. evaluate 2. understand 50 5. evaluate current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 20 article citation dagostino, l., carifio, j., bauer, j. d., zhao, q., & hashim, n. h. (2014). using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument. current issues in education, 18(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1379 author notes lorraine dagostino mail university of massachusetts lowell o'leary library 519, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854-3047 lorraine_dagostino@uml.edu lorraine dagostino is a professor at graduate school of education in the university of massachusetts lowell. her research interests include literacy, critical thinking and evaluative reading, theoretical issues in reading and literacy, and literature issues. james carifio university of massachusetts at lowell o'leary library 527, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854-3047 james_carifio@uml.edu james carifio is a professor in psychology and research methods at the university of massachusetts lowell. he has done extensive research and publishing in the respective fields jennifer d. c. bauer university of massachusetts lowell jennifer_bauer@student.uml.edu jennifer d. c. bauer is an assistant professor and communications department chair at middlesex community college. additionally, she is a doctoral student at the university of massachusetts at lowell, pursuing her ph.d. in literacy studies. her research interests include visual arts and literacy, digital/new literacies, language variation, urban education, and culturally responsive pedagogy. qing zhao university of massachusetts lowell o'leary library, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854-3047 qing_zhao@uml.edu qing zhao recently earned her ed.d. in language arts & literacy from the graduate school of education, university of massachusetts lowell in 2013. her research interests currently include the study of teaching and learning english as a foreign/second language (efl/esl) and development of efl/esl learners' language proficiency in both north american and asian learning context. nor hashimah hashim universiti sains malaysia shimah@usm.my nor hashimah hashim is a professor of education at the universiti sains malaysia her research interests include preschool education, primary school education, and curriculum studies correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to jennifer bauer at jennifer_bauer@student.uml.edu. http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1379 mailto:lorraine_dagostino@uml.edu mailto:james_carifio@uml.edu mailto:jennifer_bauer@student.uml.edu mailto:qing_zhao@uml.edu mailto:shimah@usm.my mailto:jennifer_bauer@student.uml.edu using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 21 manuscript received: 09/02/2014 revisions received: 11/30/2014 accepted: 01/22/2015 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 22 volume 18, number 2 august 19, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreader lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 903-4064-3-le_2.docx 1 volume 15, number 3 august 21, 2012 issn 1099-839x the effects of dual enrollment credit on gender and race bart ganzert forsyth technical community college the researcher of this study examined dual enrollment and huskins bill course effects on academic success and graduation rates by gender and race. quantitative statistical measures including parametric and non-parametric means comparisons, including anova, t-test and chi-square tests, were used to analyze data from 15, 527 north carolina community college students. the researcher found that dual enrollment and huskins bill courses showed positive effects on gpa and graduation rates for non-white students and positive effects in graduation rate for female students enrolled in community college programs. keywords: dual enrollment, huskins bill, concurrent enrollment, college readiness, college success, race and retention, gender and retention, college success and race between 1994 and 2004, enrollment at postsecondary institutions in the united states grew at a rate of 17% from 1984-94 and 21% (national center for education statistics, 2007). this increase in student matriculation has generated questions as to whether students are prepared for postsecondary work, especially as today’s economic demands push workers towards postsecondary degrees and certifications. one concern is for non-white students, who, historically, have been less likely to attend postsecondary institutions and are currently less likely to graduate from them, and male students, who recently have fallen behind female students in postsecondary enrollment, attendance and performance (swanson, 2008). college-style courses, such as dual enrollment programs have all been said to show promise for these groups and have proliferated in hopes of improving college performance. some researchers (klein, 2007; morrison, 2005) agree and cite advantages these programs can provide such as a relief for student boredom and for “senioritis,” or allowing for more independence in student study regimen. existing research on these programs is qualitative or local in nature, leaving the opportunity for more quantitative inquiry on the subject and for studies that can be generalized to the national population of dual enrollment students. also, conclusions from the research show mixed results in program effectiveness and there are few quantitative studies that address the question (bailey & karp, 2003). two quantitative studies (eimers & mullen, 2003; spurling & gabriner, 2006) using inferential statistics and data from small samples indicate positive effects in retention by dual enrollment students. eimers and mullen, though, found no effect in first-year gpa for dual enrolled students. hoffman (2005) in an overview of several earlier studies found positive results for the programs, especially among non-white and low-income students. hoffman also notes that non-motivation in the high school environment particularly effects male students and can be more pronounced among low income students. findings from a large study in florida and new york city using an extensive database (karp, calcagno, hughes, jeong, & bailey, 2007) showed favorable returns for male students enrolled in dual enrollment courses. the findings also indicate that dual enrollment is positively associated with the likelihood that students will earn a high school diploma, initially enroll in a postsecondary institution, enroll full-time and persist in college to a second semester. participating students had significantly higher college gpas three years after high school graduation than did peers who did not participate current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 in dual enrollment programs (karp et al., 2007). researchers also tracked participating new york vocational students and found them more likely than their peers to pursue a bachelor’s degree, earn higher firstsemester gpas and progress toward a degree (karp et al., 2007). recommendations from two studies (morrison, 2008; reindl, 2006) suggest expanding access and offerings to dual-enrollment-type programs, a program type they say has shown success in various qualitative studies. morrison bases his conclusions on data from north iowa area community college, which has found success in student persistence and graduation in dual enrollment programs. reindl’s report looks at a broad range of programs that enhance college readiness. bailey and karp (2003) concluded that dual enrollment programs may offer an effective advantage for high school students bound for college, but their conclusions are based on qualitative measures. another quantitative study by swanson (2008) found dual enrollment effective in persistence to degree for females and high income students. the study used regression analysis and a large database of iowa students; however, the data were from the early 1990s. to address the discrepancies in existing literature, this study uses a causal-comparative research design to look at two types of north carolina dual enrollment programs: dual enrollment, and huskins bill dual enrollment. the study is designed to investigate if there is a causal link between each program and to assess the academic success of male students and non-white students who took these courses and later enrolled in a north carolina community college. the researcher of this study examined dual enrollment (also called concurrent enrollment, joint enrollment or dual credit) and huskins bill course effects of students in the north carolina community college system on academic success and graduation rates by gender and race. dual enrollment programs have recently gained educators’ attention as they have shown promise for improving student success at postsecondary institutions as state budget cuts have brought more scrutiny to them. students in these programs are typically rising high school juniors or seniors between 16 and 18 years old. most are collegebound students seeking college-level credits through state articulation agreements that allow equal transfer of community college credits in “core” courses to state universities, but students are not limited to these courses. huskins bill courses, a designation given by north carolina to one type of dual enrollment program, are similar to dual enrollment courses where instruction often takes place at a secondary facility, but can be administered to a cohort of high school students taking classes together at a college campus. the instructor for these courses can be a high school teacher qualified to teach a college-level course, or a regular instructor at the administering postsecondary institution (north carolina community college system, 2009). based on findings in earlier studies that show a positive effect in college readiness by taking a higher education class in high school (bailey & karp, 2003; conley, 2003; kim, 2006; spurling & gabriner, 2002), and using evidence that these courses have a positive on postsecondary success and retention for non-white and male students, dual enrollment and huskins bill courses should echo these positive outcomes. the specific research question addressed was: • is there a difference in first-year gpa and persistence to graduation that relates to race or gender for students who take dual enrollment or huskins bill courses in high school? data for the groups were taken from the north carolina community college system database. the database yielded information from all north carolina community college students. this is an improvement over earlier quantitative studies (eimers & mullen, 2003; kim, 2006; spurling & gabriner, 2002) that used data drawn from small or local datasets. research methods data were drawn from the north carolina community college system database that contained information on students enrolled since the summer session of 2002 through fall 2008 from all of the 58 community college programs in the state. the data consist of a cohort of 15,527 individuals who graduated from high school in the spring or summer of 2003 and subsequently enrolled in a north carolina community college in the fall of 2003. approximately 79% of the students had no dual enrollment or huskins bill experience, 7% had one or more dual enrollment courses, and 14% had one or more huskins courses. female students made up 58.6% of the dataset with male students representing 41.4%. non-white students made up 24.8% of the dataset with non-whites representing 3% of the dual enrollment sample and 10% of the huskins bill sample. students within this cohort were tracked to determine which had huskins bill or dual enrollment experience while in high school and how many courses they had taken. the students were tracked through 2008 to determine graduation and success rates. the sample contained only students who matriculated to a community college within a year after high school. the study looks at a group that is homogenous by student population (two-year college students) and by the program limitations of the community college. many students at the community college seek terminal vocational degrees, while those not in a career program take core academic courses that they transfer to four-year institutions to begin studies in their majors. choosing only community college students, the researcher provided a control for students who have similar backgrounds and career aspirations as opposed to the effects of dual enrollment credit on gender and race 3 a sample that contains students who matriculated to both community colleges and four-year institutions. the sample also features students who are similar in that students were all motivated to enroll in a community college within a year after high school, indicating a sense of purpose among the students. the gpa of each student at the end of the first year of college was also calculated from information in the database. the standard community college method of determining gpa was used. this method multiplies grade value on a four-point scale with course quality points and divides the factor by total quality points. student gpa was chosen as an indicator of overall student success because it is a primary indicator of academic success, and higher student gpa typically shows that a student is well adapted to the college environment and will most likely continue and complete the program in which he or she is enrolled. also, in the community college where successful students in some programs such as college transfer tend to transfer with high frequency, gpa offers an indication of success where graduation rate alone may not offer a complete picture. to perform the causal-comparative analysis, the dataset was broken down into three comparison groups. two of these groups, students who took at least one dual enrollment course while in high school, and students who took at least one huskins bill course while in high school, represented the treatment groups in the study. the remaining group included students who have taken neither a huskins bill nor dual enrollment course while in high school. where statistical significance was found using anova, a tukey test was used for post hoc testing to determine which mean samples were significant. for comparisons of nonparametric statistics, the chi-square test was used. all calculations were performed with spss 17.0 statistical software. it allowed comparison of huskins program outcomes (specifically gpa and graduation rate) with the outcomes of the dual enrollment program and it allowed comparison of the effects of both of these programs with non-huskins and non-dual students. furthermore, the design provides for a breakdown of important descriptive elements such as race and gender and the effect of these programs on both. discussion of findings female students had higher first-year gpas than male students in each of the groups (see table 1), which included dual enrollment (2.21 over 2.1), huskins bill (1.95 over 1.9), and students with experience in neither huskins bill nor dual enrollment (1.68 over 1.57). the test revealed a t-value of 2.06 for the comparison with an n of 1871 for the females and 1323 for males. the comparison was statistically significant at the .05 value, with a p-value of .039 (see table 2). in the comparison between male and female first-year gpa means between both dual enrollment and huskins bill students, females maintained a 2.05 average versus a 1.96 average for male students. females averaged statistically higher gpas in the groups; however, the difference in gain between male and female groups who took dual enrollment or huskins bill courses was not significant. table 1 dual enrollment and huskins bill first-year gpa by gender gender number mean gpa female (overall) 8572 1.76 female dual enrolled/huskins 1871 2.05 female non dual/huskins 6701 1.68 male (overall) 6955 1.64 male dual enrolled/huskins 1323 1.96 male non dual/huskins 5632 1.57 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 this finding duplicates findings in other studies (karp et al., 2007; o’brien & nelson, 2004) that suggest dual enrollment and huskins bill courses benefit nonwhite student college readiness. non-white students in the dataset averaged a first-year gpa of 1.14 for non-dual enrollment and nonhuskins students, while non-white dual enrollment students averaged a 1.54 first-year gpa and non-white huskins bill students averaged a 1.35 first-year gpa. graduation rates showed a similar pattern with non-dual enrollment and non-huskins bill non-white students graduating at a rate of 13.8% and dual enrollment and huskins bill students graduating at a rate of 17.2%. this difference is statistically significant at .04. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ table 2 independent samples test for male and female dual enrollment and huskins bill students by gpa levene's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2tailed) mean difference std. error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper * .064 .801 2.060 3192 .039 .088 .043 .004 .171 ** 2.063 2861.183 .039 .088 .043 .004 .171 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ table 3 anova: non-white gpa for dual enrollment, huskins bill and students with neither sum of squares df mean square f sig. between groups 30.086 2 15.043 12.357 .001 within groups 4674.477 3840 1.217 total 4704.563 3842 the effects of dual enrollment credit on gender and race 5 _______________________________________________________________________ table 4 homogenous subsets for anova of non-white dual enrollment, huskins bill and students with neither tukey hsda,,b group number subset for alpha = 0.05 1 2 non 3343 1.146 huskins 378 1.345 1.345 dual 122 1.541 sig. .090 .100 note. means for groups in homogeneous subsets are displayed. a. uses harmonic mean sample size = 269.267. b. the group sizes are unequal. the harmonic mean of the group sizes is used. type i error levels are not guaranteed. other studies have indicated positive effects on male gpa and retention based on earlier study findings (karp et al., 2007; swanson, 2008; hoffman, 2005). however, in this study there was no significant difference in the size of the effect for dual enrollment between males and females. dual enrollment and huskins bill courses had an equally positive effect on males and females. earlier studies (karp et al., 2007; kirst & venezia, 2007; klein, 2007) found that dual enrollment and huskins bill courses have shown a greater effect for male students. this study finds that female students receive an equal benefit in first-year gpa from the programs. in graduation rate females surpassed males among dual enrollment and huskins bill students as well. female dual enrollment and huskins bill students graduated at a rate of 33.1% and males graduated at a rate of 25.5%. the difference is statistically significant at .001. this finding is also significant because it contradicts previous studies (karp et al., 2007) that indicate a greater effect for male students, and it shows success in college continuation for female students in this group. continuation to graduation is significant here because it suggests that dual enrollment and huskins bill courses offer female students performance advantages in college programs that extend beyond first-year success. it should not be lost, however, that both males and females who took dual enrollment and huskins bill courses benefitted in first-year gpa and graduation rate over those who did not take these courses. these programs still showed positive results for each. dual enrollment and huskins bill non-white students showed higher first-year gpa means and higher graduation rates than non-dual enrollment and nonhuskins bill students (table 3 and 4). the anova showed a statistically significant difference between the dual, huskins bill and non-dual and non-huskins bill group means at the .001 level. to determine which group means were significantly different, a tukey post hoc test was performed. the test revealed that both dual and huskins bill non-white students showed a significant difference in mean first-year gpa from non-dual and non-huskins bill non-white students. implications the higher gpa and graduation rates for dual enrollment and huskins bill non-white students demonstrate a statistically significant advantage from the programs. though the increases in gpa and graduation rate for dual enrollment and huskins bill students appear small, they do indicate a significant step towards success at the postsecondary level. graduation rates at two-year colleges tend to be low for numerous reasons: students transfer regularly to four-year schools, students face economic pressure and must drop out of programs early, or, students may take a few courses not intending on completing an entire degree. in addition to these reasons, as two-year public colleges have open-door policies, students are less likely to be prepared for the rigor of college work. the increase in gpa and graduation rate shown here through dual enrollment programs is a step in aiding student continuation. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 findings are important because they identify a positive effect on academic success and continuation to graduation in a postsecondary setting for a demographic that made up 24.8% of the dataset. students with experience in either the dual enrollment or huskins bill courses showed a 5% higher rate of graduation and higher first-year gpas, a significant boost for this large at-risk demographic. this finding agrees with findings in other studies that show dual enrollment experience shows a heightened benefit for minority student populations (hoffman, 2005; karp et al., 2007). these results show promising outcomes in firstyear college success and in graduation rate for non-white students taking dual enrollment and huskins bill courses. it also shows positive retention effects for female students over male students. positive outcomes for non-white students taking dual enrollment and huskins bill type programs have also been duplicated in other studies (karp et al., 2007; o’brien & nelson, 2004). this pattern of success warrants more attention by state education leaders to promote and expand dual enrollment and huskins bill programs specifically for these students and thereby help launch them into a successful and productive adulthood. presently, dual enrollment programs are underutilized by non-white students (hoffman, 2005; o’brien & nelson, 2004). some ways this program can benefit these students are to put dual enrollment programs in schools with high populations of non-white students. state policymakers can work to establish more diverse partnerships with k-12 and community college administrations which will allow for creative programs involving dual enrollment and huskins bill type courses. these programs could focus on at-risk demographics within regions of the state or could target areas of workforce development that show promise for creating future employment or economic opportunity. offering a mandate and the funding for these programs could provide a jumpstart for the creativity and initiative that is needed to create and successfully establish these ventures. community colleges, in particular, face the challenge of educating students with a diverse array of abilities. dual enrollment programs are a vital resource for creating a successful bridge from secondary to postsecondary work for students. state cutbacks due to the recent recession have taken a toll on dual enrollment programs which are viewed by many casual budget reviewers as redundant programs. it is a mistake to eliminate these programs based on the assumption that high schools can cover the loss of the programs internally. when a program shows effectiveness in promoting higher student gpa and graduation rate, then it follows that the program should be instituted, supported, funded and promoted as a pathway to student success in all community college systems. limitations the study design was limited in that it did not allow an accounting for variables such as previous student academic success (in north carolina, dual enrollment and huskins bill students are required to have a set high school gpa before they can take a college course.) or for individual student motivation, which could work to selfselection students into the dual enrollment or huskins bill group. however, the dataset does compensate somewhat for motivation by featuring a cohort of students who matriculated to a community college within a year of graduation. another limitation is that the study looked only at north carolina community college students. the study does not take into consideration students with huskins bill or dual enrollment experience who matriculated to four-year colleges and universities. this is an important student segment and warrants specific attention if the effects of these programs are to be completely understood. more study in this area is necessary. this particular study offers solid evidence for dual enrollment and huskins bill course effectiveness for non-white students matriculating to community colleges, and it also shows positive effects for both male and female students in general. a principal step in being able to compete in the modern workforce is the ability of a large part of the workforce to succeed in postsecondary education (mccabe, 2000; morrison, 2008). however, a major impediment to this step is the gap between secondary and postsecondary skill requirements which, according to one author, has created a “dead zone” between high school and college (reindl, 2006). with more students matriculating to postsecondary institutions (conley, 2007), programs such as dual enrollment and huskins bill which show effectiveness in the creation of college-ready students are in greater need for maintaining a job pipeline for students into the future, and, thus, are important in maintaining the economic welfare of the country and its population. as high schools continue to grow programs that focus on college readiness, knowledge of the best methods of college preparation will be necessary to guide educators in implementing the best programs for students. dual enrollment and huskins bill courses are two such programs that provide high school students with rigorous courses and that show success in preparing these students for postsecondary work. for students moving on to twoyear colleges, these courses afford students a college learning environment for students to acquaint themselves with the pace and expectations of college work. findings eliminate one inconsistency as indicated by conley (2007), that high school course syllabi are undeveloped and unreliable. courses taken by high school students at a college will have syllabi that align with postsecondary the effects of dual enrollment credit on gender and race 7 learning goals, thereby better suiting them to continue a postsecondary regime effectively. administrators in secondary and in postsecondary institutions should look at evidence of the effectiveness of these programs to best gauge their place in improving student readiness. the task for the future will be to find the most effective ways these courses can be administered to students in order to reap the greatest gain from them, and to ensure that these courses are administered in consistent ways in order to preserve the reliability of the programs. in order to best do this, more studies should be undertaken to find how well these programs work with individual student variances, such as environment and individual learning styles and to gauge the best methods of effectiveness from course experience. until then, administrators should expand these types of programs in order to benefit all students, but in particular to benefit a growing diverse student body that must be prepared to succeed. references bailey, t., & karp, m. m. (2003). promoting college access and success: a review of credit-based transition programs. new york: columbia university research center. retrieved september 18, 2008 from http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ovae/pi/cclo /crdbase.doc conley, d. t. (2003). connecting the dots: linking high schools with postsecondary education to increase student success. peer review, 5(2), 9-12. conley, d. t. (2007, april). the challenge of college readiness. educational leadership. retrieved september 2, 2008 from http://www.s4s.org/upload/_the%20challenge% 20of%20college%20readiness.pdf eimers, m. t., & mullen, r. (2003). dual credit and advanced placement: do they help prepare students for success in college? paper presented at the 43rd annual association of institutional research (air) conference, tampa, fl. hoffman, n. (2005). add and subtract: dual enrollment as a state strategy to increase postsecondary success for underrepresented students. boston: jobs for the future. retrieved from eric database. (ed 497806) karp, m. m., calcagno, j. c., hughes, k., jeong, i., & bailey, t. r. (2007). the postsecondary achievement of participants in dual enrollment: an analysis of student outcomes in two states. st. paul, mn: national center for career and technical education, university of minnesota. kim, j. (2006). the impact of dual and articulated credit on college readiness and total credit hours in four selected community colleges (doctoral dissertation). university of illinois, urbanachampaign. kirst, m. w., & venezia, a. (2007). improving college readiness and success for all students: a joint responsibility between k-12 and postsecondary education (issue brief for the secretary of education’s commission on the future of higher education). washington, dc: national center for public policy and higher education. klein, a. (2007). acceleration under review. education week, 26(44) 22-24. mccabe, r. (2000). no one to waste: a report to public decision makers and community college leaders. washington, dc: community college press. morrison, m. c. (2008, october). the strategic value of dual enrollment programs. techniques 83, (7). retrieved march 18, 2009 from http://0 find.galegroup.com.wncln.wncln.org/itx/start.do ?prodid=aone national center for education statistics. (2007). fast facts. retrieved february 21, 2009 from http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98 north carolina community college system. (2009). get the facts. retrieved february 21, 2009 from http://www.ncccs.cc.nc.us/news_releases/gett hefacts.htm o’brien, d. m., & nelson, t. d. (2004). strengthening college preparation and access through concurrent enrollment in high school and community college. unpublished manuscript, university of texas at dallas. reindl, t. (2006). getting serious about student success: high school-college alignment. college and university, 81(2), 49-50. spurling, s., & gabriner, r. (2002, april). the effect of concurrent enrollment programs upon student success at city college of san francisco. san francisco: city college of san francisco, office of research and planning. swanson, j. (2008). an analysis of the impact of high school dual enrollment course participation on post-secondary academic success, persistence and degree completion. paper presented at the meeting of the national association for gifted children, tampa, fl and the national alliance of concurrent enrollment partnerships, kansas city, mo. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 article citation ganzert, b. (2012). the effects of dual enrollment credit on gender and race. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/903 author notes bart ganzert, ed.d. forsyth technical community college 2100 silas creek pkwy. winston-salem, nc 27103 bganzert@forsythtech.edu bart ganzert is an instructor at forsyth technical community college in north carolina. he received his bachelors and masters degrees at wake forest university and his doctorate of education at appalachian state university. dr. ganzert’s research interests include k-16 partnerships, early colleges and dual enrollment effectiveness. manuscript received: 01/20/2012 revisions received: 05/03/2012 accepted: 07/05/2012 the effects of dual enrollment credit on gender and race 9 volume 15, number 3 august 21, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers volume 5, number 6 november 26, 2002 issn 1099-839x taking (a)part: poetic counternarratives for troubled times veronica gaylie the university of british columbia how do we "read the world" after september 11th? as the event was mediatized into abstraction, this article provides a framework from which poetry as counternarrative may be used to challenge the media monologue on what emerged as standardized september 11th discourse. in the aftermath of the event, the media constructed an acceptable, sensible-sounding lexicon that may also have foreclosed on social critique in the form of vernacular expressions. and if the media set the terms of acceptable language, what happened to the non-mediatized experience of september 11th? does such an experience even exist? what is the role of schools in fostering student critique? based on a narrative approach that includes examples of the author's own experience and writing, this piece takes a poetic look at a different kind of literate meaning: the sense of empowerment rooted in the language of everyday experience. everything shifts and you are part of that shifting... bp nichol two weeks after september 11, 2001, i presented a paper on poetry and resistance. in the work i draw upon my experience as a teacher and poet to explore the potentially creative elements of critical theory, the protest elements of poetry, and the potential for both to bring experience into the foreground of learning. central to the work is the notion that poetry is a transformative protest that allows people to reclaim everyday experience. in this way, the inclusion of vernacular poetry (in language classrooms, in literacy programs, in academic discourse) provides a response to paulo freire's view of literacy as the ability to both read the word and the world (freire & macedo, 1987). defending my work, i could easily anticipate the question, what is the relevance of this work in a world post-september 11th? in my response, i considered the televised reaction to the events that quickly became a nerve-shot aftermath, even as many struggled to grieve and personally deal with such a large-scale event. i also considered the question of experience and the words of paulo freire, who urges educators to remain with the events going on at the center of students' lives (freire, 1998). in the midst of responding, it occurred to me that, in order to serve students, part of that recognition might include allowing them a non-mediatized reaction to a larger than life national tragedy at the level of their own experience. as the media turned to the usual adventure film script-worthy expressions such as "america under attack," inevitably followed by "america strikes back," it seemed even more crucial to allow students to interpret events as they were lived, in the (often smaller scale) contexts of individuals and communities. but as the public took up the televised rhythm of the tragedy, where were the everyday words? and where are they now? a case for ordinary poetry in troubled times, what language will allow a humane response that has no motive except to be heard? muriel rukeyser suggests that the knowledge of poetry is "never to be used" (rukeyser, 1949, p.121). perhaps there is something in the experience current issues in education vol. 5 no. 6 of poetry that, as a living language, will not be used; that whether the business of educators is to consume, translate, supplement or supplant the language of curricula, poetry somehow defies traditional notions of use. rooted in the occurrence of oral rhythm, poetry remains unmangled despite manglings; unjustifiable, despite justifications. when experience enters the classroom through poetry, looming messages are subverted and students are invited to consider events through their own eyes, in the midst of others' meaning and text. new, smaller meanings emerge. when i reflect on my teaching experience, few students start out believing (or caring) whether or not their own experience is legitimized outside their social group. yet many students (and teachers) feel empowered when their experience is expressed in their own seemingly ordinary words, when those words are heard and legitimized by teachers and other students, through poetry. heart sick for america, two towers unzip, human as matchstick, human as concrete, building, dust, cloud, silver lining, office space, wind -human as syllable, human as idea as pilot as hero as something to think as word as plane as day cut in two. (1) as an oral form of expression, poetry has the potential to interrupt mainstream messages and contextualize social debate in classroom praxis. in a comparison of oral and text-based communities, ong suggests that oral language keeps "knowledge embedded in the human lifeworld.... (and) situates (it) within a context of struggle" (ong, 1988, p.37). poetry readings allow students to reclaim this human struggle (and right) to question and make sense of the world by working with a language that facilitates both personal and shared interpretations. moving away from fixed, abstract notions, freire calls teachers to take up what goes on in the midst of students' lives and troubles, instead of imposing definitive teacher versions. he discusses the value of concrete expressions and asks, "why not...take advantage of the students' experience of life in those parts of the city neglected by the authorities...why are there no rubbish heaps in the heart of the rich areas of the city?" (freire, 1998, p.36). these words bring to mind my own first day experience teaching in an inner city school, where, despite my efforts to direct attention to english and social studies texts, the students remained preoccupied with questions about the polluted fumes flowing through the classroom window from a chicken rendering plant down the street. and, despite my efforts to focus on the text based curricular components of a wall map and a shakespeare sonnet, one student demanded: "why do they always put everything that smells gross in the east end?" instead, we decided to leave shakespeare and write some poetry about our own learning context in the shade of the chicken plant. working with poetry in inner city classrooms this way has led me to wonder how the inclusion of written and spoken vernacular language, and the counternarrative (2) it promotes, can also provide a powerful basis for literacy and social awareness. definitions and rationales: local meaning and poetic counternarrative as social critique the term counternarrative is defined by critical theorists as "the little stories of those individuals and groups whose knowledge and histories have been marginalized...or forgotten in the telling of official narratives" (peters & lankshear, 1996, p.2). from this critical term, it is worth considering how alternative, vernacular literacies might be encouraged and devised in ways that won't simply echo the official telling. consider the latin derivations: vernacular. a. l. vernaculus born in one's house, native, fr. verna a slave born in his master's house, a native...belonging to the country of one's birth; one's own by birth or nature; native; indigenous... vernacular. n. the vernacular language; one's mother tongue; often, the common forms of expression in a particular locality.(webster's revised unabridged dictionary 1913). the first meaning shows how notions of the vernacular have been associated with places that were not chosen. in the second, if the vernacular is associated with enforced localization of "common" people, perhaps it is also used as a definition to keep those who use "common forms of expression" "in place." but who occupies the larger, public world, the freely chosen space? read this way, a starting point for counternarrative must be to realign, to reclaim the public space of language. if language is the door by which outsiders and insiders are allowed or denied access to a "location," then, from a pedagogical perspective, it is also worth considering the implications of relocating the access point itself, of reclaiming the sites of vernacular language as the location of experience and expression. as a practical manifestation of critical theory from the works of giroux, hooks and others, the devising of local, vernacular meanings from the sites of those meanings becomes an insurgent act that might finally interrupt "official narratives." file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2002,%20vol%205,%20%231-6/number6/index.html%23note1 comparative taking (a)part: poetic counternarratives for troubled times 3 what is poetic counternarrative? possible definitions might include: counternarratives rendered in the forgiving grammar of poetry; the inclusion of local goings told in local (even household) language; the inclusion of local rhythms in world events; a record of experience, in imperfect words. teaching in the inner city, i did not find abstract historical representations and the removed language of textbooks suited the urgency of the location. only vernacular counternarrative told from the oral, openended perspectives of poetry would do. from a practical perspective, how else could i have communicated with students on that first sweatypalmed day of teaching, where a teacher presentation of "literature" took back seat to the students' pressing environmental and social concerns? this was a tactile teaching moment, difficult to express in quantitative terms or even in terms that would make sense within the official version of schooling, curriculum and research. as practicing teachers know, online diagnosis of classroom situations, in other words, teaching that responds to live students, often necessitates on the spot development of intangible curricular goals. and although a statistical study on the placement of schools in lower income neighborhoods in relation to waste plants might be helpful in changing school policy, the daily narratives and small records of teachers' experiences remain vital in understanding the basis for those changes. in other words, instead of exploring that wall map, we critically located and examined the site of our learning. think of rubber boots, engines and ladders who climb stairs break backs dig for us who stand and understood and stood under. us. the people deciding between sprinkled glazed dunked or cinnamon sticks, between blue white or red, people who'd just said, hold on, i'll meet you back at my desk, or steve, come on in. poetic counternarrative is a way of encouraging students to think of living forms of language in order to create concrete representations rooted in ordinary life as they live it. poetic counternarrative is also about returning language to its' vernacular origins linked to place. it is not about knowing how to manipulate traditional poetic devices or debate rhetoric, not about knowing the ins and outs of traditional poetic rhythms, of getting language "straight" before it is even explored. poetry as counternarrative is not language at its finest, nor is it for the exclusive use of the most advanced, privileged language users; it need not be beautiful. in fact, it is about working (imperfectly) with language where teachers and students create their own sites of legitimacy to counter larger than life, specialized, or "official" interpretations of public events. poetic counternarratives in troubled times on september 11th, and in the days after, there was little teachers, parents, friends and colleagues could say to one another that fit the scale of the event itself. people listened to and comforted one another; by necessity, used small words and engaged in small transactions to make sense of the event. that day, perhaps the definition of knowledge, of what makes sense, did change. yet the media responded with a daily theme ("america under attack") already shaping fears surrounding the socalled new knowledge of life in north america. within days, i heard an economist on the radio speak of "the new normal." still, for most, life continued to present itself in the various forms of old normal, in the bare bones of daily experience; and there were few "official" or "larger than life" interpretations that could represent that experience. so, months later, how may teachers read the world with their students? even as people struggle to name a dislocated experience, they must remain part of it. and even the most fractured attempt to create local records of experience in plain words is recognition of a tactile link between people and place, a re-placing of people into vernacular experience where the story is so often told by television. in this way, students and teachers might be able to create a place in the context of the tragedy, where, instead of playing the role of audience to media sound bites, the same public who lived the event, rightfully move alongside, take up place as participating observers. talking about “it” teachers may still ask themselves, what was a "professional" pedagogical response to september 11th? especially in the days after, many may have stood before their students searching for the right words to publicly examine an event that very few could rationally comprehend. there were those who tried to do what the politicians said, to "carry on as usual," determined to stay on track, but for many this proved difficult. in any case, the students, in their usual way, would not let teachers "carry on as usual"; they wanted to talk about it. at this time i believe students demanded (and deserved) more. as the media hesitated before launching into "the new language," it was time to put language and learning into the hands of students, to engage in a reflective process that would not necessarily end in clear-cut, official answers. current issues in education vol. 5 no. 6 this was the time to welcome spontaneous vernacular expressions so that new meanings and language could emerge alongside the new events. here was a chance to grapple with student ideas in meaningful ways, where the lesson and expectations remained "unplanned," by necessity. the professional role for teachers that day was clear: to stand by their students in this story; to remain aware that the media was writing their story for them; to encourage them to use whatever private, exploratory, tentative, spontaneous language they needed to use, and, wherever possible, to help them create an imperfect record of the event that would eventually be read aloud. people who were reaching for a pencil. people who never heard the news; people still in august who just heard the words, sorry or laid off or dad i got in or mom she said yes or thank you or one moment please or, you going to answer this? the interpreters of public events my works are like water. the works of the great masters are like wine. but everyone drinks water. mark twain whether the media or politicians interpret events as an act of war or terrorism or just "plain evil," it was still lived through by everyday people. and how did people interpret it? a few weeks after the event, a businessperson, one of the few survivors in his office, appeared on television. he had just set up a makeshift office near his old site, and was in the process of arranging to attend the funerals of coworkers at the same time he was trying to salvage the business. at one point he helplessly looked at the camera and said, "this is what i do. i have to do something. artists can paint pictures, writers can write stories, and i can do this. i plug in the phone and i work." even in times of public crisis, there is a prevailing view that the "gift" of interpretive response belongs only to those pre-immersed in the business and craft of interpretation or abstract representation. in the days after, the mainstream media paraded an array of politicians, celebrities, and interpreters of pop culture, in short, anyone known to interpret this most unknown event. as the months (and years) pass, it is increasingly obvious that since this was a public event, people should have felt permitted to take part in official interpretations, even if their role was to disrupt it. perhaps this is why, in schools, teachers are left with a sense of unfinished business, that the media interpretation, the rationales for war and the ban on dissenting opinion created a sense of lingering bewilderment. ironically, because the enormous weight of the media's words left no room for voicing human-sized experiences of the event, they may have not only predicted but also created and advanced "the change" announced september 11th. can still feel the words climbing down my own back, buildings collapsed turn on the tv. if it is the media's business to shape the language of an event, then it is the crucial business of educators to critically examine the language they shape. it is also their role to model and help create a vernacular record that will give voice to those who may not feel "gifted" enough to speak. a terrorist attack, even a war, remains a non-typical, yet public event. this is why the view that only the media or expert commentators can be trusted to interpret it also requires questioning. after the attack in new york, many news reporters picked up on the phrase, "the world has changed forever." but if the world had shifted, then why were the same people shaping the language and perception of the event? the phrase had the effect of magnifying anxiety (if that were possible) at the same time it kept people tuned in. but even at the onset of the so-called global change, weren't many people still watching tv, soaking up the language, waiting for the change? even as the record of change was documented on television, as film footage of the destruction gave way to photomontages and grand musical accompaniments, the public remained a part of things, off-screen. little stories were lived out. but where were these counternarratives, the non-hyped records that would form a social history of "the change"? while televisions numbed the public with slogans, even shaping the debate in classrooms, it was important to remember john dewey's words, that "language is primarily a social thing, a means by which we give our experiences to others and get theirs again in return" (dewey, 1902, p.55). especially for those of us who work in english and language arts at the ground level, i feel students must be allowed "in on" the business of language, to first critically examine the media's portrayal and then provide opportunities to talk and record in ways that will link students, events, and place. otherwise, i fear that schools are helping to create a generation of extreme disembodiment, where the media interprets ever more complex world events in the same old language, drowning out local literacies. still, the event remains a public one, ultimately endured by the comparative taking (a)part: poetic counternarratives for troubled times 5 people, who should thereby have a chance to make sense out of it in their own words, not just the "right words" conceived by the media. then, rising, night of the rubble, night of the heap, night of the long day glued to the screen, camera pans down the street to apart ment evacuees, asks, so what do you bring at a time like this? answer is budgie, cat and one man holds up a sax, where i go, this goes. where i go. this goes. camera rolls to the next guy -that was sonny rollins, greatest saxophone player of all time and no one blinked. questions of “authenticity” under normal circumstances, the media paradoxically creates, interprets, manages, performs, packages and perpetuates images of the world in its' own increasingly inflated, insider, "authentic" image. maxine greene suggests that society conditions people to think that their lives, personal expressions, and dreams have little value: "[s]tunned by hollow formulas, media fabricated sentiments, and costbenefit terminologies, young and old alike find it hard to shape authentic expressions of hopes and ideals..." (greene, 1995, p. 136). as a teacher, i think mainstream media control may form part of the reason why many students do not even bother to consider the legitimacy and validity of their own, small, storied counternarratives. perhaps this is why promoting everyday, vernacular speech often feels like an act of dissent. it is also the reason why teachers must persist in the promotion of vernacular speech. that the media is a constructed tool used to interpret public experience is usually largely forgotten. however, for a very brief time after september 11th, the media also exhibited a confusion that may have potentially allowed entry for north american public interpretation. people watched. in retrospect, it was also a unique (and perhaps one time only) opportunity to view television reporters at a complete loss in a way that belied their normally flawless, packaged construction. it was as if the fact of their constructed existence was briefly revealed. here was a unique opportunity for teachers to observe with their students how a "stay tuned," seemingly authentic media lexicon is produced from scratch. (who first publicly used the term "evil" to describe the terrorist event? how soon after were others publicly using it? and how soon after that did "evil" become an entire "axis of evil"? in the midst of these large expressions we might have also asked, where is the diversity of common speech?) the media's important but brief linguistic lapse also served as an empowering reminder that public events are still open to interpretation by teachers, by students, by anyone. working with poetry as counternarrative, it also cannot be taken for granted that vernacular expressions are indeed more (or less) authentic. a race for (ever higher) high ground only misses the chance to debate and re-think mediatized meaning. perhaps by engaging in poetry as a form of questioning in regular classroom practice, students will learn to engage in critical and open-hearted examination during troubled times. instead of prepackaged ideas that carefully represent society's mainstream, poetic counternarratives are about the process of words and forms in flux, even as events are lived out. a poetic analysis is also in constant paradox because language of an ever-changing event is considered in ways that must allow for more change, and when teachers and students generate poems, their readings become part of the change. in this way, a poetic analysis provides the elasticity to examine an event in a way that does not preclude one's involvement or another's involvement. in other words, the goal is not to determine authenticity; instead, events are simply shaped by words from students' actual lives so that those events might be endured through shared, informed critique. poetry written in the vernacular is an unplanned, spontaneous language and, like other live constructions, it can be wrong, inappropriate or inauthentic. in time of mass social mourning, when most are without words or only able to express themselves in limited, near gibberish, it is worth remembering how the media and others recompose the discourse back to orderly binaries with a lexicon of authentic-sounding interpretation. it is also worth remembering: at least it is the people's gibberish. first time out, heart sick, poet on the street says, how's things? song goes, you've changed. fireman says, no. we drive to work go home cry drive back to work and cry again -who are the dead. now, night before is the night before, where nightmare meets the nightmare at the turn of the stairs and the tv tells us it's big, how big, bigger than this me than you, until we howl with current issues in education vol. 5 no. 6 ham fists at the moon as the dead grow, by days, more delicate. instead of unachievable goals of authenticity, poetic counternarratives force a look in a different direction from the ones typically portrayed by the media, revealing that there is neither one answer nor one simple, linear description of human events. while the messages of war and political counter measure are by now media-delivered in neatly composed packages, poetry as counternarrative stands in the mud and says: judge me. and when students engage in the action of making stories, they might begin to wonder whether the sensible-sounding stylings of the media are as sensible or even as "actual" as they seem. perhaps this way a poetic counternarrative gives students a chance to also engage in the process of "what seems." conclusion if there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day... muriel rukeyser even when the media said the world had changed, even when the expression "the new normal" was touted, some still asked, am i a part of this change? as student, teacher, poet and reader struggle with vernacular language to examine important moments, they forge a link between language, place and experience. when poetry is brought into the classroom after a large-scale event, students are permitted to make their own connections, read aloud their own interpretations that will challenge media, politicians and the pop culture interpretations of celebrities. poetic counternarrative is knowledge of the world from skewed angles, rooted in the contradictions the world presents. in the months and years after, it becomes more obvious that meaning and authenticity are not necessarily to be "found" or "defended" but rather permitted, questioned or simply lived out. the inclusion of vernacular experience in the classroom is an insurgent act. but if educators find themselves engaged in student discussions using the media's hyped word patterns (even to describe a non-typical event), then it is time to locate (or relocate) their language. caught up in the media word-cycle, what language and questions remain missing or unsaid? by examining world issues this way, educators and students might invite others into the debate, allowing language and meaning to remain open to possibility. and since personal experience is usually expressed humanly and imperfectly, it interrupts discourse, thereby pushing the boundaries of what is considered acceptable classroom discourse. it is time to turn to poetic expressions that will allow wider interpretations of the "acceptable" version of lived experience, which will allow ground level interactions with speech and text. in times of social upheaval, there is a need to act with courage, to bring forward teacher and student experience in creative, imperfect ways. as paulo freire says, adaptation to the world means "humanizing the world by transforming it" (freire, 1970, p.399). it now seems critical, even more relevant, to take part in that transformation, to remember that everything shifts and yet we remain part of that shifting. night of the burning shell, stirring in skin without others, words are small. we are tiny, loved. we reach for pencils in the middle of things as they did. lying still, we see it every time we blink, slide between two slides, where there was something, nothing and nothing, something. it sinks in. it sinks in: we are words and we remain. notes [1] samples of poetry in this document were composed by the author. [2] for further analysis of counternarrative, see: giroux, h. a., lankshear, c., mclaren, p., peters, m. (eds.) (1996). counternarratives: cultural studies and critical pedagogies in postmodern spaces. new york: routledge. references brandt, d. (1990). literacy as involvement: the acts of writers, readers and texts.carbondale: southern illinois university press. dewey, j. (1902, 1915) [1990]. the school and society/the child and the curriculum. chicago: university of chicago press. freire, p. (1998). pedagogy of freedom: ethics, democracy and civic courage. lanhman, md: rowman and littlefield. freire, p. (1970). the adult literacy process as cultural action for freedom and education and conscientizacao. in e. r. kintgen, b.m. kroll and m. rose (eds.), perspectives on literacy. (1988). carbondale: southern illinois university press. freire, p. & macedo, d. (1987). literacy: reading the word and the world. south hadley, mass: bergin and garvey. greene, m. (1995). releasing the imagination: essays on education, the arts, and social change. san francisco: jossey-bass. comparative taking (a)part: poetic counternarratives for troubled times 7 hooks, b. (1994). teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. new york: routledge. nichol, bp. (1994). an h in the heart: bp nichol, a reader. toronto: mcclelland and stewart. ong, w. j. (1988). some psychodynamics of orality. in e. r. kintgen, b.m. kroll and m. rose (eds.), perspectives on literacy. carbondale: southern illinois university press. peters, m., & lankshear, c. (1996). postmodern counternarratives. in giroux et al., (eds.), counternarratives: cultural studies and critical pedagogies in postmodern spaces. new york: routledge. rukeyser, m. (1949). the life of poetry. in j. h. levi (ed.), a muriel rukeyser reader. (1994). new york: norton and co. current issues in education vol. 5 no. 6 2002 article citation gaylie, v. (2002, november 26). taking (a)part: poetic counternarratives for troubled times. current issues in education [on-line], 5 (6). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume5/number6/ author notes veronica gaylie university of british columbia gaylie@interchange.ubc.ca veronica gaylie taught secondary english and is currently a doctoral student and instructor in curriculum and instruction at the university of british columbia. her research interests include: oral and written discourse, diverse students, narrative, and urban education. she is currently working with high school students and poetry as part of her research. her writing has been widely published in north american and international journals. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 26, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation gaylie, v. (2002). taking (a)part: poetic counternarratives for troubled times. current issues in education, 5(6). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1623 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2002,%20vol%205,%20%231-6/number6/index.html mailto:gaylie@interchange.ubc.ca http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1623 cie template volume 19, issue 1 march 7, 2016 issn 1099-839x updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments jessica a. rueter, rochell r. mcwhorter, john h. lamb and frank o. dykes the university of texas at tyler abstract: chappell, stephens, kinnison, and pettigrew (2009) conducted a study investigating educational diagnosticians knowledge of early reading development. our study replicated the work of chappell et al. through a mixed methods design that investigated educational diagnosticians’ perceptions and knowledge of early reading development. additionally, our study sought to gain a better understanding of how educational diagnosticians selected assessment instruments. our findings suggested that educational diagnosticians may lack understanding of the early developmental processes of reading and that there may be limited use of diagnostic assessment instruments when evaluating students who are struggling to read. keywords: educational diagnosticians, reading assessments, learning disabilities, instrument selection, reading disorders, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, reading fluency, prosody, mixed methods apa-style citation: rueter, j. e.., mcwhorter, r. r., lamb, j. h., & dykes, f. o. (2016). updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments. current issues in education, 19(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1450 accepted: november 17th, 2015 early identification and remediation of children at risk for reading disabilities (rd) is critical for long-term academic success and can prevent approximately 70% of later-identified rd (lovett, barron, & frijters, 2013). it is far easier to prevent reading failure in children who are at-risk than to remediate older children who are diagnosed with rd (cunningham & stanovich, 1997). moreover, it is very difficult to make up the large amounts of reading practice that children with rd have missed if interventions and early identification is postponed (schatschneider & torgensen, 2004). kavale and forness (2000) reported that approximately 90% of all children identified as learning disabled were referred for special education services due to reading difficulties. bramlett, murphy, johnson, wallingsford, and hall (2002) found that reading problems constitute 57% of the total referrals to school psychologists. furthermore, nelson and machek (2007) opined that early identification of reading failure is perhaps the most important area in which assessment personnel are able to impact the lives of children. current issues in education, 19(1) 1 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1450 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments reading development phonemic awareness and phonics instruction are aspects of the overarching construct of phonological awareness, “an oral language skill [that] refers to the knowledge that spoken words are made up of phonemes…the ability to manipulate words into its component sounds (i.e. phonemes, syllables, rime, and onset)” (siegel & mazabel, 2013, p. 192). robust evidence suggests phonological awareness plays a critical role in reading development, reading disorders, and the core deficit in students with rd (national reading panel [nrp], 2000; torgesen, 2002). a narrow aspect of phonological awareness is phonemic awareness focusing on the phoneme level (mather & wendling, 2012). phonemes are sounds represented by letters and letter combinations (siegel & mazabel, 2013). for example, the word run has three phonemes /r/ /u/ /n/. phonemic awareness is predictive of accurate word acquisition and fluent word reading skills (schatschneider & torgensen, 2004) and is critical in the acquisition of the alphabetic principle (lyon, shaywitz, & shaywitz, 2003). assessment of phonemic awareness typically includes rhyming, blending, segmenting, and phoneme manipulation (ehri et al., 2001; mather & wendling, 2012). although there are variations in sequencing and development of phonemic awareness steps (ehri et al., 2001; hempenstall, 2003), there is consistency among what is measured (e.g., rhyming, blending, etc.). pikulski and chard (2005) described reading fluency as the bridge from decoding to comprehension of text. reading fluency is an essential aspect of reading and was identified as one of the key areas of reading by the national reading panel. reading fluency is “the ability to read text quickly, accurately, and with proper expression” (nrp, 2000, p. 3) reading rate comprises the ability to recall words quickly and the speed and fluidity with which an individual reads text (hudson, lane, & pullen, 2005). children who are poor readers are typically slow and laborious while reading, struggle with school, fail to complete work, lose interest in school, and rarely read for pleasure (moats, 2001). the second element of reading fluency is accuracy, the ability to recognize or decode words. children who have poor word-reading accuracy are unlikely to understand the author’s message leading to misunderstanding of the text (hudson et al., 2005). prosody is the third area of reading fluency, the rhythmic and tonal features of speech demonstrated through expressive reading (dowhower, 1991). struggling readers often read in a monotone voice lacking expression or with inappropriate phrasing (hudson et al., 2005). the assessment of reading fluency includes: measures of accuracy, rate, and prosody (hudson et al., 2005; mather & wendling, 2012). one of the most effective methods of measuring reading fluency is through oral reading. in order to assess reading fluency and to make decisions about children’s progress in reading, teachers and assessment personnel play a vital role by providing feedback to students regarding areas that may need improvement, and providing praise, encouragement, and directions for students to read with expression (mitchell, rearden, & stacy, 2011). responsibilities of educational diagnosticians selecting, administering, and interpreting assessment results are critical responsibilities educational diagnosticians perform. moreover, educational diagnosticians are critical components of the multidisciplinary teams and assist in making decisions regarding placement, programming, and services of students with disabilities. when conducting diagnostic reading assessments educational diagnosticians must pinpoint strengths and weaknesses and specifically identify areas in which the child is struggling to read. moreover, a diagnostic reading assessment should provide possible reading intervention strategies and assist the individualized education program (iep) team in determining if the child meets eligibility criteria for special education current issues in education, 19(1) 2 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments services (chappell et al., 2009; individuals with disabilities education act, 2004). therefore, educational diagnosticians must possess skills necessary to interpret the results and convey its meaning to key stakeholders. thus, it is extremely important that educational diagnosticians are knowledgeable in a variety of assessment instruments that can be used in evaluation of reading and the reading skills that these instruments measure. further, it is important that educational diagnosticians select appropriate instruments that fully answer the referral question (sattler, 2008). standard 1.6 of the council for exceptional children (cec) (2011) special education professional practice standards provides direction for educational diagnosticians selecting instruments to be used in the assessment process. purpose of the study students who are struggling to read are consistently referred for special education evaluation (nelson & machek, 2007). to ensure that educational diagnosticians can effectively select, administer, and interpret evaluations and make appropriate evidence-based recommendations, it is important they have specific knowledge in the areas of early reading development, (i.e. phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and reading fluency). in addition, educational diagnosticians must select appropriate instruments when evaluating students at-risk for reading failure. the primary purpose of this study was to obtain information about educational diagnosticians’ knowledge of early reading development specifically in the areas of phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and reading fluency. the areas of focus in this study, as in the original study, were on early developmental reading skills rather than on languagecomprehension tasks such as vocabulary and reading comprehension. the secondary purpose of this study was to gain understanding of the instruments educational diagnosticians select when evaluating students who are at-risk for rd. the current research study is a follow-up and extension of the chappell et al. (2009) study. while early identification of students who are at risk for reading disorders is critical for long-term academic success (lovett et al., 2013), another important consideration is the noted absence of change in assessment practices (ysseldyke, 2005). therefore, the research team sought to examine whether changes have been made during the previous five years by replicating and extending chappell et al. (2009) study. the following research questions guided the study: (a) to what extent do educational diagnosticians have knowledge in the processes of learning to read? (b) to what extent do educational diagnosticians have knowledge about which assessment tools are most appropriate to measure phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and reading fluency? methodology in this study, a mixed-methods research approach was utilized that combined both quantitative and qualitative data collected (creswell & clark, 2010). as chappell et al. (2009) obtained a quantitative analysis of educational diagnosticians’ knowledge and usage of phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, reading fluency and the assessments aiding the identification of students struggling with these concepts, our study sought to strengthen the results from chappell et al. (2009) by replicating their methods. in addition, to supplement and complement the quantitative data, we added semi-structured follow-up interviews to provide educational diagnosticians with a better understanding of the essence of diagnosing reading difficulties. johnson and onwuegbuzie (2004) advised a mixed methods approach is when researchers combine the strengths of each methodology; therefore, we combined the strength of both quantitative and qualitative methods to help us gain insight into the real-world practice of current issues in education, 19(1) 3 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments educational diagnosticians. before beginning the research, the institutional review board (irb) approved the study and informed consent was obtained from all participants. data collection the population for this study consisted of educational diagnosticians in texas. the accessible population consisted of those who were contacted via electronic mail. the research team initially sent emails with a link to the survey, through qualtrics (qualtrics.com), to special education directors in texas soliciting assistance in disseminating our survey to active educational diagnosticians (see appendix a). special education directors’ names and contact information were obtained via the texas council of administrators of special education (tcase) directory. special education directors were asked to forward the email containing a link to the survey to all educational diagnosticians employed in their districts. to increase participation rates, a drawing for four $50 gift cards were offered for completed responses. the survey remained available for three months. at the end of the survey, participants were asked to volunteer for the qualitative portion of this two-phased mixed methods study. thirty individuals responded “yes” to being interested in the qualitative phase but only eight provided specific contact information. of the eight that provided information, four were purposively selected for inclusion in the qualitative phase (lincoln & guba, 1985). the selection criteria included two factors: (1) years of experience and (2) geographical location. in selecting these two factors, the research team sought to include individuals with varying years of experience and who were from different geographical locations in texas. two hundred twelve educational diagnosticians accessed and submitted their survey. seventy-seven (36%) of these educational diagnosticians fully completed the survey with one not providing demographic information. the research team purposively sampled four educational diagnosticians for interviews. interviewed participants. four educational diagnosticians participated in the interview phase of this research study. the following paragraphs highlight the participants’ educational experiences and background pertinent to this study. descriptions about the participants are consistent with the university irb protection of human subjects by using pseudonyms and providing broad geographical locations. susan taught for four years as a humanities teacher in a secondary setting. during the past three years, she has been employed as an educational diagnostician in the southern region. the second participant, evelyn, taught for thirteen years in an elementary classroom and has been an educational diagnostician for the past 20 years in the eastern region. she has the most experience of the four individuals that we interviewed. mary had eight years of experience as a classroom teacher and six as an educational diagnostician in the eastern region. the final interviewed participant, barbara had the most experience in education. with 30 plus years of experience, barbara has taught as a classroom teacher, a bilingual educator, and a bilingual educational diagnostician for the last six years in the northern region. this purposeful sample provided us with three of the four broad regions of texas. moreover, the sample provided two veteran educators, evelyn and barbara, and two relatively new educators, susan and mary. the two veteran educators had contrasting levels of experience with barbara having the majority of her career as a teacher and evelyn spending most of her career as an educational diagnostician. surveyed participants. the surveyed participants were primarily female (95%) with 86% being caucasian, 9% african american, 3% hispanic, and 1% other. all of the participants current issues in education, 19(1) 4 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments were over the age of 25, with over half of the participants 46 years of age or older. table 1 illustrates the distribution for years of experience in both teaching and being an educational diagnostician for participants in the chappell et al. (2009) study and ours. table 1 years of educational experience years of experience teaching educational diagnostician chappell* current chappell* current 0-5 8 (19%) 24 (31%) 29 (69%) 19 (25%) 6-10 18 (43%) 25 (32%) 5 (12%) 19 (25%) 11-15 7 (17%) 11 (14%) 3 (7%) 23 (30%) 16-20 5 (12%) 6 (8%) 2 (5%) 7 (9%) 21-25 2 (5%) 4 (5%) 2 (5%) 1 (1%) 26+ 2 (5%) 6 (8%) 1 (2%) 7 (9%) *frequency data obtained from chappell et al. (2009). figure 1. the relationship between educational diagnostician training and reading course completion changes after the year 2000. an overwhelming majority of the participant educational diagnosticians in this study were trained through a university program (91%). all but two of the participants provided the year they completed their educational diagnostician training. of these 75 participants, 20% were trained within the previous five years and 43% within the previous ten years of this study. when asked the year each educational diagnostician last took a reading course, all but two participants provided a response. of these 75 participants, 14 (19%) have not had a reading course. of the 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% pe rc en ta ge current issues in education, 19(1) 5 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments remaining 61 participants, 15% completed a reading course within the previous five years and 34% completed a reading course within the previous 10 years of this study. figure 1 illustrates the distribution of participants completing their educational diagnostician training and reading coursework organized within mainly five-year intervals. an important observation of these data indicated a strong relationship between educational diagnostician training and reading coursework prior to the year 2000 and a stark difference between the two frequencies after the year 2000. the participant educational diagnosticians had assignments in preschool (37%), elementary (78%), middle/junior high school (51%), high school (38%), bilingual assessment (11%), and vocational assessment (5%). twenty-seven percent of the educational diagnosticians had only one assignment, 23% had two assignments, 18% had three assignments, 17% had four assignments, 3% had five assignments, 6% had assignments in all six categories, and the remaining 5% had single assignments in pk-12 and life skills, assessment supervisor, college/post high school, or licensed specialist in school psychology (percentages do not add to 100% because of rounding). instrumentation the chappell et al. (2009) survey instrument was adapted and used in this replication study with permission (see appendix b). the chappell et al. (2009) survey consisted of 19 items while our survey had 26. our survey had five additional demographic questions and two additional concluding items requesting participation in the qualitative portion of our study. we made two changes to the content items of the chappell et al. (2009) study to obtain a greater understanding of the educational diagnosticians’ frequency of use and knowledge of diagnostic assessments. we required the participants to indicate the frequency of each assessment’s usage instead of ranking the assessments based on usage, and our survey had participants indicate whether or not an assessment measures phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and fluency instead of stating whether or not they are aware of any assessments and then listing them. our final survey consisted of 47 individual assessment items. chappell et al. (2009) found an internal consistency of 0.63 with their survey, and our cronbach’s alpha was 0.75. another adaptation we made to the survey was the omission of automaticity from the list of possible choices for elements that measure reading fluency. automaticity is the automatic recall of words (kuhn & stahl, 2003). a critical component of automaticity concerns an individual’s speed of reading or more specifically his/her oral reading rate (hudson et al., 2005). data analysis all quantitative data analysis was conducted using spss 20 (www.spss.com). all qualitative interview data was analyzed utilizing nvivo 10 (www.qsrinternational.com). for data analysis, the semi-structured interviews were audio recorded and transcripts created. subsequently, the written transcripts were uploaded into the qualitative data analysis platform, nvivo 10, and the platform was used for unitizing (examining each segment of data), coding and categorizing (lincoln & guba, 1985). this process was done independently by a team of researchers; then together, the researchers developed broad themes from the data. utilizing a team of researchers enhances the trustworthiness of the findings (lincoln & guba, 1985). trustworthiness refers to the merit of qualitative inquiry and results from rigorous scholarship that authentically reflects meanings as described by study participants (lincoln & guba, 1985). strategies utilized by the research team that promoted trustworthiness included indepth semi-structured interviews, field notes, research memos, reflective journals, triangulation, member checking, and audit trails (lincoln & guba, 1985). the use of a research team current issues in education, 19(1) 6 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments comprised of trained researchers in quantitative and qualitative methodologies can enhance the trustworthiness of the interpretation of the results (lincoln & guba, 1985). by discussing the findings of this study as a research team, the team verified their interpretation of the results. in-depth semi-structured interviews were used as one strategy to promote trustworthiness (merriam, 2009). in-depth interviews allowed the participants to describe their unique experiences regarding the evaluation and diagnoses of students with reading difficulties. each interview was audio-recorded and later transcribed. the duration of each interview was approximately 60 to 90 minutes. another strategy that was used to promote trustworthiness was the use of handwritten field notes (merriam, 2009). field notes were taken during the interview as a backup to audio recordings and initial impressions of the interview. moreover, field notes added to the analysis of the data collected and were used to verify and validate themes (lincoln & guba, 1985) generated within nvivo software. additionally, research memos and reflective journals were created and added to the authenticity of the field notes and interviews (merriam, 2009). research memos were written as the data emerged and notes were taken between ideas and concepts and their potential relationship. these memos and journal reflections provided a record of meaning that was derived from the data and utilized in the triangulation of data. the triangulation of data consisted of aligning and identifying themes that emerged from survey results, field notes, research memos, reflective journals, and interview transcripts. triangulation is the use of multiple sources to verify the results of the study and build integrity and increase confidence in the results (merriam, 2009). member checking was also used as a strategy to promote trustworthiness (merriam, 2009). initial themes were generated and interviewed participants were asked to provide input and feedback. the feedback assisted in refining themes and making inferences from the data. audit trails were used throughout the study to verify and track data collected in the study (merriam, 2009). these trails provided evidence of the steps that were taken from the beginning of the research study to the reporting of the findings. these audit trails helped to ensure the validity of our methods and the reliability of the results. results the primary purpose of this study was to obtain information about educational diagnosticians’ knowledge of early reading development specifically in the areas of phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and reading fluency. the secondary purpose of this study was to gain understanding of the instruments educational diagnosticians select when evaluating students who are at-risk for rd. the following research questions guided the study: (a) to what extent do educational diagnosticians have knowledge in the processes of learning to read? (b) to what extent do educational diagnosticians have knowledge about which assessment tools are most appropriate to measure phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and reading fluency? educational diagnosticians’ knowledge in the processes of learning to read quantitative replication. chappell et al. (2009) reported percentages of their participants correctly defining phonological (52%) and phonemic (62%) awareness, and 76% knew that phonological awareness was a predictor of reading success. we found less positive results in that our participants defined phonological and phonemic awareness with 44% and 49% accuracy respectively. however, our participants were more aware of the fact that phonological awareness was a predictor of reading success with 94% correctly identifying this fact. despite our research team’s extensive review of chappell et al. (2009), automaticity was not a listed item in our question asking what elements of reading fluency are measured. we current issues in education, 19(1) 7 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments provided an option for our participant educational diagnosticians to add any elements not listed, but none provided any element. we did however assess the participant knowledge of oral reading rate, which is a strong predictor of reading fluency and one of the characteristics of automaticity (hudson et al., 2005). we found a similar percentage of our participants (29%, n = 22) correctly identified prosody as an element of reading fluency when compared to the chappell et al. (2009) study (31%). we found a greater rate when identifying accuracy with 68 (88%) of our participants identifying accuracy compared to 74% of the chappell et al. (2009) participants. specific frequency of chappell et al. (2009) participants identifying oral reading rate was not available, we found 84% (n = 65) of our educational diagnosticians successfully identified this element while 67% of participants in chappell et al. (2009) correctly identified automaticity. chappell et al. (2009) reported that “[a]pproximately 80% (n = 34) of respondents identified the correct components of reading fluency” (p. 28). we assumed these percentages were obtained by the count of respondents who chose prosody, automaticity, or accuracy and ignored whether or not the respondents selected all three together or any of the incorrect elements listed in the survey. table 2 percentage of educational diagnosticians who correctly ranked each stage within one rank above or below the correct place note. percentages in italics are from the chappell et al. (2009) study this assumption was substantiated by the percentages of selecting each individual element in isolation where only 74% selected accuracy making it impossible for 80% to have chosen all three. replicating this method, we found that 96% (n = 74) of respondents chose prosody, accuracy, or oral reading rate. however, we found that 34% (n = 26) of our respondents chose at least one of our elements (prosody, accuracy, or oral reading rate) without selecting any of the incorrect elements of (retell fluency, silent reading rate, and comprehension). we additionally found that only seven (9%) of our participants were able to select all three of our reading fluency elements without selecting any of the incorrect elements. these results illustrated that although a sizeable percentage of the participant educational diagnosticians 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th recognition that sentences are made of words 25%(19%) recognition that words can rhyme 68% (57%) recognition that words can begin with the same word, end with the same sounds, or have the same medial sound 39% (57%) recognition that words can be broken down into syllables 48% (45%) recognition that words can be broken down into onsets and rimes 49% (40%) recognition that words can be broken down into individual phonemes 40% (29%) recognition that sounds can be deleted from words to make new words 55% (48%) ability to blend sounds to make words 14% (17%) current issues in education, 19(1) 8 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments identified the correct components of reading fluency, a large percentage made these selections in conjunction with incorrect selections of non-elements in reading fluency illustrating less of an understanding of reading fluency. the final comparison of the results of the chappell et al. (2009) study to ours is the knowledge of reading processes whereby participants’ ability to accurately sequence stages of phonemic awareness was studied. that only one participant correctly ordered these stages is extremely low and discouraging, yet better than zero of the respondents in the chappell et al. (2009) study. chappell et al. (2009) found their participants’ general understanding of these stages was 57% knew “recognizing words can rhyme” comes early in the reading process. we assessed our participants’ ability to rank each stage within one stage at, above, or below the correct stage. table 2 shows the percentages of our respondents compared to those of chappell et al. (2009) who ranked each stage within one level of the correct order. we additionally found that 81% (n = 62) disappointedly ranked four or fewer of the eight stages within one of their correct order. qualitative extension. our qualitative extension sought to gain a deeper insight of educational diagnosticians’ knowledge of early reading development. knowledge regarding the processes of learning to read emerged as a theme. one of the key processes of learning to read shared by three of the interviewed participants was that children must understand the alphabetic principle. mary stated, “….. that basically the child when they’re trying to learn to read—to begin even to code—they need to have a good understanding of the letters, and of the sounds, mainly.” barbara illustrated the importance of phonological awareness by commenting that, “if [phonological awareness is] typically developing, [the student is] okay. if it’s not typically developing, then [we in education are] looking at a reading disorder.” these qualitative findings corroborate the descriptive results of 94% of participants knowing that phonological awareness is a predictor of reading success. further, only three of the four individuals interviewed recognized that manipulating sounds are important components in the processes of learning to read. mary described student difficulties with “the sounds to identify that this is a letter and this is the sound that goes with it.” mary further stated that students being diagnosed have difficulty with phonemic awareness: “so, what i run into mostly are the kids that just cannot blend.” blending is one of the key skills used in reading and spelling and is necessary for decoding unfamiliar words (mather & wendling, 2012). however, only 49% of the participants in our study recognized the correct definition of phonemic awareness. emphasized less by the interviewees regarding the processes of learning to read was reading fluency. mary and barbara mentioned that reading fluency was a component of their evaluations but it was discussed in terms of the specific instruments or subtests that they used for evaluation purposes. for example, mary stated, “i always use the gort to test fluency.” further, when questioned about fluency, evelyn described the reading fluency subtest on the woodcock-johnson iii tests of achievement (wj-iii ach) (woodcock, mcgrew, & mather, 2001a), this lack of data related to reading fluency correlates well with the survey data showing only 9% of participants could accurately identify all of the elements of reading fluency. educational diagnosticians’ knowledge and use of measurement tools quantitative replication. chappell et al. (2009) asked participants to rank each of ten assessments in order of the participants’ frequency in use. we adapted this method to ask participants to provide a level of frequency they use each of these assessments (never, not frequently, frequently, very frequently). chappell et al.’s (2009) method of ranking the current issues in education, 19(1) 9 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments frequency of usage was unclear to our research team. they reported their top four administered assessments but vaguely described how this ranking was obtained. we found their method to be both a function of the assessments’ frequency within the top 3-4 ranks and a function of the frequency of the assessment not being used. from this dual method for ranking the frequency of assessment administration, we ranked chappell et al. (2009) participants’ results in conjunction with our participants ranking each assessment as being frequently or very frequently administered (see table 3). table 3 educational diagnostician frequency of using the instruments frequency chappell ranking very frequently frequently not frequently never wj-iii ach 79% 1st 61% 18% 21% 0% wiat--iii 47% 2nd 23% 23% 42% 12% ktea ii 43% 3rd 16% 27% 39% 18% gort-5 42% 6th 9% 32% 32% 26% iri 25% 5th 8% 17% 32% 43% cbm 13% 4th 3% 10% 21% 66% wrmt-iii 12% 7th 4% 8% 31% 57% toswrf 10% 8th 6% 4% 21% 69% piat-r 3% 10th 3% 0% 13% 84% tera-3 3% 9th 1% 1% 22% 75% note. editions of instruments were updated in current study to reflect existing practices. just as chappell et al. (2009) found, our participants’ 1st, 2nd, and 3rd most frequently administered measurement tools were the wj-iii ach (woodcock et al., 2001a), the wechsler individual achievement test – third edition (wiat-iii) (wechsler, 2009), and the kaufman test of educational achievement – second edition (ktea-ii) (kaufman & kaufman, 2004b) respectively. our next three ranks were not identical to chappell et al. (2009) but contained the same assessments of gray oral reading tests – 5th edition (gort-5) (wiederholt & bryant, 2012), informal reading inventory (iri), and curriculum-based measurement (cbm) (i.e. dibels). additionally, the remaining four assessments, woodcock reading mastery test – iii (wrmt-iii) (woodcock, 2011), tests of silent word reading fluency (toswrf) (mather, hammill, allen, & roberts, 2004), peabody individual achievement test – revised (piat-r) (markwardt, 1997), and tests of early reading ability – 3rd edition (tera-3) (reid, hresko, & hammill, 2001), were ranked as the least frequently used by participants. overall, the participants in our study used the assessments with relatively the same frequency. with respect to their knowledge of these assessments, we also obtained very similar results to those of chappell et al. (2009). we adapted the chappell et al. (2009) survey questions pertaining to the participants’ knowledge of the assessment tools to not only indicate if they were aware of an instrument that assessed phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, or reading fluency, but they also indicated their knowledge of whether or not each of the research assessments specifically measured these three reading elements. we were pleased to find our participants knew that the wj-iii ach assessed phonological awareness (81%) phonemic awareness (71%) and reading fluency (75%) in addition to knowing the gort-5 assessed reading fluency (77%). we were conversely alarmed to find only 38% of our participants knew the ktea-ii assessed components current issues in education, 19(1) 10 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments of reading fluency and 23%-31% of the participants believed the gort-5 and tera-3 assessed phonological and phonemic awareness, which they do not. our replication of chappell et al.’s (2009) analysis continued by determining if there were any differences in educational diagnosticians’ assessment knowledge and content knowledge of phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and reading fluency. chappell et al. (2009) ran non-parametric tests finding no differences in their educational diagnosticians’ assessment awareness and content knowledge. because our adaptation of the chappell et al. (2009) survey provided us with more data, we established continuous outcomes of participant performance when illustrating their competency in assessment measurement of phonological/phonemic awareness and reading fluency as well as competency in content knowledge of phonological/phonemic awareness and reading fluency. our continuous data allowed for deeper analysis in determining differences in assessment knowledge and content knowledge. we found no relationship (r = 0.082, p = 0.447) between participants’ knowledge of which assessments measure phonological and phonemic awareness (μ = 0.66) and their content knowledge of phonological and phonemic awareness (μ = 0.48). we did not find any relationship (r = -0.032, p = 0.781) between our participants’ assessment (μ = 0.60) and content (μ = 0.69) knowledge related to reading fluency. however, we determined significant differences between assessment and content knowledge for both phonological/phonemic awareness (t = 7.123, p < 0.001) and reading fluency (t = -2.927, p < 0.01). these data indicated the participants had a greater knowledge of what assessments measured phonological/phonemic awareness than what phonological/phonemic awareness was. in contrast, our participants had a greater content knowledge of reading fluency than which assessments measured fluency. because of the distributions observed in figure 1, participants were grouped based on when they last completed a reading course: 1. before the year 2000 (n = 34) , 2. after the year 2000 (n = 27), and 3. never taken a reading course (n = 14). the intent of this grouping was to determine if having taken a reading course or the time at which the last reading course was taken affected educational diagnostician knowledge. a multiple analysis of variance (manova) of four dependent outcomes of phonological/phonemic awareness assessment and content knowledge as well as reading fluency assessment content knowledge yielded no differences (f(8, 140) = 1.005, p = 0.435). qualitative extension. the interview data revealed instrument selection is a complex undertaking and that there are a multitude of reasons why educational diagnosticians select instruments for the children they evaluate. within the theme of instrument selection, two subthemes emerged: (1) district decisions and (2) diagnostic reading instruments. evelyn indicated that she selected instruments based on which ones the district purchased (i.e. availability). she commented that she typically administers the woodcock-johnson iii tests of cognitive abilities (wj-iii cog) (woodcock, mcgrew, & mather, 2001b) and the corresponding wj-iii ach, but when she first began her career as an educational diagnostician, she administered the wechsler intelligence scales (wechsler, 2003) and the corresponding wechsler achievement tests (wiat). moreover, she reported that when she evaluates young children (i.e. early childhood) she uses instruments such as the developmental assessment of young children, second edition (dayc-2) (voress & maddox, 2013) that has been specifically designed for this population of children. barbara indicated that instruments should be ideally selected based on the needs of the child. she stated, “well, your different instruments fit your different kids.” conversely, when current issues in education, 19(1) 11 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments asked about which instruments she selected, she reported that she was using the wj iii cog and wj iii-ach exclusively “because it fits the easiest into the cross battery model.” moreover, she indicated that her decision to use a certain assessment was whatever the district required her to use by stating, “whatever they tell me, i have to do.” further, because barbara is a bilingual educational diagnostician she described instrument selection for second language learners as significantly more limited. she stated there is not a robust quantity of instruments for children who are not native english speakers. she further elaborated that if given the choice she would select the wj iii cog and the batería iii woodcock-muñoz (woodcock, muñoz-sandoval, mcgrew, & mather, 2007) for children who have literacy in spanish, due to the limited availability of instruments, and the kaufman assessment battery for children-second edition (kabc-ii) (kaufman & kaufman, 2004a) and ktea-ii for children who do not possess literacy in spanish. the most informative result from these interviews aided discovering why so few of the surveyed participants used or knew about diagnostic reading instruments like the comprehensive tests of phonological processing, second edition (ctopp-2) (wagner, torgesen, rashotte & pearson, 2013), gort-5, and wrmt -iii. only one of the four participants used diagnostic reading instruments as part of their comprehensive reading evaluations. susan, evelyn, and barbara reported that they do not use diagnostic reading instruments. susan reported that she knows she should but that she does not. evelyn reported that it was an issue of availability. barbara reported it was due to district specific guidelines that the district endorses. only one participant of the four, mary, reported that diagnostic reading instruments were part of the assessment process. specifically, in this district, all children prior to being referred to special education for reading assessments undergo dyslexia evaluations. during this process, the counselor, along with assistance from mary, administers the ctopp-2, gort-5, wrmt-iii, and a brief intelligence scale. overall, the qualitative extension provided evidence of existing barriers that minimize the use and knowledge of specific assessment tools. district decisions and limited knowledge of instruments add to the reasons why our participants reported using certain assessments more frequently than others. discussion our results parallel the chappell et al. (2009) findings that indicate educational diagnosticians are not sufficiently trained in the developmental processes of reading or in the stages of phonemic awareness. although 94% of our participants were aware that phonological awareness was a key predictor of reading success, only 44% identified the correct definition of phonological awareness and only 49% identified the correct definition of phonemic awareness. these findings indicate a significant lack of preparation of educational diagnosticians and are in line with literature from the area of school psychology. nelson and machek (2007) found that over 90% of their participants reported that more training in reading assessment and intervention would be beneficial for them as practitioners. data from the survey phase of the study indicated that 81% ranked four or fewer of the stages of phonemic awareness in the correct order. these data suggests that there may be a lack of understanding regarding the stages that children go through in learning to read. conversely, information obtained from the participants in the qualitative phase revealed that there might be more understanding than reported in the quantitative phase. more specifically, participants in the qualitative phase revealed that the alphabetic principle was critical to the developmental stages of reading and that manipulating sounds are important in developing appropriate reading skills. current issues in education, 19(1) 12 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments moreover, evelyn, mary, and barbara discussed the importance of blending as a developmental process of reading. in the area of reading fluency, only 26 individuals (36%) selected at least one of the elements (prosody, accuracy, or oral reading rate) without selecting any incorrect elements (retell fluency, silent reading rate, and comprehension). moreover, individuals who were interviewed did not discuss assessment of fluency in detail rather they discussed fluency in terms of the actual subtests on norm-referenced instruments. the inferential analysis revealed participants knew more about reading fluency than they did about the assessments that measure this reading process. these data suggests that educational diagnosticians do not understand the actual components of reading fluency, but are instead relying on assessment publishers’ perspectives. as in the chappell et al. (2009) study, our participants experienced difficulty identifying instruments that measured phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and reading fluency. up to 31% of our participants believed that the gort-5 and tera-3 assessed phonological awareness, but these instruments do not. moreover, only 38% of our participants indicated that the ktea-ii measured components of reading fluency. our participants may have an understanding of some assessments, but these results show their overall knowledge of what assessments measure is lacking indicating a need for training programs to provide specific emphasis on instrumentation, most disturbing were the results that suggested educational diagnosticians do not administer diagnostic reading instruments such as the gort-5, ctopp-2, or wrmt-iii rather they are administering the broader norm-referenced assessments that contain measures of reading (e.g. wj iii-ach, ktea-ii, wiat-iii). mary was the only individual interviewed who reported that diagnostic reading assessments were used as part of the evaluation process. these findings indicated that educational diagnosticians are identifying rd from general measures of achievement rather than using specific diagnostic instruments that are purposively designed to pinpoint specific weaknesses in the development of reading. further, our results suggest that district mandates may limit educational diagnosticians’ understanding and use of diagnostic assessment instruments to identify children with reading disabilities. limitations the results of this study should be viewed within the context of the following limitations. generalizability of the study should be considered in relation to the sample size and response rate of the survey. although our returns were consistent with literature from studies involving educational diagnosticians and school psychologists, a larger sample size that is more diverse and higher return rate would generate a greater degree of confidence and reliability in the results. moreover, findings were based on a sample of educational diagnosticians who received and read the emailed survey via their special education director. it is possible that not all educational diagnosticians who were employed in public school settings in texas were forwarded the link and/or read the email. limitations related to the survey methodology should also be considered. for the purposes of the quantitative phase, we made the following adaptations to the original instrument. two changes were made to the content items of the chappell et al. (2009) study. we required the participants to indicate the frequency of each assessments’ usage and our survey had participants indicate whether or not a given assessment instrument measures phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and fluency. the second adaption was the omission of automaticity as a response item in our question asking what elements of reading fluency are measured. it is not known if individual responses would have changed if these adaptations were not made. current issues in education, 19(1) 13 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments results of the quantitative phase of the study are based on participants’ self-reports. the accuracy of these reports is unknown. however, findings from the quantitative phase have been corroborated with information obtained from interviews that were conducted as part of the study. further research into the knowledge and use of assessment tools and the reading processes that govern these tools is imperative. a greater number of content questions in the area of reading should be added. these items should include areas of phonics and the alphabetic principle. additional assessment related questions should also be added to the survey. moreover, future reiterations of the instrument may want to eliminate the ordering of the stages of phonological awareness development and focus instead on performance of phonological awareness tasks such as “tapping out the number of sounds, reversing the order of sounds in a word, and putting together sounds presented in isolation to form a word” (wagner & torgesen, 1987, p. 192). despite the improved internal consistency alpha of 0.74 with this adaptation, the survey should continue to be improved to increase this measure and assure that future results from this type of research can better aid in the improved practice of educational diagnosticians. conclusions and implications for practice the findings of this study can be used to inform current educational diagnostician preparation programs regarding the immediate need to include training in specific reading assessment instruments in order to properly diagnose rd and to provide strategic recommendations for classroom instruction. like chappell et al. (2009) we requested our participants to rate their level of agreement to various statements related to training and personal confidence in their skills. despite the 74% of our participants who believed they had the needed skills to effectively interpret assessments and make recommendations, our findings show they lack necessary knowledge to interpret and recommend strategies and interventions. professional development opportunities are needed through school districts, universities, and other state training facilities to strengthen assessment personnel’s knowledge of the processes of reading and training in administering assessment instruments specifically targeted to measure the critical components of reading acquisition. it is critical that there is more understanding of which assessment instruments districts make available and the degree of use of these instruments by educational diagnosticians. our results suggest that district mandates may limit educational diagnosticians’ understanding and use of diagnostic assessment. this may result in inadequate and/or incorrect identification, placement, and programming for students who are struggling to read. finally, results obtained from assessments should provide teachers with information that they can use in their classrooms. if educational diagnosticians are utilizing general achievement measures for identification purposes, information about specific areas of weaknesses may be lacking. this lack of specific information may result in insufficient recommendations for classroom teachers. references bramlett, r. k., murphy, j. j., johnson, j., wallingsford, l., & hall, j. d. 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(2005). assessment and decision making for students with learning disabilities: what if this is as good as it gets? learning disability quarterly, 28(2), 125-128. current issues in education, 19(1) 17 rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments author notes jessica a. rueter, ph.d. the university of texas at tyler 3900 university blvd, bep 240, tyler, tx 75799 jrueter@uttyler.edu jessica a. rueter is an assistant professor of special education. rochell r. mcwhorter, ph.d. the university of texas at tyler rmcwhorter@uttyler.edu rochell mcwhorter is an assistant professor of human resource development. john h. lamb, ph.d. the university of texas at tyler jlamb@uttyler.edu john lamb is an associate professor of math education. frank o. dykes, ed.d. the university of texas at tyler fdykes@uttyler.edu frank dykes is an associate professor of special education. current issues in education, 19(1) 18 mailto:jrueter@uttyler.edu mailto:rmcwhorter@uttyler.edu mailto:jlamb@uttyler.edu mailto:fdykes@uttyler.edu rueter, mcwhorter, lamb, & dykes: updated perspectives on educational diagnosticians’ understanding of reading assessments volume 19, issue 1 march 7, 2016 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh bethany richmond lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers current issues in education, 19(1) 19 microsoft word 838_final.doc 1 volume 15, number 1 april 3, 2012 issn 1099-839x does education cause spiritual belief change? d. thomas markle university of new mexico currently, little is known about the influence classroom learning has on the spiritual beliefs of students. despite this fact, decisions on educational policy, parental home schooling, and even whether to bring legal actions against school districts, often rest on the assumption that education can induce spiritual belief change. to begin the process of filling the current gap in academic knowledge, this qualitative interview study centers on the personal accounts of educational and religious histories of sixteen participants. the interview data collected suggests that education has a limited role in beginning the process of spiritual belief change, but that education is often relied on once an episode of belief revision begins to occur. instead, major life events, such as the death of a family member, were often described as being the catalyst for spiritual belief change. the importance of emotion in both education and belief change is discussed. keywords: religion, spirituality, belief change, hot conceptual change, emotions, life events, education, qualitative a trend exists that as an individual comes to be more learned in an academic discipline, she becomes less likely to retain her religious beliefs (ecklund & scheitle, 2007; larson & witham, 1998; leuba, 1916; 1933). while researchers are cognizant of the correlation between degree of education and decline of religious beliefs, we still lack an explanation of how or why such a shift in belief might be occurring. current developmental and conceptual change theories provide conflicting results as to what exposure to new information can do to a system of beliefs (carey, 1988; piaget, 1971; pintrich, marx, & boyle, 1993). notwithstanding our unmistakable lack of understanding as to why such changes in belief might develop, legal actions amidst various families, religious organizations, and school systems in the united states have persisted over a variety issues stemming from assumptions that learning new knowledge can fundamentally and irrevocably augment an individual’s religious beliefs. yet, the fact remains there is no solid evidence to justify such an assertion. despite the above stated lack of information, one would be hard pressed to find a curriculum-based issue that sparks a more impassioned debate than that of the teaching evolution in public schools. parents and educators have deeply entrenched views regarding what is the appropriate material to be included in the science education curriculum. many high-profile scientific organizations have had to address the teaching evolution in public schools as a result of the high tensions that accompany the topic. one example, the national science teachers association, posted an open response to the public regarding their official position defending the teaching of evolution in schools, and has made available a wealth of resources for educators to aid in the teaching of evolution (national sciences teachers association, 2003). furthermore, numerous lawsuits have taken place, in both local and federal courts across the united states, attempting to change the degree to which either intelligent design or evolution is included in public school current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 2 curriculums. thus far, sixteen court cases involving a dispute related to evolution and education that have been adjudicated to completion by federal court rulings. ten of these cases have had a significant impact on the educational landscape of the country through the adjustment of curriculum; the first case was epperson v. arkansas, in 1968; and the most recent being kitzmiller et al. v. dover area school district et al., which occurred in 2005 (antolin & herbers, 2001; matsumura & mead, 2007; pager, 2006). research conducted with parents who have selected to either home school their children or send them to a private academy regularly cite an inconsistency between their religious faith and the educational policies of their local schools as one of the top reasons for removing their children from the public school system (yang & kayaardi, 2004). many parents who choose to home school for religious reasons do so assuming that allowing their children to be exposed to information that is inconsistent with the family’s religious traditions is inherently dangerous. if, anecdotally, so many individuals hold the opinion that there is a correlation between education and spiritual belief change, then how does current educational theory measure that point of view? the answer is decidedly mixed and largely dependent on which theory is applied to the question. for example, in just looking at the theory of constructivism a researcher would be conflicted on how to interpret the impact learning might have on religious beliefs. using traditional constructivism, in which individuals slowly build their understanding of the world, it would be possible for new information to challenge one’s spiritual beliefs (piaget, 1971). piaget asserted that when new and significant information fails to fit into pre-established constructs people begin to feel a natural level of discomfort with this realization, known as disequilibrium. they are then forced to either assimilate the new information into what we believe, or accommodate it by fundamentally changing their mental construct. while disequilibrium could be the beginnings of an explanation, neo-piagetians have since modified the initial theory of how individuals construct understanding of the world, from a single logical structure into a domain-specific theory (gelman & williams, 1998; wellman & gelman, 1992, 1998). in essence, this change implies that we construct separate and unique structures for different areas of thought. a consequence of this theory change would be that it potentially becomes more difficult for new knowledge to influence religious beliefs; in order for new information to be influential there would need to be a match between the domains of the incoming and established knowledge. survey data collected on the american public indicates congruence with the revised constructionist theory. national attitudes about the existence of god have remained comparatively stable over the past 80 years (harris poll, 2006). perhaps the most damaging evidence against the notion that education can change the spiritual beliefs of students is to consider that it was roughly 40 years ago that the supreme court ruled in favor of teaching evolution in the u.s. and rates of faith have failed to change. in fact, regardless of the curriculum used public schools across the u.s., the population who believe in god, are some of the highest of any industrialized nation in the world (harris poll, 2006). in light of a poverty of direct evidence, and contradicting forecasts from various theories of learning, we must call into question the assumption that formal education is a causal factor in modifying the spiritual beliefs of students. design the research design of the study is based on a qualitative methodology of one-on-one personal, semistructured interviews between the researcher and the participant (merton, lowenthal, & kendall, 1990). the goal of this design is to explore the stories of how an individual’s education history and spiritual beliefs have interacted throughout that individual’s life, using the method of in-depth personal interviews. for this study, the personal interviews were conducted with 18 participants who were selected through snowball and volunteer sampling attempting to establish a heterogeneous sample with regards to spiritual beliefs; however data was used from only 16. one of the participants failed to provide enough data during the interview for coding, and the second participant chose to end the interview before completion. in-depth interviews of roughly 35 to 75 minutes were conducted with each participant. during these conversations the participant was asked to reconstruct their educational experiences, their progression from early religious and spiritual beliefs to their current beliefs, and what impact they believe their learning had on any change in spiritual beliefs. each of the interviews had the audio dialogue digitally recorded as a means to secure data provided from the participant, in addition to detailed field notes taken by the researcher during the interview. participants the sample population for the interview study consisted of participants who were graduate students or faculty at the university of georgia. this population represented a wealth of lived experience within educational systems, both locally within georgia public schools, as well as other institutions around the united does education cause spiritual belief change? 3 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 1 summary of participants name gender age range education childhood beliefs current belief amber female late 20s ph.d. can. catholic christian amy female mid 20s ph.d. can. catholic / methodist spiritually christian ann female mid 20s ph.d. can. agnostic agnostic brian male late 20s ph.d. can. baptist agnostic derek male early 30s ph.d. jewish agnostic emily female late 20s ph.d. can. christian christian jonathan male late 50s ph.d. agnostic christian julie female late 20s ph.d. can. presbyterian spiritually christian jen female mid 30s ma. catholic zen buddhist mike male mid 30s ph.d. mormon pantheist molly female early 30s ba. catholic spiritually catholic robert male early 30s ph.d. can. jewish spiritually jewish sally female early 30s ba. jehovah’s witness spiritually jewish sean male mid 30s ph.d. agnostic christian thomas male late 20s ph.d. can. catholic catholic tim male mid 60s ph.d. christian presbyterian ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ states and abroad. participants (see appendix for descriptions) were recruited through fliers placed around campus on bulletin boards, recruitment e-mails, as well as word-of-mouth through the assistance of friends, colleagues, and faculty members asking individuals, whom they believed might be interested, if they would be willing to volunteer some of their time to discuss their religious, spiritual, and educational history. as a prerequisite to volunteering, individuals were asked to provide basic descriptive data such as age and gender, in addition to the spiritual beliefs they were raised with, and the spiritual beliefs they currently hold. while the procedure of purposeful selection was going to be used with the aim of preventing a homogeneous sample of individuals with the same spiritual beliefs, gender, or age, the individuals who volunteered to participate created a wide diversity in the sample prior to any intervention by the researcher. data collection and analysis each participant was digitally recorded, capturing the discussion during the interview. the resulting audio files were then saved and later converted, by hand, into a typed transcript. each transcript contained not only the words spoken during the interview, but also all audible verbal and non-verbal cues, such as laughter, sighing, and pauses, which could be used during the process of coding and interpretation. the interview data collected were explored using two distinct analytical approaches. the first was used to find themes and patterns within the data, so that they could be converted into basic descriptive codes; a technique that is a hybridization of elements from the grounded theory approach as proposed by strauss and corbin (1990), bogdan and taylor (1975), as well as transcript analysis suggested by pomerantz and fehr (1997). the focus of this analysis is to extract content from the data by inductively coding various elements into distinctive categories. as the analytical phase of the research project advanced, the developed categories were combined, discarded, or refined in order to distill recognizable patterns of meaning from the raw data. these finalized data categories were then viewed in light of the original research questions as a means of testing the proposed hypothesis and allowing a deeper understanding of phenomena. the selected hybrid analysis approach also allowed for the coding of outside material, such as important identities and relationships to the participant, which are typically excluded by more traditional conversation analysis techniques. the main benefit that this form of transcript analysis has over others is the specific attention paid to the references and terms used by the speaker, as well as the importance of the identities, roles, and relationships between the speaker and others expressed during the interview. the second analytical approach used to interpret the data is that of a thematic narrative analysis (riessman, 2008). in this method of analysis, the entirety of the story that is told by the participant is utilized as the foundation current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 4 for interpretation. the participant’s holistic account is used instead of fracturing the transcript into smaller units of data from which one would develop codes, general themes, and symbols. the whole story can either highlight a specific case study that serves as an exemplar to a particular event, or be used to develop overarching patterns of cause and effect, a story arc that can then be compared against other stories to determine if they follow a similar progression of events. results for the majority of the participants, it is clear that education has played a role in the development of their spiritual beliefs. however, what is surprising is the nature of influence education provided for these individuals has been one of a supporting role, rather than being a cause or catalyst for belief change. while most of the participants referenced their education during the interviews, it was mentioned as a follow up to another more significant catalyst, life events. in other words, the teaching of factual information in the classroom, for stories that were examined, failed to be sufficient for spiritual belief change in isolation of other more significant factors. instead, the stories suggest that life experiences are the primary cause for spiritual belief change. events that were described included the early death of a parent, the observation of immoral behavior by local church leadership, and being deeply moved by the actions of a close friend. these life experiences, much more so than factual knowledge, were cited as the source that made the first cracks in the foundation of previously established spiritual beliefs. these personal experiences, in a sense, sow the seeds of disequilibrium, causing a questioning of some or all of a spiritual doctrine. it is from that point onward education then has the ability to provide the support for belief modification or change. to provide a sense of the coded themes in context, a transcribed example for each is given below. each case uses a block quote to maintain the richness of data and the unedited fidelity of the participant’s voice. spiritual beliefs from childhood: my family both came from very strong religious backgrounds, and had seen themselves as being damaged by those backgrounds, so my parents deemphasized religion. they never practiced anything formally, never asked that i practice anything formally, and it really just didn’t impact my life at all. i grew up in, the city i grew up in was the home to a large televangelism ministry in the 70s and 80s, so it was definitely part of the culture of school i went to, was very evangelistically christian, the culture of the city i was living in was pretty evangelistically christian, so a lot of what i thought about religion through that process was negative or antagonistic. (sean, personal communication, february 6, 2009) life experience as catalyst: somewhere in there my mom died when i was about twelve, thirteen, this was something that initially caused me to start questioning things. and then through that time i just felt very guilty for feeling that way, very fearful that i might be punished for thinking this way, and it was a major relief to eventually accept jesus into my heart, to accept god into believing this, and fully like putting all of my beliefs into this, and to devote my life to this. and after that feeling wore off, that initial, sort of like, feeling wore off, and that my life hadn’t really changed all that much, and i still was very angry that this had happened, and it still made no sense to me, it was very much, just hard to make any real sense out of this, it just seemed that god was extremely, kinda flippant about things, and if there was really a plan, what was the purpose of like putting us here just to suffer and all this kind of stuff? these were just these very adolescent, kinda of angry, thoughts that festered and were never really answered by anybody that i went to, and i just ended up with a bad taste in my mouth when it came to religion. i went to a baptist school, college, for my freshman year and was really bothered by the hypocrisy that i saw there and the insulation, just the insular nature of the place, and i wanted to go to _______________________________________________________________________________________________ table 2 frequency of major thematic codes theme frequency spiritual beliefs established by family in childhood 16 / 16 life experience as catalyst for belief change 13 / 16 the use of education after life catalyst occurred 11 / 16 _______________________________________________________________________________________________ does education cause spiritual belief change? 5 another school and just kind of explore some other ideas. one of the things that really bothered me, was that nobody, like people would just scoff at anything that was bound in reason, or things like that. it was like blasphemy to discuss evolution that was something that was like a possibility, things like that. just extremely difficult things in my life, know you, tragedies to me, and then like learning about tragedies that happen to others, i suppose a lot of that happens in school as well, in history we learned about vietnam and just horrible things that men do to each other. and then learning about other cultures, and how different they are, and just learning that there are billions of people who believe in something that is completely different from what we believed in, and to truly consider that they might be damned for where they are born just seemed ridiculous to me… if i were born into a world where everything was absolutely perfect and my parents told me i was blessed by god, and everything just turned out great, and i was like the best person on the sports team, and totally rocked iq tests, and dominated standardized tests, and everything just wonderful happened all the time, i wouldn’t question my faith, i would be less likely to question my faith. but when, and now if i had been exposed to like, in that situation, all kinds of terrible things that happened to close people to me, and things like that. i mean there is always going be that, “why does this happen?” like you know the explanations aren’t always satisfactory, that we can’t know, and that there is a purpose behind this but it is too great for us to understand. like that kind of stuff just isn’t good enough for some people, and when you start to experience that you don’t get punished for thinking this way, you feel a little bit more comfortable doing it. (brian, personal communication, april 6, 2009) education after life event: but, you know, the way i disengaged from christianity there wasn’t really a point where school helped me do that, school did help me sort of give language to my insurrection, in that were these set of critiques that were available… it started with gender politics, you know, that is where this crack started to happen and starting to look at christianity as this patently male dominated thing, although that is changing somewhat, and you know, the history of that and how it has been used in terms of asserting power and all these sort of masculine qualities to world history. and so that sort of opened things up and then i read nietzsche and then got into this posthumanist, post-structural philosophy, continental philosophy, 20th century stuff. but my education into rhetorical theory really was a big part of that too, because that is what we study, we study how people make meaning, and were the buck stops, and how are narratives built, and how do people linguistically cobble together their universe, and that is very closely tied in with studies of religion, in fact some of the most notable rhetorical theorists write extensively about religion as a primary metaphor by which we can understand rhetoric, because, you know, almost any meaning making activity that we are involved, in it could be called a type of spirituality, our belief that barack obama will bring us salvation is not so different from the belief that christ will bring us salvation, there are a different set of key terms, but the narratives look remarkably similar, so my vocation studying rhetoric and meaning construction has been a vocation in understanding how religions are built, how they operate, how they multiply, and spread themselves, and how people come to ask the questions they do like, “why am i here?”, why they need to ask that question, and what narratives have been built that are ready made to answer that question. studying deeply how those things are constructed has really influenced my perspective on what spirituality and religion is. (mike, personal communication, february 14, 2009) out of the data that was collected, it can be argued that there are two central reasons that factual knowledge presented in educational settings, in the absence of any other factors, seem to fail in producing a strong drive for cognitive change in the area of spiritual belief. first, there is a wide array of diverse information easily accessible and available for the construction of arguments supporting or attacking any spiritual belief system. given the intellectual complexities of the world and availability of contradicting information with modern technologies, it seems that one particular fact may be either diminished in its capacity to influence a belief set as a whole, or can easily be dismissed, based on alternative information which supports an alternative set of beliefs. second, for the participants the methods by which spiritual beliefs were first encoded into memory were often experiential and personal in nature. therefore, these beliefs appear to be far more protracted and hardened against change than are other types of beliefs that have been based on purely current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 6 intellectual or theoretical ideals. researchers have previously noted how some beliefs are only susceptible to being changed by beliefs of the same type (edwards, 1990; murphy & mason, 2006). in such cases, the exposure to factual and logical information will do little to influence a belief that is founded in experience and emotion. none of this is to say that education fails to play a role in the process of spiritual belief change; rather it is in a secondary role than as a catalyst for conceptual change. the relationship between spiritual belief change and education can be expressed well using an analogy of how fire is created. a powerful life experience is what causes that initial spark leading to flame, and the amount of knowledge that one has gained through education serves as the fuel for the combustion. both elements need to occur in order for the reaction to happen; yet only one of them can act in a causal role. it would be possible for an individual to have plenty of fuel but never get a spark, just the same as it is possible for another person to have a spark but fail to have enough combustible material to generate a fire. a few of the participants openly questioned what spiritual beliefs they would hold today if they had received differing quality or quantity of education, or had experienced a different course of life events. discussion from the data collected in this study it can be argued that the participants interviewed asserted that life events rather than formal education were the primary cause for changes in spiritual belief throughout their lives. such findings contrast the popular assumption that it is education that directly changes the religious and or spiritual beliefs of students. while education was not reported to be the catalyst for spiritual belief change, it seems to have a secondary role in supporting the justification and rationale for modifying spiritual beliefs. an overview of education and spirituality the one clear constant throughout all of the interviews is that spirituality is a deeply personal issue. the participants’ beliefs have not been established through a general apathy of interest, or a premature foreclosure of identity; they have been thoroughly considered and evaluated as being an important element of personal life, one that requires reflection and careful selection. each of the participants had weighed factors in their life and came to, what they believe to be, a reasoned and defensible position regarding their own personal spirituality. the presumption, or even fear, that the teaching of a single fact, or a set of ideas, is sufficient to be able to fundamentally alter an individual’s spiritual beliefs appears to be unfounded. during the interviews no one expressed such a sudden or radical change in spiritual belief stemming from one idea, lesson, or subject learned in school. it is an understatement to assert that the world is a complex place; it is rich in a vast variety of religious heritages, scientific and empirical knowledge, and historical accounts of both good and ill committed by groups and individuals of all classes and culture. along with the understanding of the world being as complex as it is, comes the realization that a properly motivated individual is able to support any one of a menagerie of wildly diverse beliefs given such a large set of information. with the range of information readily available on the internet alone, it becomes extremely difficult to convince a critical mind of the validity or incongruence of a complex idea, especially one that is based on faith. it is possible to suggest that by limiting exposure to diverse ideas, it might be possible to control an individual’s belief system, in so much as that person would have no alternative prospective with which to view the world. however, the opposite case, open access to information, does not entail that alternative ideas are lead to belief change. for the participants who were interviewed by me, the exposure to novel ways of understanding the world failed to serve as a catalyst for spiritual belief change. instead, in story after story, it was a life event or emotional experience that functioned as the beginnings of spiritual change. a comparison to theories of belief change in listening to each participant tell of their intertwined history of educational and spiritual development, and then comparing those stories to the variety of theories researchers have asserted about how belief changes occur, it appears to me that while no theory is directly contradicted by the interview data, at least one, the notion of hot conceptual change introduced by pintrich, marx, and boyle (1993), is notably reinforced by the findings. hot conceptual change highlights the importance of, the sometimes overlooked, factors that play a part in the modifications of belief: situations, motivations, and emotions. in short, hot conceptual change suggests that these important aspects of psychology are the influences that may serve as confounding variables for otherwise logical thought processes. other theories of belief change discuss the topic in terms of how the addition of novel information to a belief set can cause a reevaluation of one’s knowledge, and may lead to an alteration in the structure of an entire concept or set of beliefs, (see carey, 1988; case & okamato, 1996; piaget 1971; thagard, 1992). while each of these theories is beneficial in attempting to understand how individuals may go about restructuring their beliefs about the world, the explanations they provide are founded on the epistemological assumption that logical systems are, first and foremost, influenced by factual information. a supposition that is true in symbolic logic proofs, but begins to unravel when dealing with the complex mental workings of people. these, and does education cause spiritual belief change? 7 similarly constructed theories, fail to account for the fact that emotions are an essential part of the conceptual systems of humans. as counter-intuitive as it might seem, many researchers may be over valuing the role of logical reasoning in cognition, and in doing so miss the fact that beliefs are often weighted with an emotional value. the emotional value of a piece of information, in many respects, appears to be as strong of a factor in belief change, if not stronger, than the logical value of that information. in speaking with participants, a theme that was repeatedly expressed was of having experienced a life event which had an emotional element associated with it, which then started a process of belief change. the importance of life events, for the participants, parallels the ideas of gardner (2006), and research of falsetti, resick, and davis (2003), who also suggested that traumatic life events were a primary cause for belief change. it is easy to understand how there would most likely be a high level of association between trauma and emotions, and in turn how such a situation may lead to conceptual change, if the emotions from the situation were to be coupled with specific facts or beliefs. an interesting implication of the results would be that the impact of new knowledge, or even the reprocessing of old knowledge, might be primarily influenced by the emotional state of the thinker, rather than the validity of information being provided. if this is the case we could expect to see the most dramatic upheaval of emotionally based beliefs occurring during, or directly after, high levels emotional duress. furthermore, such an implication would also entail that under the majority of circumstances, the factual information being presented in the education of students in public schools would fail to be sufficient for causing spiritual belief change, an assertion which is strongly supported by the personal histories of the participants. spirituality and school curriculum despite the long-standing contention over the legality of teaching of evolution, and other topics that drive controversy in public schools, there may be little room for maintaining such disputes that are founded on the claim that there is a nature opposition between spirituality and curriculum. while clearly further research expanded in scope and depth is needed to illuminate these issues further, if the themes found in these interviews were to continue to be expressed by a greater number of participants, then the arguments currently used to suggest that the teaching of specific ideas or theories, such as evolution, might challenge or damage spiritual beliefs of student would in fact be invalid and solely based on personal fears rather than psychological research. in essence, it might be possible to side step the entire debate over what sort of factual information should be taught to students in the sciences or other curriculums by understanding the mechanisms by which personal spiritual beliefs evolve. in coming to a basic understanding of the psychological processes that govern belief change, it may very well be the case that no single fact exists which is strong enough to derail a personal spiritual faith. therefore with continued exploration in this fruitful line of research, one might be able to argue that there should be no limits placed on the teaching of factually accurate information to students based on grounds of possibly infringing on their spiritual beliefs. conclusion the research question guiding this study was what influence does education have on students’ spiritual or religious beliefs? the answer suggested by this data set is that education appears to have a limited role in causing spiritual belief change. however, what an individual has learned over the course of their education can function in a supporting role by being used as justification for an alteration in belief. rather than education, foundational changes in spirituality were reported to result from life events and experiences. specifically, participants discussed life events that had a strong emotional component, such as the death of a loved one, as serving as a catalyst for deciding to alter their spiritual beliefs. the assumption that subjects such as biology, might be the most likely to cause a question of beliefs seems to be inaccurate. instead the participants described drawing support for their current spiritual beliefs from a wide assortment of disciplines including: english, psychology, sociology, history, research methods, and biology. do individuals who have similar spiritual beliefs also have similar historical profiles? from the limited sample size of this study, it should be tentatively stated that with academics, there is little connection between their personal histories, and the belief system which they have selected to be a part of, other than to say that it seems in some cases, life experiences have shifted individuals from one belief set to another. do different religious or spiritual belief systems respond differently to education? there simply is too little information with which to make even an educated judgment on this question, it is best left to others to decide an answer. the topic of how education influences the spiritual belief change of students needs to be continued and have expanded research into the future. it is a fruitful and unexplored area of educational psychology that has substantial implications for both students and educators, yet has very little known about it beyond the limited research study presented here. the study presented here has taken the personal interviews of sixteen participants and attempted to find thematic commonalities within their described narratives of educational history and the process of spiritual change that they have undergone. in exploring these personal histories, one major theme was repeatedly asserted; personal experiences lead to spiritual belief change rather than learned factual knowledge. while specific facts and ideas are often used to support a current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 8 transformation in spiritual beliefs, this application of learned knowledge is used after a life event has served as the catalyst of change. these findings seem to contradict the assumptions individuals have about the role novel information has in maintaining and revision of beliefs. moving forward, future researchers need to establish larger scale research projects, including greater and more diverse populations, including younger participants who are still in school, in an attempt to determine whether or not the introductory research conducted here has any merit to be generalized out into a larger and more diverse population. references abrams, l. m. 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(1990). the interplay of affect and cognition in attitude formation and change. journal of personality and social psychology, 59, 202-216. falsetti, s. a., resick, p. a., & davis, j. l. (2003). changes in religious beliefs follow trauma. journal of traumatic stress, 16, 391-398. gardner, h. (2006). changing minds: the art and science of changing our own and other people’s minds. boston: harvard business school press. gelman, r., & williams, e. m. (1998). enabling constraints for cognitive development and learning: domain-specificity and epigenesis. in d. kuhn & r. s. siegler (eds.), cognition, perception, and language, vol 2. in w. damon (gen. ed.), handbook of child psychology. new york: wiley. harris poll. (2006). while most u.s. adults believe in god, only 58 percent are “absolutely certain”. retrieved from http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/ind ex.asp?pid=707 larson, e. j., & witham, l. (1998). leading scientists still reject god. nature, 394, 313-314. leuba, j. h. (1916). the belief in god and immortality. chicago: open court publishing. leuba, j. h. (1933). religious beliefs of american scientists. harper’s monthly magazine, 169, 291-300. matsumura, m., & mead, l. (2007). ten major court cases about evolution and creationism. retrieved from http://ncse.com/takingaction/ten-major-court-cases-evolution creationism merton, r. k., lowenthal, m. f., & kendall, p. l. (1990). the focused interview: a manual of problems and procedures. new york: free press. murphy, p. k., & mason, l. (2006). changing knowledge and beliefs. in p. a. alexander & p. h. winne (eds.), handbook of educational psychology (2nd ed., pp. 305-325). mahwah, nj: erlbaum. national sciences teachers association. (2003). evolution resources. retrieved from http://www.nsta.org/publications/evolution.aspx pager, c. k. (2006). the establishment of evolution: public courts and public classrooms. tulane law review, 81(1), 17-66. piaget, j. (1971). biology and knowledge. chicago: university of chicago press. pintrich, p. r., marx, r. w., & boyle, r. b. (1993). beyond cold conceptual change: the role of motivational beliefs and classroom contextual factors in the process of conceptual change. review of educational research, 63, 167-199. pomerantz, a., & fehr, b. j. (1997). conversation analysis: an approach to the study of social actions as sense making practices. in t. a. van dijk (ed.), discourse as social interaction (pp. 64-91). london: sage. riessman, c. k. (2008). narrative methods for the human sciences. newbury park, ca: sage publications. strauss, a. l., & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research. newbury park, ca: sage publications. thagard, p. (1992). conceptual revolutions. princeton, nj: princeton university press. wellman, h. m., & gelman, s. a. (1992). cognitive development: foundational theories of core domains. annual review of psychology, 43, 337-375. wellman, h. m., & gelman, s. a. (1998). knowledge acquisition in foundational domains. in d. kuhn & r. s. siegler (eds.), cognition, perception, and language, vol 2. in w. damon (gen. ed.), handbook of child psychology. new york: wiley. yang, p. q., & kayaardi, n. (2004). who choose nonpublic schools for their children? educational studies, 30, 231-249. does education cause spiritual belief change? 9 appendix participant profiles amber, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in her late twenties: amber was raised in western africa and influenced strongly by her conservative catholic mother and grandmother. as a lone child she went to catholic church with her grandmother, and grew up being told that, “church was the way to go if you had problems.” amber went through difficult times as a kid that made her faith stronger by providing a place to find solace through reading the bible and learning that while current pain is only temporary, something better waited later. the only happiness she knew, for the longest time, was religion and it became extremely important for her while growing up. amber attended catholic school from an early age until she went to college. however, amber believes that nothing she learned in school ever challenged her faith. even learning about evolution failed to have any impact; she openly admits that she has never questioned her belief in creationism. she no longer practices catholicism. as amber grew in her understanding of spirituality she believes she became more open minded. she came to believe that accepting christ as a personal savior was the most important part of her faith, and that the role of church was that of a fellowship with others rather than a requirement of devotion. amy, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in her mid-twenties: amy was raised in the southern gulf states region of the united stated. growing up within a catholic household, amy went to church regularly as a family. even at a young age religion was a large part of her life, for both spiritual and social reasons. as time went on her parents divorced, and at around eleven years old amy switched to a methodist church because it was where her friends went to worship. by and large, where amy was raised, religious gatherings were seen as social events in additional to practices of faith. early in high school, amy began seeing value in the teachings she was listening to at her religious functions, and they became more important as a moral compass in her life. progressing through her teenage years and into adulthood, amy started to move away from a strictly religious interpretation of the world because of personal interactions with people she had experienced over the years. for her change in belief, amy points to people whom she cared about, and knew where good people, who according to organized christianity were condemned to hell. she refused to believe that a good god would send people to hell for things they were unable to control. from there she began to question her faith, and reinterpret and reanalyze what she had been taught, to come to her own understanding of what being a christian is. she currently identifies with being, spiritually, a christian with a set of core beliefs, but doesn’t follow the religious traditions of a particular branch. ann, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in her mid-twenties: ann was raised in canada within a family which did not emphasize religious devotion. her mother had a personal spirituality that emphasized living a life that doesn’t hurt yourself or others but she didn’t push her beliefs onto her children. her stepfather was nonreligious, and rarely even spoke on the topic. religion in general did not enter into their daily lives, and as a child ann placed little thought to issues of religion or spirituality. when she was in high school, ann’s stepfather unexpectedly died. this event caused ann to begin seeking a greater understanding of spirituality and brought up questions regarding the purpose and meaning of life. even with her greater interest into spirituality, ann currently has no affiliation with any religion and believes that focusing on personal morality is more important. brian, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in his late twenties: brian was raised in a military family, and because of that life style, grew up in a variety of locations within the united states and also internationally. he identifies himself as being disinterested in religion as a child, but that it began to strongly influence him during his teenage years once his family was posted in mississippi. at that time brian started going to a southern baptist church, adopting their beliefs and becoming a born again christian. during his mid-teens, brian’s mother died. while he wanted to question his faith for having lost his mother, brian felt great guilt in doing so and found relief in accepting that jesus had a plan for him. however, after a brief period of time of solace, brian’s doubts continued to nag him and he found little sense in the actions of god, which seemed flippant. brian went on to a baptist college but during his freshman year was bothered by both the hypocrisy and insulation at the school. he decided to leave at the end of the academic year. in continuing with his education elsewhere, brian began to resonate with the notion of the null hypothesis, and that a person should start from a position of disbelief, waiting for the evidence of existence to be provided. currently, brain is comfortably agnostic; he feels that it isn’t his role in the world to solve age-old issues of faith, nor is it even possible. derek, ph.d. sciences, currently in his early thirties: derek was raised in the northeastern united states within a moderately jewish household, with his parents only really emphasizing religion at major holidays. derek quickly lost interest in participating while enrolled in a hebrew school program. as he aged he found himself moving away from formal religion and more towards looking at nature as a form of spiritual current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 10 inspiration. derek sees many logical contradictions in the various religious doctrines. for him the beauty and elegance of the natural world is a kin to a personal religion. derek follows the notion that science is the closest humans can come to understanding a god, if there is one, rather than following, what he believes to be, works of mythology written by people thousands of years ago. derek continues to practice some of the major jewish rituals with his young son, to provide him with cultural, rather than religious, heritage. emily, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in her late twenties: emily was raised in a christian family, having bible readings as a family every morning and attending church regularly. the institution of religion was very important to her growing up, although she admits to having fears as a child of not being christian enough. emily went to a christian school until fifth grade and then was home schooled until going to a christian college. she chose to embrace christianity as a teenager but found that many people failed to act in accordance to the beliefs they professed, which lead to some personal confusion on the value of belief. she had a crisis of faith early in college due to a family event, which lead to her being agnostic for a period of time before coming back to a christian belief system that was significantly different than how she was raised. she asserts that in believing that god is in sovereign control of everything, education should be a priority of all believers, to learn more about god’s creations, and that people should not have problems with apparent contradictions in the world since it is all god’s design. jonathan, ph.d. education, currently in his late fifties: jonathan was raised in the midwestern united states, participating in church functions, but always believing that there was something more to life than what he had observed in the lives of those around him. his experiences with the church lead him to believe that religion was simply wish fulfillment for the old and was of little interest to him. coming from a family that didn’t particularly value intellectual pursuits, he joined the military in the late 1960s as a way to find meaning and purpose in life. while larger ideals such as duty and honor were appealing to jonathan, he soon found that the vast majority of people in the military were just as confused as he was about how to live their lives. during this time he began to question if there was anything that could provide meaning and purpose in his life. as he was about to be stationed in vietnam, another enlisted man began talking to jonathan about having a personal relationship with god through christ. others had tried to talk to him about their religious beliefs before, yet this individual stood in contrast, through his lived actions, to many of the others jonathan had known. he spoke with jonathan about how events in the bible were more than myths, such as the prophesying of the creation of israel, which caused jonathan to question what other historic truths might exist in the bible. after his conversion and time in the military, jonathan went on to college. during this period he didn’t have his faith challenged by education. as an example he asserts his belief in creationism was never confronted by science, due to his belief in the irreducible complexity argument. julie, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in her late twenties: julie was raised in the southern united states, and as a child she went to presbyterian church every sunday, and some wednesdays, with her family. religion was always a central part of her family’s life. julie became very involved in the church as an adolescent, wanting to change her lifestyle after her older sister had been sent to boarding school for delinquent behavior. she became highly involved in youth groups and was the youth board member for the session in the church (the governing body). after seeing the inner workings of the church, especially how decisions were made, such as which families were helped and which were turned away, julie was disgusted with the hypocrisy of the church leadership. after that time she stopped attending youth groups and had a decline in religious belief. in college julie stopped identifying herself as a person of strong conviction and lessened the amount of time she went to church. now julie mainly goes to church for the social interactions. her faith has become a spirituality in which she values nature, focusing less on following the edicts of a religion. for julie education has allowed her to be critical about life and to not blindly accept the things people tell her on faith but to question and analyze ideas. jen, m.a. social sciences, currently in her late twenties: jen was raised in the midwestern united states in a catholic household and was greatly influenced by catholic beliefs as she grew up. she began to take issue with catholicism around the time she went to college. her explorations into the history of the church lead her to recognize how the religious institution had, and continued to, view and treat women and homosexuals in negative ways. the more she learned about this often overlooked side of the church, the less she felt like it was a belief system which reflected her own personal values. in seeing a disconnection between her views of a moral life and that of other professing christians, jen slowly moved away from the beliefs of her catholic upbringing. early in college she met an individual who was a practicing buddhist. jen, looking for a concrete practice that joined a spiritual and moral life style, began the exercise of daily mediation. this daily practice provided jen with a sense of connection to the world, and a basis for her future spiritual development. currently, jen identified herself as being a zen buddhist, with the goals of mediating on life experiences and discussing moral issues with other buddhists. does education cause spiritual belief change? 11 mike, ph.d. liberal arts, currently in his early thirties: mike grew up in the midwestern united states, and spent the first 18 years of his life in a mormon family with strong religious beliefs, but then drastically moved away from those beliefs when he went away to college. mike felt deeply connected to his faith at a young age, but in gaining a sense of the world through life experiences, mormonism began to appear to him to be a largely regressive practice. mike sites the refusal of members of the mormon faith to ask even elementary philosophical questions about the world, as a troubling and disenchanting experience for him. he describes his change in belief as a slow defection from mormonism, throughout this process he has explored various religious traditions and found arguments which reflected his own beliefs in reading philosophy and comparative religion texts. mike cautiously identifies himself as a pantheist, believing that a connecting force exists in all things, but remains highly critical of religions. molly, b.a. english, currently in her early thirties: molly was raised in the northeastern united states within a catholic household. she attended a private catholic school for her early education through middle school and then switched to a public high school. molly enjoyed and resonated with her catholic education and upbringing. she believes she had a very positive childhood and experience within the church. however, as she became a teenager molly started to question doctrines of the church, specifically the role of women and issues central to women’s rights such as birth control. she became frustrated at how women had been portrayed in the eyes of the church. around this time molly began to separate her intellectual understanding of the catholic faith with her own personal spirituality and beliefs about morality. while she still occasionally prays and enjoys the rituals of the church, she also sees great hypocrisy in their decisions. molly no longer follows the catholic faith and believes that love and respect for others are the two most important elements of her personal spirituality. robert, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in his early thirties: robert was raised in the northeastern united states, in a reformed jewish household. religion was of little real importance to him growing up. his family was lax and rarely followed the practices and the rituals of the faith, only celebrating the main holidays at temple a few times a year. robert went to hebrew school as a young boy and into adulthood, begrudgingly, continuing his studies past his bar mitzvah at the behest of his parents. at the time he felt that judaism, as a religion, was of little importance in his life, while recognizing the significance of continuing the jewish traditions. robert now believes that there is a fundamental distinction to be made between religion and spirituality; he came to this understanding through experiencing life events and extensive time abroad in china and belize. robert believes that all religions, being made by man, are deeply flawed, but furthermore that individuals can have a personal spiritual relationship with god, or whatever, without the interference of religion. sally, b.a. education, currently in her early twenties: sally was raised as a jehovah’s witness. religion was strongly emphasized within her household as she was growing up and she remembers putting her full faith into the religion when she was a child because people she loved and trusted taught it to her. however, as she aged she began to question some of the things her family’s faith declared were immoral, especially the notion that individuals who were not part of their religious group were inherently bad. overtime she began to break away from her religious upbringing and established spirituality based on jewish traditions, which is the faith of her husband. sean, ph.d. education, currently in his mid-thirties: sean grew up southeastern united states with staunchly anti-religious parents, who had seen themselves as being damaged from their earlier experiences with religion, and so deemphasized the role of religion in the life of their children. while the culture of the city and school sean grew up with were evangelical christian, he maintained agnostic beliefs throughout his early life and through college but had a conversion experience when he began teaching at an inner city high school. he began teaching courses on african and world literature, which dealt with issues of spirituality and religion. the material he and his fellow faculty were teaching, caused them to view their role in the urban school as a part of their ministry and outreach to youth. all of these factors built up to an adult conversion in his early twenties. currently a professing christian, sean believes that there is a role for doubt in a strong faith, and a good deal of what god might ask a person to do is impossible, but the act of trying is essential. sean spoke to the point that only by becoming more educated can people find religious truth, and that a lot of good science and religion has been lost by people limiting what they learn. for sean, formal education helps to encourage and develop faith, and improves the interactions between those of faith and those who choose alternative beliefs. thomas, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in his late twenties: thomas was born into a roman catholic family. he had a mother who was very religious and accepted on faith whatever she was told by the church, without ever questioning those beliefs, and a father who was agnostic due to unfortunate events early on in his life. thomas was sent to catholic grade school for religious education and from an early age believed that the complexity of the world was a clear indication of god’s creation of everything. thomas, spurred on by academic conversations on religion in college, went through a twoyear period in which he strongly questioned his religious current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 12 faith and deeply explored other religious traditions. during this period he examined his core beliefs and found himself still aligned with the catholic tradition. thomas is a strong supporter of scientific discovery and research, but he admits he has never been able to question his fundamental belief that there was god who started the process. god for him is perfect and loves us, however the world is not designed to be perfect, and therefore we are here to choose whether or not we want to accept god. tim, ph.d. education, currently in his mid-sixties: from an early age tim went to sunday school as a child, where his initial religious beliefs were formed. he continued to follow those beliefs through high school, until doubts began to emerge as he recognized a disconnection between the teachings of the bible and scholastic subjects. specifically tim saw friction between the explanations of science and religion, two areas that were both of deep personal interest. even with his doubts, tim’s self identity was wrapped up in being a christian. he continued to struggle with his beliefs throughout college, determined to find a way to marry science and religion together. he admits to failing in this attempt to merge the two belief systems, sometimes being strong in his religious faith and at other times tossing them aside in favor of academics. tim claims that he had a personal religious experience that caused him to, “doubt his doubts,” and strongly reinforce his religious beliefs. while his faith waned into his 30s, his beliefs had rebounded with his religious experiences, and when his children were born he and his wife began attending church again regularly. since going back to church tim, has continued to be very active in his presbyterian community for the past 25 years. does education cause spiritual belief change? 13 article citation markle, t. d. (2012). does education cause spiritual belief change? current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/838 author notes d. thomas markle, ph.d. the university of new mexico 123 simpson hall, albuquerque, nm 87131 markle@unm.edu tom markle is a visiting assistant professor of educational psychology for the department of individual, family, and community education at the university of new mexico. he researches dynamic cognitive modeling, the effect of novel information on belief systems, and the influence of education on spirituality. manuscript received: 10/19/2011 revisions received: 3/27/2012 accepted: 3/29/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 14 volume 15, number 1 april 3, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines lisa lacy copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers 1 volume 8, number 8 march 12, 2005 issn 1099-839x school reform through a school/university partnership jerry l. waddle and kathleen d. conway southeast missouri state university this is a study of a reform effort to improve mathematics achievement in an elementary school through a partnership with a university. the partnership involved collaborating with university faculty to provide and plan research based professional development. the purposes of the study were to determine if the instructional practices of the teachers changed, if the delivery of staff development changed, and if student achievement improved over a six year period. the research methods used to answer these questions were both qualitative and quantitative. the qualitative methods utilized were: interviews, pre and post classroom observations, and observations of grade level meetings. the quantitative components were the pre and post administration of the “missouri teacher survey of classroom practices: mathematics” and the analysis of test scores on the statewide assessment from 1999-2004. the results indicated some change in instructional practices, significant increases in staff development and collaboration, and increased student achievement in mathematics. this study investigated the results of a five year elementary school/university partnership in an effort to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics in the elementary school. the intent was to contribute to the understanding of the extent to which school/university partnerships can meet the professional development needs of schools as they strive to meet the requirements of state and federal accountability standards. this study was directed by two definite trends in the literature: (a) the school reform literature of the last several decades has advocated for expansion and redesign of professional development for teachers and school leaders (collinson & ono, 2001; darling-hammond & mclaughlin, 1995; fullan, 2001; mclaughlin & marsh, 1978; parker & golden, 1957; showers, joyce, & bennett, 1987; and sparks & hirsh, 1997); and (b) the suggestion by many that a redesign of professional development should be some form of partnership between schools and university teacher education departments (center for educational renewal, 1994; sealey & robson, 1997). peel, peel, and baker (2002) also stress the importance of partnerships where schools and universities work together in a collaborative environment, with shared leadership, common vision, support of top leaders, respect and trust, open communication, flexibility, and adequate financial support. additionally, essex (2001) cautions that “school-college partnerships hold significant promise for renewal and improvement in education but must be vigorously supported and advanced by top leadership at public school and college levels” (p. 736). the partnership in this study was supported by the university department chairs, the superintendent, and principal of the school. the goals, vision, and activities were collaboratively planned by stakeholders from both the university and the school. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 8 the professional development school (pds) is one model of a school/university partnership. although this study does not include a pds, there was an attempt to include key components of the pds model. research on pdss has concluded that effective communication networks that foster collaboration, honesty, and empowerment are vital to effective partnerships. “educational partnerships that were well received and successful involved real empowerment, collaboration, and trust by all stakeholders, as well as shared power by the leadership” (peel, et al., p. 320). the partnership between an elementary school and university in this study was an effort to bring about school reform that would result in improved math performance through staff development. the intent was to improve the instructional practices of teachers and school leaders through research based instructional methods, improve the delivery of staff development as reflected in the research, and improve student achievement in math. literature review “for many years the dichotomy between the ivory tower of the university and the trenches of the public school have been both an ideological perception and a reality” (rakow &robinson, 1997, p. 64). the whole issue of school improvement has focused a great deal of attention on the renewal of both k-12 education and higher education's role in the training of educators. according to goodlad (1994), school-college partnerships offer significant promise for simultaneous educational renewal. in an attempt to eliminate the barriers between teacher preparation programs and the continuing education of practicing teachers as well as to bring about renewal, there have been many forms of school-college partnerships emerge with varying degrees of success ( essex , 2001). however, if partnerships between higher education and public schools are to be successful they must follow certain tenets that a variety of writers and researcher have identified as necessary for successful partnerships. these characteristics are as follows: (a) clearly defined purpose and direction; (b) supported both with active participation and adequate resources by top leaders in schools and colleges; (c) trust among partners; (d) open communication; (e) mutual respect among partners; (f) mechanisms to assess progress and measure outcomes; (g) true collaboration; and (h) school-wide representation at the beginning (essex, 2001; peel, peel, & baker, 2002; rakow & robinson, 1997). since many of the school/university partnerships are designed for school improvement/ renewal, most of them have a significant professional development component. much of the reform literature advocates for the expansion and redesign of professional development for teachers and school leaders (collinson & ono, 2001; darling-hammond & mclaughlin, 1995; fullan, 2001; mclaughlin & marsh, 1978; showers, joyce, & bennett, 1987; and sparks & hirsh, 1997). this redesign has been described by many researchers to have key components such as: (a) significant collaboration; (b) job embedded; (c) extend over long periods of time; and (d) significant involvement of school leadership (sparks & hirsh, 1997). unfortunately, it is one thing to identify components and another to act on them. lieberman (1995) stated: in the traditional view of staff development, workshops and conferences conducted outside the school count, but authentic opportunities to learn from and with colleagues inside the school do not. the conventional view of staff development as a transferable package of knowledge to be distributed to teachers in bite-sized pieces needs radical rethinking (p. 591). unfortunately, much of what teachers are exposed to continues to be one-shot or one-day workshops with no support and no follow-up (lewis, 1995). fullan (2001) states that “over 20 years ago i conducted a review of inservice, as it was then called, and concluded that one-shot workshops were ineffective, topics were selected by people other than those receiving the inservice, and follow-up support for implementation was rare” (p. 255). dufour and eaker (1998) indicate that many schools take pride in offering a large variety of staff training. they quote one principal as proudly announcing, “this year we trained all our staff in the seven habits of highly effective people, assertive discipline, cooperative learning, portfolio assessment, and integrating technology into the classroom” (p. 266). this unthinking and unconnected presentation of multiple innovations with little or no attention being paid to the existing research on educational change, at best, perpetuates mediocrity over mastery. interestingly, in discussion with many of those responsible for initiating and supporting change, it is clear they understand this dilemma; they simply fail to act on it. the mastery of any new methodology takes time and a commitment must be met for continued training. sparks and hirsh (1997) wrote, “staff development's success will be judged not by how many teachers and administrators participate in staff development programs or how they perceive its value, but by whether it alters instructional behavior in a way that benefits students” (p. 5). the national staff development council (nsdc), in cooperation with eleven other educational organizations, has identified standards school reform through a school/university partnership 3 for professional development. these standards are organized into three categories; content, process, and context . the nsdc recognizes that successful staff development pushes for the intersection of these three categories. it pushes beyond content to include the actual skills or knowledge that educators need to acquire for the content to come alive; the process or means by which educators will acquire the knowledge and skills; and the organization, system, or cultural context that supports staff development initiatives (national staff development council, 1995). fullan (2001) argues that change involves the incorporation of three areas: curriculum, process, and beliefs. over time, change in all three must occur if the innovation is to be considered successful. purpose of study the purpose of this study was to investigate the results of a five year professional development partnership between southeast missouri state university and a rural elementary school in southeast missouri with a primary emphasis on improving mathematics achievement. the purpose was three fold: 1. to determine if the instructional practices of the teachers changed since the beginning of the project in 1998. 2. to determine if the delivery of staff development changed in the school since the beginning of the project in 1998. 3. to determine if mathematics achievement on the map improved since the beginning of the project in 1998. at the beginning of this project, the elementary school had an enrollment of approximately 450 students in grades kindergarten through five and was not performing well on the missouri assessment program (map), with student achievement being particularly poor in math. the map is a statewide test used in the accreditation process by the state of missouri and is comprised of three types of items: multiple-choice, constructed response, and performance events. the organizations within the university that were directly involved in the grant funded project were the regional professional development center within the college of education and the linda godwin center for science and math education in the college of math and science. the two organizations formed a team known as the improving mathematics in missouri (im) 2 success team. this team was composed of faculty from the college of education , the college of math and science, and some highly successful public school teachers from area schools. the goal of the project was to assist the school in the improvement of mathematics achievement. this was proposed to be accomplished through significant collaborative planning with the teaching staff, high quality job-imbedded professional development that becomes a part of the school culture, and a high level of involvement from the school leadership (the building principal). the success team initially met with the staff and leadership of the school in the fall of 1998 and a district action team was formed. the success team worked with the district action team to identify school needs and target focused areas through the development of an action plan for the district. the success team visited the school in the fall of 1998 for classroom observations and informal discussions with teachers and administrators regarding district mathematics education practices. the results of the map testing were also reviewed. during the same semester teachers completed a revised form of the missouri teacher survey of classroom practices: mathematics, developed by the center for learning, evaluation, and assessment research (clear) at the university of missouri – columbia in conjunction with math educators from missouri and other states. the survey was designed to help teachers and schools improve curriculum and support math education. after reviewing the results of classroom observations, discussions with teachers and administrators, responses on the survey, and map data, the success team helped the district action team identify possible activities for the next phase of the project. this collaborative planning resulted in offering staff development activities that focused on analysis of map data and needs of the school. these staff development activities were conducted throughout the 1998-1999 school year. a second round of classroom observations and informal discussions with teachers and administrators was conducted in the spring of 1999. discussions were conducted with representatives of the district action team during the fall of 1999 and additional staff development activities including family involvement, teacher collaboration, examination of the curriculum, use of hands-on materials and math journals, and writing performance tasks were planned and conducted. during the spring of 2000 the focus shifted to math textbook adoption during which the success team facilitated the organization and process for selection of a new math textbook series. some success team staff development activities continued during the 2000-2001 and 20012002 school years even though the administration and faculty of the elementary school chose to focus on reading. in addition to the activities offered at the school, some teachers from the school participated in the summer math academies offered by southeast missouri state . throughout the planning of the staff current issues in education vol. 8 no. 8 development activities, the success team made a determined effort to incorporate the latest research on effective staff development. research design and studies the research design selected for this study was a mixed-methodology design, both qualitative and quantitative (creswell, 1994). this design was chosen because we were examining research questions that required different research methodology. the use of both methods in this study is intended to have several additional purposes: “triangulating and converging findings, elaborating on results, using one method to inform another, discovering paradox or contradiction, and extending the breadth of the inquiry” (greene, caracelli, & graham as cited in creswell, 1994). qualitative the qualitative components of this study included interviews of teachers and administrators, classroom observations, and observations of grade level meetings. those interviewed were selected by purposeful snowball sampling beginning with the initial information-rich cases being suggested by the assistant principal and others being suggested by those being interviewed (patton, 1990). the sampling of people to interview was terminated based on redundancy of information (lincoln & guba, 1985). several grade level meeting observations were conducted to triangulate with the interview data. standardized open-ended interviews were used as the dominant strategy to gather data in the teachers' and administrators' own words. this interview technique was chosen to “minimize interviewer effects by asking the same questions of each respondent” (patton, 1990, p. 285). at the beginning of each interview, the participant was informed of the purpose for the interview and assurances were made that the content of the interview would be treated confidentially (bogdan & biklen, 1998). interviews ranged from 30 to 40 minutes and responses were scripted by the interviewer. shortly after the interview, the interviewer's notes were transcribed. the interviews were conducted in the building where the teachers and administrators worked and included 19 elementary teachers, the building principal. data were analyzed using tesch's eight steps to consider when coding (as cited in creswell, 1994). in addition, the research questions helped to define the coding categories. all of the transcriptions were read thoroughly to get a sense of the complete picture. some ideas were recorded during this initial reading. one transcript was then read and notes were made about possible themes. when this was completed the key words and phrases from the initial reading were examined to determine if there were clusters of themes and trends. nine clusters were identified and each cluster was assigned a number code. at that point, each transcript was read in detail and number codes were assigned to statements in the interview transcripts. the data belonging to each category were listed on a single list for each category and the lists were examined. additional clusters were identified within each category and the findings are discussed in a later section of this paper. notes about classroom and grade level meeting observations were also coded during the analysis process. quantitative the quantitative components of this study are the pre and post administration of the missouri teacher survey of classroom practices: mathematics and the analysis of map scores from 1999 through 2004. this was accomplished by comparing the classroom practices of teachers in 1999 to those in 2002 as measured by the survey and examining trends in the map scores over a six year period. presentation of the data the data analysis includes the data gathered from interviews, classroom observations, surveys, and examination of missouri assessment program (map) test data and is organized below based on the three research questions. changes in instructional practices the first research question dealt with whether or not the instructional practices of the teachers changed since the beginning of the (im) 2 project in 1998. the interviews indicated the teachers are still using worksheets and tests to determine grades in math. one teacher commented, “i would like to think i am going to switch away from worksheets.” however, some did mention they were beginning to use more performance assessments and a few even commented they were beginning to experiment with portfolios, particularly in grades 1 and 2. most of the teachers interviewed said they were using more cooperative learning activities, on the average of 1-2 times per week. the assignment of homework varied from never to 3 or 4 times a week. generally the earlier grades did less homework. most teachers said they do not use computers in teaching math. however, they did indicate considerable use of the overhead projector. they only had one computer lab in the building and one computer in each classroom. therefore, the computers were not very accessible. when asked about integrating math into other content areas, the teachers indicated they do considerable integration with reading, science, and social studies. the teachers indicated their colleagues were very supportive of new ideas for teaching math. a lot of this was accomplished through weekly grade level school reform through a school/university partnership 5 meetings that were lead by the assistant principal. the weekly grade level meetings started during the success team work were still being held. the principal now prepares the class schedule to allow for common planning time and therefore opportunities to schedule these grade level meetings. teachers commented on these meetings and how they provided an opportunity to share information with other teachers. they were seen to be very productive and helped reduce the isolation many of the teachers felt before this project began. the teachers also indicated good support from the administration, both the principal and the assistant principal. the principal tended to agree with most of the interview data from the teachers. he stated that the teachers were using a lot more variety of teaching strategies than before and were using a lot of cooperative learning, but not as much as he would like. he agreed there is some integration of math into other content areas and believes there needs to be more. he also believes the teachers have more opportunities to learn than some of the other schools in the area. “they have a lot of inservice.” he stated the map and the textbook have the most influence on the math content being taught in the classrooms. he believed the jury was still out on the new textbook. “teachers really liked the previous book.” he stated, “teachers are definitely more collaborative. (im) 2 began the collaboration and it has been enhanced with the grade level meetings.” it is important to note that the assistant principal was a third grade teacher prior to 20012002, when she became the assistant principal. therefore, she was in the classroom when the (im) 2 partnership began. as assistant principal, one of her major responsibilities is to prepare the agenda and meet with the grade level teams. during her interview it was clear that she believed the teachers and the administration were both very supportive of trying new ideas in the classroom. she said they had a lot of staff development in their school and believed the textbook had the most influence on math content. she also agreed there was definitely more collaboration among teachers than before the project began. one of the authors of this study was a member of the original success team and conducted the classroom observations in 1998, 1999 and again in 2002. the teaching observed in 2002 contrasted with the teaching observed in 1998 and 1999 where in some classes the teacher read through the script provided with the book while the students listened and then worked on the assignment. although direct instruction was observed in 2002, there was a change in the direction of more interaction over previous observations when the previous math series was being used. it should be noted that during observations on each date there were some teachers who used a format of active engagement and exploration that required the students to solve problems and go beyond their beginning level of understanding. the 2002 observations revealed that the more engaging teaching strategies had increased substantially. in the view of the observer there had been a transition in the way lessons were conducted and the new book was providing a foundation for these changes. although many teachers were comfortable with the script of the previous series and some would like to return to that format, they are moving away from the scripted format to one based on student understanding and increased student interactions. many were uncertain about what choices of activities were best to improve student understanding, but as they moved away from a scripted lesson and tried new ideas, it was anticipated they would become more confident in the effectiveness of their teaching. the data from the missouri student survey of classroom practices: mathematics were examined to identify differences between the teacher responses in 1998 and those in 2002. teachers responded to this survey by ranking each item on a likert scale of one to five. the percent of teachers responding to the survey questions with strong agreement (score of 4 or 5) was compared. the comparisons are reported when changes from 1998 to 2002 were greater than 10 %. the first area reported is that of the relative importance of different factors in determining math grades (table 1). the data revealed several important shifts. three shifts that are considered to be more desirable changes in instructional practices were that a higher percentage of teachers indicated performance tasks and portfolios were more current issues in education vol. 8 no. 8 important in determining math grades and fewer teachers selected individual seatwork in 2002. however, two items that are considered less desirable changes were the increased use of objective tests and worksheets. the increased importance of performance tasks may have been influenced by the new textbook that contains suggestions for these tasks, thereby making them easier to incorporate. it is possible that the decrease in seatwork may reflect a more active environment; however, the increase in the importance of worksheets is not necessarily consistent with this change. table 2 indicates that in the area of instructional activities in math there was an increase in the frequency of reading about math from a textbook, and using portfolios for assessment purposes. however, among the teachers who reported the frequency to be once a week or more, there were several decreases including: (a) reaching conclusions about math data; (b) making tables, graphs, or charts; and (c) applying math concepts to everyday life. additionally, there was an increase in the number of teachers reporting students doing individual seatwork on at least a weekly basis. the changes in reading from the math book are probably explained by the change in textbook. the new textbook series has more material for students to read and therefore this increase is understandable. the increase in use of portfolios was only by some of the k-2 teachers who reported during the interviews that they were using portfolios as a means of assessment. it is possible that the decrease in the use of math data to reach conclusions as well as applying math concepts to everyday life was a consequence of the teachers' lack of familiarity with the new textbook. if this is the case, it would be expected they will be better able to make these connections as they become more familiar with the book. part ii of the survey examined teacher attitude toward instructional style. to aid in the interpretation of the data we have divided the statements into four groups: student centered classroom (table 3), teacher centered classroom (table 4), statements about assessment (table 5), and a statement about technology. in the area of student centered classroom (table 3), there are four positive changes of more than 10 percentage points. these include statements supporting imbedding subject matter in authentic experiences, the use of cooperative learning, student responsibility for learning, and preparation time and hands-on activities. all of these changes reflect a shift toward a more student centered environment. in contrast, it must also be noted that three statements received responses indicating less support than previously. these include the: encouragement of novel solutions, students creating their own learning strategies, and the use of projects and centers for instruction. these responses reflect a shift away from student centered learning. six responses of the survey identified as “teacher centered” received a lower percent of teacher support in 2002 than in 1998 (table 4). this may be interpreted as a decrease in teacher centered instruction. the statements in this category include: teachers should impart knowledge, students learning basic skills before participating in higher learning, teacher control of instruction, curriculum decisions, student progress, and the relationship between instruction and assessment. the decrease in agreement with these questions strongly supports a shift away from a teacher centered approach. school reform through a school/university partnership 7 in the section on assessment, the teachers' agreement increased on statements viewing assessment as more than a test for a grade (table 5). also, the percent in agreement declined on the value of a test. this section also reflects a positive change in the teachers' attitudes. the final section relates to technology. unfortunately the teachers' response to the role of technology indicates a decreased level of support (73% in 1998, and 38% in 2002). however, the teachers' use of overhead projectors increased dramatically. in 1998 only 33% reported frequent use while 91% reported using them frequently in 2002. overhead projectors were scarce in 1998, but have been purchased for all rooms since that time. this was supported through the observations that were made in 2002. however, the teachers are not making use of other forms of technology as reported in the survey and confirmed through the interviews. this is a result of having little or no other equipment available for their use. project influence on staff development the second research question sought to answer whether or not the delivery of staff development had changed since the beginning of the (im) 2 project in 1998. an attempt was made by the success team to design staff development that was consistent with the latest research on effective staff development. the key components of effective staff development attempted by the success team were: (a) significant collaboration between staff members; (b) job embedded staff development; (c) staff development that extends over long periods of time; and (d) significant involvement of school leadership. an example of the use of significant collaboration was the process used in the selection of the new math series by the district action team composed of faculty members and involving consultation with the entire faculty. this process required numerous meetings to organize the process. the entire faculty was involved in piloting materials and the final decision was made at a meeting of all faculty members. this level of decision making was new to the school and resulted in a feeling of ownership. one important indicator of improved collaboration was the teachers' response to an item on the survey. in responding to the statement that most teachers in the school contribute actively in making decisions about the math curriculum, there was a dramatic change from 47% in 1998 to 71% in 2002. one of the more significant findings was that even though the faculty and administration decided, during the second year of the (im) 2 program, they wanted to concentrate on literacy, elements of collaboration evident in the (im) 2 work carried over into the balanced literacy project they began in 2000-2001. when asked if there was more collaboration among faculty members than before the project started, the answer was a resounding yes. they indicated the things that had stimulated this collaboration were the collaborative development of the math curriculum, their involvement in selecting the new textbook, and the weekly grade level meetings. they indicated they collaborated on such things as strategies for teaching, pace, sequence, and instructional materials. one teacher said, “the collaboration learned during the math project has carried over into the balanced literacy program.” another said, “i feel less isolated than four years ago.” significant involvement of school leadership was evidenced by the employment of one of the third grade teachers to be an assistant principal with primary responsibilities in the area of student assessment, staff development, and the scheduling and facilitation of weekly grade level meetings. these meetings were scheduled during the school day as a result of common planning times scheduled by current issues in education vol. 8 no. 8 the principal. although teachers did not seem to consider the weekly meetings as staff development, they did consider these meetings important for the sharing of new instructional ideas and methods, planning for instruction, and discussions of student assessment. these weekly grade level meetings are evidence of staff development that extends over a long period of time. the teachers indicated their colleagues were very supportive of new ideas for teaching math. a good deal of this was accomplished through the grade level meetings. they also indicated good support from the administration, both the principal and the assistant principal.overall the teachers stated they have many opportunities for teacher learning. they cited the training they received in 1999 and 2000 through the (im) 2 project and the balanced literacy training they were receiving in 2001-2002. some said there was too much encouragement for teacher learning and one said there was not much. however, most teachers indicated there was the appropriate amount of support for teacher learning. student achievement in math the third research question addressed the changes in student achievement as measured by the map. we examined map test data from the spring of 1999 through the spring of 2004 for mathematics. the map tests are administered statewide in missouri with mathematics being administered in the fourth, eighth, and eleventh grades. there are five levels of performance: step 1; progressing; nearing proficient; proficient; and advanced. step 1 is the lowest level and advanced the highest. table 6 indicates the percent of fourth grade students in each level for the six years since the (im) 2 project began. limitations of study this study was restricted to a partnership between only one elementary school and a university, as such, the generalizability of the results can be questioned. however, patton (1990) makes an argument for extrapolation rather than generalization. he defines extrapolation as “modest speculations on the likely applicability of findings to other situations under similar, but not identical conditions” (page 489). another limitation of this study is that one of the authors was involved in the project as a member of the team that carried out the partnership with the elementary school. although their desire for the project to be successful could bias their interpretation of the data, a desire to discover information that would lead to improving future partnerships should mostly negate the influence of researcher bias. a third limitation is that there are many variables affecting student achievement making it difficult to establish a cause and effect relationship between the partnership/staff development and any increase in math test scores. conclusions there is considerable evidence in tables 2 and 3 that teachers' attitudes moved away from a teacher centered attitude toward a more student centered attitude during the period 1998-2002. the pre and post survey of teachers also indicated considerable change in their attitudes about tests with a 15% increase in the number of teachers considering assessment as being more than a test for a grade and 22% fewer supporting the value of a test for assessment purposes only (table 5). overall there is a strong trend toward a classroom that is student centered and using multiple forms of assessment. two other prominent findings in the surveys and the interviews are that after working collaboratively to select a new textbook for math and re-writing the math curriculum as a part of the (im) 2 project, the teachers increased substantially in their view that most teachers contribute actively to making decisions about the math curriculum, from 47% in 1998 to 71% in 2002. during and immediately after this partnership project there was substantial improvement in the map test scores in mathematics. in addition to the improvement of test scores there was considerably greater emphasis on staff development and a change in the delivery of staff development. the staff development became more job-embedded through weekly grade level meetings and greater teacher involvement in needs assessment and curriculum decisions. as a result of the (im) 2 success team work, the school made a significant commitment to teacher collaboration through the assignment of an assistant principal for the purpose of monitoring student assessment and facilitating weekly grade level meetings. teachers indicated a substantial increase in the amount of collaboration since the beginning of the partnership. the principal school reform through a school/university partnership 9 also modeled the emphasis on instruction by planning time in the schedule for grade level meetings and making it possible for faculty to participate in numerous staff development opportunities including summer institutes sponsored by the regional professional development center at southeast missouri state . findings from the data indicated that some of the more positive changes in teachers' instructional practices were: an increased use of performance assessments; experimenting with portfolios, especially in grades k-2; more cooperative learning activities; considerable integration of math into other subject areas; and more teaching based on student understanding and interaction rather than reading through a script to the class and having them do individual work at their seats. the data indicate that these changes can be attributed primarily to the selection of the new math textbook, increased collaboration, the increased amount and ongoing nature of staff development, support by the administration, and the weekly grade level meetings facilitated by the assistant principal. this project makes a strong case for partnerships between institutions of higher education and k-12 institutions in the area of school improvement, not so much in the roll of an outside expert to tell them how, but rather as an outside facilitator to help create a culture of learning and collaboration. as stated earlier in this article the success team's goal was to assist the school in the improvement of mathematics achievement through high quality professional development, significant collaborative planning involving the teaching staff, and a high level of involvement from the school leadership. the results documented in this article provide significant evidence that: (a) the teachers increased their use of student centered instructional methods in their classrooms; (b) the school leadership made a significant commitment to ongoing staff development and collaboration with the teaching staff; and (c) student achievement in math, as measured by the map, has improved substantially in the six years, since the beginning of the project. even though the scope of this partnership limits the ability to develop a cause and effect relationship between the activities of the partnership and the improved math achievement, one could argue that the activities of the members of the success team and the district action team were a catalyst for a new focus on student achievement and through this focus and the staff development provided contributed to the upward trend in mathematics achievement over the last six years. one could also reason for patton's (1990) theory of extrapolation rather than generalization, “likely applicability of findings to other situations under similar, but not identical conditions” (page 489). there is certainly opportunity for further study of the impact of schooluniversity partnerships and research based staff development on student achievement. references bogdan, r., & biklen, s. k. (1998). qualitative research in education: an introduction to theory and methods (3rd ed.). boston: allyn and bacon. center for educational renewal. (1994). better teachers, better schools. seatle: university of washington . collinson, v., & ono, y. (2001). the professional development of teachers in the united states and japan . european journal of teacher education, 24 (2), 223-248. creswell, j. w. (1994). research design: qualitative and qualitative approaches. thousand oaks , ca : sage. darling-hammond, l., & mclaughlin, m. w. (1995). policies that support professional development in an era of reform. phi delta kappan, 76 (8), 597-604. dufour, r., & eaker, r. (1998). professional learning communities at work: best practices for enhancing student achievement. bloomington , in : national educational service. essex, n. l. (2001). effective school-college partnerships, a key to educational reneswal and instructional improvement. education, 121 (4), 732-736. fullan, m. (2001). the new meaning of educational change (3 rd ed.). new york : teachers college press. goodlad, j. i. (1991). school-university partnerships. education digest, 56 (8), 58-61. lewis, a. c. (1998). teacher development. education digest, 63 (6), 70. lieberman, a. (1995). practices that support teacher development: transforming conceptions of professional learning. phi delta kappan , 76 (8), 591-596. mclaughlin, m. w., & marsh, d. d. (1978). staff development and school change. teachers college record, 80 (1), 69-94. national staff development council. (1995). standards for staff development: high school edition. oxford , oh : author. parker, c. j., & golden, w. p., jr. (1952). in-service education of elementary and secondary teachers. review of educational research, 22, 193-200. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 8 patton, m.q. (1990). qualitative evaluation and research methods (2 nd ed.). newbury park , ca : sage. peel. h.a., peel, b.b., & baker, m.e. (2002). school/university partnerships: a viable model. the international journal of educational mangement, 16 (7), 319-325. rakow, s., & robinson, l. (1992). public school/university partnerships. education digest, 63 (3), 64-68. sealey, r., & robson, m. (1997). school and university partnerships: some findings from a curriculum development project. asia pacific journal of teacher education, 25 (1), 79-90. showers, b., joyce, b., & bennett, b. (1987). synthesis of research on staff development: a framework for future study and a state-of the-art analysis. educational leadership, 45 (3), 77-87. sparks , d., & hirsh, s. (1997). a new vision for staff development. oxford , ohio national staff development council. school reform through a school/university partnership 11 2005 article citation waddle, j.l. & conway, k.d. (2005, march 12). school reform through a school/university partnership current issues in education [on-line], 8(8). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number8/ author notes jerry l. waddle, ed.d. southeast missouri state university associate professor of educational administration former science teacher, high school principal, and superintendent of schools jwaddle@semo.edu http://cstl-coe.semo.edu/waddle/ kathleen d. conway, ph.d. southeast missouri state university associate professor of elementary, early, and special education former middle and high school mathematics teacher kconway@semo.edu http://cstl-coe.semo.edu/conway/ note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber august 22, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation waddle, j. l., & conway, k. d. (2005). school reform through a school/university partnership. current issues in education, 8(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1678 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number8/index.html mailto:jwaddle@semo.edu mailto:jwaddle@semo.edu http://cstl-coe.semo.edu/waddle/ mailto:kconway@semo.edu mailto:kconway@semo.edu http://cstl-coe.semo.edu/conway/ http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1678 volume 9, number 3 february, 2006 issn 1099-839x tolerated failure or missed opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership in urban schools? jumanne r. sledge and pamela morehead oakland university this monograph examines the existing role of teacher leaders while addressing many of the missed opportunities for teacher leaders to impact student achievement. the work of teacher leaders must impact teacher expectations, teacher content knowledge base, and teacher practice. in an era of teacher accountability and teacher quality schools can no longer continue to tolerate the fact that 40 percent of students in urban and rural schools never make it to high school graduation. to that end, urgency suggests that we begin to examine the potential of teacher leadership. for decades, society touted education as america’s great equalizer. fifty years have passed since the u.s. supreme court’s decision regarding brown v. board of education, which should have been pivotal for educating minority students. however, equal access has not led to equal achievement levels for all students, especially minority students. a plethora of literature suggests that there is a significant correlation between a student’s level of education and socio-economic status. fischer et al. (1996) posited that there is a symbiotic relationship between education and prosperity, both on the individual and societal levels. the quality of the education that poor and minority students receive relies heavily on their teachers’ expertise in teaching. unfortunately, rothman’s (2001) study of teachers of poor and minority students in california found that teachers in urban and low-income areas were less likely to have substantive content knowledge, were less experienced, and were less prepared with pedagogical skills to meet student needs. the reality of low achievement levels in many urban schools is a result of low expectations for students. delpit (1995) contended that research continues to reinforce the link between student failure and socio-economic status as well as student failure and cultural differences. delpit lamented, “it is hard to believe that these children can possibly be successful after their teachers have…so much negative indoctrination…there is a tendency to assume deficits in students rather than to locate and teach to strengths” (p. 172). while the 100 largest urban school districts comprise less than 1% of the nation’s school districts, urban schools educate approximately 30% of all students living in poverty and 40% of all nonwhite students in the united states (mdrc, 2003). the urban schools literature is replete with evidence highlighting the deleterious fact that students within urban districts typically suffer from higher poverty rate indexes, higher populations of students for whom english is not their primary language, higher populations of special education students, more complex family structures, higher incidences of violence, and fewer certified teachers in critical subject areas such as math, literacy, and science. in former united states secretary of education rod paige’s recent address to the 2004 national urban league in detroit, michigan, he identified the current issues in education vol. 9 no. 3 achievement gap as the “…major driver of racial inequality….” he contended that, …the african american community is in educational crisis, a catastrophe is upon us. this is no exaggeration. for example, a new study from northeastern university found that black male unemployment was so bad that in 2002, one out of every four african american men, 25 percent, were idle all yearlong, a rate twice as high as that of white or hispanic males.” paige also revealed “…african american students on average score 30 points lower than their anglo peers, one out of every four african american men does not complete high school and of those who do finish 12 th grade and graduate, more than 60% of them are not enrolled in colleges. there is overwhelming evidence that these problems continue generation after generation, passed down from father to son like a name. likewise, armandaiz (2001) concluded that public school systems have institutionalized negative biases enacted toward mexican americans. in the public schools studies, armandariz found that the skills, knowledge, and self-concepts were consistently and systematically devalued coupled with low teacher expectations of these minority students. according to leithwood and fullan (2003), often times school leaders work with student populations that are increasingly diverse and may not be experiencing success in school. this includes children who are from low-income families or whose cultural backgrounds or characteristics fall outside of the mainstream (for example, native peoples or recent immigrants, children with physical handicaps, and latinos, or african americans). histories of poor school performance for such students may result from neglect on behalf of the school and/or district leaders, allocation of the least able teachers and most limited resources to the most needy schools and students, low expectations, or lack of knowledge of effective strategies for working with particular kinds of students in challenging contexts. (p.13) effective schools research emphasizes the impact of teacher content knowledge, best practice methodology and the powerful role teacher expectations play in student achievement. despite consistent low achievement levels of children of poverty in many of our urban schools, we pay little attention to determining how teacher expectations can be changed and sustained. changing teacher expectations is a challenging undertaking as expectations for student achievement hinges on personal beliefs. a teacher’s beliefs ultimately influence teaching practices and behaviors (good & brophy, 1997). teachers' low expectations for student learning result in implementation of less challenging curriculum and ineffective instructional methods. delpit (1995) described the problem succinctly, “we say that we believe that all children can learn, but few of us really believe it” (p.172). if teachers embrace the idea that there is little they can do to improve student achievement, they find little incentive to change their instructional practices. low income and urban schools face the challenge to make knowledge about teaching relevant to practitioners. relevancy prevents teachers from sorting out information through their belief systems. teachers with limited knowledge, passé practices, and low expectations need focused professional development, which allows for teacher transfer and routine use. if teachers seize the opportunity to gain new knowledge and best practices designed to increase student engagement and improve performance, they will have higher expectations. teachers’ sense of self-efficacy increases as their teaching successes increase. the school, as an institution, has the power to change a history of poor school performance however, the school must face what patterson (1997) referred to as the bold realities about leadership and educational reform. the school administrator can no longer exist as the sole instructional leader in school reform. whereas, teacher leadership presents an opportunity for teachers and leaders to grow and develop simultaneously, a parallel opportunity exists for school administrators. as the administrator embraces teacher leadership, sharing instructional leadership roles becomes critical. according to newmann and wehlage (1995), principals play a key role in creating conditions that enable a school to improve. they further purported that effective principals involved in school improvement exhibit the following characteristics:  lead through shared vision and values  involve faculty members in decision-making  provide relevant staff development and training  model behaviors consistent with the vision and values changing teachers’ knowledge, practices and expectations can no longer rest in the lap of the school principal alone if the goal of the reform is to create a learning community to improve teaching and learning. several studies revealed the importance of teacher leadership in total school reform (katzenmeyer & moller, 1996; lieberman, 1988; urbanski & nickolaou, 1997). tolerated failure or missed opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership in urban schools? 3 teacher leadership in urban settings requires time and attention to the challenges related to power, social class, inequity and race for improvement in student achievement levels to occur (delpit, 1995; lipman, 1999; wynn, 2000). successful schools in the united states provide support for teachers on a day-to-day basis and focus on improving learning for all students. what separates successful schools from unsuccessful schools is how educators define and utilize leadership (glickman, 1993; glickman, gordon, & ross-gordon, 2001). teacher leaders who provide their colleagues with the professional development desperately needed to abolish low expectations have become pivotal to reversing the intolerable achievement gap that exists for minority students in urban schools. today, the view of leadership is transformed to focus on scientific understandings of teaching and learning, data driven decision-making and a broader view of professional development. dufour (2002) preferred the term learning leader versus instructional leader. the educational lens is now focused on leading learning communities the national association of elementary school principals (2001), embraced six important roles of leadership: establishing high expectations for students; connecting content and instruction to standards; using multiple sources of data for assessment of learning; placing a high priority on learning for students and adults; providing ongoing professional development in a culture of learning; and embracing the community’s support in the success of the school. this article examines the existing role of teacher leaders, addresses opportunities and potentials for teacher leaders to positively impact teacher knowledge base, and teacher practices and teacher expectations. defining the work of teacher leaders historically, educators defined teacher leadership as support faculty such as social workers, department heads, master teachers, lead teachers, learning specialists and supervisors. specialization of more traditional teacher leadership roles may not necessarily lead to dynamic school reform and perhaps requires a more complex definition. crowther, kaagan, ferguson and hann (2002) stated that, “teacher leadership facilitates principled action to achieve whole-school success. it applies the distinctive power of teaching to shape meaning for children, youth, and adults. and it contributes to long-term, enhanced quality of community life” (p. 10). katzenmeyer and moller (2001) defined teacher leadership as, “teachers who are leaders lead within and beyond the classroom, identify with and contribute to a community of teacher learners and leaders, and influence others toward improved educational practice” (p. 5). the dynamic change in the way a school community works together to improve student learning as suggested here offers promise to schools struggling with limited resources. recognizing the potential that teacher leadership affords schools is the first step toward acquiring positive results. school leaders must take the next step and determine how to identify teacher leaders and define the way in which principals and teacher leaders can work collaboratively toward common goals. teacher leaders are identified primarily by school administrators, other teachers, or the teacher leaders are self-proclaimed; their roles vary dramatically. there is agreement in the literature that teacher leaders take on a variety of roles but the more recent role is one which is not specialized but more generalized (york-barr, 2004). this generalized role is global and process-oriented leading change beyond the school walls. the role emerging for teachers leaders is more than a singular contribution, but far reaching including a strong focus on the well being and achievement of all students and includes more community involvement. according to hargreaves (as cited in crowther, kaagan, ferguson & hann, 2002) an, …intimate connection…exists between teaching and leading, realistically as well as rhetorically…when leadership is conceived as principalship, then really effective principals can bring about successful innovation, turn under performing schools around, and even sustain change…but typically, when top-level leaders move on, the focus shifts, the ownership of change leaves with the departing leaders. (p. xii) conversely, distributed leadership allows the change or reform to continue. the focus is on “communities of teacher leadership” supported by teacher leaders (crowther, kaagan, ferguson & hann, 2002). teacher leaders help colleagues achieve success for all students in the school. they accept more responsibility beyond their individual classrooms and focus on change for the entire school program. crowther, kaagan, ferguson and hann (2002) described this type of leadership as parallel leadership. parallel leadership involves leaders working harmoniously, moving in a common direction and diminishes the role of the principal as primary decision-maker. teacher leaders in this position engage with the school administrator in the goal of increasing the potential of the school to improve as a community. parallel leadership, according to crowther, kaagan, ferguson and hann current issues in education vol. 9 no. 3 (2002), “…engages processes of professional learning, culture building, and school wide pedagogy to enhance a school’s overall capacity to produce positive student outcomes” (p. 43). although a superfluity of definitions of teacher leadership exists in the literature, there is some agreement that the leader must possess certain qualities in order for changes to emerge in the school community. the qualities necessary for teacher leadership include interpersonal skills that build trusting, communicative and collaborative relationships with teachers. content knowledge that involves deep understanding of subject matter and how to deliver the content knowledge through a curriculum development process is necessary for the teacher leader’s ability to gain the respect of colleagues. additionally, pedagogical knowledge (teaching practices) that demands an understanding of how children best learn within a “thinking” curriculum as well as how to assess the learning is paramount to teachers in leadership capacities. an important and somewhat daunting challenge for teacher leaders in urban school settings is the greater inhibitor of school reform: low expectations. despite rhetoric related to teachers’ efforts toward increasing student achievement, teachers often don’t practice what they preach. teacher leaders play a key role in championing the need for high expectations. however, the roadblocks of personal and professional bias regarding race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and gender must first be removed to pave the way for high expectations for all students. opportunities for teacher leaders to impact teacher expectations according to green (2002; 2003), when the professional staff begins with sincerity to believe that all students can achieve, hold high expectations for student accomplishments, and do whatever it takes to ensure that students will learn, then the school operates in a self-sustaining climate of effectiveness. included among the responsibilities of teacher leaders is their ability to positively impact teacher expectations. within urban environments, several students live in a state of hopelessness and are more likely influenced negatively which often results in poorer choices and poorer academic performances. to that end, many teachers have acknowledged and accepted these factors which result in their abilities to expect a lower performance, if a performance at all. nonetheless, many children succumb to these low expectations resulting in self-fulfilling prophecies. harvard university scholar, ronald ferguson (1998; 2003), presented evidence that suggested teachers’ perceptions, expectations, and behaviors probably help sustain, and perhaps even expand, the test score gap between white and african american students. continuing the discussion, swanson, cunningham and spencer (2003) examined african american males’ perceptions of teacher expectations for their achievement and found that negative stereotyping and tracking influenced achievement. seemingly, everyone knows that it is unacceptable for teachers to knowingly engage in behaviors that may stifle and hinder the performance of students. as a result, many urban school districts pride themselves on their belief and expectation that all students can learn, never really demonstrating that this belief alone dictates and guides every action, interaction, and reaction that the professionals within the organization display. in order to demonstrate the expectation that all children can learn, teachers must explore a deep understanding of the protean use of expectations. bamburg (1994) concentrated on three general types of teacher expectations. the first type of expectation refers to a teacher’s perception or hunch as to the student’s current academic level. while the student’s current level may not affect future performance, bamburg (1994) continued to share that it does affect the teacher’s interaction with the students. for example, teachers who believe that they are interacting with bright students nod their heads and smile more often than teachers who believe they are interacting with slower students. additionally, teachers also lean toward and provide more direct eye contact with smarter students more frequently. the second type of expectation that bamburg (1994) mentioned is teacher’s prediction. the teacher’s prediction is the teacher’s guess of how much academic progress will occur over a period of time. coupled with teachers’ perceptions, teachers’ predictions can negatively influence students. for instance, students labeled academically challenging may receive fewer opportunities to learn new material than students labeled as bright. now, academic rigor is factored into the equation because students labeled as slow are less likely to benefit from acceleration versus constant remediation. the third type of expectation is the degree to which a teacher over estimates or underestimates a student’s present level of performance. underestimating a student’s academic performance is usually as a result of test scores or other information gained about the child from a previous teacher. any or all of the general types of expectations influence student performance. according to bamburg (1994), they will create either a self-fulfilling prophecy or a sustaining expectation effect. likewise, the findings of douglass (1964) informed educators by revealing that, tolerated failure or missed opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership in urban schools? 5 …teachers’ expectations about a student’s achievement can be affected by factors having little or nothing to do with his/her ability, and yet these expectations can determine the level of achievement by confining learning opportunities to those available in one’s track.(p. 2) many theorists warned that expectations could become damaging if based upon inaccurate or inflexible information, and if teachers make instructional decisions on these incorrect perceptions (babad, bernieri, & rosenthal, 1991; brophy & good, 1970; demaray & elliot, 1998). while the damage of inaccuracy is potentially detrimental to students, even more alarming is what bognar (1982) shared about the lack of willingness for teachers to revise their expectations of students in response to the new information. attempting to positively affect the attitudes and beliefs of other teachers is a major responsibility for teacher leaders and may be the most complex, especially since it is a highly personal affective measure. hilliard (1991) argued that deep restructuring and fundamental change occurs when we allow teachers to experience the joy of collaborative discussion, dialogue, critique, and research. an enriched academic foundation is definitely a prerequisite for an enriched pedagogical foundation, and the two provide a level of comfort for the teacher who supports professional dialogue as well as teacher-student dialogue. while the critical conversations must begin, conversations alone are not enough to get all teachers to become reflective practitioners. teachers must examine their belief about the expectations of students. teacher leaders should begin to nudge teachers to shift their thinking and practices. for example, in the american educational system, most teachers are prepared to assess students based on the student’s ability instead of the student’s effort. stevenson and baker (1992) highlighted the advent that american society confuses the concepts of ability and effort. they compared educational practices in the united states with those in china and japan. their findings revealed that, …people in the two asian countries acknowledged differences in individuals’ innate abilities, but considered hard work to be the more important factor than ability in students’ academic achievement. in contrast, american children, teachers, and parents emphasized innate abilities as the major component of academic success. (p. 1656) stevenson and baker (1992) underscored the fact that in america innate ability has resulted in a belief tantamount to educational predestination. innate ability, rather than effort, the amount of quality instruction, and parent involvement – is believed to be the sole determinant to achievement. further agitation of this idea may also mean that many american students who have not performed well on standardized tests are believed by their teachers and ultimately themselves to have a much lesser ability. this inferior ability becomes fixed in the minds of teachers and students alike. regardless of hard work, continued development, and additional professional support services, this idea remains fixed. contrary to the innate ability findings is the experience of math teacher jaime escalante at garfield high school in los angeles. escalante presented strong evidence that emphasizing effort can pay off, particularly when a teacher believes that students can succeed and provides the necessary support. escalante’s inner city students consistently outperformed suburban and private school students on the avanced placement (a.p.) calculus exam for more than seven consecutive years. prior to escalante’s work, marva collins, founder and teacher of the westside preparatory academy in chicago took students from the projects of chicago and provided them with a rigorous curriculum and the expectation that they would all attend college. from her steadfast work, her students consistently outperformed students enrolled in the surrounding local school districts and annihilated the predictive statistics of inner city youths between 1970s and 1980s as evidenced in cbs’ 60 minutes feature entitled, too good to be true. in order for teacher leaders to impact teacher expectations, the teacher leaders must become familiar with what works in schools. teachers within the building need the information, and, as collaborative partners, the teacher leaders must agree to support the teachers as they attempt to try new techniques and make use of the new information. ongoing assessment of school culture and beliefs about students and student achievement must guide this process. teacher leaders must take time to raise consciousness and create awareness about race, gender, social class, disability status, communication and speech patterns, student history, limited english proficiency, physical attractiveness, handwriting, and participation in extra-curricula activities for teachers to meet the needs of all students. opportunities for teacher leaders to impact teacher knowledge since legislators, policymakers, and those who make funding decisions about education are now concerned with student outcomes, it has become current issues in education vol. 9 no. 3 apparent to many that the next steps of accountability will be the link between student outcomes and teacher knowledge. beginning in 2000, states received federal dollars in the form of title ii grants. these grants are designed to improve teacher quality using professional development. these professional development proposals were required to affect the teacher’s knowledge base through the rigors of content. the new energy surrounding this type of professional development allowed colleges of education and colleges of arts and sciences to collaborate with school districts to meet this challenge. this framework of professional development aligns with the ideas of guskey and sparks (1998) who postulated the linkage of quality professional development to increased student outcomes through the influence of teacher knowledge. ingersoll (1999) highlighted the significant disparity in content knowledge between teachers in high-poverty, urban schools and those in affluent schools. his research identifies significant comparison gaps in the areas of math, science, english, and social studies. further, teachers in the urban schools lacked a major or a minor in their teaching field. for example, 43 percent of teachers in urban schools lacked a major or minor while only 27 percent of teachers in more affluent schools. coupled with ingersoll’s research, the national center for education statistics (2000) reported that 20 percent of teachers in urban schools have three or fewer years of teaching experience. ultimately, schools assign teachers with the least credentials and least experience the toughest teaching assignments in the nation. even teachers in urban areas with the appropriate experience and credentials are often not adequately prepared and supported to handle the increasingly difficult instructional challenges embedded within these environments. having this insight, the teacher leader must become a master of content and be able to transmit expertise to his/her colleagues. as a master of content, the teacher leader must use his skills as a professional developer to impact teacher knowledge. sanders’ (1998) study showed that students assigned to effective teachers’ [deep academic content] for three years in a row scored an average of 49 percentile points higher on standardized tests than those assigned to ineffective teachers three years in a row. opportunities for teacher leaders to impact teacher practice standards based accountability places more demands on the teacher leaders’ knowledge of curriculum and assessment. classroom teachers need strong support of knowledgeable leaders to produce significant results based on ambitious academic expectations. there are distinctions made in the literature regarding the definitions of pedagogical knowledge. as we consider the evolving role of teacher leaders as ‘capacity’ builders in school reform, we assume content knowledge exists. pedagogy is a process for teachers, placing emphasis on the areas of curriculum development, assessment and best practices in methodology. teachers invest in their own learning to this end. subsequently, teacher leaders share newly gained skills by promoting, participating, and facilitating in a purposeful professional learning community. these teachers are “…informal leaders on the cutting edge of reform…not afraid to take risks…the ones administrators typically call on for opinions and help in effecting change” (stronge, 2002, p. 20). in this role, the teacher leaders build capacity in their school. lambert (2005) defined leadership capacity as “…reciprocal, purposeful learning together in community” (p. 38). in a study of high leadership capacity schools, most of which were urban and highpoverty, the principal was responsible for building shared leadership, gradually releasing the decision making to the teachers (lambert, 2005). there are many descriptors used to illustrate what leadership capacity ‘looks like’, however, we argue that reflective practice embodies effective teacher leadership. when principals create a learning community, they look to teacher leaders to facilitate the process. knowledgeable teacher leaders can assist colleagues in becoming effective teachers through reflective practice. a commitment to teaching and professional learning is critical to improve student achievement (blair, 2000; lambert, 2005; mitchell, 1998). in essence, effective teachers feel responsible for the learning of all students and examine ways to meet their needs (covino & iwanicki, 1996; peart & campbell, 1999; shellard & protheroe, 2000). therefore, we can reasonably conclude that teacher leaders must examine reflective practice as a tool with which to lead others to effective teaching practices. costa, lipton, and wellman (1997) discussed the need for teachers to engage in research, inquiry, reflection and revising of practices. teachers construct knowledge when they engage in a learning process that promotes a spirit of risk-taking. the model of professional development that supports this is one which individuals, small groups, and entire faculties study classroom activities and achievement data as a means for exchanging ideas and exploring research possibilities in their own environment. in this model, teacher leaders facilitate a process that tolerated failure or missed opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership in urban schools? 7 builds a community of learners within the building centered on inquiry, experimentation and reflection. costa and kallick (2000) stated that in order for teachers to maximize meaning from experience they must engage in reflection. they described the activity of reflecting especially with a group of teaching peers as:  amplifying the meaning of one’s work through the insights of others;  applying meaning beyond the situation in which it was learned;  making a commitment to adjustments, plans, and experimentation,  documenting learning and providing a rich base of shared knowledge. (p. 60) reflection leads to substantive conversation, collaborative inquiry into practice of teaching and developing important recommendations for transformation in methodologies. darling-hammond and mclaughlin (1995) stated, “professional development today means providing occasions for teachers to reflect critically on their practice and to fashion new knowledge and beliefs about content, pedagogy, and learners” (p. 597). principals alone cannot sustain this level of learning for their teachers. however, teacher leaders who are generally in nonevaluative roles, better meet with success in this context of professional learning. conclusion in 1954, lawmakers embedded equity into law. today, unfortunately, many students continue to face unequal and inadequate educational opportunities because they are poor, black, latino, or live in inner cities or rural areas. further, many of these students do not get the education they need to thrive in today’s economy and to participate as citizens in a democracy. assuredly, strong public education promotes a strong society. in many cases, the reality of a weak public education system resulting in low student achievement is a result of low expectations (delpit, 1995). several years ago, ron edmonds, father of effective schools research, made a commitment to find schools that were successfully educating all students. he reasoned that if he could find a single school where all children were successful, then success was indeed possible. for edmonds, the belief that all children could learn was nonnegotiable; this was the expectation (bamburg, 1994). as teacher leaders equip other teachers with high-yield best practices that result in increased student achievement, teacher leaders must be prepared to support the new learnings of teachers. teacher leaders must create conditions for teachers to refine, practice, reflect and improve their practice over time. the teacher leader must then become the promoter and facilitator of a purposeful professional learning community. effective schools do not tolerate failure; however, they may miss opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership. helping teachers change their thinking and practices is a difficult task. as capacity for shared leadership or parallel leadership increases, the opportunity for leaders to support colleagues in an analysis and challenge of their beliefs about student learning occurs. improving teacher quality is critical to low-income, urban schools. developing a community of learners holds great promise for urban schools to improve professional practice and ultimately increase student achievement. references armandaiz a. 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(2003). black males’ structural conditions, achievement patterns, normative needs, and opportunities. urban education 38(5), 608 633. urbanski, a. & nickolaou, m.a. (1997). reflections on teachers as leaders. educational policy, 11(2), 243-254. wynn, j. (2001). urban teacher leaders: testimonies and transformations. unpublished paper presented at the aera, montreal canada. ed 436 614. york-barr, j., & duke, k. (2004). “what do we know about teacher leadership? findings from two decades of scholarship. review of educational research.74(3), 255-316. http://www.annenbergchallenge.org/pubs/cj/gap_cj.htm http://www.annenbergchallenge.org/pubs/cj/gap_cj.htm current issues in education vol. 9 no. 3 2006 article citation sledge j.r. & morehead p. (2006, feb). "tolerated failure or missed opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership in urban schools?" current issues in education [on-line], 9(3). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number3/ author notes jumanne r. sledge, ed. d. visiting assistant professor oakland university sledge@oakland.edu jumanne sledge has worked as a teacher, department head, and principal in public education. his expertise and research interests are in the area of school reform and improvement in urban educational arenas. dr. sledge has presented at several local, state, and national conferences. he is committed to closing the achievement gap thereby increasing student achievement, especially among african american males. jumanne earned his master of arts degree from the university of detroit in education administration and his doctor of education degree from wayne state university in the curriculum and instruction. pamela morehead, ph.d. oakland university morehead@oakland.edu pamela morehead is a visiting assistant professor at oakland university in rochester, michigan. she is a former elementary principal and consultant. research interests include teacher leadership and professional development. her degrees earned are in special education, early childhood and education leadership. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation sledge, j. r., & morehead, p. (2006). tolerated failure or missed opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership in urban schools? current issues in education, 9(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1595 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number3/index.html mailto:sledge@oakland.edu mailto:morehead@oakland.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1595 volume 8, number 13 june, 2005 issn 1099-839x literacy teachers' interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits gary alger university of bridgeport this paper examines the interactions between literacy teachers and instructional leaders and their effects on students’ reading achievement gains. the results of this study have implications for how instructional leaders work with colleagues and how these relationships may impact student achievement. forty-two suburban elementary and middle school literacy teachers reported the frequency and helpfulness of interactions with their instructional leaders. findings indicate that curricular and assessment interactions occurred more frequently and were more helpful than instructional interactions. students of these teachers who reported the most frequent and helpful interactions had significantly higher reading achievement gains than students of teachers who reported the least frequent and least helpful contacts. leadership is a critical component of all school improvement efforts. the evidence from the literature supports the position that effective leaders have an indirect but powerful influence on a school’s capacity to enhance student achievement (muijs and harris, 2003). effective leadership builds and sustains an organizational culture that focuses on continual improvement of educational programs, teachers’ capabilities and skills, and student learning. (fullan, 2001; sergiovanni, 2001). traditional school leadership places this authority and influence in the principal or a small team of administrators in the main office and this ‘great man’ theory of leadership continues to be the norm (day, et al., 2000). however, the challenges facing schools today, particularly the legal mandates to improve student achievement, seriously question traditional approaches to school leadership and the principal as the primary instructional leader. as a result, educators are proposing the dispersal of leadership authority within a school and that teachers assume significantly greater roles in school improvement efforts (e.g., harris, 2003; fullan, 2001; lambert, 1998; leithwood et al., 1999; sergiovanni, 2001). such dispersal has the potential to build a professional learning community, motivate teachers, improve the quality of teaching in the classroom and positively impact student achievement. although schools are beginning to develop teachers as leaders, little is known about their interactions with peers and the impact of those communications on student achievement. in a recent review of the literature on the benefits of teacher leadership, muijs and harris (2003) cite only one study that investigated the effect of teacher leadership on students; that study found a positive effect on student engagement (leithwood and jantzi, 1998). therefore, by using data collected from one school district that implemented a teacher leadership program, this study identifies the nature of interactions between teachers and their peers with instructional leadership responsibilities. more importantly, the study analyzes the effects of those current issues in education vol. 8 no. 13 interactions on the reading achievement gains of their students. this paper will provide empirical data regarding the working relationships between literacy teachers and instructional leaders and how those interactions impact student outcomes. after a review of the relevant literature review, the research methodology will be discussed in considerable detail including data sources, procedures, and data analysis techniques. the findings are presented followed by a discussion of the results and implications for current practice and future research. literature review the literature review focuses on four major topics, including the definition of teacher leadership, the role of teacher leadership in developing a professional learning community, distributed leadership theory and teacher leadership, and barriers to teacher leadership. defining teacher leadership experts vary in their definitions of teacher leadership because they have different conceptual perspectives of the roles and functions of such individuals. katzenmeyer and moller (2001) suggest that teacher leaders may assume one of three roles. they may lead by participating in decision-making processes, by managing operational tasks, or by facilitating teacher and student growth. some teacher leaders work as partners with school administrators in the decision making process. they serve as members of site-based management teams, school improvement teams, committees, or other groups that make important decisions for the school and/or district. other teacher leaders assist school administrators with the managerial operations of a school, serving in middle management roles such as department heads or members of a task force. however, the third function of teacher leadership, facilitating teacher and student growth, is of particular interest to this study. teacher leaders who facilitate the growth of their colleagues and students assume roles such as mentors, coaches, trainers, and curriculum specialists. these individuals interact with their peers both in and out of the classroom to improve pedagogical knowledge and skills and to help them transfer that to classroom practice. the ultimate goal of these interactions is to promote student learning. day and harris (2003) described four dimensions of teacher leaders and these have application to individuals who assume roles as facilitators of peer growth and student learning. the first dimension involves working with teachers so they are able to understand principles of school improvement and transfer new knowledge into classroom practice. teacher leaders may serve as a personal coach to a teacher, providing individual consultation and working side by side in the classroom to assist a peer with the implementation of a specific strategy related to a school improvement effort. the second dimension entails participatory leadership so that all teachers feel ownership and commitment to change. the teacher leader may build support among peers for specific school improvement initiatives and foster collaborative working relationships to accomplish the school goals through study groups or team discussions. the third dimension is the mediating role of teacher leaders. these individuals are experts in their field and sources of valuable information or other resources. teacher leaders are able to draw upon their own knowledge, the expertise of peers, or network with others to seek external assistance related to school improvement initiatives. the fourth dimension is building close, professional relationships with individual teachers which results in mutual learning. the collaborative, collegial relationships which teacher leaders help forge can significantly contribute to the formation of a professional learning community. schools that operate as a professional learning community are more likely to accomplish school improvement goals and improve student learning (hargreaves, 2002). teacher leaders and professional learning communities school leaders can initiate improvement, accomplish goals, and sustain a process of continuous development more efficiently and effectively if the school functions as a professional learning community (morrissey, 2000). according to hord (1995), these communities have five characteristics, including shared decision-making, common school vision focused on student learning, shared learning and guided practice, peer review and feedback, and supportive school conditions. the supportive conditions include time for staff interactions, open communications that support the improvement efforts, and collaborative relationships among staff . collaboration with peers is at the heart of the professional organization and teacher leaders can play an important role in encouraging and sustaining these interactions among colleagues (harris, 2003). frequent and meaningful exchanges between teachers build a climate of cohesiveness in which effective working relationships are established. teacher leaders can be empowered by school administrators to facilitate the development of these relationships. master teachers who assume these roles can lead and coordinate professional training programs, chair group problem solving sessions around instructional problems, lead discussions about best practices in the classroom, coach individual teachers, and generally literacy teachers' interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits 3 encourage staff interactions that focus on issues related to the teaching and learning process (frost & durrant, 2003). according to lambert (1995), these interactions enable staff to construct meaning and knowledge together, rather than relying on outside pressures to change. although collaborative relationships are essential to the professional learning community, another characteristic proposed by harris and lambert (2003) is that teachers accept joint responsibility for the outcomes of their work. related to this concept of accountability within the professional learning community, teacher-researchers have proposed that monitoring and evaluating student achievement and teaching behaviors are essential components of school leadership (copland et al., 2002). these activities include regularly reviewing student work and achievement data, observing teachers in the classroom on a scheduled basis, facilitating discussions and leading professional development to promote best instructional practices, establishing student performance goals, and developing annual plans for improvement. teacher leaders who assume roles as instructional coaches, mentors, and curriculum specialists can facilitate activities, which promote accountability of the professional learning community. distributed leadership theory and teacher leadership distributed leadership theory is a democratic and collective form of leadership that proposes the decentralization of the power and authority of the school principal. according to muijs and harris (2003), distributed leadership is helpful in clarifying the meaning of teacher leadership and how it functions within the school environment. first, distributed leadership engages teacher leaders in a process where they work together to guide and mobilize their peers in the instructional change process. they participate actively with peers, supporting and coaching them in order to accomplish school goals involving pedagogical improvement. second, because distributed leadership involves multiple individuals in leadership roles, the work is accomplished through the interactions of several teacher leaders and school administrators. finally, it suggests interdependency rather than dependency in terms of responsibility. the teacher leaders and principal assume different kinds of roles and rely on each other in order to accomplish the organization’s goals. the engagement of teacher leaders as central players in the change process, the increase in interactions and the interdependency between teacher leaders and administrators cause traditional lines of hierarchical authority to blur and prompt the formation of new relationships. “whatever specific definition of teacher leadership one chooses to adopt, it is clear that its emphasis upon collective action, empowerment and shared agency is reflected in distributed leadership theory” (muijs and harris, 2003, p. 440). barriers to teacher leadership although the theoretical foundations for developing teacher leaders are sound, implementing these changes in practice are quite difficult with many barriers to overcome (e.g., barth, 2001; hargreaves, 1999; little, 1990; smylie, 1992). there are strong cultural forces in schools that are counter to the development of teacher leaders and make it more difficult for middle leaders to assume new roles. teaching is often viewed as an independent, autonomous and private profession. teacher leaders who attempt to engage peers in collaborative activities such as discussing and sharing instructional strategies, reflecting and offering feedback on classroom performance, and training on best practices may find resistance to such efforts from staff who want to maintain control over their professional practice. teacher leaders are often hesitant to engage in such activities unless they are invited to do so by team members (mcgarvey and marriott, 1997). teacher leaders may be perceived as assuming positions that differentiate their roles within the organization and this can create conflict with some peers, particularly those who believe in equality of professional status (hart, 1990). teacher leaders often hesitate to monitor the work of peers and their students because it challenges the professional norms of equality and privacy and may even be viewed as an abrogation of trust. lieberman et al. (2000) found that egalitarian ethic of colleagues was one of the main barriers perceived by teacher leaders, and often left them feeling isolated from colleagues. although adey (2000) indicated growing acceptance for teacher leaders who assume roles as subject area specialists to focus attention on monitoring and evaluation activities, some do not want to get themselves into a position where they appear to be judging the work of a peer (glover et al., 1998b). these teacher leaders acknowledge that collegiality is an aspiration rather than a reality. they experience conflict between their need to monitor teacher performance and the desire to promote collegiality and trust among unit members (wise, 2001). teacher leaders also indicate that there is not enough time to fulfill these additional job responsibilities. individuals in these positions report they lack the time to monitor and evaluate student achievement, support teacher efforts in the current issues in education vol. 8 no. 13 classroom, facilitate reflection on instructional practices, and generally work with staff to improve teacher and student performance (brown et al, 2000; glover et al, 1998a; wise and bush, 1999). ovando (1994) found that time for teacher leaders to perform their work was a critical factor to the success of teacher leadership programs. research methodology data sources four data sources were used in this study. participants included the literacy teachers in a suburban k-12 school district in the northeastern region of the united states and the students assigned to them. instruments included the teacherinstructional leader interaction questionnaire and the degrees of reading power (drp) test (touchstone, 1995). participants. forty-two literacy teachers, grades two to eight, and the students assigned to them over a two-year period constituted the subjects of this investigation. teachers and students in grades kindergarten and first grade were not included because of the lack of reading achievement data at these levels. characteristics of the participants are presented in table 1. the participants were all full-time teachers in a suburban k-12 school district in the northeastern region of the united states with an enrollment of approximately 3,000 students. the district consisted of two elementary schools, one middle school and one high school. this particular district was selected for study because it recently implemented a teacher leadership initiative to facilitate the development of a professional learning community and to improve the reading achievement of students. in 2001, central office administrators, school board members, building principals, teachers and parents participated in a strategic planning process. an outcome of that process was the establishment of a teacher leadership role, curriculum resource teacher (crt), as part of a district-wide goal to increase teacher collaboration and to improve student achievement. the crt was a subject leader position but routine administrative and managerial tasks were minimized. one crt was employed in each elementary school and one in the middle school to help the teachers understand and implement the district’s literacy curriculum, to promote the use of best practices in literacy instruction, and to utilize student assessment data to monitor and improve student learning. the crt had no assigned classroom duties so that the individual would have adequate time to consult with peers on literacy matters, work within their classrooms, monitor student achievement, and research and develop curricular, instructional and assessment-related strategies. instrument one: the teacherinstructional leader interaction questionnaire. i developed the teacher-instructional leader interaction questionnaire (see figure 1) to collect data regarding the frequency and helpfulness of the interactions between the elementary literacy teachers and the instructional leaders. the drp was used to measure each student’s level of reading achievement. the teacher-instructional leader interaction questionnaire measured three types of interactionscurricular, instructional and assessmentrelated. the nineteen items on the questionnaire were based on the responsibilities of the crt as outlined in the district job description and were categorized as either a curricular, instructional or assessment-related interaction. the items and their category were validated by the instructional leaders. each type of interaction was defined as follows: literacy teachers' interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits 5 curricular interactions: reviewing student performance standards; selecting materials for the literacy program; coordinating the literacy program within each grade and between schools; and reviewing the literacy program philosophy and major components of the program. instructional interactions: reviewing how to implement a balanced literacy program in the classroom; planning literacy lessons, units of study, or long-range plans; developing and sharing strategies to improve student achievement; assisting teachers to fulfill responsibilities related to their teacher evaluation plan; obtaining input on planning district professional development activities; obtaining feedback on professional development activities conducted in district; discussing needs of specific students; visiting teachers’ classrooms and giving feedback on instructional practices; discussing and sharing conferences or workshops outside of the district; and informing staff about regional professional development opportunities. assessment-related interactions: developing and revising literacy assessments to evaluate student achievement; reviewing student performance data of the school; reviewing student performance data of the students in the classroom; educating staff regarding the content of state-wide assessments; and sharing/discussing ideas how to improve student performance on mandated tests. teachers rated how frequently they interacted with their crt using a 5-point scale including: (1) never, (2) at least once a year, (3) at least once a marking period, (4) at least once a month, and (5) at least once a week. subjects were also asked to indicate how helpful those interactions were to them on a 5-point scale, including (1) not helpful, (2) somewhat helpful, (3) not sure, (4) helpful, and (5) very helpful. a frequency score and a helpfulness score for each type of interaction was obtained for each subject by averaging the appropriate item responses. a combined frequency/helpfulness score was computed for each type of interaction by totaling the appropriate frequency and helpfulness means. the internal reliability coefficients for the curricular, instructional and assessment-related items for this sample are displayed in table 2 for frequency and table 3 for helpfulness. cronbach alpha reliability coefficients for frequency ranged from .79 for curricular interactions to .89 for instructional interactions. regarding helpfulness, reliability coefficients were .91 for curricular and assessment interactions and .95 for instructional interactions. based on these analyses, the instrument was considered adequately reliable for purposes of this study. instrument two: the degrees of reading power (drp). the degrees of reading power (drp) was used to measure reading achievement of students. the drp is a test of reading comprehension using the cloze technique. it assesses a student’s ability to comprehend the meaning of increasingly difficult text; the ability to analyze, evaluate and extend the ideas that are presented; and the size of the student’s reading vocabularies (touchstone, 1995). each student’s raw score was converted to a normal curve equivalent (nce) score. procedure after gaining the approval of the senior administration of the district, i asked the principal’s secretary in each school to distribute the teacherinstructional leader interaction questionnaire to all 52 literacy teachers in grades two to eight along with a letter explaining the purpose of the study. before distributing the questionnaire, the principal’s secretary coded each instrument to conduct multiple follow-ups. the codes were also used to match reading achievement data and demographic data to each teacher’s questionnaire when it was returned. the reading achievement data consisted of each student’s nce score obtained on a fall and spring current issues in education vol. 8 no. 13 administration of the drp test. two years of student data were collected for each teacher. the principal’s secretary attached the reading achievement results and teacher demographic data based on personnel records to the appropriate coded instrument of each staff member. only the principal’s secretary had the list of codes and this individual destroyed the list once the data collection period ended to ensure the anonymity and confidentiality of all respondents. data analysis all data was entered into spss v. 11.0 for analysis. for each teacher, demographic data and responses to each item on the teacher-instructional leader interaction questionnaire were entered. for each student, fall and spring nce scores on the drp, the code number of the teacher, and the teacher’s scores from the teacher-instructional leader interaction questionnaire were entered. three types of analyses were conducted. first, descriptive statistics were employed to describe the frequency and helpfulness of the interactions between the teachers and the instructional leaders. second, the paired-samples t-test was used to analyze differences in the curricular, instructional and assessment-related frequency and helpfulness means. third, in order to examine the effect of teachers’ interactions with instructional leaders on reading achievement gains of their students, teachers were ranked by their combined frequency and helpfulness scores on the teacher-instructional leader interaction questionnaire. subjects were then assigned to one of four quartiles for each type of interaction to indicate an overall level of contact with the crt. the top quartile included those teachers who reported the most frequent and most helpful interactions. the bottom quartile consisted of the staff members who reported the least frequent and least helpful contacts. an analysis of variance for repeated measures was used to examine differences in reading achievement between the two groups of teachers, to analyze differences in reading achievement between the fall and spring administrations of the drp, and to ascertain if there was a significant interaction between the two variables. the interaction indicates differences in the reading achievement gains between the two groups of teachers. an alpha level of .05 was used for all statistical tests. findings the analyses that are reported on in this section include descriptive statistics for the frequency and helpfulness of teachers’ interactions, pairedsample t-tests to determine differences in the teachers’ interactions, and analysis of variance for repeated measures to examine the interactions between reading achievement and teachers’ interactions. frequency and helpfulness of teachers’ interactions the distribution of scores, means, and standard deviations for frequency are displayed in table 4. the descriptive data suggests that teachers vary widely in their interactions with the instructional leaders. average frequency scores are highest for assessment related interactions (2.63) and lowest for instructional contacts (2.24). mean frequency scores are all below 3.0, suggesting that contact between crts and the typical teacher on any given type of interaction average between at least once a year and at least once a marking period (four marking periods per year). approximately one-third of the teachers report interacting with their crts on an average of between once a marking period and once a week on curricular issues and approximately 38% report the same frequency for assessment-related contacts. less than 20% report that level of contact on instructional matters. teachers also varied in their perceptions regarding the helpfulness of their interactions with the crts. as shown on table 5, the mean for assessment-related interactions (3.05) is highest and the mean of 2.45 for instructional interactions is the lowest. approximately one-third of the teachers report that the curricular and assessment-related interactions are helpful or very helpful but only literacy teachers' interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits 7 14.29% indicate this level for contacts on instructional matters. differences in teachers’ interactions differences in the frequency and helpfulness of teachers’ curricular, assessment-related and instructional interactions with the crt were analyzed using a series of paired-sample t-tests. the first series of these tests determined if teachers interacted more frequently about curriculum, assessment or instruction. the second series of paired-sample t-tests determined if teachers found some interactions more helpful than others. as shown in table 6, the first set of results indicate that teachers have significantly more contact with crts on assessment-related matters (t = 5.29, p < .001) and curricular issues (t = 4.67, p < .001) compared to instructional topics. the second series of paired-sample t-tests (see table 7) reveal that their curricular interactions (t = 5.88, p< .001) and assessment-related interactions (t = 6.58, p < .001) with the crts are more helpful than their instructional exchanges. reading achievement and teachers’ interactions to examine the possible effect of these interactions on students’ reading achievement gains, each teacher was assigned to a quartile for each type of interaction based on the sum of the individual’s frequency and helpfulness scores. the demographic data for the teachers in the top and bottom quartiles for each type of interaction are shown in tables 8 to 10. the two groups are similar on these personal variables for each type of interaction. the combined frequency and helpfulness score means and standard deviations for the top and bottom quartile teachers are displayed in table 11. the means for the teachers in the bottom quartile are less than half of those in the top quartile, ranging between 3.93 to 4.55 points lower. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 13 table 12 summarizes the mean fall, spring and gain nce reading achievement scores and standard deviations for the students assigned to the top and bottom quartile teachers for each type of interaction with instructional leaders. for all three types of interactions, the students of the teachers in the top quartile have higher nce gains than the students of the teachers in the bottom quartile. for curricular interactions, the students of the top quartile teachers have a mean nce gain of 7.22 points; 7.33 for instructional interactions; and 8.40 for assessment-related interactions. the nce gains of the students of the bottom quartile teachers are much lower for the three types of interactions, 4.17 for curricular; 3.46 for instructional; and 3.11 for assessment-related. tables 13 to 15 display the results of the analysis of variance for repeated measures of reading achievement by teacher quartile group for curricular, instructional and assessment-related interactions. the analysis of variance for repeated measures determines differences in student reading achievement between the two groups of teachers and between the fall and spring administrations of the drp test. it also analyzes the interaction between teacher quartile group and reading achievement or, in other words, if there is a difference in the reading achievement gains of students between the two groups of teachers. for curricular interactions (see table 13), the analysis indicates no significant difference in student reading achievement between the two groups of teachers (f = .02, p>.05) and the students have significant gains from the fall to spring testing session (f = 156.45, p < .01). the results of the interaction are also significant (f = 11.20, p < .01). students of the teachers in the top quartile have more significant gains in reading achievement from the fall to the spring testing session than students assigned to the bottom quartile staff members. literacy teachers' interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits 9 for instructional interactions (see table 14), the analysis indicates a similar pattern. there is no significant difference in student reading achievement between the two groups of teachers based on instructional interactions (f = .22, p >.05) and the students have significant gains from the fall to spring testing session (f = 122.91, p < .01). the results for the interaction indicate that the students of the teachers in the top quartile have more significant gains in reading achievement (f = 15.76, p < .01). as shown in table 15, there is a significant difference in student reading achievement between the two groups of teachers based on assessmentrelated interactions (f = 98.05, p<.01). students assigned to the teachers in the bottom quartile have a higher nce mean in the fall (65.50 vs. 58.93) but this difference narrows on the spring test (68.60 vs. 67.33). the analysis indicates students have significant gains from the fall to spring testing sessions (f = 179.23, p < .01). again, the results of the interaction suggest that the students of the teachers in the top quartile have more significant gains in reading achievement than the students assigned to the bottom quartile teachers (f = 37.91, p < .01). discussion the findings of this study suggest that literacy teachers vary in terms of their interactions with instructional leaders. as shown on table 4, current issues in education vol. 8 no. 13 descriptive statistics indicate that about one-third of the teachers interact with their peer leader on an average of between once a marking period and once a week on curricular issues and assessment-related matters. however, another 30% report they rarely interact with their instructional leader, averaging between never to less than once every quarter. instructional interactions are even less frequent, with average contacts occurring between at least once a year and once a quarter for the entire sample. approximately one-fifth of the teachers indicate their average instructional contact occurs between once a quarter and once a month. however, almost half the teachers report they never interact with the crt on instructional issues or their average contact happens less than once a marking period (four times a year). a similar pattern occurs when the helpfulness of these interactions are examined. as shown on table 5, curricular and assessment-related interactions are more helpful to the teachers compared to instructional contacts. nearly one-half of the teachers report that their instructional interactions with the crt are not helpful. when paired-sample t tests were employed to test for differences between the three types of interactions for both frequency and helpfulness, curricular and assessment-related interactions occurred significantly more frequently and were significantly more helpful to the teachers than instructional interactions (see tables 6 and 7). these findings support the beliefs of several experts that teachers who assume leadership positions face unique challenges as they attempt to interact with their peers, especially on matters that the peers consider to be within their private domainhow they teach in their classroom. more than a decade ago, lazzara et al. (1989) reported that teachers’ relationships with colleagues may change substantially after their appointments to leadership positions, interacting with them less frequently and with more apprehension and suspicion. the problem appears to be persistent as barth (2001) noted. after working with more than one-hundred teacher leaders in the state of rhode island, he concluded that the greatest obstacle to these individuals was from their own colleagues. he suggested that schools are congenial, but not collegial. teachers are not comfortable discussing their practice, sharing their craft knowledge, encouraging or celebrating the success of others, and observing one another in the classroom. this uneasiness about discussing pedagogy appears to be interfering with the work of the teacher leaders in this school district. smylie (1992) also suggested that opportunity to meet is a necessary condition for teachers and peer leaders to establish a working relationship but that it alone is insufficient. the findings of this study support this conclusion because the crts in this district have no assigned teaching duties and are assigned to only one school. even though there is ample opportunity to interact with the peer leaders, contacts vary widely within each school. smylie further proposed that when conflict exists between the psychological orientations and the roles and rules of a particular social context, interaction is less likely to take place. when teachers are committed to the norm of professional equality, they tend to interact less frequently with peer leaders because their actions could be interpreted to condone the new status of these individuals. teachers are also less likely to establish working relationships with peer leaders if they believe they are somehow obligated to follow their advice or that their professional independence and autonomy will be compromised. this particular district expended considerable effort developing and coordinating the literacy program and this may account for the higher rates of contact in the curriculum domain. crts report they were attempting to define student performance expectations, were coordinating programs within grades and between schools, and were disseminating information to more clearly define the district’s balanced literacy program. the accountability movement may also explain why assessment-related interactions occurred more frequently and were more helpful than instructional contacts. governmental testing requirements, the publication of test data in local newspapers and the comparisons between schools and districts is creating a climate of greater accountability. this district is relatively affluent within the state and expectations are high among community members regarding performance on statewide tests. some teachers with lower performing students may have viewed the crt as a valuable resource to assist them in their efforts to improve student achievement on these mandated assessments. the district also implemented a teacher evaluation program that required staff to focus on the analysis of achievement data and the establishment of student learning goals to address areas of need. in the beginning of the school year, the students of the top quartile teachers for assessment-related interactions were performing significantly below their classmates who were assigned to the bottom quartile staff members. this may have prompted the top quartile teachers to seek more frequent consultation with the crt. the most significant results of this study involve the achievement growth of students in the literacy teachers' interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits 11 classrooms of the teachers. as shown on tables 13 to 15, the analysis of variance for repeated measures reveals a significant interaction between reading achievement gain and teacher quartile group. students of teachers who report the most frequent and most helpful interactions with their peer leaders have greater achievement gains than students of staff members who have the least frequent and least helpful contacts for all three types of interactions. their growth is approximately twice that of their peers in the classrooms of the bottom quartile teachers. this finding supports hargreaves’ (2002) belief that “…professional learning communities lead to strong and measurable improvements in students’ learning” (p. 3). however, there is a small body of research to support this belief. in a recent review of the literature on the effects and benefits of teacher leadership, muijs and harris (2003) only cite one study that investigated the relationship between student outcomes and teacher leadership. in that study, leithwood and jantzi (1998) found that teacher leadership had a significant effect on student engagement. furthermore, they concluded that if school principals distribute a larger proportion of leadership activity to teachers, it would have a positive impact on teacher effectiveness and student engagement. the results of this study suggest that implementing a teacher leadership initiative is a difficult endeavor for a school district. although these restructuring efforts hold potential for improving schools, it will require time to change the culture of the organization so that teachers interact more openly and frequently on matters of curriculum, instruction and assessment. after the first two years of the teacher leadership program in this district, staff members vary in their levels of interaction with peer leaders. however, for those who did make the connections, the experiences appear professionally rewarding and beneficial to the academic growth of their students. limitations it is important to note several limitations of this study. first, it is limited by the instrumentation used, particularly the teacher-instructional leader interaction questionnaire. although the crts served as a jury of experts to validate the instrument, i may have inadvertently omitted important curricular, assessment-related and instructional interactions that did occur between the teachers and the teacher leaders. second, teachers may not have been completely honest with their responses on the questionnaire. some subjects may have responded in socially acceptable ways rather than reporting their actual interactions with the teacher leaders. third, there are limitations in the generalizability of this study due to the size and homogeneity of the sample. the elementary and middle school teachers and students in this study were located in a small, suburban district within the northeastern region of the united states. future research additional research is needed to confirm the findings of this study in other settings, particularly the effect of teacher leadership on student achievement. future studies might examine the relationships between teachers and peer leaders and the specific nature of their interactions in an effort to further explain how they impact student learning. also, i suggest that future research go beyond the self-reporting of interactions by the classroom teachers. teacher leaders need to be included as data sources so that they may describe interactions from their perspective and the barriers they face in their attempts to engage teachers in collaborative work. references adey, k. (2000). professional development priorities: the views of middle managers in secondary schools. educational management and administration, 28(4), 419-431. barth, r. (2001). teacher leader. phi delta kappan, 82(6), 443-450. bennett, n. (1995). managing professional teachers: middle management in primary and secondary schools. london: paul chapman. bennett, n., newton, w., wise, c., woods, p. & economou, a. (2003). the role and purpose of middle leaders in schools . nottingham, u.k.: national college for school leadership. brown, m., rutherford, d. & boyle, b. (2000). leadership for school improvement: the role of the head of department in uk secondary schools. school effectiveness and school improvement, 11(2), 237-258. copland, m., darling-hammond, l, knapp, m., mclaughlin, m. & talbert, j. (2002, april 1-5). leadership for teaching and learning: a framework for research and action . paper presented at the meeting of the american educational research association, new orleans, la. day, c., harris, a. & hadfield, m. (2000). grounding knowledge of schools in stakehold realities: a multi-perspective study of effective school leaders. school leadership and management 21(1), 19-42. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 13 day, c. and harris, a (2003). teacher leadership, reflective practice and school improvement, in international handbook of educational administration, pp. 724-49. dordrecht, england: kluwer. frost, d.& durrant, j. (2003). teacher leadership: rationale, strategy and impact. school leadership and management, 23(2), 173 186. fullan, m. (2001). leading in a culture of change. san francisco: jossey-bass. glover, d., miller, d., gambling, m., gough, g. & johnson, m. (1998a). subject leaders: work, organization and professional development. keele, u.k.: keele university. glover, d., gleeson, d., gough, g. & johnson, m. (1998b). the meaning of management: the development of needs of middle managers in secondary schools. educational management and administration, 26(3), 279-292. hargreaves, d. (1999). the knowledge-creating school. british journal of educational studies, 47(2), 122-144. hargreaves, d. (2002). professional learning communities and performance training cults: the emerging apartheid of school improvement. in a. harris, c. day, m. hadfield, d. hopkins, a. hargreaves and c. chapman (eds.), effective leadership for school improvement. london: routledge. harris, a. (2003). improving schools through teacher leadership. education journal, 59, 22-23. harris, a. and lambert, l. (2003). building leadership capacity for school improvement. london: open university press. hart, a. (1990). work redesign: a review of literature for education reform. in s. b. bacharach (ed.), advances in research and theories of school management: vol.1 (pp.31-69). new haven, ct: jai press. hord, s. (1995). professional learning communities: communities of continuous inquiry and improvement. austin, tx: southwest educational development laboratories. katzenmeyer, m. and moller, g. (2001). awakening the sleeping giant: helping teachers develop as leaders. thousand oaks, ca: corwin. lambert, l. (1995). the constructivist leader . new york: teachers college press. lambert, l (1998). building leadership capacity in schools. alexandria, va: association for supervision and curriculum development. lazzara, m., miller, k.,& wolfe, s. (1989, march 27-31). teacher leadership: cases from the field. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, san francisco, ca. leithwood, k. & jantzi, d. (1998). distributed leadership and student engagement in school. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, san diego, ca. leithwood, k., jantzi, d.& steinbach, r. (1999). changing leadership for changing times. buckingham, u.k.: open university press. lieberman, a., saxl, e.& miles, m. (2000). teacher leadership: ideology and practice, in the jossey-bass reader on educational leadership, pp. 339-45. chicago: jossey bass. little, j. (1990). the persistence of privacy: autonomy and initiative in teachers’ professional relations. teachers college record, 91, 509-536. mcgarvey, b. & marriott, s. the role of the core subject coordinator in supporting differentiation in northern ireland primary schools. school leadership and management. 17(3), 375-386. morrissey, m. (2000). professional learning communities: an ongoing exploration. unpublished paper, southwest educational development laboratory, austin, tx. muijs, d. & harris, a. teacher leadership improvement through empowerment? an overview of the literature. educational management, administration and leadership. 31(4), 437-448. ovando, m. (1994). effects of teacher leadership on their teaching practices. paper presented at the annual meeting of the university council of educational administration, philadelphia, pa. sergiovanni, t. (1994). building community in schools. san francisco: jossey-bass. sergiovanni, t. (2001). leadership: what’s in it for schools? london: routledge falmer gunter. smylie, m. (1992). teachers’ reports of their interactions with teacher leaders concerning classroom instruction. the elementary school journal, 93(1), 85-96. touchstone applied science associates (1995). degrees of reading power and degrees of word meaning: an overview. brewster, ny: tasa. turner, c. & bolam, r. (1998). analyzing the role of the head of department in secondary schools in england and wales: towards a theoretical framework. school leadership and management, 18 (3), 373-388. literacy teachers' interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits 13 wilkinson, p. (2002). leading from the middle. ncsl leader, 3, 17-19. wise, c. & bush, t. (1999). from teacher to manager: the role of the academic middle manager in secondary schools. educational research, 41(2), 183-196. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 13 2005 article citation alger, g. (2005, june 23). literacy teachers’ interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits . current issues in education [on-line], 8(13). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number13/ author notes gary alger university of bridgeport carlson hall room 122, bridgeport , connecticut galger@bridgeport.edu the author is currently an assistant professor of educational leadership at the university of bridgeport. he completed thirty-one years of public school service, holding positions as an elementary teacher, building principal and central office administrator. his current research interests focus on the unique contributions of teacher leaders to improving schools and student achievement. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation alger, g. (2005). literacy teachers’ interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits. current issues in education, 8(13). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1601 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number13/index.html mailto:galger@bridgeport.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1601 microsoft word 1126_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 january 30, 2013 issn 1099-839x are we turning our backs on teacher preparation? lessons from france’s system of teacher training christina n. berchini michigan state university not surprisingly, in an increasingly neo-liberal context of international competition for educational prestige, conversations about teaching and teacher preparation have taken hold across the globe. further complicating these matters is that ideas about teaching, learning, and learning to teach cannot be understood or analyzed in a vacuum; that is, without first exploring the history, evolution, purposes of, and tensions within the system in which they live. in this way, the realities of social change and globalization ensure that debates about what it means to prepare teachers well—in any context—are complex and enduring. in this article, i illuminate some of those complexities specifically as they relate to a comparison of university-based systems of teacher preparation in france and the united states. the issue of what it means to prepare teachers well for an increasingly diverse and global society is a prominent focus of this discussion. keywords: teacher preparation; learning to teach; education reform; comparative education; globalization and teacher education the debate over teacher education, its purpose, and how it should be institutionalized and enacted—if at all—is not a new or unfamiliar one. everyone has a vested interest in how children should be educated, and in turn, the qualifications that determine the readiness and expertise of those standing at the head of the classroom. in this, the question of who’s teaching your children? has inspired myriad—and often contentious—conversations about teacher quality, student achievement, how well institutions of teacher education are preparing future teachers, and the measures that might reveal as much. as a result, the direction and impact of education reform extend well beyond the classroom and public schools to the teacher colleges, universities, and educators with the responsibilities of implementing pedagogical preparation. not surprisingly, in an increasingly neo-liberal context of international competition for educational prestige, conversations about teaching and teacher preparation have taken hold across the globe. further complicating these matters is that ideas about teaching, learning, and learning to teach cannot be understood or analyzed in a vacuum; in other words, understanding a nation’s process of teacher education is a remiss endeavor without first exploring the history, evolution, purposes of, and tensions within individual systems.1 in this way, the realities of social change and globalization ensure that debates about what it means to prepare teachers well—in any context—are complex and enduring. in the essay that follows, i discuss some of these complexities specifically as they relate to university-based teacher preparation in france and the united states. furthermore, i do not offer suggestions or advice for possible directions of teacher education reform. instead, the purpose in this article is to raise questions about the direction of teacher education reform in the u.s. and its implications for what it means to prepare teachers well for an increasingly diverse and global society. finally, while i use lessons from the reform of teacher preparation in france to illuminate issues as they are playing out in the u.s., i do not intend to limit the issues current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 and questions around reform to only these two domains; in this, readers are invited to apply the questions i raise to the education of teachers in their own national contexts. teacher preparation: framing the problem “the problem with education isn’t that teachers are not properly trained, the problem is education policy that doesn’t allow teachers to teach because they are busy adhering to the parameters of the education policy.”2 “[v]ery little good can come from treating teachers like part-time cashiers at an underperforming walmart outlet” (lyons, 2011, para. 6). these opening sentiments represent two camps least likely to inform education policy and reform in the united states. the first is a school teacher’s response to position statement on www.ed.gov outlining united states secretary of education arne duncan’s ideas for reforming schools of education. the entire response is substantial in length and adverse to the current direction of education reform. this is not surprising, as even a brief engagement with the views dominating educational policy reveals that reform is not always aligned with what teachers believe to be worthwhile, or necessary approaches to reforming education; instead, current educational policies do not allow teachers to teach, as is argued in the first statement. in the second comment, the author uses a metaphor to caution against likening teachers to retail cashiers, a typically minimum-wage position not requiring specialized expertise or an expansive knowledge base obtained through years of academic study and field experience. this comment was published in the national memo, an american daily online newsletter which might be thought of by more conservative camps as liberal, perhaps even heretical. the pro-teacher perspectives expressed in the above statements, because they do not easily and uncritically embrace the numbers, measurements, and quantification games so often espoused by reformers, tend to live on the margins of american educational policy. given the fringes and margins upon which these stakeholders and their perspectives exist, it is not surprising that the purposes and utility of the united states’ university-based teacher preparation —the system in which the majority of our nation’s teachers learn to teach—are called into question. as a result, “a competing agenda has been introduced to replace the traditional elements of professions—formal preparation, licensure, certification, and accreditation—with market mechanisms that encourage more open entry to teaching without expectations of training” (darling-hammond, 2010, p. 36). because a competing agenda is growing in momentum, in this article i contemplate issues and questions around the current movement to devalue university-based teacher education in the united states (e.g. kumashiro, 2010). i use the example of france and its recently dissolved system of teacher preparation to analyze the utility of teacher education in the united states. my prior research analyzing france’s process of teacher preparation provides an extreme example of reform: the near total dissolution of a university department established to train teachers for teaching in the context of increased diversity and social change. it may seem odd, i realize, to compare two presumably different contexts to analyze a system as deeply embedded in history, politics, and culture as a nation’s process of teacher preparation (see judge et al., 1994). nor has the u.s. yet to experience the eradication of their universitybased (i.e., “traditional”) system of university teacher education. why, then, might it be helpful to think about france in the context of u.s. teacher preparation? the american system of university teacher preparation has experienced the proliferation of—and increasing federal support for—alternative routes to teaching; as well, there are heightened responsibilities imposed by the u.s. department of education and national accreditation councils on schools of education. university-based programs are held to increasingly rigorous standards and benchmarks purported to “prove” whether their teacher candidates are schooled adequately in pedagogy, content knowledge, and assessment. these transformations are occurring in a context where funding for traditional programs of teacher preparation continues to decrease. for all that is unique to—and dissimilar about— france and the u.s., particularly in their educational contexts, the social changes which fuel/ed reforms of teacher education in both countries share similar characteristics. for example, the realities of mass education, post world war ii, spurred a need to employ more teachers in both contexts given the sheer amount of students occupying schools and classrooms. the democratization of education, which followed soon thereafter, brought about goals for increased access to educational and professional opportunities for an increasingly diverse student population, as well as critical questions around the utility of a uniform classical education and the traditional methods with which content was delivered. it is not surprising, then, that goals for attending to diversity, equity, and access entered teacher preparation discourse in both contexts, and continue to inform teacher education reform to the present day. while the u.s. has not yet experienced the total dissolution of university-based teacher preparation, it seems that current reforms—in the cropping up of alternative pathways to becoming a teacher in public schools, as well as alternatives to public education itself—indeed represent “a devaluing of teacher education” (kumashiro, 2010, p. 57). thus, we can use the example of france to better consider how education reform appears to push teacher education in the u.s. in a similar direction. are we turning our backs on teacher preparation? lessons from france’s system of teacher training 3 in what follows, i describe several reforms to university-based systems of teacher preparation in both the u.s. and france, and at times oscillate between the two for the purposes of closer comparison. i draw upon contextual details to describe some of the reasons for — and ways by which— the systems have been called to address goals for attending to diversity and equity. following this discussion, i pose questions inspired by the dissolution of france’s system of teacher preparation that consider whether and how efforts to reform education perpetuate the very problems they seek to improve. the issue of what it means to prepare teachers well for an increasingly diverse and global society is also the central question upon which i focus this discussion. teacher preparation in context: a comparison of two dis/similar nations the landscape of american public education is one of a racially, ethnically, linguistically and socioeconomically diverse student body. however, the disproportionate number of white, middleclass, female teachers, in relation to an increasingly diverse k-12 student population, is an issue well-documented in literature on public education. statistics on student demographics compiled by the national center for education statistics (1986, 1993, 2005) reveal that of the 39,753,172 total k-12 students enrolled in public schools in 1986, 16.1% were african american, and 9.9% were hispanic. in 1993, african americans made up 16.6% of the student population, while hispanics made up 12.7%. while these increases seem nominal, it is important to note that by 1993, the public school student population climbed to 43,476,268. by 2005, african american and hispanic students made up 17.2% and 19.8% of the public school population, which had climbed to a total of 49,113,474 students. furthermore, statistical analyses cited in banks et al. (2005) suggest that “by 2035, demographers project that students of color will constitute a majority of the student population in the united states”3 (p. 232). urban4 schools in particular are known for their diverse student populations and communities/cities in which they are situated. staffing urban schools with teachers prepared to teach diverse and historically underserved populations is a shared target of education reform and many schools of education. demographic data on the teaching force in the u.s. reveals stark homogeneity when compared to increasingly diverse student populations, and is another issue widely addressed in literature on american public education, particularly in the area of teacher preparation. a sample survey of 2,206 teachers published by nces (1986) revealed that 89.6% of survey participants were white, and 68.8% of them were female. available data reveal that by 2003-2004, of 2,795,000 public school teachers, caucasian teachers accounted for 83.3% of all elementary school teachers and 84.5% of all secondary teachers (nces). given the realities of a homogenous teaching force in the context of increasingly diverse schools, it should come as no surprise that teachers must learn to teach in ways that go beyond content-knowledge acquisition and knowledge transmission. at this juncture, i wish to reiterate that the degree to, and rate at which, u.s. schools are undergoing demographic change is not a characteristic exclusive to the american context of schooling. however, the extent to which racial statistics on u.s. schools are collected might be exclusive to the american context. france, for instance, continues to experience an influx of immigration, particularly with its north african muslim and arabic-speaking populations (gurfinkiel, 1997; keaton, 2006). and yet, for all that is changing racially, ethnically, and otherwise in this global society, statistics on racial demographics in france were not recorded, historically. as greenwalt (2009) explains, “until recently, collecting statistics on the racial demographics of france was illegal (and is still highly restricted)” (p. 512). despite the impasse to collecting statistics of racial demographic change in france, there is a plethora of sociological research which in/directly illustrates the need to address social change in schools (see judge, 2004; keaton, 2006; bell, 2005; greenwalt, 2009). such research, in my view, is as compelling—if not more so— than the carefully compiled numerical data so easily obtained in numerous american surveys. demographic change is manifest in france’s public schools by way of race, ethnicity, religion, and social class, all of which suggests a move away from french ideals for a homogenous national identity. in france, demographic change is in direct and constant conflict with secular french values and educational policies and purposes (see judge, 2004; keaton, 2006); as with the u.s., such conflicts are very often to the detriment of minority and immigrant students’ academic and professional futures. similarly to the united states, disadvantaged populations in france are often relegated to—and condensed in—underprivileged communities and schools. as judge (2004) explains, “the crude and cruel sociological fact [is] that immigrant communities are concentrated in deprived areas, where both the cycle of disadvantage and a widespread sense of grievance and frustration are reinforced” (p. 7-8). these enclaves are often located in france’s outer-cities, for which the american understanding of the term “suburb,” according to judge (2004), “is a dangerously misleading translation” (p. 7). however, whether we are addressing teacher preparation for france’s “urban periphery” (keaton, 2006) or america’s urban cities, the issues remain similar. in france, the educational policies in place to ameliorate under-performing public schools are instead known for their punitive practices and disenfranchisement of minority populations (keaton, 2006). these realities are reminiscent of what occurs in policies and practice in current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 many american urban (inner-city) schools, and provides a rich context for comparison. for all of their differences, the need to prepare teachers for the realities facing many public schools is a concept familiar to both french and american contexts. in my work in france, i observed approximately twenty prospective teachers defend their theses, among other formats used to assess how well teachers are prepared for placement in a french public school. now that universitybased teacher education in france is dissolved—and at the time of my study, without a replacement—my focus takes on new meaning. that is, rather than contemplating how prospective teachers are prepared for an increasingly diverse and global society, the question becomes “whether”: will aspiring teachers in france receive an education in pedagogy and content beyond a standardized state exam? with even a cursory glance at demographic data on schools and societies, the implications for education are clear: many countries are facing demographic and social change, and teachers are tasked with learning about—and understanding—the issues and circumstances facing the increasingly diverse students in their care. university-based teacher education in both french and american contexts has evolved toward preparing their teachers for the reality of demographic change. however, the efforts of traditional teacher preparation programs to ameliorate inequities in schooling are undermined by the very policies in place to ensure effective preparation (see kumashiro, 2010). in what follows, i outline this particular issue as it has played out in both french and american teacher reform. what does it mean to prepare teachers for service in the united states? given the rate of demographic and social change in the u.s., university-based teacher preparation programs have responded in several ways to the need to prepare prospective teachers for service in increasingly diverse and high needs schools. many programs have proactively infused multicultural materials into their teacher education curriculum as well as structured time for reflection; many schools of education are also partnered with urban and low-income public schools to provide preservice teachers with mentored field experiences. for example, quartz et al. (2003) discuss how the university of california at los angeles has partnered with highneeds communities as sites for novice teacher professional development. in many teacher education classrooms, instructors employ curriculum focused on developing cross-cultural competence in new teachers.5 because university teacher education programs are held accountable at the federal level for producing “highly qualified”6 teachers, a minimum grade-point average, passing test score, a content-specific teaching license, and the minimum of a bachelor’s degree are all required to become a teacher. additionally, teacher education programs in the u.s., to remain accredited, answer to organizations such as the national council for accreditation of teacher education (ncate) and the teacher education accreditation council (teac), which “require programs to provide documentation that prospective teachers are able to use knowledge of content and pedagogy in their teaching” (gitomer, 2007, p. 8). additionally, in recent history, a new entity, the council for the accreditation of educator preparation (caep), has emerged to: ensure that educator preparation providers (epps) prepare and graduate future teachers who know the content of the subject(s) they will teach, know how to teach that content effectively to students from diverse groups, and demonstrate their positive impact on p12 student learning in diverse school settings. (caep, 2010) ostensibly, one goal of education reform dictated by no child left behind (nclb) and accreditation councils is to ensure that teacher education programs are producing teachers capable of teaching and engaging diverse student populations and addressing inequities in education. however, it is worth noting that caep’s framework for standards for accreditation employ scant, superficial use of the term “diverse,” and virtually no attention to issues related to equity in learning to teach. they do, however, employ abundant use of the terms “assessment” and “data.” given caep’s close alignment with schools’ increasingly ubiquitous adoption of the common core standards (ncate, 2012), what it means to prepare teachers for “effective work in schools” (caep, 2010) has emphasized knowing what to teach versus knowing how to teach. accordingly, the term “pedagogy” is given scant attention on caep’s framework for standards, processes, and procedures. perhaps it might be argued that scant or ambiguous use of particular terms in a framework for educational standards implies that programs are free to approach teacher preparation on their own terms; however, the imposition of a framework for standards and accreditation emphasizing data driven decisions “about candidates and programs” (caep) inherently espouses a value-added approach to teacher education, where numbers speak louder than pedagogy. in all of this, sanctioned ideas about preparing teachers for an increasingly diverse and global society appear antithetical to realizing that goal. for example, no child left behind (nclb) legislation, in conjunction with national competitions such as race to the top, does little to support teachers’ practice in ways that encourage developing intercultural knowledge and/or equitable access to curriculum (winerip, 2011). take, for another example, the standards for rating the nation’s education schools, as defined by the national council on teaching quality (ncqt). the ncqt provides guidelines for are we turning our backs on teacher preparation? lessons from france’s system of teacher training 5 schools of education to follow in allowing prospective teachers entry into the program and profession. here again, it is worth noting that the word “test” is used seventeen times within the guidelines; “evaluation” is used in nine instances; the word “outcome” is used three times, and such words as “diversity,” “culture,” “equity,” and “engage” (or similar words) do not appear at all. the word choice in a document outlining standards for rating teacher education schools in the united states begs questions about that which is valued in teacher preparation/learning and that which is not. thus, the emphasis of education reform in the u.s. remains on costly content-and fact-based licensure exams, students’ test scores as markers of teachers’ merit and other value-added measures of “quality,” timeconsuming paper-pushing in the name of teacher “quality,” and the diminution of carefully structured field experiences prior to full-time teaching. teacher preparation programs are also implicated in and by these value-added models of assessing “quality,” as reformers are currently working on ways by which to use student test scores to evaluate preservice teachers, as well as the university-based education programs responsible for preparing the preservice teachers of these students (sawchuk, 2011). so what does it mean to prepare teachers for service in today’s schools? complicating the reliance on numerical data to determine one’s readiness/worth/“quality” as a teacher in the u.s., as well as the value of any single teacher preparation program, is the cultural disconnect from, or racial and cultural “mismatch” (fry & mckinney, 1997) between the traditionally white, middle-class teaching force and diverse student populations in its care (see banks et al., 2005; sleeter, 2007). sleeter’s (2007) work in preparing teachers for diversity and underserved schools and communities expounds upon this concern: “[american] white preservice teachers lack of cross-cultural knowledge is a direct result of the racial isolation in which most white people grow up and live” (p. 172). according to sleeter, these prospective educators “bring to teacher education very little cross-cultural knowledge and experience” (p. 172). many university-based teacher education programs in the u.s. attempt to address these issues with relevant coursework, strategies, mentoring, and structured opportunities for reflection, in varying ways. however, it is not a simple task to disrupt or quantify a teacher’s dispositions toward teaching, learning, and their students; nor can a university-based curriculum guarantee purposeful application to the field. not only, then, are prospective teachers said to bring a lack of cross-cultural knowledge and experience to teacher education, but, according to the dominant political discourse on matters in relationship to teacher preparation, novice teachers are also said to leave many teacher education programs lacking the necessary knowledge and experience required to meet the realities of today’s classrooms (medina, 2009; sleeter, 2007). current secretary of education arne duncan has been particularly critical of university teacher preparation in this regard, arguing that “[b]y almost any standard, many if not most of the nation’s 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom,” (medina, 2009). while the term “mediocre” is not often explicated in any meaningful way by those whom espouse it, it is reasonable to assume that it is used to make arbitrary claims about dismally low standardized test scores, and thus teaching and learning, in the united states and elsewhere. duncan and others have thus openly promoted fast-track alternative to becoming a teacher. alternatives to learning to teach: “what” versus “how” examples of federally-supported alternative routes to teaching include the large and growing teach for america organization, as well as the more regional teaching fellows program, in new york city; teach for america is perhaps the united states’ largest example of an organization offering fast-tracks to teaching, and is not aligned with most traditional models of university-based teacher preparation. however, both of these organizations place new teachers in high-needs schools after a comparably brief interaction with coursework and minimal classroom experience prior to gaining “teacher” status (in some cases, preparation is not quite the length of a single summer). these programs, and others like them, appear to revolve around securing “high quality” or “highlytalented” candidates to “close the achievement gap” (this is language peppered throughout their missions and testimonials). closing the achievement gap,7 whatever its interpretation, is perhaps a noble goal; here again, though, the abbreviated approach to teacher preparation, as evidenced in alternative programs, might suggest that learning what to teach takes precedence over learning how to teach. this assumption is supported by the growing emphasis on teaching to the test, test scores as a measure of teacher quality, and teacher-proof and scripted curricula, to give just a few examples. it seems, then, that teachers’ practice, students’ lives and communities, and the importance of understanding the sociopolitical issues and structures in which schools and teachers are embedded and constrained are becoming null in the discourse of learning to teach. furthermore, the proliferation of federally funded alternative teacher education programs has inspired questions of whether or not a university degree in teaching is becoming moot.8 is a university degree in teaching any longer necessary? the federally sanctioned rise of alternative routes to becoming a teacher has done much to undermine current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 university-based teacher preparation in the u.s. cries of traditionalism and mediocrity, combined with federal cuts to colleges and departments of education, all suggest a move to dissolve the value of university-based teacher education and thus a degree in teaching. this is an important reality to consider when, according to extant research, whether alternative tracks to becoming a teacher are more effective than traditional teacher education remains inconclusive.9 for all that is incontrovertible in issues of education—e.g., the need for all students to receive a “quality” education—there are several questions which consistently beg our attention, particularly in the area of teacher preparation, and to which there are not clear or unanimous answers: what does it mean to prepare teachers well for an increasingly diverse and global society? is a university degree in teaching any longer a justifiable route to becoming a teacher? if the answer to the latter question is “no,” then what does it mean to learn to teach? as i have argued thus far, policies dictated by nclb legislation and teacher education accreditation councils, coupled with federally supported alternative routes to becoming a teacher have severely undermined university-based teacher preparation in the united states. as kumashiro (2010) points out, “such support for…alternative routes [to teacher preparation] signals not merely an increase in competition for teacher preparation programs but, more significant, a devaluing of teacher education altogether, which is often symbolized by the more ‘traditional’ routes” (p. 56). again, given the push to devalue university-based teacher education, it seems that the importance of learning how to teach has taken a backseat to learning what to teach. this is the very idea which appears to have informed recent education reform in france. in what follows, i use the story of france’s dissolved system of teacher preparation to raise questions around the implications for teacher education in the united states and any context in which university-based teacher preparation and schools of education are losing valuable support. are we turning our backs on teacher preparation? lessons from france in the university and the teachers, a series of oxford studies in comparative education, judge et al. (1994) cite the main commonality in the purposes of schooling characteristic to both america and france as “educating the citizen” (p. 98). in these countries, “education and freedom, education and democracy” (p. 98) are synonymous goals. as i mention above, goals for attending to diversity, equity, and access entered the discourse surrounding teacher preparation in both contexts, and continue to inform teacher education reform to the present day. as with the united states, the realities of a culturally and ethnically changing france inspire questions about what it means to prepare teachers well for the students who are to eventually inhabit their classrooms. an increasingly diverse population, combined with enduring debates around a uniform french identity, secularism, and goals for social solidarity call into question historical commitments to identity preservation and education for a civic and secular body. teacher-preparation in france, from 1991 through 2010, was carried out in teacher-trainer institutes across the nation known as l’instituts universitaires de formation des maîtres [iufm].10 the creation of the iufm was a response social and educational change. the new teacher-training curriculum was integrated, requiring prospective teachers to gain “knowledge of and about the discipline or disciplines to be taught, the management of learning (pedagogics and didactics), and familiarity with the educational system” (judge et al., 1994, p. 88). this symbolizes a tremendous shift in ideas about learning to teach as, historically, attention to teachers’ practice was reserved for institutions in which only primary and lowersecondary teachers were trained. until the iufm, uppersecondary teachers were not required to undergo formal pedagogical training, as a solid foundation in contentknowledge was all that was required to teach at the uppersecondary level. the iufm consisted of a two-year teachertraining program, with a competitive exam after the first year. all candidates needed a bachelor’s degree or equivalent to qualify for entry. aspiring teachers who wished to gain admission into the first year of the iufm furnished an application (or more accurately, a dossier), took an entry test, or sat for an interview, depending on the particular institute.11 there were seven separate exams for entry into the second year of training with the iufm, all of which tested for a combination of content knowledge and “professional competence and aptitude” (judge et al., 1994, p. 88). the second and final year of teacher-training at the iufm is compulsory for all students. teacher-trainees enjoyed a year of paid training in a local institution under the supervision of teacher-trainers and professors within the institute, and less frequently, inspectors affiliated with the ministry of education.12 a variety of oral and written assessments, vetted by an iufm panel, were used to determine one’s teaching ability and content knowledge acquisition. students must also provide evidence of a successful in-service experience in order to complete program requirements. upon program completion—two years of course work, the second year of which students also engage in field work in area schools—successful students gain appointment into a primary or secondary school (depending on their field of study), as determined by the ministry. as with many teaching programs in the united states, teacher-training at the iufm incorporated a wide range of ongoing assessments as a direct response to the realities of a changing society and classroom challenges (foster, 2008). teacher training in france soon came to are we turning our backs on teacher preparation? lessons from france’s system of teacher training 7 represent the idea that pedagogical skill and assessing students’ needs are as essential to learning to teach as a solid foundation in content knowledge. in this, the creation of the iufm is symbolic of a radical era leading to a breakdown of historical beliefs and assumptions about what it means, in france, to prepare teachers well for a changing society. the recent reforms to teacher-training in france are many, and do little to preserve the integrity of the iufm’s mission to merge content-knowledge and teachers’ practice into a meaningful teacher-training curriculum. as of the fall of 2010, prospective teachers are only required to sit for an exam in order to become full-time teachers. teacher-training courses incorporating pedagogical theory and didactics are no longer a substantial part of the curriculum, if these courses exist at all. end-of-training oral and written exams and portfolios, once administered to all students and assessed by iufm faculty and directors, are also now a part of france’s teacher-training history. the iufm’s role in classroom observations, where students previously enjoyed consistent, on-site feedback by teacher-trainers and professors with the iufm, has all but diminished; the majority of this responsibility is now left to the ministry of education and corresponding system of inspection. official, on-site mentoring by experienced teachers is no longer a mandated—or sufficiently compensated— component of france’s teacher-training structure. novice teachers are now given the responsibilities of a full teaching load without the mentoring, guidance, coursework, and assessments of teacher practice that existed within the former structure of the iufm.13 it is far too simplistic, even incorrect, to suggest that the circumstances surrounding educational change in both contexts are identical. instead, for all that is similar in educational matters between france and the u.s., there are extreme differences to note: france’s public schools, as a part of a centralized system of education, are institutions in which, to this day, the culture générale is a highly guarded construct, staunchly resistant to change. this idea is supported in persisting debates around a national identity (erlanger, 2009). highly guarded ideas about a culture générale are also evident in recent legislation banning muslim headscarves in public places (including schools), thereby maintain a society of secularism in the face of increased immigration and religious diversity (judge, 2004). however, so as to better respond to the realities of social change, the iufm was designed to foreground teachers’ practice and employ a curriculum in which a focus on content knowledge and test-preparation, while important, was no longer paramount to learning to teach. education reformers in france, though, have dissolved the very system established to “[shift] the emphasis of teacher training away from the preparation for a competitive exam towards the needs of pupils” (foster, 2000, p. 6). similarly, the combination of increasingly punitive value-added measures of teaching and learning for public schools and schools of education, incentivized “fast-tracks” to becoming a teacher, and cuts in funding for university-based teacher education implies a decreased value assigned to pedagogy and teachers’ practice in the u.s. here again, given these shifts—in both contexts—and what they mean for teacher preparation, the importance of learning how to teach appears to have taken a backseat to learning what to teach. what, then, does it mean to prepare teachers well for an increasingly diverse and global society? implications/conclusions in all of this, it is important to consider whether and how efforts to reform education perpetuate the very problems they seek to improve. when we move away from preparing teachers for the realities of social change in ways that rely on value-added measures, to what extent are we moving away from our original, noble goals of democratic education, thereby maintaining an unacceptable status quo? as kumashiro (2010) points out in relationship to teacher preparation in the u.s., “preservice teacher education needs to be strengthened, not discarded—but this is not the direction that current reforms are headed” (p. 57). to extend this idea, what are we suggesting to our teachers, students, and other stakeholders in education when we discard a system in which prospective teachers are encouraged to engage issues of diversity, equity, and learning in meaningful and sustainable ways? what are we suggesting when we replace comprehensive, university-based programs and schools of education with short-cut training models? in 2010, france dissolved its system of teacher-training without developing a replacement; what value are we assigning to the importance of preparing teachers well for an increasingly diverse and global society when we underfund or dissolve a system without much critical thought about how to improve or replace it? if we choose not to improve or replace a system of teacher education, to whom will prospective teachers turn for learning? finally, what messages are we sending to the global community—particularly finland and singapore, two nations in which teachers are revered and their preparation valued and to which the u. s. is often erroneously compared—when we turn our backs on meaningful teacher preparation? recall that my original intent is not to discuss direct ramifications —or suggested directions—of teacher education reform. the issues of education reform that i overview above—especially as they play out in france— are recent and still developing. the point is to raise questions about the value we assign to pedagogy and teacher learning when we prize incentivized short-cuts over actual teacher preparation, or when we support the extreme move to altogether dissolve the only system in place to prepare teachers. as lyons (2011) reminds us, current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 “very little good can come from treating teachers like part-time cashiers at an underperforming walmart outlet” (para. 6). finally, in all of these transformations to education, as they occur in the united states and abroad, it is interesting to ponder the stories that are yet to be told about teaching and education reform. as judge et al. (2009) point out, to understand teacher education, above all in a cross-national framework, is to understand much more than teacher education. how teachers are educated, and where and by whom, reflect beliefs about what teachers are for and why society employs them. any examination of such beliefs must unpack underlying theories of the purposes of an education provided by the state. (p. 9) in a context where education reform is—for better or for worse—an enduring, cross-national goal, an analysis of teacher education reform provides rich and important opportunities for comparison and reflection, as well as opportunities to glean deeper insights into our assumptions and beliefs about what it means to educate teachers and why. in closing, for as long as the united states’ teaching force remains racially and culturally mismatched from schools’ diverse student populations, the issues and questions presented in this essay remain factual, poignant, and inevitable: teachers are indeed learning to teach in an increasingly diverse and global society. to short-change this important work by incongruently supporting and rewarding alternative approaches to teacher education while loudly and arbitrarily devaluing, defunding, and disenfranchising others; by attempting to quantify every conceivable aspect of teaching, learning, and learning to teach by emphasizing only numeric, data-driven decisions, is to perhaps perpetuate—not ameliorate—the very problems in education that all stakeholders seek to improve. that is, we might consider how, when numbers speak louder than pedagogy, we move away from preparing teachers for the realities of social change. we instead align educators’ work not with how well they teach, but with how adept they become at adhering to the parameters of the education policy. references banks, j., cochran-smith, m., moll, l., richert, a., zeichner, k., lepage, p., darling-hammond, l., & duffy, h. 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(1995). common core of data survey: enrollment in public elementary and secondary schools, by race or ethnicity and state: fall 1986 and fall 1993. retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d95/dtab044. asp u.s. department of education, national center for education statistics. (1995). common core of data surveys: enrollment in public elementary and secondary schools, by level and state: fall 1980 to fall 1994. digest of education statistics. retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d95/dtab039. asp u.s. department of education, national center for education statistics. (2007). common core of data (ccd), state nonfiscal survey of public elementary/secondary education, 1995-06. retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt0 7_040.asp u.s. department of education, national center for education statistics. (2007). common core of data (ccd), state nonfiscal survey of public elementary/secondary education, 1990-91 through 2005-06, and projections of education statistics to 2016. retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt0 7_033.asp u.s. department of education, national center for education statistics. (nd). schools and staffing survey (sass): number and percentage distribution of full-time teachers, by school level, school type, and selected characteristics: school years 1993–94, 1999–2000, and 2003–04. retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2007/section4/ta ble.asp?tableid=721 winerip, m. (2011, november 6). in tennessee, following the rules for evaluations off a cliff. the new york times. retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/education/t ennessees-rules-on-teacher-evaluations-bringfrustration.html?pagewanted=all current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 notes 1 see judge et al. (1994) for an in depth comparison of university and school systems in france, the united states, and england. 2 a stakeholder responds to united states secretary of state arne duncan’s ideas for reforming schools of education. the blogpost can be accessed in full at (http://www.ed.gov/blog/2011/09/duncan-introduces-plan-to-reform-and-improveteacher-prep/) 3 while the statistics focus on african american and hispanic students, the goal of this paper is not intended to ignore many other kinds of diversity comprising american public schools, including cognitive, linguistic, and socioeconomic factors. 4 i realize that this term, “urban,” is associated with very different connotations across international contexts. in the u.s., for example, the term “urban” is associated with racial and socioeconomic diversity. schools in urban centers are typically under-resourced and experience great difficulty in attracting and maintaining a qualified teaching force (oakes et al., 2002). however, the term “urban” in france is not necessarily associated with negative connotations to the same extent as its “outercities,” and is a distinction i discuss below. 5 however, the ways by which individual programs incorporate these elements–and the extent to which they are said to be thoughtful and effective–vary, and is a discussion far exceeding the scope of this piece. 6 this article is not a perspective on “teacher quality,” per se; it is, however, virtually impossible to talk about current reform without using this term, as the discourse surrounding teacher education reform (and education reform in general) very much espouses terminology of “teacher quality” and “quality teaching.” 7 this term, in the united states, is often used in discussions of how minoritized students are measuring up to their white, middleclass peers. i do not purport that this is not a problematic term, nor do i wish to maintain that a critical analysis of this term –particularly of the word “achievement”-is unwarranted. however, it is common, familiar language in the field of education, and a critical analysis of why this term is so deeply problematic exceeds the scope of my discussion. 8 the “room for debate” daily new york times column provides a thoughtful discussion on this very topic and can be accessed here: http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/education-degrees-and-teachers-pay/ 9 this discussion is focused primarily on alternative routes to teacher education, and does not account for other ways by which public education has been undermined by neo-liberal efforts, such as with the proliferation of charter schools, school vouchers, “school choice” programs, and the intense demonizing of public schools and subgroups of students who fail to meet academic benchmarks. a larger discussion of these issues far exceeds the scope of this article. 10 university institutes of the formation of teachers 11 obtained from an undated, translated brochure outlining the requirements for entry into the iufm. 12 the ministry of education represents the centralized system in which educational matters are vetted and controlled in france, and is another important characteristic distinguishing the french system of education from the american system. in addition to determining one’s placement in a school, judge et al point out that “it is the ministry which establishes the institutions and arrangements for the training of teachers…and which, officially through parisian texts and less formally through control by inspectors, determines the nature and content of all forms of teacher education” (judge et al., p. 34). 13 this information is based on a funded research project, ‘mediocrity’ and crises in education: a comparative analysis in the context of reform, wherein i collected data on teacher preparation in the context of france’s education reform. are we turning our backs on teacher preparation? lessons from france’s system of teacher training 11 article citation berchini, c. n. (2013). are we turning our backs on teacher preparation? lessons from france’s system of teacher training. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1126 author notes christina n. berchini michigan state university 620 farm lane 313 erickson hall east lansing, mi 48824 berchini@msu.edu christina berchini is a doctoral candidate in michigan state university’s curriculum, instruction, and teacher education program. her research interests include investigating teacher identity development in secondary english classrooms; she has also conducting international research. the issues presented in this article emerged from a funded study in which she explored france’s process of teacher-training in the context of reform. she is indebted to dr. kyle greenwalt for his intellectual contributions to the design and execution of the study, as well as to the college of education at michigan state university for the generous funding opportunity which made this investigation possible. manuscript received: 11/16/2012 revisions received: 1/13/2013 accepted: 1/20/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 12 volume 16, number 1 january 30, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 8, number 10 april, 2005 issn 1099-839x teaching students with learning disabilities: constructivism or behaviorism? marcee m. steele university of north carolina wilmington there is much controversy concerning the use of constructivist and behaviorist principles for teaching children with learning disabilities. although many educators support the use of one paradigm exclusively, the author recommends combining ideas from both perspectives for the most effective instruction. this article includes a brief discussion of learning disabilities, a summary of key constructivist and behaviorist principles and their impact on students with learning disabilities, and a list of recommendations for practice in the classroom. there is a major debate in the field of education and in particular special education concerning two different theories and related approaches to teaching: constructivism and behaviorism. evidence of this controversy can be seen in university settings, public schools, and journal articles. it is typical in the education field to challenge a position, dismiss it, and then embrace a new trend as if there were no valid ideas represented in the original position. frequently effective strategies incorporate ideas from different theoretical perspectives; therefore, the author recommends taking some useful ideas from each theory for practice in the classroom. furthermore, for students with learning disabilities (ld) and other special needs, it is more effective to make curricular and instructional decisions based on the individual child, the task, and the setting than to use strategies representing one theory exclusively. in fact integrating components from both approaches could help special and general education teachers work more effectively as a team to teach children with learning disabilities. this article highlights the definition and characteristics of learning disabilities, briefly reviews constructivist and behaviorist principles, and discusses the impact on students with learning disabilities. the author recommends some ideas for practice in the inclusion classroom, where teachers currently face the challenge of teaching students with ld. learning disabilities federal law defines specific learning disabilities as psychological processing disorders that result in deficits in at least one of the academic skills (u.s. office of education, 1977). a child with this label does not have mental retardation, behavior disorders or other major disabilities. the child with ld has difficulty with processing skills such as memory, visual perception, auditory perception, or thinking; and as a result has trouble achieving in at least one subject such as reading, math, or writing (lerner, 2003). some of the typical characteristics associated with learning disabilities include problems in reading, mathematics, writing, and oral language; deficits in interpreting what is seen or heard; difficulty with study skills, self-control, self-esteem, memory, and attention (mercer, 1997). constructivist theory and practice instruction based on constructivist theory is currently supported for general education classes by university faculty and many educational organizations (brooks & brooks, 1999). one of the key ideas associated current issues in education vol. 8 no. 10 with constructivist theory is that learning should be meaningful and related to real life situations (grobecker, 1999). for example, instead of repeatedly having children work word problems to learn how to make change for a dollar, constructivist theory suggests it is better to give children real money to use at a classroom or school store for practice. in social studies, students could role play lawyers, judge, and jury for a simulated court case or conduct an election for classroom leaders instead of memorizing the related procedures and policies. children with learning disabilities will benefit from this approach because of their difficulty in generalizing from the classroom to other settings. with the realistic examples built in to the instruction, the students have specific practice with generalization. teachers following a constructivist perspective base their instruction on what the students already know as a foundation (duhaney & duhaney, 2000). therefore, to introduce new concepts, teachers need to discuss first some related ideas that are already familiar to the students. this practice helps students with ld because of their low self-esteem and repeated failure experiences. if they have the chance to start with something familiar, new learning does not seem so overwhelming and frustrating to them. ellis recommends techniques such as mapping and brainstorming (1997). for example teachers could introduce a science lesson on tides and ask student to brainstorm all the facts they already know; they could have students make a map, web, or other visual to include ideas from the class. later, the students can research further information and make any necessary revisions. in a primary level economics lesson, teachers could model construction of a flow chart of producers and consumers to show how economics works. another principle underlying the constructivist approach is a focus on key ideas and the relationships of these ideas within the subject areas (grobecker, 1999) and across subject areas (ellis, 1997). applying this principle, teachers stress connections of important concepts that are the major ideas for the discipline rather than isolated bits of knowledge. in mathematics, for example, teachers might emphasize fractions and their relationship to decimals, percents, and proportions. in social studies, themes such as conflict and diversity might be used to teach units on warfare, exploration, and government at many different grade levels. in science, cause and effect might provide the underlying theme for many topics. ellis suggests that for students with ld, teachers need to prioritize and to teach the most important facts related to key ideas so students are not overwhelmed with memorizing since many students with ld have significant memory deficits. geometric theorems and postulates about parallel lines could be broken down and taught one or two at a time to be sure they are clear and retained for later use. in addition teachers could focus on strategies and patterns that are useful for many content subjects such as the use of graphic organizers and selfmonitoring. when students learn to keep track of their own progress, errors, and accomplishments, they will gain feelings of confidence and success. active learning is an important facet of a constructivist approach to instruction. when students are actively involved in the lesson, they learn and retain the information (duhaney & duhaney, 2000; harris & graham, 1996). many of the discovery lessons in social studies, inquiry approaches in science, and whole language strategies in language arts incorporate a high level of student involvement. chemistry and physics experiments are useful for motivating students with ld. for example, experiments with plants, color, batteries, and other science concepts, even in the elementary classroom, can provide high interest for science topics and ideas. social studies projects involving maps and posters, such as planning trips and routes, also provide motivation for students. in the language arts areas, the use of literature related to themes being studied keeps students focused on topics of interest. fiction books on current issues such as euthanasia, stem cell research, or other controversial topics can be used to integrate language arts, science, and social studies lessons. teaching students to summarize, paraphrase, predict, and use visual images, which all involve active learning, helps students with ld understand and remember. role play, art, and group projects are also useful for clarifying and reinforcing instruction (ellis, 1997). such strategies are useful in motivating students with ld, who tend to me more passive learners because of their history of failure (lerner, 2003). high level thinking skills, such as problem solving and analysis, are often thought to be too abstract and difficult for students with learning problems, even though they are an important part of a constructivist curriculum. however, with some additional guidance and preparation, it is possible and in fact beneficial to emphasize these skills with such students (ellis, 1997; grobecker, 1999). teachers can guide students with ld to engage in complex writing process assignments, research projects, and other test-taking and study activities. behaviorist theory and practice the application of behaviorist theory to the classroom has generally been referred to as explicit or direct instruction. although these approaches have been criticized for use in the general education teaching students with learning disabilities: constructivism or behaviorism? 3 setting, they have shown promising research results, particularly for children with learning problems (mercer, 1997). therefore, it is worth considering the positive aspects of the behaviorally oriented approaches so that they can be combined with some of the ideas that are more popular in the general education setting. one strategy associated with structured approaches to teaching involves breaking down the tasks into small, manageable segments for teaching (grobecker, 1999). before conducting a science lesson on sound, the teacher could simplify a complex science task by introducing and teaching only one step of the scientific method, for example statement of the problem, so that the procedures and purposes are clear prior to going over all of the steps involved. this is particularly useful for students with ld as they become easily frustrated and overwhelmed when material appears too complex initially and they often give up before even starting a task (lerner, 2003). modeling is another important component of explicit instructional techniques (olson & platt, 2000). in the writing process, for example, it is important for a teacher to explain and demonstrate each stage. it is generally not sufficient to name and give some examples of pre-writing strategies or proofreading; the teacher might actually demonstrate for the whole class and perhaps individually exactly how each step is accomplished. when writing a paper, for example, on “the most significant event in your life,” the teacher could guide the students in brainstorming ideas and making a graphic organizer of topics. for students with learning disabilities, modeling is critical because of their feelings of being overwhelmed. in addition, the model provides the extra guidance that is needed for these students. in most explicit instruction, there is a great deal of practice and review of new learning until mastery occurs (grobecker, 1999). whether it is multiplication facts, geography terms involving landforms, or vocabulary related to a biology lesson on parts of the brain; direct instructional lessons provide extensive drill and practice time (olson and platt, 2000). the students with ld benefit from such over learning because of their memory problems and difficulty processing information. explicit teaching also involves a great deal of structure and systematic planning (olson & platt, 2000). because of the processing, attention, and memory problems of many students with learning disabilities, this emphasis on teacher directed and controlled lessons is beneficial (lerner, 2003). students tend to achieve when they know what to expect; in other words lessons are predictable. they are then able to focus attention on the new material being taught rather than the unique and perhaps confusing features of a lesson. another example of a direct instruction strategy appropriate for students with ld is the use of fast paced lessons with monitoring and feedback. these students can learn to progress if the lesson includes a chance for monitoring by teacher and students, provisions of feedback, and some type of reinforcement. these elements of the lesson have been shown to be effective with children especially those with disabilities. for example during a literature lesson, students might be asked to write an essay analyzing the themes of a story. rather than completing the entire assignment, students benefit from the teacher’s feedback at each step. first they might check to see if the theme they selected is relevant. then they might describe examples of the theme and be sure they are related events. all of the major content of their essays, in fact, could be checked and revised before even working on a draft. this procedure builds confidence and develops strategies to ensure skill development and a higher quality finished product. conclusion students with learning disabilities are challenging to teach successfully in the inclusion setting because of the processing and academic deficits. however, if teachers are familiar with patterns of strengths and weaknesses and aware of several principles for good practice, most students with ld have a good chance for success. instructional decisions should be made based on the child’s learning characteristics, the task, and the content rather than teaching from a pre-determined philosophy. the best teaching will often integrate ideas from constructivist and behaviorist principles. a few examples of relevant recommendations discussed in this paper are in the list that follows this narrative. although it is often easier to teach with one method overall, instruction is most effective if special education and general education teachers are familiar with several options and collaborate to make decisions for each lesson. in addition, these ideas are beneficial for several subjects, grade levels, and students with and without disabilities. they are generally easy to implement without changing an entire lesson. summary of key ideas for teaching students with ld in the general education classroom ideas based on constructivist theory  relate lessons to real life situations to make the ideas more meaningful  start lessons with information and examples that are familiar to the students (from their own experiences) current issues in education vol. 8 no. 10  focus on a few key ideas in each lesson that underlie several topics and subject areas  design activities in which students are actively involved in the lesson  integrate high level thinking skills, and provide clear explanations and guidance to clarify ideas based on behavioral theory  break down tasks into small segments  model, demonstrate, and explain each step in a procedure or new task  include as much extra practice and review as needed for mastery to occur  incorporate structure and predictable routine into lessons  use monitoring and feedback as lesson progresses rather than waiting until conclusion references brooks, j. g., & brooks, m. g. (1999). in search of understanding: the case for constructivist classrooms. alexandria, va: association for supervision and curriculum development. duhaney, d. c., & duhaney, l. m. g. (2000). assistive technology: meeting the needs of learners with disabilities. international journal of instructional media, 27, 393-401. ellis, e. s. (1997). watering up the curriculum for adolescents with learning disabilities: goals of the knowledge dimension. remedial and special education, 18, 326-346. grobecker, b. (1999). mathematics reform and learning disabilities. learning disability quarterly, 22, 43-58. harris, k. r., & graham, s. (1996). constructivism and students with special needs: issues in the classroom. learning disabilities research and practice, 11, 134-137. lerner, j. (2003). learning disabilities: theories, diagnosis, and teaching practices. boston: houghton mifflin company. mercer, c. d. (1997). students with learning disabilities. upper saddle river, nj: merrill/prentice hall. mercer, c. d., jordan, l., & miller, s. p. (1996). constructivist math instruction for diverse learners. learning disabilities research and practice, 11, 147-156. olson, j. l., & platt, j. m. (2000). teaching children and adolescents with special needs (3 rd ed.). upper saddle river, nj: merrill/prentice hall. u.s. office of education. (1977). assistance to states for education of handicapped children: procedures for evaluating specific learning disabilities. (federal register, 42:65082 65085). teaching students with learning disabilities: constructivism or behaviorism? 5 2005 article citation steele, m.m. (2005, april 30). teaching students with learning disabilities: constructivism or behaviorism? current issues in education [on-line], 8(10). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number10/ author notes marcee m. steele university of north carolina wilmington marcee m. steele, phd, university of south florida, is a professor of special education at the university of north carolina wilmington. she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in learning disabilities, assessment procedures, exceptional students, and current issues in special education. she has also taught individuals with learning disabilities from pre-school to graduate school level in public and private settings for over 32 years. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 21, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation steele, m. m. (2005). teaching students with learning disabilities: constructivism or behaviorism? current issues in education, 8(10). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1607 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number10/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1607 teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 1 volume 21, issue 1 april 29, 2020 issn 1099-839x teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development audra k. parker, ph.d. george mason university lori rakes, ph.d. florida southern college abstract: teacher candidates consistently indicate field experiences are the most impactful aspect of their preparation for teaching. in this study we explored elementary teacher candidates’ perceptions of elementary k-6 grade level organization (departmentalized or self-contained) during their teacher preparation field experiences at two universities in the southeastern region of the united states. findings suggest teacher candidates vary in terms of their attitudes towards grade level organizational structures and how their preparation in these contexts impacted their professional development. because field experiences occur at critical developmental junctures for teacher candidates, teacher educators must understand the impact of grade level organizational structures on teacher candidates’ professional development so as to appropriately scaffold and guide these experiences. keywords: departmentalization, elementary, teacher preparation citation: parker, a. k., & rakes, l. (2020). teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development. current issues in education, 21(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1846 accepted: 2/5/2020 teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development learning to teach elementary-aged students is an incredibly complex endeavor— particularly in the current educational landscape. across the past two decades, elementary classrooms have increasingly become pressure-filled workspaces due to an overreliance on accountability mechanisms such as standardized testing, data monitoring, increasing workload, http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1846 teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 2 and stagnant salaries (bridges & serle, 2011; wei, pecheone, & wilczak, 2015). because of these factors, the increase in elementary teachers’ workloads has reached unprecedented levels in recent years (strohl, schmertzing, schmertzing, & hsiao, 2014). one way in which elementary principals attempt to ameliorate the pressures teachers face in elementary classrooms is through departmentalization. departmentalization, also known as teaming, platooning, or specializing, is broadly defined as a grade-level team configuration in which individual teachers take responsibility for specific content areas for multiple classes of students (gewertz, 2014). juxtaposed against this structure is the more historically typical selfcontained elementary grade level configuration. the term self-contained is used in this study to describe general education classrooms in which a single teacher is responsible for planning and teaching all content areas for one group of students. literature on the elementary grade level organizational structures is limited and more frequently discusses scholars and practitioners perspectives or opinion. however, recent empirical research conducted by researchers in economics suggests increasing interest in the topic of elementary organizational structures (fryer, 2018; hill & jones, 2018). because the use of departmentalization is on the rise, particularly in primary grades, it is critical to understand teacher candidates’ preparation for and perceptions of this organizational structure as they transition into the profession (gewertz, 2014). we assert it is likely that many elementary teacher candidates enter their teacher preparation coursework envisioning a future career as the sole teacher leading a group of young children across an academic year. yet given current trends (gewertz, 2014), it stands to reason elementary teacher candidates will find themselves placed in a classroom that uses some variation of departmentalized instruction at some point in their preparation program. similarly, we suggest that many teacher preparation programs continue to prepare teacher candidates for scenarios that are increasingly unlikely and/or are not facilitating discussions with teacher candidates to make sense of departmentalized settings. ultimately, there is little, if any, rigorous empirical research to suggest how departmentalized and self-contained classroom experiences impact teacher candidates’ professional beliefs. given this changing context, the role of clinical experiences becomes critically important in the preparation of teachers for 21st century classrooms (aacte, 2018). clinical experiences afford authentic opportunities for teacher candidates to learn how to teach in real world situations (aacte, 2010, zeichner, 2014), and they often represent teacher candidates’ initial experiences with varying grade level organizational structures such as departmentalization or self-contained structures. our purpose here is to understand teacher candidates’ perceptions of elementary schools’ grade level structures (departmentalized and self-contained) and how learning to teach in various structures impacts their growth as future teachers. two overarching questions guide our work: 1) what experiences do teacher candidates have to prepare them for teaching in the various grade level organizational structures? 2) what are teacher candidates’ perception of various elementary grade level organizational structures, and how do these structures impact their future teaching experiences? in the sections that follow, we explore the literature as it relates to elementary organization structures, broadly speaking, as well as the nature of teacher candidates’ percept ions of field experiences. then we share findings from our survey of teacher candidates in two elementary preparation programs. we conclude with implications for elementary teacher educators and for the field of elementary education. teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 3 organizational structures in elementary classrooms the organizational structure best suited for elementary classrooms is a contentious topic among stakeholders in elementary schools (anderson, 1962; culyer, 1984; gewertz, 2014; hood, 2009; lobdell & van ness, 1962). a mere mention of the terms ‘departmentalization’ or ‘selfcontained’ elicits strong emotions among educators – oftentimes these responses are driven by their own experiences, positive or negative, with these school structures (parker, rakes, & arndt, 2017). departmentalization is premised on the notion that teacher specialization and spreading expectations for content knowledge and instructional planning across a number of teachers (typically 2-4) will improve instruction within a given content area, particularly if teachers are assigned to teach in their most effective area of instruction (condie, lefgen, & sims, 2014). proponents assert departmentalization allows teachers to focus on fewer subjects and develop more extensive content area expertise, ultimately decreasing the already extensive and unrealistic demands on teachers in elementary schools (anderson, 1962; chan & jarman, 2004). by focusing on a single content area, elementary teachers can develop confidence, content expertise and pedagogical competence in ways that are not possible when asked to teach all content areas (epstein & maciver, 1992; gewertz, 2014; mcgrath & rust, 2002). proponents of departmentalization at the elementary level identify a number of additional benefits for teachers including reductions in stress due to decreased time spent on planning and fresh starts with new groups of students throughout the day (strohl et. al., 2014). while departmentalization does increase the number of students a given teacher instructs, it limits the possibility of a potential teacher/student mismatch across an entire school day. ultimately, the positive aspects of departmentalization are primarily experienced by the teacher – more focused time for planning, less instruction to plan for on a given day, and opportunities to develop content and pedagogical knowledge in fewer subjects (poland, colburn, & long, 2017). advocates of self-contained structures also note a number of benefits – the majority of which are focused on students and their experiences in school. in fact, self-contained classroom settings align with student-centered approaches which emphasize instruction as well as social and emotional learner needs (association for supervision and curriculum development, 2007; schiro, 2008). proponents of self-contained elementary classrooms believe that young children should spend the day with a classroom teacher who is responsible for all content areas. this structure facilitates the development of strong student/teacher relationships and provides teachers with an opportunity to deeply know each learner across all content areas (mcgrath & rust, 2002; squires, huitt, & segars, 1983). the trade off in self-contained classrooms is that the teacher has fewer students but more time with and more instructional responsibilities for those students. unlike departmentalized structures that are necessarily driven by regimented schedules, self-contained settings have more flexibility over how time is spent and how content areas are integrated. the limited number of studies on elementary organizational structures means there is little to guide individuals as they make decisions about the nature of elementary students’ experiences. in our investigation of factors driving elementary principals’ decision-making regarding elementary organizational structures, we found decisions related to organizational structure are largely based on administrators’ personal beliefs and preferences (parker et al., 2017). in fact, there was no discernable contextual pattern to the rationales principals applied to their decisions to departmentalize or remain self-contained. this resulted in tremendous variability in implementation of departmentalized instruction across school settings in a single district. teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 4 additionally, there is limited understanding of the impact of this organizational structure on elementary students. for example, mcgrath and rust (2002) found that overall scores in selfcontained elementary classrooms were higher than those in departmentalized as were subject specific scores in science and language arts. however, there was no difference in achievement in math, reading, and social studies subject test scores based on organizational structure. more recently, fryer (2018) found in a study of 46 elementary schools that students in departmentalized classrooms with teachers assigned to specialization areas based on principal recommendations experienced a decline on high and low stakes test scores for each year of the two-year evaluation period. the negative impacts were most noticeable in students receiving special education services and students in classrooms with new teachers. fryer also found an increase in both absenteeism and behavioral issues. in terms of teacher behaviors, teachers departmentalizing reported being less likely to tailor instruction to individual student’s needs, likely due to having fewer interactions and decreased time with students, and less satisfied in their overall work (fryer, 2018). these recent findings indicate a negative impact of departmentalization on elementary students, particularly those who might be most at risk for academic and behavior challenges. the nature of field experiences in teacher preparation given the growing number of departmentalized classrooms in elementary schools, it is likely that elementary teacher candidates will have experiences in a non-traditional organizational configuration during their teacher preparation. because the field of teacher preparation is large, and teacher candidates specifically and without fail, point to their field experiences working within teachers and children in pk-12 contexts as the most impactful aspects of their teacher preparation training (daoud, 2018; darling-hammond, pacheco, michelli, lepage, & hammerness, 2005; valencia, martin, place & grossman, 2009; zeichner & bier, 2015), it is essential to understand the literature on field experiences. field experiences provide a critical third space in which teacher candidates, in tandem with university-based and school-based teacher educators, can make meaning of their theoretical course experiences in practical, realistic classroom contexts (gutierrez, 2008). and while field experiences have long been a part of teacher preparation, there are surprising inconsistencies and variabilities in these experiences. this is in part due to the uniqueness of university communities and their neighboring school districts, but is also a function of programs’, schools’, and universities’ attitudes towards clinical partnerships. as a result, field experiences are often poorly planned and loosely organized with limited connectivity to coursework (darling hammond, 2009; zeichner & bier, 2015). this contributes to a reality--that clinical field experiences run the gamut in terms of quality, quantity, duration, and nature of support/feedback (zeichner & bier, 2015). consequently, the outcomes for teacher candidates as a result of field work vary tremendously and are highly contextualized. as a field, teacher educators recognize a number of factors associated with high quality field work. this includes extended time in the field and purposeful connectivity to coursework. in fact, courses intentionally tied to field experiences prove particularly effective in allowing teacher candidates to make theory to practice connections. (darling-hammond, 2006; koerner, rust, & baumgartner, 2002; zeichner & bier, 2015). similarly, national teacher education organizations and leading scholars note that mentor teacher selection and consistency in expectations across pk12 and university partners also play a role in highly effective field experiences (aacte 2010; clift & brady, 2006; grossman, 2010). in addition, rather than relying on the assumption that good teachers are automatically good mentors, high quality field experiences are more likely to occur teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 5 when teacher candidates are paired with mentors who are properly prepared for the work (grossman, 2010; valencia, martin, place & grossman, 2009). while more is not always better in regards to field experiences (allsopp, demarie, alvarez-mchatton & doone, 2006), we do know that a combination of high quality and extensive time are necessary. in fact, darling-hammond (2014) notes “the most powerful programs require students to spend extensive time in the field, examining and applying the concepts and strategies they are simultaneously learning about in their courses alongside teachers who can show them how to teach in ways that are responsive to learners” (p. 551). time in the field is certainly a factor in high quality teacher preparation, but it is more about the quality of the time than it is the quantity. the purpose of our work is to explore the intersection of what on the surface may appear to be two disconnected bodies of literature: departmentalized instruction and clinical field experiences. specifically, we endeavor to understand teacher candidates’ perceptions of their field experiences when they are situated in departmentalized and self-contained structures. because field experiences are so impactful, and yet so historically haphazard in nature, an exploration of what teacher candidates perceive and experience in varying elementary contexts may inform the growing literature on clinical teacher preparation. method contextual overview participants in this study were teacher candidates enrolled in teacher preparation programs at two universities in the southeastern united states. program a is a graduate licensure and certification program that situates its course and fieldwork with professional development schools (pds) in two large, diverse districts. all teacher candidates in program a are placed in pds sites and have required field experiences that increase in complexity and duration, culminating in either a semester long or year-long internship. program b is an undergraduate licensure and certification program that situates its course and fieldwork with schools in one large, diverse district. while the participants from program a and b differed in terms of the degree level (undergraduate or graduate) of their preparation, the nature of the coursework and field experiences were similar. all teacher candidates are placed in elementary classrooms and have required field experiences that increase in complexity, culminating in a semester long internship. data collection a survey was sent to approximately 100 teacher candidates in two university settings. the questionnaire asked teacher candidates open-ended questions about their clinical experiences in both departmentalized (two or more groups of children with two or more teachers) and selfcontained (one group of children with one teacher) settings (see appendix a). the surveys were compiled by question to compare the teacher candidates’ answers. teacher candidates were asked to discuss 1) teacher and student benefits in self-contained and departmentalized classrooms, 2) teacher and student drawbacks in self-contained and departmentalized classrooms, 3) teacher and student challenges in self-contained and departmentalized classrooms. in addition, teacher candidates were asked about the impact teaching in self-contained and departmentalized classrooms had on them and whether or not, if offered, they would accept teaching jobs in either classroom setting. one hundred teacher candidates were surveyed and 53 responded, for a return rate of 53%. in many cases, the teacher candidates had completed multiple clinical experiences (both selfteacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 6 contained and departmentalized); therefore when those numbers were analyzed, they totaled greater than 53 (see table 1). three of the teacher candidates completed all four clinical experiences in a self-contained classroom. however, none who completed four clinical experiences did so in all departmentalized settings. table 1 teacher candidate clinical experiences number of clinical experiences self-contained experiences departmentalized experiences teacher candidates with one clinical experience 2 9 teacher candidates with two clinical experiences 22 11 teacher candidates with three clinical experiences 22 11 teacher candidates with four clinical experiences 43 21 note: most teacher candidates reported multiple clinical experiences in both self-contained and departmentalized settings; therefore, some the columns total greater than n = 53. data analysis using content and thematic analysis, we coded the teacher candidate surveys and identified several recurring themes. research using qualitative content analysis focuses on the characteristics of language as communication with attention to the content or contextual meaning of the text (budd, thorp, & donohew, 1967; lindkvist, 1981; mctavish & pirro, 1990; tesch, 1990). thematic analysis allowed the researchers to associate an analysis of the frequency of a theme with one of the whole content (alhojailan, 2012). patton (2002) postulates that core meanings can be discovered using content and thematic analysis on survey data. to analyze and discover core meanings, answers on the survey were placed into a spreadsheet according to the question asked. as each answer was analyzed, the basic content was assigned a color as each content theme was discovered. on subsequent analyses, the color-coded content was grouped into major themes. major themes were identified as those in which more than 50% of teacher candidates discussed (alhojailan, 2012). findings in the section that follows we share findings through five themes. the first four, relationships, time, classroom management, and academic needs, emerged as the major themes from the data analysis. in addition, upon a review across each of the four major themes, a fifth theme emerged related to teacher candidates’ developing beliefs regarding organizational structures as a result of their reflections. in each section the teacher candidates’ words elucidate the themes. to delineate the sources of each quote, teacher candidates were coded using a letter (to designate the two programs) and unique number. teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 7 as noted in table 1, survey results indicate teacher candidates experienced both departmentalized and self-contained classrooms during their clinical field experiences. teacher candidates expressed wide-ranging opinions about learning to teach in departmentalized and selfcontained classrooms based upon their clinical experiences, acknowledging both pros and cons to each structure. overall, there was remarkable consistency in teacher candidates’ perceptions of self-contained and departmentalized instruction, which resulted in four overarching themes: relationships, time, classroom management and students’ academic needs. table 2 reveals the frequency of the major themes in our data set. table 2 themes relationships time classroom management meeting student academic needs % of teacher candidates who discussed the topic in the survey 75% 72% 62% 60% relationships seventy five percent of the surveyed teacher candidates referenced relationships in their responses and overwhelmingly stated that teacher-student relationships are much stronger in selfcontained classrooms. for example, teacher candidate f2 shared in regards to self-contained classrooms, “i think that teachers are able to create more meaningful relationships with students.” similarly, teacher candidate f14 noted, “teachers are able to create a more family-oriented classroom in a self-contained classroom.” teacher candidate g6 provided a rationale for the stronger relationships when she reflected, “the teacher is able to observe how their student is doing across all subject areas (so) the teacher is able to develop a more personal relationship with the student and create a comfortable consistent atmosphere.” while we are unable to determine if these perceptions arose from their experiences as teacher candidates or was a function of their preexisting beliefs about elementary classrooms, it was clear from their responses that they viewed relationships as a central feature of self-contained classrooms. conversely, teacher candidates also readily recognized that departmentalized structures made building relationships with students challenging. as teacher candidate f27 noted, “they (students) also cannot form as strong of bonds with multiple teachers as they would with just one classroom teacher.” teacher candidate g17 shared as a drawback of departmentalization that “students don't get to create that one on one relationship with the teacher.” this seemingly dichotomous recognition indicates teacher candidates see a clear connection between structure/time with students and the nature of the relationships that they build with students. teacher candidates noted that self-contained structures facilitated their ability to build relationships with and understand their student learners during clinical experiences. g8 reflected, teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 8 “i came to know my students very well as learners and as individual children with unique personalities and strengths.” teacher candidate f1 shared, “i had better relationships with students, i was comfortable with them and there was mutual respect. it made my job teaching more comfortable and easier.” similarly, teacher candidate f8 noted, “being in a small classroom with many students all day can be very difficult, this encouraged me to get to know the students personally to be able to understand why they may act the way they do, and learn what situations help them learn better.” teacher candidate f35 shared, when a class came in that only came in for a math class, there was much less of a connection. they didn't respond as well to me because they only saw me for about an hour every tuesday so they didn't think they had to listen to me. the teacher didn't have the same relationship with them either, because really they weren't her class or her students. the connection between relationships and their impact on teaching and learning is foundational. through their field experiences, teacher candidates readily recognized and, in some cases, experienced the impact of different instructional configurations on the relationships they established or that they observed established in elementary classrooms. time teacher candidates recognized the connection between organizational structures and its impact on time. in fact, 72% of teacher candidates referenced time in their survey responses. on the surface, the notion of time seemed to set up a dichotomous framing of self-contained vs. departmentalized instruction, with self-contained taking more planning time and departmentalized instruction requiring less planning time due to the reduction in content areas instructed. this was evidenced by teacher candidate f4 who reflected that self-contained instruction required “tremendous amounts of planning” whereas departmentalized instruction required “significantly less” planning. she elaborated based on her observations of watching her mentor struggle with the quantity of planning, “i'm worried i'll be facing a task that is too difficult to handle and become burned-out.” the differences in time required for each structure and its impact on the teacher were noted consistently throughout the responses. teacher candidates also noted the impact of time as it related to the structure of the elementary school day. self-contained classrooms had more flexibility in how time across the school day was spent, which impacted how responsive teachers could be to students’ interests and needs. for example, teacher candidate g1 shared the impact of self-contained classrooms, “it (self-contained) showed me how subjects can flow together and teachers have much more flexibility with lessons and timing of teaching.” however, teacher candidates also indicated that lessons could be streamlined and more focused in a departmentalized classroom because teachers only have to focus on one or two subjects when lesson planning. for example, teacher candidate f25 stated, “being able to focus on two content areas (ela/social studies) rather than all four, the teacher is able to put more time into her planning for these specific topics.” similarly, teacher candidate f14 noted that the developed lessons could potentially be more engaging, “i was able to solely focus on one subject area, which allowed me to plan and implement rich and diverse lessons each day.” timing in terms of transitions and pacing also factored in teacher candidates’ experiences with both positive and negative outcomes. in a self-contained placement teacher candidate f17 stated, “... it allowed me to see how to effectively transition between subjects within the same classroom, and keep the learning process going through all of the core subjects.” conversely, teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 9 teacher candidate f32 reflected, “the students switched four times a day and each time took around eight minutes to have the students sit down, get settled, and begin working. that is 32 minutes of wasted time. i feel that the students would have more benefit in a self-contained classroom.” departmentalization was seen as a drawback in the sense of having to stick to a schedule or calendar. as teacher candidate g11 noted, “they have to keep up with the pacing of the other team members no matter where their class is at the time.” classroom management classroom management is an area that most teacher candidates find challenging. in fact, 62% of teacher candidates surveyed said that classroom management was a concern in the elementary classroom and most stated that management was more effective in a self-contained classroom. many stated that students do not behave the same way in each classroom when they travel to different teachers’ rooms. for example, teacher candidate f12 stated that more behavioral issues were apparent in different classrooms and “expectations differ from class to class.” similarly, teacher candidate g7 shared, “the consistency between teachers’ rules is hard for children to track; different teachers have different expectations, rules, management styles, and tolerance.” communication and consistency seemed key to teacher candidates. as teacher candidate f27 noted, “it may be difficult for students to learn the different rules and expectations of the different teachers.” teacher candidate f13 further explained, “students take advantage of teachers if they (teachers) don’t communicate well.” ultimately, based on their clinical experiences, teacher candidates found classroom management challenging in departmentalized settings. in contrast, teacher candidates mentioned that self-contained structures seemed to offer clearer and more consistent expectations for student behavior. teacher candidate g14 described the self-contained classroom as “one teacher/one voice” and stated that students receive “mixed messages” from traveling to another teacher’s room for instruction. in addition, teacher candidate f14 explained, “students can become familiar with the expectations of one classroom teacher. more routine can be established as rules and procedures remain consistent with only one classroom teacher.” teacher candidate f8 said that her experience in a self-contained classroom allowed her to learn “more about transitioning and controlling students’ behavior in the classroom.” teacher candidate f10 also stated that being in a self-contained classroom “showed me how students’ behavior changes throughout the day.” teacher candidate f4 reflected, “management becomes easier to solidify when students are with you all day.” the clear distinction between management with one set of students and management with multiple sets of students show that teacher candidates value one set of rules and expectations and clear communication between teachers. on the other hand, some teacher candidates shared that departmentalizing can benefit teachers and students if there is a personality conflict or a behavior problem with a student. teacher candidate f13 said that when departmentalizing, students can “have a break from one teacher if they’re having a rough day with them.” when teaching a self-contained class, students remain in the same classroom all day and “if a teacher has a very tough student to deal with, they receive no break at all throughout the day,” according to teacher candidate f19. regardless of setting, clinical experiences afford teacher candidates opportunities to learn about management strategies and the associated pros and cons with each. both departmentalized and self-contained settings offer teacher candidates opportunities to learn classroom management strategies in various situations. teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 10 meeting student academic needs sixty percent of teacher candidates discussed student academic needs in the survey; however, they were divided in their thoughts about how teachers effectively met students’ academic needs. some teacher candidates asserted teachers in self-contained classrooms know and are able to meet student academic needs better than in a departmentalized classroom. teacher candidate f3 described teachers as having a “full understanding of students’ abilities” in a selfcontained classroom. teacher candidate f13 further explained that in a self-contained classroom, teachers are able to “see students’ strengths and weaknesses across content areas.” because most departmentalized structures are on tight time schedules, teacher candidate f6 observed that there were “not enough opportunities to spend one-on-one time with students.” teacher candidates recognized that teachers need to know students’ learning needs and provide additional instructional support to help them be academically successful. teacher candidate f11 explained that in a self-contained classroom, teachers can “easily monitor their advanced and lower level students throughout the day.” teacher candidate f8 added that having the same group of students all day allowed teachers understand the learning needs of their students in all subjects. integrating subjects was mentioned pointing out that it was easier to cross disciplines in a self-contained classroom (teacher candidates f21 & g1). teacher candidate f21 further explained that in a self-contained classroom, teachers “determine where their students need more help in one area and spend more class time on a certain subject”. the connection between time spent with students and meeting their learning needs was apparent in the survey. conversely, some teacher candidates felt that students’ needs are better met in departmentalized classrooms. however, a majority of teacher candidates that mentioned students’ needs are better met in a departmentalized setting where students are grouped by ability. this resulted in teacher candidates developing a narrowly and ultimately misguided definition of differentiation. some saw the departmentalized ability groups as a way to differentiate within already leveled groups. as teacher candidate f2 explained, students are in classes with “peers with similar learning needs” and that “could lead to more individualized and differentiated instruction.” teacher candidate f27 added, “differentiated instruction is easier because in a departmentalized classroom, students can be broken up into groups based on their abilities and needs.” teacher candidate g5 felt that working in a departmentalized setting allowed “practice with different levels of student readiness and understanding.” conversely, some teacher candidates saw the departmentalized ability groups as the way students’ needs are met. teacher candidate f11 said, “teachers have a class of higher level students and a class of lower level students so there is not much need for differentiating instruction. teacher candidate f33 reflected, “students are grouped by readiness (from what i have seen). i guess teachers can better meet the needs of students during whole group instruction.” teacher candidate f36 explained departmentalized ability grouping as “increased differentiation.” “i learned how to differentiate even better because the classes were grouped by ability”, (teacher candidate f36). while we are unable to determine teacher candidates’ understanding of differentiation in regards to meeting students’ needs, it was clear from their responses that some equate departmentalized ability groups with meeting students’ individual academic needs. there was some concern expressed by teacher candidates regarding students having one teacher all day long because both student behavior and academics could be impacted. teacher candidate f14 said, “if students are placed in an ineffective teacher's classroom, then that student may not be provided with a high-quality education. with only one primary teacher, students are only able to grow as much as their teacher allows.” teacher candidate g1 explained that the teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 11 learning gaps can be larger in self-contained classroom and that would make harder to meet all students’ needs. teaching style and learning preference may also hinder a teacher from being able to meet all students’ needs as all students do not learn the same way and may not “mesh with a teacher’s style” if in the same classroom all day (teacher candidate g2). teacher candidates seem to realize the influence a teacher has on student learning, whether it be through content knowledge or pedagogical strategies. developing beliefs teacher candidates’ survey responses across the four major themes indicate the ways in which their experiences and reflections were shaping their developing attitudes about elementary grade level organizational structures and the elementary teaching profession, as well as their professional learning. a number of teacher candidates expressed significant frustration with the repetition of teaching and lack of strong relationships in their departmentalized classrooms. for example, teacher candidate f27 noted, “i definitely learned that i would not want to be in a departmentalized classroom. i was observing the same lesson over and over again. the day got very boring, and i would prefer teaching all of the subjects.” similarly, teacher candidate f1 stated, “honestly, being in my departmentalized classroom as a freshman made me reconsider if this was the profession for me. i was bored, i did not feel any connection to the material i was teaching or the children i spent the time with because after an hour i would not see them again. how can you teach a student to the best of your ability if you barely know them?” commenting on the role of standardized testing in her departmentalized field place, teacher candidate f6 shared, “i almost changed my major. i couldn't stand how test focused the teaching was and felt as if none of the students were receiving anything of significant impact.” these developing perceptions highlight teacher candidates’ awareness of the importance of knowing one’s students and suggest a conflict with their beliefs about how elementary classrooms are supposed to ‘look.’ lack of opportunities to teach across content areas also emerged as a frustration among teacher candidates placed in departmentalized settings. for example, teacher candidate g17 reflected, “it didn't really teach me all that much in regards to any other subject, but the subject my classroom was departmentalized in. i saw only one side of teaching, and it was very repetitive every time i was in the classroom. i wanted to see how other subjects would be approached, and i was unable to.” similarly, teacher candidate f15 noted “though i became very comfortable with ela i feel that i am now lacking in math because of only seeing ela for my entire internship.” again here, teacher candidates express an awareness of what is missing from their professional development when placed in departmentalized classrooms: opportunities to grow in all aspects of the elementary instructional day. in describing the nature of their learning in self-contained classrooms, teacher candidates acknowledged that these placements helped them conceptualize the ‘whole picture’ of elementary teaching. for example, teacher candidate g16 noted, “i learned how to manage it all. i learned how to check my bias towards certain subjects. i work with all students.” similarly, teacher candidate f8 reflected, i have had three very different experiences. i feel i have grown to love the self-contained classroom because of my last experience. i have learned more about transitioning and controlling student behavior in the classroom. being in a small classroom with many students all day can be very difficult, this encouraged me to get to know the students personally to be able to understand why they may act the way they do, and learn what situations teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 12 help them learn better. some students may not work well in this type of situation, but aiming your teaching to their needs can change the way this classroom setting affects them. the self-contained classroom also highlighted some of the challenges of elementary teaching. teacher candidate f6 shared, “being in the self-contained classroom has stressed me out. my ct always seems to be disorganized and lost about what we need to be doing, and that concerns me about teaching in a self-contained classroom. i'm worried i'll be facing a task that is too difficult to handle and become burned-out.” the self-contained experience also highlighted some of the challenges of the structure for teacher candidates. discussion the reflections of teacher candidates on their experiences in learning to teach in departmentalized and self-contained classrooms are remarkably consistent with what is noted in the literature. the mere frequency with which they are placed in classrooms adhering to some form of departmentalized instruction suggests that there is indeed increased implementation of this model (gewertz, 2014). the four major themes emerging from their survey responses mirror those seen in the literature and the ongoing debate regarding the appropriateness of departmentalized instruction for elementary aged students. their recognition of the benefits of self-contained classrooms in terms of creating strong student-teacher relationships, integrated instruction, awareness of students’ needs, and opportunities for content integration reflects the perceptions held consistently by teachers and scholars in the field as is their concern regarding the overwhelming quantity of instructional planning in these contexts (mcgrath & rust, 2002; schiro, 2008). similarly, teacher candidates identified positives related to departmentalization in terms of decreased time for planning and opportunities for a specific content focus (mcgrath & rust, 2002; strohl et. al., 2014), while also noting that relationships with students were negatively impacted. in addition to providing support for the literature on enduring perspectives of the impact of elementary organizational structures, the survey results also revealed the ways in which experiences in self-contained and departmentalized classrooms informed teacher candidates’ overall professional development. our study results indicate that teacher candidates are learning a tremendous amount from experiences that occur in different organizational structures, particularly about the benefits and drawbacks of each structure and about the kinds of classrooms they want to be in as teachers. teacher candidates see and experience tension between the two structures in terms of expectations for planning, content knowledge, relationships with students. based on the survey results, teacher candidates develop or reinforce strong attitudes towards elementary organizational structures. for example, following their field experiences, teacher candidates reflected that they would overwhelmingly accept jobs in self-contained settings and were more undecided about positions in departmentalized schools (table 3). we do not know to what extent this is related to their prior beliefs or their field experiences; however, it does raise the question, how do we prepare teacher candidates for these very different elementary contexts? and furthermore, would preparation shape their willingness to (or to not) be in these settings? teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 13 table 3 percentage of teacher candidates who (if offered) would accept a job in a self-contained or departmentalized setting yes no undecided self-contained 88% 0% 12% departmentalized 54% 8% 38% our findings also suggest teacher candidates value strong student-teacher relationships and see self-contained classrooms as organizational structures that facilitate building, maintaining, and using relationships as a tool for management and instruction. this may be a function of their existing beliefs on teaching, their university coursework, their field experiences or a combination of the three, but the refrain of relationship is consistently seen throughout their responses. in fact, throughout the data, it was clear that relationships mattered to elementary teacher candidates in ways that developing expertise in a single content area did not. this mirrors findings by poland and colleagues which suggests generalist teachers prefer the child-centered nature of elementary classrooms to content/subject oriented approaches (poland et al., 2017). thus, teacher candidates’ recognition of the role of relationships is important, particularly when considered alongside fryer’s (2017) study indicating teachers teaching in their strongest content area did not translate into improved performance. the power of relationships cannot be underestimated, and teacher candidates’ reflections on relationships in various organizations settings reinforces this notion. as teacher educators, it is imperative that we understand the organizational structures of the field experiences our teacher candidates navigate. teacher candidates are developing strong, enduring beliefs about the pros and cons of these various structures – some of which may be accurate and others perhaps not. in some instances, it is clear from teacher candidates’ reflections that the field experience is developing/reinforcing an incorrect understanding of critical education concepts. for example, in our small-scale study, a number of teacher candidates conflated departmentalization by ability level as differentiated instruction: i learned how to differentiate even better because the classes were grouped by ability. (teacher candidate f27) differentiated instruction is easier for students because in a departmentalized classroom, students can be broken up into groups based on their ability and needs. (teacher candidate f35) as educators, we know that departmentalization by ability group is simply another form of tracking, which is associated with a host of negative outcomes for learners (hallam, iresona, & davies, 2004). and differentiated instruction is an instructional approach meant to meet the needs of diverse learners through flexible grouping based on readiness, interests, and learning style (tomlinson, 2005). yet conflating the two could equate to teacher candidates’ supporting ability grouped departmentalized structures in their careers because they have incorrectly defined this as differentiated instruction. it is unlikely that we ask in class discussions, “what is the organizational structure of your field placement?” but as the previous example highlights, it matters in terms of how they are making course to field connections. teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 14 conclusion our study investigated teacher candidates’ perceptions of elementary grade level organizational structures during required experiences in their teacher preparation programs--an unexplored area of the research literature. our findings indicate teacher candidates encounter any number of configurations during their teacher preparation coursework and that they form strong opinions about how elementary classroom organizational structures impact k-6 students and teachers based on these experiences, as well as their own professional growth. while the findings here are from a small number of teacher candidates at two universities, the findings highlight the important role teacher educators play in assisting teacher candidates as they make meaning of field experiences. without careful attention to how teacher candidates are navigating the various organizational structures they encounter in their field experiences, it is possible that these misconceptions evolve into a belief or worse, an advocacy for practices that may not be in the best interests of children. because teacher candidates’ beliefs are largely shaped, changed or affirmed by their field work, it is imperative that teacher educators carefully attend to how teacher candidates navigate placements in various elementary grade level organizational structures (grossman et al., 2000; singh & richards, 2006). references american association of colleges of teacher education (aacte). 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(2015). opportunities and pitfalls in the turn toward clinical experience in u.s. teacher education. in e. r. hollins (ed.), rethinking field experiences in preservice teacher preparation: meeting new challenges for accountability (pp. 20-46). new york: routledge. author notes audra k. parker, ph.d. george mason university aparke19@gmu.edu lori rakes, ph.d. florida southern college lrakes@flsouthern.edu mailto:aparke19@gmu.edu mailto:lrakes@flsouthern.edu teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 17 appendix a 1. list your clinical experiences and state whether they were in a self-contained or departmentalized classroom. 2. what are teacher benefits in teaching in a self-contained setting? 3. what are student benefits in learning in a self-contained setting? 4. what are teacher benefits in teaching in a departmentalized setting? 5. what are student benefits in learning in a departmentalized setting? 6. what are the teacher drawbacks in teaching in a self-contained setting? 7. what are the student drawbacks in learning in a self-contained setting? 8. what are the teacher drawbacks in teaching in a departmentalized setting? 9. what are the student drawbacks in learning in a departmentalized setting? 10. what are the teacher challenges in teaching in a self-contained setting? 11. what are the student challenges in learning in a self-contained setting? 12. what are the teacher challenges in teaching in a departmentalized setting? 13. what are the student challenges in learning in a departmentalized setting? 14. how has teaching in a self-contained setting impacted you as a teacher candidate? 15. how has teaching in a departmentalized setting impacted you as a teacher candidate? 16. if offered a full time teaching position in a self-contained setting, would you accept it? 17. if offered a full time teaching position in a departmentalized setting, would you accept it? teacher candidates' perceptions of grade level organization and its influence on their professional development current issues in education, 21(1) 18 volume 21, issue 1 april 29, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf volume 1, number 5 november 18, 1998 issn 1099-839x functional behavioral assessment: the link between problem behavior and effective intervention in schools jeffrey a. miller duquesne university michael tansy gilbert school district, gilbert, az tammy l. hughes arizona state university an important current issue in education is the mandate in the 1997 reauthorization of the individuals with disabilities education act (individuals with disabilities education act amendments of 1997) that schools must conduct a functional behavioral assessment when a student's behavior disrupts the educational environment. this article reviews the literature on functional analysis and how it relates to the legal mandate for functional behavioral assessment in schools. functional behavioral assessment is considered an important and frequently missing link between topographical descriptions of behavior and treatment planning. problems with existing functional behavioral assessment methodologies include the complexity of data synthesis and treatment selection. also, existing efforts to define functional behavioral assessment have not included sufficiently diverse theoretical models for the causes of behavior or for treatment. in contrast, we provide a definition of functional behavioral assessment that includes proximal, distal, physiological, and intrapsychic causes of problem behavior. based on this definition, a multimodal, team problem-solving approach to conducting functional behavioral assessments and developing behavior intervention plans in schools is proposed. the proposed approach distributes complex decision making across team members, includes multiple theoretical perspectives, can be readily adopted by existing child study teams, and is in compliance with the 1997 reauthorization of the individuals with disabilities education act. important advances in the assumptions about the management of children with behavioral problems in schools have arisen following the reauthorization of the individuals with disabilities education act (p.l. 105-17; individuals with disabilities education act amendments of 1997). specifically, p.l. 105-17 requires that a functional behavioral assessment (fba) be conducted for children exhibiting behavior that interferes with the educational process. this means that school current issues in education vol. 1 no. 5 personnel must conduct preintervention assessments of the functional relationships between a child's behavior and the suspected causes of that behavior. subsequently, school personnel must develop intervention plans based on the information provided through this assessment (individuals with disabilities education act amendments of 1997). the actual process of fba, however, was not defined by p.l. 105-17. as a result, practitioners and researchers concerned with child misbehavior need to define the process of functional behavioral assessment. since the passage of p.l. 105-17 in 1997 researchers and practitioners have proposed several methods for functional behavioral assessment (quinn, gable, rutherford, nelson, & howell, 1998; skiba, waldron, bahamonde, & michalek, 1998; thomas, 1997) that are to varying degrees conflicting with or complementary to each other. the effort to define a process for fba is complicated because the literature prior to p.l. 105-17 includes a variety of methods that may comprise the foundation for a functional behavioral assessment process. methods that may provide direction for developing a process of functional behavioral assessment include functional analysis (carr, 1977; daly, witt, martens, & dool, 1997; haynes & o'brien, 1990; iwata, dorsey, slifer, bauman, & richman, 1982; repp, 1994; schill, kratochwill, & gardner, 1996; sturmey, 1996), functional assessment (flannery, o'neill, & horner, 1995; hendrickson, gable, novak, & peck, 1996; horner, 1994; repp, 1994; sasso, harrell, & doelling, 1997), behavioral assessment (martin & pear, 1992), and functional communication (carr & durand, 1985). with each approach comes a minor or major variation in process and/or outcome. this article provides a rationale and procedure for a specific method of functional behavioral assessment. first, we will provide a definition for functional behavioral assessment and examine its relationship to functional analysis. second, we will discuss some of the legal and interpretive issues raised by the current reauthorization of the individuals with disabilities education act (individuals with disabilities education act amendments of 1997) with respect to discipline of children in special education. third, we describe the theoretical and empirical basis for a multimodal, team problem-solving approach to functional behavioral assessment. next, the actual procedure of functional behavioral assessment will be described with a case example. associated with functional behavioral assessment is the process of developing interventions, called behavior intervention plans (bips) in p.l. 105-17. schoolbased behavior intervention plans are the direct result of functional behavioral assessments (individuals with disabilities education act amendments of 1997). we will describe a procedure for developing specific behavior intervention plans from functional behavioral assessments. finally, follow-up procedures mandated by the law are discussed. defining functional behavioral assessment consideration of function is not new to education or psychology. indeed, it was functional psychology that was espoused by early psychologists john dewey and g. stanley hall (boring, 1957). as opposed to structuralism, which is concerned with description, functionalism is at its core concerned with cause and prediction. boring (1957) wrote that to be a functionalist was to be "more interested in the future than the past, to prefer to ride facing forward on the train" (p. 551). in applied psychology the debate regarding the relative importance of the function of behavior and the structure of behavior continues. when interventions are selected based on an assessment of the causes of behavior for an individual the intervention is based on functional assessment. alternatively, structuralists choose interventions demonstrated effective with some percentage of people with a similar pattern of behavior. for example, a child disrupting a classroom with verbal outbursts could be treated with the customary intervention of differential reinforcement for no outbursts for a period of time. on the other hand, a functional assessment of the causes of the child's verbal outbursts should result in an intervention tailored to the child's individual experiences. by most accurately identifying the causes, selected interventions will be more effective and more appropriate, that is, less aversive (iwata et al., 1982). currently, there is no legislated definition of functional behavioral assessment. consensus, however, is emerging in the views of some researchers in school-based assessment. quinn and her colleagues (1998) define functional behavioral assessment as a variety of techniques and strategies to diagnose the causes and to identify likely interventions intended to address problem behaviors (p. 3). they go on to say fba includes consideration of biological, social, affective, and environmental factors as potential functions of problem behavior (quinn et al., 1998). skiba and his colleagues (1998) do not directly define functional behavioral assessment, but argue that "functional assessment moves...toward gathering information that increases our understanding of student behavior in the classroom, and identifying and teaching needed replacement behaviors" (p. 24). skiba cites seminal research by carr (1977) and iwata and colleagues functional behavioral assessment: the link between problem behavior and effective intervention in schools 3 (1982) on functional analysis as providing the foundation for functional behavioral assessment. researchers have looked to the literature on functional analysis (e.g., iwata et al., 1982) for guidance in defining functional behavioral assessment (daly et al., 1997; quinn et al., 1998; skiba et al., 1998). however, the term "functional behavioral assessment" has become entwined with functional analysis. this is further complicated by writers' use of these words interchangeably. for example, skiba and colleagues (1998) cite daly's (1997) article on functional analysis of academic performance as an example of functional assessment. further, they made the connection between functional assessment and functional behavioral assessment (skiba et al., 1998). haynes and o'brien (1990) also described this link when they asserted functional analysis had been used interchangeably with "functional behavioral analysis" and "behavioral assessment." these terms are further confused in the applied behavior analysis literature. for example, repp (1994) wrote an article titled "comments on functional analysis procedures for school-based behavior problems," but the running head was "functional assessment" and functional assessment was used interchangeably with functional analysis. it may be the case that functional analysis and functional assessment mean the same thing, but these words have now been linked with the meaning of functional behavioral assessment as indicated in p. l. 105-17. this discussion is relevant because it is our position that functional analysis is only one, relatively well defined, technique to be used in the not so well defined process of functional behavioral assessment. functional analysis is generally described as a two step analysis of the proximal causes of a problem behavior. first, hypotheses are generated about potential antecedents and consequences of behavior for an individual. second, experimental manipulation of conditions is conducted to test the hypotheses (iwata et al., 1982). functional analysis does not, however, define what qualifies as a function or cause of behavior. because functional analysis developed in the field of applied behavior analysis, functions have typically been limited to operant aspects of behavior, specifically antecedents and consequences. for each type of problem described in the literature, researchers using functional analytic techniques generate a group of potential causes that are proximal to the problem behavior and operantly defined. for example, iwata and colleagues (1982) hypothesized that the antecedent conditions (social disapproval, academic demand, unstructured play, being alone) leading to increased self-injury would vary across children with developmental delays. they exemplified the functional aspects of problem behavior across different children, but only focused on functions related to the child's immediate situation or environment. in a more recent school-based example of functional analysis, daly and his colleagues (1997) hypothesized the following five "reasonable hypotheses" of academic failure: did not want to do the work, did not spend enough time on the work, have not had enough help, have not had to do it that way before, and it is too hard. again, these hypotheses do not begin to describe the full range of potential causes for academic failure. typically, there are multiple causes for problem behaviors that require diverse methods of identification (cone, 1997; flannery et al., 1995; haynes and o'brien, 1990). the need for multiple assessment methods is complicated by the fact that problem behaviors are not consistent and can change over time. one way this manifests is in conflicting reports about a particular student's behavior from day to day. for example, when attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder is the cause of behavior problems children often experience periods of good behavioral control and work completion (barkley, 1990; nathan, 1992). when this variability in performance is observed by some treatment teams, it is inappropriately used as evidence indicating that the child could maintain control if he or she just tried, and a consequence-based intervention is initiated. implementing an intervention in the classroom for this child without consideration of the physiological cause and indicated pharmacotherapy would result in the child's behavior persisting despite the classroombased intervention. thus, the accurate identification of the complicated and sometimes transient causes of behavior require data from a variety of explanatory models. functional analysis represents an important tool for functional behavioral assessment. however, the functional analysis methodology does not include methods to assess important distal, physiological, and intrapsychic variables that cause children to misbehave. in the school-based formulations of functional behavioral assessment reviewed here (quinn et al., 1998; skiba et al., 1998), the authors initially make claims that biological, social, affective and environmental variables should be considered, but in the end they offer operant forms of functional behavioral assessment considering only proximal antecedents and consequences. school implementations of functional behavioral assessment should not be restricted to antecedents and consequences as the limitations of such an approach have been recognized even in the recent functional analysis literature. carr (1994) identified social factors and biological factors such as physical illness, current issues in education vol. 1 no. 5 exercise, and drug use as potential causes of problem behavior. mace (1994) provided the following example to show that multiple factors may control problem behavior: to discourage allocation of behavior to aggression, a treatment could be designed that arranged high-rate (continuous reinforcement) and high-quality parental attention (affectionate praise) for appropriate social interaction, while discontinuing the contingency between aggression and attention (i.e., extinction). the intervention could be further strengthened by teaching appropriate social interaction following periods of low adult attention in order to increase the reinforcing value of parental attention. (p. 387). this example represents inclusion of variables that comprise more causes of problem behavior than previous functional analytic models or recent efforts to describe functional behavioral assessment. specifically, mace's (1994) example refers to direct instruction as an intervention rather than just manipulation of contingencies; further, parent-child emotional issues are considered as potential causes. mace (1994) does not consider whether or not the parent is capable of giving highquality attention and, if so, how to get the parent to do it. these points exemplify some of the complex, distal causes of problem behavior. functional behavioral assessment, thus, should include the consideration of variables that are proximal (e.g., task avoidance), distal (e.g., family conflict), physiological (e.g., depression), and intrapsychic (e.g., thoughts and feelings) causes of problem behaviors that interfere with education. functional analysis is uniquely qualified for identifying proximal, operant causes, but is insufficient to address the full complexity of children's problems. the functional behavioral assessment definition used to develop the present model was adopted from haynes and o'brien's (1990) definition of functional analysis. this is not to further confuse these terms; rather, their definition is sufficiently general to include the functions typically considered in functional analysis as well as the broader range of functions we propose. further, haynes and o'brien's (1990) work represents a different strand of functional analysis research than that of carr (1977) or iwata (1982) used to define extant models of functional behavioral assessment. haynes and o'brien (1990) describe in detail the evidence for their definition. among other things, they took an idiographic perspective and advocated the examination of multiple causes and the use of multiple assessment methods. thus, borrowing from haynes and o'brien's (1990) definition of functional analysis, functional behavioral assessment is, "the identification of important, controllable, causal functional relationships applicable to a specific set of target behaviors for an individual client" (p. 654). p.l. 105-17 and functional behavioral assessment for the first time, the 1997 amendments to the individuals with disabilities education act (individuals with disabilities education act amendments of 1997) included the requirement that school personnel conduct an fba for children experiencing behavior problems that interfere with their education. because p.l. 105-17 is somewhat ambiguous regarding when to conduct an fba, local education agencies (leas) are left to determine to some extent when an fba is legally mandated and to a greater extent for what types of behavior. as previously noted, the 1997 individuals with disabilities education act offers little guidance regarding how to conduct a functional behavioral assessment. with reference to fba, p.l. 105-17 (individuals with disabilities education act amendments of 1997) states: in the case of a child whose behavior impedes his or her learning or that of others, consider, when appropriate, strategies, including positive behavioral interventions, strategies, and supports to address that behavior. (§ 614(d)(3)(b)(i)). if the lea did not conduct a functional behavioral assessment and implement a behavioral intervention plan for the child before the behavior that resulted in the suspension ... the agency shall convene an iep meeting to develop an assessment plan and appropriate behavioral interventions to address that behavior; or if the child already has a behavioral intervention plan, the iep team shall review the plan and modify it, as necessary, to address the behavior. (§ 615(k)(1)(a)(i)(ii)) it should be noted that p.l. 105-17 makes reference to suspension and consideration of the right of a student to a free and appropriate public education (fape) for a "change in placement of more than 10 days" (individuals with disabilities education act amendments of 1997 § 614(k)(4)(a)). therefore, educators are encouraged to develop positive behavioral interventions when a behavior impedes a student's learning or that of his or her peers. however, the local education agency is mandated to conduct an fba and develop a bip when the behavior results in a suspension of more than ten days, as this is considered a violation of a student's right to a free and appropriate public functional behavioral assessment: the link between problem behavior and effective intervention in schools 5 education. this may include out-of-school suspensions in which the student is asked to stay at home during the school day, in-school suspensions in which the student is not allowed to attend his or her regular schedule of classes but still attends school, or a combination of in-school and out-of-school suspensions. this also includes interim placements for students found with weapons or drugs on a school campus and considerations of expulsion from a school district. the pivotal issue with regard to suspension is that the student has been or is being considered for removal from the current educational placement for more than ten days. it is clear that an fba and a bip is mandated at this point. however, school districts offer different opinions on what "change in placement of more than 10 days" means. some school districts accumulate a student's days of suspension and when ten are reached, the procedures for fba are initiated. others do not accumulate days and only invoke these procedures when a transgression sufficient to warrant more than ten consecutive days of suspension or expulsion has occurred. as this aspect of educational law has yet to be fully clarified by case law, a conservative approach would be to consider fba when more than 10 days of removal from the current educational placement have accumulated. thus, the behaviors legally considered for fba do not have to be as severe as those resulting in greater then ten consecutive days of suspension, interim placements for weapons or drugs on a school campus, or expulsion. although p.l. 105-17 specifies that functional behavioral assessments must be conducted for children exhibiting behaviors that will result in suspension, there are other times when fbas are warranted and useful. schools must determine when conducting an fba would be best practice even if not mandated for a specific case. for example, behavioral deficits such as poor work completion may not result in a legal mandate to conduct an fba, but may be successfully remedied through fba and behavior intervention planning. indeed, there are many cases well suited for preintervention assessment of functional relationships (thomas, 1997). functional behavioral assessment is appropriate for any behavior that interferes with a student's education or that of his or her peers as recommended by law. it may also be appropriate as part of the reevaluation process for students with problem behaviors (skiba, 1998), as part of prereferral intervention for children not covered under p.l. 105-17, or as part of section 504 (americans with disabilities act of 1990) accommodation plans. it also has been argued that fba is a better way of intervention planning than the syndromal or topographical approach used in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders fourth edition (dsm-iv; american psychiatric association, 1994) (cone, 1997; haynes & o'brien, 1990). the wide range of potential uses suggests that a procedure for fba should be theoretically inclusive enough to address everything from bringing a weapon on campus to self-injurious behaviors in children with severe disabilities to social skills deficits in nonreferred students. implementation issues with functional behavioral assessment synthesis of functional behavioral assessment data for students with multiple problems and multiple causes "exceeds the bounds of deductive abilities for most professionals" (haynes, 1998, p. 13). therefore, it is imperative that a procedure or method be identified for assimilating this information. existing efforts to simplify data synthesis include functional analytic causal models (haynes, leisen, & blaine, 1997; haynes & o'brien, 1990; nezu, nezu, friedman, & haynes, 1997), decision-making rules (hagopian, fisher, thompson, owen-deschryver, iwata, & wacker, 1997), and expert systems based on conditional probabilities (hayes & follette, 1993). also, to assist in collecting and organizing functional assessment information, researchers have constructed rating scales such as the motivation assessment scale (durand, 1990). despite these efforts to simplify data synthesis and the increased interest in preintervention assessment of function, there has not been a significant increase in its use in the research. haynes and o'brien (1990) showed that only 20% of 156 intervention studies for the years 1985 to 1988 in major behavior analysis journals assessed functional relationships prior to conducting interventions. they further indicated that intervention decisions were based primarily on a topographical model of psychopathology. blakeslee, sugai, and gruba (1994) reviewed single-subject treatment research in several journals from 1986 to 1992 and found only 27% of the 130 studies included some form of functional assessment. they showed an upward trend in the number of articles published with functional assessment from 1986 to 1990 and a downward trend from 1991 to 1992. presumably, with the inclusion of functional behavioral assessment in p.l. 105-17 interest will increase. one can speculate about the reasons for the lack of application of this potentially powerful tool. despite the above efforts, the available methods of data synthesis and interpretation (e.g., haynes & o'brien, 1990) are still complicated and time consuming. also, the methods of data collection (e.g., experimental manipulation) recommended in the literature consume substantial resources. haynes current issues in education vol. 1 no. 5 (1998) listed three limitations that contribute to the lack of proliferation of functional analytic practices. first, there are no clear procedures for selecting the best assessment method for an individual client. second, better methods of integrating data have yet to be developed. finally, the contribution of the variance in decision making and cost effectiveness of functional assessment procedures have yet to be demonstrated. what may work better for school-based functional behavioral assessment is a multimodal, problem-solving approach in a child study team or multidisciplinary team format. using the provided documentation, which is designed to guide a team through the process of fba and intervention planning as well as keep the team on track, school teams should experience successful intervention planning in a cost-efficient manner. assumptions of a multimodal team problem-solving approach to understand childhood behavior problems one must consider multiple causes (bandura & goldman, 1995; cone, 1997; haynes & o'brien, 1990). a thorough consideration of the multiple causes of behavior requires the investigator to understand the child's behavior from multiple theoretical perspectives. to date, most of the research on functional aspects of behavior has been from a relatively strict operant perspective (dunlop et al., 1993; durand, 1990; iwata, vollmer, zarcone, & rogers, 1993). we have argued that this method is inadequate to identify the full range of causes or functions of behavior, which in turn leads to the prescription of insufficient or inappropriate interventions. for example, an operant analysis of a child's disruptive classroom behavior will lead to interventions targeting antecedents and consequences in the immediate classroom. however, if a family systems perspective also is considered, interventions may include utilizing the school social worker to make contact with the family and recommend family services in addition to classroom interventions. it is not always the case that the antecedents and consequences that are bound temporally to behaviors also are bound functionally to those behaviors. we refer to the consideration of multiple causes from multiple theoretical perspectives as multimodal. consideration should not only be given to multiple theories for the functions of behavior, but also to multiple theories for intervening or treating the problem. that is, the functions of behavior can be linked to multiple, simultaneous interventions designed to treat the "whole" person. the proposed method of functional behavioral assessment is expected to be conducted in school-based, problem-solving or multidisciplinary teams. there are several strengths to a team problemsolving approach to fba. first, in schools, the collective efforts of teachers, administrators, psychologists, social workers, counselors, and parents represent a cadre of problem-solvers, brought together to meet the challenge of synthesizing information and choosing interventions (phillips, mccullough, nelson, & walker, 1992). second, many schools already use some form of child study teaming. third, team problem-solving is considered best practice by the national association of school psychologists (ross, 1995; shaw & swerdik, 1995) because of its strength in solving complex problems. finally, p.l. 105-17 requires that the individualized education program (iep) team be convened to conduct a mandated functional behavioral assessment. although child study teams are already in place in most school districts, many school teams have difficulty staying focused, talking only about the child at hand, and reaching productive solutions (shaw & swerdik, 1995). the multimodal method of fba, while designed to simplify the integration and interpretation of data, has the secondary effect of guiding the child study team and keeping members focused on the task. our experience indicates that child study meetings in which this approach is used tend to be briefer, more goal-directed, and more productive. further, functional behavioral assessment as conducted within schools will be an iterative process for each child (the mandated review process for subsequent transgressions) as well as become an iterative process for child study teams. with time and effort teams will adopt an increasing range of interventions with which they are comfortable. to encourage this evolution, there must be a commitment by the team to identify interventions that have been shown valid for a specific cause, implement treatments with integrity, and critically evaluate outcomes. it is interesting to consider the impact of a multimodal approach to fba on school service delivery. currently there is an emphasis in the literature on including various health, social welfare, and law enforcement services, known as wraparound services, on school campuses (clarke, schaefer, burchard, & welkowitz, 1992; eber & nelson, 1997; eber, osuch & redditt, 1996). multimodal fba logically leads team members to consider referrals and interventions that utilize such wraparound services. as urban schools proceed to develop wraparound models of service delivery, our proposed method of fba may become a useful step in selecting and referring students to the proper service. anticipating the inclusion of wraparound services in schools and given the complexity of data functional behavioral assessment: the link between problem behavior and effective intervention in schools 7 synthesis, the composition of child study teams conducting fba should be broadened. p.l. 105-17 indicates a teacher, a special education teacher, parents, a person qualified to interpret test data, an administrator capable of allocating funds, and, whenever appropriate, the child constitute a multidisciplinary team (individuals with disabilities education act of 1997). in addition to those required, it may be appropriate to include community members, law enforcement personnel, health care professionals, clergy, and state agency representatives. by targeting more aspects of a child's life, interventions will be more effective and will generalize beyond the classroom. a major challenge to educational teams embarking on the enterprise of fba is synthesizing assessment information and selecting among treatment alternatives. assimilation and integration of the multiple causes of childhood behavior require a high level of expertise and insight into the full range of potential functions of children's behavior. a straightforward solution to this problem is to provide a roadmap for guiding the school child study team. to organize this potentially complex experience, we developed a stepwise procedure to guide school teams through the process of fba. although more linear than procedures recommended by others (e.g., haynes & o'brien, 1990; nezu et. al., 1997), this method assumes parallel rather than serial relationships between functions and interventions. that is, a single function may require more than one intervention, yet a single intervention may address more that one function simultaneously. for example, a group counseling intervention may address familial and emotional causes of behavior; similarly, a selfmonitoring behavioral intervention may address the cognitive aspects of the emotional cause and antecedent conditions related to the topography of the behavior in the classroom. thus, each counseling and behavioral intervention addresses multiple causes and the single cause of emotional discomfort is treated with multiple interventions. an approach to functional behavioral assessment the steps in conducting an fba and developing subsequent interventions are similar to team problem-solving approaches described by others (cosden & semmel, 1992; zins & erchul, 1995). first, the team determines what data to collect. this determination is based on the team's consensus regarding those behaviors that are most disruptive to the learning environment. next, the team describes the behavior based on assessment information. this description is free of judgment regarding the purpose or motive of the child. rather, the disruptive behavior is described with a minimum of inference, noting the setting, frequency, intensity, and duration of the behavior. after describing the behavior, the team determines the functions of the behavior, systematically generating hypotheses about the multiple causes of the behavior. then the team develops an intervention plan, selecting interventions with demonstrated treatment validity. after this, the plan is implemented correctly; that is, with treatment integrity. finally, the entire intervention plan is critically evaluated and modified as needed. this process is facilitated using the forms included with this article. [links to downloads of adobe acrobat reader deleted. figures can be found in a separate document using this link: http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/ 1614/656 ] determining what assessment data to collect is the first step. figure 1 shows some of the types of data that can be collected including observation, student interview, teacher interview, parent interview, rating scales, and normative testing. each type of data considered should be noted on the form. not all assessment methods are necessary for all students. a case manager should be assigned to each child in which fba is being conducted and that person should be responsible for determining what data to collect and who should collect it. this list of potential sources of data is somewhat different from those recommended in a strictly behavioral approach to data collection, which typically includes gathering information from people who know the child, collecting direct observation data, and conducting controlled manipulations of antecedents and consequences (flannery et al., 1995). the present approach includes indirect assessment of proximal and distal causes through student interviewing and formal testing and de-emphasizes the role of experimental manipulation. simplifying assessment has been addressed by iwata (1994), indicating that "nonexperimental methodologies have sufficient reliability and validity to be valuable most of the time" (p. 415). with respect to formal observation, the people with first hand experience with the child may already have valuable direct observation information (sarfan & sarfan, 1996). in most cases it is indicated to augment teacher observation with more structured approaches. this, however, is not always absolutely necessary. as iwata (1994) stated, "many of us have found that parents, teachers, and other caregivers sometimes can describe the functional characteristics of a client's behavior problem with uncanny accuracy" (p. 414). figure 1 shows the first page of the fba, entitled "description." the data reported in this section are similar to most behavioral models of describing problem behavior. in addition to the http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1614/656 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1614/656 current issues in education vol. 1 no. 5 typical topographical description of behavior, the team describes previous interventions and the educational impact of the problem behavior. identifying previous interventions is important for several reasons. first, in most cases the team should not rush to conduct an fba and develop intervention plans before less formal attempts to modify the behavior have been attempted unless, of course, an fba is mandated by law. second, one should not repeat failed interventions. at the least, one should significantly modify and correct whatever made previous interventions fail. finally, if there is an intervention already implemented that is having some success it should be continued. typically, interventions that are implemented prior to the fba meeting are implemented by teachers on their own in the classroom (sarfan & sarfan, 1996). educational impact is included on the form because p.l. 105-17 states that educators must consider fba when a problem behavior impedes a child's learning or that of others; therefore, the educational impact must be determined. typically, it is easy to link the disruptive behavior to decreased time on academic assignments simply by documenting the amount of administrator time spent managing the behavior and examination of the student's grades. in cases where there are multiple problem behaviors that appear functionally distinct from each other the team should conduct an fba for each behavior. team members should keep in mind that behaviors often cluster, and avoid the temptation to separate behaviors that serve the same function. it can be seen in this simple example that repeatedly walking to the pencil sharpener and asking to use the restroom are elements of off-task behavior, with a common function such as math avoidance. in cases of multiple distinct behaviors there still should only be one behavior intervention plan (bip), because even though the behaviors are distinct there may be some interventions that affect the functions of more than one problem behavior. figures 4, 5, and 6 present an example of the current approach to fba and behavior intervention planning. figure 4 exemplifies the outcome of the behavioral description phase for an fba. at this point, the team must consider the functions of the behavior described. the team should refer to haynes and o'brien's (1990) definition of functional analysis provided above to activate the group process and focus on the salient aspects of potential causes. figure 2 shows the second page of the fba, entitled "function." there are at least eight different categories of functions that the team should consider. this list obviously is not exhaustive, but represents a manageable set of potential functions from a variety of theoretical positions. with each function there are descriptors to help guide the team's thinking. the areas to consider are affective regulation/emotional reactivity, cognitive distortion, reinforcement, modeling, family issues, physiological/constitutional, communicate need, and curriculum/instruction. fully understanding these areas will require team members to have different areas of expertise. it is expected that the school psychologist and counselor will have expertise in the more clinical functions; social workers and state agency representatives will have expertise regarding systemic functions; and teachers and administrators will have expertise in educational functions (cosden & semmel, 1992). as school teams become more cohesive and experienced, each team member will contribute more to all areas of potential function. figure 5 exemplifies a completed examination of potential functions of the problem behavior described in figure 4. it should be noted that hypotheses about function are probabilistic and may require modification after interventions have been tried (cone, 1997; haynes & o'brien, 1990). next, the team must determine a plan of action based on the fba. public law 105-17 refers to this plan of action as a behavior intervention plan. figure 3 depicts the behavior intervention plan form used in the current approach. the notable difference of this form from other treatment planning forms is the lack of horizontal lines keeping the intervention for a specific goal separate from all other goals and interventions. this is because the goals and interventions are related to each other in a parallel manner as described above. this concept continues in the outcome evaluation section of the form and will be described later. based on the description of behavior and the description of functions (figures 1 and 2) the expected outcomes and goals of the plan are itemized. next, based on the description of the functions of behavior (figure 2) the specific interventions are delineated. finally, the person responsible for each intervention and the intervention review date are identified. figure 6 shows an example of a bip based on the problem described in figure 4. treatment validity is imperative for successful intervention. this means that a selected treatment is logically related to the functions of the behavior and results in achievement of expected outcomes (reshley & ysseldyke, 1995). the professional literature can be consulted to determine if treatments have demonstrated efficacy for the specific function. dunlop and childs (1996) conducted a comprehensive review of the literature on treatments selected for students with emotional disabilities based on functional analysis. it was concluded that skills training and consequence-based functional behavioral assessment: the link between problem behavior and effective intervention in schools 9 interventions were most frequently employed. selfmanagement and antecedent-based interventions were the second most commonly applied with peer mediation being the least frequently used. results also indicated a downward trend in antecedentand consequence-based interventions and an upward trend in skills training and self-management interventions from the periods 1980-1986 to 19871993. this is consistent with our recommendation that educators should transcend the purely behavioral model that has become synonymous with fba. it should be pointed out that although dunlop and child's (1996) results are promising, frequency of intervention use does not necessarily provide evidence for treatment validity. rather, research must show the actual efficacy of a treatment for a specific cause. next, each team member responsible for a specific treatment must initiate his or her respective portion of the plan. treatment integrity is a highly important consideration during this phase of the process (watson, sterling, & mcdade, 1997). treatment integrity is the degree to which an intervention is conducted correctly and consistently. to prevent treatment integrity problems team members should ask themselves if the prescribed intervention is reasonable to implement given the setting and situation. treatment integrity also should be considered when examining the outcomes of interventions. that is, if an intervention failed, one should ask if it was implemented correctly and consistently. treatment integrity can be increased in a number of ways. more experienced members of the team should offer support and training the first time a less experienced teacher attempts to implement a recommendation. working side-by-side with the teacher can be helpful (watson et al., 1997). it is important to treatment integrity to collect data other than teacher report while the intervention is being implemented. independent data may reduce unintentional bias on the part of a teacher and it provides an excellent opportunity to conduct a brief structured behavioral observation in situ. the final phase is outcome evaluation and maintenance, discontinuance, or modification of the intervention plan. these decisions are based on data. there are several considerations about data collection in the current approach in an effort to strike a balance between reliability, validity, and practicality. first, child study teams should review only necessary and sufficient information to address the effectiveness of interventions. experimental data collection methods with graphing in reversal designs are typically not reasonable in applied school settings. this is not to say time-series studies and reversal designs should not be applied in research to validate treatments. rather, we assume that laborious data collection designs with time consuming record keeping tax the resources of the educators, decreasing their availability for what they see as their primary role-teaching. second, child study teams should spend time on interventions rather than gather more assessment data than necessary. that is, if a treatment is working, it should continue. third, review existing data such as permanent products, grade books, standardized testing, amount of work turned in, discipline reports, and teacher and parent reports before resorting to more time consuming data collection methods. finally, conduct structured behavioral observations and student interviews as the first type of data collection when more convenient methods have proven fruitless. in the current model, when the child study team reconvenes and addresses outcomes, they do so in a holistic, rather than linear, fashion. figure 3 depicts the place where outcome notes are taken and figure 6 shows an example of outcomes based on the problem described in figure 4. the plan can be considered as a whole or different goals can be examined individually. this method is necessary because of the parallel process used to link goals and interventions. for example, an intervention may be working for goal 1 and not for goal 2. if the intervention was linearly linked to goal 2 and the intervention was discontinued because it did not work for that goal, the benefits to goal 1 would be lost. also, it is assumed that the team will take narrative notes in the outcome evaluation section to make the bip more useful to readers who are not part of the team. often the informal comments about an intervention clarify how and why the intervention is or is not working. conclusion we have reviewed the literature on functional analysis and how it relates to the legal mandate for functional behavioral assessment in schools. it was determined that fba is a more general process than functional analysis and should include the examination of proximal, distal, physiological, and intrapsychic causes of problem behavior. after reviewing the empirical research on extant methods of fba and addressing some of their drawbacks we have presented a multimodal, team problem-solving approach for conducting fba and developing behavior intervention plans in schools. the strengths of this approach are that it provides a procedure to identify the potential functions of a student's behavior and to prescribe interventions from a variety of theoretical orientations. this approach adopts a relatively integrated view of the relationships among behavior, functions, goals and interventions while remaining mindful of the team current issues in education vol. 1 no. 5 process used in schools. finally, data collection and outcome evaluation are defined in ways that can readily be adopted in school settings. the primary criticism of this approach that we have heard from educators is that it is more "clinical" than "educational." if "educational" means behavioral and limited to classroom variables then we would have to agree. the reality is, however, that the types of behavior problems children are bringing to school will not be solved solely with antecedentor 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(1997). demythifying behavioral consultation. school psychology review, 26, 467-474. zins, j. e., & erchul, w. p. (1995). best practices in school consultation. in a. thomas & j. grimes (eds.), best practices in school psychology (3rd ed., pp. 153-159). washington, dc: national association of school psychologists. . . functional behavioral assessment: the link between problem behavior and effective intervention in schools 13 1998 article citation miller, j. a., tansy, m., & hughes, t. l. (1998, november 18). functional behavioral assessment: the link between problem behavior and effective intervention in schools. current issues in education [on-line], 1(5). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume1/number5/. author notes jeffrey a. miller duquesne university millerjeff@duq.edu jeffrey a. miller, ph.d., is an assistant professor of school psychology with duquesne university. his research interests include functional behavioral assessment and interactional factors that contribute to the development of internalizing emotional disorders in children. michael tansy gilbert school district mtansy@aol.com michael tansy, ph.d., is a practicing school psychologist and district consultant with the gilbert school district, gilbert, az. his research interests include functional behavioral assessment and the treatment of emotional problems in school-aged children. tammy l. hughes arizona state university tammy.hughes@asu.edu tammy l. hughes, m.a., is a doctoral candidate in school psychology with arizona state university. her research interests include prediction of violence in school-aged children and diagnosis of learning difficulties in preschool children. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 24, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation miller, j. a., tansy, m., & hughes, t. l. (1998). functional behavioral assessment: the link between problem behavior and effective intervention in schools. current issues in education, 1(5). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1614 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/1998,%20vol%201,%20%231-8/number5/index.html mailto:millerjeff@duq.edu mailto:mtansy@aol.com mailto:tammy.hughes@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1614 current issues in education vol. 1 no. 5 cie template volume 19, issue 1 march 14, 2016 issn 1099-839x examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students chanut poondej and thanita lerdpornkulrat srinakharinwirot university, thailand abstract: in the literature on motivational goals, there has been an increase on the interest of a concept of the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework. however, evidences supporting the reliability and validity of this framework are still needed. the study reported in this paper was to validate the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale by conducting a confirmatory factor analysis. items in this framework were intended to measure student’s motivational orientations toward learning achievement. participants were 518 undergraduate students in thailand. descriptive statistics and reliability estimates were reported. the results revealed the validity of the four-factor structure of achievement goal orientation scale. this study contribute the empirical evidences and cross-cultural validity of the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework (mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goal orientations). keywords: goal orientation, confirmatory factor analysis, construct validity, 2 × 2 achievement goal framework, thailand apa-style citation: poondej, c., & lerdpornkulrat, t. (2016). examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students. current issues in education, 19(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1418 accepted: november 12th, 2015 over the past two decades, achievement goal theory has been evidently used to understand how individuals approach and engage in academic activities related to achievement situations. initially, achievement goal theory has used a dichotomous framework in which mastery and performance goals represented contrasting orientations. a mastery goal orientation has been theorized to correlate with a focus on mastering tasks, developing competence, gaining knowledge, and intrinsic interests of learning whereas a performance goal orientation has been defined as a focus on demonstrating competence, outperforming others, avoiding incompetent situations, and the extrinsic values. performance goal orientations were considered as maladaptive when compared with mastery goal orientations (ames & archer, 1988; dweck & current issues in education, 19(1) 1 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1418 poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students leggett, 1988; elliot, 2005; nicholls, 1984). however, there have been some evidences to support that performance goals are beneficial in some situations (harackiewicz, barron, & elliot, 1998; pintrich & garcia, 1991). theorists suggested to replace the traditional masteryperformance goal framework with the trichotomous framework by dichotomizing the performance goal into approach and avoidance dimensions. the approach-performance dimension refers to the desire to demonstrate ability and outperform others, whereas the avoidance-performance refers to the desire to avoid failure, and not being inferior to others (elliot & church, 1997; elliot & harackiewicz, 1996). more recently, according to a further revision of achievement goal theory, elliot and mcgregor (2001) proposed a 2 × 2 achievement goal framework by applying an avoidance dimension to a mastery goal. therefore, this framework consisted of four goals: masteryapproach; mastery-avoidance; performance-approach; and performance-avoidance. in the mastery-avoidance goal construct, competence was defined as “the absolute requirements of the task or one’s own pattern of attainment” and incompetence was defined as “the focal point of regulatory attention” (elliot & mcgregor, 2001, p. 502). students with mastery avoidance goal orientation focus mainly on avoiding a failure to develop competence, avoiding misunderstanding, and avoiding not to learn or master the task. however, despite the four-factor conceptualization (2 × 2 achievement goal framework) was introduced by elliot and mcgregor (2001) over the past decade, there still have been much more studies applying a trichotomous model than a 2 × 2 model (van yperen, elliot, & anseel, 2009). one problem mentioned in the literature on applying the 2 × 2 achievement goal model to the study was that some constructs of this framework were still quite difficult for participants to understand and interpret when they were responding to the items of self-reported questionnaires. in particular, the concept of mastery-avoidance goal has been still under debate and needed to be more clarified (ciani & sheldon, 2010; marzouq, carr & slade, 2011, as cited in carr & marzouq, 2012). in quite a few countries, this 2 × 2 achievement goal model has been validated and used, nevertheless, most studies were done in the western countries (e.g., baranik, barron, & finney, 2007; conroy, elliot, & hofer, 2003; elliot & mcgregor, 2001; wang, biddle, & elliot, 2007). therefore, emerging research studies conducted in other parts of the world on the construct validity of 2 × 2 achievement goal model can help obtaining a full understanding of the crosscultural use of achievement goal orientation theory. therefore, the purpose of this study was to establish the construct validity of the thai version of 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale by using a confirmatory factor analysis technique. we hypothesized that our data will support the construct validity of the four-factor structure of achievement goal orientation scale. methods participants our samples were 518 volunteer undergraduate students in a university in thailand. we employed convenience sampling method. more than 98% of the responses to the survey were complete. female students comprised the majority of the final sample of our analysis (392 participants or 75.7%). in our sample, there were 42.5% of social science, 17.4% of humanities, 5.2% of health science, 17.6% of economics, and 17.4% of nursing students. instruments the first section of the survey asked for general information (e.g. gender, faculty, major, gpa). the second section of the survey measured students’ achievement goal orientation current issues in education, 19(1) 2 poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students (consisted of 15 items of the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework). the achievement goal orientation items were composed to reflect four goal orientations: mastery-approach (e.g., ‘i feel satisfied when i learn new things in my class’); performance-approach (e.g., ‘the most important thing is that other people should think of me as excellent’); performance-avoidance (e.g., ‘i avoid asking questions because i don’t want to look stupid’); and mastery-avoidance goal orientation (e.g., ‘i worry that i may not learn all that i possibly could in this class’). items in the thai version measuring mastery-approach, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance were brought from prior research completed in thailand (poondej, koul, & sujivorakul, 2013) whereas mastery-avoidance items were adopted from elliot and mcgregor (2001)’s study. we employed a standard research technique of translation/back-translation (see behling & law, 2000) to develop our mastery-avoidance items which were initially in english language. two bilingual researchers translated each item into thai and reviewed them for the consensus then translated each item back into english to check whether they measured the same ideas. finally, english and thai versions were found to be conceptually equivalent. we used a 5-point (likerttype) response scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5), which larger values indicated a stronger endorsement of goal orientations. data analysis to determine the internal consistency reliability of the instrument, the coefficient cronbach’s alpha was performed. alpha coefficient values were above the acceptable threshold of .60 (george & mallery, 2002; kline, 2000). we tested the achievement goal orientation scale by using a confirmatory factor analysis (cfa). maximum likelihood estimation methods were derived from covariance matrices. model fit was evaluated using the following indices: 1) the chi-square (c2); 2) comparative fit index (cfi); 3) goodness of fit index (gfi); 4) normed fit index (nfi); and 5) rooting mean squared error of approximation (rmsea). c2, the original fit index for structural models, is a test of differences between the observed and expected covariance matrices. non-significant value indicates that the hypothesized model fits the data. however, one problem with the chi-square test of model fitting is that it is sensitive to the normality of the data and to the sample size; it very readily reaches significance with large sample size (barrett, 2007; bollen, 2005; tinsley & brown, 2000). due to these drawbacks of chi-square test, therefore, we considered alternative fit statistics which were rmsea, cfi, gfi, and nfi. the cutoff criteria for these fit indices recommended by baumgartner and homburg (1996), and hu and bentler (1999) should fall between 0 and 1. the values which are greater than .90 (for cfi and gfi), and .95 (for nfi) are considered as a good fit between the model and the data. good fit index of rmsea value should be at or less than .06. moreover, ratio of the change in chi-square to degrees of freedom (c2/df) should be at or less than 2 or 3. results table 1 shows results of descriptive statistics, means and standard deviations of the measure of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation model. the reliability values (cronbach’s alpha) for the measurement of ‘mastery-approach’, ‘mastery-avoidance’, ‘performanceapproach’, and ‘performance-avoidance’ as sub-scales for the model were .66, .85, .84, and .76, respectively. after using the cfa technique with the observed data, the c2 value was significant in a model (c2 = 281.258, df = 84, p < .01, c2/df = 3.35). although this model had a statistically significant c2 value, it was not surprising because the c2 is sensitive to the normality of the data and to the large sample size (barrett, 2007). other fit indices showed the acceptance of the model current issues in education, 19(1) 3 poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students (cfi = .927, gfi = .932, nfi = .900, rmsea = .067). factor loadings of the items and intercorrelations among the four achievement goals are presented in figure 1. table 1 descriptive statistics for outcome measures males (n=126) females (n=392) total (n=518) m sd m sd m sd mastery-approach 3.88 .58 3.82 .55 3.84 .55 mastery-avoidance 3.47 .90 3.57 .80 3.55 .82 performance-approach 3.42 .82 3.31 .76 3.34 .78 performance-avoidance 2.70 .97 2.45 .85 2.51 .88 figure 1. confirmatory factor analysis of the achievement goal model. current issues in education, 19(1) 4 poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students discussion and conclusion although the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework has been introduced in the literature for over past two decades, most studies still used a trichotomous achievement goal model. one of the reasons is that there are not many studies on the construct validity and reliability of the 2 × 2 scale. this study was proposed to contribute to the body of knowledge on the validity of achievement goal orientation based on the 2 × 2 framework by testing constructs’ reliability, and further evaluating the construct validity for the cross-cultural validity in the non-western context. two notable findings of the current study supported and/or extended prior researches. firstly, as expected, the results from confirmatory factor analysis showing an adequate fit with the data support the original hypothesis of the four-factor structure (mastery-approach, masteryavoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance). our results are entirely consistent with prior researches measuring goal orientation using four-factor conceptualization in the western countries (e.g., baranik et al., 2007; radosevich, allyn, & yun, 2007). thus, the emergence of the four-factor model of the achievement goal orientation indicated that undergraduate students in our sample understood our accurate explanations of the behaviors of a character pursuing these four types of achievement goals. in particular, we included the masteryavoidance goal orientation in this study when most prior studies in the achievement goal literature have not included this construct in the measurement of the goal orientation. secondly, the internal consistency values indicated the reliability of this instrument with the smallest value of .66 and the largest value of .85. hence, our findings indicate the good evidence for employing the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework to the future studies on achievement goal orientations. especially, mastery-avoidance construct can be added to the achievement goal orientation survey. however, the present study contains some limitations. in cfa, although most fit indices of the four-factor model of achievement goal orientation indicated an acceptable model fit with the data, but these values did not reach the level of a good fit which should be above .95 for cfi, gfi, and nfi, and less than .05 for rmsea (see baumgartner & homburg, 1996; hu & bentler, 1999). secondly, as the limitation of using self-reported questionnaires, the results may not reflect the truth of participant’s manner. the results may be exaggerated because participants might be too embarrassed to reveal private details. in conclusion, the present research provides further evidences that support the independence of the four achievement goal constructs (2 × 2 framework), and also shows empirical evidences that demonstrate the validity and reliability of achievement goal orientation scale of the thai version. we also again encourage researchers to use this 2 × 2 framework for the future achievement goal orientation studies. furthermore, future research ought to examine the validity of this instrument in other contexts as well (e.g., high-school contexts). references ames, c., & archer, j. 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(2013). achievement goal orientation and the critical thinking disposition of college students across academic programmes. journal of further and higher education, 37(4), 504-518. doi: 10.1080/0309877x.2011.645463 radosevich, d. j., allyn, m. r., & yun, s. (2007). goal orientation and goal setting: predicting performance by integrating four-factor goal orientation theory with goal setting processes. seoul journal of business, 13(1), 21-47. tinsley, h. e. a., & brown, s. d. (2000). handbook of applied multivariate statistics and mathematical modeling. san diego, ca: academic press. van yperen, n. w., elliot, a. j., & anseel, f. (2009). the influence of mastery-avoidance goals on performance improvement. european journal of social psychology, 39(6), 932-943. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.590 wang, c. k. j., biddle, s. j. h., & elliot, a. j. (2007). the 2×2 achievement goal framework in a physical education context. psychology of sport and exercise, 8(2), 147-168. doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2005.08.012 current issues in education, 19(1) 7 poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students author notes chanut poondej srinakharinwirot university 114 sukhumvit 23, bangkok 10110, thailand chanutp@g.swu.ac.th chanut poondej is a lecturer in innovative learning center, srinakharinwirot university, thailand. his research has focused on innovative learning, online teaching and learning, critical thinking, student motivation, learning approach, classroom learning environment, and general education. thanita lerdpornkulrat srinakharinwirot university 114 sukhumvit 23, bangkok 10110, thailand thanital@g.swu.ac.th thanita lerdpornkulrat is a lecturer in innovative learning center, srinakharinwirot university, thailand. her research has focused on student motivation, student engagement, classroom learning environment, innovative learning, stem education, and general education. acknowledgments: we would like to thank assoc. prof. dr. ravinder koul from penn state university for his timely advice and help which was a constant source of inspiration. current issues in education, 19(1) 8 mailto:chanutp@g.swu.ac.th mailto:thanital@g.swu.ac.th poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students volume 19, issue 1 march 14, 2016 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh bethany richmond lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers current issues in education, 19(1) 9 cie template volume 18, number 2 august 3, 2015 issn 1099-839x experiences of learning to teach physical education: navigating tensions shannon d. kell mount royal university, calgary this narrative inquiry explored two pre-service teachers’ experiences of learning to teach physical education during a 16-week internship. a research puzzle was named: how learning to teach is experienced by pre-service teachers and how they dwell in spaces of tension while learning to teach physical education. two pre-service teachers in secondary urban school settings were part of the study over a six month period before, during, and after the 16-week fall semester internship. field texts included audio recorded and transcribed group and one-on-one conversations, field notes from school visits and teaching observations, journal writing and reflections, artifacts from the participants’ internship, and text message conversations. narrative accounts that inquired into their experiences were co-composed with each participant. three threads of narrative connection reverberated, moving toward new wonderings related to the research puzzle: shifting stories to live by, teaching their way, and working alongside teachers. questions arose about how we might be able to use this inquiry to reflect on our own experiences and practices and how narrative inquiry may be a valuable methodological approach for physical education teacher education. keywords: teacher education, physical education, socialization, field experience, identity, teaching, narrative inquiry, curriculum this paper discusses a narrative inquiry study that focused on how two pre-service teachers, ali and lauren, experienced learning to teach physical education during a 16-week internship in two urban secondary schools. the research puzzle named at the outset of the study was ‘what tensions do pre-service teachers experience in various contexts, at different times throughout the 16 weeks, and while working alongside many people in a landscape of education?’ further questions and wonderings surrounding the research puzzle emerged throughout the study such as how pre-service teachers experienced relational shifts as the semester moved forward, and how pre-service teachers might dwell in spaces of tension while learning to teach. each participant in the study experienced learning to teach physical education uniquely. however, they also shared some similar experiences which can be termed threads of narrative connection (clandinin et al., 2006). three threads of narrative connection that emerged through the participants’ experiences while looking across their stories were a) shifting stories to live by, b) teaching their way, and c) working alongside teachers. issues and tensions surrounding physical education teacher socialization, identity development, and mentoring are discussed in relation to the findings of the study. such a discussion is significant because literature on learning to teach physical education is limited, especially in relational ways that narrative inquiry brings forth. tensions in learning to teach physical education in the field of education there exist many examples of tensions with regard to teaching and learning, and each is unique. quite easily, however, tensions can be regarded as negative rather than spaces of potential growth. as teachers, we might ask ourselves how to get 1 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 rid of tension; we may wish to live a discourse of ‘effective teaching’ which is smooth and without disruptions. cook (2009) used the term productive equilibrium to describe the inevitable state of imbalance experienced by a pre-service teacher entering a school as they navigate new relationships and contexts within the workplace. the following subsection is a brief overview of occupational socialization theory (lortie, 1975) and literature surrounding potential tensionality (aoki, 1986, 1991, 2004) that pre-service teachers may face as they enter the landscape of schools. occupational socialization theory (ost). occupational socialization is a process by which we learn roles, expectations, and values that are associated with a particular occupation (stroot & williamson, 1993). early experiences in schools can greatly influence a pre-service teacher’s beliefs by challenging or reinforcing their understandings of what it means to be a teacher (pike & fletcher, 2014). using a framework developed by lortie (1975), three kind of socialization that teachers face can be identified. acculturation includes actions, beliefs, and value systems that are learned from birth that create and reinforce ideologies about professional conduct. professional socialization is the process through which we learn and maintain values deemed ideal for teaching physical education. organizational socialization is the process that serves to maintain traditional skills or routines that are valued by a school, organization, or institution and may work against change in order to maintain traditions. this framework is useful when considering how socialization influences pre-service teachers while learning to teach. mentoring and ost. in relation to ost, in particular professional and organizational socialization, the voices of teachers in the field are critical because of the influence that they may have with pre-service teachers during internships and the first years of teaching. mccaughtry, cothran, kulinna, martin, and faust (2005) explain that “... teachers who receive mentoring are more likely to stay in teaching, be satisfied, hold better teaching attitudes, and implement more effective instructional practices and long term planning” (p. 328). however, cooperating teachers are often chosen on the “...assumption that anyone who has taught can effectively teach teachers” (butler & cuenca, 2012, p. 297) which may not always be the case. mentoring itself is a socially constructed process and, without clear communication between teacher education programs and the field regarding expectations and philosophies, can be viewed as a sink-or-swim approach by cooperating teachers. mentoring by, including communication between, teacher educators, teachers in the field, and colleagues can be an essential part of the growth and development of preservice teachers, especially in the beginning years of the profession (griffin & ayers, 2005; mccaughtry et al., 2005; patton et al., 2005; stroot & williamson, 1993). identity development and ost. another example of tensionality that may be experienced by preservice teachers, and directly related to ost, is the shifting and always changing nature of a developing professional identity. identity is not determined by a single factor; our lives are made up of many multiple and sometimes conflicting discourses (richie & wilson, 2000). this socialization process, referred to earlier as acculturation, is a process that constructs and reproduces what society believes ‘a teacher’ to be and, as a result, pre-service teachers already have begun to shape their stories to live by based on the discourses of public education. a narrative view of identity believes that through experience and the telling and reliving of experiences, we shape our identities, our stories to live by (clandinin, 2013). knowledge is intertwined with identity. a narrative way of thinking about identity takes into consideration the interconnected and interrelatedness of past and present, and personal practical knowledge, and the landscape(s) on which a person lives and works. when pre-service teachers enter schools in a new role as educators, they must navigate the landscape of education from a new perspective and may find themselves in spaces of tension in relation to their stories to live by. teaching of physical education and ost. another example of tensionality and socialization that pre-service teachers may face while learning to teach is the concept of curriculum. curriculum can be formal or informal, written or unspoken, traditional or innovative. as pre-service teachers learn to plan and implement meaningful, relevant, and unique learning opportunities for students, spaces of tension may arise when they realize that not all students are alike and not all situations call for the same action. their own voice and stories to live by must be somehow recognized in their planning and day to day interactions. as well, often in a role of being evaluated, pre-service teachers must be mindful of the landscape of the school and beliefs or orientation of cooperating teachers. this concept can be discussed in terms of curriculum-as-plan and curriculum-as-lived (aoki, 1986, 1991, 2004) in relation to the tension(s) that pre-service teachers might experience while attempting to find a balance between both. teacher agency and ost. teachers have unique life experiences, histories, autobiographies, and stories to live by. students also enter into the classroom world with unique backgrounds, home lives, previous experiences, and voices. curtner-smith, hastie, and kinchin (2008) acknowledged that students can be a powerful socializing force on pre-service and beginning teachers. together students and teachers create and live out exceptionally distinct and varying versions of what physical education looks like. it is important to remember that pre-service teachers have agency and are not necessarily directed uncontrollably by socializing forces. socialization is 2 experiences of learning to teach physical education: navigating tensions dialectic, a two-way process where pre-service teachers may actively try to shape the schools, programs, and universities that are continually shaping them. the inquiry this study was a narrative inquiry into experiences of two pre-service teachers, ali and lauren, during a 16-week internship semester in relation to aoki’s (1986, 1991, 2004) notion of tensionality and dwelling productively in spaces of tension. narrative inquiry – a brief overview narrative inquiry is a way of living alongside participants and living with stories (clandinin & connelly, 2000). sharing and learning from each others’ experiences allows educators to hold up a mirror, see new angles, and think about perceptions and practices. through conversation and living alongside each other, we may come to understand each other while also asking more questions. this study followed clandinin and connelly’s (2000) understanding of narrative inquiry. while living alongside participants and sharing experiences, the researcher focuses on the three dimensional space: (a) temporality; (b) personal and social, and; (c) place. in narrative inquiry work, the researcher positions themselves and their stories to live by in the midst of the inquiry, which means that they already had their own experiences about a topic which most likely led them to be interested in the topic to begin with. living in spaces of tension (aoki, 1986, 1991, 2004) became a focal point for the study because i had experienced many tensions while learning to and continuing to teach physical education. learning to find productivity in tension may be difficult for most teachers especially student teachers and beginning teachers. this study refers to various tensions that ali and lauren experienced and how they did/not live productively within these spaces of tension. terminology. narrative inquiry makes use of unique conceptions that may not be familiar. for example, a narrative inquirer will name a research puzzle (clandinin & connelly, 2000) or set of wonderings that frame the study. as well, stories to live by is a narrative conceptualization for professional identity that has been developed over time by connelly and clandinin (1999) as the link between knowledge, context, and identity. stories to live by “...make evident the personal, social, and political contexts that shaped our understandings” (clandinin, 2013, p. 55). a narrative way of thinking about identity takes into consideration the interconnected and interrelatedness of past and present, a person’s practical knowledge, and the landscape(s) on which a person lives and works. these are a few common narrative inquiry conceptions or terms that are used throughout the paper. context and participants the participants in the study, ali and lauren, were two pre-service teachers who were well known to me through teaching at the university. the teacher education program involved a progressive immersion into schools over eight semesters; the seventh semester as a 16-week internship placement in a secondary school setting. ali and lauren, in my professional opinion, had challenged themselves throughout the teacher education program to dwell in space(s) of tension rather than turn their focus to teaching sport knowledge and content – planning and implementation skills that they had already learned and demonstrated. i felt that ali and lauren would successfully be able to navigate the complex landscape of their 16-week internship but would also attempt to continue questioning space(s) of tension in relation to their stories to live by. i approached lauren and ali as pre-service teachers to work alongside because of our alreadyexisting relationship and because of their questioning of curriculum in relation to their developing professional identity. as a narrative inquirer, i was aware that “...these relationships might be viewed as research contamination or criticized for the researcher studying people just like her ... yet from a relational standpoint, connections such as these offer richness and depth and allow insights that would otherwise not be possible” (craig & huber, 2007, p. 255). i believed that the already existing relationships allowed the inquiry to begin more personally than had we just met at the outset. ali. ali was a physical education major and social studies minor in the secondary education program in the faculty of education. she had grown up and currently still resided in the city in which she interned. living with her parents while completing her degree, ali also had time to help coach both outside of school (ringette) and at the school (basketball). she prided herself on her involvement and ability to build relationships with students. ali worked alongside three different cooperating teachers because she wanted to gain experience teaching a variety of grade levels and also wanted to teach in her minor subject (social studies). she worked primarily alongside kelsey in a grade nine female physical and health education class as well as a grade ten female physical education class. she also worked alongside krista for one grade co-educational eleven physical education class. for a shorter length of time she worked alongside kevin and his grade ten social studies class in order to teach in her minor subject area. ali enjoyed and worked productively alongside kelsey as a cooperating teacher but felt intimidated by and did not find ways to communicate her feelings toward krista. on many occasions she expressed that she was frustrated by her relationship with krista but did not want to share these feelings with kelsey and run the risk of 3 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 behaving unprofessionally. a shy person by nature, ali sometimes lacked the confidence to stand up for herself and, on a few occasions, agreed to things that she wished she had not. ali struggled with classroom management while in the classroom setting but felt that she had good management in the gymnasium. she was very organized and tidy, and contributed to the overall smooth function of the department by maintaining the equipment room and knowing which space she was assigned to on which day. she enjoyed building relationships with students and generally looked forward to teaching every day. lauren. lauren had moved away from where she grew up to attend the university and play hockey on the varsity team. taking less than a full course load to accommodate her hockey commitments, lauren was in her fifth year of university when she interned. living on her own and playing hockey outside of her internship commitments, lauren found she was very busy but managed her time well; she was very independent and functioned well living on her own. lauren was a physical education major and special education minor in the secondary education program in the faculty of education. during internship she worked alongside janay as her primary cooperating teacher, teaching grade nine physical education. however, because janay also held administrative responsibilities in the school, lauren was forced to spread out and work alongside two other cooperating teachers in order to gain experience with other grades and subjects. she also worked alongside krista, a teacher of four years, in a grade ten female physical education class and alongside brad, a first year teacher who was new to the school in a grade nine female physical education class. lauren also spent time in the special education classrooms around the school. lauren enjoyed working with janay and found, much to her initial surprise, that they related to each other on a few levels regardless of their age and interest differences. they shared an office space which became a productive space to ask questions and engage in dialogue. she expressed that working alongside brad often felt like she was his mentor rather than the other way around, largely due to him being a new teacher as well. sarah and lauren eventually built a very positive relationship but started out with a lot of tension around beliefs about teaching physical education. lauren was a very organized person and liked to plan ahead in case she found herself busy with hockey on occasion. she quickly built relationships with students and appeared very at ease around the school and other teachers. lauren expressed that she felt competent at school and this made up for her lack of confidence during the hockey season, which she was struggling to get through. living the inquiry ali and lauren agreed to meet at least once per month as a group and audio record (to later transcribe) the conversations. i met with them together four times informally for one to two hours at a restaurant or at homes in the evenings. both lauren and ali agreed that they enjoyed the group conversations and found it interesting to hear stories of experience of the other. in addition to meeting once per month as a group, i also met each of them one-on-one in their schools periodically so they could share their space(s), share some lessons and planning, and so i could observe their teaching experiences if they wished. i collected field texts in the form of field notes, such as voice memos following school visits, observational notes, thoughts, questions, or reflections. ali and lauren shared artifacts such as lesson plans and internship evaluation documents. in addition, they shared critical incidents from their teaching experiences. one field text that was not anticipated was in the form of text messages. we began to realize before internship even began that text messaging could be a convenient way to communicate schedules in order to plan ahead. however, text messaging emerged into a valuable field text; it became a way to keep in daily contact regarding events, experiences, emotions, and asking each other questions. lauren and ali said that when something happened at school, often their first reaction was to text message me or the group (in a group text message, all participants can contribute to the conversation). i recorded all text messages in a calendar format so that it could be recalled what had happened on which day. i also added my reflections, thoughts, and/or questions beside each conversation. ali and lauren were aware that our text messages were recorded as part of the research in order to avoid any ethical concerns. creating research texts. when the internships concluded, i began writing interim research texts using a combination of transcriptions, text messages, field notes, and artifacts. i talked to ali and lauren frequently but we needed to find a way to move farther apart; the group had become very close and spent a lot of time together during internship, but we necessarily had to spend less time together and i needed to think about the data as i read and re-read the conversations. however, discussing in more detail the co-composition of the text, the group was still able to engage in relational ways and feel part of the research. from the interim research texts, the group identified where actions/events occurred, story lines interwove, and gaps or silences were found. by “...considering all of the possible stories... or what we had lived as part of the inquiry process, [we] then chose specific stories of practice that seemed to [us] to be particularly relevant to the wonders about the experience... (burwash, 2013, p. 64). together we went 4 experiences of learning to teach physical education: navigating tensions back and forth identifying and highlighting spaces of tension for the final, co-composed narrative accounts. this back and forth “... allowed us to respond to each other’s tentative interpretations and representations in the narrative accounts...” (clandinin et al., 2010, p. 70). i wanted to be sure that before moving ahead lauren and ali agreed their respective narrative accounts were representational of their experiences. once the narrative accounts had been co-composed for each ali and lauren, thinking about experiences that were identified as having relevance to the research puzzle (burwash, 2013), i looked across the narrative accounts for threads of narrative connection. threads of narrative connection as i looked across the narrative accounts, there was no attempt to generalize the experiences of all preservice teachers but, rather, wonder about how lauren and ali’s stories of experience “...lie alongside each other or how they may bump up against each other” (burwash, 2013, p. 233). i recognized interrelationships between these resonant threads and with the research puzzle regarding aoki’s (1978, 2004) space(s) of tension. some threads of narrative connection that emerged through ali and lauren’s experiences while looking across the narrative accounts were shifting stories to live by, teaching their way, and working alongside teachers. shifting stories to live by both ali and lauren entered the school setting with particular beliefs about teaching but may not have worked with teachers who held similar beliefs. this potential difference created tension, especially at the start of the internship when this experience was surprising and new. lauren. during an early conversation with lauren, she talked about an experience from the first day of school when she had to share a space with another teacher who seemed unorganized. lauren storied herself as an organized person and said she cringed at the thought of another physical education teacher ‘just playing soccer’ on the first day of school because the teacher did not know what space was assigned to her for that day. lauren recalled that “… she was like, ‘well i don’t know, i don’t even know where i am,’ so then she says, ‘i guess i will just take the girls out for soccer,’ and comes back with two balls. i’m thinking, ‘oh my god.’ so we walk the other way into the gym and i decide to try to get started with my stuff…” (transcribed from group conversation, september 10, 2012). lauren commented that perhaps the confusion had been a result of multiple teachers sharing the same space but in a later conversation said that this had happened many times with that teacher since then. her philosophy about being a ‘good teacher,’ which meant being organized, was challenged as she worked alongside this particular teacher. as lauren worked alongside physical education teachers and learned about the school’s physical education program, she began to feel more comfortable because she said she learned what to expect from each of them. in a field note i commented that it seemed she was not going to let others’ disorganization get in the way of her own teaching professionalism and philosophy of being prepared. she attempted to live out the vision of how she wanted to teach and be perceived as an educator (september 12, 2012). as well as her outward perception, lauren was also feeling tension regarding curriculum as she became familiar with some of the resources available to her. the subject area (all the health and physical education teachers) used a common text book but lauren said, ‘…i don’t like using the tests and stuff from the textbook website because they’re not good enough. i would rather make my own quizzes or whatever that align more closely with what i have taught or what we have talked about in class” (written from school visit notes, september 21, 2012). i remember feeling proud of lauren for explaining to me her understanding of curriculum in relation to assessment. this was something we spent a lot of time on in the undergraduate course i taught and i was happy to see that lauren seemed to be able to transfer her experiences in class to her teaching in internship. i also noted that her confidence seemed to be growing since the start of the semester. in relation to her confidence and her ability to remain thoughtful about her teaching, philosophy, and identity, lauren later explained that, “…i seem to come across as more confident when i am more nervous. so i guess the students thought i was confident and strict. it worked out. when i’m nervous i am more loud and clear. more specific” (transcribed from group conversation, october 2, 2012). lauren said that she had been nervous at the start of the semester but came across as confident in front of the students. i wondered if lauren had also been living a cover story (connelly & clandinin, 1999) at the start of the semester, outwardly portraying confidence but inwardly feeling lost and nervous. i wondered if she had become more comfortable as she spent more time teaching and was able to find a productive space of tension between feeling nervous and being prepared, no longer needing a cover story. regardless of other teachers’ orientations to teaching physical education, lauren resisted and continued to demonstrate innovative responses to varying degrees of professional socialization. ali. ali also felt tension in relation to her story to live by of how teaching was ‘supposed to be.’ she said that she wanted to “... figure it out as i go... not always do things how they want me to ... or just doing what the teacher wants and not learning what works best for me” (text message, october 14, 2012). ali struggled with speaking up for how she believed a lesson should go and admitted that she was intimidated as a pre-service teacher 5 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 who would be evaluated at the end of the semester (written from field notes, october 15, 2012). she also mentioned being “…yelled at by krista from the side line” (text message, october 13, 2012) because the lesson was not going as well as she had planned, she thought. ali mentioned that immediately following this experience, she “…began teaching more like krista even though (she) wanted to do different things” (written from field notes, october 15, 2012). she seemed to experience pressure to do things in certain ways, perhaps in order to uphold tradition or routines (lawson, 1983a), also called organizational socialization. at the end of the semester ali looked back on why she thought she had felt insecure about doing her lessons how she wanted to and said, “…because at the beginning i was just always fluttering back to where kelsey was sitting to talk to her about how the lesson was going and i shouldn’t have done that… if a student asked me something, my first reaction was to turn to kelsey and ask her” (transcribed from group conversation, december 6, 2012). ali seemed to identify a shift in her confidence over the course of the internship semester and an increased desire for independence. however, she felt the style of supervision by a few of her cooperating teachers did not align with her growing confidence and desire to be ‘in control’ of the class and figure things out for herself (text message, november 19, 2012). this space(s) of tension between ali’s philosophy, identity and her developing stories to live by seemed to be challenging for her. although socializing forces could be identified throughout the semester in various forms, both participants predominantly demonstrated innovative responses rather than accepting the socialization without question or critique. it was interesting to see both exercising their sense of agency and finding positive spaces of learning in the spaces of tension they experienced. teaching their own way both ali and lauren strove to teach their own way and honour their stories to live by rather than unquestionably following their cooperating teachers’ lead. there was a wide variety in the beliefs of the cooperating teachers both in the ways they taught and the ways they mentored pre-service teachers. both ali and lauren recognized these differences and challenged themselves to teach their own way. lauren. one of lauren’s cooperating teachers was a teacher of four years who was new to physical education. she mentioned that sarah was “…confrontational and sometimes intimidating” (text message, october 29, 2012). she told a story of experience while teaching tchoukball (a net game) in sarah’s class on the third day of the sequence of lessons when sarah asked how she thought it was going. lauren had replied that she thought it was going well; the students were participating and learning the game strategy. sarah then challenged her and asked about a few particular students who she thought weren’t participating enough and was pressing lauren to get them involved. lauren explained that “…her suggestion was putting competitive against non-competitive … i’m a competitive person … but i don’t think it is right with this group… but she didn’t agree so i was like, ‘uh, okay’” (transcribed from group conversation, november 14, 2012). she said that sarah had a different perspective on how to organize the class to encourage more involvement. i sensed that although lauren did not agree with sarah’s perspective, she did not want to appear disrespectful. lauren told me that she anticipated the students would not respond well to sarah’s method of handling the situation. i wondered if lauren felt she would lose a certain degree of control if she taught the class the way sarah suggested. lauren continued to describe her tchouckball teaching experience and said that she implemented a few extra game rules that would encourage inclusion rather than what sarah had suggested. she said, “… they were all so positive to each other and it worked so well!” (transcribed from group conversation, november 14, 2012). lauren explained that she listened to sarah’ suggestions the day before but decided to try something else. she grouped the students in a way that she thought would be effective and used a teaching strategy she had not tried yet. lauren said in this story of experience that the students seemed to connect with her way of teaching. sarah ended up agreeing and complimenting lauren for trying something new, so she was “…glad that i stuck to my gut and did what i felt was right” (text message, october 3, 2012). in another story of experience, lauren explained how she created her own calendar for sharing the teaching facilities even though the department had one created already. she said, “the teachers here have to share the gyms and stuff so at the start of the year we all get this massive chart of who is where and when. i don’t really like the format that they use so i retyped my own” (written from school visit notes, september 21, 2012). she also explained how she created her own quizzes that aligned more closely with her teaching philosophy “… instead of borrowing tests from other teachers” (written from school visit notes, september 21, 2012). as mentioned earlier, lauren seemed to story herself as an organized and prepared person, and said she did not mind creating her own materials. she said she felt more comfortable using materials that she had prepared and that more closely aligned with her way of teaching. i thought about lauren’s stories of experience and how she seemed to be trying to find a space to dwell between teaching in a way that reflected her own developing professional identity as well as respecting the school’s and teachers’ ways of doing things. lauren seemed to be exercising her sense of agency in response 6 experiences of learning to teach physical education: navigating tensions to professional socialization that she was facing in the school. ali. ali felt she could not be perceived as the ‘real’ teacher unless she was alone with the students and without supervision. ali described how she felt about this space of tension in a group conversation, describing how krista “...won’t give up her class to me fully either. it’s that she is a ... powerful woman, so it’s hard for me to take over if she won’t let me take over. maybe she feels like she has to be like that, if she doesn’t trust me yet?” (transcribed from group conversation, october 2, 2012). although ali expressed frustration with their relationship and her desire to have more control over the class, krista often gave her positive feedback as well. most often, this positive feedback was communicated after a lesson was complete and in an informal setting. ali seemed to sense a disconnect between the positive feedback she received from krista outside of class time and how she perceived krista’s actions during class time. in addition to feeling like she needed to be in control of the class, ali struggled with a knee injury that left her feeling disconnected with the students. the knee injury was from the summer and she said that after her knee healed and she began participating in the physical education classes she taught. while describing the new connection and positive relationships she felt were being build, she said, “i had this huge moment the other day when we were playing basketball … i went over there and said, ‘ok, let’s do four on four and then there is no sub,’ and i played with them. when i got involved their attitude and everything was totally different and they were like, ‘oh, ms. schultz, let’s one on one,’ so it was this huge relationship building piece for me. for them to see me involved with them” (transcribed from group conversation, november 14, 2012). with this new confidence in her teaching and the relationships she was building, she seemed to feel more comfortable teaching. when we talked about her knee injury after internship had concluded and were talking about how her confidence might have been affected, ali said, “the injury without me realizing it until after my internship, completely affected my confidence… i took pride in being an athlete that could participate in any activity with high intensity, and for the first two and a half months, not being able to run and get involved, was a major shot to my confidence” (email, february 22, 2013). ali believed that teaching her own way included her own “…involvement as a role model so the students can see it’s healthy to be active” (text message, november 2, 2012). as well, she said once she started coaching basketball after school, she felt the students in her classes who were also on the team were more open to her. she said, “i am loving coaching. really loving it. now those girls are more open to me in class and stuff. and their personalities have changed toward me. i think that the management in class got a lot easier that way” (text message, december 6, 2012). ali said she felt her classroom management improved in grade nine physical education once she began to build relationships with students. i wondered about potential connections between ali’s confidence in herself as a teacher, her relationship alongside krista, and her desire to teach her own way. working alongside teachers working alongside teachers was both challenging and rewarding for the participants in the study. although they were able to have productive professional dialogue with and received constructive criticism from most, challenges arose when the preservice teachers did not align with the teaching orientation of the cooperating teacher or their stories to live by bumped into one another. ali. ali shared that she did not feel she could fully take over the class she was teaching for krista. she also explained the tension(s) she felt– which she called adopting two philosophies and making her own – and aoki (1978, 2004) called tensionality between curriculum-as-plan (krista’s plan) and curriculum-aslived (ali’s hope to be ‘the teacher’). she explained this further and said, “i honestly think the hardest thing for me is adopting two philosophies and trying to make my own, because i’m with two different teachers right now. kelsey and i are super comfortable and can talk about absolutely everything, but krista i just feel is super judgmental and so strict that i got all worked up” (transcribed from group conversation, october 2, 2012). ali had began teaching krista’s class in late september as part of her teaching load in addition to the class she was already teaching for kelsey. ali described another experience and space(s) of tension when she felt that her teaching was interrupted by krista. she explained that “normally, she would yell, ‘ali!’ and then i’d have to stop what i am doing and go over to her, or she would stomp over to me, and then she will say in front of all the kids, ‘don’t do that,’ or whatever” (transcribed from group conversation, december 6, 2012). she said she felt humiliated and that no matter what she did, krista was always stepping in. ali added, “then krista left and the student turned to me, ‘why does she always get mad at you?’ she doesn’t even hold back, even in front of the kids...” (transcribed from group conversation, december 6, 2012). ali shared that she was frustrated that krista interrupted her. on the other hand, ali said she was not sure if she preferred a cooperating teacher who was rarely present, such as kevin (her social studies cooperating teacher). she told me that kevin’s style of supervision was the opposite of krista’s, and often he did not ask about what she was teaching that day (text message, december 2, 2012). this seemed to bother her and she said she perceived his behaviour as a lack of interest. 7 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 kelsey, on the other hand, was a cooperating teacher whom ali got along with well and said that their teaching philosophies aligned. she admitted that when it came to talking about the other cooperating teachers she often held back because, “i don’t want to tell [kelsey] everything and then she thinks i’m bashing. because i’m not.” (transcribed from group conversation, december 6, 2012). each of ali’s cooperating teachers seemed to live out a different version of supervision and mentoring, which created a space of tension for her. ali’s stories of experience and her internship semester while learning to teach, tensions surrounding wanting to figure out what is best for her seemed to bump into discourses about mentoring and supervision styles of cooperating teachers. lauren. lauren shared a story of an experience from one of the first days of the 16-week internship semester. although she was working primarily alongside janay as her cooperating teacher and had attended the internship seminar (a three-day ‘retreat’ with the teacher education program and the cooperating teacher/preservice teacher pair) with her, janay’s teaching schedule had been shuffled on the first day of school. as a result of the shuffled schedule, lauren and janay asked two other teachers if lauren could teach their courses in order for her teaching load to be full. lauren seemed nervous about the shuffle of janay’s schedule because she was working with more than one teacher. in my experience as a cooperating teacher and faculty advisor, pre-service teachers often work with two cooperating teachers in order to gain experience in both their major and minor areas of study. lauren expressed her feelings in a text message and said, “there was this shuffle of teachers at school start up and now janay is not in charge of my period 5 class. instead brad is the teacher for that class. and now i will have three different evaluators” (text message, september 10, 2012). lauren seemed concerned that working alongside three cooperating teachers would be a challenge. however, in my experiences it is the cooperating teachers who set aside time to discuss the pre-service teacher’s evaluation at appropriate times and the process does not require extra time on the part of the pre-service teacher; the primary cooperating teacher usually coordinates the organization of the group. i shared my experiences with lauren and she seemed more at ease about working alongside three cooperating teachers. when describing her relationships with each of her cooperating teachers, lauren said that janay “… has very similar outlooks on physical education as me” (text message, october 31, 2012). about brad lauren said, “i thought we’d totally be on the same page how we kind of teach” (transcribed from school visit conversation, december 11, 2012) but felt like they did not agree on many things. lauren looked back on her relationship with sarah and said, “sarah doesn’t really see things the same. but things have been so much better. honestly, i don’t know what it was at the start, maybe she was trying to be a little bit tougher and test me a bit, but then she completely was like, ‘have at ‘er,’ and left me all the time” (transcribed from school visit conversation, december 11, 2012). lauren described how she perceived their progressing relationship over the semester and that she was able to teach how and what she wanted by the end of the semester. both ali and lauren worked alongside multiple cooperating teachers who supported them in various ways and at differing levels. although these multiple relationships created spaces of tension for them as they navigated unique orientations to teaching and different approaches to mentoring, both participants were able to learn and grow from what could have been potentially negative situations. discussion and further wonderings presented in the section above are only a few of the stories of experience that ali and lauren shared throughout their internship semester while learning to teach. with a turn back to the literature in relation to the stories shared above, we may be able to see connections and begin to ask more questions about how learning to teach is experienced by pre-service teachers and how we may be able to support them. the sections below present some connections between occupational socialization theory (ost), the threads of narrative connection that emerged from the study, and some of the wonderings that i have moving forward. ost: acculturation ali and lauren’s stories of experience of learning to teach physical education can be related to acculturation; their values and beliefs that have been developed and created since birth, through schooling, and through teacher education shape their experiences, identity, and stories to live by as pre-service teachers. it is generally agreed that identity is dynamic and ongoing, not stable, involves multiple identities, and is developed among the presence of others within various contexts (beauchamp & thomas, 2009; lofstrom, poom-valickis, hannula, & mathews, 2010; mooney, 2007; schepens, aelterman, & vlerick, 2009). lauren and ali’s stories to live by seemed to shift over the course of the 16-week internship as they were challenged by multiple cooperating teachers, curriculum ideals and values, and personal philosophies about teaching and learning. ali struggled to find agency as she worked alongside krista, yet also seemed hesitant to share her feelings entirely with kelsey whom she trusted and identified with. she had an intense desire to be the real teacher, as she had most likely imagined what teaching was about as she grew up in school and developed a professional identity. her ideal teaching image was to participate alongside the students, which was prevented because of an injury which further disrupted her stories to 8 experiences of learning to teach physical education: navigating tensions live by about professional conduct and being a ‘good’ teacher. lauren’s tensions regarding her stories to live by about teaching and curriculum were challenged by each of her cooperating teachers in unique ways but she seemed to be able dwell productively in these spaces of tension; her confidence grew as the semester progressed. in addition, the landscape of school and her confidence as a teacher helped her get through challenges in her personal landscape of varsity hockey and the struggles she experienced on the ice. we are reminded that stories to live by are a continual process over time and that identity is never determined by one single factor, person, or idea (richie & wilson, 2000). multiple discourses and where they intersect can be space(s) of tension. i sensed that both lauren and ali experienced multiple discourses as they worked alongside many people in the context of school, as evident in all three of the threads of narrative connection. i was also reminded that stories to live by involve agency and that each person will differ in how they deal with the landscape of school, teaching, and learning. ost: professional socialization as we look across ali and lauren’s stories of experience, we see examples of professional socialization. the process of learning and maintaining values deemed ideal for teaching (lortie, 1975) can be impressed upon pre-service teachers by the teachers whom they work closely with during internship; cooperating teachers may purposefully or inadvertently impose their beliefs and values on pre-service teachers. we are drawn to, in particular, the thread of narrative connection named working alongside teachers and consider the term mentor in relation to professional socialization. although the first few years of learning to teach are critical in a teachers’ career and that “…teacher mentoring may reduce the early attrition of beginning teachers” (odell & ferraro, 1992, p. 200), we can consider if there are differences between mentors and cooperating teachers. mentoring involves a “… shared intellectual, ideological, political, personal, and emotional journey” (chawla & rawlins, 2004, p. 964) and is a term used in many contexts among many professions. posden and denmark (2007) said that mentoring is usually a sustained relationship between a ‘novice’ and an ‘expert’ in the profession that is established in order to provide help, support, and guidance while learning and developing skills. yet, as butler and cuenca (2012) point out, cooperating teachers are chosen often under the assumption that they are also good at teaching teachers, which may not always be the case. i felt uncomfortable with posden and denmark’s (2007) description of the ‘novice’ and the ‘expert’ in a mentoring relationship. assumptions are made when preservice teachers work alongside cooperating teachers; cooperating teachers perceived as experts (butler & cuenca, 2012). yet, cooperating teachers “…receive very little guidance on effective mentoring practices or ways to mentor student teachers toward the aims of particular teacher education programs” (butler & cuenca, 2012, p. 297). there exists a disconnect, potentially, between what pre-service teachers have learned in teacher education and what they live and experience in the field during internship. as we think about the cooperating teachers in ali’s and lauren’s stories of experience during internship we notice that brad, kelsey, and sarah all had been teaching for fewer than five years. yet, they were labeled a cooperating teacher and, therefore, an expert teacher who works with a pre-service or novice teacher, according to posden and denmark’s (2007) description of mentors. i wondered if a discourse exists in teacher education and schools that cooperating teachers must be experts, and if this discourse influences how cooperating teachers work alongside pre-service teachers. what does it mean to have ‘good’ supervision and to be an expert and how can this discourse be renegotiated and restoried to value a teacher’s and a pre-service teacher’s background, experiences, and knowledge? each cooperating teacher might interpret a process of supervising pre-service teachers differently. looking backward to ali’s text message about her perception of krista having trouble ‘backing off,’ it seemed that ali’s story to live by of figuring out what works for her was bumping up against krista’s style of supervision. bullough and draper’s (2004) explanation of mentoring as a power negotiation of control over situations brings to our attention that perhaps ali did not feel that she had control of her own teaching. in contrast, ali had wished that kevin provided more feedback about her teaching. we might wonder if ali felt that she was inadequately prepared, as anspal, eisenschmidt, and lofstrom (2012) identify as a common concern for preservice teachers. curtner-smith (2001) agrees that preservice teachers often feel inadequately prepared for the landscape of teaching and learning. this can be further described as a feeling of disconnect between content of teacher education programs and what really happens in schools (butler & cuenca, 2012; lawson, 1983b). lauren’s stories of experience reflect feelings of confidence regarding preparedness, on the other hand. she believed that being prepared and organized was an indication of professionalism, and we might consider if this belief about the teaching profession was a belief also held by her cooperating teacher, janay. lauren may have knowingly or unknowingly aligning her stories to live by about being a ‘good teacher’ alongside the mentor (janay) with whom she identified most. professional socialization is not necessarily a negative process when learning to teach but we should 9 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 remember that “…mentoring is largely a socially constructed practice” (butler & cuenca, 2012, p. 297) in itself. cooperating teachers may also need training and clarity regarding their roles and “… the ways in which these roles are socially constructed, produced, and reproduced…” (butler & cuenca, 2012, p. 298). support from teacher education programs, including shared visions about what learning to teach might look like, may help us support pre-service teachers as they navigate new relationships alongside cooperating teachers as professional and productive mentors. ost: organizational socialization lawson (1983a) talked about organizational socialization and how new and experienced teachers acquire and maintain ideologies valued and rewarded by the organization. as i heard lauren and ali’s stories of experience i was reminded of an explanation of how preservice teachers can be caught between tradition and change. britzman (2003) said pre-service teachers “… are confronted not only with the traditions associated with those of past teachers and those of past and present classroom lives, but with the personal desire to carve out one’s own territory, develop one’s own style, and make a difference in the education of students” (p. 41). in relation to organizational socialization and resistance to change on a larger scale, we might consider if pre-service teachers might feel limited by tradition and socialization, therefore affecting their perceived competency. aoki (1984) described competency as a perception often oriented toward efficient control. this means to an end view of competence reduces teachers and students “… from beings-as-humans to beings-as-things,” (aoki, 1984, p. 129) and is an unfair way to judge pre-service teachers. ali shared stories of her classroom management; she felt the need to turn to kelsey early in the internship semester during her lessons but later wished she could have the class to herself. she seemed to equate competency as a teacher and being the ‘real’ teacher with being alone in the classroom/gymnasium with the students and not have the cooperating teacher(s) present to intervene. in comparison, it was interesting to see how krista did not leave ali alone with the students and interjected during her lessons. one might wonder if krista had learned and was living what she believed a mentor or cooperating teacher should do in order to support a preservice teacher. yet, ali seemed to feel intimidated and pressured by such behaviour. lauren did not conform to ways that the physical education subject area suggested she teach; she did not use the pre-made tests and quizzes nor use the format for scheduling that was given to her. she demonstrated what she believed to be as professional judgment; her choices aligned with her teaching philosophy and identity. additionally, both lauren and ali commented on how they felt pressured at numerous points and to varying degrees to change or conform their teaching based on what the subject area or cooperating teachers suggested. as beginning teachers themselves in the past, one might wonder how much organizational socialization influenced the cooperating teachers’ stories to live by as professionals and mentors; what was valued by the schools where they experienced their initial years of teaching? butler and cuenca (2012) identify three different conceptions that cooperating teachers identify their roles as: mentor as instructional coach, mentor as emotional support system, and mentor as socializing agent. deep rooted beliefs of an organization, such as a school/system, may have played a large role in influencing cooperating teachers. alternatively, should we not instead hope that teacher education programs be the most influential in supporting and training cooperating teachers, the “…first educators to help make sense of the formal and informal requirements and resources involved in teaching” (butler & cuenca, 2012, p. 302)? open dialogue and continual reflection about how or why teachers act and think certain ways and what is regarded as competence should be of utmost importance. teacher education programs alongside cooperating teachers and pre-service teachers may benefit from, together, examining and questioning traditional ways of teaching. summary of wonderings through this narrative inquiry about experience of per-service teachers while learning to teach physical education during a 16-week internship, more questions emerged for me personally and professionally. narrative inquiry work does not create conclusions but rather generates more wonderings for our work as educators. some of these wonderings and challenges are presented in the section above and may cause us, together as educators, to realize the influence of socialization on both new and experienced teachers. in addition, the shared experiences of ali and lauren together with consideration of literature surrounding mentoring and identity development may help us begin to reconceptualise how clear communication between teacher education programs, teachers in the field, and pre-service teachers could take place. the internship semester may be one of the most influential periods of a pre-service teachers’ education program. it can be an opportunity to develop personal practical knowledge about the teaching profession; through reflection, support of teachers, and practicing teaching while honouring their own beliefs and values about education, pre-service teachers may flourish. spaces of tension regarding curriculum, physical education as a subject area, and their developing identities may be productive with supportive mentoring. alternatively, pre-service teachers may experience tensions too great for their perceived confidence or present abilities, leaving them feeling isolated and alone, 10 experiences of learning to teach physical education: navigating tensions succumbing to socialization without questioning their beliefs and values. cooperating teachers play perhaps the largest role in the development of pre-service teachers, often feeling as the “…gatekeepers to the work and norms of teaching” (butler & cuenca, 2012, p, 297) but lacking support. cooperating teachers need to be chosen carefully and paired with pre-service teachers thoughtfully. in addition, they require support and training from teacher education programs if they are being asked to align with the goals and beliefs of the program. quite often the schools’ views are that teacher education programs and coursework are “…incompatible with the realities of the classroom” (butler & cuenca, 2012, p. 302) and the gap between university and field experiences is perceived as large. communication, or lack of, may be the cause of this perceived (or real) discrepancy. in order for the learning of pre-service teachers to be transformative, we might ask ourselves if we are clear enough in our communication of aims, goals, and expectations from both the perspective of teacher education programs and teachers in the field who take on the role of cooperating teachers. a shared vision is not the only answer, and may be already in place. however, open dialogue along with more communication between the field and teacher education programs may be a starting point for better supporting pre-service teachers during such an 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(1993) issues and themes of socialization in physical education. journal of teaching physical education, 12(4), 337-343. 12 experiences of learning to teach physical education: navigating tensions article citation kell, s. d. (2015). experiences of learning to teach physical education: navigating tensions. current issues in education, 18(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1315 author notes dr. shannon d. kell mount royal university department of health and physical education 4825 mount royal gate southwest, calgary, ab t3e 6k6 skell@mtroyal.ca shannon is an assistant professor in the department of health and physical education at mount royal university in calgary, alberta, canada. she taught secondary physical education for eight years in regina, saskatchewan, canada while also teaching part time at the university of regina. later she became the physical education consultant for the saskatchewan ministry of education. now at mount royal university in calgary, alberta, canada, shannon enjoys teaching in both the department of education where she works with pre-service teachers and in the department of health and physical education where she teaches in the areas of outdoor leadership and physical literacy. manuscript received: 10/22/2013 revisions received: 05/20/2015 accepted: 06/02/2015 13 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1315 mailto:skell@mtroyal.ca current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 volume 18, number 2 august 3, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editors tray j. geiger layout editors constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers 14 microsoft word 964-4000-4-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x preparing school psychologists for working with diverse students: does program accreditation matter? kara m. styck arizona state university the purpose of this study was to investigate the degree to which differences exist between accredited and non-accredited school psychology training programs on specific characteristics of training theorized to prepare graduates for working with racially, ethnically, and/or linguistically diverse students. training directors from each of the 237 school psychology programs nationwide were solicited to complete a brief survey on program training characteristics. independent-samples t tests and chi-square tests of independence were used to determine the existence of significant differences in training characteristics between the two program types. no significant differences emerged between accredited and non-accredited programs on any of the training characteristics theorized as important for working with diverse student populations. the results of this study can be used to draw inferences regarding the influence of accreditation bodies on the current presence of specific school psychology training program characteristics within training programs nationwide. keywords: culturally and linguistically diverse, multicultural, training, program evaluation, school psychology the composition of u.s. schools is growing increasingly diverse. approximately 44% of school-aged students currently come from racially, ethnically, and/or linguistically diverse (reld) backgrounds (planty et al., 2009). unfortunately, as a group, students who are reld have significantly poorer educational outcomes than their white peers in regards to academic achievement scores, high school drop out rates, and pursuit of postsecondary education (planty et al., 2008; planty et al., 2009; thompson, gorin, obeidat, & chen, 2006). there are well documented gaps between reld students and their white peers in both reading and mathematics achievement as measured by the national assessment of educational progress (naep), a nationally administered academic assessment governed by the national assessment governing board (nagb) (planty et al., 2008; planty et al., 2009). reading achievement scores on the naep have increased in the past decade and a half nationwide and the achievement gap between black and white students has decreased amongst students in the fourth grade. however, in eighth and twelfth grades the achievement gap between these students’ has remained unchanged and the reading achievement gap between hispanic and white students’ has remained unchanged at all grade levels. mathematics scores on the naep follow a similar trend. for example, the gap between white and black students’ naep mathematics scores has decreased in the last decade and a half, but the gap between white and hispanic students on the same mathematics measure has not changed since 1990 (planty et al., 2009). researchers interested in minimizing achievement gaps have focused their attention on both the factors associated with k-12 academic success and effects on future outcomes, including post-secondary educational pursuit and career choice (planty et al., 2008; thompson et al., 2006). overall, studies indicate that children who current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 are reld differ from their non-reld counterparts on subsequent academic and career outcomes, including high school drop-out rates, pursuit of post-secondary education, and job selection. for example, children who are identified as black or hispanic are more likely to drop out of high school than those who are identified as white. students who drop out of high school are limited in career choice to jobs that do not require a high school diploma and likely offer lower salaries by comparison to those that require a high school diploma or postsecondary education. in the last fifty years the job market has changed considerably with an increase in jobs requiring some postsecondary school, such as office jobs, and a decrease in those requiring a high school diploma or less, such as factory jobs (carnevale & desrochers, 2003). this change in the job market affects the training requirements for individuals seeking employment. unfortunately, differences between students identified as reld and those identified as white also exist in the rates of postsecondary school pursuit and graduation (planty et al., 2008; thompson et al., 2006). even when examining exclusively students who graduated from high school, more self-identified white students go on to college than those students who are identified as black, hispanic, or native american. thompson, gorin, obeidat, and chen (2006) reported that nationwide, although 14% of children were identified as african american in 1997, only 8% of students who graduated from college five years later were african american. similar trends were found for other minority groups. for example, students identified as hispanic represented 11% of the high school population that same year, however, five years later, only 7% of students identified as hispanic graduated from college. additionally, the total enrollment of all reld students in graduate or professional schools is approximately one third that of their white counterparts (planty et al., 2008; thompson et al., 2006). these outcomes, which are associated with academic achievement, may affect the ability of reld students to contribute to society and further their economic status through the attainment of a stable career. predictors of academic success the u.s. department of education has identified factors associated with early academic success that may predict the subsequent discrepancies in higher education and career attainment previously discussed (planty et al., 2008; planty et al., 2009). these variables include parental level of education, socioeconomic status (ses), and primary language spoken in the household. of these, parental level of education and ses are closely linked. thus, the effects of ethnicity, ses, school factors, and parental education level are often difficult to disentangle. in general, higher parental education levels and ses are associated with greater academic achievement in children than the achievement of children with low-ses and poorly educated parents (davis-kean, 2005). during 2002-2004, when examining ses alone, the household median income for those identified as black was lower than that of any other racial or ethnic group (denavaswalt, proctor, & lee, 2004). schools located in high poverty areas enroll a higher percent of reld students than those who are white. only 4% of children who are white attend schools in high poverty areas compared to 32% of blacks, 34% of hispanics, 10% of asian/pacific islanders, and 24% of american indian/alaska natives (planty et al., 2008). further, controlling for ses, parents of children who are identified as white are more likely to have obtained a bachelor’s degree than those who are identified as black or hispanic (planty et al., 2008; planty et al., 2009). aside from its unique negative effect on academic outcomes, poverty is also associated with other school-related problems such as high teacher-turnover rates. scafidi, sjoquist, and stinebrickner (2007) found that teacher retention rates were lower if the schools in which they were employed had lower test scores, were located in lower income areas, or had a higher proportion of reld students. low ses school districts, which often contain a high percent of reld students, are less likely to employ and retain experienced teachers as compared to more affluent districts. as a result, greater frequencies of reld students are taught by inexperienced teachers who may not be as well prepared for classroom instruction as more senior teachers (scafidi, sjoquist, & stinebrickner, 2007). consequently, white students are more likely to reap the benefits of teacher stability than their reld peers. the negative effect of inexperienced teachers is often further compounded by the effect of students’ english fluency on their academic success. in 2006, 18% of hispanic children and 17% of asian children learned english as a second language and had difficulty speaking it. only 1% of children identified as white exhibited a similar english-language difficulty, and this percent consisted only of those children who were identified as more than one race. not surprisingly, english language fluency is not unrelated to poverty. limited english fluency was found more often in children who came from lower ses backgrounds than those of higher ses backgrounds (planty et al., 2008). this is particularly problematic because there is a large gap in the academic achievement between english language learners (ells) and those students who speak english proficiently. zehler, fleischman, hopstock, stephenson, pendzick, and sapru (2003) analyzed national data and reported that approximately three-fourths of third grade ells performed below grade level in english reading and over half of those students performed below grade level in mathematics, which places them at risk for learning problems. therefore, across all of these indicators, ses, school environment, and english fluency, students who preparing school psychologists for working with diverse students: does program accreditation matter? 3 are white tend to hold the advantage over children who are reld. working with reld students as a whole, the extant literature documents a discrepancy in educational achievement and associated factors between reld students and their white peers (zehler, fleischman, hopstock, stephenson, pendzick, & sapru, 2003; planty et al., 2008; planty et al., 2009). it is assumed that closing these gaps will result in an increase in the socio-economic and occupational opportunities for reld students. this assumption has lead researchers to suggest that to address the potential academic barriers for reld students, educators should begin with an increased understanding of their underlying needs, and further, that those who interact with reld students in educational settings or who design curricula and interventions for these students may find it useful to understand the diverse issues faced by individuals from distinct racial, ethnic, and linguistic groups to provide the most effective support. such practices, labeled by some as “culturally competent” practices and policies are hypothesized to offer some promise in this direction (rogers, 2006; rogers, ponterotto, conoley, & wiese, 1992; rogers, hoffman, & wade, 1998). there are a variety of professionals who, both directly and indirectly, affect students’ education. among these are school psychologists. school psychologists play numerous roles within schools and their multidimensional training allows them to impact the education of children in a unique manner. a school psychologist is the only person on a school campus whose roles include conducting psycho-educational evaluations, consulting with parents, teachers, and administrators to solve problems, and making empirically-based educational accountability decisions (nasp, 2006; nasp, 2007). the manner in which school psychologists interact with students affect the results of evaluations and clinical impressions, which ultimately influence educational decisions made about the student, such as, the need for academic or behavioral interventions or eligibility for special education placement. unfortunately, students who are reld are disproportionately represented in special education programs compared to their white peers with more students who are reld at risk for being identified as having a specific learning disability, mental retardation, serious emotional disturbance, multiple disabilities, hearing impairments, visual impairment, deaf-blindness, and developmental delay (u. s. department of education, 2006). decisions made by school psychologists greatly impact students’ futures and may influence their ability to meet their academic potential, graduate from high school, pursue and attend higher education, or find stable careers. in order to successfully meet the demands of these roles with reld students, some researchers suggest that school psychologists should display multicultural competence, defined as a psychologist’s knowledge, awareness, and sensitivity to differences in cultures (rogers, ponterotto, conoley, & wiese, 1992). two key areas of importance for school psychologists to demonstrate appropriate skills in working with reld clientele include assessment and consultation of students who are reld (rogers et al., 1999; behring, cabello, kushida, & murguia, 2000; ochoa, riccio, jimenez, garcia de alba, & sines, 2004; rogers, 1998). assessing reld students. assessing reld students can be challenging. one difficulty in evaluating a reld student occurs when the student is also an ell. assessment instruments are often developed and validated on samples of students whose primary language is english. when these tools are used to measure abilities, attitudes, and behaviors of non-native english speakers, the validity of the score interpretations and uses are questionable (hambleton & li, 2005). to address potential intrusion of unintended sources of variance that can diminish the validity of score interpretations, examiners should select appropriate measures, if available, or alter the test administration procedure. ochoa, riccio, jimenez, garcia de alba, and sines (2004) found that approximately half of school psychologists surveyed had some experience assessing ell students. although nearly one third of the practitioners were bilingual, most reported using interpreters to administer the test. of these interpreters, one quarter were not trained in test administration. the use of interpreters for evaluating ells can be effective or problematic given the training of the interpreter. hambleton and li (2005) discuss a better approach to assessing ells. they suggest school psychologists first determine if a translation or adaptation of the test is appropriate, then, ensure the translation is of high quality and that the construct remains the same in the new language. when a test is translated, psychometric properties need to be evaluated to determine if the new measure similarly gathers information about the specific problem (hambleton & li, 2005). language diversity is not the only source of construct-irrelevant variance in the assessment of reld students, cultural bias may also exist. reynolds and carson (2005) define cultural bias as, “a constant or systematic error, presumed to be due to group membership or some nominal variable, occurring in the estimation of a score on a psychological or education test or performance criterion” (p. 796). they argue that two types of cultural bias exist: access-skill difficulties and target-skill measurement. access-skill difficulties are those created due to lack of content exposure, examiner intimidation, and prior experiences of discrimination that have caused poor self-efficacy in the examinee. targetskill measurement is a result of fundamental differences on the skill assessed, lack of prediction power, and the under representation of reld students in normative current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 samples for standardized tests. although these conditions may exist, there are statistical methods to correct for cultural bias such as item response theory and analysis of variance (reynolds & carson, 2005). given the likelihood of encountering reld students in school settings for whom cultural bias may be an issue, school psychologists should be educated and trained in appropriate methods to account for the variance. given issues of cultural bias and linguistic diversity, the national association of school psychologists (nasp) has redefined expectations for how school psychologists should approach these situations. in nasp’s, school psychology: a blueprint for training and practice iii (2006), “diversity awareness and sensitive service delivery” is listed as a foundational competency. although previous versions of the text required, at most, an acknowledgement of racial, ethnic, language, and cultural differences amongst students, the third edition requires school psychologists to use their knowledge of these differences within their practices. nasp (2006) states further that, “the use of inappropriate or unsystematic methods for assessing english language learners reflects inadequate competence in this domain.” similarly, standard 9.02(c) of the apa ethics code (2002) states, “psychologists use assessment methods that are appropriate to an individual’s language preference and competence, unless the use of an alternative language is relevant to the assessment issue.” however, the nasp and apa recommendations are only effective if practitioners are properly educated about issues in psychometrics as they pertain to test selection and interpretation of scores. the degree to which current training programs that produce school psychologists incorporate such education into their curriculum has not been investigated in two decades (rogers, ponterotto, conoley, & wiese, 1992). consultation with reld students. consultation is an indirect service provided by the school psychologist to another professional such as a teacher or administrator, for the purpose of assisting that professional in dealing with the educational problems of a single student or a group of students (gutkin & curtis, 2009). this type of service delivery allows school psychologists to work with larger groups of students, further asserting their influence in educational decision-making. unfortunately, when consulting with parents, consultants who are reld show a greater tendency to make modifications to their practices in order to accommodate for the diverse culture of clients than white consultants (behring, cabello, kushida, & murguia, 2000). however, reld clients view consultants who verbally express racial sensitivity as having more multicultural competence than those who ignore racial themes, which suggests that school psychologists would benefit from appropriate training in working with reld clientele (rogers, 1998). the presence of training in this area, or the degree to which it is emphasized in training programs has not been investigated nationwide in two decades (rogers, ponterotto, conoley, & wiese, 1992; rogers, 2006; rogers, hoffman, & wade, 1998). characteristics of multicultural training to meet the increasing need for school psychologists who have the experience and training appropriate to deal with the diverse student body and their unique needs, training programs have adopted characteristic elements that are assumed to produce practitioners that are better equipped to work with reld clientele. some of these include assessment, consultation, and service provision with reld clientele in practicum and internship experiences, conducting research on reld topics, and coursework devoted to training graduate students in working with reld clientele (lopez & rogers, 2001; lopez & rogers, 2002). additionally, in 2002 the american psychological association (apa) presented five guidelines for psychologists regarding education, training, research, practice, and organizational change. these guidelines include recognizing personal bias, acknowledging the importance of multicultural competence, actively using multicultural constructs in psychological education, conducting research that is culture-centered, and applying ideas of cultural responsiveness to practice. furthermore, recognizing the individual differences in students’ abilities and disabilities, cultural, ethnic, experiential, socioeconomic, linguistic backgrounds, and gender are one part of the training standards outlined in the national association of school psychologists (nasp) training and accrediting standards (nasp, 2000; nasp, 2007). although training school psychology graduate students in working with reld clientele is widely recommended, the extent to which it exists and the nature of its implementation varies by program. according to research, characteristics of training programs considered exemplary in training graduate students to work with reld clientele are similar in nature to those requirements by apa and nasp and include offering or requiring a specific course in training students to work with reld clientele, providing practicum and internship experiences with reld clientele, fostering opportunities for students to conduct research, theses, or dissertations on reld topics, implementing a variety of recruitment strategies targeting potential graduate students who are from reld backgrounds, creating a supportive environment for reld students, and adopting a systematic method for assessing multicultural competencies of students progressing through their respective school psychology training program (rogers, 2006; rogers, hoffman, & wade, 1998). nationwide, programs have been surveyed on a number of characteristics targeted at training graduate students in working with reld clientele. brown and minke (1986) reported that offering a cross-cultural preparing school psychologists for working with diverse students: does program accreditation matter? 5 psychology course significantly discriminated between program types, with more doctorate programs offering a separate course than non-doctoral programs. programs that offered a specific cross-cultural psychology course were also more likely to be apa accredited. other aspects of training thought to be important in this area include devoting time in assessment and consultation courses to instruction on working with reld clientele. rogers, ponterotto, conoley, and wiese (1992) and rogers (2006) reported that training programs that integrated reld themes into their assessment courses were also more likely to do so in other courses such as in a consultation course and a roles and functions course. students in these programs were also more likely to work with reld clientele in internship. exposure to reld students in practicum and internship is another characteristic of training thought to be important in preparing graduate students for working with reld clientele. rogers et al. (1992) reported that the availability of these experiences tended to occur more at larger universities, programs with a large reld student enrollment, and programs that conferred master’s degrees. they also reported that universities that publish research on reld topics were more likely to be apa accredited, offer doctoral degrees, and enroll a large number of reld students. lastly, no recent studies have investigated the current nationwide presence of reld student recruitment strategies, degree of support given to reld students, or the existence of a multicultural competence comprehensive exit evaluation in school psychology training programs despite its hypothesized importance. purpose of the study researchers have identified key characteristics of school psychology training hypothesized to better prepare graduate students in working with reld clientele, however, it is unclear whether the increased emphasis on these training characteristics in the apa accreditation and nasp approval guidelines has had an effect on the training practices of accredited and non-accredited programs nationwide. the obvious question, then, is whether a difference exists in the training characteristics provided by programs that are accredited or approved by either apa or nasp relative to non-accredited and/or approved programs. further, there is some question as to whether the variability across programs is not only in the presence of specific training characteristics assumed to produce better equipped school psychologists in terms of working with reld clientele, but also in terms of the mechanisms for training. lastly, a study investigating the status of these training characteristics nationwide has not been published in two decades. the purpose of the present study was to assess the degree to which differences exist between apa accredited and/or nasp approved school psychology training programs and training programs that are not accredited by either of these organizations through a nationwide survey of information specifically related to the incorporation of elements thought to be indicative of exemplary1 training for working with reld students. information was collected regarding whether programs offered a course pertaining to reld topics, the degree to which they infused reld themes in specific required coursework, the percent of fte (full time equivalent) faculty and students in the program, the percent of time students spent working with reld2 clientele in practicum and internship experiences, the number of reld students who graduated from the program in the last five years, and the number of faculty and student publications and presentations given in the same time period that focused on reld topics (brown & minke, 1986; rogers et al., 1992; rogers, 2006; rogers et al., 1998). four specific questions were addressed: 1) do apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs versus non-accredited and/or approved programs differ in terms of their required coursework (i.e., presence of a course on reld topics and percent of time spent in required courses devoted to instruction on working with reld clientele)? 2) do apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs versus non-accredited and/or approved programs differ in terms of the presence of reld fte faculty and students? 3) do apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs and non-accredited and/or approved programs differ in terms of the opportunity for students to work with reld clients within practicum and internship experiences? 4) do apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs versus non-accredited and/or approved programs differ in terms of the amount of research produced related to reld topics? 5) do apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs versus non-accredited and/or approved programs differ in terms of the number of reld students who have graduated from the program in the last five years? 1 exemplary refers exclusively to the quality of the multicultural training component of the program, not to its overall quality, merit or ranking. 2 the use of the term reld in this study specifically includes individuals who identify with a minority race, ethnicity, and those whose native language is not english. this definition also includes individuals who identify with more than one racial or ethnic group and those who have more than one native language. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 method participants participating programs consisted of those who responded to a survey sent by mail addressed to the training director of each of the 237 school psychology programs identified through a comprehensive search of all existing programs nationwide conducted by miller (2008). although the survey was addressed to the training director of each program, directions included specifications to seek the person most knowledgeable of the specific training characteristics in question to complete it. the total number of surveys returned was 79. however, of these, two were missing information on accreditation and/or approval status, and therefore, not used in the analysis. the remaining sample consisted of 77 respondents, a 32.49% response rate. out of the 77 respondents, 81% were (n = 62) apa accredited and/or nasp approved and 19% (n = 15) were neither apa accredited nor nasp approved. the group of programs that were apa accredited and/or nasp approved was comprised of 3% (n = 2) apa accredited only, 76% (n = 47) nasp approved only, and 21% (n = 13) both apa accredited and nasp approved. instrumentation a multicultural competence training survey was adapted from rogers et al. (1992) for the purpose of gathering information for this study. it included thirteen multipart questions designed to gather information on the variables of interest. one survey item was omitted due to its irrelevance to the present study. the survey can be found in the appendix. required coursework. required coursework was operationally defined as the coursework required of students for program completion. two variables were analyzed which included: a) the presence of a required reld topics course, and b) the percent of time devoted to instruction on working with reld clientele in specified required coursework, each measured by an item on the multicultural competence training survey. requiring a reld topics course and incorporating such instruction into assessment, consultation, intervention, and roles and functions courses is presumed to represent a key element of school psychology programs that exemplify high quality training in working with reld clientele (brown & minke, 1986; rogers et al., 1992; rogers, 2006; rogers et al., 1998). reld faculty and students. the presence of reld fte faculty and students was operationally defined as the percent of reld fte faculty members and graduate students enrolled in each program. both the percent of reld fte faculty members and the percent of reld graduate student enrollment were analyzed. survey respondents were asked to provide: (a) the total number of faculty employed in their program, (b) the racial and ethnic breakdown of their faculty along with the corresponding percent of employment for each faculty member (i.e., full time, part-time), (c) the total number of students enrolled in their program, and (d) the racial and ethnic breakdown of the students in their program. the percent of reld fte faculty members for each program was then calculated from this information by dividing the number of reld fte faculty members by the total number of fte faculty and multiplying the quotient by 100; the same procedure was used to calculate the percent of reld graduate students for each program. large percentages of reld fte faculty and students are one element thought to be important in training school psychologists in working with reld clientele. specifically, ponterotto, lewis, and bullington (1990) suggest that programs whose reld fte faculty represent 30% of total fte faculty members offer more supportive environments for reld graduate students (as cited in rogers et al., 1998). reld clientele in practicum and internship. the opportunity to work with reld clientele in practicum and internship experiences was also measured. this variable was operationally defined as the percent of time that students work with reld clients in practicum and internship experiences. experiences serving reld clientele in both practicum and internship were analyzed separately. experience working with reld clientele is another training characteristic thought to be important in preparing school psychologists for working with reld clientele. the underlying logic is that the more experience graduate students are afforded, the better equipped they are thought to be in working with these students within their post-graduate careers (rogers et al., 1992; rogers, 2006; rogers et al., 1998). outcomes. outcomes of programs in terms of contributions to the school psychology research community on reld topics and the number of reld students who complete school psychology training programsentering practice, composed the final construct of interest. outcomes of programs were operationally defined as the research products generated (published articles and conference presentations combined) that were related to reld topics and the amount of reld students who graduate from programs in the last five years. research opportunities and research generated related to reld topics are assumed to be important outcomes of school psychology training programs, and may be indicative of competence in this domain (rogers et al., 1992; rogers, 2006; rogers et al., 1998). although the number of reld students who graduate from a program has not been previously studied, the presence and percent of reld students within a program have been linked to reld graduate student support in school psychology programs (rogers, 2006; rogers et al., 1998). procedures paper copies of the multicultural competence training survey were mailed to participants in a packet containing a cover letter describing the study, the survey, preparing school psychologists for working with diverse students: does program accreditation matter? 7 an information letter for inquiring results, and a selfaddressed envelope for return. prior to mailing the survey packet, school psychology programs were notified first by email and then contacted by phone one week later to answer any questions about the materials. a monetary incentive was included in the form of a random drawing to win a $300 travel grant for a graduate student enrolled in the winning program. all participants were informed of the drawing. in order for participants to have been included in the drawing, surveys needed to be received within six weeks of initial contact. this methodology was adapted from brown and minke (1986) and rogers et al. (1992) based on its prior successful return rate. analysis data were analyzed both descriptively and inferentially. first, descriptive statistics were calculated for all variables based on the entire sample and then disaggregated by accreditation and/or approval status. two accreditation and/or approval status categories were created consisting of: (a) apa accredited and/or nasp approved and (b) no accreditation and/or approval. inferential statistics were analyzed using chi-square tests of independence for categorical variables. chi-square is an appropriate statistical test for determining whether differences between the responses on the survey are significantly different than expected frequencies based on the condition of independence between the two variables (green & salkind, 2008). categorical variables in the present study included the presence of a reld topics course and the percent of time devoted to instruction on working with reld clientele in specified courses. independent-samples t tests were conducted on continuous variables to determine if statistically significant differences in training characteristics between apa accredited and/or nasp approved school psychology programs and non-accredited and/or approved school psychology programs exist. the independentsamples t test is an appropriate test for determining whether population mean differences between apa accredited and/or nasp approved school psychology programs and those not apa accredited and/or nasp approved exist for each variable (green & salkind, 2008). continuous variables included the percent of reld fte faculty and reld students in the program, the percent of time students spent working with reld clientele in practicum and internship, the number of reld students who graduated from the program in the last five years, and the number of journal articles and presentations produced that focused on reld topics in the same time period. the type i error rate for each test was determined using the holm’s sequential method to maintain an experiment-wise error rate of .05. results despite following similar procedures as previous studies examining a similar construct, a low response rate was achieved (32.49%, n = 77) (brown & minke, 1986; rogers et al., 1992). results reported herein may not be representative of the population of school psychology training programs nationwide as a result. descriptive statistics on all variables for the entire sample, disaggregated by accreditation and/or approval status, are presented in tables 1-4. reference to specific values from these tables will be made in the reporting of the inferential statistics. missing data were evaluated separately for each analysis. in addition, the distributions of both groups, apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs and those without accreditation and/or approval, were positively skewed. the distribution of the percent of reld fte faculty in programs that were apa accredited and/or nasp approved indicated that the majority of fte faculty members were identified as white, although at least one program indicated that 100% of their fte faculty was reld. a similar pattern resulted for fte faculty of non-accredited and/or approved programs, albeit with a smaller maximum percent of reld fte faculty. however, the average proportion of reld fte faculty members in apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs was 16.18%, which is lower than the proportion hypothesized to be necessary to create a supportive environment for reld graduate students, suggested by ponterotto et al. (1990) (as cited in rogers et al., 1998). further, those programs that were not accredited and/or approved also employed a small percent of reld fte faculty on average, reaching 14.86%. in comparison, rogers et al. (1992) reported that 13.5% of fte faculty of school psychology programs nationwide were reld, which may suggest an increase in the past two decades. the percent of reld graduate students was also similarly skewed for both apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs and those not accredited and/or approved, both enrolling mostly white students in their programs. on average, 20.83% of graduate students enrolled in programs that were apa accredited and/or nasp approved, and 22.95% of those enrolled in programs without accreditation and/or approval were reld. these proportions are roughly five percentage points higher than those reported by rogers et al. (1992). nevertheless, these increases may simply reflect the growing diversity of the u.s. population. although not statistically significant, programs that were not accredited and/or approved offered their graduate students more opportunities to work with reld clientele in practicum and internship experience than those programs with apa accreditation and/or nasp approval. on average, 40% of time in practicum experiences was spent working with reld clientele for those students enrolled in programs without accreditation and/or approval compared to 28.86% for those enrolled in apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs. regarding internship, 35.73% and 31.20% of time was devoted to working with reld clientele in programs that current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 were not accredited and/or approved and those with apa accreditation and/or nasp approval, respectively. opportunities afforded to graduate students to work with reld clientele in practicum and internship experiences may be influenced by other factors as well, such as the location of the program and the racial, ethnic, and linguistic composition of the practicum and internship sites available. table 1 prevalence (%) of the presence of a multicultural issues course disaggregated by accreditation and/or approval status course presence accredited (n = 60) n(%) not accredited (n = 13) n(%) x2(1) p course present 41(68.33) 11(84.61) 1.38 0.24 course not present 19(31.66) 2(15.38) note. accredited includes programs that were apa accredited and/or nasp approved. table 2 prevalence (%) of the percent of time devoted to multicultural issues in coursework disaggregated by accreditation and/or approval status accredited not accredited time spent in courses n % n % x2(1) p assessment 0% 0 0.00 0 0.00 1.48 0.69 1-5% 9 14.10 2 15.40 6-15% 24 37.50 4 30.80 16-25% 19 29.70 6 46.20 25+% 10 15.60 1 7.70 consultation 0% 1 1.60 0 0.00 0.79 0.94 1-5% 12 18.80 2 15.40 6-15% 31 48.40 6 46.20 16-25% 13 20.30 4 30.80 25+% 5 7.80 1 7.70 intervention 0% 0 0.00 0 0.00 3.07 0.38 1-5% 12 18.80 3 23.10 6-15% 28 43.80 5 38.50 16-25% 17 26.60 2 15.40 25+% 5 7.80 3 23.10 roles and functions 0% 0 0.00 0 0.00 0.78 0.85 1-5% 14 21.90 2 15.40 6-15% 23 35.90 3 23.10 16-25% 21 32.80 5 38.50 25+% 4 6.20 1 7.70 note. accredited includes programs that were apa accredited and/or nasp approved. preparing school psychologists for working with diverse students: does program accreditation matter? 9 table 3 differences in the percent of racially, ethnically, and/or linguistically diverse full-time equivalent faculty employed and racially, ethnically, and/or linguistically diverse students enrolled in programs, and the percent of time students spent working with diverse clientele in practicum and internship experiences between school psychology training programs disaggregated by accreditation and/or approval status note. accredited includes programs that were apa accredited and/or nasp approved. table 4 differences in the number of racially, ethnically, and/or linguistically diverse students who graduated and number of research products produced in the last five years between school psychology training programs disaggregated by accreditation and/or approval status note. accredited includes programs that were apa accredited and/or nasp approved. in addition, the distributions of both groups, apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs and those without accreditation and/or approval, were positively skewed. the distribution of the percent of reld fte faculty in programs that were apa accredited and/or nasp approved indicated that the majority of fte faculty members were identified as white, although at least one program indicated that 100% of their fte faculty was reld. a similar pattern resulted for fte faculty of non-accredited and/or approved programs, albeit with a smaller maximum percent of reld fte faculty. however, the average proportion of reld fte faculty members in apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs was 16.18%, which is lower than the proportion hypothesized to be necessary to create a supportive environment for reld graduate students, suggested by ponterotto et al. (1990) (as cited in rogers et al., 1998). further, those programs that were not accredited and/or approved also employed a small percent of reld fte faculty on average, reaching 14.86%. in comparison, rogers et al. (1992) reported that 13.5% of fte faculty of school psychology programs nationwide were reld, which may suggest an increase in the past two decades. the percent of reld graduate students was also similarly skewed for both apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs and those not accredited and/or approved, both enrolling mostly white students in their programs. on average, 20.83% of graduate students enrolled in programs that were apa accredited and/or nasp approved, and 22.95% of those enrolled in programs without accreditation and/or approval were reld. these proportions are roughly five percentage points higher than those reported by rogers et al. (1992). nevertheless, these increases may simply reflect the growing diversity of the u.s. population. although not statistically significant, programs that were not accredited and/or approved offered their graduate students more opportunities to work with reld accredited not accredited variable m (sd) range skew m (sd) range skew df t p faculty 16.18 (25.78) 0 100 1.68 14.86 (21.41) 0-66.67 1.44 73 0.17 0.87 students 20.83 (20.86) 0-83.33 1.52 22.95 (14.96) 8.8266.67 2.28 74 -0.35 0.73 practicum 28.86 (25.16) 0 100 1.29 40.00 (29.65) 5 95 0.93 75 -1.41 0.16 internship 31.20 (23.28) 1 100 0.92 35.73 (27.84) 5 90 1.58 70 -0.58 0.57 accredited not accredited variable m (sd) range skew m (sd) range skew df t p graduates 7.18 (8.46) 0 40 2.33 5.36 (3.44) 2 14 1.60 64 0.70 0.49 research 6.90 (10.62) 0 58 3.18 13.77 (11.27) 2 40 1.26 73 -2.10 0.39 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 10 clientele in practicum and internship experience than those programs with apa accreditation and/or nasp approval. on average, 40% of time in practicum experiences was spent working with reld clientele for those students enrolled in programs without accreditation and/or approval compared to 28.86% for those enrolled in apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs. regarding internship, 35.73% and 31.20% of time was devoted to working with reld clientele in programs that were not accredited and/or approved and those with apa accreditation and/or nasp approval, respectively. opportunities afforded to graduate students to work with reld clientele in practicum and internship experiences may be influenced by other factors as well, such as the location of the program and the racial, ethnic, and linguistic composition of the practicum and internship sites available. another pattern noted was the amount of research produced that focused on reld topics. again, although not significant, programs not-accredited and/or approved produced more research on reld topics than those programs that were apa accredited and/or nasp approved. programs that were not accredited and/or approved produced, on average, 13.77 journal articles and presentations focused on reld topics, whereas programs that were apa accredited and/or nasp approved produced on average, only 6.90 research products focused on reld topics in the last five years. this particular pattern may suggest that the efforts from apa and nasp to influence school psychology training programs to conduct research related to reld topics has not been successful, however, this pattern may also be a result of the small sample size of this study. the second outcome variable, number of reld students who had graduated the program in the last five years, indicated that on average, 7.18 reld students graduated from apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs and 5.36 reld students graduated from non-accredited and/or approved programs in the specified time period. a chi-square test was conducted to analyze whether school psychology programs that were apa accredited and/or nasp approved were more likely to offer a reld topics course than those school psychology programs with no accreditation and/or approval. the results of the test were not significant, χ2 (1) = 1.38, p = 0.24. the proportion of apa accredited and/or nasp approved school psychology programs that offered a reld topics course (p = .68) was similar to the proportion of non-accredited and/or approved programs (p = .85). this suggests that apa accredited and/or nasp approved school psychology programs and those with no accreditation and/or approval offer a reld topics course in similar proportions. table 1 lists the frequencies and statistics for each accreditation and/or approval status group for this variable. rogers et al. (1998) reported that 80% of exemplary school psychology training programs required a separate course on reld topics. secondly, the degree to which apa accredited and/or nasp approved school psychology programs incorporate instruction on working with reld clientele in coursework was also analyzed using a chi-square test. four courses were analyzed separately: assessment, consultation, intervention, and roles and functions. the results of the test were not significant for any of the courses: assessment, χ2 (3, n = 75) = 1.48, p = 0.69, consultation, χ2 (4, n = 75) = 0.79, p = 0.94, intervention, χ2 (3, n = 75) = 3.07, p = 0.38, or roles and functions, χ2(3, n = 73) = 0.78, p = 0.85. this indicates that apa accredited and/or nasp approved school psychology programs incorporate instruction on working with reld clientele within coursework in statistically similar proportions as school psychology programs that are not apa accredited and/or nasp approved. frequencies and statistics for each course are listed in table 2. the remaining continuous variables were analyzed using independent-samples t tests to determine whether or not significant differences between training characteristics exist among apa accredited and/or nasp approved school psychology programs and those that are not-accredited and/or approved. results of the analysis indicate no significant differences on any of the variables. the results may be attributed, however, to the skewness of the two groups. both apa accredited and/or nasp approved programs and those that are not accredited and/or approved have distributions that are positively skewed for the percent of reld fte faculty, percent of reld graduate students, percent of time spent in practicum and internship working with reld clientele, number of reld students who graduated the program in the last five years, and the total number of publications and presentations produced that focus on reld topics. discussion in recent years, efforts from both apa and nasp to influence the training of school psychologists to include specific characteristics to prepare graduate students for working with reld clientele have increased (nasp, 2006; nasp 2007; apa, 2002). these training characteristics have been hypothesized to produce school psychologists who are better able to meet the needs of reld students, which in turn, is assumed to ultimately generate better educational experiences and outcomes for reld students. research examining these training characteristics within school psychology graduate programs has been conducted using survey and interview methodology. school psychology programs that are thought to be exemplary in terms of their commitment to preparing graduate students for working with reld clientele have specific common characteristics such as offering a reld topics course, incorporating instruction on working with reld clientele in required coursework, preparing school psychologists for working with diverse students: does program accreditation matter? 11 having a presence of reld fte faculty and reld students in the program, offering opportunities for students to work with reld clientele in practicum and internship experiences, and supporting research both from faculty and students that directly relates to reld topics (rogers et al., 1992; rogers, 2006; rogers et al., 1998). the present study examined the current state of these specific training characteristics within school psychology programs, updating research conducted two decades ago for the purpose of determining whether differences exist in training between programs accredited by apa and/or approved by nasp and those that are not accredited in terms of preparing graduate students for working with reld clientele (rogers et al., 1992). the results suggest that despite efforts from apa and nasp, no significant differences exist regarding training characteristics between these two types of programs. as a result, questions arise as to why differences were not found and what accreditation and/or approval bodies can do in the future to influence programs to incorporate these characteristics into their training. apa accreditation and nasp approval have implications for graduates of school psychology training programs. however, active accreditation and/or approval status is costly and timeconsuming and it does not yield any direct benefits to school psychology training programs or the institutions in which they reside (apa, 2007; nasp, n.d.). for example, some competitive pre-doctoral and specialistlevel internship programs as well as some academic job postings require that graduates come from apa accredited and/or nasp approved training programs (association of psychology postdoctoral and internship centers, 2012). students who graduate from training programs that are not accredited are excluded from consideration of those positions as a result. therefore, training programs may be not accredited because their accreditation status was denied or revoked, or simply because they do not find accreditation status desirable (e.g., as a result of associated costs or other reasons). one possible explanation as to why differences were not found between the two program types may be due to the re-authorization of the apa ethics code (2002) and nasp’s, school psychology: a blueprint for training and practice iii (2006). these documents call for an increase of responsibility on the part of practitioners in working with reld clients, and although they are not legal documents, sanctions may be brought forth on programs and individuals for any digressions. so, it is possible that all programs, regardless of their accreditation and/or approval status, have similar proportions of these training characteristics within their programs in an effort to prepare their students for practicing within the confines of what is considered ethical. this explanation is supported by the positively skewed distribution of both program types, which indicates that the majority of programs surveyed in this study reported the presence of training characteristics targeted at preparing graduate students for working with reld clientele. although the majority of programs surveyed include these training characteristics, some programs reported little or no presence of these elements. a second question posed from these findings is what steps can apa and nasp take to make a greater impact on training within programs in the future? one strategy might include offering incentives for programs that incorporate these characteristics in their training, such as longer periods of accreditation and/or approval between evaluations for continuance than programs that do not incorporate these characteristics into their training. conversely, apa and nasp may choose to impose sanctions on programs that do not attempt to include these characteristics into their training, such as providing them with a preliminary accreditation and/or approval status or none at all, and more frequent evaluations until they meet certain criteria. conclusion in sum, results of this study must be interpreted with caution for a few reasons. first, the respondents of the survey only represent 32.49% of school psychology programs nationwide, and may not reflect the true nature of current training. second, using survey methodology assumes that respondents answer survey questions accurately and no attempt was made to check the information gathered from the survey against other sources of information such as course syllabi or student reports. additional sources of information may have provided different results. notwithstanding, important information was gathered regarding existing training in school psychology programs, namely, there appear to be no statistically significant differences in the training characteristics hypothesized to be important in preparing graduate students for working with reld clientele in programs with apa accreditation and/or nasp approval and those with no accreditation and/or approval. additionally, current efforts by apa and nasp to encourage school psychology programs to incorporate specific training characteristics into programs may need to be improved to impact training nationwide. future research is needed that investigates these training characteristics in more depth. this study offers one step in the direction towards the overarching goal of understanding the influence of specific training characteristics on preparing school psychologists for meeting the needs of all students. research examining these and other characteristics of training operate on the assumption that if educators are appropriately prepared, they can increase the educational outcomesand others by association (i.e., post-secondary school attainment, career stability), for students who are reld. detailed information about school psychology training programs, such as if coursework includes current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 12 instruction on empirically-based practices for working with reld students, and the impact of this type of training on practice, however, is still yet unknown. more research is needed that ties all of these factors together and tests each of these assumptions. references american psychological association. 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(2003). descriptive study of services to lep students and lep students with disabilities. volume i: research report. arlington, va: development associates. retrieved from http://www.ncela.gwu.edu current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 14 appendix multicultural competence training survey please provide an estimate for the following questions. 1. what percent of time in the following courses has been devoted specifically to minority issues? (please indicate your response to whatever course that best fits under each content area, regardless of course title.) 0% 1-5% 6-15% 16-25% 25%+ assessment ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ consultation ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ intervention ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ roles and functions ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ 2. please estimate on average the percent of time graduate students spend working with clients who are culturally and linguistically diverse in practicum and internship: student time (%): ___(practicum) ___(internship) 3. during the last five years, approximately how many articles focusing on minority issues were published by faculty members or graduate students from your program? (please list an approximate number.) ______________ 4. during the last five years, approximately how many conference presentations focusing on minority issues were given by faculty members or graduate students from your program? (please list an approximate number.) ______________ please specify the following information as it relates to your training program. 5. what degrees in the area of school psychology does your university offer? (please check all that apply.) ___ ma/ms ___ other non-doctoral ___ eds ___ edd ___ psyd ___ phd 6. is your school psychology program: (please check all that apply.) ___ apa approved (or provisionally approved) ___ nasp/ncate approved (or provisionally approved) 7. do your students take a specific course(s) about multicultural issues in psychology? no___ yes___ if yes, please list the course(s), indicate if the course(s) is required or optional, and indicate if the course is offered inside or outside the department in which the school psychology program is housed. check one check one titles required optional inside dept. outside dept. __________ ___ ___ ___ ___ __________ ___ ___ ___ ___ __________ ___ ___ ___ ___ 8. how many full-time equivalent (fte) faculty positions does your school psychology program have? _______________ 9. regarding the faculty in your school psychology program, how many are (please fill in.): preparing school psychologists for working with diverse students: does program accreditation matter? 15 men % time employed women % time employed african-american ___ ___ ___ ___ native american ___ ___ ___ ___ asian american ___ ___ ___ ___ hispanic ___ ___ ___ ___ caucasian ___ ___ ___ ___ multicultural ___ ___ ___ ___ other ___ ___ ___ ___ (please specify.) 10. how many graduate students are currently enrolled in your program? ________________ 11. how many of your graduate students are (please fill in.): men women african-american ___ ___ native american ___ ___ asian american ___ ___ hispanic ___ ___ caucasian ___ ___ multicultural ___ ___ other ___ ___ (please specify.) 12. how many racial, ethnic, or linguistic minority students have graduated from your program in the last five years? ________________ current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 16 article citation styck, k. m. (2012). preparing school psychologists for working with diverse students: does program accreditation matter? current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from: http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/964 author notes kara m. styck arizona state university p.o. box 870611, tempe, az 85287-0611. kara.sujansky@asu.edu kara m. styck is a doctoral student in the educational psychology program at arizona state university. she is currently completing her doctoral research on evidence-based assessment practices for determining the existence of learning disabilities in culturally and linguistically diverse school-aged students. preliminary results of this study were presented as a poster at the annual meeting of the national association of school psychologists, san francisco, ca, february, 2011. the author also acknowledges the assistance of drs. joanna gorin, david wodrich, and linda caterino. manuscript received: 3/27/2012 revisions received: 6/13/2012 accepted: 6/16/2012 preparing school psychologists for working with diverse students: does program accreditation matter? 17 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 1309_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 3 december 17, 2013 issn 1099-839x factors associated with access to the general curriculum for students with intellectual disability meagan karvonen university of kansas claudia flowers and shawnee y. wakeman university of north carolina at charlotte beginning in 1997, federal legislation required schools provide access to academic curricula to students with intellectual disability. the extent of such access for students with significant intellectual disability currently is not known. this study examined access (defined by scope and intensity of content instruction and depth of knowledge) provided to students with significant intellectual disability, and relationship between curriculum access and a set of teacher and student characteristics. a survey of 644 teachers from nine states found that these students, on average, were exposed to 17 out of 27 english language arts strands and 10 out of 16 math strands. canonical correlation analyses suggested that students’ symbolic communication level had the strongest association with students’ access. cluster analysis suggested students experience three types of access to english language arts and four types of access to math instruction, and the cluster groups significantly differed by teacher and student variables. these findings suggest several policy and practice actions to better support meaningful participation in the general education curriculum among students with intellectual disabilities. keywords: curriculum, instruction, intellectual disability, general curriculum access access to the general curriculum for students with disabilities was first mandated in the 1997 amendments to individuals with disabilities education act (idea; pl 105-17). prior to this legislation, public schools primarily taught functional life skills or developmental curricula to students with intellectual disability (browder et al., 2003). with subsequent federal legislation (no child left behind [nclb] 2002, pl 107110; idea 2004, pl 108-446) reinforcing the requirement for academic instruction, students with intellectual disability are now expected to learn academic content linked to their chronologically-appropriate grade level. these students are no longer excluded from accountability systems; instead, they are expected to learn and to demonstrate what they know and can do in academic subjects. within large-scale assessment systems, their learning is measured by alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards (aa-aas). despite the potential that general curriculum access provides, challenges in designing and delivering meaningful academic instruction to students with intellectual disability exist. one identified challenge is the relatively limited foundation of research-based strategies for teaching a wide range of academic content (browder, spooner, ahlgrim-delzell, harris, & wakeman, 2008; browder, wakeman, spooner, ahlgrimdelzell, & algozzine, 2006). specifically, much of the current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 2 research utilized a systematic approach to addressing discrete skills in a repeated trial format. in addition, the research identified in these studies illuminated a very narrow range of academic content as the focus of most empirical study (e.g., sight words, money, and time). a second challenge is that instruction in a state’s academic content standards must also be combined with, or taught in addition to, other individual curricular priorities in students’ individualized education programs (ieps). although instruction in academic standards may be integrated with functional priorities, the information on how to accomplish this goal is still emerging. evidence suggests that self-determination strategies (agran, cavin, wehmeyer, & palmer, 2006) and support from peers without disabilities (carter & kennedy, 2006; carter, moss, hoffman, chung, & sisco, 2011) can promote access to the general curriculum, and that selfdetermination can support student attainment of educational goals aligned with academic content standards (agran, wehmeyer, cavin, & palmer, 2010). however, these strategies may not yet be in widespread use by all teachers. finally, even more than a decade after idea called for access to the general curriculum, not all teachers feel adequately prepared to teach academics to students with intellectual disabilities (ruppar, dymond, & gaffney, 2011). first-year special and general education teachers report significantly different self-perceptions of how well prepared they are to teach the assigned subject matter (boe, shin, & cook, 2007), and they hold different views regarding what access to the general curriculum looks like for this population (dymond, renzaglia, gilson, & slagor, 2007). challenges regarding preparation to teach academics exist even for teachers of students without intellectual disability. for example, pogrund and wibbenmeyer (2008) wrote that even though teachers of students with visual impairments should teach using the core curriculum, special educators training to teach that population of students do not have expertise to do so. to help overcome these challenges, the field has generated numerous resources to help teachers provide access to the general curriculum (e.g., clayton, burdge, denham, kleinert, & kearns, 2006; kleinert & kearns, 2010). textbooks have been written or revised to expand coverage of academics (e.g., browder & spooner, 2011; ryndak & alper, 2003; snell & brown, 2006). in addition, several federally funded research and technical assistance projects are developing resources and methods for teachers (see examples at http://www.cast.org/research/projects/ncac.html, http://www.hdi.uky.edu/ilssa/, http://education.uncc.edu/access/). the multi-state consortia developing new alternate assessments (http://dynamiclearningmaps.org/, http://www.ncscpartners.org/) are also producing new materials and professional development to support teachers in teaching the academic content that will be assessed. even with these resources, teachers need opportunities to translate these concepts into specific, individualized instruction. for the most part, special educators who are now responsible for teaching academics to students with intellectual disability learn about academic content standards and effective instructional strategies through inservice professional development. very few teachers of students with intellectual disability have licensure in academic subjects (karvonen, wakeman, browder, rogers, & flowers, 2011), and pre-service education curricula have relatively little influence on their teaching of academics (karvonen, wakeman, flowers, & browder, 2007a). some evidence suggests that effective professional development can improve teachers’ ability to design academic instruction for this population (browder, karvonen, davis, fallin, & courtade-little, 2005; jimenez, mims, & browder, 2012). outside of structured professional development, special educators may rely on informal supports and policy messages to guide their instructional choices. for example, they may view their general education counterparts as resources for understanding grade-level material. they may also internalize messages from building and district-level administrators about what is valued in the curriculum for this population. access to academic content enhances the quality of education for students with intellectual disability by increasing expectations for learning, promoting positive adult outcomes, enhancing educational equity, and promoting self-determination (browder et al., 2007). if students with intellectual disability are to have access to academic content, teachers must be skilled in adapting grade-level content to their specialized needs. access to grade-level content may be more difficult at upper grades than at lower ones, as the extensions and adaptations stretch further to bridge the gap between grade level and students’ current level of performance. students who take aa-aas vary considerably in their use of expressive and receptive communication, sensory functioning, augmentative communication, and levels of engagement (towles-reeves, kearns, kleinert, & kleinert, 2009). thus, teachers must be creative in finding ways to adapt content based on students’ communication systems. students who already have abstract symbolic communication systems may require fewer adaptations than those who work with concrete symbols or those who have not yet developed symbolic communication systems (browder, flowers, & wakeman, 2008). teachers must also consider students’ physical and sensory issues when designing instruction (hedeen & ayres, 2002). five different students working toward a reading comprehension goal may require five different response modes, and use different forms of assistive factors associated with access to the general curriculum for students with intellectual disability 3 technology to show what they know. much of the research on access to the general curriculum has focused on the nature of instruction, including instructional settings and groupings (matzen, ryndak, & nakao, 2010; soukup, wehmeyer, bashinski, & bovaird, 2007), or outcomes of interventions designed to promote learning in the general curriculum (agran et al., 2010). some of this research acknowledges the complexity of the interactions of teachers, students, and environments in creating meaningful opportunities for students to access the general curriculum (copeland & cosbey, 2008-2009; lee, wehmeyer, soukup, & palmer, 2010). this body of research furthers the collective understanding of “access” but does not define the scope of the “curriculum” in general curriculum access. a recent investigation of the enacted curriculum for students in five states who take aa-aas indicated that performance expectations tend to be lower than anticipated given the large percent of students who have some use of symbols for communication (karvonen et al., 2011). whether certain subgroups of students who take aa-aas have access to a wider range of academic content or are held to higher expectations for performance of academic skills in daily instruction is not yet known. further, if special educators are going to effectively help all students—even those with the most significant intellectual disability—access a broad range of academic curriculum, the field needs to know more about what factors are associated with the degree of access to gradelevel content students with intellectual disability have. information about coverage and gaps in access may guide future research on targeted areas of academic skill instruction, as well as the development of targeted materials to help teachers strengthen the enacted curriculum for this population. this study described general curriculum access for students with intellectual disability and examined factors associated with access. the following research questions were addressed: 1. what is the scope and intensity of academic content coverage for students with intellectual disability? 2. what is the relationship between access to the general curriculum and teacher and student characteristics? 3. do certain subgroups of students have access to a wider range of academic content? 4. what factors are associated with the extent of academic instruction students receive? methods for this exploratory research design, we opted to use teacher descriptions collected through a researcherdesigned survey instrument referred to as curriculum indicators survey (cis). from these data we produced simple descriptive and multivariate statistical analyses that answered our research questions. instrument the curriculum indicators survey (cis; karvonen, wakeman, flowers, & browder, 2008) measures the enacted curriculum for students with intellectual disability who participate in aa-aas. the cis is structured in five parts that include inventories of content within english language arts (ela), math and science, and questions regarding teacher background, instructional resources and professional development. part 1 of cis contains 84 items and asks for background information on the responding teacher (e.g., educational experience, characteristics of case load, instructional influences in each subject area). in part 2, teachers provide information about the types of students on their case load, based on students’ levels of symbolic communication. the respondents also select a single student on their case load who will serve as the “target student” for the remaining three parts of the survey. parts 3-5 measure the english language arts, math, and science curriculum taught to the target student during the current academic year. data in the current study are based on short forms of the cis, which contain 27 content items in ela, and 16 in math. results from the science section are not included in this study. for each academic skill taught (i.e., each item), teachers rate two pieces of information: (a) the intensity of coverage of the content, and (b) the highest performance expectation (depth of knowledge, dok) of the student on the item. intensity of coverage is rated on a scale from 1 (none) to 5 (systematic and intensive, such as daily or nearly daily for the entire year). dok is rated on a six-point scale adapted from bloom’s taxonomy to extend downward for greater sensitivity to the cognitive demand typical of instruction for students with intellectual disability. this dok scale ranges from 1 (attend, vocalize, gesture) to 6 (analyze, synthesize, evaluate). a diagram that illustrates the kind of information rated at the item level on parts 3-5 is provided in figure 1. for each topic in cis parts 3-5, respondents also indicated the grade level or band from which they adapted activities, materials, and contexts for the target student. the cis has been subjected to initial pilot testing, expert reviews, and full field tests (karvonen, wakeman, flowers, & browder, 2007b). past studies have provided some validity evidence based on relationships with external curriculum measures (criterion-related) and cognitive interviews (response processes; karvonen, wakeman, flowers, & browder, 2007c). setting and sample an online survey (described below) was administered to a regionally diverse sample of teachers representing states with varied approaches to aa-aas. the selected states participated in one of two federallyfunded projects on aa-aas. two of the nine states were northwestern, two midwestern, one western, two current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 4 figure 1. content and rating expectation for academic skills in cis parts 3-5. northeastern, and two southeast. five states used a performance-based format; two a portfolio format; one a combination of portfolio and performance-based formats; and one a checklist with a body of evidence format. four states identified assessment benchmarks or targets and five states had written extended standards (i.e., prioritized and potentially transformed standards based upon the general education standards within each state). precise procedures for recruiting teachers varied by state, but in most cases recruitment and informed consent information was distributed via email to distribution lists that included eligible teachers. the sampling frame in each state consisted of teachers who administered aa-aas. the lists of teacher names were generated in different ways depending on each state’s recordkeeping and methods of communicating with teachers. in eight of nine states, gift cards with small monetary value were provided as an incentive for teachers to complete all parts of the survey. the ninth state, which did not allow incentives, had a response rate that was similar to the other states. summarized in table 1 are responding teacher characteristics, including years of teaching experience in the content area and with the population, hours in professional development on the academic subject in the past 12 months, and content area licensure status. more than half the sample (58%) had been teaching students with intellectual disability for 10 years or less. nearly one-fourth (24%) held licensure in ela and 17% were licensed in math. in both subjects, the vast majority reported receiving 10 or fewer hours of professional development in the content area within the past year (ela = 71%, math = 83%). student-level variables were available for 543 target students. nearly one-third of these students were from grades 3-5, 36% were from grades 6-8, and 23% were enrolled in high school (grades 9-12). although 9% of the sample was enrolled in grades prek-2 and in theory would not eligible for aa-aas in most states, these students were chronologically old enough to participate in the assessment and were therefore retained in the sample. roughly two-thirds (66%) of target students reportedly had abstract symbolic communication systems (i.e., use written words, sign language, braille), while 15% had use concrete symbolic communication (i.e., use pictoral or photograph representations such as boardmaker or line drawn pictures), and 17% used presymbolic factors associated with access to the general curriculum for students with intellectual disability 5 table 1 descriptive statistics for teacher and student variables ela math variable n % of n n % of n years teaching content 0-3 121 24.1 146 24.3 4-10 159 31.6 194 32.3 11-20 134 26.6 160 26.7 21-30 67 13.3 77 12.8 31 or more 22 4.4 23 3.8 years teaching students with intellectual disability 0-3 103 20.5 4-10 186 37.0 11-20 128 25.4 21-30 65 12.9 31 or more 21 4.2 professional development hours in content 0-3 201 40.0 334 55.7 4-10 154 30.6 161 26.8 11-20 69 13.7 51 8.5 21-30 30 6.0 23 3.8 31 or more 49 9.7 31 5.2 content area license yes 113 24.1 89 16.5 no 356 75.9 451 83.5 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 6 ela math variable n % of n n % of n performance assessment on demand not at all 26 5.2 29 4.8 <1/month 29 5.8 24 4.0 1-4/months 108 21.7 124 20.7 1-4/weeks 171 34.4 219 36.5 >4/weeks 163 32.8 204 34.0 communication level presymbolic 87 17.6 93 17.5 concrete symbolic 73 14.8 81 15.3 abstract symbolic 334 67.6 357 67.2 grade band prek-2 46 9.2 49 9.2 3-5 155 31.1 169 31.6 6-8 181 36.3 192 35.9 9-12 116 23.3 125 23.4 grade band match 0 strands 187 45.2 204 52.4 1 or more strands 227 54.8 185 47.6 communication (i.e., use object or concrete representations such as a cup for drink). compared with the general population of students eligible to take aaaas, target students in this sample slightly underrepresented the concrete symbolic level and overrepresented the presymbolic level (towles-reeves et al., 2009). although disability labels are not useful for interpreting student access, they may be helpful descriptors for readers wanting to compare the data with other study samples. for this study, disability labels for the target students were as follows: mental retardation (n = 366, 67%), speech/language impairment (n = 180, 33%), autism (n = 134, 25%), multiple disabilities (n = 111, 20%), other health impairment (n = 61, 11%), orthopedic impairment (n = 54, 10%), visual impairment (n = 32, 6%), learning disability (n = 31, 6%), traumatic brain injury (n = 15, 3%), hearing impairment (n = 13, 2%), severe emotional disturbance (n = 10, 2%), and deafblind (n = 5, 1%). data collection procedures the cis was conveniently administered in the context of the aa-aas alignment study for each participating state. each study used the links for academic learning (lal) alignment procedure (flowers, wakeman, browder, & karvonen, 2009). in those studies, the cis was used to evaluate alignment of curriculum to the assessment content. all studies were conducted after university institutional review board approval and teachers received informed consent factors associated with access to the general curriculum for students with intellectual disability 7 table 2 access variables variable scale and definition scope content number of items across strands taught with at least “slight” coverage. range = 0-27 in ela, 0-16 in math. depth of knowledge (dok) content average dok of all items taught in the subject (ela, math). range = 1-6 (normalized for canonical correlations) intensity content average rating for intensity of instruction, across items within strand. range = 1-5. (note: strand-level scores used in cluster analysis; average across all items and all strands used in canonical correlations) information before completing the cis. surveys were made available to eligible teachers in each state for approximately 2-3 weeks. the first state participated in december 2006 and the last state’s completion window was in june 2008. respondents viewed two online training videos prior to completing the surveys. one video provided an orientation to the instrument and how to take it online, while the other provided detailed training examples to help teachers calibrate their understanding of the three rating scales (intensity, performance expectation, and grade level). surveys were administered online and all data were automatically stored in a database. follow-up messages were sent to non-respondents and partial respondents at intervals preferred by each state—typically one and two weeks following the initial invitation. a total of 644 teachers responded, with the number per state ranging from 7 in the least populous state to 194 in a more populous state. although response rates could not be calculated in all states because of the recruitment methods used, lower bound estimated response rates ranged from 2% to 40% of eligible teachers. since the survey was administered in five sections, response rates varied slightly for each section of the survey. based on complete responses to survey sections that were then matched via unique identifier, 509 usable records in ela and 613 in math were included in our analyses and results. data analysis procedures simple descriptive statistics represented the scope and intensity of access to the general curriculum as defined in parts 3-4 of the cis. teacher and student characteristics from parts 1-2 of the cis defined variables potentially associated with the extent of access to academic content. defining access variables. descriptions of variables that represented curriculum access are summarized in table 2. two variables represented different aspects of content coverage: scope and intensity. scope represented the range of content within the subject area regardless of intensity of instruction, and intensity captured the average intensity rating (range of lessons per year, within strands and across all items). average dok across items represented the performance expectation for the student in that subject. defining predictor variables. variables potentially associated with general curriculum access are summarized in table 3. teacher-level variables included teaching experience and licensure; recent professional development in the subject area; the extent to which several external factors influenced their instructional choices; and the extent to which they used a variety of materials, settings and human resources to teach academic content. potential student-level variables included current communicative status, assigned grade level, and quality of match (or discrepancy) between assigned grade level and grade band of instructional materials and activities. for this research, we used symbolic communication level rather than disability label because disability categories are not precise and finite enough to accurately describe how a student accesses information in the practical terms needed for planning instruction. for example, accurately pinpointing how a student who has been given the label of autism would interact with academic content would be difficult because of the heterogeneous abilities of students who qualify for special education services under that disability label. teachers’ ability to accurately classify their students according to level of symbolic communication use has been validated by browder et al. (2008b) and also supported by towels-reeves et al. (2009). question 1: descriptive statistics. simple descriptions developed from three access variables characterized the scope and intensity of academic content coverage for students with intellectual disability. table 2 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 8 table 3 predictor variables variable scale and definition teacher variables years teaching students with intellectual disability years of experience teaching students with intellectual disability, rated on 5-point scale reflecting ranges of years (0-3, 4-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31 or more) years teaching content (math or ela) years of experience teaching the academic content (ela or math), rated on 5-point scale reflecting ranges of years (0-3, 4-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31 or more) licensure in the content area (math or ela) 0 = no, 1 = yes professional development time spent in professional development on instructional strategies in the academic subject, in the past year. rated on 5-point scale reflecting range of number of hours in past 12 months (0-3, 4-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31 or more) performance assessment frequency of use of performance assessment to monitor student progress in instruction. range = 1-5 (categories: not at all, <1/month, 1-4/month, 1-4/week, >4/week) general curriculum influences scale representing frequency with which teachers reported several academic items to be moderate or strong influences on their teaching in the content area. total score ranged 0-5 based on combination of these items: state content standards; alternate assessment requirements; previous alternate assessment results; national standards in the content area; and content, materials, and activities used by general education teachers at their school. αela = .79, αmath = .80 subject area resources total number of materials, settings, and people the teacher reported using to teach the subject. scale = 0-19 student variables symbolic communication level 1-3; student’s level of symbol use in communication. rated as presymbolic (i.e., relying primarily on nonsymbolic communication although they should be receiving ongoing instruction with symbols), concrete symbolic (i.e., needing symbols to have immediate referents such as pictorial symbols or words used to refer to everyday objects), or abstract symbolic (i.e., communicating with signs and symbols that do not need an immediate referent including some written text). factors associated with access to the general curriculum for students with intellectual disability 9 variable scale and definition grade band grade band that included the target student’s chronologically-appropriate assigned grade level. four categories (pk-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12) grade band match comparison between student’s assigned grade band and the grade band(s) from which teachers adapted materials, activities, and contexts to teach the content. 0 = all content taught with materials below the chronologically-appropriate grade band, 1 = 1 or more strands taught with adaptations from grade band-appropriate materials details these variables and the scale used to measure them. question 2: canonical correlation analyses (cca). a cca examined the relationship between a set of variables that represented general curriculum access and a set that represented predictor variables (i.e., teacher and student characteristics). before conducting the cca, we screened the data for outliers, linearity, and normality; no outliers were evident and the univariate distributions appeared normal. we also assessed nonlinearity and multicollinearity. all the statistical assumptions appeared tenable; all bivariate scatterplots appeared linear; and assumptions regarding within-set multicollinearity were met. question 3: cluster analyses. cluster analyses identified homogeneous subgroups of teachers based on their access variables (i.e., scope, depth of knowledge, and intensity) in each strand. a k-means cluster procedure in spss was the clustering method, wherein 2, 3, and 4 cluster solutions were evaluated. we selected a three-cluster solution for ela based on conceptual interpretation of the final cluster centers for each access variable. we selected a four-cluster solution for math. we evaluated the quality of each solution using a oneway anova on the final cluster groups and visual inspection of the distribution of distances of cases from their group’s center. question 4: anova, tukey and chi-square analyses. using the final cluster solutions, we explored group differences for the teacher and student characteristic variables identified in question 1. we used one-way anovas to examine cluster group differences on the two quantitative predictor variables (general curriculum influences, total resources) in each content area. tukey post-hoc tests identified significant differences among specific groups. chi-square analyses identified differences for the categorical variables, including student grade band, grade band match, and symbolic communication level; and teacher experience teaching students with disabilities, teaching the content, professional development in instructional strategies, and licensure in the academic area. we did not conduct chisquare tests for those predictor variables that violated assumptions of the test (e.g., use of performance assessment to monitor progress in math). results question 1: scope and intensity of academic content in table 4, we report the means and standard deviations for scope, intensity, and dok. students were exposed to an average of 17 out of 27 english language arts (ela) strands and an average of 10 out of 16 math strands. the average intensity of ela and math instruction, based on a 5-point intensity scale, was 2.5 and 2.4, respectively. the instructional dok, as measured with a 6-point scale, tended to be low, with an average of 2.4 for ela and 2.6 for math. table 4 descriptive statistics for curriculum access variables ela math variable m sd m sd scope – content 16.9 7.95 9.90 4.20 intensity – content 2.47 .83 2.42 .75 dok – content 2.42 .99 2.62 1.08 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 10 question 2: relationship between access and teacher and student characteristics the results of the two cca suggest relationships between the set of variables that measure access to ela or access to math and the set of predictor variables (i.e., student and teacher characteristics). not all surveyed teachers completed both ela and math parts of the survey, therefore the sample sizes for these two ccas differ (ela n = 351; math n = 315). ela. the ela cca was based on a sample of 351 respondents. the first canonical correlation was .615 (38% overlapping variance). the remaining two canonical correlations were either effectively zero or were not interpretable and thus are not discussed in the results. with all three canonical correlations included, χ2 (50) = 228.30, p < .001. table 5 reports the results as standardized canonical coefficients, structure coefficients (rs), squared structure coefficients (rs 2), canonical correlations (r), and squared canonical correlations (r2) for the significant function. using a cutoff correlation (rs) of the absolute value .30, all the access variables (i.e., scope, intensity, and dok) correlated with the first canonical variate. among the set of predictor variables, professional development (.30), general curriculum influences, (.48) and student communication level (.87) correlated with the first canonical variate. teachers that reported more professional development and greater general curriculum influences demonstrated greater access. students with higher communication levels tended to have greater access. the following predictor variables were not related to access: (a) years teaching ela, (b) years teaching students with intellectual disability, (c) ela licensure, (d) use of performance assessment, (e) ela resources, (f) student grade band, and (g) grade band match. math. the math cca was based on a sample of 315 respondents. the first canonical correlation was .508 (26% overlapping variance). the remaining canonical correlations were effectively zero and thus are not discussed in the results. with all three canonical correlations included, χ2 (30) = 136.52, p < .001. the last three columns in table 5 report the results from the statistically significant canonical function in math. using a cutoff correlation (rs) of the absolute value .30, all the access variables correlated with the first canonical variate. among the set of predictor variables, professional development (.35), performance assessment (.31), general curriculum influence (.49), student communication level (.82), and student’s grade band (.30) correlated with the first canonical variate. teachers with more professional development, greater general curriculum influences, and more frequent use of performance assessment demonstrated greater access. students with higher communication levels, and those enrolled in higher grade bands tended to have greater access. the following predictor variables were not related to access: (a) years teaching math, (b) years teaching students with intellectual disability, (c) math licensure, (d) math resources, and (e) grade band match. question 3: access if subgroups of students to wider range of academic content ela. the cluster analysis for ela included a total of 509 target students. the three-cluster solution grouped students into meaningful subgroups. the means for each access variable, by cluster, are reported in table 6. results from eight one-way anovas indicated statistically significant differences (p < .001) between groups on all eight access variables. after evaluating final cluster centers for each variable, we created cluster names that reflected the characteristics that differentiated the groups. the students in the group with limited access had relatively low intensity of instruction across strands, with the highest being in the language strand (m = 1.79). average dok was also quite low for students in this group (m = 1.61). a group of students with moderate access covered a broader scope at a slightly higher dok than the limited group. students in the intensive group had considerably higher mean scores for intensity variables (m = 2.13 to 3.72 on 4-point scale) and higher average dok compared with the students in the other two groups (m = 2.88). math. the cluster analysis for math included 485 target students. we found that the four-cluster solution adequately minimized within group variability and maximized between group variability for this content area. the mean values for each access variable by cluster are reported in table 7. after evaluating final cluster centers for each variable, we created cluster names that reflected the characteristics that differentiated the groups. the first group showed a pattern of limited access. for those students, scope and dok were very low; the relative intensity of instruction was low across all five strands, with slightly higher emphasis on numbers and operations (m = 2.02) relative to the other strands. the targeted – low group consisted of students who received targeted instruction that emphasized numbers and operations (m = 3.37) and measurement (m = 2.48) more so than other strands, with higher average dok (m = 2.59) than the limited group. the targeted – high group received instruction with a wider scope and higher average dok than students in all other groups, but with a similar relative emphasis across strands as was seen in the targeted – low group. finally, a fourth group of students received instruction in a broad range of topics, as evidenced by more similar means across intensity ratings for the strands but with average dok similar to targeted – low group (m = 2.51). factors associated with access to the general curriculum for students with intellectual disability 11 table 5 ela and math results for canonical correlation analyses ela function i math function i variable coefficient rs rs 2 coefficient rs rs 2 access variables scope .661 .927 .859 * .501 .766 .587 * dok .417 .782 .612 * .670 .862 .743 * intensity .068 .900 .810 * .049 .781 .610 * predictor variables years teaching content .145 .148 .022 .234 .285 .081 years teaching students with intellectual disability .050 .064 .004 -.007 .179 .032 license in content .005 .122 .015 .103 .013 .000 professional development .105 .302 .091 * .142 .349 .122 * perform assessment .038 .029 .001 .202 .305 .093 * general curriculum influence .277 .479 .229 * .319 .491 .241 * content resources .094 .171 .029 .035 .235 .055 student communication .786 .870 .757 * .693 .820 .672 * grade band .196 .260 .068 .257 .300 .090 * grade band match .240 .279 .078 .113 .102 .010 canonical r .615 .508 r squared .378 .258 table 6 final cluster centers for ela access variables variable limited moderate intensive scope 5.12 14.59 24.15 dok average 1.61 2.28 2.88 language intensity 1.79 2.81 3.72 reading/literacy intensity 1.37 2.06 3.06 composition intensity 1.24 2.12 3.19 media intensity 1.09 1.38 2.13 note: limited n = 104; moderate n = 170; intensive n = 235; total n = 509 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 12 table 7 final cluster centers for math access variables variable limited targeted – low targeted – high broad scope 3.61 7.55 15.18 11.46 dok average 1.93 2.59 3.21 2.51 numbers and operations intensity 2.02 3.37 4.34 3.90 algebra intensity 1.33 1.78 3.08 2.20 geometry intensity 1.24 1.52 2.89 2.05 measurement intensity 1.58 2.48 3.54 2.86 data analysis intensity 1.29 1.50 2.72 2.07 note: very limited n = 83; targeted-low n = 148; targeted – high n = 127; broad n = 127; total n = 485. question 4: factors associated with extent of access ela. omnibus tests for cluster group differences on most teacher and student predictor variables were statistically significant (see table 8). we observed significant group differences in average general curriculum influence score, f(2, 463) = 42.94, p < .001, η2 = .16, and total ela resources, f(2, 495) = 6.47, p < .001, η2 = .03. all pairwise comparisons were statistically significant for the general curriculum influences variable (p = .042 for moderate; intensive, p < .001 for other comparisons). members of the intensive group had significantly higher mean total ela resource score than the limited group (mi = 12.05, ml = 10.55, p = .002). on both dependent variables, the limited access group had the lowest mean, followed by moderate and then intensive. among the categorical student variables, there were statistically significant group differences for students’ symbolic communication level, χ2 (4, n = 489) = 110.31, p < .001, grade band, χ2 (6, n = 493) = 19.93, p = .003, and grade band match, χ2 (2, n = 412) = 10.48, p = .005. there were higher percentages of students with abstract symbolic communication systems in the intensive (85%) and moderate (70%) groups than in the limited (28%) group. the highest rate of instruction using grade level materials that matched students’ chronologicallyappropriate grade was reported for the intensive (62%) group. among the teacher predictor variables, years of experience teaching students with intellectual disability, χ2 (8, n = 498) = 22.65, p = .004, and hours of professional development in ela instruction in the past year, χ2 (8, n = 498) = 19.92, p = .011, were statistically significantly related to access group. teachers in the limited access group tended to have fewer years of experience teaching ela and fewer hours of professional development on ela instructional strategies in the past year compared with the other groups. there were no statistically significant differences between cluster groups on the basis of teachers’ ela or reading licensure, χ2 (2, n = 464) = 3.58, p = .167, or years of experience teaching ela, χ2 (8, n = 498) = 10.98, p = .20. math. omnibus tests for cluster group differences on most teacher and student variables were statistically significant (see table 9). there were significant group differences in average general curriculum influence score, f(3, 452) = 21.85, p < .001, η2 = .13, and total math resources, f(3, 468) = 7.66, p < .001, η2 = .05. all group means were significantly different from one another on the general curriculum access variable (p < .001 to p = .047). for total math resources, the limited access group had a lower mean than the targeted – high (p < .001) and broad (p = .021) groups. the targeted – low group had a significantly lower mean than the targeted – high (p < .002) group. among the categorical variables, there were significant group differences for students’ symbolic communication level, χ2 (6, n = 462) = 59.50, p < .001, students’ assigned grade band, χ2 (9, n = 468) = 21.77, p = .010, and teachers’ years of experience teaching students with intellectual disability, χ2 (12, n = 472) = 24.52, p = .017. there were more teachers with extensive (11 or more years) experience in the limited access group. there were higher percentages of students with abstract symbolic communication systems in the targeted – high (84%), broad (75%), and targeted – low (67%) groups than in the limited access group (34%). factors associated with access to the general curriculum for students with intellectual disability 13 table 8 access group differences for ela predictor variables variable limited moderate intensive general curriculum influences 11.31 (3.52) 12.35 (3.19) 14.69 (3.26) total ela resources 10.55 (4.03) 11.19 (3.61) 12.05 (3.61) years teaching ela 0-3 29% 24% 21% 4-10 32% 31% 33% 11-20 16% 28% 31% 21-30 17% 13% 11% 31 or more 6% 4% 4% years teaching students with intellectual disability 0-3 27% 16% 21% 4-10 34% 41% 35% 11-20 14% 25% 31% 21-30 18% 15% 9% 31 or more 8% 2% 4% professional development hours in ela 0-3 47% 46% 33% 4-10 33% 30% 30% 11-20 7% 12% 18% 21-30 3% 4% 9% 31 or more 10% 9% 10% ela/reading license yes 18% 24% 28% no 82% 76% 72% communication level presymbolic 45% 15% 6% concrete symbolic 28% 15% 9% abstract symbolic 28% 70% 85% grade band prek-2 16% 13% 4% 3-5 31% 33% 30% 6-8 32% 31% 41% 9-12 21% 23% 25% current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 14 variable limited moderate intensive grade band match 0 strands 58% 50% 38% 1 or more strands 42% 50% 62% table 9 access group differences for math predictor variables variable limited targeted – low targeted – high broad general curriculum influences 11.13 (3.87) 12.43 (3.61) 14.87 (3.01) 13.71 (3.32) total math resources 10.41 (4.22) 10.90 (3.56) 12.49 (3.25) 11.87 (3.03) years teaching math 0-3 30% 23% 19% 21% 4-10 33% 36% 25% 35% 11-20 15% 25% 37% 29% 21-30 17% 11% 15% 13% 31 or more 5% 6% 4% 2% years teaching students with intellectual disability 0-3 22% 22% 17% 21% 4-10 33% 41% 32% 39% 11-20 14% 23% 36% 27% 21-30 22% 11% 11% 11% 31 or more 9% 4% 5% 2% professional development hours in math 0-3 58% 59% 45% 61% 4-10 25% 27% 28% 27% 11-20 7% 10% 14% 6% 21-30 5% 1% 5% 4% 31 or more 5% 3% 8% 2% math license yes 13% 18% 16% 18% no 87% 82% 85% 82% communication level presymbolic 38% 16% 8% 12% concrete symbolic 28% 17% 8% 14% abstract symbolic 34% 67% 84% 75% factors associated with access to the general curriculum for students with intellectual disability 15 variable limited targeted – low targeted – high broad grade band prek-2 21% 12% 4% 7% 3-5 28% 35% 32% 31% 6-8 33% 31% 43% 35% 9-12 18% 23% 21% 28% grade band match 0 strands 59% 58% 44% 51% 1 or more strands 41% 42% 56% 49% there were no statistically significant differences between cluster groups on the basis of teachers’ years of experience teaching math, χ2 (12, n = 472) = 18.07, p = .114, hours of professional development in math instruction in the past year, χ2 (12, n = 472) = 17.01, p = .149, or math licensure, χ2 (3, n = 427) = 1.37, p = .71, or the match between grade level materials and students’ assigned grade, χ2 (3, n = 384) = 5.59, p = .134. discussion our descriptive examination of access to the general curriculum among students with intellectual disability and exploration of variables associated with access to ela and math curricula for these students offer three important findings. first, we found that the scope and intensity of academic coverage suggested that students are exposed to a variety of academic content, but the dok results indicated that the content was reduced in the level of complexity. second, in canonical correlation analyses, we found the set of variables used to define access were strongly interrelated for both ela and math, which suggested that a combination of range and intensity of content coverage and depth of knowledge can operationally define “access” to the general curriculum in a broad sense. our study defined general curriculum access as the academic curriculum – regardless of setting (i.e., resource, inclusion, self-contained). specific instructional strategies used to deliver the curriculum were also outside the scope of this analysis. this study does not allow for inferences based on all seven criteria browder et al. (2007) established for linking instruction and assessment to grade-level content, including achievement expectations, differentiation across grade levels, and the way in which content is extended from grade-level standards. third, the cluster analyses indicate groups of students with intellectual disability have different levels of access to the general curriculum— three levels of access to ela and four levels of access to math. as with the adoption of any innovation (rogers, 2003), it is not surprising that some teachers have made more progress than others in developing academic instruction for this population of students. the groups that emerged may reflect a combination of (a) teacher adoption of general curriculum access as an innovation and (b) student characteristics. several considerations for educational policy and practice emerge from these findings. for instance, if the foundation of academic instruction for this population is in functional academics, the progress teachers make in building on this foundation may lead them to intensify the instruction in familiar areas before branching out into new areas. functional math curriculum is largely based in numbers and operations and measurement, with topics such as money and time. between the limited and broad access groups, we found two targeted groups with stronger emphases on those two historically functional strands. the broad group was taught a wider range of content but with lower dok. in other words, some teachers may have chosen to push students further in familiar areas that have functional value, while others may have chosen to broaden access to more strands but with lower performance expectations. functional ela has typically included oral language (expressive and receptive communication), reading (e.g., sight words), and writing (e.g., stamping or writing one’s name). because of the broader range of functional ela content, we found just one rather than two groups between the extremes. the observed relationships between access group and teacher characteristics such as professional development (ela) and years of experience teaching students with intellectual disability (ela and math) confirm the importance of teacher preparation to design and deliver effective academic instruction. however, the small canonical coefficients for years of experience teaching the content and teaching the students imply that simply accruing years of experience does not sufficiently prepare teachers to provide access. this study also echoes findings from general education, in which other atrisk populations are served by teachers with the least current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 16 experience and with fewer professional development opportunities (lankford, loeb, & wyckoff, 2002; shen & poppink, 2003). besides teacher acceptance and preparation, access groups may also be explained by students’ communication levels. while the relationship is not perfectly linear, there were far more students who had not yet developed concrete symbolic communication systems (i.e., those labeled as presymbolic) in the limited access groups in both subjects, while the intensive and broad groups were almost exclusively made up of students with abstract symbolic communication systems. it is possible that the intensive and broad groups included some students who had been incorrectly assigned by the iep team to the aa-aas but were more appropriately assessed by an alternate assessment based on modified achievement standards or grade level achievement standards with appropriate accommodations. regardless, the outcomes illustrate that the population of students who participate in aa-aas is very diverse. teachers who design instruction and administer the aa-aas need to consider student communication systems in their planning. browder, wakeman, and flowers (2009) suggested teachers use a “work it up” and “work it across” approach to ensure a match between student characteristics and aligned academic instruction and assessment. also, taking steps to help students without symbolic communication systems develop communicative competence may enhance their ability to make progress in academic content (kleinert, kearns, & kleinert, 2010). the findings from this study extend karvonen, wakeman, browder, rogers, and flowers’ (2011) initial descriptions of the extent to which academics are being taught ten years after idea 1997 and other studies on general curriculum access. for instance, roach and elliott (2006) found a weak, inverse relationship between grade level and curriculum access. in the current study, there were larger percentages of middle and high school students in the intensive ela group than the limited ela group. there were also larger percentages of students in middle and secondary grades than upper elementary grades in the broad and targeted – high math groups. it is worth exploring how teachers help students access the curriculum even at higher grades, where the discrepancy between grade-level expectations and alternate achievement expectations is larger. there is a growing literature base demonstrating that students with intellectual disability at the secondary level can learn academic content linked to appropriate grade level standards. for example, browder et al. (2006) summarized studies in middle school literature, algebra, and science that documented that teachers could use a task analytic method to address multiple standards for secondary students and that students could independently respond correctly during academic instruction. limitations and future research the analyses presented in this paper are exploratory. there are certainly limitations to our findings. it is difficult to measure the enacted curriculum in general education (mayer, 1999), and even more challenging when describing the curriculum for students who require such individualized approaches to teaching and learning. teacher self-report is an imperfect measure, but it allowed us to maximize sample size without requiring major resource demands needed for direct observation. this multi-state sample offers a crosssection of curriculum and instructional approaches not bound by a single state’s system. however, this sample may not fully represent the extent of general curriculum access among all students with intellectual disability. since teachers had flexibility in choosing the target student whose curriculum was described on the survey, they may have chosen on the basis of who had the “densest” academic curriculum or who made the best progress during the year. the target students in this sample did differ from the typical population who take aa-aas on the basis of symbolic communication level in that there were a higher percentage with presymbolic communication and lower percentage with concrete symbol systems (towles-reeves et al., 2009). conclusion this study offered a unique opportunity to examine large-scale data for a very small population. however, since this study yielded a preliminary exploration of patterns, more research is warranted. there are certainly limitations associated with canonical correlation analysis and cluster analysis methods, and it is not surprising that the final clusters yielded statistically significant differences on the access variables. the statistically significant group differences on the basis of teacher and student characteristics provide some evidence that these groups are different in substantive ways. within this data set, the correlational findings will be used to guide development of models that better explain general curriculum access. future research may also explore the relationship between curriculum access, student characteristics not captured by the cis, and aaaas performance in order to evaluate opportunity to learn for subgroups of students. since group differences were found in the extent of general curriculum access, it is also likely that subgroups of students have different opportunities to learn the kind of content that is measured by aa-aas. if patterns identified in this study are supported by further research, there are implications for policy, professional development, and practice as well. state and local education agencies may devote additional attention to policies and supports that help teachers translate the federal requirement into effective practices for the full range of students with intellectual disability. results could help researchers and technical assistance providers develop materials that target learning opportunities in factors associated with access to the general curriculum for students with intellectual disability 17 identified areas of need. if teachers vary in their buy-in to teaching academics and can be classified according to the groups described in research question 2, professional development may be tailored to their stage of learning and implementation to help them build toward greater access. building, district, and state level administrators and curriculum specialists also need to set expectations that teachers will use resources, such as state and national content standards and aa-aas results and requirements, to guide instructional choices. the current study supports such efforts to allow all students to participate meaningfully in the general education curriculum. references agran, m., cavin, m., wehmeyer, m., & palmer, s. 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(2013). factors associated with access to the general curriculum for students with intellectual disability. current issues in education, 16(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1309 author notes meagan karvonen, phd university of kansas, the center for educational testing and evaluation joseph r. pearson hall, room 735, 1122 west campus road, lawrence, ks 66045 karvonen@ku.edu dr. karvonen is an associate director at the university of kansas center for educational testing and evaluation. claudia flowers, phd university of north carolina at charlotte department of educational leadership, college of education, 9201 university city blvd, charlotte, nc 28223 claudiaflowers@uncc.edu dr. flowers is a professor in the college of education at unc charlotte. shawnee y. wakeman, phd university of north carolina at charlotte department of special education and child development, college of education , 9201 university city blvd, charlotte, nc 28223 slwakema@uncc.edu dr. shawnee y. wakeman is a clinical assistant professor in the department of special education and child development at unc charlotte. acknowledgements: support for this research was provided in part by the national alternate assessment center (www.naacpartners.org) a five-year project funded by the u.s. department of education, office of special education programs (no. h324u040001). the opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the department of education, and no official endorsement should be inferred. manuscript received: 10/03/2013 revisions received: 11/27/2013 accepted: 11/28/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 20 volume 16, number 3 december 17, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda hollis thomas elizabeth calhoun reyes assistant executive editors bonnie mazza constantin schreiber recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell nichole hugo sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker bonnie mazza kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1277-5744-2-le.doc 1 volume 17, number 1 january 21, 2014 issn 1099-839x feasibility of adopting english-medium instruction at iranian universities mohammad reza ghorbani university of bojnord sahar zahed alavi kosar university of bojnord this study was an attempt to explore the potential possibilities of implementing english as the medium of instruction (emi) at iranian universities. the sequential exploratory mixed methods design was used to collect the perspectives of both students and contentarea lecturers at the state university of bojnord through e-mail interviews and survey questionnaires developed by the researcher. the reliability of the survey questionnaire was 0.76 using cronbach’s alpha. six undergraduate students and six lecturers were purposively selected for the interviews. as for the survey questionnaire, stratified random sampling was used to proportionately select 344 students (320 undergraduate students and 24 postgraduate students) and 36 lecturers from the accessible population. the qualitative data from the interviews were content-analyzed based on the suggestions and guidelines by creswell (2005), krueger (2002), and morgan and krueger (1998). the quantitative data from the survey questionnaires were analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (spss). the results revealed that most of the students and lecturers approved and supported the potential implementation of emi at iranian universities. the findings of this study will assist higher education authorities in policy making. keywords: english as the medium of instruction, university education, internationalization in spite of a growing awareness that the first language medium of instruction is more effective than a second one (heugh, 2002), the inexorable increase in the use of english-medium instruction (emi), particularly in higher education, has become a worldwide trend (chang, 2010; wong, 2009; manakul, 2007; coleman, 2006; kirkgöz, 2005; coetzee, 2004; crystal, 2004; kurtán, 2004; graddol, 1997). the number of university students who use english as a second language (esl) or english as a foreign language (efl) to study their subject courses is increasing (evans & green, 2007; coleman, 2006; fortanet & bellés, 2005; crawford camiciottoli, 2004). by joining this trend, many universities around the world are becoming more and more internationalized. according to brumfit (2004) and gardt and hüppauf (2004), emi in higher education cannot be separated from globalization. coleman (2006) mentions academic internationalization, student exchanges, teaching and research materials’ access, staff mobility, graduate employability, the market in international students, and european content and language integrated learning as the main reasons for using emi in europe. according to ashcraft (2006), the rationale for using emi in higher education in non-native contexts is that textbooks and journals in most fields are published in english. furthermore, emi enables students to compete in the global job market which, in turn, helps the economy of the country. as noted by vinke et al. (1998), the current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 2 adoption of english as the medium of instruction at the university level is a way to internationalize the educational system and a strategy used to attract international students. as chang (2010) suggests, emi subject courses can be regarded as extra opportunities to improve the english language proficiency of undergraduate students. the iranian daily shargh newspaper (2012) published the results of a recent study about the phenomenon of brain drain among iranian students who have won medals in science olympiads (in physics, chemistry, math, and computer science). according to the study, 62 percent of medal winners in the years 19932007 have moved to the developed countries, particularly to the united states and canada. the data show that about five million iranian expatriates live in 32 countries around the world. over 500 iranian professors teach in the united states, and over 70 percent of phd holders from the university of tehran are considering leaving the country. the international monetary fund report in 2009 shows that iran is ranked first out of 91 countries studied in the extent of the brain drain phenomenon, and 150 to 180 thousand iranians move from the country every year for different reasons. according to the iranian daily khorasan newspaper (2012), dr moslemi naini, the deputy of science, research and technology minister for scholarship and iranian students abroad, said in an interview that 20000 iranian students abroad took $200000000 to the countries where they study. iranian students have had 400 patents for malaysian universities. he believes that the capacity of universities especially at the graduate level should be expanded to prevent such problems. although it has already been expanded especially in private iranian international universities, students who fail to pass the entrance exam for free of charge public universities prefer to go to foreign universities which use emi. shah abadi et al. (2008) mentioned that the process of iranian students’ movement to abroad increased excessively in 1980s. according to university portal (2012), there are seven international universities in iran including imam khomeini international university (ikiu) in qazvin, chabahar university, university of tehran (kish branch), sharif university (kish branch), iran university, aras university in tabriz, and imam reza university in mashad. the instruction in these so-called universities is in persian. therefore, the applicants who receive final admission must attend and successfully pass courses in persian language center. university of tehran (kish international campus), which was established to facilitate the enrolment of foreign students at the university of tehran, offers emi for some majors. many universities around the world have joined this englishization as a way to modernize, globalize and internationalize the country’s educational system. this trend is assumed to have led to more international student attraction. in the face of a growing popularity of englishmedium universities, very little research has been carried out about the possibilities of emi at iranian universities in general and at newly established iranian international universities (iius) in particular. the main purpose of this study is to explore the lecturers’ and students’ potential perceptions of adopting emi. the findings of this study will hopefully lead to important suggestions for the successful recruitment of national and international students. literature review university education and internationalization according to manakul (2007), the most comprehensive definition of internationalization of higher education is the one used in the unesco internationalization of higher education 2003 iau survey report which includes mobility and exchanges of students and teachers, teaching and research collaboration, academic standards and quality, research projects, cooperation and developmental assistance, curriculum development, international and intercultural understanding, promotion of the profile of the institution, diversified sources of faculty and students, regional issues and integration, international student recruitment and diversified income generation. (p. 107) according to verbik et al. (2007), international students have predominantly enrolled in institutions of higher education in the us, the uk and australia for the past decade. these three key players in the international student market attract approximately 45% of the total amount of all foreign students. in 2006, approximately 565,000 international students registered in the us, 330,000 enrolled in the uk and 280,000 enrolled in australia (see appendix a). this means that these countries attract about 1.2 million of the 2.7 million students studying abroad. as pointed out by vinke et al. (2007), there are several reasons why the us, the uk and australia rank first among the most popular destination countries for overseas studies. firstly, all of these english-speaking countries have consistently sourced tens of thousands of students from a wide variety of countries throughout the world for many years. secondly, they have high numbers of students from india and china. thirdly, their universities have developed impressive marketing strategies to attract prospective international students. so, these three countries seem to be aware of the contribution that foreign students make to their economies. they have already internationalized their higher education systems and are currently facilitating the arrival and integration of overseas students by including amendments to immigration requirements and procedures. that is why they are more likely to remain the most popular destination for overseas students in an increasingly competitive market. feasibility of adopting english-medium instruction at iranian universities 3 with approximately 20% of international students (515,000 out of the 2.7 million foreign students), germany and france rank second among the most popular destination countries for overseas studies. these two middle powers attracted an average of 257,000 foreign students in 2006 (see appendix a). due to an increase in demand for using english-medium instruction in higher education in non-native contexts and in an attempt to attract more international students, some universities have begun to introduce emi in these countries (about 300 postgraduate programs in germany and more than 100 in france). for now, germany and france are regional rather than world powers in the international student market (verbik et al., 2007). according to verbik et al. (2007), japan, canada and new zealand attract nearly 13% of the international students. so, approximately 327,000 of the 2.7 million international students are attracted to these evolving destinations (see appendix a). recently, these countries have experienced declining international enrollments because they rely only on few markets focused on asia. although these international student market evolving destinations are still attracting many foreign students, they are less popular destinations among overseas students. as pointed out by verbik et al., (2007), malaysia, singapore and china attract approximately 12% of international students (between 250,000 and 300,000 students) in 2005-6 (see appendix a). these emerging contenders have set ambitious targets and have taken active measures to become major exporters of higher education and recruit more foreign students in the coming years. there are some reasons why they are becoming contenders in the competitive international student market. firstly, they have allocated substantial financial and human resources to the development of their higher education systems. secondly, they are increasingly using english as a medium of instruction which has contributed to their growing popularity as overseas student destinations. thirdly, since tuition fees and living costs in these countries are much lower than those in the us, the uk and australia, they may eventually succeed in their ambitions to a large number of international students beyond asia. however, these emerging powers face many challenges regarding infrastructural capacity and immigration procedures which make it difficult to seriously compete with the established english-language destinations. visa schemes, immigration procedures and migration opportunities for overseas students are more likely to motivate them to apply for study to particular destinations. the ease of arrival and integration of overseas students through employment and immigration initiatives has been a motivating factor in the competitive market (verbik et al., 2007). european universities are trying to increase their income base by attracting foreign students as a result of the above trend. therefore, it is also necessary for iius to do so as it happened in malaysia. since malaysian public universities are authorized to take in only 5% of overseas students for the science and technology streams and 25% for the social sciences and humanities, the government allowed more private universities to be set up and attract international students who would contribute to the nation both economically and culturally (gill, 2005). it is commonly assumed that international students choose countries like malaysia just for the cheaper tuition fees, lower cost of living, the ease of entry, and research facilities. malaysian english-medium universities have expanded quantitatively in terms of international student population. their success in attracting international students is an educational miracle. however, as pointed out by verbik et al. (1998), the adoption of english as the medium of instruction at the university level is a strategy used to attract international students. there are many cheap and even free of charge universities around the world which are willing to attract international students but they have had less success in pulling students due to their non-english medium of instruction. english as the medium of instruction as pointed out by graddol (1997), the instruction of courses in universities through the medium of english has become a worldwide educational trend. ashcraft (2006) argues that the traditional rationale for using english-medium instruction in higher education in non-native contexts is that textbooks and journals in most fields are published in english. emi enables students to compete in the global job market which, in turn, helps the economy of the country. paseka (2000) and verbik et al. (1998) contend that the adoption of english as the medium of instruction at the university level is a way to internationalize the educational system and a strategy to attract international students. this study focuses on this aspect of offering emi in non-english speaking countries on which little research has been conducted. since a high-level of language proficiency is required to study their academic subjects in english, students are usually affected by emi. cummins (1979) distinguished between basic interpersonal communicative skills (bics), which refer to the ability to converse and carry out daily activities in the second language, and cognitive academic language proficiency (calp), which means the ability to learn in the second language and do academic work. this distinction drew educators’ attention to the different time periods required by students to acquire conversational fluency as compared to academic proficiency in the second language. the former is often acquired to a functional level within about two years whereas the latter needs at least five to seven years (gopaul-mcnicol & thomas-presswood, 1998; current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 4 hoffmann, 1991). according to cummins (1984), failure to distinguish between the bics and calp (conversational/academic) has led to psychologicallybiased assessment of bilingual students as well as their premature exit from language support programs into mainstream classes. educators should be cognizant that students’ social interaction in english doesn’t guarantee the development of their cognitive academic language proficiency. according to ashcraft (2006), to make sure that students have the calp necessary to successfully undertake university studies, universities can make either a high-level of english proficiency a requirement for admission or have a strong language support program that is able to prepare students for their academic studies through english. at iius, there seems to be a gap between the english language requirements and the language proficiency needed for academic study. recently, some of the iius in kish have made the international english language testing system (ielts) exam or test of english as a foreign language (toefl) a requirement for admission. as pointed out by ashcraft (2006), content-area lecturers in all disciplines are affected by english-medium instruction because they face the challenge of teaching their subject area courses in english to students who are not proficient enough to follow lectures. some of these lecturers may feel frustrated because in addition to their academic fields, they have to cope with language issues in their classrooms, which demands extra knowledge and skills regarding second language acquisition processes. others may just feel that they are, say, biology or chemistry lecturers and have nothing to do with language problems. some researchers (hellekjaer & westergaard, 2003; tella et al., 1999) suggest that emi in non-english speaking countries constrains content-area lecturers’ teaching methods. since english is a second language for the lecturers, some of themespecially those who have not conducted their studies in english-speaking countries may not be confident or qualified enough to teach in english. administrative staff is also affected by the english-medium instruction because some of them may not have a good command of english to carry out their jobs (ashcraft, 2006). if the staff has problem to communicate in english, it is difficult for the university to create an ideal inclusive campus climate. in light of these challenges, this study was an attempt to explore the content-area lecturers’ and undergraduate students’ potential perceptions of adopting emi. the following general questions were asked from 12 informants at the ub to gather the qualitative data in the first phase of the study. 1. what are the potential advantages and disadvantages of adopting emi at iranian universities? 2. to what extent do you agree with adopting emi at iranian universities? also, the following question was developed to compare the lecturers’ and students’ perceptions based on their response to the survey questionnaire items in the second phase of the study. 1. is there any difference between the lecturers’ and students’ perceptions regarding the potential adoption of emi at iranian universities? furthermore, the following null hypothesis was formulated to answer the above-mentioned question. 1. there is no significant difference between the lecturers’ and students’ perceptions regarding the potential adoption of emi at iranian universities. methodology research design the sequential exploratory mixed methods design was used in this study. a mixed methods design is "a procedure for collecting, analyzing and linking both quantitative and qualitative data in a single study or in a multiphase series of studies" (creswell, 2005, p. 53). he asserts that the combination of quantitative and qualitative data will lead to a better understanding of the research problem. neither of the single approaches would seem to be sufficient to answer the research questions of this study because they are mutually dependent (brannen, 1992). according to creswell (2005), in this design the researcher places a priority on qualitative data collection and analysis which “leads to detailed generalizable results through the second quantitative phase” (p. 516). he states that the purpose of an exploratory mixed methods design is the procedure of first gathering qualitative data to explore a phenomenon, and then collecting quantitative data to explain relationships found in the qualitative data. a popular application of this design is to explore a phenomenon, identify themes, design an instrument, and subsequently test it. researchers use this design when existing instruments, variables, and measures may not be known or available for the population under study. (creswell, 2005, p. 516) as pointed out by holland et al. (1998), in this design the qualitative phase provides the basis for the development of a grounded theoretical framework which can be subjected to empirical testing. this study was conducted in two phases consecutively, that is, e-mail interviews and electronic survey questionnaires. they are feasibility of adopting english-medium instruction at iranian universities 5 table 1 demographic characteristics of the informants characteristics number lecturers students total 6 6 12 male female total 7 5 12 female undergraduate students male undergraduate students female lecturers (phd) male lecturers (phd) female lecturers (ma) male lecturers (ms) total 3 3 1 3 1 1 12 explained as follows. e-mail interviews according to meho (2006), the use of e-mail interviewing in qualitative research is rapidly increasing because it costs less to administer than other forms of interviewing. as suggested by kim et al. (2003) and karchmer (2001), e-mail interviewing enables shy people who cannot express themselves orally to do it in writing, especially when a second language is used in communicating with interviewees. it also allows interviewees to answer questions and express themselves where and when they feel more relaxed and comfortable (lehu, 2004; kennedy, 2000). e-mail survey questionnaires e-mail questionnaires are cost-effective and allow respondents to answer questions at their own convenience. according to creswell (2005, p. 361), “in this approach, the participant in a study logs onto a computer, uses the internet or a website to locate and download a questionnaire, completes the questionnaire, and sends the completed questionnaire back to the researcher”. as pointed out by ary et al. (2002), this approach is becoming more popular and has “been used most successfully on college campuses with faculty and students, with companies and their employee, or with other populations having universal e-mail access” (p. 385). population and sampling in this study, the target population was undergraduate students and their content-area lecturers at iranian universities. but the accessible population was undergraduate students and their content-area lecturers at the university of bojnord (ub), where this research was carried out. in the first phase of the study, six students and six lecturers from the four faculties at the ub were purposively selected for e-mail interviews. table 1 presents the descriptive data related to the interviewed participants' characteristics. the profile of each interviewee is given below in detail using pseudo initials to be ethical and maintain their privacy and confidentiality (creswell, 2005). h. e. was a male lecturer at ub with ph. d. degree in curriculum development. he has taught for 5 years at the university. a. y. was a male lecturer at ub with ph. d. degree in industrial engineering. he has taught for 3 years in the university. o.d. was a male lecturer at ub with ph. d. degree in mathematics. he has taught for 4 years in the university. f. a. was a female lecturer at ub with ph. d. degree in psychology. she has taught for 6 years in the university. m. m. was a male lecturer at ub with m. s. degree in industrial engineering. he has taught for 5 years in the university. s. d. was a female lecturer at ub with m. a. degree in accounting. she has taught for 7 years in the university. m. s. was an undergraduate male student. his major was mathematics. he was in the 5th semester. m. n. was an undergraduate male student. his major was counseling. he was in the 7th semester. j. k. was an undergraduate male student. his major was physical education. he was in the 3th semester. a.t. was an undergraduate female student. her major was architecture. she was in 5th semester. z. g. was an current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 6 undergraduate female student. her major was counseling. she was in 3th semester. f. n. was an undergraduate female student. his major was computer engineering. she was in 5th semester. in the second phase of the study, the stratified sample for the survey questionnaire was proportionately and randomly selected from the accessible population -the ub students and lecturers. according to the ub website, the number of undergraduate students, postgraduate students, and their content-area lecturers was 1,926, 25 and 40 respectively as of march 2012. based on the consideration of statistical power, the sample size formula and table developed by krejcie and morgan (1970), the appropriate sample size for this study was 320 undergraduate students, 24 postgraduate students and 36 content-area lecturers. stratified random sampling was used to select 184 female undergraduate students, 136 male undergraduate students, 13 female postgraduate students, 11 male postgraduate students, 14 female content-area lecturers, and 22 male content-area lecturers. proportionately. then, the questionnaires were sent to all of the randomly selected subjects at the ub. in order to assure the participants that their personal information was confidential, a code was put on each questionnaire. in this research, the subjects' perception of the potential adoption of emi was pre-existing event which could not be manipulated and controlled by the researcher. instrumentation first, the interview questions were developed by the researcher based on the objectives of the study. to employ practical strategies based on the suggestions for qualitative interviewing made by patton (1990), the researcher took the following guidelines into account in writing the questions to help the participants disclose their perspectives willingly. 1. questions were short and explicit. 2. just one question was asked at a time. 3. questions with implicit answers were avoided. 4. easy and comprehensible language was used for the participants. 5. why questions were strictly avoided because they seem to be threatening and need justification. second, the survey questionnaire was developed by the researcher based on the objectives, the related literature, and the findings of the first phase of the study. some items were taken from the related questionnaires (kirkg ِ◌oz, 2005; tarhan, 2003) with modifications. the following basic guidelines recommended by ary et al. (2002) and creswell (2005) were followed with some modifications for writing good items: 1. items are short, simple, clear, and direct. 2. items are comprehensible by every respondent. 3. to avoid bias, items which may predetermine a respondent's answer should be avoided. 4. leading items which imply a desired response should be avoided. 5. double-barreled items, which attempt to ask two questions in one, should be avoided. 6. the questionnaire is as brief as possible so that it requires a minimum of the respondents' time. 7. the items are positively worded. "if the question contains one or more negatives, such as should not, the meaning becomes unclear. restate the question in a positive way" (creswell, 2005, p. 366). all of the questionnaire items were measured on a six-point continuum likert-type scale. to score the scale, the response categories were weighted. on the scale, following the recommendations by ary et al. (2002), the favorable and positive items were coded as 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = slightly disagree, 4 = slightly agree, 5 = agree, and 6 = strongly agree. validity and reliability in this study, content and face validity of the survey questionnaire and interview questions were estimated. "researchers evaluate content validity by examining the plan and the procedures used in constructing the instrument. typically researchers go to a panel of judges or experts and have them identify whether the questions are valid" (creswell, 2005, p. 164-165). according to gregory (1992), the instrument will have content validity if its items are a representative sample which accurately reflects the theoretical domain of the construct it claims to measure. but, face validity is not an index of validity at all. it is a non-statistical assessment regarding the appearance of a measure. anyway, "the survey should have face validity. it should appear valid for its intended purpose" (ary et al., 2002, p. 409). three experts reviewed and assessed the instruments to determine their content and face validity. in an expert analysis, annotations are given about potential problems in a questionnaire (brannen, 1992). one of them was an assistant professor in english as a foreign language (efl), the second one was an assistant professor in education philosophy, and the third one an assistant professor in counseling. all of them had enough experience in measurement and evaluation as well as qualitative and quantitative research. for the field test, three students and two content area lecturers reviewed the items. they helped the researcher to clarify the items and improve the overall instrument quality. for the pilot test, thirty undergraduate students responded to the items and helped the researcher establish the reliability of the survey questionnaire. cronbach’s alpha (set at 0.05) was implemented to establish a coefficient of internal consistency. feasibility of adopting english-medium instruction at iranian universities 7 data collection first, qualitative data were collected through email interviews and then, the survey questionnaires were used to gather quantitative data. the procedure for each phase of data collection is explained below. in the first phase of the study, six students and six lecturers from the four faculties at the ub were purposively selected for e-mail interviews. they were asked to take part in the study after obtaining their consent. they had the right to withdraw from the study at any time. the researcher promised to take adequate provisions to protect the privacy of participants and to maintain the confidentiality of data. he e-mailed the questions only after securing permission from participants. since direct probing was not possible in email interviews, the researcher did it in follow-up e-mails during the data collection and analysis periods where necessary. to establish trustworthy results, meho (2006, pp. 1291-93) offers several suggestions for conducting effective e-mail interviews which were followed with some minor modifications in this study. the guidelines are as follows: 1. invitations: solicit people for participation individually if possible rather than via a mailing list or message board. 2. subject line: use an effective subject line for the first contact with the interviewees, such as research interview. this will avoid or reduce the likelihood of a request being deleted before it is read. 3. self-disclosure: introduce yourself and provide brief information about your professional status/credentials. this will help to establish trust. 4. interview request: state your request succinctly and professionally, as in “may i interview you for an article i am writing?” 5. be open about the research: one way to establish trust that creates rapport is to be as open as possible about the purposes and processes of the research 6. incentives: consider providing nontraditional incentives for people who will be willing to participate in a study. 7. research ethics and informed consent: emphasize the anonymity of the participants. 8. interview questions: keep in mind that participants are not being interviewed face-toface. so make sure that the questions to be asked are clear enough both to avoid misinterpretations and to motivate participants to delve deeper into the topic at hand. 9. instructions: along with the initial interview questions, include instructions to the participants on completing the interview. 10. deadlines and reminders: indicate the due dates when inviting individuals to participate, but make them reasonable for the participants so that they have ample time to respond. send reminders one week before the deadline, in case of no reply, to increase the response rate. 11. follow-up questions: be timely with follow-up questions, especially when clarifications, illustrations, explanations, or elaborations are needed. 12. participants and data quality: be very discriminating as to the sample interviewed. a highly committed or motivated participant can be very helpful, providing detailed and in-depth interviews. in the second phase of the study, a survey questionnaire was developed based on the objectives, the related literature, and the findings from the interviews. some items were taken from the related questionnaires (kirkg ِ◌oz, 2005; tarhan, 2003) with modifications. survey research designs, with their many applications, are procedures in quantitative research in which researchers administer a questionnaire to a sample to identify trends in the attitudes, opinions, behaviors, or characteristics of the population. survey researchers collect quantitative, numbered data via questionnaires or interviews. then, they statistically analyze the data to test research questions and hypotheses (creswell, 2005). the data collection procedures recommended by dillman (1978) and modified by chen (2002, p. 64) were used with some minor modifications as follows: 1. an e-mail will be sent to the randomly selected subjects informing them of the forthcoming questionnaires. 2. a week later, the survey questionnaires will be emailed to them along with a cover letter which will deal with a) the purpose of the study and its social utility, b) the institution in which the research is conducted, c) the respondent importance, d) confidentiality and explanation of identification, e) the discussion of code number on the questionnaire, f) what to do if questions arise, g) appreciation, and h) deadline date. 3. a week later after the deadline to return the questionnaire, the first follow-up will be conducted by e-mail to remind the subjects who have not returned the questionnaires. 4. another week after the first follow-up, another follow-up will be conducted by e-mail. data analysis as pointed out by creswell (2005, p. 519), “one current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 8 of the most difficult challenges for the mixed methods researcher is how to analyze data collected from qualitative and quantitative research”. procedures for data analysis in this study consisted of a) analyzing and interpreting the qualitative data obtained from the e-mail interviews and b) analyzing the quantitative data collected from the survey questionnaire. as patton (1990, p. 278) pointed out, the only aim of a qualitative interview is “to access the perspective of the person being interviewed.” the following guidelines by morgan and krueger (1998) were used in this study for reporting the results: 1. report the number of participants; 2. present the key themes in the data; 3. use direct quotations to illustrate the main views which were identified during the data analysis; and 4. do not report the percentage of participants who gave one answer or another because the aim of interview is to reach different viewpoints about the topic which is under investigation. after purposive selection of 12 interviewees (see table 1) from the ub in the first phase of the study, they were sent the same research questions by e-mail. the informants were assured that their participation in the research was confidential and only the researcher would have access to their identity. after receiving all the informants’ reply, the content of their answers to each question was analyzed to look for trends and patterns that reappeared in it. the results were compared and contrasted. the emerging themes were highlighted. the findings were described and important quotes were used to illustrate them. finally, the report was revised and finalized. in the second phase of the study, the raw scores taken from the survey questionnaires were submitted to the computer software statistical package of social sciences (spss version 18), using t-test. independent samples t-test was conducted to compare the possible differences between the means of the two groups to whom the questionnaire were sent. results the researcher followed creswell’s (2005) recommendation to organize, analyze, and explore the qualitative data by hand. he suggests the hand analysis of qualitative data when analyzing a small database (<500 pages of transcript or field notes). after exploring the data, they were coded to form broad themes. then, they were narrowed into smaller, more manageable number of themes. the results are summarized in the following tables. table 2 presents the main themes which the interviewees mentioned in their response to the first question, that is, what are the potential advantages and disadvantages of adopting emi at iranian universities? they are reported as follows. table 2 main themes regarding the first question themes frequency advantages: -promoting students’ english skills -providing a mean for scientific communication and contact -developing scientific vocabulary and expressions -providing the chance for iranian people to introduce their cultural and religious attitudes to the scientific world increasing the number of isi articles written in the country -helping the lecturers and students in presenting their papers in conferences -providing the means of investigating other cultures helping to use other countries’ cultural, scientific and artistic productions -helping the lecturers and students in using english scientific resources and books -facilitating the use of internet and computer software decreasing students’ expenses of translating english texts to persian in order to comprehend them -facilitating educating in ma. and ph. d. levels abroad -lowering the expenses of learning english for iranian students studying abroad -forcing the students to learn english before entering the university -encouraging the families to support their children to learn english -increasing the number of foreign students studying in iran universities -providing the students with motivation and interest -helping the students in having a job abroad due to their english proficiency -enhancing students’ self-esteem -helping students to find a job easily in iran 3 8 3 1 5 2 3 4 3 8 5 2 1 1 2 1 3 2 2 1 feasibility of adopting english-medium instruction at iranian universities 9 -encouraging the students to continue their education in higher levels -internationalizing iran’s universities. disadvantages: -weakening persian as a scientific tool in the university -decreasing the development of persian scientific vocabulary and expressions -facilitating brain drain -causing more borrowing from english into persian -deceasing the publication of persian books -causing persian culture being affected by english one bothering the lecturers in teaching the scientific concepts to students -bothering the students in comprehending the material 2 1 3 2 1 2 2 1 2 5 table 3 main themes regarding the second question themes frequency not to use emi in teaching all majors of the university -not to use emi in teaching all courses -use emi in a limited and controlled way have a longitudinal plan for implementing emi -use emi in cases which the students are proficient in english -change the teaching method of english through school years first -not to use emi due to lack of english proficiency in lecturers -not to use emi due to lack of english proficiency in students -use emi in higher levels of educations, m.a. & ph. d. -use emi just in specific universities apply emi gradually during different levels of education -promote students’ english skills before entering to the university, then apply emi 2 2 2 3 1 4 1 1 2 1 1 4 table 3 presents the main themes which the interviewees mentioned in their response to the second question, that is, to what extent do you agree with adopting emi at iranian universities? they are reported above. in general, eight participants supported the use of emi. however, they believed that before conducting emi, there must be some compensatory steps and modifications in school educational system. the following quotation from one of the interviewees reflects his remarks concerning the recent school educational system: nowadays, students pass english as a course during primary school, junior high school and high school. but rarely are they proficient in english after graduation. some changes must be applied in the school education system in order to prepare students to receive emi in the university. three participants explained the need of a longitudinal plan for implementing emi. the following quotation clarifies it: after revising the educational plan for teaching english in school curriculum, it is a good idea to apply emi gradually in teaching university courses. by using this method gradually, students are being able to comprehend the subject matter taught through emi in their last semesters, without losing their interest in this method. two of the participants mentioned that it was a good idea to conduct emi in specific, not all of, the majors at the university. a quotation clarifies it: some of the majors are understood better if they are taught in persian because their contents are more related to iranian culture and attitude. among these majors is islamic ethics. another participant believed that it was a good current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 10 table 4 the independent samples t-test for the lecturers’ and students’ perceptions group n mean std dev df t sig. lecturers 36 118.33 13.01 378 -.101 0.920 students 344 118.06 15.25 idea to use emi just in certain universities which are higher in rank and their students are more skillful in english. according to him, students in lower rank universities are not capable of understanding the subject matter explained through emi. two of the participants believed that in higher level of education (m.a. & ph. d) teaching through emi is more profitable because the students at these levels are more motivated and skillful. two other interviewees opposed the application of emi at the university. one of them mentioned some lecturers' lack of english proficiency, and the other mentioned students' lack of english proficiency as the reason. in the second phase of the study, spss was used to analyze the quantitative data from the survey questionnaires. descriptive statistics helped the researcher to describe the basic features of the data and present quantitative descriptions in a manageable form. after organizing and summarizing the collected data in a sensible way, independent samples t-test analyses were applied to analyze them. the research hypothesis in this phase was as follows: there is no significant difference between the lecturers’ and students’ perceptions regarding the potential adoption of emi at iranian universities. table 4 indicates the summary of the t-tests. an independent samples t-test was conducted to compare the lecturers’ and students’ scores regarding their perceptions of the potential adoption of emi at iranian universities. first, the levene's test for equality of variances was checked. if the levene's test is significant (p. < .05), the two variances are significantly different. if it is not significant (p. > .05), the two variances are approximately equal. in this case, since the levene's test was not significant (p. = .099 > .05), it was assumed that the variances were approximately equal. next, the results of the t-test were checked. if the variances are approximately equal, the top line is read. if the variances are not equal, the bottom line is read. based on the results of the levene's test, it was known that the two groups had approximately equal variances, so the top line was read. as indicated in table 4, there was no significant difference between the lecturers’ perception (m = 118.33, sd = 13.01) and the students’ perception [m = 118.06, sd = 15.25; t (65) = 0.55, p. > .05]. since there is no significant difference between the means of the two groups, the null hypothesis (there is no significant difference between the lecturers’ and students’ perceptions regarding the potential adoption of emi at iranian universities) fails to be rejected. discussion and conclusion the results of the survey questionnaire show that there is no difference between the students’ and lecturers’ attitudes regarding teaching through emi at iranian universities. as indicated in table 3, most of the participants consent to the application of emi at iran universities. as it is evident in table 2, the interviewees in the present study also mentioned some more motives for conducting emi at iranian universities, such as providing the chance for iranian people to introduce their cultural and religious attitudes to the scientific world, increasing the number of international articles written in the country, encouraging families to support their children to learn english, enhancing students’ self-esteem, motivation and interest, decreasing students’ expenses of translating english texts to persian in order to comprehend them, facilitating the use of internet and computer software, and providing the means of investigating other cultures. some of the interviewees mentioned the importance of having a longitudinal plan in educational curriculum for implementing emi. as cummins (1979) distinguished between basic interpersonal communicative skills (bics) and cognitive academic language proficiency (calp) and emphasized on the difference in the aim and the use of english in these different contexts, students should be prepared for using and understanding english in academic context before entering the university. lack of english knowledge hinders the students’ success in education. so, by the help of gained high-level of language proficiency prior to being accepted in the university, the students would be ready to study their academic subjects through english feasibility of adopting english-medium instruction at iranian universities 11 medium instruction in the university. the result of this study is consistent with that of coleman (2006), who mentioned academic internationalization, student exchanges, teaching and research materials access, staff mobility, graduate employability, the market in international students, and european content and language integrated learning as the main reasons for using emi in europe. in the present study, most of the interviewed proponents of using emi at the universities believe that it will help the lecturers and students in using english scientific resources and books and surfing the net. this is in line with ashcraft (2006), who supports this view and mentions that the rationale for using emi in higher education in non-native contexts is that textbooks and journals in most fields are published in english. the other advantage mentioned by interviewed proponents of emi implementation is the internationalization of the universities in iran which is in keeping with verbik et al. (2007), who mention that using emi is one of the important factors contributing to the growing popularity of international universities. emi would attract many students from other countries. furthermore it would prevent brain drain mentioned in shargh (2012) and khorasan (2012) news papers. it would encourage native students stay in the country and continue their education. it is hoped that the findings of this study will shed more light to this controversial issue and help the higher education officials make sound decisions in this regard. however, due to the some limitations the results should be treated cautiously. first, although the present study was to consider the feasibility of adopting emi in iranian universities, the data were collected from only one university, namely, the ub. some research studies can be conducted while considering universities in different cities of iran. second, the present study was conducted just in a state university. other studies can focus on private universities. third, there were a limited number of participants. other studies can be conducted to include more subjects. references ary, d., jacob, l. c., & razavieh, a. 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(2010). english-medium instruction for subject courses in tertiary education: reactions from taiwanese undergraduate students. taiwan international esp journal, 2(1), 55-84. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 14 appendix a international student mobility 2003-2006 in major destination countries according to % market share rank country 2003 2004 2005 2006 1 us 586,323 572,509 565,039 564,776 2 uk 275,270 300,055 318,400 330,080 3 australia 218,654 236,142 255,925 281,633 4 germany 227,026 246,136 246,334 248,357 5 france 221,471 244,335 255,585 265,039 6 china 77,715 110,844 141,087 162,695 7 japan 109,508 117,302 121,812 117,927 8 canada 46,381 41,338 42,590 39,008 (year to date) 9 new zealand ‡ 47,121 50,450 47,369 42,652 10 singapore approximately 50,000 n/a 72,000 n/ya 11 malaysia n/a 27,731 66,000 n/ya source: verbik, et al. (2007). international student mobility: patterns and trends. n/a: figures not available for this year ‡ figures include the number of international students enrolled in publicly funded tertiary education only feasibility of adopting english-medium instruction at iranian universities 15 appendix b interview questions 1. what are the potential advantages and disadvantages of adopting english medium instruction (emi) at iranian universities? 2. to what extent do you agree with adopting emi at iranian universities? appendix c research survey questionnaire code number: …….. feasibility of adopting english-medium instruction at iranian universities dear colleague/student, the purpose of this research is to collect information concerning your perceptions on the possibilities of implementing english-medium instruction (emi) at iranian universities. the usefulness of this questionnaire depends entirely on your honesty, candor, and care with which you respond to each of the items. all information you provide will be treated with confidentiality. the code number is used only for data analysis. finally, i would like to offer my sincere thanks to your participation and contribution to this study. if you have any concern about this study, please do not hesitate to contact me at mrg872@yahoo.com. thank you in advance for your great help. feasibility of adopting english-medium instruction at iranian universities directions: in this questionnaire, the term “emi” refers to english-medium instruction. please read each of the following statements and write down the number that best describes your perceptions of potential emi implementation. after completing section one, please place your response in the blank right after each item in section two. section 1: background information 1. are you male ………… or female ……………. 2. age ……………… 3. your department in the university …………………. 4. your degree …………………. section 2: lecturers’/students’ perceptions of english-medium instruction key 6 = strongly agree 5 = agree 4 = slightly agree 3 = slightly disagree 2 = disagree 1 = strongly disagree for example, i like to watch tv. …5.... if you place 5 on this statement, it means you agree that you like to watch tv. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 16 1. emi is necessary at the university level. ……. 2. emi will help students to learn about the culture of the target language. ……. 3. emi will probably encounter problems at iranian universities.* ……. 4. emi will increase the individual social prestige. ……. 5. emi will facilitate students' learning of the subject matter. ……. 6. emi will probably result in cultural corruption.* ……. 7. emi will contribute to students' cognitive development. ……. 8. emi will discourage the production of farsi words.* ……. 9. emi will help students to get a well paid job. ……. 10. emi will help students to understand foreign points of view. ……. 11. emi will help students to join in discussions about their subject. ……. 12. emi will have an adverse effect on student achievement.* ……. 13. emi will let students enjoy entertainment, such as internet games. ……. 14. emi will help students to read texts in their subject area. ……. 15. emi will let students get on well with people in english speaking countries. ……. 16. emi will let students become involved in research internationally. ……. 17. emi will let students make english speaking friends. ……. 18. emi will give students personal satisfaction. ……. 19. emi will probably have many disadvantages in the long run. *……. 20. emi will help students to learn about english speaking cultures. ……. 21. emi will help students to become broadly educated. ……. 22. emi will help students to surf the net in english. ……. 23. emi will prevent students from using their mother tongue.* ……. 24. emi will help students to understand how english people think and behave. ……. 25. emi will help students to get to know tourists better. ……. 26. emi will help students to get involved in international affairs. ……. 27. emi will hinder creativity.* ……. do you have any further comments? thank you for your co-operation! note: statements marked feasibility of adopting english-medium instruction at iranian universities 17 article citation ghorbani, m. r. & alavi, s. z. (2014). feasibility of adopting english-medium instruction at iranian universities. current issues in education, 17(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1277 author notes mohammad reza ghorbani university of bojnord, bojnord, iran iran, bojnord, university of bojnord mrg872@yahoo.com dr. mohammad reza ghorbani is assistant professor of teaching english as a second language (tesl) at the university of bojnord, bojnord, iran. he has worked as an efl teacher and researcher in iran, japan, and malaysia since 1990. he has published four books on educational issues in iran and one in germany as well as sixteen articles in specialized international journals. he has also presented seven papers in international conferences. his interests are english teaching, learning, testing, and evaluation. he is currently the president of state university of kosar. sahar zahed alavi kosar university of bojnord, bojnord, iran iran, bojnord, bojnord university of kosar sahar_alavi87@yahoo.com sahar zahed alavi got her m.a. in tefl from sabzevar teacher training university in 2009. she has been teaching various english courses in different universities and english institutes. she is interested in areas of teaching, sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. manuscript received: 08/26/2013 revisions received: 12/01/2013 accepted: 12/03/2013 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 18 volume 17, number 1 january 21, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors elizabeth calhoun reyes constantine schreiber assistant executive editors kevin jose rasa recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik aaron bryant darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell younsu kim anna montana cirell melinda thomas kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1081-4996-3-le_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 april 26, 2013 issn 1099-839x educational poverties in alaska: teachers’ perspectives anne jones and charles salinas university of alaska southeast in this mixed-methods study, we explore deprivations of educational entitlements as an example of poverty. we include among educational entitlements: appropriate teacher attitudes, appropriate educational materials and instructional strategies, relevant curriculums, and school and classroom structures that support the familial and cultural experiences of the children in them. through interviews, surveys, and an examination of participant demographics, we explore alaska teachers’ identification of instances of educational deprivations in their classrooms and schools and the relationship between identified deprivations and their personal and professional attitudes toward diversity and social justice. from the point of view of the alaska native teachers in this study, their goal of preparing students to succeed in both their native and white cultures is made more difficult because of the educational deprivations in their classrooms. this work has implications for many settings, as teachers struggle to keep fidelity with established norms and goals while providing the most appropriate opportunities for their students. keywords: alaska native, educational poverties, attitudes, diversity, social justice this study asks questions about an idea, educational poverty, that has lost its place in the education dialogue. as the discussion about student achievement continues to focus on testing, the important concept of educational poverty must be included in this dialogue. teacher educators have focused on the attitudes and pedagogical practices of teachers as contributing positively and negatively to student achievement (cochran-smith, 2004; ladson-billings, 1994; sleeter, 2001; zeichner, 2002). while multicultural education researchers and curriculum theorists have focused on the nature of the curriculum and the structures of schools as sources of deprivation for some children (apple, 1990; banks, 2004; cornbleth & waugh, 1995; gay, 2004; grant, 2003; popkewitz, 1990). we explore a concept we call ‘educational deprivations’ from both perspectives, using specific instances of deprivations as our context. through interviews and surveys, we explore alaskan teachers’ identification of instances of educational deprivations in their classrooms and schools and the relationship between identified deprivations and their personal and professional attitudes toward diversity and social justice. we take a critical perspective because we believe these deprivations are manifestation of power and privilege. there is good reason for applying critical social theory to education research; for most people it is in the experience of education and becoming educated that social structures distribute power, knowledge, and opportunity. we position this study within critical social theory; particularly social justice education, because this perspective allows the asking of different questions about social injustices; in this case the distribution of attributes and resources and the impact of teacher attitudes. articulated in terms of common values and goals as they pertain to education, a critical perspective will focus on equity, respect for human dignity across all cultures, equality of opportunity, and awareness of power and privilege (levinson, 2011). we also base this work on the precepts laid out by the elementary and secondary education act (esea) in 1965: equality (i.e. equal opportunity), participation, and recognition. we accept current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 the precepts of the esea (1965); that all children are entitled to an education that includes equal opportunity, participation, and recognition. we include among this group of educational entitlements: appropriate teacher attitudes, suitable educational materials and instructional strategies, relevant curriculums, and school and classroom structures that support the familial and cultural experiences of the children in them. review of the literature teacher attitudes a significant body of research indicates teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about students have a considerable influence on student learning and development (taylor & wasicsko, 2000). attitudes influence how and what teachers teach (kagan, 1992), and how they interpret and apply ideas about multiculturalism (sleeter, 1992). what teachers perceive, believe, and think can improve or damage students’ educational experiences (nel, 1992). social psychological research has long confirmed that attitudes influence what we notice, how we interpret information, and what we remember (eagly & chaiken, 1998). in a summary of the national study of american indian education that included four different measures of attitudes and perceptions on the issue of assimilation, dehyle and swisher (1997) found the majority of native american and alaskan native teachers interviewed tended to take the "man of two cultures" position. native american and alaska native teachers in their study maintained that native americans and alaska natives should acquire skills and attitudes required for success in society, but they should also maintain their culture (dehyle & swisher, 1997). curriculum and instruction nearly all students benefit from curriculum and instruction that focus on meaning, problem solving, logical thinking, and is engaging (bransford, brown, & cocking, 1999). although the literature does not reveal a consensus definition of effective teaching, rilke and sharpe (2008) review the literature and conclude that effective teaching must facilitate student learning and have a positive impact on student achievement. unfortunately, in many classrooms, the curricular norm is a set of academic standards and prescribed instructional pacing (tomlinson, 2000), bereft of opportunity for teachers to differentiate learning for groups or individuals. to the works of foster (1995), gay (2000), and hollins (1996), demonstrate that explicit knowledge about students’ cultures (by the teacher) is “imperative” to diverse students’ learning needs and to creating learning experiences that are relevant. this body of research suggests that when academic learning is relevant for students, and when diverse students learn through their own cultural and experiential filters, they show higher interest and learn more easily. alaska native students exhibit distinctive learning patterns that they bring to the academic setting (alaska native knowledge network, 1999); cultural traditions, language, behaviors, dress, learning styles, movement, and perspectives. because of these differences, alaska native children may experience the kind of cultural discontinuity from school described among african american children by irvine-jordan (1991). irvine-jordan explains that this cultural discontinuity can produce apathy, academic disengagement, and school discontent evidenced by the well-documented academic achievement gap. the achievement gap has led many scholars to examine the cultural relevancy of the curriculum as a way to increase achievement and school connectedness for diverse learners (asante, 1992; banks, 2001; gay, 2000; giddings, 2001; hale, 2001; ladson-billings, 2000, 2006; thompson, 2004; webster, 2002). several researchers have demonstrated that school achievement and motivation improve significantly when material and instruction align with the abilities, learning style, and perspectives of diverse learners (albury, 1992; boykin, 1994; diamond & moore 1995, gay, 2000; howard, 1998; krater, zeni, & cason, 1994; tatum, 2000). according to the nces (national center for education statistics, 2012), among fourth grade american indian and alaska native students, 76% had teachers who reported never having them study traditional american indian and alaska native mathematics and only 2% had teachers who reported integrating american indian or alaska native content or cultural standards when planning mathematics lessons. among eighth grade american indian and alaska native students, only 33% had teachers who reported integrating relevant culture and history into reading instruction at least once a month and 60% had teachers who reported never having them solve mathematics problems that are relevant to the alaska native community. a scant 7% of american indian and alaska native eighth-graders reported knowing a lot about american indian and alaska native systems of counting. culturally responsive teaching employs the existing cultures, experiences, understandings, and perspectives of students. on a foundation laid by many scholars, gay and kirkland (2003) establish the necessity of a culturally relevant and responsive curriculum. they lay out several premises for their assertion: (a) multicultural education and educational equity and excellence are deeply interconnected; (b) teacher accountability involves being more self-conscious, critical, and analytical of one's own teaching beliefs and behaviors; and (c) teachers need to develop deeper knowledge and consciousness about what is to be taught, how, and to whom (gay & kirkland, 2003, p. 181). research suggests that diverse students show higher educational poverties in alaska 3 interest and learn more easily when they learn through their own cultural and experiential filters and when the school curriculum reflects their cultural background (foster, 1995; gay, 2000). the development and implementation of the “alaska standards for culturally responsive schools” and “guidelines for respecting cultural knowledge” by the assembly of alaska native educators (1998) provide guidance to educators on how to integrate indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing into their curriculum and practices to make educational experiences more relevant and responsive. for alaska native students this means learning opportunities at school are experiential and interactive. it also means that learning opportunities focus on use of the senses, are narrative, and practiced in groups. barnhardt and kawagley (2006) describe alaska native ways of knowing as holistic with an emphasis on practical knowledge and skill application. the need for a relevant and place-based curriculum and assessment of curriculum is essential in indigenous settings because of the relationship between people and the land on which they live (barnhardt & kawagley, 1999; semken & morgan, 1997). rios and montecinos (2008) found ethnically diverse teachers are likely to employ culturally relevant instructional approaches, supporting sleeter’s (1993) finding that ethnically diverse teachers tend to offer a curriculum that challenges the status quo more often than white teachers do. further, dilworth (1990) suggests ethnically diverse teachers enhance the academic and social experiences of diverse students because they share communication styles. when teachers understand, appreciate, and implement alaska native communal and hands-on learning styles, naturalistic intelligences, and strong oral story telling traditions learning for these students is improved (alaska native knowledge network, 1999). classroom and school structures meidl and meidl (2011) ask, “are all environments equally good for helping all students reach their learning potential and future academic achievement?” when diverse students come to school, they often need to adjust to vast differences in structures; differences between ‘how things work’ at home and ‘how things work’ at school (gay, 2002). to succeed at school, diverse students may need new skills; skills that they often learn on their own (gay, 2002; garcia & dominguez, 1997; garcia & guerra, 2004; nasir & hand, 2006; valencia, valenzuela, sloan, & foley, 2001). these skills, characteristic of middle-class white culture, are the standard by which we judge children (garcia & guerra, 2004; nasir & hand, 2006). as a result, diverse students, especially poor and minority students, are judged as inadequate (garcia & guerra, 2004; valencia et al., 2001). physical environment, tone, and the quality of interactions among students and between teacher and students can have a tremendous impact on learning (ware, 2006). further, a growing body of literature supports the importance of caring teacher-student relationships to the academic success of diverse students (chu, 2012). culturally responsive teaching acknowledges and understands the importance of race, language, culture, and ethnicity in the classroom and enhances the kinds of environments and relationships described by ware and chu. culturally responsive teaching practices can improve outcomes for diverse students (gay, 2000; ladson-billings, 1995). using the experiences and perspectives of diverse students are tools for impactful teaching (gay, 2000; villegas & lucas, 2002). the majority of teachers in alaska are white, middle-class, primary english speakers, and are likely generally limited in their knowledge of or experience with diverse cultures (sleeter, 2001; zumwalt & craig, 2005) and of alaska native cultures in particular. this cultural mismatch may make it difficult for teachers to connect with their students and make student learning relevant (gay, 2000). some education researchers, irvine (2003) and lee (2004) for instance, believe cultural mismatches between teachers and students contribute to the achievement gap. gay and kirkland (2003) tell us, “teachers knowing who they are as people, understanding the contexts in which they teach, and questioning their knowledge and assumptions are as important as the mastery of techniques for instructional effectiveness” (p. 181). preparing culturally aware and responsive teachers for all of alaska’s schools is essential to delivering a quality and equitable educational experience for alaska’s students. this is particularly true for alaska native students (alaska native knowledge network, 1999). the literature supports our belief that as the discussion on student achievement continues we must not only include the idea of educational poverties in this conversation, but also teachers’ responses to educational poverties. as a contribution to this dialogue, we examine deprivation of positive teacher attitudes, appropriate and relevant curriculums, and school structures that reflect childrens’ lived experiences as educational poverties. we survey and interview alaskan teachers about their attitudes toward diversity and social justice, their beliefs about the suitability of materials and curriculums they use, and the instructional strategies they implement. method overview this study took a mixed methods approach. both semi-structured interviews and standardized questionnaires provided data. our intention with the interview questions was to create a context for a current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 conversation, the use of standard english by alaska native students in the classroom, which is also a social justice issue. our purpose in doing this was to both gain specific information on participants’ views on social justice and diversity, and to provide the opportunity for them to talk about other equity issues they might experience in their classrooms. we distributed standardized questionnaires concerning belief in and teaching for social justice to a larger sample of alaska teachers. we hoped that by including a broader range of participants we could obtain a more descriptive view of the issue across a wider context. we also hoped more participants would help to reconcile the qualitative information gained from interviews. context alaska remains the nation’s most rural state, with more than half of all schools located in rural or ruralremote areas. scattered throughout the vast 586,000 square miles of alaska are 31 rural and remote school districts that comprise 53% of its schools and 40% of its population. these isolated school districts serve over 19,000 students, 14,000 of whom are alaska native. the majority of students in alaska’s rural schools are poor and learning standardized english. participants all participants were teachers working in alaska public schools. eighteen female alaska native teachers enrolled in the school of education’s masters of education reading program at the university of alaska southeast participated in interviews via elluminate audio conferences and completed online questionnaires. an additional sixty-three (52 female, 11 male) white teachers who were alumni of the university of alaska southeast’s masters of arts in teaching program completed online questionnaires. forty-six (38 female, 8 male) of the white teachers completed all items relating to key variables in this study. in sum, sixty-four participants completed the online questionnaires and were included in the results. materials the measures used in this study were chosen because of the focus each scale places on attitudes and beliefs toward diversity and social justice, and because the scales are specifically designed to be used with teachers. we believe the scales, along with the interview, provide a better triangulation of the data than one or the other alone. the online questionnaire asked respondents to provide information on their gender, ethnicity, and included two beliefs about diversity scales, one social justice belief scale, and one differentiation scale. pohan and aguilar’s (2001) 25-item professional beliefs about diversity scale and 15-item personal beliefs about diversity scale draw on their view that diversity should be viewed as inclusive of historically marginalized sociocultural groups (e.g., social class, gender, religion, nonenglish languages, and sexual orientation) rather than focusing primarily on race or ethnicity. hence, these two diversity scales take a more contemporary approach to multicultural education. the professional beliefs about diversity scale measures belief about diversity within a professional, educational context. the personal beliefs about diversity scale assesses beliefs about diversity in a general, personal context. both measures use a 5-point likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) with a neutral midpoint. the cronbach’s alphas for each measure were .828 for the professional beliefs about diversity scale and .874 for the personal beliefs about diversity scale. the third online questionnaire was the 12-item learning to teach for social justice – beliefs scale (ludlow, enterline, & cochran-smith, 2008). according to ludlow and colleagues, teaching for social justice is a “pedagogy intended to help teachers to understand the social and institutional inequities that are embedded in our society” (ludlow et al., 2008, p. 210). the scale measures six components involved with teaching for social justice “…teachers’ knowledge, skill, and interpretive frameworks; teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and values; classroom practice and pedagogy; community participation; teachers’ learning in inquiry communities; and promoting pupils’ academic, social – emotional, and civic learning” (ludlow et al., 2008, p. 195). item analysis of scale items yielded a cronbach’s alpha of .793 in this study. in the final part of the online questionnaire, which we call the differentiation scale, we ask participants to rate the following statements on a scale where 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = uncertain, 4 = agree, and 5 = strongly agree: • the reading program or curriculum adopted by my school or district is appropriate for my students. • i have sufficient recreational reading material in my classroom. • i have freedom to deviate from the adopted reading curriculum when necessary. • i have choice in the instructional strategies i use to teach reading. • i have support in providing differentiated instruction for students who need it. • i have the freedom to differentiate all instruction when necessary. • i have sufficient and appropriate materials to differentiate instruction when needed. a principal component analysis of the differentiation scale produced two components that we call resources and choice. the differentiation resources component consists of the items; “the reading program or curriculum adopted by my school or district is appropriate for my students,” “i have sufficient recreational reading material in my classroom,” “i have educational poverties in alaska 5 the freedom to differentiate all instruction when necessary,” and “i have sufficient and appropriate materials to differentiate instruction when needed.” the differentiation choice component consists of the items; “i have freedom to deviate from the adopted reading curriculum when necessary.”, “i have choice in the instructional strategies i use to teach reading,” and “i have support in providing differentiated instruction for students who need it.” the cronbach’s alphas for each measure were .765 for the differentiation resources component and .763 for differentiation choice component. procedure within the first weeks of their programs, we interviewed alaska native participants in a web meeting session via elluminate using the following open-ended questions: • what is your role as a teacher in alaska? • what do you believe to be your greatest teaching challenge? • what are your feelings about the use of standard english and teaching it in school? • are there barriers that alaska native students face in acquiring standard english literacy? • what is the best way to help alaska native students acquire standard english literacy? we recorded the interviews in the web-meeting environment for later analysis. following the interview, participants received a link to complete the online survey. all eighteen alaska native village teacher grantees participants responded. the forty-six white teachers received an email link for the online survey. the emails for both groups asked for the teachers’ participation and the survey began with an informed consent form. once participants provided their consent, instructions directed them to the beginning of the survey. results quantitative data we subjected the variables measured via the online questionnaire to a correlation analysis to examine the relationships of the constructs as expressed by the teacher participants. the personal beliefs toward diversity and professional beliefs toward diversity scales were positively related to each other (r = .770, p. = .000) as to be expected. further, the teaching for social justice beliefs scale was positively related to both the personal beliefs toward diversity and professional beliefs toward diversity scales (r = .674, p. = .000; r = .697, p. = .000, respectively). among the white teachers in the study, the resources component of the differentiation scale was negatively related to the teaching for social justice beliefs scale (r = -.524, p. = .000). a near significant correlation was also observed between the resources component of the differentiation scale and personal beliefs toward diversity scale among white teachers (r = -.289, p. = .052). these last two correlations suggest that participants with stronger attitudes toward social justice and stronger personal attitudes toward diversity were less satisfied with their resources to differentiate the school experience for groups and individuals. white participants demonstrated a significantly more positive attitude toward diversity (personal beliefs toward diversity scale; pohan & aguilar, 2001) and social justice (teaching for social justice beliefs scale; ludlow et al., 2008) than did alaska native participants (t (61) = 3.408, p. = 001; t (61) = 3.243, p. = .002, respectively). table 1 correlations among all variables 1 2 3 4 5 1. professional beliefs about diversity .77** .70** -.21 .18 2. personal beliefs about diversity .67** -.29* .16 3. social justice beliefs -.52** .05 4. differentiation resources .38** 5. differentiation choice note. professional beliefs about diversity, personal beliefs about diversity, social justice beliefs (n = 63); differentiation resources and differentiation choice (n = 46) and includes only non-alaska native participants. *p < .05 **p < .001 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 data from the differentiation scale are as follows: only 30.4% of respondents reported their reading program to be “very appropriate” for their students and 50% reported having “much freedom” to deviate from the reading curriculum, only 41.3 % reported having “somewhat sufficient” materials to do so. sixty-five percent reported having “much freedom to differentiate instruction when necessary,” but only 34.8 % reported they had “some support” to do so and only 52.2% reported having “some materials” with which to differentiate. qualitative data narratives demonstrate alaska native teachers share concerns about curriculum and school structures. these narratives also reveal participants’ attitudes toward diversity and social justice. there is awareness on the part of alaska native teachers that their teaching practice, rather by choice or by requirement, does not always meet the needs of their students. they share their opinions about why they cannot accomplish this and their frustration is clear. “there is a big gap between what is in the curriculum and what the students’ background knowledge is. i may be reading a story about the city that has the high rises. most kids haven’t had the opportunity to travel even to fairbanks. they haven't seen a building that was even three stories high.” “i am challenged to activate prior knowledge or make the reading material more relevant to the children, in rural alaska especially.” “it is hard trying to connect students to the materials that they have because they are so irrelevant to our area, to rural alaska. for instance, the past two stories that i’ve been working with the children, were about the elephant and the other about fireflies, which don’t exist where i’m at.” “i have always had lots of books, but the problem has been, and continues to be, having books that relate to the students at their understanding and still be relevant most books that are culturally diverse are at a more difficult reading level the mainstream basic books are still very mainstream culture! also, it's hard to have easier books of high quality for my lower readers.” “i think it’s the culture of our people and just in general the way that our values, and beliefs, and knowledge play in a big part in how i perceive things. i think that’s probably the biggest barrier the misunderstanding between the native way and the western ways.” while they felt they had the freedom to differentiate instruction, they report they lack the time, the resources, or the personnel support to do so. “i think it’s time more than everything else, especially with all the demands that are placed goals, and data bases, and stuff like that.” “i have a lot of engaging, interesting activities and lessons i’d like to do with my class. but, our school is mandated to do certain things during the reading block and then i have writing block and math block and during those times i can’t do anything but what is prescribed in our curriculum. so, time is one of my challenges.” “i'm still building a classroom library and learning the reading preferences and interests of my students. unfortunately, i don't get much recreational reading time in class.” “i am expected to use the curriculum with fidelity; i have 30 minutes daily to differentiate appropriate lessons.” “the test scores are all that matter. differentiation is my own burden.” these narrative results coincide with results from the differentiation scale. as to school structures, participants reported: “it’s very difficult to get my students to write in standard english when they don’t speak in standard english.” “i realize that some of our kids in the village were not only missing the academic stuff, but they were also missing the citizenship part. you know being a good person, being a helpful person.” “many of my students had single parents or parents, who were going through a divorce, or their parents were married but their dad is in jail. you could just tell that their needs were so strong.” “i have a lot more parents that are young and have difficulties at home raising their children with all of the issues that i have to deal with in our society today.” a review of the literature led us to three broad areas that we proffer as educational poverties: inappropriate materials and instructional strategies, classroom and school structures that do not reflect and support the lived experiences of students and neutral or negative teacher attitudes toward diversity. we will discuss the totality of findings from this study in the context of each of these areas. generally, about half of the participants in the survey report being at least “somewhat satisfied” or educational poverties in alaska 7 “satisfied overall” with the appropriateness of their classroom materials, their freedom to use differentiation strategies, and their access to culturally rich and meaningful materials. however, half report the opposite. they report not having culturally relevant materials; they feel there is too great a focus on testing, and that they do not have the time and resources to differentiate for groups and individuals. this result supports the recent nces (national center for education statistics, 2012) findings and is in conflict with expected practice laid out in the alaska standards for culturally responsive schools (alaska native knowledge network, 1999). not surprising is the finding that as a teacher’s propensity toward social justice and/or their openness to diversity increases, they are less satisfied with the curriculums and materials provided to them to use in instruction. participants in this study view the issue of appropriate classroom and school structures as a ‘homeschool culture mismatch’. alaska native teachers place the focus of the mismatch on the home and family with the expectation that children change rather than making changes in classroom and school structures. overall, a stronger propensity in participants toward diversity and social justice led to less satisfaction with the materials, support, and structures of the school. in terms of the concept of educational poverties, this means that the more critically conscious a teacher is, the more they are aware of, and frustrated by, deprivations. discussion our results raise some important questions. white teacher participants demonstrated a significantly more positive attitude toward diversity and social justice than did alaska native participants. their awareness and concern about what is not working for their students was clear. so why does this not translate to attitudes about social justice and diversity that are similar to white teachers? do alaska native teachers understand diversity and social justice in a way that is different from how we measured it? the results also bring into question the use of instruments like the pohan and aguilar (2001) scales. these scales, meant to measure social justice, may be appropriate for use only with white participants, or at worst are innately eurocentric and hegemonic. we wonder how alaska native teachers define social justice and diversity in their own words and plan to address this question in future interviews. additionally, why did alaska native teachers, some of whose personal experiences reflect those of the families they reproached, place blame on the families rather than on the structures of the school? perhaps what is revealed is the conflict these teachers experience; the “man of two cultures” described by dehyle and swisher (1997). when alaska natives become teachers, they assume a role imbued with white middle class norms. some adjustment in norms would almost be required to have success in a teacher education program and to be successful as a teacher in a public school system. we also wonder if this phenomenon occurs among teachers of other culture groups. the alaska native teachers in this study articulate a critical perspective that demonstrates common values and goals as they pertain to education. however, we did learn that their definition of what social justice ‘looks like’ differs from what it ‘looks like’ to white teachers. as to power and privilege, they generally do not feel school structures should change to accommodate children and families, but rather that children should adapt to the existing school setting, and as a result be able to adapt to the larger white middle class dominated world. this pragmatic approach hints at a ‘get along to get ahead’ strategy. this attitude demonstrates that they are keenly aware of power and privilege. for the alaska native teachers in this study the way to escape domination is to be as adept as possible at living in the white middle class world. for them, an education that supports white middle class norms seems the obvious solution to the problem. they are also aware of and frustrated by diminished equality of opportunity to learn at their schools for native students. while their ultimate goal is for these students to be successful in both their native culture and the dominant culture, they see the best way to get there is with curriculum and assessments that make sense for their students. this is particularly true for the teachers of young children. from the point of view of 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(2013). educational poverties in alaska: teachers’ perspectives. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1081 author notes dr. anne jones school of education university of alaska southeast 11120 glacier highway juneau, alaska 99801 anne.jones@uas.alaska.edu dr. anne jones is assistant professor on the faculty of the university of alaska, southeast school of education, focusing her research and teaching on developing pre-service teacher cultural consciousness and diversity education for social justice. dr. jones also serves as a coordinator of the university of alaska southeast’s elementary master of arts in teaching program for juneau and the southeast. prior to her work in alaska, dr. jones taught elementary and middle school students in california and english to adults in bulgaria and egypt. dr. charles salinas school of education university of alaska southeast 11120 glacier highway juneau, alaska 99801 lee.salinas@uas.alaska.edu dr. charles salinas earned a ph.d. in social/personality psychology from the university of california’s riverside campus. his research interests include intergroup social attitudes and political reasoning. dr. salinas has taught at the american university in bulgaria and in the california state system. dr. salinas is currently an adjunct instructor and serves as the assessment coordinator at the university of alaska southeast school of education. manuscript received: 09/17/2012 revisions received: 01/18/2013 accepted: 04/03/2013 educational poverties in alaska 11 volume 16, number 1 april 26, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 10, number 3 december, 2008 issn 1099-839x an investigation of school violence and pre-service teachers karen nykorchuk mccaleb texas a&m university corpus christi amy andersen and harry hueston west texas a&m university all educators need to be aware of issues regarding school violence. recent years have shown that violence can happen in a variety of school settings. this study conducted a one-group, pretest-posttest, pre-experimental design to explore preservice teachers’ perceptions regarding school violence. first, pre-service educators were asked to complete an online, anonymous survey. next, the participants, members of the same english/language arts methods class, were taught a three-part school violence curriculum. and finally, a posttest, optional and anonymous, was administered. results suggest that there was a change in respondents’ perceptions regarding school violence after having participated in the curriculum. school violence is a reality in many schools. although violence can range from comparatively minor to significant levels of intensity, it is a threat that continues to plague our schools. the 2005 national youth risk behavior study found that between 3.0% and 9.4% of students in the united states reported feeling unsafe because of violent behavior of others either in school or on the way to or from school (centers for disease control, 2005). although a recent study indicated that violence and aggressive behavior at school has declined in the last decade and that children are more likely to be harmed away from school than at school (indicators of school crime and safety, 2005), school violence is still an issue of great concern (ballard, rattley, fleming & kidder-ashley, 2004). reports of highly violent incidents, such as school shootings, leave students and teachers with a lasting feeling of shock, apprehension, and grief (alvarez, 2007). during the april 16, 2007 shooting at virginia tech, 32 students and faculty lost their lives. this shooting became the deadliest school shooting rampage in our country’s history (bloomberg, 2007). in the wake of this tragic event, more questions are being asked than answered. a recent white paper on the virginia tech shooting contains findings from the fbi and the secret service which indicate that in most cases of violence in schools, the student had communicated his or her intentions of the attack well in advance.. these intentions may have frightened their peers. in these same cases, the fbi, the secret service, and the u.s. department of education have recommended that schools adopt a threat assessment approach and act on them (sennett, 2007). kandakai and king (2002) report that there is a growing belief that conflict resolution, problem solving, and decision making skills are critical for educators who must deal with school violence. alvarez (2007) asserts that teachers, who are trained to be more effective in meeting both academic and non-academic student needs, have classrooms with a more positive and successful climate for all students current issues in education vol. 10 no. 3 and are better able to handle aggressive student behavior. in a study of the effects of this type of training on teacher reactions to problematic behavior, alvarez found that advanced training in behavior and classroom management, similar to that provided to special educators, was most useful and could be useful to general educators as well (2007). if specialized training in behavior management can assist teachers to better manage and prevent violent or aggressive behavior in school, it would follow that teacher education programs would include this type of training for pre-service teachers. however, kandakai & king (2002) found that preservice teachers report receiving little or no training in their university program on how to deal with aggressive behaviors or school violence. they further report that pre-service teachers have concerns about student aggression and feel inadequately preparedto deal with this kind of behavior in their classrooms. a recent satisfaction and feedback survey from graduates of teacher education programs, required as part of a teacher accreditation process, indicates higher ratings from graduates who have had extensive clinical or internship curricula (darlinghammond, chung, & frelow, 2002). by integrating numerous practical, applied, in-class exercises into teacher education curriculum, pre-service teachers found practical applications helpful in preparing for their future roles in the classroom. practical clinical application, combined with content-based pedagogy results in higher pre-service teacher satisfaction. this study conducted a preliminary assessment of the school violence training needs for pre-service teachers at a mid-sized regional university. this university offers both general and special education teaching degrees. at this university, students studying general education are required to take only one course in classroom management whereas students pursuing special education certification must take additional coursework in behavior disorders and support techniques. in addition to assessing the university’s preservice program regarding the preparation of students for the possibility of violence in their classrooms, an exploratory probe of local school districts was conducted. this probe suggested the lack of a detailed plan for dealing with school violence on the part of some local school districts. this combined information prompted a joint project between professors in the departments of education and criminal justice. design and methodology this study conducted a one-group, pretestposttest, pre-experimental design to explore preservice teachers’ perceptions regarding school violence. first, 95 pre-service educators were asked to complete an online, anonymous survey. next, the participants, 20 members of the same english/language arts methods class, were taught a three-part school violence curriculum. finally, a posttest, optional and anonymous, was administered to the 20 participants. a limitation of this study is that initially, the project team intended to provide the curriculum training and the posttest to the group of 95 preservice teachers. due to logistical reasons, the training and posttest were only administered to a portion of the pretest participants. despite this limitation, the information gained from this exploratory study contained rich insights that will further the research of this topic. instrument professors from the fields of elementary education, special education, and criminal justice reviewed the existing literature base and, collaboratively, developed a school violence rating scale. this online instrument consisted of two sections. the first section consisted of basic demographic information. the second section was comprised of 10 items and one of those items was open-ended. the items/responses were presented in likert format: strongly agree, agree, somewhat agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. as this rating scale was designed to be anonymous, there was no tracking mechanism in place. a pilot test was conducted to assess accessibility, readability, and ease. researchers asked participant volunteers to further answer follow-up questions regarding their interpretation of each survey item. based on participant feedback, minor revisions were made. respondent validation was attained. the pilot test, pre-test, and post-test were available electronically. this instrument was designed to address four specific research questions: 1. do pre-service teachers feel training in this areas is important at the pre-service level? 2. do pre-service teachers feel prepared if confronted with issues of school violence? 3. are pre-service teachers concerned that they may experience school violence? 4. where do pre-service teachers learn most of their information regarding school violence? this instrument’s online link was posted on the course website and was also emailed to students upon request. the rating scale was available for eight weeks. the results were then analyzed by the project team and used to develop a three-part violence curriculum workshop for the pre-service teachers. the curriculum consisted of three 3-hour sessions. each session was held once a week for three an investigation of school violence and pre-service teachers 3 consecutive weeks. at the conclusion of the workshop series, pre-service teachers were again requested to complete the school violence rating scale. the study’s time frame is shown in table 1. table 1 school violence project timeline semester project component nov./dec. 2006 conducted pilot study dec. 2006 analyzed pilot study results jan. 2007 made survey revisions feb. 2007 pre-test study participants; analyzed results march 2007 developed 3-part curriculum april 2007 implemented curriculum april/may/june 2007 post-test study participants; analyzed results participants the project participants were pre-service teachers in the same english/language arts methods course. all students were in their first semester of their senior year. demographic data reports that all participants were female and all pursuing their early childhood through 4th grade teacher certification. curriculum development project participants took a revised version of the school violence survey in february of 2007. after reviewing the results of the pilot test and this survey, the project team developed a three-part curriculum to address school violence issues. the curriculum was designed to be co-taught by the project team over three consecutive weeks. each session was delivered during a regularly scheduled methods class which met for three hours one time per week. the curriculum was delivered during this class in april, 2007. the first session, occurring week one, introduced students to the issues relating to school violence. the second session focused on providing students with “real-life” situations in dealing with behavior issues ranging from minor (verbal noncompliance) to major incidents (physical aggression). the final project week emphasized awareness of issues of intense violence, prior to – during – and after the incident. as is evident in table 2, each week/session introduces the students to a more intense level of violence. session 1. this first introductory session explained the ideas and overall spirit of the project. as mentioned in table 2, professors discussed foundational information regarding school violence to expose students to the basic facts of school violence and encourage student self-reflection concerning their own experiences with violence or school violence situations. this preliminary session was the shortest session of the three. table 2 course content session course topics 1 introduction and background pilot study results national school violence statistics district/school policies student reflections 2 building caring classroom communities using effective communication recognizing and addressing stress (student and own) using verbal judo techniques conducting role play situations 3 reactive situations school shootings post traumatic stress disorder after-care management session 2. this session began with students discussing their own experiences with dealing with classroom behaviors, how they observed other teachers dealing with behavior issues, and what they learned (either in class or from “veteran teachers”) on how to most effectively address a problem behavior. students were then introduced to the concept of verbal judo. verbal judo, created by dr. george thompson, refers to the idea of moving with an adversary’s energy rather than trying to fight against it (bowman, 2001, p.28). table 3 outlines the verbal judo components that the team used in teaching this session. after the verbal judo technique was discussed and modeled by the project team, students were placed into random small groups and were given six role play scenarios. the project team role played the conflict aspect of the first scenario. this first scenario involved a six year old student who angrily states “i don’t want my paper. i don’t like you!” the student then pushes his paper off his desk and refuses to do any work. at the end of the role play, each student group was asked to address this situation using their verbal de-escalation techniques. responses were discussed as a class. current issues in education vol. 10 no. 3 table 3 verbal judo components action description individualize the situation begin by talking with the student and using his/her name. deal with the situation as privately and respectfully as possible. it is important to get down on the student’s level and “eye to eye.” when speaking with the student, use a calm, quiet, firm tone of voice. describe the action describe the student’s action in clear, objective terms (what you observed the student doing). for example, “i saw that you knocked over your chair” as opposed to “i saw that you were having a fit.” address the action in some situations, you may need to address the action as being “okay” in another context. for instance, “you know, i like to run when i’m outside.” state the behavior is “okay” in another context (if appropriate), but not under these conditions. use a negative assertion statement use a negative assertion statement to address the behavior. for instance, “i’m not saying you can never do this ‘action’ in school with your friend, you just cannot continue to do this when in school.” this step, as well as the previous step, is particularly important when there is rule discord between home and school. there are behaviors that may be allowed at home, but not in school (i.e., swearing, use of language, voice volume, etc.). students may not realize the situational difference and may require direct instruction and reminders. summarize the resolution tell the student to address his/her need while allowing your needs to be met. for example, “if you can agree with my request that you will (describe the correct action) that will be fine, if not i am going to have to (describe the action; something to correct/put the student’s action on the right path). solicit student commitment it is important to have the student commit to the plan; “great! we have a deal!” following this discussion, each group was asked to address the behavioral issues within the five other scenarios. each group then role played a scenario, using their verbal de-escalation techniques, in front of the class. after each group’s presentation, the students received feedback from their peers and the project team. session 3. this final session began with a discussion about the stress related to this session’s topic. the training emphasized that all teachers should be aware of and trained in district procedures and policies regarding school violence situations. it was explained that this workshop was designed to enhance district training and provide additional techniques/suggestions to use should they encounter a violent situation – always relying on their district policy as a base. following this introduction, the team reviewed the steps in verbal judo from the last session. then, students were given a scenario that included an elementary school student telling the teacher that another student has a real gun in a backpack. students were encouraged to begin their response using existing school policy or procedure. unfortunately, all of the students stated they did not know if their school had a policy or procedure on this type of incident. in response, the project team suggested, for the purpose of this experience, that students rely on the information that they have learned from these workshops to address this scenario. students were first instructed to write up a solution independently. then the students were assigned randomly to a small group. the students took turns discussing their solutions with their groups. each group needed to agree on solution based on their discussion. after the discussions, each group shared their solutions with the class and received feedback from their peers and the project team. following this activity, the team discussed some “best steps” to take when a report of a gun is received. table 4 lists the basic steps teachers can take, in accordance with district policy, when a student reports the presence of a weapon. the project team then conducted another practical exercise. four backpacks were distributed throughout the classroom. each backpack contained a safe gun. safe guns are constructed of rubber and are weighted to look and feel like real guns. however, the bright blue color distinguishes these safe guns from actual weapons. students were randomly assigned to a group and directed toward a backpack. each group needed to assign a student to play the role of teacher. the teacher was then given this situation: johnny, an elementary school student, just told you that a classmate, mickey, has a gun in his backpack. the an investigation of school violence and pre-service teachers 5 backpack is on the classroom floor. how are you, as teacher, going to handle this? table 4 basic steps when a weapon is reported steps action prepolice arrival separate the student from the backpack/locker where the weapon is reported to be hidden. calmly call the student to the back of the room. ask another teacher to come supervise your class or take your class to their room. have that teacher put the backpack under/behind the teacher’s desk to separate it from the rest of the class. escort the student in question down to the principal’s office. you can use your verbal judo skills to encourage the student to admit bringing the weapon to school. postpolice arrival assist the police when they arrive. the police will take charge of the situation and remove the weapon from the classroom. objectively document the incident as soon as possible for reports for the school district and the police. speak with the class about this incident. it is important for the teacher and the school counselor or administrator to speak with students, answer questions, and assure the students that they are safe. follow policy and instructions provided by your district. be aware that this incident may cause you physical and emotional stress. seek out support and take care of your own emotional needs. the “teacher” then role played the scenario. each group observed the other groups’ actions. the project team critiqued each group’s performance, specifically focusing on what action the “teacher “ took or did not take in managing his/her students, dealing with the gun in the backpack and assuring the safety of all the students in the classroom. after this exercise, the students were asked questions regarding how to deal with the aftermath of this type of incident. this scenario was followed by a discussion of a lockdown situation with a possible shooter. students were given the scenario of a lockdown with a possible shooter and asked how they would handle the situation. their responses were again discussed with the whole group. school policy was analyzed and suggestions for modifications were made. for example, school district policy might state to not open the door for anyone except a police officer. the team added that teachers need to ask the officer to slide id under the door to verify his/her identity. the curriculum advocates for teachers to not open the door until the identity has been ensured. students were advised to follow district policy and consider other basic safety information such as:  lock the door and move all students away from the windows  report to office who is in your room (attendance)  keep students as calm as possible during the event  do not open the classroom door until you verify the id of the person on the other side. follow the directions of the officer once you verify his/her id. following the discussion on lockdown policies, the class practiced lockdown procedures as part of their training. one student assumed the role of teacher and the other students assumed the role of his/her class. the teacher then role played the procedures of a lockdown drill. the project team took notes on the actions of the teacher and the students during this practiced lockdown drill. at the conclusion of the drill, the project team shared their notes regarding the teacher’s performance in directing his/her “students” during the drill. in addition, the team also noted the actions of the students. the team noted whether the students maintained a quiet demeanor, turned off cell phones, and cooperated with the teacher’s directions. once the lockdown activity was complete, the team also discussed other possibilities of what might happen during and after a shooting incident. the following list includes some of the information that teachers should be aware of during a crisis:  be aware that police are trained to “take out” a shooter before they attend to victims.  once the scene is secure, officers may instruct you to move your class to the “safe zone.” parents will not be allowed to pick up their children during this time.  be prepared that you may see injured people and/or fatalities after a shooting incident. this situation will take an emotional toll on both you and your students. at the conclusion of this session, the curriculum series was reviewed and discussed with students. students were informed that the online current issues in education vol. 10 no. 3 school violence rating scale would again be available. students were also reminded that participation was optional and anonymous. results this study conducted a one-group, pretestposttest, pre-experimental design to explore preservice teachers’ perceptions regarding school violence. ninety-five pre-service educators were asked to complete an anonymous pre-test using the school violence rating scale. twenty of those preservice teachers then participated in a three session school violence curriculum workshop occurring over three consecutive class periods and, finally, those 20 participants responded to an optional and anonymous post-test. pretest results of the 95 students requested to complete the school violence rating scale, 50 responses were submitted, yielding an overall response rate of 52%. of the pretest participants, 86% were female and 14% male. the majority of participants (64%) were pursuing an early childhood – 4th grade teaching degree, while 35% were pursing a 4th – 8th grade teaching degree. six percent of respondents reported studying special education. the first research question explored in this study queried whether pre-service teachers feel that training in the area of school violence is necessary at the pre-service level. participants responded using the key: strongly agree (sa), agree (a), somewhat agree (swa), disagree (d), and strongly disagree (sd). the participant pretest responses are illustrated in table 5. table 5 pretest responses research questions n sa% a% swa% d% sd% do pre-service teachers feel training in this area is important at the preservice level 50 62.5 27.1 6.2 0 4.2 do pre-service teachers feel prepared if confronted with issues of school violence? 50 8.2 26.5 38.8 24.5 2.0 are pre-service teachers concerned that they may experience school violence? 50 18.8 31.3 33.3 12.5 4.2 as evident in table 5, the majority of students responded that they felt that school violence training is important at the pre-service level. students also reported that they do feel, to some degree, prepared to confront issues of school violence and the majority also reported being concerned that they may experience school violence in their future. equally interesting, however, is that 16% of respondents did not feel concerned that they might experience school violence and that 26% of respondents reported feeling unprepared to deal with issues of violence. posttest results the posttest survey was electronically available to 20 students who had participated in the three week school violence curriculum. of the 20 students requested to complete the school violence rating scale, all 20 students participated, yielding an overall response rate of 100%. of the posttest participants, 100% were female an all participants were pursuing an early childhood – 4th grade teaching degree. the posttest participant responses are found in table 6. table 6 posttest responses research questions n sa% a% swa% d% sd% do pre-service teachers feel training in this area is important at the preservice level 19 84.2 10.5 5.3 0 0 do pre-service teachers feel prepared if confronted with issues of school violence? 20 65.0 35.0 0 0 0 are pre-service teachers concerned that they may experience school violence? 20 45.0 25.0 25.0 5.0 0 as evident in table 6, all student responses indicated agreement that school violence training is important at the pre-service level. additionally, all students affirmed (strongly agree 65% and agree 35%) that they feel prepared if confronted with issues of school violence. however, it is important to note that although the majority of students reported they felt concerned that they may one day experience school violence (95%), 5% of respondents disagreed. qualitative data the rating scale’s one open-ended question asked “what sources have you used to learn about school violence?” the pretest results found that the majority of students listed various forms of media (television, online news sources, etc.). in the posttest, 100% of participants responded that the school violence curriculum has helped them to learn more about this topic. discussion this study was based on a needs assessment within our own university preparation program to an investigation of school violence and pre-service teachers 7 determine our students’ perceptions of preparedness for dealing with school violence. although school violence situations happen across the country, many of our students hold to the belief that it “doesn’t happen here.” our students have also stated “i honestly haven’t thought about it.” the goal of our project was to determine the need and address that need through the school violence workshop. this study’s post-test yielded two critical findings. first, after participating in the workshop, students reported that school violence training is important at the pre-service level. second, students stated that they felt better prepared to deal with issues of school violence. these two findings suggest that the curriculum raised student awareness and understanding of the issue of school violence. the third finding indicates that students reported an increased concern that they may one day experience school violence. this finding may be interpreted in two different ways. first, the workshop may have increased students’ sense of anxiety regarding school violence. since the focus of the workshop was violence (including gun violence), the concentration and depth of this topic may have heightened students’ fear and apprehension. however, this finding may reflect that since learning about the issues surrounding school violence, students are more aware that violence can happen in any school, in any socioeconomic area, and in any geographic location. given student feedback, discussion, incidental data, and the finding that students reported feeling more prepared to deal with issues of school violence, researchers suggest that the latter interpretation is probably more accurate. this research study was geared toward students pursuing an early childhood-4th grade teaching certification. although the case scenarios in this curriculum can easily be adapted to address all grade levels, this study focused on using examples primarily within the elementary age range to address our study participants’ needs. another limitation to our study is the lack of curriculum dealing with the various levels of classroom violence. according to mary margaret kerr, there is a lack of research in school crisis prevention and intervention programs. as a result, the use of related disciplines dealing in child trauma or other psychological conditions focus primarily in the mental health field, rather than in education. kerr suggests the best form of learning is done by “doing” (2009). our curriculum is a reflection of this concept, learning by doing. as indicated by this current literature and supported by our findings, school violence curriculum is an area that requires future research and examination. despite the limitations of our study, including that of providing the curriculum training and posttest to only a portion of the original pretest sample, valuable information was gained throughout this study. although the results did indicate a change in participants’ perceptions, that change cannot be definitively attributed to the curriculum. however, incidental data seems to suggest that the curriculum did have an impact. incidental data in addition to the survey data results, the team also had the opportunity to collect additional information. this information was unsolicited by the team. several students expressed, verbally and in writing, their gratitude and excitement over the curriculum information to team members and other faculty. students explicitly commented on the role playing scenarios. many students emphasized that they appreciated the “hands-on” practice of using their verbal de-escalation skills in a safe, learning environment. they also commented that the practice helped them to feel better prepared to use these skills in an actual classroom situation. additionally, faculty (not associated with this project) observed the participants engaging in and leading professional discussions regarding safety issues and school violence. this information was especially noted by faculty and administrators as the third week of our project coincided with the shooting incident at virginia tech. finally, students and faculty not involved in the project requested the school violence curriculum training. conclusions since a change did occur, a tentative hypothesis can be drawn from this study; however, due to the limitations of the study, change cannot be definitively attributed to the curriculum. incidental data gathering and descriptive information suggest that the curriculum did contribute to the change. school violence is an important issue that needs to be addressed in teacher preparation programs. although it is likely that many teachers will never need to use these skills, it is still important to provide teachers training and opportunities to practice should the need arise. schools routinely train and practice fire and severe weather drills, yet many teachers may never encounter a school fire or weather-related emergency. similarly, lockdown drills are beginning to be practiced by many school districts in accordance with federal guidelines. following the safe school initiative final report, the department of education recommends that all schools address several preventive and practical models. this recommendation includes lockdown drills (final current issues in education vol. 10 no. 3 report and findings of the safe school initiative, may 2002). school violence response training is needed both for practicing teachers and pre-service teachers. this training needs to begin at the teacher preparation program level and continue through district/school in-service training. as this study’s curriculum continues to be implemented, it is expected that additional issues will arise that the project team will address and incorporate into the workshop series. school violence is an ever-present threat to our schools. this threat affects educators across the country, not just those in metropolitan areas. consistent with the literature, this study suggests that pre-service teachers feel unprepared to deal with issues regarding school violence. the results further suggest that research needs to be conducted regarding school violence training programs and their respective effectiveness.. references alvarez, h. k. (2007). the impact of teacher preparation on response to student aggression in the classroom. teaching and teacher education, 23, 1113-1126. ballard, m. e., rattley, k.t., fleming, w.c. & kidder-ashley, p. (2004). school aggression and dispositional aggression among middle school boys. research in middle level education online, 27(1), p. 219. bowman, d.h. (2001). teachers take charge. education week, 21(9), p. 28. d’aniello, s. (2008). beginning teacher follow up studies: a critical component of teacher education program evaluation and policy decisions. intervention in school and clinic, 4(5), 309-312. darling-hammond, l., chung,r., & frelow, f. (2002). variation in teacher preparation: how well do different pathways prepare teachers to teach? journal of teacher education, 54, 286-302. devoe, j. f., peter, k., noonan, m., snyder, t.d. & baum, k. (2005). indicators of school crime and safety: 2005. (nces 2006 001/ncj210697). u.s. department of education and justice. washington, dc: u.s. government printing office. kandakai, t.l. & king, k.a. (2002). preservice teachers’ perceived confidence in teaching school violence prevention. american journal of health behavior, 26(5), 342-353. kerr, m. (2009). school crisis prevention and intervention. upper saddle river, new jersey: pearson. mcclean, d. (2007). gunmen kills at least 32 on virginia tech campus. retrieved april, 2007, www.bloomberg.com. national school safety and security services. retrieved april, 2007, www.schoolsecruity.org. sennett, f. (2007). heeding virginia tech’s lessons: how key recommendation of the virginia tech report can help crate a safer, more secure campus. little falls, nj: paperclip communications, p. 42. united states secret service and the department of education (2002). the final report and findings of the safe school initiative. washington, dc. http://www.bloomberg.com/ http://www.schoolsecruity.org/ an investigation of school violence and pre-service teachers 9 2008 article citation mccaleb, k.n., andersen, a., & hueston, h. (2008, december). an investigation of school violence and pre service teachers. current issues in education [on-line], 10(3). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume10/number3/ author notes dr. karen nykorchuk mccaleb texas a&m university corpus christi, tx karen.mccaleb@tamucc.edu note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation mccaleb, k. n., andersen, a., & hueston, h. (2008). an investigation of school violence and pre-service teachers. current issues in education, 10(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1570 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume10/number3/ mailto:karen.mccaleb@tamucc.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1570 volume 3, number 4 march 3, 2000 issn 1099-839x ethos and pedagogical communication: suggestions for enhancing credibility in the classroom william a. haskins mckendree college whether at the conscious or unconscious level, a student's perception of the teacher's ethos, or speaker's character, has an important impact on how he or she will react to the teacher and how effective the teacher will be in the classroom. erosion of a teacher's ethos can quickly spell disaster in the classroom. this article looks at the critical relationship between ethos and pedagogical communication. the analysis will explore the definition of ethos, its various dimensions, and suggestions for improving it in the classroom. it was john's first day as a new science teacher at a middle school in illinois. he dreamed of this day; he grew anxious at the thought of how his students would respond to him. would they like him? would they respect him and his knowledge? would they trust him enough to feel comfortable in asking him questions or confiding in him? the questions that john raised are related to one of the main traits teachers must demonstrate in the classroom: ethos. as with any teacher, john needs to be perceived as having high ethos (i.e., one's character or credibility) in the eyes of his students. ethos, then, is the perceived degree of character or credibility that a person believes exists in another person or object. how john helps to develop his ethos, or credibility, in the minds of his students will play a significant role in his success as a teacher. today's teachers face a variety of reactions from their students and other constituencies: from simple praise to national awards, from insults to dismissal, from pushing and shoving to physical violence. no matter what the reaction, at the core of the response is the person's perception of the teacher's credibility. whether at the conscious or unconscious level, the individual's perception of the teacher's credibility has a tremendous impact on both how he or she reacts to the teacher and on how effective the teacher will be as an educator and communicator (frymier & thompson, 1992). erosion of a teacher's credibility can quickly spell disaster in the classroom; worse yet, violence may quickly erupt in a climate where the student has little respect for the credibility of teachers or other individuals. but to develop one's ethos, a teacher must communicate effectively with his or her students in the classroom (frymier & thompson, 1992). part of the teacher's pedagogy must exhibit itself through a pedagogical communication process that helps the teacher to be perceived as credible by the students (mccrosky & richmond, 1992; nussbaum, 1992). for purposes of this paper, pedagogical communication is defined as a process of communication used by teachers to advance educational subject matter. such behaviors as vocal variation (e.g., changes in rate, inflection, volume, movement) or visual variation (e.g., change in facial expressions, eye contact, gestures) teachers use to help communicate subject matter are examples of pedagogical communication. and more, research suggests that these behaviors may increase students'cognitive and affective learning (gorham, current issues in education vol. 3 no. 4 1988; richmond, gorhan, & mccrosky, 1987). this article looks at the critical relationship between ethos and pedagogical communication. the analysis will explore the definition of ethos, its various dimensions, and suggestions for improving it in the classroom. definition of ethos the concept of ethos received considerable attention from the ancient greeks, especially by the great philosopher and teacher, aristotle. in his work the rhetoric, he stated: the character [ethos] of the speaker is a cause of persuasion when the speech is so uttered as to make him worthy of belief; for as a rule we trust men of probity more, and more quickly, about things in general, while on points outside the realm of exact knowledge, where opinion is divided, we trust them absolutely (aristotle, 1960, p. 9). additionally, he claimed that the speaker's "character [ethos] is the most potent of all the means of persuasion" (p. 9). more contemporary scholars view ethos as primarily the perception of credibility one has towards a communicator or his or her message or both (hamilton, 1998; johnson & coolen, 1995; booth-butterfield & gutowski, 1993; burgoon, birk & pfau, 1990). such scholars frequently use the term source credibility to describe the perception audience members have of a speaker's credibility (trenholm, 1989). a speaker, for instance, may be extremely knowledgeable in a certain subject area, but if audience members fail to perceive the speaker as knowledgeable, the speaker's level of expertise will not enhance his or her credibility (redmond, 2000). likewise, the speaker may view himself or herself as being honest and a person of good character. however, if the audience doubts this, the speaker's credibility diminishes in their minds (redmond, 2000). clearly, what becomes critical in this dynamic communication exchange between a speaker and the audience is the audience's perception of the speaker's traits and ultimate judgment of the source's credibility (trenholm, 1989). as stated earlier, ethos is defined as the perceived degree of character or credibility that a person believes exists in another person or object. stated differently, how much trust and belief one has in a communicator or in his or her message or both will have an important bearing on how persuasive the communicator will be in the mind of the listener. for teachers, then, their credibility can play a significant part in how effective they will be in the classroom. suggestions for improving ethos and its dimensions through pedagogical communication before starting with suggestions, one needs to realize that a communicator's ethos does not occur in isolation from other important factors occurring in the environment. this is particularly true with the classroom environment. factors such as "timing, context, content, and student ability" (nussabaum, 1992, p. 179), can quickly affect a teacher's ethos in ways not predicted. with this in mind, the following dimensions, suggestions and examples for improving a teacher's credibility through his or her pedagogical communication are presented. the topic of credibility, has received significant attention in the fields of communication and psychology (hamilton, 1998; johnston & coolen, 1995; larson, 1992; mccroskey & young, 1981; berlo, 1961) . variables that have emerged as salient factors of credibility are trust, competence, and dynamism (mccrosky & young, 1981). a more recent factor receiving notice by scholars is that of teacher immediacy, which "refers to the use of communication behaviors [e.g., movement, enthusiasm, use of gestures, humor, vocal variety] that reduce both the psychological and physical distance between two individuals" ( myers, zhong, & guan, 1998). teacher immediacy has been found to be an important variable for influencing teachers' effectiveness and for helping students to diminish their apprehension in the classroom (mccrosky & richmond, 1992). the first dimension explored is trust. trust appears in many communication relationships between friends, family members, doctors and patients—and especially between teachers and students. verderber and verderber (1995) define trust as "placing confidence in the other" (p. 143). clearly, in a classroom, both student and teacher need to operate in a climate of trust where each can place confidence in the other, as is the case when a student elects to confide in a teacher. the student may trust the teacher to refrain from disclosing particular information or may trust the teacher to provide sound guidance on personal or academic matters, for instance. trust must be earned through the pedagogical communication process that teachers display with their students. any violation of this trust can potentially rupture the professional relationship that teachers need to maintain if honest dialogues are to occur. suggestions for improving trust through pedagogical communication include: 1. adapting messages to listeners by being genuinely sincere and honest in the presentation of information (haskins & staudacher, 1987), 2. identifying strengths and weaknesses in information (e.g., reliability, biases) to demonstrate the speaker's honesty in presenting messages (larson, 1992) , ethos and pedagogical communication: suggestions for enhancing credibility in the classroom 3 3. introducing sources (which may be trusted by students) used to develop class material (lucas, 1998), 4. explaining the soundness of the analysis, arguments, and evidence that can help to reinforce trust between teacher and student (haskins & staudacher, 1987), and 5. earning trust by showing trust towards students in the educational process (haskins & staudacher, 1987). when presenting messages, teachers, then, may want to tailor their messages to relate to the level of understanding of their students. this needs to be done in ways that convey sincerity and honesty. for example, a teacher should not be afraid to say "i don't know" if he or she lacks information asked by a student. that in itself is an honest answer. certainly an "educated guess" or a response that suggests a willingness to seek out such information can further enhance a teacher's sincerity and honesty. whenever possible, teachers need to point out the strengths or weaknesses that exist in their messages and sources and why they exist. this may further enhance trust between teachers and students in the believability of teachers' messages. additionally, teachers need to encourage active learning by inviting students to engage in dialogues with them on issues related to class topics. students can learn from these types of exchanges to evaluate messages and sources for honesty and accuracy. the next dimension of ethos discussed is competence. but competence involves more than simply being knowledgeable. it involves a perception that others have of people concerning their degree of knowledge on topics, abilities to command such knowledge, and abilities to communicate this knowledge clearly. teachers constantly face being evaluated and tested by others, especially by students, concerning their level of knowledge on a variety of subjects. moreover, a teacher's command of the subject, as well as how he or she communicates this information, bears heavily on a student's perception of the teacher's competence. being perceived as competent communicators by students holds the potential for significant advantages (e.g., student interest, participation) for teachers. but, again, being perceived as competent means more than being perceived as intelligent. with this dimension of ethos, then, a teacher needs to demonstrate an excellent command of the subject matter. unless otherwise noted, the suggestions come from the author's personal educational experiences. suggestions for doing this through pedagogical communication include: 1. appearing highly organized in the presentation of subject matter (lucas, 1998), 2. delivering the message as free as possible of errors (e.g., grammar, pronunciation, enunciation) while maintaining strong eye contact with students (kearney & plax, 1999), 3. preparing thoroughly for class by being in control of the subject matter, key issues, sources, evidence, arguments or differing viewpoints on the subject (brydon & scott, 2000), 4. having lesson plans that are organized and detailed which can help teachers gain greater confidence and control of their subjects, and 5. using relevant personal experiences that can provide greater insights for students on the subject. teachers want their students to view them as being competent instructors. preparation is the key for establishing an organized, well developed message. for instance, the lesson plan needs to contain sound evidence, arguments, and current material that can gain and hold the attention of students. teachers can practice presenting their messages to allow for greater command of the subject and familiarity with their delivery of it. when appropriate, teachers should let their feelings help demonstrate both their interests as well as command of the topic. and more, if teachers feel uniquely qualified to address the subject (e.g., special training, awards earned), they can alert their students to these qualifications. for example, teachers may suggest that in high school or college they won awards in their fields of study. teachers must be careful not to brag, but to present this information as additional facts which help underscore their competency on specific subjects. a third dimension of ethos focuses on dynamism (lemert, 1963; berlo, 1961). simply put, this "is the degree to which the audience admires and identifies with the source's attractiveness, power or forcefulness, and energy" (larson, 1992, p. 226). this dimension correlates strongly to a person's level of charisma. certain teachers, for example, may exhibit a high level of energy in their presentations; they may display "a flair for the dramatic" that moves and excites listeners. dynamism, however, does not necessarily mean that a teacher must always display a high level of energy. as larson (1992) explains: "dynamic speakers don't necessarily move about or wave their arms to give off dynamism cues. they just seem to take up a lot of psychological space. they enter a room and people expect them to be in charge" (p. 226). dynamic speakers appear to be in charge of current issues in education vol. 3 no. 4 the situation. people expect them to know what their discussing and to lead them in the discussion. in the classroom, teachers need to appear not only in control of their environment but energized by it. to look bored or distant invites communication disaster. such impressions can quickly evaporate any feelings of excitement students have for their teachers or class content. some thoughts for enhancing classroom dynamism through pedagogical communication include: 1. developing a powerful style of speaking that uses few verbal or vocal hesitancies, such as "okay" or "you know" (hostman, 1989), 2. varying physical movements (e.g., gestures, meaningful movement, facial expressions, eye contact) to complement the message and to avoid a monotonous communication style (redmond, 2000), 3. varying vocal characteristics (e.g., rate, pitch, inflection, tone) to add to the variety and interest of the delivery (redmond, 2000), and 4. using a variety of evidence, stories, visual aids, computer programs, powerpoint, etc. that add interest to the teacher's message (larson, 1992). flexibility in both visual and vocal aspects of pedagogical communication becomes critical for enhancing dynamism. a less dynamic pedagogical communication style risks making both instructor and course content appear boring to students. to increase dynamism, for example, teachers can use a powerful speaking style to express their thoughts by reducing "ahs," "ums," or "okays." additionally, teachers can videotape a practice presentation of one of their lessons. they can critique how they sound and look. they can tape themselves again , but this time allowing for some flexibility in their voice, movement, or use of visual aids. they can also let others critique them in this process. such exercises can help teachers to develop a more confident, dynamic pedagogical communication style, allowing for the possibility of enhancing their credibility in the minds of students. the last dimension of ethos for examination involves the teacher's immediacy behavior. utilizing some of the traits of dynamism, such as physical movement, eye contact, etc., immediate behavior suggests that a teacher uses a more direct style of teaching. that is, the teacher displays behaviors that reduce physical and psychological distance between himself or herself and the student. kelly and gorham (1988) operationalize high immediacy as "the teacher . . . sitting on the edge of the chair, leaning forward, placing nothing between himself and the subject, and utilizing head nods" (p. 203). richmond, gorham, and mccrosky (1987) further suggest that such behavior may also include "[v]ocal expressiveness, smiling at the class, and having a relaxed body position" and that these last three behaviors appear to be the "most important " for predicting student learning in the classroom (pp. 586-587). the following suggestions for improving immediacy of behavior through pedagogical communication include: 1. allowing for a relaxed body position when presenting material by looking comfortable when standing or sitting in front of the class (mccrosky & richmond, 1992), 2. establishing eye contact with the entire class by periodically scanning the entire class (mccrosky & richmond, 1992), 3. smiling to disarm and relax students (frymier & thompson, 1992; mccrosky & richmond, 1992), 4. attempting to reduce distance, when possible, between teachers and students by moving or moving away from barriers (e.g., desk, podiums) that often separate teachers from students (frymier & thompson, 1992; mccroskey & richmond, 1992), and 5. allowing verbal expressiveness to help establish immediacy in teachers' behaviors by attracting the attention of students and by reducing the psychological distance between teachers and students mccroskey & richmond, 1992; gorham, 1988). teachers can improve their use of immediacy of behavior with their students. for instance, teachers can practice this type of behavior with friends and colleagues. they can reduce their distance to a comfortable zone when communicating with them. teachers can then transfer this type of behavior, if they believe it appropriate, to the classroom. in the classroom, teachers need to remember to maintain good eye contact, smile periodically as they address their students, and maintain a relaxed body position when sitting of standing. at times, teachers, for example, may wish to bring their chairs closer to students or reposition students' desks (e.g., in the form of a circle or semicircle), helping to reduce both psychological and physical distance between themselves and their students. teachers need to move comfortably and meaningfully in the classroom, pausing periodically to maintain eye contact with their students. these examples of immediate behavior can not only help to reduce distance between teachers and students but possibly increase greater cognitive and affective learning by students (gorham, 1988; richmond, gorham, & mccrosky, 1987). ethos and pedagogical communication: suggestions for enhancing credibility in the classroom 5 summary a critical key to teaching effectiveness focuses on the concept of ethos. how educators develop their credibility through pedagogical communication may greatly influence the perceptions of students toward teachers' abilities in particular and the learning process in general. this article has provided a working definition of ethos as the perceived degree of character or credibility that a person believes exists in another person or object. definitions for pedagogical communication and immediate behavior were also provided. practical suggestions for improving ethos and its related dimensions through pedagogical communication were given. finally, examples were provided for applying the suggestions that may help teachers to improve their credibility in the classroom. no form of pedagogical communication can ever substitute for preparation and knowledge of a subject. a teacher's credibility, must be earned in the classroom. allowing for the union of pedagogical communication and ethos, then, may help teachers be perceived by their students as being more competent, dynamic communicators in the classroom. references aristotle. 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(1998). instructor immediacy in the chinese college classroom. communication studies, 49, 240 254. nussbaum, j. f. (1992). effective teacher behavior. communication education, 41, 167-180. redmond, m. v. (2000). communication: theories and application. boston, ma: houghton mifflin co. richmond, v. p. gorham, j. s., & mccrosky, j. (1987). the relationship between selected immediacy behaviors and cognitive learning. in m. mclaughlin (ed.), current issues in education vol. 3 no. 4 communication yearbook 10 (pp. 574-590). beverly hills, ca: sage. trenholm, s. (1989). persuasion and social influence. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. verderber, r. f., & verderber, h. s. (1995). inter act: using interpersonal communication skills (3rd ed.). belmont, ca: wadsworth publishing co. ethos and pedagogical communication: suggestions for enhancing credibility in the classroom 7 2000 article citation haskins, w. (2000, march 3). ethos and pedagogical communication: suggestions for enhancing credibility in the classroom. current issues in education [on-line], 3(4). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume3/number4/. author notes william a. haskins mckendree college lebanon, il 62254 whaskins@atlas.mckendree.edu william a. haskins is a professor of communication at mckendree college. he has published numerous articles in journals of communication, law, engineering, religion and education. he is co-author of the book entitled successful public speaking: a practical guide. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 25, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation haskins, w. (2000). ethos and pedagogical communication: suggestions for enhancing credibility in the classroom. current issues in education, 3(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1616 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2000,%20vol%203,%20%231-8/number4/index.html mailto:whaskins@atlas.mckendree.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1616 cie template current issues in education, 18(3) 1 volume 18, issue 3 october 15, 2015 issn 1099-839x students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics jason t. hurwitz, kris bosworth, regina deil-amen, cecilia rios-aguilar, j. robert hendricks, and eliane b. rubinstein-avila the university of arizona abstract: this exploratory study aimed to (a) identify students’ beliefs about their abilities and the contributions of their school environments toward achieving their college and career aspirations, (b) group schools by students’ perceptions, and (c) contrast this grouping with grouping by school-level demographics. this secondary analysis examined items from the county youth survey administered to 11th-graders (n = 3,751) at 17 local schools. school size, racial, and socioeconomic statistics comprised the publicly available data. principal components analysis identified 17 college and career readiness items representing two dimensions of student perceptions: school supports and academic efficacy. cluster analysis revealed that schools grouped by these dimensions differed substantially from the schools’ demographic groupings. keywords: college and career readiness, academic efficacy, school supports, high school apa-style citation: hurwitz, j. t., bosworth, k., deil-amen, r., rios-aguilar, c., hendricks, j. r., & rubinstein avila, e. b. (2015). students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics. current issues in education, 18(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1388 accepted: june 5 th , 2015 a high priority among educators and policymakers is support of a public education system in which all graduates are prepared to enter a postsecondary experience leading to a productive career. in past decades, many educators, scholars, and policymakers have met this challenge through program development and research focused on providing various kinds of supports to individual students (gándara & bial, 2001). missing from this literature are students’ perceptions of what supports schools provide. understanding students’ perspectives on what in their high school experience supports post-secondary aspirations is essential for policy makers and educators to assess and develop interventions to support successful post-secondary plans and transitions. the purpose of this exploratory study is to examine how high school students perceive the academic environments of their schools and the quality of their own academic preparation to pursue postsecondary aspirations. our research questions are twofold: (a) what underlying dimensions of a school’s academic environment may be measured by this survey of students’ http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1388 students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 2 perceptions? and (b) how do students’ perceptions about their schools and themselves map onto the actual demographic characteristics of the schools they attend? postsecondary education is a critical step on the path to making important career decisions. one framework for understanding the career development process is found in social cognitive career theory (scct; lent, brown, & hackett, 1994, 2000, 2002). scct attributes causality for career interests, choices and performance to the interaction of personal attributes, external environmental factors, and overt behavior of individuals. according to the theory, intermediate and ultimate career outcomes are co-determined by individuals’ self-efficacy expectations and outcome expectations – constructs that rely heavily on personal perception and are continually in flux as they are influenced by ongoing learning experiences. the theory further posits that individuals’ learning experiences are shaped by the interactions between environmental (contextual inputs) and individual characteristics (person inputs), which include dispositions, gender, ethnicity, social supports, and perceived barriers. lent and colleagues envisioned scct to include academic pursuits within the career development process; hence, the importance of examining the relevance of scct as a foundation for studying characteristics of a school’s supports for academics and college going and the student perceptions of these supports. scct posits that the interactions between environmental and individual characteristics (e.g., gender, ethnicity, social supports, perceived barriers) influence the career aspirations and decisions of young people (lent, brown, & hackett, 1994, 2000). thus, the public school environment can have a substantial influence on students as they prepare to graduate and consider postsecondary options. however, the features of a public high school environment that prepare students for postsecondary experiences are rarely spotlighted. research is lacking on specific school-based contextual variables that influence students' likelihood of continuing their education past high school graduation. profiles of students who do and do not matriculate into postsecondary education have led to certain assumptions about the type of schools each group attends. because low-income students, students of color, and students in urban settings are on average less likely to make the postsecondary transition (dyce, albold & long, 2013; louie, 2007; perna et al., 2008), another common assumption is that students in such populations are largely uninterested in postsecondary opportunities (hamrick & stage, 2004). much research has focused on adult perceptions of adult-organized activities geared toward improving the quality of educational opportunities and supports to increase student engagement in postsecondary education and training. thus, some of these assumptions may originate in the adult voices that are most vocal in examining issues of access to postsecondary education. the opinions and aspirations of the students themselves are less frequently heard in the literature, particularly in terms of students’ perceptions of the high school environment and support systems. literature review given the consistency in the pattern of college graduates reaping higher economic returns than high school graduates (bureau of labor statistics & u.s. department of labor, 2010, 2012; u.s. census bureau, 2012), increasing students’ interest in and readiness for postsecondary education has been a prominent concern among educators and educational researchers. over the past several decades, many programs and strategies to increase postsecondary enrollment have targeted underrepresented minority groups and low-ses students generally. in that time, some progress has been noted, particularly among latina/o and african american students. since the 1970s, the percentage of african american and latina/o high school graduates entering college has increased by a third (u.s. department of education, 2010; yun et al., 2008). students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 3 however, even with these increases in college enrollment, sizeable gaps in enrollment rates between african americans and latinas/os versus non-hispanic whites still remain, and degree attainment has not improved. research clearly documents that low-income students and students of color are at a disadvantage in the college choice process and face significant barriers in their pursuit of postsecondary degrees (cabrera & la nasa, 2000; haycock, 2001; terenzini, cabrera, & bernal, 2001). despite numerous programs and policies targeting underrepresented minority and lowincome students before and in the transition into college (e.g., gear up and trio), gaps in college enrollment and attainment endure. based on prior research, we know quite a bit about which demographic and other individual characteristics correlate with reduced college prospects and, therefore, much of the emphasis in these programs is on “fixing” the students, their families, and their peer groups (tierney, corwin, & colyar, 2004; tierney & hagedorn, 2002). such an approach can reinforce common stereotypes of the students these programs are meant to serve. meanwhile, gaps in college enrollment and attainment continue. however, much existing research contradicts these stereotypes. the first set of studies explores latino family orientations to college to find that latino families and communities do support college-going. for latino students, relationships with family, relatives, peers, and other close social associates play a supportive role in shaping college academic preparation, planning, enrollment decisions, and trajectories (auerbach, 2002, 2007; ceja, 2004, 2006; gándara, 1995; gonzález, stone & jovel, 2003; pérez & mcdonough, 2008; person & rosenbaum, 2006; turley, 2006). the second set of studies analyzes differences in aspirations between racial groups and challenges the stereotype of anti-school attitudes and non-college aspirations. it has been well documented that african american and latino students do value education and are more likely than whites to report college expectations once differences in ses are controlled (cheng & starks, 2002; harris, 2008; kao & tienda, 1998; qian & blair, 1999; reynolds & johnson, 2011). in particular, reynolds and johnson (2011) found that, after controlling for family structure, parental education, and high school grades and curriculum, african american high school seniors were about three times as likely as whites to report that they expected to complete a four-year college degree, and hispanics were two and a half times as likely to hold those expectations compared to whites. for decades, african americans have also reported more proschool attitudes and higher occupational expectations than whites (ainsworth-darnell & downey, 1998; downey, 2008; downey, ainsworth & qian, 2009; coleman et al., 1966; garrison, 1982; mickelson, 1990) despite the fact that such aspirations and the eventual realization of those aspirations as measured by educational and occupational outcomes is not as tightly linked for blacks and latinos as it is for whites and asians (reynolds & johnson, 2011). goldsmith’s (2004) work is consistent, and his analyses of national data point to the school context as a relevant component in shaping aspirations and attitudes. he begins by citing prior research confirming that, “both blacks and latinos have higher educational aspirations than do whites, especially when differences in family ses are taken into account” (goldsmith, 2004, p. 121). this relationship between race/ethnicity and aspirations/pro-school attitudes has been strong and consistent over time, but goldsmith (2004) is one of the only studies to also directly assess the relationship between college aspirations/school attitudes and school context. using a multilevel analysis, he finds that black and latino students have more optimistic and pro-school beliefs, and these beliefs are even more positive for minority students in minority-segregated schools. this study opens the door to a further examination of the role of high school context as an environmental contributor to student attitudes and beliefs. students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 4 as the above studies reveal, a simple deficit-oriented approach to college aspirations based on individual characteristics neglects the complex environmental component of the scct model, which posits the important contribution that conditions and structures of schooling might play in shaping outcomes. rather, many researchers and educators alike too quickly assume that too many african americans, latinas/os, and poor students of all races do not value education in general and higher education in particular. the failure to value education and the low aspirations among students and their families are often presumed to drive their lower rates of postsecondary enrollment and success (villalpando & solorzano, 2004; weidman, 1989). however, when examining contextual environmental factors, a more nuanced picture emerges. ogbu and others posit that for african american youth, negative connection to schools or negative school experiences are associated with lower postsecondary expectations (berzin, 2010; mau, 1995; ogbu, 1991). these negative “blocked opportunities” include both the quality of the schooling and perceptions of the educational environment (berzin, 2010). angela valenzuela’s book, subtractive schooling (1999), shows a similar dynamic for latino students. she elaborates how the school environment can reinforce powerful norms that send latino students negative messages about their school success that may contradict family encouragement. as stated earlier, social cognitive career theory (scct) can provide an alternative to a deficit-oriented approach to college aspiration, because it posits the important contribution that conditions and structures of schooling can play in influencing outcomes such as college aspirations. evolved from bandura’s (1986) general social cognitive theory, scct highlights the interplay between three constructs: (a) “person inputs”, some of which, like native ability, are genetically heritable, and some of which, like gender and ethnicity, are socially constructed; (b) external environmental factors or “contextual affordances” that can either facilitate or limit positive outcomes directly or indirectly; and (c) overt individual behaviors such as personal goal formation, choice actions, expenditure of effort, and refinement of goals. additionally, the influences of environmental context and person inputs in the model are continually mediated through the co-determinants of self-efficacy, a person’s sense of capability for completing various tasks; and outcome expectations, a person’s beliefs about what will occur if tasks are successfully performed. thus, in scct career and academic outcomes are not solely determined by personal traits operating in a vacuum nor are they determined solely by environmental context but rather as a complex interaction between environment and individuals (lent et al., 2002). consistent with scct, recent studies suggest that the school’s academic environment, institutional social capital, the ideology of college-going, and the patterned structures of support schools provide can have a strong influence on the postsecondary trajectories of students (gonzález et al., 2003; gregory & huang, 2013; hill, 2008; jez, 2009; mcdonough, 1997, 1998; rosenbaum, 2001). social supports for college going in a student’s proximal environment (e.g., school) can enhance a student’s self-efficacy and were seen as positively related to academic self-efficacy (quimby & o’brien, 2004). for example, in describing a school on the university of california’s san diego campus, alvarez and mehan (2006) claimed that “the first step in preparing underserved students for college eligibility was creating college-going-culture” (p. 84). in a study of school reform in the chicago public schools, researchers found that “the single most consistent predictor of whether students took steps toward college was whether their teachers reported that their high school had a strong college climate: that is, the teachers and their colleagues pushed students to go to college, worked to ensure that students would be prepared, and were involved in supporting students in completing their college applications” students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 5 (roderick et al., 2008, p. 4). such research has uncovered the powerful role of educators in schools and school programs, yet we know much less about how students themselves perceive their capacities and their future prospects within the context of their school settings (holland & farmer-hinton, 2009). with regard to student perceptions, schneider and stevenson (1999) detail the ambitions and future plans of high school students across the united states, but their study includes neither an assessment of particular school contexts nor a focus on racial/ethnic subgroups. their pivotal book did, however, point out the misalignment between students’ postsecondary and occupational ambitions and their odds of success. on the other hand, more recent qualitative research in five high-poverty high schools has illustrated the important role that the high school context plays in circumscribing the parameters within which students define their relative academic achievement and preparedness for college (bosworth, convertino, & hurwitz, 2014). the present study examines the concept of misalignment as well. however, our focus is not on alignment between student ambitions and their chances of realizing those ambitions. rather, we focus on the alignment between what students perceive about their academic preparedness and what they perceive about their school context. this exploratory study further evaluates the alignment between the students’ perceptions and the demographic features of the schools they attend. method participants the primary data source is a subset of items and students from the county youth survey administered to eleventh-grade students in 2009. the present study concerns a secondary analysis of the data collected from 3,751 eleventh-grade students in 17 public high schools, which included 1 charter and 2 magnet schools. all 9 school districts within the county were eligible and invited to participate in this census survey, of which 2 declined (comprising three high schools). all participating schools enrolled grades 9–12. all eleventh-grade students at the participating schools were eligible and invited to take part in this census survey. excluded from this analysis were alternative or continuing education high schools, and schools that enrolled fewer than 10 eleventh graders. measures student survey. this study concerns a secondary analysis of items from the county youth survey. educational researchers at the university of arizona, representatives from several local county school districts, and voices for education (a nonprofit educational reform advocacy organization) collaboratively developed the survey. they designed the survey to collect data on youth perspectives and self-reported practices on a variety of issues (e.g., education, violence, and health) to inform the policies and decisions of school administrators, educators, and advocacy groups. survey items derived from input of focus groups with middle through high school students and teachers, and from issues of common interest to the collaborators. after pilot testing and further revision, the final version of the survey contained 232 items, including 4and 5-point likert scales, multiple-choice questions, and open-response formats. the survey organizes items into 11 sections: school experiences, student motivation, academic achievement, technology use, life satisfaction, well-being, peer influence, neighborhood, parental involvement, aspirations and expectations, and demographics. participating schools or districts determined their own procedures, times, and days to administer and proctor the survey during the spring semester of 2009. students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 6 school-wide demographics and performance. this analysis also incorporates publicly available school-level archival data for the 17 schools from the 2008–09 academic year (year of the survey). these data are the school-wide (all grades, 9–12) enrollments, proportions of racial/ethnic minority students and students eligible for free or reduced lunches (% frl, a surrogate for socioeconomic status; u.s. department of education, 2010). data analyses data preparation. based on scct dimensions of person variables and environmental variables (lent et al., 2002), authors first identified a potential subset of relevant survey items and prepared the secondary data for analysis. specifically, the current investigation focused on a subset of survey items related to the following constructs: students’ postsecondary aspirations, academic behaviors, and perceptions of their school’s academic supports and climate. the first and second authors independently identified items from the county youth survey that, on their face, appeared to measure these constructs. the authors then met to discuss their selections and reach consensus on an initial list of 57 of the 232 survey items (25%). examples of postsecondary aspiration items included students’ interest in attending college, occupations they wanted to pursue, and whether getting into a good college or getting a good job motivates them to study harder. academic behavior included items like whether students usually do their homework, how many advanced placement (ap) courses they take, and what grades they receive in different subjects. school’s academic supports and climate items concerned students’ perceptions about how well their schools prepare them for the future, access to counseling for “college knowledge,” and how safe they feel at school. some of the selected items – like four separate items about grades received in english, math, science, and social science – were combined into a single variable and renamed (i.e., “perceived gpa”), resulting in 42 potential variables for analysis. next, the variables (i.e., survey items) and cases (i.e., students) were checked for missing data. one student did not respond to any survey items and was excluded from the analyses. nine of the 42 variables were missing on more than 10% of the surveys, and were subsequently excluded, leaving 33 variables for analysis. principal components analysis. nonlinear (categorical) principal components analysis (catpca) was used to reduce the large number of selected survey items to a few dimensions (linting, meulman, groenen, & van der koojj, 2007; meulman & heiser 2010). this exploratory analysis helps to identify potential underlying dimensions – like constructs – measured by the items, as well as how strongly associated items are with the dimensions. this process also yields an “object score” – a single composite value that represents information from many items associated with a dimension – for each participant on each dimension. in this way, data from a large number of items compose only a few dimensions that can be used for further analysis. unlike traditional pca, catpca can process items with categorical values (e.g., yes/no, multiple choice) rather than continuous values (e.g., age, weight, income, test scores). we first examined the scree plots to determine the number of dimensions and dropped variables with low average centroid coordinates (i.e., < .10), repeating this process six times until the model finally settled on a two-dimension solution with 18 variables. next we assessed the reliability of the variables, dropping one additional variable that did not contribute to the overall reliability of its dimension (i.e., corrected item-total correlation less than .3 or a cronbach’s alpha if item deleted value greater than overall cronbach’s alpha). we revaluated the 17 variables through the catpca model, which resulted in retaining all 17 variables and a twodimension solution. students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 7 the catpca process also yields “object scores” for each student on each of the two dimensions. average object scores for each school were calculated to create a score profile of the two dimensions for each school. the average scores were then transformed to z-scores (m = 0, sd = 1) for relative comparison among the 17 schools and use in the cluster analysis. cluster analysis. the cluster analysis evaluated whether and how a single large group of data (i.e., 17 schools) can be meaningfully classified into a smaller number of groups (everitt, landau, leese, & stahl, 2011; norušis, 2011). algorithms identify those data that are most similar with each other and most dissimilar from the other groups. a hierarchical cluster analysis was appropriate given the exploratory nature of this analysis of a relatively small data set (17 schools) with continuous data (standardized dimension scores). the analysis further used the squared euclidean method to measure distance between clusters (the smaller the distance, the more similar the cases) and the between-groups linkage method to link cases (distance between one pair of clusters is the average distance among all pairs). we specified and evaluated solutions showing three to six clusters. for comparison, we also separately conducted the same cluster analysis on the continuous school-level (grades 9–12) demographic variables (i.e., enrollment, % frl, and % non-white [i.e., any racial/ethnic identity or combination of identities other than non-hispanic white only]). overlap between both cluster analyses. we measured agreement between the two types of school clusters (i.e., one clustered by student perceptions and the other clustered by school demographics) by calculating the observed percentage agreement and the unweighted kappa statistic, which is appropriate for nominal ratings and accounts for chance agreement (cohen, 1960; fleiss, 1971). kappa ranges from -1 to 1, where 0 indicates no agreement and 1 indicates perfect agreement (negative values, while mathematically possible, hold no practical meaning). results the current analysis included secondary survey data from a county census sample of 3,751 eleventh grade students from 17 high schools. most of these students self-identified as hispanic/latina/o (33%) or white (32%), whereas african american, asian american, native american, multiple, and other combined accounted for 19% of the sample, and the remainder did not self-identify. females accounted for 42% of responses, males for 40%, and the remainder missing. the overall response rate to the census survey was 67% (sd = 13.90) on average across the 17 schools. the combined total enrollments across all grades (9–12) at all 17 schools totaled 26,028 students. the majority of students were non-white (62%), of which 82% were hispanic/latina/o. school-wide enrollments ranged widely among schools (m = 1,531, sd = 687, range = 2,805), as did the proportions of students eligible for frl (m = 36%, sd = 24%, range = 71%). research question 1: what underlying dimensions of a school’s academic environment may be measured by this survey of students’ perceptions? we originally selected 57 survey items considered related to one of three dimensions: (a) postsecondary aspirations, (b) academic behaviors, and (c) school’s academic supports and climate. ultimately, a nonlinear (categorical) principal components analysis (catpca) was conducted on the 17 variables. rather than items grouping together by the three dimensions that we originally proposed, results from the scree plot of eigenvalues consistently showed an inflexion at dimension 3, which justified retaining two dimensions in the model. table 1 displays the component loadings for each item on each dimension. authors considered the items that loaded more heavily on dimension 1 to represent “school supports,” and items on students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 8 dimension 2 to represent “academic efficacy.” this final list of 17 items across two dimensions explains 36.32% of the variance. cronbach’s alpha for the 12 school supports items and 5 academic efficacy items are .80 and .64, respectively. catpca also yields object scores for each student on each dimension. schools vary in the direction and magnitude of their scores on the school supports and the academic efficacy dimensions. table 2 summarizes for each school the average object scores on table 1 component loadings and reliability of the county youth survey dimensions of students’ perceptions (n = 3,751) survey variables dimension school supports academic efficacy 1 i would describe my school experience as…[positive] .637 -.109 2 please evaluate the quality of the school's...software, computers, curriculum, safe environment, welcoming culture, internet, and library. .594 -.418 3 my school is preparing me very well for the future. .578 -.305 4 i am motivated to study hard in school. .576 .010 5 to what extent...i see the importance of learning. .574 .242 6 how much do...my teachers motivate me to learn. .567 -.125 7 to what extent...i have all the resources i need to accomplish my goals. .523 -.065 8 how safe i feel in my school. .508 -.191 9 my school is preparing me for the type of job/occupation that i most want to have in the future. .493 -.355 10 i would describe my school environment as caring/supportive. .461 -.230 11 most students in my school...are interested in learning, come to class prepared, plan to go to college, & work very hard. .441 -.425 12 i have never considered dropping out of school. .408 .285 13 to what extent...i will be more successful than my parents/guardians. .220 .515 14 to what extent...i will be able to accomplish my dreams. .390 .510 15 sure that i will graduate from high school. .473 .501 16 gpa (english, math, science, & social studies) .414 .446 17 to what extent...i am intelligent. .396 .432 eigenvalues 4.18 2.00 % of variance 24.57 11.75 α 0.80 0.64 students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 9 note. variable principal normalization. the larger of the two component loadings is bolded, indicating the dimension each item belongs to. thus, school supports includes the first 12 items, academic efficacy the last 5 items. both dimensions, which are then standardized and plotted in figure 1 (all school names are pseudonyms). as illustrated in figure 1, only johnson has lower than average scores on both dimensions (southwest quadrant of the graph), whereas only williams’s scores are in the positive direction on both (northeast quadrant). the remaining 15 schools are split: 8 have high scores on the school supports dimension and low scores on academic efficacy (northwest quadrant), whereas 7 schools have low scores on school supports and high scores on academic efficacy (southeast quadrant). table 2 average object scores on both dimensions of student perceptions by school and cluster membership student perception clusters n school supports academic efficacy m sd z m sd z perception cluster 1 bautista 279 0.25 1.03 1.18 -0.24 0.96 -1.00 brenly 240 0.12 1.20 0.56 -0.20 1.03 -0.79 dellucci 160 0.15 1.03 0.70 -0.25 0.91 -1.03 finley 239 0.22 1.03 0.99 -0.31 1.01 -1.31 grace 315 0.05 0.92 0.22 -0.26 0.98 -1.07 womack 34 0.33 1.16 1.55 -0.25 0.92 -1.03 perception cluster 2 schilling 377 0.05 0.93 0.21 -0.04 1.01 -0.10 swindell 48 0.22 0.83 1.03 -0.11 0.84 -0.41 williams 389 0.14 0.97 0.65 0.01 0.89 0.13 perception cluster 3 bell 258 -0.29 0.93 -1.44 0.23 1.06 1.09 gonzalez 172 -0.18 1.00 -0.91 0.22 1.03 1.02 miller 278 -0.19 1.02 -0.94 0.37 0.89 1.71 sanders 217 -0.24 0.96 -1.21 0.27 0.90 1.28 perception cluster 4 anderson 169 -0.03 0.98 -0.19 0.13 1.00 0.62 counsell 174 -0.05 0.88 -0.28 0.03 1.03 0.21 kim 253 -0.05 0.93 -0.28 0.27 0.97 1.27 perception cluster 5 johnson 149 -0.37 0.98 -1.84 -0.15 1.09 -0.59 students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 10 figure 1. scatterplot of schools by average standardized object scores on the two dimensions of students’ perceptions. research question 2: how do students’ perceptions about their schools and themselves map onto the actual demographic characteristics of the schools they attend? schools clustered by student perceptions. a hierarchical cluster analysis identified how the schools group together on the two dimensions, based on the average and standardized object scores for each school. the authors reviewed the results and, by consensus, chose the five-cluster solution as the minimum number of meaningfully distinct groups (romesburg, 2004). table 2 also lists the schools by cluster, including individual schools’ average (m) and standardized (z) scores. the dendrogram in figure 2 illustrates how school clusters formed. figure 3 displays the overall score profiles for each cluster. six schools comprise student perception cluster 1: bautista, brenly, dellucci, finley, grace, and womack. relative to the other clusters, perception cluster 1 schools appear to have higher than average scores for school supports, but lower than average scores for academic efficacy. overall, perception cluster 2 (i.e., schilling, williams, and swindell) appears slightly above average on school supports and average on academic efficacy. perception cluster 3 (i.e., bell, sanders, gonzalez, and miller), somewhat opposite of the first cluster, appears slightly students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 11 below average on school supports but higher than average on academic efficacy. perception cluster 4 (i.e., anderson, counsell, and kim), somewhat opposite of the second cluster, is average on school supports and slightly above average on academic efficacy. johnson’s score profile is unlike those of any of the other schools, having low scores on both dimensions and constituting its own cluster (i.e., perception cluster 5). figure 2. dendrogram of school clusters based on students’ perceptions of school supports (dimension 1) and academic efficacy (dimension 2). schools clustered by school demographics. for comparison, we also separately evaluated how the same schools would cluster based on school-level demographics (i.e., enrollment, % frl, and % non-white). to aid direct comparison, five clusters were specified to match the number of clusters resulting from the analysis of students’ perceptions. table 3 lists the schools clustered by school-level demographics (all students in grades 9-12), including individual schools’ average and standardized (z) scores on the three continuous demographic variables. the dendrogram in figure 4 indicates how the clusters formed. figure 5 displays the overall score profiles for each demographic cluster. when clustered by school-level demographic variables (all students in grades 9–12), demographic cluster 1 contains five schools: anderson, finley, gonzalez, johnson, and sanders. this cluster appears average overall on enrollment size, percentage of students eligible for free or reduced lunch (% frl), and percentage of students of color (% non-white) relative to the other clusters. demographic cluster 2 consists of four schools (i.e., counsell, schilling, 1 2 3 4 5 student perception clusters students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 12 table 3 school-level demographic characteristics by school and cluster membership note. ayp = adequate yearly progress; frl = proportion of students at the school who are federally eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. a data from u.s. department of education, national center for education statistics, common core of data. 2010. public elementary/secondary school universe survey 2008-09, v.1b. [data file and code book]. retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/pubschuniv.asp. values presented here are rounded to protect school identities. the z-scores and the cluster analysis are based on the actual values. school clusters enrollment a frl a non-white a n z % z % z demographic cluster 1 anderson 1,400 -0.23 50 0.72 70 0.52 finley 1,800 0.40 50 0.50 55 -0.02 gonzalez 1,450 -0.11 45 0.42 60 0.27 johnson 1,300 -0.30 45 0.46 65 0.34 sanders 1,300 -0.37 30 -0.21 50 -0.24 demographic cluster 2 bell 1,700 0.27 55 0.76 85 1.10 counsell 2,050 0.77 75 1.60 90 1.36 grace 1,950 0.60 60 1.01 95 1.47 schilling 2,250 1.04 75 1.73 95 1.54 demographic cluster 3 williams 2,950 2.06 40 0.17 75 0.70 demographic cluster 4 bautista 1,850 0.43 20 -0.72 30 -0.93 brenly 1,750 0.33 10 -1.06 35 -0.75 kim 1,350 -0.24 5 -1.27 25 -1.15 miller 1,750 0.31 20 -0.76 35 -0.75 demographic cluster 5 dellucci 800 -1.08 10 -1.02 25 -1.04 swindell 250 -1.87 10 -1.14 20 -1.36 womack 150 -2.02 10 -1.19 25 -1.07 students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 13 figure 4. dendrogram of school demographic clusters based on total school enrollment, proportions of students eligible for free or reduced lunch, and proportions of non-white students. bell, and grace); it appears average on enrollment size, with higher than average % frl and % non-white. williams's demographic profile is unlike those of any of the other schools, constituting its own cluster (demographic cluster 3), which has higher than average enrollment, average % frl, and slightly higher than average % non-white. four schools form demographic cluster 4 (i.e., bautista, miller, brenly, and kim), which has average enrollment, and slightly below average % frl and % non-white. finally, the three schools in demographic cluster 5 (i.e., swindell, womack, and dellucci) have lower than average enrollment, % frl, and % nonwhite. next, we compare the grouping of schools by demographics to the grouping of schools by students’ perceptions. comparison of schools clustered by student perceptions and by school demographics. the school clusters derived by demographic characteristics differ from the clusters based on students’ perceptions of school supports and academic efficacy. both cluster analyses overlapped on the groupings of nine schools (three schools in one cluster, five in another, and one in the last), resulting in 53% observed agreement. this amount of overlap is not significant, and is likely due to chance (κ = 0.17, p = .17, 95%, ci = -0.10, 0.45; fleiss, 1971; landis & koch, 1977). thus, there is no evidence that how schools clustered by their demographic measures was systematically related to how schools clustered by the supports and academic efficacy perceived by their students. school demographic cluster 1 2 3 4 5 students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 14 discussion social cognitive career theory (scct) guides the exploration of two facets that support meeting postsecondary goals: the characteristics of the environment and the characteristics of the individual. the first research question concerned student perceptions regarding their school environments and their own self-efficacy, and how those perceptions were related. we found that perceptions varied by school. a principal components analysis identified two distinct constructs (school supports and academic efficacy) underlying students’ perceptions that differentiated the schools. by clustering the schools by the two constructs, we identified profiles for five groups of schools. next, we took the same schools and clustered them by school-level demographics (enrollment, % frl, and % non-white). we found no more than chance agreement between how schools grouped by student perceptions compared to school-level demographic factors. these findings generate questions regarding how school demographics affect a school culture that promotes and prepares students to attend college. figure 5. characteristics of school demographic clusters based on total school enrollment, proportions of students eligible for free or reduced lunch, and proportions of non-white students. these findings raise several issues. one is a mismatch between the two dimensions of students’ perceptions, leading to additional hypotheses for further research. we expected that students who rated school supports as high would also rate academic efficacy as high, and vice versa. however, a negative relationship appeared between school supports and academic efficacy in 15 of the 17 schools, and data from the county youth survey are insufficient to understand further this relationship. if such a relationship truly exists, one hypothesis may be that those schools students perceived as high in school supports are academically more rigorous and demanding, which in turn challenges students’ confidence in their ability to achieve -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 demographic cluster 1 demographic cluster 2 demographic cluster 3 demographic cluster 4 demographic cluster 5 z s c o re s enrollment % frl % non-white students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 15 postsecondary success. likewise, students in schools perceived as having fewer supports perceived higher academic efficacy, but their confidence may actually exceed their less rigorous academic preparation. it is notable that scct explicitly predicts problems in the career development process that can arise when individuals significantly underestimate or overestimate their self-efficacy, and it suggests interventions to correct these inaccuracies (lent et al., 1994, 2000, 2002). research should further test these relationships and the many hypotheses they generate. while our study focused on dispositions within the scct dimension of individual inputs, future research should focus on how student perceptions vary according to other person inputs such as race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic background, which contribute to the scct model. additional research may also explore the extent of agreement between educators’ perceptions (e.g., counselors, teachers, administrators) and students’ perceptions of their schools’ college-going cultures, and perhaps also the perceptions of parents and stakeholders in the community. perhaps most important would be inquiry into how to create and maintain high levels of both school supports and academic efficacy within school buildings. our exploration of the relative importance of school demographic characteristics and the contextual factors within a building in either supporting or hindering student aspirations to attend college formed the basis of our second research question. to answer that question, we took the same schools and clustered them by school-level demographics (enrollment, % frl, and % non-white). we found no more than chance agreement between how schools grouped by student perceptions compared to those school-level demographic factors. in this study, the aggregate school demographic measures typically associated with underserved or underrepresented student populations do not predict student perceptions of school supports or academic efficacy. it may be that the data from this secondary analysis was not specific enough to capture an association between demographics and student perceptions. for example, some schools may offer supports to certain underrepresented sub-populations but not to the aggregate student body. alternatively, our findings can be explained conceptually using scct. it may be that demographic factors, which are a part of the model, are overshadowed in their effects by other factors in the model such as personal dispositions, which we identify as academic efficacy, and contextual affordances, which we identify as school supports. our findings further suggest that student perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports can be influenced independently of the given demographic makeup of schools. this is a hopeful step toward dispelling stereotypes about those student populations’ prospects for higher education. further research is needed regarding how school demographics affect a school culture for promoting and preparing students to attend college. scct guided the exploration of environmental characteristics and individual characteristics, two facets that support or hinder the attainment of postsecondary goals, two facets of the supports and barriers to meeting postsecondary goals. as previously noted our findings are consistent with scct regarding the first two research questions in that the theory allows for differential influence of environmental and experiential factors. in addition, our results support two facets of the scct framework: (a) contextual affordances, and (b) person inputs. our analysis identified two significant dimensions of student perceptions which coincide with those elements and which we have designated as school supports and academic efficacy, respectively. explanations for these results can be found in: (a) the survey design, which was not developed to explicitly separate personal and school perceptions; (b) the dual and ambiguous students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 16 nature of the items, which makes it difficult to separate the source of perceptions; and (c) scct theory itself. the authors of scct note that “career development theorists need to reckon with both external and internal factors that affect choice behavior...” (lent et al., 2002, p. 274). they designate external factors as “contextual affordances” and internal factors as “person inputs” and note that the two factors continually interact, creating a “structure of opportunity.” scct places great importance on personal perceptions of the environment and on cognitive appraisal processes in guiding behavior. such a view does not minimize the substantial impact of objective features of the environment, but it does highlight the person’s active role in appraising and making meaning out of what the environment provides (lent et al., 2002). the mixed loading of variables we observed on academic efficacy dimension is consistent with the interaction and interdependence between personal and environmental factors in the scct framework. more research is needed to describe these dimensions and their interactions. limitations findings from this secondary data analysis must be considered in light of limitations in the survey design and sample. one limitation is the nonstandard administration of the survey. each of the 17 schools chose its own procedure, time, and day to administer and proctor the survey. the extent that administration procedures varied across schools is unknown, as no documentation is available. the extent that this may have affected outcomes is also unknown. no additional data are available to assess characteristics of the participating schools (e.g., school observations, student report cards, postsecondary outcomes) and otherwise triangulate students’ perceptions. although student perceptions in this census sample are representative of eleventh graders at the participating schools, it is unclear whether those perceptions accurately reflect programs or activities that actually exist in the school to support academics and college readiness. for example, no independent evaluation of such programs offered by the schools, or of overall school supports, is available for comparison to students’ perceptions. school supports, in particular, may be available only to specific groups of students. thus, when asking a large sample of students about services, the overall perception may not reflect the actual impact of the services on a smaller intended audience. for example, several schools supported an academic program targeting a small number of average-performing students. students in that program may have perceived strong school supports, whereas those not in the program may have had a less favorable impression. another limitation concerns the dependence on a single measure of student perceptions. although not possible in a retrospective analysis, the supplemental use of qualitative data – collected from focus groups or student interviews– with survey data would provide a richer understanding of findings. qualitative information from accreditation reports or other archival documentation may also be helpful. furthermore, no data are available on the postsecondary outcomes of these students, nor is it possible to link such data to the anonymous survey respondents. further research is needed to assess the relationship between postsecondary outcomes and schools’ environments defined by school supports and academic efficacy. practice & research implications our findings identify academic efficacy and school supports as dimensions in the perceptions of students and situate those dimensions within the scct framework, lending specificity to the model in the post-secondary decision making context. the results of the analysis indicate the difficulty of predicting students’ perceptions based on school-level demographics. thus, making assumptions about the presence of academic supports and students’ students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 17 academic self-efficacy based on commonly measured demographic characteristics of their schools may not be warranted. student perceptions may be malleable to school practices and conditions that have not yet been clearly identified. although clues to those practices and conditions are found in the survey items themselves (e.g., a safe environment, welcoming culture, teaching that motivates, goalsetting, and work ethic), further research is needed to inform educators and counselors about the specific practices they can implement to increase students' perceptions of their school's supports and their own self-efficacy. additional research is needed to indicate whether enhancing student perceptions would actually improve students’ postsecondary aspirations and plans. findings also raise more questions regarding student perceptions about the degree to which the school environment provides academic and emotional support for their postsecondary aspirations. although future research is needed to answer these questions and identify helpful practices, educators need not wait. educators can and should immediately begin to examine their own local practices by surveying both current students about their perceptions of the school's college-going culture, and also alumni about their actual postsecondary outcomes. clearly, perceptions of both students and alumni can inform (a) 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(1989). undergraduate socialization: a conceptual approach. in j. c. smart (ed.), higher education: handbook of theory and research. new york: agathon. yun, j. t., lee, c., heller, d. e., kurlaender, m., felts, e., horn, c. l., payton, j., & orfield, g. a. (2008, march 24). the educational pipeline and its consequences for students: realizing bakke's legacy. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, new york, ny. students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 22 author notes jason t. hurwitz, ph.d. the university of arizona 1295 n. martin ave., tucson, az 85721-0202 hurwitz1@email.arizona.edu dr. hurwitz is assistant research scientist at the center for health outcomes and pharmacoeconomic research (hope center) in the college of pharmacy. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to kris bosworth. kris bosworth, ph.d. the university of arizona 1430 e. second st., tucson, az 85721-0069 boswortk@email.arizona.edu dr. bosworth is professor of educational policy studies and practice, and smith endowed chair for prevention and education, at the college of education. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to kris bosworth. regina deil-amen, ph.d. the university of arizona 1430 e. second st., tucson, az 85721-0069 reginad1@email.arizona.edu dr. deil-amen is professor of educational studies and practice in the center for the study of higher education at the college of education. cecilia rios-aguilar, ph.d. claremont graduate university 150 e. tenth st., harper hall #211, claremont, ca 91711 cecilia.rios-aguilar@cgu.edu dr. rios-aguilar is associate professor of education at the school of educational studies. j. robert hendricks, ph.d. the university of arizona 1430 e. second st., tucson, az 85721-0069 edleader12@yahoo.com dr. hendricks is associate professor emeritus of educational policy studies and practice at the college of education. eliane b. rubinstein-avila, ph.d. the university of arizona 1430 e. second st., tucson, az 85721-0069 rubinste@email.arizona.edu dr. rubinstein-avila is professor of teaching, learning, and sociocultural studies at the college of education. acknowledgements this research was supported in part by voices for education, the local county education research collaborative, the school districts that helped to design, fund, and distribute the survey, and by the smith prevention initiatives at the university of arizona. we are also grateful to the students, schools, and districts for their participation, and thank dr. mark saliba and kirsteen e. anderson for their assistance. all authors were affiliated with the college of education at the university of arizona during the conduct of this research and early development of the manuscript. mailto:hurwitz1@email.arizona.edu mailto:boswortk@email.arizona.edu mailto:reginad1@email.arizona.edu mailto:cecilia.rios-aguilar@cgu.edu mailto:edleader12@yahoo.com mailto:rubinste@email.arizona.edu students’ perceptions of academic efficacy and school supports: a mismatch with school demographics current issues in education, 18(3) 23 volume 18, issue 3 october 15, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez terrence mctier priyanka parekh lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template volume 18, number 2 may 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x an examination of in-service teacher attitudes toward students with autism spectrum disorder: implications for professional practice walter chung1, susan edgar-smith3, and ruth b. palmer4 eastern university, pennsylvania stephanie chung2 cairn university, pennsylvania david delambo5 university of wisconsin at stout weihe huang6 cbem, california teacher attitude is a moderating variable that can influence the successful implementation of effective interventions within the inclusive classroom. the present study examined in-service teachers’ attitudes toward students with and without autism spectrum disorder (asd) in the u.s. a total of 234 pre-kindergarten to grade 12 teachers from public and charter schools in a metropolitan city participated in a survey. participants first read two scenarios, one featuring a student displaying autistic symptoms and another featuring a typical student. subsequently, they indicated their attitudes toward each student. results revealed that teachers perceive students with asd as more different from typical students and teachers are more likely to dislike and avoid students with asd. standard regression analysis demonstrated that being female, teaching at the elementary level, and holding special education certification are predictors of positive teacher attitudes toward students with asd. implications of these findings for professional practice are discussed. keywords: teacher attitudes, autism, special education, inclusion autism spectrum disorder (asd) is the fastest growing developmental disability in the u. s. with an approximate 290% increase in its prevalence rate between 1997 and 2008 (boyle et al., 2011). parent-reported data on the prevalence of asd among school-age children (ages 6-17 years) indicated a significantly higher rate of 1 in 50 births in 2011-2012, compared to 1 in 86 births in 2007 (blumberg et al., 2013). the centers for disease control and prevention (2014) also estimated that 1 in 68 children has asd. as the number of school-age children diagnosed with asd increases drastically, the inclusion of these children in the regular education classroom has become a major education concern. the education for all handicapped children act adopted in 1975, renamed as the individuals with disabilities education act (idea, 1990) and again reauthorized as the individuals with disabilities education improvement act of 2004 (ideia, 2004), mandated schools to provide a free and appropriate 1 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 public education to all students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment to the maximum extent appropriate. the implication is that students with disabilities, including those with asd, should be placed in the general classroom unless “they cannot be satisfactorily educated with the use of supplementary aides and services” (hosp & reschy, 2003, p. 68). research has demonstrated many benefits of inclusion for students with asd especially positive social interactions and peer modeling (von der embse, brown, & fortain, 2011). however, including students with asd in the regular classroom can be challenging because asd is characterized by symptoms in two domains: social communication (e.g., problems adapting behavior to fit various social contexts, poor eye contact, and abnormal facial expression) and behaviors and interests (e.g., unusual interests and stereotypical body movements) (american psychiatric association, 2013; hall, 2012). behaviors in both domains play an important role in impacting the daily functioning of students with asd, especially in their interactions with peers, teachers, and other personnel within a school setting. importance of teacher attitudes in the classroom to increase the feasibility of including students with asd within the regular education classroom, it is important to determine effective interventions that help mitigate the negative impact of the disorder. in addition, examining moderating variables is also crucial because they may influence the implementation of the interventions, thus impacting their effectiveness. teacher attitude is a moderating variable that can influence the successful execution of autism interventions within the classroom (mcgregor & campbell, 2001). through their attitudes, teachers may display acceptance or disapproval as well as enthusiasm or rejection, which may contribute to the success or failure of inclusion and autism interventions within the regular classroom (horrocks, white, & roberts, 2008). this is especially true in light of the fact that in the past decade the meaning of inclusion has been expanded beyond advocating for just the presence (e.g., being educated in the regular classroom) to also include the participation (e.g., being provided with high quality educational experience), acceptance (e.g., being respected by teachers and peers), and achievement (e.g., being successful across the curriculum including academic, social, and emotional areas) of all students in the school system (humphrey, 2008). purpose of study therefore, the purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to investigate in-service teachers’ attitudes towards students with asd; and (b) to examine the implications of the attitudes on professional practice. the following literature review defines teacher attitudes and discusses existing studies on teacher attitudes related to students with asd. the rationale and research questions for this study are then presented. definition of teacher attitude according to triandis (1971), attitudes are defined as a person’s cognitive and emotional evaluations and behavioral intentions toward an object or information. the object of an attitude can be individuals, organizations, values, and so forth. the cognitive component refers to the individual’s beliefs as well as information and knowledge about a person, an object, or idea. the affective component represents the individual’s emotional reactions to the object or person (e.g., exposure to students with asd), and the behavioral component deals with how the individual acts or intends to act toward the person or object. in theory, a person’s attitude affects cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions toward others, and therefore a teacher’s attitude toward a student with asd can have a tremendous impact on their interactions in the classroom. teacher attitudes outside the u.s. a search of peer reviewed literature produced only a small number of studies on in-service teachers’ attitudes toward educating students with asd. in addition, most of these studies were conducted in countries other than the u.s. for example, mcgregor and campbell (2001) surveyed 49 mainstream school teachers and 23 specialists in scotland about their attitudes toward integrating students with asd into mainstream schools. their findings indicated that teachers were concerned about the negative impact on typical students such as less adult attention and class disruption resulting from integrating students with asd into the mainstream classroom. as a result, only 47% specialists and 35% mainstream school teachers supported full integration of students with asd. in another similar study, mavropoulou and padeliadu (2000) surveyed 35 regular education teachers and 29 special education teachers in greece about their perception of students with asd. only 55% of regular education teachers and 37% of special education teachers held positive attitudes toward the idea of integration. emam and farrell (2009) interviewed teachers, teaching assistants, and the special needs coordinator of 17 students with asd placed in the regular classroom setting of mainstream schools in the united kingdom. results indicated that interactions between teachers and students with asd were negatively impacted by tensions caused by asd-related behaviors such as poor social and emotional understanding. ashburner, zivaini, and rodger (2010) examined how a small group of teachers (specific number not provided) in australia perceived the emotional, behavioral, and academic performance of their 28 students with asd in mainstream classrooms. compared to typical counterparts, students with asd exhibited a significantly higher level of emotional and behavioral 2 an examination of in-service teacher attitudes toward students with autism spectrum disorder: implications for professional practice problems. furthermore, over 50% of the students with asd were perceived as under-achieving academically, compared to only 8% of typical students. in contrast to the above studies, al-shammari (2006) interviewed two special education teachers in kuwait and concluded that both participants demonstrated positive attitudes toward educating students with asd. this positivism was echoed by 69 special education teachers in spain who were interviewed about their perception of teaching children with asd (rodriguez, saldaña, & moreno, 2012). results indicated that the 69 teachers were positive toward teaching these students and optimistic in their ability to influence the development of these students. another study was reported by humphrey and symes (2013) who surveyed 53 high school personnel (32 teachers and 21 administrators) in the united kingdom about their attitudes, experience, and knowledge in relation to the inclusive education of students with asd in mainstream high schools. they concluded that participants overall indicated positive attitudes toward inclusion. in addition, compared to teachers, administrators reported higher self-efficacy in working with students with asd and handling their behaviors. teacher attitudes within the u. s. all studies conducted in the u.s. indicated that teachers are positive toward educating students with asd. surveying 12 general education teachers from second and third grade inclusive classrooms, robertson, chamberlain, and kasari (2003) reported that teachers perceived their relationships with their students with asd as relatively positive. cassady (2011) surveyed 25 general education teachers and compared their willingness to include a student with asd to their willingness to include a student with emotional behavior disorder (ebd) in their class. results suggested that participants were more positive toward including a student with asd than including a student with ebd. in a larger scale study in georgia, 123 teachers (52 general education teachers, 71 special education teachers) participated in a survey conducted by segall and campbell (2012). findings indicated that while almost all teachers (92%) held positive attitudes toward inclusion of students with asd, special education teachers’ attitudes were significantly more positive than those of general education teachers. rationale in sum, existing studies on teacher attitudes toward including students with asd in the general classroom yielded inconsistent findings. some studies suggested positive teacher attitudes while several other studies reported teacher concerns due to the social and behavioral problems associated with asd. the attitudinal difference between teachers with and without special education training still remains inconclusive because only one study (i.e., segall & campbell, 2012) compared the two groups using inferential statistics. additionally, apart from segall and campbell’s (2012) study, all of the above studies employed relatively small sample sizes (e.g., al-shammari, 2006; ashburner et al., 2010; cassady, 2011; emam & farrell, 2009; humphrey & symes, 2013; robertson et al., 2003). in addition, the focus of most aforementioned studies was not on teacher attitudes toward students with asd, but their attitudes toward the inclusion of students with asd. drawing a similar conclusion in their literature review, park and chitiyo (2011) surveyed 127 teachers from a small midwest town in the u.s. using the autism attitude scale for teachers (aast). results showed that teachers overall had positive attitudes toward students with asd. in addition, young, female elementary teachers were more likely to hold positive attitudes towards children with asd. no significant difference in attitude existed between general education teachers and special education teachers. however, park and chitiyo’s (2011) study had the following limitations: • the subjects were all from a small town community. • only 17% (n = 22) participants were special education teachers. • only 12 % (n = 15) participants were male. • no comparison was made between a teacher’s attitude toward a typical student and his or her attitude toward a student with asd. it is crucial to address the final limitation because when teachers’ cognitive, emotional and behavioral responses to students with asd are different from their responses toward typical students, it may lead to not only different expectations but also the effect of self-fulfilling prophecies about student performance (de boer, bosker, & van der werf, 2010). research questions in order to extend this line of research, this present study surveyed metropolitan in-service teachers about their attitudes toward a student with asd in the u.s. the sample size was relatively larger compared to existing studies on teacher attitudes related to students with asd. the research questions were: 1. how do teacher attitudes toward a student with asd compare with teacher attitudes toward a typical student? 2. how do attitudes toward a student with asd differ between general education teachers and special education teachers? 3. what factors (i.e., education level, special education certification, number of years of teaching experience, gender, age, income level, and grade level teaching) may predict teacher attitudes toward a student with asd? method participants a total of 234 pre-kindergarten to grade 12 teachers from both public and charter schools located in a metropolitan area were recruited through convenience 3 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 sampling. forty-one percent (n = 92) of the participants taught pre-kindergarten to grade 5. with a mean age of 37, participants possessed 11 years of teaching experience on average. approximately 82% (n = 193) of participants were caucasian and 76% (n = 177) female. in addition, 47% (n = 107) had an annual income of $50,000 or more, 58% (n = 136) held at least a master’s degree, and 32% (n = 74) held a special education teaching certificate. based on the 2008 american community survey (select greater philadelphia, n.d.), both the age and race of participants in general reflected the demographics of the metropolitan area selected by the study (i.e., age = 38, caucasian = 72%). research design a survey was conducted to collect information about teachers’ attitudes toward a student with autistic symptoms and toward a typical student. participants were asked to complete a self-administered questionnaire. instruments participants in the study completed a demographic questionnaire on age, educational level, ethnicity, annual income level, gender, teaching certifications, and number of years of teaching experience. to indicate their attitudes toward a student with asd, participants completed a minimally revised instrument published in harnum, duffy, and ferguson’s (2007) study. the instrument presented two scenarios to the participants. the first scenario described the behaviors of a student with asd such as playing alone, not interacting with other students, having flat facial expressions, repeating words or phrases over and over, obsessing with a silver ball, and rocking his body in a chair. the second scenario described the behaviors of a typical student such as listening to and respecting people in class, sharing things with classmates, and talking and engaging in different activities with other students. participants subsequently read seven statements about the student in each scenario and indicated agreement or disagreement with each statement using a five-point likert scale (1= strongly agree, 3 = don’t know, 5 = strongly disagree). some of the statements included: “this child makes you afraid,” “i would feel comfortable around this child,” and “i would not mind this child being in my classroom.” since the original statements were designed for adults and peers in a general setting, two statements were reworded to fit the classroom setting. “this child is as smart as you” was revised to “this child is as smart as other students.” another statement “the child is different from you” was revised to “the child is different from other students.” the total rating score for the student in each scenario was calculated after applying reverse scoring as appropriate to some of the statements. a higher score represented that the teacher perceived a student as more different from others and that the teacher was more likely to dislike and avoid the student in the scenario. harnum et al.’s (2007) instrument was used in this study for several reasons: • there was no existing self-administered and standardized instrument that could measure and compare a teacher’s attitudes toward a typical child with the same teacher’s attitudes toward a child with asd. • the seven statements in the instrument covered the cognitive, affective and behavioral components of attitude defined by triandis (1971). • the instrument’s brevity and precision facilitated ease of use in school settings and motivated teachers to participate. • the instrument was reviewed and published in a prestigious journal and had established reasonable content validity. • the instrument had been adapted by other researchers to study attitudes toward students with asd in school settings (e.g., nevill & white, 2011). additionally, the cronbach alpha determined from the data collected from the 234 participants in this study was .77. this established the internal consistency of the revised instrument. procedure participants were recruited through convenience sampling. this sampling method was selected due to its greater cost and time effectiveness (muijs, 2010). a survey packet containing the instrument was either handed to the participants or emailed to them. the packet included the questionnaire along with a cover letter explaining the purpose and voluntary and anonymous nature of the study. graduate students trained in research administered and collected the questionnaires. data analysis was then conducted via computerized statistical software. results based on a 5-point likert scale (in which higher scores represented more negative attitudes), the mean teacher scores for attitudes toward the student with asd and toward the typical student were 2.44 (sd = 0.56) and 1.87 (sd = 0.42) respectively, indicating positive teacher attitudes in both cases. however, a paired t-test showed that teacher attitudes were comparatively more negative toward the student with asd than toward the typical student (t = 15.70, p = 0.00). this indicated that not only did teachers perceive the student with asd as more different from typical students, but they were also more likely to dislike and avoid the student with asd. an unpaired t-test was conducted to determine if there was an attitudinal difference between teachers with special education certification and those without. teachers without special education certification were significantly more negative toward the student with asd 4 an examination of in-service teacher attitudes toward students with autism spectrum disorder: implications for professional practice (mean = 2.59, sd = 0.57) than teachers certified in special education (mean = 2.14, sd = 0.47; t = 6.43, p = 0.00). a forward regression analysis was also conducted to examine factors (i.e., education level, income level, gender, age, number of years of teaching experience, special education certification, and grade level teaching) that may predict a teacher’s attitudes toward a student with asd. results in table 1 show that being female (t = -2.63, p = 0.01), holding special education certification (t = 4.83, p = 0.00), and teaching at the elementary grade level (t = 2.16, p = 0.03) were significant predictors of a teacher’s less likelihood to dislike and avoid a student with asd and to perceive the student as different from others. the full regression was significant and explained 22% of the variance of attitudes toward a student with asd (r2 = 0.22, p = 0.00). table 1 prediction of teacher attitudes toward a student with asd variable b se b β t p-value education level .07 0.04 .17 1.88 .06 special education (1=non-special education 2=special education) -.39 0.08 -.32 -4.83 .00 income level -.06 0.04 -.15 -1.62 .11 gender (1=male, 2=female) -.22 0.08 -.17 -2.63 .01 age .00 0.01 .05 .47 .64 year of teaching -.00 0.01 -.05 -.48 .63 grade level .15 0.07 .15 2.16 .03 note: r2 = .22 (p < 0.01) discussion this study revealed that despite in-service teachers’ positive attitudes toward both students with asd and typical students, their attitudes toward students with asd are significantly more negative than toward typical students. several factors may underlie these attitudes. one possible factor is the higher levels of behavioral and emotional difficulties in school exhibited by students with asd compared to their typically developing peers (ashburner et al., 2010). another factor is the tension that may arise in the classroom from autistic manifestations such as difficulties with social and emotional understanding, thereby impacting teacherstudent interactions and teachers’ views of supports needed for effective classroom management (emam & farrell, 2009; robertson et al., 2003). thus, teacher attitudes toward children with asd may reflect the very real challenges teachers face in instructing and interacting with these students. the presence of such challenges have been confirmed by the findings of lindsay, proulx, thomson, and scott’s (2013) study in which 13 teachers were interviewed about challenges they encountered in educating children with asd in the mainstream classroom. the teachers reported a list of challenges including understanding and managing these students’ behavior and handling various types of sociocultural barriers in inclusion (e.g., insufficient training and resources, bureaucratic school policy, and misunderstandings from other teachers, students, and parents). this study also showed the presence of three predictors of teacher attitudes toward students with asd. the first predictor is certification in special education. in contrast to the finding reported by park and chitiyo (2011), this study, with its much larger sample of teachers with special education certification (n = 74), demonstrated that teachers certified in special education show significantly more positive attitudes toward a student with asd than general education teachers do. results from segall and campbell’s (2012) study also demonstrated the correlation between training in special education and positive teacher attitudes toward the inclusion of students with asd. similarly, even principals with formal special education training were found to be more likely to recommend inclusive placements for children with asd than principals without such training (horrocks et al., 2008). one possible explanation is that special education training enhances a teacher’s understanding, confidence, experience, skills, and resources to work with students with asd, which all ultimately promote more positive attitudes toward the population (leblanc, richardson, & burns, 2009; rodríguez et al., 2012). teacher gender is the second predictor of a teacher’s attitudes toward a student with asd. the present study confirmed park and chitiyo’s (2011) finding that female teachers are more likely to exhibit positive attitudes toward a student with asd. as park and chitiyo (2011) posited, socialization differences in empathy may prompt females to display more positive attitudes toward students with asd. the role of gender in teachers’ attitudes toward students with asd is a critical issue that needs further research especially in light of the fact that the majority of students with asd are males. the final predictor of teacher attitudes toward a student with asd relates to whether the teacher is teaching at the elementary level or secondary level (i.e., middle and high school). results of the current study showed that teachers in secondary schools are more likely to have negative attitudes toward students with asd. this finding corroborates with the result reported by park and chitiyo (2011). as park and chitiyo (2011) suggested, this finding may be attributed to the greater 5 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 span of time elementary teachers spend with students with asd (usually 5-6 years) than teachers in middle and high schools do (usually 3-4 years). this hypothesis is at least partially supported by research findings that demonstrated a positive correlation between teacher experience or contact with students with asd and teacher attitudes toward including these students in the general education classroom (e.g., mcgregor & campbell, 2001; segall & campbell, 2012). another possible explanation of why secondary level teachers tend to have negative attitudes toward students with asd is their lack of efficacy in both experience and knowledge required to instruct and manage the behaviors of these students (humphrey & symes, 2013). historically, research has found that high school teachers are less positive and even resistant to including students with special needs into their mainstream classrooms due to the ensuing heavier responsibilities (van reusen, shoho, & barker, 2001). van reusen et al. (2001) found that 54% of the 125 high school teachers in their study indicated negative attitudes toward inclusion. in addition, teachers who lacked experience and knowledge of teaching students with disabilities held the most negative attitudes. therefore, it is also possible that low efficacy among the secondary teachers in this study contributed to their more negative attitudes toward students with asd. implications several implications for in-service teacher practice can be drawn from the findings in this study. the four sections below discuss (a) the need for teachers to be aware of discriminative and unfair expectations, (b) the necessity of teachers to monitor the impact of biased behaviors, (c) the role of school administrators, and (d) asd training considerations. teacher awareness of discriminative and unfair expectations. teachers need to examine if their perception toward their students with asd is different than toward typical students, and whether such attitudinal difference induces their discriminative interaction and unfair expectations toward students with asd. it has been documented that even in teaching regular students, teachers tend to be more enthusiastic toward high-ability students (e.g., leaning toward, smiling, making eye contact) while low-ability students were given less stimulating questions, provided less feedback and called on less frequently (lumsden, 1997). similarly, based on the findings of some studies that teachers perceived their students with asd as academically under-achieving and exhibiting low social and emotional functioning (e.g., ashburner et al., 2010; emam & farrell, 2009), it is not surprising that teachers may consciously or unconsciously treat their students with asd with inequality. teacher monitoring of impact of biased behaviors. teachers should not only be aware of the presence of discriminative interactions and inequitable expectations but also monitor closely to see if any such biased behaviors negatively affect the performance of students with asd so that remedial actions can be taken. research conducted with regular students found that biased teacher behaviors caused low-ability students to behave differently than high-ability peers. some of these behaviors included lower academic and sports performance, talking less, and being more eager to seek teacher approval (babad, inbar, & rosenthal, 1982; de boer et al., 2010; rothbart, dalfen, & barrett, 1971). furthermore, one finding in robertson et al.’s (2003) study was that when teachers had a negative relationship with their students with asd, these students were also less socially accepted by typical students in the classroom. in order to promote meaningful inclusion for students with asd, it is essential for more research to be conducted in this area. this is important in view of the aforementioned expanded definition of inclusion which is that inclusion goes beyond advocating for the physical presence of students with disabilities in the general classroom to also include their participation, acceptance and achievement as well. school administrators’ roles. current literature has indicated that a teacher’s positive attitude toward educating students with asd seems to be enhanced by direct contact experience with students with asd and receiving training and support to increase efficacy in managing these students (mcgregor & campbell, 2001; segall & campbell, 2012). furthermore, existing research has also suggested that many teachers believe they lack the necessary training and resources to effectively work with students with asd (hess, morrier, heflin, & ivey, 2008). as such, school administrators have two important roles to play in enhancing teacher attitudes toward students with asd. the first role is to provide regular supervisory observation and constructive feedback in order to support teachers in being cognizant of their potential discriminative interactions and unfair expectations toward students with asd. additionally, the second role of school administrators is to provide ongoing training opportunities to enhance teachers’ knowledge, skills, resources, and experience in educating students with asd. the training opportunities would be particularly important for male teachers, teachers who do not hold special education certification, and secondary school teachers. asd training considerations. in order for asd training to be effective, several considerations must be taken into account. first, to be highly effective, asd training should comprise both theoretical orientation and evidence-based interventions. applied behavior analysis (aba) and treatment and education of autistic and related communication handicapped children (teacch) are two widely used evidence-based asd interventions. in a study of teachers trained in either aba or teacch, jennett, harris, and mesibov (2003) demonstrated a positive correlation between commitment 6 an examination of in-service teacher attitudes toward students with autism spectrum disorder: implications for professional practice to theoretical beliefs in instructing children with asd and self-efficacy. in addition, a high sense of efficacy in aba or teacch was related to low levels of burnout in these two groups of educators. leblanc et al. (2009) also found that after being trained in basic aba techniques for 200 minutes, participating teachers’ attitudes and perceptions of students with asd improved significantly because these beginning teachers felt more confident and less anxious about working with students with asd. a second consideration for asd training is that it must include exposure to autism specific behaviors. because autism by definition entails unusual conduct such as self-injurious and aggressive behaviors, teachers’ less positive attitudes toward students with asd are partially anxiety-induced. thus, asd training programs should also comprise instruction, modeling, and practice in implementing evidenced-based interventions with asd populations. in a qualitative study, eldar, talmor, and wolf-zukeman (2010) solicited reports from inclusion coordinators working directly with students with asd. the researchers found that educator training programs that included both lectures as well as exposure to autism specific behaviors through role plays and films on autism were more likely to be effective than single component training programs. another consideration for asd training is the need to enhance teacher knowledge of similarities between students with asd and typical students (harnum et al., 2007) and their ability to handle the tension of managing students with asd (emam & farrell, 2009). a final consideration is that a clear understanding of key asd characteristics is crucial to the appropriate management of asd specific behaviors (tobias, 2009). for example, a student with asd may be considered “naughty” or “disrespectful,” but teachers’ perspectives will likely change once they realize the misbehavior is disability-related, not a manifestation of a typical behavior problem with no organic etiology. conclusion the findings of this study must be considered in view of several limitations. although the sample size of this study was one of the largest in existing peer-reviewed literature concerning teacher attitudes toward students with asd or their inclusion, the use of convenience sampling obtained from one urban-suburban geographic area limits the generalizability of the results. future studies should use cluster sampling across larger geographical areas. a limitation is present in the instrument as well. while the items do explore respondents’ perceptions, feelings, and behavioral intentions toward the children in both vignettes, nevertheless, the instrument is brief (only seven items). further studies using a more extensive instrument and/or multiple measures would likely provide a more robust exploration of the cognitive, affective, and behavior components of teacher attitudes. in conclusion, this study demonstrated that even though in-service teachers exhibit positive attitudes toward both the student with asd and the typical student, their attitudes toward the student with asd is significantly more negative than toward the typical student. teachers certified in special education, however, are significantly more positive toward the student with asd, compared to teachers without a special education certificate. in addition, female teachers and those teaching at the elementary level are also more likely to exhibit positive attitudes toward a student with asd. these findings suggest that school administrators may need to consistently remind teachers about the importance of treating both students with asd and typical students equally and to be aware of how teacher attitudinal differences may affect the performance of students with asd in the classroom. teachers, especially those who are males, without special education certification, and teaching at the secondary school levels, should be provided professional development in working with students with asd in order to possibly enhance their attitudes toward this student population. potential training components include characteristics of asd and the theoretical knowledge, evidence-based instruction, and intervention practices for students with asd. references al-shammari, z. 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(2011). facilitating inclusion by reducing problem behaviors for students with autism spectrum disorders. intervention in school and clinic 47(1), 22-30. doi: 10.1177/1053451211406545 9 http://www.selectgreaterphiladelphia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/amer_community-for-each-county.xls http://www.selectgreaterphiladelphia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/amer_community-for-each-county.xls http://www.selectgreaterphiladelphia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/amer_community-for-each-county.xls current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 article citation chung, w., chung, s., edgar-smith, s., palmer, r. b., delambo, d., & huang, w. (2015). an examination of in-service teacher attitudes toward students with autism spectrum disorder: implications for professional practice. current issues in education, 18(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1386 author notes dr. walter chung eastern university 1300 eagle road, st. davids, pa 19087 wchung@eastern.edu walter chung is professor of counseling psychology at eastern university. he also coordinates the applied behavior analysis certificate program. dr. stephanie chung cairn university 200 manor avenue, langhorne, pa 19047 schung@cairn.edu stephanie chung is associate professor of special education at cairn university. she also directs the special education program. dr. susan edgar-smith eastern university 1300 eagle road, st. davids, pa 19087 sedgarsm@eastern.edu susan edgar-smith is professor and co-chair of the counseling psychology department at eastern university. she also coordinates the school counseling and school psychology programs. dr. ruth b. palmer eastern university 1300 eagle road, st. davids, pa 19087 rpalmer@eastern.edu ruth b. palmer is professor and co-chair of the counseling psychology department at eastern university. she also coordinates the clinical counseling program and the trauma studies concentration. dr. david delambo university of wisconsin at stout 712 south broadway st., menomonie, wi 54751 delambod@uwstout.edu david delambo is associate professor of rehabilitation and counseling at the university of wisconsin at stout. dr. weihe huang cbem 3732 mount diablo boulevard. suite 395. lafayette, ca 94549 mhuang3097@comcast.net weihe huang is vice president of development and training at creating behavioral & educational momentum. 10 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1386 mailto:wchung@eastern.edu mailto:schung@cairn.edu mailto:sedgarsm@eastern.edu mailto:rpalmer@eastern.edu mailto:delambod@uwstout.edu mailto:mhuang3097@comcast.net an examination of in-service teacher attitudes toward students with autism spectrum disorder: implications for professional practice manuscript received: 02/22/2015 revisions received: 02/06/2015 accepted: 02/07/2015 11 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 volume 18, number 2 may 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editors tray j. geiger layout editors constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers 12 cie template current issues in education, 19(1) 1 volume 19, issue 1 may 2, 2016 issn 1099-839x characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey paul g. fitchett, tina l. heafner, and susan b. harden university of north carolina at charlotte abstract: moonlighting, an employment practice where individuals work outside of their primary job, is popular within the public education sector. using data from the national center for education statistics schools and staffing survey, this study examined both the characteristics and motivations of public school teachers across moonlighting categories. findings indicate that teacher characteristics, workplace perceptions, and professional outlook varied across moonlighting type. the likelihood of moonlighting outside of the education sector increased among single, male teachers with high reported burnout and lower salaries. results have implications for how school leaders and policymakers should view moonlighting inside and outside the education sector. keywords: teacher moonlighting, teacher working conditions, teacher characteristics apa-style citation: fitchett, p. g., heafner, t. l., & harden, s. b. (2016). characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey. current issues in education, 19(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1672 accepted: march 17 th , 2016 moonlighting, an employment practice where individuals work outside of their full-time primary job, is a persistent reality for many public school teachers (pearson, carroll, & hall, 1994; santangelo & lester, 1985; smith & cooper, 1967; winters, 2010; yeager, 1956). yet, despite the persevering nature of moonlighting in the teaching profession, surprisingly little research has investigated the similarities and differences among public school teachers who hold secondary jobs (ballou, 1995; winters, 2010; wisniewski & kleine, 1984). for example, moonlighting work is not homogeneous; the location, duration, and types of moonlighting work can vary dramatically among public school teachers. little is understood on how the differences in workplace conditions such as school-type and teachers’ perceptions of autonomy, compensation, competency, and satisfaction are related to decisions to moonlight. in discussions about the professional lives of public school teachers, moonlighting has become both an acceptable and a non-controversial practice; a byproduct of a society that is antagonistic toward public workers and encouraging private employment markets (giroux, 2005). http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1672 fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 2 research suggests that teacher moonlighting, if contained to the educational sector; helps invigorate teacher practice and might improve workplace performance (parnham & gordon, 2011; raffel & groff, 1990). however, moonlighting outside of education potentially pushes teachers into other careers and takes time away from work in the classroom (winters, 2010; wisniewski & kline, 1984). in this study, we bring attention and currency to the issue by examining the relationship among teacher demographics and workplace perceptions across various moonlighting typologies. understanding the potential motivations for moonlighting can aid school administrators and other education stakeholders in determining factors associated with taking on secondary employment and provide further evidence as which teachers might be drawn to moonlighting inside and outside the education sector. literature review demographic characteristics of moonlighting teachers teacher working conditions research has long established moonlighting as an employment practice in which a significant number of public school teachers engage. previous studies indicate that 15 to 35% of teachers hold second jobs (ballou, 1995; champion, 2010; norris & hecker, 1962; smith & cooper, 1967; wisniewski & kleine, 1984; yeager, 1956). public school moonlighting teachers are more likely to be young, white, single, college-educated males who teach at the secondary level (ballou, 1995; pearson et al., 1994; smith & cooper, 1967; winters, 2010; wisniewski & kleine, 1984). these common characteristics are likely due to traditional employment opportunities that favor white, males coupled with constrained household responsibilities of domestic partnerships (averett, 2001). moreover, married/coupled teachers more often report dual incomes. increased household income and other familial responsibilities pull (and push) teachers away from moonlighting (farber & wechsler, 1991; smith & cooper, 1967). moonlighting motivations the motivations behind teacher moonlighting vary across studies. wisniewski and kleine (1984) suggest three factors contributing to teachers’ decision to moonlight: financial reasons, professional escape, and apprenticeship prior to quitting teaching. among financial considerations, there has been substantial debate as to whether salary influences teachers’ decision to moonlight. research indicates that public school teachers believe that the work schedule for teaching provides the opportunity for moonlighting and, therefore, an opportunity to raise living standards (ballou, 1995; pearson et al., 1994; raffel & groff, 1990; wieniewski & kleine, 1984). a number of qualitative and small-scale studies have found that teachers are often pushed into moonlighting due to financial constraints (hilty, 2008; parnham & gordon, 2011). teachers, unable to live comfortably on shrinking wages, turn toward ancillary employment to provide additional spending money and improve the overall quality of their life. in a recent study using schools and staffing data (sass) from the national center for educational statistics (nces), champion (2010) found that teachers were less likely to moonlight as their salary rose. specifically, a one percent increase in salary was associated with a 71% decrease in the moonlighting salary, inferring that providing small workplace incentives will offset the financial necessity or desire to moonlight. in their study of texas public school climate, maninger, edgington, johnson, sullivan, and rice (2011) noted that teachers reported less willingness to moonlight if salaries were increased. these findings run counter to more lucrative occupations. in high paying sectors like medicine, moonlighting can significantly increase overall income and therefore small increases in primary salaries do not offset the desire to moonlight (dickey, watson, & zangelidis, 2011; saxon, 2015). fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 3 other studies suggest that salary is not associated with moonlighting. in an early analysis of teacher working conditions conducted by the nces, bobbitt (1988) reported no association between teacher moonlighting and salary. more complex statistical analyses have also indicated that pay is not significantly associated with a teacher’s decision to moonlight (ballou, 1995; winters, 2010). however, it should be noted these studies did not differentiated across moonlighting type or separated out from summer teaching, potentially confounding results. to determine whether money was a prominent motivator and if other indicators contributed to decisions to moonlight, raffel and groff (1990) divided teacher moonlighters into two categories: willing and reluctant moonlighters. willing moonlighters reported being more likely to moonlight regardless of a salary increase. reluctant moonlighters were less likely to moonlight if their salary improved. their analysis yielded substantial differences between these groups. willing moonlighters were satisfied with their jobs, remained in teaching, viewed moonlighting as a form of professional development, and often took second jobs within education-related sectors. reluctant moonlighters were less likely to moonlight within education, more prepared to leave the classroom, and less satisfied as teachers. financial incentives are not the sole motivation for moonlighting. parham and gordon (2011) reported that moonlighting could offer positive professional affirmations and boosts to self-esteem that are missing in primary teaching positions. raffel and groff (1990) found that physicians, working secondary jobs in free clinics, viewed moonlighting as a professional escape from their primary employment, allowing them to practice medicine without the bureaucratic morass associated with their primary job. moreover, these secondary clinical positions served as ad hoc professional development, preparing doctors for various workplace situations. similarly, schools may provide ancillary opportunities for teachers to connect with learners in less formalized and potentially rewarding ways. like doctors who seek secondary clinic jobs, teachers turn to moonlighting as a potential professional fulfillment (or escape) from their primary job responsibilities. working in extracurricular activities (i.e. coaching, sponsoring organizations, summer camps) provides additional teaching opportunities outside the constraints associated with traditional classroom teaching. willing moonlighters are more likely tied to secondary employment in educational sectors, signifying that the additional work might serve as a form of professional renewal and development (raffel & groff, 1990). financial considerations and professional growth are not sufficient in explaining the multidimensional motivations for moonlighting. while willing moonlighters view secondary employment as opportunity for professional growth and exploration, others (i.e. reluctant moonlighters) use moonlighting as a potential path away from education altogether. the current occupational and policy climate toward teaching has been conducive toward this type of moonlighter. teaching in the age of accountability has contributed to a ratcheting up of bureaucratic intensification that placed greater pressures on teachers (apple, 2004; costigan & crocco, 2007; hargreaves, 1994). such perceptions of workplace environment are associated with increased risk for stress, burnout and lowered expectations for remaining in the classroom (mccarthy, lambert, fitchett, lineback, & reiser, 2015; mccarthy, lambert, o’donnell, & melendres, 2009). in this high-stress context, teachers susceptible to burnout are more likely to distance themselves from their professional responsibilities and colleagues (maslach, schaufeli, & leiter, 2001). elevated levels of teacher stress and burnout contribute to moonlighting, particularly secondary employment outside the education sector (blase, 1982; farber & wechsler, 1991). fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 4 ironically while the high-stress context of the classroom may encourage teacher moonlighting, studies indicate that second job-holders work longer hours, commute more, and sleep less compared to single job-holders (marucci-wellman, lin, willetts, brennan, & verma, 2014). consequently, second job holders have higher work-family conflict and may be at greater risk for negative psychological and physical outcomes, like fatigue and injury, when compared to their single job holder counterparts (boyd, sliter, & chatfield, 2015). for moonlighting teachers, the second job may compound the stress effects of the classroom. due to schedules, policies, and public perceptions of teachers, other employment opportunities are frequently open to educators who want to test the waters in other job sectors (champion, 2010; panos, pouliakas, & zangelidis, 2014; winters, 2010). additionally, employers interested in hiring individuals for part-time employment often target teachers— providing on-the-job training for disgruntled educators (wieniewski & kleine, 1984). among some researchers, the extent of moonlighting is indicative of the de-professionalization of teaching (hargreaves, 1994; wieniewski & kleine, 1984); whereby, the work of teachers is simply quantified by the number of hours they work a week and the amount of months employed within a year. this measured mindset fails to consider outside the classroom work of teachers including grading, instructional planning, professional development, and skill development. thus, moonlighting is tacitly encouraged to keep teachers employed in a (semi-)profession that has been historically underfunded and politically undervalued (betts, 2004; ingersoll & merritt, 2011). under such conditions teachers are simultaneously pushed and pulled out of the education sector (champion, 2010; parnham & gordon, 2010; raffel & groff, 1990). professional effects of moonlighting the opportunity costs of remaining in teaching vis-à-vis the perceived professional freedom and rewards associated with leaving education are heavily skewed toward the latter (boardman, darling-hammond, & mullin, 1982; guarino, santibãnez, & daley, 2006). substantial research indicates that adverse school conditions and inhibited professional autonomy contribute to teacher attrition (ingersoll, 2001, 2015; johnson, 2006). in a longitudinal study of boston-area teachers, johnson (2004) found that teachers working in difficult working conditions were more likely to leave teaching in favor of the perceived professionalism associated with the private sector. in a study of north carolina working conditions, ladd (2011) indicated that working conditions were the most substantial predictors of teacher mobility—the decision of teachers to leave, move or stay in the classroom. as noted previously, research suggests that moonlighters (particularly those moonlighting outside of education) are less satisfied with their working conditions and more likely to leave teaching (champion, 2010; raffel & groff, 1990). for those moonlighting outside of education, secondary employment may serve as both a temporary respite from the constraining environment of many schools, while also providing training for a potential career change. the relationship between moonlighting and on-the-job performance is more tenuous. the professional effects of moonlighting on teachers differ across studies, suggesting varying degrees of influence job on performance. robust empirical time studies (ballou, 1995; farber & wechsler, 1991; parham & gordon, 2011; winters, 2010) produced conflicting evidence of moonlighting effects on teacher performance. moonlighters indicated that the practice did not harm their professional performance or their personal lives (ballou, 1995; smith & cooper, 1967; wieniewski & kleine, 1984). however, the time and energy placed into moonlighting can potentially have pernicious effects on work attentiveness of teachers. for example, moonlighters tend to spend less time on fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 5 school duties than non-moonlighters (winters, 2010) and are less likely to take on leadership roles within schools (parnham & gordon, 2011). champion (2010) noted that hours spent in moonlighting work inversely related to the amount of non-instructional time teachers reported, suggesting that moonlighters were likely to trade time from their primary job to fulfill secondary job requirements. the moonlighting typology further complicates the relationship between moonlighting and the effects on teacher performance. betts (2006) suggested that the key to understanding the motivations and effects of moonlighting is the type of secondary job. some teachers’ moonlighting activities (i.e. tutoring, consultancy) are compatible and perhaps complementary to classroom work; while, in other situations moonlighting detracts from teachers’ work. moonlighting outside of education offers professional outlets and income unrelated to their primary job; thus, possibly compounding teacher stress and fatigue. cumulatively, the research indicates that teachers moonlighting within the educational sector often perceive secondary employment as source of professional revitalization, which may improve productivity. teachers moonlighting outside of education, however, trends toward occupational burnout lower salaries, less commitment to their primary jobs, and an increased likelihood of leaving field. while the aforementioned studies examined the complex motivations and characteristics of teachers who moonlight, little research has parsed out the differences in moonlighting types. in this study, we examined both the characteristics and perceived working conditions of public school teachers across moonlighting categories with particular emphasis on comparing teachers who moonlight inside and outside of education. examining the unique relationships among moonlighting typologies and work place perceptions helps to inform policies that might leverage moonlighting for the purpose of improving teacher working conditions. method our research was guided by the following questions: 1. what are the demographics of moonlighting teachers? how do these demographics differ across moonlighting categories? 2. what are the workplace conditions of moonlighting teachers? how do these conditions differ across moonlighting categories? 3. to what extent do moonlighting teachers' professional outlook differ from non moonlighters? how do these differences compare across moonlighting categories? 4. to what extent are teacher characteristics, workplace conditions, and professional outlook associated with the likelihood that a teacher moonlights? data for this study, we used the national center for education statistics (nces) schools and staffing survey data (sass) from 2011-2012. administered every four years, sass is the most comprehensive survey of teachers’ characteristics, attitudes, and workplace conditions in the united states. we selected for full-time, public school teachers (n=22,990). 1 because sass uses a complex inverse probability sampling frame, sampling and replicate weights were included in the analysis to provide accurate national estimates and standard errors for comparison across subgroups. sass items reported information on additional income from state supplements, merit pay, and extracurricular activities such as coaching. while these additional items include information on supplemental work, they do not capture the traditional definition of moonlighting as paid employment outside the control of the primary employer. moreover, teachers’ primary employment responsibilities are often tied to their extracurricular responsibilities, such as fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 6 coaching or serving as band director. we operationalized teacher moonlighting from sass item, “during the current school year, do you, or will you, earn additional compensation from working in any job outside this school system?” responses included no, teaching or tutoring, nonteaching but related to the teaching field, or other (non-teaching/education related). the nature of this question allowed us to separate moonlighting as work from school or school district-related work (i.e. coaching, department chair, mentoring, and curriculum specialist). it also distinguished during-the-school-year employment from summer work. from the chosen sass item, we classified moonlighting into four typologies:  non-moonlighters: teachers who do not moonlight.  teaching/tutoring moonlighters: teachers who moonlight in traditional teaching capacities.  education-related moonlighters: consultants, test-development, textbook sales, district-wide curriculum leaders, non-teacher.  outside of education moonlighters: moonlighting outside of the education sector. analysis of moonlighter demographics included sass items: gender, marital status, early career status, and school-level. to examine workplace conditions, we averaged likerttype items from the sass teacher climate and attitudes inventory. these averages were then calculated into four scales with the standardized scores of 500 and a standard deviation of 100 for ease of interpretation. the scales include: school influence (α = .817), classroom control (α = .786), job satisfaction (α = .813), and burnout (α = .763). 2 to examine the financial motivations of moonlighting, we included school-related salary. professional outlook included two variables created from sass items: professional retrospection, (would teach; would not teach), and professional intentions (stay in teaching; leave teaching). 3 lastly, we standardized all scale scores and reported salary to ease the interpretation of the multinomial logistic regression model described in the subsequent section. analysis we examined descriptive statistics for each of the aforementioned characteristics and professional outlook variables across teachers’ reported moonlighting behavior. we conducted anova to analyze mean differences across each of the five reported dimensions of workplace conditions by moonlighting behavior. we used multinomial logistic regression to examine the change in odds of teacher moonlighting across each of the moonlighting typologies associated with teacher characteristics, attitudes, and professional commitment. per nces recommendations, balanced repeated replication method was employed in order to calculate means and standard errors that allow for nationally representative generalizability. results demographics of moonlighting teachers according to sass generalizable findings, approximately 19% of us public school teachers moonlight (see table 1). teaching/tutoring moonlighters comprise approximately 5% of the total teachers and 26.3% of all moonlighters. the odds of moonlighting as a teacher are 1:19. education-related moonlighters make up the smallest group, 4% of the teachers and 21.2% of all moonlighters. the odds of moonlighting in education (but not teaching) are 1:24. outside of education, moonlighters represent approximately 10% of the total teaching workforce and 53% of the moonlighting population; making the odds of moonlighting outside of education 1:9. approximately, one-quarter of the male teaching force reports engaging in moonlighting. among moonlighting subgroups, over half of the male moonlighters work outside of education. these findings confirm previous research, suggesting males tend to moonlight more frequently than fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 7 women (bobbitt, 1988; champion, 2010). conversely, moonlighting women are more likely to engage in job-related secondary employment. a greater proportion of females reported moonlighting as teachers or tutors (31.5 %). non-coupled teachers reported a greater frequency of moonlighting compared to married/partnered teachers, again supporting previous findings that moonlighters tended to be single (dickey et al., 2011; smith & cooper, 1967). early career (first-five years) did not report moonlighting in substantially greater percentages as compared to more experienced teachers. however, when early career teachers do moonlight, a greater proportion found secondary work outside of education. over half of early career teachers (56%) moonlight in non-educational jobs. in contrast, more experienced teachers engaged in a higher percentage of teaching/tutoring moonlighting opportunities. high school teachers indicated secondary employment in greater percentages than other grade bands. yet among moonlighters, high school teachers reported instances of moonlighting outside of education less frequently. teachers in elementary or combined grade bands were more likely to indicate non-education related secondary employment. table 1 teacher demographic characteristics across moonlighting category two-group comparison three-group comparison of moonlighters4 yes no tutor, teach non-teach, ed. outside ed n=4,660 n=18,330 n= 1,180 n=980 n=2,450 total weighted % 18.7 81.3 26.3 21.2 52.5 gender male weighted % 24.8 75.2 19.7 22.7 57.6 female weighted % 15.6 84.4 31.5 20.0 48.4 married/partner yes weighted % 17.6 82.4 25.5 22.1 52.4 no weighted % 21.5 78.5 27.9 19.3 52.8 within first five years teaching yes weighted % 17.4 82.6 21.9 21.9 56.2 no weighted % 19.0 81.0 27.2 21.1 51.7 school level elementary school weighted % 12.3 87.7 24.9 15.7 59.4 middle school weighted % 17.5 82.5 26.1 19.0 54.8 high school weighted % 21.3 78.7 27.2 23.4 49.5 combined weighted % 16.8 83.2 21.1 18.9 60.0 fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 8 working conditions of moonlighting teachers analysis of working conditions across moonlighting types suggested variability in professional perceptions and attitudes (see table 2). similar to champion (2010), salary was associated with moonlighting. moonlighters in teaching/tutoring reported higher school-salaries than non-moonlighters. however, teachers moonlighting outside of education reported the least amount of school-based salary. this subgroup indicated approximately $1600 less (on average) school-based salary compared to non-moonlighters and over $3500-$3900 less (on average) than education-related moonlighters. teachers moonlighting in non-teaching, education-related positions conveyed a higher average school influence and a higher average classroom control compared to non-moonlighters. non-moonlighting teachers reported the lowest level of classroom control among the typologies. moonlighters in teaching/tutoring and outside of education indicated significantly less average job satisfaction compared to non-moonlighters. non-moonlighting teachers noted the highest level of job satisfaction, affirming non-salary motives for secondary employment (ballou, 1995; parnham & gordon, 2011; winters, 2010). professional burnout was most prevalent among non-education moonlighters. these findings provide evidence of moonlighting as a potential escape from workplace stress and burnout (blase, 1982; farber & wechsler, 1991; maslach et al., 2001). table 2 analysis of mean workplace conditions across moonlighting category not tutor, teach non-teach, ed. outside ed. moonlighting group group group (n) (a) (b) (c) variables n=18,330 n= 1,180 n=980 n=2,450 contrasts f effect size school-related salary ($) weighted mean (se) 55601.75 (333.93) 57541.12 (920.99) 57955.59 (1395.34) 53988.10 (667.90) n > c*; n < a* 6.04*** 0.003 school influence weighted mean (se) 500.50 (1.32) 489.64 (4.85) 513.44 (5.95) 495.64 (4.10) n > a*; n < b* 4.09** 0.003 classroom control weighted mean (se) 498.69 (1.34) 503.99 (4.87) 520.35 (5.41) 500.65 (4.125) n < b*** 5.24** 0.002 job satisfaction weighted mean (se) 501.90 (1.66) 488.05 (5.36) 501.50 (5.24) 489.30 (4.15) n > a,c** 5.34** 0.002 teacher burnout weighted mean (se) 497.09 (1.59) 506.72 (7.40) 504.17 (5.78) 519.07 (4.17) n < c*** 9.25*** 0.004 note. ** p<.01, ***p<.001. professional outlook of moonlighting teachers examination of professional outlook variables indicated that non-education moonlighters reported displeasure with their teaching career choice and intention to leave the field more frequently than other categories of moonlighting (see table 3). among the subgroups, nonmoonlighters reported in greater frequency compared to the moonlighting subgroups that they fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 9 would more likely choose to teach retrospectively. non-moonlighters also noted an intention to stay in teaching more frequently than moonlighters. these reported discrepancies are most profound when examining the moonlight outside of education subgroup. over 40% of teachers moonlighting outside of education would not teach if given the opportunity again. almost a third of these teachers (32%) indicated intentions to leave teaching. thus, when moonlighting is reported in non-education related jobs, it is associated with professional regret and attrition. table 3 teacher professional outlook characteristics across moonlighting category moonlighting category no moonlighting tutor, teach non-teach, ed. outside ed n=18,330 n= 1,180 n=980 n=2,450 professional retrospection would teach weighted % 66.9 65.2 64.7 58 would not teach weighted % 33.1 34.8 35.3 42 professional intention intend to stay teaching weighted % 74.2 72.1 71.8 68.1 intent to leave teaching weighted % 25.8 27.9 28.2 31.9 relationship among working conditions, teacher characteristics, and professional outlook on teachers’ likelihood to moonlight as a final step, we examined the association among teacher characteristics, working conditions, and professional outlook on the change in odds associated with moonlighting outside of education. previous research suggests that teachers reported working conditions, including teachers’ control over the classroom and school influence, are associated with job satisfaction (liu & ramsey, 2008; pearson & moomaw, 2005). bi-serial correlations conducted a priori to the multinomial logistic regression indicated substantial correlation between job satisfaction and the other working condition predictors. because of multicollinearity concerns, job satisfaction was not included in the model. in this analysis, goodness-of-fit tests revealed a significant relationship among the independent and dependent variables [χ 2 (3060)=6.903, p <.001]. multinomial logistic regression results indicate substantial variability among working conditions, teacher characteristics, and professional outlook associated with the odds of moonlighting across each of the categories (see table 4). holding other variables constant, males were more likely to moonlight outside of teaching. males were associated with a 2.23 times increase in the odds of moonlighting outside of teaching compared to not moonlighting. conversely, married/coupled teachers were associated with a decrease in the likelihood to moonlight across each of the categories. findings were most pronounced and statistically significant when comparing non-moonlighters to moonlighters in teaching and non-education fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 10 moonlighters. teachers with spouses or partners were associated with a 28% decrease in the odds of moonlighting outside of education and a 33% decrease in the odds of moonlighting in teaching. elementary teachers were associated with a decrease in the odds of moonlighting in teaching capacity. interestingly, salary was only associated with the odds of moonlighting outside of teaching. results indicate each standard deviation increase in salary correlated with a 13% times decrease in the odds of moonlighting outside of education. among perceived working conditions, teachers’ reported influence over school-level decisions was associated with a decrease in the odds of moonlighting in teaching. curiously, teachers’ reported control over their classroom was significantly associated with an increase in the odds of moonlighting at each of the three categories. each standard deviation increase in teachers’ perceptions of classroom control was associated with a 26% increase in the odds of a teacher moonlighting in education. teachers’ reported attitudes symptomatic to occupational burnout were associated with increases in the odds of moonlighting in non-teaching categories. each standard deviation increase in reported burnout was associated with a 19% times increase in the odds of moonlighting outside of education altogether. when controlling for demographics and working conditions, indicators of professional outlook were not significantly associated with change in odds of moonlighting across each of the categories table 4 multinomial logistic regression analyses across moonlighting classification moonlight in teaching moonlight in education moonlight outside of education b se exp(b) b se exp(b) b se exp(b) parameter constant -2.46*** 0.125 0.085 3.135*** 0.154 0.043 2.252*** 0.108 0.105 male 0.092 0.129 1.096 0.641*** 0.122 1.898 0.804*** 0.1 2.234 married/partner -0.395** 0.147 0.674 -0.202 0.15 0.817 -0.328** 0.097 0.720 within first five years -0.289 0.174 0.749 0.023 0.182 1.023 -0.164 0.109 0.849 elementary school teacher -0.528* 0.229 0.590 -0.591 0.441 0.554 -0.191 0.195 0.826 school-related earnings (z) 0.074 0.054 1.077 0.107 0.08 1.113 -0.137** 0.048 0.872 teacher burnout (z) 0.099 0.125 1.104 0.165* 0.07 1.179 0.175*** 0.048 1.191 school influence (z) -0.134* 0.06 0.875 0.07 0.065 1.073 -0.037 0.047 0.964 classroom control (z) 0.119* 0.057 1.126 0.23** 0.07 1.259 0.098* 0.046 1.103 would not be a teacher -0.073 0.168 0.930 -0.015 0.144 0.985 0.125 0.098 1.133 intend to leave teaching 0.066 0.189 1.068 0.116 0.134 1.123 0.132 0.089 1.141 note. *p<.05, ** p<.01, ***p<.001. (z) denotes standardized scale. implications findings from this study suggest variability in teachers’ characteristics, attitudes, and perceptions across moonlighting category. understanding who moonlights and the perceived working conditions of those who take on secondary jobs has the potential to inform how teachers work and serve to better understand factors that contribute to teacher retention and attrition. the following sections detail how the aforementioned results shed light on who moonlights, provide more detail on the working conditions of moonlighters, consider the career trajectory and fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 11 occupational commitment of moonlighters, and suggest the potential for within-school moonlighting as an option to improve teachers’ professional fulfillment. understanding who moonlights among teachers’ characteristics, results indicate substantial differences between moonlighters and non-moonlighters particularly among gender and marriage/coupling status. the propensity for singles and males to moonlight has, to our knowledge, never been fully examined. further research could shed light into the motivations for higher frequency of moonlighting men. in addition, early career teachers (less than five years experience) are most likely to moonlight outside of education. this finding is troubling in that the first years of teaching are particularly formative and help educators establish their identity in the classroom (hargreaves, 2005; johnson, 2004; katz, 1972). outside of education sector work has the potential to distract teachers and take away from their professional growth. perceived workplace conditions of moonlighters in addition, findings suggested significant differences across moonlighting type when considering various working conditions. outside education moonlighters were associated with lower pay, less job satisfaction, and a greater risk for teacher burnout compared to other moonlighters and non-moonlighting subgroups. moonlighting teachers, across typologies, were less likely to remain in teaching or retrospectively consider teaching if given the chance. in particular, those moonlighting outside of education reported less commitment to remain in teaching or consider teaching a good decision. these findings are perhaps indicative of the different motivations for outside education moonlighting and highlight potential risks associated with this form of supplemental work. furthermore, motives for moonlighting also provide evidence of workplace differences that drive teachers to seek secondary employment. findings parallel previous research, which has suggested that out of the field moonlighters are often pulled away from teaching (betts, 2006). when considering a more multinomial logistic regression model, findings are more complex. results indicate that gender/family dynamics influence teachers’ decisions to moonlight outside of education. considering that moonlighting takes away from leisure time with family (ballou, 1995), families and domestic couples might be less likely to moonlight in non-education fields. males, interestingly, were more likely to moonlight than females, similar to previous studies (ballou, 1995; winters, 2010). respondents making less money in their teaching job were more likely to moonlight outside of education. this finding suggests that lower paid teachers sought outside moonlighting opportunities in order to increase their standard of living (betts, 2004, 2006). interestingly, teachers who reported greater classroom control were associated with an increase in moonlighting across each of the typologies. increased odds were most pronounced among teachers who reported moonlighting in teaching and in education. previous research has found that teachers’ who report higher levels of classroom control were associated with a greater sense of professional empowerment (pearson & moomaw, 2005). perhaps, teachers’ reported control over the classroom indicates a level of acclimation to the teaching profession that induces teachers to pursue additional career possibilities. increased reported teacher burnout was associated with a significantly greater likelihood in moonlighting outside of traditional teaching categories. as noted in prior studies (cf. parnham & gordon, 2011), teachers occasionally moonlight for additional professional fulfillment. however, high teacher burnout coupled with outside work distractions may take away from the teacher productivity and can have negative consequences on job performance (ronfeldt, loeb, & wyckoff, 2013). salary differences were also linked to moonlighting typology. teachers who fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 12 moonlight outside of education reported significantly lower in-school salaries compared to their non-moonlighting peers. providing more within-profession moonlighting opportunities will perhaps not only keep teachers occupationally content, but also alleviate financial burdens. while money alone cannot resolve issues of teacher moonlighting, salary advancement opportunities within educational settings could invigorate workplace environments and reduce outside of education moonlighting. a tangential return on the investment would be advancement in job-related knowledge and skills necessary related to teaching and learning. moonlighters professional outlook the relationship between moonlighting and teachers’ professional outlook is less clear. descriptive analysis indicates that teachers who moonlight across each of the three categories are more likely to consider leaving teaching and regret their decision to teach in greater numbers than non-moonlighters. the least likely to considering staying in the profession and the most regretful are teachers finding secondary work outside of education. moonlighting outside of the education sector might serve as a professional barometer as to teacher job satisfaction and commitment to the profession. yet, little is understood as to whether moonlighting is a response to poor working conditions or a contributing factor of poor working conditions. as educational leaders develop strategies to improve school climate, it is important that the frequency and extent of moonlighting is considered. moreover, additional research is needed to explore to what extent are teachers pushed out of the classroom by working conditions or pulled toward private sector jobs that offer higher salaries and a better workplace climate. leveraging the potential for within-school moonlighting as one potential solution to curtail outside of education moonlighting, education leaders should consider policies that encourage more in-school supplemental employment. findings illustrate that teachers who moonlight in education, non-teaching positions reported more classroom control and school influence, suggesting that those teachers who were moonlighting within the education sector (but outside the traditional parameters of a classroom teacher) perhaps have secondary occupations that offer greater overall responsibilities compared to their counterparts. teachers who feel valued and remain vested in the interest of the school are more likely to remain in teaching and potentially improve the overall school climate. creating opportunities for professional leadership that includes financial compensation may incentivize teachers to take on additional roles and responsibilities while potentially diminishing the risk for occupational stress. unfortunately, teaching remains one of the only careers that provides little opportunities for professional advancement, unless leaving the field altogether for positions in administration. with scant openings for promotion, many educators seek additional career challenges and leave the classroom; potentially depleting the workforce of quality teachers. similar to raffel and groff’s (1990) category of the “willing moonlighter,” school leaders should embrace a moonlighting culture or an expansion of duties that complements rather than conflicts with teachers on-the-job responsibilities. across the nation, local school agencies have initiated various policies aimed at differentiating leadership opportunities for teachers. teacher-in-residence initiatives offer opportunities for classroom practitioners to work in teacher preparation programs. these programs connect classroom experts with the academic knowledge and skills of schools and colleges of education, potentially reinvigorating the professional outlook of classroom teachers and recognizing the practical knowledge that teachers bring toward teacher preparation (kagan, dennis, igou, moore, & sparks, 1993; zeichner, 2010). additional efforts to expand the leadership and professional opportunities for teachers include hybrid teacher leaders and instructional coaches. these positions allocate greater professional fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 13 authority to classroom practitioners who supervise, mentor, and plan with faculty peers (margolis, 2012). ostensibly, these programs offer high performing teachers a different pathway toward leadership and greater professional fulfillment while keeping them in the classroom. attempts at fostering hybrid-teaching leaders have been somewhat successful at improving the quality of professional development and increasing teacher job satisfaction (margolis, 2012; muijs & harris, 2006; taylor, goeke, klein, onore, & geist, 2011). limitations self-reported data and social desirability are concerns when using survey data. nevertheless, the national center for education statistics (nces) schools and staffing survey data (sass) is accepted as the most comprehensive survey of teachers’ characteristics, attitudes, and workplace conditions in the united states. given that the survey is taken anonymously and numerous controls are put into place in order to safeguard the identity of participants, we are confident that biases associated with survey responses were kept at a minimum. additionally, in using secondary data, our study is limited in the interpretation of how and why teachers’ decide to moonlight. while our analysis allows us to describe the characteristics of moonlighters demographically and in relation to their perceived working conditions, the data are unable to provide appropriate descriptions of what specific secondary employment teachers are pursuing or offer specific reasons for their decisions to moonlight. future research is need both qualitatively and in large-scale to more accurately explore moonlighting inside and outside the education sector. conclusion this study addresses two central themes: who and in what conditions teachers moonlight. the demographic characteristics associated with this highest probability of moonlighting are: teaching in high schools and being an experienced, male, single teacher. among moonlighters, most teachers find secondary employment outside of education. the rationale behind teacher moonlighting is linked to workplace satisfaction, emotional drains of teaching (i.e. burnout), opportunities for professional autonomy, and salary supplements. moonlighting teachers express a more negative professional outlook and are more likely to indicate a desire to leave the profession. these sentiments increase when moonlighting moves from job-related to noneducation employment opportunities. teachers moonlighting outside of education are more likely to earn lower salaries and report higher levels of teacher burnout. these findings raise questions about the school contexts in which teachers work. further research is needed to examine the link between teacher moonlighting and educational quality. in conclusion, we recommend that to stem the tide of moonlighting outside of education, school leaders and administrators consider ways to improve the professional atmosphere in their schools, offering opportunities for professional advancement within the field of education that include both monetary incentives and professional reinvigoration. improving teacher professionalism, including opportunities for intellectual development, autonomy, and financial rewards, has the potential to offset teacher moonlighting decisions, or at the very least, leverage moonlighting’s potential to improve the teaching and learning climate notes 1 all sample sizes were rounded to the nearest 10 per nces disclosure regulations. 2 school influence items included teachers’ reported influence: setting standards for students at the school, establishing curriculum, determining content of in-service professional development programs, evaluating teachers, hiring new full-time teachers, setting discipline policy, and deciding how the school budget will be spent. classroom control items included teachers’ reported control over: selecting textbooks and other materials, selecting content, topics, and skills taught, selecting teaching techniques, evaluating and grading students, disciplining students, and determining the amount of homework to be assigned. job satisfaction items included teachers’ reported: overall fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 14 satisfaction, belief that the teachers at the school are satisfied, and belief that the school is well run. burn-out items include teachers’ report: that stress and disappointments at school are not worth it, they would leave for a higher job as 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(1984). teacher moonlighting: an unstudied phenomenon. the phi delta kappan, 65(8), 553-555. yeager, w. a. (1956). teaching is still a part-time profession. the nation’s schools, 57, 61-62. fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 17 zeichner, k. (2010). rethinking connections between campus courses and field experiences in collegeand university-based teacher education. journal of teacher education, 61(1-2), 89-99. doi:10.1177/0022487109347671. fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 18 author notes paul g. fitchett university of north carolina at charlotte 9201 university city blvd., charlotte, nc 29223 704-687-0997 paul.fitchett@uncc.edu paul g. fitchett is associate professor of education in the department of middle, secondary, and k12 education at the university of north carolina at charlotte. his research focuses on the intersections between education policy, teacher working conditions, and school-related outcomes. tina l. heafner university of north carolina at charlotte 9201 university city blvd., charlotte, nc 29223 tina l. heafner is professor in the department of middle, secondary, and k-12 education at the university of north carolina at charlotte. her research interests include social studies marginalization and policy, teacher autonomy and praxis, online and technology mediated learning, and social studies literacy susan b. harden university of north carolina at charlotte 9201 university city blvd., charlotte, nc 29223 susan harden is an assistant professor in the department of middle, secondary, and k12 education at the university of north carolina at charlotte. her research interests focus on civic engagement in schools and the professional lives of teachers. . mailto:paul.fitchett@uncc.edu fitchett, heafner, & harden: characteristics and working conditions of moonlighting teachers: evidence from the 2011-2012 schools and staffing survey current issues in education, 19(1) 19 volume 19, issue 1 may 2, 2016 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh bethany richmond lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 8, number 17 august, 2005 issn 1099-839x the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression angela spaulding west texas a&m university aggressive student behaviors are of concern to every school in the nation. discovering ways to help teachers prevent and/or respond to such student behavior is of great importance. this reported research sought to discover if and how teacher behaviors impact student aggression in the classroom. in doing so, the researcher did not set out to blame teachers for student aggression; the goal was to discover how teachers might modify behavior and react in ways that will help create positive and peaceful classroom environments – and prevent student aggressive behaviors that can result in violence. literature and problem introduction aggressive student behaviors are of concern to every school in the nation. discovering ways to help teachers prevent and/or respond to such student behavior is of great importance. this reported research, made possible by a grant from the regents’ initiative for excellence in education (2000-2003), sought to discover how teacher behaviors may impact student aggression in the classroom. there has been a great deal of research conducted on the topic of teacher behavior. however, within this broad category, this particular research sought out specific information on how teacher behavior affects student aggression. in doing so, the researcher did not set out to blame teachers for student aggression; the goal was to discover how teachers can modify behavior and react in ways that will help create positive and peaceful classroom environments – and prevent student aggressive behaviors that can result in violence. the literature supports this effort: “if administrators and teachers want to change student behavior and attitudes, they should start by modifying their own behavior and attitudes. students learn to act in the ways we have taught them to act” (moore, 1997, p. 71). van acker, grant, and henry (1996) echo this sentiment when they state, “teachers require information on their pattern of interaction with individual students. only then would differential treatment of specific students become evident” (p. 332). in a study on student aggression and teacher behavior (spaulding & burleson, 2001), teachers reported that they see the following behaviors in fellow teachers: bullying, derogatory comments, gossip, disrespect of authority, harassment, predetermined expectations of others, discord between individuals and groups, and angry outbursts. not only did teachers witness these actions among their peers, but, when asked to label these behaviors, they identified them as either violence or precursors to violence. interestingly, these are some of the very behaviors schools are trying to eradicate from the student population, yet, eradication efforts will find only limited success if teachers are modeling inappropriate behaviors. as one respondent said, “teachers model expectations – if they show aggression, they will get aggression” (spaulding & burleson, 2001). the literature documents similar findings to those of the spaulding and burleson (2001) study discussed above. hymen and perone (1998) determined that at least 50-60 percent of all students current issues in education vol. 8 no. 17 experience maltreatment by an educator at least once in their school careers. furthermore, research has found that a school may unwittingly contribute to student aggression through inappropriate classroom placement, irrelevant instruction, inconsistent management, overcrowded classrooms, rigid behavioral demands, or insensitivity to student diversity (gable, manning, and bullock, 1997; gable and van acker, 2000). conversely, findings show that elements which may curb aggression include a positive school climate, identification of and response to early violence warning signs, relevant coursework which is neither to simple or too complex, clear classroom rules and expectations, and the avoidance of power struggles (gable and van acker, 2000). other research has explored more specific teacher behaviors and results. for instance, mullins, chard, hartman, bowlby, rich, and burke (1995) studied teachers’ responses to children who were depressed. they discovered that there was an increase in a teacher’s self-reported level of personal rejection and a decrease in the level of personal attraction to children who were depressed. furthermore, the same decrease in personal attraction and increase in personal rejection were found for boys aged six through eleven who showed an increase in social problems or delinquency. finally, mullins (1995), et al., reported that teachers’ negative responses to these troubled students were likely to grow stronger over time. van acker, grant, and henry (1996) drew several conclusions from their research on school violence. first, they found a connection between school climate and violence resulting in the knowledge that schools can aversely affect student behavior. secondly, they posit that teachers may displace their own feelings of anger and aggression onto students. and, thirdly, they discovered that the lack of positive teacher feedback for appropriate student behavior were likely to create inappropriate behavior in students. they describe this phenomenon in the following manner: the lack of predictable feedback following desired behavior appears to suggest a situation in which the school may well provide a context for the exacerbation of undesired social behavior on the part of students most at risk for demonstrating aggressive and violent behavior (p. 331). krugman and krugman (1984) echoed this idea of students behaving according to what is expected of them. they wrote that students adapt quickly to whatever label a teacher gives them in order to fit in the classroom environment. students with social, emotional, or behavioral problems are greatly affected by the way others respond to them and to the feedback that they receive. pace, mullins, beesley, hill, and carson, (1999) stated that, it is argued that children who have significant emotional and behavioral problems respond less positively to others and thus elicit fewer positive responses and more negative responses from others in interpersonal relationships. these problems create a lower sense of acceptance or attraction toward the child and may increase avoidance and rejection toward the child. thus, as suggested by the authors, these processes may become entangled in a vicious circle of reciprocal causation (p. 151). moreover, white and jones (2000) wrote “a consistent flow of public correction of a child may serve to exacerbate the negative impressions peers often have of disruptive, non-compliant classmates” (p. 320). this negative impression can be countered over time, but the reputation earned earlier is difficult for a student to overcome. further research documents how a teacher’s response to a student affects that student academically. carr, taylor, and robinson (1991) found that children who misbehave in response to instruction receive less instruction than do compliant children. carr (1991), et al., refer to this student behavior as “punishment of teaching efforts” (p. 532). such punishment may lead to the “curriculum of non-instruction” whereby the teacher and the student covertly decide to leave one another alone (van acker, grant, and henry, 1996, p. 331). this literature review documents the need for teachers to assess their own behavior and how it impacts their students. obviously, how a teacher treats a student has a profound impact on student behavior, student instruction, and the classroom environment. methodology this is a qualitative study of teacher behavior and its impact on high school students. grounded theory methods were utilized for collecting, coding and analyzing the data. guided by grounded theory, the data are “inductively derived from the study of the phenomenon it represented (in this case, teacher behavior on student aggression). . . and verified through systematic data collection and analysis of the data” (strauss & corbin, 1990, p. 23). in other words, the data collection and analysis stood in reciprocal relationship with one another (i.e., such that data collection lead to analysis, and analysis lead to further data collection). glaser (1978), glaser and strauss (1967), and strauss (1987) refer to this process of constantly switching back and forth the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression 3 between data collection and analysis as the constant comparative process of grounded theory. specifically, data was collected through a qualitative questionnaire. the questionnaire was distributed to the study participants. upon collection of the responses, each questionnaire was searched line by line to find units of data that served as (1) the basis for defining categories and (2) as a spring board for additional data collection. follow up interviews were conducted with participants when new data emerged or when questions of intent were discovered. criteria were used to promote the credibility of the research. credibility, according to lincoln and guba (1985), refers to the extent to which findings are accurate representations of the phenomena under study. credibility criteria included triangulation, peer debriefing and member checking. the questionnaire began with six questions related to demographics and five questions related to the respondents’ teacher education training. following these initial questions were seven openended questions covering teacher behavior and student behavior. in addition, the survey asked the participants to label twenty-two teacher and student behaviors (identified by research literature) as precursors, violent acts, or neither. they were then asked if they see these same behaviors in students at their schools and whether or not they believed that teachers engage in such behaviors. finally, the questionnaire provided space for additional comments. research sample and site the group of respondents consisted of 156 randomly selected teachers in high need, public secondary schools throughout the northern area of the state of texas. of these, 70% were female, and 30% were male. sixty-one percent identified themselves as caucasian, 19% as african american, 12% hispanic, 2% native american, and 6% chose not to answer the question. anonymity was provided for all responders. as for length of time teaching, there was a fairly equitable representation across the categories provided with 21% having taught less than five years, 21% five to ten years, 26% eleven to twenty years, and 20% more than 20 years. two percent did not answer the question. respondents were also asked about the subject they teach. the majority (58.9%) teach one of the core subjects (math, english, science or history). six percent identified themselves as special education teachers. the other teachers, accounting for 27% of the respondents, teach one of the following classes: foreign language, music/band/choir, physical education/athletics, speech/drama, business, industrial/vocational, art, computer technology, or rotc. almost 7% stated that they teach more than one subject. questionnaire: teacher education training respondents were asked about their preservice teacher education training as it relates to classroom management, school safety, and school violence. asked if they had any classes or training in college to prepare them for school safety and violence, only 16.5% stated that they had received such training. of those who had this specific training, only 12% rated it effective. when asked about training in classroom management, 72.5% reported that they received such training in their teacher preparation program. in a follow-up question, they were asked to describe briefly the worth and value of their classroom management class or violence preparation training. less than 10% of the respondents reported a positive and worthwhile classroom management course experience. the exception to this finding was from teachers who had participated in a professional development school model during their teacher preparation programs. these teachers felt that that they lived the realities of the classroom in their pds assignment and, as a result, gained a great deal of skill and knowledge on classroom management. less than 8% of the respondents had been trained with a pds component in their teacher education program. the overwhelming theme of responders was that their classroom management training had absolutely no relationship to real life in the classroom. the final question was “do you believe school violence is an issue that should be addressed in university preparation programs?” the vast majority, 89%, said that school violence and student aggression needed to be addressed in teacher preparation programs. questionnaire: teacher behaviors and actions this discussion will focus on the survey’s open-ended questions. the responses will be reviewed together. the first question was, “what teacher behaviors and actions may help to prevent or de-escalate violent situations in the classroom or school?” three categories of answers were revealed during the data analysis and can be found in table 1.1. these include: 1) classroom management, 2) attitudes and behavior, and 3) skills and knowledge. what these responses reveal is that teachers need to be proactive and remove possible obstacles so as to create classroom environments in which all students feel valued and capable of learning and succeeding. teachers need to be proactive through careful planning and preparation, establish clear rules and expectations (which are enforced consistently and fairly), be observant, building appropriate current issues in education vol. 8 no. 17 relationships with students, exercise self-control, and show students respect. efforts such as these lead to a safe, positive classroom climate that de-escalates student aggression and violence. table 1.1 teacher behaviors and actions that may help prevent or de-escalate violent situations category specific action or trait classroom management  be visible and maintain order  set boundaries; have, follow, and enforce class rules daily  give students a voice in discipline  be observant and aware of subtle changes or when something is getting out of control  be proactive, prepared, and organized; keep students busy  react with authority to arguments  pick battles – ones that can be won  predictable behavior  allow students to express themselves appropriately and teach them how to do this  be fair  positive learning environment and interaction attitudes and behaviors  build relationships with students  self-control: control temper and anger  respect students  positive attitude: friendly, kind, encouraging, supportive skills and knowledge  understand body language – teacher’s and students’  recognize and find assistance for abnormal student behaviors  practice effective listening skills with and between students  understand and model effective conflict management furthermore, teachers need to be aware of the nonverbal messages they are sending as well as how to interpret the nonverbal messages being sent by students. understanding nonverbal communication is important because when verbal and nonverbal messages conflict, the nonverbal messages are, generally, the ones that will be received. teachers must pay careful attention not only to what they say to students, but how they say it. the same applies to the nonverbal communications that students have with one another in the classroom. aggression builds slowly from other emotions such as anger, frustration, depression, and embarrassment. an observant teacher will be able to discern subtle but serious shifts in a student’s mood and demeanor, and take appropriate action and interest in that student. one survey respondent summed up the comments of others by saying, “those {teachers} who maintain good order in the classroom, show respect for others, and have high expectations for appropriate behaviors do not usually have violence issues to face” (emphasis in original). the second survey question was: “what teacher behaviors and actions may increase the likelihood of student aggression or violence in the classroom or school?” the responses fell within two main categories: 1) classroom management, and 2) attitudes and behaviors. these are revealed in table 1.2. basically, these answers are the direct opposites of the behaviors given in response to the first question, particularly those listed under the category of classroom management. by far, the most common answer to what teachers do that may increase the chances of a violent situation was humiliating, provoking, or demeaning students publicly. for many of the respondents, it comes down to the issue of respect. there is no doubt that teachers expect to be treated with respect; however, according to the responses received, there is a problem with teachers who do not respect students. one teacher commented that “even the ‘worst’ kid can be treated respectfully within the classroom (by the teacher), and problems usually will not escalate into violence.” along with the lack of respect for students is the concern among our respondents that some teachers do not care about students, verbally bully students, are belligerent towards students, and, in general, have a poor rapport with them. one respondent stated, “i think that many teachers don’t like kids, but they choose to teach. if there is any way to get the concept that you must like children in order to teach, that would be great.” this concern is supported in the literature. anderson and anderson (1995) studied pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward children and found that 15% of the subjects in their study had negative attitudes toward children. they also found evidence that pre-service teachers are even more distrustful and hold more negative attitudes the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression 5 toward students after completing student teaching. such teachers will be unhappy and frustrated in the classroom and will be less likely to display the attitudes, behaviors, and skills needed to decrease the risk of aggression and violence in the classroom. table 1.2 teacher behaviors and actions that may increase the likelihood of student aggression or violence in the classroom category specific action or trait classroom management  no control or authority  lack of supervision; not visible  unclear rules or requirements; not addressing early behavior  too controlling, rigid; unwilling to compromise  inconsistent treatment of children  paying too much attention to small problems attitudes and behaviors  backing kids into a corner; humiliating challenging, confronting, provoking, demeaning students in front of the class  not listening to students  failure to notice warning signs  disrespectful, rude; verbal bullying and attacks; sarcasm; prejudice  negative attitude/rapport with students; not caring, accepting, nurturing, sensitive  getting and staying angry; not remaining calm with angry students; taking problems with students personally; being argumentative or belligerent  unfair; operating under preconceived ideas  threatening body language  not asking for help from other adults  not learning true situation of students  very passive or too nice  unreasonable expectations additional pitfalls for teachers include: not listening to students, negative body language, not noticing warning signs, and being too nice or passive. just as one of the traits of an effective teacher was building positive relationships with students, one of the behaviors of a teacher more likely to experience student aggression was not understanding the problem represented through student actions. for example, one teacher related how she knew her students well enough to know that one particular eighth grader was unusually irritable and emotional. in an effort to understand his behavior, the teacher found out that his parents and sibling had moved while he was at school. they left no forwarding address. they were tired of feeding a big, growing boy and thought that he would be able to fend for himself. he did this for a few days by staying with friends but he was at a loss for any long-term solution to his problem. through support services, the school arranged to help this student with his needs. such events are more common than not in our high need schools. while there is no way to know if this student would have become violent, the teacher did feel that his emotions were becoming increasingly aggressive. when faced with such increasing emotions, the potential for violence does exist. finally, the respondents said that teachers who do not ask for help from other adults might increase the likelihood of classroom aggression. teaching can be a very isolated occupation, and for those experiencing problems with students, this isolation may seem even more profound. these are times when it is imperative that help is sought. just as teachers need to watch students for changes in behavior, fellow teacher and administrators should also be observant of one other for such changes. one respondent mentioned that school administrators need to support teachers, but this support will be limited if administrators, or other teachers for that matter, do not know what kind of support or assistance is needed. questionnaire: responses to previously identified behaviors the research questionnaire also contained a chart that listed twenty-two behaviors that students exhibit that have been identified (in previous research) as behaviors that contribute to student aggression or violence. for each of these behaviors or attitudes, the teachers were asked three questions:  would you consider this student behavior: a) violence, b) a precursor to violence, or c) neither?  do you see this type of behavior in the students at your school?  do you think that teachers engage in this same behavior? current issues in education vol. 8 no. 17 the responses to these questions can be found in table 1.3 [see appendix a]. (although both was not one of the responses offered for the first question, several people utilized this response, so it is included on the chart.) in a review of table 1.3, out of the twentytwo behaviors and attitudes, the following findings are evident:  twelve behaviors are precursors to violence: social isolation, derogatory comments, verbal abuse, threats, disrespect of authority, gang membership/activities, harassment, gossip, discord between individuals or groups, vulgar or obscene language or gestures, serious discipline problems, and angry outbursts.  a majority of teachers state that they see the twelve precursors in their own school.  a majority of teachers believe that peer teachers also engage in the behaviors of social isolation, derogatory comments, and gossip.  sizable minorities of teachers also believe that teachers exhibit the following negative behaviors: threats (30.9%), disrespect of authority (34.8%), bullying (32.6%), and angry outbursts (39.1%). the fact that a third of teachers believe that peer teachers engage in these behaviors tells us that these are behaviors that must be addressed. this supports unpublished research done by olweus (1996, cited in hyman and perone, 1998), who found that 10% of 5100 norwegian elementary and junior high school teachers had bullied their students on a regular basis.  six of the behaviors listed were labeled as violence by a majority of the teachers: bullying, stealing/theft, weapons possession, vandalism, bomb/bomb threats, and physical threats. of these six, a majority of teachers reported seeing three of these behaviors regularly exhibited in the students at their school. these include: bullying, vandalism, and physical fights. further steps: review of findings by a professional focus group as part of the effort to add credibility to these findings and to seek additional solutions to the problem, a summary of the findings of this study were submitted to a group of experts from education and from fields outside of education including: a psychologist, a lawyer, a law enforcement officer, a nurse, a communications professor, a high school teacher, a high school principal, an educational leadership professor, and a business owner. the members of this focus group were asked to read the findings of the study and respond to the question: do you find the results of this study to be credible? without exception, the members of the focus group found the results to be believable and credible based on their own background experiences and discipline knowledge. the focus group provided the following suggestions with regard to this topic area:  students and teachers need more assistance in becoming aware of their own behaviors.  teachers must be willing to show respect for students and that a lack of respect is problematic in the classroom. respect, for the focus group, meant that teachers became role models for students by admitting their mistakes and even offering apologies to students when warranted.  teachers need to model appropriate behavior in the classroom. this modeling of appropriate behavior was seen as necessary for students to learn how to deal with their own mistakes and to engage in behaviors that de-emphasized the potential for violence in the classroom (e.g., how to disagree, how to admit mistakes, how to listen to other points of view, how to state one’s opinion, how to appreciate differences, how to show and feel compassion, etc.). teachers need to be able to help students develop these skills in order to reach their potential and succeed in school because too many students lack these skills and do not receive encouragement and support at home.  discipline should be age and maturity appropriate because not all students in the classroom were on the same level.  teachers need much more in-depth study in the psychology of youth. it was felt that the small doses of knowledge provided by preservice teacher institutions and school inservice programs were insufficient and problematic. giving teachers vague, hit and miss training in psychology may be as dangerous as letting someone read about surgery and then allowing them to operate.  teachers need access to trained professionals to help them understand and work successfully with student behaviors in the classroom.  teachers need to learn to read and understand both verbal and nonverbal communication, as one member stated, to ‘listen with your eyes.’ the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression 7  teachers need to be adaptable and not afraid of change.  teachers need to be compassionate and truly care for their students or remove themselves from the profession.  pre-service teachers should have more experiences to classroom environments through mentor relationships with current teachers and administrators, school counselors, and police liaisons.  university professors should spend more time in the schools so that they stay current with the issues and problems of the profession. implications the final question on the research questionnaire asked, “how can teachers best be supported in their efforts to modify their own behavior in order to create positive and peaceful classroom environments.” ninety-two percent of the teacher respondents felt that special training (e.g., seminars, classes or inservice workshops) should be offered on classroom behavioral skills – to include behavior awareness, nonverbal and verbal communications, conflict management, anger management, and listening skills. teachers suggest that these trainings be taught by specialists both inside and outside the field of education. suggested experts include: psychologists, arbitrators, law enforcement, school violence experts, communication experts, medical personnel and master teachers. furthermore, teachers suggested that classroom awareness issues be addressed. classroom awareness issues consisted of increased awareness of gang involvement, poverty, depression and suicide, drug and alcohol abuse. the respondents believe that teachers need a greater understanding of child and adolescent psychology and behavior. they also feel that experts who have experiences with youth should teach these courses. respondents feel that these types of trainings should be continuous – not one-shot opportunities. many feel that their original training and knowledge are now out-dated. with regard to teacher preparation programs, respondents suggested additions to existing teacher education curricula. for instance, training in school law is not usually addressed in preservice teacher training but in educational leadership programs. yet, many teachers feel a need to know the legal ramifications of classroom actions and behavior. additionally, criminal justice, nursing and psychology courses are not normally geared for future teachers; yet, these disciplines have much to offer in the effort to understand student and teacher behavior and to create peaceful classroom environments. this project has resulted in an important first step towards helping teachers to become aware of their classroom behaviors and to finding concrete and practical ways to adapt behavior in order to promote a peaceful classroom environment. such modifications will benefit not only the teachers themselves but also students and schools.. references airasian, p.w., & gullickson, a. 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(2000). effects of teacher feedback on the reputations and peer perceptions of children with behavior problems. journal of exceptional child psychology, 76 , 302-326. the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression 9 appendix a table 1.3 teacher responses to behavior and attitudes in school behavior or attitude precursor to violence, violence, or neither? do you see this behavior in students at your school? do you think that teachers engage in this behavior? social isolation precursor: 58.1% neither: 41.9% yes: 76.1% no: 19.6% no answer: 4.3% yes: 50% no: 39.1% no answer: 10.9% bullying precursor: 45.2% violence: 54.8% yes: 65.2% no: 30.4% no answer: 4.3% yes: 32.6% no: 58.7% no answer: 8.7% derogatory comments precursor: 83.9% violence: 6.5% neither: 9.7% yes: 93.5% no: 2.2% no answer: 4.3% yes: 58.7% no: 32.6% no answer: 8.7% verbal abuse precursor: 58.1% violence: 35.5% neither: 3.2% both: 3.2% yes: 82.6% no: 10.9% no answer: 6.5% yes: 39.1% no: 47.8% no answer: 13% threats precursor: 58.1% violence: 41.9% yes: 69.6% no: 23.9% no answer: 6.5% yes: 30.4% no: 56.5% no answer: 13% stealing/theft precursor: 41.9% violence: 48.4% neither: 6.5% both: 3.2% yes: 76.1% no: 17.4% no answer: 6.5% yes: 8.7% no: 76.1% no answer: 15.2% truancy/coming in late or leaving early precursor: 41.9% neither: 58.1% yes: 95.7% no answer: 4.3% yes: 28.3% no: 60.9% no answer: 10.9% disrespect of authority precursor: 67.7% violence: 12.9% neither: 12.9% both: 3.2 % no answer: 3.2% yes: 93.5% no: 2.2% no answer: 4.3% yes: 34.8% no: 56.5% no answer: 8.7% weapons possession precursor: 32.3% violence: 67.7% yes: 26.1% no: 67.4% no answer: 6.5% yes: 2.2% no: 89.1% no answer: 8.7% vandalism precursor: 41.9% violence: 58.1% yes: 80.4% no: 15.2% no answer: 4.3% yes: 2.2% no: 89.1% no answer: 8.7% bomb/bomb threats precursor: 12.9% violence: 87.1% yes: 43.5% no: 47.8% no answer: 8.7% yes: 2.2% no: 89.1% no answer: 8.7% exhibits improper dress or clothing precursor: 38.7% violence: 3.2% neither: 58.1% yes: 91.3% no: 4.3% no answer: 4.3% yes: 34.8% no: 56.5% no answer: 8.7% gang membership or activities precursor: 61.3% violence: 35.5% both: 3.2% yes: 78.3% no: 15.2% no answer: 6.5% yes: 4.3% no: 89.1% no answer: 6.5% physical fights precursor: 12.9% violence: 87.1% yes: 80.4% no: 13% no answer: 6.5% yes: 2.2% no: 91.3% no answer: 6.5% current issues in education vol. 8 no. 17 pushing and shoving precursor: 48.4% violence: 45.2% neither: 3.2% both: 3.2% yes: 82.6% no: 10.9% no answer: 6.5% yes: 4.3% no: 89.1% no answer: 6.5% harassment precursor: 61.3% violence: 35.5% neither: 3.2% yes: 80.4% no: 13% no answer: 6.5% yes: 17.4% no: 73.9% no answer: 8.7% gossip precursor: 51.6% violence: 3.2% neither: 45.2% yes: 89.1% no: 4.3% no answer: 6.5% yes: 63% no: 26.1% no answer: 10.9% pre-determined expectations of others precursor: 22.6% violence: 3.2% neither: 71% no answer: 3.2% yes: 63% no: 23.9% no answer: 13% yes: 60.9% no: 28.3% no answer: 10.9% discord between individuals or groups precursor: 80.6% violence: 6.5% neither: 9.7% no answer: 3.2% yes: 76.1% no: 15.2% no answer: 8.7% yes: 45.7% no: 45.7% no answer: 8.7% vulgar, obscene language or gestures precursor: 51.6% violence: 41.9% neither: 6.5% yes: 87% no: 8.7% no answer: 4.3% yes: 21.7% no: 67.4% no answer: 10.9% serious discipline problems precursor: 61.3% violence: 29% neither: 6.5% both: 3.2% yes: 80.4% no: 13% no answer: 6.5% yes: 6.5% no: 82.6% no answer: 10.9% angry outbursts precursor: 54.8% violence: 41.9% no answer: 3.2% yes: 84.8% no: 8.7% no answer: 6.5% yes: 39.1% no: 47.8% no answer: 13% the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression 11 2005 article citation spaulding, a. (2005, august 02). the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression. current issues in education [on-line], 8(17). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number17/ author notes dr. angela spaulding chair, dept. of educational leadership west texas a&m university wt box 60208, canyon, texas 79016-0001 aspaulding@mail.wtamu.edu dr. angela spaulding is an associate professor of educational leadership at west texas a&m university in canyon, texas, where she chairs the department of educational leadership and teachers courses in leadership, research, group dynamics and curriculum. she has been the recipient of the wtamu outstanding professor award and has research interests that include leadership and group dynamics, communication, conflict management, and micropolitics. she has over 40 publications in these research areas. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 21, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation spaulding, a. (2005). the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression. current issues in education, 8(17). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1605 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number17/index.html mailto:aspaulding@mail.wtamu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1605 responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 1 volume 21, issue 1 april 29, 2020 issn 1099-839x responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears laura bower-phipps southern connecticut state university abstract: heteronormativity, the “privileging of heterosexuality through its normalization” (jackson, 2006, p. 109), causes confusion and anxiety for many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers as they consider how they will talk about their lives with students. this article explores how preservice teachers have experienced the normalization of heterosexuality and the ways in which these experiences will shape their professional practices. focus group and follow up interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers were analyzed using a constant comparison method. findings suggest that participants’ professional vision was largely a response to heteronormativity. they wanted to be out, be role models, and create safe spaces; yet they felt unable to achieve this vision in what they perceived as heteronormative school climates. implications for teacher preparation programs and policies include the importance of equipping all preservice teachers to identify and disrupt heteronormativity in schools. keywords: preservice teachers, teacher education, queer theory, teacher identity, lgbtqia+ citation: bower-phipps, l. (2020). responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears. current issues in education, 21(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1747 accepted: 2/5/2020 responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears schools tend to be heteronormative institutions that create a closet for non-heterosexual teachers1, forcing them to make decisions about the extent to which they share their sexual 1 terminology for sexual orientations and identities is in constant flux (peters, 2014). while this article focuses on preservice teachers who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual, other terms are employed when discussing the work of other authors. when discussing sexual diversity in general, lgbtqa+ is used to refer to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, asexual, and others who identify outside the rigid category of heterosexual. responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 2 orientation (depalma & atkinson, 2006). heteronormativity, the “privileging of heterosexuality through its normalization” (jackson, 2006, p. 109), shapes teachers’ professional practices. lesbian, gay, and bisexual teachers talk about carefully separating their lives into personal and professional, not allowing the two to intermingle (ferfolja & hopkins, 2013). one gay educator described “monitoring one's teaching behavior, and policing oneself for evidence of homosexuality, lest a colleague, parent, or principal deduce our sexual persona for us” (king, 2004, p. 126). on the other hand, some lesbian, gay, and bisexual educators discuss the importance of sharing their sexual orientation as a means of serving as a role model for sexually diverse students, maintaining their own psychological well-being, and as a response to homophobia and biphobia experienced within schools (gray, 2013). despite the promise of sexually diverse role models, decisions about coming out are complex, and lesbian, gay, and bisexual teachers tend to spend a great deal of mental and emotional effort considering and managing these decisions (ferfolja & hopkins, 2013). challenges around coming out decisions are compounded for preservice teachers, whose professional identities are still developing (benson, smith, & flanagan, 2014). preservice teachers spend a significant amount of time becoming socialized into the education professions (lortie, 1975) and learning norms of the profession, many of which turn out to be heteronormative (gray, 2013). considering the toll on inservice teachers as they make decisions about coming out, teacher educators must consider the unique needs of sexually diverse preservice teachers and engage in what benson (2010) calls “queer-care” (p. 13). supporting sexually diverse individuals in teacher preparation programs is an essential component of providing classroom teachers who are role models for sexually diverse youth (macgillivaray, 2008) and who foster students’ understanding of sexual and gender diversity (melillo, 2003; rofes, 2000). in an attempt to inform sexually diverse preservice teachers and the teacher educators who prepare them for the classroom, this article addresses the following questions: in what ways have lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers experienced heteronormativity? how has heteronormativity shaped their anticipated professional practices? in what ways are sexually diverse participants prepared to queer professional practices? review of literature content related to sexual diversity has been strikingly absent from teacher preparation. for example, a content analysis of eight of the most popular foundations of education textbooks found that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (lgbt) topics were rarely included in these textbooks. when the topics were included, textbook authors pathologized non-heterosexual identities and positioned lgbt individuals as victims (macgillivray & jennings, 2008). similarly, an examination of 41 syllabi from multicultural courses within teacher preparation and interviews with 80 instructors of multicultural courses demonstrated that lgbt topics are often absent from multicultural coursework in teacher preparation. when they are addressed, it is in “decontextualized ways that mask heteronormativity” (gorski, davis, & reiter, 2013, p. 224). gorski and colleagues noted that when compared to other forms of diversity, sexual orientation (when included) was far less likely to be discussed through a critical lens or to be addressed through specific readings. instead, sexual orientation was included in discussions of bullying or general oppression, a phenomenon that has been noted by other scholars as well (e.g. sadowski, 2010). in considering the climate of teacher preparation programs for lgbt preservice teachers, horn et al. (2010) evaluated 57 teacher preparation programs across the state of illinois for their “inclusion of lgbtq-related course content, attitudes toward gender identity and sexual responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 3 orientation, and their ability to teach about lgbtq lives and communities” (p. 70). of these, 72% received a failing grade. further, conversations around lgbt issues tend to privilege lesbian and gay identities over bisexual identities, leading to what rodriguez (2016) calls “bisexual erasure” (p. 169). due to binegativity and biphobia, bisexuality has become largely invisible in schools (elia, 2010). asexuality is similarly absent from any discussion of lgbt topics in teacher preparation, with most mentions of asexuality and teachers referring to the de-sexualization of teachers, due to fear of teachers’ bodies (e.g. johnson, 2006; mallozzi, 2014; sinclair & reece, 2016), instead of discussing asexuality as a unique sexual orientation (durães, martins, & borralho, 2016). while many teacher educators do agree that anti-homophobia and anti-heterosexist content should be included in teacher preparation, they rarely actually do so for a variety of reasons: (1) they feel that other identities or areas of difference are more pressing to discuss, (2) they view sexual orientation as beyond the scope of primary education and therefore irrelevant for early childhood and elementary preservice teachers, and/or (3) they anticipate resistance from preservice teachers (robinson & ferfolja, 2008). in the rare examples of teacher preparation that addresses anti-heterosexism, anti-homophobia/biphobia, and anti-heteronormativity, the focus remains on developing heterosexual preservice teachers as allies for lgbt youth and helping these teachers unpack their heterosexual privilege (e.g. clark, 2010; vavrus, 2009; zacko-smith & smith, 2013). despite the importance of preparing heterosexual allies, teacher educators must also attend to preparing sexually diverse preservice teachers for the classroom. very few researchers have focused primarily on lgbtqa+ preservice teachers’ experiences. benson and flanagan (2014) raised “queer student teachers’ concerns” (p. 384) as they investigated a series of workshops intended to prepare lgbt preservice teachers to enter schools. all nine queer participants reported feeling better equipped to transition from coursework to the field after engaging in the workshops. these results demonstrate the potential teacher educators have for specifically impacting sexually diverse preservice teachers. dejean (2010), himself a gay teacher educator, reported on his interactions with a lesbian preservice teacher, calling for queer teacher educators to support queer preservice teachers through “courageous conversations” (p. 233) about queer lives within educational settings. highlighting the absence of disclosure of non-heterosexual identities in schools, he described the risk that gay and lesbian educators take in talking to each other about their experiences and the importance of doing so. he contended that queer teacher educators are best equipped for these conversations, due to their own experiences in heteronormative educational settings. given such limited research on sexually diverse preservice teachers, it is unclear how heteronormativity has shaped their professional aspirations and how teacher educators of varying sexual orientations can best support sexually diverse preservice teachers. this article addresses that gap through exploring how preservice teachers who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual have experienced heteronormativity; how heteronormativity shapes their anticipated professional practices; and the extent to which they are prepared to queer these practices. theoretical framework to understand the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers in schools, it is important to recognize those schools as social institutions that are shaped by heteronormative societies (mallozi, 2014). institutions, such as education, medicine, and the law, establish certain ways of being in the world as acceptable and “normal,” while naming all other ways of being as deviant (foucault, 1978). michael warner (1993) described the core of responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 4 heteronormativity as viewing heterosexuality as the “very model of inter-gender relations, as the indivisible basis of all community, and as the means of reproduction, without which society wouldn’t exist” (p. xxi). not only does heteronormativity privilege heterosexuality over other sexual orientations; rather, heteronormativity erases all other orientations. within schools and classrooms, heterosexuality is reinforced through classroom discourse, especially teachers’ tendency to ignore homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic slurs (kosciw, greytak, giga, villenas, & danischewski, 2015); gendered locker rooms, bathrooms, and extracurricular activities (carrera & depalma, & lameiras, 2012; wilkinson & pearson, 2009); and school policies, which frequently omit sexual orientation from anti-bullying or harassment policies, and often reinforce heteronormative gender divisions (payne & smith, 2010). heteronormativity also cultivates the belief that teachers are heterosexual unless they state otherwise. further, any statements of non-heterosexuality may be viewed as deviant at worst and an aberration at best (foucault, 1978). an alternative to heteronormativity is queer theory, which troubles dichotomies within gender and sexuality (piontek, 2006). queer theory is particularly useful for this study, which not only includes individuals who identify as lesbian and gay, but also those who identify as asexual, “the fourth sexual orientation” (durães, martins, & borralho, 2016, p. 735), and bisexual, an orientation that in itself leads to disrupting binaries (nathanson, 2009). queering teacher education “is not about reifying rigid notions of a normative dichotomous sexuality between hetero and gay/lesbian, but instead focuses on deconstructing and decentering normative heterosexuality” (vavrus, 2009, p. 384). methodology this research used qualitative methodology to understand the experiences and professional aspirations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers. such methodology allowed for exploring the meaning participants have constructed from their experiences and identities (merriam, 1998). participants participants were recruited through emails to all students within the school of education at a regional university as well as lgbtqa+ listserves on campus and announcements in education courses. seven preservice teachers consented to participate. table 1 includes pseudonyms for the participants as well as sexual identity, area for which they are pursuing teacher certification, and ethnicity. table 1 participants pseudonym sexual identity certification area race/ethnicity kelly lesbian elementary and special education white samantha lesbian elementary education white matt gay special education white rudy bisexual elementary education black doug gay elementary education white alyssa bisexual elementary education white holly asexual special education white responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 5 data sources through engaging in a focus group interview, which can be particularly useful in understanding shared experiences of marginalized groups (fielding, 1993), participants were able to co-construct meaning from their collective identities as they relate to schools (munday, 2006). the focus group interview protocol (see appendix a) queried their current levels of outness, anticipated outness as teachers, and experiences that shaped their thinking. given inservice lgbt teachers’ heavy focus on outness within the research on lgbt teachers (e.g. connell, 2012; endo, reece-miller, & santavicca, 2010; gray, 2013), outness was a logical starting point for the focus group. in the second part of the focus group interview, preservice teacher read a list of advice from inservice lgbtqa+ teachers (gathered as part of a related research project and found in the appendix b) and responded to their advice. given assertions that preservice teachers have little access to lgbtqa+ inservice teachers as role models (benson, smith, & flanagan, 2014; dejean, 2010), it was important to connect preservice gay, lesbian, bisexual, and asexual teachers to the experiences their inservice counterparts. the focus group was audio-recorded and transcribed, and the transcript was sent to all participants for member checking. a follow up email was sent one month later to ask participants to contribute additional thoughts following the focus group and inviting them to participate in follow up interviews. two participants (matt and alyssa) responded to the email with additional thoughts, and six participated in follow up interviews (samantha abstained), for the purposes of member checking, further exploring themes from the focus group interview, and probing individual experiences and aspirations. (see appendix c for follow-up interview protocol.) these interviews were also audio-recorded and transcribed. data analysis transcripts from the focus group interview and follow up interviews were analyzed through a queer lens, looking for statements of deviance (defined as anyone saying something is not appropriate or is abnormal), normalcy (what is typical or normal, particularly in relation to teachers and/or sexual orientation), and queer (points of resistance and possibility, subverting the normal/deviant binary). this line-by-line analysis started with the focus group interview and proceeded to the individual interviews, in the order in which they were conducted. a list of data points (participants’ statements) was created for deviance, normalcy, and queer. inductive themes were developed from the combined lists and data were coded according to theme using a constant comparison method (lincoln & guba, 1985). initial themes included coming out vs. being out, heteronormative expectations, outness as binary, socio-political climate of schools, double consciousness (how am i being perceived), teacher as role model, safe/unsafe as binary, and laws as barometer of lgbtqia+ safety. from these themes, three categories (merriam, 1998) were developed: outness, safe spaces, and teacher as role model. an additional form of data analysis was developing reconstructed life stories (rosenthal, 1993) from each participant based on their comments during the focus group. these are included in appendix d to allow participants to speak for themselves about their sexual identities. this is particularly important because language around sexual orientation is contested, fluid, and continually changing. responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 6 positionality of the researcher the researcher’s identities informed data collection, including interactions with participants, and data analysis. in considering the “role of [her] own and others’ racialized positionality and cultural ways of knowing” (milner, 2007, p. 338), it is important to state that the researcher identifies as lesbian, cis-female, and white. she has taught in the states of pennsylvania, nevada, and connecticut at the elementary, high school, and university level respectively. she informed all participants (and potential participants) of her sexual orientation and teaching experience. findings three key themes were identified through analysis of focus group and follow up interviews: outness, safe spaces, and teacher as role model. wanting (and fearing) to be out preservice teachers experienced heteronormative expectations in schools, which rudy, bisexual, captured by explaining, “i think most people assume that teachers are heterosexual ‘my husband, my kids’ or in terms of a male teacher, ‘my wife and my kids.’ i think that’s automatically an assumption that people make.” these heteronormative expectations created the need for participants to decide the extent to which they would be out, as previously voiced by inservice lgbt teachers (connell, 2012; gray, 2013). kelly, a lesbian, shared her experiences doing fieldwork in schools, “[other teachers] just assume i’m straight. they’ll ask me questions about my boyfriend and stuff. i just kind of let it slide.” participants acknowledged that coming out decisions are a unique burden for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual teachers. kelly stated, “you have to think about how much of your life you want to share. but if you’re straight, then you don’t have to think about it. you can share all of your life, because it’s acceptable in the greater society.” participants expressed a desire to be out when they become classroom teachers, with authenticity being a key motivator. while inservice lgbt teachers tend to bifurcate the self into personal and professional (endo, reece-miller, & santavicca, 2010; ferfolja & hopkins, 2013), participants envisioned a more unified self. matt, gay, explained, “ideally, you should be who you are in life.” they also talked about being out as easier, as samantha, lesbian, shared, “i think that being honest from the start for me, would probably be the best thing. just right from the get-go rather than having to hide and then come out.” these participants accepted the “coming out imperative” (rasmussen, 2004, p. 144) that is pervasive in educational research and lgbtqa+ advocacy organizations. while rasmussen (2004) argues that resisting coming out is an equally valid choice that can be used strategically for political, ethical, and pedagogical reasons, participants felt that being out was an essential component of their ideal teaching practices and identities. participants suggested that being married might make being out easier, because of their perception that marriage legitimized relationships. alyssa, bisexual, said, “i think if i was single, i probably wouldn’t bring it up. but i think if was married, i think i would certainly have less of a problem talking about it. i feel like it might have more power behind the statement.” maintaining relationship status as a precursor for coming out was particularly problematic for holly, who identified as asexual, “if i were to get married, some people would say that invalidates my sexuality. and that i’m actually just straight pretending to be on the spectrum or god knows what.” alyssa, bisexual, responded to holly, “it’s the same for bi people. you can be in a relationship with a woman for as long as you like, but as soon as you’re in a relationship with a man again, responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 7 then you’re not part of the [lgbt] community.” for some, mentioning a same-gender spouse would constitute coming out, but for others this particular coming out strategy was impossible. kelly, lesbian, identified particular challenges for single individuals who identify as lgbtqa+, “that’s a big problem i have when i think about coming out in schools and at my work, is that i’m not in a relationship with anybody. and i haven’t been. people don’t take [sexual orientation] as seriously or don’t have as much belief about it if you are not [in a relationship].” kelly’s, alyssa’s, and holly’s points raise the problem of homonormativity (duggan, 2002), that is the assumption that all queer people are (or wish to be) in long-term relationships with members of the same gender. when asked about how much they think about coming out and the ways they will be out in their professional lives, kate, who is bisexual, exclaimed, “a lot!!” all participants reported having thought about how out they want to be and talking about being, “nervous,” “worried,” and “awkward.” despite widespread interest in being out, there was significant fear. samantha, lesbian, explained further, “you want to be honest and out, but there’s always going to be those people that don’t accept it.” professional coming out decisions had been complicated for some preservice teachers by negative responses, primarily from family, sending the message that nonheterosexuality is deviant. rudy, bisexual, shared, “my mom is more accepting that my dad, but it also just makes me think what is it going to be like when i’m out in the real world and in a profession where it may come up.” holly, asexual, stated, “the first time my mom suspected that i was bisexual, she just kind of beat me, so i’ve been pretending to be as heterosexual as possible since then.” participants made a distinction between coming out and being out. samantha, lesbian, captured this in stating her desire “just [to] live rather than having a come out moment.” kelly, lesbian, suggested, “if someone asked, i would definitely not lie. but unless it’s something that comes up or someone asks me, i would not be out.” being out was passive, relying on others to know about preservice teachers’ sexual orientation or to ask. coming out, on the other hand, was a transgressive (i.e. queer) act. in a follow up email, alyssa, bisexual, shared, “i recognize the importance and significance of my nervousness and of the act of our coming out, not just for ourselves, but for our students, our community and our culture at large. not being open with a community i intend to be an active participant in is something i cannot bear.” coming out and being out were complex matters that were central to participants’ hopes, dreams, and fears related to becoming teachers. finding and establishing safe spaces normalization of heterosexuality and positioning lgbtqa+ identities as deviant caused participants to view some spaces as safe for individuals with non-normative sexual orientations and other spaces as unsafe. rudy, bisexual, said, “not to say i don’t feel comfortable talking about my personal life, but just making sure that it’s a safe space to do so.” a recent survey of school climate for lgbtq students found that 59.5% of respondents felt unsafe because of their sexual orientation (kosciw, greytak, zongrone, clark, & gruong, 2018). this survey, like much of the current research, focused on safety for queer students in k-12 schools, not their queer teachers, yet participants suggested that teachers and preservice teachers have similar fears related to safety. participants felt that some schools would be safe environments for lgbtqa+ teachers to be out, but suggested that many were not safe. their sentiments reflected findings that inservice lgbt teachers are greatly impacted by “schooling micro-cultures” (ferfloja & hopkins, 2013), which include the extent to which diversity is valued in a school. participants interpreted religious responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 8 schools and those in conservative areas as being unsafe. doug, gay, explained, “i fear potential backlash from parents who are religious. i am so intent on teaching in urban environments, where there is such stigma about being lgbt within the black and latino communities. i would not want my job to be threatened.” similarly, alyssa, bisexual, shared, “during my student teaching, my mentor had prayer meetings every morning in her class right before the students would come in, which led me to believe that she was a very conservative person. i was very afraid to come out to her because of that.” participants also used laws regarding marriage equality and employment nondiscrimination as indicators of safety for lgbtqa+ individuals. an additional indicator of safety was other out lgbtqa+ teachers in a school. kelly, lesbian, explained, “if there are already teachers that are lgbtq and already out, that will make it easier. but sometimes you can get a feel just for how conservative it is. and you feel like if you said something, you would be looked at differently. that would be your identifier for the rest of your time working there.” when normalization of heterosexuality was already interrupted, participants felt safer. similarly, inservice teachers feel safer coming out when there are other lgbtqa+ teachers at their schools (bower-phipps, 2017). in terms of impact on their practices, participants talked about only seeking employment in schools and communities where they would feel safe being out. rudy, bisexual, reflected, “i want to be out, more out. that’s just what i want to do. so i feel like i would have to a bit more research about where i’m applying and the surrounding area.” they also prioritized making their classrooms safe spaces for students. holly, asexual, shared, “in high school i wasn’t out, but i knew there were safe spaces. the gsa [gay/straight alliance] was also a safe space, and all of that helped me to connect to my sexuality more and to feel that safety. i want all students to feel that good. they need a safe space just as much.” some felt that coming out was an important part of creating safe spaces. overall, creating safe spaces was a matter of disrupting heteronormativity through embracing other possibilities for sexual orientation and gender expression. queer teacher as “perfect” role model? participants talked about coming out and creating safe spaces through the strongly held belief that teachers are role models. for example, kelly, a lesbian, shared, “i think i would always want to come out just for the students in my classroom. just for anyone who is feeling the same way, so they know that there’s other people and that they’re safe.” participant suggested that the stakes were high to be a positive role model and not “deviant,” yet they also suggested that queer role models could be particularly powerful. they felt that teachers were held to a different standard than other people because of being role models. alyssa, bisexual, explained, “i think the culture around education has made us feel like teachers are expected to be even better, perfect human beings than the average regular person.” when asked during a follow up interview what people expected of teachers, doug, gay, responded, “to live perfect lives. don’t drink, don’t do anything risqué, conform to society’s view of normal adult.” doug’s notion reflects king’s (2004) experience of self-monitoring and policing as a gay educator. in anticipating being role models, some participants talked about keeping teaching identities and sexual identities separate, a strategy adopted by many inservice teachers (endo, reece-miller, & santavicca, 2010; ferfolja & hopkins, 2013). rudy, bisexual, said, “it’s almost like school and teaching is the only way people view teachers. it’s like teachers don’t have a life outside of school.” participants feared that some parents would feel that lgbtqa+ identities were not positive role models for children. matt, gay, described this as, “the fear of parents, that you’re responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 9 imposing yourself on their children in your ideology and how you live your life and how that would influence their children.” participants feared that non-normative sexual orientation would become “your identifier” in interacting with students and their families. kelly, lesbian, explained, “you’re not a teacher to them, you’re just a gay person.” doug, gay, advised, “i think in your professional environment, your identifier first and foremost should be your work. i think you should focus on your work at first.” participants were aware that the separation of teaching and sexual identities only applied to non-heterosexual teachers. mallozi (2014) suggested that teachers are told there is a “right kind of personal life” (p. 197) for teachers to have. matt, gay, explained that this is unique to the teaching profession because teachers are role models, “it kind of does seem like inequality. being a teacher, you’re held to such a different standard than if i were just an accountant. because then if i was gay and my co-worker didn’t like it, i would be like, ‘whatever. okay, you do your thing, but we’re accountants.’” in thinking about their classroom practices, participants’ belief in teachers as role model meant vigilance around waiting for the right moment to come out. alyssa, bisexual, reflected, “i would want to be considered a good teacher. and then probably within a year or so depending on the community, i would bring it up. i would want to be proud of who i am. i just wouldn’t do it right away, so that you could be accepted on your merit first.” they were well aware that this was a dilemma not faced by heterosexual teachers. kelly, lesbian, said, “i think queer teachers are even held to a higher standard. because if you’re a straight teacher and you’re talking about your husband or your wife, no one’s questioning that. no one’s wondering if it’s inappropriate in the classroom for you to talk about that.” she continued, “at the same time it’s really personal. so there’s more risk of getting hurt.” in viewing themselves as role models because they were sexual minorities, participants queered the notion of teacher as role model. kelly, lesbian, talked about the importance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual teachers as role models, because of the dearth of sexually diverse teachers, “i’ve been in a good 4 or 5 schools and school systems, and i’ve never seen a teacher that’s out. and it’s kind of crazy.” matt, gay, suggested, “being teachers in a power position that students look up to, gay teachers should be represented and students can ident ify with if they’re going through it.” in a follow up email, alyssa, bisexual, shared her vision of herself as a queer role model. i want to be a role model. i want to teach tolerance and acceptance. i want kids to know it's ok to be who you are and to love who you love, and i want future generations of lgbt teachers to feel nonchalant about sharing their romantic orientation and their nontraditional families with their schools. i am growing in confidence as a teacher and i am holding onto my faith that my passion for education will be recognized and that i will be loved by my students and accepted and respected by my peers no matter what. participants took their perceived responsibilities as role models seriously. while they viewed themselves as important role models owing to sexual orientation, they feared that colleagues, students, and students’ families would not. discussion the preservice teachers in this study experienced heteronormativity that shaped their anticipated professional practices. participants were impacted by assumptions that they were heterosexual, and they sometimes experienced negative responses in sharing their sexual orientations. further, the absence (or invisibility) of lgbtqa+ teachers in their own school experiences reinforced their interpretation of schools as heteronormative institutions and left them responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 10 feeling that they lacked examples of being a teacher and an lgbtqa+ individual. even before entering their own classrooms, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers felt the same sense of marginalization and of their identities being made invisible as experienced by inservice lgbt teachers (ferjfola & hopkins, 2013). their experiences with heteronormativity established a duality in preservice teachers’ anticipated professional practices, which included both participants’ vision for teaching and the ways they anticipated this vision being muted by heteronormativity within schools. while they wanted to be out as teachers, participants were sometimes afraid to do so or were unable to envision being out unless they were partnered. their experiences with heteronormativity caused preservice teachers to carefully weigh coming out decisions, an experience also shared by inservice lgbt teachers (endo, reece-miller, & santavicca, 2010; gray, 2013). like inservice teachers, they expected their decisions to be shaped by school contexts (connell, 2012). heteronormativity forced preservice teachers to consider safety as they considered where they would feel physically and emotionally safe being out as teachers. physical and psychological safety has also been a priority for inservice teachers in selecting employment (bower-phipps, 2017; hardie, 2012). participants committed to creating safe spaces for their own students in the midst of heteronormative environments, reflecting inservice lgbt teachers’ assertions that they can “develop a curriculum and a classroom climate that will foster understanding and even generate social change among colleagues, parents, and students” (melillo, 2003, p. 1) through disclosing their sexual orientation. participants planned to be role models, but they were not entirely sure how to do that in the face of the heteronormativity they had experienced. they viewed themselves as ideal role models, but they feared that students’ families and school administrators would expect teachers to either be heterosexual or not to discuss or allude to their sexual orientation. to some extent, participants had a queer vision: they wanted to be out, expanding notions of who can and should be a teacher; to create safe spaces in their classrooms as an antidote to the heteronormativity they had experienced; and to serve as role models not only as teachers but also as lgbtqa+ individuals. despite this queer vision, heteronormativity prevented them from feeling that they could fully queer norms for teachers. they recognized the challenges in bringing together what they viewed as society’s notion of a good teacher and their own sexual identities. further, they seemed to think that there was an appropriate time and place for everything, particularly discussing non-normative sexualities. implications perhaps what lgbtqa+ preservice teachers need to learn from teacher educators, instead of what the appropriate time and place is for any indictors or discussion of non-normative sexuality, is how to be freed from the notions of appropriateness, normalcy, and ordinariness. teacher educators must continue to queer pedagogy and curriculum within teacher preparation and empower lgbtqia+ preservice teachers to engage in what dejean (2007) described as “critical self-awareness and radical honesty” (p. 70). this begins by including discussions of sexual orientation, heterosexism, homophobia, and biphobia within teacher preparation programs (robinson & ferfolja, 2008). asexuality and bisexuality are particularly absent from teacher preparation, yet including these sexual orientations serves to queer the homo/hetero binary (durães, martins, & borralho, 2016; nathanson, 2009) zacko-smith and smith (2010) provide several examples of queering pk-12 pedagogy that can inform teacher educators’ practices as well: including books that portray non-heterosexual responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 11 characters; disrupting the notion of certain colors, toys, and materials as intended for boys or girls; and avoiding language that reinforces hierarchical binaries of male-female, gay-straight. in extrapolating these few examples to teacher education, we can include queer literature in children’s and young adult literature courses; name and disrupt binary gender stereotypes as we discuss young children’s play; and critique language and messaging from schools that only acknowledge binary gender and heterosexual family structures. another example of queering teacher education pedagogy is to guiding preservice teachers through naming the norms established through school practices and through the preservice teachers’ own experiences and then queering those norms to create space for difference (bower & sature, 2011; draper, hernandez, wimmer, & rosborough, 2017). regardless of the specific practices, queering teacher education must address the structures that establish heteronormativity, making visible multiple genders and sexualities and inviting preservice teachers to reflect on their own complicity in heteronormativity and empowering preservice teachers to imagine possibilities within and beyond gender and sexuality (vavrus, 2008). not only does queering teacher preparation establish teacher education programs as safe spaces for sexually diverse individuals and prepare sexually diverse preservice teachers to interpret (and disrupt) the institutional structures that establish heteronormativity, but it also grows allies. developing heterosexual preservice teachers as allies is essential to preparing them to work with diverse student populations (clark, 2010). conditions of the study given the qualitative design of this study, the positionality of the researcher and certain conditions of the study shaped the findings. namely, only one participant was an individual of color. this not only limited the stories told within these findings, but it also reinforced what some scholars have criticized as the centrality of whiteness within lgbtqia+ and queer studies and communities (e.g. duggan, 2002; rosenburg, 2017; ward, 2008). likewise, teacher preparation tends to center whiteness and white perspectives (e.g. miller & endo, 2007; sleeter & thao, 2007). individuals who identify as lgbtqia+ and have another marginalized identity, such as race, are likely to experience multiple forms of discrimination and harassment (stones & glazzard, 2019). hearing the perspectives and experiences of lgbtqia+ preservice teachers of color is essential. an additional condition of the study was that participants had minimal experience in schools outside of their own experiences as students. their understanding of how heteronormativity impacts teachers was based on their experiences as students and their conjecture rather than on lived experience as student teachers or teachers within schools. they have yet to be socialized into the profession (lortie, 1975). additional research could follow preservice teachers from their teacher preparation programs through teacher induction. conclusion ultimately, participants in this study share a dream of teaching kids that, “it's ok to be who you are and to love who you love.” through empowering lgbtqia+ preservice teachers, queering teacher education curriculum, and developing allies among straight preservice teachers and teacher educators, teacher education can support this dream. responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 12 references benson, f. j. 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(2013). recognizing and utilizing queer pedagogy: a call for teacher education to reconsider the knowledge base on sexual orientation for teacher education programs. multicultural education, 20(3/4), 74. responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 15 appendix a interpretive focus group interview protocol the following questions will be asked prior to sharing data from the inservice teacher interviews: 1. please share your name, your major, your sexual identity, gender identity, and race/ethnicity. 2. what do you hope to teach? where would your ideal teaching job be? 3. how would you describe your level of outness at this point? 4. how much time have you spent thinking about the ways in which you will be out in your professional life? 5. if you had to decide at this point, in what ways would you be out in your professional life? 6. in what ways, if any, do you think your coming out decisions will be impacted by where you teach? 7. what other factors might impact your levels of outness? 8. what have people said to you about how out you should be in your professional lives? the following questions will be asked after the data from teacher interviews are shared: 1. what questions do you wish you could ask these teachers? 2. what do you think accounts for the variation between the teachers’ levels of outness? 3. how do their stories shape your own thoughts about being out in the classroom? 4. what else would you like to say about these teachers or about being out in the classroom that i have not asked? 5. would you be willing to participate in a follow up interview? responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 16 appendix b advice from inservice lgbt teachers it’s not that you’re a gay teacher. you’re a teacher. if it gets brought up, go ahead and educate a student if you feel like it’s suitable. make sure you know what protections you have in the state you’re going to. i looked up my specific district and “fired for being gay.” that might sound a little paranoid, but i found several youtube videos of several educators, so i realized that it was a real possible threat to my employment. if you’re still single, look into what kind of community there is. i end up driving to [nearest big city] for most of my lgbt community. whatever they decide to disclose about their identity, disclose or not disclose and for whatever reason, is completely valid and doesn’t make them less queer. i think that sometimes people just need to hear that their decisions and identities are valid, because sometimes the world implies that they are not valid. but they always are. i found it helpful to not just come right out. get the lay of the land and see how things progressed from there. a lot of people had already met my wife by the time they were like, “oh, you two are married and we like you, so it’s okay.” they have to decide they like you before they’re okay with your lifestyle. you have to know the community you’re serving. make sure that you research the community. if they’re not comfortable with you, you’re probably not going to be comfortable there. they have to be aware of their surroundings and take the temperature of the place. for each person, how out they are is a very personal decision. some people might really need to be out and wouldn't be very comfortable in a situation where they couldn’t be at least somewhat out, whereas some people don't need to be out in their professional life. i think just being aware of themselves and their surroundings would be the best advice i could give. try to make sure that your classroom is a safe space for anyone—students at school, other teachers. if you don’t want to be out, make sure that your classroom is a safe space. and if you are out, make sure it’s a safe space for lgbt people and everyone else. if you feel comfortable, try to take it up with administration, try to get anti-discrimination, anti-bullying programs pushed through. don’t have a chip on your shoulder. there are a lot of bitter, bitter, agenda driven sexual minority individuals, but when you enter the classroom, you need to drop it. you can do your activism in so many other ways. individuals who identify outside of the heteronormative slot have an interesting opportunity to impact some students in a way that a straight teacher would not be able to, but i would say be very, very, very, very careful. because in a public k-12 education system, you are vulnerable in so many ways. be careful who you become close with. watch your back. pick your friends carefully. if people can find things to use against you, they will do it. look carefully at the district’s policies regarding people with differences, whether those are visible or invisible differences. i think that it’s a lot harder to be out in districts that are more homogenous. responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 17 i wish i had some [advice], but i’m still in this position myself. looking at it from an outside perspective, i want to be like, “be you! you can be who you are and people will accept you, because they love you.” but i think that’s a little hypocritical, because i don’t have the courage to come out to everyone. if you’re really strong in your identity and you know who you are and you know sharing that part of who you are with your children is a non-negotiable, you want to be sure that you do it in a way that’s respectful of the school community. if you’re really hoping to have that experience, talk to your coopering teacher when you’re student teaching. then you can have a precursor conversation before you’re part of the job market. if you’re a person that needs a really strong community around you, you probably want to look at schools that are in urban settings, because there’s going to be a larger community in that setting. if you find yourself in a place where you know you’re the only person that identifies as lgbtq and you feel really alone, you have to look at yourself as a pioneer in the work. your voice is really important and the work you’re doing is really important and you will impact people. remember that you can’t tell your students to be proud of who they are if you can’t be proud of yourself. test the water a little bit. it’s easier to come out to your co-workers first. you don’t have to come out to students. it’s a process. i’m making progress, and it’s okay. it doesn’t make you a bad teacher or a bad person if you’re not totally comfortable being out. we live in a world that isn’t perfect. they don’t always accept us. but hopefully if you’re in a good district that supports you, then hopefully you will be comfortable. i think it’s also helpful to know that there’s other lgbt people that work in the school as well. i say go for it: be a teacher. i don’t see how what they do outside of teaching should affect anything they do in the classroom. keep it quiet as long as you can. let people see how good you are in the classroom. i feel like i always try way harder in the classroom than most, because i feel like i have to combat the fact that i am gay. keep their mouth shut. do their job. don’t let anybody in until you’ve proven yourself as a teacher. if i could take it back, i would have kept it all to myself, probably still today. keep the private private. lock up their social media. sorry to be such a negative person. responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 18 appendix c follow-up interview protocol 1. we talked about expectations for teachers. what do you think people expect of teachers? how does sexual orientation fit into that? 2. in what ways, if any, has sexual orientation been talked about in your education courses? 3. what, if anything, would you want education professors to say about sexual orientation? 4. some people talked about feeling less free to be out when they perceived an environment to be conservative. how would you know that a particular school (other teachers, students’ families, administrators) was a conservative environment? 5. we also talked about concerns teachers have in being out to students’ families, in particular. in what ways, if any, have you experienced being told that your sexual orientation is not acceptable? how, if at all, have you pushed back against that message? 6. one of the next steps for this research is to share findings with education professors. what advice do you have for professors who want to support lgbtqia teacher candidates? 7. what have i not asked that you would like me to know? responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 19 appendix d reconstructed life stories kelly. i’m kelly, i’m a junior. collaborative ed [elementary and special education] and math are my majors. i’m a lesbian and female and white. i want to teach special education in the elementary school. i’m interested in teaching abroad. i’d like to teach english in a non-english speaking country like france. since schools have so much control over their own setting, states have different laws, it’s really going to matter where i go and what school i’m at, the level of outness i would have. or the other way around. it will decide what schools i go to—if i can be out. i’m not very out. mostly just close friends and a few family members [know]. i think about [how out i will be in the classroom] a lot. the schools i’ve interned in have had a lot of conservative teachers, so i haven’t brought it up. where i work now, they just assume i’m straight. they’ll ask me questions about my boyfriend and stuff. i just kind of let it slide. it’s a small room, so if i’m talking the kids can hear it. i don’t think my sexuality is a thing the kids need to know. i think if someone asked, i would definitely not lie. but unless it’s something that comes up or someone asks me, [i wouldn’t say anything]. i think that’s the most important thing, more than your sexuality or you being out, is making sure that your classroom is somewhere that all your students and people who aren’t your students can come and talk. that’s just above all, what i think is important. samantha. i’m samantha. my major is elementary education. i’m a lesbian, i’m female, and i’m white. [i want to teach] little kids. i don’t really know what yet. [i’d like to teach] somewhere in ct. maybe in my hometown… i said i’d like to teach in my hometown, but it kind of makes me think, maybe it would be better to go somewhere and start of new, where you don’t know anyone. you just are who you are and they just figure it out or it just is and just talk about it like it is. i’m out. there are people who aren’t okay with it, but they know. school doesn’t really know. my girlfriend doesn’t go here. i’ve thought about [how out i will be in the classroom] a little bit. it’s hard for me, because my parents don’t accept it. i’m told in my house with my parents, i can’t really talk about it. they say that they tolerate it, but they don't accept it. i’m constantly focusing on the family aspect and being out at home. it’s hard. it’s like inside you want to be honest and out and live, but there’s always going to be those people that don’t accept it. i think if my parents and my family were more accepting, i would be in a completely different situation. even though they know, it’s hard to think about what it’s going to be like when i’m older and teaching. i would just live, i guess, and rather than having a come out moment like i did with my family, i would just let it be and if they know, they know. if not, there’s no reason to make it known. it’s just my life. i want people to just know. i don’t want to have to, i don’t want to say deal with it. but i just want it to be. i just want people to know, like people know whatever. : unfortunately, in my situation, there is going to have to be a coming out. because people aren’t just going to know. if i want them to know, i’m going to have to say, “my girlfriend. my wife.” and i wish that i didn’t have to be like that. i’ll just see how it is. i still have three more years of college. i look at myself, like when i was in high school three years ago and how much i have changed and progressed and how different i’m going to be in three years when i even start student teaching. matt. my name is matt. i’m a special education master’s student. i’m gay and male and white. i don’t know what [i want to teach] yet, but my certification is k-12. i don’t know if i actually want to teach or to further my education, so i don’t know where the next year will take me. [laughing] i have no question mark [about my sexual orientation], just being a very emotional responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 20 man. i’ve heard “tone yourself down” a couple of times. as far as my professional career, everything that’s professional that i’ve already done, i’ve always been out, and never felt limited to talk about my sexuality. when i’m interacting with students, i don’t feel like anyone discussing sexuality, personal life in that way would be appropriate. i don’t feel any pressure to have a come out moment to them, because i don’t feel like a straight teacher should be like, “oh, well me and my girlfriend do this on the weekend.” so i just haven’t worried too much about it. i don’t feel like i need to have a coming out moment with students, but if i was ever explaining a story and i was talking about my boyfriend, i wouldn’t feel inhibited to say, “oh, my boyfriend.” because i think, being teachers in a power position that students look up to, gay teachers should be represented and students can identify with if they’re going through it. but like i said before, i don’t think anyone should really have that kind of connection with their students where they’re talking about too many personal issues, because that doesn’t feel appropriate. i think no matter what, i’m just going to be out. it will be so much easier, and i just don’t have it in me to even try to hide it. but i think, again, working with students, to be a role model yes, and to give information, yes. but i don’t think to talk about my life in that way is appropriate for anyone. teaching, you’re there to teach and to get your job done and not to gossip about your social life. i think a lot with special ed, depending on the age of special ed and the ability, because i work with kids all across. i run into that problem. years ago, when i was not as comfortable, it was easier just to gloss over and keep perpetuating the heteronormativity. it just felt like too detailed a conversation that shouldn’t have been too deep, because of the students we were working with. so i wonder if going into student teaching myself, what that will be like. i feel like knowing the surroundings will allow me to know if i want to work there. i think exploring the state that i would go to, the district, all the way down to the school. just testing the waters, just knowing my surroundings. rudy. my name is rudy. i’m elementary ed major, also liberal studies stem and spanish. i identify as bisexual, i’m a female and i’m black. [i want to teach] just elementary school. i’m thinking more like 2nd or 3rd grade. i’ve had a lot of field placements in the upper grades, and i want to try something different. i’m thinking either ct or ga, so it’s just a matter of being certified here and then transferring the certification there. in ga, they do not have equal rights for lgbt. actually, my girlfriend and i were talking about it. we’ve been together for five years, so are thinking about getting engaged and getting married. i like warm weather, that’s my main reason for moving to georgia. but i’m more than willing to stay in connecticut. i can put up with a little bit of snow or a lot of snow to be comfortable and happy with her. that’s my goal.i’m completely out. my girlfriend used to go here, but now she doesn’t. i’ve thought about [how out i will be in the classroom] a little. my mom is more accepting that my dad, but it also just makes me think what is it going to be like when i’m out in the real world and in a profession where it may come up. i’m trying to think about how i’m going to handle it. i want to be out, more out. that’s just what i want to do. so i feel like i would have to a bit more research about where i’m applying and the surrounding area. i don’t think that’s something i want to hide. i am who i am. accept it or you don’t. doug. i’m doug. i’m an elementary ed and political science major. i identify as gay, male, and white. i’m starting out as elementary, but i want to get my master’s in science ed, so [i’d like to teach] completely science [in] new york city. [i’m] out. i’ve been with my boyfriend for seven years. i’ve thought about how it would impact my professional image, but i don’t really care. i’ve been out since before high school, so i just can’t imagine not being out. but i can understand why people would be resistant. i’m student teaching now, and my colleagues know. the students don’t know. they all ask me questions about my personal life, and i always refer to “my friend” or “my responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 21 roommate.” i went into my [recent job] interview disclosing my orientation in response to a question about diversity and inclusiveness because i felt it was relevant. i feel that once my success as a teacher is established, i would be more comfortable disclosing to students, but i also fear potential backlash from parents who are religious and because i am so intent on teaching in urban environments where there is such stigma about being lgbt within the black and latino communities, i would not want my job to be threatened. i’m fine with being out, but i don’t want that to be my identifier, and i think that causes me to overcompensate in my work. and i'm a hard worker as it is, but i push myself so much more, so that people will look at me as a good teacher and a professional rather than the gay guy who works here. alyssa. hi, i’m alyssa. i am a white bi female. i’m a graduate student teacher. [i want to teach] elementary education. right now i’m student teaching kindergarten and i love it. my dad lives in seattle. i’d like to move closer to him. i’ve been with my girlfriend for three years. most of the people who know us know [i’m bi], or anyone who friends me of facebook. my cooperating teacher found out last weekend, when friended me on facebook. [i think about how out i will be in the classroom] a lot!! i was nervous talking about it in school when i started as a graduate student here, because if felt like so many people in my class were very conservative, very straight. and certainly all of the teachers i’ve worked with seemed to be very conservative people. i have been nervous about bringing it up. i don’t know why it’s been a fear of mine, because i’ve had so many jobs in my life. and i’ve been out for a long time in every other aspect. for whatever reason, public schools it feels like something i should be worried about. and i don’t know if it’s because i don’t remember having any gay teachers as a child, any teachers in school that i ever knew. for me personally, it’s about how much of it do i bring out. because i think it’s not visible on the surface. with some people you can see it the moment you look at them, mannerisms, things like that. i’ve never had any advice from my friends or my family to say what to share or what not to share [in the classroom], which leads to a lot of confusion. i used to wear a rainbow bracelet, and i switched, just because it didn’t go with every outfit. and i have an equal sign and a kid noticed it the other day and i just told him that i just really like equals. i like math a whole lot. i like when things balance out. but little things like that, i wonder what i would put up and what i would have to explain or talk about and what’s appropriate. i think it’s going to be a personal decision no matter what. and i trust myself to make the right decision when the time comes. i feel nervous about coming out because i have never known lgbt teachers in my education experience, because gay was an offensive word throughout my high school years, and because i assume that i am somehow breaking some unwritten ultra-conservative code of conduct that is unfairly expected of all teaching professionals. but i am, and always have been, someone who is honest and open and the thought of hiding the identity of my significant other and not being open with a community i intend to be an active participant in is something i cannot bear. i want to be a role model. i want to teach tolerance and acceptance. i want kids to know it's ok to be who you are and to love who you love and i want future generations of lgbt teachers to feel nonchalant about sharing their romantic orientation and their non-traditional families with their schools. i am growing in confidence as a teacher and i am holding onto my faith that my passion for education will be recognized and that i will be loved by my students and accepted and respected by my peers no matter what. holly. i’m holly. i’m a special education major and an applied mathematics major. i identify as asexual but pan-romantic. i’m female and i am white. i want to teach special ed at the high school level. i would like to teach somewhere in europe eventually. i didn’t start coming out to anyone until college, because it was a new environment where i didn’t know anybody, so i could just be myself, versus when i was in high school. if i said anything, it would automatically get responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 22 back to my parents. i have identified as queer in general since eighth grade, because i didn’t know the word for asexual, and i thought i was bisexual/lesbian. i went through the whole spectrum to find out i was pan-romantic. in high school, because i wasn’t out, but i had the teachers and i knew there were safe spaces. and we had the gsa that was also a safe space, and all of that helped me to connect to my sexuality more and to feel that safety. but my mom, when she found out that it was rumored that i might have been a lesbian, she actually beat me. so i just stopped talking about it completely. i’m like, move as far away as possible and then start coming out, instead of if i worked in my hometown i probably wouldn’t say anything at all. i don’t really talk about [my sexual identity] much in my professional work, because most people don’t know what asexuality is to begin with. so if i mention it, then i just get a waterfall of questions that go after it or they just tell me that asexual isn’t a thing. in my high school, there was representation of different sexualities of teachers. a lot of teachers had pictures of their boyfriends or pictures of their girlfriends, so in my public school at least, it was represented that we had teachers to talk to, from the guidance counselors who were lgbtq as well. inside my classroom, i definitely want to have a safe space sticker and to make it at least known in the community that i’d be a safe teacher to talk to about sexuality, whether their my students or other students. i went through most of high school confused about my sexuality and thinking i was broken because i was asexual, thinking when do people start wanting to become sexual. still hasn’t hit, so i’m like, “this is never going to happen.” but i want to make sure that students, whether they’re special ed or my students, anybody’s students know that my room is a safe space to come and talk to about these type of things. responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 23 author notes laura bower-phipps, ph.d. southern connecticut state university bowerl2@southernct.edu laura bower-phipps is professor of curriculum and learning in the college of education at southern connecticut state university. her research centers on diversity in teacher preparation, including candidates of color in teacher preparation programs, teachers’ efforts to queer early childhood and elementary curriculum, teachers’ diverse sexual and gender identities, and preparing teachers for diverse school contexts. her most current research focuses on teachers’ preferences for racial composition of schools and neighborhoods. mailto:bowerl2@southernct.edu responding to heteronormativity: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and asexual preservice teachers’ dreams and fears current issues in education, 21(1) 24 volume 21, issue 1 april 29, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf volume 9, number 1 february, 2006 issn 1099-839x collaboration between elementary schools and community agencies to reduce violence: can it work? kimberly williams plymouth state university school personnel at seven urban elementary schools in a high poverty area were surveyed to determine if a multi-faceted approach to school violence prevention (including a major emphasis on collaboration between community human service agencies and schools) was successful in reducing indicators of violence (bullying, fighting, gang involvement, and so forth). using the assessment of risk factors survey, during the year prior to implementation 2001 to gather pretest data, and again during the summative year 2004, comparisons were made to determine if these programs had been successful in reducing violence in the schools from the perspective of school personnel. implications for schoolcommunity collaborations will be discussed. as school budgets grow tighter and funding for children’s mental health needs declines, community mental health agencies and schools will need to collaborate to meet the mental health needs of children and their families so that children can be successful in school. can these collaborations work to reduce indicators of violence, improve school safety, and improve mental health of students and their families? what are some of the potential successes? demonstrated successes? what are some of the challenges? this type of collaboration is growing in popularity, and this study attempts to shed some light on some of the aforementioned questions. in 2001 a poor urban school district in new york state received funding from a federal safe schools, healthy students grant. this grant was funded through an unprecedented collaboration among three federal agencies: health and human services, office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, and department of education. the focus of the grant was on mental health and school safety. the grant stipulated that a rather high percentage (10%) should be set aside for evaluation of the program. there was also an emphasis on sustainability of successful programs beyond the lifecycle of the grant. the school district chose 12 schools (7 elementary, 3 middle, and 2 alternative schools) in the poorest neighborhoods of the city – ones with consistently failing test scores and high poverty rates to participate in the project. the focus of this particular study was on the seven elementary schools. community-based human service agencies were selected and assembled based on identified needs of the schools and the objectives of the grant. there were programs designed to address student needs at the universal level—that is all students in a given school. among these were social skills programs such as peaceful people and staff development for faculty in the chosen schools. there were also programs for the most at-risk such as intensive case management, functional family therapy, mentoring, case management and nurses for pregnant and parenting teens, primary mental health program (pmhp for early elementary children involving play therapy), and transitional planning for current issues in education vol. 9 no. 1 students at alternative schools. there were also programs for students in the middle – adventure training for students with members of the police department, truancy programs for truant students, tutoring, anger management, and conflict resolution training. i contracted to examine the impact of the individual programs on each of the schools. i also looked at aggregated data such as all elementary schools, all middle schools, and both alternative schools. the focus on this particular paper is on the impact of the collaboration between schools and community human service agencies on the climate of and violence indicators within the elementary schools. there are three main goals of this paper. the first goal is to explain the nature of this particular collaboration between human service providers and schools serving urban elementary students and families in a high need area— the challenges to its implementation as well as successes. the second is to provide statistical results of the comparison from pre and post-tests that describe the nature of the impact of this collaboration in reducing violence factors. the third is to discuss the widespread implications for educators working to provide services in collaboration with community agencies to reduce violence in schools and communities. literature review the research literature within the past decade has focused on providing evidence of successful violence prevention and intervention programs including classroom-based programs and mental health programs. fewer studies have examined the impact of collaborative relationships between communitybased human service agencies and schools. evidence of successful programs agencies such as the hamilton fish national institute on school and community violence as well as the safe and drug-free schools expert panels have sought to identify programs as having “demonstrated” success or to be “promising” based on a rigorous examination of the research. for example, the latter identified elementary schoolbased intervention and prevention programs such as second step: a violence prevention curriculum as “exemplary.” programs such as peacemakers and peers making peace and aggression replacement training and others were labeled as “promising.” the former identified such programs for elementary programs as teaching students to be peacemakers, kid power and i can problem solve as having demonstrated success. there are research articles available from the websites and program directors of these programs. (more information is available from the safe and drug-free schools and hamilton fish national institute websites). there is a trend toward requiring schools receiving funding to use programs that have had demonstrated success or are at least promising. with this trend has come an increased urgency for programs to “prove themselves worthy” and an increase in the number of research and evaluation studies on programs and their effectiveness. classroom-based social skills programs there has been a great deal of research on the effectiveness of different classroom-based social skill building programs. aforementioned is a short list of such programs, but there are certainly many more. some early programs to establish themselves as effective were the resolving conflict creatively and the second step programs. aber, brown, and henrich (1999) conducted a research on the effectiveness of the resolving conflict creatively program (rccp) that had powerful results of its effectiveness in reducing violence in inner new york city schools. researchers studying the second step program identified factors (e.g., aggression) that were reduced significantly as a result of participation in the program versus those in a control group (grossman et. al., 1997). recently williams (2005) demonstrated the effectiveness of the peaceful people program on building social skills and reducing violence indicators among elementary children when compared to a control group. these are just a few of the myriad of research studies demonstrating success of classroombased programs (more exhaustive lists with information about where to go for further information can be found at the websites listed above). effectiveness of mental health programs in schools while many classroom programs have had demonstrated success in reducing violence in schools, the impact of mental health programs has had less research completed to determine their effectiveness on children in school. not all mental health programs in schools are the same. adelman and taylor (2000) described the different types of relationships between mental health providers in community agencies and within schools. they described recent schoolcommunity collaborations in mental health this way: concern about the fragmented way in which community health, including mental health, and human services are planned and implemented has renewed the 1960s human service integration movement. the hope is to better meet the needs of those served and use existing resources to serve greater numbers and to do so in a more comprehensive, accessible, and costeffective manner. to these ends, collaboration between elementary schools and community agencies to reduce violence: can it work? 3 considerable interest exists in developing strong relationships between school sites and public and private community agencies. as a result, a variety of forms of schoolcommunity collaborations are being tested around the country, including many statewide initiatives. in most cases, the focus is on serving families, which is seen as ensuring benefits to all youngsters in a community (p. 6). adelman and taylor differentiated between different types of relationships between schools and community human service agencies—specifically school-based versus schoollinked services. they make the points that these two strategies differ on two main aspects—where a program is located and who owns it. many schools are beginning to change their relationships with community agencies in these ways—through the creation of school-based or school-linked services. they stated that school-based health centers in this country in the past decade have grown to over 1000. clearly the relationship between schools and human service agencies is changing. but the debate still rages—should schools be responsible for the mental health of their children? some education policy experts like diane ravitch (2004, p. 466) would argue that when schools are “expected to solve all of society’s problems…[they are diverted] from their most basic mission…teaching and learning.” those who are not in favor of schools providing mental health services for children are the first to lobby for cutting services that provide physical or emotional health services to children from school budgets when constraints arise. the most compelling argument to maintain school’s role in mental health is that improving mental health of children improves their academic performance. teleen et al., (2002) found in their study examining the impact of intensive wrap around case management provided by a community service agency to elementary school children that there were significant improvements in the children’s academic performance and school behavior, as well as their social and emotional functioning in general (telleen, kim, steward-nova, maher (2002). they conclude: the model of coordination among the five community mental health agencies, as well as the coordination of the mental health agencies with school social workers and school psychologists positively affects the retention of families in the service delivery system. in addition, this model of coordination positively affects the child’s academic and school functioning as well as social and emotional functioning. the model of collaboration between community mental health agencies and schools to do intensive case management and wrap around services for the most at-risk children described by teleen et al. is quite similar to one of the strategies used in this study. mental health agency personnel collaborated closely with school personnel—particularly those in the mental and physical health fields. functional family therapy was one of the other mental health models that the school district in my study selected for working with this school-aged population and their families. fft was selected because of its demonstrated success in working with children with conduct disorders. in this study, fft was implemented by a community mental health agency. the therapists were trained in the model and they also served as mental health advocates on the schools’ internal teams. henggeler and sheidow (2003) summarized the research on fft and found that in its 30-year history it had demonstrated success in significantly decreasing the recidivism rates of serious, violent juvenile offenders in every study (including longitudinal, randomized, and control group studies). impact of collaborative relationships with schools and community agencies some studies have examined the impact of collaborative relationships between schools and community agencies in reducing school violence. one study looked at the academic impact of such a school-community collaboration. neace, munoz, olson-allen, weber, and johnson, (2003) examined the cognitive (through gpa) and non-cognitive (suspensions, absenteeism, and tardiness) impact of particular community programs on school children. the collaboration included the following programs: smart moves, second step, mentoring, big brothers/big sisters, functional family therapy, multi-systemic therapy, and primary mental health program. their analysis examined the impact of each of these programs on particular cohorts of students in terms of their gpas, suspensions, absenteeism, and tardiness. the authors summarized the following results: data from the selected programs revealed that effects of [the] project… were generally small, but favorable on attendance, tardiness, and disciplinary measures; however, none of the interventions had an impact on academic performance as measured using gpa. higher dosages of interventions were generally associated with more positive effects on non-cognitive measures. (p. 1). this quote lends support to the notion that collaboration between schools and community current issues in education vol. 9 no. 1 service agencies can have some positive impact on student behavior in schools. additional support also comes from buroughs, massey, and armstrong (2002) who found in their longitudinal analysis of reports of students referred to the office for a range of infractions, that violent infractions were reduced over time for students involved in an in-school alternative to suspension program as well as those students involved in an anger management program. armstrong (2002, p. 1) summarized the findings from a collaborative evaluation of the safe schools, healthy students arguing that “it will be necessary to create an array of interventions in schools that are multifaceted and start early in a child’s development, this will promote social and academic competencies in all students. no program by itself is likely to be successful in these efforts, rather the combined efforts of schools, families, and communities will be necessary.” clearly more work needs to be done to determine which efforts and which combination of strategies are most successful in improving the climate, safety, and mental health of students in schools. in conclusion, the current trend in education particularly in high poverty areas, is calling for an increased collaboration between human service agencies and schools to better meet the needs of students and their families. there is a need for more evidence to further examine the challenges and successes of such collaborative programs, and this paper explored such a program. method the collaboration the collaboration examined for this study was funded through a safe schools, healthy students grant that was a three-year project designed to provide services to students, families, and school staff. services included violence prevention programs at the universal, selected, and indicated levels— addressing issues in the family as well as school through the following community-based programs: functional family therapy, hope project (intensive case management), adventures in the classroom (program to build relationships with police), peaceful people (social skill development in the classroom), anger management, truancy program, stop truancy van, community liaisons (to assist with the implementation of the internal teams as a single point of referral for students to agencies), staff development, youth embracing success (yes social skills program), alternatives to violence program (avp), transitional planner (for students placed in alternative education sites returning to their home schools), school-based intervention teams (sbit), primary mental health program (pmhp), family life (including social worker and nurses for pregnant and parenting teens and pre-teens), safe school coaches (to facilitate safe school teams), and a youth mentoring program in the schools. as part of the program, the community liaison and project director, introduced the concept of the “internal team” in schools as a single-point referral mechanism for students receiving services from community agencies. participants and survey a large urban school district in new york state served as the sample for this study. in this particular school district, 70% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. the racial breakdown of the school district was that 47% were african american, 2.5% native american, 7.1% hispanic, 45% were white. seven elementary schools were chosen based on need. the elementary schools that had consistently failing test scores and highest poverty rates were selected for the program. in the beginning of the academic year 20012002, staff members (teachers, administrators and other school personnel) were surveyed using the assessment of risk factors survey (adapted from the oregon school safety survey, sprague, colvin, and irvin, 1995). this instrument was distributed to all school personnel during 2001 as a pre-test to collect baseline data prior to the start of the programs. there were 277 elementary school staff including administrators (n=6), teachers (n=188), counselors (n=8), and other school staff (n=75) who completed the survey. it was distributed in spring 2004 to determine any significant changes since the start of the collaboration between community agencies and schools. at that time there were 8 administrators, 157 teachers, 1 counselor, and 48 other school staff for a total of n=215. school personnel were selected to complete the survey rather than students because students within the 3-4 years of the grant would be changing and the personnel were thought to be more consistent throughout the lifespan of the grant. thus, this group would have a better perspective over time. qualitative data collection observations, interviews, and focus groups with school staff and service providers were also used to provide useful information and feedback about services in the schools, issues with the collaboration, and perceptions of continuing needs. observations were made in the school, during meetings and workshops related to the collaboration, and at agencies serving school. field notes were taken and transcribed with careful attention paid to issues related to the collaboration. in addition, interviews and focus groups were conducted with school and agency personnel, parents, and students involved with the collaboration and/or services. collaboration between elementary schools and community agencies to reduce violence: can it work? 5 interviews and focus groups were recorded and transcribed verbatim. these findings were analyzed for consistent themes and used to identify challenges and successes not provided in the survey data. while statistical significance was important in establishing critical changes between pre-test and post-test, also important were qualitative data from school personnel and agency workers about their challenges and successes with collaboration. qualitative data were gathered from participants in the collaboration process. these data were critical to gaining a better understanding of the perceptions of success and failure of programs and issues around sustainability of services. another important part of the qualitative data collection, was a series of open-ended questions that were asked as a part of the survey. these questions, along with focus groups with internal teams, safe school coaches, student participants in selected programs, interviews with principals, and observations of services comprised the bulk of the qualitative data collection. perhaps the most important part of the qualitative data collection was observations of internal teams. these teams were comprised of all the mental health providers in the school (social worker, school psychologist, and school counselors), the school nurse, an administrator, a teacher and a community liaison and mental health consultant. these team meetings represented the critical juncture where much of the collaboration between schools and community agencies happened. results using information from the assessment of risk factors survey (including open-ended and rating scale data) as well as initial interviews, observations, and discussions with teachers, administrators, and other key personnel, the following strengths and areas of concern were found for the aggregated data for the seven elementary schools: quantitative results table 1 shows the pre-test and post-test mean scores for variables from the assessment of risk factors survey. the largest improvement areas were declines in illegal drug and alcohol use, weapons, vandalism, and crimes at school. there were increases/improvements in collaboration with agencies, mental health services for students, and communication with agencies. variables were aggregated to produce a “total violence” variable. when comparing this from pre-test to post-test using the t-test statistic, there were statistically significant reductions in overall violence. another variable was created that encompassed the variables addressing school climate. there was not a significant difference when comparing this variable from post-test to pre-test. ratings of individual programs school personnel were asked to rate all of the programs in the collaboration on a 4 point scale from “not at all successful” to “very successful.” programs viewed as moderately successful in the spring of 2004 were (had means of 2.5 or higher on a 4 point scale):  internal teams (teams served as a single point of referral to community agencies— had a community liaison on the teams with school mental health workers and administrators)  safe school teams (teams served to design school safety measures with police, students, school personnel, and community agencies and parents with a paid safe school “coach” to facilitate)  student based intervention team (teams of teachers and mental health workers strategizing over in-house ways to address problem behavior and academic problems of students)  primary mental health program (preventative strategy using “play therapy” for identified early elementary children)  staff development (violence prevention, conflict resolution, classroom management, and so forth for staff delivered by community agency personnel) the internal team process of referring students was viewed the most favorably with an expressed need to have a community agency member present on these teams to facilitate collaboration. the safe school teams viewed the coaches in similar ways—that is that they needed them to maintain the integrity of the team. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 1 quantitative results there were a great many important themes that emerged from the qualitative data. however, the following were viewed as the most critical implications for the collaboration. the following is a snapshot of the key areas of concern and challenges to the collaboration: areas of concern. bullying and fighting. despite improvement in these areas, there was still a clearly expressed need to continue to work to reduce bullying and fighting behaviors among students (still had an average response of 2.9 which is nearly “moderately” problematic in the school). classroom management. there was an appreciation for the professional development that occurred as a result of the sshs grant, but there was still an expressed need for more professional development in classroom management. agency workers need for classroom management. some agency workers, having never been trained in classroom management, struggled with managing classrooms of students—particularly since most of the students referred for these classes (e.g., anger management and social skills training) were those children with classroom behavior problems. dangers surrounding the school. outside area surrounding the school was still viewed as dangerous and problematic for students. many students walked to and from school and school personnel were still concerned for their safety. one school proposed the idea of implementing a “walking school bus” program where groups of students would walk together, wear matching shirts/coats, with a “driver” who was an adult in charge of keeping the group safe and making designated “pick ups.” time and funding issues prevented this program from getting off the ground. challenges to collaboration. involvement of school and agency personnel during planning. perhaps one of the most important underlying themes was that many of the key school and agency personnel were not involved in the initial development of the grant. as a large urban district, grant writers were responsible for soliciting input (which they did), but they did not get input from all key stakeholders—likely because of time constraints and deadlines. had the key personnel been brought in to the discussion and planning stages sooner, the would have been more invested in the process and understood the complexities of the grant better. there was a huge learning curve for schools and agencies to even understand the grant. one school administrator remarked at the end of the second year, “i still don’t really understand how the grant works.” despite many workshops and meetings, there was a great deal of confusion about the different services, the referral mechanisms, the reporting paperwork and structures, and funding streams. granted, the this grant was complex, but much of the confusion and frustration cold have been eliminated if essential personnel were involved in the development. turf and resentment. some school personnel working in the mental health fields felt as though they were being told that they could not do their job well enough and that community agencies had to step in to fill the void. this led to some resentment on the part of some mental health workers in the schools. in two elementary schools, mental health providers were downright hostile to the outside mental health workers and did not participate, and in some cases were obstructionist to the process. at one school for example, one school counselor refused to go to meetings. at another school, a counselor would become angry and refuse to make referrals. one school social worker would leave meetings saying things like, “i’m too busy for this!” another counselor confided in me, “i know best how to serve my students…they [agency workers] don’t know what they’re doing.” this was said before any services had even been implemented. agency workers adapt. some community agency workers were unaware of some of the idiosyncratic ways schools work. as a result, many had to adapt curriculum and strategies to meet the needs of schools which led to frustration on the part of the school personnel because this took time. timetables for community agencies (e.g., the work day, vacations, and so forth.) did not coincide with the school calendar and schedule and part of the collaboration involved adapting to these differences. usually since community agencies were seen as having more flexibility than schools, they did much of the adapting—in some cases this meant working during the regular work day and doing home visits in the evening—thus working very long days at very low pay. turnover, burnout, and frustration was high in these positions. for example, in one program (intensive case management), where case managers were on call 24/2 communication breakdown. there were some initial communication problems between school personnel and agency workers that needed some work. despite trying to implement strategies to streamline this communication, each school had to work out the communication strategy that worked best for them. the internal team was designed to be a central point for the communication, and in the schools that embraced this strategy (met regularly, prioritized meetings, followed the protocol, and kept careful track of referrals), this strategy worked collaboration between elementary schools and community agencies to reduce violence: can it work? 7 magically. in schools that resisted this model, the communication was challenging, disjointed, and these schools did not make full use of the services available to them because they could not make appropriate referrals to community agencies or follow up and get feedback in any kind of systematic way. these schools became frustrated and often gave up. power of administrators. the school administrator (principal) had the power to create or destroy a successful collaboration. this school district had a very high principal turnover rate. in schools where the principal was consistent throughout the life of the grant, the collaboration was the most successful. in schools where there was a changing of the guard however, this typically had detrimental effects. in one case, one of the elementary schools that was having great success with the internal team model and the collaboration, had a change of principal. when the new principal came in, he struggled to adapt to his new role and admitted that he had “too much on his plate.” even though he delegated responsibility to his assistant principal, it was made clear that the collaboration was not a priority, and the internal teams and subsequent collaboration deteriorated. adult bullying. bullying behavior is not limited to students, adults used bullying-like behavior too. the project director was an employee of the school district. she was in charge of the budget and reporting from schools and agencies. as a frustrated middle manager, she was given little authority, but was expected to accomplish a great deal. many agency workers and administrators as well as some school administrators and other staff saw her as a notorious bully. she was known to threaten budgets, write threatening letters to withdraw funding to schools, and demand the services that agencies promised. these tactics were frustrating for the collaborators, but viewed as necessary to force compliance with the grant. it was a difficult position for the project director who needed to be a “bulldog” as she was sometimes called to enforce the contracts. money. one of the major objectives of the sshs program was on sustaining programs and the collaboration between schools and agencies beyond the lifecycle of the grant. the expectation was that structures like the internal and safe school teams could continue to function without additional funding, and that agencies and schools could codevelop grants to sustain programs with demonstrated success. unfortunately, a clear and resounding refrain from schools and community agencies was that without funding, the collaboration would not continue. the services would not be able to continue without funding for staff and funding was already challenging to obtain. even structural changes like the internal teams and safe school teams, administrators all agreed in interviews could not continue without oversight from the community mental health agents and liaisons or safe school coaches respectively (which would require funding). most did concede that the structures of the teams could continue, but without the regular participation of community agents, they would cease to be as collaborative or useful. community agents said that without funding, the role of the community liaison and mental health consultant on the internal teams as well as the safe school coaches would no longer exist. funding was viewed as essential to the survival of the collaboration. without it, even structural changes would fail to continue. discussion educational institutions and community agencies providing services to student-aged populations and their families will need to collaborate to reduce violence in schools and in the surrounding communities—particularly in high need, high poverty areas. this study provides evidence that these collaborations can have a positive impact on schools in reducing violence indicators (bullying, fighting, school crime, vandalism, and so forth). programs viewed as particularly successful (e.g., internal and safe school teams) were those that had participation from both community service providers and school personnel. this finding suggests that for a collaboration to be successful, it must be a true investment and participation from both groups. however, some of the challenges to successful implementation such as communication challenges, culture differences between schools and agencies, defining roles and expectations for each, and others need to be addressed before any such collaborative endeavor is undertaken. this study has limitations that are being addressed in future write ups of the data. first, student voices are not addressed here. student perspectives were captured as a part of this larger study and will be discussed in later work. also, there was no randomization or control groups to determine the impact as compared to a non-treatment comparison. this was successfully attempted in a follow up study with the universal program peaceful people that had very positive outcomes (see williams 2005). this paper represents a fraction of the larger study that will be addressed in later papers. despite these shortcomings, and the aforementioned challenges to collaboration, these elementary data are compelling enough to suggest that collaboration between schools and community agencies can be successful in reducing violence in schools—particularly some of the most troubling current issues in education vol. 9 no. 1 aspects of violence plaguing schools today (illegal alcohol and other drug use, bullying, fighting, weapon carrying, and crimes at school). there are many challenges and possible pitfalls to creating effective collaborative relationships between community service agencies and schools, but this study provides evidence that in then end, it is worth it. references aber, j.l., brown, j.l., henrich, c.c. (1999). teaching conflict resolution: an effective school-based approach to violence prevention. research brief. columbia university; new york, new york: center for children in poverty. adelman, h.s. & taylor, l. (2000). promoting mental health in schools in the midst of school reform. the journal of school health, 70 (5), 171-178. armstrong, k.h. (2002). symposium discussion . university of south florida, tampa, research and training center for children’s mental health. national institute on disability and rehabilitation research. annual conference proceedings: a system for care for children’s mental health: expanding the research base. march 3-6, 2002. buroughs, m. massey, o.t., armstrong, k.h. (2002). results of a longitudinal school based intervention study. . university of south florida, tampa, research and training center for children’s mental health. national institute on disability and rehabilitation research. annual conference proceedings: a system for care for children’s mental health: expanding the research base. march 3-6, 2002. grossman, d., et al. (1997). the effectiveness of a violence prevention curriculum among children in elementary school. journal of the american medical association, 277, 1605–1611. hamilton fish national institute on schools and community violence. programs with demonstrated success. retrieved december 2004 from: www.hamfish.org/pub/evpp.html hanson, k.s., armstrong, k.h. massey, o.t. (2002). student perceptions of school safety in the omnibus survey. . university of south florida, tampa, research and training center for children’s mental health. national institute on disability and rehabilitation research. annual conference proceedings: a system for care for children’s mental health: expanding the research base. march 3-6, 2002. henggeler, s.w. & sheidow, a.j. (2003). conduct disorder and delinquency. journal of marital and family therapy, 29(4), 505-22. knowledge systems, inc. (2001.) peaceful people program looks to develop social skills, curb aggression. unpublished evaluation report. massey, o.t. (2002). evaluating program effectiveness in the safe schools healthy students initiative. university of south florida, tampa, research and training center for children’s mental health. national institute on disability and rehabilitation research. annual conference proceedings: a system for care for children’s mental health: expanding the research base. march 3-6, 2002. perry, a. boroughs, m. armstrong, k.h., & massey, o.t. (2002). understanding school safety: a qualitative inquiry. . university of south florida, tampa, research and training center for children’s mental health. national institute on disability and rehabilitation research. annual conference proceedings: a system for care for children’s mental health: expanding the research base. march 3-6, 2002. ravitch, d. (2004). left back: a century of battles over school reform. simon and schuster. new york: new york. safe and drug-free schools report on exemplary programs. retrieved december 2004 from: www.ed.gov/offices/oeri/orad/kad/exp ert_panel/2001exemplary_sddfs.html safe and drug-free schools report on promising programs. retrieved december 2004 from: www.ed.gov/offices/oeri/orad/kad/exp ert_panel/2001promising_sddfs.html santoro, g. armstrong, k. h., massey, o.t. (2002). safety in schools: staff perceptions. university of south florida, tampa, research and training center for children’s mental health. national institute on disability and rehabilitation research. annual conference proceedings: a system for care for children’s mental health: expanding the research base. march 3-6, 2002. taylor, l. and aldeman, h.s. (2000). connecting schools, families, and communities. professional school counseling, 3, 298-307. telleen, s., kim, y, o, k., steward-nova, h. maher, s. (2002). the impact of coordinated mental health services: safe schools, healthy http://www.hamfish.org/pub/evpp.html http://www.ed.gov/offices/oeri/orad/kad/expert_panel/2001exemplary_sddfs.html http://www.ed.gov/offices/oeri/orad/kad/expert_panel/2001exemplary_sddfs.html http://www.ed.gov/offices/oeri/orad/kad/expert_panel/2001promising_sddfs.html http://www.ed.gov/offices/oeri/orad/kad/expert_panel/2001promising_sddfs.html collaboration between elementary schools and community agencies to reduce violence: can it work? 9 students. university of south florida, tampa, research and training center for children’s mental health. national institute on disability and rehabilitation research. annual conference proceedings: a system for care for children’s mental health: expanding the research base. march 3-6, 2002. neace, w.p., munoz, m.a., olson-allen, s., weber, j., johnson, k. (2004). pushing the boundaries of education: evaluating the impact of research-based social service programs with educational performance indicators. presented at the american education research association in san diego, ca. williams, k.m. (2005). the impact of the peaceful people program on elementary students in an urban school district using comparison groups . evaluation report for peaceful resolutions for living. unpublished evaluation report. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 1 2008 article citation kimberly williams (2006, feb). collaboration between elementary schools and community agencies to reduce violence: can it work? current issues in education [on-line], 9(1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number1/ author notes kimberly williams plymouth state university plymouth, nh kmwilliams3@plymouth.edu dr. kimberly williams is a visiting associate professor at dartmouth college and an associate professor at plymouth state university. she has also served on the faculty at the state university of new york’s college at cortland, syracuse university, and suny morrisville. she has authored books on the subject of student alcohol and other drug use and violence. recent book titles include: “socially constructed school violence” and “the peace approach to violence prevention” and “learning limits: college women, drugs, and relationships.” she has served on such national committees as the hamilton fish national institute on school and community violence and been involved most recently with the safe schools/healthy students program in new york state. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation williams, k. (2006). collaboration between elementary schools and community agencies to reduce violence: can it work? current issues in education, 9(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1589 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number1/index.html mailto:kmwilliams3@plymouth.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1589 volume 11, number 9 may, 2009 issn 1099-839x teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop katia gonzalez-acquaro wagner college the focus of this study was to assess the impact of an online workshop on teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy beliefs toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities. a pretest-post-test group design was implemented for this study. sixty-eight teachers were randomly assigned to one of two training conditions or a control group. results demonstrated that teachers in both training groups, information and information/reflection, scored significantly higher compared to the control group on the knowledge toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities questionnaire, the attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey, and the selfefficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey. teachers in the information/reflection group scored the highest of all three groups on the attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey. individuals with intellectual disabilities have made significant strides in the area of legal rights for community integration (tepper, 2001). rights such as employment, housing, marriage, schooling, parenthood and sexual intimacies are now in place. unfortunately, “attitudes toward people with disabilities have not changed as fast as the laws enacted to support them” (tepper, 2001, p. 5). an area that can greatly impact the lives of people with intellectual disabilities and that continues to be plagued with myths is sexuality. labels about the sexuality of individuals with intellectual disabilities have often created situations of unfairness and a reluctance by many to provide sexuality education appropriate to the needs of each individual (mccabe, 1993). opportunities need to be provided to understand rights (mithaug, 1996). the unfairness of having legal rights in place to secure community integration without the necessary education and training can cause many negative effects such as victimization, abuse, hiv, and unwanted pregnancies to name a few. the sexuality information and education council of the united states (siecus) defines sexuality education as a “lifelong process of acquiring information and forming attitudes, beliefs and values. it encompasses sexual development, reproductive health, interpersonal relationships, affection, intimacy, body image, and gender roles” (siecus, 2009, para 1). the definition of what sexuality education means is an important consideration when thinking about ways to adapt and implement a program for students with intellectual disabilities. siecus’s definition of sexuality education provides an example on how sexuality is more than sexual intercourse and how different domains and their significance can greatly impact opportunities for community integration. review of relevant literature current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 schooling and sexuality education there are many legal mandates in place to ensure that students with disabilities have access to and make progress in the general education curriculum (wehmeyer, lance, & bashinski, 2002). the american association of intellectual and developmental disabilities (aaidd), formerly known as the american association on mental retardation (aamr), defines intellectual disabilities as “a disability that is characterized by significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior as expressed in conceptual, social, and practical adaptive skills. this disability originates before the age of 18” (aaidd, 2008, para 2). sexuality education, a subject of discussion in many schools, is often a controversial topic and when issues of disabilities are added to the conversations a variety of opinions exist (blanchett & wolfe, 2002). decisions on the type of sexuality education programs, curriculum and standards that should or should not be provided in schools are often left to the local level and typically include comprehensive, abstinence based, abstinence only, abstinence only until marriage, and fear based programs. many of these types of programs are often developed to “complement or augment” the information that students may be receiving at home (siecus, 2001, p.2) with families having different options such as “opt in/out” policies and requirements. “the federal government does not have a direct role in local sexuality. instead, it leaves such control to state and local bodies…states are much more directly involved in decisions about sexuality education. states can mandate that sexuality education be taught, require schools to teach about stds or hiv/aids, set state-wide guidelines for topics, choose curricula, and approve textbooks” (siecus, 2001, para 23). sexuality education can often provide students with intellectual disabilities with the opportunity to learn appropriate socio-sexual skills, protect themselves from sexual abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, and unwanted pregnancies (sparks, 2004). “the fact is that people with disabilities have the same emotional and physical needs and desires as people that are not disabled” (tepper, 2001, p. 5) but the “social isolation as well as functional limitations” can often impact social/sexual development (sweeney, 2007, p. 6). sexuality education and teacher training while politicians, families, students and communities debate on the type of sexuality education program that should or should not be made available in schools, some teachers are often left with the difficult decision of understanding the different viewpoints and sometimes having to select information or follow curriculum that will meet the needs of all students, while also following local mandates. even if a teacher is not directly asked to focus in areas of sexuality education, it may not be uncommon for teachers to be exposed to questions students and families may have about the topic, making many teachers feel unsure about how to handle specific questions. hausman and rusek (1995) stated that “classroom teachers, not specialists, provide most of the health teaching in elementary schools”(p, 81), while getch, branca, fitz-gerald, and fitz-gerald (2001) explained that “ in u.s. public schools, physical education teachers are most likely to provide sexuality education in middle and high schools, followed by health educators, biology teachers, home economics teachers, and school nurses” (p. 402) making it a necessary training topic for all in the education field. “because sexuality issues touch on so many developmental issues relating to children and youth, siecus has, since 1965, urged that all pre-service teachers for prekindergarten through 12th grade receive at least one course in human sexuality” (rodriguez, 2000, p. 68). many teachers report feeling ill prepared during their teacher education programs and receiving little, if any, professional development related to this topic and how to answer questions that could be raised during class (rodriguez,young, renfro, ascencio, & haffner, 1996, howard-barr, rienzo, pigg, & james, 2005). school districts that do provide training for selected teachers may differ in the way training is provided creating the possibility of some teachers receiving more or less information (especially in adaptations for intellectual disabilities) as well as curriculum materials. wolfe and blanchett (2000) pointed out that “personnel delivering sociosexual information should be aware of their personal values related to sexuality and persons with disabilities and actively guard against imposing their values on others” (p.6). assessing teachers’ self efficacy, the “belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute course of actions required to manage prospective situations” (bandura, 1995, p. 2), is essential, especially when curriculum implementation can be greatly affected by teachers’ perceptions of their own capabilities to administer a particular curriculum. research has indicated the need for training and accessible information in the area of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities (bowder, lanning, pipping, & tanner, 2003) howardbarr, rienzo, pigg, and james (2005) reported the need for research to address the effects of a course in teachers’ knowledge as well as adding a more in depth way to study the comfort level of teachers in teaching the topic of sexuality teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 3 education to students with intellectual disabilities. providing teachers with the opportunity to receive knowledge as well as work through their own anxieties is important (donovan, 1998) and teachers “should be required to have a good command of the subject matter, and adequate level of comfort with the content, and should engage in active value clarification” (blanchett & wolfe, 2002, p.55). theoretical framework adult learning theory professional development for teachers vary with challenges such as funding and scheduling conflict playing a role on the different opportunities that may be available. because many teachers may be coming into the profession with limited information about sexuality education and sexuality education for students with intellectual disabilities, professional development in an online format was chosen as the medium to increase the number of teachers accessing information related to the topic while taking into consideration ways adults learn. when in-person professional development or courses are not possible due to funding or scheduling conflicts, online learning provides an alternative medium to deliver information (tinker, 2000). the online seminar was constructed to take into consideration the needs of adult learners. knowles (1984) theory of andragogy has been widely utilized in the development of online learning environments and was selected to serve as a framework for this study. andragogy focuses on the process of learning and how adult learners self-direct their instruction. “adults need to know why they need to learn something; adults maintain the concept of responsibility for their own decisions, their own lives; adults enter the educational activity with a greater volume and more varied experiences than do children; adults have a readiness to learn those things they need to know in order to cope effectively with real life situations; adults are life-centered in their orientation to learning; and adults are more responsive to internal motivators than external motivators”(knowles, holton, & swanson, 2005, p. 72). the online seminar provided teachers with the opportunity to receive the latest resources, while selfdirecting their learning, and engaging in personal inquiry. the tasks and readings created opportunities to connect information to current and future needs in the classroom while using a variety of instructional strategies such as a movie clip, links to research articles, information on local and national viewpoints, news digests, quotes, and a section of resources of books. the online learning environment also provided learners with the opportunity to work through sensitive issues of their own values and attitudes in a “non-threatening environment” (weerakoom, 2003, p.15). additionally, the need for learners to reflect on their learning relating it back to goals of a section they may be working on has been recommended as an essential practice (laurillard, 1993). due to the limited research in the online training of teachers in the area of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities, the literature on the training of health professionals in health education (weerakoon, 2003) was utilized as the rationale for comparing the two specific training conditions for the training of teachers. weerakoon (2003) suggested providing learners with opportunities to use reflective journals to “record feelings and thoughts” (p. 16). research questions the research question addressed in the study was: following a sexuality education and intellectual disability online seminar, do treatment groups (information vs. information/reflection, vs. control) differ significantly on post-test scores on the knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities? table 1 summary of teachers’ demographics and characteristics within treatment groups . method recruitment of participants was done with fliers throughout a large urban university, advertisement on an online community for teachers and administrators, and by emailing school administrators about the study with a copy of the flier (emails were found in the department of education websites). for the purpose of this study, the term current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 “teacher” was utilized to classify both general education teachers (those not trained as a special education teacher) and special education teachers. a demographic questionnaire indicated that the sample size (n = 68) included 45 general education teachers and 23 special education teachers. a total of 23.53% were males (n = 16) and 76.47% were females (n = 52) with 69.12% of the participants between the ages of 20 30 years (n = 47) and 30.88% between 31 40 years of age (n = 21). table 2 summary of teachers’ grade levels, years of teaching experience, and background/experience with students with intellectual disabilities within treatment groups a total of 58.82% of teachers had a bachelor’s degree (n = 40) while 41.18% of teachers had a master’s degree (n = 28). teachers in this study taught the following grade levels: 1.47% toddlers (n = 1), 4.41% preschool (n = 3), 51.47% elementary (n = 35), 35.29% middle school (n = 24), and 7.35% high school (n = 5). a total of 55.88% of teachers had 0-3 years of teaching experience (n = 38), 41.18% had 4-6 years of experience (n = 28), and 2.94% had 7-9 years of experience (n = 2), with 38.24% of teachers having background experience with students with intellectual disabilities (n = 26), and 61.76% of teachers not having any background (n = 42). teachers rated their professional preparation to teach sexuality education to students with intellectual disabilities as 36.77% poor (n = 25), 58.82% below average (n = 40), and 4.41% average (n = 3). teachers’ history of preparation in sexuality education included 7.35 % having a college general course (n = 5), 14.71% having a college sexuality course (n = 10), 23.53% having a college special education course (n = 16), 1.47% having staff development (n = 1), 10.29% having conferences or workshops (n = 7), and 42.65% none of the above or other (n = 29). teachers’ demographics and characteristics, grade levels taught, years of teaching experience, background with students with intellectual disabilities, as well as professional preparation toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities and history of preparation in sexuality education are provided for each treatment group in tables 1-3. a copy of the demographic questionnaire can be found in appendix a. table 3. summary of teachers’ professional self-ratings of their preparation with sexuality education and intellectual disabilities and history of preparation in sexuality education within treatment groups design a group experimental design was utilized for this study. teachers’ were assigned randomly by the computer program to either the information group, the information/reflection group, or the control group. the independent variable of this study was the type of treatment which consisted of two training teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 5 groups (information and information/reflection) and a control group. the training groups, information and information/reflection, received a five-week online seminar. the main dependent variables of interest included: (a) teachers’ knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities; (b) teachers’ attitudes towards sexuality education and intellectual disabilities, and (c) teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs towards sexuality education and intellectual disabilities. teachers’ responses were evaluated utilizing preand post-test information. measures dependent measures teachers’ knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities questionnaire. teachers’ knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities questionnaire (tkseid) was developed by the researcher to assess teachers’ knowledge of sexuality education as well as intellectual disabilities. the questionnaire consisted of 19 multiple-choice questions. these questions were selected based on current topics and research in the area of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities. reliability and validity of tkseid. internal consistency tests for the teachers’ pretest scores on tkseid (n = 19) yielded a cronbach’s alpha of .70. this result indicated that all questions assessed the treatment consistently and reliably. the multiple choice questionnaire was determined as content appropriate by 9 special education teachers for children with intellectual disabilities and 1 professor in the area of sexuality education. a copy of tkseid can be found in appendix b. teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey. teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey (taseid) was created as a likert-scale survey based on the recommended sexuality topics in a comprehensive sexuality education program as identified by the sexuality information and education council of the united states (national guidelines task force-siecus, 1996). these recommended topics were provided by siecus as guidelines to what topics a sexuality education program should teach if it is going to be comprehensive. teachers were asked to indicate their beliefs about the importance of teaching each topic to students with intellectual disabilities and teachers were also asked about their beliefs toward the importance of teaching these topics in different grade levels for students with and without intellectual disabilities. reliability and validity of taseid. reliability and validity of the teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey (n = 44) yielded a cronbach’s alpha score of .95. the attitude survey was determined as appropriate in content by 9 special education teachers and 1 professor in the area of sexuality education. a copy of taseid can be found in appendix c. teachers’ self-efficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities. teachers’ selfefficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities (tseseid) was measured utilizing a teacher efficacy scale modeled on the work by bandura (1990) and revised by the researcher to meet the needs of this study. teachers completed a likert-scale survey consisting of 25 questions related to sexuality education and intellectual disabilities fitting into seven dimensions of teacher efficacy: efficacy to influence decision making, efficacy to influence school resources, instructional self-efficacy, disciplinary self-efficacy, efficacy to enlist parental involvement, efficacy to enlist community involvement, and efficacy to create a positive school climate. the scale was modified to provide teachers with the opportunity to indicate their opinion about statements that related to instruction of sexuality education for students with intellectual disabilities. reliability and validity of tseseid. internal consistency tests for the pretest of the tseseid survey (n = 25) yielded a cronbach’s alpha of .95. the self-efficacy survey was determined as content appropriate by 9 special education teachers and 1 professor in the area of sexuality education. a copy of tseseid can be found in appendix d. procedure pre-test phase teachers participating in the self-paced seminar were provided with a url, the website address, in which the seminar was located. the website in which the online seminar was hosted was programmed to randomly assign teachers into one of the three groups, information, information/reflection, or control group. after entering the website, teachers were taken to the login page which provided information about the study as well as the research description and the participants’ rights to read. teachers agreeing to participate had to click the i agree button at the bottom of the page which documented informed consent of the participants. teachers had the choice of agreeing or not agreeing to participate. access to the seminar was only provided if the i agree button was selected. after teachers completed the online demographic questionnaire, the pretest questionnaire and surveys and submitted each by pressing submit, the computer generated an individual code which they needed to use to reenter the seminar. teachers in the control current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 group received a code that provided them access to the seminar after five weeks. this code was only given after all pretests, teachers’ knowledge toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities, teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities, and teachers’ self-efficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities were completed. all scores obtained during this phase of the study were used for the pre test data analyses. intervention phase once the teachers completed the demographic questionnaire as well as the pre test questionnaire and surveys, a computer generated code randomly assigned teachers to one of three treatment conditions: information, information/reflection, or control. information condition. the information condition consisted of four units with a total of 14 lessons taking approximately 10 hours to complete. in unit 1, teachers learned about the definition of sexuality, facets about sexuality, and how the social sexual self develops. unit 2 contained information about the history of sexuality education in the united states and characteristics of different sexuality education choices. unit 3 provided background on intellectual disabilities, the eugenics movement, the history of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities, some of the myths and barriers toward the sexuality education of students with intellectual disabilities, and curriculum choices. unit 4 provided teachers with information on laws affecting the sexuality education of students with intellectual disabilities, such as idea and least restrictive environment, no child left behind, and funding information. activities utilized in some of the units consisted of readings, reports, and watching a movie clip. in addition, the information group was asked to answer factual questions at the end of each unit. these questions were not the same as the ones used in the pre and post-test questionnaire. participants had to answer the questions before the application would allow them to continue into the next section. these activities followed concepts of andragogy in which adult learners had opportunities to self-direct their learning, relate to current and past learning experiences while having opportunities to apply concepts to real (knowles, holton, & swanson, 1998). the data collected were entered automatically into a database after each teacher submitted an answer. information/reflection condition. the information/reflection condition consisted of the same content as the information condition taking approximately 10 hours to complete. however, instead of answering factual questions after each unit, teachers had the opportunity to reflect on the knowledge acquired by answering reflection questions that were embedded throughout the text. an essential aspect of the information/ reflection condition was to encourage teachers to work through what many may consider sensitive topics and reflect on their feelings and understanding toward the information they were learning. all reflection questions had to be answered before the application would allow them to move into the next section. the data collected were entered automatically into a database after each teacher submitted an answer. figure 1. example of a factual question in the information condition. figure 2. example of a reflection question for the information/ reflection condition control condition. teachers in the control condition received a code that granted them access after the five-week time frame that was assigned for the seminar after the data were collected. post-intervention phase post-intervention data collection took place after the five-week time frame assigned for the seminar. although participants had access to the seminar for five weeks, it was designed to be completed in approximately 10 hours. the same procedures and measures that were used for the initial data collection were used again at the post-test phase for both training groups and the control group. all scores obtained during this phase of the study were used for the post data analyses. an overview of units, activities and instructional strategies for the online seminar can be found in appendix e. data analyses preliminary data analyses sixty-eight (68) participants were randomly assigned to either the information group, the information/ reflection group, or the control group. the information group consisted of twenty-two (22) teachers, the information/reflection had twenty-five (25) teachers, and the control group had twenty-one teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 7 (21) teachers. during preliminary data analyses, oneway anovas were performed on pretest scores to ensure that no significant differences between the three groups existed prior to the seminar. means and standard deviations from teachers’ pretest scores are provided in table 4. table 5 provides a summary of the one-way anova on the pretest scores on the knowledge questionnaire. a one-way anova on pretest scores did not show any significant differences between the three groups prior to the online seminar on the knowledge questionnaire. table 4 means and standard deviations for pretest scores note. means and standard deviations (sd) for pretest scores on teachers’ knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities questionnaire (19 multiple choice questions), teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey (44 likert scale questions), and teachers’ selfefficacy beliefs toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities (25 likert scale questions). table 5 summary of one way anova on pretest scores on knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities note. sum of squares (ss), degree of freedom (df), mean squares (ms), ratio of the between groups by within groups mean squares (f). table 6 provides a summary on the one-way anova on pretest scores on the attitudes survey. no significant differences were found on pretest scores on the anova results of the attitudes survey. table 6 summary of one way anova results on pretest scores on teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities note. sum of squares (ss), degree of freedom (df), mean squares (ms), ratio of the between groups by within groups mean squares (f). table 7 provides a summary of the one-way anova on pretest scores on the self-efficacy survey. a one-way anova on pretest scores revealed a significant difference between treatment groups on the self-efficacy measure, f (2, 65) = 4.97, p < .01. the significant main effect for self-efficacy was followed up with tukey (hsd) multiplecomparisons at the .05 level of significance. tukey pairwise comparisons of the three groups indicated that the control group (m = 70.61) and the information group (m = 59.72) differed significantly at p < .05 and the control group and information/reflection group (m = 61.72) differed significantly at p < .05. comparisons between the information and information/reflection did not reveal significant differences. assumptions were tested to determine whether the analysis of covariance (ancova) could be used appropriately on post-test scores for selfefficacy to adjust for the pretest differences. pearson correlations were performed on teachers’ pretest and post-test self-efficacy scores, within and across current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 groups, to test ancova assumptions of linearity of regression and homogeneity of within-group regression. table 8 is a summary of the pearson correlation coefficients. the data showed significant positive correlations (above .30) between teachers’ pretest and post-test performance on self-efficacy, both within and across groups, supporting the use of ancova for this dependent variable. table 7 summary on one way anova results on pretest scores on teachers’ self-efficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities * p < 0.01 note. sum of squares (ss), degree of freedom (df), mean squares (ms), ratio of the between groups by within groups mean squares (f). f (2, 65) = 4.97, p <. 01 table 8 pearson correlations between teachers’ pretest and post-test performance on all dependent variables among all teachers and within treatment groups * correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) ** correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed) main analyses information, information/ reflection, and control group post-test performance on the post-test multiple-choice questionnaire on the knowledge section of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities were examined using a one-way anova. means and standard deviations are provided in table 9. the results of the one way anova are provided in table 10. the analyses indicated that differences in the mean scores of teachers in the three groups were statistically significant f (2, 65) = 14.36, p < .05 table 9 means and standard deviations for post-test scores note. means and standard deviations (sd) for post-test scores on teachers’ knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities questionnaire (19 multiple choice questions), teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey (44 likert scale questions), and teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities (25 likert scale questions). table 10 summary of one way anova results on post-test scores on knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities * p < 0.05 note. sum of squares (ss), degree of freedom (df), mean squares (ms), ratio of the between groups by within groups mean squares (f). f (2, 65) = 14.36, p <.05 the pairwise comparisons between the three groups indicated that the information group (m = 17.81) and the information/ reflection group (m = teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 9 18.28) scored significantly higher compared to the control group (m = 15.52) at the .05 level, but the two training groups did not differ significantly from each other. information, information/ reflection, and control group post-test performance on the likertscale survey on attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities were examined using a one-way anova. the results of the one-way anova are provided in table 11. the analyses indicated that scores of teachers participating in the three groups were significantly different f (2, 65) = 64.69, p < .05. the pairwise comparisons between the three groups indicated that the training group information/ reflection (m = 185.60) and the training group information (m = 149.22) scored significantly higher compared to the control group (m = 123.71), and the two training groups did differ significantly from each other p < .05. the information/ reflection group scored higher than the other two groups. table 11 summary of one way anova results on post-test scores on attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities * p < 0.05 note. sum of squares (ss), degree of freedom (df), mean squares (ms), ratio of the between groups by within groups mean squares (f). f (2, 65) = 64.69, p<.05. information, information/ reflection, and control group post-test performance on the likertscale survey on self-efficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities were examined using ancova, with post-test scores as the dependent variable and pretest scores as the covariate. the results of ancova are provided in table 12. the analyses indicated that scores of teachers participating in the three groups differed significantly f (2, 64) = 33.26, p< .05. post hoc comparisons of the three groups indicated that teachers in the training group information (m = 82.86) and the training group information/reflection (m = 86.48) scored significantly higher than teachers in the control group (m = 70.57) at p=.00, but the two training groups, information and information/ reflection, did not differ significantly from each other. table 12 analysis of covariance results for teachers selfefficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities * p < 0.05 additional analyses on demographics additional analyses were also performed within each group to compare teachers with general and special education certification because preliminary analyses had suggested differences in the proportions of teachers with each type of certification in the three treatment groups. comparing means within each group on each dependent variable, t-test results indicated that the performance of teachers with general and special education certification did not differ significantly at the .05 level. means and standard deviations are provided in table 13. the ttest results for the type of certification are provided in table 14. discussion this study was designed to examine the effects of an online seminar on teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy beliefs toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities. teachers in the training groups, information and information/ reflection, scored significantly higher compared to teachers in the control group on the knowledge questionnaire, the attitudes survey, and the selfefficacy survey. teachers in the information/re current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 table 13 means and standard deviations (sd) for comparisons of participants with general and special education certification table 14 summary of t-test results for within-group comparisons between teacher certification subgroups flection group scored the highest on the attitudes survey compared to the control and information only group. results of this study indicated that providing training for teachers in topics related to sexuality education and intellectual disabilities can increase not only their knowledge toward the topic but also their attitudes and their feelings of self-efficacy. when creating this workshop, it was important to consider not only providing the latest resources but also giving teachers the opportunity to work through conflicting feelings as they were learning about the possible implications that providing or not providing information can have on students (sparks, 2004). after the seminar, teachers in the information/reflection group scored significantly higher on the attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey compared to both the control and the information only group. research indicates that having opportunities to reflect can assist teachers in understanding and improving their teaching practice while helping teachers understand different viewpoints and needs (carr & kemmis, 1986). these findings are consistent with the literature that states that addressing teachers’ firmly set attitudes is important in order for educators to talk about sexuality in the classroom (bemish, 1987; wolfe and blanchett, 2000). limitations of the study students with intellectual disabilities have the opportunity to be in classrooms with students without intellectual disabilities and be exposed to topics that are being implemented in the general education setting. “although the practicalities of differentiating learning for children with special needs require firm commitment, the benefits for students are significant and include enhanced social skills, adopting more appropriate expressions of sexuality and reduced risk of sexual abuse, pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases” (sweeney, 2007, p.10). this study contained a disproportionate number of special education teachers compared to general education teachers within the information/reflection group. although t-tests within each of the three groups indicated that the performance of general and special education certification did not differ significantly, the possible influence of having more special education teachers in one of the training groups cannot be ruled out. findings of this study must be considered preliminary since teachers participating in this study volunteered, making it more likely that they were interested in learning more about the topic. teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 11 another limitation of the study that must be taken into consideration is that the sample consisted of volunteers for an online learning environment that happened to be 40 years or younger, which raises issues of representativeness. directions for future research this study adds to the literature on sexuality education and intellectual disabilities and the use of an online environment as a tool for the training of teachers in topics considered controversial and of immediate need. specifically, it provided an online curriculum tailored to the needs of adult learners that targeted three important variables (knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy beliefs) that could be considered by many essential when training teachers in controversial topics. the online seminar demonstrated that training in the subject can make a significant difference in what is considered by many a challenging topic to expose participants to while focusing not only in helping teachers gain knowledge about the topic but also address attitudes toward it and self efficacy beliefs. the online seminar also demonstrated the significant effect of reflection while providing a way for teachers to access information and resources. the exposure to the latest research and examples proved to be effective for teachers participating in the training groups of this study. a longitudinal study could assist in understanding if these positive effects are maintained throughout time. additional research is needed measuring the knowledge, attitudes, and selfefficacy of school principals since they greatly affect policy implementation and could impact favorably the type of sexuality education provided to students with intellectual disabilities. references american association of intellectual and developmental disabilities. frequently asked questions on intellectual disability and the aaidd definition. retrieved march 23, 2009, from http://www.aamr.org/content_104.cfm bandura, a. (1995). self-efficacy in changing societies. cambridge university press. bandura, a. (1990, unpublished). teacher self efficacy scale. retrieved march 23, 2009, from http://people.ehe.ohio state.edu/ahoy/research/instruments/#web bemish, l.m. (1987). a study of the attitudes of special education teachers toward sexuality and the sexuality of persons with disabilities. dissertation-the university of michigan. blanchett, w.j., & wolfe, p.s. (2002). a review of sexuality education curricula: meeting the needs of individuals with moderate and severe disabilities. research & practice for persons with severe disabilities, 27 (1), 43 57. carr, w. & kemmis, s. (1986). becoming critical: education, knowledge and action research. london: falmer press. donovan, p. (1998). school-based sexuality education: the issues and challenges. family planning perspectives, 30 (4), 188 193. getch, y.r., branca, d.l., fitzgerald, d., & fitzgerald, m. 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(2000). netcourses for staff development. retrieved march 23, 2009 from http://www.mff.org/edtech/article.taf?_funct ion=detail&content_uid1=107 wehmeyer, m.l., lance, g.d., & bashinski, s (2002). promoting access to the general curriculum for students with mental retardation. a multilevel model. education and training in mental retardation and developmental disabilities, 37, 223-234. weerakoon, p. (2003). e-learning in sexuality education. medical teacher, 25 (1), 13-17. wolfe, p., & blanchett, w. (2000, may). moving beyond denial, suppression and fear to embracing the sexuality of people with disabilities. tash newsletter, 5-7. http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction%09%09=page.viewpage&pageid=521%20%09&grandparentid=477&parentid=514 http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction%09%09=page.viewpage&pageid=521%20%09&grandparentid=477&parentid=514 http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction%09%09=page.viewpage&pageid=521%20%09&grandparentid=477&parentid=514 http://www.dddcec.org/positionpapers/sexu%09alityanddd.doc http://www.dddcec.org/positionpapers/sexu%09alityanddd.doc http://www.ejhs.org/volume10/marshmedia%09%20white%20paper.pdf http://www.ejhs.org/volume10/marshmedia%09%20white%20paper.pdf http://www.mff.org/edtech/article.taf?_funct%09ion=detail&content_uid1=107 http://www.mff.org/edtech/article.taf?_funct%09ion=detail&content_uid1=107 teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 13 appendix a current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 appendix b teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 15 current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 17 current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 appendix c teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 19 current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 appendix d teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 21 current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 23 appendix e current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 2009 article citation gonzalez-acquaro, k. (2009, june). teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop. current issues in education [on-line], 11(9). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number9/ author notes katia gonzalez-acquaro wagner college [editor’s note: no additional author information was available in the article when accessed in 2015.] note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 15, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation gonzalez-acquaro, k. (2009). teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop. current issues in education, 11(9). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1592 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number9/ http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1592 volume 5, number 2 may 6, 2002 issn 1099-839x a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone jun-chae yoon, miri park, and michelle commeyras university of georgia this article investigates the interplay of cultural knowledge, symbolic language, and interpretive reading comprehension, focusing on the role of culture in symbolic understanding of text. eight graduate students from two different cultural communities read and discussed a korean folktale. data were collected in the form of initial written responses and discussion transcripts. thematic interpretative qualitative analyses are reported on initial reading stances, symbolic understandings, and efforts to identify the moral of the tale. overall the analyses show that korean readers focused mostly on discerning the morality being communicated symbolically through the story, whereas the american readers focused on individual values and freedoms to make sense of the story. our findings indicate that there will be diversity in symbolic reading comprehension both across cultural groups and within cultural groups. we propose that when readers from several cultures come together in classrooms to talk about symbolic texts it is important for them to reflect on how they use their own cultural reference points to form similar and dissimilar understandings and interpretations. heightening this awareness of diversity within cultural knowledge provides exciting and beneficial experiences for readers in today's multicultural classrooms. (reading comprehension, symbolic reading, multicultural, literacy research, cross-cultural study) once upon a time a salt peddler stopped to rest at the foot of a mountain pass. a nearby bone on the ground caught his eye. he picked it up and muttered to himself, "this looks like my shinbone." he put it back on the ground. then, he put his aframe carrier on his back and left. after a while, he noticed that the bone was following him. he did not like this and tried to be rid of the bone. this went on for several days. one afternoon when they came near a village the salt peddler made a promise to the shinbone that was actually a lie that allowed him to escape the bone. several years later when the salt peddler happened to pass by the same village, he was reminded of the bone. he went to the spot where he had last seen it. there was no trace of it only his rotten a-frame carrier. what he did find was a small tavern that had not been there before. since it was already late afternoon, he went to the tavern to stay the night. the old landlady served him a meal and some wine. after he finished his meal, she asked him to tell some interesting stories. he told her the story of the shinbone that had followed him. she listened to his story. when he finished his story, she suddenly shouted, "i'm that bone!" then, she killed and ate him (summary of the salt peddler and the shinbone in crowder han, 1991. see appendix for full text.). how does a reader make sense of folktale such as this one? how does he or she make sense of a current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 shinbone that follows a man and an old woman who kills and eats a man? when we, an intercultural group of two koreans and one u.s. citizen, read the salt peddler and the shinbone (see appendix for full text) folktale we had a lengthy discussion during which we considered different symbolic interpretations. we were intrigued with the differences in our thinking-not differences that neatly drew lines between nationalities or ethnicities but differences among the three of us as individual thinkers. we thought it would be interesting to pursue the possibility of heterogeneity of thought within two groups of readers. how would korean readers versus american readers symbolically construct meaning for a folktale that was for koreans culturally congruent and for americans culturally unfamiliar? the purpose of our study was to investigate the thinking of two groups of adult readers about a korean folktale in order to learn about the interplay of cultural knowledge and symbolic reading comprehension on individual readers within a cultural group. to do so, we invited a group of four adult readers from the united states to read and discuss the story and four korean adults (living in the united states) to do the same. before conducting our empirical inquiry we consulted the literature to see what other relevant research had already been conducted. to situate our work we begin with what others have studied and learned that seems pertinent. literature review how does a reader comprehend text in which the symbolism of words, expressions, or actions seems unfamiliar or bizarre? research has demonstrated in a variety of ways the role a reader's prior knowledge of the world plays in the process of constructing meaning from written text (anderson, hiebert, scott, & wilkinson, 1985). in particular, the reader's knowledge of culture and language play an important part in symbolically making sense of multicultural literature (davis, 1988). symbol(ism) can be defined as "any mode of expression which, instead of referring to something directly, refers to it indirectly through the medium of something else" (chadwick, 1971, p. 1). however, literary symbol(ism) here is defined not as "static entities given in the text, but as images selected by the reader as representing extended and nonliteral meanings" (davis, 1998, p. 147). symbolic meaning can be conveyed by an object, a gesture, an incident, a person, a plot, a color, a sound, a number, a context, a pattern or sequence of action in a given text-everything is suggestive of meaning for the reader. however, the significance of symbols in a literary text are never explicitly explained or determined. rather, they are reconstructed within the readers' thoughts about contexts and cultures (vygotsky, 1978). thus, symbolically interpreting text is heavily dependent on the readers' experiences and interactions with the world. then, how does a reader understand nonliteral or symbolic language? one research approach has been the study of comprehension of figurative language. searle (1979) proposed the stage model or pragmatics approach. in this model of comprehension nonliteral meaning is computed only after the failure to ascertain literal meanings. conversely, if a literal sense is successfully comprehended then figurative meaning is not considered. but, if literal meaning is not obvious, then nonliteral meaning must be considered. however, few empirical studies have provided support for the stage model (see clark 1979; clark & lucy, 1975; ortony, schallert, reynolds & antos, 1978). for example, clark's (1979) study showed that the literal meaning and the inferred meaning are simultaneously understood as parts of a single package. this finding indicates that literal understanding of figurative language does not always underlie the comprehension of nonliteral language. as ortony (1984) pointed out, the stage model represents a limited rather than a general account of the understanding of figurative language. in the comprehension of figurative language schema theory is presented as a more powerful explanation of the process of symbolically understanding text (ortony, 1984). in this view, context activates an interpretive schema as a conceptual framework of making sense of figurative language. in other words, context requiring a figurative interpretation accesses a network of prior knowledge as scaffolding to aid in encoding information from target language, then the nonliteral language is integrated with background knowledge, and finally it is understood. if not, understanding falters or fails. this view has been popular as an explanation not only for general language comprehension but also for figurative language. a few empirical studies have provided strong support for the schema theoretic view (see baldwin, luce & readence, 1982; ortony, 1979: ortony, 1985; ortony, schallert, reynolds & antos, 1978). in the study of the effects of context on the comprehension of figurative language, ortony, schallert, reynolds and antos (1978) showed that participants spent longer time comprehending metaphorical language than literal language in the short context whereas no significant difference was found between metaphorical sentences and literal ones in the long context condition. their findings indicate that the activation of appropriate background knowledge plays a major role in comprehending figurative language. file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2002,%20vol%205,%20%231-6/number2/index.html%23appendix a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone 3 when the reader shares with the writer certain cultural conventions that sets up a network of prior knowledge that serves as a conceptual framework to aid in symbolically interpreting textual information. if the interpretation does not satisfy then the reader defaults to a more literal understanding of the text. a text rife with symbolism based on a particular culture presents a challenge for readers who are reading out of culture. a symbolic dimension of the text may be interpreted differently depending on the prior cultural background knowledge of the readers. a variety of research studies have indirectly supported a schematic view of the comprehension of nonliteral language (see droop & verhoeven, 1998; lipson, 1983; reynolds, taylor, steffensen, shirey & anderson, 1982; steffenson, 1987; steffenson, joag-dev & anderson, 1979). for example, reynolds, taylor, steffensen, shirey and anderson's (1982) study showed that white students from agricultural area tend to interpret a reading passage as a fight while black students from working class area understood it as verbal play. in a similar vein, steffensen (1987) found that children for whom english is a second language were influenced in their reading comprehension according to differences in their religious affiliations. children with a christian background appeared to have higher comprehension scores on a reading passage about a christmas celebration. what we wanted to consider beyond the existing research was how cultural knowledge figures in understanding figurative language. even though there is little research available on the effects of cultural knowledge on the comprehension of figurative language, except for ortony's study (1985), it seems reasonable to assume that cultural background knowledge plays a critical role in understanding what is nonliteral. with respect to figurative language comprehension ortony's (1985) study found that those children who frequently participated in a cultural game such as "sounding" comprehended figurative language better than those children who did not. the study indicates that frequent exposure to that particular cultural game facilitated the comprehension of the use of figurative language. these studies directly or indirectly support the significance of cultural knowledge on the comprehension of figurative language. does cultural knowledge play a crucial role in constructing meaning from text that is rich with symbolism? there have been a few studies of figurative language comprehension, however, except for a prior study documented in a reader' designation and use of symbolic content (e.g., davis, 1988), there is little research available on the process of symbolically constructing meaning from text. in particular, research on the role of culture in symbolically understanding text has been relatively neglected. this comparative study was performed in an effort to understand more about the interplay between cultural knowledge and symbolic reading comprehension on individual readers who are either culturally familiar with the text or culturally unfamiliar with it. method participants eight graduate students participated from the university of georgia. all of them volunteered for this study. no effort was made to achieve gender balance because we relied on voluntary participants. there were two groups; each group consisted of four participants sharing a national and cultural identity. one group was at least third-generation u.s. citizens who were pursuing doctoral degrees in reading education. all four were european american women ages 31 to 38 and none of them expressed a strong identification with their ancestors' former cultures or nationalities. the reason we selected at least thirdgeneration american citizens was to try and get a group that could be thought of as sharing cultural knowledge typical of americans in the united states rather than of americans with more recent mixed cultural and ethnic backgrounds. the other group was korean-born graduate students who are studying in the united states. they are in fields other than reading education. in the korean group there were two males and two females ranging in age from 27 to 32. all had completed their undergraduate education in korea before coming to the united states for their graduate study. within each group the members were known to one another so there was a certain degree of comfort with regard to discussing the folktale. we chose college students for this study because they are more likely to be consciously aware of their cultural knowledge and also are accustomed to thinking critically and are able to express their thinking articulately. materials each group of participants was presented with the korean folktale titled the salt peddler and the shinbone. this is a folktale that is part of the oral tradition in korea, which means it does not have a title from the past. it has been passed down from generation to generation. nobody knows where, when, and by whom it was told for the first time. it might be as old as 500 years. the reason this particular folktale was selected is that it is highly symbolic and can be interpreted in many ways even though it looks easy to understand on the surface level. to our knowledge this particular folktale is not current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 well known in korea so we were particularly interested to see how the korean participants would use their cultural background knowledge in the process of comprehending and interpreting it. each group read and discussed the story in their first language. with the exception that korean students sometimes used english to restate or elaborate their thinking. procedure and analysis all the participants were asked to read a story thoroughly and then asked to write an initial response regarding the general meaning of message of this folktale. the initial essay included not only their understanding of the folktale but also questions they wanted to discuss with their group. then they had a discussion with their group. the first two authors (jun and miri) were present at both discussions and served as facilitators and observers (crotty, 1998). most of the time they listened to the discussion and only spoke when asked questions by the participants or when they wanted to probe the participants' thinking. they did ask both groups to talk about the symbolic meanings that could be drawn from this folktale. toward the end of each discussion jun and miri also asked the participants if they could come to an agreement about what moral message this folktale intended. the discussion sessions were recorded on audiotapes and transcribed. for the korean group's discussion, jun and miri first transcribed the tapes in korean and then translated them into english. the analysis of the transcripts focused on identifying themes related to understanding the interplay of cultural knowledge and symbolic reading comprehension as expressed by individual readers. findings initial reading stances literacy theorists (e.g., rosenblatt, 1983) have debated the locus of meaning in reading yet all recognize that reading must involve a process of using cues provided by the author in a given text and in doing so the reader makes use of his or her prior knowledge of the world. such a process of making meaning influences the reader's stance toward reading. in terms of reading stance there were differences between the two groups. readers from korea. the comments of the readers from korea indicated that they regard reading as a process of finding the author's intention. all four readers expected that the author intended a moral because the genre was obviously a folktale. they launched their discussion by focusing on two questions: (a) why did the shinbone follow the salt peddler? (b) why did the old woman kill and eat the salt peddler? they all focused on what occurred between the salt peddler and the shinbone as they searched for the moral. in pursuing their questions they used cues such as story structure, writing style and word choice in their process of constructing meaning. they found it difficult to quickly discern the moral or lesson. sook, hoon and wong wondered if there was anything meaningful intended by the author. sook said, "the story isn't meaningful." hoon stated, "on the surface it did not seem to have any lessons." hoon thought that whatever lesson was intended, "it seemed too far-fetched." wong explained at length his view that "this story did not send any message." due to the structure and contents of this short story, it is somewhat difficult for readers to understand this story, and it is somewhat tedious of them to read it. i have no idea about the story as to why it was written. the construction of sentences is not coherent and the writing style is not terse, it is too diffuse. as a consequence these things exert a harmful influence and do not support the contents of the story. . . . if someone wrote this story then this story must give lessons. my feeling after reading this is that this story does not send any message. i could not feel anything, though i was a little frightened of the appearance of a shinbone and the fact that the old woman killed and ate the salt peddler. even with these feelings the structure of the story is not coherent and very weak. the korean readers' initial stance toward the folktale was to use author cues to name the lesson or moral. when that was not obvious they faulted the author for the difficulty they experienced in constructing a meaningful interpretation of the text. american readers. the american readers began their discussion trying to identify the genre. like their korean counterparts they were not told before the reading that this was a korean folktale. leslie offered, "my first guess was that this was a fairy tale like hansel and gretel." alison said she did not know why but "it reminds me of one of the canterbury tales." and elizabeth thought it looked like a traditional fairy tale until the first "damn" and then she wondered, "why is this word in a fairy tale? fairy tales are for children and have a moral or lesson." the readers came to terms with the word "damn" by recalling that in the original versions of many known fairy and folk tales there was violence and elements that are shocking to people today who view these tales as primarily stories for children. leslie remembered that, "at the end of the original cinderella story the stepsisters and stepmother get rolled down a hill full of nails or something." a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone 5 the americans pooled their prior knowledge of fairy and folktales to situate the text with regard to genre and other texts they were familiar with. apart from the fact that the american readers are reading specialists, one possible interpretation of the difference in initial reading stances comes from a consideration of each group's educational experiences with reading. the korean readers' have been schooled to focus on finding the author's intended meaning as opposed to focusing on constructing their own meaning of text. an american schooling experience probably places more emphasis on personal response (many, 1994) and in this case the readers focused on situating the salt peddler and the shinbone among their prior reading experiences. another possibility is that the americans readers needed to do some preliminary thinking about genre and context to ready themselves to think about the moral whereas the korean readers did not need to do this. symbolic understandings symbolism can be conveyed through an object, a gesture, an incident, a person, the plot, a color, a sound, a number and even a pattern of action in any given text. symbolism requires that the reader draw upon his or her experiences, observations and intuition in making meaning. the identification and interpretation of symbolic elements is always influenced by the reader's background knowledge of the world and prior reading experiences with symbolic texts. sometimes symbolism is interpreted similarly within a community of readers and other times individual readers diverge in their interpretations. texts where symbolism is prominent such as folk and fairy tales call for a dimension of reading comprehension or constructing meaning that is intellectually sophisticated. while the shinbone was often at the center of discussion with regard to reading the symbolism, there was also attention to several other dimensions in seeking the moral or lesson of the tale. readers from korea. in the korean group, byung used the plot of the story to begin searching for the moral. first, a salt peddler met a shinbone by chance; second, he cheated and dumped it and he went to another banquet which means a return to meet other people; and third, he came back to encounter the shinbone (an old woman). he got killed and eaten by the shinbone that he cheated and dumped. i understood the meaning of the story as-do not make anything less of a relation even though it is a trivial one. through a focus on plot byung implies that the shinbone is symbolic of the most casual of relationships. and that the lesson to readers is that we should accord due respect to all manner of relationships from those that might seem trivial to those that are profoundly important to us. byung elaborated on his interpretation by drawing on his cultural knowledge. in traditional korean society a salt peddler is a person who always wanders and has lots of chances to contact many women. when the salt peddler said, "this is just like my shinbone," he endowed the shinbone with a sense of homogeneity. therefore the shinbone followed him....there are many stories in korean folk tales about a woman waiting for her man, and after all she becomes a stone. a woman is a being who waits for someone. a man is a being who wanders. in this story, a salt peddler symbolized a man who wanders. i am sure. hoon viewed the shinbone as the salt peddler's guilty conscience for his immoral actions. hoon also draws on her knowledge of traditional society in a different way to develop her interpretation. in a traditional society, a dead person's bone lying down in public is a serious problem. so he should have had the courtesy to bury it, but he did not. instead he even played with it. from traditional values his behavior is not right. from my point of view, what followed him was not the shinbone itself but his own guilty conscience...this story seems to tell that after all, his own guilty conscience brought down death on him. hoon also thought that there was something sexual occurring that needed to be considered. again her thinking offers something different from the other korean participants. this story can be interpreted from a sexual perspective. if we think of what playing with the shinbone symbolizes-that too is sexual....a shinbone out of human bones may have any peculiar characteristics. for example, human ribs have a special meaning in the bible. hoon's thinking was picked up by byung and led him to think about the shinbone from an umyang theory of taoism as reflected in korean folk religion beliefs. based on the dual principal of the negative (um) and the positive (yang), the male is positive and a sky and the female is negative and the ground. in terms of human body structure the bones of the lower part of the body pertained to the ground, therefore the shinbone may represent the female. hoon's focus on the sexuality followed a comment by wong that the word hag seemed a current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 strange choice for the old woman. byung offered that hag means a faded woman in terms of sexuality. wong did not view the salt peddler as morally wrong in his actions. as a salt peddler he had to come and go to sell his salt and if the shinbone follows him it will hinder his business. therefore he lied to dump it. he is a person who had a thorough outlook on his job....this story is about a rancorous relation. the old woman unfairly died with a grudge and as said before if the salt peddler had buried the shinbone then she should have worked off her own grudge in her mind. later in the conversation wong offered that in korean folktales an old woman appears as a ghost. this provides some cultural information for thinking about the title the salt peddler and the shinbone. american readers. the american readers initially regarded the salt peddler and the shinbone as the two major symbolic references in the folk tale. they proposed a variety of interpretations regarding the symbolic significance of the shinbone. at the outset readers accepted the shinbone as belonging to the salt peddler in some fashion. at first i thought it was his bone. somehow his bone got separated from his body and it is trying to follow him around to get back in there. (leslie) elizabeth said, "i think the shinbone is part of him" and soon thereafter suggests that the bone might be his wife whom he has neglected. thinking of the shinbone as symbolic of a woman was discussed at length. this bone is like his wife or woman. she is obedient, follows his footsteps. does what she is supposed to do and then at the end after he abandons her she eats him. i thought that is pretty typical of men's fear of being swallowed up by women. (leslie) leslie then wondered if she was bringing too much of a feminist interpretative perspective. elizabeth thought the concept of a woman eating up a man might represent a wife that takes everything of material worth from a man after divorce. alison said she purposely did not mention her thinking that the story was about "rejected love" because that came out of her "feminist" thinking. they found the story definitely "not predictable" and considered the shinbone a symbol of something mysterious like a woman. steffanie offered that the bone represented something mysterious because it was "cold, dark and hard." another interpretative theme for the shinbone developed from thinking literally about how getting knocked in the shinbone hurts. steffanie likened the shinbone to an "achilles tendon....a roman's weakness." elizabeth supported this by saying "you never talk about your shinbone until it hurts." steffanie worked out the interpretation that the shinbone symbolizes weakness. when people are strong they can avoid it but when they become tired like the salt peddler did then the weakness comes out. the lesson drawn was that people can live in denial of their weakness but they cannot do so forever. in searching for symbolic understanding the american readers frequently made reference to their cultural knowledge. they referred to european folktales (aesop fables, canterbury tales, hansel and gretel) and to american popular culture in the form of scary songs and campfire stories. midway through their discussion steffanie wondered, "if it changes our interpretation knowing it was a korean folktale." elizabeth's response was that she had forgotten about that. "i just thought about it being a folktale. i knew it was korean but the peddler in my mind was not korean. it is more european." the readers accepted that there was "a lot of hidden meaning" and that they were "guessing" and "throwing out ideas." they considered far more story elements as potentially symbolic then did the korean readers. in addition to the shinbone they discussed the symbolic possibilities for the a-frame the salt peddler carried on his back, the salt, the hag and the tavern. even the word "damn" was considered for it possible symbolic intent. but most of the discussion time focused on the shinbone's symbolic significance. the repetition of certain words such as "a-frame" led to speculation that this might indicate that they are of symbolic importance. moral or lesson a folktale is intended to communicate an important virtue to readers, particularly to children. most of the korean readers viewed this story as a lesson about responsibility. for example, sook stated, "take responsibility for even small and trifle things and don't lie." and byung commented, "i understood that the meaning of the story is don't make nothing of a relation even though it is a trivial one." to draw such conclusions the koreans depended on their cultural background as influenced by buddhism and confucianism. sook's response, "even a chance meeting is due to the karma in previous life" reflects buddhists' causal and effectual way of viewing the world. among buddhists, relationships are highly valued. byung's interpretation of the shinbone as symbolic of the female is based on um-yang theory in taoism. hoon's comment that it is wrong to ignore a bone lying in public is indicative of the importance of courtesy reflected in confucian ancestral worship and ideas about proper human relationships. so while they both used cultural knowledge they differed in a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone 7 what they drew upon and how they applied it to symbolic reading comprehension. the american readers arrived at a consensus regarding the moral of the folktale, weaving together individual and personal responses. they agreed that the moral was do not turn your back or mistreat others or yourself because it will come back to haunt you. in looking at their dialogue it is interesting to trace how they co-construct the meaning of this tale. each speaker barely completes a thought but all together they weave something overall that satisfies them, as the following dialogue illustrates: stephanie: there's an element of being careful of the thing that might get you. elizabeth: yes, it will come back to haunt you. allison: you cannot really turn your back on. elizabeth: yes, turning your back is definitely rejecting leslie: mistreatment steffanie: of yourself or others elizabeth: if you do that it would come back to haunt you or eat you. discussion we observe that for the american readers there was awareness that knowledge of korean culture was relevant to interpreting the folktale but that it was difficult for them to make use of that given their lack of knowledge. they relied often on perspectives that must be viewed as coming directly from their cultural experiences as americans. there was a gender perspective at work in both groups but in very different ways. women's power and autonomy is stronger in the united states than in korea. the old hag killing and eating the salt peddler was given a gendered interpretation. the old woman was using her power to take everything from a man who had wronged her and had left her. it is not uncommon to hear talk about the possibility that a scorned and vindictive wife might take everything from her former husband through divorce as adjudicated. this is different in korea although times are changing with regard to women's rights. it is important to acknowledge that both koreans and americans readers found the tale too odd to be for children because of the content and language (e.g., damn & hag -halmanggu). they both thought the story easy to understand at a surface level with regard to story events and progression. but both groups of readers engaged in a more in-depth discussion to consider the symbolism of the shinbone and the moral of the story. it was here that we found individualistic thinking within groups that eventually accrued to some collective thinking. the korean readers focused somewhat more on the moral aspects of the folktale. they spoke of the salt peddler's lie and his ignorance of his relationship to the shinbone and later the old woman. the american readers thinking emphasized a general social norm such as the good treatment of people. korean readers come from a society where moral virtues such as responsibility are more important than other virtues such as honesty and individual freedom. for korean readers the essence of the salt peddler' fault lies with his irresponsibility to the shinbone and later to the old woman but not in his lying or mistreatment. this may result from korean's effectcentered way of thinking in their daily lives. in contrast the american readers have lived in a society where individual values and freedoms are highly valued. for them the salt peddler's mistreatment is of utmost concern regardless of his responsibility to the shinbone. this may represent america's causecentered way of thinking in their daily lives. we have learned from our qualitative analyses that the korean readers as individuals and as a group eventually made moral sense of the salt peddler and the shinbone. the same is evident for the american readers. of significance are the variations in symbolic reading comprehension that occurred within groups as well as across groups. prior quantitative research on cultural schemata in reading comprehension gives the impression that reading comprehension is singular across groups of cultural readers. our qualitative analysis of korean and americans reading the salt peddler and the shinbone supports those earlier findings, but goes further by revealing some variations that occur in symbolic reading comprehension within a cultural group. in both of our cultural groups there was the phenomena of readers making use of each other's thinking to seek some kind of collective understanding of the shinbone's symbolism. we propose that there is a danger that cultural affinity will be treated monolithically in education and in teaching reading as a process of constructing meaning through the dynamic interaction among the reader, the text, and the context of the reading situation (anderson, hiebert, scott & wilkinson, 1985). our analysis reminds us to look for and appreciate the dynamic interaction among cultural references and individual readers as they work collectively to achieve symbolic reading comprehension. implications and recommendations symbolic reading is not a single way of constructing meaning from text either for an individual or a cultural group. rather, it is a process of exploring words, expressions, actions, customs, and beliefs evoked by or brought to text. symbolic current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 reading comprehension is interesting reading particularly when shared with others. while it may be important to experience and feel able to do individually we have found it to be a richer experience through our own initial discussion of the salt peddler and the shinbone and from our analysis of adult korean and american readers. symbolic reading can become an aesthetic way of making sense of the world expressed in the text. in comparison with literal reading, it provides greater potential for richer and deeper experiences with text. srivastava (1997) states that it helps a reader reach a higher level of understanding of the invisible profound world of a work of art. in schooling, symbolic reading comprehension of multicultural literature would offer rich experiences, with text, self and community for readers learning to live in a multicultural ethically conscious world. it would also encourage readers of differing ethnicities to be aware of their own cultural heritage as well as other people's as they seek meaning. therefore, symbolic reading comprehension of multicultural texts seems imperative for those educators teaching for social justice in the age of globalism where people can engage in self-expression within and across cultural contexts. admittedly, the current study is limited. first of all, the educational implications of the study may not be directly generalized to young readers in multicultural classroom because the study used a group of adults as participants, and because the story is more appropriate for adults than for children. to provide more convincing implications for teaching children in multicultural classrooms, further study is encouraged with children on symbolic reading comprehension of multicultural texts. references anderson, r. c., hiebert, e. h., scott, j. a., & wilkinson, i. a. g. 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(1978). mind in society. cambridge, ma; harvard university press. . current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 appendix the salt peddler and the shinbone once upon a time a salt peddler stopped to rest at the foot of a mountain pass. he was weary and his legs and back hurt from carrying his heavy load from one secluded village after another. carefully he propped his aframe carrier on the ground and slipped his arms out of the shoulder straps. he sat down with his back against a tree and was soon dozing. after a while he awoke and glanced around. something on the ground nearby caught his eye. it looked like a human bone. the thought sent tingles up and down his spine. but his curiosity overcame his fright so he picked it up for a closer look. "this is just like my shinbone," he muttered to himself and put it back on the ground. he rested a while longer and then put his a-frame on and left. hearing something behind him, he looked back and was frightened to see the bone standing in the path. he walked faster, thinking it couldn't go fast. but it went fast as well. then he slowed down to let it go past. but it also slowed down. then he stopped, thinking it would go on by. but it also stopped. he didn't know what to do. at sundown he stopped at a tavern to spend the night. the bone followed him into-his room and when he lay down to sleep, it lay down as well. the next morning, it got up when he got up and followed him out the tavern. this went on for several days. then one afternoon when they came to the top of a ridge, the peddler noticed that a house in the village below seemed to be having a party. when they came near the village entrance, he told the bone, "there's a feast at one of the houses. you wait here with the salt while i go get us some meat and rice cakes and wine." he quickly removed his a-frame and walked toward the village. he looked back after a few steps and was delighted to see that the bone had not moved. he went into the village and left by another route. several years later when he found himself in the vicinity of that village, he was reminded of the bone and decided to visit the spot where he had last seen it. he went there but there was no trace of it, only the rotten remains of his old a-frame carrier. he looked around and saw a small tavern that had not been there before. since it was already late afternoon, he went there and asked to stay the night. the old woman who ran the place took one look at him and said he could. "here, have some wine," the old woman said, after he finished his meal. "you must be bored. how about telling me something interesting. being a peddler, you must have lots of stories." "not really. but you must have heard lots of interesting things yourself. you tell me something." the old woman talked for a while and then she said, "why don't you have anything to say? going from place to place you must have seen and heard all kinds of interesting things. and you must have had all kinds of interesting experiences." "well, just the other day i was thinking of something that happened to me. you see, i had been going from village to village selling salt and, being very tired, i stopped at the bottom of a pass to rest. i was leaning against a big rock when i noticed something that looked like a shinbone. i looked at it and said to myself, 'this looks like my shinbone.' and after that, that damn bone made every move i made." "well?" said the old woman. "well, i was scared. if i walked fast, it walked fast. if i went slowly, it went slow. if i stopped, it stopped. the damn thing just kept following me," the peddler took a drink and was quiet. "well, what happened?" asked the old woman excitedly. "i just couldn't shake that damn thing. that night when i went into a tavern to sleep, it lay right down beside me. and the next morning when i headed out, it was right behind me. it followed me for i don't know how many days." he drank down a bowl of wine. "so, what did you do?" "well, one day i happened to come upon a village where some kind of celebration was going on. it was the village just down the road from here. so i said to that bone to wait here with the salt and i would go down and get us some food and drink. i headed down the road but the bone didn't follow. i was so happy to be free of that damn thing. i left that village by a different route and went straight home. that was quite a few years ago. then, just the other day i found myself near here and, remembering that bone, i came here to see what had become of it. but it was gone. i wonder what became of it." "i'm that bone!" shouted the old woman and killed and ate the peddler. a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone 11 2002 article citation yoon, j., park, m., & commeyras, m. (2002, may 6). a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone. current issues in education [on-line], 5 (2). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume5/number2/ author notes jun-chae yoon university of georgia department of reading education 309 aderhold hall, athens, ga 30602, usa. yoonjunchae@hotmail.com miri park, university of georgia department of reading education 309 aderhold hall, athens, ga 30602, usa parkmiri@coe.uga.edu michelle commeyras university of georgia department of reading education 309 aderhold hall, athens, ga 30602, usa michelle@coe.uga.edu note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 25, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation yoon, j., park, m., & commeyras, m. (2002). a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone. current issues in education, 5(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1618 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2002,%20vol%205,%20%231-6/number2/index.html mailto:yoonjunchae@hotmail.com mailto:parkmiri@coe.uga.edu mailto:michelle@coe.uga.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1618 microsoft word 1324-5975-2-le.doc 1 volume 17, number 1 may 06, 2014 issn 1099-839x the other in self: acknowledging complicity in multicultural education jenna min shim the university of wyoming in this essay, employing bourdieu’s sociological theory, in particular, his concepts of reflexivity, symbolic violence, and materialist models of the subjects and dubois’s construct of double consciousness, i discuss and analyze the dilemmas that i experience as a racial minority teacher educator in my effort to practice selfreflexivity in my own multicultural teacher education classrooms. in doing so, i demonstrate empirically the forceful and involuntary presence of the dominant other that underwrite my consciousness demonstrating the danger involved in automatically assuming an insider status solely by one’s heritage. i attempt to show the power of unexamined beliefs that constrain multicultural teaching practices against the status quo and the importance of critically examining beliefs in changing teaching practices. my ultimate hope for this self-inquiry is that the result of this work could extend beyond self-improvement to impact and advance the scholarship of multicultural teaching and learning. keywords: critical self-reflexivity, symbolic violence, materialist models of the subject, double consciousness, multicultural education there is a wide recognition that educators of color bring unique educational perspectives to teaching and learning. this is particularly true in the present time in which schools and societies are increasingly becoming diverse in many places in the world, and yet the gap between the demographics of the teacher population and student population is ever widening (e.g., philip, 2011; dingus, 2008). numerous academics of color have made significant scholarly contributions to the field of education despite prevailing eurocentric frameworks. in this regard, foley, levinson, and hurtig (2000-2001) have identified four majors contributions made by scholars of color as follows: (1) scholars of color have disrupted “deficit explanation of the lower achievement rates of students, teachers, and parents of color . . . ” (p. 80): (2) scholars of color have assumed and shown the success and capacity of students, teachers, and parents of color: (3) scholars of color have documented which “pedagogical and curricular practices help marginalized students, teachers, and parents produce success” (p. 80): (4) scholars of color have advocated multiple decolonizing and collaborative research approaches which contributed to research methodology. what this means is that the influence of the counter-hegemonic voices of academics of color in transforming white dominated field of education is undeniable. scholars of color and the need for critical selfreflexivity while strongly arguing for the impossibility of the field of education as where it is currently without “the powerful voices and ideas of insider/native” researchers, foley, levinson, and hurtig (2000-2001, p. 79) also deconstruct the notion of insider. these researchers explain that because researchers’ social, racial, cultural, and political locations are not outside of their research and pedagogical practices, a clear divide between insider and outsider is not possible. therefore, it is most likely that researchers of color who is considered as insiders are also outsiders and are speaking in a hybrid voice. the problematizing of the clear distinction between insiders and outsiders is not new. spivak (1988) has argued that we are all “subject effects” (1988, p. 204) current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 2 who are positioned in a variety of discourses inescapably; therefore, our personal and institutional interests are unavoidably entangled which are written into the representations of individuals. in analyzing the works of spivak (1988a, 2003) and kapoor (2004) notes that “acknowledging complicity”(p. 641) is one of the most prominent tenets in spivak’s works. kapoor (2004) highlights the importance of hyper-self -reflexivity in spivak’s works. indeed, spivak (1988a, 2003) notes the necessity of aligning work done with subaltern studies with her own practice of deconstruction. more specifically, spivak (2003) discusses her own privileged position as an academic in the west (columbia university in new york) and the need to deconstruct one’s implicated-ness in dominant systems of knowledge and representations by “othering ourselves” (p. 622). this essay is an effort to build on and extend the argument presented by spivak (1988a, 2003) and join the commitments of other scholars of color (asher, 2001, 2005; gay, 2003; hoffman, 1996; mcintyre, 2002; nagata, 2004) who have done critical self-reflexive work to further push the field of education toward more equality and equity. i discuss the struggles, conflicts, and dilemmas that i experience as a racial minority teacher educator in my effort to practice selfreflexivity in my own multicultural teacher education classrooms. in doing so, i demonstrate empirically the forceful and involuntary presence of the dominant other that underwrite my consciousness thereby demonstrating the danger involved in automatically assuming an insider status solely by one’s heritage. my intention is to go beyond personal confessions and self-indulgence and provide insights into doing critical self-reflexivity and acknowledging complicity in relation to teaching multiculturally oriented courses. i aim to explore and expose the degree to which i as an educator of color at times silence myself at the same time resist to the dominant ways of practicing multicultural pedagogies through doing critical selfreflexivity. my ultimate hope for this self-inquiry is that the result of this work could go beyond self-improvement to impact and advance the scholarship of multicultural teaching and learning. in this paper, i borrow spivak’s (2003) idea on “othering ourselves” (p. 622) as a primer for practicing self-reflexivity. also, considering that self-reflexivity is a much used but under defined term (maton, 2003; pillow, 2003), i define self-reflexivity broadly as an act and enactment, not just knowledge and commitment. more specifically, i envision self-reflexivity as extending beyond a mere acknowledgement of one’s social, racial, cultural, and political locations to an understanding the effects of these locations on an educator’s current pedagogical practices. i also believe the goal of multicultural education as working against inequality and inhumanity linked to the system of domination and foregrounding social justice (banks, 2004; delpit, 1995; gay, 2000; kumashiro, 2002; ladson-billings, 1994; nieto, 2000; and sleeter, 1996). the common ultimate purpose in doing self-reflexivity and multicultural education at a broader level, then, is to have a social effect. this paper is grounded in the following premises: (a) being members of the dominated group does not automatically bring about insights into historical realities and the basis for oppression (dubois, 1903/1994; luke, 2004), (b) acknowledging complicity is a requisite in unlearning one’s inevitable dominant ways of knowing (spivak, 1988a, 2003; kappor, 2004); and (c) reflexivity as an instrument that allows uncovering of social roots in an individuals’ worldview and tapping into histories embedded in people’s unconscious is a potential starting point for individual and social change (bourdieu, 1977, 1984, 1990, 1991, 1998; bourdieu & wacquant, 1992). in the following sections, i discuss the conceptual frameworks that undergird this essay: bourdieu’s (1977, 1984, 1990, 1991, 1998) sociological theory, in particular, his concepts of reflexivity, symbolic violence, and materialist models of the subjects as well as dubois’s (1903/1994) construct of double consciousness. yosso (2005) expressed concerns for the works of bourdieu mainly because his perspectives are from a white heterosexual male, and i agree with her concerns. however, i employ some of bourdieu’s theoretical concepts to think my way through my pedagogical practices in this study because some of his theoretical constructs are extremely helpful when applied to race, ethnicity, and culture (cicourel, 1993), and i believe this is especially true with his notion of reflexive practice. bourdieu (1977, 1984, 1990, 1991, 1998; bourdieu & wacquant, 1992) argued that self-analysis allows a possible social change and given that i see the goal in doing self-reflexive work in multicultural education to ultimately have a social effect, bourdieu’s (1977, 1984, 1990, 1991, 1998) concept of reflexive practice seems very applicable for this essay. bourdieu’s (1998) concept of symbolic violence is helpful for this essay because it explains the complicity of one’s involvement with domination which is the concern also emphasized by spivak (1988, 1988a, 2003). i also employ bourdieu’s (1996) materialist models of the subjects in my discussion about my effort to be self-reflexive and work against the system of domination and how the anticipated consequences of such an effort in my tenure and promotion process at times has a strong grip for me to free myself from a preoccupation with my job security. i use dubois’ (1903/1994) concept of double consciousness to explore my thoughts, actions, and consciousness that underwrite them as a teacher educator of color in my own classroom – my classroom that is in a broader sense “a social context structured mainly by dominant linguistic and cultural norms” (carter & kumasi, 2011, p. 72). i then briefly outline my personal background to the other in self: acknowledging complicity in multicultural education 3 contextualize this essay. next, i summarize my beliefs and knowledge about doing self-reflexivity in multicultural education contexts. what then follows are discussion and analyses of my own struggles and dilemmas in doing selfreflexivity in teaching multicultural teacher education courses. in the final section, i discuss the implications for multicultural education drawn from a close and careful monitoring of doing critical self-reflexivity in multicultural teacher education courses that i teach. conceptual frameworks: pierre bourdieu and w. e. b. dubois pierre bourdieu: reflexive practice, symbolic violence, materialist models of the subject wacquant (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992) notes that “if there is a single feature that makes bourdieu stand out in the landscape of contemporary social theory, it is his signature obsession with reflexivity” (p. 36). bourdieu (1990, 1990a, 1991, 1998; bourdieu & wacquant, 1992) argued that the mind is the internalization and embodiment of the social world. he explains that people are not the sole authors of their perceptions, thoughts, and actions because they are all inescapably constituted within a variety of historically constituted social and political fields. for bourdieu (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992), these social structures and orders are not consciously mastered but deeply internalized through every day practices to the extent that “the world has produced me because it has produced the categories of thought that i apply to it, that it appears me as self-evident” (p. 128). in other words, the consistency between objective social structures and embodied structures creates an illusion that the existing hierarchical social orders in regards to social class, race, gender, and language, for instance, appear natural as they become internalized not only in the members of dominant group but also dominated group. in turn, according to bourdieu (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992), unquestioned, uncontested, and unconscious acceptance of the daily life universalizes, obscures, and perpetuates the existing systems of inequality. in this respect, bourdieu’s (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992) concept of symbolic violence, “the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity” (p. 167), shows the ways in which people’s daily practices foster the embodiment of domination within themselves and other people because they accept and experience the dominant values currently utilized in the social field as legitimate—the legitimacy that reproduces the system of domination. although bourdieu has been criticized by many critics for being too deterministic (e.g., alexander, 1995; elster, 1981; jenkins, 1992), bourdieu’s arguments support otherwise. according to bourdieu (1984), while habitus, “system of durable, transposable dispositions,” that is “progressively inscribed in people’s minds” through practical interaction with external social structures are resistant to change (p. 471). habitus is not the fate and it can also be transformed through socioanalysis in a form of self-work that enables the individuals to gain an understanding of his or her dispositions (bourdieu, 1990, 1990a; bourdieu & wacquant, 1992). what this means is that the selfreflexivity involves the analysis of “social and intellectual unconscious embedded” (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992, p. 36) in individual. moreover, by making objective social rules and norms embedded in individual’s mental structures the object for analysis and thus transparent, the process which bourdieu (1990) calls objectification of objectified, the re-objectification (luke, 2004a), the social change, is possible. bourdieu’s (1990, 1990a) sociological focus is that reflexivity, i.e., objectification of objectified, is the only way to work against determinations that bear durably on individual’s practices and thus on a possible freedom from these determinations. in other words, the more individuals become aware of the social within them by reflexively questioning their categories of thoughts and actions, the less likely their thoughts and actions are to be determined by the external social orders. bourdieu’s (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992) construction of symbolic violence together with reflexivity is employed in this essay because the concepts disrupt the belief that intention, knowledge, commitment for selfreflexivity guarantees transcendence of the effects of social orders. these concepts can also illuminate ways that doing self-reflexivity can bring consciousness at least some of the social constraints that impose on individual’s thoughts and actions. moreover, incorporating bourdieu’s (1996) construct of materialist models of the subject to selfreflexivity adds another layer of complexity involved in enacting self-reflexivity because it establishes the limit that materiality imposes on people’s choices on their actions, i.e., the extent to which one can practice selfreflexivity. from a chapter of the rules of art entitled “the habitus and the possibles,” bourdieu (1996) wrote: the propensity to orient oneself towards the most risky positions, and especially the capacity to hold on to them in the absence of any economic profit in the short term, seems to depend in large part on the possession of significant economic and symbolic capital. in the first place, this is because economic capital ensures the conditions of freedom from economic necessity. (p. 261) as bourdieu (1996) argued, in modern society social relationships are mainly relationships of economic and political struggle. hence, the extent to which educators can enact self-reflexivity in education can largely be impacted by conditions of economic and cultural conditions. w.e. b. dubois: double consciousness dubois’s (1903/1994) concept of double consciousness compliments and further complexifies current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 4 bourdieu’s notions of self-analysis and reflexivity. in particular, using double consciousness as the lens through which to explore doing self-reflexivity helps to explain the psychological tension and conflicts within myself as an educator of color in practicing self-reflexivity. also, theorizing double consciousness in this paper explains the perception of myself who is inevitably fabricated in the system of domination as well as accommodates the one of the premises of this study, namely spivak’s (1988a, 2003) argument about acknowledging one’s own complicity as an academic of color. du bois’ (1903/1994) described the black experience of double consciousness as follows: it is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others. . . one ever feels his twoness, -an american, a negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strings; two warring ideals on one dark body. . . the history of the american negro is the history of this strife, -this longing . . . to merge his double self into a better and truer self. in this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. he would not africanize america, for american has too much to teach the world and africa. he would not bleach his negro souls in a flood of white americanism, for he knows that negro blood has a message for the world. (p. 3) here, dubois (1903/1994) introduces the notion of multiple, complex, and conflicting identities of the blacks who measure themselves and their capacity by what white people think about them. he shows the core beliefs that blacks hold about themselves in relation to white people. in other words, despite the desire to sustain the identities of old selves as africans, the blacks have low self-esteem and the feeling of inadequacy because of how whites view them. several scholars have noted that double consciousness continues to be a prevalent factor in the lives of african americans and other people from other historically marginalized racial groups (e.g., kumasi, 2012; lyubansky & eidelson, 2005). dubois’s (1903/1994) concept of double consciousness and bourdieu’s (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992) concept of symbolic violence both allow an exposure of how teachers from historically marginalized racial groups, not only teachers from dominant group, are implicated in reproducing dominant ways of knowing. however, dubois’s (1903/1994) concept of the two-ness in which he describes the experiences of african diaspora in the history of slavery provides an insight into doubly divided psychological effects of racism and domination. while the members of oppressed racial group have unique perspectives about the system of domination not visible to the members of dominant group, they also experience self-hate because they look themselves through the gaze of the dominant other. in her study, willis (1995) studies the literacy experiences of a third grade young african male employing dubois’s (1903/1994) concept of double consciousness to illuminate the social and psychological effects of the system of domination on how this student read the world of literacy through the dominant ways of knowing and sees his own cultural practices as illegitimate. willis (1995) suggests that literacy educators must attend to double personhood of students from historically marginalized group as a resource in school literacy practice to broaden the scope of literacy practice beyond “a eurocentric literacy canyon” (p. 37). carter and kumasi (2011) also used dubois’s (1903/1994) concept of double consciousness to study how some black youth interact and negotiate their identities during the book club activities and discussions. they conclude that dubois (1903/1994) notion of double consciousness as a lens helped them to re-search and re-see (cartner & kumasi, 2011, p. 88) the black youth’s sense making of the book discussed and their identities as they navigate dominant white and afrocultural ways of knowing. in this paper, in using dubois’ (1903/1994) notion of double consciousness i hope to understand both limitations and potentials in doing self-reflexivity as a teacher educator of color. more specifically, i hope to explore the social and racial limitations imposed on me as a teacher educator of color by understanding the important psychological manifestations of double consciousness in my own classrooms. i also hope to discuss the potentials of doing self-reflexivity work that become visible through the exploration and understanding of the limitations in doing self-reflexivity for educators of color. personal background i am a korean american, and my family immigrated to the u.s more than thirty years ago. growing up, i was often the only racial minority student in my classrooms. my memories of childhood include wanting to give up who i was in order to be like other students: i disliked being different in the ways i looked and spoke from my peers. currently, i am an assistant professor on a tenure track working as a teacher educator at an institution in a state that is populated predominantly with european american. i am in my fourth year of teaching at the institution, and i have had approximately three hundred prospective teachers in my classes. among those three hundred students, i have had less than ten racial minority students in my class all together. i have the responsibility for teaching the courses that focus on diversity to include ethnic, linguistic, and racial issues, and not only i see myself as a well-positioned person to take on such a responsibility, but i am also committed in working with the european american prospective teachers to help them examine their viewpoints about diversity. this commitment largely stems from my belief that these prospective teachers will better be prepared to the other in self: acknowledging complicity in multicultural education 5 work more productively with their future diverse student populations if the teacher education courses provide them with the context in which they can make visible and challenge their own racially privileged locations. meanwhile, i am also realizing that critical conversation about inequality and inequity linked to diversity is much easier to have when i am in a room full of people who too are committed to the same issue. during my graduate school years, i engaged in numerous conversations about the issues related to various inequalities that exist in the field of education. these conversations were with other graduate students, professors, and many others i met at different educational conferences over the years. the conversations were always heated, exciting, stimulating, energizing, and most of all, they felt empowering. when i took a job as an assistant professor shortly after graduating, i was committed to making the differences in students’ mind. as many literatures would suggest, my goal in multicultural education courses that i teach is to provide the contexts in which students are able to shift their consciousness. i thought i was a well prepared multicultural educator. i thought i had the knowledge i needed to engage my students in critical self-reflexivity. however, despite my unquestioned commitment and enthusiasm for reflexive work, as i enter my fourth year of being an assistant professor, my experiences of trying to be self-reflexive only further begs questions about how the state of doing self-reflexive may be achieved to go beyond just talking and thinking about self-reflexivity. i am realizing that the road to doing self-reflexivity is not without consequences, dilemmas, contradictions, struggles, and exhaustions. my beliefs, intentions, commitment, and knowledge about self-reflexivity i believe that self-reflexive work particularly in multicultural education must be empowering (nagata, 2004). i also agree with bourdieu (1990a) who noted that “the analysis of mental structures is an instrument of liberation” (p. 16) and that reflexive practice should lead to a vehicle to reveal the system of domination. shor and freire (1987) define empowerment not as “private notions of getting ahead” but rather as one’s ability to use one’s “recent freedom to help others to be free by transforming the totality of society, then you are exercising only an individualist attitude towards empowerment” (p. 23). adapting shore and freire’s (1987) notion of empowerment and seeing self-reflexive work in multicultural education as an instrument of liberation, i believe that self-reflexive work in multicultural education must extend beyond intellectual musing and self-assuring move for individuals. i am committed to doing selfreflexive work as a teacher educator of color by turning gaze inward to myself and recognize that i influence my students’ perceptions. perhaps more importantly, i am committed to doing self-reflexive work that would enable me to engage in critical dialogues that would provoke my students who are mostly european american to make visible and disrupt their worldviews and recognize the need to reorganize the current systems at a fundamental level. this belief, if it is realized, in a long run, can put a significant dent in the current educational systems. as van dijk (2008) notes, the members of dominant group have more access to power in terms of discourse production, and thus, the european american prospective teachers can have a greater impact in serving as an impetus for institutional change. struggles, dilemmas, conflicts, and exhaustion: limitations in doing self reflexivity in actuality, i am painfully learning that my beliefs, intentions, commitment, and knowledge about self-reflexivity in the ways i described above are just not enough. using the a few examples of my experiences in multicultural education classes that i teach in which i am often “righting wrongs” (spivak, 2004, p. 523), i illustrate how i tacitly reinforce the european american ways of thinking that reflect the dominant norms despite my resistance and otherwise intentions. having undergone socialization in both racial minority and white world, the system of subordination and domination, against my will, i sometimes support rather than undermine the dominant linguistic and cultural system that i intend to work against in my pedagogical practices. standard english at the beginning of each semester in teaching the multicultural teacher education courses, i often find myself announcing to the students that i speak english as a second language. i tell my students that if my accents get in the way for them to understand me, i would not be offended at all if they ask me to repeat myself. this is ironic announcement as i have lived in an english speaking country for over three decades. while i speak english with a noticeable accent, i seldom if ever, encounter situations where i am not understood by others because of my accent. so, what elicits such a grand announcement at the beginning of a semester? this seemingly innocent and reasonable statement represents the dominant other within myself when i look beneath the surface of the announcement. cognitively, i realize the relationship between standard english and neocolonialism/ imperialism (thiong’o, 1986; kubota & lin, 2006; rhedding-jones, 2002). in my academic work, i firmly support the idea of many different forms of english in global culture. however, when reading between the lines of the announcement, i also know that i am apologizing to the students for my ways of speaking. rather than seeing such an apology entirely as a conscious act, bourdieu’s (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992) concept of symbolic violence gives a way into seeing my privileging standard english and devaluing english with an accent as an effect of (neo) colonial trajectories (thiong’o, 1986; kubota & current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 6 lin, 2006; rhedding-jones, 2002). without being hyperreflexive about my own complicity in the legitimation of standard english, i am not able to assist my students deconstruct the underlying ideologies about historically and socially constructed dominant model of english i.e., standard english. moreover, dubois’s (1903/1994) concept of double consciousness helps to explain how i identify with myself because i perceive my ways of speaking through the dominant linguistic system. that said, reinforcing standard english not only denies my accent and intonation as legitimate but also who i am. apologizing for the way i speak also means i am ashamed of the way i speak and who i am. this is true even as i am ashamed by the shame i am feeling. for instance, in the broader world in which standard english is privileged and looking at myself through the dominant linguistic system, i feel inadequate, ashamed, and incompetent in speaking english with an accent. there is a degree of self-hatred involved in this, and this involuntary psychological manifestation of self-hatred is very forceful and powerful even as i am committed in doing critical self-reflexivity in my multicultural teacher education courses. if these feelings and actions were a matter of conscious choice, the problem may be easier to solve. quite contrarily, these feelings resulting from viewing myself as i might be perceived by the dominant others are deeply ingrained and are very difficult to overcome. if unnoticed and if the feeling of shame is taken for granted, such self-sense of inferiority and the need for an apology will continue to reinforce the dominant linguistic system. furthermore, particularly if not reflected and acknowledged, the effect of symbolic violence and double consciousness in how i view myself and my ways of speaking english is the notion of standard english as the only legitimate and correct form of english that gets reified in my daily educational practices in multicultural education that conceals the neutrality of standard english. i do recognize that theorizing double consciousness and symbolic violence does not always imply a shift in my pedagogical practices in multicultural classrooms and how i feel about myself. however, it does provide an indispensable analytic framework for understanding why i, an educator of color, who is committed in working against the system of domination silently advances eurocentrism through the internalized belief on and feelings about the authentic way of speaking english. psychologically, there are often intense tensions and conflicts within myself who have the views of the dominant and dominated. the danger, as bourdieu (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992) noted, is that symbolic violence works “almost wholly behind the backs” (p. 145) and “from below” (p. 167) in the ways that i unconsciously desire the conditions imposed on me by the system of linguistic dominance. however, it is through the practice of critical self-reflexivity around my pedagogical practices in multicultural education courses, i come to realize how my practices are situated in society, recognize the dynamics of oppression, and question the consequences of my behaviors and actions in multicultural education. more specifically, through the practice of self-reflexivity, i come to realize how my ideologies pertaining to standard english is a product of the broader social contexts. moreover, without my effort to engage in self-reflexivity and assuming that my beliefs about standard english is a universal truth can only hinder critical multicultural education that aims to dismantle the dominant ways of knowing. reversed racism the most frequent and consistent topic that gets brought upon in my multicultural teacher education courses is the notion of reversed racism. many students express their frustrations about what they perceive to be the marginalization of whites because the privileges that are given to racial minorities. the most recent example is one student’s comment about the unfairness involved in the invitation extended to african american children to visit the white house by president obama because such an invitation excludes the white students the opportunity to visit the white house. another popular comment is the ineligibility of white students in receiving scholarships because of the preferences given to racial minority students. the literature suggests that these kinds of stories around reversed racism are common narratives among white students when they encounter the topic of race and racism (king, 1991; thompson, 2003). the literature also suggests that the attitudes that underscore such stories are self-centered and justify societal oppression and inequity. that stated, students’ such stories can serve as an excellent basis to engage in a critical dialogue (hooks, 1994) in which students are able and encouraged to deconstruct their assumptions. however, actually doing so in my pedagogical practices is not without a challenge. i am constantly torn between my commitment as a self-reflexive and critical multicultural educator and my desire to keep my students happy. i find my ability to be straightforward to the students’ comments that i see as oppressive or just plain wrong is considerably constrained, and i am in a continual dilemma in deciding how to respond to the students. at times, when i bring myself to respond to students in the ways that might help them disrupt their thinking, i sense students’ defensiveness, and i back off. my concern for offending students at times limits the conversations that occur in my classroom. one student in the most recent course evaluation for a multicultural education course i taught commented: this course was pointless. it did nothing to help my education as a teacher. i think the other in self: acknowledging complicity in multicultural education 7 focusing on white privilege is divisive rather than unifying and is counterproductive to the course. (anonymous, 2012) the student’s discomfort and dislike for the discussions on white privilege translated to the course being pointless and doing nothing for the student as a future educator. thompson (2003) explains that “whites are uncomfortable with the implications of acknowledging white racism because they want to be seen as good people and “need is often more apparent among white college students who are first beginning to struggle with the implications of racism” (p. 8). thompson (2003) continues to explain that for the white students to realize that people of color can make judgments about them based on their race and assume that they are racist can be devastating. in relation to the foregoing comment, the topic of white privilege may have threatened the student’s need to be seen as a good people and thus her comment appears to be a defense against her need, discomfort, and devastation in her possible realization with her implication of racism. that stated, the importance of discussions on white privilege and deconstruction of students’ assumptions become clearer in the face of the goals of self-reflexivity and multicultural education. while i am frustrated and even angry by the comments such as the one above, navigating my way through a racist discourse as a person who is product of racist discourses is not always obviously simple. although not for certain, i speculate that this student also marked low numbers in the quantitative section of the evaluation. bourdieu (1996) argued that economic capital ensures the conditions of freedom from the material necessity for one’s survival. in my case too because most i do not possess significant amount of economic and cultural capital not have to worry about material necessity, i feel that i am often caught in infinite cycles of struggle where i must often resign to retreating to safe positions constructed within already established orders. this dynamic, i dare to speculate, is the one that mostly likely cross most junior academics. in this regard, bruner’s (1986) description of the researcher not as “an individual creative scholar, knowing subject who discovers” but as “a material body through whom a narrative structure unfolds” (p. 150) resonates. as an untenured faculty member, i must confess that what is at stake for me is the course evaluations that have a direct impact on how my work is evaluated. in other words, while it can be said that the student’s comment such as the one above may index the fact that i am disrupting students’ thinking, the effects of their judgments about the course can at least partially impact my tenure promotion process in the long run. bourdieu’s (1996) materialist models of the subjects gives an insight into how the extent to which an educator, especially as an untenured academic of color critical of systems of domination, can go against the grain is not entirely disconnected from the possession or loss of capitals. the painful question that arises now then is this. am i really critical of a system of domination and can i really call myself an educator committed to critical pedagogy when i am at times allowing students to silence me in order to attain tenure? am i not supposed to confront the structural racism in my classrooms when the students’ stories aforementioned do mask the system of domination and existing inequality? am i not supposed fight back and talk against the stratified power relations ingrained in students’ (un)consciousness? in theorizing double consciousness, there is a degree of feeling inferiority in me when standing in front of a classroom full of white students. this shows that the stratified power relations are ingrained not only in students’ consciousness but my own as well. however, analyzing my pedagogical practice and my effort to be self-reflexive partially explain the difficulties in doing reflexive work as an educator of color because the manifestation of the effects of social, racial, political, and economic discourses that are prominently present become visible. this in turn serves as a reason to continue struggling and working toward practicing being a critical scholar rather than believing that i have arrived as a critical scholar. i often silence myself even in the face of being self-reflexive in my multicultural education courses, and yet, being selfreflexive helps me recognize the limits of practicing selfreflexivity as well as the limits underlying my own views as an educator of color. moreover, without the benefit of understanding the limits of my views and practices and how my they often perpetuate as opposed to resist dominant systems, i am better able to see the effects my internalized beliefs and actions have on students in multicultural education. in effect, my inability to be selfreflexive serves to limit the possibilities inherent in multicultural education courses. other stories although i highlighted the two classroom experiences above as exemplars to illustrate how i inadvertently reinforce and legitimize white supremacy, there are plenty of other occurrences in my multicultural education classrooms where i constantly struggle between being self-reflexive to work against the systems of domination and remaining silent to keep my students happy. we spend couple weeks on linguistic diversity in my multicultural education courses, and when i invite the students to share their thoughts on english language learners and their academic achievements, most students view english language learners’ home language as a hindrance to their learning. a student stated: i think that the biggest problem for english language learners is their parents letting them speak spanish at home all the time. i know it is the easy thing to do, and the nice thing to say current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 8 “oh it’s okay at home.” but, how is talking to the kids in spanish helping them? unless your kids are having a meltdown, their parents need to at least try to speak english to them. i think that is the biggest obstacle because, without having these kids learn english, they cannot learn in school. each semester there are numerous comments very similar to the one above made by students in my multicultural education classes. here is another statement made by a student: the parents, teachers, and students must realize the importance of being competent in english and not use so much spanish. otherwise, the students will be missing out on all sorts of opportunities. when you go to university, they are not going to translate for you. it’s not like a professor will say, “oh, i am sorry you don’t speak english, and here is a spanish version of biology. we will cater to all your needs.” that’s just not going to happen. if you work at mcdonalds, the customers are not going to speak spanish to you. these students see english as the only legitimate knowledge/language in american society, which would allow english language learners to be successful. like most students, the above students both believe that the use of students’ home language interferes with students’ academic success. moreover, for these students, there is no room for a multilingual society in which many different languages are valued and respected. there are empirical evidences indicating that allowing english language learners to use their first language produces a positive, rather than negative, effect on individual learning (de angelis & dewaele, 2009). while i do disrupt my students’ assumption about english language learners and the use of their home language in my classes, when the students become defensive and adamant about their beliefs, it becomes more difficult for me to continue challenging them for the same reasons i have described in my above examples on standard english and reversed racism. for instance, looking through the lens of dubois’ (1903/1994) double consciousness and bourdieu’s (1990, 1990a) notion of symbolic violence, as a second language speaker of english, disrupting my students’ perspectives on english as the only legitimate language in american society at times is extremely difficult as i too have a tendency to have the same beliefs that are held by my students. however, being self-reflexive about my difficulties in pushing my students against what they believe to be absolute truths helps me move closer to actually challenging my students despite the challenges. implications and discussions: possibilities in doing self-reflexivity although it is a reality, to state that we live in the racist world of inequality and inequity is extremely difficult. to realize and confirm all the psychological, physical, physiological, material tolls that racism takes on people of color is also extremely difficult. to state that people of color actually perpetually the very racism that takes severe tolls on themselves is unbearable, and this is what i have described in this paper. however, my purpose in analyzing such unbearable stories in doing selfreflexivity was certainly not meant to be a victim narrative, a mere self-revelation or be deterministic. rather, it was to understand more fully the process involved in doing self-reflexivity as an educator of color in a predominantly white institution and question the naïve idea that i can just do critical self-reflexivity as a matter of will. i wish to state my recognition that the examples and their analyses in this essay are based solely on my personal experiences and that they cannot be generalized. that said, the claims made about enacting self-reflexivity of educators of color in the following section are largely indexical, but i do hope that the result of this paper goes beyond my own improvement in teaching to go beyond to improve the scholarship of teaching and learning in multicultural education. below are the implications drawn from my effort to practice selfreflexivity. first, doing self-reflexivity work is not one time project nor does it involve a linear progression. it is a non-coherent and non-consistent back and forth process that is exhausting and discouraging at times. despite my continuous effort in becoming a critical self-reflexive multicultural educator, i often return to safer and lessconflictual ways of working with the white students in multicultural education classes. critical discussion around reverse racism and going against the european american students’ beliefs, for instance, is at times more uncomfortable, risky and consequential than succumbing to the dominant discourse. talking about self-reflexivity is comfortable and self-assuring but doing and practicing self-reflexivity is challenging and my practice in multicultural education is often contradicted by my intentions. my commitment in multicultural education is to work with the students to resist against unequal power relations, and yet, my complicity to the students’ dominant ways of thinking conceals the very thing i am committed to work against. second, through a close monitoring of practicing self-reflexivity as an educator of color, looking past the simplicity in generalizing educators of color as diversity experts becomes incumbent. the educators’, including the educators of color’s, perspective is not pure but contaminated (ellingson, 1998) within complex sets of overlapping social structures constitutive of the system of domination and subordination firmly in place. hence, i, an educator of color, can often enact violence, i.e., perpetuate the unequal power relations in my classrooms even if it is not intended and even if it is not for the benefit of me who is enacting it. apologizing for nonthe other in self: acknowledging complicity in multicultural education 9 standard english to the students is not my intention and does not work toward my commitment and integrity as a multicultural educator. moreover, what is quietly but surely enacted through my practices is the dominant symbol (i.e., standard english) constitutive of the dominant linguistic system. third, doing self-reflexivity is relational practice and should not be viewed in a vacuum. for instance, the extent to which i can critique the notion of reversed racism with someone who share similar commitments is vastly different from the extent to which i can critique the same issue with the european american students in my own classrooms. the materiality and other forms of capitals entangled within power relations delimit the capacity in doing self-reflexivity. even as i struggle to remain committed as a critical multicultural teacher educator, i cannot always ignore the consequences of how the students feel in the classrooms. in this regard, doing self-reflexivity reveals how the objective social conditions prevail in individual’s daily practices (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992). bourdieu’s (1996) argument that individuals’ internal struggles are to an extent arbitrated by external sanctions affords us to think further about the kinds of conditions that would possibly enable the educator of color to be less obliged to give into political realities and better practice self-reflexivity. moreover, such thinking inspires the opportunity to re-think about the current context of higher education in a different light and see the need to re-objectify the field of higher education. finally, when viewed from dubois’ (1903) concept of double consciousness, educator of color’s doing self-reflexivity opens a possibility for shifting subject positions in which they are not just reacting as mere objects of power but act in their own terms. du bois argued that the members of oppressed group look at themselves through the gaze of the dominant and dominated and have low self-esteem. while this is true, the other side of my two-ness as an educator of color and as a member of historically oppressed racial group in which i bring the unique perspectives is what partially afford the constant struggles and dilemmas in doing selfreflexivity. in her narrative of otherness in the academy, threadgold (1996) raises a critical question: “how once discourses and genres of the other have been embodied, do you yet set about erasing the voices of the master, and learning to speak your own bodies, while still remaining credible within the academy?” (p. 281). although i am not sure if this question can be answered in a yes or no fashion, experiencing struggles and dilemmas in one’s pedagogical practices as a result of doing self-reflexivity and realizing that one is neither entirely an insider or outsider can lead to different ways of thinking about the very notion of self-reflexivity (pillow, 2003). more specifically, the tension between what i intend and know intellectually and the dominant other within myself provokes me to be reflexive about doing self-reflexivity in multicultural education classrooms and recognize that doing self-reflexivity is a constant negotiation of power and meaning constitutive of the various intersecting historical forces within the system of domination and subordination (bourdieu, 1990a; bourdieu & wacquant, 1992). struggling to fight against my privileging of standard english, for instance, attunes me more acutely to the dominant other within in and my own complicity to power as daily occurrences in my teaching. this compels me to continue working against the complicity that compromise my goal as a multicultural educator who is committed to resisting dominant discourses. in a sense, it feels more accurate to state that i am always in the process of working toward becoming a critical multicultural educator of color than i am a critical multicultural educator. that said, the degree to which i succeed or fail in working with the european american students to assist them interrogate their dominant ways of thinking at least partially depends on the degree to which i wrestle and struggle with the tension between the doubly displaced myself within in, i.e., my complicity in and resistance against the system of oppression. re-invoking the definition of empowerment offered by shor and freire (1987), mentioned earlier, in which they insist that empowerment should entail helping others to transform the society, to make empowering consequential difference in practicing self-reflexivity, the struggles and tensions between the dominant other and self simultaneously speaking through the myself should be regarded as inherent conditions of doing self-reflexivity. even though “making positions transparent does not make them unproblematic” (spivak, 1988a, p. 6), one of the central implications for educators of color here may be that engaging in struggles involved in practicing self reflexivity in multicultural education can mean engaging in new possibilities not only for the self but also for the prospective teachers and their future diverse student populations. in other words, the struggles and tensions become a site for generative space in which i and students can grow. a constant contesting and 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(2005). whose culture has capital? a critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. race, ethnicity and education, 8(1), 61-91. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 12 article citation shim, j. m. (2014). the other in self: acknowledging complicity in multicultural education current issues in education, 17(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1324 author notes jenna min shim the university of wyoming 1000 e. university avenue mcwhinnie, 209 laramie, wyoming 82071 jshim@uwyo.edu jenna min shim is an assistant professor in the department of educational studies at the university of wyoming. her primary research interests center on curriculum theory and critical multicultural pedagogies with the specific goal of contributing to social change in favor of historically marginalized groups. manuscript received: 11/01/2013 revisions received: 02/12/2014 accepted: 02/15/2014 the other in self: acknowledging complicity in multicultural education 13 volume 17, number 1 may 06, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors elizabeth calhoun reyes constantine schreiber assistant executive editors kevin jose raso recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik aaron bryant anna montana cirell laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell younsu kim melinda thomas kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template current issues in education, 20(1) 1 volume 20, issue 1 march 20, 2017 issn 1099-839x principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education maria banda roberts texas a&m – texarkana federico r. guerra, jr. university of texas – rio grande valley abstract: with the every student succeeds act continuing to legislate accountability for special education and hispanic students, the appropriate content in principal preparation programs relevant to successful leadership of special education programs is vital. this mixed methods study analyzed the survey responses of 84 principals in south texas from predominantly hispanic schools to determine the principals’ perceptions regarding their legal, foundational, and contextual knowledge of special education and their suggested topics for inclusion in curriculum content of principal preparation programs to provide the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively implement and supervise special education programs. results indicated that the principals’ greatest need was in knowledge to design curriculum for students with disabilities, however, the most frequent recommendation for inclusion in principal preparation was additional content in special education laws, section 504, and response to intervention. recommendations for principal preparation were based on the lowest areas of knowledge indicated by the responses. keywords: special education administration, principal preparation, educational leadership, principal concerns apa-style citation: roberts, m. b., & guerra, jr. (2017). principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education. current issues in education, 20(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1567 accepted: october 22nd, 2016 the significance of principal leadership is second only to that of a teacher’s in its impact on student learning (seashore louis, leithwood, wahlstrom, & anderson, 2010). by inspiring the campus vision and their teachers’ attitudes, principals promoting a caring learning environment by guiding teacher mindsets (furney, aiken, hasazi, & clark/keefe, 2005). principals model ethical and legal expectations in school, highlighting the need for superior knowledge in effective supervision of regular and special education programs. praisner (2003) determined principals with positive attitudes in serving students with special needs were those who took a variety of special education courses in their preparation program. in addition, the role of the principal has changed from being the school disciplinarian and supervisor of the building and physical plant, to one of instructional leader responsible for implementing the individuals http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1567 roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 2 with disabilities education act (idea) and the every student succeeds act (essa) (dipaola & walther-thomas, 2003). consequently, principals have a vital role in the education and lives of special needs students (hoppey & mcleskey, 2013). principals, nevertheless, are not prepared to supervise special education programs because they are inadequately prepared in their knowledge of special education policy, and more importantly, the characteristics of how these disorders or disabilities affect the student (lynch, 2012). principals are even less prepared to serve hispanic students with disabilities due to the paucity of research on this student group, in spite of the high number of hispanic children with disabilities. this study examines the perceptions of principals of predominantly hispanic schools on their knowledge in special education to determine how to better prepare principals to implement and supervise special education programs. the study specifically addressed legal, foundational, and contextual knowledge in special education, and their suggestions for content in principal preparation curriculum. the findings indicated respondents’ high levels of satisfaction with their knowledge of the idea and revealed their lowest level of knowledge in designing curriculum for students with disabilities. the respondents also suggested principal preparation programs include more content on special education laws, section 504, and response to intervention. the remainder of the discussion in this paper is organized into the following sections: (1) purpose of the study, (2) literature review, (3) methods and data sources, (4) results, (5) recommendations, (6) significance and limitations of the study, and (7) summary. purpose of the study to determine how to improve principal preparation programs in preparing effective special education leaders, the researchers examined and analyzed responses of south texas principals of predominantly hispanic schools to determine their perceptions of their knowledge in three special education topics; specifically, legal, foundational, and contextual knowledge and to gather their suggestions for curriculum content to incorporate into current principal preparation. the researchers hope the findings can be utilized by principal preparation programs to prepare all school leaders to serve the needs of special education students, especially hispanic special education students, especially hispanic special education students, thereby increasing the academic success of all students with disabilities. literature review to understand the context and results of the study, the first section of the literature review expounds on the growth of the intersection of two groups, students with disabilities and hispanics. it continues by presenting the obstacles these students encounter as second language learners and as members of families who are economically disadvantaged. the review also discusses topics crucial to principals in their accountability for the performance of all students, including students with disabilities. finally, it elaborates on the topics covered in the data collection survey and on the themes resulting from the open-ended question in the survey. demographic terms before continuing the literature review, the following clarification should be provided regarding terms used throughout this paper. the term “hispanic” is used to reflect the term used in state accountability reports in texas and in federal education accountability reports in the u.s. however, the student population in this study is overwhelmingly (97.5%) mexican or mexican american due to the geographic location along the texas-mexico border. the reader must also be cognizant of the terms “special education students” and “students with disabilities.” the terms will be used interchangeably throughout the paper, although texas and u. s. accountability roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 3 reports refer to this student group as “special education” students. the following section provides a glimpse into the education of hispanics and students with disabilities. students with disabilities and hispanic approximately 13% of students enrolled in the united states (national center for education statistics [nces], 2016) and 8.7% of students enrolled in texas (texas education agency, 2016) have been identified as needing special education services. in addition, approximately 1.5 million (1/4) of the 2014 u.s. students identified with disabilities were hispanic. students with disabilities and hispanics are two student groups highly at risk of dropping out of school due to a conglomeration of factors, resulting in their inclusion in accountability measures in the every student succeeds act (essa). table 1 provides a summary count of the most recent number of students with disabilities enrolled in the united states (u.s.), texas, and the region of study. table 1: number of students in special education in region, texas, and u.s. public schools special education services region (2016) texas (2016) united states (2014) orthopedic impairment 359 3,806 56,489 auditory impairment 501 7,046 76,632 visual impairment 315 3,967 28,106 deaf / blind 5 229 1,468 intellectual disability 3,416 46,329 425,447 emotional disturbance 1,603 26,725 363,859 learning disability 12,808 159,503 2,264,148 speech impairment 4,438 91,917 1,333,839 autism 3,574 54,098 538,015 developmental delay <5 51 409,932 traumatic brain injury 61 1,325 26,396 non-categorical early childhood 389 5,475 n/a other health impairment 4,971 62,714 817,443 totals 32,440 463,185 6,464,215 sources: texas education agency. (2016). 2015-2016 special education reports. retrieved from: https://rptsvr1.tea.texas.gov/adhocrpt/adser.html nces. (2016). condition of education: children and youth with disabilities. retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_204.50.asp low student success although the number of students in the special education program comprises a large percentage of the entire student population, statistics paint a dismal picture of student performance for this group. for example, fourteen percent (14%) received an alternative certificate rather than a regular high school diploma, and nineteen percent (19%) dropped out of school in 2014 (nces, 2016). the numbers speak for themselves, informing us schools are not providing the appropriate services to prepare these students for successful transition to postsecondary education and the job force. parents of students with disabilities, too, are dissatisfied with the level of support the schools are providing their children as evidenced by the high degree of litigation in this area (osborne & russo, 2014). their concerns are not hard to understand when one reads federal reports on the status of racial/ethnic disproportionality in special https://rptsvr1.tea.texas.gov/adhocrpt/adser.html http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_204.50.asp roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 4 education. for example, the report titled “racial and ethnic disparities in special education (united states department of education, 2016)” finds that 100% of the states have one or more districts exhibiting some disproportionality in serving minority students with disabilities. almost half of the 17,371 school districts in the u. s. were found to exhibit disproportionate rates of ethnic or racial placement, setting, or identification of minority students with disabilities for three consecutive years. the following section elaborates on the circumstances of hispanics in the public education system. hispanic education in texas, where hispanic students comprise slightly more than half of the total state enrollment (tea, 2016), educators must also consider the incongruence of the school and classroom culture with the hispanic culture as they identify and serve hispanic students with disabilities (harry & klingner, 2007). hispanics are the largest group of english language learners in the u.s. (nces, 2016). identification as english language learners, which many hispanics are, immediately places a student at risk of dropping out of school before graduation due to a language barrier. exhibiting a learning disability may further exacerbate student frustration in the classroom, thereby increasing hispanic special education students’ risk of dropping out of school. in addition, support at home may be minimal if the parents speak little or no academic english or they lack reading and math literacy due to educational or economic disadvantage (gandara, 2010). for examples, families of mexican origin comprise the largest hispanic group and have the lowest level of education in the united states (united states census bureau, 2011), and important factor in texas, where more than half the state’s school enrollment is hispanic. finally, because the culture encourages respect of school leaders and educators, parents believe school personnel know best in school matters, and may not complain if services do not meet their children’s needs. the result is that ultimate responsibility for the appropriate placement and provision of services for students with disabilities defaults to school administrators, specifically, the school principal, which leads to the following discussion on the principal’s responsibilities in accountability issues. school principal accountability the school principal must have the knowledge and skills to advocate for appropriate placement and services of all students enrolled in their schools as mandated by federal and state legislation. the latest federal legislation is the every student succeeds act (essa), establishes accountability for economically disadvantaged students, students from major racial and ethnic groups, children with disabilities, and english language learners in all public school systems receiving federal funds. as noted, two of the targeted groups are the special education group and the hispanic group. in addition, principals must adhere to all components of the individuals with disabilities education act (idea), legislation with specific legal requirements relating to identification, placement, appropriate services, and discipline of students with disabilities. however, school leaders do not innately possess the capacity to effectively supervise special education programs. it is the responsibility of the principal preparation programs to provide the necessary curriculum content and to develop the necessary knowledge and skills of future principals in preparation for their roles as advocates for the free and appropriate education of all students. critical knowledge and skills for effective instructional and campus leaders are provided next. knowledge and skills needed by principals the school principal’s knowledge and skills are crucial to meeting the provisions of idea and the legalities of special education program implementation. special education presents roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 5 a major challenge for school administrators (dipaola & walther-thomas, 2003). principals’ everyday routines include effectively and efficiently meeting the requirements of state and federal legislation, which include a mandate for accountability (schechter & feldman, 2013). however, school principals are not adequately equipped to oversee special education services due to the deficiency of special education courses in the curriculum and internship of their university preparation program (bays, 2004). research by wakeman, browder, flowers, and ahlgrim-delzell (2006), suggests that school principals are deficient in abilities that are essential to create and maintain educational support teams to address special education’s issues. dipaola, tschanen-moran, and walther-thomas (2004) noted that most principals do not have the adequate academic instruction or field-based experience from their preparation programs to effectively administer all aspects of a special education program, including legal compliance of the program. contrasting a principal with expertise in special education and a general school principal, there is little to no research on the detailed proficiencies that are essential for principals to be effective special education leaders. “the question about what makes the administration of special education special has not been explicitly addressed, there is indeed something special about the way educators trained in the administration of special education deliver services to students who have disabilities and support staff” (boscardin, 2007, p. 189). boscardin added that leadership is very important, particularly when overseeing the mechanisms of special education law. yet in some states, campus leaders can simply take a test to obtain principal certification through alternative certification routes. the national association of secondary school principals (2016) writes, “most of these initiatives seek to attract candidates from outside of the education profession on the premise that anyone with a background in business or management is a quality candidate for the principalship.” these principals can walk onto a campus with no formal training in instructional leadership at all, much less leadership of special education programs or national initiatives, for example, the federally legislated response to intervention. response to intervention response to intervention (rti) is a multi-tiered approach for early identification and support of students with learning and behavior needs. idea legislation disallowed the “discrepancy” model previously used to qualify students for special education services. in the discrepancy model, a student’s ability and their actual achievement were calculated and compared. if a significant discrepancy was noted, the student qualified for service through special education. idea now requires a tiered system of instruction with various levels of support and intervention based on student response to research-based instruction before the students are considered for referral to special education. the tiers begin with quality first instruction for all students, followed by small group and individual targeted instruction for those students who were not successful initially. the process terminates with referral for instruction from a special education teacher if additional support is required (usde, 2015). researchbased instructional strategies must, monitored, and documented as the student progresses through the tiers of intervention (usde, 2015). this process connects the teacher’s capacity to appraise all students thoroughly to recognize those who need additional support and to frequently monitor the students’ progress (walker et al., 2015). this is a systemic approach to identify students who are at risk of failure, which allows for intervention before referral and evaluation into the special education program. specific knowledge and skills are indispensable to properly administer rti; for example, knowledge of research-based instructional strategies and knowledge of data collection and assessment skills to support proper monitoring of special education students. roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 6 vincent l. farrandino, former director of the national association of elementary school principals, states that “informed leadership is critical to the success of your school’s special education program” (patterson, 2001, p. 8). this knowledge can be obtained through coursework in university preparation programs that include special education theory and special education law classes, and include field-based experiences in special education departments. dipaola, tschanen-moran, and walther-thomas (2004) concluded principals must be academically knowledgeable of all areas in special education. much of the knowledge needed stems from the legal requirements mandated by state and federal law, such as the rti component of idea. however, special education knowledge can be divided into three categories as in the survey used for this study: legal, foundational, and contextual. the following paragraphs provide an overview of the three sections of the survey: legal knowledge, foundational knowledge, context knowledge, and of general leadership knowledge to assist the reader in understanding the results of the study. knowledge and skills measured by survey in a handbook to assist principals in the administration of special education programs, patterson (2001) identifies a multitude of principal’s responsibilities which require specific knowledge of special education topics. in the legal area, she identifies such topics as: 1) eligibility under idea, 2) identification and evaluation, 3) free and appropriate public education, 4) least restrictive environment, 5) related services, 6) procedural protections, 7) iep planning, and 8) section 504 of the rehabilitation act. foundational knowledge consists of “activities related to ensuring an effective model of service provision to students with disabilities” (frost and kersten, 2011, p. 8). more specifically, knowledge is needed in: 1) collaboration between regular and special education, 2) meeting inclusion requirements, 3) impact of schoolbased decision-making on special education, 4) communication with parents, 5) staffing issues, 6) professional development to support inclusive schools, and 7) the principal as a change agent (patterson, 2001). contextual knowledge is described by frost and kersten (2011) as “research or evidencebased curriculum that aligns with state standards and is appropriate to individual student needs” (p. 8). patterson (2001) identified the following areas of knowledge in this category: 1) best practices in general and special education, 2) effects of inclusion on students with and without disabilities, 3) development of ieps, and 4) accommodations versus modifications, 5) classroom management strategies, and 6) supervision and evaluation of teachers, support professionals, and paraprofessionals. this section of the literature review was included to assist in understanding the three sections of the survey for interpretation of the data. the following section of the literature review discusses general knowledge and skills content in traditional university-based principal preparation curriculum in preparation for discussion of the fourth question of the survey. principal preparation curriculum when one looks at the courses in the curriculum for principal preparation, the coursework is very similar at most university-based programs, although studies show that what is occurring in these programs is not always what real principals experience on their jobs (wallace foundation, 2016). most states’ principal standards are guided by the interstate school leaders licensure consortium (isllc) standards (brown, squires, connors-tadros, & horowitz, 2014). texas standards are also similar to isllc standards. universities in texas must include curriculum in principal preparation programs in six areas: (1) school culture, (2) leading learning, (3) human capital, (4) executive leadership, (5) strategic operations, and (6) ethics, roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 7 equity and diversity. how the content is delivered or how the courses are structured is left up to each university to decide. familiar courses are: instructional leadership, curriculum and instruction, community leadership, organizational leadership, school law, introduction to research, technology, managing personnel, budgeting, and teacher evaluation. by reading these titles, courses appear to be focused on management more than on implementing and supervising instruction, especially instruction in a special education program. in addition, no specific guidance is provided on what the practicum activities should entail. to summarize, although principals’ responsibilities include developing and implementing a vision of a quality education for all students and allocating the necessary resources in personnel, budget, time, facilities, and leadership to achieve that vision, there is no specific reference in the isllc or the texas standards requiring specific knowledge and skills to be an effective leader in the implementation and supervision of special education programs. this study will shed some light on what practicing principals in south texas feel would benefit them in becoming better leaders of special education programs. the following section provides details on the data collection conducted for this study. methods and data sources respondents the researchers emailed surveys through the university server to 456 principals in 37 school districts in south texas, of which 84 responded, resulting in an 18% response rate. the names and contact information were obtained from the state database through the state website. it is important to note the south texas region is predominantly hispanic and school districts are situated within minutes or immediately along the texas-mexico border. the researchers were specifically interested in this area’s responses to address the issue locally. respondents were elementary, middle, and high school principals from predominantly hispanic schools. thirtyseven participants had 1-4 years’ experience as principals, twenty-three had 5-8 years’ experience, nine had 9-12 years’ experience, six had 13-16 years’ experience, and nine had more than 17 years’ experience. eleven participants had special education teacher certification and 73 did not. ten principals supervised schools with less than 300 students, thirty-one principals supervised schools with 301-600 students, forty-two principals served schools with more than 600 students, and one participant did not respond to the enrollment question. the number of students with ieps served at the participants’ campuses ranged from 0 to 381. none of the principals reported having special education administrative resource personnel on their campus. the number of special education teachers supervised by the principals of the study ranged from 0 to 95. seventy-two participants’ highest level of education was a master’s degree, five had earned a certificate of advanced study, and five had earned a doctorate degree. the largest number of respondents (41) graduated from the local university’s principal preparation program. the next largest number of respondents (12) reported graduating from another local south texas university accounting for 63% of the total principals’ responses. the remaining respondents (31) indicated attending one of ten other texas universities or a regional service center. the demographics of the respondents and their schools represented the demographics of the local region well. table 2, below, provides some of the information available from the survey in an easier-to-read format. roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 8 table 2 demographics of respondents to special education survey n=84 gender male female 32 52 experience 1-4 years 5-8 years 9-12 years 13-16 years 17+ years 37 23 9 6 9 sp ed certification yes no 11 73 education level certificate masters doctorate 5 72 5 enrollment <300 301-600 >600 na 10 31 42 1 university program local local #2 alternative outside area 41 12 1 30 survey the survey instrument used to collect data from the participants was the role of principals with special education teacher survey, with permission from its developers frost and kersten (2011). the survey was composed of special education questions and used a yes or no structure and an open-ended question section. the instrument was composed of five sections. section i solicited demographic information from the participants. section ii requested the principal’s perception of having adequate knowledge of special education in three areas: legal, foundational, and contextual. foundational knowledge was described by frost and kersten as “activities related to ensuring an effective model of service provision to students with disabilities” (p. 8). contextual knowledge was described as “research or evidence-based curriculum that aligns with state standards and is appropriate to individual student needs” (p. 8). section iii measured the frequency that principals said they engaged in specific instructional leadership behaviors with special education teachers. section iv contained open-ended questions requesting principals’ perception of their roles with special education teachers. section v contained open-ended questions asking for principals’ suggestions to improve principal preparation programs for future school administrators. only the knowledge section and the open-ended question asking for principals’ suggestions for improving principal preparation programs are used in this study. no changes were made to the original survey, negating the need to re-validate the survey. data was entered into spss for descriptive analysis. frequency counts were used to determine the highest number of principals’ perceptions in the topics covered in the survey. the authors reviewed the results from the open-ended questions and manually coded to search for themes. once coded, the researchers grouped all responses with similar content to identify the most frequently occurring themes. the themes were noted and compared to the results of the survey portion of the study. the following section describes the results of the data analysis. results only the knowledge section of the survey and one open ended question are the focus of this discussion. the knowledge section was composed of three knowledge areas: legal, foundational, and contextual. six topics composed each of the three knowledge sections, for a total of eighteen topics. results of the survey ranged from 65.4% to 100% of the participants indicating sufficient knowledge in the eighteen topics of the survey. the least number of principals (65.4%) perceived themselves with adequate knowledge in designing curriculum to roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 9 serve their students with disabilities and the highest number (100%) perceived themselves as having adequate knowledge in the individuals with disabilities education act (idea) as noted in table 2. the most frequent response to the open-ended question was the suggestion to include more content in principal preparation that concentrates on the topics of special education laws, section 504, and response to intervention (rti). results of the study are presented in four sections below based on four questions of the survey: legal knowledge, foundational knowledge, contextual knowledge, and suggested content for curriculum in principal preparation programs. legal knowledge the first question of the study asked respondents if they perceived themselves as having adequate legal knowledge for effective leadership of special education programs. this section of the survey addressed six legal topics: idea, nclb (now essa), section 504, american with disabilities act (ada), texas administrative code, and response to intervention (rti). overall, an average of 94.7% of the respondents felt adequately knowledgeable in this section of the survey. knowledge of the individuals with disabilities education act (idea) scored the highest, with 100% of the principal responding positively on this topic. ninety-five percent (95.1%) felt adequately knowledgeable in section 504, nclb (now essa), and rti, with a slightly smaller percentage (93.8%) indicating knowledgeable in the american with disabilities act (ada). the lowest area of knowledge was in special education rules and regulations contained in the texas administrative code (88.9%). this section of the survey, legal knowledge, had the highest level of positive responses indicating sufficient knowledge of the necessary content to address the education of students with disabilities. legal knowledge the first question of the study asked respondents to state their perception of having sufficient legal knowledge for effective leadership of special education programs. this section of the survey addressed six legal topics: idea, nclb (now essa), section 504, american with disabilities act (ada), texas administrative code, and response to intervention (rti). overall, an average of 94.7% of the respondents felt knowledgeable in this section of the survey. knowledge of the individuals with disabilities education act (idea) was the highest, with 100% of the principal responding positively on this topic. ninety-five percent (95.1%) felt adequately knowledgeable in section 504, nclb (now essa), and rti, with a slightly smaller percentage (93.8%) indicating knowledgeable in the american with disabilities act (ada). the lowest area of knowledge was in special education rules and regulations contained in the texas administrative code (88.9%). this section of the survey, legal knowledge, had the highest level of positive responses indicating sufficient knowledge of the necessary content to address the education of students with disabilities. foundational knowledge the second question of the study asked respondents to indicate if they felt they perceived themselves with adequate foundational knowledge in special education to effectively serve students with disabilities. this section of the survey included six topics: accommodation in least restrictive environment, parental involvement in iep, district’s placement continuum, district’s placement procedures, district’s disciplinary services, and the district’s related services model. overall, an average of 93.8% of the respondents felt knowledgeable in this section of the survey. knowledge of the participant district’s educational placement procedures for special education was the highest, with 97.5% of the respondents indicating adequate knowledge, followed by 96.3% on two topics, the district’s placement continuum and the district’s discipline supports and interventions. how to accommodate for least restrictive environment received 93.8% positive roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 10 responses, and 92.6% felt adequately prepared in the knowledge of their district’s related services. the lowest area of knowledge was in understanding the parent’s role in developing individualized education plans (86.4%). this section of the survey, foundational knowledge, averaged the second highest score in responses indicating sufficient knowledge of its topics to serve students with disabilities. table 3 principal responses to knowledge questions do you feel you have sufficient knowledge of the following topics to properly serve your students? % yes no legal individuals with disabilities education act (idea) 100 0 special education provisions in the no child left behind act (nclb) 95.1 4.9 components of the rehabilitation act (section 504) that effect public schools 95.1 4.9 components of the americans with disabilities act (ada) that effect public schools 93.8 6.2 special education rules and regulations contained in the texas administrative code 88.9 11.1 your district’s response to intervention (rti) plan 95.0 5.0 foundation how to accommodate for the academic needs for students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment 93.8 6.2 parents’ role in developing individualized education plans 86.4 13.6 your district’s special education continuum from least to most restrictive 96.3 3.7 your district’s educational placement procedure for special education 97.5 2.5 your district’s disciplinary interventions and supports for students with disabilities 96.3 3.7 your district’s related services delivery model (social work, speech, etc.) 92.6 7.4 context state learning standards for students with disabilities 97.5 2.5 most effective instructional practices for students with disabilities 90.1 9.9 academic assessments for students with disabilities 96.3 3.7 how to design curriculum for students with disabilities 65.4 34.6 how to develop a plan for program improvement in special education 77.8 22.2 how student individualized education plans are evaluated by staff in your school 92.6 7.4 contextual knowledge the third question of the study asked participants to indicate if they perceived themselves with adequate contextual knowledge in special education to serve students with disabilities. this section queried responses on six topics: state learning standards, effective instructional practices, academic assessments, designing curriculum for students with disabilities, developing program improvement plans, and evaluation of ieps by staff. overall, this section showed the lowest percentages of the survey, with an average of 86.6% of the respondents indicating adequate contextual knowledge of special education. knowledge of the state learning standards for students with disabilities was the highest (97.5%) in this section of the survey. the next highest area (96.3%) was knowledge of academic assessments for students with disabilities, followed by evaluation of ieps by staff (92.6%), effective instructional practices (90.1%), and development of program improvement plan (77.8%). the lowest area of contextual knowledge was in designing curriculum for students with disabilities (65.4%). this section of the survey, roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 11 contextual knowledge, averaged the lowest percentage of respondents stating they had adequate knowledge of special education to effectively serve students with disabilities. table 3 details each individual section of the survey with the corresponding percentage of respondents perceiving adequacy in knowledge in each component. after the table, the results continue with a summary of the respondents’ suggestions for content to include in the curriculum of principal preparation programs. principals recommendations for principal preparation programs the last section of the survey queried the principals on their suggestions for content to include in principal preparation curriculum to prepare campus leaders to effectively implement and supervise special education programs. the responses generated various themes, with the largest number of responses (41%) indicating a need for more content in special education laws, such as the provisions of idea and section 504. the second largest theme, with 25.7% of the respondents suggesting it, was content on meeting the requirements for response to intervention (rti), including documentation. the third largest theme was suggested by 17.1% of the respondents. these respondents suggested content to assist principals in working with aggressive and disruptive behaviors and disorders. the fourth largest group of respondents (11%) asked for content to help them conduct annual, review, and dismissal (ard) meetings. a fifth group (10%) suggested that principal practicum students be mentored by a special education supervisor or diagnostician to acquire specific knowledge and procedures of the special education program. the results of the open-ended question section were rather disconcerting, as no lowscoring topics in contextual knowledge were addressed in the responses, yet those areas are the most crucial for the success of students with disabilities, especially hispanic students. surprisingly, the content they requested more of in principal preparation programs, was that which they already felt adequately knowledgeable in to effectively supervise a special education program. finally, it was disturbing to note that not one single principal requested content in providing special education services to the hispanic students at their schools. recommendations principals continue to struggle with the various issues in the supervision of regular and special education programs (campbell-whatley & lyons, 2013). however, students with disabilities have specific legal rights through idea and principals have the moral and legal obligation to provide appropriate services for these students. in addition, if students with disabilities are hispanic, the principal must also address this issue in providing services. this section will present authors’ recommendations based on the results of the study and current research-based practices. idea and rti further instruction in special education law, section 504, and ada was suggested by practicing principals of this study; therefore, one recommendation is that specific topics in special education law be studied more deeply in the school law course in principal preparation programs. knowledge of the specific provisions in federal legislation is critical for principals, as they run the risk of litigation due to non-compliance. more importantly, though, is that students with disabilities may suffer the consequences of the principal’s lack of knowledge in this area. rti was another area of concern for the principals. rti is an important component of idea, the largest piece of legislation developed specifically to ensure students with disabilities will receive a free and appropriate education. rti was suggested in idea for the specific purpose of avoiding overrepresentation of minority groups in special education, as current statistics show is occurring throughout the united states (nces, 2014). the multi-tiered approach to address student roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 12 learning problems is one process to ensure every child is monitored for difficulty in the classroom and is provided research-based instruction before being considered for special education. because section 504 and ada are also specific federal legislation, they too should receive more in-depth coverage in the school law class. the following section presents suggestions to address the lowest area of perceived adequacy on contextual knowledge. designing curriculum for students with disabilities teaching and learning are what school is all about, so the first thing a principal should be concerned with is whether a student is learning when a teacher is teaching. if learning is not occurring, the principal must intervene to determine why and remedy the problem to confirm appropriate instruction is provided for the student. to accomplish this goal, a principal must know how to develop or assist with the design of curriculum for all students, including special education students and hispanic special education students. therefore, a second recommendation is that principal preparation programs consider integrating knowledge of the universal design for learning (udl) in their curriculum courses. universal design for learning is a concept for making curriculum accessible to all students, including those in special education programs (national center on universal design for learning [ncudl], 2016). the center identifies three principles of udl: (1) provide multiple means of representation, (2) provide multiple means of action and expression, and (3) provide multiple means of engagement. one example of using udl is in the preparation of written materials, such as a syllabus. a font that is easy to read by everyone must be used and captions must be provided for pictures and graphics so readers with visual impairments can use their technology to call out what is on the paper. during class, a video would require captions for those who are hard of hearing. by being proactive and anticipating possible issues with accessibility, a teacher will be able to reach all students and allow them to learn based on their needs. multicultural education a final recommendation is that principal preparation programs include multicultural education as part of their special populations course content. the researchers of this study cannot comprehend why a need for providing services for hispanic students with disabilities did not surface in the responses. perhaps because the region is approximately 97% hispanic and most area educators are also hispanic, the respondents considered themselves already adept in addressing the challenges hispanic students with disabilities face in the classroom. however, this assumption does not align with the finding that the hispanic student group is one ethnic group consistently exhibiting a high risk of misidentification, improper placement, or inappropriate instructional setting based on a previously mentioned report (united states department of education [usde], 2016). one method to address the needs of hispanics and english language learners with disabilities is through multicultural education. in multicultural education, educators integrate instruction and experiences relevant to a student’s culture, language, family background, and a multitude of other experiences which promote multiculturalism (grant & sleeter, 2011). multicultural special education can help improve student achievement as it promotes acceptance of diversity (yellin & mokhtari, 2010). incorporating bilingual and esl instruction into this model will solidify the multicultural classroom and provide a risk-free environment for hispanic students with disabilities in need of language and opportunity support. while principals do not have to be specialists in special education disabilities, they must possess essential knowledge and skills critical to accomplishing the challenges involved in special education leadership (dipaola & walther-thomas, 2003), including basic knowledge of roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 13 federal legislation such as idea, section 504, and rti. leaders must advocate for fair access to appropriate curriculum and education for all students and model a commitment to ensuring special education programs are effectively implemented. in addition, these programs must be continually evaluated for effectiveness in promoting student achievement. inclusive in this statement is commitment to promoting knowledge of multicultural and bilingual/esl education support for hispanic students with disabilities, groups currently underperforming in the classroom. this results will provide feedback for principal preparation programs to improve in meeting these goals. the significance of this study follows, in conjunction with the limitations. significance and limitations of the study universities prepare the majority of certified school principals for our public schools. federal and state legislation dictate educational mandates, such as idea and essa, to ensure the free and appropriate education for every student in those schools. current national statistics depicting a disparate education for students with disabilities, in addition to ethnic disproportionalities are evidence that current principal preparation programs are lacking in effectively preparing their graduates in providing effective supervision of special education programs. by reaching out to practitioners, principal preparation programs can determine which program content is relevant and necessary to include to prepare candidates for the real world of regular and special education leadership. once identified, the topics can be incorporated into the current curriculum of principal preparation programs. the results are sound educational strategies and collaboration among all the school’s educators can create effective, purposeful, planned instruction to assist all diverse students as required for effective learning (american association of colleges of teacher education, 2010), the ultimate goal of all principal preparation programs and their graduates. however, this study was conducted with leaders of predominately hispanic schools in the south texas region along the texas-mexico border, which may limit its transferability to schools with dissimilar demographics of students and faculty. with the increasing numbers of hispanic students in the public school system, though, the results may still be applicable to many schools and districts throughout the u. s. in addition, the low response rate may have resulted in skewed results of the study, albeit the researchers felt the response sample was fairly representative of the educators of the region. the final segment of the paper follows and summarizes the study. summary to determine how to better prepare principals for effective leadership of special education programs, the researchers appealed to practicing principals for their assistance. the researchers identified three knowledge and skills areas to incorporate into principal preparation curriculum based on the results. the lowest level of knowledge was in designing curriculum for students with disabilities and the most frequent recommendation for inclusion in principal preparation was instruction in special education laws, section 504, and rti. the perfect response to this dilemma would be a course specifically designed as a special education leadership course. however, such a course would take time to be accepted and implemented. therefore, to address the findings the researchers suggest incorporating in-depth study of the provisions of idea, section 504, and rti into the school law course, integrating universal design for learning into a curriculum and instruction course, and incorporating multicultural education into a special populations course to address the needs of hispanic students with disabilities. by adding purposeful content to the curriculum, program participant will have the opportunity to acquire essential knowledge and skills to implement and supervise an effective special education roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 14 program for the success of all students with disabilities, including hispanic and english language learners with disabilities. references american association of colleges of teacher education. 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(2015). teacher judgment in assessing students’ social behavior within a response-to-intervention framework: using what teachers know. education and treatment of children, 38(3), 363-382. the wallace foundation. (2016). improving university principal preparation programs: five themes from the field. the wallace foundation: new york, ny. retrieved from: http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/documents/improving-universityprincipal-preparation-programs.pdf yellin, d., & mokhtari, k. (2010). learning from our students: ell alternatives to special ed and grade retention. english leadership quarterly, 32(3), 8-12. http://quickfacts.c/ http://quickfacts.c/ http://tea.texas.gov/acctres/enroll_index.html http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-04.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-04.pdf http://census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2016/cb16-ff16.html http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20164000/ http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/documents/improving-university-principal-preparation-programs.pdf http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/documents/improving-university-principal-preparation-programs.pdf roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 16 author notes maria b. roberts texas a&m university – texarkana 7101 university ave, texarkana, tx 75503 marybroberts56@yahoo.com maria b. roberts serves as associate professor in the department of education leadership at texas a&m university-texarkana. in this position, she collaborates with the university and local school districts to develop effective leaders for k-12 public schools. maria has a background in public school administration. maria earned a b.s. in chemistry from the university of texaspan american, an m.ed. in educational administration from the university of texasbrownsville, and an ed. d. in educational administration from the university of texas at austin. her research interests include the improvement of principal preparation programs, leadership for predominantly hispanic and at-risk schools, and effective instructional practices for english language learners. federico r. guerra university of texas – rio grande valley 1201 w. university drive, edinburg, tx 78539 federico.guerra@utrgv.edu federico r. guerra serves as assistant professor in the department of educational leadership at the university of texas-rio grande valley. in this position, he collaborates with the university and local school districts to prepare effective leaders for pk-12 public schools. federico has a b.s. in biology from the university of texas-pan american, a masters degree in educational administration, and an ed. d. from texas a&m universitykingsville. his research interests include the improvement of principal preparation programs, leadership for predominantly hispanic school, and leadership for special education programs. mailto:marybroberts56@yahoo.com mailto:federico.guerra@utrgv.edu roberts & guerra, jr.: principals’ perceptions of their knowledge in special education current issues in education, 20(1) 17 volume 20, issue 1 march 20, 2017 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team interim executive editor constantin schreiber copy editors lucinda watson stephanie mcbride-schreiner layout editor constantin schreiber undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through problem based learning in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 1 volume 21, issue 1 april 29, 2020 issn 1099-839x undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through problem based learning in scenario analysis chin-wen chien national tsing hua university abstract: this study explored 45 taiwanese undergraduates’ learning about elementary school english education through problem based learning (pbl) in scenario analysis in a teacher education program in the northwestern taiwan. the data analysis on the documentation, questionnaires, and participants’ projects revealed the following findings. first, this study supported current empirical studies on the importance of pbl in scenario analysis for pre-service teachers’ knowledge construction. secondly, what participants gained the most from the pbl in scenario analysis was “teamwork” and “developing interests in elementary school english education.” in order to effectively integrate scenario analysis into the language teacher education program, three essential elements should be taken into consideration in terms of peer learning, authentic scenarios, and bridging the theories and practice. keywords: elementary school english education, pre-service teachers, peer learning, problem based learning, scenario analysis citation: chien, c. w. (2020). undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through problem based learning in scenario analysis. current issues in education, 21(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1694 accepted: 3/6/2020 undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through problem based learning in scenario analysis teacher education is often blamed for insufficiently preparing teachers for the complexities of teaching practice (korthagen, loughran, & russell, 2006). pre-service and student teachers often feel a large gap between theory and practice in their teacher education program. moreover, pre-service teachers and student teachers often experience a reality shock when they enter into the profession (korthagen, 2001; korthagen et al., 2006; ruys, defruyt, rots, & aelterman, 2013). these prospective teachers have to face diverse and complex problems that occur in the classroom or pedagogy. in order to solve these problems, they must be equipped with different knowledge http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1694 undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 2 bases such as content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, knowledge of learning, pedagogical content knowledge, or reflective knowledge (reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action; de simon, 2014). in taiwan, after completing the elementary teacher education program and one-semester practicum, elementary school teacher candidates are required to take the elementary school teacher certificate examination in order to become qualified teachers. since 2015, the numbers of simulation questions have increased as mandated by the ministry of education of taiwan (2015). one of the simulation questions is presented below as “ms. wu is responsible for the remedial education among ten fifth graders. these ten fifth graders are at different proficiency levels and they have low motivation. there are no teaching materials suitable for these learners. what should ms. wu do?” (ministry of education of taiwan, 2015). teacher candidates must brainstorm possible solutions for the above simulation or scenario. in order to prepare undergraduates to be equipped with the competence necessary for the elementary school teacher certificate examination, scenario analysis and simulations are integrated into children’s english, an elective course in a language teacher education program in a university in northern taiwan. the integration of scenario analysis and simulations fits well with the current trend in teacher education for pre-service teachers to master their own learning through problem-based learning including starting point of learning as a problem (scenarios), the problem as the one that pre-service teachers will encounter in the future work, and pedagogical content knowledge as organized around the problems. this study explores undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through problem based learning in scenario analysis. this study discusses the following two issues. first, how did the problem based learning in scenario analysis influence the participants in terms of their learning elementary school english instruction, their interest in elementary school english instruction, and its realistic application and relevance to their future profession? secondly, what facilitation supported their learning the problem based learning in scenario analysis? suggestions are provided on the effective integration of problem based learning in scenario analysis into language teacher education programs. literature review issues discussed in the literature review included the definitions, process, and benefits of problem based learning (pbl), empirical studies on pbl in language teacher education, and literature gap. albion (2007) defined pbl as “an approach to education for the professions that is characterized by a focus on authentic problems likely to be faced by future professionals” (p. 1). finkle and torp (1995) regarded problem based learning (pbl) as “a curriculum development and instructional system that simultaneously develops both problem solving strategies and disciplinary knowledge bases and skills by placing students in the active role of problem solvers confronted with an ill-structured problem that mirrors real-world problems” (p. 1). boud (1985) proposed the following process of pbl. first, an authentic problem that is related to the students’ intended profession is presented (boud, 1985; so, yeung, lo, & volk, 2001). memory, yoder, and williams (2003) designed 60 vignettes on common situations related to collaboration with school colleagues (i.e. counselor, psychologist), parents, other community members (i.e. service learning), and area organization (i.e. business organization). fong, o’toole, and keppell (2007) suggest that teacher educators and trainers should provide more real life cases for teacher candidates to explore, such as scenarios of classroom management in local schools. students work in small groups to analyze the problem and determine what information might be undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 3 required for a solution (boud, 1985; de simone, 2014). next, students undertake some study and research for the solution (boud, 1985). they apply the solution to the problem. finally, they are involved in reflective practice and summarize what they have learned (boud, 1985). pbl has been implemented in teacher education since the 1980s, and it aims to better prepare teacher graduates with more relevant skills for teaching professions (borhan, 2014). pbl is effective and beneficial for educational professionals. first, it focuses on collaborative learning through problem solving in an authentic context rather than memorizing and recalling information (albion, 2007; so et al., 2001). compared to the traditional teaching group, the post-test case completed by 38 participants in the pbl group in de simone (2008) revealed that they significantly surpassed the traditional approach in four areas of problem solving. the four areas included identification of the central issue/problem, quality of problem definition, relationship of the solution to the problem, and use of resources. second, under pbl, pre-service teachers are provided with opportunities to construct knowledge (i.e. pedagogical content knowledge) and develop skills simultaneously (borhan, 2014; kwan, 2008). the preliminary analysis of students’ reflections, tasks, instructors’ journals, and staff reflections indicated that undergraduates of a bachelor program in primary education in melbourne in chambers (2001) had positive attitudes toward pbl, because pbl allowed undergraduates to develop both their content knowledge and the transferable skills required as a teacher. patrick and mcphee’s (2014) survey research revealed that participants in master degree programs in primary education in scotland regarded the scenarios as useful contexts in which academic theory and professional practice might be linked. empirical studies focus on the integration of pbl into teacher education programs among general education teachers (i.e. de simone, 2008; dean, 1999; kwan, 2008; pourshafie & murrayharvey, 2013), early childhood teachers (i.e. edwards & hammer, 2006, 2007), technology (i.e. albion, 2007; chambers, 2001; choi & johnson, 2005, 2007; choi & yang, 2011; fong et al., 2007; ma & o’toole, 2013; ma, o’toole, & keppell, 2007, 2008; walker et al., 2011), or science teachers (karakas, 2008), but only a few on language teachers (i.e. christian, dillard, & mcatee, 2014; mishan, 2011). a total of 26 white female pre-service teachers in christian et al. (2014) participated in a three-session pbl case in a literacy method course in the southern united states. these pre-service teachers were presented with information about a hispanic english learner, isabel, who was struggling with reading in science and social studies. the analysis of group session notes and participants’ reflections revealed that the implementation of pbl as an instructional strategy in a literacy methods course assisted the pre-service teachers’ development of collaborative problem solving skills (i.e., process) and culturally relevant literacy pedagogy (i.e., content). most importantly, the systematic and purposeful collaborative work during the pbl promoted preservice teachers’ collective efficacy and growth in critical thinking skills. mishan (2011) explored the integration of pbl in a materials development module in a masters in english language teaching program (ma in elt) in ireland. the analysis of five participants’ self and peer-reflection and assessment of the pbl process revealed that participants could work collaboratively or independently in solving the problems. these five participants consciously evaluated and applied learning theories and teaching approaches that they had learned before. moreover, during the pbl process, they practiced their professional skills in terms of teamwork and giving and receiving feedback. however, they needed more guidance and structure for self-reflection in order to be reflective practitioners. only a few empirical studies (i.e. christian et al, 2014; mishan, 2011) focus on the integration of pbl into language teacher education programs. following the current research on undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 4 the designs and process of pbl in scenario analysis (e.g. boud, 1985; fong et al., 2007; memory et al., 2003), in this study pbl consisted of four important elements including (1) the researcher’s generated authentic problems in elementary school english classrooms, (2) a learner-centered approach, (3) the instructor as the facilitator, and (4) undergraduates working in small groups to gather information, solve problems, design activities, report findings, and reflect. the data that collected in limited empirical studies on pbl among language teachers mainly were mainly teachers’ reflections (e.g. christian et al., 2014; mishan, 2011). this study aims to use questionnaire, the participants’ projects, and documentation to explore 45 taiwanese undergraduates’ learning about elementary school english education through problem based learning in scenario analysis. method this study followed a mixed method approach including both qualitative research and survey research. a survey was employed in this study with the aim to explore participants’ learning skills and knowledge learned from the pbl in scenario analysis. the qualitative research, through data collection and detailed data analysis of undergraduates’ learning under pbl, helped the researcher obtain an in-depth understanding of the learning process that these undergraduates experienced and their interpretation of their own experiences and learning in natural and social contexts. setting and participants participants in this study were 45 freshmen majoring in education and learning technology in a university in northern taiwan. the participants registered for a course titled children’s english, an elective course for the language teacher education program, in fall 2015. this course aimed to help pre-service teachers acquire practical knowledge and skills for teaching children. participants would gain background knowledge about how children learn the language, develop skills in designing activities that motivate children’s english learning, and collect resources and materials related to english teaching. all these freshmen indicated their willingness to participate in the study. of the 45 participants, 35 were female (77.8%) and 10 were male (22.2%). with regard to their english proficiency levels, 48.9% (n=22) of the participants reached the b1 (threshold) of the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr). however, 46.7% (n=21) were at a2 (way stage), below the requirement for graduation as a major in english instruction. of the participants, only two were at b2 (vantage). data collection data in this study included one questionnaire, the participants’ projects, and documentation. documentation included the teaching materials that the class reading, class powerpoint slides, and the participants used for presenting the projects. while the questionnaire, participants’ projects, and documents for presenting the projects were used to answer the first research question, the questionnaire, class reading, and class powerpoint slides were used to answer the second research questions. the questionnaire was used to measure the participants’ learning about and facilitation employed for the pbl in scenario analysis. the questionnaire included 20 items on a 6-point likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 6=strongly agree). the questionnaire design was based on different studies including choi and yang (2011), choi and johnson (2005, 2007), marcangelo, gibbon, and cage (2009), and munshi, zayat, and dolmans (2008). the items of the questionnaire were examined by two research experts with knowledge in english language teaching and experience undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 5 in developing questionnaires. in addition, a pilot test was conducted among five freshmen in order to measure the reliability of the instrument and remove threats to validity. as a result, the instrument had a cronbach’s alpha of 0.95. with regard to the projects, participants chose one of the scenarios the instructor provided or they could write their own scenario. they were asked to use the class reading and discussion to analyze the problem occurring in each scenario as in table 1. next, they were asked to design a 5to-10-minute activity to solve this problem. finally, they were asked to use the class reading and discussion to analyze their activity design in terms of its effectiveness. these 45 participants formed into groups of three students and completed fifteen projects. table 1 scenarios # scenarios categories 1 john writes “dook” for “book” or “qig” for “pig” for his homework. alphabet 2 the teacher asked pam “what’s your name?” pam answered, “my [nen] is [pæn].” pronunciation 3 it was kevin’s birthday. the whole class sang happy birthday song to kevin. kevin said, “[sɪk] you.” pronunciation 4 mrs. peterson gave students a crossword worksheet and asked them to complete it in 5 minutes. joseph finished it in one minute and began to talk to other kids around him. classroom management 5 sandy can recite “a, a, [æ], [æ], b, b, [b] [b], c, c, [k], [k].” mrs. lindsay gave her a word card “cab.” sandy did not know how to say this word and began to cry. phonics 6 amy wrote her homework as in the picture: writing 7 vivian shared what she did on the weekend in class. she said, “on weekend, my mom make a apple pie. he buy 10 apple.” grammar 8 mr. bryant said to his taiwanese second graders in an elementary school as “fold this blue color paper in half. fold in half to make a crease. fold in the dotted line.” all the second graders looked puzzled. classroom management data analysis data were analyzed by the following steps. first, the likert responses were coded on a scale of 1 to 6 for the questionnaire. the numerical description was employed for the mean and standard deviation. the second procedure involved a factorial anova which was used to look for statistically significant relationships between participants’ scores on the project and their learning undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 6 toward pbl in scenario analysis in terms of problem solving skills, analytic skills, teamwork, communication skills, and elementary school english education. next, the researcher used open coding to look for emerging themes in the documentation and final projects. data were labeled using tentative codes (i.e. teamwork, class reading, instructor). later, these codes were grouped into different categories (i.e. facilitation, learning) based on the research questions. peer review performed by the researcher’s colleagues was employed during the data coding and analysis procedure. to ensure the trustworthiness of this study, triangulation was employed through comparing participants’ projects, responses from the questionnaire, and the documentation on class powerpoint slides. results based on the data analysis on the survey, documentation, and participants’ projects, the results were discussed in terms of participants’ learning through scenario analysis, their projects, and facilitation for the scenario analysis. participants’ learning through scenario analysis participants learning through scenario analysis could be classified into five major areas in terms of problem solving (i.e. tackling unfamiliar problems), analytic skills, communication skills, teamwork, and competence in elementary school english education (interest development, preparation for getting involved, changing viewpoints, motivation to learn). as revealed in figure 1, teamwork was rated the highest by learning participants at 91.1% (n=41), followed by “develop my interest in elementary school english education” (80%, n=36). other learning included “sharpened my analytic skills” (77.8%, n=35), “develop problem solving skills” (75.6%, n=34), and “learn about elementary school english education” (75.6%, n=34). the participants felt that they learned the least about “tackling unfamiliar problems occurring in elementary school english classrooms” (60%, n=27). figure 1. participants’ learing through scenario analysis undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 7 in this study, the scenario analysis helped participants develop interactive skills through their teamwork, and critical thinking skills through analyzing the scenarios, designing activities around problems in the scenarios, and evaluating their activity designs. eventually, they became sophisticated in their learning about elementary school english education. there was a positive correlation between participants’ learning and their scores on the projects on the scenario analysis, particuarly in their learning about elementary school english education as revealed in table 2. such positive correlations existed in terms of “interest development,” “motivation to learn,” and “preparation for getting involved.” table 2 correlation between learners’ learning and scores on scenario analysis skills correlations problem solving skills -0.18 analytic skills -0.09 tackled unfamiliar problems -0.03 communication skills -0.28 teamwork -0.11 interest development 0.14 motivation to learn 0.34 changed my views -0.10 preparation for getting involved 0.09 the pbl in scenario analysis helped the participants in this study begin to develop their interest, motivation to learn, and preparation for getting involved in the elementary school english education. participants’ scenario analysis figure 2 revealed the rubric on the class project on the scenario analysis. five criteria included consisting of required elements, analysis of the activity design based on the class reading and discussion, class presentation, well-organized writing, and submission on time. figure 2. rubric on scenario analysis as revealed in table 3, three groups received the full 30 points. one group received the lowest score, 23. the mean was 27.2 and the standard deviation was 2.37. except for the three groups that received full points, the remaining groups lost points because they did not use the class reading undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 8 and discussions to analyze the scenarios or activity designs. participants’ english proficiency had a negative relationship with their scores for the scenario analysis, -0.08. table 3 participants’ projects on scenario analysis groups scenario score activity designs 1 5 29/30 sound out the words 2 2 27/30 phonics song, sound out the words 3 3 28/30 phonics dice, classifications, listen and check, listen and write, phonics wheel, sound out the words 4 5 28/30 matching, sound out the words 5 6 24/30 color fun, listen and do 6 7 30/30 true/false, family tree, matching, hangman, classification 7 6 23/30 vocabulary train exercise, matching 8 8 28/30 whispering 9 1 28/30 alphabet tpr 10 7 30/30 listen and check, listen and choose 11 6 28/30 unscrambled word, unscrambled sentences, finding the faults 12 2 30/30 role play, alphabet stories 13 4 27/30 kind words 14 4 24/30 my little helper 15 1 24/30 blending fun, matching a total of 33 activities were designed by 15 groups as in table 3. group six was assigned to do their scenario analysis on scenario #7 “vivian shared what she did at the weekend in class. she said, ‘at the weekend, my mom make a apple pie. he buy 10 apple’” as in table 1. first, they wrote their scenario analysis as in figure 3. vivian made three grammatical errors in terms of past tense, pronouns, and articles. figure 3. group six’s scenario analysis undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 9 the participants in group six first identified the grammatical errors vivian made from the assigned scenario #7 in terms of past tense, pronouns, and articles. english articles can be one of the most difficult grammatical concepts for taiwanese efl learners, because there is no equivalence between english and chinese article systems. they designed five activities including true/false, family tree, matching, hangman, and classification for the scenario analysis. taking family tree as an example in figure 4, group six used a chinese family tree to explain the pronouns “he,” “she,” and “they.” figure 4. true or false activity some of the language teachers introduce grammatical concepts by providing learners with an isolated phrase and analyzing it. in this way, learners have little or no idea how the grammatical concept can be used in context. participants in group six explained the pronouns through a family tree. follow-up activities can be designed, such as a controlled drill on matching subject pronouns to object pronouns or a guided or a meaningful practice using the family tree to write a short paragraph. facilitation for scenario analysis different types of facilitation were provided for participants to complete their scenario analysis. facilitation included peers, the children’s english class, and online resources. as revealed in figure 5, of all these different types of facilitation, “discussions with my team members” was regarded as the most helpful (n=43, 95.6%), followed by “presentation preparation” (n=42, 93.3%), “my classmates’ feedback” (n= 41, 91%) and “class activities” (n=41, 91.1%). undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 10 figure 5. facilitation for scenario analysis other useful facilitation included “the class lecture” (n=40, 88.9%), “the class discussions” (n=40, 88.9%) and “the online resources” (n=38, 84.4%). “the class reading” was regarded as least helpful by the participants (n=27, 60%). the instructor in this study modeled the instructional strategies and after-reading activities for sweeny’s (2000) me and my family tree picture book. so group six adopted the instructor’s family tree activity into their activity design for their assigned scenario. group six, as in figure 3, used the family tree to explain the three pronouns “he,” “she,” and “they.” group six thought that the class activity helped them design this activity. figure 6 shows the class activity on making your family tree. learners in the children’s english class had to make their own family tree and introduce their family trees to their group members. figure 6. class powerpoint slide on family tree activity undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 11 figure 7 shows group 12’s analysis of their activity designs. they used the theories or concepts introduced in the class including elements of the lesson plans, child-centered lesson, and input approach as in figure 8. figure 7. group 12’s analysis of activity design figure 8 was the class powerpoint slide on the input approach. according to the input approach, learners should be exposed to input at or beyond their present level. participants in group six used the input approach they learned in the children’s english class in analyzing their scenario. figure 8. input approaches discussions and implications this study explored 45 taiwanese undergraduates’ learning about elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis in a teacher education program in a university in northwestern taiwan. the data analysis on the documentation, questionnaires, and participants’ projects revealed the following findings. first, the most significant learning the participants gained was teamwork and developing interests in elementary school english education. hopefully, the undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 12 pbl will help learners develop their content knowledge in english education as in chambers (2001) and mishan (2011). participants who engaged in tasks in chambers (2001) developed their content knowledge through the decision-making process in dealing with the instructional technology issues. pbl helped language teachers in mishan (2011) develop their creative engagement with language teaching materials and critical application of second language acquisition theory into practice. secondly, discussion with peers was regarded the most useful facilitation for pbl in scenario analysis. such finding was in accord with fong et al. (2007) that pre-service teachers’ knowledge and competence could be obtained through collaborative teamwork in the problem solving process on the video scenario analysis. in order to effectively integrate scenario analysis into the language teacher education program, three essential elements should be taken into consideration in terms of peer learning, authentic scenarios, and bridging the theories and practice. importance of peer learning in scenario analysis in this study, participants regarded “teamwork” as the most important learning and support. based on the assigned scenario, each group analyzed the scenario, designed activities, evaluated the activities, and demonstrated the activities to the whole class. such finding was in accord with empirical studies (e.g. fong et al., 2007; mishan, 2011) that language teachers appreciated the opportunity to develop teamwork skills and improve their collaborative skills through pbl. therefore, peer learning should be highly valued in pbl in the scenario analysis in teacher education. there was no right answer to any of the scenarios. participants also commented on other groups’ activities and reflected on the scenario analysis. learners were expected to learn from considering and critiquing the activities of other groups based on the pbl approach (chamber, 2001). finally, these recommendations can be compiled for pre-service teachers to construct their content knowledge and pedagogical competence relevant to elementary school english education. such collaboration and teamwork can influence pre-service teachers’ experience and learning not only from the scenario analysis, but also from discussion among the groups and the whole class (chambers, 2001). tobin and tippins (1983) claimed that learning is construed as “a social process of making sense of experience in terms of what is known” (p. 8). efforts on designing authentic scenarios in this study, eight scenarios in table 1 were designed in terms of alphabet instruction, pronunciation instruction, classroom management, phonics instruction, writing instruction, and grammar instruction. scenarios should be relevant to the english teaching situation in order to help pre-service english teachers build theory–practice alignment. therefore, patrick and mcphee (2014) suggest that scenarios should mirror the complexities inherent in teaching situations (p. 8). fong et al. (2007) recommended that real life scenarios could be designed for the pre-service teachers to explore, particularly in classroom management, stress, or time management. as for the tesol profession, scenarios can be designed based on different language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing), instructional foci (i.e. vocabulary, alphabet, phonics, grammar), or classroom management (i.e. students’ behavior, cooperative learning). values of theories on scenario analysis in this study, 80% of the groups did not achieve the full points, because they did not use the class reading and discussion on theories to analyze the scenarios and their activity designs. they undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 13 demonstrated only craft-based skills and adopted some activities that the instructor modeled in the class. ure (2009) claimed that pre-service teachers had difficulties in linking theory with practice and regarded the academic content of the initial teacher education program as least helpful in preparing them to teach. the practice of craft-based skills is not enough for pre-service teachers to construct their competence (martyn, terwijn, kek, & huijser, 2013; patrick & mcphee, 2014). both scholarship and teaching practice are highly emphasized in pbl, so pre-service teachers can blend theory with practice (desimone, 2008; patrick & mcphee, 2014). theories on language acquisition, curriculum development, instruction on language skills (i.e. listening, speaking) and foci (i.e. phonics, alphabet), child psychology, or educational psychology should be introduced into the children’s english classes, so pre-service teachers will be equipped with shulman’s (1987) knowledge base in terms of content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, or curriculum knowledge. teacher educators should model the pedagogical theories that they introduce (ruyes, defruyt, rots, & aelterman, 2013). therefore, teacher trainers and educators as facilitators in pbl should take responsibility to model an instructional approach that their learners may want to adopt in their future teaching (pourshafie & murray-harvey, 2013). through pbl in scenario analysis, pre-service teachers can engage in theory-building by linking new knowledge in university courses with practical skills in elementary school english education. conclusions this study analyzed 45 taiwanese undergraduates’ responses to the questionnaires, projects on scenario analysis, and documentation in class handouts and powerpoint slides and explored participants’ learning from and facilitation needed in pbl in scenario analysis in a teacher education program in northern taiwan. this study supported current empirical studies on the importance of scenario analysis for pre-service teachers’ knowledge construction. rather than using only questionnaires or reflections to assess participants’ attitude as in some studies (i.e. patrick & mcphee, 2041), the triangulation added knowledge to the field of teacher education by providing empirical findings regarding the importance of using pbl in scenario analysis to help pre-service teachers link theories to future practice, writing authentic scenarios from the real elementary school english classes, and fostering peer learning during pbl. this study explored the relationship between scores on participants’ final projects and their learning about elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis. other factors might affect their learning, such as past english learning experience, teaching experience, english proficiency, or courses that they have taken. these factors might be included to explore undergraduates’ learning and expand the parameters of the knowledge base in language teacher education. scenario analysis was employed in this study. a few empirical research findings reveal that video can be a more useful and suitable medium for pbl (i.e. choi & johnson, 2005, 2007; choi & yang, 2011). video clips recorded in elementary school english classrooms can be used for pbl in language teacher education programs. a further study might compare and contrast between undergraduates’ learning about elementary school english instruction under problembased video instruction and problem-based text instruction. undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 14 references albion, p. 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(2011). integrating technology and problem-based learning: a mixed methods study of two teacher professional development designs. interdisciplinary journal of problem-based learning, 5(2), 70-94. author notes chin-wen chien national tsing hua chinwenc@ms24.hinet.net chin-wen chien received her doctor of education degree from the university of washington (seattle, usa). she is an associate professor in department of english instruction of national tsing hua university in taiwan. her research interests include language education, language teacher education, and curriculum and instruction. mailto:chinwenc@ms24.hinet.net undergraduates’ learning on elementary school english education through pbl in scenario analysis current issues in education, 21(1) 17 volume 21, issue 1 april 29, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf cie template volume 17, number 3 november 7, 2014 issn 1099-839x online student satisfaction: an examination of preference, asynchronous course elements and collaboration among online students michael marmon jared vanscoder josh gordesky university of north texas online courses provide students the opportunity and flexibility to attend college courses on their own schedule and within the comforts of their own home. while most enjoy the flexibility offered by this type of course delivery method and the quality between distance (online) and face-to-face courses being relatively equal, the question has been raised about the student satisfaction in online or hybrid courses (online courses containing synchronous elements). this paper seeks to explore student satisfaction toward online courses through the lens of preference to delivery method, the impact of asynchronous instruction on satisfaction and the role of rapport/ collaboration between students in an online environment. to fully understand the impact that these aspects have on student satisfaction, a survey was constructed and distributed to the entire student population of the learning technologies department at a public institution of higher learning in texas. as an added dimension to the results obtained by the survey, interviews were held with a subsection of the survey participants to further explore the elements that impact their satisfaction towards online courses. keywords: student satisfaction, online instruction, technology, asynchronous instruction, synchronous instruction the move to add more online classes to a list of courses offered by u.s. colleges and universities are gaining momentum every day. for instance, according to allen and seaman (2007) “almost 3.5 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2006 term; a nearly 10% increase over the number reported the previous year.” this tremendous growth in the demand for online courses means that the need for reliable technology platforms to deliver the educational experience is also becoming more important. mellander (2012) reinforced this point about an increasing awareness of technology in higher education noting that there are now three modes of instruction for higher education: face-to-face lectures, online, and hybrid learning. with this turn to technology as part of the new college educational experience, both students and instructors have to feel comfortable and confident in using any of the platforms chosen for their respective classes since so much time will be spent online. these platforms are replacing the four walls of brick and mortar classes. these platforms like blackboard, moodle, and schoology primarily provide functions such as: email, whiteboards, webcams, chat pods, powerpoint or pdf viewing sections, and websites specifically used to post materials, assignments, and comments. these tools can be used in both synchronous and asynchronous classes as well. the problem facing students and instructors in regards to using this educational environment, meaning the various platforms, is making sure that connections are 1 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 made. these connections take the form of building rapport from student to student, along with between students and the instructor. for example, if a student has a difficult time finding a syllabus or specific comment in a post by another student, then the educational experience has been degraded. students and instructors lead such busy lives that they are constantly searching for information and not finding it can de-motivate the person conducting the search to the point in which that person does not want to give a great effort anymore. on the other hand, an easy-to-use platform can greatly enhance the value of the information covered in class because the motivation to learn will increase along with the relationships between students and the instructor. this is especially true in the case of an online class, rapport and relationships go a long way in creating a learning environment in which people collaborate and exchange ideas in a productive manner because there is either no in-person contact or very little. from a theoretical perspective, “online courses” refers to a course that presents virtually all of its content online and where its participants do not typically have faceto-face interaction (allen & seaman, 2001, p.7). this definition is the context by which this paper will be referring to courses that are considered 'online.' those studies focus primarily on how well the students recall and retain information in virtual environments compared to the same factors measured in traditional brick and mortar classrooms. while those studies add great value to developing a complete picture of the direction of higher education, it’s equally important to analyze the tools that students and instructors will use. the attitudes, biases, and satisfaction in using these tools remain critical factors for understanding how to improve the quality of modern higher education. by gaining a greater understanding about the attitudes that students have towards using the various functions within educational technology platforms, improved instructional design principles will be refined and implemented immediately. this paper seeks to examine and answer questions about how the environmental aspects of an online graduate program impacts student satisfaction but also how these elements affect the student’s preference towards a course offering (online or face-to-face), asynchronous instruction’s impact on satisfaction and the role of rapport and collaboration among students in an online environment. this examination of these concepts will lead to insights that could assist in the creation of different approaches to teaching individuals online that improve the student's ability to learn through strategic uses of technology which also emphasizes the social connections between those that they teach. literature review the process for teaching courses in a traditional face-to-face environment is distinctly different than instructing a course online. while the philosophical goal of presenting information to be learned and retained by a student remains the same, there are different expectations for a student completing a course either face-to-face or online. these preferences typically range from "interests (course offerings), learning styles to student needs" and the ability to complete courses on their schedule (lim et al., 2008). ultimately, it leads to a question of satisfaction and what determines the effectiveness of the instructional method. after all, the philosophical outcomes between the two delivery methods do not change and yet, a student might prefer one over the other. the preference for this method of instruction stems from decisions for how to best deliver course content. online education is by definition, the "use of technology in exchanging ideas and providing access to more people" within an educational environment (bebawi, n.d.). bebawi's definition is very helpful at explaining the purpose of online instruction. it exists as a method to reach more students geographically and more importantly, students outside of traditional populations. as most (or in some cases, all) of the instruction takes place in a digital realm, course content is both managed and delivered through a learning management system. within the realm of online courses, a learning management system (or lms) provides the ability to “organize and manage e-learning activities” such as course materials and discussion formats but an lms can adopt a pedagogical role that has a “social constructivist approach” (dalsgaard, 2006). in terms of effectiveness of the course delivery method, research has indicated that there is "no difference in student performance" when a course is taken in a traditional classroom or online (lim et al., 2008). this lack of differentiation between the two delivery methods would lead one to believe that since they are essentially equal then effectiveness does not impact the satisfaction levels of an online student. if the level of satisfaction for the student is not solely a byproduct of the effectiveness of the delivery method, it is the opposite. summers, waigandt, and whittaker (2005) provide insight in the role of technology and that it should be chosen to fit the curriculum and not the other way around (p. 235). this sentiment indicates that the selected learning management system is not the main determinant for achieving satisfaction in the student. student satisfaction is determined through various other factors in addition to the learning management system. the most important of which is the sense of "community" that must exist between the student populations in a course or degree program that takes place exclusively online. the sense of community is defined within an educational context as the "feeling of connectedness among community members and commonality of learning expectations and goals" (rovai, 2002, p. 322). this definition is important as it provides insight into the role that community has upon satisfaction levels within online higher education courses. 2 online student satisfaction: an examination of preference, asynchronous course elements and collaboration among online students drouin and vartanian (2010) explored the role that effective community building has on reversing perceived drawbacks to the method of delivering courses online. essentially, through the use of community activities (such as "fostering interactivity and social learning") can reverse "an online student’s feelings of isolation and being disconnected from their instructors, classmates and school" (drouin & vartanian, 2010, p. 149). there have been studies into effective methods for developing a functional online community. west (2010) discusses the importance in facilitating an online community through various techniques. from west's (2010) perspective, the key is focusing on four types of interaction, "learner-learner interaction, learner content interaction, learner-teacher interaction, and learner-tool interaction" (p. 70). while west establishes four areas of interactional emphasis, the consensus is that the essential element to building an online learning community is learner-learner interaction. the foundation of learner-learner interaction is focusing communication into a course's instruction. misanchuk and anderson (2001) highlight the need to create active participants in online courses as said individuals tend to feel like part of a community when they are "actively participating in discussions and other class activities" (p. 4). this notion of active participation as it relates to community building also results in an added dimension in the learning process. namely, wilson, ludwig-hardman, thornam, and dunlap (2004) support the belief that participation is necessary as it provides the opportunity for students to engage in mutual learning as students "learn from and with others and to contribute to others' learning." the importance of active participation has been highlighted as a solution for removing feelings of isolation in online students and results in higher levels of satisfaction. of course, within the context of an asynchronous course, the question remains about how to foster participation and its role in improving student satisfaction in these courses. nandi, hamilton, and harland (2011) explain the process for achieving effective asynchronous participation with discussion boards by strengthening the learner-teacher interaction in the course (p. 8). by strengthening the learner-instructor interaction in asynchronous course elements (discussion boards), it is possible for the instructor to maintain the responsibility for driving the discourse (nandi, hamilton, & harland, 2011, p. 8). moreover, yukselturk and yildirim (2008) support the notion that asynchronous course functions (such as discussion boards) can increase student satisfaction as the result of quality interaction between the student, the instructor and their fellow students. ultimately, the purpose of asynchronous instruction is to promote collaboration and rapport among online students. research indicates that this is achievable through the presentation of ideas. van aalst (2006) refers to the concept as "idea diversity," where students utilize the ideas of their peers to "improve their own understanding" (p. 282). jorgensen (2002) explains, outside of the context of interaction, collaboration can result by integrating it into the "value system of a course" (p. 9). she adds that this can assume the form of course assignments or "extra credit for assisting other students (jorgensen, 2002, p. 9). from a more broad perspective, interaction (communication) between students in a course or the student and instructor contribute directly to the learning experience (satisfaction) of the participating student. drouin (2008) offers a position that the responsibility for developing this interaction (and by extension, rapport) between peers is the instructor of the online course. specifically, instructors will create the environment, which allows for an “opportunity to discuss, analyze and exchange information” between students or the instructor (drouin, 2008). to fully cultivate interaction or collaboration in a completely online setting, it places much importance on technology. kearns and frey (2010) noted that students “feel their usage of technology such as email and instant messaging support learning activities” in an online setting (p. 43). earlier, the subject of the learning management system (lms) was discussed and it is brought up again as it acts as the technological basis for most courses and also the means for conducting the interactions which impact student satisfaction. an lms is the place where “coursework is organized, learning resources accessed, work returned and collected” but most importantly, it is the place where “discussion occurs and feedback delivered” to the student (rubin, fernandes, & avgerinou, 2013). this particular technology in an online course provides a practical means to develop the interaction effectively by how the course is structured in the lms. yukselturk and yildirim (2008) explain the issues affecting distance learners that can be addressed in the lms as a “lack of prompt feedback, technical difficulties and ambiguous course instructions” (p. 52). bolinger and halupa (2012) second this opinion and provide the lens through which online student satisfaction should be investigated through questions about the “reliability of technology and interactivity” within a course (p. 82). methods participants the ultimate purpose of this study is to better understand the level of satisfaction of graduate students towards the online delivery of courses. this required that only graduate students be recruited as participants for this study. the available student pool that the participants were to be drawn from was the department of learning technologies at an emerging research university in the southwest. the rationale behind this decision to recruit from within the department of learning technologies was simple. it provided the means of clearly defining the preferred participant as the program only offers graduate level coursework, which effectively minimizes or 3 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 eliminates the possibility of an undergraduate student making it into this research study. the method for recruiting participants was through the department's listserv or list of student email addresses. once the survey was created and placed in the online delivery method (qualtrics), the decision was made to obtain at least twenty to thirty current graduate students in the program to participate in this initial pilot study. this survey exceeded this expectation for participants as thirty-four individuals agreed to participate in this research study. by limiting the focus to the graduate student population of this specific academic department, a limitation presented itself and must be addressed. namely, the department of learning technologies offers face-toface courses in addition to those that are completely online in their composition. the limitation as perceived was that students taking strictly face-to-face courses might find their way into this study. this limitation will not diminish the results obtained from the participants; it will simply require the participant to draw upon their experiences with the delivery method (online courses) from a previous experience. materials numerous materials were utilized to conduct and explore the level of satisfaction in online graduate students taking courses via a learning management system or lms. the foremost of which was the survey designed as the primary means for understanding and evaluating the participant's satisfaction. the survey was composed with thirty-plus questions, the answers to which would provide insight into the aforementioned sentiment. this survey contained several types of questions ranging from demographic information to experience with online courses. most importantly, the final portion of the survey was a collection of questions based on a likert scale to determine the importance (less or more) of the learning management system, synchronous meeting sessions and rapport on their respective satisfaction as online students. the intention of these questions is simple and ultimately will provide the sought after insight required for a better understanding of the variables that impact graduate student satisfaction. the creation of this survey was one of the larger tasks of this study, as it would provide the foundation for future uses as it was developed into possibly becoming an instrument for measuring the participating student's aforementioned attitudes towards the medium. this survey contained sixteen specific questions that were created during discussions about the determinants to student satisfaction in online classes. these discussions sought to understand the variables, causes and barriers to satisfaction student satisfaction and questions were constructed for the survey which best encapsulated these elements. the eventual process of conducting this study again will assist in the refinement of this survey to ensure that the questions ask the right questions to accurately gauge the participant's level of satisfaction towards this medium. the survey was then delivered to potential participants via the online survey system known as qualtrics. qualtrics was chosen as the preferred method of delivering the survey because of its simplicity and the access to the service through the department. namely, once the survey had been composed, a url was then created, which provided the means for delivering it to the entire list of graduate students in the quickest fashion possible. in addition, the ease of use for the participant insured that the number of abandoned or incomplete surveys would be minimal and would allow the researcher to get enough participants for the purpose of this research study. the reliability of the questions appearing on this survey was investigated using reliability testing in spss to obtain the cronbach's alpha, which insures the validity/ integrity of the questions and will be discussed at length in the analysis section. moreover, the data which appeared in qualtrics would later be exported to spss and would be examined using several statistical methods including factor analysis, comparing of means to create scales for the factors, anovas effect size and unpaired t-tests, all of which provided insights into the responses obtained. the quantitative insights obtained from the collected data in qualtrics will be discussed thoroughly in the analysis section of the paper with the discussion regarding the validity of the survey instrument. the final material utilized in this study was the act of interviewing participants to understand their sentiment towards online education but also the responses to the questions from the survey. at the conclusion of the survey, participants were asked to participate in a short follow-up interview (either by telephone or electronic mail) to flesh out or better understand their responses to the survey questions. the number of interviews with participants would be dependent on the number of completed surveys and will assume a percentage of those respondents. procedures the procedures for this research study assumed three phases. the first was the selection of a delivery method for the survey. once the decision was made to utilize qualtrics, the survey was developed and questions chosen that represented the elements (learning management system, synchronous meeting sessions and community building) that would affect the level of satisfaction in online students. once the composition of the survey was completed, a link to it was emailed to all members of the department of learning technologies listserv (or electronic mailing list). a link to the survey demographic information by percentage: 4 online student satisfaction: an examination of preference, asynchronous course elements and collaboration among online students fig 1. ethnicity of participants. fig 2. gender by percentage. fig 3. participant age by percentage. was also included to all current professors within the program to be provided to their students to maximize the visibility of the study and ensure that the minimum number of participants was achieved. once the survey had been sent out through the aforementioned channels, it was to remain open for the duration of seven days. the amount of participants anticipated to complete the survey for this study was within the range of twenty to thirty individuals. if the survey period had closed and the minimum twenty participants not met, it would remain open for an extended period of three days. if twenty or more participants complete the survey, it would close as scheduled and the data would be analyzed. the reason for having roughly thirty individuals participate (the survey had thirty-four participants) was to act as a pilot study to evaluate the successful processes for conducting the study and subsequent studies will have larger number of participants completing the survey and interview. this initial analysis of data would be quantitative and examine the percentages available and provide insights into demographic information such as age, gender, academic level and amount of online courses being taken. the evaluation of this specific section of data will also be discussed further in the analysis section of this paper. after the survey period closed, the process to select interviewees would begin. prospective interviewees would be selected from both ends of the satisfaction spectrum to examine what affects their levels of satisfaction towards online courses either positively or negatively. the amount or percentage of graduate students was dependent on the overall number of individuals who completed the survey. ultimately, subsections from both ends of the spectrum of results were contacted to complete a short list of questions about their responses. these questions were asked verbally by one of this paper’s authors either by telephone or email and the responses recorded then transcribed. these transcripts were then coded to evaluate the responses used to describe the interviewee’s feelings towards online courses and to determine if any trends in sentiment exist. once evaluated, the findings from this aspect of the procedures will be discussed at length in the analysis section as well. the coding process was conducted exclusively by one of the listed authors of this paper, instead of being a combined effort by two or all of us. the logic for such an action was to minimize the number of differences in coding the interviews, which could have potentially resulted in responses being coded differently even though they might been the same thematically or conceptually. this also minimized the need to conduct inter-rater reliability between interview transcripts that were coded by two different individuals conducting process of coding since it was completed by a single individual and thus, uniform. there was the concern of bias on the part of the coder but the coded interviews were later examined by the remaining authors to ensure that the choices accurately reflected the responses and meaning provided by the respondent. the results and choices regarding the coding process are described, examined and analyzed further in the analysis section of this paper. analysis the primary means for evaluating student satisfaction in the context of this study was a web-delivered survey utilizing qualtrics. the survey was sent out to all of the distance students taking courses in the department of learning technologies with a total of thirty-four students participating in the study. from a demographics perspective, the participants were predominantly white (seventy-four percent -figure 1.), male (fifty-six percent -figure 2.), mid to late twenties (twenty-six percent - figure 3.) and all were pursuing a graduate degree (seventy percent were masters students and the rest were in the doctoral program). most importantly, nearly all of the participants (eighty-two percent) were taking two or more online classes; this implies a familiarity with this method for delivering course instruction. the survey results also provided some context as to what drives student satisfaction in an online course from the perspective of course structure and importance of interaction/ rapport between students and instructors. sixty-eight percent of the participants prefer online courses 5 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 that are fully online or asynchronous, which places much importance on the communicative elements of a course. the survey supported this notion by highlighting a desired response time for virtual responses as twenty-five of the participants (seventy-three percent) felt that this style of rapid communication was either "definitely" or "very" important (which were the top selections on the likert scale). moreover, most participants (eighty percent) felt that having similar career goals was "somewhat" or "definitely" important to community building as was the comfort level of being an online student (twenty-four participants felt this was "definitely" or "very" important). as the questions used to create the primary instrument (survey) are relatively unproven, it is best to examine these questions from a reliability perspective. while there were roughly forty-four questions (including the demographic questions), the cluster of questions that were utilized for this quantitative analysis was questions twenty-three through twenty-eight. the aforementioned questions that were isolated and examined in this analysis deal with the subject of asynchronous/ synchronous learning environments; online learning technologies and rapport, the remaining questions will not be discussed further in this paper. the reason for the removal of these questions is that they do not pertain to the purpose of this paper and will be removed from the instrument in future incarnations of this study. the first step for analyzing any instrument is to determine if said instrument is reliable, to obtain the reliability of the questions; specifically, twenty-three through twenty-eight, a reliability analysis was conducted to calculate the cronbach’s alpha. the results of the reliability analysis revealed that all of the questions (all thirty-one of them) were deemed reliable because of their cronbach’s alpha. specifically, these questions had an alpha of .866, which is considered reliable because the alpha falls within the following range that has an “internal consistency that is considered to be good” (sec7, n.d.). once the alpha was calculated, a factor analysis was completed to create the factors that will act as the scales to measure which factors affect student satisfaction towards online learning, technology and rapport. the ensuing factor analysis resulted in the creation of three factors that discuss the subjects mentioned in the previous paragraph. the factors created in this process were composed of questions related to online learning environments, online technologies and rapport, questions that fell beneath the .500 threshold on the rotated component matrix in spss were excluded from the three factors for this study. once the factors were established, they were converted into scales by calculating the means of all the questions in each of the factors, this allows for a comparison of the means in an anova. specifically, muller (1991) describes the purpose of this process as "a continuous response variable is examined to assess whether it is related to a categorical predictor variable." the comparison of means or anova requires both the constructed factors and a dependent variable to determine the significance of the relationship between the two, the dependent variables in the two anovas conducted for this paper was the demographic information of age and gender. the use of demographic information such as age and gender provides context to what might affect student satisfaction levels on the subjects of online learning environments, online technologies and rapport. with age as a dependent variable, the levels of significance for online learning environments were p = 0.506, p = 0.152 for online technologies and p = 0.792 for rapport. the significance values for these factors revealed that age does not appear to significantly affect a student's satisfaction towards these aspects of online learning. as for gender, the p values were .124 for online learning environments, .638 for online technologies and .093 for rapport. a cursory examination of these anova reveals that gender has a noticeable impact of the p values but it is not significant relationship between the scales and the dependent variable. the use of the standard deviation and mean from the anova were used to calculate the cohen's d/ effect size and to complete an unpaired t test. cohen's d will measures the effect size to determine "sizes of associations or the sizes of differences" in the groups being compared, in this case, gender and the three scales created earlier. according to cohen's d, gender has a medium 'effect size' (d=-0.5182) and implies that gender might have an impact on it, whereas gender has minor or small effect on online learning technologies (d=-0.1426). the final scale online learning environments falls right between the two effect sizes with a d value of -0.4379, which also makes it seem that there is a medium effect from gender on the reception of online learning environments by the participants. to understand the statistical significance of these cohen's d values, unpaired t tests were completed to assess whether there is a statistically significant relationship between gender and the three scales. the t tests revealed that gender does not have a statistically significant relationship with online learning environments (p = 0.1235), online learning technologies (p = 0.6386) or rapport (p = 0.0930). there are many reasons for a lack of statistical significance between the dependent variable and the scales, further studies will need to be conducted to better understand the cause (instrument questions or number of participants) for the lack of statistical significance and how to remedy them. another anova was completed to address the survey results from different demographic context and sought to determine if age affected any of the scales. while the anova regarding age (both young and old) was not statistically significant from the perspective of the following scales: young -online learning (p = .863) and rapport (p = .048) or rapport (p = .962) and online learning technologies (p = .544) for older participants. while most 6 online student satisfaction: an examination of preference, asynchronous course elements and collaboration among online students of the anova results involving age were not significant, age with regards to online learning technologies is significant with a p value of .048. this was interesting as it runs contrary to the impression of younger individuals and technology but requires other studies to further understand the cause for this significance and the true impact that age has on the reception of online learning technologies. the other statistically significant relationship was the impact that age has on online learning (p = .041), this significance also requires further studies to truly understand this impact. the results from the anova were then used to calculate the effect size and unpaired t test to obtain the statistical significance of this relationship. the effect size values for examining a relationship between the age and the online learning technology scale did reveal a 'large' effect size (d=9.02854), which leads one to believe that the age of the participant (young versus old) may impact their opinion of online learning technologies. when looking at the other two scales, rapport and online learning environments, there was a 'small' effect size (d=0.2479 and d=-0.3148 respectively), which explains that age might not impact the feelings of the participants towards these scales. ultimately, the information obtained from the effect size calculations was then used to conduct t tests to determine if the differences between age (young and old) of the participants are statistically significant. the results show that there is not a statistically significant relationship between the age of the participant and online learning environments (p = 0.2986), rapport (p = 0.4378) and online learning technologies (p = 0.4017). these results should be considered as a basis for examining the causes for the lack of statistical significance in future studies. namely, it might be best to increase the number of participants and also refine the set of questions to maintain the reliability of the instrument but also accurately measure the attitudes towards the scales evaluated in this survey. to build off of the survey results, a secondary instrument was implemented to better understand the responses that were provided to the original study instrument. this instrument, an interview, was delivered by phone and involved three of the thirty-four participating students (the merits for the inclusion of the qualitative instrument will be discussed further in the discussion section of this paper). the interview was comprised of five questions that sought to address the sub-questions regarding online versus face-to-face instruction and synchronous/ asynchronous course elements. furthermore, the questions selected for this interview provided the interviewer with some flexibility to ask follow-up questions should the responses warrant it. the qualitative method that was utilized for evaluating and coding these responses was naturalistic inquiry. naturalistic inquiry is defined as a methodology, which places an emphasis on "understanding and portraying social action" (schwandt, 2007). with regards to investigating the interview results, the participant's responses were also coded using evaluation coding which "assigns judgments about the merits of a program and how to improve them" (saldana, 2009, p. 97). the reason for utilizing naturalistic inquiry from a methodological perspective offers the best insights for evaluating a student's attitudes towards synchronous and asynchronous education at an emerging research institution in the southwest. for all intents and purposes, a survey can be considered very one dimensional in its assessment of the participants attitudes towards the subject presented in this instrument. qualitative research methods such as naturalistic inquiry provide a researcher an added tool for understanding the responses, mindset and in this case, the attitudes of the participants towards subjects addressed in the aforementioned survey. for instance, this qualitative approach was selected to provide context to the responses obtained that would not be present from the survey given to the students alone. the use of a secondary instrument, an interview, was used to glean context or an added dimension to the responses given by participants after completing the initial survey about their respective experiences with online education. the process for obtaining these responses was by having the participants volunteer their time roughly fifteen to thirty minutes to answer additional questions to flesh out answers on the survey questions. the interview instrument was composed of roughly five questions that were open-ended to elicit responses that were longer than a simple "yes" or "no." the interaction between researcher and participant was recorded in a digital format to simplify the transcription process that would be completed once recordings for all of the volunteers were obtained, they would be transcribed to isolate similarities in their responses. the individuals who agreed to participate all have had experience with taking courses in online learning environments and could be considered working professionals in addition to taking courses online at the institution described in this paper. there levels of experience overall were varied with one being relatively new to the process of learning in this manner, whereas the other participants had taken courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level prior to this study. in many ways, these experiences and current professional obligations would influence the responses that they provided to our interview questions. specifically, the fact that these students worked full time while attempting to obtain a graduate degree would influence their sentiment towards aspects of the online courses in this program, such as the technology employed in the course, the structure or the methods utilized by the instructors to teach students online. aspects such as these as they relate to these participants of the interview process allow for a better understanding of their temperament prior to the coding of the transcripts, which in turn allow for greater insights into their responses as well. 7 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 once the coding of the interview transcripts was completed, the three transcripts were reviewed to determine if there were any similarities that reveal the influence that impacted student satisfaction with our participants. one of the foremost similarities between the interviewees was the cause of negative responses such as the categories of technology, communication and interaction. the coded responses that describe these categories were relatively similar as well. for instance, the interviewee might feel that the interaction in online classes affect satisfaction because the participant has to "wait and wait," is "not as good" or is "irrelevant interaction" in their particular online courses. one of the more mixed responses was the technology utilized in both synchronous and asynchronous course meetings, which was considered a direct cause for influencing the satisfaction levels of the student both positively and negatively. according to the transcripts that were coded, technology allowed for greater “group meetings” (greater collaboration) through technological means such as a “microphone, audio and video.” conversely, two of the interviewees felt that the technology could be a detriment to an online course, if the structure is “unorganized” or is “not working” as it was planned. interestingly enough, the main determinant of the interviewees with regards to their satisfaction was the course structure and interaction with the professor or their peers. specifically, all of the interviewees provided negative comments because of “irrelevant interaction (between students and faculty),” synchronous meetings that were “not instructor led or of no benefit” or synchronous interaction that does not work because it did not “accommodate the majority.” in the end, the survey and interviews illustrated that several factors (scheduling, technology and interaction/ communication) could cause student satisfaction to drop, while also affecting their preference for course type (online or face-to-face), rapport/collaboration between peers and preference towards meeting types (synchronous or asynchronous). ultimately, the significance of these factors as they relate to student satisfaction will be discussed in the conclusion of this paper. discussion after analyzing the results of this study, it is clear that there were some inherent limitations to the structure for how the study was conducted. foremost, the size of the participant pool (those students who completed the survey) was not representative of the amount of students within the program and most importantly, nor was the amount of students willing to be interviewed for the study. to resolve this issue in future studies; this particular study could be expanded to include students taking online courses in other academic departments at the participating university. this would greatly increase the number of potential participants in the study, which would increase the amount of responses that would be received. moreover, an increase of responses would provide greater insight into the levels of student satisfaction at an institution of higher learning that would be more generalizable than the participant pool used in this study. another possible limitation of this study is the number of interviewees that participated in the follow-up interview to the initial survey provided to students in the department of learning technologies. specifically, the sentiment conveyed by the three participating interviewees (out of the total thirty-four participants) would not be considered representative of the participating population in this study. this could be misconstrued, as weakness because of the lack of representation from this study's participants; however, there is much that can be gleaned from this qualitative method. certainly, it still allows for a further understanding of several participants responses to the survey but it also demonstrates the process /purpose for its inclusion in this paper. moreover, the research study described throughout this paper was a pilot study used to evaluates the aspects that affect student satisfaction in online courses from the perspective of the medium (online courses), asynchronous instruction and rapport/ collaboration among students, the inclusion of the qualitative instrument is relevant even if it is not generalizable with the remaining population of participants. to remedy this perceived deficiency and the lack of generalizability from a qualitative perspective, there would be a greater pursuit of potential interviewees when the survey is given to a larger pool of participants. ultimately, it is believed that a greater percentage of interviewees with yield result in future version of the study that could be applied to a larger context. one consideration that will be implemented in further versions of this study is to include questions that provide perspective of a student’s experience with online course offerings. this is a recommendation that removes a distinct limitation to this study. namely, it was mentioned earlier that it was implied that the student participating in the study had experience with online courses since they were taking more than one course at the present time. the importance of finding out a student’s prior experience with online courses is that allows the researcher to fully understand their position but also insures that the insights provided by the participant span the satisfaction spectrum. specifically, it is important to know that their experiences have a basis for comparison and are not based off of just one experience with this method of course delivery. to isolate individuals whose experience with online courses has been limited to one course, a question will be added to future versions of the survey that explicitly ask the number of online courses that the participant has taken. the most vital element to any study is the instrument used to measure something; in this case, a survey was used to measure the participant's feelings towards online instruction. for this study, an instrument was created for the purpose of measuring these attitudes 8 online student satisfaction: an examination of preference, asynchronous course elements and collaboration among online students and in retrospect this newly devised instrument might contain some inherent limitations. foremost of which, it is a completely new instrument that was created for this study to evaluate several aspects of asynchronous/ synchronous online education such as student-instructor interaction, student rapport and the use of technology in a course. as was discussed, the results from the questions utilized, there is some limitations inherent to an unproven set of questions devised. to address these limitations, future studies will be conducted to reduce the number of questions to include only those questions that were relevant and deemed reliable in future incarnations of this study. ultimately, this study is considered to be a mixedmethod study containing two methods (quantitative and qualitative) for examining the participant's attitudes as they relate to the research question of this paper. namely, how did the participant perceive the medium for delivery of courses, the impact of asynchronous instruction on their satisfaction and the role that rapport/ collaboration plays amongst students in online courses? of course, this does allude to a preference of one over the other; however, these methods mutually complement each other. while the quantitative method provides a concrete basis by which the participant's attitudes are measured, the qualitative process of interviewing participants allows the researcher to better understand the data obtained with the survey. in many ways, this makes the quantitative method the primary method by which the data was analyzed and the qualitative acted in a secondary role that complimented the data received upon the completion of the survey with context in those results. in general, none of the aforementioned limitations reduces the applicability of this study since it seeks to provide context about a specific section of the student population at the participating research institution. furthermore, studies about student satisfaction with regards to online courses are important as the amount of online course offerings continue to increase at institutions of higher learning. ultimately, these limitations could conceivably be remedied in future incarnations of the study and most importantly, allow for a greater understanding of student satisfaction on a larger scale. by further understanding an online student’s level of satisfaction towards these courses, it is possible to create an offering, which maximizes what the student finds enjoyable while minimizing that which is viewed as a weakness. conclusion as society continues to become more technologically centered, it is only logical that education would expand into the digital realm. in addition, the response to this expansion has been overwhelmingly positive as individuals continue to enroll in online courses. the question remains about how to improve student satisfaction in online courses and what aspects affect it. throughout the course of this paper, student satisfaction was examined through the lens of disposition towards the medium, asynchronous learning and the methods to promote rapport and collaboration. while insights provided by the literature examining the topic were useful, the firsthand information obtained through the survey of online students in the university of north texas' learning technologies program allowed for a practical investigation of the research question. in particular, student satisfaction and their preference for online courses is determined by the usage of technology, communication and interactive elements. the interview portion of the research study reinforced the importance of these three elements on an online student's satisfaction levels. if providing the survey to other departments at this emerging research institution and more interviews conducted pursued this research study further, the anticipated results would likely be reminiscent of the findings of this study. in the end, subsequent studies conducted on a larger scale would allow the researcher to possibly utilize the participant's responses to create more engaging and satisfying online instruction. references allen, i.e., & seaman, j. 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(2004). bounded community: designing and facilitating learning communities in formal courses. the international review of research in open and distance learning, 5(3). retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/vie w/204/286 yukselturk, e., & yildirim, z. (2008). investigation of interaction, online support, course structure and flexibility as the contributing factors to students' satisfaction in an online certificate program. journal of educational technology & society, 11(4), 51-65. 10 online student satisfaction: an examination of preference, asynchronous course elements and collaboration among online students article citation marmon, m., vanscoder, j., & gordesky, j. (2014). online student satisfaction: an examination of preference, asynchronous course elements and collaboration among online students. current issues in education, 17(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1280 author notes michael marmon university of north texas dept. of learning technologies 3940 n. elm, suite g150 denton, texas 76207 mcmarmon@gmail.com michael marmon comes from an academic background with a firm emphasis on technology from societal and political perspectives. his undergraduate work focused on these concepts through the acquisition of degrees in film and political science. he later fleshed out these concepts by acquiring a master’s degree in information resources and library science. michael's current research interests include the social, political and educational aspects of technology and the impact that these devices and software have on all facets of twenty-first century life. to better understand the role of technology in our modern society, michael is currently pursuing a phd in learning technologies from the university of north texas. jared vanscoder university of north texas dept. of learning technologies 3940 n. elm, suite g150 denton, texas 76207 jaredvanscoder@gmail.com jared vanscoder's passion falls where learning, design, and technology intersect. he completed his undergraduate work in industrial design at the university of houston, his graduate work in educational technology at texas a&m commerce, and is currently working towards a phd in learning technologies at the university of north texas. his work includes the design and development of intelligent systems for stem education. specializing in technologies that facilitate innovative problem solving, concept visualization, and rapid development (design, engineering, fabrication) of solutions. jared has worked in engineering, architecture, product design, and education. currently he is the lead faculty member at irving high school in the design & engineering program, and serves as the stem program coordinator. josh gordesky university of north texas dept. of learning technologies 3940 n. elm, suite g150 denton, texas 76207 josh@gameplancommunications.com josh gordesky is the president of game plan communications, a firm that assists managers to think strategically and express their ideas clearly. some of josh's research interests include business communications along with examined through highly regarded assessments such as mbti and disc. in addition to his work with managers and business leaders, josh is an adjunct professor teaching two, 13-week courses for tsa agents on subjects including one on intelligence analysis and security management and another focused on transportation and border security. currently, josh is enrolled as a phd student in learning technologies at the university of north texas. his research interests include learning theories, instructional design, and other concepts dealing with how people process and apply information using different forms of technology. manuscript received: 01/21/2014 revisions received: 04/30/2014 accepted: 05/19/2014 11 mailto:mcmarmon@gmail.com mailto:jaredvanscoder@gmail.com mailto:josh@gameplancommunications.com current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 volume 17, number 3 november 7, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell authentications editors tray j. geiger lisa marie lacy layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors evelyn baca darlene michelle gonzales isaac lamont bickmore kevin j. raso tray j. geiger niels piepgrass faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers 12 demographic information by percentage: microsoft word 1319-5738-2-le.doc 1 volume 17, number 1 january 27, 2014 issn 1099-839x urban community schools: educator perceptions of the effects of children’s health and wellness on learning diana j. larocco, beth a. taylor and suzanne c. d’annolfo university of hartford findings from a participatory action-research project that brought together 11 individuals from five of hartford’s seven community schools to engage in a focus group discussion about the effects of children’s health and wellness on learning are presented. the researchers and key personnel from hartford public schools and achieve hartford! coconstructed the inquiry. issues identified as interfering with student learning clustered into themes that include students’ and family members’ mental, behavioral, nutritional, and domestic/neighborhood health. the results are being used to create a call for translational research proposals for university researchers to address these questions and disseminate findings to hartford public schools and related community partners. keywords: community schools, action research, health and wellness conceptual foundation this paper presents select findings from a participatory action-research project that brought together 11 individuals from five of hartford’s seven community schools to engage in a focus group discussion about the effects of children’s health and wellness on learning. the five schools are located in hartford’s most impoverished neighborhoods (colantonio & martin, 2013). more specifically, the study aimed to: (a) identify student health issues that discussion participants perceived affect student learning at their schools, (b) identify local strategies that they felt were especially promising in addressing the health issues their students face, and (c) generate related questions that participants would like answered. three concepts formed the foundation for this study of the health challenges that confront school and community partner personnel in hartford’s community schools. first, a child’s health matters to learning and the longer-term outcomes of college and career readiness (basch, 2010; cook & jeng, 2009). second, collaborative, community-based approaches work best for overcoming barriers to learning (dryfoos, 1994, 2005). third, research is relevant when it is contextualized in its purpose, the place and time it is conducted, and the people involved (labaree, 2008). child health and educational attainment are linked. factors known to affect children’s health, and consequently, their learning include diet, being underweight or overweight, diabetes, physical activity, chronic diseases, and parent lifestyle and education (eide, showalter, & goldhaber, 2010; janus & duku, 2007). children living in families with limited household resources frequently face limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods (cook & jeng, 2009). these children are apt to come to school without breakfast, hungry and unprepared to learn (basch, 2010). similarly, urban, minority youth whose families have limited financial and health resources often experience health disparities including, among others, underdiagnosis, treatment, and ongoing care of asthma and vision problems (basch, 2010). hartford’s children face similar health disparities. asthma rates among pre-k and kindergarten children were 17.2% during the 2004-2006 school years (nguyen, 2010). obesity rates among the city’s children ages 6-11 from 1999-2008 were 24%, which was substantially higher than the national average of 17% current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 2 (pachter, 2013). census data available from the u.s. department of commerce (n.d.) reveal that in 2011, child poverty rates were at 47.9%, the highest in the state. per capita income in connecticut was $36,775 vs. $16,798 in hartford. of the state’s residents 25 years of age and older, 35.2% held a bachelor’s degree or higher vs. 13.3% of hartford’s residents. the city’s largest racial and ethnic groups are hispanics or latinos (43.4%), followed by blacks (38.7%). of the nearly 21,000 students enrolled in hartford public schools, 90.3% are from low-income families, 16.9% of students are english language learners, and 91% are students from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds. hartford has struggled for many years with low achievement and a persistent achievement gap and, until recently, was the lowest performing school district in the state. connecticut’s high stakes tests under the no child left behind act of 2001 are the connecticut mastery test (cmt), administered in grades 3-8, and the connecticut academic performance test (capt), administered in grade 10. germane to this study’s focus on the effects of children’s health and wellness on learning, these tests, which assess essential reading, writing, mathematics, and science skills, serve as a measure of students’ academic learning within connecticut’s system for educator evaluation and development (seed; connecticut state department of education, 2013b). thus, they are of significant interest to connecticut’s educators. the levels set for student achievement on cmt and capt are below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced, which is done to provide an accountability system for school districts. in 2012, connecticut applied for and received a flexibility waiver from the u.s. department of education (connecticut state department of education, 2013a). the waiver allowed the state to establish a new accountability system in which indices are calculated at the student-, subject-, schooland district-levels to assess school performance (connecticut state department of education, 2013a). under this system, a student’s achievement level on the cmt or capt is transformed into an index score (i.e., goal/advanced = 100, proficient = 67, basic = 33, below basic = 0). the student individual performance index (sipi) is calculated by first indexing a student’s score in each subject on the cmt or capt and then averaging those scores. a school’s performance index (spi) is calculated by averaging all the sipis. this allows for the evaluation of school performance across all tested grades, subjects, and performance levels on state tests. similarly, a district performance index (dpi) is calculated by averaging all of the district’s sipis. the state’s benchmark for a dpi is set at 88 “because in a district with a dpi of 88 or above, students will have performed at or above the ‘goal’ level on the majority of tests” (connecticut state department of education, 2013a, p. 4). table 1 depicts cmt and capt dpis for hartford. as can be seen, hartford’s dpis for the academic year 2012 table 1 hartford public schools dpi: cmt and capt school year cmt dpi capt dpi 2009–2010 54.2 49.5 2010–2011 56.2 48.9 2011–2012 58.4 49.6 2012–2013 58.1 50.5 note: data are from hartford school district 2012-13 performance report (connecticut state department of education, 2013c). urban community schools: educator perceptions of the effects of children’s health and wellness on learning 3 2013 for both the cmt and capt fall between proficient and basic. the dpi for the 2012-2013 school year is well below the state’s benchmark of a dpi of 88 or above. although hartford public schools has achieved significant improvement in students’ academic learning since the district committed to a drastic change of course and launched an aggressive education reform initiative over six years ago, it remains among connecticut’s lowest performing districts and has the nation’s largest achievement gap relative to suburban schools. the complexity of issues related to child health disparities and educational outcomes are compelling, and addressing them requires a collaborative approach (sanders, 2006; stone, henig, jones, & pierannunzi, 2001). school personnel and health professionals must engage families and community service providers to ensure that children and their families receive the services and supports they need to succeed. to this end, and as part of their larger school reform efforts, hartford public schools has developed a portfolio of schools that have features of evidence-based full-service community schools, as described by dryfoos (1994, 2003, 2005). the community school serves as a hub for neighborhood life, providing activities and services for children and their families, as well as the wider community. a lead social service agency partners with schools to plan, implement and sustain on-site services such as health services, youth development and after school programs, and parent enrichment activities. finally, the private university in which we work prides itself on its engagement with the community, as does our college, which has a mission of integrating health and education sciences through community engagement. the college has a laser focus on translational research, which “creates a space for collaborative, coconstructed inquiry that values and utilizes the expertise of all stakeholders involved (smith & helfenbein, 2009, p. 91). further, we believe that school personnel know their context and the history of local of efforts towards addressing the challenges they face on a daily basis (smith & helfenbein, 2009). as such, we worked with key personnel from hartford public schools and achieve hartford!, an independent non-profit organization designed to catalyze, support, and monitor educational reform in hartford, to co-construct this inquiry. our belief was, and remains, the interaction of child health and academic achievement is best understood from the vantage point of those most closely engaged with addressing the issue (merriam, 2009). we were especially interested in how school and community partner personnel interpreted and made meaning of their experiences (creswell, 2014; merriam, 2009). gaining participants’ perspectives on the ways in which health affects student learning at their schools and the strategies they use to target and improve health risk factors has the potential to inform the development of district wide long-term approaches to improve health risk factors that could have a direct effect on students’ educational performance. study design and methods the design of this inquiry was action research, an approach in which the aim is to identify “an appropriate solution for the particular dynamics at work in a local specific situations” (stringer, 2007, p. 5). the dynamic in this study is the interaction between children’s health and wellness and learning. the local specific situation is hartford public school’s community schools. in an effort to understand how and why individuals act as they do, the researcher engages in an inquiry cycle of looking, thinking, and acting (stringer, 2008). the five main processes in the cycle are: (a) designing the study, (b) collecting data, (c) analyzing data, (d) communicating outcomes, and (e) taking action (stringer, 2008). how each was carried out in this study is explained next. designing the study in action research, designing the study encompasses identifying an issue worthy of investigation and developing a quality plan (ethical and trustworthy) for conducting the study (stringer, 2007, 2008). the importance of the issues under investigation was explained earlier. the focus of the study, its design, and the research materials were developed collaboratively and through a process of consensus by the authors and key personnel from hartford public schools and achieve hartford!, over three months and a series of four meetings. the university’s human subjects committee for the conduct of ethical research approved the study. the remainder of this section provides a description of how the study was conducted. the outcomes of the study are shared in the section on results, and broad recommendations for action are provided in the final section of the article. collecting the data data collection, which is the look part of the inquiry cycle (stringer, 2007, 2008), began with participant recruitment. the sample for this study was purposefully drawn from hartford’s seven community schools. the principal and community school director each received an e-mail from the lead author inviting them to attend a dinner and facilitated discussion. the email contained a description of the purpose of the evening and asked the recipients to identify up to two additional individuals (e.g., nurse and teacher) that would attend the dinner and discussion. an invitation to the event was also posted to the outlook calendar that is internal to hartford public schools. once the principal or community school director identified school personnel that would attend, the individuals received an e-mail invitation, explaining the purpose of the evening and the voluntary nature of participation along with a copy of the informed consent current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 4 table 2 distribution of attendees by school and position school grades principal/ap community school director teacher a prek 8 x x — b prek 8 x x x c prek 8 x x — d 6 11 x x x e prek 8 x — — form. the dinner, which was funded by the university, took place on the campus in the early evening, to accommodate potential participants’ work schedules. the university campus borders hartford. eleven individuals representing five of hartford’s seven community schools attended the dinner and participated in the discussion. the sample was comprised of four principals, four community school directors, two physical education teachers, and one assistant principal. table 2 depicts the type of school and distribution of attendees across schools by position. the method for collecting data was a facilitated, focus group discussion. focus groups are a qualitative interview method for obtaining participants’ perceptions on a defined topic of interest in an open, nonthreatening environment (krueger & casey, 2009). using krueger and casey’s (2009) focus group recommendations as a guide, the discussion was structured as follows: (a) welcome, (b) overview of the topic, (c) review of ground rules, and (d) the questions. the lead author facilitated the discussion, which lasted two hours. during the welcome, participants were thanked for attending the focus group and the purpose of the project and the evening’s logistics were reviewed. then, ground rules for the conversation were covered. the main questions that framed the discussion were as follows. 1. what are the health issues that you perceive affect student learning at your school? 2. what are the local strategies that you feel are especially promising in addressing the health issues your students face? 3. what are the related research questions that you would like to answer on this topic? each participant was invited in turn to give input and express opinions to ensure that varying points of view were obtained. active listening techniques were employed and follow-up questions primarily took the form of elaboration probes, to elicit more information, and clarifying probes, to check for understanding and clear up any confusion (rubin & rubin, 2012). the discussion was digitally transcribed, verbatim, in realtime during the evening using word processing software and a laptop computer. the second author recorded field notes on a computer and the third author served as scribe, recording notes on chart paper. analyzing the data data analysis, which is the think part of inquiry cycle (stringer, 2007, 2008), was carried out as follows. a verbatim transcript served as the data set for analysis. procedures commonly used in qualitative research were applied (marshall & rossman, 2011; merriam, 2009). to enhance credibility, the data were examined and reexamined several times throughout the analysis process. first, the lead and second author independently read the focus group transcript and took notes in the form of memos to capture initial impressions made and emerging themes. sections of text (e.g., words, phrases) were marked and coded (i.e., labeled), by hand or using word processing features including comment and highlight. with each reading, themes, categories, and corresponding coding were refined and modified as necessary. then, the independent data analyses were compared, and the first and second authors came to consensus on the themes. results the presentation of results are organized according to the issues identified as interfering with student learning, the local strategies perceived as especially promising in addressing these issues, and the research questions that participants want answered. related themes that emerged through the data analysis are presented along with quotes that are representative of participants’ responses. health issues perceived to affect student learning when asked to describe the health issues that they perceived affected students’ learning, focus group participants described multiple stressors experienced by the children in their schools. participants’ stories revolved around the interaction between children and their urban community schools: educator perceptions of the effects of children’s health and wellness on learning 5 immediate environment—families, neighborhoods, and schools. the stressors described centered on the challenges faced in meeting children’s basic needs, including access to adequate food, housing, and healthcare and safeguarding against environmental threats. participants perceived the stressors negatively affected students’ overall physical, emotional, and social health and wellness. adverse consequences, participants explained, were observed in children’s behavior and academic outcomes. the child’s health and wellness. participants talked about students’ families and neighborhoods and described the effects these environments had on the children’s physical wellbeing and mental health. a teacher stated: [students] have so much going on in their lives that when you bring them to the school, it's hard for them to differentiate between home, school . . . that affects their learning, their intellectual learning, which is mental health. that affects their physical health. that affects their social health. that affects everything. (t1) students’ mental health was a significant concern for several of the participants. while students are receiving services and supports through their individualized education programs (iep) and 504 plans under the u.s. rehabilitation act, participants perceived the services were not meeting the students’ needs. a principal shared, “you know, last year i recall we had three specific students where they were really heavy-duty children, always with a lot of mental health issues. they have so many services, but i just feel it wasn't helping them.” (p3) likewise, children’s physical wellbeing worried the participants. in particular, access to quality health care posed problems. many of the children in hartford’s community schools are covered by state or federal health insurance (medicaid/chip). the limits of the policies were described as posing barriers for children (e.g., coverage for glasses, medications). a community school director explained: having access to the proper health care to manage some of the issues that they have. . . . several students that have asthma might miss days on end of school, again, because they may not have the correct access to the health care to manage that type of problem. (c1) similarly, another community school director talked about the need for better access to eye care and insurance to cover the cost of glasses: for the last two years, teachers have been talking about how students can't see the board. trying to figure out how to address the vision issues and seeing if we can bring in resources to help identify what those resources are to take care of those issues. but the other thing, too, is if students have state insurance, and they're only allotted one pair of glasses a year, they're students, they're kids, what happens when their glasses break? they go for a year without any glasses to help support them. that affects their learning. (c3) participants also discussed students’ understanding of their own physical and emotional development and the need to provide ongoing guidance and education. students were described as lacking basic health information about personal hygiene and sexuality. a community school director shared, “we have high schoolers at our school, conversations and knowing about sexual activity and stds, health issues that are becoming aware to us” (c4). similarly, participants were concerned about middle school students’ and even the younger children’s understanding of how “their body . . . operates”. as one principal explained: when you look at our middle school students, when it comes to health, the things they need to know at a certain age, developmentally. when they get to talk about sexual things or you hear things that [are] not appropriate for that age group. there's a lack of education, period. (p1) in sum, participants shared concerns about how students’ emotional and physical health affected learning and overall wellbeing. the lack of access to adequate health care services and insurance as well as students own understanding of their developing bodies were highlighted as two factors that were having a negative effect on student’s health. nevertheless, participants’ stories about the health issues that they perceived affected student learning at their schools largely centered on the interaction between the developing child and the family environment, and these emergent themes are presented next. the family environment. virtually every participant shared concerns about the interaction between the developing child and the family environment or system (turnbull, turnbull, erwin, soodak, & shogren, 2011). participants described whole family (e.g., culture, socioeconomic status) and individual family member characteristics (e.g., health, coping) that in turn affected students’ health and learning. examples of the disadvantages children’s families were said to experience clustered around family members’ health, education and understanding of their children’s health issues, involvement in domestic violence, and values and beliefs, including those based in culture and religion. these issues were characterized as placing a strain on families’ capacities to meet their basic needs and those of their children. the family’s basic needs. participants talked current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 6 about the “challenge” of meeting students’ “basic needs” and their effects on students’ “mental health, behavior health, and social health”. participants explained that students in hartford’s community schools frequently experience housing and food insecurity. they shared stories about how many of the students’ families struggle with gaining access to and maintaining safe, affordable housing. some families are chronically homeless, and others might be episodically homeless. still other families commonly move from neighborhood to neighborhood within the city limits. in turn, children frequently change schools, and this poses a barrier to learning. a principal explained, “the more times they move, the higher the rate of their academic failure. it's harder for their success. . . . these children, you know, not just four times moving, they're moving schools continually.” (p2) a community school director expressed similar concerns: from day to day, they may not always know, tomorrow, ‘am i returning to the same school? am i going to a completely different place? will we be at the shelter tonight?’ those are the types of things that they bring to the table that impairs learning. . . . if the alarm clock didn't go off at the shelter, i'm late for school. by the time my day's started, i've had a level of stress that i now bring into the classroom. that does really impair how well they learn. (c1) along with dealing with the stressor of not knowing where they might be living at any given moment, students in hartford’s community schools live in households with inadequate, insecure access to food. participants described how children are apt to come to school hungry. a teacher stated, “we notice that some of our students k-2 come to the building in the morning late and are hungry. they've missed the whole breakfast time, and they haven't had breakfast at home, which affects their learning, obviously.” (t1) a community school director talked about how the free and reduced meals they provided were not sufficient to address the pervasiveness of the problem: we offer breakfast. in our after school program, there's dinner, but that's at 4:00 pm. if there's a long gap in eating, by the end of school day energy levels are down. it's hard for them to concentrate. you might find them trying to take another breakfast because they want to have something else to eat. the basic needs play into the mental health, behavior health, and social health. (c1) participants acknowledged the likely challenges to accessing an adequate supply of food as financial constraints, transportation, family functioning, caregivers’ health, and the well-known problem of a near absence of grocery stores in hartford’s inner city neighborhoods. family members’ physical and emotional health. several participants described how individual family members struggled with their own mental or physical health. these issues were characterized as placing a strain on families’ capacities to meet their basic needs and being visible in how students behaved in school. a principal explained, “when you meet the parents of those particular students, they were having major issues also, sometimes, mental health issues, sometimes just physical regular sickness. the kids, they do pick up a lot of the behaviors.” (p1) similarly, a teacher noted, “parents seem to have mental health problems that aren't addressed. the students carry, you know, similar traits of the parents to the building, maybe it's because they've learned that from their parents. it's very difficult to handle those situations.” (t2) family members’ physical health also affects some children “because they're either worried about the parents or the parents have medical conditions that they need to take care of or, you know, have disabilities because of the diabetes and things.” (p2) the family’s education, understanding, and follow through. participants perceived that some caregivers did not seem to be educated about or have a full understanding of their children's physical and emotional health issues. a principal talked about how children’s “mental health issues were really going unrecognized and . . . not necessarily accepted at the parental level, so the children aren't being treated.” (p3) the principal went on to explain, “i think it stems from a lack of awareness of mental health issues. parents are quite often reluctant to admit that these things exist, for whatever the reason may be, the stigma associated with it.” (p3) some participants also expressed concerns that parents seemed to lack a “full understanding” or be “uninformed or unaware of all of the proper protocols” (c2) to manage particular physical health problems like asthma or epilepsy. when it’s cold outside, a parent might not let a child walk to school because the child has asthma. participants noted that other families seemed to not have the capacity to follow through with getting their children needed health services or medications. students labeled as add or adhd and are receiving medication through the community health agency, they only get one month of prescription at a time. if you don't make your appointment and get there at the right date, the children go for a couple of days a week or a week and a half or two weeks without medication until the parent can get back to the place to get the medication. (ap1) family members’ interactions and violence in the home. a few participants talked about their concerns regarding family members’ interactions in the home. some children witness physical (e.g., hitting, punching) or verbal abuse (e.g., name calling, foul language). in turn, the participants explained, those children are apt to urban community schools: educator perceptions of the effects of children’s health and wellness on learning 7 act out in those same ways at school, displaying aggression, anger, or disobedience, for example. a principal shared: a few of my moms talked about the domestic violence happening within the home. . . . . then you see that behavior exhibited, especially the younger ones. you see them acting out because they see how it's handled at home with the punching and the hitting and the language, little first graders. (p2) similarly, an assistant principal reflected, “i think the children are exposed to a lot of experiences that they should not be exposed to. there's a lot of language that comes out from the parents or the adults in their lives.” (ap1) the sense expressed was that families do not necessarily understand the consequences of “what goes on in the home" on children’s learning and emotional health. the family’s culture, religion, values, and beliefs. family cultural background was also cited as a factor that had an effect on children’s emotional and social health. participants mentioned the challenges in working with families from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds, especially those who were recent immigrants. they emphasized the struggle of juggling different values, rituals, practices, and expectations related to gender, children, and education. a principal shared several examples, highlighting the complexity of family culture, both micro and macro: gender issues, where . . . a 14 year old is able to tell his mom what goes on in the house when he's not the best student, and how do you have that conversation? . . . then we have the girls who are in these households who come to school very depressed because, yes, they're being pushed down, you know, terrorized. . . . there's the whole mentality of the boys get away with a lot and the girls are asked to do so much of helping out in the household, of being trained to be the supporter. they come to school very angry sometimes, ‘i don't want to be responsible for the younger person.’ that translates into all these frustrations that affect their learning. they can't focus. . . . we're dealing with the fact that we have two students whose mom just died. . . . from that culture, my understanding is the dead person stays at home, they do a lot of rituals, the kids were sent to school. we didn't find out from the parents that there was a death. we found out from a conversation with a second grader who is saying, ‘this is the worst day of my life, my mom just died.’ the third grader is giving information, bits and pieces, we are trying to piece it together. that child is not in the moment at all. (p1) to summarize, focus group participants identified numerous issues that they perceived were inhibiting families’ capacities to meet their basic needs. these issues encompassed health, coping, education, violence in the home, and aspects of families’ culture. the neighborhood environment. participants shared that physical safety was a significant issue for many of the children that attend hartford’s community schools. the students live in unsafe neighborhoods, with high rates of gang activity and crime (e.g., drugs, muggings, shootings). a teacher explained: [students] may have to walk through gang or drug areas to get to school. . . . our neighborhood isn't conducive to a friendly environment where parents can feel comfortable letting their children play outside. the parks are there, but they're not monitored as well as they probably could be. (t1) more worrisome, one principal recalled, “we've had like a stabbing in east hartford; was one of our kids' parents. the violence, not just the domestic violence in the household, but also community violence and death related to that.” (p2) in sum, the neighborhoods in which the children live with their families presented significant concerns for the focus group participants, and they perceived the violence was having an effect on students learning and wellbeing. local strategies perceived to be effective when asked to describe the local strategies that they felt were especially promising in addressing the health issues were affecting students’ learning, participants described making significant efforts to build true community schools, such as those described by dryfoos (1994, 2003, 2005) and others (blank, 2005; blank, melaville, & shah, 2003; sanders, 2001, 2006). as explained by one principal: the model is to be a full service school to make sure that you meet the needs, all the needs of the students. i know we're looking to renovate our building. built into the plans are a home medical suite, mental health suite, dental suite. we designed the building with that in mind. the whole first floor will be dedicated to students, children, and families based on what their needs are. (p3) another principal reflected: we want to make the school like a hub. the parents are comfortable going there. the idea is if we can help the parents have, you know, educational success, success with health, emotion, everything, then, that will filter into the students, too. i feel like we're building a current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 8 great partnership with the families. those are things that they've identified that they are interested in. (p2) notably, virtually every participant talked about the ways in which they were authentically engaging families and trying to meet their expressed needs for support and education. participants described how they had set up parent resource centers, hired parent coordinators, and engaged parents in the work of a community school. a principal shared: one of the things that our parents have identified they would really like are the domestic violence or like a women's group. that's something that they have told me, so that's something we will work for next year. the other thing, they really want [are] ged classes. if you look at our demographics in our neighborhood, 50 percent of our adults do not have a high school diploma. we have a list. one of the parents, we were talking about it, i said, ‘you're in charge.’ she wrote a flyer. she has 50 parents interested in ged classes in spanish. (p2) similarly, a community school director explained, “we have a fathers group that meets every wednesday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00. they're called 24/7 dads. that's another program we have for fathers so they can get together to help women.” (c3) another community school director noted, “we have a financial department center where we're trying to just help our families budget correctly, learn to be money savvy, to help them budget correctly for the future.” (c2) with the assistance of various community partners, participants had established mental health clinics, dental clinics, food pantries, and clothing pantries in their schools. they explained how they had made concerted efforts to expand collaborations beyond the immediate partnerships. participants described engaging community organizations and state agencies to provide students and their families needed supports and services. those mentioned included planned parenthood, the department of public health, catholic charities, and local colleges. the partnerships with local colleges included the use of interns who might focus on the younger children that need additional attention. a community school director recounted: we have a partnership with the local college where we have college interns who come in to facilitate small group programming to help empower some of our younger students, the more harder-to-engage students who are having some challenges behaving well or can't sit still through a class. they get a break from being in the room with 20 other students, which can be helpful, walk around the building with them. (c2) participants also spoke about the various curricula and programs they had established in their schools to meet students’ developing needs. these included teen outreach programs that were primarily a pregnancy prevention programs focused on “building self esteem,” truancy prevention programs with academic and home visiting components, to identify “what's going on at the home.” participants also described “gender based programs for students in a variety of grades.” to address students’ challenging behaviors while promoting prosocial behaviors school personnel were embedding behavioral programs and interventions into the school day. a principal emphasized the progress they were making with a character education program that emerged from the students’ expressed needs: we're now using the second step. previously, what we did was to have a person from catholic charities going into the classrooms to actually find out from the students what their needs are and to do those topics. a lot of them want to find out about just growing up to be healthy teenagers. some of those topics were generated from students and [were] taught to them. (p4) school personnel, families, and students were being trained in techniques such as mindfulness with the aim of improving the overall school climate. a principal shared: one of the things we brought in last year in the school is the idea of mindfulness in education. we want the kids knowing all the challenges they walk into the door with, we want them to be able to drop it and be in the present in spite of what's going on. i start with the adults. we want the adults to know about mindfulness and then teach it to the kids. additionally, personnel with specific disciplinary expertise had been hired to address students’ challenging behaviors. a community school director explained how they had put two behavioral interventionists in place. they get there at 7:30, they facilitate cycle educational groups, one of them is called breakfast buddies. the students do a check in. we have a listing of students that may have had a rough day the day before, so we can grab the students, have a check in, touch point, and kind of frame them for the day. if need be, then you have another check in maybe at lunch. there's a separate group that, we don't like to call it lunch buddies, we haven't come up with a name yet. it helps to keep behavior to a minimum. it addresses the social piece, the emotional piece. that is definitely one strategy. in all the community schools, that's something at the forefront. urban community schools: educator perceptions of the effects of children’s health and wellness on learning 9 research questions participants would like to explore the research questions participants were interested in exploring covered a variety of topics. a principal wondered, “why we're not using all the scientifically-based research that we know how the brain works, how children and adults learn, why are we so against following it?” (p1) another principal was interested in learning, “how does full inclusion positively or negatively affect both the sped [special education] and non-sped students?” (p3) participants wondered about students’ perspectives on what it was like attending a community school and receiving the various services and supports afforded them. they wanted data on the effects of the interventions. in this regard, a principal wanted to know, “what impact is providing mental health services for those students or supports for them? how does that impact not only their learning but the learning of the other students in the classroom?” (p2) also interested in students’ perspectives, a community school director stated: a burning one for me, what is the effect of inschool suspension, out-of-school suspension on students that we know are already in a frame of mind or have the emotional issues, the social implications. you know, is there another strategy? really, what is the effect? what are we saying to them? (c1) participants were interested in learning about how domestic and community violence affected students and their families, from their perspectives. they also wanted data on students’ homelessness and migration among neighborhoods. implications for practice and action steps this paper presents the results of the data collection phase of a co-constructed action-research project that brought together 11 individuals from five of hartford’s seven community schools. the topics of discussion were the health issues that participants perceived affected student learning, the local strategies that they felt were especially promising, and the research questions that they would like answered. this paper represents a first step in the act part of the inquiry cycle— communicating the outcomes of the study (stringer, 2007, 2008). the major findings from the current study are predominantly focused on the role that the child’s environment plays on his or her health and wellbeing, and subsequent learning. for example, children in the hartford community schools are exposed to a variety of stressors external to the school environment. these include food insecurity, poverty, family mental health issues, negative family cultural influences, transient housing situations, lack of parental education on myriad health issues, and exposure to unsafe neighborhoods and domestic or gang violence. it should first be noted that these findings, on a local level, reproduce what has been published nationally regarding environmental stressors and their impact on a child’s educational attainment. for example, health disparities in the treatment of asthma and availability of breakfast are significant health indicators that are known to influence academic success (basch, 2010). similarly, improving access to mental health services in schools has been identified as a critical factor for ameliorating gaps in academic achievement among high-poverty, urban students (atkins et al., 2006). therefore, we can conclude that the problems that face the children attending hartford’s community schools, and their effects on learning, are in agreement with national data suggesting that children who live in urban, relatively poor areas face unique and substantial obstacles to academic achievement that include inadequate fulfillment of the most basic needs. the second major focus of this paper is the local strategies used by the community schools to target the various obstacles to learning associated with students’ health and wellbeing. these include myriad student programs, social supports, parent groups, teacher and administrator initiatives, and behavioral techniques. these initiatives vary from school to school, and are typically need-based, meaning that they have been designed to respond to a community need identified by the teachers and the administrators (or, in certain instances, the parents and students). this aspect of the community schools highlights one of their critical purposes: they must be responsive to the needs of the community, which includes students, parents, extended families, and community stakeholders. this puts community schools in a unique position in which they must function as both a community organization and an educational institution. this is seen in stark contrast to the magnet and charter schools that also comprise the hartford public school system. therefore, when standardized test scores are used as the basis on which student progress and school performance are assessed, what is missed are the significant, life contributions community make towards addressing health and environmental factors that negatively influence students’ learning are often overlooked. the third major focus of this paper is to present the research questions that educators and administrators develop through their daily interaction with students and families. it is notable that these differ widely from the types of research questions designed and developed by investigators in higher education or outside research and advocacy groups. for example, recent scholarly publications involving the hartford public school system have focused on teacher recruitment and retention (cohen et al., 2013), continuity of individual student data points within the hartford public school system (zannoni, dougherty, rudy, & sternberg, 2013), and an analysis of district choice applications across the system (delconte, trivedi, zannoni, & dougherty, 2012). by contrast, the current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 10 types of questions developed by the focus group participants investigated the impact of various policies (e.g., suspension, inclusion) as they applied to students, or the effect of environmental factors (e.g., presence of other magnet schools, domestic violence) on student learning and behavior. consequently, the need for translational research inquiry—that originates from and addresses the educational needs of the teachers and administrators most directly involved with the students—will be valuable in providing efficacious policy and instructional guidance for the school system going forward. in sum, the results of this study are being used to create a call for proposals for university researchers to address these questions and disseminate findings to hartford public schools and related community partners. this will form the second step in the act part of the inquiry cycle: taking action (stringer, 2007, 2008). the authors of the current study, as well as partners in hartford public schools and at achieve hartford!, will provide input on the specific research areas that will be emphasized in the call for proposals. these will include research into some of the health factors that influence academic performance (question 1), as well as assessing the efficacy and characteristics of some of the strategies used to target these factors (question 2). the hope is that the research projects will be a starting point for better assessing 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(n.d.). state and county quick facts. retrieved from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/09/09370 00.html zannoni, d., dougherty, j., rudy, b., & sternberg, j. (2013). student continuity and achievement clustering in hartford public schools, 20082012: a preliminary data report. retrieved december 8, 2013 from http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/ cssp_papers/42/ current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 12 article citation larocco, d. j., taylor, b. a., & d'annolfo, s. c. (2014). urban community schools: educator perceptions of the effects of children’s health and wellness on learning. current issues in education, 17(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1319 author notes diana j. larocco, ed.d. institute for translational research college of education, nursing and health professions university of hartford 200 bloomfield avenue west hartford, ct 06117 dlarocco@hartford.edu diana is faculty in the doctoral program in educational leadership at the university of hartford. in addition to supervising doctoral-level research, she teaches research courses. she directs the university-charted center for leadership in education and health within the institute for translational research at the university of hartford. she is also the university coordinator of assessment. beth a. taylor, ph.d. institute for translational research college of education, nursing and health professions university of hartford 200 bloomfield avenue west hartford, ct 06117 beth is an assistant professor in the department of health sciences and nursing at the university of hartford. she directs the university-charted center for health, care and well-being within the institute for translational research. she is also the director of exercise physiology research at hartford hospital. her research focuses on age and sex differences in vascular function and cardiovascular responses to exercise. suzanne c. d’annolfo, ed.d. institute for translational research college of education, nursing and health professions university of hartford 200 bloomfield avenue west hartford, ct 06117 suzi is an assistant professor and coordinator of school partnerships in the department of education. she is interested in two streams of work that focus on practical application: (a) the effect of brain-based learning on student engagement and learning and (b) implementing communities of practice with teachers to benefit students and inform practice. manuscript received: 10/31/13 revisions received: 12/09/2013 accepted: 12/16/2013 urban community schools: educator perceptions of the effects of children’s health and wellness on learning 13 volume 17, number 1 january 27, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors elizabeth calhoun reyes constantin schreiber assistant executive editor kevin jose raso recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editor elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik aaron bryant darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell younsu kim anna montana cirell kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber melinda thomas faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 11, number 4 may, 2009 issn 1099-839x the desired cooperator: preservice preferences and role confusion during the teaching practicum doug hamman and jaqueline e. romano texas tech university teacher educators lament the lack of innovation in new teacher practice, and often attribute it to cooperating teachers’ role confusion. few consider the contributions of student teachers. this study examined possible origins of practicum role confusion among preservice candidates who described desirable qualities of a cooperating teacher and preferred type of pedagogical interaction. preservice preferences for pedagogical interaction were found to be a potential source of confusion. important differences were found based on intended certification level. preservice teachers most desired a cooperator who possesses professional knowledge about teaching, and they anticipated some imitation, more guidance, but less scaffolded interaction. discussion focuses on the utility of using anticipated interaction as a frame for explicitly examining conflicting perceptions of roles. the body of research concerned with teacher education reflects a dizzying array of issues related to the process of becoming a teacher. these issues include the goals for which, the settings in which, participants contributing to, the political context affecting, and the curricula that shapes teacher preparation. the girth of recent tomes attempting to synthesize this research testifies to the complexity and wide-ranging nature of these investigations (cochran-smith, et al., 2008; cochran-smith & zeichner, 2005). one finding that consistently emerges in many of these chapters and studies has to do with the importance of experienced teachers in the context of new teacher preparation. a number of researchers have pointed to the pivotal role played by experienced teachers during the time when teacher candidates are learning to teach (e.g., hollingsworth, 1989, nettle, 1998). cooperating teachers and mentor teachers are believed to influence new teachers’ work socialization, feelings of career satisfaction, perceptions of the professional role, philosophies of teaching, instructional practices, and perhaps even their decision to continue working in the teaching field (e.g., achinstein & barrett, 2004; britzman, 2003; brouwer & korthagen, 2005; goodfellow & sumsion, 2000; kelchtermans & ballet, 2001). consideration of how preparation experiences affect new teachers’ future practice and beliefs has always been at least an implicit part of teacher education research (lortie, 1975, seperson & joyce, 1973). recently, some researchers have begun to explicitly address the issue of new teachers’ own future oriented thinking (conway, 2001; fletcher, 2000; urzua & vasquez, 2008; wilke & losh, 2008). the result of this enhanced focus has been an awareness that student teachers understandably struggle with connecting present experiences with their future role, and that teacher educators would do well to facilitate this future-looking orientation. from a psychological point of view, there may be benefits to this type of future oriented thinking. for example, possible selves theory current issues in education vol. 11 no. 4 (markus & nurius, 1986) holds that future-oriented, self-relevant identities can have a positive impact on thought and behavior in the present. cast as hoped for and feared possible selves, these self concepts help individuals to evaluate current behaviors in light of what they want to become, and provide incentive in the form of becoming what one hopes or avoiding what one fears. possible selves may also have a selfregulative effect as individuals formulate plausible strategies aimed at achieving or avoiding identityrelevant outcomes. of course, preservice teachers also anticipate the day when they will become teachers, but it is unclear whether or how these newest teachers think about their future interaction with cooperating teachers. when researchers study new teachers’ future orientation, typically, they do not consider those of preservice teachers. yet doing so could offer some insight into perennial difficulties associated with the manner in which cooperating and student teachers interact with one another. the purpose of our research, then, is to understand the ways preservice teachers anticipate their initial teaching experiences, and to identify within those musings aspects that may contribute to role confusion during the student teaching practicum. context of teaching practicum contributes to confusion despite the dominant role played by cooperating teachers, or perhaps because of it, the process of learning to teach is not without problems. nearly 35 years ago, lortie (1975) described the teaching practicum as a setting that provides student teachers with little opportunity to explore their own instructional and management approaches thereby thwarting experimentation and helping to entrench current instructional practices. researchers have tended to attribute negative aspects of the teaching practicum to institutional constraints inherent in a real-world setting (i.e., cooperating teacher’s responsibility to current students), and often to characteristics of cooperating teachers who are unable or unwilling to support the needs of an adult learner in the context of learning to teach (e.g., borko & mayfield, 1995; guyton & mcintyre, 1990). ganser (1996), however, suggested that one possible reason for the limiting nature of the teaching practicum might be attributable to role confusion among university, cooperating and student teachers. role confusion during the teaching practicum is created and perpetuated by a lack of clear definitions and expectations related to support, supervision and exploration. conclusions drawn from a recent review of the literature by clift and brady (2005) seems to support this assertion about role confusion contributing to practicum situations that are less than optimal. for example, the authors found evidence suggesting that student teachers are themselves often struggling with contradictory ideas about students, teaching and learning, often do not accept ideas and concepts from university-level teaching courses, begin to show an increasing interest in classroom management and a decreasing interest in student learning, and are often at a loss for coping with the contradictions and inconsistencies they encounter. koerner, o’connell-rust and baumgartner (2002) also reported similar findings concerning role confusion. they found that student teachers often expressed a desire for cooperating teachers to serve as mentors, but then also wanted to be given autonomy when it is time to assume greater responsibility as the practicum progresses. in their findings, the authors were surprised to find that student teachers, while desiring guidance, did not express a strong desire to work with cooperating teachers who possessed greater degrees of professional and pedagogical knowledge. the situation described by these researchers seems ripe for confusion on the part of cooperating teachers who have to determine when to offer suggestions or to intervene more directly, and on the part of student teachers that are eager for autonomy but may still desire direction. the results from these studies concerning role confusion provide a fascinating insight into the perspectives of student teachers as they consider the optimal contexts for learning to teach. it seems equally fruitful to examine the perspective of preservice teachers, yet few researchers have attempted to do so. given the connection between future-thinking and behavioral regulation (markus & nurius, 1986), this type of investigation could provide insights into how preservice teachers see themselves approaching this learning experience. and given the prominence of the cooperating teacher during the teaching practicum, a fruitful way to investigate this might be to frame it in terms of how the preservice teacher anticipates interacting with their cooperating teacher to learn how to teach. pedagogical interaction during the teaching practicum grossman (2005) described the pedagogy of teacher education as those aspects of teacher preparation that are concerned with how student teachers learn to teach. pedagogy of teacher education may include classroom instruction and interaction among teachers and students, as well as the tasks or assignments completed by student teachers. researchers of teacher education pedagogy typically focus on the effects of course content and instructional strategies on the professional practice the desired cooperator: preservice preferences and role confusion during the teaching practicum 3 and attitudes of new teachers. the pedagogical influence of interactions among cooperating teachers and student teachers, however, is typically not examined. these daily interactions that occur between cooperating, or supervising teachers, and student teachers are likely to be a particularly potent influence on the beliefs and practices of student teachers (e.g., wang, 2001; zanting, verloop & vermunt, 2001). one model that has previously been used to examine the pedagogical value of interaction between cooperating and student teachers is the dyadic interaction model described by granott (1993). granott postulated a framework for classifying and analyzing interactions of dyads in any context based on the cognitive change theories of both piaget and vygotsky. this framework consisted of a collaboration continuum along which interaction types could be classified (see figure 1). figure 1. interaction types based upon degree of collaboration in asymmetric expertise condition. granott (1993) identified three types of interaction that might occur depending on the degree of collaboration. a case where there is a low level of collaboration between the cooperating and student teacher may be described as imitation. this classification primarily describes a situation where the cooperating teacher provides little help to the student teacher. during imitation, the cooperating teacher may be functioning in a manner that does not directly acknowledge the needs of the student teacher and continues on with “business as usual” leaving the student teacher to figure things out on her or his own. the student teacher, left to her or his own devices, must learn to teach simply by observing and imitating the cooperating teacher. such a situation seems parallel to the cooperating teachers borko and mayfield (1995) identified as not actively participating in the learning of the student teacher. the next level of interaction is characterized by the cooperating teacher guiding the student teacher, or treating her or him as an apprentice. in such a situation, the cooperating teacher engages in periods of active directing of the student teachers’ learning. the cooperating teacher might observe and then evaluate activities of the student teacher, or demonstrate actions and procedures for the student teacher. in this type of situation, the cooperating teacher dominates the interaction by having definite goals and standards for the student teacher and using interaction to help her or him approximate the desired outcomes. cooperating teachers who engage in guidance-types of interaction are taking an active role in the student teachers’ learning, but the student teacher may be taking a less active role. finally, the highest level of interaction, according to granott (1993) is characterized by the cooperating teacher scaffolding the learning of the student teacher. this type of interaction is characterized by the cooperating teacher collaborating with the student teacher. goals may be selected by the student teacher or cooperating and student teacher together might share a common goal and assist one another in achieving some outcome. cooperating teachers might also help student teachers clarify goals and then provide support on an asneeded basis. cooperating teachers who engage in scaffolding-type interactions are also taking an active role in the student teacher’s learning, but the degree to which cooperating teachers control the direction or goal selection is less than in guidance situations. research findings derived from investigations of pedagogical interaction reveal that the teaching efficacy of the cooperating teacher is related to the extent to which they collaborate with the student teacher (hamman, fives & olivarez, 2007), and that student teachers who experience greater collaboration with their cooperating teachers themselves report greater teaching efficacy (hamman et al., 2007). it remains unclear, however, whether a student teachers’ efficacy at the outset of the practicum might influence the manner in which they interact with the cooperating teacher. what seems clearer, however, is that interaction between teacher pairs is likely to be an important mechanism by which cooperating teachers communicate and convince student teachers about important aspects of working in schools and classrooms (e.g., wang, 2001; zanting, et al. 2001). in addition, pedagogical interactions, both anticipated and real, may also provide a useful framework to examine the perspectives on roles that teacher candidates bring to these important encounters. preservice teachers anticipating both direction and latitude, as described by koerner et al (2002), may be unintentionally setting themselves up for ambiguous interaction patterns during the teaching practicum. research focus of the present study the present study represents an initial investigation into how preservice teachers think about their upcoming student teaching practicum. in so doing, we are hopeful about contributing to the current issues in education vol. 11 no. 4 discussion about role confusion in the teaching practicum by finding out if preservice teachers’ expectations and beliefs are consistent with or counter to what teacher educators might generally assume to be realistic and productive. moreover, by focusing on the perceptions of preservice teachers, we are investigating the hypothesis that at least some of the source of role confusion may originate with what the preservice candidates desire in terms of qualities and patterns of interaction with their future cooperating teacher. specifically, this study sought to address the questions of (a) what qualities and interactions preservice teachers desired of their future cooperating teacher, and (b) how desired qualities and anticipated interactions might be related to one another or to the school level at which the preservice teachers were intending to teach. methods participants participants in this study were preservice teachers (n = 128) attending a large university in the southwest during one summer session. all were completing coursework as part of the requirement for state certification (elementary = 67%; secondary = 33%) and were expecting to begin their studentteaching practicum within the next academic year. those preservice teachers who took part in the study, and provided a complete data record, represented 85% of the total number of preservice teachers invited to participate during the summer semester. participants’ average age at the time of the study was 23.4 years (sd = 6.16). the majority of participants are female (85%) and white (82.7%), but a small percentage of candidates (14%) represented minority ethnic or racial groups (hispanic = 13.6%; black = 0.5%). instruments three measures were used to address the research question of this study. given that few researchers have addressed the issue of what preservice teachers anticipate, relative to their interactions with cooperating teachers, two of the measures described below represent measures modified somewhat from their original form. within the limited scope of this study, efforts were made to establish the reliability of each measure, and consider evidence about the validity of the modified measures. desired qualities of cooperating teachers. items for this questionnaire were derived from a qualitative study originally conducted by koerner, o’connell-rust and baumgartner (2002) intended to help clarify roles associated with the teaching practicum (i.e., student teacher, cooperating teacher, and college supervisor). in that study, koerner and colleagues solicited written responses from a sample of university supervisors, student teachers, and cooperating teachers reflective of “good” qualities and characteristics of student teachers, cooperating teachers, university supervisors, and the student teaching placement. koerner and colleagues originally analyzed responses and derived categories reflecting similar good characteristics for each group. four general themes emerged from their analysis representing characteristics related to (a) mentoring or supervision, (b) personal characteristics, (c) pedagogical content knowledge, and (d) professional dispositions. for the purposes of the present study, we utilized only the statements reflecting the student teachers’ perspective about cooperating teachers as mentors, possessing considerable pedagogical content knowledge, and having personal and professional dispositions. using the original wording from koerner’s categories, we transformed the “good” characteristics into a 22-item, 6-point likert-type scale (1 = definitely don’t want; 6 = definitely want) (see appendix). it should be noted that all of the items drawn from the original groupings were those that two or more student teachers initially reported as desirable qualities or characteristics of cooperating teachers, and were judged by the current researchers to represent unique statements about qualities or characteristics. with the resulting questionnaire items, participants rated the degree to which they wanted specific characteristics and qualities in their future cooperating teacher, including (a) their manner of supervision (e.g., gives feedback on instruction; allows the student teacher to try new techniques), (b) desirable personal and professional dispositions (e.g., is flexible; has good interpersonal skills; is honest), and (c) extent of professional content knowledge (e.g., demonstrates how to teach; is knowledgeable about how to teach; is knowledgeable about content). overall scores derived from the current administration exhibited acceptable levels of internal consistency for the whole scale (α = 0.89), and the subscales including supervision (α = 0.84), dispositions (α = 0.78), and professional content knowledge (α = 0.76). learning to teach questionnaire. this 20item, 6-point frequency scale (1 = never occurs; 6 = always occurs) was intended to capture the frequency with which three types of interaction occur between cooperating and student teacher pairs as the later learned to provide instruction (hamman, olivarez & stevens, 2006-2007; hamman, stevens & olivarez, 2008). these three types of interaction range from lesser to greater degrees of collaboration, beginning with imitation of the cooperating teacher (e.g., i teach in a way that is similar to my cooperating teacher), guidance from the cooperating the desired cooperator: preservice preferences and role confusion during the teaching practicum 5 teacher (e.g., my cooperating teacher offers suggestions to improve my instruction), and scaffolded interaction with the cooperating teacher (e.g., i tell my cooperating teacher what i need to learn). in the current study, this questionnaire was modified slightly to elicit from preservice teachers responses about the types of interactions they would like to have with their future cooperating teacher. using the current data, the subscale scores exhibited adequate internal consistence (α = 0.89, 0.87 and 0.85 respectively) similar to those reported by the authors in the original study. teacher sense of efficacy scale (tses). the tses (formerly the ohio state teacher efficacy scale) was unaltered for the current study. this 12item, likert-type scale measures teacher efficacy for using instructional strategies, managing a classroom, and engaging students in school-related activities (tschannen-moran & woolfolk-hoy, 2001). using scores derived from the current data, adequate internal consistency was found for the whole scale (α = 0.92). although initially included by tschannenmoran and woolfolk-hoy, subscale scores were not utilized in the current study based mainly on the fact that those authors reported that the factor structure of the questionnaire was less stable when used with preservice teachers. we elected, therefore, to use a single factor or total efficacy score for our data to account for the less differentiated beliefs of our preservice teachers. procedures during one class meeting, participants were invited to participate in this study through their college-level, preservice instructors (i.e., not the researchers). instructors announced the study, described the purpose and informed students about the amount of extra credit available for participation. volunteers then visited a central research lab and individually completed the paper and pencil questionnaire. completion of the questionnaire typically required less than 10 minutes. results the purpose of this study was to examine what preservice teachers’ desired in terms of characteristics of their future cooperating teacher, and the manner in which they anticipated interacting with them in order to learn how to teach. the analyses described below were conducted in order to (a) establish what are the desired characteristics and anticipated interactions of preservice teachers with their future cooperating teachers and (b) determine if differences in characteristic and interaction preference existed based on the intended certification level of the preservice teacher. addressing these issues, it is expected, will be helpful to teacher educators attempting to improve the quality of the teaching practicum by reducing confusion about expectations and roles played by teacher candidates and mentor teachers. relations between desired qualities and interactions table 1 contains descriptive statistics and correlation coefficients reflecting relations among the study variables. variable averages and small standard deviations revealed that these preservice teachers felt that each quality was highly desirable, while greater variability was evident in their ratings of interaction and efficacy for teaching. consistent with the findings reported by koerner, et al (2002), the current sample of preservice teachers rated as most desirable a cooperating teacher that is knowledgeable in their content area. they also anticipated more guidancelike interactions as they learn to teach. these results seem to reflect an understanding about roles similar to what borko and mayfield (1995) identified among cooperating teachers who took a more active role in the preparation of student teachers. in a situation where cooperating teachers take a more laissez-faire approach, these expectations could create tensions and confusion about how the teacher pairs should work together to facilitate learning to teach. table 1 correlation coefficients and descriptive statistics among qualities, interaction and efficacy [editor’s note: the table was missing in the article when accessed in 2015]. an examination of correlation coefficients revealed statistically significant, but weak associations between desired supervision and interaction variables. for example, qualities of a cooperating teachers pertaining to supervision were related to preferences for interaction characterized by guidance (r = 0.34, p < 0.001), scaffolding (r = 0.35, p < 0.001), and to a lesser extent with imitation (r = 0.23, p = 0.001). in addition, desired disposition of the cooperating teacher was related to preference for scaffolded interaction (r = 0.29, p < 0.001), and teaching efficacy (r = 0.23, p = 0.002). no statistically significant relation was detected between preservice teachers’ preferences for interaction with the cooperating teacher and their efficacy for teaching. these findings seem to suggest that, for the most part, preservice teachers may view the issue of supervision in a manner somewhat distinct from their pattern of anticipated interaction with their cooperating teacher, and that their current level of efficacy for teaching, which was on average quite current issues in education vol. 11 no. 4 high, had little relation to the qualities they desired of, or the interactions they anticipated with, their future cooperating teacher. moreover, the descriptive statistics revealed a pattern of ratings that might be characterized as traditional in the context of teacher education, in that the desirable cooperating teacher is one who is knowledgeable and provides guidance. in terms of the consistency of these ratings with expectations held by teacher educators, these results suggest that a difference could arise when either the supervisor or other teacher educator, and the student teacher consider the teaching practicum. that is, in the context of the teaching practicum, teacher educators often see it as desirable for the teacher candidate to pursue learning relevant to his or her own goals for growth in the teaching profession, though clearly, this is not always possible (e.g., bartholomew & sandholtz, 2009; seperson & joyce, 1973). yet teacher educators value highly this type of interaction and continue to advocate for the development of teacher candidates who are reflective practitioners (e.g., postholm, 2007; schon, 1987), and often see the teacher practicum as one of the first opportunities to integrate theory and one’s own practice, and to do so through reflection on practice. this type of development valued by teacher educators is best captured by an interaction pattern granott (1993) described as scaffolding, where the novice learner and the expert interact to further the goals of the learner. the results from the correlation analysis reported above indicate that the desirable qualities of the anticipated cooperator have only a weak relation with preservice teachers’ expectations related to scaffolded interaction with the cooperating teacher. differences between expectations of teacher educators and preservice teachers, therefore, may be one source of role confusion during the teaching practicum. differences based on certification-level next, a series of three mean-differences analyses were undertaken to determine whether differences existed in qualities, interactions or efficacy based upon intended level of certification. these analyses were separated based on results reported above indicating that the relations among qualities, interactions and efficacy were moderate at best. first, a 2 x 1 manova was undertaken with intended certification level (i.e., elementary vs. secondary) as the independent variable and desired qualities (i.e., supervision, dispositions, professional knowledge) as the dependent variables. results from this analysis indicated a statistically significant multivariate effect based on intended certification level [wilks' λ = 0.884, f (3, 128) = 5.61, p = 0.001, partial η 2 = 0.12] (see table 2). examination of univariate results revealed a significant difference for desired supervision qualities [f (1, 131) = 13.71, p < 0.001, partial η 2 = 0.10], but non-significant differences for desired dispositions [f (1, 131) = 3.59, p = 0.06, partial η 2 = 0.03] and professional knowledge about teaching [f (1, 131) = 0.81, p = 0.36, partial η 2 = 0.006]. these results indicate that preservice teachers differ, based on intended certification level, in the degree to which they desire to receive supervision from their cooperating teacher, but do not differ in terms of desired dispositions and degree of professional knowledge about teaching. a second 2 x 1 manova was conducted with intended certification level (i.e., elementary vs. secondary) as the independent variable, and desired interaction types (i.e., imitation, guidance, scaffolding) as the dependent variable. results from this analysis also indicated a statistically significant multivariate effect based on intended certification level [wilks’ λ = .870, f (3, 128) = 6.38, p < .001, partial η 2 = 0.13] (see table 2). examination of univariate results revealed statistically significant differences for imitation [f (1, 130) = 8.81, p = .004, partial η 2 = 0.06]; guidance [f (1, 130) = 18.39, p < .001, partial η 2 = 0.12]; and scaffolding [f (1, 130) = 10.52, p = .002, partial η 2 = 0.07]. as with desired characteristics, these results indicate significant differences concerning the types of interaction anticipated with the cooperating teacher based on intended certification level, with elementary-level candidates hoping to have more opportunities to imitate their cooperating teacher, receive guidance from her or him, and engage in more collaborative, scaffolded interaction. third, a 2 x 1 anova was conducted with intended certification level (i.e., elementary vs. secondary) as the independent variable and teacher efficacy as the dependent variable. results from this analysis indicated no significant univariate effect for teacher efficacy based on intended certification level [f (1, 131) = 0.728, p = 0.36, partial η 2 = 0.006] (see table 2). although differences in desired qualities and types of interaction exist based on intended certification level, these results reveal that preservice teachers’ feelings of efficacy do not differ based solely on intended certification level. in terms of contributing to role confusion during the teaching practicum, these findings all seem to be fairly in line with what traditional expectations might be for cooperating teachers, and in fact, mirrored findings reported by the student teachers in koerner, et al (2002). the potential for role confusion is again possible, however, in two situations. the first would be, as borko & mayfield (1995) found, when cooperating teachers do not take an active role in the preparation of the teacher the desired cooperator: preservice preferences and role confusion during the teaching practicum 7 candidate, especially at an elementary level. interestingly, the second might occur when a cooperating teacher at the secondary level might see her or his role to be more actively involved in the student teachers’ preparation, but the candidate herself might have a preference for less interaction and supervision. the differences based on intended certification level, therefore, may deserve greater attention when preparing both candidates and cooperating teachers for the practicum experience. discussion conclusions about the contribution of the cooperating teacher in the process of learning to teach have been equivocal. on the one hand, cooperating teachers are cast as obstacles to educational progress, and on the other, as mentors and guides to novice teachers. it is little surprise, given this ambiguity, that some confusion may exist around the nature of the role to be played by cooperating teachers. the purpose of this research was to examine the extent to which preservice teachers’ anticipation of their teaching practicum may exhibit characteristics that might contribute to role confusion during student teaching. our findings suggest that the seeds of role confusion may have been sown long before the new teachers’ began their initial teaching experience. although cooperators like those described by borko & mayfield (1995) may exhibit confusion about the exact nature of their role, it seems very likely that a significant source of the confusion may originate from both the teacher candidate and the university-based teacher educator. koerner, et al (2002) reported that student teachers desired to have cooperating teachers that offered both guidance and autonomy, and more recently, clift and brady (2005) suggested that student teachers were struggling to reconcile concepts in their university-level coursework with their experiences in real classrooms. the student teacher, then, would naturally look to the cooperating teacher to help reconcile conflicting notions of teaching (wang, 2001), while the university teacher educator may just as earnestly look to the cooperating teacher to reiterate the concepts expounded in the college classroom. in many ways, it seems that it is the cooperating teacher who becomes caught in the middle of the struggle over expectations. the results from the current study seem to support this conclusion, but add to the existing literature in two important ways. first, our findings show that the fault lines that run through the learningto-teach triad may start to form long before the teacher candidate steps into a more active teaching role (i.e., during the preservice preparation). second, our findings show that expectations over the types of pedagogical interaction that preservice candidates anticipate may also contribute to this confusion. like expectations about supervision, confusion could result when a teacher candidate expects a particular type of interaction pattern, but the cooperating teacher does not share this view. another source of confusion may arise from teacher candidates who may expect what might be considered a more traditional, guidance-based approach to learning to teach, but the university teacher educator anticipates that the teacher candidate should pursue a more selfdirected course of professional development. finally, our findings point to the potential for additional role confusion based upon the intended certification level of the teacher candidate where elementary-level candidates anticipate a higher level of all types of interaction, but secondary-level candidates expect lower levels of interaction. implications align early and often. in a broadest context, these findings have relevance to the issue of reforming teacher education. that is, both cooperating teachers, and teacher educators in particular, have alternatively been cited with promoting the status quo in the preparation of new candidates and replicating their own practice. although there may be some truth in these assertions, results from the present study suggest that, rather than imposing the status quo on new teacher candidates, student teachers themselves may be seeking out traditional modes of working in classrooms. one implication of this finding is that efforts aimed at clarifying roles are essential. efforts to align preparation expectations in teacher education programs, where there is close collaboration between the university faculty and cooperating practitioners in the school site, are difficult to achieve and likely to be only partially successful. programs where no such efforts are made, however, are likely to become rife with confusion. in addition, it might be useful to begin this alignment work during the preservice phase and in so doing aid the new candidates in imagining for themselves what types of experiences they will find most instructive as they learn to teach. differentiation based on certification level. preservice teachers’ responses revealed differences based on their intended level of certification that seems to have important implications for teacher educators. first, related to alignment of expectations, it seems important to consider what is the optimal type of interaction between cooperating and student teachers working at the secondary level, and whether that would look different from the interaction occurring between teacher pairs in an elementary-level setting. second, current issues in education vol. 11 no. 4 if there are appropriate differences in approaches to pedagogical interaction, some steps are needed to assist university supervisors, cooperating teachers and student teachers to structure the teaching practicum in a manner consistent with desired and educative types of pedagogical interaction. limitations and future directions it is difficult for a preservice teacher to accurately imagine what the teaching practicum may entail, so rating desires for a future cooperator may have little relevance to what is desired at the time of the practicum, or what, in retrospect, student teachers say they needed most at the end of the practicum. our results suggest that preservice teachers may draw on their past experience with teachers, when they were themselves students, to guide their anticipation of their preparation. at the present time, it is unclear if they would continue to have similar desires while in the throws of the experience. results from previous studies suggest that there may be changes from preservice to student teaching (e.g., nettle, 1998; shkedi & laron, 2004). in the future, it seems important to link desires for cooperator with actual experience and outcomes associated with the practicum experience. previously, researchers have shown that the quality and frequency of interaction between a new teacher and a cooperating teacher has consequences for the new teachers’ efficacy (hamman et al., 2006). further work is obviously needed to determine the importance of preservice teachers “desired” qualities of a cooperating teacher in affecting the process and outcomes of learning to teach. pedagogical interaction, however, seems to provide a useful framework with which to examine roles over the entire preparation continuum, and how desired interaction may be responsible for creating opportunities or limitations within the teaching practicum. references alvarez, h. k. 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(2001). student teachers eliciting mentors’ practical knowledge and comparing it to their own beliefs. teaching and teacher education, 17 (6), 725-740. current issues in education vol. 11 no. 4 appendix a qualities of a cooperating teacher (modified from koerner, et al., 2002) directions: below is a list of statements about the type of cooperating teacher you would like to work with during your studentteaching experience. please read each descriptive statement and respond by indicating how much you want your cooperating teacher to possess that specific characteristic. for characteristics that you definitely would not want in a cooperating teacher, circle a 1. for characteristics that you definitely would want, circle a 6. for characteristics that you have greater or lesser desire for, use the numbers in the mid-range. there are no correct answers – just your opinion about what you would like to see in a cooperating teacher. i want a cooperating teacher who... statement definitely don't want do not want may not want may want do want definitely want 1 is a good mentor (supervision) 1 2 3 4 5 6 2 knows when to provide support (supervision) 1 2 3 4 5 6 3 will give the student teacher appropriate autonomy in the classroom (supervision) 1 2 3 4 5 6 4 will allow the student teacher to take over all appropriate teaching responsibilities (supervision) 1 2 3 4 5 6 5 is open-minded (disposition) 1 2 3 4 5 6 6 gives feedback on instruction (supervision) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 is flexible (disposition) 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 knows when to provide help (supervision) 1 2 3 4 5 6 9 gives positive feedback (supervision) 1 2 3 4 5 6 10 allows the student teacher to try new techniques (supervision) 1 2 3 4 5 6 11 allows the student teacher to try new activities (supervision) 1 2 3 4 5 6 12 encourages the student teacher to take “risks” in her/his teaching (supervision) 1 2 3 4 5 6 13 is collegial (disposition) 1 2 3 4 5 6 14 gives constructive feedback (supervision) 1 2 3 4 5 6 15 is knowledgeable about how to teach (professional knowledge) 1 2 3 4 5 6 16 has good interpersonal skills (disposition) 1 2 3 4 5 6 17 is open to learning from the student teacher (disposition) 1 2 3 4 5 6 18 is honest (disposition) 1 2 3 4 5 6 19 demonstrates how to teach (professional 1 2 3 4 5 6 the desired cooperator: preservice preferences and role confusion during the teaching practicum 11 knowledge) 20 is knowledgeable about content (professional knowledge) 1 2 3 4 5 6 21 is a good role model (supervision) 1 2 3 4 5 6 22 gives feedback on lesson plans (supervision) 1 2 3 4 5 6 current issues in education vol. 11 no. 4 2009 article citation hamman, d. & romano, j. e. (2009, may). the desired cooperator: preservice preferences and role confusion during the teaching practicum current issues in education [on-line], 11(4). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number4/ author notes doug hamman texas tech university doug.hamman@ttu.edu doug hamman is an associate professor of curriculum studies and teacher education. his research efforts focus on pedagogical interaction between cooperating and student teachers, and new teacher identity. jacqueline e. romano texas tech university jacqueline e. romano is a graduate student and jones fellow in the curriculum studies program. her primary research focus is on the influence of high-stakes testing on curricular decision-making, and teacher education for bilingual and minority students. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 15, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation hamman, d., & romano, j. e. (2009). the desired cooperator: preservice preferences and role confusion during the teaching practicum. current issues in education, 11(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1576 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number4/ mailto:doug.hamman@ttu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1576 volume 11, number 2 may, 2009 issn 1099-839x dialogues across disciplines: preparing english-as-a-second-language teachers for interdisciplinary collaboration margo dellicarpini lehman college, the city university of new york this study examines interdisciplinary collaboration between mainstreamenglish and english-as-a-second-language (esl) in-service and pre-service teachers enrolled in graduate methods courses in their respective fields. during the semester, tesol and secondary english education teacher candidates collaborated to develop young adult literature based thematic units that supported the curricular needs of the secondary english education curriculum in the esl classroom and the provided for the linguistic, second-language-literacy, and cultural needs of english language learners (ells) in the mainstream english classroom through interdisciplinary teacher collaboration. classrooms in the united states are rapidly becoming more diverse places. for example, between the 1989-1990 and 2004-2005 school years, enrollment by students who must receive english language education services (english language learners/ells) has more than doubled, from 2,030,451 to 5,119,56 (ncela, 2006). ell enrollment in the nation’s public schools between the years 1990 and 2000 grew by 105 percent, compared to a 12 percent overall growth rate among the general school population (kindler, 2002). this increasing diversity makes it critical that english as a second language (esl) and mainstream teachers are able to collaborate with the goals of increased and enhanced academic success for students who are learning english as an additional language while simultaneously acquiring content knowledge in english. this paper reports on the results of an interdisciplinary collaboration between mainstream and esl teachers enrolled in a graduate level teacher certification program. the results highlight the need for structured opportunities for pre-service teachers to collaborate across the disciplines to enhance educational outcomes for students learning english as an additional language. esl and mainstream teacher collaboration: a 21st century necessity while esl and /or bilingual education services are mandated by the united states federal government as a result of the bilingual education act of 1968 (and its reauthorizations in subsequent years) and lau vs. nichols 1 , most students who are learning english as a second or additional language spend most of their school day in mainstream classrooms with teachers who often have had no professional preparation in effective instructional practices for linguistically diverse learners. in some ways, mainstream teachers of ells are in the same position as many ells in mainstream classrooms: sink or swim. on the other side of this issue is the level of preparation that esl teachers receive in teaching content material. while esl services are mandated in the united states, the type of program that states and individual schools implement is not. the united states federal government has refrained from defining program type and has rather set forth guidelines that programs must adhere to. the file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2009,%20vol%2011,%20%231-9/number2/footnote current issues in education vol. 11 no. 2 following appears on the united states department of education, office for civil rights informational site entitled: the provision of an equal education opportunity to limited-english proficient (lep) students (revised august 2000): the following procedures should be used by school districts to ensure that their programs are serving lep students effectively. districts should:  identify students who need assistance;  develop a program which, in the view of experts in the field, has a reasonable chance for success;  ensure that necessary staff, curricular materials, and facilities are in place and used properly;  develop appropriate evaluation standards, including program exit criteria, for measuring the progress of students; and  assess the success of the program and modify it where needed.(available at: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/eeol ep/index.html) these broad guidelines have created a situation where programs can vary a great deal. two prevalent program types that have emerged, usually occurring at the elementary level (k-6), are esl pullout and esl push-in. pull-out esl programs are those where students leave their mainstream classroom and spend time in an esl classroom for a determined number of instructional units, depending on proficiency level. push-in models are those where esl teachers enter the mainstream classroom and, under the best circumstances, collaboratively plan and teach with the mainstream teacher. this relationship can either be viewed as the esl teacher being in a supportive role, where he or she works with individual or groups of students, but the subject area teacher is responsible for planning and implementing the curriculum, or as a partnership, similar to canonical models of teaching partnerships between special and general education teachers. in such a model, both teachers are equally responsible for planning and implementing curriculum and students are frequently unaware of which teacher is the special educator and which is the general educator. while the true partnership model has been emphasized in delivering effective educational services to ells in a variety of countries (bourne, 1989; coelho, 1998; creese, 2002; lee, 1997; mohan, leung, & davison, 2001), many of these intended partnerships result in the esl teacher being in a supportive role rather than an equal one. at the secondary level, the most prevalent program type in the united states is one that treats esl as a separate subject and students attend a specified number of esl periods each day or week, depending on individual state guidelines. for example, in new york state, students are first determined to be ell’s through the use of a home language questionnaire, then proficiency level is assessed using the language assessment batteryrevised (lab-r). finally, yearly progress is monitored using the new york state english as a second language assessment test (nyseslat). depending on proficiency level, secondary students spend one (36 minutes) to three (108 minutes) periods per day in the esl classroom. in many locations, this secondary level instruction takes the form of content based instruction (cbi), or sheltered instruction, where language is taught and supported using academic subjects as the platform for learning. cbi refers to the integration of language and content instruction, with the goal being the simultaneous acquisition of both. while content usually refers to academic subjects, genesee (1994) has argued that content “...need not be academic; it can include any topic, theme or non-language issue of interest or importance to the learners” (p. 3). met (1999) has proposed that “…‘content’ in contentbased programs represents material that is cognitively engaging and demanding for the learner, and is material that extends beyond the target language or target culture” (p. 150). currently, in most schools in the united states, the content in question is intended to be academic subject matter. the nature of this academic subject matter is important to the success of ells in us schools. the demand of teaching language through meaningful academic content can be a challenge for esl teachers. in many tesol certification programs at the graduate level, the candidate’s undergraduate degree can be in any area, and general subject area knowledge is ensured by a certification exam that assesses minimal knowledge of liberal arts and sciences in the areas of mathematics, science, and us history. some certification programs and states place an additional requirement that candidates have successfully completed specified numbers of credit hours each in what they consider core academic subjects. requiring some degree of core academic subject knowledge is better than requiring no prior knowledge in subject areas. however, esl teachers who are required to teach language through academic subjects can be at a disadvantage in terms of their actual level of preparation with those subjects. in addition, the academic content knowledge that esl teachers have can range from expert (a graduate tesol candidate with a bachelor’s degree in history or mathematics) to non-existent (a graduate tesol candidate with an bachelor’s degree in interior design, which, while requiring general and specific http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/eeolep/index.html http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/eeolep/index.html dialogues across disciplines: preparing english-as-a-second-language teachers for interdisciplinary collaboration 3 knowledge as it relates to that field, does not necessarily present that knowledge in a way that is aligned with traditional primary and secondary educational content in us schools). if required to engage in cbi, which, as stated earlier is the currently accepted model of esl in academic settings, esl teachers can be left wondering what to teach and how to teach the content that is selected. one way to ameliorate the negative impact such a situation has on both teachers and students is to develop true interdisciplinary teaching partnerships. in such partnerships esl teachers and mainstream content teachers work together to plan and design instruction, both in the esl and mainstream classroom. this planning would take into account the curricular needs of the subject being taught and the linguistic needs of the ells. content teachers would act as the specialists in the academic field and share their expertise in the area of both curriculum and instruction of core academic material. the esl teacher would contribute his or her expertise in terms of language acquisition and pedagogy. such a model would be similar to those that exist in inclusion classrooms. in fact, much of the extant research on teacher collaboration comes from the field of teaching students with learning disabilities. from this field, there are five models of co-teaching or teacher collaboration which were described by vaughn, schumm, and arguelles (1997):  a lead teacher (who takes the lead in instructional delivery) and assistant teacher (who works with individual or small groups within the larger integrated group;  station teaching, where the teachers each take responsibility for teaching different components of the material to small groups of students in a learning center or learning station type of setting within the classroom;  parallel teaching, which involves coplanning then dividing the class into smaller groups to deliver instruction in classroom;  alternative teaching, where one of the teachers scaffolds, shelters, or reinforces learning that was delivered to the large group as a whole;  true team teaching or co-teaching, where both teachers teach all of the students all of the time. the literature on co-teaching documents a variety of benefits that include the combined expertise of two knowledgeable teachers, more complex and complete curricula provided to students with learning disabilities, fuller participation of all students in the classroom, and increased and improved outcomes for all students and enhanced feelings of self-efficacy for the educators involved (cole & mcleskey, 1997; dieker & barnett, 1996; gately & gately, 2001; rice & zigmond, 2000). however, discussing and understanding the benefits of collaboration is not the equivalent of actually collaborating. in 1996, kaufman and grennonbrooks made the following statement: “collaboration between esol (english to speakers of other languages) teachers and teachers of other subject areas is imperative. teacher education programs must reevaluate current pedagogical orientations and reorganize to prepare teacher candidates of all disciplines for coordinated interdisciplinary education for all students” (p. 231). how far have we come in the field of teacher education and practice since this call for collaboration was made twelve years ago? based on a review of the literature, we have not come far at all. while teacher collaboration is discussed and acknowledged as a vital component in ensuring improved educational outcomes for all learners, a powerful tool in new teacher success and teacher development, and as a force behind positive educational change (mostert, 1998; pugach & johnson, 1995; 2002; rogers & babinski, 2002; snyder, 1994; trent, 1998), little collaboration actually occurs. when it does occur, many teachers (73.1%) have found those efforts to be “largely inadequate” (leonard & leonard, 2006, p. 6). while the positive benefits of teacher collaboration at the secondary level have been documented (achinstein, 2002; manouchehri, 2001; rottier, 2000) and the benefits of teacher collaboration have become a regular message in many teacher education programs, actual change in middle and high schools in terms of the level of teacher collaboration has not occurred (memory, yoder & williams, 2003). in addition, despite the call for collaboration to enhance the education of linguistically and culturally diverse learners, little research into actual collaborative partnerships between esl and mainstream teachers has occurred (creese, 2002). the question of why more collaboration between esl and mainstream teachers does not occur is a critical one based on the anticipated growth of the language learner population over the next few decades and the current implementation of many esl programs in the united states (where students who are learning english participate in mainstream classes without the benefits of sheltered instruction for most of their day). the current research study is an effort to investigate the types of barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration that esl teachers identify and how tesol methods courses can be effective in current issues in education vol. 11 no. 2 removing the identified barriers so that true teaching partnerships between mainstream and esl teachers can develop. the following questions are addressed:  what barriers to collaboration with mainstream teachers do esl teachers feel exist, and how are these similar to or different from other collaborative teaching relationships?  can the identified barriers be eliminated through theoretical knowledge, guided practice, reflection, and independent practice?  how can the experiences of the teachers in this study be used to inform practice in tesol methods courses? the study this qualitative research focused on the results of a semester long project that involved interdisciplinary teacher collaboration between mainstream secondary level english language arts (ela) and esl teacher candidates. qualitative data in the form of reflective writing, focus group discussions, and interviews were collected. the reflective process is critical to the preparation and ongoing professional development of educators in that educators can re-visit events and develop multiple perspectives that situate the events within a theoretical context and create connections between beliefs, theory, and practice. ayers (2004) discusses reflection as “a disciplined way of assessing situations, imagining a future different from today, and preparing to act” (p. 110) and as such formed the basis for the data collected during the semester. contextual factors and participants the backdrop for this research was a coscheduled, semesterlong tesol and english methods course focusing on building academic literacy skills through the teaching of young adult 2 (ya) literature selections. the participants were eighteen candidates enrolled in a master’s of science in education program in tesol and sixteen candidates enrolled in a master’s of science in education program in english education. the average age of the tesol candidates was thirty four years and the group consisted of one male and seventeen females. the teachers ranged in background experience and certification, but sixteen of the tesol candidates held teaching certifications in either elementary education, esl (and seeking a master’s degree to satisfy final state certification requirements), or in a secondary education core subject (e.g., mathematics, science, social studies or english language arts). two candidates were seeking initial certification in tesol and were not certified in another subject. of the sixteen who were already certified, all were currently employed in schools in new york city or one of the surrounding counties. the average age of the english education candidates was 29.3 years and the candidates were all either seeking an initial certificate in secondary level english education or a master’s degree to complete their state certification process in english education. the english education group consisted of four men and twelve women. those who possessed certification were also employed in either public schools in new york city or in the surrounding counties. the course structure was designed to provide esl and english teachers with a foundational knowledge of teacher collaboration through course readings and discussions. in conjunction with the building of a theoretical base of knowledge, the goals were to create supervised, structured opportunities for teachers to discuss issues of ells in mainstream classrooms, identify challenges faced by ells, problem solve, and ultimately collaborate to create a ya literature thematic unit that would build skills necessary for mainstream success in the esl classroom and provide access to the curriculum for ells in the mainstream english classroom. the thematic unit required groups of students to select a young adult novel, decide on themes that would emerge from the teaching of that novel (for example, family relationships, social class, friendship, immigration), and develop a series of lessons that would span two to three weeks. in the lessons, the novel itself, as well as the emergent themes would be explored. both mainstream and esl students would be learning together, and the esl and english teacher candidates collaboratively developed the unit and lesson plans to meet the needs of all learners in the classroom. method the tesol and english education faculty members developed the research methodology in conjunction with modifying the existing course to include additional collaboration within the existing syllabi. the following data collection formats were used:  interviews (audio-recorded and transcribed) with open ended questions on candidates’ experience to date, knowledge of, and beliefs about interdisciplinary teacher collaboration. the first group of interviews took place during the first two weeks of the semester (august/september), and again during the last two weeks of the semester (december).  weekly guided, reflective journal entries on the collaboration taking place in the course; these were written and analyzed in a narrative inquiry framework. file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2009,%20vol%2011,%20%231-9/number2/footnote dialogues across disciplines: preparing english-as-a-second-language teachers for interdisciplinary collaboration 5  focus group interviews/discussion (four throughout the semester; september, october, november, and december; audiotaped and transcribed).  the focus group, reflective writings, and interview data of only tesol teacher candidates is described in this article. data analysis issues that were important to the participants emerged as a result of their reflective writing, focus group discussions, and interview responses. the interviews and focus group discussions were transcribed and both the transcriptions and reflective writings were coded in a recursive and iterative way. in other words, i initially had assumptions about the issues related to teacher collaboration and esl student success, but as the transcription and coding were being conducted different categories emerged. this was in part due to the open ended nature of the interview, focus group, and reflective writing prompts since participants were able to introduce issues and topics that were not explicitly asked about. in addition, this occurred because of my own beliefs about what the important issues in esl/mainstream teacher collaboration would be, based on my own experiences as an esl teacher, program coordinator, and teacher educator. for example, i went into the study believing that collaboration would be embraced as a way to meet the needs of ells who might be underserved, and the barriers that would emerge would have a great deal to do with administrative support and gaining knowledge and skills rather than teacher positioning. i also believed that the participants would be receptive to working across disciplines, and that since esl and english education are allied fields, it would be easier for teachers to work together. i felt that esl teachers would find working with mathematics or physics teachers more challenging and that working with english language arts teachers would be a natural fit. as i read and reread the data and collected more data, candidate writing would necessitate new categories and recoding. this was primarily due to the fact that the participants had experiences within their collaborative groups that my colleague and i did not anticipate, and during the time the groups were working together, were not aware of. for example, my colleague and i structured the first co-scheduled class to act as a ‘getting to know you’ event and literature circle discussion. candidates from each class were required to have selected and read a ya novel and bring notes for discussion within their small, interdisciplinary groups. the groups were then to engage in a consensus reaching discussion (something explicitly taught as a talking to learn strategy in the esl methods classes) and ultimately decide on a young adult novel to teach. my english education colleague and i walked around the room and heard lively discussion about the books our candidates had read as well as esl student issues and the types of writing that need to be developed in the secondary english classroom. we were both excited about what we perceived to be the success of the evening. later in the week, when the student reflections started arriving in my email in-box, i was disabused of my previous notions. the tesol teacher candidates were angry. they were angry at what they felt was a superior attitude on the part of the english candidates: “they treated us like we knew nothing about books and writing” (roxie 3 , reflective journal entry, october, 2007); the power struggles that occurred in-group: “we [the esl teachers] wanted to do a book that we knew the esl kids could not only relate to but actually get through. they [the english candidates] kept wanting to do kite runner…way to high for the kids we had created a classroom profile of” (jay, reflective journal entry, october, 2007). in addition to feeling that the english candidates saw the tesol candidates as less than equals, the negotiation of meaning came up as a frequent topic in the first reflections: “they kept talking about front-loading. finally, tara (another tesol candidate in the group) told them she had never heard that term. after they looked at us like we were from mars, they explained it, and it was basically schema activation…we had just never heard that term used” (lisa, focus group discussion, november, 2007). perhaps the strongest sentiment came from holly after the second meeting. holly is a certified secondary level english teacher seeking esl certification and had taken five courses towards an advanced certificate in tesol at the time of this course: “i do not like working with them [english teachers]. so far i have taken the initiative each time to contact them. i have never [holly’s emphasis] gotten an email in return. i would prefer quite honestly not [holly’s emphasis] to work with them. the fact that this is a required and graded assignment will work to mend this problem to some degree. as with most group work, a group is key, not an individual. i will, of course, remain open to reinventing this task and the group” (reflective journal entry, october, 2007). holly’s reflection highlights the challenges that arise when professionals must take the initiative to meet and participate in a group project. in addition, her comment that ‘a group is key’ speaks to the issue of developing collaborative skills so that teachers have the tools that are necessary to successful interdisciplinary collaboration. holly’s reflection is especially interesting since she entered the tesol file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2009,%20vol%2011,%20%231-9/number2/footnote current issues in education vol. 11 no. 2 certification program with a secondary english education certification and works as a high school english teacher. she has identified with the preservice tesol candidates rather than the english education candidates and has assumed the identity of esl teacher through her program and group affiliation. in my interviews and reflective writing prompts, i was focusing on how teacher collaboration could help ells and where in the curriculum collaboration could effectively occur. in addition, i wanted to understand the beliefs that these candidates had about collaboration and develop a learning environment where they could see just how effective teacher collaboration could be for their esl students in the mainstream and esl classrooms. the candidates’ actual responses caused me to add categories that i hadn’t considered during the design of the study. for example, one disturbing trend that emerged from many of the candidates’ written responses, and to a lesser extent but still present in during the focus discussions, was anger at a system that can and has marginalized both ells and their teachers. this anger was frequently manifested in an ‘us’ (esl teacher) versus ‘them’ (content teacher) attitude. these feelings of anger changed over the course of the semester, but were present and ‘loud and clear’ in message in the beginning of the semester. in addition, while reviewing the data, i would read a reflection or statement that made a point that seemed especially important to a particular teacher candidate and i would go back to the other journal entries and interview transcripts to see if that theme emerged in other students’ responses and coded accordingly when it did. there was overlap in some of the categories that emerged; they were coded as follows:  barriers to collaboration, including time, the culture of isolation, teacher positioning, and esl teachers’ knowledge of content.  mainstream teachers’ impressions about esl and ell’s and their understanding of the needs of ells.  candidates’ feelings of being underprepared in terms of their skills in collaborating with other teachers.  unrealistic increase in teacher workload. in their own words: themes that emerged from the qualitative data barriers to collaboration: time, the culture of isolation, teacher positioning, and esl teachers’ knowledge of content. all eighteen of the tesol candidates discussed barriers they experienced both in the course under investigation and in their school settings. time was a factor for the sixteen in-service teachers in terms of their ability work with teachers across the disciplines in their school settings. these teachers worked at the elementary, middle, and secondary levels. finding colleagues who are willing to engage in this type of collaboration compounded the issue of time since the commitment needed to be made either during shared preparation periods or during the teachers’ lunch periods. many teachers wrote about and discussed how they felt like they were in the same position as their students when they began teaching: they either would sink or swim on their own. they echoed feelings of loneliness and isolation both as new teachers and as esl teachers, which frequently represent a minority in a district. one teacher remembers her first day of teaching: i was really excited. i had the name of a mentor, a classroom key, a little box of supplies, and a class list. when i entered the classroom it was dismal. i was ready to do the bulletin boards, but even with that, the room seemed empty and solitary. i tried to find my mentor for the first two weeks. when i finally did, she said we would set up meetings. i saw her that time, once in may, and once in june and i was considered ‘mentored’. my door closed that first day and i was alone. i struggled with making decisions about what to teach, what was important to these students, and how to select content because the principal said that they did cbi there. i did interest inventories but it turned out that i had 28 students and 28 different identified interests. pulling a theme was hard. i wish i had other teachers to collaborate with. even if they couldn’t help with my issues we would kind of all be in it together. (jenn, reflective journal entry, september, 2007) positioning and marginalization of the esl teacher, program, and students is another theme that emerged related to barriers to collaboration. one candidate shared her experiences of not having a set space to teach and having to move from location to location throughout the day. not only did this make planning a challenge in terms of not having a space or desk to call her own, but teaching in the hallway made her feel that esl was not taken seriously and that she and her students were not a priority. in one of her reflective journal entries she writes “when i get these kids and we go to the designated space there are sometimes other people there already using it. i can get them to move, but it takes time and my students are standing there watching me. it makes me feel like i am begging for space to teach, which i guess i am. i feel so bad for these little kids” (mary, reflective journal entry, september, 2007). other reflections from the tesol candidates highlighted how the esl teacher is viewed as an adjunct and not dialogues across disciplines: preparing english-as-a-second-language teachers for interdisciplinary collaboration 7 a part of the ‘real’ teaching staff in the building. another candidate echoed this sentiment during a focus group discussion that asked candidates to share their experiences (if any) with interdisciplinary collaboration to date: i had my prep-period [sic] at the same time as three other teachers who taught science, social studies and english. i was kind of friendly with them and i figured i would ask them if we could plan together so i could help the ells we had in common. to their credit, they agreed to meet. the first day, the math teacher never showed up and the science and social studies teachers kind of lectured me on how their subject was the important one and i should figure out how to fit their needs into my esl class. this was fine, but i also wanted them to use some strategies i could give them to help their ells. i met with them three more times, thinking it would get better and i could turn them to see how some strategies could help the ells, but each session became a “do this, do that” type of thing and an opportunity to tell me how hard it was to work with the beginning level ells. i let things fizzle out because i really didn’t know how to deal with it.” (jane, focus group discussion, september, 2007) in terms of content knowledge needed to engage in cbi, the main factor that emerged from the participants’ writing and discussion was access to the content curriculum. esl teachers have the task of teaching language and content, and frequently the content they decide on is content that reflects their strengths as teachers and their students’ interests. one of the tesol participants discussed her experience with a specific type of writing that esl students need to master in new york state in order to pass the standardized exam in english: i was teaching very different kinds of writing. we did a lot of journal entries and letters, and five paragraph essays, which i thought was the kind of thing they (esl students) needed for their classes. then, the english teachers in my collaboration group started talking about the critical lens essay and i had no idea what this was. when i found out, i realized that this is a really hard kind of essay for esl students to write since you need a lot of different things. you need background knowledge, intense information on two novels, and, hardest [sic] of all, the ability to interpret a quote which can be metaphorical. i said to myself, “wow, i’ve been really wasting my and their time by focusing on this five paragraph essay!” (roxie, reflective journal entry, november, 2007 since the course assignment was to select and teach a young adult novel, many of the tesol participants discussed how this was new to them in terms of the types of reading ells engage in. julie, who was teaching 6th grade, discussed that she had a variety of classroom reading materials, but they were all specifically for ells: after looking at some of the novels [the professor] brought in for us to pick from or get ideas from, i realize that the stuff i have in my classroom is really all wrong. it is very formulated and has fill in the blank questions after each chapter. it had prereading questions and comprehension questions and a vocabulary list. it really is a basal reader for ells. it’s not that i had never seen these, it’s just that the school i teach in only gave me these leveled readers. when i saw the real ya literature, i was excited and worried. excited because these were really great novels with important messages and a lot of ways the theme could be developed. worried because i had no idea how to teach such a novel. this is what i hope to learn from this class. (reflective journal entry, october, 2007) finally, roxie discussed how she is learning what needs to be done in the esl class to really develop the necessary language skills in the context of the content: i had an elementary background, then got placed in esl after i finished half my [tesol] degree. i approached all of my groups as an elementary teacher, which isn’t all bad…but i was missing the real content stuff. for example, i had no idea what a critical lens essay was, which they [ells] need to pass the regents. teaching literature is different, and i didn’t realize what i was missing out on until this course. i was excited, worried, and nervous about the whole thing, but i do feel that i have better skills for teaching english content and working with english teachers in my school. i’d like to do this with math and science and social studies too. (reflective journal entry, november 2007) mainstream teachers’ knowledge of and beliefs about ells. another issue that emerged from the data was that of mainstream teachers’ beliefs about linguistically diverse learners. many of the candidates expressed concern over the notion that content teachers looked at ells as students for current issues in education vol. 11 no. 2 whom they were not responsible or who were somehow broken and needed to be fixed. in her journal entry mary explores how the mainstream teachers she has been working with are less than eager to discuss the esl students who they share, which she feels is an outcome of the lower expectations these teachers have for their non-native speaking students: “i have gone to [name] numerous times since they [esl students] have a lot of trouble in that class but my attempts to help have been met with this patronizing tone…what do you want to do this extra work for…i don’t really expect much from them [esl students]” (reflective journal entry, october 2007). another candidate described an incident she had in her collaborative group when the discussion topic dealt with ways to support ells in the mainstream english classroom: the esl people were talking about some ideas that maybe could be used in the english class to help the ells with the reading. the english group’s talk turned to types of busy work that the ells could do like doing a computer program or being the time keeper in a group. this made me angry because the ells are always getting stuck doing menial things while the english speakers get to do the real work, and really, the real learning. being a time keeper in the group every time doesn’t help those [ells] with anything” (jenn, focus group discussion, november 2007) alternatively, roxie focuses on the experiences students who are learning english bring to the classroom and how mainstream teachers can come to see their diversity as strength: my students come to us with almost no skills in terms of academics, but the beginners are placed in mainstream classes for all but 3 periods a day. from observations i did i see that the esl kids are often stuck on a computer or paired with another student as a buddy, but ultimately, they are left to their own devices. they [content teachers] need to understand that these kids have a lot of experience in other ways, and they [content teachers] need to take the time to learn how to work with these kids. i think that getting together like we are helps us both understand each other’s job, and by understanding what we are required to do, i think we can help each other and ultimately help the students. (reflective journal entry, december 2007) overall, the tesol candidates felt that their mainstream counterparts’ negative or inaccurate beliefs about ells stemmed from their lack of preparedness in teaching ells: “i don’t really believe the english teachers don’t want to help these kids. i know that they do. i actually think they can’t, not with their current skills. the teachers in my group told us that they had never taken any coursework that dealt with teaching ells and their methods classes really didn’t focus on the issue. i think, and i feel they have the same idea, that if they had the necessary information they would do fine” (roxy, focus group discussion, october, 2007). skills. the lack of skills in collaborating across disciplines poses a barrier to developing successful partnerships. through the course readings, meetings, reflection on the sessions, and developing frameworks within which to situate their experiences, the tesol candidates did experience positive growth in the development of collaboration skills: we’ve met a few times with the english teachers and at first, i wasn’t sure how this all would work…in fact, i wasn’t that confident that it would work at all. now, i feel stronger about my ability to talk to them and learn from them so my teaching is better. reading about it and talking about it and planning the next session helps me see things in a different light. having the knowledge that it [collaboration] is hard helps me not take things personally (lisa, reflective journal entry, november 2007). jenn, on the other hand, remembers a particular session that highlighted how the lack of skills can form roadblocks to collaboration, “we were meeting to go over the learning goals and assessment plan for the unit. our group consisted of two middle school english teachers and two middle and high school esl teachers. we had defined team roles, determined a focus for the meeting, and had decided on the young adult novel and the supplemental materials we needed. when the group met, although we had roles, we found that they were really just labels. we didn’t really know how to fulfill our obligations to the group and wound up talking a lot about our jobs” (reflective journal entry, october, 2007). increased workload. during the initial course reflections all of the tesol participants reported that they felt that interdisciplinary teacher collaboration would increase their workload and therefore would not be worthwhile. mary, an elementary school teacher in a pull-out esl program provides a sentiment that is echoed by the other participants: dialogues across disciplines: preparing english-as-a-second-language teachers for interdisciplinary collaboration 9 we have about 36 minutes of prep [preparation] each day, then lunch. i usually eat lunch at my desk because the prep isn’t long enough. i have a lot of paperwork and planning to do. i have to keep anecdotal notes, plan books, etc. i have to call parents when necessary. i teach 6 different groups of ells, about 50 students all together, and they’re all at different levels. every night and every weekend i am working at home on school stuff. i can’t imagine finding time that doesn’t exist to work with another teacher. just coordinating it would be a nightmare” (focus group discussion, september, 2007). changes in beliefs. at the start of the course, there was a tone of frustration and at times anger that emerged from the reflections and focus discussions. the amount of certification areacentrism that emerged was surprising. based on these initial levels of hostility towards other disciplines it seemed more imperative than ever to create a context for dialogues across disciplines. while the first few meetings and attempts to collaborate had rough patches, ultimately esl teachers developed knowledge, acquired skills, and developed positive beliefs about collaborating across the disciplines. this change is evident in their reflections at the end of the course. for example, roxie, who initially wrote about the power-struggles that occurred in her group, included the following in her final reflection: we really came together. in the beginning i didn’t really like them [english candidates], and i kept feeling that they were attacking us [tesol candidates]. it took a few trials and errors. the readings in the class about collaboration really helped me see it from outside of my own perspective. i almost felt like i was looking at our group from the outside. when i would reflect after the sessions i could see, based on the readings and discussions, what we did right and what we still needed to work on. i am happy with the way the unit turned out. roxie experienced professional growth through a combination of underlying theoretical knowledge, the opportunity to apply that theory to practice, and reflection on her own and her group’s efforts. in addition to the opportunity for the candidates to deconstruct collaboration, engage in applied practice, reflection, and independent practice, my colleague and i provided a collaborative model that many candidates had not previously been exposed to. in her final reflection jenn summarizes what many participants voiced: this [program] is an advanced certificate for me, so i have been in school for a while. i had never had an opportunity to work with professors from different certification areas. it was always just the department faculty. seeing you two work together and actually revising things in real time taught me a lot about working with another colleague. the main thing i took away is that the teachers themselves have to develop this in a way that makes sense for them, not have a principal tell them how, what, and when to do it. (final reflection, december, 2007) participants also demonstrated increased understanding of the demands classroom content places on learners. samantha writes about her expanded understanding of the real content demands that her secondary level esl students experience: before working with the english teachers this semester i kind of had a frustration with both my students and the content teachers in my school. my students kept saying how hard things were for them and that their teachers didn’t understand…and the content teachers would complain that the ells were lazy, or unmotivated, or shouldn’t be in their class. what i learned was that yes, it really is hard for these ells in high school english or social studies or science or math classes. the language demands were such that, while i was building skills, i was missing a lot, and therefore, they were missing a lot. the subject teachers were treating them as mainstream learners…they really didn’t understand how language and culture interact with schooling and how, just by understanding sla [second language acquisition] in a very basic way will help them develop lessons that are relevant to their ells. by the end of this semester, i know that i really developed an understanding of what my ells have to do to be successful in their english classroom. and this is important because you can’t graduate in new york without the [state assessment]. i was also very impressed with how far the english teachers came. at first they seemed hostile and not receptive to our ideas, by the end, they were totally on board with working to develop learning experiences for ells in the english classroom and they saw that by doing this they wouldn’t be abandoning their own current issues in education vol. 11 no. 2 commitment to literature and english. (final reflection, december, 2007) holly, who was very frustrated at the beginning of the course and experienced challenges with her group coming together, described how professional growth occurred and collaboration was fostered: there was a turning point around the end of october. we had been meeting and talking a lot with the english teachers. i had a lot of negative feelings about their commitment and their respect of esl teachers and students. while we were meeting with them [english teachers] and having our tesol methods class we had been doing these readings on collaboration and discussing how the things in the research emerged or didn’t in our groups and that really helped me see things from a research perspective and take myself and my group’s issues out of it and look at what was happening professionally rather than personally. we talked about ways it could go wrong and ways it could go right and how to negotiate with the other teachers. this was a huge help, and i feel it gave us real information and the ability to actually do this project, which i was afraid couldn’t really happen. so, after all these meetings and discussions, things started to gel. it took a lot of work and my group would debrief after the meetings and take notes on what worked and what didn’t. what i learned is that this really takes work, but if you put the work in at the beginning you get great stuff at the end. [final reflection, december, 2007) the collaborative project was also a theme that emerged from the final reflective entries. candidates began the semester unsure that the unit would come together and unconvinced that anything would emerge from the collaborative relationship. during our tesol only class sessions the candidates would spend a great deal of time asking me about the unit, how it was to be done, and what would happen if their partners did not adequately participate. the tesol candidates wanted a road map for the project. i revised the assignment and developed explicit elements of collaboration between esl and ela teachers’ suggestions in each of the required unit components. this provided the additional and needed support and enabled candidates to work together in a more structured way which emerged as an important component of the early stages of the collaborative groups. lisa reflects on the outcome: i was very happy with our group’s unit plan and how we were able to integrate real content skills into the esl unit while the english teachers had sections on vocabulary development for ells, schema activation and connection for ells, differentiated assignments and assessments and in general, an appreciation for what the esl students could contribute to their class. adding the suggestions for how we could collaborate was a huge help and it gave us a framework and jumping off point. it was great to see that the english teachers started seeing them [esl students] as an asset and not a hindrance. i also walked away with this feeling that i can do it…i can go to content teachers, work with them, and write lesson plans that really help my students. i didn’t think i could do this before. i thought there were too many issues that we couldn’t overcome. i feel differently now. (final refection, december, 2007) discussion collaboration between teachers withinand across-disciplines can be challenging and problematic for a variety of reasons. first, despite the fact that collaboration is encouraged, teaching, especially secondary level teaching in the united states is frequently a profession that takes place in isolation. teachers are assigned to their own classroom, have dedicated time to prepare that may not coincide with others who they might work with, and essentially act in isolation. teacher isolation can be defined as “the extent to which teachers are restricted from or restrict themselves from interactions with other individuals or groups in the school” (bakkenes, de brabander, & imants, 1999, p.168) and in fact has become the norm in united states schools’ organizational culture (glickman, gordon & ross-gordon, 2003). while efforts are underway at administrative levels in schools to foster teacher partnerships through activities such as new teacher mentoring and shared planning, teacher education programs must take the lead and integrate explicit instruction in interdisciplinary teacher collaboration, focusing on both declarative and procedural knowledge. in other words, not only including course readings and discussion on the benefits of collaboration and models of collaborative teaching partnerships, but providing explicit instruction on how to develop these partnerships and negotiate the relationships found within collaborative contexts is important. this dual focus is essential for real change and success to occur. many of the discussions that emerged from the interviews, focus groups, and reflective writing revolved around the theme of teacher positioning which can form a barrier to successful collaboration. dialogues across disciplines: preparing english-as-a-second-language teachers for interdisciplinary collaboration 11 it is an unfortunate reality that esl teachers, programs, and students are often marginalized. esl teachers are frequently not seen to be on the same level as mainstream teachers at all points on the educational continuum, from elementary to higher education to adult education (auerbach, 1991). grey discusses a variety of factors that contribute to marginalization of esl teachers which include the fact that immigrant students are expected to become english speakers and americans at the expense of their native language and culture and that initiatives such as english only and subtractive bilingual education play a critical role in the way that linguistically diverse learners are viewed (auerbach, 1991). the power relationships that emerge between teachers and disciplines in the school can make collaboration a challenge. arkoudis (2006) discusses that the call for collaboration between esl and mainstream teachers assumes an equitable relationship between the two. she argues that in fact, this relationship is usually not equitable and the esl teacher usually has low status in the school. if esl students and teachers are marginalized, meaningful collaboration across the disciplines becomes difficult, if not impossible. in addition to teacher positioning, the issue of the types of content knowledge that esl teachers possess emerged as an important theme. while the main task of the esl teacher is language instruction, the current united states school environment requires esl students to meet the same standards as their native speaking counterparts in terms of content knowledge. students who are language learners, and who may have had very different or limited educational experiences in their native countries, need the support of both the content and the esl teacher in order to be able to achieve levels of success in their new country. while in the past it may have been acceptable that “esl teachers should choose a content area they feel comfortable with and enjoy teaching” (brown, 2004), presently, what takes place in the esl classroom must be connected to and supportive of the acquisition of academic skills that are required in mainstream classrooms. teaching students who are learning english in a thematic way allows for the exploration of content and the understanding and development of the linguistic skills and academic language needed in mainstream classrooms, in other words, the language of schooling (schleppegrell, 2004). however, these themes and the content selected must be aligned with the actual work that is taking place in the mainstream, subject area classroom in order to allow for the transfer of skills across contexts. when esl teachers and subject area teachers work together, esl teachers have the opportunity to deconstruct the real meaning of content based instruction and success in mainstream classrooms. teacher beliefs about students who are not native speakers of english also emerged as a common theme from the data. beliefs, both negative and positive, can affect the level of collaboration among professionals and the degree of success that can be achieved in collaborative teams. researchers have found that the way teachers perceive their linguistically diverse learners directly affects the way that teachers teach those students as well as the students’ attitudes about themselves (clark, 1988; flores, 2001; nespor, 1987; pajares, 1992). when teachers have negative beliefs towards their ell’s, either based on their culture, language, or other factors, these beliefs and attitudes can translate into behaviors on the part of teachers that have a negative effect on students, specifically in terms of student efficacy and achievement (august & hakuta, 1997; cummins, 2000; díaz-rico, 2000; gonzález & darling-hammond, 2000; gutiérrez, 1981). these negative beliefs about learners’ native language and culture can influence how teachers evaluate performance and achievement (august & hakuta; cummins; díaz-rico; gonzález & darlinghammond; gutiérrez). the observation that mainstream teachers lack knowledge of teaching ells is supported by recent research that found that 77% of content area teachers have had no course work or professional development that addresses the issues of ells (national center for educational statistics, 2002). this poses a challenge to schools, teachers, and linguistically diverse learners since ells generally spend about 80% of their school day in mainstream classrooms (dong, 2002). when mainstream teachers have had no coursework or professional development that makes them aware of the strengths and needs of ells they can fall into the trap of viewing these learners as a homogeneous group with the label nonnative speaker. in addition, this belief leads to the assumption that ells are students in need of remediation and esl instruction is remedial coursework, both of which are wrong. this serves to marginalize diverse learners and suppress opportunities for real sharing, learning, and development to occur. the findings of this research suggest that collaboration between teachers is neither natural nor easy. if teachers do not possess the skills necessary to work together then, despite their best intentions, the collaborative relationships will fail. these skills can be developed through explicit instruction, either at the pre-service or in-service level. teachers muse be exposed to explicit teaching in terms of learning “how to work, communicate, and collaborate with current issues in education vol. 11 no. 2 other adults” (mccormick, noonan, ogata, & heck, 2001, p. 130). teacher collaboration requires members of a team to step out of their comfort zones, to share in an open, non-evaluative way, and to be able to engage in constructive, critical analysis of their own and their colleagues work. teachers must be able to accept constructive comments and share their personal teaching stories: both the successful ones and those that highlight needs and short comings. in addition, teachers must be able to identify challenges and collaboratively develop plans to address the issues, remain focused on those issues, and revisit them periodically. finally, teachers must share similar objectives and have a stake in the outcome of the collaborative effort. support throughout the process is essential. time for collaboration also emerged from the data as an issue that forms a barrier to collaboration. the constraint of time in the school building is one that teachers (and teacher educators) have little control or influence over. this is probably the barrier most resistant to individual change and initiative and requires administrative support to overcome. however, research suggests that when teachers do effectively collaborate, their creativity as educators, levels of collaboration, and productivity increases. researchers have observed that while collaboration does not decrease planning time, it does increase the quality of instruction (walther-thomas & bryant, 1996). leonard and leonard (2003) investigated the barriers to collaboration reported by a group of teachers. while this research was not specifically focused on esl/mainstream collaboration, the researchers found that despite calls for more collaboration and the implementation of collaborative programs in schools, teachers reported that major barriers exist that cause these collaborative initiatives to fail. based on teachers’ responses, the authors developed a list of suggestions for promoting teacher collaboration and reducing the barriers associated with time. some of the suggestions that addressed the issue of time and could be implemented without the complete restructuring of programs include:  “arranging common planning time.  provide substitutes for teacher release time.  pay for collaboration beyond school time.  reduce teacher paperwork.  provide web-based teacher networks” (leonard & leonard, 2003). teacher education programs can play a critical role in providing theoretical and practical education in developing, building, and sustaining interdisciplinary teacher collaborative relationships. educational leadership programs can take a lead in providing future administrators with the same types of understandings and the skills needed to support interdisciplinary teacher collaboration. the educational leadership constituent council (elcc) requires future leaders develop collaborative environments and prepare staff to engage in collaboration and that educational leaders ensure that “collaboration[s] are [sic] used to design meaningful and effective experiences that improve student achievement” (elcc, 2002, p. 6). since many educational leadership programs require authentic projects to be completed by administrative interns, one of the required projects could be making space for collaboration in their building or district. this would ensure a multi-faceted approach that would span the organizational levels that exist: teacher education programs, teachers, school, and district leaders. changes over time candidates did experience change over time in terms of their beliefs about collaboration and the types of skills they developed that will enhance collaborative partnerships. the types of relationships that the candidates developed, based on knowledge, building of skills, and positively affecting dispositions, played a role in their changing beliefs. prior research that has investigated intra-group relationships describes different types of conflicts that can arise (tjosvold, 1997). these conflicts can fall into either the cognitive or affective domain. the tesol participants experienced affective conflicts that are similar to the prior findings of feeling devastated, personally attacked, and angry (hargreaves, 2001). these feelings, while natural, can be destructive to the collaborative group and were effectively addressed in this course through open and supportive focus group discussions, reflection, and group problem solving techniques in the form of reflective frameworks as a spring board for constructive discussion of the group’s interactions. many of the later reflections emphasized the positive role that seeing the faculty from different disciplines collaborate and negotiate (and renegotiate) their own professional relationship played in the candidates’ understanding of collaborative teaching partnerships. kluth and straut (2003) discuss the importance of modeling collaboration for general and special education teacher candidates. the current study found that similar modeling and creating opportunities for esl and mainstream candidates to develop collaborative relationships across disciplines had positive effects on candidates’ skills and beliefs. the changes that candidates experienced in terms of understanding each others’ discipline were dialogues across disciplines: preparing english-as-a-second-language teachers for interdisciplinary collaboration 13 significant. by having the ability to work together, to plan, problematize, and learn about the challenges that students learning english can experience in the content classroom, the english and esl teacher candidates developed skills that make it possible to meet the needs of language learners in a way that enhanced instruction for all learners. what tends to occur when language learners are in mainstream classes with teachers who have had little or no preparation in working with such students is that teachers “plan and deliver instruction as if everyone in the classroom has reached the level of english language proficiency that is needed to master the instructional content” (carrasquillo & rodriguez, 2002, p.3). when teachers attempt to directly apply strategies and techniques that have been successful with mono-lingual students to the l2 population, they fall into the trap of not being able to situate the needs of ells into the broader educational context. this can create a situation where mainstream teachers blame ells for their lack of success in the mainstream classroom, which places different demands on ells than on monolingual learners (toohey, 2000; valdés, 2001). finally, the reflections spoke to the finding that developing collaborative skills takes time and work on the part of teachers and does not come naturally (friend, 2000). when teachers engage in successful, collaborative partnerships their sense of teacher efficacy and their knowledge base are enhanced (brownell, yeager, rennells, & riley, 1997). it also seems that increased collaboration has a recursive effect on teacher efficacy: increased collaboration increases teachers’ feelings of efficacy (shachar & shmuelevitz, 1997). this in turn benefits students since research has shown that when teachers have an increased sense of efficacy there are positive effects on student achievement (goddard, hoy & woolfolk hoy, 2000; ross, 1995). in addition, collective efficacy, which refers to teachers’ beliefs and attitudes about the ability for the whole faculty to be successful in teaching (mcguigan, 2005) has a dramatic positive effect on student outcomes (goddard, hoy, & woolfolk, 2000, hoy, smith, & sweetland, 2002a; hoy, sweetland, & smith, 2002b). one way that this sense of collective efficacy can be built is through collaborative teacher partnerships. conclusion while this study was small and its results not necessarily generalizable to larger populations, there are benefits to such research. the participants’ experiences and beliefs generally supported past investigations of teacher collaboration and identified challenges that arise when esl teachers and content teachers collaborate to plan instruction for students who participate in both esl and mainstream classrooms. the results of this research highlighted issues such as teacher positioning, knowledge of ells on the part of mainstream educators, and knowledge of content and curricular demands on the part of esl teachers who are required to engage in cbi. these are issues critical to effective collaboration between esl and mainstream teachers and create challenges that must be faced by all teacher educators and teacher education programs. tesol teacher education programs must make room for real collaboration to occur so that preservice teachers are able to experience collaboration modeled by the faculty in the tesol program and other certification areas. tesol candidates must also gain an understanding of collaboration from a theoretical standpoint. in addition, they must be able to deconstruct issues relating to esl students’ success in mainstream classrooms and what constitutes cbi is in the current academic world. the current study provided an environment where this was accomplished by including course readings, discussion, reflection, and a modified loop-input format in the course. finally, tesol candidates and candidates from other disciplines need opportunities to actually engage in collaborative partnerships that require authentic products to be produced, such as the ya literature thematic unit the english education and tesol candidates developed together. if teacher education programs assume that collaboration between esl and mainstream will occur in the prek12 grade school setting then we are not giving preservice teachers the opportunity to develop a knowledge base and skills set that will actually enable them to effectively collaborate. rather, we are shifting the responsibility to another organization. this has proven not to be pedagogically sound, based on the paucity of collaboration between esl and mainstream teachers that currently occurs in schools. this study supported prior research that has shown that teachers need to be exposed to models of collaboration (kluth & straut ,2003), and that they must develop not only declarative knowledge, but procedural knowledge of the skills necessary to effectively collaborate (cook & friend, 1995; 2002; villa, thousand, nevin, & malgeri, 1996). the present study extended the extant research to include interdisciplinary collaboration between tesol and content area educators, which is important since the literature to date has focused primarily on collaboration between special and general education teachers. in addition, the present study provided support for the notion that while teacher collaboration is not a natural occurrence (friend, 2000), teacher education program can indeed provide contexts for the effective development of these skills. current issues in education vol. 11 no. 2 teacher education programs can incorporate opportunities for pre-service teachers in mainstream certification programs to work with pre-service teachers of ells in a variety of innovative ways that make sense for their particular program. this allows the mainstream pre-service teachers to become sensitized to the needs and experiences of english language learners which heighten the potential for greater understanding, empathy, and patience. in addition, activities that sensitize mainstream teachers to the needs of ells allow the mainstream teachers to experience first hand the “impact of pedagogical orientation and teacher-student communication patterns and attitudes on student learning” (kaufman, 1996, p.45). conversely, pre-service esl teachers can gain knowledge about the curricular demands of the subject, the skills needed for success in that particular content area, and the culture of the discipline. this allows pre-service esl teachers to design learning experiences for their ells that build language and literacy skills that are aligned with the content they are actually engaged in learning and that are required for success in mainstream classrooms. footnotes 1 lau et al. v. nichols et al. no. 72-6520 supreme court of the united states 414 u.s. 563 december 10, 1973, argued january 21, 1974, decided. 2 literature written specifically to an adolescent and young adult audience and recognized as a distinct genre. 3 all names assigned to teachers are pseudonyms. references arkoudis, s. 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(2009, may). dialogues across disciplines: preparing english-as-a-second-language teachers for interdisciplinary collaboration. current issues in education [on-line], 11(2). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number2/ author notes margo dellicarpini, ph.d. department of middle & high school education lehman college, the city university of new york 250 bedford park blvd. west, bronx, ny 10468. margo.dellicarpini@lehman.cuny.edu note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 15, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation dellicarpini, m. (2009). dialogues across disciplines: preparing english-as-a-second-language teachers for interdisciplinary collaboration. current issues in education, 11(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1573 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number2/ mailto:margo.dellicarpini@lehman.cuny.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1573 volume 4, number 4 april 17, 2001 issn 1099-839x the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write heidi goodrich andrade ohio university this study examines the impact of instructional rubrics on eighth grade students' writing and on their knowledge of the qualities of effective writing. students in the treatment group were given instructional rubrics that articulated the criteria and gradations of quality for three assigned essays. students in the control group wrote the same three essays but did not receive the rubric. students in the treatment group received, on average, higher scores on one of the three essays. questionnaires administered at the end of the study revealed that students in the treatment group tended to identify more of the criteria by which their writing was evaluated. rubrics are currently among the most popular innovations in education (goodrich andrade, 2000; goodrich, 1997a, 1997b; jensen, 1995; ketter, 1997; luft, 1997; popham, 1997), but little research on their effectiveness has been undertaken. moreover, few of the existing research efforts have focused on the ways in which rubrics can serve the purposes of learning and thinking as well as meet the demands of evaluation and accountability. the study described in this paper investigates the impact of instructional rubrics on students' written compositions and on their knowledge of the qualities of effective writing. a rubric is usually a oneor two-page document that lists the criteria for a specific assignment and describes varying levels of quality, from excellent to poor. "instructional rubrics" are rubrics that have been explicitly designed to support as well as to evaluate student learning (goodrich andrade, 2000). instructional rubrics have several features that support learning:  they are written in language that students can understand;  they define and describe quality work;  they refer to common weaknesses in students' work and indicate how such weaknesses can be avoided, and;  they can be used by students to assess their works-in-progress and thereby guide revision and improvement. although the format of an instructional rubric can vary, most rubrics have two features in common: 1. a list of criteria, or what counts in the evaluations of a project or assignment, and 2. gradations of quality, or descriptions of strong, middling and problematic work. table 1 [see “scoring rubric for persuasive essay rubric” in appendix b] contains one of the instructional rubrics used in this study. like each of the rubrics used, it draws on district, state and national standards as well as on feedback from teachers and researchers. it accompanied the following persuasive essay assignment: the state of california has a law that all students must be educated until 16 years of age. this law passed after some debate. some people thought it was a good law, some didn't. put yourself in these current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 lawmakers' shoes and argue either for or against this law. in a 5-paragraph essay, be sure to:  form an opinion on this issue and support it with strong arguments and relevant information, and  use your knowledge of democracy to explain how having or not having such a law would affect a democratic society like ours. this rubric was designed to promote the development of writing skills by describing effective, genre-specific writing as well as the kinds of problems that students commonly experience as they write. genre-specific criteria are helpful as guidelines for student writers because they "announce what is to be achieved in clear and useful language" (cooper, 1999, p. 31). for example, the considers reasons against the claim criterion reminds students to acknowledge a perspective opposite their own and explain how this perspective is lacking. research shows that students (as well as adults) tend not to consider contrary arguments (perkins, jay & tishman, 1993), not because they can't do it but rather because they don't think about doing it. including this criterion cues students to attend to an important component of a persuasive essay. the overarching principle here is that a rubric which reflects and reveals problems that students commonly experience provides more informative feedback than one that either describes mistakes they do not recognize or that defines levels of quality so vaguely as to be meaningless (e.g., "poorly organized" or "boring"). the persuasive essay instructional rubric was also designed to support the use of reasoning skills. the second and third criteria, reasons in support of the claim and reasons against the claim, give the rubric an emphasis on critical thinking—an emphasis missing from many rubrics. these two criteria inform students that critical thinking must be demonstrated in their essays and attempt to guide them in how (and how not) to do it. theoretical framework the hypothesis for this study is that instructional rubrics can have positive effects on students' writing and learning about writing. this hypothesis draws on several areas of cognitive and educational research, including authentic assessment, self-regulated learning, and the teaching and evaluation of writing. perspectives on authentic assessment provide a guiding definition of assessment as an educational tool that serves the purposes of learning as well as the purposes of evaluation (gardner, 1991; hawkins et al., 1993; shepard, 2000; wiggins, 1989a, 1989b; wolf & pistone, 1991). the literature on self-regulated learning and feedback suggests that learning improves when feedback informs students of the need to monitor their learning and guides them in how to achieve learning objectives (bangert-drowns et al., 1991; butler and winne, 1995). similarly, the literature on assessing writing recommends distinguishing between evaluation and grading by having students engage in a process of ongoing evaluation that provides precise and detailed information about what is expected for a particular assignment, as well as guidance on how students can improve their writing on that assignment (cooper, 1999; cooper & odell, 1999; white, 1994; white, 2000). taken together, theory and research on assessment, self-regulation, and feedback suggests that instructional rubrics have the potential to scaffold students' writing if the rubrics and the writing assignment have certain characteristics. they must:  articulate clear, genre-specific criteria for the assignment;  provide guidance in meeting the criteria;  provide opportunities for improvement through revision;  be sensitive to students' developmental readiness by referring to appropriate grade level standards. in this study, these principles for effective assessment were implemented by giving students instructional rubrics like the one in table 1. the other rubrics that were used and their accompanying assignments can be found in appendix a. research questions and methods this study was motivated by two research questions. the first question is: does providing students with instructional rubrics affect their knowledge of the qualities of effective writing? a written questionnaire was used to uncover students' beliefs about "what counts" when evaluating an essay. the questionnaire consisted of one question; "when your teachers read your essays and papers, how do they decide whether your work is excellent (a) or very good (b)?" the question, which was borrowed from a study conducted by dr. w. haney of boston college (personal communication, july 29, 1996), allowed for an examination of students' knowledge of the criteria by which their writing was evaluated and, by extension, of the qualities that define effective writing. this study's second research question is: does providing students with instructional rubrics affect the quality of their writing? this question was investigated by creating two groups of students— those who received an instructional rubric and those who did not—and comparing the average scores the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 3 received on the essays written by each group. in this way, it was possible to determine, at least in broad stroke, whether or not rubrics can have a measurable effect on student writing. sample this project was supported by the edna mcconnell clark foundation, which asked that the work be carried out in schools with which the foundation collaborates. as a result, the research was conducted in nine eighth-grade classes in two very different middle schools in southern california. one of the schools (school a) is located in an upper middle class, largely professional, suburban neighborhood with little ethnic diversity. many of the non-white students that attended school a were bussed in from adjacent communities and tended to be placed in lower level classes. the language arts teachers with whom i worked in school a designed their curricula independently of each other. school b, in contrast, is located in an ethnically and linguistically diverse, working class, urban community. the teachers with whom i worked at school b collaborated on an integrated curriculum that combined history and language arts. their shared humanities curriculum drew explicitly on the district's standards and an experimental new portfolio process. the combined sample from both schools included 242 students. half of the students were boys and half were girls. one hundred and twenty-one (50.0%) were latino, 86 (35.5%) were white, 31 (12.8%) were black, and 4 (1.7%) were of asian descent (filipino, chinese, vietnamese, cambodian or laotian). approximately 8% of the students were considered to have special educational needs, and 6% were identified as students for whom english was a second language (esl). the average humanities/language arts grade for the term prior to this study was 75.9% (or a c). one hundred and forty-one of the students in the sample attended school a and 101 attended school b. procedure the study spanned the 1996-97 school year. students were asked to write three different essays approximately one month apart. each assignment was designed to meet the individual school's curriculum and evaluation needs, so students in the two schools were twice assigned different essays. the first assignment for both schools was a persuasive essay. the second assignment was an autobiographical journey essay at school b, and an essay entitled "oh, the places we'll go" in school a. school a's second essays were not included in this study because of problems in the implementation of the assignment. the third and final assignment was a historical fiction essay in school b, and an essay about a personal challenge in school a. before writing a first draft of each essay, students in the treatment classes were given an instructional rubric. as principle investigator, i introduced the rubric to students during one class period in one of the treatment classrooms while the teachers observed. the teachers of the treatment classes then introduced the rubric to their own classes while i observed. students in both the treatment and control classes were asked to write first and second drafts of the essays, but the students in the control group were not given a rubric. approximately three weeks after the completion of the third essay, all students were asked to write a narrative response to the one-question questionnaire. dependent measures data were collected on two dependent variables: 1) students' responses to the written questionnaire, and 2) students' scores on the essays written for this study. three of the four classes at school a and all five classes at school b filled out and returned the questionnaires at the end of the study, for a total of 196 complete questionnaires. i analyzed students' narrative responses to the questionnaire by noting all of the qualities of writing, or criteria, to which students referred, such as spelling, neatness, organization, "good ideas," and "whether [the teacher] likes me or not." three research assistants and i scored the essays. none of the research assistants had a background in research or writing and none were able to score more than one collection of essays, necessitating rather lengthy training periods and extended attempts to reach reliability for each assignment. we always began by reviewing the rubric for the assignment in order to come to agreement on the precise definition of terms and to "unpack" overlapping criteria. the resulting adaptations did not significantly change the meaning of the rubric, but aided in achieving scoring reliability. see appendix b for the rubrics that we used to score the essays. each essay was scored on each criterion, then an average score was calculated. a total of one hundred and six persuasive essays were scored. because of implementation problems in school a, the second essay written for this study was not used. thirty-seven autobiographical incident essays from school b were scored. one hundred and sixty historical fiction/personal challenge essays were scored. reliability was checked by testing the correlation between the average scores assigned by two raters, and by determining the cohen's kappa for current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 the scores given for each criterion on the rubric. (cohen's kappa is a measure of percentage agreement corrected for chance agreement: k = po pe / 1 pe. ) comparing only the average score would have produced higher rates of agreement but would also have masked disagreements about how students performed on the individual criteria. for the persuasive essay, a correlation of .93 and a cohen's kappa of 70% were achieved by the two raters on the first twenty-six essays scored. for the autobiographical incident essay, the raters scored twenty-two essays together. a correlation of .73 and a cohen's kappa of 60% agreement were achieved for the last six essays. for the historical fiction and personal challenge essays, the raters achieved a cohen's kappa of 67% and a correlation of .74 after scoring thirty-five essays together. at the conclusion of this study the research assistants and i revised the scoring process, and a subsequent study (in preparation) had far higher rates of agreement. for the purposes of this study, however, the above rates of agreement were considered low but adequate. independent measures data were also collected on several independent measures, including school attended, teacher, grade level, gender, ethnicity, previous performance in english as measured by standardized test scores and grades, and identification as esl or a student with special needs. analysis i analyzed the questionnaires by noting the criteria to which students referred, including academically relevant qualities like content and spelling, and academically irrelevant influences such as whether or not the work was turned in on time. i compared the kind of criteria referenced by students in the treatment and control groups to each other and to the criteria contained in the rubrics used in the study. the responses from students in school a and school b were analyzed separately because the students in the control group at school b had had previous exposure to rubrics used by their teacher. the equivalence of the treatment and control groups on each of the independent variables was assessed using chi-square tests for categorical variables and t tests for continuous variables. the two groups were equivalent in terms of gender (x 2 = .002, p = .96), ethnicity (x 2 = 6.76, p = .24), number of students with special needs (x 2 = .05, p = .82), number of esl students (x 2 = .62, p = .43), and previous grades in english/language arts (t = .02, p = .99). because school a and school b used different standardized tests with different scales, equivalence in terms of standardized test scores was determined by comparing the treatment and control groups in each school to each other. at school a, the treatment and control groups were equivalent (t = -.34, p = .74). at school b, the control group had, on average, higher scores and the difference approached statistical significance (t = 1.91, p = .06). as a result, the sample at school b was biased against the treatment and the findings were likely to represent a conservative estimate of the treatment effect. for this reason, standardized test score (test) was included as a high priority control variable in the multiple regression model building process. multiple linear regression was used to understand the relationship between the treatment, the independent variables, and the essay scores. the main effect of each predictor and its interaction with the treatment and with gender were tested. the effect of a predictor was considered statistically significant if its p value was < .05. residual plots from the multiple regression models were inspected throughout the model building process to ensure that the assumptions of linearity, normality and homoscedasticity had not been violated. questionnaires the analysis of students' responses to the questionnaire revealed striking differences between the treatment and control groups. the students in the control group at school a tended to mention fewer and more superficial criteria such as spelling, punctuation, and neatness, if they mentioned any specific criteria at all: well, they give us the assignment and they know the qualifications and if you have all of them you get an a and if you don't get any you get a f and so on. note that this student knows that the teacher has her standards or "qualifications" but he does not suggest that he knows what they are. students in the treatment group, in contrast, tended to mention the same criteria to which the control group referred plus a variety of others, including criteria contained in the rubrics used in this study: student 1: the teacher gives us a paper called a rubric. a rubric is a paper of information of how to do our essays good to deserve an a. if they were to give it an a it would have to be well organized, neat, good spelling, no errors and more important, the accurate information it gives. for a b it's neat, organized, some errors and pretty good information but not perfect. student 2: an a would consist of a lot of good expressions and big words. he/she also uses relevant and rich details and examples. the sentences are clear, they begin in different ways, some are longer than others, and no fragments. has good grammar and the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 5 spelling. a b would be like an a but not as much would be on the paper. with the exception of "neat," all of the criteria referred to by these two students were included in the rubrics used in this study. some of the criteria are quoted exactly as they were written in the rubric (e.g., "... sentences are clear, they begin in different ways..."), while others are paraphrased (e.g., "big words"). table 2 is a list of the criteria from the rubrics that were mentioned by students in the treatment group at school a but not by students in the control group. the numbers to the left represent the number of times each criterion was mentioned by students in the treatment group. students in the control group at school a did not refer to any of these eleven criteria, even by chance. table 2 criteria contained in rubrics and referenced by students in the treatment group but not by students in the control group at school a (n = 74). no. of references criterion 20 word choice, e.g., "words give [the reader] a vivid picture in her mind" 8 voice, reveals feelings and emotions 7 interesting, not boring 3 has accurate information 3 provides details 2 is descriptive 2 uses proper paragraph format 2 includes ideas, thoughts and opinions 2 makes a point 2 is well-organized, e.g., ";has a beginning, middle and end" 1 sentence structure the results from school b are a little different because the students in the control group were accustomed to using rubrics. seven students in the control class referred to the use of rubrics in their responses, even though they were not given the rubrics used in this study. nonetheless, small differences in the treatment and control groups at school b were found. table 3 is a list of the criteria contained in the rubrics used in this study and mentioned by students in the treatment group but not by students in the control group at school b. table 3 criteria contained in rubrics and referenced by students in the treatment group but not by students in the control group at school b (n = 122). no. of references criterion 4 word choice, "powerful words," "vividness" 4 organization 3 length, five paragraphs 3 gives details 2 tells about action and events 2 is easy to understand 2 ideas and content 1 setting 1 the way the writing flows 1 makes a point 1 voice 1 sentence fluency 1 tells about lessons learned 1 contains correct information discussion of questionnaires when compared to the responses of students in the control group, students in the treatment group tended to refer to a greater variety of academically relevant criteria for effective writing. these differences suggest that the students who received the three instructional rubrics had more (if not complete) knowledge of what counts in writing and of the criteria by which their essays were evaluated. it appears that instructional rubrics have the potential to at least broaden students' conceptions of effective writing beyond mechanics to include qualities such as word choice, voice and tone. however, the results of the essay scores discussed in the following section suggest that, predictably, transferring students' new knowledge about effective writing to the composition of written essays is more difficult. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 essay scores table 4 lists the final regression models for each of the essays. the parameter estimates and pvalues for the treatment condition reveal that there was a positive effect of treatment on the second essay (the autobiographical journey) but not the first or third essays. interestingly, the negative parameter estimate for the interaction between treatment and gender for the third essay (historical fiction/personal challenge) indicates that there may have been a negative effect of treatment on girls' scores but no effect for boys. table 4 parameter estimates from final regression models (see also appendix d) essay 1 n = 106 essay 2 n = 37 essay 3 n = 160 intercept 1.57*** 2.18** 1.62*** trt_cntrl 0.0009 0.49** 0.12 grades 0.01*** -0.005 0.009* test 0.010* 0.01~ 0.009~ teacher -0.100** school 0.300~ (n/a) 0.22* gender -1.78~ 0.51* grades*gender 0.02~ ethnicity 0.20~ trt*gender -0.43~ r 2 % 25 40 19 ~ p < .10 * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 essay 1. there was no measurable effect of the treatment on students' scores on the persuasive essay. the only statistically significant effects come from variables with traditionally robust predictive power: previous performance in english, teacher, and school attended. essay 2. because of implementation difficulties at school a during the writing of the "oh, the places we'll go" essay, only the autobiographical essays from school b were scored. the results show that, controlling for grades, test scores, gender, and an interaction between grades and gender, students in the treatment group are predicted to score, on average, almost half a point higher on a 4-point scale than students in the control group. figure 1 summarizes the effect of treatment graphically. figure 1. relationship between essay scores, asat scores and gender for essay 2, autobiographical incident (n=37). the essays in appendix c reveal some of the differences in the autobiographical journey essays written by students in the treatment and control groups. in general, the treatment essays attend more carefully to the purpose of the journey, character development, dialogue, action, paragraph breaks, and conventions. that is not to say that the treatment essays always deal with these criteria effectively; some attempts to meet the requirements of the rubric are limited and/or clunky. for example, the use of dialogue is usually minimal ("then my dad said, 'shut up or i'll turn around and drive straight home'"), and the lessons learned are often tacked on to the end of the essays as afterthoughts ("i learned a valuable lesson that day which was, 'never do anything, that you now you're going to get in trouble for and regrete.'"). nonetheless, the student writers in the treatment group were clearly attending to the criteria on the rubric and, by attempting to meet them, learning about writing. although the teacher of the control group had had her students write down the criteria for the autobiographical essay, they did not have the full rubric at their elbows as they wrote, and their writing reveals fewer explicit attempts to fulfill the criteria. essay 3. the analyses of last two essays, historical fiction and personal challenge, were collapsed because the effect of treatment did not differ by school. since the main effect of treatment is not statistically significant, there are no measured overall differences in essay scores between the treatment and control groups, controlling for the other variables (t = .72, p = .47). the main effect of gender is statistically significant (t = 2.22, p = .03), which shows that, on average, girls are predicted to file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2001,%20vol%204,%20%231-7/number4/index.html%23appendixc the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 7 score .51 points higher than boys, controlling for grades, test scores, and ethnicity. however, the interaction between treatment and gender approaches statistical significance (t = -1.76, p = .08), suggesting that the effect of treatment may be different for girls and boys. for boys, there was no statistically significant difference between the average essay scores for the treatment and control groups. girls in the treatment group, in contrast, tended to score .31 points lower than girls in the control group, controlling for grades, test scores, school and ethnicity. thus, it appears that there may be a negative effect of the treatment on girls' scores for this essay. figure 2 represents this relationship graphically. figure 2. relationship between essay scores, grades and gender fr essay 3, historical fiction/personal challenge (n=160). discussion of essay scores findings from the analysis of the essay scores paint an uneven but intriguing pattern of results. in general, it appears that simply handing out, reviewing and explaining instructional rubrics can orient students toward the criteria for writing as communicated by the rubric and can help students write to those criteria, but that a more intensive intervention may be necessary in order to help all students perform at higher levels consistently. the lack of a treatment effect for the first assignment—the persuasive essay—may be due to several factors. for one, it was many teachers' and students' first exposure to a rubric. only one of the eight teachers participating in this study had previously used rubrics: they may not have been adequately prepared to support students in their use. this is also a likely explanation for the fact that the teacher variable had an effect on scores on the first essay but not on the second or third essays: by the second essay, each of the teachers and their classes had at least some familiarity with rubrics. a second reason for the lack of an effect of the treatment on the first essay may be that the rubric itself was not written in particularly student-friendly terms. the second and third rubrics were written in more accessible language. a third reason for the lack of an effect may be that the students did not have enough time to revise the essays. several teachers reported that the three days the students were given to write and revise was inadequate. students were given five days to write essays two and three. finally, a power calculation suggested that this sample (n = 106, control group n = 30) only had a power of 31% to detect a small effect of treatment even at the relaxed alpha level of .10. a larger sample size may or may not have detected an effect. findings from the second assignment—the autobiographical essay—are positive yet conditional. on the one hand, the magnitude of the between-group differences for the second essay appears to be educationally as well as statistically meaningful. an average of a half-point difference on a 4-point scale is a 12.5% difference. this effect is all the more meaningful because of the minimal amount of classroom time taken by the intervention: less than forty minutes was spent on introducing and reviewing each rubric. on the other hand, the sample size for the second essay is limited (n = 37, treatment = 26, control = 11), so firm conclusions are not warranted. the findings from the third assignment—the historical fiction and personal challenge essays— stand in partial contrast to the findings from the second assignment. assignment 3 results indicate that instructional rubrics may actually be related to a detriment to the performance of girls but not boys. however, it is possible that the results of the last essay were confounded by end-of-the-year pressures. teachers at both schools reported that the third essay assignment came just as their students were attempting to meet new, district mandated portfolio and exhibition requirements for graduation. one teacher referred to the time period when students were writing the third essay as: a last ditch effort to complete their graduating exhibitions. although the third essay would have been awesome to put in an exhibition, most kids were trying to take the easy way out (which was to revise something they already had rather than create something new). when push came to shove—finish exhibition and go to high school or finish the essay—high school won out. nonetheless, the possibility of gender differences in the ways students respond to the use of rubrics needs further investigation. it is conceivable that the different results for each essay could also be explained in part by the fact that students were asked to write different kinds of essays, and different kinds of writing require current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 different kinds of skills. autobiographical essays, for instance, may be easier for students to write and to revise according to a rubric than persuasive essays or historical fiction in part because students are more practiced at telling their own stories. in addition, historical fiction and especially persuasive essays require a writer to decenter, or argue her point from a perspective other than her own. although many junior high students can be expected to have the cognitive maturity needed to decenter, moffett (1983) notes that writing from multiple points of view is a difficult skill that develops over a lifetime. it is possible that students' preferences for their own perspectives made the autobiographical essays easier to write. if that was the case, it is also likely that they found the autobiographical essay rubrics easier to understand and to use, hence the positive effect of the treatment. the implication, not surprisingly, is that instructional rubrics scaffold writing within students' zones of proximal development and no further. like all instructional materials, rubrics should be designed with regard to students' cognitive development and skill level, aiming just beyond what students are able to do without assistance. the relationship between gender and writing may come into play as well. for example, another study (goodrich andrade & delamater, in preparation) also found that girls tended to earn lower scores on historical fiction essays than boys. it has been suggested (m. donahue, personal communication, february 16, 2000) that girls have more difficulty writing historical fiction because most textbooks provide little information about the lives of women. future studies of the effects of rubrics should be careful to assign writing assignments that give male and female students equal opportunities to succeed. conclusion taken together, the analyses of the questionnaires and the essay scores indicate that simply handing out and explaining instructional rubrics can increase students' knowledge of the criteria for writing as communicated by the rubric, but that translating that knowledge into actual writing is more demanding. although instructional rubrics show promise even in a minimalist intervention like the one applied in this study, positive effects on writing are not a given. the literature on teaching and assessing student work, as well as my own teaching experience, indicate the need for sustained attention to the process of writing, with the provision of instructional rubrics playing a key part—but not the only part—in providing helpful feedback to students. for example, i have found it useful to involve students in the design of rubrics, based on their own critiques of effective and ineffective sample work, but controlled studies of this approach do not exist. research is needed on the most effective role for rubrics in the writing process and on the effect of rubrics on the performance of female students if the promises and pitfalls of this popular approach are to be understood and applied in ways that promote learning and development. notes this study was conducted while the author was a principle investigator at project zero, harvard graduate school of education. correspondence should be addressed to heidi andrade, ohio university, college of education, 340 mccracken hall, athens, oh 45701. the author would like to thank norma jimenez and beth delamater for their assistance in analyzing the results of this study. thanks also go to the edna mcconnell clark foundation for its financial support. the opinions expressed in this paper are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of the foundation. references bangert-drowns, r., kulik, c., kulik, j., & morgan, m. (1991). the instructional effect of feedback in test-like events. review of educational research, 61, 213-238. butler, d. & winne, p. (1995). feedback and self regulated learning: a theoretical synthesis. review of educational research, 65(3), 245-281. cooper, c. (1999). what we know about genres, and how it can help us assign and evaluate writing. in c. cooper and l. odell (eds.), evaluating writing: the role of teachers' knowledge about text, learning and culture. national council of teachers of english: urbana, il. cooper, c. & odell, l. (1999). evaluating writing: the role of teachers' knowledge about text, learning and culture. national council of teachers of english: urbana, il. gardner, h. (1991). assessment in context: the alternative to standardized testing. in b. r. gifford and m. c. o'connor (eds.), changing assessments: alternative views of aptitude, achievement and instruction. boston: kluwer. goodrich andrade, h. (2000). using rubrics to promote thinking and learning. educational leadership, 57(5), 13-18. goodrich andrade, h., & delamater, e. (in preparation). gender and the role of rubric referenced self-assessment in learning to write. goodrich, h. (1997b). thinking-centered assessment. in s. veenema, l. hetland, & k. chalfen (eds.), the project zero classroom: new the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 9 approaches to thinking and understanding. cambridge, ma: project zero, harvard graduate school of education. goodrich, h. (1997a). understanding rubrics. educational leadership, 54(4), 14-17. hawkins, j., frederikson, j., collins, a., bennet, d., & collins, e. (1993). assessment and technology: new ways to assess student learning. technology and education, 36(5). jensen, k. (1995). effective rubric design: making the most of this powerful assessment tool. science teacher, 62(5), 34-37. ketter, j. (1997). using rubrics and holistic scoring of writing. in tchudi, s. (ed.) alternatives to grading student writing. urbana, il: national council of teachers of english. luft, j. (1997). design your own rubric. science scope, 20(5), 25-27. moffett, james (1983). teaching the universe of discourse. boston: houghton mifflin co. perkins, d. n., jay, e., & tishman, s. (1993). beyond abilities: a dispositional theory of thinking. the merrill-palmer quarterly, 39(1), 1-21. popham, w. j. (1997). what's wrong—and what's right—with rubrics. educational leadership, 55(2), 72-75. shepard, l. (2000). the role of assessment in a learning culture. educational researcher, 29(7), 4-14. white, e. (1994). teaching and assessing writing: recent advances in understanding, evaluating, and improving student performance, 2nd edition. portland, me: calendar islands publishers. white, e. (2000). bursting the bubble sheet: how to improve evaluations of teaching. the chronicle of higher education, xlvii(11), b11. wiggins, g. (1989b). teaching to the (authentic) test. educational leadership, 46(7), 41-47. wiggins, g. (1989a). a true test: toward more authentic and equitable assessment. phi delta kappan, 70(9), 703-713. wolf, d., & pistone, n. (1991). taking full measure: rethinking assessment through the arts. new york: college board publications. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 appendix a essay prompts and rubrics essay 2: autobiographical journey write about a journey you have taken. it could be a long trip, a short ride, a walk, or even a fantasy journey you experienced in your mind. tell your readers a story that lets us enter your real or imaginary journey and understand what it means to you. instructional rubric for essay 2: autobiographical journey 4 3 2 1 the purpose of the journey tells where you went and why going there was interesting or important tells where you went and why you went there either where you went or why you went there is unclear does not tell where you went or why you went there the scene vividly sets the scene, describing important sights, sounds, smells, and/or tastes along the way describes the scene in detail, but not vividly describes the scene at some point (usually the beginning) but some scenes are not described well does not describe the setting of the journey the cast of characters creates complex characters by showing them in action, using dialogue, letting the reader overhear their inner thoughts, describing their appearance, personality, behavior, etc. creates characters by describing them and using dialogue describes characters but does not show how they speak, behave, feel, etc. does not introduce a cast of characters the action tells one or two specific exciting, funny, unusual, or sad things that happened during the journey and why they were important tells one or two specific things that happened but it isn't clear why they were important tells one or two specific things but they aren't clearly written no specific events or actions stand out feelings, insights, lessons learned reveals feelings about and insights gained from the trip, and draws a general lesson learned from it reveals feelings about and insights gained from the trip describes a variety of feelings and ideas, but doesn't have a central "vibe," insight or reflection doesn't share any of the writer's insights or lessons learned organization story has an interesting beginning, a developed middle and satisfying end. correct paragraph format, at least 5 paragraphs story moves through the beginning, middle and end in a logical order. correct paragraph format, at least 5 paragraphs the story is usually organized but sometimes gets off the topic. some problems with paragraphs and/or less than 5 paragraphs the story is aimless and disorganized. incorrect paragraph and/or less than 5 paragraphs conventions uses first person form, correct grammar, mechanics and spelling. uses complex sentences, sophisticated vocabulary, etc. generally uses correct grammar, mechanics and spelling. frequent errors are distracting but do not interfere with meaning numerous problems with fragments, run-ons, grammar, spelling, etc. make the story hard to read the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 11 essay 3, school a: personal challenge write a 5 (or more) paragraph essay about a time you faced a challenge. perhaps this challenge seemed impossible, discouraging, or scary. perhaps you were helped through it by another person, or maybe you faced it on your own. tell about this incident in detail, including who was involved, what the people and surroundings looked like, exactly what happened, your thoughts about the alternatives or ways you could have handled the challenge, and the final outcome. try to make your readers understand why this particular event is memorable. instructional rubric for essay 3, school a: personal challenge criteria 4 3 2 1 ideas and content my paper tells of a difficult, discouraging or scary challenge; shows growth or change in the main character and how s/he coped; uses relevant and rich details and examples my paper tells of a challenge but it isn't made to sound very gripping; growth of the main character may be hard to see; uses relevant details and examples my paper tells of a challenge but it may not always be in focus; it may get off topic; it's not clear how the character grows; some details or examples may not matter or don't go together the challenge is murky; it is hard to tell what the topic is; it seems a little like random thoughts on paper organization my paper has a lead that establishes the challenge, a developed middle that builds tension, and a satisfying ending that resolves the problem, all in an order that makes sense, flows, and hangs together i have a beginning, middle and end in a logical order but without flair. my paper takes the reader on a walk but on a sidewalk, not a high wire my organization is rough but workable; my writing may drag its feet then race ahead; my ending may stop suddenly or drag on too long my writing is aimless and disorganized; there is little sense of a beginning or ending; it is probably confusing to a reader voice my writing has personality & sounds like a real person wrote it; it shows how i think and feel & sounds like it was written to be read my writing voice is engaging but may come and go, fading in and out my writing is bland or mechanical, sounds like i have not found my own way to say things there are no hints of the real me in my writing; it may sound like i don't like what i have written word choice the words i use are striking but natural, e.g., i use "terrified" instead of "scared," or "gut" instead of "stomach"; i use powerful verbs my paper has some fine word choices, but is often routine. my word choice is uninspired, colorless, and dull or sounds like i am trying too hard to impress; some words may be used incorrectly the same words are repeated over and over and over and over; some words may be bewildering and confusing to a reader sentence fluency my sentences are clear; they begin in different ways; some are longer than others; no fragments; my paper is a delight to read out loud my sentences are well constructed; some minor errors in sentence structure; my paper marches along but doesn't dance my sentences are often awkward or mechanical; little variety in length; may have many sentences that begin with the same word my paper is tough to read because of incomplete sentences, run-ons, and awkward phrasings conventions i use the correct paragraph form, grammar, capitals, spelling, and punctuation i made some errors, mostly by taking risks and using interesting words or sentences my spelling is correct on common words; several errors in conventions are distracting many errors in paragraph form, grammar, caps, spelling and punctuation make my paper hard to read current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 essay 3, school b: historical fiction please write a letter from or journal entry of a 14 year-old american living in some year between 1491 and 1979. take on the persona of your fictional character and write about a day in her or his life. your 5 (or more) paragraph entry should tell what year it is and use historically accurate phrases and language to describe your living situation, clothing, hygiene, education, roles in family and community, work, food, etc. also refer to relevant political, social, and/or religious events. instructional rubric for essay 3, school b: historical fiction criteria 4 3 2 1 ideas and content my paper brings the time and place in which my character lived alive; vividly describes her/his experiences and values; uses only historically accurate language and events my paper tells the time and place my character lived; describes a day in her/his life; most or all language and events are historically accurate the time & place my character lived is relatively clear, but his/her experiences are more like a list than a letter or diary entry; some language or events may be historically inaccurate the setting is murky; the character's language and experiences are often historically inaccurate; the paper may stray off topic or just ramble organization my letter/diary has a strong lead, a developed middle, and a satisfying ending, all in an order that makes sense, flows, and hangs together i have a beginning, middle and end in a logical order but without flair. my organization is rough but workable; my writing may drag its feet then race ahead; my ending may stop suddenly or drag on too long my writing is aimless and disorganized; there is little sense of a beginning or ending; it is probably confusing to a reader voice my writing sounds like a real person wrote it; it has personality; shows how i think and feel; sounds like it was written to be read my writing voice is engaging but may come and go, fading in and out my writing is bland or mechanical, sounds like i have not found my own way to say things there are no hints of a real person in my writing; it may sound like i don't like what i have written word choice the words i use are striking but natural, e.g., i use "terrified" instead of "scared," or "gut" instead of "stomach"; i use powerful verbs my paper has some fine word choices, but is often routine. my word choice is uninspired, colorless, and dull or sounds like i am trying too hard to impress; some words may be used incorrectly the same words are repeated over and over and over and over; some words may be bewildering and confusing to a reader sentence fluency my sentences are clear; they begin in different ways; some are longer than others; no fragments; my paper is a delight to read out loud my sentences are well constructed; some minor errors in sentence structure; my paper marches along but doesn't dance my sentences are often awkward or mechanical; little variety in length; may have many sentences that begin with the same word my paper is tough to read because of incomplete sentences, run-ons, and awkward phrasings conventions i use the correct paragraph form, grammar, capitals, spelling, and punctuation i made some errors, mostly by taking risks and using interesting words or sentences my spelling is correct on common words; several errors in conventions are distracting many errors in paragraph form, grammar, caps, spelling and punctuation make my paper hard to read the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 13 appendix b scoring rubrics scoring rubric for persuasive essay (adaptations to instructional rubric in bold) criteria 4 3 2 1 makes a claim makes a claim and explains why it is controversial. makes a claim but doesn't explain why it is controversial. a claim is made but it is buried, confused, or unclear. does not make a claim. gives reasons in support of the claim gives clear and accurate reasons in support of the claim. e.g., pro: leadership, informed voters, productive workers, learning from history, self-esteem, decision-making and other tht. skills, jobs / $, economy, delinquency / risk; con: freedom of choice, extracurricular pursuits selfeducation, waste of $, bad students ruin it for others, jobs / $, having kids of one's own. gives reasons in support of the claim, but overlooks important reasons. gives one or two weak reasons which don't support the claim well, and / or irrelevant reasons and / or confused reasoning. does not give reasons in support of the claim. considers reasons against the claim thoroughly discusses reasons against the claim and explains why the claim is valid anyway. reasons, as listed above, should come from whichever side was not taken as the claim. discusses reasons against the claim, but leaves out important reasons, andor doesn't explain why the claim still stands. acknowledges that there are reasons against the claim but doesn't explain them. does not give reasons against the claim. relates the claim to democracy discusses how issues related to democracy can be used both in support of and against the claim. discusses how issues related to democracy can be used to support the claim. says that democracy is relevant but does not clearly explain how or why. does not mention democracy. might mention freedom or choice, but without connecting beyond self to country or world. organization writing is well organized, has a compelling opening, an informative body, and satisfying conclusion. has appropriate paragraph format. writing shows organization through a clear beginning, middle and end. generally uses appropriate paragraph format. writing is usually organized but sometimes gets off topic. has several errors in paragraph format, and / or middle is disorganized. writing is aimless and disorganized. conventions uses correct grammar, mechanics and spelling. generally uses correct grammar. some minor errors do not distract or confuse the reader. shows some control of conventions but frequent errors are distracting or confusing to the reader. writing shows little control of conventions. serious and numerous problems distract and confuse the reader. words and sentences words are striking but natural, varied, and vivid. sentences are clear, defined, fluent, and diverse. may use sophisticated vocabulary and analogies. fine but routine word choice. wellconstructed but somewhat flat sentences. some minor errors. may attempt analogies. word choice is dull, uninspired, or overly selfconscious. some words may be used incorrectly. sentences are redundant, possibly awkward or mechanical. no analogies or strange ones! minimal variety in vocabulary, and some words may be bewildering or confusing to the reader. sentences are poorly crafted and difficult to read, e.g. runons, fragments, awkward phrasing. no analogies. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 scoring rubric for autobiographical journey essay 4 the wow factor 3 2 an attempt 1 the purpose of the journey (can i say where they went & why?) tells where you went and why going there was interesting or important to you tells where you went and why you went there either where you went or why you went there is unclear does not tell where you went or why you went there the scene (do i have a picture?) vividly sets the scene, describing important sights, sounds, smells, and/or tastes along the way describes the central scene(s) in detail, but not vividly describes the scene at some point but some central scenes are not described well or only unimportant details are given does not describe the setting of the journey the cast of characters 1 2 creates complex characters by showing them in action, describing their appearance, personality or behavior, using dialogue, letting reader "overhear" their inner thoughts. creates central characters by describing who they are, what they look like, gestures, expressions, and using relevant dialogue tells who is in the story by giving names, ages, or older/younger references, but does not show how characters behave, feel, or only describes one of several characters or uses little or only irrelevant dialogue only vaguely refers to characters or leaves significant characters out, does not use dialogue the action tells one or two specific exciting, funny, unusual, or sad things that happened during the journey and why they were important tells in detail one or two specific things that happened but it isn't clear why they were important tells one or two specific things but without enough detail to let a reader understand what's going on no specific events or actions stand out feelings, insights, lessons learned reveals feelings about and insights gained from the trip. a general lesson learned draws on a thread that runs through the essay. reveals feelings about and insights gained from the trip, but insights may be tacked on at the end. describes feelings and ideas, but doesn't have a central insight or reflection, or it isn't well connected to the story doesn't share the writer's feelings, insights or lessons learned organization 1 2 story has an interesting beginning, a developed middle that builds tension, and satisfying end. correct paragraph format, at least 5 paragraphs story moves through the beginning, middle and end in a logical order. generally correct format, at least 5 paragraphs organization is rough but workable. story may get off topic. some problems with paragraphs and/or less than 5 paragraphs the story is aimless or disorganized, lacks direction. incorrect paragraph (maybe only 1) and/or less than 5 paragraphs conventions uses first person form, correct grammar, mechanics and spelling. uses complex sentences, sophisticated vocabulary, etc. generally uses correct grammar, mechanics and spelling. frequent errors are distracting but do not interfere with meaning (3 or so errors per paragraph) numerous problems with fragments, run-ons, grammar, spelling, etc. make the story hard to read the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 15 scoring rubric for the historical fiction essay criteria 4 3 2 1 ideas and content my paper brings the time and place in which my character lived alive; vividly describes her/his experiences and values; refers to historically accurate events. my paper tells the time and place my character lived; describes a day in her/his life; most or all events are historically accurate. the time & place my character lived is relatively clear, but his/her experiences are more like a list than a letter or diary entry; some events may be historically inaccurate. the setting is murky; the character's experiences are often historically inaccurate; the paper may stray off topic or just ramble. organization [stand back and think with holistic perspective] [imagine paragraph breaks] my letter/diary has a strong lead, a developed middle, and a satisfying ending, all in an order that makes sense, flows, and hangs together. i have a beginning, middle and end in order; some minor organization problems such as a superfluous or out-ofplace sentence. my organization is rough but workable; my writing may drag its feet then race ahead; my ending may stop suddenly or drag on too long. my writing is aimless and disorganized; there is little sense of a beginning or ending; it is probably confusing to a reader. voice (a) voice (b) i use only historically accurate language, consistently using terms, phrases and slang from the period. my writing sounds like a real person wrote it. my language is mostly historically accurate but without distinction. my writing voice is engaging but may fade in and out. i use basic english, avoiding 90's slang but not using language of the period. my writing is bland or mechanical in many places. i make no discernable attempt to use historically accurate language. there are no hints of a real person in my writing; it may sound like i don't like what i have written. word choice the words i use are striking but natural, e.g., i use "terrified" instead of "scared," or "gut" instead of "stomach"; i use powerful verbs. my paper has some fine word choices and generally good language; some parts may be routine. my word choice is uninspired, colorless, and dull or sounds like i am trying too hard to impress; some words may be used incorrectly. the same words are repeated over and over and over and over; some words may be bewildering and confusing to a reader. sentence fluency my sentences are clear; they begin in different ways; some are longer than others; no fragments; my paper is a delight to read out loud. my sentences are well constructed; some minor errors in sentence structure; my essay marches along but doesn't dance. my sentences are often awkward or mechanical; little variety in length; may have many sentences that begin with the same word. my paper is tough to read because almost all of my sentences are incomplete, run-ons, and/or awkward. conventions i use the correct paragraph form, grammar, capitals, spelling, and punctuation. i made some errors, perhaps by taking risks and using interesting words or sentences. my spelling is correct on common words; several errors in conventions are distracting. many errors in paragraph form, grammar, caps, spelling, punctuation make my paper hard to read. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 scoring rubric for the challenge essay criteria 4 3 2 1 ideas and content my paper tells of a difficult, discouraging or scary challenge; shows growth or change in the main character and how s/he coped; uses relevant and rich details and examples my paper tells of a challenge but it isn't made to sound very gripping; growth of the main character may be hard to see; uses relevant details and examples my paper tells of a challenge but it may not always be in focus; it may get off topic; it's not clear how the character grows; some details or examples may not matter or don't go together the challenge is murky; it is hard to tell what the topic is; it seems a little like random thoughts on paper organization my paper has a lead that establishes the challenge, a developed middle that builds tension, and a satisfying ending that resolves the problem, all in an order that makes sense, flows, and hangs together i have a beginning, middle and end in order; may have minor organizational problems such as an out-of-place sentence or two. my paper takes the reader on a walk but on a sidewalk, not a high wire. my organization is rough but workable; my writing may drag its feet then race ahead; my ending may stop suddenly or drag on too long. [you may find yourself rearranging paragraphs.] my writing is aimless and disorganized; there is little sense of a beginning or ending; it is probably confusing to a reader voice my writing sounds like a real person wrote it; it has personality; shows how i think and feel; sounds like it was written to be read my writing voice is engaging but may come and go, fading in and out my writing is bland or mechanical, sounds like i have not found my own way to say things there are no hints of the real me in my writing; it may sound like i don't like what i have written word choice the words i use are striking but natural, e.g., i use "terrified" instead of "scared;" i use powerful verbs my paper has some fine word choices [you can count several], but is often routine. my word choice is plain or colorless or sounds like i am trying too hard to impress; some words may be used incorrectly the same words are repeated over and over and over and over; some words may be bewildering and confusing to a reader sentence fluency my sentences are clear; they begin in different ways; some are longer than others; no fragments; my paper is a delight to read out loud my sentences are well constructed; some minor errors in sentence structure; my paper marches along but doesn't dance my sentences are often awkward or mechanical; little variety in length; may have many sentences that begin with the same word my paper is tough to read because of incomplete sentences, run-ons, and awkward phrasings conventions i use the correct paragraph form, grammar, capitals, spelling, and punctuation i made some errors, mostly by taking risks and using interesting words or sentences my spelling is correct on common words; several errors in conventions are distracting many errors in paragraph form, grammar, caps, spelling, punctuation make my paper hard to read the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 17 appendix c sample essays identification number experimental condition score on rubric 1 treatment 3.22 2 treatment 3.00 3 treatment 4 (teacher score only) 4 control 1.56 5 control 1.44 autobiographical journey essays written by eighth grade students in this study essay 1: "vegas vacation" my dad had been planning on taking my brother and i to las vegas for weeks. the reason it was so important was because my brother and i have never been out of the state. we were going to leave july 10, a monday, and get back july 14, a thursday. we left at 3:00 am so that we would beat the heat. we would get there somewhere around 3:00 am. the day before we left we picked up a rental car, so we would have more room to move around. as we were driving through california we saw many important things. we saw landmarks which my dad said we would see. these landmarks represented the distance to our next destination. the closer we got the more the sun came out. it looked beautiful as we were going through all the mountains in california. in barstow we drove by a slaughter house and it smelled awful for about 30 minutes, then it went away. i drank bottled water and ate chips, that were some of the things we brought on the trip; so we would have something to eat and drink on the long trip. my dad, my brother and i were the ones who went to vegas. my brother was getting impatient about something and he started cusing. then my dad said "shut up or i'll turn around and drive straight home." my brother and i were in the backseat telling each other jokes and listening to music. my brother is short, skinny, and has brown hair. my dad is tall, strong, and has brown hair too. the second day we were there we went to an amusement park called grand slam canyon. the park had an indoor roller coaster that went all throughout the park. i didn't go on it because the line was too long, and because i didn't want to wait in line all day. they also have lots of midway games, and also a big 50 ft. high water slide. i went on the waterslide 3 times. it goes down pretty fast and i also got wet at the end of the slide. the next day we went to a waterpark called "wet n' wild." it was very hot 120 degrees, so the water was very refreshing on our bodies. the park had big pools with water shooting all around. you could just sit around, or frolic in the refreshing water. the best part of the park was a long river like thing that went all the way around the park. the current would take you about 5 miles an hour. you could sit on a big doughnut shaped innertube and float all the way around the park. i went on a lot of different slides. at first i was nervous, but once i started going it was very fun. we took a lot of pictures at these two places, and cut a lot of other places. we drove through glitter guleh and saw all of the different casinos and lights. we visited a lot of other casinos and hotels. we went inside the mgm grand, excaliber, treasure island, and many more. my feelings about this experience is very positive. i had the most fun i ever had in my life. it wasn't the only time i went, i also went the next summer. i found out how crazy about money people can get when there is a lot of it around. i also realized that i shouldn't take san diego's weather for granted. i learned that good weather is more important than having a lot of fun. sometimes fun is more important, but most of the time the weather is much more important. essay 2: my trip to the mall it all started on a sunday afternoon, when my friend mike and i were at my house watching t.v and we were so bored because all there was to watch was barney. we decided to go rollerblading at the mall because we thought it could have been exciting. it was fantastic at the mall! we had the greatest time there, we saw all kinds of different clothing and tasted all kinds of exotic foods. we arrived at this shop were they sold all kinds of weird things. the shop was small, blue, green, and with weird writing on the walls, it was really dark inside so it was hard to see. we smelled all sorts of things in the shop like: black beauty, strawberry, and cherry. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 a mysterious lady came out of the back room, she was tall, skinny, with dark hair, and freckles. when she spoke to us, she sounded like if she was chocking on something. i saw that she was limping so i took a good look at her leg it looked like a pirate had chopped it off and glued on a wooden one. her personality wasn't at all good, i mean she said,"get the hell out of here." so of course we left the old lady and her weird old shop. after we had left we went to the movies but we had ran out of money so at the time mike and i thought the best thing to do was to sneak in; which was unusual for us because we like to play by the rules besides it was very important to us to brake the rules because we wanted to now how it felt like. so eventually we snuck in and eventually we got caught! for some reason i was expecting to happen, when it did it felt like a dark cloud had come over us and god himself was going to pass judgment on us! good thing that was all in my head because in reality the cops let us of in a warning. so of course right after that we left the mall and our journey had come to an end. i guess when i got home i felt bad for what i had done. i learned a valuable lesson that day which was, "never do anything, that you now you're going to get in trouble for and regrete." essay 3: untitled in my journey i was going to mexico to visit my family. this trip was very important to me because i learned how to get along with-out my parents. also, i learned how to do my best because two people were depending on me. in this trip i flew from tijuana b.c to mazatlan, mexico with my sister adriana. this interesting trip occurred when i was thirteen years old. the airplane i went on was aero mexico. this airplane had rows of three and two seats. in the airplane there were lots of people. we were sitting in the front so that's why i saw lots of people. the airplane at first smelled like perfume but later, it smelled like chicken. the airplane also was very cold at first but, as soon as i heard we were getting near mazatlan i was very nervous. i heard some people laughing, talking, a man snoring hard. it was annoying, i decided to look out the window. the only thing i saw was a lot of white, blue, puffy clouds. i think the best thing i had seen so far that day was the beautiful and interesting sky. when we got off the airplane we were at the mazatlan, mexico airport. mazatlan is a very hot place. you feel like if there's not any air. there in the big airport i saw my tio juan and my cousin stephanie "fanny". my tio was chubby and in my opinion ugly. my cousin was wearing a flowered dress and some little sandals. she was skinny and she was an adorable cute kid. then, as we were out side i saw this old tall man. he had white hair and was wearing a white sombrero. it was my abuelo. after hugging my abuelo we got on his truck. whey we got to tepic, mayarit, mexico i saw this old small woman. it was my abuela. she had a dress and grey hair. she told me that she loved me. an important and unforgtable moment was when my abuelo told my fourteen year old cousin to leave the house because we were flirting with my abuelo's worker. when my tio told him he got very mad. i had never seen him that mad in my life. in that moment i felt very sad because my cousin got in a lot of trouble. my abuelo didn't say anything but i knew he was very mad. this is an important event because i learned and felt something that really hurt. the lesson i learned was not to talk to boys because my relationship with my abuelos is not the same as with my parents. i also learned that flirting with that guy was not right. looking back on journey, i tought the moments i spent with my family were sad, funny, and fun. i feel that my trip to mexico without my parents was a good experience for me to see the world and other things as well. essay 4: countryside—my journey to up state new york on october 7, 1996 i left with my aunt, uncle, and three cusins. my mom (clara) was very sad that was leaving then for at least 4 yrs. my brother (darrold) sad too. when i was leaving the house my mom and brother cried. my brother cried the most. i too cried a little but only for a while. before i left my moms rm. she told, "listen to your aunt, don't give her a hard and help her up when she needs help". i told her "yes mom". my dad (greg) droped me off at the navy log where my aunt and uncle were staying at for the night. we left the navy log at october 8, 1996. the ride to new york was boring because we hardly had anything to do. i had some drawing papers, crayons, markers, and writing papers. that's all i had to do. the only stops we made were to restraunts, gasoline stations, stores, and hotels. oh i forgot to say that we traveld to new york by car. one of the worse places i would never want to pass by was the desert. it was so hot even rolling down the window didn't help. the trip to new york took us at least one week. when we got there, we stay with my grand parents place. my grant parents welcomed us and my aunt, an and two other male cusins too. there were more boys than girls i had to live with. five boys and one girl me. well that's my journey to new york. hope you injoyed it too. essay 5: my journey to disneyland the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 19 at 8:30 a.m. my mom had woken me up. my mom told me to wake up and take a shower. so i did. at 9:39 i was done. i was putting close on and when i was done my mom told me and everyone else to get a jaket because we are going somewhere. my mom also had told me to stop horse playing with everyone. when everyone got ready it was 9:01. my mom told me to put my stuff in the trunk of the car. so i put all my stuff in the trunk and so did everyone else. when my step dad put the ice chest in the trunk. i grabbed a soda out from it. then we all went off together. my sister, my mom, my step dad, brothers, and sister all went off together. my sister and my step brother and i sat in the back messing around. my sister started to play with my step brother my mom and step dad, brother, and sister sat in the front were they all talked to each other. we stopped at my step dads work where we all got drinks and went to the restroom. we stayed there talking for 30 min. we all got back in the car and took off to disneyland. everyone was falling asleep. i was awake talking to my mom that where we were going. i just stopped asking my mom because i was falling asleep. i woke up at disneyland parking lote. we all got out and got something to drink then we left to go on rides. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 appendix d data interpretations interpretation of the final regression model for the persuasive essay (essay 1) controlling for grades, standardized test scores, teacher, and school, there is no statistically significant effect of treatment on essay 1 scores. this model accounts for 24.49% of the variation in essay 1 scores. no interactions were statistically significant, suggesting that the effects of treatment did not differ for school a and school b, nor for females and males. esl, special education, gender, and ethnicity were dropped from the final model because they were not statistically significant through the model building process nor were any interactions between them and the question predictor or other control variables. this model is the most parsimonious model that accounts for significant covariates. power calculation for a multiple linear regression model which already includes 4 covariates (control variables) with a squared multiple correlation r 2 of 0.245 (the r 2 obtained from a model including the four control variables only), a sample size of 106 will have 31% power to detect at = 0.100 an increase in r 2 of 0.010 due to including 1 additional variable. interpretation of the final regression model for the autobiographical journey essay (essay 2) controlling for grades, standardized test scores, gender, and the interaction between grades and gender, there is a statistically significant effect of treatment on essay 2 scores. controlling for the aforementioned variables, treatment students are predicted to score, on average, .49 points higher on essay 2 than control students. since there were no interactions present between treatment and the control variables, this means that the effects of the treatment did not differ by gender, test scores, or grades. however, there was an interaction between grades and gender, suggesting that the effect of grades on essay 2 scores differed by gender. in this case, the main effect indicates that for males, there is no effect of grades on essay 2 scores, controlling for experimental condition and standardized test scores. however, for females, there is a positive effect of grades on essay 2 scores, controlling for experimental condition and standardized tests ( grade = 0.019537, t-statistic = 1.985, p < .0560). this model accounts for 39.92% of the variation in essay 2 scores. teacher, school, esl, special education, and ethnicity were dropped from the final model because they were not consistently statistically significant through the model building process, nor were any interactions between them and the question predictor or other control variables. this final model is the most parsimonious model that accounts for significant covariates. power calculation for a multiple linear regression model which already includes 4 covariates with a squared multiple correlation r2 of 0.176, a sample size of 37 will have 95% power to detect at = 0.100 an increase in r2 of 0.223 due to including 1 additional variable. interpretation of the final regression model for the historical fiction and personal challenge essay (essay 3) the statistically significant interaction between treatment and gender means that the effect of treatment differs for females and males, controlling for grades, standardized test scores, school, and ethnicity. since the main effect of treatment is not statistically significant, this means that for males (males are coded as gender = 0) there are no statistically significant differences in essay 3 scores between males who were in the treatment group and those in the control group ( treatment = .119110, t-statistic = .72, p = .4726), controlling for the aforementioned variables. for females, there was a statistically significant difference in predicted essay 3 scores between females in the treatment and control groups ( female= -0.308641, t-statistic=-1.736, p<.0845). the negative parameter estimate indicates that, on average, females in the control group are predicted to have essay 3 scores that are .31 points higher than females in the treatment group, controlling for grades, standardized test scores, school and ethnicity. moreover, the main effect of gender in the above model is statistically significant ( gender = -.507182, t-statistic = 2.218, p < .0280) which indicates that females in the control group are predicted to have scores on essay 3 that are .51 points higher than males in the control group, on average, controlling for grades, standardized test scores, and ethnicity. however, there was no statistically significant difference on essay 3 scores between males and females in the treatment group ( the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 21 treatment = .079431, t-statistic = .784, p < .434), controlling for grades, standardized test scores, and ethnicity. this model accounts for 19.09% of the variation in essay 3 scores. there was no interaction between school and treatment suggesting that the effects of treatment did not differ for school a and school b. teacher, esl, and special education were dropped from the final model because they were not consistently statistically significant through the model building process nor were any interactions between them and the question predictor or other control variables. this final model is the most parsimonious model that accounts for significant covariates. power calculation for a multiple linear regression model which already includes 6 covariates with a squared multiple correlation r2 of 0.188, a sample size of 160 will have 39% power to detect at = 0.100 an increase in r2 of 0.010 due to including 1 additional variable. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 2001 article citation goodrich andrade, h. (2001, april 17). the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write. current issues in education [on-line], 4 (4). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume4/number4/. author notes heidi goodrich andrade ohio university athens, oh andradeh@ohio.edu heidi goodrich andrade is an assistant professor at the college of education, ohio university. she took a position at ou after eleven years at harvard university, where she received her doctorate and conducted research at project zero. her teaching focuses on educational psychology and student assessment. through her research she investigates the development of high-level thinking, with an emphasis on the relationships between thinking, learning and classroom assessment. she has worked with educators and businesses nationally and internationally on the design of thinking-centered instruction and assessments for a variety of contexts, including classrooms, after school programs, television shows and cd-roms. she has written numerous articles, including an award-winning article on rubrics (goodrich, 1997), and is co-author of two books, teaching through projects: creating effective learning environments (goodrich, hatch, wiatrowski & unger, 1995) and thinking connections: learning to think and thinking to learn (perkins, goodrich, tishman & mirman owen, 1994). note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber june 11, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation andrade, h. g. (2001). the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write. current issues in education, 4(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1630 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2001,%20vol%204,%20%231-7/number4/index.html mailto:andradeh@ohio.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1630 cie template 1 volume 18, number 1 march 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x contradictory reforms: when nclb undermines charter school innovation peter clyde martin ithaca college the article discusses how instead of being parts of a concerted educational reform effort, no child left behind (nclb) and the development of charter schools are in fact contradictory initiatives. basing itself on a theoretical framework that brings together issues inherent to outcome-based school reform and arguments supporting and criticizing both nclb and charter schools, the article examines the case of a specific charter school whose program was significantly altered due to pressures imposed by nclb. school reports, plans, programmatic descriptions, and other documents are reviewed to examine how the school responded over a three-year period to low test scores that may or may not have been a reflection of instructional quality and how nclb requirements eventually led it to move far away from its original reform-minded mission. implications regarding how nclb can undermine the innovative possibilities of charter schools are discussed, along with more general entailments regarding wider public school reform efforts. keywords: no child left behind; charter schools; bilingual education; high stakes testing; innovation in the current context of attempts to change our country’s public schools, one overarching problem has been reconciling what are in fact two separate efforts. on one hand there is, with the propagation of charter schools, an opportunity for innovation and invention that allows us to explore new possibilities for designing programs aimed at solving chronic problems that our educational system seems not to have adequate solutions for (nathan, 1998). on the other hand, we have developed by means of the no child left behind act (nclb) a reform effort that pushes for predefined outcomes as quickly as possible, insisting that the non-negotiable priority for every school be to receive satisfactory results on a specific type of assessment in math and reading. the more a school struggles in satisfying these demands for good results on high-stakes standardized tests, the less latitude it has in terms of pedagogical choice. each of these two reform efforts has a compelling logic of its own and strong support as well as vocal detractors. the problem, however, is that these approaches contradict each other in important ways, and may represent a kind of schizophrenia in our educational thought. on one hand we want innovation. instead of prescribing solutions we want local stakeholders to make decisions without too much outside interference. we have faith in our ingenuity and our spirit of entrepreneurship and we distrust efforts of government engineering. on the other hand, we also believe in accountability, checks and balances, and the presumed honesty of clear numerical results, and despise it when excuses are made. the effort on the part of nclb to direct schools to concentrate on test results also limits the experimental possibilities of charter schools, which may, arguably, result in missed opportunities in regard to discovering new solutions and therefore opportunities for educational reform. in order to explore how these two reform efforts can interact in practice, this article examines the case of the bilingual community academy (abc for its initials in spanish), an innovative charter middle school whose program and practices had to respond to nclb pressures due to low standardized test scores. the point of the current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 2 article is not to advocate for one reform effort over the other, or to question the logic of either, but to understand the altering effects that nclb mechanisms can—and are perhaps meant to—have on a school that was explicitly designed to be innovative. conceptual framework the conceptual framework draws on three areas that have been addressed in the research and theoretical literature. for one, the notion—central to much of the recent school reform movement—that improving students’ educational attainment is a simple product of improved schooling is characterized as being overly simplistic (galloway, 2007; raudenbusch & willms, 1995). with this as a background the two main reform drives of the last decade, nclb and the development and proliferation of public charter schools, are examined as connected yet fundamentally divergent responses. these conceptual areas constitute a context in which to consider the conflicting reform drives abc public charter school operated under as it sought to address the particular needs of its population. issues related to the promise of school reform the current movement for school reform has, in many ways, responded to policy imperatives from outside the area of education per se and has followed the logic of reforms from other sectors (finn, 2002). indeed, both nclb and the development of charter schools were responses to the nation at risk report (1983) that presented school failure not only as endemic but also, significantly, as a threat to the larger economic and geopolitical future of the country (paris, 1997). furthermore, it developed in response to what seemed to be widespread discontent with the state of public education (zinsmeister, 1998). in addition to popular pressure and fear of the loss of national power, education reform has been presented as a possible solution to many of the country’s social inequities, with the idea that conditions can only improve for inner-city minority children if parents are able to choose alternatives to their neighborhood public schools (rees, 1998). school choice has indeed been one of the themes of the current reform movement, in keeping with what is purported to have been successful in other, unrelated sectors. indeed, nclb was informed by the sense that improved efficiency and accountability in the corporate world had led to the resurgence of previously faltering businesses. transferring the same basic mechanisms to the world of public schools was expected by some to inevitably result in comparable improvements (finn, 2002). as a consequence of this link to perceived successes in the corporate sector, school reform initiatives on a policy level became marked by an emphasis on strong accountability for schools and districts, and a promotion of choice and competition as a catalyst for change (hanushek & raymond, 2005). there is evidence that socioeconomic differences in the united states are widely connected to differences in quality of schooling (lee & burkam, 2002). simply put, children from affluent backgrounds tend to go to higherperforming schools than students who have a lower socioeconomic status. an obvious conclusion has been drawn that effective reform of low-performing schools will inevitably lead to greater social equity (noguera, 2003). if schools improve instruction, students’ learning will improve, as will their socioeconomic prospects. this has led to the further conclusion that, conversely, inadequate student learning is attributable to ineffective schools (teddlie, kirby, & springfield, 1989). as logical and promising as this may sound— because it allows us to point to clear culprits and therefore to clear areas to address—it has also been questioned in the literature. authors have pointed to the reality that schools serving low-income populations are consistently required to accomplish more instructionally than schools with more affluent students and that schools in this case receive conveniently and unfairly much of the blame for what is in fact part of a much more far-reaching socioeconomic situation (galloway, 2007; raudenbusch & willms, 1995). asking that we think of the effect of schooling on academic achievement as the difference between what a child can be expected to learn at school in terms of academic skills and what s/he can be expected to learn at home, raudenbusch and willms (1995) note that students from low income families tend to have more to learn at school, and their teachers therefore more to teach, than do their more affluent peers. the authors argue that schools that serve low-income neighborhoods are therefore operating at a disadvantage in terms of academic achievement even when the quality of instruction is the same as in more affluent districts. at the same time, goldenberg, kunz, hamburger, and stevenson (2003) point out that schools have traditionally been designated to carry the main responsibility for the achievement gap, as they may be the only social institution everyone thinks they are an expert about . the authors go on to argue that schools content with student poverty and mobility rates, neither of which they have control over but which have a significant impact on achievement test scores. an underlying issue that is emphasized in the criticism of both nclb and charter schools as catalysts for reform is that they do not address underlying social inequalities that impact educational success (barr, sadovnik, & visconti 2006 ; hess & finn, 2007; lashway, 2004). the social challenges faced by many communities are arguably of a magnitude far too great to be solved through mere efforts by educators (davison, seo, davenport, butterburgh, & davison, 2004; galloway, 2007). mapping schools in north carolina that are considered to be failing, zhang and cowen (2009) arrived at findings that confirm the connection between academic achievement and factors that are beyond the contradictory reforms: when nclb undermines charter school innovation 3 schools’ control. the authors found that regardless of region, schools with high rates of minority and economically disadvantaged students are more likely to fail than schools that do not. more generally the authors noted that poverty, teacher turnover rate, and neighborhood socioeconomic status were the clearest predictors of academic success. galloway (2007) adds that there is in fact a danger of nclb’s tone simply alienating teachers by suggesting that the difficulties schools face are entirely the result of curriculum and instruction and ignoring the importance of factors beyond teachers’ control. this limitation to what schools can actually accomplish inevitably becomes a fundamental hurdle for any effort to significantly reform schools in the hope of eliminating the achievement gap between different socioeconomic groups. according to hess and finn (2007), this is compounded by the fact that the field of education tends to discourage the involvement of reformminded entrepreneurs even though innovation and enterprise are precisely what educational reform call for. as a field, public education is described as inherently rule-bound, giving the government a quasi-monopoly in terms of decision-making, and beholden to the interests of long-term stakeholders (hess & finn, 2007). raudenbusch and willms (2006) propose that reforms are most effectively implemented from the bottom up, starting from a community vision to then lead to a fitting type of school that in turn suggests policies to support it. in fact, however, recent educational reform efforts have simultaneously focused on both a top-down, policy driven effort through the implementation of no child left behind (nclb) and entrepreneurship through the development of charter schools. nclb and school reform explaining the purpose of nclb in terms of educational reform, the federal government has argued that the law is not to be understood as a reform in and of itself, but instead as a catalyst for it (the education trust, 2004). the contention is that it focuses the attention of schools where it should be, namely on math and literacy and on failing subgroups of students. arguably, ayp mandates little in terms of specific reform strategies, but instead forces states, districts, and schools to assume the right and the responsibility to determine how students’ needs are to be met. what nclb does require, however, is that math and literacy be focused on above all else and that failing scores on standardized tests result in documented action. nclb may not determine specific instructional designs, but it mandates a focus on specific subject matter and establishes standardized test results as the measure of success. both the intention and the consequences of nclb have been quite controversial. a number of authors propose that nclb has indeed been instrumental in forcing school systems to acknowledge the reality of the achievement gap and to earnestly focus their resources on bridging it (borkowski & sneed, 2006; cohen, 2002; piche, 2007). when the law was first being implemented, cohen (2002) pointed out that it showed recognition on the part of the federal government that previous state-led reforms had been insufficient and that the educational community in general had failed to establish clear, research-based goals for what schools should accomplish. the ayp mechanism was presented as a national remedy to this lack (cohen, 2002). furthermore, it is suggested that ayp measures are forcing schools and districts to come to terms with the achievement gap without leaving room for rationalization and therefore without providing options other than to design targeted interventions (borkowski & sneed, 2006). it is generally proposed that nclb has in fact led struggling schools to improve the quality of their instruction and higher-achieving schools to focus on achieving proficiency for all their students (piche, 2007). nclb has also been criticized on a number of fronts, especially with the view that reform can’t simply be mandated without consideration of local circumstances and that the specifics of reform are in fact far more complicated than mere legal compliance (burkowski & sneed, 2006; schul, 2011; lashway, 2004). lashway (2004) argues that turning around individual schools is a complicated process and that it is not possible to isolate clear cause-and-effect relationships related to student achievement. demographics, insufficient resources, and ineffective practices have all been identified as possible factors (lashway, 2004). barkowski and sneed (2006) add that there is also no clear indication that failure to make ayp in fact warrants any kind of change in how a school is managed and yet nclb requires significant interventions on an organizational level. here schul (2011) argues that nclb is based on a flawed use of accountability in that it may ensure compliance but not student learning. the ayp-directed use of standards and assessment as a way to control school behavior in fact contradicts what is viewed as best practices whereby what is taught should determine what is tested and not the reverse (schul, 2011). in this view, nclb brings together three different ambitions that do not work in concert, namely, to show all stakeholders what the academic performance of all students actually is, establish a behaviorist mechanism to force low-performing schools to improve, and to set ‘shoot-the-moon’ targets for all states (hess & finn, 2007). charter schools and school reform on the opposite end of direct government control, the potential for charter schools as catalysts for educational reform is controversial as well. among the arguments in favor of the development of charter schools is that they can be held easily accountable for student achievement and that they can give direct power to their staff and community stakeholders rather than being under current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 4 the sole jurisdiction of government agencies (abbowitz, 2010; grady, 2011). in a largely ideological promotion of the charter school movement, grady (2011) connects it to the free market economic theories of milton friedman, explaining that giving parents a choice among schools is bound to result in the improvement of the school system overall. this, the author argues, will automatically establish accountability that will only provide for the survival of successful schools and thus allow the government to spend its resources more effectively by steering it toward those schools that are in fact improving the education of children (grady, 2011). nathan (1998) points out that charter schools were from the onset designed to be explicitly responsible for increased student achievement and were part of a movement to encourage local school agencies to improve the quality of instruction. it is thus argued that charter schools were originally meant to serve a very similar type of reform as nclb. charter schools have fervent detractors as well for reasons that seem to be similarly fundamental. although they may have been originally designed to provide more options within the public school system, their achievement as measured by standardized test scores mirrors many of the demographic inequalities among traditional public schools (peebles, 2004; barr et al., 2006). in a discussion of the problems involved in the organizational evolution of individual charter schools, peebles (2004) explains that charter schools transition through predictable phases, none of which can be skipped simply for the sake of quick rises in test scores. the author describes how schools move over time from a preoperational fantasy stage to a translation of the original vision into measurable goals and outcomes, to a formal operational stage, to an eventual institutional stage four or five years after the school opens. during this evolution, explains peebles (2004), it has been found that teachers are often frustrated by their inability to focus on instruction rather than on the organization as a whole. the lack of preexisting structures, traditions, and policies make it difficult for teachers to focus on developing their practice and their beliefs (peebles, 2004). study: methodology and research questions in order to examine how the reform drive of nclb may interact with or counter that of a charter school, several questions are asked in the context of abc public charter school in washington, d.c. in an era where schools are encouraged to find creative solutions and structures are in place to give schools freedom— conditionally and in some cases at least—how might nclb’s adequate yearly progress (ayp) mechanism in fact impact what a school does and is? specifically, how can ayp move a school away from trying to focus on certain areas and toward focusing on others? in order to address these questions, every document that the administration of abc produced during its first three years in connection to the school’s design and academic planning was reviewed. this includes public documents, such as the original charter application and mission statement, the school’s accountability and improvement plans, and the yearly ayp reports. most, however, are internal documents meant for staff and principal stakeholders. these included the academic curriculum and its revisions, strategic plans, all academic and behavior tracking information, protocols for teachers, schedules, all internal and external assessment results, and all internal reports. while these documents were authored by different staff, individually or collaboratively, they were all approved by the senior leadership of the school and included in the school’s permanent records. the author of this article served on the school’s administrative team and was one of the authors of the documents. as director of curriculum and assessment of abc during its first three years, the author has access to the full documentation from this time period. as an initial step this information is used to describe the school and its rationale, as well as the ways its objectives were addressed and its program was put in place. this is followed by a brief review of the different assessment results in order to get a sense of some of the school’s apparent failures and successes. finally, the various documents are categorized by year (years one, two, and three of abc) and by programmatic aspect (programmatic, curricular, and instructional development; new initiatives; and assessment). changes from one year to the next are noted and considered in the context of persistently low test scores, failure to make ayp, and therefore increasing pressure from the nclb push for school reform on that of abc as it had been originally designed. the overall picture that emerges is then regarded in terms of how the school and its objectives were effectively changed as a result of responding to the pressures to increase scores on nclbmandated assessments. background: ayp in the context of washington, dc and abc public charter school in compliance with the nclb mandate that in every school at least 95% of all students in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school be tested in reading and mathematics, the district of columbia has been administering the dc comprehensive assessment system (dccas) every spring. students’ standard scores are reported as below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced along single-score cut-off points. a predetermined percentage of students overall and in specific demographic subcategories are required to score proficient or advanced in order for the school to make ayp and therefore comply with nclb. every school is then given a public ‘ayp report’ featuring the percentage of students who scored proficient overall as well as in subcategories defined by contradictory reforms: when nclb undermines charter school innovation 5 ethnicity, special education and english language learner (ell) classifications, and economic disadvantage. the report then announces to the school, to the state agencies, and to the wider public whether it made ayp in all categories or whether it is instead henceforth labeled as being a “school in need of improvement”. if the school continues not to make ayp over consecutive years, a series of remedial measures are imposed, including potential reconstitution. both the power and the limitation of the ayp report, which is disseminated through the local media, is the apparent simplicity and transparency of the numbers it presents. there is no analysis of the scores themselves, no discussion of their possible statistical significance or even validity. there is no description of the social or environmental factors impacting instruction. there is no accounting for how long the students have actually been attending the school, the quality of their previous schools, or of how many previous schools they attended and for how long. there is no mention of possible personal or family hardships that might have a greater impact on learning than any kind of school-based instruction. the numbers are to speak for themselves instead. the bilingual community academy public charter school opened in 2005 as dc’s only alonestanding bilingual middle school. it voluntarily relinquished its charter and closed in 2009 due to ongoing issues of under-enrollment and financial difficulties. throughout its existence its student body was almost exclusively low-income, mostly from low-performing public schools, and almost evenly made up of latino and african american students. according to a new york times determination of school diversity, abc ranked 6 th of 50 among dc schools in 2006 (new york times, january 2, 2012). depending on the year, special education students made up between 21.3% and 29.5% of the total population. the school served grades 6 through 8 (grades 6 and 7 only during the first year), but enrolled new students in all grades every year. abc did not have a feeder school and was never fully established as a true three-year program, with students instead enrolling and leaving on a regular and unpredictable basis. every year its ayp report announced low test scores in both reading and math. abc never got close to making ayp. table 1 describes the student population over the first three years of the school’s existence (2005 through 2008). table 1 abc student population year 1 year 2 year 3 grades served 6, 7 6, 7, 8 6, 7, 8 total students 48 94 88 african-american students 45.8% 47.9% 50% latino students 54.2% 52.1% 50% students from other ethnic groups 0 0 0 students qualifying for free and reduced lunch 92% 100% 88% special education students 22.9% 21.3% 29.5% non-english proficient (nep) students (lowest level on the statemandated language proficiency test access for ells) 6.3% 2.1% 6.8% limited english proficient (lep) students (levels 2-4 on the access for ells) 43.8% 44.7% 43.3% data presentation the school on its own terms abc public charter school’s mission statement: abc will graduate adept learners, effective communicators, and community leaders who are culturally aware and prepared to use their academic skills and bilingual proficiency to succeed in rigorous high schools, post-secondary education, and society.  adept learners. abc students will master the knowledge and skills they need to think critically, work collaboratively, and maintain focus on their goals.  effective communicators in both spanish and english. abc students will be able to articulate their ideas through the written and spoken word, finding and exercising their “voices” in both spanish and english.  community leaders. abc students will be actively engaged in their school and community, raising awareness of issues and contributing to resolutions. our students will respect others and themselves and act as role models for their families and communities. (bilingual community academy public charter school, 2005) the programmatic center-piece of the school was its spanish-english two-way bilingual immersion program. bilingual education had recently come to some prominence on the elementary level in d.c., thanks largely to the much-publicized success of oyster elementary school, a dual language english-spanish public school that had become one of the flagships for two-way bilingual immersion on a national level. twoway bilingual immersion refers to programs where students are educated in and through two languages and where native speakers and learners of each of the two are taught together (lindholm-leary, 2001). as charter schools started to proliferate in the district, other elementary schools with similar programs were being developed. as stated in the original charter application of the school, however, the founders of abc saw two significant gaps in the ways english-spanish bilingual education was being provided. for one, public bilingual education at that point existed exclusively on the elementary school level, with some schools in the process current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 6 of expanding upward so they would extend through the middle school years as well. the problem remained that most of the students who graduated from oyster or another bilingual elementary school at that time had nowhere to continue their education in both languages unless they enrolled in a private school. more significant, perhaps, was a second gap, namely, that oyster and the wave of schools it inspired tended to serve students who were either latino—and often from low-income homes— or white and mostly affluent from well-educated families (bilingual community academy public charter school, 2004). given that as of the school year 2010-2011 76.2% of dc public school children were african-american and that approximately 66% qualified for free and reduced lunch, this was viewed as an instance of inequity that needed to be addressed (washington lawyers’ committee, 2010). in addition to bilingual education, abc explicitly sought to provide quality education for students, setting high expectations by meeting them academically wherever their previous schooling had left them. expectations would be high yet individualized given students’ personal situation. instruction and public discourse in the school would explicitly address costa and kallick’s habits of mind to help students understand and promote their own learning process (costa & kallick, 2008). the point was to give every student a foundation of academic and metacognitive skills to build on, and the confidence that they could be successful learners. there was a clear emphasis on teaching the whole child and not limiting schooling to academics, focusing on physical health and artistic expression as well. finally, a central purpose of the school—embodied in its name—was to establish a community that was truly nurturing and fostered leadership qualities in students (bilingual community academy public charter school, 2004). process of program implementation. a commonly held assumption about two-way immersion programs is that they require a relative balance in numbers between students dominant in each of the two languages in order to ensure that all enjoy equal status, that all students are indeed both language learners and experts, and that students can learn from and model for each other (calderon & minaya-rowe, 2003). charter schools, however, are not legally allowed to choose their students, but are required to select them randomly by lottery (u.s. department of education, 2013). when abc was founded, bilingual charter schools in dc were not permitted to take language background into consideration for student enrollment. abc therefore relied heavily on advertising in both spanishand english-dominant communities to achieve the language balance recommended for a two-way immersion program. the original conception of the school had students participate in a month-long intensive language academy (ila) prior to the school year, where students’ math, language, and literacy skills were assessed through the public charter school board-approved diagnostic and developmentally-based abc assessment program (abcap), and where they were taught foundational knowledge in their second language. individual language learning profiles were created for each student based on these initial assessments to establish needs and strengths to address during the school year. in the second year this preliminary month was renamed intensive spanish language academy (isla) in response to the finding that basic spanish (including literacy skills for native speakers of spanish) needed to be focused on most urgently. in keeping with the principles of a two-way language immersion program, the original design of abc emphasized the equal status of the languages for social communication and academic learning. thus half of the academic subjects (language arts and science) were to be taught in english and the other half (social studies and math) in spanish. in order to make the material accessible to all students given the range of language proficiency and literacy levels, curricula were designed to be based on themes that were then explored through individualized student projects, thus explicitly establishing flexibility in terms of the literacy demands of content learning and student reflection. furthermore, in order to promote explicit language-learning, students took daily mixed-grade language development classes in both english and spanish (eld and sld, respectively) that matched their proficiency level, ranging from basic english and spanish as a second language to higher-level literature, and focusing on needs outlined in the individual language learning profiles. all school staff were bilingual and were strongly encouraged to interact socially with students in their language of instruction. all public communication was rigorously bilingual as well. finally, the middle school experience would culminate in an 8 th grade class trip to a spanish-speaking country or region. in terms of the school’s goal to differentiate instruction so as to meet the needs of all students regardless of their academic level, the extensive diagnostic assessments and theme-and project-based curricula were to allow for individualized planning. teachers who shared students were allocated scheduled co-planning time specifically so they could discuss and plan for individual students. the assumption on the part of teachers as well as the curriculum was that students would have very different academic levels and that every course, while being rigorous in terms of content area learning, would need to be strategic and flexible in regard to the skills it emphasized. the premise of the eld and sld courses was also that every student had different language and literacy levels irrespective of the grade they were in, and that it was the school’s goal to meet everyone’s needs where they happened to be. finally, contradictory reforms: when nclb undermines charter school innovation 7 from the onset the school was designed to remain small, with small classes, and a focus on individual attention. this planning for school and classes to remain small, facilitating meaningful relationships among students and between students and staff, was also meant as a way to promote the community aspect of the school that had been emphasized in the mission statement. the plan was for every day to begin with a school-wide assembly before students went to their “focus” classes. these had been designed as small communities where relationship-building, social-emotional priorities, and basic study skills would be emphasized before students attended their regular classes. one afternoon every week the entire school would engage in a community-building activity. participation in school-based extra-curricular activities was to be strongly encouraged as well. from the onset parent involvement was talked about as a priority in order to build the kind of empowering bilingual community that had been envisioned (bilingual community academy public charter school, 2004). in keeping with the spirit of reform that underlay the charter school movement as a whole, abc was established in order to provide an idea of schooling that would be deliberately different. the school’s successes. academically, the school was highly successful according to its own assessments. indeed, while the state-mandated dccas high-stakes standardized test is an evaluative assessment tool meant to measure whether the student is able to use the totality of her or his academic skills to solve certain kinds of problems seen to be on grade level, internal abcap assessments were designed to be formative and test individually those requisite skills that, taken together, allow students access to the grade-level curriculum. both types of tests are certainly relevant, but they are not interchangeable. abcap measured a continuum of skills ranging from a basic lower elementary school-level to middle school-level that were seen as prerequisite building blocks for problem solving on the dccas. if a student showed growth on the formative abcap but not on the evaluative dccas, then she or he was thought to be building in the right direction but needed more time. students overall demonstrated significant success on the abcap in each of the three years. table 2 shows the distribution of initial and final 7 th grade math abcap scores for the second year. it is clear that most students began the year with skills far below grade level and made considerable progress across the continuum of skills. given that students often enrolled without having mastered prerequisite elementary school skills, progress on the abcap measures certainly pointed to success that was not represented by dccas scores. table 2 student score distribution on 7 th grade abcap math preand post-tests number of correct answers initial (fall, year 2) final (spring, year 2) 71-74 (out of a total of 74) 0 0 g ra d e le v el 66-70 0 4 61-65 0 22 56-60 0 8 51-55 0 1 46-50 2 1 41-45 4 3 36-40 9 7 b el o w g ra d e l ev el 31-35 14 1 26-30 11 1 20-25 3 2 the school as redirected by ayp high stakes test results. indeed—and in stark contrast—student scores on the dccas were extremely low in both reading and math in each of the three years (see table 3). there is much debate around the extent to which high-stakes standardized tests actually measure instruction and not the demographic composition, socioeconomic status, and educational history of the students— none of which are under the control of teachers and school administrators (welner, 2005). indeed, in the case of abc in particular, test scores overall were connected to student mobility, poverty, and a high percentage of ells and students with disabilities (martin, 2011). regardless of these doubts concerning the validity of measuring school quality through standardized test scores, the current reality of public education is that not making ayp is publicly announced as instructional failure. persisting in not making ayp triggers remedial pressures and the threat of eventual reconstitution. for the life of a school, then, increasing test scores once they are low becomes the highest priority. table 3 abc’s dccas scores—total population s school year % proficient total population: reading % proficient required to make ayp: reading % proficient total population: math % proficient required to make ayp: math year 1 28.31% 43.58% 22.64% 40.54% year 2 26.04% 43.58% 11.46% 40.54% year 3 23.47% 57.69% 16.33% 55.41% how testing changed the school. upon examining the documents that were created in each of the three years, one notices general trends in how the focus of the school changed over time. overall, there seems to be a general shift from a developmental and process-oriented approach to learning and teaching, with a focus on bilingual education and an attempt to carefully balance current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 8 academic and non-academic educational needs, to a more explicitly results-oriented view and an increasingly single-minded focus on discrete skills in the tested subject areas. year one. the emphasis in the first year had been on establishing a comprehensive program that tried to balance academic and non-academic areas, prioritized bilingual education and critical thinking—in keeping with the original vision of the school—and that conceived of learning as developmental and teaching as processoriented. documents presenting the program as a whole emphasized the school mission, the habits of mind, and the totality of academic services, making a point of showing how the core academic and language development curricula, the social-emotional focus program, and the bicultural emphasis of the special subjects established a vision of community-oriented bilingual education that addressed the whole child. documents specifically related to the curriculum explained how content instruction in spanish would work even though half the students were not fluent in spanish, and how the core content courses were standards-aligned while the language development courses were built around stages of language and literacy development that were not based on grades but on the individual needs of each student as determined on diagnostic assessments. non-academic components of the school included arts and movement classes, a regular student support team that focused on students seen to be struggling academically, emotionally, or behaviorally, a life skills component of the focus program, and the school’s soccer team. once a week students engaged in explicit community building activities at the end of the day. artifacts related to assessment focused on the abcap individual diagnostic assessments in math and in english and spanish oral and written language development, the state-mandated assessment of english proficiency for ells, and the dccas. the different assessments were to be reported on in the required charter school accountability plan, which would be used by the local charter school board in its future determination of whether or not to renew the school’s charter. all in all, the emphasis in this first year was on developing structures that would support the vision of the school in terms of bilingual, community-oriented, and whole-child focused education. the year of course ended with the school’s first administration of the dccas, yielding baseline data whereby only 28.31% of the students scored proficient or advanced in reading, and 22.64% in math. to make ayp, schools needed proficiency scores of 43.58% and 40.54%, respectively. year two. in the second year there appears to have been a shift in focus on discrete skills, in particular the area of vocabulary and reading development, with a more results-oriented approach and particular attention to very targeted test practice. a new central curricular document described in detail how the different courses addressed the standards. the curriculum itself had been revised to emphasize and make explicit specific academic skills whereas the previous version had focused more on general concepts, themes, and rationales. new curricular alignments specifically emphasized language skills in both english and spanish, with a new school-wide vocabulary list and new english-language drop everything and read/write (dear/w) classes that were to help students with vocabulary building and fluency in reading and writing. these efforts were compounded by the mandatory language development program during the month before the school year began, where students were given diagnostic assessments and received initial language instruction. the focus of the non-academic aspects of the school changed little, with the exception of a new focus curriculum that made explicit what students were to learn in this area and also introduced a point system to reward positive community behavior within each class. the bi-weekly community building activities were further supplemented with a choice of additional elective dance, capoeira, and theater classes. there were significant changes in the approach to assessment between the first two years. whereas the first year had emphasized mandated and diagnostic assessment, the second year introduced considerable practice testing, the idea being that practice alone—even divorced from the learning of specific academic content— might provide for improved results. students were periodically administered assessments that resembled the state tests they were to take in the spring. the progress of those students who had tested lowest on a diagnostic basic skills test in math and those who had been close to scoring proficient on the previous year’s dccas were monitored separately. finally, an assessment calendar for the year was created and distributed to teachers, marking an evolution from a consideration of individual assessments as merely diagnostic or summative to one of an ongoing assessment program that became itself a focus of the school’s program. again, the year ended with low standardized test scores and failure to make ayp. reading scores were similar to those from the year before, with 26.04% of the students scoring proficient or advanced. math scores were much lower than before, falling from 22.64% proficient to 11.46% (see table 3). year three. the trend away from the central goal of bilingualism and a whole-child, comprehensive view of a student’s education toward one that was focused more explicitly on measurable progress in discrete skills in english and math continued and became more defined in the third year. whereas in the second year there had been a general shift from an integrated view of the school program as a whole to a more specific focus on standards and skills, documents created in the third year mark an contradictory reforms: when nclb undermines charter school innovation 9 explicit focus on math and reading as the subjects tested on the dccas and explain how this change in attention could be reconciled with the existing focus of the school. as a consequence of not making ayp, abc was required to formulate a school improvement plan (sip) that was submitted to overseeing agencies and shared with families and stakeholders. the sip called for some initiatives in particular that were different from what had been in place previously. this plan was to identify areas of need that had contributed to the unsatisfactory dccas results and propose strategies to address the school’s weaknesses, as well as implementation timelines and monitoring approaches. given the very low dccas scores and the absolute imperative to find ways to improve on them, math was especially emphasized in academic planning. the sip addressed math and reading by focusing on four general areas, namely, emphasizing specific sub-skills, promoting both guided and independent reading, generally improving instruction and making it more consistent, and, especially, emphasizing test preparation. in terms of specific skill areas in math, the sip explained that abc would from now on emphasize both grade-level and prerequisite discrete elementary-level math skills, ensuring that they were taught, reviewed, and/or retaught both during the regular school day and after school, with particular attention paid to the instruction of special education students and ells. previously, math had been taught as a single course that was designed to reteach requisite elementary school skills and eventually address grade-level content once students had the necessary foundation—which abcap assessments very clearly showed students did not have upon entering (see table 2). school leaders had initially refused this notion that one should pretend that students were ready to be taught on grade level simply because the curricula and benchmarks said so. conversely, the sip established a math program with several instructional components that were delivered side by side and that focused on different pieces of the elementary-to-grade level sequence of concepts and skills. changes thus took away from the entirely developmental focus of the program to explicitly address the low dccas scores. in addition, as a result of an in-depth analysis of the dccas scores in reading, the sip called for a review of the school’s reading curriculum in order to place greater emphasis on informational texts. opportunities were to be provided for teachers to share strategies to facilitate the study of informational texts and promote both independent and guided reading. the sip further stipulated that instruction emphasize small groups and differentiation. this, in turn, entailed that teachers be given adequate time to plan, both alone and collaboratively. these changes, while certainly welcome at first view, also had implications for the dual language model of the school. while math class in particular had heretofore revolved mostly around wholeclass instruction, the plan called for the establishment of cooperative groups and learning centers as the basic classroom structure, also to allow the targeting of skills based on student needs. this was certainly a departure from the whole class immersion that was to teach everyone spanish by maximizing interaction among students with different levels. essentially, math was going to be less of a spanish immersion class. finally, and perhaps most significantly, the sip called for consistent and ongoing test preparation, explicitly in order to improve on the dccas. the dccas was therefore no longer regarded as a mere way of measuring the attainment of educational goals, but became an explicit educational goal in itself. this was a major departure from the basic orientation of the school. indeed, test preparation had not been emphasized previously, as it went counter to the notion that all students should work based on where they were and not on a benchmark. it would now be a regular feature of the program in both subject areas, with monthly school-wide practice tests. in the year following the design of the sip a number of changes were implemented throughout the program. artifacts and initiatives respective to ongoing curriculum development were a sequence of curriculum maps for each of the three grades that presented an overview of content in all subject areas, with an explicit focus on common skill areas. this attention to skillcentered curriculum cohesion and integration combined the cognitive, theme-based orientation that had been promoted for the school program and the discrete skills targeted for testing. revisions of existing curriculum units and the renewed revision of the math curriculum as a whole also made discrete skills an area of emphasis. this new explicit focus on discrete skills work in areas where test results had been poor also drove the design of new academic initiatives. thus whereas in the second year there had been an emphasis on targeted reading, writing, and vocabulary building during the regular school day, new additions now targeted discrete skills work in math to address both the prerequisite elementary skills most students were lacking and those particular grade-level skills that would help dccas scores. whereas the school year had up until now been preceded by an intensive language academy to establish a spanish foundation for all students, instruction during this month was now split between language and math in order to try to ensure that all students had a foundation that would allow them to access the grade level curriculum. a new math study hall was instituted during the day when classes would practice basic skills during otherwise unscheduled time. further math instruction was given during a daily after-school math academy that included tutoring services that were mandated after the school failed to make ayp. instead of playing on the school current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 10 soccer team, which was discontinued, students would be studying math. here students were essentially tracked into different levels of proficiency, with remedial and enrichment services provided by different groups of tutors. students considered to be ‘on the bubble’ for scoring proficient on the dccas were identified and especially targeted. finally, and significantly, students ‘on the bubble’ would be pulled out once a week from an elective class (taught in spanish and tied to multicultural education) in order to take an on-line math tutorial on skills that matched their level. one result of the low math scores on the dccas was that math skill development was now the one overriding objective of the math class, severely undermining its second purpose as a forum for spanish immersion. the strategic plan for the year proposed that spanish continue to be used for most rote communication, but that new math content be taught in english and translated into spanish as needed for the english language learners who needed it. as the school did more to explicitly target discrete academic skills, other non-academic services were pared down. community-building activities, soccer, dance, capoeira, and theater classes were discontinued while the school sought to concentrate its resources on academics. one further difference was the establishment of new monitoring protocols for both students and teachers. a new tracking system was introduced for behavioral incidents to examine how individual students’ behavior connected with their academic success as measured by grades and results on interim assessments. a protocol was also established for collaborative meetings designed to make them more clearly outcomeoriented. the school’s assessment program became a more pervasive version of what had been established the previous year, with a focus on interim assessments that were in alignment and ultimately targeted the culminating dccas. monthly standardized tests were administered to the whole school in reading and math and homework was frequently given using the format and language of the dccas. additional testing booklets were given as weekend homework and focus class now also involved test preparation. the program of individual diagnostic assessments was continued as well, although it was reduced to focusing exclusively on basic math and reading and writing in both languages. one significant change was the explicit focus on students considered to be “on the bubble” for scoring proficient on the dccas. these students’ interim test results were tracked more specifically and they were pulled out of art and movement classes to work on test preparation in math. the transition from the second to the third year thus involved accepting—through persistent low test scores and the sip—the reality of having to teach to the test as the clear first priority, with trying to preserve the original vision of the program becoming a lesser concern. discussion of findings over the course of the three years and the persistence of low test scores, the school increasingly made achieving ayp its single priority and, in many ways, the guiding principle for programmatic development as though this were the overarching organizational mission. not only did this bring about significant changes in the character and ambitions of the school, but the very point of focus represented a philosophical transformation in and of itself. the school began with an emphasis on bilingual education and community leadership that explicitly focused on the learning of students developmentally and based on their individual situations rather than on generalized benchmarks. by the third year the bilingual and community focus had been significantly reduced and the programmatic emphasis was on the development of specific pre-mapped skills with the expressed purpose of being successful on norm-referenced standardized tests. those programmatic features that were meant to emphasize the whole child were stripped down in order to make room for very targeted work in areas emphasized by the test. from an emphasis on trying to address all students equally, the trend shifted to one of particular attentiveness to the progress of students with the clearest potential of scoring proficient and possibly enabling the school to make ayp. how, then, might the ayp mechanism impact what a school does and is? abc had a very particular vision for the education it wanted to provide for its students, but the ayp evaluation system imposed a different set of educational goals—arguably stemming from a very different educational vision—that had to be met before anything else could be focused on. depending on whether the school could meet these mandated educational goals, it would or wouldn’t be granted permission to focus on the vision it was established to follow. furthermore, it can be argued that abc’s failure to meet the ayp-mandated goals and therefore the denial of its own educational goals was in great part connected to the situation of the population it served and not simply a product of instruction (welner, 2005). with the threat of eventual reconstitution or closure, a school such as abc has no choice but to prioritize the goals of making ayp over the establishment of its own educational vision, which in turn dictates what areas of students’ school life it will and will not focus on. if one sees the school’s particular vision as valuable as is, this is a loss. if one agrees that the goals, benchmarks, and measurement criteria established to satisfy the ayp requirements are indeed what schools should focus on first and foremost, then this guiding pressure has to be seen as a positive way to ensure that a school does what it needs to do. contradictory reforms: when nclb undermines charter school innovation 11 in other words, the issue becomes whether we do in fact want public schools to be reformed 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(2009). mapping academic achievement and public school choice under the no child left behind legislation. southeastern geographer, 49(1), 24-40. zinsmeister, k. (1998). are americans ready for dramatic school reform? the american enterprise, 9(3), 19-20. http://nau.edu/uploadedfiles/academic/coe/about/projects/unintended%20consequences.pdf http://nau.edu/uploadedfiles/academic/coe/about/projects/unintended%20consequences.pdf http://www.washlaw.org/pdf/dc%20public%20schools-5%20year%20update%20-%20final.pdf http://www.washlaw.org/pdf/dc%20public%20schools-5%20year%20update%20-%20final.pdf http://www.washlaw.org/pdf/dc%20public%20schools-5%20year%20update%20-%20final.pdf contradictory reforms: when nclb undermines charter school innovation 13 article citation martin, p. c. (2015). contradictory reforms: when nclb undermines charter school innovation. current issues in education, 18(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1346 author notes peter clyde martin, ed.d ithaca college phillips hall 194c, 953 danby road, ithaca, ny 14850 pmartin@ithaca.edu peter clyde martin is on the faculty of the education department at ithaca college. he holds a doctoral degree in bilingual special education from the george washington university. his research interests focus on the areas of teacher education and differentiated instruction, teacher collaboration, educational equity, vision-based and transformational schooling, and serving the needs of english language learners considered to be at risk of educational failure. manuscript received: 12/23/2013 revisions received: 09/16/2014 accepted: 09/06/2014 mailto:pmartin@ithaca.edu current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 14 volume 18, number 1 march 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editors tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers an investigation into the relationships among middle school teachers’ beliefs about collaboration, their perceptions of formative assessment, and selected teacher characteristics current issues in education, 21(3) 1 volume 21, issue 3 december 9, 2020 issn 1099-839x an investigation into the relationships among middle school teachers’ beliefs about collaboration, their perceptions of formative assessment, and selected teacher characteristics liz bergeron new tech network abstract: the purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among middle school teachers’ beliefs about collaboration, their rationale for using common formative assessments, and teacher characteristics that can explain these relationships. seventy-six middle school teachers from two middle schools participated in the study. findings indicate that teachers believe collaboration benefits instruction and assessment informs instruction. the findings suggest that age might play a role in the relationship between teacher beliefs and assessment, that the degree to which teachers get along with each other influences the success of a collaborative group, and that collaboration is not limited to structured meetings. keywords: formative, assessment, mixed-methods, plc, teaching, teacher beliefs, collaboration citation: bergeron, l. (2020). an investigation into the relationships among middle school teachers’ beliefs about collaboration, their perceptions of formative assessment, and selected teacher characteristics. current issues in education, 21(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1714 accepted: 9/2/2020 an investigation into the relationships among middle school teachers’ beliefs about collaboration, their perceptions of formative assessment, and selected teacher characteristics assessment, as defined by popham (2013), refers to any activity designed to uncover covert abilities, skills, or knowledge using an overt action. assessment activities can be formal measures of student learning, such as written tests, or assessments can be informal measures of student learning, such as teacher questioning of individual students and student groups or observations of individual students and student groups. the idea that formative assessment forms instruction and informs students and teachers is generally agreed upon in the literature (e.g., ainsworth & viegut, 2006; bell & cowie, 2001; black & william, 1998; brookhartet al., 2016; fisher & frey, 2007; popham, 2013; reeves, 2007). formative assessment enables teachers to collect evidence of http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1714 bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 2 learning, provide feedback to inform learning, and position students to have agency over their own learning (wilam, 2018). one variation on formative assessment is common formative assessment (ainsworth & viegut, 2006). common formative assessments are frequent, collaborative, moldable, and responsive assessments designed by teachers who work collaboratively to help a group of students develop agreed upon knowledge and skills. a critical element of common formative assessment is the collaborative work in which teachers engage. the idea of collaboration is often operationalized in schools through professional learning communities (plcs). working in plcs teachers can support one another with the aim to improve student outcomes by co-teaching, co-planning, and co-assessing (owens, 2015). professional learning communities are structured in a similar way to the communities of practice discussed by wenger (1998). wenger argues that learning communities encourage professional growth because members bond over common purpose and use their developed personal relationships to strengthen their professional growth (wenger, 1998). plcs allow for frequent interaction among colleagues across all levels of experience which allows teachers to maintain a sense of shared responsibility for the success of all students involved, not just for the ones in their own classrooms. numerous factors can impact the efficacy of plcs, including collaboration quality and frequency of collaborative activities (reynolds, 2009; ronfeldt et al., 2015; schaap & de bruijn, 2018). collaboration in the context of this paper refers to working with colleagues to reach a consensus on the knowledge and skills necessary for the success of a shared group of students (dufour et al., 2006). this research examines common formative assessment beliefs and practices as a means for identifying enablers of effective plcs. collaboration beliefs and practices include the aspects of sharing, outputs, and productivity. common formative assessment aspects include ideas such as evaluating teaching, diagnosing students’ strengths and weaknesses, implementing new instructional strategies, and dividing the workload. it has been established in the literature that teachers who use formative assessment, collaboration, and common formative assessment implement instruction that results in improved student learning (ainsworth & viegut, 2006; black & wiliam, 1998; fuchs & fuchs, 1986; fontana & fernandes, 1994; graham, 2007). ainsworth and viegut (2006) argue that formative assessments are most powerful when they are designed, implemented, and analyzed collaboratively, often within a plc. identifying beliefs and practices tied to common formative assessment will enable insights into enablers for effective collaboration and data use in plcs. collaboration factors and common formative assessment collaboration factors collaboration can be defined as individuals working together as a group towards common goals through the sharing of knowledge, skills, and information (dufour et al., 2005). professional learning communities depend on frequent interaction among colleagues across all levels of experience allowing teachers to maintain a sense of shared responsibility for the success of all students, not just for the ones in their own classrooms (mis, 2009; reynolds, 2009). sharing ideas during planning can improve instruction by providing an environment to generate more ideas (clement & vandenberghe, 2000; forbes, 2007) enabling multiple perspectives that provide instructional feedback to members of the collaborative group (graham, 2007; moston, 2008). a well-established plc encourages collaboration because plcs and collaboration thrive on the same aspects: agreed-upon community values and goals that emphasizes better learning and teaching bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 3 (dufour, 2004), group accountability for the learning of all students (moston 2008), professional development to improve teaching (mis, 2009; reynolds, 2009), shared leadership, teamwork, and both group learning and individual learning (mis, 2009; reynolds, 2009). research has identified many factors that can discourage teachers from collaborating, such as time constraints (clement & vandenberghe, 2000; mis, 2009), teachers’ and schools’ holding onto tradition (dufour, 2004; reynolds, 2009), and school culture and colleagues’ attitudes (cizek et al., 1996). common formative assessment common formative assessments are defined by dufour, eaker, dufour, and many (2006) as “an assessment typically created collaboratively by a team of teachers responsible for the same grade level or course.” common formative assessments are used frequently throughout the year to identify individual student needs, effective teaching strategies, and program-wide concerns. common formative assessments are both collaborative and formative; teachers work together to design, administer, and analyze the assessments so that they can refine their instruction using data. benefits common formative assessments provide a basis for comparison so that teachers can reflect on their teaching. comparison of data with colleagues enables teachers to determine if students are struggling because of curriculum, instructional style, or student issues (ainsworth & viegut, 2006; dufour et al, 2006;). common formative assessments enable teachers to establish a realistic curriculum by working together on assessments clarifying the curriculum, establishing consistent priorities, establishing common pacing guides, and deciding which standards to omit from the curriculum (ainsworth & viegut, 2006; dufour et al, 2006; marzano, 2003; reeves, 2007). methods the purpose of this study was to examine how teacher collaboration beliefs (tcb), teacher collaboration practices (tcp), assessment factors (af), and teacher perceptions of common formative assessment practices (tpcfa) relate to each other, and if teacher background characteristics (tbc) play a role in any of these relationships. teacher collaboration beliefs (tcb) refer to the views held by teachers about collaborating with their teaching colleagues. tcb are the perceptions and opinions classroom teachers form over time about working with their colleagues in collaborative teams. teacher collaboration practices (tcp) refer to the self-reported information that suggests if teachers are collaborating; this includes teachers directly stating their collaboration habits and also includes conclusions drawn from the survey responses that suggest collaboration occurs or does not occur. tcp are the self-reported teacher habits relating to frequency and content of collaboration meetings. assessment factors (af) include teacher perceptions of assessment use and teacher self-reported assessment values as well as teacher reported rationales for using aspects of assessment. af are the opinions teachers hold about the assessment tools and activities they use to assess their students. teacher perceptions of common formative assessment practices (tpcfa) refer to the self-reported teacher beliefs about their own use of common formative assessment. study setting and participants the two schools purposefully selected for this research have both been using a plc model and common formative assessments for five years and have had the time to form an opinion on bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 4 aspects that they appreciate about the process as well as suggest improvements. the common formative assessment model adopted by both schools follows the guidelines outlined by dufour, eaker, dufour, and many (2006). time to collaborate is built into the school day by both administrations. both school settings provide 45 minutes twice a week for plc members to meet. both school sites use the same online formative assessment tool to administer assessments to students. the two schools are a part of the same school district, and the school district has a top down mandate from the superintendent requiring that all teachers participate in professional learning communities (plc) and use common formative assessments. the target population included 76 middle school (7th and 8th grade) english, history/social studies, mathematics, and science teachers because these teachers are required to participate in professional learning communities. at both school sites there are four plcs in each grade level: 7th grade history, 7th grade mathematics, 7th grade english, 7th grade science, 8th grade civics, 8th grade mathematics, 8th grade english, and 8th grade science. the plc model implemented at both of the school sites requires teachers to implement common assessments every eight weeks as mandated by the school administration. study variables the primary variables this study examined were teacher collaboration beliefs (tcb), teacher collaboration practices (tcp), assessment factors (af), teacher perceptions of common formative assessments (tpcfa), and teacher background characteristics (tbc). collaboration beliefs and practices examined were sharing, outputs, and productivity. the term sharing includes the sharing of ideas, data, and resources among teachers in the plc. the term outputs encompass teacher created assessments, rubrics, lesson plans, and learning activities. the term productivity includes time on task during meetings, teacher reporting of benefits, and meeting organization. variables relating to common formative assessment include assessment factors (af) and teachers’ perceptions of common formative assessment (tpcfa). these variables include evaluating teaching, diagnosing students’ strengths and weaknesses, implementing new instructional strategies, dividing the workload, and fulfilling administrative requirements. the variable, teacher background characteristics (tbc), includes the selected characteristics of gender, age, grade level taught, subject area taught, years’ experience, career switcher status, and education. research design a parallel mixed methods design was used to collect both quantitative data and qualitative data. the strength of the parallel mixed methods design is that it capitalizes on the strengths of both quantitative and qualitative research (creswell, 2008; greene, 2007). the initial quantitative data collection phase consisted of administering a researcher created informational survey to middle school teachers, beliefs and practices of collaboration and common formative assessment (bpccfa). the survey provided data about teacher background characteristics (tbc), teacher collaboration beliefs, teacher collaboration practices, assessment factors (af), and teacher perceptions of common formative assessment (tpcfa). the qualitative phase of the research involved a semi-structured interview with ten teachers selected out of the 23 teachers who responded in the survey that they were willing to participate in the interview. teachers were selected so that a sample across the teacher background characteristics was represented. open ended questions were asked during the interview so that the participants could create the response unconstrained by the researcher’s views (creswell, 2008). bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 5 results quantitative results the bpccfa survey consisted of three sections: background information, common formative assessment information, and collaboration information. teacher background characteristics represented in the survey include gender, career switcher status, age, and teaching experience. eight males responded to the survey and 36 females responded to the survey, yielding a 58% return rate. the survey participants represent a varied sample of age, experience, grade level and subject area taught. the majority of the survey participants have 2-5 years and 15-25 years’ experience teaching. most participants have been career teachers, meaning they entered the profession with less than five years’ experience in any other profession. survey responses regarding assessment factors (af) and teacher perceptions of common formative assessment practices (tpcfa) indicated teachers frequently use common formative assessment to diagnose student strengths and weaknesses, grade students, and evaluate teaching. additionally, teachers indicated that they frequently assess students at the beginning, middle, and end of instructional units. survey responses indicated that teachers perceive diagnosing student strengths and weaknesses and sharing instructional strategies as the two biggest benefits of using common formative assessment. responses suggested that most teachers do not prefer to work in isolation on assessments. the results from the bpccfa survey relating to tcb and tcp suggested that teachers frequently attend and participate in plc meetings. teacher responses indicated that department wide policies are in place. most teachers indicated that plc meetings are relevant and beneficial to their teaching. most responses suggested that teachers enjoy co-designing assessments with their plc and enjoy sharing data with their plc colleagues. the majority of responses indicated that teachers find collaborating with their plc beneficial to making instructional decisions. an exploratory factor analysis (efa) was used to summarize correlations among data. the research questions sought to understand af, tpcfa, tcb, and tcp. the efa identifies correlations among survey items so that it can be determined if the items measure af, tpcfa, tcb, and tcp. each question from the survey is viewed as a single component and the factor analysis showed if components grouped together (mertler & vannatta, 2009). the components will group with other components that tended to have the same variances in responses. to ensure the accuracy of the exploratory factor analysis, two tests were performed. the mahalanobis distance test, was used to determine if outliers existed. bartlett’s test of sphericity and kmo were used to ensure that components were sufficiently intercorrelated to conduct an exploratory factor analysis (mertler & vannatta, 2009). following the exploratory factor analysis (efa) an analysis of variance (anova) was used to compare the means between the teacher background characteristics (tbc). the tbc of gender was compared using an independent samples t-test because only two populations exist for that tbc. the exploratory factor analysis (efa) consisted of three mandatory tests and one optional test. the three mandatory tests include: (a) kaiser’s rule, (b) scree plot, and (c) principles component analysis. the fourth test, residuals test, was not required for this data because kaiser’s rule and the principles component test both showed more than 1 component. factors were restricted to two. the data was also rotated to produce a rotated component matrix. the survey contained 43 items, which translated into 43 variables. all 43 items were analyzed using descriptives. to increase the accuracies of the exploratory factor analysis the number of variables bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 6 analyzed should be no more than 10 because the sample size is 44, allowing four samples per variable (mertler & vannatta, 2009). exploratory factor analysis was conducted to evaluate any underlying common components for the measures on the following 10 survey variables: we design and implement ca, used to diagnose student strengths and weaknesses, implement strategies my colleagues share, jointly creates cfa, participate (plc) meetings, plc meeting time is related to my teaching, plc meetings benefit my teaching, co-designing assists, sharing assists with decisions, and comfort sharing data. factors were restricted to two to force loadings and limit components being retained. three criteria were used to determine the appropriate number of components to retain: eigenvalue, scree plot, and variance. the results of the eigenvalue show that 4 components are valued greater than 1, and therefore should be retained (table 1). however, the first two components seem more stable than the second two components. the first two components have eigenvalues of 3.82 and 1.53. table 1 initial eigenvalues component total % of variance cumulative % 1 3.818 38.178 38.178 2 1.525 15.249 53.427 3 1.160 11.601 65.028 4 1.066 10.658 75.686 5 .755 7.546 83.232 6 .635 6.355 89.587 7 .407 4.067 93.654 8 .309 3.089 96.743 9 .206 2.065 98.807 10 .119 1.193 100.000 the scree plot suggests that two components are shown before the graph levels off, and therefore should be retained. the principles component analysis suggests that the first component accounts for more than 38% of the variance and the second component accounts for 15% of the variance, therefore, combined these two components account for 53% of the variance (table 1). because the factors were restricted to two the eigenvalues, scree plot, and principles component analysis essentially confirm the forced loadings, and two components were retained. the rotated component correlation matrix (table 2) was used to identify which variables shared common components, two common components were identified. two underlying factors were identified, and the variables were sorted into two groups based on the loading of the identified underlying components. component 1, also factor 1, was named sharing benefits instruction and component 2, also factor 2, was named assessment informs instruction. bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 7 table 2 the rotated component correlation matrix variables component 1 2 sharing assessment data with my plc assists me with making instructional decisions .875 .132 i feel comfortable sharing assessment data with my plc .863 .012 co-designing assessment with my plc assists me with my teaching .751 -.155 plc meeting time is often devoted to conversations related to my teaching .708 .320 i implement instructional strategies my colleagues share .562 .432 plc meetings benefit my teaching .489 .255 we design and implement ca that are used to evaluate teaching .134 .801 used to diagnose student strengths and weaknesses .323 .734 jointly creates common formative assessments that i use .154 .521 i participate in professional learning community (plc) meetings -.159 .440 component 1, sharing benefits instruction, includes the variable relating to sharing through collaboration and the resulting benefits to instruction. component 2, assessment informs instruction, includes variables relating to uses of assessments to inform instruction. essentially, component 1 addresses the benefits of sharing and component 2 addresses the benefits of assessments. factor scores were then computed for each participant. bartlett’s approach was used because only the shared factors affect the factor score (distefano, zhu, and mîndrilă, 2009). independent samples t-test the resulting factors scores’ means on the two identified components, (a) sharing improves instruction and (b) assessment informs instruction, were compared based on selected teacher background characteristics (tbc). in both components for males and females the differences were considered to be not statistically significant (t (41) = 0.42, p = .680 and t (41) = 0.50, p = .620). both components for career switchers and non-career switchers were not statistically significant (t (41) = 0.82, p = 0.418 and t (41) = 1.88, p = 0.067). analysis of variance the analysis of variance (anova) compares the means between more than two groups on a single variable. a one-way anova was used to compare tbc as they relate to component 1 and component 2. the tbc of age group, grade level taught, subject area taught, and teaching experience were evaluated with each of the two components, sharing improves instruction and assessment informs instruction. views on component 1 did not differ significantly across age group, f (4, 38) = .54, p = .706, grade level taught, f (2, 40) = 0.11, p = .893, subject area taught, f (4, 38) = 1.41, p = .250, and teaching experience, f (5, 37) = 0.58, p = .717. views on component 2 did not differ significantly across grade level taught, f (2, 40) = 2.04, p = .144, subject area taught, f (4, 38) = 0.42, p = .794, and teaching experience, f (5, 37) = 1.15, p = .350. views on component 2, assessment informs instruction, did differ significantly across age groups, f (4, 38) = 2.67, p = .047 (table 3). bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 8 table 3 descriptives by age group for assessment informs instruction n mean std. deviation std. error 95% confidence interval age group lower bound upper bound 20-29 14 51.0293 7.69693 2.05709 46.5852 55.4734 30-39 11 49.8559 11.92970 3.59694 41.8414 57.8704 40-49 11 52.1285 5.03869 1.51922 48.7434 55.5135 50-59 4 53.2951 7.14197 3.57098 41.9306 64.6596 over 59 3 33.5271 18.40332 10.62516 -12.1893 79.2435 total 43 50.0000 10.00000 1.52499 46.9225 53.0775 tukey post-hoc comparisons (table 4) of the five age groups indicate that the over 59 group (m =33.53, 95% ci [-12.19, 79.25]) gave significantly lower value ratings than the 20-29 group (m = 51.03, 95% ci [46.59, 55.47]), p = .040, and the 40-49 group (m = 52.13, 95% ci [48.74, 55.51]), p = .030. comparisons between the over 59 group and the remaining two groups, 50-59 group and the 30-39 group, were not statistically significant at p < .05. table 4 multiple comparisons assessment informs instruction (i) age group (j) age group mean difference (i-j) std. error sig. 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound 20-29 30-39 1.17344 3.74193 .998 -9.5399 11.8868 40-49 -1.09916 3.74193 .998 -11.8125 9.6142 50-59 -2.26577 5.26537 .993 -17.3408 12.8093 over 59 17.50223* 5.90862 .040 .5855 34.4190 30-39 20-29 -1.17344 3.74193 .998 -11.8868 9.5399 40-49 -2.27260 3.96009 .978 -13.6106 9.0654 50-59 -3.43922 5.42258 .968 -18.9644 12.0860 over 59 16.32879 6.04914 .073 -.9903 33.6478 40-49 20-29 1.09916 3.74193 .998 -9.6142 11.8125 30-39 2.27260 3.96009 .978 -9.0654 13.6106 50-59 -1.16661 5.42258 1.000 -16.6918 14.3586 over 59 18.60139* 6.04914 .030 1.2823 35.9204 50-59 20-29 2.26577 5.26537 .993 -12.8093 17.3408 30-39 3.43922 5.42258 .968 -12.0860 18.9644 40-49 1.16661 5.42258 1.000 -14.3586 16.6918 over 59 19.76800 7.09324 .060 -.5404 40.0764 bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 9 table 4 cont. multiple comparisons assessment informs instruction (i) age group (j) age group mean difference (i-j) std. error sig. 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound over 59 20-29 -17.50223* 5.90862 .040 -34.4190 -.5855 30-39 -16.32879 6.04914 .073 -33.6478 .9903 40-49 -18.60139* 6.04914 .030 -35.9204 -1.2823 50-59 -19.76800 7.09324 .060 -40.0764 .5404 factor scores. the two identified factors, sharing benefits instruction and assessment informs instruction, from the rotated component matrix were transformed in spss to create factor scores for each participant. factor score 1, sharing benefits instruction, is a score for each participant on their view of the five combined variables that all correlate because of the same underlying component. factor score 2, assessment informs instruction, is a score for each participant on their view of the four variables all correlated because of the same underlying component. the factor scores represent each individual’s responses on the identified factor. the only significant findings, p=.047, on the factors scores were among the over 59 age group (table 5) on the assessment informs instruction factor scores (m=33.53, sd=18.40). the variance among all other tbc (gender, career switcher, teaching experience, and subject area) was not significant. table 5 means for age group on factor scores age group t_sharingbenefits t_assessmentinforms 20-29 mean 50.4357 51.0293 std. deviation 11.34468 7.69693 30-39 mean 48.4044 49.8559 std. deviation 7.67592 11.92970 40-49 mean 48.4216 52.1285 std. deviation 11.43231 5.03869 50-59 mean 51.8039 53.2951 std. deviation 8.48254 7.14197 over 59 mean 57.1995 33.5271 std. deviation 9.70206 18.40332 qualitative results six female teachers and four male teachers were purposefully selected. table 6 shows the tbc represented in the interviews. bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 10 table 6 teacher background characteristics represented in interviews grounded theory design informed the qualitative data analysis. grounded theory is used to generate a theory based on current data to explain the action of a population (strauss & corbin, 1998). a systematic procedure for coding qualitative data was adopted for this study. the systematic procedure involved three cycles of coding: open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. the open codes this study identified are show in table 7. table 7 open codes identified codes 1 plc meeting time 7 influence 12 data discussions a) punctual a) student learning a) test b) focused b) administration b) none c) email c) professional development/readings c) strengths/weaknesses d) multiple preps d) consistency d) re-teaching/teaching e) want more big idea planning e) county/district/state e) anxious f) want more meetings f) student ability f) off-task g) all have equal say g) parental 13 grading h) don’t meet just to meet h) enjoy collaborating 14 concerns 2 get along on a personal level i) previous work/previous teaching 15 sharing students 3 struggling students j) previous negative plc 4 online tests k) improves teaching 5 change assessments l) share workload a) better assessment type 8 culture b) multiple choice 9 designated roles c) motivation 10 personal teaching style 6 time 11 big picture results from the qualitative coding that are of interest include 29 mentions of the get along on a personal level code, 12 mentions of the better assessment type code, 16 mentions of administration influence code, five mentions of the parental influence code, nine mentions of the name gender age grade content years teaching career switcher undergraduate degree ellen female 40-49 7th science 5-9 years yes minored in content i teach lena female 20-29 7th english 2-4 years no major in content i teach bob male 30-39 8th science 5-9 years yes major in content i teach mary female over 59 7th math over 25 years no majored in education annie female 40-49 8th math 5-9 years yes other randy male 20-29 7th math 2-4 years no major in content i teach maria female 20-29 7th social studies 2-4 years no minored in education molly female over 59 7th science 15-25 years no major in content i teach juan male 40-49 7th math 15-25 years no other ethan male 30-39 7th english 5-9 years no majored in education bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 11 personal teaching style code, and 13 mentions of the concerns code (see table 7). the get along on a personal level code was identified in all 10 interviews. each participant spoke to how well the plc “meshed” (ethan) or explained, “we all get along really well” (juan). the better assessment type code was identified in 8 of the interviews. participants expressed an interest in changing the current assessment type used in their plc, wanting “more smaller quantitative assessments more frequently” (lena) or “in an ideal world i would have a portfolio assessment, that would accumulate work throughout the unit and then a final activity that is less traditional tests and more analytical” (ellen). the 16 mentions of the administration influence code were distributed across seven interviews. the administration influence code most often addressed the school improvement plan and the opening faculty meeting discussion about teacher test scores. the five mentions of the parental influence code addressed the perception parents have of classroom practices, “that way you don’t have the whole stereotype of students, ‘oh he is the harder grader’ you don’t have parents complaining” (randy). the nine mentions of the personal teaching style code refer to individualized teaching styles as exemplified by maria, “the reality is we are all different teachers and we do teach some things differently. i might emphasize one part of history, and that is just how history is; you kind of connect to different things based on your background.” with the majority of the codes reflecting positive statements regarding plcs it is important to note the 13 responses identified by the concerns code. concerns ranged from schools being too reliant on numbers (bob and molly), to meetings being dominated by one individual (ethan), to the timeconsuming format of online tests (ellen). the major codes identified were collapsed into four themes. the themes and the collapsed codes they include are shown in table 8. table 8 themes identified in the interviews theme open codes and axial codes (a, b, c, etc.) procedural • plc meeting time: a) punctual, b) focused, c) email, d) multiple preps, f) want more meetings • online tests • time • influence: b) administration, e) county/district/state, h) parental, j) share workload • designated roles • data discussions: b) none, f) off task • grading people • get along on a personal level • culture • data discussions: e) anxious conceptual • plc meeting time: e) want more big idea planning, g) all have equal say, h) don’t meet just to meet • change assessments: a) better assessment type, b) multiple choice, c) motivation • influence: c) professional development/readings, d) other teachers are doing, g) consistency/same page, i) enjoy collaborating, j) previous teaching, k) previous work • big picture • concerns inside the classroom • struggling students • influence: a) student learning, b) student ability, i) improves teaching • personal teaching style • data discussions: a) test, c) strengths/weaknesses, d) teaching/re-teaching • sharing students bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 12 mixed methods parallel analysis of the quantitative and qualitative findings the parallel examination of the quantitative and qualitative findings suggests that the quantitative components are supported by the qualitative codes. the frequency, by participant, of the axial code occurrences as they relate to the two components is shown in table 9. the axial codes are organized under each of the two components. the struggling students code, concerns code, personal teaching style code and time code were not useful in explaining why teachers’ responses grouped into either component 1 or component 2 and were therefore not organized under either component. table 9 frequency of the axial code occurrences ellen lena bob mary annie randy maria molly juan ethan sharing improves sharing students x x x x influence x x x x x x x x x x plc meeting time x x x x x x x x x culture x x x x x x get along on personal level x x x x x x x roles x x x x x assessment informs data discussions x x x x x x x x x x change assessment x x x x x x x x grading x x x online tests x x x x x x x x x big picture x x x the axial codes included under component 1, sharing improves instruction, include codes related to the sharing of ideas, resources, and workload: sharing students, influence, plc meeting time, culture, get along on a personal level, designated roles. the axial codes included under component 2, assessment informs instruction, include codes related to the beneficial instructional outcomes of using assessment. the codes included in component 2 are data discussions, change assessment, grading, and big picture. discussion the quantitative results from the factor analysis suggest that components group together based on an underlying structure. the two components that were found to be responsible for the underlying correlation between variables were component 1, sharing benefits instruction, and bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 13 component 2, assessment informs instruction. teachers across the tbc indicate they view sharing as a means for improving instruction and assessment as a means for informing instruction. the qualitative results suggest that the degree to which teachers get along on a personal level was a key idea in each of the interviews, with 29 mentions of get along on a personal level. interview data also suggest that better assessment type, administration influence, parental influence, personal teaching style, and concerns were key ideas across the interview data. teachers report that sharing and assessment benefits occur outside structured plc meetings. a parallel mixed methods examination of the quantitative and qualitative results suggests that eleven of the fifteen identified codes can be organized under component 1 and component 2. this suggests that the quantitative findings from the bpccfa survey are supported by the semistructured interview responses. the codes and the bpccfa survey responses support the identification of component 1, sharing improves instruction, and component 2, assessment informs instruction. teachers indicate that the practices of collaboration and assessment benefit instruction. due to the factors of the survey new research questions were devised to describe the results more effectively. both qualitative and quantitative responses were analyzed to address the four revised research questions, (a) what is the nature of the relationship between sharing improves instruction and teacher background characteristics (age, gender, teaching experience, work experience, and education)? (b) what is the nature of the relationship between assessment informs instruction and do teacher background characteristics (age, gender, teaching experience, work experience, and education) play any role in these relationships? (c) what do teachers value about sharing? (d) what do teachers value about assessment? discussion of quantitative results the quantitative analysis of the survey items suggests that teachers value sharing and assessment but are unclear about items relating to plc meeting participation and jointly creating assessments. the anti-image matrix shows a weakness with the items regarding plc meeting participation and jointly creating common formative assessments. it is suspected that those items on the survey represent the administration’s requirement of attending weekly meetings and of creating joint assessments. the remaining survey items suggest that teachers value the practice of collaborating and value assessment data. therefore, the weaknesses in these two items combined with the strengths in the other items suggest that teachers enjoy collaborating, but do not enjoy attending required meetings or creating required assessments. the interviews show that many of the plc accomplishments occur over email and are not a part of the structured meeting, such as sharing students and resources, therefore the requirement to attend weekly meetings is an unnecessary nuisance because teachers can accomplish their favorite aspects of collaboration without meeting. essentially, the benefits of sharing and assessments can occur outside of meetings, so the item asking about meetings could be interpreted in different ways, depending on the understanding of how sharing occurs and how assessments are created. because of the weakness with the plc meeting item and a lack of research available on plcs in middle schools, an empirical argument can be made to support the factors, but this variable should be investigated further to determine the relationship with the sharing improves instruction component or the assessment informs instruction component. bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 14 tbc as they relate to each component analysis of tbc and the two components showed that little variance across tbc existed. the findings from the anova showed that the only statistically significant findings relate to age group on component 2, assessment informs instruction. the findings from the qualitative interviews show that the majority of common formative assessments are carried out in the classroom using an online assessment tool. the anova showing that the older age group of teachers believes less that assessment informs instruction is corroborated by research from marc prensky (2007) which shows that teachers in the older age group are often less familiar with technology and younger teachers have an easier time with technology. the tukey post hoc comparisons show that the only significant difference between age groups is the over 59 compared to the 20-29 and 40-49 age groups, even though the over 59 group has a lower mean score, (m=33, sd=18.40), on component 2 than all the groups. the sample size was not large enough to determine if the other differences between means were truly significant. further examination between age groups with a larger sample size could explain these differences more. technology can be a barrier to effective implementation. if an online assessment system is the primary tool for assessing students, then teachers not familiar with the technology, such as the over 59 age group identified in the analysis, are going to be more resistant to using assessment, even if they believe it to be beneficial. discussion of qualitative results teachers at the two school sites all indicated they belong to a plc and benefit from participation in their plc, but do not necessarily view meetings as the best method for collaborating. teachers identify many beneficial outcomes of plcs, especially improvements to instruction through sharing and assessments. teachers reported enjoying the benefits from refining their teaching through data discussions, sharing students, collaborating on unified communications with parents, and the feeling of collegial support from getting along well with plc members. participants indicated that they feel their individualized approaches are merged well with the group needs and that they are able to maintain their individuality while still collaborating as a group. this is important because teachers are highly educated and informed decision makers who still want the power to use their expertise and experience to make classroom decisions. the data suggested that teachers at the two school sites participate in plcs because of an administrative requirement to attend plc meetings but would choose to participate regardless of the requirement. by letting teachers determine their method for collaborating both their time and their professional expertise are valued, thus encouraging a positive view of collaboration. implications for practice the findings from the bpccfa survey and semi-structured interviews suggested that teachers value sharing because it improves instruction and also value assessment because it informs instruction. it is essential for effective implementation that 1) teachers get along on a personal level with their plc members, 2) plc meetings should be formatted in a manner convenient for the members, 3) plcs need time to become comfortable sharing data, and 4) plcs still need to allow for instructional approaches individualized to each teacher. it is important to recognize that these teacher participants indicated a strong preference for participating in plcs; however, they also indicated overwhelmingly that getting along with their plc members was critical to the enjoyment of participating. a plc is much more than a weekly bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 15 meeting. it is a group of teachers that get along well and support each other to accomplish common purposes with their students. participation is not necessarily measured by meeting attendance, as participation occurs in many ways not related to attending a meeting, such as exchanging ideas over email or in the hallway between classes. the administrative requirements should therefore not focus on a meeting requirement, but rather recognize that collaboration occurs in many ways. teachers enjoyed the flexibility of structuring meetings in their own way, only meeting in person when necessary and sharing resources and information via email. this would allow teachers to continue to respect each other’s time. as explained in previous research (clement & vandenberghe, 2000; mis, 2009) and supported by the semi-structured interview responses, limited time can be a roadblock to collaborating. as described by randy, “we send out an email to everyone . . .’on this quiz i got this correct, this is what i saw wrong.’” then teachers are able to find methods for sharing information and work around times that are convenient for them. essentially, it should be recognized that a plc functions very well when the plc members get along and this can play out in ways beyond the administrative meeting requirement. those who want teachers to work in plcs that focus on sharing instructional practices and common assessments should encourage plc members to form relationships built on mutual trust and respect and allow each plc to develop their own measures for successful collaboration. administrators should recognize that the model of collaboration that works for one group might not work for a different group. administrators should be flexible and not mandate a specific structure for meetings nor frequency requirements because plc members find methods and time for collaborating that meet the needs of their students and their curriculum outside of attending meetings. plc members should be given ownership over the process and they should be able to determine the group norms, expectations, and requirements. school leaders need to do more than simply assign teachers to groups. leaders need to be aware of existing 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(2018). embedded formative assessment. solution tree. author notes liz bergeron new tech network lbergeron@newtechnetwork.org http://www2.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/factsheet.html mailto:lbergeron@newtechnetwork.org bergeron: middle school teachers' beliefs about collaboration current issues in education, 21(3) 19 volume 21, issue 3 december 9, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf cie template 1 volume 18, number 1 march 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x assessment under resource constraints steve lovett and mary g. curtis the university of texas at brownsville assessment and the measurement of learning are receiving increasing emphasis in american higher education. this is a case study that demonstrates a simple, inexpensive method of measuring freshman to senior “gains” or learning using a cross-sectional methodology. seniors and freshmen within a four-year business program were both given the same multi-part test. not surprisingly, the seniors’ average score on all parts was higher than that of the freshmen. however, the seniors were older than the freshmen, indicating a possible maturity effect, and had higher average scores on their entrance examinations, indicating a possible selection effect. we used regression techniques to estimate these effects, and subtracted the estimate from the seniors’ gain to estimate a net gain. our method is applicable to any learning outcome that can be quantified, and we believe that it is both effective and within the means of nearly all u.s. institutions of higher education. keywords: program assessment, measuring learning, cross-sectional design, hispanic-serving institution, critical thinking skills institutions of higher education in the united states are becoming more and more aware of the need to measure and manage student learning. zumeta referred to an “outcomes revolution” (2011, p. 137) in american higher education, which began sometime in the 1980s and in which educational programs are evaluated more on the basis of results, such as measures of student learning, job placement rates, or graduates’ career success, and less on the basis of inputs, such as faculty credentials, advanced scientific laboratories, or library facilities. this shift is reflected in the priorities of accrediting agencies. banta, jones, and black noted that “most professional accrediting organizations expect faculty within accredited academic programs to demonstrate accountability regarding student performance on a continuous basis” (2009, p. 22). still, rodgers et al. (2013) suggested that seeking real improvements in student learning is an even more powerful rationale for program assessment than simply responding to the pressures of accrediting agencies or any other external stakeholders. it’s useful to distinguish institutional goals and outcomes from program goals and outcomes. goals at both levels should be mission driven (council for higher education accreditation, 2014). institutional mission statements tend to emphasize broad measures of success and contributions to communities. for example, the institution at which this study was conducted is located on the u.s./mexican border, and its mission is focused on the integration of cultures and on developing knowledgeable citizens and leaders. however, this paper is focused on program goals and outcomes. college, school or program mission statements are generally more specific than those of institutions. for example, this study was done within the business school of the above mentioned institution, and the school mission emphasizes teaching critical thinking, quantitative skills, and business content knowledge, all of which we attempt to measure as part of the program assessment process. unfortunately, program assessment is often met with resistance from faculty. several authors, including bresciani (2006), suskie (2009) and walvoord (2010), current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 2 have suggested that resource constraints are a key reason for this resistance – assessment requires resources, including faculty time and labor, and administration is often either reluctant or unable to provide these resources. suskie wrote “. . . if assessment is to be pervasive and sustained, it must be cost-effective, yielding benefits that justify the time and expense put into it” (2009, p. 90). therefore, the development of assessment methods that make efficient use of available resources should be a priority within the industry of higher education. program assessment is a cycle that begins with setting goals for student learning, continues with teaching or otherwise providing learning opportunities, then with the measurement of learning, and finally with some change in curriculum or pedagogy intended to improve learning (suskie, 2009). this paper focuses on the third step of the cycle: the measurement of learning. it is a case study, the purpose of which is to demonstrate a simple yet effective method of measuring learning that is within the means of nearly all institutions, including those with limited resources to devote to assessment. furthermore, this method is versatile in that it is applicable to any learning outcome that can be quantified; in other words, so long as a number can be assigned to a student’s result. longitudinal versus cross-sectional designs the two basic designs for measuring learning are longitudinal and cross-sectional. a longitudinal design means that the same student is evaluated at different times – for example, as an entering freshman and then again as a graduating senior. the difference between the student’s scores in whatever measure is used is taken as the student’s “gain” while in the program. a cross-sectional design means that different students are evaluated at the same time. for example, in one semester a group of entering freshmen and another group of graduating seniors could be evaluated, and the difference between their scores could be taken as the freshman to senior gain. seifert et al. (2010) favored longitudinal designs over cross-sectional designs, writing “. . . longitudinal pretest-posttest designs yield the most internally valid results and the most accurate estimates of college impact. there is no substitute for the ‘gold standard’ that longitudinal pretest-posttest studies furnish in accurately assessing how students learn and change” (p. 14). these authors did acknowledge several difficulties with longitudinal designs, especially the increased cost of data collection and difficulties resulting from participant dropout, but they nonetheless recommended longitudinal designs because they yield more accurate results than cross-sectional designs. however, at many institutions, especially those with low persistence, the problems associated with longitudinal studies are magnified to the point that they become impractical. such studies require that students be tracked through their programs. this is a manageable task when many students complete their programs as expected, as often tends to be the case at wealthier and more selective institutions. still, tracking students becomes especially difficult in situations of low persistence, or those in which relatively few students actually graduate from the institution in which they begin their education, many of those who do attend irregularly for long periods of time, and many other graduates are transfers from other institutions. unfortunately, these situations may in fact be the norm. pascarella and terenzini wrote that “based on evidence of nationally representative samples, it would appear that since the late 1980s, 50 percent or more of the students who initially enrolled at a four-year college eventually attended two or more undergraduate institutions” (2005, p. 146). furthermore, the persistence problem tends to be more severe at less selective institutions, and these are often those with fewer financial resources. poorer institutions have fewer resources from which to draw and rely more heavily on student enrollment to fund themselves. for example, the institution at which this study was conducted is located in one of the poorest areas in the nation (u.s. department of commerce, 2012) and does not have access to any significant endowments or other financial resources, so administrators must request funding from the state legislature biannually based on enrollment. at least partly because of this, the institution followed an open enrollment policy at the time of the study. act (2010) reported that the first to second year retention rates for four-year public institutions offering bachelor’s degrees averaged 91.5% for the “highly selective” institutions, but only 57.5% for open enrollment institutions. the six year graduation rate for the highly selective institutions was 76.0%, but only 26.4% for the open enrollment institutions. and the persistence problem is often especially severe in hispanic serving institutions, such as the one in which this study took place. the u.s. census bureau (2010), the u.s. department of education (2011), and the u.s. department of labor (2011) have all noted that persistence is a particular problem in minority serving institutions. we recognize that the issue of persistence may be viewed in various ways, and that some institutions or educators may in fact view a lack of persistence positively. they may prefer that students compete for degrees, and even encourage low performers to leave their programs. none-the-less, our position is that persistence is to be encouraged – we want students to get degrees because we believe that doing so will contribute to the quality of their lives. as many of the students enrolled at this institution are first-generation college students, persistence to the completion of a four-year degree is a significant challenge. they have few role models within their own families or even within the community. in any case, a solution to the difficulties that low persistence imposes on longitudinal designs may be the assessment under resource constraints 3 use of cross-sectional designs, in which different students are evaluated at the same time. of course, the fundamental problem with cross-sectional studies, and the reason that they are less precise than longitudinal studies, is that different individuals are being evaluated, and they may differ on many dimensions, including their initial preparation or abilities. however, lovett and johnson (2012) demonstrated techniques whereby defensible adjustments could be made for any identifiable differences. furthermore, because they require fewer resources, cross-sectional designs are more likely to be realized in less wealthy institutions. the measurement of learning at these institutions is certainly as critical as it is at more elite institutions, and in many cases these institutions do not require the precision needed for highlevel academic research, but simply need to obtain reasonable estimates of student learning on a continuous basis. this paper therefore continues with a demonstration of how estimates of student learning can be obtained through a cross-sectional design, using a simple, pragmatic method that is within the means of nearly all institutions. the setting, participants and procedures this study was conducted in the business program of a small university located on the u.s./mexican border. the institution is a designated hispanic serving institution (u.s. department of education, 2011). university records showed that the student body at the time of the study was 93% hispanic. many students were raising families and/or working, and most were first generation college goers. the struggle to increase the educational levels of hispanics in the u.s. has been well documented by authors such as amaro-jiménez and hungerford-kresser (2013) and oseguera, locks, and vega (2009). meinert reported that “. . . only 64.3 percent of hispanics age 25 and older have at least a high school diploma or the equivalent, and just 14.1 percent have a bachelor’s degree . . .” (2013, p. 29). she also stated that “over the next four decades, 37.6 million hispanic workers are projected to join the u.s. labor force, which will account for about 80 percent of the total growth in the workforce” (meinert, 2013, p. 30), and made a rather convincing case that improving the educational level of hispanics is one of the greatest challenges facing the u.s. today. first, we obtained approval for the study from our institutional review board. the participants were either undergraduate seniors enrolled in the business program’s capstone course or freshmen enrolled in an introductory business course. the two groups were compared using an in-classroom test that counted toward a portion of their course grades – it was an embedded assessment tool. suskie (2009) favored embedded assessments over “add-on” assessments, or those that are ungraded and outside of course requirements, noting that it is difficult to convince students to take add-on assessments seriously. the test was written by the teacher of the capstone course, and so was an internally generated rather than a standardized test. in general, internally generated tests are more useful for measuring learning because they have greater content validity; they are written by the instructors from content covered in the program, and so measure more specifically what students are expected to learn in the program. choosing subjects or areas for testing is a very significant issue in any attempt to measure learning within a program. the subjects covered in the test described below were chosen based on the school’s mission statement, the required classes in the school’s degree programs, and the best judgment of the teacher of the capstone course, who had been teaching within the school for more than a decade. the test included 70 multiple choice questions. multiple choice tests are often criticized because they provoke little thought, but they none-the-less remain popular because they can provide information about a broad range of material in a relatively short test (suskie, 2009). the first 54 multiple choice questions were content questions covering the seven business topics most emphasized in the program. these were accounting, economics, finance, marketing management, marketing promotions, operations management and organizational behavior. these are referred to below simply as topics 1 through 7 (not in the same order as above). the test also included 16 other multiple choice questions involving mathematical calculations. the first eight of these are referred to below as “rote math”. these were rather simple questions, examples of which had been demonstrated in class by each teacher shortly before the test. the second eight questions are referred to as “math with thought.” these were more complex questions that had not been demonstrated but which built on the rote math questions. there was also one essay question which the authors used to evaluate critical thinking and which is discussed more fully below. there were 49 seniors, constituting the entire enrollment of two sections of the program’s capstone course. these seniors took their test in one sitting. there were 177 freshmen enrolled in four sections of the introductory course. enrollment in these sections ranged from 41 to 47 students, and two different teachers taught two sections each. both teachers agreed to help with this study, and, in order to minimize the demands on each, we split the task of measurement at the freshman level between them. this meant that not all freshmen participated in all parts of the study, but we consider this to be a realistic assessment situation. good assessment depends on an efficient use of resources, and accurate estimates of student learning do not require that all students participate in all assessment activities. suskie wrote that “. . . a representative sample can yield information that is almost as accurate as information from everyone” (2009, p. 46), and noted that sampling is a way current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 4 to minimize the costs of assessment. we address the issue of the representativeness of the freshman sections below, at the end of the initial analysis section. the first freshman teacher had two sections with a total of 89 students. he/she included all of the content questions on in-classroom tests, but the students did not answer all of the questions in one sitting. because these questions were designed for seniors they were rather difficult for the freshmen, so the teacher included them on tests throughout the semester as the topics came up, and mixed them with easier questions that play no role in this study. students are usually accustomed to tests that include some easy and some harder questions, so this resulted in rather typical freshman level tests. the second freshman teacher had two sections with a total of 88 students and included the math questions on tests throughout the semester in a similar fashion, and also included the critical thinking essay on a test about halfway through the semester. it is worth noting here that the baseline used for measuring gains in this study was the freshmen’s scores during an introductory course, after they had received some instruction. of course, the ideal baseline would be the freshmen’s “pre-entry” scores, or their score before entering the program. however, obtaining pre-entry scores using an embedded assessment instrument, or one that counts as a part of a course grade, may simply be impractical. doing so would mean giving the freshmen a graded test that they had no opportunity to study for on or before their first day of class. the freshmen would almost certainly perceive this to be unfair, and many teachers would agree with them. measuring underlying constructs of all of the outcome variables used in this study, critical thinking (ct) was the most difficult to measure. halpern (2003) defined ct as “. . . thinking that is purposeful, reasoned, and goal directed” (p. 6), and there is little doubt that it is a priority for teachers in higher education. buskist and irons (2008) wrote “if there is one thing that all college and university teachers want their students to learn, it is to think critically” (p. 49), and halpern (2001) wrote that “. . . there is virtually no disagreement over the need to help college students improve how they think” (p. 270). bailin et al. (1999) pointed out one aspect of ct that is especially relevant to this study; ct requires some background knowledge of the issue at hand. they wrote that “. . . the depth of knowledge, understanding and experience persons have in a particular area of study or practice is a significant determinant of the degree to which they are capable of thinking critically in that area” (bailin et al., p. 290). for example, a person who knows little or nothing about chemistry is at a severe disadvantage if asked to apply ct to determine whether the results of a chemistry experiment are valid. likewise, a person who knows little about business is at a disadvantage if asked to apply ct to a business situation. this by itself was good reason to hope that the seniors in our study would demonstrate better ct skills than the freshmen. both the seniors and freshmen were asked to write a short essay from the same prompt that presented the students with a business situation in which a low-end u.s. shoe manufacturer had to decide whether to begin manufacturing “knock-offs” of an expensive italian shoe. this situation had many points to consider. for example, while the italian shoes might sell well in some markets, they might not sell well in the markets of the low-end manufacturer. there was also the response of the italian company to consider – would they take legal action? – and there were ethical issues to take into account as well. this prompt was one that suskie (2009) would consider an “extended response” rather than a “restricted response” prompt because it gave the students considerable latitude in deciding how to respond, which was appropriate for an essay intended to evaluate critical thinking. the essays used for scoring were handwritten. the course teachers first made clean photocopies of the essays. we then shuffled these so that we wouldn’t know whether the student was a senior or a freshman until after we had assigned a final score, scored each essay independently, and finally met to compare and discuss each student’s essay in order to come to a consensus on the final score. we used a descriptive rubric for scoring. this means one that includes brief descriptions of the work that would result in each possible rating. suskie (2009) noted that using rubrics as scoring guides makes scoring easier and more consistent, and that descriptive rubrics are especially useful because they explicitly document standards of performance. using a 3 point scale (3 = exemplary, 2 = competent, 1 = developing), we scored each essay on four ct competencies. we evaluated how well each student: 1) restated the problem described in the prompt, 2) analyzed the issues in the prompt, 3) used synthesis, or supported their response with external information, and 4) came to a logical conclusion or evaluation based on the response. we used a pilot group of essays not included in the project results to clarify and refine the rubric. the final ct score was the simple or unweighted sum of the four competency scores. all of the outcome measures used in this study were therefore direct evidence of student learning, which suskie describes as “. . . tangible, visible, selfexplanatory, and compelling evidence of exactly what students have and have not learned” (2009, p. 20). also, all of the measures used were quantitative, because they resulted in meaningful numbers that could be analyzed statistically. however, the multiple choice questions (content and math) were objective measures, while the critical thinking essay was a subjective measure, or one that required professional judgment to score. suskie (2009) noted that subjective measures are becoming assessment under resource constraints 5 increasingly popular because they evaluate important skills that cannot be evaluated through objective measures, including creativity and problem solving skills. however, as mentioned above, our crosssectional methodology required that possible differences between the seniors and freshmen be taken into account. one difference that is likely to be important is a selection effect – students who are less prepared for college are more likely to drop out, while those who are well prepared are likely to persist. this selection effect is an integral part of tinto’s (1975, 1993) model of student departure. it tends to raise the average performance of those remaining in a program, thereby creating a false appearance of learning within the program. we therefore needed to estimate the students’ readiness upon entering the program. we obtained the information to do this from the university’s admissions center. all of the students had taken commercially available reading, writing and mathematics tests upon entering the university. we standardized the scores from these tests, and below refer to the average of the three standardized scores as a “readiness composite” or simply “readiness.” initial analysis sample means and the results of t-tests for the equivalence of means are shown in table 1. we refer to the first seven variables as demographic variables, number eight (the readiness composite) as a selection variable, and numbers nine through twelve as performance variables. table 1 descriptive statistics – seniors versus freshmen seniors (n=49) freshm. (n=177) overall st. dev. sig. of diff. 1. avg.. ag e 27.51 20.84 5.635 .000 2. male (%) 53.0 55.0 0.499 .775 3. hispanic 91.3% 94.6% 0.250 .474 4. speak mostly spanish at home 34.8% 38.7% 0.484 .711 5. mother college graduate 26.1% 33.3% 0.459 .494 6. father college graduate 32.6% 39.3% 0.483 .511 7. avg. family income $39,350 $34,930 18,351 .200 8. readiness composite 0.2576 -0.0563 0.673 .004 9. content mc (avg. correct) 85.8% 66.3% 0.164 .000 10. math rote (avg. correct) 90.0% 75.7% 0.190 .000 11. math with thought (avg. correct) 74.0% 53.4% 0.243 .000 12. critical thinking (out of 12) 7.67 6.98 1.713 .044 we took the demographic variables from either university records or a student survey done in class. these show that the seniors and freshmen were similar in several ways. in both groups just over half were men, and most were hispanic. just over a third reported speaking mostly spanish at home. roughly one-third reported that their parents were college graduates – in other words, about two-thirds of both groups were first generation college students. their average family income was less than $40,000 per year. but there were differences as well. it was not surprising that the seniors were older than the freshmen, but this was important because it indicated a likely maturity effect. pascarella and terenzini wrote: “it is one thing to conclude that increases in subject matter knowledge and academic skills occur during college. it is quite another to conclude that these increases occur because of college” [emphasis in original] (2005, p. 70). certainly, college is not the only avenue through which students learn as they go through life – they learn new vocabulary by watching television, for example, and they may learn business skills through work experience. therefore, in order to calculate a net gain, an adjustment for age may be necessary. table 1 also shows that the seniors’ readiness composite was higher, indicating a possible selection effect, or one in which poorly prepared students dropped out at a higher rate than well prepared students (tinto, 1975, 1993). again, an adjustment for such an effect may be necessary in order to calculate a net gain. finally, the seniors’ scores were higher on all performance measures – the content multiple choice (topics 1-7 combined), rote math, math with thought, and the critical thinking essay. of course, this was an initially encouraging result, although it was before adjustments for differences between the groups. table 2 shows correlations for the combined data set including both seniors and freshmen. several correlations were noteworthy. age correlated negatively with speaking spanish at home and with parents’ education levels – this probably reflects the increasing use of english and increasing education levels within the area. the men reported higher family incomes, and the hispanics lower family incomes. it was interesting that those who spoke spanish at home tended to report higher parents’ education levels – perhaps the spanish speakers were the more recent arrivals in the area and perhaps education was related to mobility. however, our goal at this point was to identify variables for which adjustments should be made when comparing the seniors’ and freshmen’s performance measures. an adjustment should be made for any variable for which there is a significant difference between the seniors and freshmen, and which correlates significantly with one or more of the performance measures (lovett & johnson, 2012). age was an obvious choice – the seniors were significantly older and age showed a significant positive correlation with three of the four performance measures. however, no adjustments were necessary for any of the other six demographic variables because, even current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 6 table 2 correlations 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. age 2. male -.04 3. hispanic -.11 -.16 4. spanish/home -.20* -.12 .20* 5. mother college -.21* .09 -.04 .21* 6. father college -.25** .06 -.07 .36** .60** 7. family income -.09 .21* -.25** -.06 .38** .42** 8. readiness .08 -.13 -.10 -.27** -.03 -.15 .09 9. content mc .36** .18 -.18 -.39** -.18 -.22 -.21 .42** 10. math rote .27** -.06 -.08 -.10 .02 -.13 .08 .36** .44** 11. math/thought .32** .15 -.25** -.27** -.01 -.15 .10 .36** .42** .54** 12. critical thinking .17 .11 -.24* -.16 .16 .17 .19 .28** .24 .21* .28** **= correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *= correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). table 3 results: calculate net gains in ten areas seniors freshmen difference adjustment net gain overall std. dev. gain in std. dev. (% correct) 1. topic 1 84.69 66.46 18.23 9.17 9.06 24.69 .367 2. topic 2 87.24 63.72 23.52 9.71 13.81 20.59 .671 3. topic 3 87.50 67.44 20.06 8.64 11.42 19.56 .584 4. topic 4 90.09 67.47 22.62 10.66 11.96 22.13 .540 5. topic 5 84.44 77.73 6.71 3.75 2.96 17.31 .171 6. topic 6 87.24 65.66 21.58 10.44 11.14 22.90 .486 7. topic 7 79.85 52.87 26.98 9.83 17.15 26.85 .639 8. math – rote 90.05 75.74 14.31 8.63 5.68 19.01 .299 9. math with thought 73.98 53.42 20.56 12.08 8.48 24.28 .349 10. critical thinking 7.67 6.98 0.69 0.53 0.16 1.713 .093 (scale = 0 – 12) assessment under resource constraints 7 though “hispanic” and “spanish at home” correlated negatively with some performance measures, there were no significant differences between the seniors and freshmen on these variables. but the selection variable – the readiness composite – showed significant correlations with all four performance variables, and seniors had higher readiness scores. we therefore made adjustments for only two variables: age, which represented a maturity effect, and the readiness composite, which represented a selection effect. none-the-less, that the exercise of comparing seniors and freshmen using all available information was a useful one. in this case we found no significant demographic differences between the two groups apart from age, but in other cases we might. we also compared the freshman groups. recall that, while each senior participated in the complete study, each freshmen participated in only a part of the study – either content, or math and essay – and the part that they participated in was not the result of a random assignment, rather, an entire section was assigned to the same part. we therefore checked for differences between the groups on age and readiness. the 89 “content” freshmen averaged 21.2 years old, while the 88 “math and essay” freshmen averaged 20.5 years old, and a simple t-test showed that the difference was not significant at traditional levels (p = .30). the average readiness score of the “content” freshmen was -.0236, while that of the “math and essay” freshmen was -.0893, and again a t-test showed no significant difference (p = .53). therefore, differences between the sections were not a concern. but again, the exercise of comparing the sections was useful because in other cases there might be differences. for example, a night section might have older students, or an honors section might have better prepared students. results the results are shown in table 3. the first column shows the average senior score on each topic, the second the average freshman score, and the third column the “gain,” or the difference between the two scores. the fourth column shows the adjustment for age and readiness. an example of the procedure for calculating this adjustment is shown in table 4. in step a, we ran a regression using the topic 1 score as the dependent variable and age and readiness as independent variables, and this regression was done for the entire data set, including both seniors and freshmen. since the beta values for both of these variables were significant, we know that in general older students and better prepared students tended to score higher on topic 1. furthermore, the beta values are unbiased estimators of the effect of the age or readiness on the topic 1 score, and this allows us to use the same statistical technique for making adjustments as was used by lovett and johnson (2012). table 4 results: calculate maturity-selection adjustments step a regression on topic 1 score. variable beta std. err. sig. constant . .514 .078 .000 age .009 .003 .006 readiness .101 .034 .004 model r-square .126 step b calculate predicted values based on age and readiness. freshmen seniors .514 .514 + (.009 * 20.84) + (.009 * 27.51) + (.101 * -.0563) + (.101 * .2576) .6959 .7876 step c calculate adjustment. .7876 .6959 = .0917 we first considered the freshmen, who had an average age of 20.84 and an average readiness score of .0563. what would be the expected average topic 1 score of such a group, without regard to whether they were seniors or freshmen? step b shows that it would be 69.59%. likewise, the expected average score of the seniors, with an average age of 27.51 and an average readiness score of .2576, would be 78.76%. step c shows that the difference between these – 9.17% – was what could be attributed to maturity and selection effects. in the fourth column of table 3 this was subtracted from the gain to calculate the net gain, shown in the fifth column. failure to make this adjustment would mean, in effect, that the program was taking credit for the fact that the students had grown older while in the program and that some poorly prepared students had dropped out, and of course credit should be taken only for what was actually taught to the students. for the sake of brevity, calculations for the adjustments for the other topics are not shown, but the procedure was the same in all cases. the sixth column of table 3 shows the standard deviation for the score on each topic, calculated using the whole data set including both seniors and freshmen, and the seventh column the net gain in standard deviations. this is necessary because a test resulting in a high standard deviation of scores, or one in which the difference between high performers and low performers is great, will also tend to show a greater difference between seniors and freshmen. discussion excluding topic 5, the net gains for the content items shown in table 3 ranged from 0.367 to 0.671 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 8 standard deviations. these results were encouraging because they exceeded pascarella and terenzini’s estimate of 0.26 to 0.32 standard deviations for the net effect of attending college (2005, p. 71). the net gains for the two math items were 0.299 and 0.349 standard deviations. these results roughly match pascarella and terenzini’s estimate of 0.29 to 0.32 standard deviations for the net effect of attending college on mathematical skills (2005, p. 71). also, recall that the baseline in this study was the scores of freshmen during their introductory business course, after they had received some instruction. had “pre-entry” scores been used, the net gains would likely have been even higher. topic 5, with a net gain of only .171, was a cause for concern. however, we should not immediately conclude that students are learning little in this area – it could be that the test questions did not effectively measure what they did learn. also, note that the freshmen’s raw score for topic 5 (column two of table 3) was the highest of all the nine content and math items. it may be that the questions were too easy, making it hard to measure the freshman to senior gains. in any case, since assessment is an on-going process, this exercise should be repeated in coming semesters with different sets of questions, and more attention should be given to students’ gains in topic 5 if disappointing results are repeatedly encountered. however, the critical thinking (ct) scores were more troubling. the net gain for ct shown in table 3 was only .093 standard deviations. pascarella and terenzini found few studies on gains in critical thinking or cognitive skills in general, but what they did find led them to an estimate of a gain of 0.50 standard deviations in critical thinking during college (2005, p. 205). this was a simple gain rather than a net gain, but pascarella and terenzini (2005) speculated that most of the gain was uniquely attributable to college, so that there should be little difference between the two. in any case, our finding of such a small net gain was a cause for concern, and this was especially true because the superior performance of the seniors on the multiple choice content items indicated that they did in fact have more background knowledge in business, which should be to their advantage in applying ct to the business situation used in our essay prompt (bailin et al., 1999). now, once again, we should not immediately conclude that students were not learning to think critically in the program – it is possible that they were, but that our method of evaluation did not capture these gains. still, recall that the nine content and math items, for which we found substantial gains, were measured through multiple choice questions which simply require a student to recognize a correct answer when presented with one. perhaps the program was primarily teaching these recognition skills, and neglecting more important ct skills. these troubling results should provide a stimulus for the faculty to begin a process of improvement – the faculty may begin experimenting with new teaching techniques or curriculum in an effort to improve ct. certainly, many authors have written about teaching techniques to improve ct. for example, brookfield (2012) wrote that social learning can be used to teach ct. students working in small groups to analyze scenarios – such as the one used in our essay prompt – are often surprised to find that their classmates interpret the scenario differently, and that this helps them to question their own reasoning and therefore to begin thinking critically. pascarella and terenzini (2005) describe a technique they called academic controversy, in which a group of four students is divided into two pairs and each pair is then assigned an opposite position on a controversial topic. bonk and smith (1998) described more than a dozen useful techniques including debates, mock trials, and case-based teaching, all of which may have advantages in teaching ct. limitations in the following paragraphs we discuss five limitations of this study in what we consider to be ascending order of importance. first, as previously mentioned, we did not completely measure student gains within the program because the freshmen were not given the test at the beginning of their programs but rather at the end of their introductory class. furthermore, giving the students a course embedded test, or one that counts as a portion of a grade, before they had received any instruction is probably impractical. doing so would be quite intimidating to the students and very questionable from the perspective of fairness. however, we don’t consider this to be a major flaw in our methodology because a test near the beginning of a program is a reasonable substitute for a test at the beginning of a program, and this results in a conservative estimate of student gains – we know that we underestimated rather than overestimated student gains within the program. second, we must address the issue of internally generated versus externally generated measures. suskie (2009) referred to this issue as one of “local” versus “published” measures. we used a test that was written by teachers within the program rather than one written outside the program, such as a commercial test, and in our judgment it would be difficult if not impossible to find a commercial or published test flexible enough to be adapted to both a freshman and a senior level course. again, however, we do not consider this to be a major flaw. we are aware that some external observers – including some administrators and even some accrediting agencies – are more impressed by externally generated measures. however, we consider curriculum-based measures a valid path of investigation. such measures are touted in the field of education as an authentic form of measurement (bradley, danielson, & hallahan, 2002). assessment under resource constraints 9 and, as previously mentioned, internally generated tests have greater content validity than externally generated tests because they measure more specifically what students are expected to learn within a program, and therefore are more useful as a part of the four step assessment cycle mentioned in the introduction. third, in this study we made adjustments for age (the maturity effect) and readiness (the selection effect), but, even though we examined the available data for other material differences between the freshmen and the seniors, we can never be completely sure that these two variables were the only material differences. for example, there is considerable evidence that socioeconomic status affects academic achievement (reardon, 2011). we attempted to examine this issue by asking students about their parents’ education levels and their annual incomes, failed to find any differences between the freshmen and seniors, and therefore made no adjustment. still, it is possible that there is some significant difference that we failed to find – perhaps there are socioeconomic differences that are not reflected in education or income. we do consider this to be a fundamental difficulty of our cross-sectional method of measuring learning, because while it will usually be possible to make adjustments for major effects such as maturity or selection, it will never be possible to ensure that all effects have been accounted for. fourth, our method is more easily applied to objective than to subjective measures of learning simply because it is easier to quantify objective measures. these include multiple choice tests, fill-in-the-blank tests for which no partial credit is given, or any other measure that can be scored without using professional judgment. subjective measures, of course, are those requiring professional judgment to score (suskie, 2009). in this study the objective measure was the multiple choice portion of the test, and applying our method to that portion required very little faculty labor except for making the test and data entry. the subjective portion was the critical thinking essay, and in order to apply our method we needed to quantify the students’ performance on this portion. as described above, we first agreed upon a rubric, then scored the essays individually, and finally met to discuss and come to a consensus as to the scores. all this required a considerable amount of time and effort. furthermore, we believe that quantifying subjective measures will inevitably be quite time consuming, and subjective measures are necessary to evaluate important skills such as critical thinking, creativity and problem solving. since our objective is to propose a method for measuring learning under resource constraints, this is indeed a significant limitation. fifth, our method applies only to measurements of learning that can be quantified, and there are certainly some important educational outcomes, especially attitudes, that at least do not lend themselves to quantification. for example, most colleges of business seek to teach their students to be ethical, and most colleges of education seek to teach their students to value children and their differences. it is unlikely that these and other important attitudes will ever be reliably quantified, and so our method cannot be applied to them. conclusion we hope that this paper has demonstrated a practical method of measuring learning, which is, of course, an important step in improving learning. furthermore, this method, in which beginning and ending students are compared and regression techniques are used to make adjustments for important differences between the two groups, is applicable to any learning outcome so long as the outcome can be quantified; in other words, so long as a number can be assigned to each student’s result. as we speculated in the previous section, it may be true that some important educational outcomes cannot be quantified, but regardless, there are many important outcomes that can be quantified. for example, kraiger, ford, and salas (1993) and kraiger (2002) described three kinds of outcomes. first, affective outcomes include confidence, attitudes and motivation, and these are of course the most difficult to quantify. but skill-based outcomes lend themselves more easily to quantification. for example, many institutions seek to teach and assess students’ written or oral communication skills, and commonly assign grades to written work or presentations. the third category are cognitive outcomes, including declarative knowledge such as that which we measured through the content multiple choice questions in this study, and also cognitive strategies such as critical thinking, which we also measured. most importantly, we believe that our method is both effective and within the means of nearly all institutions of higher education, including those with limited resources to devote to assessment. references act, inc. 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(2011). what does it mean to be accountable? dimensions and implications of higher education’s public accountability. the review of higher education, 35(1), 131-148. http://www.chea.org/directories/index.asp https://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/2010/tables.html https://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/2010/tables.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48/4810768.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48/4810768.html http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/winningthefutureimprovinglatinoeducation.pdf http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/winningthefutureimprovinglatinoeducation.pdf http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/winningthefutureimprovinglatinoeducation.pdf http://www.dol.gov/_sec/media/reports/hispanicelaborforce.pdf http://www.dol.gov/_sec/media/reports/hispanicelaborforce.pdf assessment under resource constraints 11 article citation lovett, s., & curtis, m. g. (2015). assessment under resource constraints. current issues in education, 18(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1357 author notes steve lovett the university of texas at brownsville school of business one west university blvd., brownsville, texas 78520 steve.lovett@utb.edu dr. steve lovett is an associate professor in the department of management and marketing at the university of texas at brownsville. his research has focused on the assessment cycle and the measurement of learning. mary g. curtis the university of texas at brownsville college of education one west university blvd., brownsville, texas 78520 mary.curtis@utb.edu dr. mary curtis is an associate professor of special education in the educational psychology and leadership studies at the university of texas at brownsville. her research interests focus on the assessment of language acquisition, language differences, and language disorders. manuscript received: 01/15/2014 revisions received: 09/04/2014 accepted: 09/26/2014 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1357 mailto:steve.lovett@utb.edu mailto:mary.curtis@utb.edu current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 12 volume 18, number 1 march 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editors tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 9, number 4 february, 2006 issn 1099-839x e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding frederick b. king and diana j. larocco university of hartford journals can be defined as the permanent records of thoughts and ideas that an individual has processed and clarified through the act of writing or otherwise recording their experiences (killion, 1999). while journaling has existed almost as long as man has been writing, the use of journaling as a pedagogical strategy is a relatively recent phenomenon that has steadily increased over the last 30 years (koontz, 2004). early on, teachers used journaling primarily as a method for improving a student’s writing skills. more recently, however, teachers in disciplines such as social studies, mathematics, engineering, sciences, and education have integrated journaling into their classroom practice (duerdan, et al., n.d.; inspiring teachers, n.d./a&b). the use of journaling across a variety of disciplines is related to the fact that constructivistoriented professors have found journaling to be a valuable strategy for checking students’ understanding of core concepts, promoting reflection on the connections between theory and practice, enhancing insight, and promoting critical thinking (andrusyszyn & davie, 1997; halva-neubauer, 1995). watkins and marsick (as cited in cyboran, 2005) stated in 1993 that “. . . people need to bring what they are learning into conscious awareness. they learn more effectively through a process of questioning, reflection, and feedback from others that permits a deeper understanding to emerge from these otherwise everyday activities” (p. 35). in the past, using paper and a writing instrument was the primary mode for journaling. nevertheless, the increased popularity and use of technology in classrooms and by individuals, the rise in distance education courses, and the changing nature of students (e.g., part time, fully employed) have given rise to a variety of technological approaches to journaling. the technological approach to journaling can take many forms and includes, for example, e-mail, web logs, and electronic discussion boards. cyboran (2005) also noted that “using technology can make reflective journaling much easier” (p. 34). additionally, electronic forms of journaling can overcome resistance, at both the individual and organizational level, because no additional resources are required or need to be purchased. moreover, technologically linked methods are particularly attractive to both instructors and students because they naturally lend themselves to allowing learners to ask asynchronous, individualized questions and seek specific feedback about assignments or their understanding of core concepts (longhurst & sandage, 2004). developing reflective practitioners through journaling “at the heart of learning through journal writing is reflection” (kerka, 2002, p. 1). reflection, and its importance in our lives, has been stressed by educational theorists and philosophers, adult educators, and cognitive scientists such as dewey, knowles, schön, and vygotsky (cyboran, 2005). “meaning making, according to constructivists, is the goal of learning processes; it requires articulation and reflection on what we know” (jonassen, davidson, collins, campbell, & haag, 1995, p. 11). reflection, aimed at developing reflective practitioners, forms the core of the conceptual framework for the departments in which this exploratory study took current issues in education vol. 9 no. 4 place. specifically, this framework was derived from the writings of schön (1987). “schön calls his model ‘reflection in action’ and describes a progression from rote following of rules to questioning, criticizing, and reforming assumptions through a continuous process he calls a ‘reflective conversation’ with the situation” (university of hartford, 2005). sometimes, schön suggested, we act, unique situations (i.e., problem or opportunity) arise, and we are surprised, for good or for bad, by the results of our actions. we may respond to the surprise by either ignoring or reflecting on the various elements of our actions. schön further contended that our reflections typically take two forms—reflection on action or reflection in action. “we may reflect on action by thinking back on what we have done to in order to discover how our knowledge in action may have contributed to an unexpected outcome” (schön, 1987, p 26). he posited that reflection on an action after it has occurred is passive and has no real direct connection to actions in the present. on the other hand, reflection in action “ . . . is thinking that serves to reshape what we are doing while we are doing it” (schön, 1987, p. 26). reflection in action is thinking about the thinking that led to the unique situation (i.e., problem or opportunity), inquiring further, deepening understanding, and discovering answers. reflection in action, as described by schön (1987), is considered by many to be the cornerstone process of journaling. “a form of dialogical learning, journal writing has been espoused as a means of facilitating reflection, promote personal growth, and precipitate change since ‘simply to record our behavior is to interfere with it’” (simons, 1978, as cited in andrusyszyn & davie, 1997, reflection through journal writing, ¶1). “reflecting through journal writing gives learners the opportunity to shape their ideas, create new ideas, and connect them to what they already know” (killion, 1999, p. 37). by its very nature, journal writing adds energy and synergy to the learning process. moreover, it provides the instructor with a permanent product that is produced by the student in his or her own “voice” and is a representation of the student’s thinking. benefits of journaling killion (1999) stated that journaling at its simplest is “writing to learn” and unlike “thinking about” ideas, which eventually evaporate, journals are permanent records of those thoughts or ideas. the process of transferring an idea into language forces the mind to process and clarify the idea. when a learner is required to apply language to an idea, the idea takes shape and form. (p. 36) similarly, other authors have duly noted the power of journaling as a pedagogical tool. they have described journaling as “ . . . taking a tour inside each students’ head” (inspiring teachers, n.d./a, ¶2), “ . . . an incredibly flexible instructional tool, useful across the entire curriculum” (kelly, 2004, ¶1), “ . . . a crucible for processing the raw material of experience in order to integrate it with existing knowledge and create new meaning” (kerka, 2002, ¶2), and “ . . . a tool to aid learners in terms of personal growth, synthesis, and reflection on new information that they acquire” (hiemstra, 2001, p. 19). the literature contains many references to the benefits of using journaling in classroom environments (duerden, et al., n.d.; hiemstra, 2001; kelly, 2004; kerka, 2002; killion, 1999). these include, but are not limited to: (a) explicating connections between new knowledge and previous knowledge; (b) examining relationships between what is being learned and the rest of the world; (c) reflecting on personal goals; (d) sorting out experiences; (e) solving problems; (f) enhancing reflective thinking; (g) enhancing metacognition; (h) improving problem solving and critical thinking; (i) facilitating self-exploration, personal growth, and values clarification; and (j) synthesizing ideas, experiences, and opinions after instruction. according to hiemstra (2001), most students and instructors employ journaling to extend learning beyond the knowledge and skills that students may have acquired in daily classroom activities. “by careful choice and judicious working of the journal assignment, students are led in a very natural way to deeper conceptual understanding of the subject at hand” (duerdan, et al., n.d.). some drawbacks to traditional journaling when instructors require students to keep paper journals and collect them for regular review, the logistics of passing them among professors and students within a given time period (a week in most classes) can be a formidable task. the journals themselves can be cumbersome to tote back and forth and they may be forgotten or not picked up. also, while the journals are in the instructor’s care the students are not journaling. phipps (2005) believed that one of the biggest obstacles to journaling was trying to read the writing, both the students and the instructors. journaling also takes time and time management. some students have been noted to wait until the day before the journal is due and then write numerous entries to the journal in an effort to catch up. as phipps (2005) notes, the journal then becomes more of a memory exercise than a true reflective learning. “with online journaling, however, student can compose their daily or weekly entries as assigned while the instructor has access to their journals to check individual progress and offer feedback on a e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding 3 continuous basis” (phipps, 2005, problems with traditional reflective journaling, ¶2). considerations when using journaling several authors have highlighted important issues that instructors should consider before they deliberately adopt journaling as a teaching strategy. first among them is selection of the type of journaling to be used. hiemstra (2001) delineated a variety of journal types and formats. for instance, instructors can select a learning journal format in which students record thoughts, reflections, feelings, personal opinions, hopes, or fears during an educational experience. in a second type, the professional journal, the specific purpose is to have students record professional growth and development (hiemstra, 2001). second, instructors should consider possible negative effects of journaling. kelly (2004) postulated that there are at least two. she suggested that journaling in class leads to the loss of instructional time needed to teach course material. technologically based approaches are asynchronous by nature and they virtually eliminate this potential drawback. kelly further posited that some students’ might perceive instructor feedback as criticism. teachers should therefore provide journal feedback that is free of criticism, is formative in nature, and focuses on the process of learning. third, questions have arisen as to whether an instructor should even read students’ journals. those against teacher involvement have cited the perceived lack of freedom for expressing opinions and emotions (kelly, 2004). in this case, the learner “may need to be convinced of the safety of expressing what could be critical comments to someone who has the power to award a grade to their overall performance” (orem, 1997, findings ¶ 1). on the other side of this issue, those who advocate that instructors review journal entries believe that a comment on an entry will help establish a relationship between a student and the instructor. the instructor may also choose to use the journal for academic topics, thereby trying to reinforce the learning that is taking place through classroom interaction, readings, and activities. andrusyszyn and davie (1997) believe that “journals shared between student and teacher were perceived to narrow the distance between the two, providing a form of security valued by the adult learning returning to school” (reflection through journal writing, ¶8). finally, another debate in journaling is whether the instructor should assess journal entries. those against assessing journal entries cite such reasons as: the power relationship between the instructor and student will inhibit thought, assessment will encourage self-censorship, and the writer may “play the game” (kerka, 2002). those in favor of assessment state that: reflection will be more highly esteemed for development, reflection can be guided by the instructor, review of the material gives instructors data on students’ learning process, and, finally, it is necessary to ensure participation (kerka, 2002). ”it is generally accepted that journals themselves should not be subject to grading, although participation or nonparticipation in the process may be evaluated” (andrusyszyn & davie, 1997, interactive journal writing as a design tool, ¶6). whether the journal is formally assessed or not, english (as cited in kerka, 2002) offered some guidelines instructors: “(a) respect—making confidentiality and boundary setting essential; (b) justice—providing equitable feedback; (c) beneficence—guarding privacy, focusing on learning rather than therapy; (d) self—awareness-practicing the reflection you preach; and (e) caring—providing clear expectations and guidelines” (p. 2). e-journaling journaling in the classroom has traditionally been a paper process. e-journaling eliminates some of the drawbacks of journaling mentioned above. additionally, this “intellectual exchange allows faculty members to encourage, guide, and engage student in an academic venue” and “builds a rapport between faculty and student that contributes to positive learning experiences and successful outcomes” (phipps, 2005, ¶ 1). consequently, some instructors have turned to electronic media for journaling. the type of media used varies, but longhurst and sandage (2004) stated that “choosing pedagogically appropriate technology with the lowest support requirement and the simplest learning curve encourages faculty adoption and student learning alike” (p. 69). they noted that the appropriate technology does not feel disruptive or intimidating. for this reason longhurst and sandage (2004) chose email as their method of transmitting journal entries. another group (duerden et al., n.d.) chose to use webnotes™ as their technology for journaling. in both of these studies, the authors found that the use of an electronic means of transmitting journal entries: (a) simplified the entire procedure, (b) was easier and more timely than using paper, and (c) provided more opportune feedback to the students. in sum, based on the research and our personal experiences, we firmly believe that the deliberate practice of journaling is, perhaps, the best instructional strategy for promoting student and instructor reflectivity. first, the use of journaling can provide the opportunity, for both novice and experienced practitioners, to reflect on their practice, thereby better understanding their own epistemology, current issues in education vol. 9 no. 4 which could then inform, and even transform, their practice (orem, 1997). second, when instructors review and comment on student journals they set the stage for their own reflections by creating a window’s view of their teaching from the student perspective. this view provides qualitative data that the instructor can then use to make formative changes in course pace, assignments, and content. third, we appreciate the need to update the act of journaling through appropriate technology. therefore, we deliberately set out to explore e-journaling as the technology of choice for student journaling in two separate courses. finally, we believe that e-journaling supports recommended practice espoused by chickering and gamson (1987). in particular, we feel that e-journaling: encourages contact between students and faculty, encourages active learning, provides prompt feedback, increases time on tasks, and respects diverse talents and ways of learning. the purpose of this research was to explore the utility of e-journaling as a means for promoting student and instructor reflectivity in two separate graduate courses (i.e., educational leadership and instructional design). specifically we were interested in understanding the phenomenon of e-journaling from the student and the instructor perspective. the following questions drove the data collection and analysis. how would students adjust to using technology (e-journaling) as the means for journaling and what challenges would they face? how, if at all, would students use e-journaling to reflect on their understanding of core concepts and make connections between theory and practice? what, if any, benefits would instructors gain from using technology as a strategy for supporting student reflectivity? methodology an exploratory case study design (yin, 2003) was used to answer the research questions. exploratory case studies are typically undertaken before launching larger scale investigations (u.s. general accounting office, 1990) . according to yin (2003), the case study is an appropriate research design when the researcher is interested in investigating “how” and “what” type questions that are focused on describing a contemporary phenomenon. the contemporary phenomenon under study was e-journaling; we took a constructivist approach in seeking to answer the research questions and describe this contemporary phenomenon. two separate graduate-level courses constituted the cases. after reviewing the literature, both collaborating instructors chose a course that they felt would benefit from the journaling experience. the first case, which is described in more detail below, was an educational leadership course that was conducted in one of university’s educational leadership programs. the second case, also described below, was an instructional design course that was a component of a masters program in educational technology, which targets pre-service and in-service teachers. student ejournals, e-mail, and course evaluations constituted the data set for analysis for both cases. as instructors, we actively aimed to create courses that embodied the tenets of reflection in action set forth by schön (1987) and contained in the departments’ conceptual framework. we did this by using a variety of instructional strategies, primary of which was e-journaling. each instructor used the ejournals in a manner to fit their individual pedagogies. however, in consultation, we determined that blackboard® would be the appropriate technology to use for these courses and this research. the blackboard® course management system was widely used at our university and all of the students were familiar with its operation. this met the non“disruptive or intimidating” criteria established by longhurst and sandage (2004). additionally, we agreed that journal postings would be private and collaborative (i.e., between the student and the instructor). this position was supported by phipps (2005) “course management software also provides useful discussion-board capabilities that can be configured for private rooms used exclusively for personal journal entries and instructor responses” (journaling with technology, ¶4). both instructors required that students complete a journal entry at least once weekly. reflective journal entries were a part of their homework, therefore, no class time was expended. the instructors then reviewed the entries, provided feedback in accordance with english’s guidelines (above), “encouraged, guided, and engaged students” (phipps, 2005), and used the journal entries to modify the upcoming face-to-face classes to address issues/questions raised in the journal entries. using ejournaling to modify courses and curriculum prior to holding classes was used as a form of just-in-time teaching (jitt) (novak, n.d.; rozycki, 1999). in jitt web-based interaction on study assignments, this case e-journals, were submitted to the instructors prior to the next class. the instructors read the ejournals “just in time” and adjusted the lesson to fit with the feedback/questions/dialogue of the ejournals. as novak (n.d.) pointed out “the students are expected to develop the answer as far as they can on their own. we finish the job in the classroom” (the web component, ¶ 2). this scaffolding deepens student understanding and ensures a much more student-centered, active classroom. it doesn’t really matter if the student was on the right track, or not. “in fact, partially correct responses are particularly useful e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding 5 as classroom discussion fodder” (novak, n.d., the web component, ¶2). we used the group discussion function of blackboard® for student postings of weekly journal entries and instructor comments. we separated all of the students into private groups. each group was comprised of two individuals the student and their instructor. no other individual (student or otherwise) had access to the e-journaling that took place in these private discussion groups. students were given broad guidelines on the information that should be covered in the weekly e-journal postings. this included reflecting on the required readings, course assignments, and classroom discussions. once the journal entry for the week was posted, the instructor would respond with his or her comments, insights, or reflections. though not required, the student could then reply to the instructor’s comments, and so on. the journal entries were not graded per se, but weekly postings were a course requirement. if a student did not post in a given week, a deduction was made from the participation grade for these courses. case 1: the educational leadership course description the students in the educational leadership course (n = 13) were matriculated in one of the university’s educational leadership programs. the particular program employed a cohort model. it was designed to prepare aspiring school leaders for a number of different roles (e.g., supervisor, department chair, assistant principal, principal) within both public and private schools. twelve of these 13 participants were employed full-time as teachers in a variety of urban, suburban, public, and private schools and one student was not working outside of the home. the content of the educational leadership course focused on leading change within the context of current federal and state educational reform initiatives. the course design was founded on the instructor’s beliefs the best way to learn was by doing and knowledge and skill can be built through reflection-in-action (schön, 1987). further, to be effective change agents and manage the complexity of school improvement, educational leaders must understand change as a process. therefore, classes and assignments were intentionally designed to serve as a practice field where students worked in teams to examine the notion of change as a process and develop knowledge and skills in relationship to leading change (i.e., being a change agent). the course had three interrelated assignments. students were to: (a) create and implement personal change plans, (b) work in teams to develop a scholarly team presentation on change as a process, and (c) keep an online journal (i.e., e-journal) account of their weekly activities as those activities related to their progress on their personal change plan. the goal of the primary assignment, constructing and implementing a personal change plan, was intended to provide students with first hand experience with managing a self-selected change initiative. using a model for planning change, as set forth in pearpoint, o'brien, and forest (1995), students worked with a self-selected team of their classmates and created an individualized change plan or "path". each student’s personal change plan was to focus on his or her skills as an educational leader and one or two areas in which he or she wanted to build knowledge and skills. the instructor modeled the development of a path with a student volunteer during class; then students were given two class periods to work with their self-selected teammates to develop their individual path. these teams met once a week for the remainder of the semester, during class time, to review their path progress and to provide mutual support and critically helpful feedback. the e-journal assignment had two goals: promotion of reflection-in-action and provision of multiple asynchronous (participate “any time, any place”) opportunities to individualize and respond to student learning needs. each student was to keep an individual online journal account of his or her weekly activities. students were asked to reflect on their thoughts, feelings, and insights in relationship to personal change, progress on their individual change plan, their work with their teams, and the larger issues of change that educational leaders, as change agents, face in their schools on a day-to-day basis. the following open-ended questions were provided as a guide: what happened this week (as it relates to my path)? what did i do? how do i feel? what did i learn? how can i use what i learned? results concerning the act of journaling, a review of email correspondence and journal entries revealed that students’ were tentative at first about the ejournal assignments and expressed concern about never having kept a journal before, finding the time to journal, and deciphering instructor expectations about the journal content. evident in most of the students’ initial e-mail correspondence (first two weeks of classes) were the frustrations and struggles that they had with the technology. examples included the loss of written material while trying to post it or posting to the blackboard® system when it was unavailable (i.e., on fridays from 5:00 pm to 5:15 pm) and occasional problems with internet failure. as the semester progressed, however, all but one of the students regularly completed the e-journal current issues in education vol. 9 no. 4 assignments. this single student had a history of being remiss in completing assignments in general. in reviewing the content of all student ejournals for the semester, it is apparent that students used their e-journal to reflect on their needs and those of their teammates as they created their personal change plans. they routinely described the progress they were making on their paths and their feelings about working with teammates to create the final project. further, students’ e-journal entries revealed how they understood themselves in relationship to the ways in which they approached change and their role as educational leaders and change agents. finally, most of the students incorporated ideas from their readings and the class lectures into their entries. upon reviewing the content of the instructor’s responses to students’ e-journal entries, it was apparent that they most often took the form of social support as defined by house (1981). house summarized social support as “ . . . an interpersonal transaction involving one or more of the following: (1) emotional concern (liking, love, empathy), (2) instrumental aid (goods or services), (3) information (about the environment), or (4) appraisal (information relevant to self-evaluation)” (p. 39). specially, the support offered was either emotional or informational and was in response to students’ expressed apprehension, triumphs, and challenges. the e-journal excerpt below and the instructor’s response, which follows, are a typical example of a student’s entry and the instructor’s reply. during the second week of the course, student a had an opportunity to work with teammates and create his/her individual change plan. student a reflected on his/her initial concerns about the assignment and the process: first, i must say that being the pathfinder was a much more enjoyable experience than i had first anticipated. i really thought it was going to be a painful process of trying to come up with things to say for an ending that seemed a little overwhelming. when i first chose "my path", it felt like an impossible thing to accomplish in a short period of time . . . . however, when it was all out on a colorful chart, broken down into achievable time frames, it all seemed possible. in response, the instructor reflected: “we often find it difficult to share our dreams aloud; it is always amazing to see how once we do that, the dreams don't seem quite so impossible.” similarly, student b wrote about his/her initial apprehension and realizations: (italicized words in all of the quotations were substituted by the instructor to protect confidentiality.) before i start my journal about my path, i wanted to say how apprehensive i was feeling in regards to this project. while on one hand i immediately saw the importance and power of such a process, i could not envision myself as the focus of such a process due to my sometimes-obsessive quest for privacy. i initially wanted to propose to the class (jokingly-well, maybe not so jokingly-no i do mean jokingly) that since i do not need to change anything about myself or my life, that i would write a list of things that everyone else could work on changing. . . . needless to say, i was not excited about the assignment or the grueling exercise of picking teammates to work with. however, the two partners i ended up with by default . . .were awesome! student c really opened up and shared some very personal information . . . student d is hysterical [funny] and asked many good questions that make student c and myself look at our quest from angles we had not previously thought of. in response the instructor reflected: the process of understanding your purpose and building a vision for yourself is a critical first step in becoming a skilled leader. being able to reflect, as you did, on your hesitancy to open-up is a wonderful first step toward learning about the importance of understanding others. we ask teachers, families, and students to share in so many ways and yet, we may not be willing to do the same. a skillful leader recognizes who he or she is and is open to sharing that with others. instructor comments in the form of informational support (house, 1981) were aimed at individualizing instruction, directing students to resources that might help them with their change plans, and answering questions about the assignments. in the case of either emotional or informational support, the instructor’s reflections ordinarily prompted further student reflections and this contributed to a synergistic dialogue between the instructor and individual students. this excerpt from student a is one example of how students further engaged in reflection based on a previous instructor comment that was a direct response to his/her expressed learning need. additionally, it shows how students were generally able to link their experiences with path to readings from this and other courses and, more importantly, to practice. e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding 7 per your posting, i gave some thought to my path and tying it in with fullan, [bolman and deal], etc. of course, fullan came to mind immediately since the "framework for leadership" is now committed to memory. in fact, i have copied the chart and handed them out to various people. i've had such positive feedback when i have explained the ideas behind the 'framework'. in fact, one woman has it posted next to her desk. student b’s e-journal excerpt, from week four, shows how the instructor used the content of journals to guide and adjust instruction from week to week. at this point in the course, a majority of students began to write about their evolving understandings about: the process of change as described in the literature (e.g., beckard & pritchard, 1992; fullan, 2001), what it takes to develop a shared vision for how the group might accomplish the final assignment, and the overall challenges of working in teams. i really appreciate the time you gave us to discuss the assignment at the beginning of class. i liked what you had to say about the process and hearing other students voice the same frustrations as me was beneficial to me-i thought i was the only one who was having a hard time. . . i think i can learn more than how to "change" in this class. . . . in reflecting back to this student the instructor wrote: while it might seem that you are not progressing on your path, it appears that you are thinking about it and that is senge's (1990) using the subconscious. it also seems that you are thinking about leadership and what it takes to create and share knowledge. it is critical that leaders take the time to hear. think about: "when have i experienced good listening?" (wheatly, 2002, p. 88). in sum, students’ perceived that the course and the act of journaling to be beneficial in helping them learn and reflect on the course content. additionally, they were able to make connections from theory to their practice. the overall end of semester students mean ratings for the educational leadership course were high and on a five-point, likert-type scale (5 = strongly agree; 1 = strongly disagree) they ranged from 5.0 – 4.5. of particular note are students’ high ratings for the item “assignments helped me understand the course material” (x = 4.8). a sampling of related written comments from the end of semester evaluations showed similar positive perceptions: “we experienced the content being taught.” “an interesting way to look at our goals!” “the [team work and] group presentations really helped us to understand concepts in the course and helped us work together . . . ”. finally, what was perhaps the most compelling experience for this instructor were the ongoing opportunities to reflect with students about the nature of personal change and its relationship to the larger issues of change that educational leaders, as change agents, face in their schools on a day-to day basis. this excerpt from student a’s final ejournal entry exemplifies those of other students: as our final class approaches, i am reflecting on how much i have changed my thoughts about change!!! often, change seems so insurmountable. between getting all parties on board, implementing the change, riding the "dip" and continuing forth (even through the distractions of others who disagree), it is obvious why many people abandon change even if it is for the better. through the tools path, fullan, [bolman and deal], etc. offered through the course, i can see how change is possible. case 2: the instructional design course design the students (n = 6) in the instructional design course were matriculated in the educational technology masters program. instructional design (id) is a survey course where the students learn fundamental instructional design concepts and processes. a number of instructional design models are examined in the course covering the period from the early 1900 to present day web-based course design. the course content focused on the big picture of instructional design and not on the day-today lesson preparation that teachers complete. the class and the assignments were designed to serve as an authentic practice field where students worked in teams to explore the various id models and choose one that would form the basis for their instructional design project. case studies were used in the beginning of the class to give the students a feel for the overall design process. students were divided into two project teams. each team interviewed prospective “clients” in one of the member’s schools to determine an instructional design project. once the project was chosen and approved by the instructor, the team members completed all of the steps of the id model that they had chosen. the final project was web-based, beta tested by the “customers”, burned onto a cd, and posted to the class web site. this course design was founded on the instructor’s beliefs that the best way to learn was by hands-on, authentic activities. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 4 in addition to the major project, each student was expected to keep an online journal in blackboard®. this e-journal was intended to promote reflection-in-action (schön, 1987). the students were given instructions concerning the requirements for the journal and some of the broad questions that they should address in their postings. additionally, each student was given an article about how to accomplish journaling and the benefits of keeping a journal. they were asked to reflect and comment on the readings for the week, that week’s class, their progress on the project, and anything else that they would like to talk about in the e-journal entry. the instructor read each posting within 24 hours of its due date and commented on each entry. it was my intent to use these e-journal reflections in two different ways, neither of which was explicated to the students. first, i wanted to further the breadth and depth of student learning through dialogue between the instructor and the individual student, prompting them to re-reflect on what they were learning and what its practical application might be in their own academic activities and classrooms. second, i wanted to use the journals as a form of jitt (novak, n.d.) where the e-journaling was a “feedback loop formed by the students outside-ofclass preparation that fundamentally affects what happens during the subsequent in-class time together” (¶1). i would modify my lessons to accommodate student requests for further explanation, clear up confusion and misconceptions that arose in the reflections, and keep track of how students were doing with their project. in terms of the objectives i had in mind when assigning e-journals, the following student e-journal entry synthesized what i was trying to accomplish through personal reflection and collaboration, hands-on activities that expanded the classroom experience, and application of learned material to the student’s own classroom. this article put a whole new slant on my ideas of journaling. truthfully, i thought journaling was assigned merely as a "check up" to be sure we were keeping up with our reading assignments for the course . . . i found the first part, reflection as part of personal learning, to be the more interesting part and also more applicable to being a teacher. . . . in thinking of terms of elementary school, i wonder if it could be taught and used well enough to be timeeffective. results none of the students began this course with this level of understanding. as the literature suggested, each of the students was unsure of journaling in the beginning and their postings were reflective of the tentativeness, confusion, and initial orientation to learning new content. some examples of this confusion manifest in the e-journals were: “many of my thoughts are still somewhat confused at this time and i am hoping that our discussion in class will shed some light on this.;” “i felt as if i had been dropped into the middle of a conversation or argument that i knew very little about.;” “basically, i am in a quandary;” and “well, this is my first reflection and i’m not quite sure what to say.” as the semester progressed jitt and class discussions based on journal entries helped clear this confusion and addressed most of the “voiced” student concerns and questions. the resultant student postings showed an increased depth and breadth of reflection. the following excerpts were taken from the same students’ journals about two-thirds of the way through the semester “my limited knowledge in this area has forced me to do some research on my own so that i can feel more comfortable writing and designing on this topic. this is not a bad thing and is definitely a learning process for me. sometimes it is the initial steps that are the most difficult.” this student contemplated the final project and his/her need to deepen understanding and make connections. this next student provided a view of reflection-inaction and bridging theory to practice as reflected in some lessons that he/she taught in their own classroom. what i did was prepare a powerpoint presentation to re-teach these concepts. my presentation did not include text, so i used my graphics to model the concepts i wanted the students to learn and i explained them audibly. i lessened the cognitive load by not having the students take notes, but rather i gave each student a printout of each slide. i had the students concentrate on the graphics. at each layer, we discussed the characteristics of a particular layer. the whole lesson took me longer, but the results were worth the time it took and the extra effort i had to put into creating the presentation. the next student expressed emergent comfort with the course material and content: “i must say i like case based reasoning. it is a very interesting and very logical concept. i gotta admit, between this and rapid prototyping, i am finding two approaches that i could see myself diving into more.” the last student described an expanding awareness of the depth and breadth of the content and possibilities for application: my interest in multimedia learning has spiked and i am planning some multimedia "modules". i'm planning on reading the book and then using some principles from our books and class readings to design some e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding 9 simple video instruction modules and web pages. the living systems model was very good and talking about it in class enforced some ideas i had about multimedia learning. at the end of the instructional design course, students were asked to critique of the journaling assignment. the student responses were overwhelmingly positive and exemplified the many benefits of journaling as found in the literature and noted above. some of sample comments follow. “ i actually found the reflective journal a valuable part of the course. journal entries are something i 'love to hate'. . . . i found it provided structure to my thoughts on the reading. the journal forced me into a very regular routine for the class.” another student wrote about the benefit of the individualized instructor student interaction: one great thing about the journal was that it provided an opportunity to dialogue with you. although this class was face to face, the journal still provided another dimension to the class dynamics and the professor/student relationship. i found this to be a very positive aspect of the course. you asked me questions that led me to further reflection, especially about our project . this student reflected on journaling as a means for thinking about his/her thinking: i have to admit that at first i was hesitant about the prospect of coming up with something insightful to say each week. however soon i found that i had new thoughts and ideas that warranted more insight and thought. once this happened i found the journaling to be a helpful way to question my own thoughts and think about what i was experiencing. as i wrote, it forced me to define my thoughts and feelings which helped me to understand what i was thinking. one student did express that s/he did not like journaling. nor did the individual believe that it improved her/his understanding of the course material. this student wrote: personally, i don't like to write in a reflective journal. when it comes to my own learning, writing in a journal is for me a real waste of time. in this class for example, writing in this journal has not taught me anything new or different, nor has writing in the journal enriched my understanding of the material interestingly, this individual was a teacher who required her/his students to use journals and he/she acknowledged, in his/her entries, that journaling was an impressive tool for learning. furthermore, this individual wrote that s/he would like to know more about journaling so that s/he could use it to better effect in his/her classroom. overall, the experiment with online journaling in this instructional design course was considered a success. five out of the six participants found that journaling added clarity, depth, and understanding to the course. these electronic journals demonstrated reflection, synthesis, and dialogical interaction (andrusyszyn & davie, 1997) additionally, they understood instructional design theory and were able to apply it to their classroom practice. the overall end of semester students mean ratings for the educational leadership course were high and on a five-point, likert-type scale (5 = strongly agree; 1 = strongly disagree) they ranged from 4.3 through 4.8. the instructor also used another, self-developed, course evaluation which was rated on a 10 point likert scale with 1 being unacceptable and 10 being outstanding. question 17 “was accessible to students both in and out of class” received an overall grade of 9.8. question 18 “demonstrated interest and concern for students” was graded 9.6. question 20 “challenged you intellectually” and question 21 “encouraged you to ask question and/or express opinions” were graded 9.3 and 9.5 respectively. overall, these were the highest ratings that this course had ever received. discussion “e-journaling remains underused as a teaching and learning tool” (phipps, 2005, conclusion, ¶1). taken as a whole, the results of these two exploratory case studies show promise for ejournaling as a tool that instructors can use to enhance student reflection and learning. the results also indicated that the interactions that take place between individual students and the instructor have the potential to support students in their learning and in meeting their individualized learning needs. the students in these two courses made relatively seamless adjustments to using technology (e-journaling) as the means for journaling. while some of the students reported initial challenges with e-journaling, because blackboard® was familiar to all of them they did not perceive the technology to be overly disruptive or intimidating (longhurst & sandage, 2004). furthermore, as the semester progressed the students not only posted their initial reflections, but also posted further comments in response to instructor comments. the students enrolled in these courses clearly used e-journaling to reflect on their understanding of core concepts and make connections between theory and practice. for the most part, students’ journal entries followed a pattern current issues in education vol. 9 no. 4 explicated by orem (1997). the first journal entries showed that these students were unaccustomed to journal writing. these early entries revealed little exploration of the subject to any depth, nor did they reflect to any great extent on what impact the journaling was having on their learning, thoughts, motivations, and pedagogy. nevertheless, the continuing dialogic exchange between the instructors and the individual students aided the students in using their journaling to deepen their learning and reflection. as the students became more comfortable with the act of journaling and reflection-in-action, they demonstrated a greater depth of learning and a more positive affinity for the subject matter ( orem, 1997) as evidenced in the journal content. additionally, the interaction between the students and the instructor took on a more collaborative tone as the semester progressed. the end of course student evaluations and reflections attested to the efficacy that the students perceived e-journaling had for them. students and instructors perceived several benefits from the use of technology as a strategy for promoting student reflectivity. students and instructors alike perceived that reflection in action through e-journaling appeared to provide students with a routine structure for thinking about their readings and classroom discussion and a forum for voicing the challenges they faced in bridging the theory to practice gap. the students in this study perceived that they were getting a better understanding of the course material, that it was more real to them, and that they could then apply what they had learned in more situations and in a very constructive manner. e-journaling also supported a synergistic dialogue between instructors and individual students. specifically, it provided instructors were with multiple asynchronous (participate “any time, any place”) opportunities to individualize and respond to student learning needs. students overwhelmingly reported (formally and anecdotally) that the e-journal experience afforded them a greater depth of learning and satisfaction with the course. both instructors found that the e-journaling experience, though creating more work for them, was beneficial. we benefited from the e-journal experience by gaining insight into students’ reports of their problem solving and application of learning outside of the classroom. moreover, we believe that the use of technology contributed to our learning, professional growth, and enhanced our teaching. in particular, the speed with which we could provide feedback to the students aided both instructors. students could read comments from the instructors within hours of their postings, reflect on these comments, and re-comment if they chose. student entries and their follow-up comments provided direction for the next week’s lectures, activities, and adjustments to readings, for example. with all of the interaction that took place the instructors felt that they could formatively change lessons based on previous feedback and better address, in these lessons, the individual needs of each student. a method of “just in time” teaching (novak, n.d.; rozycki, 1999). though it was hard to determine if the regular interaction of student and instructor was a cause of the results we found, or whether it was solely the individual reflection contained in the students’ journaling, we believe that the preponderance of benefit accrued to the act of reflective journaling. our basis for this belief is the feedback we received, as explained above, from the end-of-course surveys, and from anecdotal information garnered through in-class discussions. future directions these initial experiences appear to hold promise for e-journaling as a valuable pedagogical technique in the constructivist oriented classroom. one apparent advantage of e-journaling that needs further exploration is the asynchronous opportunity for instructors to respond to students’ individual learning needs and work with them to bridge the gap between theory and practice. larger scale and longer term studies should be conducted to identify specific advantages of e-journaling. based on all the evidence gathered and the feedback we received through these exploratory case studies, we have continued to use ejournaling in classes that we conduct. to better quantify and qualify our student experiences with ejournaling, we have developed a short questionnaire that is being administered, pre and post, in each of the courses where e-journaling is currently employed. we hope to report the results of these courses and the pre/post questionnaires in a future manuscript. references andrusyszyn, m., & davie, l. 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(2000). turning to one another. san francisco: berrett-koehler. yin, r. k. (2003). case study research (3rd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding 13 2006 article citation king f.b. & larocco d.j. (2006, feb).e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding. current issues in education [on-line], 9(4). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number4/ author notes dr. frederick b. king hartford university rking@hartford.edu dr. king is an assistant professor of educational technology, education and human services department, university of hartford. his primary research interests include the integration of technology to enhance and improve learning across the curriculum, asynchronous distance education, metacognition, and student self-regulatory skills. dr. diana j. larocco hartford university dlarocco@hartford.edu dr. larocco is an assistant professor in the department of educational leadership at the university of hartford. before coming to the university, she worked in the field of developmental disabilities for 29 years and has extensive experience as a special education teacher and administrator. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation king, f. b., & larocco, d. j. (2006). e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding. current issues in education, 9(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1596 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number4/index.html mailto:rking@hartford.edu mailto:dlarocco@hartford.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1596 cie template 1 volume 17, number 3 december 22, 2014 issn 1099-839x change is the only constant: beginning teacher perceptions of implementing the current top-down change elizabeth e. saylor and shea n. kerkhoff north carolina state university north carolina adopted the common core state standards (ccss) in 2010, implemented in 2012, and retracted in 2014. the purpose of this exploratory case study was to hear beginning teachers describe their challenges and realizations as they implemented top-down curriculum reform. mandated reform has been linked to professional vulnerability (day, elliot, & kingston, 2005), professional vulnerability has been linked to diminished teacher self-efficacy (lasky, 2005), and diminished teacher self-efficacy has been linked to teacher attrition (skaalvik & skaalvik, 2007). semi-structured interviews with three elementary beginning teachers were analyzed to uncover key themes. participants stated that the amount of state or district initiatives they had experienced in their short careers was unexpected and overwhelming. unsurprisingly, participants reported spending the most amount of instructional time on mathematics and reading because of the state tests. a synthesis of the findings suggests participants perceived the mandated reforms negatively and the intrinsic factors of teaching positively. findings may help policy-makers and teacher-leaders understand beginning teachers' experiences implementing reform in order to diminish rampant beginning teacher attrition. keywords: beginning teachers, faculty mobility, educational change, common core state standards, elementary education, qualitative research within the educational domain, various the most recent education reform in the united states, the common core state standards (ccss) was released in june of 2010. goals and expectations for the subjects of english language arts and mathematics were announced for each grade level. school districts across the united states began implementing the ccss by 2012. while the ccss were new, standards-based reform is not new to educators. in fact, standards reform has been part of the political rhetoric since the 1970s (smith & o’day, 1991). during the last several decades, the policy pendulum has swung from a national curriculum to localized control of content and back again. the hope is that each return is not like a ping-pong ball bouncing back and forth uselessly, but like a drill, utilizing what was done before and going deeper with each return (fisher, frey, & lapp, 2011). the ccss promised to be better than standards reforms of the past because these standards were internationally benchmarked (national governors association center for best practices [nga] & council of chief state school officers [ccsso], 2010a; nga & ccsso, 2010b). current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 2 the purpose of this exploratory case study was to hear beginning teachers describe their challenges and realizations as they implemented the changing academic curriculum. specifically, we examined how second and third year elementary school teachers implemented the ccss as part of their daily teaching content. the main research questions were: 1) what do second and third year teachers at wade elementary school (pseudonym) report as the impact of implementing the ccss? 2) what do these second and third year elementary teachers perceive as influencing their decision-making regarding curriculum content? this study looked at three beginning teachers (two to three years of experience) in one north carolina public elementary school. we aimed to identify what beginning teachers found overwhelming as well as influential in regards to implementing the new curriculum. an additional goal of this work was to understand how top down policy on curriculum affects teachers’ decisions in their classrooms. these decisions included what internal stories and external pressures controlled teacher judgments on what subjects to teach and how much time to spend on each subject. these decisions also included whether or not to remain in the teaching profession. conceptual framework this study was framed by critical theory (koroljungberg, yendol-hoppey, smith, & hayes, 2009) and influenced by both deficit thinking paradigm (lasky, 2005) and teacher efficacy theory (guskey, 1988). as figure 1 demonstrates, critical theory was the overarching theory. teacher efficacy theory most directly influenced our research questions and our decision to utilize branyon's (2013) study findings for a priori analysis of our data. deficit thinking paradigm directly influenced the discussion to focus on what could be accomplished in the future, not on complaints of what went wrong in the past. the cost of change this study is significant because the literature shows that beginning teachers leave the profession in high numbers reporting lack of support as a major reason (brill & mccartney, 2008; ingersoll, 2001; ingersoll & smith, 2003; latham & vogt, 2007; perrachione, rosser, & petersen, 2008). our beginning teachers were being asked to teach the new ccss, but were not trained during preservice coursework on the ccss. moreover, minimal inservice professional development was offered on the new ccss or on ways to effectively implement new standards. north carolina adopted the ccss in 2010 and implemented it in 2012. many top-level administrators considered implementation a “work in progress” and continued to tweak the policies and expectations for classroom teachers throughout the school year figure 1. conceptual framework. as north carolina public school teachers with 17 years of experience between us, we had experienced the sink or swim feeling of being a new teacher. idealistic and full of pedagogical theory, we started our careers full steam ahead but quickly shifted down to “survival mode” when we also had to shoulder the weight of state assessments, district initiatives, administrational paperwork, parental expectations, and struggling students on top of pedagogy and content knowledge. the literature shows that  reform relates to teacher feelings of professional vulnerability (day, elliot, & kingston, 2005);  feelings of professional vulnerability negatively correlate with teacher self-efficacy (lasky, 2005; woolfolk & hoy, 1990);  low teacher self-efficacy causes attrition (skaalvik & skaalvik, 2007; sass, seal, & martin, 2011). while the literature supports these three statements, no studies with the exception of dworkin’s (1997) study discuss reform in the us in relation to public school teacher attrition. the literature does address the cost of attrition and the cost of reform. teacher turnover comes at high costs to districts: a) money for the rehiring and training process, and b) human capital of teachers with experience (brill & mccartney, 2008; watlington, shockley, guglielmino, & felsher, 2010). in addition to turnover being expensive, it negatively affects student achievement (ronfeldt, loeb, & wyckoff, 2013). similarly, curriculum reform requires the expenses of training teachers and measuring progress. in order to implement the ccss, fremont public schools (pseudonym) provided multiple professional development sessions to administrative faculty who in turn relayed this critical theory teacher efficacy theory research questions a priori codes thematic analysis deficit thinking paradigm discussion change is the only constant: beginning teacher perceptions of implementing the current top-down change 3 information by offering trainings for faculty during staff meetings and teacher workdays. financed assessment training materials were sent to teachers in stacks and technological resources were created by various entities. subsequently, administrative faculty sent these websites and links to freemont teachers via email to navigate and learn to utilize in their own free time. furthermore, a new curriculum means new textbooks, standardized assessments, other publishing materials, and educational software products (porter, 2011) that were being developed at the time of the study. although unfortunate to illustrate, in public schools such as freemont, taxpayer dollars supply the financing for curriculum reform and possibly teacher attrition. taxpayers, policymakers, school leaders, teacher educators, beginning teachers, and students will benefit from this case study as it can facilitate discussion between legislators, educators, and researchers. similar case studies have linked teacher commitment to successful school improvement in kenya, england, australia, and canada (see branyon, 2013; day, elliot, & kington, 2005; lasky, 2005) but there is a lack of case studies conducted in us schools to generate theory on attrition as an unintended consequence of reform. this study was timely as implementation of the newly adopted ccss began the 2012-2013 school year and the annual report showed teacher turnover increased to 14.3%, a five year high (public schools of north carolina, 2013). review of related literature in 1983, the national commission on excellence in education published one of the most significant reports in the history of united states education reform. this report, a nation at risk: the imperative for educational reform, was written in a cautionary voice and portrayed american students as academically underachieving. a nation at risk concluded that the us was in foreseeable danger of “a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people” (national commission on excellence in education, 1983, p. 5). the nation’s response to this account catalyzed education reforms at local, state, and federal levels. although the report mainly focused on the improvements needed for teachers and students at the secondary level, an overarching proposition of getting back-to-basics in k-12 education was incited generally. over the past three decades, a myriad of educational reforms both large and small scale have been introduced in an effort to disavow the “rising tide of mediocrity” in our nation and correct the path of our education system. in 1994, the goals 2000 education america act deployed a new set of standards, which sought to make us students first in the world in science and mathematics achievement by the year 2000. the development and implementation of content standards in academic and several non-academic areas took root during this period. this concentration of standards and testing furthered the fervent drive of accountability in our schools. accountability has been the primary focus of the educational reform era beginning in 2001 with the no child left behind (nclb) act through present day with the common core state standards. in 2001, nclb increased federal oversight as the bush administration implemented the rewards-based policy to motivate school improvement. low-performing, high-poverty public schools across the nation made systemic changes based on scientifically proven methods, a caveat of nclb and other federal legislation (borman et al., 2003; easley, 2005). four years after nclb, literature from the field continued to cite problems in the education of american youth and identified strategies linked to college success. american public school systems again made changes, but this time in two specific streams: a) recruiting certified and retaining experienced teachers; and b) raising rigor (hunt & tierney, 2006, p. 2). the review of literature is organized into these two streams. the first is teacher retention, including sections on self-efficacy and school climate. the second stream is raising rigor through standards-based reform, including unintended consequences and the deprofessionalization of teachers. the selection criteria for inclusion consisted of peer-reviewed literature and containing at least two of the key words listed as sections above. teacher retention retaining experienced teachers is not only a concern of the us, but one of global trepidation as well. teacher attrition is a significant international concern facing administrators (sass, seal, & martin, 2011). estimates of teacher attrition in the united states suggested that of those that leave 50% leave the profession within the first five years (brill & mccartney, 2008; latham & vogt, 2007). more acutely, estimates of beginning teachers suggested that 20% to 30% of all beginning teachers in the united states leave the profession (perrachione, rosser, & petersen, 2008). staffing problems of public schools cannot be explained only by teacher retirement and increased student enrollments; rather, organizational characteristics also contributed to the problem of teacher retention (ingersoll, 2001; ingersoll & smith, 2003). teacher attrition resulted in high economic costs for hiring, more inexperienced teachers in classrooms, and a lack of continuity that has made institutional development and planning difficult (brill & mccartney, 2008). the annual financial costs of recruiting, hiring, and training new teachers was staggering, with estimates of a total national replacement cost of $2.2 billion per year (borman & dowling, 2008). furthermore, new teachers tended to make tremendous improvement in the first few years (wynn, carboni, & patall, 2007), meaning that retaining a teacher with two years of experience was far more productive than hiring a new teacher to replace him current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 4 or her (brill & mccartney, 2008). attrition was especially acute among teachers with higher ability, as measured by the sat, the national teacher exam, and licensure tests (smethem, 2007). with the positive correlation between high teacher attrition rates and both high human capital and economic costs, it is important to understand this phenomenon in detail and work toward necessary changes. teacher efficacy and school climate were major factors of dissatisfaction related to beginning teacher attrition. teacher efficacy. self-efficacy in teaching was noted consistently as having major impact on teacher attrition and retention. if individuals did not believe that what they were doing could influence how well students learned, attrition rates rose. teacher efficacy has also been linked to teacher strain and burnout (skaalvik & skaalvik, 2007) and intent to quit (sass et al., 2011). however, hughes (2012) made the argument that although effectiveness has been cited by teachers as a consideration of retention, only a few studies collected measures of teachers’ perceived levels of effectiveness and evaluated the impact on retention; thus, more data are needed to more fully understand this relationship. school climate. new teachers consistently mentioned administrative support, working conditions, and collegiality when discussing attrition rates. data suggested that the roots of the teacher shortage largely reside in the working conditions within schools and districts (ingersoll & smith, 2003, p. 32). new teachers are particularly vulnerable to a negative environment (smethem, 2007). in fact, the third most common reason reported by teachers who had considered leaving the profession—behind salary and disruptive students—was inadequate administrative support (brill & mccartney, 2008). in a survey of 217 firstand second-year teachers as to why, six of the top eight reasons related to school climate (wynn, carboni, & patall, 2007). teachers reported wanting to work in schools where they had greater autonomy, higher levels of administrative support, and clearly communicated expectations (hughes, 2012). predicting job satisfaction and dissatisfaction is instrumental to reducing teacher attrition. dinham and scott (1998, 2000) and sergiovanni (1967) suggested that teacher satisfaction was connected to factors associated with intrinsic rewards (i.e., student-teacher relationship, teacher and student achievements, etc.) whereas teacher dissatisfaction was linked more closely with extrinsic factors (i.e., school leadership and climate, teacher course load, school communication, etc.). this study was conducted to build on the existing literature on beginning teacher retention, and also to determine how intrinsic and extrinsic factors affect teacher decisions. the literature appears to indicate that the level of influence that administration and colleagues have on new teachers is high. the goals are for policy makers, administrators, and school officials to take this information and use it to support new teachers and ultimately increase teacher retention. keeping teachers in our schools is half of the battle. the other half of the battle is raising rigor. raising rigor through reform the us department of education (doe) stated that the goal of any educational reform, be it systemic or curricular in nature, is increased student achievement (usdoe, 2002). the major stakeholders in schools seem to agree that raising rigor is a worthy goal. the disagreement lies in how to get there. researchers have conducted qualitative and quantitative studies on topdown reform intended to raise rigor in us schools. standards-based reform. proponents of standards-based models of reform, including current secretary of education arne duncan, have cited empirical evidence showing correlation to higher student achievement. marzano and kendall proved in their highly cited work that clearly stated standards were linked to a 25 % increase in student achievement (1996). while reform always comes at a cost, berger (2000) affirmed, "the factors supporting the implementation of a standards-based system of reform appear to outweigh viewpoints opposing it" (p. 62). due to issues of efficiency, bobbitt (1918) claimed that decisions of what standards to execute should be decided at the top level of leadership. the current environment of top-down reform focuses on accountability. jones, jones and hargrove (2003) gave three reasons mandated standards and assessments should come from the top: “1) to measure student achievement, 2) to provide information about the quality of schools, and 3) to hold students' educators accountable” (p. 10). as it stands, a considerable body of literature supports standards-based reform and supports implementation by systemic top-down scientifically-backed accountability measures (see borman et al., 2003 meta-analysis). critical researchers debunk these findings and instead assert that context matters tremendously in the success of standards reform to create higher student achievement (darling-hammond, 2006; lachat, 1999; ramirez & mcclanahan, 1992). under the nclb legislation, schools with poor performance as measured by standardized tests were punished and schools with adequate yearly progress were rewarded with more funding. this legislation created a matthew effect where the poor become poorer and the good become better. ramirez and mcclanahan (1992) claimed that standardization and centralization solely advantage the majority. furthermore, researchers attribute unintended consequences to standards-based reform. the most problematic consequence was widening the achievement gap between white and nonwhite students (sandholtz, ogawa, & scribner, 2004). students already below grade level had further progress to make than students at grade change is the only constant: beginning teacher perceptions of implementing the current top-down change 5 level before more rigorous standards were added. in some states, including north carolina, students who could not achieve the new standard, as assessed by the high stakes test, were forced to repeat grades (e.g. excellent public schools act, 2013) or worse. high stakes tests created counterincentives for students to drop-out early (darlinghammond, 2006) and caused conditions where some teachers felt they must cheat (amrein-beardlsey, berliner, & rideau, 2010; dorn, 1998). another critical unintended consequence of the standards-reform movement was a narrowing of the curriculum to mathematics and literacy, marginalizing important 21st century global-ready skills in social studies and world languages (leming, ellington, & schug, 2006; vanfossen, 2005; zhao, 2010). instead, critical researchers advocate for participatory reform to empower those closest to students, the classroom teachers and administrators, to generate the school improvement process (elmore, 2004). kotter and cohen’s (2002) the heart of change, a foundational book in the field of organizational learning, emphasized employee participation in the decision-making process to increase buy-in. buy-in then leads to a greater chance of the desired change to result (kotter & cohen, 2002). engaging teachers in the reform process increases teacher empowerment and creates a more agreeable school climate, relating back to greater teacher retention. the deprofessionalization of teachers. this leads to a second major theme in the literature: teacher deprofessionalization. atkin (1989) claimed that both educational researchers and policy makers had marginalized classroom teachers from the reform process. atkin offered a reason for this gap between educators' views and education reformers’ views in his seminal editorial. educational researchers, contributing to the literature that policy makers use to structure reform, increased from the social sciences and not from the k-12 classroom. teachers and teacher-educators were marginalized in colleges of education as the emphasis was placed on objective scientific evidence over interpretive classroom experience (atkin, 1989; darling-hammond 2006). another theme in the literature is that everrolling waves of reform kept teachers in a place of professional vulnerability. lasky's (2006) data from a longitudinal mixed-methods study showed that when teachers felt well-prepared and in control of their classroom, they did not feel vulnerable. high rates of change were correlated to feelings of vulnerability. the change could be unexpected curriculum changes, such as the ccss, but also the probability of future change, such as short-term contracts like those common with beginning teachers (day, elliot, & kingston, 2005). a high number of policy changes followed closely by high-stakes performance measures, could leave teachers feeling distrusted by politicians and the public and afraid that they may fail (taubman, 2009). common core critics. the ccss, written in 2010 and implemented in north carolina in the fall of 2012, specified goals for ela and mathematics, while north carolina state social studies and science standards were to be implemented in the following years respectively. however, critics of the ccss have already made their voices heard. legislative discussions of repealing ccss in north carolina took place in 2014. the authors of the ccss claimed that the standards are nationally and internationally benchmarked on degree of focus and level of cognitive ability (nga & ccsso, 2010a). however, porter (2011) found that the ccss were notably less focused than state ela standards and had less of an emphasis on performance than standards in countries with higher student achievement. teachers perceived the biggest problem to be that classroom textbooks did not align to the ccss (editorial projects in education research center, 2013). standards, curriculum, and instructional materials needed to be aligned to ensure success (krajcik, mcneill, & reiser, 2008). while accountability measures were supposed to protect taxpayer money (shore & wright, 2000), the cost of new textbooks, curricular materials, and aligned assessments would be lofty (tienken & orlich, 2013). conclusion researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners agree that high teacher quality and rigorous curriculum can yield higher student achievement. the disagreements arise from how to retain quality teachers and reform curriculum standards. the current practices in educational research and reform have marginalized teachers and marginalized subjects, such as science, social studies, and world languages (settlage & meadows, 2002; zhao, 2010). this study gave a voice to beginning teachers. because the majority of the literature is published by social scientists at the university level or from policy analysis groups, it is imperative for teacher case studies to be shared. in the literature, teacher research has been presented as an emancipatory act, one through which teachers gained freedom of voice, choice, and power by positioning themselves in contradistinction to researchers and academics in higher education, who traditionally enjoyed higher employment status (clifford & guthie, 1998). many who write about the phenomenon of teacher research argue that teachers must be included in academic journals to deepen understandings of teaching and to define their work (zeichner, 2003). methods this study was an exploratory collective case study (creswell, 2012; stake, 2000). the qualitative approach permits researchers and policymakers to better understand the daily world of teaching through teachers' own words. the phenomenon under investigation was how second and third year teachers made decisions related to their changing academic curriculum. the unit of current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 6 analysis was the individual in his or her role as an elementary school teacher. the case consisted of three participants: beginning teachers at an elementary school that had implemented the ccss the same school year. research questions our research questions looked at beginning teachers’ priorities as they implemented the ccss in a normal day-to-day manner, in order to uncover their values, influencers, and stressors. we asked: 1) what do second and third year teachers at wade elementary school (pseudonym) report as the impact of implementing the ccss? 2) what do these second and third year elementary teachers perceive as influencing their decisionmaking regarding curriculum content? site selection the context of the case was part of the case itself (stake, 2000). the school was relatively small with room for 350 students. other than the size, the site selection was a typical elementary school in a large urban district in north carolina. the student population was diverse ethnically, racially, and socio-economically. just over 50% of students were white, non-hispanic, followed by just under 50% african american, and a small percentage hispanic, asian, and american indian. the average end of grade scores for mathematics and reading were slightly below of the state average. the teacher culture was collaborative. the site selection was a sample of convenience. participants we sent out an email to all beginning teachers at wade elementary school asking for participation in the study. wade elementary was selected for this study because one of the researchers had an excellent rapport at this school and we both felt that we had a unique opportunity to gather rich, uninhibited data due to the established, close peer relationships. three beginning teachers in the school accepted a role as participant. the three teachers were either second or third year teachers in kindergarten through third grade classrooms. two of the teachers were female and one was male. all three teachers had their bachelor’s degree in elementary education from reputable universities in the southeast (see table 1). table 1 participants pseudonym sex grade-level taught teaching year ms. glenn female 3 rd 2 mr. jones male 3 rd 3 ms. patch female 1 st 3 we chose to study beginning teachers because there is a learning curve in teaching as in all professions. beginning teachers may understand best practices from undergraduate courses and professional development but may not yet be able to apply these practices (putnam & borko, 2000). teaching is a phenomenon with many moving parts. on a continual basis, teachers must decide what content to teach and how to teach it. a veteran juggler can add a new bowling pin and keep the other pins in the air. but toss an additional bowling pin to a novice juggler who is already in a rhythm (e.g., second and third year teachers) and all the pins come crashing to the ground. it is for this reason that we chose to study second and third year teachers the year the state implemented a new curriculum. we wanted to understand how beginning teachers decided to implement the changes in their own classrooms. in other words, we wanted to see how beginning teachers eventually got all the pins back in the air and how they felt during this process. moreover, the attrition rate for beginning teachers was higher than at any other time of teaching: 30% in the first three years and 50% in the first five years (corbell, osborne, & reiman, 2010). this made understanding their experience with reform important to the discussion of the relationship of policy and attrition. due to district budget cuts, the participants did not have the opportunity to seek any additional professional development in ccss or in general outside of their school during their beginning years of teaching. occasionally, professional development was conducted during staff meetings by the instructional resource teacher (irt) or by other members of the school faculty. these short teacher development sessions typically entailed a faculty member from the school displaying a method from their classroom that they found beneficial. no fresh ideas or professional development was offered from outside individuals or groups at the time of the study due to the funding restrictions. the majority of the professional development presented by the school faculty involved literacy or mathematics subject material with the extremely rare presentation on science education. professional development in social studies did not take place in this elementary school for at least the past 10 years. this deficiency was not an atypical phenomenon. the complete dearth of professional development in the area of social studies corroborates with a study by wood (1989), which found that social studies received the least support from school level administrators of any of the five core subject areas. this lack of teacher development and support generated feelings of frustration among the faculty members of the school, including the beginning teacher participants. as fairly recent college graduates, the participants felt a level of disappointment with their ability to access new methods to continue honing their professional skills as an educator in their beginning years change is the only constant: beginning teacher perceptions of implementing the current top-down change 7 of teaching. once hired in a teaching position, they expanded their professional repertoire by working closely with their grade level colleagues and other school faculty. data collection we interviewed participants with a semistructured format consisting of nine main questions and any reasonable clarifications, probes, or follow-ups. the interviews took place at the teachers’ school, the natural setting for the participants. interviews were conducted between the third and fourth quarter of the school year. at that point in the year, the school’s administration had led several brief common core training sessions during the school’s bi-monthly staff meetings and quarterly inservice days. interviews were audio recorded and accompanied by researcher notes for reliability. see appendix b for codes and operational definitions. we contextualized the interviews using participant observer attendance of school faculty meetings, professional development workshops, and professional learning community meetings (hendstrand, 2006). we also attended public events, such as a district leader presentation on ccss ela implementation for elementary schools and a public symposium on north carolina education reform. to further contextualize the case, we reviewed public web documents including general statutes, policy statements, and school demographics. we made additional interview notes of nonverbal communication during and immediately following the interviews. because new teachers may not feel comfortable in sharing their insecurities or stress, we thought it important to not only examine what they were saying, but how they were saying it with their body language. koivumaki (1975) explained: nonverbal skills can be related to other facts about people, such as their sex, their experiences, their values, or their personal happiness. one can examine “channels” of nonverbal communication: tone of voice, face cues, body gestures, proxemic (spatial) behavior, touch, smell, even esp. in short, nonverbal communication seems relevant in an enormous range of ways, and there is much research both good and bad being done on it. (p. 28) the major categories of interpersonal communication as specified by buehler and richmond (1963) that we focused on in this study were motor movement and speech. motor movements include subcategories of posture, facial movements, and gestures. speech includes oral and sound subcategories. data analysis as critical researchers, we viewed our study as a wake-up call for increased and valued teacher input in educational research, more trials on efficacy of policy before mass implementation, and less capriciousness in policy reform. we used a critical theoretical perspective as described by koro-ljungberg, yendol-hoppey, smith, and hayes (2009), "to produce a sociopolitical critique" (p. 689). critical researchers term deficit thinking as discussion on what characteristics students are lacking (moll, amanti, neff, & gonzalez, 1992). lasky (2005) applies the deficit thinking paradigm to teachers and asserts that focusing on teacher stress and vulnerability caused by policy creates deficit thinking, whereas focusing on the positive input of teacher commitment to implementation fidelity speaks to the affirmative. teacher commitment is part of a larger theory of teacher efficacy that suggests that teachers’ confidence in their effectiveness positively affects student outcomes (woolfolk & hoy, 1990). the research questions and data analysis were shaped by branyon's (2013) case study on teachers’ decisions regarding common core curriculum. she organized the findings into two maximum impact themes: (a) mandated and (b) intrinsic influences. branyon concluded, "internal factors overcame all other factors in determining the types of learning experiences children received" (2013, p. 45). branyon’s findings then informed the conceptual framework for the a priori coding themes and contextual considerations of analysis as displayed in appendix b. a priori coding. in the a priori coding we created spreadsheets to organize coded statements from the interviews that fell under the following categories and subcategories:  intrinsic (internal) o teacher pedagogical and content knowledge; o attitudes and personal preferences; o self-efficacy as a teacher; o one's beliefs about decision making or problem solving.  mandated (external) o compensation in the form of salary and benefits; o timetable or prescribed daily schedule for content; o students mastery of common core standards; o undergraduate training and professional development; o materials and resources accessible at the school level. after the independent initial coding sequence, we convened and discussed the coding analysis. after meticulously discussing our individual analysis, we determined that many statements were coded the same, but that some compound sentences were counted as two by the analysis of one researcher and one by the other. after thorough discussion, we reached an agreement of the specific category in which the particular statements current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 8 belonged. at the completion of this process, we reached a reliability percentage well over 80. open coding. after the completion of the a priori coding, we open coded each of the three interviews independently. we began the analysis by reading over each of the three interviews multiple times. each time we read the interviews, we added notes to the margins and underlined key statements. researcher one initially determined that a high number of comments were made involving positive emotion; this led researcher one to begin the highlighting process. researcher one read all interviews again and each time a significant section or phrase appeared involving positive emotion she highlighted with a specific color. this process was repeated when additional salient themes were presented in the data of negative emotion, self-efficacy, curriculum, and change or preparation. when this was completed, we met to review our initial data analysis and findings. researcher two then utilized the color-coding technique for the shared key themes. we did this to ensure the reliability and validity of the analysis of the data collected. we also wanted consistency in the findings and an overall collaborative process with the analysis of the data. when the salient categories and colors were determined and coded, we decided to also complete a content analysis of the data. researcher one noticed that specific subjects were mentioned more frequently than others. wanting to have a better understanding of this phenomenon to determine any meaning within the data, she created a content analysis chart. she analyzed the interview data, tallying the frequency of subjects verbally mentioned or referenced. the subject noted most frequently was reading, writing, and/or literacy. then mathematics, followed by science, and social studies was last. throughout this process, researcher one noticed that science and social studies were conflated as “science and social studies” frequently. this occurrence was further investigated and the category of “science and social studies” became an additional section of the frequency chart. trustworthiness triangulation was achieved as we used multiple and different sources and methods to corroborate the initial evidence. due to the thorough and rigorous qualitative data analysis methods, the study had a high degree of confirmability. the verification process occurred through the duration of the study as both researchers crosschecked their data analysis at various points throughout the coding process. after each researcher independently analyzed the same data, we met and discussed the reasoning for each code and ultimately discussed the salient findings that emerged. it can be determined from the completion and explanation of this rigorous process that the data is credible, defensible, warranted, and able to withstand alternative explanations. additionally, member checking occurred at the conclusion of the data analysis. findings were communicated with all participants in order to increase validity. participants found no discrepancies in our findings. as both researchers had worked as teachers in the district, we had an insider view that allowed us to share a common culture with the participants. this insider status also forced us to clarify our own bias. we both kept a reflective journal to document assumptions before, during, and after the study was completed. this was to acknowledge reflexivity and increase trustworthiness of our qualitative method. we used our position as participant observers to informally observe the context of the participants and the decisions they made on a daily basis. we both remained cognizant of personal biases, understanding the potential for a validity issue. as the researcher with personal connections at the elementary school, i identified and exposed personal biases in my journal. these biases dealt with hesitating to attack teacher or administrator actions, understanding the limited time and resources allotted in many public elementary schools. i exposed my biases to my research partner to ensure that my personal biases did not affect the validity of the study. as the other researcher, i acknowledged my assumption that topdown reform would be perceived negatively by teachers. as a classroom teacher, i had often felt frustrated by top-down reform that came from policy-makers, so i earned my master's degree in education policy to learn more about the us system. we followed institutional review board protocol for the whole of the study. findings our data showed that participants reported diminished self-efficacy, marginalization of science and (even more so) social studies, and negative feelings of mandated state or district initiatives as a response to the top-down standards reform. this section organizes the findings by research question. the study used open and a priori coding for both research questions. how do beginning teachers perceive the ccss implementation? all three participants mentioned the new ccss multiple times and in each instance the comments were in a negative manner regarding the ccss as a mandated change. the study found that teachers perceived the ccss implementation at wade elementary related to their own feelings of being (a) overwhelmed, (b) underprepared, and (c) unconfident. this confirms the literature on the relationship of reform to professional vulnerability (day, elliot, & kingston, 2005) and diminished self-efficacy (lasky, 2005). one key theme of open coding was participants feeling overwhelmed related to a large number of academic standards with a comparatively small amount of time to achieve the level expected. as for the lack of time change is the only constant: beginning teacher perceptions of implementing the current top-down change 9 for needed instruction, all participants cited district policy as the major influence over the time schedule. ms. patch discussed how she felt like she needed to teach certain subjects more based on student formative assessments but that "it just gets hard with the schedule." the second key theme was the participants’ feelings of being underprepared related to a perceived lack of training and support. ms. glenn said, "we learned the nc, or the north carolina, objectives all through college and then as soon as i graduated they were like common core.” while this participant blamed the university as expressed with the previous and other statements, the other two participants blamed the district and school administration for the lack of training. the analysis of the participant body language and non-verbal cues showed the negative feelings associated with our participants' perceived lack of support. when the participants referred to the lack of support they felt from the administration, they all lowered their voices at different points throughout these statements and some eye contact was lost due to the participants looking down or away when speaking about this topic. two of the participants appeared to display shame when commenting on the lack of administrative support. one participant leaned back with folded arms when speaking about this topic. one participant also chuckled frequently and insincerely while speaking about the perceived lack of support as if to say that it was a joke. the third key theme was participant feelings of lack of confidence related to the amount of curriculum and policy change. our participants stated multiple negative comments concerning the constant change in the schools and linking the new ccss as yet another change. ms. glenn lamented, “there’s so many changes happening all the time, which i guess is what i didn’t expect." a large amount of mandated change in a short time period diminished self-efficacy of the participants. mr. jones said, "it's every year something new, improve, do this do that and i haven't found that zone where i'm in the zone and i know what i'm doing and i'm confident with it." the participants commented on wanting more stability in the curriculum to have the ability to accomplish a level of expertise. ms. patch stated, "i feel like everything has changed so much with common core and i have felt a little, not so confident teaching it [math] just because everything has changed." observation of body language during the interviews substantiated the findings. when speaking about the perception of the constant change, the participants displayed body language and mannerism depicting frustration. two of the participants looked up and one rolled her eyes when discussing the pressures with learning the new curriculum while simultaneously teaching it. all three at various points in the interview opened their hands, palms facing each other and moving out in a sharp movement as if to say, “what do they expect me to do?” they also each sighed frequently and shook their heads from side to side when speaking about their perceptions of the constant changes with the curriculum. we noted no inconsistencies between the informal observations and the formal interview responses. what are beginning teachers’ attitudes towards the academic content in the ccss? during the data analysis the researchers created a frequency count on academic content areas. two of the participants mentioned literacy the most throughout their interviews, while the third participant mentioned the subject of mathematics the most. science and social studies were mentioned the least by all three participants. our finding is not a surprise; it parallels and confirms the extensive amount of research that has been conducted on the marginalization of science and more specifically social studies in the elementary school setting (leming, ellington, & schug, 2006; shaver, 1989; vanfossen, 2005). ms. glenn stated that social studies is given the least amount of time in her classroom; “i know this is horrible to say, but mainly because it's not tested the same way." the study uncovered two individual subjects referenced in a conflated manner, matching ongoing critiques of specific subject marginalization occurring over the past three decades due to the various curriculum reforms. the two female participants mentioned specifically “science and social studies” together more frequently each time they spoke of the subjects rather than referring to them as individual content areas and they both mentioned that neither science nor social studies were a favored subjects to teach. mr. jones, the male participant, did mention social studies and science more frequently as individual subjects and he did mention during his interview that these two subjects were his favorites to teach overall. our finding is contrary to the literature that predicted the ccss would increase instructional time for both science (scruggs, brigham, & mastropieri, 2013) and for social studies (anderson & ross, 2013). what do teachers perceive as intrinsic and mandated influences over their professional decisions? findings from the a priori coded data suggest that attitude, perceptions of self, and problem solving were the coded measures with the highest frequency of comments. participants perceived their attitude about teaching, their perception of self as a teacher, and their ability to problem solve as the most important aspects of making professional decisions (see table 2 and an expanded table in appendix c). current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 10 table 2 teachers’ perceptions impact internal external negative 4 36 positive 31 11 attitude. the majority of our participants’ comments concerning attitude were of a positive nature pertaining to the intrinsic aspects of working as a teacher. the first grade teacher exclaimed, "i just love seeing how much they [students] grow." the analysis revealed that the participants’ body language suggested their positive attitudes toward the nurturing aspect of teaching. during all three interviews, the participants seemed sincere and genuine about their enthusiasm for the aspects of their profession that they deemed as positive. they all smiled a great deal, leaned forward, and sat up in their chairs. they also had bright eyes with raised eyebrows and all three participants became highly animated when speaking about their love of working with children and feeling that they were making a difference in the lives of their students. perception of self. on the whole, all three participants’ perceptions of self were mixed with both positive and negative comments concerning self-efficacy as teachers. positive perceptions of self related to the intrinsic aspects of teaching. they all commented on loving to work with children. mr. jones said that he began teaching "to make a difference, be a guy role model, be there for kids that don’t have that strong male role model in their lives and make a difference, let kids see the world differently." negative perceptions of self related to the mandated aspects of teaching. one participant said that teaching reading was her weakness and that teaching reading was considered the most important subject by the district. another participant said he felt professionally vulnerable because his “end of year performance is based on how kids do” and that he didn’t perceive his students’ test scores to be an accurate reflection of his teaching ability. problem solving. the category on the a-priori coding measures with the highest number of comments overall was the problem solving section. the results concluded that in this section the majority of the participants’ comments were negative, especially those that pertained to policy or limitations of their teaching as an effect of those policies or administrative pressures. ms. glenn stated that she left her last teaching position because the school leaders controlled the curriculum; "you had to do it this way or that way and you couldn't change it." on the other hand, all three teachers found the ability to tackle the problems facing their individual students as a positive challenge of being a teacher. ms. glenn went on to say that the leadership at her current school allowed her to "make that change to meet the needs of the kids." all participants presented a high level of positivity when they spoke about any autonomy they felt in the classroom with regards to their abilities to make decisions. the male participant preferred to solve classroom problems alone. the two female participants identified collaboration with other grade-level teachers as the most influential factor concerning classroom decisions. “it’s just really cool how we as a team can think of something that we need to do for the kids or a certain thing and we can do that,” explained ms. glenn. in all three cases participants found autonomy in being able to make decisions an important aspect of problem solving. they all, however, defined autonomy differently, with the male participant referring to it as individually and the female participants as in peer-groups. summary of findings the findings of this study are specific to the three beginning teachers that were interviewed. inability to generalize findings is a characteristic of qualitative research (decuir-gunby, 2008). the data identified that the three beginning teachers found the amount of state or district initiatives they had experienced in their short careers overwhelming. the amount of change diminished self-efficacy in their daily professional lives. participants identified collaboration with other teachers and district requirements as the most influential factors concerning decisions about what to teach. additionally, through observed events, such as staff meetings and school inservices led by administrators, we found that all three teachers perceived the state and the district indirectly responsible for shaping their teaching experience as it related to content demands, while a more direct responsibility was placed on their school administration, whom they felt had the ultimate authority within their school. the minimal professional development on site during staff meetings and in-service days directed toward the implementation of the new curriculum standards gave the teachers some support, but they were left wanting. none of the teachers attended outside professional development, as it required taking days off of work, finding a substitute for their classroom, and paying for it out-of-pocket. the school administrators and/or the instructional resource teacher, who attended ccss professional development, relayed information about the new standards to the staff. this led to an uneasy feeling of “learning as they go” with respect to the new curriculum. a synthesis of the findings suggested the participants perceived the mandated factors of teaching negatively and the intrinsic factors of teaching positively. the intrinsic and mandated influences suggested from this study are important findings. the positive and negative attitudes the beginning teachers had toward the work and the profession is important as well. the study was conducted to better understand the influences of change is the only constant: beginning teacher perceptions of implementing the current top-down change 11 policy as they relate to professional vulnerability and to have a deeper understanding of beginning teachers’ selfefficacy towards academic content areas. while these findings cannot be generalized, the suggestions from this study can be used to corroborate literature on reform and attrition in the context of beginning teachers. the findings can also be used as a springboard for discussion between policymakers, school leaders, teacher educators, and beginning teachers. the next section begins this discussion between the major stakeholders and calls for further research where needed to improve our schools in a way that respects teachers as the experts of their own classrooms. discussion rather than focusing on what causes teacher stress and reinforcing deficit thinking, we chose to focus on the discussion on the positive. the participants said that they needed stability in the system to increase selfefficacy and thereby commitment. self-efficacy is a teacher believing that he or she can make a difference. commitment is a teacher saying that he or she will make a difference. commitment leads to both greater policy implementation fidelity and greater teacher retention (lasky, 2005; day, elliot, & kingston, 2005). the following section discusses implications of our study for policymakers, for school leaders, and for teacher educators. for policymakers the medical field has an extensive trial period before new practices are implemented in the field. this long timeframe allows for positive outcomes and side effects to be measured. the longer length from study to practice has ethical concerns in that patients could die from a disease for which there is a cure before the cure is made available to the public. however, the education field has the opposite problem, implementing widespread and systemic reform before a trial period accounts benefit, cost, and side effects. borman et al. (2003) state, "as each new reform is widely disseminated and implemented, the research follows closely behind, sometimes weighing in on an issue only after schools have moved on to the next apparent innovation" (p. 125). without a period for efficacy evaluation, school reform will be more like the pendulum swinging back and forth rather than the drill, going deeper with each return. hiebert says it best: “what if, rather than being harried by another new standard that has yet to be validated, we were to do some serious soulsearching?” (hiebert, 2011, p. 27). we must do some soul-searching not just about this particular reform but on the reform process as a whole. policymakers should also heed unintended consequences of legislating standards reform. tying financial rewards and punishments to mathematics and reading can cause teachers to decide only to teach mathematics and reading. creating a culture of competition for financial resources goes against the moral values of cooperation and collaboration of these three teachers. this substantiates easley (2005). in addition, a culture of constant change is contrary to these participants’ values of consistency and stability. finally, creating an environment of competition and instability can cause teacher’s self-efficacy to drop. this research study supports the literature that self-efficacy is correlated to attrition (skaalvik & skaalvik, 2007; sass, seal, & martin, 2011). before implementing a system-wide reform, future policymakers should take into consideration both  the quality of the outcomes resulting from the change, and  the quantity of change experienced by the educators in that system. for school leaders while this study found mandated standards and testing as factors that influenced our participants’ decisions of daily content, these teachers felt that these were minor influencers. further, the bureaucratic paperwork associated with accountability measures had a high learning curve and consumed much time but is perceived by the teachers as redundant. the findings of our study corroborate previous studies on prior standards reform movements (see day, elliot, & kingston, 2005; berger, 2000). participants stated that implementing the ccss was not a major factor in instructional decisions but was a major factor in paperwork preparation. teachers require assistance in completing the paperwork and other non-instructional duties related to the policy changes. dworkin (2001) found that feelings of meaninglessness and powerlessness led to teacher burnout. assistance with paperwork gives teachers the time needed for meaningful responsibilities, such as developing relationships and personalizing curriculum. the participants said that collaborating with other teachers was the most influential factor in their daily decision-making of content. on one hand, collaboration increased their workload, and because of this, created negative stress. on the other hand, the female teachers reported that collaboration gave them a system of support. collaboration with peer teams affords reciprocal accountability. collaboration with in-school teams keeps teachers accountable for teaching common core standards in a way that complements the needs of their students. the amount of stress collaboration causes is minimal when balanced with the accountability and support systems that keep the teachers as the perceived professionals. we must go back to the research that was emerging before nclb sent us down the path of valuing externally-calibrated, quantifiable research over teacher’s qualitative professional judgments (borman et al., 2003; easley, 2005; shepard, 2010). for teacher educators in teachers’ colleges, preservice teachers learn to include the students in the classroom rules conversation current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 12 (canter, 2001). being part of the process and understanding why a rule exists helps children meet the expectations. the same is true of adults (schmidt, & prawat, 1999; schrag, 1998, as cited in berger, 2000). we must spend time in teacher education courses talking about the research behind policies. this can help increase self-efficacy and help avoid unintended consequences, such as the marginalization of subjects like social studies. the teachers in our study said that they spend the most time in class on what will be tested at the end of the year. as we move closer with each day to the first score of our 21 st century, the marginalization of elementary school social studies continues to be repeatedly confirmed and unyielding (heafner et al., 2007; leming, ellington, & schug, 2006; vanfossen, 2005). results from elementary school-level studies indicate that primary grades teachers (k-2) spend as little as 12 minutes a day on social studies instruction compared to 24 minutes a day for intermediate grades teachers (3-5) (fitchett & heafner, 2010). the results conclude that unequal value placed on subjects in the standards determines unequal value placed on subjects in the classroom. yet, specific subjects are not the only aspect of devaluation that requires attention in our schools, there is a significant lack of value and professionalism afforded to our teachers as well. our participants' teacher education courses included knowledge of the previous state standards. all of our participants noted that they never anticipated the amount of change that they experienced as beginning elementary school teachers. teacher education classes can help prepare preservice teachers to manage top-down initiatives and remain committed to the profession by explaining the historical context for why and how educational policy decisions were made. understanding why a reform was implemented in the past can help teachers infer what policy-makers are attempting to accomplish in the future. understanding why reform was occurring may have helped our participants perceive the change in a more positive light. conclusion this study looked at beginning teachers’ priorities as they teach daily content because as experienced teachers, the researchers believed that how teachers spend their time reflects their intrinsic values and external pressures. our overarching question was: how did second and third year elementary teachers at wade elementary school perceive the implementation of the common core state standards? this exploratory case study contributes to the literature both on teacher attrition and standards-based reform. implications for further research would be to discover through statistical analysis if accountability reform causes an unintended consequence of high quality teacher attrition. our study found that the beginning teachers are overwhelmed by the amount of change mandated from the top and that the constant changes created both frustration and disillusion with their chosen profession. teachers need time to become proficient before mandated to change and held accountable for the success of the reform. the ultimate goals are for teacher attrition to decrease and for educational policies to be productive for all parties involved. increasing teacher retention benefits taxpaying citizens, policymakers, school leaders, beginning teachers, and most importantly, the students. references amrein-beardsley, a., & berliner, d. c. rideau, s. 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(2003). teacher research as professional development for p-12 educators in the usa. educational action research, 11(2), 301-325. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 16 appendix a interview questions 1) what do you teach? how long have you taught? where did you go to undergrad? what was your major? 2) why did you decide to become a teacher? 3) is teaching what you expected? why or why not? a) question for clarification i) is it different or the same as you imagined? ii) is it different or the same as your professors said it would be? b) questions for probing i) what do you like about teaching? ii) what aspect of teaching causes the most anxiety? 4) what subject or subjects do you spend the majority of your time? a) questions for probing i) do you like or not like this content area? ii) is this content area a strength? iii) do you feel less confident in any subject area? 5) what factors influence how much time you spend on each subject? 6) who is making these choices? a) question for clarification i) why do you spend the most time on this subject? ii) are you advised to teach this the most? 7) what subject or subjects do you spend the least amount of time on? a) question for clarification i) how do you decide what subjects if any get cut from your schedule? b) questions for probing i) do you like or not like this content area? ii) were you advised to spend less time on this? 8) what changes would you make, if any? change is the only constant: beginning teacher perceptions of implementing the current top-down change 17 a) questions for probing i) why would you make that decision? 9) is there anything else you would like to add? appendix b impact factors on decision-making in the classroom for coding intrinsic (internal) mandated (external) factor operational definition factor operational definition teacher knowledge shulman's pck model (1987) salary human capital theory: monetary and nonmonetary benefits teacher attitudes values, likes, dislikes, personal preferences timetable time in the day, academic subjects schedule perceptions of self bandura's theory of selfefficacy (1994) related to teaching guskey (1998) standards mastery standards masterywhat students were expected to know and be able to do for the next year decision-making strategies problem solving skills beliefs about making decisions independently and collaboratively with peers ability grouping in-class small group instruction to like ability students materials instructional resources, such as books, technology, and scripted lessons training undergraduate coursework and professional development workshops note: adapted from branyon, j. b. (2013). enacting a common core curriculum: the kenya study. the delta kappa gamma bulletin, 79(2),40-46. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 18 appendix c positive and negative perceptions of intrinsic and mandated influences intrinsic (internal) mandated (external) negative 1. lesson plans go not in a good direction 2. that ((teaching reading))’s a weakness 3. i was really nervous ((about teaching social studies)) 4. i feel a little less confident in math 1. this is horrible to say but mainly because it’s not tested 2. it ((social studies curriculum)) gets boring 3. you had to do it this way and you couldn’t change it 4. i didn’t expect the changes so much 5. haven’t found that zone where i’m in the zone 6. this year i am working with a team and i have to create everything brand new 7. the negative student behaviors 8. no matter what i tell the parents, inform them, administrators:::nothing changes 9. it’s a lot of smoke and mirrors 10. putting everything down on the line at the end of the year 11. that’s ((eog result)) wrong 12. they make it seem like one day makes a whole year 13. all that anxiety because people put that 14. end of year performance is based on how kid’s do 15. it’s a bunch of crap 16. reading does take a lot of time 17. people care about test results 18. i don’t have any job security 19. it’s to the minute . . .i’d change some things 20. i didn’t know we were going to departmentalize until after i had the job 21. i didn’t find anything beneficial ((about mentoring program)) 22. do i feel supported by administrators? no. 23. i expected more support from like administration 24. ((open classroom and working with other teachers)) is very difficult 25. just in 3 years it ((curriculum)) has changed 26. i feel like my professors did not prepare me 27. parents can cause a lot of anxiety 28. they ((parents)) can be very, i think, rude 29. administration doesn’t really support you 30. you have no control over ((students’ homelife)) 31. it just gets hard with the schedule 32. everything has changed with common core and i have felt … not so confident teaching it 33. if we didn’t have to do that because … kids get more out of centers 34. i would also like to see how another administrative team works 35. i would like to teach maybe in my own classroom 36. i spend so much time on paperwork positive 1. comfortable around kids 2. passion for teaching 3. it((teaching))’s very rewarding 4. get to be creative …get to be logical 5. be silly with kids 6. meet the needs of the kids 7. i’m really content 8. make a difference 9. make a difference ((2)) 10. make a difference ((3)) 11. open the world to these kids 12. i love all my kids to death 13. i love it 14. just giving as much love as i can to ((students)) 15. i care about them 16. love creating stuff for the classroom 17. i enjoy all of those things 18. one of the things i enjoy is reflecting 19. i can’t wait so i can do these kinds of things ((choose novels)) 20. i can have a lot of fun 21. i rock those things ((ss and science)) 22. i love science experiments 23. trying to get away from the boring 24. i loved those things 25. i have always loved children 26. i love the children 27. i get to teach really fun things 28. i do like teaching that content 29. i really enjoy teaching ((grade level)) 30. i really like these content areas 31. i do think i’m good at teaching literacy 1. team is collaborative 2. we’re ((teacher team)) good at coming to a conclusion 3. it ((daily 5)) helps me get a better relationship 4. i love this school but … 5. i think everyone on the staff i could approach and talk to 6. it’s a happy environment 7. i really like … working with the other teachers but 8. some of the parents, they make me feel like i’m making a difference in their child’s lives 9. fun, happy environment 10. i like how the school is small 11. i like the time off change is the only constant: beginning teacher perceptions of implementing the current top-down change 19 article citation saylor, e. e., & kerkhoff, s. n. (2014). change is the only constant: beginning teacher perceptions of implementing the current top-down change. current issues in education 17(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1311 author notes elizabeth e. saylor north carolina state university college of education raleigh, nc 27695 eesaylor@ncsu.edu liz saylor is a ph.d. candidate in curriculum, instruction and counselor education,concentration social studies at north carolina state university. after teaching in an urban public elementary school for ten years and obtaining national board certification, she returned to academia and is currently an instructor and teaching assistant at north carolina state university. her research interests include social studies education, social justice, teacher preparation, and professional development. shea n. kerkhoff north carolina state university college of education raleigh, nc 27695 snkerkho@ncsu.edu shea kerkhoff is a ph.d. student in the department of curriculum, instruction and counselor education with a literacy concentration at north carolina state university. she taught public high school for seven years and earned her master’s degree in international education policy and management. her research interests include global education, equity pedagogy, literacy instruction and policy, and teacher education. manuscript received: 10/08/2013 revisions received: 11/04/2014 accepted: 11/04/2014 file:///c:/users/brooke/appdata/local/temp/eesaylor@ncsu.edu file:///c:/users/brooke/appdata/local/temp/snkerkho@ncsu.edu current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 20 volume 17, number 3 december 22, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell authentications editors lisa marie lacy tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson tray j. geiger section editors rikkilynn archibeque tray j. geiger laura beth kelly kevin j. raso evelyn concepcion baca darlene michelle gonzales priyanka parekh isaac lamont bickmore megan hoelting niels piepgrass faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1313-5774-7-le.doc 1 volume 17, number 1 february 09, 2014 issn 1099-839x the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science andrea rae milner adrian college toni a. sondergeld bowling green state university charles rop university of toledo appropriate views of the nature of science are vital to scientific literacy yet rarely taught in us schools primarily due to naïve nos views held by teachers. thus, most school teachers need further educational nos experiences and instruction. science education literature suggests teachers can learn nos through both implicit (learning through doing) and explicit (precise utilization) professional development opportunities. through an integrated field studies teacher professional development program (a river runs through it [arrt]) we implemented both implicit and explicit nos instruction to see if the combination of methods would improve nos beliefs following the program. results obtained from pre and post vnos-c (see appendix a) surveys show a modest post-test increase in teachers’ informed nos views in all nos aspects (except inferential which remained the same), supporting the notion of using both implicit and explicit instruction in teaching the nature of science. in the context of a place-based, field oriented and naturally integrated watershed, our work offers insight into the value of using both implicit experiences and explicit instruction in the teaching of the nature of science for changing participant views of nos. however, due to the large number of naïve post-test nos views in empirical, theory vs. law, inferential, scientific method, and tentative aspects we realize extended nos experiences and instruction are necessary if science teacher educators expect to elicit dramatic and sustained change in teacher nos beliefs. our study demonstrates that the combination of implicit and explicit nos instructional methods in teacher professional development programs could be a meaningful method of impacting teachers’ nos beliefs as we saw an increase in all nos aspects from pre to post with the exception of one area which remained the same. keywords: nature of science, implicit instruction, explicit instruction, integrated field studies, professional development for many decades we have heard reports that students in the united states do not know much science by the time they graduate from high school and that the science they do learn is often a surrogate form; a dull, lifeless and often useless list of facts to memorize (aaas, 1993; nrc, 1996; ngss, 2013a). for those who current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 2 know and do science, school science that is found in most k-12 textbooks does not match up to our experiences because it is often not at all like real scientific inquiry. the science scientists know and practice, the very nature of science, is dynamic and logical, driven by curiosity and a need to find out. it is fed by inquiry and influenced by new discoveries and an active set of cultural influences (aaas, 2008). these are not new ideas; that school science is not real science, that real science should be taught in schools, and that students should gain practical understandings of the nature of science. educators and educational researchers have for many years endorsed efforts to nurture informed views of the nature of science (nos) in students (i.e., lederman, abd-el-khalick, bell, & schwartz, 2002) in an attempt to spark students’ interest in the area and produce a more scientifically literate society. the national standards for scientific literacy (aaas, 1993; nrc, 1996; ngss, 2013a) as well as all of the state science standards consider deep understandings of nos a vital part of scientific literacy for any student regardless of whether they wish to pursue a career in science or not. being scientifically literate allows individuals to have a greater understanding of issues they encounter on a daily basis in the media, government, and personal life experiences (hazen, 2002), and having accurate nos perceptions strengthens scientific literacy. further, in order to build a culture of more scientifically literate individuals holding well informed nos views, there needs to be an emphasis on learning scientific principles and concepts through handson inquiry-based practices that are representative of real science (aaas, 1993; hazen, 2002; nrc, 1996; ngss, 2013a). the national science teachers association (2000) preamble to their nature of science position statement reads, in part, “all those involved with science teaching and learning should have a common, accurate view of the nature of science.” our study and research question one common explanation for the absence of real science in classrooms is that teachers have very limited and naïve views of the nature of science themselves. teachers teach the science they know and if this does not represent the best conceptions of the nature of science, their students will not be exposed to it. it follows that in order to improve scientific literacy in schools, teachers need further educational experiences in nos. we believe that even practicing teachers with little background or experience in science can learn the nature of science through participation in well-crafted professional development opportunities that include implicit and explicit instruction in nos. we support the notion that if teachers own a more informed view of nos, their science teaching will gain vitality and scientific literacy will begin to thrive and grow in their classrooms. appropriate experiences may help facilitate the portrayal of science from a “rhetoric of conclusions” (clough & olson, 2012) to teachers representing the best conceptions of nos. without appropriate experiences, teachers may ask themselves, “how do i or can i help students understand the nature of science if i do not understand nos myself?” (ngss 2013b). our research explores the influence of a professional development program entitled a river runs through it (arrt) (grant-funded by the ohio board of regents) on arrt teacher’s nos beliefs prior to and after the program to assess the impact of the implicit experiential nos experiences combined with the explicit nos instruction that teachers received. specifically, the research question guiding this study was: does a river runs through it (arrt), an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program designed to provide nos implicit experiences and explicit instruction, influence teachers’ views of the nature of science? what would a more informed view of nos look like in practice in school classrooms? abd-el-khalick and lederman (2000a) state: “no consensus presently exists among philosophers of science, historians of science, scientists and science educators on a specific definition for nos” (p. 666). neither is it free of structure, of historical and logical order. as mentioned above, science is a dynamic process and not one scientific method or formulaic, universal checklist to follow (tsai, 2006). scientists tend to be lifelong learners because science demands it. sadly, many teachers still hold empiricist perspectives of science and assume that scientific knowledge is the discovery through a universal scientific method (tsai, 2006). instead, teachers should come to know science as a continual construction of meaning that emphasizes the tentative nature of science knowledge, the theory-laden quality of scientific exploration. like scientists, teachers should come to understand the role of conceptual change in the progressive development of their own scientific understanding as well as their students’ (tsai, 2006). research concerning teachers’ views of the nature of science although there are variations in the descriptions of the nature of science, we refer to nos as defined by abd-el-khalick, bell, lederman & schwartz (2002). the nos aspects addressed in this study (empirical, tentative, influential, creative, theory-laden, social and cultural, scientific method, theories and laws) are defined in table 1. we feel that these various aspects combined provide a complete and practical working definition of nos. the literature suggests that nos instruction can be implicit or explicit. implicit attempts utilize science process-skills instruction or engagement in science-based inquiry activities to improve science teachers’ conceptions of nos (abd-el-khalick & lederman, 2000, p. 665). although at first glance, this method would seem to be effective, there is some controversy about its long-range effectiveness. a limited the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 3 number of studies exploring the implicit nos instruction of pre-service teachers show slight improvement in preservice teachers’ nos views (e.g., palmquist & finley, 1997). others examined nos changes in practicing teachers’ views and found mixed results due to implicit nos instruction. for example, although scharmann and harris (1992) found that some in-service teacher attitudes changed with implicit instruction, other researchers indicate insignificant changes (e.g., haukoos & penick, 1985). consequently, the research results are not conclusive regarding the influence and appropriateness of implicit instruction of nos (abd-el-khalick & lederman, 2000a). in contrast, explicit instruction has been shown to be useful in eliciting positive nos attitudinal changes in practicing and pre-service teachers. according to tsai (2006), science teacher education courses that integrate ideas about the philosophy of science, contemporary learning theories, and activities led to changes in teachers’ views of the nature of science. tsai suggests that practicing teachers showed more agreement with constructivist views about science at the conclusion of the course, but their position toward the empiricist views about science remained statistically unchanged. due to their prior academic experiences in science and rich practice in teaching science, the in-service teachers might have strongly developed (possibly empiricist-oriented) views about science that were resistant to change (tsai, 2006). furthermore, approaches that utilize elements from history, philosophy of science, and/or direct instruction of nos are more effective in achieving adequate conceptions of nos than approaches that utilize scientific process-skills, instruction, or non-reflective inquiry-based activities (abd-el-khalick & lederman, 2000a). context of our study as the historic rivers run through the midwest, they bring outstanding opportunities for invigorating science and mathematics education. this teacher professional development program, entitled a river runs through it (arrt) (grant-funded by the ohio board of regents), is based on the assumption that powerful science teaching is situated in local contexts making the study of these two historic rivers valuable for teachers. the program was designed as an integrated watershed program to offer practicing teachers with professional development focusing on hands-on implicit nos experiences in the field as well as explicit nos classroom discussion. field work in the watershed area, classroom work on pedagogical applications, and technology integrated throughout were set up to enable participating teachers of science and mathematics to develop knowledge, skills and understandings as represented in the ohio academic content standards as well as new facility with field-based and inquiry methods of teaching. extensive field work as, well as intensive collaboration with working scientists, naturalists, mathematicians, and other local experts in related fields were a large component of this professional development program. the program consisted of two phases: 1) an intensive and integrated summer institute that ran monday through thursday from 8:30am until 5:00pm for two weeks; and 2) an academic fall session application phase (three 3hour long face-to-face class sessions). phase 1, the summer institute, mainly focused on nos implicit experiences and had three components: a) field-based inquiry which included collecting data in the local river watersheds, including technology-enhanced water studies, soil sampling, light intensity testing, comparison of flora and fauna in different areas; b) classroom-based study in which participants engaged in data analysis, interpretation and integrated study; and c) an instructional design component in which participants used their new understanding to design curriculum materials for their own classrooms. phase 2, the academic fall sessions, mainly focused on nos explicit instruction had three components: a) lesson planning; b) lesson plan slide show presentations and presentations of draft action plans; and c) culminating activity and action plans. both phases however, because of the inherent nature of our program, at certain points in time, focused on both nos implicit experiences and explicit instruction. in arrt, teachers were exposed to nos through integrated place-based field study that utilized science process-skills instruction and engagement in sciencebased inquiry activities (i.e., abdel-khalick & lederman, 2000a). participants, in field study groups, sampled water, surveyed geological formations, made observations and collected data using technology during field trips and interpretive walks. our specific content focus was watershed ecology in a rather broad sense. we incorporated river ecology, wetlands, natural history as well as human ecology; farming, human settlement, architecture, history, folklore, art and music. participants also regularly discussed specific issues pertaining to the nature of science to collaboratively construct meaningful understanding in situ, while participating in the field study. we also more explicitly approached nos through discussion, guided reflection, specific questioning in the context of classroom science activities (including inquiryoriented activities, examples from history of science, and traditional classroom-based science activities) (i.e., schwartz et al., 2002). during the arrt summer institute, participating teachers acted as environmental field scientists studying, exploring, and experimenting with their natural surroundings implicitly experiencing the nature of science. explicit, direct instruction of nos was later integrated in a rather socratic way into the fall discussion sessions. we consider this explicit instruction because the instructors actively looked for opportunities to directly teach the basic nos aspects through questions and comments. curricular details regarding the content of current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 4 nos instruction during the socratic discussion sessions focused on all aspects of nos. these socratic discussion sessions, in part, included collaborative groups meeting in “implementation sessions” to support each other in putting their new learning of nos aspects into practice with their own students. we hypothesized that the combination of lived experiences in practicing guided scientific inquiry with explicit direct instruction of nos issues would influence teachers’ perceptions of the nos and possibly transfer into their daily teaching. although constructive nos views alone are insufficient to drive teacher practice, they are still a necessary condition (abdel-khalick & lederman, 2000a). additionally, professional development contexts that treat inservice teachers as professionals are more likely to promote change in certain aspects of teachers’ views about the nature of science (schuster & carlsen, 2006). examples of summer institute activities that treated practicing teachers as field scientist professionals include but were not limited to: experiential fieldwork example: water sampling. one example of arrt’s attempt to provide teachers with experiential learning where they explored nos implicitly and were treated as field scientists is described here. teacher participants began the day in the classroom at the local botanical gardens learning about explorer® technology and probes for collecting water sampling data. the instructors for this component of arrt were a high school ecology teacher and a technology expert. curricular details regarding the content of nos instruction during this experiential fieldwork on water sampling focused much on the empirical (observation of the natural world) and inferential (distinction between scientific claims and evidence on which such claims are based) aspects of nos. this included the instructors leading the participants in discussion and demonstration of the probes and their function: temperature, conductivity, ph, and dissolved oxygen levels. in addition, participants took notes and were given ample opportunity to ask any questions they had that were answered by the instructors. class moved to the nearby pond at the local botanical gardens where participants applied the formal instruction in a hands-on application by collecting water data from different locations around the pond. working in groups of three or four, all participants recorded data in their field journals and took turns handling the explorer® probes. through a working lunch, the group gathered outside to discuss their results and the practical implications of different water sample data collected from various locations around the pond. participants were enthusiastic about their discoveries and sharing of their results. following lunch, in small groups participants connected their explorer equipment to laptop computers in the classroom to work with the data charts and tables. each group created a power point presentation using the explorer® software and their water sample data. according to the participants, the activity could easily be reproduced in a real classroom setting. in fact, some of the teachers that already teach water quality were looking forward to using the explorer® equipment with their students rather than traditional “snap kits.” method participants twenty practicing teachers and 4 graduate students (n=24) participated in all phases of the a river runs through it (arrt) program. this article reports the findings of only one of the research foci employed in relationship to the larger project. for this report, we focus on ten of the twenty practicing teacher participants who completed both phases of nos data collection. although all twenty completed the pre-test, ten chose to not participate in the post-test. we are uncertain as to why these ten participants self-selected out of the study, but believe it may have something to do with the nature of the post-survey being conducted after the arrt program was finished. additionally, the post-test was mailed to teachers with a follow-up email rather than having participants complete the survey in a controlled environment (classroom) as done with the pre-test. gender composition of the ten participants who did complete both preand post-tests was made up of mostly female (n=8), all self-identified as white, non-hispanic teachers of public (n=6), urban (n=4), suburban (n=5), and/or rural (n=1) schools in northwestern ohio and southeastern michigan. participants’ current grade level teaching was distributed between elementary (k-3) (n=1), intermediate (4-6) (n=3), middle of junior high (6-8) (n=4), and high school (9-12) (n=2). great variance existed in our participants’ current subject area teaching: math only (n=1), science only (n=5), social studies and language arts (n=1), art (n=1), gifted and talented (n=1), special education (n=1). instructors three professors and four instructors were responsible for arrt program instruction and field study inquiry. instructors held diverse backgrounds and fields of specification to meet the program objective of integrating field study, environmental education, and multiple content areas. the professors included: 1) an environmental scientist/education professor, 2) a geologist/environmental science professor, and 3) and an education professor with a literacy and math content focus. the other instructors consisted of high school biology and environmental education teacher, a technology expert from the university, and two doctoral candidates from the college of education, each with a focus in science education. in addition to the seven key instructors, numerous guest instructors and content specialists assisted in the program’s field trip experiences. for example, the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 5 when touring local historical sites of indian battle fields, a local archeologist and historian led the discussion and visit. when exploring an excavation site of a local island civil war prison for southern officers, the head archeologist and an archeological “rubber specialist” discussed their work and findings. metropark naturalists and botanical garden staff also participated in other field excursions. these field specialists and local experts contributed great depth to the teachers’ study and understanding of the specific disciplines being explored. they also implicitly portrayed science as a dynamic field of study where inquiry of the natural environment is essential in building upon current scientific knowledge. instrumentation and procedures instrument vnos-c. during arrt, we conducted three applications of the “views of nature of science questionnaire form c” (vnos-c) (lederman, abd-elkhalick, bell, & schwartz, 2002). the vnos-c is a ten item open-ended questionnaire focusing on nos principles such as: empirical, tentative, inferential, creative, theory-laden, social and cultural, myth of the “scientific method,” and nature of and distinction between scientific theories and laws and is used to assess participants’ base level understanding of the nos principles. as a result of previous studies and follow-up interviews, there is support for a high confidence level in the validity of the vnos-c for assessing the nos understandings of a wide variety of respondents (lederman et al., 2002). longitudinal surveys collect information at different points in time in order to study changes over time (fraenkel, wallen, & hyun, 2012). as a panel study, the researchers survey that same sample of individuals at different times during the course of the longitudinal survey (fraenkel, wallen, & hyun, 2012). this survey was administered to the same group of teachers at three different points in time. first, the vnos-c survey was given to all participants during the first day of the summer institute. the second application of the vnos-c occurred during the second (of 3) fall discussion meeting approximately three months after the summer institute concluded. this was a clear diversion from the vnos-c protocol with vygotsky’s belief in mind “that much of what we learn we learn from others” (phillips & soltis, 1998, p. 59). vygotsky argued that learning and development is a social, collaborative activity and that the zone of proximal development can serve as a guide for curricular and lesson planning. vygotsky used the term zone of proximal development to describe the region between the learner’s spontaneous level of knowing and thinking, and the level the learner can reach in problem solving with assistance (carin, bass, & contant, 2005, p. 89). vygotsky believed that school learning should occur in a meaningful context and not be separated from learning and knowledge students develop in the "real world". therefore, out-of-school experiences should be related to the student's school experience. for the third application, we mailed surveys to all of the participating teachers at the beginning of january; approximately six months after the summer institute and about three months after the vnos-c discussion meeting. vnos-c application #1: survey on first day of the summer institute. we modeled our program after the instructional strategies for conceptual change proposed by nussbaum and novick (1982) where we first revealed the practicing teachers naïve views of nos during the vnos-c application #1 on the first day of the summer institute. teachers in the arrt summer institute completed the vnos-c independently on the first day of the program. rather than having participants in the controlled environment of the classroom, as suggested by lederman (2002), teachers were asked to take a clip board, the survey and find a comfortable place out of doors in the local botanical garden, our daily meeting place for the summer institute. this departure from the protocol suggested by the authors is more consistent with our philosophy of informal learning through inquiry and the use of field study in the environmental education program (see arrt philosophy above). as in lederman (2002) teachers were allotted one hour to answer the questionnaire. see appendix a for items on the vnos-c. vnos-c application #2: fall discussion meeting. as described earlier, the arrt program included three fall evening follow-up classroom work sessions designed to continue working on the implementation of what they had learned from the summer field institute into their current teaching. the summer institute provided opportunities for the teachers to evaluate their preconceptions through field work (nussbaum & novick, 1982). the second of our fall meetings was dedicated to a discussion of the nos. small group and whole-group discussion provided opportunity to create cognitive dissonance with their preconceptions based on their summer field work (nussbaum & novick, 1982). teachers worked in their summer institute field study groups of four to five participants to collaboratively construct group responses to vnos-c questions. each of the five groups was assigned two of the 10 vnos-c items. they discussed the meanings of the questions, possible answers and used markers to write group responses on poster board paper. when the group was done, they hung their group responses on the wall of the classroom. in addition to giving the specific answers to the assigned questions, they were asked to describe what implications their answers have for their teaching of science and other subjects. when each field study group stood up to present their responses to their assigned vnos-c items, invigorating whole group discussion occurred where instructors were able to facilitate conceptual restructuring in regard to informed nos views (nussbaum & novick, current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 6 1982) through explicit nos dialogue. participants were required to use examples from the summer institute as evidence for their claims in order to illustrate the impact of the field work in regard to their nos views demonstrating how implicit instruction had impacted their nos beliefs. instructor led explicit nos dialogue with participant shared implicit nos experiences were intentionally combined to facilitate deeper nos understanding through the deliberate meshing of explicit and implicit nos instruction. formal nos assessment of individuals was not a goal of this meeting. rather, the appropriate understanding of nos principles where the knowledge was collectively constructed by the teachers “whose purpose [was] to share their expertise in order to construct and negotiate meaning” (wink & putney, 2002, p. 13). socially constructing meaning and beliefs about nos to elicit greater ownership over these beliefs was the primary desired outcome at this session. as abd-el-khalick and lederman (2000b, p. 1059) state: to be able to effectively teach nos to k-12 students, science teachers need to have more than a rudimentary or superficial knowledge and understanding of various nos aspects. teachers need to know a wide range of related examples, explanations, demonstrations, and historical episodes. they should be able to comfortably discourse about various nos aspects, contextualize their nos teaching with some examples or stories from hos, and design science-based activities to render the target nos aspects accessible and understandable to k-12 students. vnos-c application #3: post survey mailed to teachers only. individual teachers’ nos views were again formally assessed sixteen weeks into the regular school year, six months after the summer inquiry institute and three months after the fall nos discussion session. this time lapse allowed teachers to get back into their regular routines and to field test the lesson plans they produced as an outcome of the arrt summer institute. because busy schedules did not allow another evening session, it was impossible to gather teachers together in a controlled environment for this round of data collection. teachers were mailed the vnos-c and asked to complete it without the use of outside materials and return it to the researchers. an email reminder was sent out to all who did not return their post-survey within two weeks of the initial mailing. data from this phase was used for comparison to teachers’ baseline nos understanding and in comparison to the fall discussion session to see if arrt experiences may have contributed to a lasting change in nos beliefs. our return rate for the mailed surveys was 50%. data analysis data collected for the vnos-c individual teacher responses at time 1 and 3 were coded according to aspects of nos as defined by lederman, abd-el-khalick, bell, and schwartz (2002). their definitions for the categories described in table 1 were used as the basis for determining if responses provided in this study were more informed or more naïve views of the nature of science. interrater reliability is crucial when multiple researchers are analyzing data. the researchers independently analyzed this data, compared their analyses, and resolved any discrepancies with further consultation of the data arriving at a consensus (lederman, abd-ed-khalick, bell, & schwartz, 2002). first, the responses were evaluated for accuracy where researcher’s rated nos response as representing either more informed views or more naive views for each nos aspect. for example, one respondent wrote that: “imagination and creativity are used in presenting ‘hard science’ to the public, but is not tolerated among those following strict scientific methods.” this response was considered a more naïve view for the creative aspect of nos. another respondent stated that: “scientists absolutely must use imagination and creativity…in coming up with new ideas, being able to look at something and see things that no one else has. looking at things in new ways, using tools/technology for other purposes.” in contrast to the first example, this response was rated an informed view for the same nos aspect. following this preliminary round of data analysis, researchers looked for common themes, patterns, and naïve conceptions in the responses (i i.e., akerson, v. l., morrison, j. a., & mcduffie, a. r., 2006). table 1 nature of science aspects defined nos aspect definition empirical science is based, at least partially, on observations of the natural world. tentative scientific knowledge is subject to change and is never absolute or certain. the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 7 inferential the crucial distinction between scientific claims and evidence on which such claims are based. creative the generation of scientific knowledge involves human imagination and creativity. theory-laden scientific knowledge and investigation are influenced by scientists’ theoretical and disciplinary commitments, beliefs, prior knowledge, training, experience, and expectations. social and cultural science as a human enterprise is practiced within, affects, and is affected by a larger social and cultural milieu. scientific method the lack of a universal step-wise method that guarantees the generation of valid knowledge. theories and laws lack of a hierarchical relationship between theories and laws. results a greater number of informed views were found at the end of arrt program than at the beginning, for seven of the eight vnos-c categories: empirical, tentative, creative, theory-laden, social & cultural, scientific method, and theories vs. laws nos aspects. however, more informed views for the inferential nos remained about the same as it was in the pre-test. none of the nos aspects regressed to having a greater number of more naïve views at the end of the program than in the beginning. see table 2 for vnos-c application results and table 3 for examples of more informed and more naïve view examples from our participants for each nos category. persistent naïve conceptions common themes in misconceptions among participants with more naïve views at the post-test phase were examined to see where participants continued to struggle with appropriate nos beliefs. frequent misconceptions were found in empirical, tentative, inferential, scientific method, and theory vs. law nos aspects. creative, theory laden, and social cultural nos aspects did not possess common misconceptions in the post-test phase as there were so few participants (zero or one) with more naïve views of these domains. empirical nos misconception themes. a common misconception found in the post-test empirical nos was the belief that science relies on “testing” and is “provable” or “supplies provable evidence.” this misconception was described by five of the six participants with more naïve empirical nos views in their post-test responses. tentative nos misconception themes. science as “fact” was found as a common misconception among those with more naïve tentative nos views in the posttest. all six of these participants responded that science is used to “prove something true” or that scientific “laws are fact.” inferential nos misconception themes. common misconceptions were revealed among those with more naïve inferential nos views in the post-test. with respect to the structure of an atom, five of the seven participants with misconceptions referred to technology as the leading reason for scientists’ certainty of atomic structure. and four of the seven participants felt that experimentation played a role. regarding species, six of the seven participants with misconceptions believed similar characteristics such as dna and breeding were responsible for specific categorization of species. scientific method nos misconception themes. of the seven participants with more naïve views about the scientific method dimension of nos in the post-test, four referred to the scientific method as a specific step-wise “procedure” that scientists use in experimentation. while all seven suggested that the experiments elicit scientifically valid or “true” results. theory vs. law nos misconception themes. the common theme of hierarchical structure between theories and laws was evident in post-test responses from those with more naïve views toward theory vs. law nos. all eight of these participants viewed theories as “unproven” and “laws (as) fact” or “proven.” and three participants suggested that “theories become laws once proven.” current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 8 table 2 pre and post individual response vnos-c results (n=10) nos aspect test time more naïve view more informed view empirical pre-test post-test 7 6 3 4 tentative pre-test post-test 7 6 3 4 inferential pre-test post-test 7 7 3 3 creative pre-test post-test 1 0 9 10 theory-laden pre-test post-test 3 1 7 9 social & cultural pre-test post-test 4 1 6 9 scientific method pre-test post-test 9 7 1 3 theories vs. laws pre-test post-test 9 8 1 2 the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 9 table 3 participant more naïve and more informed response examples for each nos aspect assessed nos aspect more naïve view more informed view empirical people who study scientific methods have the means to actually prove the relativity and validity of a situation… without proof or evidence people of science will not believe. (item 1) science is done in a process that seeks clarification of ideas, while posing more questions for investigation…it tests ideas and retests ideas and relies on peer review to validate findings. (item 1) tentative a theory is a theory until an experiment comes along and makes it a fact. (item 4) theories are only as good as the knowledge we posses at the time. new technology, new experiments constantly alter our scientific theories. the value of learning theories is to discover more. by knowing what is, you can question it or expand it, therefore changing the original theory. (item 4) inferential the looks of atoms are determined through experimentation and observations by the scientists! (item 6) i think that scientists are certain about their characterization of what a species is. i think scientists used similar characteristics to put species into various categories. (item 7) i think scientist’s first use as obvious as possible evidence that they can agree on, maybe such as gills vs. lungs vs., photosynthesis. then they just start narrowing down the characteristics. but there is not total agreement…things change and new species are found. (item 7) creative imagination and creativity are used in presenting “hard science” to the public, but is not tolerated among those following strict scientific methods. (item 10) scientists absolutely must use imagination and creativity…in coming up with new ideas, being able to look at something and see things that no one else has. looking at things in a new way, using current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 10 tools/technology for other purposes…if they were not creative, how would they get the idea to experiment in the first place? theory-laden because no one was there with their yellow notebooks to take observations so no one knows for sure (why dinosaurs were extinct)! (item 8) different biases play a role. theories rely on how experiments are set up and how data is analyzed. since each researcher has their bias it is easy to see how they (views of dinosaur extinction) can vary. (item8) social & cultural science is universal because with the vast array of groups testing for results on a given topic, they should eventually result in the same/similar results. thus the scientific results would not change the social and/or cultural values at the end but enhance the entire population as a whole. (item 9) i think that science is affected by the social and cultural values imbedded in individuals and groups…science is approached by people with their own religious values and beliefs. (item 9) scientific method the scientific method involves posing a question, then postulating a series of answers, then conducting a series of controlled experiments to test the proposed hypothesis, and then seeing which of the hypotheses holds true after many trials. (item 1) a way to find out about something. an exercise to satisfy curiosity…derived from a natural sense of curiosity about our world and how it works. it can revolve around the simplest of questions and observations, and so can be explored at the earliest age and by all, no matter what their intellect or level of knowledge. (items 1 & 2) theories vs. laws i believe a theory becomes a law once scientists are able to prove their theory with certainty. laws don’t change. (item 5) theories attempt to explain “why” something occurs or “how” something occurs. laws predict and don’t explain. (item 5) the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 11 discussion does a river runs through it (arrt), an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program designed to provide nos implicit experiences and explicit instruction, influence teachers’ views of the nature of science? our study demonstrates that the combination of implicit and explicit nos instructional methods in teacher professional development programs could be a meaningful method of impacting teachers’ nos beliefs as we saw an increase in all nos aspects from pre to post with the exception of one area which remained the same. overall, perceptions of the nature of science held by teachers in this research were more informed after completing the arrt program and having returned to teach for twelve weeks. prior research has shown mixed results for improving teachers’ nos beliefs when using implicit nos experiential learning alone (haukoos & penick, 1985; palmquist & finley, 1997; sharmann & harris, 1992), or solely explicit nos instruction (tsai, 2006) although explicit nos instruction has appeared to worked better (abd-el-khalick & lederman, 2000a). teachers in this study came into the program with higher informed views in certain nos aspects over others. for the creative, theory-laden, and social & cultural domains of nos, over half of the teachers in our sample entered the program with informed views. for these nos aspects all, or all but one, of the teachers held more informed views in the post-test stage. we cannot explain the reason for this. however, we do speculate that it may have something to do with self-selection into the arrt program. by this we mean it is possible that the teachers who chose to participate in our environmental education professional development program may have participated because arrt goals and philosophy matched closely with their personal science education beliefs. supporting this possibility, creative, theory-laden, and social/cultural aspects were all specific goals of arrt. it was a goal for teacher participants to learn to be creative in their exploration of the natural world around them (creative nos). at times they hypothesized about the nature of a river or the condition of a historical battle field based on the remains, where different conjectures were made and all could have been “right” (theory-laden nos). the integrated nature of the program, combining science with local history and other content areas, promoted the social & cultural nos aspect. therefore, teachers who did not at least in part share these philosophical beliefs about science would likely have avoided applying for this intense professional development learning opportunity. on the other hand, teachers in this study held quite naïve views prior to and after the arrt program for particular nos aspects. over half of the teachers’ views were still naïve in the post-test phase for empirical, tentative, inferential, scientific method, and theories vs. laws domains of nos. although all of these nos aspects increased in more informed views in the post-test, except for inferential which remained the same, a large portion of our sample still held more naïve perceptions in the end. most problematic were theories vs. laws, scientific method, and inferential nos aspects. a theme of “science is proven” or “absolute truth” found from doing science was revealed in the teachers’ responses for items addressing these categories. while these results are somewhat similar to prior research (tsai, 2006), it is nevertheless quite troubling in that teachers without appropriate nos views are highly likely to pass these misconceptions along to their students. at the same time, this is not surprising as these naïve views may be long standing beliefs requiring more than one course to change regardless of the nos instructional method. implications in the context of a place-based, field oriented and naturally integrated watershed, our work offers insight into the value of using both implicit experiences and explicit instruction in the teaching of the nature of science for changing participant views of nos. however, based on the naïve views still present in the post-test, specific attention should be given to nos aspects that revolve around science as a dynamic body of knowledge that is never proven “truth” but supporting or refuting evidence. additionally, we realize that one teacher education program is most likely not enough to elicit dramatic change in teacher nos beliefs. especially for those that hold very strong naïve views, as well-established beliefs are very difficult to move and much time is required to facilitate long held attitudinal changes. time and constant support are necessary for helping in-service teachers learn to transfer appropriate nos beliefs through their teaching of nos in their own classrooms (tuan & chin, 1999). and, this is the ultimate goal since we strongly believe that engaging field-based nos learning promotes student excitement toward and learning of science. questions about the value and application of implicit instruction in nos as a specific strategy or in combination with explicit methods as delivered in arrt are raised from this study. undergraduate teacher education programs need to focus on teaching strong nos understanding so these pre-service teachers have exposure to these views and a chance to adopt them. teacher professional development programs addressing the nature of science need to extend longer than a summer session in order to have a competitive chance against strong naïve nos perceptions. providing teacher support in lesson planning throughout a school year or longer may also be a beneficial tactic in enhancing and sustaining nos instruction in the classroom. “the integration of scientific and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts set the stage for teaching and learning about the nature of science. this said, learning about the nature of current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 12 science requires more than engaging in activities and conducting investigations.” (next generation of science standards [2013] p. 2). the conclusions of this research support this notion and can help inform policy development, curriculum, as well as assessment advancements. the ngss (2013a) states: quality science education is based on standards that are rich in content and practice, with aligned curricula, pedagogy, assessment, and teacher preparation and development. it has been nearly 15 years since the national research council and the american association for advancement in science produced the seminal documents on which most state standards are based. since that time, major advance in science and our understanding of how students learn science have taken place and need to be reflected in state standards. the time is right to forge next generation science standards. limitations the major limitations in this study are sample size and post-test procedure. we were unable to obtain post-test vnos-c responses from all participants in the arrt program (a 50% return rate). the only responses we received were from those that voluntarily completed and returned the questionnaire. therefore, we are unable to determine if this group of respondents is similar to or different from the participants who chose not to respond. as previously mentioned, we believe the reason for the lower return rate on the post-survey was because participants were asked to complete the survey on their own time and return it after the program was complete, as opposed to having teachers complete the survey when they were in class as a captive audience. procedurally, the post-test was not completed in a “controlled” environment. teachers completing the post-test at their home or school without researcher observation allowed them the opportunity to use outside information in responding even though they were specifically instructed not to do this. interviews of participants would have added to the validity of the results as they would have provided greater depth in understanding more about participants thinking. therefore the generalizability of these results is limited based on the added instability of testing environment, small sample size, and lack of interviews. future research the teachers in this study self-selected to participate in this program. future research should focus on a much larger sample size that includes teachers who are randomly selected to explore whether self-selection is a variable that influences the development of nos views. a longitudinal research study is needed to establish whether an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program designed to provide nos implicit experiences and explicit instruction will influence teachers’ views of the nature of science over time. researchers might 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(2002). a vision of vygotsky. boston: allyn and bacon. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 14 appendix vnos-c items 1. what, in your view, is science? what makes science (or a scientific discipline such as physics, biology, etc.) different from other disciplines of inquiry (e.g., religion, philosophy)? 2. what is an experiment? 3. does the development of scientific knowledge require experiments? if yes, explain why. give an example to defend your position. if no, explain why. give an example to defend your position. 4. after scientists have developed a scientific theory (e.g., atomic theory, evolution theory), does the theory ever change? if you believe that scientific theories do not change, explain why. defend your answer with examples. if you believe that scientific theories do change: (a) explain why theories change; (b) explain why we bother to learn scientific theories. defend your answer with examples. 5. is there a difference between a scientific theory and a scientific law? illustrate your answer with an example. 6. science textbooks often represent the atom as a central nucleus composed of protons (positively charged particles) and neutrons (neutral particles) with electrons (negatively charged particles) orbiting the nucleus. how certain are scientists about the structure of the atom? what specific evidence do you think scientists used to determine what an atom looks like? 7. science textbooks often define a species as a group of organisms that share similar characteristics and can interbreed with one another to produce fertile offspring. how certain are scientists about their characterization of what a species is? what specific evidence do you think scientists used to determine what a species is? 8. it is believed that about 65 million years ago the dinosaurs became extinct. of the hypothesis formulated by scientists to explain the extinction, two enjoy wide support. the first, formulated by one group of scientists, suggests that a huge meteorite hit the earth 65 million years ago and led to a series of events that caused the extinction. the second hypothesis, formulated by another group of scientists, suggests that massive and violent volcanic eruptions were responsible for the extinction. how are these different conclusions possible if scientists in both groups have access to and use the same set of data to derive their conclusions? the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 15 9. some claim that science is infused with social and cultural values. that is, science reflects the social and political values, philosophical assumptions, and intellectual norms of the culture in which it is practiced. others claim that science is universal. that is, science transcends national and cultural boundaries and is not affected by social, political, and philosophical values, and intellectual norms of the culture in which it is practiced. if you believe that science reflects social and cultural values, explain why. defend your answer with examples. if you believe that science is universal, explain why. defend your answer with examples. 10. scientists perform experiments/investigations when trying to find answers to the questions they put forth. do scientists use their creativity and imagination during their investigations? if yes, then at which stages of the investigations do you believe scientists use their imagination and creativity: planning and design, data collection, after data collection? please explain why scientists use imagination and creativity. provide examples if appropriate. if you believe that scientists do not use imagination and creativity, please explain why. provide examples if appropriate. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 16 article citation milner, a. r., sondergeld, t. a., & rop, c. (2014). the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science. current issues in education, 17(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1313 author notes andrea r. milner, phd assistant professor teacher education adrian college 110 south madison street adrian, michigan 49221 517-265-5161 ext. 3885 amilner@adrian.edu andrea r. milner is an assistant professor at adrian college (ac) in the teacher education department. dr. milner is also the director of the institute for education at ac. she earned her doctor of philosophy in curriculum & instruction in august 2008 from the university of toledo. her research focuses on the effects constructivist classroom contextual factors have on student motivation and learning strategy use. this includes the investigations of innovative strategies, techniques, and methods to facilitate learning environments that will ignite motivation and stimulate learning strategy use in a manner that will positively transform students’ experience of education within the classroom and enable students to then transfer that experience to their life out in the “real world”. she has numerous publications and presentations. toni a. sondergeld, phd assistant professor school of educational foundations, leadership and policies bowling green state university bowling green, ohio tsonder@bgsu.edu toni a. sondergeld is an assistant professor at bowling green state university (bgsu) in the school of educational foundations, leadership and policies. dr. sondergeld is also the co-director of the center of assessment and evaluation services (caes) at bgsu. she earned her doctor of philosophy in foundations of education: educational research & measurement in 2009 from the university of toledo. her research focuses on science/stem education; program/grant evaluation; classroom assessment & data driven decision making; and school reform. she has numerous publications and presentations. charles rop, phd associate professor curriculum and instruction university of toledo toledo, ohio 43606 charles.rop@utoledo.edu charles rop is an associate professor at the university of toledo (ut) in the department of curriculum and instruction at the ut’s college of education. he earned his doctor of philosophy in curriculum, teaching and educational policy with cognates in science education, teacher education, and disciplinary knowledge from michigan state university. his research focuses on exploring ways to construct learning experiences that engage the passions and perceptions of learners in ways that transform their views of the world and their relationships to it. in his research in science education he is working to discover ways that thoughtful engagement with the natural world can enable teachers and prospective teachers to catch a vision for authentic inquiry and discovery in science. melding qualitative and quantitative methodologies, he is looking at how these new experiences might influence their presentation of science in their classrooms. he has numerous publications and presentations the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 17 manuscript received: 05/13/13 revisions received: 08/13/2013 accepted: 08/31/2013 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 18 volume 17, number 1 february 09, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors elizabeth calhoun reyes constantin schreiber assistant executive editor kevin jose raso recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editor elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik aaron bryant darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell younsu kim anna montana cirell kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber melinda thomas faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 5, number 5 june 5, 2002 issn 1099-839x the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners wayne e. wright arizona state university drawing on interviews with teachers, this study examines the effects of a highstakes standardized test (the sat-9), on a large inner-city elementary school in southern california with a high english language learner (ell) student population. specifically, the study addresses the following questions: (a) how much of an emphasis is there on the sat-9? (b) do teachers believe the sat-9 is a fair and valid measure of teaching and student learning? (c) how has the sat-9 affected the curriculum taught to students, especially ell students? (d) how has the sat-9 affected the teachers and students? and, (e) has the sat-9 improved teaching and learning at the school under study? the findings reveal that standardized testing has not resulted in higher quality teaching and learning in this school; rather, it has resulted in a narrowed curriculum and harmful effects on both teachers and students. the majority of states are now using some form of high stakes tests to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable in an effort to improve teaching and learning. this study analyzes the effects of california's high stakes testing policy on an innercity elementary school with a high english language learner (ell) population. under the state's standardized testing and reporting (star) program (see http://star.cde.ca.gov), all students in grades 2-11 in california must take the stanford achievement test, 9th edition (sat-9). the sat-9 is a nationallynormed multiple-choice test produced by harcourt educational measurement. elementary students are required to take several separate language arts and math sections. combined, the tests take considerable time. for example, the mandatory sections of the 2nd grade test take nearly 7 hours to complete. california has created an academic profile index, which uses results from the sat-9 exam to rank schools throughout the state (pyle, 1999). schools with low test scores are targeted and given growth rates to which they are held accountable. low scoring schools that fail to meet the growth rate are scrutinized and are denied the monetary rewards given to schools and teachers who meet their growth targets. newspapers publish sat-9 scores and api rankings, subjecting schools and school districts to public scrutiny as well. each consequence clearly contributes to the classification of the sat-9 as a high-stakes test in california. the purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of the sat-9 on teachers, students, and the curriculum in an inner-city elementary school. this school serves a high population of english language learners and is situated in a low-socioeconomic neighborhood. inner-city ell students traditionally do not do well on standardized exams, yet are the students that testing proponents target under assumptions that high stakes tests will improve educational quality and academic achievement in their schools (amrein, berliner & biddle, 2002; http://star.cde.ca.gov/ current issues in education vol. 5 no. 5 haney, 2000; mcneil, 2000; ohanian, 1999 and heubert & hauser, 1999). specifically, the purpose of this study is to address the following questions: (a) how much of an emphasis is there on the sat-9? (b) do teachers believe the sat-9 is a fair and valid measure of teaching and student learning? (c) how has the sat9 affected the curriculum taught to students, especially ell students? (d) how has the sat-9 affected the teachers and students? (e) has the sat-9 improved teaching and learning at the school?. literature review today's testing movement has its roots in the eugenics movement. early founders and advocates of iq testing saw great utility in the ability of tests to sort out the so called "feebleminded" children (and adults) for purposes of social control (gould, 1996; grissmer, flanagan, kawata, & williamson, 2000; heubert & hauser, 1999; sacks, 1999; stoskopf, 2000). when iq tests made their way into schools, educational practitioners found them to be useful tools for quantifying notions of merit and aptitude, sorting children, and disbursing educational resources accordingly. tests became more popular as did society's reliance on tests to hold schools accountable. today, we test more students, with greater frequency, and with a larger number of tests than during any other time in the history of the united states. over the last three decades we have also increasingly relied on tests, to which severe consequences have been attached, to reform our schools. these test are known as high stakes tests (sacks, 1999; kohn, 2000). advocates of testing argue that attaching stakes to tests is necessary to hold schools accountable, reward high performing schools, and identify failing schools so they may be targeted for extra help. this is a key element of president george w. bush's education plan (no child left behind act, 2001). however, researchers and numerous others have false notions that accountability measures such as high stakes tests actually yield increases in academic achievement. there is mounting evidence that gains on state tests are not necessarily indicators of higher achievement. an experimental study by koretz, linn, dunbar and shepard (1991) revealed that performance on a high-stakes exam did not generalize to other tests for which students had not been specifically prepared. klein, hamilton, mccaffrey, and stecher (2000), investigated the performance gains celebrated in texas. they compared the texas assessment of academic skills (taas) scores with the scores taken from the national assessment of educational progress (naep) and found the dramatic increases in taas were not evident on the naep as had been previously purported. additionally, while the taas illustrated that performance gaps between whites and students of color were narrowing, naep scores showed that the gaps were widening. amrein and berliner (2002) found a similar pattern as they examined increases on 18 states' high-stakes exams and patterns on other tests that tested similar knowledge constructs (e.g., sat, act, naep, and ap exams). all researchers found that significant increases on high-stakes exams did not transfer over or generalize to these other exams, challenging the notion that high stakes tests caused increases in academic achievement. high-stakes accountability systems can and do get results (i.e., increased test scores), but the results are not "particularly deep or lasting" (fullan, 2001, p. 220). rather, the results are artificial. given that high stakes tests have not evidenced authentic learning gains, scholars express deep concerns over the negative and harmful results of testing on schools, teachers, students, and the curriculum (haney 2000; klein, hamilton, mccaffrey, & stecher, 2000; mcneil, 2000; valencia & bernal, 2000). sacks (1998) contends, "focusing exclusively on measurements and accountability may have [had] precisely the opposite of [their] intended outcomes" (p. 93). this was a major finding in the work of mcneil (2000). mcneil studied the effects of high stakes tests in classrooms in texas—the state where dramatic increases in test scores were dubbed the "texas miracle." mcneil revealed that school reform efforts that which centered on testing, greatly distorted the educational experiences of students in urban schools. she found that as schools focused more and more on test preparation and teaching to the test, test scores increased, meanwhile the quality of teaching and learning was both compromised and depreciated. in an in-depth examination of elementary schools in arizona, smith, edelsky, draper, rottenberg, and cherland (1989) found that external (i.e., state and district mandated) high stakes testing resulted in additional negative effects in the classroom. they found that: 1. testing reduces the time available for ordinary instruction. 2. testing affects what elementary schools teach. in high stakes environments, schools neglect material that the tests do not include. 3. testing encourages use of instructional methods that resemble testing. 4. testing affects school organizations by placing general boundaries on placements and instructional opportunities. the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners 5. testing has hidden structural effects on ordinary instruction. 6. by teachers' definitions, testing affects pupils. 7. testing affects teachers. (pp. 267-275) in addition, haney's (2000) investigation of the "texas miracle" revealed that poor and minority students dropped out of school at significantly higher rates as pressures to raise test scores intensified. thus, increases in the dropout rate led to higher aggregate test scores. test proponents in texas touted increases in scores as proof that high-stakes tests worked to improve academic achievement. what was more plausible of an explanation, however, was that the students who dropped out of school took their low-scores with them. a simple change in the sample of students who were tested caused the increases in composite test scores actual increases in achievement did not. the students who remained in school did nothing but remain in school to improve their composite test performance. as heubert (2001) maintained, "when low-achieving students are not part of the test-taking population, the pass rates of those who remain will be higher-even if the achievement of those who actually take the test has not improved" (p. 4). in fact, haney (2000) and mcneil (2000) have even documented incidences in which school personnel in some texas schools actually prevented low-achievers from taking the tests in order to inflate test scores. finally, the issue of the inclusion of language minority students who are not yet fluent in english, has been a major concern raised by many scholars, educators, and others in the testing debate. language minority students frequently live in low socio-economic neighborhoods and attend inner-city or rural (migrant worker area) schools neighborhoods and schools disproportionately impacted by high stakes tests. for example, "50% of the schools scoring in the lowest 20% on the [academic profile index in california] were in rural areas ... while the other 50% were in the inner cities. ... all of these areas are impacted by poverty and language barriers" (grisham, 2001, p. 13; see also wells, 2001). the language barriers these students face inevitably affect the ways in which they perform on tests. english-language learners are usually expected to meet the same standards as native english speakers on high-stakes tests "before having made the improvements in instruction that will enable all students to meet the standards" (heubert, 2001, p. 11). the language needs of these students are oftentimes overlooked in large-scale testing programs. more specifically, accommodating the language needs of language minority students is an endeavor not often valued in states with english-only policies such as california. as such, "large-scale assessments are studded with problems that affect not only how equitably the achievement of lep [limited english proficient] students can be measured, but how effectively lep students' mastery of content [can be] assessed" (kopriva, 2000, p. 5). according to the u.s. department of education's office of civil rights (office of civil rights, 2000) high stakes tests should not have a disparate impact on ell students. education agencies must provide an education program that enables ell students to master the knowledge and skills necessary to pass high stakes tests. the american education research association (2000) position statement concerning high-stakes testing in prek-12 education extends this point: if a student lacks mastery of the language in which a test is given, then that test becomes, in part, a test of language proficiency. unless a primary purpose of a test is to evaluate language proficiency, it should not be used with students who cannot understand the instructions or the language of the test itself. if english language learners are tested in english, their performance should be interpreted in the light of their language proficiency. special accommodations for english language learners may be necessary to obtain valid scores. (p. 13) despite professional guidelines (and research findings that show the negative impact of high stakes tests), sat-9 scores and api rankings are being used inappropriately in california. the use of the sat-9 as the sole indicator of school performance and student achievement is leading to the neglect of the academic needs of ell students (garcia, 2001). likewise, the api in california is misleading for schools with large numbers of english learners, particularly as educational programs for language minority students are being evaluated postproposition 2271. several scholars have negated claims that english-only programs are superior to bilingual education programs, for example. using sat-9 scores such claims simply cannot be substantiated (butler, orr, gutierrez, & hakuta, 2000; mora, 2001; thompson, dicerbo, mahoney, & macswan, 2002). from the literature reviewed herein, it is clear that there are serious concerns among scholars and practitioners about the effects of high-stakes testing. other than mcneil (2000) and smith et al. (1989), however, few researchers have actually gone 3 current issues in education vol. 5 no. 5 into the schools. few have been able to document first hand the negative effects of high stakes tests in classrooms. while this study is not as comprehensive as the work conducted by mcneil and smith and colleagues, it fills a void in the literature. it takes a closer look into an inner-city elementary school in california with a high english language learner population and investigates the ways in which school personnel were forced to come to terms with california's sat-9, its academic profile index, and the burdens of teaching in a state with a high-stakes test. methodology those who understand the effects of testing are those who are closest to the tests — the teachers. ironically, teachers' voices are rarely heard in the testing debate. their views are often dismissed by testing advocates who argue that teachers oppose high stakes tests simply because they do not want to be held accountable; teachers are biased so their concerns about high stakes tests should not be warranted. yanow (2000), on the other hand, argues, "to understand the consequences of a policy for the broad range of people it will affect requires 'local knowledge'the very mundane, expert understandings of and practical reasoning about local conditions derived from lived experience" (pp. 4-5). clearly, teachers posses this "local knowledge" and have the "lived experience" necessary to understand the effects of high-stakes testing. qualitative research methodologies were utilized to collect the data needed to tap into this "local knowledge" (bogdan & biklen, 1992; merriam, 1998). this study was conducted at alamitos elementary school2, where i taught for several years. my interest in selecting alamitos elementary as the research site was the result of an informal visit to the school two months prior to the formal interviews. during this visit, each conversation in which i engaged with teachers, pertained to the enormous pressures they were under to raise test scores. wanting to get at the particulars and access the voices of teachers, i set out to generate a more comprehensive understanding of the topic, lending empirical evidence to the overall literature pertaining to standardized testing. description of the research site alamitos elementary school is located in southern california in a low socio-economic innercity neighborhood. as is typical of other inner-city schools, alamitos is overcrowded, has a large ell population, and is considered to be an "underperforming school" due to low sat-9 scores and the fact that it did not meet all of its 2000 or 2001 api growth targets. alamitos elementary school is in the beach cities school district (bcsd), one of the largest school districts in the state of california. alamitos provides instruction year round to 1,178 students (but was originally designed for only 500) in grades k-5 on four different tracks (a, b, c, and d) and busses out an additional 1,400 students to schools throughout the district. the tracks are not based on ability per se, but make it possible to educate many students in the limited space available in the school. students on each track attend school for 3 months, followed by a one-month vacation. by staggering the vacations (off-track time) of the four tracks, more classroom space is available for the students and teachers that are "on-track." at alamitos, as in other year-round schools, this requires one or more teachers at each grade level to be a "rover," meaning that their class must rotate to a different classroom each month. while the tracks were not designed to be ability based, a series of gifted classrooms developed along track c. the former spanish bilingual program developed along track d and part of track a. a small khmer (cambodian) bilingual program developed along part of track b. in effect, some racial and ability tracking resulted. the student population is 63% latino(a), 31% asian (mostly the children of cambodian refugees), 4% african american, and 3% other (including about five white students). eighty-seven percent of the students are classified as english language learners; 67% are spanish-speaking, 28% are khmer (cambodian) speaking, and the rest speak lao or vietnamese. fewer than 9% of the students' parents completed college and fewer than 25% completed high school. all students in the school qualify for a free school lunch. alamitos teachers have an average of 6 years of experience, which is below the state average of 13 years. fifty-five percent of the teachers are fully certified and the rest are in the process of completing their credentials. on the sat-9 in 2000, 78% of alamitos students scored below the 50th percentile in reading, and 66% scored below the 50th percentile in math. this earned alamitos a score of 2 out of 10 (10 being the highest) on the academic profile index (api). when compared to schools with similar demographics, however, alamitos scored 7 out of 10. the school did meet the overall api growth target but failed to meet the growth target for its asian "subpopulation." as a result, the school and its teachers were denied monetary rewards, and alamitos was deemed a "performance review school" by the state. the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners in 2001, sat-9 scores improved overall with a 2% increase in students above the 50th percentile in reading, and a 3% increase in students above the 50th percentile in math. the school even succeeded in meeting its overall api growth target, and the growth target for its asian subpopulation. however, this time the school did not meet its api growth target for its latino(a) subpopulation, and once again the school and its teachers were denied monetary rewards. also disappointing was a drop in api rankings from 7 to 5 (out of 10) in comparison to schools with similar demographics. this drop is somewhat suspicious given test scores increased. similar school api rankings are calculated based on parental data provided by the students. of course, many children from immigrant families, especially younger children, are not fully aware of this information. parent data were only reported for 54% of alamitos students, for example. however, a school less than a half-mile away, which is essentially in the same neighborhood, was able to report parent data for 80% of its students, and was able to show lower percentages of education levels of its parents. this school earned an api ranking of 10 on the similar schools scale, even though its overall reading scores were lower than alamitos' scores. its math scores were higher, but the wide difference on the api similar schools ranking (5 as compared to 10) reveals that these rankings may depend more on how diligently the school collects and reports parent background information than how well students actually perform on the sat-9. interviews i conducted formal interviews with five experienced teachers at alamitos elementary school. i focused on teachers in the primary grades because that is where grade level testing begins. i decided to focus mainly on the 2nd grade teachers because that is the first grade level in which students are required by state policy to take the sat-9. i included one 1st grade teacher because in addition to the state policy, in the district testing policy it is written that all 1st grade students should be tested as well. lastly, i included a kindergarten teacher to determine if the sat-9 was having an effect on students' first year of schooling. i felt it was important to interview teachers who were (a) experienced, (b) knowledgeable, (c) viewed by their peers as dedicated and successful teachers, and (d) representative of the various instructional models in the school (i.e., former bilingual teachers3, english-only teachers, and gifted teachers). i made a list of several teachers who fit my criteria, narrowed it down to five, and then proceeded to contact each participant. i explained to them the purpose of the study. when they agreed to an interview, an appointment was scheduled. all interviews were conducted a few months before the sat-9 was administered in 2001. i traveled to california to conduct the interviews in person. interviews were guided by an interview agenda i developed prior to the interviews, but teachers were free to divert from the interview questions to topics or issues they felt warranted discussion. the interviews lasted 60 to 90 minutes, were tape recorded, transcribed, and coded4. interview participants linda veal is a kindergarten teacher, and has over 17 years of teaching experience (16 at alamitos). linda is certified to provide english language development (eld) and specially designed academic instruction in english (sdaie) instruction to ell students. she teaches mostly ell students in an english-only setting, although she does speak some spanish and has a bilingual aide. linda served as a mentor teacher for several years, and has provided training and assistance to teachers throughout the district in areas such as literacy, math, and classroom management. in addition to teaching, linda serves at the district level as a peer assistance and review (par) coach and is currently completing a masters degree in early childhood education. hina anjanar is a 1st grade teacher, and has been teaching for seven years (all at alamitos). hina is eastern indian, but lived for several years in panama before her family came to the united states. spanish is hina's second language and english is her third. hina is a bilingual teacher and taught in the bilingual program for four years before the district dismantled it after proposition 227 passed. she currently teaches mostly ell spanish-speaking students in an english-only setting. bianca gonzales is a 2nd grade teacher, and has been teaching for four years, all at alamitos. bianca is originally from cuba and did not speak english when she began school in kindergarten in the united states. like hina, she is a bilingual teacher and taught in the bilingual program before proposition 227. during the 1999-2000 school year, she taught in an experimental bilingual program established by the district for parents who signed waivers. this year she teaches ell spanish-speaking students in an english-only setting, but still provides some spanish primary language support when her students need it. mary lemon is a 2nd grade teacher and has taught for nine years (all at alamitos). mary is a passionate and hard working teacher, has a background in child development, and is deeply 5 current issues in education vol. 5 no. 5 aware of the physical, emotional, and educational needs of her students. she is certified to provide english language development (eld) and specially designed academic instruction in english (sdaie) to ell students, and has a bilingual aide. nicole soto teaches the 2nd grade gifted class called "excel." she is originally from canada, and has taught for over 20 years in different countries and at various grade levels. she has been teaching at alamitos for over nine years, has a masters degree in reading, and is certified to provide eld and sdaie instruction to ell students. nicole does not speak spanish, but her husband's family was among the original inhabitants and landowners of california before it became a part of the united states. despite the fact that nicole teaches in the gifted program, the majority of her students are ells the excel program is designed to identify and serve gifted students in inner-city, low-socioeconomic schools. observations my own experiences and observations in alamitos and the district served as a secondary source of data. i experienced many of the issues described by the teachers at this site. in addition, i have been in the classrooms of the participating teachers many times; have had opportunities to see them teach and interact with their students; sat in staff meetings, grade level meetings, and curriculum planning meetings with them; and have had numerous informal conversations with them. my "insider knowledge" made it possible to verify the claims made by teachers regarding the changes in the school and their teaching as a result of the sat-9. documents a third source of data was generated from district and school documents. these included content standards and assessments; memos; handouts from meetings, trainings, and workshops; agenda and meeting minutes; working documents; announcements; and newsletters. many of these documents were gathered while i taught in the district, and additional documents were obtained from the study participants and other teachers. these documents were carefully analyzed and used to triangulate or substantiate the statements made by teachers. findings and discussion recurring themes emerged from the data and served to organize the discussion herein. where appropriate, themes are illuminated in vignettes (see erickson, 1986). emphasis on the sat-9 all of the teachers commented about the heavy emphasis placed on the sat-9. it is important to note that when the test was first administered in 1998, there was almost no emphasis on it whatsoever. no test preparation materials were purchased, and no test preparation time was required. at a staff meeting, we were told not to worry about it and to tell our students to just do the best they could. several teachers speculated that this was intentional. there was a desire to have low baseline data in order to show improvements in the subsequent years. increases in year-to-year scores would substantiate claims that various school reform initiatives were effective. in just three years, the emphasis on the test has become so great, that many staff members now sarcastically refer to the district as "sat-9 land." nicole described the current emphasis on the sat-9: it's an avalanche. i think that is the best word to use. it's an avalanche. it's an avalanche that is sweeping common sense and good teaching practices, just bulldozing them out of the way. it has created such a test-driven, stress-driven situation. mary explains the high priority being given to testing and test preparation: everything that has to do with the test has been given such a high priority, that there is no priority any more but that...the bottom line question comes down to, "well, what's going to help them do better on the test?" and if it's not going to help them do better on the test, well, we don't have time for that right now. linda said the emphasis on the sat-9 is "incredibly more!" she added: i would say it has quadrupled at least in terms of its importance, in terms of the amount of time we spend at staff meetings dealing with it, and with the consequences of it. it really is now high stakes. hina said, "and now that's all we're worried about. test test test test test!" and bianca commented: this year, i think all i care about is, "ok, am i using the vocabulary that the kids will see on the test?" all i think about [is], "ok, let's see what's on the test, and let me teach to the test." the teachers' statements are supported by documents in which a large number of district and school memos and information packets addressing the sat-9 were found. these documents include guides correlating district curriculum with test preparation materials and the sat-9, staff meeting agendas, test preparation newsletters, and changes to district standards and assessments. bianca described meetings at the beginning of the 2000-2001 school year in which teachers were released from their classrooms to meet with the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners administrators to set professional goals. they were instructed to bring sat-9 scores of students below the 20th percentile. in the past, teachers' goals might include such things as increasing their own knowledge on a particular instructional technique, differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all students, or improving the oral proficiency of ell students. now, teachers' goals were prescribed and driven by the needs to raise sat-9 scores. mary mentioned that the school held assemblies geared toward teaching students the dos and don'ts of testing and motivating students to "test your best." vignette 1 describes one such assembly: "test your best" assembly twelve 2nd grade classes are crowded into the well-worn, dimly lit auditorium with only 200 seats. two classes are seated on the floor in front of the stage. teachers were doing their best to quiet down their students, many of whom were chatting loudly or bouncing up and down on the torn cushion seats. the commotion came quickly to an end as mr. k., the young and hip school counselor leapt onto the stage, grabbed the microphone, and yelled in his bob barker voice, "welcome to test your best!!!!" a heavyset latino boy sitting at a table on the side of the stage pushes play on a tape recorder and game show music comes blaring through the speakers. by now all students are sitting eagerly looking towards the stage. mr. k. has gotten their full attention. the music stops and mr. k reminds the 2nd graders that in a few weeks they will be taking a very important test the sat-9. he tells the students that it is very important for them to do the best they can. he then tells the students that his 5th grade friends will be playing a game called "test your best," to help teach them what things they can do to test their best! "contestant #1, come on down!" mr. k yells. a cambodian girl comes running down the left aisle of the auditorium. mr. k turns to her and asks, "sokha, what can you do to make sure you do well on the test?" sokha answers in a shy, subdued voice, "sit next to someone really smart and copy their answers?" buzzzzzzzzz! the sound boy sets off a loud buzzer with a big grin. the students laugh. mr. k turns to the audience and using his counselor voice, asks "why is her answer wrong?" about 30 little hands go up. a few boys are jumping up and down going "oooh! oooh!" mr. k picks a boy in the second row. "that's cheating!" the boy says emphatically. "that's right!" proclaims mr. k. he then leads a discussion on why it is wrong to cheat, and how it is important to study and do it on your own. mr. k yells "contestant #2, come on down!" a latino boy comes running down the aisle. mr. k. asks, "jonathan, what should you do the night before the test?" "jonathan takes the mike and says, "stay up all night and watch tv?" buzzzzzzzzzzzz! once again the kids laugh. mr. k turns to the audience and asks, "what should you do the night before the test?" about 50 hands go up, waving eagerly in the air. mr. k picks a girl seated in the left section of the auditorium. she mumbles the answer so softly no one can hear. mr. k prompts her to speak louder, but once again she mumbles, and then lowers her head, suddenly not enjoying all the attention focused on her. a boy next to her yells out, "she said go to bed early!" "that's right!" pronounces mr. k. he then switches to counselor mode, and tells the kids how important it is to get a good night sleep before the exam. mr. k then yells out "contestant #3, come on down!" a cambodian girl comes running to the stage. mr. k. asks, "jennifer, if you are taking the test, and you don't know the answer to a question, what should you do?" carefully reciting back her memorized line, she speaks slowly and softly into the microphone, "mark a guess and go on to the next question." ding ding ding ding ding ding ding! the giggling sound boy bangs a desk bell several times. the students break out in wild applause. "that's right!" exclaims mr. k. he begins his counselor lecture on how important it is to mark a guess for every answer and to never ever leave any questions blank. he also stresses several times how important it is to only mark one answer for each question and to make sure to erase wrong answers really well, or else the computer will score it as "incorrect". "contestant #4, come on down!"... the show continues with a few more contestants. near the end of the show the student helpers line up on the stage holding posters rested against their legs with the blank side facing the audience. 7 current issues in education vol. 5 no. 5 mr. k yells out, "what's the first thing we learned?" sokha holds her poster up over her head and mr. k reads it to the students, "don't cheat." let's all say that! the students repeat loudly "don't cheat!" "what's the 2nd thing we learned?" mr. k. makes an exaggerated pointing motion to jonathon, who holds up a poster reading, "go to bed early." mr. k reads it and has the students repeat it. this time, they repeat it a bit louder. "what's the 3rd thing we learned?" at mr. k's signal, jennifer holds up her sign, "mark an answer for every question." students enthusiastically repeat it back, some standing and yelling at the top of their lungs. this exercise is repeated, with signs and students yelling things like "mark only one answer!" and "eat a good breakfast!" at the conclusion of the assembly, the students clap and cheer wildly. as they exit, several chant "answer every question!" or "only mark one answer!" prior to the assembly, motivational posters along the theme of "test your best" were created by students and posted all over the school, and remained up until sat-9 testing was completed. nicole mentioned some of the other "absurd" practices happening as a result of the emphasis on the sat-9: and then last year [there was] the added stress of "if all your kids show up every day for the test you get a field trip." uh huh. it's like, "oh good. i want the kid with chicken pox coming into my classroom to take a test? i don't think so!" you know, that was horrible. that was absolutely ludicrous; another sign of insanity. i had a chronically ill child with a horrible disease...how good was he going to do on the test? but hey, there was the carrot! "get all your kids in to test, you get a field trip." for goodness sakes, a field trip! shouldn't we be giving children in the inner-city particularly, field trips? they should have more than the children who are in the more affluent areas. the implementation of governor davis' monetary reward program has also led to greater emphasis on the sat-9. as mentioned previously, alamitos has not yet qualified for the monetary rewards. regardless, most of the teachers expressed concern about this reward system. linda commented: not only do you have an automatic lure for cheating, in an underpaid profession, but the stress on teachers to perform, and to exclusively teach to the test, is almost undeniable… the reality of it is, teachers start to clamor and think, "hey, maybe i could buy a house. maybe i could put new brakes on my car. maybe i could travel a little bit...maybe i could do something like other professionals who have the level of education i've had." mary and nicole mentioned that at the past two staff meetings, most of the focus was on a packet of materials from the state on ethical practices in testing and preparation for the test. the packet spelled out what could and could not be used to prepare students, what could and could not be on the walls during the test, what could and could not be said or done during the actual test, and the consequences of engaging in "unethical practices." both found the packet and the emphasis on it to be insulting. nicole used it as an example of the "absurdity" happening in the schools as a result of high stakes testing. she commented: it seemed to me that this was an attempt to remind teachers that, "no matter how much money is being dangled in front of your nose, you should not try to (clears throat) help your students in any way that is unethical." in the months prior to testing, teachers were required on a daily basis to dedicate 30 minutes to an hour for test preparation. this requirement came down from the district. all teachers at each grade level were required to do the test prep during the same block of time. this was a challenge in that each teacher had a different schedule. many had to rearrange their day to accommodate the common test preparation period. grade level teachers were also required to turn in reports to the administrator detailing what it was they were doing during this time. the teachers explained that during test preparation time the emphasis was on getting kids into test taking mode. many emphasized practicing bubbling-in answers on multiple-choice answer sheets similar to those of the sat-9. the district purchased a test preparation series called test best for test prep (steck-vaughn company, 1998), which closely matches the format and content of the sat-9. harcourt, the producer and profiteer of the sat-9, publishes this series as well. in addition to test best teachers have found, purchased, or created other materials to help students practice these tests. the teachers find it necessary to spend lots of time exposing students to the testing format as it differs greatly from their ordinary instruction, classroom assignments, and homework. bianca expressed her frustration: i have caved in more to teaching to the test. [before] i always think about eld and the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners sdaie strategies… i know those strategies in and out, and i've used them constantly… [but now] i've caved in a little bit to this whole pressure of the test and the scores and our apis. the teachers in this study have resisted teaching to the test. they have been trying to maintain what they consider to be authentic teaching by gearing learning toward the individual needs of their students, especially their ell students. however, the emphasis on the sat-9 and the pressure to raise scores has made it difficult to maintain their professional integrity. teachers' perceptions of the sat-9 as a fair and valid measure of teaching and learning when i asked the teachers, "do you think the sat-9 is fair?" all answered immediately and emphatically "no!" except mary who literally had to stop laughing first. the reasons the teachers gave to explain why they feel the sat-9 is unfair and invalid included: (a) the mismatch between what is taught and what is tested, (b) issues of testing children who are not yet fluent in english, and (c) issues of social, cultural, and class bias. the teachers described problems with the dates the test was administered and stated that the results of the sat-9 were of little use to them. mismatch between instruction and testing. the fact that the sat-9 is not aligned with the curriculum taught in california schools has been clearly documented (schneider & holtzman, 1999). ironically, the state of california spent several years developing content standards for instruction in classrooms but then purchased the sat-9-an off-theshelf, nationally-normed exam. nationally-normed tests cannot be used to assess the extent to which students meet state standards, unless of course, a state aligns its standards to what is tested on the nationally-normed exam. this would be discouraged. in addition, norm-referenced tests do not inform schools and teachers as to what students are learning. they only inform schools and teachers as to how students compare to a sample of students across the nation. for example, some of the teachers mentioned the problem of the difference between the population on which the sat-9 was normed, and the population of the students at alamitos. in addition to class and cultural differences, the number of ell students in the norming population was minimal compared to the population at alamitos. as linda explained it: well it's inherently unfair because i don't think it's a valid measure based on the norming group. i believe the norming group had a 2% second language learner population. well, our school has probably a 90% second language learner [population]. so, consistently right off the bat, kids who don't have a full grasp of english are being asked to take a test in their second language. so, inherently, that's a problem. in an evaluation of california's assessment program in 1998, wested, an independent educational policy research center hired by the state, recommended that the state stop the testing program, re-evaluate, and make the necessary changes before proceeding (schneider & holtzman, 1999). to date it appears that the state has ignored these recommendations. the state of california has, however, been trying to remedy its testing system by working with harcourt to create additional, criterion-referenced math and language arts sections of the test that are more in line with california's standards as part of the star augmentation. added to the complexity is the fact that beach cities unified has spent several years developing its own content standards. the district standards differ from the state standards. the district invested a substantial amount of time, money, and resources to develop and train teachers in the standards and created a series of its own standardsbased assessments. the affect the sat-9 has had on the district's standards and assessments will be discussed later. linguistic bias of testing english language learners. all of the teachers argued that the sat-9 is inherently unfair for english language learners because they are being tested in a language in which they are not yet proficient. bianca argued, "of course it's not fair! its just like if i were tested in another language, where i would be classified as the bottom of the 20th percentile." when students are not fluent in english, the sat-9 is not a valid measure of learning or knowledge. lynda commented: i think we need to ask ourselves, "what are we testing for?" are we testing language? then let's call it a language test, and let's make it oral. are we testing reading? then let's talk about what we're testing for. to try to purport that we are testing for knowledge and acquisition of skill, when we're really testing for language and reading ability is deceiving the public, it's deceiving the tax payers, and making it look like we're not providing a solid education. specifically, the teachers noted that ell students simply do not yet know many of the words 9 current issues in education vol. 5 no. 5 used on the sat-9. the way sentences are phrased is problematic. mary pointed out that the test directions often use a negative in places where the students may listen for a positive (e.g., which of the following is not an even number?). this strategy confused many of her ell students. some portions of the sat-9 contain oral prompts that are read aloud to students, particularly in the math section. teachers are only allowed to read the prompt once, which clearly disadvantages ell students who frequently need repetition in order to comprehend. another problem for ell students is that each section of the test must be completed within a specific amount of time. hina mentioned that ell students need more time to process in english than students who are native speakers of english. hina speaks from experience; she had great difficulties passing one of the teacher licensing exams until she was granted extra time as a non-native speaker of english. she explained: english being my third language, i would have to read those passages of questions a couple of times to fully understand and answer. so that extra hour on each section they gave us, that's all i needed. and i think maybe the kids are like that. they really need that processing time. and we were telling them, "ok, question number one, answer this in this amount of time, and let's go to the next one." but if you're going to give them a test, you should be able to give them enough time, and be able to answer on their own, without a time limit. social, cultural, and class bias. the sat-9 was normed on a student population with less than 3% english language learners. in california, english language learners make up 25% of the student population. as mentioned above, the ell population at alamitos was 87%. the representation of students of low socioeconomic status was also likely much lower in the norming population than the students at alamitos. the teachers often joke that the test was normed in iowa, suggesting their culturally and linguistically diverse students are being measured against mainstream midwestern students. nancy commented that the sat-9 "might be fair in your more middle class, white anglo saxon protestant household, or in a household where english is spoken fluently." hina made a similar comment: i think some of the questions in there are just focused on the white population, which i feel is not fair for our kids. their lifestyles are really different from white populations, so it's really hard for them to answer those questions correctly. the teachers gave several specific examples of ways in which test questions were culturally, socially and/or class biased. bianca gave a personal example from her own life about the predominantly latino neighborhood in which her parents live: i'll go to my parents [house], and i get so mad. "mom, i can't believe there's not a bagel place around here!" and she goes, "you need to go where the white people live over by the beach! we don't have bagels around here. latinos don't eat bagels and cream cheese." so, it's the same thing with the test. hina explained why alamitos students rarely see things beyond their immediate neighborhood: our kids, whatever is in their neighborhood, that's all they see. we have the beach only a few miles from us, yet half my kids have never been to the beach. that's because parents, they're working, [or] they have no car. they don't know exactly what's around us. and if they're working shifts, they usually don't have time to take their kids anywhere...in that sense, the students don't have that much experience. mary commented that the producers of the sat-9 have made token attempts to make the test more sensitive to students of other cultures merely by changing the names in the stories: the test tries to make up for that by writing stories about carlos. you know, they put these ethnic names in these stories...like carlos in the kitchen with his mother setting the table when the car drives up into the driveway and honks the horn. it just cracks me up that they're trying to take a test and adjust it to these kids, like, "oh well, maybe they'll listen and pay attention because it says carlos or because it says juan and maria." but that's about the only adjustment you see...and typically when they go asian...they use chinese names...which cracks me up because even my asian kids will look at the names and go, "what does that say?" they have no idea...most of the stories are very middle class [and] caucasian. teachers gave several examples of the class bias in the sat-9. nicole mentioned that there might be a question about airplane travel, yet only two of her students have ever been to an airport. mary mentioned a reading comprehension question on a passage about a woman who worked in the health profession. the students were required to make an inference on why the woman chose this job. the the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners answer the test creator was looking for was that she enjoyed helping people. however, mary noticed that her few students who could actually read and comprehend the passage chose the answer, "because she needed the money." she explains her theory on why her students selected this answer: when you bring a test like that to a socioeconomic group that meets our criteria at our school, and you ask them why people have jobs, they are going to tell you its because they need the money...and, for the kids to have to infer that it was because she had enjoyed the fact that she was caring and giving and able to take care of other people, that inference isn't there when people are at the survival level. the fact that alamitos students live in a low socioeconomic area also means that they are exposed to and have to deal with many things that middle and upper-class students rarely experience. linda mentioned that last school year, out of her 20 students, 9 had fathers who were incarcerated. one of her kindergarten students told her, "i know why my daddy's in jail... because he choked my mommy and tried to kill her." bianca talked about a student who joined her 2nd grade class a few months after the beginning of the school year: she cried the whole first week of school, didn't want to do anything. and i finally found out that she had been homeless. so she had only been in kindergarten. her mother is dying. she just told me on friday. bianca mentioned other challenges facing her students: in phonics we blended [the word] rat. [the students said] "oh yeah, i have rats in my room!" "yeah, they're under the bed." "oh, my mom can hear them in the closet!" i have another little kid who has cockroaches coming out of his backpack...home life isn't good for them…i send them to the homework club just so that they have a clean place with a pencil in front of them to do it. a lot of these kids are dealing with more than just language issues, or being new to the country, or just even having low basic skills. nicole commented on how the problems her students face on a daily basis affect their ability to learn: i've had children who have come in whose fathers had been shot for their wallet, [or] who've been beaten black and blue. children whose parents have gone off the deep end ...i admit, there's alcoholism all over. there's child abuse all over. i'm not saying [higher socioeconomic schools] don't deal with some of these things, but they don't have the added emotional strain of children who are so needy. nicole argues that these factors and others that students deal with cannot be accounted for in a standardized test: there's pressure from below from the students who are looking at you going, "i can't learn what you're teaching me because my mother's in the hospital. my brother got taken to jail. we were under the beds all night long because there was gunfire." i don't think they can norm that for a test. sorry. i think they should norm this on sleep deprived, terrified, underfed children. nicole mentioned the well-known statistic, "the higher the ses (socioeconomic status) the better the kids do [on standardized tests]." one issue also common in low socioeconomic neighborhoods is the low level of education attained by the parents. linda mentioned, "the mother's educational level...is a widely known and widely accepted indicator of student ability." the majority of students' parents at alamitos do not speak english fluently. in fact, there are many parents who are not literate in either their native language or english. this severely limits their ability to help their children, as hina explains: our parents, even though they want to help their kids, their english is not so high, so its very hard for them to help...even if they're educated in spanish, it's very hard for them to help them in english. linda gave an example of how the differences in socioeconomic status and education can disadvantage students in terms of knowledge gained outside of school: and we also know that parents who aren't literate, for whatever reason, have less to give their children in terms of materials in the home, opportunities to meet texts; therefore they are always at a disadvantage when it comes to doing this kind of work. their resources at home are less, and consequently, the test is inherently unfair because…it's affected too much by outside variables over which we have very little immediate control…take a first grader who is being subjected to the sat-9…if his home environment hasn't prepared him, you're stacking him up against a kid whose mother may have gone to the library every week, and may have gotten him educational videos and programs for him. therefore…at 11 current issues in education vol. 5 no. 5 home…he may not have acquired that kind of book learning and school knowledge that's being asked for and tested on the test. as linda pointed out, many children begin school at alamitos with very little experience with print. when i taught kindergarten at alamitos, i discovered very quickly that many of the students never held a pencil, or had someone read a book to them. during home visits, i noticed very few books or reading materials in the home. many alamitos students have a clear disadvantage in that they are being held to the same standard as middle and upper class children who likely have parents who read, who buy them books, who take them to the library, and who read them bedtime stories. much of the sat-9, even in grades 1 and 2, requires that the students read instructions, passages, and answers on their own. the teachers argue that if students are not capable of reading the exam, then it is not a valid measure of what they know, especially in areas other than reading comprehension, such as word problems in the math section. thus, the sat-9 becomes a futile endeavor for some students in bubbling in answers at random. the results are completely meaningless. when i was still teaching at the school, a 1st grade teacher told me about a strategy one of her students used to mark his answers. he pointed to each bubble while chanting, "batman, batman, fly away," and marked the answer wherever his pencil landed. as shown in vignette 1, students were trained at school-wide assemblies and by their teachers to mark an answer for every question, even if they had to guess. bianca mentioned having her aide stand next to a student who had recently arrived in the united states, mainly to encourage the student to mark random guesses for every question on the test. since there is no penalty for wrong answers, students had a 25% chance of getting each question right if they guessed, but no chance if they leave a question blank. the school could raise composite test scores with just this strategy. issue of testing dates in year round schools. the fact that alamitos is a year round school has created some problems in terms of the dates during which the sat-9 is administered. up until the 1999-2000 school year, the state had designated a specific time period in which all schools had to administer the sat-9 (usually around may). the strict testing time period meant that students on certain tracks had between 30 to 60 days less instruction than students in traditional calendar schools, which are typically in higher socioeconomic areas. so, not only were students disadvantaged on the sat-9 in terms of the linguistic, cultural, and class issues discussed earlier, they were also disadvantaged by having to take the exam with significantly fewer days of instruction than more advantaged students. harcourt was supposed to adjust for this statistically, but, in addition to other mistakes, forgot. they forgot two years in a row. the scores year-round schools posted were lower than they should have been. this made the headlines (colvin, 1999; djurklou, 1999) and the california department of education fined harcourt $1.1 million dollars. adjustments or not, alamitos teachers still had the added pressure of trying to cover everything on the exam in a shorter amount of time. another issue of sat-9 testing in yearround schools is the fact that hundreds of students take the test immediately after returning from a month-long vacation. at alamitos, in 2000, these students were on track b. they were off in april and began testing the first and second week in may. track b teachers had to prepare their students the best they could and hope the students would retain most of it over the vacation. track b contains the largest number of asian students. this may help explain why alamitos failed to meet its api growth target for this subgroup that year. when the testing dates were changed in 2001, the majority of students who were on vacation immediately prior to testing were latino(a). incidentally, alamitos met the growth rate for asian students in 2001, but not for latino(a) students. usefulness of sat-9 results to improving instruction. i asked teachers, "when do you get the results of the sat-9?" mary laughed and said, "typically either right before the school year ends, or within a month and a half of the next school year." bianca also laughed and said, "after you've already started a new year with a new group of kids!" after all the hard work the teachers put into preparing their students for the sat-9, the results come back so late that they are of little value in helping the teacher pinpoint the needs of the students. the results are of little help to the students' teachers the following year as well. mary explains, "by the time that i get them [the results], i've already figured out which students need the extra help or need remediation." one problem with the results is that they are so generic they do not provide information on any specific skills or problems the children were unable to solve. this is a given; however, when normreferenced tests are used to assess the extent to which students meet state standards. categories of deficiency are too ambiguous to inform remediation efforts. reports only provide scores for sections and subsections. at a staff meeting at the beginning of the 1999-2000 school year, for example, teachers were given test results showing only the average for each the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners section across grade levels. all 2nd grade teachers had only the grade level average with which to work. after viewing these averages we met in grade level groups, discussed the sections in which our students scored low, and brainstormed ways to focus on these areas during the year to raise the scores, not to mention to improve the learning in these areas. to assist us with this task, the district provided copies of the previous years' sat-9 exam. we were able to view the test and discuss it, but we were not allowed to take any notes or write anything down. regardless, this approach was not very effective in helping us plan our curriculum. first, because all classes were averaged together, there was no way for us to know how well our own class did on certain sections of the exam. second, we were looking at scores of students who were no longer in our classes. third, there was no way to tell which particular problems gave students difficulty. the only "benefit" that came from the exercise was that teachers were exposed to what the test looked like, what was important on the test, and what would be important in their teaching the following year. the test results were not and could not be used to pinpoint the educational needs of individual children. effects of the sat-9 on the curriculum the teachers reported that the district's emphasis on the sat-9 has resulted in drastic changes to the curriculum. these changes include (a) changes to district standards and assessments, (b) the adoption of new curricular materials in math and language arts, and (c) the de-emphasis or elimination of content areas and other activities not related to the sat-9. the teachers did not consider these to be positive changes. district standards and assessments. the district has spent several years creating its own content standards and authentic standards-based assessments. the idea behind standards-based reform is that the standards drive the curriculum and assessments are used to determine how well students meet the standards. however, teachers reported that the sat-9 is now driving the standards. an analysis of the district's standards revealed that the standards were changed to include concepts covered on the sat-9. a page from the district's revised math standards is shown in figure 1. the lines indicate the 16 new items that were added on this page for k, 1st and 2nd grades to match the sat-9. an analysis of district assessment instruments reveals that they too have been revised to be more reflective of both the content and format of the sat-9. for example, the district has an authentic reading assessment program based on identified benchmark books that students are expected to read at certain points in their schooling (e.g., end of kindergarten, emergent, end of 1st, middle of grade 2, end of grade 2, etc.) about which they must answer comprehension questions. in response to the sat-9, the district revised the assessment program by pushing the benchmark books down one level, (e.g., middle of grade 2 became end of grade 1) in order to match the level of the reading difficulty found on the sat-9. the comprehension questions were also changed so that at least half were multiple-choice and were of the same bubble-in format as the sat-9. figure 1. sample page from the district's revised math standards showing skills added to match the sat-9. math. most of the teachers mentioned the adoption of math steps (produced by houghton mifflin) which is essentially a series of worksheets emphasizing paper and pencil practice. mary explained that the series is "aligned with the california content standards...so they thought it would align more with what's on the sat-9." the publisher's description supports mary's assertion. an advertisement for the series describes it as "carefully sequenced lessons...that prepare students for standardized tests" (from www.schooldirect.com). on every page, there is a special section called "test prep" where the practice item appears in the same bubble-in format as the sat-9. this new series was in stark contrast to the previous series, anytime math (ironically also produced by harcourt) that emphasized hands-on, exploratory, self-discovery math and de-emphasized paper and pencil tasks. in addition, the district created a number of its own required math materials and assessments, such as open-ended math (oem) prompts. the district is also requiring students to complete a 13 http://www.schooldirect.com/ current issues in education vol. 5 no. 5 number of "learning records," which are entries into a math journal in a style similar to oems. the idea is that students will have a notebook to refer to with which they can study for the sat-9. while teachers think the concept is good, they feel in practice it is an unproductive use of time, especially for ell students. hina commented, "just doing one learning record takes up the whole 45 minutes, and we really don't get any other teaching in there!" bianca noted that for ell students "it ends up being a huge copy session." the large number of new math materials, assessments, and procedures have left many teachers in the district confused. as mary explained: "what you get is this mish mash, and you still have teachers trying to figure out, 'well, what exactly do you want me to teach?'" i attended a training meeting with mary where the district's math curriculum leaders attempted to make sense of the myriad of new materials and requirements. we were expected to take the information back to alamitos and explain it to the other teachers. one of the items given to us at the training meeting was a math correlation guide, which essentially listed all of the math skills covered on the sat-9 with correlations to exact page and problems numbers in math steps, anytime math, test best for test prep, open-ended math prompts, standards, assessments, and other math materials. the following school year this evolved into a comprehensive pacing guide designed to ensure that students would be exposed to all of the math concepts before the sat-9 was administered. the teachers found the pacing guide to be completely unrealistic and, again, were perplexed that it was based on the traditional calendar year yet was being mandated for year-round schools. the pacing guide required teachers to squeeze into six months what they would normally teach over a nine-month period. adding to the stress, teachers at alamitos were expected to teach more material, more quickly, and in less time than was the case in higher ses, traditional schools. nancy, expressing her concerns about this, gave a specific example: "it had things such as teaching money in two days. i'm terribly sorry. maybe on the eastside, where students have their own bank accounts." hina expressed her frustration about losing control over the decision of what and when to teach math concepts to her students: "this [the pacing guide] is so ridiculous! every class is different...you really have to see where your own class is and go from there." it appears the district is concerned that if teachers slow down to make sure their students understand before moving on, then the higher students will not get exposed to other concepts and will get them wrong on the test. the result is a sacrifice of the learning of lower students in order to ensure that higher students get everything they need to raise the school's average math scores. language arts. teachers reported that the most dramatic changes to the curriculum came in language arts. prior to the third year of sat-9 testing, the district's literacy programs were based on whole language philosophies. teachers emphasized shared and guided reading and used books which provided support to emergent and early readers (fountas & pinnell, 1996). sound-symbol relationships were taught in the context of these books, and through activities such as shared and interactive writing (mccarrier, pinnell, & fountas, 1999). the district's literacy leaders and trainers discouraged the teaching of phonics out of context. two months into the school year, however, the district adopted the open court phonics program for grades k-35, provided emergency training for all teachers, and required the immediate implementation of the program. the program takes approximately two hours per instructional day, is highly scripted, and prescribes exactly what it is the teacher is to do, say, and write on the board. specific dictation drills, worksheets, and readers for each lesson are also included. open court is a one-size-fits-all program. all students, regardless of their levels of performance, are submersed in the exact same lessons. ironically, there was little or no time left for reading. the district reassigned a large number of literacy and eld specialists as "open court coaches," to ensure strict and exact implementation of the program. the coaches, who came to be known as the "open court police," patrolled classrooms and made sure teachers were following the script properly. the teachers insisted the decision to adopt open court was because of the sat-9. at a meeting i attended, a top district official confirmed this was true. he acknowledged he made the decision to adopt open court because of its success helping to raise sat-9 scores in texas and the inglewood and sacramento school districts in california (for counterpoints to this claim, see coles, 2000; moustafa & land, 2001; taylor, 1998). there was also substantial pressure from the state and a member of the state board of education to adopt the program (lapp & flood, 2000, fall). the teachers resent the program because they are no longer allowed to use their professional judgment, experience, and expertise to design individualized literacy instruction. they described the program as "too boring" for students who can already read, and "too difficult" for students still struggling. the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners their major concern is the large amount of time taken up by open court. mary commented, "open court takes a great chunk out of your teaching day, [and] just specifically for a couple of sections on the test." bianca expressed her concern about the appropriateness of open court for ell students. she found her students did not know many of the words used in the phonics drills. it takes her even longer to present each lesson, taking more time from her regular instruction. hina noted she has significantly less time to meet with students in small reading groups. she complained about the black-and-white plain paper books that are used to emphasize the phonics elements taught in the lesson. she said, "they are learning how to sound out and blend, but there's no comprehension in the books. they make no sense! and the language used in there goes over our kids' heads!" the reality, as the teachers have explained, is that open court became the language arts program. open court takes up about one-third of the teaching day although it was supposed to be a supplemental resource. there is very little time left for shared reading, guided reading, shared writing, interactive writing, or to just read books aloud to the students. the amount of time to work individually with students in small groups also greatly decreased. in my classroom prior to the adoption of open court, i was able to meet with each reading group for 20 minutes and had time to read with every student a book matched to their reading ability. once open court was adopted, these small reading groups became 15-minute "workshops." i was required to use open court materials instead. for the first time in many years, the district also adopted a basal spelling program. before, teachers were afforded their choice on how they would teach spelling and were trained to observe and analyze student reading and writing to inform spelling instruction. because one of the sub-tests on the sat-9 covers spelling, once again teachers were sent to mandatory training meetings to be trained in a new program. teachers were instructed to give students the same spelling lessons and spelling words from the basal, regardless of their spelling abilities. the other content areas: social studies, science, eld, art, music, and pe. between open court, math, eld, writing, and mandatory test preparation time, teachers reported that there is no time left for anything else. nicole asked, "where do you fit it all in?" figure 2 shows a time allotment and sample schedule given to teachers during an open court training session. the boxed items were to be given top priority. if assemblies, photos, field-trips or other interruptions occurred during the day, teachers were still expected to provide instruction for the full amount of the stated time for those items. when one considers that open court, math steps, and the basal spelling program were adopted specifically to raise sat-9 scores, this schedule clearly shows that teachers were given no choice but to teach to the test, and that teaching to the test was an all-day endeavor. figure 2. time allotment/sample schedule. district level administrators told teachers they were not to teach art or allow students to draw pictures to accompany their writing as part of an eld lesson. the rationale for this, linda explains is, "because we're not going to be drawing a picture on the sat-9." teachers reported music is down to five lessons a year with the music teacher. physical education (pe) rarely happens before testing even though law mandates 100 minutes of pe instruction per week. mary mentioned that at a staff meeting this year, teachers were given a thick packet containing state pe standards, activity cards, and a comprehensive teacher's guide. she said when the materials were passed out, the message from the administrators was, "i don't know when you're going to teach this...or what equipment you are going to use...but in your spare time, you can look through it." 15 current issues in education vol. 5 no. 5 linda added that some kindergarten teachers at alamitos have even eliminated recess. in addition, the teachers lamented the fact that there is not even time left in the day to teach social studies and science, subjects they know are just as important as reading and math. many of the teachers mentioned that the district adopted a new social studies program this year. teachers were even sent to a training seminar on it. mary said the program "is wonderful, and it aligns with our eld curriculum," but expressed frustration about having no time to use it: "i literally have not opened it with the students. the kids haven't even seen it." bianca made a similar comment: "the brand new social studies [program] is fabulous! but have i opened it with my students? no!" science instruction has always been one of nancy's strengths, and her emphasis on science has been one of the defining characteristics for her excel program. however, with all the changes related to the sat-9, she laments that science and social studies instruction in her classroom has been greatly reduced as well: "it's miniscule, absolutely miniscule in comparison." bianca also described her struggle to provide social studies and science instruction: the only way i can do social studies or science, for that matter, is eld. and it's not truly like a well-rounded social studies unit. it's just kind of like, we touch on it a little...it's not a real outstanding unit you can really get into. additionally, teachers are finding it difficult to provide daily eld for their ell students also required by state law. teachers are finding that open court, district assessments and sat-9 preparation are increasingly encroaching on the time previously devoted to eld instruction as well. bianca explains, "eld used to be my favorite time of the day to teach. i love eld. well, sometimes if we have to do an open-ended math prompt, or sat-9 prompt, i'll skip over eld." mary said: i like teaching the eld curriculum, even though i don't get to it as much as i would like to. because of all the priorities of the day...i don't hit eld on a daily basis. and when i do, i sometimes have to tie it in with my spelling. the teachers commented that in addition, there is now less time to develop students' oral language throughout the day. teachers have found there is no time to engage the students in class discussions, one of the most effective techniques to develop the oral language skills of ell students. linda cracked, "it's like we say to the children, 'sorry, i can't listen to your story about your puppy because i have to read you this book about a dog." it was often in these class discussions that teachers could discuss openly with students some of the challenges they faced in their homes and neighborhoods. the teachers feel frustrated. because of the emphasis on the sat-9, they have less time to meet the social needs of their students. issues of educational equity. the fact that students are only being taught subjects which are tested on the sat-9, to the near exclusion of social studies, science, art, music, and pe, raises some serious questions of educational equity, particularly for ell students in inner-city schools. i asked teachers if schools in the higher socioeconomic areas were still able to teach these subjects. linda and mary both have children at elementary schools on the eastside (higher socioeconomic area) of the district, and confirmed that eastside schools were still teaching social studies, science, art, music and pe. mary expressed her disgust with this situation: what upsets me about that is the law states that there should be equal opportunity in education. and my belief is that our kids, because they are who they are and where they come from, are being punished for that, and not being allowed an equal opportunity in education. the first grade teachers are especially frustrated about the emphasis on the sat-9 and the narrowing of the curriculum. the state does not require 1st graders to be tested. the decision to test 1st graders was a district decision. many teachers speculated that the district wants the 1st grade students to experience the sat-9 one-year before the sat-9 counts in the api. this way, when students are 2nd graders, they will be more familiar with the test. to mediate the situation, all twelve 1st grade teachers and four 2nd grade teachers decided to voluntarily extend their instructional day by one-half hour, without pay, to provide students with the full curriculum they would have received had their not been so much emphasis on the sat-9. hina explains why they made this decision: this year, we...extended our day a half hour more. and this is exclusively to do science and social studies...we think it's very important for our students to learn other subjects besides open court and math...because in upper grades, their literature, all that is based on social studies, and science and things like that. and if they don't get that base from the beginning [in] 1st [and] 2nd grade, they're going to have a very hard time understanding the literature in the upper grades...there was no room for social studies, science, so that's when we the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners decided to extend our day a half hour...but this is a time for us. with that half hour, we can teach whatever we want, and especially in social studies and science and stuff, and not have to worry about, "ok, this is what we have to do." it's our own time, and we pick what we want to do. bianca explains the feelings of teachers that led up to this decision: there are a lot of teachers who feel, "i'm not meeting the needs of these kids because i'm teaching to this test, which is going way beyond what they really need...i'm not doing the best that i could for my kids." [so] they're saying, "ok, let's move the day to 2:15, without pay." many other teachers, however, are very concerned about the precedence this decision is setting. nicole expresses the concerns of many teachers: we are paid at a very low level considering the amount of education that [we] have, and the amount of work that we are expected to do is escalating. testing...is generating a massive amount of paperwork. so, we're doing more, getting paid the same, and then there are teachers who are saying, "oh well, we'll work for another three weeks for free," which is what the time after school multiplied over the year works out to be. and eventually, as people know, common practice becomes the rule. so it will be, "well, these people have extended their day, so we will extend everybody's day, without pay." nicole's words proved to be prophetic. a few months after our interview, linda wrote to inform me that a vote was taken at a staff meeting, and the majority of teachers elected to extend the school day a half-hour, without pay. she noted how pleased the principal was and said that he congratulated the staff for their professionalism. teachers already spend many hours beyond the required work day grading papers, organizing their classrooms, and preparing lessons and materials for the next day. but to voluntarily extend the instructional day with students raises a number of issues, especially in terms of the contract between the teachers' union and the district. but obviously, these teachers were not thinking about themselves. as linda explains, "this proves what kind of character teachers really have. in other words, these teachers believe so strongly that kids need this, that they are willing [to provide it] essentially for free." however, it was clearly a divisive issue at the school, and many of the other teachers felt the pressure or guilt to extend their day too. there is also the risk that someday the extended day will also be consumed by sat-9 preparation. effects of the sat-9 on teachers and students as evidenced in the examples above, the teachers are feeling stressed and overwhelmed because of the great emphasis on the sat-9 and the pressure they feel to raise sat-9 scores. the teachers are feeling disempowered as they are being forced to implement one-size-fits-all programs that they know are inappropriate for their students. they are growing tired of being compared with teachers of middle class and native english-speaking children and absorbing the blame for their students' low scores. they are insulted by monetary rewards and wonder why more monies are being given to advantaged schools instead of the schools that need equitable resources. the teachers had a lot to say about the effects this is having on themselves and others at alamitos. linda said: i think people are walking around with almost a palpable, visible hang-dog feeling. the feeling that, "i no longer matter. why am i educated?"...and i've seen a lot of teachers who want to quit the profession, who are saying, "this is not what i signed on for." nicole noted a conversation she had with 3rd grade teacher: i asked a pointed question to a teacher at my school. i asked, "do you know anybody on this campus who is happy? any teacher who is happy?" "no." it came back that fast (snaps fingers). "do i? no." large staff, nobody is happy. i'm watching the teachers become very frustrated by watching good teachers leave. bianca mentioned a recent experience with one of her 2nd grade colleagues: sonia's like, "there's so much, i'm so overwhelmed, i'm so exhausted, i'm so stressed! but, i'm such a bad teacher." [after a staff] meeting she just started bawling. i mean, bawling! just from the stress, and just from feeling, "i'm not good. i'm not a good teacher." and jenny and i were just consoling her saying, "you are one of the best teachers we have." nicole made a comment that is very telling of the feelings of teachers: the most pathetic thing is that up until about two years ago, i counseled young people, "come into teaching. it is a wonderful profession." now i counsel them to find 17 current issues in education vol. 5 no. 5 something else because this is not the profession i would choose for myself. kindergarten is the only grade level that is not required to administer the sat-9. however, from linda's many comments above, it is clear that the emphasis on the sat-9 has had a dramatic effect on the kindergarten program, teachers, and students as well. linda mentioned the stress she sees in her teaching partner and the effects tests have on her students: i see my partner for example. "hurry up! sit down! write! hurry! you've got to go. this is all being done to kindergarten kids, where there is absolutely no consideration given to their fatigue. in fact, words like this have been used: "you need to build their stamina for longer [reading and] writing!" this is coming from our administrator...so now school has become a survival ordeal...it breaks my spirit to see little kids, who should be imbued with nothing but enthusiasm for learning, to take that enthusiasm, and kind of corrupt it by forcing and channeling it into these little narrow definitions of what learning is. the teachers reported many examples of how the emphasis on the sat-9 is having an effect on the students. mary told me: i've had kids break down and cry, when i've administered a test. and it just breaks my heart because all you can say is, "just try your best." and then the other end of the spectrum is the ones who just don't care, and they figure just fill in any bubble and get it over with, because as soon as you close your book you don't have to do anything else with it. so, that's what you get-apathy; but how pathetic is that that 2nd graders should have to experience that? vignette 2 below depicts an event described by bianca, which took place in one of the 2nd grade classrooms at alamitos: "i know how to read a word" the 2nd grade students have their test booklets open on their desks and sit quietly as mrs. sanchez guides them through the sample problem of the reading comprehension section of the sat-9. mrs. sanchez finishes reading the text from the teacher's test administration booklet, looks up and asks, "are there any questions?" her question is met by mostly blank stares. she then continues reading from the test booklet, "you have 50 minutes to complete this section. you may begin." a few students pick up their pencils and begin to read the first passage. a few start bubbling in answers without bothering to read the passage first. jorge, a spanish-speaking ell student, looks around, looks at his test booklet, looks around again, and finally looks over at his teacher who is sitting at her desk keeping a watchful eye on the students. as they make eye contact, jorge leaves his desk and walks over towards her. in a sad voice he says to her in spanish, "mrs. sanchez, i can't read. i can't read it!" mrs. sanchez gives him a sympathetic look. "i know jorge. just do the best you can." jorge returns to his seat. he looks intently at the test booklet for several minutes. he then stands up and walks back to the teacher's desk, holding the test booklet. he says softly, "mrs. sanchez, i know how to read a word." he points to and reads the word, "the." he was so sad. mrs. sanchez, stroked his hair gently, wishing she did not have to make him go through this. "that's right jorge," she said gently. she then sent him back to his desk to finish the test. after describing this event, bianca remarked, "you know, this does bring them down." hina has had 1st grade students break down and cry. she described a student who had arrived in the united states just two months before sat-9 testing: one of my students cried the day before the test. we had been practicing for it. [she] recently came from mexico. she had no english at all, very few words, here and there. and she was with me, i think two months...and she had to take the test. i mean, she had a hard time just when we did practice...she went home and she was crying to her mom, and her mom came and told me the next day. [the child] was so overwhelmed, the poor thing. it was really hard for her. the emphasis on the sat-9 and raising test scores can hamper the relationships between teachers and students. the counselor assigned the "lowest of the low" ell spanish-speaking 2nd grade students to bianca, even though she was no longer allowed to teach in spanish. in fact, the counselor transferred some of her higher students to other classrooms to make room for these low students. given the fact that she was purposely given the lowest students, she resented the fact that she was being held to the same expectations as the other teachers to raise sat-9 scores. bianca described the constant struggle of trying to balance the needs of her students with the pressure to teach to a test she knew was well beyond the capabilities of her students. linda commented on the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners how the sat-9 can change how teachers view their students: but if you are too stressed, that stress not only affects your health, but it affects your relationship with your students. and you start to look at your students as high scorers or low scorers, and that starts to affect your relationship. and you start to, maybe not necessarily want that kid in your class next year, and you find out that the little low kid is coming, and you kind of, don't want him. then what does that do to that child's selfesteem when, because of no fault of his own, he struggles to do well on tests? conclusion i asked the teachers, "has the sat-9 made you a better teacher?" and "has the sat-9 improved teaching and learning at your school?" of course, "better" is subjective, but i left it up to the teachers to see how they would interpret the question. sat-9 scores have gone up at alamitos each year, so one could argue that the teachers are doing a better job and that teaching and learning has improved at the school. however, these proved to be emotional questions for the teachers. the answer to both questions was very clear—"no." the five elementary school teachers interviewed in this study were extremely knowledgeable and provided substantial information needed to answer the research questions. they believe the sat-9 is not a fair and valid measure of teaching and learning for several reasons, including the mismatch between the curriculum and the test, the differences in the school population and the norming population, the testing of students before they are fully proficient in english, cultural and class bias, the testing of some students who have had significantly fewer days of instruction than other students, and testing some students immediately after a month-long vacation. the sat-9 has affected the curriculum provided to students as major changes have been made to teach to the test. these changes include: revising district standards and assessments to more closely match the content and format of the sat-9; adoption of math steps, open court, test best for test prep, and a basal spelling program; an increase in the number of required open ended math (oem) assessments and learning records; and mandatory time allotments for phonics, math, and direct sat-9 test preparation. as the sat-9 tests only language arts and math, there is no room for science, social studies, pe, music and art. even english language development (eld), which is required by state law as essential instruction for ell students, is beginning to be cut back. teachers have little time during the day to develop the oral language skills of their students. the emphasis on the sat-9 is so great that the district decided to also require the testing of 1st graders, even though the state does not. in response, many teachers have voluntarily extended their day without pay to provide their students instruction in the content areas not assessed on the sat-9. these teachers feel their students are equally entitled to the educational opportunities in which their wealthier peers continue to engage in their schools. the sat-9 is having harmful effects on the teachers and students. the teachers are stressed and overwhelmed by all the curricular changes and pressure to teach to the test and raise scores. they feel they are disempowered as professionals, and are no longer able to make decisions on how to best meet the needs of their students. they are tired of being compared to higher socioeconomic schools with significantly smaller numbers of ell students and being blamed for their students' low scores. they experience additional stress when helping students in poverty deal with the problems within their families and neighborhood. they are insulted when monetary awards are disbursed to schools and teachers of more privileged students. they are frustrated when they watch good teachers leave the school, and sometimes teaching in general. the students feel the stress as well. students often break down and cry because of test-related anxiety. some are developing apathetic test-taking behaviors in the primary grades because they deem it pointless to read a test question before bubbling in a wrong answer. the pressure on the teachers to raise scores is changing their relationships with their students as well. teachers want to see their students as more than candidates for high and low test scores, but this is difficult when pressures are placed on teachers to post gains year-to-year and meet academic targets set outside of the classroom. these teachers strongly feel that the sat-9 is not improving teaching and learning. the sat-9 is having the opposite effect. the teachers maintained that if they could change anything about the current situation, they would abolish the sat-9 and other high stakes tests. this does not mean they are against holding students, teachers, and schools accountable. all of the teachers argued for the use of authentic assessments instead. authentic assessments show where students are at the beginning of the year and illustrate academic growth until the end of the school year. if all children are different and progress at different rates, they argue that it is much more reasonable to hold teachers accountable for each 19 current issues in education vol. 5 no. 5 individual's growth per year instead of helping all students pass an arbitrary standard. bianca adequately summed up the feelings of the teachers in this study and many other teachers who experience the effects of standardized testing: i wouldn't have any kind of standardized testing. let's just focus on the assessments the district has now, which up to now have worked, and which we've seen have results, and so we are more able to teach to each students' needs, and not teach to a whole group like what we're doing with a standardized test. i think that's the whole flaw with standardized testing, teachers are just, whether they like it or not, they're teaching to a whole group, and that's not the way. we all know that each child learns differently. how can you be a good teacher when you're teaching the whole group and not teaching to each student's needs? at alamitos elementary school, in the beach cities school district, the sat-9 is clearly not achieving its stated purpose-improve teaching and learning in the schools. rather, it is hampering authentic teaching and learning, and harming teachers and students. in addition, it is having a differential impact on the education of ell students in low socioeconomic neighborhoods, creating a situation where the linguistic and cultural needs of students are being ignored, and denying these students an equal opportunity to learn. the findings of this study are consistent with the studies, reports, and position statements described in the literature. these data from the teachers, along with the data from the document analyses and my first-hand observations, provide evidence that high stakes testing is indeed having harmful effects on teachers, students, and the curriculum. while this small study focused on the use of the sat-9 in a single school in california, the fact that similar conclusions were drawn in smith et al.'s (1989) study of elementary schools in arizona and mcneil's (mcneil, 2000) study of high schools in texas where different yet similar tests were used, provides compelling evidence that there are serious flaws in using high stakes tests to improve school performance. indeed, the findings of this study support mcneil's assertion that high stakes tests are a "contradiction," swope & miner's (2000) assertion that "the testing craze won't fix our schools" and kohn's (2000) assertion that high stakes tests are actually "ruining the schools." notes [1] proposition 227 was designed to bring an end to bilingual education in california. however, some bilingual programs have continued through a limited waiver process. [2] all names of places and people have been changed to maintain the confidentiality of the participants and their colleagues. [3] the bilingual program at alamitos was dismantled after the passage of proposition 227. [4] i developed a set of 48 codes for each of these themes, and then inserted the codes into their appropriate positions in the interview transcripts (merriam, 1998; stake, 1995). for example, the code "tttt," stood for "teaching to the test" and was inserted into sections of the transcripts where teachers described pressures or practices of teaching to the test. separate documents were created for each code, transcript segments were copied and pasted accordingly, and the documents were analyzed and organized per research question. since i focused on the experiences of the teachers, i relied heavily on their direct quotes to portray precisely what it was the teachers were attempting to convey (see emerson, fretz, & shaw, 1995). 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(2000). conducting interpretive policy analysis. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n7/ the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners 2002 article citation wright, w. e. (2002, june 5). the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners. current issues in education [on-line], 5(5). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume5/number5/ author notes wayne e. wright arizona state university wayne.wright@asu.edu. wayne e. wright is a doctoral student and graduate research assistant in the educational leadership and policy studies program at arizona state university. he currently serves as the assistant to the director of the language policy research unit of the education policy studies laboratory. he is also an editorial assistant with the journal of language, identity, and education, and recently served as an editorial assistant with the bilingual research journal. prior to coming to arizona state university, wayne was an elementary school teacher (grades k 2nd) in long beach, california. wayne taught in one of the only true cambodian (khmer) bilingual education programs in the country. he also served as a mentor teacher, and was the head of his school's technology committee. he lived and worked for over a year in cambodia where he taught at the institute of economics, and provided technical assistance and training for human rights and student organizations. wayne's research interests include bilingual education, standards and testing, and policy issues affecting the education of language minority students. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 26, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation wright, w. e. (2002). the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners. current issues in education, 5(5). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1622 23 mailto:wayne.wright@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1622 cie template volume 18, number 2 august 11, 2015 issn 1099-839x scaling up teacher professional learning: how to grow teacher knowledge while growing school networks emily j. klein and reva jaffe walter montclair state university meg riordan expeditionary learning this research reports data from case studies of three intermediary organizations facing the challenge of scaling up teacher learning. the turn of the century launched scaling up efforts of all three intermediaries, growing from intimate groups, where founding teachers and staff were key supports for teacher learning, to large multi-state organizations. the authors drew on data from three earlier qualitative studies of professional development at big picture learning, expeditionary learning, and the internationals network, and reveal some of the benefits and challenges of taking teacher learning to scale. keywords: teacher learning; professional communities of practice; scaling-up, school design organizations; a 2009 new yorker article, “what’s the recipe?” explores the fascination with cookbooks and raises a key point that parallels the exploration of teacher learning communities: “the space between learning the facts about how something is done and learning how to do it [is] large…the recipe is a blueprint but also a red herring, a way to do something and a false summing up of a living process that can be handed on only by experience…we say ‘what’s the recipe?’ when we mean ‘how do you do it?’”(gopnik, 2009). there are no recipes for how to replicate school designs and support teachers in learning and implementing the designers’ curriculum. thus, we look to organizations that do this work to show us how it might be done and to capture their doing so that they might serve as guides. it is this space – the “how to” of replicating school designs and the teacher professional learning needed to effectively grow reform that interests the authors of this research. recent educational reform focused on redesigning high schools and on improving teacher quality in ways that influence student learning, attendance, and graduation rates, has moved to the forefront of educational policy (darling-hammond, 1997; darlinghammond & prince, 2007; hanushek & rivkin, 2004). the growth of new school design organizations, or intermediary partners that provide curricular designs, professional learning, school coaching, and other assistance to schools, over the past two decades reflects the need to build both school and teacher capacity to help students develop necessary 21st century skills and knowledge. there is a growing body of literature about scaling up educational reforms, a relatively recent phenomenon made possible by a unique mix of policies (such as the obey-porter acts1), ideas (such as those created by the new american schools development 1legislation passed in 1997 and named after its congressional sponsors that helped to ready the educational market for comprehensive school reform and new designs for teaching and learning. obey-porter offered up to $50,000 per year for 3-years to schools willing to adopt designs (keltner, 1998). 1 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 corporation), and money (such as the bill & melinda gates foundation2 funding of school designs) (glennan, bodilly, galegher, & kerr 2004). mcdonald, klein, and riordan (2009) highlight “teaching and learning the design” as one of eight challenges intermediary school designers face in scaling up. the challenge for school designers is to help others develop a nuanced and deep understanding of an often complex teaching and learning design, and then effectively use those practices at the classroom level (schmidt & datnow, 2005; stringfield & datnow, 1998). this research reports findings from case studies of three intermediary organizations engaging in scaling up their school design (meaning, opening new schools that replicate an original design for schooling) and consequently scaling up teacher learning. we define intermediaries as groups that “focus their work specifically on supporting learning improvements” and who “occupy a distinct position between central offices and schools where they aim to leverage changes at both levels” (honig & ikemoto, 2008, p. 329). the intermediaries in this study, big picture learning (bpl), expeditionary learning (el), and the internationals network for public schools (inps), also serve as secondary school designers and support networks of schools and teachers in implementing a specific design for schooling. this sub-set of non-profit intermediaries supports national networks of both public and charter schools, and establishes memoranda of understanding with each school in order to articulate specific curricular, coaching, professional learning, branding, and marketing services to school partners. each intermediary is deeply mission driven, with supporting students, teachers, and leaders at the heart of their designs. all rely on the work of teachers to implement their visions of reform and must therefore invest heavily in helping teachers learn and execute their designs; it is in the interest of all three intermediaries to promote teachers’ learning because such learning engenders commitment to the design and increases teachers’ investment in professional growth in service of students’ success. teacher learning is essential to the survival of these designs particularly because nothing about the design is scripted for teachers; they need a strong understanding of the design in order to implement it and have relied heavily on building communities of practice to do so (klein, 2007: klein & riordan, 2011). there is evidence that their professional development has been effective in helping teachers transform their practice (klein & riordan, 2009). because of this, we believe all three intermediaries offer relevant 2the bill and melinda gates foundation invested heavily in new school design and replication in the early part of the 21st century (mcdonald et al., 2009). all of the intermediary organizations in this research initially received foundation funds to scale-up (replicate) their designs for schooling. insights into how to grow teacher learning communities beyond their particular contexts. while our work here relates to teacher learning within specific types of organizations, we believe that our findings offer portable lessons related to teacher learning within other organizations that are in the process of scaling. the work of scaling designs for schooling is complex and it may be tricky to transfer learning from one context to another. however, a gates study of small schools reveals that intermediaries that were able to establish effective supports for teacher learning and to empower teachers to learn from one another in their schools were more likely to have a higher incidence of effective instructional practices (fanscali et al., 2009). the turn of the century launched the scaling up efforts of all three intermediaries, (sparked largely by funding from the gates foundation), growing from intimate groups, where founding teachers and staff were key supports for teacher learning, to large multi-state organizations. this study focused on what happens when professional learning founded in such communities grows rapidly and across wide geographic spaces. we examine the new and often unforeseen challenges these organizations face, as well as the strategies they use to manage these emergent challenges. we asked: • how do intermediaries meet the learning needs of teachers while going to scale? • how has going to scale impacted professional learning practices and communities of practice? • what are the challenges of bringing teacher learning communities to scale? • what strategies do the intermediaries use to strengthen and develop teacher learning communities as they go to scale? literature review and theoretical framework we used two areas of literature that helped us frame our research. the first focuses on scaling up and offered an understanding of scale as both a challenge of growing a school design across contexts and as a challenge of scaling up teacher learning. the second, on communities of practice, helped us make sense of exactly how these intermediaries provide support for scaling up teaching and learning how, below the surface of the organization’s design, they help the people using the design to do it well. learning and scale while there is an emergent body of literature about scaling up school designs (datnow, 2000; glennan et al., 2004; klein & riordan, 2009; stringfield & datnow, 1998) and a strong base of research about how to support teachers in learning new content, practices, and beliefs (see phillips, desimone, & smith, 2011 for a good discussion of this literature), there is less literature about the intersection of the two: the organizational challenges and opportunities presented when intermediaries engaged in scaling their designs are simultaneously scaling up 2 scaling up teacher professional learning: how to grow teacher knowledge while growing school networks teacher professional learning. some literature suggests scaling up instructional reforms is all about teacher learning, as the success of such reforms relies on each teacher’s ability to learn the design well enough to implement it in real contexts with particular content and unique groups of students (coburn, 2003; datnow & castellano, 2000; elmore, 1996; mcdonald, buchanan, & sterling, 2004; schmidt & datnow, 2005; wylie, 2008). this literature builds on a strong foundation of research that finds that teacher learning and inquiry supports the collective capacity of schools to design and implement effective practices (little, 1999; mclaughlin & talbert 2001; crockett, 2004). they find that teacher learning is most effective when efforts are sustained and coherent (cohen & hill, 2001) and a consistent part of reform efforts rather than a one-shot workshop (darlinghammond & richardson, 2009). researchers and practitioners alike recognize that scaling up is far more complex a process than simply increasing numbers of schools (coburn, 2003; viadero, 2007). coburn’s (2003) work on re-thinking scale includes four dimensions: depth, sustainability, spread, and shift to reform ownership. three of these are integrally connected to teacher learning. depth involves the degree to which reforms “effect deep and consequential change in classroom practice” change that requires learning on the part of teachers, as most teachers interpret reforms through “prior knowledge beliefs, and experiences” (coburn, 2003, p. 4). sustainability is closely related in that teachers who have achieved deep classroom change are more likely to sustain these changes, “when there are mechanisms in place at multiple levels of the system to support their efforts” (coburn, 2003, p. 6). coburn (2003) identifies ongoing learning opportunities as a significant structure for sustaining reforms. finally, shift to reform ownership happens when there is a shift in “authority and knowledge of the reform from external actors to teachers, school, and districts” (coburn, 2003, p. 7). similarly, thompson and wiliam (2008), in their study of scaling up a classroom-based intervention, suggest that the real challenge of scaling up is to improve classroom practice. elmore (1996) and mcdonald (1996) refer to this as scaling down “to indicate the process whereby a spreading reform challenges habitual practice in the new contexts and habitual practice yields to new ways of working” (mcdonald et al., 2004, p. 82). scaling down involves not only “spread” of ideas, but “penetration,” meaning that knowledge and skill are disseminated across a network, and also deeply absorbed by teachers on the ground (klein & riordan, 2009). a challenge facing these three organizations is that teachers’ practice cannot be scripted but must be known deeply, experienced through practicing it, and then developing intimate understanding of the what, why, and how of classroom instructional decisions (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; mcdonald, 1992; schön, 1983). we were particularly interested in adding to the body of knowledge about scaling up referred to in the studies above: scale that is not merely about increasing numbers of schools in districts across the country, but scale that involves changes in practice, shifts ownership from the intermediary to the teacher, and is sustained over time. on the surface, each intermediary in this study seems to have circumvented this problem by creating school designs structured to support a particular philosophy of teaching and learning. in addition, these schools have purview over the teachers they hire, allowing them to hire those who profess “buy-in” or an interest in the design’s approach to teaching and learning. and yet, as with recipes where process yields varying results, even in these instances intermediaries struggle to help teachers learn how to implement and sustain the design (klein & riordan, 2009). in his famous article, “a revolution in one classroom: the case of mrs. oublier,” david cohen (1990/2001) describes a professional development reform effort that attempted to influence the core relationship of schooling between the student, the teacher and the content, but resulted in a fundamentally distorted hybrid practice. the concern is not only how to start 25 new schools but how to sustain them in ways that do not result in “sinister caricatures of the original” (elmore, 2004, p. 20). the literature on scaling up provides some indication of what the particular challenges of scaling up might be (datnow & castellano, 2000). klein and riordan (2009) describe a series of challenges intermediaries face as they scale up. three of those challenges seemed particularly relevant to our work: the fidelity challenge, the challenge of teaching the design to others, and the ownership challenge. the fidelity challenge involves finding a balance between fidelity to the design and adaptation pressures from local contexts (viadero, 2007; wenger, 2004; wylie, 2008). we understood this as a challenge of implementation. how do teachers implement the design in a way that helps maintain that balance between fidelity and adaptation? how much adaptation is permissible before the design is compromised? the second challenge, the teaching challenge, is one of coaching and knowledge dissemination – finding people able to articulate the design and work with teachers to support their learning of it. this challenge also involves knowing how to use coaches or teachers who are instructional leaders, how they can spread communities of practice, and how they can impact the fidelity challenge. it also involves managing the knowledge that grows from scaled up communities of practice (drucker, 1998; seely brown & duguid, 1991; senge, 1994; wenger, 2004). finally, the ownership challenge involves being able to instill the same sense of “ownership” in newer adopters and larger communities of practice that exist in original smaller ones 3 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 (klein & riordan, 2009). local ownership promotes both balancing fidelity and adaptation and the teaching of the design to others (who are also needed to teach it); absent this ownership, the design risks dissolution or may become “frankenstein-ian,” adaptations straying into a pieced-together hybrid of the original design. one of the concerns about much reform and its relationship to scale is that it is tougher to bring to scale innovations that impact the basic relationship between teachers, students, and knowledge (elmore, 2004). the three intermediaries in this study recognize that simply changing the structure or school design will not change practice in the classroom, no matter how well meaning the teachers (fine, 1994). thus emerges the focus on teacher learning as a premise for reform. elmore (2004) writes that the problem of sustaining scale of any educational reform is in changing the “core patterns” of schooling, which he defines as “how teachers understand the nature of knowledge and the student’s role in learning, and how these ideas about knowledge and learning are manifested in teaching and classwork” (p. 8). we were interested in the challenges and opportunities of scaling up reforms that change the core dynamic of schools and we see this as centering on teacher learning and transfer. professional communities of practice in thinking about the challenges and strategies of scaling up teacher learning communities in particular, we turned to the literature on professional communities of practice (cop). much of the professional development facilitated by these intermediaries has been built around developing cops in and across schools. in cops, “members…are informally bound by what they do together–from engaging in lunchtime discussions to solving difficult problems–and by what they have learned through their mutual engagement in these activities” (wenger, 1998a, pp. 4-5). communities of practice are particularly effective at helping members navigate work problems and processes that are “non-canonical” or outside the espoused practice of the organizations (davenport & prusak, 2000; rulke, zaheer, & anderson, 2000; seely brown & duguid, 1991). this is essential for organizations like the intermediaries in these studies that try to help members navigate non-traditional pedagogical practices. we think of the challenge of scaling up teacher learning as a challenge in scaling up school-based and local cops. thus, this body of literature was effective as a frame for exploring possible strategies as well as the challenges for scaling up teacher learning. to make sense of challenges faced and the strategies used by the three intermediaries in this study, we looked to literature identifying important functions of cops. they include: 1. stewarding competencies or innovation: seely brown and duguid (1991) argue “that, through their constant adapting to changing membership and changing circumstances, evolving communities-ofpractice are significant sites of innovating” (p. 41). as intermediaries scale up, potential for innovation increases and can lead to organizational transformation (argyis & schön, 1978; wenger, 1998a). however, geographic and technical challenges of managing this innovation grow as well. 2. sharing and growing knowledge: as cops grow, their repertoire of collected practice, particularly knowledge of and about practices related to “noncanonical” practices grows as well (scribner, cockrell, cockrell, & valentine, 1999; seely brown & duguid, 1991; wenger, 1998a, 1998b; west, 2009). 3. retaining knowledge: wenger (1998a) suggests cops become “living” homes for knowledge in a way that is distinct from the work of written documents, as “communities of practice preserve the tacit aspects of knowledge that formal systems cannot capture” (p. 5; amin, ash, & roberts, 2008). 4. identity homes: cops can be seen as places where people become practitioners; it is in the act of becoming an “insider” or a “member” of the community that learning happens (lieberman & miller, 2008; seely brown & duguid, 1991; wenger, 1998a). each of these intermediaries has made significant progress in understanding how to help teachers both learn about the design and learn how to do it, and past research efforts have documented these strategies (klein & riordan, 2009). in our research efforts we witnessed the challenges of helping teachers become intimate “knowers” of these ambitious designs. however, we also observed the power and energy engendered by expanding professional learning beyond one or two schools. our research indicates these organizations have been effective at supporting teachers in implementing changes from professional learning into their curriculum and teaching (klein, 2008; klein & riordan, 2009, 2011). although not always with complete fidelity, the strategies engaged in by the intermediaries engendered alignment between the organization’s vision and practices in the classroom, a challenge that has evaded school reformers historically (cuban, 1993). the research presented here draws on both the strategies as well as the challenges of scaling up teacher learning. research context the intermediaries big picture learning (bpl). bpl schools are premised on the notion that learning should be based on students’ passions and that teachers should serve as coaches in connecting student interest with academic content. most bpl schools serve students in grades 9-12 and secondary students spend two days a week at internships of their choice and build projects around their work. teachers stay with students for four years and help design individual learning plans for each student along with the student, his or her mentor, and his or her parents. central to being a successful advisor is the ability to find academic content in internship work experiences and advisors must be content area generalists. currently there 4 scaling up teacher professional learning: how to grow teacher knowledge while growing school networks are approximately 70 schools in 19 states across the country. professional development at bpl schools employs a variety of strategies to help support teachers. because bpl schools are so non-traditional in their design, teachers have few images or experiences to help them figure out what it means to be a teacher there. strategies for supporting teacher learning are geared towards building professional communities of practice and include: networking teachers through informal and formal professional development opportunities, the regular use of case studies and story-telling, regular observation days for teachers to visit other teachers and schools, direct instruction through workshops usually led by experienced teachers, and a buddy system that pairs experienced with new bpl teachers. expeditionary learning. el schools are rooted in the vision of kurt hahn, educator and founder of outward bound, an outdoor educational organization established in 1941. hahn promoted meaningful education through direct and engaging experiences, service, and adventure. el is a school transformation model informed by five dimensions – curriculum, instruction, assessment, culture & character, and leadership – supported by core practices that describe best practices in each dimension. coursework is rooted in long-term case studies, called “learning expeditions” in which students explore in-depth content, engage in out-ofclassroom fieldwork, speak with experts, engage in projects to create products, and present their work to authentic audiences. el schools are both elementary and high school, although for the purposes of this study only secondary schools (grades 6-12) were included. currently there are over 130 schools in 29 states across the country. el’s professional development emphasizes “adult learning [that is] active and engaging” (expeditionary learning schools, 2010, para. 2). central to all professional development is: literacy across the curriculum, teachers experiencing instruction and content as students, character development, and opportunities for reflection. professional development occurs primarily onsite at schools, where el school designers (coaches) work with school leaders and teachers for approximately 30 or more days per year. the school-based professional development is complemented with other opportunities, including regional and national institutes, conferences, school site seminars and educator outward bound courses, totaling about 15 days a year. the international network for public schools (inps). inps schools are public high schools structured to meet academic and emotional needs of recently arrived english language learners from over sixty countries. their approach to learning integrates language development and content as students work collaboratively in heterogeneous groups on interdisciplinary projects and also complete internships within their local communities. teachers work collaboratively in teams to develop curriculum that incorporates students’ diverse linguistic and cultural knowledge. inps’ model of authentic assessment requires that students develop portfolios that they defend to panels of peers and community members. inps’ professional development model includes conferences, regular inter-visitations across schools and teacher initiated study groups. teachers are involved in the planning and leading of professional development conferences and workshops. the first inps school opened in new york city in 1985 and as of 2015 there were nineteen inps schools across the country. table 1 description of intermediaries big picture learning expeditionary learning international network for public schools # of schools 70 in 17 states over 130 in 29 states 17 schools in 2 states core principles advisory, individualized learning, project based curriculum, internships. curriculum centers on “learning expeditions” or case studies with fieldwork, experts, and authentic student work. serve recently arrived immigrant students, experiential learning, language and content integration. model of teacher learning building communities of practice, teacher inter-visitations, expert teacher led workshops, mentoring. school-based professional development led by el school designers (coaches). also includes national and regional professional development institutes and national conference. teachers engage in collaborative learning, study groups, mentoring, intervisitation, teacher led workshops and committees, distributed leadership. methods this research used qualitative, case study methods that are particularly useful when “the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident” and when “there will be many more variables of interest than data points” (yin, 1994, p. 13). case study methodology is well suited for studying intermediaries in the context of scaling up because it helps capture emergent properties of organizational life in the process of change (hartley, 1994). not intended to be the study of an entire organization, case study research is designed to focus on particular issues, features or phenomenon (yin, 1994). it provides a holistic view of phenomenon since it involves many sources of evidence. this study 5 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 triangulated different forms of qualitative data reflecting the experiences of different actors within intermediaries (teachers, coaches, intermediary personnel) in the context of scaling up. by bringing together three case studies of teacher learning within intermediary organizations, we hope to highlight the complex nature of teacher learning and its relationship to school design. although at different stages of scaling up, these intermediaries face challenges that are similar and transferable to other organizations. the goal of this study was not evaluative, to analyze the “success” of each of these three organizations, nor was it a comparative case study. rather, we were interested in looking deeply at these three organizations to make sense of some of the trends we were noticing across them. future research might look to evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies. this research draws on data collected between 2003-2008 from three earlier studies on professional development across the three organizations: bpl, el, and inps. it also includes additional data collection between 2008-2010 that focused on the benefits and challenges of scaling up teacher professional development at the organizational level (principals, coaches, and organizational leaders). data collection and data sources data sources. data collected from prior studies that took place 2003-2008 focused largely on teachers’ experiences of professional development within intermediary organizations. more detail about the methodology of these studies can be found in: klein, 2007; klein, 2008; klein and riordan, 2009; and klein and riordan, 2011. table 2 includes a summary of data collection from these three studies3. during 2009-2010, using a new theoretical framework that combined the literature from scaling up with the literature on teacher learning communities, as well as new research questions, we conducted additional data collection with individuals who worked within the intermediaries. we conducted semi-structured interviews exploring how the organization supports teacher professional development, the challenges of growing professional development, the specific challenges facing coaches, principals, teachers, the use of technology in professional development and how teacher learning has changed as the organization has grown and the benefits of going to scale (see the appendix for the interview protocol). 3teachers for each study were chosen in the following way. for bpl: all teachers in the intermediary in the rhode island schools at the time of the study were invited to participate via an open email/letter opportunity. seventeen were interviewed for the study. for el: all teachers in the intermediary in the nyc schools at the time of the study were invited to participate via an open email/letter opportunity. twenty five were interviewed for the study. for inps: researchers worked with the principal in participating schools to identify a diverse sample in terms of grade level and subject area. table 2 description of three original case studies data source big picture learning expeditionary learning internationals network for public schools interviews 17 teachers 4 principals 2 cofounders 3 staff members 25 teachers 2 principals 2 coaches 16 teachers 7 principals 1 coach 3 executive director 2 intermediary personnel observations 31 days professional development observations 10 days classroom observations 20 days professional development observations 15 days classroom observations 5 days professional development observations 12 days classroom observations artifacts and documents 500 pages: curriculum, documentary data, internal case studies, website documents 300 pages: artifacts related to pd, student work, professional development agendas, online planning tools, school designer updates 200 pages: professional development agendas, committee meeting minutes, historical documents data analysis the constant-comparative method of qualitative data analysis (glaser & strauss, 1967) was used to code, sort, and categorize data. researchers returned to original data with new codes based on research questions for the new study and individually reviewed them. mining the prior data with an eye towards scaling up teacher learning, a number of common codes emerged that were either a challenge these organizations faced or a strategy they used. some codes arose from the original studies and others from the new interviews conducted. researchers collectively defined and clarified codes, generated hierarchies of codes, developed interpretations across categories, and verified findings. we ended up with four overarching codes within the categories of “challenges” and “strategies”: “the fidelity challenge,” “the responsiveness challenge,” increasing opportunities for teacher learning,” and “building and supporting innovation.” we define these codes in our findings section and give examples within. our scaling up codes were informed primarily by: mcdonald et al. (2009), schmidt and datnow (2005), and glennan et al. (2004); communities of practice coding was grounded in wenger’s writing (1998a, 1998b, 2004). 6 scaling up teacher professional learning: how to grow teacher knowledge while growing school networks findings and discussion our data reveal a number of significant findings about both the challenges of bringing teacher learning to scale and the strategies organizations are using to support their work. we found each challenge and strategy applied to all three intermediaries. challenges the fidelity challenge. early on in bpl and inps, the original founders knew all the teachers, principals, and most of the students in its schools.4 especially when school designs require major shifts in thinking about teaching and learning, fidelity to the design engendered by close, organic professional communities of practice is a powerful means of helping newcomers learn the philosophy and practices of the intermediary. however, at each organization’s current scale, learning the design must occur through structures that help guard fidelity even as experimentation is encouraged. the issue that emerges is how to help teachers learn about these complex school designs when smaller cops no longer suffice in supporting fidelity to the model. we saw this challenge expressed at multiple levels in el schools: the classroom, the school, and the organization. in one teacher’s classroom implementation of a particular professional development practice strayed from the design, suggesting to us that the organization might need to require greater fidelity to its practices. in this particular instance, the teacher used the term, “learning expedition” for a project that involved students in creating their own city-states, following a study of ancient greece. while there were components of what el considers to be a learning expedition in the project, other aspects (such as fieldwork and experts) were missing. these data suggested that this was an issue of both fidelity and learning; it misrepresented learning expeditions to the students and therefore distorted the design, and interviews with the teacher indicated a lack of understanding of what comprised an expedition, and a genuine belief that she was implementing the design correctly. more than just getting the terminology right or wrong, this example illustrates the fidelity challenge at scale. at the school level there have been successful examples of veteran faculty members orienting new members to the school’s el practices. for instance, at one el school, several days during summer planning are devoted to targeted teacher-led demonstrations of shared classroom practices and shared language. incoming teachers learn about expectations from other teachers and model their behavior on the community’s norms; they earn trust and “admission” into a professional learning community by mirroring the school-wide practices. as 4 this was less true for el, which started with 10 schools in five cities around the country. newer members successfully appropriate and reflect the language and instructional strategies embraced by the larger community, they become members of that community and contributors to it. one el teacher indicated, “i learned about creating learning targets (goals or objectives), how to run a ‘building background knowledge workshop’ with students (a strategy for engaging students in new content) and use discussion protocols, which were new for me. all of the other [veteran] teachers here use them successfully and it’s important to learn so we have shared practices it helps to be consistent with kids.” because el schools are spread across the country, the organization has to meet the challenge of creating many smaller cops simultaneously, and manage the quality of all of them. data suggested how these communities of practice maintained the role of being “identity homes” even as they grew to scale. teachers were able to become practitioners in their school-based community, which allowed them and the organization’s coaches to monitor for fidelity at a smaller scale. an el teacher told us about how this worked in her individual school: fridays we stay until 3 and…we meet as a faculty and we’re taught: first we watched an actual lesson being given by someone and then we broke it down for each of the steps, what’s required, why is it important, how do we use it, and then we got to take our lessons that we’ve [the 7th grade team] written and change them together as a group to fit into the gradual release of responsibility [i do, we do, you do] model. as a school, the teachers became monitors of fidelity for themselves and el coaches reinforce practices or redirect misconceptions as needed. the fidelity challenge spans not only the work of schools, but of the growing number of coaches and others who work to develop schools. tom van winkle, managing director of school services, identified this as a key challenge in the current state of scaling up: i think one of the things it means as an organization is that we have to be very tuned into making sure what our school designers do in schools is fairly consistent across the board…i would say that that’s a challenge for us because – the quality of work of school designer a isn’t exactly the same as the quality of work of school designer b. they’re all coming in with different experiences. we do our best to hire the best. smart hiring is one part of the equation; another is, as van winkle expresses, “tuning” and striving for consistency across school contexts. how does an organization going to scale ensure that coaches communicate practices using similar language and that “what makes el” in denver resembles “what makes el” in asheville? to support consistency in coaching, el created the director of school designer support position, 7 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 which spearheads targeted training for all new coaches in the organization. supports consist of “on-boarding,” familiarization with staff materials (housed in an online site), participation in el institutes and school-based site seminars (with other new and veteran coaches), and ongoing video/conference calls. veteran coaches are further supported at the regional or national level through a mentorship program, with coaches establishing clear goals and check-ins to monitor progress, seek feedback and support, and engage in reflection. now several years into this initiative, data indicate that el’s school coaches experience increased consistency of training and feel more supported in their work. we heard this as a continual and constant challenge for teachers, however. many times our data suggested teachers engaged in what we would call “token” implementation or fidelity to the design – using terms like “building background knowledge,” but perhaps engaging in a practice that didn’t demonstrate as much fidelity to the design as the organization would like. some others felt pressure based on the needs of their students to make other adaptations. when talking about implementing expeditions into her class, one teacher told us, “if we don’t build their skills then it doesn’t matter how interesting the projects are. the kids will not be able to read the material that’s in front of them and they will fail tests, and they’re going to keep failing tests. and it becomes really difficult for them to work independently.” el has met these challenges by increasing training and support as well as developing a greater online repository of models and tools – both teacher-generated and el-staff developed. elliot washor, one of the co-founders of bpl shared the idea of using “heuristics” or “rules of thumb” that help coaches in problem-solving. unlike some of el’s structured strategies, these experience-based techniques are more likely to offer generalizations as opposed to prescribed tools. the tension here is allowing for the kinds of innovation that foster improvement of the model but knowing when to insist on fidelity for the design’s integrity. at different points data suggest bpl has struggled to know when innovation had gone so far that the design was being compromised. central to their design is that students’ coursework is integrated, they do not take “classes” in math and science, but rather, content knowledge emerges from student projects developed in their internships. yet, in california and other states, state testing pressures pushed some bpl schools to offer math classes. in some instances bpl has accepted the inevitable local context pressures placed on their schools, but early into their scale up they also devised “distinguishers” that expressed their core principles of teaching and learning. these distinguishers, along with a memorandum of understanding, help mark the limits of innovation for any school within their network. in managing the fidelity challenge, these organizations rely heavily on coaches to work with schools on design implementation; the coaches train leaders and teachers – they are the managers of innovation. however, as schools are added nationally, and the schools themselves continue to add grades and scale up, sheer numbers challenge an organization’s capacity to inculcate all teachers into the culture, discourse, and design. further, growing organizations need to consider the additional layer of professional development for coaches themselves. as described in the literature, coaches cannot always be found from within the existing organization and in this case, the very people entrusted with teaching the design are people who need to be taught it deeply enough to share it. within the original new york network, inps has not relied on instructional coaches; instead teachers who have specific areas of experience and interest have led inter-visitations, study groups and workshops. within the new york network, schools have built capacity through the use of teacher leaders. those teacher leaders are the “living homes” of knowledge that wenger (1998b) describes. engaging teachers to develop and implement teacher learning also exponentially increases the number of relationships individual teachers can draw on for support on an ongoing basis (warren little, 1993), helping to share the knowledge of the organization (seely brown & duguid, 1991). inps has provided opportunities for teachers to develop leadership capacity through network professional development activities. one assistant principal who was formerly a teacher leader speaks to this: i have worked at three internationals: brooklyn, flushing and now here at lafayette. for each of these schools, i served as the representative from the schools on the internationals professional development committee. it was the first leadership opportunity that i had. it gave me a chance to work with other teachers and to decide what kinds of professional development that we would offer and facilitate. the intermediary’s professional development structures serve a dual purpose of supporting leadership development as well as encouraging the flow of institutional knowledge about signature practices across schools within the network. while the use of teacher leaders to develop new schools was effective in the new york network, the network faced challenges when it opened new schools in california because of the lack of seasoned educators on the west coast. the network addressed this challenge by using instructional coaches but acknowledged that this was a departure from the inps model and understood it to be a temporary support or what the organization calls a “new geography scale up strategy” to start the first two schools on the west coast. in the days when the network 8 scaling up teacher professional learning: how to grow teacher knowledge while growing school networks was limited to schools in new york city, the strategy of engaging experienced teachers who transmitted the core commitments and institutional knowledge about practice to staff within new schools was effective. as the network went to scale, it required coaches who could connect the intermediary and new geographies creating connections between individual schools. inps has worked to support the development of a smaller cop in california that will become an identity home for the california schools by creating new opportunities for collaboration and teacher learning in those schools. the intermediary has supported professional development events for the california schools as well as teacher study groups and intervisitations in which groups of teachers from across schools work collaboratively to reflect on and develop their practice. however, given the small number of california schools and structural challenges, such as being in different districts with different schedules, the california network does not have the depth of knowledge and the shared memory for practice that the new york network currently has. as intermediaries grow in size, data from this study suggested a greater need to make explicit and transparent institutional learning that has grown over time in order to support schools to implement core design principles. the work of cops as “living homes” and sharing “non-canonical practices” may not be effective at a large scale. claire sylvan, executive director of inps speaks to the lessons of growth: it has taught us the importance of writing down more things. what other people might call “codify.” it has taught us that there are things that we can put into writing instead and share in that way instead of relying exclusively on osmosis through interpersonal contact. that, said we will never abandon interpersonal relationships as part of this. sylvan is careful to point out that codifying knowledge does not mean creating rigid guides for establishing practices in new schools: we don’t have scripted workshops in internationals because we have always had this implicit common knowledge, now what we have done is put that together in one place with the full expectation that it won’t look exactly the same for anybody. it seems the challenge for inps as they grow is to find new ways to make institutional knowledge that has been implicit and has traveled through interpersonal relations, transparent.5 as lave and wenger (1991) 5 our findings indicate that among the networks we studied, it is important to create more resources and make learning more visible for new schools and new teachers. at the same time, it is important to explain, “transparency in its simplest form may just imply that the inner workings of an artifact are available for the learners’ inspection: the black box can be opened, it can become a ‘glass box’” (p. 102). while our data don’t point to an optimal size for a network of schools, evidence suggests that geographic spread (when schools are both far from a cluster of other network school and far from the original hub school) may contribute to challenges of instilling ownership. the responsiveness challenge. deeply connected to the fidelity challenge is what we call the “responsiveness” challenge. in year one, with a handful of schools in one or two locations, an organization can identify and meet schools’ needs as they arise. in year two, after growing schools in other – perhaps more distant – locations, there are more requests, more emails, and onsite visits may be less frequent (as there are more schools to attend to). year after year, scaling up challenges an organization’s capacity to respond to growing needs of leaders and teachers, thus impacting its ability to monitor fidelity. where an organization once offered a series of eight yearly professional development institutes, it now must offer fifteen, in different locations, and create new ones that differentiate for new and experienced teachers. the strong early communities of practice that were able to share, grow, and retain knowledge without formal structures may be less able to do this quickly and effectively. our data indicated all three of the intermediaries in this study struggled with this challenge and how to meet it. washor, of bpl, shared a story that illustrates the challenge of staying responsive and nimble while growing. in its early years of scaling up, the organization tried an innovative approach to professional development: they hired a documentary filmmaker to film a single advisory and then used the footage as a professional development tool. schools around the country would watch an episode and then talk about issues arising from it in their schools and, using video conferencing, across the nation. they hoped this would be an opportunity to “grow knowledge” on a larger scale and find another way to be a “living home” for this knowledge. in describing what can be done “from the center” of the intermediary, washor said, we tried to run professional development where we had a video conference…but it was very difficult to do and people just basically sat there. we asked them questions and then we broke them up into their groups. but by the time they got there assembled, did the work we did it live it was three hours of their time. and it would have been better just to get the people to sit highlight that none of these networks advocate a scripted curriculum in their school design. 9 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 down and every teacher in the room and say, okay, this is my problem for the week, how do i help, how do you help me do this? and who’s going to continue to help me? as one researcher observed the video professional development, what washor suggested was in evidence; the conversation felt stilted across networks and when conversation at the local hubs finally became animated it was often time to return back to the larger group, essentially shutting down whatever interesting discussion was happening among the teachers. one teacher indicated, it was good to see someone else’s advisory practices and sparked connections to my own advisory...but, i also want the opportunity to go deeper into my own struggles and successes and get feedback immediately from colleagues that i can use. this teacher’s insights identify a challenge of networking across wide geographic spaces. bpl’s effort to be responsive was an attempt to grow the cop to a larger scale. but cops may only be effective at a certain size; in the instance of bpl the scale of the learning community became unwieldy, and ultimately missed the mark. in an effort to manage the fidelity challenge there is inevitable anxiety when the center lacks knowledge of the intimate practices of the individual schools and teachers. yet if the intermediary tries too hard to participate in those local, daily practices it cannot respond effectively in areas that may have more impact. more successful approaches seem to be those in which intermediaries differentiated support to schools, responding to particular contexts and/or strategically employed “cross-pollination” among schools in order to help them learn from one another in their varied stages of scale. strategies increasing opportunities for teacher learning. one strategy all three intermediaries used to manage the above described challenges was finding multiple ways to broaden opportunities for teacher learning as they continued to scale, building on the transformative potential of broader cops as described in the literature (argyis & schön, 1978). one strategy was increasing opportunities for teacher leadership, opportunities not as readily available when only a few schools existed. in scaling, none of the organizations were equipped with a sufficient number of staff or coaches who knew the design intimately enough to become teachers of it. in all three, whether by design or by circumstance, the organizations called on teachers to become coaches or teachers of the design. this was an opportunity for teachers to advance their learning of the design and for the organization to build leadership capacity from within, a strategy well illustrated by inps. inps uses a distributed leadership model (copland, 2003) that engages teachers to design and implement professional development and to serve on new school planning teams. this model encourages leadership development and ensures that professional development responds to teachers’ needs. as one math teacher explains: “i think that strength of our model is that it is shaped by teachers’ input as opposed to the administration setting the agenda.” as inps grew to seventeen schools in twenty-years within new york city, one element of the organization’s scale up strategy involved using teacher leaders to help carry the culture to new schools. these are teachers who teach in one inps school and then migrate to start new schools, carrying the shared commitments, norms and practices that are central to the inps approach6 (jaffe-walter, 2008). elmore (1996) describes this strategy of school reform in which educators steeped in the practices of an exemplary school start other schools as “using the genetic material of their own knowledge and understanding" (p. 18). this links to our theoretical framework and coburn’s (2003) notion of shifting ownership from the intermediary to the teacher; increasing opportunities is part of shifting ownership using teachers to grow new schools not only enables the sharing of institutional knowledge across schools but also extends relationships that were developed within individual schools across the network, thereby encouraging the cross fertilization of ideas and ongoing informal support and collaboration. the broader network community is reinforced by regularly scheduled professional development activities such as intervisitations and study groups that bring groups of teachers together across schools to spend time in each other’s classrooms, reflect on practice and address pressing challenges. this work reflects coburn’s (2003) notion of depth, helping to deepen meaningful changes in practice within individual schools. bpl also uses this strategy to help them in the early stages of scaling up to provide new opportunities for teachers who have spent at least four years in their schools. many of the first group of advisors to “graduate” from a bpl school became coaches and principals in newer schools, many moving across the country to do so. in some instances those principals later went on to take leadership roles in around the country, as did one teacher from one of the early schools in rhode island, who became a local principal, and then regional director of the bpl schools in new jersey. one advisor who moved into a coaching role indicated, ...because i had experienced being an advisor i built the skills needed to understand how to 6 eight of the ten current principals in the international schools have spent more than five years teaching within inps. several began their careers as new teachers at international high school at laguardia community college, one began with internationals as a paraprofessional. in addition, one current assistant principal was a student in the first graduating class of the international high school at laguardia community college. 10 scaling up teacher professional learning: how to grow teacher knowledge while growing school networks coach others. it’s easier when you’ve done it yourself and know the little steps that it takes, for instance, to create a learning plan with a student. this teacher’s insight suggests that organizations scaling up might first look internally for those people who “deeply know the design in concept and in practice [and] who can empathize with other adults who need to know it” (mcdonald et al., 2009, p. 24). but what happens when geography prevents educators from participating within the network, as lave and wenger (1991) suggest? when newcomers do not have access to the wide range of day-to-day activities, resources and opportunities for participation available to educators in the local network? how do they then become an “insider” of the teacher community and how do they come to “share ownership” of the design? in inps, growing teacher leaders was successful while school openings were limited in number and confined to the local area, but the network had to recruit leadership and teachers from outside the network to start new schools in oakland and san francisco, as did bpl who grew at a much faster pace than this model allowed. providing more extensive learning opportunities for scale is not simply a matter of funneling teachers towards leadership. not all teachers in these networks can, or want to, leave the classroom. as each of these intermediaries has grown, the needs of individual teachers have multiplied. early professional development in intermediaries tends to focus on helping teachers learn about the school design but eventually experienced teachers may need different kinds of learning opportunities. a common model for providing new learning opportunities for veteran teachers is to urge them to lead professional development. and while many teachers embrace the chance to be leaders, intermediaries have felt some pressure to differentiate professional development beyond this. one teacher at bpl told us: once you’re past your first year you become more expert and so, aside from teaching other people, you don’t get much out of the professional development days and one gets very focused on experienced people sharing stuff with the less experienced people, which i think happens in our school because it’s so different. for the bpl network and inps in particular, the organizational design is so specific that few outside experts can offer professional development, because it may often be too generic and too de-contextualized from the specific learning needs of teachers. non-canonical practices passed on by strong communities of practice seemed rarely supported by such experts. in interviews, inps teachers described how professional development from external providers was often not aligned with the needs of their students who are newly arrived immigrant students. one math teacher explained that network based teacher learning structures and collaboration across schools were central to serving students: one of our challenges is that our school is 100% ell with a specific model, so even the state doesn’t understand how we work. that’s where internationals (inps) helps us we’re all in the same boat. schools are team-based and collaborative. and internationals is too. they bring us together to share what we’ve learned we share problems that we have had and how we overcome them. when we come together, it’s a more authentic approach. this teacher emphasizes the need for learning structures that are responsive to the needs of students and teachers, in tune with the challenges of their particular experiences. early on in its growth bpl was resistant to going outside the organization for professional development. while both founders acknowledge the role of outsiders in the work at bpl and believe they can play a part in professional development, they qualified these statements with ones about the limits of outside experts. bpl staff and teachers were also concerned about how outsiders try to teach what they know. one principal told us, i think we’re most critical of pedagogical styles that are not really inclusive and there’s a lot of times where we’ve had people come in and just try to transmit information…and people just lose interest really quickly because it’s not grounded in the experience of our staff members and the students that they work with. outside experts with little understanding of context and community, and without effective pedagogical skills for a bpl classroom may do little to pass along their expertise in a way that is both palatable and relevant. yet, the strategy of relying solely on practitioners within the network raises the possibility of ‘in-breeding’ as teachers within one context may transmit a limited number of practices or ones that may not be finely tuned. while bpl is still committed to using what they call “inside expert practitioners” to lead professional development, as the organization has scaled up there has been a degree of change in experimenting with outside experts as teachers also need opportunities to be learners and not just leaders as they continue on in these schools. one regional area director told us his philosophy is to “identify the best possible pd opportunities for your folks – whether it’s in or out of house,” and he regularly sends his teachers to outside sponsored conferences, symposia, and institutes. his only request is that they bring back the learning and share with their local community. evidence suggests mixed success with this approach, which can lead to mistaken implementation of practices (klein & riordan, 2009). when it works, however, as one bpl advisor expressed, it can transform practice: “after 11 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 attending a conference, another advisor shared examples about how to push students’ thinking on their projects…i could immediately use the ideas about question-asking and connecting to bloom’s taxonomy in my work with my students…” el has also experimented with how to provide learning opportunities to meet the diverse needs of teachers as the organization scales up. however they now face the challenge of providing the necessary expertise to staff these workshops. one cost effective way they are managing this is by facilitating some national institutes in regional areas or with one school faculty. we suspect that this helps the challenge of scale in communities of practice, focusing on multiple smaller communities as opposed to bigger ones. those communities seemed more likely to effectively share knowledge that they developed and coaches were then able to connect work between communities. el has also tried to provide advanced institutes for teachers nationally to maximize available resources, particularly in areas like assessment, differentiation, and leadership. for instance, they offer a sequence of professional development institutes focusing on assessment rooted in best practices (o’connor, 2005, 2007; stiggins, arter, chappuis, & chappuis, 2005; wiliam, 1998). the initial institute focused on student engaged assessment; “assessment in daily instruction” provides a foundation for the subsequent offerings: “creating quality assessments and plans” and “standards-based grading & reporting” (the latter focuses on school-wide structures for standards-based grading). the sequence differentiates professional development for novice and more experienced el teachers and builds shared ownership of the design. for those in earlier stages of learning the design, professional development opportunities encourage the learner to put “aside misgivings and disbelief in order to try on ownership” (klein & riordan, 2009, p. 29). for those further along in their learning, there are opportunities to take “on the actual responsibilities of ownership” (klein & riordan, 2009, p. 29), again, illustrating coburn’s (2003) notion of going to scale and building the ever important, but often elusive, shift of ownership. reports from several participants, suggest that experimentation with differentiation of learning opportunities – off-site or school-based – may provide means for teachers to grow as learners and take risks. van winkle, of el told us, i think organizationally [offering differentiated professional development] is hard, but from the standpoint of the school and the growth of individual teachers, i think it’s a real asset, because it enables the school coach to work with the school leadership to really focus on a particular individual’s growth and what they need. one el teacher shared that she thought the opportunities for pd had the “potential to be transformative,” but she wasn’t sure they were there yet, that it still needed to be “more individualized” and that it was a “resource question” in that there needed to be more specialization among coaches and leaders. bpl has also attempted to find ways to differentiate professional development for teachers. over the years they have struggled to figure out how to help develop the “quantitative reasoning” in teachers’ practice with students. one way they have supported teachers is through hiring an outside expert in this area to build capacity with teachers in schools. like other coaches he is able to bring outside expertise while developing a strong understanding of the organization’s unique philosophy. his work with particular teachers and schools allows him to differentiate professional development for teachers at different levels of practice. increasing differentiated professional development can be the most significant way intermediaries contribute to teacher development and learning. in large part, the educational system emphasizes support and learning of new teachers and intermediaries have had to follow suit, as the needs of new teachers are urgent and immediate. however, sustained change requires more attention to the needs of experienced teachers who also want to grow as learners, to build their capacity and ownership, which can then create more depth in the organization. building and supporting innovation. as organizations grow their designs, early adopters can become laboratories for newcomers adopting the design, and leaders and teachers can learn from newcomers. similarly, newer schools may innovate and improve practices and share with others in the larger network. sharing practices across schools builds the institutional capacity of individual schools, and innovations may further spread through national conferences, visits, informally, or via technology. inps’ sylvan contends that starting new schools encourages innovation and new energy as it provides learning opportunities for teachers in older schools: people mistakenly separate new school development from maintaining old schools: i would argue that new school development continues to drive innovation and intellectual curiosity in your older schools. the creative energy of that new school it’s so exciting and why should you keep that for the new schools? let it come back to the old schools. people get involved in the new schools, “oh, i just met these new teachers and look what they are trying,” and that brings new ideas into the old schools because the new schools are trying things out and there are no set patterns yet. you want them to do some of the core things but you 12 scaling up teacher professional learning: how to grow teacher knowledge while growing school networks also want them to innovate. i include new school planning as an important part of our professional development along with conferences, rfps…they drive innovation, and keep the energy up. there was evidence from all three intermediaries that new schools can become fertile grounds for fostering innovation and expanding the possibilities within the collected repertoire of the network’s practice as there “are no set patterns yet.” one strategy both el and bpl use to foster innovation is hosting an annual national conference. at these conferences, teachers, principals, and coaches from around the country present innovative practices to their peers in workshop formats. a recent national el conference included workshops on assessment practices, literacy, leadership, and building professional community. teachers shared practices formally through these workshops and informally throughout the day as they talked with peers from different locations. this also served as a means of building identity homes for new members as well as sharing some of the non-canonical practices across smaller communities of practice. members, both old and new, become a part of a larger community identity (the national organization) in addition to their smaller school or regional community. one teacher spoke of her time there as one that fostered the highest level of engagement she had ever known at a professional learning experience. speaking about a “slice” of a learning expedition she did about lobsters, she said: why am i so into this thing with the lobsters, because i am?! everybody in this group is crazy about lobsters! when we did our presentation… we were behind this thing and had these paper lobsters and did the music and i was like… literally, it was one of the most fun things i did... i really liked the people i was with… and i think that we were just engaged. and so every time i was really engaged and then i thought about what made me engaged, those were the things that i want to do [with my students]. her high level of engagement provided an important space for fostering innovation. while experienced educators carry a network’s culture with them, they also benefit from opportunities to create something new, to experiment with tried and true recipes, both fueling innovation and transforming their own identities as shapers of practice (warren little, 1999). by engaging teachers to work across schools, the intermediary supports the creation of new cops while also carrying back new possibilities for practice to existing ones. providing opportunities for spreading innovation are not enough, and all three organizations have come up against how to sustain levels of innovation, as coburn’s (2003) theoretical frame urged us to look for. doing this involves strategizing about building a collective memory of practice, premised, it seems, on the belief that the power of shared ideas is enhanced through some means of documenting them. cops “preserve tacit aspects of knowledge that formal systems cannot capture” (wenger, 1998a, p. 5), but as intermediaries grow to scale, they may feel the need to try to capture these aspects. in particular, the intermediaries in this study have a very specific vision of teaching and learning and so meeting the fidelity challenge seemed to involve, for all of them, documenting ideas and practice. creating a database of practices well aligned with the intermediary’s philosophy of curriculum and instruction may help sustain innovation by providing models of what the organization’s vision looks like in practice. our data suggest it may also become a place for teachers to learn instead of starting from scratch. figuring out how to provide a warehouse of documented successful practice has led to innovative thinking particularly in the area of technology. el has developed el commons, a website that allows members to share curriculum and student work. at the heart of this network is an online collection of high quality student work as well as the “embedded learning that went around it.” van winkle, managing director of school services with el explains: …the beauty of a network is you can see how your context might relate to someone else’s context and what student projects they had their kids work on and what field experiences they had their students go on…and they see examples out there and then they also have the opportunity to communicate with those teachers. that system i think is a real advantage for a large network of schools. el commons now houses an extensive student product archive, teacher-created learning expeditions, shared school documents (e.g.: faculty handbooks, professional development sessions), key organizational documents, and planning tools to support teachers’ in creating and documenting work. el has a director of resources who vets submissions, manages web content, and provides updates to the el network on newly developed materials. while this hub was introduced relatively recently (march 2011), it offers opportunity for a collective memory of practice organized around the intermediary’s school design. this may be the key to sustainability as well as a launching point for creativity. although distinct communities of practice may innovate too far from the design, they are important in helping organizations “harness innovative energy” (seely brown & duguid, 1991, p. 54). separate communities also facilitate differentiation. for instance, in one el school, a group of teachers of varying levels of experience might engage in a form of japanese lesson study to focus on a particular active pedagogy strategy that supports experiential learning. or, an experienced 13 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 teacher may run an “el 101” for those new to the design, sharing the learning gleaned from years of practice. a final effective strategy for supporting innovation across all three intermediaries has been through the use of coaches who do the work of “boundary spanning” – work that links their organization with the external environment. boundary spanning primarily concerns the exchange of information (allen & cohen, 1969; daft, 1989; malinowski, 1922) and boundary spanners attempt to influence external environmental elements and processes. they are often the stewards of innovation described in the literature on communities of practice (seely brown & duguid, 1991), and those who manage the teaching challenge. our research suggests that boundary spanners, in the form of coaches, school designers, mentors, and sometimes teachers and principals, seemed to help secure outside sources of innovation into an organization (daft, 1989; seely brown & duguid, 1991). these individuals often bridge the gap between national professional development conference and individual teacher classroom. boundary spanners additionally served to tighten the network, sharing information across school contexts. across the organizations we saw how they carried best practices from one school to another and from the schools back to the organization. for instance, in new york city, one el school designer (coach) typically supports several schools that are in various stages of scaling (e.g., a new start-up school, a high school at scale in its fourth-year, and another two-years into its scale-up process). as a result, a coach is positioned to share successful practices and concrete documents and materials from those schools further along in the scaling up trajectory. we observed one coach sharing learning expeditions, daily classroom pedagogy (workshop model lessons and socratic seminars), and structures to support leadership meetings (templates and protocols). this kind of feedback loop also seemed to support the responsiveness challenge. conclusion we believe scaling up teacher learning is at the heart of scaling up school designs. the intermediaries in this study highlight the challenge of building and sustaining innovation because their visions of teaching and learning are not represented in textbooks and district professional development. however, the strategies they use for harnessing the potential of small cops to transform and grow the organization are useful for others interested in sustaining innovation. repeatedly, we found that when communities became too large, teacher learning suffered, and all three organizations experimented with ways to keep cops small even as they grew. there is some assumption that the “typical, large organization is unlikely to produce discontinuous innovation” (seely brown & duguid, 1991, p. 54). but in fact, there is literature to suggest that scaled up cops can provide fertile ground for invention. there are limitations of our study, namely the differences between the three organizations. they are in various stages of scaling up, for example, inps has seventeen schools while el exceeds one hundred and thirty schools. however, given the limited literature on teacher learning within school networks and a landscape in which organizations continue to grow designs for schooling, we see this study as an important contribution to the literature. most research about scaling up focuses on a single intermediary and including three intermediaries in this study allowed us to highlight the challenges and opportunities outside of very particular organizational contexts. we found that in line with our theoretical frame, that these organizations were thinking about scaling up in a particular way, scaling up as scaling down, in terms of knowing the teaching and learning of the design deeply, being able to sustain those practices, and transferring ownership of the design from the intermediary to the local teachers. we were able to step back from how the professional development is facilitated and the specific design challenges to build a broader understanding of what it means to scale up teacher learning. for organizations and individuals engaged in this work, reflecting on the process of scaling up supports intermediaries to think more deliberately about strategies they employ; our research identifies a number of important strategies and tools. in particular, increasing opportunities for teacher learning through differentiating professional development, building teacher leadership, and creating regional hubs are important practices in the work of these organizations. intermediaries also build and support innovation through national conferences, through technology that acts as a structure for archiving best practices and sharing innovations, and by employing coaches as boundary spanners to transmit teacher learning between hubs. these strategies and tools have limits but seem to offer the most opportunity in managing the challenges of scaling up teacher learning. additionally, scale necessitates a greater degree of systems-thinking, meaning that as organizations scale up it becomes increasingly important to identify patterns, cycles, and keep the overall goals in sight while managing inputs and facilitating interactions between smaller moving parts. wheatley (1992) indicates that systems benefit from clear articulation of outcomes. to that end, organizations engaged in scaling up should continue revisiting and reassessing their missions and visions to determine if the “recipe” in place will yield the desired outcome or whether tinkering is needed. further, school design organizations may need to ramp up transparency and communication to make visible the “sleight of hand” components of growing schools and coaching leaders and teachers to successful implementation. with a recipe, as we mention in the introduction, there is a gap between reading about how to create 14 scaling up teacher professional learning: how to grow teacher knowledge while growing school networks something and actually creating it. the recipe does not guarantee the result. however, what we have learned from leaders, teachers, and the organizations in our study brings us closer to bridging the space between theory and praxis. ultimately, navigating the challenges of scaling up a school design across multiple contexts requires tending. our findings indicate that organizations tending to teachers’ learning offer rich opportunities to deepen onthe-ground implementation. further research is needed to 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(1994). case study research: design and methods (2nd ed.) thousand oaks, ca: sage. 17 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 article citation klein, e. j., walter, r. j., & riordan, m. (2015). scaling up teacher professional learning: how to grow teacher knowledge while growing school networks. current issues in education, 18(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1336 author notes emily j. klein, phd associate professor montclair state university 1 e. normal avenue, university hall, 2123, montclair state university, 07043 kleine@mail.montclair.edu emily j. klein is an associate professor at montclair state university in the department of secondary and special education and member of the doctoral faculty. the author of several articles on teacher professional learning, teacher leadership, and urban teacher residencies, dr. klein’s first book going to scale with new school designs: reinventing high school, was published by teachers college press. her second book, a year in the life of an urban teacher residency: using inquiry to reinvent math and science education, will be published by sense publishers. reva jaffe walter, phd assistant professor montclair state university 1 e. normal avenue, montclair state university, 07043 rjaffew@gmail.com reva jaffe walter is an assistant professor at montclair state university in the department of counseling and educational leadership. her research focuses on teachers’ professional communities, immigration and schooling, the anthropology of policy, and urban education reform and has appeared in journals such as the harvard educational review, teachers college record and anthropology and education quarterly. her book technologies of concern: nationalism, liberalism and the schooling of muslim youth will be published with stanford press. meg riordan, phd 7 north pleasant street suite 3a , amherst, ma 01002 mriordan@nycoutwardbound.org meg riordan ph.d., is a project director with expeditionary learning (el), a k-12, non-profit educational organization. she leads el's federally-funded teacher potential project, studying the impact of el's curriculum and coaching on teachers' instruction and students' learning. meg's research interests include teacher professional learning, organizational scaling, school reform, blended-learning, and students' educational experiences. she is the co-author of going to scale with new school designs: reinventing high school (teachers college press, 2009) and numerous articles. manuscript received: 11/04/2014 revisions received: 04/14/2015 accepted: 04/24/2015 18 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1336 mailto:kleine@mail.montclair.edu mailto:rjaffew@gmail.com mailto:mriordan@nycoutwardbound.org scaling up teacher professional learning: how to grow teacher knowledge while growing school networks volume 18, number 2 august 11, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreader lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers 19 cie template current issues in education, 18(3) 1 volume 18, issue 3 october 6, 2015 issn 1099-839x using student test scores to award merit pay: a look at the 2012 pay-for-performance program for idaho schools gary storie and peter r. denner idaho state university abstract: in the fall of 2012, idaho implemented a plan to award bonus pay to schools whose students demonstrated academic growth based on the betebenner (2008) method. this study examined the relationship of the amount of bonus paid to a school, the percentage of students from low income families associated with a school, and the location of the school (urban, suburban, town, or rural). using hierarchical set regression, a statistically significant negative relationship was found between the percentage of students eligible for subsidized meals and per pupil school bonus pay. when school location was added as a predictor, rural school location emerged as a positive predictor of the amount of per pupil bonus money received by a school. the percentage of students eligible for subsidized meals also predicted whether a school received any bonus money. keywords: merit pay, pay for performance, accountability apa-style citation: storie, g., & denner, p. r. (2015). using student test scores to award merit pay: a look at the 2012 pay-for performance program for idaho schools. current issues in education, 18(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1373 accepted: july 15 th , 2015 can the solitary influence of a teacher or school on student learning truly be measured? the answer appears to be “yes,” according to the american recovery and reinvestment act and president obama’s race-to-the-top initiative. the affirmative answer is so compelling that guidelines for states to apply for federal money required teachers and schools to be accountable for student learning, and to have that accountability measured by evaluation models that in whole, or in part, use student test results to judge whether or not teachers and schools are effective (u. s. department of education, 2010). idaho initiated such a plan in 2012 and provided bonus pay to schools that demonstrated growth in student achievement scores. the concept of paying teachers or schools more based on student test scores is highly contested in educational research with few studies touting the value of it. certainly the idea is to motivate teachers to work harder and ensure their students achieve higher scores on tests, but researchers are finding a significant number of flaws regarding the practice (alicias, 2005; amrein-beardsley, 2014; berliner, 2014; kupermintz, 2003). among the criticisms, the http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1373 storie & denner: using student test scores to award merit pay: a look at the 2012 pay-for-performance program for idaho schools current issues in education, 18(3) 2 strongest may be the inability to control for all the factors that contribute to student learning besides what the teacher does. with this in mind, we conducted this study to consider the amount of the bonus pay idaho schools received in 2012 in relation to some of these questionable variables, specifically socio-economic status and school location. students from homes with low family income generally achieve at a lower rate when compared to students from more affluent backgrounds (coleman et al., 1966; sum & fogg, 1991). we looked specifically at this connection and asked the basic question: was there a relationship between the amount of bonus pay a school received and the percentage of students from low-income families who attended that school? other research has shown school location has an effect on student learning (hopkins 2005; plecki, 1991; zoda, combs, & slate, 2011). this factor was considered as well. the biggest challenge to establishing merit pay for teachers or schools based on student test scores has been accounting for all the variables that affect student learning. generally, the simplistic concept of merit pay involves whether or not students improve their scores from one year to the next, and if they do, then bonuses ought to be awarded. however, to define this academic growth and the factors that may, or may not, have contributed to it has proven to be elusive. value-added models (vam) and student growth models (sgm) state and federal education policy makers who advocate providing bonus pay for higher test scores consider student learning to be significantly influenced by the teacher or a collective of teachers in a school setting. this sentiment may be drawn from research sponsored by the new teacher project (tntp) – an analysis of survey data that suggest current teacher evaluation models are inconsequential or irrelevant, do not address teaching deficiencies, nor recognize and reward instructional effectiveness; there was no tangible incentive for good teaching or reasons to retain them, especially in urban settings (the new teacher project, 2010). a 2009 study found current performance assessments of teachers fail to distinguish the good from the bad, 99% of teachers receive a satisfactory rating from their supervisors, and poor teachers were not removed from the classrooms (weisberg, sexton, mulhern, & keeling, 2009). the need for objective measures of teacher and school performance in the light of student learning became a central focus of tntp and has been embraced by education officials in high levels of both state and federal offices. as a result, the establishment of teacher evaluation models that can to be tied to achievement based on improved student learning is a condition for states to receive additional dollars under obama’s race-to-the-top program (u.s. department of education, 2010). as a consequence, and not surprisingly, the concept has garnered favor and/or practice in 44 states (amrein-beardsley, 2014). though research has shown the competency and relational skills of a classroom teacher have a significant relationship with student achievement (heck, 2009; the new teacher project, 2012; zhou, 2012), there are many other variables associated with learning that are well out of the teacher’s or school’s control, some of which may be serious impediments for even the most able educator to overcome. this fact brings into question the equitable practice of evaluating teachers and schools on the basis of student test scores and using the scores to make decisions about teacher tenure, compensation, and school performance rating and labeling. to address questions about fairness, statisticians sought to isolate the teacher or school effect on learning from other variables, devising what are known as value-added models (vam) of teacher evaluation. these models existed in the past yet were sparsely used. berk (1984) reported such policies were in place in nine school districts in seven states during the early storie & denner: using student test scores to award merit pay: a look at the 2012 pay-for-performance program for idaho schools current issues in education, 18(3) 3 1980s. now the majority of states have one form or another of teacher evaluation programs that can be considered value-added models. the tennessee value added assessment system (tvaas) gained prominence in the late 1990s, and then gave rise to the education value-added assessment system (evaas) a decade later. the evaas was originally used in texas and subsequently spread to other states. tvaas developer, william sanders, a statistician from the university of tennessee, reported that his model met its objectives; he claimed test score gains by students were attributable to the teacher and not to the students’ abilities or achievement levels (sanders & horn, 1994). the tennessee state board of education was so convinced of the model it now relies on the results from its statewide testing program to make consequential decisions about teachers based on whether or not their students make gains in test scores. teachers in tennessee may be paid bonuses if student test scores improve over time, or they might lose their licenses if scores decline (hardy & sher, 2013; tennessee state board of education, 2013). both tvass and evaas and value added models in general have been criticized in recent years. kupermintz (2003) claimed he found flaws in sanders’ approach and cautioned education policy makers about relying too heavily on tvaas or similar value-added teacher evaluation models; he doubted the statistical ability to calculate a pure teacher effect on learning. alicias (2005) challenged the tvaas and other value-added models on similar grounds, claiming it is impossible to eliminate all the possible interactions and effects of other stimuli that influence a student’s performance on a test. amrein-beardsley (2014) questioned the validity of such instruments, asserting that other measures of teacher performance (i.e., classroom observation, student and parent surveys) do not correlate with vams in general. she also found gross instabilities in individual teacher’s vam scores on evaas over a course of four years, which challenged the reliability of using this method to discern a true teacher effect on learning (amrein-beardsley, 2014). berliner (2014) claimed various classroom, school, and home characteristics and the interactions between them are likely among the strongest influences on student learning yet not always accounted for in value added assessment models. a student growth model (sgm) is another method that relies on student test scores to evaluate teacher and school performance. although not claimed to be vams per se, in actuality sgms seek to do something very similar – attribute the growth of student learning, or lack of it, to the teacher or school. betebenner (2008, 2011) developed a student growth model he believed was an alternative approach to vams and growth to standard school models of accountability. his approach employed a “growth percentile methodology" to capture growth over time in student achievement (betebenner, 2008, p. 2). growth percentile methodology looked at learning growth normatively using "quantile regression techniques" (p. 12). regarding such growth calculations, betebenner (2008) wrote, if the student’s current year score exceeded the scores of most of their academic peers, in a normative sense they have done well. if the student’s current year score was less than the scores of their peers, in a normative sense they have not done well. (p. 4) in essence, by comparing students’ growth results on tests to the growth results of students with similar profiles, the betebenner (2008) model could “side step many of the thorny questions of causal attributions, and instead provide descriptions of student growth that have the ability to inform discussion about assessment outcomes and their relation to education quality” (p. 2). betebenner (2008) said his approach to gauging student academic growth was not a value-added model because it did not specifically try to isolate the teacher or school effects on storie & denner: using student test scores to award merit pay: a look at the 2012 pay-for-performance program for idaho schools current issues in education, 18(3) 4 learning from other variables. however, by aggregating data suitable for the model at the school or classroom level, inferences could still be made about student growth pertinent to that setting. in other words, a teacher or school could be judged by whether or not students demonstrated growth comparable to the growth of similar students elsewhere. the 2012 pay-for-performance program in idaho used betebenner’s (2008, 2011) growth percentile methodology to determine growth in student test scores compared to that of peers. quartiles were established, and bonuses were awarded to schools whose scores fell above the first quartile (25 th percentile). bonuses were paid to schools rather than to individual teachers, but school boards and administrators had discretion on how to disperse the money to teachers and staff. about 75% of the schools in idaho received bonus pay money. other factors that influence student learning education research is rife with studies on the dynamics of student learning and factors that influence it. among the most noteworthy of these factors is the socio-economic status of students. this fact became especially important after a study by samuel coleman and others in 1966. he found that students from economically disadvantaged homes were likely to be less academically proficient than their more affluent peers (coleman et al., 1966). sum and fogg (1991) found that students from low-income homes generally ranked in the 19 th percentile on achievement tests. sirin (2005) conducted a meta-analysis of the research published between 1990 and 2000 on the topic of the relationship between students’ socio-economic status and achievement. he examined the differences between the studies including the specific measures for achievement and poverty, statistical methodologies, and data sources. among all the studies he discerned correlations ranging from .005 to .77, with a mean of .29. sirin (2005) reported “a medium level of association between ses and academic achievement at the student level and a large degree of association at the school level” (p. 438). the stronger relationship found at the school level is especially pertinent to this study. other studies suggest the effect of poverty on student learning is somewhat mitigated in smaller schools. after a review of the literature on school size and student achievement, zoda et al. (2011) reported that poor students in small schools do better than poor students in larger school settings. howley and bickel (1999) found smaller schools in ohio, georgia, and texas seem better able to accommodate the unique needs of disadvantaged and impoverished students, thereby enabling them to achieve a degree of academic success. plecki (1991) found a negative correlation between school size and achievement in a study pertaining to elementary students in california. the mitigating effect of school size for students from poverty seemed to vanish in schools larger than 760 students (borland & howsen, 2003). since many small schools exist in remote rural locations, there may be a relationship between student learning and the place in which a school is located. alspaugh (1992) examined fifth grade reading and math scores for rural and urban schools; although no statistical difference was noted among aggregate scores, when controlling for low family income (as indicated by whether or not student qualified for government subsidized meals), he found location was the best predictor for urban students doing poorly in reading. fan and chen (1999) collected data on 24,500 students from across the country over a period of six years and found that students in rural schools did as well in the subjects tested as their peers in other settings. however, family income was not a factor in their analysis. when taking family income into account, hopkins (2005) discovered poor students in rural tennessee schools outperformed their counterparts in storie & denner: using student test scores to award merit pay: a look at the 2012 pay-for-performance program for idaho schools current issues in education, 18(3) 5 large cities and in other non-rural locations on a subset of the mathematics act, and on test scores from the tennessee comprehensive assessment program (tcap). idaho bonus pay study concerned that vams and sgms may not always account for variables that contribute to student learning (other than the effects of the teacher and school), this study looked at the relationship between the amount of bonus pay received by schools in idaho and the following: low family income (as indicated by eligibility for free and reduced priced school meals), school size, and school location. we believed these variables were well established in the literature as influences that may be beyond the control of statistical calculations embedded within current teacher performance programs that attempt to measure teacher or school effectiveness based solely on student test scores. though vams have received considerable scrutiny in the literature recently, sgms, such as betebenner’s (2012) model used in idaho in 2012, have not been as well examined (amrein-beardsley, 2014). our study looked at the fairness of the school level bonus pay distribution model applied based on betebenner (2012) methodology for evaluating student achievement. this study examined whether distribution of the bonus money to schools was affected by variables over and beyond the effect the school had on student learning. these variables included the percentage of students from low-income families, as indicated by their eligibility for subsidized meals, who attended the school, and school location. because the bonus distribution model was expected to distribute more bonus pay to larger schools with more students, the effect of school size was controlled by looking at the amount of bonus money distributed per pupil. if either the percentage of students from low income families or the location of the school accounted for differences in the per pupil amount of bonus money to the schools, even if the differences were small, then the amount of bonus money awarded could not be attributed entirely to the performance of the teachers and the school. research questions the basic research questions for this study were the following:  was the per pupil amount of bonus pay distributed to schools in idaho during the fall of 2012 related to the percentage of students from low income families in the school buildings as measured by the percentage of students eligible for subsidized meals?  was there any additional effect on the amount of per pupil bonus pay money awarded to a school because of the school location (urban, suburban, town or rural), when controlling for the effect of the percentage of students eligible for subsidized meals?  did the percentage of students eligible for subsidized meals predict whether schools received any bonus money?  did school location predict whether schools received any bonus money? method all the data used in this study were obtained from the idaho state department of education (2013) website and were available in the public domain. data collection included the amount of 2012 bonus pay received by each school in the state, the enrollment of each school, and the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals. schools were assigned a location code based on the definition established by the institute of education sciences national center for education statistics. for equivalent comparisons between large and small schools, the amount of bonus pay each building received was divided by its enrollment to yield a per pupil amount of bonus pay. in the 2012 school year, there were 704 schools in idaho (idaho state department of storie & denner: using student test scores to award merit pay: a look at the 2012 pay-for-performance program for idaho schools current issues in education, 18(3) 6 education, 2013). information was available for 627 (89%) schools. of the 627 schools, 449 (72%) received some amount of bonus pay, 178 (28%) schools received no bonus pay. for this study, we used hierarchical set regression to examine the relationship between two factors, the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals and school location, and the amount of per pupil bonus money awarded to schools. the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals was the predictor variable entered in the first set. controlling for the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals, school location variables (urban, town, and rural) were added as predictors in the second set using dummy coding. the second set was analyzed using stepwise selection. to avoid multicollinearity, the category of suburban school served as the reference category. the suburban school category was chosen as the reference category because it contained the fewest number of schools in idaho. separate binary logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine whether either the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals or school location were related to whether the schools received any bonus pay at all (0 = no bonus pay money, 1 = bonus pay money). all tests for statistical significance were conducted at  = .05. results we examined the effects of the percentage of students eligible for subsidized meals and school location on the amount of per pupil bonus pay money received by schools in idaho in 2012 based on student achievement levels. the mean per pupil amount of bonus pay distributed to the schools was m = $163.14 (sd = $133.78). table 1 presents the means and standard deviations for school location category, percentage of students receiving subsidized meals, and the amount of per pupil bonus money paid to schools. table 1 also displays the correlations of the location categories with percentage of students receiving subsidized meals and the amount of per pupil bonus money as well as the correlation of the percent of students receiving subsidized meals with the amount of per pupil bonus money paid to schools. as can be seen in table 1, there was a statistically significant relationship found between the percent of students receiving subsidized meals and the amount of per pupil bonus money paid to the schools. table 1 means, standard deviations, and selected correlations (n = 627) for school location categories, percentage of students receiving subsidized meals, and the per pupil bonus pay money awarded to schools measure m sd % students receiving subsidized meals per pupil bonus money urban location 0.21 0.41 .05 .01 suburban location 0.11 0.32 -.07 -.09 * town location 0.21 0.41 .09 * -.04 rural location 0.47 0.50 .01 .08 * % students receiving subsidized meals 54.48 18.63 -.25 * per pupil bonus money $163.14 133.78 -.25 * * p < .05 storie & denner: using student test scores to award merit pay: a look at the 2012 pay-for-performance program for idaho schools current issues in education, 18(3) 7 per pupil bonus money paid to schools we examined the influence of the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals and school location on the per pupil amount of bonus money paid to schools using hierarchical regression. although preliminary inspection indicated the presence of outliers, as might be expected given the fact that some schools received no bonus money, inspection of a plot of the residual errors revealed the errors had an approximate normal distribution. table 2 presents the results of the hierarchical set regression. at step 1, the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals was found to be a statistically significant negative predictor of the amount of bonus pay received per pupil by the schools, b = -1.81, t = -6.51, se = .28, p < .001. the correlation was r = .25, indicating the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals accounted for about 6% of the variance in the per pupil amount of bonus pay received by the schools. the results show that for every 1% increase in the percentage of students in the school receiving subsidized meals the amount of per pupil bonus pay declined by $1.80 per pupil. at step 2 of the hierarchical set regression that controlled for the effect of the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals, school location codes (urban, town, and rural) were entered as a second set of predictors using stepwise selection. at this second step, rural location was found to be the only additional statistically significant predictor of per pupil bonus pay when controlling for the percentage of the students receiving subsidized meals, b = 21.50, t(624) = 2.08, se = 10.34, p = .038. rural school location was found to be a positive predictor when the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals was held constant. although statistically significant, as can be seen in table 2, the final multiple correlation was not much larger, r = .26 (r 2 = .07). table 2 the relationship between percentage of students receiving subsidized meals in a school and the amount of bonus pay money it received predictor r  b 95% ci for b step 1 .25 * percent of students with subsidized meals -0.25 * -1.80 * [-2.35, -1.25] step 2 .26 * percent of students with subsidized meals -0.25 * -1.81 * [-2.35, -1.26] rural school location 0.08 * 21.50 * [1.19, 41.81] note: n = 627. ci = confidence interval. * p < .05. the final model accounted for 7% of the total variance in the amount of per pupil bonus pay received by the schools. nevertheless, both the percentage of the students receiving subsidized meals and rural school location were shown to have a significant influence on the distribution of per pupil bonus money to the schools. the regression coefficient revealed that rural location increased the amount of bonus pay distributed to rural schools by $21.50 per pupil storie & denner: using student test scores to award merit pay: a look at the 2012 pay-for-performance program for idaho schools current issues in education, 18(3) 8 when controlling for the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals. as shown in table 1, urban and town locations were not significantly correlated with the amount of per pupil bonus pay, and they did not emerge as statistically significant predictors of the amount of per pupil bonus money when controlling for the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals. table 3 subsidized meals as a predictor of school receiving any bonus pay money model b se-b wald df exp(b) 95% ci exp(b) intercept 3.40 0.37 83.04 * 1 percentage of students receiving subsidized meals -.04 0.01 41.26 * 1 0.96 [0.95, 0.97] note. receiving bonus pay money was the target outcome group. * p < .05. table 4 probability of a school receiving any amount of bonus pay based on the percentage of students receiving subsidized meals percentage of students receiving subsidized meals predicted probability of receiving any amount of bonus money 10 .95 20 .93 30 .90 40 .87 50 .82 60 .75 70 .68 80 .58 90 .49 any bonus money paid to schools binary logistic regression was used to determine the probability of whether or not a school would get any amount of bonus pay at all based on its percentage of students receiving subsidized meals. the binary logistic regression was statistically significant, -2 log likelihood = 631.01,  2 (1, n = 627) = 47.15, p < .001. the cox and snell pseudo r 2 = .07, indicating the model accounted for 7% of the total variance in the awarding of bonus pay to schools. this result was similar to the finding for the per pupil amount of bonus money. table 3 presents the binary logistic regression coefficients, the wald test, the odds ratio, and 95% confidence interval for the storie & denner: using student test scores to award merit pay: a look at the 2012 pay-for-performance program for idaho schools current issues in education, 18(3) 9 odds ratio. based on a classification criterion for success of .50 or higher for predicted probabilities, the correct prediction rate was 99.2% for schools receiving bonus pay, but only 4.8% for schools not receiving bonus pay. table 4 shows the predicted probability of a school receiving bonus pay increased as its percentage of students receiving subsidized meals declined. a separate binary logistic regression was used to determine the probability of whether or not a school would get any amount of bonus pay at all based on its location. the overall binary logistic regression was not statistically significant, -2 log likelihood = 671.61,  2 (3, n = 627) = 6.55, p = .09, cox and snell pseudo r 2 = .01. this means school location was not a factor in predicting whether or not a school received any bonus pay. discussion our study looked at whether the 2012 idaho performance pay model that distributed bonus money to schools based on student achievment was related to the percentage of students who were eligible for subsidized meals and the school location. the idaho state department of education used betebenner’s (2008, 2011) growth percentile methodology for determining student achievement growth and subsequently the amount of bonus pay awarded to schools. betebenner (2008, 2011) does not describe his model as value-added, a concept that purports to attribute student learning to only the teacher. rather, his model uses a normative student growth percentile methodology that sorts students into stratified groups with similar characteristics and profiles, thereby mitigating concern about other variables associated with student achievement. thus, schools were awarded bonus pay money based on the extent to which their students exceeded the normative expectations for their respective groups. the results of the study indicated the 2012 distribution of bonus money to schools in idaho was not entirely successful because it was somewhat related to variables beyond the control of the schools. the results of the study also add to the current literature regarding problems with statistical formulas that attempt to discern the teacher or school effect on learning, specifically with betebenner’s (2008, 2011) student growth model (sgm). though value added models have received notable investigations recently, sgm’s have not (amreinbeardsley, 2014). our findings showed the percentage of students eligible for subsidized meals influenced the odds of a school receiving bonus money and was a significant negative predictor of the amount of per pupil bonus pay money received by a school. the higher the percentage of students from low-income families, the smaller was the likelihood of a school receiving bonus money. with regard to the per pupil amount of bonus pay received by schools in idaho, this study showed about 6% of the variance was due to the percentage of students from low-income families in the school building. one might argue that this is a small enough difference to be unimportant. in this light, perhaps the distribution of bonus pay based on betebenner’s (2008, 2011) methodology worked. however, there was an unexpected predictive relationship between the percentage of students from low-income families and the amount of per pupil bonus pay awarded to a school. this finding suggests that the bonus pay distribution methodology did not entirely side step student achievement causal attribution issues. the results of our study also showed that when controlling for the percentage of students eligible for subsidized meals, the distribution of bonus money favored rural schools. rural location did contribute to the distribution of bonus money when it was not expected to be an influential factor at all, given that achievement growth was supposedly benchmarked against like students. storie & denner: using student test scores to award merit pay: a look at the 2012 pay-for-performance program for idaho schools current issues in education, 18(3) 10 together the results suggest the distribution of bonus pay money was influenced partly by the percentage of students on subsidized meals and school location, and was not entirely due to the effects of the teachers and administrators in the schools on student achievement. in this respect, the results corroborated earlier findings (alicias, 2005; amrein-beardsley, 2014; berliner, 2014; kupermintz, 2003) that bonus pay models sometimes neglect factors like the percentage of students from low-income families and school location that are known to be associated with student achievement test scores. thus, the question remains as to whether or not it is fair to provide teacher compensation based on factors over which a school or teachers have little or no control. this study found that variables associated with learning that were beyond the control of teachers and school administrators continue to affect bonus pay distribution models. the results also corroborated the findings of studies (alspaugh, 1992; hopkins, 2005) that indicated students tend to achieve better in rural schools when controlling for family income level. the new teacher project brought to light important information regarding ineffective and invalid teacher evaluation practices, and the money available from race-to-the-top induced states to ameliorate how their schools appraise teacher practices. at the core, these aspects of education reform are not entirely misguided. however, the problem arises when statisticians and policy makers collaborate to include student test scores as part of the teacher evaluation process. not only is the test taken during a single week or on a given day affected by numerous unquantifiable influences acting on the student, but variables such as the student’s socio-economic status and the location in which the student attends school also affect test scores. student learning is far too complex a process to ascribe to a single variable such as a teacher or school. this study was an examination of the relationship between the percentage of students from low-income families and school location, and the amount of bonus pay distributed using betebenner's (2008) growth percentile methodology for calculating achievement growth. relationships between bonus pay and these known variables influencing student learning were apparent, a notion that should be considered as education policy makers craft ways to provide financial support to schools as well as to compensate effective teachers. references 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(2011). elementary school size and student performance: a conceptual analysis. international journal of educational leadership preparation, 6(4), 1-20. retrieved from http://cnx.org/contents/78ba1624-a1e6-4360-804d0a1773cc3670@2/elementary-school-size-and-stu . http://tntp.org/assets/documents/tntp_dcirreplaceables_2012.pdf http://www.tn.gov/assets/entities/sbe/attachments/7-26-13-june_2013_minutes.pdf http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/legislation.html http://cnx.org/contents/78ba1624-a1e6-4360-804d-0a1773cc3670@2/elementary-school-size-and-stu http://cnx.org/contents/78ba1624-a1e6-4360-804d-0a1773cc3670@2/elementary-school-size-and-stu storie & denner: using student test scores to award merit pay: a look at the 2012 pay-for-performance program for idaho schools current issues in education, 18(3) 13 author notes dr. gary storie department of school psychology and educational leadership idaho state university campus stop 8059 pocatello, id 83209 storgary@isu.edu dr. gary l. storie is assistant professor in the department of school psychology and educational leadership of the college of education at idaho state university. he is a former school superintendent and currently teaches courses for the preparation of school administrators. dr. peter denner department of school psychology and educational leadership idaho state university dr. peter denner is professor of educational psychology in the department of school psychology and educational leadership at idaho state university. he currently teaches courses in statistics and provides collaborative support to the research of colleagues and graduate students in the areas of research design and statistical analysis. an earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 106 th annual conference and research symposium of the national rural education association, san antonio, tx, october 17-18, 2014. mailto:storgary@isu.edu storie & denner: using student test scores to award merit pay: a look at the 2012 pay-for-performance program for idaho schools current issues in education, 18(3) 14 volume 18, issue 3 october 6, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez terrence mctier priyanka parekh lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 876-4319-3-le.doc volume 15, number 3 september 28, 2012 issn 1099-839x building the case for culturally responsive teaching in physical education: using high school students’ perceptions toward multiethnic groups debra patterson california state university fullerton recent census data indicates student populations are changing drastically. it is essential to inform educators on the benefits of culturally responsive teaching with their students. educators must be open to learning about their students and modifying their teaching to increase students academic success. physical education offers a unique environment for students to be engaged with each other in a variety of learning opportunities. this study investigated high school students' perceptions toward multiethnic groups using a modified multicultural sensitivity scale. participants included 140 high school male and female students ages 14-18 years. students voluntarily completed the 27-item 5-point likert type questionnaire. descriptive statistics were computed to determine differences in responses. results indicated some students are open to learning about other cultures which is the first step in reducing prejudices and stereotypes. for educators, culturally responsive teaching provides opportunity to raise awareness and breakdown racial barriers within their school. keywords: culturally responsive teaching, physical education, teacher education, multicultural education students entering educational institutions in the 21st century are experiencing an evolving composition of increasing numbers of ethnic minorities across the united states. the most current 2010 u.s. census bureau data indicated that racial and ethnic minorities accounted for roughly 85% of the nation’s population growth over the past decade (u.s. census bureau, 2011). in california, educators have known for years that student populations are changing drastically. over the years the educational literature has attempted to prepare current and incoming educators of this fact. wyman (1993) stated that an educational approach that recognizes and responds to the needs and traditions of culturally diverse students is labeled “multicultural” or “multiethnic education.” this concept has become critical to teacher education programs and our current educators. theoretically, instructional approaches that integrate multicultural concepts within the physical education setting can strengthen inter-racial and extraracial bonds along with increasing sensitivity levels between student groups (sutliff & perry, 2000). respecting the demographic shift toward an increased multiethnic population encourages a greater awareness toward the sensitivity levels between all persons. teacher education is attempting to address this by providing teacher training programs that produce culturally sensitive teachers who are able to meet the needs of students from all cultures and ethnicities. currently, in california the courses in single subject credential programs are required to meet sb 2042 (2002) which necessitates an infusion of competencies that will prepare teacher candidates to teach english language learners (ell) from diverse cultures and first languages other than english. to support this mandate, teacher current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 education programs typically offer one course in multicultural education while infusing ell strategies throughout the teacher education program. teachers may be the answer to helping students learn to work and accept each other as jibaja-rusth, kingery, holcomb, buckner, and pruitt (1994) suggested over 17 years ago that increasing the interaction between teachers and students of color requires a high degree of multicultural sensitivity in order for teachers to fully address cultural subtleties in the classroom. torry and ashy (1995) ascertained that all students are able to achieve their full potential for academic, social, and vocational success only when teachers are culturally sensitive. this concept can be taken one step further by asking if this idea also includes cultural sensitivity between students, especially with respect to the cooperative learning approach that many educators are embracing. according to posnick-goodwin (2006), helping students to get to know students from other backgrounds is critical for all schools, and educators should pave the way. learning about others, becoming sensitive to the challenges and feelings of others, and learning to work with people are essential skills all students need to learn. one movement towards improving the process of learning about multiculturalism and developing more effective teachers through changes in teacher education programs has emerged. culturally responsive teaching (crt) is just one approach towards infusing multiculturalism and teacher education (gay, 2010). it is common for the terms culturally relevant teaching and crt to be used interchangeably (castagno & brayboy, 2008). it has been suggested that institutions responsible for teacher education rethink their current curriculum to include increased education on crt (abbate-vaughn, 2005; gay, 2002; villegas & lucas, 2002). gay (2010) discussed the importance of implementing the six specific qualities: validating, comprehensive, multidimensional, empowering, transformative, and emancipatory that define crt and have these qualities incorporated within the teacher education program. villegas and lucas (2002) warned that the traditional approach of just adding an additional course to the existing teacher education curriculums may not have sustainable effects unless the entire teacher education curriculum adopts the ideas of developing culturally responsive teachers and have the content infused within every course of the curriculum. researchers have investigated sensitivity levels that have transcended many academic and instructional groups. larke (1990) investigated levels of sensitivity between preservice teachers through the utilization of the cultural diversity awareness inventory. the investigation utilized a 28-item agree/disagree questionnaire that ascertained a respondent attitude regarding (1) general cultural awareness, (2) the culturally diverse family, (3) cross-cultural communication, (4) assessment, and (5) the multicultural environment. the results indicated that respondents had hesitations associated to interacting and working with multiethnic students and their parents. larke (1990) suggested the preservice teachers discomfort should be addressed by offering increased opportunities to raise cultural sensitivity. additionally, torrey and ashy (1995) investigated the impact of culture on preservice physical education teacher's through the multicultural self-report inventory. the instrument measured respondent's values toward implementing multicultural concepts during instruction. the 72 preservice physical education teachers (87% caucasian) who served as subjects had no prior student teaching or academic training in multicultural education. the instrument was divided into categories with questions addressing the following issues: (1) personal beliefs about culture, (2) beliefs about interacting with other cultures, and (3) beliefs about the importance of culture in teaching. the results suggested that respondents did not possess strong beliefs about culture and did not see how a student's cultural background would alter their future instructional approach. with a strong effort of training preservice teachers underway, the focus must also include educating the current teachers about crt and the impact it can have not only in their classes and school community but most importantly in society. current teachers may need to become familiarized with the details of crt. gay (2010) defines crt as a pedagogy that distinguishes the different cultural backgrounds and traits of all students regardless of ethnic differences along with modifications of teaching methods to address the diversity within the class setting. furthermore, teachers must develop the skills to adjust their teaching for multicultural settings (scherff & spector, 2011). the theory around culturally responsive teaching embraces a large amount of knowledge about multicultural education and ways of assisting culturally diverse students in succeeding in education (castagno & brayboy, 2008). along the same lines of crt, cultural relevant teaching was defined by ladson-billings in 1994, “as an approach to teaching and learning that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural references to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes” (as cited in grant & ladson-billings, 1997, p. 62). whichever term is used the same message is clear, there is an important need to educate teachers on ways of modifying their teaching methods to benefit their students learning. the literature on crt that has focused on teaching african-american students has provided critical aspects of teaching that educators should try and embrace with their students. howard (2001) conducted a qualitative study on 17 elementary students’ perspectives of their teachers. students were selected from four different urban schools. the results of his study found that building the case for culturally responsive teaching in physical education:using high school students’ perceptions toward multiethnic groups 3 table 1 ethnicities for males and females grade age (years) caucasian males/females african american asian american hispanic native american other total 9th 14 36/10 1/0 3/2 7/3 3/3 1/2 71 15 21/7 1/0 2/0 2/3 2/0 38 10th 15 3/6 0/1 2/3 0/1 3/1 20 16 5/2 1/0 8 17 0/1 1/0 2 18 1/0 1 students’ were very aware of their teachers sense of responsibility of helping them become successful in academic achievement. the students’ reported feeling that their teachers expressed a genuine concern for them at school by building a caring environment and establishing a community-like atmosphere through the engagement of dynamic and stimulating classroom experiences. these positive experiences provided students’ a safe learning environment where they felt they could be successful. it was further validated when teachers took a genuine caring approach to their students learning and at the same time were willing to modify their teaching styles to meet their students needs a true sense of crt was evident. howard (2001) indicated that the results of his study can easily carry over to other ethnic groups. he concluded that teachers should listen to their students and what they have to say about their teachers, the school environment, and other factors that impact their learning. thus, as researchers continue to build a foundation for the best method to provide both preservice and current teachers a wide view of multicultural education, cultural sensitivity, and crt (haberman & post, 1990; jibaja-rusth et al., 1994; phuntsog, 1995; torry & ashy, 1995) it becomes paramount that additional insight must also be derived from students. the current literature identifies a need to continue investigating students’ voices by listening to their stories and feelings of learning in multicultural environments and with others who are different from them. there is a research gap in the physical education environment in regards to crt especially at the high school level. the purpose of this study was to determine high school students' perceptions toward multiethnic groups within a physical education setting using a modified multicultural sensitivity scale (jibaja-rusth et al., 1994). it should be noted that the physical education setting was used due to the uniqueness of the environment where students for the most part are not sitting behind desks and where their cultural differences might be displayed on a larger scale due to the context and content. in physical education students’ are generally put into groups where they must work together, problem-solve, and perform in front of others. thus, students’ may develop different attitudes of working with multiethnic groups in physical education then in other academic areas in high school curriculum. it is hoped that when teachers develop an awareness of their students they will be able to provide the best learning environment for academic success. methods participants and setting participants included 140 high school students from one urban public school in central california whose ages ranged from 14 to 18 years (table 1). there were significantly more males n=95 (68%) than females n=45 (32%) participants. most students were caucasian (65%) with a smaller population representing african americans (1.5%), asian americans (5.8%), hispanics (16.1%), native americans (6.5%), and "other" (5.1 %). there were three 9th grade (average class size 31-37 students) classes and one 10th grade class (class size was 31) used. most participants (95%) lived in an urban setting. specific details about the school include 34% of the students were classified as english learners, 78% as socially disadvantaged, and an overall school api score of 676. the graduation rate was 88.1% for all students. instrument the questionnaire was a 27-item 5-point likert type questionnaire containing the original 21 questions from the multicultural sensitivity scale (mss) created by jibaja-rusth et al. (1994) plus an additional six questions that were developed by the researchers to specifically address the physical education setting. the mss is a validated and reliable instrument (jibaja-rusth et al., 1994). permission was sought from the authors of the multicultural sensitivity scale prior to administering the survey to modify the survey by adding additional questions and changing the original scale from a 6-point likert scale to a 5-point likert scale as well as reversing the order. after receiving permission from the authors, face validity was established for the modified mss current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 table 2 m ul t i cu l tura l sens i t i v i t y sca le rat ing sca le : (1 ) strongly agree, (2) agree, (3) undecided, (4) disagree, (5) strongly disagree ques t ion m ean sd 1. i have a tendency to trust students of my ethnic group more than i trust those of other ethnic groups. 3.48 1.26 2. i feel very uncomfortable in the presence of members of ethnic groups other than my own. 3.99 1.14 3. when i observe the hardships of some children, i understand why they are not proud of their ethnic identity. 3.34 1.08 4. individuals should be deeply sensitive to the thoughts others have of them. 3.35 1.25 5. it is good to avoid encounters with people who are different from you. 4.28 1.16 6. each ethnic group should strive to become more americanized rather than maintaining the characteristics of their ethnic group. 3.75 1.22 7. i feel most secure when i am in the presence of members of my ethnic group. 3.25 1.25 8. i feel less comfortable when i socialize with persons outside my ethnic group. 3.80 1.08 9. i feel threatened by members of other ethnic groups. 4.15 1.00 10. when i understand the environment from which many children of ethnic minority backgrounds come from, i understand why they do not have pride in their ethnic identities. 3.38 1.04 11. the ethnic group that students belong to frequently determines how i respond to them interpersonally. 3.59 1.07 12. when i am offended by an ethnic minority, i generalize the behavior to other members of that group. 3.74 1.05 13. in order to be accepted by persons of other ethnic groups, i frequently find myself altering my behavior. 3.63 1.11 14. i have discovered that it is better to avoid associating with people who think differently than me. 3.78 1.09 building the case for culturally responsive teaching in physical education:using high school students’ perceptions toward multiethnic groups 5 15. i naturally respond more favorably to students of my ethnic group. 3.45 1.13 16. multicultural issues are a community issue. 2.67 1.19 17. i prefer working with students with whom i can identify ethnically. 3.49 1.12 18. i have not been able to overcome my feelings of uneasiness when i see a group of people from a particular ethnic group together. 3.75 1.03 19. i feel tense and uptight when i have to work closely with students who are of a different ethnic group than my own. 4.02 1.01 20. i would feel more relaxed if i could work with students of my own ethnic group. 3.64 1.07 21. i do not enjoy associating with persons of other ethnic groups. 4.09 1.05 22. i classify people on the basis of obvious ethnic characteristics. 3.81 1.03 23. including multicultural education in physical education is important. 2.85 1.20 24. multicultural education is a school issue. 2.83 1.14 25. i believe that students with certain ethnic backgrounds are more successful in certain sports than other students. 2.84 1.21 26. i would like to learn games and activities that are from other ethnic origins. 2.47 1.08 27. i have been a victim of ethnic prejudice. 3.60 1.26 including the rating scale and additional six questions by having two professors, one representing physical education and the other education review the modified instrument. although the original mss had only been administered to adults, it was deemed appropriate for high school age participants by the original authors. the rating scale consisted of strongly agree (1), agree (2), undecided (3), disagree (4), and strongly disagree (5). questions 2226 were the added questions to the mss for use with this study. data collection and analysis all participants and parents completed the university institutional review board approved consent forms. consent was granted to use high school students by the school site principal. one condition stipulated by the principal was to indicate to the students that participation was strictly voluntary. additionally, each participant’s responses remained anonymous. the questionnaire was administered during the student's physical education class. no time limit was given to complete the questionnaire. participants were instructed not to discuss the survey with others and to turn it in face down to ensure confidentiality. all participants completed the survey within 20 minutes. means and standard deviations were computed on each of the demographic questions and for each of the 27 questions. results the purpose of this study was to determine high school students' perceptions toward multiethnic groups within a physical education setting using a modified multicultural sensitivity scale in an attempt to provide educators with a tool that might provide additional insight and greater awareness of their students. the means and standard deviations are listed for each question (see table 2). after rank-ordering each question, many of the responses were in the neutral zone. however, four questions provided the perspective that students’ were not bothered by being around or working with other ethnic groups. examples of this include the disagreement for questions 5, 9, 19, and 21 which all have a common theme of the need to avoid encounters, feel threatened, current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 feel tense and uptight, and not enjoying working or associating with other ethnic groups. specifically, question 5, "it is good to avoid encounters with people who are different from you," question 9, "i feel threatened by members of other ethnic groups," question 19, “i feel tense and uptight when i have to work closely with students who are a different ethnic group than my own,” and question 21, "i do not enjoy associating with persons of other ethnic groups.” these results indicated students openness to learning about other cultures. the strongest neutral response occurred on question 7, "i feel most secure when i am in the presence of members of my ethnic group.” this was the only question that produced a high response rate for both "disagree" and “agree." this might demonstrate that students don’t have a string feeling one way or another involved with their own ethnic groups. the results of this question illustrate the importance of providing students opportunities to work with multiethnic groups and demonstrate the benefits of working with each other. there were six questions (2, 8, 12, 14, 18, and 21) that resulted in students reporting that they tended to disagree. these six questions addressed students perceptions of feeling uncomfortable, socializing, generalizing behavior, avoiding people who think differently, uneasiness, and classifying people based on ethnicities different then their own. although the results may indicate that many students were either neutral or disagreed with these specific questions, it demonstrates that there was not a strong agreement of their feelings of working in multiethnic groups. questions 23-27 were added for this survey. it was also found that most students agreed with question 26, "i would like to learn games and activities that are from other ethnic origins", which shows an openness towards trying more non-traditional sports and learning about other cultures. agreement with question 16, "multicultural issues are a community issue" and question 24, "multicultural issues are a school issue," demonstrated that students feel it is important that both schools and the community address race and cultural issues. agreement on question 25, "i believe that students with certain ethnic backgrounds are more successful in certain sports than other students" is both interesting and disturbing, as this indicates students are stereotyping players in certain sports. for this reason, students may be missing out on opportunities to participate in a sport in which they could excel. since stereotyping is a form of prejudice, these feelings have the potential to grow into larger cultural insensitivity issues. however, the responses may indicate students' willingness to record what they think is the "morally correct" answer. it is interesting to note that even though question 5 and question 14 are similar, the different wording elicited different responses from the students. the overall mean of responses for question 5, "it is good to avoid encounters with people who are different from you," was 4.28. yet, question 14, "i have discovered that it is better to avoid associating with people different from me," evoked a lower mean at 3.78. although both means lie on the right side of the scale, difference in responses may be a reflection of the more politically correct phrasing in question 5 versus the "real life experience" phrasing in question 14. the differing responses may also indicate a tendency to not “practice-what-you¬ preach” type of philosophy when it comes to encounters with students who are ethnically different than themselves. discussion the findings from this study demonstrated that high school students displayed a variety of perceptions about multicultural education and sensitivity levels of interacting with each other in physical education class. many of the responses confirmed that high school age students may not have strong beliefs one way or another when it comes to interacting with cultures other than theirs. this could prove to be a vital age to help shape their future behavior to learn the benefits of working and interacting collectively with students from other ethnicities. the results from this study indicated that some students are open to learning about other cultures, which is one of the first steps in reducing prejudices and stereotypes (devine, monteith, zuwerink, & elliot, 1991). yet, this doesn't just happen. these are concepts that need to be taught, discussed, and emphasized. students need to learn how to work together with trust and acceptance. students need to be able to demonstrate their eagerness to work with students from other cultures rather than simply verbalizing their willingness. when teachers have an awareness of their students feelings then they should strive to provide an environment that encompasses the six specific qualities (gay, 2000): validating, comprehensive, multidimensional, empowering, transformative, and emancipatory that define crt. when crt is implemented on a daily basis it may provide students with the skills and opportunities necessary to work together in the classroom or gymnasium. since the physical education environment offers unique opportunities for students to collaborate and problem-solve in a physical setting as opposed to a traditional classroom setting it may prove to be a prime target to address multicultural education and working with each other. there are two major factors that physical education teachers can employ to embrace the idea of breaking down the multicultural issues. the first factor deals with the teacher’s behavior and taking on the role of a leader as is needed in crt. this involves strengthening their teaching skills, becoming knowledge on instructional practices related to crt, and having effective management strategies that involve both individual circumstances and large group settings. teachers need to be aware of the many different cultures building the case for culturally responsive teaching in physical education:using high school students’ perceptions toward multiethnic groups 7 in the classes and adapt their teaching to all groups. for example, many hispanic students prefer to work in small cooperative groups whereas many asian students prefer to work alone (nieto & bode, 2012). the teacher must find the balance of how to effectively teach all students. this further demonstrates the need for teachers to have a strong awareness of who their students are in their classes and their feelings of working with different ethnicities. the second factor involves implementing cultural diverse activities throughout the curriculum that are designed to provide students with a diverse environment that conforms to the national association for sport and physical education (naspe) 2009 instructional practices guidelines. many times teachers implement a variety of multicultural dances and refer to this process as implementing a multicultural curriculum. clemens and metzler rady (2012) have provided many ideas for not only introducing dances from other cultures but also physical activity games and fitness activities that represent a variety of different cultures. it is important that the teacher doesn’t just teach the activities but provides closure questions that allow students the opportunity to process their experiences. teachers need to listen to what their students are encountering and have the confidence to discuss the uniqueness of their experiences. teachers need to offer continuous opportunities that involve students working in random groups, trust building activities, and cooperative games. specific examples include activities that encourage problem-solving and collaboration such as orienteering, developing offensive/defensive strategies for modified game play, creating games from other cultures, and assisting each other with setting realist goals for lifetime physical activity. gay (2010) and howard (2001) stated that teachers must demonstrate a genuine care for their students along with a motivating learning environment in the hope of producing academic success. in physical education, this means the teachers should be creating a cooperative instead of competitive curriculum that might break down students preconceived thoughts of working with each other in a multiethnic setting. this may also help students assuming that students from other ethnic backgrounds may exhibit a more natural athletic ability then their own ethnic culture. this concept was a concern with question 25 in the results. some students may not even try different sports or activities if they think others will be better then themselves due to cultural differences. a strong step forward of addressing multiculturalism when paring the responses from the questionnaire, specifically from questions 16 and 24, that indicated students do tend to agree and feel that multicultural issues are both the community and school issues along with practical applications of implementing an on-going program of culturally diverse activities. when teachers implement culturally diverse activities they will be offering opportunities for the students to learn games and activities from other ethnic origins as they indicated they wanted to on question 26. implementing a curriculum that has a foundation in cultural diverse activities and experiences should address most of the responses from the questionnaire. students will be provided a vast array of hands-on opportunities to engage and learn about each other and about activities. as previously indicated, preservice teachers are now required to take one class that addresses multicultural issues and pedagogies when working with students from different ethnicities in their classes. however prior to this mandate, torrey and ashy (1995) found that preservice teachers in physical education who had no prior training in multicultural education did not possess strong beliefs about culture or nor did they see how a student’s cultural background would have an impact on their instructional approach. along this line of research larke (1990) found that preservice teachers had hesitations of interacting and working with multiethnic students. technically, the preservice teachers from these studies may be current teachers who need to enhance their knowledge of working with multiethnic groups and learn current pedagogies that address their students needs. this demonstrates the need to inform and educate current teachers on the benefits of crt. conclusion this study used high school students responses on the modified mss questionnaire to identify their perceptions on multiethnic issues and situations. when teachers are aware of the attitudes and perceptions of the students in their classes, they can have a better understanding of how to be a leader and help the students learn about each other. nieto and bode (2012) defined multicultural education as inclusive. they also discussed that multicultural education is about all people and for all people regardless of their ethnicity or other differences. creating a culturally sensitive program may seem like an overwhelming task. phuntsog (1995) suggested addressing practicing teachers’ perceptions to identify what competencies are crucial for promoting this type of learning. gay (2002) indicated that teacher education programs must engage future educators in discussions of crt to increase the awareness of strategies that will impact student learning and the likelihood of responsible citizens in society. although this may be the most common solution, another very competent resource are the students. if given the chance, students can use their experiences to change multiculturalism from a way of recognizing minorities to a way of viewing society as a whole (garcia & pugh, 1992). the necessity for physical education teachers to engage in a consistent practice of implementing culturally diverse physical activities should prove one way to assist students and teachers in learning about different ethnic origins. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 this study further builds the case for teachers to embrace the idea of developing an awareness and genuine concern about their students which will assist them in implementing crt into their physical education classes. the results support the idea that content and context of physical education may be one of the best places to focus on implementing crt. the benefits of crt can provide both the teachers and the students a unique learning environment that builds community and can increase academic success. these results demonstrated that students do not always feel threatened or uncomfortable working with others of different ethnicities as sometimes society assumes. with the increasing diversity in our schools teachers must attempt to provide environments where students do not feel threatened or uncomfortable learning amongst students of different ethnicities. again, teachers need to be open to listening to what their students are saying and feeling. the ultimate outcome of breaking down the cultural barriers may be producing a society that works together in future endeavors. limitations and future research there are several limitations of this study. the results may have been more powerful using complex statistics such as anovas rather than just descriptive statistics. another limitation was using the 5-point likert scale instead of a 4-point likert scale which would elicit students in deciding on either agreeing or disagreeing for each statement thus staying out of the neutral response. however, it should be noted that it is important that students may not have feelings one way or another in working in multiethnic groups. also, using only one school and one content are may have limited the findings. the results of this study barely touches the existing gap in research on crt in physical education. future research should include an investigation of students’ sensitivity levels that are broadened across different content areas and grade levels in the same school. it would be valuable to establish any patterns of students reacting differently in different courses based on the content being presented and then discovering ways to address them. an additional area of focus would include a longitudinal study following the students’ from the middle school level of education through high school and see if the results change due to the implementation of a culturally diverse curriculum. another area for future research would be a prepost study design using the mss. this would involve gathering data using the mss at the beginning of the school year with several classes and teachers in physical education. then provide the teachers with the results of the mss so they can identify the specific needs of their students’ and implement a culturally sensitive curriculum while focusing on crt throughout the school year. subsequently, administering the mss at the end of the school year to measure any changes in students’ perceptions. it would also be advantageous to collect data on specific crt 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(2011). culturally relevant pedagogy: clashes and confrontations. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield education. sutliff, m., & perry, j. (2000) multicultural education: developing connections in elementary physical education. strategies: a journal for physical and sport educators, 13(5), 33-36. u. s. census bureau. (2011, october). american fact finder: allegany county, n.y. retrieved october 1, 2011 from http://factfinder2.census.gov. villegas, a. m., & lucas, t. (2002). preparing culturally responsive teachers: rethinking the curriculum. journal of teacher education, 53(2), 20-33. wyman, s. (1993). how to respond to your culturally diverse student population. alexandria, va: association for supervision and curriculum development. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 article citation patterson, d. (2012). building the case for culturally responsive teaching in physical education: using high school students’ perceptions toward multiethnic groups. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/876 author notes debra patterson california state university fullerton 800 north state college boulevard fullerton, ca 92834 (657) 278-8337 dpatterson@fullerton.edu debra patterson, ph.d. is an associate professor in the department of kinesiology at california state university fullerton. her research focuses on students and teachers perceptions in physical education. manuscript received: 12/09/2011 revisions received: 08/03/2012 accepted: 09/24/2012 building the case for culturally responsive teaching in physical education:using high school students’ perceptions toward multiethnic groups 11 volume 15, number 3 september 28, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers volume 11, number 3 may, 2009 issn 1099-839x multimedia observations: examining the roles and learning outcomes of traditional, cd-rom based, and videoconference observations in pre-service teacher education h. carol greene east carolina university the purpose of this study was to examine the role and learning outcomes of three types of classroom observations in a teacher education methods course: video-based cd-roms, videoconference-supported observations, and traditional face-to-face observations. it was not the goal of this study to compare the effectiveness of each type of observation to the other ones; rather, the goal was to examine the role each observation type plays in the overall learning experience of the pre-service teacher, and to investigate the learning outcomes associated with each type of observation. therefore, this study investigated three questions: 1) what are the advantages/ disadvantages of each observation type? 2) what do the students learn from each observation type? 3) how does the interaction of various types of observation support and/or enhance traditional face to face observations? results indicate that although the majority of the students preferred face-to-face over technology-supported observations, this was based simply in their preference for being in a real classroom rather than on what they actually learned. more and higher level learning outcomes were associated with the cd and videoconference observations than from the face-toface observations. additionally, more advantages of the technology-supported observations were cited than were cited for their face-to-face counterpart. the purpose of this study was to examine the role and learning outcomes of various types of classroom observations in a teacher education methods course in an elementary program through three types of interactions: video-based cd-roms, videoconference-supported observations, and traditional face-to-face observations. this research was conducted in an elementary methods course which is designed for pre-service teachers just beginning their teacher education program in elementary education. the objectives of the course are to introduce students to theories and principles of early childhood learning, as well as to instructional decision making and lesson plan design. a field experience is also a required component of the class. traditionally, pre-service teachers are sent into a classroom to observe the instruction. however, these observations are typically not as effective as teacher educators might hope because the pre-service teacher has not been taught to view the classroom from a teacher’s perspective; the classroom is still observed through their student lens. instruction and preparation in how to observe teaching may be necessary for preservice teachers before they are sent to a classroom to observe. current issues in education vol. 11 no. 3 it was not the goal of this study to compare the effectiveness of each type of observation described here or to determine if one type was “better” than another; rather, the goal of this study was to examine the role each type of observation plays in the overall learning experience of the preservice teacher, as well as to investigate the learning outcomes associated with each type of observation. therefore, this study investigated three key questions: 1) what are the advantages/disadvantages and strengths/weaknesses of each observation type? 2) what do the students learn from each observation type? 3) how does the interaction of various types of observation support and/or enhance traditional face to face observations? guided observations: preparing for the field experience the literatures that informed this study emanated from the research on learning to teach, as well as the literature on the role and type of field experiences available to teacher education. a predominant perspective for many years in the study of learning to teach frames this endeavor as a developmental process (e.g., bolam, 1990; borko & putnam, 1996; burke, 1987; davis & zaret, 1984; feiman-nemser, 1983; fessler & christenson, 1992; huberman, 1993; national center for research on teacher learning, 1991; putnam & borko, 2000). learning to teach can be considered a developmental process due to the fact it is a unique individual enterprise to which people bring varying beliefs, attitudes, abilities, values, and experiences (putnam & borko, 1997; richardson, 1996). the process of learning to teach can also be likened to other aspects of a developmental process in that it occurs at different rates and at different times for each teacher (borko & putnam, 1996, feiman-nemser, 1983; putnam & borko, 2000) and it is necessary for early experiences to be concrete in nature. additionally, similar to the vygotskian notion of scaffolding, support from more experienced others must occur along with these early experiences in order to move the pre-service teacher into more complex understandings (putnam & borko, 2000). the question for teacher educators then becomes: what experiences or opportunities can teacher education programs provide in order to most effectively nurture that development? a common response to this question has been providing the pre-service teacher with opportunities for early field experiences. the main purpose behind these field experiences has been to allow the inexperienced teacher to experience concrete, real-world applications of the theories and principles they learn about in the university classroom. usually, field experiences begin with observations. a problem in this area has been that pre-service teachers still see the classroom with a student lens and have not yet learned how to view the classroom from a teacher lens. training in what and how to observe in a classroom must occur before classroom observations can be effective or helpful in the education of the new teacher (author(s)). unfortunately, this has not always been possible as observations are usually conducted in a public school classroom without the presence of the university professor. based on the studies reviewed for this research, pre-service teachers must be guided in connecting the theories and principles they are learning in their coursework to the observations they are doing in the public school classroom (e.g., author(s); hult & edens, 2001; pape & mcintyre, 1993). other research has suggested that early field experiences may even have detrimental effects because the complexity of the classroom is more than the inexperienced teacher can understand without support and may, in fact, actually inhibit learning (pape & mcintyre, 1993). another drawback to traditional field experiences has been the lack of meaningful communication between the public school and the university classroom (mcdevitt, 1996). without such communication, it is difficult for the pre-service teacher to experience meaningful connections between their coursework at the university and their observations in the public schools. from the synthesis of the literature, it can be assumed that preparation for face-to-face field experiences is critical in order for meaningful and effective learning to occur. cd-rom based case studies have been one method used to train new teachers for how and what to observe in a classroom setting. research has found them to be a successful strategy for allowing preservice teachers to vicariously experience the realities and complexities of the classroom (author(s); harrington, 1996; shulman, 1992; sudzina, 1999). other studies of case methods have shown that case studies can contribute to constructed knowing as in the work of shulman (1992). shulman argues for the need to use cases to teach theory. he asserts that teachers see the practical through the lens of the theoretical and that cases can give students the opportunity to apply principles to particular situations. he argues that this brings the theory studied throughout teacher education programs to life by situating the learning in a practical and meaningful context and by allowing theory to enter practice through teachers' judgments. presenting dilemmas without clear-cut, right-wrong answers allows the students to problem solve and actively multimedia observations: examining the roles and learning outcomes of traditional, cd-rom based, and videoconference observations in pre-service teacher education 3 apply theory they have studied to real world problems. new possibilities related to the use of interactive video conferencing (ivc) are also being explored as one way to counter some of the negative aspects of traditional field experiences, which may include such problems as overcrowding in schools and classrooms, lack of supervision from the professor due to physical constraints, transportation difficulties, and lack of preparedness of the preservice teacher for the observation. as wilcox (2000) noted, ivc creates a learning environment that is both collaborative and communicative and that turns the synchronous, located nature of the traditional classroom into an asynchronous and distributed learning environment. with a learning environment that is more communicative and collaborative, comes opportunity for more meaningful connections to be created. ivc can support early field experiences in new ways that may also ultimately support and enhance traditional face-to-face observations. a classroom observation conducted via videoconferencing equipment provides one way to allow the university professor to be present with his or her pre-service teachers at the observation and to provide the guidance the literature suggests is necessary in early field experiences. this study sought to examine the roles and learning outcomes of three types of observations – face to face, cd-rom based, and videoconferences –in the learning outcomes of pre-service teachers, as well as how the three types of observations may interact to support and enhance one another. methods this study evolved from research conducted in one section of a teacher education general methods course at a large public research institution in the southeastern united states. the professor of the course led this project and conducted the research. participants included 26 pre-service teachers enrolled in this course. all students were required to participate in the activities described in this research as they were a required component of the class. they were not required to participate in the research activities, but 100% of the pre-service teachers did elect to participate and data were collected from them in all categories of data collection except the focus group. only 17 of the 26 students participated in a focus group. the pre-service teachers were not graded on their responses to any of the research activities and no names were required on any data solicited from them in order to prevent bias. procedures as stated earlier, this research occurred in an elementary methods course in which a field experience is required. the pre-service teachers are required to teach 4 lessons to students in the public schools. they typically begin with a face to face observation, but this research looks at the way the addition of ivc and cd-rom case study observations may prepare them for that observation. therefore, for this research, the pre-service teachers participated in three types of observations of public school classrooms throughout the semester: cdrom based video observations, interactive video conferencing observations, and face-to-face observations. observation schedule each type of observation was conducted twice, thus, each pre-service teacher participated in a total of six observations. the cd and videoconference observations occurred first, followed by the face-to-face observations. this was done to provide guided observation in order to help the preservice teachers transition from seeing the classroom through their student lens to seeing it through a teacher lens, thus preparing them for the experience of being in a real classroom and to make their first face-to-face observation more educationally significant. all three observation types were completed prior to the pre-service teachers beginning their field experience so that the results related to what they learned would not be influenced by their participation in the field experience. the pattern of observations was as follows: cd, ivc, cd, ivc, face to face, and face to face. the pre-service teachers observed a different classroom each time so that they were being exposed to a different setting each time. all of the observations were completed within the first six weeks of the semester with one week in between each session. along with each of these observations, students completed a kwol sheet (what do i know, what do i want to know, what do i observe, and what did i learn?). additionally, a reflective questionnaire was completed immediately upon completion of the observation. see appendix a. the class met on monday and wednesday of each week. the instructor of the course introduced new content on mondays such as direction instruction, lesson planning, or integrated curriculum and then, on wednesdays, an observation occurred that supported the content taught on the prior monday. therefore, the instructor chose cds and arranged videoconference sessions that focused on the content being covered in the university course. the first cd and ivc observations focused on direct instruction and the traditional six-step lesson plan. the second cd and ivc observation focused on integration of subject matter. the face to face observations were at the discretion of the teacher whose classroom we were observing, as is common with the traditional face to face observation. current issues in education vol. 11 no. 3 observation types the cds used in this research were developed by harris video cases ® based at brigham young university in salt lake city, utah. the cds chosen for use in this research included the larry beaudin case (harris, beaudin, & baker, 2000) focusing on instructional design and the peggy hunt case (harris, hunt, & baker, 2000) focusing on integrated science/math instruction. the cds were projected to a large screen located in the university classroom and were viewed by the entire class together. the videoconference observations were scheduled by a technology support person at the university involved in this research in conjunction with the professor of the course. the university participates in a public school network partnership in which public school teacher’s work together with university professors to prepare pre-service teachers. the professor of the course contacted the technology support person with a request for a videoconference and provided details related to the focus of the lesson to be observed and the date desired. once the technology support person had confirmed the details and scheduled the conference, the observation was conducted. the face to face observations were coordinated by the instructor of the course. they were arranged to be held in the same school and in the same classrooms in which the pre-service teachers would eventually teach their four required lessons. during both the cd observations and the ivc observations, the university professor was present with the students guiding them in what they were seeing and drawing their attention to particular aspects of the instruction. the university professor was not present with the pre-service teachers during their face-to-face observations. although the instructor was physically present at the public school where the pre-service teachers were observing, the pre-service teachers were placed in a total of four different classrooms throughout the school so the professor was not able to be present with each student during their observation. data collection and analysis as discussed in the procedures, along with each observation, students completed a kwol sheet. the kwol chart was chosen as a tool to gather data related to the pre-service teachers’ own perceptions of what they learned and what they observed. the researcher wanted to know what the pre-service teachers observed and learned without coercing them in any way. this tool lent itself well to that goal and to a qualitative study because the respondents were not given structured choices or guided in their responses in any way that may affect their response. additionally, immediately upon completion of each observation, they also completed a reflective questionnaire. after participation in all observations, each pre-service teacher also completed a survey using a likert scale response to indicate how helpful they perceived each type of observation to be in helping them learn about the concepts presented in class and about the complexities of teaching and being a teacher. see appendix b. finally, a total of 17 pre-service teachers, one group of 10 and one group of seven, volunteered to participate in one of two focus group sessions. see appendix c for the interview guide. analysis of these data was based on qualitative methods using the constant-comparative method to determine patterns or themes in the representations (glaser & straus, 1967; merriam, 1998). according to merriam (1998), the “constant comparative method involves comparing one segment of data with another to determine similarities and differences. data are grouped together on a similar dimension” (p. 18) and are given a name so that they become a category. the objective then becomes to locate patterns in the data and arrange them in relationship to each other. each data source was analyzed using this method so that categories were developed. these categories then became the evidence for the findings described in this research. triangulation of the data was achieved in two ways. first, one form of triangulation this research employed was through the collection of multiple data sources. the use of multiple data sources ensured accurate interpretation of results by confirming and reconfirming similar patterns found throughout various types of data. a second form of triangulation was used known as member checking. member checking was used when the students were asked to participate in a focus group. results of the focus group discussion supported findings from the surveys, reflections, and kwol sheets and were used as an aid in ensuring accurate interpretation of the data. findings results indicate that although the majority of the students preferred the face-to-face observations over the cd-rom videos or the videoconference observation, this was based more in their preference for being in a real classroom versus what they actually learned from the experiences. analysis of the survey revealed that the face-to-face observations were rated higher than the other two types of observations on helping the pre-service teachers understand the complexities and realities of teaching and on helping the students connect the concepts and theories they were learning in class to the practical applications in the classroom; however, results from multimedia observations: examining the roles and learning outcomes of traditional, cd-rom based, and videoconference observations in pre-service teacher education 5 the kwol charts and reflective questionnaires indicated more and higher level learning outcomes from the cd and videoconference observations than from the face-to-face observations. additionally, more advantages of the technology-supported observations were cited than were cited for their faceto-face counterpart. nevertheless, in the end, the preservice teachers valued the face-to-face experience most highly. a brief overview of what the students perceived the advantages and disadvantages of each observation type to be is discussed first, followed by a closer examination of what the pre-service teachers reported they learned from each type of observation. finally, the interaction of each type of observation in preparing pre-service teachers for the actual experience in the classroom is also discussed. advantages and disadvantages of each observation types the students were asked after each observation type to offer their opinions on the advantages and disadvantages of that particular type of observation. the purpose of this research was not to compare the effectiveness of each type of observation to one another; rather, the purpose was to examine each type of observation in regard to what outcomes exist for student learning and how the interaction of each type may support and enhance one another. therefore, a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each type is shared to consider how the challenges of one situation may be mediated by the strengths of another. cd-rom observations for the cd-rom based observations, the advantages listed included: a) convenience – no traveling to a school was required, b) instruction – students were exposed to a cd that showed them the steps involved in a direct instruction lesson, c) ability to pause and discuss – students mentioned the instructor’s ability to pause the cd to discuss parts of the lesson plan or classroom management issues as an advantage, d) view of the classroom – the camera went around the classroom and showed views of the classroom from several angles and got close-ups of student work, so the students felt they had a really strong “view” of the classroom. the disadvantages of the cd-rom videos mainly consisted of the fact that the students could not talk directly with the teacher or students and ask questions for clarification. they felt a definite disconnect between the university and the public school classroom with this arrangement. videoconference observations advantages of the videoconference observations were similar in some ways to the cd observations, but had distinct differences as well. the pre-service teachers again mentioned the convenience of an observation via videoconference; however, in this type of observation, many of them stated they felt as if they were really there without having to be physically in the classroom. many of them stated they did not experience the disconnect they felt with the cds. the cd observations had obviously been pre-recorded and did not have the same feel of immediacy and relevance to the pre-service teachers. they stated they felt the videoconference observation was more similar to the “real thing.” also, they again pointed out that instruction was an advantage because the instructor could help them understand what they were seeing and “point out things;” however, it was a disadvantage that the observation via videoconference could not be stopped, reviewed, and discussed. the biggest advantage of the videoconference observations for the pre-service teachers was the ability to talk with the teacher after the lesson and ask questions. the disadvantages of the videoconference observations involved video and audio. it was often difficult to hear student questions/responses because placement of the microphone may not be near the speaking student. also, the camera is positioned in one place in the classroom and does not move around so as not to be a distraction to the children. however, this limits the view of the pre-service teachers and they felt they did not receive an entire view of the classroom. face-to-face observations there was one advantage of the face-to-face observations mentioned by all 26 pre-service teachers and that was the ability to see and hear clearly. interestingly, no other advantage was noted. disadvantages included: a) the pre-service teachers felt they were a distraction to the children, b) the preservice teachers were not able to discuss the observation with the instructor, c) the classroom was crowded with the addition of the pre-service teachers to the classroom, and, d) transportation was difficult with a tight time schedule to get back for their next class. in the next section, findings related to what the pre-service teachers reported they learned from each observation type are discussed. student learning during each observation type, the preservice teachers completed a kwol chart, a variation on the traditional kwl chart. prior to each observation, the pre-service teachers were asked to record what they already knew and what they would like to know. during the observation, they were asked to jot down what they observed and immediately following the observation, they were asked to write down what they learned. additionally, they were asked in their reflective questionnaires, after each observation, what they felt that observation current issues in education vol. 11 no. 3 had helped them learn about lesson planning and about teaching. the findings discussed below suggest that it is not so much the type of observation that determines what the pre-service will observe and learn from the experience; rather, it is the pre-service teacher’s developmental ability in “seeing” the classroom. this also suggests the importance of the role of the professor during observations to train the pre-service teachers in what they are seeing and how it connects to what they have learned in the university classroom. during the first observation, which was a cd observation, the pre-service teachers focused nearly solely on the teacher, almost to the exclusion of what the students in the video were doing. they observed that the teacher used humor, the teacher was enthusiastic, the teacher stated the objective, the teacher moved around the room, the teacher had good control of his classroom, and the teacher used “props” (which they later in the semester correctly referred to as “visuals.”) in the second observation, which was a videoconference, the pre-service teachers still noticed the teacher to a large degree, but also began noticing how the teacher interacted with the children. for example, the pre-service teachers noticed that the teacher involved the students, moved around the room, and used questioning. they also began to notice integration of curriculum and the phases of the lesson plan and could identify what part of the lesson was occurring. by the third observation, another cd, the pre-service teachers were identifying more specific components to the teaching process such as group activities, giving clear directions and expectations, and learning with active methods rather than using worksheets. in the fourth observation, another videoconference, the pre-service teachers continued to grow in the sophistication of viewing the classroom from a teacher’s, rather than a student’s, perspective as they noticed such things as the use of examples and models, smooth transitions, and, again, the use of questioning and clear directions. by the face to face observation, they were more clearly focused on the children in the classroom, rather than so intently focused on only the teacher. the pre-service teachers began mentioning the students who looked bored or who were not on task or those who were interested and attentive. they also mentioned the interaction between the teacher and the students. interaction of observation types as can be seen so far in these findings, the difficulties of one observation type are often the strengths of another. for example, the technical difficulties that may exist with a videoconference are offset by the medium’s ability to provide access to an experience of which the pre-service teachers may not have otherwise had physical access. the ability for an instructor to guide his or her students’ observation is limited in a traditional face-to-face setting, but the students are experiencing the realities of a classroom in a real classroom without the technical difficulties of computers and videoconferencing equipment. therefore, the findings suggest that the interaction of the three types may provide a more complete preparation for field experiences. in addition to their reflective questionnaires and kwol charts, each pre-service teacher completed a survey which asked them to rate the perceived helpfulness of each type of observation in helping them understand about the concepts presented in class and about teaching. the students responded to a five-point likert scale with one being not helpful at all to five being extremely helpful. finally, the pre-service teachers were asked to think about the observations overall and rate how helpful they were in helping them connect the concepts and theory they were learning in the university classroom to their practical application in the public school classroom. the results are displayed in table 1. table 1. learning outcomes via observation type learning outcome cd observation videoconference observation face to face observation overall course concepts 3.74 4.06 4.68 teaching 3.61 3.93 4.81 theory to practice 4.78 within each data source used in this research, the pre-service teachers consistently commented they learned concepts and theories through our discussions of the cd-rom and videoconference observations and that these observations and ensuing discussions are what made their face-to-face observations more meaningful. for example, one pre-service teacher stated, “i probably would not have even noticed the things i noticed when i saw the classroom teacher teaching, but you had told us when we watched the video to notice how the teacher was teaching by asking a lot of questions instead of just telling the kids stuff and so then i noticed it when the teacher did it.” it also appears by looking at this chart that as contact with a “live” experience goes up, so does the perceived learning outcomes. on the survey, the pre-service teachers rated the face-to-face observations as most helpful in helping them learn course content and teaching strategies. likewise, multimedia observations: examining the roles and learning outcomes of traditional, cd-rom based, and videoconference observations in pre-service teacher education 7 when asked in the student focus group which observation they found most helpful in helping them learn about course content and teaching, 100% of the pre-service teachers stated the face-to-face observations were the most helpful. however, analysis of the kwol charts and reflective summaries revealed a different picture. the preservice teachers did not have strong face-to-face observations this particular semester. during the first face-to-face observation, the teachers forgot the preservice teachers were even coming, so all the preservice teachers saw was the children watching a video for a reward. they even commented on their kwol charts and reflective questionnaires that they really did not get to see much, yet, in the end, they felt their face-to-face experience to be the most helpful. summary one thing important to remember in interpreting these results is the dual role of the researcher/instructor. these observations were structured in such a way as to enhance and support the instruction occurring in the university classroom. while the pre-service teachers were learning the parts of a direct instruction lesson and how to write a lesson plan, the first cd was viewed in which the focus of the cd was a direct instruction model. again, when the pre-service teachers were learning about integrating standards from the curriculum, the instructor arranged a videoconference that provided the pre-service teachers the opportunity to see an integrated lesson. this type of supportive arrangement continued throughout the duration of the observations. therefore, the pre-service teachers were likely to notice what had been emphasized in the classroom instruction. the strength of these observations seems to come from the fact that when pre-service teachers see “real” teachers using the strategies they have learned about in the university classroom, it not only makes an abstract concept concrete for them, it also serves as validation that what they are learning in the university classroom really does happen in practice. in the findings, the researchers did notice a trend for the pre-service teachers to “validate” the university experience through their experiences with the classrooms and teachers involved in the observations. these findings extend the research conducted by author(s), hult and edens (2001), and pape and mcintyre (1993) on the role of field experiences in teacher education programs by supporting the notion of guiding the pre-service teachers in their preparation for observations in the public school classroom. the findings from this research suggest that guided observation is an effective way to prepare for, as well as to enhance and support, traditional face-to-face observations. moreover, this research illustrates the importance of the guidance of the professor during these early observation experiences in schools and how these experiences shape and guide the development of the teacher. finally, this research extends the literature on alternative opportunities for field experiences and the role such advanced technologies may play in supporting and enhancing our work in the education of teachers. in considering the use of ivc and or cdrom videos as additional opportunities for observation, a basic concern, as with the development of any type of technology as a tool for teacher education, is that the efforts to use technology should be based in the needs of learning rather than on the powers of the technology (talley & martinez, 1998). sarason (1984) notes that, “. . . everything possible is not desirable. and desirability is not justified by technological possibilities; it requires independent, non-technological bases to provide good reasons” (p. 112). this study investigated one way that technology truly can support the needs of education and the learner rather than the other way around. references alvarez, h. k. 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(2000). videoconferencing: the whole picture. penguin books. multimedia observations: examining the roles and learning outcomes of traditional, cd-rom based, and videoconference observations in pre-service teacher education 9 appendix a reflective questionnaire 1. how did watching this teacher help you understand more about planning lessons? what was clarified? 2. how did watching this teacher help you understand more about teaching in general? what was clarified? 3. state at least one question you are left with about lesson planning. 4. state at least one question you are left with about teaching. 5. what were the advantages of using videoconferencing equipment to observe a classroom? 6. what were the disadvantages of using the videoconferencing equipment to observe? current issues in education vol. 11 no. 3 appendix b survey on a scale of 1 to 5, please rate your opinion of the following: 1= not helpful at all 2= not very helpful 3=somewhat helpful 4= very helpful 5= extremely helpful cd observations 1. how helpful were the cds in helping you understand the concepts presented in class? 2. how helpful were the cds in helping you understand the complexities of teaching and of being a teacher? videoconference observations 3. how helpful were the polycom observations in helping you understand the concepts presented in class? 4. how helpful were the polycom observations in helping you understand the complexities of teaching and of being a teacher? face-to-face observations 5. how helpful were the face-to-face observations in helping you understand the concepts discussed in class? 6. how helpful were the face-to-face observations in helping you understand the complexities of teaching and of being a teacher? course 7. how helpful overall was this class in helping you understand the concepts involved in designing lessons? 8. how helpful overall was this class in helping you understand about the field of teaching and about being a teacher? 9. how helpful do you feel the observations in this class were in helping you connect the theory and concepts you learned about in class to the practice of teaching? multimedia observations: examining the roles and learning outcomes of traditional, cd-rom based, and videoconference observations in pre-service teacher education 11 appendix c interview guide for focus group 1. thinking about the various types of observations we experienced this semester, which type did you find most helpful? why? 2. what did you consider to be the advantages of each type of observation? 3. what did you consider to be the disadvantages of each type of observation? 4. what did you learn from the observations this semester about lesson planning? 5. what did you learn from the observations this semester about teaching? 6. how did the observations help prepare you for your practicum experience? were there times when you were teaching that you thought about something you observed and used that to guide your actions? if so, what were they? 7. would you leave out any of the forms of observation? if so, which one and why? 8. how did all the observations work together to help you understand more about lesson planning and teaching? did they support and enhance one another? if so, how? current issues in education vol. 11 no. 3 2009 article citation greene, h. c. (2009, may). multimedia observations: examining the roles and learning outcomes of traditional, cd-rom based, and videoconference observations in pre-service teacher education. current issues in education [on-line], 11(3). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number3/ author notes carole greene east carolina university 207 speight building greenville, nc 27858 greeneh@ecu.edu dr. greene's area of expertise is educational psychology. she teaches undergraduate courses in general curriculum and instruction methods and graduate courses in research design. dr. greene’s two primary research areas include the use of technology in teacher education and issues of social justice. she is particularly interested in the use of technology to enhance preservice teacher education through technology-supported collaborations between schools and universities. she is also interested in enhancing and supporting educational opportunities of children in poverty through service learning activities in preservice teacher education. dr. greene has given over 50 state, national, and international presentations in her areas of interest. her articles have appeared in the journal of interactive online learning, advances in research on teaching, current perspectives on applied information technologies, and the teacher educator among others. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 15, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation greene, h. c. (2009). multimedia observations: examining the roles and learning outcomes of traditional, cd-rom based, and videoconference observations in pre-service teacher education . current issues in education, 11(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1574 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number3/ mailto:greeneh@ecu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1574 volume 10, number 4 december, 2008 issn 1099-839x editors’ notes jeffrey johnson, katy hisrich, & yun teng arizona state university compared to other education research journals, some of which have been in print for over one-hundred years, current issues in education is still in its beginning stages. standing here at our aluminum anniversary, we can only imagine how we will change in the next decade and beyond. over the past ten years, cie has published just under 100 articles in a wide range of fields, topics ranging from empowerment evaluation to high stakes testing to the power of e-journals. in that time, we have worked to become one of the leaders in the field, providing high quality research free to the educational world. those of us who are now engaged in this endeavor are honored to have our names linked with those who have come before us. as each new group has assumed responsibility for the operations of cie, the vision for the journal has grown. in the beginning, the goal of advocating for greater dialog and discussion in the education community was in evidence in a proposed name for the journal, dialogos. shortly thereafter, a second mission was added, that of using the electronic format to increase the impact of an article. the third overriding vision came soon after, that of the globalization of research to reach a greater audience. these goals, increasing discussion, impact, and scope are still part of our mission today. as our new administration has taken over, we have been mindful of the importance of these goals. yet as we have worked together, we have found a fourth focus emerging, that of innovation. it is our feeling, that in addition to research being valid, reliable, logical, and important, we look for things that are new, inventive, and insightful. innovation can take many forms, such as topics that are new, unexplored, or even unknown. methodologies that contradict preconceived notions. presentations that go beyond simple papers. we have taken it as one of our purposes to seek out these things. all of the articles published in this issues show evidence of innovation. the work by jennifer gay and sara corwin discusses arts based afterschool programs and their possible impacts on student’s scholastic success. the grosswald, stixrud, travis, and bateh paper presents a new method for helping adhd students based on ancient techniques. finally, the article by mccaleb, andersen, and hueston details a possible program for helping pre-service teachers confront violence in their classrooms. we are excited about these papers, and the many that we will be publishing in the future. one of our first authors encouraged us to “keep a critical eye on the role of technology in perpetuating or challenging the status quo.” we remain mindful of our role in this and will continue to find articles that present important and useful ideas for the educational world. current issues in education vol. 10 no. 3 2008 article citation johnson, j., hisrich, k., & teng, y. (2008, december). editors' notes. current issues in education [on-line], 10(4). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume10/number4/ author notes jeffrey johnson jeffrey johnson is a doctoral student in the interdisciplinary phd. program of curriculum and instruction with a focus on mathematics education in the college of education at arizona state university. he has a master's in mathematics education from teachers college—columbia university, and a bachelor’s in secondary education from arizona state university. he has worked as a mathematics teacher at laguardia community college in queens, ny, central high school and the thomas j. pappas school for the homeless in phoenix, and ms 399 in the bronx, ny. his current research projects include the effect of student teaching on pre-service teacher's attitudes and abilities, and equity issues relating to state standardized assessments. katy e. hisrich katy e. hisrich is pursuing her doctorate in educational psychology at arizona state university. she has a master's degree in elementary education from university of north carolina at charlotte and a bachelor's in early childhood education and child development from vanderbilt university (peabody college of education). she worked as a kindergarten teacher for 7 years in charlotte, nc and has taught two education courses at university of north carolina at charlotte. currently, hisrich teaches an undergraduate class in educational psychology at asu, and for the last two years she has been teaching an education course for the university of phoenix online. in addition, she is working with two professors: putting together an edited edition of the journal, computers in the schools, about the effects of technology on early childhood emergent literacy skills and creating an online course called learning with preschoolers, offered through asu for parents about how to interact with their children on the computer. hisrich also founded and built her own website, which is dedicated to providing parents with information about creating educational environments, using technology, showing how the brain learns, and implementing children's activities/procedures; she also uses this same information in her presentations to parents at various venues. her research interests include parent involvement, effects of technology, learning and the brain, and the development of young children. yun teng yun teng is currently a doctoral student from the division of educational leadership and policy studies (elps), mary lou futon college of education at arizona state university (asu). he has an m.a. in social and philosophical foundations of education also from asu. upon graduation from the m.a. program in 2006, he was awarded the university graduate scholarship to continue his doctoral program at elps. his research interests include education policies regarding public schools, charter schools, voucher programs and other forms of public/private schools, history of education, and comparative education. acknowledgements this 10th edition of current issues in education would not have been possible without the support of the following people: george hynd, dean of the mary lou fulton college of education. george’s decision to restart the journal, with a new vision and focus, brought us together initially. his support of that decision has enabled us to find and publish exciting research. finbarr sloane and sara brem, faculty advisors. barry and sara began the process of finding people with a desire to work and a vision for what the journal could become. once the editorial team was organized they struck a nearly perfect balance of providing advice and guidance, while allowing us to develop our own abilities and styles. tirupalavanam g. ganesh, assistant dean of information systems and former editor of cie. having been a former editor, ganesh was invaluable in both providing us explanations of what had been done before and ideas on how to proceed into the future. meredith toth, associate editor and webmaster. in addition to pursuing her own research and serving as an editor on the journal, meredith took on the task of reorganizing our website. her skills have proved invaluable. suzan bawolek, sherman elliot, brandon helding, elizabeth lewis, wendy oakes, edward o’neill, and amina turton, associate editors. most of us came into this endeavor without a clear vision of what the work would entail. however, all of our associate editors have proven themselves adept at taking difficult tasks and executing them beautifully. it is through their efforts that we can publish these articles. http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume10/number4/ an investigation of school violence and pre-service teachers 3 note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation johnson, j., hisrich, k., & teng, y. (2008). editors’ notes. current issues in education, 10(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1571 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1571 volume 8, number 21 july, 2005 issn 1099-839x taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation frank serafini university of nevada, las vegas the national board for professional teaching standards (nbpts) was established in 1987 to develop and operate a system of advanced certification; including a set of high and rigorous standards of accomplished teaching and an assessment system designed to measure these standards. utilizing a qualitative, case study framework, this research project was designed to investigate the meaning perspectives associated with the nbpts certification process from the point of view of a national board candidate interacting with the procedures, assessments and requirements necessary to achieve certification. the study asserts the candidate focused on the alignment of her teaching to the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the nbpts standards, the possible recognition of being nbpts certified, and the challenges with representing teaching practices through the assessment vehicles provided in the certification process. “the mission of the national board is to establish high and rigorous standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do, to develop and operate a national voluntary system to assess and certify those teachers who meet these standards, and to advance related education reforms for the purpose of improving student learning in american schools.” (nbpts, 1989). in the opening statement from the document entitled, “towards high and rigorous standards: what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do” (nbpts, 1989), the national board for professional teaching standards (nbpts) expresses its mission to create a set of standards that describe in detail the board’s vision of accomplished practice, and a certification system designed to assess and certify teachers who match this vision. the nbpts was initiated to increase the professional development of teachers, the status of the teaching profession and the quality of education in america (nbpts, 1987). by establishing high and rigorous standards, and developing an extensive assessment and certification system, it has been suggested that the nbpts will have a profound effect both politically and professionally on the teaching community nationwide (baratz-snowden, shapiro & streeter, 1993). because of the influence the nbpts certification process may have on classroom teachers throughout the united states, it is important to understand the meanings teachers construct concerning the nbpts standards, the certification process and its relationship to their classroom teaching practices. the standards movement in education, of which the nbpts is associated, has had an extensive effect on the way teaching, learning and professional development is enacted in public schools (noddings, 1997). like any standards based educational reform movement, the unifying influences and the assessments that accompany the nbpts certification current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 process offer possibilities, as well as challenges, in both political and educational arenas (eisner, 1998). as a relative newcomer in the professional development arena, the nbpts process has yet to be fully documented and understood from the perspective of the teacher candidates proceeding through the certification process. in numerous educational publications, classroom teachers that have gone through the certification process have written about the effects the nbpts process has had on their lives and teaching practices (cascio, 1995; rose, 1999; shapiro, 1993). these reports have been overwhelmingly positive, expressing the impact the nbpts process has had on teachers’ teaching practices, thinking processes, the enhanced status of the teaching profession and the improvements in the quality of education provided their students (buday & kelly, 1996). classroom teachers, university educators, state legislators and members of the business community have come together to create what the nbpts describes as "high and rigorous standards" for a variety of teacher specializations within the teaching profession (nbpts, 1987). the nbpts certification process may represent a significant change in the way professional development and teacher certification is implemented, with all the inherent possibilities and challenges associated with such an endeavor (petrosky, 1994). in contrast to the testimonial evidence provided by various nbpts candidates and certified teachers, this study seeks to add to the research literature by describing and interpreting the meaning perspectives associated with the nbpts process, as constructed by an elementary classroom teacher seeking national board certification in the early childhood generalist category of specialization. working from an interpretivist research paradigm (erickson, 1986), using a single-case study design (stake, 1994), this research project was designed to gain access to the meaning perspectives associated with the nbpts certification process from the point of view of a national board candidate interacting with the procedures, assessments and requirements necessary to achieve certification.. a brief history of the nbpts in response to recommendations made by the carnegie task force on teaching as a profession, the nbpts was created in 1987 to serve two distinct purposes: (a) the creation of an assessment and certification system to offer teachers an advanced certification, and (b) to establish a standards setting board to develop standards in as many as thirty-six separate teaching certification areas (carnegie forum, 1986). in addition to the standards and certification system designed to recognize accomplished teaching, the nbpts was initiated to provide a staff development model based on the high and rigorous standards created by classroom teachers and other educators, legislators, school board members, business community members and educational researchers (carnegie forum, 1986). the nbpts is governed by a sixty-three member board, a majority of whom are practicing classroom teachers. the nbpts is described as a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental organization that was initiated to respond to the claim that the teaching profession, unlike medicine, architecture or accounting, has not codified the knowledge, skills and dispositions that account for accomplished practice and that certain misconceptions about what constitutes good teaching continue to exist (baratz-snowden, shapiro & streeter, 1993). classroom teachers can apply for nbpts certification in any of the twenty-four specializations, ranging from early childhood generalist to young adult english language arts. each of these certifications align to the nbpts standards developed by teachers, for teachers, intended to create a unified vision of teaching across the united states (ambach, 1996). the goal of the nbpts in the next decade is to certify over 100,000 teachers, roughly one for every school in the united states. possibilities and challenges the nbpts certification process and its accompanying assessment system have been touted as a model for professional development (french, 1997), a unique process for certifying accomplished teachers and attracting qualified individuals into the teaching profession (shapiro, 1993), a vision of excellence in teaching that combines the wisdom of practice of outstanding teachers with consensus among the broader education community (barringer, 1993) and a process that requires teachers to think and talk about their practice in ways they have never done before (mitchell, 1998). proponents of the nbpts system suggest the certification process and the development of rigorous teaching standards will increase the professional standing of the teaching profession, create a sense of collegiality among teachers, develop teachers that are more reflective and cognizant of their practice, create a consistent, unified vision of accomplished teaching and instill in the general public a positive image of public education (buday & kelly, 1996; nbpts, 1989). the positive outcomes proposed by supporters of the nbpts certification system include: (a) an enhanced status accorded public school teachers, (b) the recognition of accomplished practice as represented by the nbpts certification process, (c) the attraction taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 3 of qualified teachers to the profession, (d) the promotion of reflective practice, (e) enhanced collegial relationships among teachers, and (f) the use of new assessment procedures to capture the complexities inherent in accomplished teaching. in contrast to the positive outcomes suggested by nbpts proponents, other educators have levied challenges to the nbpts standards, assessments and certification system. educators have challenged the nbpts process on the grounds that it will create a competitive atmosphere rather than the collegiality it purports to establish (marshall, 1996), and will create unnecessary distinctions between teachers, leading to an informal hierarchy in the teaching profession, rather than the unifying vision the board proposes (king, 1994). still other educators have claimed that the nbpts standards and criteria are not consistent with what many scholars have described as culturally sensitive teaching pedagogies (irvine & fraser, 1998). another challenge levied against the nbpts is the trend that minority teachers, especially african american teachers, are achieving nbpts certification in disproportionate numbers (bond, 1998). finally, labaree (1992) suggests that the standards themselves represent a normative force on teaching practices, when the teaching profession should be celebrating its diversity and creative differences, rather than a solitary vision of accomplished teaching. it is possible that the rigorous standards outlining the nbpts vision of accomplished practice, and the reflective or systematic thinking that teachers engage in during the certification process, improve the quality of classroom teaching, whereas the assessment procedures utilized by the nbpts are merely a traditional, numerical scoring device, designed to certify and normalize accomplished teaching. a review of the literature revealed a sense of “skeptical optimism” about the future of the nbpts standards and its assessment process. although the nbpts teaching standards may reflect a vision of accomplished teaching that more teachers may be able to demonstrate in the years ahead, one should remain cautious about the standards-based reform movement in general, the hierarchy of teachers that may result from nbpts certification, the assessment system's ability to distinguish and certify accomplished teaching and the means of representing quality teaching given the vehicles provided by the nbpts certification system (serafini, 2002). research questions interpretivist research designs are emergent and flexible, allowing for the construction of knowledge and changes in data collection and perspectives during the study (erickson, 1986). however, the following questions provided an initial focus for the study: (a) what are the meaning perspectives associated with the nbpts process as constructed by an elementary classroom teacher involved in the nbpts certification process for early childhood education?, (b) how are the standards and the certification process interpreted by the candidate as the candidate progressed through the requirements towards achieving certification?, (c) how does the nbpts certification process and the accompanying standards define the core proposition "thinking systematically about one's teaching and learning from one's experience?, and (d) what is the focus of the teacher's systematic thinking as the candidate progresses through the certification process? theoretical framework this study was conducted from the perspective of an interpretivist research paradigm (erickson, 1986). it is a qualitative study designed to understand and describe the interpretations of a candidate going through the nbpts certification process. since the majority of studies conducted by nbpts researchers are quantitative studies intending to understand the overall effects of the nbpts certification system and standards setting process, this study focuses on an individual candidate throughout the certification process. this study was conducted to describe in detail the meanings associated with the nbpts process from the perspective of a classroom teacher and to construct warranted assertions of the nbpts process. based on the idea that individuals construct and assign meanings to the objects and events in their lives and act according to these constructions (erickson, 1986), research methods were employed to describe and interpret the meanings associated with the nbpts process by the teacher candidate attempting to achieve certification. interpretivist research is based on the interpretation of naturally occurring events and the representation of those events to the public. it is a reconstruction of the meaning perspectives held by the actors in their natural settings. merriam (1998) writes, "… reality is constructed by individuals interacting in their social worlds. qualitative [interpretivist] researchers are interested in understanding the meaning people have constructed, (italics in original) that is, how they make sense of their world and the experiences they have in the world" (p.6). stake (1994) states, " a case study is defined by interest in individual cases, not by methods of inquiry used." (p. 236). cases are constructed based on the conceptual framework of the researcher, the physical and temporal distinctions of time and place, the theoretical frameworks brought to the study, and current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 the paradigms the researcher holds to be important (ragin & becker, 1992). participants and setting the researcher worked as a staff development facilitator at an elementary school in an urban center in the southwest united states helping classroom teachers develop child-centered and literature-based approaches to reading and literacy education. the researcher worked in approximately thirty different classrooms each week demonstrating approaches to literacy instruction, responding to various teachers efforts during their classroom instruction and offering resources and support for their professional growth. it was in the position of staff developer that jennifer, the national board teacher candidate who participated in this study (all names in this study are pseudonyms) was introduced to the researcher. jennifer’s primary, multiage classroom (grades k-2) can best be described as a child-centered, multiage classroom. a workshop format was employed in language arts instruction. math instruction utilized manipulatives and problem-solving activities, while science instruction included hands-on experiments and inquiry-based thematic units. jennifer’s classroom contained approximately twenty-four students throughout the course of the study. the demographic makeup of her classroom was fifty percent hispanic, thirty percent caucasian, and twenty percent african american. the school in which she worked was part of the federal title one program, with eighty percent of the school’s children receiving free or reduced priced lunches. in her sixth year as a primary grade teacher, jennifer decided that she would apply for nbpts certification. after learning of her decision to pursue nbpts certification, the researcher approached her to participate in a research study focusing on the nbpts certification process. two factors were important in making the decision to select jennifer. first, jennifer was one of only twenty teachers applying for certification in the geographical proximity, and second, because of the working relationship that had been established between teacher and staff development facilitator, the researcher felt comfortable approaching jennifer with this request. stake (1994) explains that the primary consideration in selecting a case is opportunity to learn and access to the context to be studied. jennifer jennifer was considered by many of her colleagues to be an outstanding teacher even before she applied for the nbpts certification process. jennifer was a member of several professional organizations, including the national council teachers of english and the international reading association, and hade presented at several conferences prior to the onset of the study. the two principals that jennifer worked for during her tenure as a classroom teacher had called on her to lead staff development workshops at their respective schools, had appointed her lead teacher for her grade level, and gave her exemplary teacher evaluations over her years working with them. in general, jennifer was considered an outstanding teacher, one that had earned the respect of many of her colleagues and administrators. data sources this study involved the collection of five types of data: (a) interview transcripts, (b) journal entries, (c) nbpts documents, (d) portfolio artifacts and interpretive commentaries created by the candidate for submission to the nbpts assessors, and (e) observational field notes taken during support group meetings. however, the majority of data used in the study was collected primarily through a series of open interviews, where the candidate simply recounted any work and involvement with the nbpts process since the last interview, and semistructured interviews where a selection of questions were created before the interview and presented to the candidate during the interview. electronic mail (e-mail) was utilized to send jennifer excerpts from the previous weeks’ interviews in order to have her check the transcripts for accuracy. these email notes also served as prompts for our future interviews. in a sense, the excerpts from the interviews served as a "member check" during the course of the year long interview process (lincoln & guba, 1985), allowing jennifer to clarify and expand on her interview statements. information from previous interviews was regularly used to begin subsequent interviews, allowing the candidate the opportunity to clarify particular statements or expand on any points she had previously offered. in addition, the candidate kept a reflective journal during the course of the nbpts certification process to wrote about her thoughts and concerns. the reflective journal entries offered a unique perspective, one that was not always available in field notes or interview data. prior to the study, the nbpts distributed, as part of its information campaign and public awareness efforts, many brochures, articles, web-site resources, and information packets outlining the intentions, procedures, and mission of the nbpts certification process and organization. these sources of information were analyzed to investigate perspectives to the nbpts procedures and intentions in addition to the one offered by the candidate herself. taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 5 data analysis the data analysis procedures used in this study followed erickson's interpretive model of qualitative research (erickson, 1986). according to erickson (1986) “the basic task of data analysis is to generate assertions that vary in scope and level of inference, largely through induction, and to establish an evidentiary warrant for the assertions one wishes to make." (p. 146). the researcher is looking for "key linkages" among various pieces of data, which can be described as patterns of generalizations within the case at hand. theoretical and research memos, written during the data collection period, provided an impetus for the data analysis to follow (glaser, 1978). these memos were used as a resource for theorizing about what was observed and the data being collected. these memos were used to provide an initial foundation for the data analysis as it proceeded. data analysis procedures occurred in three consecutive phases. the first phase began as information was collected from interviews, support group meetings, nbpts publications, and the candidate’s reflective journal. the second phase began when data collection was completed and the entire "data corpus" (erickson, 1986) was analyzed looking for key linkages and patterns of generalization. after reading through the entire data set twice, seven preliminary categories of data were constructed and the data was organized into individual computer files pertaining to each category. these categories were labeled: (a) alignment, (b) providing evidence, (c) standardized reflection, (d) tensions with writing, (e) recognition, (f) tensions with assessment, and (g) support and collaboration. the final phase of data analysis occurred as the final report was being written. merriam (1998) writes, "…because data collection and analysis is continuous and simultaneous in qualitative research, there is no clean cut off no time when everything else [analysis] stops and writing begins." (p. 220). writing is as much an act of discovery and analysis as it is an act of transcription. after the seven initial categories listed previously were constructed and detailed descriptions about each category were recorded in a research journal, analysis began looking for connections and relationships among the categories. the initial categories of providing evidence and standardized reflection fit better as sub-categories within the larger category of alignment, rather than as separate categories. although jennifer provided evidence of her teaching practices and was required to reflect on her teaching, it seemed the primary impetus of these activities was to align to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice. the category originally entitled recognition remained significant throughout the data analysis. the original category of support and collaboration was eventually constructed as a sub-category within the category of recognition. many aspects of the data labeled support, was considered an act of recognition. in other words, the data labeled support or collaboration included information about various teachers, both nbpts candidates and other teachers at jennifer's school, who supported her during the nbpts process. this evidence of support were considered a form of recognition. the category challenges with representation was constructed from the two initial categories: tensions with writing, and tensions with assessment. these categories, described initially as “tensions,” referred to the candidate’s challenge of representing herself as an accomplished teacher. the tensions focused on the candidate’s ability to represent her level of teaching ability to the assessors through the assessment center exercises and portfolio entries. it is because of this focus that the category of challenges was renamed representation. although every bit of data did not fit neatly into one of the three categories described, these three categories and the subcategories described provided key linkages to a preponderance of the data set. results the goal of data analysis is to construct and warrant the assertions that arise from subsequent readings and re-readings of the data set. erickson (1986) explains, "one of the basic tasks of data analysis is to generate assertions, largely through induction, by reviewing the full set of field notes, interview transcripts, journal entries and pertinent documents." (p. 146). based on an extensive analysis of the data set, the following three assertions were put forth. assertion #1 the teacher candidate viewed the nbpts certification process as one of aligning to the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the nbpts standards documents. the teacher candidate viewed, as part of this process of alignment, her need to adopt the nbpts standards as a vision of accomplished practice, to provide evidence of this alignment in her teaching portfolio and to focus her thinking and reflective processes on the criteria set forth in the standards documents for accomplished practice. one of the central tenets of the nbpts certification process is the adoption of the nbpts standards as a vision of accomplished practice. this vision of accomplished practice is then used as a lens by the teacher candidates to assess and critique their current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 teaching practices during the certification process. from the outset of the nbpts certification process, jennifer believed it was her responsibility to provide evidence of her alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice through the assessment vehicles provided during the nbpts certification process. assertion #2 the teacher candidate believed that she would be recognized as an accomplished teacher by achieving nbpts certification. jennifer viewed the nbpts certification as a legitimate recognition of her accomplished teaching practice, believing that achieving nbpts certification would lead to increased positive recognition of her accomplished teaching practices among her peers, the educational community and the public in general. jennifer believed that the nbpts certification represented a legitimate endorsement of her teaching ability, one that would increase her status as a teaching professional. since there are few, if any, formally recognized hierarchies among elementary school teachers, she believed the nbpts certification could be used as a vehicle to allow her to stand out as an accomplished teacher among her peers. jennifer also believed that achieving national board certification would lead to increased status for the entire teaching profession. assertion #3 the teacher candidate faced several challenges in representing herself as an accomplished teacher through the vehicles provided by the certification process, including the teaching portfolio and assessment center exercises. jennifer often felt the written commentaries she included in the nbpts teaching portfolio were unable to satisfactorily represent her level of accomplished teaching. there seemed to be various “tensions” or “challenges" associated with the assessment vehicles used to represent her teaching practices. representing the complexities of accomplished practice through written, interpretive commentaries and videotape segments presented a considerable challenge jennifer needed to overcome in order to achieve national board certification. in order to further delineate each of the assertions put forth, each assertion will be described in detail and presented with data from a variety of sources to support these three assertions. aligning to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice as teacher candidates begin the nbpts certification process, they must become familiar with the particulars of the vision of accomplished practice as set forth in the nbpts standards. this vision is set forth in the written language of the nbpts standards and candidates are required to interpret these written standards and demonstrate their alignment to the nbpts vision in the written commentaries and videotape segments submitted to the nbpts in their teaching portfolio. the standards are not delivered to the candidates on videotapes or by classroom demonstration; rather they are delivered to candidates in written statements from which candidates must interpret and relate these written standards to their classroom teaching practices. the standards are general statements about accomplished teaching, open to wide interpretations, represented in written language as de-contextualized propositions about teaching that require teachers to contextualize the nbpts standards into their classroom context to determine what to include in the written commentaries and artifacts contained in the portfolio they submit for certification (burroughs, roe & hendricks-lee, 1998). as jennifer became acquainted with the nbpts standards, she understood there to be an alignment between her vision of what it meant to be an accomplished teacher and the nbpts' vision of accomplished teaching. even before beginning the nbpts certification process, jennifer believed she possessed many of the qualities of accomplished teaching described in the nbpts standards, and that she would be able to demonstrate them in the teaching portfolio she would submit for certification. by reading through the standards documents on numerous occasions, jennifer believed that she had become familiar with the nbpts vision of accomplished practice. she began to use the written descriptions of the nbpts standards as a lens to assess, critique and interpret her own teaching practices. after reading through the nbpts standards documents provided to her during the initial phase of the certification process, jennifer explained: i really thought surely that there was something that i don't really strongly agree with, but i went back through, and i was looking through [the standards], there really isn't anything in there that i can disagree with. i know it was a group of early childhood teachers that came up with these. it must have been a really good group of early childhood teachers that came up with these standards because they are not fluff, and they are not cutesy, they just spell out what good teaching is and what it looks like in an early childhood classroom. i think that is why i like them so much. it's very broad and open and it touches on everything i do, so that is kind of nice. taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 7 as jennifer began to produce the written commentaries and videotape segments required for certification, she referred to the nbpts standards in order to make decisions about what aspects of her teaching to include in the portfolio as a representative sampling of her classroom practices. in other words, because of the space and time limitations imposed by the certification process, she had to decide what to include and what to leave out of the written commentaries and portfolio entries she submitted to the nbpts. the assessments, the teaching portfolio and the written commentaries became the vehicles jennifer would use to represent and demonstrate her alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice. the promotional literature distributed by the nbpts described the standards as a vision of what teaching should be like as we move into the 21 st century. however, this vision is delivered to the candidate in the form of written standards. candidates must construct their own interpretations of the nbpts vision by reading through and becoming familiar with the standards documents. candidates must decide how their interpretations of the written nbpts standards relate to their local contexts and the teaching practices of their own classrooms. jennifer viewed the nbpts standards as the standards of accomplished teaching available in the unites states at the time of this study. just as a lens on a camera focuses on certain aspects in one's field of vision, the nbpts documents were used as a lens to focus on certain aspects of her teaching practice. this nbpts lens is designed to help candidates focus on those aspects of their teaching practice that are included in the nbpts' vision of accomplished practice in order to be able to write about them and provide evidence of this level of practice in their portfolios. in this sense, the standards limit the field of vision of the teacher candidate to what aligns to the vision set forth in the nbpts standards, while at the same time providing a focus for the candidate during the certification process. the expectation that candidates adopt and align to the nbpts vision, temporarily setting aside any of their own criteria for accomplished teaching, was discussed at support group meetings during presentations by several nbpts teacher facilitators and in various nbpts documents. jennifer consistently mentioned her willingness to forego any other standards of quality teaching she might have to focus on the nbpts vision of accomplished practice in order to be successful during the nbpts certification process. jennifer attended several meetings with other nbpts candidates during the course of the certification process. at one of the meetings, an npbts certified teacher that had worked as a scorer for the nbpts evaluation team discussed what she felt was important for candidates to know about how their portfolios and interpretive commentaries would be scored. she told the audience of teacher candidates: after working for a short time with these [nbpts] assessors, i want you to know they knew exactly what they were looking for. teachers, you need to remember and learn what each portfolio entry is addressing and what the standards are for each portfolio entry. be sure to focus on the language of the standards. so when you look at the [lesson] topics be sure it addresses the standards you are looking at. it can’t just be a wonderful lesson if it doesn’t answer what that entry is looking for. the goals for the particular lesson must align to the nbpts goals for what you are teaching. and how it fits in the big picture. it can’t just be a good lesson, it has to align with the nbpts goals and standards. the facilitator was giving the teacher candidates advice on what to include in their portfolios and how to write better interpretive commentaries to submit for certification. her advice hinges on the teacher candidates being able to demonstrate their alignment to the nbpts standards. in a reflective journal entry, written as jennifer began to draft the interpretive commentaries that she would include with her portfolio entries, she explained: my focus is on my goals and the standards pretty much, and i was trying to think about what emily [an nbpts teacher facilitator] was saying after we watched another candidate's video. she said, ‘it's not about being able to show good teaching, it's about being able to, the standards are what you are supposed to be doing, and you can be doing good stuff in your classroom, but it may not be what the standards say you should be doing.’ in addition, jennifer wrote the following entry in her reflective journal: my primary purpose of going through [the nbpts process] is to inform my practice. i want to see if others think my teaching aligns with the standards. i am hoping by the end of this all, i am more knowledgeable about the standards and able to articulate them. this process of aligning to the standards is also supported by the literature distributed by the current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 nbpts. the following excerpt from a brochure entitled, “national board certification: a guide for candidates”, published by the american federation of teachers, a teachers’ union involved with the nbpts, represents the kind of alignment that the developers of the nbpts process believe to be necessary for achieving certification. it states: the first step in approaching the national board standards is to adopt the right mindsetnamely, that you agree with the national board standards and that you see yourself embodying these standards in your practice… in other words, there is no guesswork involvedthe national board standards are the only standards by which your teaching will be assessed. (american federation of teachers, 1998, p.18). not only does alignment involve coming to know the standards, but it also involves learning to use the language of the standards in one's own writing. jennifer was not only trying to understand the nbpts standards, she began to use the language from the standards in the writing that she included in her portfolio submitted for certification. in an interview conducted after her portfolio had been submitted, jennifer talked about how she went about constructing the interpretive commentaries that accompanied the video segments of her teaching: i wrote to the standards a lot. i incorporated the language [of the standards] and made sure to incorporate words like, 'understanding young children' and made sure that i said enough about that in each of the entries that it required. and the standards just kind of helped me stay within their lines, to keep what was most important for the entry, incorporating those standards along with whatever i was teaching. the directions and all the advice i was given said to use the standards, use the language of the standards, and it doesn't say anywhere in the [nbpts] directions that you should use their language, but it does say that you should refer to it, and make sure that your writing covers all those areas. teacher candidates may be thinking about their practice, but are directed to do so through the lens of the nbpts standards. for jennifer, the certification process became a process of representing her alignment to a set of predetermined standards of accomplished teaching, as described in detail in the nbpts standards, through the assessment vehicles provided during the certification process. being recognized as an accomplished teacher in a variety of the literature provided by the nbpts, including brochures, press releases, and the nbpts web-site, increasing the professional status of classroom teachers has been described as one of the primary goals of the nbpts certification and standards development process. in addition, the nbpts standards and certification process has been purported to create a unifying vision of accomplished practice that experienced classroom teachers should aspire to achieve (ambach, 1996). because of the reported lack of formal structures for recognizing accomplished practice currently in place in the teaching profession, it is believed that classroom teachers will gravitate towards the legitimization of accomplished practice offered by the nbpts (king, 1994). during this study, it became evident that jennifer was looking to have her teaching abilities recognized, not only by the educational community and the general public, but by herself as well. because of this, data suggesting two types of recognition were identified: self-recognition and public-professional recognition. first, selfrecognition is defined as the process of seeing oneself as an accomplished teacher. jennifer came to believe that she could legitimize her teaching practices by aligning to the nbpts standards. if she achieved certification, she believed that the certification would legitimize her standing as an accomplished teacher, that it would somehow make her quality of teaching more “official”. shortly before jennifer was scheduled to receive written notification concerning her status as an nbpts candidate, she wrote in her reflective journal: my perception of myself as a classroom teacher is really wrapped up in this [nbpts] process right now. i want to believe that this process will set the exemplary teachers apart from the mediocre teachers, and even more from the "sucky" teachers. i don’t think my teaching practice has dramatically changed since going through the process, however, going into this year [the school year after the nbpts process], i felt more confident about the way i run my room and set up the environment because i have the national standards to back me up. i grow and change each year because i read and reflect on my interactions in my room. i don’t think i did more of this because of the [nbpts] process, it's just what i do. although, jennifer believed that she was already an accomplished teacher before the nbpts process began, she believed that aligning to the taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 9 nbpts standards would legitimize her level of accomplished teaching practices and provide her with a nationally recognized criteria to support her perception of herself as an accomplished teacher. she believed that aligning to the nbpts standards and ultimately achieving certification would set her apart from what she has described as mediocre, or “sucky,” teachers. jennifer believed that the nbpts certification process was a challenging process to go through, on that no every teacher could handle, and ultimately the nbpts certification would separate her level of teaching from the average teacher, she explains: i don’t think just any “joe schmoe” teacher could come through this and be able to meet the national standards, at least for early childhood. i ask [myself], ‘can i meet this level of teaching?’ because, its a lot in those [nbpts] standards, things that should be happening in your classroom, and to be making sure that you can do all of those things, its like a bar to see if you are reaching that level. for jennifer, the nbpts standards were a “bar,” a level of challenge she was up to demonstrating in order to be recognized as an accomplished teacher. the second type of recognition, described as public-professional recognition, refers to the recognition of accomplished teaching by other members of the teaching profession and the general public, including state and federal legislators, government officials, parents of school children and the business community. being recognized as an accomplished teacher within the educational community and by the general public has been suggested as an important consideration in a candidate's decision to attempt nbpts certification (baratz-snowden, shapiro & streeter, 1993). teachers, like members of other professions, desire to be seen as accomplished members of their profession, and often look to external certifications, awards or exams to legitimize this recognition. many of the elementary school districts throughout the united states are currently offering monetary stipends for becoming national board certified. ranging from $500 to $5,000, these stipends were described by jennifer as a "nice bonus" for all of her efforts. in the district where jennifer works, only five teachers were selected from those that applied to receive financial and clerical support from the district. she felt that being chosen to receive the financial support, and being offered a substitute teacher for up to ten school days in order to work on her certification, was a form of professional recognition. jennifer felt nbpts certified teachers deserved the recognition they received for their level of accomplished teaching. she viewed the nbpts certification as an "elite club" that deserved the level of recognition she hoped would be forthcoming if she became certified. in an entry in her reflective journal she wrote: those that have achieved certification are part of an elite club. i suppose if they go through this process and are successful they deserve recognition. honestly, part of the glamour of doing this, is that i am hoping that it will give me some sort of recognition. at every meeting the researcher attended, whenever an nbpts certified teacher was introduced they received a lengthy and enthusiastic round of applause. teacher candidates seemed to acknowledge their accomplishments and spent time talking with them about the challenges they faced during the certification process. at one of the support meetings, an nbpts facilitators stated: “this [nbpts process] is all consuming. you basically put your life on hold. you are the best of the best! it is not like anything else you have done. it is all consuming.” she explained how challenging the process was and then introduced two nbpts certified teachers, at which time the teacher candidates rose to offer the two teachers a standing ovation. however, jennifer also realized that the nbpts certification was not as universally recognized as she would like. in an interview she explained: as soon as i got my [nbpts] standards, i tried talking to people, ‘what have you heard about it?’ most people don’t even know much about it [nbpts]. except, well in our research group [at jennifer’s school], they knew a little about it. to some people you say, ‘i’m going through national board certification,’ and they have no clue. they say, ‘what’s that?’ and they’re educators! it’s kind of unfortunate. jennifer felt that teachers needed to be more aware of the nbpts certification and process. if teachers didn’t know about the nbpts certification, the recognition she felt she deserved would not be forthcoming. for jennifer, self and publicprofessional recognition was an important factor in her decision to apply for nbpts certification. she valued the nbpts certification process, and hoped that achieving certification would give her the recognition of teaching excellence she felt she deserved. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 challenges with representing accomplished practice the primary function of the teaching portfolio and the assessment center exercises is to provide an opportunity for teacher candidates to represent their teaching abilities to the nbpts team of assessors. in fact, the teaching portfolio and the assessment center exercises were the sole artifacts used to represent jennifer’s alignment to the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the nbpts standards. the portfolio and assessment center exercises were each scored to determine whether jennifer would achieve nbpts certification. in the process of describing her classroom and putting into words those aspects of her teaching practice that jennifer wanted to present to the nbpts assessors, jennifer was forced to represent her teaching through the written commentaries and video segments required by the nbpts certification process. at a support group meeting before jennifer began the certification process, a representative from the nbpts told the group of candidates: you need to show you at your best. a good lesson. the clearer you can make to them [nbpts assessors] the practices you use and why you use them, the better off you will be. you want to give the assessor the best picture of your practice you can. start using the language of the standards in your written answers to the portfolio prompts. take your own subject and add the predicate from the standards documents itself. as the nbpts representative continued to explain the assessment process to jennifer and the other candidates, jennifer began to realize the goal of the assessment process was to provide evidence of one’s alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished teaching through the assessment vehicles provided. jennifer needed to learn to represent “the best picture of her practice” to the nbpts assessors through the assessment vehicles she would be required to complete. the assessors never met jennifer face to face, conducted interviews or engaged in on-site, classroom observations during the certification process. the items contained in the portfolio, and her responses to the assessment center exercises, were the only artifacts used to represent jennifer's teaching abilities to the nbpts assessors. the two primary challenges of representing her teaching practices jennifer faced during the certification process were: (a) deciding what to include in the portfolio entries and what to discard, and (b) learning to write in an unfamiliar genre in order to represent her alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice through her writing. the portfolio entries and assessment center exercises had rigid space, time and content requirements that jennifer had to adhere to during the assessment exercises. in addition, the written interpretive commentaries that jennifer was required to construct were a type of writing she had never encountered. choices must be made about what to include and what to discard since every aspect of one's classroom and teaching practice cannot be included. candidates must represent their classroom teaching practices, which exists as a series of acts or performances that occur in a specific context, through a set of videotapes, written commentaries and assessment center exercises. delandshire and petrosky (1998) suggest that every representation of the act of teaching is a reduction of the contexts and actions of the actual teaching-learning event to what can be included in the assessment vehicles provided. jennifer struggled at times trying to describe her classroom context and her teaching in clear and concise language that fit the nbpts entry directions, space limitations, and portfolio requirements. in an interview, jennifer commented: there is so much that goes on within the classroom that it's hard to get it down on paper, especially if they [nbpts assessment exercises] don't ask the right questions for me to answer. there's not enough space to explain everything. it's hard to paint a clear picture. they ask very specific questions that lead you to respond in very specific ways, but it doesn't necessarily paint the whole picture. along with each artifact of student work and video tape segment selected, jennifer was required to write an interpretive commentary according to the entry directions and writing instructions included in the nbpts certification materials. each of these written interpretive commentaries has its own requirements, space limitations and font restrictions, and is used as a representative sample of her teaching as a whole. in essence, the interpretive commentaries jennifer constructed were a distinctive genre that she had to come to understand, and be able to write in, if she was to be successful in the nbpts process. these interpretive commentaries are a unique genre that may be unfamiliar to many classroom teachers. burroughs, roe and hendrickslee (1998) state, "because nbpts discourse relies upon decontextualized propositions about teaching written for distant audiences, we hypothesized that teachers, who work in local, situated learning communities, might have difficulty negotiating the [nbpts] board's discourse" (p.34). the nbpts portfolio entries have explicit instructions, and come with an optional format that taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 11 candidates are invited to follow. although jennifer was provided with these explicit instructions and the standards that accompany each entry, she had never written detailed descriptions of her classroom or teaching practices for a certification process in this particular style or genre before. this created a challenge to her as she prepared the written commentaries to be included in her portfolio. it is important to note that the nbpts standards are broad, general statements regarding the vision of accomplished practice set forth by the nbpts board. these standards are delivered to the teacher candidates in written format, and candidates must then interpret the nbpts vision of accomplished practice for themselves. teachers are required to, first, interpret the nbpts standards of accomplished practice and, second, represent their alignment to these standards, in writing, using the assessment vehicles provided. in the process of writing, audience and purpose are important factors in determining the structures, style and content of a particular piece of writing. because of this, jennifer became concerned about the audience of nbpts assessors that would eventually read and interpret her portfolio and assessment center exercises, and the style and content of the interpretive commentaries she constructed. in an interview as jennifer was preparing interpretive commentaries for several entries in her portfolio, she explained: the directions and all the advice i was given said to use the standards, use the language of the standards. it doesn't say anywhere in the [nbpts] directions that you should use their language, but it does say that you should refer to it, and make sure that your writing covers all those areas, the things in each of those entries. i did this so that it would be easy, completely clear for them so they [nbpts assessors] could pick it up easy. jennifer knew that the nbpts scorers were looking for specific things, for example the language of the standards, and was sure to include some of this language in her written commentaries. in an interview conducted while jennifer was writing some of the interpretive commentaries for her portfolio, she discussed the challenges of finding the right words to describe her classroom and her teaching practices. she said that she would often refer to the actual language of the nbpts standards documents to solve this dilemma. she explained: i wrote to the standards a lot. i incorporated the language of the standards and made sure to incorporate words like, 'understanding young children.’ the standards just kind of helped me stay within their lines, to help me keep what was most important for the entry, that is, incorporating those standards along with whatever i was teaching. after i finished writing, i would go back and read through it and think, ‘oh, i can plug in these words from the standards, because it’s the same thing, just said differently.’ when i did my writing, i would answer the question, read about it, and just write down what i thought about it. if i got stuck on something i was trying to explain, wasn't sure how to put it into words, i would refer to the standards, find a piece that maybe talked about that [aspect of her classroom] and say, ‘there's a thing to say.' or, 'i can plug in these words from the standards, because it's the same thing, only said differently.' i used a lot, a lot of their words because it was what they asked for, and i felt comfortable doing it. the directions and all the advice i was given [by the nbpts facilitators] said to use the standards, use the language of the standards. it doesn't say anywhere in the [nbpts] directions that you should use their language, but it does say that you should refer to it, and make sure that your writing covers all those areas, the things in each of those entries. i did this so that it would be easy, completely clear for them, so they [nbpts assessors] could pick it up easy. as jennifer was trying to understand the requirements of the genre of interpretive commentaries imposed by the certification process and what kind of writing would help her to be successful in the nbpts process, she often referred to her own writing capabilities and processes. she believed that being a better writer would help her score higher on her portfolio entries and interpretive commentaries. however, what jennifer meant by "being a better writer", was being able to successfully negotiate the demands of the genres imposed by the nbpts assessment process. her view of quality writing was focused on the requirements of writing for the nbpts assessors. in an interview conducted near the end of the certification process, referring to the process she was going through in her writing of these interpretive commentaries and classroom descriptions, jennifer stated: it's hard, i mean, i am trying to be a better writer. i'm trying to be more concise in my wording, but i'm not there yet. lots of it [her writing] is just 'flowery' stuff that doesn't need to be there, lots of extra stuff. so, when i was reading through it [one of my entries] current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 it was like, that part needs to stay, and that part needs to go. when asked if she was talking about being a better writer in general or just for the nbpts requirements, she responded: both! it [the portfolio entry] requires you to be very concise, because you have a strict page limit, but i do find just becoming a better writer, in general, that you don't need all those extra words that i throw in there. like i found a lot of 'in my classrooms' in there, which is, well, redundant right? so it's coming together pretty well now. the presentation of evidence in the teaching portfolio is a rhetorical process, where candidates attempt to convince the nbpts assessors of their level of accomplished practice and their alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice set forth in the standards documents (burroughs, roe & hendricks-lee, 1998). teachers make a case that their level of accomplished practice, represented by specific samples of their teaching practices contained in the assessment vehicles, align to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice set forth in the standards documents. although jennifer viewed the certification process, in particular the writing instructions and entry directions as "jumping through hoops" at times, they were hoops she was willing to jump through to achieve certification. she stated: being able to write to the questions [in the entry directions] is a big part of it. being able to jump through these hoops. it's some hoop jumping for sure. the direction say write to the questions, so, i will write to the questions. jennifer spent an extraordinary amount of time, both in and out of school, preparing items to submit for certification. the nbpts process requires a large commitment on the part of classroom teachers to complete the requirements during a school year when they are also in the classroom teaching. she hoped that her “hoop jumping” efforts would not go unnoticed. discussion the nbpts certification process and standards documents represented a vision of accomplished practice, a possible avenue for increased recognition as a classroom teacher, and an assessment system that required jennifer to represent her level of accomplished teaching to the nbpts assessors for scoring and certification purposes through the written commentaries and artifacts submitted. beginning with the process of adopting the nbpts vision of accomplished practice, and culminating with jennifer’s use of the nbpts language in her written commentaries, the certification process forced jennifer to forego any personally held criteria about accomplished teaching and evaluate her own teaching solely in light of the vision offered by the nbpts standards documents. because of its power to recognize and certify classroom teachers that demonstrate their alignment to a specific vision of accomplished teaching, the nbpts represents an emerging authority within the teaching profession in the united states. with this emerging authority comes various possibilities and challenges due to the future directions and extent of the nbpts’ influence. based on the evidence provided and the assertions put forth, the nbpts process represents: (a) a process of aligning to a specific discourse community or community of practice, (b) a commodity designed to support the recognition of accomplished teaching, and (c) a vehicle intended to promote reflective practice. nbpts as community of practice there is a close relationship among the nbpts certification process, the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the written language of the standards documents, and the theory of discourse communities or communities of practice proposed by lave and wenger (lave & wenger, 1991), and other researchers (gee, 1992; smyth, 1992). lave and wenger (1991) view learning as a situated activity dependent upon a process they call “legitimate peripheral participation.” “learners inevitably participate in community of practitioners [practice] and that the mastery of knowledge and skill requires newcomers to move toward full participation in the socio-cultural practices of a community” (lave & wenger, 1991, p.29). the nbpts certification process represents a set of situated activities within a community of practice. candidates participate in the activities of this community of practitioners and eventually, if certified, become legitimate members of the nbpts community of accomplished teachers. one of the most important activities that candidates engaged in during the certification process is the writing of the interpretive commentaries and portfolio entries submitted for evaluation. extending lave and wenger’s concept of communities of practice to include communities of writers, beaufort's (1997) definition of a discourse community, which focused on the writing practices of a discourse community, stated that discourse communities are “…social entit[ies] within which a set of distinctive writing practices occur and beyond whose borders different writing practices occur" (p. 518). the writing practices associated with the nbpts certification process focus on teacher candidates’ ability to create written commentaries that taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 13 demonstrate an alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice in order to achieve certification. throughout the certification process, jennifer was shown how to write to the standards, frequently reviewed her drafts with other candidates to see if they were following the nbpts entry directions and standards documents, adopted the language of the nbpts standards for inclusion in her written commentaries, and aligned her descriptions of her classroom and teaching practices to her interpretations of the nbpts values and practices. these activities demonstrate jennifer’s process of legitimate peripheral participation as she was apprenticed into the nbpts community of practice. burroughs et al. (1998) described the nbpts certification process as a discourse community to which teacher candidates were required to align in order to achieve certification. if nbpts candidates are to be successful in achieving certification, they must assume the nbpts discourse values and be able to represent these values in the portfolio they are required to submit for certification. it is the candidate's responsibility to interpret the values represented in the written standards of the nbpts by becoming familiar with, and aligning to, the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the nbpts standards documents (burroughs et al., 1998). the adoption of the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the nbpts standards, the focusing of the candidate's systematic thinking during the certification process, and the representation of the candidate's alignment to this established vision are all social processes that work to include participants in the nbpts discourse and communities of practice. aligning to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice meant more to jennifer than simply understanding the nbpts standards. it meant using the language of the standards in the written commentaries she submitted, adopting the nbpts vision of accomplished practice as her own, and learning to write and represent her teaching practices in language and formats the nbpts scorers would recognize and value. jennifer argued in writing that she had assumed the correct values, had adopted the language and writing practices of the discourse community, and was ready to become a legitimate member of the nbpts community of practice. certification remained the final step to legitimize her acceptance into the nbpts community. burroughs et al. (1998) suggest that candidates that were not certified had difficulties adopting the nbpts vision and aligning to the values of the nbpts discourse community, while successful candidates were able to, “…assume the nbpts discourse values.” (p. 3). jennifer was able to successfully accomplish this adoption of, and alignment to, the nbpts discourse values. in essence, jennifer’s representation of her level of accomplished practice was a process of moving from local, contextualized classroom events to the general, abstract discourse required by the nbpts, using the standards documents as “mediating artifacts” (werstch, 1991) in the process. during one of the support group meetings, one of the nbpts teacher facilitators told the group of candidates, "welcome to the club!" in essence, the facilitator was accepting the candidates' alignment to the nbpts discourse values as the key to membership in the nbpts club. the nbpts certification process serves as a process of legitimizing candidates’ alignment and acceptance of the nbpts values and practices. for a club to exist it must have members. membership is predicated on one's ability to accept and demonstrate an alignment to the values of a particular club in order to be accepted as a member. the nbpts is no different. the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the standards documents, represents a guide for candidates to follow to join the club. however, any membership in a club creates a distinction between members and non-members. it is this distinction that may create challenges in the teaching profession as the nbpts gains in prominence. the allocation of teachers to higher and lower rungs on the educational hierarchy may disenfranchise certain groups of teachers and disrupt the sense of community among teachers the nbpts initially set out to support and extend. nbpts as commodity king (1994) expressed his concerns about the nbpts certificate becoming a valued commodity and the possible creation of a hierarchy of teachers because of the nbpts certification. king (1994) wrote, "…the struggle for certification represents a race for certain qualifications that bring cultural assets. what national board certification is about, at least in part, is extending to teachers the symbolic struggle for cultural capital within their occupational field." (p. 103). because of the authority given to the nbpts to recognize and certify accomplished teaching, the certificate itself helps promote the recognition of a specific group of teachers over another. jennifer began the nbpts certification process hoping to use the certificate as a symbol of her level of accomplished teaching, a commodity she could exchange in the educational marketplace for higher salaries and promotions within the educational hierarchy and as a symbol to set her level of teaching apart from the average teacher. in fact, not soon after successfully completing the certification process, jennifer explained that she had been promoted to the current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 position of teacher leader at her grade level and given a substantial salary increase (personal communication, may, 2001). one of the concerns jennifer had during the certification process was how she would be perceived by other teachers at the school where she worked and in the educational community. she held little hope that the teachers at her own school would recognize her as an accomplished teacher. in fact, she was concerned that certain teachers would almost hold it against her, wondering, “who does she think she is?” after achieving certification. however, she held out more hope for the larger educational community, stating in an interview, “someday, somewhere in the future, teachers will recognize how important this certification is.” in the variety of literature distributed by the nbpts, ranging from promotional brochures to periodic newsletters, one of the primary outcomes of achieving certification suggested by the national board is the status accorded nbpts certified teachers. the ways in which this status will be given to teachers includes: (a) reciprocity across many states for recognizing teaching credentials and licensure, (b) assuming new roles in the teaching profession, (c) faculty adjunct positions at local universities, (d) being considered a spokesperson for the teaching profession, (e) mentoring responsibilities, (f) increased salaries and stipends, and (g) appointment to curriculum development and other administrative positions. it seems that there are many external rewards being associated with nbpts certification. how these external rewards and the status given to nbpts certified teachers effects the teaching profession will need to be investigated as the nbpts expands its influence. nbpts process as standardized reflection in the literature distributed by the nbpts and included in one of the five “core propositions” that serves as a framework for all of the certifications and standards documents, the nbpts strongly suggests that the certification and assessment process promotes systematic or reflective thinking and teaching practices. based on the evidence presented, the nbpts certification process required jennifer to reflect on her teaching practices, however, it did so on a limited, “standardized” basis. setting the nbpts standards as the lens to assess her practice and as the sole criteria of judging her level of accomplished teaching, the certification process narrowed the scope and dimensions of jennifer’s reflective processes to those that will help get her certified. rather than reflecting on the standards, the nbpts process promotes “standardized reflection” where the nbpts standards documents become the only lens used to reflect on one’s teaching. jennifer adopted the nbpts standards as the sole criteria of accomplished practice during the certification process. she mentioned several times during interviews and in her journal entries that she was not involved in this process to critique the standards or look for other criteria to evaluate her teaching. she believed that it was her job to demonstrate the standards in her writing and her portfolio entries, period. when asked whether she disagreed with some of the standards, she said it didn’t matter. she was here to demonstrate them, not challenge them. in other words, if it wasn’t contained in the nbpts standards, it was of no consequence to her during the certification process. because of the reduction of criteria of accomplished practice to the vision set forth in the nbpts standards, it is possible that the certification process represents an alternative form of "technical rationality" (schon, 1983), simply substituting one set of prescribed, universal teaching methods, for another set of contemporary, consensus standards of accomplished teaching. rather than teachers adopting particular teaching methods designed by university researchers to be delivered in the classroom context as suggested by schon’s concept of technical rationality, nbpts candidates are required to adopt a set of values, attitudes, practices, and visions of accomplished teaching to enact in their classrooms and demonstrate during the assessment process. unless the standards remain open to negotiation, and teachers are able to reflect on the changes in their practice based on a variety of criteria, the nbpts process may reduce its version of reflective practice to the same narrow version of reflection that it hoped to leave behind. the nbpts certification process may raise the level of accomplished teaching in america, however, it may also have a limiting, standardizing effect on the teachers that proceed through the certification process. this standardization of accomplished teaching may restrict the abilities of particular groups of teachers to be recognized for their individual talents. if the nbpts standards are recognized by the educational community and the general public as the only set of teaching standards, and do not allow for alternative perspectives concerning accomplished teaching to be given credence, the standardization of teachers may diminish, rather than increase, the effects of the nbpts certification process and assessment system.. limitations there are many possible perspectives from which to study the nbpts certification process. a researcher could construct a written survey and administer it to a representative sample of nbpts candidates or nbpts certified teachers to understand taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 15 general trends concerning the certification process. it is also possible that researchers would select a sample of candidates to interview before, during or after the certification process to see what kinds of experiences they were having, or the meanings these candidates constructed concerning the nbpts process. this study focused on the experiences of one candidate as she progressed through the yearlong nbpts certification process. the qualitative, single-case design allowed the construction of an intimate understanding of the complex experiences and meanings constructed by the candidate during the certification process. methodological choices were made to understand a single candidate in greater detail, rather than study a larger number of candidates in less detail. with any single case study, limitations concerning generalizability and credibility are expected (lincoln & guba, 1985). the credibility of this study rests primarily on the ability of other researchers and readers of this report to accept the relationships described among the data collected and the categories and assertions constructed. the utility of the study, the importance assigned by the readers to the descriptions, interpretations and assertions contained in the report, will, in part, determine its credibility. constructing thick descriptions, providing quotes from interviews and journal entries, and including artifacts from the teaching portfolio, lend credibility to the assertions set forth and allow the readers of this report to understand the meaning perspectives constructed by the teacher candidate during her nbpts certification experience. the study initially intended to focus on the reflective practices, or systematic thinking processes, of a single candidate during the certification process. i chose this focus because the literature distributed by the nbpts and the testimonials provided by nbpts certified teachers suggested that the certification process was an effective vehicle for promoting reflective practice. i wanted to know what they meant by reflective practice, and how the nbpts certification process promoted this type of thinking. during the initial interviews, however, i became aware of the challenges of focusing on such a small aspect of the nbpts process without first understanding the process as a whole. i was unable to separate the candidate's reflective processes from the rest of her understandings and experiences concerning the nbpts certification process. as the study progressed, the direction of the study changed, and the content of the interviews focused on jennifer's understandings of the entire nbpts process, not exclusively the reflective aspects of the certification process. remaining open to the data being collected during the course of a qualitative study is crucial if researchers are, according to peshkin (2000) “…to exploit the opportunities for learning that fieldwork makes possible. such selection, together with ordering, associating and meaning making, is an element of interpretation. stated otherwise, interpretation is an act of imagination and logic. it entails perceiving importance, order, and form in what one is learning that relates to the argument, story, narrative that is continually undergoing creation." (p. 9). one of the primary concerns during the data analysis of the study was whether i found three assertions that simply fit my interests a priori, or whether i was able to divorce my predilections and motivations to construct assertions that connected to the data. in order to address this concern, i began the study by writing in my research journal about my understandings of the nbpts process and its effects on the teaching profession i had been a part of for the past eleven years. i needed to bring to a conscious level the perspectives and possible concerns that i held intuitively about the nbpts certification process. before going into the study, i admittedly had reservations about any process that claimed to create reflective teachers and was concerned about the rapid development of standards in the various disciplines of knowledge or content areas during the past two decades. further, i was, and still am, concerned about the effect of the nbpts teaching standards on the classroom teacher, and that the alignment to any standards of teaching practice, nbpts or otherwise, will lead to a standardization of classroom teaching and the reduction of the content of the curriculum to what is included in the accepted standards. avenues for future research given the financial limitations imposed by the non-profit status of the organization, the board's concerns with creating and maintaining a legally defensible national certification process, and the time constraints imposed by the structure of the certification process, the nbpts has strived to provide a variety of assessment vehicles for candidates to use to represent their teaching practices, educational philosophies and classroom contexts. the nbpts process is required by design to result in a single decision, to certify or not to certify. candidates are currently provided with limited feedback concerning the results of the assessment process. in general, they are simply provided with their final scores for each individual entry and an overall tally. in other words, the whole certification and scoring process is eventually reduced to a single decision, whether the candidate achieves national board current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 certification or not. whether the reduction of the assessment and certification process to a single score is effective in developing accomplished, reflective teachers is an important consideration for future research. reflective practice requires a teacher to be able to look back and evaluate their teaching and its effects. the limited feedback provided to the nbpts candidates may be a possible deterrent to their reflective processes. the nbpts process reduces the representation of accomplished teaching to what can be included in the written commentaries and video segments. future research will have to address the question, “does the process of becoming an nbpts certified teacher hinge on one's level of teaching ability, or one's ability to successfully align to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice, or discourse community, through the written commentaries, videotape segments and assessment vehicles provided during the certification process?” in other words, do better writers pass and poor writers fail regardless of their teaching abilities? another concern is the underlying assumption of the nbpts process that accomplished teaching is measurable, and that the nbpts assessment system is a credible and reliable process for doing so. does nbpts certification mean that certified teachers are more accomplished than other teachers, or that they are just more capable of representing an alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished teaching through their written commentaries and portfolio artifacts? i am also left with questions concerning the nbpts assessment vehicle's ability to represent accomplished teaching, and the scorers' ability to recognize it when they review prospective candidates' portfolios. i know that decisions are being made, and that less that fifty percent of potential candidates are certified. however, whether accomplished teaching can be assessed, scored and tallied remains a primary concern. as the number of nbpts certified teachers begins to grow (there are approximately 10,000 certified teachers in the country as of the fall of 2000), the potential the nbpts has for impacting the teaching profession will increase. concerns have been raised about the effects of particular classroom teachers being recognized as accomplished teachers and given the financial incentives and leadership positions that may become, in part, associated with the nbpts certificate, while other teachers are viewed as unaccomplished and relegated to a lower rung on the teacher hierarchy. it will be important to understand the effects of the nbpts certification on the teaching community as more and more teachers become certified. the nbpts describes its certification process as an opportunity to build a sense of community among teachers. if the certification itself creates unwanted hierarchies, the nbpts process may have the opposite effect on the communities developed among the next generation of teachers. concluding remarks whether teachers can demonstrate the nbpts vision of accomplished teaching through the written commentaries, videotape segments and assessment center exercises or not will determine whether they achieve nbpts certification. the teacher candidate in this study believed that her nbpts certification would eventually be recognized as a legitimate endorsement of her accomplished teaching abilities by the educational community and the general public. although she had concerns about the nbpts assessment system's ability to assess and represent her accomplished teaching abilities, she was able to set aside these concerns and created a portfolio that allowed her to achieve nbpts certification. jennifer is now a certified nbpts teacher. what this certification will provide for her in the future as a classroom teacher remains to be seen. references ambach, g. 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(2005, july 20). taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation. current issues in education [on-line], 8(15). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number21/ author notes frank serafini, ph.d assistant professor university of nevada, las vegas 7247 hollywood park ave., las vegas , nv 89129 serafini@unlv.nevada.edu note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 19, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation serafini, f. (2005). taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation. current issues in education, 8(21). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1603 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number15/index.html mailto:serafini@unlv.nevada.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1603 cie template current issues in education, 19(3) 1 volume 19, issue 3 january 17, 2017 issn 1099-839x impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement kimberly a. martin dyersburg state community college molly m. goldwasser duke university richard galentino professional development pathways and living labs at healthstream, inc. abstract: this study examines differences in student satisfaction and engagement in cohort programs versus traditional, non-cohort educational programs by studying the impact of close bonds between students. the authors measure and compare “close bonds” within an educational cohort to a traditional program and measure the impact of close bonds on satisfaction and engagement. the results demonstrate significant difference in the bonds developed by students in cohort programs compared to non-cohort programs. the close bonds scale was strongly correlated to the engagement scale and moderately correlated to the satisfaction scale. regression analysis suggests close bonds may predict both satisfaction and engagement. keywords: cohort, bonds, satisfaction, engagement, success, retention apa-style citation: martin, k. a., & goldwasser, m. m., & galentino, r. (2016). impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement. current issues in education, 19(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1550 accepted: august 26th, 2016 cohort programs in higher education are increasingly common as an intervention to increase student retention and graduation rates (lei, gorelick, short, smallwood, & wrightporter, 2011). many researchers have documented the impact of cohort models on these completion measures (lei et al., 2011), but less is known about the impact of a cohort model on affective student outcomes and larger institutional goals of student satisfaction and engagement. institutions are creating cohort-based educational programs for students at all levels, but particularly for graduate students. numerous graduate programs in education have moved from a traditional model to a cohort model in recent years (maher, 2005; mandzuk, hasinoff, & seifert, 2005). maher (2005) defined a cohort as “a group of about 10–25 students who begin a program of study together, proceed together through a series of developmental experiences in the context http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1550 martin, goldwasser & galentino: impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement current issues in education, 19(3) 2 of that program of study, and end the program at approximately the same time" (p. 195). it is worth noting that cohorts can and do exist in traditional models of education. students naturally form groups around similar interests, schedule restraints, or small program size (hubbell & hubbell, 2010). cohorts in this study refer to the intentionally created student groups described by maher. cohort programs are attractive to administrators and policy makers for several reasons. with growing public pressure for graduates to be workforce ready, cohort models offer productive training for the work place. cohort programs are team-oriented, much like the work environments most students will face upon graduation. research shows that participation in educational programs that are cohort based can lead to positive workforce relationships later in life (basom, yerkes, barnett, & norris, 1996/1997; norris, barnett, basom, & yerkes, 1997). depth of relationship with colleagues within one’s field and professional network is a key component of graduate school education cohorts. many researchers have cited the relational (bonding, support, belongingness) aspects of cohorts and its importance for students (barnett, basom, yerkes, & norris, 2000; potthoff, batenhorst, fredrickson, & tracy, 2001; teitel, 1997). cohort programs also are attractive economically. educational leaders often face the challenge of creating academic programs that create revenue for their respective institutions (slaughter & rhoades, 2004). cohort programs preclude administrators from the requirement of offering a bevy of individual courses to allow for student choice within the curriculum. this reduces salary costs for faculty members while helping to ensure higher enrollment in each course section, making such programs a profit center for the institution. furthermore, program designers are interested in academic productivity, especially in accelerated graduate programs. wheelan and lisk (2000) note that with adults in accelerated degree programs, there are significant correlations between cohort group development and group productivity, as measured by the grade point average. in spite of these reasons for the attractiveness of the cohort model in education, little research has been done to determine whether or not cohort programs have an effect on the larger institutional goals of student satisfaction and engagement. also, few studies have been done to determine the factors that make some cohorts more effective than others. if educational leaders were aware of these factors, they could emphasize them in programmatic design or maintenance. koeppen, huey, and conner (2000) proposed a framework for studying cohorts that has eight dimensions: (1) social interaction and interdependence, (2) developing a common purpose, (3) group and individual learning, (4) cohesiveness, (5) facilitation of collaboration and field experiences, (6) academic performance, (7) interaction with faculty, and (8) student retention. we use this framework in our research to operationalize a definition of “close bonds.” we then work to determine whether or not students in cohort groups have closer bonds than students in traditional programs and whether or not “close bonds” are related to student satisfaction and student engagement. hypotheses based on the above framework, we have developed two hypotheses relating to cohort programs for graduate students. they are: 1) students in cohort programs develop closer bonds than students in traditional, non-cohort programs, and 2) close bonds will positively influence student satisfaction and engagement. martin, goldwasser & galentino: impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement current issues in education, 19(3) 3 review of the literature benefits of cohort groups murphy (1993) stated, "the cohort structure promotes the development of community, contributes to enhanced academic rigor, and personalizes an otherwise anonymous set of experiences for students" (p. 239). researchers suggest cohorts also increase the bonds among classmates and their sense of belonging, networking, trust, and mutual aid (barnett et al., 2000). cohort participation increases social capital among members, creating a mutually beneficial system of obligations, trust, and accountability for students (mandzuk et al., 2005). members of cohorts report higher degrees of socialization than non-cohort students do (mandzuk et al, 2005), and they report feeling individual support, emotional security, and friendship (norris & barnett, 1994). furthermore, cohort members report academic benefits of cohort participation, including the perception that their knowledge increased as a result of cohort membership (norris & barnett, 1994). cohort participation has been shown to change the depth of class discussions (teitel, 1997) and to positively affect learning outcomes for adult students (reynolds & hebert, 1998). additionally, teitel's (1997) study shows that faculty and staff overwhelmingly view cohorts as positive. problems with cohort groups research also has shed light on some problems with the cohort structure. first, cliques may form, which can harm students' sense of belonging, negating one of the main purported benefits of the cohort structure (barnett et al., 2000; radencich et al., 1998). other studies note the academic benefits of a flexible curriculum that allows for student choice and experimentation, which is not typically available in a closed cohort system (centra & rock, 1971). additionally, students in cohorts may feel more pressure to adapt to the opinions of others in the group than students in non-cohort classes who are less bonded to their classmates (mandzuk et al., 2005). students in cohort groups tend to band together to negotiate assignments, due dates, and even program administration, at times negatively impacting the power relationships between students and faculty in class (maher, 2005; tietel, 1997). bonding and cohort effectiveness norris and barnett (1994) note, "a cohort structure does not in itself insure a cohort" (p. 34). little research exists to show how the effective functioning of a cohort group leads to measurable outcomes for the institution. three common measures of institutional effectiveness are student satisfaction, student engagement, and student persistence. in this study we focus on student satisfaction and student engagement; however, we highlight in our literature review the correlation between these two variables and student persistence in the work of previous researchers. student persistence. reynolds and hebert's (1998) research found that members of cohort groups generally have higher grade point averages than students who are not members of cohort groups, and that these positive student outcomes lead to reduced attrition. high persistence rates are important for colleges and universities because such rates are used as a metric of institutional quality, in addition to improving the financial outlook for institutions through both tuition and alumni giving (sarraf et al., 2005). however, because persistence cannot be fully measured until after a student completes a degree program, institutions often measure student satisfaction and student engagement, each a predictor for persistence, throughout a student's enrollment to determine the likelihood of persistence to graduation (kuh, 2001; noel-levitz, 2011). martin, goldwasser & galentino: impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement current issues in education, 19(3) 4 student satisfaction. satisfaction has been shown to positively impact academic achievement, as well as interaction among students and faculty on campus (centra & rock, 1971; pascarella, 1985). satisfied students are more likely to continue to enroll at the same institution until graduation (suhre, jansen, & harskamp, 2007). additionally, students who are a part of effective groups have been shown to be more satisfied with their individual learning (hilgard & bower, 1966). however, a link between positive cohort relationships and student satisfaction with the institution has not been examined. student engagement. student engagement is one of the best predictors of student learning and personal development (carini, kuh, & klein, 2004). the level of student engagement at a given institution is largely seen as a measure of institutional quality (kuh, 2001). additionally, student engagement is important to many institutions because of the demonstrated linkages between engagement and student retention (carini, kuh, & klein, 2004), which lead to desirable institutional outcomes such as higher graduation rates, alumni giving, and alumni participation (sarraf et al., 2005). student engagement is often studied for undergraduates, but is rarely discussed for graduate students (pontius & harper, 2006). wang (2003) argued that the oft-used measure for undergraduate student engagement, the national survey of student engagement (nsse), could be easily adapted for use with graduate students. however, we found no research measuring engagement of cohort students. conceptual framework and measures the measurement instrument used in the study is a 24-question survey. we offered both a paper and an electronic (internet-based) version of the survey to participants. the survey took 10 minutes to complete. the survey was voluntary, was not intrusive, and was appropriate for the significant time restraints on the target population. this survey was used to measure the independent variable, close bonds, as well as the two dependent variables: student satisfaction and student engagement. the independent variable in this study is close bonds. the term “close bonds” is operationalized using koeppen, huey, and connor’s (2000) eight dimensions of effective cohorts: (1) social interaction and interdependence; (2) developing a common purpose; (3) group and individual learning; (4) cohesiveness; (5) facilitation of collaboration and field experiences; (6) academic performance; (7) interaction with faculty; and (8) student retention. the close bonds questions were converted into a scale variable (cronbach's alpha = .887). the dependent variables are student satisfaction and student engagement. our original intent was to also ascribe student persistence as a dependent variable; however, in the process of surveying students we realized that our student persistence questions were ineffective in that all students answered positively to all questions related to persistence. since the research shows student satisfaction and engagement are positively correlated with student persistence, we elected to use those dependent variables (satisfaction and engagement) throughout the study. the survey questions measuring the dependent variables came from the national survey of student engagement (nsse) and the adult student priorities survey written by noel-levitz. research has shown these measures to be both valid and reliable (kuh, 2001; noel-levitz, 2011). items related to academic engagement were used to measure graduate student engagement, as graduate students are often less involved in extracurricular activities and campus life than the undergraduate students for whom the nsse questions were created. scale variables were created for engagement and satisfaction using these items. the internal reliability for each scale was high (cronbach’s alpha = .729 for engagement; cronbach’s alpha = .852 for satisfaction). at least seven survey items address each key concept. martin, goldwasser & galentino: impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement current issues in education, 19(3) 5 survey concept map in our survey of students, we measured the eight components of close bonds as illustrated in the concept map below. (see figure 1.) we measured the effect of these eight components of our independent variable on the dependent variables of student satisfaction and student engagement. students receiving the treatment of a master's-level “cohort program” in education were compared against our control group (students in master's-level non-cohort education programs). figure 1. conceptual model of components of close bonds among students as predictors of student satisfaction and engagement. in conclusion, our hypotheses are: 1) students in cohort programs develop closer bonds than students in traditional non-cohort programs, and 2) close bonds will positively influence student satisfaction and engagement. data collection in order to maximize our potential response rate and to control for differences in students by locale and academic program, we limited our sample to master’s degree students in education programs at colleges and universities within 30 miles of a metropolitan area in the southeastern united states. limiting our sample to schools in this area, we found eight schools with master’slevel programs in education. five of the eight schools participated in our survey (see figure 2). some of these schools offer cohort programs, while others offer traditional classes in their master's-level education programs. the graduate students in the cohort-model degree programs serve as our treatment group. graduate students at the area schools with traditional (non-cohort) master's programs serve as our control group. we contacted the program coordinators of the graduate programs to ask them to facilitate their students' participation in the study. five of the eight schools agreed to participate. martin, goldwasser & galentino: impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement current issues in education, 19(3) 6 table 1 participating institution characteristics school type estimated enrollment cohort/traditional a private, master's 1,500 traditional b private, doctoral 13,000 traditional c private, doctoral 2,500 cohort d private, doctoral 4,000 cohort e private, master's 4,000 cohort we designed the survey administration procedures to place as little burden on the schools in the sample as possible to improve response rates. therefore, we gave each school two administration options. in the first option, the school could choose a paper-based survey administration. for schools choosing this option, a member of the research team scheduled a time to visit one class of students enrolled in the program. the researcher briefly explained the project and gave respondents an overview of the informed consent agreement before asking students to complete paper copies of the survey. students also were given the option of providing their contact information on a separate piece of paper, which was not associated with their responses on the survey, to be used in a drawing for a $50 gift card as an incentive for completing the survey. in the second administration option, schools could choose an online survey administration. schools choosing this option were provided with an email message that included the informed consent information and a link to the survey. they then forwarded that message to the students in the selected programs. the online survey was identical to the paper survey used in the other type of administration. at the end of the online survey, students were given the option to click a link to open a new survey, not associated with their responses on the first survey, where they could provide their contact information for the incentive drawing. we combined the contact information from the paper-based surveys and the online surveys and selected one participant at random to win the incentive gift card. some weaknesses existed in the survey administration procedures. for example, the presence of a researcher during the administration of the paper-based surveys potentially led respondents to answer more positively than in the more anonymous online version of the survey. when we measured student engagement and student satisfaction taking into account whether students took the survey on-line or on paper, we discovered significant differences after performing a t-test (p < .05). consequently, we controlled for administration method (paper versus on-line) in our regression analysis. furthermore, the presence of the researcher at the paper-based administrations may have made respondents less confident that their participation is voluntary, despite the researcher’s statements to the contrary and the institutional review board (irb) consent form outlining the voluntary nature of participation. administration of the paperbased survey during class may have caused participants to view the survey as school-sanctioned, which also may have led them to believe it was not voluntary. surveys were administered using one of these two methods for all students. the email sent to students participating in the online survey was identical for all students. the researchers administering the paper-based surveys used a script approved by the irb to ensure identical administration. we administered identical surveys in these two manners to both control and treatment groups. one school from the control group opted for the on-line administration, and one school from the treatment group opted for the on-line administration. the entire population of schools meeting our criteria (within a 30-mile radius of the selected metropolitan area and offering a master's-level education program) was included in the martin, goldwasser & galentino: impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement current issues in education, 19(3) 7 first cluster of our sample. from this point, the sample was based on convenience. schools opting for the paper-based survey administration were asked to identify one class section to which the surveys could be administered. this introduced potential bias into the sample because the students in the class chosen by the institution may be significantly different in some way from other students. additionally, this meant the number of students sampled from each program varied by the size of the class selected, rather than by the number of students enrolled in the program. therefore, some programs may have been overrepresented in the sample. this process also introduced potential error of non-observation, as some students enrolled in the program may have not been included in this non-random sample. this study used a static group comparison research design. because students in the sample were already enrolled, either in a cohort-model program or a traditional graduate degree program, prior to the commencement of this study, random assignment to treatment and control groups was not an option with this sample. this selection bias could impact the validity of this study, as students who opted into cohort-model programs may be pre-disposed to build closer bonds with their peers. the non-randomization of the groups poses a threat to the external validity of this research. due to the diversity of the institutions surveyed, the study results may be generalized to master’s students at an array of institutions. the study was limited to master’s students studying education; the results may not be generalized to undergraduates or doctoral students, or to other academic disciplines. as mentioned above, the centralized location of the sample may limit the generalizability of the study results to urban southern communities. finally, the nature of survey research is such that the analysis was done on self-reported data. the respondents were asked to rate their own levels of bondedness, student satisfaction, and student engagement for this study. there is the possibility that self-reported data may be biased in some way. methods in order to perform our analyses, we developed scale variables for our independent variable, cohort bonds, and our dependent variables, student engagement and satisfaction. to create these variables, we summed the self-reported responses of the survey items related to each topic. additionally, we created a variable for program selectivity that was based on each program’s admissions requirements and the average entrance exam score for the most recent entering class. these factors were combined, and each program was assigned a selectivity score from 1 (minimally selective) to 4 (very selective). these scale variables are described in table 2. additionally, we collected demographic, enrollment, and relationship data to use as control variables. table 2 summary of scale variables variable mean sd close bonds scale 37.15 .603 engagement scale 33.37 .457 satisfaction scale 22.80 .410 to analyze the data from this study, we used three methods: (1) a t-test to measure the difference in means between cohort groups and non-cohort groups on the scale values for close bonds; (2) correlations between the close bonds scale and the student engagement and martin, goldwasser & galentino: impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement current issues in education, 19(3) 8 satisfaction scales; and (3) a regression analysis between the close bonds scale and the student engagement and satisfaction scales, which allowed us to control for factors such as school selectivity, demographics of the respondent, length of enrollment, relationships between classmates prior to enrollment, and administration method (paper versus on-line). in our regression analysis we controlled for the following demographic variables: number of children, marital status, age, gender, and race. we chose these variables to control for differences among various demographic groups with respect to our dependent variable. for example, we wanted to account for any variation that one’s gender might have with respect to our dependent variable. with respect to enrollment we controlled for selectivity of the program, length of enrollment, gpa, and time between completion of bachelor’s degree and start of master’s degree. we felt that these were important factors for which to control because they could influence satisfaction and engagement independent of close bonds. for example, we wanted to control for a school type to allow for potential differences between a student at school b and a student at school a with respect to engagement and satisfaction. last, we controlled for relationship variables such as knowing members of the program prior to enrollment, seeing classmates at work, or seeing classmates socially. again, we felt that these factors needed to be controlled because they could influence satisfaction and engagement independent of close bonds as established via the cohort mechanism. results close bonds in cohorts versus non-cohort programs to test the hypothesis that students in cohort programs develop closer bonds than students in traditional non-cohort programs, we examined mean scores on the self-reported bond scale. the mean bond scale score for students in cohort programs (n=55) was 38.82, with a standard deviation of 5.683; the mean score for traditional non-cohort students (n=47) was 36.45, with a standard deviation of 5.323. we ran a t-test for independent means to determine if the difference between the means of each group was significant. (see table 3.) the test statistic t=2.162, was significant at α =.05 (p=.033) with the confidence interval [-4.547, -.196]. this statistically significant difference suggests there is a difference between close bonds developed by students in cohort programs and those developed by students in traditional programs. therefore, we reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference between bonds between members of the two groups (cohort and non-cohorts). table 3 bonding scale scores by cohort affiliation cohort affiliation yes no t df bonding scale 38.82 (5.683) 36.45 (5.323) -2.162* 100 note. *p < .05. standard deviations appear in parentheses below means. relationships between close bonds and satisfaction and engagement to test the hypothesis that close bonds will positively influence self-reported student satisfaction and engagement in degree programs, we first ran a correlation between the close bonds scale and each of the other scales to determine if there was a relationship between the variable pairs. the close bonds scale score was strongly correlated to the engagement scale martin, goldwasser & galentino: impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement current issues in education, 19(3) 9 [r(93) = .50, p<.001] and had a medium correlation to the satisfaction scale [ r(89) = .411, p<.001]. (see table 4). table 4 correlation to close bonds scale engagement scale satisfaction scale close bonds scale .500*** .411*** note. ***correlation is significant at the 0.001 level (2-tailed) the relationships between the close bond scale and the engagement and satisfaction scales are statistically significant, which indicates that we can reject the null hypothesis that there is no relationship between close bonds and engagement and satisfaction. the two correlations are also substantively significant. the r2 values of .25 for engagement and .17 for satisfaction indicate that 25% and 17%, respectively, of the variance in these variables is accounted for by the variance in close bonds. given the statistically and substantively significant correlation between close bonds and the engagement and satisfaction scales, we completed a regression analysis to determine the predictive relationship between close bonds and engagement and satisfaction, controlling for other variables that may influence these relationships (see table 5). table 5 summary of regression analysis for variables predicting student engagement variable b se b β close bond scale score .334 .089 .404*** number of children .171 .838 .028 marital status -.255 .992 -.034 time off prior to degree commencement -.696 .566 -.173 age of respondent .268 .687 .063 current gpa .423 1.099 .040 sex of respondent .416 .989 .041 race of respondent .344 .394 .087 number of years enrolled in current degree program .584 .724 .088 do you see classmates socially? -1.142 1.068 -.120 do you see classmates at work? -.364 .974 -.037 did you know classmates prior to this degree program? 1.814 1.144 .159 selectivity of academic program paper or online administration -.030 2.946 .422 1.344 -.009 .239** note: r2 = .454. ***p<.001, **p<.05 the model as represented in table 5 accounts for 45.4% of the variance in student engagement. for every one unit increase on the close bonds scale, there is a .334 unit increase in engagement. this is statistically significant (p<.001). the model as represented in table 6 accounts for 33.2% of the variance in student satisfaction. for every one unit increase on the close bonds scale, there is a .308 unit increase in satisfaction, and it is statistically significant (p<.001). after analysis, our findings suggest that close bonds could be used to predict both student satisfaction and engagement after controlling for identified variables. martin, goldwasser & galentino: impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement current issues in education, 19(3) 10 table 6 summary of regression analysis for variables predicting student satisfaction variable b se b β close bond scale score .308 .084 .457*** number of children .690 .753 .137 marital status -.151 .868 -.026 time off prior to degree commencement -.266 .508 -.084 age of respondent -.257 .823 -.078 current gpa .261 1.011 .031 sex of respondent -1.091 .884 -.137 race of respondent -.194 .360 -.064 number of years enrolled in current degree program .222 .648 .042 do you see classmates socially? -.082 1.013 -.011 do you see classmates at work? .753 .894 .097 did you know classmates prior to this degree program? -1.132 1.012 -.126 selectivity of academic program paper or online administration -.698 2.169 .374 1.251 -.264* .215* note: r2 = .332. ***p<.001, *p<.1 conclusion our hypotheses—1) students in cohort programs develop closer bonds than students in traditional, non-cohort programs, and 2) close bonds positively influence student satisfaction and engagement—were supported by this study. in particular, we found that students in master’slevel programs in education in the selected metropolitan area that were cohort program tended to report closer bonds than students in non-cohort programs. furthermore, the close bonds between these students, as represented in a close bond scale, were correlated positively to both student engagement and satisfaction. the literature suggests that engagement and satisfaction have a positive correlation with persistence—an important outcome for program planners with respect to master’s-level education programs and their success. our study found a predictive relationship between close bonds and satisfaction and engagement. in comparing traditionally formatted programs to cohort programs, we found significantly higher scores on the “close bonds” scale for students who were part of a cohort program. depth of relationship with colleagues within one’s field and professional network is a key component of graduate school education cohorts. many researchers have cited the relational (bonding, support, belongingness) aspects of cohorts and its importance for students (barnett et al., 2000; potthoff et al., 2001; teitel, 1997). we also found that, even after controlling for numerous variables, close bonds were positively correlated with self-reported student satisfaction and student engagement. due to the link between student satisfaction, student engagement, and persistence, institutions seeking to improve student persistence rates often attempt to improve student satisfaction and student engagement. according to our research, one way to make these improvements is to increase the bonds between students. due to the relationship between cohort programs and close bonds found in master’s level educational programs in this study and the predictive relationship between close bonds and self-reported student satisfaction and engagement, the results of this study may be used to recommend utilizing the cohort format to increase student satisfaction and engagement in similarly situated programs. martin, goldwasser & galentino: impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement current issues in education, 19(3) 11 the finding that close bonds can predict student satisfaction and student engagement leads to additional research questions for consideration in future studies. a deeper understanding of what creates close bonds would be helpful to program designers with respect to these educational programs. our findings suggest that further research in understanding the dynamics of how bonds are created between cohort members would add to the literature and further guide master’s-level program design. further studies could also determine the effects of close bonds on engagement and satisfaction, and ultimately persistence, at other educational levels and in other disciplines. a final area for additional research is the impact of close bonds within a cohort on the strength of bonds students develop for the program or institution. strong bonds to a program or institution may create a more engaged alumni base, stronger word-of-mouth marketing, and a stronger donor base for the institution. references barnett, b. g., basom, m. r., yerkes, d. m., & norris, c. j. 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(2000). cohort group effectiveness and the educational achievement of adult undergraduate students. small group research, 31(6), 724-738. martin, goldwasser & galentino: impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement current issues in education, 19(3) 13 author notes kimberly a. martin dyersburg state community college 1510 lake rd., dyersburg, tn 38024 kimberly.martin355@gmail.com kimberly a. martin currently serves as the vice president for institutional advancement and continuing education at dyersburg state community college. in this position, she works with fundraising, public and alumni relations, institutional research and effectiveness, strategic planning, and continuing education. kimberly has a background in assessment of student learning, program, and institutional outcomes. kimberly earned a b.s.b.a. in marketing from the university of tennessee, an m.b.a. from bethel university, and an ed.d. in higher education leadership and policy from vanderbilt university. molly m. goldwasser duke university address: box 102472, duke university, durham, nc 27708 mollygoldwasser@gmail.com molly m. goldwasser currently serves as the associate vice provost for academic affairs at duke university. in this position, she collaborates with colleagues across the university to augment academic and programmatic assessment and to maximize institutional effectiveness. molly has a background in promoting, tracking and monitoring student learning outcomes in both k-12 and higher education. molly earned a b.a. in public policy studies from duke university, an m.a. in curriculum and instruction from the university of mississippi, and an ed.d. in education leadership and policy from vanderbilt university. she currently teaches at both duke and the university of mississippi. her research centers around issues of institutional effectiveness and access/equity in education. richard galentino healthstream, inc. 209 10th avenue south, suite 450, nashville, tn 37203 rgalentino@gmail.com richard galentino serves as vice president for professional development pathways and living labs at healthstream, inc. in this position he specializes in helping organizations become learning organizations engaged in the innovation process. richard’s expertise includes shaping academic, for-profit, and non-profit medical centers domestically and globally. richard earned a b.s.f.s. from georgetown, a ed.m. from harvard, and an ed.d. from vanderbilt university. richard is passionate about launching medical and educational innovations into the broader healthcare marketplace for maximum societal impact. mailto:kimberly.martin355@gmail.com mailto:mollygoldwasser@gmail.com mailto:rgalentino@gmail.com martin, goldwasser & galentino: impact of cohort bonds on student satisfaction and engagement current issues in education, 19(3) 14 volume 19, issue 3 january 17, 2016 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team interim executive editor constantin schreiber copy editors stephanie mcbride-schreiner lucinda watson layout editor constantin schreiber section editor aaron bryant cie template current issues in education, 18(3) 1 volume 18, issue 3 october 6, 2015 issn 1099-839x curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning bradley conrad capital university, ohio christy m. moroye university of northern colorado p. bruce uhrmacher university of denver abstract: with increased attention to measurable, common student achievement outcomes, the experience of both students and teachers has been overlooked. while measurable outcomes may possess value, they have served to shift the focus of schools, administrators, and teachers to writing curriculum that centers on assessable content learning rather than meaningful educational experiences for teachers and students alike. this study of a recent teacher workshop examines a lesson planning approach that is based on john dewey’s notion of the aesthetic experience and places such experiences at the heart of the educational enterprise. findings include the notion of curriculum disruption, which refers to an alteration of the improvement trajectory of standardized curricula, offering innovation in lesson planning. keywords: curriculum theory, curriculum development, lesson planning, creativity, aesthetic experience apa-style citation: conrad, b., moroye, c. m., & uhrmacher, p. b. (2015). curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning. current issues in education, 18(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1434 accepted: august 10 th , 2015 in the standardized, test-driven world of contemporary education, a great deal of attention has been placed on common student achievement outcomes with the hope of improving the education of all public school students in the us. while such a goal is ostensibly worthwhile, a number of unintended side effects have resulted, particularly as they relate to curriculum. first, the aim of helping underserved students through a standardized curriculum is counter-productive in so far as it leads to what maxine greene (1988) calls a “one-dimensional ‘excellence’” (p. 12) in which diversity is ignored or marginalized. such standardization, according to peter taubman (2009), “... homogenize(s) diverse populations, locations, and http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1434 conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 2 situations,” which, “in fact masks the real differences among groups, individuals, schools and locations, differences in resources, societal treatment, histories, and power” (p. 114). second, a focus on quantifiable results has shaped the educational milieu in such a way that energies are placed on raising test scores rather than producing significant and memorable learning experiences. taubman (2009) puts it this way: we have arrived at a moment when students and teachers are subjected to a curriculum driven by disconnected multiple-choice questions or essay prompts that must be answered in a set amount of time and that have little if any relationship to problems, interests, or speculations that we might associate with thinking, erudition, creativity, or a curriculum animated by and responding to the flux of the classroom. (p. 17) third, with the connection of student test scores to teachers’ job security, there is an increased focus on producing effective test results, often forcing teachers to develop and/or teach curricula that are test-preparation focused, and to forego what might otherwise be meaningful learning experiences because they are “untested.” taubman (2009) refers to these practices as producing an “audit culture” (p. 108). in such a system, according to greene (1998), “at once, teachers and administrators are helped still to see themselves as functionaries in an instrumental system geared to turning out products, some (but not all) of which will meet standards of quality control” (p. 13). taken together, the emphasis on standardization, the privileging of quantifiable results, and the test-focused curriculum have produced what elliot eisner (1995) argues are “distractions.” he notes that: standards distract us from the deeper, seemingly intractable problems that beset our schools. it distracts us from paying attention to the importance of building a culture of schooling that is genuinely intellectual in character, that values questions and ideas at least as much as getting right answers. it distracts us from trying to understand how we can provide teachers the kind of professional opportunities that will afford the best among them occasions to continue to grow through a lifetime of work. it distracts us from attending to the inevitable array of interactions between teaching, curriculum, evaluation, school organization, and the often deleterious expectations and pressures from universities. (p. 758) considering the side effects of an overemphasis on standards, we developed lesson plan strategies that seek to counteract the standardsand testing-focused curriculum planning methods (see uhrmacher, conrad, & moroye, 2013). in short, these strategies, which draw on the aesthetic ideas of john dewey (1934), the arts-based curriculum of elliot eisner (2002), and the process philosophy focus as elaborated upon by donald oliver and kathleen gershman (1989), examine the ways in which the lesson planning process itself can be transformed into a meaningful experience not only for the teacher, but also for his or her students. we call our approach perceptual lesson planning (a broad umbrella term under which a number of aesthetic approaches may be found), or crispa, which is an acronym that stands for six elements that teachers might draw upon to create the conditions necessary for an aesthetic experience. these conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 3 elements include connections, risk-taking, imagination, sensory experience, perceptivity, and active engagement. we will examine these in more depth momentarily. recently, we held a perceptual lesson planning (crispa) workshop for practicing teachers in denver, colorado with the intention of providing a lesson-planning model that would offer another way to think about curriculum development. rather than focusing upon the standards and testing outcomes, we invited teachers to focus upon the experiences created for students. in this venue one teacher reported that she saw this work as a “curriculum disruption.” referring to her visual rendering (see figure 1) of the lesson-planning process, she said, “all of this confusion here (in the middle) is the lessons that were learned here today (at the crispa workshop), it’s the disruption in the lesson plan.” figure 1. disruption. her usage of the word “disruption,” recalled for us gilles deleuze’s notion of the “untimely”—something that interrupts “the tendency to sameness, uniform quantification, the fixing of all becomings through one measure or ‘territory’” (as cited in colebrook, 2002, p. 65). this teacher’s quotation also drew us to examine the notion of disruption theories generally, and those circulating in the business world in particular (christensen, horn, & johnson, 2008; dru, 2002), which we discuss below. the purpose of this paper is to first report on the data collected and analyzed by a threeperson research team from the aforementioned crispa workshop, and then to consider what disruption looks like in education. in this paper, we report on our most recent findings about the implications of this aesthetic approach in teacher lesson planning. while we believe these findings are important and that teachers and teacher educators ought to take note, we also discuss the theory by which we unpack our findings that we refer to as “curriculum disruption,” a novel theory for the field of curriculum studies. background and crispa overview the idea of using the arts and aesthetic theories as ways to conceive of education broadly-speaking has been at the heart of the work of many of leading educators (e.g., barone, 2000; broudy, 1994; eisner, 1985; greene, 2001; jackson, 2000; smith, 2014) and constitutes an entire section in pinar, reynolds, slattery, and taubman’s (1995) classic tome, understanding curriculum (specifically pages 567-604). further, two well-regarded academic journals publish research specifically attuned to such matters: journal of aesthetic education and the journal of conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 4 aesthetics and art criticism. in the 1960s, the central midwestern regional educational laboratory (cemrel) created an aesthetic education curriculum for grades k–6 and it established eleven teacher professional development centers to support it. cemrel defined aesthetic education as how “to perceive, judge, and value aesthetically what we come to know through our senses” (madeja & onuska, 1977, p. 3). over the years various organizations (e.g., the kennedy center, the lincoln center, young audiences) aimed to bring the arts and an aesthetic education (albeit with slightly different definitions of the aesthetic) into elementary and secondary schools as well as into teacher education. in accordance with such works, uhrmacher has since 1993 been the faculty advisor to the aesthetic education institute of colorado 1 (the institute), which has been co-organized by think360arts and the morgridge college of education, university of denver. the institute provides professional development for teachers (k-12) using the arts (generally dance, theater, visual art, music, and poetry) as a foundation. today, many think of the institute as providing an integrated arts approach to education through teaching-artists. the evaluations of the yearly summer workshops have generally been excellent. in fact, many frequently comment that the institute transformed their lives (uhrmacher & bunn, 2005). clearly, something important takes place in this week-long workshop. we (a collective of faculty, du students and alumni) have over time studied this institute and its effects (see perlov, 1998; romero, 1997). moreover, based on our observations and interpretations of the institutes along with john dewey’s (1934) ideas on aesthetic experience, we developed a framework to understand and to create the conditions for aesthetic learning experiences (uhrmacher, 2009). in short, our framework was built by observing, over a number of years, artists work with teachers on professional development. in various workshops, artists engaged practicing teachers in the creative process by having them participate in dance, theatre, visual art, music, and poetry. our observations led us to discern a set of salient features that describe the interactions among participants as well as characteristics of the experience. we then took those salient features and compared them to john dewey’s ideas about the aesthetic experience, as he used the term in art as experience (1934). in our comparison of our observations with dewey’s theory, we identified six consistent elements that we suggest are aspects (or dimensions) of an aesthetic experience. thus, when utilized or tugged upon, each dimension leads one to a greater possibility of having an aesthetic experience. we should point out that in his characteristic manner, dewey (1934) does not provide a specific definition to the term “aesthetic experience.” rather, he characterizes it in numerous ways. in one place, dewey (1934) states: experience in the degree in which it is experience is heightened vitality. . . .it signifies active and alert commerce with the world; at its height it signifies complete interpenetration of self and the world of objects and events. . . .because experience is the fulfillment of an organism in its struggles and achievements in a world of things, it is art in germ. even in its rudimentary forms, it contains the promise of that delightful perception which is esthetic experience. (p. 19) stated differently, dewey (1934) notes that all experiences have the potential to be ordinary or extraordinary. when one’s experience can be described as being fully present and 1 the aesthetic education institute of colorado has recently been renamed the institute for creative teaching. please see http://think360arts.org/what-we-do/professional-development. conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 5 riveted to the moment, when one’s senses are heightened, and when one might describe his or her experience as having been “consummated” or fully complete, we may call that an aesthetic experience. when we conduct our workshops, teachers get the idea about an aesthetic experience when we characterize it as one in which an individual may be transfixed by watching geese fly overhead beneath a blue sky, dotted with white clouds. as a kind of shorthand, we often refer to these as “wow experiences.” we also note that since dewey (1934) pointed out that any experience has the opportunity to become an aesthetic experience, then classroom learning activities have that potential as well. therefore, referring to the elements of an aesthetic experience, we note six ways that teachers may turn an ordinary activity into something truly memorable. these include connections, risk-taking, imagination, sensory experience, perceptivity, and active engagement— crispa (see uhrmacher, 2009; moroye & uhrmacher, 2009, 2010; uhrmacher et al., 2013). connections refer to the ways in which people become engaged with ideas, books, media, or materials in the learning environment. these connections may be intellectual, emotional, sensorial, communicative (csikszentmihalyi & robinson, 1991), and/or social. that is, students may connect with the subject matter at-hand cerebrally, viscerally, and through their senses. they may also relate to the topic by feeling an attachment to the time period (e.g., the victorian era), culture, or through actual people (e.g., when studying math, one may connect to an understanding of actual mathematicians). one may also find a social connection to the class activity—social refers to the fact that sometimes we become engaged in an activity because of the people around us. teachers who find ways to connect students to the curriculum in a variety of ways ensure that they stay engaged throughout the learning experience. risk-taking refers to students’ opportunities to try something new, to step out of their ordinary routines. researchers have pointed out that risk-taking may increase students’ cognitive development, as well as their creativity, self-motivation, and student interest in subject matter, such as science (see uhrmacher & bunn, 2011). imagination refers to the manipulation of qualities or ideas. imagination may be intuitive, in which a person has a sudden insight; fanciful, in which a person combines unexpected elements such as with a dancing tree; interactive, in which a person works with materials to yield a product; or mimetic, in which a person mirrors or mimics the creative work of another. sensory experience includes at least one person and a sensory interaction with an object or place. the student uses her senses to investigate and engage with the object in order to discern its various subtle qualities. sensory experience also refers to a sensory-rich environment that enhances the student’s experience. obvious examples include math manipulatives or science experiments, but more subtle sensory experiences might include background music during a writing activity or using drums to play the rhythmic meter in sonnets. perceptivity describes a deepened sensory experience during which one thoroughly examines the object using one or more senses. the goal of perceptivity is to see or re-see in order to know more. in this case, the senses are used to directly know more about a particular object, such as a bird’s nest. how are the twigs and leaves woven together? might we distinguish various odors? what do the sounds of the materials teach us? active engagement requires students to fully participate in their own learning. this includes physical activity, making choices, and/or creating personal meaning. teachers may, for example, work with students to create a menu for ways to represent their learning, or the class may work through an experiential problem, such as a role-play, debate, or simulation. conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 6 the six elements of an aesthetic experience might be used in a variety of combinations. also, teachers might use them in the initial planning of their lessons, or in the moment to energize an otherwise bland or uninteresting class session. regardless of when they are utilized, the elements of crispa can serve as intentional curricular choices that can increase the likelihood of students having aesthetic experiences during a lesson. methodology our previous research has investigated what the crispa elements look like in the classroom, and we have provided elsewhere vignettes of activities and student experiences 2 . the present study follows up on one of our unexpected findings that the teachers had “euphoric” experiences while engaged in curriculum planning with the aesthetic elements of crispa (moroye & uhrmacher, 2009). to explore this idea, we asked two research questions:  how do experienced teachers perceive and use the crispa elements?  what do the elements mean to the teachers in terms of their professional work and lives? we employed the research methodology of educational connoisseurship and criticism, a humanities-based method, largely conceptualized by elliot eisner (2002) that aligns with our research in aesthetics and the arts. this method, which has been used internationally over several decades (moroye, 2009), is a qualitative methodology designed to improve education (eisner, 1997). the conceptual underpinnings of this method have been elaborated at length elsewhere (eisner, 1997; 2002) and therefore we provide a brief overview of the general procedures. there are four components to educational connoisseurship and criticism (henceforth referred to as educational criticism), which are interconnected and serve to guide the researcher (eisner, 1997). the first component is description, which is the actual portrayal of what the connoisseur(s) saw or heard. in this article we offer detailed descriptions in the form of vignettes of the one-day workshop as well as descriptions of the artifacts they created illustrating their experience with crispa. the descriptions are written in the first-person by the researcher who facilitated the workshop so as to provide an authentic account of the experience. along with this description, we weave in focus group data that we incorporate in our analysis. we coded the focus group data to arrive at themes connected to the teachers’ perceived outcomes of working with this particular model, crispa. the second component of educational criticism is interpretation, which is our analysis of what we observed in the workshop and in the images they created. our interpretations are woven into the descriptions of these two entities. the third component is evaluation, which connects to eisner’s (1997) idea that educational criticism should aim to improve education. we offer this evaluation after the descriptions and interpretation, sharing the ideas surrounding curriculum disruption. the fourth component, thematics, explains the concepts that emerge from the data. the themes that emerged in the present study came in the form of four outcomes caused by curriculum disruption. our data collection took place when co-author bradley conrad conducted a one-day, eight-hour workshop on crispa for practicing teachers. there were 14 participants, six men and nine women, with two african-american participants and 12 white. all of the participants were practicing teachers from a variety of districts and grade levels, including four elementary teachers, three middle school teachers, and seven high school teachers from an array of content 2 for examples of lessons plans and classroom vignettes that illustrate the crispa elements, we invite the reader to explore www.crispateaching.org and to review our previously published work, specifically moroye and uhrmacher (2009; 2010) and uhrmacher et al. (2013). http://www.crispateaching.org/ conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 7 areas. the teachers attended the workshop in response to an invitation to participate in a onecredit seminar at the university. all attendees were given the option to participate in the study and only those who agreed are included in the data analysis and findings. prior to the workshop, participants were asked to bring in a lesson plan they had used in their classes that they would consider a typical lesson plan. during the workshop, participants learned about perceptual lesson planning (crispa). the facilitator introduced each element of crispa, one-by-one, supported with examples. they then solicited other examples from the participants who then applied the element to the lesson plan they brought to the workshop. at the conclusion of this exercise, participants compared their original lesson plan with the one they had altered with crispa. at the close of the workshop, to both gather information and to model a crispa idea, conrad asked participants to create a watercolor representation of their experience in response to this question: what was it like to go through the process of thinking about lesson planning in these terms using the crispa elements? after participants had time to create their picture, conrad debriefed and audio recorded the process through an open-ended, 45-minute focus group during which he asked participants to explain what their pictures meant and how they conveyed their experiences. the focus group allowed participants to debrief a shared experience while exploring and explaining what that experience meant to them. after the workshop, the other two researchers, moroye and uhrmacher, independently and then collaboratively analyzed the 14 watercolors and the transcript of the focus group discussion. similar to the process outlined by saldana (2009), we conducted two rounds of coding culminating in a third round of categorization and then subsequent thematic findings. the first cycle (saldana, 2009) coding consisted of independent descriptive codes focused on the experiences of the participants as portrayed through their comments during the focus group and the watercolors they created. we used such nomenclature as “lesson planning” and “experience of teacher” and “experience for students.” we identified instances of corroboration and dissidence between the participants’ verbal and visual representations of their experiences. in other words, we did not rely upon our own interpretations of the participants’ drawings. rather, we used the combination of their comments about their work with the images they created to more deeply perceive what the workshop meant to them. the second cycle (saldana, 2009) coding, conducted jointly by moroye and uhrmacher, began with a comparison of our independent codes and resulted in refined categories of planning experiences: attention to the student experience; creativity; and professional transformation. from the categories the data took shape in the form of four thematic findings, which then informed our theory of disruption. presentation of data and findings we provide responses to our research questions by using, as educational criticism suggests, an artful representation of data accompanied by vignettes depicting the research setting and activities (also see barone & eisner, 2011). we then directly revisit the questions. we include a vignette in four parts written by conrad, the facilitator of the workshop. note that they are written in first person to reflect the participatory nature of the research. fading malaise the smell of coffee and a feeling of malaise emanates from a third-story university classroom as 14 teachers slowly file into the space where they will participate in a one-day crispa lesson planning seminar. one woman saunters in the room wearing gray sweatpants and a yellow hooded sweatshirt. she drags her feet conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 8 through short steps, almost as though sleepwalking; she carries a paper cup filled with coffee to her desk, nearly spilling some as she sits down. another male teacher slouches in the padded chair of his desk, staring blankly up to the ceiling, periodically nodding his head just prior to falling asleep. the lethargy in the room is almost palpable; there is hardly a sound in the classroom, save the sound made by my dry erase marker being rubbed against the whiteboard as i write the agenda for the day. there is a subtle irony to the listless mood in the room, as they signed up for this workshop to see how innovation and creativity might invigorate their lesson planning. serving the role of facilitator, i share with the teachers that they are going to go through each element of crispa, beginning with “connections”, and in that process, they will consider each element before applying it to the lesson plans have brought with them. “so the ‘c’ in crispa stands for connections,” i begin. what do you think of when you think of connections?” “they’re like when you feel drawn to something or see something in another person or object that you relate with,” a woman answers. “nicely said,” i affirm before going into more detail on the types of connections one might make. this definition is displayed on a handout and a powerpoint presentation on the screen in front of the room. the participants are then asked, “who has an example of what a connection might look like?” “i think of music,” a male participant replies. “so for example, i love the smashing pumpkins…the alternative rock band…and i have (loved them) since i first heard them. i remember hearing their song ‘today’ for the first time on the radio, 1992. they speak to me.” “great example. now let’s think about that with your lesson plan. where is a place that you can help students connect with the material you are teaching? what kind of space can you create and/or activity can you provide to help them make a strong connection to the content of your lesson?” as the participants ponder the question, they begin to work quietly, looking at their lessons as they make notes, but in but a few moments, they begin to confer with one another, unprovoked, as a buzz begins to fill the room. the participants are then invited to share what they have done with a few people around them. one participant remarks, “this is a lot more interesting than what i had.” i then utilize a similar format to familiarize them with the “r”, “i”, “s”, “p”, and “a” elements of the crispa acronym, examining and then asking the teachers to apply other elements of conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 9 the acronym to their lesson plans. there is a gradual crescendo in the room as participants talk excitedly about what they have done, periodically calling the facilitator over to get feedback or just share. during the peak of sound and energy, people are sprawled about the classroom, many having left their desks to sit on the floor or at a few stray chairs that were resting in the corner of the room. participants now talk excitedly of how much better their lesson plans are than they were before. disruption after a few hours of working through the ideas as a group, i invite the participants to visually illustrate what this experience of using crispa with their lesson plans was like. they do this by using watercolors, crayons, or markers on a small canvas to symbolically represent this experience. after working diligently, some with slow intention while others as if in a fit of creativity, i announce, “ok, if you could come to a logical stopping point, i want to hear what this process was like for you. you may comment on the picture, i’d love to see the picture, or you may not. what is it like to go through the process of lesson planning using the elements (of crispa)?” after a brief silence, sarah offers, “you know i tried to display it in my picture here (see figure 1), but it’s almost like the calming of the sea and in lesson planning, everything is part of it. all of this confusion here is the lessons that were learned here today, it’s the disruption in the lesson plan. i think you have these rainbow colors here that show it putting everything together to blend. we have this neutral color here where it’s all satisfied and together to be as one.” curriculum and disruption in the process of analyzing our data, the above quotation struck a chord that we believe warrants further attention. in short, the participant is saying that crispa is the disruption in the lesson planning process and the plan itself. although we did not have the opportunity to interview the participant later to see what exactly she meant by her usage of the term, her quotation provided the material to propel our thinking and interpret our data from a fresh viewpoint. disruption often refers to something negative, such as when we say that the students are disrupting the class, meaning that learning is not happening. but disruption may also be used in a positive way, as a force that blocks a diatribe of power. disrupting the discourse in order to focus on a set of new ideas and issues and to get at root causes of problems as opposed to perceived surface matters has been a point of discussion for postmodernists (graham, 2011), race theorists (blackmore, 2010; writer, 2008), feminist scholars (fine, 1992; shinew, 2001), and those concerned with curriculum (iseke-barnes, 2009; munroe, 1998; sleeter, 2009) and teaching (stone, 1996). often the writer’s goal is to disrupt theory and practice with the aim of social justice. for some, such as foucault, who said, “i take care not to dictate how things should be,” the writer’s purpose is achieved once such a disruption is surfaced (as cited in graham, 2011, p. 664). conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 10 foucault “wrote provocatively to disrupt equilibrium and certainty, so that ‘all those who speak for others or to others’ no longer know what to do’” (as cited in graham, 2011, p. 664). while the goal of disorientation is meaningful for a variety of purposes, our data suggest that disruption can be further theorized. in particular, we wondered if the disruption the participant noted was one that stopped at disruption, or if it was an experience that led to something else. to explore and interpret our data, we turned then to works in the business literature, where the notion of disruption is receiving a great deal of attention and is even being applied to education. for example, christensen, horn, and johnson (2008) point out in their observant and creative text, disrupting class: how disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns that there are two types of innovation: sustaining and disrupting. christensen, with his colleagues (2008), applies these two notions of innovation in the business world to the field of education. briefly, sustaining innovations support and improve the performance of a product: airplanes should fly farther, computers ought to process faster, and cellular phone batteries might last longer (christensen et al., 2008, p. 46). disruptive innovations, however, do not provide an advance in improvement: instead of sustaining the traditional improvement trajectory in the established plane of competition, it disrupts that trajectory by bringing to the market a product or service that actually is not as good as what companies historically had been selling. because it is not as good, the existing customers…cannot use it. but by making the product affordable and simple to use, the disruptive innovation benefits people who had been unable to consume…the product. (christensen et al., 2008, p. 47) the authors point out that the personal computer is a classic example. pcs eventually replaced the large, expensive mainframes created by companies such as ibm. while initially personal computers such as the apple iie were not as good as the mainframes, they appealed to a new constituency: children in schools instead of corporate executives. the rest of the story should be well known (if not, see isaacson, 2011). from this point of view on disruption theory we would note that crispa was not about creating an improved lesson plan in the sense that it would necessarily yield a more efficient, standardized lesson to meet state objectives. rather, crispa is about disrupting the improvement trajectory and offering an innovation: it can, among other things (explained below) enhance creativity. also, its new constituency is the teacher him or herself and not administrators or others who wish to dissect the teacher’s commitment to state standards and objectives. this is a significant disruption to curriculum as it is currently contemplated and utilized in education. scripted curricula like the springboard program, everyday math, success for all, and open court, just to name a few, have become increasingly popular in schools as a means to meeting the demands required by standardized testing (milosovic, 2007). these curricula, which remove the teachers from the curriculum making process, transform teachers into curriculum implementers. perceptual lesson planning is a clear disruption to such a perspective and (re)places the teacher at the heart of curriculum work. jean-marie dru (2002) offered another viewpoint on disruption theory in the field of advertising. from his perspective, disruption is built upon on a three-step process: convention, disruption, and vision. arguing that disruption differs from ‘change’ generally and simply something ‘new’ in particular, dru (2002) suggests that disruption is about changing the rules of convention and offering a new vision. for example, absolut vodka “positioned itself as a conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 11 fashion brand rather than a spirits brand. it resisted the conventional approach of relying on the product’s provenance and heritage” (dru, 2002, p. 20). convention: the premium quality of a spirit brand lies in its provenance. vision: absolut is about a fashion brand. disruption: transform the bottle into an icon, and build a territory around who drinks it and where (dru, 2002, p. 24). a key point we learn from dru (2002) is that disruption has vision—or to put it another way, what happens after the disruption? post-disruption reflection and response to research questions to review, our initial research questions included: 1) how do experienced teachers perceive and use the crispa elements? 2) what do the elements mean to the teachers in terms of their professional work and lives? as data analysis progressed, our findings have led us to consider the responses to these questions in terms of what happens when the lesson planning process is disrupted. it is important to note that none of these directly relate to improving student performance on standardized tests, though they may. more importantly, these possibilities focus on what has largely been ignored in the standardized testing movement – the actual educational experience for students and for teachers. the four possibilities revealed as themes from our data, which do focus on educational experience, include that the crispa disruption: 1. enlivened the experience for teachers of planning their lesson. 2. enhanced attention toward the student experience in the classroom. 3. provided the possibility for creativity by students and teacher (tools to be creative). 4. provided the potential for transformative experiences for teachers that change the way they view themselves and their professional responsibilities. the first theme is a response to our first research question that sought to understand the teachers’ experiences with crispa. the second, third and fourth themes relate to the second research question that sought to ascribe meaning for teachers’ work and lives. let’s return to the vignette and take a look at the discussion in the classroom with an eye towards these four possibilities. enlivened experience of the teacher and enhanced attention toward student experience responding to the woman who notes disruption, beth adds, “i have something similar to you but backwards. mine started off neutral, kind of gray and white, and that’s how i thought of the lesson and i thought, ‘as i learn more possibilities and incorporate more senses and perception and stuff… then it turned into this other side.’ i thought it made everything more vivid and experiential.” tom then shared, “mine exploded and then there were some products maybe in the same shape but have more facets that are by themselves. (crispa) really helped an awful plan; the ultimate goal being adding all of those different experiences for the students and for us.” stuart added, “my original lesson plan was predictable, black and white, orderly, before it traveled through the gray area where it was less predictable, kind of messy, but much more interesting that led to the light of what i ended up with.” after a long pause, lisa said, “this is my picture and the black part is the void in my mind and my boring lesson plans; conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 12 they’re still kind of jagged around the edges and this is the white space where i’m still thinking about things and things are still coming together in this beautiful symphony of colors; i definitely felt that today.” these quotations illustrate two of the dominant themes that emerged from these data: enlivenment of the experience of teachers and enhancement of attention toward the student experience in the lesson. as noted in previous studies, using crispa changes the way teachers characterize their experience of planning a lesson. the process of applying the elements to their content is intrinsically rewarding and meaningful. further, the teachers noted that they focused more deeply and intentionally on what students would be doing during the lesson, thus enhancing their attention to the learning experience. this is a shift from those who focus on how a learning objective might be met in a test, essay, or even an activity. the experience gains equal ground with the standards and content. as mark discussed his watercolor he says, “i did mine through my students’ perspective. over here is the fact that we have to create meaning; obviously it’s not constrained, it’s outside. there’s lots of colors, lots of sensory stuff going on, beautiful birds. the student here is not on fire, but he’s full of passion.” while mark focused on the ways in which students will make meaning, marcie reflects on how she can take an existing “core” lesson and view its new possibilities: mine went with the black hole of our system. the lesson has always been there and will always be there. it’s surrounded by everything you can put into it; the different colors, different ideas, different thoughts that kind of surround that core lesson that you might be teaching but give opportunities to teach your students. although not all quotations are included in this manuscript, we note that in several instances, the teachers shared that their lesson plans were enhanced by crispa in some meaningful way. second, the teachers not only spoke of the enhancement of their students’ experiences made possible by crispa, but also commented on the enlivenment of their own experience using the model. one participant describes the experience of creating the lesson plan with crispa as a symphony of colors, adding that her formerly mundane lesson plan had come to life. along with this the mere transformation of energy in the room is a clear testament to the enlivenment felt by the teachers. despite arriving in a somewhat listless way, both the energy and the physical space in the room were very much altered by the crispa experience; a real disruption. post disruption creativity and transformation the participants talk animatedly about what they have done. though most of the participants did not know each other prior to class, one would hardly be able to discern that if he or she were to walk into the room at this point. playing the role of facilitator, i again prompt the participants to share their images and their experiences from using crispa on this day. “other folks, talk about the process and how it was for you.” “mine shows how i was in the dark and now i’m in the light,” karen says (see figure 2). conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 13 figure 2. dark to light. two participants sitting near her nod their heads in agreement, one of whom is eleanor. she says: mine is real literal, because that’s how i am, but i don’t consider myself to be a particularly creative person, like that isn’t something for me that is a talent of mine; no one’s ever really told me i’m creative. and i know there are lots of different ways to be creative, which is what i appreciated about (the workshop)… but for me, it’s a really difficult process to strive for and i’ve worked with some crazy creative teachers who i adore, and i’ve tried to implement some of their practice in the classroom. but i feel like it’s a challenge for me to be creative. so i really appreciate being here today. for me i have these pictures of arrows pointing out of my brain because i feel like it really stretches my thinking and it’s a really reflective and time consuming process for me, it’s not something that comes naturally. but having these tools presented to me, it all just sort of came together. i don’t feel like i have to pull these ideas out of thin air. you can go through these certain avenues to put it all together and having all of these reflective questions or these reflective tools is really helpful to me. and it’s not about me being creative but it’s about creating spaces for my kids to be creative. so that was really a perception shift for me today. karen and eleanor’s comments point out that while some teachers learned how to enhance lessons, others had a deeper response. karen believed that something changed in her; she saw her work in a new light. eleanor had a similarly deep realization that she, too, could be a creative teacher. crispa gave her the tools to achieve what she had often seen other teachers do well—design and implement creative lessons. in particular, she realized that she can take the focus off of herself and focus on what her students are doing. we suggest that this response is a transformative one—that for some teachers this curriculum disruption shakes them to the core and changes their beliefs about themselves and their own teaching. the conversation continues with marvin who comments on the value of creativity. “i was thinking about creativity and how it helps solve problems and how it’s important for us to help students conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 14 be creative because, i always think about how in a small way we are teaching the future doctors, the future scientists, people who are going to create the world that we live in. i always think of it as protecting the world that we live in or preserving the world that we have and so it’s important for us to be creative as educators and to be the people who are creating the environment through which students can be creative.” finally, barbara holds up a picture that prominently displays a light bulb, offering, “this is us, being encouraged to think outside the box and this is me with a light bulb, which this class helped open my eyes to what is possible.” we note that our data suggest that crispa encourages creativity. in multiple cases the teachers shared how their lessons began as static, boring, or mundane before being transformed creatively. not only did many find that their lessons were transformed, but they were as well. themes and discussion what might we take away from our stories about teachers using crispa in the lesson planning process? first, we note that crispa offers a disruption, which encourages us to rethink the aims and processes of lesson planning itself. this is not only a deliverance from the historically common approach of teachers completing lesson plans for the purpose of submitting them to administrators, but is also quite a leap from the teacher as implementer of scripted curriculum model. to better illustrate this point, we utilize mary dru’s (2002) three-step disruption process, which includes convention, disruption, and vision. here convention refers to general practices. disruption refers to a break in the practice. and vision refers to providing ideas for new practices. table 1 disruption process for lesson planning convention: lesson plans are written in a linear, technical fashion to guide the teacher through a lesson and to show administrators that a lesson has been created to adhere to state guidelines. disruption: lesson plans will be written in an artistic fashion to inspire teachers in their teaching. vision: lesson plans will be valued for the ways in which they enliven the experience for teachers, enhance attention to the student experience, transform the teacher’s persona and practice, and increase creativity for both teachers and students. second, dru (2002) distinguishes high and low level disruptions. the latter shifts attention of the brand within the market while the former “displaces the entire market” (dru, 2002, p. 60). in our view, crispa is a high level disruption that aims to change the market, or in convention disruption vision conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 15 educational terms, alter the purpose, meaning, and outcomes of a lesson plan and its attendant consequences. third, we might view curriculum disruptions as occurring in one of three (nonhierarchical) ways. to begin, there is a technical breakthrough, often carried forward by research that allows curricularists to reform the field of education. the most recent brain-based research might fall under this category in that it helps us tinker with current educational designs to maximize human potential. in this category, convention is altered. the second type might be called cultural in that some curriculum proposals aim to embed new cultural ways of thinking and acting. culturally responsive pedagogy might be an example of this approach. in this category convention is shifted from one viewpoint to another. third, there are some discontinuities or disruptions that might be termed ontological in the sense that they break with convention altogether and form new visions (oliver & gershman, 1989). crispa lesson planning is an example of this third mode in that it overturns the general stated purposes of lesson planning altogether. limitations and future research as indicated in the methodology section, one of the three authors was an active participant-researcher in the study. as workshop facilitator, it was his role to provide an engaging workshop for the teachers. therefore, we recognize that his enthusiasm for the crispa model may influence the findings. however, the independent data analysis by the other two authors offers some buffer to his interpretations and therefore strengthens the positive findings. further, each participant was influenced in different ways by the crispa elements, and some had stronger positive feelings than others. such positivity may be in part attributed to the classroom environment and collective enthusiasm, but it is also corroborated by previous studies (see uhrmacher, 2009; moroye & uhrmacher, 2009, 2010). future research would certainly want to challenge and explore the positive reactions by the teachers and may also explore teachers “reentry” into their conventional teaching practices. how are these practices perceived by administration? what experiences do students report? the most “negative” comment from the participants in the present study was that the process was time-consuming. would she continue to use a meaningful but time-consuming model? would the process become less time consuming with further practice? while beyond the scope of this report, such explorations would add understandings to the crispa approach. another potential limitation to the study exists in that the researchers did not look specifically at the actual lesson plans created in the workshop. our previous research has specifically examined lesson plans, however, which yielded data that led to this study (see moroye & uhrmacher, 2009, 2010). as such, we were interested in exploring teacher experience given that we have previously collected data on and written about the lesson plan product. a future study considering both the experience as well as the product may be revealing. conclusion the present study explored and analyzed the experiences of 14 teachers as they encountered a novel approach to lesson planning. while the findings of this qualitative inquiry are not intended to be generalizable, they do add to the confluence of evidence that perceptual lesson planning (crispa) may serve as a curriculum disruption for many teachers. by analyzing their experiences and presenting them as vignettes, we provide forms of anticipation that may serve other scholars and practitioners interested in creative educational processes. further, we have argued that curriculum disruptions as such have the potential to re-envision education on various levels. conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 16 in our introduction, we cited several critiques of standardized education. as a result of the present study, we then argued that a curriculum disruption such as crispa might disorient standardization in a way that (re)places curriculum development power in the hands of teachers, rather than to outside sources. our purpose here is not to argue for or against standards or predetermined educational outcomes. rather, we are considering the notion that standards-based approaches to lesson planning might have unintended consequences. as such, this study was designed to create a space for teachers to experience lesson planning that privileges experience over standardized outcomes. we believe that the notion of a curriculum disruption—whether crispa or something else—provides the possibility for re-visioning 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(2005). aesthetic education institute of colorado, stage 1. unpublished evaluation for the colorado chapter of young audiences. conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 18 uhrmacher, p. b., & bunn, k. e. (2011). beyond the one room school. rotterdam, the netherlands: sense publishers. uhrmacher, p. b., conrad, b., & moroye, c. (2013). finding the balance between process and product in perceptual lesson planning. teachers college record, 115(7), 1-27. writer, j. h. (2008). unmasking, exposing, and confronting: critical race theory, tribal critical race theory and multicultural education. international journal of multicultural education, 10(2). retrieved from http://ijme-journal.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/137/226 http://ijme-journal.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/137/226 conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 19 author notes bradley conrad assistant professor capital university education department 1 college and main lc 210, columbus, oh 43209 bconrad634@capital.edu bradley conrad is an assistant professor in the education department at capital university. dr. conrad has published several articles in the areas of curriculum, teacher dispositions, and culturally responsive pedagogy. he has served as a faculty member at capital for the past four years where he teaches a variety of teacher education courses while mentoring undergraduate students in their teaching and research. he received his ph.d. in curriculum and instruction from the university of denver. christy m. moroye associate professor university of northern colorado educational foundations and curriculum studies mckee 285, greeley, co 80639 christine.moroye@unco.edu christy m. moroye, phd is associate professor of educational foundations and curriculum studies at the university of northern colorado. her research interests include ecological and aesthetic perspectives of teaching and learning. she is co-editor with david flinders of curriculum and teaching dialogue. p. bruce uhrmacher professor university of denver morgridge college of education denver, co 80208 bruce.uhrmacher@du.edu p. bruce uhrmacher is professor of education and research methods at the morgridge college of education, university of denver. his research interests include crispa, aesthetic education, and arts-based research. he is currently interim chair of the elliot eisner sig at aera. he has also served as a faculty advisor to think360arts for over twenty years. mailto:bconrad634@capital.edu mailto:christine.moroye@unco.edu mailto:bruce.uhrmacher@du.edu conrad, moroye, & uhrmacher: curriculum disruption: a vision for new practices in teaching and learning current issues in education, 18(3) 20 volume 18, issue 3 october 6, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez terrence mctier priyanka parekh lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word 1172_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 2 august 19, 2013 issn 1099-839x the effect of survey mode on high school risk behavior data: a comparison between web and paper-based surveys shobana raghupathy sociometrics corporationlos altos stephen hahn-smith contra costa behavioral health division there has been increasing interest in using of web-based surveys—rather than paper based surveys--for collecting data on alcohol and other drug use in middle and high schools in the us. however, prior research has indicated that respondent confidentiality is an underlying concern with online data collection especially when computer-assisted surveys are administered in group settings such as computer labs and classrooms. using a sample of 341 high school students, we conducted a study comparing alcohol risk behavior prevalence rates from the web-based surveys with paper-form version of the same survey. the online surveys used in the study implemented several programming safeguards to enhance privacy. the goal of our study was to see if the risk-behavior items—when transitioned to an online format with these additional safeguards—would provide prevalence estimates that are comparable to its paper form version. results showed that overall alcohol prevalence rates did not vary significantly between the two conditions. however, there was a significant interaction between gender and survey mode. females reported lower mean risk indicator rates compared to males, possibly indicating stronger privacy concerns among the former group. the results suggest that online survey administration may require targeted efforts to help alleviate confidentiality concerns among adolescent girls. keywords: online, alcohol, youth risk behavior, school health, web-based survey, methods. access to computers and the internet has become almost universal in schools in the united states (wells & lewis, 2006). consequently, there has been increased research on the potential use of web-based surveys in elementary, middle and high schools for collecting data on high-risk health behaviors (boyd, mccabe, cranford, & young, 2007; cooper et al., 2006; mccabe, boyd, young, crawford, & pope, 2005). computer and internetbased survey administration has several significant advantages over traditional paper and pencil data collection methods (lessler, caspar, penne, & barker, 2000; o’ reilly, hubbard, lessler, biemer, & turner, 1994; turner et al., 1998). for example, it is quicker, and more cost-effective as it completely eliminates the need for manual data entry thus reducing transcription errors as well as workload (turner, rogers, hendershot, miller, & thornberry, 1996; turner et al., 1998; lessler, caspar, penne, & barker, 2000; o’ reilly et al., 1994). moreover, unlike paper surveys, the computerized survey allows for complex questionnaire designs by providing automated skip patterns (i.e. questions that do not apply to a specific respondent are automatically skipped). this feature makes computer-based surveys especially attractive for interviewing younger children who may be unable to current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 2 maneuver complex branching in questionnaires (beebe, harrison, mcrae, anderson, & fulkerson, 1998). one particular concern has been the effects of mode of data collection (web-based surveys, paper surveys) on respondents’ actual and perceived privacy and anonymity regarding data collected online. these perceptions are especially critical as they impact respondents’ willingness to disclose socially undesirable behaviors such as unsafe sexual practices and/or substance abuse (sudman, 2001). the evidence is mixed in this regard. several recent school-based studies in the united states and elsewhere using school computer labs have found that web-based surveys and paper modes generally produced equivalent youth risk behavior prevalence estimates (bates & cox, 2008; denscombe, 2006; eaton et al., 2010; mccabe et al., 2005; van de looij-jansen & de wilde, 2008). however, confidentiality remains an underlying concern especially when responses are visible on monitor screens and the online surveys are administered in group settings such as computer labs and classrooms (beebe et al., 1998; brenner et al., 2006). in particular, substance use prevalence among adolescents has varied depending on their perceptions of privacy (aquilino, wright, & supple, 2000), anonymity (supple, acquilino, & wright, 1999), and trust (wright, aquilino, & supple, 1998). recently, denniston and his team of researchers (2010) conducted a comprehensive study comparing paper and pencil vs. web administration of the youth risk behavior survey (yrbs), which is the primary instrument used by schools in the united states for collecting data on a variety of adolescent high-risk behaviors. the research, sponsored by the center for disease control, involved 85 high schools in the us. the study found that students taking an online health-risk behavior survey expressed greater concerns about privacy than those who took the same survey in paper form (denniston et al., 2010). the study also found that the web-based survey produced more missing data due to nonresponses, compared to in-class administrations of paper surveys. the authors recommended against the administration of the yrbs in an online format: however, they indicated that steps to improve respondent privacy would possibly enhance the feasibility of using web-based surveys in schools, especially for small surveys that can be completed quickly. similar observations about privacy were also noted by beebe et al. (1998) who found that teen risk behavior reporting was higher among paper and pencil respondents –as compared to computer-based respondents-when computers were placed closer (beebe et al., 1998). further examination of the feasibility of web based data collection in schools is needed because there is evidence that students themselves prefer taking online surveys despite privacy concerns (mangunkusumo et al., 2006; case & haines, 2004; hallfors, khatapoush, kadushin, watson, & saxe, 2000; mccabe et al., 2005; mccabe, boyd, young, & crawford, 2004). this preference may be based on the fact that web-based surveys—especially those that are audio-enhanced—are in a format that is more comprehensible to junior-high and vocational high school students, who might have lower literacy skills than senior-high school students (mccabe et al., 2004). in fact, the office of management and budget (omb) requires federally sponsored data collection efforts to offer an electronic mode of response whenever feasible, as this process is believed to reduce respondent burden (office of management and budget, 1998). indeed, given the cost and time advantages of online surveys compared to paper formats, the trend towards electronic data collection seems inevitable. study purpose our study extends the research on the mode effects of web-based data collection of adolescent health data in school settings. recently, our project team was invited to evaluate the feasibility of web-based data collection in a high school in rural washington. each year, the school collected risk indicator data from 9-12th graders by administering a 17-item paper survey on alcohol use risk behavior and attitudes. these items are drawn from the widely used youth risk behavior survey (yrbs), the same instrument that was the focus of the study by denniston et al. (2010) discussed earlier. our study incorporated several survey design features that were specifically addressed privacy concerns of the survey respondents. first, our survey was much smaller in scope and included just 17 items focused primarily on alcohol risk indicators (instead of all 90 plus items in the yrbs) as the school was mainly interested in measuring alcohol risk-behavior. we also incorporated programming features that promoted response confidentiality. the survey layout was designed to hold just one question at a time on the computer screen. once a response was entered by the student, the survey automatically progressed to the next question thereby instantly refreshing the screen. this auto progression feature also eliminated nonresponses as the students could move on to the next question only after the previous one was answered. online respondents were also automatically logged out after the last question. these privacy safeguards programmed into the web-based survey system were far more comprehensive than those used in prior research using online yrbs instruments, and were expected to enhance the confidentiality and anonymity of survey respondents1. consequently, we hypothesized that alcohol use risk prevalence estimates would be higher among the group taking the online survey, compared to those using the paper survey, as the former group would be more forthcoming about their high risk behaviors when assured of complete confidentiality and anonymity. the effect of survey mode on high school risk behavior data: a comparison between web and paper-based surveys 3 methods sample the study used a convenience sample of high school students in grades 9-12. students were drawn from a single school from a predominantly rural school district in washington state. a total of 341 high school students participated in this study comparing online versus paper form administration of an abbreviated version of the yrbs. the sample was fairly evenly split between male (50.4 percent) and female (49.6 percent) students. almost two-thirds of students (63.6 percent) were in either 9th or 10th grade. about 60% of the sample was white, with 30% native american2. about half the students were eligible for free or reduced priced school lunches. the school was given a stipend to assist with the study, and for supplying their computer lab for the study. students were randomly assigned into two research conditions: one that took the online version of the survey (condition a), and the other that took the paper form version (condition b). the sample size of condition a (online version) was 160 students, while condition b consisted of 181 students. data collection instruments and procedures project staff programmed the high school youth risk behavior survey as an online survey. the survey included 17 items on a number of alcohol use and risk indicator measures including short and long-term use, binge drinking, and perception of harm. online surveys were administered in the school computer lab, while paper surveys were administered in classrooms. several measures were undertaken to maximize privacy of responses. each student was assigned a unique id by a study coordinator hired by the project. students in condition a logged into the survey by entering his or her unique student id and self-administered the survey. responses entered into the online survey were directly deposited on an external server ensuring that teachers did not have access to the data. the survey screen held just one question at a time and progressed automatically to the next page upon completion of each question. this ensured that the screen was continually refreshed and did not display answers that were visible to everyone. besides enhancing privacy, this auto progression feature also meant that students had to complete each question before moving on to the next one, which completely eliminated nonresponses as students not wishing to answer a question had to check on a “decline to answer” box. students took about 25-30 minutes to complete the survey, which did not feature any skip patterns, and were automatically logged out upon completion. data collection for each test was conducted over 1-2 days in order to account for lab availability. all data collection procedures were approved by the study organization’s full institutional review board for the rights of human subjects in research. active consent was sought from parents, while students turned in assent forms. teachers were responsible for parental notifications at least two weeks before the study and for devising the schedules for computer lab use. a study coordinator hired by the project explained survey procedures and supervised the students in the computer lab during the survey administration process. students were reminded that their answers would be kept confidential and that they would be returning to take a retest in two weeks’ time. once the test and retest data were collected, project staff conducted the data analysis. results: alcohol use risk prevalence rates – online versus paper-form the goal of the present study was to determine whether there were significant differences in the prevalence of high risk behaviors and attitudes regarding alcohol use depending on whether survey questions were presented on a computer versus on paper. would the method of data collection have an effect on reporting tendencies of respondents? to examine this question, risk prevalence rates for each condition were examined. to simplify the analysis, questions were recoded into “high risk” versus “no risk” following coding used in past studies using the yrbs (e.g., brenner et al., 2002). the coding procedure is outlined in table 1. a chi-squared analysis was used to assess whether prevalence in each of the behavior risk factors varied between the two conditions. contrary to our hypothesis, risk indicator estimates using the above coding scheme were found to be comparable between the two conditions. in other words, mode of survey administration did not impact alcohol risk prevalence rates and no significant differences were found between the two conditions. out of the 17 individual items, just three registered significant differences between different modes of administration (table 2). analysis of variance (anova) was used to examine differential responses by subgroups, including gender, race, and grade level. race and grade level did not vary significantly between conditions; however, a significant difference did emerge for gender. 1 for example, in the study by denniston et al. (2010), up to four questions appeared on each screen and response choices remained visible until students clicked the ‘‘next” button on the bottom of each screen. also, students could advance to subsequent questions regardless of whether they left questions blank, which led to substantial nonresponses. 2 the school district lay in the outskirts of a reservation and has a high proportion of native american students. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 4 table 1 coding scheme for computing alcohol risk prevalence estimates item high risk no risk lifetime alcohol use 1 or more times 0 times alcohol use last 12 months 1 or more times 0 times alcohol use last 30 days 1 or more times 0 times binge drinking last 2 weeks 1 or more times 0 times parents upset if they found you had been drinking after party not at all upset to somewhat upset very to extremely upset been to party with other kids drinking over last 12 months 1 or more times 0 times driven a car after drinking over last 12 months 1 or more times 0 times ridden in car with someone who had been drinking over last 12 months 1 or more times 0 times number of friends who drink alcohol once a week or more 1 or more friends 0 friends easy for kids to get alcohol very easy sort of easy, difficult, or not sure believe people risk harming themselves with 1-2 drinks per day no or not sure yes believe people risk harming themselves with 3-4 drinks per day no or not sure yes believe people risk harming themselves with 5 or more drinks per day no or not sure yes is underage drinking harmful to your health no or not sure yes is binge drinking dangerous no or not sure yes wrong for kids under 21 to drink no or not sure yes able to say “no” when all friends are drinking no or not sure yes the effect of survey mode on high school risk behavior data: a comparison between web and paper-based surveys 5 table 2 prevalence of substance use variables: overall and within each survey mode total (n=341) condition a online (n=161) condition b p & p (n=180) x2 p-value lifetime alcohol use 73.1% 70.0% 75.8% ns alcohol use last 12 months 56.6% 55.3% 57.9% ns alcohol use last 30 days 31.9% 31.1% 32.6% ns binge drinking last 2 weeks 19.8% 18.0% 21.3% ns parents upset if they found you had been drinking after party 71.9% 71.9% 71.9% ns been to party with other kids drinking over last 12 months 53.1% 47.8% 57.9% ns driven a car after drinking over last 12 months 7.7% 8.7% 6.7% ns ridden in car with someone who had been drinking over last 12 months 41.6% 36.6% 46.1% ns number of friends who drink alcohol once a week or more 60.7% 57.8% 63.3% ns easy for kids to get alcohol 66.0% 68.8% 63.5% ns believe people risk harming themselves with 1-2 drinks per day 44.1% 37.5% 50.0% p<.05 believe people risk harming themselves with 3-4 drinks per day 24.2% 23.6% 24.7% ns believe people risk harming themselves with 5 or more drinks per day 10.9% 8.7% 12.9% ns is underage drinking harmful to your health 19.8% 16.1% 23.0% ns is binge drinking dangerous 14.2% 10.6% 17.4% p<.05 wrong for kids under 21 to drink 47.6% 46.3% 48.9% ns able to say “no” when all friends are drinking 27.1% 22.4% 31.5% p<.05 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 6 table 3 prevalence rates by condition and gender question item male female online (n=87) p&p (n=84 ) x2 p-value onlin e (n=74 ) p&p (n=94 ) x2 p-value lifetime alcohol use 76.7% 78.6% ns 62.2 % 73.4 % ns alcohol use last 12 months 59.8% 59.5% ns 50.0 % 56.4 % ns alcohol use last 30 days 37.9% 35.7% ns 23.0 % 29.8 % ns binge drinking last 2 weeks 21.8% 26.2% ns 13.5 % 17.0 % ns parents upset if they found you had been drinking after party 67.8% 73.8% ns 76.7 % 70.2 % ns been to party with other kids drinking over last 12 months 54.0% 59.5% ns 40.5 % 56.4 % p<.05 driven a car after drinking over last 12 months 10.3% 6.0% ns 6.8% 7.4% ns ridden in car with someone who had been drinking over last 12 months 43.7% 44.0% ns 28.4 % 47.9 % p<.01 number of friends who drink alcohol once a week or more 62.1% 70.2% ns 52.7 % 57.0 % ns easy for kids to get alcohol 68.6% 65.5% ns 68.9 % 61.7 % ns believe people risk harming themselves with 1-2 drinks per day 45.3% 52.4% ns 28.4 % 47.9 % p<.01 believe people risk harming themselves with 3-4 drinks per day 31.0% 22.6% ns 14.9 % 26.6 % p<.05 believe people risk harming themselves with 5 or more drinks per day 10.3% 10.7% ns 6.8% 14.9 % ns p0is underage drinking harmful to your health 23.0% 22.6% ns 8.1% 23.4 % p<.01 is binge drinking dangerous 18.4% 17.9% ns 1.4% 17.0 % p<.001 wrong for kids under 21 to drink 55.2% 47.6% ns 35.6 % 50.0 % p<.05 able to say “no” when all friends are drinking 29.9% 32.1% ns 13.5 % 30.9 % p<.01 risk index 42.1% 42.6% ns 31.2 % 40.5 % p<.01 notably, females reported lower mean risk indicator rates (m=36.4 percent) compared to males (m=42.7 percent), f(1,337)= 8.15, p<.01. more importantly for this study, there was a significant interaction between gender and whether students took the survey online or on paper-and-pencil, f(1,335)=4.40, p<.05. to analyze this trend further, a new variable, risk_index, was created to assess for mean differences between all four conditions (table 3). the risk_index was simply the mean prevalence across all 17 items for each student. while males had non-significant differences in responses across question items between the two survey methods, females had significantly higher risk prevalence rates in the paper-and-pencil condition (risk index=40.5 percent) relative to the online condition (risk index=31.2 percent). to examine these differences further, a chisquare analysis was performed for each question separately by gender (table 3). for males, there were no question items that varied significantly between survey the effect of survey mode on high school risk behavior data: a comparison between web and paper-based surveys 7 modality types. for females, however, 9 of the 17 risk prevalence questions varied significantly in their prevalence rates between survey administration modality. in all cases, females reported higher risk prevalence rates in the paper-and-pencil administration compared to the online method, suggesting that former group was more comfortable about revealing sensitive information about their alcohol risk behaviors. data quality in a prior study, denniston et al., (2010) saw far greater percentage of incomplete surveys and missing data among online respondents. our efforts at improving data confidentiality by programming privacy safeguards and restricting survey length seem to have had a positive effect on data quality. the number of missing or invalid responses across all questions was nearly non-existent for both the online and paper and pencil version of the survey. these results indicate that students in both groups were responsive to questions. this could be due to short length of the survey as well as because of the additional programming safeguards taken to enhance respondent confidentiality in the computer condition. general discussion the goal of this study was to gain a better understanding of differences that may exist when students take a health risk behavior survey using the traditional paper-and-pencil method of administration, compared to taking it online. risk indicator rates for alcohol-related risk behaviors were examined between the online and the paper-and-pencil versions of a 17-item survey whose items were drawn from the yrbs. we developed innovative programming safeguards to enhance respondent privacy and anonymity. these included elements such as auto-progression, forced response, instant screen refreshing and automatic logout. despite these features, our study did not detect higher risk prevalence among the online respondents, as was hypothesized. the alcohol risk indicators were comparable between the two survey modes, which is similar to the result found in earlier studies that used the yrbs (eaton et al., 2010; denniston et al., 2010). however, these additional privacy safeguards did improve data quality, and eliminated problems of missing data due to incomplete surveys and nonresponses that was found in the study by denniston et al. (2010). the most significant finding in our study, however, was revealed when examining the data separately by gender. on the majority of questions, females were more likely to endorse high risk items in the paper-and-pencil condition compared to the online condition. these results suggest that while overall risk prevalence rates for alcohol use do not vary much between survey conditions, there can be significant differences within specific subgroups (e.g., females). in this case, risk behavior prevalence rates for females were higher in the paper and pencil condition, indicating that perhaps female respondents were more confident in disclosing high risk behaviors on paper than they were when responding on a computer. these results are worthy of more investigation. there is some evidence in the field of ecommerce and consumer behavior that shows male-female differences in internet privacy risk perception and protection behaviors. for example, youn and hall (2008) found that girls perceived themselves as more susceptible to unsolicited email than boys, and perceived privacy risks to be more severe than boys. girls were also less likely to read unsolicited emails and tended to perceive provide inaccurate information boys online. it is therefore unsurprising that such online privacy concerns manifested themselves in self-reports of sensitive risk behavior data as well. the practical implications of our finding are clear. special attention should be paid to the specific environmental conditions, which may affect privacy concerns when students are completing surveys on sensitive information. this includes computer spacing, viewable area, the progression of survey questions, and other environmental factors that contribute to perceived privacy, which can have a profound impact on questions of a sensitive nature. equally important, attention should be paid to understanding the deeper dynamics at play regarding how different subgroups of students respond to survey questions in light of the mode in which they are administered. higher levels of risk perception and privacy concerns can cause girls to be less than forthcoming in their responses, and special efforts may needed to help girls alleviate these concerns, over and above environmental conditions. it would be a great contribution to the literature to create an established standard and best practice to follow when students are responding to surveys containing sensitive data. this issue is particularly important now as computers are ubiquitous and computer-based surveys are becoming more and more prevalent. references aquilino, w. s., wright, d. l., & supple, a. j. 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(1998). a comparison of computer-assisted and paper-andpencil self-administered questionnaires in a survey on smoking, alcohol, and drug use. public opinion quarterly, 62, 331–53. youn, s., & hall, k. (2008). gender and online privacy among teens: risk perception, privacy concerns, and protection behaviors. cyberpsychology & behavior, 11, 763-765. the effect of survey mode on high school risk behavior data: a comparison between web and paper-based surveys 9 article citation raghupathy, s., & hahn-smith, s. (2013). the effect of survey mode on high school risk behavior data: a comparison between web and paper-based surveys. current issues in education, 16(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1172 author notes shobana raghupathy sociometrics corporation 201 main street, suite 100, los altos, ca 94022 shobana@socio.com dr. raghupathy is senior research associate at sociometrics corporation. since 1997, when she secured her ph.d degree in sociology from brown university, dr. raghupathy has played a leading role in transferring prevention research into practice, primarily in the area of adolescent health. her work includes development of science-based resources for youth-based drug prevention; multimedia tools for evaluation and implementation; practitioner assistance and training on program replication and adaptation. dr. raghupathy has secured numerous grants from the national institute of health for creating school-based health education tools for youth. these included an online data collection system for school districts; a drug prevention program for native american elementary school children; and currently, a suicide prevention intervention for native american high schoolers. dr. raghupathy has established a solid track record as a prevention researcher, having served as research advisors to several external public and private research organizations (california healthy kids resource center, california department of education; pacific institute for research and evaluation and california department of health services; nida and center for scientific review). prior to joining sociometrics, dr. raghupathy worked in international organizations such as the world bank and the unicef. stephen hahn-smith behavioral health services contra costa behavioral health division 1340 arnold dr. #200 martinez, ca 94553 steve.hahn-smith@hsd.cccounty.us stephen hahn-smith, ph.d. is a research and evaluation manager at the mental health division, contra costa county. this role involves oversight of all research activity for the division of mental health, including the collection of performance measures for consumers in the system, monetary and revenue analysis, productivity reporting, and consumer satisfaction surveys. recently, he has been part of the planning and evaluation team for the mental health services act programs, a new initiative for innovative programs for consumers of the public mental health system. he has also been involved in several large scale cross-site studies, including the caasp infrastructure grant in new mexico; the statewide system of care evaluation while at the university of california, san francisco; and several prevention related cross-site studies while at emt associates. currently, he is the coordinator of research and evaluation in contra costa county for the public mental health plan. dr. hahn-smith received his ph.d from the university of new mexico in 1996; master’s in education from harvard university, and bachelor of arts from university of colorado, boulder. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 2 10 manuscript received: 01/24/2013 revisions received: 06/03/2013 accepted: 07/13/2013 the effect of survey mode on high school risk behavior data: a comparison between web and paper-based surveys 11 volume 16, number 2 august 19, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors ayfer gokalp david isaac hernandez-saca linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template current issues in education, 19(1) 1 volume 19, issue 1 march 8, 2016 issn 1099-839x research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students ali merç anadolu university, turkey abstract: the purpose of this study was to investigate the level and predictors of research-related anxiety among graduate elt students in the turkish context. 81 ma and phd students from 14 universities offering graduate programs in elt responded to a background questionnaire, a research anxiety scale, and a research self-efficacy survey. the analysis of the data revealed that graduate students were moderately anxious about conducting research. it was also found out that self-efficacy beliefs of graduate students were able to explain a certain portion of the research anxiety. furthermore, while gender and having a publication experience do not affect the level of research anxiety, ma students were found to be having more research-related anxiety than phd students. finally, research self-efficacy was found to be negatively correlated with research anxiety. the overall findings suggest that graduate students need support to increase their selfefficacy about research in order to have lower levels of research anxiety. recommendations for graduate programs and suggestions for further research are also provided. keywords: research anxiety, research self-efficacy, graduate students, elt apa-style citation: merç, a. (2016). research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students. current issues in education, 19(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1539 accepted: january 2 nd , 2016 graduate students in turkey are considered as the lucky minority as they are accepted to graduate schools after challenging examinations. most of them possess the self-confidence and feeling of accomplishment as they were among the good students during their undergraduate studies. nevertheless, the road that goes to the successful completion of the programs is full of obstacles. the research requirement of the graduate courses, the courses specifically designed on research methods training, and the dissertation writing process usually bring psychological burden on those students. anxiety is one of those sentiments that graduate students often experience during their work in the graduate school. graduate students in the field of english language teaching (elt) are no exception. they are even more concerned as most of them hold the two roles in the educational settings: being a student and being a teacher. within this understanding, the present study aims to find out the level of research anxiety experienced by turkish graduate elt students and to identify the predictors of the research anxiety experienced by these students. http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1539 merç: research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students current issues in education, 19(1) 2 theoretical background and previous research according to sevidy-benton and o’kelly (2015), graduate student anxiety is a problem for the reason that this state is a dynamic mechanism in foreseeing students’ accomplishment. the complication of this might appear as the fact that the degree graduate students are supposed to obtain is acquired late or is never acquired. in other words, “anxiety about the research required in a class may overshadow any benefits the student may get from the content” (sevidybenton & o’kelly, 2015, p. 47). the complete disappointment and the procrastination experienced by these students are typically caused by these feelings of apprehension and fear about the research as well as the emotional states of insufficiency and uneasiness (onwuegbuzie & jiao, 1998). it is also evident that anxiety is strongly linked to student aspiration; in other words, higher levels of anxiety are caused by lower aspiration in students, those higher levels are also caused by low achievement scores (kazmi, 2013). research anxiety can simply be defined as the anxiety that students experience in courses on research methodology (onwuegbuzie, 1997). in his pioneer study on research anxiety, onwuegbuzie (1997) conjectured that research anxiety is multidimensional mechanism which includes library anxiety, statistical anxiety, composition anxiety, and research process anxiety. library anxiety is a component of research anxiety, and ‘barriers with staff’, ‘affective barriers’, ‘comfort with the library’, ‘knowledge of the library’, and ‘mechanical barriers’ are precursors of library anxiety among graduate students (onwuegbuzie & jiao, 1998). amongst these antecedents, cooperative attitudes are strongly linked to “barriers with staff, comfort with the library, and knowledge of the library (jiao & onwuegbuzie, 2002). statistics anxiety is also a vital phenomenon in graduate studies (onwuegbuzie & wilson, 2003). the relationship between statistics achievement and research anxiety, study habits, course load, and the number of statistics courses taken is significant among novice researchers (onwuegbuzie, 2013). according to elliott, choi, and friedline (2013), executing online statistics labs as an element of a basic research methods course may help students develop less negative attitudes toward statistics and expand their skills to read academic texts, which probably may result in lower levels of research anxiety. research anxiety in undergraduate programs has also been in the research agenda recently. according to butt and shams (2013), pre-service teachers do not hold positive attitudes towards research. as a matter of fact, undergraduates with the opinion that research is a vital component of their future professional lives have higher levels of anxiety (papanastasiou & zembylas, 2008). however, undertaking research projects with a first-hand involvement rather than being provided with theoretical knowledge about research may decrease the level of anxiety experienced by student teachers (akyüz, 2013). hence undergraduate programs, especially the teacher education programs, should act as an actual participant in reducing students’ research anxiety (butt & shams, 2013). as they are more involved in the research component of the academic programs, graduate students are relatively more prone to anxiety. previous research on the research anxiety of graduate students revealed different results. for example, trimarco (1997) found out that graduate students with a superior extent of knowledge experienced less anxiety in the usa context. abdullah, erfanmanesh, and abdul karim (2014) reported that a certain level of information seeking anxiety was existent among malaysian postgraduate students. iranian graduate students, on the other hand, were found to be experiencing a moderate level of research anxiety, holding high level of research self-efficacy, and having positive attitudes toward research (rezaei & zamani-miandashti, 2013). in a very recent inquiry, van der westhuizen merç: research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students current issues in education, 19(1) 3 (2015) reported that graduate students in south africa were enthusiastic about learning and were positive about the importance of research in their professional lives although research was a tough subject to master. as for gender variable, studies showed that there was no significant relationship between anxiety levels of graduate students and their gender (bibi, lqbal, & majid, 2012; trimarco, 1997). as for the field of study variable, it was evident that ma students in the field of elt were among the groups who exhibited higher levels of research anxiety than the graduate students from other disciplines (bibi et al., 2012). research-related concerns of graduate students in turkey have also been investigated. for example, graduate students perceived writing the discussion part of a research paper as the most challenging aspect of writing research papers while writing a list of references was the least challenging component (köksal & razi, 2011). as for the research anxiety, it was found out that turkish graduate students had low levels of research anxiety (bayar, bayar, eğmir, ödemiş, & kayir, 2013; saracaloğlu, 2008). moreover, graduate students’ level of research anxiety did not differ in terms of their age, gender, and level of education. the current status of the graduate students, however, was varied: research assistants as graduate students had significantly lower levels of anxiety than their classmates (bayar et al., 2013). in order to reduce the research-related anxiety, einbinder (2014) suggests employing some innovative educational techniques as a result of which students can deal with their worries, grow self-confidence in their skills, and grasp fundamental constituents of research methods. according to kracker (2002), a cognitive/affective training model given in a 30-minute format can decrease the anxiety that is often linked to research paper assignments for novice researchers. following the investigations about the relationship between the ra and rse, maschi, wells, yoder-slater, macmillan, and ristow (2013) suggest a teaching model for instructors for lessening research-related anxiety of students by enhancing their self-confidence about research. generating an understanding classroom environment, offering emotion-, cognitive-, and action-focused tasks, and using planned timing are among the strategies that instructors can use. finally, graduate students’ research-related anxiety decreases while their information literacy skills increase when there is an opportunity to work one-on-one with the librarians (brinkman & hartsell-gundy, 2012). the self-efficacy concept can be defined as the “beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (bandura, 1997, p. 3). self-efficacy in an instructional context might easily be associated with the factors affecting the academic performance of a learner (büyüköztürk, atalay, sozgun, & kebapçı, 2011). in other words, higher levels of student determination, confrontation, and endurance might be the consequences of higher levels of self-efficacy beliefs. research self-efficacy is similar to research anxiety in the way that both concepts are factors to foretell student attainment (sevidybenton & o’kelly, 2015), and both may lead to catastrophic consequences for graduate students in their effort to successfully complete their programs (onwuegbuzie & jiao, 1998). furthermore, studies conducted to investigate graduate students’ self-efficacy beliefs in turkey showed that those students were sufficient in preparing assignments, presentations, and projects (gökçek, taşkın, & yıldız, 2014). besides, self-efficacy beliefs of graduate students are connected to their computer self-efficacy (odaci, 2013; tuncer, 2013), and subjective well-being (odaci, 2013). research self-efficacy and research anxiety are two significantly related concepts (saracaloğlu, 2008) to the extent that students’ levels of research anxiety decrease while their research self-efficacy increases (pajares, 2002; rezaei & zamani-miandashti, 2013; trimarco, merç: research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students current issues in education, 19(1) 4 1997). what is more, anxiety and difficulty of research as a subject matter do not relate to graduate students’ positive attitudes towards research or the extent to which they viewed research as beneficial for their future career (van der westhuizen, 2015). significance of the study and the research questions the aforementioned research findings about anxiety together with other variables affecting the success of a graduate program call for the question of ‘how efficient are those programs to train future researchers?’ although the answer to this question is not clear, bilican (2014) discovered that an elt phd program at a turkish university was effective at improving the analytical and critical thinking abilities of the phd candidates about research design. on the other hand, it is a known fact now that the current programs can be augmented by providing students with wider-ranging teaching resources as well as more sensible and thorough feedback (bilican, 2014). nevertheless, research on graduate students’ anxiety and other components of research in graduate work is quite limited, especially in the elt context. this study, therefore, is an attempt to shed more light into the issue. the present study is the first example of its kind to document the components of research anxiety and research self-efficacy and the possible relationship between the two concepts. it is obvious that the study is important for detailing the current status of the feelings of the graduate students of elt towards conducting research. this will probably be inspiring for researchers studying on the graduate students in many other disciplines. to this end, the following research questions were formed for the present investigation: 1. what is the level of research anxiety experienced by turkish graduate elt students? 2. do variables such as gender, level of graduate study, publication experience, and research self-efficacy beliefs have an effect on graduate elt students’ research anxiety? methodology participants the participants of this study were 81 (25 male and 56 female) graduate students from 14 turkish universities offering an ma and/or phd programs. they were from different age groups: 20-25 years of age (24.69%), 26-30 years (43.21%), 31-36 years (13.58%), and 36 and above years (18.52%). 45 of the participants were ma students while 36 of them were studying phd in elt. more than half of the participants were efl instructors at universities (62.96%) while some of them were either research assistants at elt departments of universities (22.22%) or teachers teaching at state (9.88%) or private schools (2.47%) at k12 level. only two of them were not working at the time of study, but full-time graduate students. all of the participants had at least one basic ‘research methods’ course during their graduate study while some of them had some other research-related courses. 92.59% of them had the ‘research methods in elt/in social sciences’ course. furthermore, 56.79% of them took a course on ‘quantitative research methods’ such as statistics in elt, statistics in social sciences, etc. 61.73% of them had already taken a ‘seminar’ course in which they were supposed to write research papers. only 33.33% of them had a course related to ‘qualitative research methods’. as for the publication experience of the participants, more than half of the students (54.32%) had never published a paper in a journal, in a conference proceeding, or in an edited book. other students had experienced publication at an academic outlet at least once. the purposes of graduate study in elt were also diverse. most students indicated that they were doing it for pursuing an academic career (88.89%), and 53.09% wanted it to improve themselves as efl teachers. the remaining reasons for a graduate study was either to be merç: research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students current issues in education, 19(1) 5 appreciated by others (6.17%) or because of being forced by their institutions (2.47%) or their parents (1.23%). instruments an online survey was structured to obtain the required data to answer the research questions in three parts: a background questionnaire, the ‘research anxiety rating scale’ (rars), and the ‘research self-efficacy scale’ (rss). the background questionnaire. the background questionnaire consisted of 10 items. the participants were first asked questions eliciting their demographic characteristics such as gender, age, level of study, university, and current job. then, their current experience related to graduate courses related to research and their own publication experience were questioned. students’ reasons for studying in graduate programs were also elicited. the rars. in order to find out participant students’ levels of research anxiety, the rars (onwuegbuzie, 2013) was used. rars is a five-item likert-type scale with a high level of reliability (alpha=.84). the scale consists of 45 items in seven sub-categories asking contributors to respond to on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). most of the statements in the scale were written in a way to specify research anxiety (i.e. writing a research proposal scares me) while some others indicated positive feelings about research anxiety (i.e. i am looking forward to conducting research in the library). the statements in the latter case were taken as reverse items and coded accordingly (1 for strongly agree and 5 for strongly disagree). as earlier studies on anxiety with different measures suggested (hart, 1987; horwitz, horwitz, & cope, 1986), mean scores below 2.00 were considered representing low levels of research anxiety while mean scores above 3.50 were considered as the indicators of high research anxiety. the mean scores between 2.01 and 3.49 were taken as moderate levels of research anxiety. the sub-categories in rars and sample statements are as follows: 1. fear of libraries (i am looking forward to conducting research in the library.) 2. fear of writing (writing a research proposal scares me.) 3. fear of statistics (since i do not like statistics, i do/will not enjoy research methods.) 4. fear of conducting research (conducting research takes up too much time.) 5. fear of research language (research methods textbooks are difficult to understand.) 6. fear of research courses (taking a course in research methods frightens me.) 7. perceived utility and competence (research meetings/conventions intimidate me.) the rss. in order to find out the self-efficacy beliefs of graduate elt students related to research, the rss was utilized. this scale was developed by büyüköztürk et al. (2011) as a five-item likert-type scale and established a high reliability level (alpha=.87). it consists of 18 items each of which describes a competency related to conducting research such as i believe i am sufficient in creating hypotheses relevant to my research (item 2) or i can discuss my research findings within a conceptual framework (item 15), and participants are supposed to indicate to what extent they agree with those statements on a scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). to have a consistency with the rars, mean scores below 2.00 from the rss were considered representing low levels of self-efficacy beliefs about conducting research while mean scores above 3.50 were considered as the indicators of high self-efficacy. the mean scores between 2.01 and 3.49 were taken as moderate levels of self-efficacy beliefs about research. procedures the online survey was uploaded to an online survey website in february 2015, at the end of the fall semester before the spring semester started. the link of the survey, then, was emailed to the professors from different universities to reach students from various graduate elt merç: research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students current issues in education, 19(1) 6 programs. the survey was open for two weeks. once the time was over for responding to the survey, the collected data were entered to spss (version 22) for statistical analyses. descriptive statistics, a multiple regression test, independent-samples t-tests, and a pearson’s correlation test were computed in order to answer the relevant research questions. results in order to answer the first research question ‘what is the level of research anxiety experienced by turkish graduate elt students?’, descriptive statistics were run using the results obtained from the rars. table 1 presents the mean scores for the seven factors as well as the total scale. table 1 descriptive statistics for rars factors n mean fear of conducting research 81 3.02 fear of libraries 81 2.88 fear of research language 81 2.81 fear of writing 81 2.70 fear of research courses 81 2.23 perceived utility and competence 81 2.09 fear of statistics 81 2.05 overall 81 2.43 as table 1 shows, graduate elt students had moderate levels of research anxiety when both the overall scale (mean score= 2.43) and seven factors (mean scores ranging from 2.05 to 3.02) are considered. nevertheless, it was evident from the analysis that fear of statistics and perceived utility and competence related to research were the most anxiety-provoking factors. on the other hand, fear of conducting research as well as fears related to libraries, research language, and writing were the least anxiety-creating factors among the seven components of research anxiety. in order to answer the second research question, do variables such as gender, level of graduate study, publication experience, and research self-efficacy levels have an effect on their research anxiety?, first, the descriptive statistics were calculated. the analysis showed that ma students had a higher research anxiety level than the phd students (m= 2.52 and 2.32 respectively). on the other hand, the mean scores of the male and female students in the research anxiety scale were quite similar (m= 2.42 and 2.43 respectively). similarly, students with a publication experience obtained a similar mean sore (m= 2.40) with their peers without such experience (m= 2.46). finally, the average research self-efficacy score of the participants was calculated as 3.85, which meant that graduate students were highly self-efficacious in terms of conducting research. second, a multiple regression test was run to find out the effect of the four variables (gender, level of study, publication experience, and research self-efficacy beliefs) on the research anxiety scores of the participants (table 2). table 2 shows that gender, level of study, publication experience, and research self-efficacy beliefs were altogether able to explain the 33% of the research anxiety. the analysis also suggested that while gender, level of study, and publication experience had minor effects, research self-efficacy had a significant effect on graduate students’ research anxiety. merç: research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students current issues in education, 19(1) 7 table 2 multiple regression test results model r adjusted r 2 β sig. gender .015 -.012 .021 824 gender, level of study .240 .033 -.075 ,490 gender, level of study, publication experience .243 .022 -/005 ,960 gender, level of study, publication experience, research self-efficacy .603 .330 -.578 ,000 in order to find out the significance of the differences among the mean scores, independent t-tests were run between research anxiety scores and gender, level of study, and publication experience separately. the results indicated that the scores were significantly different for the ‘level of study’ variable whereas the scores were not significantly different in terms of ‘gender’ and ‘publication experience’ variables. as table 3 presents, ma students experienced significantly more research anxiety than the phd students. nevertheless, none of the differences between the scores of the ma and phd students for the seven factors of the research anxiety scale were significantly different. table 3 results of t-test and descriptive statistics for rars by level of study level of study ma phd m sd n m sd n t df overall scale 2.52 .45 45 2.32 .36 36 2.18* 79 fear of libraries 3.11 1.82 45 2.59 .76 36 1.58 79 fear of writing 2.81 .66 45 2.56 .62 36 1.77 79 fear of statistics 2.15 .61 45 1.93 .38 36 1.91 79 fear of conducting research 3.03 .48 45 3.01 .34 36 .19 79 fear of research language 2.83 .48 45 2.78 .52 36 .47 79 fear of research courses 2.35 .71 45 2.08 .53 36 1.87 79 perceived utility and competence 2.19 .54 45 1.96 .52 36 1.97 79 * p < .05. the gender variable, on the other hand, did not provide any significant differences in terms of the overall research anxiety scores of male and female students (table 4). the only merç: research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students current issues in education, 19(1) 8 significant difference was observed in factor 2, in which female graduate students were significantly more anxious than their male peers for writing research papers. table 4 results of t-test and descriptive statistics for rars by gender gender female male m sd n m sd n t df overall scale 2.43 .44 56 2.42 .37 25 .12 79 fear of libraries 3.07 1.64 56 2.46 .84 25 1.75 79 fear of writing 2.80 .69 56 2.47 .50 25 2.17* 79 fear of statistics 1.99 .48 56 2.19 .62 25 -1.52 79 fear of conducting research 2.99 .48 56 3.10 .23 25 -1.09 79 fear of research language 2.79 .47 56 2.85 .57 25 -.54 79 fear of research courses 2.21 .67 56 2.27 .61 25 -.38 79 perceived utility and competence 2.09 .56 56 2.09 .50 25 .00 79 * p < .05. table 5 results of t-test and descriptive statistics for rars by publication experience publication experience with experience without experience m sd n m sd n t df overall scale 2.39 .36 37 2.46 .47 44 -.70 79 fear of libraries 2.75 1.28 37 2.98 1.60 44 -.70 79 fear of writing 2.63 .74 37 2.75 .57 44 -.82 79 fear of statistics 1.97 .43 37 2.11 .60 44 -1.17 79 fear of conducting research 3.05 .28 37 3.00 .51 44 .52 79 fear of research language 2.86 .49 37 2.76 .51 44 .81 79 fear of research courses 2.16 .50 37 2.29 .75 44 -.89 79 perceived utility and competence 2.04 .49 37 2.13 .58 44 -.71 79 * p < .05. merç: research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students current issues in education, 19(1) 9 as for the ‘publication experience variable’, there were no significant differences between graduate students who published a paper and the ones who had never experienced publishing papers in terms of both the overall research anxiety and the seven factors of the research anxiety scale (table 5). finally, in order to find out the possible relationship between the research anxiety and research self-efficacy beliefs of the graduate students, a pearson’s correlation test was run. the result showed that research self-efficacy and research anxiety were significantly correlated in a negative direction (r= -.599, p<.05), which means that research anxiety decreases as the level of self-efficacy increases. discussion and conclusions the findings of this study put forward that turkish graduate elt students experience research-related anxiety at a moderate level. this overall outcome finds support from earlier studies (abdullah et al., 2014; bibi et al., 2012; kracker, 2002; rezaei & zamani-miandashti, 2013; van der westhuizen, 2015) while it contradicts with some which found out that graduate students’ research-related anxiety is low (bayar et al., 2013; saracaloğlu, 2008). earlier studies concerning the research-training has largely emphasized the existence of statistics anxiety as the predictor and a determining factor of the research anxiety among students (elliott et al., 2013; onwuegbuzie, 2013; onwuegbuzie & wilson, 2003). however, the sample in this study reported experiencing statistics-related anxiety at the lowest level among all other factors. it is probably because of the fact that those students are equipped with the necessary skills to deal with statistics in research. as they indicated in the survey, all of these students had taken at least one research-related graduate course, almost all had taken elt-based research classes, and a majority already completed a course successfully about either quantitative research methods, qualitative research methods, or both. on the other hand, the most anxiety-provoking factor is the process of conducting research. graduate students find research, when compared to other factors of research-related anxiety, a highly time-taking activity and a challenging and stimulating discipline; it is also one of the least enjoyable components of the graduate study. in fact, according to van der westhuizen (2015), research is the most enjoyable part of graduate work, which students are very eager to learn about although it consists of very difficult subjects to master. therefore, it can be assumed that there is something missing in the graduate programs to support graduate students to overcome the difficulties emerging from the nature of the research-related subjects and to change their negative attitudes towards research. it is evident in the literature that holding positive attitudes towards research results in reduced levels of research-related anxiety (butt & shams, 2013; elliott et al., 2013; rezaei & zamani-miandashti, 2013; van der westhuizen, 2015). among the predictors of anxiety, gender has played a very minor role according to the findings of the present study as it was explaining only very limited portion of anxiety and the comparisons of the mean scores did not yield any significant differences between male and female graduate students. these findings corroborate with previous inquires (bayar et al., 2013; bibi et al., 2012) that the gender variable might not be cited as one of the factors influencing the research anxiety among graduate students. in addition to gender, graduate students’ involvement in publishing a research paper and/or presenting their research in front of an audience does not make a difference in terms of the level of research anxiety they experience. providing that a student is anxious about any component of the research process, earlier experiences of conducting research are not effective in reducing or diminishing his/her stress and concerns. this merç: research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students current issues in education, 19(1) 10 finding can be interpreted that even the most experienced researchers (professors or other publication-rich academics) might experience a certain degree of research anxiety from time to time in contrast to bayar et al.’s (2013) findings, which suggest that research assistants as graduate students experience lower levels of anxiety than their peers who are full-time students or doing other jobs. as a matter of fact, the number of publication is significantly correlated with research self-efficacy (rezaei & zamani-miandashti, 2013), therefore, it might be a more sound judgment to predict the existence of the research anxiety by considering the relevant factors as a whole rather than as separate entities. level of study (ma vs. phd), on the other hand, displayed a significant difference in this study within the finding that ma students were more anxious than the phd candidates in overall anxiety even though the seven factors comprising the overall anxiety level were not significantly different. this finding, however, does not mean that level of study is one of the factors to predict research-related anxiety among graduate students as it does not tend to predict the notion of anxiety by itself nor with other variables including gender and publication experience. one interpretation about this result can be to claim that phd students have already passed through a research process with all the steps during their earlier work and gained experience, which eventually helped them to deal with the possible anxiety-provoking situations in the process of conducting research. this interpretation, of course, would contradict with the discussion related to the findings which signposts that experience is not a predictor of research anxiety. nevertheless, publication experience might be a different concern from dealing with the research itself. thus, it is normal that ma students, who are at an earlier stage of conducting research, hold more research-related concerns than their peers as phd candidates. the most prominent finding of this study is that graduate elt students’ self-efficacy beliefs about research is one of the predictors of the possible research-related anxiety. in addition to its predicting ability, research self-efficacy beliefs are negatively correlated with the research anxiety experienced by graduate students. in other words, research anxiety decreases as research self-efficacy increases. previous studies on self-efficacy have also demonstrated the role and effect of self-efficacy beliefs on language learning anxiety claiming that there is a negative correlation between these two concepts (tsai, 2013). in the same vein, the findings support the existing literature in the way that higher self-efficacy results in lower research anxiety (pajares, 2002; rezaei & zamani-miandashti, 2013; trimarco, 1997). the present findings also confirm the postulation that graduate students with higher levels of self-confidence and stronger beliefs about their ability to handle research-related responsibilities such as completing the course work or writing theses experience less anxiety about research. implications and recommendations this study generally showed that graduate elt students experience moderate levels of research anxiety, and this anxiety is interconnected to their self-efficacy beliefs about conducting research. a number of suggestions are possible for the instructors in the graduate schools to help graduate students find ways to increase their self-efficacy and to experience lower levels of research anxiety. otherwise, undesired levels of anxiety about research may result in leaving the graduate programs or incomplete assignments and dissertations. first, graduate students should be taken as individuals who are trying to complete a difficult task. therefore, it is normal that they sometimes experience research-related concerns, which might set barriers to their accomplishment. in a nutshell, as rezaei and zamani-miandashti (2013) suggests, “understanding where research anxiety originates and how it is being propagated could provide pertinent information for administrators to better prepare and support graduate students in the merç: research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students current issues in education, 19(1) 11 area of research” (p. 76). furthermore, if instructors hold great expectations from those novice researchers, they will probably feel more stressed, even desperate about the graduate school. thus, instructors should determine their expectations considering the current level of researchrelated know-how of the graduate students. as most of the graduate elt students are full-time efl instructors at the same time, they might not balance their roles as students and teachers; therefore, they may need more guidance and encouragement in their graduate studies. a very recent inquiry clearly states that teachers in the elt world are not very enthusiastic about engaging in research for their professional development (anwaruddin & pervin, 2015). instructors in the graduate programs, then, should try to create a positive atmosphere in research-related courses and in the dissertation-writing process by eluding superfluous feedback while giving feedback and delivering lessons about research. also, as maschi et al. (2013) advocate, instructors in the graduate programs can create an appreciative classroom milieu and can propose tasks that focus on students’ emotional, cognitive, and behavioral needs as tactics to foster self-efficacy and reduce research-related anxiety. to sum up, graduate programs should be aware of the graduate students’ emotional, cognitive, and social well-being. the supervisors and the instructors in the graduate programs can support these students to be positive about the ability to complete the research component of the program. they should also share the responsibility for supporting those graduate students in coping with the problems they encounter in the process of learning about and conducting research. especially ma students, compared to the phd candidates, will need this support a lot as they are more concerned about the research component in the graduate programs. limitations and suggestions for further research although this study has been an attempt to understand the research anxiety experienced by graduate elt students, the findings should be interpreted cautiously. first of all, despite the adequate number in sampling, each graduate student might be experiencing research anxiety at different levels in different forms as anxiety is a context-specific and a personal trait. therefore, further studies may check the current level and different components of research anxiety that graduate students hold in both turkish context and other venues. second, this study used gender, level of study, and publication experience as well as research self-efficacy as the possible variables affecting research anxiety. these factors are able to explain only a certain portion of the phenomenon; thus, further inquiries should investigate the role of other factors such as attitudes towards research, achievement, orientations for a graduate study, etc. finally, this study was a survey study whose results may not be generalized. as for catching further evidence, studies using other data collection tools, particularly case studies or multi-method enquiries will shed more light into the explanation of the existence and reasons of research anxiety among graduate students. references abdullah, a., erfanmanesh, m. a., & karim, n. h. a. 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(1997). the effects of a graduate learning experience on anxiety, achievement, and expectations in research and statistics. paper presented at the annual meeting of the northeastern educational research association, ellenville, ny. retrieved from files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed419022.pdf tsai, c. c. (2013). the impact of foreign language anxiety, test anxiety, and self-efficacy among senior high school students in taiwan. international journal of english language and linguistics research, 1(2), 31-47. retrieved from http://www.eajournals.org/wpcontent/uploads/the-impact-of-foreign-language-anxiety-test-anxiety-and-selfefficacy-among-senior-high-school-students-in-taiwan.pdf tuncer, m. (2013). an analysis on the effect of computer self-efficacy over scientific research self-efficacy and information literacy self-efficacy. educational research and reviews, 8(1), 33-40. van der westhuizen, s. (2015). reliability and validity of the attitude towards research scale for a sample of industrial psychology students. south african journal of psychology, 45(3), 386-396. doi: 10.1177/0081246315576266 files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed419022.pdf http://www.eajournals.org/wp-content/uploads/the-impact-of-foreign-language-anxiety-test-anxiety-and-self-efficacy-among-senior-high-school-students-in-taiwan.pdf http://www.eajournals.org/wp-content/uploads/the-impact-of-foreign-language-anxiety-test-anxiety-and-self-efficacy-among-senior-high-school-students-in-taiwan.pdf http://www.eajournals.org/wp-content/uploads/the-impact-of-foreign-language-anxiety-test-anxiety-and-self-efficacy-among-senior-high-school-students-in-taiwan.pdf merç: research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students current issues in education, 19(1) 14 author notes ali merç anadolu university yunusemre kampusu egitim fakultesi, 26470 eskişehir, turkey amerc@anadolu.edu.tr dr. ali merç is a teacher trainer and currently working as an assistant professor in the program in english language teacher training at anadolu university, faculty of education. he received his ba (2000), ma (2004), and phd (2010) from anadolu university. his research interests include pre-service efl teacher education, language teaching and learning anxiety, teaching practicum issues, distance efl teacher training, and teaching and learning reading in a foreign language. mailto:amerc@anadolu.edu.tr merç: research anxiety among turkish graduate elt students current issues in education, 19(1) 15 volume 19, issue 1 march 8, 2016 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh bethany richmond lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 6, number 3 march 3, 2003 issn 1099-839x texas voices speak out about high-stakes testing: preservice teachers, teachers, and students belinda bustos flores & ellen riojas clark university of texas at san antonio although teachers and students are directly impacted by high-stakes testing policy mandates, their opinion is often left out during the decision-making process. as future educators, preservice teachers are also affected by these mandates; thus far, their perspectives have also been ignored. providing these stakeholders a forum in which they can speak about accountability testing allows others to hear their voices in this controversial issue. to achieve this goal, we employed a qualitative design. data gathered consisted of observational journals and threaded e-journals. data were critically analyzed and triangulated. trustworthiness was further established using peer-review and member checking. emerging patterns revealed that, across grade levels, preservice and inservice teachers see the overemphasis on high-stakes testing as being intrusive on their curricular and instructional decision-making. they note that instructional decisions are not being made in the students' best interests. across grade levels, students' perceptions and their approach to tests differ. these voices challenge notions of whether high-stakes tests are valid measures of students' learning, ability, or potential, and whether test results should be used as an accountability measure. in january 2002, president george w. bush signed his landmark educational legislation, the "no child left behind act," with the intent to improve education through the requirement that each state develop an accountability system vis-à-vis testing students grades 3-8. president bush's political agenda for educational reform used texas as an exemplary model of an accountability system. further support came from politicians and educators that see texas as a trendsetter for establishing an accountability system that they credit with increasing student performance. texas began this trend by initially requiring basic competency as a precursor to graduation from high school (see, texas education agency, [tea], 2002). later, texas raised the bar by establishing rigorous state standards, known as the texas essential knowledge and skills (teks), for all grade levels, k-12, and all subject matter. policy makers further held the public school system including teachers and students accountable for these standards by requiring state-mandated testing, known as the texas assessment of academic skills (taas). schools were rated as being either "low performing," "acceptable," "recognized," or "exemplary," depending on academic performancestudents' passing/failing rates in one or all sections of the taas testas compared to schools sharing similar populations (tea, 2002). texas, in the eyes of some, continues to lead the nation as a model for standardsbased accountability and its unwavering stance for continual reform of the educational system. in placing texas on a pedestal, policy makers current issues in education vol. 6 no. 3 established a rationale for the current national accountability mandate. texas' success has not come without criticism. opponents of the accountability system would suggest that increased scores are a mere illusion of high-stakes testing practices and should not be heralded without closer scrutiny (amrein & berliner, 2002b; haney, 2000; klein, hamilton, mccaffrey, & stecher, 2000). other critics also argue that for most policy makers, while ignoring the apparent inequities (funding, teacher quality, and resources) that exist in schools, the answer has been singular: accountability via high-stakes testing as if high-stakes testing will fix ailing, ill-equipped, low performing schools is the only answer to accountability. when it comes to high-stakes testing, educators often wonder to whom do policy makers listen and how do they make their decisions? possibly, they listen to lobbyists who represent the testing industry. according to metcalf (2002), the three major test-publishing companies, mcgraw-hill, houghton-mifflin, and harcourt general, have become involved at an all time high in testing issues. perhaps the profit margin may be what drives testing publishers to design and provide these tests, even though the validity of competency tests may be compromised by their inappropriate use, i.e., to evaluate school performance and to set graduation requirements. even when researchers (valenzuela, 1999, 2000a, 2000b) have testified on the aversive effects of the excessive emphasis on texas' mandated testing programs, policy makers may look upon such expert testimony with trepidation and suspicion. apparently, policy makers can also turn a deaf ear to the pleas of concerned citizens who have marched upon the steps of the state's capital to protest highstakes testing (joyce, 2003; young, 2001). court rulings on the taas suggesting that the positive outcomes outweighed any negative effect have supported the efforts of standards and testing proponents (pipho, 2000). however, little has been heard from those most affected by political or judicial decisions. the purpose of this paper is to provide such a forum for these voices. while policy makers, researchers, and other stakeholders continue the debate about standards and accountability, certain voices have been left unheard or have been silenced in this debate. stakeholders, such as preservice teachers, teachers, and students, have a right to be heard regarding their experiences and opinions about high-stakes testing. as flores (2001) argues, preservice teachers as observers of classrooms have been impacted by high-stakes testing policies. although preservice teachers have not had extensive classroom experience, what they are witnessing in their assigned classrooms during this high-stakes testing era can offer an untainted perspective. preservice teacher voices can serve to alert teacher educators about the impact that "teaching to the test" is having on the formation of future teachers. moreover, it is also important to consider teachers' and their students' perspectives. smith and fey (2000) note, "in the professional literature, teachers are not regarded as knowledgeable agents in the (high-stakes) debate" (p. 343). yet their experiences and perspectives can directly shed light on this controversial issue. after all, teachers and students are the ones engaged in the daily realities of testing. even though schools are the ones held accountable for test scores, teachers and students assume the heaviest of burdens in the accountability issue. in this study, we were driven to provide preservice teachers, teachers, and students a forum to speak out about high-stakes testing because of the persistent stories from the field that were being made evident through classroom observations, classroom discussions, and journals. review of the literature researchers promoting standards hold the position that making schools accountable, vis-à-vis testing, has led to increased achievement for all students, and specifically created an educational system of equity for minority students (fuller & johnson, 2001; scheurich, skrla, & johnson, 2000). the researchers posit that the accountability system has been successful in narrowing the achievement gap. they also point out that the results show that ethnic and language minority students have the capacity to learn and can demonstrate their achievement on tests, and, therefore, schools can no longer justify failure simply because of student demographics. moreover, skrla and scheurich (2001) credit the accountability system in changing the perspectives of school leaders and school systems. their analysis of five texas school superintendents' reflections reveal that there was a paradigm shift away from their school district's deficit thinking-an erroneous belief that certain populations, specially low-income and ethnic minority students, cannot be academically successful. further, the researchers surmise that the accountability assured resistance to deficit thinking. in a similar study examining the transformation of a texas urban school district, koschoreck (2001) defends the accountability system as a means to achieving educational equity. his study finds that the superintendent's vision and commitment to educational equity is clearly articulated across the school district. this common vision was seen as a conduit for transforming that district's rating from "low performing" to "recognized" status. fuller and johnson (2001) argue texas voices speak out about high-stakes testing: preservice teachers, teachers, and students 3 that the accountability system has been "a major force in driving their (school district) efforts to improve the learning of all students, especially children of color and children from low-income homes" (p. 281). nevertheless, some of these researchers (koschoreck; fuller & johnson) concede that other factors, such as class size reduction, better inservice training, and changes in curriculum, have also assisted in improving student performance. however, when texas' schools showed a performance increase on the state's mandated competency test, and a number of schools-including low-income schools and those with ethnic minority students-changed from "low performing" to "recognized" status, research evidence did not support the basis for these status changes. when comparing the taas reported gains with other standardized tests' results, rather than touting a texas "miracle," critical reviewers noted that this reported achievement was more myth than a reality (haney, 2000; klein et al., 2000; amrein & berliner, 2002a, 2002b). amrein and berliner suggest that the focus on high-stakes tests in the daily classroom, while it may result in increased scores, does not result in a transfer of knowledge and skills to other similar measures, and as such, are a failed policy. in the case of low-income, high minority schools, these practices are exacerbating the achievement gap. thus, as flores (2001) notes, for some low-income, high minority schools, this "texas miracle" is more of an urban legend than an urban reality. parker (2001) would argue that the accountability system perpetuates deficit thinking because ethnic minority students' scores still lag behind their white counterparts. valencia, valenzuela, sloan and foley (2001) suggest that inferior schools are the cause of historical minority student failure, and in promoting accountability, proponents are treating the symptoms of school failure rather than the cause. although accountability proponents acknowledge that the current system is not perfect, they still contend that equity will not be achieved without some type of systematic means (skrla, scheurich, & johnson, 2001; scheurich, et al., 2000). other researchers also support the notion that standards and appropriate test use can ensure that all students, especially minority students, receive high-quality instruction (heubert, 2001). nonetheless, the current literature abounds with evidence that the texas' state-mandated test is driving the curriculum (mcneil 2000a, 2000b; mcneil & valenzuela, 2000). in a recent survey of a random sample drawn from the members of texas' reading association, teachers (n=200) clearly revealed the overemphasis and harmful impact of taas on the curriculum and on learner-outcomes (hoffman, assaf, & paris, 2001). specifically, as these experienced classroom teachers' responses pointed out, "the taas does not measure what it purports, is unfair to minority students, is affecting instruction in negative ways, is leading both students and teacher to 'drop-out,' and is being used in ways that are invalid" (p. 490). conversely, cimbricz (2002) argues that high-stakes testing is not the only factor that impacts teachers' practices, and that other factors, such as teaching experience and knowledge, influence teachers' instructional decisions. nevertheless, cimbricz concedes that she does not know the impact of such decisions in schools where there is a greater emphasis on test performance as compared to those schools with lesser emphasis. wright's (2002) study with experienced elementary teachers, working with a large number of english language learners in a california inner city school, reveals not only the psychological stress, but also the limitations placed on these teachers regarding curriculum and lesson planning as a result of the state-mandated testing program. thus, we must consider that in low performing schools, in which there are a large number of ethnic minority students, the stakes are high and the pressure is great. flores (2001) also points out how the excessive emphasis on testing impacts preservice teachers' experience. as teacher candidates, they formulate their knowledge while attaining teaching experience. in her study, four themes were identified as emerging from classroom observations and preservice teachers' field journals: (a) focusing on basics, (b) emphasizing rote learning, (c) teaching to the test, and (d) promoting an english-only curriculum. in conclusion, flores further suggests that these kinds of field experiences will not only reduce the quality of experiences preservice teachers will have, but will also reinforce future teachers' notions of deficit thinking regarding students' abilities, and will likely reaffirm prescriptive teaching. mcneil (2000b) poignantly argues, "this prescriptive teaching creates a new form of discrimination as teaching to the fragmented and narrow information on the test comes to substitute for a substantive curriculum in the schools of poor and minority youths" (p. 728). in a recent article, "bamboozled by the texas miracle," a texas teacher warns others about the pitfalls of state-mandated tests. beam-conroy (2001) states that since coming to texas as a teacher, she has learned five important lessons: (1) highstakes testing is king; (2) high-stakes testing will take over your teaching; (3) do what the tests demand or lose your job; (4) high-stakes tests are scholastic darwinism; (5) high-stakes testing corrupts even current issues in education vol. 6 no. 3 well-meaning reforms. beam-conroy expresses feeling "bush-whacked" and powerless as a teacher. the misuse of high-stakes testing results has also been criticized (haney, 2000; kellow & wilson, 2001). haney initiates the discussion by pointing to the paucity of the taas' psychometric soundness and the apparent inattentiveness to measurement error, which have resulted in a great misuse of the test results for high-stakes decisions, such as awarding of high school diplomas. kellow and wilson's analysis of texas taas 1998-1999 data extend the conversation by demonstrating that using the results for high-stakes decisions without considering the measurement error has likely resulted in a number of students who were denied their high school diploma when, in fact, their observed adjusted scores met the criteria. according to their approximations, 35,182 students who failed the reading subtest and 43,077 students who failed the math subtest were false negative classification errors. needless to say, the denial of these students' high school diplomas is an egregious error. one only has to wonder, over the years, how many thousands of students were denied their diplomas because of this false negative classification error. kellow and wilson (2001) estimate that 2% of student scores are misclassified annually, and if a high-stakes test like taas were in place nationwide, approximately 1.1 million students would be misclassified on an annual basis. apparently, in texas, many students have already been abandoned by political mandates; when high-stakes testing is implemented nation wide, millions more will also be "left behind." moreover, these high-stakes decisions have been made regardless of the criticisms waged that the misuse of the results are compromising the test's validity. smith and fey (2000) remind us that "focusing on high scores for the sake of high scores, as seems to be the case in high-stakes accountability programs, diminishes the validity of the test and makes it less useful in tracking real gains and losses in the construct generally" (p. 340). similarly, amrein and berliner (2002b) evoke the heisenberg's uncertainty principle: "the more important that any quantitative social indicator becomes in social decision making, the more likely it will be to distort and corrupt the social process it is intended to monitor" (p. 16). relying solely on test results to make curricular decisions compromises the validity of the test. validity is further jeopardized when tests are used to justify policy, rather than as indicators of content knowledge learning. likewise, the validity of the test scores should also be questioned because of current classroom practices. the emphasis and practice on testing creates a false echo in the form of rhetoric pointing to the increased scores as indicators of student achievement, school accountability, and educational equity. however, as we have seen, these inflated scores are not an indicator of measurable learning (amrein & berliner, 2002b, 2002c; haney, 2000; klein et al., 2000), but rather, are reflective of test practice and teaching to the test. sadly, this rhetoric is perpetuating the great divide among different ethnic groups (mcneil & valenzuela, 2000; valenzuela, 2000a; valencia & villarreal, 2003). disconcerting, the overemphasis on tests and test scores may in fact result in students having a distorted view of learning and its value as a lifelong skill (sheldon & biddle, 1998). despite these academic criticisms based on empirical research and the several maldef (mexican american legal defense fund) lawsuits that have been filed on behalf of students who have been denied their high school diplomas on the basis of test scores (fikac, 1999), texas continues in its high-stakes testing trend. additionally, texas has recently increased the stakes for third graders, requiring that they pass the new texas assessment of knowledge and skills (taks) test or risk retention. the taks is designed to be more aligned with the state's curriculum standards. according to state reports, had the law been enacted in 2001, nearly one-sixth of all third graders in texas would have been retained (spencer, 2001). valencia and villarreal's (2003) current projections also indicate that this law will have the greatest adverse effects on minority populations. policy makers also apparently disregarded the grade level retention research indicating that retention increases a student's likelihood of dropping out (owings & kaplan, 2001; smink, 2001; valencia, 2000; valencia & villarreal, 2003). these types of actions may increase if there is no change in policy or in the people who make policy. we shall see further developments, now that the "no child left behind act" has been mandated. as stated by smith and fey (2000), "in the polis, teachers are regarded as either anonymous throughputs or obstacles to effective policy" (p. 10). perhaps the acts that challenge high-stakes testing policy, such as stakeholders speaking out, will assist in changing the policy. methodology we employed a qualitative design for this study in which a total of 18 undergraduate preservice teachers, 10 graduate inservice teachers, and 30 public school students participated. approval to use human subjects for research was granted for the study. confidentiality for all subjects was maintained and names used in this study are pseudonyms. during the fall and spring semesters, data gathered included faculty directed e-mail threaded journals, preservice texas voices speak out about high-stakes testing: preservice teachers, teachers, and students 5 teachers' observation journal reflections, and faculty direct observation field journals. in order to understand the high-stakes phenomenon and to provide preservice teachers and inservice teachers a forum for freely expressing their views without fear of reprisal or any prior expectations, they were encouraged to comment in their threaded dialogue e-mail journals on issues of testing within their schools. specifically, preservice and inservice teachers' discussions were based on prompts initiated by the professors: what do you think about high-stakes testing? can you give examples of high-stakes testing? as the dialogue continued among the participants, we read and followed their comments. using their comments, we further stimulated the threaded discussions by asking the inservice teachers to relay their colleagues' and students' reactions toward high-stakes testing. the specific email prompts sent to everyone participating in the threaded discussion were: how do your colleagues think/feel about high-stakes testing? what do your students think/feel about testing, like taas? question prompts for public school students were sent to their respective teachers in the study and included: what do you think/feel about taas? the teachers then forwarded the students' responses to us via e-mail. data obtained from the teachers, preservice teachers, and students were critically analyzed and triangulated to identify common themes (lincoln & guba, 1985; miles & huberman, 1994). we each independently developed a matrix to identify common patterns across the data. through our peerreview, we included only themes mentioned by the majority of the respondents in the analysis. we examined and agreed upon all identified patterns. the preservice teachers' observational journals and direct observation of inservice teachers enrolled in an advanced methods course were also used to triangulate the findings. to ensure the trustworthiness of the findings, member-checking was employed by presenting the findings to the preservice and inservice teachers. both groups acknowledged that we captured their perceptions of the high-stakes testing impact on them and students. they were elated that their voices would finally be heard. excerpts drawn from the groups were representative of the majority of the responses given. the preservice teachers (n=18) and inservice teachers (n=10) were matriculated in either an undergraduate or graduate program of study at a major southwest texas institution and enrolled in our courses either during the fall and/or spring semesters of 2000-2001. on the first day of class in the fall and spring semesters, the threaded e-mail assignment was presented to our classes as the first activity of the semester. at this time, students were invited to participate in the study. of the eighteen undergraduate preservice teachers who volunteered for the study, nine were elementary education generalists taking their final methods course and observing in urban middleand low-income school districts. most of these were first-generation, collegeaged students, and monolingual. the other nine were preservice bilingual education majors who were enrolled in an undergraduate language assessment course and engaged in fieldwork in an urban, lowincome school district. the bilingual education preservice teachers were bilingual and were nontraditional, second career college students. the inservice teachers included early childhood, elementary, and secondary teachers in bilingual and monolingual settings who were enrolled in a graduate level assessment course (n=5) or an advanced methods course (n=5). the inservice teachers enrolled in the graduate assessment course were bilingual and experienced teachers of five or more years. the other graduate class members were first year teachers, two of whom were monolingual and the other three whom were bilingual. teachers across grade levels were included in this study because all grade levels are held accountable for the state standards (teks) and all students are tested using benchmark assessments, district "taas" mock tests, or other standardized tests. the majority of these teachers work in urban, middleand low-income schools throughout the city and the surrounding area. the public school students were enrolled in the inservice teachers' classrooms. the teachers forwarded the students' responses to us. the public school students represented a variety of geographic settings (urban to suburban), socioeconomic positions (low to upper-middle class), and school levels (elementary, middle, and high school). findings and discussion in the midst of our data analysis, we received a graduate inservice teacher's urgent telephone call and subsequent email reflections as part of the ongoing threaded discussion. this fourth grade teacher's query began with a shaky voice asking, "can i get fired just for not teaching the taas?" the following vignette describes what led to eleni's urgency, which we felt captured the essence of what is occurring as a result of the emphasis on high-stakes testing: eleni was very excited when she landed her first teaching job as a first grade teacher at a middle class urban school with a majority mexican american student population. her teaching current issues in education vol. 6 no. 3 evaluations indicated that she was an exemplary first year teacher. however, a dark cloud loomed over her. she did not like the overwhelming presence of the taas test. the school principal required that students practice taking the taas daily, and teachers were discouraged to teach anything that would not be on the taas test. after a year of skill and drill, the school's rating went from "acceptable" to "exemplary" status. however, eleni was not happy with this outcome. as she put it, "i felt that we had cheated because of the things we had to do to get there; i wasn't proud (crying and voice shaking). i was ashamed and i felt that all of us (the school's faculty), all belong to this 'secret society' because we all knew what we had to do to get 'exemplary status.' this year other schools visited us, because we are an exemplary school, but all i feel is shame and sadness. it is like a pseudo-reality a big farce." during her second year, now as a fourth grade teacher, eleni began to challenge the taas spoon-feeding methods of her school. she knew that the students were capable of more and they were not being exposed to other experiences. one day, as a change to the humdrum taas skill and drill, she decided to have the children write letters using cursive handwriting. though required by the curriculum, the students had not been exposed to cursive writing and could not read simple notes in handwriting. as she was teaching the lesson, the principal walked into her class, and upon leaving, he left a note asking her to come to his office. on entering his office, the principal began yelling at her and asked, "what do you think you are doing?" she explained how she was using the letter-writing task to practice taas skills. the principal was livid and told eleni that she would be written up because of her insubordination. she then responded, "but i am teaching the state's curriculum!" the principal retorted, "if it is not being tested, you are not going to teach it!" she left the office disappointed and disgusted " i wanted to run, run and never to return to the school." in this vignette, we note the teacher's concerns about texas' mandated testing program and the schools' focus on its rating, rather than on student learning. critics have argued that this narrow, misguided focus is perpetuated by accountability mandates, and calls into question the validity of the test and the purpose of schooling (smith & fey, 2000; amrein & berliner, 2002b). in our analysis of the threaded e-mail discussions and observational journals, the data reveal themes similar to those implied in the introductory vignette and other research. each of these themes will be presented and discussed in the subsequent sections. for the themes listed below, the term "teacher" is used inclusively to refer to both preservice and inservice teachers. the six themes we identified in our analysis were: 1. teachers are not against accountability; rather, they view assessment as distinct from high-stakes testing. 2. teachers posit that an overemphasis on testing results in an unbalanced curriculum and inappropriate instructional decisions. 3. teachers suggest that excessive pressure is placed on particular grade levels. 4. teachers are having second thoughts about pursuing or remaining in the teaching profession. 5. teachers propose that test results should not be used to make high-stakes decisions. 6. teachers have observed that test emphasis affects students negatively, and is manifested as physical, psychological, or emotional symptoms. 1. teachers are not against accountability; rather, they view assessment as distinct from high-stakes testing. teachers recognize the importance of assessment. the analysis reveals how teachers are very attuned to the role that assessment should take within the teaching and learning cycle. however, they also acknowledge that there is a difference between assessment and testing. further, they recognize that there are limitations to testing and assessment. as amy, a second grade teacher states: i think that it may be a necessary evil, even though we know that texas voices speak out about high-stakes testing: preservice teachers, teachers, and students 7 these tests don't accurately reflect knowledge. they don't take into account test taking abilities, computer awareness, anxiety, physical conditions, etc. still, we need a measure to gauge children's learning and teachers' abilities in teaching. benchmarks and tpri [texas primary reading inventory] are essential in assessing the child's knowledge and detecting growth at certain intervals. these are very helpful tools, at least for me. karen concurs: "i have found that testing is beneficial in order to see what level the student is in… " another teacher agrees: i've realized that, in kindergarten, the children need to be reaching higher goals and expectations to be promoted to first grade; but i also realized how important it is to test them because sometimes it is not enough to observe them as a group, but also individually, and in testing them we can address their needs. there are teachers who have mixed thoughts about the focus and benefits of testing. lucille states, "i personally have a problem with putting a big emphasis on testing. on the other hand, i feel we really do need to assess students. why are so many students struggling academically?" on the other hand, patricia, a fourth grade teacher, suggests that there are alternatives: i believe that the only way to get accurate results about what the students have learned is to test what is being taught. i believe that the teacher-developed tests are the best indicators of what the students are actually learning. a preservice teacher believes that the results will help her improve her teaching: "as for myself, i feel that testing will help me understand how to implement my teaching strategies that will aid the child's needs. whatever the results of any type of tests, it is a reflection on my teaching methods." this preservice teacher recognizes the role of assessment as a diagnostic tool rather than a prescriptive mechanism. contrary to popular beliefs that teachers do not want to be held accountable, teachers' views of assessment versus high-stakes testing are quite distinct. the teachers, both preservice and inservice across grade levels, see assessment useful when it informs them and their teaching. so when assessment is diagnostic and purposeful, teachers feel it is an important component. wright (2002) also observed that teachers often feel that standardized test results do not provide them with the adequate information that they need to make decisions concerning specific student needs, and thus, do not assist in helping them modify their instruction. 2. teachers posit that an overemphasis on testing results in an unbalanced curriculum and inappropriate instructional decisions. teachers are not against testing; rather, they are concerned about the effect that testing has on the curriculum and on their instruction. teachers recognize that overemphasis on any one component distorts the curriculum. they also note that the focus on testing results in the narrowing of the curriculum. a third grade teacher notes: there is so much material teachers have to cover to prepare for testing… leaving little time to teach. it seems very timeconsuming, confusing, and with the responsibility of numbers (% passing rate) placed with the teacher, it is obvious why we are stressed. another teacher feels in conflict with what is expected of her and her students, and what she has learned is best for young children: "i think the district wants the pre-k teachers to really prepare them for reading. i guess it is needed if these students are to succeed." similarly, a preservice teacher reveals her uncertainty in her observation journal: i am observing in kinder and they are just being prepared for the test. i think that when my cooperating teacher is handing out material to practice for the test, the students still don't know exactly what they are preparing for... a beginning fourth grade teacher's e-mail note reveals how much taas emphasis there is throughout the school year. it's october and we are getting ready for the taas. the environment in the school district and at school is certainly getting fired up. we have been given practice workbooks that must be covered and understood by the children by dec. 1. we will be tested on feb. 19th, 2002. on top of that, fourth grade is being pressured into teaching four writing modes (one a month) when the children do not even know how to write a decent sentence, much less current issues in education vol. 6 no. 3 compound sentences. they have never been introduced to elements such as quotes, titles, etc. at this point, i'm just making progress in getting students sent to the right places for assistance and having my special eds finally classified. the principal tells me i need [a] minimum [of] 12 children to pass taas, and has now required that all teachers do a daily michael eaton sentence with the classroom. write the sentences on huge tablets for display, turn a set in to him every week along with the students samples, submit the writing papers the children are producing that week, and rework a televised taas problem. the general comment from other instructors is that we are all behind in grading, preparing new materials, and keeping up with the snowball of paperwork. i feel i am teaching grammar, writing, spelling, and an iota of math. how do i squeeze in anything else? i really feel i am shortchanging the students. help, does anyone have any suggestions? although there have been claims that the closely aligned system has resulted in a better way to evaluate student progress (scalafani, 2001), the general consensus among the participants is that there is no such alignment. this preservice teacher sums it best when she calls for better alignment between curriculum and testing: students need to be cued on what is expected of them. the teaching should be a reflection of what they will be tested on or material that is taught in class. in the early grade levels testing may be easier because the child may not fully understand that they are being evaluated. they might not understand that concept. in the older grades 3-12, the comprehension of testing is clear. in these grades levels students do group work, but they should be able to work independently. testing is independent work. teachers note that the curriculum standards are what should guide curricular and instructional decisions, not the taas test. as a first grade teacher affirms: "as one of our classmates said, as long as you are teaching the teks, the children will be prepared for taas." another third grade teacher agrees and expands on this notion: talking about the taas, i think there is so much pressure for kids about the test and they cannot even focus on learning because sometimes teachers are just preparing them for the test. i think it is necessary for them to be tested, but not to teach them for passing the test. i remember that one teacher told us when we are teaching the teks we are preparing them for the test and i strongly agree with that opinion. …there should be a way to avoid a [state-mandated] test and the pressure we, as teachers, and they, as students, have to go through when testing. connie, a preservice bilingual teacher observes: in the classroom, one of the major issues (in high-stakes testing) is not considering the individual student needs or the development level of the child. regardless of these issues, the student is required to master standardized testing. as i have seen with my cooperative teacher, i notice that she is pressured to make sure these students master the objectives needed to meet requirements. in my web search, i notice that many standardized tests focus on accountability and that bilingual researchers are trying to make sure that students' cultural backgrounds, individual needs, and development levels be considered. implicit in these comments is the overemphasis on taas, even to the point of accepting practices that may be developmentally inappropriate. there is a lack of consideration for the students' needs or background when high-stakes tests become the driving force for curricular and instructional decisions. evidence of an unbalanced curriculum has also been noted in other research studies (amrein & berliner, 2002a; mcneil, 2000a, 2000b; mcneil & valenzuela, 2000; valenzuela, 2000b). also, according to teachers, the principals are more concerned with the number of students passing rather than with their learning, thus leading to texas voices speak out about high-stakes testing: preservice teachers, teachers, and students 9 inappropriate instructional decisions. valencia & villarreal (2003) maintain that test-driven instructional decisions will not lead to student learning. 3. teachers suggest that excessive pressure is placed on particular grade levels. the focus on state-mandated testing and accountability places excessive pressure on particular grade levels. although all teachers acknowledge that each of them has a responsibility for how students perform on the test, it is apparent that the taasdesignated grade levels bear the greatest burden. nevertheless, all teachers sense the pressure, as katherine, a preservice teacher reveals: "due to testing, it seems teachers are feeling frustrated and overwhelmed." even though pre-k children are not tested by the state, early childhood teachers share this concern about the effects of state-mandated testing. as one early childhood teacher notes, i don't think that getting high scores in taas should be the light at the end of a tunnel… i think it's really sad when teachers only teach around the test! what about all the other important stuff? we're all responsible. a first year teacher, marina, laments about her primary responsibility: i am teaching fifth grade and this is all i have been told to worry about. testing strategies is what they need to learn, and simply taking their time. they seem to just want to rush through the test and get it over with. another preservice teacher recalls: for my second approaches class last semester, i spent 30 hours in a third grade classroom. all the lessons i observed were based on math and reading worksheets dealing with what the teacher called "taas strategies". it was easy for me to see that the students and teacher were only going through the motions of learning. neither one cared about what they were doing. as a future teacher i believe that my biggest challenge is going to be how to get the students to do well on the taas while at the same time learning. elsie describes the general consensus regarding taas at her elementary campus: "… let's get ready to become exemplary for the 2001-2002 school year. we don't like it, but let's all get together and help one another to achieve the district's goal of becoming an exemplary campus." conversely, lolli, a third grade teacher, is concerned with the goals of the school in relation to testing: i believe that much pressure is placed on teachers and students in regards to testing. the teachers teaching the upper grades are consistently being told about taas scores and what needs to be done to do better. if you are "acceptable", then you want to be "recognized". if you are "recognized", then your goal is "exemplary." there is nothing wrong with being recognized or exemplary, but does so much emphasis need to be directed to the teachers, and also to the students? much time is spent preparing for the taas. a preservice teacher, sara, uses her experiences to examine the issue from multiple perspectives. she offers the following insights: as a student, i think testing causes anxiety and it creates a distance between the student and their education. students tend to use testing as a criterion for not only judging themselves, but on what others think of themselves. as for teachers, i think that teachers take it as "their job being on the line." i think that teachers are evaluated based on classroom performance and not on the students' individual needs, background culture, and their development level. as for myself, as a teacher candidate, i think that tests should be evaluated on individual needs and that the teacher is not the one being evaluated based on her classroom performance. evident in these responses is the general consensus that students and teachers, in particular taas-designated grade levels, are being held accountable for the school's goal to attain either "recognized" or "exemplary" status. interestingly, on some campuses achieving a "recognized" or "exemplary" status gives the campus a common goal. this common vision is seen by standards and accountability proponents as a means to achieving equity (see fuller & johnson, 2001; koschoreck, 2001; skrla & scheurich, 2001). however, the respondents indicated that excessive stress is created by the unrealistic demands on students and teachers. there is a real concern among them that the students are only going through the motions of learning. in support of this concern, critics have warned us about the impact of high-stakes testing on students' desire current issues in education vol. 6 no. 3 for learning (sheldon & biddle, 1998). there is also a sense among the respondents that teachers' jobs will be in jeopardy if their students do not perform well on the test. similarly, amrein and berliner's (2002a) recent study also noted that high levels of stress among classroom teachers are due in part to the pressure of the state and the school district's emphasis on testing. 4. teachers are having second thoughts about pursuing or remaining in the teaching profession. at a time when the "no child left behind act" calls for highly qualified teachers, there continues to be a critical shortage of such teachersespecially in bilingual and early childhood education. a disturbing eventual outcome is likely. both teachers and teacher candidates are considering leaving the profession or are not entering into the profession in the first place, due to this excessive pressure. a preservice teacher reflects: i believe testing will affect negatively teachers' delivery of effective instruction. i also believe testing will affect me as a teacher candidate as that is part of what is going to determine if i am going to become a teacher or not. teachers also believe that testing overemphasis limits their grade level choice. as an early childhood teacher candidly states: "i don't plan on teaching an older grade [level]! i am amazed by how much hype is caused by this test! i also see the pressure that the teachers get as far as their students' performance!" in sum, many preservice teachers are having second thoughts about pursuing the teaching profession because in their field experience, they encounter the negative effects of testing. they see testing as a factor in reducing students' creativity and motivation, as well as in hampering teacher autonomy and decision-making power. sheldon and biddle (1998) would concede that the emphasis on testing hinders students' love for learning and teachers' love for teaching, and also results in a loss of intrinsic motivation for both. preservice teachers have expressed similar reactions regarding interest and disillusionment for the teaching profession (flores, 2001). as a result of the overemphasis on the taas, inservice teachers feel that they are losing creativity in their teaching, teaching to the test, becoming "pawns" in accountability issues, "dumbing down" the curriculum, and losing options for and interest in teaching certain grade levels. teacher flight as fallout from the high-stakes accountability system was also noted in amrein and berliner's recent study (2002a). 5. teachers propose that test results should not be used to make high-stakes decisions. teachers are wary of high-stakes decisions that are being made based on state-mandated tests. they also consider the long-term outcomes of such decisions: "i hate the idea of tests being the source of deciding if a student passes, or as a measure of intelligence. not everybody is a test-taker. doesn't mean they're dumb!" another teacher ponders the use of high-stakes testing results: i believe testing affects students in that the results may be used to make education decisions that impact individual students. the student may be put in special education, misplaced in the education system, or not taking into consideration what they really know, how they know it and how they learn. they can be treated differently by teachers and peers. a bilingual preservice teachers suggests: "as a bilingual/bicultural person, i believe that one of the most important issues is that formal testing only takes into account the experience of the 'typical' student." another preservice teacher offers this criticism regarding testing companies: "the national testing firms seem to formulate tests geared towards the middle-income white students instead of considering the vast numbers of multicultural/multilingual students." another preservice teacher concedes: "tests in the past have been designed for a certain group of people. they were for 'average' middle class students. research has proven that teacher-made criterion based tests are better because they are for individual assessment." the findings show a clear message coming from aspiring and practicing teachers regarding highstakes decision-making as a result of testing. they are concerned about whether or not the tests are valid instruments for certain student populations, and whether or not they are true indicators of diverse students' abilities. they are also concerned about the assumptions being made regarding certain student populations based on test performance. overall, they argue that tests cannot be the sole barometer of a student's ability. they suggest that additional measures must be used to get a full profile of a student's range of abilities. most importantly, they insist that tests must be valid instruments for the population being tested, and must address linguistic, cultural, and economic differences among test-takers. professional organizations such as the american educational research association, the american psychological association (2000), and the national association for the education of young children texas voices speak out about high-stakes testing: preservice teachers, teachers, and students 11 (1998) have issued specific high-stakes position statements. these statements support arguments that test results should not be the only factor taken into consideration when making high-stakes decisions, and that tests must demonstrate psychometric soundness for the population that is being tested. 6. teachers have observed that test emphasis affects students negatively, and is manifested as physical, psychological, or emotional symptoms. teacher and preservice teacher perceptions the overemphasis on testing has resulted in aversive effects on students that are easily observed. teachers are genuinely concerned about their students' well-being as they are subjected to increasing stress caused by the testing policy. an elementary teacher states: testing definitely affects the students academically and mentally. if a student does not do well in a test he/she might think they are dumb and this lowers their self-esteem. i am already hearing that just from the practice tests. …most of my students were stressed and after a whole week of testing they were a bit nervous and anxious to know their results. a secondary teacher suggests that the tests fail to account for individual differences in relation to test taking: "the test doesn't measure students' skills in that some students can't work under a certain pressure." another teacher discusses the observable ill effects of the test: testing can have many affects on students and teachers. for a lot of students, tests are scary, painful realities of school life. a lot of teachers have also come to see testing, especially the taas tests, as a measure of whether they get to keep their jobs are not. unfortunately, i have seen too many teachers direct all their efforts at having the students do well on the taas. a bilingual preservice teacher contemplates language issues: some of the issues that are important when testing would be language. sometimes a student is tested without taking into consideration his first language or the language spoken at that child's home. if we test our students in their primary language they might score at a higher level. another bilingual teacher candidate is bewildered by the experienced teachers' decisionmaking. she notes: today in my visitation field classroom for my second approaches class, there is one student that speaks little english. also, there were three teachers deciding on what language should luis should be tested in, this is his second year in third grade, last year they tested him in english and this year they are thinking, he would be better off testing him in spanish even though his progress in english is much better than last year. the big question today was, "what language should he be targeted for taas?" my question is: "what is better for luis?" in a case like this, should the teachers inquire what language does luis speaks at home, what language his friends use when they are playing at home? doesn't a student's home environment count also for academic purposes? this preservice teacher notes students' concerns at her designated field site: "in the second visit the students took the practice taas. the students knew it was a test and became nervous. the teacher told them not to get nervous. then several asked what would happen if they failed." according to rebecca, a generalist preservice teacher, even when children are physically ill, they are expected to perform even on practice tests: i was substituting and had a child that was physically ill (upset stomach etc.). she threw up in a trashcan in my room. i sent her down to the nurse. she returned to me with a note that stated the principal did not want any student to go home during the test; the student would have to complete all her testing before her parents could be called. ... the student was very upset about the test. she told me that it made her nervous and that her tummy hurt. she did not want to be placed in the after school taas tutorial again the following year. if her score did not reach 80% she would be placed in an after school program. current issues in education vol. 6 no. 3 the pressure children face is also observable days before the test date. victoria, a third grade teacher in a higher income school, writes about the week before the taas test: i want to let you know that my kids are super pressured, stressed, scared, and anxious. i told them we were having a game and fun day on monday so that they can relax and forget about taas, clear their minds and then be more relaxed for the test. …i would love to share with you some of my experiences. ... all of a sudden, many of my kids cannot remember anything they have learned throughout the year. they are getting confused and frustrated that they cannot work out word problems. they don't want to read any passages and would rather be eightand nine-year olds. i'm also stressed out about the test and find myself less patient with my students. today, instead of explaining something to a student (for the 100 th time) i told him that i couldn't believe he still could not understand it. i apologized and explained what stress is and how people react to it. he understood but i still feel terrible. everybody else is on edge around here, including the counselor. the principal-concerning the noise level during the test-has passed down strict guidelines. children must be quiet in all nontaas classrooms before the door is opened and doors must not be allowed to slam. bathroom hand dryers are banned and so is anything "normal?" like you would find at an elementary school? during taas, this will be like a ghost town. it is ridiculous!!! a high school teacher also notes how the students' stress level increases as the test date nears: the way i can tell is on the way the students breathe, some students become sick, maybe their adrenaline becomes too high; others are so exhausted because they studied so hard the night before and all they do is sleep. the worst thing is that we cannot wake them up! students' perceptions several of the teachers discussed the taas with their students. responses and reactions were obtained from students, grades 3 to 11. teachers collected these responses from their students' and then e-mailed them to us. although different formats were used to obtain the data, we still found similarities across the responses; students reacted from an emotional, attitudinal, and/or motivational stance. the following third grade students' responses allowed us to vicariously scrutinize what is occurring in the classroom. emotional and attitudinal responses included those that are forthright: "i freak out," and "i hate it." others demonstrate mixed emotions: "i like the celebrations (taas pep rallies, t-shirts, buttons that say bust the test, baby), but i worry when they test." motivational responses ranged from boredom, as written on a taas work sheet, "i am bored," to one of persistence "…like in a taas 'rocky' play: first the test beats you up, miss, then like rocky, you have to come by and punch the lights out of it." a fourth grade teacher reports: i just asked my math class what they thought about the taas. let me preface their responses with a description of the class as a whole. i have the second-highest math class in fourth grade. all my students scored between 85-89 on last year's taas, so they're pretty bright. they are all between nine and ten years old. i love this group of kids, and would be happy if i had them all of the time. similar to the third graders, these fourth grade student responses ranged from, "the taas is boring," to "the reading part is boring, but the math part is cool!" unlike the third graders, these students were more likely to talk about issues of trust: "we don't have any freedom [while taking the test] and the teachers don't trust us," or, "we should go to the bathroom by ourselves." others were more concerned with the length of the test: "i like it, but it's too long." some students expanded on how the length affects their interest: "i get bored during the test. we should take a break in the middle of it for recess." others posit that the test length makes it difficult to attend to the task: "it's so long, that in the middle, my brain just like, blanks out, and i don't care anymore," "sometimes i hallucinate because it's so long," and "we write so much it feels like our hands will fall off." in addition to length of test, a specific student concern is with the prompts: "yeah, if we had funnier stories, it would be more interesting." one student offers a viable solution to change the mood of the testing environment: "it's too quiet, and there are texas voices speak out about high-stakes testing: preservice teachers, teachers, and students 13 too many distractions. teachers need to play a little soft music while we work." some students are concerned with the fairness of the test: "i don't think it's fair that if you are absent, you don't have to take the test another day," or "i feel like we're in trouble; like we're in jail." a student suggests the use of other measures: "why can't we have the test based on our homework?" when this same teacher asked the children about her teaching practices, the children's responses are very candid and revealing: "you teach to the test mostly" and "you need to know reading, writing, and math in life too." a fifth grade teacher asked her students to respond to a writing prompt: "how do you feel about the taas?" again, there is a range in the emotional responses among these fifth grade students: hi, i am angela and i think the taas is the most fantastic thing that has ever been brought up. if taas was not brought up, people would probably be failing left and right. they would be failing because they know that they didn't have to take the taas so they don't have to study at all. cyndy reveals: i feel happy about the taas because it pumps up my brain. i really like when the taas tries to trick me, because that really gives me a challenge. the things i don't like about taas are when we practice all the time. why, i ask myself, why? i know that i am still a child, so i can't whine much. juan reports: i like the taas test because it is a review of what i have learned in the class. it teaches kids if they're ready to move on or not. the taas could bring out the best in kids if they are willing to try. the taas can teach kids things they didn't know before. last year i passed the real taas test, it showed me i was ready to move on to the fifth grade. taas could interest you in something you didn't know before. if someone doesn't pass the taas it tells the person they need to study harder so they could get a diploma. i want a diploma when i grow up so my parents will be so happy with me. passing the taas is real important, and it could help you get a good job when you are older. ralph writes: how i feel about the taas… well i guess you could say that i feel kind of scared and good. the reason i feel scared is because i'm afraid that i am going to miss a lot of the questions and fail. the good part is that i will do my best and to try my hardest. cara reveals: the taas test for me is a big challenge, but i feel comfortable about it. some questions i have to think about for a while, others i don't. the day of the taas test my mom always tells me to pray. it helps me a lot. there's another key though, a key so magical, we just look it over. that key is made with faith, goals, and success. everybody has it, and it really doesn't matter if you pass it or not. i mean of course you want to pass it, but if you try your hardest and you don't pass, it's okay. the taas test is also very interesting because i learn some new things. also if i miss some question, i know i need to work on it, or those problems. in the fifth graders' responses, we note an increase in concern with not passing or doing well on the taas. these fifth graders suggest that passing the taas will likely affect future educational and occupational outcomes. another teacher followed the same procedure with her sixth grade students, and again we see a variety of insightful written responses. ruben writes: "i feel scared about the taas test, because if i don't pass i am in trouble." seneca reveals: how i feel about it is that it is a skill to see how we are doing, but sometimes they give it to us too many times. every year we have to take one. and it takes some time from our work. that is how i feel. rita responds: i feel nervous about the taas. i worry that i could not pass it and fail it with a really bad grade, and that my mother would ground me for three months. when i get nervous i can't concentrate, neither current issues in education vol. 6 no. 3 can i understand the questions. i'm going to study so i'll get a good grade and not be nervous, so i hope to get a really good grade. valeria reports: how i feel about the taas is i think it is very important on us because as we get older the teachers will look back on our score to see if we have to go to a different class or not. also, i think taas is something you just have to do. albert says: well, i feel very tense about the taas because i don't think that it should be taken in only one state. i guess it is good to take because i feel really good because everything you learn through the whole year. the people want to see how much you've learned by taking it. so i feel very nervous when it comes to taking the taas since it's for the whole district. arnie writes: i feel kind of scared that i won't pass the test. sometimes i feel sad because i might not pass. …i won't get to go with my friends to seventh grade. so i really have to try and pass the taas test. sixth graders continue to be concerned with their performance on the taas since they have realized that if they do not do well they will not pass to another grade, or they will be placed in another class (i.e., special education). they also speak to the issues of the importance of the test, the content areas represented on the test, and the consequences of the test. a seventh grade teacher's query about taas resulted in negative responses from her students, such as: "i don't like the taas," "i get frustrated," "the taas makes me nervous," and "i'll be taking the taas so i can get it over with and not worry about it anymore." at an upper-middle class school, the teacher integrated the task as an optional activity for a class project. erica, an eighth grader, surveyed her peers and these are some of their thoughts based upon their taas experience. rather than being concerned with their performance, these eighth graders were more likely to characterize the test and process as: "dumb, because we didn't know why we have to take it," "stupid!" "has no point!" "dumb, learned everything the year before," "boring," and "waste of time." during the study, the field-testing of the texas assessment of knowledge and skills test (taks) occurred. taks is a new state-mandated assessment program designed to have a closer alignment with the state's standards. after taking the pilot version of the taks, erica, in a followup survey, shares some of her peers' comments. half of the students remain constant in their criticism of the test: "it's stupid," "why do we have to take these things? it's not even to find out if we know anything," "it's only to find out if you 'recognize' schools," and "after taking this test, we shouldn't have anymore school; there is no point to it." a couple of responses reveal the increased difficulty of the taks as compared to the taas: "it's too hard," and "i had to guess on half of them." two other students provide a justification for taking the test: "good thing to take so that you can prove you learned something," and "gives an academic overview for universities." questions regarding the taks are starting to surface with the increased stakes created by this new test. in the spring of 2003, a high school student from an upper-middle income home is challenging the state mandate by refusing to take taks. she feels it subtracts from the quality of teaching and also contributes to the inequity of low-income students. the freshman suggests that, "high stakes testing has stolen her thirst for knowledge and tarnished what she treasurers about school-learning." (torres, 2003a, p.1b, 2003b, p. 4b). a high school teacher asked her classroom students: "what do you think about the taas?" and "do you think it reflects what you have learned?" most of the responses by high school students who have been successful in school feel that the test does not reflect what is needed to be successful in life. their responses reflect the students' confidence, yet are rather cynical: rudy (17) responds: "it was a waste of time. i think it was boring. it was easy. 'do you think it reflects what you have learned?' "no." lisette (15) expands on this notion: it was easy, if that's the standard; it is a low standard. too many students are above it, if that's what average is for us. we need a higher standard; it is too low for the real world. "do you think it measures what you have learned?" no, most of us have learned more. interestingly, some students are against the test because they feel that they are not being challenged by the required lower standards. evident among the responses is that across grade levels, students have distinct perceptions about the test, the items, the purposes, and the difficulty level of the state-mandated exam. their responses texas voices speak out about high-stakes testing: preservice teachers, teachers, and students 15 show how some students are clearly concerned with their performance, while others are annoyed by the process, others are relying on their persistence to do well, and still others are motivated by the test to demonstrate what they have learned. similar findings were found when massachusetts' students were asked to draw and explain their reactions about their state's competency tests (wheelock, bebell, & haney, 2000, 2002). in our current analysis, the teachers' and students' responses clearly reveal the psychological, emotional, and physical effect on students. wheelock et al. found similar effects in students' drawings about the tests. teachers also observed these side effects as a result of high-stakes testing in california (wright, 2002). we are reminded by sheldon & biddle's (1998) work that students' motivation toward learning can be thwarted when conditions such as high-stakes testing exist. we also note that some of the younger students' responses tended to be more positive in nature in comparison to the older students. perhaps younger students are trying to appease their teachers, but we also posit that the younger students at the time were not faced with the possibility of retention, as is the case now. a follow-up study examining the effects of the current testing mandates would provide insight into whether or not younger students would maintain their favorable perceptions. interestingly, students do not have a clear understanding of the purpose of testing; they think that passing tests (a) will help them become interested in content areas, (b) will provide job opportunities, (c) will ensure their grade promotion, or (d) represent the end all of the learning process. the existence of so many differing perceptions and concerns about the test calls into question the validity of taas results. yet, schools and teachers are judged by these results. apparently, as a means to demonstrate equity and to ensure school accountability-and regardless of the compromise to validity-policy makers continue to make decisions and enact legislation based on high-stakes test scores. conclusion in providing these teachers, preservice teachers, and students a forum to voice their perspectives, insights as to the implications of policy dictates have been garnered. while educational opportunity and equity are goals for which we should all strive, the current accountability system, as it is currently being implemented, appears to have gone awry. preservice and inservice teachers acknowledge that assessment is an important part of the teachinglearning cycle; however, they feel that high-stakes tests result in a test-driven curriculum. as we note in this study, these teachers recognize the limitations to teaching to the test and wonder if students will know or value anything beyond what is tested. similarly, amrein and berliner's (2002c) recent study examining data across 28 states, including texas, confirm that the focus on high-stakes testing has not led to increased student performance on other standardized measures. our findings support amrein and berliner's (2002a) conclusions that focusing on high-stakes testing results in incidental outcomes such as a narrowing of the curriculum, teaching to the test, and teacher flight from public schools as well as from the profession in general. through the voices of our respondents, we sense the undue stress that results from current high-stakes testing policies, and the effects of that stress on teachers and students. such stress is likely to impact not only test performance, but also motivation towards learning in general. in the case of the texas teachers quoted in our research, we can see that they are not afforded the opportunity to make appropriate curricular, instructional, and assessment decisions based on their professional knowledge and expertise. rather, all decisions are being made by policy dictates. when teachers' decision-making power is limited, their ability to be innovative in meeting student needs is also limited, thus leading to feelings of frustration and to a sense that their educational role has been reduced to that of a technician. removing decisionmaking power from the teacher is a clear example of de-professionalization. like smith and fey (2000), we recommend that teachers become active agents in the high-stakes testing debate. to do so, "they must learn the culture of both polis (to understand the political actions and intentions that lie behind accountability policies) and psychometrics (to point out the fallacies of local accountability programs)" (p. 343). as teacher educators, we should take a strong stance and assist in this effort to make certain that our preservice teachers have this knowledge. we must also provide support for those currently in the field. we must not stand idly by while others define the profession through policies that focus on test results rather than on student learning. as an educational community, we must set the standards regarding what it means to be a "highly qualified" successful teacher. this focus on texas and its state-mandated test, taas, has brought to the forefront the issue of high-stakes testing and the repercussions on effective teaching and ultimately, student outcomes. this study serves as an example of policy dictates and the aftermath of such policy. texas is not the only state that is plagued by high-stakes testing; this has become a national concern. while politicians debate each other about how to assure school accountability, teachers, teacher candidates, and students are at the current issues in education vol. 6 no. 3 forefront as the unwilling pawns of policy mandates. recognizing that tests are not predictors of creativity or future success, across the country teachers and students are beginning to dig in their heels to protest standardized testing, either by demanding for alternative exit criteria (kossan, 2001), by refusing to administer the state-mandated test (ohanian, 2001), or by suggesting that teacher assessment is a better indicator of student learning (rapp, 2001). students have also become active in boycotting against the massachusetts test "weight" on graduation requirements (gehring, 2000) or by protesting against their state's mandated test (organized students of chicago, 1999). vermont's governor suggests that changing their current educational system to incorporate high-stakes tests will result in "dumbing down" school curriculum, and thus, is considering refuting the recent federal mandates (pyle, 2002). although polls indicate that parents support testing (thernstrom, 2000), parents are being misled to believe that high-stakes testing ensures that their children receive the best education, and that such testing is the only way to achieve school accountability. like teachers, parents are organizing to protest the inequities of testing, and groups are currently being formed throughout the country. parents and communities share the responsibility for questioning educational testing policies. further studies that examine parents' notions of testing would shed light on their perspectives. as professionals, we must join other efforts challenging policy makers in order to examine the discrepancies between who are, and who should be, the educational policy decision makers. current policies have resulted in ineffective teaching practices. our findings concur with swope and miner (2000) that the "misuse of standardized tests can distort learning, exacerbate inequities, and undermine true accountability" (p. 8). at the crux of this issue is that students' potential is being undermined with prescriptive teaching practices. all voices and issues need to be heard to help schools make decisions that not only assure accountability, but that also achieve educational goals. references american educational research association (2000). aera position statement concerning high stakes testing in prek-12 education. retrieved february 9, 2003 from http://www.aera.net/about/policy/stakes.htm american educational research association, american psychological association, and national council on measurement in education (2000). standards for educational and psychological testing 1999. washington, dc: author. amrein, a. l. & berliner, d. c. 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(2001, april 24). it's time to stop the taas madness. austin american statesman, commentary section. http://www.rethinkingschools.org/publicatio%09n/failing_kids/failing_kids.shtml http://www.rethinkingschools.org/publicatio%09n/failing_kids/failing_kids.shtml http://www.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/account%09/2002/manual/index.html http://www.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/account%09/2002/manual/index.html http://www.edletter.org/past/issues/2000-%09mj/forum.shtml http://www.edletter.org/past/issues/2000-%09mj/forum.shtml http://www.csteep.bc.edu/drawoned/mcas/m%09caspaper.html http://www.csteep.bc.edu/drawoned/mcas/m%09caspaper.html http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?conte%09ntid=10635 http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?conte%09ntid=10635 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume5/number5/ texas voices speak out about high-stakes testing: preservice teachers, teachers, and students 19 2003 article citation flores, b. b., & clark, e. r. (2003, march 3). texas voices speak out about high-stakes testing: preservice teachers, teachers, and students. current issues in education [on-line], 6(3). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume6/number3/ author notes belinda bustos flores university of texas at san antonio bflores@utsa.edu belinda bustos flores is an assistant professor in the college of education and human development at the university of texas at san antonio. formerly, she was the title vii bilingual coordinator in the division of bicultural bilingual studies and was the coordinator during the first year of project alianza. she completed her ph.d. at the university of texas at austin in curriculum and instruction with specializations in multilingual studies and educational psychology. in february 2000, she received the 1st place award for outstanding dissertation from the national association for bilingual education. her research interests within the field of bilingual education include teacher self-concept and ethnic identity, teacher efficacy, teacher beliefs, teacher preparation, teacher testing and effective teaching practices. ellen riojas clark university of texas at san antonio eclark@utsa.edu ellen riojas clark is an associate professor in the division of bicultural bilingual studies at the university of texas at san antonio. she has coordinated several title vii undergraduate teacher-training projects, a graduate bilingual counselor's project, a graduate educational leadership project, and an early childhood teacher-training project. dr. clark received her b. a. from trinity university, san antonio, her m. a. in bicultural bilingual studies from the university of texas at san antonio, and her ph. d. from the university of texas at austin. in addition to bilingual education teacher training and the identification of gifted students, another area of research is studying the relationship between the constructs of self-concept, ethnic identity, and self-efficacy in students and teachers. note from the spring 2016 executive editor, constantin schreiber april 25, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation flores, b. b., & clark, e. r. (2003). texas voices speak out about high-stakes testing: preservice teachers, teachers, and students. current issues in education, 6(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1684 file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number3/index.html mailto:bflores@utsa.edu mailto:eclark@utsa.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1684 current issues in education vol. 6 no. 3 volume 6, number 14 september 16, 2003 issn 1099-839x academic instrumental knowledge: deconstructing cultural capital theory for strategic intervention approaches robert rueda and lilia d. monzó university of southern california angela arzubiaga vanderbilt university this paper explores the issue of social and cultural capital with immigrant students and their families. drawing on a cultural-historical theoretical framework, the article focuses on that subset related to schooling that we term academic instrumental knowledge (aik). this article draws from two related projects involving ethnographic work at home and at school with latino immigrant families to examine the nature of specific examples of how this knowledge is constructed and how it operates in the daily lives of these families. the article argues all families possess cultural and social capital, but it does not always map easily on to that valued by schools. moreover, that while such knowledge appears to be critical to school success, intervention based on simple transmission of important school-related facts and knowledge, without reference to the specific sociocultural contexts in which these families live, will not be effective. a common perception about academic success is that it is a function of ability. but ability to do what? an important aspect of schooling is that it sorts individual students based on their ability to conform to a prescribed set of practices and knowledge which fall beyond the realm of academic content specifically taught. this experience, their cultural capital, often determines their access to academic content and achievement (apple, 1995; bourdieu, 1998). cultural capital refers to having the knowledge and experience that results in behaviors and practices aligned to the values of those who are in a position to legitimize them. parents who understand the knowledge and behaviors rewarded in schools may pass these onto their children and become advocates for their children's rights, for example, demanding placement in programs to which they are entitled and preparation that enhances college opportunities. immigrant families have little knowledge of our educational system and may not have extensive knowledge of the educational systems of their countries of origin (portes, 1998; valdes, 1996). it is not surprising then that the high value many immigrant families place on education rarely translates into success for their children (goldenberg & gallimore, 1995). while the desire to succeed academically is often high among these families, this desire is not often matched by knowledge of how to achieve it. current issues in education vol. 6 no. 14 a high educational priority is making accessible what we term here academic instrumental knowledge (aik) to immigrant families. this schoolspecific knowledge can be seen as a specialized type of cultural capital. we have noted through our work that immigrant families express a desire for this type of information. however, we do not support approaches that seek to socialize families into the cultural values and practices considered "appropriate" by white middle-class standards and that are based on deficiency perspectives toward diverse children and families (auerbach, 1989). rather, we support approaches that make explicit the cultural basis of legitimized school practices and how these support structural inequalities and that encourage negotiation and the social construction of new hybrid practices that balance the diverse values, beliefs, resources and constraints of families with the structure of schooling. we explore in this paper the types of information and knowledge to which aik refers and how such information gets accessed and appropriated among immigrant families, grounding our discussion in examples from two studies of immigrant latino families. our goal is to discuss key features of effective programs aimed at families. we situate the cultural knowledge of immigrant families with an eye toward refining the work on social/cultural capital and providing a foundation for thinking about improving the life outcomes of immigrant families. cultural capital: a theory of structural inequalities critical theories of education explain the roles schools play in society, showing their ability to both reproduce and transform society (apple, 1995). bourdieu (1998) has advanced a theory of social space that is relational and demarcates people's position in society according to the relative weight of capital (cultural, economic, etc) they possess. capital is "the wealth out of which more wealth comes" (kilbride, 2000: pg. 11). although initially used by economists, sociologists have applied the concept of capital to other resources, namely social capital. often the term social capital is used to refer to multiple sources of social resources as opposed to economic ones. however some authors have noted the importance between different forms of capital, including human, cultural, and social capital (kilbride, 2000; portes, 1998). in this more restrictive use, social capital refers to the networks of people who can provide other forms of capital, including economic and cultural capital (portes, 1998, stanton-salazar, 2001). in this sense a person with an extensive network of friends, family, and other contacts may have greater social capital that someone who is predominantly isolated with few people from whom to gain access to information, assistance, or other resources. however the quality of this network, that is the kinds of information and resources the network may have also has an important bearing on the extent to which the network is a source of capital. it may be that a network provides important resources in a particular area or context but less so in others. human capital refers to the knowledge or expertise that particular individuals have developed that allows them to gain greater human or other forms of capital. under this definition, human capital would include particular knowledge and skills often discussed in terms of individual abilities, including things like language fluency and skills that could be marketed toward employment (for example, knowing how to build a house or having a nursing degree) (kilbride, 2000). bourdieu (1998) has advanced a theory of cultural capital that encompasses styles of interaction as well as the knowledge and skills that are products of an individual's position in a social space that is always relational to others. he argues that what some have referred to as individual skills are culturally produced and that the sorting of cultural capital is precisely legitimized by distinctions of ability that can never be separated from culture. our understanding of educational issues leads us to agree with bourdieu, that knowledge and skills are learned through participation in cultural activity (rogoff, 1997, 2003). thus, although some authors make the distinction between human and cultural capital, we see all knowledge and skills learned as an outcome of cultural interactions and embedded with culturally produced values and meanings. thus in this work, we treat cultural capital as encompassing all that which is culturally learned, including values, beliefs, information, understandings, skills, and ways of engaging in particular practices. bourdieu (1998) points out that cultural capital, especially that which pans into schooling, is initially passed down by the family and that the sorting function of schooling further differentiates people with respect to capital, by giving more to those who have more capital and less to those with less. ability grouping at the earliest grades is one way in which cultural capital becomes the bases by which further cultural capital is inequitably distributed through continued tracking practices. the children whose families have been successful in the u.s. educational system have the social capital necessary to gain the cultural capital to succeed in schools. they will enter school with skills and practices that easily map into the expectations of teachers and they will be thought to possess greater ability and interest in school, which will increase the academic instrumental knowledge: deconstructing cultural capital theory for strategic intervention approaches 3 likelihood that they will be tracked into the more advanced academic tracks available. in addition, their families will have knowledge of how to structure their children's education, what the characteristics of good schools are, and of what they can expect and demand of schools on behalf of their children. in this work we deal with both cultural and social capital in the sense of the what which is learned and developed (cultural capital) and the who that provides these resources (social capital). both are imminently important and we cannot really discuss the cultural capital or lack thereof of immigrant children and families without in one way or another addressing the people to whom these children and families may be able to turn to toward access the cultural capital of schooling. however, the purpose of this work is really to understand academic instrumental knowledge as a subset of cultural capital pertaining primarily to educational issues prevalent in the lives and educational outcomes of immigrant children. thus, although we refer to the social capital of the immigrant families we have worked with, our major focus is on the kinds of cultural capital, specifically academic instrumental knowledge, that families need to success in the u.s. education system. cultural capital and immigrant families many children of immigrants (particularly those from low ses backgrounds, speakers of languages other than english, etc.) are at a significant disadvantage with respect to culture and social capital given that their parents have little knowledge of how u.s. schools function, of the practices and behaviors rewarded by teachers and schools, and even of their rights with respect to educational issues. furthermore, it is unlikely that immigrant families will develop close relationships with individuals who have this type of cultural capital. in discussing the habitus, bourdieu (1998) points out that people within a particular social space and with a certain type and amount of capital develop particular tastes and ways of being which support engagement in activities that put them in contact primarily with others who share similar interests and generally fall within the same social space, making the transfer of cultural capital difficult. indeed the cultural capital that white middle class families have vis-à-vis the schools has proven elusive for many children and families from lowincome, non-dominant groups. the extensive research on home-school discontinuities that exist for non-dominant group children, especially black, american indian, native hawaiian, and latino/chicano children has shown the deep-seated nature of such discontinuities (for a review see au & kawakami, 1994). for example, much of this research is centered on forms of discourse, body movement and rhythm, cognitive styles, and language practices. these are practices that are developed through years of participation within specific cultural contexts, often learned from birth onward. although children can learn the social literacies of schools, this will likely take years of participation, years that may be filled with conflict as they are judged poorly from the onset, which may also preclude access to knowledge about the cultural expectations of the institution. given this dilemma, many researchers have begun to study how to draw on the diverse knowledge and experience children bring to school as a means by which to facilitate academic content. however, this is also difficult as most teachers have little knowledge of the communities in which they teach. all of these issues must continue to be examined. in the present context, we are concerned with facilitating instrumental cultural practices and information about schooling to parents that may support them in making informed educational choices for their children. this is especially relevant for immigrant latino families, whose knowledge of the school system in the u.s. is significantly less than that of groups who have more experience in this regard. an important note is that although achievement among minority children is low, many have been able to succeed within the existing educational system even though they may have started out with very low levels of the cultural capital rewarded in schools. it may be that in some ways the capital that minority families pass down which allow their children to successfully engage in their communities, although not directly rewarded in schools, may mediate access to the cultural capital offered and rewarded in schools. for example, some research suggests that immigrant children tend to have a more positive outlook with respect to the outcomes they can expect from the educational system of this country than non-immigrants and that this results in practices aligned to teachers expectation and may be accordingly rewarded (ogbu & simmons, 1998; suarez-orozco, 1987). other work suggests that the ability of families to structure children's experiences according to their beliefs results in greater academic success (portes & rumbaut, 2001; zhou & bankston, 1996). our position is that the cultural capital of specific families must be acknowledged and utilized to create links that support the learning of some concrete practices and information that children need to succeed in schools. a sociocultural perspective on cultural capital we approach our understandings of cultural capital and knowledge construction from a current issues in education vol. 6 no. 14 sociocultural or cultural-historical theoretical framework. that is, we view human cognition and behavior as embedded in collectively organized, artifact-mediated activity systems (vygotsky, 1987; wertsch, 1998). based on this framework, we argue that cultural capital, aik, and all existing knowledge of families is sociocultural in nature -meaning that it is socially transmitted and negotiated, embedded in specific sociocultural context or ecocultural niches, and is culturally-laden and political in nature-it can't be simply transmitted such as in a neutral course in "parenting practices" without reference to these complex factors. this framework supports the view that immigrants do not arrive devoid of cultural capital. rather, they have the cultural capital to effectively interact within familiar cultural contexts in which they have been successful (as defined by participants in those contexts). for example, some latino immigrant families attach importance to gift giving and routinely engage in such reciprocal exchange practices (moll & greenberg, 1990). they know that to attend a birthday party without a gift would be considered inappropriate and could be interpreted as disinterest in maintaining close ties. the individual with sufficient cultural capital to understand these rules of exchange will solidify his/her relationships and possibly increase their capital. however, in the contexts of schools, where the arbiters of the rules of interactions and rewarded cultural practices are teachers with different cultural assumptions and expectations, these same practices and experiences may go unrecognized, lose their worth, and perhaps even become negative capital (portes, 1998). although bourdieu refers in his work only to the cultural practices of the dominant groups as cultural capital, he clearly points out that this becomes cultural capital only in their alignment to the preferences of those in power. but he makes it clear that worth is not inherent in any particular practice but is assigned and relational. immigrant parents often play peripheral roles in the school system. however developing a deep understanding of the cultural nature of schools and its practices, including the meanings of those practices and the identities associated with them, requires full participation (lave & wenger, 1991). for this to occur, the peripheral position from which immigrant parents interact with schools must begin to be moved in the direction that enhances their knowledge of the system, allows them greater participation, and legitimizes their voice in decisionmaking. a significant point is that participation involves developing the identities associated with such practices. our system of schooling, its practices and the values and beliefs embedded in them, have been historically and socioculturally developed and thus validate the embedded notions that lead to cultural privilege. thus, any program that seeks to encourage parents to develop greater understanding of the school system for immediate benefit to their children should beware that this increased knowledge not result in further ammunition for the role of cultural reproduction of schools. one mechanism is critical dialogue that reveals the cultural basis of school practices and how these serve to sort children into particular sectors of the economy, creating inequities of social, economic, and political power that are often defined by race, class, and gender. considering family contexts in incorporating school culture a sociocultural perspective allows us to see that family values and their social, economic and political niches must be central in attempts to transmit knowledge and practices compatible with a different cultural context. supporting parents in gaining a deep knowledge of the culture of schooling is difficult to operationalize into effective programs. it would require significant and extended participation in school-like contexts with similar structural constraints, an option that would be neither feasible nor appropriate for many of the low-income families who have little time at their disposal (auerbach, 1989; valdes, 1996). moreover, such an approach may have undesirable secondary consequences such as negating or altering the particular world views of the families and children who bring their own diverse but valid ways of knowing and behaving. of course new forms of cultural capital can be produced by conscientious teachers who negotiate the cultural demands of the classroom explicitly with students. while this is a desirable option, there is little indication that such a transformation is likely to happen anytime soon. indeed trends seem to be digressing to old patterns based on deficiency perspectives (valencia, 1997). our perspective is that schools ought to serve the needs of diverse communities in ways that validate and build on cultural differences. this additive approach requires a radical restructuring of schools, including teacher education on critical perspectives of culture and learning, a diverse teaching force, increased revenues for urban schools and communities, more adequate systems of accountability and testing, and strong communityschool connections that allow the voices of parents and children to be heard in all aspects of school decision-making. although we advocate transforming schools in these ways and deconstructing normative cultural practices, we are clear about the long-term nature of this goal and recognize the more immediate need to academic instrumental knowledge: deconstructing cultural capital theory for strategic intervention approaches 5 support the academic achievement of minority children who presently struggle to achieve in the existing system. in the next section we distinguish the knowledge and practices that may lead specifically to educational capital from the broader concept of cultural capital, which has proven elusive for most immigrant families. in the following section we discuss aik as knowledge situated within communities that addresses specific needs in support of educational success. academic instrumental knowledge in our previous work we have documented that access to aik was related to children's reading engagement and achievement (rueda, macgillivray, monzó, & arzubiaga, 2001; arzubiaga, rueda, & monzó, 2002). we defined "access to aik" as knowing a person who had knowledge of the u.s. educational system and who families could turn to with questions about their children's progress or other school-related matters. however, in that work we did not address what it is that aik specifically referred to, except to say that it was information about the educational system that would lead to increased capital with respect to schooling in the u.s. it would seem that this is the critical question in order to develop programs that effectively provide parents with access to aik. however, as odd as it may seem to program developers, our argument is that aik, as all cultural capital, is situated knowledge about the educational system. while we have a good sense of what types of information are important to understand to maximize potential success given existing educational research, we have little knowledge of how this information makes sense in the lives of particular communities and particular families. thus it is our contention that programs must be developed with the specific needs, interests, concerns of the particular individuals who attend such programs and who together, along with the developers, are continually negotiating the information presented with their own sociocultural realities, experiences, beliefs, and values. in what follows, then we attempt to document what aik refers to for the families that we have worked with in two projects involving ethnographic work at home and at school with latino immigrant families. in what follows we draw on specific examples from our data and discuss the nature of aik and how it assessed rather than to report comprehensively on specific findings. we begin with a brief understanding of the networks available to families with knowledge of the u.s. educational system or insights into their social capital. sources of academic instrumental knowledge although parents had few sources of aik, those who did depended on a family member who had had some schooling in this country, a friend of the family, or in rare cases a teacher with whom they had developed a strong relationship. mothers who sought assistance from a particular teacher had developed a relationship with the teacher over a number of years and interacted with that teacher not only with respect to their children's education but often over other personal matters. in addition the relationships were reciprocal. mothers knew a great deal about the personal lives of the teachers and others to whom they turned to for aik. researchers also sometimes became sources of aik but only selectively and under certain conditions. furthermore, families judged the shared experience of the person who was providing aik and this seemed often more important than their knowledge of schooling. for example, one mother seeking advice from lilia (second author) with respect to language program placement, listened to her recommendation to place the child in a bilingual program and the research based reasons for this preference. this information was provided with a conscious effort to make the information accessible to her using non-technical terms. however the mother, after listening to lilia and to her daughters' repeated request to be put into a bilingual program, recited her older son's recommendation for english immersion placement and took his advice instead, pointing out that she could teach her daughter spanish at home. her son's recommendation was based on the difficulty that he said he encountered having to transition to english at the fourth grade. however, it must be noted that this son was at the time a university student whose bilingual education had certainly not negatively impacted him and perhaps had been the reason for his academic success (cummins, 1996). this mother was especially concerned over her child needing to learn english, but the cultural context of the school community was such that it engendered a fear of failure and stigma in a bilingual program. the school had been targeted by anti-bilingual education activists not long before this conversation took place and had received national attention resulting in a school culture that was predominantly in favor of english immersion. it must be noted that in other immigrant communities such as the one in which our follow up study takes place, families were very much in favor of bilingual education. although many families were concerned that their children learn english, they did not see this as incompatible with bilingual instruction. in sum, instrumental knowledge was most sought and incorporated by families when the person with whom they discussed the information was someone with whom they felt "confianza" (trust), when it addressed an immediate need or problem, current issues in education vol. 6 no. 14 when the relationship was reciprocal, and when there was some shared history or experience that made their knowledge seem relevant to their lives. in addition, other socioeconomic and sociopolitical issues may impact whether academic instrumental knowledge is accepted even when the provider is a viable source toward defining academic instrumental knowledge at the time of the previous study we focused on understanding the impact that access to knowledge about school might have on reading. currently we are concerned with describing and developing the construct of academic instrumental knowledge by attempting to understand what types of knowledge parents may have been referring to when asked whether they had someone they could turn to regarding questions about schooling. this type of knowledge seemed not only relevant to their children's reading, but also seemed accessible to immigrant parents without them actually participating in the culture of schools to a significantly greater extent. for this task we draw on the previous study that used ethnographic methods with twenty-one immigrant families (rueda et al., 2001) and on a subsequent ethnography of eight urban latino immigrant families taking place approximately two miles from the previous study site (monzó, 2001). the families in both studies spoke primarily spanish in the home and had similar income levels. in the first study, research assistants, including lilia, interacted with families through home visits, participating in typical daily activities such as dinner and homework, and accompanying them to school meetings, clinics, etc. in the second study, a similar approach was used by lilia. in the process of such activities, it was common for families to ask for knowledge about school given their knowledge of lilia's previous teaching experience and her university student status. in addition, families often discussed their interactions with teachers and other school personnel as well as the practices, ideas, and values students learned at school that they were uncomfortable with (for a description of the study and methods see monzó, 2001). we ground our definition of the term academic instrumental knowledge in the contextspecific types of knowledge that families have sought from lilia and others but we also include the knowledge and practices (and the embedded values and beliefs) that we found to be absent among families but that we believe facilitate success in our educational system. we distinguish aik from more general and global sets of cultural practices, beliefs, and attitudes that are also deeply rooted in the culture of schools but that are more difficult to operationalize in intervention programs. we use it to refer to information about the educational system and practices that support achievement in school and that can be referenced in a critical dialogue that reveals the cultural nature of such practices. such critical dialogue allows diverse groups to consider these new understandings as one way of thinking and doing, a way that indexes success in the u.s. but not necessarily as a standard by which the value of all practices should be measured. in distinguishing from more implicit knowledge that is learned through participation in culture, the practices claimed to be instrumental to success in u.s. schools can be set against the many constraints and affordances that impact individual families. as discussed previously, our argument is that we cannot make a list of information and practices that parents need to learn to support their children's education and the move to create programs with this curriculum. such an approach minimizes the situated nature of knowledge, the specific needs of particular families, and how the sociocultural experiences, values, and beliefs they hold interact with this information. instead, we propose that aik must be negotiated with the sociocultural experiences of particular individuals. table 1 is a list contrasting three types of knowledge specific to the families we worked with that we have catalogued in our work: 1) knowledge about school that was directly sought by parents, 2) knowledge that was provided to parents but that was rejected once received, and 3) knowledge that has been shown to mediate success in schools but that was not evident from out interactions with families. as is evident from the table, there seems to be a pattern to the differences. these patterns are discussed below table 1. types of academic instrumental knowledge [note from spring 2016 executive editor constantin schreiber: this table could not be retrieved when accessing the archives in 2016. please contact the authors if you would like to take a look at this table.] aik sought: problems with access the type of knowledge about school that parents most often sought was informational and related to solving an immediate, short-term problem. however in many cases parents' appropriation and use of this knowledge seemed to be thwarted by the ways it was communicated by teachers or other school personnel and/or understood by parents. for example, after a meeting held for parents on language programs, lilia visited a mother who had sat through the entire meeting at the very front of the room. two academic instrumental knowledge: deconstructing cultural capital theory for strategic intervention approaches 7 hours after this meeting the mother was not able to demonstrate understanding of what had been said. although the meeting had been held in spanish, the language used to explain the programs was technical and complex. in our work, we have provided what we believe to be explicit explanations to help parents distinguish between the various language programs available. however, this information continues to be elusive to many of the parents even after repeated explanations. there have also been a few cases of more involved help-seeking that has supported the adoption of practices typically associated with middle-class parents. one example is of a mother who participated in the study with the hopes that her ninth grade daughter might be encouraged to develop an interest in pursuing a college education. lilia discussed the practice of tracking and suggested that the girl become knowledgeable about courses required by universities. the parents asked what specific courses. upon hearing that foreign language was a requirement, the mother mentioned that her daughter had wanted to take french but had been put in a sewing course. lilia explained that it often helped when parents made the requests. the mother, who spoke sufficient english, immediately followed up and made the request. her daughter was placed on the waiting list for french class for the following semester. later when the girl's received a d in her report card in algebra, the mother decided to speak with the teacher. lilia accompanied her. the teacher explained that the child did not seem to understand the material and that it was her responsibility to seek help. the mother encouraged her daughter to sign up for an after school tutorial. when her grades did not improve, again the mother decided to go to the school. rather than take lilia's suggestion that they speak to the teacher again to try and pinpoint what she did not understand, the mother decided that she wanted to speak with the counselor and ask that he change her daughter to another math class with a different teacher. she was afraid that the teacher would retaliate negatively toward her daughter for their continued attempts to speak with him accompanied by lilia, they went to see the counselor who insisted the change could not be made. lilia, who had been silently listening previously, intervened after noting the look of resignation in the mother's eyes, to tell the counselor, "but she is her mother and she has the right as such to ask that her child be moved if she is unhappy with the teacher." noting the english fluency and assertiveness in lilia's voice, the counselor quickly turned to look in the computer, said it needed to be "ok'd" by his boss, immediately stepped out to speak with her, and returned a few minutes later and said he would do but that the girl should not discuss this with her friends. for this mother, the aik gained proved useful in advocating for her daughter. the girl's math grades improved to a c the following semester. factors that may have increased accessibility to the aik provided were the mother's knowledge of english and having some familiarity in engaging in dominant group contexts as she worked as a housekeeper in white middle and upper-middle class families. however, her lack of knowledge about parental rights or about the middle class practice of making requests at schools may have resulted in her leaving the counselor's office without having her requests met or insisting upon them. lilia's intervention and ability to bridge for the mother was critical in this case. aik rejected: problem of fit in table 1, the type of knowledge parents most often rejected was initially sought in the context of a broader problem for which numerous solutions may have applied. lilia offered suggestions that seemed appropriate to her given her knowledge of the educational system, curriculum and typical classroom practices, the community, the parents' english needs, and other considerations. however, in some cases such suggestions proved inappropriate for particular families and were rejected as possible avenues to solving their problems. in one example of rejected aik, another ninth grade girl who had recently arrived from el salvador was being bussed to an all white public high school where she had been placed in the esl track. she was receiving poor grades in many classes. she explained that in many of her esl classes instruction was offered in english only and translations were only available if the students asked. in history, where she was receiving a "d", she said it was especially difficult as they had no text to review and the teacher lectured the entire time in english. lilia pointed out that the student's english class should be focused on learning the language and that her understanding of the academic content of history should not be dependent on her knowledge of the second language. the mother asked in a manner set for action, "y que puedo hacer?" (and what can i do?) lilia's response was to suggest a visit to the teacher to ask about the child's grades, to explain that the daughter was not understanding, and to enquire about the school esl program and general policies in this regard. lilia offered to accompany the mother who she had previously accompanied to numerous places to help her translate, as she did not speak english, including the immigration office. lilia and the mother made plans to talk to the teacher the current issues in education vol. 6 no. 14 following week. however on the day prior to going, the mother called lilia to cancel because the daughter would be taking an exam that week and the mother preferred to wait and see how she might do. months later, when the daughter received her report card, the girl was still getting a "d". we are still troubled by this decision and have suggested other options for the child. for example we have suggested reading some of the material in spanish from the library, hoping that knowing it in spanish might help her understand when the teacher speaks about it in english. however, this has not been a useful strategy because it has been difficult to find books on history in spanish and because she does not have a clear idea of the topics that are being discussed in class. we have not pursued this issue further, as there are indications in the mother's interactions such as her tone of voice that suggest the mother is embarrassed about her decision. this example brings to the forefront many of the complex issues that surround the seemingly straightforward domain of instrumental knowledge. for theoretical and practical reasons, it is important to try to understand why this situation has gone unresolved. this mother was very active in her children's schooling on a daily basis. it was common to see her helping them, sitting with them at the table as they did their homework in the evenings. the family used the library on occasion and at various times sought lilia's assistance for transportation to the library or to lend them a dictionary. this was a mother whose 5th grade daughter was in various sports and who routinely watches her play, attended school assemblies, etc. but the ecocultural niche, which the family occupied, resulted in a clash with the efforts of lilia to negotiate knowledge and practices that might result in greater success. one important factor is that the daughter was undocumented and the mother may have felt it was too risky to go and speak at the school about her daughter's language proficiency. this may have marked her as an obvious target for investigation regarding citizenship status or otherwise called undesired attention to her. another potential factor is that the daughter attended a school that was predominantly anglo and that was located in a distant suburban community. the mother may not have felt comfortable interacting in that community, and moreover had never had the opportunity to see the school. the final column in table 1 includes information that we believe to be important especially in terms of more general and long-term issues regarding eventual school success. it is possible that because the context for these issues is more general, focused on long term goals, ambiguous, or not connected to immediate problems, there is no logical or existing space in the ecocultural niche to integrate the new information. the "problem" which this knowledge addresses is not immediately visible to the families. making aik accessible: key features for effective intervention programs as shown above some information initially sought by parents was rejected. that is, they listened and believed it was inappropriate for them or their particular case. work by mehan and colleagues on the issue of how to bolster the academic success of low-achieving high school students is relevant in this context (mehan, hubbard, & villanueva, 1994; mehan, villanueva, hubbard, & lintz, 1996). they describe the process of "untracking," an educational reform effort that has been successful in preparing students from low-income and linguistic and ethnic minority backgrounds for college. untracking provides all students with the same academically demanding curriculum while varying the amount of institutional support each student receives. especially helpful are institutional "scaffolds" that teach the hidden curriculum of the school, forming a space for students to develop an academic identity and to build bridges between high school and college. important for the academic success of african americans and latinos, untracking allows students to develop a reflective system of beliefs and a critical consciousness without sacrificing their neighborhood identities. this approach has been described as "accommodation without assimilation." it permits the development of a "hybrid" or "third space" (gutiérrez, baquedano-lopez, & tejada, 2000), where success can be gained by incorporating new knowledge in a way that transforms but allows for negotiation. however, a critical aspect of increasing opportunities of minority youth is supporting similar understandings among parents so that they can structure their children's activities from early on and can develop with their children a mindset that is critically aware and positioned to make informed choices. the work of delgado-gaitan (2001) with copla, the latino parent association which has made important strides in the schools of carpintería, california, provides important insights into the process by which parents can learn not only about how the educational system works but also how to use this knowledge to support their children's education. her work has shown that a process of collective decision-making, rooted in the needs and beliefs of the community, was most effective in creating an organization that has not only lasted over ten years but also become a strong voice in the schools. specifically, instructive has been her analysis that "in empowerment moving forward, academic instrumental knowledge: deconstructing cultural capital theory for strategic intervention approaches 9 learning, and growing don't always happen in a straight line; they often move in a spiral motion, moving forward, then slipping back…when we move forward again we take bigger steps…" (pg. 5) based on lessons learned from these and other works as well as our own, we come away with some basic principals that seem particularly important in making aik accessible and adaptable for families. programs must follow an additive approach in contrast to what mehan and his colleagues describe, many traditional approaches to intervention programs have followed a subtractive model, delineating the practices, values, beliefs that must be adopted in order to support academic achievement without regard to violating existing cultural norms. authors who have looked closely at the lives of immigrants warn against this approach in that it may have detrimental affects to how they get along and survive within their own ethnic communities. for example, valdes (1996) suggests that increased participation in school activities require time commitments that may require families to neglect their responsibilities to other members of their family networks from whom they receive important resources when needed. researchers attempting to socialize parents into the specific literacy practices of schools have also found that such attempts did not result as expected (delgado-gaitan, 2001; goldenberg, reese, & gallimore, 1992). parents have their own notions of reading and these dominate the way they structure literacy practices in the home. more advantageous would be to find links between their own literacy related capital and the literacy expectations of schools and encourage negotiation of these practices. in many cases constraints may require choices between one and another practice. in some cases new practices may be juxtaposed against existing practices that oppose the new ones and that are embedded with opposing values. conflicts arise when particular identities and practices denigrate or conflict with other identities and the values embedded in them. we believe that this is the reason why often the knowledge gained within these intervention programs have little impact on the short term and are almost useless in the long term, as people find them to conflict with other values they hold and do not see ways in which to integrate or have these different and or opposing viewpoints coexist. an important task for intervention programs is to open these difficult issues up for discussion and to collaboratively develop not one but a variety of possible hybrid practices that take into account participants own beliefs and values, allowing each individual the opportunity to explore with others the issues they raise. social critical dialogue discussions about instrumental knowledge must reveal the cultural basis of such knowledge. most parent education programs available treat the knowledge to be gleaned as if it were culture free and they are discussed as best practices without any exploration of other cultural practices that may have similar end results. furthermore, the short term and political implications must be discussed so that parents can make informed choices for and with their children. a sociocultural perspective assumes that knowledge is socioculturally constructed and has deep sociocultural and historical roots. freire (1982) argues that only through critical dialogue can social change be enacted. programs that merely attempt to transmit the practices of white middle class families to others simply reproduce the structures of privilege in our society. mediators must have intimate knowledge of the cultural contexts of the community and of the school. these persons must be willing and able to engage participants in collective discussions about the knowledge they are being presented and the positive and negative ways in which it may impact their lives. in addition there must be a critical discussion of the role the sorting mechanism of schooling and the reproductive role it plays in maintaining the status quo as well as the possibilities if offers for transformation. such discussions must be authentic with exploration of new ways of integrating the knowledge with their existing frames. provider must be someone with whom they share some trust and a sense of shared interest and shared experience. they must also be able to create such trust among the group. this suggests that short-term programs are unlikely to have the desired impact of long term appropriation of aik. information must be meaningful parents must be intricately involved in defining the content of such programs. although mediators may have their own thoughts about what types of knowledge parents may need, and although parents' lack of knowledge of educational institutions may result in not even knowing what question to ask, their existing understandings can still become a critical feature of programs. discussions can ensue about why such knowledge is thought to be crucial and parents can make decisions about whether they agree or disagree with a particular perspective. in addition, our work suggests that simply listening and discussing issues is insufficient to make the connection to actual practice. an apprenticeship approach in which discussions suggest the implication of having such knowledge is crucially important for knowledge to be accessed. the work of delgado-gaitan suggests that parents who are current issues in education vol. 6 no. 14 unfamiliar with the system often wish to have someone who can accompany them in their interactions with schools and that these people can lend support and mediate when necessary. negotiation, appropriation, and hybridity our work and that of others has shown that academic instrumental knowledge cannot be offered without a sensitive and thorough exploration of peoples' values, beliefs, resources, and constraints and how people balance these daily. appropriation of new knowledge involves not merely learning it in ways that allows verbalization but actually putting such knowledge to use in ways that transform people's ways of seeing the world and their identities. this is especially necessary when values may be in conflict or when constraints and resources within the ecocultural niche are not compatible with the academic instrumental knowledge being discussed. some have pointed out that the collective negotiation of the cultural contexts of schools and communities, including the values embedded in these can result in transformed knowledge. such negotiation can also result in the creation of hybrids which can be better incorporated by families without creating undue stress on their lives, without denigrating their values and yet still provide a clear validation of their resources and cultural practices. opportunities for such creative innovations must be available not only to groups but on an individual family basis which clearly calls for small groups and trust among all group participants. conclusion in this paper we have drawn on a sociocultural perspective in order to situate the nature of cultural capital and argue that all groups have cultural capital in specific sociocultural contexts. attempts to offer families' knowledge about the educational system (aik) cannot be effective when they are embedded in deficiency perspectives or treated as a set of neutral facts to be learned. our interest is in providing families with the opportunities afforded to those who have the knowledge to make informed choices that have positive impact on their children's educational success. we have attempted to distinguish between broader notions of cultural capital, which are difficult to operationalize to a set of more concrete practices and knowledge about the educational system which will enhance immigrant children's opportunities to academic success. with a perspective on learning as the process of developing identities which may transform people's ways of seeing and doing, we view critical dialogue as an imperative part of this process. we argue against the uncritical enculturation of families into dominant cultural systems and argue in favor of encouraging politically informed decisions, negotiating academic instrumental knowledge within existing values and practices, creating hybrids, transforming knowledge, and permitting informed choice in the acceptance or rejection of cultural practices in the process of appropriating this. references apple, m. (1995). education and power. new york: routledge. arzubiaga, a., rueda, r., & monzó, l. d. (2002). family matters related to the reading engagement of latino children. journal of latinos and education, 1, 231-243. au, k.h. & kawakami, a.j. (1994). cultural congruence in instruction. in e.r. hollins, j.e. king, & w.c. hayman (eds.), teaching diverse populations: formulating a knowledge base (pp. 5-23). state university of new york press. auerbach, e.r. (1989). toward a social-contextual approach to family literacy. harvard educational review, 59(2), 165-181. bourdieu, p. (1998). practical reason. stanford, ca: stanford university press. cummins, j. (1996). negotiating identities: education for empowerment in a diverse society. ontario, ca: california association for bilingual education. delgado-gaitan, c. (2001). the power of community: mobilizing for family an schooling. new york: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. freire, p. 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(1987). becoming somebody: central american immigrants in u.s. inner city schools. antrhopology and education quarterly, 18, 287-299. valdes, g. (1996). con respeto: bridging the distance between culturally diverse families and schools. new york: teachers college press. valencia, r.r. (1997). the evolution of deficit thinking: educational thought and practice. london: falmer press. wertsch. (1998). mind as action. new york: oxford university press. vygotsky, l. s. (1987). l. s. vygotsky, collected works (vol.1) (n. minick, trans.). new york: plenum. (original work published 1934) zhou, m. & bankston iii., c.l. (1998). growing up american: how vietnamese children adapt to life in the united states. new york: russell sage foundation. current issues in education vol. 6 no. 14 2003 article citation rueda, r., monzó, l. d. and arzubiaga, a. (2003, september 16). academic instrumental knowledge: deconstructing cultural capital theory for strategic intervention approaches. current issues in education [on-line], 6(14). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume6/number14/ author notes robert rueda university of southern california wph 601, university park los angeles, ca 90089-0031 rueda@usc.edu robert rueda is professor of learning and instruction at the rossier school of education. his research focuses on sociocultural approaches to literacy learning and teaching among latino and special education students. lilia d. monzó university of southern california 2050 fair park avenue #303, los angeles, ca 90041 monzo@usc.edu lilia d. monzó is a doctoral student at the rossier school of education. her research interests are with issues of culture and identity among latino immigrant students. angela arzubiaga vanderbilt university 1207 18th avenue south nashville, tn 37212 a.arzubiaga@vanderbilt.edu angela arzubiaga is an assistant professor of psychology in education at arizona state university. she obtained her ph.d. in education from the university of california los angeles (ucla) in 1998. she has been awarded the university of california president's postdoctoral fellowship and has been recognized as a junior scholar by the international society for the study of behavioral development (issbd). her research interests are in eco-cultural and sociocultural models to understand family life and home-institution connections. author note: we are grateful for funding that supported this work through dissertation grants awarded to lilia monzó from aera/oeri and from the social science research council through funds from the mellon foundation. we are also grateful to ciera for their funding through oeri which supported earlier work that also informs this paper. above all, we give our thanks to the parents and children from both projects who have allowed us into their homes and lives and to discuss and share their lives with you. note from the spring 2016 executive editor, constantin schreiber january 25, 2016. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number14/index.html mailto:rueda@usc.edu mailto:monzo@usc.edu mailto:a.arzubiaga@vanderbilt.edu academic instrumental knowledge: deconstructing cultural capital theory for strategic intervention approaches 13 2016 article citation rueda, r., monzó, l. d., & arzubiaga, a. (2003). academic instrumental knowledge: deconstructing cultural capital theory for strategic intervention approaches. current issues in education, 6(14). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1682 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1682 cie template volume 18, issue 3 september 29, 2015 issn 1099-839x examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model jana m. willis university of houston – clear lake abstract: training programs that improve technology self-efficacy of teacher candidates will better prepare candidates to overcome technology challenges with greater levels of confidence. the purpose of this study was to examine self-efficacy levels of preservice teacher candidates who participated in scaffolded technology training designed to establish and build upon personal successes and motivations related to technology skill development and use of technology. a purposeful sample of 424 pre-service teacher candidates enrolled in an instructional technology course were administered the technology and teaching efficacy scale at the beginning and end of the semester to assess perceived confidence in his or her abilities to implement technology into classroom lessons/activities to promote students' success through the use of technology. findings suggest that preservice teacher candidates, who participated in a technology course that was designed to develop confidence in the use and implementation of technology had an impact on use of technology and teaching self-efficacy. keywords: use of technology, teaching, self-efficacy, technology integration, preservice teacher candidates apa-style citation: willis, j. m. (2015). examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model. current issues in education, 18(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1385 accepted: july 13th, 2015 among the many theoretical perspectives in the field of motivation are achievement goal theory (ames, 1992; dweck & legget, 1988; nicholls, 1984), expectancy-value theory (eccles et al., 1983; wigfield & eccles, 2000) and self-efficacy (abbitt, 2011; bandura, 1986; holden & rada, 2011). within these theories exists a substantial body of research that examines how learners build meanings based on their own experiences through achievement related behaviors (schunk, pintrich, & meece, 2008). the purpose of this study was to examine self-efficacy levels of preservice teacher candidates who participated in scaffolded technology training designed to establish and to build upon their personal successes and motivations. scaffolded learning processes build upon prior knowledge, increase efficacy, and support further growth. improved confidence levels based on success can affect intrinsic interest levels in areas of technology use and current issues in education, 18(3) 1 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1385 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model integration, supporting transfer of skill level development from the training environment to the classroom. the scaffolded course design used in this study incorporated motivational belief constructs derived from theories of achievement goal, expectancy-value, and self-efficacy to influence learners’ confidence levels and achievement outcomes. research supports the relationship between a positive self-efficacy in relation to technology knowledge and future classroom use of technology (albion, 2001; holden & rada, 2011; lumpe & chambers, 2001; voogt, fisser, roblin, tondeur, & van braak, 2013). understanding how these theories are related and how they affect the confidence levels of learners facilitates design and development of effective technology training. technology integration in ec-12 classrooms continues to be a primary component of long-range educational plans within public school systems and is why teacher education programs address the training of teacher candidates in technology skill development and technology use. training programs that increase technology self-efficacy of teacher candidates will better prepare candidates to overcome technology challenges with greater levels of confidence (watson, 2006).. motivation model building upon the research of hulleman, durik, schweigert, and harackiewicz (2008), motivation was examined as a model where achievement goals and initial interest lead to perception of task value (expectancy-value), thus supporting learner’s technology skill development and continued interest in technology (self-efficacy). achievement goal theory (ames, 1992; dweck & legget, 1988; nicholls, 1984) supports the belief that learner engagement is critical to achievement-related processes and outcomes. wigfield and eccles (2000) expanded earlier research on expectancy-value theory by relating the theory to predictors of success. the beliefs of individuals as related to their confidence in accomplishing an academic task (self-efficacy) and the value they place upon accomplishing the task are essential for understanding achievement behaviors and predicting academic outcomes. schunk et al. (2008) demonstrated that just as self-efficacy is a positive predictor of performance outcomes, task value is a reliable predictor of the future use of the task by the learner. perceiving value in tasks or activities has been associated with motivation and maintained interest. in an instructional setting, where new skills acquisition and subsequent application are applied and built upon, the individuals’ perceived value of the skill, their engagement in the skill acquisition process, and their confidence in their success in acquiring the skill are critical. students’ competence perceptions arise, in part, from prior performance experiences and are predictive of achievement (bandura, 1994; usher & pajares, 2008). learners establish intrinsic task value when they are interested in the task for its own qualities and when they find the task to be enjoyable and fun. this enjoyment and personal connection with a task, through interaction and experience, can facilitate attention, cognitive processing, effort, and subsequent interest (hidi, 1990; hidi & harackiewicz, 2000). learners view tasks as having utility value when they perceive the task as useful and relevant to areas outside of the training environment. when learners perceive value in the tasks or activities encountered during training, their level of situational interest increases (hidi & renninger, 2006). in what could be viewed as a reciprocal effect, as value is perceived by learners, their interest levels increase and the value of the activity and their desire to continue with the task or activity increases, resulting in maintained situational interest. if maintained over time, sustained situational interest can lead to well-developed individualized interest. individualized interest will then directly affect continued return to the new task or activity or reuse of the new skill or knowledge. current issues in education, 18(3) 2 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model interest that develops or deepens in a particular context depends on the extent to which value, positive effect, and knowledge acquisition experiences happen in relation to the activity (hidi & renninger, 2006; mitchell, 1993). additionally, individual interest reciprocally relates to other motivational variables such as self-efficacy and self-regulation. lipstein and renninger (2007) hypothesized that interest is a mediator for the development of self-efficacy and selfregulation skills, as interest maintains attention and effort required to develop knowledge and to continue learning over time. self-efficacy, confidence, and technology bandura (1994) defines self-efficacy “as people’s beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives” (para. 1). his research indicated that those individuals who possessed high levels of self-confidence in their own abilities would approach difficult tasks as challenges rather than as obstacles (bandura, 1994). therefore, higher levels of self-efficacy will produce higher levels of performance. teacher candidates often enter technology training with low levels of self-efficacy. for the technology novice, new technologies may seem threatening and overwhelming, resulting in intensification of existing beliefs about their inability to master technology related tasks. introducing candidates, who possess low levels of self-efficacy, to technology skills that are familiar or personally gratifying will help alleviate feelings of inadequacy and potential failure. slowly building a sense of success regarding new technology skill acquisition will promote self-confidence and increase interest in further skill development. skill development and skill transfer two critical issues found in technology training are skill development and skill transfer. scaffolded learning processes during new technology skill acquisition establish the foundation for the candidates’ sense of success, self-confidence, and increased interest in further skill development. when candidates experience high levels of anxiety or fear regarding technology skill acquisition even the simplest of tasks can become overwhelming, creating barriers to continued growth. in the course under study, developed using scaffolded training, candidates experience learning opportunities that offered incremental acquisition of technology skills, where new skills built upon existing skills. this process helped candidates become confident, self-supporting users of technology. the ultimate goal of technology training is to empower teacher candidates in their own skill use so that they confidently integrate technology into their future classrooms. scaffolding in technology skill acquisition requires breaking skills into small obtainable components that empower the candidates and provide a sense of success and accomplishment. scaffolding of technology skills helps alleviate feelings of panic and uncertainty because of incremental introduction of skills. the slower processes of growth help reduce stress and anxiety during instruction. a second issue in technology training is the ability to transfer the skills and knowledge related to integrating technology into the classroom curriculum without actual classroom experience and hands-on practice. technology training aligned with the curriculum and relevant to what teachers do in the classroom is more helpful than training restricted to the development of basic technology skills (zhao & bryant, 2007). effective training in the integration of technology requires consistent modeling of effective uses of technology in the classroom and in the curriculum. instruction must demonstrate appropriate uses of a variety of technology tools for both teaching and learning. simply telling a teacher the capabilities of technology is not enough; teachers must be able to envision the technology as it relates to their own content area if they are to master ways to integrate technology effectively (zhao & bryant, 2007). “cookie cutter” courses current issues in education, 18(3) 3 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model that focus on basic skills and application training will not enable the transfer of skills from the training environment to the classroom. course design model given that the technology training course occurs early in the course sequence for teacher certification, candidates have not yet developed differentiated knowledge of pedagogical skills relevant to their future teaching assignments. the goal of the technology course in this study was to provide a broad skill base for diverse candidates in multiple teaching areas and certification grade levels. pre-service teacher candidates need to have a flexible concept of technology use and integration as they progress to content specific disciplines during their teacher education program. in addition to the scaffolding of technology skill sets, this course also scaffolded the concepts and instructional processes behind the assignments. since candidates are so diverse in their certifications and grade level choices, a recognized set of curricula served as a base resource for most of the semester’s technology assignments. environmental education (ee) materials provided the foundational curriculum for technology integration assignments. the ee materials used course were cross-discipline, cross-grade level, and standards-aligned. since the ee materials were developed, reviewed, revised, and field-tested by experienced educators, we argue that repeated exposure to high quality curricular examples provided experiences that, over time, increased candidates’ sense of preparedness and perceived teaching self-efficacy. because curricula were used repeatedly through the semester, exposure may effectively mimic a vicarious mastery experience for candidates. while enactive mastery has the strongest effect on personal efficacy beliefs (bandura, 1994), candidates in this course are not yet at the point in the teacher education program that will allow them to prepare or teach a lesson in an authentic setting. however, there are various types of vicarious mastery experiences that can be effective for improving self-efficacy beliefs. bandura (1994) considered that “all of the vicarious modes of influence – whether conveyed through effective actual modeling, symbolic modeling, videotaped self-modeling, or cognitive self-modeling – enhance efficacy beliefs and improve performance” (p. 95). candidates with the most opportunities to experience different learning experiences will more likely be comfortable using technology to aid teaching and learning (ertmer & ottenbreitleftwich, 2010). the goal of the technology course was to encourage teacher candidates to move beyond simple acquisition of technology skills to more conceptually advanced levels where they were able to apply teaching methods that facilitated technology integration in their lessons and classroom activities and to explore the potential impact on student learning. candidates enrolled in this prerequisite course were of all ages and possessed varying levels of computer knowledge. the scaffolded course design model supported candidates’ confidence levels, learning processes, and skill development. the course began with an activity that engaged candidates in a multimedia task that allowed freedom of expression and creativity through a technology-based activity that encouraged self-promotion. candidates created a digital story that embraced dispositional characteristics and behaviors defined by the school of education (soe). candidates shared their stories with classmates as a class introduction. using simple video tools to highlight their lives and display accomplishments, empowered them and provided candidates with an immediate sense of accomplishment. “i was proud to introduce myself to my classmates. i was excited to learn how to do this through a photostory. i had always wanted to make one, but never knew how (student a).” extending use of images as a communication medium the candidates selected a social justice or environmental issue they felt compassionate about addressing. they used an online photo tool, “fotoflexer”, to create a layered image that integrated text and images to illustrate their selected issue. this allowed candidates to expand on current issues in education, 18(3) 4 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model basic image manipulation skills using a more sophisticated graphic tool. using visual tools offered candidates “instant gratification” for their efforts and bolstered confidence in technology use. “i really enjoyed making these things. but more importantly, it showed me especially creative and fun things i can make and do in the classroom to draw students in, to spark their interests, and generate curiosity and a motivation to learn (student b).” during subsequent small assignments, the instructional focus was on building skills sets beginning with basic skills needed to communicate online, create electronic documents, and conduct web-based exploration. candidates were required to communicate with the instructor through both course and university email systems. they communicated with classmates about their digital stories using the course discussion tool. “my favorite way to share my knowledge and mastery is through group discussion. while some students groan at the long discussion, i enjoy the interaction with my professors and other peers. i also hope, in the long run...that it will actually help other students. passing knowledge along is very important (student c).” candidates created an electronic portfolio to house course artifacts. the visual or “showcase” aspect of the portfolio afforded another vehicle for personal gratification and measure of accomplishment. “i think that this would be a great way to show my command of the subject matter that i plan to teach (student d)”. the portfolio afforded expansion of technology skill and online exploration. candidates extended word processing skills as they designed/developed a newsletter using desktop publishing software. desktop publishing introduced advanced features of document creation. newsletter assessment included significant focus on aesthetics and creativity to encourage intrinsic motivation, while exploring functions of new technology tools. offering opportunities for new technology exploration can build confidence and motivate candidates to initiate future technology inclusion. candidates explored concept-mapping software, through an individualized assignment that revisited dispositional characteristics and behaviors. revisiting content with introduction of a new technology helped scaffold candidates through skill development processes. scaffolding continued as skills acquisition accelerated and reached a peak at course mid-point. higher order thinking skills became critical components of using advanced software as candidates began to develop integrated lesson models. at the course mid-point, candidates explored and utilized tools for data collection, graphic representation, and interactive presentation. candidates initially explored 5e lesson plan components as a sequential process, and then over the next five modules isolated individual 5e components to extend understanding of lesson plan phases. candidates would explore an integrated technology for support/enrichment within each of the 5e components. in the 5e model engage component candidates completed an assignment that required quality evaluation of a webquest. scaffolding took place as candidates began with evaluation of a webquest prior to use of or creation of a webquest or web related activity. in the explore component, data collection software and the integration of higher order questioning through database exploration supported student-learning processes and extended technology skill set development. once acquainted with databases and classroom use candidates built data collection sets for their lesson. in the explain component, candidates revisited the video tool (e.g. moviemaker, imovie, slice) to design and develop an instructional video to support/extend lesson content. candidates often entered the course with prior knowledge/skill using powerpoint. therefore, in the extend/elaborate component, candidates built upon prior knowledge by designing/developing non-linear powerpoint games. games extended technology skills and use of current issues in education, 18(3) 5 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model critical and higher order thinking skills for student activities. in the evaluate component, candidates built upon earlier collage skills with a more sophisticated tool, incorporating text, images, sound, video, and animation. candidates used the online tool, glogster, to develop a student-based product to assess mastery of lesson content. candidates used an online rubric maker to develop a rubric to assess student created technology product. technology skill building tapered off, as the final assignment required candidates to apply newly acquired skills during final project development. the final project required candidates to work collaboratively to develop an integrated lesson inclusive of technology integration options during 5e lesson plan phase. instructions provided to candidates indicated they were to select a different technology than those explored in the course for each 5e components. individuals earned extra credit if they selected an appropriate technology outside the course scope. in addition to the supporting nature of the collaborative project, the culminating activity helped candidates realize their increased skill levels and competence in technology integration. “i really enjoyed the group project. at first, i was a little nervous not knowing what to expect from my group. we were all able to communicate and everything worked out great (student e)”. figure 1. technology course design conceptual model (smith & willis, 2011). the scaffolded course design model (see figure 1) design emphasizes intrinsic motivation as a key to success where achievement goals and interest levels lead to task value (expectancyvalue) and supports learners’ technology skill development and continued interest in the technology (self-efficacy). for the design model, consider an image of a diamond as candidates move from the narrow bottom (representing low skills) towards the wider mid-point of the diamond, where skill building increases with introduction of more sophisticated software. during the model’s early phase, candidates gain skills through personally gratifying activities that current issues in education, 18(3) 6 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model stimulate intrinsic motivation. moving up the shape, as the diamond begins to taper back to a point, so does focus on new skill acquisition. at this point, candidates are again exposed to technologies that offer a sense of immediate success and security but that offer opportunities to extend and apply new skills at a higher level. the final project offers candidates an opportunity to culminate new skills in a showcase product that emphasizes their growth and accomplishments. methods participants a purposeful sample of 424 pre-service teacher candidates enrolled in inst 3133 survey of instructional technology were solicited to participate in this study. of the 424 respondents on the pre-survey, 83.3% were female and 17.0% were male. participant’s ages ranged from 16-60 years of age (with a mean of 26.6 years) and race/ethnicity was reported to be: 63.0% white, 19.0% hispanic, 3.0% black/african american, and 2.0% asian. instrumentation each of the pre-service teachers were administered the technology and teaching efficacy scale (mayo, kajs, & tanguma, 2005; tanguma, underwood, & mayo, 2004) to assess perceived confidence in his or her abilities to implement technology into classroom lessons/activities to promote students' success through the use of technology (see appendix). an equal number of items addressed the two subscales: (a) use of technology and (b) teaching. the instrument consists of 22 items, regarding both use of technology and teaching self-efficacy, and are rated on a 5-point likert type scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree). composite scores range from 22 to 110; the higher the composite, the greater the technology and teaching self-efficacy. psychometric findings provide support for the internal consistency or reliability of this instrument: cronbach’s alpha for entire instrument = .98, use of technology = .97, and teaching = .96). data collection and analysis pre-service candidates were administered the technology and teaching efficacy scale on the first and last day of the academic semester so as to assess his or her perceptions before and at the end of the inst course. data was analyzed using descriptive statistics (e.g., percentages, means) and a two-tailed paired t-test to assess whether a statistically significant mean difference existed from preto post. results in addition to technology skill development, the course exposed candidates to instructional strategies, lesson planning, as well as dispositions, characteristics, and behaviors of effective teachers. therefore, responses are reflective of candidates’ beliefs and perceptions, both prior to and after taking the course, regarding their abilities as future teachers and the potential impact of technology use in their future classrooms. the items encouraged introspection of their own educational experiences and retrospection of their future as classroom teachers. candidates were prompted to respond to survey questions as if they were already in a pk-12-classroom. comparison of the preand post-survey results within each year examined the impact of the course on the self-efficacy of the teacher candidates who completed the technology training. the survey items fell into five rating subscales ranging from strongly disagree (sd) to strongly agree (sa). initial analyses included descriptive and inferential statistics. technology and teaching self-efficacy to assess whether there was a statistically significant mean difference between the pre and post-self-efficacy of the participants in regards to use of technology and teaching for student success a two-tailed paired t-test was conducted. table 1 provides the numerical results. findings current issues in education, 18(3) 7 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model suggested that there was a statistically significant mean difference between the preand post-selfefficacy scores, t(423) = -17.60, p < .001, d = 1.14 (large effect size), r2 = .493. the mean scores increased from 76.95 (pre-course) to 93.65 (post-course). the survey of instructional technology course had a large effect on the self-efficacy of the teacher candidates and 49.3% of the variance in those scores can be attributable to the course. table 1 paired t-test results for technology and teaching self-efficacy mean standard deviation mean difference t-value df p-value pre-scores 76.95 14.10 16.7 -17.60 423 < .001* post-scores 93.65 15.30 note. statistically significant (p < .05) table 2 pre-scores – use of technology efficacy scale (%) survey item strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree 1. my students learn better because i am able to incorporate technology into their activities 1.7 2.1 11.8 53.8 30.7 2. i am able to incorporate technology into any classroom subject 3.1 21.0 37.7 31.6 6.6 3. i can incorporate technology into my teaching without sacrificing the basics .5 14.9 28.5 47.2 9.0 4. i am able to use technology to capture a student’s interest 1.7 9.0 13.0 53.5 22.9 5. i am able to use technology in my teaching to improve the quality of education .9 11.1 23.3 48.8 15.8 6. i can get students excited about learning by using technology in the classroom 1.7 5.7 13.7 54.7 24.3 7. i am able to use technology to solve many classroom problems 3.1 18.9 44.8 27.6 5.7 8. my students can think better because of my use of technology in the classroom .9 7.3 15.3 56.4 20.0 9. i can use technology to make classrooms more appealing to my students 1.4 13.9 34.4 38.7 11.6 17. my students retain more because i incorporate technology into their learning activities. 2.6 15.8 36.8 36.6 8.3 19. students are successful in my classes because of my ability to effectively incorporate technology into my teaching 1.9 16.3 45.8 29.7 6.4 technology self-efficacy participants were asked to rank preand post-self-efficacy concerning their perceived abilities in the use of technology. tables 2 and 3 display the overall percentages per item for pre and post-course participant responses. prior to taking this course, the majority of the responses fell in the agree category. at the completion of the semester, the majority of the participants reported “strongly agree” in most of the survey items. the smallest percent increase in self-efficacy was current issues in education, 18(3) 8 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model reported with “my students learn better because i am able to incorporate technology into their activities” (21.7%), while the largest percent increase was found to be in “i am able to incorporate technology into any classroom subject” (48.8%). these findings indicate that the knowledge and training received in the survey of instructional technology course has increased participants’ technology self-efficacy, and thus a sense of preparedness to integrate technology into their future classrooms. mean increases in self-efficacy ranged from .29 to 1.27. the largest mean increase from preto postcourse participation was found to be in “i am able to incorporate technology into any classroom subject”. table 4 displays the descriptive statistics for each item in this subscale. table 3 post-scores – use of technology efficacy scale (%) survey item strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree 1. my students learn better because i am able to incorporate technology into their activities 2.4 .5 5.4 39.4 52.4 2. i am able to incorporate technology into any classroom subject 2.1 .5 3.3 38.7 55.4 3. i can incorporate technology into my teaching without sacrificing the basics 1.7 .5 5.4 40.3 52.1 4. i am able to use technology to capture a student’s interest 2.1 0 3.1 31.6 63.2 5. i am able to use technology in my teaching to improve the quality of education 2.4 0 4.5 37.7 55.4 6. i can get students excited about learning by using technology in the classroom 2.4 .2 2.6 34.7 60.1 7. i am able to use technology to solve many classroom problems 2.1 2.1 16.0 43.9 35.8 8. my students can think better because of my use of technology in the classroom 2.4 .5 3.8 36.1 57.3 9. i can use technology to make classrooms more appealing to my students 2.1 .9 6.4 43.4 47.2 17. my students retain more because i incorporate into their learning activities. 2.6 1.2 9.7 46.0 40.6 19. students are successful in my classes because of my ability to effectively incorporate technology into my teaching 2.6 1.9 22.4 40.8 32.3 to assess whether there was a statistically significant mean difference between the pre and post-self-efficacy of the participants in regards to the use of technology a two-tailed paired ttest was conducted. table 1 provides the numerical results. findings suggested that there was a statistically significant mean difference between the preand post-self-efficacy scores, t(423) = 17.982, p < .001, d = 2.50 (large effect size), r2 = .781. the mean scores increased from 39.26 (pre-course) to 47.79 (post-course). the survey of instructional technology course had a large effect on the self-efficacy of the teacher candidates and 78.1% of the variance in those scores can be attributable to the course. table 4 current issues in education, 18(3) 9 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model descriptive statistics for the use of technology efficacy survey item mean pre standard deviation pre mean post standard deviation post mean difference 1. my students learn better because i am able to incorporate technology into their activities 4.10 .82 4.39 .81 0.29 2. i am able to incorporate technology into any classroom subject 3.18 .94 4.45 .77 1.27 3. i can incorporate technology into my teaching without sacrificing the basics 3.49 .87 4.40 .76 0.92 4. i am able to use technology to capture a student’s interest 3.87 .92 4.54 .75 0.67 5. i am able to use technology in my teaching to improve the quality of education 3.67 .90 4.44 .79 0.76 6. i can get students excited about learning by using technology in the classroom 3.94 .87 4.5 .77 0.56 7. i am able to use technology to solve many classroom problems 3.14 .89 4.09 .89 0.95 8. my students can think better because of my use of technology in the classroom 3.87 .85 4.56 .80 0.58 9. i can use technology to make classrooms more appealing to my students 3.45 .92 4.32 .81 0.88 17. my students retain more because i incorporate technology into their learning activities 3.32 .93 4.21 .86 0.89 19. students are successful in my classes because of my ability to effectively incorporate technology into my teaching 3.22 .86 3.98 .93 0.76 table 5 paired t-test results for the use of technology self-efficacy mean standard deviation mean difference t-value df p-value pre-scores 39.26 7.08 8.53 -17.98 423 < .001* post-scores 47.79 7.71 note. statistically significant (p < .05) teaching self-efficacy participants were asked to rank preand post-self-efficacy concerning their perceived abilities in teaching. tables 6 and 7 display the overall percentages per item for preand postcourse participant responses. the smallest percent increase in self-efficacy was reported with “students who have difficulty learning from other teachers are able to learn in my class” (20.3%), while the largest percent increase was found to be in “i am good at explaining things in terms that students can understand” (36.8%) and “even students with poor academic records can benefit from my teaching” (37.0%). these findings indicate that the knowledge and training received in the survey of instructional technology course has increased participants’ technology integration selfefficacy, and thus a sense of preparedness in teaching. mean increases in self-efficacy ranged from .60 to .99. the largest mean increase from preto postcourse participation was found to be in current issues in education, 18(3) 10 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model “even students with poor academic records can benefit from my teaching”. table 8 displays the descriptive statistics for each item in this subscale. table 6 pre-scores – teaching efficacy scale (%) survey item strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree 10. all of my students benefit because of the way i teach 2.4 20.5 43.4 28.3 5.4 11. when my students are successful it is because i have done a good job as a teacher .9 10.1 26.4 51.2 11.3 12. i am good at explaining things in terms that students can understand .9 9.2 17.0 61.8 11.1 13. even students with poor academic records can benefit from my teaching 1.7 16.5 37.3 36.3 8.3 14. when students do not understand a concept, i can explain it so it becomes clear to them 1.4 11.6 29.7 46.5 10.8 15. i can create an atmosphere conducive to learning .7 8.7 21.9 56.4 12.3 16. i am able to accurately evaluate my students’ progress 2.1 17.5 31.8 42.0 6.6 18. i vary my teaching strategies to meet the needs of my students 2.1 14.6 29.0 42.0 12.3 20. other teachers consider me a valued colleague 1.2 15.3 34.2 42.7 6.6 21. i am perceived as an asset to my school 1.4 9.9 31.6 48.6 8.5 22. students who have difficulty learning from other teachers are able to learn in my class 9.0 21.5 45.8 17.7 6.1 table 7 post-scores – teaching efficacy scale (%) question strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree 10. all of my students benefit because of the way i teach 2.4 4.5 23.1 38.9 31.1 11. when my students are successful it is because i have done a good job as a teacher 1.9 .9 8.7 46.9 41.5 12. i am good at explaining things in terms that students can understand 2.1 .2 3.8 46.0 47.9 13. even students with poor academic records can benefit from my teaching 1.9 .2 7.3 45.3 45.3 14. when students do not understand a concept, i can explain it so it becomes clear to them 2.1 1.2 11.8 46.5 38.4 15. i can create an atmosphere conducive to learning 2.1 .2 5.0 46.0 46.7 16. i am able to accurately evaluate my students’ progress 2.4 1.2 14.9 44.1 37.5 18. i vary my teaching strategies to meet the needs of my students 2.1 .7 6.4 46.9 43.9 20. other teachers consider me a valued colleague 2.6 1.4 11.8 48.1 36.1 21. i am perceived as an asset to my school 2.4 1.4 11.1 51.2 34.0 22. students who have difficulty learning from other teachers are able to learn in my class 1.7 6.1 31.8 34.0 26.4 table 8 current issues in education, 18(3) 11 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model descriptive statistics for the teaching efficacy question mean pre standard deviation pre mean post standard deviation post mean difference 10. all of my students benefit because of the way i teach 3.14 .88 3.92 .96 .78 11. when my students are successful it is because i have done a good job as a teacher 3.61 .85 4.25 .80 .63 12. i am good at explaining things in terms that students can understand 3.72 .81 4.37 .76 .64 13. even students with poor academic records can benefit from my teaching 3.33 .90 4.31 .78 .99 14. when students do not understand a concept, i can explain it so it becomes clear to them 3.54 .89 4.18 .84 .64 15. i can create an atmosphere conducive to learning 3.70 .82 4.35 .77 .64 16. i am able to accurately evaluate my students’ progress 3.33 .91 4.13 .88 .80 18. i vary my teaching strategies to meet the needs of my students 3.48 .96 4.30 .80 .82 20. other teachers consider me a valued colleague 3.38 .86 4.14 .87 .75 21. i am perceived as an asset to my school 3.5 .84 4.13 .84 .60 22. students who have difficulty learning from other teachers are able to learn in my class 2.90 .99 3.77 .96 .87 to assess whether there was a statistically significant mean difference between the pre and post-self-efficacy of the participants, in regards to technology and teaching efficacy, a twotailed paired t-test was conducted. table 9 provides the numerical results. findings suggested that there was a statistically significant mean difference between the preand post-self-efficacy scores, t(423) = -16.412, p < .001, d = 1.03 (large effect size), r2 = .458. the mean scores increased from 37.68 (pre-course) to 45.86 (post-course). the survey of instructional technology course had a large effect on the teaching self-efficacy of the teacher candidates and 45.8% of the variance in those scores can be attributable to the course. table 9 paired t-test results for teaching self-efficacy mean standard deviation mean difference t-value df p-value pre-scores 37.68 7.95 8.18 -16.412 423 < .001* post-scores 45.86 7.91 note. statistically significant (p < .05) discussion and implications the results of this research demonstrate the value of integrating multiple theoretical perspectives in the study of motivation. we demonstrated how achievement goals can operate as frameworks within which individuals perceive task value in activities, and how these task values current issues in education, 18(3) 12 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model may operate as proximal predictors of achievement outcomes. the course under study was a required pre-requisite for admission into the teacher education program. candidates enrolled in this class were not yet eligible for enrollment in content methods courses or courses that included field-based classroom experiences. however, ee materials used in the course were developed, reviewed, revised, and field-tested by experienced educators. repeated exposure to high quality curricular examples provided experiences that increased preparedness and perceived teaching selfefficacy. as research indicates, there are various types of vicarious mastery experiences that can be effective for improving self-efficacy beliefs including actual modeling, symbolic modeling, videotaped self-modeling, or cognitive self-modeling all of which enhance efficacy beliefs and improve performance (bandura, 1994). this course introduced initial certification teacher candidates to the tools and skills necessary to understand and implement a variety of technology tools for use in the ec-12 classroom. while learning new technologies, candidates explored, through the ee curriculum, authentic situations in which technology may be appropriately integrated. the teacher candidates utilized ee materials as foundation curriculum for designing and developing lessons that integrated technology into teaching and learning experiences. as noted in the literature, training that increases participant confidence levels during skill acquisition can positively influence future use of the new skills and continued skill development (albion, 2001; holden & rada, 2011; lumpe & chambers, 2001). the course included educational applications of instructional and informational technologies that promoted the integration of technology into the curriculum. the results of this study are indicators of the success of the skill-building scaffold model implemented and its contribution to both the technology and teaching self-efficacies of the participants. in this model, technology skill development, through scaffolded processes, incrementally built upon small, early successes in technology skill acquisition. by increasing confidence levels in technology use, candidates showed changes in technology and teaching selfefficacy. survey results indicated that at the conclusion of the course, candidates felt more capable using and integrating technology. the responses recorded by the candidates indicated growth in beliefs about the impact that technology would have on teaching and learning processes. the respondents’ scores also reflected increases in their assessments of their own abilities as future teachers. the results of this study will also add to the current body of research regarding self-efficacy and its impact on technology use and integration. results of the analyses will inform teacher educators of the impact of technology training as it relates to candidate self-efficacy and skill transfer, suggesting potential areas for revision or modification of existing technology training; laying foundations for development of a reproducible technology training model. studies that explore the application of the scaffolded training model, implemented in this course, are necessary if we are to understand the relationship between the scaffolded training model, skill acquisition, skill transfer, achievement goal theory, expectancy-value theory, and self-efficacy. recommendations for future research there are several recommendations for future research in this area of study. first, the use of a control group that received technology training through a less scaffolded approach would offer the researcher an opportunity to get a more accurate representation of the potential impact of the design model used in this study. second, although the technology and teaching efficacy scale (mayo et al., 2005; tanguma et al., 2004) was a reliable and validated instrument, a suggestion for future research is to find a different survey with a larger focus on technology skill, use, and current issues in education, 18(3) 13 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model integration. third, it is suggested a follow-up be conducted with the same candidates as they advance in the teacher education program, preferably during their field-based experiences. references abbitt, j. t. 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(2007). can teacher technology integration training alone lead to high levels of technology integration? a qualitative look at teacher's technology integration after state mandated technology training. electronic journal for the integration of technology in education, 5(1), 53-62. current issues in education, 18(3) 15 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.85.3.424 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.91.3.328 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.91.3.328 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0013164407308475 http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999.1015 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model appendix technology and teaching efficacy scale copyright  dr. david g. underwood and dr. jesús tanguma please read each of the following statements and circle the response that most closely describes your level of agreement or disagreement. the responses are: sd=strongly disagree d=disagree n=neutral a=agree sa=strongly agree 1. my students learn better because i am able to incorporate technology into their activities sd d n a sa 2. i am able to incorporate technology into any classroom subject sd d n a sa 3. i can incorporate technology into my teaching without sacrificing the basics sd d n a sa 4. i am able to use technology to capture a student’s interest sd d n a sa 5. i am able to use technology in my teaching to improve the quality of education sd d n a sa 6. i can get students excited about learning by using technology in the classroom sd d n a sa 7. i am able to use technology to solve many classroom problems sd d n a sa 8. my students can think better because of my use of technology in the classroom sd d n a sa 9. i can use technology to make classrooms more appealing to my students sd d n a sa 10. all of my students benefit because of the way i teach sd d n a sa 11. when my students are successful it is because i have done a good job as a teacher sd d n a sa 12. i am good at explaining things in terms that students can understand sd d n a sa 13. even students with poor academic records can benefit from my teaching sd d n a sa 14. when students do not understand a concept, i can explain it so it becomes clear to them sd d n a sa 15. i can create an atmosphere conducive to learning sd d n a sa 16. i am able to accurately evaluate my students’ progress sd d n a sa 17. my students retain more because i incorporate technology into their learning activities sd d n a sa 18. i vary my teaching strategies to meet the needs of my students sd d n a sa 19. students are successful in my classes because of my ability to effectively incorporate technology into my teaching sd d n a sa 20. other teachers consider me a valued colleague sd d n a sa 21. i am perceived as an asset to my school sd d n a sa 22. students who have difficulty learning from other teachers are able to learn in my class sd d n a sa current issues in education, 18(3) 16 willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model author notes jana m. willis, ph.d. university of houston-clear lake 2700 bay area blvd., box 357 houston, texas 77058-1002 willis@uhcl.edu dr. jana willis is a professor in the school of education instructional design and technology program at university of houston-clear lake. she designs, develops, and implements online and hybrid courses. she works with preservice/in-service teachers on effective uses of technology in the pk-12 curriculum. dr. willis works with a local school district’s gifted and talented program, teaching 4th and 5th grade gifted students how to design and develop video games. research interests include serious games in the pk-12 classroom, game-based learning, digital stories, technology integration, electronic portfolios, self-efficacy, and project/problem based learning. scholarly works include international, national, and regional refereed/ non-refereed journal articles, edited book chapters, and professional conference presentations. she contributes to her field through editorial service on national and international journals, review of conference proposals, and member and committee involvement in state, regional, national, and international organizations. current issues in education, 18(3) 17 mailto:willis@uhcl.edu willis: examining technology and teaching efficacy of preservice teacher candidates: a deliberate course design model volume 18, issue 3 september 29, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez terrence mctier priyanka parekh lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers current issues in education, 18(3) 18 microsoft word 1234-5986-2-le.doc 1 volume 17, number 2 may 21, 2014 issn 1099-839x the benefits of standards-based grading: a critical evaluation of modern grading practices danielle l. iamarino northern arizona university this paper explores the methodology and application of an assessment philosophy known as standards-based grading, via a critical comparison of standards-based grading to other assessment philosophies commonly employed at the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels of education. evidenced by examples of increased student engagement and more thorough comprehension of course materials, standards-based grading is illustrated as an effective replacement for conventional points-based grading. the analysis also identifies and responds to common issues and concerns inherent in the application of standards-based grading, and includes a review of relevant literature and research in support of standards-based grading as a progressive and successful alternative to more conventional assessment philosophies. keywords: standards-based grading, formative assessment, points-based grading, summative assessment standards-based grading, also known as formative assessment, is an innovative and highly controversial grading practice gaining momentum at the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels of education. the process is most concisely described as a grading system in which students are evaluated based on their proficiency in meeting a clearly-articulated set of course objectives (tomlinson & mctighe, 2006). standards-based grading is different from points-based grading in that it diverges from the traditional 100-point scale, in which points are allocated to individual assignments, and students earn them as they go (marzano, 2009). standards-based grading focuses instead on larger outcomes; rather than inferring a student’s progress based solely on how many points the student has accumulated from the completion of individual assignments—or from attendance, which is sometimes scored alongside academic assignments—standards-based grading concerns itself with the cohesive body of knowledge that the student gains as a result of the course. it does so by prioritizing the final result of the student’s participation, instead of relying on a summation of grades awarded at various stages of the student’s learning process—an intrinsically flawed method of evaluation which often produces a snapshot inconsistent with the true outcome of the student’s efforts in the course. to truly understand the differences between these two grading practices, it must be noted that standardsbased (formative) assessment and points-based (summative) assessment serve two different—and often conflicting—purposes. in his book, how to grade for learning, k-12, ken o’connor (2009) identifies the separate purposes of each method, stating, it is essential that teachers distinguish clearly between formative and summative assessment….formative assessment should be used primarily to give feedback to students (and teachers) on the progress of learning, whereas summative assessments are used to make judgments about the amount of learning and so are included in grades. (p. 116) in short, the former focuses on providing students with current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 2 figure 1. source: spokane public schools, 2009, p. 14. feedback, with the expectation of improvement, while the latter is predicated upon judgment of what the student has already managed to achieve. the same concept is illustrated in figure 1, which depicts the effect of swapping summative for formative assessment; instead of defaulting to previously recorded grades, and calculating a final grade from the resulting accumulation of points, formative grading assesses in the present tense, seeking to verify not simply that a student has completed a certain amount of assignments, but that a student is armed with the tools necessary to succeed in future assignments. by emphasizing a student’s ability to meet a clear set of standards, typically designed to reflect thorough, end-ofcourse comprehension of the subjects taught, standardsbased grading not only holds students accountable to their progress, but eliminates the discrepancies implicit in attempting to turn point calculations into an accurate representation of a student’s achievements. thusly, a teacher using a standards-based system of evaluation is better able to determine a student’s grade based on the single most important aspect of education—how well the student comprehends the content of the course. standards-based grading takes aim both at mediocrity in the classroom and inaccurateness in the gradebook, attempting to reinvigorate education by encouraging teachers to implement more accurate methods of evaluation—methods that hold students accountable not for earning points, which often do not represent learning achievements so much as students’ ability to follow a set of rules, but for actual mastery of the subjects taught to them. though applicable to all fields of study, this method of evaluation is particularly relevant to the liberal arts, whose academic objectives lend themselves less to test scores (points) and more to the general betterment of students’ abilities to think and write critically, comprehending and contributing to the world around them in a manner that projects, as the phrase suggests, a measure of “liberation.” an examination of grading systems used within the field of liberal arts, applied to such disciplines as the study english or writing, reveals that standards-based grading is a substantial improvement upon traditional points-based grading, but that it requires of those who use it a keen understanding of its methodology, and a commitment to education that transcends and even defies many current expectations set forth by school administrations. with a general emphasis on liberal arts classes, this report will illustrate the benefits of standardsbased grading through a review of relevant literature, research, and—perhaps most centrally—actual grading practices employed at the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels of education. standards-based grading and overarching learning objectives in order to truly appreciate the deficiencies of points-based grading, we must understand not only the ways in which standards-based grading is superior to points-based grading, but also what characterizes a “superior” education. we must identify overarching goals in education, and evaluate each method of grading based on how well it serves those goals. for the purpose of this discussion, let us identify and reaffirm the objectives of academic, liberal-arts based education. in the essay, “statistics in liberal arts education,” iverson (1985) investigates the learning objectives of college-level liberal arts classes, stating that the benefits of standards-based grading: a critical evaluation of modern grading practices 3 english, in particular, is taught “because training in english enables us to think more critically and to communicate our thoughts,” and that “similar comments can be made about most subjects taught as part of a liberal arts curriculum” (p. 17). achievement of objectives such as critical thinking and communication necessitates that students are able to apply what they learn in the limited context of the classroom to what they experience in the greater context of the world, a purpose iverson (1985) reaffirms when stating that “after acquiring such a background in the liberal arts, a person’s natural next step is to acquire the necessary skills needed for a profession” (p. 17). this task is naturally obscured by points-based grading, in that there is no clear way to apply the acquisition of points to anything other than a gradebook. a better system would make it a priority to clarify for students the practical connections between achievements inside and outside of the classroom. numerous researchers support the necessity of establishing such connections, such as college english instructors hassel and lourey (2005), who state in their essay, “the dea(r)th of student responsibility,” that “instructors have reason to believe that their students are out of touch with what their grades really symbolize, why they are even in college, and what responsibilities they have as students” (p. 2). standards-based grading may help close this gap between course curriculum and overarching education and career goals; its formative assessment component engenders a learning environment prime for clarifying the broader implications of coursework, in that it requires instructors to interact more often and more closely with students and their work—to engage students in establishing goals, and then help students apply their work to those goals. conversely, points-based grading is preoccupied with numbers, rather than communication. final grades are sourced from gradebook figures (points), and there is often no comprehensive system in place to determine the integrity of the methods through which those figures are collected. this makes it difficult to determine whether or not the resulting final grades are accurate reflections of student proficiency levels. while an assessment system based on the input and output of figures may appear highly manageable from an administrative standpoint, finn (1990) highlights the potential for a improved student learning if we, as educators, are willing to step outside of tradition: when the presumptive link between inputs and outputs snaps, it also becomes possible to think of education (as we commonly think of most other enterprises) in terms of productivity and efficiency. these concepts make sense only when you recognize that dividends do not necessarily follow from investments—nor learning from teaching—in predictable and uniform ways. (p. 589) by reframing education as an enterprise s an enterprise, finn (1990) encourages us to teach and grade for longterm productivity, rather than short-term numbers and grades. the success of this philosophy hinges, in no small part, upon whether or not students are able to grasp the practical application of what they are learning. under a standards-based system, teachers are encouraged to provide detailed and meaningful assessments of student material, thusly affording both student and teacher a chance to work together to demystify learning objectives and establish critical connections. in addition to helping repurpose education as a fundamental step toward a career, the critical connections students make between course material and long-term goals will serve their ability to understand the world around them in more multidimensional, comprehensive terms. iversen (1985) further aligns the study of liberal arts with “higher ideals of human life,” and identifies the content of a well-rounded liberal arts education as “less a list of subjects and more a general learning process that develops a person and makes that person an active, contributing member of society” (p. 17). given this description, the overarching aim of liberal arts education is to grow and refine students’ capacity for learning, providing them with a base of knowledge by which they might acquire a better understanding of themselves, their peers, and—as previously mentioned—the world beyond the classroom. moreover, the above description makes clear that providing students with an exemplary liberal arts education does not default to rote instruction of itemized “subjects,” but requires the facilitation of an active and evolving process by which students learn to navigate the intricacies of the society toward which they aspire. additionally, let us consider the phrase “higher ideals of human life”; it conjures, in particular, ideas of self-worth and empathy, placing implicit value on the critical, moral and social development of the human mind. for a number of reasons, achievements or deficiencies in such categories cannot responsibly be qualified by an amount (or lack) of points. in order to accurately identify and respond to accomplishments and impediments in a learning process that emphasizes such broad goals as cognitive development, individualized attention must be given to the student in question. his or her particular situation must be acknowledged and dealt with by a teacher who understands the importance of clarifying the larger implications of the student’s progress, lest that student lose sight of the relevance of continuing to make said progress. an individual grade of 99 out of 100 points will almost certainly fail to reinforce overarching learning objectives as well as a written page of evaluative response, or a personal conference detailing what exactly the student did so well. similarly, if a teacher hands a student a failing assignment, that student will not know where the need for improvement originates unless the current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 4 teacher makes an effort to explain the grade, providing the student not only with a clear set of standards to meet, but a plan for meeting that set of standards. communication patterns in classroom assessment o’connor (2009) reinforces that language, rather than numbers, should be the central tenet in studentteacher communications: "the basic principle at work [in standards-based grading] is that words open up communication, whereas numbers close it down— prematurely at that" (p. 123). premature conclusion of student-teacher dialogues creates gaps in the learning process, making it especially vulnerable to impediment; given that it is the nature of the learning process (and any other process, for that matter), to exist in a constant state of flux, absorbing the features of its environment, it is essential that teachers catch and correct problems before they are manifest. progress must be monitored outside the parameters of points-assignment, in order that deficiencies and successes are not overlooked, having been inaccurately transfigured by numbers in a gradebook. teachers cannot achieve this without transcending the comfortable distances of entering points into a gradebook, into the sometimes uncomfortable realm of communicating with students directly and often about the particulars of their academic progress. expectedly, there is some resistance to this transition. finn (1990) comments on a central tension surrounding the change: there is, to be sure, some self-interest evident both in educators' devotion to an input-based conception of the enterprise that employs them and in their resistance to paying the consequences for poor results. in this sense, the old paradigm is manifestly more comfortable and less demanding than the new. (p. 590) this is, overwhelmingly, an understandable impasse. for teachers, one of the most intimidating aspects of the “new” paradigm, in which communication is prioritized as a necessary component of academic progress, is its tendency to unmask previously unidentified problems—to throw a wrench in what we had previously understood to be a well-oiled machine. for example, consider the following situation high school english teachers, frey and fisher (2013), encountered during their transition to standards-based assessment: [we] began providing students more detailed feedback about their progress. the shift to focusing on their drafts created a new problem, as it became apparent that we were seeing emerging problems between what we thought we were teaching and how our students were interpreting the content. (p. 67-68) fortunately, this is not an insurmountable issue. in the classroom, the key to making the right information stick is to catch and correct problems as they occur, rather than responding to them at a later point, after grades have been issued and students are less incentivized to better their work. finn (1990) suggests that once we begin to define education in terms of actual knowledge gained, we will have an easier time “working backward from what is or isn’t learned,” and correcting gaps in students’ comprehension of the material (p. 590). error margins and discordant outcomes in conventional grading close examinations of classes in which exclusively point-based grading systems are used tend to reveal notable discord between intended and actual learning outcomes; despite that the addition and subtraction of points is meant to reward or penalize students for the quality of their performance in a class, theoretically making them more accountable to their academic responsibilities, reports suggest that pointsbased grading is actually having an adverse effect on students’ motivation to improve their understanding of subject matter. in an attempt to shed light on this issue, frey and fisher (2013) embarked on a study aimed at providing educators with an answer to the question, “does the grading we do pay off in terms of improved student understanding of writing?” (p. 66). the following results are from a survey they conducted on english students at their high school, who were accustomed to being evaluated in the context of a points-based, or summative grading system. the survey asked them what they valued most insofar as feedback on their writing assignments. the results are as follows: of the nearly 550 high school students who responded to the question about feedback on end-of-unit extended writing tasks, over 80 percent of them selected [that they wanted] “to know what grade i got and generally how i did.” they were not as interested in “edits to improve my writing” (3 percent), “information about my understanding of the content” (12 percent), or “specific and detailed information about my performance” (4 percent). (frey & fisher, 2013, p. 66) these results highlight the overarching inefficiency of the current grading system (it does not encourage a continuum of improvement) and also lend some definition to a particular problem: that students are losing nearly all interest in improving work once final grades have been calculated. frey and fisher (2013) note the practical effect of this trend, stating that although students typically comply with teachers’ specific revision suggestions, “in too many cases, there is no evidence of any advancement in learning. the student made all of the corrections we requested, only to make the same mistakes again on the next essay” (p. 66). this is due in part to the fact that points, in addition to distracting students from ongoing learning objectives, are also prone to masking (or inappropriately compensating) for learning deficiencies, making it the benefits of standards-based grading: a critical evaluation of modern grading practices 5 difficult both for students to engage with course material, and for teachers to identify and meet student needs. in the following excerpt from her article, “seven reasons for standards-based grading,” high school teacher scriffiny (2008) attests to how points-based grades can mask actual levels of comprehension, obscuring the learning process: i once thought it was essential to award points to students simply for completing homework. i didn’t believe students would do homework unless it was graded. and yet, students who were clearly learning sometimes earned low grades because of missing work. conversely, some students actually learned very little, but were good at “playing school.” despite dismal test scores, these students earned decent grades by turning in homework and doing extra credit. (p. 71) scriffiny’s (2008) testament raises several key problems associated with points-based grading, the first being that awarding points “simply for completing homework” risks sending the wrong message to students: that they can be successful without improving the quality of their work, if only they complete it and turn it in on time. such a system not only prioritizes the acquisition of points more than it does the comprehension of material, but it also suggests to the students that the constancy of their work is more important than the quality of their work. as martell (1974) explains, “predictability in academic performance is rewarded. what then do we have? a social institution that has substituted means for ends. grades are paramount, and education is only secondary” (p. 113). when students are awarded points for meeting the basic expectation of turning assignments in on a regular basis— even if the work being turned in does not reflect actual completion of learning objectives—these students may forget that the learning objectives even exist, focusing instead on meeting the rote requirements of a system that is guaranteed to issue points in exchange for compliance. the second problem is that in an environment that prioritizes points, students are often quick to identify and isolate the quickest methods of attaining those points, regardless of whether or not the activities they complete to get them are actually beneficial to the learning process. this has the practical effect of replacing cognitive learning goals with the acquisition of points, as an assignment completed chiefly for the purpose of attaining points is an assignment lost to all broader course objectives. this is alienating to the student in that it separates successful grades from successful learning, and alienating to the teacher in that it fails to provide a truly accurate representation of how successful his or her teaching methods are. an additional problem is that relying exclusively upon points to report student progress allows for the development of inaccurate trends in the gradebook. sadler (2005) helps us better understand the margin of error inherent in an exclusively points-based system: using numerical ranges gives the impression of definiteness and precision and the system is easy to make operational, but the grade cut-off scores are not usually linked directly to mastery of specific subject matter or skills. . . . the obvious measurement issue raised by this policy is how the marks are generated in the first place. validity, sampling adequacy, item quality, marking standards, marking reliability and measurement error generally are all significant variables that produce an underlying softness in the basic data that typically goes unrecognized. (p. 182) if we accept sadler’s (2005) claim of “softness” in the data upon which numerical grades are predicated, we must also accept that grades issued under a point-based system may reflect inaccurate data. consider, for example, the following situation, entirely possible under the kind of point-based system referenced by both scriffiny (2008) and sadler (2005): student a has a higher homework average than her peers, due to consistantly completing and turning in homework assignments, but her quiz and tests scores are substantially lower than her peers, suggesting that she lacks fundamental comprehension of course material. conversely, student b has a low homework average, but her test scores reflect that she comprehends the material. despite this, student a’s earned points will amount to more than student b’s, resulting in a higher final grade. any grading-system that allows for this kind of contradiction has failed the test of integrity. if a grading system is unable to determine a failed from a successful learning objective, it is in need of substantial and immediate revision. unfortunately, while providers of elementary and secondary education, such as scriffiny (2008), frey and fisher (2013), are making strides in the promotion of standards-based grading, likeminded post-secondary educators may face larger roadblocks in the fight for more accurate assessments. hassel and lourey (2005) discuss a disturbing trend in post-secondary assessments: at harvard, about half of all course grades already are a or a-, and, as dan seligman notes, ‘91% of seniors graduated with honors’ (2002, p. 94). if the direction that grades are taking at harvard—the oldest institution of higher learning in the united states and the ‘jewel’ of american higher education—is any indication, the future of evaluation and assessment in university classrooms is bleak. (p. 4) so, why is harvard, whose name is synonymous with high standards, issuing high grades in such plentiful current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 6 quantities? hassel and lourey (2005) suggest that the kind of “grade inflation” exibited here is the result of a “consumer model of academia,” in which students have come to expect a high grade that is concurrent with their high tuition rates (p. 4). this unrealistic expectation has been allowed to manifest in higher education, due in part to universities’ interests in maintaining student enrollment. “[grade] inflation,” as hassel and lourey (2005) go on to state, “is a direct consequence of seeing students as customers entitled to a product (credits) that they have paid for, rather than as apprentices, and the result is a weakening of standards and a skewing of instructor and student accountability” (p. 4). a standardsbased system, in which grades are in direct correlation to learning objectives, would make it more difficult for universities to acquiesce students’ undue expectations of high grades. grade distortion and the reporting of nonacademic progress standards-based grading provides the teacher with an opportunity to repurpose existing activities and assignments so that they better reinforce learning objectives, and does so in part by eliminating distractions. conventions that are clearly disconnected from broader goals, and that dilute the learning experience—such as point-incentives for basic classroom requirements such as attendance—are subtracted from the learning environment, clearing the way for more academic standards to be met. exemplifying this methodology at the elementary and secondary levels is the district known as spokane public schools (sps), which now restricts all grading criteria to categories that are directly relevant to academic success. sps explains, in a purpose statement orienting teachers unfamiliar with the standards-based system, that “when we include things like effort, participation, or adherence to school rules in grades, grades are essentially broken” (2009, p. 4). this statement highlights that if grades are indeed meant to reflect academic progress, academic standards must be the only standards upon which the grades are based. there is a complication, however, in adapting this system at the elementary and secondary levels of education; a parental and societal expectation exists that schools monitor and encourage adolescents’ social and work habits in conjunction with their academic progress. anticipating this concern, sps (2009) recommends that teachers continue monitoring students’ nonacademic development, but that they report it separately from students’ grades, in a manner that does not interfere with academic assessments. to do so, teachers must first understand how to treat nonacademic and academic developments as two separate categories of progress. effectively differentiating between these two categories necessitates a standardsbased system, in which work habits and social development are each assigned their own set of criteria, and a student’s progress in achieving these criteria is reported according to certain levels of satisfaction. it is also important to note that separating nonacademic from academic information is not a matter of altering the methods by which each set of data is gathered. regardless of an assessment’s focus, healthy communication between student and teacher remains essential, and can be encouraged in a variety of ways; in particular, the national council for teachers of english suggests conducting surveys, interviews, or conferences with students as means of gathering, processing and discussing all manner of necessary information (formative assessment, 2013). the concern, rather, is in the reporting of each category; in keeping with the goal of preventing nonacademic information from distorting students’ grades, information not directly relevant to grades may be conveyed to students, parents and administrators via narrative evaluation, in a document that does not intersect at any point with the reporting of strictly academic developments. this is a clean, effective way for elementary and secondary school teachers to continue reporting important nonacademic developments without skewing academic standards, and consequently distorting academic grades. evaluation criteria in a standards-based system sps (2009) also acknowledges that in order to successfully operate and maintain a standards-based grading system, there must exist an exceptionally clear model of criteria by which to evaluate students’ academic advancements within that system. attention to criteria, after all, is what separates standards-based grading from other forms of grading; criteria are what help teachers determine whether or not standards are being met. because there is often no practical definition or application of statewide academic standards, which tend to be unduly reliant upon points-based test scores, many forward-thinking districts and institutions find themselves in the position of needing to establish and implement: first, their own set of standards, and second, their own criteria by which to measure how well their students achieve those standards. sps and other likeminded education providers take noteworthy initiative in forging their own districtor institution-wide standards and criteria. figure 2, excerpted from sps’ grading handbook, illustrates a model set of standards. academic proficiency is broken down into four different levels, reflecting standards of achievement at various stages of the learning process. the headings corresponding to each level—“beginning,” “approaching,” “meeting,” and “above”—refer to a student’s progress in relation to the end-of-course standard, which is described in level 3 (“meeting”). the availability of such a rubric lends essential clarity to the process of standards-based grading. the absence of a widely-implemented set of grading criteria, such as the one shown in figure 2, can the benefits of standards-based grading: a critical evaluation of modern grading practices 7 figure 2. source: spokane public schools, 2009, p. 9. lead to serious inconsistencies in the way individual teachers within an institution or district evaluate and grade their students. marzano and kendall (1996) warn that inconsistency in grading standards can engender “a situation in which grades given by one teacher might mean something entirely different from grades given by another teacher even though the teachers are presiding over two identical classes”—a discrepancy undesirable in any education system that strives to cultivate the same levels of academic success in each member of its student body (p. 10). such discrepancies only result when, in the absence of a universal set of standards, teachers improvise by creating their own grading criteria; one teacher might prioritize attendance and classroom participation, while another is more concerned with quality of homework. each teacher places more importance—typically expressed in amounts of available points—on his or her preferred category, and grades accordingly. such individually crafted standards disservice students in that they are applicable only in the limited context of that particular teacher’s class. in the eyes of the student, the purposes of these standards may be a complete mystery outside of the teacher’s classroom. mysteries in the evaluation rubric, resulting in questionable grading practices, critically disadvantage any student, parent, administrator, or government representative attempting to navigate the education system. in the book, making standards work: how to implement standards-based assessments in the classroom, reeves (2004) discusses this issue: whether congress and state legislatures are analyzing the performance of millions of students or a third-grade teacher is evaluating the work of a single child, the principle of fairness demands that the definition of success be clear. student achievement in a fair system stems from meeting a standard rather than wading through mysterious and changing expectations. (p. xiv) the operative word in the above passage is “fair.” attempting to facilitate a class in the absence of standards and criteria is tantamount to professional recklessness. variant evaluation criteria not only confuse and hinder current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 8 students, but also impede any attempt to determine the strengths and weaknesses of a student body as a whole, as they allow no reliable frame of reference by which to evaluate success. standards-based grading and teacher performance an education system lacking in concrete evaluation criteria is a danger to teachers as well; like students, they too suffer the anxieties of being evaluated absent a reliable frame of reference. while monitoring teacher performance and holding teachers accountable to their shortcomings are essential aspects of education reform, attempting to do so when the standards of success have not yet been comprehensively clarified may cause levels of confusion and stress in teachers that ultimately lead to decreased productivity. ball (2003) elaborates: the teacher, researcher, academic are subject to a myriad of judgments, measures, comparisons and targets… within all this, there is a high degree of uncertainty and instability. a sense of being constantly judged in different ways, by different means, according to different criteria… we become ontologically insecure: unsure whether we are doing enough, doing the right thing, doing as much as other… and yet it is not always very clear what is expected. (p. 220) thus, a clear set of standards is necessary in guiding both students and teachers toward desirable education outcomes. in his essay, “the two purposes of teacher evaluation,” marzano (2012) promotes a teacher evaluation system based on a scale similar to that of sbss student evaluation system (see figure 2). marzano (2012) states that a successful evaluation scale for teacher performance “would articulate developmental levels, such as not using, beginning, developing, applying, and innovating,” and that, much like in sbs’s example, each level should be accompanied by a narrative description of the accompanying goal (p. 18). via this standards-based system, teachers may work toward clearly articulated objectives, and be evaluated based on criteria that they understand. additionally, standards-based grading helps ensure that a class does not become disproportionately teacher-centered. teacher-centered learning has, until recently, largely dominated classroom settings. traditionally, teachers conduct classes from a position of power, functioning as distributors of information rather than as facilitators of learning. teachers are the core around which the classroom orbits; they set the rules, administer the course content, and ensure that the rules are not broken during students’ acquisition of the course content. in theory, this approach to teaching provides students with the structure and direction necessary for effective learning. in practice, however, this type of environment may stifle otherwise motivated learners, in that it prevents them from moving out from beneath the teacher’s wing. martell (1974) discusses the paradox: the teacher's power to influence the direction and possible outcome of a student's future has an impact at once reassuring and forbidding. constant reinforcement of the teacher's importance leads, more often than not, to an unquestioning attitude on the part of the student. (p. 112) as teachers, we should want our students to question. valuable learning experiences often begin with questions. confusion is clarified via questions. and, perhaps most relevant to the discussions threading this essay, connections between coursework and learning objectives are made via dialogues initiated by questions. when the teacher is installed as an authoritarian figure, he or she essentially takes the place of a parent or guardian, and it becomes difficult for a student to question information issued from that authority. if teachers want students to take responsibility for themselves not just as students of a particular class, but as learners, developing learning strategies that will serve them both inside and outside the classroom, we must provide for the asking and answering of questions—some of which may even challenge us, and our teaching habits, in unanticipated ways. in order to more fully understand the negative implications of exclusively teacher-centered learning, and the ways in which standards-based systems mitigate these effects, let us further examine common components of the teacher-centered approach. in her essay, “teachercentered versus student-centered: balancing constraint and theory in the composition classroom,” english teacher kain (2003) discusses the methodology behind the practice, stating, “most critically, in teacher-centered approaches, judgments about appropriate areas and methods of inquiry, legitimacy of information, and what constitutes knowledge rest with the teacher” (p. 104). the central flaw of this design is that it fails to cast the student as an active participant in the development of his or her own education; the student exists in the classroom setting as an observer of the teacher’s knowledge, confined to the peripheries of the learning experience. given the evidence suggesting that teachercentered learning is deeply flawed, we must ask ourselves: why is it still practiced by an overwhelming majority of education providers? the answer is that the most popular antidote to teacher-centered learning— student-centered learning—is not without flaws of its own. kain (2003) describes this alternative in relation to the highly-prescriptive teacher-centered approach: “by contrast, student-centered approaches derive from constructivist views of education, in which the construction of knowledge is shared and learning is achieved through students’ engagement with activities in which they are invested” (p. 104). superficially, the above philosophy appears to solve many of the issues associated the benefits of standards-based grading: a critical evaluation of modern grading practices 9 with teacher-centered learning. it involves students in the learning process through sharing of knowledge, rather than administration of information; and participation in activities, rather than subjection to long-winded lecture. it redistributes unequal power dynamics, encouraging teachers and students each to take a similar stake in classroom productivity. it lacks, however, the highlydefined set of standards afforded by teacher-centered learning, which, in its rigidity, succeeds at least in providing students with clear expectations (however arbitrary those expectations may be). the question then becomes, “how can a teacher combine the clear expectations of teacher-centered learning with the interactive and accommodating nature of student-centered learning?” the answer is to apply the principles of standards-based grading to the model of a student-centered learning environment, thereby creating an environment in which standards are well-defined, students are engaged, and the teacher is accessible. these respective methods of evaluation and instruction not only complement each other, but are in certain ways reliant upon each other. an activity conducted in the philosophy of student-centered learning may lack direction if it is not designed to reinforce a particular standard; similarly, a standard may present itself as arbitrary if its achievement is not facilitated through engaging activities and lively dialogues. ideally, students should neither be shut out of their own education, helpless to influence the content or course of the experience, nor should they be without guidance, and a set of objectives to reference in moments of uncertainty. using standards-based grading practices to evaluate progress within a student-centered learning environment helps teachers achieve this ideal. conclusion in conclusion, modern grading practices are rife with complexity and contradiction. they are remnants of archaic conventions, and hybrids of newer methodologies not yet tried by time and application. they are student or teacher oriented, inaccessibly rigid or unhelpfully absent of structure and definition. amid these distinctions, points-based grading reveals itself as an objective failure, insufficient in meeting the needs of any student focused on attaining a comprehensive, impactful education, and any teacher concerned with identifying and meeting the needs of his or her students. the most effective teaching and grading methodologies refrain from extremes, combining useful features from a number of partially-successful practices, in order to create a premium system of education capable of adapting to the requirements of those who use it. standards-based grading emerges from the study of these methodologies as a system worth advocating; neither intransigent nor unstructured; it accommodates different learning styles, sets attainable goals, and provides teachers with the opportunity to meet students wherever they are in the process of achieving those goals. perhaps most importantly, standards-based grading separates and elevates the advent of learning from points and numbers in a gradebook, lending new inspiration to the ages-old pursuit of education. references ball, s. j. 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(2014). the benefits of standards-based grading: a critical evaluation of modern grading practices current issues in education, 17(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1234 author notes danielle l. iamarino northern arizona university flagstaff, az 86001 iamarinodl@gmail.com danielle l. iamarino is a proponent and researcher of alternative and holistic approaches to education. she currently resides in flagstaff, arizona and teaches english composition at northern arizona university. manuscript received: 05/06/2013 revisions received: 01/20/2014 accepted: 01/23/2014 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 2 12 volume 17, number 2 may 21, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors elizabeth calhoun reyes constantine schreiber assistant executive editors kevin jose raso recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik aaron bryant anna montana cirell laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell younsu kim melinda thomas kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template current issues in education, 19(2) 1 volume 19, issue 2 may 23, 2016 issn 1099-839x the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students r. c. morris dixie state university abstract: higher education research highlights the difficulties students face when transitioning from a junior college to a traditional university. this study took place in the midwestern united states, exploring a gap between junior college vs. traditional university students’ academic self-efficacy beliefs. this study also controlled for ses, the effects of the student role-identity, and academic performance on academic self-efficacy. results found that when junior college students were compared to a group of traditional university peers, junior college students experienced lower academic self-efficacy beliefs, despite having higher overall grade point averages. additionally, junior college students reported that their student role-identity was less important to them compared to students at the large public university. findings suggest the potential for structural disadvantage at the institutional level of higher education, mirroring inequalities found in society at large. keywords: higher education, inequality, self-efficacy, junior college, traditional university apa-style citation: morris, r. c. (2016). the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students. current issues in education, 19(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1565 accepted: march 25th, 2016 a primary mission of the junior college system in the united states is to prepare students to transfer to baccalaureate granting institutions (bragg, 2001). research finds that students have a difficult time transitioning from the junior college setting to a traditional university (alicia, john, & melguizo, 2008; townsend, mcnearny, & arnold, 1993). important early studies by clark (1960, 1980) articulated these challenges. building on this work, contemporary research often focuses on the disadvantaged backgrounds junior college students come from (cohen & brawer, 2003; niu & tienda, 2013). despite a strong program of research measuring predictors of college attendance and completion, few studies examine social psychological inequality at the institutional level of higher education (aronson, blanton, & cooper, 1995). this study explores differences in self-efficacy beliefs between a group of junior college and traditional university students attending higher education in the same midwestern county in the united states. http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1565 morris: the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students current issues in education, 19(2) 2 structural inequality is defined as one group of people experiencing marginalization as a result of labels, stigmas, or categorization occurring relative to other people within a given social setting (royce, 2009). for the purposes of this study, structural inequality is measured as a college student’s experience of feeling empowered by the intuition of higher education they are attending. measuring structural inequality in this way sensitizes the results to the contextual factors—roles and attached self-meanings—leading to the observed social psychological differences students experience in each academic setting. essentially, this study asks if there are demonstrable difference in self-efficacy beliefs between junior college and traditional university students when controlling for well-established factors influencing college performance such as age, race, socioeconomic status (ses), sex, and prior and current academic performance (krumrei-mancuso, newton, kim, & wilcox, 2013). self-efficacy is defined as a person’s belief about their ability to exercise control over self and their environment (bandura, 1997). self-efficacy operates at an omnibus level of self-belief, called global or general self-efficacy. self-efficacy also operates at a situational or micro level, called domain specific self-efficacy (bong & skaalvik, 2003; gecas, 1989). this research considers both levels of self-efficacy; but, given the comparison between two different academic settings, this study is primarily focused on differences in domain (student) specific self-efficacy beliefs (multon, brown, & lent, 1991). self-efficacy beliefs initially develop during childhood. however, self-efficacy beliefs are not static and continue to be adapted across multiple dimensions of the life-course (bandura, barbaranelli, caprara, & pastorelli, 2001); and because a person’s self-efficacy beliefs are subject to change they are an ongoing mechanism of behavior (britner & pajares, 2006). an important factor influencing access to and success in higher education is a self-selection process involving these self-efficacy beliefs, called “matching” (bandura et al., 2001; choi, 2005). there are two parts to matching. first, students’ beliefs about their ability to be successful in a given academic environment; and second, students’ beliefs about institutional restraint or empowerment (putwain, sander, & larkin, 2012). the sum of this self-efficacy belief is central to the decision to attend (reay, david, & ball, 2005) and remain in a higher education program (mattern & shaw, 2010). matching also includes a filtering process based on “social class and ethnic differences” (ball, davies, david, & reay, 2002, p. 58). students from disadvantaged backgrounds attending higher education programs often start college with a diminished sense of personal efficacy, irrespective of past performance (chang, eagan, lin, & hurtado, 2011). pajares (1996) notes that diminished self-efficacy beliefs can overpower past performance in determining future performance (cf. caprara, vecchione, alessandri, gerbino, & barbaranelli, 2011): students with similar previous performance attainments and cognitive skills may differ in subsequent performance as a result of differing self-efficacy perceptions because these perceptions mediate between prior attainments and academic performances. (pajares, 1996, p. 554) bandura (1986) links self-efficacy beliefs to behavior by pointing out that people think about the implications and possibilities of their actions; people guide their behavior using forethought. bandura’s emphasis on anticipation takes root in the different roles (e.g., student, employee, and friend) people occupy. roles get defined by expectations, locating people within the immediate social structure (turner, 1978). people consider their actions using these expectations, anticipating their ability to be a causal agent in a given role. for instance, the role morris: the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students current issues in education, 19(2) 3 of “student” gets defined by a position within the academic setting and students interact with a wide variety of others (e.g., peers, teachers, administration). interaction with an instructor carries a set of expectations differing from expectations for interacting with peers. the point is, a student’s self-efficacy (actual and imagined) changes based on the anticipated expectations of the student role within the environment defining the role (cf. ajzen, 1991). self-efficacy beliefs link directly to role-positions through the identities that are associated with a role. as people become more or less committed to a given role, a self-meaning known as an identity develops based on the role (stryker & serpe, 1994). consider the example of a person with a student role and a recreational role, for instance an amateur competitive athlete. within the student role domain, the person may have low self-efficacy beliefs as a student and yet as an athlete possess high self-efficacy beliefs. what accounts for the difference? part of the answer comes from the student engaging in the anticipatory process bandura mentions. the student engages in matching by asking: as a student do my actions have power? as the student considers their personal and environmental ability to be agentive they learn that their actions lack power. on the other hand, when this person considers their ability relative to other athletes their actions have power (both anticipatorily and behaviorally). another important piece of the answer comes from the importance of the student-role versus athlete-role within the individual’s self-concept. distinct role-identities have varying importance (morris, 2012, 2013); and, role-identities with greater self-efficacy tend to be more central to the self-concept (gecas & schwalbe, 1983). as centrality increases the identity increasingly defines who the person is and how they will behave (stryker & serpe, 1994). self-efficacy is a mixture between internalized beliefs about agentive ability related to a particular role-identity and the social structural expectations that shape those beliefs (bandura, 1986). in this view, self-efficacy is not purely an internal psychological process. the student role-identity is defined by role expectations that are sustained within a given academic environment and academic environments differ in their ability to empower students. therefore, academic self-efficacy beliefs are a product of anticipation, expectations, and learned responses related to the student role-identity within a specific academic setting. this research focuses on academic self-efficacy at two different settings of higher education. academic self-efficacy (ae) is defined as a student’s perception of empowerment to accomplish the things they want to do, as sustained by the institution they are attending (majer, 2009). this study also considers how the student role-identity correlates with global feelings of empowerment, and how well-established factors influencing college performance such as age, race, ses, sex, and prior and current academic performance predict domain specific ae.1 regardless of the academic setting, students entering higher education typically begin with an exaggerated sense of self-efficacy (edman & brazil, 2008; vuong, brown-welty, & tracz, 2010). however, research finds that junior college students face challenges that peers at a traditional university typically get insulated from, such as needing to work full-time, supporting families, and otherwise experiencing greater role-conflict (archer, hutchings, & ross, 2003). as a result, junior college students’ self-efficacy beliefs quickly diminish as they begin their college level work (caballero de cordero, 2005; nakajima, dembo, & mossler, 2012). despite these challenges, one of the principal goals of junior college programs is to transfer students to baccalaureate granting institutions, thus ostensibly providing students with greater life opportunities (van dinther, dochy, & segers, 2011). thus, the purpose of this study is twofold. first, testing differences in self-efficacy beliefs between junior college and traditional university morris: the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students current issues in education, 19(2) 4 students; second, and importantly, extending previous research by assessing the extent to which inequitable positions exist within these differing academic settings. students begin college feeling confident; and, since self-efficacy beliefs “mediate between prior attainments and [current] academic performances” (pajares, 1996, p. 554), do junior colleges bridge the gap by supporting self-efficacy beliefs that are relatively comparable to traditional university students (robbins et al., 2004; zajacova, lynch, & espenshade, 2005)? based on the intersecting variables discussed, the following hypotheses are proposed: hypotheses h1: supporting established research, as ses increases the likelihood of attendance at the traditional university will increase. h2: students attending the junior college will have lower academic self-efficacy beliefs compared to peers at the traditional university. h3: students attending the traditional university will have higher global self-efficacy beliefs compared to peers at the junior college. h4: based on the full-time nature of a traditional university, the student role-identity will be more central for traditional university students. methods data for this study came from two sample populations; students at a large public university and students at a nearby junior college. both campuses are located in the same midwestern county in the united states. this study used a double-blind anonymous design with electronic response pads (clickers) in the classroom setting.2 a total n of 1,062 students (470 men, 559 women) participated in surveys used for this analysis; 562 from the junior college and 500 students who reported first-year or sophomore status at the traditional university. the demographic makeup of each institution was successfully recreated through sampling.3 analysis proceeded in five stages. the first stage was exploratory data analysis (eda) where data were checked for distribution properties. following eda, the second and third stages ran construct validity and reliability checks using dimension reduction including measurement of cronbach’s alpha and mcdonald’s omega. mean comparison results (t-test and anova) relied on bartlett factor scores (distefano, zhu, & mîndrilă, 2009). multi-item latent constructs were also modeled during sem analyses. see table 2 and figures 1-3 for complete details. the fourth stage assessed bivariate correlations. stage five was the final step of statistical analysis; the final stage ran a series of structural equation models (sems), including a multi-group sem comparing results between the junior college and traditional university. full sem model details get presented in table 4. sem models made it possible to address the complex pathways and correlations under investigation. full information maximum likelihood estimation was used to adjust for missing data points present in these data—missing was ≤ 5% (enders, 2001). the dependent variable, ae came from three items based on work by pearlin and schooler (1978) and pajares (1996). the first two measures are likert items ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree with a sixth category for don't know and a seventh for refuse to answer. item 1: based on just my educational experience at the institution where i am currently enrolled i expect to be able to do just about anything i really set my mind to. item 2: based on my overall experience at the institution where i am currently enrolled i expect to be able to do just about anything i really set my mind to. item 3: to what extent would you say that the current institution at which you are enrolled has prepared you for success after graduation (item 3 is also a likert item morris: the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students current issues in education, 19(2) 5 ranging from a great deal to poorly with a sixth category for don't know and a seventh for refuse to answer – all emphases in original items)? the primary predictor representing the higher education setting (hes) was measured as a binary variable: 0 = junior college 1 = traditional university. pajares (1996) argues that research investigating the complex social psychological phenomenon of self-efficacy must include measures of both domain specific and global selfefficacy (ge). ae is the domain specific measure of interest. the original plan for measuring ge was to use a factor-scale measure similar to ae. five likert items from the international personality item pool (ipip) were factor analyzed to represent the latent construct of ge (goldberg et al., 2014). during dimension reduction the five items for ge did not factor together. in fact, the psychometrician's who oversee the ipip have since replaced this scale of ge. based on this and the current factor analysis results, the measure of ge used in this study came from a single likert item: i can do just about anything i really set my mind to. response options again ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree with a sixth category for don't know and a seventh for refuse to answer. measurement of academic performance came from self-reported grade point average (gpa). respondents were asked to report both high school and current gpa (for a critique of this methodology see frucot & cook, 1994). the scale consisted of 8 categories (including don't know) beginning with < 1.0, moving up in .5 increments and topping out at 3.5 – 4.0. table 1 descriptive statistics and factor scales of variables, n = 1,062 ae age ge hes race ses sex sid applicable factor loadings factor 1 factor 1 factor 2 factor 1 item 1 .600 .492 .218 .757 item 2 .818 .599 .504 item 3 .784 .504 .300 .677 item 4 .653 item 5 .341 .423 kmo .676 .656 .641 alpha .772 .545 .656 mcd ω .870 .670 .823 descriptive statistics mean 0asy 3.08 ge results of item #4: 2.558 .587 .778 0asy .533 4.076 sd 1 1.18 1.258 .492 .416 1.181 .499 .923 min -3.549 1 1 0 0 -2.757 0 1 max 1.427 5 5 1 1 2.693 1 5 variable legend: ae = academic efficacy ge = global efficacy hes = higher education setting ses = socioeconomic status sid = student identity centrality statistical legend: alpha = cronbach’s alpha asy = asymptotically correct kmo = kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy mcd ω = mcdonald’s omega sd = standard deviation the measure of ses adopted in this study was based on previous research finding that resources available through parents captures the social stratification that students are likely to experience (arrow, bowles, & durlauf, 2000). structuring ses in this way provided a useful proxy measure for the various conditions that junior college vs. traditional university students morris: the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students current issues in education, 19(2) 6 face, such as pressures to work while in school or attend part-time (spilerman, 2000). item one asked respondents to select the category containing the income for their "primary place of residence (permanent address)" on a likert scale. the second item asked respondents to identify the level of education completed by their mother, and the third item asked respondents to identify the level of education completed by their father. six categorical options were provided beginning with (1) less than high school diploma up to (6) phd or professional degree. based on the research tradition providing the backbone for this paper (cf. krumreimancuso et al., 2013), the following controls of college performance were included during analyses. a measure of psychological centrality for the student role-identity (sid) which asked, "thinking only of your role as a student would you agree or disagree with the following statement: being a student is important to the way i think about myself (options again ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree with a sixth and seventh categories for don't know and refuse to answer). sex was measured as a binary variable 0 = male 1 = female. age, a measure of birth year that was collapsed into five categories, as the numeric value of the category increased (more recent birth year) age decreased. race was collapsed to a binary variable 0 = other 1 = white. dummying of race was necessary due to empty cells. demographic statistics for the variables used in this study, including factor loadings and measures of cronbach’s alpha and mcdonald’s omega, get reported in the table 1. results test of hypothesis 1 table 2 displays mean comparisons between ae, gpa, and ses. as expected, ses was higher for students at the traditional university. this result confirmed the assumption presented in hypothesis 1: on average ses was higher for the students attending the traditional university (subsequent sem results also support the first hypothesis). test of hypothesis 2 table 2 also shows that students at the junior college, on average, had lower ae compared to the students at the traditional university. this is particularly compelling in view of the results of table 2 showing that students at the university reported lower average gpa scores. these results support the second assumption presented in hypothesis 2: on average, students attending the junior college had lower ae beliefs compared to traditional university peers. table 2 two-sample t-test with unequal variances and one-way anova by hes t test f test ae gpa ses ae gpa ses mean sd mean sd mean sd junior college -.121 1.067 5.880 1.13 -.467 1.214 f f f university .089 .938 5.542 1.102 .326 1.041 14.026 28.31 146.265 h0 ≠ 0*** h0 ≠ 0*** h0 ≠ 0*** p = .001 p = .001 p = .001 ae = academic efficacy, gpa = self-reported gpa, ses = socioeconomic status h0 = two tailed test | *** p ≤ .001 a further test of these relationships gets presented as a pairwise correlation, presented in table 3. the table is organized so that the first three columns display the principal variables of interest. in the first column, ae was significantly and positively related to the hes, providing further support for the second hypothesis. hes was also positively related to sid, ge, current gpa, high school gpa, and sex. in column two, ses was significant and positively related to hes, providing further support for the first hypothesis. ses was also significant and positively morris: the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students current issues in education, 19(2) 7 related to age and high school gpa. column three reports positive relationships for hes, they included age, sid, and high school gpa. column three also displays four negative relationships for hes, including ge, current gpa, race, and sex. looking at the relationships between ses and ge presented in column two of table 3, as ses increased ge decreased (ge β = -.071, p = .05). this finding questions the blanket assumption presented in hypothesis three assuming that students from more privileged backgrounds at the traditional would have higher ge. the multi-group sem analyses presented below addresses the complex pathways and correlations of the variables presented thus far. mean comparisons and bivariate relationships between variables suggest support for the first and second hypothesis. however, the third hypothesis, assuming that a simple linear relationship exists between ses and ge was called into question. this result may be a product of the combined sample analyses presented thus far. a multi-group sem will allow for more nuanced analyses of each hes. bivariate correlations also suggested support for the fourth hypothesis; results show that as hes increased the centrality of sid also increased. sem of all hypotheses the final stage of analysis was a series of sems. figures 1-3 present the results of the final parsimonious sems. model fit statistics and standardized parameter estimates also get presented in figures 1-3. table 4 provides detailed parameter estimates and model fit statistics for each of the sems. both correlation and regression estimates get reported in table 4; for the regression paths standard error estimates are in parentheses. each of the models presented is the best fitting model with non-significant paths and variables removed. all significant relationships between variables were retained during the final stage of modeling, including significant covariate relationships, allowing antecedent or indirect effects to retain model influence (bollen & davis, 2009). all of the models fit these data well. beginning with the measurement model (found in table 4) the comparative fit index (cfi) of .948, the incremental fit index (ifi) of .948, and the normed fit index (nfi) of .937 demonstrated a reasonably strong fit. the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea) table 3 pairwise correlations of variables, n = 1,062 ae ses hes age sid ge gpa cur gpa hs race sex ae 1.000 ses -.039 1.000 hes .104*** .331*** 1.000 age -.033 .241*** .105*** 1.000 sid .284*** .023 .067** -.032 1.000 ge .335*** -.071* -.106*** -.0467ϯ 0.114** * 1.000 gpa cur .133*** -.046 -.147*** -.092*** .091*** .084** 1.000 gpa hs .055* .237*** .333*** .119*** .042 -.041 .143** * 1.000 race -.003 -.021 -.079** -.029 .017 .041 .132** * .034 1.00 0 sex .101*** -.11*** -.064* -.059 .135*** .046ϯ .175** * .091** * .031 1.000 ae = academic efficacy, ge = global efficacy, gpa cur = self-reported current gpa, gpa hs = self-reported high school gpa, hes = higher education setting, sid = student identity centrality *** p ≤ .001 | ** p ≤ .01 | * p ≤ .05 | ϯ ≤ p .10 morris: the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students current issues in education, 19(2) 8 was .056 (p = .198) with a confidence interval (ci) low of .48 and high of .065. based on the large sample size, chi-square was not a primary fit statistic. model 1 ran the combined sample with a dummy variable controlling for the hes and models 2 and 3 were run as a multi-group sem separating the sample populations based on hes, testing the hypothesized relationships among the different student populations. test of hypothesis 1 and 2. sem analyses show that ses was only significant for junior college students (e.g., model 2: ses β = -.133, p = .034). the significant effect for ses in the combined sample reported in table 2 and 3 and model 1 of the sem analysis was coming from the junior college respondents. model 1 of the sem analysis shows that ses was not a significant predictor of students’ perceptions of ae at the traditional university, and for junior college students there was a negative effect between ses and ae. as ses increased ae decreased. the difference in effect also explains the results found in the bivariate correlation matrix and the smaller fit than expected for the combined sample. these results indicate that when it comes a junior college vs. traditional university setting, students at the traditional university do not experience negative ses strains in the way that students at the junior college do, adding support for hypotheses one and two. figure 1. combined sem standardized parameter estimates of academic self-efficacy. figure 2. multi-group sem standardized parameter estimates at junior college. morris: the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students current issues in education, 19(2) 9 figure 3. multi-group sem standardized parameter estimates at traditional university. test of hypothesis 3. of all predictors modeled, ge had the strongest effect on ae; as ge increased domain specific ae increased (model 1: β = .342, p = .001 | model 2: β =.258, p = .05 | model 3: β = .420, p = .001), with the strongest effect present at the traditional university. additionally, looking at model 1, compared to students at the junior college traditional university students had higher ae (β = .201, p = .001). this finding supports hypothesis three and is a noteworthy psychological finding, uncovering a multidimensional aspect of the selfconcept predicting a domain specific one. the negative relationship between ge and ses found in the bi-variate correlation matrix (β = -.071, p = .05) was only present for the combined sample found in figure 1 (sem covariate correlation = -.082, p = .01). the correlation between ge and ses in the sem for the traditional university was -.056 (p = .197), and for the junior college the correlation was -.037 (p = .432). this was the only relationship present in the full sample reported in model 1 to disappear from both models 2 and 3 when running a multi-group sem analyzed by hes. the combined strength from both student populations was necessary to produce a significant correlation. test of hypothesis 4. as sid increased ae increased (model 1: β = .233, p = .001 | model 2: β =.176, p = .001 | model 3: β = .259, p = .001), with the strongest effect present at the traditional university. additionally, looking at model 1, compared to students at the junior college traditional university students had higher sid (β = .233, p = .001). this finding supports hypothesis four suggesting that students at the traditional university should rate the student roleidentity as more central to their self-concept based on the conditions at a traditional university. finding this effect strongest among traditional university students also supports the other results reported, contextualizing the role factors leading to the observed individual social psychological differences experienced (gecas & schwalbe, 1983). looking at additional control variables, high school gpa was not a significant predictor of current ae, but current gpa was. too, when current gpa increased, so did ae. it is worth noting that a one-standard deviation increase of current academic performance (β = .126, p = .006) had a similar amount of influence on ae as did ses (β = -.133, p = .026). controls for age and sex were only significant at the junior college, and race was not significant as a predictor for any of the sems. at the junior college younger students had lower self-efficacy beliefs than morris: the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students current issues in education, 19(2) 10 older students (β = -.107, p = .022) and women were more likely to report positive self-efficacy beliefs (β = .092, p = .046. table 4 standardized fiml estimates for sem models predicting academic self-efficacy measurement model model 1 – full sem model 2 – sem for junior college model 3 – sem for traditional university β (std. error) ae  ses -.106** (.022) -.133* (.034) ae  hes .201*** (.040) ae  ge .342*** (.024) .258***(.034) .420*** (.033) ae  sid .233*** (.019) .176*** (.027) .259*** (.026) ae  curr gpa .127*** (.016) .126** (.023) .090** (.020) ae  age -.107* (.019) ae  sex .092* (.054) age  ses .338*** .103* ge  ses -.082** curr gpa  ses .092* hes  ses .395*** hs gpa  ses .276*** .264*** race  ses .126*** sex  ses -.303*** .192*** sid  ses -.100* sid  hes .053* hs gpa  hes .329*** hes  ge -.100*** sid  ge .118*** .113** .119*** curr gpa  ge .095*** .073* age  curr gpa -.152*** hes  curr gpa -.140*** sid  curr gpa .088** .130** .072* hs gpa  curr gpa .151*** .122** .293*** race  curr gpa .137** .075* sex  curr gpa .122** .181*** race  hs gpa .126*** age  hs gpa .135** age  sex -.096* race  sex -.110** sex  sid .159*** .116*** age  sid -.096* obs1(ae)  ae .608+ .608+ .583+ .610+ obs2(ae)  ae .834*** .834*** .867*** .787*** obs3(ae)  ae .777*** .777*** .844*** .743*** obs1(ses)  ses .739+ .738+ .722+ .750+ obs2(ses)  ses .670*** .671*** .669*** .627*** obs3(ses)  ses .545*** .544*** .498*** .425*** chi-squareχ² (df) 170.341*** (32) 170.557*** (33) 98.398*** (51) 162.922*** (58) rmsea (pclose) .056 (.098) .055 (.134) .041 (.895) .048 (.664) cfi .948 .948 .959 .916 ifi .948 .949 .960 .918 nfi .937 .937 .920 .879 aic 260.341 258.557 204.398 254.922 n = 1062 n = 562 n = 500 legend: ae = academic efficacy curr gpa = current gpa ge = global efficacy hes = higher education setting (junior vs. traditional) hs gpa = high school gpa obs#(construct) = observed item for latent variable ses = socioeconomic status sid = student identity centrality + fixed parameter for identification / * p ≤ .05 / ** p ≤ .01 / ***p ≤ .001 discussion of primary interest was the answer to the principle research question motivating this paper, presented in the second hypothesis: do students at the junior college have equivalent academic self-efficacy beliefs compared to traditional university peers? previous research has shown that across higher education settings, incoming students typically begin their studies with morris: the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students current issues in education, 19(2) 11 high positive expectations (edman & brazil, 2008). results presented in table 1 found that despite having higher overall grade point averages, students at the junior college experienced lower academic self-efficacy beliefs compared to their traditional university peers. while it is true that junior college students typically face unique challenges (e.g., attending college later in life, pressure to work, and/or attend school part-time) the findings reported held when controls for age, sex, race, and ses were included. in addition, the multi-group sem found that ses was not a significant predictor for students at the traditional university, indicating that the strains of low ses were only a significant negative predictor of self-efficacy for junior college students. based on the exploratory nature of this study, using cross-sectional data, it is difficult to know if the lower self-efficacy beliefs were a product of the filtering produced by ses. students at the junior college typically came from backgrounds of lower overall ses and research has found that these students experience significant challenges and internal conflict relating to an academic identity, when compared to students from higher ses backgrounds (aronson & inzlicht, 2004). potentially, these findings uncover that ae is the product of a self-selection bias. however, rather than a confounding result this outcome was expected a priori. the hypotheses presented assume that ses is a predictor of the higher education setting a student attends. results presented are not a definitive casual argument that structural inequality is the main producer of these findings; however, finding higher overall grades among junior college students and lower ae suggests an important need for further—ideally longitudinal—investigation into structural conditions of inequality within stratified higher education settings. further, finding that ses background did not significantly impact a traditional university student’s self-efficacy belief suggests that in addition to being relatively insulated from the contemporary economic challenges facing higher education, students from higher ses backgrounds are also relatively insulated from negative psychological effects impacting ae. the student role-identity was more central for the university students’ self-concept. findings support previous research suggesting that the cycle of inequality that students from lower ses face socializes them to expect less of themselves. in other words, lower ses students hedge their bets and psychologically compartmentalize self-meanings according to the structural conditions of inequality that they face (festinger, 1964; osborne, 1995). for example, a student might ask herself: why should i place the role-identity of student in a central place of importance for my self-concept? thereby protecting herself from negative feedback related to this identity. the analysis also suggests that a student’s current gpa predicts the current sense of academic self-efficacy, but previous gpa does not. pajares (1996) notes that the linkage between a student’s previous performance and current performance is strongly mediated by selfefficacy beliefs (cf. labelle, martin, & weber, 2013). when it comes to a student’s feelings of empowerment as fostered by the academic environment, previous accomplishments influence current performance insofar as current beliefs about agentive ability support performance. what matters is the “here and now”. these findings support the mediating link identified by pajares (1996). this linkage is essentially the heart of this study. recognizing that self-efficacy plays a key role influencing future life opportunity this study set out to test potential differences in selfefficacy beliefs between junior college and traditional university students. these findings indicate that there is an inequality of self-efficacy beliefs between students in these two institutions of higher education. past performances can be minimized by current self-efficacy beliefs, and students from the junior college report that they feel less empowered by their academic environment. morris: the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students current issues in education, 19(2) 12 the significance of this study centers on finding higher average grades and lower selfefficacy beliefs among junior college students when compared to traditional university peers.4 this result suggests that the inequalities found in society are potentially mirrored as structural inequality within the higher education settings under investigation; and, that students experience part of this structural inequality at a social psychological level impacting their domain specific self-efficacy beliefs. the impact of which, as pajares notes, predicts a diminished ability among junior college students to successfully transition to and graduate from a traditional university. limitations and concluding remarks the major limitation of this study has already been suggested; data comes from a large cross-sectional study, limiting a causal argument. future research working on higher education and self-efficacy beliefs would be strengthened by a longitudinal design using a panel study to track students from primary education, through college, and into life beyond schooling. a longitudinal design would allow future researchers to address the possibility of a self-selection bias. the hope is that the present study acts as motivation for continued research into the impact institutions of higher education have on the social psychological processes impacting student outcomes. while considerable care was taken to get representative samples of students, the idiosyncrasies of each institution must be taken into account. the midwestern setting and the types of students who attended both institutions (disproportionately white, relatively privileged and conservative) likely influenced the results to some degree. additionally, data were managed to include only first and second year students from the traditional university with a measure of ses as a proxy for role-strains, but based on the limitations of these data it was not possible to further filter students by full-time and part-time status, a status that likely impacts a student’s performance, commitments, and related self-efficacy beliefs. subsequent research would benefit from a larger and more diverse pool of students and institutional settings. greater generalizability would provide more robust conclusions about how structural inequality in higher education permits as well as reflects the social psychological inequalities identified in this study. notes 1students responding to items asking about how empowered they feel by the school they are attending sensitizes measurement to the individual level. this represents a novel measurement strategy for assessing structural inequality. however, despite the novelty, this is not a new theoretical conceptualization of macro structural conditions being recursive with micro processes. for example, the social structure and personality tradition rests on the notion that, “…social actors are constrained by the structures in which they are embedded, but they also reproduce those structures through their actions/[attitudes] (emphasis added)” (mcleod & lively, 2003, p. 86). 2instructors who donated a class session began their class with an introduction, turned the time over, and then departed. at the beginning of each class session a recruitment script was read including voluntary participation and risk disclosures. 31 classes at the junior college and 18 at the traditional university are represented in these data. no student at either institution elected not to participate. 3full details of these data are available upon request. 4as one reviewer noted, differences in individual level performance could be the result of, “…different grading methods or philosophies between junior colleges and universities.” a measure of grading strategies was beyond the scope of 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(2010). the effects of self-efficacy on academic success of first-generation college sophomore students. journal of college student development, 51(1), 50-64. doi:10.1353/csd.0.0109 zajacova, a., lynch, s. m., & espenshade, t. j. (2005). self-efficacy, stress, and academic success in college. research in higher education, 46(6), 677-706. doi:10.1007/s11162004-4139-z. morris: the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students current issues in education, 19(2) 16 author notes r. c. morris department of social & behavioral sciences 225 s. university ave, st. george, ut 84770 rcmorris@dixie.edu r.c. morris is an assistant professor of criminal justice at dixie state university. he received his ph.d. in sociology from purdue university in 2014. he conducts research on social psychology and criminology as well as the scholarship of teaching and learning. . . morris: the inequality of self-efficacy between junior college and traditional university students current issues in education, 19(2) 17 volume 19, issue 2 may 23, 2016 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh niels piepgrass bethany richmond olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 11, number 1 may, 2009 issn 1099-839x editor’s notes jeffrey johnson, katy hisrich, and yun teng arizona state university no text available. see notes below. current issues in education vol. 11 no. 1 2009 article citation johnson, j., hisrich, k., & teng, y. (2009, may). editors' notes. current issues in education [on-line], 11(3). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number1/ author notes jeffrey johnson jeffrey johnson is a doctoral student in the interdisciplinary phd. program of curriculum and instruction with a focus on mathematics education in the college of education at arizona state university. he has a master's in mathematics education from teachers college—columbia university, and a bachelor’s in secondary education from arizona state university. he has worked as a mathematics teacher at laguardia community college in queens, ny, central high school and the thomas j. pappas school for the homeless in phoenix, and ms 399 in the bronx, ny. his current research projects include the effect of student teaching on pre-service teacher's attitudes and abilities, and equity issues relating to state standardized assessments. katy e. hisrich katy e. hisrich is pursuing her doctorate in educational psychology at arizona state university. she has a master's degree in elementary education from university of north carolina at charlotte and a bachelor's in early childhood education and child development from vanderbilt university (peabody college of education). she worked as a kindergarten teacher for 7 years in charlotte, nc and has taught two education courses at university of north carolina at charlotte. currently, hisrich teaches an undergraduate class in educational psychology at asu, and for the last two years she has been teaching an education course for the university of phoenix online. in addition, she is working with two professors: putting together an edited edition of the journal, computers in the schools, about the effects of technology on early childhood emergent literacy skills and creating an online course called learning with preschoolers, offered through asu for parents about how to interact with their children on the computer. hisrich also founded and built her own website, which is dedicated to providing parents with information about creating educational environments, using technology, showing how the brain learns, and implementing children's activities/procedures; she also uses this same information in her presentations to parents at various venues. her research interests include parent involvement, effects of technology, learning and the brain, and the development of young children. yun teng yun teng is currently a doctoral student from the division of educational leadership and policy studies (elps), mary lou futon college of education at arizona state university (asu). he has an m.a. in social and philosophical foundations of education also from asu. upon graduation from the m.a. program in 2006, he was awarded the university graduate scholarship to continue his doctoral program at elps. his research interests include education policies regarding public schools, charter schools, voucher programs and other forms of public/private schools, history of education, and comparative education. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 15, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. in this case, the only information that was available about these “editors’ notes” was that they had been published as volume 11, issue 1 in 2009. no content could be retrieved in 2015 when the articles from the old cie website were reformatted and made available online again. it is unclear as to whether the content was never published due to a mistake or whether it was simply lost. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number1/ editors’ notes 3 2015 article citation johnson, j., hisrich, k., & teng, y. (2009). editors’ notes. current issues in education, 11(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1572 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1572 volume 8, number 19 july 20, 2005 issn 1099-839x elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices stephanie z. smith georgia state university marvin e. smith georgia southern university steven r. williams brigham young university this report focuses on the processes of change in beliefs and practices experienced by practicing elementary school teachers during a sixteen-session course using two of the modules from the developing mathematical ideas (dmi) materials. we identify a collection of six metaphors for knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics to succinctly describe and categorize teachers’ beliefs. we present three case studies representing a continuum of change in beliefs observed among the participants of the dmi course. we relate this continuum both to the beliefs teachers brought to the course and to their degree of engagement in various components of a change process model. using this model of change, we analyze the ways in which teachers expressed interest in change, problematized their beliefs, experimented with possible solutions, and reflected on experimental results leading to changes in beliefs and practices. the results of our analysis indicate that variations in change among participants can be explained by variations in their levels of engagement in particular elements of the change model by the learning activities of the dmi course. paradigmatic and systemic changes recommended in the standards of the national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm, 2000) and supported by teacher enhancement grants from the national science foundation involve complex issues associated with teacher beliefs, teacher knowledge, and changes in teaching practices. friel and bright (1997) integrated and summarized a number of issues of particular importance for these changes, including: (1) working to change teacher beliefs is the starting point for most professional development, and (2) changing beliefs and experimenting with teaching practices are intertwined in an iterative process. in discussing programs that are successful in changing beliefs, richardson (1996) singled out “programs that approach learning to teach in a constructivist manner” as being particularly successful in “engaging their participants in examining and changing their beliefs and practices” (p. 113). among the common features of successful constructivist professional development programs current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 which she listed, two are of particular importance for this study: (1) participant’s beliefs and understandings are a major concern in the program, and (2) the goal of the program is to facilitate participants’ understanding of their beliefs as well as their considering and experimenting with new beliefs and practices. richardson (1996) also noted, “attitudes and beliefs are important concepts in understanding teachers’ thought processes, classroom practices, change, and learning to teach” (p. 102). in the context of an innovative elementary mathematics professional development program using two modules from developing mathematical ideas (dmi) (schifter, bastable, & russell, 1999a and 1999b), this study (1) provides a framework for organizing, describing, and analyzing teachers’ beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics; (2) explores a sequence model for the processes of teacher change; and (3) reports effects of a specific teacher development program on participating teachers’ beliefs and practices. conceptual framework as we frame the discussion that follows, we draw from research on teachers’ beliefs, propose metaphors that summarize teachers’ beliefs and mental models for teaching mathematics, and summarize research on the processes of changing beliefs through professional development experiences. this literature frames our decision to use case-study methodology to study the effects of the course on teachers’ beliefs and practices as well as our presentation and interpretation of the results. teachers’ beliefs and practices although it seems obvious that teachers’ personal beliefs and experiences effect how they teach, thompson (1992) pointed out that there are numerous ways of interpreting the idea of a belief. we focus here on the beliefs of teachers in our study in three areas: their views of what it means to know mathematics, to learn mathematics, and to teach mathematics. a useful way of talking about such beliefs is the approach taken by bullough (1992) and his associates (bullough & stokes, 1994). bullough discussed metaphors as mental images or models that briefly summarize the elaborate and complex theories, assumptions, and understandings upon which people act. he used the notion of personal teaching metaphors as one image that helps teachers discuss and reflect upon their assumptions about teaching and their roles as teachers. bullough & stokes (1994) discussed at some length one particular metaphor of a teacher as “‘one who knows,’ or master” and students as “disciples, imitators of higher authority.” they went on to suggest that “for the master, teaching is telling,” knowledge is “fixed and stable,” and the teaching and learning process is “a matter of compelling others to dance to the beat of the master’s drum” (p. 201). this master teaching metaphor is coherent with traditional views of knowing and learning mathematics. kuhs and ball (1986) summarized this view as follows: “rules are the basic building blocks of all mathematical knowledge and all mathematical behavior is rule-governed; knowledge of mathematics is being able to get answers and do problems using the rules that have been learned; computational procedures should be automatized; it is not necessary to understand the source or reason for student errors; further instruction on the correct way to do things will result in appropriate learning; in school, knowing mathematics means being able to demonstrate mastery of the skills described by instructional objectives” (p. 2, bullets removed). this description has much in common with lampert’s (1990) description of the cultural assumptions about mathematics in schools: “doing mathematics means following the rules laid down by the teacher; knowing mathematics means remembering and applying the correct rule when the teacher asks a question; and mathematical truth is determined when the answer is ratified by the teacher” (p. 32). discussions by stigler and hiebert (1999) and ma (1999) suggest that this traditional view still dominates the culture of mathematics teaching. in contrast to the master metaphor, research from a social constructivist perspective (vygotsky, 1978; bakhtin, 1981; rogoff & wertsch, 1984; wertsch, 1985, 1991; tharp & gallimore, 1989; rogoff, 1990) provides an alternative model for teaching centered on joint productive activity and instructional conversation (tharp, 1997; dalton, 1998). this view of teaching, which could be summarized by a facilitator metaphor, is founded on alternative beliefs about what knowledge is, how it is learned, and the role of teachers in guiding and facilitating learning. learning from this perspective involves social interactions among students and more capable others (teachers and peers) working together in authentic, goal-directed activities (joint productivity) and conversing about what they are doing, thinking, and learning (instructional conversations). the role of the teacher during these instructional conversations is to listen carefully to what students are saying and to use questioning techniques to guide students’ thinking as they develop understanding and connect it to individual and community knowledge (tharp 1997). this view of teaching is clearly evident in the nctm professional standards for teaching mathematics (1991). elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 3 in table 1 [see appendix d], we provide a set of six metaphors that summarize the traditional and standards-based views of school mathematics. the traditional view includes (1) a toolbox metaphor for knowing mathematics, (2) a behaviorist metaphor for learning, and (3) the master teaching metaphor. the standards-based view of school mathematics includes (1) a flexible problem solving with understanding metaphor for knowing mathematics, (2) a social constructivist metaphor for learning mathematics, and (3) a facilitator metaphor for teaching mathematics. for us, these two sets of metaphors summarize the “from what” and “to what” of the current mathematics education reforms. processes of changing beliefs and practices in the case of school mathematics, changing from the traditional beliefs and practices summarized by one set of metaphors to fundamentally different standards-based beliefs and practices summarized by another set of metaphors constitutes a revolutionary paradigm shift rather than incremental change. beginning to share new exemplars for what it means to know mathematics, to learn mathematics, to teach mathematics, and to practice in this community is a part of the basic approach of both the nctm standards and the dmi materials. as we examine the processes for encouraging and supporting these changes, we can benefit from research on learning and professional development of teachers. the same research that justifies the shift to social constructivist views of learning for students in school mathematics supports a shift in designing professional development for teachers. social constructivist views of learning support the perspective that changes in teachers’ beliefs will be experiential, developmental, and gradual. this is consistent with guskey’s (1986) model of the process of teacher change (see figure 1 [see appendix d]), which claimed that changes in teachers’ beliefs (step 4) followed improvements in student outcomes (step 3) produced by changes in classroom practices (step 2) teachers made in response to professional development experiences (step 1). recognizing the complexity of teacher change, clarke and hollingsworth (2002) recently reviewed guskey (1986) and other models for teacher change (johnson & owen, 1986; lappan et al., 1988; cobb, wood, & yackel, 1990; clarke & peter, 1993) and proposed what they called an interconnected model of teacher professional growth. describing four domains affecting a teacher’s world (external, personal, practice, and consequence), they focused on two processes of change: reflection and enactment. their model particularly emphasizes how these two mechanisms of change produce particular change sequences affecting these four domains, allowing for development of what they call growth networks. although they thoroughly elaborated their model with examples from their empirical studies, they did not provide examples for how their model could be used to analyze and explain variations in change across individuals. in searching for a model that is sufficiently detailed to explain variations across participants, we noticed that the guskey (1986) model could be used to apply a change sequence to dewey’s (1933) model of reflective thought, which included five phases or non-hierarchical elements, including: problematizing the situation and recognizing the conditions of the problem; recognizing possible solutions to a problem; generating hypotheses for possible solutions to the problem; reasoning about these hypotheses to determine their potential for success; and testing one or more of these hypotheses in the context of the problem. to problematize is to recognize a situation as a problem and to acknowledge the conditions in the situation that affect the problem. problematizing current practices is required to translate general interest or curiosity into an interest in changing practices. in applying dewey’s model to preservice teacher education, mewborn (1999) emphasized the importance of problematizing teaching situations. if problematizing is not sufficient to develop interest in complex fundamental change then interest narrows to simple incremental change within current paradigms and practices. obviously, unless a situation is problematized, it is difficult to formulate hypotheses and test possible solutions. examining potential solutions is relatively simple for incremental changes and relatively complex for fundamental changes. incremental change poses only minor changes in strategies within current metaphors as possible solutions. fundamental change requires development of understanding of new principles, metaphors, and curriculum needed to support major changes in practices needed to solve more fundamental and more complex problems. similarly, interest in incremental improvement leads to simple experiments with minor changes, while interest in fundamental changes leads to complex experiments with major changes. dewey’s (1904/1965, 1933) arguments for reflective thinking support the notion that teachers need to develop habits of reflection to be able to do the level of problematizing needed to improve their teaching and students’ learning. he argued that teachers who avoid reflective thinking develop an intellectual dependency on and interest in explicit directions from others on what and how to teach. this dependence can reinforce the master metaphor and focus teachers’ interest on acquiring additional current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 activities and teaching strategies to be accommodated within existing practices. this could support minor, incremental changes in teaching, but would not lead to fundamental changes in practices that produce big benefits in student learning, such as understanding mathematics. both dewey and guskey also discussed elements of interest in change. dewey (1933) mentioned curiosity as one of three personal resources essential for reflective thinking. guskey (1986) was more specific, claiming that most teachers engage in professional development because of their interest in students and their desire to become better teachers to the benefit of their students. this desire to improve student outcomes provides both the basis for problematizing current practices and for changing beliefs when evidence of improved student outcomes can be tied to specific changes in teaching practices. again considering both dewey (1933) and guskey (1986), reflecting on teacher experiences and student outcomes leads to decisions about whether experiments were successful or not for improving students’ learning and were practical or not for longterm use. success then leads to changes in beliefs; failure leads to ending the experiment, reversion to previous practices, and no changes in beliefs. the complexity of the needed reflection depends on the complexity of both the problem posed and the solutions attempted in the teaching experiments. summary the literature summarized above suggests to us that two important characteristics would mediate the effects of the dmi course: (1) beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics; and (2) sequenced processes for changing beliefs and practices. these two themes framed our exploration of variations in the impact of the dmi course on teachers’ beliefs and practices. for the purposes of this study, we have chosen to formulate and empirically support a time-sequenced (and therefore linear) process model that supports the detailed analysis of variations in teacher change yet fits within clarke and hollingsworth’s more global (and therefore interconnected and iterative) model of professional growth as a specific change sequence between two domains (the personal domain and the domain of professional practice). integrating the frameworks for change from dewey and guskey provides the components of a model for analysis of the essential elements and processes of changing beliefs, including:  teachers’ interests in change;  the extents to which they problematize current practices and pose possible solutions;  their activities in exploring and testing these alternative practices; and  their reflective analyses of the benefits of these changes for students, leading to lasting changes in beliefs and practices. consequently, this study focuses on (1) describing the beginning and ending beliefs of participants in the dmi course (including summarizing those beliefs with metaphors for knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics) and (2) elaborating and testing a sequenced process model that is useful for explaining the variability in the documented changes in these teachers’ beliefs. methodology the dmi course and participants thirteen inservice elementary teachers participated in a one-semester university course using the developing mathematical ideas (dmi) materials developed at the educational development center. participating teachers were employed in two local school districts. their teaching experience ranged from 1-32 years and averaged about 10 years. their teaching assignments were distributed across grades 1-5, with one teacher in a k-6 mathematics lab. the course used two dmi modules: building a system of tens (schifter, bastable, & russell, 1999a) and making meaning for operations (schifter, bastable, & russell, 1999b). the big ideas in building a system of tens focused on understanding place-value and making meaning for operations focused on understanding addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division operations. these two dmi modules supported a series of sixteen three-hour class sessions designed to help teachers think about these particular big ideas of mathematics and to examine how children learn to understand those ideas. the essence of the course experiences included “a deep exploration of mathematics content—including the base-10 structure of our number system, the meaning of operations, and methods for calculating with multi-digit numbers and fractions—as well as analyzing children’s thinking about that content” (davenport, 2001, p. 6). the dmi materials were designed to help teachers learn additional mathematics content and make mathematical connections, appreciate students’ thinking and learn how to foster such thinking, and analyze mathematics lessons and activities to uncover the mathematics students will learn. at the heart of the dmi materials are: (1) sets of classroom episodes (cases) illustrating student thinking (as described by the students’ teachers), (2) various learning activities providing opportunities for participants to reflect on their own and their students’ understandings of mathematics, and (3) assignments providing opportunities for participants to reflect on teaching elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 5 mathematics. participants collected their written work and responses from the facilitator in a portfolio, which provided another tool for reflection. the dmi materials provided a variety of models for course organization. the course in this study met one evening each week for a full semester and was led by the first author as facilitator. one major role of the facilitator was to organize and moderate small-group and whole-class discussions about: (1) focus questions about the written cases of classroom episodes; (2) videotapes of mathematics classrooms and clinical interviews; (3) samples of student work from teachers’ classrooms; and (4) research reports related to students’ thinking. the teachers also (5) explored the mathematical ideas in the videotapes; (6) planned, conducted, and analyzed clinical interviews of their own students; (7) wrote additional cases about their students; (8) experimented with the ideas discussed in class while teaching in their own classrooms, and (9) wrote personal reflections. data collection and analysis data for this study were taken from (1) audio taped whole-class and small-group discussions during the course; (2) field notes taken by the authors; (3) written materials collected from the teachers as part of the course; (4) a group interview with participants conducted by an independent evaluator following the course; (5) a post-course observation of participants’ teaching practices in their regular classrooms; and (6) a post-observation interview on changes in practices resulting from the dmi course. we audio taped each class session. during small group discussions, the third author usually sat with a target group and recorded their conversation. these audiotapes were transcribed for analysis. we used our field notes to clarify and provide context for the recorded conversations. analysis of the data proceeded in a manner consistent with a naturalistic inquiry approach (lincoln & guba, 1985). first, two researchers read the transcripts independently and identified emergent themes. they paid particular attention to teachers’ beliefs (especially images and metaphors for teaching) and participation in processes of change. as these researchers discussed their reading of the transcripts, common themes began to emerge and they developed codes for these themes. second, these same researchers re-read the transcripts and coded the conversations according to the emergent themes. the next step in the analysis of the data involved the isolation and validation of the major themes wherever they appeared in the data by triangulation across the various data sources and across time. lastly, these themes were used to analyze all of the other data from the study. at the end of the semester following the conclusion of the dmi course, the second author observed several of the dmi course participants’ classroom teaching and then interviewed them about changes in teaching practices they attributed to the dmi course. these interviews were audio taped and transcribed. some of the observed teaching episodes were also audio taped using a wireless microphone worn by the teacher. field notes were taken for all observations, providing the primary data source for those cases in which teachers declined to wear the wireless microphone. this data provided an additional source for teachers’ reflections and for triangulation and confirmation of the conclusions from the primary data collected during the dmi course. results as we analyzed the data we noticed that the impact of the course varied across the participants. to illuminate this variation, we present three cases of individual teachers (indicated by the pseudonyms christine, linda, and paula). in many ways, the cases of christine and paula represent the two extremes of the course’s impact, and the effects of the course on linda are similar to those of the majority of the participants. these three cases also articulate the variety of images and metaphors held by the participants and illuminate the coherence in their mental models. these three individual stories are largely self-narratives by the teachers that we have pieced together from the various data sources indicated. we selected these statements for their consistency across time and data sources. the descriptions of these three cases (located in the appendices) are organized around the framework for changing beliefs and practices that emerged from the analysis of the data and the review of the literature: interest in change, problematizing and posing solutions, exploring/testing alternatives, and reflective analysis of benefits and changing beliefs and practices. this section includes brief descriptions of these teachers’ beginning beliefs as well as summaries of our claims about these teachers’ changes in beliefs and practices. christine at the time of the dmi course, christine was teaching third grade for the second consecutive year. she had previously taught for ten years in the resource room with students she characterized as two or three years behind grade-level in mathematics. beginning beliefs. christine spoke about her mathematical background and beliefs on several occasions, which clearly indicated a toolbox perspective on knowing mathematics, a behaviorist current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 view of learning mathematics, and a strong commitment to the master metaphor for teaching mathematics, primarily because she had been taught that way. she believed mathematics should focus on skills and facts, expressed the goal of getting correct answers using procedures memorized to the point of automaticity, and believed that standard algorithms were most efficient both for her and for her students. christine was comfortable with direct instruction of algorithms and believed that it was “the best way” to teach mathematics. this approach had been successful for her as a student, and it provided a foundation for her confidence as a successful mathematics teacher. for example, she said: [i have thought about] why i like algorithms so much. [it’s because] i was taught that way. i am comfortable using an algorithm, and i am good at it (portfolio assignment 1.7). see the case of christine (appendix a) for evidence of her engagement in the change processes. changes in beliefs and practices. on the whole, the evidence in the case of christine indicates that her view of mathematics changed very little as a result of the dmi course. she had enlarged her view of what it means to do mathematics somewhat by allowing invented strategies into her toolbox, but she made little progress as a result of the course toward revising her preferences for behaviorist learning and the master metaphor for teaching. she learned how to ask students to explain their solutions and allowed some temporary informal inventing, but only if it led students to the traditional algorithms which she continued to emphasize through her direct instruction. (see table 2 [see appendix d] for a comparison of christine’s beginning and ending beliefs and practices.). linda linda had taught kindergarten for 16 years and was teaching first grade for the first time during the dmi course. beginning beliefs. at the beginning of the course, linda embraced the traditional algorithmic emphasis in elementary mathematics and felt that it was fast and accurate. she noted that she was able to perform mathematical tasks and arrive at correct answers, but had not developed meaning for the mathematics she had learned to do. because linda’s beliefs about mathematics were firmly based in algorithmic processes, she was surprised at first by the variation in students’ thinking exhibited in the dmi materials. initially, linda emphasized direct instruction; she believed that the traditional algorithms needed to be taught directly. see the case of linda (appendix b) for evidence of her engagement in the change processes. changes in beliefs and practices. the evidence shows that during the dmi course, a major focus for linda became a new view of number— what she called number sense. she came to believe that differences among students’ strategies for solving number problems in sensible ways indicated real understanding. she came to desire her own students being able to visualize number in the same ways as the students on the dmi videotapes. as part of this, she wanted her students to be able to explain their thinking and be flexible in working with numbers. although she came to value invented algorithms as useful for mental computation, she still placed some importance on speed and efficiency using conventional algorithms. linda pushed herself to solve problems in non-traditional ways and began to enjoy talking to others about her own mathematical ideas. she began to value these new ways of thinking and started to think she had been cheated by the narrow focus of her early mathematical experiences. by the end of the course, she had expanded her view of learning to include children being able to think, explore, take risks, and struggle with a problem in coming to understand mathematics. during the course, it became apparent to linda that children who have developed number sense can approach problems in a variety of ways. thus she began to value letting children explore their own ways of approaching problems as a way to help them “grasp a concept.” at the same time, she felt that this exploration needed “some structure and explanation” and that direct instruction of algorithms still had its place. by the end of the course, changes in her goals for learning allowed changes in her teaching practices. her expectations had changed from recall of number facts to explaining or modeling answers to story problems that allowed her to assess errors in students’ understanding. she began to focus more on questioning individual students’ problem solutions and to keep track of their strategies. in order to do this, she began to keep detailed notes on her students daily, rather than just writing down a score. linda recognized the need to become a better questioner, to help her students articulate their strategies and understandings and explain their thinking processes. finally, she said that she had begun to question and evaluate how she taught. she noted that she was having fun approaching teaching in this way; she found it both exhilarating and frightening. (see table 2 [see appendix d] for a comparison of linda’s beginning and ending beliefs and practices.) paula paula had been teaching fifth grade for six years and had previously taught grades two and four. elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 7 beginning beliefs. paula enjoyed mathematics and had taken other courses to help her become a better mathematics teacher. she entered the course with a view of mathematics as a mixture of the traditional toolbox of algorithms and sense making. she said she valued critical thinking and problem solving skills and wanted her students to “understand what they are doing,” nevertheless she expressed a concern that her fifth grade students were not proficient in the traditional algorithms. she questioned the traditional emphasis on algorithms, even though she was then teaching from a textbook that emphasized direct instruction of standard algorithms. she expressed the concern that if the goals of mathematics instruction included critical thinking and problem solving, more direct instruction in procedural skills would not help meet those goals. this led her to question the efficacy of the traditional master teaching methods she was still using, but there was no evidence that she understood that achieving these additional learning goals required social constructivist learning processes and alternative teaching methods. see the case of paula (appendix c) for evidence of her engagement in the change processes. changes in beliefs and practices. the evidence shows that she developed a deeper and more interconnected view of mathematics and adopted this as a goal of her instruction. she also valued an increased focus on conceptual understanding. this development was supported by her personal mathematical problem solving in the course. she noted that she was becoming more flexible in her problem-solving approaches, and this in turn allowed her to value flexibility in her students. she articulated this as a change in her philosophy about knowing mathematics. paula’s beliefs about learning grew deeper and more interconnected. she began to focus more on students’ thinking processes and variations in thinking among students evidenced through dialogue and written representations. she viewed this as children taking back the responsibility for their learning. the changes in paula’s beliefs about teaching focused on movements away from the standard practice of following a page-by-page sequence in the textbook and a concern about “covering the material.” she felt that she had moved toward a focus on individual children’s thinking, cautious planning of problems, and questioning students to get at their understanding. she began to focus more on individual students’ mistakes and problematic thinking in order to help them build a “bridge” to understanding. because she wanted to press for deeper understanding, she began to be concerned with building deeper, more coherent curriculum materials. she found this approach to teaching very enjoyable, but more importantly, she felt it was a better way of educating students. (see table 2 [see appendix d] for a comparison of paula’s beginning and ending beliefs and practices.) discussion these three cases represent a continuum of engagement in the process of change. on the one extreme, christine started with very traditional beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics, and made the least progress toward alternative beliefs and practices. more typical of the results of course participants, linda started with very traditional beliefs and practices and made significant shifts in both, although only beginning to understand the coherent alternative provided by the standardsbased perspective. at the other extreme, paula started the course already wondering about children’s understanding of mathematics and made the most real progress by connecting additional complexity to her previous understanding and developing a robust and coherent philosophy of standards-based mathematics education. the purpose of this section is to examine how varying levels of engagement in the process of change during the dmi course, linked to various beginning beliefs, resulted in these variations in change. in the process of this analysis, the applicability of the analytical framework proposed from the review of literature and used to organize the descriptions of the cases will also be demonstrated. this analysis is organized in terms of the following four variables in the change process: (1) interest in change, (2) problematizing/posing solutions; (3) exploring/testing alternative practices, and (4) reflective analysis/changing beliefs and practices. interest in change by enrolling in the course, all of the participants expressed an interest in learning something that could possibly improve or add greater variety to their teaching, constituting at least a low level of interest in change. most of these interests were expressed in the context of the participants’ initial expectations for the course. these expectations focused largely on acquiring immediately applicable “teaching-as-telling” strategies, “exciting” activities, or “make-it-take-it” materials consistent with incremental change in traditional beliefs and practices. although a few participants came with a desire to explore ways of enhancing their own mathematical understanding and that of their students, most came looking for better ways to be a master teacher rather than for fundamentally different ways to think about mathematics knowing, learning, and teaching. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 at first, these expectations created a mismatch between what the course actually offered and what students expected. the critical point here is that almost all of the participant’s expectations for the course were closely aligned with the traditional beliefs of knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics. the fact that some teachers made progress in changing their beliefs given these initial expectations is encouraging. from examining the data, we recognized that these teachers’ interest in change, as it originated at the beginning of the course or developed during the course, involved three factors: (1) curiosity, (2) recognition of differences in beliefs and practices, and (3) dissatisfaction with current beliefs and practices. curiosity. some teachers enrolled in the dmi course with high initial levels of curiosity, while others increased in curiosity during the early course sessions. in both cases, this curiosity encouraged their becoming more dissatisfied with the status quo, more aware of alternatives, and, consequently, more interested in change. for example, linda expressed curiosity about the ways in which some of her students thought about numbers in ways that she could not. at first, she could not understand the thinking of those students. this led her to become curious about their thinking and to question, “what is it that they know? what are they trying to do? what is in this problem that is causing them to think this way?” she became anxious to explore children’s thinking and her own understanding of mathematics in order to answer some of these questions. this contributed to her increased interest in change. recognition of differences in beliefs and practices. this factor in developing greater interest in change became evident in the discourse during class sessions that verbalized, compared, and contrasted the variety of beliefs and opinions about teaching practices held by course participants (e.g., the value of using manipulatives) or evident in the dmi cases (e.g., facilitating invention of strategies from conceptual understandings). teachers in the course had many opportunities to see and discuss these differences of opinion about various aspects of teaching. recognition of these differences also contributed to increased interest in change. for example, regarding the value of using manipulatives, christine expressed the opinion that “when you do use manipulatives you’ve got to drill and drill so that they understand exactly what those manipulatives are representing.” paula expressed a different view. “i read a research article saying manipulatives are not the answer—be careful and sure that they understand. the emphasis here is on the child’s understanding and the meaning the child makes of the materials they use” rather than on the use of the manipulatives, which can be proceduralized without understanding. this discussion situated one of the differences between christine’s and paula’s beliefs about knowing mathematics: christine used manipulatives in particular ways to further her goals of learning procedures and paula recognized that manipulatives had to be used in different ways to meet her goal of developing conceptual understanding. regarding the example of facilitating children’s invention of strategies from understandings as evidenced in the dmi cases, christine analyzed the teaching practices evident in those cases from the perspective of standard algorithms as the best pathway to correct answers, with her interest in students’ invented strategies only as temporary alternative pathways to the same destination, pathways with which particular students may be more comfortable. however, she paid little attention to the specific thinking and understanding students used to invent those strategies. linda, in comparison, was fascinated by the student thinking in the cases and responded that she wanted to become better at helping students communicate their understanding by improving her questioning techniques focused on flexible problem solving with understanding. paula demonstrated in her response to the cases that she recognized the connection between classroom discussions of students’ thinking and their understanding, and she could even see the logic in students’ incorrect strategies. dissatisfaction with current beliefs and practices. as with curiosity, teachers can come with this factor of interest in change or it can be created in the initial course sessions. more important than curiosity or awareness of differences, this factor is the essential element of an interest in change sufficient to lead to problematizing current beliefs and practices. this factor originates as dissatisfaction with the outcomes of teaching, not yet sufficiently detailed as to have identified the particular problem or cause of the dissatisfaction. for example, engaging in mathematical problem solving and examining children’s thinking and understanding of mathematics during the dmi course led linda and paula to express dissatisfaction with their own early mathematical experiences. linda recognized that she had not developed an understanding of the mathematical procedures she had been taught. paula had found mathematics enjoyable, but recognized that not all of her friends “got it” and was thus dissatisfied with some aspects of her experience. christine, in comparison, expressed satisfaction with what she had been taught and how she had learned, elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 9 and was content with teaching her students the same mathematics in the same manner. in summary, christine expressed a low level of interest in change, focused primarily as adding some “spice” to her teaching. linda expressed a moderate level of interest in change, primarily curiosity about children’s thinking that was different from her own and improving her questioning techniques to facilitate students’ communication. paula expressed a high level of interest in change, centered on sufficient dissatisfaction with traditional practice for her to be interested in exploring the rationale behind particular alternative teaching practices intended to building conceptual understanding. (see table 3 [see appendix d] for a summary of our appraisal of these three teachers’ levels of interest in change as low, moderate, and high, respectively.) problematizing current beliefs and practices and posing possible solutions one element of problematizing current beliefs and practices is becoming aware of possible alternatives. the task of incremental change is primarily experimenting with minor improvements to practices within existing beliefs and reflecting upon the results of these incremental changes in practices. however, without problematizing current beliefs and practices, the need for revolutionary change is unrealized and the focus remains on incremental improvement. two examples are provided here of how revolutionary alternatives problematize traditional beliefs and practices: (1) comparing the learning of algorithms with developing conceptual understanding, and (2) comparing “fast and accurate” computational skills with flexible problem solving. comparing algorithms to understanding. paula questioned the traditional emphasis on algorithms. she expressed a concern that her fifth grade students were not proficient in the traditional algorithms. this led her to question the efficacy of traditional teaching methods. she also expressed the concern that if the goals of mathematics instruction included critical thinking and problem solving, more instruction in procedural skills would not help meet those goals. she even felt constricted by the need to continue to spend time teaching algorithms to satisfy parents and prepare students for standardized tests. in comparison, linda translated her sensitivity about her own supposed lack of understanding into a greater interest in her students coming to thoroughly understand mathematics and be able to clearly communicate that understanding. comparing fast and accurate to flexible. recognition that the traditional elementary school emphasis on “fast and accurate” computation (automaticity) and direct instruction in “one way” to solve particular problems was challenged by a more interconnected and conceptual view of mathematics, including understanding of concepts, invented strategies, and flexibility in solving nonroutine problems. paula came to understand the connection between depth of conceptual understanding and degree of flexibility in problem solving strategies. linda also recognized that children who understand concepts of number show greater flexibility in problem solving and develop very efficient invented strategies for mental computations. she reinforced this perspective as her own understanding grew during the course and she began to develop greater flexibility in her own problem solving. she admitted that her invented mental strategies were often faster than her traditional computational methods. linda also recognized that this shift in learning goals required a corresponding shift in teaching practices. recognizing problems as occurring within one’s own experience requires that these problems be stated and that the conditions that affect them be examined carefully and in detail. thorough statements of problems of practice include the contexts where they typically arise and the relationships between the stated problems and other aspects of practice. mewborn (1999) indicated that preservice elementary teachers rarely specifically stated problems and even less frequently questioned what was problematic about particular situations for others. however, the inservice teachers participating in the dmi course frequently stated problems specifically and often questioned others about particular teaching situations in which those problems occurred. their attempts to personally solve these problems were assisted by the readily available alternatives in the dmi materials. absent these workable solutions, attempting to solve such significant problems of practice would likely have been very difficult. in summary, christine expressed a low level of problematizing and solution posing as she remained confident in her current success with direct instruction and worried about how she could explain a variety of invented strategies without confusing her students further. however, linda focused on how to create an appropriate environment for student exploration and sharing of strategies, reflecting a high level of problematizing knowing, learning, and teaching and posing solutions in each of those areas. paula began to consider changes in her curriculum to provide problem situations that could develop critical thinking, problem solving, and understanding, also reflecting a high level of problematizing and solution posing in all three areas of beliefs and practices. see table 3 [see appendix d] for a summary of our appraisal of these three teachers’ levels of current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 problematizing/posing solutions as low, high, and high, respectively. exploring/testing alternative beliefs and practices to engage in exploring/testing alternatives, the process of problematizing and posing possible solutions in the dmi course needed to create sufficient hope that the revolutionary alternatives would result in better outcomes and more satisfying results to generate the needed experimentation. yet at this stage of the process, many of the teachers’ understandings of the alternative practices were minimal. actually experimenting with these alternatives helped them become more knowledgeable about the specifics of the alternatives. one of the strengths of the dmi course was that it provided two sites for the experimenting/testing of solutions to problematic practice. one was the dmi classroom, where peers had conversations about elementary mathematics and children’s solutions. the second site was the participants’ own classrooms, where they interviewed their own students and tried out different teaching ideas. participants’ experiences suggested that these two laboratories were portable in the sense that they could remember the first one as they tried out ideas in the second, and vice versa. this provided a very rich context for reflection on practice. many of the participants indicated that the things they read in the cases and saw on the videotapes were actually happening in their classrooms and interviews with their students. by design, the teachers’ classrooms provided laboratories for validating what was taking place in the dmi course. having both sites available for exploration of ideas—the dmi course and individual classrooms—allowed participants to reflect on their mathematical thinking and their teaching in both venues. the extent to which participants enjoyed talking to each other about their mathematical ideas and the results of their experiments were evidenced through the participants’ dialogue during class sessions and their written responses in portfolios. change processes in the dmi classroom involved what clarke and hollingsworth (2002) referred to as the teacher’s personal domain, while change processes occurring in the school classrooms involved the teacher’s domain of practice. being able to problematize, experiment, and reflect in both the dmi class and one’s own classroom provided an iterative element with a short turn-around time and increased the impact of the dmi course on teachers’ beliefs and practices. as expected, attempts to experiment with alternative practices were constrained by a variety of factors even after current practices had been problematized. in particular, participants’ conceptions (formed during several years of school mathematics instruction) and traditional expectations of administrators or the teacher next door both served to discourage some attempts to experiment with alternative beliefs and practices. in summary, christine tried asking some of her students to share their thinking, but her focus in teaching mathematics continued to be on the correct answer and providing students with hints if they didn’t get to the answer she wanted. linda departed from her emphasis on direct instruction and tried letting children explore their own ways of approaching problems as a way to help them “grasp a concept.” in doing so, she began to focus more on questioning individual students’ problem solutions and keeping daily detailed notes on her students’ strategies rather than just recording their scores for number of correct answers. paula began to focus specifically on developing understanding; cautiously planning problems to provide a deeper, more coherent curriculum; and questioning students to get at their understanding. (see table 3 [see appendix d] for a summary of our appraisal of these three teachers’ levels of experimenting/testing alternatives as moderate, high, and high, respectively.) reflective analysis of benefits and changing beliefs and practices we have learned that reflecting on practices and changing beliefs is a complex activity. it involves comparative analysis of the evidence of results from current and alternative beliefs and practices and making connections among these experiences. reflecting also involves making judgments about the relative efficacy and relative satisfaction from these alternatives and making generalizations about their potential efficacy in somewhat different circumstances or contexts. in addition, reflecting involves examining the level of implementation of traditional or alternative practices for opportunities for incremental change within existing or alternative beliefs. interest in change and problematizing are highly interactive, with new awareness of possible alternatives strengthening dissatisfactions and leading to additional problematizing of ineffective practices. all of these elements of the change process occurred in both laboratories: the dmi course and teachers’ classrooms. for some, well-developed theories emerged from their analysis of personal experiments with alternative practices. for others, the effects of the dmi course were less dramatic. in summary, although christine engaged in some exploring of alternative practices, her low interest in change and low problematizing of current beliefs and practices left her without a significant problem to be solved by alternative practices. elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 11 consequently, she saw only limited usefulness for students’ invented strategies and made only insignificant changes in her beliefs, curriculum, and teaching practices. she thought students’ strategies were interesting and worth sharing in class occasionally, but failed to recognize them as the foundation for building students’ understanding. in comparison, linda and paula both recognized the results of their experiments as beneficial for students, and made significant progress in changing beliefs and practices involving knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics. linda began to expand her students’ opportunities to explore mathematics in a supportive environment and to build their number sense, particularly for use in mental computations. she increased her ability to ask good questions, rephrase what students said, and assess errors in their thinking. however, she also held on to some traditional tools and emphases in the curriculum. this represents significant progress given her moderate interest in change and her current understanding of the concepts of the standards-based perspective. paula’s reflections on the benefits of her experiments resulted in high levels of change in her beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics. her teaching metaphor became that of a facilitator who poses interesting problems, uses questioning to find out what students think, and leads them to build deep, well-connected understandings. she enlarged her curriculum to include more emphasis on understanding big ideas, problem solving, and critical thinking. she also recognized that understanding occurs through problem solving, dialogue about solution processes, and creating written representations for those solutions. all of these changes were responsive to her initial interest in the whys of the standards-based perspective and her ability to develop a new personal theory of mathematics education. (see table 3 [see appendix d] for a summary of our appraisal of these three teachers’ levels of reflecting/ changing beliefs and practices as low, moderate, and high, respectively. conclusions we learned from this study that metaphors can provide concise yet powerfully descriptive summaries of widely held beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics. although the titles of these metaphors immediately conjure up particular images in our minds, the ways we used these metaphors still allowed us to describe additional details about specific teachers’ beliefs so that our overall characterization of any particular teacher’s beliefs remained true to the individual subject. yet, for purposes of comparing beginning and ending beliefs, analyzing change, and summarizing the effects of this particular professional development experience, the level of simplification afforded by these metaphors proved to be very helpful. overall, it has been encouraging to see that some teachers made real progress in changing their beliefs during the dmi course, even though they were initially looking for additional strategies to use while teaching within their existing metaphors. examining the processes through which these teachers changed their beliefs has also been a useful tool for understanding the nature of the changes and the variations across individuals. figure 2 [see appendix d] shows our completed process model for describing and analyzing the variations in changes in beliefs and practices observed in the participants of the dmi course and evidenced by the three cases presented. it was clear to us that participants’ beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics were complex, varied, and interrelated. creating and using this model has allowed us to elaborate on key elements and processes of teacher change which integrate the literature on professional development with our empirical experiences researching the effects of the dmi course. acceptance of redefined learning goals emphasizing flexible problem solving with understanding, such as those found in nctm’s principles and standards (2000), requires corresponding shifts toward paradigmatic theories of learning and teaching practices that are coherent with and capable of achieving those new learning goals. the results of this study suggest that one’s teaching practices are unlikely to be problematized unless beliefs about knowing and learning mathematics are problematized first. without problematizing beliefs about knowing and learning mathematics, interest tended to follow the typical pattern of remaining focused on incremental change within current teaching metaphors rather than participation in the paradigmatic changes offered by the dmi course. important elements of interest in change, which is essential to this problematizing process, included curiosity, recognition of differences, and dissatisfaction with current beliefs and practices. in analyzing variations in the amount of change achieved by participants in the dmi course, we observed that participants with low interest in change and/or low levels of engagement in these change processes, particularly in problematizing and experimenting, made only limited changes in their beliefs and practices. conversely, those participants who had higher levels of initial interest and more fully engaged in each of the change processes, experienced greater changes in beliefs and practices. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 implications although situated in the context of a specific professional development course in elementary mathematics education, the use of metaphors as a tool for describing and categorizing complex, interconnected beliefs is generally applicable. with some modification to the metaphors for knowing, this collection of metaphors may be useful in examining teachers’ beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching in other content areas that also focus on developing conceptual understanding and thinking processes. use of metaphors like these can facilitate analyses of the types of changes that can be achieved by various professional development activities. this change process model merges practical elements of professional development targeted at changing beliefs and practices with a potentially generalizable framework from the literature on teacher education. to the extent that this change model has elaborated a change sequence that has been useful for us in explaining variations in the outcomes of this dmi course, this process model may be helpful to others interested in instigating or studying paradigmatic changes in teachers’ beliefs. additional work clearly remains. this study represents our effort at developing theory grounded in the specifics of three individual cases that are representative of the participants in one university classroom engaged together in one series of teaching/learning experiences. additional utility can be added to this theory by further development and testing of suitable collections of metaphors for knowing, learning, and teaching. utility can also be improved by development and testing suitable methods for gathering comparable data relevant to teachers’ participation in the various components of this change process, which would allow comparison of the results of this study to data from larger numbers of participants in similar systematic professional development activities. references bakhtin, m. m. 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(1997). from at-risk to excellence: research, theory, and principles for practice (research report 1). santa cruz, ca: center for research on education, diversity and excellence. retrieved may 16, 2002 from http://www.crede.ucsc.edu/products/print/re ports/rr1.html. tharp, r. g., & gallimore, r. (1989). rousing minds to life: teaching, learning, and schooling in social context. new york: cambridge university press. thompson, a. g. (1992). teachers' beliefs and conceptions: a synthesis of the research. in d. a. grouws (ed.), handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 127-146). new york: macmillan. vygotsky, l. s. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes (m. cole, v. john-steiner, s. scribner, & e. souberman, eds. and trans.). cambridge, ma: harvard university press. wertsch, j. v. (1985). culture, communication, and cognition: vygotskian perspectives. new york: cambridge university press. wertsch, j. v. (1991). a sociocultural approach to socially shared cognition. in l. b. resnick, j. m. levine, & s. d. teasley (eds.), perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 85-100). washington, dc: american psychological association. . . http://www.crede.ucsc.edu/products/print/re%09ports/rr1.html http://www.crede.ucsc.edu/products/print/re%09ports/rr1.html current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 appendix a the case of christine interest in change. christine expressed some curiosity about whether there were other ways to teach mathematics that could provide ideas she could incorporate into her current practices in an incremental rather than revolutionary way. she wrote: most of my students did well in math. i could bring their math skills up to grade level. i thought i was a good math teacher. i took this class because i thought there was always room for improvement—a way of learning to teach math in a better and more exciting way. (portfolio assignment 1.5) christine’s expectations for the course included learning more about how students learn to think mathematically, along with some skills to make her a better math teacher. she hoped to transfer those skills into her classroom so that her students would be better at mathematics. she was only mildly curious about fundamentally different approaches to teaching mathematics that place greater emphasis on understanding mathematics concepts than on memorizing facts and algorithms. problematizing and posing solutions. various tasks and activities during the course provided opportunities for christine to question what she believed and knew about children’s thinking. as she began studying the dmi cases of teachers’ experiences with children’s thinking, she expressed surprise and amusement at the different ways the children solved problems, some of which seemed “weird and difficult” to her (portfolio assignment 1.2). she wondered if the tediousness and complexity of the student’s work at solving what she thought were simple math problems was not the reason why some students hated mathematics. she questioned the underlying causes of some students’ difficulties. maybe “it is because they do not have a good understanding of basic place value systems…. with this new way of teaching math, will more students change their minds about math? will they do better in math? is there a better way, a most efficient way, to solve math problems? i wonder!” (portfolio assignment 1.3) exploring/testing alternatives. as christine engaged in discussions about various strategies for solving problems, she observed how interesting it was “to see how different people had their own math style in solving a problem.” but her primary interest was in how this should affect her teaching. “in third grade, if you present a problem like this, do you explain all this that we have been doing? or do you just say you can’t do that? or do we just go on and confuse them more by showing all these ways? i’m not sure they’re ready for this” (dmi session discourse). more questions surfaced for christine as she shared her experiences from interviewing some of her students. from the interview i found out i can’t assume that students can do those simple, simple things. i just was shocked at what they didn’t know. i wish i could do this with every one of my kids, so i could see just where they mess up. (dmi session discourse) christine reflected in her portfolio on one student’s work that really concerned her. she titled it “did i do the right thing?” jessica was getting very discouraged. i could tell that she did not want to continue any longer. my question: did i do the right thing to have her come up in front of the class to solve the problem? it was obvious that she had no understanding of the question. i was surprised at what she came up with. i tried to find out more by probing, redirecting, and asking questions to clear up her confusions. how do i get her to ask her own questions? how do i get her to stick with a problem even when it’s difficult without getting discouraged? am i embarrassing her in front of the class? should i give her more hints to come up with the answer, or should i allow her time to figure it out herself? (portfolio assignment 2.2) christine struggled to generate thoughtful potential solution paths to her problematic activity of attending to differences in the classroom. although she perceived the need to expose her students to different solution strategies, her metaphors limited the kinds of solutions she could seek. rather than question her metaphors, she tried solutions that left her teaching metaphor intact, essentially deciding just to tell these other strategies to students. her choices of which strategies to show in class were also linked to her metaphor for mathematics; she chose to show only those strategies that had a clear and direct path to the traditional algorithm. this resulted in a relatively superficial change in her practice. reflective analysis of benefits and changing beliefs and practices. after one classroom episode, christine decided to interview jessica. christine had just finished a multiplication unit where her students first memorized the multiplication tables, then they all passed the “daily times test.” she then taught a unit about the elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 15 meaning of the multiplication process. christine wrote that she thought jessica appeared to understand the basic concept of multiplication. however, during the interview it became clear to christine that jessica hadn’t remembered anything they had discussed in class and was unable to explain what “times” meant. christine wrote: now i am getting a little discouraged. maybe i did not teach her well. maybe she did not pay attention in class. maybe she needs more one-on-one help in math. i was surprised at her [lack of] understanding. (portfolio assignment 2.5) christine began reflecting on her own mathematical thoughts. she recorded in her portfolio that she had never done this before. it was enlightening to her to see how she solved problems differently than her colleagues and how that made her more aware of her thinking. however, throughout the entire course christine still chose a standard algorithm as her preferred approach to solving problems. she said she felt her ways of problem solving had not changed and she was still “most comfortable” with standard algorithms. at times she would look at a problem from what she called “a different way,” but she said she felt it took much longer. as the course progressed, christine broadened her learning goals for students a little bit, but continued to frame her teaching with the master metaphor. for example, during the first of the two dmi modules she recorded in her portfolio “the ultimate goal of doing mathematics is to get correct answers. however, in order to get correct answers understanding plays an important role” (portfolio assignment 1.5). she had noticed that children and adults could use different solution strategies in solving problems and still come up with the same answer. she provided some room in her goals for invented strategies as alternatives to standard algorithms. she even wanted her students to be exposed to what she called “different ways” of solving problems. however consistent with her master metaphor of teaching, she beganshowing those strategies to her students and encouraging them to try them. the value of these invented strategies for her was as a “stop gap” measure until students learned the more efficient standard algorithms. she said: this class has helped me see a variety of ways children solve problems. maybe children can figure out problems other ways until they have had enough practice with the math facts and have drilled standard algorithms long enough that they will become more efficient with them, because many of these creative ways are so time consuming. but it is a way they can solve the problems without getting them marked wrong. who cares anyway how you get it. as long as the answer is correct it doesn’t really matter how you got it—just get it! (dmi session discourse) as christine reflected back over the first half of the course, she wrote that several things had changed for her. she felt she had learned more about the variety of children’s invented strategies. she noticed she had begun to ask students to tell how they had come up with an answer as opposed to just asking them “what is the answer?” in doing so, she believed she had “added a lot to her instruction.” i tend to show students different ways of solving math problems, to expose them to various ways. and i have gained a lot of respect for the many different ways problems can be solved, though some methods i do not really agree with. it has added a little more spice to my math curriculum. (portfolio assignment 1.7) as christine saw other participants in the course bring up new ways to do mathematics, she continually questioned whether they were better than her traditional methods. at the end of the course, she revisited her beliefs about standard algorithms and wrote, “now, i don’t think it is the best way of doing math. it may be one of the many ways of doing math, but it surprised me to admit that it is only one of many ways of doing math” (portfolio assignment 2.8). five months after the completion of the dmi course, christine taught a mathematics lesson during which she posed eight division story problems and asked students to solve them using manipulatives, pictures, graph paper, or traditional algorithms. she asked students to explain their solution strategies, and after the initial solution, asked for students who did it another way. for each of the eight problems, christine asked for additional strategies until she had someone share the traditional long-division algorithm. if no one shared the standard algorithm she would do so, emphasizing how the traditional algorithm was faster, particularly with larger numbers (observation field notes). during the post-observation interview that focused on christine’s perceptions of what had changed in her teaching as a result of the dmi course, she responded: most of the time i just pick out story problems from what we call the curriculum…. and once in a while i add a little bit to it…but most of the time i just follow the curriculum... i just ask more often, “explain to me how you got this answer. why do you say this?” so i ask more for the understanding... i try to use a lot of the visual aids. i try to… meet the different learning styles of the kids by using different ways of teaching. some current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 may be more comfortable with the traditional way, so i am still doing that. i feel like they still need to be exposed to that. i think they still need to know that because of standardize testing. they go to the computer room, and they still give you basic division. you still have to do that. at the same time, i think the understanding part is very important, too, and so i like to see them doing it different ways. i want them to say, “math is not just one way of doing it.” (end-of-year interview transcript) elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 17 appendix b the case of linda interest in change. linda expressed an interest in coming to understand the mathematics she already knew how to do, but her new assignment in first grade focused her interest in learning new things that were immediately applicable to her teaching. “i had hoped for activities and ideas that i could incorporate into my classroom.... more like a big workshop, where you take the ideas and run with them; like a make-it-take-it” (portfolio assignment 1.2). linda said she felt her way of looking at skills would be challenged in the course, but she still considered “the old tried and true ways” faster and more accurate than the children’s invented strategies introduced during the first class session. she felt skills still needed to be taught directly. linda expressed curiosity about some children’s mathematical thinking when she said that her students thought about numbers in ways that she could not. at first, she did not understand how they were thinking, and she was curious about how they were able to manipulate numbers in their heads. this led her to question, “what is it that they know? what are they trying to do? what is it in this problem that is causing them to think this way?” problematizing and posing solutions. as the course progressed, linda gained an ease and confidence that allowed her to share her previous experiences with mathematics as a student and her perceptions of how those experiences had affected her current feelings toward mathematics. when i first came to this class, i was terrified. i wanted to keep my mouth shut because i was afraid someone would discover how little i know about mathematics…. when i was in school a very long time ago, the system expected me to know how to get the answers, and if i got the answer and had it right, that was the important thing…. i really feel bad looking back. i wanted to understand the algorithms, but i never could…. i don’t think i ever really understood why you multiplied this number and then you moved over a space and multiplied the next one. but you obeyed and did it. (dmi session discourse) linda began to raise questions and to reflect on her assumptions about learning mathematics as she read cases about other teachers’ classroom experiences, viewed video recordings of children explaining their mathematical solutions, and discussed children’s thinking with peers. this bothered me last week, because it just seems so much faster and easier to do it my way—using the standard algorithm. and why shouldn’t i teach the kids that way? but then i watch these kids. they’re thinking, and they really picture the numbers much better than i do…. what i am finding i dearly love about this class is i can sit here and i look at these kids and i’m forced to answer these focus questions. i’m forced to step inside their shoes and say, “okay, what do they know? what are they trying to do? what is in this problem that is causing them to think this way?” (dmi session discourse) linda continued to question her beliefs about how children learn mathematics, and she commented on these beliefs in her portfolio. she noted that children who understand numbers show great flexibility in their approaches to problems and become very efficient in mental math. she remained uncertain about the need for direct instruction in algorithms even as her own computational strategies became more flexible. i have found myself trying to stretch and think [like] the children in the case studies…. in regards to addition where regrouping is required, i must admit that i have even found it faster than the traditional method when doing mental math. if it is written, i am still more comfortable with the old way. i still feel a need to check my answers using the traditional borrow and carry method. (portfolio assignment 1.5) linda, who problematized not only mathematics and the learning of mathematics but also what it meant to teach, took the greatest risk in generating possible solution paths. she abandoned many of her earlier conceptions for new ways of teaching. her shift from telling things to students to attending more to children’s thinking allowed her to consider a wide variety of practices as part of her solution: (1) keeping more detailed notes on children; (2) learning how to question children in order to help them articulate their thinking; (3) de-emphasizing the traditional algorithms; and (4) allowing children to struggle with problems without stepping in to help. all of these paths led linda out of her comfort zone, but she could see that these paths also led to a significant solution to the problems in her practice. exploring/testing alternatives. as linda made progress in her own mathematical thinking she began to show some willingness to consider alternative approaches to teaching, and she began to confront the dilemma of how to reconcile her preference for direct instruction and what she was learning about teaching for understanding. i still find myself questioning how much instruction is necessary from the teacher. “how do i create an current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 environment where my students are willing to explore and to take risks? is this method effective for children of all ability levels, or am i losing some of my class that doesn’t understand what their peers are doing?” (portfolio assignment 1.5) partway through the semester the course participants were asked to identify the one case that had the greatest impact on them and describe why they had selected that case. it was at this time that we began to see more changes in linda’s personal metaphor. linda commented during class about the case she had selected. the first case had the greatest impact on me because i’m trying to teach my first graders number sense—very basic. but it moved me out of my comfort zone enough that i decided that i wanted my children to be able to visualize number like the students in those cases…. this class is helping me realize, as a primary teacher, we need to help our children develop number sense and do a better job helping children see relationships between numbers at a much younger age…. i’ll probably never teach them the algorithms. (dmi session discourse) reflective analysis of benefits and changing beliefs and practices. by halfway through the course linda had made considerable progress from reflecting on the mathematics she wanted her students to know, what experiences would provide her students the opportunity to learn those things, and what would be her role as a teacher. in her portfolio she wrote: i think that my objectives have changed somewhat from things like “the student will demonstrate their knowledge of addition by adding numbers to 12” to “the student will be able to explain or model answers to story problems using addition.” i think that being able to explain what they are doing is not only helpful for them but for me as a teacher, so that i can see where they might have errors in their understanding of a process…. i struggle with how long to let them explore with some of these concepts before i demonstrate a method. i still feel some things in first grade need to be taught. you need to give them a beginning point. for instance, i need to teach that addition means to combine and subtraction means to take away. (portfolio assignment 1.6) however, linda expressed some uncertainty about how to proceed as she began to move away from her expert metaphor. she recognized that rebuilding her teaching practice could be a lonely and uncertain process, even though she had seen alternative practices modeled in the videotapes and cases. “i feel like i’m kind of hanging out there, like columbus, hoping that i don’t fall off the edge and take my class with me. it’s exhilarating and also very frightening” (portfolio assignment 1.6). linda started to notice that changes in her teaching were beginning to have an important impact on the environment in her classroom and the thinking that her students were beginning to do. this required her to begin supporting students thinking in ways that were still new to her. it’s amazing that some of the things that are happening in these cases have actually been happening in my classroom. my children are finally starting to be able to tell me how they solved their problems…. it takes real restraint to sit back and let a child struggle with a problem and not point out what they should do. (dmi session discourse) near the end of the first unit, linda reflected on her personal knowledge growth with respect to various cases and how her growth had enlightened her thinking about her students’ understanding of mathematics. each reading assignment has helped me view mathematical processes in a new light. i think the case studies in section 1 have had the greatest impact on my thinking and teaching…. i am trying to become better at questioning my students to help them articulate what they are doing. perhaps the reason i felt the greatest impact from the first case study is because it moved me out of my comfort zone and made me question and evaluate how i teach math in my classroom. (dmi session discourse) during the second dmi module, linda noted several ideas that had become important to her. gaining confidence as a problem solver and addressing her past experiences with mathematics had empowered alternative images of herself as a learner and teacher of mathematics. i am finding it exhilarating to talk with other teachers about the teaching of mathematical ideas. i have become concerned about individual understanding, as i have done interviews and case studies of my students. and i have learned to recognize the value of each voice in my class (portfolio assignment 2.3). i have found the focus questions stimulating. i love to come home and share them with my family. i would not have felt this way at the beginning of this class. at that time i felt insecure, and i was resisting the fact that my way of doing things was being challenged. (portfolio assignment 2.6) i hope that i will be able to continue to grow in my ability to ask questions, rephrase what the children tell me, elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 19 and help them to explain their thinking and process in arriving at answers to problems. (portfolio assignment 2.8) i’ve now come to the point where i feel that my comments are somewhat of value, and i feel much more comfortable. i’m not afraid to make a few mistakes and say, “what do you mean?” this class turned out to address a bigger picture than i had envisioned, and it turned out to be very exciting. it was such a revelation for my own self awareness that it became very exciting to see where i was coming from, from my past experiences as a child growing up with mathematics, and my feelings toward mathematics now. i have almost come to feel like i had been cheated. i will never look at mathematics the same way as i did before i had this class. (dmi session discourse) linda’s shifts in mathematics learning goals for students provided a foundation for this shift in her image of a teacher as one who ask questions, rephrases what children say, and helps them explain their thinking and problemsolving processes. five months after the completion of the dmi course, linda taught a first-grade mathematics lesson in which she asked students to use the “rodeo math” manipulatives they had created the previous day (consisting of a cowboy and multiple pants, shirts, and hats with numerals written on each piece of clothing). working in groups of 2-3, students exchanged pieces of clothing on their cowboys to produce addition number sentences. one student recorded the number sentences and all students in the group computed the sums. linda encouraged students to look for patterns among the combinations in order to get all of the possible combinations. she asked students whether the same numbers in different orders were the same sum (e.g., could 5 + 2 + 3 = 10 be 5 + 3 + 2 = 10 instead?). she also asked, “which way could you dress the cowboy to get the highest number” (observation field notes). during the post-observation interview, linda commented about valuing students’ voices as they shared their solution strategies, but also showed that she was focusing on what children were thinking and asking follow-up questions. she said, “i can see that they have a much deeper knowledge of what they are doing if they can explain it and not just go through a ritual.... i am trying very hard to... ask questions and not tell answers.... that is a very difficult skill. i still struggle with it sometimes—not just telling them ‘this is where you’ve made your mistake.’” she had added two more realistic problem-solving tasks to the curriculum. she said, “we have a standard math book, and i have tried to stretch them beyond that and let them do things that i wouldn’t have done before. i took problems that were in the dmi book and brought them back, and i let them try to do them... this morning... we talked about the jazz game, and i said, ‘if at the end of the first quarter, the jazz had 20 points and carl malone had made 5 of those points, how many points had the other people made?’ it was interesting to watch them figure that out, and they all got the same answer. they used several different methods, and each of them shared it” (postobservation interview transcript). she also commented on the dilemma she still faced in reconciling basic skills versus invented strategies: “i’ve felt like they passed the [state] core test very well. i don’t know that they’re any better, really, than other students... but i hope they are freer to explore. one thing that i still struggle with is that in first grade i think they have to have some basic skills. i am still trying to balance between drill and exploration. i still feel that... some of this has to be mastered for them to be able to explore” (post-observation interview transcript). she expressed plans for continued experimenting: “i’ve been thinking that perhaps i will change a little bit more. maybe i’ve tried to take too big of a leap too fast... i’m going to start right at the first day of school, start doing some addition, some subtraction, all with these few numbers and just let it grow as we go along... now that i’m seeing... the full scope of the curriculum a little better, it’s a little clearer to me. i think that i’m going to try to do all of it in connection with the few things that we’ve learned and then move on. that’s my thought for next year” (postobservation interview transcript). current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 appendix c the case of paula interest in change. from the beginning it was clear paula questioned the metaphor of teacher as master and allowed room in her view of learning for sense making. paula recorded five of her expectations for this course in her portfolio.  explore the whys of basic algorithms.  explore the whys of student processing.  collect new games, techniques, and thought provoking problems to incorporate into my instruction.  explore the hows in the management of so many toys, so many ideas, so many children, and so little time.  enhance my own mathematical processing skills. (portfolio assignment 1.2) later, paula said she hoped “teaching to the big ideas” would help her “create, duplicate, borrow, beg, or steal some intervention strategies” that would answer her concerns (portfolio assignment 1.5). paula also expressed her concern with helping older learners “rebuild” a system of tens (portfolio assignment 2.3). problematizing and posing solutions. paula’s experience as a student differed from linda’s. as a child, paula was able to perform algorithms efficiently and enjoyed doing so. but she remembered noticing not all of her classmates could. this raised questions in her mind about whether too much emphasis was being placed on computational algorithms. when most of us went to school, we learned one way to add, one way to subtract, one way to multiply, and one way to divide. several of us noticed, however, that not all of our friends we went to school with “got it.” the question i have is why is the entire nation seemingly committed to the algorithm anyway? is it a universal truth or just a way to fit into society? is an algorithm a tool? is an algorithm really a good thing? is there only one algorithm? i think we teach algorithms because we want to hold our jobs, so that people won’t say we were lousy teachers. really, it’s so children’s parents can help them with their homework, right? what it all comes down to is how we are held accountable. it feels like we are being held back, because we have to teach this way so the children can pass tests. it’s too bad. (dmi session discourse) exploring/testing alternatives. at the beginning of the course paula indicated she was open to alternatives for what to teach and how to teach it and was willing to pursue what teaching for understanding might mean. most of my fifth grade students are not proficient in traditional algorithms. can i reinforce the students’ algorithms best through story context, or symbol context, or pictorial context, or a variety of all three? is there a time when bare mathematical symbol context is better? what i’m most concerned about is that they are able to develop critical thinking in their problem solving, and they won’t get there if we keep saying that the standard algorithm is the only way. in the long run they need to understand what they are doing. (dmi session discourse) as the course progressed, paula noted in her portfolio that her understanding of mathematics was deepening and her rigidity had given way to greater flexibility. she commented that breaking down various problems had given her a much better understanding of how elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 21 algorithms work, the value of base-ten knowledge, and the connected and integrated nature of mathematics. she expressed similar ideas during class: i’m noticing that mathematics is not just single ideas taught separately in isolation, but rather more of a connected and integrated whole. it’s making me re-think what mathematics is—its wholeness versus its parts. it seems like the underlying factor for everything is base ten. we revisit it over and over again, just in different ways. (dmi session discourse) along with shifting her beliefs about mathematics, paula also changed what she did in the classroom. as she reflected on what she had begun to do differently, she wrote about increased frequency of “flights away from the book, workbook, and workshop files” with more time spent on exploring and dissecting students’ mistakes on assignments and tests (portfolio assignment 1.6). later she noted: i have found that i can lead a whole class discussion with only two or three problems and use the children’s ideas to develop a much better session than a page of math problems can accomplish. what many of them are doing is rebuilding an understanding of mathematics. however, it takes longer than i anticipated. (portfolio assignment 2.3) they are taking back the responsibility for learning, and i am becoming convinced that this is not only a “funner” way to teach math but a better way as well. (portfolio assignment 2.7) paula attributed some changes in her teaching practices to a greater emphasis on children’s thinking and understanding. i am thinking more about students’ thinking individually rather than covering the mathematics. not just to say, “okay, that’s checked off” and continue going on hoping everybody in the class has gotten what i planned them to get. but more, “what did that student individually get?” you have to stop and reflect about what you are seeing, and it takes time. i noticed in the last few days i have been more cautious in my planning as to what kind of problems can get at thinking, that will make their mathematical understanding deeper. what i would like is to help bridge their thinking and to diagnose how to help them straighten out some of the problems they are having in that thinking. (dmi session discourse) reflective analysis of benefits and changing beliefs and practices. at the end of the course, paula reflected in her portfolio on what had changed for her during the semester. she wrote that she knew her students better than before. she noticed her students could now track their thinking processes and pinpoint the variations in their ideas. she also noticed that their understanding of the mathematics was deeper and their dialogues and written representations were more focused. paula had gained confidence in her ability to question and pose interesting problems. she commented in class that she had started to teach mathematics more as connected big ideas rather than separate disconnected pieces, which was consistent with changes in her philosophy of mathematics education. i thought this class was going to be more about ideas on how to teach. i think i had an idea that there was going to be a little more theory behind it, and not just ideas, but i think the thing that was most helpful was it helped me develop my philosophy of mathematics education. and, i think until you understand what your philosophy of something is, you are not as powerful at it. i think i had a philosophy, but it changed by the process that we went through and discussions we had. i knew questioning was important, but i now see it spilling current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 over into other subjects. the type of questions that you ask children to get them to understand is permeating my whole life, and i will never be the same. (dmi session discourse) by the end of the course, paula had built upon her views of how children learn to redesign her teaching metaphor as one who uses questions to find out what students are thinking and then poses additional questions to lead students to build new understandings of wellconnected mathematical ideas. five months after the end of the dmi course, paula taught a mathematics lesson that posed a problem that focused on vocabulary and language development associated with the mathematical concepts of twoand three-dimensional shapes connected to the science of soap bubbles and strongest shapes. she fostered development of a problem-solving community as she engaged her students in a social constructivist experience and used questioning to prompt and facilitate students’ thinking about deep understandings of the mathematics in the lesson. (observation field notes) during the post-observation interview focused on changes in paula’s teaching practices resulting from the dmi course, she commented on how she now attended to children’s understanding and helped them explore their mistakes. i spend a lot more time discussing their ideas. i don’t do as many problems per se, but we spend more time on specific problems. we just go broader because we take the time to listen and talk about all the different ways they would approach it. . . . i find myself asking more questions and trying to generate more questions from them. . . . i am trying to build on what each child says and to connect it to either someone else in the room, something they said earlier, or a particular path i am hoping they will go down. . . . i try to point out to them how valuable it is when they find and correct themselves and figure out why they did it wrong. i use a phrase this year i have never used before. i will say, ‘do you realize the most important thing that has happened today just happened for you in our class, because you corrected yourself, and you just figured out what you have done wrong. and that is the most valuable thing.’ i found that the more that i use that phrase the more children start saying that. they would try to find the mistakes they had made and then bring it to my attention. ‘look, this is what i did wrong. that is the most important thing i could do today. i just found what i did wrong.’ and that cognition. . . [and] celebration—of ‘oh, i got that wrong, and now if i figure out why i got it wrong she is going to be even happier than if i had gotten it right’— is very different, and that is attributed directly to the [dmi] class. (postobservation interview transcript) paula recognized that changes to her fifth-grade curriculum were essential to achieving her goals for learning. i haven’t changed all my problems. i’m locked into district core in math, and the majority of the core deals with computation out of context. i do have to continue to work with them on math out of context, but i have given more real life math problems at other times in the day, such as the warm-up activity in the morning. i used to spend quite a bit of time with grammar or daily oral language, and now probably fifty percent of it would be a math contextual question or game, because i have found that if you put math in the context of real life that builds their grammar skills. if the math is in the context of a story, then you are killing two birds with one stone. i want more of the kinds of problems [we saw in the dmi course]. i want more of them because i am too exhausted to think them up myself. i am elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 23 stretched too thin to keep generating them, and i have generated quite a few. i will take situations in the literature book we’ll be reading and use that as a springboard for a math problem, or a field trip we’ve been on. i did a lot more of that this year. almost every field trip or outside experience we did i tied back into a math problem after we had done it, and i watch for those opportunities to do that. . . . still, i haven’t moved everything completely to a big idea. (post-observation interview transcript) her comments during the interview also indicated she understood that shifts in teaching required to facilitate learning flexible problem solving with understanding were revolutionary in nature and as yet unsupported by continuing standardized testing. in addition, she expressed some concern over vocal groups expressing opposing viewpoints that indicated that her changes in beliefs and practices were very fragile due to the limited evidence of their effectiveness. she said, “i think math education is [students’] ticket to the future, and my consciousness is open and sensitive to the need of better math education. i know what we have done traditionally all these years isn’t working as well as it should, and it is exciting but also frustrating to be caught in the middle of the revolution and not know if what you are doing is really [helping]” (postobservation interview transcript). current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 appendix d list of table and figure captions table 1. metaphors table 2. changes in metaphors/beliefs table 3. interest in change, problematizing, exploring, and analyzing figure 1. guskey’s (1986) model of the process of teacher change figure 2. change process model for teachers’ beliefs and practices table 1. metaphors elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 25 table 2. changes in metaphors/beliefs current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 table 3. interest in change, problematizing, exploring, and analyzing figure 1. guskey’s (1986) model of the process of teacher change elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 27 figure 2. change process model for teachers’ beliefs and practices current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 2005 article citation smith, s.z., smith, m.e. & williams, s.r. (2005, july 20). elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices. current issues in education [on-line], 8(19). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number19/ author notes stephanie z. smith georgia state university dr. stephanie z. smith is an assistant professor in the early childhood education department at georgia state university in atlanta, ga. she received her phd in curriculum and instruction (mathematics education) from the university of wisconsin–madison in 1998. her scholarly interests include learning and teaching mathematics with understanding, children’s and teacher’s conceptions of mathematics, and teacher education and professional development. marvin e. smith georgia southern university dr. marvin e. smith is an assistant professor in the department of teaching and learning at georgia southern university in statesboro, ga. he received his phd in curriculum and instruction (mathematics education) from the university of wisconsin–madison in 2000. his scholarly interests include learning with understanding, classroom assessment, and teacher education and professional development. steven r. williams brigham young university dr. steven r. williams is a professor in the mathematics education department at brigham young university in provo, ut. he received his phd in curriculum and instruction (mathematics education) from the university of wisconsin–madison in 1989. his research has focused on the learning of calculus, discourse in mathematics classrooms, and various topics in teacher education. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber july 13, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation smith, s. z., smith, m. e., & williams, s. r. (2005). elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices. current issues in education, 8(19). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1650 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number15/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1650 elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 29 cie template volume 18, number 1 april 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x reframing the self in an international learning context: experiences of international students with a disability briony supple victoria university, melbourne joseph s. agbenyega monash university, melbourne in teaching and dialoguing with international students with a disability we often had to struggle with questions such as: what is the nature of student experience? and how are we supporting international students with a disability to articulate transformative perspectives of the self? this paper, which is based on a qualitative case study of two international students with a disability at mckenzie university (a pseudonym) melbourne, australia, is written to provide insider accounts and provoke understanding into how bourdieu’s notions of habitus, capital and field can be expanded to account for the conscious transformations that the students made in recalibrating themselves in their new fields. the paper calls for nuanced reading of how transformation of the self constitutes ongoing reframing of the habitus as a way of detaching oneself from dominant prescriptions of disability within one’s field. we ask our readers to consider how this detachment brings into being new formation of the self and symbolic capital to the students. finally, we bring a reflective reading to the data as a critical moment of practice and to reclaim our understandings of disability not as inability, but as complicated sociopolitical construct that needs to be contested. it is within these contested spaces that we can gain the strength to give marginalized selves the voices they need to move beyond margins of tertiary education. keywords: inclusion, higher education, international students, bourdieu in teaching and dialoguing with international students with a disability we often had to struggle with questions such as: what is the nature of student experience? and how are we helping international students with a disability articulate transformative perspectives of the self? this research has two purposes. first, is to provide insider accounts and provoke understanding into how bourdieu’s notions of habitus, capital and field can be expanded to account for the conscious transformations that two international students with a disability made in recalibrating themselves in their new fields. second, is to identify how the resources and strategies in the university at the center of this study support or hinder the academic performance of international students with disability. globalization, the importance of institutionalized cultural capital and english as the lingua franca have resulted in a large number of students travelling abroad to study with australia as a popular destination. international students have been a significant feature of this move to tertiary education institutions in australia, particularly over the last ten years. for the purposes of this paper we use the definition of “international students” from arkoudis and tran (2007) as referring to “students who are pursuing a degree at an australian institution but are not citizens or permanent residents of australia” 1 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 (arkoudis & tran 2007, p. 158). australia is one of the top three destinations along with the united states and the united kingdom to draw international students (arkoudis & tran, 2007; liamputtong, 2011). the fact that australian universities are becoming ever more reliant on the income generated by international students, means that it is important that universities start to listen to these students and leverage what can be learnt from their experiences to inform the fostering of a positive academic journey in australia (arkoudis & tran, 2007; liamputtong, 2011; robertson, 2011). the fact remains however that the expansion of student populations from many different cultural and linguistic backgrounds is the continuing challenge for universities in australia (arkoudis & tran, 2007). cultural differences and/or linguistic challenges mean that international students find it hard to navigate a number of areas: academic codes, relationships with lecturers, teaching and learning styles, adjusting to a new life away from family and friends, which are often compounded by stress from financial pressures (khawaja & dempsey, 2008; liamputtong, 2011; pan, wong, chan, & joubert, 2007). similarly, the presence of a disability can further complicate the process for local students adjusting to university in terms of accessing and understanding relevant policy, support systems, access to resources and adjusting to a more independent lifestyle (donato, 2008; dutta, kundu, & schiro-geist, 2009; eckes & ochoa, 2005). students can become segregated, isolated and limited in terms of full participation and engagement with their educational and social environments, and isolated by policy which situates students in deficit, perpetuating ‘able-est’ beliefs (fay & wolff, 2009; hehir, 2002). unfortunately these experiences can then cascade into internalized ableism where students believe these limitations are the result of their own failings and as a result become a self-fulfilling prophecy (fay & wolff, 2009; hehir, 2002). one of the key policies for students with a disability at mckenzie university is to provide an inclusive and flexible environment for students and staff by identifying and removing any remaining systemic barriers to equitable access and participation. there is no specific policy at mckenzie university which governs international students with a disability per se; the relevant policy pertaining to international students with a disability, in theory, is contained within the university’s equity and diversity policy. in practice however, the disability liaison unit of the university does not receive extra funding for service provision to international students with a disability, even though international students pay fees in excess of local students for studying at mckenzie university. as researchers we were interested in this intersection of ‘layers’ – how a student who is labeled not only ‘international student’ but also ‘student with a disability’ navigates new territory, geographically, culturally and politically (under university policy), in their new academic and social setting of a foreign country. looking at these experiences informed by disability as a social construct rather than an individualized ‘problem’ helps us examine these layers and make sense of the workings of power and empowerment, the politics of difference and inclusion (albrecht, 2003; ware, 2009) and seeks to show respect for people with a disability as individuals rather than a collective group with the same needs. the pervading discourse regarding international students has often been one of deficit, and problematizes groups of students based on ethnic background for example; “asian” students are often problematized as being typically passive learners (see biggs, 1997; littlewood, 1999, in arkoudis & tran, 2007; robertson, 2011). gleaning insight into an individual’s experience through close consideration of insider perspectives is pivotal in moving away from perceptions which situate students as a homogenous group and assume that their experiences are the same under the disability “label.” these insider perspectives are a way for researchers, policy-makers, practitioners and other stakeholders to appreciate and learn from the realities of other people (jones, 2013). the belief that “all groups have a right to speak for themselves, in their own voice, and have that voice accepted as authentic and legitimate” (harvey, 1989, in mills & gale, 2007, p. 439) is central to a critical theoretical stance as articulated by bourdieu, and is used in this research to underpin how the students interviewed have resisted the ‘disability’ label. a bourdieuian approach to research underpinned by critical theory and the tenets of social justice means starting thought from the lives of those people upon whose exploitation the legitimacy of the dominant system depends can bring into focus questions and issues that were not visible, ‘important’, or legitimate within the dominant institutions, their conceptual frameworks, cultures, and practices. (harding, 1998, in mills & gale, 2007, p. 439). bourdieu’s conceptual tools of habitus, capital and field, and symbolic violence, have been applied in this paper in order to explore the experiences of two international students with a disability, mary and anna, the results of which were somewhat unanticipated. in bourdieuian theorization, field explains individual positioning and relations between both individuals and institutions and is framed by certain rules (clark, zukas, & lent, 2011). capital is that which is valued in the field, and may be symbolic, social, economic, or cultural (webb, schirato, & danaher, 2002). habitus are the embodied social structures encompassing agency, habits 2 reframing the self in an international learning context: experiences of international students with a disability and reflexivity, structured by histories and present circumstances (clark et al., 2011; webb et al., 2002). practices and actions are the manifestations of the habitus (manton, 2008, p. 51, in clark et al., 2011). these elements are interdependent; for example, an individual’s position in the field will have an influence on the kind of capital recognized in that field. this also serves to shape the habitus of the person. symbolic violence is “the violence which is exercised upon individuals in a symbolic, rather than a physical way. it may take the form of people being denied resources, treated as inferior or being limited in terms of realistic aspirations” (webb et al., 2002, p. xvi). the analysis of the data employs bourdieu’s conceptual tools as a framework through which to view the experiences of mary and anna. mary is a 20 year old student from china who has a visual impairment. she has full mobility without the use of a cane or a guide dog, but wears thick glasses and needs to hold written material very close to her face to read it. anna is a 21 year old student from hong kong who has depression and anxiety. mary’s and anna’s experiences in australia as international students showed how they use their habitus, and capital in navigating new academic codes and adjusting to life in a different culture (field) while also working with new systems of support to transform the self. there are times when mary and anna experienced symbolic violence in the form of discrimination or disadvantage, but are unable to speak out about this. looking at the experiences of these students serves to complement bourdieu’s habitus by seeking to acknowledge “individual reflexivity and the capacity to behave in ways that are not necessarily accommodative to the dominant social relations or discourses within which they are located” (bennett, 2010, p. 101). couldry (2005) argues that bourdieu’s habitus limits an agent’s “possibilities for action, by constraining the resources he or she has to act in the situations he or she encounters” (couldry, 2005, p. 357). however, as the analysis shows, the experiences of mary and anna illustrate how these students have consciously worked at reconstructing their habituses in the new fields, and how this happens in alignment with their newly acquired cultural capital as a student studying in australia. research questions the following two questions informed the methodology of this research: 1. how are the strategies and resources in the research university supporting or hindering the students with disability’s academic development and achievement? that is, what are the facilitators and what are the barriers as conceptualized as part of this study? 2. as practitioners, how can bourdieu’s theories of capital, habitus and field help us understand these experiences? methodology we situate this research in a bourdieuian perspective of field, capital and habitus. bourdieu defines the habitus as “internalized embodied social structures” (bourdieu, 1989, p. 18). as habitus is composed of values, beliefs and norms the research approach must recognise voice and agency as important tools for exploring lived experiences. for example, prior to entering into australia, the international students in this research have acquired existing internalized values, beliefs, dispositions from their long socialization with a place in their respective home countries. as they enter into australia, they enter into a new field; what bourdieu terms as a network of objective relations between positions (bourdieu, 1988). because objective relations have rules and norms which determine the nature of interactions of the agents or occupants, a new form of socialization begins leading to a hybridization of habitus. bourdieu sees capital manifesting in economic, cultural, social and symbolic ways (bourdieu, 1998). in economic terms capital refers to wealth defined in monetary terms; cultural capital involves a person’s or institution’s possession of recognized knowledge; social capital is constituted by social ties; and symbolic capital refers to one’s status, honor or prestige (bourdieu, 1998). these assets influence everyday relations the international students with disability have with predominantly australian white educators. by utilizing this theoretical methodological approach we avoided entangling ourselves in purely quantitative approaches to collecting data which often are problematic when the aim of the research is understanding authentic voices of individuals with disability because they create and maintain positioning of ”the other”. quantitative approaches can answer some research questions but largely, the researcher becomes invariably positioned ‘outside’ and ‘at a distance’, and looking for an ‘objective’ reality. this is in comparison with a qualitative case study which attempts to enable researchers a deeper insight and understanding of the lived experiences of the participants. by carrying out this research within qualitative parameters we have gained the possibility of analyzing underpinning power relations or wider social contexts, and how these relate to power; (webb et al., 2002) an important part of research with students, particularly those with a disability. it is significant that a number of contemporary studies which focus on the experiences of students with a disability use interviews as a way of collecting rich and meaningful data, and qualitative approaches to analysis in exploring the various dimensions of these experiences. for instance, beauchamp-pryor’s (2012) study considered how students with a disability participate and are represented in educational policy-making at university in the uk. bessant (2012) explores the experiences of students with a disability at university negotiating alternative 3 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 assessment arrangements with staff members in australia. redpath et al. (2013) focus on the barriers to higher education experienced by post-secondary students in northern ireland. all of these studies utilize interviews and different qualitative analysis techniques to explore the richness inherent in their findings. in a similar way, framing this research within bourdieu’s conceptual perspectives using a qualitative approach also offers us the possibilities of understanding how the insider perspectives of students with disability are crucial in making sense of how they feel about themselves in regards to the impacts of policies, support and services on them in their education (bland, 2011). an important part of qualitative approaches is considering how the researcher cannot be separated from the research – the researcher’s values are an inherent part of all the stages of the research process and cannot be detached from the subject under investigation (ayiro, 2012; bryman, 2008; guba & lincoln, 1994). through a process of reflexivity we asked ourselves questions about our perceptions and beliefs before engaging in the research. as both authors are lecturers, one of the lecturers also being a student at the time of these interviews, we had some preconceived notions regarding the experiences of the students we were interviewing. based on literature and anecdotal evidence of local students’ experiences we expected the results of this study to reflect negative outcomes. however, this was not the case, and the data analysis shows an overall sense of satisfaction, which we had not predicted. data collection and analysis this research was undertaken at mckenzie university (pseudonym) in melbourne. the interview protocol for this study was informed by a conceptual framework which situates policy, practice, and pedagogy as intrinsic to fostering inclusivity in higher education. using the conceptual framework, we created questions for the students which focused on what is currently working or not working for them, and how they viewed their experience as a student with a disability from a country outside of australia. because of the added layer of complexity provided by cultural diversity within both participant cohorts, questions also focused on gaining insights into the interviewees’ perceptions of sociocultural norms as reflected in their respective countries, as well as perceptions of other countries. recruitment of interested students was purposeful (students who had registered with the disability liaison unit of the university) and was done through email invitation. the email was sent to a manager at the disability liaison unit (dlu) at mckenzie university which outlined the background to the research and provided email contact details of one of the researchers for students to write to if they wished to participate. alternative means of communication were also suggested if the students did not find email to be an appropriate medium with the dlu’s assistance. the dlu manager sent the information to any international students who had registered with the unit as requiring support. although we sought more students to participate in this research, only two students signed consent forms indicating their willingness to participate. face-to-face, individual interviews were held on the university campus and lasted for around one hour for each participant. questions were sent to the participants before the interviews took place and covered areas such as educational background, the level of academic support in the home country and in australia, perceptions of any cultural differences in support, and the attitude of people with additional needs in home country and australia. in order to maximize the voice of the student and clarify further information, the interview transcripts were sent to the students. the students were asked to extend ideas, rework comments, or delete any areas they wished to have omitted from the data, giving the participants’ ownership of the information. as these students speak english as their second language, their speech does contain grammatical errors. however, these were not corrected in the transcripts in an effort to maintain the true voices of the participants (bland, 2011). theoretical categories of habitus, capital, field and symbolic violence were used to thematically organize information from the transcripts. in order to preserve the stories as much as possible, the analysis was done “manually” and not by using a software program such as nvivo. results and discussion culture: habitus and symbolic capital the students’ views on and experiences of service provision in the university at the center of this study demonstrate that the nature of the dispositions, values, etc. of a country determine the way that people with disabilities are treated and supported. the results from the interviews with mary and anna reflect the different degrees of symbolic capital that are afforded to students with disabilities in different countries. within the asian context for example, authors suggest that the concept of inclusive education is one that is relatively new (forlin, 2007; gilson & dymond, 2011) and that values embedded in confucian philosophy in hong kong and chinese cultures are also a likely contributor to the willingness to thoroughly embrace inclusion (forlin, 2007). disability has long been considered under a medical rather than a social model in hong kong, which has created a society where people with a disability have been isolated and ostracized (forlin, 2007; gilson & dymond, 2011). similarly, the implementation of initiatives for inclusive practices in china has generally been slow, and relates to a culture which tends to shy away from “difference” (shang, fisher, & xie, 2011). the way that mary and anna spoke about their additional needs reflected their internalized problematic, using language such as “my problem” to talk about their 4 reframing the self in an international learning context: experiences of international students with a disability disabilities. mary mentioned “how in china i don't want other people to know my eye problem” because of the shame that it had caused her growing up, and the possible implications of not being able to attend university or get a job: when i was in china, if you have some problem…people… will look down at you and if i will go to find a job, it’s very difficult. they don’t think you can do it… they think you have disability so you’re actually not a normal person. at the start of the interview anna talked of how she had “escaped” from her country because i have problem, that's why i'm here today and i don't want to stay in hong kong…my country, i’m not thinking about those physically disabled, but someone like me, mentally disabled, my country they don’t recognize people as mentally disabled. they just think that we’re crazy and you should be locked up in a mental hospital. both of these quotes reflect the highly competitive field in china for symbolic capital; a battlefield of sorts (webb et al., 2002), in that the competition for capital is fierce between the agents, and those who need help such as mary and anna are denied recognition by being looked down upon or locked up. as a result, both anna and mary spoke about feeling like someone from a kind of sub-class in their own countries. for this reason it is perhaps not surprising that both mary and anna locate “the problem” as within themselves, and consequent feelings of low self-worth in trying to deal with a lack of support at school and university in china and hong kong. tse, cheung, kan, ng, and yau (2012) argue that the distinctiveness and saliency of one’s social status depends heavily on how society perceives the group to which the individual belongs. for mary and anna, their classification as disabled individuals puts them in a distinctive group, which for cultural reasons is considered as being sick in need of treatment. similarly, using the dlu for support in australia may also have negative consequences on their identity if membership is associated with being unwell. familial habitus. both mary and anna’s families played a significant role in the degree to which they each felt supported and empowered to pursue their education in australia. this familial or family habitus (atkinson, 2011) in relation to education is seen as the internalized and ingrained perspectives a family has, which constitute largely unarticulated assumptions about the likely academic trajectory for the child, the extent to which further study at university, for example is “as an impossible, a possible or an entirely natural future” (reay, 1998b; bourdieu & passeron, 1979, in atkinson, 2011, p. 334). the significant role mary’s family, particularly her father, played in encouraging her academically and socially is unequivocal and inextricably linked to the habitus of her family: i can talk to everyone about my eye problems now. i don’t feel very confused or very stressed about my eye problems. when i tell you, yes, it’s the truth. i can’t fix it and my father always told me that if you can’t control it, just let it go. it happened so that’s a fact... when i graduated from middle school i think a lot about my life at that time and my father asked me if i want to go to a normal life or just disability life… if i go slow i just can learn by myself and my father said your brain don’t have problems so you’re a very brilliant girl and just have some problems with your eyes, that’s my problem. it is likely from this comment that mary’s family assumed that university study would be an option for her, and encouraged her to pursue this. perhaps also part of what prompted mary to pursue overseas study may have been the desire to remove herself from the field of her home country and ‘prove’ her education as “an entirely natural future” as atkinson’s (2011) quote above suggests. however, unlike mary, anna was unfortunate in not having the support of her family. anna’s familial habitus is one where there is a struggle against her family: even my parents think that i’m crazy. they hate the idea that i’m asking for help and i need help from a counselor or i need help from the dlu and the special consideration, they hate this idea. they hate the idea that i’m taking medication... they think that i’m not working hard enough. they think that mental illness is like a block. if you jump over it, if you try hard enough to jump over it, you can jump over it. they think it’s like a fever, but it’s not that easy. it’s something in your mind that you can’t figure out and you need help. in looking at these statements from anna, it appears that in her case, familial habitus is a discord between the beliefs of her family and her experiences of growing up with anxiety and depression. anna lacks capital within not only her social and educational fields, but also within her family field because the social/cultural group to which she belongs is defined and linked to illness (tse et al., 2012). capital and field. as previously alluded to, mary’s perceptions of the pervading socio-cultural fields in china meant in general she was not afforded cultural capital in wider society (shek & merrick, 2012; tse et al., 2012), potentially impacting on her acceptance into university and future ability to secure a job. she told a story about having a pre-university medical examination, and implied that her acceptance or rejection into the university hinged on the results of this test. she was fortunate on the day in that at the test 5 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 i just said [to the person doing the eye test] i can’t see clearly, if you can just make me pass and at that time they just don’t want to make some problems, [so they said] yes, you can pass, just make a little [adjustment to the results] maybe i can just see 5.1 maybe and so it’s borderline, it’s 5.4, they just make it 5.4. mary talked about how she had been through school with no support, and how she developed her own strategies for learning on her own, such as sitting at the very front of the class to copy from the blackboard or rely on friends to help with her study, all the while not wanting to let on about the extent of her vision. mary talked about the support she had received in australia: i want to talk [about] one of my good tutors. he’s very kind. last trimester i asked him a lot of questions. when we did assignments, not only me, i just feel confused because i’m the person who always wants to do something in front of others because i have some problem and i think i will do it a little slow so maybe they need four hours, maybe i need eight hours so i just do it first and i came to his office maybe four or five times a week to ask something about assignments and he’s very kind and he just tells me and he is very humorous and he helps me to do the things and he told me maybe this is wrong and you should do this, those kind of things and the learning adviser as i mentioned before, k, she is very good. she helps me a lot for the bigger printing and to apply for dlu and some other things. arguably, finding support at mckenzie university also contributed to mary feeling a greater sense of freedom in australia in being able to talk about her needs openly. although mary talked about herself as being “the problem” or “i'm the person always having problems”, she was empowered and comfortable in herself to ask for assistance at mckenzie university. this implies that her symbolic capital and resultant attitudes have shifted since coming to australia; she has more agency in this new field in being able to disclose her needs. bourdieuian capital “is not set in stone or universally accepted, either within or across fields” (webb et al., 2002, p. 22). as a result, mary enjoys good relationships – she has friends here in australia and talked about positive interactions with support staff. this accumulation of capital also resulted in her parents feeling happy that her daughter is supported in australia. anna also found a new sense of capital in the field at university in australia. what we see in anna’s case is her shift in acculturated capital away from the field of her own country and family which constructs her identity as being in deficit, to one where she can openly seek help, and indeed is one of many students who seek help. the western countries have more knowledge about mental illness and in fact my counselor keeps telling me something like a lot of people in australia need counseling services and a lot of them, especially students in my age, because i used to tell them i’m 21 and 21 should be the age that you feel happy, you play with your friends and you go out and have fun and at least not stay in a room talking to counselors and she said a lot of students in australia, at least in [this university], they ask for counseling, so i guess that sort of makes me feel better. the fact that anna even sought counseling is important as it is inconsistent with the literature which suggests that international students do not take advantage of counseling services offered by universities due to concerns over trust, loss of face, embarrassment, shame or fear of stigmatization by peers and family (sawir et al., 2008). indeed, “many international students would rather suffer with psychological difficulties than speak to a professional counselor due to stigmas associated with mental illness and personal competency” (sandhu, 1994, in popadiuk & arthur, 2004, p. 135). in anna’s case, she was able to talk about the comparisons between her counselor in hong kong and in australia, and in doing so it was interesting that she had concluded western countries have more knowledge about mental illness. her conclusions may be based on identifying some of the differences in approaches to therapy, in that counselors influenced by western psychotherapeutic approaches perceived mental illness as arising from interactions between the person and the environment. (mallinckrodt, shigeoka, & suzuki, 2005, in chen & mak, 2008, p. 443) symbolic violence in the field. despite having positive experiences of support there were also times when mary and anna felt at a disadvantage or unsatisfied. for example, mary was frustrated that prior knowledge from china was not recognized in australia. she told us how she had studied in china for three years before coming to australia and that she had expected this prior study would have been recognized by mckenzie university in terms of advanced standing for some units. however, this was not the case. because of this lack of recognition by the university, she felt it was a waste of her time having done this prior study. in china it’s three years at uni[versity] and now it’s three years [here] and i nearly finish half and i came here. what i did before is just rubbish. i can’t fix it and when i came here i can’t apply for credit. she was obviously frustrated and upset by this lack of recognition, and waste of time and effort in having completed the study in china, is particularly emphasized in her use of the word “rubbish”. in this case we can see how the alignment of cultural capital of the student with that of the target institution results in the maximization of 6 reframing the self in an international learning context: experiences of international students with a disability learning potential, but that this is hindered when not the case (stewart, 2010). for bourdieu, mary’s experience in not having her capital recognized is an example of how the education system “work[s] to ‘consecrate’ social distinctions by cultivating certain ways of acting that have the effect of reproducing social inequality” (webb et al., 2002, p. 128). anna’s experience of symbolic violence was evident in the way she talked about her disappointment regarding contact with local students: “there’s no school bullying, they’re just trying to ignore you like you don’t exist because they don’t know how to communicate with chinese.” this was compounded by how she felt about the financial commitment her family was making for her to study in australia. “what’s wrong with chinese? they pay 40 grand to study here and so you [local students] can enjoy your educational benefits.” this is anna’s experience of symbolic violence in that it is almost the norm that local students ‘ignore’ international students. according to dunne (2009) local students at university often report that intercultural contact is “less rewarding than intracultural contact” (dunne, 2009, p. 233). local students tended to pursue intercultural contact “only when it was deem[ed] to be ‘worth the effort’” (dunne, 2009, p. 233). symbolic violence for mary and anna was also related to the challenges of communicating in a different language and the reactions of those around them. part of mary’s frustration for example was how she felt unable to fully express the extent of her vision, and how much help she actually needed in class. i just told them [the lecturer] my eyes are not good or something, but they can’t understand how bad it is. i can’t explain very clearly how bad it is. i just can tell them it’s bad... i actually can’t see it [the lecture slides], but how can i say just make it bigger? if they make it bigger, i can’t see it, too. this difficulty in communicating may also relate to mary’s habitus – in her own country she had lived for so many years in trying to hide her loss of vision that now when it is safe to fully explain it to others, she simply does not have the words to do so. this is not uncommon for many students with a disability; the ability to communicate needs is one of the main determinants for success for students (donato, 2008), which is of even greater significance when the student speaks english as their second language. furthermore, “students' ability to communicate their needs does not necessarily lead to a positive experience” (donato, 2008, p. 61) as was the case with anna: when i first came to this university and when i first trying to see a doctor and having new medication which is very difficult, because psychological pills are not a cold or something and i may have difficulties in class which the teacher himself thought it was a way that i tried to get higher marks, so i told him i was sick and he said it’s a way that you try to get higher marks and he said my english couldn’t be good because i’m chinese. i got high distinction from the foundation here and he said that’s because i’m chinese and my english won’t be good so that’s not very nice...[so i was discriminated against] from being ill and from being chinese…i didn’t know that i could deal with that [situation with the lecturer] so i did nothing and he just gave me a cross, that’s every paper i handed in, a big one. fear of speaking out is something that many students with a disability face (donato, 2008; goode, 2007; hopkins, 2011). the psycho-emotional dimension of disability, that is any situations where a person with a disability feels put down, “undermined”, “devalued”, or “worthless” and afraid to speak out (reeve, 2002, p. 1) is one of the most brutal examples of bourdieuian symbolic violence. mary continued to struggle in class despite not being able to read the slides after asking for help. anna was unaware that she was able to do anything about her lecturer accusing her of feigning illness for higher marks. these are clear examples of how mary and anna as agents are being “treated as inferior, denied resources...but they do not perceive it that way; rather, their situation seems to them to be the natural order of things” (webb et al., 2002, p. 25). clearly these situations could have been very different had the lecturer taken the time to sit and talk to mary and anna openly about what exactly their needs were, and what other support systems and strategies might have helped their learning. reconstructing the habitus. even though she continually talked about “my problem”, in many ways mary has “fought back” and constructed herself as an agent with capital in two fields. firstly, based on encouragement by her father, and the seemingly grim alternative of “the disability life” which is fraught with discrimination, lack of opportunity and society’s belief “that you are not a good person” (if you have a disability), mary clearly made a conscious decision in china to become educated and live a life where she could become empowered through education. she then traveled to australia to upskill and acquire further cultural, symbolic and linguistic capital in an english-speaking university, something which is valued in various fields (further education, employment) in china (waters, 2006). secondly, within the australian university field she has worked with a sense of determination in constructing herself as a student who speaks english in her home life, achieves high marks and has made friends who she can rely on for help. she established good connections with lecturers and got herself a job. in this way she repositioned herself within the fields of her own country as well as her university in australia. mary’s 7 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 formation of the habitus is conscious, an extension of bourdieu’s solely unconscious endeavor (farnell, 2000, in sayer, 2010, p. 91). mary’s habitus is working against the accepted cultural grain that is, she is fighting against how society constructed her identity in china as without symbolic capital; a sense of her being seen as “handicapped” and not a good person. moreover, despite the negative attitudes in her home country, mary has still developed an attitude of viewing people for what they are rather than harboring deficit views about others, saying that people with a disability should have the same rights, i think. they need to study. maybe they will do things better than the normal person and maybe i can’t see it clearly, but my ears is very good. i can hear a lot of things. as previously alluded to, anna’s observations of western countries having more knowledge about mental illness and her statement that “i feel more comfortable staying in australia than hong kong because i’m more western” show that she prefers to position herself in terms of australian students. anna had also managed to leverage support from her counselor to act as a quasi advocate on her behalf in terms of notifying staff of her needs, saying “i’m no longer contacting my teachers. i ask my counselors to do that.” once again this is evidence of a conscious recalibrating of the habitus and pushing against the socio-cultural habitus of family and community in hong kong. in the context of this study, bourdieu’s theories can be extended towards the potential for people to push against the previous limitations of the dominant habituses and construct themselves as powerful and empowered. this new conceptualization of bourdieu’s habitus hence can take into account “the way in which the constraining and enabling effects of social contexts on individuals are mediated by their own deliberations” (sayer, 2010, p. 89), something which sayer argued that bourdieu’s construction of the habitus “largely ignored” (p. 89). conclusion collecting data via interviews to glean insights into the student experience and analysis through bourdieu allows insight into the uniqueness of the individual experience, challenging our notions of “international student” and “student with a disability”. bourdieu’s tools of habitus, capital and field allow real insight into the lived experiences of these students, and these methodological approaches are aimed at uncovering the rich and complex individual experiences of a diverse range of students. in response to our research questions driving this study, our main finding was in relation to how existing socio-cultural norms in home countries resulted in students feeling unsupported in china and hong kong, as also explored by shek and merrick (2012). the juxtaposition of the students’ comments regarding their perceived level of support in australia against their own notions of disability driven by culture (for example, anna’s words about how “they lock you up” in hong kong if you have a mental illness) clearly results in what we see as a positive reflection of their experiences as a student in australia. their experiences further support the theory that in any specific social or cultural group to which one belongs, the value of one’s identity depends to a great extent on health status and self-perceived wellbeing in comparison to other groupings (tse et al., 2012). anna and mary came to australia with minimal expectations of how their particular needs would be met due to their home country experiences and the lack of symbolic capital in their own countries. for example, being classified into a disability group, which was not valued in their home countries, incurred negative impact on their identity. in terms of moving forward, anna and mary did also give some examples of where they felt unsatisfied with how their needs had been met at mckenzie university. both mary and anna were unaware of the existence of policies governing the experiences of students with a disability and mckenzie university, and therefore unaware of their rights under such policies. as practitioners and policy makers it is important to think about the true accessibility of these policies and who is included under these policies – international students with a disability are not technically covered under the current university policy. making all students aware of their rights under university policy, and such policies being written in clear and easily understandable ways for students who may speak english as a second language, are positive ways of looking towards comprehensive provision for students such as anna and mary. this research is positioned in a way so as to contribute to the discourse which looks at the identity and agency of international students (arkoudis & tran, 2007; kettle, 2005; kell & vogl, 2008; robertson, 2011) and students with a disability (goode, 2007; hopkins, 2011). as researchers we wished to uncover how students work as agents of their own change in their conscious positioning away from deficit labels. looking at the experiences of these students serves to complement bourdieu’s habitus by seeking to acknowledge how individuals change their positioning in relation to what might have been their assumed originating and influencing socio-cultural discourses. recognizing that students have individual experiences which are valid and worth listening to is critical in terms of developing inclusive practice and policy, improving access and accountability and celebrating what is working. it is apparent that little has been explored within the cohort of students from a variety of cultural backgrounds and how their experiences in their own countries mirror or are different to experiences in their new countries. 8 reframing the self in an international learning context: experiences of international students with a disability references albrecht, g. 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(2010). bourdieu, ethics and practice. in e. silva & a. warde (eds.), cultural analysis and bourdieu's legacy: settling accounts and developing alternatives (pp. 87-101). hoboken, ny: taylor & francis. sawir, e., marginson, s., deumert, a., nyland, c., & ramia, g. (2008). loneliness and international students in australia. journal of studies in international education, 12(2), 148-180. doi 10.1177/1028315307299699 shang, x., fisher, k. r., & xie, j. (2011). discrimination against children with a disability in china. international journal of social welfare, 20(3), 298-308. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2397.2009.00666.x shek, d. t. l., & merrick, j. (2012). disability research in china: gaps and future directions. international journal of disability and human development, 11(1), 1-4. stewart, r. (2010). being an inclusive faculty in new zealand schools. new zealand journal of teachers’ work, 7(1), 47-52. retrieved from http://www.teacherswork.ac.nz/journal/volume7 _issue1/stewart.pdf tse, s., cheung, e., kan, a., ng, r., & yau, s. (2012). recovery in hong kong: service user participation in mental health services. international review of psychiatry, 24(1), 4047. 10 http://www.teacherswork.ac.nz/journal/volume7_issue1/stewart.pdf http://www.teacherswork.ac.nz/journal/volume7_issue1/stewart.pdf reframing the self in an international learning context: experiences of international students with a disability http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/0 9540261.2011.646244 ware, l. (2009). the hegemonic impulse for health and well-being: a saga of the less well and the less worthy. in s. r. steinberg (ed.), diversity & multiculturalism: a reader (pp. 363-376). new york: peter lang. webb, j., schirato, t., & danaher, g. (2002). understanding bourdieu. crows nest, australia: sage publications ltd. 11 http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09540261.2011.646244 http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09540261.2011.646244 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 article citation supple, b., & agbenyega, j. s. (2015). reframing the self in an international learning context: experiences of international students with a disability. current issues in education, 18(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1333 author notes dr. briony supple victoria university, melbourne, australia victoria university, ballarat rd, footscray, vic, 3011, australia briony.supple@vu.edu.au briony is a lecturer in students supporting student learning (sssl) at victoria university, melbourne, australia, where she works with various student peer mentor programs. her research interests include increasing engagement through student peer mentoring and inclusion in higher education. joseph seyram agbenyega monash university, melbourne australia mcmahons road, peninsula campus, frankston, vic, 3199 joseph.agbenyega@monash.edu joseph agbenyega is a senior lecturer in early childhood and inclusive education at monash university, melbourne, australia. his research interests include inclusive education, early childhood development and teacher professional inquiry. manuscript received: 11/17/2013 revisions received: 06/09/2014 accepted: 06/10/2014 12 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1333 mailto:briony.supple@vu.edu.au mailto:joseph.agbenyega@monash.edu reframing the self in an international learning context: experiences of international students with a disability volume 18, number 1 april 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editors tray j. geiger layout editors constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers 13 volume 5, number 1 may 1, 2002 issn 1099-839x editorial – the evolution of current issues in education: building upon a solid foundation ildiko i. laczko-kerr and marina gair arizona state university since its inception in 1998, almost five years ago, current issues in education has endeavored to develop into an innovator in creating democratic access to research in education. the journal, designed to provide free access to scholarly research via the internet, commenced by inviting a diverse group of researchers to dialogue about current issues in education. a simple enough endeavor so it would seem, one that may appear to have been taken up by other journals as well, but looks can be deceiving. over the course of this journal's life; through the careful crafting and vigilant efforts of editors, associate editors, and advisors current issues in education has continued to evolve into a journal whose mission is focused around establishing and fostering dialogue relating to a broad range of education related topics. it is our great pleasure and honor to be the current stewards of current issues in education (cie). we follow in the footsteps of many others who have laid a solid foundation for the continued evolution of this journal. it is our hope that we can help to further this process. leslie poynor, in the first cie editorial address (1998) reminds us that cie is committed to "establishing dialogue between areas of education that are rarely brought together." this continuing interest in a variety of topic areas is due in part to the realization that educating human beings is a complex undertaking, one that cannot be rushed by technology, time, or political ideology. our early development as an electronic journal (e-journal) came with the understanding that "the internet makes e-journals an opportune global mode of communication for scholarly exchange in which national and international boarders are erased. the appeal of e-journals is enhanced by the power of the electronic medium to open up possibilities hitherto impossible" (ganesh & jennings, 1999). utilizing this awareness, our predecessors took actions to develop the medium in which we publish. the use of hyperlinks and multimedia i.e., audio and video clips within published articles continue to be supported by the editorial staff; yet, articles that make use of these unique aspects of electronic publishing in a manner that enhances the research account are seldom encountered. leavy and ganesh (2000) note that "scholars may not have access to the power the medium offers and expertise in use of cutting edge technology may rest with a few." while this is certainly true, advances in technology and training have made access and learning more available. our most recent predecessors remind us "many of the current issues in education are those same issues that educational researchers have been wrestling with for years" (dicerbo & darcy, 2001). current issues in education must continue to be a source of quality educational research that meets the diverse needs and interests of a global community of scholars, practioners and recipients of educational research. in addition to continuing to publish articles that explore enduring topics in education, we want to bring together academics and researchers with diverse theoretical perspectives and disciplinary interests to provide provocative editorials on more contemporary and emerging themes in education. over the course of the year, current issues in education seeks submissions that have dominated public debates, fueled referenda campaigns, and current issues in education vol. 5 no. 1 legislative reforms in the recent past. this year, it is the goal of cie to reflect the spectrum of actors, range of competing discourses, and ongoing processes of change in education. references dicerbo, k. e. & darcy, m. (2001). current issues in education: meeting the challenges of our times. current issues in education [on-line], 4(1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume4/number1/ ganesh, t. g. & jennings, t. a. (1999). ejournals today: forerunners of the unrealized potential of the digital medium. current issues in education [on-line], 2(1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number1/ leavy, a. m & ganesh, t. g. (2000). the nascent promise of ejournals: instances of pioneering use of technology. current issues in education [on-line], 3(1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume3/number1/ poynor, l. (1998). editor's notes — current issues in education [on-line], 1(1). available: http://cie.asu.edu/volume1/number1/ http://cie.asu.edu/volume4/number1/ http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number1/ http://cie.asu.edu/volume3/number1/ http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume1/number1/ the evolution of current issues in education: building upon a solid foundation 3 2002 article citation laczko-kerr, i. i. & gair, m. (2002, may 1). the evolution of current issues in education: building upon a solid foundation. current issues in education [on-line], 5 (1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume5/number1/ author notes ildiko i. laczko-kerr arizona state university ilaczko@ade.az.gov ildiko i. laczko-kerr, ph.d. is a graduate from the division of psychology in education at arizona state university. her research interests include teacher quality, training and certification, specifically emergency teacher certification and its effect on student achievement. she holds a ba in psychology and a ma in educational psychology from the university of arizona. marina gair arizona state university marina.gair@asu.edu marina gair is a doctoral candidate in the division of educational leadership and policy studies at arizona state university. her academic interests include sociology of education, educational anthropology, and visual ethnography. her current research focuses on the socialization of preservice teachers, specifically investigating the ways in which elements of hidden curricula function in teacher training practice. she has recently contributed an introductory chapter entitled "hiding in plain sight" to the edited volume, the hidden curriculum in higher education by eric margolis (routledge, spring 2001). the work is based on ethnographic interviews with leading scholars in education on the topic of socialization and the reproductive functions of post-secondary schooling. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 25, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation laczko-kerr, i. i., & gair, m. (2002). the evolution of current issues in education: building upon a solid foundation. current issues in education, 5(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1617 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2002,%20vol%205,%20%231-6/number1/index.html mailto:ilaczko@ade.az.gov mailto:marina.gair@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1617 cie template current issues in education, 19(3) 1 volume 19, issue 3 january 17, 2017 issn 1099-839x fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning sarah k. mcmahan texas woman’s university rubén garza texas state university abstract: given the benefits associated with authentic field experiences (edwards, 1996; mcmahan et al., 2015; siwatu, 2010), it is not uncommon to include early field experiences prior to student teaching as a way to engage university students with teaching diverse students in an authentic school setting. this study explored preservice teachers’ perceptions of their pedagogical growth and development as an aspiring teacher in a structured field experience placement prior to student teaching. data was analyzed using qualitative techniques and revealed three main themes. the following themes reflected preservice teachers’ perceptions of their growth: viewing through a prescriptive lens, valuing the collaborative experience, and fostering self-awareness. while preservice teachers valued the collaborative experience, they expressed a superficial level of pedagogical learning and their thinking reflected a narrow scope from a prescriptive lens. our findings suggest a need for teacher educators to help preservice teachers’ develop a deeper understanding of the dynamics of teaching during their initial experiences of learning to teach in authentic settings. keywords: field experiences, teacher growth and development, pedagogical knowledge apa-style citation: mcmahan, s. k. & garza, r. (2016). fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning. current issues in education, 19(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1550 accepted: october 22nd, 2016 field experiences provide a vital component in the preparation of preservice teachers for entry into the classroom. nationally, most teacher education programs include a field experience component as an avenue to authentically connect theory into practice (maistre & pare, 2010; mcmahan et al., 2015). this clinical practice, acknowledged by the council for the accreditation of educator preparation standards (caep, n.d.), helps to foster preservice teacher development, especially when the structure of field experiences is planned well (aacte, 2010). http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1550 mcmahan & garza: fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning current issues in education, 19(3) 2 the structure of a field experience is a critical aspect linked to meaningful and authentic learning experiences for teacher candidates. a structured field experience is more than a traditional observe and reflect; it involves interactive experiences such as teaching, small group pull outs, mentoring students, and overall “learning by doing” activities. the assigned mentor teacher serves as a coach to encourage and foster preservice teacher candidates’ development of pedagogical knowledge and skills. boz (2012) proposed that preservice teachers begin to develop pedagogical content knowledge (pck) before any classroom contact. if we accept this notion, then teacher development begins in the university classroom at a conceptual level that should be further enhanced through genuine classroom engagement within a structured field experience. in this study, structured field experience refers to deliberately facilitating learning and teaching opportunities for preservice teachers in an authentic school setting during established days and times. this also includes deliberate placement with a mentor teacher during the semester before the student teaching practicum. the mentor teacher is a classroom teacher who volunteers time to work collaboratively with a teacher candidate. the mentor serves as a model for teacher preparation and assists the teacher candidate in further refining his/her skill set. for purposes of this study, the mentor teacher responsibilities included: guiding the candidate’s lesson planning, scheduling a time to implement a lesson, providing feedback after instruction, participating in frequent dialogue concerning the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate’s effectiveness in the teaching situation, guiding the candidate in making the transition from student to teacher, and conferring with the university field-based faculty liaison as needed. these expectations are viewed as collaborative in nature rather than reciprocal. the teacher education programs across the united states use a variety of approaches and methods to enhance the growth and development of preservice teachers. the field experience component, coupled with a positive mentoring opportunity, is one of the major contributing factors in the development of aspiring teachers (mcmahan & piro, 2013). preservice teachers must have the opportunity to practice coursework learning in order to enhance their pedagogical and content knowledge and skills as a way to bridge the gap between theory and practice (meyer, 1997). “rather than an emphasis on the how-to-concerns associated with routine procedures, time management, and constructing lesson plans, the preservice teacher learns to reflectively build a praxis for teaching that acts as a personal and theoretical knowledge base” (moore, 2003, p. 33). this means that educators not only focus on providing innovative field experience options, but that they systematically include time for preservice teachers to reflect on their learning while immersed in authentic settings. therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine preservice teachers’ perceptions on how a structured field experience influenced their pedagogical knowledge and development. review of the literature teacher preparation programs have been redesigning the curriculum of educational methods courses and field experiences as a means to improve teacher education (e.g. clark & peterson, 1986; huling & resta, 2001; zeichner, 2010). researchers have advocated that preservice teachers need to experience the reality of working with students under the guidance of a mentor teacher (washburn-moses, kopp, & hettersimer, 2012; wilson, floden, & ferrinimundy, 2001). although quality field experiences are a key ingredient in preservice teacher preparation other aspects such as dispositions, mentorship, and coursework are linked to the development of an effective teacher (hallam, 2009). this study is guided by a framework on field experiences and pedagogical content knowledge. mcmahan & garza: fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning current issues in education, 19(3) 3 field experiences field experiences provide opportunities for preservice teachers to immerse in the culture and climate of a school and classroom (e.g. feiman-nemser, 2001; mcintyre, byrd, & foxx, 1996; zeichner, 2010). field experiences also provide opportunities to strengthen or reaffirm prior beliefs and attitudes about teaching and learning (lortie, 1975). preservice teachers have an opportunity to teach and to learn in collaboration with an assigned mentor teacher as well as to interact with students in the classroom, often during the field experience component of their educator preparation. traditionally, early field experiences provide foundational knowledge and are often considered observational experiences because they provide preservice teachers with opportunities to study the realities of teaching (koran, snow, & mcdonald, 1971). subsequent field experiences included in preservice teacher coursework provide additional opportunities to “practice” what they have learned from their pedagogical coursework. these later field experiences often employ an immersion approach where preservice teachers learn by doing (mcmahan et al., 2015; wiggins, follo, & eberly, 2007). well-structured early field experiences as well as a diverse field experience setting may help to prepare preservice teachers for 21st century classrooms. on the other hand, research by ladson-billings (2000) suggests that field experiences may not reflect the realities of today’s complex classrooms. therefore, it is important to expose preservice candidates to diverse placements and settings that include a diverse student population and teachers who model different instructional practices and classroom management systems. edwards (1996) suggests that preservice teachers, having the opportunity to visit several schools prior to student teaching in multiple contexts, observe both effective and ineffective ways of working with disadvantaged children. field experiences are critically important in developing and nurturing the preservice teacher for entry in the teaching profession (mcmahan & piro, 2013); however, preservice teachers must also reflect on those experiences as a way to ameliorate superficial knowledge. teacher knowledge although past research indicated that a lack of structured field experiences, especially in diverse settings, contributed to the inadequate preparation of teachers (davis & moley, 2007), today’s structured options, such as clinical practice, are viewed as a critical aspect of teacher preparation (aacte, 2010). moreover, as hammerness et al. (2005) acknowledge, preservice teachers are not able to gain all the necessary cognitive and affective proficiency needed to address students’ needs in a diverse classroom setting, but it is important to identify what “content and strategies” are needed to foster life-long learning. “whereas pre-service teachers’ thinking may be influenced by factors such as educational experiences, background, values, beliefs, and dispositions, reflective practice can serve to challenge and reinforce prior knowledge about the cognitive, social, emotional, and political aspects related to teaching” (garza & smith, 2015, p. 12). orchestrating frequent and systematic approaches to engage preservice teachers in reflecting about their experiences can help them to explore their thinking and strengthen their connections to pedagogical instruction, thereby fostering their learning, growth, and development. as reed and bergemann (2005) affirm, “those who reflect on their actions and performance are more successful than those who merely react” (p. 14). this foundation of understanding should address the “purposes of education as well as the methods and strategies of educating” (shulman, 1987, p. 13) as a way to prevent superficial learning and making unsubstantiated assumptions within the teaching context. some policy makers have embraced the notion of defining teacher effectiveness by the increases of student outcomes on tests that assess their knowledge (imig & imig, 2007). other mcmahan & garza: fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning current issues in education, 19(3) 4 educators dialogue about the characteristics of quality teaching and the type of knowledge required to be an effective educator (zyngier, 2007). for example, zyngier (2007) proposed a “productive pedagogies framework that included intellectual quality, connectedness, supportive classroom environment, and recognition of difference” (p. 209). shulman (1986) proposed that teaching included a combination of “content and process that included three types of content knowledge: (a) subject matter content knowledge, (b) pedagogical content knowledge, and (c) curricular knowledge” (p. 9). these different aspects contribute to an instructional proficiency that is influenced by different types of knowledge that focus on the nuances of teaching, field of study, metacognition, or dispositions (mishra & koehler, 2006). while various perspectives may describe aspects related to teacher effectiveness, accrediting entities also prescribe criteria for equipping teacher candidates with appropriate preparation for quality teaching. the council for the accreditation of educator preparation (caep, n.d.), provides a framework for educator preparation programs to use as a guide in collecting and documenting evidence of student learning in several standards. the following standards describe teacher characteristics relevant to our study: “standard 1: content and pedagogical knowledge the provider ensures that candidates develop a deep understanding of the critical concepts and principles of their discipline and, by completion, are able to use discipline-specific practices flexibly to advance the learning of all students toward attainment of college-and careerreadiness standards, and standard 2: clinical partnerships and practice the provider ensures that effective partnerships and high quality clinical practice are central to preparation so that candidates develop the knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions necessary to demonstrate positive impact on all p-12 students’ learning and development” (p. 3). prior research (garza & smith, 2015) indicated the value of including reflection during field experience before the student teaching practicum as a way to foster aspiring teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge. however, teacher educators still need to help preservice teachers examine their developing beliefs. pedagogical content knowledge shulman (1986) argued that teachers pck was reflected by making their subject matter understood by students. pck is “the manner in which teachers relate their subject matter knowledge (what they know about what they teach) to their pedagogical knowledge (what they know about teaching) and how subject matter knowledge is part of the process of pedagogical reasoning” (cochran, deruiter, & king, 1993, p. 263). this means that teachers need to understand the dynamics of teaching and learning to effectively influence student learning and success. cochran et al. (1993) expanded on shulman’s (1986) notion of pck and proposed a model for teacher preparation based on a constructivist view of teacher learning with “pedagogical content knowing as the focus, intersected with four components: knowledge of pedagogy, knowledge of subject matter, knowledge of students, and knowledge of environmental contexts” (p. 268). they further noted that preservice teachers varied experiences during their preparation influenced the development of each type of understanding and “the construction of pedagogical content knowing resulted from multiple opportunities to teach, to observe and to reflect on one’s own teaching and that of others in a content area” (p. 269). similarly, kleickmann et al. (2012) suggested that the quality and number of learning opportunities during mcmahan & garza: fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning current issues in education, 19(3) 5 teacher preparation fostered preservice teacher’s understanding of pck. providing relevant experiences for preservice teachers to critically examine their existing beliefs about teaching and learning while connecting theory to practice may serve as a scaffolding approach to foster their pedagogical capacity. however, to what extent do preservice teachers develop the knowledge needed for teaching during a structured field experience? additional studies on teaching in content areas have contributed to the development of pck that links subject matter to instructional practices in the respective content. for example, ball, thames, and phelps (2008) described the mathematical knowledge and skills teachers needed for teaching and viewed pedagogical content knowledge as the component that links subject matter knowledge with the teaching performance. they concluded that although teachers need to be very knowledgeable in their content, this does not necessarily transfer to effective teaching. pedagogical content knowledge needs to be described and “how this knowledge is used in teaching effectively” (p. 404). therefore, it would be important to understand how a field experience prior to student teaching influences a candidate’s pedagogical knowledge and skills. in another study involving 43 preservice science teachers, nuangchalerm (2012) suggested that inquiry-based instruction enhanced pck with varied degrees of understanding and indicated that pck coupled with pedagogical knowledge influenced teacher development. in other words, effective teachers need a solid understanding of both content and pedagogical knowledge. monte-sano and budano (2013) furthered the dialogue on pck by examining the instructional practices of two high school history teachers and identified specific aspects of pck relevant to teaching the content. while they identified particular aspects of pck for teaching history, they also identified “instructional practices that illustrate the enactment of such knowledge” (p. 207). they concluded that pck is developed with varying degrees. alonzo, kobarg, and seidel (2012) identified aspects of pck used by two german physics teachers that influenced teachers’ interactions with students. teachers must know and be able to explain their content to students, further supporting previous research regarding the importance of both content and pedagogical knowledge. meister and jenks (2000) suggested, “preservice teachers need the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that help them examine their own beliefs, values, and personal experiences they bring to their understanding of teaching and learning” (p. 10). while other studies have linked preservice teachers’ pedagogical growth with mentoring experiences of adolescents (garza & ovando, 2012), only certain aspects of pck have been explored and described, suggesting the complexity of developing appropriate knowledge and skills. therefore, there “is the need for preservice teachers, their supervisors, and their mentor teachers to examine and discuss the rationale behind pedagogical decisions” (moore, 2003, p. 40). preservice teachers must continue to reflect on their practice as a way to continue the development of pck. pedagogical growth and development may be limited without a reflective examination of their teaching and learning opportunities while placed in a structured field experience. our investigation examined preservice teachers’ perceptions of their learning experiences in order to describe their pedagogical knowledge growth and development. hammerness et al., (2005) asserted that “while research identifies stages of teacher development, they lack a description of the characteristics of the learning experiences that may foster teacher development and growth” (p. 380). our study contributes to the dialogue by describing the pedagogical growth fostered through a structured field experience. in doing so, we identify specific knowledge and skills that aspiring teachers perceived to have gained through authentic interactions during their placement in a mentor teacher’s classroom. mcmahan & garza: fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning current issues in education, 19(3) 6 methods in this qualitative study we used constant comparative analysis (glaser & strauss, 1967; strauss & corbin, 1998) to examine preservice teachers’ written responses to an open-ended questionnaire about their learning in a structured field experience cohort prior to the student teaching semester. this interpretative study was framed within the theoretical underpinnings of field experiences (maistre & pare, 2010; mcmahan et al., 2015) and teacher knowledge (caep, n.d.). providing early field experiences in diverse settings is critical in fostering a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics of teaching and learning in academically, linguistically, economically, and socially unique classrooms (darling-hammond, 2006). the following questions guided this research study: 1) in what ways does a structured field experience influence preservice teachers’ pedagogical growth and development? and 2) in what ways does a structured field experience help preservice teachers to link theory and practice? participants purposeful and convenience sampling (creswell, 2007) were used to identify the participants. this means that the inquirer “purposefully selects individual participants that will best help the researcher understand the problem and research question” (creswell, 2003, p. 185). the participants in this study were enrolled in two different faculty member’s pedagogy course in the semester in which the study occurred. this allowed for data to be collected from each faculty member’s course. participants included 49 preservice teachers from two different educator preparation programs at public institutions of higher education in the same state: 43 females (three african americans, one asian, seven latinas, 31 whites and one other) and six males (three latinos and three whites) in their last semester of pedagogy coursework before entering the student teaching semester. while some of the participants may have had the opportunity to observe a classroom for a specific assignment or course, this was the first structured field experience for all participants. twenty-three of the participants were from a large university in the southwestern united states and were seeking secondary content area certification (grades 9-12). the other 26 participants were from another institution located approximately 200 miles north of the large university and seeking elementary certification (ec-6). while both institutions are identified as hispanic serving institutions (his), a majority of the students enrolled at respective universities are white. the participants were located at two different institutions and were selected because of similar contextual factors. all participants were enrolled in a 15-week structured field experience that took place at a school site. pedagogy coursework focused on instruction, classroom management, and assessment that included teaching and learning in a structured environment within a school setting. while one university program required participants to collaborate with an assigned mentor teacher 6 hours at the school weekly, the other program required them to collaborate 15 hours at the school weekly. all participants were informed on the scope of the course and field experience requirements on the first class day of the semester. both school sites were located near a large metropolitan area, enrolled a diverse student population, and were identified as title i campuses. the school sites were already established clinical field sites. participants at each school site were assigned a mentor teacher in their respective content and certification area by the faculty of the course, and collaborated with the same mentor teacher throughout the semester. since both institutions had an established structured field experience at the school sites, strong relationships between mentor teachers campus administrators, team leads, faculty liaisons, and the university faculty member had been formed. the school faculty who had mcmahan & garza: fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning current issues in education, 19(3) 7 previously served as mentor teachers were seasoned in how to best support preservice teacher candidates as they transitioned from the role of a college student to that of an aspiring teacher. this allowed each participant to have a direct activity related to his/her field experience placement. participants collaborated with their mentor teacher and engaged in the daily routines of the classroom teacher such as conducting instruction, participating in tutorials, and analyzing student performance data. the university instructor from both institutions was also on the school campus site during the required field experience time frame, which helped to foster the schooluniversity relationship. unlike other field placements in which the university instructor is not on site and has an informal relationship with the school campus, this structured field experience was planned in coordination with the school campus administrators and the actual university pedagogy class was held on the school campus. data collection data for this study were gathered using written responses from an open-ended questionnaire collected from preservice teachers at two different institutions at the end of the spring 2013 semester (marshall & rossman, 2006) and approved by the university’s institutional review board. having knowledge of the study, participants completed the questionnaire as a classroom activity with no grade or reward attached to it. the questionnaire, crafted by the university faculty, was informed by the literature and the purpose of this research study. the survey included the following questions: (a) in what ways did your cooperating teacher (mentor teacher) foster your development as a teacher? please provide specific examples; (b) in what ways has the block field experience fostered your development as a teacher? (c) what were you expecting from the block field experience to prepare you as a future teacher that you didn’t obtain? (d) in what ways have you transitioned from student to professional? (e) in what ways did the field experience foster your knowledge about teaching and learning? these open ended questions, specific in content and aligned with our research questions, allowed for individual responses that conveyed personal perceptions about teaching and learning. data analysis the data sources were analyzed independently by each researcher using qualitative data reduction strategies in order to manage, categorize, and interpret data to identify themes (marshall & rossman, 2006). to ensure inter-coder reliability, we independently sifted through the surveys using open-coding strategies to reduce the concepts and identify their properties (strauss & corbin, 1998). when the coding was complete, the data was grouped into categories; then through constant comparative analysis (glaser & strauss, 1967; strauss & corbin, 1998) we each sorted and further reduced the categories with descriptive statements taken from questionnaires. we then discussed the initial codes and preliminary categories, and again independently using constant comparative analysis and axial coding (charmaz, 2006), sorted and placed the data into new themes. a deeper analysis of the data was done by comparing initial codes and notes to generate an initial list of recurring themes. we finally examined and refined the themes, their labels, and their descriptive statements before agreeing on the themes. trustworthiness was added by peer debriefing at multiple intervals of the data analysis (mcmillan, 2012). findings orchestrating a structured field experience for preservice teachers before student teaching provides them with an opportunity to authentically engage and interact with a diverse student population. our study explored preservice teachers’ perceptions of their pedagogical growth and how they connected theory to practice. analysis of the data revealed three main themes related to mcmahan & garza: fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning current issues in education, 19(3) 8 preservice teacher development within the field experience context. the following themes reflected the voices of preservice teachers in a structured field experience: (a) viewing through a prescriptive lens, (b) valuing the collaborative experience, and (c) fostering self-awareness. viewing through a prescriptive lens viewing through a prescriptive lens in this study refers to preservice teachers’ superficial conceptions regarding pedagogical connections during the field experience. prescriptive learning encompasses preservice teachers’ observations about effective teaching practices without critically reflecting on the phenomenon. the participants identified effective instructional pedagogy whenever their observations directly linked to their course work. one participant noted: “it was great to see the different teachers and teaching styles” and another reported, “this class allowed me to see what happens during most of the school day.” while their classroom experiences provided them with an opportunity to recognize how a variety of approaches were important in the teaching process, these statements describe a teacher’s daily teaching activities as a contributing factor to their learning without providing a rationale to support their thinking. a majority of the participants were quick to point out specific instructional strategies that they perceived as beneficial to their overall learning experience. one participant commented: “i learned so many teaching methods like magic hat, visual cards, think, pair and share.” another participant affirmed “my mentor had a lot of great ideas to engage her students…i am glad i got the opportunity so now i have more tricks for my bag.” these comments reflect a gaining of ideas rather than the pedagogical understanding of their use in the classroom. participants described the application of instructional techniques that spoke to them during teaching episodes throughout the day. their classroom experiences were also instrumental in terms of seeing classroom management techniques. several participants believed they learned a lot observing how to manage a classroom and prevent disruptive situations. “my mentor teacher helped me develop an understanding for discipline in the classroom and how to handle situations with behavior. i learned that sometimes you need to give students ultimatums when it comes to their behaviors…” stated a participant. in this instance, there is an expressed rationale for the approach used by a teacher. a similar sentiment echoed the value of learning more about classroom management techniques: “i learned from my mentor to layout your rules in the very beginning and be mean the first couple of weeks; otherwise they probably won’t listen to you.” this statement expresses a narrow rationale but also conveys the importance of providing opportunities for students to work with teachers who have difficult students as well as master teachers. one participant expressed that “they wish they had seen more problem behaviors. i feel like if i would have had the opportunity to watch how a teacher handles problematic situations i would be even more prepared with having to handle them myself in the future.” again, the participants saw classroom management techniques being employed in the field experience as good practices that influenced their thinking about effective ways to manage a classroom. participants’ responses are noted as learning through a prescriptive lens because they illustrate surface level learning. this learning describes preservice teachers understanding from what is actually observed. these statements reflect a superficial grasp of the dynamics associated with effective teaching because they fail to recognize the importance of different teaching styles mcmahan & garza: fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning current issues in education, 19(3) 9 and the influence on student learning; however, their learning connects to their course work. the participants viewed these connections as learning even though they did not explain how it contributed to their learning. these classroom episodes were perceived as beneficial to their growth without critically thinking about the context in which they occurred. the specific instructional strategies were prescriptive in nature because they described superficial learning without a deep understanding of their impact on student learning and success. participants only identified the approach and failed to reflect on the dynamics of teaching and the classroom factors that promoted the perceived successful practices. therefore, they attributed growth because they “saw” good teaching practices; not truly understanding that growth involves critical reflection. classroom management responses resemble superficial aspects of learning, similar to the generalized responses regarding instructional practices. these statements are superficial because they describe what was implemented in the classroom and are accepted as a panacea for all behavioral challenges. a participant noted “my mentor had a great discipline system set up.” another participant stated their growth and development was impacted because they “learned firsthand the importance of classroom management strategies and the need for it to make the most of classroom instruction time”. participants failed to notice the other factors that contribute to effective classroom management practices, such as the culture for learning, the physical arrangement of the classroom, meeting students’ needs, and relationships (scarlett, ponte, & singh, 2009). valuing the collaborative experience learning and teaching alongside a mentor teacher helped preservice teachers to become closer and more connected to the realities of the daily classroom. preservice teachers acknowledged the value of the collaborative experience working jointly with another person’s support. participants believed that their mentor teacher was instrumental in helping them to develop and to refine their pedagogical skills and pedagogical content area knowledge. “being involved with my mentor and spending more time with my mentor” was a sentiment conveyed by most participants. the participants reported that their learning and pedagogical growth was strengthened through the collaborative experience. participants recognized that their mentor teachers invested time and effort to help them learn more about the daily intricacies of teaching. a participant noted “my teacher was very open and was happy to answer any questions that i had. she let me accompany her to her teacher meeting and always explained stuff they talked about.” another participant stated her mentor was also valuable because “she helped me see that it’s okay to not know everything. beforehand i thought i had to know all the answers.” still, another stated that she valued her mentor teacher’s insight because “she would sit down with me and explain the strengths and weaknesses of my lessons.” participants also recognized the open lines of communication as an important part of the learning experience. as one participant stated “their personal stories and advice that i was given as to what i should do when in certain situations have given me a great outlook as to what my future will look like.” the communication between the participant and the mentor was impactful because it enhanced participants’ knowledge about challenging issues they might face in their teaching career. these statements convey the importance of having a mentor teacher to discuss the nuances of teaching with an aspiring preservice teacher. they also indicate that mentor teachers need to explicitly explain the nuances of their practice to extend preservice teachers’ thinking from a technical aspect to a critical aspect. preservice teachers need to know and understand why specific instructional approaches are selected and the intended outcomes of their decisions. mcmahan & garza: fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning current issues in education, 19(3) 10 participants acknowledged the impact of the experience teaching and learning alongside a mentor teacher (mullen, 2002). the participants perceived the value of their placement with a mentor teacher because they “got a behind the scenes look at what it’s like to be a teacher.” comments such as “i wanted to be involved more,” “i wish i could of taught more lessons and been more involved with the kids,” and “i wanted to be in the class more and spend more oneon-one time with my mentor teacher to ask questions,” suggest the positive influence on participants’ dispositions regarding teaching and learning. fostering self-awareness the overall experience was important for facilitating a self-awareness of what it means to be a teacher. the idea of fostering self-awareness refers to preservice teachers’ understanding of their professional role. this self-awareness includes characteristics and dispositions that teachers must embody. participants noted that they were now prepared for the teaching profession because they had to “act grown up.” they defined this state of using professional language to communicate and dressing in professional attire. one participant commented: “every time i go [out to the school] i remind myself to dress and act like a professional,” and another reiterated, “i find myself being more professional everyday by the way i dress, talk and hold myself in front of my peers and students.” similarly, another participant expressed: “i made sure students referred to me as mrs. [name] and i wore very professional clothes and my whole demeanor was as if i was already a teacher. i even noticed students taking that in and showing me a different kind of respect that i have received in the past.” while the participants embraced the idea of seeing themselves as a professional, this thinking was not framed through a depth of understanding even though they had the opportunity to practice their role in a genuine setting. one participant stated, “i am sure i can hold my own class now. i have learned i am capable of teaching and leading a group of students.” even though the experience fostered a level of confidence and reinforced participants’ desire to become a teacher, the comment reflects a nascent understanding of knowledge and skills instrumental in fostering a professional stance (hammerness et al., 2005). discussion while participants attributed growth to seeing what they observed and its effect on students in the classroom, they failed to question their assumptions and to think critically about the significance of their perspective (hammerness et al., 2005). preservice teachers perceived their growth as a teacher through a prescriptive lens because they reacted to what was observed and not to the technical aspects of teaching. while their new learning reflects a surface level of understanding the dynamics of teaching, it provides a pedagogical foundation of knowledge that can be enhanced with practice (cochran et al., 1993). participants noted that the hands on experience helped to foster their understanding of what constitutes a professional educator (shulman, 1987). the participants perceived their growth because they saw effective practices being utilized in the classroom and embraced them as approaches they could utilize. however, participants failed to connect the instructional process to theory. the structured field experience fostered preservice teacher’s growth as a teacher by connecting what they learned in their pedagogy classes to actual practice, but without linking their learning to theory. although preservice teachers connected their growth and development as a teacher to actual observations and experiences, this view supports the importance of designing appropriate field experiences that challenge and enhance preservice teacher growth mcmahan & garza: fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning current issues in education, 19(3) 11 and development (zeichner, 2010). in spite of this, field experiences provide opportunities for preservice teachers to make sense of conceptual knowledge of the teaching profession. it was evident in the participants’ responses that the learning experiences situated in a structured field experience were influential to their growth as a teacher because they commented on the pedagogical practices reflected in the daily realties and routines of the classroom (cochran et al., 1993). the participants’ comments highlighted effective instructional practices and management approaches as a critical component of their pedagogical growth (ball et al., 2008). participants expressed the desire to spend more time interacting with students and the mentor teacher because it was impactful to their professional growth. by “doing more” in the field-based practicum experience, they felt their own learning and development was positively impacted, much in concert with findings by kleickmann et al. (2012). participants expressed they grew as a teacher by spending more time with the students and mentor teacher and by participating in meaningful activities, not tutoring kids. they did not see “tutoring” kids as a valuable component of their practicum experience, in contrast to research that suggested the value of this experience (garza & ovando, 2012). participants wanted to do more “teacher stuff” rather than tutor. preservice teachers perceived these tasks as not critical to their growth as an aspiring teacher. this reaffirms they were not able to critically think about why certain practices were used; they wanted to just learn from what the saw in the experience through a prescriptive lens without thinking about other factors that influenced the context of the classroom (alonzo et al., 2012). thinking long-term about the implications of the learning experience was not something the participants were able to grasp; however, as monte-sano and budano (2013) suggested, their level of knowledge and skills develops over time. participants were more concerned with the “here and now” and failed to see that true growth takes time and requires critical thinking and application to oneself. they were more focused on the mechanistic aspects of teaching and not “how classroom episodes can help the individual to see theory in action and recognize the effectiveness of its application” (garza & smith, 2015, p. 9). preservice teachers in our study not only recognized the value of teaching and learning while observing theory in practice (garza & ovando, 2012; mullen, 2002), they also expressed an emergent interpretation of self-awareness about what it means to be a teacher. taggart and wilson (1998) explained that teachers fail to focus on the critical aspects of teaching as a result of their inexperience with the intricacies of teaching. chong, low, and goh (2011) noted that novice educators find the dynamics of teaching demanding because when they focus on the self, their pedagogical perspective is limited. in contrast, preservice teachers connected their observations of effective practices and perceived this as a way to effectively manage their future classroom. although this reflects a superficial perspective, as kleickmann et al. (2012) suggested, it is necessary to orchestrate learning opportunities for preservice teachers to continue to enhance their understanding of the complex dynamics of teaching. they have yet come to the realization how understanding theory is critical to their pedagogical development. additionally, preservice teachers attributed various constructs about the meaning of professionalism in the teaching profession. it is only surface area learning because they focused on the self that included aspects of (grooming and professional language). they failed to express how professional communication, interaction, and appearance influence students’ learning and collaboration with colleagues (chong et al., 2011). preservice teachers also failed to recognize the overall impact of lifelong learning through their narrow focus of reporting specific instructional strategies, classroom management practices, mentoring experiences and specific professional appearances as influential in their growth as a teacher (hammerness, 2005). mcmahan & garza: fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning current issues in education, 19(3) 12 limitations our study is limited by the small number of participants from two different public universities and included all level preservice teachers enrolled in two different certification programs. participants in other educator preparation programs and geographical areas might encounter a different set of circumstances that may influence their learning experiences in a structured field experience setting. although our findings add to the research on pedagogical growth by illuminating preservice teachers’ voices, our interpretations of the findings are based on perceived experiences of preservice teachers in a mentor’s classroom. therefore, caution should be taken when generalizing the conclusions from this study to other field-based experiences with similar learning and teaching contexts. implications understanding preservice teachers’ growth in a structured field experience prior to student teaching may inform teacher educators how to better structure learning opportunities that will enhance pedagogical knowledge. assessing and understanding preservice teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and skills may provide insight into the process of learning how to teach (fives & buehl, 2008). our study contributes to the body of research on teacher knowledge by identifying those aspects of “learning, social and cultural contexts, and teaching” that need further understanding to help preservice teachers improve their practice (darling-hammond, 2006). our findings suggest that although preservice teachers’ growth was limited in scope, their pedagogical development was enhanced through the structured field experience. in concert with findings by monte-sano and budano (2013), participants obtained pedagogical knowledge with varying degrees of understanding. their observations and involvement in an authentic classroom setting with the guidance of a mentor teacher influenced their thinking about teaching and their teacher identity. this implies that field experiences must have a deliberate purpose (shulman, 1986). second, our findings reinforce the importance of a structured field experience before student teaching to help preservice teachers to link theory to practice. although the participants expressed various aspects that contributed to their emergent teacher identity, the focus was on the self as professional and actual classroom observations, reflecting a narrow perspective about professionalism and dispositions. this suggests that teacher educators must help preservice teachers to reflect critically about their learning and observations through a systematic process that includes regular interpersonal and/or intrapersonal dialogue. in addition, “early field experiences should be carefully structured, guiding future teachers in their overall development through the assistance of competent cooperating teachers willing to work in conjunction with the university to foster appropriate development” (aiken & day, 1999, p. 9). further research might explore how preservice teachers’ superficial learning can be enhanced during the student teaching practicum. it is especially important not to orchestrate field experience opportunities that focus solely on exposing preservice teachers to the complex dynamics of teaching, but also to deliberately ensure that they are systematically crafted to strengthen preservice teachers thinking to promote their pedagogical growth and development. in doing so, preservice teachers may be more effective in the classroom as they begin their careers in education (caep, n.d.). references aiken, i. p., & day, b. d. 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(2001). teacher preparation research: current knowledge, gaps, and recommendations. seattle, wa: center for the study of teaching and policy. zeichner, k. (2010). rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college-and university-based teacher education. journal of teacher education, 61(12), 88-99. zyngier, d. (2007). productive pedagogies: seeking a common vocabulary and framework for talking about pedagogy with preservice teachers. in t. townsend & r. bates (eds.), handbook of teacher education (pp. 205-217). dordrecht, the netherlands: springer. mcmahan & garza: fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning current issues in education, 19(3) 16 author notes sarah k. mcmahan, ph.d. department of teacher education texas woman’s university po box 425769, denton, tx 76204 smcmahan@twu.edu sarah mcmahan, ph.d. is an associate professor of teacher education at texas woman’s university. her research focus is in the area of school/university partnerships and preservice/novice teacher induction and mentoring. rubén garza, ph.d. department of curriculum and instruction texas state university 601 university drive, ed bldg. room 3075, san marcos, tx 78666 ruben.garza2001@gmail.com rubén garza, ph.d. is a professor in the department of curriculum and instruction at texas state university. his research interests include mentoring, preservice teacher education, culturally responsive pedagogy, and latino education. mailto:smcmahan@twu.edu mailto:ruben.garza2001@gmail.com mcmahan & garza: fostering preservice teachers’ development: engagement in practice and learning current issues in education, 19(3) 17 volume 19, issue 3 january 17, 2016 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team interim executive editor constantin schreiber copy editors stephanie mcbride-schreiner lucinda watson layout editor constantin schreiber section editor aaron bryant cie template current issues in education, 18(3) 1 volume 18, issue 3 december 23, 2015 issn 1099-839x school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects douglas gagnon university of new hampshire abstract: the u.s. department of education has recently called on all states to create plans to ensure equal access to excellent teachers. although there are numerous limitations in using vam in highstakes contexts such as teacher evaluation, such techniques offer promise in helping states grapple with issues in equitable access. research presented here expands our understanding of this topic, showing that disparities in access to high value-add teaching exist not only along lines of student poverty, but also across location. furthermore, findings suggest that teacher supply may predict the relative disparities in access for a given location. the policy impacts of these findings are explored. keywords: teacher effectiveness, equity, value-added modeling, teacher supply, education policy apa-style citation: gagnon, d. (2015). school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects. current issues in education, 18(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1473 accepted: november 11 th , 2015 teachers perform critically important work, and are unquestionably a major influence on the achievement of students (darling-hammond, 1999; rivkin, hanushek, & kain, 2005). because there is meaningful variation in how well teachers perform, understanding the distribution of teacher effectiveness is a matter of great importance in the push for equality of opportunity. schools serving students from disadvantaged communities face significantly greater challenges due to the countless out-of-school factors that impact learning (berliner, 2009). thus, it is critical that traditionally underserved students are not further disadvantaged because of the teachers assigned to them. yet, research demonstrates that students in high-poverty schools receive instruction from teachers that are, on average, less qualified on a number of indicators such as experience, full licensure, and competitiveness of undergraduate education (clotfelter, ladd, vigdor, & wheeler, 2007). another report found that schools with 55 percent or more of its students eligible for freeor reduced-price lunch (frpl) have twice the rate of out-of-field teachers as do schools with a frpl rate of 15 percent or less (almy & theokas, 2010). furthermore, rural, high-poverty, and diverse schools exhibit considerably higher rates of beginning teachers than do more affluent schools (gagnon & mattingly, 2014). overall, little http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1473 school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 2 doubt exists that teacher qualifications differ considerably across school characteristics, including the socioeconomic status of its students. the conversation surrounding equal access to good teaching has recently turned its focus from teacher qualities to teacher effectiveness. teacher effectiveness is a measure of how a teacher impacts student outcomes, whereas teacher quality speaks to the credentials that a teacher brings into a classroom (hinchey, 2010). this distinction is an important one, as research has consistently shown that certain teacher qualities—most notably experience and advanced degrees—are poor predictors of teacher effectiveness (harris & sass, 2007; nye, konstantopoulos, & hedges, 2004; rivkin et al., 2005). therefore, researchers are increasingly looking at how teachers influence student outcomes when analyzing teacher effectiveness, usually in the form of value-added to achievement on standardized assessments. admittedly, this is a narrow way to operationalize a construct as complicated as teacher effectiveness, as it accesses a fraction of the impact of great teachers. although one may get a more complete picture of teacher effectiveness by also taking into account other data such as those taken from structured classroom observations, such information is difficult to obtain and therefore not available when making comparisons across large numbers of schools from many different districts, and hence there is no conclusive evidence as to how teacher observations might differ across school type. it is important to note that the use of value-added modeling (vam) to identify trends in teacher effectiveness is much different from its use in high-stakes teacher evaluation, and considerably more caution is urged when vam is used in cases of the latter than in those of the former (national research council, 2010). two major criticisms of vam being used for teacher evaluation are not applicable when aggregating teacher estimates to make research conclusions that are relatively low-stakes in nature. 1 the first major criticism of vam is the lack of reliability when making individual estimates. however, if idiosyncratic teacher-level errors are indeed random, then aggregating teacher estimates to the school level will cancel out much of this error. therefore, since the methodology here does not concern itself with individual estimates but rather only means, concerns of precision are less paramount. the second major criticism presented is that vam creates unintended negative consequences on the learning environment when used in teacher evaluation. since vam in this context is not being used in personnel decisions nor are individual results being made public, teachers and administrators would have no incentive to resort to deleterious behavior: teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum, or even outright gaming. thus, the estimation of teacher value-added scores represents one of the most feasible and valid means to evaluate the distribution of teacher effectiveness in a context such as this. 2 1 by “relatively low-stakes” i mean, specifically, that such analytics do not inform teacher evaluations or personnel decisions. 2 it is assumed that teacher effectiveness is context-specific. for example, some teachers may be effective in lowpoverty environments, but not high-poverty ones—and vice versa. this clearly has policy implications. for instance, incentives to move high-performing teachers into needier schools might not be effective due to the contextspecific nature of effectiveness. an exploration of this is beyond the scope of this paper. however, it is worth noting that context-specific teacher effectiveness would not diminish the findings of this paper, as in it i seek to explain, among other things, why some schools with challenging environments employ effective teachers, whereas similarly challenging—and contextually similar—schools do not. importantly, a number of policy solutions exist which aim to improve the equitability of teacher access that do not require effective teachers to change contexts. school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 3 purpose this study aims to extend the current literature on access to effective teaching. recent studies suggest that lower-income students receive less effective instruction than their more affluent peers, but the degree to which this disparity exists is highly variable (max & glazerman, 2014). i hypothesize that levels of teacher supply may explain why a poor school in one area may have effective teachers, whereas an equally poor school in a different area may be seriously lacking. literature which addresses the geographical distribution of teacher qualities is sparse, while no known study looks at teacher effectiveness in particular. however, it stands to reason that certain geographic locations may be especially attractive to teachers based upon an abundance of other work opportunities or other factors related to quality of life. this has the effect of benefitting all schools in that region—even those that would otherwise find it difficult to attract teachers due to a more challenging population of students. this trend is further compounded by the fact that the geographic scope of teacher markets tends to be rather small, as teachers generally express a preference for schools close to their home (boyd, lankford, loeb, & wyckoff, 2005). in short, certain regions attract more teachers from outside areas while simultaneous producing more teachers—teachers that are likely to stay in the area. through this investigation i provide new evidence that furthers our understanding of these matters, and explore relevant policy implications. area of study the sample used in this study comes from the state of new hampshire, which provides an interesting context to examine trends in teacher effectiveness across poverty and place. although new hampshire is a relatively affluent, white, and rural state in comparison to others, the regions of the state vary considerably. the rate of childhood poverty in new hampshire— once the lowest in nation—has been rising in recent years, and new hampshire’s child poverty rate is now lower than only 35 states (mattingly, carson, & schaefer, 2013). overall the state of new hampshire offers a well-rounded sample in terms of urbanicity, with nearly equal numbers of children living in rural, suburban, and central city locations. child poverty is nearly twice as common in rural areas as it is in suburbs, while central cities boast rates three times higher than suburbs (mattingly et al., 2013). the range of demographics found in new hampshire is reflected in regional differences. with a long north-south axis, the state is marked by a short coastline in the more urban and suburban southeast corner, while it is flanked by more sparsely populated mountainous regions in the north and west. three counties in new hampshire are considered metropolitan areas— stratford, rockingham, and hillsborough—which together account for 62 percent of the state’s population (johnson, 2012). figure 1 shows a map of new hampshire with its ten counties labeled. hillsborough county, which contains the manchester-nashua urban corridor, is the most populous and diverse county in the state, in terms of race as well as income. demographer ken johnson (2012) reports that nearly a quarter of children in the city of manchester live in poverty, compared to less than 5 percent in suburban hillsborough county. adjacent to this metropolitan area are the counties of carroll, belknap, merrimack, and cheshire. johnson (2012) reports that carroll county is representative of one of 300 rural growth nodes in the country, buoyed by recreational activities that are in relative proximity to metropolitan areas. this contrasts with coos county in the far north, a region that has experienced a population decline for three generations. the state as a whole exhibits very different of forms of rurality—from affluent and growing to relatively poor and economically stagnant. school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 4 figure 1. a county map of the state of new hampshire. overall, there is a broad trend in new hampshire where the state becomes poorer, lessdiverse, more rural, and less populous as one looks north and west across the state. i use data from this study to construct figure 2, which consists of a pair of maps that show the proportion of students who are in town or rural schools, 3 and the proportion of students eligible for frpl, at the county level across the state. the map on the left shows that the state is composed of predominantly rural or town designations, with only the southeastern counties of hillsborough, rockingham, and strafford serving more urban and suburban students than town and rural students. the map on the right shows a slightly more complicated trend in frpl rates, with more affluent rockingham and merrimack counties in the south central part of the state contrasting with the poorer counties of coos and sullivan in the north, and west, respectively. data all student-level data and teacher linkages are obtained from the new hampshire department of education. these data include a number of student-level covariates: freeor reduced-price lunch status, english language learner status, disability status, race, gender, attendance, and suspensions. the achievement data used here come from the 2011-2012 new england common assessment program (necap), a criterion-referenced assessment which was administered in 3 rd through 8 th and 11 th grade for mathematics and ela. the mathematics and 3 town/rural and suburban/urban designations roughly coincide with metro and non-metro assignments, another common classification of urbanicity. therefore, town and rural were combined in this graphic in order to represent urbanicity as a binary variable. school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 5 ela necap assessments were administered in the states of new hampshire, vermont, rhode island, and maine. much of the school-level information used in this study was taken from the new hampshire department of education website. data on the percentage of students within a school who are registered for frpl is readily available. the county within which each school resides was obtained using the “nh school and district profile” page of the department’s website, which was then hand-entered. information on the urbanicity of each school was taken from the national center for education statistics. data sets were merged using nces school identification codes. figure 2. proportions of students who attend rural or town schools, and who are eligible for free-or reduce-priced lunch, by county. . methods there are three primary analysis steps in this study. first, i create a value-added model which estimates teacher contributions to student achievement. then, a second-stage regression methodology is employed, fitting a taxonomy of regressions that use teacher effectiveness estimates from the value-added model as the outcome variable and school characteristics as predicting variables. finally, i conduct a correlational analyses to understand how findings from the second-stage regressions may be explained using proxies for teacher supply, examining relationships at the county level. each of these three primary analysis steps is now discussed in detail. creating a value-added model a value-added model is constructed using high-dimensional fixed effects to estimate a teacher’s contribution to student achievement, which is used here to operationalize teacher effectiveness. this value-added model is typical in its structure, estimating a teacher’s individual contribution to student learning after controlling for prior achievement as well as the following student-level covariates: freeor reduced-price lunch status, english language learner status, disability status, race, gender, attendance, and suspensions. a formula for i students and j teachers, with one level of high-dimensional teacher fixed effects, may be parsimoniously written as: a = β1aprior+β2x +fψ +ε. school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 6 a is a i x 1 vector of current year test scores; aprior is a i x 6 matrix of prior student achievement; x is a matrix of student demographic information. ψ is a j x 1 vector of teacher identifiers, and ε is a vector of error terms. this is accomplished using a stata command called fese, which is a user-developed command developed to deal with high-dimensional fixed effects when the value of the fixed effects are of interest (nichols, 2008). computationally speaking, fese uses least squares approximation to estimate unit effects, in this case the teacher, and reports coefficients and heteroscedasticityand cluster-robust standard errors. the difference between an individual teacher effect and the mean of all teacher effects represents that teacher’s estimated contribution to achievement. the sample of teachers for which value-added estimates are created is limited to teachers in the 4 th and 7 th grades. assessments which cover the content in these grades are actually administered in the start of 5 th and 8 th grades, respectively. these cohorts will be identified as 5 th and 8 th grade throughout this paper, with the understanding that this refers to the year of the assessment, not the groups of teachers for which the value-added estimates refer to. the resulting subsamples include 603 teacher estimates in 5 th grade mathematics, 603 in 5 th grade ela, 190 in 8 th grade mathematics, and 201 in 8 th grade ela. second-stage regression once teacher effects are estimated, they are then used as the outcome measure in the second-stage regressions which use school characteristics as predictors. a taxonomy of fitted regression models is constructed, adding predictors one group at a time: frpl rates and urbanicity, then county indicators, and finally frpl-county interaction terms. 4 outcome and predictor variables in the second-stage regression are listed below. teacher effectiveness: value-added estimates of teacher effectiveness. this is the estimate of the average contribution a teacher makes to student learning, presented in standard deviation units. this serves as the outcome variable in the second-stage regression. school lower-income (school_frpl): the percentage of students qualifying for frpl within a school is used as an indicator of the proportion of students in lower-income families, and a rough proxy for the level of poverty within a school. urbanicity (urb): a vector of urbanicity dummy variables as defined according to the urban-centric codes developed by the u.s. census bureau and supported by the national center for education statistics (nces). these urban-centric codes of urban, suburban, town, and rural also have three subcategories: population gradations of large, medium, and small for city and suburb; distance from urbanized area gradations of fringe, distant, and remote for towns and rural areas. however, due to the very small number of schools in some subcategories—and research questions which do not require such granular divisions of urbanicity—only the four main categories were used. urban: 1 if the school is in a territory inside an urbanized area and inside a principal city; 0 otherwise. suburban: 1 if the school is located outside a principal city and inside of an urbanized area then all other urbanicity dummy variables=0. otherwise this serves as the excluded variable. town: 1 if the school is located outside an urbanized area and inside of an urban cluster; 0 otherwise. rural: 1 if the school is located outside an urban cluster; 0 otherwise. 4 these interaction terms estimate the unique impact of county-level frpl rate on teacher effectiveness estimates in each of the ten counties in the state, as this yields a distinct slope for each county. school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 7 since the suburban variable is excluded, all other urbanicity variables are interpreted with respect to suburban schools. county (cou): a vector of county dummy variables. the cheshire county binary variable is excluded, 5 and all other urbanicity variables are interpreted with respect to it. correlational analyses finally, i conduct descriptive, correlational analyses for county-level aggregate variables of interest. to address questions related to teacher supply, two county-level variables are examined: frpl rates, and normalized necap achievement levels. teacher supply is used in a general sense in this study, as one cannot simply measure the overall quality and quantity of teachers in a given geographic area. however, both student achievement and student income are highly correlated to levels of adult education. therefore, it is a reasonable assumption that areas with a more educated adult populace will also have more teachers, and hence overall academic performance and lower rates of student poverty serve as useful proxies for the level of teacher supply in a given county. both proxy variables are calculated by taking the average of the all students from the sample who reside in that county, for each respective variable. research questions 1. do teacher effectiveness estimates exhibit meaningful variability? 2. can school characteristics such as frpl rates, urbanicity, and county predict teacher effectiveness? 3. do county-level proxies for teacher supply explain disparities in access to effective teaching? results establishing meaningful variability in teacher effectiveness estimates is a necessary precursor to addressing research questions 2 and 3 in this study, as a lack of variability precludes any examination of such. in related literature, the size of teacher effects are most commonly reported as the estimated impact that a teacher 1 standard deviation (s.d.) above the mean has on standardized student achievement. i find that the estimated impact of having a teacher 1 s.d. above the mean is a 0.2 s.d. difference in student achievement. effects are slightly larger in 5 th (0.22 s.d.) than in 8 th grade (0.18 s.d.), and slightly larger for ela (0.22 s.d.) than for mathematics (0.18 s.d.). this represents a somewhat surprising finding as prior research has shown teacher effects to be greater in mathematics than in ela (hanushek & rivkin, 2010). overall, however, the magnitudes of these estimates are meaningfully large, and relatively similar to those found in past research (aaronson, barrow, & sander, 2007; nye, konstantopoulos, & hedges, 2004; rockoff, 2004), and as such, allow for further investigation into teacher effectiveness across poverty and place. to answer the second research question, a series of regression models is fitted using school characteristics to predict teacher effectiveness estimates. table 1 presents the coefficient estimates for these fitted regression models. models 1 through 6 suggest that the relationship between school frpl rates and teacher value-added is robust to the inclusion of controls, while urbanicity is sensitive to other covariates. that is to say, the relationship between the income level of a school and the estimated effectiveness of its teachers remained relatively consistent whether or not one accounts for the urbanicity or county of a school; the same cannot be said of the relationship between urbanicity and teacher effects vis a vis the other school factors that are 5 as the following analyses illustrate, cheshire county exhibited the lowest average teacher value-added estimates and therefore is offers the most clarity to use as the excluded variable. school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 8 table 1 ols estimates, teacher value-added (contribution to student achievement, in standardized units) intercept 0.056 (0.010) *** 0.023 (0.009) *** -0.075 (0.028) ** 0.067 (0.012) *** 0.010 (0.030) 0.017 (0.035) -0.029 (0.089) percentage of students eligible for frpl -0.0018 (0.0003) *** -0.0022 (0.0003 ) *** -0.0019 (0.0003) *** -0.0024 (0.0004 ) *** -0.0012 (0.0024) urbanicity (suburban excluded) urban -0.030 (0.017) † 0.031 (0.019) 0.037 (0.025) 0.059 (0.028) * town -0.031 (0.017) † 0.006 (0.017) 0.002 (0.024) 0.005 (0.026) rural -0.025 (0.013) † -0.016 (0.013) -0.025 (0.016) -0.017 (0.017) county (cheshire county excluded) belknap 0.025 (0.038) 0.030 (0.038) 0.035 (0.037) 0.210 (0.124) † carroll 0.059 (0.040) 0.064 (0.039) 0.080 (0.041) † -0.062 (0.113) coos 0.144 (0.041) *** 0.166 (0.041) *** 0.176 (0.041) *** 0.046 (0.158) grafton 0.075 (0.037) * 0.068 (0.036) † 0.076 (0.038) * 0.113 (0.101) hillsborough 0.083 (0.029) ** 0.079 (0.029) ** 0.056 (0.034) † 0.106 (0.089) merrimack 0.083 (0.032) ** 0.066 (0.032) * 0.062 (0.032) † 0.020 (0.094) rockingham 0.102 (0.030) *** 0.068 (0.030) * 0.059 (0.033) * 0.066 (0.033) strafford 0.052 (0.033) 0.047 (0.033) 0.042 (0.037) 0.161 (0.098) † sullivan 0.056 (0.040) 0.076 (0.040) † 0.084 (0.040) * 0.271 (0.146) † interaction terms (cheshire county excluded) belknap * frpl rate -.0048 (0.003) carroll * frpl rate 0.0037 (0.0035) coos * frpl rate 0.0025 (0.0037) grafton * frpl rate -0.0011 (0.0028) hillsborough * frpl rate -0.0017 (0.025) merrimack * frpl rate 0.0020 (0.0027) rockingham * frpl rate 0.0009 (0.0027) strafford * frpl rate -0.0035 (0.0027) sullivan * frpl rate -0.0044 (0.0035) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 note. standard errors in parentheses. †p<.10,*p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001 school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 9 controlled for. ultimately, this adds validity to establishing a connection between school poverty and teacher effectiveness. furthermore, the magnitude of the frpl coefficient is meaningfully large, as high-poverty schools (frpl=76%), for example, are associated with teacher effects 0.12 s.d. lower than those of low poverty schools (frpl=25%). the impact of school county on estimated teacher effects is also meaningful: half (five) of the counties in new hampshire have significantly higher coefficients than that of the lowest county. next, county-level frpl slopes are analyzed and interpreted (model 7), as these coefficients speak to within-county relationships between school poverty and teacher effectiveness. because these coefficients are interaction terms, they must be interpreted with respect to the frpl coefficient; by adding these two terms, one can determined the estimated relationship between school frpl rates and teacher effectiveness estimates within a county. the frpl term alone represents the relationship between frpl rate and estimated teacher effects when all other county dummy variables are zero, which occurs when the county is the excluded category (cheshire). the findings presented here again reveal interesting trends. in the county with the most negative slope, 6 a 20 percentage point difference in frpl rates is negatively associated with a 0.12 difference in teacher value-added. this contrasts to the three counties (carroll, coos, and merrimack) where the estimated effect of frpl rates is actually positive, although not significantly different from no effect. 7 rockingham and cheshire counties exhibit small negative coefficients that are also not statistically different from zero. thus, findings here suggests that affluent schools in carrol, cheshire, coos, merrimack, and rockingham counties employ teachers no more effective, on average, than lower-income schools in each respective county, while significant disparities in other counties do exist. table 2 the relationship between school frpl rate and teacher value-added, by county (first column), and its corresponding state rank (second column). state rank in absolute achievement (third column) and frpl rates (fourth column) are also presented. 6 belknap had the most negative slope, which equals the belknap*frpl coefficient (-0.0048) plus the frpl coefficient (-0.0012), or -0.006. 7 t-tests reveal that the interaction terms of belknap, strafford, and sullivan counties (the most negative effects of frpl rates) are significantly different (alpha=.05) from carroll, coos, and merrimack counties. county frpl coefficienct (from model 7) rank, frpl coefficient (10=most negative) rank, absolute achievement (10= lowest achievement) rank, frpl rates (10= highest rate of students on frpl) belknap -0.0060 10th 6th 6th carroll 0.0025 1st 1st 8th cheshire -0.0012 5th 5th 5th coos 0.0012 2nd 8th 10th grafton -0.0023 6th 4th 3rd hillsborough -0.0030 7th 9th 4th merrimack 0.0008 3rd 2nd 2nd rockingham -0.0003 4th 3rd 1st strafford -0.0047 8th 7th 7th sullivan -0.0057 9th 10th 9th school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 10 to answer research question 3, the relationship between within-county frpl effects and proxies for teacher supply are examined. the county-level frpl coefficients exhibit a modest, negative relationship (ρ= -0.21) with the percentage of students in that county eligible for frpl, and a strong, positive correlation (ρ=0.65) between the overall level of achievement in a county and its frpl coefficient. both of these correlations support the primary hypothesis of this study, namely that areas of high teacher supply should exhibit a more equitable distribution of effective teachers across school poverty. table 2 further illustrates this point: counties with lower income and achievement levels generally have more negative frpl slopes, and vice versa. figure 3 graphically represents how disparities in access vary according to a teacher supply proxy. on this graph is plotted the estimated teacher effectiveness versus the frpl rate of a school, with separate best fit lines for schools in the five higher-, and five lower-, achieving counties in the state. in the higher-achieving counties, this difference is not statistically significant. in lower-achieving counties, however, the difference is noteworthy: a teacher at a school with 30 percent frl students (moderately-low poverty) adds an additional 0.1 standard deviations to student achievement compared to a teacher at a school with a 70 percent frl rate (moderately-high poverty). overall, it appears that disparities in access to effective teaching are greatest in areas that have lower levels of teacher supply. figure 3. estimated teacher effect across school frpl rate, higherand lower-achieving counties. conclusions this study’s primary contribution to related literature is its incorporation of geographical location to our understanding of the distribution of teacher effectiveness. meaningful differences were found in the average effectiveness ratings across counties in the state of new hampshire, with differences between high and low value-added counties on the order of 0.1 standard deviation. such variation might be expected; more interesting findings emerge when such variation is explored in greater detail—specifically that the level of disparity in access to effective teaching may be predicted by the overall levels of achievement and poverty in a county. this finding speaks directly to the conclusion by max and glazerman (2014) that, although highpoverty schools are more likely to employ teachers with lower effectiveness ratings, there exists -0.12 -0.1 -0.08 -0.06 -0.04 -0.02 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0 20 40 60 80 te ac h e r ef fe ct ( s. d . ab o ve t h e m e an , st u d e n t ac h ie ve m e n t) estimated teacher effect, higher-achieving counties estimated teacher effect, lower-achieving counties school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 11 considerable variation and in fact some districts do not exhibit such an inequality. i argue that this equity-inequity spectrum may be caused in part by differences in factors related to teacher supply. specifically, one would suspect that geographic regions which can better attract teachers due to any number of quality of life factors—a more educated populace, recreational activities, employment opportunities, or higher pay—would be better able to staff all of its schools with effective teachers. proximity to teacher training programs is yet another factor which may be related to the supply of effective teachers. conversely, those regions that find it difficult to attract professionals in general likely find it especially difficult to staff its poorest schools. indeed, the counties in new hampshire where this relationship is the strongest are the very places where one would expect inequities to be sharpest. in the new hampshire counties that exhibit lower rates of student achievement and affluence, there is considerably more inequality in teacher effectiveness ratings across schools of higher and lower compositions of students on freeor reduced-price lunch. one may take a supply-side view of teacher staffing to understand this finding. if regional factors exist which differentially attract talented teachers, poorer schools in high-supply counties may benefit considerably more than similarly poor schools in low-supply counties. in order to illustrate an example of high-supply region, i offer the case of rockingham county, which is located on the new hampshire coast and boasts an affluent and well-educated population. although the overall rate of lower-income students in rockingham county in this sample is quite low at 14 percent, there are also a number of schools with one-third or more of its student eligible for frpl. it stands to reason that these schools with moderate levels of lower-income students benefit from being situated in such an affluent area. indeed, rockingham county shows no difference in effectiveness ratings across lines of school frpl rates. merrimack and carroll counties present similar examples, as both regions likely have little difficulty attracting and retaining a well-educated populace when compared to other counties in the state. furthermore, these counties are located closer to many of the state’s major teacher preparation programs, which are by-in-large located in the southern and eastern parts of the state, providing another explanation for these results. policy implications policy and politics must address unequal opportunity, as most americans find the growing disparities between rich and poor to be alarming (putnam, 2015; reardon, 2013). clearly the factors at play are complex, as numerous issues ranging from parenting and values, to educational access, to the social capital of one’s neighborhood—all viewed through a historical tapestry of systematic disadvantage for immigrants and minorities—each seem to explain away a piece of the puzzle. one thing is certain: no panacea exists through which the disparities in achievement may be quickly closed. despite this, students, educators, and policy makers understand the classroom teacher to be the single-greatest school factor in diminishing or perpetuating disparities in achievement. no other entity outside of the home works as intimately with students, and research has consistently shown the outsized effect that teachers can have on students (nye et al., 2004; rivkin et al., 2005). perhaps just as importantly, and unlike many other family and community factors, the qualifications and performance expectations of teachers may to a significant degree be determined through policy decisions. in november, 2014, the u.s. department of education asked each state to submit a plan describing the steps it will take to ensure that poor and minority children are not taught at higher rates by inexperienced, unqualified, or out-of-field teachers. these plans required states to identify gaps in access to “excellent” teaching, and to propose strategies aimed at closing identified gaps. plans, first submitted in june, 2015, vary considerably in the metrics used to school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 12 identify excellence, driven in part by the teacher personnel and evaluation data available. some states that lack sophisticated data systems and analytic capacity had to rely on trends in novice teachers and highly qualified teacher rates, alone, to serve as proxies for unqualified and/or out-of-field teachers. given that roughly 99% of teachers in the us are “highly qualified,” this measure offers very limited insight into disparities in teacher quality across schools. however, some states that have constructed more robust data systems may be able to assemble a dashboard of metrics that will allow for a more complete examination of access to excellent teaching. imazeki and goe (2009) argue that many states looking to improve the distribution of teachers use too few indicators to identify the schools and districts most in need of assistance, and should use additional teacher quality data. i argue that states should do this and more, taking into account regional trends and teacher value-added estimates. improved data systems link student test scores to individual teachers, thus paving the way for vam to be used to estimate teacher effectiveness within states. indeed, there are many states that do not currently use vam in teacher evaluation but do have the data links necessary to create a value-added metric for the purposes of understanding equity. although many criticisms of vam are entirely compelling, we should not cast aside these techniques in appropriate low-stakes applications. states can create a dashboard of important metrics such as the most meaningful quality indicators, value-added scores, teacher turnover and retention data, and other school and regional demographic information. ultimately this allows for a more efficient and targeted use of incentives and supports by states, as vam may help to identify particular districts and regions that suffer from low teacher supply. however, often times such schools are identified with incomplete and sometimes anecdotal evidence; clearly more information, including vam results, would improve such identification. if vam is not an option for states, this study suggests that states may want to pay special attention to poor, low-achieving schools that are also located in a broader region of poverty. many states are already instituting “grow-your-own” policies, financial incentives, and providing support for communities of practice in order to help schools that struggle to find effective teachers. clearly solutions will vary depending on the contexts of schools; successful rural solutions will likely look very different than urban ones, for example. but regardless of the policy initiative, it is important that a full complement of evidence is used to support implementation strategy as well as in evaluating the effectiveness of programs that attempt to promote equal access to excellent teachers. references aaronson, d., barrow, l., & sander, w. (2007). teachers and student achievement in the chicago public high schools. journal of labor economics, 25(1), 95-135. almy, s., & theokas, c. (2010). not prepared for class: high-poverty schools continue to have fewer in-field teachers. washington, dc: education trust. berliner, d. c. (2009). poverty and potential: out-of-school factors and school success. boulder, co: national education policy center. boyd, d., lankford, h., loeb, s., & wyckoff, j. (2005). the draw of home: how teachers' preferences for proximity disadvantage urban schools. journal of policy analysis and management, 24(1), 113-132. clotfelter, c., ladd, h. f., vigdor, j., & wheeler, j. (2007). high poverty schools and the distribution of teachers and principals. working paper 1. durham, nc: national center for analysis of longitudinal data in educational research. school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 13 darling-hammond, l. (1999). teacher quality and student achievement: a review of state policy evidence. seattle, wa: center for the study of teaching and policy, university of washington. gagnon, d. j., & mattingly, m. l. (2014). rates of beginning teachers: examining one indicator of school quality in an equity context. the journal of educational research, 108(3), 226235. hanushek, e. a., & rivkin, s. g. (2010). the quality and distribution of teachers under the no child left behind act. the journal of economic perspectives, 24(3), 133-150. harris, d. n., & sass, t. r. (2007). teacher training, teacher quality and student achievement. washington, dc: national center for analysis of longitudinal data in education research. hinchey, p. h. (2010). getting teacher assessment right: what policymakers can learn from research. boulder, co: national education policy center. imazeki, j., & goe, l. (2009). the distribution of highly qualified, experienced teachers: challenges and opportunities. washington, dc: national comprehensive center for teacher quality. johnson, k. m. (2012). new hampshire demographic trends in the twenty-first century. durham, nh: carsey institute, university of new hampshire. mattingly, m. l., carson, j. a., & schaefer, a. (2013). 2012 national child poverty rate stagnates at 22.6 percent. new hampshire child poverty jumps 30 percent since 2011. durham, nh: carsey institute, university of new hampshire. max, j., & glazerrman, s. (2014). do disadvantaged students get less effective teaching? key findings from recent institute of education sciences studies. washington, dc: institute of education sciences, national center for education evaluation and regional assistance. braun, h., chudowsky, n., & koenig, j. (eds.). (2010). getting value out of value-added: report of a workshop. washington, dc: the national academies press. nichols, a. (2008). fese: stata module for calculating standard errors for fixed effects. retrieved from https://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s456914.html nye, b., konstantopoulos, s., & hedges, l. (2004). how large are teacher effects? educational evaluation and policy analysis, 26(3), 237-257. putnam, r. d. (2015). our kids: the american dream in crisis. new york: simon & schuster. reardon, s. f. (2013). the widening income achievement gap. educational leadership, 70(8), 10-16. rivkin, s. g., hanushek, e. a., & kain, j. f. (2005). teachers, schools, and academic achievement. econometrica, 73(2), 417–458. rockoff, j. (2004). the impact of individual teachers on student achievement: evidence from panel data. american economic review, 94(2), 247-252. https://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s456914.html school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 14 author notes douglas j. gagnon university of new hampshire 73 main st, durham, nh 03824 douglas.gagnon@unh.edu douglas gagnon is a recent ph.d. recipient in the department of education and a research associate at the carsey school of public policy at the university of new hampshire. . mailto:douglas.gagnon@unh.edu school location and teacher supply: understanding the distribution of teacher effects current issues in education, 18(3) 15 volume 18, issue 3 december 23, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 8, number 2 february, 2005 issn 1099-839x elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity john l. nietfeld north carolina state university angela a. hunt state university of west georgia this study investigated the types of interventions that elementary school teachers and pre-service teachers choose to employ when working with students displaying hyperactive behavior. the extent to which beliefs systems, namely entity/incremental theories, showed relationships with the selection of particular types of interventions was also examined. participants were presented with fictional scenarios of students that varied according to the level of adhd-like behaviors exhibited and were then asked to provide appropriate interventions. overwhelmingly, the teachers in this study chose behavioral interventions (e.g., reinforce appropriate behavior) over more clinical or medical options (e.g., refer for adhd diagnosis). however, the teachers did not differentiate their interventions in a manner consistent with the qualifications of adhd as described in the dsm-iv. in addition, entity/incremental beliefs revealed an inconsistent relationship with the choice of intervention. within the field of education there exists a fascination with a clinical or medical model of treatment for students who display hyperactive behavior or who have been diagnosed with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (adhd). this fascination has led to a disproportionate number of studies that examine the effectiveness of clinical treatment versus behavioral techniques (maag, 1999). a clinical model places a high degree of efficacy on the process of diagnosis and subsequent use of medicine to curb disruptive behavior whereas a behavioral approach relies upon adjustments in the learning environment or a reinforcement-based behavior management plan. unfortunately, acceptance of this model from an educator's standpoint may lead to a general feeling of helplessness when working with a student who exhibits hyperactive behavior. this study sought to examine what regular education elementary school teachers and pre-service teachers believe to be the most effective solutions for students who exhibit hyperactive behavior. in addition, another aim of this study was to examine the relationship of pre-existing implicit beliefs with the choice of intervention strategies that are chosen. adhd has been estimated to affect approximately 3% to 5% of school-age children in the united states (american psychiatric association, 1994), although studies have shown that this estimate might be conservative (lefever, dawson, & morrow, 1999; roland, et al., 2002). other industrialized nations such as england have not kept pace in the current issues in education vol. 8 no. 2 number of diagnoses (less than one percent) with the united states (barkley & murphy, 1998). this disorder is dealt with inconsistently within and across teachers, parents, and physicians. according to many pediatricians, both schools and parents commonly over refer students for adhd (hailemariam, bradley-johnson, & johnson, 2002). some of the confusion associated with the disorder is that a child does not necessarily have adhd if they display one of the behavioral symptoms. in fact, jacobson (2002) argues that most children would be labeled as having adhd if observed when they display their maximal adhd-like behaviors. according to the diagnostic and statistical manual-iv (dsm-iv), in order for a child to be diagnosed as having adhd the following evidence must be present: 1) six out of nine symptoms for hyperactivity-impulsivity have to be present for at least six months at a maladaptive level, 2) maladaptive symptoms have to have been present before the age of seven and 3) some symptoms must be present in two or more settings (e.g., school and home) (apa, 2000). these guidelines, while necessary for diagnostic purposes, have little impact upon the everyday interactions and assumptions made by teachers when working with hyperactive students. evidence from recent studies is mixed in support of a clinical model approach versus a behavioral intervention approach. one of the largest studies conducted on the topic, the national institute of mental health (nimh) multi-modal study (jensen, et al., 2001), found the medical approach to be superior to behavioral treatment. the study was conducted with six teams of investigators and included 579 children. for some cases the study found that a combined approach (medical and behavioral) to be slightly more effective than single treatments. the nimh study garnered much attention yet it has not gone without criticism. breggin (2003) points out that findings from the nimh study are limited because of serious methodological flaws such as the failure to use a placebo-controlled, double blind clinical trial, the lack of a control group of untreated children, and the failure to emphasize that blind classroom raters found no differences between any of the treatment groups. other research has reported advantages of a behavioral approach such as the meta-analysis conducted by dupaul and eckert (1997) in which they concluded that school-based interventions, particularly behavioral interventions, have significant effects in changing behavior. reid and maag (1998) emphasized the use of functional assessment as part of a multimodal model by teachers. the multimodal plan includes the use of behavior modification, medical management, psychological support, and educational accommodations (barkley, 1990). in particular, physical accommodations, task-materials, and curricular-instructional adaptations are recommended. while this evidence seems practical it may be more challenging to implement in the classroom. glass and wegar (2000) have found that teachers and administrators find it easier to adopt an emphasis on diagnosis and the clinical model approach than to implement behavioral adjustments. as a result, they have found that teachers' perception of the incidence of adhd is higher than the accepted 5% rate. if this is the case, an important step is to begin to find out what teachers believe to be the most appropriate interventions for curbing hyperactive behavior. thus far, studies focused on the perspective of teachers have been limited (glass, 2001). limited evidence has reported that special education teachers are more successful and less resistant to accommodations for students with hyperactivity (zental & stormont-spurgin, 1995). also, a study by stormont & stebbins (2001) found that pre-school teachers who were presented with a list of behavioral interventions (e.g., give verbal compliments for improved behavior) viewed the interventions as important and reported that they would feel comfortable implementing the interventions. a related issue to this problem is the individual difference factors that contribute to teachers making different judgments related to misbehavior. one area of promise might be found within the domain of implicit beliefs. dweck and leggett (1988) have described two major types of implicit theories of intelligence that individuals hold. the first is an incremental theory of ability that views learning and intelligence as malleable and a product of effort and effective strategy use. subsequently, incremental theorists tend to adopt learning (ames & archer, 1988) or mastery goals (elliott & dweck, 1988) where the emphasis in the learning process is placed upon gaining competence through persistence. the second implicit theory is the entity theory of ability that views learning and intelligence as relatively fixed and unchanging and a product of stable factors such as inherited ability. entity theorists tend to adopt performance goals where the emphasis in the learning process is in performing well relative to peers, seeking recognition, and ensuring that others view them as “intelligent.” recent research in this area has focused almost exclusively on the perspective of students and outcomes associated with holding particular implicit beliefs (pintrich, 2000; church, elliot, & gable, 2001). little attention has been paid to the consequences associated with teachers who hold varying implicit beliefs. teachers who make daily decisions involving misbehavior make implicit elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity 3 judgments about their students' ability to change their behavior. the extent to which the teacher views themselves as having an influence over this change and the extent to which they believe change is possible at all may be determined by the implicit theory that they hold. incremental theories may lead to the belief that misbehavior is malleable while entity theories may lead to the belief that misbehavior is a stable characteristic of the student. this pattern of beliefs has previously been found with students making judgments about other students with regard to academic performance and behavior (heyman & dweck, 1998; erdley & dweck, 1993). in summary, there are numerous implications for educators regarding the preference of clinical versus behavioral approaches to reduce hyperactive behavior. first, it is important to get a baseline understanding of what types of interventions (clinical or behavioral) that teachers with various levels of experience prefer. second, given the rising percentage of students label as adhd, it is important to test whether teachers discriminate between casebased scenarios that give sufficient evidence for a student having adhd versus those that do not. third, it is important to develop an understanding of the various consequences associated with teachers holding either incremental or entity views as they relate to classroom practice and issues of behavior management. variables such as beliefs that reveal important individual differences in approaches by teachers may yield important advances in understanding the likelihood of any given teacher reacting in a particular way when encountering hyperactive behavior. finally, this research is important for educators in order to test whether documented approaches that have been shown to be effective in working with hyperactive behavior in the classroom is considered are considered as viable options by educators. present study this study was conducted in two phases. participants in the first phase included regular education elementary school teachers with varying levels of experience, while those in the second phase included pre-service teachers. the aim of this study as a whole was to investigate 1) what strategies teachers and pre-service teachers are most likely to adopt when working with a hyperactive child given hypothetical situations 2) do intervention choices change with varied levels of adhd-like behavior present and 3) how do implicit beliefs relate to the interventions that teachers adopt. our research questions for the first phase of our study included the following:  what types of interventions do elementary school teachers recommend when presented with scenarios of students who exhibit hyperactive behavior?  do elementary school teachers choose different actions when working with children who meet the diagnostic qualifications for adhd versus children who do not?  do elementary school teachers who score high on dweck's (1999) entity scale tend to select clinical interventions for hyperactive students? with regard to the first question we predicted that teachers would provide a greater proportion of behavioral interventions than clinical interventions. yet, we expected the clinical options to be represented by a significant portion of our respondents based upon the estimates over-diagnosis provided in the literature (glass & wegar, 2000; hailemariam, et al., 2002). we also expected to find that the teachers in our sample would discriminate, to some extent, between the interventions they would suggest for students who displayed more versus less adhd-like symptoms in the hypothetical situations. finally, we expected to see a relationship between entity-based beliefs and the selection of clinical interventions. likewise, we expected to see a relationship between incrementally-based beliefs and the selection of behavioral interventions. phase-i method participants. the participants in this study included 78 teachers (76 women and 2 men, mean age 44.7 years) from three different elementary schools from a large metropolitan area. two of the schools were considered mid-level ses schools ( n =21 & 21) and one low ses ( n =36) based upon their placement within their county for receiving free or reduced school lunches. sixty-eight of the teachers were white, seven were black, and one asian. two teachers did not provide their race. the teachers were all regular education teachers with an average of 15.75 (sd =10.18) years of teaching experience. a breakdown of the number of teachers representing each grade level was as follows: kindergarten n =11, first grade n =11, second grade n =12, third grade n =18, fourth grade n =10, fifth grade n =13, and three who did not provide their grade level. materials. participants were asked to complete a survey that was comprised of three parts. the first part was demographic information. the second part was an eight-item inventory comprised of two factors developed by carol dweck (see dweck, 1999). four items measured “theories of intelligence” and four items measured “the kind of person” one is (see appendix). the items measured the extent to which a person adopts an entity-based theory versus current issues in education vol. 8 no. 2 an incrementally-based theory. higher scores on each scale are based upon entity theories and lower scores on incremental theories. the third part of the survey included three different fictional scenarios, developed by the authors, that described a child with hyperactivity (see appendix). the scenarios were systematically varied according to the number of adhd characteristics exemplified by the child. according to the dsm-iv-tr (american psychiatric association, 2000) a child must meet three requirements to be considered for adhd diagnosis. they include 1) six out of nine symptoms for hyperactivity-impulsivity have to be present for at least 6 months at a maladaptive level 2) some maladaptive symptoms were present before the age of seven and 3) some symptoms present in two or more settings (ex. at school and home). according to these qualifications scenario 1 is the only scenario presenting enough evidence to suggest the child may have adhd. in scenario 1 the child displays the following symptoms: fidgeting, difficulty waiting turn, talks excessively, blurts out answers before questions complete, interrupts others, and leaves seat. in addition, the child’s symptoms were present before the age of 7 and are present in more than one setting. in scenario 2 the child only displays the symptoms of fidgeting and squirming. it is unknown if the symptom occurred before the age of 7, or if the symptom occurs in other settings. in scenario 3 the symptoms include: difficulty waiting turn, leaves seat, interrupts others, and talks incessantly. it is unknown if these symptoms occurred before the age of 7, or if the symptoms occur in other settings. each scenario was followed by eight options that included possible actions the child’s teacher could take to deal with the child’s hyperactive behavior. the directions were as follows: “please read the following scenario and then rank order all of the options that follow, in the order that you feel is the most appropriate, from 1 (most likely) to 8 (least likely). please do not add any additional options or change existing options when ranking your preferences.” four of the options were behavioral options (e.g., set up a system for reinforcing the child’s appropriate classroom behavior) and four were clinical options (e.g., refer the child for adhd diagnosis). the options remained the same for each scenario. procedure. survey packets were delivered to each of the schools and picked up one week later. each teacher at the three schools received a packet and were asked to complete the survey independently within one week. an overall response rate of 72% was obtained from the three schools (21/30; 21/32; 36/46). results in this section descriptive statistics will be reported followed by correlational and inferential statistics. composite scores were used in the analysis of the rankings from each scenario that included one score for an overall behavioral ranking and one for an overall clinical ranking. the two dimensions of the dweck scale were analyzed separately. coefficient alpha reliability indices indicated that both the intelligence scale (alpha=.947) and kind of person scale (alpha=.894) showed a high degree of internal consistency. descriptive statistics. descriptive statistics for phase i of the study are shown in table 1. table i descriptive statistics for phase i condition mean sd scenario 1 behavioral 10.36 1.07 scenario 1 clinical 25.72 1.20 scenario 2 behavioral 10.52 1.33 scenario 2 clinical 25.48 1.33 scenario 3 behavioral 10.56 1.84 scenario 3 clinical 25.56 2.00 intelligence 18.33 3.66 kind of person 18.67 3.74 years of experience 15.75 10.18 note. the means for the behavioral and clinical scales represent a composite score of the ranks (1-8) from four items. the lower the overall mean the higher the rating. scores on the intelligence scale and kind of person scale had a possible range from four to 24. the means reported for each scenario include a composite score from both the behavioral intervention options and the clinical intervention options. lower scores indicate a higher preference for that type of intervention. the participants overwhelmingly rated behavioral interventions higher than clinical interventions across all three scenarios. separate mean ranks for each of the eight intervention options are shown in table 2. using a behavior monitoring plan was the highest rated option across all three scenarios while suggesting that the child take ritalin was the lowest rated option across the three scenarios. correlational statistics. correlational statistics are provided in table 3. teachers with more experience tended to report that basic attributes about a person can change as evidenced by the positive correlation between experience and kind of person. an inconsistent pattern of correlations developed between beliefs about intelligence and responses to elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity 5 the scenarios. significant correlations were found in scenario two for both the behavioral and clinical ratings revealing that teachers choosing more behavioral options tended to support a more malleable view of intelligence. for scenario 3 the tendency to select behavioral interventions was correlated with the malleable view of intelligence but the tendency to select clinical interventions did not correlate significantly with a static view of intelligence. no significant correlations were found between intelligence and behavior management strategies for scenario one. in addition, no significant correlations were revealed between the kind of person variable and strategy selection on any of the scenarios. table 2. means for the eight intervention options in phase i. intervention scenario 1 mean rank scenario 2 mean rank scenario 3 mean rank behavior monitoring plan 1.70 1.75 1.74 reinforcing appropriate behavior 1.99 2.04 2.12 refer for adhd 5.76 5.52 5.60 refer for special education 7.06 7.13 7.13 restructure classroom environment 3.55 3.49 3.44 school psychologist 5.25 5.15 5.19 daily report cards 3.11 3.24 3.26 suggest ritalin 7.64 7.67 7.63 table 3 correlation matrix for phase i variables variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1. years experience ____ -.02 .24* .09 -.16 .18 -.18 .19 -.17 2. intelligence ____ .49** .02 .00 -.25* .25* -.14 .25* 3. kind of person ____ -.08 .12 -.18 .18 -.06 .14 4. scenario 1 clinical ____ .91** .32** -.32** .38** .38** 5. scenario 1 behavioral ____ .34** .34** .41** .41** 6. scenario ____ .48** 2 clinical 1.00** .48** 7. scenario 2 behavioral ____ .48** .48** 8. scenario 3 clinical ____ .88** 9. scenario 3 behavioral ____ note. *p<.05; *p<.01. inferential statistics. in order to address our first two research questions we conducted t-tests and repeated measures anova procedures to examine differences in intervention preference for each scenario and the level of consistency in the ratings across the scenarios. a comparison of the preference for behavioral interventions versus clinical interventions revealed significant differences in favor of the behavioral interventions across all three scenarios (scenario 1: t (66)=56.62, p <.001; scenario 2: t (66)=46.03, p <.001; scenario 3: t (67)=33.31, p <.001). repeated measures anova revealed no differentiation between scenarios in the ratings provided by the teachers for either behavioral interventions, f (2, 132)=.514, p =.589, or clinical interventions, f (2,132)=.996, p =.369. therefore, manipulation of adhd-like symptoms had no effect upon teachers' selection of interventions. phase-ii pre-service teachers served as participants in the second phase of the study that employed somewhat different procedures. an attempt was made in this phase to avoid influencing the participants' response by first asking for open-ended response for each scenario before ranking the intervention options. in addition, an attempt was also made to get at what interventions the pre-service teachers viewed as ultimately having the most impact on the behavior rather than what sequence the interventions should be employed, therefore the instructions were changed for the ranking process. the following research questions were investigated in this second phase:  what types of interventions do pre-service teachers recommend when presented with scenarios of students who exhibit hyperactive behavior?  do pre-service teachers choose different interventions when working with children who meet the diagnostic qualifications for adhd versus children who do not?  do pre-service teachers who score high on dweck's entity scale tend to select clinical interventions for hyperactive students? in the second phase we hypothesized that pre-service teachers would show a similar preference for behavioral interventions that the elementaryschool teachers showed in the first phase. similarly, current issues in education vol. 8 no. 2 we hypothesized that they would differentiate between the scenarios in the interventions that they selected. with regard to our third question, we expected to see teachers with more entity-based beliefs to select clinical options more frequently than teachers with incrementally-based beliefs in both their open-ended response and in their ranking preferences from the intervention options. method participants. the participants in this study included 93 pre-service teachers (73 women and 20 men, mean age 24.4 years) from three different sections of an educational psychology course at a medium-sized university in the south. the course was taken during the junior or senior year after admission to the teacher education program and at the beginning stages of their practicum experiences. seventy-nine of the teachers were white, 13 were black, and one hispanic. the students came from a mix of specialty areas within the college of education . participants were offered extra credit for their participation. materials. participants were asked to complete a survey that was comprised of four parts. the first part was demographic information. the second part was the eight-item inventory by dweck used in phase i. the third part of the survey included the same three fictional scenarios that were used in phase i but with different requirements for participant responses. procedure. the participants first completed the demographic sheet and dweck's entity scale before reading the scenarios. after the participants read each scenario they were asked to provide an open-ended response to the question, “if this student were in your classroom, what would be your initial response in dealing with their behavior. please list only one response.” upon completion of their openended responses for each scenario the participants were shown a powerpoint slide asking them to rank order the same options used in phase i. specifically, the instructions asked them to, “ rank order all of the options listed below, in the order you feel ultimately will be the most successful in changing the students' behavior, from 1 (most successful) to 8 (least successful). the wording of this statement was intended to emphasize what variables the participant felt would actually be most likely to correct the misbehavior rather than asking what sequence of actions they felt they should employ. participants then rank ordered the options for each of the three scenarios. results. in this section descriptive statistics will be reported followed by correlational and inferential statistics. composite scores were used in the analysis of the rankings from each scenario that included one score for an overall behavioral ranking and one for an overall clinical ranking. the two dimensions of the dweck scale were analyzed separately. coefficient alpha reliability indices indicated that the intelligence scale (alpha=.902) and kind of person scale (alpha=.849) showed a high degree of internal consistency. descriptive statistics. descriptive statistics for phase ii of the study are shown in table 4. once again, the participants overwhelmingly rated behavioral interventions higher than clinical interventions across all three scenarios. approximately ten percent of the total responses to the open-ended question were first reviewed to examine trends in the responses and to develop an initial list of 13 categories. both authors then independently coded all of the responses within these categories. these categories were eventually collapsed into the four categories shown in table 4 due to overlap between the categories. table 4. descriptive statistics for phase ii openended response behavioral ranking clinical ranking intelligence kind of person scenario 1 m sd m sd m sd m sd behavioral 11.84 3.36 24.28 3.41 17.38 3.80 16.12 3.90 parental 14.29 3.50 21.71 3.50 20.07 2.20 17.21 3.87 punishment 14.33 2.31 21.67 2.31 18.33 .58 14.67 1.15 clinical 17.89 3.64 18.00 4.23 17.28 4.65 16.39 3.74 total 13.48 4.12 22.58 4.29 17.80 3.82 16.29 3.79 scenario 2 behavioral 12.73 4.00 23.37 3.98 19.91 3.79 16.09 3.61 parental 12.57 4.83 23.43 4.83 17.71 5.41 19.14 5.08 punishment 10.50 .71 25.50 .71 17.50 3.54 17.50 2.12 clinical 17.25 4.49 18.75 4.49 17.38 3.54 15.75 3.83 total 13.46 4.43 22.62 4.43 17.80 3.82 16.29 3.79 scenario 3 behavioral 12.29 3.82 23.71 3.82 17.98 3.61 16.53 4.03 parental 12.33 3.55 23.67 3.55 16.08 3.90 16.75 3.08 punishment 16.92 5.20 18.92 3.60 18.92 3.60 16.17 3.59 clinical 17.95 5.13 18.35 5.45 17.70 4.32 15.50 3.85 total 14.13 4.93 21.96 4.89 17.80 3.82 16.29 3.79 any discrepancies were discussed until coming to agreement. initial coding discrepancies occurred in less than four percent of the cases based upon the final categories. behavioral responses included teacher/student interactions, changing the child's location in the classroom, adjusting classroom activities or tasks, or developing a behavior chart or reward system. clinical responses included suggesting the child take ritalin, referring the child to be tested for adhd, or referring the child to a school counselor or other special services such as special education. parental responses included anything related to parental involvement or a parental elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity 7 conference. in table 4 the means are broken down by open-ended responses for each scenario. open-ended behavioral responses comprised 62.4% of the total responses for scenario 1, 19.4% of the responses were clinical, 15.1% were parental, and 3.2% suggested using some form of punishment. openended behavioral responses comprised 73.1% of the total responses for scenario 2, 17.2% of the responses were clinical, 7.5% were parental, and 2.2% suggested using some form of punishment. open-ended behavioral responses comprised 52.7% of the total responses for scenario 3, 21.5% of the responses were clinical, 12.9% were parental, and 12.9% suggested using some form of punishment. the scenario that included the least amount of adhd-like indicators (scenario 2) had the highest percent of behavioral intervention responses. scenario 3 had the lowest percent of behavioral intervention responses even though it was in the middle with regard to adhd-like indicators. it appears likely that the participants perceived the student in this scenario to be the least controllable based upon the description given in the text even though evidence of hyperactive behavior was not described from multiple contexts or before the age of seven. mean ranks for each of the eight intervention options are provided in table 5 below. table 5. means for the eight intervention options in phase ii. intervention scenario 1 mean rank scenario 2 mean rank scenario 3 mean rank behavior monitoring plan 2.50 2.65 2.68 reinforcing appropriate behavior 2.92 2.93 3.12 refer for adhd 4.60 4.48 4.47 refer for special education 6.87 6.96 6.84 restructure classroom environment 4.32 3.86 4.57 school psychologist 4.53 4.67 4.43 daily report cards 3.74 4.01 3.76 suggest ritalin 6.58 6.51 6.22 the two most preferred options across scenarios by students were utilizing a behavior monitoring plan and reinforcing appropriate behavior. the two least preferred options across scenarios included referring the child for special education services and suggesting that the child take ritalin. not surprisingly, there was consistency between the open-ended responses and the ratings for the intervention options. as in the first phase of the study, there was no differentiation between scenarios in the ratings provided by the teachers. pairedsamples t-tests were conducted and revealed no significant differences between means for any of the scenarios. therefore, manipulation of adhd-like symptoms had no effect upon teachers' selection of interventions. correlational statistics. correlational statistics for phase ii variables are provided in table 6. the kind of person variable was related to responses on the third scenario. no significant correlations were found though between the kind of person variable and intervention options for scenarios two or three. students rating behavioral interventions higher also tended to hold incremental views on a person's attributes. the intelligence variable did not show a relationship with any of the scenario variables. table 6. correlation matrix for phase ii variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. intelligence .45** -.11 .07 .07 -.06 -.07 .07 2. kind of person -.21 .17 -.16 .17 -.26* .26* 3. behavior scen. 1 .98** .35** .37** .53** .52** 4. clinical scen. 1 .34** .38** .51** .50** 5. behavior scen. 2 .98** .52** .51** 6. clinical scen. 2 .52** .52** 7. behavior scen. 3 .99** 8. clinical scen. 3 note: * p<.05; **p<.01 inferential statistics. in order to address our first two research questions we conducted t-tests and repeated measures anova procedures to examine differences in intervention preference for each scenario and the level of consistency in the ratings across the scenarios. a comparison of the preference for behavioral interventions versus clinical interventions revealed significant differences in favor of the behavioral interventions across all three scenarios (scenario 1: t (91)=-10.43, p <.001; scenario 2: t (91)=-9.98, p <.001; scenario 3: t (91)=7.66, p <.001. repeated measures anova revealed no differentiation between scenarios in the ratings provided by the teachers for either behavioral interventions, f (2, 182)=1.25, p =.289, or clinical interventions, f (2,182)=1.15, p =.319. therefore, manipulation of adhd-like symptoms had no effect upon teachers' selection of interventions. these results found with pre-service teachers replicated those found with the teachers in phase i. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 2 discussion this study sought to examine what teachers believe to be the most effective interventions when working with students who exhibit hyperactive behavior that disrupts the classroom. we investigated the extent to which 1) teachers chose behavioral versus clinical solutions when working with hyperactive children; 2) whether teachers differentiate between scenarios that have varying levels of adhd-like behavior as reflected by their choice of different interventions; and 3) whether implicit beliefs such as entity/incremental theories show relationships with the choice of interventions. the elementary school teachers in phase i of the study and pre-service teachers in phase ii of the study overwhelmingly chose behavioral rather than clinical interventions as appropriate strategies to deal with the disruptive child. this is an encouraging finding from a pedagogical standpoint. the teachers in phase i ranked the behavioral strategies as the “most appropriate” options and pre-service teachers in phase ii considered these strategies to be “ultimately the most successful” of the available options. the four most highly rated intervention options for the scenarios in both phases of the study were all behaviorally-based strategies. this indicates that teachers, in general, have efficacy for making positive environmental changes in the classroom that will curb misbehavior with hyperactive students. this finding also dispels the notion that teachers, at least from this sample, see a “quick fix” clinical or medical model option as the most appropriate means of curbing hyperactive behavior. finally, these results show alignment with studies suggesting the need for more balanced approaches to working with hyperactive behavior (dupaul & eckert, 1997; reid & maag, 1998). the teachers in this sample did not, however, differentiate in their suggested interventions across the scenarios despite having different levels of adhd-like symptoms present. this finding may be due to the lack of knowledge that teachers have about the technical qualifications related to the diagnosis of adhd. it might also be that teachers would maintain their selection of strategies regardless of the diagnosis and/or adhdlike symptoms displayed by the student. teachers may consider their actions as independent of the clinical diagnosis choosing instead to focus on interventions intended to alter classroom behavior. surprisingly, dweck's entity/incremental scales did not show any consistent pattern of relationships with the choice of intervention selected by the teachers. we predicted that teachers adopting an incrementally-based perspective on intelligence and person attributes would tend to choose a greater proportion of behavioral to clinical strategies than their entity-based counterparts. this hypothesis was only partially supported through correlational findings. in the first phase of the study the teachers did show this pattern for the second and third scenarios. no such pattern was revealed for the intelligence variable. in the second phase of the study this hypothesized pattern was found only for the kind of person variable on the third scenario. these findings appear to only partially replicate findings from other studies in education conducted by dweck and her colleagues (dweck, 1999). it is possible that the teachers, including those with entity viewpoints, answered in a way that they perceived to be socially acceptable. it could also be that personal experiences in the field of education have led them to feel obligated, to some extent, to respond in a certain way (i.e., present a behavioral strategy). it is also possible that the instrument is not sensitive enough to reveal any meaningful relationships that may be present. hyperactivity may possess enough domain-specific variance associated with it as a unique facet of behavior to warrant more specific items in the inventories. finally, an interesting finding in the first phase of the study was that teachers with more experience tended to report a more malleable view about the kind of person one is. it is possible that it is the more experienced teachers possess a greater reservoir of experiences seeing changes in student behavior and how individual attributes can be changed in an educational context. also, this finding may indicate the need for teacher education programs to place a greater curricular emphasis on incremental beliefs by emphasizing evidence-based research that shows the positive benefits of specific behavioral strategies and interventions. limitations of the study the overall findings of this study are limited somewhat by the nature of the task that the teachers completed. first, the scenarios were of fictional students rather than actual students in a classroom. we cannot expect to fully approximate the intricacies of working with real-life students through case-based scenarios. in real-life contexts the teachers would most likely make decisions regarding students with hyperactive issues or adhd-like symptoms in conjunction with a team of other teachers and administrators. this study hoped to measure the general reactions of teachers when posed simulated behaviors. second, due to the nature of the study and time constraints the scenarios were limited in their length and amount of detail. ideally, one would prefer to allow each teacher to get a rich description of each student with the opportunity to observe actual behavior. future studies could make important gains elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity 9 by examining the interactions of teachers with students in their natural contexts over extended periods of time. future studies this study leads to numerous questions for future research. one avenue might involve delving more fully into the tendency for teachers to adopt differential classroom strategies when working with adhd versus non-adhd students. in this study teachers did not suggest different interventions even when the adhd symptoms varied by scenario but one variation to that approach might be to indicate to teachers that the student in the scenario has been professionally diagnosed as having adhd. it would be possible to systematically vary this information to see if this leads to a different selection of interventions. if findings were to reveal that educators maintain consistent classroom strategies across adhd students and non-adhd students alike there would exist a schism between their beliefs and summary findings and recommendations by the national institute of health (1998). in their summary statements they report that a combined intervention program of behavioral treatments with medication have added little to strictly medical interventions alone. this examination of intervention selection might be furthered even more with a comparison of special education and regular education teachers. finally, the exploration of implicit beliefs systems and their relationship interventions and strategies for working with disruptive students is still in its infancy. this study was a first attempt to look at the basic relationships between entity/incremental theories and intervention strategies. from these preliminary findings it appears that measurement instruments need to be developed with a greater focus on the domain specific aspects of working with disruptive students. furthermore, greater understanding might be gained by the observation of teachers holding various beliefs in their interactions with students in the classroom over extended periods of time. references american psychiatric association. 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(1995). educator preferences of accommodations for students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. teacher education and special education, 18 , 115-123. . elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity 11 appendix survey please respond to the following statements using the scale below: 1 2 3 4 5 6 strongly agree agree mostly agree mostly disagree disagree strongly disagree _____ 1) you have a certain amount of intelligence, and you can't really do much to change it. _____ 2) the kind of person someone is, is something very basic about them and it can't be changed very much. _____ 3) people can do things differently, but the important parts of who they are can't really be changed. _____ 4) your intelligence is something about you that you can't change very much. _____ 5) to be honest, you can't really change how intelligent you are. _____ 6) as much as i hate to admit it, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. people really can't change their deepest attributes. _____ 7) everyone is a certain kind of person, and there is not much that can be done to really change that. _____ 8) you can learn new things, but you can't really change your basic intelligence. scenario 1 a student in your classroom is causing you some difficulties. in the past two weeks you have made note of the student's behavior to better assess the situation. you have noticed the child fidgeting in their seat during the lessons. the student has cut in line on more the one occasion. the child also has trouble staying quiet. the child either tries to engage classmates in conversation at inappropriate times or blurts out answers out of turn. as a result of the child's talkativeness you have observed the child butting into other student's conversations during recess. your friend and colleague was the child's first grade teacher. she stated she observed and struggled with many of the same behaviors from this student when the child was in her class. in addition to what you have observed in your classroom you have been privy to see the child and family at the local park. you were about to approach the mother, but noticed she seemed occupied with trying to keep her child from running off. scenario 2 after returning from winter break you are still having difficulty with one particular student. you thought after the break from class the child would return more relaxed. it still seems though; the child just cannot sit still for any length of time. it has turned into a daily routine for you to ask the child to stop fidgeting at their desk. the child's constant squirming during lessons has become disruptive to your teaching. you are worried all the movement the child makes is, or will become, a distraction to the other students in your class. you are also concerned that all the attention you give this student to relax in their seat is taking quality education time from the class as a whole. scenario 3 a month ago a new student was placed in your classroom. the new student is full of energy. you have tried to allow the child some time to adjust, but you are getting worn out trying to keep up with the student. other students in the class have complained that during recess the new student cuts in line quite often. similarly, you have noted during class activities the child has difficulty waiting for their turn. and last week you marked down seven occasions when the child got out of their seat during a lesson. in addition, you have never observed the student to remain seated throughout lunchtime. finally, the most wearisome characteristic is the child's incessant talking. it seems no matter how many times you tell the child to stop talking the chatter continues. intervention options: (a) a behavioral monitoring system established between the teacher and the student. (b) reinforce the child's appropriate classroom behavior. (c) refer the child for adhd diagnosis. (d) request the child be placed in special education classes. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 2 (e) restructure the classroom environment to alter the child's behavior. (f) send the child to school psychologist for evaluation. (g) use a daily report card system for the child. (h) the child takes ritalin. elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity 13 2005 article citation nietfeld, j. l. & hunt, a. a.(2005, february 05). elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity, current issues in education [on-line], 8(2). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number2/ author notes john nietfeld north carolina state university 602d poe hall, raleigh, nc 27695 john_nietfeld@ncsu.edu john nietfeld is an assistant professor of educational psychology at north carolina state university . his research interests include metacognition, motivation, and adult reading. angela hunt state university of west georgia angie hunt is a graduate student in counseling & educational psychology at the state university of west georgia. her interests are in teacher perceptions and training related to behavior management. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 24, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation nietfeld, j. l., & hunt, a. a. (2005). elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity. current issues in education, 8(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1613 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number2/index.html mailto:john_nietfeld@ncsu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1613 volume 11, number 5 may, 2009 issn 1099-839x teacher candidates as innovative change agents lucia l. yu and evan thomas ortlieb [editor’s note: the authors’ institutional information was missing in the article when accessed in 2015.] confronting the educational directives of high-stakes testing and accountability is achievable through inference and implementation of innovative change. using the lens of learners as inquirers, teacher candidates designed and implemented action research projects to create alternate instructional strategies, management systems, and methods to reach disenfranchised students. the primary investigators challenged their teacher candidates to exercise inference for innovation — expanding their potential for critical thinking in a society of transition, and manage transformational skills — allowing them to be ongoing change agents. nearly one decade ago, elementary classroom teachers experienced a dramatic societal change as they confronted challenges of greater accountability and increasing demands of more diverse and inclusive classrooms in urban areas (aacte, 2001; arends, 2001). raising students’ scores on both the traditional standardized tests and high-stakes tests has become the sole focus; meanwhile, teachers are criticized for condensing their instruction to test preparation, failing to lead students to become critical, creative, and curious thinkers (lemann, 1999). qi (2007) found that teachers and learners neglected the context in which learning was to occur, while emphasizing the testing situation and assumed components of the test. if american schools are to regain their prominence as leaders in education, quality of instruction and learning must be central foci; a societal change is in order. stephens et al. (2008) identified five critical issues to be considered in assessing the potential for change: 1) sustainability challenges, 2) financing structure and independence, 3) institutional organization, 4) the extent of democratic processes, and 5) communication and interaction with society. freire (1993) declared that society requires the development of an especially flexible, critical spirit when it begins to transit from one epoch to another. change agents must be context-specific, and based on identifying, synthesizing, and integrating common themes (stephens et al., 2008). arthur wise (2000), president of the national council for accreditation of teacher education (ncate), similarly expressed that teachers should use strategies to develop critical thinking for problem solving. it is only natural to focus on critical thinking skills; teacher educators must serve as change agents if success is attainable (de leon-carillo, 2007). literature review inference this study conducted a one-group, pretestposttest, pre-experimental design to explore preservice teachers’ perceptions regarding school violence. first, 95 pre-service educators were asked to complete an online, anonymous survey. next, the participants, 20 members of the same english/language arts methods class, were taught a three-part school violence curriculum. finally, a current issues in education vol. 11 no. 5 posttest, optional and anonymous, was administered to the 20 participants. behaviorism has been the dominant theory that views learning as a response to stimuli existing in the environment. in this stimulus-response (s-r) notion rooted in laboratory settings, humans are passive reactors—learning through the process of imitation, reinforcement, and shaping (norton, 2003). the s-r unit can be used to examine simple tasks, but not complex behavior. humans are thinking beings (vygotsky, 1934; zahorik, 1995) bearing insights, reasoning power, and the ability to make decisions. they have minds to select stimuli with which to respond and to choose the best response that makes sense to them. this is also known as the smind-r unit, and it explains the rational, logical, and cognitive processes that occur between stimuli and responses. charles peirce thought that anomalies, which humans encounter in their lived experiences, will drive the process of inquiry into the motion of inference (neilsen, 1989). peirce’s triadic model of inference (see figure 1) is an endless cycle of reasoning, (cunningham, 1992; 1998) which is composed of the following processes: 1. abduction: learners generate hypotheses from their life experience, prior knowledge, conscience, and/or sociocultural modes to deal with the anomalies 2. deduction: learners keep testing hypotheses against their social context 3. induction: learners confirm, reject, or modify the previous hypotheses figure 1. peirce’s triadic model of inference findings in neurobiology reveal that newborn babies are born with the intellectual competency to instinctively respond to the environment for survival and for the exploration of the new world (gardner, 1985; john-steiner, 1985). education is used to further mobilize this intellectual competence based on learners as inquirers (wray, 1999), not the passive transmission of knowledge (short, haste, & burke, 1996). instruction as inquiry can be summarized to have the following purposes: (1) activate prior knowledge, (2) acquire knowledge, (3) understand knowledge, (4) use knowledge, and (5) reflect on knowledge (zahorik, 1995). change agentry from the historical perspective on education, we are confronting many struggles just to survive (shannon, 1990) – such as the concepts of teaching, approaches in literacy, the reform of the school system, the creation of standardized tests for a classless society, and educators’ reactions in terms of alternate assessment. many enthusiastic educators acting as change agents feel insecure, uncomfortable, or dissatisfied with the prevailing instructional strategies or systems in place; yet, they often initiate innovation for the survival of their communities (crawford & deer, 1993; foss & kleinsasser, 1996; klein, 2001, 2004; schuck, 1996; tillema & knol, 1997). usually the change agents face both expected and unexpected resistance while trying to convince their colleagues of the benefits of implementing the innovation in the institution (lothian, 2005). for example, there are still educational researchers and practitioners arguing over quantitative versus qualitative methods of research as well as skillsbased versus whole language instruction in reading education. in the abcd’s of managing change (1986), dormant, a professor and change consultant in education, proposed a conceptual framework for the practice of change agentry: a. adopters – those who will accept, implement, and utilize the innovation b. black box – the innovation invented by the change agents to deal with the anomaly, and to improve the operation in the community c. change agent(s) – those who feel unsafe, uncomfortable, dissatisfied with the current situation in the community and plan to change. change agents are innovators who initiate the change, schedule the change, create the climate for change, find the support for change and the resistance to change, involve the people who support change, convince the people who resist the change, and launch or modify the change. d. domain – where the innovation is implemented (the climate for change). implementing a series of management skills is necessary for change to occur (elton, 2003), such as “technology strategies” for the evaluation of innovation; “interpersonal strategies” also deal with the resistance in the domain, to create opportunity for change, to assess the climate for change, to implement human performance by engaging the colleagues into the change, and to be effective leaders to direct the change. teacher candidates as innovative change agents 3 objective to be human is to engage in relationships with others and with a society (sun, 2002). when a society begins to move from one epoch to another, it requires the development of an especially flexible, critical spirit, or critical consciousness that is integrated within reality (freire, 1993) and led to critical action for the epochal transition (shirilla, gass, & anderson, 2009). in a series of service-learning activities, the investigators strove to awaken teacher candidates’ critical consciousness for culture and society in the increasingly diverse and multicultural urban context. based on the assumption that teaching and learning are inquiry, not the transmission of knowledge (short, harste, & burke, 1996; wray, 1999), investigators conceptualized inference (cunningham, 1992; 1998) and change agentry (dormant, 1997) within teacher education to give teacher candidates opportunities to become change agents of critical thinking. through the integration of teaching, research, and service within servicelearning experiences, teacher candidates led various inquiries within two public elementary schools in the southeast. methods this project allowed 42 participants to examine their own educational practices and those being implemented in a single, elementary-grade level classroom in which they were fulfilling practicum requirements as undergraduate and graduate students of a four-year university. designed with watts’ (1985) notions of self-reflection, collaboration, and innovation, these single-teacher, action-research investigations were facilitated by university faculty, but conducted almost entirely by university students. at the core of any action research project is the necessity of disciplined inquiry managed with the intent that the research will inform and potentially change instructional practices in the future. participants were encouraged to keep a narrow focus in hopes of fostering innovative changes with measureable outcomes. without being unrealistic to expect the teacher candidates to make system-wide transformations, teacher candidates were encouraged to collect data on events and ongoings within their classrooms. then, participants coded data based on whether or not the observed behavior directly led to increased student participation and comprehension of material. afterwards, student investigators employed their intellectual freedom (smith, 1988) towards designing innovative strategies for their elementary students. the following steps summarize their methods of inquiry by first making an inference for innovation and then creating and managing change-related skills: part 1: inference for innovation 1. write observations and critiques on the classroom setting, classroom management, students’ learning behaviors, small group activities, teacher’s talk, and strategies the coordinating teachers use. 2. think about alternate strategies that could be used or modifications to existing ones to impact student achievement. 3. find five supporting research-based articles related to the proposed strategy. the theories should be able to support the implementation of the proposed strategy. 4. talk with peers and the coordinating teacher about the proposed strategy. 5. write lesson plans or proposals for the implementation of the proposed strategies they intend to use. 6. apply the proposed strategies within instruction during practicum experiences. 7. collect student artifacts from the field sites. 8. analyze the data and reflect on the effectiveness of the strategy. 9. confirm, reject, or modify the strategy execution for future implementation. 10. keep a field journal. part 2: managing change skills 1. identify the four factors of the abcd’s of managing change (dormant, 1986) based on the school environment. 2. create a climate for change. 3. demonstrate the strength of the innovation and the weaknesses of the previous strategy from aspects of security, perfection, advantages, convenience, economy, and durability. 4. analyze possible support systems and the expected resistance inside the institution. 5. use linguistic, logical, and interpersonal intelligences to justify your reasoning (gardner, 1985). 6. implement the change. 7. assess the change periodically and modify accordingly. results the graduate and undergraduate students in teacher education explored alternate means for assisting in student achievement during their elementary-school field experiences. their enthusiastic proposals for change can be categorized into three topics: 1. instructional strategies most teacher candidates were interested in pursuing instruction related to methods used in reading education. they wrote proposals such as: “using invented spelling instead of the conventional spelling for composition current issues in education vol. 11 no. 5 writing in the first draft,” “more than one answer multiple ways of reading responses,” “authoring circle for composition writing,” “vakt for phonemic awareness,” “sight, sound, and sense for poetry,” and “using technology to tutor atrisk early readers.” 2. classroom management some teacher candidates explored alternate methods of more-effective classroom management (primarily based on positive reinforcement). 3. integrity others pursued alternative methods to reach low-achieving students and their parents. the teacher candidates were interviewed at the conclusion of the semester so as to share and evaluate their implementations. the most common conceptualization among the teacher candidates was the difficulty in implementing the change. one participant said, “the students did not want to accept the implemented change even more than the classroom teacher,” while another felt that “it was a lot of work to get it started; however, once i implemented the change, managing it was the easy part.” these participatory students and others gained firsthand experience of the difficulties that lie in shifting from one style of instruction to another. through encouraging the elementary students and sharing the purpose for the change, progress was made easier for all parties. one teacher candidate even said that she was surprised at how interested her classroom teacher was in modifying one method of classroom management (in this case, from centered on discipline to positive reinforcement). albeit not a simple task, commitments to finding new and better ways to teach, manage classroom behavior, and reach learners with imminent needs is at the core of teacher education. participatory teacher candidates developed knowledge, skills, and a disposition for effective teaching through conceptualizing “inference” and “change agentry” into their real-world practicum teaching experiences. conclusions inference expands teacher candidates’ potential for critical thinking in a society of transition. change management skills keep these future change agents in-line with educational objectives. teacher candidates and classroom teachers alike have the opportunity to go beyond preparing students to pass standardized tests, and prepare them to be independent thinkers and decision makers. teacher candidates followed shirilla, gass, and anderson (2009) suggestions in seizing the moment to instill change within instructional styles and procedures in elementary schools. through selfreflection, inquiry, and evaluation, classroom teachers can use action research, inference and provide critical consciousness for changes in their own educational world (freire, 1993; tripp, 2003; watts, 1985). since inference is an endless cycle of reasoning, and society is still in a phase of transition, there is a perfect opportunity to make this transition towards inquiry-based learning. individual changes, like those of these teacher candidates, are merely hidden streams in the beginning, but they will eventually overflow into the mainstream. inevitably, educators and teacher educators will struggle to continue, and continue to struggle towards these necessary goals 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(1985). when teachers are researchers, teaching improves. journal of staff development, 6(2), 118-127. wise, a. (2000). aacte brief. washington, d.c: american association of colleges for teacher education. wray, d. (1999). inquiry in the classroom. ontario, canada: pipping publishing corp. http://www.fhs.usyd.edu.au/arow/arer/017.htm http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/index.htm http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/index.htm current issues in education vol. 11 no. 5 2009 article citation lu, l. y. & ortlieb, e. t. (2009, may). teacher candidates as innovative change agents current issues in education [on-line], 11(5). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number5/ author notes lucia l. yu evan thomas ortlieb [editor’s note: no information about the authors was available in the article when accessed in 2015.] note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 15, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation lu, l. y., & ortlieb, e. t. (2009). teacher candidates as innovative change agents. current issues in education, 11(5). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1577 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number5/ http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1577 (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 1 volume 21, issue 3 december 9, 2020 issn 1099-839x becoming a successful international faculty member in a striving university daniela véliz pontificia universidad católica de chile carolina guzmán-valenzuela universidad de tarapacá (chile) astrid pickenpack pontificia universidad católica de chile abstract: hiring academics from abroad is one of the strategies that contemporary universities employ to become international institutions. at the same time, a growing number of academics are considering a wider range of academic opportunities, which has contributed to an increase in transnational academic mobility. however, most universities are not yet prepared to support the unique needs of international faculty members. despite the crucial roles that international faculty play in colleges and universities, relatively little is known about their experiences since most of the studies on the topic are quantitative in nature. the purpose of this qualitative study was to better understand the ways in which international faculty members navigate academic life at a striving university – defined as an institution that aspires to become a world-class university. our findings show that the international faculty members who participated in this study underwent processes of adjustment in which their agentic responses intermeshed with institutional structures, posing challenges to both the faculty members and their host institution. however, it was found that the burden of adjustment is being placed upon individual academics. therefore, we examined agentic responses to challenging academic environments that were not ideally suited for internationalization and will provide insights into how universities might better support international academics as they navigate uncertainty. keywords: academics; internationalization; striving university; acculturation; agency citation: veliz, d., guzmán-valenzuela, c., & pickenpack, a. (2020). (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university. current issues in education, 21(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1797 accepted: 5/26/2020 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1797 veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 2 introduction hiring faculty members from abroad is one of the strategies that contemporary research universities employ in their internationalization processes (altbach, 2006; barnett, 2016; de witt, 2011). at the same time, a growing number of academics are considering a wider range of academic opportunities, which has contributed to an increase in transnational academic mobility (kim, 2009, 2010, 2017; pherali, 2012). however, most universities are not yet prepared to meet the unique needs of international faculty members, which may be particularly true in the case of striving universities – universities aspiring to gain prestige in international rankings (o’meara, 2007). faculty members play an important role in colleges and universities, principally through research and by increasing overall productivity (webber, 2012). however, relatively little is known about the professional experiences of international faculty members in general or about international academics moving to striving universities in particular. studies on international faculty members tend to be quantitative in nature and analyse national datasets to examine specific academic outcomes, such as productivity, job satisfaction, and earnings (froese, 2012; kim et al., 2011; lin et al, 2009; mamiseishvili, 2010; mamiseishvili & rosser, 2010; tao, 2020). there are few studies addressing the experiences of international faculty members (gimenez & morgan, 2014; kahn, 2009; morley et al., 2018; pherali, 2012; sallee & hart, 2015; thomas & johnson, 2004; uusimaki & garvis, 2016) and none at striving universities. some authors (ecu [2014]; kim & locke [2010]) have actually encouraged other academics to do qualitative studies to uncover the stories behind this lack of statistics. the purpose of this qualitative study was to better understand the ways in which international faculty members navigate the culture and policies at a striving university and the main challenges they face. the university chosen for examination is a striving research-oriented institution in the united states. at the time of this study, the university was not considered a top-tier university according to international rankings, nor was it a highly diverse university in terms of international population (considering both students and faculty members). however, the university has demonstrated a commitment to increasing its global prestige by strategically hiring international faculty members. the assumption underlying this research study was that the particular characteristics of the striving university chosen would make the processes of navigating academic work demands particularly challenging for international academics. additionally, we aimed to identify the mechanisms used by faculty members to effectively adapt to adverse institutional conditions. this seems particularly relevant in a context where most universities around the globe are compelled to become more international but very few – those in the top 100 international rankings – are prepared to address the difficulties involved in hiring international academics. framework a call for internationalization in this era of globalization, contemporary universities are increasingly focused on becoming international organizations (altbach, 2006; de witt, 2011) and, as such, they need to develop policies and strategies to promote internationalization (barnett, 2016; blessinger, 2015). some of these policies and strategies include, at the student level, campus-based internationalization initiatives such as study-abroad experiences, curriculum enrichment via majors in international veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 3 studies or specific area studies, intensive foreign-language instruction, and sponsorship of foreign students (haigh, 2014). at the faculty level, there are faculty mobility programs, visiting lecturers and scholars, international conferences and seminars, among others (svetlik & braček lalić, 2016). the recruitment of international faculty for the purpose of improving the academic prestige of a university especially regarding research productivity (bennion & locke, 2010) is paramount. table 1 illustrates the importance leading international rankings place on recruiting international faculty, with the qs world university ranking’s faculty internationalization indicator contributing 5% to the overall ranking results (top universities, 2017). table 1 weight of international faculty in international rankings ranking percentage weighting indicator qs world university rankings 5% international staff ratio times higher education world university rankings (the) 2.5% international staff ratio academic ranking of world universities (arwu) 0% it is therefore not surprising that institutions around the world compete to hire the best academics to gain an advantage in the market and improve their international ranking (baruffaldi & landoni, 2012). gaining prestige has become an aspiration for many institutions around the world, although only the most prestigious universities have the financial resources to take on the challenge. striving universities institutions that are aspiring to achieve high international rankings have been referred to in the literature as “striving institutions”. a striving institutional culture is defined as the “pursuit of prestige within the academic hierarchy” (o´meara, 2007, p. 123). striving behaviors occur when institutions imitate more successful college and universities to gain market advantages (véliz & gardner, 2019). striving institutions have been found to have several practices including (a) hiring more “faculty stars” who are more research focused; (b) a reduction in faculty teaching loads; (c) greater expectations for research productivity in tenure and promotion; and, (d) increased expectations for faculty to secure grants, awards, and fellowships (o’meara, 2007). universities that aspire to become more research-oriented have been seen to exhibit more striving behaviors. although higher education administrators are generally in favor of improving institutional prestige (ortagus, 2016), scholars have argued that the upward drift always comes at the expense of academics (wolf-wendel & ward, 2005) who face new professional pressures. for example, scholars have reported that the boundaries between faculty members’ work and personal lives have been negatively affected by their striving university environments and that they have had to organize their time very carefully to meet institutional demands. (gonzales et al., 2016). this concern with time management appears to be a prevailing problem in research universities, whose priority is to increase the number of publications, patents and grants won (walker, 2009), which they refer to as ‘real work’ (yliojki, 2013) as opposed to teaching, service and managerial duties. however, it appears that striving institutions exacerbate this problem (gonzales et al., 2016). the research aspirations of striving universities pressure faculty members to change their work habits veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 4 in order to spend less time teaching and advising so they will have more time for research, grant writing and publishing international faculty members in the united states the concept of ‘international academic’ has been defined in many different ways in the research literature. in some cases, international academics have been identified according to their citizenship and birthplace (lin et al., 2009; mamiseishvili & rosser, 2010). these definitions are problematic because they may include faculty members who were born and educated abroad but have become naturalized u.s. citizens. some scholars have suggested that the country where international faculty members completed their terminal degree can identify international faculty more precisely when studying this population (kim et al., 2011). for the purpose of this study, we define international faculty members as foreign-born academics who may be naturalized u.s. citizens or permanent residents that grew up outside the country and thus have perspectives, values, and attitudes that might be internationally influenced. we use, therefore, the terms “foreign-born” and “international” faculty interchangeably throughout this paper. the number of international faculty members at u.s. universities has increased over time, nearly doubling in the past 40 years across all academic positions (e.g., assistant, associate, and full professor). for example, the number of foreign-born faculty members at u.s. institutions in 1969 was 28,276. this number has steadily increased to 74,220 in 1998, 115,313 in 2010, and 134,379 in 2017 (institute of international education, 2017). currently, most international faculty members are employed at research universities and concentrated at the most prestigious universities in the united states, according to the open doors report, with the majority (76%) employed in stem disciplines (institute of international education, 2017). international faculty members come from countries around the world, with china (33.6%), india (9.3%), and south korea (5.4%) being the top three (institute of international education, 2017). although international faculty members have become more attractive to research universities as a means of improving global prestige and increasing research income and publications (lin et al., 2009; mamiseishvili & rosser, 2010; mamiseishvili, 2010), there are few studies that address their experiences in specific universities, such as striving institutions. some studies have found that international faculty members are less satisfied with their jobs but more productive compared to their u.s.-born colleagues (mamiseishvili, 2010; mamiseishvili & rosser, 2010). despite these differences in productivity, scholars have not found significant differences in annual salary between international and national faculty members (webber, 2012). other studies indicate that international faculty members face cultural adjustments and language issues (thomas & johnson, 2004) and still others address how the gender and ethnicity of international faculty shape professional success (tao, 2020). the focus of this paper is, however, the experiences of international faculty members who are on the tenure-track at a striving university since this type of study is not available in the literature. international faculty members: processes of socialization and acculturation according to merton (1957), socialization is the process by which new members acquire norms, knowledge, and the skills they need to flourish in a given organization. in addition, socialization is a ritualized process involving an exchange of cultural patterns of thought and action in which individuals influence the organization but, at the same time, are influenced by it (trowler & knight, 1999). socialization is an ongoing process, but it can be more clearly observed when new members join an organization, such as when new faculty members enter an academic institution. veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 5 similarly, the concept of acculturation refers to a two-way process through which both the incoming academic and the host institution change as a consequence of their encounter (jiang et al., 2010). understanding the experiences of acculturation can help institutions identify ways to facilitate and support the process, which will, in turn, contribute to institutional development and enhancement. a faculty member’s first years in a tenure-track position are the most stressful, perhaps due to the pressure of understanding the organization’s culture. new faculty members may be affected by factors like loneliness, intellectual isolation, lack of collegiality, heavy workloads, and time constraints (trowler & knight, 1999). during the initial adaptation period, new faculty members learn about the institutional values and traditions that have the greatest impact on how they construct their academic identities and behave as faculty members (campbell & o’meara, 2014), as well as their relationships with other colleagues and students (feixas, 2002). new academics’ experiences act as interpretative frameworks that give meaning to their future actions and during this period, new faculty members try to exert agentic responses in order to strategically navigate their careers, such as contacting their department chair to discuss their vita and likelihood of promotion the following year (campbell & o’meara, 2014, p. 53). while socialization and acculturation have been common conceptual lenses through which international students are examined (elliot et al., 2016; smith & khawaja, 2011), few studies have used these concepts to broadly examine the experiences of international faculty members (jiang et al., 2010), or specifically at striving universities. in particular, a cultural clash might be evident, especially involving faculty members moving from other continents and cultures. additionally, international faculty members need to obtain permanent work visas and settle in with their families, which takes time and energy and puts pressure on them. it is in this context that an interplay between personal and family factors, cultural diversity and ethnicities (uusimaki & garvis, 2016), academic trajectories, institutional elements (e.g., institutional goals, the role of faculties, the department culture) (campbell & o’meara, 2014), academic disciplines, and global trends (e.g., internationalization processes and research productivity) come into play and produce tensions, which both new international faculty members and universities have to address in their mutual acculturation processes. in this paper, we examine the acculturation processes of international faculty members in a striving university from their own subjective experiences, taking into account these multi-level considerations. method we conducted a qualitative study to understand how international faculty members navigate at a striving university and the main challenges they face. qualitative studies are valuable when trying to understand the participants’ meaning of the “events, situations, and actions that are involved with any of the accounts that they give of their lives and experiences” (maxwell, 1996, p. 17). social actors give different meanings to the situations they experience, and these meanings are diverse and, sometimes, contradictory and problematic (denzin & lincoln, 1994; van maanen, 1982) since they depend on complex social contexts (guba & lincoln, 1994; schwandt, 1994). to capture the international faculty members’ experiences, we used in-depth semi-structured interviews as our primary data source (mcmillan & schumacher, 2010). our case: a striving university this study was conducted at a research-oriented institution in the united states. although said university is considered a research university nationally, it has been ranked in the third tier of u.s. veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 6 institutions (u.s. news and world report, 2015). it occupies a position above 500 in the times higher education while nationally, it is above position 150 (u.s. news and world report, 2015). the university is also the state’s land-grant1 institution and the only doctoral-granting institution in its state. for the purpose of this study, we will refer to the university as land grant university (lgu): lgu is a rural, medium-sized institution with a predominately-white student population, but where less than 1% of its faculty members are designated as international. additionally, the university is in a state that is not diverse in terms of racial ethnicities and international population. based on a review of the university’s stated mission, website, and official documents, it does not strongly promote a policy on internationalization. however, it can be considered a striving university since it has several traits of striving institutions, such as (a) a greater attempt to hire “faculty stars” who are more research focused; (b) a decrease in faculty teaching load, an increase in discretionary time, and a loosening of institutional ties with an increased emphasis on disciplinary ties; (c) an increased emphasis on research in tenure and promotion; and, (d) increased expectations for faculty to secure grants, awards, and prestigious fellowships. (o’meara, 2007, p. 131 «sic»). participant recruitment given the low degree of internationalization of the striving university where we conducted our fieldwork, international academics were scarce and difficult to find. following the definition of international academic provided earlier, we selected the participants from a list of international faculty members provided by the university’s human resource office. we identified 17 faculty members that were “international” or non-u.s. citizens. interestingly, the list did not provide the real number of international faculty members employed by the university at that time since some of them had become u.s. citizens due to their marital status, so we did not include them on the list. hence, it was not possible for us to identify these naturalized citizens unless they disclosed this fact to the university. 1 a land-grant college or university is an institution that has been designated by its state legislature or congress to receive the benefits of the morrill acts of 1862, 1890, and 1994. the original mission of these institutions, as set forth in the first morrill act, was to teach agriculture, military tactics, and mechanic arts as well as classical studies so members of the working classes could obtain a liberal, practical education. veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 7 table 2 demographic characteristics of international faculty members at striving university (lgu) pseudonym disciplinary area country of origin gender faculty rank country of completion of graduate studies ana professional / applied europe female assistant us tian social science east asia male assistant us ranjit stem south asia male full us budi professional / applied southeas t asia male assistant us esmail stem middle east male associat e canada ibrahim stem eurasia male assistant us meryem professional / applied eurasia female assistant us max stem eurasia male assistant uk by e-mail, we invited all 17 international faculty members included on the university’s list to participate in the study. we sent a reminder e-mail two weeks after the initial invitation. only five faculty members from the list agreed to participate. the participant sample was then increased through a snowball sampling technique with those initial five participants, who helped us identify additional international faculty who held working visas or were known to be nonresident aliens. said technique enabled us to increase our total sample to eight participants, comprised of two women and six men. all the participants held an academic tenure-track appointment. six of the participants had applied for their position while living abroad. none of them had specific information about the university environment (such as its lack of an international environment). the participants had diverse cultural backgrounds, hailing from countries in europe, the middle east, and asia (see table 2). data collection in-depth interviews were our main source of data collection. after obtaining informed consent from each participant, we used a semi-structured interview protocol. protocol questions spoke directly to the faculty members’ experiences in their processes of adaptation to their new host institution. interviews were conducted by one member of the research team and lasted approximately 60-70 minutes. with the permission of the participants, they were audiotaped and later transcribed verbatim. the transcribed interviews were sent to the interviewees so as to ensure the accuracy of the conversation. data analysis we analyzed the data via the constant comparative method (glaser, 1978), which allowed us to develop emergent themes and to compress large amounts of data into meaningful units. we veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 8 established the trustworthiness (guba & lincoln, 1985) of the data analysis in three stages. first, we conducted a member check by sending a preliminary summary of the findings to each interviewee for verification and feedback. second, each member of the research team (composed of three members) individually read each interview. later, in the third stage, the research team held several research meetings to come to an agreement on the main categories emerging from the data. despite the fact that we were only able to recruit a small number of international academics, the different demographic characteristics of the faculty members allowed us to identify “common patterns and core experiences and shared aspects of the cases” (emmel, 2003, p. 38). hence, we obtained “detailed descriptions of the uniqueness of the cases and …. the shared patterns that cut across cases” (emmel, 2003, p. 38). our categorization process was specifically focused on establishing codes for the personal, academic, and institutional factors that shaped the acculturation processes undergone by the international faculty members in their host institutions as well as the role that said institutions played in facilitating/obstructing such processes. we were particularly interested in the factors that helped the participants become successful faculty members. we then refined and reduced our initial set of codes to obtain 19 codes that reflected the purposes of our study. table 3 grouping codes of being an international academic into categories personal factors academic factors institutional factors cultural, religious, geographic issues perceptions about teaching and students type of university family of origin high teaching standards university culture language issues being international (in relation to students) welcoming institution being a foreigner (in relation with colleagues) facilitating international faculty members lives in administrative terms moving to another country for better academic opportunities supportive authorities building networks within and outside academia visa issues mentor figure settling down after this analytical process, we looked for relationships between the codes and then grouped them into categories that allowed us to understand the process of being a faculty member in an international context, particularly at a striving university (see table 3). we decided to categorize ‘settling down’ as a transversal code present in all the categories analyzed. given the small sample of academics deployed in this study, we do not claim that the results offered here can be generalized. rather, our aim was to examine the rich, detailed stories that academics were willing to share with us in order to seek ‘out insights that illuminate both variation and significant common patterns’ (emmel, 2003, p. 39) in their academic experiences. veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 9 international academics at a striving university: an ongoing process of being and becoming we organized our findings by distinguishing the experiences described by the faculty members from the academic teaching and research tasks from the institutional factors that facilitated/obstructed their adaptation process. re-shaping the tasks of teaching and research being a faculty member involves, in broad terms, the construction of an identity that revolves around classic teaching, research, and service tasks (clark, 1991; guzmán-valenzuela & barnett, 2013), which in themselves are complex. according to most of the international faculty members who participated in this study, teaching, research, and service are pivotal academic tasks and being a successful academic involves performing all of them well. the participants in this study were new faculty members – not in the sense that they had to learn their academic role since they had all been hired partly for their academic experience – but in the sense of learning how to be an international academic in an institution located in a new country/continent with a particular organizational culture and demands. these international faculty members were thus in a transitional stage that involved learning how to be a faculty member within their status of being international at a striving university. according to ibrahim (eurasia): “it’s culture, institution. well… a) institutional culture; and b) general, cultural activities and behavior, you know? social expectations for different people, and language.” four out of seven participants pointed out that the university was a rural university lacking an international environment – a dimension that wasn’t noticed by the participants during their application process – which made the acculturation process more difficult for international staff, as captured in this comment from meryem (eurasia) “for me, it is really important to work in a multicultural environment so you know? i really would love to see more international faculty, to be honest.” however, most of the participants had received several job offers when they were on the job market and three participants said they accepted their current position because they valued the quality of life that the university could provide them and their families. as noted earlier (in the framework), international faculty members, in general, face cultural and language challenges when moving to a university in another country. what is unique in this case is that international faculty members at this striving university have also had to adapt to two features that are not present in most research-intensive universities in the united states: rurality and minimal international presence. in this context, language and cultural challenges and weak academic support structures for international academics were exacerbated since said universities (managers, academics and students) were insufficiently prepared to address them. teaching: expectations and adaptation teaching is particularly challenging at this striving university since it takes place in an environment where students have diverse expectations and their ethnic background is mainly white. in particular, of the fact that most students had not previously been exposed to cultural diversity was an important issue for most faculty members in this study. some interviewees mentioned ethnic or racial issues that had made teaching particularly challenging because it implied a kind of culture clash. as tian (east asia) stated: we do not have a lot of international students or even students with different cultural backgrounds. pretty much caucasian. yeah, pretty much i can say 90% of veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 10 the students are caucasian so being a professor with an asian cultural background is kind of difficult. the teaching standards and expectations of the new international faculty members also played a role. cultural differences in the teaching approaches in their home countries did not always match the expectations in their new institution, even for those who had previous teaching experience in the united states. for example, budi (southeast asia) had this to say about the differences in teaching styles between his home country and the university: some students can complain about the way of teaching. for example, where i am from, we basically don’t tell students what is going to be on the test or exam. they have to study hard; they have to be able to answer all the questions. here, in the us, we let them know and tell them what is going to be on the exam, tell them what to study. a totally different way of teaching. the faculty members in this study had generally graduated from more ethnically diverse institutions with more prestigious academic reputations. consequently, faculty members had higher expectations regarding the academic achievement of their students. in order to fit into the environment at the striving university, these academics had to adapt and change their academic expectations, summed up here by max (europe): “i have had to re-educate myself; you have to change your educational expectations.” in order to assimilate a new teaching culture, academics had to talk to other faculty members in their departments as well as students. being a researcher: learning new rules and traditions although all the interviewees had an established research career, there were challenges in developing research networks within the country. international faculty members needed to re-learn how to follow certain research paths that obey cultural patterns and research guidelines in a particular country, as max said: in the uk and europe, you are forced to be multinational, and to an extent, the us is almost the reverse. i mean, you know? europe is this kind of melting pot of culture, languages, and i worked a lot, especially in the last 10 years, doing transeuropean research. … you come to the us, and they don’t look out. they look at the us, and they are holding everything else out… if you want to build a proper research connection, it is very difficult, and… so that’s been kind of fun. the perception of a closed research culture in u.s. academia may well be common among international academics who have moved to the united states. at this striving university, there are other cultural and institutional challenges, such as tension between a local institutional culture and the presence of incoming international faculty members with their own research networks that might extend beyond the united states. additionally, some faculty members explained that the university had recently experienced budget cuts, which had caused anxiety among international academics about obtaining institutional funds to conduct their research. the lack of reliable funding forces universities to seek alternative ways to survive, such as recruiting more students, raising tuition, increasing extramural funding, and/or expecting faculty ‘to do more with less’ (gardner et al., 2014). lgu has only recently begun intensifying its focus on research. faculty members in this institution are, therefore, assessed according to their ability to attract research grants for the veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 11 institution and achieve research outcomes. consequently, research competition and productivity could also become a source of conflict for these faculty members. esmail (middle east) had this to say: when you come just to start your work, and you are not established, i think everyone is nice with you, right? and kind of…, but i think, after i started to receive certain grants, and establish my group, and i had sort of more students, and kind of get more established at work, i felt that there were a few people that were not happy about the situation so i don’t know if it was related to my acknowledgment, that they didn’t like that, or it was because they felt there was somebody working more, they have to work more, so… or something like that. this quote illustrates the emerging perception among academics in the host institution that their international colleagues are conducting tasks that carry more prestige and extend over a longer time period, threatening their own academic identities. finally, while all research universities in the us have to address challenges with research budgets, it is likely that this striving university (like other striving universities) has to make additional efforts to obtain and invest research monies in pursuit of its research aspirations. institutional factors overall, participants agreed that the organizational climate at the university was positive in the sense that it was a good place to work with a sense of community which was greatly valued by participants. this seems to be connected to the fact that they work at a striving university. according to ibrahim: my experience in general has been good. it is a nice community. we are not a big university, so you get to meet all kinds of people, with all kinds of backgrounds from different departments. i have several good friends, colleagues from different departments. as for as the university itself, i would say i am mostly happy with it. one of the most recurrent topics among faculty members in relation to international staff’s adaptation process was the importance of receiving institutional support with administrative issues regarding their international status. most of the participants agreed that their interaction with the administration was positive and helpful, especially because international faculty must fulfill many special requirements, particularly regarding visas. at the departmental level, most participants agreed that they received great support from a variety of people at the university, such as the dean, department chair, faculty colleagues, and staff at the international student office, which they appreciated, as described by tian: “i have to say that there are several people very helpful, very supportive here, in this college. i think the most important one is the associate dean…. she is very supportive and tried to protect me a lot.” many participants received support related to the expectations of academic authorities. having clear expectations from the beginning made adapting to the college easier for these faculty members. as esmail stated: i think the most helpful person in my department was the department chair. mainly because on the first day, or even before that, the day of the interview, he described exactly what are the sort of job functions for faculty member… he clearly described that i had to write proposals, bring research dollars, and i had teach these courses veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 12 in undergraduate, and graduate level, and i had to do research, publish, advise students… mentorship was present in the participants’ experiences as well. many participants emphasized the role of their formal and informal mentors in their adaptation process. according to meryem: professor xx, he is my mentor here and he has been very helpful. since the day i was hired, or i received the offer, he always sent me emails telling me what to do, you know? what comes next, the stages, and he even helped me create my first syllabus for the first semester, so he has been very helpful. institutional support – either formal or informal – is important for international faculty members during their adaptation to a new host institution. however, in striving universities – whose research profile is less developed compared with the most research-intensive universities in the united states – such support is vital. additional institutional structures to support international faculty members in general, the participants appreciated the initiatives taken by some colleagues and the support they received from the institution when they began working. however, some challenges arose from their specific international status and the university was not always able to deal with them. the broad spectrum of issues they faced ranged from difficulties navigating the immigration processes and moving to another country or state to buying a car or house in a foreign country. some participants recounted that while the university had the resources and office capacity to process their visas, the process itself was still complicated. most of the participants felt that the timelines and extra paperwork required for international faculty members added extra pressure at the beginning of their employment. surely, the striving university was not well enough prepared to deal with these issues. in particular, some academics felt the visa process caused a great deal of stress in their families. budi described his experience as follows: my wife’s visa permit had expired! when we heard about the news, because we were so stressful because usually if you are out of status just for one day, you are not allowed to come back for another three years, right? so, she went back to – [asian country], and i told them, if she cannot come back, i’ll quit, so they helped her to come back. international academics, in general, realized that the university did not have all the services in place for international faculty members because there were so few of them at the university and because the university was relatively small. in general, the services available were primarily to assist undergraduate students, not faculty members. ranjit (south asia), summarized: it is also because of the size. it is a small university. they simply do not have the resources to support many of these extra things so i think that is a limitation. it is a small university. there are pluses and minuses of being in a small university. other issues that affected their settling down had to do with accommodating their partners in the process. for example, ana (from europe) moved with her husband, who was also international. since he was ineligible to work, he applied to graduate school to keep busy. in sum, most of the veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 13 aforementioned issues had implications in all spheres of the faculty members’ lives (personal, family, and academic). becoming a successful academic at a striving university the experiences of the eight foreign-born faculty members examined here provide insight into the complex acculturation processes at a striving university in the united states that is not completely prepared to provide all the necessary job conditions. there are intricate factors at different levels (micro, meso, and macro) that interact and play roles in shaping these faculty members’ experience as they strive to become successful international academics at the new host university. some of the factors are basic – such as visa status for the academic and their family – and others are negotiable and fluid during the acculturation process involving the academic and their host institution. other factors point to a rather closed or parochial organizational culture lacking the institutional structures to assist international academics in their adaptation processes. also, the intrinsic characteristics of the academic community (managers, academics and students) can become a source of tension due to their unfamiliarity with the high research and teaching expectations of international academics. international academics at this striving university undergo processes of adjustment and assimilation in which their agentic responses interlock with institutional structures, posing challenges to the academics and their host institutions. however, a personal will to succeed and job conditions that need to be met by the host institution condition the rest of the factors. all the international faculty members participating in this study were successful academics in their home countries that had decided to emigrate to boost their academic careers and live in a family-friendly environment. the chance to work in a relatively small rural university (surrounded by a spectacular landscape) surely influenced their decision. all of them have brought their personal and family histories as well as a series of academic practices. they had learned how to teach, conduct research, and do service tasks. although these are common academic tasks, their realization is attached to a particular cultural context with its own codes, expectations, and rules that need to be learned during the socialization process. consequently, faculty members in this study found themselves re-learning how to succeed as academics at a striving university. in this re-learning process, all sorts of structural factors came into play, adding complexity to the adaptation process. at the same time, there are also sources of conflict or even anxiety, such as language issues, cultural backgrounds, geographical elements, ethnic aspects, and visa arrangements, that are exacerbated in a striving university. during the analysis of the interviews, we identified a series of responses from these academics that revealed how they dealt with challenging personal, academic, and institutional situations. it became evident that our participants deployed a capacity to act in pursuit of clear goals, putting a set of actions into practice. for example, all the faculty members we interviewed made their academic decisions before applying to lgu. they were pursuing long-term objectives (most of them on a tenure-track appointment) requiring years of planning that had started, for most of them, when they resolved to undertake their doctorates in the united states and establish an academic career in the country. from a variety of job offers, they decided to establish themselves at this university since they believed it provided good research opportunities and conscious strategic decisions about where to focus their academic efforts in order to succeed, as articulated by esmail: veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 14 i had offers from europe, from france. i had offers, two offers from canada, and two offers from here. so, between these different [options] in terms of like living, standards, they were all similar, universities… some of them were more famous than here but i think the research opportunity that i could get here was the most important part of why i came here. once inside the institution, the participants showed high levels of proactivity, academic empowerment, and openness to learn and adapt to challenging new situations. tian described what we labeled ‘a will to succeed’ while talking about the changes she has made to reopen a therapy room in her new institution: i am trying to establish a lot of new structures and rules there. so yeah, a lot of change but not particularly due to my cultural background or anything. it is pretty much like … it is more like my specialty area and my experience that i bring in here. in this quote we see tian bringing her own standards and ways of organizing academic work, which she has developed from her past academic experiences so as to extend the institution’s opportunities. likewise, max had this to say: when you are in the bottom of the system, you are trying not to upset people, and you get caught up in politics… thankfully, i’ve been doing science work quite a long time so i think if you are relatively new to it, it might’ve been an even worse experience, but because i come in with the experience i have, i think [i]’ve managed better than some people might’ve. max showed an awareness about being at ‘the bottom of the system’ but was also conscious of having a repertoire of experience and competencies that helped him deal with his new academic life at a university that was unable to sufficiently meet his expectations and standards. furthermore, our participants showed the capacity for adaptation and strategic decision making, as well as the belief that a positive attitude towards change could make the adaptation process easier and help them succeed. it can be an interesting experience; it can be a funny experience. it’s really a matter of, you know? to the person to make the best of the situation, they are in. it is really up to the person themselves. you have … the culture that you come from but there is also your own, individual attitude that really impacts how you interact with other people at the university. (ibrahim) in this quotation, ibrahim stated that even though everyone has different cultural backgrounds, personal attitudes towards change are an important part of succeeding in a new institutional environment. a positive attitude is especially important in a striving university that is learning how to accommodate the complexity of hosting international faculty members that have invested time and effort into getting to know the university’s academic culture across diverse areas. tian referred to the teaching process and the time she has invested in learning about her students and assimilating what she calls cultural ‘atmosphere’: “yeah, so i spend about one semester to get to know students and know the entire cultural atmosphere here.” although institutional structures to support these international academics were insufficiently developed, the faculty members we interviewed were able to seek help and support from other veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 15 faculty members and authorities in order to reach their goals, as described by max: “and whenever i have a question, i really don’t feel shy. i can know i can just knock on someone’s door and ask my question.” the role of (formal or informal) mentors at a striving university is essential to supporting international faculty members in the challenging process of re-learning their roles as academics. mentors might support new international staff socially and emotionally as well as with the many tasks involved in teaching and research, even though they might not necessarily be familiar with research demands and procedures. in addition, administrative support is essential to help faculty members with the bureaucratic requirements necessary to achieving a civic status that provides sufficient social security, healthcare coverage and other items they require. these administrative issues need to be solved so the faculty members and their families can properly settle down in the new country (especially in regard to securing the proper visa status). without these minimum conditions, it is difficult to survive as an academic. these academics also had to re-learn how to become new citizens (with civil rights and duties) in a foreign country that may be on another continent that is completely different their own homeland (in ethnic, religious, and cultural terms). they experienced challenging transition and adjustment processes, which affected their academic lives as well as their personal and family lives causing them to get social support in diverse areas. they deliberatively sought to develop social networks with colleagues and friends that helped them feel more integrated in the new culture. to sum up, the international faculty members who participated in this study were highly determined. they had very clear academic expectations and goals and they devised and implemented strategies to help them succeed at the striving university. these academics were able to create spaces to exert their agency and become the kind of faculty members they want to be in a completely new international environment – this is, a university aspiring to become a prestigious research university. finally, their success was a result of the ways they realized their agency as academics. however, a will to succeed was not enough: the university had to be prepared to create the structures to guide and support international faculty members in their journey. despite the fact that their internationalization agenda has become increasingly imperative, striving universities are not always prepared to deal with management, human resource and personnel issues or meet the teaching and research expectations of international faculty members. conclusion the international faculty members in this study made deliberate decisions about their careers and personal lives in order to become successful academics at a striving university. after listening to their stories, no one could doubt that these faculty members are exemplary global academics. they had many opportunities and offers and they made strategic decisions that brought them closer to their academic aspirations. all of the international faculty we interviewed were determined to be successful academics prior to joining the university. they brought their own academic capital (especially built around research) but were also prepared to adapt, negotiate, and learn the new rules associated with working at a striving university in the united states. because they knew the rules about research (which follows ‘global’ codes), re-learning some rules about conducting competitive research in their new environment was not that difficult. teaching was a different matter: these faculty members had to invest effort and energy into adapting their teaching codes or scripts to local needs, developing ‘culturally sensitive teaching skills’ (pherali, 2012, p. 329). therefore, teaching required extra effort for these academics. veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 16 all the faculty members in this study had academic experience in the united states, as well as in their home country (only one participant completed their graduate studies outside the united states), which contributed to their abilities to successfully adapt to the new institutional environment. additionally, all participants came from universities that were much more prestigious than the current one so their academic productivity ‘standards’ and teaching expectations were consistent with their own narratives and higher than those at the host institution. these factors, coupled with the academics’ own sense of agency, provided a unique scenario for these academics. we argue that when successful international faculty members move and choose to live in another country and work in a striving university, their personal, family, academic, and financial investment is extremely high. these academics not only find ways to adapt quickly to ensure a stable academic position (tenure); they also extended the institutional boundaries of an aspirational university that still had to develop structures (at different levels) to support these academics. in short, our participants are strategic and flexible international academics that are constantly negotiating their identities to obtain the best opportunities for themselves, their families, and their academic careers within an institution in the process of becoming more international. these capacities are ready to be re-shaped in a new academic context. the identity they built during their years as successful local academics in particular countries was challenged to morph into the identity of a successful academic at a striving university. these faculty members have been successful thanks to a combination of personal and academic agencies that they had already learned in the past. at the same time, some components situated in the present call for action by the institution to welcome these academics. the striving university where these faculty members worked was willing to accommodate and support their international academics by putting certain academic and administrative procedures in place to help them settle down. both social and academic support (especially from colleagues and mentors) were described as key factors in a smoother transition to the university environment. supportive institutional structures were, therefore, crucial to helping faculty members adapt, although in some cases, basic work conditions (such as visa status) and teaching and research expectations were not fully met. accordingly, the burden of adjustment was placed upon individual faculty members. this poses challenges for striving universities around the globe that are working to become more international even though they are currently not prepared for internationalization. according to the experiences examined here, both academic agency and academic capital are necessary conditions to succeed as an international academic at a striving university. at the same time, the space and support that universities and, particularly, departments can provide for faculty members are relevant as well. in developing strategic responses to succeed in academia, it turns out that both international faculty members and their striving university are effectively pursuing their objectives. recommendations and future research until recently, there has been little evidence that universities have considered the experience of international faculty members. as kim, wolf-wendel, and twombly (2011) pointed out, international faculty members usually obtain attention because they are viewed as problems, specifically due to language barriers or teaching skills. however, with more countries (such as china, russia, or india) competing in the global university rankings based on international veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 17 indicators, universities located in countries like the united states, the united kingdom, and australia cannot take their positions for granted. universities interested in hiring international faculty members could consider providing incoming faculty members with more explicit information about the student culture as well as teaching expectations. the interviewees also suggested that the university offer courses on cultural awareness to assist students both in and out of the classroom. this might also apply to other, nonstriving universities. institutions might also consider arranging a special orientation program for new international academics. some of the difficulties that participants encountered were related to their visa status. it is surprising that this kind of support is quite established in u.s. universities at the undergraduate level, but it seems that it is not that well developed for faculty members. there is still a substantial portion of the immigration process that falls onto international faculty members’ shoulders, producing extra pressure, especially for faculty members during their tenure-track period. cultural adaptation support is also needed and might include discussions of the current context, especially in environments that are predominately culturally homogeneous. future research might continue to explore other institutional contexts as well as the experiences of international faculty members in different countries and institutions. in this regard, qualitative studies might help us better understand these experiences and create new formulas to support international academic staff. another important aspect to be considered in future research –which has been underexplored – are gender differences 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(2013). boundary-work between work and life in the high-speed university. studies in higher education, 38(2), 242–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.577524 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f1028315311421842 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0039042 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2011.08.004 https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2014.942266 https://doi.org/10.1080/02732173.2020.1732250 https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1003594512521 https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2016.1178217 https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12195 https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2009.11779029 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-012-9523-6 https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.577524 veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 21 author notes daniela véliz pontificia universidad católica de chile dvelizc@uc.cl carolina guzmán-valenzuela universidad de tarapacá cguzmanv@academicos.uta.cl astrid pickenpack pontificia universidad católica de chile aspickenpack@uc.cl veliz, guzmán-valenzuela & pickenpack: (be)coming a successful international faculty member in a striving university current issues in education, 21(3) 22 volume 21, issue 3 december 9, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf cie template 1 volume 17, number 3 december 22, 2014 issn 1099-839x conflicting discourses: a first grade teacher’s perceptions of teaching with a scripted ela curriculum susan a. sturm state university of new york at fredonia in this article, a case study is presented of an urban first grade teacher’s perceptions of teaching english language arts (ela) within a district-mandated scripted curriculum. the teacher was observed during fifteen sessions of whole-class, 90-minute reading over two months and was interviewed four times. all curricular materials were analyzed, including the commercial ela curriculum and the school district-supplied common core state standards materials. qualitative analyses revealed that the teacher possessed three discourses, or “distinctive ways of acting, interacting, valuing, feeling...thinking, and believing” (gee, 2011, p. 177) which she accessed in order to talk about her experiences. the teacher’s three discourses were: (1) an academic discourse derived from her master’s program; (2) a professional discourse that developed during her career; and (3) a personal discourse that came to be throughout her life. the teacher’s discourses remained compartmentalized and possible reasons are explored, with implications for administrators, policy makers, and teachers in similar situations. keywords: scripted curriculum, ela curriculum, common core this is one teacher’s story of what it was like to teach first grade in a school that had a mandated curriculum for english language arts (ela). this story details her perceived frustrations, joys, and innovations as she and her twenty-three first graders navigated the murky waters of, not only their school district’s mandated ela curriculum, but also new york state’s recent adoption of the common core state standards. in telling her story, the hope is to provide comfort for others in her position and to give voice to just one of the many teachers in the united states who are now in similar positions of maneuvering multiple standards, programs, and curricula. with teachers’ performance being more directly linked to their students’ academic performance, many educators find themselves under almost-constant pressure to teach in a way that prepares their students to take exams. educational theorist arthur applebee (1996) wrote, “it has been very clear in recent years that systems of assessment have a profound effect on the nature of classroom teaching and learning” (p.115). namely, many schools have adopted mandated curricula in order to standardize what is being taught and to make sure that all “children are getting the best possible education no matter where they live” (national governors association center for best practices, 2010). an unfortunate result of these mandates has been an increase of scripted programs in english language arts (ela) (macgillivray, ardell, curwen, & palma, 2004) in order to create a more uniform approach to meeting the standards. research has shown that “mandates do not necessarily result in substantive teacher learning, thoughtful instruction, or best classroom practice,” (valencia, place, martin, & grossman, 2006, p. 114) and that by “narrowing the scope of curriculum, teachers’ craft is often stagnated” (macgillivray et al., 2004, p. 138). additionally, some (anagnostopoulos, 2003) have argued that even though english teachers do not intend to marginalize their students’ discourse, pressure on teachers to prepare students for an exam and to stick to the curriculum often results in marginalization. in essence, an increase in current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 2 federal mandates and teacher accountability for their students’ test scores, and the resulting dependence on scripted curricula, has created negative impacts on the teaching of english language arts. research into the perceptions of teachers of ela can reveal how educators are negotiating working under mandates from their states as well as from their school districts, how their teaching is affected by the use of commercial curricular programs, and what can be done to ensure that children are receiving the best education possible. this case study was designed to explore the ways in which a first grade teacher in an urban classroom used a scripted english language arts curriculum to teach. bounded by the first grade classroom environment and the event of ela instruction, the research questions driving this case study were:  what discourses does a first grade teacher with a scripted and mandated english language arts curriculum assume?  in what ways, if any, do these discourses influence her identity as a teacher? review of literature the trends that have influenced the field of english language arts have appeared at local, state, and national levels and have been responsible for a variety of fads, practices, and paradigms. presently, the field of ela is among a new wave of reforms that are affecting how the subject is taught. teachers are under immense pressure to help their schools make adequate yearly progress and to prepare students for state exams. at the same time, many schools across the country are rolling out the new common core standards and subsequent curricula. being stuck in a fuzzy grey area of transition, ela educators are still responsible for preparing students for state exams while at the same time implementing new practices to address the internationally-benchmarked standards of common core. the result is an even higherstress, higher-stakes classroom environment that makes many teachers feel like plate spinners in the educational circus. scripted ela curricula living in an era of accountability, school districts are under immense pressure to produce everhigher test scores. as a result, many schools are adopting commercially-produced ela curricula to help them manage the difficult task of meeting all of the standard requirements. “highly-directed (scripted) curricula with pacing guides, ‘embedded assessments,’ and ‘flashy publishers’ web pages provide teachers with all of the content, pedagogy, assessments, and even classroom management tools they should need” to prepare their students for assessments (white, 2012, p. 194). proponents of curricular programs argue that they provide standards for teachers as well as a means by which school districts can ensure that coherent and consistent content is being presented across all classrooms (ogawa, sandholtz, martinez-flores, & scribner, 2003). commercial curriculum designers, such as houghton mifflin, harcourt brace, mcgraw-hill, and pearson have capitalized on the desire for standardization of curricula by creating programs that are designed to align with learning standards. programs such as open-court reading (mcgraw hill education, 2005), soar to success (houghton mifflin harcourt, 2007), and treasures reading (mcgraw hill education, 2006), promise to “make all the right connections to ensure that no child is left behind” (macmillan-mcgraw hill, 2006). on the outside, scripted ela programs seem to be an effective and convenient method for meeting the requirements of educational standards; however, as convenient as this sort of standardization may sound, it is certainly not without risk. smagorinsky, lakly, and johnson (2002) described a scripted program from their research in which “all teachers in all schools [in the school district] would read the same literature on approximately the same day, ask the same questions, use the same assessments, and otherwise provide each student in the district the same instruction” (p. 198). the standardization they described is precisely what scripted ela programs are designed to create. the authors reported on the resulting “acquiescence, accommodation, and resistance” (p. 187) that a first-year teacher experienced within the program. similarly, anagnostopoulos (2003) showed how the state-mandated exam and the district-mandated curriculum in ela were positioned between students and teachers and worked to “silence students’ emergent attempts to engage with and construct understanding” (p. 207) of their english curriculum, sometimes without their teachers’ realization. with so many school districts adopting scripted curricula to manage the requirements of educational standards, it is essential to explore the these programs and to consider the effect that scripted curricula have had on teaching practices and the state of the education profession. teaching in scripted curricula as long as there have been ela curricula, there have been studies about teaching practices and perceptions of working with such programs. ogletree and dipasalegne (1975) examined teacher perceptions of working within a direct instructional system for teaching arithmetic and reading (distar) program, a very early version of a scripted curriculum. they found that most teachers felt that the program limited their creativity and they felt the need to make modifications to the materials that they were provided. likewise, in the 1980s, ball and feiman-nemser (1988) found that prospective teachers felt that good teaching did not involve textbooks or teachers’ guides, but rather creating lessons and materials individually. this theme of feeling the need to modify or amend the materials that are provided in curricular programs has continued through conflicting discourses: a first grade teacher’s perceptions of teaching with a scripted ela curriculum 3 current research. specifically some have found that teachers have been concerned with how to adapt curricular materials in order to meet the needs of “students who have been historically marginalized by the public school system” (stillman, 2011, p. 149); to make the curriculum more relevant to the students’ interests (pease-alvarez & samway, 2008); and to address the learning of students for whom english is a second language (macgillivray et al., 2004). these concerns speak directly to the acknowledgment by teachers that a culturally sensitive curriculum is preferred and that scripted curricula do not allow them to address the varying sociocultural backgrounds of their students as well as their professional needs as a teacher. a second theme from the research on teaching within scripted curricula was a perceived sense of lost identity as a teacher. scholars have reported that working with a scripted curriculum has left teachers feeling “very frustrated because [the] curriculum does not resemble what [they] want to do in [their] classrooms” (smagorinsky et al., 2002, p. 199) and that they were not able to create a teacher identity freely. likewise, ainsworth, ortlieb, cheek, pate, and fetters (2012) reported that first-grade teachers felt that their semiscripted ela curricula placed too much emphasis on “test scores” which “precluded the classroom teacher in her art of teaching” (p. 89). other research has argued that teachers cannot develop and grow if they are “absolved of the thinking about the what, why, and how of their instruction and its effects on student learning,” as sometimes occurs in scripted programs (valencia et al., 2006, p. 114). still others have reported teachers being “swept up in a flow of mandates that consumed their thinking, their energy, and for some, even their love of teaching” (valli & buese, 2007, p. 545). a true sense of loss is present in the research on teaching identity among scripted language arts programs. as santoro (2011) stated: “if high-stakes accountability renders the moral rewards of the [teaching] profession inaccessible, it is likely that strong teachers will find little to sustain them in the pursuit of good work” (p. 18). with little to sustain them, some might be faced with the decision to stay or leave the profession. finally, research has revealed reports of teachers who were “constrained” (beatty, 2011, p. 2), “held hostage” (meyer, 2005, p. 106), “colonized” (macgillivray et al., 2004, p. 134), and “put…in a box” (ogawa et al., 2003, p. 166) by their school’s ela curricula. these words connote an embodied sense of captivity and entrapment and are not emotions that any professional ought to feel upon going to work each day. many researchers have reported teachers feeling as though they were forced to comply with their school district’s decision to teach with a scripted ela program or face the potential of being ostracized by other teachers and administrators (pease-alvarez & samway, 2008) or, even worse, losing their jobs altogether (meyer, 2005). feeling threatened to teach in a prescribed way is surely not something that teachers expect when entering into the profession. having to teach in a scripted ela program has been shown to cause these types of emotions and will, undoubtedly, drive some to walk away from or reconsider the profession altogether (crocco & costigan, 2007; santoro, 2011; valli & buese, 2007). learning in scripted curricula the research on student learning in scripted ela programs is also vast. some studies have shown that ela curricular programs, such as open court, success for all, and direct instruction under the government’s reading first initiative failed to meet the literacy needs of students because they did not address individual needs but, rather, assumed that “the process of learning to read will be identical for every child” (milosovic, 2007, p. 29). teachers have seemed to agree with the notion that a good curriculum will allow them to use their professional expertise to tailor instruction for all learners. likewise, some research mentioned that “the diverse ethnic and cultural makeup of today’s classroom make it unlikely that one single curriculum will meet the needs and interest of all students” (ede, 2006, p. 31). others have argued that “the rigid use of a commercial reading program may crowd out silent reading, literature, writing, and discussion from the curriculum, with harmful effects on children’s literacy development” (yatvin, weaver, & garan, 2003, p. 30) as well as that effective teaching does not rely on a script as students need on-the-fly, authentic instruction that changes as do their needs (allington, 2002). in order to meet the needs of all learners, a curriculum has to move beyond “low-order skills” and focus more on “higher level, meaning making instruction” that is tailored to the students’ needs (joseph, 2006, p. 91). research has shown that scripted ela curricula tend to lead to a narrowing of skills or a “bracketing” of “students’ learning because [teachers] are not available to them to help address their cognitive, social, and spiritual needs” (meyer, 2005, p. 105). instead, “the material struggles of children’s lives are too often rendered invisible” (dutro, 2010, p. 281) inside of scripted programs that do not welcome ideas outside of what is available contextually. students have been reduced to a test score, and the chance for teachers to forge meaningful relationships with students in order to know more about their sociocultural backgrounds, has been taken away by mandates and time constraints (crocco & costigan, 2007). conditions such as those described in the research on learning in scripted programs work to perpetuate systems of marginalization and oppression in schools with students placed at the bottom of a rigid hierarchy of power. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 4 talk in scripted ela curricula according to applebee (1996), “a curriculum provides domains for conversation” (p. 37) opening up a space for dialog between teacher and students. talk is the means by which students learn about the ways of others, themselves, and the world around them, and teachers are the direct link between students and the curriculum. if, indeed, the curriculum lays the groundwork for talk, it is interesting to consider what scripting a curriculum does to the potential for conversation. teaching in scripted programs relies heavily on traditional patterns of talk, such as the initiate-response-evaluate (ire) model, in which the teacher asks a question with an intended right answer, one student responds either correctly or incorrectly, and the teacher confirms or denies his or her response with some form of evaluative remark (cazden, 2001; mehan, 1979; nystrand & christoph, 2001). such a pattern of talk might sound like this: mrs. sam: okay class, who can tell me what year columbus arrived in america? let’s see, johnny? johnny: 1492. mrs. sam: excellent, johnny. now who else can tell me the name of his ships? mary? mary: the niña, the pinta, and the santa maria. mrs. sam: very good, mary, you’re right. this pattern of talk is teacher-centered rather than student-centered and creates a hierarchy of power in the classroom with the teacher positioned at the top, assuming the job of filling the students’ minds by “making deposits of information which he or she considers to constitute true knowledge” (freire, 1993). missing from this model are most of the five principles that alexander (2006, p. 28) claimed make teaching dialogic: 1) participants collectively learn; 2) reciprocity among participants’ listening to and sharing ideas; 3) support for all ideas from all participants, without the fear of being wrong; 4) cumulative building of knowledge and information in oral communication 5) purposeful and open dialogue that is structured around a learning goal traditional patterns of classroom talk, such as ire, rely on the teacher’s control of the pace and direction of the talk (christoph & nystrand, 2001), recitation of material by students (cazden, 2001), and multiple exchanges between participants with little connection between exchanges (mehan, 1979; wells & arauz, 2006). the focus in traditional classroom talk is on the teacher and the content rather than on the students and the development of thinking among them. classroom talk of a traditional nature does not allow much room for multiple perspectives or points of view. instead, traditional patterns of talk perpetuate “a highly routinized form of knowledge” (fine & weis, 2003, p. 97) in which “the form is the curriculum in a sense, since no other curriculum is really available” (p. 98). learning becomes more about how to “do” school and how to “talk” academic rather than how to grow intellectually and independently. children’s personal perspectives are traded in for context-based questions and test-style reading passages. traditional talk patterns are a feature of many scripted programs and sets up a classroom context of the teacher as the authority source (gutierrez, rymes, & larson, 1995) or the keeper of the official discourse (gee, 1996). in fact, scripted programs assume the role of authority text in the classroom and often usurp the teacher’s power to “respond to what her children’s behaviors are telling her” (meyer, 2005, p. 105). when even the teacher feels uncomfortable straying from the scripted language of the program, it’s no wonder that children have to fight to have a voice (dutro, 2010) within their school’s scripted ela curriculum. gap in the research while research into the many facets of scripted and mandated ela curricula is extensive, what seems to be missing from the research is specifically how early elementary teachers deal with working within a prescribed program. how does a school district’s mandated curriculum affect an elementary teacher’s discourse? do elementary teachers feel that there are opportunities for professional judgment and flexibility when teaching with a scripted ela program? how are teachers’ choices about the their teaching influenced by scripted programs? do teachers in urban settings believe that scripted ela programs meet the cultural needs of all of their learners? from a wider perspective, more research is needed in what role politics and national educational reform have on day-to-day life in the classroom. is there a connection between large reform movements and the discourse of the classroom? do teachers notice and consider the broader goings on of the education system? this research aims at exploring some of these big questions and to develop a deeper understanding of what it is like to be an elementary teacher who is mandated to use a scripted english language arts curriculum. in doing so, the hope is that more teachers in this position will feel a sense of community and that a conversation can begin about a teacher’s place in the larger political scene. theoretical framework in considering this case study, a sociocultural perspective will be used. specifically, bakhtin’s concept of discourses will be applied to analyze the data gathered and to consider the role of discourse on one teacher’s identity. then, a closer look at the theories on social justice education will take place, situating this case study among this larger body of thought. conflicting discourses: a first grade teacher’s perceptions of teaching with a scripted ela curriculum 5 bakhtin and gee’s notions of discourses in the dialogic imagination, bakhtin (1981) explained that language “gives expression to forces working toward concrete verbal and ideological unification and centralization, which develop in vital connection with the process of sociopolitical and cultural centralization” (p. 271). in other words, language represents the coming together of a speaker’s verbal and ideological worlds, and thereby represents him or her as a part of many sociocultural processes. at any given moment of speaking, a person’s words are symbolic expressions of who he or she is, where he or she has been, and what he or she would like to be. this notion of discourse as a symbolic expression of identity will be used to explore the case study at hand of one teacher. furthermore, bakhtin continued, we all possess “languages of social groups, ‘professional’ and ‘genetic’ languages, languages of generations and so forth,” (p. 272) that “may all be taken as particular points of view on the world” (p. 293). the discourses that we each assume have emerged from a variety of worldviews that are developed as we move through different social situations and events. “the word in language is half someone else’s” (bakhtin, 1981, p. 293) and this dependence upon others to make language one’s own is what creates the link between speakers. without others, one would not have or need language: language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speakers' intentions … language, for the individual consciousness, lies on the borderline between oneself and the other. (bakhtin, 1981, p. 294) the other’s response to language has the potential to change everything about how the speaker identifies, forever altering his or her discourse and way of being. in schools, teachers make up a community of professionals who share in a very specific genre of language. they depend on one another to become socially situated among a group with shared interests and goals. as a result of this dependence, speech genres emerge which represent the intersection of many speakers, ideas, and ways of being. in a school, speech genres tend to be recognizable and can consist of very specific language such as “appr,” “iep,” “formative assessment,” and “differentiated instruction,” all phrases and terms that might seem foreign to anyone outside of the education speech genre. becoming an accepted member of a community of teachers entails, to some extent, taking up the discourse of the other teachers around you. beyond language, there is also a shared sense of being in a school that contributes to a teacher’s discourse. how the morning message is delivered, what is acceptable dress in the building, the way grade-level meetings are run, who sits next to whom in the teacher’s lounge at lunch—these are all socially-learned practices that come from belonging to a professional school community. these social ways of being dictate the discourse of a school building and failing to adapt to them can lead to feelings of isolation or exclusion. each school develops its own speech genres related to the specific student population, geographic location, and the way of life inside the school community. in a bakhtinian sense, a teacher’s discourse is reflective of all of these elements— the community of professionals, speech genres present in the building, and the specific characteristics of the school—in a fluid and ever-changing way. gee (2011) referred to a similar relationship between language and social groups when he wrote, “a discourse with a capital ‘d’…is composed of distinctive ways of speaking/listening and often, too, distinctive ways of writing/reading. these distinctive ways of speaking/listening and/or reading/writing are coupled with distinctive ways of acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, and believing” (p. 177). gee’s definition of discourse takes into account the interactions and ways of acting that individuals demonstrate as a result of their social ways of being. discourses are “specific socially recognizable identities” (p. 177) that are revealed, not only in how a person speaks, but also in how he or she acts. gee acknowledged: "discourses are not mastered through overt instruction but by enculturation (‘apprenticeship)’ into social practices through scaffolded and supported interaction with people who have already mastered the discourse'" (gee, 1996, p. 170). teachers learn the discourse of their school from those around them. they are scaffolded by others in their professional community into the behaviors, norms, and discourse of their building. this works to create a sense of belonging and community that has potential to provide, not only support, but also rigid structure that may be difficult to work against. it is important to understand the role of discourse in a school building, how discourse reflects a school community’s social ways of being, and the norms of practice that dictate discourse in schools. exploring the conditions that impact discourse in schools can help us to understand the choices in language and practice that teachers make. critical interanimation of discourses. a teacher’s identity is representative of a variety of discourses that have developed throughout his or her life. for example, most teachers have access to the following discourses: an academic discourse, learned while studying in a teacher education program; a professional discourse, taken up as they become part of a school building and district community; and a personal discourse, developed from their own experiences, culture, and backgrounds. with each of these social settings come a worldview and a genre of language to which the teacher is exposed, elements that ultimately contribute to his or her sociallyconstructed teaching identity. since “each word tastes of current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 6 the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life,” (bakhtin, 1981, p. 293) what a teacher says can reflect intentions from any number of contexts. in fact, what each person says is only truly his “when the speaker populates it with his own intention” (p. 294). the task of the researcher is to analyze the language of teachers and to explore what intention they are populating their words with, what worldviews they are symbolizing, and which identity they are taking up to do so. remembering gee’s notion of discourse, a researcher must consider an individual’s many ways of communicating coupled with many ways of acting, as well as the “scaffolded and supported interaction with people who have already mastered the discourse” (1996, p. 170) in order to make sense of the discourse choices teachers make. when a speaker is aware of his or her many discourses, there is potential for what bakhtin (1981) called “critical interanimation,” or “[active] choosing [of] one’s orientation among” discourses (p. 296). for example, a teacher who is confident in her professional life will have little discomfort recognizing and using the discourse of both her personal background as well as her academic background as she teaches. interanimation, or working between and across discourses, leads to critical thinking and the ability to recognize when another discourse may be more appropriate or effective, as well as why different speech genres exist in the first place. when there are limitations or restraints on what we feel we can say or do, we tend to lose the ability to critically interanimate—our words become more someone else’s than our own. without critically interanimating, a speaker may compartmentalize discourses, purposefully keeping them separate and only calling on them in the contexts where they were learned or where he or she feels they are safely acceptable. in bakhtin’s words, without critical interanimation, a speaker is “not able to regard one language (and the verbal world corresponding to it) through the eyes of another language” (p. 295). gee (1996) might add that the social apprenticeship into new speech genres plays a role in critical interanimation as “acquisition must (at least, partially) precede learning” (p. 171). a teacher could very likely acquire the discourse of her building without actually learning all that there is to know about the discourse, where it comes from, and the privilege gained by accessing it. research into the nature of discourses assumed by teachers working with scripted curricula can help to uncover the many emotions and concerns that arise from working within such a setting. likewise, research of this nature can provide a clearer picture for what it is like to teach under mandates and how teachers’ identities are influenced. finn’s domesticating literacy when we think of the word domestication, it is often in reference to animals. domesticated pets, wild animals domesticated in captivity, the domestication of cattle for beef production. rarely does the word domestication bring to mind children. such a word does not belong near children. it connotes manipulation, oppression, and taming—not conditions we wish for our next generation, especially as pertains to the education they are receiving. however, a close look at the history of education reveals that domestication is not, nor has it ever been, absent from the american classroom (applebee, 1974; squire, 2003). it may be hiding in the form of assessment, mandated curricula, or academic discourses. finn (2009) described “domesticating education” as “associated with working-class (and, in fact, middleclass) classrooms. methods are traditional and teacher centered. discipline and control of students is authoritarian. ideal students are docile and obedient.” (p. 255) parallels can be drawn between this definition and the types of teaching and learning that are perpetuated within a scripted ela program—traditional, teachercentered lessons, docile and obedient students. finn described how domesticating teaching practices “invariably accompany the skills and drills ‘solution,’” and “replicate the authoritarian, conformist, powerless societies of intimates that make implicit, contextdependent language and communication inevitable” (p. 128). by following a script that was written to provide middleand upper-class children with the skills needed to thrive (dutro, 2010) and that may be providing lowerclass children the skills to submit, teachers can unknowingly feed into the system of control and power that has plagued our schools for decades (anyon, 1981). finn (2009) added, “giving children more and more drills in phonics and basic skills has and never will lead to powerful forms of literacy” (p. 128). the skills in scripted programs result in the “highly routinized form of knowledge” that fine and weis (2003) described: “knowledge is flat and highly controlled within the school—thus divorced from the true experiences of [students]—and the school simply demands passivity in its face in order to ‘pass’” (p. 98). in this learning environment, so long as children are obedient and passive during ela, they ought to pass along through the educational system unmarked, unmoved, and perhaps more dangerously, unchallenged. most scripted curricula are taught in a very traditional, skills-based manner (crocco & costigan, 2007; macgillivray et al., 2004; ogawa et al., 2003). because many ela programs are designed to prepare children for large-scale assessments, there is often more focus on vocabulary and phonics than on conceptual and critical thinking. this is the focus finn warned against when he wrote, “progressive methods are empowering. traditional methods are domesticating” (p. 251). methods such as critical reading and questioning ideas are empowering and, incidentally, often left out of scripted ela curricula or, if present, skipped over by teachers in conflicting discourses: a first grade teacher’s perceptions of teaching with a scripted ela curriculum 7 favor of skills that are more likely to appear on highstakes tests, such as comprehension and vocabulary (crocco & costigan, 2007; ede, 2006). a scripted program eliminates the on-the-fly teaching and thinking in which educators are trained, replacing it with “teacher-proof” programs (white, 2012, p. 193) where teachers “tend to become alienated from their reading instruction and begin treating reading instruction as merely the application of materials” (owens, 2010, p. 117). a scripted ela program assumes that all students make use of the same patterns of talk as well as the same “discourses,” or “ways of talking, listening, writing, reading, acting, interacting, believing, valuing, and feeling in the service of enacting meaningful socially situated identities and activities” (gee, 2011, p. 177). such a standardized classroom would be hard to find. research in the nature of discourses and practices assumed by teachers working with scripted curricula helps to uncover the perceptions of teachers working within such a setting, as well as some of the injustices that they may or may not recognize in the education system. likewise, research of this nature can provide a clearer picture of the many influences on a teacher’s practice, and what, if anything, he or she does to adapt to these influences. teaching comes with its own socially-acquired discourse and teachers can choose to assume, reject, or adapt this discourse according to their own needs and their ability to think critically about their role in the larger system of education. this research examined one teacher’s discourses and the decisions she made during the teaching of ela with a mandated scripted curriculum. methodology description of school this case study was conducted in a first grade class in an urban public elementary school that is part of a large school district in western new york. freemont public school district (all names of places and people in this study are pseudonyms), serves 34,000 students in nearly 60 different facilities, one of them being campbell elementary school, the building in which this research took place. at the time of this study, campbell elementary had a demographic distribution of 85% african american, 7% hispanic or latino, 5% white, 1% american indian or alaska native, 1% asian or native hawaiian/other pacific islander, and the remaining 2% multiracial children (nysed, 2012). there were 528 students enrolled at campbell elementary in pre-k through eighth grade, 46 of them being in first grade. eighty-five percent the school’s children were eligible for free lunch and there was an 88% attendance rate in the building. regarding student achievement, according to the nys, adequate yearly progress (ayp) in ela was not made for the two years leading up to this research by any of the ethnic groups in this school, leading to the school’s “restructuring (advanced) comprehensive” status. as found in the school report card document (nysed, 2012), restructuring (advanced) indicates the following: a school that was designated as a school in restructuring (year 2) in the current school year that failed to make ayp on the same accountability measure for which it was identified; or a school that was designated as restructuring (advanced) in the current school year that made ayp for the identified measure. at the time of this study, because campbell elementary failed to make ayp for a second year in a row, it had the worst possible status ranking that a school can have in ela (nysed, 2012). setting and participants the setting for this study was colleen hughes’ first grade classroom at campbell elementary school. at the time of our interviews, mrs. hughes had been a teacher in the district for her entire career—five years— and taught ela with the mandated curriculum that was used by all teachers in the district. her class was a representative population of the school’s demographics as listed above from the new york state education department school report card. researcher role in observing the teaching of a current scripted ela program in a first grade classroom, i “participate[d] in the social life of the community,” in order to gain an “insider perspective,” and to “interact with students and teachers” in the first grade classroom (glesne, 2011, p. 64). doing so, i was able to “make the strange familiar and the familiar strange,” (erickson, 1973, as cited in glesne, 2011, p. 67) and to gain valuable first-hand perspectives of the interactions that occurred between the class and the curriculum. being an observer allowed me to take very thorough and detailed field notes, full of the “rich, thick description” that glesne (2011, p. 49) recommended for increasing a study’s trustworthiness. likewise, my regular visits and repetition of behavior each time i was there solidified my role as a researcher first, and as an adult visitor to the classroom second. as someone who came to this research with my own background in teaching with a scripted ela program, i made sure to continually make reflections in the form of research memos and journal entries in order to recognize any biases i had that might have interfered with my data gathering and analysis. likewise, i had several colleagues review my interview questions and data analysis regularly to check for any unintentional misleading or insertion of my own opinions. it must also be acknowledged that i was conducting this research out of state university, the same university my participant attended for graduate school. as such, she was likely familiar with the ideologies of state university and, as a result, may have responded to my questions under the current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 8 assumption that i held similar ideologies as those of state university. great measures were taken to remain neutral in my interviews and conversations with mrs. hughes and to focus on her opinions and feelings, not mine. i have accounted for moments when this bias might have influenced a specific response. research design creswell (2013) wrote, “…case study research involves the study of a case within a real-life, contemporary context or setting” (p. 97). the case study approach to qualitative research involves exploring “a real life, contemporary bounded system (a case) or multiple bounded systems (cases) over time, through detailed, indepth data collection involving multiple sources of information,” (p. 97) and allows researchers to identify themes through rich descriptions of the cases analyzed. by observing in a first grade classroom during ela instruction, i was able to maintain a bounded case for study that focused my exploration specifically on what i was interested in understanding, the teaching that occurred within a scripted ela curriculum. this study was bounded specifically by the 90-minute english language arts block, and events outside of this bounded system were not included for analysis (e.g. behavior correction, snack time, transitioning between activities). data collection for this case study i gathered multiple forms of data in relation to the teaching that occurred within a scripted ela curriculum. three formal interviews were conducted with the participant, fifteen 90-minute ela lessons were observed and detailed field notes were taken, and i was allowed unlimited access to the commercial curriculum program (harcourt, 2003) used by freemont school district, as well the core knowledge language arts (ckla) supplemental materials provided by the district to align with the common core state standards (new york state education department, 2013). i also gathered data in the form of other artifacts from the classroom, such as photographs of the space, the building, and other curricular materials. data analysis to analyze data gathered from observations, interviews, and classroom artifacts, i used methods adapted from glesne (2011) lincoln and guba (1985) and saldaña (2013). analysis consisted of immersion in the data through reading and rereading, then descriptive coding and thematic analysis using a constant comparative method. first cycle of analysis: descriptive coding. saldaña (2013) stated, “descriptive coding summarizes in a word or short phrase—most often as a noun—the basic topic of a passage of qualitative data.” (p. 88). the result is a comprehensive list of codes that described simply what is present in the data. this first cycle of analysis was an initial pass through the data, which helped me to eliminate any of the notes that were unnecessary as well as to “label each passage with a notation system that would designate its original place in the transcript” (seidman, 2006). second cycle of analysis: pattern coding. after i grouped all of my data according to the first cycle descriptive codes i had assigned, i used constant comparative methods to sort data according to “a major theme, a pattern of action, a network of interrelationships, or a theoretical construct from the data” that emerged during first cycle coding (saldaña, 2013, p. 212). these categories emerged from my own intuitive choices and represented “a progressive process of sorting and defining and defining and sorting [the] scraps of collected data” that i had gathered (glesne, 2011). step three: revisit theory then return to categories. i continued to sort my data into more concrete themes, viewing them through a sociocultural lens in order to create a move detailed and clearer structure for data analysis. this allowed me to recognize the distinct discourses taken up by my participant. with bakhtin and gee’s theories on discourse as guides, i developed a theme of conflicting discourses in mrs. hughes’ language and how these discourses influenced her teaching practice. specifically, i determined that three discourses emerged: 1. mrs. hughes’ academic discourse 2. mrs. hughes’ professional discourse 3. mrs. hughes’ personal discourse findings february 28, 2013 after buzzing into the building, i stepped inside and was immediately met with the eerily familiar smells of elementary school—a mix of crayons, cafeteria food, and floor cleaner. i walked up a few steps and encountered a man seated at a small desk. he was wearing a badge and a uniform shirt. he smiled big and said, “you’re new, aren’t you?” gosh, did i stick out that badly? i smiled back and said, “i am. i’m susan and i’m here to meet mrs. hughes.” he asked, “are you a student teacher?” i answered, “no, i’m actually a graduate student at state university. i’m here to observe in mrs. hughes’ class for a few weeks.” he laughed and, at the same time, said, “oh good. ‘cuz i was gonna say, if you’s thinking about teaching here, you need to go get your head checked, especially if it’s up on that third floor!” i laughed with him without really knowing why while making a mental note to ask mrs. hughes what’s up on that third floor. i said politely, “well, i’m happy to be here and i think mrs. hughes told me she’s on the first floor so i should be safe!” the preceding passage is from the first entry in my research journal from the first day i visited campbell elementary school. beyond this initial experience, there conflicting discourses: a first grade teacher’s perceptions of teaching with a scripted ela curriculum 9 were many other indicators throughout the halls of the building to what i would come to find out about life in this school for both the teachers and the students. for example, each day i entered the building, i was met, not only by the friendly security guard, but also by a large case that ominously displayed a countdown of the number of days left until the new york state ela and math exams. continuing my walk down the hallway to mrs. hughes’ room, one could find what appeared to be colorful examples of student artwork taped sporadically down the corridors. only after several weeks of walking by these posters did i realize that they were student representations of the school’s behavior matrix, a complex chart of expectations for student behavior when in practically every physical space of the building with regards to attitude, attendance, and academic excellence. also appearing on each classroom’s door was an image of a national college or university’s mascot and expressions such as the following, which i saw on a kindergarten classroom door: “we are college-bound, purdue university, freshman class of 2025”. while this statement is somewhat ironic considering that, statistically, fewer than half of the students in the school district graduated high school in 2012 (nysed, 2012), it shows but one example of the many ways that children in campbell elementary were constantly reminded that hard work would equate to success. equal parts behavior and academics seemed to be the district’s recipe for success. within the context of the larger building, i noticed some interesting patterns in mrs. hughes’ discourse and behaviors. considering bakhtin’s theory of discourses (1981) and his suggestion that each person’s discourse is a “socio-linguistic belief system that defines a distinct identity for itself within the boundaries of a language” (p. 356), it is interesting to compare how mrs. hughes spoke of her experiences teaching within a scripted ela curriculum with what was observed. exploration into her perceptions of teaching, her students’ learning, and what innovations she felt that she made to the curriculum can help in understanding her varied discourses. mrs. hughes’ discourse a close look at the data showed that mrs. hughes had three distinct discourses (figure 1) from which she drew in order to talk about her experiences and which contributed to her identity as a first grade teacher: an academic discourse, a personal discourse, and a professional discourse. while these discourses often overlapped, each of them also stood alone in many examples. as such, they were analyzed separately. figure 1. mrs. hughes’ discourses. mrs. hughes’ academic discourse mrs. hughes was a graduate of a literacy master’s degree program at state university, a research institution located in the same city as her school district. much of her academic discourse centered on her experiences at state university. she referenced the work of her master’s program during our interviews mainly when i asked her about the changes she would make to campbell elementary school’s ela curriculum if she were given the chance. for example, i asked her what a reading program would look like if she could design it herself. she responded, “i really really like the guided reading programs that we all learned about in school.” later, she said again, “i love guided reading…and i love fountas and pinnell [1996]. and i can’t use that ever so it’s such a shame.” in fact, mrs. hughes had many books on guided reading in her private collection—books she had purchased outside of her job despite the fact that she felt she could not teach the strategies found in them. this frustration at not being able to teach reading in a manner that she clearly preferred, evoked strong emotions in mrs. hughes. her perception was that her school’s curriculum did not allow for the type of instruction she learned about in her master’s program. it seemed that, because her school had mandated a scripted ela program, there was no room for mrs. hughes to teach guided reading, a desire of hers that she later called “my main wish.” at times, mrs. hughes talked about an opposing relationship between what she learned at state university and what she was required to do in her job. for example, when asked if there was anything else she would like to add to our discussion about teaching ela at campbell elementary, she said, “well, at first i didn’t think i would like it because of the whole—what i was told in school. state university does not like scripted.” when i probed her for more information about this, she stated, “…a lot of the stuff that’s in this particular program [harcourt’s current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 10 trophies, 2003] is in the stuff that we learned at state university, just set up differently. and it’s honestly not as bad as i thought it would be.” while mrs. hughes spent much time talking about her “main wish” to teach guided reading, a practice she became familiar with during her academic career and which was absent from the scripted curriculum, she immediately refuted that desire when given the chance, paralleling all of the things she learned in graduate school to what was in the scripted curriculum. while this could have been because of my affiliation with state university and mrs. hughes’ feeling that she should be opposed to scripted curricula as a state university graduate, it is clear that she felt that scripted curricula and the ideologies of state university were in two separate camps. mrs. hughes acknowledged that the things she expressed a deep desire to teach, such as guided reading, were supported in her academic career, not her professional career. when asked why she felt comfortable teaching outside of the scripted curriculum, mrs. hughes responded: i think a lot of it is my schooling, at state university, because they taught so many different programs or strategies for reading so that i could use those outside of the curriculum…like guided reading or think-pairshare or things like that, you know. those aren’t in the books but i know it’s stuff i can do if i, you know, in my toolbox, if i have extra time or, you know, time to do more strategies if they are not getting something. while the discourse of state university might have helped make mrs. hughes comfortable with teaching outside of the script, the strategies she learned there were for when she had “extra time,” or when a student needed extra help. mrs. hughes stated it best when she said, “i have to teach the curriculum before i go out of the curriculum,” clearly giving privilege to the script and her professional discourse, rather than her academic one learned from state university. while she preferred the discourse of her master’s program at state university, mrs. hughes seemed to privilege the discourse of her professional career. her perception, it would seem, was that, in order to meet her professional requirement of teaching with a scripted ela curriculum, she was not allowed to access her academic discourse. a closer look at her professional discourse can help in understanding this disconnect. mrs. hughes’ professional discourse mrs. hughes often revealed a strong tendency toward her professional discourse, the socialized talk and way of life in her job. specifically, mrs. hughes possessed a collective mentality that was created in her building; she expressed an appreciation for the structure of and the planning required in the scripted program; she equated her effective teaching with fidelity to the curriculum; and she was grateful that her school provided her with the new common core supplemental materials. a collective mentality. as happens with most teachers who are part of a larger school building, mrs. hughes identified herself as part of a group of professionals at campbell elementary. she often started her statements with phrases such as, “we are,” “we have to,” or “we all,” referring to herself as a part of the campbell elementary professional group. when i asked her what it was like to work in her building, she replied, “we are like family here....we are very close.” while mrs. hughes certainly did speak about herself individually, which will be explored in the final section of these findings, much of her identity seemed to come from a collective perspective; she was part of a larger body of professionals. structure of the scripted program. at times, mrs. hughes expressed an appreciation for the scripted curriculum. though she wished she could use the techniques learned during her academic career, when i asked what she liked about teaching with the scripted program, she said, “i love how it’s set up, how it goes from working with the sounds and then it has, it incorporates the same pattern from the sounds you were working on in the morning and into the spelling words. and it just, it flows very nicely.” mrs. hughes was referring to the fact that, in the scripted ela curriculum, each day of the week was structured the same, giving the scripted program a pattern that made it easy to implement. the structured approach that the scripted program took was something that mrs. hughes appreciated and felt was adequate in meeting her students’ needs. planning in the scripted program. likewise, mrs. hughes spoke of the ease of planning, stating, “i have—all my spelling was premade for every year. and i, everything is done. all those powerpoints are done and i don’t have to reinvent the wheel because i’ve been doing it …” mrs. hughes was referring here to a series of powerpoint slideshows that she and the other first grade teachers made to correspond with the lessons on spelling each week in the scripted curriculum. these powerpoints were a transfer of the teacher’s edition overhead materials into a slideshow, which could be projected onto the class whiteboard, allowing the students to do the same word building activity as the manual described while using the classroom technology. mrs. hughes described this use of powerpoints when i asked what innovations she made to the curriculum. in actuality this lesson still followed the script precisely; the material was simply presented through a different mode. though she may have professed that she preferred the teaching style of guided reading, her preference for the minimal planning effort it took in ela re-aligned her loyalty with the school district’s mandated ela curriculum. she appeared to demonstrate a preference in her practice toward the professional conflicting discourses: a first grade teacher’s perceptions of teaching with a scripted ela curriculum 11 program over her professed academic knowledge and beliefs. fidelity to the curriculum. mrs. hughes also defaulted to her professional discourse in expressing her fidelity to the school district’s mandated curriculum. when asked about being formally observed by her administrators, she said, “i think next year’s going to be one formal [observation] and then one informal…i should say one formal where they announce it and then one unannounced…and if you’re teaching and doing your job, then you have nothing to worry about.” here, mrs. hughes showed an acceptance for the school district’s policy of observing their teachers unannounced. since the school had a mandated curriculum, she was also equating following the script with “teaching and doing your job.” she felt no fear about an unannounced visit, perhaps because she rarely went off of the script; she had “nothing to worry about.” safe teaching, to mrs. hughes, was following the mandated program, something she was good at. integration of common core. when i questioned mrs. hughes about the writing of the new common core supplemental materials that her school district prepared the prior summer, she again talked about the mandated program as something that made her job easier. she said, “over the summer, the district, they created the supplemental guide to enhance our scripted programs and they’re actually great. and they did all of the work for us…you know, they went through all the teacher guides and they aligned them to the common core, so that’s great.” upon researching the supplemental materials further, i discovered that the school district did not, in fact, create the common core-aligned lessons. the curriculum was downloaded from the engageny website sponsored by the nys department of education (new york state education department, 2013) which claimed to provide “educators across new york state with realtime, professional learning tools and resources to support educators in reaching the state’s vision for a collegeand career-ready education for all students” that “can be adopted or adapted for local purposes.” though mrs. hughes did not seem to fully understand the process behind the creation of the engageny, core knowledge language arts (ckla) (new york state education department, 2013) materials, she did seem thankful to be in a district that handled the task of planning for the standards for her. when i later mentioned how difficult some of the ckla supplemental read aloud stories seemed, she replied, “yeah. but [the students] are doing okay with it, and it’s nice to have an additional read aloud because there aren’t many read alouds.” it was her perception that her students enjoyed the common core-aligned lessons and that they benefitted from the read aloud activities. a closer look at a lesson in which the engageny supplemental materials were used can provide more insight into her statements. for example, during the week shown in figure 2, a ckla supplemental curriculum lesson was taught based on the story, “writing in ancient egypt” (figure 2). although the trophies (harcourt, 2003) story that week was a non-fiction piece about a veterinarian, the ckla story was an historical fiction piece focused on a family who lived in ancient mesopotamia. the following excerpt comes from my field notes from that day: mrs. hughes moved to the rocking chair and told [the students] they were going to continue with their story about ancient egypt. she asked if anyone could remember the river that they were talking about yesterday. a student raised her hand to say, “the nile river.” mrs. hughes responded, “very good, the nile river.” at this point she opened the white teacher’s manual notebook and began to read the story “writing in ancient egypt.” she stopped occasionally to ask questions including, “what does exhausted mean?” from slide 6a-1. when no one answered, she reread the sentence from the story that contained the word: “they were both exhausted from being out in the hot sun all afternoon and relieved to be back on the banks of the river.” a student offered, “they were tired.” mrs. hughes said, “very good, they were tired.” this excerpt was but one example of what was typically observed during the ckla read aloud lessons, which mrs. hughes believed her students were “doing okay with.” the comprehension questions surrounding the advanced language and concepts from these read aloud stories were often met as the question above was: with blank stares and silence. though it seemed clear to me that the ckla supplemental lessons were difficult for her students, mrs. hughes seemed thankful for not having to create the materials that would align with the mandated standards on her own and, rather than speak ill of them, she praised their inclusion for being additional stories for the children to hear, positioning them as an enhancement to student learning. it seemed that mrs. hughes had grown comfortable with the materials her district provided and, though the discourse about her academic experiences suggested that she believed otherwise, she considered fidelity to the mandated curriculum as simply a part of the job. patterns of talk within the scripted curriculum. the observed lessons and materials gathered from the curriculum helped to reveal specific patterns of talk taking place. while a full discourse analysis is outside of the purview of this project, it is still important to make note of some of the most salient patterns, including a very traditional one present in most lessons observed. mrs. hughes often had to repeat questions, reread passages, current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 12 f ig u re 2 . t ea ch er ’s m a n u a l c k l a , p ag e 6 8 -6 9 . (n e w y o rk s ta te e d u ca ti o n d ep ar tm en t, 2 0 1 3 ) conflicting discourses: a first grade teacher’s perceptions of teaching with a scripted ela curriculum 13 and reword the language of the curriculum in order for her students to be able to answer contextual comprehension questions, “because,” in her words, “it’s not worded for the kids.” the pattern of talk described in the above lesson on ancient mesopotamia was a traditional, ire pattern, which placed the text as the authority source and mrs. hughes as the keeper of the right answer found in the manual. this sort of questioning was quite common throughout her teaching of ela and, though mrs. hughes expressed a preference toward a more interactive approach to instruction, the professional discourse of the scripted program influenced her to participate in this more traditional, teacher-centered talk. when children could not remember the very specific contextual details, mrs. hughes read again so that they might locate the right answer from the text. after the right answer was found, a response of “very good” or “excellent” often followed. this same traditional pattern was seen again and again throughout my visits, including in the following passage taken from my field notes: mrs. hughes read aloud from the little bear story: “he opened his eyes and saw two little squirrels. ‘play with us,’ they said. ‘no time,’ said little bear. ‘i have to go home for lunch.’” here, she stopped reading and asked, “why can’t little bear play?” a student raised his hand and, when called upon, answered, “because he has to go home and eat lunch.” mrs. hughes replied, “excellent. can someone find the sentence where it says he has to go home and eat lunch?” she called on another student whose hand was raised. this student read aloud the sentence from page 193 of her book and mrs. hughes said, “excellent, that sentence told us exactly what the answer was.” in this short passage alone, we can see two salient examples of both a traditional pattern of talk and the text being treated as the authority source of knowledge in the classroom. interestingly, the script of the teacher’s manual included two other questions, “why do you think little bear shuts his eyes and lets the wind brush him?” and “how do you think little bear looks as he lets the wind brush him? act it out.” while these questions arguably invited children’s personal perspectives and opinions into the conversation, as well as an embodied interpretation of the curriculum, mrs. hughes was mandated via her district’s pacing guide to forego these questions and ask only the context-based comprehension question. mrs. hughes’ personal discourse mrs. hughes’ personal discourse was made up of the various ways that she identified herself as a teacher and as a person. much of this discourse was revealed when i asked her questions about the kind of teacher she was or what she did apart from the school district’s mandates. even with some very strong personal opinions, mrs. hughes continued to default to her professional discourse throughout my conversations with her. personal identity. mrs. hughes assumed a discourse through which she created a personal identity both within and outside of her professional discourse. she spoke very strongly about the kind of teacher she was. in reference to how she taught prior to the introduction of the common core-aligend supplemental materials, mrs. hughes stated, “i differentiated no matter what because that’s just the type of teacher i am, and i feel that i can do that more now that i am tenured.” it seemed that mrs. hughes personally perceived of herself as a teacher apart from the mandated program that her school used. demonstrating this, she later said, “i love teaching language arts, even though it’s scripted. like i said, i add my own twists to it.” here, language arts was something that she loved, but only when she was adding her own innovations or when she taught outside of the script. the phrase, “even though it’s scripted,” connoted that mrs. hughes may have felt that the script was something that took away from her teaching of language arts, which she claimed to love; a sort of necessary evil that she had to “twist” in order to get by. when probed more about these twists, mrs. hughes shared: “if we’re doing a story on maps, i’ll bring in, i have a blow-up globe, i’ll bring that in and i’ll show it for artifacts that aren’t necessarily included in the script but that—i just feel—that add.” later, when i asked her what changes she makes to the curriculum, she responded: the spelling i change every time. day one, there is supposed to be a pretest, i don’t do a pretest. i do the introduction the way that i do it with the routine that i do because i have found through the years that it is more engaging for the kids and they remember it more than, oh let me see if i can get the word right before i’ve even been introduced to the word. upon close inspection, these “twists” to the script are little more than bringing in an object from home—one that is not truly incorporated into the curriculum or providing depth to the material—skipping questions that she felt were too challenging for her students, or eliminating an element of the program that does not seem to make sense to her. these hardly seem like innovations when one considers some of the impressive research that has been published on multimodal composing in urban classrooms (miller & mcvee, 2012), play and interaction within mandated programs (kontovourki & siegel, 2010), and the use of technology to open doors for exploration outside of the classroom (kist, 2010). perhaps mrs. hughes was unaware of these possibilities or had simply accepted the way of life in the mandated curriculum. another part of mrs. hughes’ personal identity was her need to better herself through “professional learning opportunities,” “professional development,” and professional magazine subscriptions outside of the current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 14 workday. when i asked about the support she received in her building, she mentioned that campbell elementary was without a professional reading coach to help them manage the new common core state standards as well as the regular ela curriculum. without the help of a reading coach, mrs. hughes took it upon herself to subscribe to magazines and continue her learning in order to continue to grow professionally. when her district failed to meet her needs as an educator, she took it upon herself to do so. personal recognition by her school. mrs. hughes personally identified herself as someone with great knowledge, experience, and wherewithal when it came to her profession, and she recognized that her school district capitalized on her strong teaching by giving her the responsibility of teaching the most struggling readers in first grade. she said that for the first grade “differentiated block that we have…i teach direct instruction. so it’s the lowest group and i only have five children.” “direct instruction,” or di, was a reference to an intensely scripted reading program that the school mandated for children who were at the lowest level of reading in the grade—in this case, five students who mrs. hughes met with each day after the whole-class 90minute ela instruction. when i questioned mrs. hughes about why she was the first grade teacher chosen to work with the lowest level of readers in the grade, she replied, “they wanted a strong teacher teaching [them]…” it seemed that the school decided that the more academic need students had, the more scripted their instruction needed to be; the more apt a teacher was to follow the intense direct instruction, the more likely she was to be called on to teach these most struggling readers. mrs. hughes thought of herself as a competent, knowledgeable teacher whom her district relied upon in order to help the weakest students in ela. it could be said that mrs. hughes was proud of this fact, while at the same time, stating, “if i was not teaching direct instruction, i would have the area groups [differentiation groups], and i could, i could do guided reading. but i was told i have to teach di, so.” here, we can see the direct conflict in discourses: mrs. hughes personally wanted to teach guided reading but she was professionally mandated to teach direct instruction. one can almost sense her frustration and, at the same time, her complacency. discussion mrs. hughes possessed three conflicting discourses from which she drew for her identity as a teacher: an academic discourse derived from her time studying in a master’s program; a professional discourse that developed during her time as a teacher in campbell elementary school; and a personal discourse that had arguably been evolving for her entire life. specifically interesting are why she privileged the professional discourse and how she compartmentalized her discourses. privileging professional discourse yet preferring academic discourse research has shown that teachers, “ultimately receive professional and personal rewards from the[ir] district for complying with the mandated program,” (macgillivray et al., 2004, p. 140) including becoming a member of a group of colleagues who all identify with working with a mandated program and a feeling of control and expertise at being able to adequately manage a mandated program. mrs. hughes seemed to have placed great value on her identity as a teacher in her building who was willing and able to perform these tasks. by complying with her district’s mandates, she had become someone who other teachers looked up to. in fact, she became someone with enough success at following the scripted program, that her school “rewarded” her by asking her to teach the lowest level of readers in the grade. while this meant very tightly controlled, scripted direct instruction, to mrs. hughes, this seemed to be something to be proud of. her district knew that, as a “strong teacher,” she could follow the script perfectly, so she was given the task of working with the most struggling readers. mrs. hughes seemed to align her loyalty with her district’s decision to use a mandated program; something that simply became part of her job and that earned her recognition as a strong teacher. another potential implication of working in a school that has a mandated curriculum is the risk of equating of good teaching with following the scripted program. it seemed that mrs. hughes had taken this perspective at times. for example, when mrs. hughes said, “if you’re teaching and doing your job, then you have nothing to worry about,” in reference to the potential unannounced observation by her administrators, she was acknowledging that her job was to follow the scripted program. “teaching” and “doing her job” as her school administrators expected was teaching the way they mandated and, despite her “main wish” to teach language arts using methods she had studied in college, mrs. hughes was not likely to risk her job by straying too far from the script. she seemed to have taken up the professional discourse that good teaching was equal to following the script. when teachers are audited or observed in order to determine their fidelity to a program that their school district has mandated, they are left with only two options: teach the mandated way or leave. of course mrs. hughes would rather keep her job than leave it—she expressed a deep love for teaching and for her students—and the best way to ensure this was to teach the way her district wanted her to. in her mind it seemed, the best job safety was to teach by the script in the best way she could, something that earned her respect and recognition by her administrators and other teachers, both incentives to continue following the scripted program. it could be inferred that mrs. hughes had great difficulty breaking down a façade of happiness with her conflicting discourses: a first grade teacher’s perceptions of teaching with a scripted ela curriculum 15 program that she had built over the five years of her teaching career. being a relatively new teacher, a fact that has been shown in much research to increase her likelihood of stress, frustration, and burnout (henry, bastian, & fortner, 2011; jones, 2012; panesar, 2010), mrs. hughes was still at a risky point in her career. however, she had a strong sense of what effective reading instruction could and, in her mind, should look like, and this was in stark contrast with what she was mandated to teach. instead of using our interviews to complain about this situation, mrs. hughes chose to speak of the scripted program in a mostly positive manner. it seemed as though she wanted to make it clear to me that everything in her job was fine. she did not express strongly positive feelings toward the scripted program, but she also did not complain about it. however, when she responded to my questions about what she would change, the detailed explanations of what she would do differently were often followed by comments such as, “it’s such a shame,” or “i was told i have to teach di”. this language was certainly sad to hear, yet much of our time talking was spent on what mrs. hughes liked about teaching language arts. it seemed as though she had become complacent. going against her school district’s requests would have been extremely difficult and is something that could potentially cost her the teaching job. few could blame mrs. hughes for her acceptance of the situation and, indeed, there are many other teachers in her position who privilege the discourse of their schools just as she did. when considering this in light of social justice education, the implication of a teacher who acts with complacency, despite having a deep desire and knowledge of how to teach effectively, is both sad and frightening. mrs. hughes was a hard-working, respected professional to whom other teachers in her building turned for help and advice. she knew the details of her ela curriculum better than many in her building and was called upon to teach the neediest readers in her grade. if a teacher like mrs. hughes was willing to privilege the discourse of the scripted program and what has been mandated, what does this say for the teachers who have come after her and will continue to join the teaching force under others like her? mrs. hughes had become a point person in her building for teaching other teachers about how to maneuver the curriculum materials; if she was unwilling to recognize that the scripted program was inadequate in meeting the needs of all of her students, she is not likely to help others to come to this conclusion or to assist others in finding new ways of teaching a more culturally relevant pedagogy. this systemic and inherited sense of complacency can come with privileging the discourse of a mandated curriculum and is extremely difficult to stand up against. it is important to note that it was possible that mrs. hughes spoke about her desires to change her curriculum in such a manner because she understood that i was studying at a university that openly frowned upon the use of scripted curricula, the same university at which she earned her graduate degree. it is possible that she was orienting herself to me as a member of the university community and thus presenting her work to a person she perceived was a representative of ideologies related to teaching that did not support the use of scripted curricula. my identity as a researcher from state university could have had an influence on how she responded to my questions about her scripted curriculum, a curriculum in which she may not have found fault. i went to great measures to ensure that my opinions about scripted curricula were never voiced, and in fact, mrs. hughes only knew that my study was about teaching ela and was never blatantly asked about her scripted nature of her curriculum—she volunteered this information. still, with these precautions, my position as a researcher from state university likely played some role in the co-construction of the dialogue of our interviews and this bias cannot be ignored. nonetheless, without access to mrs. hughes’ thoughts, i can only infer what she meant and present possible explanations for her statements. compartmentalized discourses returning to bakhtin’s notion of critical interanimation it seemed as though mrs. hughes constantly contradicted herself, saying, for example, “i love teaching ela,” and in the very next breath, “even though it’s scripted”. although there are likely many reasons for why mrs. hughes felt the need to qualify that her love of ela was despite the fact that she had a mandated and scripted curriculum, it seemed that this sort of contradictory talk happened most often when she was talking against the school’s mandated ela program. someone who is critically interanimated is able “to regard one language (and the verbal world corresponding to it) through the eyes of another language,” (bakhtin, 1981, p. 295) and can make sense of what causes one discourse to be voiced while others are silenced. with regards to mrs. hughes, it seemed as though she was unable to reach a level of critical interanimation and, instead, kept her various discourses separate, compartmentalized. as a result, she seemed to perceive of her job as going well, her students as learning adequately, and her twists to the script, including the powerpoint versions of the scripted lessons, as innovative. mrs. hughes’ positive attitude toward her school and its curricula show how important her teaching job was to her. while other teachers may have taken an interview as an opportunity to complain about the many mandates placed upon them, mrs. hughes used our time together to talk about the things she liked. this is commendable and concerning at the same time. why did she feel the need to foreground her loyalty with the school district? while there is a constellation of causes for working complacently in a system of injustice, research of this nature calls attention to the social inequalities against current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 16 teachers and students. feeling that it is one’s job to teach with mandated materials is a form of institutionalized oppression. teachers in this position are side-stepped by their administrators and publishing companies and are robbed of the opportunity to infuse their teaching with their own expertise and skill. at the same time, a teacher’s voice is very small up against these entities and it is clear to see how loyalty and complacency become the only means for survival within the larger system. there were probably many reasons for mrs. hughes to keep her discourses compartmentalized. namely, it seemed as though she had not yet recognized and acknowledged how strongly she desired to teach using the practices she had learned in her academic career. this may have been a result of her still-early career position and a lack of the necessary “survival skills” (panesar, 2010, p. 12) for meeting the demands of the classroom, including recognizing and speaking her concerns to her school administrators. mrs. hughes placed her job—and its resulting professional discourse— before her personal and academic experiences, and she likely felt that letting go of these other discourses was simply a part of being a teacher in campbell elementary school. likewise, she was part of a larger system of acceptance of the scripted program, a system that was likely very difficult to act against. her work environment was one of pressure, accountability, fidelity, and standardization, not one of innovation, risk-taking, experimentation, and creativity. mrs. hughes saw the things she learned in college and the things she appreciated in her personal life as secondary to the school’s mandates. these secondary discourses were for “if i have extra time,” or “if [the students] are not getting something,” rather than being a regular part of her repertoire of practice. the ability to think critically about one way of being through other ways of being—critical interanimation—could provide great satisfaction, gratification, and a sense that what a teacher has done and learned is valued. feeling the need to compartmentalize what has been learned and what is personal in order to focus only on what has been mandated professionally can cause tension and feelings of colonization for a teacher. being a member of group of people who are willing to accept poor conditions could lead to one’s own acceptance of these conditions. a sense that nobody else seems to mind, why should i? could emerge. at loss in this scenario are teachers who are willing to fight for their rights to be contributing members of their school who are valued for their professional opinions and expertise. being critically interanimated can allow a teacher to understand how and why he or she chooses to take up the speech genre of the larger building community as well as what propels one to speak against others in the same community. the advantage of this is a deeper understanding of how discourse impacts one’s ability to be creative, individual, and valuable to others in the community. conversely, critical interanimation may reveal that one is not valued by his or her school, but, rather, is asked to compartmentalize the discourses that are not part of the school’s chosen discourse, as was seen with mrs. hughes. this, while disheartening, can lead to recognition of injustice, oppression, and inequity in teaching. being critical of the discourses one assumes and recognizing apprenticeship into certain social practices can give teachers strength to challenge the inherited injustices that may be passed down to them. conscious awareness of the discourses at work in one’s teaching can lead to reflectiveness and, eventually, to a critical self-awareness and the need to change negative factors. a more socially just curriculum there have long been educators who have devoted their lives to fighting for social justice in the education system (freire, 1993; dewey, 1934; finn, 2009; fine & weis, 2003; anyon, 1981). as we move through eras of educational reform and mandates, many have voiced concern over how a school curriculum is designed and whom it best serves. the teaching that was seen in mrs. hughes’ classroom aligns closely with finn’s description of domesticating literacy (2009), with children being drilled on phonics and test-style questions. this type of learning threatens to perpetuate inequities in american schools and does little more than train students for life in the working class. as schools become increasingly diverse, the need for curricular redesign to meet the needs of all learners becomes more apparent. the classroom looks vastly different than it did even ten years ago, with students varying dramatically in culture, religion, sexuality, physical ability, socioeconomic status, and language ability. it is no longer enough to be aware of the various backgrounds of students; educators must strive to adopt what ladson-billings (1995) called a culturally relevant pedagogy consisting of the “ability to develop students academically, a willingness to nurture and support cultural competence, and the development of a sociopolitical or critical consciousness” (p. 483). culturally relevant pedagogy stems from the ideology that all people learn differently based on their backgrounds and their cultures, and teachers must equip themselves with the tools necessary for maximizing the learning experience for all, not just for some learners. ladson-billings (1995) described culturally relevant pedagogy as “a theoretical model that not only addresses student achievement but also helps students to accept and affirm their cultural identity while developing critical perspectives that challenge inequalities that schools (and other institutions) perpetuate” (p. 469). this two-part perspective on pedagogy—addressing student achievement while helping students develop their own identities—is what many scripted curriculum programs conflicting discourses: a first grade teacher’s perceptions of teaching with a scripted ela curriculum 17 lack. student achievement is generally the focus while student identity is assumed. culturally relevant teaching takes into account the various diversities that exist in a classroom, whether cultural, political, socioeconomical, physical, or demographic, and considers what ought to be taught to learners based on these characteristics. teaching of this nature is not prescribed, nor is it scripted and rigid. rather, culturally relevant teaching emerges with the needs of the learners and is an active, changing process that evolves through and with learning. secondly, and arguably more importantly, culturally relevant teaching invites students to challenge societal norms, to ask questions of their education, and to work toward a more socially just life. classrooms where culturally relevant pedagogy is used might recognize a problem in the school or community, such as a disconnect between the stories of the textbook and the reality that is lived by the students. then, the teacher would work to provide a space to change the curriculum to solve the problem. for example, in dutro’s study (2010), a classroom of third graders was asked what “hard times” meant. the scripted curriculum expected that they would respond within the context of the story they were reading, a story about a depression-era family dealing with the difficulties of life on a farm during the 1930s. instead, the children used the open-ended question as an opportunity to write about their own hard times, creating a space within the curriculum to discuss poverty in the 21 st century. a culturally relevant teacher might take this one step further and hold a discussion about living with poverty, allowing students to share their stories and feel a sense of support and belonging. as a class, they might explore other books or films that take up the issue of poverty or research local or national groups that assist those living in poverty. while this might seem far outside of the scope of what is typically found in a school’s curriculum, this is the type of learning experience that would likely benefit the students in dutro’s study as well as the students in mrs. hughes’ class, that is, a culturally relevant learning experience. implications through this project, insight was gained into how an early elementary teacher felt as she worked within a scripted ela program and how she assumed different discourses when describing her experiences. crucial to understanding how teachers like mrs. hughes—who have studied at top-ranking universities and learned many practices for innovative teaching—ultimately feel the need to compartmentalize their discourses, is to examine the larger political scene as it pertains to education. this understanding can help in examining how federal mandates and teacher accountability, and the resulting curriculum programs, influence the teaching happening in urban schools. within the theoretical framework of this study, i examined the ideas of bakhtin and gee, two men who talk at length about how language is connected to identity. they both describe how what we say relates directly to the identity that we construct for ourselves within various social situations. mrs. hughes spoke often of how much she loved teaching, her students, and her school. however, she was a member of a school system that did not value her and her colleagues as professionals, but, instead, opted to use a “teacherproof” ela curriculum (white, 2012, p. 193) that was planned and packaged for her. even the new common core state standard-aligned supplemental lessons were designed without her input, becoming a new requirement that she had to address. mrs. hughes’ language and therefore her teacher identity, was scripted for her. what she said as she taught came from the scripted curriculum. the discourse of the program was expected by her school district and mrs. hughes was mandated to follow a pacing guide and was observed to make sure she was being faithful. teaching outside of the script was not even an option for mrs. hughes and so she developed a sense of complacency toward her mandated program. this can happen when one works within a system of power and oppression as was present at campbell elementary. mrs. hughes did not have a say in what curriculum was selected by her school, nor did she have the right to change the curriculum to meet the needs of her students. as a result, she knew that the only option was to teach in the way she was mandated and this is what she did. this situation of scripted instruction prevented mrs. hughes from creating culturally relevant and effective lessons that would meet the needs of her students while also contributing to the school community and the community at large. giving voice to those who work daily with commercially manufactured curricula can help other educators recognize ways that they can “attempt to derail these [inequalities] rather than reinforce them, whether intentionally or not” (fine & weis, 2003, p. 108). teachers are professionals who have trained in how best to design and implement curriculum for a diverse body of learners. senge et al. (2000) reminded us that one of the “most profound purpose[s] that education might have” is “helping young people learn how to create the lives they truly want to create” (p. 167). teachers are the direct link between curriculum and student (applebee, 1974) and without the ability to use their expertise to meet each learner at his or her point of need, and guide him or her to creating the life they want, teachers can be left feeling undervalued, overworked, and ultimately frustrated (santoro, 2011; stillman, 2011; thomas, 2012). it was the goal of this research to listen to a teacher working within a scripted ela curriculum, to explore what she liked and did not like about this type of teaching, and to contribute to the larger body of research that exists on curriculum and instruction. the knowledge gained in this study has implications for other teachers who are also under mandates to use scripted curricula, for current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 18 administrators who desire to provide the best support they can for their teachers, and for policy makers who have the interest of children in mind when they promote and pass federal mandates, such as the no child left behind act and race to the top. conclusion mrs. hughes and other teachers like her work every day to create a balance between what the school district mandates, what they can feasibly cover in one day, and what they know is best for their learners. standards were created to help ensure that all students receive an equal chance at learning. curricular programs have been designed to help teachers easily meet the guidelines set out by standards. however, somewhere along this path, practices have been distorted, voices silenced, and professional creativity stifled. the system has changed from one of helping guide teachers to the best curricular choices to one of mandating what is provided to all students. senge et al. (2000) ask, “what if the goals and dreams [our students] truly want aren’t on the menu? then they’re out of luck.” (p. 169) when adults become complacent within a system operating around them, and are either unable to or fear recognizing the inequalities of the system, it is always and unfortunately children who lose out. studies such as this shed light on the intricate details of how school systems work and show just how entangled teachers become in the world of mandates, scripts, assessments, requirements, and fidelity. while mrs. hughes likely did not recognize the domestication of literacy at work in her classroom, her students were being carefully crafted into obedient, rank-and-file members of the working class poor. they were not challenged to think, create, or question anything about the material they were presented. they were not learning skills to help them in the inevitable lifelong struggles for “better schools, better health care, enriched emotional and spiritual lives, powerful political organizations, stronger unions, and greater appreciation of their own culture and the culture of others” (finn, 2009, p. 197) that they would encounter after leaving school. rather, mrs. hughes’ students, via her teaching of the mandated ela curriculum, were being trained to understand that doing well in school meant getting the answers right, answers that came from the teacher’s manual. with every ela lesson, a sad circle of power was closing, with mrs. hughes and the curriculum on the inside, and students, inexorably, on the outside. research that delves more deeply into this educational crisis is crucial, particularly in low-income, high-poverty urban schools such as campbell elementary. an exploration of several teachers working in similar conditions to mrs. hughes might offer a more complete, system-wide look at how urban teachers with scripted curricula perceive their job. calling attention to the larger political issues at work in schools helps teachers to understand the choices that they have or do not have professionally. conditions in schools will only change when educators become aware of, and then willing to fight for, social justice, not only for their students but also for themselves. references ainsworth, m. t., ortlieb, e., cheek, e. h., jr., pate, r. s., & fetters, c. 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(2003). reading first: cautions and recommendations. language arts, 81(1), 28-33. conflicting discourses: a first grade teacher’s perceptions of teaching with a scripted ela curriculum 21 article citation sturm, s. a. (2014). conflicting discourses: a first grade teacher’s perceptions of teaching with a scripted ela curriculum. current issues in education, 17(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1320 author notes susan a. sturm assistant professor of literacy state university of new york at fredonia thompson hall w261 fredonia, ny 14603 sturm@fredonia.edu susan is an assistant professor of literacy in the state university of new york at fredonia's department of language, learning & leadership. her ph.d. was earned from the university at buffalo in elementary education. susan's research examines the use of mandated and scripted english language arts curricula to teach reading. manuscript received: 10/29/2013 revisions received: 06/11/2014 accepted: 06/13/2014 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 22 volume 17, number 3 december 22, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell authentications editors lisa marie lacy tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson tray j. geiger section editors rikkilynn archibeque tray j. geiger laura beth kelly kevin j. raso evelyn concepcion baca darlene michelle gonzales priyanka parekh isaac lamont bickmore megan hoelting niels piepgrass faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 8, number 25 november 2005 issn 1099-839x children's comprehension and local-to-global recall of narrative and expository texts fernando romero arizona state university scott g. paris university of michigan sarah k. brem arizona state university we examined underlying mechanisms for comprehension differences across expository and narrative text while controlling for factors confounded in the extant literature. fourth grade students (n=32) read both an expository and a narrative text, and completed both a local comprehension assessment, and a global retelling assessment for each text. children recalled more information from narrative than expository texts in the global processing task, but there was no difference in the local processing task. our findings are consistent with psycholinguistic studies on the formation of mental models from text, and suggest that narrative structure may facilitate memory for global information even when local comprehension of exposition and narrative is equivalent. the relative importance of narrative and expository text in elementary reading curricula is a matter of considerable concern for both educators and researchers. robust findings show that children tend to exhibit better reading comprehension for narrative than expository texts in formal assessments (duke, 1999; michigan educational assessment program, 2002; national center for education statistics, 2001). in a survey of 35 countries, nces (2001) reported that in no country did students score significantly higher on expository items. these findings raise concern for a number of reasons. students may be poorly prepared for secondary and postsecondary education, in which expository text plays a much larger role; interpreting results becomes problematic if assessments differ on the proportion of expository and narrative items, and on the ways in which exposition and narrative are defined. finally, and perhaps most importantly, until we know why this disparity exists, it will be difficult to remediate it. one promising explanation is that exposure drives the difference (duke, 1999). bruner (1990) argued that readers use their preconceptions and expectations about a text to help them comprehend what they are reading. literacy instruction during elementary school emphasizes the fictional narratives at the expense of informational texts, (campbell, kapinus, & beatty, 1995; hoffman, roser, & battle, 1993). if narrative and exposition require different sorts of schema, exposure to one would not lead to expertise in the other. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 25 narrative and expository schemata indeed, a large body of research shows that narrative and exposition do invoke different schemata. traditional stories start by describing relations among settings, characters, and plots; they contain clear markers between episodes (e.g., beginnings and endings, setting and goal attainment); and conclude with a global ending (mandler, 1984). socio-linguistic models likewise find a well-defined structure in narrative discourse composed of six elements: abstract, orientation, complication, evaluation, result, and coda (labov & waletsky, 1967). the narrative structure of text has been shown to affect information reduction, organization, storage, and retrieval of textual information (mandler & johnson, 1977). in contrast, expository discourse is organized into statements that allow readers to follow text flow through logic and causality, exposition relies primarily on declarative statements, logic, and reason, and it is evaluated in terms of its accuracy and strength of argument (bruner, 1986, 1990). expository text is generally analyzed in terms of propositional structure (e.g., meyer & rice, 1984; otero & kintsch, 1992). a well-written expository text uses a macroproposition early in the paragraph to organize subsequent propositions and connect them to the larger goals of the author. still, knowing how schemata differ does not tell us how these differences affect comprehension. this is not only dissatisfying from a research perspective, it creates practical limitations as well. there are many differences to be found between exposition and narrative, and therefore likely to be many sources of differences in processing. we focus on one that, based upon prior work in psycholinguistics, we believe to be of particular importance: that narrative and expository text tend to differ in the scope of processing they receive. processing of text and scope scope is defined along a local-to-global continuum, as in the construction-integration model of text comprehension (kintsch, 1988). local processing is at the level of phrases and sentences. for example, in order to correctly interpret the sentence “the man ran to the bank to save the drowning child,” the reader must wait until the end of the sentence before choosing one of the many meanings of “bank.” deciding from the outset that a “bank” is a building where one goes to deposit and withdraw money would cause a lot of confusion. local processing maintains local coherence. it does not, however, ensure that there will be consistency and coherence from sentence to sentence, much less across the whole text. solving a murder mystery, for example, usually requires a very high degree of global processing, as one must corroborate alibis and map suspects’ movements over the course of the story. in expository text, arguments and extended reasoning also require broad scope to evaluate whether various points are compatible, or whether aspects of the topic remain unaddressed. mckoon & ratcliff (1992) have found that the most likely level of processing is that required to produce “minimal coherence.” that is, readers tend to make only those connections that are readily available from the information at hand, that can be made automatically, and that are necessary to maintain an acceptable degree of coherence according to the monitoring processes being used. thus, unless a global model is required by the situation, readers will not construct it. bringing together the psycholinguistics literature and the work on schemata, we hypothesis that since schemata strongly influence inferencing and metacognition, different schemata will also differ in what information is available, the automaticity of inferences, and the monitoring strategies used. in particular, text based on different schemata could support different scopes of processing. if narrative promotes global processing and thus a broader processing scope than exposition, readers will extract different information from texts, construct broader, more well-integrated mental representations of the text, and will be able to answer different sorts of questions on a standardized test. in support of our account, there is evidence to suggest that texts using narrative structural elements support a broader scope of processing than exposition. reading curricula often capitalize on this global nature, teaching students to create story maps or concept maps, using a preset structure defined by story grammars of the sort described by mandler (1977), as well as temporal organization and dramatic arc (brewer, 1980). story mapping instructional applications have reported success in promoting reading comprehension (baumann, bergeron, & bette, 1993; davis & mcpherson, 1989; palincsar & brown, 1984). in addition, readers are more likely to remember a text when it has a familiar structure (bartlett, 1932; mandler & johnson, 1977; stein & nezworski, 1978; yussen, huang, mathews, & evans, 1988). some argue that story mapping is still not encompassing enough to account for global responses that link personal experience to reading comprehension of stories (foley, 2000). likewise supporting our account, expository texts tend to be processed locally, in terms of individual propositions rather than the overall structure (einstein, mcdaniel, bowers, & stevens, 1984; mcdaniel, einstein, dunay, & cobb, 1986). manipulations to increase the level of processing and children's comprehension and local-to-global recall of narrative and expository texts 3 integration have a greater effect when participants read expository text than when they read narrative text (narvaez, van den broek, & ruiz, 1999), suggesting that the processing of expository text receives less global processing unless prompting occurs. they may be organized in terms of local relationships between antecedents and consequents, rhetorical strength (bailenson & rips, 1996), or a need to establish certain claims before making others. this results in texts that require either a local model for comprehension, or an uneven, idiosyncratic global model. researchers have argued that the narrative-expository differential may be accounted for in part by the fact that narratives are generally more similar in structure to one another than are expository texts; this could allow emerging readers to more readily identify and use the structure of narrative text (e.g., mandler & johnson, 1977; rumelhart, 1977; stein & trabasso, 1982). testing the scope of processing account isolating features of narrative and expository text is a difficult task. comparisons of text genres have often confounded structural differences and semantic differences. narrative is often equated with fiction, while exposition is primarily associated with the canonical style of writing evident in textbooks. thus, even though informational narratives are quite possible, and may even be prevalent in subjects such as history (e.g., sadosky, goetz, & rodriguez, 2000), the characteristics of fiction and textbooks may become conflated with the concepts of narrative and exposition, respectively. in addition, some texts combine narrative and expository elements (e.g., newspaper articles, autobiographies), and determining the individual contributions of each genre is difficult. finally, the tasks used to assess student outcomes vary widely from study to study, so that it becomes difficult to determine whether results are driven by genre or task demands. the purpose of this study is to compare children's reading of narrative and expository texts by eliminating many common confounding factors by comparing students' performance in a within-subjects design and equivalent texts and using tasks that specifically address the issue of global versus local processing. we argue that if the presence of a narrative structure improves students’ ability to construct an global representation of the text, then narratives should show an advantage over expository texts in tasks requiring global processing. however, since local representations are required for minimal comprehension, there should be little difference between expository and narrative texts on tasks requiring only local representations. this would have implications for education in that it would help us predict what types of assessments and items are likely to produce a narrative-expository differential, as well as guiding the development of activities to support the development of reading skills across both genres. method participants the participants were 32 middle-class, anglo-american fourth grade students at a public school in a small midwestern city. there were equal numbers of male and female participants. all had at least a fourth grade level of reading comprehension proficiency, based on their teacher’s assessment of their previous class performance, and performance on standardized reading tests. students were nominated by their teachers for participation. none of the participants had been identified as having learning disabilities, and all were monolingual english speakers. this study took place at the end of the school year. materials four texts were created. they were presented as bound books, each five pages in length. these texts operationalize genre as having two levels: narrative and expository. the two narrative texts contained key narrative elements that have been identified in previous research (e.g., mandler, 1984). the narrative elements were: (a) establishing of a main character and setting, (b) goal-directed actions on the part of the main character, (c) the encountering of a problem or conflict, and (d) resolution of the problem or conflict. two commonly cited narrative other elements, a formal beginning (e.g., “once upon a time”) and a formal ending device (e.g., “they lived happily ever after”) were not used, both because many modern-day children’s books do not use these conventions and because they are not as clearly structural as the plot arc, and could simply function as isolated cues. for the purposes of examining the structural differences between narrative and expository, the absence of these items strengthens the test. we operationalized expository as the absence of narrative story elements. although this may not fully capture the nature of expository text, the result is a text that is very similar to that of many expository children’s books, organized in terms of macropropositions (or topic sentences), and allows us to isolate key structural elements so that distinguish exposition from narrative structure (appendices a and b). because genre is manipulated withinparticipant, we used two similar content areas to avoid novelty and practice effects, while controlling for subject matter interest. all four texts involved non-fictional events, featured animals prominently, and had an environmental theme focusing on people protecting wildlife from the effects of human current issues in education vol. 8 no. 25 intrusions upon their habitat. we created a narrative text and an expository text about protecting endangered mountain gorillas, and a narrative text and an expository text about rescuing ocean birds after oil spills. in selecting these content areas, we consulted the participants’ teachers regarding whether or not these topics were covered in the curriculum, and whether they were aware of any major individual differences in content expertise among the participants. we also asked students about their prior knowledge and experience with this content at the beginning of the two tasks. the four texts contained approximately the same number of words, ranging from 449 to 468 words, with an average of 462 words. all four were designed to have a flesch-kincaid grade level score of 6.6 in order to control for difficulty while avoiding ceiling effects in children's performance. participants completed two tasks, one tapping their ability to comprehend the story at a local level, the other their ability to comprehend at a global level. local-level comprehension was assessed with a “think-along” passage (tap) designed by paris (1991) that required children to answer two questions immediately after reading each page of the book, for a total of ten questions. these items assessed their ability to recall basic information about events detailed on that page of the book, and are similar to items found on standardized tests. they were coded as 0 for incorrect and 1 for correct. two independent raters scored all data with an inter-rater reliability of 95%; i.e. their judgments coincided in 95% of cases. in the remaining 16 of 320 cases, the two raters discussed their reasoning, and chose a score jointly based upon this discussion. we assessed participants’ ability to construct global models of the text through retelling. after they had read the entire book, participants were told “pretend that i’m your friend from class. i haven’t read the book and want to know about it. can you retell the book as you remember it, trying to include as many details as possible?” retellings demonstrate how readers focus and elaborate elements of text structure (gambrell, koskinen & kapinus, 1991; gambrell, pfeiffer, & wilson, 1985; irwin, & mitchell, 1983; stein & glenn, 1979). retelling was measured with narrative and expository retelling rubrics adapted from the michigan literacy progress profile (meap, 2001). the rubrics assessed the same six elements of retelling in both genres; gist/main idea, details/story elements, organization, linguistic spillover (i.e., use of language conventions), rehearsed and unrehearsed information, and elicited feelings. the retelling elements assess global processing because, unlike the tap, which requires holding details in memory only for the length of a page, the retelling requires them to be held in memory until the end of the story, and integrated so that the reader can extract the main idea and overall organization, order and the details and story elements, and extract the emotional impact of the story. each retelling element was scored along a four-point continuum from minimal and inaccurate (i.e., beginning level) to clear and elaborate (i.e., mature level). the rubric was used by two independent raters with an inter-rater reliability of 90%. disagreements were resolved through discussion. in addition to these two measures, we included additional questions to assess the effectiveness of our controls, and to solicit feedback regarding students’ perceptions of the two genres. to assess our control measures, we asked participants two questions targeting prior knowledge before they began each text. the prior knowledge questions were coded on a 3-point scale. scores of 0 were given if students failed to answer or gave an irrelevant answer. incomplete answers were scored as 1, and a full answer was scored as 2 points, as determined through the use of a rubric. after they had completed the books, we asked participants to compare the two books using five cognitive and five affective items. for each, participants were asked to choose between the narrative and the expository texts, or to indicate no preference for either genre. the five cognitive comparisons addressed: question difficulty, need for background knowledge, ease of understanding ideas, clarity of order of events, and ease of remembering. the five affective items asked participants: which book they liked more, which book was more interesting, which book they would recommend to a friend, which book required greater effort, and which book elicited more feelings. each of the cognitive and affective items was scored on a three point scale, with -1 for expository choice, 0 for no preference (i.e., same), and +1 for narrative choice. this was for classification purposes only, and values were assigned arbitrarily. procedure the study employs a within-participant manipulation of genre (expository vs. narrative), with content (gorilla vs. bird) and order (narrativefirst vs. expository-first) included for control purposes. each student read the two books and completed all tasks during a single one-on-one session. the sessions were conducted at the participants’ school in a quiet room. the directions were: “i’d like you to read these two short texts. as you finish reading every page, we’ll stop, children's comprehension and local-to-global recall of narrative and expository texts 5 i’ll cover your book with a piece of paper, and i’ll ask you a couple of questions. i printed a star next to the page number to remind you to stop and listen to my questions. please keep the texts on top of the table so that i can follow as you read. if you want to stop and return to your classroom at any time, it’s fine, just let me know. all right? do you have any questions?” participants were randomly assigned to read two text pairings of content and genre (i.e., expository-bird, narrative-bird, expository-gorilla, and narrative-gorilla). across participants, the pairings and the order of presentation were fully counterbalanced. participants completed the prior knowledge check prior to reading a text, answered two tap questions at the end of each page, completed the retelling task at the end of each book. they completed the preference survey after reading both books. results in all statistical analyses, we used 0.05 as our alpha level. we might have chosen to use 0.10, given that our hypothesis—that narrative will outperform exposition on the retelling task—is onesided. however, using 0.05 is both more conservative, and more appropriate for the tap task, in which we did not make a directional prediction. prior knowledge assessment the first two items in the tap task were developed to control for instances when students may have extremely low or high prior knowledge regarding the content areas of the books. no student reported greater prior knowledge for the topic of one book over another, and there were no overall differences in prior knowledge across conditions (all fs <1). preference survey many students showed no preferences; of those who did show preferences, 49% favored the narrative text, and 51% favored the expository text. we used a binomial test to determine if preference frequency differed significantly from chance for each item, deleting cases where no preference was indicated. we found no evidence for preference on any of the items (see table 1 for frequencies and results for the binomial test). this argues against difficulty, interest or enjoyment as confounds; if students had found one type of text easier or more pleasurable to read, this could drive any differences between narrative and exposition. this does not appear to be the case. table 1 frequency of response for each of the five cognitive and five affective preference items. binomial tests were run only for those cases where students indicated a preference; no preference responses were deleted. local-level comprehension table 2 presents the mean tap scores for each of the four conditions and for each of the 10 questions. a repeated measures anova revealed that students performed marginally better on the gorilla texts (f(1, 9) =3.60, p = 0.09). there were no significant interactions involving content (all fs < 1). given that the advantage for the gorilla theme is only marginally significant, that both levels of content were seen equally often in all levels of the genre and order conditions, and that there are no hypotheses involving content, we simplify the remaining analyses by collapsing across content. table 2 think-along passage (tap) group means per item for each of the four conditions. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 25 we conducted a repeated measures 2 x 2 anova with genre (narrative vs. expository) and order (narrative-first vs. expository-first) and found no main effects. there was a significant interaction between genre and order (f(1, 9) = 17.19, p < 0.01), with exposition receiving higher scores in the first position and narrative receiving higher scores in the second. one possible explanation is that there is an effect of position, with exposition somehow benefiting from being seen first, and/or narrative benefiting from being seen second. a second, and more plausible, explanation is that, despite random assignment, stronger readers were unintentionally assigned to receive the expository text first and the narrative text second. since these participants would contribute both the exposition scores in the first position and the narrative scores in the second position, if they were stronger readers, there would be an apparent interaction, when in fact it merely reflects consistently higher levels of performance for one particular group. this latter possibility is the more parsimonious of the two scenarios, and there is no research to support a position effect. we further explored the possibility of reader ability by using participants’ exposition score as a covariate in the analysis of their narrative scores, and vice versa. if reading ability, as measured by their scores in the alternate genre, is driving this interaction, the effects of order will disappear when reading ability is used as a covariate. narrative proved a significant covariate, f(1, 29) = 5.62, p = .025, accounting for 16% of the variance in the order effect. however, when expository scores are used as a covariate, order remains marginally significant f(1,29) = 3.55, p = .070, accounting for 10% of the variance. in conclusion, order seems to play a relatively small role in comparison to reader ability. global comprehension table 3 shows the mean retelling scores by condition and text elements. finding no main effect for content (f(1, 30) = 1.99, p = .169), nor any interactions with content (all fs < 1), we collapsed over content. as predicted, a 2 (order) x 2 (genre) repeated measures anova showed a significant main effect for genre f(1, 30) = 17.143, p < 0.001. we again found an effect of order, f(1, 30) = 4.89, p < .05, again most likely explained by the disproportionate assignment of students with higher ability to the exposition first condition. there were no other significant effects (fs < 1). table 3 retelling group means per item for each of the four conditions discussion the results of this study suggest that structural differences may contribute to differences in students’ performance in reading narrative and expository texts. we compared children's reading of texts that included elements of narrative structure versus text with an expository structure that lacks these elements, controlling for content and difficulty. children did not exhibit differential comprehension as assessed by answering questions interspersed while reading, a task which requires only local comprehension processing. however, when children were asked to retell the text, narratives were better recalled than expository. thus, while students performed similarly on both genres when the task required local coherence, their performance with narrative text was stronger when the task required a global representation. this explanation is consistent with existing psycholinguistic research suggesting that expository text tends to be processed locally, while narrative text receives both local and global processing (einstein, mcdaniel, bowers, & stevens, 1984; mcdaniel, einstein, dunay, & cobb, 1986). what remains to be seen is whether the advantages narrative enjoys are due solely to students’ greater exposure to narrative, or whether that narrative discourse has inherent advantages because of the overarching structure of a story with a beginning, middle, and end. although we may be able to help students improve their performance simply by exposing them to and teaching them about narrative and expository text, this may not be as effective as pinpointing the key elements of difference, and, for that matter, similarity. similarities could be used to promote transfer, and differences to forewarn students of problems that may befall them if they approach narrative and expository text in the same way. in addition, there are better and worse examples of narrative and exposition, especially exposition. beck & mckeown (1991) found that most social studies texts for the middle grades were rather poor examples children's comprehension and local-to-global recall of narrative and expository texts 7 of exposition, and mcnamara and her colleagues (1996) showed that poor exposition creates problems for poor readers to a much greater extent than good readers (who presumably have more strategies for repairing the text). it is also worth noting that we found no evidence that students’ prefer narrative text over expository. pappas (1993) reported that kindergartner students have the ability to understand text content and structure, reenact texts, and enjoy both narrative and expository types of genre equally well. our results are consistent with these findings and suggest that the problems students face in expository text may not stem from a lack of comprehension, interest, or engagement, but rather from the less evident and useful structure of the text. we suggest that students’ differential performance across genres in formal and informal measures ought to be considered separately from other factors such as text characteristics (e.g., fictional characteristics, use of imagery), and motivation factors (e.g., interest, expectancy). in the past, explicit instruction teaching students the underlying structure of text has focused primarily on narrative (i.e., story grammar instruction), comparable explicit instruction can be taught in relation to exposition. this may be particularly important if students experience difficulty identifying and using the structure of expository texts to facilitate recall. regarding the implications of this study, it is interesting that the task that is most similar in appearance to a standardized test, the tap, did not produce differential performance. it is important not to presume that short answer comprehension questions necessarily do not require global processing; standardized test items requiring students to make inferences, choose appropriate titles for a passage, and the like, may well require global representations. issues to address in follow-up studies include determining whether the localized tap task creates unusual demands upon students. the tap required students to stop at the end of every page. interruptions in the flow of reading have been shown to have little effect on comprehension and processing time (ericsson & kintsch, 1995), but the effects are somewhat more pronounced when the material is unfamiliar. given the argument that expository structures may be more variable and less familiar, we would expect, if anything, for this task to disadvantage expository text. we see no evidence of such a disadvantage, but it is possible that exposition would have actually outperformed narrative had there been no interruptions. such a finding would be unusual and unexpected, given the large body of research showing an advantage for narrative across many tasks, content domains, and languages. because of the differences between researchers’ definitions of narrative, it is also possible that the same pattern would not be found using different definitions of narrative and expository. while the elements we chose to vary across the two genres are commonly held as important, there may be others of equal or greater importance in one theory or another. we would argue that the advantages conferred by being able to systematically vary a set number of elements outweighs concerns about which model of narrative is being used. nevertheless, additional studies invoking different aspects of narrative and expository text are needed. finally, we note that the sample in this study was relatively homogeneous, with similar ethnic background, educational experience, and socioeconomic status. although this is necessary for the study, since the argument is that similarity of exposure (or lack thereof) to narrative and exposition, our explanation would also predict that students with different levels of exposure to narrative and exposition will perform differently on these tasks. therefore, additional test of our theory would be provided by examining whether the pattern changes as the experiences of the sample change. in conclusion, we believe that an examination of the structural properties of texts and the requirements of assessment tasks may serve to explain and predict student performance on measures of reading performance, and to 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(1999). comprehension and memory for texts: three generations of reading research. in s. r. goldman, a. graesser, p. van de broek (eds.), narrative comprehension, causality, and coherence (pp. 15-34). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. yussen, s., huang, s., mathews, s., evans, r. (1988). the robustness and temporal cause of the story schema’s influence on recall. journal of experimental psychology: learning, memory, and cognition, 14, 173 179. . . . current issues in education vol. 8 no. 25 appendix a children's comprehension and local-to-global recall of narrative and expository texts 11 appendix b note. these text examples correspond to the first page of each book. all books were five pages long. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 25 2005 article citation romero f. paris s.g. brem s.k. (2005, november). children's comprehension and local-to-global recall of narrative and expository texts. current issues in education [on-line], 8(25). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number25/ author notes fernando romero arizona state university fer@asu.edu scott g. paris university of michigan sarah k. brem arizona state university note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber july 13, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation romero f. paris s. g., & brem s. k. (2005). children's comprehension and local-to-global recall of narrative and expository texts. current issues in education, 8(25). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1651 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number15/index.html mailto:fer@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1651 the value of imperfect videos current issues in education, 21(2) 1 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age the value of imperfect videos karen costa author, adjunct, faculty development professional abstract: in this video for shapingedu, karen costa describes her philosophy of creating imperfect videos as a tool to humanize learning and to connect with new traditional learners. keywords: video, humanizing, online learning citation: costa, k. (2020). the value of imperfect videos. current issues in education, 21(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1917. this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 5/21/2020 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1917 the value of imperfect videos current issues in education, 21(2) 2 author notes karen costa author, adjunct, faculty development professional karenraycosta@gmail.com guest editor notes sean m. leahy, ph.d. arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff, m.ed macel curtin university, learning futures advisor k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au mailto:karenraycosta@gmail.com mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au the value of imperfect videos current issues in education, 21(2) 3 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf cie template current issues in education, 19(2) 1 volume 19, issue 2 may 30, 2016 issn 1099-839x applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content virginie jackson metro atlanta area school district abstract: this research was designed to investigate the effectiveness of using the think-aloud strategy to improve the reading comprehension in the content area of science. based on state standards assessments, many early elementary grade students who were considered fluent readers struggled with evaluative science comprehension. in this quasi-experimental case study, the researcher used a self-created set of lessons using the think-aloud strategy for science as the intervention. the target group of this study consisted of two classrooms totaling 48 first-grade students identified as regular education or gifted. the treatment group received instruction using the think-aloud strategy during the science block. the control group received the regular instruction of the school district’s science curriculum without the think-aloud strategy being incorporated. results of using the think-aloud strategy during science instruction significantly increases a students’ comprehension of science text. findings from this study assisted with improving student learning by providing teachers with an instructional method (the think-aloud strategy) in the science-content area and in enabling every student to experience a certain degree of success in the evaluative comprehension of science text. the findings from this study were useful to teachers, administrators, school district personnel, and curriculum developers to improve comprehension levels in all students by implementing the think-aloud strategy. keywords: reading comprehension, think aloud analysis, content area reading, think alouds, science education apa-style citation: jackson, v. (2016). applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content. current issues in education, 19(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1483 accepted: april 5 th , 2016 reading is a fundamental skill needed to succeed in life. reading comprehension skills are not only crucial in the educational setting, but also they are a means to function effectively in society (oliva & gordon, 2012). according to oliva and gordon (2012), the u.s. government passed the no child left behind act of 2001 to determine ways to help prepare american students for the future in a technologically growing society, to be competent nationally by revising current curriculum, and to assess students through standardized tests. there is an http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1483 jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 2 increasing number of students, especially in the urban areas, with poor comprehension skills (delpit, 2006). reading comprehension involves the construction and reconstruction of content meaning (sweet & snow, 2003). previous research show that the literal form of comprehension is the easiest because it requires only surface-level understanding. the evaluative comprehension skill is more difficult because the use of higher order thinking skills are needed. higher order thinking skills involved with evaluative comprehension skills include making text-to-text, text-to-me, and text-to-world connections (alonzo, basaraba, tindal, & carriveau, 2009). it is important for students to receive direct instruction of strategies in order to develop evaluative comprehension. according to pardo (2004), many students do not have the vocabulary or prior experiences necessary to make the connections with text and meaning. the think-aloud strategy is a method widely used for instruction characterized by the teacher modeling the thinking process by verbalizing thoughts while reading aloud for students (dunston & headley, 2002). the think-aloud strategy allows students to monitor their thinking process through the use of reading strategies while engaged in the science text in order to gain comprehension of what they are reading. thinking aloud while reading science text can help students to learn the metacognitive process involved in comprehension. some examples of thinkaloud strategies that can be used while reading science text are making inferences, making connections, summarizing, questioning, and interpreting. the more think-aloud skills a student is equipped with, the better he or she will be at problem solving while interacting with science text. this research study investigated the effectiveness of using the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension in the content area of science. although past studies demonstrated a positive correlation between fluency and comprehension (chard, vaughn, & tyler, 2002; national reading panel, 2000), there are instances that implicate other factors effecting comprehension skills aside from decoding and fluency (williams, 2005). research showed that students with poor comprehension skills may display normal performance on phonemic tasks but impaired performance on semantic processing tasks (weekes, hamilton, oakhill, & holliday, 2008). phonemic tasks involves decoding words. semantic processing refers to the ability to recall abstract words and accessing knowledge about category relations between words and category priming for spoken words (nation & snowling, 1997). inability to engage in evaluative comprehension becomes a problem when students perform poorly on the criterion-referenced competency test. a study conducted by peterson-brown and burns (2011) showed that semantic association of information was recalled better than information that was not semantically associated. recent research showed the effectiveness of the use of direct teaching of metacognitive strategies to increase comprehension levels in students (boulware-gooden, carreker, thornhill, & joshi, 2007). content instruction is a strategy that appears to be more effective than the strategies approach and the basal comprehension lessons because it allows students to focus on interacting with the text in order to make the connections with the ideas presented in the text (mckeown, beck, & blake, 2009). research showed an emphasis being placed on using books, strategies approach, and metacognitive strategies to teach reading comprehension; however, there is still not clear guidance on how to progress instructionally with teaching reading comprehension in the sciencecontent area (austermuehle, kautz, & sprenzel, 2007; kuhn, 2000; o’reilly & mcnamara, 2007). also, there is a lack of evidence and research on the effect of teaching reading comprehension to elementary students in the science-content area through think-aloud activities. jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 3 findings from this study will add to the body of research that supports the use of the think-aloud strategy to improve evaluative science comprehension skills in students. the think-aloud strategy focuses directly on important ideas and on making connections and is likely to support students in building a coherent representation of the text they are reading. purpose of the study the purpose of this study was to determine if the use of the think-aloud strategy would improve the evaluative science comprehension of elementary students. according to school district curriculum for first-grade students at a title i elementary school located in northwest georgia, these elementary students had been identified as fluent readers. the independent variable was the think-aloud strategy used by the teacher to model comprehension. the dependent variable was the level of evaluative comprehension achievement in first-grade boys and girls, and the control group variable was defined as the regular instruction of the school district curriculum. the think-aloud strategy is the process of “talking about the reading strategies you are using and the content of the piece you are reading” (wilhelm, 2001, p. 19). in this study, the operational definition of the think-aloud strategy was the thinking process modeled during the think-aloud strategy that included making predictions, creating images, connecting information in text with prior knowledge, monitoring comprehension, and overcoming problems with vocabulary or comprehension (gunning, 1996). the think-aloud strategy and think-aloud activities were integrated into the science instruction of the treatment group. the control group received regular instruction, which is the process of teaching the science-content area without the integration of the think-aloud strategy or think-aloud activities theoretical framework the theory that supports the possible positive effects of instruction on reading comprehension is known as the schema theory by anderson (1984). this theory illustrates the importance of teaching general knowledge and generic concepts to foster comprehension of text materials (anderson, spiro, & montague, 1984). teaching general knowledge and generic concepts can be done through the use of semantic mapping and graphic organizers that provide a mental representation of abstract words that allow students to make connections using their prior knowledge or experiences (schemata) to achieve comprehension. the theory of schema is compared to a mental filing cabinet that allows a person to continue to learn by retrieving previous information, categorizing, and reorganizing that information to fit the new information that is learned. this is based on the notion that, in order for something new to be learned, there needs to be a connection made with something already known. the definition of oral reading fluency is the ability to read a text, orally and silently, with appropriate speed, accuracy, and expression (rasinski, blachowicz, & lems, 2006). reading comprehension is much more than decoding and fluency; it is also influenced by background knowledge, culture, and experience. in order for students to understand what they are reading, they need to be equipped with the information necessary for comprehension before being introduced to the text. reading comprehension refers to the act of understanding and constructing meaning from written words. it involves active and intentional thinking in which the meaning is constructed through interactions between the text and the reader (ruddell, 2006). reading comprehension is also related to semantic word association. previous research showed students with poor comprehension skills displaying normal performance on phonemic tasks but impaired performance on semantic processing tasks (weekes et al., 2008). some students with poor comprehension are able to read the text they are given and have the same phonological jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 4 awareness as their peers who have normal comprehension; however, their semantic skills are different. research questions the following research questions guided this study: 1. what is the effect of implementing the think-aloud strategy on the evaluative science comprehension achievement of first-grade students from a title 1 school who are identified as fluent readers? 2. what is the development rate of the use of think-aloud skills in first-grade students? 3. which think-aloud strategies are most frequently used by first-grade students? recent research benefits of metacognitive strategies alonzo et al. (2009) discussed how comprehension is an important component to literacy, and the levels of comprehension include literal, inferential, and evaluative. student assessment scores in this study showed inferential and evaluative comprehension to be more challenging than literal comprehension. additionally, a research study conducted by weekes et al. (2008) was designed to determine the factors that contributed to reading comprehension difficulties in students. it is agreed that students with poor reading comprehension have difficulties connecting the meaning of words compared to age-matched peers who have normal reading comprehension. the experiment pointed out that students with poor comprehension were less sensitive to abstract semantic associations between words as a result of poor gist memory. weekes et al. (2008) found that gist memory was necessary for text comprension as well as inference making, reasoning, and similarity judgments. weekes et al. (2008) discussed how there was a difference in students with poor comprension ability to recall semantic words, rather than phonological words. it was also noted that all of the items were familiar to both groups of students so the level of recollection was not based on familiarity of the words. the reason why the recollection of the drm words was low for the students with poor comprehension was because the words were abstract. as a result of this, students with poor comprehension lacked the ability to categorize the abstract information in order to make the necessary connection needed for comprehension. moreover, the research conducted by boulware-gooden et al. (2007) indicated that teaching metacognitive strategies and vocabulary significantly affects reading comprehension. metacognition is defined as “enhancing (a) metacognitive awareness of what one believes and how one knows and (b) metastrategic control in application of the strategies that process new information” (kuhn, 2000, p. 178). this particular study was integral because its findings strongly suggested that direct teaching of vocabulary and metacognitive skills will increase reading comprehension in students. carlisle and rice (2002) found that these skills are needed in addition to phonological awareness so that the students can monitor their understanding of the text. according to pressley (2006), comprehension is not enhanced merely by reading more text. the difference between students with normal comprehension and students with poor comprehension is the number of strategies they are equipped with while reading a text. likewise, schellings, aarnoutse, and van leeuwve (2006) found that reading strategies were related to reading comprehension. in order for reading to take place, two levels were involved: word identification and comprehension of sentences and text. the participants who were identified as high comprehenders verbalized more about comprehension than the low comprehenders on texts. there was a negative correlation between reading strategies and reading jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 5 error. the results also showed a significant correlation between reading strategies and reading ability (schellings et al., 2006). furthermore, hagaman, casey, and reid (2012) investigated the use of strategy instruction using the self-regulated strategy development model (srsd; graham & harris, 2005) to teach “the read a paragraph (rap), ask myself what was the main idea and two details?, and put it into my own words paraphrasing strategy to increase reading comprehension in elementary students (hagaman et al., 2012, p. 111). the characteristic of the srsd model is explicit instruction and systematic (develop background knowledge, discuss it, model it, memorize it, support it, and independent performance). the results of this study showed an increase in reading comprehension based on the students’ ability to recall and answer short-answer questions. this suggested that teaching the rap strategy using the srsd model increased reading comprehension. metacognitive strategies and comprehension of science text a research study conducted by leopold and leutner (2012) showed that there were positive effects of the drawing strategy instruction on science text comprehension. notably, previous research showed that 10th graders were not using the necessary think-aloud metacognitive skills necessary for text science text comprehension (schellings & broekkamp, 2011). correspondingly, a research study conducted by o’reilly and mcnamara (2007) showed that reading skills assisted students with science knowledge and had a significant effect on achievement scores for students. in general, this research study showed that science knowledge and reading skills were significantly correlated. this research study also showed that the use of metacognitive reading strategy knowledge was a weak predictor of science achievement and only significant in positive course grades (o’reilly & mcnamara, 2007). hands-on learning and learning from text are important characteristics of any content area (neufeld, 2005). being explicitly taught comprehension strategies can help students read more effectively in other content areas. by the same token, the research study conducted by braasch and goldman (2010) showed that students who had more prior knowledge performed better on science concepts being taught through the text-weather system. finally, reutzel, smith, and fawson (2005) found that teaching a family or set of comprehension strategies embedded in a collaborative, interactive, and engaging routine (transactional strategies instruction; tsi) was more effective than using the single strategy instruction (ssi), which is a series of comprehension strategies taught one at a time, in helping students to achieve in science comprehension as measured by a state, curriculum-based measure of comprehension standards. this research study showed that young students enjoyed reading and discussing science information books, and they suggested that teachers use informational text to teach young students reading comprehension strategies through the use of the tsi strategy. the average first-grade student spends only 3.6 min per day interacting with informational texts (duke, 2000). early elementary schools are focusing instruction on narrative texts. the elementary classroom reading areas contain more narrative texts than any other genres. according to moss (2005), content-area reading should begin in early grades so that students are introduced and prepared for reading and comprehending texts of increasingly difficult concepts. jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 6 benefits of the think-aloud strategy in the research study conducted by cummins and stallmeyer-gerard (2011), one learns of the significant effect of synthesizing interactive read alouds and think-aloud minilessons on students’ comprehension of informational texts. additionally, research conducted by marcell, decleene, and juettner (2010) discussed the process of teaching reading comprehension by allowing the students to be involved actively in the process through the guidance of the teacher, instead of the teacher taking on the active role of scaffolding and teaching multiple-comprehension strategies. there were many instances where the teachers would teach different kinds of metacognitive strategies in isolation. the students would appear to understand the metacognitive strategy and the process involved in using them; however, when it was time to apply the strategy independently toward comprehension, the students were confused and were not able to figure out which strategy to use for the particular text encountered and how to use it. this was because not only were the strategies taught in isolation but also the students were used to the teacher taking an active role in practicing with the strategy. the authors of this study suggested using the reciprocal teaching model, which is the process of explicitly teaching, modeling, and practicing four strategies through the interaction with multiple kinds of text within the students’ zone of proximal development. this strategy involved scaffolding and the gradual release of ownership of the teacher to the students that prepared them to be able to read to learn. meyers, lytle, palladino, devenpeck, and green (1990) also showed that primary students’ think-aloud comments were correlated to their understanding of the text. the students who were able to reason and infer through their think-aloud statements were able to show their comprehension of the text through coherent retellings. yang (2006) explored the relationships between reading strategies and comprehensionmonitoring strategies and their functioning to assist readers with the process of comprehension. reading strategies are the problem-solving strategies used for better understanding of text, whereas comprehension monitoring entails the awareness that there is a problem encountered while reading the text. both of these strategies can be used simultaneously; however, readers should be able to use both in order to achieve in critical reading. also, research studies conducted by smith (2006) and walker (2005) showed how directly and explicitly teaching comprehension strategies through modeling using the think-aloud approach had a profound, positive effect on student comprehension growth. this research study used the think-aloud mysteries approach to engage students actively in learning comprehension strategies in a fun way while reading text. meyers et al. (1990) proved that primary students’ think-aloud comments were correlated to their understanding of the text. the students who were able to reason and infer through their think-aloud statements were able to show their comprehension of the text through coherent retellings. the study conducted by caldwell and leslie (2010) proved that using the think-aloud strategy while reading resulted in more inferences and recall of the text compared to not using the think-aloud strategy while reading. students were able to generate more causal statements during recall when they thought aloud (caldwell & leslie, 2010). in the same way, meller, richardson, and hatch (2009) discussed the importance of using children’s literature and read-alouds to allow the teacher to model reading strategies and provide background knowledge, foster critical thinking, and increase reading comprehension in primary classrooms. the authors suggested using high-quality children’s literature to engage jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 7 students in read-alouds. the discussions and critical conversations taken place are what contribute to the critical element of children’s literature. in order to engage primary-age children in discussions about literature, they suggested that it is important to ask critical questions. the research study conducted by gillam, fargo, and robertson (2009) demonstrated that having the ability to paraphrase passages was correlated to expository text comprehension. the researchers wanted to study the different types of statements made by students of expository texts. the types of statements made orally by the students while they interacted with the text were examined to determine their relationship to reading comprehension performance. by the same token, the research study conducted by kelley and clausen-grace (2008) illustrated that there was a positive effect of teaching metacognition through the use of the thinkaloud strategy on students’ reading comprehension in various genres of text, including nonfiction text. summary research shows that explicitly teaching metacognitive skills can increase reading comprehension in students. it is especially effective when students are repeatedly exposed to the teacher thinking aloud during content instruction so that students are able to internalize and apply the thinking process that should take place while interacting with a variety of text. the thinkaloud strategy is a method widely used for instruction characterized by the teacher modeling the thinking process while reading aloud for students (dunston & headley, 2002). this particular instructional practice is observed only during the literacy block of a classroom setting. reading comprehension strategies are usually taught during the reading block. students are now recommended to problem solve, communicate, and think critically when reading science text (national reading panel, 2000). as students are moving through the primary education concept of learning to read and into the intermediate level of education of reading to learn, reading is now a key factor in science achievement (o’reilly & mcnamara, 2007; reutzel et al., 2005). reading comprehension skills must be taught in the science contentarea classrooms because the students are faced with the task of comprehending the content-area text without the understanding of external and internal text features and the thinking process necessary for the evaluative comprehension of the science text they are reading. using the think-aloud strategy while interacting with science text will likely support students in building a coherent representation of the text they are reading because of the research that supports the use of the think-aloud strategy during the literacy block. methods the purpose of this case study was to determine the effectiveness of using the think-aloud strategy to improve the reading comprehension of first-grade students in the content area of science. although many students in early grades are reading fluently based on state standards, they struggle with evaluative science comprehension. the united states has recently adopted the common core standards as part of a national curriculum that supports the integration of reading comprehension into all of the content areas. students are now recommended to problem solve, communicate, and think critically when reading science text (national reading panel, 2000). as students move through the primary grade-level concept of learning to read and into intermediate grade levels of education of reading to learn, reading is now a key factor in science achievement (o’reilly & mcnamara, 2007; reutzel et al., 2005). the think-aloud strategy is a method used for instruction characterized by the teacher modeling the thinking process while reading aloud for students (dunston & headley, 2002). this research study investigated the effectiveness of using the think-aloud strategy to improve the jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 8 reading comprehension in the content area of science. the key characteristic of the think-aloud strategy is the process of the teacher modeling for students how skillful readers think and the students doing the following six elements of the think-aloud strategy in order to become successful readers: taking a picture walk and commenting aloud, thinking aloud to self, verbalizing inferences, formulating questions, linking up background knowledge, and sharing thoughts while working through the texts (see appendix a). the justification for the research design chosen to implement this study as well as the process that was taken to analyze the results is included in this chapter. participants the target group of this case study consisted of 2 first-grade classrooms, totaling 48 students, chosen through the use of the convenience and purposive sampling approach. one of the grade 1 classes (group 1), consisting of 24 students, was assigned to the treatment group and received the science comprehension instruction through the incorporation of the think-aloud strategy in nonfiction text. the other grade 1 class (group 2) made up the control group and received science instruction without the incorporation of the think-aloud strategy. the site of the study took place in a title i public school located in northwest georgia. the majority of the students who participated in this study came from low-socioeconomic backgrounds. there were 90.4% of the students who qualified to receive free or reduced-price lunch. the student enrollment distribution was by the following races and ethnicities: 0.2% american indian, 57.0% african american, 0.7% asian, 37.2% hispanic, and 4.1% white. the grade level taught in this school ranged from prekindergarten through first grade. instruments permission was granted by the pearson publishing company to use the dra-2 as an instrument in this study. the dra-2 is the assessment that was used as preand postassessments of students’ evaluative science comprehension skills (beaver & carter, 2009). during the administration of the dra-2, the students received a science text at their independent reading levels to read. the students were asked comprehension questions orally that came along with the dra-2 kit. the students’ answers were recorded by the researcher and scored according to the guidelines of the rubric that accompanied the dra-2 kit. the possible range of score for this assessment is 7-28. the scores received for each question were tallied for group 1 and group 2 and were recorded on a table and analyzed. research shows the dra-2 to be reliable and valid. it has internal, test-retest, passage equivalence, and interrater and expert rater reliability. the dra-2 is valid because it measures what it was developed to measure: accuracy, fluency, and evaluative comprehension (beaver & carter, 2009). the second instrument was the think-aloud sentence starter form developed by the researcher and use during the implementation of the study (see appendix b). the think-aloud sentence starter form consists of sentence starters that can be used to think-aloud about a text that is being read in order for comprehension to take place. the researcher developed think-aloud sentence starters for the varying levels of comprehension by aligning each statement with the procedures in part one of the think-aloud strategy in this study. the science texts that group 1 read during the course of the study had stopping points inserted at the end of each paragraph. each student was given the direction to read each passage and stop wherever he or she saw the word stop (which was located at the end of each paragraph) to verbalize his or her thinking. the students were digitally recorded while thinking aloud, and the information from the recording was used by the researcher to transfer onto the think-aloud sentence starter form in order to use tally marks to record and analyze the frequency and types of think-aloud statements used by jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 9 each student. input from the think-aloud sentence starter form was summarized and reported in the results section of this study. the third instrument was the student observation checklist (see appendix c) developed by the researcher to document group 1 implementing the think-aloud strategy during the course of the study and during the dra-2 post-test while reading the science text. the student observation checklist consists of a checklist of questions that can be used to observe and record the students’ behavior while using the think-aloud strategy with the text that is being read in order for comprehension to take place. the researcher developed the student observation checklist by aligning each question with the procedures in part one of the think-aloud strategy of this study. group 1 was instructed to think aloud at the stopping points on the pages of the science text during the administration of the dra-2 post-test, which was digitally recorded. the information from the digital recordings of each student was transcribed and transferred onto the think-aloud student implementation form by the researcher. input from the think-aloud student implementation form was summarized and reported in the results section of this study to assess whether group 1’s evaluative science comprehension level improved as a result of the use of the think-aloud strategy and to analyze the utilization of the think-aloud strategy of firstgrade girls and boys. research design this was a quasi-experimental case study that determined the effects of using the thinkaloud strategy on the evaluative science comprehension achievement of first-grade students. the independent variable was the think-aloud strategy used by the teacher to model comprehension. the dependent variable was the level of evaluative comprehension achievement in first-grade students, and the control group variable was the regular instruction of the school district curriculum. in this study, regular instruction was the process of teaching the science content area without the integration of the think-aloud strategy or think-aloud activities in order to increase evaluative reading comprehension of science text. procedures this study took place in 2 first-grade classrooms during the science block at an elementary school located in northwest georgia after consent forms were received from the parents. one of the classrooms served as the treatment group (group 1), and the other classroom served as the control group (group 2). in the beginning of the study, both groups were given the dra-2 comprehension assessment orally as a pre-assessment. the students read a science text at their independent reading levels and orally received the comprehension questions as a pre-test that consisted of text-related questions that fell within the literal, implicit, inferential, and evaluative categories. group 1 received instruction from the use of the think-aloud strategy during the science block for 15 min a day, 5 days a week for a total of 5 weeks during the 20132014 school year. in order to model the thinking process using the think-aloud strategy, the teacher of group 1 did the following in part 1 of the think-aloud strategy: 1. selected a trade book that was grade-level appropriate for the topic of study. 2. previewed the text to look for unfamiliar vocabulary or confusing parts in the story and made comments aloud about what she was thinking when she encountered them in the text in order to clarify for the students the thinking process used to understand unfamiliar vocabulary. 3. took a picture walk (i.e., flipping through the pages) to look at illustrations and nonfiction features with students and made comments aloud about what she noticed in the illustrations, asked questions about the pictures and subheadings, and made predictions jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 10 based on text features in order to clarify for the students the thinking process used to make predictions about what they were going to learn from the text. 4. paused and made comments about what she was thinking while reading aloud to students in order to clarify for students how comprehension was taking place. 5. articulated her predictions, confusing parts in the story, or connections with prior knowledge to help show comprehension of the text. 6. closed the lesson by making a strong connection to the book or short review of the purpose of the story aloud to model to the students how to make connections (i.e., text-totext, text-to-self, and text-to-world) in order to clarify for students how comprehension was taking place. in part 2 of the think-aloud strategy, the teacher gradually released the think-aloud process to students by giving them opportunities to make comments about what they were thinking after each paragraph that was being read to them. a chart with sentence starters was displayed for the teacher to record the amount of times each strategy was used to help with understanding the text using tally marks. the following are the characteristics of the think-aloud strategies that were utilized by the students during this study: 1. think-aloud 1 involves the student taking a picture walk (i.e., flipping through the pages) to look at illustrations and nonfiction features and making comments aloud about what is noticed in the illustrations, asking questions about the pictures and subheadings, and making predictions based on text features. 2. think-aloud 2 involves the student thinking aloud by sharing uncertainties, questions, responses, feelings, and connections that appear during reading. 3. think-aloud 3 is characterized by the student verbalizing inferences that are made, including inferences deduced from new words and ideas, themes, illustrations, and photos. 4. think-aloud 4 is characterized by the student formulating questions that come to mind as he or she reads. 5. think-aloud 5 involves the student verbally linking up background knowledge as he or she comes across new information. 6. think-aloud 6 involves the student sharing his or her thoughts while working through confusing parts and applying fix-up strategies. 7. think-aloud 7 is characterized by the student making a strong connection to the text or short review of the purpose of the story aloud (i.e., text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-toworld). in part 3 of the think-aloud strategy, students were given an opportunity to construct meaning from text, one-on-one, with the researcher. each student read the science text aloud and thought aloud after reaching each stopping point in the text. a digital recorder was used to record students’ thinking aloud during each session. the researcher used the digital recordings of the students using the think-aloud strategy to administer two separate scores per student: the total number of statements the students made while thinking aloud and the number of types of thinkaloud statements the students used during each session. both scores were added together to conclude a total score for each passage. this allowed for the analysis of types of think-aloud statements and the frequency and development of the use of the think-aloud strategy for each student during the observation period. jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 11 four science texts titled, parts of a plant, by blevins (2004), living and nonliving, by lindeen (2008), what is matter?, by curry (2004), and what does light do?, by trussellcullen (2001) provided by the school district were used during the one-on-one sessions on separate occasions to record students’ thinking aloud digitally as they read. also, the researcher recorded students’ utilization of the think-aloud strategy based on students’ recordings onto the student observation checklist. group 2 (the control group) received the regular instruction by their classroom teacher during the science block for 15 minutes per day of the school district’s science curriculum without the think-aloud strategy being incorporated (appendix d). the topics taught encompassed plants, living and nonliving things, magnets, and light using the same science texts used to teach the experimental group without the use of the think-aloud strategy. the following is an example of the school district’s science curriculum without the thinkaloud strategy being incorporated: 1. the lesson begins with teacher activating student’s prior knowledge of science topic. there is usually a graphic organizer such as the kwl chart displayed to organize student responses. the teacher records what students already know about the science topic introduced under the k column (what i know), and records questions that the students have about the topic under the w column (what i want to know). 2. the teacher shows a videotape or read a text to students about the science topic. 3. the teacher scaffold students at the end of the science text. student responses are recorded under the l column of the chart (what i learned). 4. the teacher may engage students in a science experiment as an extension activity. 5. the students will be assessed on what they have learned through formal and informal assessments. at the end of the 5th week of the study, both groups were administered the dra-2 as a post-test in order to compare the scores from the pre-test (beaver & carter, 2009). after the post assessment was administered, these data were analyzed by counting and comparing scores received for students’ responses on the preand post-tests. group 1 was given the task of utilizing the think-aloud strategy while reading the science text orally during the posttest, which was electronically recorded. the information gathered from the digital recording of each student from group 1 thinking aloud during the dra-2 post-test was transcribed and transferred onto the student observation checklist and the think-aloud sentence starter form by the researcher. group 2 was not required to use the think-aloud strategy while taking the post-test. they were only required to read the science text orally and answer the comprehension questions on the post-test. the rationale for this method lies on the notion that the students would internalize the different types of think-aloud statements learned through the use of the think-aloud sentence starter form during the intervention and naturally use the ones they felt comfortable using on their own to think-aloud while reading the science text during the post-test. the post-test score of the intervention group (group 1) and the control group (group 2) was compared to determine whether thinking aloud while interacting with science text increases science evaluative comprehension. results forty-eight 1st-grade students participated in the study. the following section details the analytical process utilized to assess the study’s research questions. all statistical tests were jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 12 conducted at α = .05. the distribution of treatment and control students’ preand post-test science achievement scores are displayed in appendix e. research question 1 this research question was, what is the effect of implementing the think-aloud strategy on the evaluative science comprehension achievement of first-grade students from a title 1 school who are identified as fluent readers? the null hypothesis was that there will not be a statistically significant difference between the treatment and control groups on post-test dra-2 comprehension scores after controlling for participants’ pre-test dra-2 scores. the alternative hypothesis was that there will be a statistically significant difference between the treatment and control groups on post-test dra-2 comprehension scores after controlling for participants’ pretest dra-2 scores. a one-way analysis of covariance (ancova) was conducted to determine if there was a significant difference between students who implemented the think-aloud strategy and students who did not on the post-test evaluative science comprehensive achievement (dra-2 comprehensive) after controlling for participants’ pre-test evaluative comprehensive achievement scores. the ancova is appropriate when comparing two or more groups on a continuous dependent variable while controlling for one or more continuous variables (stevens, 2002; tabachnick & fidell, 2006). the think-aloud intervention (yes vs. no) was the between-subjects independent variable; students’ post-test dra-2 comprehensive scores was the dependent variable, and students’ pre-test dra-2 comprehensive scores was the control variable. the purpose of the ancova was to assess differences on post-test achievement scores while statistically controlling for the students’ preexisting differences on science achievement. this strategy allowed the researcher to assess the impact of the think-aloud strategy on science achievement while eliminating students’ preexisting differences on science skill, thus, eliminating it as a potential confounding variable in the statistical model. the following ancova testing procedures were utilized. first, the data were screened for outliers prior to assessing the statistical assumption. the students’ post-test dra-2 scores were standardized by group, and the resulting scores were utilized to identify outliers in the data. a data point was considered an outlier when the standardized score was greater than 3. this process did not reveal any outliers in the data. the next step in the analysis was to assess the statistical assumptions. histograms of the participants’ post-test scores were used to assess the normality assumption. the distributions of the treatment and control groups’ pre-test dra-2 comprehensive scores are displayed in appendix e. the distributions of the treatment and control groups’ post-test dra-2 comprehensive scores are, also, displayed in appendix e. neither post-test distribution was markedly discrepant from a normal distribution. however, the small sample sizes in each group precluded the use of the central limit theorem to assume normality. a kolmogorov-smirnov test was conducted for each group as a secondary assessment of normality. the tests revealed that the treatment and control group distributions were approximately normal, z = 0.97, p = .308 and z = 0.52, p = .948, respectively. the next step involved assessing the homogeneity or error variances and equality of covariance of regression slopes assumptions. levene’s test was not significant, indicating the two groups had equal error variances (i.e., homogeneity of variances) on post-test dra-2 scores, f(1, 45) = 1.76, p = .191. last, the final assumption of ancova was homogeneity of regression slopes, which was assessed with an f test on the independent variable x covariate interaction term. the term was not significant, indicating the equality of regression slopes, f(4, jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 13 25) = 1.22, p = .326. this indicated that the relationship between pre-test and post-test science scores was consistent for the two groups. the descriptive statistics for the participants’ scores at pre-test and post-test are listed in table 1. table 1 descriptive statistics for pre-test and post-test developmental reading assessment science scores ________________________________________________________________________ treatment group control group ___________________________ ___________________________ variable n min max m sd n min max m sd ________________________________________________________________________ pre-test dra 24 12.00 23.00 17.33 3.31 24 10.00 27.00 20.54 4.63 post-test dra 24 22.00 28.00 24.58 1.74 23 12.00 28.00 21.09 3.40 dra develop 24 1.00 14.00 7.25 3.65 23 -7.00 6.00 0.52 3.54 ________________________________________________________________________ note. min = minimum; max = maximum; dra = developmental reading assessment; develop = development. the unadjusted and adjusted means are listed in tables 2 and 3, respectively. the unadjusted means represent the values prior to adjusting for preexisting differences on science achievement. the adjusted means represented the tested values after adjusting for preexisting differences on science achievement. the ancova test statistics are listed in table 4. the ancova revealed a significant difference between the treatment group (m= 25.10, se = 0.50) and the control group (m = 20.55, se = 0.51) on post-test dra-2 science achievement while controlling for their pre-test scores, f(1, 44) = 37.63, p 2 = .46, power = 1.00. table 2 unadjusted post-test developmental reading assessment science scores ________________________________ group n m sd ________________________________ treatment 24 24.58 1.74 control 23 21.09 3.40 ________________________________ interestingly, the difference between the group means increased after controlling for preexisting differences on science achievement. this demonstrated the importance of controlling for pre-test scores when comparing the two groups. jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 14 table 3 adjusted post-test developmental reading assessment science scores ________________________________ group n m se ________________________________ treatment 24 25.10 0.50 control 23 20.55 0.51 ________________________________ forty-six percent of the variability in the students’ post-test science achievement scores could be attributed to the treatment after controlling for the students’ pre-test science achievement. thus, the researcher rejected the null hypothesis because the p value was less than .05. table 4 one-way analysis of variance on post-test developmental reading assessment science achievement __________________________________________________________ source ss df ms f sig. __________________________________________________________ group 208.90 1 208.90 37.63 .000 error 244.27 44 5.55 __________________________________________________________ research question 2 this research question was: what is the development rate of the use of think-aloud skills in first-grade students? the development rate of the treatment participants’ use of the think-aloud strategy is displayed in figure 1, which is a stacked bar graph of each week’s student rate of usage of the think-aloud strategy in order to determine the development rate. 0 2 4 6 8 10 week 1 week 2 week 3 week 4 week 5 week r at e of u se t-a 1 t-a 2 t-a 3 t-a 4 t-a 5 t-a 6 t-a 7 figure 1. developmental rate of the use of think-aloud skills in first-grade students. t-a = thinkaloud. jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 15 the figure reveals an increased rate of usage of the think-aloud strategy from week 1 to week 5. during week 1, the think-aloud strategy was used at the rate of 6.20, week 2 at a rate of 8.94, week 3 at a rate of 10.09, week 4 at a rate of 9.04, and week 5 at a rate of 20.00. this graph revealed a clear pattern of student development rate of the think-aloud strategy with an average growth of 3.98 each week of continuous exposure and usage of the strategy. research question 3 this research question was, which think-aloud strategies are most frequently used by first-grade students? the descriptive statistics for the treatment participants’ use of the thinkaloud strategies for parts of a plant, living and nonliving, what is matter?, and what does light do? are listed in table 5 and appendices g, h, and i, respectively. table 5 descriptive statistics for use of think-aloud strategy on parts of a plant _______________________________________________________________ think-aloud strategy n minimum maximum m sd ________________________________________________________________ 1 24 1.00 8.00 3.17 1.74 2 24 0.00 1.00 0.29 0.46 3 24 0.00 2.00 0.50 0.78 4 24 0.00 3.00 0.58 0.83 5 24 0.00 6.00 2.88 1.96 6 24 0.00 1.00 0.17 0.38 7 23 0.00 4.00 1.35 1.23 ________________________________________________________________ the descriptive statistics revealed a clear pattern. think-aloud strategy 1 was used with the most frequency for all four sections of the comprehensive science curriculum. the mean use of think-aloud strategy 1 ranged from 3.04 (sd = 1.46) for what does light do? to 7.83 (sd = 2.76) for what is matter? think-aloud strategy 5 was the second most used strategy for all four sections of the comprehensive science curriculum. the mean use of think-aloud strategy 5 ranged from 2.67 (sd = 2.18) for what does light do? to 5.08 (sd = 2.59) for what is matter? the statistics indicated that the dominant think-aloud strategies (i.e., strategy 1 and strategy 5) were used most frequently for students’ understanding of matter. interestingly, think-aloud strategy 6 was the least used strategy for understanding parts of a plant, living and nonliving, and what is matter? curricula. however, think-aloud strategy 2 was the least used strategy for the understanding of light. although none of the strategies were individually related to students’ achievement development as suggested in research question 2, together, the think-aloud strategies proved to be effective for research question 1. jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 16 data analysis the dra-2 was given to group 1 and group 2 as preand post-tests. during the administration of the preand post-tests, the students read a science text at their independent reading levels and orally received the comprehension questions as a pre-test, which consisted of text-related questions that fell within the literal, implicit, inferential, and evaluative categories. during the post-test, group 1 was given the task of applying the think-aloud strategy while reading the science text, which was digitally recorded and documented on the think-aloud sentence starter form and the student observation checklist by the researcher. the thinkaloud sentence starter form and the student observation checklist were also be used by the researcher to document group 1 implementing the think-aloud strategy during the course of the study. input from the student observation checklist was summarized and reported in the results section of this study to assess whether group 1’s evaluative science comprehension level improved as a result of the use of the think-aloud strategy and to analyze the effective utilization of the think-aloud strategy of students. the think-aloud sentence starter form was used throughout the study to measure group 1’s ability to demonstrate competence in utilizing the think-aloud strategy taught during the 5 weeks of intervention (see appendix d). the science texts that group 1 read during the course of the study had stopping points inserted at the end of each paragraph. each student was given the direction to read each passage and stop wherever he or she saw the word stop (which was located at the end of each paragraph) to verbalize his or her thinking. the students were digitally recorded while thinking aloud, and the information from the recording was used by the researcher to transfer onto the think-aloud sentence starter form in order to use tally marks to record and analyze the frequency and the types of think-aloud statements used by each student. the researcher used the digital recordings of the students using the think-aloud strategy to administer two separate scores per student: the total number of statements the students made while thinking aloud and the number of types of think-aloud statements the students used during each session. both scores were added together to determine a total score for the passage. this allowed for the analysis of types of think-aloud statements and the frequency and development of the use of the think-aloud strategy for each student during the observation period. input from the think-aloud sentence starter form was summarized and reported in the results section of this study. the preand post-test data from group 1 and group 2 were compared in order to measure the significance of the intervention. the data from the student observation checklist were used to measure whether thinking aloud after reading each paragraph affected the evaluative comprehension of science text and were summarized and reported in the results section of this study. the comprehension scores of group 1 and group 2 on the preand posttests were recorded and analyzed at the end of the 5 weeks of intervention to determine the percentage of comprehension growth or decrease between and within the groups. this provided the observation of whether there was a statistical significance in the implementation of the thinkaloud strategy in first-grade students and the effects of the think-aloud strategy on their evaluative science comprehension. discussion this study examined the effectiveness of using the think-aloud strategy to develop the evaluative science comprehension in first-grade students. the primary purpose was to examine whether students receiving the intervention had greater comprehension in the content area of science than students who did not receive this treatment. the data showed a statistical difference jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 17 between the treatment group and the control group. there was a significant difference between the treatment group (m = 25.10, se = 0.50) and the control group (m = 20.55, se = 0.51) on post-test dra-2 science achievement while controlling for their pre-test scores, f(1, 44) = 37.63, p 2 = .46, power = 1.00. students in the treatment group gained 7.25 points on average compared to the control group that gained an average of 0.52 points from the pre-test to the post-test. the developmental rate of students utilizing the think-aloud strategy showed that, as time progressed, the utilization of the think-aloud strategy increased. the students who were in the treatment group displayed higher gains in evaluative science comprehension than the students who did not receive the think-aloud instruction. the findings suggested that students had a better understanding of science content when it was taught along with the think-aloud strategy than students who only received science instruction without the incorporation of the think-aloud strategy. during the think-aloud sessions, students were more engaged compared to students who received the daily science instruction without the use of the think-aloud strategy. the rate of the students’ utilizing the think aloud skills showed that students utilization of the think-aloud sentence starters increased over time. the results also showed that think-aloud sentence starters 1 and 5 were utilized the most by first-grade students. sentence starter 1 involved taking a picture walk (i.e., flipping through the pages) to look at illustrations and nonfiction features and making comments aloud about what is noticed in the illustrations, ask questions about the pictures, subheadings, and makes predictions based on text features. sentence starter 5 involved linking up background knowledge as students come across new information. this observation is aligned with piaget’s (1937/1954) theory of cognitive development, which suggests that children create structures (schemata) for thinking about things which change throughout developmental stages of their lives. the stages of intellectual development are the sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years) when children rely on their senses when learning about their surroundings, the preoperational stage (ages 2 to 7 years) when children develop language and their thinking is egocentric, the concrete operations stage (ages 7 to 11 years) when children are less egocentric and able to problem solve through concrete experiences, and the formal operations stage (ages 12 years and higher) when children are able to use abstract language and concepts in order to learn (ruddell, 2006). the students who were a part of this study were first-grade students between the ages of 6 and 7 years old. they are in the concrete operation state of development, which explains why their utilization of think-aloud strategies 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 was low. usage of think-aloud strategies 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 requires a higher level of thinking and the use of abstract language concepts, which is usually experienced by older students. conclusion the results of this investigation showed that, when first-grade students were repeatedly exposed to think-aloud activities and the teacher thinking aloud during science instruction, they were better able to internalize and apply the thinking process necessary for the development of evaluative science comprehension. the think-aloud strategy is a method widely used for instruction characterized by the teacher modeling the thinking process while reading aloud for students (dunston & headley, 2002). this particular instructional practice is observed only during the literacy block of a classroom setting. reading comprehension strategies are usually taught during the reading block; however, this study demonstrated that it should also be taught during the science content area. jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 18 students are now recommended to problem solve, communicate, and think critically when reading science text (national reading panel, 2000). as students are moving through the primary education concept of learning to read and into the intermediate level of education of reading to learn, reading is now a key factor in science achievement (o’reilly & mcnamara, 2007; reutzel et al., 2005). reading comprehension skills must be taught in the science contentarea classrooms because the students are faced with the task of comprehending the content-area text without the understanding of external and internal text features and the thinking process necessary for the evaluative comprehension of the science text they are reading. using the think-aloud strategy while interacting with science text supports students in building a coherent representation of the text they are reading. it, also, gives the teacher a picture of the cognitive process that takes place in order for the reader to comprehend what he or she is reading. the teacher can watch for the following cognitive processes while the students are engaged in the think-aloud activity: activate background knowledge, make predictions, form mental images, monitor comprehension progress, and use fix-up strategies as they interact with the text. during read-alouds of science text, it is important to model the comprehension process by thinking aloud because it gives the students the opportunity to see the thinking process involved when interacting with a science text. once the students have seen the different strategies used by the teacher while thinking aloud and have been given opportunities to practice utilizing those skills, they begin to internalize the process and are able to apply the skills on their own independently. according to vacca and vacca (2008), teaching with text involves more than assigning pages to be read, lecturing, or using questions to check whether students have read the assigned materials. teachers must, in turn, understand the bonds between reading and meaning making. it is also important that teachers build on what the students already know in order for them to make connections with what is being taught. in many cases, depending on the student’s culture or home environment, the student encounters the use of standard english only in school. this limited interaction with this dialect affects the student’s ability to make meaning of the subject matter being taught. the think-aloud strategy allows students to monitor their thinking process through the use of reading strategies while engaged in the science text in order to gain comprehension of what they are reading. thinking aloud while reading science text can help students to learn the metacognitive process involved in comprehension. some examples of think-aloud strategies that can be used while reading science text are making inferences, making connections, summarizing, questioning, and interpreting. the more think-aloud skills a student is equipped with, the better he or she will be at problem solving while interacting with science text. these findings could be of practical benefit in the classroom setting. the common core curriculum and state standards are requiring teachers to move from the traditional ways of teaching in isolation to more rigorous, engaging, and meaningful learning experiences. student voices and interactions are now the center of the classroom learning environment. the multifaceted approach provided by think-aloud strategies to teach reading comprehension in the science content area is aligned with the common core curriculum state standards because of the rigor, student dialogue, meaningful and unisolated encounters with science text, and learning experiences involved in the content area of science. these skills are needed in addition to phonological awareness so that the students can monitor their understanding of the science text. according to pressley, johnson, symons, mcgoldrick, and kurita (1998), comprehension is not enhanced merely by reading more text. jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 19 the difference between normal comprehenders and poor comprehenders is the amount of strategies they are equipped with while reading text. the think-aloud strategy presented in this research study can be used as a guide to support first-grade students’ science comprehension process in the classroom setting. this study suggested that, when students were engaged in thinking aloud, they began to internalize the comprehension process that affected their evaluative comprehension of science text. limitations the small sample size presented in this study may have presented a limitation to the degree that the findings could be generalized. the sample of participants in this study consisted of 48 first-grade students from a title i elementary school in northwest georgia. the majority of participants were african americans from middleto low-socioeconomic backgrounds. the participants in this study were chosen through convenience and puposive sampling, which could possibly have limited the generalizbility of the findings in this study. because this study used the think-aloud strategy as a supplemental approach consisting of 15 additional min of instruction for 5 days per week for 5 weeks, it may have posed a threat to internal validity. this study explored the effectiveness of using the think-aloud strategy to improve the science evaluative comprehension levels of primary students who were already reading fluently and characterized as reading on grade level. future research will need to be conducted to determine if the use of the think-aloud strategy will improve the evaluative comprehension levels in older students. additional research could be done for a period longer than 5 weeks in order to have a better understanding of the rate of think-aloud skill utilization in students. more research could be done to determine the effects of the think-aloud strategy on the science comprehension of english language learners references alonzo, j., basaraba, d., tindal, g., & carriveau, r. s. 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(2006). reading strategies or comprehension monitoring strategies? reading psychology, 27(4), 313-343. doi:10.1080/02702710600846852 jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 23 appendix a process of the think-aloud strategy used by students 1. take a picture walk (flipping through the pages) to look at illustrations and nonfiction features and make comments aloud about what is noticed in the illustrations, ask questions about the pictures, subheadings, and makes predictions based on text features. 2. think aloud to yourself by sharing your uncertainties, questions, responses, feelings and connections that appear during your reading 3. verbalize inferences that you make including inferences deduced from new words and ideas, themes, illustrations and photos. 4. formulate questions that come into your mind as you read. 5. link up background knowledge as you come across new information. 6. share your thoughts as you work through confusing parts and apply fix-up strategies. 7. make a strong connection to the book or short review of the purpose of the story aloud (text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-toworld). jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 24 appendix b think-aloud sentence starter form place a tallymark each time you hear the student make the following statements. type sentence starter number of time used 1. i can see a… i predict that… i think this is… 2. why did… this is confusing because… 3. this is really saying… the big idea here is… 4. i wonder… a question i have is… 5. i already know that… something new that i’ve just learned is… 6. i don’t understand… i’ll reread this… 7. this reminds me of… this reminds me of… jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 25 appendix c student observation checklist this checklist is to be used to document student utilization of the think-aloud strategy while reading science text. __________1. did the student take a picture walk (flipping through the pages) to look at illustrations and nonfiction features and make comments aloud about what is noticed in the illustrations, ask questions about the pictures and subheadings, and make predictions based on text features? __________2. did the student think aloud by sharing uncertainties, questions, responses, feelings, and connections that appear during reading? __________3. did the student verbalize inferences that were made, including inferences deduced from new words and ideas, themes, illustrations, and photos? __________4. did the student formulate questions that came into mind as he or she read? __________5. did the student verbally link up background knowledge as he or she came across new information? __________6. did the student share his or her thoughts while working through confusing parts and apply fix-up strategies? __________7. did the student make a strong connection to the text or short review of the purpose of the story aloud (i.e., text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world)? student comments after each paragraph (think aloud) ______________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 26 appendix d difference between regular instruction and using the think-aloud strategy regular science instruction adding the think-aloud strategy to science instruction 6. the lesson begins with teacher activating student’s prior knowledge of science topic. 7. there is usually a graphic organizer such as the kwl chart displayed to organize student responses. the teacher records what students already know about the science topic introduced under the k column (what i know), and records questions that the students have about the topic under the w column (what i want to know). 8. the teacher shows a videotape or read a text to students about the science topic. 9. the teacher scaffold students at the end of the science text. student responses are recorded under the l column of the chart (what i learned). 10. the teacher may engage students in a science experiment as an extension activity. 11. the students will be assessed on what they have learned through formal and informal assessments. 1. the lesson begins with teacher activating student’s prior knowledge of science topic. 2. there is usually a graphic organizer such as the kwl chart displayed to organize student responses. the teacher records what students already know about the science topic introduced under the k column (what i know), and records questions that the students have about the topic under the w column (what i want to know). teacher previews the text to look for unfamiliar vocabulary or confusing parts in the story and make comments aloud about what she is thinking when she encounters them in the text in order to clarify for the students the thinking process used to understand unfamiliar vocabulary. teacher takes a picture walk (flipping through the pages) to look at illustrations and nonfiction features with students and makes comments aloud about what she notices in the illustrations, asks questions about the pictures, subheadings, and makes predictions based on text features in order to clarify for the students the thinking process used to make predictions about what they are going to learn from the text. 3. the teacher shows a videotape or read a text to students about the jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 27 science topic. while reading aloud to students, teacher pauses and make comments about what she is thinking in order to clarify for students how comprehension is taking place. teacher articulates her predictions, confusing parts in the story, or connections with prior knowledge to help show comprehension of the text. the lesson is closed with the teacher making a strong connection to the book, or short review of the purpose of the story aloud to model to the students how to make connections (text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world) in order to clarify for students how comprehension is taking place. 4. the teacher may engage students in a science experiment as an extension activity. 5. the students will be assessed on what they have learned through formal and informal assessments. part 2 of think-aloud strategy (we do) 6. there is a gradual release of the think-aloud process to the students by giving them opportunities to make comments about what they are thinking after each paragraph that is being read to them. 7. a chart with sentence starters and strategies will be displayed to record the amount of times they were used to help with jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 28 understanding the text. part 3 of think-aloud strategy (you do) 8. students will be given an opportunity to construct meaning from text with a partner. (the teacher will read aloud the science text and the students will turn to their partners and say something aloud about what was just read to them). 9. students will then be faced with the task of reading the science texts on their own and thinking aloud at each stopping point in the text. jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 29 appendix e distribution of treatment and control students’ pre and posttest science achievement figure 2. distribution of treatment students’ pretest science achievement. figure 3. distribution of control students’ pretest science achievement. pre-test dra comprehension 3025201510 fr eq ue nc y 10 8 6 4 2 0 pre-test dra comprehension 3025201510 f re q u en cy 10 8 6 4 2 0 jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 30 figure 4. distribution of treatment students’ posttest science achievement. figure 5. distribution of control students’ posttest science achievement. post-test dra comprehension 3025201510 f re q u en cy 10 8 6 4 2 0 post-test dra comprehension 3025201510 f re q u en cy 10 8 6 4 2 0 jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 31 appendix g descriptive statistics for use of think-aloud strategy on living and nonliving table 6 descriptive statistics for use of think-aloud strategy on living and nonliving _____________________________________________________________ think-aloud strategy n minimum maximum m sd _____________________________________________________________ 1 24 1.00 9.00 3.50 1.82 2 24 0.00 2.00 0.33 0.56 3 24 0.00 7.00 1.04 2.01 4 24 0.00 2.00 0.46 0.72 5 24 0.00 7.00 3.13 2.17 6 24 0.00 2.00 0.25 0.53 7 24 0.00 3.00 1.38 1.17 _____________________________________________________________ jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 32 appendix h descriptive statistics for use of think-aloud strategy on what is matter? table 7 descriptive statistics for use of think-aloud strategy on what is matter ___________________________________________________________ think-aloud strategy n minimum maximum m sd _____________________________________________________________ 1 24 3.00 14.00 7.83 2.76 2 24 0.00 5.00 1.08 1.14 3 24 0.00 5.00 1.38 1.61 4 24 0.00 4.00 1.58 1.32 5 24 0.00 10.00 5.08 2.59 6 24 0.00 4.00 0.92 1.18 7 24 0.00 10.00 2.13 2.15 _____________________________________________________________ jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 33 appendix i descriptive statistics for use of think-aloud strategy on what does light do? table 8 descriptive statistics for use of think-aloud strategy on what does light do _____________________________________________________________ think-aloud strategy n minimum maximum m sd _____________________________________________________________ 1 24 1.00 6.00 3.04 1.46 2 24 0.00 3.00 0.29 0.75 3 24 0.00 5.00 0.75 1.26 4 24 0.00 2.00 0.42 0.58 5 24 0.00 7.00 2.67 2.18 6 24 0.00 2.00 0.33 0.64 7 24 0.00 5.00 1.54 1.47 _____________________________________________________________ jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 34 author notes virginie jackson metro atlanta area school district fort lauderdale, fl vjackson343@gmail.com dr. virginie jackson is a reading specialist whose research focuses on the integration of reading strategies in content areas in order to promote student achievement. mailto:vjackson343@gmail.com jackson: applying the think-aloud strategy to improve reading comprehension of science content current issues in education, 19(2) 35 volume 19, issue 2 may 30, 2016 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh niels piepgrass bethany richmond olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 8, number 7 march, 2005 issn 1099-839x a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks anthony j. onwuegbuzie university of south florida nancy l. leech university of colorado at denver and health sciences center this paper identifies major errors and myths perpetuated by educational research textbooks. the most pervasive errors and myths advanced by methodology textbooks at the following eight phases of the educational research process are described: (a) formulating a research problem/objective; (b) reviewing the literature; (c) developing the research purpose/research question(s) and hypotheses; (d) selecting a research design/method; (e) collecting data; (f) analyzing the data; (g) interpreting/validating the data; and (h) communicating the findings. second, the implications of these errors and myths are provided. it is shown how research textbooks can be reframed to break down the barriers between quantitative and qualitative research. setting the scene virtually all graduate students from the field of education are required to take one or more research methodology courses as part of their degree programs (mundfrom, shaw, thomas, young, & moore, 1998; onwuegbuzie, slate, & schwartz, 2001). typically, an immediate goal of these courses is to prepare students to complete their theses and dissertations. more long-term goals of educational research courses include helping students to possess research consumer skills (i.e., the ability to read, to interpret, to synthesize, and to utilize research) and research production skills (i.e., the ability to design and to implement original research studies) (onwuegbuzie et al., 2001; ravid & leon, 1995). educational research textbooks play a vital role in achieving all of these goals by attempting to “provide a down-to-earth approach that helps students acquire the skills and knowledge required of a competent consumer and producer of educational research” (gay & airasian, 2003, p. iii). although many of the leading educational textbooks (e.g., ary, jacobs, & razavieh, 2002; best & kahn, 2003; charles & mertler, 2002; creswell, 2005; fraenkel & wallen, 2003; gall, borg, & gall, 2003; gay & airasian, 2003; gliner & morgan, 2000; gravetter & forzano, 2003; johnson & christensen, 2004; langenbach, vaughn, & aagard, 1994; leary, 2004; liebert & liebert, 1995; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001; punch, 1999; rosnow & rosenthal, 2005; salkind, 2003; wallen & fraenkel, 2001) generally are well written, we contend that each one contains statements that are flawed, thereby permeating myths that lead to poor methodological practices. for example, most research methodology textbooks attempt to introduce educational research within the first two chapters. unfortunately, these chapters are often filled with current issues in education vol. 8 no. 7 inaccuracies. in particular, in these chapters, many textbooks discuss the philosophical underpinnings of quantitative and qualitative research paradigms. however, with the exception of a very few textbooks (e.g., creswell, 2005), no mention is made of the mixed methods paradigm; giving the impression that only two major research paradigms exist. yet, mixed methods research represents an established third paradigm with a long tradition (johnson & onwuegbuzie, 2004; tashakkori & teddlie, 1998, 2003b). similarly, when discussing the emergence of the quantitative (e.g., positivism) and qualitative (e.g., interpretivist) paradigms, no mention is made of the impact of pragmatism on research methodology, even though pragmatism can be traced back to 1861 with the writings of charles s. peirce, the “father of pragmatism” (fisch, 1982); and even though pragmatism had “a profound effect on the conduct of scientific and social scientific research, and it accounts for the ready acceptance of ‘qualitative' methods today” (maxcy, 2003, p. 75). with this in mind, the purpose of the present paper is to identify the major errors and myths perpetuated by educational research textbooks. specifically, the current article presents the most prevalent and pervasive errors and myths advanced by research methodology textbooks at various phases of the educational research process. second, the implications of these errors and myths are provided. in particular, many of these errors advance the myth that research method as a technique (i.e., research design) and research method as logic of justification (i.e., research paradigm) are synonymous. in fact, research designs are presented in educational research textbooks as if only specific types of data can be collected and analyzed for each research design. for example, in outlining experimental designs, virtually all research texts give the impression that only quantitative data can be collected when these designs are used. yet, there is no reason why qualitative data (e.g., interview responses) cannot be collected as part of the experimental design. also, experimental and control groups can be compared with respect to qualitative information. similarly, quantitative data (e.g., test scores) can be collected in qualitative studies (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-a; tashakkori & teddlie, 2003a). finally, using onwuegbuzie and leech's (in press-a) framework, it is shown how research textbooks can be reframed to break down the barriers between quantitative and qualitative research. as such, instead of presenting research as representing a dichotomy of methodological choices that fall strictly either into the quantitative or qualitative research paradigm, it is contended that research should be presented as a holistic, reflective, and integrative process that helps students become both consumers and producers of educational research. the current article is unique in at least two ways. first, it appears to be the first published paper that has critiqued all of the leading educational research textbooks simultaneously. second, this article appears to be the only published work that has identified and documented errors made in both the quantitative and qualitative research sections of these textbooks within the same framework. as such, the present essay appears to represent the most wideranging discussion of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks to date. errors found in research method textbooks a review of commonly used research method textbooks identified many of the major errors and myths reported and perpetuated. only textbooks written for graduate education introductory research methods courses were included. we define “educational research” as research in any area (e.g., elementary education, curriculum and instruction, educational psychology) related to education. the most prevalent and pervasive errors and myths advanced by research methodology textbooks at each of the following eight phases of the educational research process was analyzed, including: (a) formulating a research problem and research objective; (b) reviewing the literature; (c) developing the research purpose, research questions(s), and hypotheses; (d) selecting a research design/method; (e) collecting data; (f) analyzing the data; (g) interpreting/validating the data; and (h) communicating the findings. the myths and errors in each of these areas are outlined below. formulating a research problem and research objective many textbook authors discuss the sources of research problems as including personal experiences (e.g., ary et al., 2002; creswell, 2005; gay & airasian, 2003; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001), casual observations (e.g., mcmillan & schumacher, 2001), theories (e.g., gay & airasian, 2003), related literature (e.g., gay & airasian, 2003; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001), practical situations, current social and political issues (mcmillan & schumacher, 2001), and replications (e.g., gay & airasian, 2003). however, few textbooks discuss the important role of the research objective in the educational research process. yet, this is a very important step in the process because it leads to the determination of whether the study is exploratory, confirmatory, or some combination of both. the vast majority of research textbooks gives the impression that quantitative research methods are associated with deductive reasoning and a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks 3 qualitative methods are associated with inductive reasoning (tahsakkori & teddlie, 2003a). for instance, gay and airasian (2003) state: “an inductive research approach is typically qualitative in nature, while a deductive research approach is typically quantitative in nature” (p. 4). however, this creates a false dichotomy between the quantitative and qualitative research paradigms because both quantitative and qualitative research studies can involve both deductive and inductive reasoning, depending on the research objective. as noted by onwuegbuzie and leech (in press-a), the research objective in both quantitative and qualitative studies can be classified as falling on a continuum from exploratory to confirmatory. exploratory studies often involve the development of theories surrounding how and why a phenomenon exists as it does. conversely, confirmatory studies involve testing hypotheses that arise from new or existing theories. moreover, exploratory research objectives center on theory initiation and theory building, whereas confirmatory research objectives focus on theory testing and theory modification. therefore, as contended by newman and benz (1998), exploration and confirmation are linked by theories. thus, instead of emphasizing deductive/quantitative and inductive/qualitative combinations, as often occurs in the opening chapter of introductory-level research texts, we recommend that authors make it clear that (a) the reasoning process does not dictate the research paradigm and (b) research objectives drive the research methods used. reviewing the literature most research texts include a chapter or a specific section on reviewing the literature. as noted by gay and airasian (2003, p. 16), a traditional literature review, which is undertaken in the overwhelming majority of studies, “involves systematically identifying, locating, and analyzing documents containing information related to the research problem. these documents can include articles, abstracts, reviews, monographs, dissertation, books, other research reports, and electronic media.” in other words, “a literature review is a written summary of articles, books, and other documents that describes the past and current state of knowledge about a topic” (creswell, 2005, p. 79). although many purposes of literature reviews have been provided, such as to plan for a study, to establish the importance of the research problem, to provide a rationale for the study, to reframe a body of literature, and to identify research strategies and specific data collection techniques that have been found to be effective/ineffective (ary, et al., 2002; creswell, 2005; gall et al., 2003; fraenkel & wallen, 2003; gay & airasian, 2003; johnson & christensen, 2004), the most common purpose of a literature review is to synthesize the body of literature in a topic area of interest. as such, traditional literature reviews are inherently qualitative (onwuegbuzie & leech, 2003). unfortunately, the discussions of literature reviews contained in introductory-level research methodology textbooks typically contain several errors of commission and/or omission that can lead to misconceptions. in particular, this discussion often gives the impression that qualitative literature reviews can provide a neutral representation of the body of literature. however, as noted by dellinger (2003), neutral representation is not possible because the “review of the literature is inherently an interpretive and value-driven process…[reflecting] the researcher's own story about what is deemed valid, worthwhile, meaningful and valuable in a set of studies” (p. 4). in addition, introductory research textbooks fail to inform readers that literature reviews have a number of limitations. most notably, the appropriateness, comprehensiveness, and representativeness of the literature cited in a review are affected by (a) selective inclusion of studies, often based on the reviewer's own subjective assessment of the quality of the underlying studies; (b) failure to examine the characteristics and attributes of the studies as potential explanations for consistent and contradictory findings across studies; (c) failure to consider the context under which each of the investigations took place; (d) differential subjective weighting of studies in the interpretation of a set of results; (e) misleading interpretations of study results; (f) confirmation bias, (g) over-reliance on findings from either quantitative or qualitative studies, and (h) failure to examine moderating and/or mediating variables in the underlying relationship (onwuegbuzie & leech, 2003; wolf, 1986). similarly, some or all of the following nine errors identified by dunkin (1996) emerge from qualitative literature reviews. we contend they should be mentioned in research text: (a) vague study selectivity, (b) arbitrarily assigning equal weight to each study, (c) double-counting study results, (d) incorrectly summarizing the details of one or more studies, (e) attributing findings to a study that are not justified, (f) failing to identify invalid interpretations and inferences, (g) failing to include contradictory findings, (h) generating misleading inferences in the research synthesis because of the aforementioned errors, and (i) failing to include all of a study's results relevant to the synthesis. introductory textbooks also do not make it clear to readers that summarizing a subset of findings without a cumulative, systematic, current issues in education vol. 8 no. 7 and rigorous analysis of the entire set of results provides the reader with no information as to the confidence that can be placed in conclusion coherence (onwuegbuzie & leech, 2003). also not discussed by textbook authors is how literature reviews often do not place the readers in a position to ascertain whether procedural or context variation affects study findings because the relationship between procedure/context and study results is not examined formally (cooper, 1989). the problems associated with literature reviews can culminate in inadequate and invalid syntheses of the extant literature. this, in turn, not only can adversely affect the quality of a single study, but also “can have cumulative effects on a body of literature that may manifest in a lineage of poor conceptualization, design, measurement, methodology, and ultimately, inferences” (dellinger, 2003, p. 2). thus, literature reviews contain flaws that affect the validity of ensuing inferences, thereby leading to a failure to represent accurately the accumulated body of knowledge. another error of omission that is apparent in virtually every textbook is the lack of encouragement for researchers conducting literature reviews to report indices of practical significance (e.g., effect sizes) corresponding to each statistically significant finding. such a practice would facilitate the use of metaanalyses, in which the mean effect size across the studies is estimated and the variance in effect sizes across studies is examined as a function of selected design variables. related to this concern, textbooks also should encourage researchers to cite metaanalysis studies in the literature review sections. developing the research purpose, research question(s), and hypotheses stemming from the research problem, objective, and, in many cases, the review of the literature, the research purpose, questions, and hypotheses delineate what will be researched. some research textbooks (e.g., gall et al., 2003) frame research questions in a way that is compatible only with quantitative research studies. furthermore, these authors do not include research questions in qualitative sections; instead, the impression that is given to readers is that the nature of qualitative research is so open-ended and exploratory that specific questions are not necessary. in every textbook, hypotheses are presented as belonging exclusively to quantitative research studies. this gives the impression that hypotheses are never tested in qualitative research studies. yet, as several methodologists contend (e.g., onwuegbuzie & teddlie, 2003; patton, 1990; tashakkori & teddlie, 1998), qualitative data can be used to test hypotheses. thus, hypotheses also should be discussed within the qualitative section of textbooks. selecting a research design/method many researchers believe that there is a direct relationship between research paradigm and research technique (bryman, 1984; onwuegbuzie & teddlie, 2003). yet, the research paradigm used does not dictate what procedures should be used (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-b). this is a myth that is perpetuated by textbooks in multiple ways. first, most authors do not make a distinction between research paradigm and technique; research techniques are described as being either quantitative or qualitative. in fact, research designs are presented in educational research textbooks as if only specific types of data can be collected and analyzed for each research design. for example, all textbooks reviewed give the strong impression that only numeric data are collected in experimental studies and that only nonnumeric data are collected in qualitative research studies. in so doing, these textbook writers are confusing the logic of justification with the research methods. yet, there is no reason why qualitative data (e.g., interview responses) cannot be collected as part of the experimental design. also, experimental and control groups can be compared with respect to qualitative information. similarly, quantitative data (e.g., test scores) can be collected in qualitative studies (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-a; tashakkori & teddlie, 2003a). another misleading aspect of the research design section of virtually all textbooks stems from the use of the term “causal-comparative” to denote quasi-experimental studies in which two or more groups are compared with respect to one or more quantitative outcomes. the writers of this article have found from personal experience that the phrase “causal-comparative research design” leads some students to believe that this design can result in the determination of causal relationships. as such, we recommend that this phrase be removed completely from textbooks. exacerbating this confusion is the misleading definitions of causal-comparative research presented in textbooks. for example, gay and airasian (2003) stated that “causal-comparative research produces limited cause-effect information” and that “a causal-comparative study…approximates cause-effect results without harming the participants” (p. 12). both of these statements are extremely confusing because it is not clear what it means to obtain “limited cause-effect information” and to approximate “cause-effect results.” these statements appear to suggest that causal-comparative research nearly facilitates the identification of cause-andeffect relationships. gay and airasian also state, a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks 5 “causal-comparative research…attempts to determine reasons, or causes, for the existing condition” and that “the researcher attempts to determine the cause, or reason, for preexisting differences in groups of individuals” (p. 337). similarly, best and kahn (2003) incorrectly define causal-comparative studies as “suggesting causation for their findings” (p. 132). gall et al. (2003) incorrectly state “causalcomparative research design[s] … allow us to study cause-and-effect relationships” (p. 298). another confusing statement appears in charles and mertler (2002): “causal-comparative research is done to explore possible cause and effect, though it cannot demonstrate cause and effect as does experimental research” (p. 341). moreover, such statements give the false impression that causal-comparative research designs enjoy a higher status than do correlational designs. this is not the case because causalcomparative designs are essentially correlational, with the only substantive difference between two types of designs from an analytical standpoint being that in causal-comparative designs the independent variable (e.g., treatment group, gender) always represents the nominal scale of measurement (johnson, 2001). indeed, it could be argued that attributes that are categorized (e.g., gender) could be included either in a causal-comparative study (as a major independent variable) or in a correlational study as one independent variable in a set. in this respect, we applaud ary et al. (2002) for making the following statement: “despite its name, causalcomparative research does not establish a simple causal relationship among the variables of a study” (p. 25). johnson and christensen (2004) also should be acknowledged for including the following discussion: despite the presence of the term causal included in the term causal-comparative research , keep in mind that causal-comparative research is a nonexperimental research method, which means that there is no manipulation of an independent variable by a researcher. furthermore, techniques of controlling for extraneous variables are more limited than in experimental research (in which random assignment may be possible). because of the lack of manipulation and weaker techniques of controlling for extraneous variables, it is difficult to make statements about cause and effect. in short, do not be misled by the word causal in the name of this type of research. (p. 41) [emphasis in original] collecting data there are many myths perpetuated in textbooks in relation to collecting data. nearly all texts indicate that the research approach determines the type of data collected. specifically, these authors incorrectly state that quantitative research exclusively involves the collection of numerical data, whereas qualitative research exclusively yields non-numerical data (e.g., words, observations). for example, gall et al. (2003, p. 25) state that quantitative researchers “generate numerical data to represent the social environment” and that qualitative researchers “generate verbal and pictorial data to represent the social environment.” these statements are misleading on at least two levels. first, while researchers sometimes generate data, this is not always the case. indeed, in many instances, the data of interest already have been generated, and the researcher's goal is to extract them, organize them, analyze them, and make sense of them. in quantitative research, it is very common for archival data to be used that were not generated by the researcher. with respect to qualitative data, the idea of the researcher generating the data runs completely contrary to the interpretivist belief that phenomena should be studied as they occur naturally (lincoln & guba, 1985). second, although a quantitative researcher might be primarily interested in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting numeric data, non-numeric data also might provide valuable insights. interestingly, in experimental designs, considered the apex of quantitative research, side effect data (i.e., qualitative data types) are routinely collected, analyzed, and interpreted. similarly, qualitative research can involve both numeric and non-numeric data. for example, in interviews and focus groups, both data types can be collected. related to this issue, many research texts give the impression that observation is a research method instead of a data collection technique (tashakkori & teddlie, 2003a). two other main issues concerning data collection are instrumentation and sampling. in sections involving these two components of the research process, misperceptions abound in textbooks. the major misperceptions are now described. sampling. in most texts, sampling is described for quantitative designs as being probability or non-probability (ary et al., 2002; gay & airasian, 2003). this is misleading for readers because there is no reason why both these types of sampling could not be used in qualitative studies. some authors (e.g., charles & mertler, 2002; gravetter & forzano, 2003) do not even include a discussion about sampling as it relates to qualitative studies. yet, sampling is as much of an issue in qualitative research as in quantitative research. specifically, as noted by onwuegbuzie and leech (in press-c, in press-d), in qualitative studies, one or more of the following generalizations nearly always are made: from the sample of words to the voice; from the sample of observations to the truth space; current issues in education vol. 8 no. 7 from the words of key informants to the voice of the other sample members; from the words of sample members to those of one or more individuals not selected for the study; and from the observations of sample members to the experience of one or more individuals not selected for the study. consistent with this assertion that sampling permeates qualitative research, lincoln and guba (1985) advocate that the techniques of prolonged engagement and persistent observations be used when collecting data in order to increase the researcher's chances of understanding the underlying phenomena. both of these techniques clearly represent sampling issues. further, some qualitative researchers find it difficult to refrain from generalizing their results (e.g., thematic representations) beyond their samples to the underlying population (onwuegbuzie & leech, 2005a). as such, not only should purposeful sampling techniques be discussed in relation to qualitative research in textbooks, but authors also should make it clear that random sampling should be seriously considered in qualitative studies that lead to findings that are generalized beyond the study participants. describing sampling designs as either representing probability sampling or non-probability sampling is misleading for another reason. specifically, it might give the impression that sampling takes place at only one stage; yet, some studies involve multi-sampling designs (e.g., twostage sampling), in which sampling is undertaken at more than one stage. in fact, while some textbooks discuss multi-stage sampling designs very briefly (e.g., creswell, 2005; gall et al., 2003; gay & airasian, 2003), the majority of textbooks (e.g., ary et al., 2002; best & kahn, 2003; charles & mertler, 2002; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001; punch, 1999) do not discuss it at all. disturbingly, the relatively few authors who discuss multi-stage sampling invariably give the impression that multi-stage sampling belongs to the domain of random sampling. yet, as noted by onwuegbuzie and leech (in pressd), multi-stage sampling can involve random sampling at every stage, non-random sampling at every stage, or a mixture of random sampling and non-random sampling designs at different stages of the random sampling process (i.e., mixed methods sampling strategies). indeed, it is usual for mixed method studies to utilize mixed methods sampling strategies (kemper, stringfield, & teddlie, 2003; onwuegbuzie & collins, 2004). with respect to qualitative research studies, patton (1990) identified the following 15 purposeful sampling strategies: extreme/deviant case sampling, intensity sampling, typical case sampling, maximum variation sampling, stratified purposeful sampling, homogeneous sampling, critical case sampling, snowball/chain sampling, criterion sampling, theorybased/operational construct sampling, confirming/disconfirming case sampling, purposeful random sampling, political important sampling, convenience sampling, and opportunistic sampling. miles and huberman (1994) identified 16 purposeful sampling designs, adding a sixteenth sampling design, combination/mixed sampling to patton's 15 sampling schemes. these lists of purposeful sampling techniques provide a useful framework for qualitative researchers. yet, some textbooks (e.g., best & kahn, 2003; gravetter & forzano, 2003) do not even discuss qualitative sampling designs. of those who do provide a summary of purposeful designs, none of the introductory research textbooks examined discussed all 16 purposeful sampling designs. yet, at the very least, all of these designs can be summarized in only 16 paragraphs, which would take up less than six pages. for example, to their credit, gall et al. (2003) presented patton's (1990) 15 sampling schemes in four pages. it should be noted that qualitative research studies also can involve multistage sampling schemes, as can happen when the researcher returns to the site multiple times to select additional data. thus, multi-stage sampling also should be discussed in the context of qualitative inquiry. choice of sample size also is presented in a misleading way in virtually every research methodology textbook. some textbook authors do not even discuss sample sizes (e.g., gravetter & forzano, 2003; punch, 1999). when providing sample size guidelines in quantitative research, most authors provide arbitrary minimum sample sizes. typically, for correlational research designs, minimum sample sizes of 30 are recommended (e.g., charles & mertler, 2002; creswell, 2005; gall et al., 2003; gay & airasian, 2003; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001). however, this recommendation is extremely unwise because it represents a statistical power of only .51 for one-tailed tests for detecting a moderate relationship (i.e., r = .30) between two variables at the 5% level of statistical significance (erdfelder, faul, & buchner, 1996; onwuegbuzie & leech, 2004). this level of power does not represent any significant improvement over flipping an unbiased coin, suggesting that, if this guideline was followed, approximately one-half of all statistical tests in correlational designs involving one-tailed tests of bivariate relationships would be statistically nonsignificant. for two-tailed tests of bivariate tests, the guideline of 30 participants has even more dire consequences, yielding a statistical power of .38. onwuegbuzie, jiao, and bostick (2004) suggest a minimum sample size of 64 for one-tailed tests and a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks 7 82 for two-tailed tests to attain .80 power for a moderate correlation. for causal-comparative designs, a few textbooks (e.g., gay & airasian, 2003) suggest minimum group sizes of 30. unfortunately, this represents a power of only .61 for one-tailed tests (i.e., independent samples t -tests) for detecting a moderate difference (i.e., d = .50) between two groups at the 5% level of statistical significance (erdfelder et al., 1996) and .48 for two-tailed t -tests. even more disturbingly, many textbook authors (e.g., charles & mertler, 2002; creswell, 2005; gall et al., 2003; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001) recommend minimum sample sizes of 15 for both causalcomparative and experimental designs. with respect to the former designs, this represents a power of only .38 for one-tailed tests and .26 for two-tailed tests. (onwuegbuzie et al., 2004 calculated group sizes of 51 for one-tailed tests and 64 for two-tailed tests.) with such sample size recommendations in textbooks, it is no wonder that the “the average [hypothesized] power of null hypothesis significance tests in typical studies and research literature is in the .40 to .60 range (cohen, 1962, 1965, 1988, 1992; schmidt, 1996; schmidt, hunter, & urry, 1976; sedlmeier & gigerenzer, 1989)…[with] .50 as a rough average” (p. 40). the current trend of only a few authors (e.g., ary et al., 2002) discussing the role of power in quantitative research clearly needs to be reversed. with respect to qualitative studies, rarely is there any discussion of sample size in introductory research methodology textbooks (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-a). yet, such guidelines have been provided in qualitative research textbooks (e.g., creswell, 1998). for example, creswell (1998) recommends that 20-30 persons should be interviewed in grounded theory designs in order to “achieve detail in the theory” (p. 113). for phenomenological designs, creswell (1998) recommend interviews with up to 10 participants. onwuegbuzie and leech (in press-d) provide several rationales for systematically selecting sample sizes in qualitative research studies. instrumentation. instrumentation is the other main issue that arises in textbooks when discussing data collection. across the board, with a very few exceptions (e.g., creswell, 2005), textbooks we reviewed only included discussion of instrumentation in the quantitative research chapters. furthermore, most of the texts described tests as being reliable and valid. that is, they assign properties of reliability to quantitative measuring instruments, even though reliability is a function of scores and not of instruments (onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002a, 2002b, 2003, 2004; thompson & vacha-haase, 2000; wilkinson & the task force on statistical inference, 1999). for example, ary et al. (2002) refer to "reliability of a measuring instruments" (p, 249); gay and airasian (2003) include sections they call “validity of measuring instruments” (p. 135) and “reliability of measuring instruments” (p. 141); gall et al. (2003) use the phrase “test validity” (p. 191) and “test reliability” (p. 195) ; and mcmillan and schumacher (2001) describe “components of test validity” (p. 243). such statements can give the impression that because an instrument's developer reports a large reliability coefficient for scores yielded by the normative sample, it can then be assumed that the instrument will continue to yield large reliability estimates in all subsequent studies, regardless of the sample selected. this issue likely explains why the vast majority of quantitative researchers do not report reliability coefficients for data from their samples (onwuegbuzie, 2002b; onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002a, 2002b, 2003, 2004; thompson & snyder, 1998; vacha-haase, ness, nilsson, & reetz, 1999; willson, 1980), even though it has been recommended to report reliability coefficients by authoritative and influential sources (e.g., american educational research association, american psychological association, and national council on measurement in education, 1999; wilkinson & the task force on statistical inference, 1999). indeed, only a few textbook authors (e.g., johnson & christensen, 2004) use phrases such as “validity of test scores” (pp. 132-133) and “reliability of test scores” (pp. 132-133). however, even these statements can be misleading because they suggest that score reliability is only an issue for tests, and is thus not an issue for other types of quantitative measures (e.g., affective scales). therefore, we recommend that words such as “instruments” replace the word “test” when the latter is being used in the generic sense. further, in none of the textbooks examined was reliability discussed in relation to qualitative studies, even though reliability is important to consider with qualitative data (daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2002; madill , jordan , & shirley, 2000). at best, some components of reliability that are pertinent to qualitative research, such as interrater reliability and intra-reliability, are discussed only in the quantitative sections of textbooks (e.g., creswell, 2005; gay & airasian, 2003). similarly, few textbooks (e.g., mcmillan & schumacher, 2001) mention validity issues in qualitative research, even though as many as 50 components of validity in qualitative research have been identified (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-e). current issues in education vol. 8 no. 7 another important misconception promoted by research textbooks is that quantitative data methods are objective. yet, as contended by onwuegbuzie (2002a), in quantitative studies, many research decisions are made throughout the research process that precedes objective verification decisions made. for instance, in developing instruments that yield empirical data, subjective decisions are made as to what items and how many items adequately represent the content domain. these subjective decisions prevent the measures from being objective. the only objective aspect of quantitative measures is the scoring; however, the ensuing scores are not objective. moreover, when constructing quantitative instruments, items are selected that are believed to represent the underlying the behaviors. yet, these behaviors stem from observations, which, in turn, stem from qualitative data collection techniques (i.e., observations, interviews). thus, the role of qualitative research in the development of quantitative measures should be acknowledged. unfortunately, this is not the case in research methodology textbooks. the lack of discussion of instrumentation in qualitative research by the majority of textbook authors can give the impression that qualitative researchers do not use instruments to collect data. yet, many instruments are used by interpretivists to collect data, including the following: observational schedules, interviews schedules, documents (newspapers, personal journals and diaries, official memoranda, letters, jottings individuals write to themselves, e-mail messages, minutes of meetings, records in the public domain, archival material stored in libraries), and audio-visual materials (e.g., photographs, digital images, videotapes, pictures, paintings, physical traces of images) (for a discussion of each of these instruments, see for example onwuegbuzie et al., 2004). another misconception promoted by textbooks is that every instrument produces only one data type, with quantitative instruments, for example, only generating numerical data. however, this line of thinking is contradicted by the proliferation of instruments that contain closed-ended and openended items, which generate quantitative and qualitative data. such instruments that can incorporate a mixture of closed-ended and openended items include questionnaires, interview schedules, standardized tests, and documents (cf. johnson & turner, 2003). another source of misunderstanding perpetuated by some textbook authors stems from their treatment of observations as a research design or method rather than as a data collection technique that can be used in both quantitative and qualitative research (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-a; tashakkori & teddlie, 2003a). for example, gay and airasian (2003, p. 293) define “observational research” as a form of descriptive research in which “the current status of a phenomenon is determined not by asking, as with a survey or through an interview, but by observing.” yet, observations not only can be collected in descriptive research designs but also in correlational, causal-comparative, and experimental designs, as well as in all qualitative research designs (e.g., case studies, phenomenological research, grounded theory, ethnographic research). similarly, some authors refer to content analysis as a research method or research design instead of quantitative and qualitative data analysis techniques (tashakkori & teddlie, 2003a). analyzing the data all introductory research methodology textbooks give the impression that there is a one-toone correspondence between research approach and data analysis technique. specifically, statistical analyses are associated exclusively with quantitative research, whereas qualitative analyses (e.g., thematic analyses) are associated exclusively with qualitative research. for example, the chapter on descriptive statistics usually follows the chapters that discuss quantitative research. this maintains the myth that statistics should only be used with quantitative designs and not in qualitative designs. similarly, when a discussion of qualitative analysis is included in the book, it invariable is placed near the qualitative chapters; thus, giving the impression that qualitative analysis should be used only with designs that fall under the qualitative paradigm. although quantitative data are more likely to necessitate statistical analyses and qualitative data are more apt to justify qualitative data analyses, yet, both statistical analyses and qualitative data analyses can be used to explore and to confirm phenomena (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-a). moreover, onwuegbuzie and teddlie (2003) have demonstrated how quantitative and qualitative data analyses can be integrated within the same analytic framework (i.e., mixed methods data analyses) either sequentially or concurrently. these methodologists discussed how quantitative and qualitative data could be transformed to the other data type. in particular, tashakkori and teddlie (1998) used the term “quantitizing” to refer to the conversion of qualitative data (e.g., focus group responses) to quantitative data (e.g., frequencies) and the term “qualitizing” to denote the conversion of quantitative data (e.g., attitude scores) to qualitative data (e.g., profiles). onwuegbuzie and teddlie also described how quantitative and qualitative data could be correlated, consolidated, compared, and integrated. a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks 9 when discussing inferential statistical techniques, textbook authors tend to discuss the role of statistical significance. however, many writers (e.g., charles & mertler, 2002) fail to mention the other three types of significance that have been identified, namely, practical significance, clinical significance, and, most recently, economic significance (leech & onwuegbuzie, in press). practical significance indices provide information about the size of observed difference or relationship (e.g., effect size). clinical significance measures provide data regarding the extent to which the intervention makes a real difference to the quality of life of the participants or to those with whom they interact. economic significance indices represent the economic value of the effect of an intervention. these errors of omission occur despite the problems associated with null hypothesis significance testing, which include (a) its over-reliance on sample size, (b) the fact that it does not indicate whether a result is true for a population, and (c) the fact that it does not indicate the strength or size of an effect (i.e., the belief that a p < .05 is less important or significant than a p < .001) (fan, 2001; kirk, 1996; thompson, 1993). although an increasing number of textbooks discuss practical significance (e.g., ary et al., 2002; creswell, 2005; gay & airasian, johnson & christensen, 2004; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001), few textbooks, if any, discuss clinical or economic significance. yet, these concepts are not too advanced for beginning researchers. in addition, when discussing inferential statistics, textbook writers do not discuss them within the framework of the general linear model. this might give the impression that each statistical analysis represents an independent technique rather than a procedure that subsumes or is subsumed by other inferential procedures. errors of omission also occur in qualitative data analysis sections of textbooks. in particular, authors do not discuss how obtaining counts of observations can provide more meaning to narrative descriptions (onwuegbuzie, 2003b; onwuegbuzie & teddlie, 2003). onwuegbuzie (2003b) refers to these counts as effect sizes. further, as noted by onwuegbuzie and leech (2005b), virtually all research methodology textbook authors (e.g., ary, jacobs, & razavieh, 2002; creswell, 2005; fraenkel & wallen, 2003; gall, borg, & gall, 2003; gay & airasian, 2003; johnson & christensen, 2004; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001; wallen & fraenkel, 2001) present their discussions of statistical analyses in separate chapters from their discussions of research design and other stages of the research process. as such, in these statistics analysis chapters, there tends to be little or no reference to research questions, research design, or the like, giving the impression that statistical analyses occur in a vacuum. . interpreting/validating the data the quality of result interpretations (i.e., inference quality) is a function of how valid the underlying findings are. thus, validity represents the most important stage of the research process for both quantitative and qualitative research studies. thus, it is not surprising that all research textbooks examined contain a discussion of validity in relation to quantitative research, including information about campbell and stanley 's (campbell, 1957; campbell & stanley, 1963) threats to internal and external validity. however, as noted by onwuegbuzie (2003), these threats are only discussed in relation to experimental and quasi-experimental designs, giving the impression that validity is not an issue for other types of quantitative designs (e.g., descriptive, correlational). yet, validity is as relevant for these designs (huck & sandler, 1979; mcmillan, 2000; onwuegbuzie, 2003). moreover, the seminal framework provided by campbell and stanley for experimental research is too restricting for nonexperimental quantitative designs. consequently, huck and sandler (1979), mcmillan (2000), and onwuegbuzie (2003) have expanded campbell and stanley's framework, with onwuegbuzie's (2003) presentation being the most comprehensive to date. disturbingly, only a few textbook writers (e.g., ary et al., 2002; gall et al., 2003; gay & airasian, 2003; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001) discuss validity as it pertains to qualitative research, even though much literature exists in this area. with 50 components of validity or legitimation identified in the literature (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-e), at least some of these deserve mention. for example, maxwell's (1992) conceptualization of validity could be summarized in introductory research methodology textbooks. specifically, maxwell identified five types of validity in qualitative research: descriptive validity (i.e., factual accuracy of the account as documented by the researcher), interpretive validity (i.e., the extent to which a researcher's interpretation of an account represents an understanding of the perspective of the group under study and the meanings attached to their words and actions), theoretical validity (i.e., the degree to which a theoretical explanation developed from research findings fits the data), evaluative validity (i.e., the extent to which an evaluation framework can be applied to the objects of study, rather than a descriptive, interpretive, or explanatory one), and generalizability (i.e., the extent to which a researcher can generalize the account of a particular situation or population to other individuals, times, settings, or current issues in education vol. 8 no. 7 context). with respect to the latter, maxwell differentiated internal generalizability from external generalizability; with internal generalizability pertaining to the generalizability of an inference within the setting or group studied, whereas, the latter refers to generalizability beyond the group, setting, context, or time. according to maxwell, internal generalizability is typically more important to qualitative researchers than is external generalizability. another misconception advanced in some textbooks (e.g., best & kahn, 2003) is that aspects of the research design or data collection procedure can be assessed for validity. for example, best and kahn (2003) refer to “validity and reliability of the interview” (p. 324). yet, it is not the interview that should be assessed for validity and/or reliability. rather, it is data that emerge from the interview(s) or the resultant inferences made that should be examined for legitimation. communicating the findings in a variety of the literature provided by the nbpts the final step of the research process is to communicate the research findings. with respect to quantitative reports, perhaps the biggest misconception promoted by textbook is that interpretations of results are value free. this can lead to the impression that it is not essential for the context to be provided when reporting a relationship. that is, explanations of phenomena should be undertaken at a high level of abstraction such that the role of culture is ignored, thereby allowing “universal generalizations that encompass the broadest domain of the phenomenon in question” (moghaddam, walker, & harrj , 2003, p. 123). indeed, as stated by tashakkori and teddlie (2003a): “we are struck by how much some of the ‘quantitative' papers are void of any reference to the cultural context of the behaviors/phenomenon under study” (p. 19). yet, ignoring the role of culture likely leads to noninteraction-seeking bias, in which the nature of reality of interest is not honored in the optimal sense (onwuegbuzie, 2003). thus, all quantitative findings should be contextualized. with respect to writing qualitative reports, a common weakness of this section in textbooks is a failure to emphasize that qualitative findings should not be generalized beyond the sample unless the sample size is adequately large (onwuegbuzie & leech, 2005a). not making this recommendation explicit likely explains why some qualitative researchers find it difficult to resist the temptation to generalize their results to the underlying population. instead, they should focus on attempting to obtain insights into particular educational, social, and familial processes and practices that existed within a specific location and context (connolly, 1998). implications of errors the implications of the textbook errors outlined above are immeasurable. on the simplest level, the fact that research method textbooks continue to relate myths and errors about the process of research to students keeps the myths alive; many researchers do not understand that what they learned from the textbook is incorrect. thus, researchers continue to perpetuate errors within their own research projects, presentations of their research, and published articles. more specifically, many of these errors advance the myth that research method as a technique (i.e., research design) and research method as a logic of justification (i.e., research paradigm) are synonymous. moreover, many of these myths tend to promote the incompatibility thesis, which suggests that quantitative and qualitative paradigms cannot coexist, and cannot and should not be mixed in any way (howe, 1988). indeed, by separating quantitative and qualitative approaches, research methodology textbooks read as if they contain two books in one. additionally, as noted by onwuegbuzie and leech (in press-a), separating discussion of quantitative and qualitative approaches in research textbooks, “students may form the impression that research represents a dichotomy of choices rather than an integrative, interactive, and systematic process for the purpose of generating new knowledge or validating or refuting existing knowledge” (p. 15). such a narrow view of research might dissuade them from learning to conduct “bilingual research” (tashakkori & teddlie, 2003a, p. 64), believing that they have to choose one paradigm over the other. yet, in recent years, the incompatibility thesis has been usurped by the compatibility thesis, whereby the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative paradigms consisted of isolated events lying on a continuum of scientific research (howe, 1988; tashakkori & teddlie, 1998). unfortunately, the majority of research textbooks do not presently reflect this trend. using onwuegbuzie and leech's (in press-a) framework the framework suggested by onwuegbuzie and leech (in press-a) demonstrates how research textbooks can be reframed to break down the barriers between quantitative and qualitative research. in essence, this framework calls for the integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches at each stage of the research process. at the stage at which the research problem and research objective are formulated, rather than linking deductive reasoning with quantitative research and inductive reasoning with qualitative research, textbook authors would a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks 11 describe research objectives as lying on an exploratory-confirmatory continuum. the extent to which the research objective is exploratory or confirmatory would then determine the reasoning process. once the research objective has been established, the purpose of study, research question(s), and hypotheses (if the research objective is confirmatory) are determined. however, rather than presenting these elements as falling under the quantitative/qualitative divide, they would be discussed in the context of the exploratoryconfirmatory research objective continuum. the next major section of the book would describe a typology of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research designs. however, it will be emphasized that the design does not dictate the data type collected. the section on data collection would provide information about sampling and choice of instruments. in the discussion on sampling, instead of presenting the sampling schemes as belonging to either the quantitative research and qualitative fields, all 24 sampling methods outlined by onwuegbuzie and leech (in press-a) would be described and classified according to whether they represent probability or non-probability sampling. in addition, to these 24 sampling techniques, the following additional 4 mixed methods sampling strategies would be included: (a) multi-stage mixed methods random sampling (in which all phases of the sampling are random), (b) multi-stage mixed methods non-random sampling (in which all phases of the sampling are non-random); (c) multi-stage mixed methods random-purposive sampling (in which the first phase of the sampling is random and at least one of the subsequent phases is purposive); and (d) multistage mixed methods purposive-random sampling (in which the first phase of the sampling is purposive and at least one of the subsequent phases is random). these mixed methods sampling schemes would provide researchers with at least 28 sampling methods at their disposal, regardless of paradigmatic orientation. with respect to the instrument section of the textbook, burke and turner's (2003) mixed methods data collection framework would be used. here, it would be made clear that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between paradigm and data collection method. the section on data analysis could incorporate the framework of onwuegbuzie and teddlie (2003). here, it would be emphasized that the analyses selected would be a function of the research objective and purpose. in particular, the data analysis tools discussed would be classified under exploratory and confirmatory techniques. in the section on interpreting and validating data, information about threats to internal validity, external validity, and legitimation would be provided under the headings of inference quality and data quality, as recommended by tashakkori and teddlie (2003b). finally, discussion about quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research reports would take place within the same chapter. recommendations for authors, instructors, and students based on the analysis of textbooks, the following are recommendations for authors of textbooks, and instructors and students of research methodology courses. for authors of textbooks, it is important to update and revise the texts regularly to keep up with recent trends and changes. because research and analysis techniques are constantly transforming and emerging, keeping up with these changes is important. one avenue to assist with this is for textbook authors to attend national and regional conferences, and to read recent literature in the area of research and analysis techniques. furthermore, it would be beneficial to have textbooks rigorously reviewed by leading methodologists in the field. instructors of research method courses using these texts should keep up with recent trends and changes in research and analysis techniques. using a critical eye in reading and choosing texts would increase the chances of using texts that contain fewer errors. finally, instructors should not make the textbook the sole method of information; instructors should supplement the assigned readings with recent articles which outline controversies and the latest developments. for readers of these textbooks, it is imperative to read critically and point out discrepancies. conclusion evidence has been provided that a significant proportion of published studies, theses, and dissertations are seriously flawed, containing analytical and interpretational errors (daniel, 1998; keselman et al., 1998; onwuegbuzie, 2002b; thompson, 1998; vockell & asher, 1974; ward, hall, & schramm, 1975; witta & daniel, 1998). onwuegbuzie and daniel (2003) presented the following five reasons for this trend: (a) graduatelevel instruction in which research methodology is taught as a series of linear steps, rather than as a holistic, interactive, and reflective process; (b) graduate-level curricula that severely limit students' exposure to quantitative and qualitative research approaches; (c) the endorsement of various misperceptions about the nature of research; (d) research methodology instructors teaching out of their specialty areas; and (e) failure, reluctance, or even refusal to recognize that methodological techniques that were popular in previous decades no current issues in education vol. 8 no. 7 longer represent best practices and may now be considered inappropriate, invalid, untimely, or obsolete. however, the present essay has demonstrated that an additional reason likely prevails for the vast number of published studies, theses, and dissertations that are seriously flawed. specifically, it is likely that the errors and myths perpetuated by textbooks also play an important role in the proliferation of research inquiries that involve questionable practices and, consequently, invalid findings and inferences. thus, it is imperative that research methodology textbook authors exercise much more caution in what they write. references ambach, g. 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(2005, march 10). a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks current issues in education [on-line], 8(7). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number7/ author notes anthony j. onwuegbuzie university of south florida department of educational measurement and research, college of education 4202 east fowler avenue, edu 162, tampa , fl, 33620-7750 tonyonwuegbuzie@aol.com nancy l. leech university of colorado at denver and health sciences center note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 20, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation onwuegbuzie, a. j., & leech, n. l. (2005). a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks. current issues in education, 8(7). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1604 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number7/index.html mailto:tonyonwuegbuzie@aol.com http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1604 cie template 1 volume 17, number 3 november 23, 2014 issn 1099-839x students’ commitment, engagement and locus of control as predictor of academic achievement at higher education level muhammad sarwar and ghulam muhammad ashrafi university of sargodha, pakistan the purpose of this study was to analyze commitment, engagement and locus of control as predictors of academic achievement at higher education level. the researchers selected 369 students using multistage sampling technique from three public sector general universities of the punjab (pakistan). three instruments namely commitment scale, engagement scale and academic locus of control scale were used for data collection through personal visits of the sampled universities. after data cleaning 315 responses were found fit for statistical analysis. analysis of data revealed significant positive impact of commitment, engagement and locus of control on academic achievement. keywords: commitment; engagement; academic locus of control; academic achievement; higher education prediction of academic achievement has been a topic of researchers’ interest worldwide. predictor can be defined as independently changing variable which influences the dependent variable. in this study commitment, engagement and locus of control are predictors and academic achievement is predicted. this study may be helpful to predict academic achievement at higher education level in pakistan. moreover the study tried to explore effect of demographic variables (department, income, father’s education, mother’s education, age, years of stay in the university, gender, residence and program) on commitment, engagement, locus of control and academic achievement at higher education level in pakistan. the purpose of study was to analyze the effect of commitment, engagement and locus of control on academic achievement. then study intended to explore the effect of family, individual and university related variables on commitment, engagement, locus of control and academic achievement. results of the study may suggest administrators, policy makers, curriculum planners and other stakeholders to consider the effect of commitment, engagement and locus of control on academic achievement. parents and teachers may guide the students to be committed to their institutions, engaged in studies and have internal locus of control to improve academic achievement. the researchers may get help from the present study to do future research in the area. students’ commitment commitment refers to affective factors involving interest, faith and acceptance of positive attitudes toward certain things (kim & ok, 2009). institutional commitment refers to overall impression, satisfaction, sense of belonging, perception of quality and attraction to a particular institution (meyer & allen, 2004). commitment is a factor of student persistence in higher education (strauss, 2001; strauss & volkwein, 2004). the higher commitment with the institution fosters higher performance as students achieve good marks (lundberg, 2010). gill, biger, and dhaliwal (2008) explored that the degree of students’ perceived commitment to continuing study is positively related to the degree of student dependence on faculty to learn course material. students’ engagement students’ engagement refers to the amount of time and effort students put into their studies and other purposeful activities in educational field (kuh, 2001). current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 2 engagement is influenced by many factors including: campus climate, students’ experience of engagement, and students’ willingness to participate. the student engagement is related to campus climate and students’ experience of engagement (dunleavy & milton, 2009). campus climate is influenced by the way institution manages its resources, organizes the curriculum and other learning opportunities to get students to participate in activities (coates, 2010). the students will be more engaged if the teacher has created a safe learning environment that encourages students to meet challenges and apply higher order skills (jones, 2009). positive perceptions of school environment enhance academic achievement through engagement (wang & holcombe, 2010). engagement is also influenced by students’ willingness to participate in educational activities such as attending class, submitting assignments, and observing class instructions (chapman, 2003). students with favourable ratings on their academic engagement perform better academically (lee-nagarajah, tek, hashim, & meng, 2011; wang & holcombe, 2010). lower-ability students benefit more from engagement than their other classmates (carini, kuh, & klein, 2006). students’ locus of control locus of control focuses on the degree to which individuals generally believe that they, rather than other people or uncontrollable factors are responsible for the outcomes of events in their lives (kang, chang, chen, & greenberger, 2013). locus of control can be internal or external. people who consider themselves able to control their outcomes are known as possessing internal locus of control. on the other hand people who consider themselves unable to control their outcomes are known as possessing external locus of control (zaidi & mohsin, 2013). research shows that individuals with internal locus of control have high motivation for achievement and consequently have higher achievement than the individuals with external locus of control (bozorgi, 2009; cetinkalp, 2010; ghonsooly & elahi, 2010; kutani̇s, mesci̇, & övdür, 2011; lee, 2012; rastegar, heidari, & akbarzadeh, 2012; rotter, 1966; zaidi & mohsin, 2013). bulus (2011) suggested that teachers should motivate their students to develop and use internal locus of control to increase their academic performance. objectives the following were the major objectives of the study:  to analyze whether students’ commitment, engagement and locus of control are significant predictors of academic achievement at higher education level in pakistan.  to determine the effect of demographic variables (department, income, father’s education, mother’s education, age, years of stay in the university, gender, residence and program) on students’ commitment, engagement, locus of control and academic achievement at higher education level in pakistan. methodology we examined a wide range of research methodologies to find a best fit for the purpose. analytical model was considered appropriate for this study. the analytical model actually consists of a set of variables which illustrates the effect of different variables and their interrelationships (cherian & jacob, 2013; montgomery, peck, & vining, 2012; zikmund, carr, & griffin, 2012). this survey study aimed at analysis of commitment, engagement and locus of control as predictor of academic achievement at higher education level in pakistan. commitment, engagement and locus of control were taken as independent variables whereas academic achievement was dependent variable. sampling and sample there were 136 universities in pakistan in 2011, when the data were collected. the population is defined as the entire set of individuals to which findings of the survey are to be generalized (levy & lemeshow, 2013). total enrolment in 136 universities of pakistan was 804,000 students (higher education commission of pakistan, 2011). it was very difficult to prepare a list of all these students and randomly select sample. so it was decided to go for multistage sampling. multi-stage sampling is a complicated form of cluster sampling in which larger clusters are further subdivided into smaller, more targeted groupings from which the researcher randomly selects the sample (bryman & bell, 2007). due to law and order situation in rest of three provinces the study was delimited to only punjab province. there were 18 universities in punjab, including seven professional and 11 general universities. we excluded professional universities and 11 general universities made accessible population for the study. there were 117,770 students enrolled in these 11 universities. we selected three universities out of eleven universities of the punjab through simple random sampling. there were 33173 students in these three universities. again it was difficult to prepare a list of all these students. so it was decided to select four departments from each sampled university through random sampling after preparing a list of all departments in each university. the information about departments was taken from respective university websites. we selected randomly one class of master level students from each department. in this way 12 classes were selected. there were 369 students in these 12 classes. the university wise distribution of sample was as under: 123 students from the university of sargodha, 104 students from the university of gujrat, and 142 students from the government college university, faisalabad. the average age of sample students was 21.81 years with minimum age 20 and maximum 28 years. as majority of students in pakistani universities are females. the sample consisted of 75.6% females and 24.4% males. students’ commitment, engagement and locus of control as predictor of academic achievement at higher education level 3 research instruments we used five-point scales to measure students’ commitment, engagement, and locus of control. the achievement was taken as cumulative grade point average, the students had achieved in the previous semesters. commitment, engagement, and locus of control were independent variables and achievement was dependent variable. the three scales (commitment, engagement, and locus of control) originally developed in western cultures, were adapted to accommodate local pakistani context. these scales were discussed with experts one by one to ensure face and content validity. the experts were ten senior faculty members of the department of education, university of sargodha. they checked the face and content validity of the scales. they ensured that the items belong to the same construct, which the items claim to measure and the language and context suitability for respondents. the experts were competent enough to check these characteristics, as they were busy in teaching such class and were well conversant in research. this activity improved the validity of the scales. some modifications were made to incorporate the suggestions of the experts. keeping in view the limited english language ability of some of the respondents, it was decided to translate the scales into urdu (national language of pakistan). again there was a problem that most of the respondents understand the terminology only in english. so, finally bilingual scales were used. the scales were pilot tested on a sample of 100 students taken from the university of sargodha. these respondents were not included in the main study. more description of scales is as follows. students’ commitment scale students’ commitment scale was adapted from employee commitment survey scale developed by (meyer & allen, 2004). this scale has three components: affective commitment (desired-based), continuance commitment (obligation-based) and normative commitment (cost-based). items in each category were modified keeping in view the students’ commitment with the institution. we added urdu translation to make it a bilingual scale for the better interpretability and convenience of respondents. measuring instruments should have validity, and reliability (bagó, climent, pérez-grueso, & pellisé, 2013). validity is the extent to which an instrument measures what it is intended to measure and reliability is the ability of an instrument to measure consistently (tavakol & dennick, 2011). the scale was discussed with experts (senior faculty members) to ensure face and content validity. at this stage the scale consisted of 45 items. the scale was pilot tested on a sample of 100 students. on the basis of pilot study five items were dropped due to weaker item-total correlation. the final scale had 40 items. the reliability (cronbach’s alpha) of the commitment scale was 0.858 as calculated from pilot study and 0.912 as calculated from main study. students’ engagement scale we adapted students’ engagement scale from ("national survey of students engagement ", 2011) and coates (2010). the scale has two parts: experience at the institution and participation in different activities. some modifications were made and urdu translation was added to make the scale a bilingual one. the scale was discussed with experts (senior faculty members) to ensure face and content validity. at this stage the scale consisted of 37 items. the scale was pilot tested on a sample of 100 students taken from the university of sargodha. on the basis of pilot study data five items were dropped due to weaker item-total correlation. the final scale had 32 items. the reliability (cronbach’s alpha) of the engagement scale was 0.850 as calculated from pilot study and 0.928 as calculated from main study. academic locus of control scale many scales were available to measure internal and external locus of control. academic locus of control scale developed by (rossouw, 1996) was considered more appropriate. as the scale was developed in western culture so modifications were made to fit it to the local context. we added urdu translation to make the scale bilingual one for the better interpretability and convenience. at this stage the scale consisted of 40 items. the scale was pilot tested on a sample of 100 students taken from the university of sargodha. on the basis of pilot study data five items were dropped due to weaker item-total correlation. the final scale had 35 items. the reliability (cronbach’s alpha) of the academic locus of control scale was 0.850 as calculated from pilot study and 0.928 as calculated from main study. data collection the research instruments were administered personally to the selected students of all the three universities. first of all, the respondents were briefed about the guidelines to respond the data collection instrument. the three scales including demographic information were put together to make data collection instrument. the instrument comprised of four parts. first three parts were commitment scale, engagement scale, and locus of control scale. the respondents responded these scales against five-point likert’s scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. fourth part was about demographical information (department, income, father’s education, mother’s education, age, years of stay in the university, gender, residence and program) and cumulative grade point average. this cumulative grade point average was used as a proxy for academic achievement. we approached 369 students out of which 315 agreed to respond. so the response rate was 85%. data analysis the data were coded and fed into the computer. we calculated total score for each scale by converting each person’s responses to the scale items into numerical codes by representing one for strongly disagree (lowest current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 4 amount of the measured attribute) and five for strongly agree (highest amount of measured attribute). the preliminary data analysis included data editing, correcting aberrant values and missing values analysis. the data transformation technique was applied for computing the average scores of the above-mentioned three scales. the statistical analysis was carried out to further explore the data. descriptive statistics, correlation and regression we applied the pearson correlation analysis to find out the value of correlation between students’ commitment, engagement, locus of control and academic achievement. the commitment was taken as average score on 40 items scale having reliability 0.912, engagement as average score on 32 items scale having reliability 0.928 and locus of control as average score on 35 items scale having reliability 0.928. the achievement was taken as cumulative grade point average of the students from previous semesters. table 1 descriptive statistics parameter n mean range sd students’ commitment 315 3.27 1-5 .59 students’ engagement 315 3.62 1-5 .61 locus of control 315 3.53 1-5 .44 table 1 indicates that mean scores of students’ commitment scale (m=3.27, sd=0.59), engagement scale (m=3.62, sd=0.61), and locus of control scale (m=3.53, sd=0.44) show moderate level of commitment, engagement and internal locus of control in students at higher education level in pakistan. table 2 correlations of students’ commitment, students’ engagement, locus of control and academic achievement parameter students’ engagement locus of control academic achievement students’ commitment .576(**) .308(**) .585(**) students’ engagement .434(**) .684(**) locus of control .598(**) ** significance level (p ≤ 0.01) the correlation values of academic achievement with commitment, engagement and locus of control were 0.585, 0.684 and 0.598 respectively. all these values are significant at 0.01 levels. we applied the multiple regression analysis for predicting value of the dependent variable (academic achievement) from the predictor variables (students’ commitment, engagement and locus of control). for this purpose, we used the following regression equations. regression equations academic achievement = intercept + coefficient (commitment) + coefficient (engagement) + coefficient (locus of control) + error academic achievement = α + β1 (commitment) + β2 (engagement) + β3 (locus of control) + ε academic achievement was taken as grade point average. commitment, engagement and locus of control were taken as scores on commitment, engagement and locus of control scales. while α, β1, β2 and β3 are constants, whereas ε is random error in measurement. the values of constants as shown in table 4 are as below. α=0.902 β1=0.256 β2=0.383 β3=0.353 ε= may assume any value if we put values of constants then the equation becomes academic achievement = 0.902 + 0.256 (commitment) + 0.383 (engagement) + 0.353 (locus of control) + ε table 3 model summary presenting students’ commitment, engagement, locus of control as predictor and academic achievement as criterion variable model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 1 .789 .623 .619 .23602 predictors: (constant), students’ commitment, students’ engagement, locus of control criterion variable: academic achievement table 3 indicated that in pakistani educational institutions students’ commitment, engagement and locus of control explained 61.9% variance in the students’ academic achievement. students’ commitment, engagement and locus of control as predictor of academic achievement at higher education level 5 table 4 coefficients of regression line presenting students’ commitment, students’ engagement, locus of control as predictor variable and academic achievement as criterion variable model unstandardize d coefficients standardize d coefficient s t pvalu e b std. error beta (constant) .90 2 .117 7.73 0 .000 students’ commitme nt .16 6 .028 .256 5.98 1 .000 students’ engagemen t .24 0 .028 .383 8.49 2 .000 locus of control .30 5 .034 .353 9.09 1 .000 criterion variable: academic achievement table 4 indicates that students’ commitment, engagement and locus of control have significant impact on academic achievement at 0.05 levels of significance. it is revealed that students’ commitment, engagement and locus of control have positive impact on students’ academic achievement at higher education level in pakistan. differences regarding demographic variables independent sample t-test revealed no significant differences in students’ commitment, engagement, locus of control and academic achievement with respect to department, income, father’s education, mother’s education, age, and program of study at university level in pakistan. in mexico, (binder, 1998) reported that parental schooling is associated with academic achievement of students at school level. this difference may be due to difference in level of education or culture differences were noted regarding gender, residence and years of stay in the university. independent sample t-test revealed that female students were more committed (t=3.26, p=.001), more engaged (t=2.86, p=.004); had more internal locus of control (t=3.88, p=.000) and higher academic achievement (t=2.82, p=.005) than their male counterparts. independent sample t-test further revealed that rural students were more committed (t=2.18, p=.029), more engaged (t=2.40, p=.016); had higher academic achievement (t=2.30, p=.022) than their urban counterparts. but the rural students had less (t=-2.07, p=.039) internal locus of control than their urban counterparts. independent sample t-test results show that students in 2 nd and subsequent years in university were more committed (t=3.27, p=.001), more engaged (t=3.30, p=.001); had more internal locus of control (t=2.95, p=.003) and higher academic achievement (t=3.00, p=.003) than their first year counterparts. conclusions and recommendations on the basis of analysis of data the conclusions were made. commitment, engagement, and locus of control are predictors of academic achievement at higher education level in pakistan. this means that an increase in any one of the three aforementioned variables results in corresponding increase in academic achievement. different studies (corno & mandinach, 1983; duttweiler, 1984; findley & cooper, 1983; krause & coates, 2008; lefcourt, 1976; lodyga, 2009; marks, 2000; murk & addleman, 1992; strauss, 2001; strauss & volkwein, 2004; walker & greene, 2009; wong & hui, 1995) have reported similar results in other parts of world. this study provides evidence in local context that academic achievement can be predicted based on commitment, engagement, and locus of control. in pakistan, higher education institutions are struggling to provide state of the art academic facilities to their students after the establishment of higher education commission of pakistan in 2002. but the quality of higher education needs improvement to be at par with international standards. the students of higher education have moderate level of commitment, engagement and internal locus of control in pakistan. by improving commitment to the institution, engagement with the studies and internal locus of control the academic performance may be improved. as this study was conducted in punjab, the future researchers are recommended to conduct more studies in other provinces to provide evidence about the significance of commitment, engagement, locus of control and other related variables to improve academic achievement at higher education level. this may contribute to improve the standard of higher education to narrow the gap between local and international standards. most of the demographic variables (department, income, father education, mother education, age, and program) had no effect on students’ commitment, engagement, locus of control and academic achievement at higher education level in pakistan except gender and residence and years of stay in university. female students were more committed, more engaged; had more internal locus of control and higher academic achievement than their male counterparts. similarly rural students were more committed, more engaged; had higher academic achievement than their urban counterparts. but the rural students had less internal locus of control than their urban counterparts. longer stay in university is associated with more commitment, current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 6 engagement; internal locus of control and higher academic achievement. several studies in pakistan show that female students are more engaged and have higher academic achievement than their male counterparts, similarly rural students have more positive attitude and higher achievement than their urban counterparts (awan, sarwar, naz, & noreen, 2011; sarwar, bashir, & alam, 2010; sarwar, bashir, khan, & khan, 2009). there is need to do further research to explore why female students and rural students were more committed, more engaged, had more internal locus of control and higher academic achievement than their male and urban counterparts respectively. finally, it can be said that commitment, engagement, and locus of control are predictors of academic achievement at higher education level in pakistan. by improving commitment to the institution, engagement with the studies and internal locus of control the academic performance may 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(2012). business research methods. boston: cengage learning. retrieved from http://www.cengagebrain.co.nz/content/9781285 202082.pdf human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 9 article citation sarwar, m., & ashrafi, g. m. (2014). students’ commitment, engagement and locus of control as predictor of academic achievement at higher education level. current issues in education, 17(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1314 author notes muhammad sarwar, associate professor centre for assessment and quality enhancement department of education university of sargodha, sargodha drsarwar@ymail.com muhammad sarwar is working as associate professor of education in the centre for assessment and quality enhancement, university of sargodha, pakistan. he earned his master and doctor of philosophy in education from pakistan and postdoctorate from the university of worcester, uk. his research focus is on achievement studies and quality enhancement. ghulam muhammad ashrafi department of education university of sargodha, pakistan gmmalik.mba@gmail.com ghulam muhammad ashrafi is lecturer in the department of education at university of sargodha, sub campus mianwali (pakistan). he has completed his ms in educational sciences from university of sargodha, pakistan and is now working on \his phd. he has multifaceted experience of teaching and research in very renowned institutions of pakistan. his research interests include collaborative learning and discovery learning in virtual environments. manuscript received: 10/18/2014 revisions received: 04/14/2014 accepted: 04/15/2014 mailto:drsarwar@ymail.com mailto:gmmalik.mba@gmail.com current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 10 volume 17, number 3 november 23, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell authentications editors lisa marie lacy tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson tray j. geiger section editors rikkilynn archibeque tray j. geiger niels piepgrass evelyn concepcion baca darlene michelle gonzales kevin j. raso isaac lamont bickmore megan hoelting faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers the stac model: rethinking the basic functionality of informal learning spaces current issues in education, 21(2) 1 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age the stac model: rethinking the basic functionality of informal learning spaces tom haymes ideaspaces abstract: productive “third spaces” are often an afterthought when designing learning environments, both in a physical sense and online. these areas, properly mediated by technology and designed around humans, can often be a key facilitator for student success. the stac model is designed to provide a framework for understanding what makes these spaces successful in capturing and retaining students who would otherwise leave the learning environment at the first opportunity. stac stands for “stickiness, toolsets, adjacencies, and community” and is an order of priority system for prioritizing design and technological elements within any space. this article describes the rationale behind the model and how it can be applied in both physical and online environments. keywords: informal learning spaces, toolsets, human-tool interaction, hybrid learning, online learning, learning spaces, learning management systems, conversational spaces, communities of practice citation: haymes, t. (2020). the stac model: rethinking the basic functionality of informal learning spaces. current issues in education, 21(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1915 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 6/14/2020 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1915 the stac model current issues in education, 21(2) 2 the stac model: rethinking the basic functionality of informal learning spaces every environment tells a story to its inhabitants. the story can be one of control or one of empowerment. while both physical and online spaces are sometimes radically adapted to the needs of their human inhabitants, their design sets a tone for the kinds of activity that can occur in them. in a controlled classroom environment, a dynamic teacher can overcome some of the limitations of the instructional space (although arguably he or she shouldn’t have to). in informal environments this is not really possible. students will walk with their feet if the space doesn’t meet their needs. informal spaces are where students see learning happening. better students model behavior to students who aren’t used to self-directed learning and behavior as well as culture shift productively. informal spaces are an intersectional “third space” between students’ home/social lives and their academic lives. as such, they form critical connective tissue between the more focused learning environments they experience in the classroom and a tendency to leave school behind when they leave the learning environment. these “hybrid” environments facilitate the creation of communities of practice among the students. as muller and druin pointed out: in such a hybrid space, enhanced knowledge exchange is possible, precisely because of those questions, challenges, reinterpretations, and renegotiations. these dialogues across differences and—more importantly—within differences are stronger when engaged in by groups, emphasizing not only a shift from assumptions to reflections, but also from individuals to collectives. (muller & druin, 2003, p. 1063, emphasis in original) frans johansson makes a similar point in the medici effect when he argues that innovation occurs in the intersections (johansson, 2003). in other words, spaces “in between” are critical to growth and learning. the trick is keeping students in these in-between spaces long enough for groups to form. if designed properly, a student-centric, empowered learning space can become a critical tool for facilitating learning throughout the college, school, or online program. jean lave and etienne wenger wrote in their classic situated learning, “learning is an integral and inseparable aspect of social practice” (etienne and wenger, 1991, p. 31). all spaces in an environment need to facilitate this social practice of learning, but none more so than informal spaces as, in addition to the learning imperative, their very use is predicated on social norms. in an era when online learning has become such an important modality, informal spaces have become even more critical to success. for hybrid students a well-designed campus space can provide a critical learning anchor for their online activity. taking this to another level, the creation of wholly online, student-informal environments could help bridge the engagement gap that is a serious impediment to effective online learning. at the beginnings of online learning, diana laurillard engaged in a deconstruction of teaching and learning in an attempt to construct technological environments that would augment teaching and learning. obviously, online environments are technological environments, but properly designed physical environments are also interfaces with technology and should follow the same principles. all should be “productive” environments, which laurillard describes as including “microworlds, productive tools, and modelling environments” in which the learner can “build something,” “engage with the subject,” and “learn how to represent these relationships in some general formalism” (laurillard, 2003, p. 171). all informal learning environments, both online and in person, should aspire to be productive environments. students will be drawn to such environments, and they will form a critical backbone to their educational journeys. the stac model current issues in education, 21(2) 3 environments designed in this way have the potential to transform a billboard of information into a community of learning. informal spaces should therefore be viewed as a set of learning tools. tools must be driven by their purpose and in this case the purposes are threefold (in order of priority): 1) keep students engaged and coming back to the space; 2) provide modes of communication and interaction; and 3) expose students to a wider community of learning and opportunities. the stac model is designed to prioritize these three kinds of “productive” engagement and align college services to support them. the four elements of the stac model are, stickiness, toolsets, adjacencies, and community engagement. together, they are designed to create an environment that keeps students in the space and interacting with other students while exposing them to new opportunities and resources designed to elicit curiosity and creativity. the holy grail of informal learning spaces is the achievement of true peer-learning environments. there is ample evidence to indicate that if you can get the students to pull together toward their learning goals, then outcomes will dramatically improve. residential campuses have a distinct advantage in this area because the number of opportunities for social interaction on campus grows exponentially when students also live there. conversely, nonresidential campuses often struggle with student interaction and, ironically, community-building, because students tend to “visit” campus and then return to their “real” lives. online “campuses” face perhaps the greatest challenges in this area because of the interface between instruction, the design of their technology, and the remoteness of the student experience. anything that keeps students interacting with peers longer has been shown to improve learning outcomes. as alexander astin wrote over a quarter century ago: the single most powerful source of influence on the undergraduate student’s academic and personal development is the peer group. in particular, we found that the amount of interaction among peers has far-reaching effects on nearly all areas of student learning and development. (astin, 1993, p. 7) david zandvliet notes, “[a] review of the eco-psychological literature similarly reveals a focus on interpersonal and community factors that reflect value, fairness, respect, and collaboration. this emphasis indicates the importance of community for environmental learning at both the micro and macro levels” (zandvliet, 2012, p. 127). the design and integration of informal spaces into the overall learning mission of the institution is therefore critical. the first level of the stac model is designed to support student-centric needs now and is driven by the need to facilitate productive peer interaction. the key to this level is the development of community. as lave and wenger point out, “[t]he idea of identity/membership is strongly tied to a conception of motivation. if the person is both member of a community and agent of activity, the concept of the person closely links meaning and action in the world” (lave and wenger, 1991, p. 122). most undergraduates—particularly those challenged by the new experience of college—struggle with the concept that they have some power over their own learning journeys. an effective learning environment can provide a key bridge to linking meaning and action in the world. the second level of the stac model represents the supporting elements that the college provides to expose students to new opportunities and support. however, if the needs of the first level are compromised by the second, the overall effectiveness of the space will be substantially undermined. if students find the spaces to be unreliable places to gather and are robbed of agency in the process, they are far less likely to stick in them. the stac model current issues in education, 21(2) 4 figure 1. the stac model for physical spaces. © 2019 author the stac model current issues in education, 21(2) 5 designing physical spaces using the stac model level 1 – the student-driven now the fundamental rule of productive spaces is that they need to provide an environment that is driven by the students first and foremost. if the students are deprived of agency, they are unlikely to persist in the space, and/or they may find alternatives at the first possible opportunity. the two basic levels of the stac model are therefore fundamental to the success of any productive space because they provide a rationale for being in the space in the first place and, more importantly, a rationale for coming into the space and returning to it whenever possible. without these preconditions, any activities related to the second level will have to first overcome the burden of creating an audience before anything programmatically new can even begin. these are not facilitated spaces; they are facilitating spaces. the second-level spaces are where the facilitation occurs. while having a complete suite of services available to students is the ideal circumstance, if first-level criteria are met, the space will still be productive. the inverse is not true. consequently, second-level activities cannot be allowed to impinge on first-level functions at the risk of ruining the student-centric logic of the space. stickiness: the space needs to provide an environment that is welcoming to students and provides a rationale for them to stay on campus to work and interact with peers. the critical aspect of this is that the students—within the bounds of reasonable safety and maintenance considerations—should be able to reside in and reconfigure the space to meet their immediate needs. the space should also accommodate longer-term occupancy and provide food services where appropriate. finally, the décor should reflect these priorities. the best way to get students to congregate is to give this space a “clubhouse” feel where they know they can establish and sustain their communities of practice. toolsets: the space needs to include easily accessible collaborative tools. these fall into four functional categories: 1) group creation – furniture must be mobile and reconfigurable to support a range of group sizes up to 10 people. tables and chairs on casters that can be easily combined to create larger group sets are essential here. round tables are generally to be avoided because they dictate the size of the group. 2) work sharing – whiteboards and student-accessible displays are critical to group functionality. these should also be as mobile as possible throughout the space in order to support different group locations. these tools should also provide a linkage to digital tools such as concept mapping and file repositories. 3) group territories – groups need to be able to establish temporary territories where they can segregate themselves from other groups. there are at least two ways to accomplish this. first, mobile partitions (which could also be writable surfaces such as whiteboards) should be provided. a second option is to build alcoves into the space where groups can congregate. the second solution is a bit more inflexible and uses up edge space which might be better used to support adjacencies (see below). 4) group sustainability – there should be ample power outlets and other relevant connections so that group cohesion is not dictated by battery life. ubiquitous wi-fi is assumed to be a part of the space as well to support access to online resources. level 2 – the college-driven new the second-level functions of these spaces are where the institution can make an impact with its own agency. part of college is exposing students to people and experiences that enrich the stac model current issues in education, 21(2) 6 their skills or views of the world. that is fundamentally what level-two spaces are about. more importantly than the spaces themselves, however, is the people that inhabit those spaces. some of these are regular staff who can expose students to new ways of learning or entirely new disciplines. these spaces can also act as a conduit to the larger community outside the institution. using technology, these experiences can even be geographically unbound, such as bringing in a remote speaker or facilitator via videoconferencing technology. adjacencies: services that support student activity should be located adjacent to the space and not in the space itself. these are staffed areas that may have more limited hours than the main space. these spaces provide specialized capabilities and, more importantly, have support staff who can assist students in exploring new things. transparency is key to linking these spaces to the central hub of informal learning. some examples of adjacencies are: 1) design lab (makerspace) – making and design are increasingly important skills in a world that we can increasingly shape to our needs. students need to learn the theory and practice of making throughout their academic careers. the design lab is an accessible space for creating physical products that can range from 3d printing to vinyl cutting to laser cutting. this should be a low barrier-toentry space that hosts periodic workshops on a variety of topics to include both student requests and staff initiatives. 2) library – information and media creation services are another critical skill modality for the 21st century. more than ever our students need support navigating and creating media. the library is the logical place for this to occur as librarians have always been stewards of information. its role is to provide information support to the space as well as tools associated with a digital media commons to complement the activities of the design lab in the creation of digital products, such as videos, websites, etc. 3) tutoring – a series of small rooms should be provided for tutoring support for students. these rooms can be shared with the main space or the library for quiet study or small group work when they are not staffed by tutors. 4) counseling – many students require emotional support and guidance during their educational journeys. having access to advisors and counselors can meet critical needs that can often determine success or failure in school. community engagement: this is a key intersectional space that can be used to provide a venue for speakers, films, and other kinds of events. in addition to internal initiatives, it should also be used as a key linkage to the outside community in order to expose students to the life of the wider communities in which the school resides (geographical, academic, professional, etc.). like adjacencies, transparency should be provided to the greatest extent possible so that the space can be visible from the main space without competing with it acoustically. this space should be configured as a theater-like area with reconfigurable seating, a large display or projector, and some sort of podium or stage for speakers. it should be acoustically insulated from the larger main collaboration area. designing online spaces using the stac model the same basic principles used in designing physical spaces can be applied to online environments. students studying in online environments need third spaces as much as, if not more than, traditional students. this is because the transition space between “home” and the stac model current issues in education, 21(2) 7 figure 2. the stac model for online spaces. © 2019 author the stac model current issues in education, 21(2) 8 “school” is in many instances even more abrupt and porous. there is little incentive for students to spend more than the minimum time necessary in learning environments when they are literally sitting in their home environments in many instances. however, as was noted in the introduction to this article, it is critical for their success that they spend as much time interacting with virtual learning environments as possible. this will simply not happen without a “sticky” informal environment that exists between and above the formal environments represented by the “classroom” spaces. the stac model avoids the mcluhanesque mistake that characterizes many online environments by focusing on the underlying purposes of any space instead of simply replicating functionalities that might work in a physical environment into a virtual one. effective learning is universal. its modalities aren’t. if you understand why you are designing a space the way that you are, it is possible to create new kinds of online spaces and identify areas of opportunity that augment the human capacity for learning using the tools made available by the disconnection from space and time that online networks offer us. level 1 – the student-driven now students have often been viewed with a level of suspicion in online spaces. there seems to be far more discussion of controlling the environment because of fears such as cheating or electronic vandalism than there is of student agency in online environments. it’s no accident, therefore, that students often perceive their learning environments as being uninviting places to spend their hours online. the logic for level-one spaces remains the same in an online environment even as its realization becomes even more challenging. if we don’t want students to log on, go to their class spaces, and do the minimum necessary before logging off, then consideration must be given to designing student-centric spaces that are at least partially under student control. stickiness: to the extent possible students must feel that they have ownership and control over their online congregation spaces. 1) sticky spaces need to be very obviously accessible throughout any course as this environment will be unexpected to most students. 2) on-demand videoconferencing or other interactive modalities (think fortnite without the shooting) can be used to facilitate a club-like atmosphere. 3) these spaces must have the capability to seamlessly integrate with their existing modes of online social interaction such as twitter, instagram, or messaging. toolsets: the environment needs to include easily accessible collaborative tools. these fall into four categories: 1) group creation – group spaces must be easy to form from a wide variety of areas in the online environment. 2) work sharing – groups should have access to a range of shared interactive tools such as digital whiteboards, concept mapping, and student videoconferencing on demand, in addition to a mechanism for storing and sharing files. 3) group territories – groups need to be able to define their digital territories. this means that they need to be able to control the publicness of their group activities from the rest of the institution (subject to administrator override). group spaces should also have the capacity to span multiple courses and even be disconnected from any online course registration at all. the stac model current issues in education, 21(2) 9 4) group sustainability – groups should also be able to control the persistence of their online spaces, extending even beyond the bounds of a given semester or even graduation. while limits will probably need to be placed on this capability there is benefit in extending learning beyond the traditional boundaries of classroom instruction and even to bringing in non-student members such as community members and mentors. level 2 – the institution-driven new the online environment provides interesting and—for the most part—unexplored possibilities for experience and support facilitation. with the right tools, staff and faculty could fairly easily devise online experiences for students divorced from the need for a physical infrastructure. online tutoring and counseling are perhaps the most developed in this area, but other environments have real potential to transform the online student experience. adjacencies: services need to be packaged with the student experience. the key distinguishing factor of these elements is that they are staffed (and consequently may have more limited hours than other spaces within the lms). these spaces need to be accessible from anywhere within the lms environment and to be readily apparent to student users to be effective. 1) digital makerspace – as in the physical environment, the core of this experience needs to be centered around making and design. there are a number of interesting virtual possibilities that might support these modalities. perhaps this could be a hackerspace with digital programming tools that allow students to build coded creations rather than physical artifacts. another possible model for this would be to create an online design studio with remote 3d printing where students could go into a lab and pick up their products at their convenience. in either case, the staff should be wellversed in the design process and should offer periodic workshops in design and prototyping as they would in a physical space. 2) library – in many ways the online library resembles the physical space more closely than most other environments. this is not surprising in that media has become increasingly disconnected from its physical manifestations. library staff should provide information support via videoconferencing to the environment. media tools associated with a digital media commons can complement the activities of the digital makerspace in the creation of digital products such as videos, websites, and others. the staff would give periodic synchronous and asynchronous workshops on strategies for effective research and communication. 3) tutoring – online tutoring services are a critical part of the support package. synchronous and asynchronous modes should both be supported in this area. this would also be a logical place for workshops on student success strategies. 4) counseling – in a physical environment, it makes sense to place counseling services (ada, course planning, and psychological) in a separate area, but online there is a logic to proximity because students are more likely to struggle in finding these kinds of resources, and privacy is defined much differently if physical proximity is a nonissue. as such, counseling and related student services need to be digitally “adjacent” to all areas of the online learning environment in order for them to be apparent to the student users. the stac model current issues in education, 21(2) 10 community engagement: all of these online environments need to have a built-in tool to create online events where speakers and other events can be broadcast to the larger community rather than within the “walls” of a single course. these tools must be easily accessible and ubiquitous to administrators and faculty wishing to reach out to the larger community. this is actually easier in an online environment as speakers can be remote and the usual physical limitations of room size can be eliminated altogether (although organizers should still have the ability to manage group sizes for interactive reasons). designing environments that create community by drilling down to the basic principles of what the environment is intended to provide, we can establish a set of priorities centered on student empowerment and engagement. at a minimum, any effective informal space must cover the individual needs of students in the stac model (stickiness and toolsets) to create an environment where students will willingly congregate. most of the cost and complexity of this space is associated with institutional-level learning support activities (adjacencies and community engagement). finally, and most importantly, stac must form the basis for the management of the environments, both online and in person. environments can facilitate desired activities. they do not in themselves create those activities. they must be managed according to the priorities of the stac model, giving student empowerment and access to tools priority over all other activities in the environment. informal spaces are, by their very nature, fragile environments, often occupied by students who are unsure of how to make maximum use of them. attempts to control these spaces can easily disrupt these tentative explorations of what it means to be a lifelong learner and diminish the overall dynamic of the campus or online platform as an effective learning environment. that is not the story we want our learning spaces to tell. references astin, a. w. (1993). what matters in college? liberal education, 79(4), 4-16. johansson, f. (2006). the medici effect: what elephants and epidemics can teach us about innovation. boston: harvard business school press. laurillard, d. (2003). rethinking university teaching: a framework for the effective use of learning technologies. new york: routledge. lave, j., & wenger, e. (1991). situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. cambridge: cambridge university press. muller, m. j., & druin, a. (2003). participatory design: the third space in hci. in j. a. jacko & a. sears (eds.), the human-computer interaction handbook: fundamentals, evolving technologies and emerging applications (pp. 1051-1068). hillsdale, nj: l. erlbaum associates. zandvliet, d. b. (2012). development and validation of the place-based learning and constructivist environment survey (places). learning environments research, 15, 125-140. the stac model current issues in education, 21(2) 11 author notes tom haymes ideaspaces guest editor notes sean m. leahy, ph.d. arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff, m.ed macel curtin university, learning futures advisor k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au the stac model current issues in education, 21(2) 12 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf volume 6, number 4 march 7, 2003 issn 1099-839x how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners curt dudley-marling boston college homework is the focus of many versions of educational reform; yet research on the efficacy of homework as a means of raising student achievement is mixed at best. even less certain is the impact of homework on the lives of families, particularly family relationships. this study used interviews to examine how a diverse group of parents whose children struggled academically perceived the effects of homework on their families. in general, the presence of homework had a disruptive effect on the lives of these families, reducing the time available for family activities and diminishing the quality of family interactions. in these families, homework was a carrier for school troubles, a means by which “school troubles” were transformed into “family troubles.” every child . . . should be required to do at least two hours of homework a night, or they're being cheated for the rest of their lives. (newt gingrich, in spring, 1997, p. 16) a taken-for-granted assumption underlying current versions of educational reform is that "there should be a close and intimate relationship between families and education or between home and school in order to achieve effective . . . schooling" (david, 1993, p. 11). recent federal legislation aims "to strengthen partnerships between parents and professionals in meeting the educational needs of children aged birth through 5 and the working relationship between home and school" (u.s. department of education, 1998, on-line) by requiring local school districts to develop written policies for involving parents in their children's education (u.s. department of education, 2002a, on-line). federal and state governments have also sponsored a range of initiatives for encouraging parent involvement. home for the holidays reading together, a campaign to encourage families to read with their children launched by u.s. secretary of education rod paige in december, 2001 (us department of education, 2001), is typical of a wide range of federal and state initiatives for promoting parent involvement in their children's schooling. similar initiatives encouraging parent involvement in their children's schooling have been undertaken in canada, great britain, australia, and new zealand (whitty, power, & halpin, 1998). the desire to "strengthen partnerships between parents and [school] professionals" is based on at least two assumptions: 1) parents "should be available both at home and in the school to work with their children in support of their education" (standing, 1999, p. 57), and 2) student achievement rises when schools make a concerted effort to enlist parents' help in fostering children's learning (u.s. department of education, on-line, 1997). these assumptions about parent involvement are supported by a body of research indicating a strong, positive relationship between parent involvement and higher levels of school achievement, particularly in reading current issues in education vol. 6 no. 4 (balli, demo, & wedman, 1998; green, 1995; lareau, 1989; stevenson & baker, 1987). perhaps the most common manifestation of parents' work in support of their children's education is homework, 1 which is "among the panaceas that policymakers have suggested for improving education" (corno, 1996, p. 27). in a climate of fiscal restraint, increasing the volume of homework has been particularly attractive to politicians and educational policymakers who view the labor of parents as a cost-effective way to enhance learning time as a means of boosting student achievement (keith, 1987; smith, 1998). the u.s. department of education, for example, has made available a variety of materials to help parents with their children's homework as part of the "no child left behind" legislation (u.s. department of education, 2002a, 2002b). demands for more homework are bolstered by the conventional wisdom that homework has the power to foster discipline, responsibility, and initiative (mcdermott, goldman, & varenne, 1984). a publication from the u.s. department of education (1987) makes the additional claim that homework has the power to increase students' love of learning in and out of school. newt gingrich's desire that "every child . . . do at least two hours of homework a night" (in spring, 1997, p. 16) remains unfulfilled, but, since the early 1980s, there has been a significant increase in the amount of homework children do each evening. the amount of time sixto eight-year-old american school children spend doing homework has nearly tripled in the last twenty years from forty-four minutes to over two hours per week (hofferth, 1998) and, in some school districts, even pre-kindergartners and kindergartners may have at least thirty minutes of homework each night (loupe, 1999). the proliferation of books written to help parents cope with the demands of homework (e.g., canter & hausner, 1988; rosemond, 1990) attests to the significance of homework in the lives of contemporary families. the data on the efficacy of increasing homework as a means of improving student achievement are mixed, however. numerous studies have been marshalled either to support (e.g., black, 1996; huntsinger, 1999; keith, 1982, 1986) or to challenge (e.g., cooper, 1989, 1999; cooper, lindsay, nye, & greathouse, 1998; corno, 1996; paschal, 1984) claims made about the benefits of homework. however, because of "the number and complexity of influences on the effectiveness of homework, no simple, general finding that proves or disproves the utility of homework has been forthcoming" (cooper, 1989, p. 5). in the most comprehensive review of research on homework undertaken to date, harris cooper (1989) concluded that the effect of homework on academic achievement is largely a function of grade level; that is, homework has the greatest effect on the academic achievement of high school-age students, but has only a minimal effect on elementary students. research on homework has overwhelmingly focused on the positive effects of homework, usually in terms of academic achievement. researchers have rarely considered the possibility that homework might have negative effects for children or their families. an exception is an ethnographic study by varenne and mcdermott (1999) which suggests that homework may force parents into unwanted roles that strain, at least temporarily, family relations (varenne & mcdermott, 1999). other research suggests that homework may also trouble family relationships by reducing the time families have available for participating in leisure activities (cooper, 1989; kralovec & buell, 2000; samway, 1986). it is likely, however, that not all families experience homework in the same way accounting for the fact that while some parents demand more homework for their children (strother, 1984) other parents view homework as a "curse put on parents" (mcdermott, goldman, & varenne, 1984, p. 391). the variation in parents' responses to homework may be obscured by the nearly exclusive reliance on quantitative methodology to study homework. quantitative methods, with their emphasis on statistically constructed average parents, efface the meaning of parent involvement for individual mothers and fathers. research and policy discourses on parental involvement, including homework, also suffer from a fixation on normative families. smith (1998), for example, observed that, "schools, school curriculum, and the professional training of teachers orient to the idealized middle-class family of two parents, one of whom (understood usually to be the mother) does not work in paid employment and is available to support the schools her children attend" (p. 23). in general, parents' involvement in their children's homework has been presented as an "unproblematic, ungendered concept, free from class and cultural associations" (standing, 1999, p. 57). it is clear, however, that the implications of parent involvement are not the same for all parents. homework may pose a special challenge for students who struggle academically, for example (bursuck, 1994); therefore, homework may be particularly disruptive for their families (lareau, 1989). varenne and mcdermott (1999) observed that homework is often a means by which children's role as people "not good at doing school" is imported into the home. if identities are constructed in the context of relationships organized around particular activities file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number4/index.html%23endnote1 how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 3 (gergen, 1990), then homework by infusing the tensions of children's struggles in school into ordinary daily activities provides the occasion for creating dysfunctional identities for both students and their families. the research reported here addresses the effects of homework on families and family relations; specifically, how a diverse group of parents each of whom had a child who struggled academically in school perceived the effects of homework on their families. in general, the data presented here indicate that homework seriously disrupted the lives of the families interviewed for this study. i begin by describing the research methods employed in this study including the sample, data collection procedures, and data analysis. i then summarize the findings of the study; specifically how the parents i interviewed perceived the effects of homework on their families and family relationships. this section is organized according to the major themes that emerged from the data analysis: 1) parents' perceptions of the demands of homework; 2) parents' involvement in children's homework; 3) parents' taking on the role of their children's teachers; and, 4) the effect of homework on family routines and relationships. i conclude by discussing the implications of this study for teachers and educational policy makers. the study the purpose of this study was to better understand how parents of children for whom school is a struggle experience their children's homework. in other words, i was interested in parents' experiences with homework and how homework affected their lives and the lives of other family members. interviewing is a particularly useful technique for "understanding the experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience" (seidman, 1998, p. 3). therefore, i conducted twenty-three interviews with families who self-identified as having at least one child for whom school was a struggle. the interviews were open-ended and ranged from forty-five minutes to one hour and fifty minutes in length, averaging just over one hour for each interview. sixteen of the families i interviewed lived in the canadian province of ontario and seven families resided in the mid-western united states. the participants included married couples and single mothers, although, even in two-parent families, some fathers were unable or unwilling to be interviewed. in all, i interviewed six single mothers; ten mothers from two-parent families; and, seven couples. therefore, the findings presented here tend to favor the perspectives of mothers. the sample included parents from a range of racial, socioeconomic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds. i interviewed asian (2), black (8), and white (13) parents. five families i interviewed were immigrants to canada. two families were mandarin speakers who did not speak english in their homes. most of the parents interviewed were middle-class, but the interviewees included poor and working class families. less than half of the parents i interviewed had completed college. several parents indicated that they had not graduated from high school including a mother who completed only six years of schooling. four of the parents i interviewed had graduate degrees. potential interviewees for this study were identified with the help of university colleagues and school personnel although i knew three families before i undertook this study. for example, three families were identified with the assistance of a university-based sociologist whose work focuses on black, urban communities. the two mandarinspeaking mothers i interviewed were identified with the help of a multicultural consultant working in a large school board. six families were identified with the help of the director of a university-affiliated reading clinic in southwestern ohio. a woman who organizes tutoring services for families of students with learning disabilities in southern ohio recommended two families to me. several other families were located with the assistance of four principals working in southern ontario schools. one family was located by placing an ad in a newsletter published by a private school in ontario. other families were identified through the use "snowball sampling" (that is, parents i interviewed sometimes suggested the names of other parents they thought i might be interested in interviewing). the struggling learners discussed with parents included eight girls and fifteen boys ranging from eight to seventeen years of age. most of these students attended public schools although two were being home-schooled and two others attended private schools. there were significant differences in the degree to which the children i discussed with parents struggled in school. the majority of the children did poorly in most school subjects and a few exhibited serious behaviour problems. twelve of the children had been identified as learning disabled or language disordered and one child had been identified as gifted. one student was enrolled in an esl program. five students had never been formally labelled, but had received some type of remedial assistance during their school careers. what all the children had in common was their parents' perceptions that they were not doing well in school. i relied on open-ended questions to get parents to talk about the nature of their children's struggles in school and how school troubles had current issues in education vol. 6 no. 4 affected them and their families. when interviews bogged down i referred to an interview guide (weiss, 1995) which indicated the general areas i was interested in talking about with parents, including, for example, queries about the effects of their child's struggles in school in general and the effects of homework in particular on family relationships and routines. i read transcriptions of the audiotaped interviews several times before attempting to generate categories that would account for the interview data. as i read and re-read the data, these categories emerged as core themes from parents' accounts of their families' responses to school failure. these themes did not emerge from any a priori categories or theoretical frames. the data were then coded according to the themes that were then used as the basis of an analysis of how school troubles affected the lives of these families (bogdan & biklen, 1982; weiss, 1995). specifically, data were analyzed through a process bogdan and biklen (1982) call "modified analytic induction"; that is, data were collected and analyzed to develop a "loose descriptive theory" that encompassed all cases of the phenomena" (p. 66), in this case, how a diverse group of parents perceived the effects of homework on the lives of their families. the impact of homework on families of struggling learners the parents interviewed for this study indicated that homework was a significant presence in their homes occupying the time of children and parents who monitored and supported children's homework, often taking on the role of their child's teacher. parents indicated that homework frequently reduced time available for family leisure time activities and domestic chores. overall, the demands of homework disrupted the lives of these families, frequently upsetting family relationships and denying parents and children many of the pleasures of family life. these themes are documented in the following sections. the demands of homework homework is a "simple and well-accepted fact" (mcdermott, goldman, & varenne, 1984, p. 391) in most homes, but its presence looms larger in some homes than others. edna bunker 2 the mother of an eighth-grade boy who struggled in school, commented, "[my son] spends hours and hours and hours on homework. all weekend long, all night long. it's dreadful. just dreadful." she added, "there's more to life than homework." mrs. bunker frequently admonished her son to "hurry up so that we can do something else" but homework rarely left time for "something else." betty springs also complained that her ninth-grade son spent "two, three, and four hours a night" on homework to "get just kind of passing grades." betty's husband, martin, added: "sam wasn't sitting in front of the tv and watching television. he was doing his homework. . . . no student should be doing that much homework." the springs and bunkers might have expected that homework assignments would occasionally intrude on their families' leisure time. still, the demands of their sons' homework went beyond what these parents considered reasonable, a perspective shared by nearly all of the parents i interviewed. 3 sheila mcisaac, an irish immigrant, commented on her son's first few years in school: "there was always homework. . . . there were hours of homework. in the evening sitting at the kitchen table just doing it over and over and over again. it was quite stressful." the intrusion of homework into their family life eventually led the mcisaac's to home-school their son. john cooper had a similar perspective on his son's homework. "peter was bringing home seven, eight, nine pages of [home]work a night. . . . i just thought it was ridiculous for a first grader to do so much [home]work . . . two, two and a half, three hours. " mrs. cooper added, "it wasn't difficult work for him to complete. it just took all evening. and sometimes i was getting up in the morning, 'okay, you didn't finish this page, you have to do it before you go to school.'" single mother betty blake offered a similar assessment of the heavy demands of homework when her son was in second grade. "timmy was bringing home homework like he was in high school," she said. "i couldn't believe it. we'd get home and we'd be doing homework until ten o'clock at night." clearly, homework was a significant presence in the homes of the parents i interviewed 3 and parents indicated that their children's learning difficulties were a significant factor in the amount of homework they had each night. the "hours" of homework timmy blake brought home each night, for example, was mostly work he had not completed in school because he spent so much time attending to "what was going on around him," as his mother put it. parents also emphasized the effect academic difficulties had on the amount of time it took for their children to complete homework assignments. children who struggled with reading, for example, had particular difficulty completing homework assignments. mr. mcisaac observed that homework “would take so long [because] there were a lot of problems involved with reading. math problems that involved a lot of reading would be so laborious that it would take forever. it would take hours to do homework.” file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number4/index.html%23endnote2 file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number4/index.html%23endnote3 file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number4/index.html%23endnote3 how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 5 ralph thorn recalled how his son al's distractibility influenced the amount of time he spent working with al's homework. “it would take us two, three hours, four hours every night,” he told me, “to get through fifteen, twenty minutes worth of homework”: in a household where there are other outside noises going on and everything, the slightest little disruption . . . al would focus on what was going on; it was just that al was focussing on everything that was going on …it was a pretty difficult task for both of us. edna bunker blamed her son's "perfectionism" for the amount of time it took him to complete his homework: this year he had to do something for language arts and he was 98% finished, [but] because he is a perfectionist, it wasn't finished enough for him. he was ready to throw the whole thing away. i said, "mike, just do the good copy, just hand it in as it is. . . . at least you will get a grade." but he was ready to dump the whole thing because he gets so frustrated if it's not the way he wants it. he spends hours and hours and hours on homework. poor organizational skills was another reason mike had difficulty with his homework. every afternoon mrs. bunker met her son at the door with a "big stop sign" which was her humorous way of asking her son to stop and think: "do you know what homework you have tonight?" "do you have what you need to complete your homework?" often he did not. in general, homework was a significant presence in the homes of the parents i interviewed that occupied the time of children and parents. in these families, if children had a lot of homework, then so did their parents. parents’ involvement in children’s homework many educators recommend that parents find a quiet place for children to do homework away from the noise and distractions of family activities (strother, 1984). certainly, children will seek the help of parents with the spelling of a word, a difficult math problem, or confusing directions and teachers will occasionally assign projects that require the assistance of parents. most parents will also assume responsibility for monitoring children's homework. but, it is often understood that homework is the child's responsibility, not the parents' (keith, 1986). the parents i interviewed indicated that, for their children, homework was rarely a solitary activity. diane riggs, for example, continually referred to her son's homework in our interview as "our homework" and so it was for most of the parents i interviewed. in these families, homework was a collaborative activity involving children and parents. there were differences in the level of support children required and the kind of assistance parents were capable of providing, but, if homework made significant demands on the time of students who struggled in school, it made similar demands on their parents. carol dumay bemoaned the fact that when her daughter georgina was in first and second grade she wasn't able to do her homework independently. "[homework] was a problem. i had to sit right there with her. i couldn't leave her on her own . . . 'cause she didn't work independently. she always wanted you there, to help her." betty blake indicated that her son timmy required a high level of support with math problems. "i understand that i have to help with homework," she told me, "but the depth in which i have to help him with his homework is what frustrates me. like, i don't understand how come he is not picking this up at school. he should be able to just come home and do the work." but, since timmy could not "just come home and do the work," his homework was also his mother's homework. many parents of elementary school children, like carol dumay and betty blake, told me that their children needed constant support while they did homework, but even parents of older students indicated that their daughters and sons often insisted that a parent sit with them while they did homework. edna bunker spoke of her thirteen-year-old son mike's need for her to "be there" while he did his homework: mike wants someone to sit one-onone with him [while he does his homework]. and so i'll do that for a while. but i get frustrated too because it goes on and on and on. it's not like he can just sit there and get the stuff done quickly. it goes on and on . . . and so it's frustrating. diane riggs also talked about the demands of supporting her son's homework: every night there's always something. . . . his math he's very good at so i don't have to worry about that, unless it comes out with word problems, then i have to read it for him. . . . and if it's grammar i have to read through it. . . . or it might be a book report or current issues in education vol. 6 no. 4 something like that and i have to help him with his spelling [and] trying to figure out what he wants to say. so i'm doing a lot of the work. tanya wallace recalled how she and her husband supported their daughter's writing assignments by helping her to edit her written work. "we used to help catherine a lot with editing her writing because of her spelling. . . . in seventh and eighth grade we would edit for her. we tried everything. but then rewriting took so long." and, as other parents told me, the time homework took was stressful and frustrating for tanya, her husband, and catherine. if all the parents didn't feel that they needed to sit with their children all the time they were doing homework, nearly all the parents i interviewed discussed the amount of time they had to spend monitoring children's homework and helping them to organize their school work. parents generally felt that without careful monitoring their children would have difficulty even beginning their homework. "mike is so disorganized," mrs. bunker told me. "he comes home for lunch and he comes home at the end of the day and you're [always] monitoring." monitoring included making sure mike knew what homework he had been assigned; seeing that he had all the resources and materials needed to complete his assignments; and, checking to see that his homework had been completed. mike was among many children who, their parents told me, often failed to write down assignments or left assignments at school. catherine connor's description of her son, max, who was in fourth grade at the time of our interview, echoed a common theme among the parents i interviewed. "typically, max does not bring home the textbook that's got the homework he needs. he always forgets that." edna bunker often drove her son back to the school to collect materials he needed for his homework, something other parents i interviewed only threatened to do. if parents felt that they needed to monitor their children's homework, "nagging" may have been the principal means parents used to make sure their children's homework was completed. single mother, elma kinkead, described what she said was a typical interaction between her and her teenage daughter over homework. "every day i go in and ask andrea: 'have you done your homework?' 'what are you doing?' 'what kind of marks are you getting?'" diane riggs shared a similar story. "i'm badgering my son every night for his homework," she said. "you know, he loves the computer, so he's on the computer. 'roger, come on, let's do our homework.'" edna bunker spoke for many parents when she told me, "it's always: 'do you have it done?' all day long. if you would hear us, that's all we're saying. hurry up and get it done." the parents i interviewed expended considerable time and emotional energy getting children to complete homework assignments. but, feeling the pressure for their children to do well at school, parents frequently took on roles that went beyond either monitoring homework or helping children with homework assignments. taking on the role of teacher when tiffany scott was in second grade, tiffany's teacher told her mother that tiffany "wasn't up to her level." when ms. scott asked what she should do, tiffany's teacher suggested that she "work with tiffany at home." like maria scott, many of the parents i interviewed took up the challenge to "work with" their children at home. betty lau spent up to two hours each night doing what she called "mom's homework" with her daughter. "mom's homework" focussed on an age-graded "super workbook," full of drills and exercises in math, reading, writing, and spelling, which, according to mrs. lau, was frequently used by other parents in the chinese community. mrs. lau was convinced that these efforts were helping her daughter. "in bonnie's school," she told me, "they are only teaching them two digit addition and subtraction. . . . but now my daughter can do multiplication." like betty lau, many of the parents i interviewed took a direct role in teaching their children school-related skills. the moores attempted to strengthen their son archie's math skills by "drilling him on his math facts," as they put it. the thorns often "got jars of pennies out on the table and tried to show [their son] the concept of numbers and subtraction and multiplication." carol dumay supported her daughter by "letting georgina read to me [and] i read to her constantly." carol also offered georgina more explicit support by drawing on strategies she had learned from the staff at a university reading clinic. celine street saw her efforts to teach her son to read as a means of overcoming what she believed were the shortcomings of her son's teacher(s): i read to him, he would read to me. we would read a book together. it started with the disney baby characters. you get a story and you read some words and there's a character. the character will tell you what that word is. so i would read and he would tell me what the character was. or i would read and then we would switch it around. he would read and i would do the how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 7 character. within two months, i had michael reading. betty springs, a former teacher, taught her son strategies for writing term papers. similarly, alice mandel took advantage of the knowledge she had acquired during her graduate training in education to help her daughter learn specific skills alice believed her daughter needed to overcome her "learning disability": before exams i spent hours and hours with her . . . showing her how to study, how to make herself ask questions. when i ask her questions, she writes them out. and then we review them. help her remember things. give her mnemonics, that kind of thing. overall, the parents i interviewed emphasized their feeling that homework ate up significant chunks of time for them and their children. a few parents saw value in the school work their children brought home. mr. and mrs. mcisaac, for example, told me that, although they resented the intrusion of homework in their family life, it was "mostly time we enjoyed." but, overwhelmingly, the parents i interviewed were ambivalent about homework. still, most parents would likely have agreed with diane riggs about the importance of helping children with their homework: i have to make sure that roger's got his homework done. if i don't, then he gets behind and the teacher gets cross with him and . . . he starts feeling badly about himself. if he can keep up and at least have his homework done, then he's all right. it's when he gets behind that he gets panicky and starts feeling badly about himself. the cost of letting homework slide can be high, as mrs. riggs suggests. but the toll of homework on household routines and family relationships was also high for the families i interviewed. writing about her relationship to her son's homework, educator katherine samway (1986) lamented that homework had harmed her "emotional well-being as a parent ... there have been too many evenings when i have allowed teacher-imposed obligations to supercede . . . family needs and interests" (p. 352). the sense that "teacher-imposed obligations" in the form of homework often interfered with family needs was emphasized by nearly all of the parents i interviewed. parents indicated that the demands of homework reduced the time available for domestic chores and diminished the pleasure they were able to derive from family relationships. “fussing and fighting [over homework]” homework demanded that parents spend significant amounts of time with children on schoolwork, but these interactions were frequently tense and frustrating for both parents and their children. "school affected my relationship with robert," mrs. mcisaac told me. tension over homework was one of the reasons she and her husband decided to remove robert from school in favour of home schooling: i think if i had kept robert in school it would have caused a barrier between us. there was always homework. there were hours of homework. in the evening sitting at the kitchen table just it doing over and over and over again. so it was quite stressful. so when we took him out of school [for home schooling], it removed the third party.... there was like the pressure off all the time. having him out [of school] is easier. i think it could have only gotten worse. maria scott recalled similarly stressful interactions around homework with her daughter: i'd say, tiffany, "okay, let's read. i'll read one page and you read a page." so i'd read a page and she'd listen to me read and then, when it's time for her to read, she'd get frustrated when she got stuck on a word. . . . she just sat there and got so upset. and sometimes she would make me upset and i would say, "tiffany, you know this word. start with the first letter and sound it out." and she'd get upset so we're both sitting there trying to figure out this word. i'd get so frustrated. [sometimes] i would yell, "well just go! just leave me alone!" and she'd get upset and started to cry. ms. scott believed that homework did neither her nor her daughter much good: "it damaged my daughter as well as our relationship," she said. "whenever we did homework we were fussing and fighting. betty blake also worried that fights over homework had harmed her relationship with her son. "i tend to yell a lot," she told me: i don't spank him, but i yell. i know that's not good for him. . . . i try not to yell, but i don't know what else current issues in education vol. 6 no. 4 to do. . . . i get so frustrated. i don't even know what to say any more. i'll spend half a day showing him how to do something and he'll know how to do it as along as i'm sitting here. but if i move and say do it on your own, all of a sudden it's like, "what?" he gets very upset when i yell at him to the point where he cries.... i think the fact that i get frustrated, it might have affected our relationship molly reeves also recalled tense interactions over homework: it was one day last week. it was some of his spelling words: fastfaster, tall-taller. just add "-er," you know. and there was a little story he had to read that had some of his spelling words. and "fast," he got it, but every time we got to "faster," he didn't get it. and there was no difference, except the ending. we just kept arguing over it. and finally i said, "all right, just let it go, forget it. go on." and he went into his room. fussing, fighting, and arguing over homework was a theme common to most of my interviews. like betty blake, parents believed that "education was important" which meant that homework was important, too. "working with" their children was also a way to help their children do better in school or, at least, keep from falling further behind. perhaps this is why parents of children who receive average or below average grades may be especially likely to desire more homework for their children (cooper, 1989). still, the parents interviewed for this study also acknowledged that the costs of getting children to complete their homework monitoring, encouraging, nagging, driving back to school to retrieve materials, and "fighting, fussing, and arguing" was also high. for some of these parents, the aggravation and tension over homework outweighed the benefits of getting it done. "it's not worth it," as one parent told me. this may have accounted for the willingness of the moores and the thibaults to accept their children's claims that they "didn't have any homework." they probably knew differently, but to accept the claim their children had "no homework" was easier than fighting over homework. david thibault put it well: you fear that if your kid doesn't do well in school then their life is going to be hell. what they have to do is take school seriously and always do better at it. but in trying to push your kid to do better at school . . . you end up ruining the relationship that you have with your kid. when school is over you want to have a good relationship with your children and the school gets in the way. homework may be important, but, if the cost of doing homework includes strained relationships with family members, then it may not be "worth it." conclusion most current versions of education reform emphasize parent involvement as a key to academic success. although broadly conceived, parent involvement most often takes the form of supporting children's homework. the assertion that homework increases academic achievement directly by increasing "time on task" and, indirectly, by promoting personal qualities essential for future academic success (e.g., persistence, diligence, the ability to delay gratification [bempechat 1998]) has achieved the status of common sense even if little research can be marshalled to support these claims (cooper, 1989). whatever the benefits of homework, public debates over homework have given little attention to its potential costs, especially the potential violence homework can do to family routines and relationships. my interviews indicate that for some parents, in this case a group parents whose children struggled in school, homework can be a nearly intolerable burden. the parents i interviewed indicated that the amount of time children devoted to homework limited opportunities for other family activities and created resentment among parents and children. the time parents spent on their children's schoolwork frequently disrupted domestic routines and undermined relationships between parents and children and between spouses. the parents interviewed for this study also offered powerful evidence that stressful interactions over homework threatened long-term relationships between mothers and fathers and their children. in these families, homework was a carrier for school troubles, a means for transforming "school troubles" into "family troubles." educational policy makers, politicians, and others demanding more homework as a means of boosting academic achievement must balance the (limited) academic benefits of homework (cooper, 1989) against the potential social costs of increasing children's homework burden. as one of the mothers i interviewed put it, "there's more to life than homework and school." the intensification of how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 9 schooling through homework denies many parents and children the pleasures of family life and, as the data collected for this study indicate, the costs of homework are especially high for families that include children for whom school is a struggle, punishing parents for having children who do not fit the structures of schooling as well as other children. i am not recommending that schools suspend homework merely out of consideration of families like those i interviewed for this study. whatever the academic benefits, homework is a wellentrenched practice in our schools that is not going to go away anytime soon. indeed, teachers who do not routinely assign homework may be liable to severe criticism that they are failing to promote high academic standards. rather, the challenge is for parents, teachers, and school administrators to work together to create homework policies that are considerate of the range of ways families are constituted (e.g., two working parents, one working parent and a stay-at-home parent, single parent), the different ways families live their lives, and the need for schools to maintain "high standards." such policies must also be considerate of the findings of this study that, for some families, particularly families that include children who struggle in school, homework is a heavy burden that, from the parents' perspective at least, is simply "not worth it." endnotes 1. for purposes of this paper, homework includes all school-initiated work children are expected to complete outside of normal school hours, usually at home and often with the support of their parents. 2. to protect the identities of the parents interviewed for this study pseudonyms are used throughout. 3. the disruptive effects of homework on family life were emphasized in eighteen of the twenty-three interviews i conducted. references balli, s. j., demo, d. h., & wedman, j. f. 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(1998). devolution and choice in education: the school, the state, and the market. london: open university press. http://www.ed.gov/pubs/faminvolve/local2.html http://www.ed.gov/pubs/faminvolve/local2.html http://www.ed.gov/legislation/goals2000/theact/sec401.html http://www.ed.gov/legislation/goals2000/theact/sec401.html http://www.ed.gov/pressreleases/12-2001/12172001.html http://www.ed.gov/pressreleases/12-2001/12172001.html http://www.ed.gov/legislation/esea02/pg2.html#sec1118 http://www.ed.gov/legislation/esea02/pg2.html#sec1118 http://www.ed.gov/pubs/parents/homework/index.html http://www.ed.gov/pubs/parents/homework/index.html how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 11 2003 article citation dudley-marling, c. (2003, march 7). how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners. current issues in education [on-line], 6(4). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume6/number4/ author notes curt dudley-marling boston college lynch school of education dudleyma@bc.edu curt dudley-marling is a professor in the lynch school of education at boston college where his teaching and research focus on struggling readers and their parents and the politics of literacy. he has written nine books including readers and writers with a difference: a holistic approach to teaching struggling readers and writers (with lynn rhodes) and living with uncertainty: the messy reality of classroom practice, winner of the james n. britton award for inquiry in the english language arts. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber november 13, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation dudley-marling, c. (2003). how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners. current issues in education, 6(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1681 file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number4/index.html mailto:dudleyma@bc.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1681 identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 1 volume 21, issue 3 december 9, 2020 issn 1099-839x identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers kate rollert french wayne state university abstract: drawing on literature around the first-year experiences of new teachers working in urban schools, this article examines the changing beliefs of brand-new urban educators as they progress throughout their first year as teacher of record. using the moje and luke (2009) theoretical framework for identity formation and development, this study examines how teachers’ beliefs and dispositions develop in tandem with teacher identity through various social interactions. findings suggest that new teachers are more likely to change their beliefs when they undergo various stages of emotional conflict and will turn to more experienced colleagues at their new school for advice and insight. this can contribute to belief change and affect classroom practice. teachers were more likely to change their beliefs during the middle of the school year. implications for teacher induction and development are discussed. keywords: teachers beliefs and practices, belief influence and change, urban education citation: french, k. r. (2020). identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers. current issues in education, 21(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1822 accepted: october/27/2020 identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers historically speaking, public schooling in america was developed as a means to bring greater parts of society together in an era when division amongst social class, immigrant or nativeborn status, and religious affiliation caused great dissonance (reese, 2011). early public school advocates promised that schools would “restore social harmony” and create moral and law abiding citizens as students learned to work together, and through their differences, in the common school classroom (reese, 2011, p. 11). however, these early foundations also laid room for conventional eurocentric values and practices—a tradition in american schooling that is still widely seen today. continuous bouts of school reform have challenged eurocentric school norms over the past decade in an effort to create learning environments that are fair and socially just (hess, 2011). however, greater wide-scale reform movements that focus on equity and improving the http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1822 french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 2 educational outcomes for students from historically underserved populations, such as policy under no child left behind and race to the top, have experienced mediocre success and increasing criticism (ravitch, 2010). one theory of why education policy fails to achieve its aim is because of problems with implementation. weatherly and lipsky (1977) discussed this idea of poor implementation as street level bureaucracy, where individuals tend to cope with policy (instead of fully accepting it) and prioritize their own personal incentives. in other words, implementation of policy is only as good as the last implementer. mary kennedy discussed this idea further in her book titled: inside teaching: how classroom life undermines reform. kennedy (2005) argued that education policy fails because teachers only implement parts of policy that they feel are important or have value. findings such as these suggest that teachers act in their own perceived best interests and could have a greater effect on improving educational outcomes for students than educational policy alone. new teachers with a dedication to teaching for social justice and addressing educational debts between students from high and low socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds, in particular, are entering the classroom more rapidly than ever before (picower, 2012). however, research shows that this vigor exhibited during the early-career years of new teachers quickly dwindles as teachers gain more years of experience—particularly in under-resourced urban schools (ingersoll, 2001). understanding how new teachers experience their first year in the classroom and how these experiences play a role in their developing teaching practice is an area of research that needs further exploration (wilson et al., 2002). this need is even more vital in urban areas where new teachers who are empowered with visions for reform “fall prey to the stereotypes and deficit thinking that is part of the air they breathe in urban public schools” (picower, 2007, p. 16). the beliefs of teachers could have serious implications for long-term student outcomes and growth (gershenson et al., 2016). therefore, this study seeks to understand the experiences of new teachers working in an urban school and how their beliefs and practices change over the course of their first year. a case study approach reveals the unique individual experiences of five new teachers as they embrace new influences and undergo emotional turbulence during their first year in the classroom as teacher of record. very few studies explicitly examine how and what influences new teachers during their first few years of teaching (hopkins & spillane, 2014). understanding these factors of influence, and how they influence new teachers’ perception and practice is one step in understanding how schools can work to better prepare their teachers for work in challenging environments. specifically, i address the following research question: research question 1: how are the beliefs of teachers impacted during their first year of teaching? for this study, i chose to capitalize the words “white” and “black” when they were applied in a racial context. i made this decision because “white” and “black” are just as important to one’s identity as their geographical or ancestral origins—such as when one identifies as “irish,” “chicano,” or “african american.” french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 3 background on first-year teachers new teachers take on a vulnerable role when they embark on their first year as teacher of record (trent, 2011). they often experience doubt and face many challenges navigating the new terrain of their own classroom, school, and community (howard & milner, 2014). new teachers are also most likely to experience significant stages of emotional turbulence as they progress through what ellen moir (1990) describes as the six phases of first-year teaching. according to moir (1990), new teachers experience the six phases of teaching when they begin their first year as teacher of record. these phases are consecutive and coincide with the traditional academic calendar. anticipation is the first phase new teachers face when they embark on their first year. during this phase new teachers tend to romanticize the position and have a sense of excitement that carries them through their first several weeks of school. the second phase, termed survival, begins during the early months of the school year and is often a very overwhelming phase for new teachers. during this stage, new teachers tend to struggle to manage multiple responsibilities and feel overwhelmed with the many new duties on their plate. often new teachers will commit to 70-hour work weeks during this phase (moir, 1990). disillusionment is the third phase new teachers face. during this phase, first-year teachers typically have low morale and feel defeated in their quest to be a good teacher. during this phase teachers can have lower self-esteem and experience more self-doubt. classroom management is also a great concern during this phase, which—in addition to formal classroom evaluations that are often given during this timeframe—can cause added stress. this phase typically extends from the end of october to the middle of january. rejuvenation is the fourth phase that generally finds teachers with a feeling of confidence that that they have a better understanding of their role as a teacher. this phase continues until early spring, when teachers then enter the fifth phase of reflection. during this final phase new teachers feel that the end of the year is fast approaching and they start to reflect on what they could have done better over the year and how they will make these changes in the coming year. this phase typically lasts from the middle of april to the end of may. figure 1 moir’s (1990) timeline representing new teachers’ attitude progression over the first year as teacher of record. french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 4 figure 1 illustrates the various phases new teachers face during their first year as teachers of record. i used this timeline to guide data collection and also to examine how the timing of an experience affected newly acquired beliefs. this timeline also made it possible to identify potential patterns amongst study participants—including when they were most likely to change their beliefs. i then compared these patterns to determine what experiences/ phases of the moir (1990) model occurred during these belief changes. i also used this data to track potential patterns of occurrences in phases where teachers were more likely to change their beliefs, keep their beliefs, or return to a prior set of beliefs. teachers beliefs former educational research has suggested that the beliefs of teachers are difficult to change (roehler et al., 1988)—which subsequently led to a trend in research suggesting that teacher preparation programs have limited impact on teacher beliefs (gallagher, 1994). however, some more recent educational research suggests that teachers’ beliefs can change depending on the unique experiences of each teacher (trent, 2011). new teachers, in this case, have emerged as more vulnerable to this type of belief change, while more experienced teachers are less likely to change their beliefs (tschannen-moran & hoy, 2007). because we know that teachers’ beliefs can affect classroom practice and that their perceptions of student ability, value, and motivation to learn (anderman et al., 2011), teachers’ beliefs are very important to study and examine. for example, if a teacher believes that students from poor or minority backgrounds are less capable of achieving than students from more affluent, privileged backgrounds, then it is possible that this teacher will treat poor and minority students much differently in the classroom. the differences in interactions between these belief-constructed groups could be subtle—such as not calling on a student when her or his hand is raised, or blatant— such as repeatedly targeting the same african-american student for not following a classroom rule when other students breaking the rule are not reprimanded, or overt—such as seating all of the english-language learners in the back of the classroom (benokraitis & feagin, 1995). similarly, if teachers believe that their students are incapable of meeting certain behavioral or academic standards, they may settle for mediocre expectations. this idea of lack of attention toward students from less privileged groups is in direct conflict with teaching for social justice. understanding how teachers’ beliefs are formed, influenced, changed, or unchanged is an important prerequisite of study in many areas of educational research. in contrast to earlier research on beliefs—particularly on the inability for beliefs to change—emerging research illustrates how not only beliefs can change, but also under which conditions beliefs may change. this is particularly useful in understanding the evolving beliefs of new teachers as they develop their own practices in early-career years and face new sources of influence. theoretical framework like many other professionals in novice roles, new teachers undergo a period of change in creating, understanding, and enacting their new identity as teacher of record (beijaard et al., 2004). this dynamic process is often challenging as novice teachers struggle to connect previous educational experiences and/or coursework with current understandings of teaching and learning from new perceptions of their school community (cohen, 2010). while some argue that identity formation occurs on an individual level—and often in isolation from others—moje and luke (2009) suggest that identity is constructed through social interactions and evolves overtime. specifically, moje and luke (2009) suggest that individuals form a new identity in part through french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 5 membership in a particular group or group affiliation. for example, as a new white teacher begins her first year, she may be associated with other white teachers at her new school because she is perceived to teach and develop in a similar fashion, and respond in particular scenarios, as the other white teachers would develop and respond. while membership in this group may give a new teacher an instant sense of belonging and source for advice, it could also lead to disbanded affiliations with other groups that embrace more equitable teaching practices and work toward balanced learning environments. by situating this study with the moje and luke (2009) identity framework, i was able to observe teachers changing beliefs and dispositions as a part of their identity formation when they engaged in social interactions over the course of their first year. the moje and luke (2009) identity framework initially examined teacher identity and its relation to literacy and instruction, but is also appropriate to examine the belief changes and identity formation of new teachers in this study to address the influence of social experiences—and the formation of new relationships—that play a role in developing professional identities of new teachers as they understand their role in the classroom and greater educational community. methodology i used an embedded case study to study five new teachers working in the same school. i chose an embedded case study model because it allowed me to generate data from surveys, interviews, and classroom observations in an effort to understand the experiences of these teachers as they progressed throughout their first year as teacher of record (scholz & tietje, 2011). overall, i conducted 30 interviews, 15 classroom observations, and 15 surveys. i also used the moir (1990) first year phases of teaching model as a timeline and reference point for data collection. the moir (1990) model theorizes what teachers are feeling and emotionally experiencing during various points of their first academic year in the classroom. as a general framework for teachers, the moir (1990) model suggests that teachers begin their year with a romanticized idealism on what they can achieve in their classroom (anticipation phase), which quickly dwindles into an uncertainty after many weeks of being bombarded with new issues (survival phase). after a few more weeks this uncertainty is confirmed with feelings of ineptitude (disillusionment). typically, after a holiday break, teachers start to feel a bit more competent in their work (rejuvenation phase), and traditionally end their academic year more optimistic about their teaching in the future (reflection phase). while this model is not a guarantee, it is often what new teachers experience as they transition throughout their first year (moir & stobbe, 1995)—suggesting that this experience is the norm for most teachers instead of the exception. by following the trend of moir’s (1990) six phases, i ensured that data was collected during specified intervals which accurately captured the same time periods of vulnerability and strength for each teacher. research setting this study was situated in an urban district that served a population of approximately 5,500 students. 70% of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch and 14% of students were enrolled in special education services during the time of study. 35% of the students identified african american, 10% as of the students identified as latinx, 10% of the students at identified as more than one race, and 48% percent of the students identified as caucasian. like many other urban districts, this district was experiencing a declining enrollment during the time of study. within this district, i chose the middle school as the most appropriate site for study. the middle school not only encompassed the characteristics of an urban school, but it also recruited 14 new french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 6 teachers for the 2015–2016 academic year. of these new teachers, eight teachers had no years of experience teacher and three had between one and four years of teaching experience. of the eight qualified new teacher participants, five teachers volunteered to participate in the study. participant background the five teachers in this study all graduated from university-based (and accredited) teacher education programs. each teacher participated in a pre-service internship prior to their participation in this study and was also was exposed to social-justice teaching coursework. the extent to which each teacher learned social justice teaching strategies varied. some teachers participated in semester long courses that were exclusively devoted to understanding power and oppression in school systems (such as the experience of mr. grand), while other teachers attended workshops or participated in class discussions that were generated from socially just education ideology. only one teacher, mr. burlington, was not exposed to social justice ideology as a product of his teacher preparation prior to his first year in the classroom. with the exception of mr. burlington, all of the teachers felt a strong sense of understanding of what it meant to teach for social justice. all of the teachers in this study were beginning their first year as teacher of record in the same school. three of the participants identified as female and two of the participants identified as male. all of the teachers were between the ages of 22 and 28. all teachers identified as white or caucasian. the teachers were given no incentive to participate in the study, and were asked to participate in a study investigating new teachers on a voluntary basis. the participants taught different subjects. mr. grand taught history, mr. burlington taught sixth and seventh grade science, ms. brownstone taught in the special education resource room, ms. land taught german studies, and ms. danielson taught french studies. all study participants signed a consent form that outlined study parameters. this document also provided further information on the survey, interview, and observation protocols, identified participant rights, and provided contact information for the university institutional review board in the event of concerns or further questions. data collection data collection took place over the course of the 2015–2016 academic year (beginning august 2015 and ending november 2016). the first set of surveys and interviews were conducted before and during the first weeks of school to get a baseline set of data for each teacher. this time period coincided the anticipation phase of the moir (1990) model and took place during the months of august and september. data was collected again in october (survival), december (disillusionment), february (rejuvenation), may (reflection), and july (anticipation) with a final data point collected the following november. the final data collection in november was added as a follow-up interview for teachers to share anything they found necessary to share based on the findings of the study or experience as a participant in the study. the november interview also allowed for teachers to explain what factors might have contributed to changes in their beliefs. surveys i administered a survey of 43 questions to all study participants three times during the study timeframe. the questions were randomly distributed and redistributed for each survey. to organize survey questions, i created three broad domains and ten more detailed constructs. the three domains encompassed: 1) teaching practice, 2) social justice, and 3) school purpose, while the ten french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 7 constructs focused more specifically on beliefs. collectively the constructs represented the following belief statements: a) belief that students learn in different ways, b) belief that learning is the same for all students, c) belief in constructivist teaching practices, d) belief in directtransmission teaching practices, e) belief that students possess strengths from home, f) belief that students do not possess strengths from home, g) belief in high academic and behavioral expectations, h) belief in basic expectations for disadvantaged students, i) belief that schools should prepare students for college, and j) belief that school should prepare students for jobs. these constructs and beliefs are intersectional, but were identified and defined independently to best showcase and isolate any changes in beliefs as they progressed over time. all survey questions were derived from three existing and reputable surveys on teachers’ beliefs and attitudes. the teaching, learning, and computing survey (1998) was used as one source of questions for the survey in this study. the teaching, learning, and computing survey (1998) was developed by the center for research on information technology for organizations (crito) and was used to assess the beliefs of over 5,000 teachers in 1998. the survey asks teachers to describe their best practices, and teaching philosophies by having teachers answer to what extent they agree with statements such as, “i mainly see my role as a facilitator. i try to provide opportunities and resources for my students to discover or construct concepts for themselves.” the survey is commonly referred to as the tlc and was first used to identify differences in teachers’ willingness to implement new technologies based on their constructivist or direct transmission beliefs on teaching. the teacher beliefs survey (tbs) was another survey that i referenced for questions to assesses the beliefs of teachers related to traditional or constructivist approaches in teaching and learning. the tbs utilizes hypothetical situations to assess beliefs. both the tlc and tbs investigate beliefs about teaching and student learning through different approaches. the tlc survey relies on questions that assess teachers’ broad perspectives, while the tbs relies on questions that assess teacher practices by asking whether they agree with statements such as, “i involve students in evaluating their own work and setting their own goals.” combined, the two surveys provided questions that helped to assess beliefs on teaching, the purposes of teaching, and social justice. the 2013 teaching and learning international survey (talis) teacher questionnaire has a section on teaching practices, beliefs, and attitudes. this survey was used for an international consortium presented by the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) to conduct a cross-country analysis on teaching and learning in schools. for this study, i utilized questions from the section on teaching practices, beliefs, and attitudes. questions from this survey were most useful in assessing teachers’ beliefs on teaching and teachers’ beliefs on student ability and familial involvement. the talis also provided questions that assessed job satisfaction, school climate and culture, and community support. using these three surveys i created a likert scale of questions that represented each domain and construct. this survey was then piloted using the responses from three first-year teachers before it was given to study participants. the surveys were administered online during the anticipation phase, the disillusionment phase, and the reflection phase with a 100% completion rate. the survey is available in appendix a. interviews all teachers participated in five interviews—given in tandem with the moir (1990) phases with one final interview during the fall of the following year. the interviews were semi-structured french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 8 and lasted approximately 30 to 40 minutes. all interviews were audio-recorded and later transcribed and analyzed using nvivo software. the semi-structured nature of the interviews allowed for interviewees to contribute any additional information they felt valuable to supporting their survey answers and also classroom observations. the full protocols for the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and final interview are available in appendix b through appendix f. observations to mitigate some of the negative externalities associated with self-reported data, i conducted classroom observations for each teacher during the survival, rejuvenation, and reflection phases of the moir (1990) model. by observing study participants, i was also able to observe whether their self-reported beliefs matched their teaching behavior. for example, if a teacher selfreported (through survey and interview data) that she held exceptionally high expectations for her students but then had students copying definitions from a book during classroom observations, i would note this as an inconsistency. similarly, if a teacher thought that she held high expectations for all students but then only enforced these expectations for some of her students during my classroom observations, i would also mark this as an inconsistency. because of these possible discrepancies, it was vital to include my perspective as a researcher in measuring beliefs during classroom observations over the course of study. for each classroom observation, i took field notes and then categorized them by the three domains of teaching practice, social justice, and school purpose. i also conducted memos after each observation to organize my thoughts and preliminary findings. i compared data from classroom observations to interview and survey data—during each phase—as a way to better understand if perceived beliefs were also authentically demonstrated in classroom practice. the goal of the classroom observations was to document how study participants were teaching and interacting with their students. the observation protocol provided space to document specific examples of teaching that were affiliated with a certain belief domain and/or construct. for each classroom observation, i observed study participants in their own classrooms. the observations ranged from approximately 30 to 60 minutes. each teacher was aware of when classroom observations would take place. quality, rigor, and trustworthiness since there was no expectation to replicate the work done in this case study, the terminologies of “reliability” and “validity” were substituted with “quality,” “rigor,” and “trustworthiness.” two methods were used to enhance quality, rigor, and trustworthiness; triangulation of data sources and member checking. i used the process of triangulation to enrich the data and enhance developing patterns amongst participants. the process of triangulation also justified the need for survey data in combination with classroom observations and interviews. in triangulation, the researcher takes multiple samplings of the same phenomena to better understand, see all parts, and improve the overall accuracy of formed conclusions (creswell, 2003). for this case study, i used data triangulation to evaluate data from the perspectives of participant interviews, classroom observations, and survey questions. i then looked for consistencies or inconsistencies in ideas across all sets of interview, observation, and survey data. when inconsistencies were identified, i asked study participants to clarify their response. member checking was a second method i used to ensure trustworthiness of the data. in member checking, the researcher receives feedback from study participants to validate the french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 9 correctness of recorded data (byrne, 2001). for this study, member checking occurred during the classroom observation and interview phases of the study as participants were asked to clarify their behavior that i witnessed during classroom observations. this reflective process allowed me to triangulate the data with another perspective to ensure that high-quality data that was credible and trustworthy. analysis i coded the data using domain and taxonomic coding methods. as mentioned above, i categorized beliefs by constructs and domains which made taxonomic coding most relevant to analyzing my data. taxonomic coding allows for “the systematic search for and categorization of cultural terms” or in the case of this study, defined beliefs (saldana, 2015, p. 26). by using this method of analysis, i was able to identify and categorize specific examples of beliefs, selfperceptions of beliefs, and understandings of beliefs effect on practice for each the defined belief domains and constructs. the entire coding process for data from interviews and classroom observations was conducted using nvivo software. to analyze data from surveys i used likert scale scoring techniques and then identified changes in response to questions that occurred over the moir (1990) phases. specifically, i noted when participates changed their response on answers to the same question. using taxonomic coding strategies, i also developed case-summary maps for each participant to organize their story as it developed over the course of the year. these maps were instrumental in recognizing patterns across participant data and helped to create figure 1. role of the researcher as a qualitative researcher, i could not distance myself from the study as one can do through quantitative research. my background as a former teacher in urban schools and past experience observing teachers in urban schools all led to my initial interest in this phenomenon of teacher beliefs and ultimately grew greater during my literature review. given these parameters, i was careful to immerse myself as a research participant while also attempting to remain as unbiased, fair, and as truthful as possible. by acting as a research participant, i was careful to mitigate any attempts at unsystematic data collection from a personal prejudice by intentionally structuring multiple data collection points throughout the academic year. i also provided an opportunity for participants to evaluate their data with an interview the following year. additionally, in agreement with creswell (2009) stance on research participation, i believed that my personal insights and feelings were strengths to understand the data more fully. findings all participants changed their beliefs throughout the course of study and at various points of interest. belief change varied by teacher. data revealed that new teachers were more likely to change their beliefs regarding teaching practice and social justice than they were for school purpose. data also revealed that teachers engaged in and developed social relationships with new colleagues as they progressed throughout the moir (1990) model. teachers were much more confident in their roles and identities as teachers at the end of the reflection phase. many teachers shared that their new colleagues helped them to teach in more effective ways and brought about an awareness of how teaching should be at their new school. i chose to share the findings of each teacher individually because the story of each teacher is unique in regards to their developing beliefs and identify. french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 10 ms. danielson ms. danielson began her year with very optimistic and idealized beliefs on teaching and what it means to teach for social justice. she found value in her students and the surrounding school community, and believed that they all needed to partner for success, and felt that her students would respect her and meet the high academic and behavioral expectations she set. as the year progressed, ms. danielson started to believe that she had little control over student achievement, mainly because of her students’ troubling backgrounds and unfortunate home lives. she went from describing the value she saw in her school community as partners in learning, to describing a broken community that was poor and uninvolved. during the survival phase, from the end of september to the end of november, ms. danielson started to believe that it was okay for some but not all kids to achieve and that students from diverse backgrounds did not know how to respect teachers, partially due to an upbringing of poor parenting. she shared, “well part of me thought they would do everything i said because i’m the teacher and like parents teach their kids to like respect teachers. but a lot of populationslike the demographics and the low socioeconomic status students—they aren’t taught those things.” because of this, she felt that as a teacher she had very little control over student achievement and started to believe that schools were more of a daycare than a place to enhance intellectual growth. ms. danielson shared, “i would say in general, [their home background] is not overwhelmingly positive. i wouldn’t group them all stereotypically, but i know that a lot of them have low ses status and stuff like that.” ms. danielson also echoed similar changes in her beliefs on teaching for social justice when she shared her new beliefs during the survival phase. i have extremely high expectations, but lately they’ve been getting um lower and lower (laughs) like just behave on a regular basis, sit in your seat when you’re supposed to, know when it’s appropriate to sharpen your pencil because the sharpener is incredibly loud, know to raise your hand and not talk out of turn…. i used to expect them to [turn in] their missing work, but now i realize that with their level, i am more responsible for that than they are. unlike danielson’ initial beliefs about meeting high expectations during the anticipation phase, this quote indicates that she no longer believes that her students are capable of meeting high expectations—whether they are behavioral or academic. instead, ms. danielson believes that her students now need more guidance, supervision, and less autonomy. she is doubting her students’ abilities. ms. brownstone ms. brownstone also began her year with many of the same idealized beliefs as those shared by ms. danielson. she felt that it was important to prioritize student learning and set high expectations. during the survival phase, ms. brownstone still believed that it was important to put kids first, but also felt that her teaching would vary depending on the uniqueness of each student. she shared, “i’d say my role as a teacher is to present the material to the students in the best way that they can learn it – so i try and adapt however i can to teach the individual student” during this phase ms. brownstone also started to believe that it was important to enforce neutrality in her classroom, and that school was not a place to discuss differences in one’s beliefs. she shut down most conversations that did not contribute to behavioral or academic goals. ms. brownstone also believed during this time that a quiet classroom was important to learning. french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 11 during a classroom observation, i observed one student attempt a conversation with his classmates and ms. brownstone. the student was sharing his opinions on homosexuality, gender identity, abortion, and many other politically relevant issues. (he even voiced his concern for politicians who threatened to limit the access of transgendered people to use the bathroom of their choice.) however, despite the students’ knowledge of the topics, ms. brownstone paid little attention to his commentary and did her best to ignore most of the words the child said—even when they were posed as a question. after a minute or so, she finally silenced the child saying, “we are tabling this conversation.” these actions illustrate ms. brownstone’s new beliefs and also lend themselves toward the stunted progress of social justice and the perpetuation of the status quo. if ms. brownstone believes that school is a place to prepare students for society, she is inadvertently teaching her students that society is not accepting of the beliefs that are silenced in her classroom. this is critical to address when educating for social justice. when i asked ms. brownstone to explain this specific interaction that i had observed during our follow-up interview, she shared that it was important for her to keep a neutral tone in her classroom and to not address nor draw attention to issues that were inappropriate for school—such as the topic of gender identity. during the disillusionment phase, ms. brownstone continued to believe that it was her responsibility to enforce neutrality and to keep controversial topics outside of her classroom she shared: surprisingly students actually bring up the topic of strong beliefs such as religion and very controversial topics quite often, so i often find myself having those conversations where it’s okay to have different beliefs and that’s okay, but schools not a good place to talk about them because everyone has such strong beliefs. i’ve even had to have the social worker come in and help me with these conversations with the students as well to try and help keep that kind of neutral tone with my kids. so, i definitely have some very strong-minded students—that is something that has been a challenge for me this year is to still keep that neutral tone to my classroom and while still being accepting, if that makes sense. this quote illustrates that while ms. brownstone is trying to keep her classroom open to different beliefs and ways of living and thinking, she is also inadvertently silencing conversations that are necessary for students to learn and grow in their understanding of people, society, and the world. over the course of the year, ms. brownstone shared that she often engaged in conversations with her new colleagues for advice and insight. she also often turned to her own mother (a special education teacher in another district) with questions and concerns. she felt that her mother was the most reliable source of influence given her background in teaching and years of experience in the classroom. ms. land unlike the other new educators, ms. land experienced the fewest belief changes over the course of the year. she began the year with an appreciation for diversity and the community. she believed that students learn best when they are engaged. she also believed that learning should be an active process and differentiated by student. during the survival phase, she shared, “i really like to try to give [students] good feedback. like this is where you are, this is where i would like you to be to push yourself to that next level.” she also now used a seating chart strategically to integrate students by different genders, races, and backgrounds. during one classroom observation, she even french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 12 stood up and defended a student to the class who did not identify with the mainstream identity by saying that he was “entitled to [his] own opinion and that we need to be respectful of all classmates.” this quote illustrates that ms. land is intentionally intervening to disrupt the power dynamic that exists between those with privilege and those without privilege in an effort to make her classroom a more equitable and socially just place. like many of the other teachers, ms. land also now believed that it was important to mentor certain students. she shared: i see myself as a mentor to quite a few of my students. they come to me telling me they didn’t sleep all night because the step dad was fighting with them and they just need a support in their lives. that’s one of my biggest roles i can be as a teacher is a constant support and also to go back to teaching responsibility and respect to students and to teachers as well. in making these observations, ms. land illustrates how her beliefs have evolved from solely providing academic instruction to students to more fully providing more comprehensive accommodations to meet the wellbeing of her students. this growth over time demonstrates how her teaching practice moved from one that was strictly academic to one that considers the barriers to learning that she must address as part of her teaching practice. during the disillusionment phase, ms. land changed her beliefs from seeing school as a place to prepare students for college to believing that school should not necessarily prepare students for college because all students should not go to college. she shared: i do think that our system is quite broken in the fact that we push everyone to go on to university, and they really might not be ready. we need people that do different jobs in order for our society to function. so, it doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone needs a college education. in this quote, ms. land illustrates a new belief that she has acquired—not everyone needs a college education. she also becomes critical of the american education model as she finds it pushing students towards college when that may not be what her students’ desire—or even what is most appropriate for their skills and talents. mr. grand mr. grand experienced the most changes among these five new teachers over the course of the year. mr. grand began the year like most teachers with idealized beliefs on engaging teaching, positive student/teacher relationships, and appreciation for all kids who, despite their backgrounds, wanted to learn and could learn. however, as grand transitioned through the survival and disillusionment phases his beliefs and classroom environment changed to reflect new perspectives. during the survival phase, mr. grand still believed in the importance of positive student/teacher relationships, but now he felt that his role as a mentor or father figure to his students was even more important that his role as a teacher. he shared an example of his new mindset in detail. i would describe my role as making sure i have a safe environment for kids to come when they’re in my classroom, that they feel very comfortable there. and also to some of them, i feel like kind of like a father figure, like someone they can look up to. i don’t know what their home lives are [like], but a lot of them want to come in french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 13 and tell me what they did the night before and about their weekend and if they’re having a bad day and why. so i think it is part of my job to be a counselor as well, help them with their problems and be someone they can talk to… i assume i might be the only male figure they have as a teacher or even in their life at times so [i see it as] whatever i have to do. and i try to be someone they can talk to if they need to. in this quote, grand demonstrates a newfound belief in his relationships with his students. while at the beginning of the year, mr. grand felt that it was important to form positive student/teacher relationships, he now sees his role as much more important—and involved—than that of a teacher. he feels that he is responsible for saving his students from their home environments and providing them with ways out. his role is no longer purely academic. during the survival phase, mr. grand also believed that students in urban schools learn differently than students in non-urban schools, suggesting that urban students do not care to learn and are unmotivated. mr. grand shared his new beliefs. i really want them to just focus on the task at hand and know that it’s not social hour, but achievement to them is like whatever, most of them simply don’t care. in terms of achievement, like the standards i want them to reach, it is much harder because first i’ve got to get them to care before they reach the level of understanding.... i’m sure what i deal with on a daily basis doesn’t happen everywhere, and that i guess it’s also hard to say too because i’m in an urban school. in a more suburban school, where if i say something you know the kids do it on the first time. you ask them once instead a bunch of times... and also, i feel like there’s a lot of disrespect [here], like students don’t respect each other enough. they can’t sit there without having to say something to one another at times. it’s not [even] interesting. it’s kind of sad at times. this change for grand reflects his evolving beliefs from seeing his students as capable of meeting high academic and behavioral expectations to now seeing his students as unable to meet these standards because of their urban backgrounds. this new belief of inferiority gives grand a reason to believe that his frustration has little to do with his own ability in teaching and more to do with his students’ inability to learn. his comparison of his new students to students in more suburban areas suggests that he now sees his new students as inferior to non-urban counterparts. here we can sense mr. grand’s frustration—not in himself as a teacher, but in his student’s capacity to achieve. during the survival phase, mr. grand also started to believe that as a teacher, he should be more of an authoritarian—something he had picked up as advice from a neighboring (and more experienced) teacher. mr. brownstone shared how he had learned how to better handle and treat his students based on advice from this teacher that he had come to respect and admire next door. in tandem with this new advice, he started treating his african american students differently during a classroom observation, i observed one african american student doodle through an entire class period while wearing his headphones. when i asked mr. grand why this student was not participating, he shared that “i kind of let him just do his own thing” with the hope that he will not disrupt the entire class. he felt that this student’s missed opportunity to learn was better for the entire class’s wellbeing and, therefore, justified. mr. grand also tended to target a group of french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 14 african american students in the back of the room for disciplinary issues more often than the other students. during the disillusionment phase, mr. grand also began to question the ability for his students’ parents to act as good parents. he shared his new perspective on the community compared to his own community. i mean, i would say i guess my community was pretty white you know, a pretty white privileged school and it’s different here. part of it is, you can tell that a lot of these kids i wouldn’t call them bad kids, but the way they act out for attention is because they don’t get it at home. there are some parents that probably don’t even care about them and just want them to come to school. that’s why they want to be at school is to see teachers that really care about them, is my guess. when i asked grand if he advocates for his students on curricular and policy changes that promote more equitable opportunities during this phase, he shared, “no, i have not done that.” when i followed-up to ask if he would ever advocate for polices that promote more equitable opportunities he shared, “umm i don’t know. i guess that’s hard for me to look down the line. i don’t know maybe. i’d give a lukewarm chance i guess.” when i asked mr. grand about his decision to group african american students in the back of the classroom, he said that this seating arrangement was unintentional. when i probed about his new strict classroom management style, and mr. grand explained his new perspective. he shared: i expect them to [work] without hemming and hawing about it. like this is what you’re expected to do, this is what you’re going to do. so, one example from today [is when] we worked in groups and one of the kids was like, “aww i don’t want work with this group.” and i was like, ‘no! you are going to work with the group i assigned you to work [with] and that is not going to happen.’ so, like no one gets a choice. hearing these statements was startling as mr. grand began his year believing that all students had value and wanted to learn. mr. grand’s pre-service teacher training program even included a semester-long course that focused on systems of oppression, privilege, and power in social institutions like public school—and even equipped teachers to combat these norms in their teaching careers. he once felt this background was instrumental in preparing him for work in an urban environment. however, during the disillusionment phase, mr. grand’s thoughts, responses, and actions suggest that his beliefs were very different than when he started teaching. as the year progressed, mr. grand often talked about the teacher next door and how he was such a great source of inspiration for him as a new teacher. he felt grateful to have such a brilliant source nearby to answer his questions. mr. grand often turned to this teacher for advice on classroom management decisions, and even decided to be stricter and operationalize a noexcuse disciplinary policy because of conversations with this informal mentor teacher next door. mr. burlington mr. burlington began his year different than all of the other new educators. while he believed that good teaching was engaging and hands-on, he did not believe that his new students would be able to conduct themselves properly or meet high academic and behavioral expectations because of their backgrounds and upbringings in the community. these beliefs changed as her underwent the phases of the moir (1990) model. during the survival phase, mr. burlington started to see a new ability that he did not expect in his students and was really impressed in how his students worked together and really supported french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 15 each other like a family. he still did not think they possessed any strengths from their home environments, but he did see that his students were able to meet—and exceed—his expectations. he also started to believe that teaching and learning skills were more important than learning content—even though he relied on lecture and teacher-dominated learning strategies during this phase. during the survival phase, mr. burlington shared that his beliefs about the community had changed from the idea of “being prepared for the worst” to viewing his students and community as “no different than anyone else.” he went on to share that his students “might not have the support at home that other students get, but that they’re still kids. they still laugh, and cry, and can be disruptive.” data from the first and second survey also showed that mr. burlington doubled his composite score in the beliefs on social justice section. in particular, his score doubled for questions regarding a belief that students possess strengths from home, and his score more than doubled for questions regarding a belief that students are capable of meeting high expectations. this demonstrates that mr. burlington began the year with serious doubts about the community’s ability to positively contribute to student success. he then significantly changed his mind to view the community as really no different than his own community, with students and parents who wanted the same things for their families as what families want in any community. when mr. burlington spoke about what influenced his development as a new teacher, he shared that the colleagues in his science department had really been the most influential in his belief transformation toward seeing his students in a more positive way. he felt that had it not been for the regular interactions with his science department that he might have experienced his first year very differently. discussion as educators progressed through their first year as teacher of record, most experienced not only changes in their emotions but also changes in their beliefs. at the beginning of the year, ms. danielson, ms. brownstone, and mr. grand held empowering and idealized beliefs about teaching. these teachers believed that teaching should be student-centered and that teachers should hold high academic and behavioral expectations. during these phases, these three teachers also felt confident in their ability to execute these idealized beliefs in their classrooms and form rich and meaningful relationships with their students. they all possessed empowering thoughts about in their new urban community—including the ability for students to thrive in the classroom with positive parental support. however, as these three new teachers transitioned into the second phase of survival, and into the third phase of disillusionment, they began to hold very different beliefs about their students’ abilities, backgrounds, and their own ability to impact change as a teacher. these new beliefs were overall less empowering and drastically different than the novice educators’ beliefs from the previous phase. on the opposite end of the spectrum, mr. burlington began his first year with a less empowering set of beliefs, believing that his students were incapable of meeting high academic and behavioral expectations, and that they also they suffered from difficult homes lives and subsequently possessed no strengths from home. yet, as mr. burlington transitioned through the survival and disillusionment phases of the moir (1990) model, he encountered significant belief change as he adopted drastically different beliefs about his students, the community, and his ability to impact his students for the greater good. specifically, he moved from believing that his students were less capable of achieving than their non-urban student counterparts because of their backgrounds to believing that they had the same potential as any kid in any school. french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 16 while all of these teachers underwent significant changes in their beliefs during the survival and disillusionment phases, albeit on different ends of the spectrum, they all shared one commonality as they progressed through the rest of the moir (1990) model: their beliefs did not incur any further drastic change past the disillusionment phase. as mr. burlington, mr. grand, ms. danielson, and ms. brownstone continued through the final—and similar—phase of rejuvenation and reflection, they all experienced renewed hope and reflected on how they were going to embark on their next year differently. during the final phase of rejuvenation and reflection, these teachers became more unwavering in their newest beliefs, firming up their newly acquired and more empowering (or less empowering) beliefs about teaching, their students, and the community. these newly formed mindsets continued on for the rest of the year. when compared with the moir (1990) emotional changes, the changes in teachers’ beliefs for these four teachers directly or inversely mirrored the changes in the moir (1990) model as portrayed in figure 2. in this figure, “belief changes a” denotes teachers who changed their beliefs from doubtful to more empowered, where teaching was based in constructivism, the teacher saw value—and potential—in students and their community, and school was a place for preparing caring and responsible citizens with skills to contribute in society. conversely, “belief changes b” denotes a more disenchanting path, that summarizes a digress from beliefs that were hopeful and almost sanguine to beliefs that were less empowering towards students and their community. teachers who followed this curve were also more likely to use a more authoritative approach to instruction as the year progressed. in contrast to the two pathways of belief change, the final path on this figure illustrates to unique trajectory for one of the teachers—ms. land—who experienced little to no change in her beliefs over the course of the year. therefore, “no change in beliefs” illustrates how the beliefs of one teacher remained constant for the duration of the year. figure 2 moir (1990) timeline representing new teachers’ attitude progression over the first year as teacher of record. french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 17 these four teachers experienced similar changes in their beliefs as they experienced changes in their emotions throughout the moir (1990) model. however, unlike in the moir (1990) model where teachers experienced a renewed hope during the rejuvenation phase—and similar emotions to those experienced during the anticipation phase—during the final reflection phase, the beliefs of mr. burlington, mr. grand, ms. danielson, and ms. brownstone did not revert back to the initial and idealized beliefs they possessed during the anticipation phase. instead, these four teachers finished out the remaining phases of the moir (1990) model operating under the mindset of the new beliefs they had acquired during the disillusionment phase. over the course of the year, the five new educators shared what they perceived to be the sources of influences on their beliefs. as mentioned, during the anticipation phase all of the novice teachers shared that their beliefs associated with teaching and working in urban schools were mostly influenced by their experiences in their teacher education preparation program—or in the case of ms. brownstone, her own mother who was a teacher. during the survival phases, these perceived influences on their beliefs changed as a majority of the new teachers identified different sources of influence from their new social connections, such as those from more experienced teachers. ms. danielson, ms. brownstone, mr. grand, and mr. burlington all felt that the experienced teachers they interacted with most regularly, such as teachers in their departments, or that next doors, affected their beliefs about teaching, their students, and the community most significantly during this phase. moje and luke (2009) suggest that people are more likely to change their identities as they engage in new social relationships and social scenarios—just as many of the new teachers experienced in this study. because identity is so closely tied to ones’ beliefs, it is possible that teachers were also situating their new professional identities to more closely align with those of their mentor teachers. ms. land was the exception of the group sharing that she felt other educators she respected influenced her beliefs most significantly, but did not name anyone specifically in her department like the other new teachers had named. ms. danielson felt that her french department was very influential in shaping her beliefs, and ms. brownstone felt that same way about her special education department—even though they were geographically distant from her classroom. mr. burlington even gave credit to his science department for changing his perception of his students whom he had held a negative opinion of from day one. burlington felt that because of the science department’s empowering views and positive work ethic, he had changed his beliefs about his students to now believe that they were capable of achieving far greater endeavors than he had even imagined during the previous phase. mr. grand felt strongly that the other social studies teacher who was stationed immediately next door to his classroom was most influential in his new and emerging beliefs about this student and his teaching pedagogy. he also felt that his principal was another source of influence. as the five new educators progressed into the final phase of reflection, i asked what influenced their beliefs. surprisingly, during this final phase of reflection four of the five new educators shared that their beliefs were not really influenced by anything else and that they had formed their opinions on matters based on their own thought processing and reasoning ability. more so, these same four teachers did not think that their beliefs about their students, the community, or that their teaching practice had changed over the course of the first year. with the exception of ms. land, these new educators all had changed their beliefs significantly over the year and it was surprising as the researcher to hear that they had not noticed this change— especially when they felt that their beliefs had been influenced three phases earlier. when i informed mr. grand, ms. brownstone, and ms. danielson that their beliefs had changed based french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 18 on my preliminary data analysis from interview, classroom observation, and survey data, they were not exceptionally surprised and felt that it was possible for these changes to occur unknowingly—and especially during the months up to winter break—because of the many demands that weighed on them as first year teachers. all of the teachers felt that it was possible for an individual to change their beliefs on all sorts of issues and also in a new school as they had experienced. ms. land even shared that it was possible for people to change their beliefs and that her own beliefs could have changed without her even noticing because of the many demands and additional responsibilities outside of teaching that she faced as a new teacher. however, this response was the first time ms. land had ever mentioned the many demands on her plate as a new teacher. during the earlier parts of the year she seemed to manage every responsibility with poise. interestingly, mr. burlington, who felt that his beliefs had changed over the course of the year, shared at the end of the year that beliefs in general do not change and are “more concrete.” this was an interesting remark given mr. burlington’s belief changes that he experienced over the course of the year and his willingness to admit that they had changed and were greatly influenced by the teachers in his science department. mr. burlington’s emotional experiences also mirrored those of mr. grand, ms. danielson, and ms. brownstone as he progressed through the moir (1990) model. therefore, it is interesting that mr. burlington did not experience the same unawareness of belief change as mr. grand, ms. brownstone, and ms. danielson had experienced. mr. burlington experienced a belief change curve that inversely mirrored the belief change curve of mr. grand, ms. brownstone, and ms. danielson. specifically, mr. burlington began his year with less empowering beliefs about teaching and teaching for social justice and then changed his beliefs into drastically more empowering beliefs by the end of the disillusionment phase. mr. grand, ms. brownstone, and ms. danielson experienced the opposite effect, beginning their year with more empowering beliefs and ending the disillusionment phase with drastically less empowering beliefs than they possessed at the beginning of the year. implications in teaching for social justice in teaching for social justice, teachers must first recognize that certain socially constructed groups are privileged, while others are disadvantaged (johnson, 2006). understanding how this complex system of injustice exists is a foundational principle in teaching for social justice. the next step is for teachers to actively engage as change agents in their classrooms and communities to combat patterns of oppression by intentionally disrupting behavior, activity, and decisions that perpetuate the oppression of marginalized groups—or in the case of this study, students who identify with the less privileged minority (ayvazian, 2004). when teachers are acting as change agents and disrupting this cycle of oppression, they are teaching for social justice (banks, 2001). understanding educational experiences through the lens of critical race theory is also paramount to teaching for social justice. while many of the teachers cited exposure to social justice oriented pre-service coursework, few behaved in a way aligned with the true tenants of teaching for social justice. for example, ms. brownstone believed that she was teaching for social justice when she disallowed for students to talk about topics such as sexual orientation and gender identity. she felt these topics were controversial and that censorship of these topics was more important because school was a place to respect everyone’s beliefs. however, by suppressing conversations and opinions that she felt were inappropriate based on her perspective, ms. brownstone was inadvertently silencing marginalized groups that do not identify with mainstream perceptions of identity. from french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 19 a social justice perspective, ms. brownstone was perpetuating the status quo and not disrupting the cycle of oppression as it relates to those with diverse gender identities and sexual orientations. perhaps more concerning, ms. brownstone was unaware of how her actions might reinforce a culture of heteronormativity in her own classroom. similarly, even though mr. grand completed an entire semester’s worth of learning to teach for social justice, he deliberately ignored some of his black students (who he had deemed as troublemakers) in an effort to not disrupt the entire class. in doing this, mr. grand could have modeled to other students in the classroom that his black students were less capable of meeting his expectations and therefore excused of meeting his expectations. in an effort to truly combat the systems of oppression and end this cycle, teachers like ms. brownstone and mr. grand should think carefully about how they exhibit their authority and whom they target for regular discipline (johnson, 2006). truly teaching for social justice would mean circumventing their teaching strategies to create a more inclusive classroom culture where students from all backgrounds feel welcome. implications for teacher induction based on findings from this study it is recommended that schools consider the demands placed on first-year teachers and work to deter less meaningful initiatives, mandates, and trainings that might interfere with a more empowering teacher induction period. all of the teachers in this study felt that there were too many demands, unaffiliated with teaching, that were placed on them during their first year. these demands pulled them away from their own teaching, lesson planning, and otherwise empowering development. these demands may have also contributed to more emotional turbulence. given these parameters, schools and districts could structure first-year teaching policy that is amenable to first-year experiences and builds gradually in a consecutive and manageable fashion instead of piling new demands all at once. schools may also consider partnering with local universities to create teacher induction programs that better connect theory with practice. as new teachers embark on their first year, it is important that teacher induction programs provide teachers with both the hands-on experience and constructive support. with high-quality teacher induction program, the transition from preservice teacher to teacher of record could be more manageable (stanulis et al., 2007). limitations the small number of new teachers who participated in this research is one limitation of this study. the intensive data collection that spanned an entire year and allowed for multiple sources of data collection was used intentionally to mitigate the effects of a small sample size. i spent nearly 50 hours with teachers to develop a rich understanding of their unique experiences, perspectives, beliefs, and perceived influences as they transitioned through each phase of the moir (1990) model. this intensive data collection helped to offset the limited sample size. the second greatest limitation of this study was fully capturing the true beliefs of teachers because beliefs are difficult to conceptualize and even more difficult to define and verbalize. to best address this concern, i relied on pre-defined belief domains and constructs to record and map any changes in beliefs that occurred over the course of the first year. i also utilized the moir (1990) model to strategically track changes in beliefs at appropriate checkpoints. these belief changes were self-reported in interview and survey data, but i also used classroom observations to consider how and if the self-professed beliefs of new teachers matched their exhibited beliefs. a third limitation of this study—as with all qualitative research—is the french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 20 idea of a social desirability bias. as participants responded to interview questions they did so with their own agency, but as the social desirability bias posits they could have also answered interview and survey questions in a manner that produced answers that would be viewed more favorably by others or the researcher (grimm, 2010). because of this, it was important that i assure participants of their anonymity in this study and that their answers would not be shared with any school staff administrators (for risk of retribution). i also relied on classroom observations and survey data as a way to elicit the most accurate responses and to help lessen the social desirability bias. contributions to the literature this study contributes to existing literature on teacher beliefs and developing identity, and extends this research to understand how the beliefs and identities of brand-new teachers are influenced and changed. this study shares not only when new teachers are likely to experience belief and identity change, but also the possible factors that can contribute to this change. new teachers are more susceptible to changing their beliefs, identities, and ways of teaching during their first few months in the classroom and when they are turning to other experienced teachers in their school for advice. new teachers are also more likely to turn these experience teachers when, as moje and luke (2009) suggest, there is an ideal social environment for the evolution of a new identity. new educators undergoing these phases perceive these informal mentors as much more knowledgeable about teaching and often defer to their expertise. this is one possible source that may change new teachers’ beliefs and ways of teaching. as discussed, some new teachers held misconceptions of what it means to teach for social justice which prompted behaviors that were detrimental to students from historically underserved and marginalized groups. based on this finding, future studies could explore how these misunderstandings manifests in greater detail and how teacher induction programs could work to remedy misconceptions. based on the finding that teachers feeling influenced by other teachers in their school, future research could examine the developing social ties of incoming novice educators in an effort to better understand how novice teachers’ beliefs are influenced and changed by social networks. because many teachers often undergo unexpected experiences, social interactions, and general set-backs in understanding what it means to be a teacher during their first year, schools and teacher preparation programs should consider how they can structure supportive social environments that empower teachers and their developing identity as teacher professionals. as mentioned, one possible way of doing this is through teacher induction. teacher induction is often a partnership between a school and a local university where both parties work to help merge the worlds of theory with practice as teachers gain more real-world experience but consistently reflect back on their theoretical knowledge of teaching and learning (stanulis et al., 2007). this study suggests that teacher induction programs may play an even more powerful role in helping new teachers explore their new environments and social interactions with teaching experts as appointed mediators. programs such as teacher induction, may also help to reduce the vulnerability new teachers face in their news schools because they can allow for new social interaction outlets and experiences that may contribute to belief and identity formation in supportive and positive ways. collectively, this study calls for future research that continues to critically examines how schools and teacher preparation programs can work together to create supportive and empowering environments for both early-career teachers and underprivileged students. french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 21 references anderman, l. h., andrzejewski, c. e., & allen, j. 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_______________________________________________________________________ years of experience teaching: ____________________________________________________ race: _______________________________________________________________________ teacher training: _____________________________________________________________ location(s): of years teaching: ___________________________________________________ subject & grades taught: ________________________________________________________ the following statements are about schooling and social issues. indicate your agreement or disagreement with each by place the following abbreviations next to each sentence: strongly disagree-sd, moderately disagree-md, slightly disagree-sd, slightly agree–sa, moderately agree–ma, strongly agree-sa 1. teachers know a lot more about than students: they shouldn’t let students muddle around when they can just explain the answer directly. 2. a quiet classroom is generally needed for effective learning. 3. students are not ready for “meaningful” learning until they have acquired basic reading and math skills. 4. it is better when the teacher-not the students decides what activities should be done. 5. students will take more initiative to learn when they feel free to move around the room during class. 6. how much students learn depends on how much background knowledge they have—that is why teaching facts is so necessary. the following statements are about schooling and social issues. indicate your agreement or disagreement with each by place the following abbreviations next to each sentence: strongly disagree-sd, moderately disagree-md, slightly disagree-sd, slightly agree–sa, moderately agree – ma, strongly agree-sa 1. the american economy will be sufficiently strong during the next two or three decades to provide a place in the working world for people of all skill levels_______ 2. in the 21st century world economy, there won’t be nearly enough “blue-collar” and service jobs for the numbers of people who typically graduate from high-school and don’t go on to college________ 3. a good academic education, through college, will provide students the most important skills and knowledge they will need to succeed in work________ 4. most high school and college education does not provide what students now need—a capacity to take initiative, to organize work with others, to deal with novel problems, and to use technologies______ 5. schools have generally failed to educate most students from lower class backgrounds enough for them to escape the poverty of their origins______ 6. good basic reading and mathematics skills and learning the important facts of history and science will enable most students from immigrant and poor families to succeed in school and later life________ imagine how you will set up your own future classroom as you read each of the following survey statements. as you think about your classroom (not your cooperating teachers’ classrooms), write a number on the line beside each statement to indicate how much you disagree or agree with the statement on a scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree) french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 24 1. it is important that i establish classroom control before i become too friendly with students_______ 2. i believe that expanding on students’ ideas is an effective way to build my curriculum______ 3. i prefer to cluster students’ desks or use tables so they can work together. 4. i invite students to create many of my bulletin boards_____ 5. i like to make curriculum choices for students because they can’t know what they need to learn____ 6. i base student grades primarily on homework, quizzes, and tests______ 7. an essential part of my teacher role is supporting a student’s family when problems are interfering with a student’s learning_____ 8. to be sure that i teach students all necessary content and skills, i follow a textbook or workbook____ 9. i involve students in evaluating their own work and setting their own goals_____ 10. my primary role as a teacher is to help students become learners, not to teach particular content knowledge_____ 11. when there is a dispute between students in my classroom, i try to intervene immediately to resolve the problem____ 12. i believe students learn best when there is a fixed schedule____ 13. i communicate with parents mainly through report cards and parent-teacher conferences____ 14. during discussions i ask many open-ended questions and encourage students to ask questions of each other____ 15. if i am not directing classroom events, the most likely result is chaos___ 16. my students spend the majority of their seatwork time working individually___ 17. for assessment purposes, i am interested in what students can do independently____ 18. i invite parents to volunteer in or visit my classroom almost any time____ 19. i generally use the teacher’s guide to lead class discussions of a story or text. 20. i prefer to assess students informally through observations and conferences. 21. i find that textbooks and other published materials are the best sources for creating my curriculum____ 22. if students are interested in a topic i try to help them, but i don’t use class time because i have a lot of curriculum to cover____ 23. i often create thematic units based on the students’ interests and ideas____ 24. students need to learn that there are consequences for inappropriate behavior____ please indicate how much you disagree or agree with each of the following statements ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). …your personal beliefs on teaching and learning 1. effective good teachers demonstrate the correct way to solve a problem____ 2. when referring to a “poor performance”, i mean a performance that lies below the previous achievement level of the student_____ 3. it is better when the teacher – not the student – decides what activities are to be done____ 4. my role as a teacher is to facilitate students’ own inquiry____ 5. teachers know a lot more than students; they shouldn’t let students develop answers that may be incorrect when they can just explain the answers directly____ 6. students learn best by finding solutions to problems on their own____ 7. instruction should be built around problems with clear, correct answers, and around ideas that most students can grasp quickly____ 8. how much students learn depends on how much background knowledge they have – that is why teaching facts is so necessary____ 9. students should be allowed to think of solutions to practical problems themselves before the teacher shows them how they are solved____ 10. when referring to a “good performance”, i mean a performance that lies above the previous achievement level of the student____ 11. a quiet classroom is generally needed for effective learning____ 12. thinking and reasoning processes are more important than specific curriculum content_____ … about yourself as a teacher in this school? french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 25 1. all in all, i am satisfied with my job___ 2. i feel that i am making a significant educational difference in the lives of my students___ 3. if i try really hard, i can make progress with even the most difficult and unmotivated students___ 4. i am successful with the students in my class____ 5. i usually know how to get through to students____ 6. teachers in this local community are well respected_____ ... about what happens in this school? 1. in this school, teachers and students usually get on well with each other____ 2. most teachers in this school believe that student well-being is important___ 3. most teachers in this school are interested in what students have to say____ 4. if a student from this school needs extra assistance, the school provides it_______ which three of the following do you believe are the most important objectives that middle and high school education should have? please ✓ next to the 3 most important objectives. 1. mastery of content in science, history, algebra, and literature. 2. developing talent in the performing arts or athletics. 3. competence in writing and in oral communication. 4. learning to reason carefully and use evidence well. 5. being able to work well in groups, and understand different views. 6. being interested and able to learn independently. 7. wanting to help others and contribute to the general community. 8. developing skills in using computers to analyze and present ideas. how useful are each of the following kinds of assessments for you in judging how well students are learning: indicate your answer by place the following abbreviations next to each sentence: not useful-nu, slightly useful-su, moderately useful-mu, very useful-vu, essential-e 1. short-answer and multiple-choice tests_____ 2. essay tests______ 3. open-ended problems ____ 4. individual and group projects_____ 5. standardized test results_____ 6. student presentations/performances____ french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 26 appendix b: interview protocol one to be read at the start of the interview thank you for agreeing to participate in my research. the interview today will last 45-60 minutes depending upon how much you would like to share, start of interview to begin, i’d like to start by asking you about your beliefs on teaching practice. theme 1: teaching practice 1. how would you describe your role as a teacher? 2. what does it mean to be an effective teacher to you? 3. how did you learn to teach? 4. who influences your teaching practice in your new school? a. for each person i. when did this person start influencing your practice? ii. how does this person influence your practice? next, i’d like to ask you a few questions about your students theme 2: student achievement 1. how would you describe your students? 2. how do you measure student achievement? 3. what influences student achievement? 4. have you always held these beliefs? a. if yes, next question b. if no, ask: how did your beliefs on student achievement change? 5. do your beliefs on student achievement align with other teachers in your school? a. which ones? b. how frequently do you talk with them? 6. do your beliefs on student achievement misalign with other teachers in your school? a. which ones? b. how frequently do you talk with them? theme 3: response to reform efforts 1. how do you feel about implementing new reforms into your school and/or classroom? a. what influences your decision to accept a new reform with enthusiasm? b. what influences your decision to accept a new reform because it is mandatory? 2. how do other teachers in your school feel about implementing new reforms into your school and/or classroom? a. do you feel you share the same feelings about reform with teachers you talk interact with most frequently? i. how so? 3. are you more willing to accept a new reform enthusiastically if teachers you are close with accept it enthusiastically as well? 4. are you less accepting to accept a new reform enthusiastically if teachers you are close with do not accept it enthusiastically? theme 4: job satisfaction french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 27 1. do you enjoy teaching? why? a. have you always felt this way? b. what was your initial outlook on being a teacher? 2. what is your long-term career plan? a. have you always felt this way? 3. what has influenced your job satisfaction as teacher of record? 4. what has influenced your motivation and attitude toward teaching in urban schools? a. do the teachers you are close with share these motivations and attitudes toward teaching? french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 28 appendix c: interview protocol two teaching practice 1. how would you describe your role as a teacher today? 2. what are your expectations for students? a. ability b. achievement 3. what are your goals for teaching long-term? 4. how would you describe your classroom practice? a. is learning the same for all students? b. is learning different for all students? 5. who is responsible for constructing knowledge? a. students, and teacher serves as a facilitator? b. teacher should make all decisions? 6. what is most important in student learning to you? a. mastering content? b. develop skills to learn? 7. what or who do you believe influences your beliefs on how you teach? a. teacher prep program? b. new colleagues? i. which ones? c. other social justice 1. how would you describe your students’ home environment? a. do students possess strengths from home? 2. how would you describe your current students? 3. how would you describe satisfactory student performance for your students? a. is it when students do better than they did before? b. is it when they are on grade-level or showing that they are college ready? 4. what or whom do you believe influences your beliefs on your students and their families? a. teacher prep program? b. new colleagues? i. which ones? c. other school purpose & reform 1. how would you describe the purpose and state of america schools today? a. kids to college? b. skills for work? c. not meeting their potential? 2. how do you feel about implementing new school initiatives into your school and/or classroom?* 3. what or whom do you believe influences your beliefs on schooling purpose and reform? a. teacher prep program? b. new colleagues? c. which ones? d. other impact on classroom behavior 1. how do you think your beliefs influence your activities and interactions with students in the classroom? 2. can you provide an example of your beliefs influence your classroom activities and interactions with students? french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 29 appendix d: interview protocol three teaching practice 1. how would you define your teaching practice? social justice 2. can you provide an example of you using culturally responsive or justice-oriented teaching methods in your classroom? for the following question provide an example as well 4. do you think you hold high academic and behavioral expectations for all in a rigorous curriculum? 5. do you think your classroom climate is warm and demanding? how so? 6. do you affirm and sustain their students' cultural backgrounds by drawing from their "funds of knowledge" (languages, histories, cultural practices) 7. do you connect with their students' families and communities? 8. do you advocate for curricular and policy changes that promote more equitable educational opportunities? 9. do you help students identify and critique historical and contemporary examples of injustice? 10. do you empower students to actively work toward social change? 11. how do you think your beliefs about teaching and your students’ abilities are reflected in your classroom practice? 12. now i’m going to ask you some specific questions about my visit to your classroom… (will vary for each teacher based on previously recorded data) french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 30 appendix e: interview protocol four (will vary by each teacher based on classroom observation) 1. when i visited the students were {insert observation i.e. copying definitions form the overhead and generating discussion}. you said in an earlier interview that {insert data i.e. that you see your role for teaching as not just someone who is there to teach but more of a mentor, or a father-figure for students to look up to}, can you explain how these beliefs of yours came into play during this lesson? 2. you also said that you {insert data i.e. you believe students should take ownership of their learning, but that it is more of the teacher’s responsibility to construct knowledge}. can you explain how this belief came into play during this lesson? 3. you mentioned in our last interview that you {insert data i.e. hold incredibly high academic and behavioral expectations for your students} – can you explain how this came to play in the lesson i visited? 4. you mentioned that {insert data i.e. skills are more important that retaining content}, can you explain how this belief came into play in this lesson? 5. you mentioned in our last interview that you {insert data i.e. try to incorporate social justice teaching by intentionally showcasing prominent african american inventors or leaders in your lessons}. can you explain how this came to play or how you connected with your african american students in 6. you mentioned that you see are {insert data i.e. usually supportive of new reforms if other teachers in your school are supportive}. can you explain how this belief came into play during the lesson i observed? 7. you mentioned that you see schools as {insert data i.e. a space to prepare kids for jobs} can you explain how this came into play in your classroom when i visited? 8. now i want to hear about your teacher preparation program. how did they prepare you to teach? what did they tell you to anticipate regarding the culture you would encounter at your school? do you think this preparation was realandic for your current teaching environment? 9. how was your current work environment changed that way you teach, compared to how you expected to teach at day 1? who or what has affected this change? french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 31 appendix f: interview protocol five teaching practice how would you describe the role and responsibilities you hold as a teacher? teaching curriculum, safe environment, foster relationships what do you believe is the purpose of schooling? what are your expectations for students? what is your long-term career plan today? what influences your job satisfaction? how would you describe your classroom practice? is learning the same for all students? is learning different for all students? students, and teacher serves as a facilitator? teacher should make all decisions? what is most important in student learning to you? more about the skills mastering content? develop skills to learn? what or who do you believe influences your beliefs on teaching and your students most? social justice how would you describe your current students? do your beliefs on student achievement (ability) align with what any other teachers believe at your school? how would you describe your students’ home environment? how would you describe satisfactory student performance for your students? each kid is different is it when students do better than they did before? is it when they are on grade-level or showing that they are college ready? what or whom do you believe influences your beliefs on your students and their families? school purpose & reform how do you feel about implementing new school initiatives into your school and/or classroom? what or whom do you believe influences your beliefs on new school initiatives? do you think your beliefs about teaching, student achievement, teaching for social justice, and school reform changed over the course of the year? what do you think influenced this change most? french: identity development & belief change: experiences of beginning urban teachers current issues in education, 21(3) 32 author notes dr. kate rollert french wayne state university kate.french@wayne.edu volume 21, issue 3 december 9, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf mailto:kate.french@wayne.edu volume 5, number 3 may 22, 2002 issn 1099-839x reflective practitioner preparation: in the wake of 21st century terrorism glenda moss and joe d. nichols indiana university purdue university fort wayne this paper presents an example of reflective educational practice as the authors address the impact of trauma on the educational process. multiple aspects of the educational process will be discussed: education at the national and local level as well as teacher preparation and k-12 classroom practice. the authors ground the theoretical piece in educational theory while also drawing on personal practical knowledge of experience from classroom practice. this reflectivereflexive, theory-practice inquiry method illuminated the ways that students and teachers must deal with trauma in the educational setting on a daily basis. "a picture is worth a thousand words." when describing the twin towers in new york city on september 11, 2001, thousands of words were used to describe the multiple impressions, feelings, thoughts, and interpretations held by viewers. likewise, when one now hears the two words, "twin towers," different images come to mind in contrast to images prior to september 11, 2001. these new images are reflexive responses to a traumatizing event and will dominate our thought patterns if left unanalyzed by subsequent information and events that can help us return to a sense of normalcy and stability. immediately following the tragic events of september 11, the national association of school psychologists (nasp) released suggestions to school systems in our local community for helping children cope with tragic events. as educators, we are also dialoguing about how to adequately prepare preservice educators to effectively attend to devastating loss, and how we can assist students in moving beyond the tragic events that will unfortunately and eventually occur in our schools. drawing on personal, practical knowledge of experience (clandinin & connelley, 1985), reflective analysis (cochran-smith & lytle, 1990; dewey, 1938; olson, 1997), and theory and experience, the following discussion is framed from our point of view as reflective-reflexive researchers. our purpose is three-fold. first, we present a case study of reflective practitioner preparation through a teacher narrative story of experience, followed by our reflective-reflexive narrative stories of experience. we reflected on the six-grade teacher's story, and reflexively turned it onto ourselves to analyze our own experiences, in an effort to contribute knowledge to the issue of preparing teachers for dealing with trauma. thus, we provide a theory-practice connection exemplar for reflective teacher practice. the reflective-practitioner responds to students' needs that emerge as a result of national tragedies such as violent attacks, or local tragedies such as the death of a family member or classmate. ideally, the reflective-practitioner, as a critical reflective leader, responds to the daily incidents of institutional trauma, which marginalize particular children through insensitive educational policies and practices. finally, the reflective-practitioner teacher listens with care, understands, and draws on current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 knowledge and skills to support children/students through difficult situations. second, we present issues of child abuse, school violence, and marginalization as forms of domestic trauma that require school-based interventions. finally, we discuss the pragmatics of facilitating the dialogical healing process in the school setting in response to national and local tragic events, but even more importantly, in response to the daily trauma that some children experience as a result of unjust social structures. in addition, we address the lack and absence of ongoing emotional healing processes for children dealing with the trauma of "otherness," a form of trauma that has resulted from educational practices that privilege the emotional needs of the members of the dominant culture. the continuous thread throughout this paper is that of reflective teaching practice as promoted by the interstate new teachers assessment and support consortium (intasc) (1992) standards. september 11: sixth-grade classroom case study people from diverse life contexts in the united states of america and around the globe, were heavily impacted by the traumatic events of september 11. one sixth-grade teacher described his reflective-reflexive (applying theory in practice) experience on the morning of september 11, 2001 with the following observation: as my class sat and watched the horrifying events of the world trade buildings unfold before our eyes on september 11, 2001, i was rudely awakened by how insensitive and callus some of my students seemed to be. while watching tower one burn after a terrorist attack, we watched live footage of tower two also being struck by another plane. as the building erupted into flames and the media began to give more details, they focused in on people from this building beginning to jump. i headed for my television control and began to turn this off fearing that this was too much for them to handle. as i reached the control, i heard a student in the background begin to giggle and say, "this is so cool". my initial reaction to this statement was absolute anger, sorrow, and frustration. how did this student come to be so unsympathetic to others? (personal correspondence, 9-12-01) this sixth-grade teacher was able to reflexively, or instantaneously, reflect on his recently attained knowledge of ecology theory and turn it inward to analyze the responses of his sixth-grade students in a moment of decision. while the events of september 11 were unique, the student's response was not, and as a whole, the event represents one among numerous moments of decision that teachers are faced with during every class period of any given day. how we respond to our students can contribute to building the learning relationship, or may become a barrier to growth and development. this teacher was able to suspend an initial reflexive thought that resulted in angry feelings towards the student's response, and reflexively-reflectively analyze the response through an understanding of ecology theory. it is easy at a time like september 11 to be conscious of how students in k-12 classrooms are affected by trauma. systematic learning structures are disrupted by the presence of emotions that teachers are not used to dealing with in the classroom setting. if k-12 practitioners survive long enough in the teaching profession, they will eventually be forced to confront tragic events that occur on a national and international level, and even perhaps more profound, local tragic events in their own communities or schools. we can remember very vividly where we were when the announcement came that the challenger space shuttle carrying teacher christa mcauliffe, had just exploded on take-off. while one of us was teaching high school algebra in oklahoma and the other was teaching middle school social studies in texas, we can each recall where we were when we heard the tragic news. both teachers and students had to process the event, and sixteen years later, most can still reconstruct where they were at the time of the broadcast. during the past 16 years, we have experienced the loss of students and teachers to traffic accidents and illnesses. we have also experienced the unpredictable tragic deaths of students during their participation in athletic events, suicide, and gang or gunshot related incidences. in each and every case, disruption of mental and emotional capacities of students and teachers, and of the school climate, occurred as we suspended our daily curriculum and typical academic discussions to attend memorial services, funerals, and wakes with our students and colleagues. however, the affect of tragic events is not limited to k-12 students and teachers. pre-service teachers and their instructors, among others, are also impacted by death and traumatic events. for instance, one of our pre-service teachers experienced the loss of his sister in new york on september 11 as she worked in the twin towers. though neither we, nor the larger population of pre-service teachers at our school knew the young lady personally, her death had a systemic effect. we felt our class member's absence while he was in new york futilely looking for the remains of his sister and helping his brother-in-law adjust to the loss. in the weeks following the tragedy, as instructors, we monitored and tempered class a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone 3 discussions with great vigilance, knowing full well that a participant in the class discussions was suffering a direct and devastating loss. in the wake of the aftermath of september 11, pre-service educators were beginning to ask an important question: what obligations do we have to adequately prepare pre-professional educatorstudents to deal with potentially catastrophic and upsetting events as they enter the teaching profession? theory-practice connections despite our best efforts to prepare our preservice teachers in the applied areas of subject content, physical and cognitive developmental issues, and effective instructional methodology, it is also essential to focus on assisting our students in creating a foundation of reflective practice and skills that are grounded in theory. after hearing the callous comments from his student, our sixth-grade teacher could have reacted in an inappropriate manner toward the student, perhaps even resulting in the escalation of the disturbance. he chose however, not to be reactionary, and instead paused long enough to use critical reflective skills and draw loosely on his recent theoretical discussions in a graduate level course concerning bronfenbrenner's work (1979), to understand the reactions of the student. a complete discussion of bronfenbrenner's ecological theory is beyond the scope of this paper. furthermore, we are not arguing for bronfenbrenner's theory above other theories for understanding students' behavior and interactions in the classroom. we draw on bronfenbrenner's ecological theory to the extent that it proved to be instrumental for our sixth-grade teacher who remembered bronfenbrenner's statement, "a child's experiences are viewed as subsystems within larger systems, or a set of nested structures" (bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 22). according to this theory, these "nested structures" serve to assist children's understanding of themselves and their interactions with the environment. understanding his student as a product of the environment helped our sixth-grade teacher make sense out of what he recognized as an inappropriate response to tragedy. children interact with the environment of which they are a part and these interactions are the engine of development. it can be confusing and frustrating as a teacher to try and understand the perspectives and reactions of children. however, when one begins to gain an understanding of and get a theoretical handle on the central issues in children's lives, this perspective becomes easier to put into context. thus, the lack of communication in the classroom, parental involvement, and monitoring of certain issues will continue to result in callous and inappropriate reactions from children in the wake of tragic events. as we continue to reflect on the events of september 11, 2001 and the events that occurred thereafter, many of us are not surprised at the reaction of some individuals. in essence, the example of the student reaction provided earlier was predictable given the extreme nature of the events and the student's assumed limited experiences with severe trauma. as educators however, it is important to understand that typical life experiences from a child's perspective can be equally traumatic and debilitating. although in no manner attempting to lessen the devastation of september 11, we now turn to a discussion of the impact of abuse, violence, and traditional policies and practices in the schools that work to marginalize and potentially severely impact the lives of children. understanding children as a product of their environment can be helpful in making sense out of what an adult teacher might initially recognize as an inappropriate response to tragedy. in addition, understanding the social and environmental systems that dynamically influence children throughout their development is key. domestic trauma child abuse in 1999, an estimated 3 million children were reported to child protective agencies as victims of child maltreatment (peddle & wang, 2001). because of the continuing rise in the reported cases of abuse, schools are experiencing increasingly greater challenges to recognize and to provide services to these students. in order to serve and support these victims, educators need to understand the dynamics of child abuse and to become more knowledgeable of school-based interventions. in addition, understanding the immediate and long-term effects of abuse is essential for current and preservice teachers. several researchers suggest that children who suffer from abuse may exhibit symptoms commonly associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd)(ford, racusin, ellis, daviss, reiser, fleishcher, & thomas, 2000; gorey & leslie, 1997; king, 2000; mcleer, deblinger, atkins, foa, & ralphe, 1988; reebye, moretti, & lessard, 1995). in addition, graham (1993) suggested that in fact, ptsd is the most common diagnosis for children who have been abused. children who experience ptsd may exhibit a number of symptomatic responses commonly associated with a continual reexperiencing of the event, avoiding stimuli associated with the event, general numbing of responsiveness, and increased arousal. in addition, symptoms may include falling or staying asleep, difficulties in concentration and completion of tasks, and irritability that may include anger outbursts (american psychiatric current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 association, 1994). there may also be signs of hyperactive vigilance or exaggerated responses and actions. etherington (2000) and others (alter-reid, gibbs, lachenmeyer, sigal, & massoth, 1986; kendall-tackett, williams, & finkelhor, 1993;wolf & birt, 1995) found that victims of child abuse and neglect might also exhibit elevated anxiety and depression, inappropriate sexual behavior, and social withdrawal. kimerling and calhoun (1994) noted several physiological symptoms that may be apparent in abuse victims, including headaches and stomachaches. victims of trauma, and in particular child abuse, may become hypersensitive to sights, touch, smells and sounds (kolb, 1987) that are associated with these earlier emotional experiences. child abuse victims may also experience persistent symptoms that interfere with normal development (mcleer et. al., 1988). these symptoms may include excessive daydreaming or confusion and development of unwarranted specific or undefined fears. these intrusive thoughts and accompanying irritability often interfere with schoolwork and may be manifested in what many would consider developmentally inappropriate behaviors (graham, 1993). despite the suggestion that the ptsd model is best suited to describe the symptomotology to violent trauma like sexual abuse, others have criticized its application in fully explaining the results of child abuse trauma (finkelhor, 1990). finkelhor, for instance, argued that the ptsd model is too narrow in that it overwhelmingly focuses on the affective realm. in his view, concentrating extensively on feelings minimizes attention to the thinking or cognitive realm. as a result, maintained finkelhor, victims of child abuse have distorted cognitive maps about sex, family, and self worth. not all victims of sexual abuse may exhibit ptsd symptoms but may have other problems that manifest themselves and become debilitating factors (finkelhor, 1990). school violence in october 2001, an hhs (health and human services) news release carried the title: "hhs awards $10 million for child traumatic stress initiative" declaring, "hhs secretary tommy g. thompson today announced the awarding of $10 million in grant funds to improve treatment and services for children and adolescents exposed to traumatic events" (hhs news, 2001). while this appeared to be in direct response to the tragic events of september 11, a june 15 news alert indicating a july deadline for this grant proves differently. this news alert is evidence that there was concern for children already suffering from trauma-causing events, like school violence, much earlier (the center for health and health care in schools, 2001). two months before the september 11 event, the announcement of the availability of $10 million to improve services for children and adolescents exposed to traumatic events by the substance abuse and mental health services administration's center for mental health services appeared in the drug and alcoholism & drug abuse weekly and in mental health weekly (cmhs, 2001). clearly, issues related to the treatment of childhood trauma, often related to violence, were being discussed prior to the september 11 event. research has shown that children and adolescents today are more violent and therefore more often the victims of violence (ceballo, dahl, aretakis & ramirez, 2001; gladstein, rusonis & heald, 1992; rembolt, 1998; lorion & saltzman, 1993; singer, anglin, song & lunghofer, 1995). for the 1995-96 school year, california schools alone reported more than 22,000 violent crimes against people (california safe schools report, 1997). as public schools continue to provide supportive services to students in the wake of columbine and other school tragedies, it becomes even more critical for school practitioners to understand the impact violent, traumatic experiences may have on their students. raywid and oshiyama (2000) concluded that there exists a substantial amount of research literature suggesting appropriate directions that schools can move in, in order to avoid more tragedies of school violence similar to that experienced at columbine high school. their suggestions of smaller high school populations, grouping by interest rather than academic grades, and encouraging tolerance, acceptance, and respect among students, may begin to offer some solutions in the attempt to create a stronger "community atmosphere". in many cases where violent student behavior has been observed, particularly in suburban schools, students and staff reported that perpetrators felt shunned or isolated and were not accepted into highly regarded extracurricular activities or clique groups. as a result of war, violence, and traumatic experiences, children not only see and experience tragic events, but also experience the potential threat of harm (byrnes, 2001). in situations of violence, children may not secure a stable attachment to a nurturing adult. in fact, the interruption of daily routine, school services, and the physical structure of normally safe havens (whether at home or school), may have a long-term impact on the quality of children's lives even after the violence has abated (byrnes, 2001). some experts would also suggest that violent images have become so pervasive in the media, that children have become desensitized to a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone 5 violence. others would theorize that violence is rooted in the recent social and economic changes in the united states over the past 20 years. for instance, overworked and financially strapped parents vent their frustrations on their children, in some cases resulting in physical and emotional abuse taking place in the family. as recipients of abuse at home and seeing an increasing prevalence of violence in our society, children have grown accustomed to violence as a "normal" way to settle disputes (remboldt, 1998). in addition to viewing violence as the most expedient way to achieve desired results, other children may use violence as a mechanism to obtain various desired possessions (remboldt, 1998). despite the fact that the sources of school violence (either in urban or suburban environments) lie in complicated, ambiguous arenas of social life (perlstein, 2000), it remains the task of schools to respond with appropriate support for victims and survivors. bullying, sexual harassment, and other activities that students use to assert power and maintain their place in the pecking order are simultaneously pervasive and invisible, and as such, frequently overlooked by teachers and administrators (perlstein, 2000). together, they constitute the normal, systematic form of violence in our schools. in addition, where majority white males may often have a wealth of defined supportive groups or individuals if trouble arises, females and minority males in particular, often suffer inequitable support. the burdens of boyhood fall particularly hard on poor, minority males who are more likely to face punishment than nurturance (felice, 1981; nichols, ludwin & iadicola, 1999; prothrow-smith, 1991). in addition to structural shortcomings, poor minority youth are often victims of and participants in violent behavior as a result of their exposure to violence in their communities and because they have come to believe that school authorities cannot protect them (ceballo, dahl, aretakis & ramirez, 2001; gordon, gordon & nembhard, 1994, prothrow-smith, 1991). ironically, at the same time that females are victimized at school, males are poorly served by their apparent privilege. in comparison to female students, male students have been found to fall short in academic achievement and also get into far more trouble behaviorally (nichols et. al., 1999; perlstein, 2000; sadker, sadker, & long, 1997). as obstacles to females' educational opportunities have begun to diminish, american ideals of masculinity, the valorization of isolation and aggression, and taboos against displaying emotions other than anger have accentuated males' academic and behavioral difficulties (pollack, 1998). identifying and reporting child abuse is a necessary skill that all child educators should possess. the need to understand how children respond to abnormal, uncontrollable, and traumatic situations and how these responses impact normal development is critical (etherington, 2000). while having the skills to identify and report incidences is crucial, the safety and well being of children also depend on the ability of the school and community to move beyond detection to provide follow-up services. for victims of abuse and trauma, schools may be the main source of stability, consistency, and routine (graham, 1993). therefore, it becomes imperative that as pre-service educators, we assist our students both those from supportive backgrounds and those from backgrounds where chances of success are hampered by traumatic events to be proactive in their preparation to life and work. appropriate responses: when tragedy affects the school climate appropriate adult responses first, the national association of school psychologists (nasp) suggests that adults should model a calm and controlled demeanor in the midst of tragedy and loss. developmental psychologists would agree that children tend to take their emotional cues from significant adults in their lives. although emotional states are often difficult to control, especially when tragic events take on a more personal nature, children need to understand that it is acceptable to have strong emotional feelings while at the same time maintaining a calm, non-anxious demeanor. second, children need to be reassured that they are safe and that important adults in their lives are also safe. understanding that trustworthy people are in charge in tragic situations (police, firemen, doctors, military etc.) will further help to ease potential anxious and frightened responses from students. adults should also understand that children (as well as adults) express their emotions differently. to assist students, it is vital that adults understand that there is no right or wrong way to express grief or anxiety. children should understand that emotions are a natural way to deal with these issues and that it is all right to feel upset. however, as these feelings and emotions evolve, children may need assistance from adults in adequately and appropriately expressing these feelings. even the emotion of anger is understandable, but depending on the age of a child, such an emotion may not be expressed in an appropriate manner. changes in behavior, sleep patterns, and appetite may also be an indicator of a child's grief, anxiety, or discomfort in tragic situations. adults need to be aware of a child's emotional state and assist them in expressing current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 themselves in manners that are appropriate and supportive, in an effort to eventually move beyond a tragedy. fourth, adults should provide factual explanations, especially immediately following a tragic event. when adults speculate or embellish events concerning what has happened or what may happen in the future, anecdotal information may become intertwined with factual events, resulting in an escalation of hypothetical or false causes, other results, and undue reactions. children should be told truthful information and adults should not try to pretend that the event is not serious. without dwelling on the potentially massive scale or scope of the tragedy, children ought to be given credit for their intellectual ability in understanding the seriousness of events. finally, explanations that adults give should remain developmentally appropriate, based not only on age but also on students' individual characteristics and needs (bowman, 1993; elkind, 1989). upper middle and high school students may have strong and varying opinions about the causes of violence and tragedy in schools and society. they may want to share concrete suggestions to help prevent these issues from reoccurring in the near future. in addition, students at this age level can often understand the social, political, and economic ramifications of world events and how these may impact their future lives. upper elementary and middle school children may be quite vocal in asking questions about safety issues at their schools and in their communities. these students should be reassured and adults should assist them to separate reality from fantasy, and again, provide them with factual information. early elementary school children should be insulated somewhat from the scope of events, but at the same time be respected for their thoughts and opinions. information that is simple and brief should be provided and balanced with reassurances that the daily structures of their lives will continue with as little interruption as possible. the nasp suggests that adults should encourage all children to verbalize their thoughts and feelings. in addition, these researchers maintain that developing good listening skills is essential. this requires adults to focus on skills that involve accepting and listening to children's thoughts, emotions, and feelings with a non-judgmental, nonopinionated demeanor. appropriate parental reactions if at all possible, parents should maintain a "normal" daily routine in the days following the tragic event. continuing to have planned, specific times for meals, homework, and bedtime will assist children in functioning with a sense of normalcy. second, parents should take time to discuss the event with their children in a developmentally appropriate manner. parents should have the ultimate decision, especially for their young children, in determining what information should be disseminated. third, the nasp also recommends that parents maintain close physical contact with their children during and throughout the days following a crisis situation. close physical presence will not only reassure children, but will help parents monitor their reactions to what is taking place around them. for instance, spending extra time reading or playing quiet games with children can create an sense of calm, develop closeness, and a feeling of security. fourth, parents should take precautions to safeguard their children's health. although we know that stress can be physically detrimental to adults, in a similar fashion, stress can physically affect children's well-being. insuring that students continue to receive proper amounts of sleep, exercise, and appropriate nutrition are key factors that will assist students in dealing with and moving beyond tragic events. fifth, parents should seek out and determine what resources their children's school has in place to help them cope with tragic occurrences. most schools have a strategic plan of action to assist their staff, students, and parents in the case of emergency situations. typically, school systems will provide extra counselors and support staff for students and their parents in the case of these types of events. remaining in the physical environment of the school with friends and teachers may also help children regain a sense of normalcy. finally, parents should take advantage of family affiliations with churches, synagogues, and other religious organizations. these organizations provide opportunities for prayer and communal support and typically encourage hopeful and optimistic thoughts for the future. praying and providing positive support for victims of tragedy can begin the healing process and children should be exposed to this often overlooked potential source of comfort and strength. appropriate teacher/school reactions similar to what adult responses ought to be, schools and teachers should provide additional support for students in the wake of tragedy. schools should be safe havens and administrators and staff should assure students that they are well prepared to provide comfort and security at all times. second, as adults and parents provide stability in the children's environment, schools should also seek to maintain a normal daily routine as much as situations will allow. stability and calm are key components that will help to maintain a productive and welcoming school and classroom environment. third, schools should provide information to both teachers and students that a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone 7 may be useful in the classroom or in students' home environments. although take-home parent information sheets and packets can be useful, teachers should provide news and information directly to students when possible, rather than having information passed on by way of public address announcements. in the school, teachers are the strongest direct connection to students, and students may interpret direct information from the teacher as the safest and most reliable source of information. as a fourth support component, the nasp advises that schools should have a crisis plan ready to implement in the case of emergencies or traumatic situations in the school. school psychologists and counselors should be made available to talk to students and staff members who require additional support. schools should also be aware of additional community resources that are available for students, and staff personnel should be knowledgeable of agencies that parents and students can be referred to. fifth, teachers should be aware and monitor students who may have recently experienced personal tragedy or those who may have suffered indirect connections to tragic events. children who may have recently traveled to a site of tragedy, like the most recent new york city incident, may feel a personal loss and connection to the event. these students may need extra support and consideration as events continue to unfold. the nasp also suggests that schools and teachers provide an outlet for students who desire to assist in helping the victims of tragic events. creating get-well cards or sending letters to victim's families and survivors of tragedies may be one avenue of support. in addition, writing thank you letters to emergency workers and health care providers, and even providing monetary donations are all methods that may be used to help students feel a part of recovery efforts. finally, as tragic events unfold in the media frenzy of information, schools and teachers should monitor and in some cases restrict viewing of the events and the aftermath that follows, as our sixth-grade teacher did when he realized his students were viewing live events. viewing of events should be developmentally appropriate for the age group of students in the classroom. in addition, teachers should allow for age appropriate discussions and activities as news of the event continues to be provided by the media. teachers should not be expected to provide all of the answers, but they should ask questions that help guide the discussion, rather than dominate it. two-way communication between the school and parents is a key factor and schools and teachers should place great emphasis on coordinated efforts to support children through tragic events. summary as instructors of pre-service teachers, we are obligated to make certain that our students are prepared to teach not only in their content domain, but that they are also adequately prepared to assist students through tragic events that will undoubtedly occur. properly trained adults, parents, school administrators, and teachers can work in a coordinated effort to provide an effective support system for our young people. this assistance begins with understanding our own emotions and how we as individuals see and deal with tragic events. children will often take their cues from us; therefore, we as adults must be prepared to react with appropriate emotions and attitudes. although not always easy given time constraints and other obstacles, taking time for reflection on events is essential to us as adults for a greater quality of life. children too, need time and the opportunity for pause and reflection. as educators, our ultimate goal is to create classroom atmospheres conducive to all types of discussions, both those of celebration and of tragedy. in this manner, we can promote educationally and 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(1995). the psychological sequelae of child sexual abuse. in t. h. ollendick & r. j. prinz (eds), advances in clinical child psychology (volume 17, p. 233-263). new york: plenum press. current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 2002 article citation moss, g., & nichols, j. d. (2002, may 22). reflective practitioner preparation: in the wake of 21st century terrorism. current issues in education [on-line], 5 (3). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume5/number3/ author notes glenda moss indiana university purdue university fort wayne school of education 2101 e. coliseum blvd., fort wayne, in 46805-1499 glenda moss taught middle-school students language arts and social studies for thirteen years in texas until she resigned to begin doctoral studies in june of 1998. she received her ed.d. in educational leadership from stephen f. austin state university. she presently serves as an assistant professor in the school of education at indiana university purdue university fort wayne, where she teaches pre-service teachers methods for secondary social studies and english, and critical reading in the content area. her areas of interest include teacher preparation, critical pedagogy, critical multiculturalism, and critical research methods. joe d. nichols indiana university purdue university fort wayne school of education 2101 e. coliseum blvd., fort wayne, in 46805-1499 joe d. nichols taught junior and senior high school students math for fifteen years in oklahoma, until he received his ph.d. in educational psychology from the university of oklahoma in 1994. he presently serves as an associate professor in the school of education at indiana university purdue university fort wayne, where he teaches preservice teachers educational psychology with field experiences. his interests include motivation theory, adolescent development, high school block scheduling structures, elementary looping classrooms, collegiate connections with high schools, and pre-service field experience. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 25, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation moss, g., & nichols, j. d. (2002). reflective practitioner preparation: in the wake of 21st century terrorism. current issues in education, 5(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1619 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2002,%20vol%205,%20%231-6/number3/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1619 a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone 11 cie template 1 volume 18, number 1 march 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x increasing accountability measures for early childhood teachers using evaluation models: observation, feedback, and self-assessment anna krummel reinking illinois state university president barack obama and u.s. secretary of education arne duncan are promoting an early learning initiative focusing on the agenda of every four year old having equal access to high-quality early learning environments (administration for children and families, 2013). one way the federal government is supporting this proposal is through a grant; race to the top-early learning challenge (rtt-elc) (u.s. department of education, 2013). as this grant is being implemented throughout the states, policymakers are pushing for higher teacher accountability through the “workforce” heading of the grant. one way many states are implementing a plan focusing on the early learning workforce is through developing a quality rating and improvement system (qris). these systems focus states’ efforts on teacher accountability by depicting certain teacher evaluation models that are currently being researched and implemented (u.s. department of education, 2013). the three main teacher evaluation models, focused on in this article, are observation, feedback, and self-assessment. these three models can be implemented separately or in conjunction with each other, which is also discussed. keywords: early childhood education, teacher evaluation, preschool, race to the top early learning challenge, quality rating and improvement system in his state of the union address on february 12, 2013, president obama stated, in states that make it a priority to educate our youngest children…studies show students grow up more likely to read and do math at grade level, graduate high school, hold a job, form more stable families of their own. we know this works. so let’s do what works and make sure none of our children start the race of life already behind. this statement, along with other statements from the president in his last two terms is primarily based on research showing that brain development occurs most rapidly early in life. organizations, such as unicef, an organization developed in the 1940s as a way to address the needs of children worldwide, have advocated for early childhood education because of the immense brain development occurring in the first years of life (the world bank, 2011). additionally, the world bank, a leader in the human development network (hdn) released a statement that said, “medical research has demonstrated that the most rapid period of brain development occurs in the first few years of life and that the experiences of early childhood have an enduring effect on an individuals’ future learning capacity” (the world bank group, 2011). therefore, with the available research and comprehensive early learning agenda proposed by president obama, individuals around the nation and worldwide are building upon the understanding that investment in early childhood education, care, and development for the nation’s youngest learners will prevent the achievement gap before it even starts (white house, 2013). leading officials working with president obama are also in support of the proposed early learning initiative. the u.s. department of education’s leading current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 2 official, secretary arne duncan stated that, “perhaps the best investment we can make is early childhood education—getting our babies off to a great start and getting them into kindergarten ready to learn and read” (connelly, 2010). top economists are also supporting president obama and secretary duncan. organizations, such as readynation and the national women’s law center, are gathering professionals from a variety of careers to build support of the proposed initiative. economists in support of the proposed early learning campaign agree that highquality programs for early learning are needed in order to create a more equal educational system for children from all types of families and communities (administration for children and families, 2013). president obama, his administration, and business professionals are not the only people who have the goal of increasing the quality of early learning atmospheres for children. researchers, such as guernsey and ochshorn (2011), agree with the initiative, but also expand on the proposal. they propose that early learning teachers need more accountability measures in order to improve the early learning atmosphere and demonstrate high student achievement (guernsey & ochshorn, 2011). therefore, researchers who understand the importance of early learning environments are currently researching accountability measures to put into preschool classrooms, such as teacher evaluation models. it has been stated when teachers are evaluated, with a purpose, substantial improvements to instruction and other social emotional factors could benefit (pianta & hamre, 2009). therefore, teacher accountability is part of the president’s early learning initiative. holding teachers accountable is being met through teacher evaluation models. teacher evaluations provide meaningful information that can be used to improve the quality and application of educational programs (decker & decker, 2001). in the past, early childhood teachers have had some form of evaluation system. however, with increased accountability creates the need for a teacher evaluation measurement instrument, which researchers, policymakers, and school administrators are working on developing. consequently, this paper focuses on three evaluation models that are being researched and are predominately used in early childhood settings. the three methods are observation, feedback, and self-reflection. this paper will aid educators, community members, and school administrators in understanding the differences and commonalities of the three evaluation models. while discussing the three models, leading professionals in education and other professions, will be able to understand the impact teacher evaluation models have on students/children and teachers, specifically in early childhood settings. how are early childhood teachers evaluated? instruments and strategies to evaluate early childhood teachers are being developed and expanded upon to address increased teacher accountability because the role of early childhood teachers is becoming increasingly multifaceted (agbenyega, 2012). however, there is a lack of professional consensus regarding internal quality control in early childhood settings (darling-hammond, 2010). there is also a lack of implementation consistency among and between districts and states regarding teacher evaluation models and instruments. in one study, preschool teachers reported that they were not accurately assessed through an evaluation method because it was not designed specifically for preschool teachers (lazzari & bruder, 1988). therefore, teacher evaluation models are being created, studied, and improved upon. teacher evaluations models are ways to support student growth by reinforcing high expectations, defining a clear set of priorities, and creating a common language for best practice (the new teacher project, 2014). researchers have studied evaluation models, including observation, feedback and self-reflection strategies. they have studied these models separately and in conjunction with each other. these strategies have been studied as a way to evaluate preschool teachers’ ability to interact socially with students, assist in the development of students’ social emotional development, and encourage students to succeed academically. observation observation has been a foundational strategy and influential measurement tool in early childhood classrooms for more than three-decades (gage & needels, 1989; pianta & hamre, 2009). it is a way to observe classroom environments and teacher-child interactions (pianta, 2012). the information gathered during an observation is not provided as a feedback tool, but rather a verbatim of what occurred during the observation. it has been found and stated that, “placing observation of actual teaching as a central feature of accountability frameworks, teacher preparation… could result in substantial improvements in instruction and related social” interactions (pianta & hamre, 2009, p. 109). therefore, observations have implications for administrative decisions, evaluation practices, and policymaking (pianta, 2012). the instruments for observation that are being studied, implemented, and improved upon are in response to a specific heading in the race to the top-early learning challenge (rtt-elc) application. as part of the application and fund allocation requirements, states are required to allocate a portion of the funds received to a specified system designed to increase the workforce or professionalism of early childhood educators. the “workforce” heading in the rtt-elc is being met by variations of the quality rating and improvement system increasing accountability measures for early childhood teachers using evaluation models: observation, feedback, and self-assessment 3 (qris) (u.s. department of education, 2013). each qris model involves areas that are hypothesized to be part of a “quality early learning environment” including teacher interactions. as defined by the national association of the education of young children (naeyc) the qris is a system that was developed and implemented as part of a larger conversation regarding the definition of what makes a high-quality early learning environment (national association for the education of young children, 2013). as part of the early learning challenge and implementation of the qris, there is one instrument, the class (classroom assessment scoring system), which is being used more prevalently to evaluate the foundational pieces of classroom environments, including interactions that create optimal learning environments (la paro, pianta, & stuhlman, 2004; office of head start national centers, 2013). one topic within optimal learning environments is teacher-child interactions, which is seen through observations. research has shown that when the class is used to evaluate classroom environments, which can be completed by a peer or administrator, teachers are able to stimulate peer conversations. these peer conversations are then used to facilitate the development of language skills through well-planned schedules and to develop other quality learning strategies through brainstorming (howes et al., 2008). teacher-child interactions that are intentionally planned support the argument that quality early childhood classrooms promote learning of academic skills, as evident in research (howes et al., 2008; bogner, raphael, & pressley, 2002). observers using the class to observe and evaluate the teacher-student interactions categorize the interactions into three broad categories that include emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support. the three specified categories are then broken down even further into two subcategories that include “positive climate” and “concept development.” both of these dimensions focus on teachers’ interactions with children. the positive climate relates to teachers’ interactions with children that create an enjoyable classroom atmosphere. the concept development focuses on teachers’ interactions as students develop higher-order thinking skills. researchers have shown that structured observation tools, such as the class, serve a purpose when evaluating early childhood teachers (downer et al., 2012). in one research study, the researchers used the class as a way to investigate the minimum level of preschool quality needed for children to show an increase in their academic, behavioral, and memory skills in a rural area (burchinal, vernon-feagans, vitiello, greenberg, & the family life project key investigators, 2013). one of the purposes of the class, as indicated earlier, was to create a way to measure teacher-student interactions. therefore, in this study, researchers used the class and found that increases in positive behaviors, as evident through teacher-child interactions, were associated with higher-quality classrooms. in this study, the researchers did not find a direct correlation between high quality preschool settings and academics, however there was a correlation found for quality preschool and positive behaviors (burchinal et al., 2013). a second observation instrument, which has been outlined by the u.s. department of education’s office of planning, research, and education (opre), is the teacher observation in preschools (top). the top is used to observe teachers’ and assistants’ behaviors in preschool classrooms and is associated with the researchbased curriculum, tools of the mind (tools of the mind, 2014). this observational instrument is frequently linked to the research-based curriculum, tools of the mind. at the preschool level, tools of mind is “an instructional strategy used to promote the development of selfregulation” (www.toolsofmind.org). the top “is a system for observing teachers’ and assistants’ behaviors in preschool classrooms across a day-long visit” (bilbrey, vorhaus, farran, & shufelt, 2010) and is always used in conjunction with the child observation in preschool (cop) (farran & son-yarbrough, 2001). an observer using the top observational instrument gathers snapshots of teachers’ and assistants’ behaviors to present a picture of how the teachers and assistants are spending time in a classroom (bilbrey et al., 2010). it is a way to “understand the classroom environment in terms of the teacher’s behaviors” (fuhs, farran, & nesbitt, 2013, p. 350.) a third observational instrument, also outlined by opre, is the teaching pyramid observation tool for preschool classrooms (tpot). the tpot “is an instrument designed to measure the fidelity of implementation of practices associated with the pyramid model (hemmeter, fox, & synder, 2008). the teaching pyramid, on which tpot is based from, is “a framework for supporting social-emotional development and preventing and addressing challenging behaviors” (branson & demchak, 2011, p. 196) in preschool classrooms. in other words, the tpot is an instrument that measures the extent to which an intervention or program is practiced in a classroom, specifically related to the social-emotional development of preschool children. the tpot is completely based on an observation conducted in a preschool classroom and an interview with the teacher. a trained administrator of this observational instrument provides information on how well teachers are implementing practices related to universal, targeted, and individualized supports. the observer or administrator gained detailed information fourteen key teaching practices, environmental items, and notes any red flags that would indicate there is immediate support that is needed. the focus of tpot is to current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 4 understand what teachers need to focus on to ensure positive social-emotional outcomes for young children. using the tpot as an observational instrument, it is recommended that the observation should last at least two hours and include both teacher-directed and child-directed activities. a fourth instrument used to observe in preschool classrooms is the 43 item early childhood environmental rating scale-revised (ecers-r) which released in 1998 (frank porter graham child development institute, 2014). however, harms and clifford designed the first ecers in 1980. the ecers was “designed to assess group programs for preschool-kindergarten aged children” (frank porter graham child development institute, 2014). the ecers revised edition “contains inclusive and culturally sensitive indicators” and new items have been added to include classroom interactions (environment rating scales institute, 2014). in general, rating scales developed on early childhood settings at any level evaluate the process quality in the setting or the experiences children have in the setting through interactions (phillipsen, burchinal, howes, & cryer, 1997). researchers have found the best way to assess process quality is through observation, therefore environmental rating scales were developed. this instrument is currently being used in major studies around the united stated, including federal research projects with head start and state research projects (clifford, reszka, & rossbach, 2010). finally, the program quality assessment (pqa) is also an instrument used in preschool classrooms for teacher evaluations and is associated with the researchbased curriculum, high scope (high scope, 2014). the pqa is a 63-dimension evaluation instrument with 7 domains, including adult-child interactions. the designed purpose of the pqa is to evaluate “the quality of early childhood programs and identify staff training needs” (high scope, 2014). on the high scope website it is stated that the preschool pqa “is reliable and valid and is appropriate for use in all center-based early childhood settings” (high scope, 2014). the pqa was designed to recognize strengths and detect areas for improvement as evaluators and teachers work together to make a better environment for the students and families they serve (high scope, 2014). feedback observation alone is one-way administrators, teachers, researchers, and data collectors can evaluate preschool teachers. one research, avalos (2011), reviewed ten years of publications focusing on teacher professional development. through that review of literature the researcher discovered that peer feedback, either formal or informal, could provide construction professional development through both questioning and supporting the teacher’s self-assessment (avalos, 2011). although, in order to constructively support and compete a teacher’s self-assessment, feedback many times must be used in conjunction with observation. when observation and feedback are used together, results yield improved implementation of a teacher strategy in subsequent observations (alvero, bucklin, & austin, 2001; balcazar, hopkins, & suarez, 1985). feedback is when the assessor focuses on one specific area of the teacher’s classroom and provides feedback. the feedback can be verbal, written, or displayed in a graph for interpretation (agbenyega, 2012; barton & wolery, 2007; casey & mcwilliam, 2008, 2011; mcfarland, saunders, & allen, 2009; wright, ellis, & baxter, 2012). quality and structured feedback is considered by some researchers to be essential when creating an encouraging environment for early childhood teachers (casey & mcwilliam, 2011; pianta, 2012). the feedback provides the teacher with an opportunity to reflect and improve their practice to increase student success. casey and mcwilliam (2011), two well-known researchers in the field of teacher evaluation feedback, conducted a review of literature. their literature review was on performance feedback, which is “verbal, written, or graphical feedback about their (teacher) implementation of an intervention during an observation in an effort to improve their implementation during subsequent observations” (casey & mcwilliam, 2011, p. 68). the results from this literature review support the notion that schools, agencies, states, individuals, and communities all implement different types of teacher evaluation systems, however feedback yields positive results. prior to completing their review of literature regarding performance feedback, casey and mcwilliam (2008) conducted a study focusing on graphical feedback. graphical feedback is when assessors focus on one area of teaching. graphical feedback is a specific type of feedback that displays quantitative information about individuals’ past performance to influence future performance (leach & conto, 1999). researchers have used graphical feedback as a way to monitor specific teaching strategies. for example, casey and mcwilliam (2008), use graphical feedback as a way to measure the teacher’s use of incidental learning in a classroom, which is “interactions on children’s existing engagement to expand children’s participant or encourage their use of more sophisticated behaviors” (casey & mcwilliam, 2008, p. 253). the results showed that, “presenting graphical feedback to teachers seemed to be effective in increasing the number of intervals in which they used incidental teaching with the target children” (casey & mcwilliam, 2008, p. 261). these results, while they cannot be generalized, can be replicated for future researchers to gain more understanding of graphical feedback, with brief verbal conversations. increasing accountability measures for early childhood teachers using evaluation models: observation, feedback, and self-assessment 5 aside from graphical feedback, there is also emailed or written feedback as a way to communicate with the teacher being observed. in one study, barton and wolery (2007) used email feedback with preservice teachers who were in their student teaching semester. the observer sent emailed feedback to each participant within four hours after observing in the classroom. the focus teaching strategy for the feedback was expansion language. an example of “expansion language” is when a child says, “pancake” the teacher could use expansion language stating, “yes, i have a pancake on my plate that i will eat.” all three participants increased their use of “expansion language” once the intervention was introduced (barton & wolery, 2007). the second experiment was a systematic replication of the first experiment. by creating a systematic replication of the first experiment, researchers attempted to replicate the experiment, but added new variables and changed some criterion. the researchers added the dimension of measuring child statements that did not result in an expansion (barton & wolery, 2007). they also expanded their focus to include the measure of “missed opportunities” for expansion between a teacher and child. a “missed opportunity” is when a teacher misses a cue from a student to expand their language, as explained above. however, in the end, the second experiment had inconsistent results. two of three participants responded well to the emails and increased their use of the specified language (barton & wolery, 2007). there are many outside factors to consider when implementing email feedback, including the investment and time constraints of participants. the researchers of these two studies advocate for future research endeavors that may include other aspects along with feedback for teacher evaluations (barton & wolery, 2007). graphical, written, and verbal feedback can go together and often accompany observations. verbal feedback is a way to bring in the face-to-face, social interaction needed for quality evaluation models. verbal feedback is a conversation between the observer and the teacher to ensure teachers understand what they are viewing on the graph (casey & mcwilliam, 2008). feedback, as part of the observational method, is considered by some researchers to be essential when creating an encouraging and high-quality preschool environment (casey & mcwilliam, 2011; pianta, 2012). the feedback provides the teacher with an opportunity to reflect and improve their practice to increase student success. feedback, also known as “good coaching” has the capability to improve teacher practice and programs (guernsey & ochshorn, 2011). self-reflection self-reflection is another type of evaluation method (agbenyega, 2012; ntuli, keengwe, & kyei-blankson, 2009; o’connor & diggins, 2002; wright et al., 2012). self-reflection is generally defined as allowing “educators to distance themselves from their thoughts and actions, make sense of how and why particular practices worked or didn’t work and use new understanding of these processes to adapt practices to be more effective in the future” (mcfarland et al., p. 506). the purpose of selfreflection is to enable teachers to articulate their implicit and personal theories. they are able to question contradictory beliefs and process their practice. reflection creates an environment where teachers want to change themselves, rather have change dictated to them (wood & bennett, 2000). in general, self-reflection is a way for teachers to assess his/her own instruction performance, which is essential to improving teaching qualities and effectiveness (beck, king, & marshall, 2002; capizzi, wehby, & sandemal, 2010; mcfarland et al., 2009; wright et al., 2012). many times self-reflection is an ongoing process that reflects on the ever-changing practices in the classroom and self-questioning regarding effectiveness (arthur, beecher, death, dockett, & farmer, 2005; dahlberg, moss, & pence, 1999; mcfarland et al., 2009; o’connor & diggins, 2002). one type of self-reflection teachers may use is journaling (lin, lake, & rice, 2008). in one study, it was found that teachers are more willing to talk when they are writing a journal-like entry. the process of writing a journal has been found to help teachers transform and develop as professionals (lindsey, roberts, & campbell jones, 2004; gere, buehler, dallavis, & haviland, 2009). while journaling, teachers are able to become aware of their practices and create problem-solving strategies and pedagogical interactions (wood & bennett, 2000). while researchers have studied the actual act of self-reflection, other researchers have investigated teachers’ perceptions of self-reflection. in one research study, pre-service teachers were asked to report their views on the self-reflection process during their practicum course (mcfarland et al., 2009). overall, the researchers of this study found that the act of self-reflection or selfassessment itself was the most important piece. interestingly, the depth or detail to which the reflection was completed was unrelated to the effects. in other words, the researchers found that it did not matter how reflective the teacher was and to what extent the teacher reflected, but that they were going through the process of reflecting (mcfarland et al., 2009). however, the researchers also found that pre-service teachers developed better self-assessment skills as they continued through the process of self-reflection. overall, the participants found many benefits to developing self-reflection skills (mcfarland et al., 2009). in summation, research shows that providing information alone does not usually have an impact on teachers’ behaviors in the classroom. teachers need to be given support and held accountable (rose & church, 1998; wade, 1985). consequently, the three described current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 6 models of teacher evaluation can also be looked at in partnership with each other. it has been said that, “learning to practice in practice with expert guidance, is essential to becoming a great teacher of students with a wide range of needs” (darling-hammond, 2010, p. 40). the ongoing process of observation, feedback, and selfreflection provide quality interactions and holds teachers accountable (casey & mcwilliam, 2011; klein & knitzer, 2006). implications early childhood teacher evaluation models are important, as outlined by the current administration and other leading professionals. president obama and secretary duncan advocate for high quality early learning environments for all four-year-old students in the united states (u.s. department of education, 2013). along with the president and secretary of education, policymakers, researchers, and educators are all focused on increasing student achievement, which is arguably accomplished with high-quality teacher accountability measures. highquality early learning environments are currently being developed as rtt-elc funds are allocated, specifically concentrating on states’ qris models. the qris systems are implementing accountability and evaluation models for early childhood teachers. as these systems are being developed, implemented, and studied, researchers are finding correlations between higher-quality early learning environments and teacher accountability measures associated with evaluations. arizona is one state that has developed specific legislation and policies regarding early learning accountability measures. the arizona’s quality first program has been developed to partner with early childhood providers to make quality improvements focusing on the workforce aspect of the rtt-elc application, expanding early childhood teachers’ knowledge and expertise in working with young children (quality first, 2013). other states are joining in arizona’s efforts by developing studies, programs, and legislation focusing on the importance of early learning environments, especially increasing the teacher force. future studies concentrating on evaluation models, both current and developing, will increase the workforce or professionalism in the early childhood field. some in academia believe that increased accountability models in early childhood settings is the first step to increasing the social view of early childhood teachers as professionals and not babysitters. as qris models are being studied and workforces in early childhood environments are increasing, future studies may include teacher perceptions, administrator perceptions, and community perceptions of early childhood teachers. educators and individuals in academia have indicated that as early childhood teaches increase certification requirements, including accountability measures, the perception of childcare settings will increase. for decades early childhood teachers have been viewed as nurturing babysitters, rather than nurturing educators (clark & huber, 2005). as society changes and there are more households with two working parents, there will a bigger need for early learning environments for younger children. the discussion regarding the early learning workforce and accountability measures is beginning and will continue as rtt-elc funds are allocated. the discussion regarding the importance of high-quality early learning environments will also continue and expand as national organizations develop and advocate for high quality early learning environments for all children around the united states. the discussion will also continue to expand as scientists and doctors continue to educate the public on the extensive, foundational, and important brain growth and development that occurs in the first few years of life, the early childhood years (world bank, 2011). as more individuals become invested in early learning, accountability measures and evaluation models will continue to be studied, critiqued, and improved upon in order to create high-quality early learning environments for all four-year olds. references administration for children and families. 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(1985). what makes a difference in inservice teacher education: a meta-analysis of research. educational leadership, 42(4), 48-54. white house: president barack obama. (2013). early learning. retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/earl y-childhood wood, e., & bennett, n. (2000). changing theories, changing practice: exploring early childhood teachers’ professional learning. teacher and teacher education, 16(5-6), 635-647. wright, m. r., ellis, d. n., & baxter, a. (2012). the effect of immediate or delayed video-based teacher evaluation on head start teachers’ use of praise. journal of research in early childhood, 26(2), 187-198. http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/early-childhood http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/early-childhood current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 10 article citation reinking, a. k. (2015). increasing accountability measures for early childhood teachers using evaluation models: observation, feedback, and self-assessment. current issues in education, 18(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1362 author notes anna krummel reinking illinois state university 5919 n imperial dr., peoria, il 61614 ackrumm@ilstu.edu anna krummel reinking received an ms ed from dominican university and is currently an abd at illinois state university in the school of teaching and learning. her dissertation will focus on using an evaluation model to work with preschool teachers as they implement multicultural education and curriculum into their classrooms. manuscript received: 01/21/2014 revisions received: 08/30/2014 accepted: 09/12/2014 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1362 mailto:ackrumm@ilstu.edu increasing accountability measures for early childhood teachers using evaluation models: observation, feedback, and self-assessment 11 volume 18, number 1 march 22, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editors tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template volume 18, number 1 april 29, 2015 issn 1099-839x an examination into the validity of secondary school entrance scores in predicting the academic success of secondary aged students martin t. hall charles sturt university, australia the barbados secondary school entrance examination (bssee) is used to allocate students to secondary schools in barbados. however, this means of allocation has always been contentious. therefore the aim of this study was to establish the predictive validity of the bssee in relation to the caribbean secondary education certificate (csec). academic achievement was measured using students’ performances on the bssee and csec. the sample included 252 students across barbados (130 males, 122 females). the results showed that the bssee accounted for 29% of the variance for this sample. additionally, the means of female students were higher on both the bssee and csec, but only a statistically significant difference was obtained on the bseee. the bssee should be used in conjunction with other assessment scores as a fairer means to allocate students. furthermore, the bssee should be used as a diagnostic tool for remediation. keywords: academic achievement; barbados secondary school entrance examination; caribbean examination council; caribbean secondary education certificate; common entrance; high stakes exams; regression high academic success, for many, provides an opportunity to improve one’s social status; hence, high academic achievement is seen as one of the most important outputs of school. this focus on academic output over content could be misleading; for many, the ultimate purpose of education is to foster democratic citizens who can critically assess policy implications and make informed decisions for the betterment of a society (nussbaum, 2010). nevertheless, parents and students consider high academic success to be paramount, and therefore it is not surprising to see that differential attainment and predictive validity is at the center of discussions around academic outcomes and is usually at the forefront of academic debates. a clearly documented disparity is the difference in achievement outcomes for both males and females (hall, 2013a). focus has been in various subject areas (reis & mccoach, 2000); however, mathematics and english language are often highlighted. according to the 2004 national reading assessment, measured by the u.s. department of education, the achievement gap between males and females, while are slight in 4th grade, left boys 14 points behind their female counterparts during 12th grade (approximately 17 years old) (perie, moran, & lutkus, 2005). interestingly, girls typically have better grades in math classes, but tend to score below average on standardized math tests (dee, 2007). national assessment for educational progress (naep) testing reveals that achievement gaps are practically non-existent at young ages, but that a significant disparity is apparent as students get older (dee, 2007). in the united kingdom, a report from the bow group, a think-tank linked to the conservatives, suggested an urgent call to action to address the falling academic performance of males. the report stated that nearly 90,000 males did not receive a single good gcse (equivalent to csec) in 2006. additionally, skidmore (2008) states that boys are four times more likely than girls to be excluded from school permanently. 1 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 interestingly, in nigeria the observed trend was that many more girls than boys were being left out of the education system. strong emphasis was being placed on the need for countries in the african region to identify an effective strategic intervention that will enhance the improvement of girls' participation (forum for women educationalists [fawe], 2001). in countries where enrolment is high, the trend has been that the participation and performance of girls lagged behind that of boys and thus been aggravated by high repetition rate, high dropout rate, and low retention rate (john, 2011). reid (2011) stated that the data provided by the caribbean examinations council (cxc), showed an inverse relationship between student registration and performance in jamaica. in addition to the students who fail the examination, there are a significant number of students who register for, but do not sit the examinations. barrett, pro-registrar of the cxc, attributes this poor performance to the amount of money that is allocated to education by government, stating that if monetary allocations are low, the results will be similar (francis, 2006). “however, despite the fact that barbados spends three times as much per student as jamaica, the performance of barbadian students at cxc is not proportionately higher than that of jamaican students in these examinations” (vision 2030 jamaica national development plan, 2009, p. 14). to pursue the point further, in trinidad and tobago, results revealed that for the 2002-2007 period that there was a decline in passing english rates, down to 52.8% in 2007 from 64.4% in 2002. a similar trend was observed in mathematics for a similar period. pass rates ranged from a high of 51.1% in 2002 to 41.2% in 2005. these results might suggest there is a struggle for some students to master basic literacy and numeracy skills. urgent action is needed to eliminate the poor performance of both males and females, especially when a significant amount of a country’s budget is spent on education. in the united states, some 1.13 trillion is spent on education annually (united states department of education, 2011) and previously approximately 21% of the barbados’ budget was spent on education in barbados (roberts, 2002). in fact, former governor of the central bank of barbados stated that between 1966 and 2000 successive governments spent us$15 billion on the cost of education which he calls “a remarkable investment for such a small state" (alleyne, 2006). this investment in education begs the question of whether established models require modification to ensure a higher return on investment. in light of the above, whether or not past performance can predict future performance has been another highly debated issue, again with sex differences being considered. this debate has realized the modification and transformation of many assessment models worldwide. in barbados, this is the most current debate surrounding academic achievement. in fact, quite recently, the caribbean examination council (cxc) stated that it was waiting on the government of barbados to make a decision on whether the barbados secondary school entrance examination (bssee) would be replaced by the caribbean primary exit assessment (cpea) – a cxc developed test (carter, 2013). the exam, which is already in place in other caribbean islands, is said to have a wider scope than the bssee and examines student performance over a period of three years (carter, 2013). while the only qualification to be accepted into and attend primary school in barbados is that students must be approximately four (4) years of age, students who are eleven plus (11+) have to complete the compulsory bssee which is used as a means to allocate students to secondary schools. the student is examined in language arts, mathematics, and has to write an essay. the test is prepared by the ministry of education in barbados in conjunction with a consulting authority. exemptions are permitted in special circumstances; however, all students between the ages of nine plus and twelve plus, whether attending public or private schools, are required to write the examination. the bssee is usually administered annually between the months of may and june. on the basis of scores obtained on the exam, coupled with school choice, students are awarded places at one of the 22 secondary schools. they are allowed to select any of these schools in order of preference, as long as zoning requirements are met. the students are also given the opportunity to select two schools outside of their zones. the award of places at a particular school is restricted by the number of places available. in addition to the student’s choice of public secondary schools, they may choose to select a bursary to attend an assisted private school. there is a lone senior school where remedial and vocational programs are provided. students whose performance on the bssee falls below the threshold, which would make them ineligible for a placement at a secondary school, are placed there. typically, students who perform well and receive high grades on the exam are allocated to older secondary schools, and students who get lower grades are allocated to newer secondary schools. historically, this method of allocation causes much debate. secondary schools in barbados are well known based on an unofficial ranking. the result of this ostensible stratification has caused some disparity among the ‘social academic class’. before 1950, some schools were known as first grade and second grade schools. it is believed that the origin of this divide has its genesis in that classification. these schools were shortly after called grammar schools, were considered the older secondary schools, were looked upon as academic in nature and were revered. on the other hand, modern secondary 2 an examination into the validity of secondary school entrance scores in predicting the academic success of secondary aged students schools or newer secondary schools, which were seen as vocational and sought to accommodate the ‘underachievers’, did not carry the same prestige as the older secondary schools. disparities between the two groups are constantly being highlighted. in fact, it could be argued that the bssee, although it did not create, perpetuated a system of academic inequality. at the secondary stage (11+ to 16+) students are prepared for their adult roles and concomitant responsibility as productive citizens in society.1 they are introduced to the national curriculum for the first three (3) years and the cxc curriculum for the final two (2) years of study. the curriculum at this level comprises agricultural science, biology, chemistry, entrepreneurial and business studies, foreign languages, geography, history, home management, information technology, integrated science, mechanical drawing, physical education, physics, and technical and vocational education. at the end of fifth form (14+) students sit the caribbean examination council examinations – csec – at the technical and general proficiency levels. from september 2001, students at sixth form level schools were allowed to read for the caribbean advance proficiency examination (cape). tertiary level education is regarded as postsecondary education and is shared across four major institutions, namely, erdiston teachers’ college, the samuel jackman prescod polytechnic, the barbados community college, and the university of the west indies. this purpose of this study was to examine the long standing policy of the compulsory, one-off examination that serves as the basis to allocate students to secondary schools. if the predictability of the bssee is known, this study could significantly inform policy. in other words, it may confirm or discount the view that performance on the bssee indicates how students will perform in secondary school at the csec. this study also explored sex differences in academic outcomes. accordingly, this study sought to answer the following questions: 1. are there statistically significant relationships between bssee and csec within a sample of secondary aged students in barbados 2. are there statistically significant relationships between bssee and csec for male and female subsamples? 1 for a more comprehensive overview of the barbados education system, see the international bureau of education: http://www.ibe.unesco.org/countries/wde/2006/latin _america_and_the_caribbean/barbados/barbados .pdf 3. are there statistically significant sex differences between bssee and csec? 4. what is the predictive validity of the bssee in relation to csec in a sample of secondary aged students in barbados? in this study, fifth form (grades 11-12) was the only form selected from the selected secondary schools. academic achievement was measured by scores obtained at csec mathematics and english a, it was necessary to select a sample of students who would write these exams soon thereafter. this grade level was the most contiguous, making it easy to obtain a standardized measure of academic outcomes. research has shown that causal logic is not the most useful way to view the relationship between past academic performance and future academic outcomes, as there could be several intervening variables which may affect future academic outcomes. interestingly, horn (2003) found that increased performance on high stakes test scores does not equate to increased learning. additionally, marchant, paulson, and shunk (2006) stated that schools with high-stakes testing policies in place had a lower proportion of students reaching proficient than did schools without these types of policies in place. nevertheless, there is much research to suggest that previous performance is a strong predictor of academic achievement. in a study which examined how home and motivational factors affected high school boys' and girls' math and science achievement, researchers found that the best predictor of achievement was previous achievement (koutsoulis & campbell, 2001). not surprising, sackett, kuncel, arneson, cooper, and waters (2009) stated that scores on admission tests were indeed predictive of academic performance, as indexed by grades. these findings clearly show that past performance is usually a good predictor of academic success. noteworthy however, is the fact that while obioma and salau (2007) have shown that high stakes examinations were statistically significant in their sample, of greater importance is the fact that there were not of much practical importance in predicting the achievement of students. method participants two hundred and fifty-two students (252) students were surveyed. the selected participants were all in the last year of their five year program. as a result, the students were all preparing for the csec in their respective schools. the sample selected represents student enrolments from all eleven parishes of barbados and consisted of students from both rural and urban areas. within the sample were 130 males and 122 females. the age range of the sample was narrow between 15 to 17 years. the mean age was 15.45 (m = 15.45, sd = .50). seventy of the adolescents were 15-year olds, 174 of 3 http://www.ibe.unesco.org/countries/wde/2006/latin_america_and_the_caribbean/barbados/barbados.pdf http://www.ibe.unesco.org/countries/wde/2006/latin_america_and_the_caribbean/barbados/barbados.pdf http://www.ibe.unesco.org/countries/wde/2006/latin_america_and_the_caribbean/barbados/barbados.pdf current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 the adolescents were 16-year olds, which is the typical age for students preparing for csec in the barbadian education system, and eight of the adolescents were 17year olds. the difference in age is due to students who were born in late august or early september, the school year begins in september. the difference could also be accounted for by students repeating a year at primary school because of the system of flexible transfer. design the study employed a mixed design approach and can be viewed as partly ex post facto and partly longitudinal. the study could be considered ex post facto since the first set of data was of students who completed the bssee in 2005. these students were then located within varying secondary schools and the data representing their performance on the csec were subsequently obtained. this exam was taken five years after bssee and therefore satisfies the longitudinal component of the study. descriptive statistics for all variables were computed on the overall sample and inferential statistics such as t-tests were employed to determine whether sex differences obtained were statistically significant. pearson product moment correlations were used to determine the level of the relationship that existed between variables. the tests of significance were analyzed using the 0.05 probability level, the p value usually selected in educational research (leacock, warrican, & rose, 2009). linear stepwise regression analysis was used to assess the predictability of the independent variable (past performance, bssee) to the dependent variable (future performance, csec). procedures a list was provided by the ministry of education and human resource development of students who completed the bssee in 2005. using data randomizing software, a sample of students was selected. this method was chosen because it allowed the researcher to have a sample that represented students from varying ability groupings. it also ensured a proportionate selection across all schools. in fact, this method realized the selection of twenty-two (22) public secondary schools. however, only fifteen (15) of these schools allowed access at the time that the study was being conducted. there are six (6) scores that are produced when a student completes all of the components of the bssee. these six scores represent: a raw score for mathematics, a raw score for english language, a converted score for mathematics, a converted score for english language, a cumulative score of both mathematics and english scores, and a letter indicating the grade the student obtained on the composition writing question. the cumulative score of both mathematics and english scores was used as the overall performance score on the bssee to indicate academic achievement. future academic achievement was measured by computing the grades received on the english language and mathematics csec. in the english examination, students are graded on their understanding and expression. the rubric that defines the mathematics grade includes knowledge, comprehension, and reasoning. students taking this exam could receive grades ranging from 1 through to 6, with 1 indicating the best grade a student can receive and 6 indicating the lowest grade a student can receive. the scores were reverse coded and computed to reflect one academic achievement score. results research question 1 a pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was computed to assess the relationship between bssee and csec. there was a positive correlation between the two variables, r = 0.54, n = 252, p < 0.0005. the results are presented in table 1. the data is also represented by a scatterplot in figure 1. table 1 table displaying the correlation between bssee and csec figure 1. a scatterplot showing the relationship between achievement measures as measured by the caribbean secondary education certificate (csec) and the barbados secondary school entrance examination (bssee). total bssee score academic outcomes (csec) total bssee score pearson correlation 1 .54** sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 252 252 academic outcome (csec) pearson correlation .54** 1 sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 252 252 4 an examination into the validity of secondary school entrance scores in predicting the academic success of secondary aged students research question 2 pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were computed to assess the relationship between bssee and csec for both males and females. there was a positive correlation between the two variables for both males (r = .58, p = <.0005) and females (r = .48, p = <.0005), with males obtaining a higher coefficient than females. the results are presented in table 2. figures 2 and 3 present the scatterplots of the correlations of the outcome variables for both males and females respectively. table 2 table displaying the correlation between bssee and csec for males and females student's gender total bssee score academic outcomes (csec) male total bssee score pearson corr. 1 .58** sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 130 130 academic outcomes (csec) pearson corr. .58** 1 sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 130 130 female total bssee score pearson corr. 1 .48** sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 122 122 academic outcomes (csec) pearson corr. .48** 1 sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 122 122 figure 2. a scatterplot showing the relationship between achievement measures as measured by the caribbean secondary education certificate (csec) and the barbados secondary school entrance examination (bssee) for males. figure 3. a scatterplot showing the relationship between achievement measures as measured by the caribbean secondary education certificate (csec) and the barbados secondary school entrance examination (bssee) for females. research question 3 the data were further analyzed to determine whether there were any statistically significant differences in relation to sex. the t-test for independent samples was employed. a significant difference was found between males and females (t = 3.63, df = 250, p < .0005) on the bssee. females obtained a higher mean score on this exam than did males. no significant differences were observed between the two groups on the csec examination (t = 1.96, df = 250, p = .052). the means and standard deviations for the two subsamples and for the two academic outcome measures were analyzed and are presented in table 3. table 3 the means and standard deviation for males (n = 130) and females (n = 122) on the bssee and academic outcomes research question 4 when the data were entered for regression analysis, all of the models tested proved to be a good fit. for the entire sample bssee was able to account for 29% of the variance in relation to csec (f (1, 250) = 102.43 t =10.121, β =.539) and the model was statistically significant p < .0005. for the male subsample, bssee accounted for 33% of the variance (f (1, 128) = 65.32, t males females m sd. m sd. total bssee score 191.77 28.49 204.98 29.27 academic outcome 6.12 1.82 6.58 1.91 5 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 =8.082, β =.581); the model proved to be statistically significant p < .0005. for the female subset, 22% of the variance was accounted for (f (1, 120) = 35.40, t =5.949, β =.477), the model was statistically significant p < .0005. table 4 presents the summary of the results for the entire sample, and for males and females. figures 4, 5, and 6 present the scatterplots of the regression results of the outcome variables for the entire sample, and for males and females respectively regression equation. ŷ = b0 + b1x, where ŷ is the predicted outcome, b0 is the intercept, b1 is the gradient of the line and x is the predictor variable. therefore academic achievement as measured by csec can be predicted by the intercept (bssee, b0) + the gradient (csec, b1) x the predictor (x, score received on csec). table 4 summary of regression analyses grouping r square adjusted r square β t p-value total grouping .29 .29 .54 10.12 .000 males .34 .33 .58 8.08 .000 females .23 .22 .48 5.95 .000 figure 4. a scatterplot of the regression analysis of achievement measures as measured by the caribbean secondary education certificate (csec) and the barbados secondary school entrance examination (bssee). figure 5. a scatterplot of the regression analysis of achievement measures as measured by the caribbean secondary education certificate (csec) and the barbados secondary school entrance examination (bssee) for males. figure 6. a scatterplot of the regression analysis of achievement measures as measured by the caribbean secondary education certificate (csec) and the barbados secondary school entrance examination (bssee) females. discussion and conclusion over the years, there have been debates about the fairness of the bssee, with overtones suggesting that this one-shot examination was partial, and disadvantaged many students. therefore this scope of work was important and necessary. the present findings show that the scores obtained by the entire sample on the bssee are positively related to grades obtained at csec, with a large percentage of variance being accounted for. the 6 an examination into the validity of secondary school entrance scores in predicting the academic success of secondary aged students results were similar in both male and female subsamples, with a stronger correlation being observed for females. the work of koutsoulis and campbell (2001) and sackett et al. (2009) support these results, as the findings presented in those studies showed that there was a relationship between past performance and future performance. the present findings also revealed that mean scores were higher for females on both examinations; however, a significant mean difference was only observed on the bssse. performance on the bssee usually identifies a trend where females’ performance is superior to their male counterparts. arguably, it could be due to the type socialization which takes place in the home as well as the school that accounts for this disparity. another view is that girls receive more positive academic feedback which in turn affects student performance. interestingly, gunderson, ramirez, levine, and beilock (2011) state that generally “boys and girls receive the same overall amount of positive and negative feedback about the intellectual quality of their work,” but that girls receive “more positive feedback about their non-intellectual performance, which tended to make girls devalue positive feedback about their intellectual performance more than boys” (p. 159). the competitive nature of the bssee and girls predisposition to be academically motivated could be important factors worth exploring. girls appear to be more academically motivated, both intrinsically and extrinsically, and therefore strive for high academic achievement as is evidence by their grades in tandem with motivational measures (hall, 2013b). the scores obtained on this examination, to a large extent, dictates which school a student will be allocated to. more importantly, whether that student will attend an older or newer secondary school, or put differently, a school that is perceived to be based on high academic merit or one that is perceived to have as its basis – a program structured around technical and vocational subject matters. despite the above, the most comprehensive of reviews of the research in the area of academic gender differences have shown very few true differences between math and verbal abilities between males and females (halpern, 2000). this is also reflected in the results of this study. although some researchers argue that there is no relationship between high stakes examinations (amrein & berliner, 2002), the findings of this study put the long standing argument about the predictive validity of the bssee to rest and are very significant in that way. the results of this study suggest that the bssee could reasonably predict how students will perform at csec, accounting for almost 30% of the variance. whether these findings overwhelmingly support a position to keep to the examination is a matter of interpretation. however, it does not change the fact that allocation to secondary schools based on a one-off examination does not give everyone taking the exam a fair chance to receive maximum results. there are many factors that could prevent exceptional students from performing their best on the day in question, e.g. illness, test anxiety, etc. (new york state examination department, 2004; wu, hughes, & knok, 2010). in a meta-synthesis of over 800 meta-analytic studies, hattie (2012) found that prior achievement was a significant contributor to future performance. prior achievement, according to hattie, falls under the contributory student factor ‘background’. it was ranked 14th among predictors of academic achievement, and it was revealed that it was not only a significant predictor of academic achievement, but that it had a large effect size. importantly, it was not the only predictor or the highest predictor of academic achievement. debatably, the bssee is currently the best means of allocating students to secondary schools, especially in a ‘ranked environment’. this view is supported by mason (1989) who also conducted research using bssee data. more support is provided by the new york state examination department (2004) who reported that higher levels of academic achievement are obtained on high stakes examinations. however, serious considerations must be made about other fair and viable means of allocating students to secondary schools (neill, 1997). true to the principles that undergird testing and measurement, continuous assessment or multi-modal assessment may be seen as fairer in the eyes of many. in 2001, the ministry of education and human resource development outlined an action plan to allocate students to secondary schools using the bssee and other performances assessed by end of term tests. the only issue is that these exams may not be created with the same level of standardization as the bssee. it seems that where the proposed initiative set out to right what many saw as an ‘injustice’, could present a standardization challenge, a challenge that could be mitigated by the implementation of the proposed cpea. moreover, educators need to take into account how boys learn and process information. the results of the bssee revealed that females scored higher on the exam than did males. females are usually better at retaining facts (hall, 2013a), while males usually are better able to understand concepts when the underlying processes have been explained, as has been shown in stem subjects. some researchers suggest that girls are better at verbal tasks and tasks which require the recollection of facts, while males may be better at mathematically and science based subjects (bromfield, clarke, & lynch, 2001). taking into account the learning strategies of both males and females, and designing instruction to accommodate these varying learning strategies is important if best results in terms of academic performance are to be obtained for both genders. 7 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 in addition to the above, teachers should use students’ performance on the bssee as a diagnostic tool for remediation. this examination could be used more strategically, not simply to place students, but to identify the deficiencies that students possess at this stage. this knowledge should be employed to inform the development of remedial programs for students who perform poorly on the exam. thereby, reinforcing their early academic foundation and better preparing them to engage secondary learning with the requisite skills. this approach is likely to produce excellent results, especially for students who enter secondary school without being fully prepared for that level of academic rigor and therefore are lost by the wayside. references alleyne, d. 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(2010). not for profit: why democracy needs the humanities. princeton, nj: princeton university press. obioma, g., & salau, m. (2007). the predictive validity of public examinations: a case study of nigeria. abuja, nigeria: nigerian educational research and development council. perie, m., moran, r., & lutkus, a. d. (2005). naep 2004 trends in academic progress: three decades of student performance in reading and mathematics (nces 2005-464). washington, dc: u.s. department of education, national center for education statistics. reid, r. (2011, february 23). reid examines jamaica's poor csec results. the jamaica gleaner. retrieved from http://jamaicagleaner.com/gleaner/20110223/news/news1.html reis, s. m., & mccoach, d. b. (2000). the underachievement of gifted students: what do we know and where do we go? gifted child quarterly, 44(3), 152-170. doi: 10.1177/001698620004400302 roberts, v. (2002). overcoming barriers to access and success in tertiary education in the commonwealth caribbean. paper presented at the 2nd pan-commonwealth conference, durban, south africa. sackett, p. r., kuncel, n. r., arneson, j. j., cooper, s. r., & waters, s. d. (2009). does socioeconomic status explain the relationship between admissions tests and post-secondary academic performance? psychological bulletin, 135(1), 122. doi: 10.1037/a0013978 skidmore, c. (2008). boys: a school report. london, england: the bow group. united states department of education. (2011). the federal role in education. retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.htm l vision 2030 jamaica national development plan. (2009). education draft sector plan. retrieved from http://www.vision2030.gov.jm/portals/0/sector_ plan/microsoft%20word%20-%20education.pdf wu, j., hughes, j. n., & knok, o. (2010). teacherstudent relationship quality type in elementary grades: effects on trajectories for achievement and engagement. journal of school psychology, 48(5), 357–387. doi: 10.1016/j.jsp.2010.06.004 9 http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110223/news/news1.html http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110223/news/news1.html http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html http://www.vision2030.gov.jm/portals/0/sector_plan/microsoft%20word%20-%20education.pdf http://www.vision2030.gov.jm/portals/0/sector_plan/microsoft%20word%20-%20education.pdf current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 article citation hall, m. t. (2015). an examination into the validity of secondary school entrance scores in predicting the academic success of secondary aged students.. current issues in education, 18(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1343 author notes martin t. hall, phd, cpsychol charles sturt university, australia lecturer in educational psychology, school of education boorooma street, wagga wagga, nsw, 2650, australia mahall@csu.edu.au dr hall is lecturer in educational psychology at charles sturt university in australia, a chartered member of the british psychological society, and a member of division 15 of the american psychological association (apa) (educational psychology). dr hall is also a member of the research institute for professional practice, learning and education (ripple). his research interests include cognitive and sociological variables that affect academic achievement in both online and faceto-face environments, and past performance as predictors of future performance and as a mediator of academic outcomes. manuscript received: 01/11/2014 revisions received: 01/13/2015 accepted: 01/25/2015 10 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1343 mailto:mahall@csu.edu.au an examination into the validity of secondary school entrance scores in predicting the academic success of secondary aged students volume 18, number 1 april 29, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editors tray j. geiger layout editors constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers 11 cie template volume 19, issue 1 march 2, 2016 issn 1099-839x impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math diane acosta odessa college teresa north, and john avella university of phoenix abstract: this study considered whether delivery modality, student gpa, or time since high school affected whether 290 students who had completed a developmental math series at a community college were able to successfully complete college-level math. the data used in the study was comprised of a 4-year period historical student data from odessa college based on the completion of the developmental math courses, introductory algebra and intermediate algebra, and subsequent completion of a college-level math course. through an ex-post facto design with logistic regression analysis, the results revealed that gpa was a predictor (p = 1.56 x 10-9) of completing a college-level math course with a c or better. however, the delivery mode of developmental math (p = .456) and time lapse since completing high school (p = .200) were not found to be predictors of college math completion with a c or better. although online education continues to be an area of concern in higher education, this study’s results reveal there are other variables that may affect successful completion of a college-level course, with this study finding that for every 1-point increase in college gpa, students were 3.64 times more likely to complete college-level math with a c or better. keywords: developmental math, success factors apa-style citation: acosta, d., north, t., & avella, j. (2016). impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math. current issues in education, 19(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1518 accepted: october 31st, 2015 higher education institutions open the door of opportunity for students to become global citizens and enter the workforce. for many, the community college system is an entry point into higher education, both because of lower cost (schmid, 2009) and because of the community current issues in education, 19(1) 1 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1518 acosta, north, & avella: impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math college open-door policy that provides access to higher education for a diverse set of students who would otherwise not be able to attain a degree or certificate (goldrick-rab, 2010). an opendoor policy provides all students with equal access to enrolling in courses offered at the college (american association of community colleges, 2015). however, new college students, whether at four-year or community colleges, face a challenge. according to barbatis (2010), a growing number of college students enrolling in colleges and universities need developmental education, non-credit courses that address the needs of students who are underprepared for college-level courses (national association for developmental education, 2013). the need for developmental education courses is particularly problematic for community college students because of the open-door admission policy, meaning that they are less likely to be prepared for college-level work (goldrick-rab, 2010). in addition, community college students typically have demanding work and home schedules that make it difficult to take courses on-campus (capra, 2011). to help students overcome such challenges, community colleges offer developmental education courses both on-campus and online to provide students the opportunity to improve their knowledge base before beginning college-level coursework (fike & fike, 2008). typically, developmental education courses are offered in three areas, english, reading, and math (boylan, 2011). developmental math has one of the highest enrollments, with more than half of entering freshmen students needing to enroll in at least one developmental math course (bonham & boylan, 2011). developmental classes are intended to prepare students for success in subsequent college-level courses, yet most research in this area focuses on performance and retention in the developmental classes (waycaster, 2011; woodard & burkett, 2010; zavarella & ignash, 2009). this study focused on the success of 290 community college students who had completed their developmental math sequence and then took college-level math, looking at the impact of three risk factors: (a) developmental math modality, online or oncampus; (b) student gpa prior to taking college-level math, ≥ 2.0 or below on a 4-point scale, and (c) time lapse since completing high school. although online education affords students the flexibility they desire, the trend in most colleges is high attrition rates and re-enrollments among online students in general (capra, 2011; croxton, 2014; hachey, wladis, & conway, 2012; kegelman, 2011; xu & jaggars, 2013), and specifically for developmental education courses offered online at community colleges (jaggars, edgecome, & stacey, 2013; jantz, 2010). according to the national center for education statistics (2015), the attrition rate is greater for students enrolled in two-year public institutions. only 59% of students enrolled in a two-year public college were retained from academic year to the next (national center for education statistics, 2015). one point of note that was observed is that students with prior experience in online courses have a higher probability of completing their future online courses, while students new to the online environment have higher failure and drop rates in online courses (hachey et al., 2012). while this study did not specifically explore prior online experience, time lapse since high school completion could be an indicator since online learning is a newer modality that requires non-traditionally-aged students to ensure they are technologically experienced (wuebker, 2013), meaning that students who completed high school many years prior may not have experienced prior online learning opportunities. bahr (2012) also found that students who have weaker academic backgrounds historically do not complete their developmental sequence in math or english. students with a higher overall gpa have a higher probability of persisting through college and completing their educational goals than their peers who are academically weaker and have a lower gpa (bremer et al., 2013). current issues in education, 19(1) 2 acosta, north, & avella: impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math therefore, it was important to examine if gpa is a contributing factor in the completion or noncompletion of college-level math after completing the developmental sequence. methodology a non-experimental ex-post facto study was used to determine whether successful completion of a college-level math course varied students who completed developmental math online and students who completed developmental math on-campus, while also investigating if gpa of the participant and the time lapse since completing high school were predictors of success or indicators of risk. descriptive statistics were used provide an overview of study sample and logistic regression methodology was used to analyze how the predictor variables impacted successful completion of college-level math. the study population included 290 students from odessa college who completed a developmental math sequence either on-campus or online before completing college-level math, with successful completion of college math with a c or better representing the dependent variable. the participants in the study were selected based on their successful completion of a college-level math course after successfully completing introductory algebra and intermediate algebra either completely online or on-campus. the sample of participants was comprised of students stratified randomly across the following independent variables: (a) developmental math delivery modality, online or on-campus; (b) gpa prior to taking college-level math, ≥ 2.0 or below; and (c) and time lapse since high school. descriptive data the net sample was comprised of 290 students who took the two developmental math course sequence either in a face-to-face or online modality and had subsequently completed a college-level math course. table 1 provides the descriptive data of the sample, including how the time lapse variable impacted the completion of college-level math with p = .002. in addition, the table indicates there is a substantial difference between the number of students who completed the developmental math sequence on-campus and those who completed it online. out of the 290 students who completed college-level math with a c or better, 82.8% of them completed the developmental math sequence in the face-to-face modality, while 76.2% completed the sequence in the online modality. table 1 time lapse since completing high school and gpa when enrolling in college-level math statistic time lapse (years) gpa (4-point scale) overall f2f online overall f2f online mean 5.37 4.78* 8.20* 3.05 3.04 3.127 std. deviation 7.136 7.094 6.704 0.737 0.737 0.741 minimum 0 0 0 1.00 1.00 1.62 maximum 34 34 28 4.00 4.00 4.00 note. overall n = 290, on campus (f2f) n = 240, online n = 50 * significant difference in time lapse, p = .002 as seen in table 1, there was a significant difference (p = .002) in the time lapse between the online and on-campus (f2f) groups. however, subsequent analysis showed that time lapse did not significantly (p > .05) impact the dependent variable of passing college-level math with a c or better. further analysis showed the key factor in predicting success in completing collegecurrent issues in education, 19(1) 3 acosta, north, & avella: impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math level math with a c or better was gpa, a measure that was comparable (p < .05) for both the online and f2f groups. results logistic regression was used to analyze how the predictor variables in the nonexperimental ex-post facto study impacted successful completion of college-level math. successful completion of college-level math is defined as completing a college-level math course with a c or better. as shown in table 2, a baseline model was established incorporating the three independent variables of (a) developmental math delivery modality, online vs. on-campus; (b) student gpa prior to taking college level math, ≥ 2.0 or below; and (c) time lapse since high school completion. how these independent variables impact the dependent variable of successful completion of college-level math was then assessed, beginning with a logistic regression baseline model of [log (p / (1-p)) = [β0 + β1x1 + β2x2 + β3x3 + β4x1x2 + β5x1x3] (field, 2009) and determining the significance of the coefficients, β0, β1, β2, β3, β4, β5, using wald’s x2 statistic (field, 2009). table 2 depiction of independent and dependent variables of study variable value let x1 = 1, if developmental math was completed online 0, if developmental math was completed on-campus x2 = the gpa to the nearest tenth of a point x3 = the number of full years elapsed since high school y = 1, if college math course was completed with a c or better 0, if college math course was completed with a d, f, or w where y is distributed as a binomial random variable with success probability p fit of baseline model after adding the variables to the logistic baseline model, as per field (2009), was [log (p / (1-p)) = [β0 + β1x1 + β2x2 + β3x3 + β4x1x2 + β5x1x3], with the log-likelihood statistic used to determine the overall fit of the variables in the model. the model was examined to ensure adding the variables was creating variation or changes in y (dependent variable) using chi-square tests of the omnibus tests of model coefficients. table 3 provides the results from the overall model fit after adding the independent variables. table 3 depiction of overall fit of model after addition of independent variables omnibus tests of model coefficients chi-square significance naglekerke r2 step 43.365 .000 block 43.365 .000 model 43.365 .000 .208 current issues in education, 19(1) 4 acosta, north, & avella: impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math after adding the independent variables to the baseline model, the dependent variable was shown to be significantly affected, p ≤ .05. with all independent variables added to the baseline model together, the model chi-square result in table 3 provides the final model coefficient of 43.365 with p ≤ .05. the naglekerke r2 of .208 indicates that the incorporation of the three independent variables into the model accounted for approximately 21% of the variation in the outcome of the completion of college-level math with a c or better, indicating one or more of the independent variables affected the dependent variable. wald (x2) and exp(b) were then calculated to determine the specific impact of each of the independent variables. impact of developmental math delivery mode as seen in figure 1, initial statistics indicated little likelihood that the modality students chose in taking their developmental math courses impacted their subsequent success in collegelevel math courses. this finding is contrary to that of others (bonham & boylan, 2011; capra, 2011; croxton, 2014; hachey et al., 2012; jaggars et al., 2013; jantz, 2010; kegelman, 2011; xu & jaggars, 2013). figure 1. college-level math completion among face-to-face (f2f) and online students. this initial perspective is supported by the logistic regression model analysis, where b = -0.315 with an exponentiation of exp(b) = 0.730. exp(b) < 1 indicated that the predicting variable of course modality did not affect the successful completion of college math with a c or better. the wald statistic x2 = 0.555 with p = .456 is > .05 indicated there is no statistical significance for the modality students used to complete their developmental math courses. therefore, delivery mode of developmental math did not contribute to the outcome of the successful completion of college math with a c or better. impact of gpa as seen in figure 2, initial statistics indicate a very strong likelihood that gpa impacted students’ subsequent success in college-level math. delivery mode statistics b -0.315 exp(b) 0.730 wald (x2) 0.555 sig. (p) .456 current issues in education, 19(1) 5 acosta, north, & avella: impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math figure 2. college-level math completion with confidence interval as student gpa increases. this perspective is supported by the logistic regression model analysis, where b = 1.294 with an exponentiation of exp(b) = 3.647, which tells the researcher the odds of the predicting variable affecting the outcome. exp(b) > 1 indicated that the predicting variable of student gpa did affect the successful completion of college math with a c or better. the wald statistic x2 = 36.457 with p = .000 is ≤ .05 indicated there is a very strong statistical significance of student gpa predicting college-level math success. the odds ratio indicated that for every 1-point increase in college gpa, students were 3.64 times more likely to complete college-level math with a c or better. impact of time lapse since high school as seen in figure 3, initial statistics indicated there was more likelihood that time lapse since completing high school impacted students’ subsequent success in college-level math courses (p = .200 of the wald x2 statistic) than did delivery mode with p = .456; however, this value was not statistically significant (p > .05). the graph indicates that the percentage of students completing college-level math with a c or better was considerably greater for students who completed high school within 0-2 years, but the differential between ≥ 2.0 gpa or below were relatively the same as for students who had been out of high school for 3-30 years. figure 4 verifies that the differences in the percentage of students completing collegelevel math with a c or better vs. d, f, or w was relatively the same, regardless of time lapse since completing high school. this finding is contrary that of rodrigues (2012). this perspective is supported by the logistic regression model analysis, where b = -0.027 with an exponentiation of exp(b) = 0.974, which is closer to exp(b) > 1 than the delivery mode variable. this explains the variation for students who completed high school 0-2 years prior as seen in figure 3, but because exp(b) < 1, the predicting variable of time lapse since completing high school does not affect the odds of successful completion of college math with a c or better. further supporting this lack of significance, the wald statistic x2 = 1.641 with p = .200 is > .05 indicates there is no statistical significance of high school time lapse predicting college-level student gpa statistics b 1.294 exp(b) 3.647 wald (x2) 36.457 sig. (p) 1.56 x 10-9 current issues in education, 19(1) 6 acosta, north, & avella: impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math current issues in education, 19(1) 7 math completion. therefore, high school time lapse is not contributing to the outcome of the successful completion of college math with a c or better. figure 3. time lapse difference for college-level math completion. figure 4. college-level math completion based on high school time lapse. time lapse statistics b 0.027 exp(b) 0.974 wald 1.641 sig. .200 acosta, north, & avella: impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math logistic regression summation table 4 provides a summation of the logistic regression analysis of whether each independent variable affected the successful completion of college level math. neither high school time lapse nor delivery mode were predictors of the completion of college-level math with a c or better. only student gpa prior to taking college-level math was a significant predictor of success. in addition, the interactions between the three independent variables did not provide statistical significance in the test results. rather, the student’s gpa upon completing the second developmental math course was the lone predicting variable for the odds of successful completion of college-level math as is indicated with p < .05. table 4 summary of logistic regression results variables in the equation b exp (b) wald sig. high school time lapse 0.027 0.974 1.641 .200 delivery mode of developmental math 0.315 0.730 0.555 .456 delivery mode of developmental math by high school time lapse 0.025 1.026 1.195 .659 delivery mode of developmental math by college gpa 0.596 1.815 1.167 .280 student gpa 1.294 3.649 36.457 1.56x10-9 conclusions the purpose of this study was to examine whether developmental math delivery modality, student gpa, or time lapse since high school affected student success in passing college-level math with a c or better. despite multiple assertions in the literature that students do not succeed as well in online courses as they do in traditional campus-based courses (capra, 2011; croxton, 2014; hachey et al., 2012; kegelman, 2011; xu & jaggars, 2013), particularly among developmental education courses (jaggars et al., 2013; jantz, 2010; xu & jaggars, 2013), especially math (bonham & boylan, 2011), this study found no impact (p = .456) of developmental math delivery modality in the success of students successfully completing college-level math, with the high p value suggesting that little impact by the small sample size of online students. nor was time lapse since high school a contributing factor in the successful completion of college-level math (p = .200), contrary to assertions by rodrigues (2012). however, while it had received little prior investigation (bremer et al., 2013), student gpa prior to taking college-level math was found to be an extremely important predictor of success in completing college-level math with a c or better (p = 1.56x10-9). implications not only do the majority of students need to take a developmental math course (boylan, 2011), they often fail and repeat the same developmental math course multiple times. studies such as this one can provide meaningful data to administrators as they continuously seek solutions to help students complete developmental education courses in order to finish gateway courses such as college-level math (bissell, 2012). although 100% of the students in the study completed the two developmental math course sequence with a c or better, 23.8% of these students did not pass college math with a c or better. the college gpa independent variable, defined as gpa prior to taking college-level current issues in education, 19(1) 8 acosta, north, & avella: impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math math, was a strongly significant predictor for the completion of college math with a c or better (see figure 2, table 4). one factor that may have contributed to the gpa being a predicting variable is students’ use of their resources at odessa college. some of the resources available to students include the student success center with math tutors, a math lab tutoring center with more math tutors and computers equipped with software available for students to practice their math skills, and a library with a computer lab equipped with study skills software (k. clemmer, personal communication, september, 25, 2015). although there are many resources available, students with a lower gpa often do not utilize their resources, seek out help from their instructors, or develop a routine of study hours for the week (k. clemmer, personal communication, july, 14, 2014). in contrast, students who do take advantage of these resources not only earn a higher gpa, but have learned to use resources that can help them be successful in their college-level courses (zeidenberg, jenkins, & scott, 2012). odessa college has applied suggestions of less instructor lecture and more computeraided instruction (epper & baker, 2009; twigg, 2011) to help students practice math problems either in groups, independently, or with the instructor (epper & baker, 2009). odessa college has also incorporated intrusive advising and student support (bonham & boylan, 2011; fowler & boylan, 2010) for its developmental education students. according to fowler and boylan (2010), intrusive advising and student support is a structured contextual intervention process that changes according to the student’s needs and development. the goal is to understand the areas of improvement a student needs and help them by having the advisor make initial contact, rather than waiting on the student who may not be aware they are in need of extra support (fowler & boylan, 2010). student support includes providing one-on-one advising, counseling, and tutoring to help the student improve in any areas of concern (fowler & boylan, 2010). however, with 23.8% of student who completed the developmental math course sequence still not passing college-level math, more support is needed, particularly for students with lower gpas. one area of note is that in this study, it was not possible to track if students were using the available resources. adding this tracking ability is an area for future research that has been suggested to odessa college. the implication for administrators potentially goes beyond developmental education to encompass students with lower gpas, not just those who are taking developmental math. for example, administrators could create a structured support program similar to developmental education programs just for students who have a lower gpa (fowler & boylan, 2010). further, as noted in table 1, the overall mean of students examined in this study indicated they had been out of high school for 5.37 years, thus being a non-traditional, adult student. although this study found no significance (p > .05) in time lapse since high school, and hence, age of the student, recognition of the normative non-traditional age suggests that andragogy, a newer teaching philosophy designed around specific needs of adult learners and how adult learners engage with the content of a class (connell, 2011) may be important. it may be that it is not age that produces the benefit of the andragogical approach to teaching, but that it is an important part of helping developmental education students succeed in their courses, and potentially all students who are struggling in courses (rodrigues, 2012). a key element of andragogy is that the student must learn to take control of their own learning experience (mcgrath, 2009). this becomes a key aspect of a structured support program similar to developmental education programs just for students who have a lower gpa (fowler & boylan, 2010). hence, a key aspect of a structured support program for students with lower gpas would be to not only focus on the content of the course, but also how each student can view the information differently based on their own current issues in education, 19(1) 9 acosta, north, & avella: impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math learning experience (mcgrath, 2009). thus, it may be beneficial to train all faculty members in all subject areas in the andragogical approach so that students will not only learn content, but also take control of their own learning and future (mcgrath, 2009; 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(2013, february). adaptability to online learning: differences across different types of students and academic subject areas (working paper no.54). new york, ny: community college research center. retrieved from http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/adaptability-to-online-learning.pdf current issues in education, 19(1) 11 http://www.thejeo.com/archives/volume9number1/hacheyetalpaper.pdf http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/online-learning-practitioner-packet.pdf http://jolt.merlot.org/vol6no4/jantz_1210.pdf http://www.aontas.com/download/pdf/adult_learner_2009.pdf http://www.nade.net/aboutdeved.html http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cva.asp http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej991442.pdf http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej952026.pdf http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej881562.pdf http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/adaptability-to-online-learning.pdf acosta, north, & avella: impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math zavarella, c. a., & ignash, j. m. (2009). instructional delivery in developmental mathematics: impact on retention. journal of developmental education, 32(3), 2-13. zeidenberg, m., jenkins, d., & scott, m. a. (2012). not just math and english: courses that pose obstacles to community college completion (working paper no. 52). new york, ny: community college research center. retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed538998.pdf . current issues in education, 19(1) 12 http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed538998.pdf acosta, north, & avella: impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math author notes dianne acosta odessa college diane94@sbcglobal.net received ph.d. in higher education administration from university of phoenix in 2015. has been in higher education for fifteen years as a professor, department chair, and administrator. currently serves as dean of teaching and learning at odessa college. teresa north university of phoenix teren1956@gmail.com received phd in nutrition from university of california – davis (1984) and phd in higher education leadership from capella university (2007). retired from teaching and administration at western illinois university (19842012). teaches and mentors doctoral students at university of phoenix (since 2009). john avela university of phoenix jackavella@hotmail.com received edd in educational nova southeastern university (1999). public school education service as special education teacher, principal, and superintendent for over 30 years, retiring in 2010. teaches and mentors at university of phoenix (since 2005) and western governors university (since 2010). acknowledgements: odessa college, a two-year public institution in the west texas region that serves approximately 5,400 students, provided data in support of this study. current issues in education, 19(1) 13 mailto:diane94@sbcglobal.net mailto:teren1956@gmail.com mailto:jackavella@hotmail.com acosta, north, & avella: impact of delivery modality, student gpa, and time-lapse since high school on successful completion of college-level math after taking developmental math volume 19, issue 1 march 3, 2016 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh bethany richmond lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers current issues in education, 19(1) 14 self-mapped learning pathways: theoretical underpinnings and practical course design for individualized learning current issues in education, 22(1) 1 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age self-mapped learning pathways: theoretical underpinnings and practical course design for individualized learning matt crosslin, phd orbis education abstract: in the fall of 2014, several universities came together to offer a unique “dual-layer” open online course. this course was designed with two complete layers from two different course design modalities (instructivism and connectivism). learners were granted the freedom to create an individualized pathway through the course involving either layer, both layers, or a custom combination of both layers at any given point in the course. since these options gave learners the ability to map their own pathway as a learning process, this course structure is now referred to as self-mapped learning pathways. the goal of this design methodology is to allow for true individualization of the learning process for each learner. this article will examine the theoretical underpinnings of self-mapped learning pathways design methodology. additionally, several design considerations will be suggested based on practical application as well as research results. keywords: heutagogy, learner agency, individualized learning, learning theory, instructional design, open learning, student-centered learning, gamification, learning pathways citation: crosslin, m. (2021). self-mapped learning pathways: theoretical underpinnings and practical course design for individualized learning. current issues in education, 21(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1900 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 10/27/2020 introduction while the world of education is constantly fluctuating, one concept that seems to remain constant is that the design of many courses is based on a single pre-determined pathway through http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1900 crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 2 the course content. this pre-determined pathway could be an extensively controlled one, or a pathway that is somewhat loose in its structure. either way, course pathways are generally tied to a design where the learner does what the instructor thinks they need to be doing at any given moment in the course (onyesolu et al., 2013). some courses do venture outside of this instructorguided format and into adaptive/personalized learning or social learning. however, most adaptive or personalized learning designs are really just a set number of pre-determined pathways through course content with situated choices leading to the different pre-determined pathway options (basham et al., 2016). additionally, some learners – especially those that are accustomed to following the instructor’s predefined pathway through a course – may find social learning too illstructured. many see learning as an “either/or” proposition: either one follows the instructor and learns from a more knowledgeable other, or one forges their own path through social connections and self-determined learning (porcaro, 2011). the reality may be that many learners need both at different times for different topics or skills (anders, 2015; bain, 2003). sometimes learners need to sit down and follow what the experts prescribe as a pathway to learn a new skill, and other times learners need to find their own way by connecting with other humans or even machines (like the internet). these different ways of interacting with instruction could be referred to as modalities of learning: one modality being “instructor-focused” and the other modality being “learner-centered.” however, designing one course that meets either modality is a difficult undertaking, as any instructor or instructional designer can attest. designing a course that meets more than one modality might seem impossible, but what if it actually wasn’t? the self-mapped learning pathways model, based on the concept of customizable modalities, is a new paradigm that attempts to create a design methodology that allows learners to choose their own learning modality at any point in a course. the overall effect of a course designed in this paradigm is that each learner selfmaps their own custom pathway through course material. this design methodology is important due to the increasing number of universities attempting to reach more diverse populations, especially in online courses (rovai & downey, 2010). globalization and integration has created a much richer set of socio-culturally diverse contexts in education. additionally, even within traditionally consistent groupings such as ethnicity there are still differences based on socioeconomic status, geographic location, familial connections, access to technology, and many other factors. assuming that all learners in any given course will all be “on the same page” as far as prior knowledge, pre-existing skills, and educational interests is less possible than ever before. self-mapped learning pathways is not only a methodology, but also an epistemological mindset that seeks to open up learning pathways to allow the learner to become the final design agent in the personalization process. overarching theoretical concepts before diving into the principles of design and power dynamics that form the foundation of self-mapped learning pathways design, a brief examination of over-arching guiding theoretical concepts is in order. the first of these concepts has already been mentioned: sociocultural theory. although sociocultural theory is a complex idea based on the work of lev vygotsky, the foundational idea to focus on for this methodology is how individual learners have different fluctuating contexts (cultural, institutional, historical, etc) that variably influence their mental states and social interactions at any given time (dosunmu, 2013). for the purpose of the design methodology covered in this paper, self-mapping of learning pathways allows learners from different sociocultural groupings to occupy the same learning experience without being forced to crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 3 adjust their learning expectations to the specific sociocultural context of the instructor or other learners (unless they choose to do so in order to meet their personal learning goals). as far as the main guiding principles for this design methodology, the work of gayatri chakravorty spivak in can the subaltern speak? serves as basis for the two main issues to consider with self-mapped learning pathways. spivak (1988) looked at the work of many post-colonialists in india and pointed out that they were mostly speaking for subalterns, rather than letting subalterns speak for themselves. additionally, spivak had concerns that many were looking at subalterns as one homogenous group that all had one voice, instead of as a diverse group of different people with different points of view. while learners would not be considered “subaltern” in spivak’s work (de kock, 1992), the foundational idea (inspired by her work) of allowing learners to speak for themselves because there is no assumption that they all have the same needs (or even one opinion or preference for how they learn) serves as a guiding principle for self-mapped learning pathways. for example, when instructors force all learners into “student-centered learning” without letting students have a say if they want that or not, this assumes that all learners need student-centered learning at that moment and that the instructor gets to determine that modality for all. because of these guiding principles, this methodology needs a more empowering epistemology such as heutagogy. heutagogy is a field of study that focuses on self-determined learning, where learners are taught how to learn rather than what specifically to learn (blaschke, 2012; hase & kenyon, 2007). self-mapped learning pathways is a design methodology that was conceptualized as one way to move towards self-regulated learning, allowing those that are ready to self-determine to do so, while also providing scaffolding for other learners that are on their way to becoming self-determined in their learning. one important practical application concept that guides self-mapped learning pathways is gamification. while the process of mapping a learning pathway could itself be considered a game due to factors like uncertainty, goal-orientation, decision-making, involving special social groups, and making a process of activities (salen et al., 2004), gamification as defined as “the use of game elements in non-game contexts” (dicheva et al., 2015, p. 75) is a better frame of reference here. while it would be possible to make many learning pathways courses into full games, not all course topics would be suited to become actual educational games. however, as will be explored in this article, gamification concepts like freedom of choice, multiple routes, onboarding, new roles, freedom to fail, customization, and social engagement loops (dicheva et al., 2015) are core elements of designing a self-mapped learning pathways course. the final concept to cover is metamodernism. metamodernism is a proposed successor to postmodernism that attempts to describe how culture is shifting towards a mindset that embraces elements of modernism and postmodernism at the same time, in a way that is similar to both, but also goes beyond both (vermeulen & van den akker, 2010). metamodernism is a way of approaching the world that “negotiates between a yearning for universal truths on the one hand and an (a)political relativism on the other” (luna, 2016, para. 4). this concept sets the stage for self-mapping, in that learners and instructors realize that their personal pathway might be the best for them, but not the best pathway for others. principles of design in creating customizable pathways the biggest concept to understand in creating a self-mapped pathways course is that the goal of the design is to expose the underlying power and control dynamics beneath various instructional modalities, thus allowing the learner to understand the choices that must be made in crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 4 customizing their own pathway. for example, traditional instructor-led courses are designed in a manner than places most of the power and control of a course in the hands of the instructor. this might be a good option for some learners at some points in the course, but not for all learners for the entire duration of the course or even for individual learners at all points in the course. due to varying sociocultural factors as well as differing levels of pre-existing knowledge, different learners will have different educational modality needs at different points in the course – with each pattern of need being unique from the others. additionally, individual learners could have constantly changing needs for varied modalities based on anything from lack of sleep to emotional stress. the typical design structure in most courses has been to create one pathway through the content that all learners must follow. this pathway may be linear or not: it could contain situated choices or variable pathways as the course progresses, but all of those options are still preprescribed paths in most cases. traditional courses also might contain direct instruction, social learning, group work, or other forms of less structured pathways; however, these design methodologies are often predetermined by the instructor to be for all learners regardless of any other factors. for example, when all learners in a course are put into groups whether they need social learning for the topic at hand or not. the major shift that is made with self-mapped learning pathways design is that the learner becomes a co-designer in the learning experience. the learner will determine what modality they utilize at any moment in the course. if a learner feels that the topic for the week is new to them and they need to follow a linear prescribed pathway, they can do so. if the learner feels they have a decent grasp of the topic but need to explore a less structured social learning pathway to look at how to apply the topic to their life, they can take that pathway. if they feel that the topic does not really connect with their particular sociocultural contexts in learning, they are free to create that pathway. power issues in education how is this design methodology situated in the general concepts of power and control in education? power and control are two concepts that are basically a part of all areas of life. however, creating a consistent definition of power has proven difficult for theorists and researchers alike, due to most researchers focusing on definitions for their specific research study (mcleod & lin, 2010). for the purpose of this paper, the definition provided by yukl (2006) will suffice: “the capacity of one party (the agent) to influence another party (the target)” (p. 146). foucault (1980) described the issue of power in this manner: …in any society, there are manifold relations of power which permeate, characterize and constitute the social body, and these relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse. (p. 93) education is one part of our society that is involved with the production, accumulation, circulation, and functioning of a communicative discourse. many educators and researchers are seeking to “understand human communication as a universal means to comprehend the social world” (warren & wakefield, 2012, p. 100) because “this communication and related academic principles are the core of social research and educational theory” (warren & wakefield, 2012, p. 100). the nature crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 5 of who is producing this narrative as well as who is accumulating and circulating it is one of the key foundations of power issues in education. habermas (1971) further connected power and control with education and knowledge with his concepts of the three kinds of knowledge: instrumental, communicative, and emancipatory. instrumental knowledge is the basic knowledge that all humans need in order to survive and possibly control and self-regulate their own environment. in terms of foucault’s statement above on power in society, this would be the establishment and accumulation of power. communicative knowledge is based on the ability to interpret, engage with, and negotiate understandings of the world around us. again, in terms of the statement foucault made on power, this is the circulation and functioning of discourse. finally, emancipatory knowledge is a process that critically questions not only ourselves, but also the social systems of society. this type of knowledge would seem to be outside of foucault’s boundaries of relations of power. however, foucault (1980) did conclude if one wants to look for a non-disciplinary form of power, or rather, to struggle against disciplines and disciplinary power it is not towards the ancient right of sovereignty that one should turn, but towards the possibility of a new form of right, one which must indeed be anti-disciplinarian, but at the same time liberated from the principle of sovereignty. (p. 108) critically questioning ourselves as well as society around us could be one way to become antidisciplinarian as well as liberated from the sovereign control of others. this could also be another avenue to self-regulate our learning and existence. therefore, the three forms of knowledge that habermas (1971) describes (instrumental, communicative, and emancipatory) can be seen as a good framework for describing power relationships and control in education. instrumental knowledge and power to that end, the first form of knowledge to examine is instrumental. this type of knowledge is probably the most familiar form in education, as it is most closely aligned with instructivism. instructivism is a broad learning theory that basically “assumes the effectiveness of passive reception of sanctioned information through memorization and recall" (porcaro, 2011, p. 40). within this broad framework falls the behaviorism of skinner and thorndike as well as the cognitivism of gagne and bruner. the main connective strand for these diverse ideas is that “instructivists, whether behaviorist or cognitivist, are ontologically objectivist and realist, and epistemologically empiricist…. they see learning as simply mapping the real, external world onto the minds or behaviors of the student” (porcaro, 2011, p. 41). this means that the power to regulate learning and engagement rests outside of the learner – usually with an expert instructor or expertlyprogrammed set of media – and therefore those with the knowledge have established power and control that must be accumulated by a learner that is dependent upon a more knowledgeable, powerful other. other words used to describe instructivism are objectivism and institutionalism (onyesolu et al., 2013). whatever the term that is used, the idea is still seen as a way to transfer knowledge into the brain of the learner in order to change behavior. according to onyesolu et al. (2013), this method is the lecture model of instruction that is commonly utilized by 70-90% of university professors. what this means for higher education is that most instructors design themselves as the seat of power for the courses that they teach in some fashion. it would also mean that they are crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 6 probably most likely transmitting instrumental knowledge designed to help learners survive and control their environment. but a major issue that arises is that this means all learners are seeking to survive and control (or regulate) their environment, opening the door for possible conflicts of interest between learners. other forms of knowledge and power are needed to bring these competing agendas to a place of peaceful co-existence. communicative knowledge and power the next form of knowledge to examine more in depth is communicative. this type of knowledge is also probably familiar to many in education, as it is most closely aligned with constructivism. constructivism is a diverse learning theory that displays “a variety of ontological and epistemological perspectives" (porcaro, 2011, p. 41). these varied perspectives include the cognitive constructivism of piaget (which is almost cognitivism) as well as the sociocultural constructivism of vygotsky. despite the wide coverage of perspectives, the unifying strength of constructivism is that it is “well-suited for teaching the epistemic practices and collaborative problem-solving skills necessary in a knowledge society while empowering learners through democratic participation in learning and dialogue” (porcaro, 2011, p. 43). onyesolu et al. (2013) clarified this diverse perspective by defining it as a theory that is “rooted in the idea that the learner actively constructs his knowledge, not that it is passively acquired from without” (p. 40). this means that the power rests inside of the learner – usually with each learner bringing their unique perspective to a negotiation of learning – and therefore those with the knowledge have the role of sharing knowledge with those who don’t, with the goal being to come to a shared understanding and control. while porcaro (2011) and onyesolu et al. (2013) acknowledge that constructivism has many critics that do not feel it is really a learning theory, they also recognize the importance of its impact on educational design and theory. porcaro notes that many critics feel constructivism ignores basic instructional science, while others feel constructivism is too broad of a concept to be a theory and therefore should be an epistemology. porcaro’s response is that these critics focus mostly on what practices are not constructivist but then fail to describe what category these nonconstructivist practices fall under. onyesolu et al. (2013) note how constructivism has been labeled as everything from a fad to a religion, all in contrast to being a true learning theory. the response from onyesolu et al. (2013) also echoes one of poracro’s points: “it cannot be over-emphasized that a learner enters his learning situation with pre-conceived notions or ideas about many phenomena” (p. 40). seeing that there are widely different aspects associated with constructivism, the question becomes: “do all aspects of constructivism relate to power dynamics”? according to foucault (1980), power needs discourse in order to be effective in society. therefore, the radical constructivism of ernst von glaserfield would not be much of a part of the discussion of power dynamics in education because in radical constructivism “communication is not necessary to involve sharing meaning among participants” (liu & chen, 2010, p.64). of course, radical constructivism is important in understanding how some experts believe learners construct knowledge within their mind. but eventually, in order for this construction of knowledge to be able to affect power or regulation of learning, it will need to be communicated as discourse. for this process, the discussion will turn to the ideas of social constructivism. the concept of social constructivism is most often associated with soviet psychologist lev vygotsky. according to liu and chen (2010): crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 7 from vygotsky's perspective, learners construct meaning from reality but [do] not passively receive what [they] are taught in their learning environment. therefore, constructivism means that learning involves constructing, creating, inventing, and developing one's own knowledge and meaning. the role of teacher is a facilitator who provides information and organizes activities for learners to discover their own learning. (p. 65) this is not far off from von glaserfield’s radical constructivism in some ways. power has shifted away from an all-powerful expert that is transferring knowledge to a learner that is responsible for constructing knowledge. oftentimes, the power over oneself is seen as the opposite of the ecological or expert power that instructors typically control in classroom settings (mcleod & lin, 2010). however, vygotsky did not see the process of acquiring knowledge as a solo endeavor. he proposed the idea of the zone of proximal development: an identifiable “gap” that exists between what learners can achieve individually and what the same learners can achieve with the help of more knowledgeable others through engagement and social interactions (vygotsky, 1978). the zone of proximal development is a key factor in not only the shift from teacher-centered instructivist power to student-centered social constructivist power, but also in the shift from learning as an individualistic activity to learning as a social activity that is shared among learners (watson, 2001). to link back to foucault, the zone of proximal development is one arena where power is produced, accumulated, and circulated as a function of discourse. the main modern issue with the zone of proximal development is that it still depends on a more knowledgeable other to guide learners to the point of developing their own learning (vygotsky, 1978). this would still closely mirror a typical formal learning situation in grade school or college. what about online situations where there are many knowledgeable individuals coming together to dig deeper into a topic they are already familiar with? andersen and ponti (2014) notes how the zone of proximal development can be seen as operating at two levels: individual and collective. some have worked on newer learning frameworks to address the growing needs of society for learning through connecting and engaging with others in less formal situations. in these spaces, creating the scaffolding needed for the zone of proximal development is both collective and self-regulated in nature. additionally, scaffolding for open learning when many learners might start the educational process but not complete it can become problematic when the more knowledgeable others decide to not complete the learning process. the next section will examine one prominent attempt at a new learning framework that has gained attention in recent decades. connectivism as emancipatory knowledge connectivism is a new learning framework that began as a reaction to behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism as understood by george siemens and stephen downes. to siemens (2005), behaviorism is a theory focused on behavior change due to stimulus and response, as observed through external changes rather than understanding internal processes. in contrast to behaviorism, siemens (2005) sees cognitivism as an internal computer processing model, with external information (input) entering the learner to be processed and stored in the learner’s memory. finally, siemens (2005) views constructivism as a process where learners actively attempt to create and construct meaning by understanding their experiences. to sum these up, siemens (2005) observes that “all of these learning theories hold the notion that knowledge is an crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 8 objective (or a state) that is attainable (if not already innate) through either reasoning or experiences” (p. 4). after examining the concepts of behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism, siemens and downes came to the conclusion that these learning theories did not address modern learning issues adequately. among the problems that they noted were issues such as learners changing fields often through their lifetime, the rise of the importance of informal self-regulated learning, the ability to off-load some cognitive tasks previously covered in older learning theories to technology, and the rising need to know where to find knowledge. but their main issue with older learning theories was that a central tenet of most learning theories is that learning occurs inside a person. even social constructivist views, which hold that learning is a socially enacted process, promotes the principality of the individual (and her/his physical presence – i.e. brain-based) in learning. these theories do not address learning that occurs outside of people (i.e. learning that is stored and manipulated by technology). they also fail to describe how learning happens within organizations. (siemens, 2005, p. 4) in other words, siemens’ concern is that, even though the power of learning can exist with an instructor or a learner, there was little room for a shared power structure that allowed for learning to occur socially as a group according to existing learning theories. his solution for the problem he identified was to propose a new theory, along with downes, called connectivism. in siemens’ (2005) own words connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing. (p. 6) in many ways, this would link back to foucault’s (1980) point about emancipatory knowledge, that in order to be free from disciplinary power, one needs to be anti-disciplinarian (chaotic and complexity) while also liberated from the power of the principle of sovereignty (learning as process that is not entirely under the control of any individual). however, connectivism remains under the concept of societal power structures that foucault (1980) described because it involves the “production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse” (p. 93). all of this assuming, of course, that connectivism is a true learning theory and not just a random collection of interesting ideas. some debate has occurred over whether connectivism is really a learning theory or not (bell, 2011; calvani, 2009; harasim, 2012). calvani (2009) makes a strong point that replacement of other theories is not necessary, because a more nuanced view should be taken: pragmatically there is probably not one dominant learning theory that can only be used at all times. in other words, learning is not always about behaviorism or constructivism, but behaviorism and constructivism utilized at the appropriate times in the appropriate manner. bell (2011) agreed with crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 9 calvani that there is more than one applicable theory for all of learning. however, bell examined various aspects of the arguments for and against connectivism as a new learning theory and came to an interesting conclusion. bell sees connectivism as a phenomenon because it “has not established itself as a distinct learning theory, although its epistemology can make a contribution to new paradigms of learning…and its study and practice can provide a rich context for exploring those paradigms” (bell, 2011, p. 106). within these contexts for exploring various paradigms is where power dynamics most likely need to be worked out, especially since – as bell points out – connectivism does contain an epistemology. as previously quoted, this epistemology places knowledge in an interesting arena that has not been explored extensively in the past: a group artifact that is not just transferred from one person to another or occurring inside of any given person, but one that is shared and communicated through discourse and engagement (electronic and otherwise). power and control dynamics in learning design this examination of power dynamics in learning leaves us with the conclusion that all learning modalities contain intentional or unintentional structures of power and control. usually this means that one agent is in control and the other must follow the pathway that this controlling agent prescribes. in a typical formal learning modality, this relationship is set up so that the instructor has complete power and control over the direction, regulation, and determination of the learning process. in other words, the instructor determines what will be learned, tells the learner how to learn what was determined, and then creates a set of rewards and/or punishments to motivate or force the learners to complete that pre-determined set of learning objectives. some less-structured courses allow learners to have some input in how they motivate themselves (for example, online courses often rely less on instructor presence and more on learner self-regulation) or even some input on the direction that the learning process might take. by contrast, informal education is often a process that is completely up to the learner: the learner has the power and control to determine what they want to learn, direct a pathway through the available resources, and regulate their own learning to complete the process. while some may feel that one modality or power/control structure is better than the other, the complex reality may be that many need both at different points in the learning process for any given topic or skill. however, most courses are designed so that all learners are subject to one power structure (usually instructor-led, but occasionally student-centered group consensus) for the entire duration of the course. this approach has created a dehumanizing effect on education in general, with many people seeing education as pointless, unrealistic, and tedious. therefore, one of the main goals of the self-mapped learning pathways concept is to not only return control over learning modality back to the learner, but to also humanize the learning process by recognizing that all learners are unique and different, thus allowing them to create a customizable pathway of personalized modalities through the course (bali & caines, 2018). customizable modality versus courses that blend modalities together one response to the self-mapped learning pathways concept is to point out that many courses already have elements of both instructor and learner control. this is quite often true. many courses already do blend modalities into a single course pathway. the distinction between the selfmapped learning pathways methodology and courses that blend modalities is that it actually creates two complete modalities through the course content and activities. the instructor-led modality is a complete course pathway that learners can choose to stick with for the entire course crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 10 and still be considered as having “completed” the course. additionally, the student-centered modality is also a complete course pathway that learners can choose to stick with for the entire course and still be considered as having “completed” the course. the unique aspect of the selfmapped learning pathways design is that learners can choose one pathway, both pathways, or a custom mix of either pathways at any point in the course, changing their choice as often as they like. a unique combination of design features and technology tools enables this customization. those features will be explored later in this article. however, at this point an exploration of the history of the self-mapped learning pathways concept is in order. history of self-mapped learning pathways one possible way to deal with issues that power dynamics create is to allow learners to choose which power dynamic they would like to utilize while moving through course content and activities. the self-mapped learning pathways concept started out as an attempt to create a new type of massive open online course (mooc). in the fall of 2014, several universities (led by the learning innovation and networked knowledge (link) research lab at the university of texas at arlington) came together to offer an open course on learning analytics. initiated by dr. george siemens, the data, analytics, and learning mooc (dalmooc) was envisioned as a unique course design structure that was initially labeled a “dual-layer” approach. dalmooc was designed with two complete layers from two different design epistemologies: one that was instructor-led (instructivism) and one that was focused on connected learning (connectivism). learners were granted the freedom to choose an individualized pathway through the course involving either layer, both layers, or a custom combination of both at any given point in the course. the initial design for dalmooc involved several different types of technology. the first was a learning management system (lms) called edx that hosted the instructor-led content, videos, assignments, and discussion forums. the second was a competency-based system called prosolo that allowed learners to connect with each other to interact around shared competencies and submit peer feedback. additionally, learners were encouraged to create their own blogs or social media accounts to connect and interact outside of the lms or prosolo. because of the complex nature of the course design, a visual syllabus was created to help explain the dual-layer structure. additionally, many technologically-adaptive software solutions such as quickhelper and bazaar were integrated into edx. several design considerations were considered (such as assignment banks and scaffolding between the layers), but not implemented by course launch time. over 23,330 people registered for the first dalmooc offering, with an estimated 13,535 learners showing at least some form of activity in the course (dawson et al., 2015). over 1,500 learners were active up to the last week; however, it is difficult to tell how many of those completed the entire course and how many took a “pick and choose” approach to the course content and activities. a few studies have looked at various issues that arose in the design. crosslin and dellinger (2015), when examining the social media feedback quotes on dalmooc, noted: at first glance, these quotes might seem to indicate that the course structure was not well understood. however, a closer look could also reveal that each participant forged their own path through the course in different ways, thereby validating the dual-layer design as effective (at least, in some cases). (p. 253) crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 11 after examining data and interviews from dalmooc, crosslin, dellinger, et al. (2018) also concluded that course participants seemed to value the ability to choose the pathway that they utilize to engage the course in. however, additional research is needed to improve the technical and design aspects of the framework. rosé et al. (2015) noted that while the dual-layer model shows interesting results, the frustration and confusion expressed by learners indicates the need to improve the tools that help learners connect, make decisions, and find support while navigating the course structure. dawson et al. (2015) also point out the idea of self-regulated learning has been neglected in the conversation about learning pathways. in 2015, lessons learned from dalmooc were applied to the winter 2015 offering of the humanizing online learning mooc (humanmooc). the learner-facing side of the course focused less on the dual-layer aspect of the design, and more on the leaners creating their own pathway through the course options. this necessitated a shift from the term “dual layer” to “customizable modalities” to describe the course structure (crosslin, 2016). greater scaffolding was built into the course syllabus, while less tools were implemented in the overall design. instructure canvas was utilized to create the instructor-led modality, while a website referred to as the “neutral zone” was set up to facilitate learners creating their own custom pathway through the course content, activities, and options. this neutral zone also contained the assignment bank, designed to help scaffold leaners into creating their own assignment ideas by giving a “bank” of assignment ideas they could consider outside of the one option given in the instructor-led modality in canvas. qualitative analysis into the participants experiences (crosslin, 2016) yielded two interesting themes: course participants did desire an overall learning experience that was tailored to their personal learning preferences, but the technical and design limitations of the course created barriers in their learning experiences. based on this feedback, the concept of customizable modalities shifted more towards the learner experience of creating their own pathway, necessitating another terminology shift to “self-mapped learning pathways.” currently, research is being conducted into how traditional online history courses can adopt elements of self-mapped learning pathways (crosslin et al., 2019). conceptualizing a self-mapped learning pathways course the key concept in a self-mapped learning pathways course is that learners are free to choose which modality to participate in at any given moment of the course. learners are able to choose either pathway, both pathways, or a custom mix of each pathway as needed. this choice does not have to stay the same for the entire course – it can change at any moment. for example, a learner may decide that the content in the first week of a course is a review of content they already know. so this learner could chose to go to twitter and connect with other advanced learners. this group decides to look at a deeper application of the introductory topic that is more in line with their real-life contexts. as the week goes on, the learner realizes that there are some gaps in their knowledge of the content, so they decide to go back into the learning management system to see what the instructor is teaching about those gaps. after gaining the missing knowledge, the learner re-joins the spontaneous group to dig deeper into the topic. stephen downes’ (2017) summary of open pedagogy is the best way to summarize this mindset: “follow my model or not; it's your choice” (para. 1). to best facilitate this in a course, pathway options can be anchored with a weekly start and end point. typically, the starting point is some sort of open or neutral space/zone that lays out the pathway choices for the week or module. the ending point is often a competency or set of crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 12 competencies that focuses more on how learners demonstrate the skill or knowledge they gained that week than on the method that they utilize to demonstrate their knowledge. the key power dynamic in self-mapped learning pathways design is that the learner is always in control of what modality they choose. the instructor does not dictate at what times the learners are all watching a video, or when all learners are forming groups and interacting. instead of a linear pathway that is dictated for all learners at the same time, the pathway options through a self-mapped learning pathways course will resemble something like figure 1. figure 1 diagram of self-mapped learning pathways design in figure 1, learners enter into a course module through an area called the neutral zone. this area simply presents a brief introduction to the module, the competencies for the module, and explanations of both modality options. the learner would then follow links to the modality that they prefer. in the connectivist modality, they would be encouraged to utilize tools that would help them connect with others as well as with the content they desire. for the instructivist modality, learners would find themselves on a linear path through the content that the instructor feels would best lead them towards competency completion. instructors would also develop the competencies into more formal learning objectives in this pathway. at any point learners could decide that they need either more instructor-led content or more connection with other learners or content and switch over to the other modality (or add it to the one they are current participating in). learners continue to follow, change, or mix either modality until they have completed the module’s competencies. in open online courses, the competencies would only serve as certification points for those seeking official statements of course completion such as grades, badges, or certificates. in more traditional or formal courses, they would serve as evaluation points based on open-ended rubrics or portfolio assessments. crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 13 while this process may seem straight forward in theory, the reality of this design is that specific modalities through the course will not look so structured. actual pathways as designed will look less linear and more like figure 2. figure 2 pathway possibilities figure 2 shows how the design of a self-mapped learning pathways course module will be less structured – the blue lines represent the instructivist pathway that can have many options and even circular design, while the red lines represent the chaotic nature of connectivism that includes many official possibilities as well as unofficial possibilities (represented by the gray lines). this paradigm will allow learners to self-map their own personalized pathway through the module content and activities. for example, an actual learner’s pathway could end up looking something like figure 3. crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 14 figure 3 self-mapped pathway example 1 figure 3 represents how a theoretical learner could begin a course module in the blue instructivist modality, switch over to the red connectivist modality, find content outside of the official channels in the gray area, and then bring it all back together for competency completion. however, it is possible that learner pathways may not even end up being linear. learners may end up picking and choosing parts of the course, as demonstrated in figure 4. crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 15 figure 4 self-mapped pathway example 2 figure 4 represents how a theoretical learner might choose different parts of the neutral zone, the blue instructivist modality, the red connectivist modality, and the gray areas outside of the official channels to complete the module competencies that they are interested in. table 1 contains a summary of the various modalities. the first column lists the various factors such as modality and technology applied in each modality, with the rest of the table examining how those factors were designed in the course. table 1 summary of modalities and pathways factor one modality one modality two modalities modality: instructor-led learner-focused instructor-led mixed with learner-focused epistemology: instructivism connectivism connectivism technology utilized: lms (text, video, discussion tools, assignment tools) google hangouts twitter blogs google (plus, hangouts) lms twitter blogs google (plus, hangouts) crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 16 building a self-mapped learning pathways course when building a self-mapped learning pathways course, course designers will need to keep in mind that learner choice is the adaptive mechanism in the course. therefore, the course will need to have different options – many of them open ended – for learners to choose from. the designer must resist the temptation to design the choices into the course for the learner. in some instances, this may be difficult to avoid for those that have strong bias for certain epistemological stances such as instructivism or connectivism. as long as the designer and/or instructor is aware of their bias, and willing to take steps to not force those biases on all learners, the course will work more smoothly towards the goal of self-determined learning. however, please keep in mind that not all aspects of self-mapped learning pathways have to be added into every course. different courses will have different requirements from accrediting bodies, university departments, corporate oversight boards, and many other controlling interests. where applicable, these interests will need to be accounted for in the design. where the course designer has the flexibility to allow for self-determination, various aspects of self-mapped learning pathways can be implemented into courses. designing the instructivist modality the best place to start is with a well-designed, fully-formed instructor-guided pathway that all learners could potentially follow from beginning to end to complete the course. this pathway does not have to be simple or linear: it could have group work, various choices in content, problembased learning, etc. however, the key to this pathway is that most or all learning decisions are made by the instructor. remember: learners are not required to follow this pathway, but it has to be there for those that choose to do so. creating an instructivist modality needs to start with a set of competencies that will guide both the instructivist and connectivist modalities in the course. this is where the design methodology gets a little tricky. the instructivist modality will have a more detailed set of objectives for completing the competencies, but the connectivist modality will not. therefore, the competencies need to be broad enough to allow learners the flexibility to map their own pathway, without being specific enough to start making the educational decisions for the learners. once the course has a good set of competencies, these can be refined into objectives that can guide the learners when they choose the instructivist modality (see crosslin, 2014). for the purpose of pathways mapping, competencies would focus on behaviors (what learners are learning), leaving the conditions (how they will learn) and criteria (how they will prove they learned what they did) up to the learner. in the objectives in the instructivist modality, these conditions and criteria are also defined for the learner. therefore, the competencies will help organize the overall course structure, while focusing those competencies into objectives will form an instructivist modality for the learners that choose that option. organizing long courses into smaller sections (such as by week), each with a start and end point, can help keep learners on track with competencies. however, flexibility in due dates is key for those learners that might need to look ahead or go back and repeat past content in order to make their own pathway. designing a well thought out instructivist course pathway is extensively covered in many books, websites, and other resources (see crosslin, benham, et al., 2018, for an example). therefore, covering those topics is outside the scope of this paper. however, special consideration should be given to assessing learner artifacts. be careful to not create a rigid system of assessment crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 17 just yet, as the design of the connectivist modality and other course options may influence how learners are assessed. making space for the connectivist modality while the connectivist modality is less structured, careful consideration must be given to how learners are guided into the space, as well as to dealing with the problems that exist in less structured spaces. learners might benefit from being given suggestions for services to use for networking or blogging. when doing so, make sure to provide links to resources that train learners who are not familiar with those tools, as well as links that explore the possible dangers associated with any online tool. no technology is neutral, therefore learners must be made aware of the pros and cons of any service that is suggested. additionally, learners should not be led to believe that they are required to use any service or online tool, in the event that they become uncomfortable with using that tool for any reason. the idea is to create space in the course for learners to map their own pathway, including time given to adjust and change as needed. bridging the modalities with a neutral space one way to help learners map their own pathway could be to create a neutral space, where all possibilities are explained, linked to, or provided. if the course is centered on this neutral space, rather than an instructivist-leaning tool like a learning management system, learners might feel free to create their own pathway. additionally, scaffolding tools can be built into this neutral space for those learners that are interested in forming their own path, but are uncertain as to how to accomplish that. for example, an assignment bank of possible activity options could be provided to give learners ideas for how to adjust the course pathway to their specific socio-cultural needs. learners could even be encouraged to add to this assignment bank (see valenza, 2014, for an example). the main idea is to focus learners on their options in building their own pathway, not on any specific design epistemology or strategy. assessing work across multiple modalities one of the more difficult parts of designing a self-mapped learning pathways course is creating an assessment strategy that can span the different pathways that are created. whether through more open-ended rubrics, self-assessment, or portfolio building, this assessment method will need to be focused on what the learner accomplished more than technical details like word counts, rote memorization, or detailed rubric counts. going back to the competencies that were created, make sure that any form of assessment focuses on the behaviors over conditions or criteria, in a way that can span both instructivist and connectivist modalities. one possibility for this is to look at the pathway that learners self-map as a portfolio of what they learned. learning pathways mapping the biggest challenge for learners when mapping learning pathways is that technology to accomplish the actual mapping does not yet exist. however, a combination of tools can be used to help learners with the process. the basic process is to have learners create a map of the pathway they would like to take through the course, follow the map and change it as needed throughout the course, and then reflect on the process at the end. any tool could be used to accomplish this, such as word processing tools, blogging tools, or even a notepad. one possibility is to use a story making tool like wakelet to create the map; then have learners follow the map and create artifacts on crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 18 services like wordpress, twitter, youtube, etc; and finally have learners reflect on the pathway in an annotation tool like hypothes.is. for an example of this process, see crosslin (2017). conclusion this article does not serve as an exhaustive list of every design and theoretical issue related to self-mapped learning pathways. research and writing on this emerging mindset are ongoing. as new findings, blog posts, and ideas are created, they will be cataloged at the author’s website (crosslin, 2019). a special note should be made that the particular methods mentioned in this article are not the only way to approach pathways mapping. others have looked at mixing different epistemologies other than instructivism and connectivesm (kilgore & al-freih, 2017). however, the main goal always remains the same: to allow learners to take control and ownership over their learning pathways, bringing about a realization of heutagogical student-centered learning that many in education desire to obtain. references ally, m. 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(2006). leadership in organizations (6th ed.). pearson. crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 21 author notes matt crosslin, phd orbis education, instructional designer ii; university of texas rio grande valley, part-time faculty matt@mattcrosslin.com guest editor notes sean m. leahy, phd arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au mailto:matt@mattcrosslin.com mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au crosslin: self-mapped learning pathways current issues in education, 21(2) 22 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf cie template current issues in education, vol(number) 1 volume 22, issue 3 december 8, 2021 issn 1099-839x mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators emily mcrobbie northern arizona university abstract: this interpretive case study explored how k-12 educators conceptualized and related mindfulness to their professional lives while completing the stress management and relaxation techniques (smart) in education mindfulness-based intervention program. participants were able to construct an understanding of mindfulness and noted increased present moment focus, expanded awareness, and a greater sense of neutrality or reduced judgment. educators who practiced mindfulness regularly reported strengthened compassion, improved relational quality, and a stronger sense of empowerment. the study suggests that mindfulness for educators presents opportunities for individual and school transformation, although the amount of school change participants reported was influenced by systemic support and privilege. strengthening relational quality in schools, empowering teachers, and shifting school culture from places of cultural reproduction to those of transformation may more effectively address the sources of teacher stress and create relational spaces that support teaching and learning. keywords: mindfulness, teacher, educator, relational quality, compassion citation: mcrobbie, e. j. (2021). mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators. current issues in education, 22(3). https://10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1988 accepted: 11/1/2021 introduction mindfulness in education has gained a great deal of attention in recent years, yet few studies explore contextual nuances or describe how mindfulness is understood by educators and related to teacher work. current literature largely focuses on teacher well-being, stress reduction, and social-emotional learning as a method for improving teaching skills and student learning. mindfulness-based interventions might also create space for educators to connect, reflect, and transform. educators view mindfulness training as a meaningful, positive experience that improves well-being and professional work (greenberg & harris, 2012; herrmann & gallo, 2013; jennings et al., 2013; roeser et al., 2012; roeser et al., 2013; sharp & jennings, 2015). several studies provide evidence that mindfulness training for k-12 teachers can improve teacher resiliency (flook et al., 2013; roeser et al., 2013; schussler et al., 2018). additionally, https://10.0.56.171/cie.vol22iss3.1988 mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 2 improving one’s ability to attend to students with open awareness in the present moment is thought to enhance the teacher-student relationship and positively influence the learning environment (sharp & jennings, 2015). yet findings from a limited number of studies are to be considered cautiously (schussler et al., 2018) and studies that explore participant meaning in context are needed to better understand diverse experiences. the purpose of this study is to understand how k-12 educators make meaning of mindfulness and explain how they relate it to teaching and learning. an interpretive theoretical lens is used to document and describe educator experiences. this can be the first step to identifying the variety of ways that mindfulness-based interventions are received by educators and considering implications for program design as well as new research questions. participants who committed to regular mindfulness practice during an 8-week stress management and relaxation techniques (smart) in education program discussed changes that they attributed to improving their professional and personal lives. participants who did not establish a daily practice did not experience many changes even though they saw value in the training. shared understanding of mindfulness included present moment observation, awareness, and a greater sense of neutrality that fostered compassionate responsiveness to others. these attributes were linked with improved relational quality and personal empowerment in professional work. additionally, this study revealed significant differences between two school sites. experiences differed between participants in an affluent, suburban school setting and those in an at-risk, urban school district. levels of privilege and systemic support altered educator experience with mindfulness training and practice. the study highlights that although mindfulness practice as an individualistic tool to strengthen well-being was valued by participants, it is also important to address contextual differences and how educators are empowered to meet professional challenges. systemic support and privilege may play a role in teacher experiences with mindfulness. research examining mindfulness-based interventions for k-12 teachers is currently establishing foundational knowledge. this study responds to the call for additional exploratory and descriptive research and contributes to contextual knowledge to better understand how educators make meaning of mindfulness. multiple studies recommend the need for qualitative research to provide rich, contextual information related to mindfulness educator training (greenberg & harris, 2012; roeser et al., 2012; sharp & jennings, 2015). this study captures personal meaning and descriptions of how participants explain mindfulness in the context of their work. it also extends the conversation of mindfulness for educators beyond pragmatic concerns to consider issues of teacher empowerment, the role of privilege, and individual and school change. although there is evidence that mindfulness improves a sense of well-being, resiliency, and social emotional development, mindfulness additionally offers leverage for transformation of educational structures. overview of relevant literature review research specific to mindfulness-based interventions for k-12 educators suggests improvements in stress management, well-being, social-emotional regulation, and relationships with students (jennings & greenberg, 2009; jennings et al., 2013; roeser et al., 2012). the specific mechanisms by which mindfulness strengthens these areas is still in development. one promising line of research suggests that adults engaging in regular mindfulness practice develop meta-awareness that fosters improved attention in the present moment, clearer quality in the mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 3 content of consciousness, ability to inhibit irrelevant processes or thoughts, and self-regulation (jankowski & holas, 2014). mindfulness appears to reduce cognitive rigidity and allow flexibility of thought (greenberg, reiner & meiran, 2012). such cognitive flexibility allows for positive reappraisal of stressors (hanley et al., 2014). positive reappraisal is the process of reinterpreting stressful events as harmless or even meaningful and beneficial (lazarus & folkman, 1984 as cited in hanley et al., 2014; sharp & jennings, 2015). adults with regular mindful meditation practice tend to use reappraisal coping to handle stressors more frequently than those who are less experienced or less regular in their practice (hanley et al., 2014). enhancing one’s ability to reappraise stressful situations is certainly a helpful life skill and one that would benefit k-12 educators as they navigate work stress. however, it is also important to consider sources of teacher work stress and critically examine educational structures that may create less than ideal teaching and learning spaces. to best understand systemic sources of teacher stress, it helps to position the teaching profession in the political, social, and cultural climate that american educators navigate. the empiricist philosophy common in public education values schools as models of efficiency and places a high value on empirical testing and verification (flinders & thornton, 2013). teachers and students often experience separation, rigid rules, restrictive evaluation, and institutional conformity (jackson, 1990). this system undervalues and manages teachers’ knowledge, intensifies their work, and isolates them in ways that leave few opportunities for collaboration or empowerment (apple, 2004 in flinders & thornton, 2013). research indicates that teacher satisfaction with their profession has steadily decreased in the last 25 years (mccarthy et al., 2014) and that up to 30% of teachers experience psychological ill-being or burnout (milatz et al., 2015). in several studies focused on mindfulness-based interventions, teachers noted how extreme workload and the stress of teaching leads to exhaustion (jennings & schonart-reichl, 2014; roeser et al., 2013; sharp & jennings, 2015; trumbower, 2015). in a public education model influenced by neoliberal policies and reforms, teachers are not viewed as relational and empowered professionals (giroux, 2015; hargreaves & fullan, 2013; slouka, 2009). yet teachers commonly name the relational quality of their work to be of greatest importance (mccarthy et al., 2014; milatz et al., 2015). social support and interaction serve as a stress buffering system (ditzen & heinrichs, 2014 as cited in milatz et al., 2015). positive relationships with colleagues and supervisors are noted as a helpful coping strategy that offsets work stress (certo & fox, 2002). relationships with students can be an important source of enjoyment in a teacher’s work life (milatz et al., 2015). additionally, teacher relationships with students have “been shown to be among the top ten predictors for students’ academic outcomes” in hundreds of studies (hattie, 2009 as cited in milatz, et al., 2015, p. 2). we must consider that nurturing relationships is an important and necessary task for schools, and one that is often overlooked. many teachers entering classrooms take on a new identity that is contrary to the relational reasons they entered the teaching profession; this school-shaped identity feels false and leads to a sense of separation and dissatisfaction (casbon et al., 2005). for example, a new teacher in this study voiced her surprise and discomfort with the realities of teaching as she struggled with a large class size, limited parent and administrative support, expectations in a data-driven environment, and classroom management challenges. she was already considering leaving the profession in her third year as a classroom teacher because she did not feel she was part of supportive, relational community. but when teachers are invited to rediscover and express their true identity in their profession, they feel more authentic and engaged (casbon et al., 2005). mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 4 teachers who experience spaces of care and trust in professional work also bring that same awareness into their classrooms and find strength to question authority (casbon et al., 2005). mindfulness-based interventions as professional development may provide opportunities to promote connection, reflection, and support to make new choices. mindfulness is associated with enhanced capacities for relationships (brown et al., 2007). mindfulness-based interventions can create spaces to support relational wellness and provide a unique approach to teacher growth and development. palmer (1998) believed that excellent teaching originates from identity and integrity rather than reducing teaching to a set of techniques. in this view, educator growth involves developing authentic practitioners with renewed connections to self and present context (intrator & kunzman, 2009). this is precisely what mindfulness practices aim to develop. this unique type of professional development opens space to rediscover their own knowledge, voice, and strength (casbon et al., 2005; intrator & kunzman, 2006). another area of related literature identifies the development of professional dispositions or habits of mind for teachers (dottin, 2009; national council for the accreditation of teacher education, 2006 as cited in roeser et al., 2012). examples of effective habits of mind for educators include emotional regulation, reflecting in a nonjudgmental way, observing and gathering data, resiliency, empathy, and compassion (jennings & greenberg, 2009). evidence of occupational self-compassion in teachers who have participated in mindfulness training is encouraging (roeser et al., 2013). mindfulness-based interventions may include practices that focus on building compassion and empathy (greenberg & harris, 2012; herrmann & gallo, 2013). in one case study, participants shared that they experienced a sense of increased compassion and began to implement mindfulness practices in their classrooms (herrmann & gallo, 2013). empathy and compassion may buffer burnout and future research that explores the link between mindfulness and compassion should be explored (sharp & jennings, 2015). participants in this study noted greater compassion towards self and others and related it to improved relational quality. a shift in perspective is needed to create a healthy relational space in educational structures that will support k-12 teachers and students. the current technical rational view of education seeks to improve student achievement, yet it deemphasizes the very important role of human relationships in that process. mindfulness-based interventions may offer promise for individual and collective change. method the interpretivist theoretical lens selected for this study adopts a constructivist view that assumes that reality is socially constructed, intersubjective, and represented in diverse ways as people make meaning (butin, 2010; lukenchuk, 2013; stake, 1995). case study methodology is grounded in a constructivist paradigm that values human construction of meaning (baxter & jack, 2008). as qualitative data is collected and analyzed in this frame, the researcher’s role is to examine patterns of meaning and describe the participant experience (butin, 2010). this study was exploratory and remained open to patterns of meaning that arose from the data. descriptive and exploratory research can inform contextual understanding in mindfulness-based interventions (greenburg & harris, 2012; roeser et al., 2012; sharp & jennings, 2015). research situated in this frame seeks to explore how people understand their experiences and construct meaning (merriam, 1998). a case study design best suited this study to explore educator understanding and mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 5 experience in a particular context (merriam, 1998). case study research is grounded in natural settings and situates the participants and researcher in context (creswell, 2006; denzin & lincoln, 2005; miles et al., 2014; yin, 2003). an important feature of case study methodology is that it “investigates a unique, contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between the phenomenon and context are not clearly evident” (yin, 2009, p. 18). case study is a preferred approach to examine contemporary events when behaviors of participants cannot be manipulated or separated from context (yin, 2009). this study values understanding experience within a complex, contextual setting, co-construction of meaning by participants and researcher, and inductive analysis (lukenchuk, 2013; miles et al., 2014). it provides an in-depth, rich exploration of meaning, and values a holistic story (creswell, 2006; merriam, 1998; miles et al., 2014; stake, 1995; travers, 2004). the use of broad research questions that ask “how” or “why” is typical in case study design and the intention is to remain flexible and open as data is gathered (swanborn, 2010; yin, 2003). two research questions guided this study: 1. how do k-12 educators make meaning of mindfulness? 2. how do educators relate mindfulness to teaching and learning? positionality and reflexivity the life experiences a researcher brings to the field is made transparent to recognize the inherent subjectivity of research and allow readers to make their own determination around confirmability (miles et al., 2014; stake, 1995). this process allows the researcher to “unravel how their biographies intersect with their interpretation of field experiences” (finlay, 2003, p. 4). it would be remiss of me to not to examine my own tradition of contemplative practice and how i came to this work. when i entered the research field, i had a fifteen-year contemplative practice in yoga, a six-year practice in vipassana meditation, and a twenty-five-year career as an educator. as a seasoned educator, i was well acquainted with the challenges, frustrations and stress that occupy the work lives of many teachers. the questions a researcher will ask is influenced by their experiences. complete detachment from one’s research is not possible (horsburgh, 2003). however, every effort was made to let the data speak for itself and conversations with participants illuminated diversity. reflexivity and attention to trustworthiness in research practices were attended to throughout the research process. reflexivity, an effort to examine one’s beliefs and positionality, was a regular practice. the researcher journal was a tool used to reflect on areas of potential bias and record researcher experiences and thoughts. additionally, a bracketing interview to reveal and explore potential research bias was completed prior to data collection. participants and context this study is bounded by place and time, a characteristic of case study design (stake, 1995). the smart in education training for k-12 educators took place in the rocky mountain region of the united states. two sites were included in the study, one an affluent suburban school (site 1) and the other an urban school district with a high at-risk student population (site 2). data collection took place during an 11-week time frame in fall 2016. this included the 8week mindfulness program schedule that skipped two weeks to match school district schedules plus one week following the last session to complete interviews and collect final documents. nine educators, four located at site 1 and five at site 2, participated in this study and were concurrently working in k-12 public school districts. the inclusion of multiple participants at mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 6 two sites represents a single case with embedded units design (baxter & jack, 2008). there was a total of 50 educators registered at the two sites, including four males and 46 females. nine participants volunteered for the study and gave written informed consent as required by the university institutional review board procedures. names in this report were changed to honor confidentiality. no compensation for participation was provided. participant years of teaching ranged from 3 to 20 with an average of 14.4 years. all but two had earned master’s degrees and six worked at the elementary level, two worked across the k-12 spectrum, and one worked at the high school level. participants were predominantly female with one male and predominantly white with one person of color, although this was representative of the overall gender and ethnicity enrollment during this smart in education session. participant demographics are found in table 1. table 1 participant demographics ellen maisy stephanie greg mavis grace ann mollie charlotte site location 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 years employed as educator 16 20 9 17 13 18 3 17 17 current role sp sp sp cl sp adm cl sp cl level elem elem elem elem k-12 elem elem k-12 hs education ma ma ma ma ma ma ba ma ba gender f f f m f f f f f ethnicity white white white white white minority white white white prior mf yes yes no no yes no no no no note. current role abbreviations include sp = specialist; cl = classroom teacher; adm = administrator at the suburban site (site 1) the four participants, one male and three female, were experienced educators who worked in the same elementary school. their years of experience in education ranged from 9 to 20 years with an average of 15.5 years. two had prior experience with mindfulness while two were new to mindfulness. all reported that they registered for this training to be part of a school mindfulness goal aimed to bring mindfulness practices into all classrooms and also thought there would be personal benefits. these participants noted strong well-being at the beginning of the study and felt they had positive life habits in place to effectively deal with stress. all completed requirements to receive professional development. at the urban site (site 2) five female participants volunteered to participate in the study. two worked in elementary schools, one worked at a high school, and two worked across the kmcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 7 12 spectrum in the district. their years of experience in education ranged from 3 to 18 years and average 13.6 years. these participants had less familiarity with mindfulness and primarily registered to learn new strategies to manage stress. several stated that they felt they needed this training to deal with high levels of work stress, and four indicated mediocre to poor sense of well-being at the beginning of the training. all study participants completed the program as well as the study, although one participant at site 2 did not complete suggested home mindfulness practice and did not submit the practice log document. the training was offered for free or for a nominal registration, often ranging from $25.00 to $75.00 depending on the school district. the purpose of the program is captured in the registration statement, “smart supports participants in: re-connecting to personal and professional meaning and purpose, finding balance and cultivating emotional intelligence, and improving mental and physical health” (passageworks, 2014). smart in education is described as 70% mindfulness based stress reduction (mbsr) curriculum and 30% smart curriculum including social emotional content and examples that relate to classroom work (r. wilensky, personal communication, december 4, 2015). the curriculum included: mindfulness practices, creating a new habit, mindful listening, setting intentions, observing sensations, thoughts and emotions, effects of stress, responding versus reacting, emotions and emotional reactivity, working with anger, forgiveness, kindness and compassion, and a state of being as compared with a state of doing. although different facilitators led the two cohorts, the curriculum and mindfulness practices were consistent between sites. the program consisted of 2-hour group meetings each week for eight weeks, a half-day saturday retreat devoted to mindfulness practice, and encouraged daily practice. an additional 14 hours or 840 minutes of mindfulness practice outside of group meetings, completion of logs, and a final reflection paper were required if one desired formal professional development credit. each session included multiple mindfulness practices, such as mindful eating, mindful movement, body scan, sitting meditation, and loving kindness meditation, as well as shared content and discussion. chairs were arranged in a circle and facilitators utilized an invitational, participatory approach. periodic open dialogue in dyads, small groups, and whole group took place. both facilitators emphasized self-compassion and reflection on one’s own experiences. data collection and analysis case study methodology uses multiple data sources to allow for triangulation of data and strengthened confidence in findings (creswell, 1994; swanborn, 2010; yin, 2009). data sources included interviews with individuals during the first three weeks and last two weeks of the study, participant practice logs and final essays, smart in education curriculum materials, school district goals, school demographics, and field notes. the researcher assumed a participantobserver role and field notes were taken during smart in education sessions. weekly research summaries compiled data and supported data analysis. individual interviews with participants were in person, 20-50 minutes in length, semi-structured, audiotaped, and transcribed. interview questions related to sources of work stress, approaches to and regularity of mindfulness practice, views about the training, content and mindfulness practices, descriptions of mindfulness, examples, challenges and benefits, and observations of change. participants were encouraged to add additional information and interviews were purposefully open-ended. desimone (2009) notes that interviews and observations are one of the most appropriate methods to understand and describe a contextual professional development experience. member checking involved returning mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 8 transcribed interviews to participants to make changes, ask for clarification, and confirm data. the constant comparative method of data analysis was used to identify emerging patterns in the data (merriam, 1998). this method involves “continuous comparison of incidents, respondents’ remarks, and so on with each other. units of data – bits of information – are literally sorted into groupings that have something in common” (merriam, 1998, p. 179). this method begins with coding. coding provides a strategy to examine words or phrases that participants use to communicate meaning (merriam, 1998; miles et al., 2014). all transcribed interviews were coded by hand using a priori and in vivo codes for first cycle coding (miles et al., 2014). approximately 50 a priori codes were created to begin coding and these were generated using current literature at the time of the study. examples of a priori codes include awareness, attention, kindness/compassion, forgiveness, patience, benefits, challenges, stress, and others that were expected to arise during interviews. additional in vivo codes arose from participant language (miles et al., 2014). subcodes for certain concepts were utilized, such as in the case of teacher stress to help identify various sources of teacher stress. as new codes emerged, they were also applied to previously coded transcripts. in total, 200 codes were used in the first level analysis. codes were then arranged into categories with similar meaning for second level analysis. for example, the phrases “in the present” and “right now” represented different vocabulary for the concept present moment. the frequency for each meaning code was then tabulated and ranked. codes were next organized by frequency for the entire group, each site, individuals, and examined in relationship to research questions, practice logs, and final essays. this information was analyzed and assertions and propositions were developed. “an assertion is a declarative statement of summative synthesis, supported by confirming evidence from the data and revised when disconfirming evidence or discrepant cases require modification of the assertion” (miles et al., 2014, p. 99). a proposition suggests a conditional event or a relationship (miles et al., 2014). for example, the data revealed differences between participants that committed to regular daily practice and those that did not. the resulting proposition was, “participants who committed to regular practice and completed 800 or more minutes of home practice reported greater change and explained mindfulness in more detail.” the construction of assertions, propositions, and memos allows the researcher to begin to reflect upon and develop early analysis (miles et al., 2014). matrices were developed and exploration of rival themes and outliers were explored before developing themes (miles et al., 2014). outlier experiences were included in the findings. for example, one person who did not adopt regular practice also shared valuable insights about mindfulness and the role of privilege that were included in the findings. data source triangulation, including field notes, interviews, and documents, was used to confirm emerging themes and reduce potential bias (denzin & lincoln, 2005; miles et al., 2014; stake, 1995). patterns that emerged from the data sources were examined and interpreted to develop findings and conclusions (miles, et al., 2014). from this process, emerged evidence that: (a) similar understandings of mindfulness existed, (b) those with greater home practice expressed deeper understanding of mindfulness and noted change, and (c) specific individual and site similarities and differences existed to explore further. continued analysis resulted in the emergence of several categories related to the research questions that reflected the research purpose, were exhaustive, and conceptually congruent (merriam, 1998). inductive analysis is appropriate in qualitative research to allow findings and themes to emerge from the data that are plausible, accurate, and meaningful (letts et al., 2007; miles et al., mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 9 2014). a decision was made to organize findings by themes rather than research questions because overlap existed between research questions and the patterns of meaning were better illustrated using theme organization. three themes emerged from the data: (a) understanding and experiencing mindfulness, (b) holistic personal and professional change, and (c) transforming schools. the first two themes address the first research question: how do k-12 educators make meaning of mindfulness? all three themes, although with greater emphasis on the last two themes, address the second research question: how do educators relate mindfulness to teaching and learning? findings participants explained how mindfulness practice influenced awareness and how it improved relational quality. there were noticeable differences between individuals who established a consistent mindfulness practice and those who did not. an additional insight emerged while comparing the two sites. there were noticeable contextual differences that supported or inhibited individual and school change. representative examples are included to honor participant voice. theme 1: understanding and experiencing mindfulness participants constructed an understanding of mindfulness and three concepts emerged from the data: (a) present moment focus, (b) expanded awareness, and (c) a greater sense of neutrality or reduced judgment. data revealed differences between educators who established a regular mindfulness practice and those who did not. five of the nine participants, ellen, maisy, and stephanie at site 1 and mavis and mollie at site 2, completed more than 800 minutes of practice outside of group meetings. these individuals integrated mindfulness into daily routines, noted more beneficial changes, and spoke about mindfulness concepts in greater depth. an increase in present moment focus was noted. mavis explained that mindfulness is “being able to live in the present moment, to identify your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions” and being able to sit with those observations. observing in the present moment allowed participants to pay attention to subtleties that might have once gone unnoticed in their environments, thoughts, or emotions. the concept of expanded awareness emerged from the data. the phrases “being aware,” “noticing,” and “in touch with” connected with the concept of awareness. awareness of environmental surroundings, one’s emotions, and considering the needs of others were topics noted. in some examples, participants linked greater awareness of emotions with choosing a response. during a stressful day, charlotte explained how she realized that she needed to take a moment for herself and found a quiet place to breathe for a few minutes. she recounted: it was that day i had to take a pause in the locker room. i think that’s why i needed that because i did notice that it was happening. even in the meeting where i was getting more angry, i knew that i was getting angry so i also knew that i needed to hold my tongue and i needed to just think before i could speak and i needed to process it. participants who completed over 800 minutes of home practice, spoke about awareness in greater depth and began to attend to patterns in their minds or actions. maisy said that mindfulness “shifts your thinking.” her growing self-awareness was traced over several weeks. in our second interview she noted, “i really think a lot of my reactions, my emotions for me, stem from the inability to forgive, which is a huge recognition … i’m starting to see this little pattern.” she explained, “i have more awareness about underlying feelings. and if i’m going to mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 10 forgive myself or if i’m going to do whatever, if i’m not really aware of the source i can’t make any growth changes in myself.” this evidence suggests a deeper self-awareness emerging. not all participants expressed that they had experienced significant changes in awareness. those who practiced infrequently spoke about their experiences differently. ann’s realization was to begin to recognize emotions and then let them go, although she noticed few other changes. grace said she did not experience changes beyond noticing more in her environment and working to increase mindful listening with students. interestingly, despite her claim that she saw no significant changes, she offered a unique explanation of mindfulness that some might argue captures a deep understanding. grace explained, “it’s like an awakening or an awareness of yourself, but also way more than yourself because i think people are always really focused on themselves, but not in this type of way, not in a positive, metacognitive sort of way.” she likened becoming more mindful to “waking up from a fog or mist where you cannot see clearly.” experienced practitioners often describe a sense of awakening to our habits of mind, conditioned reactions, and deeper awareness (yates, 2015). the final mindfulness concept that emerged from the data was experiencing a state of calm neutrality and reduced judgment. participants frequently described a strengthened sense of calm, peacefulness, or steadiness. most spoke about experiencing less judgment and connected this with being kinder to oneself or another. ann stated, “the big part that i really like is the nonjudgmental part of it; don’t beat yourself up about it. you won’t be perfect, just recognize those feelings and let it go.” a sense of relief was present as participants released harsh selfjudgment and transitioned to greater self-acceptance and self-compassion. at the beginning of the study, all participants commented that it was difficult to find time in their schedules to practice mindfulness. however, those who established a regular practice no longer indicated that time was a barrier in final interviews. instead, they talked about how they felt more efficient with their time and prioritized better. stephanie commented, “it really benefits your time; it makes you feel like you spend your time wisely.” they shifted their view to believe that making time for mindfulness was important and expressed that mindfulness practice felt essential to maintain well-being. additionally, they noticed multiple changes, including less worry, more self-care, improved sleep, decreased rumination, attending more to others, and improved relationships. by comparison, those who did not establish a regular practice expressed that they continued to struggle with time and had not experienced significant long-lasting changes even though they found the practices useful. those who successfully established a regular practice explained that they used multiple, short practices scattered throughout each day. the type of home mindfulness practices selected varied, and the data indicated that commitment to regular practice using any of the options to be valuable. theme 2: holistic personal and professional change interestingly, when participants were asked questions related to the second research question to better understand how they related mindfulness to teaching and learning they frequently interwove examples from professional and personal lives together in responses. they spoke about mindfulness holistically and felt that it resulted in kinder and more compassionate responses. mindfulness was integrated into both professional and personal lives. there were many examples of more actively listening, considering another’s perspective, and being more present with family members as well as students, parents, and colleagues. participants shared evidence that they were responding in new ways to strengthen relationships. although they saw the mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 11 benefits of mindfulness practice to reduce stress, they emphasized that mindfulness enhanced their lives in many ways. participants commonly used phrases such as “less reactive,” “softer,” “gentler,” “kinder,” “calmer,” and “more patient” to describe interactions with others. some felt that relationships with students were becoming more genuine and enjoyable. a caring relationship is a basic form of connection that builds trust and is necessary in learning spaces (noddings, 1992). both students and teachers benefit from classroom relationships (milatz, et al., 2015). participants linked feeling calmer and more patient with the ability to pause, listen, observe, and consider other perspectives. greg commented, “i feel the difference on the inside. that now it doesn’t have to be this calm exterior as a façade; now the calm exterior is matching a calmer interior, too.” charlotte said, “i’m watching students. as i’m listening to students, i think i’m also being very mindful about what is it that i’m hearing? and what is it that i’m seeing? and just what’s going on around me and how is it affecting me?” maisy attributed increased patience and self-reflection to her mindfulness practice and related it to her work with students: working with struggling readers you have to have a lot of patience, and again, a lot of that can come back to your own feelings of inadequacy. sometimes if they’re not getting it and you get frustrated with them, but you are really frustrated at yourself because what you’re doing isn’t working and you’re not sure what to do next. so, i think i’ve had more reflection on stuff like that, like where is my reaction coming from? why am i having this emotion? so being able to notice that more has been really good because my response, i can change it then. and then my patience level with kids, too, is better because i’m coming from a little bit of a different place. not every day, but it’s better. many participants noticed that being able to create calm within allowed them to engage with others in more constructive ways. stephanie explained, “the example of being calm about my workload. it has helped me be more present in meetings with my colleagues.” mavis explained how mindful listening allowed her to be more present and consider other perspectives. she stated, “i’ve really, really tried harder to be there in the moment and actually listen to people and not be ready with my solution because i might be missing something when i’m doing that, and i’m sure some folks can probably sense that i’m not fully present.” individuals reported that simply taking a breath and pausing for a moment before responding to another resulted in awareness to listen and consider another’s perspective or one’s response. it is possible that creating a pause allows participants to consider how to be more proactive and avoid unnecessary conflict. participants expressed that it felt positive to respond in kinder, calmer ways to others and they attributed these moments to effective communication and improved relationships. they also discussed engaging in more self-compassion. they related self-compassion with releasing a pattern of self-judgment. greg explained, “i wasn’t always kind to myself … and i think i’m getting better at, o.k., let it go, it just doesn’t matter.” when i asked charlotte what she had learned about herself, she stated, “that i’m pretty hard on myself. i think i’ve always known that, but i don’t think i’ve actually admitted that. i think i’m harder on myself than anybody else is, so i think being able to forgive myself and just let it be is something i’m still learning.” mavis echoed similar comments, “i’m very hard on myself. i knew i was, but it was kind of glaring how hard on myself i can be.” participants provided examples of increasing positive internal dialogue and increasing self-care as methods of countering self-judgment. several participants explained that they considered other perspectives more often and this led to greater compassion. mollie stated she is “seeing things through the other person’s eyes.” mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 12 greg said that it helped him relax and listen to a colleague’s concerns. participants connected a sense of increased calm, patience, forgiveness and compassion towards self and others with improved relationships. all participants perceived mindfulness practice as more than a stress-reduction tool and those with greater home practice were able to articulate why. they viewed mindfulness practice as a proactive wellness habit that made them better teachers and people. stephanie explained that she viewed it as a method to prevent stress, improve mental health, and make life feel more meaningful. mavis stated, “i think it’s a way of living because being kind and compassionate to others and also compassionate towards self is way more, i think, than a tool or a practice.” maisy stated in our final interview, “and maybe that’s a big takeaway is that this is not supposed to be some separate thing that i do; this is the way i live.” she additionally explained a distinction between mindfulness as a potential stress-reduction strategy and mindfulness as a state of awareness: stress is not the only thing that affects our well-being. i used to think this was about stress management, but really it’s about reacting. and reacting isn’t necessarily stress. you know, if a student’s doing something and i’m feeling frustrated and i overreact, it’s not because i’m stressed; i’m just annoyed or feeling inadequate or whatever. so for me, it’s the awareness of how i’m reacting. like i was saying i was noticing my kids, it’s noticing. i’m not stressed if i’m cutting vegetables. it’s not stressful. but i’m not paying attention to a child who just walked in the door that i haven’t seen for eight hours or, so noticing, oh, i should actually be present when i talk to this person. maisy continued: so i think mindfulness is much bigger to me now, at least. stress is just one really small component of it now that i’ve gone through all that. and i’m realizing it’s helped me more with other things more than it has with the stress because the stress seems somewhat insignificant now compared with some of the other things i’ve learned. there were noticeable differences in the depth of explanations between those who had adopted a regular home mindfulness practice and those who did not. there were also subtle differences in the insights among those who had prior mindfulness experience and those who did not. the three participants who completed more than 800 minutes of home practice and had prior experience with mindfulness viewed it as a way of living. other participants tended to lean towards viewing mindfulness as a tool or strategy, although additionally commented that mindfulness practice was more than a stress-reduction tool even if they were unable to articulate reasons for this belief. it is further noted in the literature that positive benefits may also be related to the opportunity to participate in a group support program that attends to teacher stress and wellbeing (burrows, 2011; jennings et al., 2013). this study suggests that although participants did note a benefit from group support while establishing a habit of regular mindfulness practice, the experienced changes and benefits were attributed to practicing mindfulness regularly. theme 3: transforming schools mindfulness training encouraged participants to trust their own professional insights, yet contextual differences were documented between the two sites in how educators related mindfulness to teaching and learning. site 1 was engaged in a whole school mindfulness initiative with administrative and parent support, a supportive community of colleagues, and greater privilege. a former smart in education participant, michelle at site 1, observed her mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 13 peers taking the smart training this fall, “people are coming in changed and different and leading their students in a refreshed way. and i think that whole idea of letting all the teachers know on the staff that the best intervention is them.” there was a sense of positive school change. site 2 consisted of educators traveling from multiple schools within a large district who were experiencing greater work stress, more isolation, and less privilege. here any changes noted were limited to the individual and these participants continued to struggle with work satisfaction. participants related mindfulness to their work with students and colleagues as well as paperwork and testing requirements. they viewed mindfulness as a catalyst for experiencing greater presence with students and colleagues and restoring balance to schools where standardized curriculum and testing dominated the landscape. participants noted how mindfulness practice clarified their values and altered choices related to curriculum and instruction. at site 1, there was significant discussion about the importance of developing socialemotional skills and focusing on whole child development. they related mindfulness to one of the district’s goals, social-emotional learning. those who began their careers close to 20 years ago spoke openly about how standards and testing mandates in the past decade had shifted focus away from social-emotional growth of the child. ellen commented that the stress she faces as a teacher had shifted and was now more directly related to testing pressures in a heavily mandated, data-driven environment. she said, “it felt like we were wringing out every point in the test scores that we could with kids.” she commented, “i think anxiety levels were increasing and the fun was going out of it, so we weren’t helping kids grow into healthy human beings.” she continued to explain that mindfulness returns balance to the teaching and learning environment. she said, “i feel like we’re still able to have quality instruction that’s rigorous and really nurture [students].” maisy wrote in her final reflection paper: education has changed a lot over the past decade since data and accountability have become such strong focal points. in the past, education was more child-centered. as a teacher, i was more reflective on each child, their needs and i used that information to help drive my instruction. now, data and common core standards drive the instruction. all students are expected to meet those standards at the same time and a failure of their ability to do so is reflective as a failure of their teacher. this subtle pressure of blaming the teacher has permeated the way i respond to stress and to my students. i get frustrated and agitated if a student continues to struggle and is not taking on my instruction. i carry that stress and frustration around with me, which causes me to be impatient, preoccupied, grumpy and overwhelmed. logically, i know my job is about the child and not the data, but i know my data is being watched and judged by people who do not know my students. the emphasis on standards-driven academic outcomes has added an additional layer of stress on already overwhelmed teachers (darling-hammond, 2001 as cited in sharp & jennings, 2015). maisy emphasized how mindfulness practice helped her reconnect with a child-centered teaching philosophy, “this course has reignited my core beliefs about child-centered education and given me some tools to help diminish the stress that the ‘data-driven’ movement has created for both me and the students.” she explained how it has changed her interactions with students in the teaching and learning environment, “we laugh more, take more pause breaks, think and reflect before we respond, and really listen to others’ responses.” from our first interview in september to this final reflection paper written in november, maisy transitioned from frustration about the current state of education to a more empowered position. stephanie, initially doubtful mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 14 about the benefits of the schoolwide mindfulness goal, changed her opinion as the result of experiencing positive changes herself. in our final interview, she thought the school-wide mindfulness program for students would be beneficial and support social-emotional health. by contrast, participants at site 2 felt their efforts were isolated and did not influence greater school change. their practice helped clarify their own ideas and how they interacted with students, although they believed that a larger school initiative and administrative commitment to mindfulness was needed to experience greater school change. charlotte linked mindfulness with restorative justice, the school’s approach to improve student behavior. in our first interview, she indicated frustration with this system and stated that she did not fully understand how restorative justice worked. in our final interview, she expressed that she thought training teachers and students in mindfulness would support the practice of true mindful listening and restorative justice. she stated: i think it’s making me a bigger believer in restorative justice and yet how do we build the capacity of kids to grow, as well? so, i think the next thing that i would like to look into, if i ever have any time to do that, is, alright, i get it. i know what it’s about, it’s listening to kids, i get it, but how do we really get kids to listen to kids? because that’s what restorative justice is and seeing the consequences of their actions. are we really letting kids really listen to kids or are we just going through the process? because if we don’t have more people trained in mindfulness and in really paying attention to what you’re feeling, then are we really having them listen to each other or are we just going through the motions? mollie shared taking deep breaths and a few mindful movements with a student and engaged in conversations about mindfulness with colleagues. she primarily used the practices to keep herself calm and effectively interact with others. unlike participants at site 1, however, she did not believe that the efforts of a small group of teachers would be enough to shift the teaching and learning environment in the schools where she worked. she thought that administrators should also complete the training and school district commitment was needed for real change to occur. systemic support and privilege allowed greater change in the school environment at site 1 while lack of systemic support and less privilege restricted school change at site 2. it is noted that participants at site 2 collectively completed fewer independent mindfulness practice minutes than those at site 1. additionally, participants at site 2 worked in different schools and had to drive long distances through traffic to attend training while those at site 1 worked together in the same school and had colleagues also enrolled in the program as well as a supportive administrator. site 2 participants consistently referenced greater stress in their work life. they spoke about large class sizes, student behavior and learning challenges, less involved parents, and rapidly changing administration and curriculum. mollie noted workload concerns, “in my work life, definitely, it’s just too much. it’s just too much. i don’t even have time to teach.” she linked excessive workload to her stress and teacher burnout. stress is related to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, often resulting in detachment from students and negative feelings about work (sharp & jennings, 2015). teacher burnout is attributed to long-term professional stress, including emotional exhaustion, lack of autonomy, and disengagement (maslach et al., 2001; mccarthy et al., 2009; jennett, harris & mesibov, 2003 as cited in trumbower, 2015). mollie was not sure that she could make it to retirement and ann commented that she was already experiencing burnout after three years of teaching. high teacher stress and burnout in the teaching profession often leads to teachers leaving the field prematurely (flook et al., 2013; mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 15 herrmann & gallo; 2013). participants at this site did not have the privileges of strong support systems and resources in their jobs nor did they work with a privileged student body. the district did help fund the training using grant money and offered professional development credit. this action was greatly appreciated by participants and supported their ability to attend. as the only person of color in the study, grace noted important considerations about the role of privilege as it relates to mindfulness. she stated, “i mean, culturally speaking, i think of this as a white people thing to do, and when i looked around the room that was validated every time.” she also pointed out that although taking breaths might help to calm a person with small stressors, it may not work for more serious life issues. she explained that mindfulness assumes a certain amount of privilege. she stated, “i feel like in order to be in a place where you can use this there are certain privileges that you already have to have to even be in a place to be open to it.” when i probed to better understand the specific privileges she meant, she answered: i mean the fact that you can, first of all, even take a class to do those, which money was one of the reasons i didn’t take it early on. then to be in a space where your biggest problems are things that you can manage by deep breathing or doing body scans, where people have much bigger problems than that. although site 2 educators valued what mindfulness could do to improve the teaching and learning environment, change was limited to individualistic efforts. by comparison, site 1 participants expressed they were not experiencing significant stress in their work life and had administrative support. site 1 was a privileged community. the parent teacher association raised funds to help pay for the smart in education program at the school and teachers were able to walk down the hall to attend weekly sessions. they also were immersed in a school where many people had taken or were taking the training and could easily find others to practice or discuss mindfulness if they wished. participants at site 1 shared examples to illustrate how mindfulness was already shifting the school environment. maisy shared, “you know, we start off our staff meetings now in mindfulness; we do a mindful 10 minutes of mindful breathing as a staff now ... and everyone knows what to do. it’s not weird. it’s very comfortable.” she explained, “it’s just a more common phrase. it’s just what people are starting to do more often.” ellen articulated how mindfulness was already creating change: the kids need to know that they’re respected. and there’s something about taking time out and everybody participating in a common exercise that benefits child and adult alike. that’s one angle. another one is the general theme of kindness that is a part of mindfulness is vital and i think can help shift the culture of a school. and as a school, i would say that we are shifting. we have been shifting and this will hopefully continue the momentum away from kids being, more about valuing the kids’ output on a test over who they are as people and what they can contribute to the world and how to take care of themselves. and i think the mindfulness that we’re focusing on is an opportunity to grow to the next stage as a community, and a community that’s kind and thinking beyond just the curriculum of content. stephanie explained, “i can already feel it,” and, “that kids are acting out less. there’s way more attention brought onto how can we be kind to ourselves and kind to others in the classroom. so that’s been a great thing for me to observe, as someone who works with all grade levels.” systemic support and greater privilege allowed for greater school change at site 1 while at site 2 change was individualistic. since mindfulness was not prioritized in the site 2 school district, it was left to individuals to take an interest and invest their time, a perceived limited mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 16 resource. site 2 participants felt more isolated while trying to implement mindfulness practice in their lives. privilege may play a role in mindfulness reaching educator audiences as well as supporting individuals to establish regular mindfulness practice. discussion the purpose of this study was to understand how k-12 educators make meaning of mindfulness and relate it to their professional work. the first theme revealed that similar conceptual understandings of mindfulness were identified: (a) present moment focus, (b) expanded awareness, and (c) a sense of neutrality or reduced judgement. interestingly, these concepts align with how experienced practitioners describe mindfulness. jon kabat-zinn describes mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” (kabat-zinn, 1994 as cited in roeser et al., 2012, p. 169). thich nhat hahn states, “mindfulness is the energy of being aware and awake to the present moment” (plum village mindfulness practice center, 2014). mindfulness is the practice of intentionally focusing awareness on the present without judgment, coming into a state of neutral observation (mccown et al., 2010). participants who practiced regularly during this study provided more indepth explanations about these concepts, stated they were able to return attention to the present moment more often, experienced more extensive beneficial changes, and integrated mindfulness practice into daily life. the second theme suggests improvements in relational quality. the study supports literature related to strengthened relationships, increased feelings of compassion, and reappraisal of a problem before responding (burrows, 2011, 2013; herrmann & gallo, 2013; sharp & jennings, 2015; trumbower, 2015). there were opportunities to pause, observe, and respond from a greater sense of calm, patience, and compassion. evidence suggests that participants began to experience the first and second levels of mindfulness that involve moderating one’s behavior and becoming more consistently responsive (yates, 2015). participants discussed how expanding awareness, observation of details, and willingness to consider other perspectives strengthened responsiveness, compassion, and relationships. these skills were experienced more frequently by participants who established a regular mindfulness practice. participants who integrated mindfulness practices into their lives began to question and consider patterns of thought and behavior. several participants expressed a sense of empowerment and reclaimed child-centered philosophies, shared examples of choosing new responses in their work environments, made efforts to listen and consider other perspectives, observed students and colleagues more closely, practiced self-compassion, and took steps to increase self-care. self-care and community support allows educators to experience resilience and “capitalize on a mindfulness-based program” (schussler et al., 2018, p. 22). nel noddings (1992) advocates for ethics of care in schools to strengthen teaching and learning. participants in this study felt mindfulness made them kinder and more caring teachers. when educators model relational skills in learning spaces, students and colleagues may experience a genuine and compassionate presence that supports social bonds. mindfulness is thought to assist in the transformation of the mind to experience a sense of interconnection and compassion (palmer & zajonc, 2010; yates, 2015; zajonc, 2009). attending to the relational quality of teaching and learning responds to giroux’s (1997, 2015) suggestion that social bonds and collective reasoning are essential to a successful democratic community. opportunities to align work with values and feel connection with others may be meaningful for educators. they perceived that mindfulness improved relationships and strengthened relationships may create a mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 17 support network important to educator resiliency. stronger relationships could counter teacher stress in two ways: (a) creating a positive, proactive support network, and (b) reducing interpersonal conflict. strengthening collegiality along with enhanced emotional regulation, awareness, and efficacy may strengthen resilience and create a protective factor that reduces teacher burnout (schussler et al., 2018). the literature links mindfulness to social emotional competency (dottin, 2009; jennings & greenberg, 2009; jennings et al., 2013; sharp & jennings, 2015). this study provides evidence that participants related mindfulness to social emotional skills, including reflecting in a nonjudgmental way, observing and gathering data, empathy, and compassion referred to by other authors. some of these skills were specifically addressed in the smart in education curriculum while others were indirectly experienced. participants noted responding with compassion towards self and others. strengthening compassion may buffer teacher stress and counteract teacher burnout (sharp & jennings, 2015). additionally, compassion may play a significant role in healthy relationships and school communities. scholar bell hooks (2000) noted, “compassion and forgiveness reconnect us” (p. 217). finding new ways to increase compassion in teaching and learning environments is likely to improve relational quality in educational settings. as participants began to notice details in the present moment more keenly, they responded in ways that were kinder to establish trust. “trustworthy spaces are fundamental to learning and allow real change to take place” (casbon et al., 2005, p. 366). although participants believed mindfulness practice helped reduce stress, several found the benefits extended into all areas of their lives and well beyond stress management. one participant offered an insight that mindfulness is really about increasing awareness and becoming fully present. she stated that as her experience with mindfulness expanded, stress seemed almost insignificant as compared with greater awareness and presence. improved professional and personal relationships were a significant focus of discussion in this study. the final theme provided insights about individual and school change as well as contextual differences. mindfulness training provided a new opportunity to experience connection and reflection. it provided space to pause, reflect, and feel validated and empowered. interactions occurred laterally as opposed to what is generally experienced in traditional authoritarian structures. there was a sense of openness, mutual respect, trust, and freedom. mindfulness training can create space for teacher empowerment, and empowered teachers are better able to reclaim child-centered philosophies and create relational spaces in schools. an intensely standards-driven teaching and learning environment and excessive work demands were considered stressful for teachers in this study. participants explained that extreme focus on testing had an unintended consequence of dehumanizing students and teachers. participants, especially at site 1, believed that social emotional health was the foundation for learning and they experienced a renewed commitment to this view. the american history of rationalization has created an educational reform culture that quantifies measurement to gauge success and downplays complex human interactions (eisner, 2001, as cited in flinders & thornton, 2013). educational environments influenced by neoliberal forces devalue teacher decision-making, emphasize efficiency and output as opposed to process, intensify work, and isolate educators (apple, 2004, as cited in flinders & thornton, 2013; giroux, 2015; slouka, 2009). teachers who might otherwise respond to students as individuals and assume empowered roles are too often forced into unrealistic demands that result in loss of power. in such systems, the focus becomes on efficiency of time and work productivity at the expense of personal and mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 18 social growth. the intensification of teacher work escalates chronic work overload resulting in little time for conversation or reflection (apple, 2004 in flinders & thornton, 2013). these factors contribute to the daily stress encountered by educators. mindfulness training as professional development presents an opportunity for teachers to reconnect with themselves and with others in ways that counter the hectic climate in which they normally work. it also may increase a sense of connection and empowerment. contextual differences at the two sites, including perceived work stress, support, isolation, and privilege influenced participant experience with mindfulness. systemic support and privilege influenced the degree to which participants experienced change in their schools, and incongruence persisted between mindfulness and the current educational structure. this study suggests that systemic support and privilege may influence how individuals and schools integrate mindfulness. additional research to explore these factors in greater depth is recommended. limitations there are several limitations of this study. analysis of data in case study research focuses on the complexity of the case rather than generalization to other contexts (creswell, 2006). limitations of this study include the demographics of the participants, time frame, and settings specific to the study. the findings do not explore if participants continued mindfulness practice beyond the scope of this time frame nor does it reflect experiences at other smart in education sites. these might be appropriate subjects for future research. there may exist differences between self-reported perceptions and actual participant behavior (singer, 2014). mindfulness practice logs were self-reported and may or may not represent exact mindfulness practice time completed by each participant. adding classroom observations to a future study could better capture if observable changes took place in the teaching and learning setting. conclusions and recommendations the mindfulness in education community is currently establishing foundational knowledge to better understand how contemplative epistemology might influence the teaching profession. this study identifies how k-12 educators made meaning of mindfulness and how they related it to professional work. despite individual and contextual differences, shared understandings about mindfulness existed. these included: (a) present moment focus, (b) expanded awareness, and (c) a sense of neutrality or reduced judgement. educators who integrated mindfulness practices into daily life were able to explain and experience these concepts in greater depth. participants related these concepts to improved relationships, greater present-moment awareness, compassion, and the ability to make healthier and more empowered choices. participants who did not practice regularly did not experience these same changes even though they enjoyed the training and thought it was worthwhile. it is recommended that mindfulness training for teachers include multiple supports to help participants establish regular mindfulness practice. in particular, participants found that short, guided audio practices were helpful. they also appreciated the diverse mindfulness practices that were introduced so that they could select which practices worked best for them. participants found the half-day retreat with multiple mindfulness practices to be impactful because they experienced mindfulness for a longer period and felt calmer and more relaxed for several hours following. mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 19 participants provided many examples of how they utilized mindfulness in their professional lives. those who practiced consistently and frequently communicated that mindfulness practice positively influenced both personal and professional life and described a holistic change. this change involved longer periods of time spent in the present moment and greater awareness that allowed room for new and often healthier, compassionate responses. participants emphasized that although mindfulness was a helpful stress reduction tool, it offered much more and supported expanded awareness, relational quality, and sense of well-being. however, differences were discovered between the two sites. more of the educators at site 1 with greater systemic supports and privilege were able to commit to regular practice. examining systems of support and the role of privilege in various school settings will deepen our understanding of contextual differences. this study suggests that educators enrolled in a mindfulness-based intervention and simultaneously working in k-12 environment may benefit from administrative support, a connected community of peers also learning and practicing mindfulness, attention to diversity, and reduction of barriers, such as financial commitment, location, and excessive workload to allow time to attend. it is recommended that program designers and school districts consider the role of systemic support and privilege to best support educator participation in such programs. future research might explore individual motivations and attitudes related to attendance as well as individual and systemic factors involved in establishing regular practice. educators experienced improved relational quality during the smart in education program. additionally, this study revealed that several participants experienced a greater sense of empowerment and new ways to interact with colleagues and students. site 1 participants felt that creating a mindfulness culture at their school was transforming the teaching and learning environment. they observed that teachers were more focused on being present with students, strengthened commitment to social-emotional learning, and responded in more patient and compassionate ways. although participants at site 2 did not experience a similar shift in their school environments, they did believe that mindful presence positively influenced their interactions with others. studies that investigate schools that have integrated mindfulness practices into the school culture could inform potential connections between individual and school change. additional ethnographies, narrative inquiries, and case studies that explore contextual differences in mindfulness-based interventions for educators are needed. studies that follow educators after mindfulness training has concluded will be important to learn to what extent mindfulness practice continues post-training. future research that investigates mindfulness as it relates to relational quality, educator empowerment, and school change will add depth to the literature. this study highlights that although mindfulness may be successful in reducing teacher stress and strengthening social emotional competency, it is also important to attend to contextual sources of stress, teacher empowerment, and systemic support. this shift in focus will help avoid the potential co-opting of mindfulness and empower educators to better address the core issues in schools that impact student learning and teacher work. mindfulness as professional development may create 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(2009). meditation as contemplative inquiry. lindisfarne books. author notes emily mcrobbie adult and higher education program university of southern maine emilyjmcrobbie@gmail.com http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0617-7571 this study was conducted while completing a doctoral degree at northern arizona university and in collaboration with passageworks institute. special acknowledgment and thanks extended to dr. rona wilensky at passageworks institute. more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . http://sophia.stkate.edu/msw_papers/533 mailto:emilyjmcrobbie@gmail.com http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0617-7571 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 10, number 2 december, 2008 issn 1099-839x use of the transcendental meditation technique to reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) by reducing stress and anxiety: an exploratory study sarina j. grosswald sj grosswald & associates william r. stixrud william stixrud and associates fred travis maharishi university of management mark a. bateh university of phoenix this exploratory study tested the feasibility of using the transcendental meditation® technique to reduce stress and anxiety as a means of reducing symptoms of adhd. students ages 11-14 were taught the technique, and practiced it twice daily in school. common adhd inventories and performance measures of executive function were administered at baseline and three months later. results showed statistically significant reductions in stress, anxiety, and improvements in adhd symptoms and executive function. attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) is now among the most prevalent chronic health conditions affecting school-aged children. almost 4.5 million children between ages 4 and 17 are diagnosed with the disorder, and almost half of these children are on adhd medication. the majority of those on medication remain on it in adulthood (center for disease control and prevention [cdc], 2005). seventy-five to 85% of the time, adhd is complicated by other emotional or behavioral disorders. an anxiety disorder is present in as high as 40% of adhd children (costello, mustillo, erkanli, keller, & angold, 2003; pliszka, 2000). side effects of the adhd medication can further compound the problem by causing or exacerbating emotional disorders. consequently many children on adhd medication are taking multiple drugs that include treatment for anxiety or other mood disorders, though most of those drugs are not fda approved for use with children. the long-term health effects of adhd medications are not fully known; however, evidence suggests risks of cardiac disorders and sudden death, liver damage, and psychiatric events. the side-effects and long-term health outcomes associated with adhd drug treatment potentially have important health implications for the millions of children (cdc, current issues in education vol. 10 no. 2 2005). in 2006 the fda required manufacturers to place warning labels on adhd medications, listing the potential serious health risks. most recently the british national institute for health and clinical excellence issued guidelines stating that first-line treatment for adhd should be training and behavioral interventions, with drug treatment being reserved as a last resort for severe symptoms or impairment (national institute for health and clinical excellence, 2008). this statement may be the first signs of reversing the approach of drug treatment as initial standard of care. further, recent long-term follow-up studies of the original studies (the mta cooperative group, 1999) concluded that medication alone or medication in combination with behavior therapy was superior to behavior therapy alone. the follow-up studies found that after three years of treatment there were no significant differences in behavioral symptoms among any of the three treatment groups (jensen, et al., 2007). the authors concluded that the earlier advantage seen with medication treatment was no longer apparent 36 months later. follow-up also showed that children in the medication study groups had significantly higher rates of delinquency, substance use, and stunted physical growth (jensen, et al., 2007; molina, et al., 2007). in light of the growing concerns about the safety of adhd medication, their actual effectiveness, and potential long-term health risks, the need to find effective non-drug interventions is becoming paramount. the purpose of this exploratory study was to obtain pilot data to assess the feasibility of using the transcendental meditation technique to reduce stress and anxiety as a means of reducing the symptoms of adhd. the primary hypotheses were the following: 1) children with adhd could learn and regularly practice the transcendental meditation technique, and 2) regular practice of the technique would reduce stress-related problems and symptoms associated with adhd. the secondary hypothesis was that tm practice could potentially enhance executive function. stress, anxiety, and adhd adhd is associated with impaired executive function, specifically brain circuitry governing behavior (bush, et al., 2005; durston, et al., 2004; zametkin, et al., 1993). dysfunction of these circuits leads to impulsivity and lack of normal social inhibition. it also leads to impaired working memory, inability to focus attention, and impaired temporal organization. stress interferes with executive function and behavior regulation (mcewen, 1998). stressimpaired executive function is associated with impaired working memory, impaired impulse control, and lack of mental flexibility and coping strategies. stress also dramatically compromises selective attention and the ability to sustain attention (lupien, et al., 2005). recent research sheds light on the relationship between stress and adhd. vance, et al., demonstrated dysfunction of the right prefrontal regions of the brain in adhd children (2007). this region is responsible for developing coping strategies, influencing the ability to handle stress. chronic acute stress damages the body's ability to return to non-stress levels, leading to chronically elevated levels of cortisol, a biochemical marker of stress. in children with adhd high cortisol levels impair executive function, self-regulation, and letter knowledge (blair, grange, & pazza, 2005). chronic stress can originate not only from emotional causes but can also result from physical origins. a study of premature birth and birth weight showed an association between physical stress and risk of adhd. danish researchers found that babies born prematurely had up to 70% greater risk of adhd. similarly, babies born of low birth weight had 50-90% greater risk of adhd, depending on the weight at birth (linnet, et al., 2006). early experiences of stress are believed to affect the level of responsiveness of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the autonomic nervous system. young children exposed to chronic stress can become conditioned to higher levels of adrenaline. this raises the “set point,” making these children more vulnerable to stress, resulting in situations more easily triggering stress responses. stress management as a treatment option there has been little investigation of effective stress management techniques for children with adhd. most research on adhd and stress management focuses on parents and their interaction with the child. one study of a stress management program for adhd children examined its effectiveness in improving self-concept, locus of control, and acquisition of appropriate coping strategies. the study compared a therapist-led, group, stress management program; stress-management techniques taught by the parents using provided workbook and videotapes; and a control group with no intervention. in acquisition of coping skills, there were no significant changes in any of the three groups. children in the therapist-led group did report more appropriate coping strategies (gonzalez, 2002). meditation meditation is becoming common as a means of coping with stress and improving psychosocial factors. although there are many forms of meditation, researchers generally classify them into two categories: techniques of concentration or use of the transcendental meditation technique to reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) by reducing stress and anxiety: an exploratory study 3 techniques of contemplation (shapiro, 1982). each of these techniques uses different processes, and thus has different effects (orme-johnson, & walton, 1998). in meditation practices involving concentration, such as zen meditation, the practitioner focuses on something specific such as an event, image, or sound, trying to direct all of his or her attention to a single focal point. contemplative techniques include mindfulness meditation practices, a secularized version of vipassana or insight meditation. the goal is to be aware of any and all thoughts and sensations while trying not to judge or become actively involved in the thoughts (shapiro, 1982). this type of mindfulness-based stress reduction (mbsr) technique can be practiced throughout daily activity. coupled with cognitive behavioral therapy, mbsr treatments have been studied for depression relapse, borderline personality disorder, and anxiety disorders (segal, williams, & teasdale, 2002). recent research of a mbsr technique showed decreases in perceived stress and symptoms among a clinical population with stress-related problems, illness, anxiety, and chronic pain (carmody & baer, 2007). there is a growing body of research on the beneficial effects of meditation not only as a stresscoping mechanism, but also in improving brain function. research suggests that meditation can change neural activity (newberg et al., 2006), alter dopamine levels in the brain (jevning, 1978; kjaer et al., 2002) and change eeg patterns (travis, 2001; travis & wallace, 1999). researchers are just beginning to explore the use of meditation for attention and adhd symptoms. a study of sahaja yoga meditation as an intensive family treatment program with children with adhd found improvements in children’s adhd behavior, self-esteem, and relationships with their families (harison, manocha, & rubia, 2004). in non-adhd subjects mha, krompinger and baine (2007) found that mbsr may improve attention-related neural responses. a recent feasibility study of adhd adults and adolescents using mbsr noted improvements in adhd symptoms based on self-report and improvements on performance measures of attention (zylowska, et al., 2007). the transcendental meditation technique the transcendental meditation (tm) technique is neither a technique of contemplation or of concentration. it is a technique of “effortless transcending” (travis, et al., 2002). it does not involve directing the attention or controlling the mind. the technique is practiced sitting with eyes closed, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, for 10-20 minutes each session depending on the age of the practitioner. during the meditation session the active mind settles down to a silent yet fully awake state of awareness; transcending conscious thought to experience consciousness itself (travis & pearson, 2000). the mind is alert while the body gains a unique and deep state of rest and relaxation, creating a state called "restful alertness" (roth, 1994). deep rest is reflected by markedly decreased metabolism including heart rate, respiration rate, and blood flow to the limbs (dillbeck & orme-johnson, 1987; jevning, wallace, & beidebach, 1992; orme-johnson, 1973; wallace, 1970). at the same time mental alertness is maintained, as measured by eeg and pet (travis & wallace, 1999; yamamoto, kitamura, yamada, nakashima, & kuroda, 2006 ). transcendental meditation is characterized by activation in frontal and parietal attentional areas of the brain responsible for attention, executive function, and emotional stability (dixon, et al., 2005; fergusson, 1993; gaylord, orme-johnson, & travis, 1989; newberg, et al., 2006; so & orme-johnson, 2001). meta-analyses comparing the transcendental meditation technique to other relaxation techniques found that for reducing trait anxiety in adults the tm technique had an effect size almost twice that of any other technique (ormejohnson & walson, 1998; eppley, abrams, & shear, 1989). the use of the transcendental meditation technique for stress reduction in adolescents showed improvement in school behavior, decreased absenteeism and rule infractions, and reducted suspensions due to behavior-related problems (barnes, bauza, & trieber, 2003). middle school students practicing the technique showed increased emotional regulation, and improved well-being (rosaen & benn, 2006). the practice of the transcendental meditation technique in elementary and secondary schools is associated with improved academic performance (nidich & nidich, 1989). the technique is also associated with accelerated cognitive development, improved concept learning, and improved focus and attention in children (dixon, et al., 2005; warner, 2005). the predominant theory of adhd holds that adhd is a disorder affecting multiple executive functions, with poor inhibitory control being the most important executive deficit (barkley, 1997). stress compromises all of the major executive functions, including behavioral and cognitive inhibition, working memory, and flexible shifting or transitioning. it is likely that the improved behavior of adolescents practicing the transcendental meditation technique reflects, in part, increased inhibitory control secondary to normalization of the stress response. current issues in education vol. 10 no. 2 this study was the first systematic exploration of the effects of transcendental meditation on the specific neuro-developmental disorder of adhd. given the effect of stress on executive function, attention, mood, and selfregulation, it is reasonable to explore non-drug approaches to stress reduction as a means of improving adhd symptoms. transcendental meditation’s reported effects on factors associated with adhd (e.g., stress, cognitive function, behavior regulation) makes it a potentially useful technique for managing the disorder. the fact that the technique does not require concentration, controlling the mind, or disciplined vigilance of the thought process makes it especially suited for adhd children. additionally, it is learned quickly and easily. the practice is effortless and only involves two 10-20 minute meditation sessions each day. methods overall study design a private k-12 school for children with language-based learning disabilities with 235 students agreed to participate in this study. thirtytwo students were in middle school grades, and 11 of these were diagnosed with adhd. a randomized controlled study would have only 5-6 subjects in each group. since this was an exploratory study, we chose to use a pretest-post test design with a single cohort. the subjects served as their own controls. because adhd most often involves not only attention problems, but behavioral and executive function problems, we selected a number of instruments to identify the variables that might be influenced most by the intervention. subjects participation in the study was restricted to students ages 11-14 with pre-existing diagnoses of adhd made by a physician or psychologist. information about the study and about the transcendental meditation technique was presented to the parents and students. thirteen students volunteered to participate. parents or guardians were requested to complete a brief history form indicating diagnoses, comorbidities, and medications. eleven of the volunteers had a current adhd diagnosis. all eleven were entered into the study. one month after the start of the study, one student indicated that she preferred to meditate at home rather than at school. due to the inability to reliably monitor compliance, she was dropped from the study. the final cohort was 10 students ages 1114, nine boys and one girl. four students were caucasian, six were african american. all had a diagnosis of adhd, six with inattentive-type and four with combined-type. six students had comorbidities including general anxiety disorder, dysthymia, obsessive compulsive disorder, pervasive developmental disorder, sleep disorders, and tics. eight students were taking stimulants (e.g., concerta, ritalin); three of those were also on other medications such as mood stabilizers (e.g., zoloft, welbutrin, risperdal). by virtue of attending the school, all students had language-based learning disabilities. half of the students were private-pay, and half were on financial scholarship provided by the district of columbia for students needing assistance that the district school system does not provide. procedure six weeks before the start of the intervention, two teachers and two administrators at the school were instructed in the transcendental meditation technique in order to lead the students in twice daily meditation sessions at the school. following completion of baseline assessments, students were provided the standard course of instruction in the transcendental meditation technique (see below). over the 3-month study period, subjects participated in customary follow-up checks of correct meditation. students meditated at school in a group for 10 minutes twice each day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. parents were encouraged to have students continue regular meditation at home on weekends and holidays. home compliance was not rigorously monitored. instruments data collection was divided into two categories to correspond to the primary and secondary hypotheses: 1) measures of stress, anxiety, adhd symptoms as reported by parent, teacher, and student inventories, 2) measures of executive function as measured by parent and teacher inventories, and by performance tests. anecdotal information was collected by informal video interviews at preand post-test times. measures of stress, anxiety, and adhd symptoms. teachers and parents completed the achenbach child behavior checklist (cbcl) inventory, which is validated as diagnostic of adhd based on the dsm-iv criteria. the cbcl is one of the most widely-used measures in child psychology, assessing behavior and social competency. it is composed of 112 items, each differentiating clinical from non-clinical children (α = .78-.97, r = 0.95-1). summarized in two categories: syndrome scales and dsm-oriented scales, the cbcl provides eight symptom subscale scores and a total problem score. students completed the self-administered achenbach youth self-report (ysr) and the revised children's manifest anxiety scale (rcmas) to assess overall behavioral and emotional use of the transcendental meditation technique to reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) by reducing stress and anxiety: an exploratory study 5 functioning. the ysr is a companion to the cbcl, providing parallel measures from the teachers, parents, and students. like the cbcl the ysr has 112 items measuring eight subscale symptoms categorized under syndrome scales and dsmoriented scales, and a total problem score (α = .71.95; r = .47-.79). the rcmas is a 37-item self-report instrument assessing the level and nature of anxiety in children and adolescents (α = .83, r = .60-.88;p < .01). measures of executive function. teachers and parents completed the behavior rating inventory of executive function (brief). the brief consists of 86 items in eight non-overlapping clinical scales. these scales form two broader indices: behavioral regulation and metacognition. these two indices are combined to create an overall global executive composite score. the brief assesses behavior regulation and executive functioning (α = .80-.98, r = .82 for parents, r = .88 for teachers). four performance tests were used to measure different aspects of executive function. the cognitive assessment system (cas) expressive attention, delis-kaplan executive function system (d-kefs) verbal fluency test, tower of london (tol), and connor’s cpt ii. the cas expressive attention subtest is a color-word interference test similar to the stroop. it measures higher level complex attention and ability to inhibit (r = .83-.93). names of colors are presented in ink colors of either the name of the color or a different color. when the color of ink is different from the color name the task requires attention, inhibiting the reflexive response, and cognitive processing (switching) to say the correct color. the d-kefs verbal fluency subtest measures the ability to generate words fluently, generate words in categories, and shift attention by switching from one category to another (r = .54-.73). the student is asked to list as many words as possible starting with a certain letter, to name as many items in a category, and to name items switching from one category to another. the tol measures higher order problemsolving, and is used to evaluate executive function difficulties (move score r = .80, p = .001; correct score r = .42, p = .06). subjects are shown a configuration of colored balls stacked on pegs. the subject executes a sequence of moves that transforms his or her board to match the displayed configuration with the balls arranged on designated pegs. the connors' continuous performance test (cpt) ii is a computerized test that measures sustained attention. the subject is presented stimuli on a computer screen (e.g., a letter or asterisk) and is asked to respond by pressing a button only when detecting a specified letter after seeing another specified letter. intervention: the transcendental meditation technique during the course of instruction in transcendental meditation the student learns how to let the mind move from the active focused levels of thinking to silent, expanded levels of wakefulness at the source of thought, without concentration or effort (travis, 2001). the practice of the technique involves two components: a suitable sound (“mantra”) specifically chosen to facilitate the process of settling the mind; and a precise yet effortless technique for using the sound which leads to the experience of quieter and quieter aspects of his or her awareness. the technique is taught by certified transcendental meditation teachers. the course involves one meeting of individual instruction followed by a meeting each day for the next three days to verify correct practice and provide additional information. each meeting is approximately one hour each day. all 11 children in the group were able to learn the transcendental meditation technique, and practice it successfully, as evidenced during the morning and afternoon meditation sessions and by responses to tm course assessment questionnaires. the transcendental meditation teacher observed group meditations several times a week for the first two weeks. over the rest of the study period the tm teacher met with students individually an average of three times. during these meetings the teacher used a standard procedure for assuring correct, effortless meditation. during the study period students meditated in a group at the beginning of the first period in the morning and the beginning of the last period in the afternoon each school day. meditation sessions were led by school faculty instructed in the tm technique. three months after instruction, post testing was administered. statistical analysis to reduce the number of statistical tests, the variables were grouped into two conceptual categories to correspond to the hypotheses. one grouping was stress, anxiety, and adhd symptoms. this group included the relevant variables from the ysr, rcmas, and cbcl. the second grouping was measures of executive functioning, which included the responses from teachers on the brief and the data from the performance tests. analysis was conducted on measures for which we had complete data (n=10). parent inventories and cpt scores were not included because fifty percent of the parent posttest inventories were not returned, and thirty percent current issues in education vol. 10 no. 2 of students had already left school for summer break at the time of cpt post testing. we used raw scores for all analyses except performance tests, which were converted to standard scores using look-up tables provided in the test manuals. standard scores were used for the performance measures in order to change all variables to a common direction of improvement. we applied repeated measure manovas to test for significant pre-posttest differences in the two data groupings categories. since these findings are considered exploratory, we used manovas to avoid conducting multiple t-tests. additionally, since stress or anxiety was part of multiple instruments, manova analysis was determined appropriate. because we had directional hypotheses, all tests of significance were one-tailed t tests. results stress, anxiety, and adhd symptoms from the ysr the variables selected for analysis were anxious/depressed, withdrawn/depressed, affective problems, anxiety problems, attention problems, adhd problems, and total problems (table 1). added to these variables was the single result of the rcmas. the analysis yielded significant improvement of symptoms from pre-test to posttest as reported by student inventories, f(1,9) = 4.7, p = .0285. the same measures analyzed from the ysr were selected for analysis of the teacher reported cbcl. teacher results corroborated student reported reductions in symptoms, f(1,9) = 6.5, p = .0155. table 1 stress, anxiety, and adhd symptoms student teacher pre-test post-test pre-test post-test symptom mean sd mean sd es mean sd mean sd es anxious/ depressed 5.7 3.6 2.7* 3.7 .8 10.2 6.4 5.6* 3.6 .7 withdrawn/ depressed 4.8 2.7 3.9** 3.0 .3 4.3 3.8 3.6 4.0 .2 affective problems 5.8 3.4 4.1* 2.5 .5 5 3.7 3.6 3.6 .4 anxiety problems 3.2 2.0 1.6** 1.9 .8 3.7 3.5 2.1 2.4 .5 attention problems 7 4.0 5.2* 3.5 .5 23.6 10. 5 22 11. 0 .2 adhd problems 5.4 2.9 4.3 2.7 .4 12.4 5.7 11.7 5.7 .3 total problems 52.5 25.6 40* 27.4 .5 63.1 24. 8 56* 31. 2 .3 * p ≤ .05. **p< .005. executive function the brief includes 3 composite measures: behavioral regulation index, meta-cognition index, and general executive composite. the global executive composite is composed of the behavioral regulation index and the metacognition index. a repeated measures manova of the general executive composite indicated significant improvement in executive function from pretest to post test, f(1,9) = 5.5, p = .022. thus, repeated measures manova were conducted on the scales comprising the two indices. these manovas also were statistically significant: behavioral regulation index (inhibit, shift, and emotional control), f(1,9) = 23.7, p < .00001; and metcognition index (initiate, working memory, planning, organize material, and monitoring), f(1,9) = 13.7, p = .0025. table 2 presents the preand post-test means, standard deviations, and effect size for the individual scales associated with each index. table 2 teacher behavior rating inventory of executive function (brief) * p ≤ .05 the performance measures analyzed were the cas and the d-kefs (table 3). the cas scores of expressive attention and accuracy ratio were combined with the d-kefs scores for category fluency and category switching. a repeated measures manova yielded a significant improvement in scores on these performance measures from pre to posttest, f(1,9) = 5.0, p = .026. since all of the subjects had language based learning disorders, the letter fluency trial of the dkefs verbal fluency test and the tower of london were omitted from analysis. performance on the letter fluency condition is dependent on vocabulary knowledge and spelling ability. a review of measures of executive function used for assessing adhd suggests that tests of letter fluency are not reliable for distinguishing adhd from controls because of the confounding presence of learning disorders. pre-test post test effect size scale mean sd mean sd behavioral regulation index (bri) 54.1 16.9 46.4* 13.2 .5 inhibit 19.0 6.9 17.1* 6.5 .3 shift 18.5 5.3 15.5 3.9 .6 emotional control 16.6 6.7 13.8* 4.3 .4 metacognition index (mi) 94.8 32.1 85.3 23.2 .4 initiate 15.1 3.7 13.2* 3.2 .4 working memory 22.8 4.2 20.1* 5.3 .6 plan/organize 21.8 4.4 20.6 5.5 .3 organization of materials 14.6 4.9 13.2 5.0 .3 monitor 20.4 5.9 18.2* 4.5 .4 general executive composite (gec) 151.6 37.7 131.7* 33.1 .5 use of the transcendental meditation technique to reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) by reducing stress and anxiety: an exploratory study 7 similarly, the tower of london has been found to be less consistent than other measures in distinguishing specific effects associated with adhd from those related to learning disorders (sergeant, geurts, & oosterlaan, 2002). table 3 performance measures * p ≤ .05 discussion even though the majority of subjects in the study were taking medication for adhd and comorbidities, they were still experiencing cognitive and psychosocial symptoms extensive enough to present problems in school and at home. an effective non-pharmacolcogical option that can improve these symptoms would provide a valuable treatment option, whether alone or as an adjunct to medical and behavioral interventions. because the transcendental meditation technique does not require focus or concentration, it seems well suited for children struggling with adhd. this study indicates that children with adhd can successfully learn the transcendental meditation technique and practice it on a regular basis. we hypothesized that the transcendental meditation technique would have a positive effect on stress, anxiety, and adhd symptoms. results support to this hypothesis, showing significant pretest-post test improvements. the student ratings of positive effects were corroborated by the teacher ratings with high levels of confidence. our secondary hypothesis was that the transcendental meditation technique would improve executive function. statistically significant improvements were noted on both the teacher rated brief and on the performance tests. stress and anxiety can overwhelm and lessen the effectiveness of the individual. anxiousness contributes to poor impulse control, inability to sustain attention, impaired working memory, and lack of cognitive flexibility. this raises the question as to whether, in some cases, it is the symptoms of stress and anxiety that are being diagnosed as adhd. whether these problems are a result of adhd or are the cause of adhd-like symptoms, this study suggests that reducing stress and anxiety by the transcendental meditation technique can potentially improve adhd symptoms and executive functions. these results are consistent with previous research on the transcendental meditation technique showing reduced anxiety, increased emotional regulation, and improved social behavior in non-adhd students. improved executive function noted in our study is also consistent with research on the tm technique showing increased frontal brain coherence, which is associated with more effective executive functioning, improved attention, greater emotional stability, and decreased anxiety. compared to other meditation techniques, the transcendental meditation technique may be particularly suited to children with adhd. it is easy to learn and is learned in less than an hour. the technique does not involve controlling the mind; and it requires no other time investment than the 10-15 minute sessions twice a day. yet changes in the brain are seen within a short time (travis & arenander, 2006). different meditation techniques have different effects. a study of the effects of mindfulness meditation in adults and adolescents with adhd (zylowska, et al. 2007), showed improvements in attention and inhibition among the adolescents. however, that study did not show improvements in anxiety or depression. in contrast, these improvements were seen in our study of the transcendental meditation technique. in addition, the tm practice was associated with improved executive function. the current findings suggest that tm may be a beneficial intervention for students with adhd, and that it can be practiced comfortably within the typical school day. studies on student learning have emphasized the importance of “downtime” for integrating new learning. therefore, two periods a day of deep mental rest would be expected to improve learning and retention in all students. the findings of this study also have promising implications for what is commonly referred to as the “epidemic of student stress,” which manifests as affective disorders, problems with behavioral control, substance abuse, and self-injury. since students with adhd experience higher levels of stress than typical students, a technique that can help normalize their stress response and provide increased self-control would be extremely valuable. moreover, studies on aggression have consistently found that states of deep relaxation are incompatible with anger and aggression. therefore regular periods of “de-stressing” can potentially improve the ability of adhd students to inhibit the tendency to act impulsively, and enhance their ability to think before they act. measure pre-test post test effect size mean sd mean sd cas expressive attention 36.10 10.63 44.70* 13.59 .8 cas accuracy 37.70 2.21 39.40* 1.27 .8 d-kefs category fluency 25.10 7.83 28.70 7.61 .5 d-kefs category switching 8.30 3.19 9.60 2.63 .4 current issues in education vol. 10 no. 2 the transcendental meditation technique can be done anywhere one can sit and close the eyes. therefore it is portable, and a personal means of selfregulation for adhd children. to maximize the benefits, the recommended routine is one meditation session in the morning and one in the late afternoon, every day. incorporating the tm program in a school setting, as was used for this study, provides an excellent means of maintaining regularity, benefiting not only the students but also the school. teachers’ anecdotal comments revealed that teachers were able to teach more and students were able to learn more because they were less stressed and anxious. with recent research showing reduced ability to cope with stress and slower brain development in adhd children, a technique that can positively affect both of these factors can be a valuable resource for treatment of adhd. the technique does not conflict with other cognitive or behavioral approaches, or with medication. with less stress and anxiety, the child may be more responsive to other interventions, potentially increasing their effectiveness. as in most studies of adhd, our subjects had comorbidities and learning disorders. adhd rarely appears in isolation. seventy-five to 85% of adhd diagnoses include one or more comorbidities, and 20-30% exhibit learning disorders. therefore, an argument can be made that the sample reflects a common adhd population. this was an exploratory study, with a small number of subjects and no control group. also, there was no control for differences in medication. therefore we cannot propose a cause and effect relationship. however, we administered objective performance tests of attention and executive function to support self-report inventories that are commonly used to diagnosis adhd. the data showed withinstudy corroboration of results. these results suggest that further research is warranted to assess the impact of transcendental meditation practice as a potential treatment option for adhd, either alone or as adjunct treatment. it would be most important to replicate these results with a control group. further study of improvements in brain coherence and brain development could provide insight into the underlying mechanisms of observed changes. conclusions medication for adhd can improve the symptomatology of the disorder for some children, or be marginally or not effective for others; and it can cause life threatening complications. even for those children who have improvement in symptoms, the improvement is often insufficient. additionally, it can be hard to obtain consistent drug action throughout the day and into the evening for homework. importantly, medication does not treat the underlying pathophysiology. the transcendental meditation technique is an easily learned and practiced technique. this research suggests that the technique has potential to improve attention, behavior regulation, and executive function by naturally reducing stress and anxiety and improving brain functioning. this research was the first systematic study of the effects of the transcendental meditation technique on the symptomatology of adhd. the results of this exploratory study indicate that transcendental meditation practice 1) can be learned and successfully practiced by children with adhd, 2) has the potential to reduce stress, anxiety, and stress related adhd symptoms within three months, and 3) may contribute to improved behavior regulation and executive function. this research provides encouraging indication that the transcendental meditation technique may have potential as an effective nonpharmacological intervention for managing the stress and anxiety associated with adhd and impaired executive function, and may have a positive impact on behavioral symptoms associated with the disorder. references barkley, r.a. 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(2007). mindfulness meditation training in adults and adolescents with adhd: a feasibility study. journal of attention disorders [epub ahead of print] retrieved december 21, 2007 from http://jad.sagepub.com/cgi/rapidpdf/108705 4707308502v1 http://jad.sagepub.com/cgi/rapidpdf/108705%094707308502v1 http://jad.sagepub.com/cgi/rapidpdf/108705%094707308502v1 current issues in education vol. 10 no. 2 2008 article citation grosswald, s. j., stixrud, w. r., travis, f., & bateh, m. a. (2008, december). use of the transcendental meditation technique to reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) by reducing stress and anxiety: an exploratory study. current issues in education [on-line], 10(2). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume10/number2/ author notes sarina j. grosswald, ed.d. sj grosswald & associates 714 19th st. s., arlington, va 22202 sarina@grosswald.com acknowledgments the authors would like to thank robert a. cohn, jd, the chelsea school, and the abramson family foundation for providing major funding for this project. we would also like to thank phyllis greer and kelly munley for assistance in data collection, alarik arenander, ph.d. and elizabeth rice arnold for consultation during the planning stages, and the institute for community enrichment and for its support. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation grosswald, s. j., stixrud, w. r., travis, f., & bateh, m. a. (2008). use of the transcendental meditation technique to reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) by reducing stress and anxiety: an exploratory study. current issues in education, 10(2). retrieved from: http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1569 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume10/number2/ mailto:sarina@grosswald.com http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1569 students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 1 volume 22, issue 3 december 8, 2021 issn 1099-839x students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings sarah k. guffey, christopher w. parrish, david s. williams university of south alabama abstract: the benefits of team learning include increased achievement, increased motivation, and greater retention of concepts learned. while team learning has been implemented since the early 20th century, instructors in higher education settings may still experience challenges managing implementation, such as unmotivated students and a lack of accountability among group members. one team learning pedagogy is team-based learning (tbl), a structured course design that combines individual preparation with collaborative problem-solving. given the benefits of tbl in face-to-face settings, including student learning and improved attitudes, educators have also adapted tbl to online settings. this embedded mixed-method study examined students’ perceptions of tbl in face-to-face and online teacher education courses. we found that students in tbl courses, regardless of delivery method, reported positive perceptions of tbl, and commonly identified the course structure and teams as the most effective aspects of the course. keywords: team learning, team-based learning, teacher education, online instruction citation: guffey, s. k., parrish, c. w., & williams, d. s. (2021). students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings. current issues in education, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1960 accepted: october 13, 2021 introduction faculty and educational developers have been faced with the need to implement innovative teaching strategies to foster active, collaborative learning. some of these innovative strategies incorporate students working together to complete an assignment or task, which has been referred to as cooperative learning (bruffee, 1995; johnson & johnson, 1978, 2009); collaborative learning (dillenbourg, 1999; gokhale, 1995; meijer et al., 2020; panitz, 1999; vygotsky, 1980); problem-based learning (hmelo-silver, 2004); and team-based learning (michaelsen, 1983; michaelsen & black, 1994)—which are collectively hereafter referred to as team learning. the idea of students working together and learning from each other was first introduced by dewey (1940), who believed that learning should be an interactive and dynamic https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1960 guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 2 process that allows students to interact with their classmates (gillies & ashman, 2003). as a result, students learn “socially appropriate behaviors and they understand what is involved in cooperating and working together” (dewey, 1940, 1966, as cited in gillies & ashman, 2003, p. 1). generally, there are benefits when students work together in learning environments, including increased achievement and motivation, greater retention of concepts learned, and social development (johnson et al., 2000). a foundational theory in team learning is vygotsky’s (1980) social constructivism, which suggests that students construct new knowledge from prior experiences and while working with peers and teachers. he stressed the importance of social interaction and community of students in the process of learning and cognitive development. while team learning has been around since the early twentieth century, instructors in higher education settings may still experience challenges managing implementation, such as unmotivated students (i.e., social loafing), difficulty with communication among the group, and a lack of accountability among group members (hall & buzwell, 2013; kerr, 1983; koh & hill, 2009; meyer et al., 2016; mulvey & klein, 1998). in addition to implementing team learning in face-to-face settings, enrollment in online courses has consistently increased, with even faster growth in recent years (seaman et al., 2018). furthermore, universities—nationally and internationally—have transitioned instruction to online settings for the safety of students and faculty as it relates to covid-19. given these shifts to online instruction, ways in which to implement successful team learning in online courses is of need. one specific team learning pedagogy is team-based learning (tbl), which is a structured, collaborative learning framework that combines individual preparation and accountability with team problem solving, and the application of course content. tbl has primarily been implemented in face-to-face settings (e.g., clark et al., 2008; lewis et al., 2019), with fewer reports detailing the implementation or effectiveness of tbl in online settings (e.g., franklin et al., 2016; parrish, guffey, & williams, 2021; parrish, guffey, williams, estis, & lewis, 2021; parrish, williams, & estis, 2021). although tbl was first developed and implemented by michaelsen in a college of business (sibley & ostafichuk, 2014), tbl is commonly implemented and studied in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and some stem disciplines (haidet et al., 2014). in these settings, tbl has been shown to improve students’ content knowledge, attitudes, and team interdependence (fatmi et al., 2013; haidet et al., 2014; liu & beaujean, 2017). the examination of tbl in teacher education is sparse (nicoll-senft, 2009; parrish, guffey, williams, estis, & lewis, 2021; parrish, williams, & estis, 2021). as such, the purpose of this study is to examine students’ perceptions of tbl in face-to-face and online teacher education courses. we more specifically examine two research questions: 1) what are the effects of course delivery in face-to-face and online tbl teacher education courses on students’ perceptions of tbl? 2) what do students identify as most effective and least effective in face-to-face and online tbl teacher education courses? conceptual framework in the sections that follow, we discuss our conceptual framework for the study, beginning with a discussion of team learning pedagogies and the benefits and challenges of team learning, in both face-to-face and online settings. we conclude with an overview and evidence of tbl as an effective team learning framework. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 3 team learning pedagogies team learning pedagogies in higher education often range from students informally working in a team to students having defined roles within the team to solve open-ended, inquirybased problems (blumenfeld et al., 1996; tadesse & gillies, 2015). while there is no prescriptive outline for the various team learning pedagogies, an overview of cooperative learning, collaborative learning, and problem-based learning are discussed in this section. an additional team learning pedagogy, tbl, is discussed in a separate section as it is the focus of this study. the main goal of cooperative and collaborative learning is to help students successfully work together to learn new information (bruffee, 1995). although the two terms are often used interchangeably by instructors, a main difference is that cooperative learning was developed for teaching students in primary schools or novice learners and collaborative learning was developed for teaching adolescents and adults or learners with more content knowledge (bruffee, 1995; panitz, 1999). additionally, while there has been extensive research on both cooperative and collaborative learning, it’s important to note that both have theoretical underpinnings of social constructivism. in social constructivism, learning is dependent upon students engaging in content specific discussions with one another (kalina & powell, 2009; krahenbuhl, 2016; prawat, 1992; vygotsky, 1980). given the context of the study is higher education, we focus our discussion on collaborative learning. collaborative learning is defined as “a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together” (dillenbourg, 1999, p. 1). students are grouped in teams to solve problems or achieve an academic goal (gokhale, 1995). as students communicate with each other during the problem-solving process, they are “exposed to and draw on the expertise” of their team members (blumenfeld et al., 1996). additionally, it’s important for learners to build consensus through the cooperation of group members (panitz, 1999). problem-based learning (pbl) is an instructional method where students work together in collaborative groups to solve problems that do not have one correct answer, through self-directed learning (sdl; hmelo-silver, 2004). the teacher acts as a facilitator, providing scaffolds for students rather than providing knowledge through direct instruction (hmelo-silver, 2004). although students are working in teams in this experiential learning process, team members do not have identified roles. the main goals of pbl are to help “students develop: a) problemsolving skills; b) sdl skills; and c) flexible knowledge” (hmelo-silver, 2004, p. 235). benefits of team learning since dewey’s (1940) research on teamwork, many scholars have studied the benefits and challenges of students working with each other to learn. studies have found that group work allows learners to develop higher orderand critical thinkingskills while building content knowledge (conrad & donaldson, 2004; palloff & pratt, 2005). davies (2009) also found that teamwork “promotes deep as opposed to surface learning and active as opposed to passive learning.” additionally, he found there were several practical advantages for instructors such as: a) reduced time in grading; b) ways to manage large numbers of students; c) ways to help students develop 21st century skills for the workforce (teamwork, leadership, project management, communication skills); d) foster social membership in large enrollment environments which can be alienating and confusing for students; and e) provide an informal forum in which new ideas can be discussed and assimilated (davies, 2009). while there are guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 4 many benefits to team learning, studies reporting the specific examination of team learning in teacher education are sparse. challenges of team learning alternatively, if not implemented effectively, group work can be challenging for students and instructors (bravo, 2019; davies, 2009), particularly regarding the motivation of participants (kerr, 1983; morgan, 2002). some students may be reluctant to participate in their group and apathetic to the goals or objectives of the group and class assignments (kerr, 1983; morgan, 2002). examples of motivational issues have been referred to as “social loafing” and “free riding,” which means the group member does not contribute or participate in group assignments (hall & buzwell, 2013; jones, 1984; latane et al., 1979; meyer et al., 2016; ruel et al., 2003; strong & anderson, 1990; watkins, 2004). as a result of “social loafing” and “free riding,” capable individuals may take on the role of the “sucker effect,” which is identified as capable students minimizing their effort in group assignment or projects (kerr, 1983; meyer et al., 2016; mulvey & klein, 1998). these students would rather fail as a group than to be a sucker and complete the work individually (kerr, 1983; meyer et al., 2016). alternatively, there are motivated team members who successfully encourage their less motivated peers to engage in and contribute to team assignments by planning and coordinating activities (curseu & pluut, 2013). however, there are instances where the motivated team members are also highly competent in academic settings and when grouped with team members that are viewed as less competent, the highly competent student doesn’t accept or rely on information from that person or persons (andrews & rapp, 2014). managing the social aspects of small group learning is also challenging. students with dominant personalities may steamroll discussions, pressure group members to agree with their perspective, or force decisions on the group (blumenfeld et al., 1996; curseu et al., 2019). other students may purposefully dismiss group members or disregard their contributions, which may cause the rejected students to withdraw or feel embarrassed (blumenfeld et al., 1996). as one aspect of our study examined team learning in online courses, it’s important to expand on the general challenges with team learning and specifically highlight challenges in online courses. studies have found that when working in teams in online courses, students have difficulty communicating with their team members and understanding group assignments and course objectives (abdous, 2019; koh & hill, 2009; phirangee, 2016). students also experience feelings of isolation or a lack of community and feel there is a lack of accountability among team members (phirangee & malec, 2017; roberts & mcinnerney, 2007). in online courses that utilize team learning, students work with many technologies such as learning management systems and video conferencing platforms for synchronous meetings. students have reported experiencing feelings of frustration when managing the various technologies (gillett-swan, 2017). each of the team-learning pedagogies described above provide flexibility in when and how often team activities are completed within the course. as such, the frequency in which team learning is implemented in higher education courses—as well as the associated benefits of team learning—likely varies from course-to-course. in contrast, tbl is a structured course design that embeds team learning in a consistent and regular manner. team-based learning the tbl course design combines individual preparation with collaborative problemsolving. at the start of the course, students are assigned to permanent, diverse teams of three to guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 5 seven students. each module then consists of the same sequence of instruction: (a) individual preparation, (b) readiness assurance process (rap), and (c) team application of course content (michaelson & sweet, 2008, 2011). each module begins with individual preparation, where students engage with various module specific learning materials, such as readings or videos, to gain the foundational or prerequisite knowledge needed to successfully complete problem-solving activities later in the module (michaelsen et al., 2004). instructors often provide preparation learning objectives that detail what students should know and understand following engagement with the learning materials, and in turn, helps guide students reading or viewing. the rap is designed to gauge students’ levels of preparation for the module and includes four parts: the individual readiness assurance test (irat), the team readiness assurance test (trat), appeals, and the clarifying lecture. students begin by individually taking the irat, a short, multiple-choice, formative assessment on the content of the preparation materials. following, they take the same assessment, the trat, but as a team, thus requiring students to engage in discussion and to reach consensus for each answer choice. the trat also provides teams with immediate feedback for each question, allowing teams to continue discussions until the correct answer is reached. discussions during the trat have been identified as key learning opportunities as peer instruction often includes language more accessible to students than that of their instructors. if teams get a problem incorrect on the trat and believe there was ambiguity in the reading or question, a team may submit an appeal. an appeal includes declaring the source of ambiguity in the reading or question, as well as a justification and evidence from the preparation materials. the instructor reserves the right to grant or deny team appeals. the rap concludes with a clarifying lecture by the instructor and targets the content of those questions missed on the readiness assurance test (rat). the majority of class time is spent with students engaged in application activities. within the tbl framework, application activities must follow a 4s format. the 4s format includes: application activities that are a [s]ignificant problem, teams are required to make a [s]pecific choice (among clear alternatives), all teams work on the [s]ame problem, and teams’ choices are [s]imultaneously reported. once teams have reported their choices, inter-team discussion ensues as teams justify their reasoning. the number of implemented application activities will vary by course and module. peer evaluation is often completed at midand end-of-semester and provides students an opportunity to evaluate each of their team members’ contributions within the course. opportunities to evaluate peers is particularly important as tbl includes multiple team activities and provides accountability amongst team members, especially as peer evaluation is calculated in students’ course grade. in completing peer evaluation, students assign their teammates numerical scores, as well as comment on each student’s strengths and areas for improvement. there are multiple methods for conducting peer evaluations, some which force students to rank or assign varying levels of points to each team member (e.g., michaelsen method). for an overview of various peer evaluation methods, see sibley and ostafichuk (2014) and szatkowski and brannan (2019). research related to tbl in considering the effectiveness of tbl across all post-secondary fields, authors of systematic reviews of literature and meta-analyses report that tbl has been shown to improve content knowledge, team communication and awareness, course participation, attitudes and selfguffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 6 efficacy, and transfer of learning to job performance (fatmi et al., 2013; haidet et al., 2014; swanson et al., 2019). while tbl has been shown to positively benefit all students, it is those students at the lower-end of performance that have been shown to consistently benefit the most (haidet et al., 2014). in a meta-analysis of 38 studies examining the course learning outcomes, liu and beaujean (2017) found that the academic outcomes of students participating in tbl courses was almost 0.5 standard deviations higher than other methods of instruction. similarly, swanson et al. (2019) conducted a meta-analysis of 17 studies reporting the effects of tbl on content-knowledge outcomes. the researchers reported a mean effect size of 0.55 (p<0.001), indicating a positive, moderate effect of tbl on post-secondary students’ content-knowledge. specific to teacher education, nicoll-senft (2009) conducted a study examining the effectiveness of tbl in the context of a graduate-level, special education course. it was found that within the course, students often scored higher on their trat (98.21%) than their irat (90.95%). in comparing student achievement on quizzes between students participating in tbl and students which completed the course in a previous semester in which tbl was not used, students in the tbl course scored significantly higher on individual and team quizzes than those students who completed the non-tbl course. nicoll-senft (2009) concluded that tbl, “increased student learning, enhanced student-to-student discourse, and an overall improvement in students’ self-directed learning” (p. 37). brannan and colleagues (2019) also posited that tbl would provide regular opportunities for preservice teachers to engage in and develop critical thinking skills, an important characteristic for the in-the-moment decision-making required in teaching (griffith & lacina, 2017). the authors noted that the demand associated with diverse teams having to consistently make a specific choice (e.g., trat and application exercises) would provide regular opportunities for preservice teachers to engage in critical thinking as varying perspectives and justifications would be shared in the process of reaching a negotiated decision. team-based learning in online settings given the benefits of tbl in face-to-face settings on both student learning and attitudes, instructors have begun to adapt and implement tbl in online settings. past efforts to adapt tbl to online settings have remained primarily either fully asynchronous or fully synchronous (clark, et al., 2018; franklin et al., 2016; palsolé & awalt, 2008). given asynchronous courses lack realtime interactions, the tbl components often completed in a single class session are stretched over multiple days. for example, students are provided between 1-2 days to complete the irat, followed by 2-3 days for teams to complete the trat. a similar structure is provided for teams to complete the application activities, with multiple deadlines across multiple days. palsolé and awalt (2008) found that in implementing tbl asynchronously, student learning outcomes were similar to those of tbl in face-to-face courses, and that students perceived a significant satisfaction with teamwork when compared to their other courses that implemented team learning in a less structured manner. although activities are extended in time, the course maintains the flexibility students desire within an online course, and students still perform similar to those in face-to-face tbl courses. tbl has also been adapted to synchronous settings, where students experience real-time interactions, but do so remotely. in a synchronous setting, tbl is implemented using the traditional tbl methodology, but through video-conferencing platforms (clark et al., 2018; franklin et al., 2016). for example, students participate in class sessions using web-conferencing software that allows for whole-group meetings and the use of breakout rooms. breakout rooms provide opportunities for teams to collaborate on various activities, such as the trat and guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 7 application activities. students participating in a single synchronous tbl module reported positive team competencies and interdependence (franklin et al., 2016). more recently, the integrated online–team-based learning (io-tbl) model was developed to include elements of both asynchronous and synchronous engagement (parrish, guffey, & williams, 2021; parrish, guffey, williams, estis, & lewis, 2021; parrish, williams, & estis, 2021). the goal of the io-tbl model is to maintain the flexibility desired in online courses, while also providing the connectedness available in synchronous meetings. each module begins with a synchronous session that includes the irat, trat, clarifying lecture, and one or more application activities. following, teams spend the remainder of the module—the next two to three weeks—engaged in one or more application activities, as well as an opportunity to submit appeals from the trat. if two application activities are to be implemented outside of the synchronous sessions, the application activities are completed concurrently, with multiple deadlines across the weeks. for example, teams may be given four days to create a product or deliverable, another three days to view the other teams’ products, leave feedback, and to make a specific choice. following, teams’ choices are revealed, and students are provided two to three days to individually share justifications and defend their team’s selected choice. to complete these application activities, teams are provided both asynchronous and synchronous means of collaborating to ensure the flexibility of an online course remains. io-tbl was the model of online tbl examined within this study. parrish, guffey, williams, estis, and lewis (2021) used midand end-of-semester feedback to examine students' perceptions of io-tbl through the community of inquiry framework. effective aspects of the course included synchronous meetings, increased learning, teamwork, and the instructor; ineffective aspects included a heavy workload and a significant time requirement. in considering the community of inquiry framework, effective and ineffective course aspects most commonly aligned with the teaching presence, followed by social presence and cognitive presence (parrish, guffey, williams, estis, & lewis, 2021). while team learning has been implemented in higher education for decades, and with numerous benefits to the learner, a number of challenges still exist. namely, social loafing, a lack of accountability amongst group members, and within online settings, an absence of community. likewise, without a prescriptive framework for when and how often instructors should implement team learning, the associated affordances will also likely vary across courses and students. given the affordances of tbl in face-to-face and in online courses, tbl may serve as one team-learning course framework to meet many of these challenges. lastly, as studies examining the implementation of team learning pedagogies, as well as tbl, in teacher education are sparse, understanding students’ perceptions of tbl in teacher education courses is of particular need. method as the purpose of this study was to examine students’ perceptions on tbl in face-to-face and online tbl teacher education courses, an embedded mixed method design was employed. qualitative data was used to further explain and interpret the quantitative data collected through the team-based learning student assessment instrument, tbl-sai (mennenga, 2012). the collection and analysis of complementary quantitative and qualitative data allowed us to make sense of these students’ perceptions (creswell & clark, 2017). this section provides an overview of the participants, followed by a description of both the quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 8 participants two sampling procedures were used to identify participants from a mid-size regional public university for the study. first, convenience sampling was used to identify tbl courses within the college of education—face-to-face tbl and online tbl. all instructors in the college were sent a survey that stated the purpose of our study, asked if tbl was used within each course, how the course was offered (e.g., face-to-face, online), and for a roster of each course in which they would allow us to conduct the study. instructors were encouraged to send as many of their tbl courses as they deemed appropriate. students in tbl courses, both face-to-face and online, were emailed the link for the tblsai survey (mennenga, 2012) during the last two weeks of the course, with a follow-up reminder emailed a few days later. for each semester of data collection, students were incentivized to complete the survey with a drawing for one of four gift cards to the university bookstore. this sampling procedure was completed for three consecutive semesters (fall 2018, spring 2019, and summer 2019); note that online tbl was not offered fall 2018 and only those students in online tbl were surveyed in summer 2019. also note that io-tbl was the sole model used for online tbl courses. across all three semesters, we had a student response rate of 16.4%, with 28 of 171 students completing the survey; see table 1 for an overview of courses and students surveyed for each semester. the gender of the participants were 79% female and 21% male. the race of participants were 93% white, 4% african american/black, 3% from multiple races. the majority of participants were between the ages 21 and 29 (70%), followed by ages 30 to 39 (19%), ages 40 to 49 (7%), and ages 50 to 59 (4%). with regard to the degree sought, 50% of participants were seeking an undergraduate degree and 50% were seeking a graduate degree. table 1 number of students surveyed, responded, course type, and semester face-to-face tbl online tbl courses students response courses students response fa ‘18 3 45 6 sp ‘19 4 91 6 2 26 11 su ‘19 1 9 5 totals 7 136 12 3 35 16 note. online tbl was not offered fall 2018 and only those students in online tbl were surveyed in summer 2019. quantitative data data collection the team-based learning student assessment instrument, tbl-sai (mennenga, 2012) was administered online and accessed by participants through qualtrics. the 32-question tblsai measured three subscales: (a) accountability; (b) preference for lecture or team-based learning and (c) student satisfaction. the instrument included a five-point likert scale with responses of strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, and strongly agree. the total scores of the tbl-sai ranged from 33 165. mennenga (2012) defined neutral scores as follows: guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 9 accountability, 24; preference for lecture or tbl, 48; student satisfaction, 27; and total score, 99. scores that fall above neutral scores are categorized as positive experiences or attitudes. the accountability subscale had eight questions with scores ranging from 8-40 and addressed students’ preparedness for class and/or contributions to their team members (mennenga, 2012). the preference for lecture or tbl subscale had 16 questions with scores ranging from 16-80 and addressed students’ preference for tbl or lecture, with an above neutral score indicating a student’s preference for tbl (mennenga, 2012). the student satisfaction subscale had eight questions with scores ranging from 8 40 and “included positive feelings toward either tbl activities or traditional lecture” (mennenga, 2012, p. 169); an above neutral score indicated positive feelings towards tbl. data analysis a cronbach’s analysis to measure the reliability of the instruments and a correlation analysis between the three subscales was conducted (field, 2013; huck, 2012). descriptive statistics were calculated for the two student groups: face-to-face tbl and online tbl (johnson & christensen, 2019). levene’s test was used to test the assumption of homogeneity of variances (field, 2013; huck, 2012). to compare the mean scores of the two student groups, an independent samples t-test, was conducted (field, 2013; huck, 2012). a one-way t-test was conducted to determine if the mean scores of each group were significantly different from the neutral score for the tbl-sai (mennenga, 2012), as well as the neutral score of the subscales (field, 2013; huck, 2012; johnson & christensen, 2019). qualitative data data collection students were asked three open-ended questions at the conclusion of the survey: (1) what did you feel were the most effective aspects of this course; (2) what did you feel were the least effective aspects of this course; and (3) do you have any other comments or thoughts about this course? data was organized into data sets, effective course aspects and least effective course aspects. for the third open-ended survey question—other comments—responses were assigned by the first two authors to either the effective course aspects data set, or the least effective course aspects data set, as determined by the nature of the comment. data analysis all responses within each data set—effective course aspects and ineffective course aspects—were independently open-coded by each of the first two authors (corbin & strauss, 2008). following, the first two authors met to discuss and compare their open-codes and inductively developed themes for each data set, effective course aspects (see table 2) and ineffective course aspects (see table 3). the authors then recoded each data set, assigning one or more corresponding themes to each unit of analysis; each student response was considered a unit of analysis. lastly, the authors met to compare how themes were assigned and were able to reach a consensus in all instances of disagreement. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 10 table 2 themes for effective course aspects theme description assessments responses relate to assessments, assessment strategies, or means of assessment (e.g., online). assignments responses relate to assignments and assignment details, such as resubmissions, student-led presentations, lecture-assignment alignment, and extra credit. course content responses relate to the content of the course, such as reading materials and access to in-class presentations. course structure responses relate to the organization, inclusion and sequencing of course elements, such as team-based learning, lecture followed by group activities, synchronous meetings, and course schedule. teams responses relate to teams and team organization within the course, such as permanent teams, group assignments, diverse teams, and peer relationships. instructor responses relate to the characteristics of the instructor (e.g., flexible, understanding, personable, etc.,) and timeliness of instructor feedback. lecture/instruction responses relate to techniques included withinor elements of lecture and instruction, such as teacher questioning, instructor explanations, application of content. student perceptions responses include students’ perception of the course (e.g., enjoyable, applicable learning, etc.,). technology responses relate to the technology used to facilitate learning within the course (e.g., zoom, peardeck, intedashboard, etc.,). guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 11 table 3 themes for ineffective course aspects theme description assessments responses relate to assessments within the course, such as readiness assurance tests (rats), accessibility of assessments, final exams, or quizzes. assignments responses relate to specific assignments, assignment feedback, assignment alignment, assignment frequency, or out-of-class assignments. course organization and expectations responses relate to unclear deadlines, confusion of expectations, content alignment, class length, course difficulty, workload as related to course credit hours. teams responses relate to team assignments, peer review, group make-up (differing content areas within the same team), unmotivated group members, or out-of-class group meetings. instructor responses relate to the instructor’s lack of feedback, lack of instruction, inability to provide explanations, or management of in-class discussions. lecture/instruction responses relate to the powerpoints, presentations, and synchronous lectures. nothing responses indicate “nothing” (theme was not applied for a no answer). findings our results are reported in two sections. we first report the results of the tbl-sai with respect to method of delivery (face-to-face or online). second, we report what students identified as effective and least effective course aspects, also by method of course delivery. quantitative: students’ perceptions of team-based learning a cronbach’s analysis was conducted to determine reliability on the tbl-sai and the three subscales (accountability, preference for lecture or tbl, and student satisfaction). it was found that the scale’s alpha levels were .745, .824, .914, and .900, respectively, which indicates that the scale and three subscales had an adequate level of inter-item reliability. a correlation analysis was conducted between the tbl-sai subscales. it was found that the preference subscale was positively correlated with the satisfaction subscale, r (22) = .760, p < .01. additionally, it was found that each subscale (accountability, preference for lecture or tbl, and student satisfaction) was positively correlated with the tbl-sai in its entirety, r (22) = .445, p < .05; r (22) = .946, p < .005; r (22) = .829, p < .005. the descriptive statistics associated with the tbl-sai and subscales for the face-to-face and online tbl courses (accountability, preference for lecture or tbl, and student satisfaction) are reported in table 4. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 12 table 4 means, standard deviations, and standard error means on the tbl-sai and subscales measure group mean sd se tbl-sai face-to-face tbl (n = 11) 133.73 13.02 3.92 online tbl (n = 11) 125.45 13.32 4.02 accountability face-to-face tbl (n = 12) 35.17 4.06 1.17 online tbl (n = 16) 34.56 3.945 .987 preference for lecture or tbl face-to-face tbl (n = 12) 58.50 7.47 2.16 online tbl (n = 16) 55.94 7.07 1.78 student satisfaction face-to-face tbl (n = 11) 39.45 5.39 1.63 online tbl (n = 11) 34.00 5.24 1.58 the independent samples t-test results associated with the tbl-sai and individual subscales (accountability, preference for lecture or tbl, and student satisfaction) are reported in table 5. results showed that the effect of course delivery on the tbl-sai was not significant, f (2, 20) = -1.473, p = .156. the assumption of homogeneity of variances was tested and met using levene’s test, f (2, 20) = .001, p = .970. there was not a significant difference in the accountability subscale mean scores for face-to-face and online tbl courses, t (26) = -.396, p = .696. the assumption of homogeneity of variance was tested and was not violated using levene’s test, f (2, 26) = .032, p > .05. there was also not a significant difference in the preference for lecture or tbl subscale scores for face-to-face and online tbl courses, t (26) = .927, p = .362. the assumption of homogeneity of variance was tested and was not violated using levene’s test, f (2, 26) = .151, p > .05. there was a significant difference in the student satisfaction subscale scores for face-to-face and online tbl courses, t (20) = -2.407, p = .026. the assumption of homogeneity of variance was tested and was not violated using levene’s test, f (2, 20) = .066, p > .05. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 13 table 5 independent samples t-test comparing tbl-sai mean scores of face-to-face and online tbl 95% ci of difference measure t df p md sed lower upper tbl-sai -1.473 20 .156 -8.273 5.616 -19.98 3.441 accountability -.396 26 .696 -.6042 1.527 -3.742 2.534 preference for lecture or tbl -.927 26 .362 -2.563 2.764 -8.244 3.119 student satisfaction -2.407 20 .026* -5.454 2.266 -10.18 -.7282 *p < .05 comparison of the groups’ mean scores to the neutral scores are reported in table 6. the one-way t-test results show that the face-to-face and online tbl means scores on the tbl-sai and its subscales were significantly higher than the neutral scores. table 6 one-way t-test comparing tbl-sai mean scores and neutral scores measure group mean neutral score p tbl sai face-to-face tbl (n = 11) 133.73 99 .003 online tbl (n = 11) 125.45 99 .003 accountability face-to-face tbl (n = 12) 35.17 24 .002 online tbl (n = 16) 34.56 24 .000 preference face-to-face tbl (n = 12) 58.50 48 .002 online tbl (n = 16) 55.94 48 .002 satisfaction face-to-face tbl (n = 11) 39.45 27 .003 online tbl (n = 11) 34.00 27 .007 guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 14 qualitative: students’ perceptions of team-based learning to report students’ perceptions of instruction across and within each course delivery method, themes specific to effective and least effective aspects are shared. for each theme, the percentage of participants within each course delivery method that discussed that theme is also reported. effective course aspects the themes, theme frequencies within each method of course delivery, and representative quotes specific to effective aspects are reported in table 7 and include: assessments, assignments, course content, course structure, teams, instructor, lecture/instruction, student perceptions, and technology. when considering how students’ discussion of effective aspects were similar across the delivery methods, almost half of the students in each type of tbl course discussed course structure and teams. discussions of course structure—face-to-face (46%) and online (48%)—related to how elements of the course were organized or sequenced, and in many cases, students explicitly mentioned the tbl framework; “i really enjoyed tbl to learn materials!” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl). in other cases, students described specific elements of the tbl framework, such as: “meeting face-to-face [synchronously], challenging team tasks aligned with course objectives, working with the same group all semester, diverse team member specialties'' (spring 2019, online tbl). additional aspects of the course structure included opportunities to engage with the course content during the time typically reserved for lecture; “i liked the scenario questions for the lecture and having my team to discuss what we should do next” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl). a last aspect of course structure was specific to onlinetbl as students valued that the synchronous meetings allowed them regular opportunities to engage with their instructor and peers. for example, one student stated the following: “it was my first tbl class and i was surprised how much i learned from it! definitely liked the zoom meeting layout” (spring 2019, online tbl). in this particular course, zoomtm was the web conferencing platform used to host synchronous meetings. the theme teams–face-to-face (38%) and online (48%)–related to the benefits of working with other students. across students’ responses, it became clear that the permanence of teams in a tbl course provided students the opportunity to establish trust and comfort with the students on their team: “working with the same group all semester made me comfortable to ask questions to peers” (fall 2018, face-to-face tbl). further, students reported multiple benefits of getting to work with a team, such as seeing others’ opinions and ideas, opportunities to leverage the strengths of teammates, and increased learning. for example, consider each of these students’ comments: “building relationships with colleagues and leveraging each other’s strengths to be successful” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl) and “if i couldn’t remember something from the material or discussion, one of my teammates usually did and that made working on assignments easier. it also helped me remember the material later because i could recall who knew it” (spring 2019, online tbl). a last element of teams was the effect of accountability in promoting course engagement as students perceived that their team was counting on them; “team-based learning provided me ways to see others’ opinions. it also encouraged me to do more because i had a team counting on me” (fall 2018, face-to-face tbl). in considering where students in face-to-face and online tbl courses differed in what they perceived as effective aspects, students in online tbl (33%) discussed assignments more often than those in face-to-face tbl (7%). students in online tbl courses stated that they enjoyed writing lesson plans, as well as completing the classroom management plan, as a team. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 15 there were also effective aspects discussed in both face-to-face and online tbl course settings–assessments, course content, instructor, lecture/instruction, student perceptions, and technology–but by only one or two students. see table 7 for a representative quote within each of these aspects. table 7 themes identified as effective aspects for each course delivery method theme course modality n representative quote assessments face-toface tbl 15% (2) “i think the trats following the irats helped me personally to understand and get explanations for any mistakes made or misconceptions had” (spring 2019, online tbl). online tbl 14% (3) assignments face-toface tbl 7% (1) “i liked doing the lesson plans and management as groups before we did them on our own. working in a team helped me remember what to do on my own” (spring 2019, online tbl). online tbl 33% (7) course content face-toface tbl 7% (1) “…i also found information read before class and the irats were great resources for the future” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl). online tbl 0% (0) course structure face-toface tbl 46% (6) “the team-based learning made my learning and retention of information better! i loved getting to work with peers to find out solutions and effective ways to teach social studies” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl). online tbl 48% (10) teams face-toface tbl 38% (5) “i liked doing the lesson plans and management [plan] as groups before we did them on our own. working in a team helped me remember what to do on my own” (spring 2019, online tbl). online tbl 48% (10) instructor face-toface tbl 23% (3) “i loved ____ and i look forward to taking more classes with him as an instructor. it is clear that the team-based learning that has been put together for this class was well thought out” (spring, 2019, online tbl). online tbl 5% (1) lecture/instruction face-toface tbl 0% (0) “immediate application of material covered” (spring 2019, online tbl). online tbl 10% (2) student perceptions face-toface tbl 23% (3) “i overall really enjoyed the class. it was hard and a lot of work” (fall 2018, face-to-face tbl). online tbl 10% (2) technology face-toface tbl 15% (2) “one of the most important aspects of this course was the technology implemented to conduct class. it allowed an online class to be more interactive and allowed me to be better acquainted with my professor and classmates” (summer 2019, online tbl). online tbl 5% (1) guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 16 ineffective course aspects the themes, theme frequencies within each method of course delivery, and representative quotes specific to ineffective aspects are reported in table 8 and include: assessments, assignments/activities, course organization and expectations, teams, instructor, lecture/instruction, and nothing. when considering how students’ discussion of least effective aspects were similar across delivery methods, students commonly identified teams, assessments, and the instructor. table 8 themes identified as least effective aspects for each course delivery method theme course modality n representative quote assessments face-toface tbl 20% (2) “i feel that i did not learn much during the irat and trat. even though i went over the learning objectives and read the chapters, i feel the test questions were off. maybe i just didn’t comprehend the material well enough” (summer 2019, online tbl). online tbl 35% (7) assignments face-toface tbl 20% (2) “all of the individual and team lesson plans that were due every single week” (fall 2018, face-to-face tbl). online tbl 5% (1) course organization and expectations face-toface tbl 0% (0) “amount of time in team meetings needs to be addressed in course description” (spring 2019, online tbl). online tbl 25% (5) teams face-toface tbl 30% (3) “as often happens with group work, it is difficult when team members are not pulling their weight. peer evaluation at some points during the semester could help address this problem, although honest feedback on these could damage team relationships” (fall 2018, face-to-face tbl). online tbl 45% (9) instructor face-toface tbl 20% (2) “some individuals in the class dominated discussion and class time, which prevented us from accomplishing as much as we could have otherwise. more regulation from the profession would help move things along and balance out those concerns” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl). online tbl 20% (4) lecture/instruction face-toface tbl 0% (0) “…the lack of direct instruction seemed to cause more problems for me throughout the semester” (summer 2019, online tbl). online tbl 10% (2) nothing face-toface tbl 20% (2) “there is nothing i think of as least effective. i learned different things from each aspects of the course that i believe will help me later” (spring 2019, online tbl). online tbl 5% (1) similar to the effective aspects, students in face-to-face (30%) and online (45%) tbl courses identified teams as a least effective aspect of the course, namely about team members not pulling their weight and peer evaluation. in some cases, team members did not feel that other guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 17 team members were contributing equally to team activities or attending out-of-class team meetings: “i do not like team-based learning when all the team members do not participate. there were several times when i felt like some team members were not productive in the activities or beneficial in the learning” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl). specific to online tbl, some students indicated that it was not fair when a team member did not show up to an out-ofclass meeting. in other cases, teams appeared to function well and students expressed a dislike for having to differentiate numeric scores among their team members during peer evaluation, especially as this was calculated in students' course grade. although peer evaluation provides a means of providing team members with feedback on their performance, one particular student feared that honest peer feedback would damage team relationships. regardless of method of delivery, students in tbl courses–face-to-face (20%) and online (20%)–identified specific aspects of the instructor as least effective. these critiques primarily related to wanting feedback directly from the instructor, and not necessarily from the other teams in the course. for example, one student responded with the following: “i do not feel that each team should choose the best representation of other team’s work...it would be better if the instructor indicated which product they felt met the criteria and why, so that we could all learn from their expertise” (spring 2019, online tbl). a last critique of the instructor centered on managing whole-class discussion as it relates to more dominant, vocal students. some students in both face-to-face (20%) and online (35%) tbl courses identified the assessments, specifically the readiness assurance tests, as a least effective aspect of the course. students stated that they did not feel that they helped them learn, or that regardless of how they prepared, they struggled to perform well. other comments were critiques specific of the final exam. there were two least effective aspects that appeared in online tbl, but not face-to-face tbl–course organization and expectations (25%) and lecture/instruction (10%). specific to course organization and expectations, students in online tbl desired that the required meeting day and time be clearer at the time of registration, while one student did not feel the required meeting time was even necessary. another student comment did not appreciate the course only being offered online and the university fee associated with online courses. specific to lecture/instruction within online tbl, some students expressed a desire for more explicit instruction, while another student felt that what little lecture was provided within the course was ineffective. specific to wanting explicit instruction and explanations, one student responded with the following: “it would have been much more effective for the professor to directly explain how to lesson plan and create classroom management plans rather than have us look at past examples and review them as a team” (summer 2019, online tbl). the last two aspects identified least effective included assignments and nothing. both comments specific to assignments related to either the frequency or type of lesson plan required within the course. and lastly, nothing represented those comments where students explicitly expressed no least effective aspects of the course. discussion in this study, we examined students’ perceptions of tbl in face-to-face and online teacher education courses. specifically, we explored how method of delivery (face-to-face and online) affected students’ perceptions of tbl, as well as inductively identified what students reported as effective and least effective course aspects. students in teacher education courses completed the tbl-sai, as well as responded to open-ended questions around effective and guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 18 ineffective aspects of the course. we found that students in tbl courses, regardless of delivery method, reported a strong preference for tbl, which provides a structured and consistent course framework for team learning. students in tbl courses also commonly identified course structure (i.e., elements of tbl) and teams as effective aspects of the course. students’ perceptions of tbl student mean scores in face-to-face and online tbl courses were statistically significantly higher than the neutral score on the tbl-sai. additionally, there was not a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of students in face-to-face and online tbl courses. this lack of statistical significance in-between groups indicates that students' tbl courses, regardless of how the course was offered, perceived tbl positively (mennenga, 2012). as the most promising affordances of tbl have been reported in face-to-face settings (fatmi et al., 2013; haidet et al., 2014; liu & beaujean, 2017; swanson et al., 2019), these results provide some indication that these same affordances would be available in online settings. student accountability in considering the accountability subscale, students in both methods of course delivery scored significantly higher than the neutral score. there was also not a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of students in face-to-face and online tbl courses, indicating that students, regardless of how the course was offered, felt accountable towards their teammates and the course requirements, i.e., preparing for the irat, etc. (mennenga, 2012). this is in contrast to previous studies that have shown some students are reluctant to participate in their group and are apathetic to the goals or objectives of the group and class assignments (kerr & brunn, 1983; morgan, 2002), which have been referred to as motivational issues of “social loafing” and “free riding” (hall & buzwell, 2013; jones, 1984; latane et al., 1979; ruel et al., 2003; strong & anderson, 1990; watkins, 2004). our qualitative findings provide deeper explanation of the way accountability functioned across face-to-face and online course modalities and suggest that accountability was inherently recognized by students as they felt like their team was counting on them, regardless of method of course delivery. this was further evidenced as students viewed teams as an opportunity to build relationships with a small number of other students. as tbl provided consistent opportunities for students to interact with the same teammates across the semester, trust and camaraderie were developed in such a way that students did not want to let their teammates down. these high-functioning teams were also reported to improve learning as students could leverage the strengths and views of their teammates. in other cases, and in alignment with challenges reported in the literature, students did not always feel like one or more of their teammates were contributing equally on team activities and assignments. while there is certainly evidence that many of the participants viewed their teams positively, it does not appear that tbl completely eliminates the possibility of “social loafing” among some team members. likewise, although peer evaluation is one tbl structure intended to hold students accountable to their team, one student feared that an honest evaluation would damage team relationships—especially as peer evaluation may occur at mid-semester. in future implementations, we will explore the possibility of implementing peer evaluation more frequently across the semester, as well as including a confidential portion of the peer-evaluation such that students will feel comfortable providing honest peer feedback. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 19 preference for tbl with respect to the preference for lecture or tbl subscale, students in both methods of course delivery scored statistically significantly higher than the neutral score. there was also not a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of students in face-to-face and online tbl courses, indicating that students, regardless of course delivery, preferred team activities versus lecture, which is similar to findings in other studies (opdecam et al., 2014; remington et al., 2017). when considering our qualitative findings, the course structure was often identified as an effective aspect of tbl courses, regardless of method of delivery. this is not surprising as tbl is a course framework with a clear structure across the course; within each module, students engage in the same sequence of instruction: (a) individual preparation, (b) the readiness assurance process (rap), and (c) team application activities (michaelson & sweet, 2008, 2011). the course structure and predictability of tbl was recognized and valued by students, and in some cases, was even attributed to their learning. likewise, in one particular case, a student identified the opportunity to engage with application activities during the “lecture” portion of the class meeting as an effective course aspect. student satisfaction with tbl in considering the student satisfaction subscale, students in both methods of course delivery scored significantly higher than the neutral score on the student satisfaction subscale. however, this subscale was the only instance in which the difference in mean scores of students in face-to-face and online tbl courses was statistically significant, with students in face-to-face tbl courses scoring higher. even though students in face-to-face tbl were more satisfied than students in online tbl, they were both generally satisfied. this is in contrast to research that shows not all students enjoy working in teams and often have difficulty communicating with team members when completing team projects (koh & hill, 2009; roberts & mcinnery, 2007). to further understand why students in face-to-face tbl were more satisfied with tbl than those students in online tbl, students' responses were considered. although online tbl included a number of scheduled course meetings throughout the semester—one per module—a significant amount of team engagement had to be scheduled outside of this class time and might have contributed to this decrease in student satisfaction. this is in contrast to face-to-face courses where class meetings are likely more frequent, and teamwork occurs primarily within the scheduled class meetings. the specific model of online tbl implemented, io-tbl, requires students to coordinate team collaborations in between required online class meetings, which may be an atypical expectation for an online course and thus impacting their satisfaction of the overall course. parrish et al., (2021) also reported that students enrolled in an io-tbl course were often unaware of the synchronous requirements at the time of course registration and identified this as an area of improvement for the model. limitations and future research the primary limitation was the survey response rate of 16.4%, which was less than the recommended 29.9% (blair et al., 2015). future studies should consider additional means of survey dissemination and incentives to ensure a higher response rate. a second limitation is that io-tbl was the only model of online tbl included within the study; students’ perceptions in either fully-asynchronous or synchronous tbl courses might differ from those students in 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(2019). the effect of team-based learning on content knowledge: a meta-analysis. active learning in higher education, 20(1), 39-50. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787417731201 szatkowski, h. d., & brannan, l. r. (2019). taking ownership of team accountability: the student-driven peer evaluation method. journal of faculty development, 33(1), 39-49. tadesse, t., & gillies, r. m. (2015). nurturing cooperative learning pedagogies in higher education classrooms: evidence of instructional reform and potential challenges. current issues in education, 18(2). https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1374/607 vygotsky, l. s. (1980). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. harvard university press. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00598-5 https://doi.org/10.1002/tl.20439 https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v20i4.1053 https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1322457 https://doi.org/10.1086/444021 https://doi.org/10.5688/ajpe81355 https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787417731201 https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1374/607 guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 24 author notes sarah k. guffey university of south alabama skguffey@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9074-901x christopher w. parrish university of south alabama parrish@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8699-4362 david s. williams university of south alabama dwilliams@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4457-2505 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9074-901x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8699-4362 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4457-2505 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ canada’s student journal forum: from humble beginnings to national conference current issues in education, 24(2) 1 volume 24, issue 2 august 28, 2023 issn 1099-839x canada’s student journal forum: from humble beginnings to national conference mariya maistrovskaya university of toronto libraries victoria eke concordia university of edmonton sarah m. forbes university of toronto libraries abstract: student journal forum began as an in-person half-day event at the university of toronto (u of t) in 2015. it was organized by a group of librarians with the goal of connecting editors of 60+ student-led u of t journals with publishing supports, best practices, and with each other. the audience’s enthusiastic engagement and the community-building power of the event prompted the librarians to offer it again the next year, and the year after. eight years later, this local annual event has grown into a canada-wide virtual gathering. the shift to online during the covid-19 pandemic was a key catalyst to open the forum to students to connect remotely, and for the event to be jointly organized by multiple libraries across canada. the event’s offering has evolved as well, moving from librarian-led publishing best practice sessions to student-led presentations and participatory learning sessions. the most recent 2023 forum featured an open call for proposals that let student editors share their experiences and present on topics that mattered to them. it was complemented by a half-day of publishing skill sessions presented by canadian librarians and two panels with scholarly editors and publishing professionals. in this paper, we reflect on the evolution of the student journal forum, its successes and challenges, and its role in establishing the connection between student editors across canada and between different canadian libraries that offer student journal publishing support. keywords: student journal forum, student publishing, student editor conference citation: maistrovskaya, m., eke, v., & forbes s.m. (2023). canada’s student journal forum: from humble beginnings to national conference. current issues in education, 24(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss2.2182 accepted: july 17, 2023 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss2.2182 maistrovskaya et al.: canada’s student journal forum current issues in education, 24(2) 2 student journal forum: the beginnings student journal forum was established at the university of toronto (u of t) in 2015. it started with a phone call to u of t libraries from a student who asked: “how could a print student journal be a part of the library collection?” this inquiry led to a series of questions connecting the dots between different library departments. do u of t libraries have a process for collecting student-run journals? what about the university archives? are the libraries supporting student journals? if yes, how? what other supports are available for them at u of t? and how many student journals does u of t have? following an environmental scan, it was established that u of t had about 60 student journals, 15 of which were hosted by the library on open journal systems (ojs). student editors could request free library hosting, receive copyright and scholarly communications support, and have their journals listed in the library catalogue and their print archives in the university of toronto archives and records management holdings. outside of u of t libraries, student editors could receive support via their respective student unions, departments, as well as (at that time) the hart house literary and library committee. unfortunately, these services were not well advertised or connected, and were unknown to most student editors. consequently, the first student journal forum event organized by u of t libraries in 2015 aimed to: • connect student journal teams with services available at the library and beyond. • share publishing best practices, skills, and tips, and • facilitate networking between student editors. additionally, to help bring student editor supports together, the library organizers created a student journal publishing guide, which also became the home of the annual student journal forum websites, and established a u of t student journal directory, which, to this day, remains the largest public student journal directory in canada. evolution of the annual student journal forum the inaugural 2015 student journal forum was a full-day event with a catered lunch provided by u of t libraries. it featured a keynote by a “star” faculty member, publishing skills presentations by librarians, a panel of student journal editors, and a show and tell networking session. the attendance by graduate and undergraduate u of t students and their enthusiastic engagement motivated the cross-departmental group of library organizers to make it an annual event. for the following few years, the forum followed the same pattern of a full or half-day catered event targeting u of t student editors. soliciting forum topics from attendees during registration and requesting post-forum feedback helped inform the move to include more student-led sessions. the focus has also gradually shifted from library-centered “didactic” presentations towards student-centered sessions, table discussions, and networking. an inside peek at the 2018 forum was captured by one of the presenters farah quaiser from stem fellowship journal (quaiser, 2018). in 2020, the annual forum broke the mold and expanded beyond u of t to become a toronto-wide event. it was co-organized by u of t and york university libraries, welcomed attendees from three toronto institutions, and included both york and u of t panel presenters. it https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/student_journals https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/student_journals/events https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/student_journals/events https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/student_journals/journal-directory https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/student_journals/2015forum maistrovskaya et al.: canada’s student journal forum current issues in education, 24(2) 3 also featured a half-day bootcamp for journal editors that covered the topics of journal management, copyright, peer review, and discoverability. when the covid-19 pandemic forced institutions to move online, student journal forum organizers saw an opportunity to expand the forum beyond toronto and make it into a canada-wide virtual event. it was made possible thanks to the joint volunteer effort of librarians from eight canadian institutions who joined forces to form the new organizing committee. this was an unprecedented grassroots initiative in canada and a welcomed opportunity for librarians to break out of their silos and collaborate on an event that most individual libraries would not organize on their own. the 2021 event was hosted virtually over four days, with a few short sessions each day. it followed the established pattern of librarianand student-led presentations, skill sessions, and networking. university of toronto press editors were invited for an informal ask me anything (ama) session that was quite popular. this virtual canada-wide collaboration was so welcomed that the organizers decided to do the same in 2022, this time as a group representing ten universities. there was, however, a big change. for the first time in its history, there was a call for proposals that allowed students to send in their presentation ideas. the organizers viewed this change as a logical next step in the ongoing progression of the forum toward more student-owned and generated content. the organizing committee also offered to mentor applicants who needed extra help with their presentations—this was not ultimately needed as all students were proficient with virtual presentations by that time. the committee received 25 proposals from journals all across canada which were reviewed using a rubric, accepted, and slotted into a 2-day schedule. student-led presentations were outstanding, with topics ranging from mixed media publishing to managing crossinstitutional collaborations to decolonizing academic publishing. an outline of the event was captured by the public knowledge project (pkp) (mangahis, 2022), which also became the first non-library event sponsor, offering a gift card draw to the presenters and assisting with social media coverage during the event. shifting the focus from librarian-picked presenters to student-initiated submissions allowed for the event to center on students’ priorities and on the topics they were interested in, presented by peers they could better relate to. peer presentations brought in new perspectives from a variety of journals, boosted audience engagement, and encouraged more presenters to stay for the duration of the forum rather than leave after their session. and, unsurprisingly, it also helped reduce the workload for the forum organizers, which was welcomed by the pandemic-stretched librarians. student journal forum 2023 the virtual canada-wide collaboration continued into 2023—this time as a group representing eight canadian universities. with a desire to bring back important skill building and engagement opportunities with established editors and scholarly publishing professionals that were not present in the previous iteration of the forum, while balancing student-led contributions, a blended approach was undertaken to develop the program. the duration of the forum was also expanded to 3 days to accommodate the additional content. presenters for the skills-based sessions and expert panels were recruited from among the organizers and their professional networks. a call for student-led presentations was undertaken maistrovskaya et al.: canada’s student journal forum current issues in education, 24(2) 4 to build content for the remaining two days of the forum. unlike the 2021 call for submissions for student presentations which provided numerous options of presentation formats and lengths, the format was standardized with only a 10-minute presentation option to allow for the possibility of even more student voices to share their experiences. the committee received 35 proposals from journals all across canada which were reviewed using a rubric, accepted, and organized into a 2-day schedule according to common themes. the 2023 student journal forum took place virtually over three days, february 21 to 23, and welcomed attendees from universities and colleges across canada, the united states, and europe. the program was comprised of librarianand student-led presentations, professional panels, and many opportunities for questions, discussion, and networking. all student presenters are active members of the editorial boards of undergraduate or graduate journals publishing in a variety of disciplines, such as medicine and the health sciences, musicology, and film studies. the forum opened with a half day of skills-based sessions led by scholarly communications and digital publishing librarians from post-secondary institutions across the country. with the intention of providing student journal editors and their teams with expanded knowledge of the publishing process from experts in the field, topics covered included project management, copyright, online discoverability, peer review, and inclusive publication practices. educational materials from the skill share, mainly slide decks and handouts, were made available on the forum’s website, with recordings and transcripts to follow. these transcripts were made possible thanks to the sponsorship by the u of t libraries. the second day of the forum began with the first two rounds of student presentations. in the first block, three presentations about equity and inclusion in journal publishing were heard, followed by a 15-minute question period. in the next block, the presentations were broadly categorized under journal management, covering the topics of starting a new student journal, copyright law as it applies to student publishing, and special or topical journal editions where members of canada’s oldest student-run medical journal shared their experiences planning for its centennial edition. following these presentations was another opportunity for attendees to partake in a question-and-answer period. next, attendees were invited to participate in an informal ama panel discussion with experienced journal editors ready to share tales of their experiences and answer questions related to any and every aspect of journal editing. this session was positively received amongst forum attendees and resulted in a lively and lengthy discussion. the focus of the student presentations on the third and final day of the forum was engagement. in the first session, students discussed internal engagement from a variety of perspectives. topics covered included ways by which the rate of submissions could be improved for newly established journals, keeping reviewers engaged with submission content and the peer review process, using unique policies around peer-review and open access, as well as the development of editor training criteria. the focus of the second session was engagement with communities outside a journal’s editorial team, including communications and marketing strategies for journal promotion in general, publication of a special edition, and community building across canada. the forum concluded with a panel session, co-hosted with the society for scholarly publishing (ssp), where student journal editors were invited to bring their questions about how the skills and experience acquired in their current roles can be applied to future endeavors in academia and/or the workplace. scholarly publishing professionals from the american psychological association, penn state college of medicine, and j&j editorial happily shared the https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/student_journals/sjf2023-feb21 https://www.sspnet.org/ https://www.sspnet.org/ maistrovskaya et al.: canada’s student journal forum current issues in education, 24(2) 5 details of their career trajectories and offered first-hand advice about advancing in the publishing industry. a detailed account of the 2023 forum was put together by pkp (racy, 2023), who once again offered sponsorship and social media coverage to this year’s event. challenges, takeaways, and future plans participant feedback has been collected every year in the form of an online survey. while the survey questions have evolved from year to year, they have generally focused on participants’ satisfaction with the event, and on identifying the topics that were useful and those that could be covered in the future. in 2022-23, additional questions were added to solicit presenters’ feedback on the application process and support provided by forum organizers. overall, feedback received over the years has been positive, with an average rate of response at 40% in 2023. the majority of 2023 feedback survey respondents indicated that the event either met or exceeded their expectations, taking from the presentations and panel discussions new perspectives, ideas, and information that can be applied to their own journal projects. while some participants would have liked to have seen representation from additional graduate student journals, the ideas and perspectives presented by undergraduate editorial boards were deemed to be useful and engaging. when the forum moved online, achieving sustained participation was challenging. more often than not, presenters would deliver their presentations and then leave the meeting. by grouping presentations of similar topics and delaying the question-and-answer periods until all of the presentations were heard, interest was maintained, and participation numbers remained steady not only from session to session, but from one day to the next as well. the organizers also identified that having slightly fewer presentations (3 versus 4) in each one-hour presentation block allowed for more time for questions and provided room for housekeeping messaging and possible technical troubleshooting during the session. as the forum expanded beyond its u of t libraries roots, the forum also struggled with branding. a twitter account, @canadasjf, was created in 2022 to help streamline communications and attempt to connect with institutions and student journals across canada, but no visual identity was established. in 2023, the pkp communications team put together a visual identity and assets for the organizers as they prepared to do a social media takeover of the student journal forum twitter account. leading up to the forum and throughout the 3-day event, nearly 100 tweets were posted advertising the program, upcoming presentations, and gift card draw winners. with a cohesive aesthetic and persistent messaging, the student journal forum twitter account saw an increase in followers of approximately 40% by the end of the event, as well as the majority of tweets seeing, for the most part, engagement numbers in the hundreds. while pkp’s twitter campaign proved successful, the future of the platform remains uncertain. should twitter cease to exist or become increasingly difficult to use, the organizing committee may need to assess alternative venues for such activity. the forum website also underwent an expansion in 2023 in a desire to improve discovery of the detailed program, which had only been provided as an external document linked from the website in the previous year. each day of the forum was now presented on a separate page with a schedule of events containing direct links to detailed information about the student presenters, links to their journals, and presentation abstracts posted below. finally, having a single open https://twitter.com/canadasjf?lang=en maistrovskaya et al.: canada’s student journal forum current issues in education, 24(2) 6 zoom room for the duration of the three days helped minimize the confusion and welcome attendees who would come and go as their schedules allowed. one of the initial forum goals was to create a space for journal editors to meet, network, and learn from each other. moving from a local to a virtual nation-wide event made this task easier to accomplish during the days of the event, but harder to sustain long-term. the organizers have been continuously looking into ways to keep student editors connected beyond the several days of the forum. a listserv for canadian student journal editors set up in 2022 has not seen a significant uptake and has been mostly used by librarians to share publishing-related events. there have also been ongoing conversations about establishing a public directory of canadian student journals, but without a single canadian organization to take up its hosting and maintenance, they have not moved ahead. a push for community-building has come from student editors as well. at sjf 2023, the editors of the meducator pitched the establishment of the national council of undergraduate academia through which editorial teams could meet on a quarterly basis to discuss trends and issues in student journal publishing, progress, lessons learned, and opportunities for collaboration (sun & bansal, 2023). community-building, student-led discussion topics, and publishing best practices will remain at the core of the student journal forum as planning kicks off for the 2024 event. the organizers will continue following the student editors’ lead to ensure the event evolves to meet the needs and interests of this engaged community. we hope these reflections help student and librarian groups outside of canada to consider the kinds of networks and events that could support student journal publishing in their areas. maintaining an annual event requires a continuous commitment from a core group of organizers, but there are many other shapes and forms through which a network could grow. many institutions and libraries already provide support for student publishing locally, including training and presentations, so co-organizing and opening those up to a larger community would help both reach a wider audience and reduce the duplication of effort. putting technical resources together to offer the hosting of journal publishing platform at a consortium or national level is another way to reduce strain on individual institutions. further involving international organizations, such as pkp, ssp and possibly other publishing associations and libraries, could help the network could grow beyond national barriers and be enriched by the diversity of its members. references quaiser, f. (2018, january 31). reflection: uoft’s student journal forum (2018). medium. https://farahqaiser.medium.com/reflection-uofts-student-journal-forum-201895becd759ad8 mangahis, p. (2022, march 10). we’re here to support student journals. public knowledge project (pkp). https://pkp.sfu.ca/2022/03/10/were-here-to-support-student-journals/ racy, f. (2023, march 14). canadian student journal forum and pkp’s open journal systems. public knowledge project (pkp). https://pkp.sfu.ca/2023/03/14/sjf-ojs-roundup/ sun, j. & bansal, s. (2023, february 23). developing a national council of undergraduate academia: fostering student community [conference presentation]. student journal forum 2023, online. https://farahqaiser.medium.com/reflection-uofts-student-journal-forum-2018-95becd759ad8 https://farahqaiser.medium.com/reflection-uofts-student-journal-forum-2018-95becd759ad8 https://pkp.sfu.ca/2022/03/10/were-here-to-support-student-journals/ https://pkp.sfu.ca/2023/03/14/sjf-ojs-roundup/ maistrovskaya et al.: canada’s student journal forum current issues in education, 24(2) 7 author notes mariya maistrovskaya https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9324-2938 university of toronto libraries mariya.maistrovskaya@utoronto.ca victoria eke https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2568-5806 concordia university of edmonton victoria.eke@concordia.ab.ca sarah m. forbes https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8509-3773 university of toronto libraries s.forbes@utoronto.ca more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9324-2938 mailto:mariya.maistrovskaya@utoronto.ca https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2568-5806 mailto:victoria.eke@concordia.ab.ca https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8509-3773 mailto:s.forbes@utoronto.ca https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ student journal forum: the beginnings evolution of the annual student journal forum student journal forum 2023 challenges, takeaways, and future plans references volume 9, number 5 february, 2006 issn 1099-839x progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age r. d. nordgren cleveland state university a multi-site case study of three swedish schools examined the dimensions of trust, responsibility, shared power (democracy), and global workforce competence as required by a decade-old national education reforms. a key finding was the existence of progressive educational practices including constructivist epistemology, evidenced by the schools’ organizational structure, the instructional methods employed, and the various roles engaged in by the teachers, students, and administrators. these progressive practices and the mechanisms used to sustain them in one swedish public school system may be conducive to effective preparation of workers and citizens for the post-industrial economy and to live in a participatory democracy. for at least a century, progressive educators have advocated for schools that empower students to be self-directed and self-regulated, active participants in their learning and in the governance of their learning environments (dewey, 1916). this contrasts greatly with the controlling, knowledge-dispensing traditional schooling model that, despite progressives’ decades of efforts, remains the dominant model in the u.s. this article describes the findings from a study conducted in sweden where progressive schooling reforms affected teachers, administrators and, most profoundly, students. the model embraces an egalitarian dissemination of power among children and adults and utilizes the constructivist epistemology while establishing democratic, collaborative learning environments based on a foundation of trust and personal responsibility. the swedish education reform of 1994 (skolverket, 2000) and the guiding curricula that spawned these schools may also ensure that sweden fosters in its youth the essential traits and values for success in the post-industrial global economy and to actively participate in a vibrant democracy, the most dominant and prolific form of government in the global age (castells, 2000; karatnycky, piano, & puddington, 2003). 1 review of relevant literature constructivism and school reform many of the real and perceived problems regarding u.s. public education have been combated by reforms that are ostensibly “more of the same,” not changing the way schooling is done, merely adding to what is already in place—more standards, course requirements and, of course, high-stakes tests (kohn, 2004; meier, 2002). some scholars (e.g., delors, 1998; freire, 1985; chomsky, 2000) advocate for truly alternative ways of educating, employing methods and developing school environments that internally motivate students to not only learn prescribed content but to “learn how to learn” so as to become life-long learners as well as knowledgeable participants in a democracy. one such alternative that has been the focus of much scholarly writing in recent years is constructivism, an epistemology seemingly embraced by the swedish school reforms of the 1990’s and by the three schools in this study. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 constructivists contend that all learning emanates from the personal experiences of the learner through social interactions with others ( howard, mcgee, & schwartz, 2000). dewey, vygosky, and piaget were early advocates of constructivism, and their work powerfully impacted education theory and, to a lesser degree, practice by focusing classroom activity on the student rather than the teacher and the curriculum. the learning environments in this study were consistently student-focused, strongly suggesting an adherence to, if not an approval of, constructivism. keeping students actively engaged in meaningful learning may be the key to resolving disciplinary and motivational problems in u.s. schools (glasser, 1998; kohn, 2004). in doing so, direct instructional methods of teacher lecture followed by individual student seatwork, resembling the “banking” model impugned by freire (1985), must be severely limited. not only does a reliance on direct instruction force students to become little more than passive recipients of information (howard, mcgee, & schwartz, 2000; shapiro, 2000), but also research in learning theory (e.g., gregorc, 1982; gardner, 1985) suggests that most students not only dislike direct instruction but also may actually be demotivated by it. in order for schools to evolve beyond direct instruction, the role of the teacher must change from that of dispenser of knowledge to facilitator of learning who, through an understanding of each student’s learning preferences and motivational “buttons,” can help students learn from numerous resources (including the teacher) and foster selfdirectedness that may eventually lead to a love of learning. a strong internal desire for learning is essential for life-long learning, a crucial aspect of “knowledgework” as described later in this article. to ensure that students are internally motivated, life-long learners, the classroom and school environments must transform from autocracies that are strictly controlled by authoritative adults to more open, democratic settings that more resemble senge’s (1990) learning organization and other organic, flexible structures that can readily meet the changing needs of the environment (morgan, 1985). when teachers are coerced by outside forces such as site-based and district administrators in addition to mandates from the state and federal levels (i.e., imposed standards and high-stakes tests), their autonomy is lost and their motivation to perform quality work is greatly diminished (kohn, 2004; meier, 2002). a learning environment conducive to strategies supporting constructivist beliefs and the nurturing of democratic ideals in children and adolescents is one where all stakeholders share power: teachers, students, administrators, parents, and the surrounding community. sharing of power demands that decisions directly affecting learning should be made with the learner’s input, if not solely by the learner. this type of democratic environment was evident in the three swedish schools in this study and is at the core of constructivist education (shapiro, 2000). students were not only invited to make important decisions affecting their education, they were—ironically—mandated to do so. swedes did not allow their children to escape the civic obligation of learning how to not only live in a democracy but to ensure their democracy remains robust. constructivism and democracy constructivism’s origins may be traced to dewey’s promotion of experiential learning and his belief that the primary function of education should be the preparation of democratic citizens (1916). deep understanding of content beyond mere recall or even application, as described in bloom’s taxonomy of learning (1956), must be fostered by social interchange, which would require teachers to allow for student interaction in classrooms, rather than force students to sit quiet and motionless. this deep understanding/high-level learning is necessary for critical analyses of the content, the source of the content (teachers, textbooks, internet sites), and of all authority (goodlad, 2001). democracies, dependent upon a participatory, well-educated populace that is able and willing to critically analyze (barber, 1992), will most likely be the dominant form of government in the age of globalization. preparing students to succeed in the global economy within the global village, where national boundaries are blurred and corporations demonstrate no allegiance to any nationstate (castells, 2000), will require a drastic change from the traditional schooling model that relies heavily on passive recall of low-level information (reich, 2002; torres, 2002). education agencies, therefore, must create environments where students can interact and learn to participate in a democracy, not schools where control is the dominant theme (sehr, 1996). methods this multi-site case study focused on the dimensions of shared power, trust, student responsibility, and “global workforce competence” (teamwork, pragmatic technical skills, problem solving, and entrepreneurship). the first three emanated from the swedish national curricula, which are value-laden documents, designed to guide pre-school, compulsory, upper-secondary, and adult schooling (regeringskansliet, 1999) (see appendix a for excerpts from one of these curricula). democracy is a dominant theme throughout these documents, but fearing political misconceptions that may surround this concept and its inherent complexities (barber, 1992), the study concentrated on the sharing of power progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age 3 within the schools. a search of the prevailing literature on what students should know, do, and be like to succeed in the global economy led to the four categories of global workforce competence. these were, the literature suggested, the most important skills and/or traits for one to succeed in the global economy (entrepreneurship subsumed the traits of creativity and risk-taking) 2 . the research questions asked in what ways the three schools support these seven dimensions. the three schools in the study were selected for their continuity of service for a large proportion of students in the community. all the students attending the elementary school were scheduled to matriculate on to the middle school and, although high school (or “upper secondary school”) is not mandatory in sweden, approximately 80% of all those leaving the middle school went on to the high school in the study. the schools were located in a small community in central sweden of about 35,000 people and, although the community had one local government, it had two school districts: one for preschools and compulsory schools, and the other for upper secondary and adult education. the principals of the schools and the superintendent of the pre/compulsory schools were known to the researcher; two principals and the superintendent participated in an international school consortium with the researcher and readily volunteered their campuses for research along with several other principals in the district. the researcher had met and interviewed the two upper secondary school principals during a visit one year prior to this study. the elementary school was by far the largest in the community, serving about 500 students, the middle school about 800, and approximately 1200 students were educated at the upper secondary school. one other middle school and 14 other elementary schools were also in and around the community, as were two other upper secondary schools. eleven of the 16 career-focused national programs were located at the upper secondary school in the study; two significantly smaller schools housed the other four programs. a seventeenth program was “individual” in that students having difficulty in other programs could opt to develop their own program of study and be taught by teachers who specialized in motivational techniques, somewhat equivalent to drop-out prevention programs in u.s. high schools. the goal was to eventually motivate these students to re-enter their chosen academic program or attempt another (skolverket, 2000). data were collected through individual and focus group interviews of high school students, and teachers at all levels. the elementary and middle school principals were interviewed individually; the two upper secondary principals were interviewed together. each interview lasted approximately one hour and consisted of seven to eight base questions. these sessions took place on campus during and after school hours, were recorded and later transcribed. surveys were administered to every teacher in the schools and to the students in the high school (appendices b and c). a document search conducted before, during, and after the other data were collected, focused on curricula and decision making at each school and the two school districts. finally, focused classroom observations and general campus observations were conducted at the three sites, both attentive to student-teacher/adult interactions that may relate to shared power. data were analyzed using the constant comparative method (glaser & strauss, 1967) in which data collected (interviews and documents) were compared throughout the collection process for themes arising from the seven established categories of shared power, trust, student responsibility, teamwork, pragmatic technical skills, problem solving, and entrepreneurship. these theories were used as conceptual links between and among the seven categories; the findings discussed in this article are divided into the dominant themes found in the analysis (survey results were later included in this analysis). these themes are the following and head each of the subsections in “findings.”  students owning their learning  standards and national curricula that guide rather than dictate  constructivist teaching strategies that empower students  trust and adult supervision  democracy and empowerment  global workforce competence: making schooling relevant to the workplace. these themes have obvious and subtle connections to the seven dimensions that drove this study; the themes and the connections are described in the next section. findings students owning their learning students in all schools developed their own learning plans, beginning with pre-school children as young as four years old. although the youngest of the students did not have their learning plans in written form, the evidence suggested that they were deeply involved with the development of these plans. according to teachers, pre-school children sat in circles (“rings”) on monday mornings to decide what file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%232 current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 they were to do during the week, the teachers acting as facilitators. on fridays, they discussed their learning for the week and then completed a selfassessment consisting of smiling or frowning faces for each of the week’s activities, followed by more discussion of their progress. this was the earliest example of democratic schooling experiences found in the study and may be indicative of the swedes’ valuing democracy. when a focus group of elementary teachers was asked about democratic activity, one teacher responded yes, they need [democracy skills] when they are going out to the society … and when they’re six years old that’s mid point [of their experience in that school, so] i think to make them secure and think of each other and the social part … it’s a part of swedish society, isn’t it? democracy--to care for each other and not to fight [but] to talk …no fighting to learn from …and you can’t fight to have [an] effective democracy. at the middle school, teams of teachers and students met weekly in a large forum to discuss how they felt their learning was proceeding. one middle school teacher described this forum. with our 120 pupils we have started something we called “a team.” we started [this] pupils’ team so that we [can] each discuss what's good and what's bad, and [the students] hand [their comments] into us [beforehand] so we discuss [some of these] at our meeting. we try to see if there’s anything we could do to make it better for the pupils, but also have them think about “is this really good?” or “is it just a way of making protest?” in the high school, students agreed that they were involved in most aspects of their learning, from planning to assessment; but insisted that they should have even more power in their schools. upper secondary student: well, i just think you need to let the students decide more by themselves, especially [in upper secondary school]. …i can decide on my own likes in sweden so then the teachers and the administrators decide for me…[long pause]. [students] should have a bigger… influence in everything and [teachers and administrators] should let students be part of everything. as part of a focus group, another upper secondary student replied, “ … the teachers and principals and students should be a part of the decisions, of course, otherwise it’s not a democracy.” a survey administered to 300 students at the upper secondary school (154 respondents) (appendix b) revealed that students were mildly negative regarding their position of power (see table 1). the items pertaining to the shared power dimension in the student survey were 3 through 5 and 8 through 15 and this grouping’s mean score was 2.35 on a 1 to 5 scale, with 5 corresponding to their perception that they were greatly empowered. all teachers at each school were given similar surveys (appendix c) (rate of return was a disappointing 48 out of 231 3 ). (table 3 and teacher empowerment will be discussed shortly.). table 1 teacher and student survey data (by dimensions) table notes: score was calculated as a negative but is reported as “0.” teacher survey: n = 48, cronbach alpha for survey = 0.60 student survey: n = 154, cronbach alpha for survey = 0.78 standards and national curricula that guide rather than dictate although, students were required to reach the academic standards developed by the swedish department of education (skolverket) for each of the seventeen upper secondary programs offered in all of the 278 swedish communities, the standards (referred to as the “syllabuses”) were found to be sparse in comparison to american state standards 4 and the means to these ends were decided by negotiations between the students and the teachers. the standards were passed down from skolverket through the local school boards and on into each school building, changing often along the way. upon being asked about the influence state and local government has on her education, an upper secondary school student stated … certain rules that they [skolverket] has to loll through and then the community can look at them and [determine] what they think about [the standards] they have to follow … but in their own way, so all communities don’t have the same thing. interviewer: so your school and maybe even the students interpret what the politicians give you? student: oh yea, we can … i don’t know … we can, we look at it; all the schools are looking at in different ways, and that’s … that’s what we do. interviewer: do you think that’s good? file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%233 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%234 progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age 5 student: yes! … [the skolverket] just has, ah, this map you have to go after … just you don’t have to fold it exactly all the same way. in essence, standards were not ironclad statements, but malleable guidelines that could change according to local and even individual needs. despite the existence of academic standards found in the syllabuses, the guiding force for each level of schooling was the three swedish national curricula that were developed in the mid-to-late 1990’s (skolverket, 2000). these documents (see appendix a for excerpt of the compulsory school curriculum) were value-laden, not content-focused as were the syllabuses. these curricula were mentioned again and again by teachers and administrators throughout the study. interviewer: in what way does the national curriculum [as translated by the school] affect the curriculum and the instruction in your classroom? middle school teacher: a lot because the curriculum status for the students [what we think they should be able to know and do] by the end of the year [is developed] at the beginning of the year, so we are following that schedule... the program, what the curriculum says about…what they should know … so we are looking at it, and [the students] read it, and then they can … we can discuss how we are going to work with this… in an interview with the two upper secondary principals (both had equal power in the school), they described the aforementioned evolution of the skolverket’s “mandated” curricula from the state to the local levels, emphasizing how little impact they felt they had on their jobs at the school. principal 1: i would say that the national curriculum in the upper level, if i can say so, [is like a] chain. first [link] is at the national level … and then on our district level we have a certain plan, which should be matching the goals in the national curriculum. and then we have our plan for our … school, and in our school we have our two principals, and we have our own plan for our … areas [or programs]. principal 2: yes and it should be [that] the goals match each other in a sort of chain. so … i wouldn’t say that the national curriculum has very much to do with how we work here. but conversely, the second principal stated the importance of the values found in the curriculum for upper secondary schools. … all these words which you have in your study democracy, trust--all these kind of values-they are very important as they [guide us]… but this principal is quick to point out that the curriculum is to be individualized to meet the students’ needs. … the whole system is a mixture of different ambitions, i would say different intention; we want to have structure but also … say [we have a] national curriculum, but every pupil, every student should be able to choose her or his own plan. constructivist teaching strategies that empower students teachers in the middle and upper secondary schools were difficult to identify upon entering the classrooms as they blended well with the students. they dressed casually and rarely began their classes by standing in front addressing the students. instead, students typically entered classrooms nonchalantly (there were no bells at the schools), began working on a project, usually collaboratively but sometimes individually, with their teachers sitting amongst them at tables or even on the floor. in addition, all teachers were addressed by their first name only--even the two superintendents were known to students and teachers by their first names. this casual environment may have positively affected trust within the schools and of the schools within the community (kramer, 1999; kramer, brewer, & hanna, 1996). teachers’ instructional strategies and the classroom environments they developed with the students were greatly influenced by the seemingly constructivist reforms of 1994. individualized instruction, a crucial aspect of constructivism (shapiro, 2000), was evident during the observations and supported by an upper secondary student in an interview and who, perhaps unknowingly, also criticized the banking model of instruction. i like to decide … i always like to do that, and i think [making my own decisions is] important because if all the teachers decide everything, we maybe not learn properly. we may not learn everything we have to learn [without the teachers’ deciding what we learn] but [if they did decide everything] maybe we just learn it for one day and then do the test … the day after we don’t know it... a middle school teacher spoke about how she worked to individualize instruction based on her knowledge of the students and from their input about what they want to learn and how they learn, determining each student’s learning style; a strategy used in a university course she had taken a few summers before. [i have students] who like writing [when] they use their eyes [and i have] those who use their ears, and we try to make a list of the group [‘s preferences]. we try to find many different ways current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 [they could learn]… i sit in a ring [with students] and i talk about ... how did it work for you? …some said it was good--it was very good. and i would start a discussion [about] what’s good for you maybe is not good for others, and that’s where they have to make their own decisions how to learn… she went on to describe how students in her class are required to develop and teach one lesson a week to other students, requiring them not to use a textbook so as they might then depend on the prescribed lessons published in it. this, the teacher felt, required the students to be more creative, to think about the learning preferences of those in the room based on the circle conversations they routinely had. she asked them to bring in material from other classes (she taught english) such as art so that they could see that “you don’t have to leave art when you come into [the] english classroom.” after each lesson, they were to write a reflective piece on what went right and what they would change, a practice she and her colleagues do on a daily basis, she said. she referred to these teacher reflections as “diaries.” trust and adult supervision at the elementary school, children played outdoors on an icy hill and on a skating rink between and during classes. usually a teacher was in the vicinity, but sometimes not. one day the researchers walked across the skating rink and were shouted at, in swedish, by a boy who appeared to be about six years old. once they arrived at the other side of the rink, an apologetic teacher said that the boy was simply stating the rules about not going onto the rink unless you wore ice skates—a rule, she said that was developed by the students themselves. at another elementary school in the community but not in the study, the researchers participated in a mid-morning tea planned and presented by two eleven year olds in appreciation for all the adults at the school. when asked where the other 200 students were, the principal pointed out the window where they were sledding down a rather large hill and skating on a frozen pond at the bottom of the hill. no adults were outside. when asked what would happen if a child were to get hurt, the principal replied, “oh, another child would let us know, i suppose.” upon hearing the researcher’s concerns about litigation, a teacher at a nearby table responded laughingly, “oh, you americans!” with the possible exception of the students’ development of their own learning plans, the lunchrooms may have been the best place to see how responsible swedish children could be in these trusting learning environments. at all three schools, students ate and socialized without formal adult supervision, even at the elementary school where teachers did eat with their students in a small cafeteria, but only because the principal said he would provide them lunches if they ate with their students. his explanation was that he wanted them to have more informal time with their students; indeed, it was informal as no teachers were witnessed giving directives to the children during the several hours of lunches observed there, simply eating and socializing with students who were eight to ten years old. students ate their meals while conversing with friends (students and teachers) then cleared their tables, dropped off their metal utensils and ceramic plates and cups with the dishwashers, then disposed their waste in appropriate recycling bins. the same scenario was repeated during three days at the middle school except that there the adults did pay a nominal fee for their lunches. at the high school, adults ate separately in a small room adjoining the cafeteria, leaving the students adult-free except for the lunchroom servers. during formal interviews and lunchtime conversations, no adults or students could recall a problem stemming from this lack of adult supervision. in fact, they seemed puzzled by the researchers’ concern for this. 5 at the middle and high schools, students were found in snack rooms and recreation areas with little or no adult supervision. in fact, the only adults consistently in the vicinity were those who worked the snack counter. at the middle school, the students had sofas and stereos in one snack room while at the other they had a volleyball court, table tennis, billiards and other games at their disposal. administrators and teachers, as well as the adults working the snack bars, insisted no problems ever arose from these relatively unsupervised rooms. in fact, the middle school principal noted how startled the students were in one snack room when he and the researchers “intruded” upon their snack time. he led the researchers out of room after only a few seconds saying he wanted the students to have their privacy. when asked in interviews, “what happens when students do not do what they are supposed to do?” several times teachers gave a puzzled look and replied, “why wouldn’t they?” apparently, the students were not simply obedient 6 as there were no directives from teachers or other adults that were witnessed in the observations; instead, students simply went about their business of learning. elementary teachers reported that they concentrated on social skills rather than academics in the early years, yet international studies suggest that by upper secondary, swedes outperform students from most industrialized nations, including the u.s (nces, 1999). one swedish teacher said that their first intention is for the children to learn to get along with others adding, “what good is it to teach them to read and write if they’re only going to end up in prison?” file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%235 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%236 progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age 7 further discussion found that this statement was a commentary on the difference in crime and incarceration rates between the u.s. and sweden, and america’s recent intense focus on academic standards and subsequent high-stakes testing rather than the learning of values necessary for good citizenship. democracy and empowerment the creation of empowering democratic learning environments was a desired outcome of the 1994 school reforms (skolverket, 2000) and is evidenced by the wording in the three national curricula (see appendix a). teachers were to be given more autonomy to make decisions about their jobs and, it was desired, this autonomy would be passed down to the students. it is not clear from the date collected that teachers were in fact autonomous. when asked about this new empowerment in an interview, one upper secondary school teacher stated during the last five years, we are rather used to be[ing] free to take care of our own planning to take care of our own economics--even so, we want the administrators to be responsible for their logistics, so to speak, so we can do the work. but you know we have these teams … and we are responsible for planning … different subjects and economics and the status of courses-[what] we want to see, [the] results [that may coincide with the national plan]. interviewer: do you think this is better or worse than the old way? teacher: this is, of course, much better … because it’s possible for us to make … find new solutions for new problems. we meet different students and different classes and then we can relate to them instead of following the instructions [from the formerly-used prescribed curriculum]. teachers and administrators were reluctant to talk about the transition from a relatively autocratic leadership (or the “british style that americans seem to like,” as one upper secondary teacher said) to an egalitarian, democratic style. one of the upper secondary principals simply smiled and said the transition was “painful.” a focus group of middle school teachers laughed uncomfortably at the question of this change, and one veteran suggested that if not for the teachers’ unions supporting the reforms, then they would not have been enacted. two younger teachers stated that they could not imagine having schooling any other way. “it’s best for the children … they need to be able to [function] in the new economy … the new world.” an interesting finding from a teacher interview was the existence of a children’s “parliament’ in the community in which students from the middle and upper secondary schools were asked to participate in meetings with local government officials. the two upper secondary principals commented on the parliament principal 1: [the community leaders] ask for feedback or what … young people think about … different issues. principal 2: i think it started years ago by one of the youth leaders in the community. principal 1: yes, and our politicians … listen quite eagerly to what the young person says and … how would it be possible for the students to get better marks [and be prepared for life] after school has finished. the person in the community who led the children’s parliament confirmed the principals’ remarks that the community leaders did want to know what the children learn in school, and what their views are about local issues. three students were chosen by their peers from the middle level and three more from the upper secondary schools to serve in the parliament and, although the ultimate decisionmaking was left to the elected and appointed government officials, the students’ input often influenced the decisions made by the adults. for instance, two community centers were opened in the past several years due to the discussions with adolescents, and the governing of these centers was based in part on the feedback the adults received from the students in the parliament. according to survey data, students agreed or strongly agreed to statements pertaining to the importance of their empowerment (items 4, 9, 11, 14, and 15) ranging from 73 to 87% (bolded in table 2). but their agreement to how much they were actually empowered ranged only from 19 to 48%. their disagreement to these statements was generally not as strong as their agreement to these items, ranging from 14 to 36%. as will be noted in the teacher survey discussion, high percentages of neutrality were found. in an interview with the upper secondary principals, it was apparent that despite observations suggesting that the teachers were accepting of the constructivist changes, there still was some concern about teachers continuing to hold on to teachercentered, traditional methods. prior to the 1994 reform, curriculum was much more structured, ostensibly prescribing to the teachers just what they were to teach and how the content was to be transmitted to the students. principal 1: [teachers] are pretty free as long as they fill the goals. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 principal 2: i think they are more free now than some years ago when the curriculum told them how to do and what to study in each subject. now they can choose what to study and how; but we say, and the school … says you must discuss with your students [what is to be taught and how]. students must have real influence … of … planning the studies together with the teachers. principal 1: and that’s in the curriculum … in the laws. interviewer: you said it was more rigid in the past, more structured before ’94? principal 2: yes, it was before ’94, the last national curriculum for the secondary school [prior to ‘94] was in … 1970. interviewer: are teachers generally happier at your school to make their own decisions or would they rather have you make most of the decisions? principal 2: they would [rather] make their own decisions, i think. interviewer: you think they would be happier doing that? principal 2: yes. principal 1: that depends. principal 2: yes, it depends … some teachers are very conscious and aware of what the national curriculum says and try to do like the intentions are written in it. but i think some teachers want to do as they always have done, they are quite traditional in the way of working … some [of] the teachers are in front of the students and deciding what to read and how to read and what to… interviewer: teacher centered? principal 1: yes, and it varies quite a lot. principal 2: yes, it varies quite a lot. the principals went on to discuss how they manipulated the environment to discourage traditional teaching. in particular, they replaced individual desks with tables so that students would be more inclined to work together. the principals felt they were winning the battle to get all teachers to accept constructivist practices. principal 2: i think the number of traditional teachers [is] declining, but there are some left. but many people they … principal 1: they are tired now. principal 2: yeah, they are tired. interviewer: you’ve worn them down? principal 2: yes, they are waiting for their pension. results of the teacher surveys bring into doubt whether or not teachers truly believe that they are empowered by authorities. as noted earlier, only 48 of 231 (21%) of the teacher surveys were returned making generalizations made from these surveys for all teachers in these three schools suspect. regardless, what can be culled from these data is an overwhelming feeling that teacher empowerment is important as evidenced by items 6, 9, 12, and 19 (bolded in table 2) which ask teachers to respond to the importance of shared power (between 84 and 100% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed to this importance). yet when asked about their actual empowerment as it relates to their involvement in school decision-making, the teachers were less emphatic. items 5, 10, 11, and 20 referred to teacher empowerment and if they believed their administration encouraged their involvement. those responding favorably (agree or strongly agree) ranged from 52 to 79%, but very few responded negatively. for item 20 which had a favorable response of only 52%, the other 48% responded “neutral.” table 2 student survey responses for items regarding empowerment table 3 teacher survey responses for items regarding empowerment progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age 9 what is not clear from the both the survey and interview data is the degree to which teachers are empowered, performing as autonomous and active participants in democratic settings. some of the remarks by the teachers and administrators suggest that the reforms of 1994 were exacted upon teachers; those who did not accept these changes may have been counseled out of the profession (wearing them down). the following questions arise: does a democracy exist when it is imposed upon the people? is forced autonomy truly autonomy? those who designed the swedish national curriculum, laying out the vision for swedish schools, apparently felt that democracy and autonomy were important (see appendix a), but what if teachers were happy with the way schools were previously operated, even if they did not have significant power in this operation? were their opinions taken into consideration or did the sponsors of the national reform use “eminent domain” to ignore or even squelch dissent? further research is needed to gain a better understanding of teacher autonomy and empowerment in these three swedish schools and all swedish schools considering the effects of the 1994 reforms. global workforce competence: making schooling relevant to the workplace in addition to the social dimensions of democracy, trust, and responsibility, this study was designed to find if the schools were preparing the students for the global economy. the first three dimensions—shared power, trust, and personal responsibility—may assist students to participate in a democracy and perhaps live peaceably in the “global village” (a term first used by marshall mcluhan in the 1960’s when he described the shrinking world due to advancements in communications technology). but were these students gaining the skills and knowledge necessary for them to endure and ultimately succeed in the every-changing world of globalization? studying recent workforce skills literature including the seminal scans report (1991), the four areas of teamwork, pragmatic technical skills, problem solving, and entrepreneurship were developed for use in this study. indeed, the lower levels of schooling concentrated on social skills, yet the upper secondary school was set on preparing the students for the workforce in the spirit of conant’s (1959) comprehensive high school. as mentioned previously, each swedish community must offer all 16 of the career-centered programs of study. these programs were treated as schools-within-schools where teachers usually worked in only one program, and the program’s teachers were given significant autonomy within that program. the skolverket set the academic guidelines for each program, but these were scant in content, similar to the syllabuses of the compulsory schools, and the department’s mandate to follow these was rather flexible, essentially allowing students and teachers to decide amongst themselves what would be learned. all main subject areas (swedish, english, math, social studies, and science) were mandatory in each program, but these subjects were learned through the lens of the career area of that particular program (skolverket, 2000). two programs did not appear to be as career oriented as the others, but rather college preparatory. teachers, however, were quick to point out that students in every program theoretically could be accepted into a university (university admission in sweden is quite competitive with only about one in three students gaining admission) (sandahl, 1997). in the 11 programs offered at the upper secondary school in this study, evidence suggested that the four dimensions of “global workforce competence” were supported. these teen-age students, as students of all ages in the study, usually worked collaboratively. the few who did work individually did so at their own request but this, they said, was only a temporary situation, eventually everyone learned in collaboration. marketable technical skills were to be gained in the various programs, and critical analysis was inherent in the project-based curricula developed by the students with the help of the teachers. the community had a committee of local leaders from government agencies and businesses who addressed the economic needs of the kommun including how the schools, especially the upper secondary schools, prepared its students for the workforce. the upper secondary school principals spoke of trying to balance the committee’s desires with what they felt, as professional educators, was sound education for the students. all in all, they felt satisfied with the arrangement as local businesses often donated equipment such as computers to the school and even better, held employment slots open for graduates. when asked if the businesses funded any part of the school’s programs, the principals were quick to say that they received all their funding from the government, adding that funding all of the schools’ needs was the obligation of the various levels of government. it should be noted that about 40 swedish principals, superintendents, and university professors visited 14 florida schools prior to this study, hoping to find ways to increase creativity and risk-taking among their students, what they believed to be the core of entrepreneurship. the swedish educators did current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 not find entrepreneurial skills being learned in florida schools but instead reported that these schools emphasized control and obedience (school management institute, 1999), neither compatible with the fostering of entrepreneurs. the assumption was made for this study that if the swedes were looking to the u.s. to help increase entrepreneurship in their schools, then this must be almost non-existent in swedish education. but, alas, creativity was quite evident in all the schools of the study. by the instructional methods used and the structures of the schools, creativity was a natural by-product--as was risk-taking. developing their own learning required students to be both creative and risk-takers. two programs observed in the upper secondary school offered classes in entrepreneurship where students were allotted money to open actual businesses in the community, usually in the form of on-line services. students were required to obtain personal loans from a local bank, loans that were secured by the school board. it was rare, however, that these businesses lost money, according to the programs’ teachers; the loans were repaid by the student prior to his/her leaving the school. only the last four items in the teacher and student surveys pertained to global workforce competence and the mean scores (table 1) suggest that the 154 student respondents and the 48 teacher respondents mildly to strongly supported that these skills were learned in the schools. what was surprising is that, although it may be assumed that the primary responsibility for teaching these skills would fall upon the upper secondary school with its 11 career-focused programs, the elementary and middle school teachers strongly supported the existence of these skills in the overall curricula. discussion possible implications for u.s. education of course, progressive, democratic schools like the swedish schools in this study do exist in other parts of the world including the u.s. 7 yet, from the results of this study which examined the impact of the national curricula and from other u.s. educators’ findings in schools in sweden, these constructivist learning environments may be nationwide (school management institute, 1999). only ten to fifteen years ago, according to some swedish teachers and administrators, their schools resembled the u.s. in their british-style, autocratic approach to how school was conducted (instructional strategies, classroom and school management styles). how could this transformation be accomplished at such speed and seemingly be widespread? asking teachers and administrators to share power with children, literally changing the roles they play in the schools must have indeed been painful, but it appeared to be working. one veteran teacher said that he had his doubts about the new system when it was implemented at his school following the 1994 education reform act, but he could now see that his students were much better prepared to live and work in a democracy. the structure of the each school’s management and the instructional methods used promoted the skills deemed necessary to succeed in the global economy. all schools had teams of teachers that shared power with the principals, and this sharing of power was evident among teachers and students. can this progressive, democratic schooling model be extensively replicated in the u.s.? first, it should be noted that the swedes do not encounter what is, with the possible exception of teacher quality 8 , the one consistent indicator of school success—poverty (giroux, 2003; payne, 1996). the social democracy that prevails in sweden does not allow for great economic differences due to deliberate efforts by the federal government to implement an egalitarian economic system, and to provide for a “workfare” as compared to a welfare system that gives equalizing benefits for all who are employed, even if only part-time (bjorklund & freeman, 2005). therefore, the differences in lifestyle between someone working the counter at mcdonald’s and a medical doctor are not nearly as overwhelming as they would be in america due in part to the relative lack of strong social supports, at least relative to the swedish system. the result of the swedes’ efforts is a relative (to the u.s.) elimination of poverty in their nation, but poverty remains the destructive mediating variable that u.s. school reforms cannot universally overcome (anyon, 1997; giroux, 2003; rothstein, 2002). another mediating variable was horizontalindividualism described by triandis (1995) who notes differences between scandinavian culture and the u.s. in that, although both are individualistic rather than collective, the norwegians, finns, danes, and swedes do not readily accept the existence of great chasms of wealth in their societies, making their individualism horizontal. each citizen is primarily responsible for his or her own development, as is expected in an individualist culture, but it is embarrassing for swedes to be too rich or allow for others to be too poor. americans, conversely, accept these chasms (a vertical individualism), and acceptance that is evident in their unwillingness to create and sustain the type of social safety nets that exist in the nordic countries. the swedes’ egalitarian individualism may originate from a viking tradition dating back a millennium where a bowl of mead was shared with comrades, each man being careful not to take more than his share, a cultural norm now known file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%237 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%238 progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age 11 as lagom. in addition, a 19 th century novel a fugitive crosses his tracks by aksel sandemose has guided scandinavian culture specifically toward embracing the values of modesty, humility, and selfrestraint. this novel is the origin of jante’s law named after the fictional town that was the setting of sandemose’s story (dewitt, 2003). a related swedish tradition is that “no one blade of grass can stick out higher than another, for that blade will be the first to be cut down” (sandahl, 1997). in other words, be wary of those who seek attention to themselves. even if americans were to eliminate poverty and embrace lagom, they would still not be able to develop and sustain the swedish style of schooling without first restructuring the schools and school systems in such a way that power can be shared. the bureaucratic organizations that exist at the state and local levels in the u.s. would have to give way to flatter, more responsive systems (morgan, 1985). with the implementation of state and national standards in recent years, the u.s. school bureaucracies have ballooned, further removing the local stakeholders of education from relevant decision making (johnson, 2004; kohn, 2004; meier, 2002). the u.s., with 49 different state standards (at the time of this study, only iowa did not have statemandated academic standards), does not have a national system of education, despite the efforts of the so-called “no child left behind” initiative. although the swede’s system is nationalized, it is set in a myriad of “free schools,” as the elementary principal called them, where all the standards are malleable at the local and even the classroom levels. school reform in the u.s., especially since the publication of a nation at risk in 1983, has been a movement advocating “more of the same.” bracey proffers that schools are doing a better job at what they have been asked to do than ever before; that is, educate as many children as possible in the most efficient yet, rudimentary, manner (1998). the concern is the term “educate.” is education merely a regurgitation of often useless facts (the ability to perform well on standardized tests)? or is it the gaining of skills necessary to flourish in the future as espoused by chomsky 9 (2000)? toffler (1970) noted over 30 years ago that schools primarily prepare students to be 1) on time, 2) obedient, and 3) able to perform repetitive tasks; all skills, he contended, necessary for success in the industrial age. toffler (1980) claimed that the industrial age ended in 1955 when white-collar workers first outnumbered bluecollar workers in the u.s. why should local and state governments, and especially the federal government, support an education system that prepares citizens to live in the past? at a school board meeting in sweden observed in this study, a principal made a presentation about why her school and the schools in her district conduct schooling in a constructivist manner. she began her presentation by telling all the adults in attendance (mostly parents) that their experiences in school had no relevance to what their children were experiencing. the adults in the room, the principal explained, were schooled for the industrial age, a time that had long since passed in sweden. she insisted that the audience understand that her school’s and her school district’s educators were preparing the community’s children for both the present and the future: the global age, as she called it. the findings of this study may have important implications on u.s. schooling as it presumably prepares students to be successful workers in the global economy and capable participants in a democracy as the no child left behind legislation would indicate. swedish students were trusted to make important decisions regarding their learning and their behavior, freeing adults to concentrate on facilitating learning rather than controlling children and dispensing low-level knowledge. reich (2002) describes the successful workers of the post-industrial economy as “symbolic analysts” or “knowledgeworkers” who shun so-called “dumbed-down,” systematically routinized work (dobbins & boychuk, 1999), and the direct supervision that this work requires. in effect, autonomy (the marrying of trust and responsibility) is the necessary trait to be mastered if one is to find a satisfying and financially rewarding job in the global economy; otherwise a worker who requires direct supervision reminiscent of that found in u.s. schools, will be relegated to low-wage, little-or-no-benefits job, toiling in the lowest echelons of the service industry. knowledgework requires self-regulated and self-directed personnel who can be trusted to accept the responsibility of work and be relatively unsupervised, and responsible for their own actions (delors, 1998; reich, 1991; 2002). swedish educators and policy makers may understand this and have somehow implemented a system that is designed to foster a responsible worker while also preparing students to actively participate in a “public” democracy where the populace is required to be able to critically analyze their micro and macro environments (sehr, 1996; goodlad, 2001). if america is to compete in the post-industrial global economy and fashion itself as the beacon of file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%239 current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 democracy for rest of the world, its political and education leaders must develop educational settings and opportunities that promote the type of worker and citizen that is responsible and trusted to operate collaboratively in a self-regulated environment and to question the authority of those in power. the continued proliferation--perhaps the veritable existence--of democracy may depend on how the u.s. educates its citizens. footnotes 1 as of 2003, 121 of the world’s 192 nation-states (63%) were technically electoral democracies, up from 28% in 1950 (karatnycky et al, 2003). 2 swedish educators visited florida schools in 1999 to find how entrepreneurship was fostered in u.s. schools. they instead came away with the belief that these schools were infatuated with control rather than risk-taking and creativity (school management institute, 1999). 3 this poor rate of return surprised the principals and pre/compulsory school superintendent. completed surveys were returned to the central office at each school and mailed to the researcher. this collection method was problematic but necessary due to time constraints. the researcher acknowledges that follow-ups for non-respondents and/or interviews of a random sample of non-respondents would increase the generalizability of the teacher survey data across the three schools (see gall, borg, & gall, 1996, pp.302-4). 4 the syllabus for all swedish compulsory schooling (regeringskansliet, 1995) is 103 pages as compared to 1196 total pages found in four volumes (mathematics, science, social studies, language arts) for k-12 schooling in the state of ohio. 5 in post-columbine america, it is uncommon for school cafeterias to allow for metal utensils as these can be used as weapons, plus the u.s., relative to sweden, chooses to dispose of products rather than reuse them. when this was mentioned to teachers and administrators, they asked how u.s. students could possibly eat without utensils. mostly with their hands, it was explained, but they were given plastic “sporks” that were both forks and spoons--and relatively harmless. this so amused the swedes that the spork story leaked to the local newspaper which interviewed the researchers about violence in american schools and the ridiculous-sounding spork. 6 blind obedience is often conflated with democracy according to some scholars (e.g., goodlad, 1998; sehr, 1996; soder, 2001). instead, a strong democracy must depend upon a populace willing to be skeptical of rules and laws and accept them only if they can rationalize their existence or that by not following policy, they would disrupt the greater good of the environment ( barber, 1992; soder, 2001). 7 see david sehr’s case studies of democratic schools, deborah meier’s descriptions of the mission 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(2003). case study research (3rd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. http://www.foundationcoalition.org/publicati%09ons/journalpapers/fie97/1142.pdf http://www.foundationcoalition.org/publicati%09ons/journalpapers/fie97/1142.pdf http://www.inspriringteachers.com/articles/j%09ournaling http://www.inspriringteachers.com/articles/j%09ournaling http://www.inspriringteachers.com/articles/j%09ournaling http://www.inspriringteachers.com/articles/j%09ournaling http://www.cete.org/acve/docgen.asp?tbl=pa%09b&id-112 http://www.cete.org/acve/docgen.asp?tbl=pa%09b&id-112 http://712educators.about.com/cs/writingres%09ources/a/journals.htm http://712educators.about.com/cs/writingres%09ources/a/journals.htm http://www.nsdc.org/library/publications/jsd%09/killion203.cfm http://www.nsdc.org/library/publications/jsd%09/killion203.cfm http://liberalarts.udmercy.edu/~koontzc2/me%09nuartcl.html http://liberalarts.udmercy.edu/~koontzc2/me%09nuartcl.html http://webphysics.iupui.edu/jitt/what.html http://www.iupui.edu/~adulted/mwr2p/prior/%09orem.htm http://www.iupui.edu/~adulted/mwr2p/prior/%09orem.htm http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm05/eq%09m0519.asp?print=yes http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm05/eq%09m0519.asp?print=yes http://s11.stanford.edu/projects/tomprof/new%09tomprof/postings/176.html http://s11.stanford.edu/projects/tomprof/new%09tomprof/postings/176.html current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 2006 article citation nordgren r.d. (2006, feb).e-journaling: progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age. current issues in education [on-line], 9(5). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number5/ author notes r. d. nordgren cleveland state university nordgren was an english teacher and an assistant principal at the middle and high school levels and is author of making schooling relevant for the global age: fulfilling our moral obligation (rowan littlefield, 2003). he is currently an assistant professor and coordinator of the master’s in urban secondary teaching program at cleveland state university. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation nordgren, r. d. (2006). e-journaling: progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age. current issues in education, 9(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1597 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1597 volume 26, issue 1 may 02, 2025 issn 1099-839x editorial introduction: (re)designing education for better futures: student-centered and collaborative approaches to equity and transformation jami carmichael arizona state university fredrick kofi ayirah arizona state university kelly brown arizona state university lindsie spengler arizona state university abstract: in this editorial for volume 26, issue 1 of current issues in education, we build on the editors’ previous call to slow down and imagine what can/is emerging, even amidst crisis. against the backdrop of escalating political attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (dei) in education— particularly under the second trump administration—we highlight how scholars and practitioners are intentionally designing education rooted in care, belonging, and justice. this issue features ten articles organized into three thematic strands: centering student identity and well-being to improve educational experiences; reimagining support systems: experiences of belonging in higher education; and building bridges: collaborative approaches to educational transformation. collectively, these works exemplify the power of interdisciplinary, studentcentered, and equity-driven research to sustain transformative educational practices in turbulent times. we argue that the future of education must be shaped not only through resistance, but through ethical, relational, and creative redesign—reflecting the futures we dare to imagine. keywords: current issues in education; student belonging; student well-being; educational transformation; equitable education. citation: carmichael, j., ayirah, f. k., brown, k., & spengler, l. (2025). editorial introduction: (re)designing education for better futures: student-centered and collaborative approaches to equity and transformation. current issues in education, 26(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2399 accepted: 04/30/2025 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2399 carmichael et al.: editorial introduction current issues in education, 26(1) 2 editorial introduction: (re)designing education for better futures: student-centered and collaborative approaches to equity and transformation in the previous issue of current issues in education (cie), our editors called for slowing down—not as an act of passivity, but as a necessary intervention in a world gripped by uncertainty and instability. they invited readers to pause, reflect, and recognize the emerging possibilities arising amidst crisis (see desimoni et al., 2024). in this first issue of vol. 26 (spring 2025), we take the next step: from emergence to intention. the ten articles in this volume remind us what it means to move with care and intentionality in educational research, even while attacks on education continue to rise. what becomes possible when we design education not in reaction to crisis, but in alignment with equity, belonging, and justice? the manuscripts in this issue address this question by exploring how educational experiences can be transformed when we center student identity, reimagine support systems, and build bridges across institutional and disciplinary divides. together, they reveal a field in motion—one that is not only responding to complexity, but actively shaping educational futures with purpose and care. as an interdisciplinary, student-led journal, cie continues to serve as a space for bold, boundary-crossing scholarship. this issue reflects our commitment to bridging diverse disciplines, reaching global audiences, and embracing a wide range of theories, methodologies, and educational concerns. the works featured here span continents and contexts, from primary and secondary schools in perú (lee fergusson, javier ortiz cabrejos, anna bonshek) to graduate stem-focused learning communities in the united states (andrew pendola, john appiah, william murrah, clarissa beavers), highlighting the shared challenges—and creative responses—emerging across educational environments. whether through narrative inquiry (tijuana rollins), cross-sectional design research (i̇lhan i̇lter and stefan rathert), or scale development (ed harris, katherine curry, jentre olsen, ashlyn fiegener, jam khojasteh), these articles exemplify the diverse methodologies represented in this issue. this kind of scholarship—rooted in student experiences, grounded in well-being and belonging, and attentive to the complexities of educational issues—is not just timely; it is necessary. as educational spaces face increasing political pressure, the work featured in this issue reminds us of the power of research to resist erasure, affirm diverse student identities, and envision more equitable educational systems. while the previous editorial centered on global educational crises and rollbacks, it also anticipated the sweeping changes a second trump administration might bring. in this issue, we turn our attention to the fallout already unfolding within the first four months of the second trump presidency—specifically, the escalating attacks on education in the united states. since january 2025, a sweeping set of executive orders, legal threats, and agency directives have targeted any educational practice perceived to center diversity, equity, and inclusion (dei), race, gender, sexuality, or systemic inequality (binkley, 2025; shultz, 2025). these efforts have not only made public schools the target of attacks by the very government meant to support them, but also directly threatened the safety and well-being of historically marginalized students (annamma & stovall, 2025). in prek–12 schools, the trump administration has moved to withdraw federal funding from districts that continue race-conscious programming, including tutoring, mentorship, and curricula such as ethnic studies and black history (goldstein, 2025). the u.s. department of current issues in education, 26(1) 3 education's office for civil rights issued a “dear colleague” letter threatening investigations and enforcement against any use of race in admissions, financial aid, staffing, or even teacher training programs. the administration has gone as far as demanding that districts sign attestations declaring they do not use “‘illegal d.e.i. practices’” (goldstein, 2025, para. 2)—a vague and sweeping mandate that could jeopardize critical services for low-income students, including free meals and access to counselors (goldstein, 2025; shultz, 2025). higher education has faced similar scrutiny. the trump administration gave colleges just two weeks to dismantle dei programs or risk losing federal funds (brinkley, 2025). scholarships designated for students of color, culturally relevant curricula, and race-conscious admissions are now being flagged as discriminatory under an expansive reinterpretation of the supreme court’s 2023 affirmative action ruling (brinkley, 2025; schultz, 2025). the administration has also begun suspending and threatening to cancel billions in research funding to elite universities— including columbia, harvard, and princeton—as part of a broader campaign to eliminate what it deems political and ideological bias on campuses (bender et al., 2025). these measures are not only destabilizing institutions but also chilling academic freedom and stifling educational research on race, equity, and social justice—prompting lawsuits against the u.s. department of education by democracy forward on behalf of the society for research on educational effectiveness and the american educational research association (aera, 2025). in this political climate, it is tempting to retreat or focus on compliance. but as lange and lee (2024) remind us, educational responses to anti-dei attacks must not only resist systemic erasure—they must center our shared humanity. their call for honest conversations, standing by our commitments to equity and justice, and using all available tools to accomplish our goals serves as a guiding framework for educational researchers and practitioners navigating this moment. we also draw inspiration from scholars of color who have long resisted oppressive educational systems, from bell hooks’ (2018) call for radical love in teaching, to gloria ladsonbillings’ (1995) foundational work on culturally relevant pedagogy. and we take heart in the collective resistance emerging across institutions: universities in the big ten academic alliance have begun forming a mutual defense compact to share resources, legal counsel, and public support when targeted by political attacks on dei and academic freedom (pendell, 2025). these acts of solidarity remind us that we are not alone, and that even in difficult times, we can continue the work by showing up, speaking out, and protecting one another. in their editorial, desimoni and colleagues’ (2024) imagined cie as a beacon of hope during turbulent times—a space to slow down and recognize the emergent—with this issue we aim to carry that light forward, illuminating how educators and researchers are continuing equity-oriented, student-centered work, even as the storm grows stronger. this issue of cie offers examples of how educational researchers imagine more just educational systems that value student well-being, belonging, and empowerment. from highlighting the experience of mexican american women preservice teachers (blanca n. ibarra) to examining how collaborative esport spaces empower female students (mila zhu), these articles move beyond compliance to actively sustain the work of care, equity, and inclusion in education. to illuminate the many ways educators and researchers are designing education with care—especially in times of political pressure and systemic retrenchment—we have organized the ten articles in this issue into three thematic strands: centering student identity and wellbeing to improve educational experiences; reimagining support systems: experiences of belonging in higher education; and building bridges: collaborative approaches to educational transformation. these themes reflect intersecting commitments to student identity current issues in education, 26(1) 4 and well-being, the reimagining of support systems, and collaborative approaches to educational transformation. theme 1: centering student identity and well-being to improve educational experiences brings together four articles that examine how educational environments shape, affirm, and challenge identity, particularly for those who have been historically marginalized, and how these identities influence engagement and persistence. first, in their article, “empowering female students through esports programs: insights from a vocational high school,” mila zhu explores how esports environments, including educational practices, digital cultures, and social-cultural contexts can both reinforce and challenge gender norms for female students. the author found that collaborative design and coding spaces can empower female students and foster more inclusive participation. this study reveals how esports programs can serve as powerful spaces for reimagining participation in tech-related learning environments, disrupting traditional gender norms through collaboration, expanding who feels welcome, and offering a model for more equitable futures in education. second, blanca n. ibarra, in their article “motivations for entering the teaching profession: illuminating the voices of female pre-service teachers on the u.s.-mexico border,” sheds light on how cultural identity, lived experiences, and intrinsic motivations shape mexican american women's decisions to pursue teaching careers. through qualitative survey responses, ibarra reveals that many pre-service teachers are fueled by a deep desire to make a difference, which is often rooted in both the encouragement they receive and the harms they endured in their own schooling. by centering voices often pushed to the margins, this study underscores the transformative potential of educators who carry forward not only knowledge, but commitments to justice, care, and representation in classrooms that mirror the communities they serve. third, lee fergusson, javier ortiz cabrejos, and anna bonshek, in their article, “a comparative study of health, school performance and wellbeing in perúvian school children and adolescents who meditate,” examine how meditation practices influence students’ physical health, academic performance, and personal well-being, expanding conventional metrics of student development. drawing from a cross-sectional study of students in high-altitude regions of perú, the authors found strong correlations between the regular practice of transcendental meditation and improved cognitive, emotional, and academic outcomes. in doing so, this study invites us to consider how integrating holistic practice into school routines can nurture student well-being in ways that are culturally responsive, low-cost, and community-centered, particularly in under-resourced or rural settings. fourth, i̇lhan i̇lter and stefan rathert, in their article “academic achievement and postgraduate career commitment among pre-service teachers: the mediating role of science identity,” the authors highlight the importance of science identity and how students perceive themselves as part of the scientific community in mediating the relationship between academic achievement and postgraduate career commitment among pre-service teachers. the findings suggest that a stronger science identity encourages students to pursue further education, promoting their academic and professional growth. the authors stress the need for educational practices that enhance recognition, competence, and interest, which supports students’ personal development and long-term well-being. this work underscores how cultivating science identity, alongside academic achievement, can support more inclusive, student-centered approaches that improve teacher development and contribute to educational advancement. current issues in education, 26(1) 5 theme 2: reimagining support systems: experiences of belonging in higher education includes three studies that examine how higher education institutions can more intentionally support diverse learners through student-centered design. these articles highlight the power of responsive learning communities, flexible pathways, and adaptable pedagogies to foster belonging, especially for students navigating structural barriers in postsecondary education. for example, in their article, “returning to reach higher: exploring the perceptions and lived experiences of adult learners pursuing bachelor's degrees,” tijuana rollins uses narrative inquiry to explore the challenges and motivations of adult learners re-entering higher education. rollins highlights how adult learners navigate institutional barriers, financial strain, and multiple identities and responsibilities while pursuing academic goals. this study reminds us that designing educational systems with care means understanding the material and emotional labor these students carry—and reshaping institutional practices to offer them belonging and support. next, in “strategies for efficacy and belongingness towards foundational stem skills for at-promise graduate students: the qmer learning community,” andrew pendola, john appiah, william murrah, and clarissa beavers present the qmer learning community as an innovative, community-driven model aimed at enhancing both research skills and belonging among at-promise graduate students, particularly those who are first-generation, low-income, or from racially minoritized groups. the qmer model stands out for its emphasis on nonhierarchical, inclusive learning environments, peer-led workshops, and practical skill development. survey and interview findings underscore the program’s impact, with participants, especially black, first-generation, and low-income students, reporting greater inclusion, academic confidence, and a sense of belonging. the program’s thoughtful design, centered on accessibility, validation, and interdisciplinary connection, demonstrates how supplementary learning environments outside traditional coursework can serve as effective support systems. by fostering identity, voice, and value, the qmer model not only promotes academic success but also strengthens social integration, offering a powerful framework for reimagining support systems in higher education. finally, in “adapting educational practices and technologies in the post-covid-19 era: a scoping review,” sara gonçalves, bárbara longa, isabel barroso, conceição rainho, and vítor rodrigues explore how educational practices and technologies have adapted in a post-covid environment. the authors examine how the covid-19 pandemic disrupted traditional learning systems, prompting a rapid shift to online and distance education. audiovisual tools—such as video conferencing, pre-recorded lectures, and multimedia content— became crucial in maintaining instructional continuity, enhancing flexibility, personalization, and student engagement. however, challenges like technological access, digital literacy disparities, and the digital divide persist. in this scoping review, the authors examine how instructional practices and technologies have adapted in the post-pandemic era, focusing on the impacts of tools like mobile apps, subtitles, flipped classrooms, and scaffolding techniques on learning outcomes and student motivation. the authors identify existing research gaps and offer insights for future educational policies and practices. by exploring audiovisual integration across traditional, blended, and online contexts, this study informs educators, policymakers, and researchers on how to foster more inclusive and effective educational experiences in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. theme 3: building bridges: collaborative approaches to educational transformation represents three articles that underscore the importance of building bridges current issues in education, 26(1) 6 between theory and practice, policy and pedagogy, and individual actors and the systems they seek to influence. educational transformation rarely happens in isolation. whether responding to external mandates, addressing persistent inequities, or striving to better meet the needs of diverse learners, the authors included in this theme demonstrate how sustainable change emerges through collaboration across disciplines, institutions, roles, and lived experiences. for example, in kimberly davidson, amy williams, cristina washell, and kellie whelan-kim's article, “adopting science of reading standards: one department’s story,” the authors document how a teacher preparation program navigated the complexities of aligning existing curriculum with newly state-mandated literacy reforms. rather than approaching the change as a compliance mandate, the department utilized internal collaboration to shape the curriculum in pedagogically sound ways. this work highlights how professional communities can act as sense-makers and innovators in moments of top-down change. additionally, in “aligning education with student needs: lessons from gifted and talented education,” talbot s. hook and gregory t. boldt push beyond policy adaptation and into systemic redesign. drawing on critiques of traditional, age-based models of schooling, the authors advocate for flexible, learner-centered pathways that better align with students’ needs, strengths, and aspirations. the article invites educators and leaders to collaborate across roles and structures to reimagine what equity and excellence can look like in tandem. not as competing ideals, but as co-constructed possibilities. the authors advocate for more adaptable and personalized learning pathways and explore how educational systems can be redesigned to foster both equity and excellence by drawing insights from innovations and critiques in gifted education. as much as the article critiques rigid, age-based learning models, it advocates for more flexible, personalized educational structures, highlighting the transformative potential of embracing diverse entry points into teaching. the focus groups and surveys utilized in the study served as collaborative spaces where teachers, many of whom came to the profession later in life or from different industries, shared how their unique journeys enriched both their classrooms and school communities. by centering their voices, the study not only pushes back on one-size-fitsall approaches to teacher preparation but also offers concrete insights into how educational systems can be reimagined to better support equity, retention, and excellence better. doing so builds bridges between teacher diversity, professional resilience, and the larger transformation of education itself. finally, ed harris, katherine curry, jentre olsen, ashlyn fiegener, and jam khojasteh explore educational transformation in their article “value creation in social learning spaces: scale development.” the authors transformed an existing theoretical framework into a practical tool for capturing the various values and benefits of social learning experiences. their work seeks to equip educators, facilitators, and researchers with a means to assess and enhance collaborative environments. this contribution reminds us that educational transformation is not just about relationships but also about creating shared language, evidence, and metrics that can support collective growth over time. grouping the articles into these three themes, allowed us to not only organize this issue but also illuminate a shared commitment across diverse contexts: to reimagine education as a space where student identity, belonging, and collaboration are essential to educational equity and transformation. as scholars, educators, and students committed to better educational futures, we are called to defend the values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access, and to boldly reimagine and redesign education itself. in a moment when political pressures threaten to narrow the possibilities of what education can be, the works in this issue remind us that the future of current issues in education, 26(1) 7 education must be crafted with care, justice-oriented innovation, and a deep commitment to student experiences and well-being. the path forward is not merely procedural or defensive—it is ethical, imaginative, and relational. it demands centering student identity and well-being, rethinking the support systems that foster belonging, and building collaborative bridges that can sustain educational transformation across communities and contexts. the scholars featured in this issue offer blueprints for this work, demonstrating that even in times of retrenchment, educational research can illuminate pathways toward more just, inclusive, and life-affirming futures. we hope this issue inspires readers to continue showing up—for students, for one another, and for the expansive possibilities that intentional, care-centered education can bring. * * * we express our deepest gratitude to the chief editor, victoria desimoni, and the dedicated 2024-2025 editorial board for their invaluable leadership and contributions to the cie journal. their vision and commitment have been instrumental in shaping and guiding the journal. special thanks go to our consultant, stephanie mcbride-schreiner, for her unwavering support and invaluable expertise, which has greatly enriched our student-led journal, and to felicity warren for providing thoughtful guidance and valuable resources. we extend our appreciation to the student editors, whose diligence ensures the smooth operation of the journal, and to all the copy editors and associate editors for their meticulous work and attention to detail. our gratitude to arizona state university faculty, especially our faculty advisors, dr. danah henriksen and dr. frank serafini, for their vital guidance and encouragement, strengthening the journal's foundations. we are honored to acknowledge the authors who entrusted us with their manuscripts, enabling us to publish their thoughtful and significant contributions. your work continues to enrich our field and propel the journal forward. to our reviewers, old and new, thank you for your dedication and commitment. we recognize the challenges of securing reviewers, and we are immensely grateful for your faith in the journal and your relentless work in evaluating submissions. finally, we extend thanks to our readers for their support. your continued engagement inspires the journal to thrive and innovate, creating a vibrant platform for scholarly exchange. references american educational research association (aera). (2025, april). aera files lawsuit against education department. newsroom. https://www.aera.net/newsroom/aera-highlights-enewsletter/aera-highlights-april-2025/aera-files-lawsuit-against-educationdepartme annamma, s. a., & stovall, d. (2025, february 24). standing up to the new segregationists. inside higher ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2025/02/24/collegesmust-stand-new-segregationists-opinion bender, m. c., blinder, a., & swan, j. (2025, april 14). inside trump's pressure campaign on universities. the new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/us/politics/trump-pressure-universities.html binkley, c. (2025, february 18). trump administration gives schools a deadline to end dei programs or risk losing federal money. oregon public broadcasting. https://www.aera.net/newsroom/aera-highlights-e-newsletter/aera-highlights-april-2025/aera-files-lawsuit-against-education-department https://www.aera.net/newsroom/aera-highlights-e-newsletter/aera-highlights-april-2025/aera-files-lawsuit-against-education-department https://www.aera.net/newsroom/aera-highlights-e-newsletter/aera-highlights-april-2025/aera-files-lawsuit-against-education-department https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2025/02/24/colleges-must-stand-new-segregationists-opinion https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2025/02/24/colleges-must-stand-new-segregationists-opinion https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/us/politics/trump-pressure-universities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/us/politics/trump-pressure-universities.html https://www.opb.org/article/2025/02/18/trump-administration-gives-schools-deadline-end-dei-programs-risk-losing-federal-money/ current issues in education, 26(1) 8 https://www.opb.org/article/2025/02/18/trump-administration-gives-schools-deadlineend-dei-programs-risk-losing-federal-money/ desimoni, v., stone, c., kim, m., & chaomuangkhong, t. (2024). editorial introduction: in the face of urgency, making space for the emerging. current issues in education, 25(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2302 goldstein, d. (2025, april 17). trump targets k-12. the new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/briefing/trump-targets-k-12.html hooks, bell. (2018). all about love. william morrow paperbacks. ladson-billings, g. (1995). toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. american educational research journal, 32(3), 465–491. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465 lange, a. c., & lee, j. a. (2024). centering our humanity: responding to anti-dei efforts across higher education. journal of college student development, 65(1), 113–116. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/919356 schultz, b. (2025, february 18). trump admin. warns schools: end race-based programs or risk losing funds. education week. https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/trump-adminwarns-schools-end-race-based-programs-or-risk-losing-funds/2025/02 author’s notes jami carmichael orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-7723-0646 arizona state university jlcarmic@asu.edu fredrick kofi ayirah orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7150-8261 arizona state university fayirah@asu.edu kelly brown orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1795-4247 arizona state university kelly.brown1@asu.edu lindsie spengler orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7619-2242 arizona state university lcclark@asu.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://www.opb.org/article/2025/02/18/trump-administration-gives-schools-deadline-end-dei-programs-risk-losing-federal-money/ https://www.opb.org/article/2025/02/18/trump-administration-gives-schools-deadline-end-dei-programs-risk-losing-federal-money/ https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2302 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/briefing/trump-targets-k-12.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/briefing/trump-targets-k-12.html https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465 https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465 https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/919356 https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/919356 https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/trump-admin-warns-schools-end-race-based-programs-or-risk-losing-funds/2025/02 https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/trump-admin-warns-schools-end-race-based-programs-or-risk-losing-funds/2025/02 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-7723-0646 mailto:jlcarmic@asu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7150-8261 mailto:fayirah@asu.edu https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1795-4247 mailto:kelly.brown1@asu.edu https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7619-2242 mailto:lcclark@asu.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ current issues in education, 26(1) 9 cie template current issues in education, 19(3) 1 volume 19, issue 3 february 23, 2017 issn 1099-839x engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom amanda borton capina and gregory bryan university of manitoba abstract: reading engagement is like a puzzle consisting of many pieces to emplace for successful engagement to occur. the author, a french immersion teacher/researcher, found that many of her grade one reluctant readers—those students who could read but chose not to—approached reading with some pieces of the puzzle. they had strategies and knowledge but lacked motivation to engage in reading. this led to the question: how do reluctant readers in my classroom respond to practices designed to increase their motivation to read? this study is qualitative-oriented action research. the author fulfilled the dual role of teacher and researcher as she introduced and taught seven classroom practices to see which ones helped the reluctant readers to increase their motivation to read. by applying multiple data collection methods the teacher/researcher set out to record what reluctant readers had to say about each of the classroom practices. keywords: reading motivation; reading engagement; action research; classroom practice apa-style citation: borton capina, a., & bryan, g. (2017). engaging reluctant learners in a french immersion classroom. current issues in education, 19(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1642 accepted: november 21st, 2016 this study was designed to investigate how reluctant english readers in a french immersion setting responded to classroom practices that were especially intended to increase their motivation and engagement in reading. additionally, this research was simultaneously intended to inform the first author’s own teaching practices. the first author (amanda) was an early year’s french immersion teacher who worked with readers of various capabilities and attitudes towards reading. for ease of readability, hereafter this study is reported in the first-person voice of the first author of this article. literature review for the purpose of this study, two primary foci were identified for the review of the literature. because this study involved exploration of classroom practices designed to increase the motivation of unmotivated readers, the twin foci were motivation and motivational classroom practices. http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1642 current issues in education, 19(3) 2 capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom motivation never underestimate the power of motivation. when a student is motivated to do something, whether it is an assignment, playing a sport, or reading, it is far more likely to get done and done well. students who are motivated to read, read more often inside and outside of school (hiebert 2009) and outperform unmotivated readers in school tests (schwabe, mcelvany, & trendtel, 2015). it is important when discussing motivation to note the two different types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. intrinsic motivation is one indicator of a students’ desire to read. there is a high correlation between intrinsic motivation and the frequency and breadth of students’ reading (hiebert, 2009). intrinsically motivated readers will often read at school, at home, for work, or for fun. it is important to foster this motivation in students. this can be done by supporting self-selection of books, access to books, and positive reading environments (guthrie & wigfield, 1997). to help intrinsically motivate young readers, teachers should allow them lots of time, opportunity, and choice in their reading (fink, 2006). extrinsic motivation often involves prompting and rewards for completion of tasks. ormrod (1998) says, “extrinsically motivated students may have to be enticed, cajoled, or prodded [and] are often interested in performing easy tasks and meeting minimal standards” (p. 476). there might be little pleasure found here for reading (guthrie & wigfield, 1997) because reading is not in and of itself seen as rewarding. rather, other rewards—other values—are being imposed. as gambrell and marinak (2009) said, if you want children to value pizza give them pizza as rewards for reading. optimally, motivating students to read would not be about offering rewards and stickers. intrinsically motivating students is what is desirable, showing students why reading is important and enjoyable, showing them different means of reading that are both quiet and socially charged, as well as by providing them with a multitude of opportunities to read. cunningham and allington (2007) said that, in their experience, “major motivation for reading by students came from having time for independent reading of books of their own choosing and teachers reading aloud to them” (p. 13). by being aware of our students and motivational techniques we can appropriately employ those techniques most likely to work with each student (hebert, 2008). in the following section describing study participants, mention is made of why the participants in this study were identified as lacking in motivation. classroom practices as powell-brown (2006) said, it is important for educators to help reluctant readers “develop a love for recreational reading” (p. 88). to do this, educators should employ classroom practices that are engaging as well as educational. a review of the professional and research literature was conducted. as a result of that review, seven engaging and educational practices were identified as capable of being efficiently implementable in my classroom. the study participants were then asked about these seven practices. many of the classroom practices in this study had a social component to them and therefore necessarily involved oral language as well as written language. the oral language/socialization is a key component. reading does not have to be an isolating, quiet event; it can be noisy and shared. this opportunity to socialize can make reading more personally meaningful to a reluctant reader. classroom practices that engage students socially can be a natural transition from active enjoyable playground experiences to active enjoyable reading experiences. as hiebert (2009) writes, “just as they crave social interaction on the playground, capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom current issues in education, 19(3) 3 when in the classroom, discussion and collaboration are natural parts of a student’s learning and development, and students will readily embrace collaboration with peers as a reason to read” (p. 66). throughout the use of all strategies, it is important to note the significance that the teacher has in showing and modelling to the students how to engage in the various practices, since in the classroom, and in some students’ lives, the teacher is the primary reading role model. research has shown that when teachers increase their modelling and demonstration of reading strategies and practices, in turn, students’ reading achievement can increase (allington, 2001). the following seven practices were the classroom practices chosen for this study. as well as providing opportunities for social interactions, increasing knowledge, and strategy development, the research literature suggested these practices were motivating. drama. for many students, the use of drama in the reading classroom is a different way of reading and interacting with books and can lead to further exploration of texts (charters & gately, 1986). since drama is performance-oriented, it is an approach that engages students and teacher in conversations about what has been read and how it can best be presented through a different medium (honig, 1996). drama provides many opportunities for social interactions between peers and texts, allowing students to extend their knowledge of, and relationship with, the story. drama can be used in many different ways to engage students in their reading, including acting out a favourite part of the story, conducting interviews with main characters, and improvisation (cullingford, 2001). reader’s theatre. reader’s theatre involves students working in small groups to read a story out loud, each student taking on the role of one of the characters in the story. how students choose to represent the voice of the character is left open to their interpretation of the story and the character. reader’s theatre is a way for students to practice their oral reading while working on reading with expression, intonation, and appropriate speed (fink, 2006). it is a strategy that allows reluctant readers to actively participate in reading and to relate to characters from common books/stories of interest. this type of engagement can help with comprehension, making the book more exciting to the reader (powell-brown, 2006) as well as prompting students to read more books from the author or to read books in a similar genre. reader’s theatre allows for more than just the retelling of a story, it opens the door for students to work together, problem solve, and generate meaningful conversations and questions that can facilitate their learning or promote their interests. author’s theatre. in her research, haas dyson (1997) used a similar strategy to reader’s theatre entitled ‘author’s theatre’, which allows students to take their own stories and have their peers act them out. students create, write and read their own stories, as well as those of their peers to engage in author’s theatre. author’s theatre provides students with the chance to make social connections to one another, as well as to bring their play lives and interests into the classroom in a meaningful and valued way. sharing their knowledge and interests in this way can motivate and engage students, by providing them with a sense of community and belonging in the classroom (hiebert, 2009). the nature of author’s theatre allows for students to share a part of themselves. read aloud. read aloud is one of the most influential factors motivating students to read (cunningham & allington, 2007). read aloud is story time. it is when the teacher selects a story to read to the class. read aloud allows for reluctant readers to engage in stories without the burden of decoding. many reluctant readers may say that they do not like to read; however, very few children decline the opportunity to listen to a good story (beers, 2003). teachers who read capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom current issues in education, 19(3) 4 aloud to their students have the opportunity to teach them how to love language, stories, and reading (cullingford, 2001; powell-brown, 2006; robinson, mckenna, & wedman, 2000). reading aloud should involve more than just pulling a book off a shelf and reading through the pages. it needs to be done with purpose—a favourite story, a story with meaning, a book that ties in with something that is being taught—and it should be read with expression and enthusiasm. most often, stories that are read aloud are the ones that students gravitate towards later, when they get to choose their own reading material. those books are the ones that many students want to read during self-selected reading time or to borrow for home reading (beers, 2003; powellbrown, 2006). literacy circles. literacy circles are similar to book clubs and their structure is designed for students to share books that they have read and share thoughts about what they read (powell-brown, 2006). literacy circles, where students work together in small groups, allow for reluctant readers to engage in reading a text of their choosing. students are able to share and discuss books that interest them with their peers, which can enhance their experience with the book and positively increase their attitudes towards reading (powell-brown, 2006). literacy circles allow for students to talk with one another, share their thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. inquiry. inquiry as a strategy to engage reluctant readers can be an interesting process for both students and teachers. inquiry revolves around the students’ interests and is typically geared towards areas of non-fiction, which in turn is designed to lead to student-directed learning projects within the classroom. when teachers allow students to generate topics of interest to be explored in the classroom then they are allowing students’ a choice and a voice in what they are learning and how they will learn it. this provides students the opportunity to select their own texts to find information as well as their own means to finding it (edmunds & bauserman, 2006; hiebert, 2009). inquiry is assisted by the teacher, but enacted by the students. success with inquiry could be due to the fact that teachers use what students are interested in and what their desires are to motivate them to read and write (cunningham & allington, 2007). self-selection. throughout the day, students should be encouraged to make self-selected reading choices. whilst there are elements of self-selection in all of the above practices, in this case the self-selection of books is done purely for enjoyment. that is to say, unlike drama, reader’s theatre, author’s theatre, literacy circles, read aloud and inquiry, there is no activity required beyond reading for pleasure. the amount of time set aside for self-selected reading depends on the age of the children but it is important that time is set aside for it every day (depree & iverson, 1994). the reason self-selected reading time works so well is that all students have the opportunity to read a text of interest to them (allington, 2001). the selfselection of books allows students the chance to read alone, with a friend, or with a teacher. having the opportunity to choose has the potential to motivate students to read (bryan, 2009). purpose of conducting the study in a french immersion setting gambrell (1996) wrote that reading engagement consists of four main components— strategies, knowledge, motivation, and social interactions. these components act as pieces of a puzzle. when all pieces are connected, a student is able to be engaged in reading. however, when pieces are missing, students may struggle to engage. i have found over the years that many of my students who are reluctant readers come with only some pieces of this puzzle—usually they have the knowledge and strategies to read, and interact socially about reading, but sometimes are lacking the motivation necessary to be engaged in reading. they can read but often choose not to. students who remain unmotivated and reluctant to read early can end up with a life-time distaste for reading (worthy, 1996). motivation is a key to engaging students capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom current issues in education, 19(3) 5 alike, including reluctant readers (bryan, 2009; hebert, 2008). for that reason, it becomes important to recognize the information that they bring with them as valid, and to use their knowledge to find ways to motivate their reading. it is also necessary for reluctant readers to be provided with multiple opportunities to interact socially with their teachers and their peers. after all, despite traditional notions that quiet classrooms are productive ones, “silence in the room is not an indicator of student engagement” (hiebert, 2009, p. 68) or productivity. having studied the professional and research literature, i found many suggestions of how to motivate reluctant readers and ways to implement opportunities for them to socially interact with reading. however, the literature was generally presented from a monolingual perspective, which left me wondering how these suggestions would work in a bilingual classroom. would these suggestions be as successful in a classroom setting that had less time set aside daily for them? because of french language arts, french immersion classrooms generally have less teaching time allotted for english language arts (ela)—approximately one hour daily is all the time teachers have to teach english. yet, regardless of whether a student is in an english class or a french immersion class there are still the same expectations in terms of reading levels and reading development. these expectations, with limited time to meet them, can be stressful and daunting for classroom teachers. since teaching time is limited in ela, it is imperative to find the most effective and efficient classroom practices to engage all readers, especially those who are reluctant. getting reluctant readers to read in their first, let alone second, language can be difficult. providing students with classroom practices that motivate them and that are socially interactive in english could increase their engagement of reading in all subject areas. when students read more in english they improve their english first language. this allows them to use that increased english knowledge and transfer it to their french second language. given the limited time, finding those practices that are most successful in engaging and motivating reluctant readers will help teachers create an ela program that effectively and efficiently helps students meet academic expectations. research question it is important that students not only learn how to read but also enjoy reading. the participants in this study were capable but reluctant readers. while i recognize that descriptors such as capable and reluctant are value-laden labels, such terms are necessary here for clarity. that is to say, these study participants had the strategies and knowledge to read, as well as participate in purposeful social interactions, but were lacking the motivation to become engaged readers. they did not find reading enjoyable and they rarely participated in reading on their own. with this in mind, the research question that i sought to answer was: how do reluctant english readers in a french immersion setting respond to classroom practices designed to increase their motivation to read? methodology since i conducted my research with my own students, i used qualitative-oriented action research. action research, which is cyclical and ongoing, allowed for me to be both teacher and researcher and to work within a ‘real-world’ situation, which was my own classroom. by applying this method of research, i was able to create a research environment that encouraged co-learning between myself and students, and the opportunity to learn and apply my findings to my own teaching as it occurred. participants were asked about their views on a series of different classroom practices. these practices were designed to enhance their engagement through motivation. additionally, current issues in education, 19(3) 6 capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom participants were observed to see what evidence their behaviours suggested about their levels of motivation pertaining to the various practices. school setting the school, which for the purpose of confidentiality will be referred to as john j. school, was in an urban school district in western canada. john j. school was a bilingual dual track nursery to grade six school with 365 students. the cultural make-up of the school was diverse, with caucasian, indigenous, spanish, african-american, and asian students. there was one educational assistant assigned to work with a small group of english as an additional language (eal) learners. john j. school had higher enrollments in their french immersion program, with the highest number of students being in kindergarten and grade one. in the community, john j. school was the only school to offer french immersion, and therefore received many students from out of catchment areas. the socio-economic makeup of the community was low income and working class. many of the families in the community were young parents with more than one child. i worked in a grade one french immersion classroom and had a total of 20 students. for all but one, whose first language was mandarin, the first language for these students was english. my classroom consisted of 14 boys and six girls, and at the time of this study most students were 6 years old, with a few having just turned 7. my students were taught primarily in french, with only 60 minutes a day being allotted to ela. my day was structured so that ela was taught in the afternoon, typically after lunch unless students were scheduled for physical education. nineteen of my students [those who first language was english] attended french kindergarten where all of their instruction was in french. therefore, this was their first time participating in a structured ela program. classroom setting mcniff and whitehead (2008) discussed research occurring in our living practices, defining this as research collected on site, and in my case, the classroom. by conducting research in my classroom, it allowed for me, as the researcher, to reflect on the action (participants engaging in classroom practices designed to increase their motivation to read) as it was occurring and to take a step back to reflect on it after. schön (1983) refers to this as reflective practice, which is both reflection in-action and reflection on-action (mcniff & whitehead, 2008, p. 144). one of the common elements of ela time in my classroom was what the students and i referred to as “explore time”. explore time was an opportunity for students to participate in activities of their choosing. these activities included the use of such items as lego, the sand table, and computers. alternatively, students could choose more “traditional” classroom activities including reading, writing, drawing, and acting. all students in the classroom were taught and exposed to the same classroom practices as the study participants. since daily reading activities occurred in the classroom, and i was observing their reading behaviors, the classroom was the ideal place for data collection to occur. study participants written parental permission was obtained for each study participant and pseudonyms were employed when reporting the study results. in this study, i employed purposive, convenience sampling. the children selected for participation in this study were three boys who were capable but unmotivated grade one readers from my own french immersion classroom. in mark’s case, he would become defiant when asked to read and would often argue with me or worse, throw his shoes when told he needed to engage in reading. when jon was asked to participate in reading he would sit there and play with his pencils, talk with his peers, and repeatedly asked to use the bathroom. sonic’s reaction to reading was similarly current issues in education, 19(3) 7 capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom unmotivated; he would engage in unrelated conversations about recess with his peers and wander the room instead of reading. a brief description of each study participants’ background information, general academics, reading, language, personality, and interests can be found in table 1. table 1. summary of study participants mark jon sonic background information  6 years of age  caucasian  lived within walking distance of the school  youngest child of two in a nuclear family  completed french immersion nursery and kindergarten  working class family  known to teacher since 2 years old (had taught older sibling)  6 years of age  chilean descent  second generation canadian  split family home  mother remarried  lived in neighboring community  bussed to school  youngest child of two  completed french immersion nursery and kindergarten  working class family  known to teacher since 3 years old (had taught older sibling)  6 years of age  hispanic descent  had experienced speech delays and was receiving ongoing speech therapy  driven to school by parents  youngest child of three in a nuclear family  working class family  stay at home mother  known to teacher since 2 years old (had taught older sibling) general academics  unmotivated student  capable student without any special weaknesses or strengths  high spoken vocabulary  creative thinker  in a rush to finish assignments  easily distracted  capable student who performed well in math  resistant to paper and pencil tasks  rarely invested strong efforts into completion of classroom tasks  rush to complete assignments  general struggles  unfocussed  mathematics weaknesses  poor fine motor control  performed admirably in gym class reading  capable, but unmotivated reader  well able to use different cues to assist with decoding  capable  preference for non-fiction text  rarely read on his own but enjoyed reading with the teacher  capable, but reluctant to read at school  his strongest academic pursuit  stated preference for mo willems books language  english first language and the only language spoken within his home  english first language and the only language spoken within his home  exposed to spanish through visits to extended family in chile  english first and only language  spanish spoken by his parents, but not by him personality  volatile  disinclined to extend himself  rambunctious  energetic  passive  kind  a follower of his peers interests  video games  television cartoons  video games  physical activities  wrestling  video games  soccer capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom current issues in education, 19(3) 8 i recognize that in any grade one classroom students are going to be at developmentally different stages with regards to such things as classroom behaviour, reading motivation, and reading capability. as the teacher, i expect and recognize this diversity yet, not withstanding, i endeavour to assist all of my students in moving forward. in this study, i focused especially on these three study participants, however, ultimately i am doing my best to assist all students. regardless of the age, abilities, or attitudes of my students i am trying to help them all. an effective way of doing this is to find out what practices are most likely to motivate the students. data collection data was collected monday through friday over a period of 7 consecutive weeks. i used five methods of data collection: a general questionnaire; learning conversations; journaling; observations; and recording sheets. the questionnaire was completed by the three study participants at the start of the study, whereas the learning conversations were conducted individually throughout the study. similarly, journaling, observations, and the recording sheets were ongoing throughout the study. questionnaires. data collection commenced with the completion of a questionnaire. this allowed me to gather data that would aid in the construction of profiles of the study participants as readers, including their own self-perceptions. the chosen questionnaire— mckenna and kear’s (1990) elementary reading attitude survey—was easy for young children to understand and respond. this child-friendly questionnaire used garfield’s moods as representations of the reader’s attitudes towards reading, ranging from feeling very upset to feeling very happy. for instance, in one question participants were asked about how they felt using their free time reading a book. did it make them feel happy, upset, or somewhat in between? in another question, participants were asked how they felt about reading a book for fun at home. all 20 questions were similar in nature. because i deemed the information of potential value to me as their classroom teacher, the survey was administered to the entire class. in order to help ensure that the questions were understood, i read each question to the students and encouraged them to seek clarification in any case where they did not fully understand what the question was asking. learning conversations. i conducted seven one-on-one learning conversations with each of the study participants at the end of each week for the duration of the study. each conversation was audio recorded for transcription and analysis. learning conversations were intended to allow each participant to express his opinions about a variety of classroom practices designed to increase his motivation to read. questions were open-ended, allowing for discussion and honest responses. before asking a participant about each specific classroom practice, i checked to see that he knew what the given practice was so that it was fresh in his mind. the participants were asked to discuss those things, if any, about each practice that they found to be enjoyable and/or useful in helping them to develop as readers and, conversely, to talk about those things that they found not to be motivational and/or useful. each conversation lasted from 5–10 minutes—a total of approximately one hour per participant. although i was asking about a specific classroom practice in each learning conversation, they were only semi-structured. this allowed for more freedom and potentially greater depth and/or breadth in participant responses. for example, one of the open-ended question was “what kind of books do you like?” additionally, in response to a participant’s positive reply about an activity i asked “can you tell me why you like it?” in some instances, i had to prompt the participants and try to encourage them to be as expansive as possible in their various responses. capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom current issues in education, 19(3) 9 when speaking with the participants, i member checked frequently. that is, i would repeat or reread what they had previously said to see if that was correct or if they wanted to change or add to their answers. by conversing with these study participants, i made them part of their learning process. journaling. i used a personal reflection journal to record my observations of my participants during the seven classroom practices. as i introduced the practices i noted not only my observations of their participation in these practices, my own personal reflections on what i was seeing, but also comments that they made, such as mark saying, “i love this part when the dad spits out the cookie! ha ha ha…you’re so funny madame!” i recorded my observations as soon as possible in my personal reflection journal. all observations were dated. observations. one of the means that i used to gauge the study participants’ apparent levels of motivation was by observing their reactions to the different classroom practices, how they interacted with each classroom practice, as well as how that seemed to affect their reading engagement and their motivation to read during their own time. for example, jon was observed laughing and saying “madame you sound funny. how did you do that?” during read aloud time. observations allowed me, as teacher and researcher, to watch the participants in their classroom environment. i was able to observe how they were interacting without teacher guidance during explore time and see expression and interest, and sometimes lack of, for each of the different classroom practices used. recording sheets. my final form of data collection was the use of recording sheets. i had a sheet for each week with each participant’s pseudonym on it to tally how often they participated in each of the study’s seven classroom practices during explore time. according to bryan (2009, p. 92), “a typical observational data collection method is that of event recording. this involves observing and counting the number of times an event occurs.” event recording is an appropriate technique when the observed behavior is short and countable (richards, taylor, ramasamy, & richards, 1999). i made a tally mark each time i observed the study participants choosing any of the seven classroom practices. thus, i used recording sheets as a means of recording the participants’ choices during explore time. data analysis the data collected were analysed to provide answers to the study research question. this involved the creation of a reading profile for each study participant. it also involved identification of those things that the study participants’ comments seemed to indicate that they found to be motivational or not to contribute to their reading motivation. questionnaires. the completed questionnaire for each participant was analysed with an eye towards finding out about each individual as a reader and his attitude towards recreational reading and academic reading. once study participants completed their questionnaires i added their ratings for each section, determining how they felt about themselves as both recreational and academic readers. the questionnaire was designed so that the higher the score, the better they saw themselves as readers. the questionnaire was specifically used for the purpose of generating a profile of each participant. this helped to contextualize the comments made by the students in the learning conversations. the participants’ profiles included teacher perceptions about them and their classroom attitude and behaviours towards reading, such as “mark would rather draw mario figures on his desk than read with his group, his attitude is very aggressive when confronted.” learning conversations. having recorded and transcribed the learning conversations, the next step in data analysis was what stringer (2008) referred to as “unpacking or current issues in education, 19(3) 10 capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom ‘interrogating’ the epiphany” (p. 94). i went through the recorded data looking for ideas, phrases, thoughts, and feelings (hereafter just called ideas) that were articulated by the participants and that emerged as reoccurring themes. from these reoccurring themes 20 categories emerged, including positive judgments, negative judgments, humour, and family. each idea was placed into a category. while it is true that a given idea may have been appropriately placed in more than one category, i employed the notion of “best fit” (bryan, 2009). journaling. working alongside the study participants and recording in my journal their comments and my observations, provided me with the chance to analyze key experiences that arose and how these key experiences seemed to have metamorphosed across the duration of the study. that is to say, for instance, that early in the study reading activities were met often with resistance, whereas later reading opportunities were often embraced. at the end of each school day, i went through and reread what i had written for the day in my journal and identified things that i considered to be important. the changing behaviors and the changed attitudes that these behaviors seemed to effect were important. they suggested that at least some of the introduced classroom practices were having the desired effect. observations. observations allowed me, as researcher, to make notes on what the study participants were doing once the classroom practices had been introduced and which, if any, seemed to affect their motivation and reading engagement. for instance, when explore time was offered in the class, and the study participants selected one of the seven classroom practices without prodding from me, i considered that a noteworthy experience. similarly, when a study participant said something reflective of his motivation and engagement i also considered that to be noteworthy. after all, motivation cannot be directly observed. rather, we infer motivation from those things we can observe (bryan, 2009). observations were recorded in my journal and were used to identify the common elements that the participants most seemed to enjoy. recording sheets. at the end of each week i counted up my event recorded tallies for each of the practices to see which practice was most often selected. i believed the most often selected practices provided a reflection of which activities the students found to be more or less motivational and engaging. during explore time the students were effectively free to choose to participate in whatever they found most attractive, and therefore, selecting some classroom practices over others reflected varied levels of motivation for these different practices. i recognize that the amount of times a child elected to participate in one of the study’s classroom practices may have been influenced by the order in which those practices were introduced. for instance, the children may have chosen to participate in a given practice more or less often because that practice was the one that we were focusing on in that particular week. while this order of introduction may have influenced the results, it was necessary to stagger the introduction of the practices because they could not all be taught at one time. the recording sheets were used more as a form of triangulation to confirm the things the students were saying about their participation or lack of participation in the various practices rather than being used as an indicator of engagement. i used them to confirm the accuracy and the truthfulness of what they were saying. criteria for ensuring research quality it is important when conducting qualitative-oriented action research to work with criteria for establishing research quality. addressing these criteria shows readers that the research presented is accurate and reliable, as well as protects research findings and participants. current issues in education, 19(3) 11 capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom trustworthiness. for research to have established trustworthiness, stringer (2008) and lincoln and guba (1985) highlighted four areas that needed to be considered: (1) credibility, (2) transferability, (3) dependability, and (4) confirmability. according to lincoln and guba (1985), credibility is confidence in the truth of the findings. in this study, ensuring credibility involved such things as persistent observations, prolonged participation, triangulation of multiple data sources, member checking, and the use of a second coder. working alongside me throughout this process was my research assistant, who was also a professional colleague and graduate student. she had been an early year’s teacher for 5 years and we had worked together during those years. she was familiar with the community and the students. i was able to discuss my observations with her daily. my research assistant and i met at the end of the seven weeks to categorize the learning conversations. having determined the categories that would encompass the learning conversation data, my research assistant and i collaboratively analysed the transcripts for one learning conversation. after this period of training, the research assistant and i independently analysed all of the remaining transcripts. with jon, the percentage of agreement was 94.29%; with sonic, the percentage of agreement was 95.78%; and with mark, the percentage of agreement was 87.14%. the coding categories employed included those contained in table 2. transferability necessitates the provision of rich, thick descriptions of the elements of the study. although my research and results were specific to the reluctant readers of my classroom, i aimed to facilitate the transferability of my findings. when i refer to transferability i am not saying that my research findings were generalizable, like shenton (2004), i am instead saying that there is sufficient background information and detailed explanation of the study that comparisons can be made to it. dependability of a study is based on the adequacy and suitability of the study’s research procedures (stringer, 2008). in this study, ensuring dependability involved the use of multiple and appropriately interrelated data collection strategies which supported one another, such as questionnaire, journaling, observations, recording sheets, and learning conversations. the accessibility and availability of the recorded information in a study is a simplified version of stringer’s (2008) definition of confirmability. confirmability in this study was established through the use of triangulation, which amalgamated and amplified my data, and through journaling which showed reflexivity to confirm my results. validity. my study met the high standards for classroom based research. this was done through the specific criteria for action research identified by anderson, herr, and nihlen (1994). i met democratic validity by tape recording my learning conversations with my study participants to ensure that the data was not lost and that what i was recording was accurate. i believe that my research had a positive impact on my study participants and has informed and improved my teaching and, therefore, achieved outcome validity. by tracking my process and conducting my research in a competent manner, i was able to show process validity. process validity, like dependability, showed that by using multiple data sources i was able to have consistency in my findings. the results of my study caused me to take a different look and approach to my own teaching. based on the results of this study, i incorporated certain practices, such as author’s theatre, in my teaching. because i moved to take action to further inform my practice in an ongoing way, my research showed catalytic validity. dialogic validity—a study that causes conversation and interaction between people, was met in that my research was and is being presented in a public fashion. as such, it has been subject to peer review and dialogue amongst teaching professionals. current issues in education, 19(3) 12 capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom results introducing the seven classroom practices to the students was an easy process for me. this ease was due in part to the first three strategies being ones that were part of my classroom routine since september. additionally, i was familiar with most of the practices so there was a level of comfort in executing the teaching. the only practice that i was unfamiliar with was author’s theatre, which required me to do some research and planning. study results for mark mark viewed himself as a reader but did not enjoy it and was not motivated to engage in it. this description was based on his completion of the reading attitude survey as well as on observations of him in class. all but two of mark’s answers in the recreational reading section of the survey were the mildly upset garfield. he answered question 9, how he feels about going to a book store, higher than the rest by circling the slightly smiling garfield. countering this slight shift towards the positive, mark circled the very upset garfield for question 7, which asked how he felt about reading during the summer. mark’s views of himself as an academic reader were the same as his views of himself as a recreational reader. out of the 10 questions in this section of the survey, mark circled all but two as being a mildly upset garfield. for question 17, how he feels about stories read in class, he circled the slightly smiling garfield. this finding was consistent with observations i made on his reaction to daily story time, which was always positive. question 19 asked students how they felt about using a dictionary; this elicited a very upset garfield response from mark. mark consistently showed a positive attitude when it came to story time, or read aloud, in the classroom. in the middle of a story, he often called out how funny things were or how he liked the voices i gave to the characters. although he showed a positive reaction towards being read to, he also showed considerable disinterest in reading on his own and with his peers. during reading time, he was often observed doodling or talking with his friends about playing mario at recess or about how he did in his video game the night before. throughout the 7-week period of data collection, mark made some connections between the different classroom practices being taught. he was able to connect the practices that used voice and movement, seeing how they built upon one another in the classroom and how they extended to his life outside of the classroom where he began to take a more active role in playing with his peers around stories. mark consistently mentioned in his learning conversations his fondness for stories that were funny and available to use right away. regardless of the classroom practice, mark did not like when he did not get to use the book of his choice. this impatience seemed to be the most influential factor stopping him from reading. looking at his responses in the learning conversations and the recording sheet information, the classroom practices that seemed to motivate mark to read were the ones that used different voices for different characters and involved physical movement. in addition to appearing to motivate him to read, author’s theatre also motivated him to write. the practices that mark seemed to find to be least engaging were literacy circles and inquiry. although mark mentioned liking literacy circles, when they were made available for daily use he did not choose to participate in them during his explore time, choosing instead to participate in classroom practices that were more physical and dramatic in nature. capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom current issues in education, 19(3) 13 study results for jon jon saw himself as a reader but primarily engaged in reading when he was working oneon-one with me. the description of jon as a reader was based on my observations of him in the classroom and his views of himself indicated on the questionnaire. in recreational reading, jon responded with equal numbers of mildly upset garfield ratings and very upset garfield ratings. the only question where jon provided a positive response was question 10 where he was asked about reading different kind of books. for this question, jon gave a slightly smiling garfield rating. this is consistent with my observations about jon’s enjoyment of selecting his own books, which often varied from what his classmates often picked for story time. during self-selected reading time, jon was more enthusiastic when he picked non-fiction books on animals. despite this, i often observed him quickly putting his book of choice to one side and participating in unrelated conversations with his peers. jon scored slightly higher on his view of himself in academic reading. jon circled an equal number of slightly smiling garfield’s and mildly upset garfield’s. he circled two very upset garfield’s, which were for questions 12 and 19. question 12 asked about his attitude towards worksheets and workbooks and question 19 asked about how he felt about using a dictionary. again, these results were not surprising, as jon was often distracted and difficult to work with during literacy circles or during any structured activity where he was expected to do pencil and paper work. in class, jon was observed avoiding reading during reading time unless it was with me. i noted that jon would often rush to complete his agenda to read with me, however if i was busy with another student he did not read, he wandered the room, talked with others, or started to play with different things in the classroom. over the 7-week span that this research took place, jon showed the biggest growth during the fourth week with the introduction of drama. from this week forth, jon no longer was so heavily dependent on me as a reading partner. previously, jon liked the idea of selecting his own books but really did not invest a lot of time reading them unless he was reading to me and i was praising him for a job well done. he found humour and pleasure in what he perceived to be shocking me with his great reading skills. with the introduction of classroom practices that involved movement, choice, peers, and humour jon was able to start to find a place for himself as a reader. study results for sonic according to the questionnaire results, sonic’s view of himself as a reader varied greatly from his recreational reading self to his academic reading self. with regards to his view of himself as a recreational reader, for six of the 10 questions, he circled the slightly smiling garfield. for the other four questions he circled the mildly upset garfield. some of the positive responses included question 1, how he feels about reading on a rainy day; question 4, how he feels about getting a book for a present; and question 5, how he feels about spending his free time reading. sonic’s view of himself as an academic reader, however, was noticeably lower than his view of himself as a recreational reader. he rated four questions with a very upset garfield and three questions with a mildly upset garfield. sonic expressed a dislike of doing worksheets and workbooks, using a dictionary, learning from a book, and reading out loud. my observations of sonic were more consistent with his views of himself as an academic reader. i observed sonic’s lack of participation in reading books from the classroom, as well as his unfocused behaviour during literacy circles. after his mother signed consent for sonic to current issues in education, 19(3) 14 capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom participate in this study, she approached me and told me that he was reading a lot at home and that he loved elephant and piggie books. she said also that they were now making regular trips to the public library so that he could have some of his favourite books at home. she asked if he could bring some to school to read, and was told he could. after that he had asked to read to the class two or three times a week. sonic had positive things to say about each of the seven classroom practices introduced during this study, and really started to thrive as a reader during self-selected reading when he was able to choose his own elephant and piggie stories to read. although sonic talked a lot about liking drama, reader’s theatre, and author’s theatre, he did not select them as often as he did the other practices during explore time. when sonic did participate in those classroom practices it was usually when friends of his were already there and they would ask him to join them. observations on my recording sheet during explore time for sonic’s engagement in literacy circles and inquiry were consistent with what he talked about in his learning conversations. each of these two classroom practices had features that he liked, but neither was one that he would choose to participate in on a regular basis. combined summary of what mark, jon, and sonic had to say as mentioned, the participants’ comments were categorized into 20 themes that emerged from the data. although there were 20 categories, for the purpose of brevity table 2 contains a brief description and example of only the top six categories. table 2. description and example of the top six categories category example explanation positive judgement amanda: what do you think about how we used drama? jon: it makes centre time better. mention of a positive feeling or response in regards to one of the seven classroom practices. negative judgement mark: it’s not my favourite. i mean, it’s a lot of reading of real things. i don’t like that. mention of a negative feeling or response in regards to one of the seven classroom practices. positive social amanda: so, you like your friends in your group… sonic: yeah. it is fun to read with them, they read some, i read some. i like that. mention of positive interactions or positive comments about interactions. teacher amanda: you like to pick your book and then read it with me? jon: i like to show you how good my reading is. mention of the teacher, teacher reactions, or teacher expectations. characters amanda: tell me what you think about it. sonic: i liked being mortimer! mortimer was loud and didn’t sleep and the police had to come! mention of characters from printed or digital texts. play amanda: it’s more fun with your friends? jon: yeah. we go to the puppets and we make up stories like the owl and the wolf fighting. sometimes they wrestle! mention of physical manipulation of things such as puppets, props, or their bodies in enjoyable interactions with their friends. capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom current issues in education, 19(3) 15 table 3 contains the combined results for each of those top six categories. in the table, the right hand column represents the total number of comments for each of the six most populous categories. the bottom row represents the combined totals for all 20 categories—the six most populous as contained within this table plus the 14 categories not otherwise represented. as can be seen, the vast majority of ideas expressed by the three study participants were comments categorized as positive judgements. indeed, the next three highest categories combined (a total of 96 comments) only just eclipses the total of positive judgement comments (91) alone. there were almost three times as many positive judgements as there were negative judgements about the seven classroom practices (37). however, not all of the practices received more positive than negative judgements. there were more than twice as many negative judgement comments about inquiry (14) as there were positive judgements (6). for literacy circles, there was little difference between positive judgements (8) and negative judgements (6). the results for the drama classroom practice are noteworthy. one-third (10) of all the comments categorized as positive social ideas (30) were made in relation to drama. similarly, more than one-third (11) of all of the comments categorized as play ideas (27) were made in relation to drama. each of these categories consisted of comments making reference to enjoyable, engaging experiences. furthermore, across all 20 categories, there was a total of 87 comments about drama. the highest number of comments about any other classroom practice was 61 for author’s theatre. this represents an increase of more than 42% between the second most “talked about” activity and the first. drama clearly was not merely something the students enjoyed but, indeed, it was something they wanted to talk about. for inquiry, there were 45 comments in total, but the 14 negative judgements represent almost a third (31.1%) of that total table 3. frequency of themed comments for combined group by classroom practice read aloud selfselected reading literacy circles drama reader's theatre author's theatre inquiry total categories positive judgement 13(28%) 15(28%) 8 (22%) 19(22%) 18(31%) 12(20%) 6 (13%) 91 negative judgement 5 (11%) 1 (2%) 6 (17%) 3 (3%) 2 (3%) 6 (10%) 14(31%) 37 positive social 1 (2%) 0 (0%) 5 (14%) 10(12%) 5 (9%) 7 (12%) 2 (4%) 30 teacher 3 (7%) 9 (17%) 2 (6%) 6 (7%) 3 (5%) 3 (5%) 3 (7%) 29 characters 4 (9%) 7 (13%) 0 (0%) 8 (9%) 9 (16%) 3 (5%) 0 (0%) 31 play 2 (4%) 2 (4%) 0 (0%) 11(13%) 5 (9%) 7 (12%) 0 (0%) 27 combined totals from all 20 categories 46 54 36 87 58 61 45 the percentages included in table 3 show the percentage of comments about a given practice that the raw figure represents. for instance, of 46 comments of read aloud, 13 were positive judgements, representing 28% of all comments for read aloud. of 54 comments about ssr, 15 were positive judgements, representing 28% of all comments about ssr. note that these percentages do not tally to 100% of all comments of a given practice because, as explained, table 3 contains only the results for each of the top six of all of the 20 categories. at the end of capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom current issues in education, 19(3) 16 the 7 weeks i tallied the number of times each participant chose a particular classroom practice during explore time. these choices are represented in figure 1. for instance, mark chose the read aloud option 40% of the time. as the figure shows, each study participant had a different practice that he chose with greatest frequency (mark: read aloud, jon: author’s theatre, sonic: self-selected reading). as can be seen in the figure, read aloud and self-selected reading were the practices chosen far more regularly than the others. with the exception of jon’s participation in author’s theatre, read aloud and self-selected reading were the most popular of all of the choices for all of the participants. the large numbers for mark’s selections of read aloud and self-selected reading reflect his propensity for oscillating between activities. the traditional reading practices of read aloud and self-selected reading were in the top three chosen classroom practices for each participant figure 1. frequencies of mark, jon, and sonic’s participation by classroom practice during explore time over the 7-week study period. discussion the research findings pertained to classroom practices that motivated reluctant readers. this seems an effective and efficient way for teachers in a french immersion setting to make best use of their limited ela time. pedagogical significance of the study findings the seven classroom practices selected for this study involved different learning styles that were, for the most part, social in nature. study participants were involved in practices that were hands-on, auditory, and visual. providing the study participants with multiple ways to experience reading allowed them the freedom to choose what best suited their learning styles and interests. it appears as if each one of the three study participants found at least one of the seven 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 read aloud self-selected reading literacy circles drama reader's theatre author's theatre inquiry to ta ls f o r e ac h p ra ct ic e a ft e r 7 w e e ks ( % ) classroom practices current issues in education, 19(3) 17 capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom classroom practices motivating. this seemed to have increased the amount of times they were engaged in reading. i presented these classroom practices in a sequential order over the 7 weeks, starting with the most familiar for the students, read aloud, and progressing to the ones that would be the least familiar. i placed drama, reader’s theatre, and author’s theatre one after the other. this worked out well, from a teaching stand point, as the practices were similar and afforded the students a sense of the interwoven nature of these distinct but compatible approaches to reading and reading instruction. drama was an ideal connecting point between the more “literary” practices that proceeded it and the playful nature of the practices that followed it. having classroom practices that blend into each other so easily, particularly when there was limited time to teach, was not only practical but enjoyable for the students. as well, because these classroom practices were similar in nature, it took less time to teach them and allowed for the students to become independent at a faster rate. the participants talked a lot about the use of varied voices when being read to and how much they enjoyed that. this suggests that when a story is read to the class with expression, it can change how a student feels about reading. the opportunity to exercise freedom in choosing the books that they read was motivational because it validated participants’ likes and interests. they were not stopped from engaging in books that had fighting or weapons, and were encouraged to read whatever interested them. this study also showed that, despite my school division’s move towards certain practices, students were not always motivated by them. over the past few years my school division moved towards the increased use of inquiry. many believed that in allowing students to choose what they wanted to study they would be motivated to learn. in my research, the participants resisted the inquiry approach. they seemed not to be motivated by this practice. although my study participants were not completely negative about inquiry, they all mentioned how they did not really enjoy it, and out of all the classroom practices it was the second-to-least chosen. the results demonstrate that for these study participants the classroom practices that motivated them to read were ones that allowed for physical movement and humour. they also seemed to be motivated by the element of choice. however, this appreciation of choice was not so strong that it encompassed an inquiry approach to reading because of the perception that it resulted in too much auxiliary work. research significance of the study findings the research findings for five out of the seven classroom practices support studies that had already been conducted in this field. cunningham and allington (2007) stated that one of the most influential factors in motivating students to read was being read to. my research supported this claim, with all three study participants enjoying being read to, provided it was the right material. my research suggests that reading with expression and purpose books of interest can motivate children to read on their own. the data showed that self-selection of reading material was popular, appreciated, and motivational. when it came to inquiry, the only part that all three study participants liked was the choosing of their own stories. my research findings lend support to research conducted by bryan (2009) which showed that allowing students to select their own books daily had the potential to motivate them to read. my research into the use of drama supported previous research that found it provided opportunities for social interactions with peers around texts (cullingford, 2001). through this capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom current issues in education, 19(3) 18 research i found that with the limited amount of time available to teach reading, drama was a motivator in getting reluctant readers involved and enjoying reading time. lapp and flood (1992) described reader’s theatre as an oral interpretation of stories that students enjoy. powell-brown (2006) wrote that reader’s theatre made books more exciting. my research supported these findings. the study participants all enjoyed participating in reader’s theatre, and during explore time were found engaged in this classroom practice. study participants liked social interactions with their peers and the use of voice and movement to read and tell stories. i found that author’s theatre was a motivating classroom practice for the study participants, as it provided them with the freedom to create and act out their own stories. these findings supported haas dyson’s (1997) research into author’s theatre about how it allowed even reluctant readers to “bring their peer play life into the official school world” (p. 4). my research findings for two of the classroom practices, literacy circles and inquiry, counter previous studies done in these areas. powell-brown (2006) cited research findings that literacy circles provided children with a social aspect of communication that was crucial in forming positive attitudes towards reading. my research showed that, although study participants may have enjoyed aspects of literacy circles, as a whole it was not a favourite practice. two of the study participants specifically mentioned not liking the practice of literacy circles. they said it took too long and that it was boring. the greatest discord between my research and others’ research was related to the idea of inquiry as a classroom practice to motivate reluctant readers. prior claims, such as those by cunningham and allington (2007), discussed how using what students are interested in and creating means of representing that in the end would motivate them to read and write. my research indicated otherwise. the study participants all enjoyed selecting what interested them; however, they did not enjoy the amount of time they had to put into reading books or doing the auxiliary work. this research has generated interesting results that require further research. one avenue that could be studied further is the use of inquiry in the elementary french immersion classroom. would inquiry be a more successful tool to motivate if there were more time to engage in it? would the results found in this study be the same if it were to have been conducted over the span of a school year, allowing for more time between the classroom practices? how would the results vary if the study participants were reluctant female readers? how would the results vary if the study participants were in a non-french immersion classroom. concluding remarks when i set out to find out what reluctant english readers in a french immersion setting had to say about classroom practices designed to increase their motivation to read, i had ideas of where i thought it would lead me. the research literature suggested that the seven classroom practices were potentially motivating for reluctant english readers. these practices were social in nature and drew upon various learning styles which were intended to engage these reluctant readers. throughout this process i was able to learn a lot about which classroom practices worked best within the time constraint of 60 minutes a day and really see and hear what was motivating to the study participants in my french immersion setting. what this study shows is that classroom practices that allow for social interactions, choice, and use of voice and movement while in an environment that supports all learning styles are the best ways to motivate young reluctant french immersion readers. capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom current issues in education, 19(3) 19 references allington, r. 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(1999). single subject research applications in educational and clinical settings. san diego, ca: singular. robinson, r., mckenna, m., & wedman, j. (2000). issues and trends in literacy education. (2nd current issues in education, 19(3) 20 capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom ed.). needham heights, ma: pearson. schön, d. a. (1983). the reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. new york, ny: basic books. schwabe, f., mcelvany, n., & trendtel, m. (2015). the school age gender gap in reading achievement: examining the influences of item format and intrinsic reading motivation. reading research quarterly, 50(2), pp. 219-232. shenton, a. k. (2004). strategies for ensuring trustworthiness in qualitative research projects. education for information, 22, 63-75. stringer, e. (2008). action research in education (2nd ed.). upper saddle river, nj: pearson. worthy, j. (1996). a matter of interest: literature that hooks reluctant readers and keeps them reading. the reading teacher, 50(3), 204-212. capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom current issues in education, 19(3) 21 author notes amanda borton capina university of manitoba acapina@wsd1.org amanda borton capina is a veteran teacher and mentor within her school division. she has a master’s degree in education and has presented her research internationally. she is currently working on her phd in language and literacy in the faculty of education at the university of manitoba. gregory bryan university of manitoba gregory_bryan@umanitoba.ca gregory bryan is a professor of literacy education in the faculty of education at the university of manitoba. mailto:acapina@wsd1.org mailto:gregory_bryan@umanitoba.ca capina & bryan: engaging reluctant readers in a french immersion classroom current issues in education, 19(3) 22 volume 19, issue 3 february 23, 2017 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team interim executive editor constantin schreiber copy editors stephanie mcbride-schreiner lucinda watson layout editor constantin schreiber section editor aaron bryant volume 9, number 2 february, 2006 issn 1099-839x education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions paul a. wagner and lillian benavente-mcenery university of houston – clear lake there is so much quarrelling surrounding education today it seems people have lost sense of what needs arguing about, where there is a need for more research and where there are grounds for general agreement. grounds now exist for shared agreement on matters of educational purpose. moreover, there has in fact been much agreement on such matters over the years. with one flag to salute, people in education should be in a much better position to strategize on those tactics most likely to achieve our common pragmatically issued goals. will the bickering ever end? recently, martin bickman (2003) tried to sum up much that is wrong in education. he describes public education as a battleground wherein traditionalists such as diane ravitch and e.d. hirsch expose the nonsense of the “self-expression” curriculum as advocated by opponents (kohn, 1999) of standardized curriculums and standardized testing. bickman believes there is a cycle wherein subject matter is emphasized in the schools at the expense of personal expression and then at other times personal expression predominates at the expense of subject matter. bickman’s battleground metaphor is meant to underscore the severity of the tension that exists between the two competing sets of true believers. moreover, for thinkers such as bickman, the battle never abates. as one group dominates current educational practice the other side busily lays the groundwork for its surge back into fashion. writers such as bickman are so convinced of the inevitability of the debate, readers come to doubt any possibility of a synthesis emerging from the previous thesis and antithesis. the debate since this is not a review of the recent work of bickman, subsequent remarks will speak more generally to the alleged competing needs between rigor of subject matter mastery on the one hand and the need for social and personal development on the other. anyone familiar with the educational theorizing of western and middle eastern antiquity will recognize the stirrings of such distinctions even then. 1 however while the distinctions were acknowledged, there were no appearances that the two themes stood in opposition to one another, at least not in the minds of theorists. 2 for example, talmudic writings more than two thousand years ago, made the distinction between becoming educated in order to address the world as an adult and becoming trained for some occupation. 3 indeed this distinction underlies much of the rationale for the religious practice of bar mitzvah. similarly, the greeks during the golden age of athens, saw the purpose of education to be self-actualization, to use aristotle’s term, and identified other training as something one was led to through prudential reason and acquired wisdom. specifically it is through the effective use of prudential reasoning that each learns what excellencies each may have. subsequently it is up to the learner to learn how to use those “excellencies excellently” – again to borrow language from aristotle’s the politics. consider too, the example of spanish jews in maimonides’ time. maimonides reports that advances in medicine, science and even current issues in education vol. 9 no. 2 religion kept apace as complimentary parts of a great conversation benefiting both individuals and community (herschel & neugroschel, 1983). 4 under such a worldview there is no reason for such an unwarranted dichotomy to arise. evidence of successful programs agencies such as the hamilton fish national institute on school and community violence as well as the safe and drug-free schools expert panels have sought to identify programs as having “demonstrated” success or to be “promising” based on a rigorous examination of the research. for example, the latter identified elementary schoolbased intervention and prevention programs such as second step: a violence prevention curriculum as “exemplary.” programs such as peacemakers and peers making peace and aggression replacement training and others were labeled as “promising.” the former identified such programs for elementary programs as teaching students to be peacemakers, kid power and i can problem solve as having demonstrated success. there are research articles available from the websites and program directors of these programs. (more information is available from the safe and drug-free schools and hamilton fish national institute websites). there is a trend toward requiring schools receiving funding to use programs that have had demonstrated success or are at least promising. with this trend has come an increased urgency for programs to “prove themselves worthy” and an increase in the number of research and evaluation studies on programs and their effectiveness. did such cultures get it wrong? should education really be about self – esteem? in the contemporary united states things seem on the surface at least, to be quite a bit different. there is an evident dichotomy between those who champion personal development and those who champion an understanding of the world within which we live. notice the difference between the nodding heads and weeping eyes of those in the audience of a standard self-help television show and compared that vision to the wide open eyes and critical commentary of say, nova series viewers on public television. the first group cares very much about mastery over psychological forces while the second hopes to understand the world of physical forces. there are no absolute grounds for preferring one subject over the other. nevertheless, the two audiences and their respective subject matter interests seem worlds apart. however, in the highest reaches of the ivory tower there are many who understand this apparent chasm need not exist. for example, there are non-reductionistic biologists such as stephen rose (1998), richard lewontin (2000) and stephen j. gould (2001) and spiritually inspired physicists such as henry schaeffer iii (2003) and sir john polkinghorne (1994) who believe the forces of the world all need explaining and the life of inquiry doesn’t require one to choose between in the words of william james’ (1982), “soft-mindedness” and “hard mindedness” or c.p. snow’s (1964), the two cultures. it is possible to read diane ravitch (2003) as someone far from conservative in curricular matters but committed instead to intellectual responsibility. similarly e.d. hirsch is no adversary of self-esteem. 5 rather his quest is simply to show that subject matter competence is the most reliable path for developing student confidence and… selfesteem. neither ravitch (2003) nor hirsch (1999) express hostility towards the idea that education can and should lead to personal development. indeed, to that end, both ravitch and hirsch argue roughly that by instilling in students a full acquaintance with the great conversation of humankind, intellectual skills and a passion for truth, they will likely develop both confidence and personal understanding. for ravitch and hirsch, participation in the world of the humanities, arts and sciences develops student understanding of the external world as well as an understanding of the social skills to deal with self and others. though the expression “the great conversation of humankind” is not one used by either ravitch or hirsch the spirit behind the idea seems common to both. 6 the term “great conversation of humankind” had become common parlance in america at least since the time when the encyclopedia britannica began publishing its great books series back in the 1950s and great book clubs began springing up around the country’s urban centers. at present the idea has fallen into some disrepair among some american educators, not because it lacks substance but rather because like so many other ideas it has been bundled together with a set of uncompromising and sometimes offensive ideologies. this bundling of ideologies has unfortunately led to the downfall of many otherwise good ideas in america’s current and ongoing “culture war” and so it is with the concept of the great conversation. it has been weighed down not so much by defaults of its own but with ancillary conceptual baggage with which it has often been tied. for example, the great conversation is not inherently tied in with the alleged elitism of mortimer adler’s (1998) paidea proposal of the 1970s. 7 nevertheless, those who for good reason object to elitism may instinctively protest the perennial notion of a great conversation as well. the minimalist notion of the great conversation (mgc) advocated herein is not a education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions 3 carrier of any elitism. it is, in a sense, not father’s sense of the great conversation but something much closer, dare one say, to great grandfather’s notion. by avoiding the distractions posed by ancillary conceptual baggage such as adler’s paidea proposal and focusing instead on what is most central to the notion of a great conversation the idea can still be reasonably persuasive as establishing a universal goal or purpose for education (as distinct from training, schooling or socialization). at its crux, the idea historically behind the great conversation says that all humans are naturally engaged in pursuing on some level, big questions such as what is the world made of, how do things come into being, what is happiness, what is the best form of organization and so on (bass, 1997; gale and densmore,2003; sobol, 1997). these big questions are cross-culturally relevant and they bring participants in the conversation together. think about it. what separates people more than anything is a refusal to join with others across cultures or to reach across historical epochs and participate earnestly in the conversation. participation in the great conversation leads to a bringing together (eads and wells, 1989). it is difficult to imagine anyone who does not agree with at least this minimalist notion of the great conversation (mgc) and recognize its benefits for all. the gist of the idea of a great conversation arose a multiplicity of times in human history when local cultures recognized that both truth and the search for truth could not be constrained by local jingoism. the great conversation of humankind is not a technical term designating a single way of looking at education. and, more specifically, the mgc identifies simply that realm of learned discourse where together and in non-exclusionary fashion, humans attempt to answer big (and perhaps some not so big) questions of physics, religion, mathematics, happiness, engineering, prudential reasoning, morality, architecture, the nature of formal and informal languages, evolution and development, love, the purpose of social systems and so on. to deprive students the information and skills needed to participate in the great conversation isolates them from full participation in community immediately and the world community generally. mgc focuses attention on the central educational goal of bringing everyone together to participate in dialogue to seek some form of shared truth and to avoid error or unnecessary grounds for fundamental divisiveness. to be isolated from participatory interaction with community and the intellectual tools ranging from math and logic to heuristics, symbol and metaphor that make mgc possible is certain to impair any individual’s personal development. indeed, what could be more destructive to personal understanding and expression in the long run more than an inability to see both self and the world as others see each? bickman (2003) correctly distinguishes alfie kohn’s (2004) approach to instruction and testing as quite different from that of say, e.d. hirsch (1987). note however that while kohn and hirsch may differ on means of instruction and assessment it is not at all clear that they differ with regards to the purpose of education. 8 indeed a careful reading of each shows that there is little difference between the two when questions pertain to the purpose of education. for example, kohn, as much as hirsch, recognizes the need to bring students into the mgc. kohn explains that by teaching students to treasure good questions, to seek truth and most importantly to not settle for conventional answers to test items students develop skills that truly equip them for life long learning or in other words life long participation in mgc (kohn, 1998). 9 admittedly, hirsch (1999) has more confidence in standardized testing than kohn for insuring the acquisition of necessary intellectual tools but this does not mean that there is sharp disagreement between he and kohn on what those intellectual tools are (o’neill and tell, 1999). again whether one compares diverse cultures or historical epochs there is ample evidence throughout for the centrality of mgc as the defining purpose of education. note, the focus here is on education and not on associative notions of schooling, training and socializing. the latter three all have legitimate roles in a community. each though also has purposes distinguishing it from education. for example, consider that in early talmudic writings of the ancient jews, the idea of mgc is essentially expressed as participation in derashah, a process of unending homiletic sharing. this process of unending homiletic sharing is very much like the experience of high table discussions that often occupied the time of oxford and cambridge dons in a sharply different culture. questions that precipitate discussion in the two environs may differ but, the focus on dialogue and the passion for truth and destruction of error are preeminent in both venues. and to that extent, both are equally legitimate exemplars of mgc. to return to the fleeting and apparent differences between writers like kohn and hirsch in matters of educational purpose, it is instructive to remember that kohn and hirsch both praise the intellectual skills encompassed by doubting and subsequent contribution to the mgc. in short, these authors, to the extent that they are said to represent current issues in education vol. 9 no. 2 distinct entrenched personal interests each seemingly want the same thing in the end: namely, a level playing field wherein all students can learn to contribute to the intellectual well being of both self and community. similarly, in working toward a common conception of the related notion of schooling (at least in the united states), williams (1989) reminds educators that it is wise to keep in mind that it is not the content that constitutes the entirety of the curriculum but the very process of democratic deliberation over what should be taught. many authors are adversarial when it comes to assessment methodology, strategies of classroom management, responsiveness to the community’s social concerns and preferred subject matter (apple,2001, p.325) but this does not necessarily carry over to an equally diverse array of visions for educational purpose generally. 10 battlefield metaphors such as bickman’s distract from the common goal all educators share or at least should share, when designing teaching/learning strategies. if educators do not agree on purpose, if there really is some perennial battlefield afoot on that then, educators are destined forever to talk past one another. and, in the end it will be the students who suffer in the wake of such disharmony. fortunately, things are not as bleak as all that. battlefield metaphors, at least with regards to educational purpose are at best, anachronistic. if there are any outsiders to this shared vision of the purpose of education they come not from the ranks of the intellectual community but from the ranks of politicians. politicians from both side of the aisle who use educational accountability as a rallying cry to induce voter support (mitchell and boyd, 2001). there are also those die-hard behaviorists who see in education nothing more then a set of strategies for securing predictable behavioral patterns in witless students. the politicians, anachronistically minded behaviorists and bureaucrats are the ones who have created a battleground atmosphere surrounding public education. their obsessive focus on techniques and measurable outcomes mutes discussion of educational purpose. nevertheless, the country’s intellectuals seem to remain generally of one mind when it comes to purpose. the consequences of divergence of opinion in matters of purpose even when a sense of purpose is agreed upon as it is within the community of leading educationist thinkers, if the people in power namely politicians, school board members and the courts are in disarray on such matters, little can be accomplished (woodbury and newsome, 2002: cuban, 1988). an inability to achieve minimal agreement between thinkers and power-brokers on matters of educational purpose leads to conceptual chaos when deciding on matters of pedagogical style, tactics, methodologies, featured studies and so on (mitchell and boyd, 2001; stallings, 2002). the most distracting concern for the country is not whether a perennial battle exists between advocates of self esteem on the one hand and subject matter mastery on the other but rather the ineffectual grasp of many power brokers in the matter of educational purpose itself. in educational studies, whenever in doubt, it never hurts to return to the work of john dewey to reestablish one’s conceptual moorings. as long ago as 1902, dewey showed that the pull between rigor and erudite self reflection should cease as experts recognize that education is meant both to teach students “stuff” as well as when and how to use that stuff, or as dewey once said, “intelligence becomes ours in the degree to which we use it and accept responsibility for consequences” (dewey, 1957). in this sense dewey, as philosopher william frankena (1965) points out, is echoing aristotle who thought that schools should teach students both theoretical reasoning as well as prudential reasoning. it is not much of a reach here to say that aristotle, the classicist and dewey the progressive are each urging attention to personal development as much as to subject matter mastery. the two ideas are seen as flip sides of the same coin. here there are at least rudimentary grounds for agreement on the purpose of education even though the historical span involved is over two thousand years and half a world apart. admittedly, aristotle is more willing to identify subject matter in the fashion of knowledge silos than is dewey but that does not mean that either he or dewey discounted the full flourishing of the individual in every imaginable way. 11 again, rather than a battlefield reflecting perennial and inevitable tensions dewey and aristotle in relative agreement on purpose every bit as much as apparent adversaries such as sykes, ravitch, hirsh, noddings, kohn and jane roland martin are today – again at least as far as the big matter of educational purpose. 12 the consequence of bringing students into the mgc is that students can subsequently live personally and socially effective lives as a result (kierstead & wagner, 1992). techniques for getting to mgc remain controversial but the destination rests secure. as immanuel kant observed summing up the spirit of mgc long ago, “education includes the nurture of the child and, as it grows, its culture” (kant, 1960). the controversy that troubles current educational practice occurs not within the lofty thoughts of major intellectual theorists but within the incommensurate mandates created by bureaucratic education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions 5 fiat and the self-seeking priorities of classroom engineers. in particular, programs like “no child left behind” have failed to create an atmosphere of shared purpose but have instead fostered a survivor mentality (easley, 2005; dagley, 2002). in this enterprising “every person for him or herself mentality” that is created by “no child left behind” any alleged focus on shared purpose drifts into oblivion as each actor in the educational system does whatever is necessary to save his or her job. where once teachers and educators manned the helm of a system for educating students, now a new breed of social engineers is emerging and tensions between the two are increasing. for example, as hirshland and steinmo (2003) point out that there has long existed a struggle between “…the country’s basic democratic and egalitarian principles on the one hand and its localist and republican institutions on the other.” the result they contend, “…is that american policy at the national levels ends up characterized by a type of national schizophrenia.” as a result, there is now much to be gained by hired guns willing to adopt any and all manipulative strategies that promise to produce whatever results those in power seek. in this new enterprising atmosphere is the goal of mgc diminishing in importance? and if so, is this to the betterment or the detriment of the nation’s students? is education for the state and by the state? a host of questions have emerged with fresh vigor in the wake of “no child left behind” and other similar ill-advised programs (thomas, m.d. and bainbridge, 2002). issues of social engineering, institutional control and personal accountability are eclipsing any previously shared understanding of the purpose of education. in contradistinction to this conceptual ethos, russian novelist count leo tolstoy (1967) who once ran a famous school on his own estate wrote in sympathy with what we are calling mgc as follows, “…the purpose of our educational institutions lies chiefly in the dissemination of understanding among all classes, and not in the conservation of understanding in some one class which has taken exclusive possession of it.” the masters of social engineering excuse their preoccupation with control by pointing out that without control there can be no effective education. true enough. but when the focus becomes control itself rather than education, the means becomes the end and the end becomes neglected. educators exist primarily to develop minds and not orchestrate behaviors. it is worth recalling that nearly two hundred years ago, german philosopher immanuel kant (1960), himself a very self-disciplined personality, cautioned educators, “but on the whole we should try to draw out from their own ideas, founded on reason, other than to introduce such ideas into their minds.” this notion drawing out reasoned thought appears again and again in the literature still today(cahan,1994,p.158) to tolstoy and kant both the notion of a hired gum approach to education would be an anathema. there is as robin barrows (1984) explains a sharp difference between principles of classroom management and control and principles concerned with developing the mind. in an educational institution, all principles should be subordinated in the end to those which develop the mind. classrooms and schools are best thought of as sanctuaries and temples of learning. they should not be thought of, even metaphorically, as laboratories for social engineering or some sort of relatively civilized battlefield. social engineering focuses on control of outcome in the tiniest detail. in contrast, the academic freedom central to education necessitates allowances for individuality in material and skills acquired. moreover, teachers must understand, as australian john passmore (1980) remarks, that they are drawing out from students (rather than driving in) much of what is said to be learned. students need to be educated by teachers; neighbors need to be informed by teachers of the purpose and practice of education (hatch, white, & faigenbaum, 2005) and finally, teachers need to participate in the training of school board members in policy management and resource development. together all stakeholders in education should begin with an understanding of the nature of mgc. teachers must reclaim their rightful voice in all of this (weiner, 2003). as argued above, in the case of dewey and aristotle, the ancient jews and oxford dons, intellectuals of all stripes from around the globe and dating back darn near forever, have been largely of one mind when it comes to discerning the purpose of education. in contrast, those (usually from outside the school system) with a far less intellectual turn of mind see schools principally as tools for socializing, training, civic architecture, control over possible sources of community unrest and a host of matters at best only remotely related to education. an overemphasis on these schooling issues can distract from student subject matter acquisition as much as they do from matters of self – esteem and personal development. the issues which set schooling objectives against mgc have a more deleterious effect on educational practice than any dialogue among true educational theorists about the proper balance between self-esteem and personal current issues in education vol. 9 no. 2 development on the one hand and subject matter rigor on the other. though john dewey died fifty some years ago, he continues to be the leading educational thinker that nearly every serious student of education in the united states turns to in order to find some pragmatic spin on the truth of what ails education today. though a philosopher of considerable note, dewey wrote about education neither as an intellectual, a bureaucrat, a social engineer or a person of political ambition. rather when it came to education, dewey wrote to the audience that mattered most, teachers and the lay educated public. in his educational writings, dewey combined his epistemic insights with his enthusiasm for progressivism and democratic practice (dykhuizen, 1973). this intellectual foundation led dewey (1961) to conclude that in the end it was not specific subject matter that should determine the manner and course of instruction but rather the need of each individual to flourish as an individual within some sort of participatory democracy. in short, education for dewey “…means supplying the conditions which foster growth (dewey,1916, p.56).” for dewey, the individual’s potential and the instructor’s experience should dictate subject matter, assessment, and instructional and management strategies. 13 attention to the student’s future contributory role in a participatory democracy prescribes the necessary coherence for fulfilling educational purposes in a world of diversity (dewey, 1941). in short, for dewey what was needed for the fulfillment of educational purpose is for each person to get on with others in a life of collective flourishing “…as an affair of civilization not of individual intellect” (dewey, 1957). to grasp dewey one must grasp his academic philosophy as well as his more ideological works in education. to see dewey as an ideologue alone is to sell dewey short. one cannot understand dewey by reading only his thoughts on the curriculum. for dewey the philosopher, the curriculum should be driven by the society people collectively want and by the intellective tools people need to share in order to shape the world around them (dewey, 1902). even though dewey is co-founder of a unique approach to philosophy, namely pragmatism (along with c.s. pierce (1986) and william james (1997) and continuing into the present through the works of w.v.o. quine (1995) and hilary and ruth putnam), there is also something of an aristotlean (as well as kantian) commitment in dewey as commentator william frankena (1965) has aptly pointed out. 14 the apparent agreement between dewey and aristotle is important to note since it underscores the consistency of vision of educational purpose across national boundaries and historical epoch, argued for throughout this discussion. like aristotle, dewey recognized that the state existed for some purpose. that purpose can be simply re-stated in a recent motto from the us army, namely, to help each and every individual “become all that he or she can be.” for dewey and aristotle alike, human flourishing is the end to which the state and its educational practices must aim (frankena, 1965). for both dewey and aristotle, humans are rational or better yet, intellective beings who possess a capacity to figure out how to engage the world rather than merely grope their way through existence. however, dewey in contrast to aristotle, is less convinced that the concept of human flourishing could be defined in a one size fits all manner as frankena (1965, p.191.) explains, “dewey advocates… unifying method and subject-matter and adapting both to the child…” whereas aristotle thought that certain subject matter was necessary for intellective development, dewey through his emphasis on experiential learning was an early champion of diversity in learning styles and immediately relevant experience as the principle means for fulfilling intellective development. despite these differences between aristotle and dewey each seems nevertheless to aspire to a common goal overall, namely to bring about the flourishing of the individual through something herein branded as mgc (frankena, 1965).for example, dewey emphasized that the state and its educational resources should be mustered to help each individual participate as fully as possible in a democratic state. this in turn would result in the flourishing of the state as much as that of the individual (dewey, 1936). in what initially may appear to be a contrast between the two, aristotle saw the flourishing of the state as preeminent as a means for insuring the flourishing of an optimal number of citizens and dewey saw the development of the individual as preeminent in bringing about the flourishing of the state. but having acknowledged such an apparent contrast the question remains whether it represents a distinctly different notion of educational purpose between the two. scholars may quarrel whether aristotle or dewey was more willing than the other to sacrifice the educational well being of the few to secure the flourishing of the many, but in fact, each shows a sincere commitment in principle to doing the best for all (frankena, 1965). for dewey it was to do the best for the individual through the state and for aristotle it was to do for all individuals what can only be achieved by individuals contributing to the state (one cannot help recalling john f. kennedy’s words when reflecting on this aspect of aristotle, “ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country”.) in short the apparent contrast on education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions 7 matters of purpose between dewey and aristotle is as illusionary as the contrast bickman alleges exists between contemporaries such as kohn and ravitch. for both aristotle and dewey, as well as kohn and ravitch, mgc designates a template of educational purpose albeit roughly but not inaccurately. mgc identifies educational purpose as extending student vision beyond the limits of any jingoistic horizon and thereby taking the student a step further away from error and unsuccessful engagement with the world. it must be acknowledged prior to concluding these remarks that dewey deliberately avoided the phrase the great conversation of humankind. a close reading of dewey reveals that while his commitment to democracy underscored the ideas of universal commitment and respect for all who participate in the great conversation he was wary not to use any language that would identify him with the teaching techniques or subject limitations espoused by the likes of his contemporaries robert maynard hutchins and mortimer adler. 15 nevertheless, as this portrayal of mgc shows, dewey and aristotle are seen as very close in matters of educational purpose each espousing a form of mgc, just as frankena (1965) explains. egalitarianism and the great conversation it is not much of a stretch to claim that mgc constitutes at least one end or aim of education generally. mgc excludes no one and entertains the possible meritoriousness of every imaginable lifestyle within the context of relevant conditions. focus on participation in mgc makes irrelevant combative metaphors. it is not a fight teachers wage when hosting the great conversation it is rather an invitation to share with others the search for truth and techniques for minimizing error. what could be more fulfilling of personal purpose and intellectual authenticity? the focus on respect for all participants, universality of participation, passion for truth of some kind and appreciation for big and meaningful questions (yeh, 2001; weiner 2000; woodbury and gess-newsome, 2002) is what makes mgc the touchstone for all educational thinkers in matters of purpose. the conceptual contours of mgc unite ravitch, hirsh and kohn with the likes of aristotle and dewey and nearly all other serious students of educational purpose from the dawn of written speculation about education. mgc evolves. throughout the evolution of mgc a principle of natural selection operates. this principle of natural selection, initially discussed by richard dawkins (2004) and susan blakemore (2000), determines whether or not stuff learned (“memes” is the technical term currently in fashion for such all such stuff) constitutes knowledge and the utility of such knowledge now and in the foreseeable future. mgc leads inevitably to the adoption of socially constructed facts and skills (memes). this process of reason-governed evaluation leads mgc to ever more reliable evaluations of whether or not the stuff being learned should constitute knowledge specifically in immediate problem-solving contexts. finally, the mgc leads to a continuing re-evaluation of itself just as it does to all intellectual commitments freely embraced and tentatively held. equally as important as learning any stuff or how to use such stuff, there is a moral element inevitably emergent from full participation in the mgc. the moral element is intellectual integrity. authentic participation in mgc demands dissatisfaction with anything less than truth. this dissatisfaction or, to put things more positively, this passion for truth compels participants to always keep an open mind and not settle for a facsimile of truth (dewey, 1929). 16 the practical upshot of this moral commitment in the schools is that students must ask again and again two questions namely: “how do you know?” and “what do you mean by the term x?” these two questions are at the heart of mgc. without those two questions participation in the great conversation of humankind amounts to no more than collective and often contentious efforts at propagandizing. without the active utilization of these two questions self-expression becomes nothing more than winning at all costs. without the active utilization of these two questions standardized curriculums and testing become little more than measures of successful propagandizing. in 1929, john dewey declared at a national meeting of the progressive education society that, “the challenge for america in the future is the moral, not the technological” (kierstead & wagner, 1992). questioning how one knows or what others mean by this or that term are, for dewey, moral imperatives. the asking of such questions is not just an effective teaching technique. (and again this commitment to questioning was equally important in the streets of ancient athens.) so in declaring the centrality of the moral, dewey was underscoring that education is neither about simply learning stuff nor even about self–expression alone. rather for dewey, education is a venue wherein we learn to advance our shared interests and common bond. all this occurs under the auspices of a gathering and common understanding of the world’s furniture, how it is arranged and some idea of whether or not we humans should be in the business of rearranging this or that object, force or current issues in education vol. 9 no. 2 process. it is through the traditional academic disciplines as well as through new research protocols and speculative reflection that insights and intellective tools become available to participants in mgc. this is as true in kindergarten classrooms as it is in the great research laboratories of the world. if there is a battlefield mentality surrounding our collective sense of public education, it exists only because we have forgotten that the technological means for measurement and management must forever remain subservient to the moral. techniques of instruction and assessment must never be allowed to overshadow the purpose of education (weiner,2000; sobol,1997). education itself is ultimately about making a better world. to borrow again that well-known platitude from the united states army, education is about making each person all that he or she can be. or as sobel writes (1997, p.635) “…a true education makes people competent, wise and just.” the stuff each learns and uses in a classroom must be seen as subservient to this much larger goal. this vision is what continues to unite most educational thinkers in what we have herein described as mgc. education, genuinely understood as mgc, leads inevitably to an appreciation for both democracy as well as to a respect for others. inasmuch as education prepares each person for a life of excellence it leads as well to a better shared community. when education is seen as bringing people into the great conversation of humankind, the role of active participation looms large. understanding the potency and responsibility of genuine participation in the great conversation leads participants to further understanding of the responsibilities involved generally when participating in a democracy. the two sets of responsibilities go hand in hand. 17 in search of truth curriculums focusing on self-expression alone lead students away from a sense of cooperation, mutual respect and a sense of personal responsibility for insuring the well being of others. curriculums focusing on standardized content and testing foster a totalitarian understanding for the purpose of education and isolate students one from another (boaler, 1997). truth and further shared understanding are not the products of standardized approaches to education. rather in a standardized approach often the best one can hope for is acquiescence to whatever is declared true by those in power (apple,2001; mitchell and boyd, 2001). no one ever won a nobel prize by acquiescing lock, stock and barrel in the truths downloaded by those in power. nobel prizes in the sciences are awarded to people who learn how to participate in the great conversation and who know how to pursue a line of questioning more successfully than anyone previously. in short, focus on either a personal development curriculum or a sterile and homogenous subject-focused curriculum is guaranteed to fall short of the ultimate of bring students into the great conversation of humankind and perhaps more importantly, effective participation in democracy. as dewey (1938) concludes in experience and education, “i am not… in favor of any end or methods simply because of name… the basic question concerns the nature of education.” through mgc students learn that education is a venue where they are to learn both stuff and skills and yet most importantly, respect for the accomplishments of the human spirit – accomplishments in both their individual and collective manifestations. with each new individual understanding of some phenomenon, the mgc itself advances. footnotes 1 for further examples, see christopher j. lucas, our western educational heritage, (1972) with special emphasis on chapters 1 – 3, and w. t. s. gould, people and education in the third world, (1993). 2 for example, philip birnbaum, a book of jewish concepts (1964, pp. 223-224), suresh chardra gosh, the history of education in ancient india: c. 3000 b. c. to a. d. 1192, (2001), and henry schmidt, education: pt. i history of education ancient and modern, (1842). 3 phillip simpson’s translation aristotle’s the politics, (1997, ch. 1 & 5). 4 see also arbel’s maimonides (2001). 5 see for example hirsch’s cultural literacy , (1988, p. 29, pp. 98 – 102), and the schools we need and why we don’t have them , (1999, pp. 100 – 104). 6 see also a. kohn’s beyond discipline, (1996), and what does it mean to be well-educated? (2004). 7 see also m. adler’s, the paidea program (1998, 2 nd ed.) and the paidea program (1984). 8 for example, see hirsch, cultural literacy (1987, p. 18) and kohn’s what does it mean to be welleducated? (2004, pp. 2 – 10). 9 confucius’ the great learning in w. bachin’s (ed.) classics in education anticipated almost word for word the mgc when he wrote, “more study without thought is useless, but thought without study is dangerous…mind should be set on the search for truth…illustrate virtue, regenerate the people…from the emperor to the people all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of all else.” (1966, pp. 163 164. the natural and universal access of all peoples to the “great learning” confucius speaks of is underscored by ibn khaldoun’s remarks on the possibility of people achieving what has been education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions 9 achieved by the “oriental peoples.” see ibn khaldoun’s historical prolegema to the history of the berbers” in three thousand years of educational wisdom (1947, p. 200). 10 for example, as long ago as 1970, hero to student radicals, paul goodman dismissed the standardized testing minded writing, “…it is authoritarian to manipulate people for their own good and incidentally expend them for the cause by somebody else’s strategy” in his new reformation (1970, p. 152). see also paolo friere’s education for critical consciousness (1974, pp. 32 40). 11 see for example, randall curran’s aristotle and the necessity of public education (2000, ch. 2), and jerome papp’s naturalizing philosophy of education: john dewey in the postanalytic period (1998, p. 20). 12 see frederick kierstead and paul a. wagner’s the ethical, legal and multicultural foundations of teaching(1992, ch.2). 13 see for example, dewey’s discussion of the two fold path constituting the map prepared by the instructor and the student’s grasping of the purpose of maps generally and the use of a particular map in a given case in his the child and the curriculum and the school and society (1902). 14 see hilary putnam’s pragmatism: an open question (1995), and hilary putnam and ruth putnam’s dewey’s logic: epistemology as hypothesis and education for democracy both found in hilary putnam’s words and life (1995). 15 the personal animosity between ??? on the one hand and ??? on the other can be seen in ???’s (january 1937) rant against the two in his president hutchin’s proposal to remake higher education,” the social frontier, and see to hutchin’s re??? 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(2006, feb). education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions. current issues in education [on-line], 9(2).available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number2/ author notes paul a. wagner, ph.d., director, project in professional ethics professor, educational foundations school of education and philosophy school of humanities and human sciences university of houston – clear lake houston, texas, 77058 wagner@cl.uh.edu the author is former executive secretary of the philosophy of education society, former vice president of the association of philosophers in education, president of the texas educational foundations society and member of the ethics committee for the american association of public administration. lillian benavente-mcenery ed.d. assistant professor university of houston-clear lake houston , texas 77058 281-283-3539 mcenery@cl.uh.edu the co-author is an assistant professor in the literacy, language, and library science department and co-director of the university reading clinic in the center for educational programs at uh-clear lake. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation wagner p. a., & benavente-mcenery, l. (2006). education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions. current issues in education, 9(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1594 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number2/index.html mailto:wagner@cl.uh.edu mailto:mcenery@cl.uh.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1594 teacher collaboration and instruction for social-emotional learning: a correlational study current issues in education, 23(3) 1 volume 23, issue 3 december 12, 2022 issn 1099-839x teacher collaboration and instruction for social-emotional learning: a correlational study ann m. leonard, ph.d. independent consultant teacher collaboration international consulting rebecca h. woodland, ph.d. professor, department of educational policy, research, and administration college of education, university of massachusetts amherst abstract: teacher collaboration and social-emotional learning (sel) are extant school improvement strategies intended to have a positive effect on student learning outcomes. the purpose of this quantitative, ex post facto study was to examine possible correlations between degree of teacher collaboration and use of instructional practices that support student sel among lower secondary teachers (grades 7-9) in the united states (leonard, 2021). correlational analyses were conducted using a secondary dataset of the 2018 teaching and learning international survey (talis) sponsored by the office of economic cooperation and development (oecd, 2018). results showed strong, statistically significant relationships between frequency of teacher engagement in higher-intensity “student-facing” collaborative actions such as peer observation, and the enactment of instructional approaches that contribute to student sel, such as helping students believe they can do well in school and having them work in groups to come up with a joint solution to a problem. implications for research and for the advancement of teacher collaboration and sel in p12 schools are discussed. keywords: social-emotional learning, developmental relationships, teacher collaboration, student-facing collaborative actions citation: leonard, a. m. & woodland, r. h. (2022). teacher collaboration and instruction for socialemotional learning: a correlational study. current issues in education, 23 (3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss3.2053 accepted: 11/29/2022 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss3.2053 leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 2 introduction teacher collaboration and social-emotional learning (sel) are extant strategies related to school improvement and enacted with the intention of improving student outcomes. teacher collaboration takes many forms but is frequently operationalized in p12 schools through the establishment of a professional learning community (plc). membership in a high-quality plc, characterized by shared purpose and interdependent practices that are sustained over time, can enable educators to engage in constructive, reflective dialogue and action-taking to improve student academic learning. other forms of collaboration within a plc can include peer observation, team teaching, and the sharing of materials. social-emotional learning (sel) is the domain of student learning that includes student understanding and managing of emotions, goal setting, feeling empathy for others, establishing positive relationships, and making responsible decisions. sel content is increasingly understood as a critical aspect of a school’s curriculum that should be attended to in tandem with traditional academic areas. however, despite the recognized value of teacher collaboration and sel, these two phenomena remain largely disconnected from each other in educational research and practice. 1 the publication of a nation at risk (gardner, 1983) initiated a burst of national conversation among educators, community members, policy makers, and politicians about how to improve p12 public schools. the central aim of these improvement efforts was to combat the perceived “rising tide of mediocrity” through a renewed commitment to educational standards and achievement as the basis for global competitiveness. however, the report largely neglected the social and emotional aspects of learning. while enumerating recommendations for academic content, expectations, time, and teaching methods, a nation at risk did not acknowledge that social and emotional competencies play an integral part in academic learning and achievement. driven by a nation at risk, the last three decades of p12 public education improvement work have been dominated by achievement and accountability-driven reforms such as the adoption of common core state standards, high-stakes testing, and using student test scores in school and teacher evaluation. the 2015 every student succeeds act (essa) which authorized the expenditure of federal funds on evidence-based sel programs, and the publication of the aspen institute report (berman, 2018), from a nation at risk to a nation at hope, are two further milestones in the national education conversation that mark an emerging recognition of the role that social and emotional learning plays in student achievement and school improvement. the aspen institute’s report establishes sel as a fundamental domain of schooling, integral to student learning and development. although u.s. public schools have always been charged with a civic purpose, and awareness of the importance of socialization in education can be traced at least as far back as dewey’s democracy and education (1916), these recent publications revived interest in the social, relational, and emotional dimensions of the educational process. while from a nation at risk to a nation at hope may not match a nation at risk in terms of policy influence, it is indicative of a growing understanding that schools need to attend to students’ acquisition of not only knowledge and cognitive skills, but also social and emotional competencies needed in adulthood such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making (casel, 2015). importantly for the work of school improvement, 1 this paper is based on the research conducted for ann m. leonard’s dissertation study but has been revised and updated after the peer review process conducted by cie’s editorial team. these revisions have been made collaboratively by leonard and woodland. leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 3 meta-analyses have found that progress in the development of cognitive, social, and emotional capacity happens when these domains are integrated together, not compartmentalized into discrete programs or lessons (durlak et al., 2011; taylor et al., 2017). this implies that all teachers need to understand the linkages among students’ social, emotional, and academic strengths and challenges in order to create conditions to maximize student learning across these domains. they need to know what constitutes culturally and developmentally relevant socialemotional learning, how to effectively enact sel-supportive instructional practices in their classrooms, and how to analyze and act on sel-related problems of practice. for the purposes of a study that is fundamentally interested in classroom teacher practices that are supportive of student sel, it is appropriate to utilize a framework for sel that is not specialist-delivered or contained in a free-standing course, program, or lesson, but rather one that is grounded in instructional strategies that can be infused into existing teaching practices, curricula, and activities, school-wide. such an approach is found in li and julian’s developmental relationships model, defined as “reciprocal human interactions that embody an enduring emotional attachment, progressively more complex patterns of joint activity, and a balance of power that gradually shifts from the developed person in favor of the developing person” (li & julian, 2012, p. 157). scales et al. (2020) used li and julian’s model to study sel-supportive instructional practices at the middle school level and found that the quality of student-teacher relationships, as reflected in the kinds of instructional practices teachers employ and how they establish classroom norms and climate, predicted student academic motivation and sense of belonging directly, and through motivation indirectly predicted gpa. teacher-student relationships that extended beyond warmth and high expectations and included providing support, sharing power, and expanding students’ sense of agency and possibilities were key to the formation of developmental relationships that had the potential to “substantively affect the trajectory of young people’s growth in a sustained manner over time and across contexts, and in particular, to stimulate, maintain and grow the kind of academic motivation needed for students to exert full effort and persevere in the face of struggle” (scales et al., 2020, p. 651). the instructional practices that build developmental relationships are (1) stealthy, or woven into normal school practices, so less likely to feel controlling or provoke resistance in students; and (2) recursive, or made up of small, repeated actions that can activate large changes over time (yeager & walton, 2011). instead of seeking to directly alter students’ internal characteristics and competencies, as some sel approaches do, the developmental relationships framework aims to alter relational contexts and instructional practices so that social-emotional competencies emerge and flourish. yet, as is true of other frameworks for systemic, integrated sel, the scholarship of li and julian and scales et al. does not explain how teachers learn to initiate and sustain developmental relationships with their students. purpose of the study while teacher collaboration and sel are prominent school improvement-related strategies, their enactment is varied, and their implementation is complex and fraught with risks to undercut their purported benefits to teaching and learning. little work has been done to examine the potential intersections between teacher collaboration and student sel. given the known power of teacher collaboration to promote teacher learning and the quality of instructional practice in general (e.g., vangrieken et al., 2017; vescio et al., 2008), the field would benefit from a deeper understanding of the ways that teacher collaborative action-taking may advance or be related to sel-supportive instructional practices. this study contributes to leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 4 discourse in the fields of study of teacher collaboration and sel through an ex post facto analysis of u.s. teacher responses to the 2018 administration of the teaching and learning international survey (talis), a five-year cyclical survey sponsored by the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd, 2018), specifically targeting survey items related to collaborative action-taking and instructional practices supportive of sel. it provides a descriptive snapshot of specified professional and instructional practices among u.s. lower secondary level teachers (grades 7-9) and an analysis of correlations between types of collaborative action-taking and instructional practices supportive of sel. it points to productive directions for further research, including investigations of other salient teacher-level and schoollevel factors, and other approaches to studying teacher beliefs and practices related to collaboration and sel. it may also help guide school leaders’ reflection and decision-making related to efforts to improve in the areas of teacher collaboration and sel, thereby enhancing the efficacy of teacher time and effort and indirectly leading to better and more equitable learning outcomes for students. statement of the problem existing frameworks for systemic, integrated sel (e.g., jennings & greenberg, 2008; jones & bouffard, 2012) do not sufficiently attend to teacher learning needs; they place responsibility for continuous improvement in the hands of district and school leaders and give limited consideration to available means to improve teacher sel knowledge and instructional skill through teacher collaboration. professional development related to sel is insufficient and not always effective (jennings & frank, 2015). while a growing body of evidence suggests that integrated sel implemented on a continuous basis by all school staff is related to the most durable and beneficial outcomes for students, many schools rely on discrete lessons or specialized-staff-delivered programs to support sel. the work of li and julian (2012) and scales et al. (2020) explains how instructional practices that build developmental relationships are an essential ingredient in the effective promotion of positive social-emotional and academic outcomes. although educator collaboration is known to be a catalyst for contextualizing complex issues and developing strategies to address problems of practice, leading to beneficial outcomes for teachers and students, little is known about whether and how teacher collaborative actiontaking and sel-supportive instructional practices may be related to each other. to investigate this gap, secondary analyses were conducted on the talis 2018 dataset to provide information about current collaborative action-taking and instructional practices supportive of sel across u.s. schools among lower secondary teachers (grades 7-9) and initial findings about possible relationships between the independent variables, types of teacher collaborative action-taking, and the dependent variables, specific instructional practices known to be supportive of sel. research design the study employed secondary data analyses in a correlational design to examine the naturally occurring variations in the independent variables, sel-supportive instructional practices, as they relate to the dependent variables, and types of teacher collaborative actiontaking. the following research questions were addressed in this study: 1. in which types of collaborative action-taking do u.s. teachers most frequently engage? 2. in which sel-supportive instructional practices do u.s. teachers most frequently engage? 3. what is the relationship between teacher collaborative action-taking and teacher instructional practices that support sel? sub-question: which types of teacher leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 5 collaborative action-taking relate most strongly with specific sel-supportive instructional practices? because the intersection of sel and teacher collaboration is a new line of research, it was appropriate to conduct an ex post facto examination of existing data gathered through the talis 2018 survey of 2560 u.s. lower secondary level (grades 79) teachers from 165 mainstream (not primarily serving hospitalized or adjudicated youth) schools (oecd, 2020b). an ex post facto study indicates that the data have already been generated, so the variables cannot be manipulated by the researcher (silva, 2012). none of the published talis documentation indicates plans to study possible relationships between collaborative action-taking and sel-supportive instructional practices; the intent of the talis is to describe the current state of teacher practices, attitudes, and beliefs (ainley & carstens, 2018). this study was a novel utilization of talis data to conduct secondary analyses using a correlational design to examine the naturally occurring variations in specified independent variables, sel-supportive instructional practices, as they relate to specified dependent variables, and types of collaborative action-taking. to examine the possible relationships between collaborative action-taking and sel-supportive instructional practices, it was necessary to choose statistical methods for bivariate correlation of categorical data. in a correlational study, there is: only a single group of subjects rather than two or more groups. in addition, each of the subjects has a score on two different variables. also in a correlational study, we do not seek cause-and-effect relationships between independent and dependent variables. rather, we simply want to know whether or not the scores on the two variables are related (steinberg, 2010, p. 417). the research questions outlined above were addressed using quantitative (descriptive and correlative) statistical methods applied to the talis 2018 dataset. the independent and dependent measured variables in this study were teacher-level, describing teacher professional and instructional practices. the independent variables were drawn from the talis 2018 items describing the frequency of teacher collaborative action-taking (items 33 a-h; see figure 1). figure 1 talis item 33 leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 6 talis 2018 employs a conceptual framework which distinguishes between two levels of collaborative action-taking. the lower exchange level is associated with items 33 d, e, and g, and includes engagement in discussions on teaching materials, common assessment standards, or the learning of individual students, and attendance at team conferences. the higher professional collaboration level, associated with items 33 a, b, c, f, and h, represents action-taking that demands more commitment and collegial interdependence, such as team teaching, peer observation, interdisciplinary or multi-age projects, and collaborative professional development (ainley & carstens, 2018). this study used the specific collaborative actions itemized in item 33 a-h to evaluate possible relationships between teacher collaboration and sel-supportive instructional practices. findings about collaborative actions, i.e., the specific talis items, are more informative to researchers and practitioners who may be engaged with a variety of approaches to teacher collaboration. the construct validity of these items is established through the studies cited in ainley & carstens’ conceptual framework, and the literature on effective teacher collaboration. for example, item 33b, observe other teachers’ classes and provide feedback, references peer observation practices known to be an effective collaborative learning method (city, 2011). item 33h, take part in collaborative professional development, broadly describes what is known about the characteristics of effective educator teams (louis et al., 1996; vangrieken et al., 2017; vescio et al., 2008). the teacher-level dependent variables for this study were based on items describing the frequency of teacher enactment of instructional practices known to be supportive of student sel. as noted above, the talis 2018 was not constructed with the intent of measuring teacher selsupportive instructional practices. to make inferences about sel-supportive instructional practices through secondary analysis of the talis 2018 dataset, the linkages between the talis items and empirical findings about instructional practices that support student sel, (operationalized in this study using li and julian’s developmental relationships framework and the findings of scales et al. about what teachers need to be able to do to build and sustain developmental relationships with their students) must be explicated. as with the independent variables, this was done by selecting specific items for descriptive and correlative statistical analysis, rather than utilizing predefined indices. figure 2 shows talis item 34, which the talis 2018 technical manual identifies as a subscale for teacher self-efficacy in student engagement. within this subscale, items c, d, f, h, i, j, l, and m can be conceptually linked to the more general construct of student engagement, but not directly to instructional practices that build developmental relationships. for example, items d, f, h, and i address classroom management using the lexicon of behavioral management (control student behavior, get students to follow... rules), not social-emotional development. by contrast, items a, b, g, e, and k align precisely to elements of the developmental relationships framework. items 34a and b, get students to believe they can do well in school work and help students value learning align to the developmental relationships element of expressing care, which focuses on teacher practices that demonstrate warmth, encouragement, and dependability. item 34g, help students think critically, aligns to the developmental relationships element of challenging for growth, which focuses on teacher practices that express high expectations and build a growth mindset. items 34e, motivate students who show low interest in schoolwork, and k, provide an alternative explanation, for example when students are confused, align to the developmental relationships element of providing support, which focuses on teacher practices that support student persistence toward task completion and goal achievement in the face of challenges (scales et al., 2020). leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 7 figure 2 talis item 34 further connections from talis items to instructional practices known to build developmental relationships were established by including in the dependent variables data from talis item 42 (see figure 3) on the frequency of enactment of specific instructional practices in a target class. talis identifies this item as a subscale for cognitive activation, a construct defined as setting learning tasks that ask students to evaluate, integrate and apply knowledge in a leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 8 figure 3 talis item 42 problem-solving context to stimulate cognitive processing and established as predictive of student motivation and achievement (ainley & carstens, 2018; seidel & shavelson, 2007). to yield insight into instructional practices that align more precisely with the developmental relationships framework and support student sel, this study utilized items 42 e, f, and g. 42e, i present tasks for which there is no obvious solution, is related to the developmental relationships element of challenging for growth, which focuses on teacher practices that express high expectations and build a growth mindset and confidence in students’ abilities to face challenges. items 42 f and g, i give tasks that require students to think critically, and i have students work in small groups to come up with a joint solution to a problem or task, are related to the developmental relationships element of expanding possibilities, wherein teachers offer engaging experiences that help students learn to navigate obstacles, express their preferences and passions, and amplify their voices (scales et al., 2020). the design for this study was not predicated upon the existence of an as-yet-to-berecognized subscale in the talis that matches li and julian’s developmental relationships framework, nor is it arguing that the selected independent variables from talis items 34 and 42 fully encompass what is known about sel-supportive instructional practices. it did assert that the specified instructional practices identified in the talis are sufficiently aligned with identified elements of the developmental relationships framework, which is known to be an approach through which teachers can effectively integrate support of student sel into classroom teaching and learning (ainley & carstens, 2018; scales et al., 2020). hence, correlations leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 9 between these items can yield valid insights into this study’s primary research question: what is the relationship between teacher collaborative action-taking and teacher instructional practices that support sel? this study could not and did not assume that the dependent variables capture a dimension representing sel-supportive instructional practices. measurement models such as confirmatory factor analysis are useful for confirming a theory about how many factors are part of a dimension, which was not the aim of this study. knowledge in the field regarding selsupportive instructional practices is emergent and unsettled, and so this study attended to the potential relationships between specific teacher-reported professional and instructional practices to contribute to an emerging understanding of how teachers may learn instructional practices that develop and sustain developmental relationships and, through this pathway, support student sel. data collection & analysis sample demographics the data set for this study included a total of 2560 u.s. teacher respondents from 165 different schools. demographic analyses indicated that the sample was 67.23% female and 32.77% male. respondents reported a mean experience level of 13.9 years in teaching, and a mean of 8.1 years teaching at their current school. 59.74% reported their highest level of formal education completed as isced level 7, master’s or equivalent, and 38.1% reported their highest level of formal education completed as isced level 6, bachelor’s or equivalent. these demographic data are similar to that of the 2017-18 nces national teacher and principal survey for gender, experience, and education levels in public middle schools (taie & goldring, 2020), indicating that the talis sample is accurately representative. talis instrumentation and analysis methods this study employed an existing dataset from talis 2018, released in 2019 and available to download and analyze using a statistics software package. statistical procedures were chosen according to the sample characteristics and item structure of the talis. the sample size of 2560 u.s. lower secondary level teachers is large enough to use procedures that assume a normal distribution. the actual number of surveys used in tabulating the descriptive analyses of the independent variables, and types of collaborative action-taking, ranged from 2419-2427 across the eight items analyzed. the actual number of surveys used in tabulating the descriptive analyses of the dependent variables, instructional practices supportive of social-emotional learning, ranged from 1966-2425 across the eight items analyzed. the actual number of surveys used for chi-square testing of the dependent variables against the independent variables ranged from 1958-2419 across the 64 tests. to address the variances associated with estimating population statistics from a sample, replicate weighting was used in analytical procedures conducted on the data. the replicate weights allow the single sample to simulate multiple samples, generating a more informed standard error and enabling more accurate inferences about the population to be drawn from analyses of the sample data (steinberg, 2010). the variables in this study are categorical and ordinal, not numerical: the responses are arranged in a logical order expressing categories of frequency (e.g., item 33: never/once a year or less/2-4 times a year/5-10 times a year/1-3 times a month/once a week or more), but the spacing between those levels of frequency cannot be assumed to be equal (kremelberg, 2014). correlative procedures were therefore employed that are appropriate for the selected variables; chi-square testing is the appropriate measure of possible associations among categorical/ordinal leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 10 variables. chi-square testing was used as a measure of possible associations between items composing the dependent and independent variables as indicated by the presence or absence of statistically significant relationships between the variables (frost, 2020). chi-square tests are highly sensitive to sample sizes under 50 and over 500, so with more than 2000 surveys under analysis, it is unsurprising that statistical significance was found in almost all the tested potential associations. data visualization and analysis of the chi-square test results were conducted to compensate for this hypersensitivity and determine similarities and differences between observed and expected matrices. p-values, chi-square statistics, and response percentages were calculated for each of the 64 possible associations between types of collaborative action-taking and types of sel-supportive instructional practice. p-values are one measure of the strength of the evidence against the null hypothesis; lower p-values represent stronger evidence. if the p-value is higher than 0.05, the sample data do not provide enough evidence that the association exists (kremelberg, 2014). given that these chi-square tests are a bi-variate analysis, without controlling for an additional variable such as a school-level characteristic, it would be expected to find statistically significant relationships among many, if not all, of the tested associations. therefore, this study’s analytical approach looked beyond the presence of statistical significance as expressed in p-values and examined response percentages in detail to assess the strength and describe the nature of the relationship between the two tested variables. summary of research design the study described here incorporated research questions, research methods, and an analytical approach that built on a review of bodies of literature related to teacher collaboration and social-emotional learning (leonard, 2021). the research design offered a way to begin to examine possible relationships between sel-supportive instructional practices and teacher collaborative action-taking, while demonstrating regard for prior theoretical and empirical achievements in the field. results the study’s hypotheses were predicated on the idea that greater frequency of teacher engagement in higher level, more interdependent types of collaboration would positively relate to more frequent use of instructional practices supportive of sel. considering that underlying the theoretical conceptualizations of both teacher collaboration and sel is a fundamental assertion that relationships and emotional processes affect how and what we learn, it was reasonable to posit that frequency of participation in more interdependent, collaborative, peer-topeer interactions would be related to the frequency of use of sel-supportive instructional practices. this section will present the findings that resulted from the descriptive and correlational analyses enacted to answer this study’s research questions. research question 1: in which types of collaborative action-taking do u.s. teachers most frequently engage? rq1 was descriptive and required quantitatively describing the talis data for selected items 33a-33h, the independent variables related to teacher self-reported frequency of enactment of eight specified collaborative actions. statistical procedures were employed in stata and excel for organizing, summarizing, and displaying the data. to address the core concern of rq1, which collaborative actions u.s. lower secondary teachers most frequently engage in, summary leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 11 tables and graphs were constructed to display data regarding which collaborative actions u.s. 7th-9th grade teachers report engaging in once per month or more, aggregating the two highest frequency response categories, 1-3 times a month and once a week or more. this level of frequency is relevant to this rq based on previous studies (yoon et al., 2007), which indicate that any professional learning experience in which teachers engage for an average of less than 810 hours per month will likely have little or no impact on instructional practice and student learning. while the talis item response choices cannot readily be converted to hours per month, it is reasonable to assume that only the highest two levels of frequency response possible, 1-3 times a month and once a week or more, may reach an average of 8 hours per month or more. these data are graphically presented in figure 4. figure 4 percent of more frequent responses on collaborative action items wide variation in teacher participation in different types of collaborative action-taking is illustrated in these data, with a range from 6.52% to 67.79% of high-frequency responses across the eight selected survey items. item 33e about discussing the learning development of specific students was the most frequent action that teachers reported engaging in, with 67.79% saying they took this action at least once a month, followed by item 33d regarding the exchange of materials with colleagues (56.07%), item 33f about how often you work with other teachers in the school to ensure common standards in evaluations (48.31%), and item 33g, how often you attend team conferences (46.26%). it is noteworthy that the four most frequently reported collaborative actions include the three types which are categorized in the talis conceptual framework as lower-level exchange actions (items 33d, e, and g), and only one of the higher-level, more interdependent actions (item 33f, work with other teachers in this school to ensure commons standards in evaluations for assessing student progress). the lower-level actions are distinguished by being typically leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 12 episodic and informal in nature, as contrasted with higher-level actions that involve more depth of commitment and interdependence between teachers. professional collaboration activities that are considered higher-level, such as observing other teachers and providing feedback, teaching jointly as a team in the same class, and engaging in joint activities across different classes and age groups (e.g., projects), were the four least frequently occurring practices. the lowest-frequency collaborative actions were: teach jointly as a team in the same class (33a: 6.52%), observe other teachers’ classes and provide feedback (33b: 6.98%) and engage in joint activities e.g. projects (33c: 10.12%). the number of contact hours devoted to professional learning needed to show a positive and significant effect on student achievement has been found to range between 30-100 hours, averaging 49 hours, spread over 612 months, whereas professional development offering 5-14 hours of contact had statistically no significant effect on student achievement (yoon et al., 2007). teacher perception of the usefulness of professional learning experiences has also been found to be related to the duration and intensity of the experience; the more hours of participation that teachers report, the more highly they rate the usefulness of the professional development (wei et al., 2010). although there are no well-established empirically-grounded guidelines regarding the amount of time needed for specific collaborative actions to be effective, the yoon et al. metric, when applied to the findings about participation in collaborative action-taking in the 2018 talis, suggests that very small numbers of u.s. lower secondary teachers are participating in these higher-level types of collaboration at frequency levels high enough to have any significant effect on student outcomes. of the higher-level items, the only two in which u.s. lower secondary teachers report engagement at a level of frequency close to the lower-level items are 33f) work with other teachers in this school to ensure common standards in evaluations for assessing student progress and 33h) take part in collaborative professional learning. regarding the nature of these two items, note that they differ from the other three which all involve students being present during the professional collaboration activity, whether in classroom observations, team teaching, or joint activities; neither meetings about common assessment standards nor other forms of collaborative professional learning typically involve the presence of students. item 33h) take part in collaborative professional learning (39.43%) contains broad and confusing terminology, with responses dependent on teacher interpretation of the terms collaborative, professional, and learning, highlighting the analytical challenges inherent in the use of the talis typology for collaborative actions. overall, the descriptive analyses conducted on talis 2018 data to answer rq1 showed that teachers participated more frequently in the lower-level exchange practices, which are less likely to positively influence student learning. conversely, the higher-level, more interdependent practices that are known to positively influence instructional practice and student learning, happen infrequently and thus are not likely to have a positive effect on student learning. research question 2: in which sel-supportive instructional practices do u.s. teachers most frequently engage? rq2 required quantitatively describing the talis data for selected items 34a, b, e, g, k and items 42 e, f, g, the dependent variables representing teacher self-reported frequency of enactment of eight specified instructional practices associated with the developmental relationships framework, this study’s model for operationalizing sel-supportive instructional leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 13 practices. statistical procedures were employed in stata and excel for organizing, summarizing, and displaying the data. summary tables were constructed to display data regarding which selsupportive instructional practices teachers report engaging in once per month or more, aggregating the two highest frequency response categories, quite a bit and a lot for items 34 a, b, e, g, k, and frequently or always for items 42 e, f, g. these data are presented in figure 5. figure 5 percent of more frequent responses on sel-supportive instructional practices as with the collaborative action-taking responses previously reported on, considerable variation in the frequency of teacher enactment of sel-supportive instructional practices is illustrated in these data, with a range from 29.82% to 94.18% of high-frequency responses. overall, however, teachers’ self-reported levels of confidence in their enactment of all but one of these instructional practices are high. in examining these results, u.s. teachers appear to be most frequently enacting instructional practices associated with the elements of expressing care, which focuses on teacher practices that demonstrate warmth, encouragement, and dependability: items 34a get students to believe they can do well in school work (85.36%), and 34b help students value learning (76.3%). the two items associated with challenging for growth, which focuses on teacher practices that express high expectations and build a growth mindset, are split, with item 34g, help students think critically, showing high confidence (82.31%), and item 42e, present tasks for which there is no obvious solution, showing much lower confidence (29.82%). the two items associated with providing support, which focuses on teacher practices that support student persistence toward task completion and goal achievement in the face of challenges, are also split, with item 34e, motivate students who show low interest in school work, showing lower confidence (64.18%) than item 34k, provide alternative explanations e.g. when students are confused (94.18%). a split in response percentages is also visible in the two items associated with expanding possibilities, instruction that offers engaging experiences that help students learn leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 14 to navigate obstacles, express their preferences and passions, and amplify their voices: higher confidence is reported in item 42f, tasks that require students to think critically (79.42%), and lower confidence is reported in item 42g, have students work in groups to come up with a joint solution to a problem or task (65.46%). recalling that the design for this study intentionally set out to examine specific instructional practices associated with support for student sel, an as-yetundefined concept that is outside of the empirically-tested constructs that inform the writing of the talis items, it is unsurprising to find these split responses; one would not expect to find internal structural validity on items that are linked to a specific developmental relationships element. rather, the split responses are affirming of the findings of this study’s literature review regarding the lack of theoretical and practical consensus in key areas, such as how to define sel and whether and how sel competencies are teachable. research question 3: what is the relationship between teacher collaborative action-taking and teacher instructional practices that support sel? sub-question: which types of teacher collaborative action-taking relate most strongly with specific sel-supportive instructional practices? rq3 and its sub-question necessitated the identification and use of correlative statistical procedures suited to categorical data and the application of analytical techniques to ascertain the presence and nature of any identified relationships between independent collaborative actiontaking variables and dependent sel-supportive instructional practice variables. the chi-square test was selected because it compares observed and expected distributions of categorical data on two variables. if there is no relationship between the two variables, then the chi-square test should find that the frequency of reported sel instructional practice use is evenly distributed across the various levels of frequency of collaborative action-taking. if there is a relationship between the variables, the chi-square test will identify it via a level of statistical significance (pvalue) of 0.05 or less, and the nature of the relationship can be described through close examination of the response percentages to determine if the observed frequencies follow a pattern. sixty-four chi-square tests were conducted in stata to measure possible associations between independent variables, collaborative actions, and the dependent variables, selsupportive instructional practices. other studies of the talis data (e.g., brandt, 2015) took the approach of creating composite variables out of sub-items and conducting regression analyses to characterize the relationships between the composite variables. that approach was deemed illsuited to this study given the unsettled state of understanding in the field about what might constitute a composite construct for sel-supportive instructional practices and given our interest in conducting a more granular examination of specific types of collaborative action rather than generalizing multiple types of collaborative action in a composite variable. statistical significance was found in all but one of the relationships between the independent and dependent variables. this finding supports the hypothesis that a higher frequency of collaborative actiontaking correlates to a higher frequency of enacting instructional practices that support sel. for the sub-question of rq3 regarding which types of collaborative action-taking relate most strongly to specific sel-supportive instructional practices, close examinations were conducted of the row percentages of each chi-square tabulation to test the hypothesis that stronger relationships would be present between the higher-level, more interdependent collaborative actions and sel-supportive practices as compared to the relationships between lower-level collaborative actions and sel-supportive practices. to enable meaningful leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 15 comparisons to be made across the eight sel-supportive instructional practice variables, row percentage data for teachers who report they are engaging in collaborative actions at the levels known to be influential on student outcomes (1-3 times/month and once a week or more) for each sel-supportive instructional practice were tabulated. row tabulations enabled an understanding of which types of collaborative action-taking relate more strongly to selsupportive instructional practices. to illustrate the responses of teachers who report they are engaging in collaborative actions at the levels known to be influential on student outcomes (1-3 times/month and once a week or more), summary tables and bar graphs were constructed to display this data, grouping the collaborative actions into three categories. the three categories displayed are: student-facing, higher-level collaborative actions, composed of teaching jointly as a team in the same class, engage in joint activities across different classes and age groups (e.g. projects), and observe other teachers’ classes and provide feedback; non-student-facing higher-level collaborative actions, composed of work with other teachers in this school to ensure common standards in evaluations for assessing student progress and take part in collaborative professional learning; and lower-level exchange collaborative actions, composed of exchange teaching materials with colleagues, engage in discussions about the learning development of specific students, and attend team conferences. the division of the higher-level category into student-facing and nonstudent-facing diverges from the two categories of the talis conceptual framework to highlight differences in the row percentage data between higher-level, more interdependent collaborative actions by teachers that occur in the presence of students (team teaching, joint activities across classes/age groups, and peer observation) and those that typically involve only adults (meeting to work on standards and assessments, and collaborative professional learning). the subsequent series of bar charts (figures 6, 7, 8) illustrates a subtle but discernable pattern of higher row percentages in the 1-3 times/month and once a week or more columns for one or more of the student-facing collaborative actions, as opposed to the non-student-facing actions, both higher and lower level. the sel-supportive instructional practices represented in these bar charts encompass both those that teachers report enacting with relatively low frequency (42e, i present tasks for which there is no obvious solution had 30% of respondents report they do this frequently or always) and relatively high frequency (34a, get students to believe they can do well in school had 85% of respondents report they do this quite a bit or a lot). they also encompass sel-supportive practices representing three of the elements of li and julian’s (2012) developmental relationships framework: 34a, get students to believe they can do well in school maps to the element of expressing care; 42e, i present tasks with no obvious solution, maps to the element of challenging for growth; 42g, i have students work in small groups to come up with a joint solution to a problem or task, maps to the element of expanding possibilities. leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 16 figure 6 types of collaborative action-taking that relate most strongly with item 34a: to what extent can you get students to believe they can do well in school work figure 7 types of collaborative action-taking that relate most strongly with item 42e: i present tasks for which there is no obvious solution leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 17 figure 8 types of collaborative action-taking that relate most strongly with item 42g: i have students work in small groups to come up with a joint solution to a problem or task the response percentages presented in figures 6-8 show that one or more of the studentfacing, higher-level collaborative actions taken by teachers (the blue bars on the left-hand side of each chart) have higher row percentages in the two highest frequency response categories than the non-student-facing, higher-level collaborative actions, and the lower-level exchange collaborative actions. in figure 6, the student-facing collaborative action of peer observation has the strongest relationship with the practice of getting students to believe they can do well in schoolwork. in figure 7, peer observation has the strongest relationship with the practice of giving students tasks for which there is no obvious solution. in figure 8, the student-facing collaborative actions of peer observation and engaging in joint activities or projects have the strongest relationships with the practice of having students work in small groups to come up with a joint solution to a problem or task. these stronger relationships are present between studentfacing, higher-level collaborative actions and sel-supportive instructional practices that u.s. teachers report engaging in with low, mid-range, and high frequency, and across the elements of li and julian’s developmental relationships framework. these data visually demonstrate how student-facing, higher-level collaborative actions correlate more strongly with sel-supportive instructional practices. summary of results this study investigated u.s. lower secondary teacher engagement in collaborative actiontaking and sel-supportive instructional practices. quantitative analyses found that u.s. lower secondary teachers engaged more frequently in lower-level, exchange-type collaborative actions, and engaged less frequently in higher-level, more interdependent collaborative actions. teachers reported high overall confidence in their enactment of sel-supportive instructional practices and current issues in education, 23(3) 18 reported more frequent engagement in practices linked to the developmental relationships element of expressing care, and mixed engagement in practices linked to providing support, providing challenge, and expanding possibilities. chi-square testing found statistical significance in the relationships between all but one of the independent variables (teacher collaborative action-taking) and dependent variables (sel supportive instructional practices). statistical significance was present, as hypothesized, in the relationships between higher-level collaborative actions and sel-supportive instructional practices but was also present in relationships between lower-level exchange actions and selsupportive instructional practices. close examination of row percentages of the chi-square test results indicated that a subcategory of student-facing, higher-level collaborative actions may correlate more strongly with sel-supportive instructional practices. teachers who reported more frequent participation in one or more of the student-facing, higher-level collaborative actions reported more frequent enactment of sel-supportive instructional practices. limitations to the study limitations to this study are related to the sample and the instrument. the 2018 talis in the u.s. was administered to a sample of the population of lower secondary level teachers, which suggests that responses may be influenced by the structures, schedules, roles, and practices of grade 7-9 educators such as grade-level or subject-area teams or departments that may not exist in the same forms at elementary or upper secondary levels (brandt, 2015). findings drawn from this sample may not be generalizable to other levels of p12 education. the study only examined u.s. teacher survey responses and explored teacher practices which may be influenced by external factors such as national or local policy or culture, and thus may not be generalizable to education systems outside of the united states. the independent variables for this study were measured by items that have been part of the 2013 and 2018 survey instruments. they were subject to extensive review as part of talis survey development (ainley & carstens, 2018); they are grounded in decades of studies using a variety of methodologies, including multiple systematic meta-analyses referenced in this paper. still, the talis items did not ask respondents to evaluate the quality or the results of their collaborative action-taking or to identify with whom they collaborated. the dependent variables for this study, as noted above in the explanation of the research design, were based on conceptual connections from talis items to instructional practices known to build developmental relationships, but the study could not and did not assume that the dependent variables fully capture a dimension representing sel-supportive instructional practices. the validity of this study’s findings – whether its results represent the actuality of educator beliefs, experiences, and behaviors is dependent upon the authenticity and accuracy of teacher responses to the talis instrument. teacher self-reports on the survey may vary from actual teacher practice, leading to inaccurate inferences. furthermore, this study’s findings of statistical significance may indicate a relationship exists among the variables or may result from the mediation of other unknown factors. the choice not to examine school-level factors in this study leaves open questions about whether and how any relationships identified between teacher collaborative action-taking and sel-supportive instructional practices may be influenced by those school-level factors. current issues in education, 23(3) 19 discussion a concise restatement of this correlational study’s central finding is that the more frequently teachers engage in collaborative practices, the more teachers will enact sel supportive instructional practices. student-facing, higher-level collaborative actions seem to have stronger relationships with teacher enactment of sel-supportive practices than either nonstudent-facing higher-level actions or lower-level exchange actions, but student-facing, higherlevel collaboration is the least common type of collaborative action-taking among u.s. lower secondary teachers. what remains absent from research, policy, and practice is a robust dialogue about how teachers can best learn about sel and improve their sel instructional capacity. this study’s findings offer a starting point for that dialogue, by establishing that there are meaningful correlations between how often and deeply teachers work with one another to examine and deliver instruction and their use of sel-supportive pedagogy. implications for research the finding that strong, meaningful relationships do exist, and that a subcategory of higher-level collaborative actions that are student-facing have the strongest relationships with potentially sel-supportive instructional practices, leads to the formulation of new research questions. these include questions that would extend beyond the finding of correlation to explore directionality and causality, such as: • what is the directionality of influence in relationships between teachers’ collaborative practices and their sel-supportive instructional practices? • what other teacher-level factors (e.g., teacher reports of their level of self-efficacy or cultural proficiency or of the faculty’s level of innovativeness) might explain some of the variance in findings about relationships between teacher collaboration and selsupportive instructional practices? • what school-level factors (e.g., resource sufficiency, school climate, or distributed leadership practices) might explain some of the variance in findings about relationships between teacher collaboration and sel-supportive instructional practices? it might be fruitful to investigate these questions using data from a future administration of the talis, especially if the survey designers prioritize improvements to items so that they better align with the emerging understanding of what constitutes equitable, effective sel-supportive instructional practice, and if it becomes feasible to readily control for other teacherand schoollevel factors that may act on the variables studied here in ways this study could not consider or control for. another possibility would be to utilize data from the oecd-sponsored insight video survey. the insight survey uses the same conceptual framework for teacher collaboration as the talis teacher survey, but its conceptualization of quality teaching includes supporting social and emotional relationships between and among teacher and students, supporting student experiences of autonomy, and using interesting tasks as domains of sel-supportive instruction (oecd, 2020a). the data collection modalities include video, artifact collection, student and teacher surveys, and preand post-assessments of student cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes to assess what teacher practices are related to these outcomes. the u.s. was not a participant in the first iteration of this study, which studied 700 teachers, drawn from nationally representative samples across eight countries, but if it did participate in the future, the dataset would enable current issues in education, 23(3) 20 inquiry into relationships between teacher collaboration, sel-supportive instructional practices, school characteristics, and student-level outcomes. the present study did not attempt to control for other factors that are known to influence teacher sel implementation, such as school-level data regarding resource sufficiency, school climate, or distributed leadership practices (ainley & carstens, 2018). while it is possible to cross-tabulate talis teacher survey data with the corresponding school’s principal survey data, the item phrasing is not favorable to controlling for factors that might explain some of the variance in findings about relationships between teacher collaboration and sel-supportive instructional practices. for example, rather than asking about a school’s fiscal resources, item 17c asks principal respondents to estimate the percentage of students from “socio-economically disadvantaged homes” (oecd, 2019). future studies continuing this line of inquiry in the talis dataset might examine whether relationships exist between this study’s variables of interest and a school’s level of resources (as reported by the principal) or teacher reports their level of self-efficacy or of the faculty’s level of innovativeness as a way to broaden the emerging understandings of how teachers become effective supporters of student sel. given access to school-level data beyond what is available in the talis, a future study could examine whether teacher collaborative action-taking and instructional practices supportive of sel vary in relationship to a school’s implementation of mtss or another tiered model for student support. the talis teacher survey data is not linked to data on student performance, so this study did not attempt to make direct linkages to student academic outcomes, nor could it consider student perception data. the talis survey collects teacher and principal data, and thus cannot provide insights into student perception of teacher sel-supportive instructional practices, although questions about this arise when examining data showing teachers’ relatively high confidence in their implementation of sel-supportive practices. how would students rate their teachers on the sel support that teachers seem so confident they are providing? would there be concordance or lack of concordance between student and teacher views on these questions? what kinds of research could yield valid insights into teacher-student concordance, especially given concerns about sel assessment validity? these questions could provide direction for future scholarship. conclusion in the 21st century, and especially considering the national movement for racial justice and recent pandemic disruptions to schooling, how to raise all teachers’ capacity to equitably support the social-emotional development of all their students has become a pressing priority for p12 public education. social-emotional competence has been shown to be more strongly associated than test scores with beneficial life outcomes for students (jackson et al., 2020). teachers recognize the importance of sel yet doubt their readiness to successfully address the social-emotional needs of the students in their classrooms. school leaders also recognize the urgency of addressing these needs, but attempts to bring about schooland district-scale improvements have encountered a variety of challenges, including a lack of effective structures and practices for teacher learning about sel. this study offered initial findings regarding a novel question: is there a relationship between the kinds of collaborative actions teachers undertake and the sel-supportive instructional practices they enact in their classrooms? many productive lines for further research into other dimensions of this question remain open for scholarly exploration. nonetheless, the findings show that the more frequently teachers engage in collaborative practices, the more current issues in education, 23(3) 21 teachers will enact sel-supportive practices, and that some collaborative actions that are directly student-facing (e.g. peer observation, team teaching, joint projects) have stronger relationships with selsupportive instructional practices than other types of collaboration suggest near-term district and school leadership actions that could be implemented to improve teacher sel instructional capacity. principals and superintendents exert influence on classroom instruction through multiple pathways, including that of communicating and modeling district priorities, and that of decision-making about local systems and practices for teacher collaboration. both of these levers of influence could be used to create conditions to strengthen teacher sel instructional capacity within the complex ecosystems of p12 schools. references ainley, j., & carstens, r. 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(2007). reviewing the evidence on how teacher professional development affects student achievement. issues and answers report, rel 2007-no. 33, 62. retrieved from: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/southwest/pdf/rel_2007033.pdf author notes ann m. leonard, ph.d. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9803-023x independent consultant, teacher collaboration international consulting anniemleona@gmail.com rebecca h. woodland, ph.d. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6350-4412 professor, department of educational policy, research, and administration college of education, university of massachusetts amherst woodland@umass.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://10.0.3.248/j.tate.2016.10.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2007.01.004 https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/professional-development-united-states-trends-and-challenges.pdf https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/professional-development-united-states-trends-and-challenges.pdf https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311405999 https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/southwest/pdf/rel_2007033.pdf https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9803-023x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6350-4412 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ purpose of the study figure 2 talis item 34 data collection & analysis summary of research design research question 1: in which types of collaborative action-taking do u.s. teachers most frequently engage? figure 4 percent of more frequent responses on collaborative action items research question 2: in which sel-supportive instructional practices do u.s. teachers most frequently engage? figure 5 percent of more frequent responses on sel-supportive instructional practices research question 3: what is the relationship between teacher collaborative action-taking and teacher instructional practices that support sel? sub-question: which types of teacher collaborative action-taking relate most strongly with specific sel-sup... limitations to the study implications for research conclusion volume 6, number 15 september 17, 2003 issn 1099-839x the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk lawrence leonard and pauline leonard louisiana tech university the institutionalization of collaborative working environments is widely considered to be critical to the creation and maintenance of schools as professional learning communities. prevailing thought suggests that improved student performance may be fully realized only when teachers routinely function as teams and abandon their traditional norms of isolationism and individualism. this interpretive study involving teachers in 45 north louisiana schools suggests that while some schools and school districts are indeed characterized by elements of the `learning community' others remain largely mired in customary practices that are counterproductive to realizing the newer collaborative standards. participating teachers report that, despite the rhetoric, major impediments to joint professional work remain and they make suggestions for better meeting the continuing collaborative challenge. there has never been a time when the expectation has been greater that teachers work together in meaningful job-embedded ways. while the prevailing call for routinized collaborative practice has been evident for the past couple of decades, it has intensified with the more recent systemic reforms based in heightened curricula standards and more stringent accountability mechanisms (peterson, 2002). the conception that educators perform better when they work together professionally is buoyed by elements of organizational theory models which emerged earlier in the corporate sector (e.g., argyris, 1978; covey, 1991; drucker, 1985; lawler, 1986; senge, 1990). such conceptions view authentic teamwork as being an essential characteristic of the successful organization as its members come together regularly to share ideas and develop common understandings of goals and the means to their attainment. building organizational capacity through collegial interaction in schools has become prominent in much of the literature on education reform and school improvement. administrators and teachers at all levels of the education practice are encouraged to build professional learning communities based on shared conceptions of vision, purpose, and means (e.g., barth, 1990; lambert, 1998; leonard & leonard, 2001a; speck, 1999). indeed, the thrust for educators to collaborate has taken on wholly international dimensions. for example, the australian college of education encourages teachers to "work collaboratively with their colleagues" (brock, 1999, p. 11) and the general teaching council for england advocates that the bases for raising schooling standards lies largely in "collaborative enquiry and open, active professional learning" (2002, introduction, 4). in canada, the ontario college of teachers asserts that teachers are educational leaders who collaborate with their colleagues, parents, and members of the community (1999, p. 8). in the united states, state-mandated school reforms of the past several years and, more recently, the new federal school accountability initiative articulated and legalized through the bush current issues in education vol. 6 no. 15 administration's no child left behind act (nclb, 2001) -have greatly increased expectations that educators do more to ensure that all students better meet standards of learning performance, particularly as measured by standardized testing procedures. concomitant with these governmental and agency imperatives are newly revised professional standards adopted by prominent professional agencies and learned societies and which compellingly endorse the collaborative initiative. for instance, the national board for professional teaching standards (2001) includes the proposition that effective teachers are members of learning communities and that accomplished teachers contribute to the effectiveness of the school by working collaboratively with other professionals on instructional policy, curriculum development and staff development (nbpts, 2001, 5). as well, the interstate new teacher assessment and support consortium (intasc) recommends that new teachers be prepared to "foster relationships with school colleagues" that help "support students' learning and well being" (intasc standards, 1998). the national staff development council (nsdc) and the interstate school leaders licensure consortium (isllc) also place high emphasis on the need for schools and school districts to create and sustain organizational cultures that are characterized by elements of professional shared learning. the nsdc process standards recommend that teachers be "provided with sufficient time during the work day "to learn and work together to accomplish the school's mission and goals" and that "staff members learn and apply collaborative skills" (nsdc standards, 2001). isslc notes the need for school administrators to promote student learning by sustaining a culture of "staff professional growth" in "an effective learning environment" (isslc standards, 1996). cultural norms and teacher collaboration notwithstanding the noted prevailing expectations that schools exemplify recognized components of professional learning communities, historical norms have not reflected such circumstances. almost three decades ago, lortie (1975) reported that teachers worked in circumstances that placed them physically and intellectually separate from their colleagues and that there was limited professional sharing among them. indications of individualistic and isolationist orientations were also evident in goodlad's (1984) seminal work a place called school: prospects for the future as he reflected upon evidence that teachers tended to interact little either within or among schools, a circumstance further noted by rosenholtz (1989). by the mid 1990s, elmore determined that although there was increasing recognition of how schools might better operate there appeared to be little incentive for teachers "to change their practices in their daily work routines" (1995, p. 15). the relevant literature of even more recent years has provided limited evidence of the melding of expectations and practices (e.g., leonard & leonard, 1999; welch, 1998). nonetheless, there are persistent claims to what professional collaborative cultures can and do achieve, among them, teacher empowerment, collegial trust, and organizational change, and school improvement (hall & hord, 2001; maehr and midgley, 1996; stoll & fink, 1996) all of which are resolutely linked to the ultimate goal of enhanced student outcomes. of course, discussion of collegial behavior must be embedded in an overriding conceptualization of societal and organizational culture. despite the diversity that exists in american society and its multiple micro-societal layers, "individualism as an ideal is extreme in the u.s. core culture" (banks, 2003, p.9). it is not unreasonable to expect that this macro-culture of individualism would penetrate an organization's culture. a school's culture simply reflects what its members collectively value and believe about the world and their place in it (schein, 1985). it includes critical and interactive elements such as shared expectations of behavior, the nature of professional development, mutual respect, and orientations toward collaboration and learning (peterson & deal, 1999; speck, 1999). peterson (2002) identifies two forceful and opposite school cultures: `positive' and `toxic'. positive cultures reflect norms of common purpose, continuous inquiry, and shared practice while toxic cultures thrive where there is a lack of purpose, collaboration is discouraged, and there are hostile relations among staff. toxic cultures can defy individual efforts toward educational improvement and, because of their entrenchment, can even stymie collective reform efforts. authentic teacher collaboration that which is directed ultimately toward student learning is unlikely to occur within the realm of a negative school culture. as wagner and masden-copas (2002) warn, the primary goal of continuous school improvement will not be realized "unless teams of teachers improve together" (p.43). in spite of the potential benefits accrued to cultural norms of collaborative practice, problems may persist in sustaining schools as learning communities founded in notions of professional interaction that is, teachers meeting regularly to exchange ideas, set goals, and make plans to address shared purposes. inherent in such a supposition is, of course, that teachers themselves actually retain commonly-held beliefs about the value of collaborative activities and that they are able to avail the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk 3 of organizational circumstances and conditions that regularly generate them. inhibitors to such collegial professional interaction have been noted often in the literature, among them: time constraints, fragmented visions, competitiveness, conflict avoidance, and lack of administrative support (for examples see dipardo, 1997; knop, lemaster, norris, raudensky & tannehill, 1997; kruse & louis, 1997; leonard, 1998). recent research undertaken by one of the authors (leonard, 2002) with 238 louisiana teachers confirmed several of those suppositions and provided additional insights. in that study, appropriate revisions were made to an earlier survey instrument developed by the authors (leonard & leonard, 2001) and which had been based upon schein's (1985) underlying dimensions of organizational culture. the self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 500 systematic randomly selected teachers in 88 schools in 10 public school districts or parishes in northern louisiana. the instrument was comprised of 52 items, 24 of which were of likert-type response format with the remaining items addressing descriptive aspects of the teachers' schools, demographic information, as well as a selection checklist of various common forms of teacher shared work. these forms of shared activities included team planning, peer observation, joint inservice (i.e., participating in workshops with school colleagues), extracurricular activities, and other forms of joint, or common, activities. from the teachers' reported perspectives, and generally speaking, the research findings were summarized in the following five statements: 1. teachers do not consider their schools to sufficiently exhibit expectations of or support for regular, high levels of collaborative involvement. 2. teacher work continues to be characterized by competition and individualism and lacks the type of trusting, caring environment that is more conducive to collaborative practice. 3. there needs to be greater articulation of underlying values and beliefs about educational practice that is tempered with respect for diverse professional opinions and practices. 4. teachers are dissatisfied with scheduling and appropriations of time, which often serve to deter collaborative practice. 5. teachers need professional development directed at improving their collaborative skills. as noted earlier, the follow-up louisiana research, which is described below, served to further probe the nature and extent of collaborative practice in schools. such inquiry is needed in order to learn more about how cultures can be fostered to "systematically address school improvement and student learning" (hipp & huffman, 2002, p. 39). as noted above, the research reported here primarily addresses data received in a follow-up survey addressing aspects of professional collaboration in north louisiana schools. the questionnaire addressed teachers' beliefs about collaborative practice compared to what they perceived as actual collaborative conditions and circumstances in their schools (see leonard, 2002). of the 238 teachers who completed the initial questionnaire, 101 indicated that they would be willing to participate in the follow-up survey which would delve more deeply into the nature of teacher shared work in schools. the second questionnaire was distributed in the spring of 2002 with 56 (55.5%) teachers from 45 schools in 8 districts returning completed instruments. twenty-five of the respondents taught at the primary/elementary level, 16 in the junior high/middle school grades area, and the remaining 15 in high schools. school enrollment size ranged from a low of 168 to a maximum of approximately 2000 students. teacher experience ranged from 3 years to 34 years. in open-ended question format, the followup survey asked teachers to reflect upon specific aspects of collaborative practices at their schools as well as at the district level and beyond. teachers were also asked to assess administrator and organizational expectations and support for professional collaboration as well as evident impediments to such practices. inasmuch as common language is essential to effective communication - and in an attempt to avoid possible misconceptions about what constitutes professional collaboration - the survey document contained the following guiding definition: "for the purpose of clarity in this discussion, `professional collaboration' is considered to occur when teachers work together regularly, share their knowledge, contribute ideas, and develop plans for achieving educational goals that is, principally in terms of improved student learning. (we are not, in this instance, including such things as hall or lunch supervision or extra-curricular activities.)" results the data analysis of the written responses to the open-ended survey questions employed a basic qualitative enquiry technique by initially structuring the data along question topics and then allowing additional themes and sub-themes to emerge. large portions of the data were coded independently by the researchers and, later, categories and themes were reexamined collectively to determine agreement. the method allowed for high inter-rater reliability and current issues in education vol. 6 no. 15 reasonable confidence that the written opinions of the respondents were being perceived correctly. the coding process resulted in the emergence of two principal themes: 1. the nature and extent of professional collaboration in schools, and 2. the nature and extent of professional collaboration at the school district level and beyond. each category is discussed in turn and then considered together in overall terms. school-level collaboration the most frequent forms of collaborative practices cited by the 56 responding teachers included faculty meetings, departmental meetings, grade-level or subject area meetings, and special education meetings. they also noted curriculum meetings, team teaching, lesson planning, and faculty workshops. a number of the teachers provided explication of the forms collaborative practices took at their schools. for instance, this high school english teacher related how she and her colleagues meet to discuss student progress: we discuss what the students didn't seem to get before moving on to a new level in hopes of the lower level teacher focusing more on those skills with the next group. we do this because we have found that there are some skills entire groups are not acquiring. an elementary teacher noted that teachers in her school are "paired together" to "plan their units" while another recounted how the workload is shared as each teacher is required to "get materials and tests ready for all teachers". as did a few other participants, this middle school teacher described how departments regularly come together: several times in the course of the year, all departments meet to discuss how to meet state benchmarks and provide curriculum for each subject area. reading and english work closely in collaborating writing creatively with assigned stories read in class. a few others referred to various forms of "informal gatherings" or "when we are passing each other" as opportunities for sharing ideas "by word of mouth". occasional reference was also given to addressing student discipline problems by consulting with each other. table 1 contains a summary listing of the various ways the teachers reported collaborating with colleagues. notwithstanding the extensive record of ways that the teachers engage in collaborative practices, there were also those teachers who reported little such activity was to be witnessed in their schools and some indicated that collaborative activity was virtually non-existent. one high school teacher said quite succinctly that the amount of collaborative work was simply "none" while another estimated that "very little collaboration of any kind is done at our school"; a third person stated flatly that "teachers really do not collaborate." of those who did recount various forms of shared work, most (73.1%) lamented that efforts were still largely inadequate. one elementary respondent put it this way: although we do collaborate on various things, we do not meet often enough. most of the time we see each other in the hall and have quick conversation. it is usually short. table 1: various forms of professional collaboration reported by teachers faculty meeting departmental/subject meetings grade-level meetings beginning-of-year meetings lesson planning examination preparation workshops sharing materials informal meetings university graduate classes team teaching special education meetings committee meetings peer observation the research literature on professional collaboration has consistently cited a number of prevailing barriers to meaningful interactions [see for examples dipardo, 1997; knop, lemaster, norris, raudensky & tannehill, 1997; kruse & louis, 1997, leonard, 1999]. most of these impediments to shared work activity were cited by the participant teachers. not unexpectedly, the ubiquitous issue of time was prominent among them. frequently, respondents bemoaned that lack of time is a major problem in their schools and one high school teacher attributed it to there being "so many programs, activities, etc. that we are involved in planning and conducting until no time is left for professional collaboration". this sentiment was echoed by another secondary teacher who stated: "we have a lot of responsibilities and not a lot of free time." increasing amounts of "paper work" was cited by a number of others. this elementary teacher explained circumstances this way: it's hard to find extra time to devote to collaboration. extra time is spent on developing lesson plans, helping children who were absent with make-up work, running papers, gathering materials for lessons and school committee work. i teach 4th grade and average about forty the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk 5 conferences a year. this takes a lot of out time also. a few of the teachers pointed out that they did not think it appropriate that teachers should be expected to utilize after-school time for collaborative activities, especially, as one elementary teacher noted there is little opportunity to meet after classes since teachers "usually have children of their own or errands to run after school". other comments incorporated notions of being "too busy", "too tired", and "overwhelmed" by other professional and personal responsibilities. a couple of teachers also noted that some teachers have other employment and, consequently, are often "in a hurry to leave and get to their other job". this high school teacher summarized the prevailing time-constraining situation in this manner: we have twenty minutes for lunch, and 10 minutes for recess. otherwise we have only our planning period, which does not coincide with other teachers' periods. most do not want to stay after school. the teachers noted a number of other obstacles to teacher collaborative practice. prominent among them was the apparent attitude and lack of commitment by teachers as well as the lack of compensation. they talked of "lazy people" who wished to avoid additional work and others who prefer "to work alone" and stay in their "comfort zone". references were also made to "resistance to change", "competition" among teachers for high test scores, and a genuine "lack of interest" in doing things differently. one middle school teacher was particularly dismayed with the attitudes of some of more experienced teachers toward newer faculty members: [they are] reluctant to accept ideas of new teachers; sometimes they don't want new ideas; sometimes i think they feel threatened by the presence of the new teachers who are up to date with current technology and who are excited about teaching methods. the respondents were also critical of a lack of appropriate compensation for additional work. they noted that "collaboration takes effort and organization" and, without monetary reward, "no one is willing to do it." one teacher with more than 20 years experience put it this way: i have noticed over the years i've been teaching that there seems to be a lack of commitment on the parts of teachers to give time, especially after school or during the summer, without monetary compensation. but, without pay, who can blame them? other noted barriers to collaborative opportunities included "tight scheduling" - especially in smaller schools -teacher personality conflicts, and lack of administrative support. there were marked contrasts among some respondents in terms of how they viewed the extent of administrative concern for collaborative practices among teachers. while some respondents were highly complimentary in their perceptions of principal support others were considerably less enamored. the former spoke of how their principals had arranged for regular subject and grade-level meetings, accommodated schedules to model a collaborative orientation, and provided additional opportunities for teachers to come together during workshops and special teamwork sessions. this junior high school teacher was clearly pleased with the efforts of her chief school administrator: our principal is very supportive! each faculty meeting we share ideas and plan schoolwide activities. next year we have a schoolwide theme planned for 6 th , 7 th , and 8 th . activities are being planned now for next year. we also have a summer retreat when we plan as a faculty the activities and policies we plan to implement. another junior high school teacher related how his principal regularly visited meetings, encouraged teachers, and provided them with necessary information. not everyone was as satisfied with the efforts of their school administrators. some noted that collaboration was largely left "to each grade level to take care of" or was "only ostensibly encouraged" in the realistic recognition that "we can't do it". others were pithy in their appraisals that administrator support for collaborative practice was "very little" or "does not exist". recommendations for improved administrative support for collaboration included suggestions of: scheduling that would better facilitate teacher interaction during the day, arranging for team teaching, providing substitute teachers to free up teachers to work together, organizing classroom allocations more effectively, providing directives and incentives for after school work, and setting stronger expectations that teachers actually collaborate in meaningful ways. collaboration at the district level and beyond the variation that characterized collaborative practice and support for collaboration at the school level seemed largely to be reflected in circumstances at the district or parish level, as well. some teachers spoke of their districts providing multiple and varied opportunities for teachers to engage in professional interaction with counterparts at other schools. other respondents spoke of beginning-of-year initiation gatherings, of occasional district grade-level meetings during which teachers current issues in education vol. 6 no. 15 addressed state curriculum benchmarks, of district supervisors meeting with subject area teachers to "share collaboratively", of grant-writing workshops, and of the notification of regional meetings of interest to teachers. a number of teachers felt these efforts were quite effective in meeting teacher professional development needs. this junior high school faculty member put it this way: our parish is constantly trying to offer programs to help teachers in their classrooms. if there is something we need and if our parish doesn't offer the workshop they will find another place that does. if there is enough interest, they will bring one to us. as with some school-level administration, some teachers perceived a lack of direction for collaborative engagement at the district level. their descriptors ranged from "none" to "very little". one primary teacher went so far as to suggest that she did not think the superintendent "really cares" while this high school faculty member reported a perceived pattern of indifference at the district level: unfortunately our parish administration doesn't promote or encourage collaboration in schools or among schools. this has been the case for my entire 23 years. the louisiana teachers offered a number of ways for improving the promotion of collaboration at the district level and beyond. suggestions included mandating intensive collaboration training at all schools, providing more opportunities for teachers to collaborate with other schools and at the district level, coordinating the dissemination of the latest teaching techniques, providing sufficient numbers of teachers at the school level, and promoting newer ideas by recruiting teachers from outside the district and state. there was also strong support for the notion of paying teachers extra for collaboration time beyond the normal school day and for the supply of more substitutes so teachers could work together more frequently during the school day. some also spoke of the need to better utilize web-based teacher networks, to work with colleges and universities in designing more practice-based courses, and to allocate more funding for attendance at professional conferences outside the state. there were also admonitions that district administrators should not perceive non-teaching time as "time off" and that they more routinely and effectively consult teachers prior to making decisions that impact directly upon them and their students. table 2 summarizes teacher suggestions for better promoting professional collaboration at the school and district levels. table 2: teacher suggestions for promoting collaborative practices in schools and school districts. collaboration training for teachers increase number of teachers arrange common planning time reduce teacher paperwork increase opportunities for collaboration better disseminate new teaching methods recruit teachers outside area pay for collaboration beyond school time provide additional substitute teachers provide web-based teacher networks increase funding to attend conferences design more practicebased courses better utilize inservice time listen to teacher suggestions set expectations for collaboration increase administrative support conclusions and implications the teacher perspectives about the nature and extent of collaborative practices in 45 north louisiana schools contain insights that are meaningful, yet, in and of themselves, are not exceptional. forms of teacher shared work have been commonly noted in the research literature as have been identified barriers to its manifestation (for examples see dipardo, 1997; knop, lemaster, norris, raudensky & tannehill, 1997; kruse & louis, 1997). what is particularly noteworthy, however, is that the realization and maintenance of schools as so-called `professional learning communities' seems to remain, in many instances, little more than an elusive aspiration. while the data presented here indicate that there are indeed multiple forms of teacher collaborative practices occurring in many of the schools of the survey respondents, others remain mired in traditional norms of teacher individuality and organizational isolationism. even in those instances where teachers reported relatively high levels of regular professional involvement among colleagues, dissatisfaction with at least some aspects of prevailing circumstances persisted. earlier research reported by the authors demonstrated that teachers themselves value attributes of collegial enterprise that are based upon strong customs of routine professional interaction (leonard, 2002; leonard & leonard, 2001a/b; leonard & leonard, 2002). through recent revisions to their professional standards and guidelines, various the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk 7 education-based associations and agencies strongly advocate continuous collective reflections and shared work among teachers (e.g. ncate, intasc, nbpts, isllc, nctm, etc.). furthermore, policymakers and administrators at all levels of the public education hierarchy regularly espouse the need for teachers to devise new ways to work together to address professional needs and, by extension, to effect improved student learning. the nclb act (2001) as well as various related federal and state education department directives, position papers, and professional development funding allocations reflect the recognition that teacher collective learning is a crucial factor in achieving successful education reforms. enigmatic to this apparent universal recognition of the inherent value in maintaining routines of professional collaboration and in the ostensible thrust to create cultures of collegial engagement is that, for many schools, this idealism may not match the reality. the impediments to sustaining norms of professional collaborative practice seem as troublesome today as they did decades ago (see lortie, 1975; goodlad, 1984). as this study signifies, many teachers continue to depict severe limitations in the capacity to work meaningfully with colleagues in ways that allow them to address the common goal of enhanced student achievement. the obstacles to collaborative practice today are hauntingly similar to those reported years ago. teachers still complain that the scarcity of opportunities to collaborate is promulgated by increasing work demands and decreasing time availability. they also continue to lament persisting negative mindsets about the actual desirability of shared work and the resistance to moving beyond the traditional models of teacher relationships. while some schools seem to be headed by administrators who value and promote elements of the `learning community', others clearly are not. the distinction is important and it may be time for district level administrators and policymakers to unequivocally communicate expectations of the former to current and potential school-level administrators. school principals who continue to personify traditional leader traits in the currently emerging educational environment not only minimize professional growth, they may also optimize student mediocrity. attempts at school improvement cannot be individual and fragmented but rather must be embedded in collaborative practices that address the day-to-day needs of students (louis & marks, 1996). to that point -and perhaps most debilitating of the concerns that teachers continue to espouse about efforts to establish learning communities founded on principles of professional collaboration -is the lack of consistent resolve at the district and state levels. while many schools have creatively juggled schedules and identified additional resources that are used to occasionally free up teachers for shared work, many others have not. if habitual teacher collaborative practice is truly valued, it should not be left to the vagaries of particular schools and personnel who demonstrate the will and the means to endorse and enact it. rather, it should be a certain expectation that is clearly espoused at the highest policy and administrative levels and supported in actual measures. making provisions for teachers to work together during and outside school hours may indeed require reallocation of resources or securing additional funding. if such is the circumstance, then the strong political will of leaders buoyed by a supportive constituency may be the best chance for addressing the ongoing 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(1996). changing our schools. buckingham, uk: open university press. http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/pbl/pblintasc.htm http://www.umsl.edu/~mpea/pages/aboutisllc/aboutisllc.html#anchor-20645 http://www.umsl.edu/~mpea/pages/aboutisllc/aboutisllc.html#anchor-20645 http://www.ucalgary.ca/~iejll/volume6/leonard.html http://www.ucalgary.ca/~iejll/volume6/leonard.html http://www.nsdc.org/educatorindex.htm http://www.nbpts.org/ http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/ http://www.oct.on.ca/english/ the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk 9 wagner, c. and masden-copas, p. (2002). an audit of the culture starts with two handy tools. journal of staff development, 23(3), 42-53. welch, m. (1998). collaboration: staying on the bandwagon. journal of teacher education, 49(1), 26-37. . current issues in education vol. 6 no. 15 2003 article citation leonard, l. & leonard, p. (2003, september 17). the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk. current issues in education [on-line], 6(15). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume6/number15/ author notes lawrence leonard louisiana tech university lleonard@latech.edu dr. lawrence leonard is a professor in the department of curriculum, instruction, and leadership at louisiana tech university. he is a former schoolteacher and administrator with primary research interests in educational leadership, organizational change, and collaborative practices. pauline leonard louisiana tech university pleonard@latech.edu dr. pauline leonard is an assistant professor in the department of curriculum, instruction, and leadership at louisiana tech university. she is a former schoolteacher whose primary research areas include educational values, equity and diversity issues, and teacher leadership and collaboration. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 25, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation leonard, l., & leonard, p. (2003). the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk. current issues in education, 6(15). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1615 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number15/index.html mailto:lleonard@latech.edu mailto:pleonard@latech.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1615 volume 11, number 6 may, 2009 issn 1099-839x resistance to technological change in academia linda moerschell walden university initiating changes in technology, promoting utilization, and managing resistance by faculty may be among the most pressing challenges for academic leadership. change that involves new technology is an ideal example of the systemic nature of organizational change because it includes infrastructure, expert knowledge, training, long-term vision, cost-benefit equations, and sufficient utilization to sustain the change. the literature on organizational change supports this premise that is exemplified in this article by anecdotal evidence from two universities. the first example describes the challenges in promoting utilization of internet2 technology and the second describes the introduction of a project involving voice-over internet protocol. for change agents, managing change and working through resistance may be their biggest challenge with regard to implementation and utilization of new technologies. change that involves technology implementation is an ideal example of the systemic nature of organizational change. it requires not only infrastructure, but expert knowledge, training, a long-term vision, and sufficient utilization by followers to sustain the change. the training and utilization aspect of technological change may be the most significant candidate in managing change resistance. the complexities of organizational change are viewed here through the framework of technology implementation. the following essay will discuss two separate examples in two affiliated universities, illustrating the problems of rolling out synchronous technologies with the goal of enhancing teaching opportunities. each example is about a new and complex technology introduced on campus and the chain of events that followed. the examples are based on retrospective accounts of the author having been associated with each project: one as change agent and the other as an observer. a literature review of change resistance theories that target the uniqueness of technology implementation and utilization in academia connects these examples together. the first example will describe the ongoing efforts of a small team of people at northern new york university two (nnyu2) 1 to increase the utilization of a relatively new internet2™ (i2) technology. this example is shared because it may benefit other universities that are attempting to acclimate their faculty to synchronous technologies. the technology will be briefly described, student research on i2 utilization will be shared, and current initiatives will be documented. recommendations for overcoming change resistance will be presented. the second example is a completed project of voice-over internet protocol (voip) implementation at northern new york university three (nnyu3) in which i was the principle investigator and lead change agent. the process of funding, implementation, program growth, and eventual collapse, will be described. the example illustrated how one individual with vision and energy can drive, but not sustain, change. an analysis of file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2009,%20vol%2011,%20%231-9/number6/index.html%231 current issues in education vol. 11 no. 6 how resistance overcame the potential benefits of the technology will be analyzed in light of contemporary change theories. the perplexities of resisting change in academia resistance behaviors in academia have a deeply rooted history. according to rodriguez (2005), there were over 2,574 documents in the eric database when he searched teacher education and resistance (kitchen & rodriguez). the search results resistance in terms of diversity, discourse, curriculum changes, and of course, technology. technological advancements represent one of the most visible areas for educational change and reform (horn, 2002). but when it comes down to faculty members changing their old ways of teaching and adapting their courses to include technologies, reform is slow. delay tactics are commonly employed from “the old timers who like things as they were” (cohen, fetters, & fleishmann, 2005). the expectation and enthusiasm of administrators in higher education that invest in and pour over new technologies may not match the enthusiasm of teaching staff. while administration and information technology (it) departments roll out technological products, the slow rate of adoption by professors is frustrating to administration. some experts feel that the introduction of technologies triggers behavior changes and attitudes in organizations (cameron & green, 2004). a consistent theme in the technology resistance research is that “pushing hard would create even more resistance” (cohen, et al. 2005, p. 326). internet 2™ (i2) is a separate internet system reserved for research and education applications. it is a member-driven cyber community that promotes partnership, opportunity, and exchange among many disciplines (building tomorrow’s internet, 2007). using a combination of internet based technologies including video voice-over internet protocols, i2 provides “unique partnership opportunities that together facilitate the development, deployment, and use of revolutionary internet technologies” (building tomorrow’s internet, 2007). i2 offers opportunities for collaboration, partnerships with other teaching venues, and a way to attract students to learning through the thing students know best – interactive communication technology. the introduction of internet 2™ to acclimate the faculty and staff to i2 nnyu2 held a faculty seminar in may of 2003, to introduce and demonstrate the benefits of i2 technology. the enhanced learning experience for students was attractive to university administration and not long after the demonstration, the campus administration rolled out internet 2™ capability. this signaled a committed to the technology but the costs to implement the technology were very high, in excess of $80,000 per year (technician, personal communication, april 2007). in spite of the availability of economic development grants to support the implementation of the project, the cost to sustain the technology after implementation would be exceedingly high, therefore, acceptance to change and technology utilization was critical. four problems can be identified as barriers to successful i2 technology change at nnyu2. first, the awareness of and interest in any type of teaching technology is minimal. second, there is a lack of motivation to learn and change teaching patterns to include technology. third, and something familiar to all organizations, implementing change is a common psychoanalytic conundrum, which represents a mix of personalities and quirky behaviors. finally, recognizing the existence of a condition that is far from equilibrium, which state is inherent in a dynamic environment like academia. a lack of internet a pervasive lack of awareness and interest in i2 technology was quantified by a group of my graduate students at nnyu2 in their needs assessment/data analysis class project in the spring of 2007. the student group was assigned a needs assessment project focusing on internet 2™ utilization by faculty. their task was to collect data, substantiate the suspected gap, and make recommendations to close that gap. their first step was to become familiar with the technology and then engage in qualitative data collection methods that included interviews, surveys, and a focus group. what they found surprised them. seventeen out of 37 faculty interviewed were not aware of the i2 technology on campus. in another survey, six out of 35 faculty members had no interest at all in the technology while the other 29 had some interest in learning more (needs assessment students, personal communication, april, 2007). comments reflected a range of dispositions from a total lack of awareness to an inability to visualize how the technology would benefit them. although this survey conducted by the students was informal rather than comprehensive, it provided some sense of faculty’s level of awareness and interest in the technology. lack of awareness and interest is a form of resistance behaviors. negative effects may arise due to a lack of knowledge concerning change. according to horn (2002), the teachers who have been in the system for a while know that change is cyclical and that if they ignore it, it will eventually go away. lack of motivation to learn the second barrier was the lack of motivation to learn and/or change teaching patterns utilizing technology. the inability to learn has been resistance to technological change in academia 3 identified as a resistance factor that is common in many organizations which, often involves leader and follower dynamic. with regard to technology, fostering a learning environment is a critical leadership competency. according to bergmann and brough (2007), motivation to change is regarded as one of the practical strategies to be implemented in group settings. i2 technology utilization is far more than a bullet item on a professor’s to-do list; it requires a commitment to learn that surpasses attending a one-time demonstration. this may be the point at which time commitments, motivation to learn and adapt, and prioritizing academic duties, collide. often the motivation to learn about new technologies gets a low priority because of competing demands of the teacher’s time (horn, 2002). the motivation to learn new technology is a barrier that was substantiated by the students in the needs assessment class referred to earlier. they discovered that faculty who were motivated, identified a difficult learning curve ahead of them. further, the students deduced that even if faculty members learned about the technology, they had a difficult time understanding how to connect the technology to their course content (needs assessment students, personal communication, april, 2007). learning and adapting has a social nature to it and poses a challenge for faculty members set in their ways (bergmann & brough, 2007). it is easy to get comfortable with mediocrity. changing teaching patterns takes motivation and energy with or without technology. motivating reluctant followers means that leadership has to break through the stubbornness and lack of enthusiasm by shaking up deep-seated beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that have been in place over a long period of time (bergmann & brough, 2007). they cite “ten reasons why school personnel don’t follow the leader” (p. 17). five out of the ten have relevance in this case. the implication that a faculty member is not motivated or does not want to change their own habits is substantiated here as they pertain to implementing i2 technology. they are; a) a limited vision of the future, b) a comfort with the way things are, c) deficits in information and communication, d) the individual’s nature to be uncooperative, and e) that they do not have the skills to do what the leader is proposing (bergmann & brough, 2007). as a faculty member i have observed examples of technological skill deficiencies of other faculty at nnyu2 in past semesters which are cited as reasons to resist technology. one simple example is the opportunity to use the two new digital video cameras that were purchased for colleagues in a specific department. after having the motivation and initiative to learn about the new cameras i offered to train a few others on the equipment. some grimacing at the thought of technology, they were not interested in learning and were content using the old, if not outdated, equipment. it is also a striking example of how quickly technology evolves. students who are handed a vhs tape to review their speech assignments seldom have vhs players available to them because they are almost obsolete. resistance to any type of change is predominant in some departments (needs assessment students, personal communication, april, 2007). this balkanization that is referred to by horn (2002) creates isolation and alienation among and within departments. it can become a culture that breeds resentment toward change (horn, 2002). a common psychoanalytical conundrum collective and individual personalities have a tremendous impact in the success of organizational change. fear and anxiety are strong forces behind resistance, and in this case, resistance to technology (jarrett, 2004). the starting point for skill assessment required to utilize technologies varies greatly among teaching faculty. the motivation to overcome that fear and learn is linked to the personality type. individuals in nontechnology oriented departments could find technical knowledge intimidating, if not completely useless. in these cases, interventions are necessary to help individuals overcome their fear and sense of personal inadequacies (jarrett, 2004). the common psychoanalytic conundrum, or puzzle of personalities, can contribute to the barriers that are built with regards to rolling out new technologies. some approach technological change by ignoring it. yet, this cynicism by teachers seems counterintuitive to the mission of higher education. they represent a group of followers that are “capable but cynical” (bergmann & brough, 2007, citing kelley, 1988, p. 5). the proposed change may not be exciting or inspiring enough – and faculty may be asking what is in it for them? the degree of reluctance to adopt change may be nothing more than a product of an individual’s personality quirks. if that same person were isolated from other individuals it might not be a problem, however, resistance behaviors can become contagious. this resistance, or reluctance to change, is displayed at every opportunity. according to bergmann and brough (2007), academics display resistance behaviors in private conversations, during large group decision making gatherings, in small group sessions, in casual conversation, chance meetings in the hall, the parking lot, grocery store, or game. rumors, especially those out of control rumors that grow from fear, can sabotage change efforts before they have a chance to take hold (cohen, et al. 2005). current issues in education vol. 11 no. 6 finally, faculty may resist i2 because it presents a challenge, or compromise, to the integrity of their scholarship. there was not a lot of data to support this perception, but it makes sense that faculty fear that they will risk the loss of their unique personality and expertise in the classroom. they might perceive their roles as changing from professor to facilitator through access to other classrooms in real time collaborations. whether consciously or not the loss of identity and self worth are valid reasons for resistance. oreg’s (2003; 2004) research on personality, context, and resistance to change, particularly the resistance to change scale (rtc), comes closest to qualifying this perception. horn (2002) points out that teachers may resist reform because it does not agree with their expectations. attempts to acclimate with the new technology may do nothing more than raise levels of anxiety and fear. according to cameron and green (2004), “human nature can throw a wrench into the best-laid it plans” (p. 262). this compounds the perplexities of change resistance to technology in academia. the far from equilibrium state the far from equilibrium state is inherent in academia. according to hargrave and van de ven (2004) “there is a systemic nature to technological advances” (p. 282). it could be argued that academics do not understand the systemic picture of change (horn, 2002). complexity theorists offer a perspective that serves the greater picture that is well suited for the dynamic environment of academia. organizational change, in terms of technology implementation and utilization, is never a perfect fit. but as described in a change/stability paradox from complexity science, there are many changes of equal significance happening at the same time. to understand the change process, leadership has to manage stability while at the same time, cultivate chaos. although the path of change that i2 as a single technology is part of other dynamic forces, its implementation is threaded throughout the structure of the organization. this systemic nature of change was conveyed in the babson college case in which one change in curriculum triggered at least 250 other changes (cohen, et al. 2005). this state of disequilibrium lies at the heart of all change but is exemplified in systemic technological change and innovation. hargrave and van de ven (2005) referring to work of various systems theorists, write that there is “the tension and interplay between the utility-maximizing behavior of individuals and the deterministic effects of institutions i.e., between action and structure” (p. 259). this state may present the greatest barrier to utilization of i2 technology because in this paradigm it is natural for the organization to exist in a permanent equilibrium seeking state. in other words, it is a condition that defines academia. measuring the progress of change is defined by hargrave and van de ven (2005) “as the difference in form, quality, or state over time in an intuition. change in an institutional arrangement can be determined by observing the arrangement at two or more points in time on a set of dimensions” (p. 261). systems thinking models of change and resistance explain how the entities or actors change deep structures. in this case, the actors are faculty and administration, and the deep structure is the university as a whole entity. according to drazin, glynn, and kazanjian (2005) most improvements in process involve choices in deep structure. the choices assume an organization of units and that basic activity patterns maintain its existence. choices are the fundamental elements that make a system operate (2005). in the case of implementing i2 at nnyu2 the choice of each individual moves the system farther from equilibrium unless they are making the same choice at the same time. according to drazin, et al. (2005), technology scholars look at the actors that construct change and the process by which change is constructed. it is the convergence of numerous actors, numerous events, that is needed to transcend boundaries (drazin, et al. 2005). for some, this may seem a bizarre way to view technology implementation in academia, for others this process of interaction gravitates toward or away from entrepreneur and resister. this equilibrium seeking motion may characterize the process in academia. hargrave and van de ven (2005) include a focus on a process model that examines the science of events that studies the co-evolution of technical and institution change. resistance to change is embedded in the culture of academia and resisting the utilization of technology epitomizes this behavior (bergmann & brough, 2007; horn, 2002; kitchen & rodriguez, 2005). a culture change is often a necessary systemic component of implementing technological change (cameron & green, 2004). the ticking clock the adoption time for this technology, rather than the reluctance to use it, started the change clock ticking. according to an information technology technician working on this project, the cost of not using this technology was higher than the cost of using it (technician 1, personal communication, april 2007). the equilibrium between organizational benefit and financial risk was upset with the introduction of the technology. who would mobilize change and bring back organizational equilibrium after punctuated equilibrium (emery, lewin & weigelt, 2004) was not exactly clear. limited resistance to technological change in academia 5 utilization from one department on campus was not enough to balance the equation. internet 2™ was not the first and probably will not be the last innovative technology to reach campus. since a significant portion of nnyu2’s academic interest is to train new teaching professionals, teaching technologies are an imperative. the decision to bring i2 to campus was not haphazard and the support for change was well thought out. demonstration events were organized for faculty, support systems and personnel were made available, and most importantly, governance and infrastructure were solidly organized behind this change initiative. to close the gap between the fear of new technology and the adoption of it, resources were created and those in place were mobilized. in spite of all of these pieces in place, change resistance remained a powerful force and there did not appear to be broad based faculty driven interest (faculty member, personal communication, december, 2007). in fact, enthusiasm seemed to radiate from only one academic department that felt that i2 would be an asset in developing international linkages to programs. this begged the question: with all of this support in place why was there a significant deficit in interest, adoption, and utilization of technology? as if this writing, there are few active collaborations and projects utilizing i2 at nnyu2. implementing and encouraging utilization of new technologies is a unique type of change process as this example has shown. the cost of failure is higher than utilization costs for most change initiatives. like any type of high-risk investment, a long-term cost benefit analysis is a prudent measure to engage in, particularly before implementation of technology. without baseline criteria for utilization, or utilization study benchmarks; and without a rigorous change plan, this university like many others in similar situations would be ill-advised to proceed with any new technological initiatives. many organizations, and maybe some of the leadership at nnyu2, are guilty of being overly enthusiastic about the potential of a new technology without fully realizing a complete vision. the assumption could be that if it works great in one place it will naturally catch on in other areas. this reasoning is faulty because it does not address the differing goals and opportunities that each actor brings to the change problem. it is unreasonable to assume that the vision of leadership is a shared vision. as bergmann and brough (2007) suggest, all stakeholders should be a part of developing that vision and recommend a “vision task force” (p. 25). in a conversation with the technology coordinator for nnyu2, i discovered that the majority of faculty lack vision or ideas as to how they can use this technology in a pedagogical sense (personal communication, december, 2007). hence, a recommendation for nnyu2 is to emphasize longterm vision and create a better plan for the next systemic communication technology opportunity. although awareness-building efforts are ongoing it is only a gesture that affects just a few variables and keeps the organization in a state of disequilibrium. innovation and vision does not always flow from the top leadership down to faculty and staff as shown in this next example of technological change in academia. innovation and entrepreneurship are terms often linked to organizational change. the following example provides anecdotal evidence of the systemic nature of change and how resistance behaviors may exist on many levels within the organization. example 2: a systemic change problem from 1997 until late in 2003, i served as director of a continuing professional education project located within the continuing education department at nnyu3. the mission of this grantfunded project was to provide health care workers; which included all allied health professionals, physicians, dentists, behavioral health workers, and first responders, with accredited continuing professional education. the list of professionals who needed continuing education to retain their licenses was significant and access to education was sparse in the rural and isolated region in northern new york. the gap between training opportunities and those that needed training certifications in their field was wide and complicated by health care worker shortages. time constraints and travel distances to professional education conferences deterred allied health care workers from receiving the continuing education and certifications they needed to stay current in their fields. the leadership at nnyu3 was optimistic that the stagnant and revenue draining health care education project could turn into a viable and healthy enterprise for the university and the community. perceptive marketing and hard work got the project off the ground but efforts to connect with educational opportunities that could overcome limitations of access and travel continued to curtail the mission of the project. the solution was to be found in communication technology. communication technology grants were flowing during this period from the federal government to close gaps between lack of access to education and healthcare in rural areas, and the opportunities and resources that were available elsewhere. the fact-finding research phase prior to writing a grant revealed that voice-over internet protocol (voip) and the new networks that supported current issues in education vol. 11 no. 6 the technology was the most viable way to accomplish the professional educational goals. voip is a communication technology that converges network technologies to produce a synchronous video and voice capability (miller, 2000). simply put, a group of people in a conference room at a hospital on the eastern border of new york state could participate in a live conference at nnyu3 through equipment and connectivity provided by this grant. in real time, the audience in eastern new york could see and hear the presenter, ask questions, and at the same time, the speaker and audience at nnyu3 could see them. the network provider served as the hub of connectivity between all of the entities involved. that meant that the voip relay was made possible by the provider’s wide area network (wan) and that could link every member on the network who chose to participate in the conference. with the fact-finding research completed, the grant writing began in partnership with a small rural hospital. the isolation and small size of his hospital nestled in a small new york town was a boost to the potential outcomes for the grant reward. the partnership and hard work paid off and the continuing professional education project became the award recipient of a federal grant, which supplied hardware for video conferencing and connectivity to nnyu3 and a telemedicine unit to the small hospital. once the grant award was announced the administration at nnyu3, not fully expecting the grant award, seemed thrown into a frenzy. the telecommunications award coincided with a capital construction project. as a result, the new buildings had to be wired to accommodate t-3 broadband lines and room designs had to create storage for the equipment and to accommodate conferencing venues. during these first months there was much campaigning, politicking, and compromising with faculty and administration around campus to promote the new program. the new technology coordinator had difficulty connecting the mission of undergraduate education together with professional continuing education and community service. there was the problem of a conflicting change vision and a second, bigger problem that had to be addressed. technology intervention through the membership structure of a wide area network provider, the continuing professional education project acquired access to 45 other members that had live video conferencing technology. most of those members were hospitals, allied health facilities, and universities. although the technology and membership were in place the problem was what exactly, could run through these communication technology channels. the questions of what to provide as an educational product, how it would be financed, and how it could be accredited, marketed, and packaged was yet to be solved. a model had to be developed to facilitate, and make accountable, the continuing education’s strict guidelines for awarding credits. inspired by the needs and working relationships of area dentists a model, or prototype, for professional education that utilized voip technology was developed. working in collaboration with a dental school, the continuing professional education project had made continuing dental education available live to dentists in northern new york at the same time it was being seen at the dental school in western new york. this continuing professional education project using synchronous technology grew to become the conduit of educational opportunities, relationship building, and marketing strength for a variety of continuing education programs utilizing voip. using this as a model, an additional federal grant application was submitted and a grant was awarded that supported a variety of expenses including programming fees for trainers, marketing materials, line charges, and fees. between 2000 and 2003, the continuing professional education project provided continuing professional education through voip technology to hundreds of pharmacists, physicians, dentists, nurses, behavioral health workers, and first responders. the program was successful but to remain active it required expert knowledge, human energy, daily maintenance, marketing, and money to keep the change wheels turning. good ideas can fail change initiatives can fail in an organization because the organization does not prepare for change. organizational readiness has proven to be a significant factor in the success of change and the lessening of resistance. organizational readiness was addressed in several of the change models as a prerequisite to change including cameron & green (2004), sevcik (2004), and palmer (2004). palmer described an assessment process that determined whether change would overwhelm an organization. he compared an organization’s capacity to a soaked sponge unable to absorb more change. the academic environment, as far as readying the infrastructure, graciously accommodated many of the details that the new voip project needed, but it was most likely overwhelmed. although the university leadership was enthused and supportive of many technology initiatives on campus, nnyu3 as a systemic and human environment was not. according to palmer (2004), “changes that fail usually do so because of human, not technical, reasons (p. 35). the information technology (it) resistance to technological change in academia 7 department was evolving from a maintenance role on campus into a decision-making entity that had been given a higher level of authority at about the same time the installation of the voip technology was commencing. looking back, this may have been the point that, to borrow a popular phrase, all hell broke loose. the chain of command shifted and individuals who were being cultivated to support the new voip technology were being redirected. additionally, communication channels between the forces that would be most likely to make change succeed were not open. without the informative and collaborative function of communication, change was doomed (elving, 2005). the fragmented communication opportunities among departments and personnel to keep necessary information flowing was a clear indicator that the organization was not ready to sustain a rapid rate of change. a successful technology roll out process requires adaptiveness (cameron & green, 2004). it is a competency that requires the organizational members to learn about and become familiar with the capacity of the technology to “transform the business processes” (cameron & green, 2004, p. 249). this characterizes the third reason cited for failure; innovation was not adapted or diffused through the university. in systems thinking, adaptability and the organization’s learning capacity are the most fundamental elements in supporting change. adaptability requires an organizational membership that is willing to learn and grow. i agree with cohen, et al. (2005) that academia may not be the best setting for technological innovations to thrive because of its culture and comfort in doing things the old-fashioned way. lepsinger and yukl (2006) observed “uncertainty is greater in times of rapid technological change” (p. 3). technology often poses new threats that further the organization’s inability to adapt. the rapidly changing infrastructure at nnyu3 needed expert knowledge and collaboration of an expert team to support this stream of change. sevcik (2004) wrote that “diffusion is a social phenomenon” (p. 1). uncertainty and doubt fostered cynicism, a social manifestation of resistance, which made adaptation and diffusion throughout the university impossible. further, opportunities of subsystem innovations were stopped as soon as they were started because without collaboration of an expert team, there was no way to connect the ideas with the technology. although this solution to problems surrounding access to professional education seemed like a good idea, it was destined for failure because of the gaps that open in a rapid systemic change process. the collapse of the project the leadership at nnyu3 never seemed comfortable with the rapid changes brought about by the voip project and camps of resentment began to form. some parts of the administrative staff were distracted by cheaper technologies to expand nonhealth care professional education and undergraduates markets internationally. the college leadership believed strongly in the growth of technology in education and the enthusiasm enabled the professional continuing education project with latitude to grow; however, the original vision was shifting as international education opportunities grew. the original vision of the continuing professional education project as the hub of regional health care education was being subverted by a new vision of the university as an international provider of undergraduate training courses. the support needed to sustain the infrastructure and funding was being threatened by conflicting goals and gaps. the maintenance and growth of professional education programs for health care providers was dependent on two components, expert knowledge and willingness to pay. a huge change in operation, infrastructure, and programming, which was supported by only a few people, could not be sustained. resources were sparse and even with supplemental grants it was difficult to cover costs associated with access to expert knowledge and the complex system of management that had to be built around voip utilization. the continuing professional education project could not sustain against the forces of internal resistance, the changing marketing needs, and the persistent unwillingness to pay for the programs. hence, the project was shut down and the equipment was stored. the hospital, the other beneficiary of the grant, continued to utilize their telemedicine unit and eventually their community acquired the equipment that was once used at nnyu3. persistence and continual campaign for change had been the glue that held all the pieces together in the first years of the project. today, there is little or no utilization of video conferencing technology for continuing professional education in the region. this example may offer lessons for other institutions that are attempting to roll out technology initiatives to support education projects. the lessons learned the continuing professional education project and nnyu3 was not the only technological and entrepreneurial fatality of its kind. at a 2003 technology conference hosted by senator hillary clinton and a chamber of commerce in central new york, attendees struggled with the exact issue that nnyu3 had – how to implement, utilize, and sustain technological advances to support educational and health care opportunities. one could argue that the current issues in education vol. 11 no. 6 state as a whole recognized the rapid rate of change in technology itself exacerbates the difficulties in implementing technological change. the conference organizers tried to cultivate collaboration and entrepreneurship within the educational and healthcare markets with the belief that “change is mobilized by politically savvy entrepreneurs” (hargrave & van de ven, 2006, p. 296). there were several take away lessons from senator clinton’s conference. although not stated in the program’s agenda, i realized that the discussion was about a variety of differing goals among organizations using technologies, funding streams were frequently diverted, and that key change agents changed positions frequently. entrepreneurs were building technology projects on a moving floor and the collaboration that was dependent on expert knowledge was being played like a shell game. there were probably many reasons for the failure of the long-term utilization of voip educational technology that came to nnyu3 while i was serving as director of the continuing professional education project. in fact, a case analysis might be applied to each subsystem of the organization that led to uneven and failed development (hargrave & van de ven, 2006). this particular change initiative was trying to jump into a fast moving current of bigger change initiatives and was washed up on the shore. hargrave and van de ven stated that “few if any institutional changes begin with a clean slate; instead…[they] inherit actors and infrastructure that require …crossing, grafting, or recombining existing institutional arrangements in novel ways” (p. 296). in summary, conflicting long-term goals, lack of organizational readiness, and the inability of the organization to adapt and learn were the most likely causes for the collapse of the voip project at nnyu3. the grant award was somewhat unexpected and a conflict in long-term technology goals may have thwarted growth and change. resistance to change can often be attributed to conflicting goals. in this particular example, several technological innovations rolled out at the same time to satisfy different goals on campus. the administration was balancing politics, innovation, entrepreneurship, and service to learners with too few resources including human capital and funding. one competing technological goal involved a distance learning project with an affiliated educational institution that had long standing political and economic ties into the university. another was the student internet infrastructure on campus that was craving updates, which would have siphoned off one-third of the technology capacity from the t-3 lines running the voip system. finally, there was a less sophisticated voip being tested at the university to teach language, culture, and technical courses to students overseas. there was no doubt that conflicting goals meant conflicting technological products and opportunities, which, layered over the politics, context, and individual personalities, created one fine mess (oreg, 2006). many lessons were learned as a result of the project at nnyu3, and the most important was that “not all good ideas get adopted” (sevcik, 2007, p. 1). technological change within an organization is less of a paradox and more of a risk-benefit equation. leadership, when rolling out new technologies, are engaged in a type of risk taking that is dependent on the acceptance of the technology to catch up to, or neutralize, the risk. the organization does indeed try to get back to a place of financial equilibrium through the utilization, or acceptance of, the technology. beckhard’s formula of c = (abd) > x has relevance in analyzing technological change. the cost of the change, x, had to be less than dissatisfaction with the status quo, times the desirability of the end state, times the practicality of the change (cameron & green, 2004). it is of some consolation that the president of the college said, in a recent conversation with me about the project, that the technological innovation coming out of the continuing professional education project was “way ahead of the curve” (december, 2007). today, ongoing efforts, vision, sophisticated planning, and innovative management have increased the success rate at this university for implementation, utilization, and mitigation of change resistance. conclusion information technology initiatives account for 30% of an organization's expenditures as cited by cameron and green (2004). the resistance phenomenon exacerbates this burden and may mask the actual costs associated with change. leadership may not easily identify a direct causal link between the employees’ negative or difficult behavior and the change initiative. it is likely that any manager as change agent would have been perplexed by the range and pace of transformations in employee moods and attitudes. employees may not articulate their concerns unless the change agent opens up communication opportunities. because successful change is systemic, a leader’s complex skill set should extend beyond managing the leader-follower relationship during change and into the leaderorganization, board of directors, and stakeholder relationship. inefficient and poorly managed organizational change can be costly, particularly technological change (cross, johnson-cramer, & praise, 2007). resistance to technological change in academia 9 the intent of this essay was to support change resistance literature with examples from academia in which i was a stakeholder and observer. the two examples of technology innovation and implementation supported the literature in describing the phenomenon of change resistance, particularly in academia. they are two illustrations of the systemic nature of change, the complex nature of change resistance behaviors, and the peculiarities of the implementation of new technologies in an academic setting. footnotes 1 the names of the universities, organizations, individuals, and program titles were substituted with fictional names to protect the confidentiality of the individuals and organizations. references bergmann, s., & brough, j. a. (2007). lead me, i dare you!: managing resistance to school change. larchmont, ny: eye on education. building tomorrow’s internet. (2007). retrieved december 1, 2007, from http://www.internet2.edu/. cameron, e., & green, m. (2004). making sense of change management: a complete guide to the models, tools & techniques of organizational change. london: kogan page. cohen, a., fetters, m. &fleischmann, f. (2005). major change at babson college: curricular and administrative, planned and otherwise. advances in developing human resources, 7(3). doi: 10.1177/1523422305277173. cross, r., johnson-cramer, m. & praise, s. (2007). managing change through networks and values. california management review, 49(3), 85-109. retrieved september 7, 2007, business source premier. davenport, t. (2003). whatever happened to complexity theory? trends and ideas, article reprint # t0310b. harvard business school publishing. purchased from harvard business on-line on october 8, 2007. drazin, r., glynn, m., & kazanijian, r. (2004). dynamics of structural change. in m. poole & a. van de ven (eds.), handbook of organizational change and innovation, 161 189. new york, ny: oxford university press. elving, w. (2005). the role of communication in organisational [sic] change. corporate communications: an international journal, 10(2), 129-138. retrieved september 7, 2007, business source premier. emery, j., lewis, a., & weigelt, c. (2004). adaptation and selection in strategy and change. in m. poole & a. van de ven (eds.), handbook of organizational change and innovation, 108-160. oxford, uk, new york, n.y.: oxford university press. hargrave, t., & van de ven, a., (2004). social, technical, and institutional change. in m. poole & a. van de ven (eds.), handbook of organizational change and innovation, 259 303. new york, ny: oxford university press. horn, r. jr., (2002). understanding educational reform: a reference handbook. santa barbara, ca; abc-clio, inc. jarrett, m. (2004). tuning into the emotional drama of change: extending the consultant's bandwidth. journal of change management, 4(3), 247-258. doi: 10.1080/1469701042000255383. miller, m. (2000). voice over ip. forest city, ca: m & t books. oreg, s. (2006). personality, context, and resistance to organizational change. european journal of work and organizational psychology 15(1), 73-101. retrieved september 7, from proquest database. palmer, b. (2004). making change work: practical tools for overcoming human resistance to change. milwaukee, wis: asq quality press. rodriguez, a., (2005). teachers’ resistance to ideological and pedagogical change: definitions, theoretical framework, and significance. in r. kitchen and a. rodriguez (eds.), preparing mathematics and science teachers for diverse classrooms: promising strategies for transformative pedagogy, 1-16. mahwah, nj; lawrence earlbaum associates, inc., publishers. sevcik, p. (2004). innovation diffusion. business communications review, 34(9), 8-11. retrieved september 7, 2007, business source premier. http://www.internet2.edu/ current issues in education vol. 11 no. 6 2009 article citation moerschell, l . (2009, may). resistance to technological change in academia. current issues in education [on line], 11(6). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number6/ author notes linda moerschell walden university [editor’s note: no additional author information was available in the article when accessed in 2015.] note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 15, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation moerschell, l . (2009). resistance to technological change in academia. current issues in education, 11(6). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1578 http://cie.asu.edu/volume11/number6 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1578 two undergraduate students’ journal reviewing experiences current issues in education, 24(2) 1 volume 24, issue 2 august 28, 2023 issn 1099-839x two undergraduate students’ journal reviewing experiences susan chan & nuha mohammed university of toronto abstract: this paper describes the benefits of student-run publications from the perspective of two undergraduate students. based on their experiences, the commentary elaborates how reviewing for a student journal has contributed to their growth as writers and developed a sense of community. keywords: student reviewer, peer review, transfer, meta-cognition, community citation: chan, s. & mohammed, n. (2023). two undergraduate students’ journal reviewing experiences. current issues in education, 24(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss2.2185 accepted: june 26, 2023 introduction working with an undergraduate publication affords young students the opportunity to construct a plethora of new skills or, at the very least, a chance to reinforce a pre-existing skill set. of these skills, arguably some of the most notable are transfer, metacognition, and assimilation into their university’s community for first-year writing. as students from a large university in southern ontario, we will expand on these skills and how we contributed to and derived from our firsthand editing and reviewing experiences in an undergraduate journal for the university. author backgrounds we both participated as reviewers for the journal “writing for university and beyond: a journal of first-year student writing at utm.” our role of reviewing was to read first-year essay submissions, then note areas of improvement to filter out suitable papers that could be used in the journal. this entailed identifying essays that displayed coherent writing, had an interesting topic relevant to the journal, and cited additional sources to support their claims. having these characteristics mitigated the amount of revision required, expediting the publication process. student reviewers were assigned to groups based on the sub-themes of the journal. for example, in “writing for university and beyond: a journal of first-year student writing at utm,” there are separate categories authors can apply to. analyzing essays focused on what composes a genre is a separate theme from analyzing how discursive communities function. after reviewers https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss2.2185 chan, s. & mohammed, n.: two undergraduate students’ journal reviewing experiences current issues in education, 24(2) 2 independently make their critiques, they meet with fellow reviewers of the same group to discuss their reasoning behind the essays they support. this functions as a peer review for the authors of the essays and ensures consensus in the reviewers’ perspectives. discussion transferring skills as undergraduate students, there is an unavoidable expectation to learn from a breadth of different subjects. this interdisciplinary approach can be taxing on fledgling writers, as each branch of study has different writing requirements. this is where transfer comes into play. transfer refers to the ability to repurpose a proficient skill and apply it to a new framework (driscoll & devette, 2020). transfer theory proposes the relevance of providing direct indications that stimulate learners to recognize the parallel between the origin and target of transfer; in this circumstance, between writing as a journal editor/reviewer and personal writing habits (brent, 2011). in nuha’s experience in working with the journal, they had the chance to explore transferring some of the skills they obtained in a preliminary writing course to their editing/reviewing framework while also acquiring a new set of skills adaptable to disciplines and discourses related to but separate from the journal. as an english major, nuha has been exposed to a wide range of writing disciplines where expectations do not always coincide. of these skills, nuha points out writing heuristics, specifically ‘they say/i say’ structures introduced by birkenstein and graff (2006), which they picked up over the course of their major, as a considerable contributor to the improvement of their writing. this heuristic allowed nuha to secure a metacognitive structure of thinking and writing, to analyze and reanalyze their thought and writing processes. on numerous occasions, nuha would write an essay or a story only to notice in retrospect that it sounded like a checklist of facts or thoughts; nothing truly seemed to come together or read cohesively. writing heuristics have added a very necessary element of direction to nuha’s writing to make it cohesive and relevant. this skill has also proven to be an asset in the reviewing process of the journal. when analyzing papers in preparation to publish, it became second nature for the reviewer to employ the kind of mindset that writers had. as an outside reader, heuristics acted as a benchmark of linked ideas to create and follow a cohesive chain of thoughts. being an undergraduate reviewer has influenced the way nuha interacts with students and scholarly writing, to understand and connect with it at a deeper level. learning by metacognition reviewing for the journal also allowed us to refine our metacognitive skills, essentially the capacity to remove all personal aspects of analysis and to observe oneself as a writer, which is a skill that is both transferrable and a catalyst to transfer (rudd, 2019). metacognition further refers to thinking about thinking, which improves a writer’s ability to observe their stream of thought and understanding to decide its adequacy in regard to their writing (gorzelsky, 2016). these skills both contribute tremendously to further education as we add to the ‘toolbox’ of skills for students to utilize throughout our academic careers. in susan’s opinion, like them, many students are writing for the sake of meeting class deadlines. they come into writing with unconscious biases; in this case, they are formulating sentences with only meeting rubrics in mind. to only write answers is a restrictive style of writing that cannot show an intuitive relationship to the overall message. this is because the arguments are not connected, thus hindering the flow of ideas and inhibiting the intended audience’s understanding. the disorganization of ideas is not immediately clear to oneself, even with introspection. therefore, it chan, s. & mohammed, n.: two undergraduate students’ journal reviewing experiences current issues in education, 24(2) 3 is necessary to expand beyond one perspective. susan’s perspective as a reviewer allowed for a unique environment to foster meta-cognition. while reading academic papers can improve writing and expand perspectives of different writing styles, susan was a thoughtless consumer of information before working with the journal. when susan read textbooks, they were not challenged to think about what features make for good writing and what makes for bad. the role of reviewing was neither authoring nor passive reading, as it required critical thinking skills to identify awkward phrasing, irrelevant information, and organization to provide the writer with constructive feedback. in turn, the feedback acquired by meta-analysis became transferred to susan’s own writing for improvement by taking on a third-party perspective that can apply to their own writing style. integration to community forcing students into an active role is how publications promote student integration into the academic writing community. in this paper, the academic writing community refers to the form of writing targeted at an audience producing/reviewing research and exchanging knowledge on a formal area of study. because student reviewers are now part of the publication process, there is an incentive to behave in accordance with academic writing standards in a discourse community. why is becoming part of a discourse community considered desirable? the academic writing community offers a platform to apply the skills developed through reviewing outside of coursework. besides further refining linguistic usage, this is an opportunity to gain experience for careers related to publication. writing learned from publication takes form in many different careers, such as journalism, book authorship, editing, marketing, and research publication. to join the academic writing community, the guidelines follow the discursive community rules laid out by swales (2016), who is known for establishing the fundamental components of discourse communities. swales systematically examined different communities to establish behavioral patterns. his findings describe a discursive community as an exclusive circle of people actively interacting and working towards a common goal. there are rules to abide by for a community to function. condensing these rules, all members are expected to interact with one another and work towards a common goal. this rule makes the assumption that all members are proficient enough in the community’s customs and knowledge (swales, 2016). for the academic writing community, this proficiency is based on producing content that meets a standardized level of skill in written communication. the act of reviewing satisfies this condition by developing improved authorship, as mentioned through the transfer of writing and metacognitive thinking practiced as a reviewer. of the principles of discursive communities that swales established, an essential rule that applies to undergraduate students exploring scholarly discourses is that members of a community must have a method of interaction to exchange ideas or work together for a common goal. in susan’s experience, this platform is the undergraduate journal. being a part of the academic writing discourse community acts as a bridge to bring writing peers, fellow reviewers, and mentors together. we, susan and nuha are given the opportunity to communicate with similarly goal-oriented people who give feedback and offer our experiences. this vicarious learning, similar to meta-cognition through reviewing, fosters growth in writing through an alternative way to expand perspectives. this highlights that undergraduate students with the opportunity of publication would be introduced to authority figures within the writing community discourse: mentors. mentors of the journal are professors and experienced students who exemplify chan, s. & mohammed, n.: two undergraduate students’ journal reviewing experiences current issues in education, 24(2) 4 authoritative members due to their longer involvement in teaching and producing work studying the core values of writing. the role of mentors is to provide feedback on developing opinions formed as reviewers from a more experienced standpoint. this merger with students of a new generation of discursive engagement, in tandem with the wisdom of writing veterans, enriches the ideas of undergraduate students and reduces shortcomings due to writing inexperience. in nuha’s experience of these interactions, students learn how to exist as a scholar within these discourses directly from faculty, either implicitly through action or explicitly through candid instruction. this type of mentorship is indispensable within working for a journal context as undergraduate students are often in need of someone to provide context to the discourse to set expectations and follow by example. being aware of these unspoken rules to maintain community status can be valuable to undergraduate students looking to further their education in academia, as they are required to know how to work within communities of scholars and faculty members, not just as students but within the framework of a scholar themselves. this is where the interplay of journal work compliments any other work done within similar fields. limitations it is important to note limitations to which the benefits apply. academic writing is a niche field. in susan’s experience, work in some disciplines, such as excavation in archaeology or solving mathematical equations, have little opportunity to use writing skills from an undergraduate journal. therefore, learning through delivering peer review may not benefit students in more practical disciplines. the experience of assimilating to an academic writing community specifically is not an all-encompassing genre and would reach peak application when supplemented by the individual’s background in conjunction with other discursive communities. conflictingly, another limitation experienced by many undergraduate students in similar discourses is the limitations of such an expansive framework. in nuha’s experience in the field of english, where writing expectations encompass a plethora of variations, be that voice, style, tone, etc., it was often difficult for them and students alike to get a grasp of and become proficient enough to enter appropriate discourses. though these academic writing journals can be niche, they still receive a substantial amount of attention from students at varying levels of proficiency; it is often difficult for writers to stand out in all this traction despite their efforts. conclusion to conclude, reviewing undergraduate publications is a resource that anyone within the broader academic community can use to grow as writers through peer reviewing other works. for example, we developed communication skills transferable across disciplines, acquired new approaches to writing using reviewer perspectives, and gained connections to a writing community that allows constructive exchanges and acknowledgment. these acquired skills and connections are invaluable and will aid our journey through post-secondary education and perhaps across possible careers of interest. chan, s. & mohammed, n.: two undergraduate students’ journal reviewing experiences current issues in education, 24(2) 5 references bird, b., downs, d., mccracken, i. m., & rieman, j. (eds.). (2019). next steps: new directions for/in writing about writing. 101. university press of colorado. brent, d. (2011). transfer, transformation, and rhetorical knowledge: insights from transfer theory. journal of business and technical communication, 25(4), 396–420. driscoll, d, l., & devet b., (2020). writing centers as a space for transfer: supporting writing, writers, and contexts. wln: a journal of writing center scholarship. https://wlnjournal.org/digitaleditedcollection2/driscollanddevet.html gorzelsky, g., driscoll, d. l., paszek, j., jones, e., & hayes, c. (2016). chapter 8. cultivating constructive metacognition: a new taxonomy for writing studies. in the wac clearinghouse; university press of colorado ebooks (pp. 215–246). https://doi.org/10.37514/per-b.2016.0797.2.08 graff, g., & birkenstein, c. (2006). they say i say: the moves that matter in academic writing. w. w. norton & company. swales, j. (2016). reflections on the concept of discourse community. asp, 69, 7-19. https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.4774 https://wlnjournal.org/digitaleditedcollection2/driscollanddevet.html https://doi.org/10.37514/per-b.2016.0797.2.08 https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.4774 chan, s. & mohammed, n.: two undergraduate students’ journal reviewing experiences current issues in education, 24(2) 6 author notes susan chan university of toronto susan.chan@mail.utoronto.ca nuha mohammed university of toronto nuha.mohammed@mail.utoronto.ca more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:susan.chan@mail.utoronto.ca mailto:nuha.mohammed@mail.utoronto.ca https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ cie template 1 volume 18, number 1 april 20, 2015 issn 1099-839x connecticut’s educator evaluation process: the concerns and experiences of educators in two pilot districts diana j. larocco 1 and beth ann loveland sennett 3 university of hartford deborah s. wheeler 2 upper dublin school district this article provides select results from a study designed to explore and describe school personnel’s concerns about implementing connecticut’s newly developed model of a system of educator evaluation and development. data were gathered from school personnel in two public school districts involved in a statewide pilot of the model system. to examine change in educators’ concerns over time, study volunteers completed an internet-based survey twice: in the beginning of the school year and at the end of the school year. a subsample of survey respondents also participated in a focus group at the end of the pilot school year. results revealed a shift in educators’ concerns about the new educator evaluation system, moving from a focus on self and tasks to ideas about how to improve the process. at the same time, the level of commitment to implementing the new system as experienced in the pilot decreased somewhat. keywords: teacher concerns; teacher evaluation systems; change; pilot background and rationale despite countless u.s. federal and state schoolreform efforts over more than four decades, significant national concern about the academic achievement gap between subgroups of students remains. on the one hand, it is understood that student’s academic achievement is a complex issue with factors related to the individual child, families, communities, schools, and teacher quality each playing a role. on the other hand, federal mandates such as the elementary and secondary education act of 1965, and its most recent reauthorization, the landmark no child left behind (nclb) act of 2001 (nclb, 2002), squarely place responsibility for closing the achievement gap on school district personnel. the congressional intent behind nclb is to make certain that all students learn (mcdonnell, 2005; reichbach, 2004; the thomas b. fordham foundation, 2001). among other provisions, the law mandates that schools provide highly qualified teachers for every classroom and attempts to assess school districts’ progress toward the implementation of comprehensive school reform efforts through an emphasis on accountability. having a teacher that is considered highly qualified under nclb (2002) is only a beginning and does not guarantee in any way the teacher’s classroom performance would lead to improvements in student achievement. ongoing educator supervision and evaluation systems that provide a direct connection between teacher practice, professional development, and improvement in educational outcomes for all students must be in place (guskey, 1986; peterson, 2000; stronge, 2006). a combination of recent state and federal policy initiatives have begun to address the issue of educator supervision, and this has resulted in a significant number of states passing teacher evaluation legislation designed to address educator effectiveness based in part on student learning (mead, 2012). among these states is connecticut, where in 2012, the state legislature passed a current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 2 law that mandated fundamental changes in how teacher and school administrator evaluations are carried out. the provisions of connecticut’s law, which are explained in more detail later, delineate key components of educator evaluation with the aim of improving the quality of teaching, school administration, and by extension student achievement. before the law’s passage, the criteria for and the ways in which teachers and administrators were evaluated varied widely among connecticut’s 164 public school districts. implementing the law’s requirements represented a significant change from past practice. for the change to be enacted successfully educators must be authentically engaged in the process and have their concerns considered and addressed (hall & hord, 2011; wagner et al., 2006; waugh & punch, 1987). this paper describes the results of an exploratory study involving school personnel working in two public school districts that had participated jointly in a statewide pilot of connecticut’s newly mandated educator evaluation system. the investigation focused expressly on the phenomenon of educators’ concerns related to implementing the innovation in its initial stages. teacher supervision and evaluation danielson and mcgreal (2000) described teacher evaluation as serving two primary purposes (a) to make decisions that lead to particular consequences (e.g., determine a teachers’ worthiness or merit) and (b) to enhance professional skills (e.g., the teacher is learning a new instructional strategy). the former is summative, generally externally imposed, uniformly applied, and intended to assess all teachers on the same criteria (glickman, gordon, & ross-gordan, 2004). the latter is formative and aims to provide teachers with the opportunity to learn about themselves as teachers and is intended to further their instructional practice (glickman et al., 2004; marzano, frontier, & livingston, 2011). historically, supervision and evaluation in america’s public schools existed to control standards and improve instruction, with a focus on judging the work of the teacher rather than on student achievement (burnham, 1976). throughout the 1800s, large and multi-layered school systems began to develop in urban areas, leading to “a demand for teachers who held expertise in specific disciplines and for administrators who could assume increasingly complex roles” (marzano et al., 2011, p. 13). in subsequent decades, teaching began to be viewed as a multifaceted enterprise that warranted ongoing feedback. during the 1960s, “the concept of supervision as democratic, cooperative, and creative guided the practice” (burnham, 1976, p. 303). the notion of teachers as professionals who desired to improve themselves and their practice emerged, as did curriculum development and professional development courses as methods for improving instruction. building on the idea that teachers are professionals who want to expand their expertise, the concept of clinical supervision, with classroom observation followed by a conference between teacher and observer, quickly gained importance during the mid20th century (marzano et al., 2011). in the 1980s, hunter (1983) popularized a seven-step model described as mastery teaching and provided a framework for teacher and supervisor to collaboratively analyze specific elements of an observed lesson and determine effectiveness of the teacher’s practice. hunter’s model was based on lesson design analysis and a common language of instruction that supported deeper reflection on instructional practice. hunter’s model became “the content of the preconference, observation, and postconference” (marzano et al., 2011, p. 20). contemporaneously, glatthorn (1984) posited that teachers’ individual needs for professional growth should become part of the supervisory process, thereby providing a degree of ownership over their own skill development. likewise, other scholars (glickman, 1985; mcgreal, 1983) began to promote the idea of a continuum of supervisory formats to be implemented based on teacher expertise and experience. this conception provided flexibility in placing teachers in differentiated supervisory stages based on performance (mcgreal, 1983). in addition, improvement of instruction was the focus of both the supervisory process and professional development of teachers (glickman, 1985). despite this momentum in advancing teacher evaluation practices, findings from the rand study (wise, darling-hammond, tyson-bernstein, & mclaughlin, 1984) indicated that supervisory practices were not considered by teachers to be sufficiently standardized to support improvement of pedagogy. administrators had neither adequate training nor the ability or determination to effectively implement teacher evaluations. feedback was not well accepted by teachers, and evaluation practices lacked a uniform approach. to this time, agreement on which teacher competencies to evaluate was absent as was consensus on process for doing so. charlotte danielson’s 1996 work, enhancing professional practice: a framework for teaching, is often credited for confronting both of these issues. the model, which articulates four domains of teaching responsibility—content, planning and preparation; instruction; the classroom environment; and professional responsibilities—provides evaluators with “precise language to distinguish teacher’s performance from one level to other” (danielson, 2007, p. 27). thus, teachers know the standards upon which they will be evaluated and are expected to reflect. the efficacy of danielson’s work has been validated through the consortium on chicago school research and the measures of effective teaching (met) study, funded by the gates foundation. findings of the met study indicate that danielson’s framework has predictive validity (griffin, connecticut’s educator evaluation process: the concerns and experiences of educators in two pilot districts 3 2013). a key element of the successful use of the model in evaluation is the training of evaluators to use the framework with fidelity. danielson’s work forms the basis for the pilot of connecticut’s system for educator evaluation and development. connecticut’s system for educator evaluation and development connecticut’s current system for educator evaluation and development has its beginnings in 1986 and with the adoption of the education enhancement act. this act spurred a significant and long lasting process of change in connecticut’s system of public education with a subsequent agenda of high standards for students and professional educators (sergi, 2001). briefly, connecticut’s teachers were required to meet standards for entry into a teacher preparation program, demonstrate professional knowledge, and meet a new set of professional development standards. the trajectory of this change was expanded in 1999 with the publication by the connecticut state department of education of connecticut’s commitment to excellence in teaching: the second generation. three policy documents served as the framework for the state’s teacher evaluation process, most importantly connecticut’s common core of teaching (connecticut state department of education [csde], 1999). the common core of teaching was and remains linked by state law and regulations to teacher preparation, induction, and teacher evaluation. this set of professional teaching standards delineates the knowledge, skills, and dispositions expected of all connecticut’s teachers. at that time, school districts throughout the state were directed to design and implement teacher evaluation processes and professional development plans aligned with the common core of teaching. nevertheless, as with other aspects of connecticut’s 164 public school systems, each district’s plan for teacher evaluation was unique to the district. for example, the frequency with which a teacher or administrator would be observed could vary as did the foci of observations. in other words, there was not a statewide or uniform approach to the educator evaluation process. although districts would routinely modify their teacher evaluation and professional development systems based on current research in subsequent years, no additional formal restructuring of educator evaluation and professional development was put in place until may, 2012, when connecticut was awarded a waiver from nclb (2002) requirements (connecticut coalition for achievement now, 2012). at the same time, the state legislature passed public law 12-116, an act concerning educational reform (2012). among other provisions, section 51(a) of the act mandates that the superintendent of each local or regional board of education annually evaluate each teacher in accordance with guidelines established by the connecticut state board of education. the law went into effect july 1, 2012. an interagency workgroup, the performance evaluation advisory council (peac), was created and authorized to develop the framework for a model teacher-evaluation system based on the recently revised common core of teaching (csde, 2010). peac’s work led to the development of connecticut guidelines for educator evaluation and support (csde, 2012a), which are aligned with relevant provisions of public law 12-116 (2012) and to which all districts are expected to adhere. the state board of education unanimously approved the guidelines in june 2012. concomitantly, the connecticut state department of education (csde, 2012b) developed a model system for educator evaluation and development (seed) that schools and district could choose to adopt to meet the requirements of public law 12-116 (2012). the seed model is based on danielson’ (2007) rubrics for measuring professional performance and connecticut’s common core of teaching (csde, 2010). ten school districts or consortiums of districts were selected to pilot the seed model during the 2012-2013 school year. under the seed model, 45% of a teacher’s annual evaluation rating is awarded based purely on student-achievement data resultant from standardized test performance. forty percent of the summative rating is linked directly to professional performance, tied to standards presented in the connecticut’s common core of teaching (csde, 2010) and danielson’s (2007) framework and rated through observations of practice by the supervisor. five percent of the summative rating is determined through either school-wide achievement indicators or student feedback. the remaining 10% of the teacher’s summative rating is based on parent feedback gathered through a survey. all in all enacting the seed model represented a significant departure from past practice for teachers and administrators in connecticut. description of the seed model pilot to establish the context within which the seed pilot and the study described herein took place a description of the pilot year is provided in this section. on april 5, 2012, the connecticut state department of education issued an invitation and application (s. pryor, personal communication, 2012) to all connecticut school districts to become one of ten pilot sites for the seed program. the criteria indicated for selection of the pilot site districts included: district size, geographical representation, district designation as urban, suburban or rural, and consortia of small districts working collaboratively with other small districts. discussion of this opportunity between the superintendents of district a and district b led to a shared application to become a consortium pilot site. each superintendent wanted their district to gain the benefits provided through participation in the pilot that would afford state funding for all required faculty training, mandated calibration of evaluators, and implementation current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 4 of the required parent and faculty survey administrations. in addition, participation would provide a year for practice and mastery of the nuances of the new evaluation system by their faculty before the statewide implementation scheduled for the academic year 20132014. finally, the superintendents perceived the districts would benefit from active collaboration with the state department of education leading to enhanced recognition and stature within the state. the rationale for submission of a collaborative application was threefold. first, these school districts are located in the rural northwestern region of the state, an area that tends to be excluded from representation in major state department of education initiatives. second, the combined enrollment of about 2,000 students and employment of about 230 certified staff members (strategic school profiles, 2011-2012) would provide a viable number of participants for the pilot activities that could not be realized independently. finally, these adjacent districts presented diverse structures, thus providing input from educators in both a small community-based, high-achieving comprehensive pk-12 district and a small regional pk-12 district comprised of three non-contiguous member towns whose high school is also a regional vocational agriculture education site. these districts have an established history of sharing resources and collaborating on initiatives that strongly supported the decision to apply as a consortium for inclusion in the state pilot. on july 3, 2012, following the approval of their joint application, the superintendents of district a and district b participated in an informational session held by the state department of education to introduce the pilot program. table 1 presents the professional development activities conducted during the 2012-2013 school year by agencies contracted by the state department of education to provide training in both teacher and administrator evaluation to personnel in the pilot districts. evaluators from both districts were provided access to teachscape, a web-based program that trained and calibrated the skills of evaluators. teachscape used danielson’s (2007) rubric for measuring professional practice to appraise the skills of administrators in evaluating teaching practice through watching videos of lessons and rating the observed performance. my learning plan oasys, a web-based observation and appraisal management system, was made available to pilot districts for use in maintaining records of annual goals, observations, and mid-year reflective conversations. in addition, my learning plan calculated summative ratings through application of the stored data to the seed rating-matrix. support for pilot districts in administering and interpreting response data from parent, faculty, and student surveys was provided through panorama education, a survey platform built specifically for k-12 education. table 1 seed training sessions for teacher and administrator evaluation agency dates participants /topics teacher evaluation education connection 8/16/12 teacher evaluators from districts a and b introduction to teacher evaluation: overview of the 45%, 40%, 10% and 5% components of the model education connection 8/17/12 teacher evaluators from districts a and b 45% student learning objectives (slo a & b) education connection 8/23/12 superintendents from districts a and b meet with educational consultant to review implementation status education connection 8/30/12 certified staff from districts a and b teacher evaluation orientation education connection 9/10/12 teacher evaluators from districts a and b 40% teacher practice components: danielson rubric and summative matrix overview of parent and student related indicators education connection 1/18/13 superintendents from districts a and b meet with educational consultant to review implementation status administrator evaluation connecticut association of schools 9/13/12 administrator evaluators from districts a and b introduction to administration evaluation: overview of the 45%, 40%, 10% and 5% components of the model connecticut association of schools 9/25/12 administrator evaluators from districts a and b 45% teacher effectiveness outcomes, 10% and 5% stakeholder feedback connecticut association of schools 10/1/12 administrator evaluators from districts a and b 45% student learning: state tests and local measures connecticut association of schools 10/9/12 administrator evaluators from districts a and b 40% principal performance and practice connecticut association of schools 10/17/12 administrator evaluators from districts a and b debrief 40% principal performance & data system connecticut association of schools 11/6/12 all administrators from districts a and b overview of administrator evaluation model components connecticut’s educator evaluation process: the concerns and experiences of educators in two pilot districts 5 each district maintained participation in the pilot program throughout the school year and successfully evaluated all certified faculty below the rank of superintendent through application of the summative evaluation rubric. district personnel holding connecticut certification as intermediate supervisors completed all teacher evaluations in both districts; there were no complementary evaluators trained or used. in district a, all teacher evaluators were principals or central office administrators. district b permitted teachers serving as department chairpersons as well as principals and central office administrators to evaluate teachers. at the conclusion of the pilot school year, each district reported that they completed the goal-setting process by the extended date of november 15, and the summative rating process by june 30. neither district met the target of conducting six formal observations with every certified teacher. this was similar to other districts participating in the pilot. in sum, connecticut’s public law 12-116 (2012) is an example of a public policy that aims to improve the quality of teaching and by extension student achievement. similar federal polices and other comprehensive school reform efforts often require significant investment in changing the way educators approach their work and the need to implement innovations not only at the organizational level but also at the individual teacher level. connecticut’s seed is representative of a summative teacher evaluation process, with formative components, and this is a fundamental change in how the state’s school districts have evaluated educators. implementation of innovation requires active participation and significant commitment on the part of both teachers and administrators. given what is known about innovation implementation and the change process, a study eliciting public school personnel’s concerns about implementing connecticut’s newly developed educator evaluation process at the beginning and end of the pilot year seemed warranted. guiding framework: change and innovation implementation the theoretical underpinnings for this study are rooted in change theory (demers, 2007) as it applies to the implementation of educational innovation and reform efforts (fullan, 1993, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2006; hall & hord, 2006; hord, rutherford, huling-austin, & hall, 2006; wagner et al., 2006). authentic educational change “desired or not, represents a serious personal and collective experience characterized by ambivalence and uncertainty” (fullan, 2007, p. 23). if the results of the change process are successful, it can result in “a sense of mastery, accomplishment, and professional growth” (fullan, 2007, p. 23). observers of the change process have long contended that educational leaders must understand that the adoption and successful implementation of any innovation begins at the individual level (fullan, 1985; hall & hord, 2006; hord et al., 2006; wagner et al., 2006). moreover, success depends on “how school district central offices create and implement supports for change” (honig, copland, rainey, lorton, & newton, 2010, p. 5). implementing an educational innovation, such connecticut’s new educator evaluation process, is accompanied inevitably by new learning and a need to rethink and adjust current practice. such change often elicits concerns, anxiety, and uncertainty. research has shown that when teachers’ concerns pertaining to implementing educational innovations are identified and addressed individuals are more apt to implement related practices (burstein, sears, wilcoxen, cabello, & spagna, 2004; mcleskey & waldron, 2002; pedron & evans, 1990; van den berg, sleegers, geijsel, & vandenberghe, 2000; wade, welch, & jensen, 1994). through understanding and addressing individual concerns, a school and personnel can better provide support with implementation of the innovation (hall & hord, 2006). as such, the framework that guided this investigation is hall and hord’s (2006, 2011) concernsbased adoption model (cbam). the cbam is a practical, evidence-based model (anderson, 1997) focused on describing, measuring, and explaining the process of change experienced by both individuals and groups of educators attempting to implement an innovation. an innovation is something that is new to the individual and can encompass any combination of beliefs, understandings, behaviors, materials, instructional strategies, a curriculum, or a program. in the study described herein, the specific innovation under consideration was public school personnel’s concerns about implementing connecticut’s newly developed model of a system of educator evaluation and development. the cbam places particular emphasis on the diverse and unique meanings that individuals assign to the change and acknowledges that implementing any innovation is a highly personal experience. at the same time, it is understood generally that most individuals go through predictable stages of change, each of which is characterized by questions and concerns about the innovation as it unfolds. concerns are not necessarily fears, anxieties, or worries, but rather “the composite representation of the feelings, preoccupation, thought, and consideration given to a particular issue or task” (hall & hord, 2006, p. 138). in this model, change and implementing an innovation are one and the same. the cbam (hall & hord, 2006, 2011) encompasses six elements that interact dynamically as implementation of an innovation and the associated changes unfold. the elements are (a) external environment, (b) organizational culture, (c) resource system, (d) change facilitator, (e) probes, and (f) interventions. the external environment encompasses the historical, social, economic, and political milieu within which a school operates. it includes many and varied current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 6 sources of externally imposed change that are outside of a school’s immediate locus of control. notably, federal, state, local, and other externally imposed mandates quite often set the change agenda for schools (hall & hord, 2011), as was the case in this study. a school’s culture permeates the organization; is socially constructed; and encompasses shared knowledge, beliefs, and experiences (hall & hord, 2011). the culture is evidenced in how a school looks; the rituals and celebrations that take place; the stories shared; and the ways in which school personnel, students, families, and the community interact inside and outside of the school (lindahl, 2006; wagner & masden-copas, 2002). the resource system includes, among other means of support, materials (e.g., books, articles, manuals), time, and expert knowledge of the innovation available to those who will be implementing the change (hall & hord, 2011). those with expert knowledge might include principals, teachers, staff developers, instructional coaches, or consultants external to the school. the change facilitator can be a single person, or several persons, whose primary role is to support implementers. change facilitators are acutely aware of both the positive and negative, or dysfunctional, aspects of a school’s culture and maintain their focus on continuous improvement of teaching and learning (hall & hord, 2011). they draw on the resource system to ensure achieve implementation of and fidelity to the innovation. probes are the formal and informal methods the change facilitator uses to assess an individual’s or group’s needs and concerns and identify personalized intervention strategies based on this assessment. interventions are actions (e.g., sharing an book about the innovation) or events (e.g., rescheduling a meeting due to illness) that can affect the implementation of an either positively or negatively (hall & hord, 2011). the interventions emerge from an ongoing process assessment and feedback, are planned, systematic, and tailored to specific needs of individuals, groups, or the organization as a whole. related to probes, the cbam also includes three diagnostic dimensions: (a) stages of concern (soc), levels of use (lou), and innovation configurations (ic). soc comprises seven developmental stages of concern that cluster into three areas, self, task, and impact (hord et al., 2006). lou covers six characterizations of distinctly different observable, patterns of individual behavior related to using the innovation. finally, ic, or ic maps depict a continuum of ways in which individuals might operationalize the components and dimensions of an innovation. the change facilitator is the individual who has responsibility for overseeing the innovation, building a supportive context, and helping individuals (hall & hord, 2006, 2011). while this is quite often the principal, hall and hord (2006) suggest that the “optimal arrangement for an organization is to have a leadership team” (p. 269). in the cbam, the team would use both informal and formal tools to gather diagnostic information about how they might use resources and intervene to support individuals as they implement the innovation. more specifically, diagnosis would include: administering the soc survey (george, hall & stiegelbauer, 2006) to understand individual concerns related to the change process, developing lou (hall, dirksen, & george, 2008) profiles to determine what individuals or groups are doing related to the innovation, and constructing and using ic maps to document and assess fidelity of implementation (hord, stiegelbauer, hall, & george, 2008). the focus of this study is public school teachers’ and administrators’ concerns about implementing the newly developed system of educator evaluation and development. the soc dimension of the cbam (hall & hord, 2006, 2011) served to define the main variables of interest-educators’ concerns. table 2 provides a summary of the cbam stages of concern. table 2 cbam stages of concern (hall & hord, 2011) categories stage of concern stage description impact 6. refocusing the individual is thinking about broader benefits of the innovation, including the possibility of introducing major changes or replacement of the innovations. 5. collaboration the individual focuses on coordinating and collaborating with colleagues to improve the use of the innovation. 4. consequence the individual focuses attention on the students affected by the innovation within his or her immediate sphere of influence. task 3. management the individual has shifted focus to the various processes and tasks required by the innovation. the focus is on efficiency, managing, and scheduling. self 2.personal the individual is uncertain about his or her ability to meet the requirements of the innovation, as well as his or her role in the innovation. 1. informational the individual has a general awareness of the innovation and has an interest learning more. the interest is focused on substantive aspects of the innovation, not on his or her role in the innovation. unrelated 0. unconcerned the individual shows little or no concern about the innovation. connecticut’s educator evaluation process: the concerns and experiences of educators in two pilot districts 7 methodology this exploratory study employed two methods of data collection: an internet-based survey and a focus group discussion. to ensure participant confidentiality, the second author, who was the superintendent in one of the districts at the time of the study, was not involved in any way with the data collection process. the researchdeveloped survey was administered online, in the beginning and the end of the pilot school year. individuals completing the spring administration had an opportunity to self-select to participate in a 90-minute focus group discussion. the focus group was conducted at the end of the pilot school year. the paper is focused on change in school personnel’s concerns over time. both teachers and administrators comprised the sample because the phenomenon of interest is concerns related to implementation of an innovation (i.e., seed) that required reciprocal engagement, new learning, and significant commitment and the part of both groups. therefore, the results presented are those from the 55 educators (i.e., teachers and administrators), working in two of the pilot districts, who completed both the fall and spring administrations of the survey and the subsample of eight individuals who self-selected to participate in the focus group discussion. survey description, administration, and data analysis the recommendations of dillman, smyth, and christian (2009) were followed for the design and administration of the survey. to confirm the clarity of the survey language and directions and try out the entire survey process (e.g., software functionality, time to complete the survey), a small-scale pilot was conducted with four individuals working in districts other than the ones under study. no modifications were made based on the pilot test. a copy of the tool is in the appendix. the survey had four sections. for sections i iii respondents were asked to read each statement and check the number on a 7-point likert scale that best represented the degree to which each statement was true of them. section i contained 7-items designed to measure concerns associated with the educational innovation (george et al., 2006; hall & hord, 2006, 2011). the items were in the form of statements that described concerns that a respondent could have regarding their involvement with the newly developed educator evaluation process. section ii of the survey contained 8-items that gauged participants’ overall experiences with and opinions about teacher evaluation generally. section iii contained 5items that queried respondents about their commitment to key components of the educator evaluation system. section iv of the survey contained five items that collected basic demographic information about each participant. the spring administration contained an additional item that provided respondents an opportunity to self-select to participate in a 90-minute focus group interview, which is described later. in the fall, study participants were recruited from the population of 229 pre-k to 12 school personnel (e.g., teachers and administrators) working in two of the pilot districts. the superintendent of each district provided the lead author with an excel file that contained names and school e-mail addresses. a series of six e-mails contacts were made to maximize the response rate (dillman et al., 2009). the e-mails were sent through the online survey program. they contained information about the purpose of the study, a link to the informed consent form, and a link to the survey, which was a unique url that was automatically created for each potential respondent. this url was encrypted with ssl for added security during survey taking. the linked informed consent form was used because the online e-mail system did not allow attachments. seventy-six individuals took part in the first administration of the survey (fall). given the purpose of the study was to look at change in educators’ concerns over time, only these individuals were recruited to participate in the follow-up, end of pilot survey administration (spring). the procedures for the spring administration of the survey were the same as those of the fall. in all, 55 individuals participated in both the fall and spring administrations. table 3 contains demographic information about this sample. as might be expected, the overwhelming majority of participants were teachers. the numbers of participants per district and school level were relatively similar. table 3 sample characteristics (n = 55) district n % a 24 43.6 b 31 56.4 highest level of education completed bachelor’s degree 7 12.7 master’s degree 31 56.4 sixth year degree 17 30.9 years of experience in education 5 years or less 6 10.9 6-10 years 11 20.0 11-15 years 8 14.5 16-20 years 16 29.1 21-25 years 6 10.9 26 years or more 8 14.5 position held teacher 45 81.8 support personnel (e.g., counselor, social worker) 3 5.5 administrator (building or central office) 7 12.7 school elementary 25 45.5 secondary 30 54.5 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 8 the raw survey data were downloaded online to a comma separated value (.csv) file and imported into microsoft® excel®. data were inspected and imported into spss for further analysis. scoring the instrument involved assigning numerical values to each of the response choices. the survey data were analyzed using descriptive statistics; frequencies and percentages were calculated. a paired-samples t test was used to compare differences between beginning and end of pilot year responses to the survey (field, 2013). to ensure that spurious significant differences were not found, alpha was set at .0001. using a smaller alpha level lessens the chance of a type 1 error (trochim, 2005). the small initial level for alpha required neither a bonferroni nor sidak correction, as the chance of finding one or more significant differences in 20 tests was 0.002 (0.2%). focus group description and data analysis data were also collected using a focus group interview, which is a qualitative method for obtaining participants’ perceptions on a defined topic of interest in an open, nonthreatening environment (krueger & casey, 2008). as noted earlier, the spring administration of the survey contained an item inviting respondents to participate in a focus group. thirteen individuals expressed an interest; of those, eight people self-selected to participate—four from each district. there were three administrators and five teachers. to maintain confidentiality of the focus group participants, no additional information was collected. the focus group was held at central non-school location and lasted 90 minutes. to ensure participant confidentiality, the second author was not present during the focus group. using krueger and casey’s (2008) focus group recommendations as a guide, the lead author facilitated the discussion, and it was structured as follows: (a) welcome, (b) overview of the topic, (c) review of ground rules, and (d) the questions. during the welcome, participants were thanked for attending, the purpose of the discussion was reviewed, and ground rules were covered. the questions framed the conversation were as follows. 1. what are your thoughts and feelings today about your personal experiences with any part of the pilot process? 2. what were your initial thoughts and feelings about the educator evaluation process? 3. thinking about the future and moving forward, what are your preferences and hopes for the educator evaluation process? each participant was invited in turn to give input and express opinions to ensure that varying points of view were obtained. active listening techniques were employed and follow-up questions primarily took the form of elaboration probes, to elicit more information, and clarifying probes, to check of understanding and clear up any confusion (rubin & rubin, 2012). two graduate students recorded the participants’ responses. detailed notes were taken in real-time using word processing software and a laptop computer. notes were also recorded on chart paper. procedures commonly used in qualitative research were used to analyze the focus group responses (marshall & rossman, 2011; merriam, 2009; corbin & strauss, 2008). to enhance credibility, the data were examined and reexamined several times throughout the analysis. first, the authors independently analyzed the focus group data. sections of text (e.g., words, phrases) were marked and coded (i.e., labeled), by hand or using word processing features including comment and highlight. with each reading, themes, categories, and corresponding coding were refined and modified as necessary. then, the independent data analyses were compared and consensus was reached on the themes. next, the results of the survey are presented, followed by the results of the focus group discussion. the paper concludes with an overall discussion of the results, study limitations, and suggestions for action and future research. survey results analysis of the fall survey data for the 55 respondents that are of interest in this study reveals that their concerns about the educator evaluation process were largely centered on self and tasks, as delineated in the cbam (hall & hord, 2011). the items with the highest mean response in the fall were informational, personal, and management 6.02 (sd = 1.35), 6.29 (sd = 1.18), and 6.18 (sd = 1.32), respectively. at the self-stage of concern, individuals have more of an impersonal interest in learning about “substantive aspects of the innovation, such as general characteristics, effects, and requirements for use” (george et al., 2006, p. 8). personal concerns suggest uneasiness about the innovation and its consequence for the individual, and management concerns are related to the time and effort involved in implementation (george et al., 2006). using an alpha level of .0001, a paired-samples t test was conducted to evaluate whether participants’ fall and spring concerns differed significantly. the spring mean was significantly lower for informational concerns (m = 4.40, sd = 2.00) than was the fall mean (m = 6.02, sd = 1.35), with t(54) = 4.46, p < .01, d = .36, 99.99% ci [.09, 3.14]. likewise, the spring mean was significantly lower for personal concerns (m = 5.31, sd = 1.73) than was the fall mean (m = 6.29, sd = 1.18), with t(54) = 3.66, p = .001, d = .66, 99.99% ci [.14, 2.11]. these trends in the data suggest participants were not as concerned in spring with learning more about seed or its consequences for them as they had been in the fall. with regard to refocusing efforts, the spring mean was significantly higher (m = 5.16, sd = 1.66) than was the fall mean (m = 4.11, sd = 1.99), with t(54) = 3.30, p = .002, d = -0.57, 99.99% ci [-2.40, .29]. this trend indicates participants were moving away from connecticut’s educator evaluation process: the concerns and experiences of educators in two pilot districts 9 concerns about task and focusing on impact concerns, perhaps developing ideas about how the innovation might be improved or considering a process that could replace it (george et al., 2006). figure 1 provides a fall to spring comparison of participants’ stage of concern regarding implementing seed. figure 1. fall to spring comparison of participants’ stage of concern regarding implementing seed. * p < .01, ** p = .001, *** p = .002 a paired-samples t test was also conducted to evaluate whether participants’ fall and spring levels of commitment to implementing seed differed significantly. with regard to commitment, the spring mean (m = 4.27, sd = 1.90) was significantly lower than was the fall mean (m = 5.11, sd = 1.75), with t(54) = 2.41, p = .019, d = .46, 99.99% ci [-.62, 2.29]. concerning participants’ beliefs about the feasibility of seed, the spring mean (m = 2.65, sd = 1.60) was significantly lower than was the fall mean (m = 3.51, sd = 1.75), with t(54) = 2.67, p = .01, d = .46, 99.99% ci [.49, 2.20]. likewise, the spring mean for the importance of implementing seed (m = 3.29, sd = 1.94) was significantly lower than was the fall mean (m = 4.00, sd = 1.89), with t(54) = 2.05, p = .045, d = .37, 99.99% ci [.74, 2.16]. overall, these trends in the data suggest that participants’ commitment to implementing seed had diminished over the pilot year. figure 2 provides a fall to spring comparison of participants’ level of commitment to implementing seed. figure 2. fall to spring comparison of participants’ level of commitment to implementing seed. *p = .019, **p = .01, ***p = .045 finally, participants’ general experiences with teacher evaluation and opinions about seed did not change significantly over the pilot years, as can be seen in figure 3. the results might be an artifact of the newness of the innovation. they might also be a product of the timeframe within which data were collected; a year in the life of an innovation might be insufficient to experience any impact. figure 3. fall to spring comparison of participants’ general experiences with teacher evaluation and opinions about implementing seed. in sum, trends in the differences between the results of the fall and spring survey administration appear to show that participating educators were moving from a focus on self and task concerns about the seed process to impact concerns. at the same time, their commitment to implementing seed had waned. the results are what might be expected given seed was just launched; and the trends in the data are in keeping with the cbam (hall & hord, 2011). in the early stages of implementing an innovation, hall and hord (2011) contended, concerns of an inexperienced implementer will quite often center on informational needs, the consequences of the innovation for the individual, and management of logistics and tasks. as time goes on and the individual becomes more adept at implementing the innovation, concerns can shift to thoughts about how to improve the innovation or approaches that might be even better (hall & hord, 2011). focus group results similar to the results of the survey, analysis of the focus group data revealed that participants’ initial concerns centered on self and managing tasks, as well as seeming disorganization at the state-level. focus group participants described several valuable outcomes of having participated in the seed pilot. these included opportunities to reflect on practice, collaborate with colleagues, and improve practice. upon completion of the pilot and although concerns remained, individuals described how they were focused on improving the evaluation process to meet local-level needs. the opinions expressed by the focus group participants were consistent across the district a and district b and the teachers and administrators in attendance. current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 10 initial concerns focus group participants described concerns experienced at the beginning of the pilot year that centered on self and a general sense of unease, disorganization at the state-level, and the specific tasks related to implementation. the educators spoke of “alarm and worry on the part of teachers” (p2) and “being nervous about next year and how that will go” (p3). one person described approaching the pilot with skepticism, “i didn’t like the idea at first [and] thought it would be silly. i thought, ‘if you can write a good goal and figure out how to do that, you will be fine” (p1). the timing of the pilot was troubling for some: “to kick off the school year and do this at the same time was tough. the timing piece was hard. . . . it might have made more sense to start later . . . more time to digest, if we had started later” (p8). another participant expressed “the practice was overwhelming. moving to five areas of professional development with new forms, new policies, and new procedures. that was crazy” (p3). tied to their accounts of general uneasiness with implementing the new process were descriptions of a seeming lack of preparation or organization at the statelevel and a need for better information. one person said, “it was a bumpy start. they kept re-writing what we were doing straight through to november” (p7). some focus group participants identified the lived experience surrounding the state’s training for the pilot participants as a source of distress. one individual recalled: training was incredibly frustrating . . . the trainers were trained just before we were. the state wasn’t ready to launch. they were piloting the plane while learning how to pilot the plane. from having heard the committee on many occasions, i know that they were ramming it through no matter what. (p9) similar to the results of the survey, task concerns described by focus group participants included how the process would affect participants personally and those related to managing the process. for many, “the goalsetting process in and of itself caused anxiety” (p3). under the new evaluation system, teachers are expected to engage with their principals (or their designees) in a goal setting conference. notably, state guidelines require that at least two of the three required goals be focused on student learning, and they account for 45% of a teacher’s annual evaluation. the student growth goals are to be clearly tied to student achievement and school or district priorities. teachers must write the student growth goals as student learning outcomes, which are long-term, broad academic statements that describe an expectation for student improvement. indicators of academic growth and development are used to measure student-learning outcomes, and these are written as smart goals (i.e., specific and strategic, measurable, aligned and attainable, time bound. one person expressed uneasiness about the percentages they were using in their smart goals because they seemed arbitrary: [the] problem was that we came up with some number for smart goals—70%, 56%, or whatever percent . . . . we should be working for 100%, but don’t want to be penalized for not getting there . . . . we don’t want to encourage a low benchmark; what’s a reasonable number? (p5) another individual explained how unrealistic it was to set student growth goals that applied to all students: problems with goals led to the program being taken less seriously. some goals had to apply to all students, which is impossible in high school. i wrote for the majority of my students. expectations did not fit reality. this is the divide between goals and the reality of teaching. (p6) still another person talked about the challenge of aligning student growth goals with the professional, or teacher growth goals they were expected to write: “we were so focused on [the] goal selected for the [student growth] goal. i spent weeks trying to make sure that the teaching goal reflected on my professional goal” (p2). management of the number of observations and the administrative paperwork were also cited as components of the system that worried the participants initially and throughout the pilot. one individual shared, “the administrative piece is overwhelming, and way too many forms. we are ‘formed’ to death” (p1). someone else reported, “the pre-observation form took a lot of time . . . caused anxiety . . . and i’m not sure it’s worth it” (p2). structural expectations of the system were described as elements needing to be overcome rather than accommodated. a participant pronounced, “it was overly ambitious to think that people would get through six observations” (p6). time was noted as a factor that contributed to some participants’ initial distress. one person shared, “[for] evaluators, far more time [was] required to talk through, to explain, and reassure people— one session after another” (p5). valuable outcomes derived from participation despite initial reservations, focus group participants clearly identified benefits and the valuable outcomes derived from having participated in the pilot process. highly regarded were opportunities to collaborate and give input on the new process. one attendee shared, “i was glad they [the state department of education] gave us a chance to modify [the district’s process]” (p4); and another said, “my district engaged us in discussion about [the pilot]” (p5). the return to connecticut’s common core of teaching was described as helpful because, in one participant’s words, “there has been a lack of value placed on the value of the content being communicated. need to have subject matter count for something” (p6). connecticut’s educator evaluation process: the concerns and experiences of educators in two pilot districts 11 as the pilot year progressed, participants’ concerns were described as shifting away from self and managing tasks to their professional responsibility and how the goal setting process was affecting students. one participant commented, “teachers personalized this. this is the goal. these are the kids. my work will influence this, and this is what we are going to do” (p9). overwhelmingly, participants described how the pilot process afforded them with opportunities to reflect on professional practice, examine their teaching, and improve. the process was credited with providing new opportunities to work with colleagues and collaborate. as one participant shared, “lots of good conversation around goal-setting . . . opportunities to discus pedagogy, to be in the classroom, to coach.” (p7). one person recounted how participating in the pilot “forced reflection where there was none . . . right now i am thinking about the notion of reflection . . .where there wasn’t enough, now there is more” (p1). another individual explained, “we have looked at practice under a magnifying glass. at the time, it was hard. now that it’s done, i am glad . . . this did cause me to try to change my practice in a positive way” (p2). still another stated, “the whole point is that we need to know. we are using evaluations to improve and support teaching” (p3). remaining concerns expressed benefits aside, doubt continued for some as to the value of the new system as experienced in the pilot. as one participant related, “i think it was not of much value. because of disorganization, there was a lack of clarity. we went through the motions. so in the here and now i feel the same as i did at the beginning” (p5). some spoke about what they viewed as insignificant change from the old evaluation system to the new. one individual explained, “it was not that much different from what we were doing at our schools. the smart goals i set were similar to those i had been setting” (p6). another individual shared perspective on what was lacking in the new system, “teaching is a balance of science and art. the art component needs attention. this program does not consider the art piece, too. data cannot account for all elements of teaching” (p7). this final comment seems to allude to a move towards refocusing efforts on how the seed process could be improved, as was the case in the survey. discussion this paper provides a look at public school personnel’s concerns about implementing connecticut’s new system of educator evaluation and development in two pilot districts. both the survey and the focus group results revealed a shift in district personnel’s concerns from an initial focus on self and tasks to refocusing efforts on local improvements to the educator evaluation process. focus group participants described the demands of implementing the new program as overwhelming at the beginning of the pilot year. consistent with the survey findings, the initial concerns mirrored those of inexperienced users, as described by hall and hord (2011). the initial concerns centered on self— learning about the innovation and acquiring the personal capacity for implementing the innovation (hall & hord, 2011). focus group participants were also concerned about tasks, primarily those related to the individual’s role in and ability to manage, schedule, perform, or meet the requirements of the innovation (hord & hall, 2011). as one example, at the beginning of the implementation of the pilot program, focus group participants’ concerns revolved around the uncertainty and challenges associated with the novelty of the seed process. the challenges were described as seemingly insurmountable, and participants expressed having felt personally overwhelmed. they shared how they struggled with the tasks of setting goals and managing the volume of observations and paperwork. these results are compatible with previous research suggesting the early stages of implementing and innovation can be fraught with intense concerns related to the need for information and worries about how the change will affect an individual personally (burstein et al., 2004; mcleskey & waldron, 2002; pedron & evans, 1990; van den berg et al., 2000; wade et al., 1994). the results of the spring survey and findings from the focus group are suggestive of participants’ movement toward impact concerns (hall & hord, 2011) and how they could improve upon the seed process. focus group participants described how they experienced process benefits as the pilot progressed. these included opportunities to reflect on practice, have collegial conversation, and improve their teaching. these benefits echo what other researchers have found. teachers appreciate and are best supported through formative discourse and opportunities for reflection (blase & blase, 2000; peterson & comeaux, 1990; ponticell & zepeda, 2004; stiggins & bridgeford, 1985), and such practices can propel changes in how teachers approach their work (vetter, 2012). at the same time, commitment to implementing seed as experienced in the pilot diminished. notably, by the end of the pilot year, data from both the survey and the focus group suggest that school personnel were refocusing their efforts on improvement of the evaluation process by effective management of expectations, streamlining reporting, and clarifying areas of the process that they described as vague. at the refocusing stage, individuals think about broader benefits of the innovation, including the possibility of introducing major changes or replacing the innovation entirely (hall & hord, 2011). in sum, neither district fully adopted the seed process because it could not be implemented fully and with fidelity given the limitations of time, money, and personnel. instead, educators in each district have used the feedback obtained through the pilot process and this current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 12 study to refine and develop local versions of the teacher evaluation process. gathering data about initial and ongoing concerns during a pilot of any innovation can aid school and district administrators with identifying areas for professional learning related to the innovations. these kinds of information can also provide insights into how to refine the innovation to meet local needs. limitations and recommendations for future research as with most research, this investigation has several limitations. first, the study was conducted in two districts among the state’s 164, the sample size for both the survey and the focus group were small, and individuals self-selected to participate. these facts limit the generalizability of the results to other settings. another researcher should conduct a similar study in districts that have chosen to implement the seed model. the results would add to an understanding of educator concerns about that process specifically and the connecticut guidelines for educator evaluation and support (csde, 2012a) more generally. second, a research-developed survey was employed in this study. while the survey provided a profile of participants’ stages of concern, additional research should be conducted to refine and validate the survey. finally, other researchers should continue to examine the evolution of teacher evaluations systems in connecticut and across the country to determine the components that best support teachers’ instructional improvement and lead to improved academic outcomes for all students. references an act concerning educational reform. connecticut public law 12-116. 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evaluation process. read each statement. for each, please check the number the best reflects the degree to which the statement is true. 1, i am not concerned about the new teacher evaluation process. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true 2. i would like to know more about the new teacher evaluation process. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true 3. i want to know how the new teacher evaluation process will affect me. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true 4. i am concerned with managing the new teacher evaluation process in practice. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true 5. i want to know how the new teacher evaluation process will affect students. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true 6. i have joined forces with colleagues so the new teacher evaluation process will have a collective impact on teaching and learning. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true 7. i have ideas about modifications to the new teacher evaluation process that might make it work even better. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 16 section ii: your experiences with and opinions about teacher evaluation generally as you read each statement consider the entire evaluation process including planning for evaluation, observations, or other procedures and feedback. for each of the statements please check the number the best reflects the degree to which the statement is true. 1. my most recent evaluation experience was very high quality. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true 2. my most recent evaluation experience had a strong impact leading to changes in my professional practice. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true 3. i believe that a teacher's evaluation should include multiple indicators of student academic growth and development, including state standardized tests. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true 4. i believe that a teacher's evaluation should include classroom observations. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true 5 i believe that a teacher's evaluation should include whole-school student learning indicators. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true 6. i believe that a teacher's evaluation should include parent feedback. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true 7. i believe that a teacher's evaluation should include peer feedback. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true 8. i believe that a teacher's evaluation should include student feedback. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not true very true connecticut’s educator evaluation process: the concerns and experiences of educators in two pilot districts 17 section iii: level of commitment to the new teacher evaluation as you read each statement consider how committed you are to the new teacher evaluation process. for each of the statements please check the number the best reflects the degree to which the statement is true. 1. i am strongly in favor of the new teacher evaluation process. 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 very true not true 2. i am very enthusiastic about the new teacher evaluation process. 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 very true not true 3. i am committed to implementing the new teacher evaluation process. 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 very true not true 4. i believe it is feasible to implement the new teacher evaluation process. 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 very true not true 5. i believe it is important to implement the new teacher evaluation process. 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 very true not true current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 18 section iv: information about you please respond to each of the following items. 1. highest level of education completed (select one only.) bachelor’s degree master’s degree sixth year degree doctoral degree other: __________________________ 2. this is my first year working in this district. 5 years or less 6-10 years 3. years of experience in education (select one only.) 5 years or less 6-10 years 11-15 years 16-20 years 21-25 years 26 years or more 4. location in which you currently work (select one only.) elementary school b1 elementary school b2 elementary school b3 high school b elementary school a intermediate school a high school a other: __________________________ 5. current position (select one only.) teacher support personnel (e.g., counselor, social worker) administrator other: __________________________ connecticut’s educator evaluation process: the concerns and experiences of educators in two pilot districts 19 article citation larocco, d. j., wheeler, d. s., & loveland sennett, b. a. (2015). connecticut’s educator evaluation process: the concerns and experiences of educators in two pilot districts. current issues in education, 18(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1318 author notes diana j. larocco, ed.d. university of hartford college of education, nursing and health professions, institute for translational research 200 bloomfield avenue, west hartford, ct 06117 dlarocco@hartford.edu dr. diana larocco is faculty in the doctoral program in educational leadership at the university of hartford. in addition to supervising doctoral-level research, she teaches research courses. before coming to the university of hartford, she was the director of research and grants for the now connecticut department developmental services. she worked in the field of developmental disabilities for over 29 years and has extensive experience as a special education teacher and program administrator working with infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families in connecticut's birth to three system. dr. larocco directs the university-charted center for leadership in education and health within the institute for translational research at the university of hartford. she is also the university coordinator of assessment. deborah s. wheeler, ed.d. upper dublin school district 1580 fort washington avenue, maple glen, pa 19002 deborah is the superintendent of schools for upper dublin school district in pennsylvania. she has extensive experience as a special education teacher and administrator. beth ann loveland sennett, ma university of hartford, college of education, nursing and health professions 200 bloomfield avenue, west hartford, ct 06117 beth ann is a doctoral candidate and private educational consultant and tutor. she has extensive experience as a special education teacher and administrator. manuscript received: 10/26/2013 revisions received: 12/10/2014 accepted: 01/19/2015 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1318 mailto:dlarocco@hartford.edu current issues in education vol. 18 no. 1 20 volume 18, number 1 april 20, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editors tray j. geiger layout editors constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 8, number 12 june, 2005 issn 1099-839x teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories marjorie hall haley 1 and amanda seewald 6 george mason university allyson midgely, 2 judy ortiz, 3 teresa romano, 4 and lisa ashworth 5 as a profession language educators are paying more attention to teacher-driven research to help clarify and explain those phenomena occurring in our classrooms. the purpose of this paper is to explore the following question: what happens when teachers apply a teacher action research (tar) strategy for improving their classroom practice? i will start with a definition and then outline a set of steps for conducting this type of research. next, the four teachers tell their own “stories” and share reflections on growth and development. finally, i posit the importance of this kind of research in making contributions to language teaching and learning inquiry. for many foreign and second language teachers professional development opportunities take place at once-a-year conferences and sometimes during a one day staff development. is it any wonder these “try it out on monday!” workshops are limited and quickly fade from memory? as a profession language educators are paying more attention to teacher-driven research to help clarify and explain those phenomena occurring in our classrooms. the purpose of this paper is to explore the critical question: what happens when teachers apply a teacher action research (tar) strategy for improving their classroom practice? i will start with a definition and then outline a set of steps for conducting this type of research. next, the four teachers tell their own “stories” and share reflections on growth and development. finally, i posit the importance of this kind of research in making contributions to language teaching and learning inquiry. the concept of action research can be traced back to the early works of john dewey in the 1920s and kurt lewin in the 1940s, but it is stephen corey and others at teachers college of columbia university who introduced the term action research to the educational community in 1949. teacher action research is referred to in the literature as action research, practitioner research, teacher-as-scholar, practical inquiry, interactive research, classroom inquiry, or practice-centered research (downhower, melvin & sizemore, 1990). this type of self-driven, individualized research is a tool teachers can use to develop, reflect, and improve their teaching styles and pedagogical practices. the authors of this paper feel that many teachers fear that this type of work would require too much additional time that they do not have. examining more closely exactly what tar is and discovering how it can be a part of your daily routines as a teacher can minimize this fear. in order to reveal the facility with which one can implement a tar project, to demonstrate the crucial value of results obtained from such work, and encourage more teachers to view themselves as researchers, four current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 foreign language teachers, as a part of a graduate course i teach on foreign language methods, participated in teacher action research projects with elementary and middle school students. the tar project was a requirement for all in-service teachers enrolled in this course. there were four in-service teachers (in a class of 18) and all four projects are presented here. as part of the course agenda, i helped students identify and conceptualize the puzzlement they wished to investigate. they were initially told to “look” at their teaching and make a list of phenomenon that occurred that might be interesting to investigate. throughout their research projects the four teachers provided weekly updates to me both electronically and during in-class discussions. further, i met individually with the teachers to discuss data analyses and provided assistance with interpreting results. these studies were subsequently presented as poster sessions at the northeast conference on the teaching of foreign languages. their research findings as well as their methodologies depict the type of valuable information that teacher action research can provide to benefit teachers and their students. the results and subsequent reflections by each teacher can ultimately help them modify their daily teaching methods and strategies to create an optimal learning environment in their classrooms. the names of the teachers and school identities have been changed in order to insure anonymity. some of the most beneficial things about teacher action research are that it is small scale, contextualized, localized, and aimed at discovering, developing, or monitoring changes to practice (wallace, 2000). therefore, every project can take on the needs of the specific situation while following a relatively similar format as a guide. what differentiates action research from other types of social study is that it results in concrete actions that can be implemented. each of the following teachers’ projects began with a set of guidelines that can be used in any teaching situation to open a research process. these are the guidelines typically used in teacher action research:  identify a puzzlement/inquiry  decide in a systematic way how to go about answering that question  develop a timeline to carry out the project – one week, a month, a grading period or even a full academic year.  decide how data will be collected and analyzed  implement study – data collection and analysis  report and share findings literature on teacher action research and language teachers while the literature contains a respectable amount of studies conducted in foreign and second language classrooms, clearly there is a need for additional research. a few educators have discussed the possibilities of teacher research for foreign and second language education (johnson, 1992; nunan, 1992; nunan & lamb, 1996) but very little has been published in journals on teacher action research, i.e., teacher as researcher. richard donato (2003) reported on a one-year-long, innovative professional development project for texas’ languages other than english (lote) in which teachers explored action research as a tool for deepening professional knowledge and improving foreign language instruction in the context of their own schools and classrooms. all the studies maintain an area of focus on learners and the relationship of the learner to a particular teaching or assessment practice. in some cases, the learners became co-researchers with the teacher during the action research project and were asked to self-assess, provide input on lesson content and assessments, and rate instructional strategies for overall effectiveness (p. 18). marjorie hall haley’s (2004, 2001) work examined foreign and second language teachers engaged in action research to explore the impact of multiple intelligences-based teaching. in the first two phases of this ongoing research, hall haley enlisted the help of primary and secondary language teachers from around the country and from australia, hong kong, and germany (2004: 167-169). these educators collaborated with each other and with hall haley to develop ways to apply mi theory to both instructional strategies and assessment practices. data showed that “learner-centered instruction from the perspective of multiple intelligences…. demonstrated students’ strengths and weaknesses can be affected by a teacher’s pedagogical style” (2004: 171). the following four investigations were conducted in the fall of 2002. the individual cases demonstrate how action research can be used to improve teaching instruction in the foreign language classroom. these teachers undertook the studies in an effort to improve methods of classroom management, address student attitudes, and augment impact on learning. it is important to note that these teachers are attempting teacher action research projects for the first time. the four studies presented each address a particular phenomenon that was occurring in the teachers’ classrooms. these four teachers are not only the subjects of this paper but also collaborators in analyzing the impact that this work had on their teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 3 teaching and growth as reflective practitioners. specifically, these four teachers examined (1) effective ways of working with heritage language learners; (2) cooperative learning and peer tutoring in a foreign language in elementary schools (fles); (3) homework; and (4) attitude and motivation toward studying a foreign language. foreign language teachers often find themselves with a heterogeneous group of students. terry richards is a high school spanish teacher in a suburban school in an area that has a large hispanic population. because most of her educational training and previous teaching efforts centered on students who were focused on learning a new or foreign language, the placement of heritage language learners (hlls) in her regular spanish iii classroom presented unexpected opportunities and challenges. richards was faced with the new task of managing and meeting the needs of two very different student populations in the same classroom. she used an action research study to find instructional strategies and approaches that would best serve heritage students who are placed in regular spanish classes and to develop curricula and activities based on the specific needs and motivations of these students. note: in order to distinguish between the teachers’ stories and the methods’ professor’s narrative, the sections of the text have been identified accordingly. teacher # 1 working with heritage language learners terry richards high school spanish teacher introduction my research was conducted with native speakers of spanish (called heritage language learners (hlls) who were placed in my regular spanish iii classes. to my surprise, spanish native speakers were placed in two of my classes in a school that offers a special program for spanish native speakers with classes such as native speakers i and ii, international baccalaureate for native speakers i and ii. this program was implemented at the school due to its large hispanic population. when asked to switch classes, my students requested to stay in my classes to improve their writing skills. puzzlement as a first year teacher, i found myself dealing with a series of questions about how to make my own teaching career meaningful, how to best reach students and how to keep them focused and engaged in the process of second language learning. since i had a few spanish native speakers in class, these reflections and questions became even more difficult to resolve, since this specific group of students was challenging. i am latina and have great empathy for my heritage language students. i knew that their speaking and listening skills were highly proficient but their reading and writing skills were lacking. and i also knew that i needed to provide activities that were relevant and interesting. therefore, i decided to concentrate my research on answering the question: how can ireach my heritage students and keep them motivated?i wanted to effectively keep heritage students engaged in my regular spanish classes and needed to customize the learning experience for their special needs and areas of weaknesses and strengths. methodology i collected students’ scores from previous years and their current writing samples to examine their language proficiency. i began to tailor lessons and activities as well as to develop alternative curricula to better fit their individual language needs. during this time i kept the regular program of studies for the rest of my students. i learned soon enough that i needed to adopt and change some approaches to fill gaps in the native speakers’ grammar and spelling. to fully understand the goals and challenges of teaching spanish to spanish speakers, it was important to understand the diverse backgrounds of students who participate in spanish courses and their motivations for studying a language they appear to effectively use for communication. heritage students can be divided into several groups:  thirdor fourth-generation u.s.-born hispanic students considered to be receptive bilinguals: they are english dominant and understand almost all spoken spanish, but they have limited speaking skills in spanish and do not read or write it.  firstor second-generation bilinguals possess different degrees of proficiency in english and spanish. in most cases, these students have received their education in english and have developed few if any literacy skills in spanish.  recent immigrants to the united states are spanish dominant : their level of english proficiency, the amount of formal education they have had in spanish, and their literacy skills in spanish vary (valdes, 2001). my students were all third-generation u.s. born hispanics with advanced speaking skills, but very limited writing skills. data collection i collected the following data: performance on oral presentations based on rubrics, posters, multiple intelligence surveys, videos, journal entries, essays tailored for my hll students, and grammar current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 and reading comprehension activities for hispanoblantes (spanish speakers). i began recording my thoughts and reflections about my students on post-it notes, loose paper, anywhere i could find space during my class with them so i would not lose momentum. i did not keep a record notebook but i did transcribe my small notes into an electronic file at the end of the day during the entire school year. data analysis i used the data to determine answers to the following questions:  what instructional strategies engage my heritage language learners?  when do they feel motivated to learn and participate?  what approaches are helping fill in their grammar gap? my hll students practiced several writing strategies to improve areas such as spelling, grammar, and syntax. first, they created pre-writing maps or “brainstorming webs”, as they liked to call them. this helped them facilitate their flow of vocabulary, generate words, and shape their thoughts before they started writing. secondly, they worked on different drafts in class. they were given different writing prompts to practice and to start developing their maps into more complex sentences. this part of the process is my favorite, because it gives me a chance to truly assess students on a daily basis thru informal observation, as they display their train of thought in paper and interact with their partners for feed-back. the topics were developed for them using situations that they could relate to, such as living in bilingual homes, facing migration status, being second and first generation americans. once students completed their drafts, they worked in pairs to edit each other’s work and make corrections on grammar, punctuation, and spelling. this helped them improve their own proofreading skills and be more acute in realizing their mistakes. i noticed that this practice built independent learners and self-esteem. after getting feedback from peers, i collected their draft papers and revised them. i provided them with constructive feedback to improve their skills in grammar, spelling, and mechanics. i used an analytic rubric (appendix a) which i discussed with them ahead of time. i also provided them a checklist that “mirrored” the rubric in friendlier vocabulary. this was done to insure comprehension. this way, students were able to review their writing prompts and quickly check if they met the required criteria or not. i created a simple rubric in the target language with four domains: task completion, vocabulary, grammar and mechanics. results throughout their various writing samples, it was clear that they possessed solid cultural understanding of ideas but they lacked grammar knowledge, spelling and literacy skills. they also had limited colloquial vocabulary. for example, i found out in their journals that they constantly exchanged the “c” for “s” and they did not use “z” at all. sometimes they wrote sentence fragments without verbs or subjects. in some cases, they even wrote english words if they lacked the spanish vocabulary. by providing them with materials that tap those grammatical and syntactical needs, through practice, they were able to improve their writing. they also became more engaged in class discussions because they felt their experiences were valid and that they had a voice in class that students respected. it seemed to me that once my hll students achieved a certain level of confidence in their reading and writing, they were more willing to participate in open discussions because they seemed to feel that their opinions were respected by their classmates. conclusion as with all students, hll students respond well to environments that draw them into constructive learning. in my classes, i found that music, laughter, and positive feedback help all students respond better to learning. this was especially true with hll students who responded to this teaching style with great enthusiasm. during my study, my hll students changed their negative attitudes and responded more often and favorably to oral and written assignments when they felt more confident and self assured of their abilities . any time we learned a new colloquial term, for example, i would ask them what term they would use in their countries. they enjoyed making contributions and sharing experiences with the class when the learning environment was safe and supportive. they shared their music preferences; they brought lyrics to class so other students could learn some special songs. they brought pictures of special holidays in their countries and shared them with the class. they felt that they could explore the language and enrich their lexicon and grammar through analysis of language, literary readings, and essay writing. from the data collected, i noticed a developmental improvement in their essays. the more they read their literary pieces, the better lexicon they adopted in their own writing and speech. sometimes teachers feel intimidated to teach native speakers or they just segregate them from the learning core and make them feel unwelcome. implications teachers can provide critical strategies for success for heritage students by recognizing and teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 5 welcoming the varieties of language. heritage learners can share their cultural connections to the language to enrich the learning experience for all students. furthermore, it is pivotal to acknowledge differences of speech, to ask students to share colloquial terms, and to keep them engaged in cooperative activities. reflections a direct result of my research was that i learned that heritage students can benefit from being in foreign language classes if activities and strategies are tailored to them. by using teaching strategies that engaged heritage language learners’ prior knowledge and experience, the entire class benefited. in addition, i feel that my future research will give me more information as well as additional ideas to continue developing and better organizing my data collection and analysis methods. end of story for teacher # 1. methods professor i wanted this experience to provide terry the opportunity to differentiate instruction for her hlls. she clearly understood their strengths and weaknesses in linguistic proficiency but at the outset was not certain as to how to address them. because terry is so purposeful and deliberate in her planning, her data collection was effective and provided her with evidence for modifying instruction to meet the needs of her hlls. terry’s teacher action research project gave her the opportunity to clearly assess and adjust her instructional strategies to meet the needs of her heritage language learners. the benefits of this type of reflection have helped broaden her understanding of her role as a teacher and the impact she has with all learners. further, as a reflective practitioner, an integral part of tar, terry was able to contemplate and fine-tune the classroom environment in an ongoing way to meet the needs of the learners within it. lita ashley is the second teacher who wanted to develop strategies for teaching two distinct student groups in one classroom. this challenge is common to today’s classroom and is one for which tar can provide compelling information to teachers. in this scenario, the teacher focused her study on the use of cooperative learning groups and peer tutoring activities to address the diversity of learners in her classroom. teacher # 2 cooperative learning groups and peer tutoring: can they unite students with different language experience in the same classroom? lita ashley french fles teacher introduction my foreign language classroom is located in an elementary school in the northern section of virginia. i am a french fles teacher who teaches first through fifth graders three times per week for thirty minutes each. my classes contain students of various levels of experience in learning french. the use of cooperative learning groups and peer tutoring can provide opportunities for students who are more experienced in the language to help those students who are less experienced. how can these two instructional strategies unite a classroom of differing language experiences? my research was conducted in a french fifth-grade fles class. the class is designed to be taught in the target language with a large number of interactive activities to promote a greater understanding of conversational french. there are twenty-eight students (ages ten to eleven) in the class. eighteen of the students are in their third year in the french program while ten of the students have never had any french before. these students are on very different language levels based on their experience in french. from the very first day of class this school year, these two different groups of students have displayed marked differences in their ability to respond in class. the students who have never had french before often display behavior problems and disrupt the learning process. they will sometimes misbehave in class when they do not understand any or most of the french language that is being spoken. on the other hand, the students who have had french before appear bored as i am forced to stop many times and catch up the other students. this classroom situation provided a question for me to find ways to help both groups of students effectively learn in the same fles classroom. this fles classroom is in an elementary school of approximately five hundred and sixty-five students. the majority of the students live in a middle-class neighborhood, comprised of culturally, linguistically, and racially diverse families. puzzlement what types of classroom activities best engage the entire class when students are at two different language levels? how do i keep the 18 experienced students interested and challenged in class while bringing up the 10 inexperienced ones to the level of the others? current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 methodology i enlisted all 28 students in the classroom to participate in this research. i received parental permission for the students to participate in this research. i used a variety of interactive activities in french as well as four exit slips (a simple survey/questionnaire that allows students to self assess their progress; usually done at the end of the class before students exit the room) in english during this research project. two cooperative learning methods employed were peer tutoring and think-pairshare. in peer tutoring, classmates taught each other simple concepts in the content areas such as math, science, or language arts. think-pair-share was an activity in which students first listened while i posed a question, and then the students were given time to think of a response. next, they were paired with a classmate to discuss their responses, and finally they shared their responses with the whole class. exit slips, three to four short questions that the students were asked to respond to in writing, were collected at the end of each lesson to find out what they had learned and how they liked it. i tallied the results for all the students in a notebook to compare their reactions and abilities. data collection i planned interactive activities during two 30-45 minute classes each week. exit slips were given over a period of six weeks at the conclusion of each interactive activity. i gave written assessments and exit slips to evaluate how the students were performing these interactive activities. see figures 1, 2, and 3 for three examples of surveys that were given to the students. figure 1. question #1: why would you want to study a foreign language? data analysis i tallied the results of the surveys to compare and contrast the progress of the students. i was looking for data that would show that the interactive activities were improving the students’ knowledge and performance in the language. i also wanted to evaluate the students’ attitudes towards learning another language during this process. figure 2. question #2: what are examples of where you might see the french language used in your daily life? figure 3. question #3: do you like working in pairs? why? why not? results throughout this research project, i found that using cooperative learning strategies enhanced the learning process in this fles classroom. i also found that this classroom strategy helped encourage participation in the classroom, thereby making a more relaxed and comfortable learning environment for all students. conclusion two types of cooperative learning activities that were used with this research project included peer tutoring and think-pair-share. in each of the classroom activities used in this study, i found the students demonstrated greater classroom participation, greater language retention, as well as a reduced level of anxiety when speaking the target language in class. by keeping a journal each day about behavior in the classroom and the students’ responses to the lesson (as well as recording notes teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 7 after each class), i noted a reduction in classroom behavior problems. after reading and analyzing the exit slips from this research project i discovered that the students expressed an overall positive experience from working with the cooperative learning groups and activities. their reactions were positive when they were posed the question, “did you like working in groups and pairs?” this teacher research action project has shown that the use of cooperative learning strategies can begin to unite a divided classroom of differing language experiences. implications with our society and student populations becoming more and more diverse in background and academic experiences, it will become increasingly important to use cooperative learning strategies in foreign language classes. the part of the state in which the study took place is made up of a large percentage of transient families – often moving for enhanced job opportunities. there are students from a variety of educational backgrounds who enter foreign language classrooms at different times during the school year. as educators we need to find techniques and instructional strategies to help these students smoothly transition into an environment that encourages and enhances their academic success. reflections this research project has validated for me the importance of trying new and varied activities in my foreign language classroom instead of a traditional lecturing style of teaching. students enjoy helping each other learn as they work together in groups. it is clear to me that students have the ability to have a major impact on their own learning and that of their peers when they work together. i learned a great deal about my teaching from this experience: i plan very carefully and i am aware of the need to accommodate a wide range of learners on a daily basis. i am also aware of being critical about my teaching and examining what and why i do what i do. as a result of this systematic feedback, i feel that i view planning and assessment with a broader lens. being aware of what works best for my students has deepened my awareness of being experimental and fluid in seeking a variety of ways to reach all learners. end of story for teacher # 2 methods professor i realized that lita’s puzzlement was one that many fles teachers undoubtedly face. once lita completed a quick review of literature on cooperative learning, she realized that this might be an effective instructional strategy given the linguistic backgrounds of her students. this enabled the current emphasis in foreign language learning to provide a communicative context. a systematic approach to data collection is an essential element in tar. lita was very purposeful in organizing and assembling her data. by closely examining the results from her data collection, lita was able to determine that cooperative learning and peer tutoring made her diverse class more united and more able to work together in a productive and stimulating learning setting. the research she completed allowed her to focus in on a need and construct a way to address that need to benefit both the teacher and students involved. the previous two cases have demonstrated how action research can benefit and improve teaching strategies or approaches. according to lita, “i never regarded myself as a classroom-based researcher. for me, doing this research was very empowering and i am a more confident teacher.” teacher action research can also be used to improve and direct student behavior, thus possibly closing the achievement gap between students. ally milner, a french teacher at a large urban middle school, sought to discover how action research study could be used to improve student responsibility and homework completion in her classroom. teacher # 3 what happens when students and parents are included as partners in the learning processes of language learning? a closer look at homework! ally milner middle school french teacher teacher background i graduated from brigham young university in 1994. although i studied to become a biology teacher, i have never taught that subject. my experiences have led me to my current position as a french teacher. i have been teaching french for three years. introduction this teacher action research project included all four french classes at a large urban middle school in virginia. the students come from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds. for most of these students both parents work outside the home. the student population is also one of the most diverse in the county: 34.5% white, 27.9% african-american, 21.9% hispanic, 5.7% asian, 10.4% other. the foreign language program in our county is a specialty program. students who are accepted into this program start learning a foreign language in sixth grade. all students in the program sign a contract stating that they will maintain at least a “c” in both language arts and foreign language as well as an “s” (satisfactory) in conduct. students’ placement current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 in the program is reviewed if they are not meeting the contract requirements. many students come into the program because they think it will be fun to learn a new language. sometimes, however, their work habits need refining. my primary objective of this research project was to explore an alternate way of addressing homework. puzzlement how can i get my students to do homework and make it more meaningful so they will want to do it? i started by making a list of a few of the more-common responses i have heard regarding homework. do these excuses sound familiar? “what homework?” “you didn’t tell us we had homework.” “it’s due today?” “it’s in my locker.” “i did it but i left it at home.” “can i bring it to you later?” this year i took a new approach to homework. no specific homework was assigned on a daily basis. i simply asked the students to practice the material learned in class that day for at least fifteen minutes each night. i encouraged them to be creative and have fun with their practice. the time spent in class was used to practice and prepare students for friday’s quizzes. i encouraged students to supplement the practice we were doing in class with practice at home, but emphasized that it was their own responsibility to be prepared for the quiz on friday. i quickly noticed an interesting pattern in my classes. one half of each class consistently scored an “a” or “b” on the weekly quizzes while the other half consistently scored a “d” or “f”. i wanted to establish a homework program to help students who needed more structure and accountability without penalizing those who were successful with the flexibility of choosing their own homework tasks. would students who score below an 84% on the weekly quiz do better on the next week’s quiz if they had a homework sheet containing daily homework assignments aimed at practicing both the current as well as the past week’s material? these were the questions i addressed in my research project. methodology i created a homework sheet, which contained carefully selected assignments for students to practice the current week’s as well as the material from the past week (see appendix b). i wanted parents to be involved monitoring and encouraging their children in their foreign language studies. many assignments on the homework sheet would be to practice out loud for just a few minutes with a parent or to show a parent their written work. parents would then sign-off for that day. having parents directly involved helped me know that their children were making the effort to practice at home. data collection all students received the homework sheet, but only those who scored below an 84% on the previous week’s quiz were required to do it. i checked their homework daily for errors and offered them the incentive of retaking a past quiz if they achieved an 84% or higher on the next quiz as well as a 100% on their homework sheet. data analysis i kept a record of the students’ quiz scores and how much of the homework sheet they completed. i also had students write anonymous opinions about the homework sheet at the end of each week after they had taken the quiz. results i monitored the students’ preparation for quiz 1-3 (first quiz) in class only. no other homework was assigned to these students to help them prepare. i monitored the students’ work the following week using the homework sheet in preparation for quiz 1-4 (second quiz). the data on the graph below compare the students’ quiz scores between their first quiz (quiz 1-3) and their second quiz (quiz 1-4). student opinions below are some specific statements made by the students regarding the homework sheet. i chose these particular quotes because they represent responses that were given more than five times. “i feel that the homework sheet is helping me do better and i feel that i’m learning more.” “i like knowing my homework in advance.” “assigned homework forces me to study.” teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 9 “the homework sheet is helpful. i did better on the quiz this week. i felt more confident and the quiz seemed easier.” “i want more homework. it helped me a lot.” “ i like having the homework sheet as an option.” results overall, students were very receptive to the homework sheet and in almost all cases there was a direct correlation between how much of the homework they completed and how they performed on the following quiz. parents were also very receptive to the homework sheet. i received many e-mails from parents thanking me for this homework program. they were supportive, encouraging, and grateful. they were happy to know exactly what homework was assigned each day and to be able to monitor it. conclusion the homework sheet has proven to be an effective tool in helping close the achievement gap among students in my class. the more the students practice the language, the better they perform. more importantly, i feel that this tar helped my students develop as independent learners, in charge of their own learning. how much and what kind of practice is needed depended on the individual. some students were able do what it took to succeed without specific homework assignments, but there were many students who needed teacher-directed structured practice, either to get ideas of how and what to study or to help them discipline themselves. offering the practice sheet as an option for those who were scoring at 84% or higher on the quizzes had been very positive. students did not feel like they were doing busy work. requiring students who scored under an 84% to complete the homework has proven to benefit them in their achievement, self-confidence, and attitude. implications this research project presented the idea that seemingly drastic changes to the educational norm of homework can dramatically alter student enthusiasm and achievement. additional research projects could examine the types of homework assignments developed by the students and how their own home learning methods can inform classroom instruction. this is further evidence that student-centered and constructed learning can be a successful approach to teaching. reflections i have learned from this research project that some students need homework and some do not. students who are doing well like the freedom of choosing what and when to study. i plan to continue with this principle; however, i am going to make some adjustments to the design of the homework sheet so it is easier to use. instead of writing all the homework assignments on the sheet in advance, i will leave blank spaces for the students to fill in the homework assignments themselves. this way i have more flexibility and allow my students the opportunity to build their learning in creative individualized ways. i felt that what is most critical in this work is the fact that my students have developed a keener sense of becoming independent learners, a life-long skill that they will take with them beyond my classroom. end of story for teacher # 3 methods professor why do teachers give homework? do students need incentive and motivation to complete homework tasks? clearly, homework should be connected to in-class instruction and at-home work can provide additional “practice.” homework in foreign languages is usually a reading/writing exercise. in this case, students responded favorably to having a choice about homework. through her action research study, ally was able to conclude that the homework sheet proved to be an effective tool in helping to close the achievement gap on the weekly quizzes. by giving students a choice, she was able to collect data based simply on what the students decided to do and how that decision impacted their grades. as ally discovered, tar can yield unexpected benefits as well. in this case, ally found increased support from parents who welcomed the opportunity to know exactly what homework was assigned each day and the chance to monitor it. the research here created a foundation for not only methodological change, but also for student responsibility and choice which can lead to a more fulfilling and successful learning experience. while the previous examples demonstrate how action research can be used to modify specific activity in the classroom, the following study demonstrates how one teacher sought to examine how her students regarded her as an effective teacher. this teacher was particularly interested in enhancing her skills as a reflective practitioner and thinking deeper how her own teaching practices. reflective teaching practices (richards & lockhart, 1996) create multiple opportunities to investigate teaching strengths and weaknesses in a comfortable, yet efficient manner. julia ortega wanted to discover more about her sixth grade language students to improve her teaching and become more effective in the classroom. reflective teaching practices (richards & lockhart, 1996) allow educators to evaluate their teaching current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 strengths and weaknesses in order to build a strong teaching philosophy and identity. by conducting the following research in her classroom, julia hoped to develop her reflective skills and construct a more positive learning environment by adjusting her teaching style. teacher story # 4 helping my students build a learning community julia ortega middle school spanish teacher introduction this research took place in my spanish i sixth grade class in a northern virginia middle school. these students take spanish i for two years. in sixth grade, they take half of level i spanish and in seventh grade, they complete the other half. they are awarded high school credit (carnegie unit) at the end of two years. this group also takes spanish ii as eighth graders. puzzlement: do my students feel that i create and support a learning community? i believe by understanding what motivates and concerns my students, i can be more effective in the classroom. my research was simply motivated. i wanted to know more about my students so i could improve my teaching and yield more positive student attitudes and outcomes. i set out to discover if there was a relationship between their responses to simple questions and factors such as gender, age and participation in class. i wanted to give my students a chance to talk about their feelings regarding spanish class and give them an opportunity to talk about anything of their choosing. methodology i focused on gaining information from my students through the use of a survey, figure 4. i wanted to understand the perspective of my sixth graders and to reflect on their concerns as students in my classroom. some questions that motivated my research were:  am i too difficult or easy?  am i perceived as mean or fair?  how do students feel about my class?  how can i improve my teaching strategies? after administering the survey, i planned to analyze the results by synthesizing common themes. i used the results to compare and contrast student responses according to males and females because i was curious about perceptions of middle school-aged learners. using the information obtained, i hoped to be able to make decisions about how to improve my teaching styles and affect immediate change in my classroom. data collection all of my 6 th grade students, a total of fifty in spanish i (two periods or classes), were anonymously surveyed. the survey was administered once in the school year. students were asked to omit their names on this one-time survey. students were assured their answers were confidential and they would not have to fear repercussions. the survey took about 7-10 minutes to complete. i told students that i would give them as much time as needed to complete the survey. students were told not to look at each other’s papers and not to discuss their answers with each other. they were asked to think about their answers and be as honest as possible. i also asked if they had any questions prior to conducting the survey. use your own paper and answer the following questions to the best of your ability.  what do you like about my class? why?  what don’t you like about my class? why?  do you participate in class? if yes, why? if no , why?  are you involved in any clubs or extracurricular activities? if so, what are they? you are not required to sign your name on this survey. if you choose this, please identify yourself by male or female. thank you! figure 4. mrs. ortega’s survey students completed the survey and were asked to place their surveys on a desk near the door. i didn’t want them to have to walk up to my desk to turn in their surveys. i wanted to reduce or minimize any possible intimidation factors. data analysis a total of 31 females and 19 males were surveyed. the data presented here are a sampling of all data collected. individual student responses are verbatim (italicized) and when applicable, the number of students with the same response is provided. each single italicized item is an individual response unless otherwise indicated. what students like about my spanish class. male responses. 53% answered “ watching movies.”other responses are listed below:  i like learning spanish(4)  i like doing the work(3)  i like spanish because it is fun ( 3)  i like speaking spanish (3)  spanish projects (2). teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 11 female responses.  spanish is fun (9)  i like learning spanish (8)  i like spanish projects (7)  movies (7)  games (6)  speaking spanish (5)  i like learning new spanish words (3)  write on chalkboard (3)  i like writing in pen (2). additional responses cited by females included: love everything, role-play, homework passes, like listening to the teacher’s jokes, teacher doesn’t put you on the spot, i like oral work, working in the spanish web, i like señora ortega and the way she teaches, it’s like having recess but you are also learning. what students do not like about my spanish class. male responses. 50% of the males surveyed don’t like tests or homework. other dislikes are: the class opener spanish conversation ( 2), i don’t like looking up words in thedictionary (2), i can’t think of anything i don’t like (2). female responses. tests and homework were also on the top of the list for females in terms of dislikes about my class. when females were asked what they don’t like about my class, they answered: translations (3), class is boring, too much work (2), spanish words that are hard (2). results the survey yielded some interesting results. my student participation rate was over 95% as indicated by the students and i believe this is a reflection of what students thought they should write in answer to the survey question, “do you participate in class?” also, in terms of gender differences, the females wrote much more than the males. the girls were openly critical and dealt with broader issues. the girls were more concerned about classroom justice and fairness. boys’ concerns were practical such as classroom temperature or concerns about the work (translation, vocabulary, content). in terms of class participation, both males and females had equally high participation rates (ninety percent or more). i was surprised by the responses from my third period class. this class has seen more of the disciplinary side of me because of some student conduct and work habits, but their surveys did not contain more negative responses than the less difficult 4 th period class. essentially, i discovered that students like my class and they believe that learning spanish is fun. the rewards of learning appear to be intrinsic for these young learners. i do have external rewards such as homework passes, bonus points, stickers, but the students did not mention these motivators on the survey. conclusion the results of the survey affirm my personal feeling that nothing goes unnoticed by students and that, as a teacher, i truly am on stage. comments made by students on the survey about my hair and my personal appearance supports this idea. the survey also presented some interesting sociological patterns. females were much more articulate about their dislikes than the males. they also had more criticisms. it isinteresting to note that females viewed me more critically than the males or they were more open about discussing their opinions. i’m glad to know most of my students are happy with me. i am strict at times and demand a lot, but i believe expectations have a lot to do with how students perform. i expect the best from my students and they give me their best. the survey allowed me to get in touch with my students and to appreciate their perspectives in the classroom and in their lives. i believe this survey has made me a more compassionate and caring teacher. implications this classroom based research project proved to be a powerful way to gain insight into my own teaching. i feel that surveys are a useful tool for all teachers who seek honest feedback from students. by asking the right questions and carefully reviewing the responses from the surveys, teachers are in a better position to improve the classroom environment and their teaching methods. administering anonymous surveys is essential to obtainrealistic and concrete information that can be valuable and instrumental in creating optimal learning experiences. future use of surveys could assist me in improving other aspects of my teaching including classroom management. reflections after carefully reviewing the data from the survey, i decided to make a few changes in my attitude and procedures. i realize i have to be more flexible with my 6th graders. they are making a transition from elementary to middle school. high school spanish can be overwhelming for 6th graders. the survey answers remind me that these children are dealing with all kinds of pressures from parents and peers. i don’t want to add to that. i hope to be a positive influence in their lives and not a negative one. as a result of the survey, i also try to release my sixth graders a minute early so they won’t be pushed or harassed by seventh graders in the hall. i never knew this was a problem until the survey. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 also, in retrospect, i should have used a more objective way of measuring student participation other than posing the question: do you participate in class? for instance, if i were to count the number of raised hands during a given period, my participation rate would have been more accurate than what the students indicated in the survey. while the survey was effective, modifications to it could have yielded more useful results. overall, i feel that the reason for my research was satisfied. i learned more about my students, made changes in my attitude and procedures, and learned about the teacher action research process. i hope that this new and deeper knowledge of my students will ultimately translate into better teaching strategies and improved student outcomes. end of story for teacher # 4 methods professor this study clearly highlights the complexity of tar. this teacher began her study asking a question with four sub-questions. the end result was a survey that emphasized what julia’s students’ thought about her as a teacher. what is particularly noteworthy about this study is that it highlights the notion that research is multi-faceted and is not always straightforward. the researcher may start with one goal in mind and then be moved in other directions. the survey used in julia’s research allowed her to discover affective feelings about her students and to appreciate their perspectives. through the process, she was able to see expected and unexpected outcomes both of which can assist in informing pedagogical choices. julia noted, “i now realize these kids have a lot to juggle and after i conducted this interview i became more aware of what it’s like to be their age. also, i was really impressed at how grateful they were that i thought enough of them to ask their opinions.” it is clear as well from this study that although tar can begin with a specific series of questions, not all may be answered and some new ones can arise. julia’s research discoveries gave her practical information that she could apply instantly. this research also pointed out the teacher’s need to become more receptive to change, a task that can never be understated in the process of teaching as well as when conducting research. conclusion as the methods professor i guided and supervised these 4 in-service teachers as they conducted their research projects. my objective throughout was to empower these teachers to begin regarding themselves as researchers – to take ownership of their ability to question, analyze, and reflect on the teaching and learning process. the use of tar allowed all four of these teachers to actively engage in classroom-based research. each of the teachers faced similar challenges: providing appropriate instructional assistance for heritage language learners, choosing effective teaching strategies to reach a wide range of students’ language proficiency levels, and student behavioral problems and motivation. once the teachers identified the puzzlement, they set out in an organized methodical way to investigate, gather and analyze data and then make informed decisions. during the time of the research projects, i witnessed each teacher examining and questioning their own assumptions about what was occurring in their classrooms. these were evident in weekly email communications as well as in-class discussions. each continued to examine their own beliefs and all were critical with regard to ways to improve and/or do things differently in both teaching and assessment practices. here we have clear examples of how teachers acting as researchers can create thoughtprovoking environments that allow the teacher to become the learner by constructing an individualized informative study that often yields powerful results. the teachers in this paper were supported by the methods professor in the course. topics such as working with heritage language learners, cooperative learning, multilevel classes, etc. were all covered as part of the course syllabus. when will we debunk the myth that teacher action research is “scary” and not for the faint at heart? more and more the tide is changing as we see larger numbers of classroom teachers actively engaged in research. mills (2003) defines action research as: … any systematic inquiry conducted by teacher researchers to gather information about the ways that their particular school operates, how they teach, and how well their students learn. the information is gathered with the goals of gaining insight, developing reflective practice, effecting positive changes in the school environment and on educational practices in general, and improving student outcomes. (p.4) the common denominator in the many terms used to describe teacher action research is the teacher as an “active constructor of knowledge rather than a passive consumer of it” (miller & pine, 1990). i am heartened when i read the breadth and depth of current research being undertaken by both novice and experienced educators. what is particularly encouraging is that we clearly see the professional development of reflective practitioners. educators examine a particular phenomenon that is indigenous to their respective classrooms. teachers conducting research are empowered. the four teachers cited in this article have all learned not only teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 13 about the tar process but also about the profound effect this type of research can have on teaching. teacher research treats teachers as autonomous, responsible agents who participate actively in directing their own work and their own professional development (zeichner & klehr, 1999). tar is transformative in its ability to scientifically display the dynamics of a classroom and present the teacher as a professional with an individual research base. finally, of primary importance in teacher action research is sharing findings, i.e., what one learned. teachers engaged in classroom research typically become leaders in their schools. often their work is shared within the school district and many go on to present their findings at local, state, and in some cases, national conference settings. these are sometimes presented as workshops or poster sessions. the relationship that forms between the classroom teacher and the university academician provides a very fertile ground for additional work. such was the case with the four teachers who told their “stories” in this article. they are not only school leaders but continue to collaborate with the university methods professor in on-going professional development projects. additional resources for teacher action research can be found at: http://gse.gmu.edu/research/tr http://www.ericsp.org/digests/teacherresearch.htm references donato, r. (2003). action research: reseeing learning and rethinking practice in the lote classroom. languages other than english communique. vol. 8, 1-6. downhower, s., melvin, m.p., & sizemore, p. (1990). improving writing instruction through teacher action research. journal of staff development, 11(3), 22-27. ej430614. hall haley, m. (2004). learner-centered instruction and the theory of multiple intelligences with second language learners. teachers college record. vol. 106, no. 1, 163-180. hall haley, m. (2001). understanding learner centered instruction from the perspectiveof multiple intelligences. foreign language annals. vol. 34, no. 4, 355-367. johnson, d.m. (1992). approaches to research in second language learning. new york:longman. miller, d.m., & pine, g.j. (1990). advancing professional inquiry for educational improvement through action research. journal of staff development, 11 (3), 56 61. mills, g.e. (2003). action research: a guide for the teacher researcher. upper saddle river, nj: merrill/prentice hall. nunan, d. (1992). research methods in language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. nunan, d., & lamb, c. (1996). the self directed teacher: managing the learning process. cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j., & lockhart, c. (1996). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. valdés, g. (2001). introduction. in l.a. sandstedt (project director), the aatsp professional development handbook series for teachers: spanish for native speakers, vol. 1, greeley, co: american association of teachers of spanish and portuguese. wallace, m.j. (2000). action research for language teachers. new york: cambridge university press. zeichner, k., & klehr, m. (1999). teacher research as professional development for p-12 educators. national partnership for excellence and accountability in teaching. washington, dc. http://gse.gmu.edu/research/tr http://www.ericsp.org/digests/teacherresearch.htm current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 appendix a fairfax county public schools pals: performance assessment for language students spanish for fluent speakers level 1 writing tasks analytic rubric criterio de evaluación para el discurso escrito ejecución de trabajo indicado 1 -ejecuta el trabajo en lo mínimo; el contenido es inadecuado e ilegible 2 -ejecuta el trabajo parcialmente; cumple con algunos requisitos adecuadamente, pero sin desarrollo 3 -ejecuta el trabajo completamente; cumple con todos los requisitos adecuadamente con cierto desarrollo 4 -ejecuta el trabajo superiormente; cumple con todos los requisitos, con ideas bien desarrolladas y organizadas comprensión 1 -el texto es incomprensible. 2 -el texto es comprensible, pero requiere que el lector descifre el texto 3 -el texto es comprensible; requiere un mínimo de enmiendas por parte del lector 4 -el texto es comprensible; no requiere clarificación por parte del lector nivel de discurso escrito 1 -usa oraciones completas, algunas redundantes con pocos o sin mecanismos coherentes 2 -hay uso predominante de oraciones completas, poco redundantes con uso apropiado de mecanismos coherentes 3 -surge una variedad de oraciones completas y creativas; párrafos con cierto desarrollo; uso apropiado de mecanismos coherentes 4 -usa una variedad de oraciones completas y párrafos desarrollados con ideas creativas; uso apropiado de mecanismos coherentes vocabulario y gramática 1 -uso limitado de vocabulario básico y/o de estructuras gramaticales básicas 2 -uso adecuado de vocabulario básico y/o de estructuras gramaticales básicas 3 -surge el uso de vocabulario nuevamente adquirido y/o de estructuras gramaticales complejas 4 -uso adecuado de vocabulario extenso y/o de estructuras gramaticales complejas ortografía 1 -la escritura de las palabras es incorrecta y carece de acentos; la puntuación y/o el uso de la mayúscula son inapropiados 2 -la escritura de las palabras es a veces correcta; el uso de los acentos; la puntuación y/o el uso de la mayúscula son a veces correctos 3 -la mayoría de las palabras están escritas correctamente; la mayoría de los acentos, la puntuación y/o el uso de la mayúscula son correctos. 4 -las palabras están escritas correctamente; los acentos, la puntuación y/o el uso de la mayúscula son correctos también teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 15 appendix b sample of homework sheets nom:______________________ period:_______________________ ib homework sheet 1-6 10/14/02 – 10/17/02 i am providing this homework sheet as a way for you to have structured practice which will help you bring up your quiz scores. if your next quiz score is an 84% or higher, you may retake 1 of your past quizzes. i know that you can do it. i am confident that this practice will help you accomplish your goals. instructions for homework sheet: you are to do each of the assignments on the day it is assigned. all assignments are due the following day. please have the homework as well as this sheet in class everyday. i will stamp your sheet if you have completed the assignment. at the end of the week, you will turn in this stamped sheet. homework assignment day assigned teacher stamp lundi 10/14/02 write a sentence using each of the possessive adjectives: mon, ma, mes, ton, ta, tes, son, sa, ses, notre, nos, votre, vos, leur, leurs. make flashcards for the new vocabulary learned this week – refer to phrase list 1-6 (16 flashcards). mardi 10/15/02 write a sentence using each of the possessive adjectives: mon, ma, mes, ton, ta, tes, son, sa, ses, notre, nos, votre, vos, leur, leurs. go through all the new flashcards 1-6 and pull out the ones you don’t know. study the ones you don’t know with your parents for 10 minutes and have them sign in the teacher box. mercredi 10/16/02 write a sentence using each of the possessive adjectives: mon, ma, mes, ton, ta, tes, son, sa, ses, notre, nos, votre, vos, leur, leurs. go through all the new flashcards 1-6 and pull out the ones you don’t know. study the ones you don’t know with your parents for 10 minutes and have them sign in the teacher box. get a picture or pictures from the internet for the front of your postcard. postcard due jeudi le 17 octobre. jeudi 10/17/02 write a sentence using each of the possessive adjectives: mon, ma, mes, ton, ta, tes, son, sa, ses, notre, nos, votre, vos, leur, leurs. go through all the new flashcards 1-6 and pull out the ones you don’t know. study the ones you don’t know with your parents for 10 minutes and have them sign in the teacher box. take careful notes about the quiz for tomorrow and check the items off, when you feel prepared, as you study. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 2005 article citation haley, m.h., midgely, a., ortiz, j., romano, t., ashworth, l., & seewald, a. (2005, june 23). teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories . current issues in education [on-line], 8(12). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number12/ author notes marjorie hall haley, phd george mason university mhaley@gmu.edu marjorie hall haley, phd, is tenured associate professor in the center for language and culture in the college of education and human development at george mason university in fairfax, virginia. allyson midgely is a middle school french teacher in prince william county, virginia. judy ortiz is a middle school spanish teacher in prince william county, virginia. teresa romano is a middle school spanish and heritage language learner teacher in fairfax county, virginia. lisa ashworth is a foreign language in the elementary school (fles) french teacher in prince william county, virginia. amanda seewald george mason university amanda seewald is a graduate research assistant for professor haley. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 21, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation hall haley, m., midgely, a., ortiz, j., romano, t., ashworth, l., & seewald, a. (2005). teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories. current issues in education, 8(12). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1606 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number12/index.html mailto:mhaley@gmu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1606 volume 6, number 12 july 1, 2003 issn 1099-839x understanding hypertext in the context of reading on the web: language learners’ experience arif altun nigde university this paper explores second language readers' understanding of hypertext in the context of reading on the web from a qualitative research paradigm. a total of six undergraduates english as second language (esl) students voluntarily participated in this study. the results showed that students' understanding varied depending on the presentation of hypertext readings. the findings suggested that students saw hypertext as a valuable bank of information when they were exposed to linear hypertext. when they encountered the non-linear hypertext, they perceived it as a maze and experienced disorientation. it is concluded that neither computer nor text reading skills alone are an adequate basis to start using hypertext technology in language classrooms. hypertext is a non-sequential (non-linear), electronic, textual, hypermedia, and interactive environment. hypertext creates an interactive environment where reading is contingent upon computers and possible by multiple sources of information linked together. some researchers consider hypertext reading an invention as important as the printing press (i.e., bolter, 1991). having started as an idea in 1940s by vannevar bush's proposal, the development of hypertext and the emergence of hypertext environments have accelerated today. with the era of the internet and multimedia technology, hypertext environments have moved from an imagery level to being a real part of our lives, especially of our education as we become more able to digitize a wide variety of information and expose readers to more digitized media on computer screens, how a new technology such as hypertext can be interpreted and shaped by a community of l2 readers, as well as the way in which l2 readers understand, interpret, and value hypertext reading material as a new medium, is worth exploration. thus, there is a need for research to discern the usefulness of hypertext technology in language classrooms. reading patterns in hypertext environments with the advance of multimedia technology, researchers have begun to investigate the ways in which hypertext could be employed to enhance reading experiences. one of those enhancements is the electro text project, which was developed by anderson-inman, horney, der-thanq, and larry (1994) to help middle school students read and comprehend stories. the electro text project was developed for reading classes in two eighth-grade classrooms. the project includes resources, vocabulary definitions, background information, text glossaries, graphic overviews, pictures, sounds, and self-monitoring comprehension questions in 44 pages (anderson-inman, et. al., 1994). based on research they conducted with the electro text project, anderson-inman, et. al., (1994) presented three types of hypertext readers. the first one was called book lover, a person who typically reads everything in linear form, and uses available resources sparingly. the second type of hypertext current issues in education vol. 6 no. 12 reader was called studier, an individual who navigates through 44 pages in a linear form, uses backward navigation for reviewing and checking, and more frequent use of comprehension monitoring questions. the last type of hypertext reader was coded as a resource junkie. students of this type report being excited by the resources provided, particularly by computer-generated speech. a resource junkie spends most of his/her time looking for and using resources. it is the resource junkie, in fact, whose navigation patterns and strategies are the most varied and complex. the research on hypertext reading patterns brought up two important issues. first, there are a variety of hypertext reading patterns in existence among hypertext readers. second, although hypertext is defined as non-linear and non-sequential in nature, many readers approach it in a linear and sequential manner. to conclude, a considerable body of literature exists concerning the general reading patterns exhibited during conventional reading. however, since hypertext is a rather new medium that presents text in a non-linear, electronic form, little information is available on what l2 readers understand from this new form of text. intertextuality and readers’ beliefs about multiple texts while many computer and cognitive scientists are devoted to the idea of designing better hypertext environments and exploring the mental processes and consequences of learning with hypertext (spiro & jehng, 1990; mc allese, 1990), far less research has been done by first language (l1) and second language (l2) reading researchers and/or reading educators to assess hypertext's potential impact on and implications for reading and literacy education. research on beliefs and reading is mostly focused on either single or linear-text reading (i.e. williams, 1994), students' approaches to the authorship of text (i.e. garner & alexander, 1994), or teachers' perceptions of texts and their beliefs (i.e. anders & evans, 1994). some researchers have also investigated nonlinear text and readers' beliefs about reading multiple texts in both the l1 (i.e. spivey, 1997), and l2 the literatures (i.e. chi, 1995). in a study looking at l2 readers' approach to multiple texts, chi (1995) investigated 10 taiwanese college students' reading processes. based on verbal reports, free oral post-reading responses, and interviews, chi reported four types of patterns that appeared from l2 learners' reading process: storytelling, integrating, evaluating, and associating. chi (1995) also commented that readers integrate their prior knowledge and experiences as well as learning preferences and interests, all of which derived from their cultural backgrounds. studies concerning readers' approach to hypertext are at its nascent. to explore how experienced computer users approach hypertext readings and how their prior knowledge and beliefs play a role in discerning information, altun (2000) conducted a case study with two l1 experienced computer users. the data revealed five categories in readers' approach: a link does not do much unless it is appealing, electronic text is faster, page design can cause disorientation, looking up a word, and don't have the pen. these categories indicated that experienced computer users realized and benefited from this differently structured electronic environment, yet they needed to be able to structure and integrate the information in meaningful ways during reading in hypertext. experienced computer users showed a pattern of being able to control their reading process based on their prior knowledge, existing schemata, and their beliefs about hypertext reading. in addition, based on their prior knowledge and beliefs, experienced computer users developed strategies to minimize their disorientation. the question remains, however, what l2 readers understand from hypertext in the context of reading in a web-based environment. reading hypertext fiction: is it a new form of hypertext? hypertext has been seen as embodiment of certain ideas about texts in the domain of literary theory. hypertext fiction can be characterized as a new emerging genre that has been made textual fragmentation and complex cross-referencing possible with a theoretical view of the text (any text) as de-centered and open-ended (i.e., joyce, 1988; burbules & callister, 1996). landow (1997) argues that, "over the past several decades literary theory and computer hypertext, apparently unconnected areas of inquiry, have increasingly converged" (p. 2). one of those connected areas is fiction. hypertext, as in the metaphor of writing space (bolter, 1991), is "a new laboratory in which to test ideas... [thus] an experience of reading hypertext or reading with hypertext greatly clarifies many of the most significant ideas of critical theory" (landow, 1997, p. 34). another definition to hypertext fiction is put forward by howard becker. according to becker (n.d.), it is a new form of art, which can only be valued by the participants from the art world. in other words, hypertext fiction was not meant to be agreeable, instructive, edifying, or enjoyable; but rather it was to be considered to have all these qualities by those in a world of like-thinking people. how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 3 sample screenshots from a hypertext fiction web site were presented in the following figures 1, 2, and 3. figure 1. a sample hypertext fiction: mercury this hypertext fiction, entitled mercury, is all underlined with hypertext links to let readers choose their way of reading. simply by looking its structure, it is difficult to make an inference about where to go. readers were expected to choose their own way of reading at their own pace. once they clicked through the links, they could read the rest of the fiction through the opening screens, which are shown in figures 2 and 3. figure 2. a followed hyperlink figure 3. another followed hyperlink literary scholars are interested in exploring hypertext fiction due to its structure and interactivity. it can further be said that the research focus is not only on the structural components of hypertext, but also on its use and user outcomes (e.g., miall & dobson, 2001; curry, haderlie, ku, & lawless, 1999). in an earlier research study, moulthrop and kaplan (1991) investigated how their first-year literature students gained a sense of power in their reading and in their writing. the researchers gave assignments to students to read michael joyce's afternoon: a story and other hypertext fictions. based on their findings, the researchers claimed that hypertext fiction, because of its interactive nature, helped students gain a sense of power in both reading and writing. the researchers also went further to suggest that such a "social act" would not yield to a closed, empirically correct reading since spontaneity, collaboration, and process has been emphasized in literary studies. in a recent research study with l1 readers who read either a simulated literary hypertext or the same text in linear form, miall and dobson (2001) conducted two consecutive studies to examine the differences between reading short stories on computer when they were in either a structurally linear form or a hypertext form. the researchers found that the hypertext readers tended to feel either confused during their reading, or to feel that they must have missed something in contrast to the linear readers. in all, 75 per cent of the hypertext readers reported varying degrees of difficulty following the narrative, whereas only 10 per cent of the linear readers were reported to have made similar complaints. miall and dobson (2001) conclude that hypertext discourages the absorbed and reflective mode that characterizes literary reading as far as readers' transactions with the hypertext are concerned. moreover, despite the prior work of influential commentators such as bolter and landow, hypertext is still at a pre-paradigmatic stage; that is, there is no accepted theoretical framework in which to locate it, and no settled body of knowledge on either the nature of hypertext or its appropriate applications. a different hypertext structure enforces readers' interaction with the reading. during this interaction, readers were reported to experience disorientation and difficulty with orienting themselves to the reading. for some readers, this diorientation may correspond to a new form of reading as well as writing. yet, how l2 readers understand hypertext fiction still remains a salient question to explore. hypertext as both a new technology and a genre is a new area of study to explore. differently presents texts may lead to disorientation due to the very nature of hypertext structures. on the other hand, this may well be said to be successful control of navigation rather than disorientation. one cannot hope to properly address the issue of optimum usefulness of hypertext at any level without knowledge and understanding of the natural processes of hypertext reading. the research reported here, therefore, is best viewed as an attempt to further describe the l2 readers' hypertext reading process and their awareness of hypertext. study design this study is a case study to explore l2 readers' approach to hypertext readings in an academic reading and writing context from the current issues in education vol. 6 no. 12 qualitative research paradigm. a case study is the preferred strategy among researchers when the investigator has little or no control over the phenomenon within a real life context (yin, 1994). according to merseth (1996), to be effective, case studies need to be situated in a real world context, rely on research, and foster the development of multiple perspectives. since hypertext as an environment is a new way of presenting text and is used to provide a real life context for academic reading and writing purposes, this study is designed as an exploratory case study to approach the phenomenon within a real life context. entrée and data collection this study was conducted at an academic reading and writing classroom in a mid-western university campus in the usa. the academic reading and writing course was designed for non-native speakers of english who did not succeed in the proficiency test, which was part of the university acceptance policy and administered by the english department. the course was a required one to improve students' language skills and eventually attend freshman english. the class met two times a week in separate sections for a total of six credit hours per week. a different instructor instructed each section. the current research was conducted only in the reading section where students were asked to read from both hypertext and their own textbooks. the data was collected during an 11-week period, through observations, semi-structured and structured interviews, and a questionnaire. additionally, journal entries were utilized to further understand the process students experienced. to gather data for the research and present course material to students online, a web page, which included information about the syllabus, was designed for the course in cooperation with the classroom instructors. as part of the class assignments, students were required to read metacognitive passages in essays and fiction both from their textbooks and hypertext sites on a weekly basis. consequently, students were asked to reflect on their ideas, experiences, and feelings about the selected passages in their journals. their journal reflections were taken as is without making any changes in their written language. to enable students to submit their journal entries online, an active server page (asp) database was created and linked to the class web site by the researcher. the questions were posted on this web page on a weekly basis since this was the only way for students to get to the journal entry prompts. this database constituted part of the research data to be analyzed. participants the participants in this study were six volunteer undergraduate esl students differing in gender, ethnicity, english experience, and in their self-perceptions of computer expertise. the participants were given pseudonyms. dr. beril will be used as a pseudonym for the classroom instructor. rick was a 30 years old venezuelan student studying finance. he studied english for eight months, starting from the time he arrived in the u.s. jennifer was a 19 year old korean student studying business. she studied english for four years and attended high school in the u.s. linda was a 22-year-old brazilian student, majoring in arts and sciences. she studied english for eleven years, although she has only been in the u.s. for a month and a half. she originally visited the u.s. for about eleven months as an exchange student while attending high school. she also visited the states the year before, staying about five months. brown was a 21-year-old chinese student, studying accounting. she studied english for five years. ned was a 23-year-old kenyan student who arrived in the u.s. in the fall of 1998. although he had been in the states for only a couple of weeks during the research period, he considered english to be his native language, simply because he had been educated in an english-medium school in his country, and spoke english at home. although he claimed english as his native language, he had still not passed the university mandated english placement test. adam was an 18-year-old pre-engineering student. he was from nigeria and felt english was his native language. adam was the only student in the classroom who identified himself as able to speak more than two languages. . hypertext reading passages the participants were provided with 18 online web-based readings related to the topics within the context of l2 academic reading/writing. the materials revolved around essays, (i.e. solitude, loneliness, etc.), traditional and cultural events (i.e. folk tales, short stories from various countries), and hyperfiction (i.e. fiction in hypertext format). the selected readings were in both linear and non-linear format in four different genres: exposition, hyperfiction, nonfiction, and narration (see, appendix a). questionnaire a questionnaire was used to collect data about readers' background and their computer experience at the very first meeting with the participants (see, appendix b). the data collected from the questionnaire was used to present demographic data about the participants. it was not utilized to further conduct any quantitative analysis. how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 5 interviews both semi-structured and structured interviews were conducted with participants. a structured interview was conducted with each participant to gather additional descriptive information. semi-structured interview sessions, on the other hand, were held with certain individual cases after hypertext reading sessions in the class throughout the course. those individuals, who were asked to join voluntarily, were interviewed on their journal reflections before each class. with probing questions, the selected individual cases provided indepth information about their understanding of hypertext and hypertext readings they had done during previous classes (see, appendix c). data analysis the data collected from the different sources were prepared, examined, transcribed and wordprocessed for analysis. the word-processed transcriptions and students' journal entries from the database were entered into qualitative research analysis software (folio views version 4.2) to be separately coded and analyzed. initially, the data analysis included two components: a reflective field log and analytic files (glesne & peshkin, 1992). the analytic files helped the researcher organize the data into broader categories such as interviews, quotations, and journal entries. early files for this research included interviews with the participants in the study and regular journal entries for their course readings. the reflective field logs, on the other hand, provided more detailed data about the setting and participants. as marshall and rossman (1995) claimed, this approach was ".rich in portraying the values and beliefs of participants in the setting" (p. 85). later data analyses consisted of a content analysis to code and categorize the data in a systematic way (glesne & peshkin, 1992). content analysis guided the researcher in determining where the greatest emphasis lay in finding the themes in the data (berg, 1998). as a result of this content analysis, the data were categorized according to the research questions asked in the study, and each category was dealt with within its own context. during the content analysis, metaphors were imposed on the data to better comprehend the nature of hypertext reading in this particular setting. according to patton (1990), data present ".a new set of metaphors for [what] we observe, how we observe, and what we know as a result of our observation" (p, 82). metaphors are especially powerful in creating conceptual vehicles for understanding, and play a central role in the construction of social reality (lakoff & johnson, 1980). consequently, the two main categories emerged in how the students read hypertext: "a link must be attractive" and "what is a link?" findings the purpose of this study was to explore how l2 undergraduate readers approach hypertext in an academic reading context. the data revealed the fact that l2 readers' background knowledge about hypertext played an important role in their approach both hypertext links and readings. the findings suggested that when students were exposed to linear hypertext, they saw it as a valuable bank of information from which they could benefit. when they (the students) encountered non-linear hypertext and a more complex design, they perceived it as a maze, and experienced disorientation. patterns in esl students' understanding of hypertext readings: metaphors in context the patterns that emerged from this study suggest that, regardless of the level of experience in computer literacy and language proficiency, students in the academic reading class showed two different patterns depending on the format and the type of hypertext readings. these patterns can be described in two metaphors: "hypertext as a bank of information" and "hypertext as a maze". table 1 displays the distribution of readings according to their calendar in the syllabus, and the categories embedded in the data during hypertext reading sessions. hypertext as a bank of information. regardless of the differences among students' levels of computer experience, their approach to the selected linear hypertext readings showed more similarities than differences. these similarities suggest that students' approach linear hypertext readings in an academic reading class were as follows: a. linear hypertext was a source of information that as readers, they believed they should have control; b. even though there was an extensive amount of information in the selected linear readings, the students felt they could make decisions about what was important and what was not; c. as a result, students believed that the information provided to them was helpful for their writing in that it created an environment for them to connect reading and writing in a meaningful way. linear hypertext readings in various genres provided students with information about the nature of academic reading and writing (i.e. how to write an essay and a summary, to paraphrase, etc.), and the cultural contexts (i.e. traditional and cultural events, folk tales). most of the linear readings included noncurrent issues in education vol. 6 no. 12 fiction readings. therefore, i will refer to non-fiction interchangeably with linear format, unless otherwise mentioned. table 1: patterns, reading sequence, hypertext genre and format in selected readings patterns weeks hypertext genre hypertext format a bank of information 1, 2, 3b (one day), 4 5 6b (one day) 3a (one day), 6 non-fiction expository non-fiction hyperfiction linear linear a maze narration non-linear a bank of information 9, 10 narration linear, nonlinear the reading for the second week included three sites with the task being to select one of the three and write a reflective journal entry. when the task included multiple sites, the students' role changed from participant readers to decision-makers where they either accepted or rejected what to read depending on what was important for them. in his journal reflection, rick described how he approached the process, including his navigational problems. "to chose what link to read, i visited each site and then i decided read how do i deal with loneliness? to access it was very easy and i didn't have any problem. when i finished my reading, i wrote the journal" (rick, journal #5). according to rick, "reading on line is faster and you can choose what is important for you" (interview notes on perceptions of hypertext reading: rick). rick considered non-fiction hypertext readings as a source of information to evaluate, investigate, and access to the information faster. in the following statement, he explicitly stated his perceptions: "these readings gave me tools to be a critical thinker and accept or denied some readings, since now i know that i have to investigate the evidences to be sure that the author's affirmations are correct" (rick, journal #5). for some students, the non-fiction hypertext readings seemed to be a cumbersome process, at least at the beginning. there were several times they thought they were confused during reading in nonfiction. however, when the task turned out to be mere reading, rather than a technology struggle, students found success with no occurrences of disorientation. brown, for example, was one of those students who articulated this process in her journal: "one thing i have trouble with is the on-line address. it gives me a headache once time. i forgot the address to get into the site i found the previous day. i had tried so many paths and addresses, but still can't get in. an also i have no idea about the address or the path which can directly get into the site i want. i always get it after taking many useless paths and opening many unwanted sites. however, in generally i still can handle it" (brown, journal #6). students' journal entries represented clearly how students understood non-fiction readings within the academic reading context. students approached the links with the purpose of making use of the information in their writing, and the hypertext readings were the source of information for them when needed. regardless of their computer experience, all of the students perceived that these non-fiction-reading sites would help them write better. in the fourth week, two hypertext sites were assigned for non-fiction readings with the task of writing a journal reflection about their reading process. brown who considered her computer experience as at the beginning level, wrote in her journal about the sites recommended in the class: "the one in the syllabus page is a good example, writing resources center and research center. it provides the all basic information about writing effectively. sometimes i have a wonderful idea about the assignment, but in turn it comes out a bore one because i don't know how to organize it. i bet this will help me improve my writing skill since it indirectly shows me the right track toward writing" (brown, journal # 5). since these selected non-fiction sites included only a few linear and/or non-linear links, students did not report any problems with following links, regardless of their computer experience. students perceived non-fiction hypertext sites, which are linear in format, as a bank of information in which students could decide to accept, reject, or how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 7 discuss what is important for them and incorporate it into their writings. hypertext as a maze. the patterns in nonlinear readings that were observed in the academic reading class and embedded in the data was best categorized as a metaphor, "hypertext as a maze". regardless of students' computer literacy level, students' perceptions and understanding of non-linear hypertext readings were as follows: 1. non-linear hypertext readings were difficult to follow. 2. they were like a maze that would never end. 3. as a result, l2 readers' lack of schema about non-linearly presented hypertext caused navigational problems while accessing nonlinear hypertext readings. most non-linear hypertext readings were in hyper-fiction and narration. in addition to fiction readings from the textbook, students were provided links to two non-linear fiction (hyper-fiction) in hypertext format (titled breeze and under the ashes) for classroom reading. two class hours were devoted to non-linear hyper-fiction readings and discussions on these readings. students used the same set of questions for classroom discussions as for textbook reading discussions. in an interview with ned and jennifer, both described their experiences with the program as trying to find their way through a maze. although jennifer liked to read fiction, she did not think that hyper-fiction was something that she wanted to engage in. i: would you like to talk about the hyper-fictions we have done in the class? n: for me, i did like those readings. i think they are fun, but we click on many links that we do not have any idea where we are going. reading becomes boring. but i cannot describe this. j: i felt like i was in a maze. i like to read, like fictions, but in the textbooks, stories in the textbooks i don't like...i thought i would never find the end (in: perceptions about hyper fiction: ned, jennifer). all four students agreed that it was difficult to read hyper-fiction, because they did not perceive themselves in constructing their own story, at the center of the navigation and meaning-making process. in addition, these designs in hyper-fiction made them lose track of their reading process by literally leaving them "lost" in a maze. for some students, this maze was endless. trying to find at least one ending seemed to be the ultimate goal for students during the hyper-fiction reading. the instructional prompt consisted in the teacher's instructing the students to find at least one ending in order to write a character analysis. the instructional prompt provided the impetus to achieve that goal. although more than one ending existed for the story, all students except ned stopped reading after they found the first ending. ned found the first ending to the story in the first five minutes, and then announced he was finished. the instructor urged him to continue and find the other endings, if any. finding these endings to the story was not, however, a fast process for some. linda, for example, focused on finding the ending while reading the hyper-fiction; at one point, she said she felt so impatient because it seemed the story would never end. the endless maze created a situation in which l2 readers' lack of schema about non-linearly presented hypertext caused navigational problems when accessing non-linear hypertext readings. on the first day of the sixth week, dr beril talked about the characteristics of fiction. she stated that every reading had a purpose. she also wanted students to focus on plot, setting, and character. this instruction took about three minutes. afterwards, dr. beril instructed students to open the internet and go to the class web page to access the hyper-fiction reading, under the ashes. as students read through the hypertext fiction, the instructor stopped the class in the last three minutes of class time, and said that she wanted everybody to find at least one ending in the story, and write an analysis of the story. she also reminded students that they would have homework each week. this class ended on time. after this session, students were asked to write a journal reflecting on their experiences with this first non-linear hypertext fiction. one of the initial questions was to find out whether students completed the task so that they could reflect upon their experiences. the journal responses showed clearly that students engaged in hyper-fiction readings, and that they followed the instructions for the task. in the following journal entry, for example, adam described the character he found the most interesting: "in under the ashes the most interesting character to me was the little old woman, she seemed to have been the owner of the house and she used to hold a lot of parties but i think something or some people started bugging her so she must have burnt it or so" (adam, journal #7). although the students engaged in hyperfiction readings, the experience was a new and current issues in education vol. 6 no. 12 different one for them. therefore, they were not yet able to understand the process. rick, as an example, described the hyper-fiction readings as "strange": "it's different reading on-line because is new and an innovation for me. i really like this. nevertheless, if the reading is too long it could be more exhaust than reading from books. i think the character in "breeze" is very strange, because in this reading the protagonist is nothing and for this reason is very difficult to describe the characters. i like this reading but i can't describe this" (rick, journal #7). as can be inferred from his reflection, he seemed to have been lost during the reading, and he confessed that it was a different reading experience for him. rick's statement about the protagonist [being nothing] and his struggle to describe the character were important indicators of the navigational problems he encountered. yet, it was difficult to come to this conclusion by looking only at the statement within the given context. therefore, in the interview, i asked rick about his statements: i: would you like to talk about the hyper-fiction readings? r: they were strange, especially breeze. i: would you tell me more about it? did you understand the content? r: kind of, but i am not sure. there were links, and it was difficult to follow the story. i click a link, i read something, and i go somewhere else, and i forget what i have read. i: do you mean you lost track of your reading? r: exactly. i think it was not a good idea (in: perceptions about hyper-fiction readings: rick). for students in the academic reading class, non-linear hypertext readings were not easy to navigate. students found themselves in a maze where they searched for strategies like making choices or finding an end to the story. however, regardless of students' computer literacy level, their understanding of non-linearly presented hypertext led to navigational problems for all of them. conclusion and discussion this study explored esl students' understanding of and perceptions about hypertext readings in an academic reading context. underlying these specific goals was the implicit goal of understanding and evaluating hypertext reading from a socio-cognitive perspective, as a literacy technology for esl learners and as an instructional medium for educational purposes. based on the findings in this study, students' understanding of hypertext was found to play an essential role in their approach and perceptions about the hypertext readings. they successfully benefited from this new environment by taking control of their reading process. on the other hand, they became disoriented and interrupted during the meaning-making process when they encountered a new genre or art form: hyper-fiction. these findings supported the earlier research on reading hypertext literature in that background knowledge played a significant role in students' approach to hypertext (chi, 1995, altun, 2000). students' understanding of hypertext and reading passages in hypertext resulted in either taking control of the process, or being disoriented in reading space. different from the findings with experienced computer users (altun, 2000), based on their prior knowledge and beliefs, l2 computer users could not develop strategies, which minimized disorientation and getting lost. one explanation of this might be the fact that the students in this study were less experienced computer users. also, the use of hypertext fiction in an academic reading and writing setting might have presented a new laboratory in which to test ideas; however, students did not seem to benefit from reading hypertext or reading with hypertext to clarify ideas of critical theory, as suggested by landow (landow, 1997). this finding might be due to students' lack of schema for and/or awareness of hypertext fiction. such lack of awareness of hypertext fiction led l2 readers to follow various paths to find an end to the story. when clues were not present, they felt as if they were in a maze. as far as literary hypertext fiction is concerned, this study supported the findings in miall and dobson (2001). having looked at both linear and non-linear hypertext, miall and dobson (2001) reported that readers felt either confused during their reading, or felt that they must have missed something in contrast to the linear readers. l2 readers' schema on fiction, which suggested a beginning and an end, were not met in hypertext fiction. therefore, they felt as if they were in a maze with endless loops. on the other hand, hypertext fiction, interactive in nature, did not help l2 readers gain a sense of power in both reading and writing, as suggested by moulthrop and kaplan (1991). one possible reason for this can be the participants' background. this contrasting finding may also suggest hypertext fiction be considered a new form of how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 9 art (becker, n.d.) and be evaluated within its own context. the findings of this study suggest several implications for language educators. the first important educational implication that can be inferred from this study lies in the definition and practice of literacy education. literacy has been considered equivalent to writing (e.g., havelock, 1980), and thought the opposite of orality (e.g. olson, 1994). however, with the introduction of hypertext technology, which includes various media, this traditional definition of literacy must be reexamined. in fact, in this study, esl readers tended to access recorded materials in the hypertext environment. literacy education must reflect this change, and insert changes in the hypertext technology into the literacy curricula. during this process, it will be the practitioners who will make the transition happen. therefore, practitioner teachers should be provided guidance and time to disseminate these changes. the second educational implication addresses the selection and the use of hypertext readings for classroom purposes. language educators need to be selective in their choices, especially with hyper-fiction readings. hyper-fiction represents a new genre or art form because it extends beyond traditional text. it is non-linear form, it does not follow a conventional linear fiction format, and it allows students, as landow (1997) puts it, to not only interact with the text, but also to take part in creating a text of his/her own. because the form is new, it proves to be problematic for students who are unfamiliar with the structure and procedure the hyper-fiction entails. it causes disorientation and prevents students from sharing, discussing, and negotiating meanings in a classroom setting. due to this difficulty, students need to be trained separately when this new genre or art form is introduced into the classroom. if students cannot be properly trained in hyper-fiction, then its use in a freshman reading/writing class should probably be avoided. another educational implication is that the hypertext environment, especially the internet, can provide a rich resource of information and a support tool for esl readers to explore and obtain information to utilize for their needs. compared to printed material, digitized information systems provide much quicker access to sources. such convenience should not be overlooked, and the educational value of using hypertext and the internet in classrooms to enrich the classroom environment for esl learners is an issue that language educators must consider seriously. the findings from this study also suggest the following issues need to be considered: 1. hypertext readers should be introduced to various formats of hypertext readings before they are exposed to this new medium. as discussed earlier in detail, non-linear hypertext sites confused all students regardless of their computer literacy levels. when considering the hypertext readings for classroom purposes. educators need to include supportive instructions to establish schema for these types of readings. 2. readers in the hypertext environments should be exposed to various types of media during hypertext reading process (i.e., audio, video, text, and animation). the findings from this study showed that students displayed a tendency toward making use of any and all materials available to them. but when limitations were present in computer configurations, the situation caused students to experience problems in accessing audio and video sources over the internet. therefore,  instructional use of these various types of media should be reconsidered and included into the curricula.  hardware and software availability needs to be ensured. 3. it is important to note that neither computer nor text reading skills are alone an adequate basis to start using hypertext technology in language classrooms. new curricula and instructional techniques are needed when considering students' approach to this new medium. hypertext technology presents a new environment for students, a new tool for educators, and a new area to explore for researchers. the findings of this study bring up an emerging concern of selecting and utilizing hypertext readings for classroom purposes. if students are not ready for this type of reading, educators are advised to either develop schema-building activities or avoid using this new genre. for researchers, the implications, better designs and implementation of hypertext environments deserve a thorough exploration. in addition, hypertext use in classrooms needs to be examined with larger groups of participants from different vantage points to better understand 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(1994). case study research: design and methods. thousand oaks, ca: sage . http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker/lisbon.html http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker/lisbon.html http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/burbules/ncb/papers/crossroads.1.html http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/burbules/ncb/papers/crossroads.1.html http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/articles/v02/i01/miall/ http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/articles/v02/i01/miall/ how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 11 appendix a urls for the selected websites 1 week 2 http://www.webfeats.com/sealander/contents2.html http://www.albany.edu/counseling_center/lonely.html http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar96/solitude.html week 3 http://is.rice.edu/~riddle/hyperfiction.old.html#honest http://boards.excite.com/ http://www.jvd.net/rcl.htm week 4 http://www.mindtools.com/ http://www.coun.uvic.ca/learn/program/hndouts/psq5r.html http://karn.ohiolink.edu/~sg-ysu/writehb.html http://www.researchpaper.com/ http://www.sonoma.edu/cthink/k12/k12library/helps.nclk http://www.sonoma.edu/cthink/k12/k12class/oconcept.nclk week 5 http://www.delta.edu/~anburke/summary.html http://karn.ohiolink.edu/~sg-ysu/sumwg.html week 6 http://leo.stcloud.msus.edu/acadwrite/summary.html week 7 http://sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/comp/ad-claims.html week 9 http://wwx.media3.net/plymouth/vtour/ http://dir.yahoo.com/arts/humanities/literature/countries__cultures__ and_groups/ 1 all urls were active as of august, 2002. http://www.webfeats.com/sealander/contents2.html http://www.albany.edu/counseling_center/lonely.html http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar96/solitude.html http://is.rice.edu/~riddle/hyperfiction.old.html#honest http://boards.excite.com/ http://www.jvd.net/rcl.htm http://www.mindtools.com/ http://www.coun.uvic.ca/learn/program/hndouts/psq5r.html http://karn.ohiolink.edu/~sg-ysu/writehb.html http://www.researchpaper.com/ http://www.sonoma.edu/cthink/k12/k12library/helps.nclk http://www.sonoma.edu/cthink/k12/k12class/oconcept.nclk http://www.delta.edu/~anburke/summary.html http://karn.ohiolink.edu/~sg-ysu/sumwg.html http://leo.stcloud.msus.edu/acadwrite/summary.html http://sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/comp/ad-claims.html http://wwx.media3.net/plymouth/vtour/ http://dir.yahoo.com/arts/humanities/literature/countries__cultures__and_groups/ http://dir.yahoo.com/arts/humanities/literature/countries__cultures__and_groups/ current issues in education vol. 6 no. 12 appendix b background information questionnaire please answer the following questions. all answers will completely be confidential. thank you for your participation. gender: male____ female____ age: ______ 1. identify your type of discipline and your position 2. how many years have you been using a computer? 3. do you have access to a personal computer away from school? yes ____, no____ 4. what type of operating system/platform do you use the most? ibm/windows______, apple/macintosh____ 5. how many hours do you access a computer in a day? 6. do you use a computer or browser for scholarly reading (articles, reports, class work)? 7. do you use a computer or word processor for scholarly writing and communication (letters, papers, reports, class work)? ___ very often ___ often ___ sometimes ___ rarely ___ never 8. what kinds of computer software are you accomplished using (you can check as many as possible)? word-processing ___, spreadsheets ___, databases ___, graphics ___, games __, communications ____, other, please specify _____________ 9. do you have a programming background?_____yes ____no 10. how familiar are you with computer technology? please, check the appropriate correspondents, and add to the list if there is any not listed. ___ word processing ___ internet ___ html programming ___ java programming ___ visual basic ____ c++ 11. how would you consider your level of computer literacy? ______beginner ____intermediate ____advanced 12. place the appropriate number (1 to 5) next to the activity which describes yourself. 1. daily 2. a few times a week 3. once or twice a month 4. rarely 5. never ___ use email ___ view newsnet groups ___ write to newsnet groups how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 13 ___ write to listserves ___ read messages in listserves ___ use ftp (file transfer protocol) to receive or send materials ___ use or view gophers ___ use or view web sites ___ create an html (hypertext markup language) document (e.g., webpage) ___ view electronic journal(s) ___ other, please specify; 13. do you use a computer browser (i.e., netscape) for leisure time reading (news, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, etc) ___ very often ___ often ___ sometimes ___ rarely ___ never 14. do you encourage and support others to read electronically? ___ yes ___ no. any further comments: ___________________________________________________. current issues in education vol. 6 no. 12 appendix c interview questions descriptive questions: background questions: 1. tell me about yourself? where are you from? how long have you been in the states, how long have you been learning english, etc. global questions: 1. do you like reading/writing? (i will ask some probing questions to elaborate the response). 2. can you tell me how you prepare yourself for this course? 3. suppose i want to improve my academic reading and writing skills, what would you recommend me to do? focused questions: 1. i am doing a study about reading on-line in hypertext. you are the only (or one of the) student(s) with some computer experience in this class. how do you like studying on screen? do you like reading in hypertext? 2. i am doing a study about reading on-line in hypertext. you are the only student in this class with no interest with reading hypertext? would you tell me more about it? 3. i am doing a study about reading on-line in hypertext. you are the only student in the class who likes reading in hypertext. how do you like reading in hypertext environment? follow-up questions: probing and specifying questions: 1. could you say something more about that? 2. can you give me a more detailed description of how you follow the links when you read? what effects your decisions? 3. what did you do then? 4. did you notice whether you share what you read with your peers? direct and indirect questions: 1. have you ever lost your way while reading online? 2. do you recommend others to read on-line in hypertext? 3. what do you think reading and writing would be like in the next 5 or 10 years? interpreting questions: 1. what do you mean by that? 2. what were you thinking when that happened? 3. do you mean you just give up reading and writing when___happened? how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 15 2003 article citation altun, a. (2003, july 1). understanding hypertext in the context of reading on the web: language learners' experience. current issues in education [on-line], 6(12). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume6/number12/ author notes arif altun, ed.d. is an assistant professor in the department of computers and instructional technology education, nigde university, turkey. his main research interests include the socio-cognitive issues in hypertext environments and webbased instruction. he is also interested in research related to teacher education and integrating computer technologies into pre-service teacher education. he teaches courses in research methods, computer tools for teachers, and computer assisted language learning. he can be contacted at altunar@ibu.edu.tr or altunar@nigde.edu.tr. note from the summer 2016 executive editor, constantin schreiber august 5, 2016. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation altun, a. (2003). understanding hypertext in the context of reading on the web: language learners' experience. current issues in education, 6(12). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1685 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume6/number12/ mailto:altunar@ibu.edu.tr mailto:altunar@nigde.edu.tr http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1685 volume 9, number 6 may, 2006 issn 1099-839x mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter andrea dixon rayle. veronica bordes, angela zapata, patricia arredondo, marie-christine rutter, and christina howard arizona state university this exploratory study focused on the mentoring experiences of women faculty members and graduate students within a counseling psychology graduate program. results from semi-structured interviews and focus groups identified the women’s contextual mentoring experiences in higher education and highlighted several factors that contribute to mentorship experiences unique to women in graduate higher education. findings demonstrate the importance of relational mentoring relationships and investment by mentors. implications for building upon mentoring theories for women and future research are discussed. since the late 1970s, female-focused literature has emphasized that women’s gender socialization in the united states influences their relationally-focused approach to interpersonal interactions (gilligan, 1982; liang, tracy, taylor, & williams, 2002). this process of gender socialization has led women to seek out and enact horizontal (relational) versus vertical (hierarchal) connections in their relationships with both men and women (gilligan; liang et al.). although women may be more comfortable with horizontal, relational approaches, hierarchical/paternalistic models prevail in most u. s. educational institutions (kram & isabella, 1985; schwiebert, 2000; tannen, 2001). the purpose of this study was to explore the subjective mentoring experiences of women faculty and graduate students within a counseling/counseling psychology academic program, who were involved in informal mentoring relationships. the study’s objectives were to begin to understand the women’s mentoring experiences in higher education independent of their age, role, and status; to identify factors that contribute to mentorship experiences unique to women in graduate education; to explore the costs and benefits of mentoring relationships for women; and to examine the women’s familial and professional role models. the roots of mentoring models and stages the construct of mentoring has multiple meanings that may be described as uni-directional, reciprocal, and/or hierarchal (tannen, 2001). traditional mentor-mentee relationships include: a) giving rather than receiving; b) sharing and giving that brings joy, inspiration, and vitality based on expertise; c) incorporation of another’s attitudes and thinking about mentees’ work and career benefits; and d) a role modeling process at its best (arredondo, 2001). reciprocal mentoring involves a relationship between two individuals to which both contribute and derive mutual benefits for personal and professional growth (kram, 1988). according to sweeny (2001), mentoring is a “tool to…increase openness to professional feedback, learning, and the power of seeing oneself through another person’s eyes” (p. 7). sweeny purported that mentees derive benefits for growth and learning in a supportive and friendly relationship, thereby enhancing self-esteem and selfconfidence. because of their experiences, mentors current issues in education vol. 9 no. 6 also assist in negotiation of organizational barriers, enabling career advancement for the mentee (kram, 1988). in traditional male-to-male mentoring relationships, there appears to be an acceptance of organizational hierarchy. in fact, the hierarchical model seems to complement men’s gender-role socialization experiences, whereas for women, a web-like model is more complementary (tannen, 2001). according to kram and isabella (1985), women seemed to value reciprocal, peer relationships, perhaps seeking the emotional support that is lacking in hierarchical and patriarchal organizations. however, schwiebert (2000) cautioned individuals not to make the mistake of interchanging the constructs of mentoring and role modeling. she indicated that role modeling allows the mentee to identify with and emulate the mentor’s most desirable characteristics. in the current study, mentoring was defined as a reciprocal process that occurs in women’s vertical (faculty to student) and horizontal (peer to peer) relationships in a higher education setting. multiple definitions of mentoring within higher education settings exist. sweeny (2001) described mentoring as, “one of the best tools there is to promote the creation of better norms of collegiality and collaboration . . . and consistently improving student learning” (p. 7). cunningham (1999) suggested that educational “mentoring provides, first, an instrumental or career function (e.g., sponsorship, coaching, instruction), and second, an intrinsic or psychosocial function (e.g., serving as a model, a confidant, a friend)” (p. 443). finally, gates (2003) stated, “we must continue to develop people as they progress through the ranks if they are to be effective leaders” (p. 104). thus, the theoretical understandings of mentoring in higher education aid in the understanding of the complex relationships involved in the process. kram (1983) outlined four stages of the mentoring relationship: initiation, cultivation, separation, and redefinition. these are developmental stages through which mentees or protégés theoretically move in relation to the mentor. in the first stage of initiation, the protégé develops a strong positive fantasy, admiration, and respect toward the mentor. the protégé also begins to feel cared for, supported, and respected. the second stage of cultivation occurs when the protégé’s expectations are constantly tested against reality and the psychosocial functions of the relationship are at their peak. a growing sense of competence occurs when the mentor challenges or coaches the protégé. in the third stage of separation, the protégé experiences independence and autonomy. the mentoring relationship no longer remains a central part of both members’ lives, which is typically characterized by feelings of loss. in the final stage, redefinition, a new relationship is developed between the mentor and the protégé. typically both members are on equal footing and the relationship takes the form of a friendship. kram (1983) stated that the mentoring relationship has the potential to enhance the development of both the mentor and mentee. this suggests the importance of determining those characteristics of the mentoring relationship that contribute to the mutual development of the parties involved. more specifically, limbert (1995) discussed two models of mentoring that focused specifically on women faculty members. the first model is that of mentoring between a senior female faculty and a junior female faculty member. limbert indicated that an advantage to this model is the shared experience of having gone through the ranks in academia. however, a disadvantage is the reality that there are “too few senior women to help junior women” (p. 87). in addition, a female who feels she has not been integrated into the male networks that dominate academia, is not in a position to mentor another who is entering the system (johnsrud & wunsch, 1991). the second model limbert (1995) discussed is a peer-mentoring model between women in academia. limbert reported one disadvantage of this model is the time it takes to develop trust. however, she also identified several advantages: 1) flexible time commitments in relationships among women, 2) less of a tendency to become overly dependent on one another, 3) opportunities to exchange external networks to build on one’s own network, and 4) the opportunity to feel safe to fail. mentoring women in higher education women have been increasingly represented in graduate higher education programs during the last two decades, with a recent report indicating that nearly half of the doctorates awarded in the year 2000 went to women (hoffer et al., 2001). because female graduate students report significantly less social support from family and program faculty than their male counterparts, the gender-specific mentoring of women in higher education appears to be of utmost importance (limbert, 1995; mallinckrodt & leong, 1992; schwiebert, 2000). specifically, effective mentoring in higher education involves the transmission of skills, knowledge, and attitudes, and allows for level of trust and communication which permits mentees to risk making mistakes and to develop personally and professionally (schwiebert). in order to achieve success, female students and new faculty must be socialized to the world of higher education (arredondo, 2001), a process in which mentors are vital. mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter 3 past literature suggests the positive effects mentors can have for female students. students who have professional and personal mentors feel more committed to their work, have greater career aspirations, and report higher self-esteem (gilbert, gallessich, & evans, 1983). in a study of women doctoral recipients at stanford university, participants overwhelmingly responded that an active advisor facilitated the completion of their program. in fact, this response was most frequently given by those who were classified as “early finishers”; completing their degrees in less than 4.25 years (maher, ford, & thompson, 2004). because academic programs have become more aware of the advantages mentoring provides for students, programs have sought to make mentors more accessible to women and people of ethnic/racial minority groups (packard, 2003). even if mentors who share characteristics with these students are not readily accessible (due to under-representation in their programs), formal mentoring initiatives have been implemented that are quite different from traditional serendipitous mentoring relationships. female students and faculty in the life sciences have begun to seek out each other through web-based mentoring programs such as mentornet and other networking groups (kasprisin, boyle single, single & muller, 2003; packard). additionally, the western interstate commission of higher education's (wiche) doctoral scholars program was designed to provide mentoring for racial/ethnic minority counseling psychology students (hill, castillo, ngu, & pepion, 1999). margolis and romero (2001) suggested that planned mentoring of underrepresented students in higher education can grant access to positions of power in the academic social structure. this type of mentoring “…assumes an expanded role, that of addressing the needs of the organization, racial and ethnic groups, students, faculty, and, ultimately, society” (redmond, 1990, p. 191). although students have been encouraged to find mentors they can relate to, academia has been comprised of euro-american males historically (moyer, laovey, & casey-cannon, 1999), thus making it difficult for female and ethnic/racial minority students to find faculty members of similar genders and racial/ethnic statuses. in a study of female doctoral students, women reported that they appreciated their female professors because of their ability to demonstrate confidence and competence as a woman (bruce, 1995). these professors also modeled the balance of personal and professional life (bruce). female faculty members also increase the likelihood that young female students will join them in academia: “…as the role and status of these women change the discipline—as they take their place in the hierarchy—they will be in a position to aid those who come after her” (margolis & romero, 2001, p.95). it seems that women faculty in higher education are in a position to lessen opposition for female students and facilitate their progression through higher education. studies on mentoring with college-age women (liang et al., 2002), multicultural female pairings (kalbfleisch & davies, 1991), and with women in the workplace (spreitzer, 1995) suggest the effects of positive mentoring on self-esteem, relationship-building, loneliness, and persistence in primary tasks. focusing on the mentoring of women in academic environments, gilbert et al. (1983) found that women who had female mentors ranked higher on self-esteem, work commitment, career aspirations, and satisfaction with student roles than those women who had male mentors. however, men did not have any significant differences on these variables whether or not they had a sex-matched mentor. on the other hand, in a replication of the gilbert et al. (1983) study conducted by mcquillen (1992), it was found that women who had female mentors reported greater levels of stress and conflict than those with male mentors. although an explanation for these stress differences was not offered, it is possible that emotionality, a component of mentoring relationships, differs in cross-gender matches. thus, this exploratory study examined mentoring experiences of women faculty and graduate students within a graduate program in higher education. method research team and participants prior to collecting data, the researchers, who consisted of four female graduate students and two female faculty members, who all acted as reviewers, met to discuss the purpose of the study and the questions that would be asked during the interviews. based on theory and previous research, the researchers discussed their expectations regarding themes of mentoring relationships that could emerge from the focus groups and interviews. all researchers were authors of the study. twenty-eight female graduate students in a counseling/counseling psychology program at a major southwestern university participated in focus groups designed to study mentoring relationships. the seven focus groups consisted of female graduate students (ph.d. and master’s level) usually ranging in size from two to six participants. six female faculty members participated in individual interviews. the researchers of this study were also included as participants when they were not facilitating the focus groups or interviews. the following demographics include both students and faculty. participant ages current issues in education vol. 9 no. 6 ranged from 23 to 59, with the mean age being 33.52 (sd = 11.46), and the median age being 29. of the 28 student participants, there were 19 doctoral (67.86%) and 9 master’s (32.14%) students. participants included 18 (54.5%) euro americans, 4 (12.1%) latinas, 3 (9.1%) african americans, 2 (6.1%) asian americans, and 6 (18.2%) biracial/multiracial individuals. in addition, 18 (56.3%) of the participants self-identified as single/unmarried, 12 (37.5%) were married or had a life partner, 1 (3.1%) reported being separated, and 1 (3.1%) reported being divorced. the majority of participants did not have children (n = 26, 78.8%). demographic information was not available for one of the student participants. demographic forms. the demographic forms requested the following basic information from participants: age, race/ethnicity, marital status, if they had children and how many, if entering the counseling/counseling psychology field was a significant career change, terminal degree (i.e., m.c., ph.d., ed.d.), year in the counseling/counseling psychology program, when and where they earned their undergraduate degree, if they had mentors, and the sex of their mentors. procedure participants were recruited via email listservs. any person answering the call for participants was included in the focus groups and faculty interviews. follow-up attempts were made on two occasions in an attempt to recruit more participants. focus groups comprised of individuals from the same cohort in their doctoral or master’s program (i.e., individuals from the same year in their respective program). all focus groups were conducted by two of the reviewers or faculty supervisors and lasted one to one and a half hours. the six faculty interviews were conducted individually by two students. interviews lasted 30 minutes to one hour. based on the research ideas to be explored, the research team, in order to provide structure to the interviews with faculty members and to facilitate discussion and data collection in the focus groups, designed a set of open-ended questions. the first part of the focus groups and interviews focused on current and prior mentoring relationships. the middle portion of the focus groups and interviews focused on similarities and differences between that of the mentors and mentees, and how those similarities and differences might have affected the mentoring relationships. the final portion of the focus groups and interviews focused on suggestions for mentoring guidelines. upon completion of the first focus group, the research team met to revise the set of questions to include in the focus groups and interviews (see table 1). based on the direction of the discussion and dialogue, the facilitator would ask questions to gain clarity and understanding. a second researcher recorded the responses using paper and pencil. additionally, the researchers took active-memberresearcher roles (adler & adler, 1998) in that they were each members of their own cohort focus group and the faculty participated in individual interviews. in this sense, the researchers took roles as active participant observers who, as mentioned by adler and adler, were able to be members and not researchers so that the flow of the interaction was not altered unnaturally. upon completion of the focus groups, the recorded responses were typed and independently analyzed by four student researchers. using grounded theory, the researchers coded for main themes that emerged from the transcripts. according to strauss and corbin (1998), grounded theory allows the data to drive the themes that emerge. this is a more accurate representation of “reality” than the arbitrary selection of themes from one’s own experience. “grounded theories, because they are drawn from the data, are likely to offer insight, enhance understanding, and provide a meaningful guide to action.” (pp. 12). thus, given the purpose of this study (i.e., to identify factors that contribute to helpful and positive mentorship experiences unique to women), grounded theory appeared to be the most appropriate approach to data analysis. data analysis. in order to analyze the data, the researchers used open and axial coding (strauss & corbin, 1998). open coding was conducted first. this is a method whereby themes and their properties emerge from the data. in order to do this, the researchers individually analyzed the transcripts for emergent concepts. after the initial coding, the research team reconvened to reconcile the list of mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter 5 concepts to compile them into themes with definitions. reconciliation occurred through discussion of the concepts that emerged and independent meaning assigned to each theme. subthemes were also identified. upon reconciliation, the researchers again individually analyzed the transcripts using axial coding. this is a process whereby sub-themes based on the level of properties and dimensions of the themes emerge. the team met a second time to reconcile coding records. an identical process of data analysis was applied for the faculty and graduate student interviews. results seven major themes emerged from the data (summarized in table 2). recurrent themes throughout the focus groups and interviews suggest that female graduate students and faculty members share common views regarding mentoring relationships in higher education. this is especially true regarding what women desire in their mentoring relationship. however, students took the perspective of mentees whereas faculty, with the exception of a junior faculty member, took the perspective of the mentor. the junior faculty member presented both perspectives. this difference in perspectives can be seen by differences within each theme. empowering relationships discussion about empowering relationships included comments referring to encouragement, support, motivation, trust, pride, self-esteem, collaboration, well being, and personal growth. an example of this is exemplified by vanessa, “mentoring relationships are very supportive, nurturing and encouraging. they provide the opportunity to pass down knowledge and network. they teach you how to maneuver in an academic world without giving up your identity.” faculty also emphasized empowering relationships. this is exemplified through the following statement by julia: as a mentor, i try to treat students as colleagues and provide resources to gain power. i also provide resources for research, and i help my mentees to achieve a sense of meaning and purpose to what they are doing. i affirm their dreams. another faculty member, kathy stated, “seeing what my mentors have done as professional women gives me motivation to succeed. i think, look what they’ve done. here we are in the 21 st century – let’s see what i can do.” dynamic of the relationship the dynamics theme included comments about a sense of obligation, a power differential, feelings of stress, comfort/discomfort, evolution of the relationship, and ambivalent feelings regarding the relationship. this can be seen through a comment made by wendy: the relationship with my mentor started out by being an advisee. if i felt a connection, then it developed into mentoring. shared experience, connections, shared goals, and wanting to follow a similar path. the questions change. in the beginning, it was more academic, now more long-term. boundaries are looser, but they are still there. another student named joy also stated, “mentors should be aware of the power differential and their amount of influence. they should be respectful of mentees and recognize their research contributions, remembering that they are developing future colleagues.” faculty members’ views of current issues in education vol. 9 no. 6 dynamics include similar perceptions and observations. susan said: faculty-faculty relationships might be defined through being co-researchers and being on committees together. there is less difficulty with dual relationships with colleagues. you have to be aware that no matter how egalitarian you are with students, you still need to be aware of the power of the role. dynamic of the relationship the dynamics theme included comments about a sense of obligation, a power differential, feelings of stress, comfort/discomfort, evolution of the relationship, and ambivalent feelings regarding the relationship. this can be seen through a comment made by wendy: the relationship with my mentor started out by being an advisee. if i felt a connection, then it developed into mentoring. shared experience, connections, shared goals, and wanting to follow a similar path. the questions change. in the beginning, it was more academic, now more long-term. boundaries are looser, but they are still there. another student named joy also stated, “mentors should be aware of the power differential and their amount of influence. they should be respectful of mentees and recognize their research contributions, remembering that they are developing future colleagues.” faculty members’ views of dynamics include similar perceptions and observations. susan said: faculty-faculty relationships might be defined through being co-researchers and being on committees together. there is less difficulty with dual relationships with colleagues. you have to be aware that no matter how egalitarian you are with students, you still need to be aware of the power of the role. investment of the mentor four sub-themes emerged under this particular theme: personal/emotional, professional development, time/availability, and financial investment. personal/emotional. students discussed the personal/emotional investment that their mentors provided for them. lisa said: mentors should get to know mentees on a personal basis. where they want to go, what their personal interests are, their goals, more than just academics. it is long-term. it shows when they are committed to a student. mentors should know what is going on because they are making an investment. faculty members also discussed the personal/emotional investment on the part of the mentor. this is exemplified by elizabeth, “i believe that the task of the mentor is to listen, help address concerns and problems, interpersonal and professional problems. however, i do not provide therapy.” professional development. statements from students also included the investment of the mentor regarding students’ professional development. this can be seen in the statement by ashley, “mentoring relationships have an official status. mentors should provide professional experiences. mentors should monitor professional growth and development and mentors and mentees can do personal things together. currently, i only have an advisor.” faculty echoed the sentiments made by students. one faculty member, rebecca, spoke of her own mentor: my relationship with my mentor began the moment i entered the program. then it began to develop professionalism. i had to do presentations and my mentor provided opportunities for me. he encouraged me to follow his lead and then encouraged my independence. he made sure that there were opportunities and spent time with me in networking. he would introduce me to people that he thought i should get to know. this relationship was more like an apprenticeship. he encouraged me to make sure that doors were open so that i could go into whatever field i chose. time/availability. students addressed the need for mentors to be available to their mentees. farrah stated, “my mentor is more available than other professors and is quick to welcome me into her office.” jenny also stated, “i used to be hesitant to call my mentor at home or on the cell phone late at night. now i feel more comfortable doing those things.” faculty members also addressed the availability of the mentors to mentees. elizabeth addressed this as a cost in the following excerpt: one of the costs is the time and energy spent on mentoring. i engage in several hours of student-focused work every night. this is a choice that i make in order to get the students their feedback quickly. it takes away from private time. however, julia describes this as a process of the relationship. for the first year i am not very available to my mentees. they might have difficulty in getting an appointment with me and in their fist year may feel like i am a phantom. in their second year, when students blossom into their research and service interests, i mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter 7 begin to see them a lot. by the last semester of their program, my students and i see each other all of the time and there is not a lot of boundaries. over time, there is an escalating amount of involvement and moving into private space. financial. some students suggested that mentors should assist their mentees in finding financial assistance. wendy stated, “the perks of the mentoring relationship include taships, travel funds, research opportunities, and opportunities to co-teach a class. we need something to show for being someone’s mentee.” bertha added to this by saying, “it shows when a mentor is committed to a student when they offer research projects. mentors should know what is going on. they are making an investment. dishing out money for a conference, is that asking too much?” another student, elena, echoed this sentiment in the following statement, “mentors should assist mentees in finding financial assistance.” faculty interviews did not echo this subtheme, as faculty members did not make mention of personal financial investment on the part of mentors. shared experiences the shared experiences theme was defined as having a sense of common experiences that helped the women relate to their mentors, brought the women and their mentors together, and/or maintained the mentoring relationship. the participants related four sub-themes that emerged within this theme: ethnic/racial match, being women, having common academic or research backgrounds, and having similar personal experiences. ethnic/racial match. this is exemplified through a statement by isabella: i came from a mentoring relationship in which there was an ethnic match. the university i came from was a white man’s club, even the women acted like men. therefore, having an ethnic match meant that someone was taking an interest, especially in the sense that others who were not of my ethnic/racial group did not validate my goals of going to graduate school. women and minorities face more hurdles. there is a shared experience in having a mentoring relationship with someone of an ethnic match. they want to promote ethnic inclusion. faculty echoed sentiments, exemplified by kathy, i sought out my mentor because we were both women of color. this woman exudes professionalism that i admire and would like to emulate. this mentor has been able to role model ways in which she dealt with barriers being both a woman and non-white. women. this shared experience can be seen in a quote by cynthia, “i always go to women for advice and we work collaboratively together. when men are around, there is a new power differential. because of this, i am more comfortable with women mentors.” one faculty member, rebecca, stated, i am non-discriminating in mentoring males and females. there are more females in the program, so i have a propensity to make sure female students connect with people. males, because of socialization are already seeking out opportunities. i think that female students need to be pushed more to seek out opportunities such as fellowships and scholarships. academic/research. this shared experience was mentioned frequently. jennifer stated, “faculty have the experience of going through what we are going through as students. they can lay out a path for us and point us in the right directions. they can share the stories of their own academic experience.” faculty also addressed the issue of similar research interests. cecilia stated, “the relationship begins out of my desire to work with that student. i may even advocate admitting a student into the program due to similar interests.” personal. one student, keisha, mentioned, “one of my mentors had similar religious traditions as myself and so we would talk about those. i think it helped the relationship, but it had little to do with my professional development.” faculty mentioned personal history as a shared experience. rebecca stated, “i was the first person in my family to go to college. i think this may parallel what ethnic minorities who are the first to come to college are experiencing, rather than from coming from an advanced degree family.” balance of personal and professional life within oneself this theme emerged through the comments participants made about how to balance their personal and professional life, rather than balance personal and professional roles. students had differing opinions on how this was modeled. jo-anne stated, “my undergraduate mentor provided me a model of striking a balance between work and family.” however, sherry stated, both of my male mentors maintain a private practice, which has shaped the idea that i can go into academia and still have a private practice. however, i have not received any advice about how to balance family with a career. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 6 data from faculty interviews did not reflect the same sentiment that emerged from the student focus groups. this can be seen through this comment by elizabeth, “for beginning professors, it is important to remember to balance personal time with time spent with students. you won’t make it if you don’t have appropriate boundaries for mentoring.” male mentoring relationships three sub-themes emerged for this particular theme: a grandfather/familial role, a less personal connection, and slower relationship building. although students spoke to these themes, no faculty members addressed them. for the grandfather/familial role, charlotte’s quote addressed this, “my dad was the disciplinarian and wasn’t often home. the way i feel about my male mentor is the way i feel about my dad.” in the sub-theme of lack of emotional connection, one of the students, linda, mentioned, “i only have male mentors. the relationships are impersonal and serve mainly to make sure my academic needs are met.” finally, for slower relationship building, a quote by alisha illustrated the sub-theme: i had a male mentor and felt intimidated at first, but it was partly due to his credentials. now i feel more comfortable, like a friendship. we have respect for each other. though there are still times when i feel uncomfortable and think, ‘do i want to go there with him?’ peer mentoring the peer mentoring theme consisted of experiences and views relating to peer mentoring including the importance of it, the dynamics of the relationship, and shared experiences. laura stated, “i get advice about the program from other students. i feel that they are more forthright than the faculty regarding the program. i go to the older students for questions and concerns because they can empathize with my concerns.” when discussing student-student mentoring, cecilia said, “i like the idea of teams. here students can be mentored by both faculty and other students.” when talking about faculty-faculty mentoring, rebecca stated these relationships “might be more defined through being co-researchers and being on committees together. there is less difficulty with dual relationships with colleagues.” discussion it appears that women in higher education create unique mentoring experiences and relationships that meet their specific mentoring desires, and are consciously aware of additional components they may need. the purpose of this study was to explore the subjective mentoring experiences of women faculty members and graduate students within a counseling/counseling psychology program, who were involved in informal relational models of mentoring. what can the current women's views about their mentoring experiences teach us about future successful mentoring of women in higher education? the current findings indicate that notwithstanding age, levels of professional experience, or perspectives of the mentoring relationship (faculty member versus graduate student), women in higher educational counseling psychology settings are similar in the themes they experience and desire in their mentoring relationships. specifically, the preliminary themes that surfaced in this exploratory study include:  empowering mentoring relationships  dynamics of mentoring relationships  investment of mentors  shared experiences between mentors and mentees  need for personal balance of personal and professional lives  experiences with male mentoring relationships  peer mentoring (see table 2 for further detail). overall, t hese preliminary themes describe the multi-dimensionality of the mentoring needs of women suggesting a relational, web-like process through which women travel to experience successful professional and personal mentoring. in addition, congruent with past research, this study’s thematic findings highlight several factors that matter most to women when engaging in mentoring relationships that differ significantly from men’s needs (allen & eby, 2004; dreher & cox, 1996; gilbert & rossman, 1992 ). through the themes that surfaced, it appears that women share similar, unique needs and desires for relational approaches to mentoring relationships versus more traditional, male-appreciated hierarchical models (allen & eby; dreher & cox; gilbert & rossman; gilligan, 1982; liang et al., 2002). in their discussions of each of these themes, the women revealed a number of factors that are important to them as women in mentoring relationships. first, the theme of “empowering relationships” surfaced in several manners; the women expressed their needs for encouragement, support, and motivation, within any mentoring relationship. consistent with past research, they reported that their female mentors are personally, educationally, and emotionally supportive, and effectively able to provide the relationships mentees’ desire, as was reported in an earlier study (allen & eby, 2004; dickens & sagaria, 1997). mentoring as collaboration is a common practice among female scholars (dickens & sagaria) and it appears that mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter 9 female mentors reportedly provided relational, psychosocial approaches to mentoring relationships that offer the empowerment and trust the women participants desire (allen & eby; limbert, 1995). contrary to more traditional, hierarchal mentoring models, female mentors were reported to impart opportunities to succeed and flourish in the academic setting and created atmospheres in which to grow (allen & eby; dreher & cox, 1996; limbert). the participants in this study described empowering relationships as crucial to successful mentoring, thus offering the possibility to inform future approaches for mentoring women in higher education. second, the current findings point to multidimensional “dynamics in mentoring relationships.” these dynamics were viewed as being both positive and stressful. participants stated they often felt a sense of obligation to their mentors, both to impress them and to live up to their expectations, and similar to past research, this sense of obligation motivated as well as burdened them (moyer et al., 1999). in addition, the women reported recognizing power differentials in their relationships that often lead to comfort as well as to discomfort and ambivalent feelings regarding the relationships. at times, the mentees and/or mentors wanted to be friends as well as colleagues, but stated that it is complicated to navigate this while honoring the power differential that exists. faculty mentors stated that as students progress to graduation, they become colleagues and the mentoring relationship should mirror this evolution. in addition, the faculty members stated that when mentoring relationships evolve, the dynamics of the relationship with women mentors often led to long-term friendships more easily than with male mentors. these findings align with past research with women; women view their relationships in the long-term (gilligan, 1982), thus mentoring relationships are assumed to be a longterm commitment that will evolve and go through numerous stages (kram, 1983). the dynamics highlighted by the participants illustrate the sense of emotional and ethical vulnerability that mentors and mentees may feel, the possible emotional risks they take, and the multi-dimensionality of mentoring relationships for women. as past research has indicated, the “process” of mentoring appears to be of utmost importance to women (allen & eby, 2004; dreher & cox, 1996) and results in dynamics that these women consider important for productive mentoring relationships. third, the findings illustrate these women’s expectations of their mentors’ investment in them as mentees and as persons. the participants described having expectations that their mentor would invest in them on a personal and emotional level, would be available and devote time to them, and should assist them in finding financial assistance for professional development opportunities. mentees openly discussed the personal/emotional support their mentors provided for them. again, this theme lends voice to the importance of the relational model of mentoring for women (schwiebert, 2000); this sample of women in higher education prefer their mentors to support them both personally and emotionally by knowing them well enough to walk beside them during some experiences and to lead them through others. the women agreed that mentors invest in mentees on multiple levels and aid in their professional and personal lives by investing personal and emotional support. congruent with past research, mentees added that this appears to come more freely from female versus male mentors (dreher & cox, 1996). although the majority of the current data describes women’s mentoring relationships, “shared experiences” can be conceptualized as possible predictors of mentoring relationships. frequently the women reported seeking out their mentors or mentees according to shared research interests, gender, or ethnicity. the identification of the commonalities, by either mentor or mentee, appears to precipitate a deliberate choice to begin the mentoring relationship. schwiebert (2000) suggested that shared experiences may be the quality that differentiates a mentor from an advisor or role model. as one faculty member stated, “true mentoring is very rare—it grows out of shared perspectives.” the identification of shared experiences and perspectives within the mentoring dyad appears to provide mentees the sense that their mentors have experienced, and can anticipate, obstacles that they will encounter during their academic, personal, and professional progression. the women participants had expectations of their mentors’ abilities to ameliorate these personal and professional hurdles, thereby enhancing their professional experiences. if shared experiences enhance mentoring relationships, then this is likely one of the contributing factors to the satisfaction and commitment reported by females that have benefited from having female mentors (gilbert et al., 1983). further, participants reported that the balancing of personal and professional roles is a salient issue for females in higher education. the women in this study felt similar to those female graduate students in a past study, in which over onethird of the participants reported the balance of personal and professional lives a “most pressing” concern (moyer, et al., 1999). women with families who take on additional roles (i.e., student) typically add these roles without making changes to lessen current issues in education vol. 9 no. 6 their familial responsibilities. role expansions and expectations put unique stressors on women (gilbert et al., 1983) and the current results indicate that mentees want more guidance from mentors in this area. from the perspective of the female mentors, participants stressed the importance of keeping time spent with students from bleeding into personal time. many mentoring relationships are considered onesided, with the mentor giving far more than receiving (tannen, 2001). however, the female faculty members in this study admitted that they gave their time and emotion with, generally, only satisfaction in return, meaning that their academic mentoring dyads may be more uni-directional than reciprocal (arredondo, 2001). because this imbalance has the potential to be taxing on mentors, future research might focus on the creation of formalized higher education mentoring guidelines to prevent possible mentor burnout. further research may reveal that female mentors are more susceptible than male mentors to burnout due to the unique emotional aspects of female-to-female mentoring relationships (kram & isabella, 1985). in higher education, where female faculty members are in the minority, the question of the dynamic of male mentoring is a significant one. because this study was designed to focus on the mentoring experiences of women-women relationships, the women participating in this study focused the majority of their attention on the impact of female mentors in their lives. however, although some women mentioned receiving positive and empowering mentoring from male faculty members, the discussions consistently came back to the lack of personal connection with men and the fact that male mentors often took on a patriarchal role, which is a congruent theme with past research (allen & eby, 2004; dreher & cox, 1996). it would, however, be remiss to imagine that male mentors have not held an important role in the lives of women who have arrived at the graduate level in their academic careers. although they experienced a less personal connection with male mentors, the women in this study gave examples of their male mentors believing in them and encouraging them to apply to graduate school. nevertheless, the women described the process associated with male mentors as different from the process that occurred with female mentors. perhaps gender differences impeded the process of initiation, cultivation, separation, and redefinition as outlined by kram (1983). when there is a gender difference with male mentors, it is possible that socialized roles and expectations affect the relationships, influencing possible stages of development for female mentees (allen & eby, 2004; dreher & cox, 1996; nykodym, freedman, simonetti, & nielsen, 1995). finally, the findings of this study inform future mentoring with women in graduate training settings for the value of peer mentoring. as expressed by the participants, the main tenants of peer mentoring were that students gave each other forthright advice and peer relationships were safe and without expectations. as such, peer mentoring seemed to foster the intimacy needed to share fears and worries while still receiving key information toward successful achievement. kram (1988) discussed how peer relationships provide information, career strategizing, and feedback. psychosocially, peers help with confirmation, emotional support, and friendship. lastly, mutuality is one of the most unique attributes among peers. the shared experience of being on the same path, especially in academia where there are defined trajectories, appears to be a powerful dynamic. the more advanced students and faculty members pave the way for their female peers, who are then able to pave the way for others. the participants did not mention any of the negative traits of peer mentoring; instead, as past research has indicated (kram, 1988), peer mentoring showed to be purely helpful, encouraging, and a safe haven. finally, the faculty participants seemed consistently aware that the ways in which they were/are mentored influences their mentoring of others and that the depth of their commitment allows the next generation of professional women to thrive in higher educational settings. limitations as is the case with all research inquiries, this study included several limitations that should be noted. the researchers intended to elucidate themes around women’s mentoring needs and experiences with a small sample of faculty members and students in a counseling psychology graduate program . the qualitative and interview nature of the study provided rich information about the impact of mentoring in the lives of these particular women in higher education; however, because the focus of the study was on female-female mentoring relationships, the women participants spent less time describing their malefemale mentoring experiences. future studies should focus on women’s perceptions of both female-female and male-female mentoring relationships in higher education in order to further define women’s perceptions, needs, and wants for mentoring. the ideas and experiences collected in the current study confirmed the notions that mentoring is empowering and engendering of success; however, due to the small and homogenous sample, future studies might focus on female and male students’ mentoring mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter 11 experiences in higher education. the current researchers’ plan is to follow up the current study with additional research focusing on multiple disciplines and professional positions in higher education with both women and men. further, there is the potential impact of social desirability in qualitative studies involving interviews and focus groups that may likely affect the manners in which participants respond in order to “please” researchers or “fit in” with other participants. in fact, social desirability may have contributed to the current participants’ heightened attention on the importance of mentoring relationships in their personal/professional development; they may have been more reluctant to discuss their negative experiences. however, without specifically asking for positive and negative perceptions, the women participants offered both perspectives from their mentoring experiences. the methodology used in the analysis of these data also deserves attention. the formats of the interviews and focus groups may have inhibited participants with unique mentoring relationship experiences to share. however, social scientists agree that semi-structured and focus group qualitative studies are intrinsically subjective processes that are shaped moment-to-moment by culture, context, the particular relationship between speakers (e.g., interviewers and interviewees), and by the identities and locations (merrick, 1999; rennie, 1999). finally, studies with multiple forms of data collection are needed in future studies of this kind to solidify themes for women’s mentoring experiences in higher education. concluding thoughts and future directions this study raises important points for reflection regarding the factors that matter in the mentoring of women in higher education. with the growing number of women in higher educational professional roles and the increasing number of female students in higher education, the ongoing research into the specific mentoring needs and wants of women promises to add greater depth to the existing knowledge about how women succeed and grow in mentoring relationships. this study serves as a foundation for the current research team members, who are interested in broadening this particular study with numerous other professional women, and ultimately working toward outlining specialized guidelines for mentoring women in higher education settings. it would be especially useful to conduct a similar study in other areas of the country within counseling psychology programs, as well as within other higher education disciplines to compare the findings that emerged in this study. it would also be informative to examine the mentoring process among women along isolated racial, ethnic, or regional lines, as this study was not able to capture how these unique factors contributed to all of the women's cultural, personal, and professional experiences. further, studies of this nature should be conducted with male faculty members and students in order to allow for gender comparisons in higher education mentoring experiences for males and females. in addition, quantitative studies should be planned that build upon these findings. studies might focus on mentoring as a career and professional development enabler and esteem builder. future studies might investigate the role of mentoring in workplace settings where relationships for women and men still appear to be stratified. another area in need of focus is to develop a mentoring survey instrument that measures specialized multidimensional mentoring experiences among diverse groups of women, which could be coupled with a version for specific use with men. finally, theorists and researchers can use these data to raise awareness of the profound influence of contextual parameters and 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(1995). psychological empowerment in the workplace: dimensions, measurement, and validation. academy of management journal,38, 1442-1465. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1998). basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. thousand oaks, ca: sage. sweeny, b. (2001). ask the mentor of mentors: a collection of answers to frequently asked questions. retrieved october 14, 2003, from http://www.teachermentors.com/rsod%20 site/askmom.html tannen, d. (2001). but what do you mean? women and men in conversation. in j. m. henslin, (ed.), down to earth sociology: introductory readings (11th ed.) (pp. 168 173). new york: free press. http://www.teachermentors.com/rsod%20site/askmom.html http://www.teachermentors.com/rsod%20site/askmom.html current issues in education vol. 9 no. 6 2006 article citation rayle a.d., bordes v., zapata a., arrendondo p., rutter m., howard c. (2006, may). mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter. current issues in education [on-line], 9(6). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number6/ author notes andrea dixon rayle arizona state university division of psychology in education po box 870611, tempe, az 85287-061 andrea.rayle@asu.edu andrea dixon rayle, ph.d., is an assistant professor of counseling at arizona state university. she received her ph.d. in counseling and counselor education, and her primary research interests include ethnic identity, acculturation, and spirituality among minority and nonminority persons; mattering and purpose in life, and adolescent development and wellness. she teaches group, school, and multicultural counseling and is the school counseling program coordinator at asu. she enjoys needlework and bicycling. veronica bordes arizona state university division of psychology in education veronica bordes, m.ed. is a ford fellow and a doctoral candidate in counseling psychology at arizona state university. her research interests include academic persistence, mentoring, and a focus on adolescent and latina/o populations. she is working on her dissertation focused on the second point in a longitudinal study of latina/o college academic persistence. she is also a pediatric neuropsychology intern at a local teaching hospital. she enjoys golf, dancing, running, rock climbing, and playing with her dog to provide some fun and relaxation. angela zapata arizona state university division of psychology in education angela zapata is a doctoral student in counseling psychology at arizona state university. her research interests include women's and gender issues, mentoring, multiculturalism, the relationship of religion and spirituality with physical and mental health issues, as well as other health and wellness issues. she is currently a practicum counselor at asu's counseling center and is involved in a cultural adaptation of a manualized prevention program designed to teach recently divorced mothers how to help their children adjust to the transition of divorce. she is a co-creator of a health and wellness program for other students in the counseling/counseling psychology program at asu. angela enjoys spending time with her family and dogs, and she finds peace and revitalization in nature. patricia arredondo arizona state university division of psychology in education patricia arredondo, ph.d., is senior associate vice president with university undergraduate initiatives and professor of psychology in education at arizona state university (asu). she serves as president of the american counseling association (aca), 2005-2006, and was recognized as a "living legend" by the aca, for her contributions to the development of multicultural counseling competencies, dedication to latina/o issues and her leadership in promoting organizational change through a focus on diversity. she has published widely on these topics including co-chairing the taskforce for the "guidelines on multicultural education, training, research, practice and organizational change for psychologists." she is a fellow of divisions 17 and 45 of the american psychological association and recipient of an honorary doctorate from the university of san diego. prior to going to asu, she was president of empowerment workshops, inc., based in boston, an organizational consulting firm primarily focused on multicultural organizational development. when she is not collecting air miles, she enjoys yoga, reading murder mysteries and chicana fiction, beating men at golf, and riding with her convertible top down. file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number6/index.html mailto:andrea.rayle@asu.edu mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter 15 marie-christine rutter arizona state university division of psychology in education marie-christine rutter, m.a. is a doctoral student in counseling psychology at arizona state university. her focus in all areas of her work has been on ethnic minorities and health. her current research interests include mentoring, caregiving, and community research on health and ethnicity. she is also a psychology intern at a local teaching hospital and teaches educational psychology at the university. she enjoys running, hiking, and international travel. christina howard arizona state university division of psychology in education christina howard is a first year doctoral student in counseling psychology at the university of wisconsin-madison. she is currently researching the retention of undergraduate alana student in the math and sciences. her other interests include academic identity and talented and gifted children. in her spare time, she enjoys taking her dogs to the dog park and practicing sailing. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation rayle, a. d., bordes, v., zapata, a., arrendondo, p., rutter, m., & howard, c. (2006). mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter. current issues in education, 9(6). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1598 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1598 current issues in education, 26(2) 1 volume 26, issue 2 november 20th, 2025 issn 1099-839x editorial introduction reflecting on our shared educational futures: a global need to belong for transformative learning erica reed arizona state university celina german arizona state university patricia geraghty arizona state university kelly brown arizona state university jami carmichael arizona state university abstract: in this editorial introduction to the fall 2025 issue of current issues in education, we explore belonging as the relational and systemic foundation of educational transformation. building on prior discussions of equity and redesign through care, this issue highlights how belonging and agency operate across micro, meso, and macro levels—from teacher identity and classroom collaboration to institutional leadership and policy design. across the seven articles published in this issue, authors demonstrate that transformation is sustained not by compliance or reform cycles, but by relationships that cultivate trust, capacity, and shared purpose. together, these works illustrate how belonging can be institutionalized as both a human need and a policy imperative, shaping educational futures that are inclusive, adaptive, and rooted in connection. keywords: belonging, equity, transformative learning, teacher identity, inclusive systems reed et al.: reflecting our shared educational futures current issues in education, 26(2) 2 citation: reed, e., german, c., geraghty, p., brown, k., & carmichael, j. (2025). reflecting on our shared educational futures: a global need to belong for transformative learning. current issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2475 accepted: 11/18/2025 editorial introduction reflecting on our shared educational futures: a global need to belong for transformative learning in the spring 2025 issue of current issues in education (cie), readers were invited to move from reaction to reflection, to redesign education through care rather than crisis (see carmichael et al., 2025). as we publish this fall 2025 issue, we build on this conversation through the lens of belonging (strayhorn, 2018) to inquire into what it takes to be a catalyst for transformation globally. reading the seven manuscripts published in this issue of cie, we observed a common theme: authentic transformation is not imposed from top-down governmental policy approaches; instead, it grows from relationships that make people feel seen, valued, and inspired. each article illustrates the educational possibilities that can develop when relationship-centered educational practices are prioritized. the manuscripts featured here collectively highlight the relational core of educational practice. whether examining teacher well-being, curriculum adoption, instructional design, or professional belonging, each study reflects the human need to feel connected, capable, and trusted within our complex systems of teaching and learning. together, these articles remind us that agency and belonging are not peripheral to academic flourishing (vanderweele & case, 2025); they are foundational to better policy and practice. in this editorial introduction, we invite readers to imagine an ecosystem (bronfenbrenner, 1979) of belonging and transformation. we observed these phenomena unfolding across three levels: the micro, meso, and macro—each complementary to the overall success of the system. at the micro level, belonging takes root in identity and nourishes motivation. at the meso level, transformation begins to unfold as educators and learners co-create their shared experiences. at the macro level, capacity, leadership, and policy either enable or erode that collective sense of purpose. we offer this framing as a way to read the articles in this issue as a cohesive whole. each level illustrates how belonging and transformation emerge, sustain, and sometimes struggle within various educational contexts. together, these articles remind us that transformation rarely happens in isolation; rather, it emerges through the relationships, practices, and systems that connect educational stakeholders. in a time when educational spaces are increasingly shaped by division and politicization (pollock et al., 2022; woo et al., 2024), these authors help us imagine what is still possible in education—an interconnected ecosystem where connection, co-creation, and shared purpose shape the conditions that allow both educators and learners to thrive (love, 2019). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2475 reed et al.: reflecting our shared educational futures current issues in education, 26(2) 3 engaging with the micro: human experience & professional belonging the first two manuscripts in our issue remind us that belonging can be cultivated through systemic changes. first, in "finding their place: exploring the sense of belonging among alternatively certified early-career educators," wilcoxen, langfeld, and o’shea show that retention relies on a sense of belonging. grounded in an ecological framework, this multicase qualitative study explores how alternatively certified teachers experience value, connection, influence, and authenticity during their early years. participants described how mentorship, collegial trust, and recognition fostered belonging, while bureaucratic barriers and limited decision-making voice weakened it. the study affirms that belonging is both emotion-based and structural, shaping early teacher identity and determining whether new educators stay committed to the profession. transformation is made possible when mentorship and inclusion are built into systems, rather than left to individual effort. in the second manuscript, “comparing special education and general education teachers’ stress, job demands, and resources during covid-19,” leo, mola ávila, wilcox, khan, schiller, and zhang, reframe resilience through the job demands–resources framework, revealing that belonging and professional connection are central to endurance and growth within the teaching profession. while reported stress levels were high across the teacher participants in this study, special education teachers faced distinct challenges related to individualized instruction, iep compliance, and the emotional toll of remote support during covid-19. yet many of these educators sustained their sense of purpose through collaboration, administrative support, and collegial trust. the authors’ findings offer a hopeful view of transformation amid crisis, showing that resilience is not a matter of individual grit but of collective belonging that sustains well-being and commitment even under strain. these articles demonstrate that at the micro level, belonging serves as a powerful foundation for teacher retention and growth. when mentoring, ongoing feedback, and collaborative problem-solving are prioritized within educational organizations, people feel valued, which in turn strengthens performance and sustains success. exploring the meso: academic design as shared authority the following two articles illustrate how belonging becomes a form of agency in motion at the school site level. in their article, “a systematic review of reviews on problem-based learning and its effectiveness,” amoa-danquah and carbonneau position the classroom as a space of inquiry, empowerment, and shared transformation. synthesizing 22 studies on problembased learning, the authors confirm that when teachers facilitate inquiry and students coconstruct knowledge, critical thinking, communication, and authentic problem solving deepen. their findings highlight that student agency depends on teacher agency; facilitation thrives when educators have the autonomy to design, guide, and adapt learning to their specific context. this study calls for shifting from compliance-based implementation to principle-aligned practice, where belonging and trust between teachers and learners drive meaningful and sustainable change. in “the micropolitics of literacy curricula adoption: an exploratory actor network theory analysis of curricula adoption,” barrett-tatum, scales, vaughn, stevens, kline, van wig, yoder, and wellman examine how curriculum decisions move through layers of policy, procurement, and accountability. using actor network theory, the authors trace the relationships among mandates, administrative structures, and teacher voice. their analysis shows that while classroom educators carry the weight of implementation, they often have limited reed et al.: reflecting our shared educational futures current issues in education, 26(2) 4 influence over what they teach. yet teachers reclaim agency through collaboration and contextual adaptation, transforming top-down directives into meaningful practice. the authors advocate for including educators more authentically in curriculum decision-making, affirming that belonging and professional agency are essential to equitable and sustainable reform. these two articles illustrate that at the meso level, belonging and transformation begin with agency. when teachers are trusted to design, adapt, and lead, classrooms become communities of inquiry, and policy becomes partnership rather than prescription. visiting the macro: systemic belonging and transformative leadership the remaining four manuscripts included in this issue widen our lens from classrooms to institutions and nations, illustrating how belonging can be codified into the architecture of transformation. first, in “leave, move, or stay? an examination of retention factors among novice dual-certified teachers of color,” kea, young, wilder, sirgany, and trent examine why novice teachers of color (toc) in the united states leave, move, or remain in the profession, and how belonging within school systems shapes those decisions. guided by bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems theory, the authors surveyed dual-certified teachers who graduated from a historically black college and university to explore how preparation, mentorship, administrative support, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (dei) commitments influence retention of toc. the findings show that toc stay where they feel supported, connected, and respected, and leave when those conditions are absent. these elements reflect a macro-level focus on systemic belonging, as they highlight the need for educational institutions to create equitable, supportive, and culturally responsive environments. this study underscores the importance of transformative leadership that addresses systemic inequities, advances inclusive policies, and ensures that toc not only enter the profession but are supported so that they can thrive, stay, and lead. second, in “leveraging on stakeholder involvement to create a student success culture through institutional capacity assessment at a university in south africa,” ndebele and mbodila demonstrate how collective reflection can drive transformation. using the institutional capacity assessment tool (icat), faculty, staff, and administrators assessed their university’s strengths and gaps in supporting student success. the process fostered dialogue across roles, creating a shared understanding of what student success means and how it can be achieved. rather than serving as a compliance measure, the icat became a catalyst for belonging and collaboration, aligning diverse perspectives around a common purpose. this study illustrates that transformation begins when institutions turn assessment into community connections and capacity into a culture of belonging. third, in “urban-rural stem education’s influence on creativity in public and private middle schools of pakistan,” kamlish and das explore how equitable access to stem education in pakistan can transform student potential into participation. surveying 164 middle school students across diverse programs, the authors found that while current curricula often underdevelop creativity and critical thinking, structured stem experiences foster stronger analytical and innovative skills. results also revealed an equity gap, with students in urban and private schools reporting higher engagement and perceived benefits than those in rural and public settings. the findings point to a central insight: transformation in education depends on belonging and equitable opportunity, where all learners are equipped to engage fully in creative, inquiry-based learning. reed et al.: reflecting our shared educational futures current issues in education, 26(2) 5 these three articles show that at the macro level, belonging and transformation emerge as systemic work. institutions evolve when leadership, policy, and capacity building move beyond compliance to cultivate trust, equity, inclusion, and community. from reflection to regeneration if the last editorial introduction asked how we design educational spaces for equity amid disruption, here, we ask readers to contemplate how transformation adapts and endures. together, we imagine that one approach might be in how belonging is systematically institutionalized; mentorship is integrated into educational structures; and collaboration is prioritized as critical to effective academic design. how can we use capacity tools to align communities around shared purpose rather than to expose gaps? how can we track retention, engagement, and belonging, and utilize those results to inspire collective accountability and transformation? these seven selected articles offer insights into these questions and inspire us to re-imagine how transformation can give educational stakeholders greater leverage in authentically representing their envisioned educational futures. transformation is not a destination but a current that flows through classrooms, campuses, and communities, inching the needle toward justice and equity issue by issue, transgressing the limits of each reform cycle. throughout each article in our fall 2025 issue, a consistent truth emerges: teacher and student agency are deeply intertwined with belonging in educational systems. when educators feel valued and trusted, they can create the conditions for students to take ownership of their learning and thrive. when learners are invited to co-construct knowledge, they gain the confidence and curiosity that sustain lifelong growth. these manuscripts remind us that systems thrive when policy is informed by practitioners’ experience, leadership nurtures authentic relationships, and pedagogy is designed for partnership. when belonging becomes an authentic practice, hope and equity inform policymaking, and transformation becomes a possibility. references amoa-danquah, p., & carbonneau, k. j. (2025). a systematic review of reviews on problembased learning and its effectiveness. current issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2293 barrett-tatum, j., scales, r. q., vaughn, m., stevens, e. y., kline, s., van wig, a., yoder, k. k., & wellman, d. (2025). the micropolitics of literacy curricula adoption: an exploratory actor network theory analysis of curricula adoption. critical issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2308 bronfenbrenner, u. (1979). the ecology of human development: experiments by nature and design. harvard university press. carmichael, j., ayirah, f. k., brown, k., & spengler, l. (2025). editorial introduction: (re)designing education for better futures: student-centered and collaborative approaches to equity and transformation. current issues in education, 26(1).https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2399 kamlish, & das, k. (2025). urban-rural stem education’s influence on creativity in public and private middle schools of pakistan. current issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2229 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2293 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2308 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2399 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2229 reed et al.: reflecting our shared educational futures current issues in education, 26(2) 6 kea, c. d., young, f., wilder, t. l., sirgany, l., & trent, s. c. (2025). leave, move, or stay? an examination of retention factors among novice dual-certified teachers of color. current issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2284 leo, a., ávila, j. a. m., wilcox, k. c., khan, m. i., schiller, k. s., & zhang, y. (2025). comparing special education and general education teachers’ stress, job demands, and resources during covid-19. current issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2241 love, b. (2019). we want to do more than survive: abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. beacon press. ndebele, c., & mbodila, m. leveraging on stakeholder involvement to create a student success culture through institutional capacity assessment at a university in south africa. current issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2310 pollock, m., kendall, r., reece, e., lopez, d., & yoshisato, m. (2022). keeping the freedom to include: teachers navigating “pushback” and marshalling “backup” to keep inclusion on the agenda. journal for leadership, equity, and research, 8(1), article 1. https://journals.sfu.ca/cvj/index.php/cvj/article/view/185 strayhorn, t. l. (2018). college students' sense of belonging: a key to educational success for all students. routledge. wilcoxen, c., langfeld, j. & o’shea, a. (2025). finding their place: exploring the sense of belonging among alternatively certified early-career educators. current issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2350 woo, a., diliberti, m. k., & steiner, e. d. (2024). policies restricting teaching about race and gender spill over into other states and localities: findings from the 2023 state of the american teacher survey. rand corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/rra1108-10.html author notes erica reed orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8077-8830 arizona state university esreed2@asu.edu celina german orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7309-7522 arizona state university cgerman5@asu.edu patricia geraghty orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-9358-7769 arizona state university patricia.geraghty@asu.edu kelly brown https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2284 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2241 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2310 https://journals.sfu.ca/cvj/index.php/cvj/article/view/185 https://journals.sfu.ca/cvj/index.php/cvj/article/view/185 https://journals.sfu.ca/cvj/index.php/cvj/article/view/185 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2350 https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/rra1108-10.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/rra1108-10.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/rra1108-10.html https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8077-8830 mailto:esreed2@asu.edu https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7309-7522 mailto:cgerman5@asu.edu https://orcid.org/0009-0007-9358-7769 mailto:patricia.geraghty@asu.edu reed et al.: reflecting our shared educational futures current issues in education, 26(2) 7 orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1795-4247 arizona state university kelly.brown1@asu.edu jami carmichael orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-7723-0646 arizona state university jlcarmic@asu.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1795-4247 mailto:kelly.brown1@asu.edu https://orcid.org/0009-0000-7723-0646 mailto:jlcarmic@asu.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ inclusive access for all current issues in education, 22(1) 1 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age inclusive access for all marcia l. dority baker & jaci lindburg university of nebraska abstract: inclusive access provides a framework for digital course material delivered via the learning management system (lms) day-one to students. this platform assists instructors with selecting current, quality, affordable material, and supports learning analytics by providing engagement data in canvas. the university of nebraska provost office has funded an initial series of grants to support open educational resources (oer) initiatives at the lincoln, kearney, and omaha campuses for several years. the vast majority of these dollars went to incentivize faculty in the adoption of oer. the oer and inclusive access pilots are ready to mature into a service supported by academic technologies in its at the university of nebraska. as the launch of the 2019-20 academic year, the services that began as pilots were ready for prime time, which was critical for scaling these services during the covid-19 pandemic. as the fall 2020 semester completes in a hybrid, de-densified environment, we have even more data to show the successful adoption of oer and inclusive access platform made a difference for both our students and instructors as courses moved online. initially there was excitement about using inclusive access platforms to help save students money and provide content the first day of the semester. now our faculty across the nu system are using oer in innovative ways to connect with their students. the academic technologies teams at the university of nebraska will continue to gather feedback from the faculty and students we support, tweaking the services as need be. the initiatives have been successful, and we look forward to hearing from more faculty members who report: “it just works!” keywords: inclusive access, affordability initiative, oer, academic technologies citation: dority baker, m. l., & lindberg, j. (2021). inclusive access for all. current issues in education, 22(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1904 this http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1904 higher education tuition and fees in china current issues in education, 22(1) 2 submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guestedited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: october/27/2020 inclusive access for all sometimes the best way forward is with a pilot program, and open educational resources (oer) and inclusive access digital course materials efforts at the university of nebraska (nu) are a classic example. the past few years have been marked with tremendous evolution and change at nebraska. a long-time blackboard user since 1998, the university system—with four campuses at kearney, omaha, lincoln, and the medical center made the decision to migrate to canvas in 2017. along with this learning management system (lms) transition, information technology services (its) divisions across three campuses and central administration aligned into a single office of information technology services (its) for the nu system. the reorganization created five shared services divisions that scale well – including security and infrastructure—and also established a community of practice (cop) for the academic technologies (at) teams. a goal of the restructure was to find a healthy 80/20 split of service where the majority of core systems for teaching and learning (such as the lms, collaborative technologies, and video capture/caption services) are the same across the nu system while also being flexible in order to align to needs of an individual campus as needed. this balance is aimed at providing enhanced support of teaching and learning, scaling services where possible, and uncovering new avenues for partnership across a common platform. finally, the university is in a similar situation to many higher education institutions in seeking to identify affordability initiatives to provide a more cost-efficient education for our students. these multiplying factors: a holistic it reorganization, realized efficiencies of services, and the launch of affordability initiatives have been a blessing in disguise, allowing our at teams to rethink how we support teaching and learning at nebraska and try new ways to scale services. in 2015, the university of nebraska provost provided the first grant funding for open education resources (oer) at the university. this was seed funding for faculty to redesign their courses incorporating oer material. since then, each campus has funded and supported oer in two-year cycles. the kearney campus was the first campus to provide grant funding to faculty in academic years 2015/16 and 2016/17. the lincoln campus participated in 2017/18 and 2018/19 and the omaha campus in 2019/20 and 2020/21. the staggered approach has allowed the academic technologies teams to support and learn from each grant cycle. it also provides growth opportunities as technology matures and communication on oer gains momentum across the nu system. this initial program was very successful, as it laid the foundation for digital-born content in courses using canvas and provided a collaborative partnership between faculty and their campus at teams, librarians, and instructional designers. the provost’s grant project also spurred discussion on how to provide digital content to students in a more affordable manner. for the first time, nu was now working together in asking the question: why are our students buying expensive textbooks if we can provide quality oer content for free? this challenged the academic technologies teams to look for other opportunities to deliver affordable course content. the university of nebraska became a member of unizin in 2017, a consortium of 25 higher education institutions that focuses on learner success, access, and affordability. our membership provides dority baker and lindburg: inclusive access for all current issues in education, 22(1) 3 new opportunities to learn from peers and influence academic technology services. it also allows nu to utilize the engage platform for inclusive access to course material via the canvas lms. inclusive access is a new course material model providing affordable course content to students day-one via the lms. as is the case with institutions across the country, more and more nu students are waiting to buy books weeks into the semester, if at all, due to the skyrocketing cost of textbooks. providing day-one access is a key element of this program, as it creates a more equitable learning environment for all students in a course. now that the university of nebraska uses canvas, we can scale inclusive access across the system, working closely with key campus partners including its, registrar’s office, bursar's office, campus bookstores, university libraries, textbook publishers, students and faculty. inclusive access content is more affordable for students and is billed directly to their student account, which allows them to utilize financial aid and/or scholarships to pay for inclusive access material. students also retain the right to participate in inclusive access course material or not (via opt-out options). the lincoln campus has piloted two inclusive access platforms. the first inclusive access option is provided by unizin through the engage tool and accessed via canvas. instructors select their course materials, which are available day-one or even prior to the official start of a term for student use and instructor review. we are learning as we go through the pilot, which is currently a manual process. this allows the academic technologies team to discuss the service with instructors in real time and involves learning more about the publishing industry. in the long-term, inclusive access will be automated until then (spring 2021) we are setting a solid foundation for the service. student analytics are available for instructors using select engage material in their canvas course. this provides data on what students are viewing/reading (or not) and annotations can be shared with the class. print material is still requested for many classes. students can print up to 50 pages at a time for all publisher titles in the engage platform. the second inclusive access option is provided by the follett university bookstore through the follett access (formerly included) tool in canvas. while this inclusive access platform started as a manual process, it is now automated for faculty to select material for their course. course materials are automatically assigned to the course on day one or before for student use and instructor review. print options are available for students as determined by the publisher. we purposely decided to pilot both options, as many instructors have established relationships with the campus bookstore and not all the course materials are available in engage. our campus is already impressed by the benefits of inclusive access provided by both options, including: 1) saving students money; 2) no decreases in student success*; 3) easy adoption processes for faculty; 4) delivering material from top publishers in canvas; and 5) no need for student access codes. the impact of inclusive access at the university of nebraska-lincoln is significant, especially when comparing the pilot program to current semester data. the fall 2019 pilot included approximately 60 courses impacting 5,405 students for an estimated savings of $379,819 in book costs. the breakdown from the two inclusive access platforms: the engage (unizin) pilot supported 23 classes of 3,116 students for an estimated savings of $242,511 in book costs. the follett access pilot supported 37 classes of 1,929 students for an estimated savings of $137,307 in book costs. the fall 2020 semester included approximately 199 courses impacting 14,352 students for an estimated savings of $849,485 in book costs. the breakdown from the two inclusive access platforms: the engage (unizin) pilot supported 28 classes of 3,808 students for an estimated savings of $205,143 in book costs. the follett access program supported 171 classes of 10,544 students for an estimated savings of $644,342 in book costs. to scale out the impact of inclusive access since we started the pilot program, the book cost savings for students on the lincoln campus dority baker and lindburg: inclusive access for all current issues in education, 22(1) 4 is an estimated $1,861,530. this includes approximately 390 classes with over 29,600 students over the course of two academic years. the university of nebraska-omaha (uno) campus also participated in the oer initiative via the provost’s seed grants. during the spring 2019 semester, the academic technologies team worked closely with campus partners in criss library to provide the first round of provost-funded grants to faculty members. in spring and summer of 2019, seven courses adopted oer as part of this grant funding program. in 2019-20, two types of oer grants were made available at the omaha campus: the same oer grants as prior year, in addition to an additional stipend being added to online course development grants that also adopt oer as part of course conversion coordinated by the office of online learning. by doubling down on incentivization options to recognize faculty’s time and effort in adopting oer, the campus was able to fund 47 additional courses in converting to oer during the 2019-20 academic year. then, as the campus kicked off the fall 2020 semester, 35 grants were awarded for oer that term. while many of these grant recipients are still completing their adoption and course redevelopment work at the time of this article’s publication, savings created for students due to oer for the omaha campus are already tracking at above $400,000. in spring 2019, a closer relationship was formed with the campus bookstore to advance the affordable course content effort even further. the campus bookstore had just begun their own effort coordinating an inclusive access day-one digital course textbook option. through partnership with academic technologies and integration with canvas, this quickly became a popular option for faculty and students on the omaha campus, saving students over $1m over the cost of traditional textbooks in just a single 2019 calendar year. by coordinating a single marketing approach to faculty members encouraging them to understand the options available to them during the course material adoption process – including oer and inclusive access – the impact of their choices on a student’s overall cost of attendance, we have been able to save students nearly $1.5m. another critical element of this project on the omaha campus was the creation of an oer coordinator position, a dual report to the library and academic technologies units. this individual serves as the primary point of contact for faculty questions in seeking to identify quality oer readily available for course implementation. the university of nebraska-omaha offers two nationally recognized online degree programs. students at the omaha campus interact regularly through online coursework, with 25% of uno’s total credit hours coming from online courses, and over 95% of students experiencing at least one online class before they graduate. support from campus leadership for this initiative is strong, with continued support for staff positions and resources to advance this initiative in support of learners and the campus’s commitment to its access mission as a metropolitan, communityengaged institution. the beauty of a pilot is the opportunity to “kick the tires” for a service. as the university of nebraska is a system member of unizin, we can share progress reports with our peers. conversation within the unizin accessibility subgroup has been beneficial, as there are two schools who have dealt with lawsuits due to accessibility issues with oer and/or inclusive access platforms. due to these concerns, they are not adopting engage after piloting due to extensive, unaddressed accessibility issues. for the nebraska system, the omaha campus is leading the review of accessibility issues with inclusive access platforms. being able to pilot a platform on one campus and review accessibility concerns from another allows us to scale services and efficiently support teaching and learning. the omaha campus will pilot the vital source platform to compare accessibility concerns with the engage inclusive access platform. dority baker and lindburg: inclusive access for all current issues in education, 22(1) 5 the provost’s office grants for oer and inclusive access pilots are ready to mature into a full, continuous service supported by academic technologies teams in nu its. the next step is scaling this as an its “big idea”. the its big idea initiative was initially a process from the university of nebraska provost, in which faculty participated in helping to plan for universitywide strategic funding priorities. its launched its own big idea process in 2019-20, seeking proposals from throughout our division bringing forward innovative ideas that are: 1) strategic; 2) impactful at the multiple campuses we serve and not just one environment; 3) forward-facing with a noticeable impart to faculty, students, and staff one that is visible and clearly understood by our users; 4) not a product or system name, but focused on why we would do this work. the oer proposal, entitled “inclusive access for all” was selected from 43 proposals as a finalist for the its big idea initiative. we are excited to deliver enhanced services with inclusive access, and look forward to communicating how this impacts student success at nebraska. as we entered the covid-19 pandemic in march 2020, we were fortunate, as the services that began as pilots were ready for prime time. there was already excitement about using inclusive access platforms to help save students money and provide content the first day of the semester. our faculty across the nu system are using oer in innovative ways to connect with their students. as our campus leaders rapidly search for all possible avenues to engage, retain, and motivate students throughout the pandemic, oer has emerged yet again as an outstanding option for delivering value, efficiency, convenience, and a clear, positive impact to a student’s cost of attendance. toward the beginning of the pandemic, the nu its organization pursued additional external grant funding to aid in continuing our grant programs for faculty, and were recently awarded an additional $84,000 from women investing in nebraska, a philanthropic organization, of which the nu provost’s office matched funds for a total of $168,000 new dollars to align to faculty’s continued adoption of oer and inclusive access options. as we enter the spring 2021 semester, we are working closely with student governments and faculty senates to gain approval for the addition of course marking in the student information system, and a course scheduling tool to add visibility and transparency to students and their families. this functionality will allow individuals to search for which courses are using oer and inclusive access at the time in which they register for courses, rather than just before a course is scheduled to begin. what started as a good faith effort from the nu provost and the kearney campus back in 2015 has become a bona fide strategy for the university of nebraska and nu its, who are now tracking $4.9m in total savings to students as a result of this initiative. as covid-19 brought an inevitable digital transformation to campus communities, the oer and inclusive access programs were cast into the spotlight and the hard work in piloting, planning, and building an infrastructure to support this activity became apparent in delivering obvious value. without a strong pilot in which to scale, these types of savings would not have been possible in the timeframe in which they were achieved if we needed to start from scratch. it would have also been difficult, if not impossible, to launch our oer and inclusive access pilots during the pandemic due to competing priorities and the staff time needed for more general instructional support as our nu campuses pivoted to remote learning. the academic technologies teams at the university of nebraska will continue to gather feedback from the faculty and students we support, tweaking the services as need be. oftentimes, the greatest feedback we receive is when we save a student money or a faculty member time. the impact has been highlighted by valued faculty members across our campuses, and we look forward to hearing from more faculty members who report: “it just works!” dority baker and lindburg: inclusive access for all current issues in education, 22(1) 6 references hilton, j. (2016). open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions. educational technology research and development, 64(4), 573–590. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-016-9434-9 university of nebraska-omaha. (2019, june 23). uno online degrees among best in nation. retrieved from https://www.unomaha.edu/news/2016/01/uno-online-degrees-among-bestin-nation.php unizin. (2019, july 17). unizin. retrieved from https://unizin.org author notes marcia l. dority baker assistant director, academic technologies university of nebraska, lincoln campus mdoritybaker@nebraska.edu jaci lindburg, phd assistant vice president, it strategy & learning technologies university of nebraska, omaha campus jlindburg@nebraska.edu guest editor notes sean m. leahy, phd arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au http://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-016-9434-9 https://www.unomaha.edu/news/2016/01/uno-online-degrees-among-best-in-nation.php https://www.unomaha.edu/news/2016/01/uno-online-degrees-among-best-in-nation.php https://unizin.org/ mailto:mdoritybaker@nebraska.edu mailto:jlindburg@nebraska.edu mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au dority baker and lindburg: inclusive access for all current issues in education, 22(1) 7 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf volume 8, number 14 june 23, 2005 issn 1099-839x teacher isolation: how mentoring programs can help kelly l. heider indiana university of pennsylvania teacher attrition has become a very serious problem in the united states in recent years. studies have shown that many talented, new teachers are leaving the profession early in their careers due to feelings of isolation. in response to the alarming turnover rate, school districts have adopted mentoring programs which have been successful at making beginning teachers feel less isolated. this article examines four such mentoring programs and their potential to reduce teacher isolation. introduction nearly 540,000 teachers moved to other schools or left the teaching profession in 2000— many of them due to feelings of isolation (carroll & fulton, 2004). despite investing four, sometimes five, years of their time and money in a college education, spending hundreds of hours observing teachers in the classroom, completing a semester as a student teacher, and obtaining a job in a very competitive field, forty-six percent of new teachers nationwide leave the profession within the first five years of service (ingersoll, 2002). in fact, the annual turnover rate for teachers is close to four percent higher than the average of all other professions (carroll & fulton, 2004). in response to this high rate of attrition, many state education associations have begun to focus on solving the problem of teacher isolation through formal mentoring programs. in fact, formal mentoring has become a very popular teacher induction tool in recent years. in 2001, thirty-eight states were offering some kind of mentoring or induction program for new teachers (hirsch, koppich & knapp, 2001). the vermont department of education, for example, requires each of its schools to provide mentoring support for new teachers throughout their first two years of employment. participation in a mentoring program is also required to be eligible for a level ii teaching license (vermont project for accomplished teaching, 2003). other states, such as georgia, louisiana, montana, texas, wisconsin, california, ohio, washington, and new york, have also been experimenting with induction programs that include some form of mentoring with promising results (see table 1). table 1 positive effects of mentoring programs on new teacher retention rates program name location retention rate armstrong atlantic state university branch of the pathways to teaching careers savannah, georgia 100 percent over five years framework for inducting, retaining, and supporting teachers thibodaux parish, louisiana 88 percent over three years beginning teacher support program montana 97 percent over one year teacher induction program at texas a&m university corpus christi, texas 100 percent over five years teaching incentives pilot program wisconsin 100 percent over one year new teacher project santa cruz, 95 percent over current issues in education vol. 8 no. 14 california twelve years toledo, ohio ’s teacher induction model columbus, ohio seattle, washington rochester, new york 98 percent over one year 90 percent over one year increased by 70 percent the first year note: adapted from the national governors association center for best practices. (2002). mentoring and supporting new teachers. washington dc: national governors association. by 2013, 3.5 million new teachers will need to be hired to support increased enrollment in public schools and to replace retiring teachers (hull, 2004). without good mentoring programs that reduce teacher isolation and encourage teachers to stay in the profession, it will be very difficult for school districts, especially low-income school districts, to fill these positions and keep them filled. in this article, we will examine four different types of mentoring practices, including telementoring, mentoring by a veteran teacher, novice teacher learning communities, and peer coaching and their potential for decreasing or eliminating teacher isolation (see table 2). table 2 some strengths and weaknesses of four mentoring programs program strengths weaknesses telementoring new teachers can get help or feedback at times that accommodate their busy schedules. there is a lack of faceto-face contact with mentors. mentoring by a veteran teacher there are numerous face-to-face interactions between mentors and new teachers. mentors are often untrained or have different teaching assignments or philosophies. novice teacher learning communities all participants are new teachers who are empathetic to each others’ problems and concerns. it is difficult to build trust when participants are only able to meet when busy schedules permit. peer coaching it promotes reflective practice in a nonthreatening environment. it has never really caught on in the u.s. because teachers have very little free time to observe colleagues. reducing teacher isolation through telementoring every year, 3.5 trillion e-mail messages are sent—many of them between employees of corporations. this year, daily e-mail correspondence is projected to reach 36 billion (public interest registry, 2003). big business has been very successful at building relationships through e-mail. in fact, “relationship building is precisely what drove the expansion of the internet” (public interest registry, 2003, para. 2). educators can learn from this success and use e-mail to build collegial relationships between new teachers through a process called telementoring. telementoring involves electronically connecting a group of new teachers by using a list server. the list server allows beginning teachers to voice their concerns, share valuable teaching resources, get advice about dealing with difficult students, share strategies for time management and parent conferences, and exchange creative lesson plans (eisenman & thornton, 1999). in 2003, lynda abbott conducted a study at the university of texas at austin involving beginning teachers’ experiences with telementoring as learner-centered professional development. her multiple-case study followed ten new teachers who used telementoring services sponsored by the university of texas’ wings (welcoming interns and novices with guidance and support) program for fifteen to twenty-four months. e-mails were sent between beginning teachers and their mentors at least once a week, and these e-mails, in addition to interviews with the new teachers, information submitted by the new teachers when they were selecting their mentors, profiles written by the mentors, and interviews with wings staff, served as data that were analyzed and organized into themes. these themes developed into three interesting findings. first, it was discovered that the participants preferred online mentoring support because they were embarrassed to ask for help from teachers or supervisors in their own districts. second, the new teachers were pleased with the amount of professional and personal support they received from their telementors. not only did they get practical teaching tips and pointers on assimilation into school culture, but the beginning teachers received care, empathy, and optimism. in fact, seven of the ten mentoring relationships grew into “collaboratively reflective professional-development exchanges” (abbott, 2003, p. viii). finally, wings staff members were instrumental in keeping an open line of communication between new teachers and their mentors by providing much-needed technical support. other new teachers who have used telementoring report both positive and negative feelings toward the process. on a positive note, teachers who participated in telementoring felt less isolated (eisenman & thornton, 1999). because most schools are departmentalized or divided into grade levels, and ever-increasing duties leave little time for teacher isolation: how mentoring programs can help 3 communication between teachers, there is a tendency for beginning teachers to adopt a self-reliant philosophy (lortie, 1975). telementoring not only allows new teachers to communicate freely with other colleagues, but it enables them to obtain assistance or feedback at times that accommodate their busy schedules. despite the benefits associated with telementoring, some beginning teachers are not satisfied with the process. criticism focuses on one area in particular—lack of face-to-face contact with mentors. in many cases, students never meet their mentors. “it feels a little odd not knowing what they look like,” (woodd, 1999, p. 142) ann, a telementoring participant, states. this dehumanization of communication has left a small percentage of teachers feeling just as isolated as they did before telementoring. however, most new teachers report feeling less isolated after being given the opportunity to participate in telementoring (woodd, 1999) reducing teacher isolation through mentoring by a veteran teacher unlike telementoring, mentoring by a veteran teacher involves numerous face-to-face interactions between beginning teachers and their mentors. mentoring by a veteran teacher is the most traditional type of mentoring program. in this program, a veteran teacher is chosen to coach and provide support for a new teacher during his/her first few years of service. since veteran teachers can be very influential in shaping the philosophies, teaching styles, and attitudes of the novices they mentor, it is very important to choose them carefully. according to tom ganser (1995), the director of field experiences and director of the beginning teacher assistance program at the university of wisconsin-whitewater, there are four criteria for choosing veteran mentors: competency, enthusiasm, an ability to work with adults, and professionalism. in order to pair mentors who meet these criteria with beginning teachers, however, other factors need to be considered. new teachers and their mentors should share similar teaching assignments, whether the similarities occur in content or grade level. problems that beginning teachers encounter are often specific to one of these factors, and mentors can be more helpful if they are experiencing similar conditions. also, it is important that new teachers and their mentors share a similar philosophy of education. if philosophies are too different, communication and honesty can become strained, resulting in a breakdown of trust in the relationship. finally, beginning teachers and mentors need to have similar schedules, with hall duties, lunches, or plan periods occurring at the same times, to facilitate the mentoring process. without time to talk, the mentor relationship is useless, and the new teacher becomes isolated, once again (ganser, 1995). although careful pairing of beginning teachers and mentors is important, it isn’t enough to ensure mentoring success. to be effective, mentors need to be trained. a study conducted by evertson and smithey (2000) found that beginning teachers were more successful after being mentored by trained veterans than they were if their mentors had not been trained. “the mere presence of a mentor is not enough; the mentor’s knowledge of how to support new teachers and skill at providing guidance are also crucial” (holloway, 2001, p. 85). the muscatine community school district in muscatine, ohio won the 2002 nea-saturn/uaw partnership award for its successful induction program which includes thorough training for veteran mentors. during the summer, every new mentor receives a full day of instruction followed by eight after-school training sessions throughout the academic year. training sessions teach coaching skills and stress the importance of confidentiality in order to build trust between mentors and beginning teachers. following the advice of tom ganser, veterans are selected to mentor new teachers based on their past teaching performance and assignments (o’neill, 2004). with proper selection and training, mentoring programs can foster strong professional relationships that benefit not only the beginning teachers, but the mentors themselves. in an article entitled veteran teacher transformation in a collaborative mentoring relationship (2001), june zuckerman tells the stories of three experienced teachers who felt that their own careers had been revitalized by serving as mentors to new teachers. ganser (1995) cautions, however, against administrators using mentoring as a means to improve the performance of struggling veteran teachers. this practice can backfire, resulting in the poor training or resignation of a new teacher. one must always keep in mind that the goal of a mentoring program is to transform novice teachers into successful professionals. according to dennis sparks (2002) of the national staff development council, this goal cannot be reached unless new teachers feel a strong connection to colleagues. in fact, the national commission on teaching and america’s future (2002) claims that teacher induction programs are more effective if beginning teachers are paired with veterans. the organization cites several states that have been successful at reducing teacher turnover by designing induction programs that include mentoring by a current issues in education vol. 8 no. 14 veteran teacher. for example, california’s beginning teacher support and assessment program (btsa) reduced teacher attrition rates by two-thirds (national governors association, 2002), and districts in ohio and new york had similar results when they gave veterans release time to mentor new teachers (darling-hammond, 2003). connecticut’s beginning educator support and training (best) program not only improved teacher retention with the use of veteran mentors but contributed to better student performance on the state’s assessment test (o’neill, 2004). in order to improve student performance in schools, districts have to be able to retain good teachers. pairing veterans with new teachers can prevent isolationism and help beginning teachers complete a successful indoctrination. “good teaching thrives in a supportive learning environment. collegial interchange, not isolation, must become the norm for teachers” (nctaf, 2002). reducing teacher isolation through novice teacher learning communities another way to prevent isolationism and create a supportive, collegial environment for new teachers is to develop novice teacher learning communities. like telementoring, novice teacher learning communities allow groups of beginning teachers to come together for support and guidance. however, the new teachers actually meet face-to-face several times throughout the school year rather than communicating only through e-mail. for example, between august 1995 and june 1999, two stanford university researchers and twelve new teachers formed a learning community that met eleven times per school year for reflection on teaching practices. each meeting was held at a teacher’s house with dinner followed by two discussion sessions. the first session was rather informal, lasted thirty to forty-five minutes, and consisted of small talk, updates on current classroom practice, and discussion of individual stumbling blocks. in the second session, discussion became more formal and focused on inquiry. each new teacher was responsible for bringing an artifact to share with the group, such as a student’s project, a formal evaluation, a class videotape, etc. the new teacher then received feedback from the other members of the learning community relevant to the artifact (meyer, 2002). the results of this five-year study were quite powerful. participants compared their relationships with colleagues in their schools to the relationships that developed with the teachers in their learning community and found the learning community relationships to be closer, more supportive, and more focused. colleagues in the new teachers’ schools were apathetic when it came to discussing or questioning teaching practices, but the opposite was true in the learning community. one participant said: the way my faculty interacts is very different from the way this group interacts, and that is because people don’t know each other as well, or don’t respect each others’ ideas as much or are not interested in learning what other people are doing in their classrooms. (meyer, 2002, p. 33) all of the beginning teachers agreed that they felt isolated in their schools but connected in their learning community. a similar study was conducted by sandy schuck at the university of technology in sydney, australia in 2003. eighteen beginning teachers volunteered to be members of a novice teacher learning community for one academic year. unlike the participants in meyer’s five year study, the subjects in schuck’s study also communicated through attendance at workshops, online discussion boards, e-mail, fax, and telephone. schuck found that her participants liked having different means of communicating and valued the learning community for the support it gave them when they were unable to get the help they needed in their schools. however, subjects participated in learning community activities on an irregular basis and gave several reasons for their poor attendance including lack of time, concerns about confidentiality, and lack of trust in learning community members. like the participants in the telementoring studies, the new teachers in schuck’s learning community also preferred face-to-face contact to online interactions but appreciated the ability to communicate between meetings and workshops using technology. overall, schuck’s novice teacher learning community helped beginning teachers reflect on their teaching, share resources and techniques, and develop professional relationships, thus reducing feelings of isolation. reducing teacher isolation through peer coaching in novice teacher learning communities, large numbers of beginning teachers get together several times a school year to share ideas, discuss problems, or confide in each other. in peer coaching, two or three teachers with varying levels of experience observe each others’ lessons, share strategies, discuss solutions to problems, or conduct research in the classroom on a weekly or even daily basis (robbins, 1991). because the relationship is confidential, participants are not being formally evaluated as part of the process, and peers meet and interact on a regular basis, new teachers who are part teacher isolation: how mentoring programs can help 5 of a peer coaching relationship find it much easier to confide in their fellow mentors. as a result, they build closer relationships with their colleagues and feel like they are part of a team. other benefits of peer coaching include a heightened awareness of one’s own strengths and weaknesses, an openness to new ideas, an increase in self-efficacy, higher motivation levels, and a shift from subject-centered instruction to student-centered instruction (slater & simmons, 2001). participants in a university study conducted by jenkins and veal in 2002 experienced all of these benefits and more. after being trained in the methods of peer coaching in a secondary pedagogy course, eight preservice teachers used those methods to complete field experiences required in their elementary pedagogy course. each of the eight preservice teachers taught kindergarten, second, or fourth grade classes over a two-month period while being observed by a peer who was not teaching. after the observations, the teachers and peer coaches had private conferences which began with positive comments from the coaches. teachers initiated all discussion about their lessons with the coaches interjecting only to ask for clarification or encourage reflection. this entire process was repeated fifteen times, until each participant had served as teacher eight times and coach eight times. being able to discuss their teaching in a nonthreatening environment made the experience enjoyable for all the participants. in addition, all eight preservice teachers felt that their pedagogy improved and said that they saw themselves using the skills and techniques they had learned while peer coaching throughout their teaching careers (jenkins & veal, 2002). unfortunately, peer coaching is not a popular mentoring practice in the united states. most teachers in america never get to see their colleagues teach or have colleagues observe their teaching. observations are almost always done by administrators a few times a year in a formal, threatening manner which results in little reflection on the part of the teacher. in china, japan, new zealand, and switzerland, however, new teachers often observe other new teachers, mentors, teachers in the same grade or subject, and teachers of other grades or subjects (britton, raizen, paine & huntley, 2000). by observing other new teachers, beginning teachers can support one another. it is important to note, however, that peer coaching should never be limited to new teachers. best practices are usually found in the more experienced teachers’ classrooms. observing teachers in the same grade or subject area increases content knowledge and improves pedagogy, but there are also benefits to observing teachers in other grades or subject areas. new teachers who observe professionals who teach outside of their grade or subject can pay less attention to content and more attention to classroom management (britton, raizen, paine & huntley, 2000). the national commission on teaching and america’s future (2002) writes, “the era of solo teaching in isolated classrooms is over. to support quality teaching our schools must support strong professional learning communities” (p. 13). peer coaching is a means by which america’s schools can overcome isolation and build collegial environments that improve teacher retention rates and, ultimately, classroom instruction conclusion studies have shown that mentoring programs such as telementoring, mentoring by a veteran teacher, novice teacher learning communities, and peer coaching keep new teachers motivated and enthusiastic while increasing their skills and selfefficacy. as a result, schools that employ these practices experience less turnover (darlinghammond, 2003). reducing turnover is important because it is costly for both school districts and their students. the average cost to recruit, hire, prepare and lose a teacher is $50,000.00 (carroll & fulton, 2004). this adds up to a lot of money that could be spent on students and programs designed to raise teacher job satisfaction. with so many qualified teachers leaving the profession, students are experiencing a substandard education in a considerable number of school districts. simply stated, teacher turnover is disruptive to the education of students. in fact, bob chase (2000) writes: nea members know that high staff turnover has devastating consequences for children. research shows that the single most important factor in a child’s education is the quality of his or her teacher— and quality depends in large measure upon years of experience. (p. 5) in order to give students the best education we can possibly give them, we need to encourage good novice teachers to stick around and work at becoming great veteran teachers. telementoring, mentoring by a veteran teacher, novice teacher learning communities, and peer coaching can help beginning teachers realize their potential and reach this goal. linda darling-hammond (2003) contends: school systems can create a magnetic effect when they make it clear that they are committed to finding, keeping, and supporting good teachers. these teachers become a magnet for others who seek environments in which they can learn from their current issues in education vol. 8 no. 14 colleagues and create success for their students. (p. 12-13) clearly, mentoring programs help school districts create these nurturing environments which reduce teacher isolation, and, in turn, inspire new teachers. references abbott, l. 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(2003). getting help from the outside: developing a support network for beginning teachers. journal of educational enquiry, 4(1), 49-67. slater, c., & simmons, d. (2001). the design and implementation of a peer coaching program. american secondary education, 29(3), 67 76. sparks, d. (2002). high-performing cultures increase teacher retention. retrieved october 23, 2003 , from the national staff development web site: http://www.nsdc.org/library/results/res12 02spar.html vermont project for accomplished teaching. (2003). why mentoring? retrieved october 23, 2003 , from http://www.vtworldclassteaching.org/why% 20mentoring.htm woodd, m. (1999). the challenges of telementoring. journal of european industrial training, 23 (3), 140-144. zuckerman, j. (2001). veteran teacher transformation in a collaborative mentoring relationship. american secondary education, 29(4), 18 29. http://teachnet.edb.utexas.edu/~lynda_abbott/abbott-dissertation.pdf http://teachnet.edb.utexas.edu/~lynda_abbott/abbott-dissertation.pdf http://www.pir.org/resources/articles/gilbert http://www.nsdc.org/library/results/res12-02spar.html http://www.nsdc.org/library/results/res12-02spar.html http://www.vtworldclassteaching.org/why%20mentoring.htm http://www.vtworldclassteaching.org/why%20mentoring.htm teacher isolation: how mentoring programs can help 7 current issues in education vol. 8 no. 14 2005 article citation heider, k.l. (2005, june 23). teacher isolation: how mentoring programs can help . current issues in education [on-line], 8(14). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number14/ author notes kelly l. heider certified english teacher and library media specialist burrell high school in lower burrell, pa doctoral candidate indiana university of pennsylvania in indiana, pa heider@adelphia.net (home) burhslib@wiu.k12.pa.us (work) note from the fall 2016 executive editor, constantin schreiber october 6, 2016. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation heider, k. l. (2005). teacher isolation: how mentoring programs can help. current issues in education, 8(14). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1686 file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number14/index.html mailto:heider@adelphia.net mailto:burhslib@wiu.k12.pa.us http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1686 current issues in education 26(2) volume 26, issue 2 november 20th, 2025 issn 1099-839x comparing special education and general education teachers’ stress, job demands, and resources during covid-19 aaron leo university at albany (suny), school of education josé antonio mola ávila universidad del norte, department of economics kristen c. wilcox university at albany (suny), school of education maria i. khan university at albany (suny), school of education kathryn schiller university at albany (suny), school of education yunxiao zhang university at albany (suny), school of education abstract: recent scholarship has demonstrated the negative impacts of the pandemic on educators. however, it is less clear whether special education teachers (sets) incurred more severe effects. this mixed-methods study draws on a survey of 419 teachers from 38 schools in new york state to identify differential impacts of the pandemic on sets. our analysis found that sets reported lower levels of stress compared to general education teachers and perceived that greater support was available to them. open-ended responses provided a space for sets to describe the experience of teaching during the pandemic and identify particular stressors and challenges they faced. these findings hold important implications for the set workforce as stress is a major factor linked to the educator shortages facing many schools. ensuring that sets are supported and retained is critical leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 2 to ensure that the needs of students receiving special education services are being met in the postpandemic era. keywords: mixed-methods, educator stress, jd-r framework, teacher turnover, students with disabilities citation: leo, a., ávila, j.a.m., wilcox, k.c., khan, m.i., schiller, k.s., & zhang, y. (2025). comparing special education and general education teachers’ stress, job demands, and resources during covid-19. current issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2241 accepted: 18/06/2025 comparing special education and general education teachers’ stress, job demands, and resources during covid-19 teaching has been characterized as a profession associated with high levels of stress, which may be mitigated by appropriate and adequate supports (kush et al., 2022; kyriacou, 2001; pugliesi, 1999; wilcox & lawson, 2018). during the covid-19 pandemic, however, researchers noted the increased demands placed on teachers and reports of heightened stress levels across the profession (hirshberg et al., 2023; kush et al., 2022; leo et al., 2022; ozamizextebarria et al., 2021). various factors have been identified as exacerbating educators’ stress levels including weakened school support systems, fraught community-school relationships, and new and difficult work-related challenges such as the need to rapidly transition to online learning during school closures and comply with social distancing mandates when schools reopened for in-person instruction (hartney & finger, 2022; pressley & ha, 2022; wilcox et al., 2023). while this scholarship has demonstrated the negative impacts of the pandemic on general education teachers, it is less clear whether special education teachers (sets) – who have historically reported relatively high levels of stress, experienced pandemic-related challenges differently (boe et al., 1997; brunsting et al., 2014; mcgrew et al., 2023). to explore this issue, this mixed-methods study draws on a survey of 419 (344 general education and 75 special education) teachers from 38 schools in new york state. through the jobs demands-resources (jd-r) model (bakker & demerouti, 2007), this analysis focuses on sets’ reported stress levels as well as perceptions of support in their working contexts relative to their general education counterparts. statistical analyses found that sets reported lower levels of stress compared to general education teachers. specifically, sets reported lower levels of work stress and covid-related stress, reported experiencing fewer demands and stressors, and perceived that greater supports and resources were available to them. open-ended survey responses provided a space for sets to describe the experience of teaching during the pandemic in their own words and identify particular stressors and challenges they faced. these responses serve as a reminder that, although quantitative analysis showed that sets reported less stress than general education teachers, https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2241 leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 3 qualitative analysis indicated they nonetheless experienced stressful working conditions during the pandemic. these findings hold important implications for maintaining and growing the educator workforce, as stress is a major factor linked to the teacher shortages facing many school districts, shortages that were more severe for those working in special education prior to the pandemic (carver-thomas & darling-hammond, 2017). ensuring that sets are supported and retained will be crucial to ensure that the needs of students receiving special education services are being met in the post-pandemic era (brandenburg et al., 2020). literature review special education teachers’ stress decades of research have demonstrated that teaching has been – and continues to be – a stressful occupation which can impact educators’ mental and physical health in negative ways (greenglass & burke, 1988; kush et al., 2022; kyriacou, 2001). teacher stress may be defined as “the experience by a teacher of unpleasant, negative emotions, such as anger, tension, frustration, or depression, resulting from some aspect of work as a teacher” (kyriacou, 2001, p. 28) and is closely linked to heightened rates of turnover, burnout, and workforce attrition (harmsen et al., 2018; schaufeli & bakker, 2004). although sets regularly experience great satisfaction and joy from their work (fish & stephens, 2010), many of those working in the field of special education have also reported relatively high rates of stress (dewey et al., 2017; lavian, 2015; mcgrew et al., 2023). due, in part, to these stress levels, sets are vulnerable to burnout and exhaustion, which contribute to high rates of attrition and turnover (brunsting et al., 2014; carver-thomas & darling-hammond, 2017). as a result, schools across the united states have long struggled to fill special education teaching positions (boe, 2006; mason-williams et al., 2020). for instance, billingsley & bettini (2019), citing data from the national coalition on personnel shortages in special education and related services, noted that 49 states in the united states report shortages of special educators. a recent survey from the national center for education statistics found that “72% of public schools with vacancies in special education experienced difficulty filling the position with a fully certified teacher for the upcoming school year” (school pulse panel, 2024). factors identified as contributing to the stress and burnout of sets include lack of support from administrators, overwhelming caseloads, and feelings of isolation from colleagues (ansley et al., 2019; billingsley & bettini, 2019). role ambiguity and role conflict – where educators lack clarity about their job responsibilities or where multiple job demands are incompatible with one another – have also been cited by researchers as important factors in the stress of sets (bettini et al., 2020; wiśniewski & gargiulo, 1997). novice sets also report higher burnout than their veteran colleagues (bettini et al., 2017). sets may also incur stress if they are not provided the adequate supports and resources needed to meet the unique needs of their students (billingsley et al., 2020). scholars have found, for instance, that sets working with higher numbers of students with emotional or behavioral disturbances are more prone to burnout (brunsting et al., 2023; gilmour & wehby, 2020). in addition, sets who work in classrooms with students who have multiple disabilities or where students have a range of different disabilities may also incur higher rates of stress (billingsley & bettini, 2019; kaff, 2004). as with their general education counterparts, sets also cite increasing workloads, pressures from students’ family members, and inadequate salary and job insecurity as sources of leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 4 stress and job dissatisfaction (cancio et al., 2018; hester et al., 2020). lastly, the wider sociopolitical, cultural, and policy context can impact sets’ levels of stress (bettini et al., in press). for instance, bettini et al. (in press) note that changing teacher preparation programs, licensure processes, and shifts in views towards disabilities have all recently impacted sets’ working conditions and partnerships with their general education colleagues. educator stress during a pandemic evidence mounts that the pandemic was associated with a rise in educators’ stress levels (hirshberg et al., 2023; kush et al., 2022; ozamiz-extebarria et al., 2021; schiller et al., 2023). it has been documented that during periods of school closure, educators encountered a range of unfamiliar challenges as they were required to rapidly shift to remote instruction (kim & asbury, 2020; klapproth et al., 2020). many educators struggled to learn new technology needed for remote instruction and doubted their capacity to effectively teach students remotely (ferren, 2021; pressley & ha, 2022). other research indicated that educators worried about students’ safety and wellbeing during the pandemic and often felt isolated from them (herman et al., 2021). lastly, educators reported unique challenges in their attempts to engage families during the pandemic, as such efforts often occurred amid community-school relations already strained by issues related to educational inequities, pandemic mandates, and polarizing curricular content debates (hartney & finger, 2022; leo et al., 2024; novianti & garzia, 2020). research also suggests that sets, in particular, were severely impacted by the pandemic due to the unique needs of the students they served (marshall et al., 2020; o’connor bones et al., 2022). in a recent survey of 468 sets across the u.s., 38.4% met clinical criteria for generalized anxiety disorder, a rate 12.4 times greater than the u.s. population; and 37.6% met the criteria for major depressive disorder, a rate 5.6 times greater than the population (cormier et al., 2021). similarly, a study conducted by mcgrew et al. (2023) found that of nearly 500 sets surveyed, 62% were classified as “severely burned out” (p. 1). like their general education counterparts, research has shown that many sets reported a lack of control over their working conditions and experienced excessive worry, anxiety, and stress during the pandemic (glessner & johnson, 2020). sets also felt constrained in their ability to implement best practices for their students and worried about meeting their needs, especially during school closures (hirsch et al., 2022). a survey of 332 sets, for example, reported a significant decrease in levels of efficacy and sense of school connectedness during periods of remote teaching (womack & montiero, 2023). results from the american educator panels conducted in spring 2020 reported similar results: 30% of respondents reported difficulty receiving adequate support for their students with "mild or moderate” disabilities. for students with “severe” disabilities, this number was nearly one half (hamilton et al., 2020). and a survey of 744 school districts across the country conducted by the american institutes for research (jackson & bowdon, 2020) found that over half reported challenges complying with the individuals with disabilities education act (idea). these challenges were even more severe in districts with higher proportions of economically disadvantaged students (jackson & bowdon, 2020). while some research described how sets made adaptations such as conducting individualized education plans (iep) meetings virtually (jenkins & walker, 2021), remote learning arrangements made it particularly difficult for sets to meet the needs of their students. as a united nations policy brief states, children with special needs were the “least likely to benefit” from remote learning (2020, p. 12). researchers note that online learning environments leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 5 cannot provide the structured routines of a classroom that are most beneficial for students with special needs (hurwitz et al., 2022; pozas & letzel-alt, 2023; smith, 2020). moreover, assessments used to identify students with special needs and measure their academic progress are not validated for virtual use (hass & leung, 2021). as schools shifted to online learning, families of children with special needs became responsible for assisting or leading their education; a task for which they were often unprepared and underequipped (asaro-saddler et al., 2023; navas et al., 2022). these new duties were more challenging for families already struggling economically and for caregivers who continued to work full-time during quarantine (kantamneni, 2020). school closures also meant that students with special needs could not regularly access professional services and specialized equipment (greenway & eaton-thomas, 2020). as students with special needs are disproportionately likely to be economically disadvantaged, building closures also meant that many students with special needs experienced food insecurity as they could not access school lunches (brandenburg et al., 2020). conceptual framework job demands-resources model (j-dr) this study utilizes the j-dr model (bakker & demerouti, 2007; demerouti et al., 2001) to investigate sets’ experiences of stress and support during the covid-19 pandemic. the jdr model focuses on the relationship between the demands workers face at their jobs and the resources on which they may draw to successfully accomplish work-related tasks. when demands outweigh resources, employees are more likely to experience burnout and exhaustion as well as a range of negative mental and physical health-related impacts (demerouti et al., 2001). according to this framework, job demands are defined as “physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job that require sustained physical and/or psychological (cognitive and emotional) effort or skills and are therefore associated with certain physiological and/or psychological costs” (bakker & demerouti, 2007, p. 312). bakker & demerouti (2007) define job resources as “those physical, social or organizational aspects of the job that may do any of the following: (a) be functional in achieving work goals; (b) reduce job demands and the associated physiological and psychological costs; (c) stimulate personal growth and development” (p. 312). these two fundamental concepts (i.e., job demands and job resources) are purposely conceived broadly as the model is meant to encompass a range of demands and resources, aspects which can differ greatly depending on the circumstances of the profession and job context. for instance, resources might be operationalized as job control, social support, financial rewards, career opportunities, or positive feedback from superiors (schaufeli, 2017; siergrist, 1996). to further investigate potential buffering effects of varied resources, xanthopoulou et al. (2009) suggested additional personal resources and characteristics to the model. these resources might include self-efficacy, optimism, and self-esteem. two basic outcomes are associated with the interactions of job demands and resources. in a context where job demands are excessive and resources are lacking, workers will incur stress which can lead to negative impacts not only on the worker in the form of burnout, exhaustion, and other health problems, but also for the organization as well (bakker & demerouti, 2007). in contrast, workers who are provided with more abundant resources can withstand more of the negative impacts of job demands on their psychosocial wellbeing (bottiani et al., 2019). such leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 6 situations may also increase motivation and work engagement among workers which can lead to longer organizational commitment and improved work performance (taris & schaufeli, 2016). through the lens of the jd-r model, this study investigates the experiences of stress incurred by special education and general education teachers as well as their perceptions of demands and resources provided to them. the following research questions guided this analysis: 1. how do sets’ reported levels of work-related stress during the pandemic in relation to perceived demands and resources compare with their general education counterparts? 2. how do sets characterize their experiences of stress, job demands, and the availability of resources? methods data collection this research is drawn from a mixed-methods study (involving statistical analysis of survey data and qualitative analysis of open-ended responses) exploring workplace stress and job satisfaction disparities among teachers working in schools serving different subpopulations of students (i.e., ethnically, linguistically, and socioeconomically) and in different types of communities (i.e., urban, suburban, rural) across new york state during the covid-19 pandemic1 (wilcox et al., 2022). after institutional review board (irb) approval was granted by the university at albany (suny) (approval number 21e027), data collection began in april 2021 using a qualtrics survey of instructional and support staff in schools throughout new york state. the survey questions were developed by an interdisciplinary research team, with some questions derived from other validated survey instruments and research on employee turnover (bothma & roodt, 2013). the survey questions (see appendix a) focused on understanding how the covid-19 pandemic impacted educators’ lives including stress, intent to leave their job, available resources and supports, and changes to work-life balance. specifically, a range of likert scale items prompted educators to disclose how frequently they experienced feelings of stress and negative emotions due to their experiences in schools during the pandemic. the survey also asked respondents to indicate their perception of resources and supports available to them through the pandemic. the final, open-ended question asked: “please provide any comments you would like about stress, your job satisfaction, or your perceptions of the effects of the pandemic on your life and work as an educator.” after several rounds of survey recruitment over the period from march-june 2021, we had collected 904 survey responses from teachers and support staff who worked in 38 different schools with an overall educator response rate of 33.1%. while the sample is not representative of all educators in new york state (as we discuss in more detail in the limitations section), our team was able to compare the responses of special education and general education teachers from whom we received responses. table 1 presents general demographic information about sample schools. 1 a full report on the methods and procedures used for this research is available on the researchers’ website: https://ny-kids.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/nykids.covid_.study_.methods.final_.pdf https://ny-kids.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/nykids.covid_.study_.methods.final_.pdf leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 7 table 1 demographic information about sample schools2 teacher role number of schools economically disadvantaged white hispanic/ latino african american/ black english language learners general education teacher (get) only 10 36% 83% 5% 3% 3% special education teacher and get 28 34% 78% 7% 4% 3% new york state average n/a 57% 41% 28% 16% 10% out of 38 participating schools, 28 schools had special education teachers who responded to our survey. participating schools were located in 15 counties and communities ranging from distant rural areas to small cities. data analysis survey responses among 419 teachers (75 special education and 344 general education teachers) were downloaded from qualtrics and analyzed in spss (ibm, 2020). first, the research team created and maintained a directory that included a copy of the survey and codebook. the research team then prepared raw data for analysis using school identifier variables, and codes were run to check for missing values. each set of research questions required different analytic strategies so that, for each analysis, syntax was annotated to indicate author, date, and purpose of analysis. robustness checks were also employed, such as cronbach’s alpha for internal consistency. six scales were initially constructed to reflect educators’ negative feelings about their jobs such that higher values indicated greater stress and lower job satisfaction, which are described in table 2, along with summary statistics and bivariate pairwise correlations. two of these scales corresponded to the jd-r framework and were used for this analysis3: 1) the contextual stressors, demands, and challenges when interacting with students and parents (labeled “demands and stressors”); 2) resources and supports indicating the educators’ capabilities to respond to the challenging context due to covid-19 (labeled “resources and supports”). the remaining scales refer to educators’ perceived experiences about stress, intent to leave their job, and work-life balance. 2 demographic data refers to the 2020-2021 schoolyear when our survey was administered. 3 see appendix for descriptive statistics and survey items used for this analysis. leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 8 table 2 summary statistics and bivariate correlations 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 (1) work stress (2) covid stress 0.56*** (3) demands and stressors 0.46*** 0.33*** (4) resources and supports -0.50*** -0.32*** -0.23*** (5) intend to leave before covid 0.10** 0.02 0.01 -0.16*** (6) intend to leave during covid 0.59*** 0.29*** 0.29*** -0.50*** 0.46*** (7) work-life balance 0.56*** 0.74*** 0.33*** -0.31*** -0.04 0.32*** (8) % of economically disadvantaged students 0.05 -0.07 -0.02 -0.04 -0.04 0.01 0.00 (9) special education teacher -0.08 -0.07 -0.13*** 0.17*** 0.02 -0.03 -0.08 0.02 (10) general education teacher 0.08 0.07 0.13*** -0.17*** -0.02 0.03 0.08 -0.02 -1 (11) educator gender 0.17*** 0.11** 0.02 -0.13*** -0.17*** 0.02 0.10** 0.07 0.06 -0.06 cronbach’s alpha (95% c.i.) .99 (.98, .99) .67 (.64, .71) .63 (.60, .67) .72 (.69, .75) .69 (.65, .73) .77 (.74, 80) omega (95% c.i.) .99 (.98, .99) .69 (.66, .73) .64 (.60, .68) .73 (.70, .76) .66 (.62, .70) .74 (.72, .77) mean 3.12 2.59 3.84 3.07 0.90 1.92 2.61 34.43 0.18 0.82 0.83 sd 0.79 0.45 0.65 0.76 0.80 1.28 0.70 17.59 0.38 0.38 0.38 note. gender was transformed to a dichotomous variable representing females as 1 and males as 0. special education teacher and general education teacher variables were transformed into a dichotomous variable to indicate each role. ***p<.001 **p<.01 *p<.0 dependent variables: the scales (from 1 to 7) reported in table 2 are our dependent variables, for which we measured the differences between special education and general education teachers. these variables capture the educators’ perceptions of how the covid pandemic impacted them. independent variable: a dummy variable equal to 1 when the educator is a special education teacher and equal to 0 when the educator is a general education teacher. we compared the dependent variables between special education teachers and general education teachers by estimating equation (1). 𝑦𝑡𝑠 = 𝛽1 + 𝛽2 ⋅ 𝑥𝑡𝑠 + 𝜀𝑡𝑠 (1) where 𝑦𝑡𝑠 is the dependent variable y for the educator t in school s; 𝑥𝑡𝑠 is the independent dummy variable indicating whether the educator t in school s is a special education teacher; 𝜀𝑡𝑠 is the error component; given the specification used in equation (1), 𝛽1indicates the mean of the dependent variable y for general education teachers and 𝛽2 represents the average difference between the special education teachers in comparison to general education teachers. our analyses explore whether 𝛽2 is statistically significant for our six scales. because of the two-stage sample design (first schools and later educators), we used complex samples general linear modeling (csglm) in spss to adjust standard errors for heterogeneity due to educators being clustered within schools, when estimating equation (1). to leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 9 adjust for the cluster sample design, standard errors generated for this analysis used clustering options to compute the variance-covariance matrix. this ensured that educators were not independently sampled. hence, we ran regressions clustering by school level to capture heterogeneity across schools. among the sets who responded to the survey, 31 left responses to the final, open-ended question. the open-ended survey responses were analyzed using computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (nvivo 12). coders used an inductive constant-comparison approach (where each interpretation of data is compared with existing interpretations as they emerge) (charmaz, 2006) to develop a codebook that included eight “parent codes” focused on the major lines of inquiry: academic progress; adaptations; collaboration; community; job satisfaction; leadership; social-emotional well-being; stress. during the coding process, another 29 related child codes were created. the research team then used methods of code comparison across schools (e.g., axial coding) (saldaña, 2021) and used recommended strategies to reduce credibility threats inherent in qualitative studies (miles, huberman, & saldaña, 2020), including triangulation across data sources and interpretive memoing (i.e., reflecting on interpretations with intent to account for any overor under-weighting of evidence). findings indication of stress experienced by all educators survey data demonstrated that all educators in this study experienced stress and negative emotional experiences (e.g., anger) during the pandemic. in an analysis of the total responses of both special education and general education teachers (n=419), participants reported high levels of stress as well as accompanying negative emotions such as anger and nervousness. for instance, as shown in figure 1, nearly a third of survey respondents (32%) felt “upset” fairly/very often due to unexpected changes at work. over half of all respondents (51.9%) reported feeling “nervous and stressed about work” fairly/very often. lastly, over a third of participants (34.7%) educators reported feeling angry fairly/very often. figure 1 educators’ stress during the pandemic (fairly/very often) 32% 51.90% 34.70% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% upset nervous and stressed angry leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 10 stress levels of special education and general education teachers with regard to our first research question, data indicated that sets, in particular, fared better than general education classroom teachers, a finding which contrasts with expectations based on prior research of sets’ experiences of stress in the workplace (e.g., dewey et al., 2017; lazarus, 2006) and during the pandemic (cormier et al., 2021; glessner & johnson, 2020; mcgrew et al., 2023). table 3 presents the results of the data analysis by differences in educator role, where the third column indicates the differences observed between set and general education teachers (𝛽2 as indicated in equation (1)). the dependent variables used for these analyses were standardized to simplify the description of the differences observed. table 3 differences in reported stress level by teacher role independent variable constant/genera l education teacher (𝛽1) special education teacher dummy (𝛽2) obs. r2 (1) work stress 0.205*** -0.187** 419 0.006 (0.056) (0.078) (2) covid stress 0.067 -0.172* 419 0.005 (0.042) (0.098) (3) demands and stressors 0.117** -0.349*** 419 0.018 (0.051) (0.100) (4) resources and supports -0.207*** 0.468*** 419 0.030 (0.058) (0.074) (5) intend to leave before covid -0.062 0.057 417 0.001 (0.048) (0.087) (6) intend to leave during covid 0.091* -0.084 418 0.001 (0.055) (0.076) (7) work-life balance 0.176*** -0.189** 419 0.006 (0.038) (0.094) notes. all variables used are standardized, except the dummy variable special education teacher role. ***p<0.001, **p<0.05, *p<0.1. standard errors in parentheses were computed clustering by school. see appendix a for the scales description. the results above show that sets reported lower work stress (0.187 sd) and covidrelated stress (0.172 sd) than general education teachers. results also indicate that sets reported experiencing fewer challenges balancing work and life (0.189 sd) compared to their general education colleagues. these results contrast with research suggesting that teachers of leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 11 students who had unique teaching needs (such as those with special needs) were impacted more severely than other educator groups (cormier et al., 2021; hester et al., 2020; o’connor bones et al., 2022). second, our findings show that sets reported lower demands and stressors (0.349 sd) and perceived greater levels of resources and supports compared to general education teachers (0.468 sd). we also found a negative correlation (-0.23, see table 2) between educators’ perceptions of school resources/supports and stress-related responses (resources and supports index), meaning that educators’ work stress declined when their perception of available school supports increased and vice versa. as hypothesized by the theoretical framework employed in this study (bakker & demerouti, 2007; demerouti et al., 2001), the perception of abundant resources at schools is related to a decline in educators’ negative emotional responses and stress levels. for sets, this equated to lower levels of stress than their general education counterparts. open-ended responses: special education teachers in response to our second research question, open-ended responses left by sets elaborated on the challenges they faced during the pandemic and the resulting stress they experienced. several responses, though limited, also noted the significance of available supports and resources in mitigating their stress levels during the pandemic. the data presented below are important reminders that, although statistical analyses found that sets reported overall less stress than their general education counterparts, they nonetheless experienced stressful conditions during the pandemic. one teacher, for instance, explained the “juggling act” of instructional adaptation and emotional demands put upon her: every day, more and more responsibilities have been given to me at my job. my job was already a juggling act due to students’ disabilities and needs. i am constantly trying to support students in front of me and those online. i'm trying to address their mental health, create engaging lessons, keep everyone safe while my support staff keeps getting pulled for other things. i keep getting told to change, do this more, add this to my list but no one has stopped to ask how we are doing. i come to work every day two hours early and do work all weekend. still i feel as if i am drowning. several set responses highlighted the emotional demands they encountered during the transition to remote teaching that left them feeling inadequate to meet students’ needs. “so many of my students i feel are being left behind during hybrid learning. there is not enough time in the day to meet their needs,” said one teacher. summing up themes related to the array of emotional demands sets experienced, one remarked: many of my students are suffering from emotional stress, anxiety, depression and lack of motivation. they miss when school was in person every day and they were able to interact with their friends and their teachers in person. another set explained the particular difficulties that students with special needs may have experienced during periods of remote learning when resources for delivery of instruction were not adequate (o’connor bones et al., 2022; pozas & letzel-alt, 2023): also many students, especially those students who need special education support, suffer with the new style of teaching/learning. they can't navigate through multiple sights [sic] that teachers list for them to read or watch a video of something and then answer the leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 12 questions. those that have reading difficulties get frustrated very easily with assignments that have to be completed this way. many students who receive special support services aren't getting it. even for those teaching in person, social distancing mandates created challenges for sets to engage their students and utilize resources and best teaching practices they had prior to the pandemic as one set wrote, “we teach differently because of covid and social distancing, which makes everything less fun.” speaking to resource constraints specifically, another set felt that “many tools we used in the past for educating students as well as classroom management are not available to us now with social distancing and for sanitary reasons (not moving student seats as they stay in same seat throughout day).” similarly, one set described the challenges of social distancing and constraints on using often taken-for-granted resources of physical expression had on their ability to teach effectively: wearing a mask all day long while teaching is the worst part of my entire day. it is hard to understand my students, physically uncomfortable, and makes it hard to communicate. i cannot wait until i no longer have to do this. also 6 feet distance makes it very hard to work with students and teach them. i have to be able to see their papers as we work! as students returned to school, several respondents observed behavioral and academic changes among their students that had developed during the pandemic and school closures. “the students are stressed and release that stress in the classroom. they are unmotivated and mentally distressed,” said one set. as a result, many respondents described feelings of burnout, exhaustion, and intentions to leave the profession. a set described the negative impacts of the pandemic on their levels of job satisfaction and work-life balance: i am no longer as excited about going to work each day than i was prior to the pandemic and feel that each day contains an unexpected surprise that affects my day to day routine. i find it difficult to disconnect from work when i leave for the day and carry on with my personal life unaffected. this just doesn't happen anymore. another set wrote, “this job has become so overwhelming and stressful that i'm looking at retirement options for the end of next year and exploring other careers.” likewise, a set expressed the difficulties of teaching the during the pandemic yet also noted some insights they had gained through the process: i love my job and at the same time, this has been the most exhausting year in all of the years of my teaching. the pandemic has impacted my energy level once i get home. this has also opened our eyes, as educators, to changes that can be made to how we teach! though infrequent, several responses highlighted the ways that supports and resources mitigated their stress during the pandemic. in particular, several responses highlighted the role that administrators played during the pandemic in supporting sets. for example, one participant described changing schools during the pandemic due to a lack of perceived support by administration: i switched schools in the fall of 2020 (after 6 years, forfeiting tenure as well) because i was not confident in the administration of my previous school to handle the new covid manner of teaching. i am now at my new school where i am extremely happy and leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 13 satisfied with the means in which covid was handled throughout the school year. i am in year 1 of tenure track and took a slight pay cut, but my life changed for the better due to this decision. another set recounted their appreciation for district leadership in handling the pandemic: i have felt extremely fortunate to work in a district that has worked as hard as [name redacted] has to create the best possible (and safest) learning environment for all students and staff. in the overall pandemic plan, i have felt that our district has made important accommodations for my special needs students. it has not been easy or perfect. discussion this mixed-methods study examined the reported stress levels and relationships of stress levels to job demands and resources among sets and their general education colleagues in k-12 schools in new york state. as predicted by the jd-r model, educators’ reported levels of stress were higher when resources at their disposal were outweighed by job demands (bakker & demerouti, 2007). despite research (e.g., cormier et al., 2021; glessner & johnson, 2020; mcgrew et al., 2023) noting sets’ relatively high levels of stress, burnout, and attrition during the pandemic, we found that sets in this study – as compared to their general education counterparts – reported lower levels of stress and more favorable assessments of the balance between their job demands and resources available to them. while it is seemingly good news that sets in this study reported lower levels of stress than their general education counterparts, it is crucial to remember that these educators still experienced stress and negative emotions (see figure 1). qualitative data further demonstrated the unique challenges and stressors faced by sets in this study, indicating the significant emotional toll pandemic-related disruptions took on their professional and personal lives. overall, this evidence indicates that additional efforts must continue to be made to support sets to prevent burnout and attrition. several insights related to the increasing teacher attrition rates facing districts across the u.s. may also be drawn from this data. for instance, most teachers who quit during the pandemic cited stress as the driving factor in their decision, followed by a dislike for the way things were run at their school (diliberti et al., 2020). as our study also demonstrates, perceptions of support and resources can help mitigate the impact of stress and, in turn, could help stem increasing rates of teacher burnout and attrition (marshall et al., 2022). working conditions, in particular, are an important factor that impacts the stress levels and job satisfaction of sets (billingsley et al., 2020; stark et al., 2023). ultimately, negative impacts on teachers can increase attrition and turnover levels, thus impeding districts from adequately staffing schools, which can in turn increase the stress levels and reduce the effectiveness of sets who remain in the field (brunsting et al., 2014; carver-thomas & darling-hammond, 2017). additional research can further explore the particular job supports and resources that teachers found to be most crucial during the pandemic. such research can build on this study as well as other scholarship noting the positive impacts of professional development, mentorship, and mindfulness programs to mitigate educators’ stress levels (herman et al., 2021; jakubowski & sitko-dominik, 2021; woulfin & allen, 2021). scholars must also consider the significance of job insecurity, budgetary constraints, and inadequate time to meet job demands on teacher stress (mccarthy et al., 2022). how school and district leaders approach matching resources to leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 14 educator job demands during crisis conditions is another important area for further inquiry, as the covid-19 pandemic is not likely to be the last major disruption to schools (wilcox et al., 2024). in this post-pandemic moment, it will be crucial to continue supporting sets to prevent turnover and ensure that the needs of students receiving special education services are being met (brandenburg et al., 2020). as woulfin & jones (2023) note, the challenges of the pandemic have both revealed inequities facing students receiving special education services and provided policymakers and educational leaders with the opportunity to refocus their efforts on meeting the needs of sets and the students they serve. limitations several limitations are important to note about this study. for one, due to space limitations, our survey was unable to inquire into which particular supports were most valued. open-ended responses, however, did provide partial insights into this issue, such as when respondents explained how supportive and empathetic administrators provided them with crucial support during the pandemic (hidalgo-andrade, 2021). second, our sample was meant to capture a range of educators’ experiences during the pandemic; however, the participants in this study were overwhelmingly situated in rural and suburban communities and were white— a demographic more homogenous than new york state’s teaching workforce (of which 80% are white). to better understand the racialized impacts of the pandemic, more research is needed to uncover the diverse experiences of teachers working in urban districts and teachers of color (baker et al., 2021). lastly, the schools in this study served student populations with lower average levels of economic disadvantage (a poverty indicator) than the state as a whole (56%) (new york state education department, 2023). this difference is crucial as prior research has noted the additional challenges faced by students, families, and educators in high-poverty schools and districts (bottiani et al., 2019; elliot et al., 2023). it is possible that this demographic variable impacted the reported stress levels of educators in this study, although statistical analyses showed that there were no differences in reported stress levels between sets and general education teachers serving schools with different levels of student economic disadvantage. nonetheless, the significant overlap between poverty and disability is notable in new york state (office of budget policy and analysis, 2022). references ansley, b. m., houchins, d., & varjas, k. 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(2016). the job demands-resources model. in s. clarke, t. m. probst, f. guldenmund, & j. passmore (eds.), the wiley blackwell handbook of the psychology of occupational safety and workplace health (pp. 157–180). wiley blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118979013.ch8 united nations. (2020). policy brief: the impact of covid-19 on children. new york: united nations sustainable development group. wilcox, k. c., durand, f. t., lawson, h. a., schiller, k. s., leo, a., khan, m. i., & mola ávila, j. a. (2024). principals’ discursive framing and communications and educators’ job satisfaction during the covid-19 pandemic. journal of school leadership, 34(6), 516-540. https://doi.org/10.1177/10526846241271448 wilcox, k.c., schiller, k., durand, f., lawson, h., leo, a., yu, f. tobin, j. (2023). discovering differential impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on the education workforce. addressing differential impacts of covid-19 in new york state. albany, ny: suny press. wilcox, k.c., leo, a., khan, m., tobin, j., avila, j.a., schiller, k., durand, f., & lawson, h. (2022). discovering impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on the education workforce: methods and procedures report. albany, ny: state university of new york. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1021329112679 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2017.04.008 https://doi.org/10.1002/job.248 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-023-09489-3 https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8998.1.1.27 https://doi.org/10.32674/jimphe.v5i1.2619 https://doi.org/10.1177/07419325221079015 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118979013.ch8 https://doi.org/10.1177/10526846241271448 leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 21 wilcox, k. c., & lawson, h. a. (2018). teachers’ agency, efficacy, engagement, and emotional resilience during policy innovation implementation. journal of educational change, 19, 181-204. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-017-9313-0 wisniewski, l., & gargiulo, r. m. (1997). occupational stress and burnout among special educators: a review of the literature. the journal of special education, 31(3), 325-346. https://doi.org/10.1177/002246699703100303 womack, t. a., & monteiro, e. m. (2023). special education staff well‐being and the effectiveness of remote services during the covid‐19 pandemic. psychology in the schools, 60(5), 1374-1393. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22702 woulfin, s. l., & allen, c. (2022). the institution of schooling. in d.j. peurach, j.l. russell, l. cohen-vogel, & w. penuel (eds.), the foundational handbook on improvement research in education, (pp. 67-88). rowman & littlefield. woulfin, s. l., & jones, b. (2023). re-setting special education for justice: an essay on the logics and infrastructure enabling deep change in the covid-19-era. journal of educational change, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-023-09483-9 xanthopoulou, d., bakker, a.b., demerouti, e. and schaufeli, w.b. (2009), work engagement and financial returns: a diary study on the role of job and personal resources. journal of occupational and organizational psychology, 82, 183-200. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317908x285633 appendix scales information scale source and coding work stress question: 'thinking about your work in a school, please describe how often in the last month you have experienced the following:' . i have been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly at work. . i have felt that i was unable to control important things related to my job. . i have felt nervous and ‘stressed’ about work. . i have felt that things were going my way at work. (reverse item). . i have felt that i could not cope with new aspects of my job. . i have felt that work-related stress has impacted my personal life. . i have felt that i am on top of things at work. (reverse item) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-017-9313-0 https://doi.org/10.1177/002246699703100303 https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22702 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-023-09483-9 https://doi.org/10.1348/096317908x285633 leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 22 . i have been angry because of work-related problems that were outside of my control. . i have felt that work-related difficulties were piling up so high that i could not overcome them. choices were: never, almost never, sometimes, fairly often, very often. dummy variables were created for each choice (equals 1 if never, equals 2 if almost never, equals 3 if sometimes, equals 4 if fairly often equals 5 if very often). the index was computed as the mean of the individual items. demands and stressors question: 'in the context of this school year, to what extent do you agree with the following statements?:' . i have had difficulties communicating with some students’ parents and caregivers. . i have had to find new strategies to engage students. . i have had students struggle with mental health challenges. . my students' mental health challenges have affected my mental health. choices were: strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree or disagree, agree, strongly agree. dummy variables were created for each choice (equals 1 if strongly disagree, equals 2 if disagree, equals 3 if neither agree or disagree, equals 4 if agree, equals 5 if strongly agree). the index was computed as the mean of the individual items. resources and supports question: 'in the context of this school year, to what extent do you agree with the following statements?:' . i have had opportunities to weigh in on decisions impacting my work. . i have been able to get help for students about whom i am concerned. . i have had students receive the support and resources they need to learn while they are working remotely. . i have been provided the support and resources i need to engage students with different needs while they are working remotely. choices were: strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree or disagree, agree, strongly agree. dummy variables were created for each choice (equals 1 if strongly disagree, equals 2 if disagree, equals 3 if neither agree or disagree, equals 4 if agree, equals 5 if strongly agree). the index was computed as the mean of the individual items. leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 23 intent to leave before covid question: 'prior to the pandemic (before march 2020), how often did you feel the following ?' . i found my job personally fulfilling. . i shared what i learned from my teaching experiences. (reverse item) . i dreamt about a better paying job. . i looked forward to another day at work. . i had considered leaving my job. (reverse item) choices were: never, every couple of months, once a month, every couple of weeks, every week, every day. dummy variables were created for each choice (equals 0 if never, equals 5 if every couple of months, equals 4 if once a month, equals 3 if every couple of weeks, equals 2 if every week, equals 1 if every day). the index was computed as the mean of the individual items. intent to leave during covid question: 'thinking about changes in your job due to the pandemic (since march 2020), how often have you felt the following?' . i found my job personally fulfilling. . i shared what i learned from my teaching experiences. (reverse item) . i dreamt about a better paying job. . i looked forward to another day at work. . i had considered leaving my job. (reverse item) choices were: never, every couple of months, once a month, every couple of weeks, every week, every day. dummy variables were created for each choice (equals 0 if never, equals 5 if every couple of months, equals 4 if once a month, equals 3 if every couple of weeks, equals 2 if every week, equals 1 if every day). the index was computed as the mean of the individual items. covid stress question: 'for each of the following, rate how much the pandemic has changed your life:' . routines. . family income/employment. leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 24 . access to personal social supports. . experiences of stress related to covid-19 pandemic. . balancing work and personal/family life. choices were: no change, mild. small change; able to meet all needs and pay bills, moderate. having to make cuts but able to meet basic needs and pay bills, severe. unable to meet basic needs and pay bills. dummy variables were created for each choice (equals 1 if no change, equals 2 if mild, equals 3 if moderate, equals 4 if severe). the index was computed as the mean of the individual items. work-life balance question: 'for each of the following, rate how much the pandemic has changed your life:' . balancing work and personal/family life. choices were: no change, mild. small change; able to meet all needs and pay bills, moderate. having to make cuts but able to meet basic needs and pay bills, severe. unable to meet basic needs and pay bills. dummy variables were created for each choice (equals 1 if no change, equals 2 if mild, equals 3 if moderate, equals 4 if severe). note. intent to leave scales are based on (bothma & roodt, 2013); the rest of the scales are based on (wilcox et al., 2022). author notes aaron leo, phd orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1226-6861 university at albany (suny), school of education email: aleo@albany.edu josé antonio mola ávila, phd orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6399-1815 universidad del norte, department of economics email: jmolaa@uninorte.edu.co kristen c. wilcox, phd orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3338-8008 university at albany (suny), school of education email: kwilcox1@albany.edu maria i. khan, phd orcid:https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2530-5495 university at albany (suny), school of education email: mikhan@albany.edu kathryn schiller, phd orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0125-5008 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1226-6861 mailto:aleo@albany.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6399-1815 mailto:jmolaa@uninorte.edu.co https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3338-8008 mailto:kwilcox1@albany.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2530-5495 mailto:mikhan@albany.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0125-5008 leo et al.: comparing special education and general education teachers current issues in education 26(2) 25 university at albany (suny), school of education email: kschiller@albany.edu yunxiao zhang university at albany (suny), school of education email: yzhang65@albany.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. mailto:kschiller@albany.edu mailto:yzhang65@albany.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ the castle and the paths: a story with two endings current issues in education, 22(1) 1 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age the castle and the paths: a story with two endings a. michael berman california state university, office of the chancellor abstract: the future of higher education is imagined here in the form of a parable. the reader is challenged to rethink the role and purpose of higher education and the potential paths for evolution in the future. keywords: higher education futures, access, alternative pathways citation: berman, a. m. (2020). the castle and the paths: a story with two endings. current issues in education, 21(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1898 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 12/14/2020 the castle and the paths: a story with two endings once upon a time, a long time ago, in a town not too far from here, there was a castle. it was a large, imposing castle with high stone walls and a huge wooden door in front that was usually closed and barred, and a smaller door in back. the castle sat upon a tall, craggy peak with a few narrow paths leading to the front door, and a short straight path from the rear. at the base of the peak was a small village that got along from day-to-day in the shadow of the castle and the craggy peak. the castle was ruled by a rich king, who was mostly friendly and benign but had flashes of anger now and then. when anyone asked him how he became the king, he said it had always been so, and always would be. once a year, a group of young men (and only men, back in that long ago time) would make their way to the front door. it was a long hard trip from the village to the front door, but http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1898 berman: the castle and the paths current issues in education, 21(2) 2 these men had many helpers to carry their possessions and smooth the way, so it wasn’t really as hard as it looked. they would knock at the door and ask to be admitted, and the king would open the door, take a look and let most of them in. the rules about who was allowed to enter weren’t all that clear, but everyone in the village could see that it was only the sons of the more prosperous men who were admitted, so most people never even tried to climb to the peak. the men who were admitted would enter the castle and disappear into the mysterious precinct inside. after four or five years the men would emerge from the other side, a bit older, and, it’s said, a bit wiser. but the biggest change was a special badge that each man wore on his chest. each man’s badge certified that he had completed his quest inside the castle and had been found of sufficient intelligence, character, and persistence to be named a “graduate” of the castle. a man with a graduate badge could be assured of respect in the community and a good income. the other villagers looked upon these graduates with a mixture of reverence and envy – a true sign that the bearer was noble and true of heart. sometimes a child from a poor family would fight his way up the hill and manage to make it into the castle, to complete the quest, and to earn the badge. the king even helped out some of these men by paying for their food and lodging inside the castle. the king liked to point these men out to the villagers and say “see? everyone has a chance to earn a badge. you just have be noble and true of heart.” the villagers would smile and nod, but late in the evening by the home fires and at the pubs they would mutter that a few lucky ones such as themselves might make it through the castle, but everyone knew it was mostly the sons of the rich that got the chance. but the appeal of earning the badge was great, and over time more and more of the young men, and even a few young women, would fight their way up the craggy peak and try to enter the doors. the king was happy with this because there just weren’t that many who could make it, and he thought that the villagers would be satisfied as long as they had hope that their sons and daughters had a chance to earn a badge, even if only a few made it all the way to the back door of the castle. one day a message came from a land across the sea. the kingdom had been challenged to a great war. the king was forced to mobilize the people like never before – nearly all the young men and some of the women had to fight in the army, and everyone sacrificed as never before. as the hard fighting went on, every family felt the loss of a son or daughter, and the king’s purse was depleted of much of his gold. to the great relief of all, the kingdom won the war and the surviving soldiers returned to the village. the king was grateful – he appreciated the sacrifice of his people – but also nervous – how would he keep these returning warriors happy and satisfied, and prevent them from turning against him? perhaps, he thought, if everyone had the chance to enter the castle, the people would be happy with the king. so he decreed across his land that every soldier could come to the castle, and the king would help pay for it. the next day, thousands of soldiers began to climb the hill to appeal for entry. the king was forced to scramble and add new wings to the castle to accommodate them all. it was a strain on his already depleted treasures, but more young men and many women managed to enter the castle. and, to the king’s relief, as they left the castle they helped make the village richer and more prosperous than it had even been before, and their taxes quickly refilled the king’s coffers. berman: the castle and the paths current issues in education, 21(2) 3 times were good, and many families that had never had a “badge-uate” were proud of their children and all the success and happiness they found upon leaving the castle. the king was happy, but nervous too. what had once been a privilege for the few now because an entitlement for the many. the king’s lords started saying things like “everyone should have a right to come to the castle” and “nobody can succeed without a badge.” soon the path to the castle was crowded day and night as people made the climb up the craggy peak. what had once been a somewhat difficult path became steeper and harder as the king got tired of spending his gold to maintain it. even worse, many of the young men and women were being pushed up the path against their will, uncertain that they even wanted to enter the castle. every day, the village would hear the cries as some of the bodies of their children tossed over the walls of the castle and into the rocky moat below, because they were not noble and true of heart, or at least, that’s what the castle guards would say. faced with an ever-increasing deluge at the door, the king started asking those who would enter to give up all the gold they had to get inside, or to promise to pay later for the expense of their time inside the castle. of course, many families had no money to pay, so he increased the taxes on the villagers. at night around the home fires and in the pubs, the villagers that had a little money would complain that they were paying twice – they had to pay more for their own children, and they had to pay taxes for other people’s children too. most of them were (reasonably) sure it was worth it for their children, but they really disliked paying for the children of others, especially since they were convinced that many were neither noble nor true of heart and would just end up tossed into the moat. now, all through the years that the castle had stood upon the craggy peak, there had been a few people who had figured out that if they made their way around the castle rather than going through it, they could get to the back and have a happy and prosperous life without getting a badge. there were even some who had entered the front door of the castle and been tossed into the moat, or who had jumped voluntarily, and had then made their difficult way on their own to a happy and prosperous life. but everyone knew that the path around the castle was even harder than the path through the castle, so they didn’t really pay that much attention to those hardy souls. but as the path to the castle got tougher and more crowded, and as the price for admission got higher and higher, and as the badge-uates left owing more and more to the king, the path around the castle started to look more attractive than ever before. a new guild of mercenary guides began to stand at the foot of the path, offering to lead the way, and some young men and women paid to be led on an alternative path. some of the guides were noble and true of heart, and they led their charges to a happy and prosperous life, while others would take all the gold that the young men and women had, and even some of the king’s gold, and then abandon their followers at the bottom of the moat. over time, more and more of the secrets of the castle begin to spill over the walls and become available for free on the outside. young men and women willingly traded these open “secrets” among themselves to help each other guide their way around the craggy peak. some of the more sympathetic lords and ladies inside the castle began to share their secrets with the young travelers. many feet made the path around the craggy peak wider and easier to find, and the path became well-marked and much easier to traverse. it was still difficult, but nothing like it had been in years past. berman: the castle and the paths current issues in education, 21(2) 4 at first, the king and his courtiers paid no attention to the young men and women making their way around the peak. “we know the castle is the right path,” they would say. “anything else is just inferior.” they could see that there were still thousands at the door every day with gold in their hands, clamoring to come inside, and they were convinced it would always be that way. the villagers could see that many of the people who had made their way around the craggy peak were noble and true of heart, and they weren’t always so sure that the folks coming out the back door of the castle were all that virtuous. they would say things like “those badges don’t mean what they used to” and “the badge-uates were a lot more noble when we left the castle.” but they still depended upon the badge as a true sign, and they were a little suspicious of those who hadn’t made the formal passage through the castle. then one day, the villagers noticed that some of those who had made their way around the craggy peak were wearing badges of their own. these badges were awarded for the quests that had been achieved in the difficult path around the craggy peak. at first, the villagers were suspicious and even contemptuous of these alternative badges, but as more and more young people took the alternate path and earned the new badges, the village began to recognize that the right badge could tell you who was noble and true of heart. some in the village even recognized that the feats that had been accomplished in the path around the craggy peak were more like the everyday challenges that they faced in the village, and they begin to value to quest badges even more than the traditional badge of the castle, which, everyone agreed, wasn’t all that it used to be. the king and his couriers sneered at the alternative badges. they were sure it was a fraud and a fad, and that the tried-and-true path through the castle would always be the one true way. he added a few extra badges himself, and made the path through the castle a little more clearly marked and less mysterious, but he kept collecting gold at the door and tossing men and women into the moat if he thought they didn’t measure up. his courtiers assured him not to worry, this too would pass, and there would always be a castle. this story has two endings, and you can decide which one you like. some say that the king finally begin to see the error of his ways. he saw that there were a lot of good things about what the castle could do, and he started to tear down the walls. over time, the castle and the path around the craggy peak became indistinguishable, and people of all ages and from all families had the freedom to choose the right path. everyone in the village had a reasonable chance to take advantage of the good things that were in the castle. of course, not everyone would make it to the other side – you still had to be noble and true of heart – but the villagers could see that as long as you had a good pair of shoes and were brave, and perhaps had a few brave comrades to help you, you could make it to a happy and prosperous life. and everyone lived happily ever after. but if you ask me, i think that the king never did understand what was happening. more and more people swarmed around the craggy peak, like a giant river. their footsteps eroded the sides of the peak and the walls began to crumble. in a panic, the king fled as a mob of angry villagers made their way over the ruins of the walls and destroyed the castle. much of what was in the castle was vain and ugly, but there was also beauty and truth there too. mobs don’t really care about that – everything was tossed into the moat. berman: the castle and the paths current issues in education, 21(2) 5 a hundred years of darkness followed, as even the alternative path was damaged beyond repair. eventually, the noble and true of heart restored the village to happiness and prosperity, but that’s another story. the end author notes a. michael berman california state university, office of the chancellor mberman@calstate.edu guest editor notes sean m. leahy, phd arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au mailto:mberman@calstate.edu mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au berman: the castle and the paths current issues in education, 21(2) 6 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf current issues in education, 26(2) 1 volume 26, issue 2 november 20th, 2025 issn 1099-839x finding their place: exploring the sense of belonging among alternatively certified early-career educators chris wilcoxen university of nebraska omaha jennifer langfeld university of nebraska omaha amber o’shea university of nebraska omaha abstract: this study explores the impact of belongingness among alternatively certified educators to identify strategies for better supporting them during their early years. using a qualitative multicase study design, the researchers employed within-case and cross-case analysis, with each case representing an individual alternatively certified educator. data were collected from three sources: individual meetings with the director of the alternative certification program, a belongingness survey, and a semi-structured focus group with participants. data analysis included both within-case and cross-case approaches to identify themes across participants and address the research question. the findings hold implications for educational policy and practice, particularly in light of ongoing challenges in teacher recruitment and retention. keywords: alternative teacher education, school belonging, early career educators citation: wilcoxen, c., langfeldt, j., & o’shea, a. (2025). finding their place: exploring the sense of belonging among alternatively certified early-career educators. current issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2350 accepted: 08/21/2025 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2350 wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 2 finding their place: exploring the sense of belonging among alternatively certified early-career educators the united states is currently facing a shortage of qualified educators (dillard, 2023; sutcher et al., 2019). according to tan et al. (2024), 406,964 teaching positions remain unfilled or are occupied by teachers who lack full certification for their assignments, representing about 13% of the total teacher workforce (3,224,967). this shortage underscores the urgent need to prioritize both the recruitment and retention of well-trained educators. in response to the increasing needs for teachers, many states have expedited entry into teaching through alternative certification programs, which provide opportunities to teach full-time prior to completing certification requirements (constantine et al., 2009; whitford et al., 2017). while efforts to recruit new teachers are essential to address this need, retention is important. educators who feel valued, supported, and connected to their school communities are more likely to remain in the profession (wilcoxen et al., 2020). a key factor influencing teacher retention is a strong sense of belonging, which can foster professional commitment and reduce attrition (allen, 2023). a sense of belonging encompasses feelings of being accepted, valued, and included within a community or organization and can influence thoughts, feelings, and actions within individuals (armellini et al., 2021; mendoza &venables, 2023), additionally, a strong sense of belonging has been linked to improved job satisfaction and retention rates among educators (o’shea, 2021), especially in the early stages of their careers. when teachers feel isolated or unsupported, they are more likely to leave the profession prematurely (hausmann et al., 2007; ingersoll, 2001). people are social beings who have a psychological need to belong (adedeji et al., 2023; escalera-reyes, 2020). teacher preparation models can also impact a sense of belonging among early-career educators. increased guidance and support lead to increased commitment and engagement (bakker et al., 2008; kachchhap & horo, 2021; rezaee et al., 2018). traditional teacher preparation programs often emphasize extended field experiences and mentorship (american association of colleges for teacher education, 2018), which can help cultivate a sense of community and social connections before educators enter the workforce (u.s. department of health and human services, 2023). in contrast, alternative certification programs tend to be fasttracked and provide opportunities to teach full-time with minimal supervision (whitford et al., 2017), potentially leaving early-career educators less equipped to foster relationships within their schools. a sense of belonging plays a critical role in shaping the experiences of early-career educators; therefore, understanding the factors that contribute to this sense of belonging is essential for supporting teacher retention and success. additionally, with a growing need to address teacher shortages and high turnover rates (garcía & weiss, 2019; ingersoll & strong, 2011; nketsia et al., 2022), it is essential to understand how different preparation models contribute to fostering a sense of belonging in early-career teachers. while research exists on a sense of belonging in the workplace (e.g., bjorklund, 2023; o’shea, 2021), there is less research regarding educators' sense of belonging, specifically for those entering the profession under alternative certification programs. this article aims to explore the impact of belongingness among alternatively certified educators to determine how to better support educators during their early years. we were guided by this research question: how do alternatively certified educators perceive a sense of belonging wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 3 within their school building? findings demonstrate important implications for educational policy and practice, especially considering the ongoing challenges in teacher recruitment and retention. literature review what is belonging? individuals have a fundamental psychological need to belong (adedeji et al., 2023; booker, 2021; escalera-reyes, 2020; mcmillan & chavis, 1986; osterman, 2000; slaten et al., 2016). this need influences behaviors and shapes how people interact within their environments. research underscores the importance of fostering inclusive work settings where individuals feel valued and connected to their organizations (american immigration council, 2024). in the context of this study, a sense of belonging is defined as individuals feeling valued by, included in, and connected to an organization or group (armellini et al., 2021; mendoza & venables, 2023). conversely, a lack of belonging can diminish engagement and motivation and adversely affect individuals' well-being (american immigration council, 2024). according to over zero and the american immigration council (2024) survey results, 64% of americans feel like they do not belong in their workplace. building a sense of belonging requires trust between individuals and organizations. adedeji et al. (2023) emphasize that “trust in a social relationship engenders a feeling of belongingness and psychological sense of community that promotes better life outcomes,” with trust often predicting the strength of social relationships and participation (p. 2621). social disconnection impacts relationships and engagement and leads to isolation (bushman et al., 2018; kwan et al., 2018). belonging in the workplace organizations continue to recognize the critical role belongingness and social connection play in fostering a positive and productive workplace environment. for example, to address the teacher shortage, the american association of school personnel administrators (2022) proposed five transformative strategies, including a significant shift from the traditional "support employee wellness" approach to a broader, systemic mandate: "strengthen educators' sense of purpose, belonging, and connection" (p. 21). this shift highlights the importance of workplaces that are inclusive, welcoming, and committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. it also underscores the need to actively create opportunities for educators to build and maintain meaningful social connections (aaspa, 2022). this perspective aligns with the 2023 report by the u.s. department of health and human services on loneliness and isolation, which highlights the negative effects of social disconnection in the workplace. these include higher turnover rates, diminished productivity, mental health challenges, and poor performance (u.s. department of health and human services, 2023). similarly, over zero and the american immigration council (2024) underscores that fostering a sense of belonging boosts workplace outcomes, enhancing productivity, creativity, retention, and loyalty (american immigration council, 2024). together, these findings illustrate the profound impact of social connections on organizational success and employee well-being. when belongingness is nurtured, teachers perform better (kachchhap & horo, 2021). much like students, educators are influenced by their work environment. this includes multiple contexts (e.g., physical, emotional, atmospheric) that mold teacher learning and perspectives (kachchhap & horo, 2021). shared learning experiences, including mentorship programs, peer wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 4 collaborations, and professional learning communities, play a vital role in fostering a sense of connection among educators (ussher, 2010). for instance, mentoring partnerships not only enhance teachers' feelings of belonging but also boost their confidence in instructional practices (fantilli & mcdougall, 2009). this support helps them navigate the challenges of the profession. similarly, collaborative structures, such as peer collaboration and professional learning communities, help cultivate a sense of community, providing a supportive network that contributes to professional growth and overall well-being (wilcoxen et al., 2020). together, these shared experiences create environments where educators feel valued, supported, and empowered to thrive. scholars continue to seek to understand key factors that affect well-being in the workplace, such as trust, belonging, inclusion, and work-life balance (booker, 2021; o’shea, 2021). these factors are difficult to measure as they are consistently evolving in response to shifting social, cultural, and organizational trends. adedeji et al. (2023) suggest that as workplace dynamics and broader societal contexts change, researchers must continuously reassess and adapt their understanding of what contributes to a healthy, productive, and supportive work environment. this need to adapt extends to all workplaces and includes alternatively certified educators. alternative teacher certification to address teacher shortages and attract individuals seeking a career in education, alternative certification programs (acps) have emerged as non-traditional certification pathways that offer expedited routes into the classroom. these programs have been developed to entice second-career educators, providing them with an accelerated entry into the teaching profession (ingersoll et al., 2014) and reducing teacher shortages (shaw, 2008). a survey conducted by the american national center for education statistics for the 2015-2016 school year revealed that 18% of public-school educators obtained their teaching license through acps (gray & taie, 2015). for the last 25 years, the university of nebraska omaha has provided accelerated teacher certification pathways. these programs combine rigorous coursework with valuable field experiences to effectively prepare candidates for initial teacher certification in pk-12 schools (langfeldt & wilcoxen, 2023). individuals can obtain an initial teaching certificate by completing an educator preparation program (epp) to earn their bachelor’s degree. alternative teaching permits are issued if applicants hold a bachelor's degree in any field and have completed at least 75% of the required content endorsement courses. additionally, candidates must submit a written agreement with an epp offered by a state institution of higher education, committing to completing the program to obtain an initial teaching certificate. as part of the program, candidates are required to attend a pre-teaching seminar that covers essential topics such as planning for routines and procedures, communication with families, classroom management, and instructional strategies. furthermore, their hiring district must submit a written plan outlining the mentoring and supervision arrangements. this plan of support ensures that participants receive the necessary guidance and training to be successful in their classrooms and meet the requirements for a teaching certificate. the teacher academy project (tap) was originally designed to address the shortage of certified educators in high-demand areas like math, science, and world languages. this program has expanded based on the growing needs in all content areas. the program allows participants to complete certification requirements in as little as 18 months, in addition to the completion of wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 5 any necessary endorsement work. residents are hired by a school district and teach full-time in the classroom while simultaneously working on their certification courses in the evenings and on weekends. this allows for the integration of practical teaching experience with formalized coursework. conceptual framework: ecological belonging framework we were guided by bronfenbrenner’s (1979) seminal ecological framework for human development, which puts individuals at the center of their ecological system. specifically, drawing on bronfenbrenner and ceci’s (1994) work, we grounded this study in a framework that considers both personal and environmental factors as key contributors to a sense of belonging. interactions between these two factors drive change: (a) environments can influence and shape individuals, and (b) individuals can modify and transform their environments (akbayrak & douglas, 2022; bronfenbrenner & ceci, 1994). these interactions impact whether individuals feel valued and connected to their environment, which influences their sense of belonging (adedeji et al., 2023; american immigration council, 2024; escalera-reyes, 2020). this ecological belonging framework focuses on how environmental perceptions (value, connection, influence, and authenticity) affect individuals' sense of belonging. in the context of this study, the first facet, value, refers to the importance or worth attributed to individuals and their contributions (over zero and the american immigration council, 2024). value encompasses the recognition and appreciation people receive, which makes them feel included and respected in their environment. walton and brady (2017) contend that people infer their place within organizations through a series of questions, such as whether they feel valued within an organization. at times, these are articulated aloud, and at other times, internally. whether or not one feels appreciated, or valued, impacts actions and behaviors (armellini et al., 2021), which can impact productivity within the workplace. the second facet, social connection, refers to forming meaningful relationships and bonds between individuals or groups (u.s. department of health and human services, 2023). a lack of social connections negatively impacts job satisfaction (o’shea, 2021), well-being, and poses significant health risks such as depression or dementia (u.s. department of health and human services, 2023). holt-lunstad et al. (2017) indicate that these social connections are characterized by structure, function, and quality. structure refers to the number and variety of relationships but also encompasses the frequency of interactions. function refers to the extent to which you can depend on others to help meet different needs or provide support, whereas quality refers to the satisfaction and positivity (as opposed to the negative aspects or dissatisfaction) drawn from these interactions (holt-lunstad, 2022; holt-lunstad et al., 2017). these characteristics are important in understanding the factors that impact social connections within the work environment. feeling accepted and included is necessary for effective social connections. the third facet, influence, refers to the ability of individuals to affect decision-making processes within various life settings (powell et al., 2024; short & rinehardt, 1992). this includes having a say in decisions that impact their families, workplaces, local communities, and the nation. powell et al. (2024) explain influence as agency or co-creation, where the individual helps shape the rules or decisions that affect the environment. influence has also been linked to empowerment (short & rinehardt, 1992; wilcoxen et al., 2020), which has been linked to efficacy, retention, and effectiveness (lyons et al., 2013; soini et al., 2010). wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 6 the fourth facet, authenticity, refers to being able to bring one’s whole and true self to a setting or environment (rivera et al., 2019; walton et al., 2017). it means feeling comfortable to openly express one’s thoughts, opinions, and identity. this directly correlates to bandura’s (1977) concept of self-efficacy, an individual’s belief in their ability to successfully perform a task or achieve a specific outcome. philosophical and psychological research on the connection between authenticity and well-being is not new (rivera et al., 2019; ryan & deci, 2001; ryff & singer, 2008; waterman, 1993). when someone feels they can be authentic in their environment, it impacts personal confidence, motivation, resilience, and performance. methodology this qualitative study used a multicase study research design (stake, 2006). according to dyson and genishi (2005), the purpose of qualitative case studies is to understand complex social interactions, including teaching and learning in the classroom setting. case study methodology looks to generate insights into specific areas of interest to provide rich, detailed descriptions of the case being studied (yin, 2018). following creswell (2013) and stake (2006), we selected a multicase study design for its unique characteristics that exemplify the interrelationships involved in alternatively certified educators’ sense of belonging in schools. each case in the study was bound to one alternatively certified educator in the teacher academy project, with a total of three cases. grounded in stake’s (2006) multicase study methodology, our exploration extended beyond an individual case by examining a collective phenomenon, what stake called a quintain. in the context of this study, our quintain was the sense of belonging among early-career educators. while each participant represented a distinct case, the aim of this research was to explore how the quintain (i.e., a sense of belonging) was experienced across cases. by examining multiple cases through the lens of the quintain, we sought to generate insights into the patterns and complexities of belonging within and across contexts. program participants study participants included three secondary educators completing an alternative certification program within one midwestern state. each held a bachelor’s degree in another content area prior to participation, met the requirements for alternative certification, and was hired to teach high school full-time. each was hired to teach in an urban high school within the state's largest district, which serves over 52,000 students. one participant was a second-year educator, and the other two were first-year educators. see table 1 for participant demographics. table 1 participant demographics name ethno-racial identification content area bachelor’s degree terrence (1st year) black social science political science josue (1st year) hispanic business, marketing, and information technology business & a master’s in business administration robert (2nd year) caucasian math physics note. all names are pseudonyms wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 7 this study was submitted to the university's institutional review board and approved under the u.s. department of health and human services regulations per code 45cfr46.102. additionally, permission was obtained from all participants prior to their involvement in the study. data collection and reporting were conducted in a manner that ensured confidentiality and protected participant identities in accordance with ethical research standards. as researchers with experience in teacher education and professional development, we recognize that our background influenced how we approached this study. having worked closely with early-career educators, our experiences bring both an empathetic perspective and a set of assumptions regarding how belonging is developed within schools. data sources data were collected from three sources: individual meetings with the director of the alternative certification program, a belongingness survey, and a semi-structured focus group interview with participants. triangulation of data sources enhances the credibility of the findings and allows for a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics within the school environment (creswell, 2013; stake, 2006). individual meetings meetings with the director occurred on a semester basis throughout the program. these meetings were touchpoints between the director and each teacher to ensure they were on course to meet the certification needs of the state. these meetings also included opportunities to check in and problem-solve concerns. belongingness survey the belongingness survey, called the belonging barometer (over zero and the american immigration council, 2024), was given in april at the end of their first or second year in the classroom. it included 10 items and utilized a likert-type scale of 1-5, with 1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree. it included the following statements: 1. i feel emotionally connected to [my school building]. 2. people in [my school building] welcome and include me in activities. 3. i am unable to influence decision-making in [my school building]. 4. i feel unable to be my whole and authentic self with people in [my school building]. 5. people [in my school building] value me and my contributions. 6. my relationships with others in [my school building] are as satisfying as i want them to be. 7. i feel like an “insider” who understands how [my school building] works. 8. i am comfortable expressing my opinions in [my school building]. 9. i am treated as “less than” other residents in [my school building]. 10. when interacting with people in [my school building], i feel like i truly belong. we chose the belonging barometer because the previously validated instrument offered a multidimensional framework for assessing belonging. this extended beyond basic feelings of acceptance to include emotional connection, psychological safety, authenticity, feeling valued, and the ability to influence group decisions (over zero and the american immigration council, 2024). unlike tools such as the psychological sense of school membership scale (st-amand et al., 2020) which tends to focus on students, the belonging barometer is specifically designed to evaluate belonging across a range of life domains, including the workplace. this makes it especially relevant for understanding the experiences of educators. while the general wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 8 belongingness scale (satici & gocet tekin, 2016) is useful for measuring general interpersonal belonging and perceptions of acceptance or exclusion, the belonging barometer addresses both interpersonal aspects and broader systemic factors like equality and participation in decisionmaking, which are critical in the context of schools. the belonging barometer’s broader scope and contextual sensitivity make it particularly valuable for exploring belonging in complex professional environments and, therefore, enabled the researchers to capture the nuanced experiences of alternatively certified educators and generate meaningful insights to inform targeted support during their early-career stages. focus group the focus group was semi-structured and guided by an interview protocol consisting of 10 open-ended questions, allowing participants to reflect on their personal experiences, school culture, and support systems. the session lasted approximately 90 minutes and took place in a quiet, private room at the university. sample questions included: can you share an instance where you felt particularly welcomed or included in your school community? what made this experience stand out? in what ways do you feel valued by your colleagues and your school administration? are there specific actions or policies that reinforce this feeling? a moderator facilitated the discussion while a co-facilitator took observational notes. the session was audio-recorded with participants’ consent and later transcribed verbatim for analysis. participants were encouraged to speak freely and to engage with one another’s responses. this format enabled interactive dialogue and diverse perspectives, while also allowing for emergent themes to be explored organically. to promote comfort and psychological safety, participants were reminded of confidentiality and the voluntary nature of participation. refreshments were provided, and the atmosphere remained collegial and conversational throughout the session. the timing allowed for follow-up on concepts resulting from individual meetings and the results of the belongingness survey. data analysis in this study, an interpretive analysis was used to examine how early-career educators conceptualized and experienced belonging within their school environments. the multicase framework allowed for comparison between individual cases in relation to the quintain, or sense of belonging. this approach supported a deeper understanding of how belonging is constructed and experienced across cases, highlighting both commonalities and differences (stake, 2006). rather than treating belonging as a fixed, measurable variable, our analysis emphasized the subjective accounts of each participant, focusing on how they describe, interpret, and assign meaning to their personal experiences (charmaz, 2014). data analysis involved both within-case and cross-case analysis techniques (kalinnikova magnusson & walton, 2021; miles & huberman, 1994) to identify themes and address the research question. this approach allowed for a richer, more nuanced understanding of the quintain by situating individual experiences within a broader conceptual and relational framework. following saldaña(2016), we first familiarized ourselves with participant characteristics by examining attribute codes (see table 1). next, we reviewed information collected from semester meetings with the director. this added context and background information pertaining to each participant. after reviewing the director’s information, we reviewed each participant’s wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 9 belongingness survey results based on the five-point likert-type scale. to add clarity to concepts shared in the survey results, all three authors coded the focus group transcription. a priori codes were developed from the conceptual framework and included: value, connection, influence, and authenticity. as defined in the conceptual framework, these facets drove the coding process. a sense of belonging referred to the extent to which individuals felt included, valued, and connected to an organization or group. this included the perception of being accepted, respected, and supported by others (armelli et al., 2021; mendoza & venables, 2023). to work toward integrated reliability, the three authors used eight aspects of intercoder reliability as outlined by cofie et al. (2022). these include: 1. all three authors engaged in the coding process. the recommendation was at least two. 2. to address bias, only one coder was connected to the data. 3. all three authors had previous experience coding qualitative data. 4. all artifacts were coded by all authors. 5. all authors used the same conceptual framework when coding. 6. all authors shared the meaning of codes through discussion and agreement. 7. once all artifacts were coded, all three authors reviewed the codes through discussion and agreement (campbell et. al., 2013). 8. guided by a conceptual framework, the authors used operational definitions that provided definitions for the coding process. as patterns were identified during analysis, we remained open to discovering new insights and identifying emergent themes beyond the original framework. this iterative process included a combination of deductive (a priori) and inductive coding. this ensured analysis was both theoretically grounded and responsive to the data to facilitate a deeper understanding of the participants’ lived experiences (creswell & poth, 2018; merriam & tisdell, 2015). one author was the program director, another was involved in one of the certification courses, and the third was brought in as an outside perspective. all authors recognize that our positions as researchers may influence participants' responses, particularly if they perceive us as an authority figure within the field of education. by including a researcher with an outside perspective and maintaining transparency about our roles, we sought to balance the advantages of familiarity with the need for rigorous analysis, ensuring that participants’ lived experiences were accurately and respectfully represented. given that the study pertained to school building dynamics and a sense of belonging within that environment, none of the researchers held supervisory roles or were actively involved in that specific setting. potentially, the relationship with the director allowed for more honesty and vulnerability based on the pre-existing relationship. additionally, to uphold the integrity of the research, authors prioritized the voices of the participants by using their own words in data presentation and analysis, ensuring that their lived experiences were authentically represented. the team actively engaged in ongoing reflexivity and collaboration throughout the analysis process, and the mindfulness of power dynamics, proximity, and perspective played a key role in maintaining the authenticity of the data. results we begin by describing the three individual cases and then transition into the findings from our cross-case analysis. wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 10 case study: terrence director information terrence's journey to becoming a first-year teacher in an urban school district in the midwest is marked by diverse professional experiences. terrence, a black male, began his professional journey as an intelligence specialist in the united states navy. following his military service, terrence broadened his global perspective in japan, where he served as an assistant language teacher through the japan exchange teaching program. he went on to work as a paraprofessional at an urban high school in the united states, supporting multilingual students from a variety of backgrounds. in his inaugural year as a high school educator at the age of 33, terrence dove into the teaching profession full-time as an alternatively certified educator. belonging survey responses see table 3 for terrence’s belongingness survey results. terrance’s scores showed a strong and consistent sense of belonging, inclusion, and satisfaction within his school building. he acknowledged limited decision-making influence, but all other indicators showcased an inclusive professional environment. table 3 terrence’s survey results statement rating i feel emotionally connected to my school building. 5 people in my school building welcome and include me in activities. 5 i am unable to influence decision-making in my school building. 2 i feel unable to be my whole and authentic self with people in my school building. 1 people in my school building value me and my contributions. 5 my relationships with others in my school building are as satisfying as i want them to be. 5 i feel like an “insider” who understands how my school building works. 5 i am comfortable expressing my opinions in my school building. 5 i am treated as “less than” other residents in my school building. 1 when interacting with people in my school building, i feel like i truly belong. 5 focus group responses in reviewing terrence's responses to the focus group questions, he expressed feeling valued, connected, influential, and able to be his authentic self at work. value. terrence expressed that he feels valued by his principal, his colleagues, and his mentor. “i don't think there's a single person in my building that knows i'm a [first year] teacher... they think i'm a well-seasoned teacher. and i'm like, no, [i’m] not. this is my very first year... and they're like, ‘really?’" this response illustrated that terrence felt he was perceived as competent and experienced by his colleagues, which aligned with the theme of value. being mistaken for a seasoned teacher signified a recognition of terrence's abilities as a wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 11 teacher and his contributions to his workplace. terrence also felt “welcomed and included” as reflected in the following: “and my principal...is a great principal...and he's always made me feel welcome in that building...i've never felt overly supervised. they don't get [in] my business... but you know, they still hold me accountable at the same time. it's a weird balance strike, but...it's been good.” the inclusion terrence felt also aligns with the theme of value, as it illustrated how terrence’s principal's approach to leadership recognized and appreciated educators, without being overbearing. such an environment fosters a balance where individuals like terrence feel respected and held accountable yet not micromanaged. terrence expressed his appreciation for his mentor's readiness to address all his inquiries, recognizing this as a generous offering of time and expertise: “he does very little and answers all [my] questions.” his comment, "he does very little," underscored his mentor’s effectiveness in offering support without undue intervention. this respect for professional autonomy strengthened terrence's feeling of being a trusted and integral part of his workplace. the theme of value in the workplace underscores the significance of acknowledging and appreciating individuals and their contributions, cultivating an atmosphere of inclusion and respect. furthermore, the nurturing environment established by his principal and mentor highlights how effective leadership and mentorship can foster a sense of value, respect, and professional autonomy. connection. terrence expressed that he felt connected to his colleagues. he spoke about his lunch gang, “epd” (extra professional development) sessions, and his previous experience as a paraprofessional in the same district. when asked about an instance when terrence felt particularly welcomed or included, terrence shared, “i've got a lunch gang....i'll grab school lunch and i'll sit with my colleagues and we'll talk and enjoy each other for the short 25 minutes that we have for lunch. and...that's been really great...i really enjoyed that part of my day.” when asked about how satisfied terrence was with the relationships he has formed in his building, terrence candidly reflected on the inherent challenges and natural dynamics of forming connections in a school environment. he shared, “i probably have the same problems that any other teacher has, when it comes to forming relationships. that [in] our building you get put in your section, and you will have friends around your section. and you'll go across the building and meet people you haven't talked to in like three months. and...that's just part of the way things work because like we said, it's like on the one hand, you want more cross-department interaction and collaboration. on the other hand, we don't want to have staff meetings every week.” terrence went on to explain that his colleagues often connected during informal gatherings they humorously dubbed “epd”—extra professional development—where they could unwind and not focus solely on work discussions at off-campus locations. terrence's reflection illustrated the balance between the structured and social aspects of building workplace relationships, highlighting both the challenges and fulfillment within his professional community. terrence recounted his previous position as a paraprofessional in another school within the district. this role provided him with a unique insider perspective, enabling him to understand school operations. his established sense of belonging in his previous building helped him transition into his current environment. wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 12 terrence exemplified the theme of connection through his experiences with his colleagues during casual and structured interactions. terrence acknowledged the inherent challenges in fostering relationships across departmental lines, noting how typical schedules sometimes limit cross-departmental interaction. however, informal gatherings allow colleagues to bridge these gaps, engaging in meaningful exchanges outside the formal setting. additionally, terrence's unique insider perspective, gained from his previous role as a paraprofessional in another school within the district, contributed to his understanding of school operations, further facilitating his sense of belonging. influence. although terrence spoke the least about his ability to influence others in his workplace, he did touch on this when he mentioned his authentic approach to interactions. by stating, "i do keep it real. sometimes i keep it so real that others feel welcome to keep it even realer," terrence highlighted how his authenticity creates an environment where others feel comfortable being genuine. this comment, while brief, suggests a form of indirect influence, one grounded not in authority or hierarchy, but in modeling vulnerability and openness. this form of influence, while subtle, can have an impact on workplace culture. when individuals model authenticity, they lay a foundation for trust. in terrence’s case, his ability to "keep it real" seemed to invite reciprocal honesty, potentially fostering a more inclusive and transparent environment. this also speaks to the quality of interactions rather than positional power. even without explicitly framing himself as influential, terrence’s comment reveals how sincere interactions can shape the tone of a professional space and contribute to a culture of belonging. authentic. terrence identified a balance between being professional and genuine in an environment that welcomed open expression. terrence's approach enabled those around him to also "keep it real," thereby nurturing a culture where everyone felt free to be their true selves. this aligns with the theme of authenticity, underscoring the significance of being genuine in interpersonal interactions and their potential to positively influence workplace dynamics. further reflecting on authenticity, terrence's experience at his workplace highlighted how shared cultural backgrounds can bolster this theme. in response to being asked about the school's approach to diversity and inclusion and its impact on his sense of belonging, terrence noted, "and our principal is black, so that's nice." here, terrence identified how having leadership that shares similar cultural experiences can empower individuals to express their authentic identities. case study: josue director information josue, a 44-year-old hispanic male, launched his career in the united states marine corps. there, he developed his expertise in human resources management and talent acquisition over nearly two decades, taking on various responsibilities such as personnel processing, staffing, and recruitment, even in challenging combat environments. after achieving a master's in business administration, josue cultivated an interest in education, which led him to spend several years as a substitute teacher in an urban school district. this experience reinforced his dedication to becoming a full-time educator, prompting him to start his teaching career at an wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 13 urban high school in a midwestern state. as a father, husband, and small business owner, josue had multiple commitments. belonging survey responses see table 4 for josue’s belongingness survey results. josue felt a strong sense of belonging within his school building. his responses indicated positive relationships, inclusion, and self-expression, while feelings of exclusion were minimal. table 4 josue’s survey results statement rating i feel emotionally connected to my school building. 5 people in my school building welcome and include me in activities. 5 i am unable to influence decision-making in my school building. 1 i feel unable to be my whole and authentic self with people in my school building. 1 people in my school building value me and my contributions. 5 my relationships with others in my school building are as satisfying as i want them to be. 5 i feel like an “insider” who understands how my school building works. 5 i am comfortable expressing my opinions in my school building. 5 i am treated as “less than” other residents in my school building. 1 when interacting with people in my school building, i feel like i truly belong. 5 josue’s focus group responses in josue's responses to the focus group questions, he expressed feeling valued and connected, held influence, and was able to be his authentic self at work. value. josue spoke extensively about the theme of value; authors coded it more than any other facet. his reflections included both positive and negative aspects, demonstrating the multifaceted nature of feeling valued in the workplace. josue described several experiences where he felt appreciated and recognized, fostering a strong sense of value in the workplace. at the beginning of the school year, josue felt “welcomed” when he was introduced to the entire staff. this initial recognition set a positive tone for his integration into the school community. additionally, josue was nominated by his peers and colleagues as teacher of the month. he explained that the recognition process was celebratory and public, with the principal and assistant principal presenting a wwe-style (world wrestling entertainment) championship belt to him in front of his students. the event included photographs, social media posts, and a public announcement, making josue feel highly appreciated. “they come to your classroom and announce it to all the students. you know, ‘your teacher is doing a great job! he deserves this belt.’” josue highlighted how students could nominate teachers to receive a special t-shirt with the message, “you have made a difference in my life.” he received this recognition from two of his students, which further reinforced his sense of contribution and purpose. these positive wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 14 moments reflected how formal and informal recognition, both from colleagues and students, can cultivate an atmosphere where individuals feel seen and appreciated for their efforts. despite these positive experiences, josue also shared challenges that detracted from his sense of value, particularly regarding school space limitations and state certification requirements. josue expressed frustration in having to rotate between five different classrooms daily. “i have to go to five different classrooms on a daily basis.” this limited his ability to personalize, organize, and manage the space according to his preferences and needs. the lack of a permanent space diminished his ability to create a comfortable and consistent environment for himself and his students. josue also spoke to the state certification requirements. he felt all his previous experience should have counted toward the state’s endorsement requirements. josue had a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in business. given he was receiving certification in business, marketing and information technology, the state required additional coursework in computer science. he disagreed with this assessment by the state and the additional cost it incurred. “i have an mba, which i finished 10 years ago, and i still owe the program. all those classes should be counted ... perhaps for qualified individuals, like super qualified individuals like myself ... my life experience and my professional experience [should count]. i don't mind doing this, but everything has to come out of my pocket.” additionally, he spoke to the certification requirements not recognizing his personal needs given his age and stage in life. “i have a lot of things on my plate besides being a full-time teacher. [i am] a student full-time, father, husband, and i have a side business.” connect. the facet of connection was the second most coded for josue. his reflections highlighted both informal and formal connections with colleagues, which significantly contributed to his sense of belonging and support within the school environment. josue described a variety of meaningful connections with his peers and mentors that fostered collaboration, camaraderie, and shared purpose. josue emphasized his ability to build excitement and unity among his team during school pep rallies by “hyping them up,” showcasing his role as a motivator and leader within the school community. outside of work, josue regularly participated in social gatherings with colleagues, fostering relationships beyond the professional setting. “we go out to a restaurant, and we have dinner together ... sometimes we have about 10-20 people.” these informal social gatherings created a sense of camaraderie and strengthened bonds among colleagues. josue shared a unique connection with a retired airman who served as an informal mentor, citing their shared military experience: “he did 20 plus years in the air force, and i did 20 plus years in the marines.” this established a foundation of mutual understanding and respect. josue also spoke about the relationship with his formal mentor, noting their shared academic background in business. “he also has an mba, so we get along very well. very smart dude.” josue went on to share the support these relationships provided. these connections provided josue with significant support and professional growth opportunities. josue described how his colleagues frequently helped, demonstrating a culture of collaboration and care within the school. “they offer to help ... and they're always asking me if there's anything that i need.” he also referenced opportunities to co-teach with peers who “have lengthy experience at the high school.” co-teaching with experienced peers allowed josue to further develop his skills and wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 15 confidence. the foundation of trust and shared purpose within these relationships allowed josue to feel supported and connected, enhancing his professional experience. influence. in terms of influence, josue described how his involvement in school decision-making and team initiatives allowed him to share ideas and contribute to meaningful changes within his school environment. josue said, “i can share how i feel” in his building and can “provide different ideas.” this highlighted his ability to express his thoughts and share ideas openly within his building. this sense of having a voice in his workplace fostered feelings of empowerment and respect. josue spoke enthusiastically about his involvement in school decision-making. he was an active participant in a team focused on revising the school’s cell phone policy. as one of 20 educators on the team, he attended monthly meetings to work toward reducing student distractions caused by cell phone use. “i am part of the whole no cell phone policy program. i am one of 20 teachers attending meetings, once every month since october of last year.” his contributions included sharing ideas and creating posters to support the initiative, demonstrating his commitment to the team's goals. josue stated, "i let them know how i feel about it and they [the team] have been very, very supportive of that.” being part of the decision-making process motivated josue to invest in school initiatives and strengthened his sense of ownership over the outcomes. additionally, his ability to contribute ideas and receive support from his colleagues reinforced his sense of agency and influence in his workplace. this highlighted how providing early-career educators with opportunities to influence decisions can enhance their engagement and satisfaction. authentic. the authors coded authenticity in multiple places within the focus group transcription, although all instances centered on josue sharing an opinion or excitement for his place in the building. josue expressed genuine enthusiasm for his role, sharing how his work environment motivated and energized him. “my experience has been great. i mean, i love to be there. i actually wake up every morning at 5:30, and you know, i'm excited! i go there. i prep and i'm a happy camper. i love what i do!” this statement illustrated josue’s authentic joy and satisfaction in his position, demonstrating a strong alignment between his personal values and his work environment. josue noted that he never felt treated differently as an alternatively certified teacher, which contributed to his sense of belonging and ability to be himself in the workplace. working in a predominantly latino school provided josue with a sense of cultural alignment and authenticity. “the students are incredibly diverse.” this cultural connection enabled josue to relate to his students and foster meaningful relationships, further enhancing his sense of authenticity. josue’s ability to be authentic in his workplace had a profound impact on his mindset and work experience. his excitement about going to work each day suggests that authenticity is linked to a more optimistic and motivated approach to his responsibilities. feeling treated equally as an alternatively certified teacher and connecting with his students’ diversity reinforced josue’s sense of acceptance and belonging in his role. wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 16 case study: robert director information robert's journey to joining the residency program underscores his dedication to education, shaped by nearly two decades of teaching experience in california. as a 54-year-old white male and alternatively certified teacher in california, robert developed his teaching skills in diverse classroom settings, adapting to the varied needs and challenges of the teaching profession. after teaching for 20 years in california, a move to a new state introduced a significant hurdle: the necessity to fulfill specific certification requirements unique to the state to continue his educational vocation. through his engagement as a second-year teacher in a new state, robert completed the requisite certification courses while concurrently working toward an accelerated master’s degree in secondary education. belonging survey responses see table 5 for robert’s belongingness survey results. robert expressed a positive sense of connection and inclusion within the school building. he felt valued and welcomed, while ratings concerning influence, authenticity, and relationship depth were lower. table 5 robert’s survey results statement rating i feel emotionally connected to my school building. 5 people in my school building welcome and include me in activities. 5 i am unable to influence decision-making in my school building. 2 i feel unable to be my whole and authentic self with people in my school building. 2 people in my school building value me and my contributions. 5 my relationships with others in my school building are as satisfying as i want them to be. 3 i feel like an “insider” who understands how my school building works. 3 i am comfortable expressing my opinions in my school building. 5 i am treated as “less than” other residents in my school building. 1 when interacting with people in my school building, i feel like i truly belong. 4 robert's focus group responses in robert's responses to the focus group questions, he articulated a strong sense of connection to his workplace, expressing that he feels empowered to be his authentic self. he conveyed a sense of value and influence within his role, yet his comments also revealed contradictions, indicating a complex internal dialogue about his feelings and experiences. value. in discussing his sense of value within his school environment, robert emphasized the “sense of purpose and mission” shared among the staff, particularly in a highpoverty setting. he noted, “it is important like that the schools and districts need people,” wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 17 highlighting the critical need for dedicated educators in challenging contexts. this statement underscored his awareness of the vital role strong educators play in these often under-resourced schools. moreover, robert reflected on the importance of teacher retention, stating, “what are they doing to attract and retain those people? i think (school district) is trying…” this insight illustrates his understanding of the systemic challenges facing educational institutions. he further contrasted his current experience with a previous district, stating, “maybe i’m comparing you to (different school district), which i have horror stories about.” this comparison not only emphasized his appreciation for his current environment but also revealed the significant impact that a supportive workplace can have on an educator's sense of value. connect. we identified this theme as the strongest aspect of robert’s experience. he expressed a sense of belonging within a welcoming district, stating, “i feel like i’ve gotten to know and become friends with some of [my colleagues].” this sentiment reflects not only his personal satisfaction but also the collaborative culture fostered within his department. however, robert also acknowledged the challenges of establishing connections in a large school setting. he candidly shared, “i basically have social anxiety, and [my high school] is very large.” this admission highlights the complexities of building relationships within a substantial institutional framework. despite recognizing the potential for collaboration, he noted, “it’s just hard to get to that.” this complexity suggests that while he values the connections he has formed, the size of the school presents barriers to broader engagement. additionally, robert identified operational factors as significant barriers to his sense of connection in his school setting. he expressed frustration with the technological systems in place, stating, “i still don’t feel like an insider.” his experience with situations such as malfunctioning wi-fi illustrated how operational inefficiencies can detract from an educator's overall experience. he candidly shared with his class, “you’re gonna see what happens to an old person when the computer doesn’t work,” highlighting the generational gap in navigating technology. additionally, robert acknowledged the steep learning curve associated with these operational tools, which can create feelings of exclusion and hinder effective collaboration. this aspect of his experience underscores the importance of providing comprehensive support and training for educators to foster a truly inclusive environment. influence. robert articulated this theme in relation to his students, emphasizing the need for diverse representation among educators. he stated, “[school building] should have a lot of mexican-american teachers by now,” underlining his commitment to ensuring that the teaching staff reflects the community they serve. this desire for representation signifies a deep understanding of the role educators play in shaping the future of their students. furthermore, robert conveyed a proactive stance regarding his legacy, asking his students, “which one of us is going to take my job?” this forward-thinking approach not only encourages student ownership but also reinforces the importance of mentorship in preparing the next generation of educators. authentic. robert expressed that the district's vision aligns with his values, remarking, “(school district) is very positive, supportive for open-minded teaching.” however, when reflecting on moments where he felt unable to express his full identity, he acknowledged, “i’ve kind of adjusted to it in context of the political climate around teaching and particularly, sort of wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 18 the moral panics going on around critical race theory.” this recognition of external pressures illustrates the nuanced struggle educators face in balancing personal beliefs with institutional expectations. he articulated a desire to push boundaries in his teaching, stating, “next year my class is going to be woke af.” yet, he also expressed apprehension about potential backlash, noting, “i am nervous about some parents with a very strong ideological objection.” this tension between aspiration and fear encapsulates the challenges educators encounter in creating inclusive and thought-provoking learning environments. cross-case analysis across all three cases, participants expressed a strong sense of belonging shaped by the core facets of value, connection, influence, and authenticity. table 6 demonstrates that these supportive elements were often accompanied by tensions that added complexity to each participant’s experience. all participants reported feeling emotionally connected to their school buildings and described being welcomed and included by colleagues and leadership. yet how these feelings were sustained or challenged varied depending on contextual factors such as building size, professional autonomy, and sociopolitical climate. survey responses overall indicated alignment amongst the three individuals, with robert indicating fewer satisfying relationships and feeling less like an “insider.” table 6 survey results statement robert josue terrence i feel emotionally connected to my school building. 5 5 5 people in my school building welcome and include me in activities. 5 5 5 i am unable to influence decision-making in my school building. 2 1 2 i feel unable to be my whole and authentic self with people in my school building. 2 1 1 people in my school building value me and my contributions. 5 5 5 my relationships with others in my school building are as satisfying as i want them to be. 3 5 5 i feel like an “insider” who understands how my school building works. 3 5 5 i am comfortable expressing my opinions in my school building. 5 5 5 i am treated as “less than” other residents in my school building. 1 1 1 when interacting with people in my school building, i feel like i truly belong. 4 5 5 this supports the broader narrative that alternatively certified early-career educators can experience a complex mix of connection and isolation, and a sense of being valued as well as feelings of constraint. the shared sense of emotional connection, inclusion, and perceived value demonstrates evidence of effective support. wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 19 value participant reflections reveal that feeling valued is deeply tied to recognition, inclusion, and autonomy. participants consistently highlighted experiences of being recognized and affirmed in their roles. this is additionally supported by their ratings in table 6, which showcases that all three marked 5s for the statement, “people in my school building value me and my contributions.” josue’s public recognition as teacher of the month and studentnominated accolades reinforced his sense of worth. however, this validation was juxtaposed with his frustration around state certification requirements, which failed to account for his prior professional experience. this disconnect between school-level affirmation and systemic disregard reflects how value can be experienced on one level and undermined on another. our cross-case analysis also reflected that a sense of value in the workplace requires a balance of recognition and inclusion. for terrence and josue, the desire for "not overbearing leadership" and "not being micromanaged" points to the importance of autonomy and trust. this suggests effective leadership needs to balance providing support and mentorship without being overly controlling to foster an inclusive and respectful workplace culture. this includes promoting diversity, equity, and a sense of belonging for all staff members. participant acknowledgement of formal and informal appreciation suggests a need for verbal praise, public acknowledgment, and opportunities for leadership roles. an educator's sense of value and decreased isolation can increase retention (hausmann et al., 2007; ingersoll, 2001; wilcoxen et al., 2020). despite differences in background, experience, age, and content, all cases demonstrated a link between belonging and support. given that all participants entered teaching through alternative certification routes, their reflections highlight how alternative pathways reshape the nature of support and belonging compared to traditional teacher preparation pathways. their prior military or professional experience appears to contribute to their expectations for autonomy, recognition, and influence, which should be considered when designing induction support for alternatively certified educators. connection participant experiences illustrated the importance of meaningful connections in fostering a sense of belonging, collaboration, and professional development in the work environment. this facet highlighted informal relationships, such as shared meals and mentorship rooted in common experiences, but also recognized that the size of the school and space led to challenges. while all three participants noted strong interpersonal connections, these relationships were often localized and did not always extend across departments. terrence and josue found belonging through informal routines like shared meals or “extra professional development” meetups, while robert formed close ties within his immediate circle. robert’s social anxiety and the logistical realities of a large school hindered broader engagement. our analysis suggests that while informal connections are essential, physical and structural barriers can limit broader inclusion, leading to a fragmented sense of connection. both terrence and josue also emphasized the importance of informal opportunities to interact in large buildings. initiatives such as “lunch bunch” and "extra professional development” provided additional opportunities to make connections in large buildings. social connections can impact job satisfaction (o’shea, 2021), and these actions nurtured camaraderie and mutual respect outside of formal teaching environments. formal connections, like co-teaching and mentorship, provided avenues to support learning and growth. this guidance and support work in tandem with teachers’ commitment and engagement (kachchhap & horo, 2021; rezaee et al., 2018). all three participants highlighted wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 20 aspects of this support leading to their connections within the building. robert emphasized the need for dedicated collaborative physical spaces to encourage interaction and shared problemsolving, while josue and terrace spoke to the respect and inclusion they felt. influence while coded the least often, the facet of influence emphasized the significance of creating opportunities for employees to contribute to decision-making processes. josue’s participation in school-wide policy efforts demonstrated a clear sense of agency, and robert reflected on his influence as a role model for future educators. terrence’s commitment to authenticity even helped shape the culture among his peers. all three spoke to the agency that helped them shape decisions and rules that affected their environment (powell et al., 2024). still, influence was not uniformly felt. for josue, the lack of a consistent classroom restricted his ability to influence his instructional space. for robert, institutional support for progressive teaching clashed with external pressures that made him cautious about content decisions. these tensions reflect how influence is shaped not only by formal roles but also by constraints tied to space, status, or external perception. authenticity all three participants shared a commitment to authenticity, expressing a desire to show up fully in their professional roles. each of the participants’ reflections highlights how being authentic in the workplace fostered a deeper sense of purpose and fulfillment, whether this was through academic freedom, genuine interpersonal interactions, or inclusive workplace cultures. cultural congruence between educators and their school communities, especially for terrence and josue, supported this. both mentioned their cultural connections to the school community, illustrating how authenticity allows individuals to fully embrace their roles and contribute meaningfully. for josue, belonging was also mediated through his roles as a father, husband, and business owner. these roles influenced his expectations of support and structure. his identity extended beyond the classroom, suggesting that belonging may not solely be a product of schoolbased culture, but a broader alignment with life experiences and responsibilities. however, robert’s case illuminated the fragility of authenticity in the face of ideological scrutiny. despite feeling aligned with the district’s progressive values, he admitted adjusting his instruction out of concern for backlash from parents, underscoring how personal identity and professional freedom can exist in uneasy tension. robert felt dissonance with academic freedom, revealing a multifaceted perspective on his experiences within the educational landscape. while he felt strongly about being his authentic self in the workplace, he simultaneously navigated the complexities of providing rich academic content and fostering critical thinking. when employees can align their personal values and identities with their professional roles, they are more likely to experience job satisfaction, motivation, and engagement (rivera et al., 2019). this emphasizes the value of fostering authenticity when building supportive and inclusive workplace cultures. table 7 summarizes the overall focus group facets identified by each participant. wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 21 table 7 focus group facets theme robert # (%) of facets josue # (%) of facets terrence # (%) of facets value 4 (22.22%) 8 (42.10%) 5 (31.25%) connections 9 (50.00%) 5 (26.32%) 8 (50.00%) influence 1 (5.55%) 2 (10.53%) 1 (6.25%) authenticity 4( 22.22%) 4 (21.05%) 2 (12.5%) these findings reveal that belonging is not merely a product of inclusion or support. it is a dynamic negotiation shaped by the interplay of personal identity, institutional norms, and sociocultural contexts. by highlighting both what supported and what complicated participants’ sense of belonging, the study offers a more nuanced understanding of the early-career experience for alternatively certified educators and points to the need for responsive structures that sustain both their personal and professional growth. see table 8 for a summary of factors that support alternatively certified educators and those that hinder them. table 8 summary of cross-case analysis theme supporting factors challenges value recognition from peers, students, and leadership systemic disregard for prior professional experience (certification) connection informal gatherings, mentorship, coteaching building size, siloed departments, social anxiety influence participation in policy teams, student mentorship limited role in decisions beyond specific projects or classroom structures authenticity cultural congruence, emotional expression in role fear of ideological pushback, lack of curriculum freedom implications these findings suggest that while early-career, alternatively certified educators often experience strong interpersonal and cultural support, positive experiences are frequently offset by institutional or structural constraints. understanding this tension is essential for developing responsive induction programs that not only nurture a sense of belonging but also dismantle barriers to full participation. for example, terrence felt welcomed and respected by leadership, yet his limited discussion around influence reveals how even supportive environments may fall short in providing genuine opportunities for shared decision-making. similarly, robert appreciated the district’s open-minded stance on instruction, but remained apprehensive about potential political backlash, underscoring the friction between personal values and external pressures. in contrast, josue’s active role in revising the school’s cell phone policy demonstrates how schools can institutionalize teacher voice through participatory leadership teams. wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 22 establishing such formalized pathways for involvement, especially for alternatively certified educators, can enhance feelings of agency and accelerate professional integration. to meaningfully support early-career educators, schools must intentionally balance mentorship with autonomy, ensuring that guidance does not slip into micromanagement. recognizing both the time and financial commitments required for transitioning into teaching is essential, especially for those entering from other careers. expressions of value through both formal recognition and everyday appreciation reinforce belonging and professional worth. strengthening connections through informal gatherings, structured mentorship, and access to shared collaborative spaces can reduce isolation and foster community. just as importantly, providing meaningful opportunities for influence, whether through decision-making roles, curriculum design, or school culture initiatives, promotes a sense of ownership and investment. finally, cultivating a school climate where educators feel safe to express their identities, values, and pedagogical beliefs without fear of judgment ensures authenticity, engagement, and longterm commitment to the profession. future research could compare experiences across certification pathways, such as traditionally certified versus alternatively certified educators, to uncover unique affordances or tensions. additionally, longitudinal designs tracking educators beyond their first two years could provide insight into how belonging evolves over time. gender differences, particularly given the subset of male educators, also warrant deeper examination in shaping belonging experiences. limitations while this study provides valuable insights into a sense of belonging among early-career educators, certain limitations must be acknowledged. first, the sample size was limited to three case studies, which may not fully capture the diverse experiences of alternatively certified earlycareer educators in other contexts. additionally, because data collection relied on self-reported experiences through interactions with the director, focus groups, and surveys, there is potential for response bias, as participants may have framed their experiences in socially desirable ways. despite these limitations, the study contributes to the growing body of research on early-career educators and highlights important factors influencing their sense of belonging. it also addresses a gap in the research regarding alternatively certified educators. these insights can inform future professional development initiatives and support systems for new educators. conclusion this research highlights the importance of fostering a strong sense of belonging among early-career educators, particularly those entering the profession through alternative certification pathways. addressing these educators’ unique challenges enables educational institutions and school districts to create supportive environments that promote retention and professional growth. the findings offer valuable insights into key factors shaping the experiences of alternatively certified educators, who remain underrepresented in existing research. ultimately, investing in meaningful support 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(2018). case study research and applications: design and methods (6th ed.). sage. author notes chris wilcoxen, ed.d. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7872-9430 https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2010.517690 https://doi.org/10.31532/interdiscipeducpsychol.2.3.003 http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.27.3696 https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/state-teacher-shortageshttps://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/13598661003677614 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.4.678 https://doi-org.leo.lib.unomaha.edu/10.1007/s10826-017-0932-0 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmce-02-2019-0022 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7872-9430 wilcoxen et al.: finding their place current issues in education, 26(2) 28 university of nebraska omaha cwilcoxen@unomaha.edu jennifer langfeldt https://orchid.org/0009-0004-8328-0243 university of nebraska omaha jlangfeldt@unomaha.edu amber o’shea https://orcid.org/0009-0006-1975-9852 university of nebraska omaha aoshea@unomaha.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:cwilcoxen@unomaha.edu https://orchid.org/0009-0004-8328-0243 mailto:jlangfeldt@unomaha.edu https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/orcid.org/0009-0006-1975-9852?lang=en__;!!pvxuogz4srb2p-tu!emugsi-r_bsrfsnxfzy1oqmhbhhcy93xnljixrtttoysoefzyakev4d6rrr3u9hqqabc1xtojfmdnokesrs1qf6v7g$ mailto:aoshea@unomaha.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ spatial computing: creating the future of learning current issues in education, 21(2) 1 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age spatial computing: creating the future of learning emory craig ceo, digital bodies maya georgieva the new school abstract: spatial computing is the fourth paradigm of the digital revolution and could profoundly transform learning. it is the convergence of several technological developments, including augmented and virtual reality (xr), artificial intelligence, haptic feedback, motion-capture, and situational awareness engines. this article explores how the shift from 2d screens to virtual worlds will impact learning and raise new ethical and digital literacy challenges. spatial computing goes far beyond the simple use of a vr headset for virtual experiences. microsoft’s experimental dreamwalker project has already demonstrated how a user can remain entirely immersed in a virtual environment while successfully navigating the real world around them. these developments offer far-reaching implications for learning and our social interactions. students may prefer virtual embodied avatars who are adaptive, personalized, and available anytime over real faculty or they may gain a new-found appreciation for human connection. in a world where the virtual and real converge, learning will no longer be limited to education organizations but will be embedded throughout human experience. when we are no longer confined by physical reality but by the worlds we can imagine, the ability to ask the right questions will be more critical than having the correct answers. with spatial computing, technology will no longer be an educational tool, but a platform for human experience. keywords: spatial computing, xr, virtual reality, augmented reality, immersive learning citation: craig, e. & georgieva, m. (2020). spatial computing: creating the future of learning. current issues in education, 21(2). http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1935 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1935 spatial computing: creating the future of learning current issues in education, 21(2) 2 accepted: 06/11/2020 spatial computing: creating the future of learning if you cut open the present, the future bleeds out. william burroughs the more things change . . . higher education has been through waves of technological change, which seems to change everything and nothing at all. from early mainframes that took the space of entire rooms, we've moved to desktops and laptops, and mobile devices that put the mainframe in our pockets. it's transformed institutional operations, the student experience, and in some remarkable examples, the learning environment itself. but for all the developments, innovation remains elusive. one can all too easily step into a classroom in higher education and find that little has changed. the faculty is in the front of the room, seated students dutifully (or not) take notes, and they are evaluated in ways they will seldom experience in the real world. except in certain professions, most students will never take another exam after they leave college. or ever write another paper with proper apa citations. as ken robinson said in his popular ted talk, do schools kill creativity?, it’s as if the primary goal of higher education is to perpetuate itself, to produce new university professors (robinson, 2006). that’s essential, of course, as no organization survives without ensuring its future. but the vast majority of our students will leave the university for the real world, unprepared for the challenges they will face. the next paradigm shift now that we’re finally comfortable with mobile computing, we face the next wave of the digital revolution. spatial computing or xr (it’s too new to settle on terminology) is building like a tsunami on the horizon. this fourth paradigm shift of the digital revolution is a convergence of several technological developments, including vr, ar, mixed reality, ai, computer vision, sensors, haptics, and situational awareness engines. every previous development made our devices smaller, convenient, and more powerful. but while our digital content improved in quality, it has remained confined to 2d screens. with spatial computing, we move into a new realm of virtual environments. technology will no longer be a tool to solve a task but a platform for human experience. that profoundly challenges the current state of higher education. we’re comfortable with our digital tools (even if we adopt them unevenly). we are even more comfortable in our debates about our digital tools as it avoids the risk of implementation. but spatial computing is not just another development we can shoehorn into our toolbox of ed tech solutions. when faculty and higher education institutions struggle with how immersive experiences fit into current practices, that misses the point. spatial computing will challenge and undermine current practices. currently, immersive learning has found a home in engineering and healthcare education. but these are areas where simulations have long been part of the learning environment. the challenging move is when these developments are integrated into the social sciences and liberal arts. this is where spatial computing opens an exciting new realm of creativity through immersive storytelling. spatial computing: creating the future of learning current issues in education, 21(2) 3 of course, our initial forays into spatial computing are rudimentary at best. ai is still in its infancy, vr and mixed reality headsets are bulky and uncomfortable. and all of it is costprohibitive. technology always evolves this way. the first ibm pc (blazingly fast at 4.77mhz) cost the equivalent of $5,000 today. the inflation-adjusted price for the groundbreaking apple lisa? over $25,000 today. but focusing on the cost and quality of the current state of the technology is just a reassuring narrative, a way to avoid addressing the challenges of the future. dreamwalker: a spatial computing example struggling to understand a future that we only glimpse through a distant haze, an example helps. microsoft recently announced its dreamwalker project, an arrangement of sensors, cameras, and a vr headset that would let you navigate the real world while completely immersed in virtual reality. relying on our current technology, it is bulky and ridiculous looking. no one would wear this today except as an experiment. but look at it as a glimpse of the future world in which higher education will exist. here, the present is cut open, and the future bleeds out. a future where the very fabric of reality is no longer made of atoms but of photons that will bring human experience to almost magical realms of imagination. figure i. microsoft’s dreamwalker project from the microsoft research blog (2019): . . dreamwalker monitors users’ environments using a variety of sensing technology— inside-out tracking via a windows mixed reality-provided relative position trace, a dualband gps sensor, and two rgb depth cameras—to detect obstacles discovered along the way. discovered obstacles that may move or appear in users’ paths are managed by introducing moving virtual obstacles, or characters, such as pedestrians walking near users, to block them from any potential danger. other options for controlling users’ paths may include pets and dynamic events such as vehicles being parked, moving carts and more, limited only by the imagination of the experience creator. the real-time environment spatial computing: creating the future of learning current issues in education, 21(2) 4 detection technology provides guidance for the creation of this additional virtual content with great care taken to generate these virtual obstacles outside users’ field of view to avoid any unnatural “popping up” of objects in the virtual world. it’s a remarkable project, almost like a real-life version of what was envisioned in the movie, the matrix. you can walk around the world and simultaneously experience another (virtual) world entirely. you might question why someone would even want to do this we can discuss as soon as you remove the earbuds from your ears. we already exist in immersive environments of our own creation. spatial computing and learning the opportunities and challenges in these developments for higher education are profound. in a spatial computing environment, any surface could become a virtual stage for embodied experiences that fuses gaze, touch, smell, and transcends human experience as we know it. information and insights from people who passed through the space before you would still be accessible. you might even want to walk back their analysis to understand how they developed their conclusions. virtual time and space will allow for past, present, and future to co-exist—a world where you can be anything and meet anybody. keeping students on task already challenging in a world of ubiquitous social media will become a pervasive environmental challenge. with spatial computing, students could be anywhere and yet experience anything they want. our current innovative learning spaces have long renounced the chairs bolted to the floor of 19th-century education, but they still focus students’ attention under the guise of flexibility. in the future, perhaps our physical campus spaces will be replaced by virtual portals to guide students’ learning through challenges, collaboration, or mindful contemplation. spatial computing promises to finally personalize learning to the needs of each student. virtual mentors will not simply offer directions and manage searches but drive our ability to learn. objects in a room might even register and respond to levels of anxiety or confidence, sharing just the right amount of information students need. learning becomes less about what you know and more about what you create with what you know. imagination becomes the final frontier. the ethical challenges spatial computing will raise profound ethical challenges and go to the very core of our relationship with the world around us. how do we determine the validity of our experiences when the boundary between the real and the virtual disappears? we spend a good deal of energy focusing on digital literacy and skills, but our definitions are based on the world we were educated in a text-based world. our students will live in a world radically different from the one we know. in the social realm, an example can be found in georgia tech’s mixing virtual teaching assistants in with their “live” ta’s. but it will advance far beyond these early experiments. what happens when i can leave a virtual environment but my ai-driven avatar remains? what happens when faculty and students have digital twins existing both as real and digital selves? will students prefer the digital version of their faculty who are always available 24/7? can our social fabric survive when our identities become completely malleable? the questions here go far beyond the future of higher education. it’s actually about our future as human beings. as the virtual world becomes more powerful and ubiquitous, what happens to reality? will we leave it behind for our illusions or come back to it with a newfound appreciation for human connection? the very nature of the world will no longer be confined by spatial computing: creating the future of learning current issues in education, 21(2) 5 physical reality but by the worlds we can imagine. we will exist in multiple futures where asking the right questions will be more important than having answers. in a world of convergence where technology blurs the lines between the virtual and physical and ai avatars co-exist alongside us, learning will no longer be confined to education systems as we know them today it becomes the very essence of the human experience. the founding editor of wired magazine, kevin kelly, has argued that only through artificial intelligence will we come to know ourselves as human beings (kelly, 2017). in the same way, spatial computing may present us with an opportunity to not just remake the world but reimagine every facet of humanity. references kelly, k. (2017). the inevitable: understanding the 12 technological forces that will shape our future. penguin books. microsoft. (2019, october 21). retrieved a new era of spatial computing brings fresh challenges-and solutions-to vr. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/a-newera-of-spatial-computing-brings-fresh-challenges-and-solutions-to-vr/?ranmid=24542 robinson, k. (2006). do schools kill creativity? [video]. ted conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?language=en author notes emory craig ceo, digital bodies ecraig@digitalbodies.net maya georgieva the new school, director, education futures / xreality center maya@newschool.edu guest editor notes sean m. leahy, ph.d. arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff, m.ed macel curtin university, learning futures advisor k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/a-new-era-of-spatial-computing-brings-fresh-challenges-and-solutions-to-vr/?ranmid=24542 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/a-new-era-of-spatial-computing-brings-fresh-challenges-and-solutions-to-vr/?ranmid=24542 https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?language=en mailto:ecraig@digitalbodies.net mailto:maya@newschool.edu mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au spatial computing: creating the future of learning current issues in education, 21(2) 6 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf volume 6, number 2 february, 2003 issn 1099-839x typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research anthony j. onwuegbuzie howard university larry g. daniel university of north florida the purpose of this paper is to identify and to discuss major analytical and interpretational errors that occur regularly in quantitative and qualitative educational research. a comprehensive review of the literature discussing various problems was conducted. with respect to quantitative data analyses, common analytical and interpretational misconceptions are presented for dataanalytic techniques representing each major member of the general linear model, including hierarchical linear modeling. common errors associated with many of these approaches include (a) no evidence provided that statistical assumptions were checked; (b) no power/sample size considerations discussed; (c) inappropriate treatment of multivariate data; (d) use of stepwise procedures; (e) failure to report reliability indices for either previous or present samples; (f) no control for type i error rate; and (g) failure to report effect sizes. with respect to qualitative research studies, the most common errors are failure to provide evidence for judging the dependability (i.e., reliability) and credibility (i.e., validity) of findings, generalizing findings beyond the sample, and failure to estimate and to interpret effect sizes. educational research worldwide has played a major role in influencing and informing educational practice. indeed, the last decade has seen a proliferation in the number of articles published in educational research journals. some of these published works have been the basis of educational reform in many settings. moreover, most investigators utilize previous research in developing their conceptual and theoretical frameworks, as well as in providing qualitative (e.g., content analyses) and quantitative (e.g., meta-analyses) reviews of the literature in which the key findings are summarized. in conducting literature reviews, researchers often assume that the documented findings are trustworthy. unfortunately, some researchers have found that the majority of published studies and dissertations are seriously flawed, containing analytical and interpretational errors (daniel, 1998c; hall, ward, & comer, 1988; keselman et al., 1998; onwuegbuzie, 2002b; thompson, 1998a; vockell & asher, 1974; ward, hall, & schramm, 1975; witta & daniel, 1998). some of these flaws have arisen from graduate-level instruction in which research methodology and statistics are taught as a series of routine steps, rather than as a holistic, reflective, current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 integrative process (kerlinger, 1960; newman & benz, 1998); from graduate-level curricula that minimize students' exposure to quantitative and qualitative content (aiken et al., 1990; thompson, 1998a); from proliferations of various erroneous "mythologies" about the nature of research (daniel, 1997; kerlinger, 1960); from increasing numbers of research methodology instructors teaching out of their specialty areas; and from a failure, unwillingness, or even refusal to recognize that analytical and interpretational techniques that were popular in previous decades no longer reflect best practices and, moreover, may now be deemed inappropriate, invalid, or obsolete (schmidt & hunter, 1997). purpose the purpose of the present paper is to identify and to discuss the major analytical and interpretational errors that occur in qualitative and quantitative educational research. also contained in this essay are recommendations for good data analytic practices for each of these techniques that are based on the extant literature. although a few methodologists have identified common errors made by researchers when analyzing various types of data, they have tended to focus their attention on a few data-analytic techniques at a time. for example, thompson (1998a) reviewed the following five methodological errors that occur in educational research: (a) use of stepwise methods; (b) failure to consider result interpretation in the context specificity of analytical weights (e.g., regression beta weights, discriminant function coefficients); (c) failure to interpret both weights and structure coefficients in result interpretation; (d) failure to realize that reliability is a function of scores and not of instruments; and (e) incorrect interpretation of statistical significance and the associated failure to report and to interpret effect sizes present in all quantitative analyses. moreover, no published paper was found in which errors made in both quantitative and qualitative research are discussed within the same article. as such, the present essay appears to represent the most wide-ranging discussion of analytical and interpretational errors in educational research to date. there is little doubt that a myriad of analytical errors still prevails, despite the widespread availability of statistical software and many documented accounts calling for better research practice. as supported in the foregoing literature review, it is likely that many of these errors stem from a lack of a unified framework for analyzing and interpreting qualitative and quantitative data. in order to rectify these shortcomings, it is recommended that researchers be provided with a catalog of appropriate and inappropriate data analytic practices upon which the majority of researchers agree. in addition, editors of research journals should provide authors, as well as members of their editorial board and other reviewers of articles, with specific guidelines for analyzing and interpreting empirical data (daniel, 1998a). again, these guidelines should be based on agreed-upon practices. as such, the guidelines that are included in the ensuing literature review represent one small step in this direction.. method for arriving at typology of errors over the last six years, several methodologists have examined various erroneous analytical practices undertaken by applied quantitative researchers in various educational and psychological journals. the current authors attempted to obtain as many of these articles arising from these examinations as possible by conducting a search of literature databases such as eric (i.e., educational resource information center) and psycinfo, as well as by attending methodological paper presentations at state (e.g., georgia educational research association), regional (e.g., mid-south educational research association, southwest educational research association, eastern educational research association, midwestern educational research association), national (e.g., american educational research association, association for the advancement of educational research), and international (e.g., european educational research association) conferences over this time period. the articles extracted from these sources included the following: elmore and woehlke (1988, 1998); kirk (1996); keselman et al. (1998); onwuegbuzie (2002b), vacha-haase, ness, nilsson, and reetz (1999); vacha-haase (1998); simmelink and vachahaase (1999); henson, capraro, and capraro (2001); henson and roberts (in press); lance and vachahaase (1998); vacha-haase, nilsson, reetz, lance, and thompson (2000); snyder and thompson (1998); thompson (1999b); thompson and snyder (1997, 1998), vacha-haase and ness (1999); vachahaase and nilsson (1998); and mcmillan, lawson, lewis, and snyder (2002). all of these articles represent paper presentations at professional meetings and/or published works in reputable journals over the last six years. in addition to searching the literature database and collecting methodological articles from professional meetings, the authors used the "snowballing" approach to obtaining manuscripts. specifically, the reference list of every methodological paper extracted was examined to determine if it contained relevant articles that we had overlooked. this technique led to the identification of several additional articles. this method also helped typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 3 us to validate our choice of articles. for example, vacha-haase et al. (2000) reviewed 10 of the articles cited above, whereas mcmillan et al. (2002) reviewed these same 10 articles, as well as vachahaase et al.'s (2000) article. these three techniques for extracting methodological papers (i.e., database searching, attending conferences, snowballing) led to the identification of a large proportion of empirical studies examining the erroneous practices undertaken by applied researchers with respect to statistical analyses over the last six years. the same three techniques outlined above were used to obtain articles that formed the basis of our recommendations for analyzing and interpreting quantitative and qualitative data. extracting literature for this purpose was much more challenging than obtaining articles that examined the incidence of errors of omission and commission made by applied researchers, as described above. whereas the latter type contained less than two dozen articles, papers presenting methodological recommendations for qualitative and statistical analyses numbered in the hundreds, just in the last decade alone! in extracting articles from the literature database, professional conferences, and via snowballing, the present writers tended to include articles that were authored or coauthored by quantitative and qualitative researchers and methodologists with national/international reputations. many of these methodologists are not only researchers and writers, but also are journal editors and reviewers. thus, they are widely read in the fields of educational and psychological research, as reflected by the reference lists contained in their articles. snowballing techniques on these lead methodologists' articles yielded many more useful sources. in compiling our list of recommendations, we also reviewed many of the most popular textbooks in the area of qualitative research methods, quantitative research methods, statistics, measurement, and evaluation. a series of content analyses was undertaken on the collected articles. specifically, a content analysis was undertaken with respect to each of the analytical techniques discussed below. in using this procedure, our goal was to summarize the collective thought in the field. it could be argued that the fact that we did not summarize a random (i.e., scientific) sample of methodological papers provides a limitation to our paper. to the extent that our sample of articles was not representative of the recommendations posited by the majority of the leading methodologists, this criticism is valid. however, it should be noted that the aim of this essay was not to provide a survey of different analytical techniques found in the literature because this would have led to the "best" and the "worst" recommendations being given equal weight; rather, our goal was to attempt to determine the best practices as advanced by the community of research scholars as a whole. in any case, a perusal of other articles similar to our own (e.g., thompson, 1994a, 1998a, 1999) indicates no more, and often even less structure in the technique used to select articles than described above. at the very least, as noted earlier, our paper appears to cite more literature in general and more current articles in particular than any other paper of its type. review of the literature errors common to both qualitative and quantitative research at the highest level, analytical and interpretational errors in educational research include creating a false dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative research methodologies; that is, failing to treat quantitative and qualitative research strategies as lying on an interactive continuum, with theory as the driving force. this practice tends to prevent researchers from taking a holistic and comprehensive approach to research (newman & benz, 1998). throughout the 20th century, an uncompromising rift has prevailed between quantitative and qualitative researchers. quantitative purists express assumptions about the world in general and research in particular that are consistent with a positivist or empiricist philosophy, whereas qualitative purists (e.g., post-positivists, poststructuralists, and post-modernists) reject positivism (onwuegbuzie, 2002a). moreover, the major differences that prevail between the two sets of purists are at the level of logic of justification (smith & heshusius, 1986). positivists believe that behavior can be measured empirically. on the other hand, nonpositivism is rooted in the constructivist, hermeneutic paradigm (i.e., verstehen) in which multiple realities are socially constructed through individual and collaborative definitions of the situation, that values are an essential component of the research process, and that facts are indistinguishable from values (onwuegbuzie, 2000a, 2002a). as such, qualitative purists are skeptical about the utility of providing evidence of representation and legitimation (onwuegbuzie, 2000b). unfortunately, much of the quantitative-qualitative debate has been counterproductive, entailing a continual contest of polemics, which has tended to confuse rather than to illuminate, and to segregate rather than to unify educational researchers (onwuegbuzie, 2002a). indeed, this trend prompted miles and huberman (1984, p. 21) to declare, "epistemological purity doesn't get research done." however, more and more researchers are realizing that no one paradigm is a hegemony in current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 educational research. indeed, as concluded by hammersley (1992), the primary dilemma facing both sets of purists is that their assumptions are selfrefuting. with respect to positivists, their assertion of the verifiability principle is self-refuting because it is neither logical nor empirical, and thus lacks meaning. to be congruous with their epistemological underpinnings, extreme relativists (i.e., constructivists) must concede that their assertion that all truth is relative is itself only true in the relative sense; thus, in terms of other philosophical perspectives their claims may be false. accordingly, relativism is both true and false (hammersley, 1992). moreover, to be consistent with their tenets, realists must treat the quantitative paradigm not only as being true by its own standards, but also as a reality that is as legitimate as is any other reality--in particular, the qualitative paradigm (onwuegbuzie, 2002a). as such, a false dichotomy exists between the quantitative and qualitative research paradigms (newman & benz, 1998). as asserted by onwuegbuzie (2002a), recognizing these flaws in the logic of justification allows one to re-frame how research paradigms should be considered. as surmised by newman and benz (1998), instead of representing a dichotomy, positivist and non-positivist ideologies lie on an epistemological continuum. in fact, the myriad of dichotomies that are used to differentiate qualitative and quantitative research paradigms can be re-framed as lying on continua. these include realism versus idealism, foundational versus antifoundational, objective versus subjective, impersonal versus personal, and deductive reasoning versus inductive reasoning (onwuegbuzie, 2002a). such a reconceptualization permits quantitative and qualitative researchers alike to focus more on research methodologies rather than on paradigmatic considerations (onwuegbuzie, 2002a). indeed, as contended by smith and heshusius (1986), there is no one-to-one correspondence between research paradigm and research methodology. paradigm-specific errors in educational research the remainder of this paper provides a critical synthesis and review of the educational research literature, examining both the extant qualitative and quantitative body of literature as described above. the first component involves an identification and discussion of the most prevalent analytical and interpretational errors made in qualitative educational research. this component is organized into sections that discuss general analytical and interpretational errors made in qualitative research, regardless of which methodologies are being referenced. on the other hand, the second component is divided into two major parts. the first part, mirroring the qualitative component, discusses general analytical and interpretational errors made in quantitative research, irrespective of the underlying technique(s). the second part provides common analytical and interpretational misconceptions for each of the major data-analytic techniques, including: bivariate correlational analyses, multiple regression, analysis of variance, analysis of covariance, multivariate analysis of variance, multiple analysis of covariance, discriminant analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling, as well as hierarchical linear modeling. because of the inclusion of this second section, the quantitative component is much longer than is the qualitative component. however, the discrepancy in length should not be interpreted to mean that one paradigm is more important than is the other or that one paradigm leads to better quality research than does the other. errors in qualitative research many data analytic and interpretational errors permeate qualitative research. therefore, the section below highlights the most common and pervasive errors encountered in the literature. in addition to discussing general errors made in qualitative research, the authors would have liked to have outlined the most prevalent analytical and interpretational errors that have been found to occur for each of the major data-analytic techniques-similar to that undertaken for quantitative research. however, this goal was beyond the scope of the present article for the following reasons. first and foremost, there is not the same level of agreement among qualitative researchers concerning available data-analytic approaches as there is among quantitative researchers. indeed, whereby specific terms have been given to very specific quantitative (i.e., statistical) analyses (e.g., t-test, analysis of variance, multiple regression), the interactive nature of qualitative data analysis renders it much more difficult to provide labels for each type of analysis. for example, what one qualitative researcher might refer to as the method of constant comparison (e.g., lincoln & guba, 1985), another researcher might call a thematic analysis (e.g., boyatzis, 1998). second, whereas quantitative data analysis typically represents a distinct stage in the research process (onwuegbuzie, in press-a), qualitative data-analysis tends to be much more interactive, recursive, and iterative. more specifically, in qualitative research, the research design/data collection, data analysis, and data interpretation stages are often non-linear in nature, and it is not unusual for these three stages to be inseparable. as a result, only general analytical typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 5 and interpretational errors that have been found to occur in qualitative research are presented. general errors in qualitative research. failure to legitimize research findings. with respect to qualitative research methodologies, analytical errors include a failure, often for philosophical reasons, to legitimize research findings and interpretations through documentation of validity (e.g., credibility, relativism, external criticism) and reliability (e.g., inter-rater reliability, internal consistency). with respect to the former, although the importance of validity has long been recognized by quantitative researchers, this issue has been the subject of disagreement among qualitative researchers. at the one end of the qualitative continuum are those (e.g., goetz & lecompte, 1984; miles & huberman, 1984) who contend that validity for qualitative research should be interpreted in the same manner as for quantitative research. at the other end of the continuum, some post-modernists (e.g., wolcott, 1990) question the appropriateness of validity in qualitative research, asserting that the goal of providing evidences of validity is utopian. disturbingly, a common definition of validity among relativists is that it represents whatever the community agrees it should represent. unfortunately, such a definition is ambiguous, and, consequently, does not help beginning qualitative researchers to design their studies and to assess the legitimacy and trustworthiness of their findings. it appears that a reason for the rejection of validity by some qualitative researchers stems from their perceptions that the positivist definition and interpretation of validity serves as the yardstick against which all other standards are evaluated. thus, these extremists believe that in order to reject positivism, they must reject validity (onwuegbuzie, 2002a). however, this is tantamount to throwing out the baby with the bath water. unfortunately, many qualitative researchers adopt an "anything goes" relativist attitude (onwuegbuzie, 2002a), culminating in a failure to assess the credibility of their data interpretations. yet, as contended by onwuegbuzie (2002a), in order to be taken seriously, qualitative researchers must be accountable fully at all phases of their research study, including the data collection, analysis, and interpretation stages. such accountability can only come to the fore by providing evidence of representation and legitimation. thus, rigor in research is needed, regardless of whether quantitative or qualitative research techniques are utilized. with respect to the latter, it is important that qualitative researchers assess the legitimacy of their interpretations. this can be undertaken by re-defining the concept of validity in qualitative research, for example, by deeming validity as representing an examination of rival interpretations and hypotheses (polkinghorne, 1983), or by re-conceptualizing validity as being multidimensional (e.g., credibility, transferability, dependability, confirmability; lincoln & guba, 1985). in fact, onwuegbuzie (2000b) identified 24 techniques for assessing the legitimacy of qualitative findings and interpretations. a myriad of methods for assessing the truth value of findings and interpretations in qualitative research have emerged in the literature. these include triangulation, prolonged engagement, persistent observation, leaving an audit trail, member checking, weighting the evidence, checking for representativeness of sources of data, checking for researcher effects, making contrasts/comparisons, checking the meaning of outliers, using extreme cases, ruling out spurious relations, replicating a finding, assessing rival explanations, looking for negative evidence, obtaining feedback from informants, peer debriefing, clarifying researcher bias, and thick description (creswell, 1998; maxwell, 1996; miles & huberman, 1984, 1994). utilizing and documenting such techniques should help to reduce methodological errors in qualitative research. another analytical error in qualitative research is the failure to assess the reliability of observed findings. although reliability is generally conceived of as an important concept in analyzing quantitative data, it is important to note that reliability is actually pertinent with regard to qualitative data (madill, jordan, & shirley, 2000). in qualitative research, information gleaned from observations, interviews, and the like must be "trustworthy" (eisenhart & howe, 1992; lincoln & guba, 1985); otherwise any themes that emerge from these data will not be credible. an important component of trustworthiness is "dependability" (lincoln & guba, 1985). interestingly, dependability is analogous to reliability (eisenhart & howe, 1992). techniques for evaluating this dimension of trustworthiness include triangulation, which involves the use of multiple and different methods, investigators, sources, and theories to obtain corroborating evidence (ely, anzul, friedman, garner, & steinmetz, 1991; glesne & peshkin, 1992; lincoln & guba, 1985; merriam, 1988; miles & huberman, 1984, 1994; patton, 1990). triangulation reduces the possibility of chance associations, as well as of systematic biases prevailing due to only qualitative (or quantitative) methods being utilized, thereby allowing greater confidence in any interpretations made (fielding & fielding, 1986; maxwell, 1992). current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 according to denzin (1978), three outcomes arise from triangulation: convergence, inconsistency, and contradiction. each of these outcomes clearly represents issues pertaining to reliability. nevertheless, many interpretivists refrain from using the term "reliability" when pertaining to qualitative data, probably because of an attempt to distance qualitative analytical techniques from statistical method (madill et al., 2000). however, this line of thinking is counterproductive. indeed, as noted by constas (1992, p. 255), unless methods for examining rival hypotheses in qualitative research are developed, "the research community will be entitled to question the analytical rigor of qualitative research"--where rigor is defined as the attempt to make data and categorical schemes as public and as replicable as possible (denzin, 1978). fortunately, reliability as a concept in qualitative data analysis is increasingly gaining acceptance. in particular, it is no longer unusual for qualitative researchers to report either intrarater (e.g., consistency of a given rater's scores or observations) or interrater (e.g., consistency of two or more independent raters' scores or observations) reliability estimates (gay & airasian, 2000; worthen, borg, & white, 1993). evidence of this can be gleaned from the fact that a leading theory-building qualitative software program called nud.ist (non-numerical unstructured data indexing searching & theorizing) allows data analysts to determine inter-coder reliability (qsr international pty ltd., 2002). generalizing findings beyond sample. interpretative errors in qualitative research include the tendency to generalize findings rather than to use qualitative techniques to obtain insights into particular educational, social, and familial processes and practices that existed within a specific location (connolly, 1998). only when relatively large representative samples are utilized is it fully justified for researchers to generalize findings from the sample to the population. while obtaining large, representative samples typically is the goal in quantitative research, this is not the case in qualitative research, where purposive sampling of relatively few cases is more the norm. yet, some qualitative researchers find it difficult to resist the temptation to generalize their results (e.g., thematic representations) to the underlying population. failure to estimate and interpret effect sizes. recently, the american psychological association (apa) task force advocated strongly that researchers should "always present effect sizes for primary outcomes...[and]...reporting and interpreting effect sizes...is essential to good research" (wilkinson & the task force on statistical inference, 1999, pp. 10-11). however, the title of their report (i.e., "statistical methods in psychology journals: guidelines and explanations"), suggests that these stipulations are pertinent only to quantitative data. moreover, the apa task force did not provide any recommendations that effect sizes be reported and interpreted when analyzing qualitative data. yet, as advanced by onwuegbuzie (in press-b), there are many situations in which effect sizes would provide a richer, thicker description of underlying qualitative data. indeed, it appears that failure to utilize effect sizes by qualitative researchers stems, at least in part, from educational researchers associating effect sizes with the quantitative paradigm. yet, ironically, the use of effect sizes actually results in empirical data being qualitized (tashakkori & teddlie, 1998), which, in turn, facilitates the assessment of whether an observed effect is small, medium, large, or the like (cohen, 1988). simply put, these effect size interpretations represent qualitative categorizations (onwuegbuzie & teddlie, 2002). at its most basic form, providing an effect size in qualitative research involves obtaining counts of the frequency of an observed phenomenon. interestingly, as noted by sechrest and sidani (1995, p. 79), "qualitative researchers regularly use terms like 'many,' 'most,' 'frequently,' 'several,' 'never,' and so on. these terms are fundamentally quantitative." moreover, it could be argued that terms such as "many" are "frequently" are relative; that is, they depend on the context from which the data were obtained. using such phrases without supplementing them with the counts, forces the reader to accept the writer's interpretation. conversely, by providing counts, readers can make up their own mind as to what adjective best depicts the underlying phenomenon. as a result, qualitative researchers often can extract more meaning by obtaining counts of observations in addition to their narrative descriptions (sandelowski, 2001). for example, witcher, onwuegbuzie, and minor (2001) conducted a qualitative study to ascertain preservice teachers' perceptions of characteristics of effective teachers. a phenomenological analysis resulted in the emergence of six characteristics of effective teaching (as perceived by the preservice teachers). by counting the frequency of the emergent themes, these researchers found that of the six identified characteristics of effective teachers, studentcenteredness was the most commonly-cited trait (cited by 80% of the preservice sample). this was followed by enthusiasm for teaching (40%), ethicalness (39%), classroom and behavior management (33%), teaching methodology (32%), and knowledge of subject (32%). this example provides support for dey's (1993) contention that typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 7 meaning and number can be inextricably intertwined. obtaining counts of the themes prevented the researchers from over-weighting or under-weighting the emergent themes (sandelowski, 2001). the development of themes, categories, typologies, and the like is commonplace in qualitative data analysis (boyatzis, 1998; constas, 1992). such development is based on the frequency with which a facet occurs (miles & huberman, 1994). more specifically, every time a qualitative researcher reduces data to categories or themes, he/she is utilizing the "numbered nature of phenomena for their analysis" (sandelowski, 2001, p. 231). in fact, at least three rationales prevail for counting themes: (a) to identify patterns more easily, (b) to maintain analytic integrity, and (c) to verify a hypothesis (miles & huberman, 1994). further, by adding numerical accuracy to their descriptive accounts, witcher et al. (2001) were able to leave an audit trail, which involved a more extensive documentation of the observed data. interestingly, audit trails are advocated by qualitative researchers as a means of evaluating legitimation or increasing legitimation, or both (halpern, 1983; lincoln & guba, 1985). counting themes is a manifestation of what tashakkori and teddlie (1998, p. 126) referred to as "quantitizing" data, in which qualitative data are transformed into numerical codes that can be represented statistically. as stated by sandelowski (2001), in quantitizing, "qualitative 'themes' are numerically represented, in scores, scales, or clusters, in order more fully to describe and/or interpret a target phenomenon" (p. 231). also, boyatzis (1998, p. 129) referred to the counting of themes as "quantitative translation." onwuegbuzie (in press-b) presented a typology of effect sizes in qualitative research. this typology was divided into what he termed manifest effect sizes (i.e., effect sizes pertaining to observable content) and latent effect sizes (i.e., effect sizes pertaining to non-observable, underlying aspects of the phenomenon under observation). for example, when conducting thematic analyses, qualitative analysts usually only classify and describe emergent themes. however, much more information can be ascertained about these themes. in particular, these themes can be quantitized (i.e., quantified) by determining the frequency of occurrence (e.g., least/most prevalent theme) and intensity of each identified theme (onwuegbuzie, in press-b). moreover, by unitizing the themes and utilizing what he termed as intra-respondent matrices (i.e., unit x theme matrices) and inter-respondent matrices (e.g., subject x theme matrices and subject x unit matrices), onwuegbuzie demonstrated how exploratory factor analyses and cluster analyses can be undertaken on these matrices such that the hierarchical structure of the themes (i.e., meta-themes) and their interrelationships can be identified. onwuegbuzie also illustrated how effect sizes (e.g., eigenvalues and proportion of variance explained by each theme) pertaining to the thematic structure and relationships among themes and meta-themes can be estimated. onwuegbuzie (in press-b) introduced the concept of adjusted effect sizes in qualitative research, in which the frequency and intensity of themes are adjusted for the time occurrence and length of the unit of analysis (e.g., observation, interview, text). for instance, with regard to the length of unit analysis, the frequency of the emergent theme could be divided by the number of words, sentences, paragraphs, and/or pages analyzed. such adjusted effect sizes help to minimize bias that is inherent in the data (onwuegbuzie, in press-b). consistent with onwuegbuzie's conceptualization of effect sizes in qualitative research, nearly one-half a century ago, barton and lazarsfeld (1955) advocated the use of what they coined as "quasi-statistics" in qualitative research. according to these authors, quasi-statistics refer to the use of descriptive statistics that can be extracted from qualitative data. interestingly, becker (1970, pp. 81-82) contended that "one of the greatest faults in most observational case studies has been their failure to make explicit the quasi-statistical basis of their conclusions." as noted by maxwell (1996): quasi-statistics not only allow you to test and support claims that are inherently quantitative, but also enable you to assess the amount of evidence in your data that bears on a particular conclusion or threat, such as how many discrepant instances exist and from how many different sources they were obtained. (p. 95) [emphasis in original] indeed, becker, geer, hughes, and strauss (1961/1977) provided more than 50 tables and graphs in their qualitative work. these tables and graphs facilitate effect size interpretations of their qualitative data. errors in quantitative research as is the case for qualitative research, there are many data analytic and interpretational errors that prevail in existing research that uses quantitative data regardless of the statistical analysis used. thus, the first part of this section provides a summary of the major errors that are not dependent on the statistical technique used. in the second part of this section, we outline the errors in quantitative research that are dependent, at least for the most part, on the method used. specifically, we present the major analytical and interpretational errors that have been found to current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 prevail for each of the major data-analytic techniques, namely, bivariate correlational analyses, reliability analyses, analysis of variance, analysis of covariance, multiple regression, multivariate analysis of variance, multiple analysis of covariance, discriminant analysis, canonical correlation analysis, principal component and factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis, structural equation modeling, and hierarchical linear modeling. general errors in quantitative research. as noted by onwuegbuzie (in press-a), threats to internal validity in quantitative research occur at both the data analysis (i.e., analytical errors) and data interpretation (i.e., interpretational errors) stages. indeed, onwuegbuzie (in press-a) described several types of errors that occur at both these stages. according to this researcher, data analytical errors can stem from several sources, including the following: mortality, non-interaction seeking bias, researcher bias, treatment replication error, violated assumptions, multicollinearity, and mis-specification error. each of these sources of error is summarized briefly below. (for a more detailed discussion of these sources of error, see onwuegbuzie, in press-a.) mortality. it is not uncommon for researchers to delete some cases from their final data sets. there are many reasons why such a practice occurs. specifically, cases may be deleted if they appear to represent outlying observations. alternatively, the size of a data set may be reduced in an attempt to analyze groups with equal or approximately equal sample sizes (i.e., to conduct a "balanced" analysis). such removal of cases can lead to analytical errors in the first situation if one or more participants who are deleted represent valid cases, and in the second situation if one or more participants who are removed from the data set are different than those who remain. in either event, the reduction of the data set introduces or adds bias into the analysis, thereby influencing the effect size in an unknown manner (onwuegbuzie, in press-a). in the same way, using casewise deletion and listwise deletion strategies in the presence of missing data, a very common practice among researchers, also can lead to analytical errors. non-interaction seeking bias. when testing hypotheses and theory, some researchers do not examine the presence of interactions. this likely is more often to occur for correlational-based analyses (e.g., correlations, regression, canonical correlation, path analysis, structural equation modeling) than for ova-type methods (e.g., factorial analysis of variance, multivariate analysis of variance). noninteraction seeking bias can not only lead to errors at the data analysis stage, but it can also induce interpretational errors. moreover, by not formally testing for the presence of interactions, researchers may end up interpreting a model that does not accurately or validly represent the underlying nature of reality (onwuegbuzie, in press-a). researcher bias. the form of researcher bias that is more prevalent at the data analysis stage is the halo effect. the halo effect occurs when a researcher is scoring open-ended responses, or the like, and allows her or his prior knowledge of or experience with the participants to influence the scores given. this biases the data, leading to analytical errors. treatment replication error. as noted by mcmillan (1999), a common mistake made by analysts involves the use of an inappropriate unit of analysis. for example, a researcher might use individuals as the unit of analysis to compare groups when analyzing available group scores would have been more appropriate. in particular, analyzing individual data when groups received the intervention violates the independence assumption, thereby inducing an analytical error through the inflation of both the type i error rate and effect size estimates. violated assumptions. several authors (e.g., keselman et al., 1998; onwuegbuzie, 2002b) have noted that the majority of researchers do not adequately check the underlying assumptions associated with a particular statistical test. regardless of the inferential statistical technique used, unless assumptions are checked, the extent to which an analytical error prevails is unknown. with knowledge of the extent to which assumptions are violated, researchers are in a position to interpret findings within an appropriate context. however, when it is unknown whether assumptions have been met, data interpretation can be extremely misleading and invalid. multicollinearity. multicollinearity occurs when two or more independent variables are highly related. when one independent variable is perfectly correlated with other independent variables, the parameter estimates are not uniquely determined. a strong, but less-than-perfect, linear relationship among independent variables, as is more often the case, results in unstable (least-squares) coefficients with large standard errors and wide confidence intervals (fox, 1997). multicollinearity often is associated with multiple regression; however, multicollinearity is an issue for other members of the general linear model, including ova methods. thus, multicollinearity should not only be assessed when multiple regression is involved but for all analysis involving two or more independent variables. mis-specification error. mis-specification error involves omitting one or more important variables from the final model. this is an error that typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 9 can be committed with any inferential analysis. as noted by onwuegbuzie (in press-a), mis-specification error often arises from a weak or non-existent theoretical framework for building a statistical model. this inattention to a theoretical framework leads many researchers to (a) undertake univariate analyses when the phenomenon is multivariate, (b) utilize data-driven techniques such as stepwise multiple regression procedures, and (c) omit the assessment of interactions. all of these approaches lead to misspecification error. unfortunately, mis-specification error, although likely common, is extremely difficult to detect, especially if the selected non-optimal model, which does not include any interaction terms, appears to fit the data adequately. as noted by onwuegbuzie (in press-a), interpretational errors, can arise from the following: effect size, confirmation bias, distorted graphics, illusory correlation, crud factor, positive manifold, and causal error. each of these sources of error is summarized briefly below. (for a more detailed discussion of these sources of error, see onwuegbuzie, in press-a.) effect size. the non-reporting of effect sizes likely represents the most common interpretational error in quantitative research. failure to report effect sizes often culminates in misinterpretation of pvalues. in particular, a p-value tends to be underinterpreted when the sample size is small and the corresponding non-reported effect size is large. on the other hand, a p-value tends to be over-interpreted when the sample size is large and the non-reported effect size is small (e.g., daniel, 1998a). the lack of reporting of effect sizes led the apa task force to recommend strongly that researchers "always present effect sizes for primary outcomes...[and]...reporting and interpreting effect sizes...is essential to good research" (wilkinson & the task force on statistical inference, 1999, p. 599). more recently, the latest version of the american psychological association (apa), version 5 (2001), contained the following statement: when reporting inferential statistics (e.g., t tests, f tests, and chi-square), include information about the obtained magnitude or value of the test statistic, the degrees of freedom, the probability of obtaining a value as extreme as or more extreme than the one obtained, and the direction of the effect. be sure to include sufficient descriptive statistics (e.g., per-cell sample size, means, correlations, standard deviations) so that the nature of the effect being reported can be understood by the reader and for future meta-analyses. this information is important, even if no significant effect is being reported. (p. 22) a few pages later, apa (2001) states neither of the two types of probability value directly reflects the magnitude of an effect or the strength of a relationship. for the reader to fully understand the importance of your findings, it is almost always necessary to include some index of effect size or strength of relationship in your results section. (p. 25) on the next page, apa states that the general principle to be followed, however, is to provide the reader not only with information about statistical significance but also with enough information to assess the magnitude of the observed effect or relationship. (p. 26) confirmation bias. confirmation bias is the tendency for interpretations and conclusions based on the current data to be overly consistent with a priori hypotheses (greenwald, pratkanis, leippe, & baumgardner, 1986). unfortunately, confirmation bias is a common source of error at the data interpretation stage. confirmation bias tends to prevail when the researcher attempts to test theory, because testing a theory can "dominate research in a way that blinds the researcher to potentially informative observation" (greenwald et al., 1986, p. 217). when hypotheses are not supported, some researchers interpret their data as if the theory underlying the hypotheses is still likely to be correct. in so doing, many researchers are not aware that the purpose of their research no longer can be described as theory testing but theory confirming. however, confirmation bias, per se, does not necessarily lead to interpretational errors. such errors occur only when one or more plausible rival explanations to underlying findings exist that could have been demonstrated as being superior if given the opportunity (greenwald et al., 1986). however, because the vast majority of findings generate rival explanations, researchers should always assess their interpretations for the possibility of confirmation bias. distorted graphics. the interpretation of graphs can be a source of error. for example, it is not unusual for histograms to suggest normality, when numerical data (e.g., skewness and kurtosis) indicate non-normality. distorted graphs could be the result of an inappropriate scale. alternatively, interpretation errors can ensue even if the graph is not distorted, especially when the researcher has a confirmation bias (e.g., desperately wants to demonstrate that the normality assumption holds). illusory correlation. the illusory correlation is a propensity to overestimate relationships among variables that are either not related or only slightly related. the illusory correlation often arises from a current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 confirmation bias. the illusory correlation also may arise from a false consensus bias, in which researchers falsely believe that most other persons share their interpretations of a relationship (johnson & johnson, 2000). crud factor. meehl (1990) observed that given a large enough sample size, many trivial relationships can emerge as being statistically significant because to some degree, "everything correlates to some extent with everything else" (p. 204). meehl referred to this tendency to reject null hypotheses when the true relationships are trivial as the crud factor. this crud factor leads some researchers to interpret trivial relationships, leading to interpretational errors. positive manifold. positive manifold can occur when individuals who perform well on one ability or attitudinal measure tend to perform well on other measures in the same domain (neisser, 1998). as such, positive manifold can lead to an overinterpretation of relationships. thus, analysts should be careful when interpreting relationships found among two or more sets of cognitive test scores or affective measures. causal error. some researchers cannot resist interpreting large relationships as suggesting causality. however, causality is a function of the research design and not the analytic technique used. thus, regardless of the complexity of the analysis, cause-and-effect relationships should only be inferred confidently from experimental studies. in the absence of an experimental design, any causal statements made likely will represent interpretational errors. additional general analytical and interpretational errors. daniel and onwuegbuzie (2000) have identified 10 analytical and interpretational errors associated with statistical significance testing. they labeled these errors as type i to type x. the first four errors are known to all statisticians as type i (falsely rejecting the null hypothesis), type ii (incorrectly failing to reject the null hypothesis), type iii (incorrect inferences about result directionality), and type iv (incorrectly following-up an interaction effect with a simple effects analysis). daniel and onwuegbuzie (2000) identified and described the following six additional types of error: (a) type v error--internal replication error-measured via incidence of type i or type ii errors detected during internal replication cycles when using methodologies such as the jackknife procedure; (b) type vi error--reliability generalization error--measured via linkages of statistical results to characteristics of scores on the measures used to generate results (a particularly problematic type of error when researchers fail to consider differential reliability estimates for subsamples within a data set); (c) type vii error-heterogeneity of variance/regression--measured via the extent to which data examined via analysis of variance/covariance are not appropriately screened to determine whether they meet homogeneity assumptions prior to analysis of group comparison statistics; (d) type viii error--test statistic distribution error--measured as the extent to which researchers express alternative hypotheses as directional yet evaluate results with two-tailed tests; (e) type ix error--sampling bias error--measured via disparities in results generated from numerous convenience samples across a multiplicity of similar studies; and (f) type x error--degrees of freedom error--measured as the tendency of researchers using certain statistical procedures (mainly stepwise procedures) erroneously to compute the degrees of freedom used in these methods. method-dependent errors in quantitative research. correlation coefficients. with respect to quantitative research methodologies, perhaps the most common analytical/interpretational error stems from a failure to realize that all parametric analyses (i.e., univariate and multivariate techniques), with the exception of predictive discriminant analyses, are subsumed by a general linear model (glm), and that, consequently, all analyses are correlational (cohen, 1968; henson, 2000; knapp, 1978; roberts & henson, 2002; thompson, 1998a). in particular, many researchers are unaware that even correlation coefficients are specific cases of the glm, and are therefore bounded by its assumptions (onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002a). moreover, onwuegbuzie and daniel (2002a) identified several inappropriate practices undertaken by researchers while utilizing correlational coefficients for inferential purposes, including failure to consider the statistical assumptions underlying correlation coefficients, failure to interpret confidence intervals and effect sizes of correlation coefficients, failure to interpret pcalculated values in light of familywise type i error, failure to consider the power of tests of hypotheses, failure to consider whether outliers are inherent in the data set, failure to recognize how measurement error can affect correlation coefficients, and failure to evaluate empirically the replicability of correlation coefficients (i.e., internal replication). based on these observations, onwuegbuzie and daniel (2002a) made the following 10 recommendations for utilizing and interpreting correlation coefficients: 1. always check statistical assumptions prior to using pearson's r to conduct tests of statistical significance, as well as after the correlation has been computed. use nontypology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 11 parametric correlation (e.g., spearman's rho) if the normality assumption is violated. 2. always adjust for type i error when conducting multiple nhsts [null hypothesis statistical tests] of correlations. 3. always be cognizant of the power of nhsts of correlations, preferably before the data collection stage, and, at the very least, at the data analysis stage. 4. when making inferences about the pearson r value, always interpret effect sizes. 5. do not conduct "nil" null tests of statistical significance for reliability and validity coefficients (i.e., do not test whether reliability and validity coefficients are statistically significantly greater than zero). 6. do not report disattenuated correlation coefficients without also presenting the raw coefficients. 7. do not correlate variables without a theoretical framework. 8. avoid inferring causation from a correlation coefficient, regardless of its magnitude. 9. do not use hotelling's t-test when comparing correlation coefficients arising from the same sample. 10. conduct external replications when possible, and, in their absence, always undertake internal replications. regarding recommendation (10) above, onwuegbuzie and daniel (2002a) coined the term "type v error" to describe internal replication error rates (as noted earlier), which provides information about how stable the computed p-value is across multiple re-samples of the same dataset. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), noninteraction seeking bias, violated assumptions, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for correlation coefficients, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, illusory correlation, crud factor, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. reliability of scores. authors of statistics textbooks routinely report that statistical power is affected by at least three components: (a) sample size, (b) level of statistical significance, and (c) effect size. however, a fourth component should be added, namely, the reliability of scores. reliability, which typically ranges from 0 (measurement is all error) to 1 (no error in measurement), is the proportion of variance in the observed scores which is free from error. (reliability coefficients also can be negative.) unfortunately, relatively few researchers report reliability coefficients for data from their samples (meier & davis, 1990; onwuegbuzie, 2002b; onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002a, 2002b; thompson & snyder, 1998; vacha-haase et al., 1999; willson, 1980). for example, willson (1980) noted "that reliability ...is unreported in almost half of the published research...[and is] inexcusable at this late date" (pp. 8-9). unfortunately, more than two decades later, vacha-haase et al. (1999), who reviewed practices regarding the reporting of reliability coefficients in three journals from 1990 to 1997, found that 64.4% of articles did not provide reliability coefficients for the data being analyzed. similarly, vacha-haase (1998), who identified 628 articles in which the bem sex role inventory (bem, 1981) was utilized, found that 86.9% of the articles did not present any score reliability information for the underlying data. simmelink and vacha-haase (1999) reported that 75.9% fell into this category with respect to the use of the rosenberg self-esteem instrument (rosenberg, 1965). the trend of not reporting current-sample reliability coefficients stems, in part, from a failure to realize that reliability is a function of scores, not of instruments (thompson & vacha-haase, 2000).the dearth in the reporting of reliability estimates led the apa task force on statistical inference recently to recommend that authors "provide reliability coefficients of the scores for the data being analyzed even when the focus of their research is not psychometric" (wilkinson & the task force on statistical inference, 1999, p. 21). further, the american educational research association, american psychological association, and national council on measurement in education [aera/apa/ncme] (1999) stated that good standards for reporting results necessitate researchers to provide reliability estimates and standard errors for "each total score, subscore, or combination of scores that is to be interpreted" (p. 31). without information about score reliability, it is impossible to assess accurately the extent to which statistical power is affected. thus, reliability coefficients always should be reported for the underlying data. moreover, the use of confidence intervals around reliability coefficients is advocated, considering that reliability coefficients represent only point estimates. in fact, confidence intervals around reliability coefficients can be compared to coefficients presented in test manuals to assess generalizability (onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002b). additionally, as noted by onwuegbuzie and daniel (2002b), the recommendations of the apa task force and aera/apa/ncme (1999) regarding the reporting of current-sample reliability coefficients do not go far enough. indeed, it is argued that reliability coefficients should not only be reported for the full sample at hand, but also for sample subgroups. for example, in a two-sample case, it is current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 possible to obtain a moderate reliability estimate for the full sample, whereby the reliability coefficient of one group is relatively large but the coefficient for the other group is relatively small. it is likely that such a case would produce a different outcome in terms of statistical and practical significance than would a scenario in which the ratio of reliability coefficients is much smaller. simply put, comparing subgroups with different reliability coefficients can affect type i and type ii error rates, as well as effect size estimates. in such circumstances, type vi error (reliability generalization error; daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000) prevails. thus, in summary, we recommend that subgroup reliability coefficients be reported whenever possible, alongside their confidence intervals. when current-sample reliability coefficients are not available, researchers, at the very least, should compare the sample composition and variability of scores of the present sample with those of the inducted (i.e., norm) group (vacha-haase, kogan, & thompson, 2000). the results of these comparisons should be delineated. specifically, as noted by vacha-haase et al. (2000), assuming that previouslyreported reliability coefficients generalize to the present sample is only marginally justified if the compositions and the score variabilities of the two samples are similar. additionally, magnusson's (1967) formula could be used to predict the reliability of the present sample, based on the reliability of the inducted sample and the standard deviations of the inducted and current samples, as follows: where rc = the predicted reliability of the current sample, ri = the predicted reliability of the inducted sample, is the variance of the current sample, and is the variance of the inducted sample. however, it should be noted that the predicted reliabilities are purely theoretical. (for an example of the use of this formula see diamond & onwuegbuzie, 2001.) independent/dependent samples t-test. when researchers are interested in comparing two independent samples, assuming normality, they must choose between the pooled and non-pooled t-test. this selection depends on whether the variances are equal or unequal, respectively. when the variances are equal, the pooled t-test should be used. on the other hand, when the variances are unequal, or when there is doubt about their equality, the non-pooled ttest should be employed. that is, if the homogeneity of variance assumption does not hold, then the t-test formula for separate variances should be used (maxwell & delaney, 1990). under the assumption of variance homogeneity, the pooled t-test is only slightly more powerful (i.e., smaller type ii error probability) than is the non-pooled t-test. at the same time, in the presence of variance heterogeneity, use of the pooled t-test can increase greatly the chances of an invalid conclusion, especially when the sample sizes also are unequal. some statisticians recommend that the analyst first test the equal variance hypothesis: if h0 is rejected, then they conclude that the population variances are not equal and proceed with the non-pooled t-test. if h0 is not rejected, then they advise that the pooled t-test procedure be used. however, this is a misuse of the variance test, because it may result in failing to reject the null hypothesis that without knowing the probability of a type ii error. it should be noted that when the researcher fails to reject a null hypothesis, it is inappropriate to conclude that the null is true, but only that there is not enough evidence to justify its rejection. in addition, the probability of a type i error is changed by performing two tests. thus, we recommend the use of the pooled t-test only when prior knowledge, experience, or theory suggests that the population variances are approximately equal. if there is any doubt about the equality of the variances, the non-pooled t-test should be used. unfortunately, presently, it appears that many analysts utilize the pooled version of the t-test. such a practice typically will result in type vii error (heterogeneity of variance/regression; daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000). disturbingly, keselman et al. (1998) found that variance homogeneity was evaluated in only 8.20% of articles involving between-subjects univariate designs (n = 61) published in 17 prominent educational and behavioral science research journals in the 1994 or 1995 issues that were selected for review. this trend must be reversed in order to strengthen the conclusion validity stemming from independent/dependent t-tests. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), non-interaction seeking bias, violated assumptions, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for independent/dependent samples t-tests, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, and causal error are common interpretational errors. analysis of variance tests. research suggests that analysis of variance (anova) is the most popular statistical procedure for conducting null hypothesis statistical significance tests among educational researchers (elmore & woehlke, 1998; goodwin & goodwin, 1985; onwuegbuzie, 2002b). unfortunately, the anova test is often misused. specifically, lacking the knowledge that nearly all typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 13 parametric analyses represent the general linear model, many analysts inappropriately categorize variables in non-experimental designs using anova, in an attempt to justify making causal inferences, when all that occurred typically is a discarding of relevant variance (cliff, 1987; pedhazur, 1982; prosser, 1990; thompson, 1986, 1988a, 1992a). for example, cohen (1983) calculated that the pearson product-moment correlation between a variable and its dichotomized version (i.e., divided at the mean) was .798, which suggests that the cost of dichotomization is approximately a 20% reduction in correlation coefficient. in other words, an artificially dichotomized variable accounts for only 63.7% as much variance as does the original continuous variable. interestingly, more recently, peet (1999) found that for the one-way anova framework, as the number of categorized groups decreases (minimum number = 2), less variance in the dependent variable is accounted for by the categorical variable, compared to the continuous variable. specifically, peet noted that with four groups, almost 90% of the variance accounted for by the continuous variable was explained by the categorical variable; however, with two groups, only approximately 50% of the original variance accounted for was explained by the categorical variable. it follows that with factorial anovas, when artificial categorization occurs, even more power is sacrificed. for instance, in the 2 x 2 anova framework, when the correlation is between .2 and .5, double dichotomization at the mean culminates in a discarding of 60% of the sample members at both the two-tailed 5% and 1% levels. thus, as stated by kerlinger (1986), we recommend that researchers avoid artificially categorizing continuous variables, unless compelled to do so as a result of the distribution of the data (e.g., bimodal). indeed, rather than categorizing independent variables, in many cases, regression techniques should be used, because they have been shown consistently to be superior to ova methods (daniel, 1989a; kerlinger & pedhazur, 1973; lopez, 1989; nelson & zaichkowsky, 1979; thompson, 1986). disturbingly, it is clear that most users of anova tests do not adequately check the underlying assumptions. this is evidenced by the paucity of researchers who provide information about the extent to which anova assumptions are met. for example, keselman et al. (1998) reported that less than one-fifth of articles (i.e., 19.7%) "indicated some concern for distributional assumption violations" (p. 356). similarly, onwuegbuzie (2002b) found that only 11.1% of researchers discussed the extent to which ova assumptions were violated. the fact that, when conducting univariate comparisons, anova tests are almost exclusively used is a serious cause for concern, bearing in mind that (a) anova relies on the assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance; and (b) only the minority of data utilized in the field of educational research tends to satisfy anova assumptions (micceri, 1989; wilcox, charlin, & thompson, 1986). unfortunately, non-normality and variance heterogeneity lead to a distortion of type i and/or type ii error rates, particularly if the group sizes are very different (keselman et al., 1998). thus, researchers always should check the anova assumptions. in particular, if the normality assumption is violated, analysts should consider using the non-parametric counterparts, for example, the mann-whitney u test (for the two-group case) or the kruskal-wallis test (when three or more groups are being compared). when the homogeneity of variance assumption is violated (type vii error; daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000), techniques such as welch, james, and brown and forsythe tests could be utilized because they are reasonably robust when heterogeneity of variance prevails (maxwell & delaney, 1990). additionally, some researchers unwisely use omnibus anova tests (i.e., protected tests) followed by post-hoc comparisons instead of testing planned contrasts (i.e., unprotected tests). use of omnibus tests when planned comparisons are of interest results in reduced statistical power. we recommend use of planned comparisons as these comparisons tend to be more consistent with carefully structured research questions and serve to limit the number of statistical tests needed (pedhazur & schmelkin, 1991). however, in cases in which researchers insist on using omnibus anovas followed by post hoc tests, we suggest that the dunn-bonferroni procedure for unprotected tests be utilized because it appears to provide the best control of type i error (barnette & mclean, 1998). (presently, only 12% of researchers use the dunn-bonferroni procedure for making pairwise multiple comparisons; keselman et al., 1998). moreover, as recommended by maxwell and delaney (1990), when conducting pairwise comparisons, the pooled (omnibus) error term should only be used if the variance homogeneity assumption is met--otherwise, a separate error term should be utilized which involves only data representing the levels of interest in the particular comparison. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), mortality, violated assumptions, and misspecification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for anova, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. analysis of covariance tests. most comparisons made in educational research involve current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 intact groups that may have pre-existing differences. unfortunately, these differences often threaten the internal validity of the findings (gay & airasian, 2000). thus, in an attempt to minimize this threat, some analysts utilize analysis of covariance (ancova) techniques in which there is an attempt to control statistically for pre-existing differences between the groups being studied. prior research suggests that ancova is undertaken in approximately 4% of published research (elmore & woehlke, 1988; goodwin & goodwin, 1985; willson, 1980). unfortunately, most of these published works have inappropriately used ancova because one or more of the assumptions have either not been checked or met--particularly the homogeneity of regression slopes assumption (glass, peckham, & sanders, 1972). as noted by maxwell and delaney (1990), ancova represents an anova after adjusting for the regression of the dependent variable on the covariate. in other words, the aim of an ancova is to allocate a percentage of the variance in the dependent variable that would otherwise have been attributed to error in a conventional analysis of variance, to a potentially confounding variable (i.e., the covariate). this partitioning of the variance culminates in a reduction in the sum of squared errors and, consequently, the mean square error. in theory, this subsequent decrease in "noise" helps to clarify the relationship between the independent and dependent variables (loftin & madison, 1991). the first step of ancova is to regress the dependent variable on the covariate, ignoring group membership. after this is undertaken, an anova is conducted on the residualized dependent variable. if the analysis goes as anticipated, holding everything else constant, the anova f-statistic is increased because the error variance is smaller than it would have been if the influence of the covariate had not been removed. the allimportant assumption that must be met (i.e., homogeneity of regression slopes) implies that the covariate must be highly correlated with the dependent variable but not related to the independent variable. however, as noted by henson (1998), few covariates exist that meet these criteria-especially when study participants are not randomly assigned to groups (i.e., in quasi-experimental designs), which are endemic to educational research. unfortunately, if an appreciable correlation exists between the covariate and the independent variable, as is often the case, then the covariate also can reduce the variance in the independent variable--culminating in reduced power and effect size. thus, the homogeneity of regression assumption means that the regression slopes of the covariate and the dependent variable in each group must be identical, or at least similar, if the single pooled regression slope can be utilized accurately with all groups. to the extent that the individual regression slopes are different, the part correlation of the covariate-adjusted dependent variable with the independent variable will more closely mirror a partial correlation, and the pooled regression slope will not provide an adequate representation of some or all of the groups. in this case, the ancova will introduce bias into the data instead of providing a "correction" for the confounding variable (loftin & madison, 1991). ironically, ancova typically is appropriate when used with randomly assigned groups; however, it is typically not justified when groups are not randomly assigned (henson, 1998). another argument against the use of ancova is that after using a covariate to adjust the dependent variable, it is not clear whether the residual scores are interpretable (thompson, 1992b). disturbingly, some researchers utilize ancova as a substitute for not incorporating a true experimental design, believing that methodological designs and statistical analyses are synonymous (henson, 1998; thompson, 1994a). thus, we recommend that researchers should use ancova sparingly and with extreme caution. however, when it is utilized, an assessment of the homogeneity of regression assumption always must be undertaken and documented. if the data are shown to violate this assumption (e.g., via a statistically significant levene test result), the researcher will make a serious mistake in proceeding with the ancova analysis. if ancova is undertaken in the presence of heterogeneity of regression slopes then a type vii error will prevail (daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000). using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), mortality, violated assumptions, and misspecification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for ancova, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. multiple regression. in their review of articles published in the american education research journal, educational researcher, and review of educational research over a 20-year period, elmore and woehlke (1998) found that multiple regression was the third-most popular statistical technique utilized. unfortunately, the majority of researchers use multiple regression in inappropriate ways. undoubtedly the most common error in regression is the use of stepwise regression procedures (i.e., forward selection, backward selection, stepwise selection). indeed, the use of stepwise regression in educational research is rampant (huberty, 1994), probably due to its widespread availability on statistical computer typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 15 software programs. as a result of this apparent obsession with stepwise regression, as stated by cliff (1987, pp. 120-121), "a large proportion of the published results using this method probably present conclusions that are not supported by the data." perhaps bruce thompson has been the most vocal critic of the use of stepwise regression. he and others (beasley & leitner, 1994; davidson, 1988; edirisooriya, 1995; lockridge, 1997; moore, 1996; thompson, 1994a, 1995, 1998a, 1999; welge, 1990) have identified at least three problems associated with this technique. first, at every step of the analysis, computer packages use incorrect degrees of freedom in computing statistical significance (type x error; daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000). unfortunately, these incorrect degrees of freedom tend to bias statistical significance tests in favor of declaring trivial effects as statistically significant. second, not only does undertaking k steps of analysis not necessarily lead to the best predictor set of size k, it is possible that none of the predictors entered in the first k steps are even among the best predictor set of size k. third, because the order in which the independent variables are entered in the model is influenced by sampling error, which, at any step, can lead to mis-specification of the model, and because stepwise regression typically involves several steps, this technique often produces results that are very difficult to replicate (thompson, 1995). a fourth problem identified by the present authors is that because stepwise regression utilizes a series of statistical significance tests, it is subject to actual type i error rates that can be much greater than its nominal alpha value. for example, a stepwise regression procedure which takes 5 steps to select a final model, with the entry criterion being set at .05 (which is the default value for statistical packages such as spss), results in the probability of at least one type i error rate being .23 (i.e., 1 (1 .05) 5 ) (see for example, maxwell & delaney, 1990). if some variables that are entered are then subsequently removed, then the type i error rate can increase even more. moreover, stepwise regression, more than any other regression technique, tends to capitalize on chance, often resulting in an overfitting of data (tabachnick & fidell. 1996) and yielding results that are based on randomness rather than carefully articulated theoretical models. specifically, decisions about which variables are included in the final regression model are based on p-values, which are extremely sample-dependent. for an extensive discussion of the major flaws associated with stepwise regression, see huberty (1989) and thompson, smith, miller, and thomson (1991). as advocated by thompson (1995), instead of conducting a stepwise regression, an all possible subsets (aps) (i.e., setwise) multiple regression should be performed. using this technique, all possible models involving some or all of the independent variables are examined. indeed, in aps regression, separate regressions are computed for all independent variables singly, all possible pairs of independent variables, all possible trios of independent variables, and so forth, until the best subset of independent variables is identified according to some criterion such as the maximum proportion of variance explained (r 2 ), which provides an important measure of effect size (cohen, 1988). similarly, these repeated subsets can be useful in conducting a regression commonality analysis (newton & spurrell, 1967; rowell, 1996; seibold & mcphee, 1979). (for an example of an aps multiple regression, see onwuegbuzie, slate, paterson, watson, and schwartz, 2000; for an example of commonality analysis, see daniel, 1989a.) unfortunately, statistical software programs such as the statistical package for the social sciences (spss; spss inc., 2001) do not allow analysts to conduct aps regression analyses directly, although the statistical analysis system (sas institute inc., 1999) does, and no commonly available packages include computations for commonality analyses. it should be noted that both aps regression and commonality analyses represent exploratory model-building tools, as opposed to a model-testing techniques (tabachnick & fidell, 1996). as such, aps regression models and commonality analysis results should never be treated as definitive. rather, they should be subjected to both internal and external replications. alternative forms of linear regression techniques that are acceptable are hierarchical (i.e., sequential) multiple regression and standard multiple regression. in hierarchical multiple regression, independent variables are entered into the regression equation in an order specified a priori by the researcher. each independent variable is then evaluated with respect to its own contribution to the model at its own point of entry. independent variables can be entered one-at-a-time or in blocks in a specified order based on the researcher's theoretical considerations (tabachnick & fidell, 1996). hierarchical regression can be conducted interactively via any statistical software. however, it is likely that many users shy away from this technique because it is not fully automated, unlike stepwise regression. standard multiple regression involves entering all variables into the regression equation simultaneously (i.e., "direct" variable entry) and assessing the contribution of each (via partial and current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 semi-partial correlations) as if it had been entered into the model after all other variables had been entered. both hierarchical multiple regression and standard multiple regression represent model-testing approaches, and are thus recommended for confirmatory purposes. in any case, whichever technique is used (i.e., aps regression, hierarchical regression, standard regression), it should be noted that the choice of regression variables is just as important as with any other regression technique. that is, the variables that are selected for the initial multiple regression model must be based on theoretical and/or practical considerations (daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2001). in reporting the results of a multiple regression model, most researchers only present unstandardized and/or standardized regression coefficients (b or weights), and regression structure coefficients (thompson & borrello, 1985; henson, 2002) typically are omitted from the analysis. yet, structure coefficients, which describe the relationship between scores on a given manifest (i.e., observed) variable with the scores on a given latent (i.e., synthetic) variable, when considered alongside standardized weights, can provide vital information about the relative importance of each of the regression variables (courville & thompson, 2001; henson, 2002). specifically, the extent to which the standardized weights and the structure coefficients are identical for each variable indicates how uncorrelated the predictor variables are (thompson, 1998a). second, if both standardized and structure coefficients of a variable are trivial (i.e., near-zero), the variable is not a practicable predictor of the outcome measure. third, if a variable has a near-zero standardized coefficient but a large structure coefficient, the variable plays a role in explaining the dependent variable, but the variable is collinear with at least one additional predictor variable. finally, if a variable has a near-zero structure coefficient but a large standardized coefficient, this indicates that the variable is a suppressor variable. suppressor variables are variables which assist in the prediction of dependent variables (i.e., they increase the effect size) due to their correlation with other independent variables (tabachnick & fidell, 1996). specifically, suppressor variables improve the predictive power of the other independent variables in the model by suppressing variance that is irrelevant to this prediction, as a result of the suppressor variable's relationship with the other independent variables. although the proportion of variance explained (i.e., r 2 ) is routinely reported, very rarely is the corrected estimate of explained variance (adjusted r 2 ) reported. yet, this adjusted measure helps to reduce the positive bias that is inherent in r 2 (ezekiel, 1930; wherry, 1931) when sample size is small, correlation is trivial, or the number of predictor variables is large. another mistake that analysts make when conducting multiple regression analyses is that they do not consider in result interpretation the context-specificity of analytical weights (thompson, 1998a). this often leads to overinterpretation of regression weights (cliff, 1987). thus, as recommended by thompson (1998a), regression weights always should be interpreted with extreme caution. additionally, few researchers provide an analysis of the residuals to assess the extent to which the selected multiple regression model fits the underlying data (i.e., meets the regression assumption of constancy of error variance). even less frequent is the examination of influence diagnostics to determine whether any observations (i.e., cases) exert an undue amount of influence on the regression results (fox, 1997). such influence typically is counterproductive; however, if the case diagnostics indicate a serious deficiency in the regression model, it is very likely that the given observation will provide valuable information to the analyst. as noted by myers (1986), influence diagnostics include the following: (a) the number of estimated standard errors (for each regression coefficient) that the coefficient changes if the ith observation were set aside (i.e., dfbetas); (b) the number of estimated standard errors that the predicted value changes if the ith point is removed from the data set (i.e., dffits); and (c) the reduction in the estimated generalized variance of the coefficient over what would have been produced without the ith data point (i.e., covratio). (for an example of the use of influence diagnostics, see onwuegbuzie et al., 2000.) most analysts do not appear to evaluate multicollinearity among the regression variables. multicollinearity leads to inflated regression coefficients or "bouncing betas." thus, multicollinearity should routinely be assessed in multiple regression models. techniques for assessing multicollinearity include (a) variance inflation factors (vifs), which indicate the extent to which the variance of an individual regression coefficient has been inflated by the presence of collinearity, and (b) condition numbers, which represent the ratio of the largest to the smallest eigenvalues based on a principal components analysis of the regression coefficients yielded by a given analysis, and which serve as measures of the strength of linear dependency among the regression variables (sen & srivastava, 1990). vifs and condition numbers less typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 17 than 10 indicate that multicollinearity is not appreciably present (fox, 1997; myers, 1986). another error that appears to be a common feature of multiple regression analyses is an inadequate case-to-independent variable ratio. green (1991) recommended using the following guideline for determining an appropriate sample size for a multiple regression analysis that takes into account the effect size. according to green, the sample size should be greater than or equal to (8 / f 2 ) + (i 1), where f 2 = r 2 /(1 r 2 ). the sample size should exceed this value if the dependent variable is skewed, if one or more of the variables yield low score reliability, or if cross-validation is needed to test the generalizability of the regression model. finally, we recommend the use of internal replications, in order to avoid type v error (internal replication error; daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000). the three most common classes of internal replication utilize either cross-validation, jackknife, or bootstrap techniques (thompson, 1994b). for regression analyses, cross-validation involves dividing the sample into two approximately equally sized subsamples (although equality of sub-samples is not required), computing the regression coefficients for the first sub-sample, and then using the second subsample to attempt to confirm the results of the first sub-sample. also, the results of the second subgroup can be confirmed via the first subsample's data. jackknife techniques involve conducting separate analyses, with groups of participants of an equal size (usually one at a time) being deleted from each analysis once only until all cases/groups have been dropped. the regression results at each stage would be compared to determine stability. finally, bootstrap methods involve resampling the same dataset repeatedly (i.e., thousands of times), and then computing the regression coefficients and r 2 values for each sample. these coefficients are then compared to the original regression coefficients from the full sample in order to assess stability. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), noninteraction seeking bias, violated assumptions, multicollinearity, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for multiple regression, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, illusory correlation, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. multivariate analysis of variance/ covariance. with the increased availability of comprehensive statistical software, more researchers are utilizing multivariate statistical techniques. for example, in a review of 36 research articles published in the 1998 volume of the british journal of educational psychology, onwuegbuzie (2002b) found that multivariate analysis of variance (manova) was the second most common technique utilized. specifically, this technique was undertaken in nearly one-fourth of the articles examined. elmore and woehlke (1998) found that manova was utilized in 12.4% of the articles contained in journals published by the american educational research association from 1978 to 1997. unfortunately, several flaws are associated with use of multivariate analyses of variance. for example, some researchers undertake one-way repeated measures analyses of variance (anovas) in order to determine whether there are statistically significant differences among multiple measures (i.e., an omnibus test), and then, if a statistical significant difference is found, follow up with a series of univariate analyses with type i error rate protection (e.g., scheffé tests). however, this practice is now outdated. moreover, many statisticians criticize this technique because analyses involving repeated measures test "linear combinations of the outcome variables (determined by the variable intercorrelations) and therefore do not yield results that are in any way comparable with a collection of separate univariate tests" (keselman et al., 1998, p. 361). in fact, using anova as a follow-up to manova is a variant of type iv error (see daniel & onwuegbuze, 2000). moreover, although as many as 37.5% of researchers conduct a manova followed by a univariate analyses (i.e., a manova-univariate data analysis strategy) (onwuegbuzie, 2002b), as noted by keselman et al. (1998, p. 361), "there is very limited empirical support for this strategy. indeed, keselman et al. (1998) stated that "if the univariate effects are those of interest, then it is suggested that the researcher go directly to the univariate analyses and bypass manova. . . . focusing on results of multiple univariate analyses preceded by a manova is no more logical than conducting an omnibus anova but focusing on the results of group contrast analyses (olejnik & huberty, 1993)" (pp. 361-362). furthermore, because this technique relies on a statistically significant manova omnibus test as a precursor to using anova on a post hoc basis, the incompatibility of manova and anova, due to the differences in their respective mean square errors and error degrees of freedom, results in a post hoc anova test that has lower statistical power than if the anova test had been used as a planned comparison. thompson (1999) also criticized researchers who perform several univariate analyses to analyze multivariate data. he maintained that because univariate analyses can be viewed as assessing the contribution of one or more independent variables to a solitary dependent variable, it typically does not current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 honor, in the optimal sense, the nature of reality that most researchers are interested in studying. this is because most phenomena involve multiple effects. as tatsuoka (1973) asserted: the often-heard argument, "i'm more interested in seeing how each variable, in its own right, affects the outcome" overlooks the fact that any variable taken in isolation may affect the criterion differently from the way it will act in the company of other variables. it also overlooks the fact that multivariate analysis-precisely by considering all the variables simultaneously-can throw light on how each one contributes to the relation. (p. 273) thus, we recommend that researchers avoid using the manova-anova analytical strategy, and focus instead on conducting analyses that most appropriately reflect the underlying multivariate reality of interest. (for a more extensive discussion of manova versus multiple anovas, see huberty and morris, 1989.) also, we suggest that researchers use the multivariate approach to analyzing repeatedmeasures data (which basis its analysis on the difference scores) rather than the mixed-methods (i.e., with one factor representing the betweensubjects factor(s) and the other factor representing the within-subject factor(s)) approach because the latter necessitates an assumption that is not required by the former. specifically, the mixed-model approach requires a homogeneity of treatment-difference variances (i.e., sphericity) assumption. simply put, this assumption requires that every measure must have the same variance, and all correlations between any pair of measures must be the same (maxwell & delaney, 1990). however, it should also be noted that the multivariate approach itself requires multivariate normality. as such, researchers always should assess the viability of this assumption. another oversight of researchers employing manova techniques is the failure to report the criteria used for determining statistical significance. these criteria include wilk's lambda, pillai's criteria, hotelling's trace criterion, and roy's gcr criterion. under certain conditions (e.g., when the independent variable has two levels), the first three criteria are identical. however, there are times when these techniques will yield different p-values. thus, researchers always should specify which criteria were used. finally, as for the case of ancova, multivariate analysis of covariance (mancova) should be used with extreme caution. this is because mancova is subject to the same assumptions as for ancova. however, not only is mancova based on the multivariate normal distribution, but it is also assumed that the regression between covariates and the dependent variables in one group is the same as the regression in other groups (i.e., homogeneity of regression) such that using the mean regression to adjust for covariates in all groups is appropriate (tabachnick & fidell, 1996). using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), mortality, violated assumptions, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for manova and mancova, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. descriptive discriminant analysis/predictive discriminant analysis. huberty and his colleagues (huberty, 1994; huberty & barton, 1989; huberty & wisenbaker, 1992) have eloquently differentiated between descriptive discriminant analysis (dda) and predictive discriminant analysis (pda). according to huberty (1994), dda describes the differences on dependent variables that are measured on the interval or ratio scale with respect to a nominally-scaled variable, namely group membership. on the other hand, pda involves predicting group membership from response variables that are intervalor ratioscaled. in pda, the percentage of correct classification is of particular interest, whereas in dda, the function and structure coefficients are the focus, with the hit rate being immaterial (thompson, 1998a). also, as thompson (1998a) noted, whereas dda is a member of the general linear model, pda is not a direct family member. one of the biggest flaws in interpreting dda results is a failure to interpret both the discriminant function coefficients and the structure coefficients. whether dda or pda is utilized, many researchers do not report the criteria used for statistical significance (e.g., wilks' lambda, pillai's criteria, hotelling's trace criterion, and roy's gcr criterion). in addition, many analysts utilize stepwise discriminant analysis techniques. as is the case for stepwise multiple regression, stepwise discriminant analysis contains serious flaws (e.g., type x error; daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000). thus, this technique should never be used. instead, standard discriminant analysis or hierarchical discriminant analysis could be utilized. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), non-interaction seeking bias, violated assumptions, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for discriminant analysis, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. both pda and dda are subject to the assumption of multivariate normality. this assumption means that scores on the predictor typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 19 variables are independently and randomly sampled from a population, and that the sampling distribution of any linear combination of predictors is normally distributed. unfortunately, these procedures are not robust to departures from normality if the group sizes are very unequal. indeed, logistic regression is more appropriate than is discriminant analysis in the presence of non-normality and unequal group sizes (tabachnick & fidell, 1996), and thus could be utilized in this case. in fact, logistic regression is more versatile than is discriminant analysis because less stringent assumptions are needed. specifically, logistic regression makes no assumptions about the distributional properties of the regression variables-in particular, the predictors do not have to be normally distributed; nor do they have to linearly related or have equal variances within each group. also, the regression variables can be discrete, continuous, or a combination of the two. it is thus surprising how infrequent logistic regression is used in educational research--despite its popularity in the health sciences. because logistic regression is a discrete response-variable analog to multiple regression, the recommendations made above for the latter (e.g., non-use of stepwise methods, examining residuals, and conducting internal replications) are pertinent for using the former. canonical correlation analyses. canonical correlation analysis is utilized to examine the relationship between two sets of variables when each set contains more than one variable (cliff & krus, 1976; darlington, weinberg, & walberg, 1973; thompson, 1980, 1984, 1991). indeed, as noted by knapp (1978, p. 410), "virtually all of the commonly encountered tests of significance can be treated as special cases of canonical correlation analysis.” that is, canonical correlation analysis can be used to undertake all the parametric tests which canonical correlation methods subsume as special cases, including pearson correlation, t-tests, multiple regression, analysis of variance, and analysis of covariance (henson, 2000; roberts & henson, 2002; thompson, 1988b, 1998a, 1991). humphries-wadsworth (1997) reviewed articles published between 1988 and 1998 in which canonical correlation analyses were undertaken. she identified several problems arising from the use of this technique. these problems included inconsistencies in the terminology used to label the same procedure (e.g., “canonical loadings,” “canonical weights,” “correlation loadings,” and “canonical correlates”), and failure to report all the necessary information. summarizing thompson's (1992a) recommendations, humphries-wadsworth (1997) stated that when performing a canonical correlation analysis, (a) both the p-values pertaining to canonical functions and the squared canonical correlation coefficients (i.e., effect sizes) should be assessed; (b) both the canonical function coefficients and the canonical structure coefficients should be interpreted, along the lines outlined above for multiple regression; (c) redundancy coefficients, which are equal to the average of the squared multiple correlation of each of the variables in one set with all the variables in the other set (pedhazur, 1982) should not be interpreted because they represent univariate statistics; (d) communality coefficients should be routinely examined; and (e) internal replications (e.g., cross-validation, jackknife, or bootstrap techniques) should be undertaken. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), non-interaction seeking bias, violated assumptions, multicollinearity, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for canonical correlation analyses, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, illusory correlation, crud factor, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. principal component analysis and factor analysis. principal component analysis (pca) and factor analysis (fa) are statistical procedures performed on a set of variables in order to determine which variables in the set form logical subsets that are statistically independent from each other. specifically, variables that are statistically related with each other but statistically independent from other subsets of variables are combined into components/factors. these components or factors thus are assumed to represent the underlying phenomena/constructs that are responsible for the observed correlations among the variables. the overall goals of both pca and fa, which are the two most common methods of factor extraction, are to reduce the dimensionality of the set of variables, to summarize patterns of correlations among manifest variables, to describe an underlying process via the observed relationships among variables, or to test theories about the nature of underlying processes or constructs (henson et al., 2001; henson & roberts, in press; tabachnick & fidell, 1996). there are two major types of factor analysis: exploratory and confirmatory. exploratory factor analysis (efa) is an analytic technique conducted in the early stages of the research process with the goal of reducing a larger set of variables into a smaller, interpretable set based on the correlations among the variables. in so doing, the analyst hopes to understand better the internal structure of an instrument or a dataset when insufficient information is available about the data structure. simply put, exploratory factor analyses are based on current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 mathematical solutions and do not incorporate a priori theoretical underpinnings (daniel, 1989b). on the other hand, confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) is typically utilized in the latter stages of the research process to test a theory about the latent processes (henson et al., 2001; henson & roberts, in press; kieffer, 1999). a common flaw that is apparent in factor analysis is the use of inadequate case-to-variable ratio (henson et al., 2001; henson & roberts, in press). for example, in a review of 40 articles using exploratory factor analysis published in the american educational research journal (vol. 33-36), journal of educational research (vol. 89-93), or the elementary school journal (vol. 96-100), henson et al. (2001) found that 14% of efas used subject-tovariable ratios of less than 5:1, with two studies using fewer participants than variables. similarly, henson and roberts (in press) reported that 11.86% of the 60 efa articles they examined had ratios less than 5:1. comrey and lee (1992) suggest that for factor analyses, sample sizes of 50 are very poor, 100 are poor, 200 are fair, 300 are good, 500 are very good, and 1,000 are excellent. tabachnick and fidell (1996) and kieffer (1999) recommend that at least 300 cases be used for factor analysis. however, these guidelines are too simplistic because they do not directly take into account the number of variables. we recommend using case-to-variable ratios as a guideline (henson et al., 2001; stevens, 1996, 2002). to this end, we suggest using 5 participants per variable as the bare minimum, although at least 10 participants per variable is much more desirable (gorsuch, 1983). when researchers use case-tovariable ratios that are less than 5, this should be readily acknowledged in the report as posing a threat to internal validity (i.e., the reliability of the variable scores and emergent factor scores). the difference in pca and fa is that the former utilizes the total variance of each variable to assess the shared variation among the variables. that is, pca uses “ones” on the diagonal of the correlation matrix that is factor analyzed. on the other hand, fa utilizes estimates of common variance or reliability on the main diagonal (henson et al., 2001; henson & roberts, in press; thompson & daniel, 1996). it is likely that fa better reflects reality better than does pca because the latter assumes that each variable represents scores that are perfectly reliable (kieffer, 1999). regardless, as noted by thompson and daniel (1996), heated arguments prevail as to the relative merits of pca or fa. some statisticians (e.g., daniel, 1990; thompson, 1992c) have asserted that the difference between pca and fa is trivial. more specifically, thompson and daniel (1996) reported that the difference between pca and other extraction methods reduces as the number of factored variables increases and as scores on the factored variables become more reliable. however, other researchers (e.g., gorsuch, 1983) have maintained that there is enough discrepancy between the two procedures to justify careful consideration of which technique to utilize. in any case, our position is that researchers should specify which extraction method they have used and provide a rationale for their choice. analysts may even want to consider examining both pca and fa results and then selecting the method which provides the most meaningful interpretation. as noted by hetzel (1996), a common misunderstanding among novice factor analysts is incorrectly assuming that the eigenvalue for a specific factor after extraction is identical to the trace (summation of squared values in columns of the factor pattern/structure matrix) after the factor solution is rotated. this error in thinking leads to incorrect proportions of variance being reported for factors. as identified by thompson (1997), another mistake made by some analysts is a failure to interpret both the factor pattern matrix and the factor structure matrix after conducting an oblique rotation (i.e., rotation of the factors in the factor space such that the angle between the factors is different than 90 degrees). the rationale for this is the same as for interpreting both standardized coefficients and structure coefficients in multiple regression and discriminant analysis. reporting only one of these two matrices provides only partial information (henson et al., 2001; henson & roberts, in press; thompson, 1997). on the other hand, when varimax rotation (i.e., orthogonal rotation of the factors in the factor space such that all factors are at 90-degree angles to each other) is utilized, the factor pattern matrix and the factor structure matrices are identical. perhaps the most common flaw in articles reporting factor analyses is the lack of attention to detail (henson et al., 2001; henson & roberts, in press). indeed, of the factor-analytic studies in the field of counseling psychology examined by tinsley and tinsley (1987), most did not accurately and completely report the results. in a follow-up study by hetzel (1996), none of the factor-analytic articles reviewed contained all of the necessary information. in a further replication of tinsley and tinsley's (1987) seminal work, kieffer (1999) had very similar conclusions, as did henson et al. (2001) and henson and roberts (in press). we recommend that exploratory factor analyses include as many of the following pieces of information as possible: initial number of variables, sample size, sample composition, sampling design, means and variances of the items, correlation matrix typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 21 (for replication purposes), method of factor extraction, criteria used for selecting the number of factors to be extracted, method of factor rotation, eigenvalues, correlation matrix of the extracted factors, final communality estimates, estimates of reliability, rotated factor pattern matrix, and rotated factor structure matrix (if oblique rotation is utilized) (cf. hetzel, 1996). (for an example of how to report efa results in table form for orthogonal rotations and oblique solutions, see table 4 of henson & roberts, in press, and henson et al., 2001, respectively.) we recognize that many factor analysts are operating under stringent page restrictions. nevertheless, attempts should be made to provide as much as the above information as possible. researchers conducting exploratory factor analysis also should provide an explicit justification for each criterion used in the analytical process (henson & roberts, in press). using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), non-interaction seeking bias and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for exploratory factor analyses, whereas confirmation bias, crud factor, and positive manifold are pertinent interpretational errors. confirmatory factor analyses. when performing confirmatory factor analyses, some researchers mistakenly analyze the correlation matrix instead of the variance-covariance matrix (thompson & daniel, 1996). using correlation matrices with confirmatory factor analyses is tantamount to utilizing a variance-covariance matrix wherein the manifest variables have been standardized to unit variance (bollen, 1989), which likely does not reflect reality. as noted by skehan (1991), the acceptance or rejection of a confirmatory factor model is not only a function of the difference between the model and reality, but it also is a function of the size of the sample. in particular, large samples tend to have a bias toward rejection of models (skehan, 1991). according to schumacker and lomax (1996, p. 125), for sample sizes larger than 200, “the test has a tendency to indicate a significant level” and, consequently, to lead to a rejection of the underlying model. thus, it is even more important that effect sizes are reported alongside values. indeed, because there does not appear to be a universally agreed-upon index for assessing model adequacy, we recommend that researchers report several fit indices (i.e., effect size measures) such as the ratio of chisquare to degrees of freedom , the adjusted goodness-of-fit index, the relative fit index (rfi), the incremental fit index (ifi), the tucker-lewis index (tli), and the comparative fit index (cfi) (bentler, 1990; bentler & bonett, 1980; bollen, 1986, 1989; schumacker & lomax, 1996). cut-off values between .90 (e.g., bentler & bonett, 1980) and .95 (hu & bentler, 1999) have been recommended for demonstrating model adequacy. the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea; browne & cudeck, 1993) is another index that researchers should consider reporting. the rmsea, which is the square root of the difference between the population covariance matrix and the fitted matrix divided by the number of degrees of freedom for testing the model (i.e., the discrepancy per degree of freedom for the model), is used to compare the fit of two different models to the same data. the rmsea is bounded below by zero and will be zero only if the model fits exactly (browne & cudeck, 1993). browne and cudeck (1993) asserted that (1) a rmsea of approximately .05 or less is indicative of a close fit of the model in relation to the degrees of freedom, (2) a rmsea value between .05 and .08 indicates a reasonable error of approximation, and (3) models with rmsea's greater than 0.1 always should be rejected. hu and bentler (1999) suggest a cut-off value of .06 for the rmsea. with respect to the ratio, although some researchers (e.g., carmines & mciver as cited in arbuckle, 1997) recommend a range between 2 to 1 and 3 to 1 for declaring an acceptable fit, most researchers (e.g., byrne, 1989) believe that relative chi-square ratios above 2.00 represent an inadequate fit. thus, we recommend this latter value. it should be noted, however, that several monte carlo studies (i.e., studies in which a series of specific empirical sampling distributions for each index are examined) have demonstrated that many effect size indices also are affected by sample size. for example, marsh, balla, and mcdonald (1988), who analyzed the distributions of 29 different indices (e.g., gfi, nfi, tli), found several of these indices to be related to sample size. notwithstanding, in most cases, all the fit indices obtained using ml techniques tend to perform much better with respect to accuracy of estimates and correctness of statistical results than those obtained using other techniques such as generalized least squares and the asymptotic distribution free method (hu & bentler, 1995). apart from sample bias, violation of assumptions underlying estimation methods-specifically, violation of distributional assumptions and the effect of dependence of latent variates--can threaten the adequacy of fit indices. in particular, hu and bentler (1995) reported that, when latent variables are dependent, most fit indices over-reject models at a sample size of 250 or less. unfortunately, given that chi-square tests have a tendency to reject models using sample sizes greater than 200, and that most fit indices lead to an over-rejection of models current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 for samples smaller than 250 when latent variables are dependent, it is difficult, if not impossible, to recommend an ideal sample size for cfa studies. (for comprehensive examples of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis see kieffer, 1999, and onwuegbuzie, bailey, and daley, 2000.) as for exploratory factor analyses, non-interaction seeking bias and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for confirmatory factor analysis, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, crud factor, and positive manifold are pertinent interpretational errors. path analysis. path analysis, which was developed in the 1920s by sewall wright in order to gain a better understanding of genetic theory, became popularized in behavioral and social sciences in 1960s (schumacker & lomax, 1996). path analysis is a technique for studying the direct and indirect effects of variables on one or more outcomes. direct effects involve two variables (observed or latent) that are connected by a single directional path, which represents the regression of the outcome on the predictor. by contrast, indirect effects occur between two latent variables when no single direct path connects them, but instead when the second variable is logically related to the first latent variable through one or more other latent variables via their paths. conveniently, path coefficients in path models take on the values of pearson product-moment correlation coefficients or standardized partial regression coefficients. moreover, the paths suggest whether the dependent variables are related to correlated effects, mediated effects, and/or independent effects. unlike multiple regression analyses, path analysis models allow analysts to specify the type of relationship among the independent variables when predicting one or more dependent variables. path analysis involves decomposing correlations and then comparing original coefficients with the path coefficients computed on the basis of the path model. correlations between any two variables are decomposed into simple and complex paths (schumacker & lomax, 1996). path coefficients can be tested for statistical significance (e.g., using t-values), whereas the overall path model can be tested for goodness of fit using various test statistics (e.g., chi-square tests). unfortunately, because statistically significant chi-square values suggest that a model does not fit the underlying data, sample sizes greater than 200 have a tendency to reject models, as is the case for cfa. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), noninteraction seeking bias, violated assumptions, multicollinearity, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for path analyses, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, illusory correlation, crud factor, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. structural equation modeling. structural equation models differ from path analysis in that the former focus on latent variables rather than observed variables, and combine a measurement model (i.e., confirmatory factor analysis) with a structural model (i.e., path analysis) to substantiate theory (schumacker & lomax, 1996). by first utilizing multiple observed variables in defining a particular latent variable or hypothesized construct (e.g., a factor), measurement error can be estimated, and, as such, measurement properties (i.e., structural-related validity) can be assessed via parameter estimates. as with confirmatory factor analysis, we recommend that researchers who utilize structural equation techniques report several fit indexes simultaneously (thompson, 2000), because there is "no single statistical test of significance that identifies a correct model given the sample data" [emphasis in original] (schumacker & lomax, 1996, p. 120). also, as recommended by schumacker and lomax (1996), we advocate that a bootstrap analysis should be conducted to determine the stability of path coefficients for the selected model. bootstrapping involves re-sampling the data (with replacement) a specified (large) number of times to generate statistical estimators adjusted for case-by-case bias and to establish standard error bands around these estimators. these sample bootstrap estimates and standard errors are averaged and used to obtain confidence intervals around the average of the bootstrap estimates (i.e., bootstrap estimators). the bootstrap estimators and their corresponding confidence intervals are then used to determine how stable the sample statistic is as an estimator of the population parameter. however, it should be noted that even though sem analyses often lead to models that more closely reflect reality, many of these resultant models may still be under-specified because they (a) do not include interaction effects, (b) do not test for nonlinear relationships, and/or (c) fail to account for a sufficient number of observables to identify one or more of the latent variables (i.e., under-identification of the model). another concern surrounding sem is the fact that this method of analysis also has been termed causal modeling. this is regrettable because the term causal modeling appears to give many researchers the impression that sem is a method of identifying causes--which is not necessarily the case. indeed, sem is no less correlational in analytical framework than is any other member of the general linear model. that is, as is the case for all types of statistical analyses regardless of level of complexity, use of sem can only allow for causal statements to typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 23 be made if the research design permits it (i.e., experimental). using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), non-interaction seeking bias, violated assumptions, multicollinearity, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for sem, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, illusory correlation, crud factor, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. hierarchical (multilevel) linear modeling. hierarchical linear modeling (hlm) is a technique designed to analyze data that are structured hierarchically. indeed, hlm has been found to be especially relevant to studies of educational settings because students typically are clustered together within classes, classes are clustered together within schools, schools are clustered together within local education authorities or school districts, and so forth (bryk & raudenbush, 1992; goldstein, 1987, 1995; gray & wilcox, 1995; kreft & de leeuw, 1998). as hlm software has become more readily available, this method of data analysis is increasing in popularity (onwuegbuzie, 2002b). however, due to its relative complexity, still relatively few researchers use hlm. in hlm, models contain one or more variables measured at different levels of the hierarchy. models can have as few as two levels (e.g., students nested within classes), or many more than two. the lowest level measurements are referred to as being at the micro level, whereas all higher-level measurements are deemed to be at the macro level. because hlm models are generalizations of multiple regression models (kreft & de leeuw, 1998), the same assumptions associated with multiple regression not only prevail when using hlm, but they are more complicated. moreover, when these assumptions are violated, type i and type ii errors will be imminent. as cautioned by kreft and de leeuw (1998), hlm should not be used for data exploration. indeed, such exploration should be undertaken prior to the hlm stage. additionally, when using hlm, researchers should refrain from testing models that are too complex--that is models that contain many independent variables, measured at all levels of the hierarchy, and/or that include many cross-level interactions (kreft & de leeuw, 1998). such models are to be avoided, not only because they are sensitive to subtle changes in the system and thus contain unstable parameter estimates, but also because such models are much more difficult to interpret, as well as to replicate from one sample to the next. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), noninteraction seeking bias, violated assumptions, multicollinearity, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for hlm, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, illusory correlation, crud factor, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. summary the purpose of the present paper was to identify and to discuss major analytical and interpretational errors that occur regularly in quantitative and qualitative educational research. with respect to qualitative, interpretivist research, the most common errors are failure to provide evidence for judging the credibility (i.e., validity) of the findings, generalizing findings beyond the sample, and failure to estimate and to interpret effect sizes. typical errors associated with quantitative research include (a) no evidence provided that statistical assumptions were checked; (b) no power/sample size considerations discussed; (c) inappropriate treatment of multivariate data; (d) use of stepwise procedures; (e) failure to report score reliability indices for either previous or present samples; and (f) no control for type i error rate. however, perhaps the most prevalent two errors made in quantitative research, appear across all types of quantitative analyses, namely the incorrect interpretation of statistical significance and the related failure to report and to interpret confidence intervals and effect sizes (i.e., variance-accounted for effect sizes or standardized mean differences) (daniel, 1998a, 1998b; ernest & mclean, 1998; knapp, 1998; levin, 1998; mclean & ernest, 1998; nix & barnette, 1998a, 1998b; thompson, 1998b, 2002). this error often leads to under-interpretation of associated p-values when sample sizes are small and the corresponding effect sizes are large, and an over-interpretation of p-values when sample sizes are large and effect sizes are small (e.g., daniel, 1998a, 1998c). because of this common confusion between significance in the probabilistic sense (i.e., statistical significance) and significance in the practical sense (i.e., effect size), some researchers (e.g., daniel, 1998a) have recommended that authors insert the word "statistically" before the word "significant," when interpreting the findings of a null hypothesis statistical test. conclusion a plethora of analytical and interpretational errors prevails in both quantitative and qualitative research. based on the frequency of many of the errors identified, one has to wonder what percentage of published educational research findings is invalid. in any case, it is clear that extreme caution should be exercised when undertaking quantitative and qualitative analyses, regardless of level of complexity. indeed, use of sophisticated analytical techniques and computer software is no substitute for current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 really getting to know the underlying data and carefully checking all a priori assumptions. we are aware that our views and recommendations provided throughout this essay represent only a portion of the larger body of metathinking and appraisal in the field of education that has taken place for many decades. in providing what we believe to be current best practices for various data-analytic techniques, we encourage the reader either to endorse our recommendations or to demonstrate errors in our judgments. at the very least, we hope that we have provided a framework for promoting dialogue. references aiken, l. s., west, s. g., sechrest, l., reno, r. r., with roediger, h. l., scarr, s., kazdin, a. e., & sherman, s. j. 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(2003, february 19). typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research. current issues in education [on-line], 6(2). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume6/number2/ author notes anthony j. onwuegbuzie howard university department of human development and psychoeducational studies, school of education 2441 fourth street, nw, washington, dc 20059 tonyo@surfsouth.com anthony j. onwuegbuzie is an associate professor of educational psychology at howard university in washington, dc. he earned his ph.d. in educational research and two of his three master's degrees (i.e., m.s. in statistics and m.ed. in testing and measurement) at the university of south carolina. also, he earned a postgraduate diploma in statistics at the university college london. his research topics primarily involve disadvantaged and under-served populations such as minorities, learning disabled students, and juvenile delinquents. in the last four years, he has secured more than 120 publications in reputable refereed journals. to date, he has made or has been invited to make more than 200 presentations and keynote addresses at the international, national, regional, and university levels, presenting on the continents of north america (including canada), europe, and africa. he has a forthcoming book entitled: library anxiety: theory, research, and applications (scarecrow press). larry g. daniel university of north florida larry g. daniel is associate dean, college of education and human services, and professor, division of educational services and research, at the university of north florida. his research and writing interest include research methodology and statistics, measurement issues, educational leadership, and teacher education. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 22, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation onwuegbuzie, a. j., & daniel, l. g. (2003). typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research. current issues in education, 6(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1609 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number2/index.html file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number2/tonyo@surfsouth.com http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1609 current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 improving student journal visibility via the directory of open access journals current issues in education, 24(2) 1 volume 24, issue 2 august 21, 2023 issn 1099-839x improving student journal visibility via the directory of open access journals judith barnsby directory of open access journals mariya maistrovskaya university of toronto libraries abstract: in this interview with judith barnsby, directory of open access journals (doaj), we look at how student-run journals could enhance their visibility by joining doaj. we highlight the general and student journal-specific application requirements for inclusion in doaj, known challenges with the application process, and recommendations for student journals that want to apply. the interview is conducted by mariya maistrovskaya, university of toronto libraries, the interviewer. keywords: student journal publishing, indexing, open access publishing, doaj, directory of open access journals citation: barnsby, j., & maistrovskaya, m. (2023). improving student journal visibility via the directory of open access journals. current issues in education, 24(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss2.2179 accepted: june 17, 2023 introduction student-led academic journals are on the rise in north america (ng et al., 2017), yet their content is not easy to find online. while professional academic journals usually seek to improve their discoverability via scholarly indexes and databases, very few student-led journals are indexed in such venues. for example, in canada, out of 200+ currently publishing student journals, only eight are indexed in the directory of open access journals (doaj) (maistrovskaya, 2023). doaj indexes high-quality open-access journals from anywhere in the world, in any discipline and language. there is no cost for journals to apply nor for readers to access the index https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss2.2179 https://doaj.org/ barnsby & maistrovskaya: improving student journal visibility via doaj current issues in education, 24(2) 2 as it is openly available online. being included in doaj grants a journal both the recognition of quality and a boost in visibility via doaj’s directory and other search services that use its data. doaj welcomes applications from student-led journals. in this interview with doaj’s judith barnsby, we explore why and how student journals may apply, what challenges they may encounter, and what a successful application would look like. interview interviewer: thank you for agreeing to the interview. to start, could you say a few words about the directory of open access journals what it is and why would a journal want to be included? doaj: doaj is a global index covering only fully open-access journals and is used by many libraries, services, and funding organizations worldwide as a source of reputable openaccess journals. inclusion in doaj would give a student journal visibility in many search services and show it meets recognized criteria of quality and openness. interviewer: do you have a sense of how many student journals doaj includes? doaj: it’s difficult to give an exact figure, as student journals are not specifically flagged within the doaj system. it’s fair to say, though, that we could include a lot more, as many people don’t realize that we will index student journals, as many other databases do not accept them. interviewer: i have searched two hundred canadian student journal titles against doaj, and i came up with eight that are indexed. doaj: so, we could definitely do a lot better. interviewer: could you briefly outline the doaj inclusion requirements and the application process that a journal would follow? doaj: there is a set of basic criteria that all journals must meet in order to be indexed in doaj. this covers issues such as the journal website, editorial processes, copyright, and licensing. more details are given at doaj’s guide to applying. interviewer: would you say the current inclusion criteria allow student journals to apply? doaj: yes, we encourage student journals to apply, and have a specific criterion in our guide to applying that is specifically for student-run journals. the requirement is that if a journal is run by a student body, there must be an advisory board for the journal, where at least two members have a phd or equivalent qualification. that’s the only extra thing we ask for. interviewer: could you say more about the impetus for having that specific requirement for student journals? doaj: the reason for it is to ensure that there is some level of faculty or more senior oversight of the editorial process. just to ensure that things are being done to the right standard with the help of people who are more experienced in research and in publishing their work. interviewer: it’s interesting that the requirement is phrased as “phd or equivalent.” so i wonder whether, for example, a librarian who has a faculty status at a university would qualify as being an advisor in that case? doaj: yes. we say that because not all subjects require a phd. for instance, if it was a medical journal and some student medical journals are indexed in doaj there will be a medical doctor rather than a phd who provides oversight. https://doaj.org/apply/guide/ barnsby & maistrovskaya: improving student journal visibility via doaj current issues in education, 24(2) 3 interviewer: this is very helpful to know. we don’t want students to think, “oh, we don’t have two phd advisors, so this is a ‘no’.” it’s good to know that depending on the discipline, there may be other opportunities. doaj: yes, i think that’s important. because it’s easy to assume that it is only phds who are qualified to oversee a journal, and that is not necessarily the case. we have to try and cover all subjects in doaj. interviewer: and would you say that you receive student journal applications often? doaj: we can receive them at any time, but we don’t get very many in total compared to the overall number of applications (on average over 800 per month). one question to ask is: do student editors know or care about being indexed? or if they do know, do they assume that their journal wouldn’t be eligible? perhaps there is a view that a student journal is not going to be of interest to the wider world or to indexing services. and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be of interest if they are producing good research. interviewer: which of your index inclusion requirements do you think would be the most challenging for student journals to meet? doaj: if journals have got good support from their institution’s library, and are following best practice in their editorial processes, then they should be able to meet the basic criteria. what we find is that licensing and copyright are often very difficult for people to understand who are new to open access publishing. that would not be exclusive to student-run journals – we see it everywhere but their librarians should be able to help and advise. understanding what licensing means and that it’s different to copyright is really important. and understanding what it is that works best for the journal. for instance, we have conversations with publishers sometimes, and they say: “we’ve got a cc by license, but we don’t want people to use the work commercially.” that means they’re using the wrong license! so, it’s understanding when you start: are you comfortable with other people using that work commercially or not? what the students would be comfortable with, what the organization is comfortable with in terms of the rights that you’re giving to end-users. and not just end-users, but commercial organizations – under a cc by license anyone may use the content commercially, without needing to inform you. this is a key issue for anyone who’s starting out in open access – and definitely not specifically for student journals. interviewer: would you like to see more student journals included in doaj? doaj: absolutely! student journals are a great idea. they are introducing students to a lot of important concepts quite early in their academic career: what open access means, how to navigate the publishing world, being an author, being a reviewer, being an editor. there are so many positives to having a student journal from the point of view of the students themselves, but also for the institution and ultimately for the academic world as a whole, because people will be better at doing this the earlier they start. so, i’d love to have more student journals in doaj. interviewer: that’s wonderful! so, what would a successful student journal application look like? doaj: obviously, it would meet the basic criteria. we would see all the information that we would expect on the journal website. the editorial board ideally would have some people from other institutions as well. one of the things that we encourage institutional journals to do is to make sure that they include people from other organizations on the board in order to have different viewpoints and experiences. barnsby & maistrovskaya: improving student journal visibility via doaj current issues in education, 24(2) 4 a successful application might have a few small queries from our reviewer, but this is normal. often, we need to ask for more information to be provided, for instance about the peer review process or author fees (often journals with no fees don’t mention this) or to include affiliations for the editorial board members, and of course qualifications for the advisors on a student journal! but ideally if we get a student journal, and it’s on a standard platform like ojs or janeway, we’d probably expect to see most of the information we need there, and if we only have a few small queries, then that would be pretty good. interviewer: that sounds great! would you have any final thoughts on student journals and indexing or any advice for student journal publishers? doaj: how can we encourage more student journals to apply, to realize that it’s a good thing to be indexed, in terms of visibility? getting a journal indexed is the first step, but sharing their article metadata is also really important. if the article metadata is supplied to indexing services like doaj, then that data gets pushed out to a lot of other services and the opportunity for people to find that content is really increased. so, i see doaj as a useful starting point for open access student journals to increase their reach and demonstrate the quality of their content to the whole research community. interviewer: thank you for the interview! references maistrovskaya, m. (2023). canadian student-led academic journals—platforms and indexing data (version 2) [data set]. borealis. https://doi.org/10.5683/sp3/qxeuvh ng, k., lari, m. h. a., chan, s. w. s., arora, r. k., qaiser, f., sharlandjieva, v., & noukhovich, s. (2017). student-run academic journals in stem: a growing trend in scholarly communication. science editor, 40(2). https://www.csescienceeditor.org/article/student-run-academic-journals-stem-growingtrend-scholarly-communication/ https://doi.org/10.5683/sp3/qxeuvh https://www.csescienceeditor.org/article/student-run-academic-journals-stem-growing-trend-scholarly-communication/ https://www.csescienceeditor.org/article/student-run-academic-journals-stem-growing-trend-scholarly-communication/ barnsby & maistrovskaya: improving student journal visibility via doaj current issues in education, 24(2) 5 author notes judith barnsby https://orcid.org/0009-0000-8967-1457 directory of open access journals judith@doaj.org mariya maistrovskaya https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9324-2938 university of toronto libraries mariya.maistrovskaya@utoronto.ca more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://orcid.org/0009-0000-8967-1457 mailto:judith@doaj.org https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9324-2938 mailto:mariya.maistrovskaya@utoronto.ca https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ interview references volume 8, number 22 july, 2005 issn 1099-839x narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum paula booker baker georgia southern university lee woodham digiovanni georgia college and state university as curriculum objectives become more “standardized,” pedagogical strategies that reach diverse populations become more important, not less as some practitioners might be prone to believe. through the use of narratives, we have found that students achieve greater understandings of curriculum as well as find culturally relevant ways of applying curriculum to previous knowledge. using the same line of thinking, stories of successful pedagogical practice help to reinforce the ideas behind culturally relevant pedagogy as it translates from theory into practice. classroom narratives from students and teachers where culturally relevant pedagogical practices have been implemented are the focus of this article. efforts to implement standardization in education have increased over the years. this return to “a single standard of achievement and a onedimensional definition of the common will…result in severe injustices to the children …” (greene, 1995, p. 173). in schools today, the phrase “high standards” implies that every student is expected to reach a predetermined bar. the inevitable consequence becomes failure when teachers are forced to implement these standards without regards to the needs and experiences of the students. teachers and administrators blame the state standards and assessments for the decline of multicultural education (bohn & sleeter, 2001). “standards can…make explicit what students will be tested on, a detail that may help parents and community leaders at least know what the ‘game’ is and what the students will be judged on” (bohn & sleeter, 2001, p. 2). many students’ educations are in jeopardy because they are oblivious to this game or “culture of power” (delpit, 1995). standardized approaches to curricula and pedagogy are inadequate when considering the needs of culturally diverse classrooms. delpit (1995) argues that “children who may be gifted in real-life settings are often at a loss when asked to exhibit knowledge solely through decontextualized paper-and-pencil exercises” (p.173). in order to provide a culturally relevant environment for teaching, no one pedagogy should control the classroom by excluding all others. we have been involved in conversations with our peers in different school districts and find that many teachers are supposed to be on specific lessons on specific days – that the lessons are fairly scripted and that deviation from the timeline is not permitted. no room is allowed for individuality or creativity in presenting lessons; only the officially sanctioned timeline of lessons is to be seen if an current issues in education vol. 8 no. 22 administrator walks into the classroom. delpit (2003) goes into details of excellent teachers who have been reprimanded for not following standardized curriculum, including one who was “ordered to give up his thoughtful, imaginative, and effective practice in order to conform to following the script of the mandated open court (sra/mcgraw hill, 2002) literacy program. although he protested that his students were already achieving beyond the district’s expectations, he was told he had to fall in line” (p.15). we concur with delpit that this practice is dangerous, treating students as products on an assembly line, with no thought as to the emotional and intellectual growth, only the results on a standardized test. while we find the experiences the teachers in these districts are having to be appalling, the missing factor for us in all the talk about standards is the student. where does the student fit into this assembly line model of education? what experiences does the student bring with her when she enters the classroom? what are the cultural expectations and mores that the student encounters at home? what kinds of biases are inherent in the curriculum that prevent student learning? we believe that through responsive teachers, schools can make a difference and begin to address these questions and the impact of education on the lives of students (banks, cookson, gay, et al., 2001). as educators, we understand that there is more to education than “covering” the objectives that are issued to us from our state departments of education; there is also the need to cultivate relations with our students, to allow students the opportunity to be free to express their ideas without fear of reprisal or humiliation in our classrooms, to make the curriculum relevant to all. by making teaching culturally relevant, strategies such as constructing multicultural representations in the classrooms will help bridge the gap between students, their diverse experiences, and what the school curriculum requires (banks, cookson, gay, et al., 2001). in an effort to find ways to build bridges between the home and school as well as academic and lived experiences of students, we performed a literature review on cultural biases in education and pedagogical practices to help in our exploration to find strategies that will counteract or eliminate these biases. in order to make the literature come alive for us, we began to look for examples within our own classrooms that represented culturally responsive pedagogy in action. in this article you will find some understandings we culled from our literature review, followed by anecdotes that represent for us theory in practice. the anecdotes you find here represent just the beginning of this exercise, as we have also begun collecting real world examples from our peers. we hope to illustrate how theory can be moved into practice, with narratives where culturally responsive pedagogical practices have been implemented in our classrooms. educational importance for culturally relevant/responsive teaching the 2000 census shows a growing hispanic and african american population in the united states, and figures show that non-white population in the united states is approximating 25% (grieco & cassidy, 2001). meanwhile, a recent study in our state, georgia, shows that the teaching force in georgia remains over 80% white, with a trend of higher turnover for white teachers at schools that serve predominantly minority students (freeman, scafidi, & sjoquist, 2002). as “no child left behind” reforms and the consequential “adequate yearly progress” reports that specifically track performance of ethnic groups emerge, the focus for teachers ought to move away from what curriculum will be tested to how to engage both teachers and students in appropriate pedagogical practices for diverse populations. the importance of multicultural education as well as culturally appropriate pedagogical practices becomes even clearer. literature has been devoted to the empowerment of the majority culture and the consequent disabling of minority students (e.g. bowman, 1994; cotton, 1991; cummins, 1985; dimitriadis, 2001; hale, 2001; ladson-billings, 1994; lipka, 2002; perry & delpit, 1998; salzer, 1998; steele, 1992). “many of the…marginalized are made to feel distrustful of their own voices…yet they are not provided alternatives that allow them to their stories or shape their narratives or ground new learning in what they already know” (greene, 1995). in order for students to “buy into” education, they must be able to find a personal connection with education and the learning process. as teachers we ought to become fluid in our curricula presentation so as to allow students opportunities to connect. using gloria ladson-billings term, culturally relevant teaching, we ought to initiate actions to integrate the students’ cultural backgrounds into the classroom (1994, 1995). the objective of a culturally relevant classroom is to use this connection between culture and curriculum, home and school to promote academic achievement. ladson-billings (1994) and others (e.g. gay, 2000; howard, 2003; klug & whitfield, 2002; townsend, 2002) have taken the research a step further with the development of culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy, a theoretical framework for education “that attempts to integrate the culture of different racial and ethnic groups into narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum 3 the overall academic program” (http://www.emstac.org/registered/topics/disproportio nality/models.htm). by involving students in a culturally responsive classroom, they learn different ways of knowing, understanding, and presenting information. because diverse views are allowed, students are introduced to new and diverse interpretations and perspectives. the different views challenge and broaden the students’ boundaries. in the classrooms students are allowed to use their strengths which in turn facilitates the development of new skills. moreover, associations are made between the school culture and home culture. what exactly is meant when we say culturally relevant pedagogy? gay (2000) actually prefers the term culturally responsive as opposed to relevant, and one will find that we use the terms interchangeably. from gay, we find that “culturally responsive teaching can be defined as using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant and effective for them” (p. 29). gay notes that improving academic achievement is far from the only goal, as a culturally responsive approach to teaching helps students of color “maintain identity and connection with their ethnic groups and communities; develop a sense of community, camaraderie, and shared responsibility; and acquire an ethic of success” (p. 30). further, culturally responsive/relevant teaching can be described as multidimensional. while it does address curriculum content, culturally relevant teaching also includes “learning context, classroom climate, student-teacher relationships, instructional techniques, and performance assessments” (p. 31). an important understanding of this multidimensionality is to realize that to do this kind of teaching well requires tapping into a wide range of cultural knowledge, experiences, contributions, and perspectives. emotions, beliefs, values, ethos, opinions, and feelings are scrutinized along with factual information to make curriculum and instruction more reflective of and responsive to ethnic diversity. however, every conceivable aspect of an ethnic group’s culture is not replicated in the classroom. nor are the cultures included in the curriculum used only with students from that ethnic group. cultural responsive pedagogy focuses on those elements of cultural socialization that most directly affect learning. (gay, 2000, pp. 31-32) consequently, culturally responsive teaching can be considered transformative, as “it recognizes the existing strengths and accomplishments of these students and then enhances them further in the instructional process” (gay, 2000, p. 33) and emancipatory, “in that it releases the intellect of students of color from the constraining manacles of mainstream canons of knowledge and ways of knowing” (gay, 2000, p. 35). finally, “cooperation, community, and connectedness are also central features of culturally responsive teaching. students are expected to work together and are held accountable for one another’s success” (gay, 2000, p. 36). even with the aforementioned research, as educators we still find an ever-growing divide between theory and practice. while there is a movement within teacher education programs to include more instruction about multicultural education, and even a “bold proposal” to certify new teachers in culturally responsive pedagogy (townsend, nov.2002), there remains a large segment of the practicing teaching population who are unexposed and unaware of the philosophy behind the movement, or for that matter, unaware of the need for culturally relevant teaching practices in the face of the standards movement. the need for visualization: translating theory into practice while appreciating the literature on culturally relevant pedagogy, we felt a need to visualize the practices in classrooms that are very culturally diverse as well as classrooms that are predominantly white. this visualization is important for several reasons. one author is an african american woman who teaches in a culturally diverse middle school, while the other author is a white woman who taught in a predominantly white elementary school. our experiences are vastly different, but we both believe that every child in our classroom has the right to be successful, and the right to be affirmed as an important human being regardless of the ethnic makeup of our classes – culturally responsive pedagogy is one way to accomplish this task. the conversations we have had about what culturally responsive pedagogy looks like in our classrooms have been invaluable in helping each other make deeper connections. another reason why we have become engrossed in this visualization is in an effort to make the practice more accessible to our colleagues and present our students with opportunities for academic success while guiding them to become more caring, concerned, and humane individuals. in both of our personal experiences as teachers in a k-12 setting, we have learned from experience that the use of narratives in the classroom not only helps students to achieve a greater understanding of curriculum, but also allows our students to find culturally relevant ways of applying http://www.emstac.org/registered/topics/disproportionality/models.htm http://www.emstac.org/registered/topics/disproportionality/models.htm current issues in education vol. 8 no. 22 the curriculum to previous knowledge. theoretically and methodically we took a narrative approach as we monitored our own classrooms. this study began as a project for our doctoral class; however, we quickly realized the impact culturally relevant pedagogy had on our students and the classroom environment. narrative inquiry encouraged us to examine our roles as practitioners as we listened to and learned from the stories of our students. through the storytelling we were allowed to understand perspectives of others and develop rich connections as we gained knowledge academically and socially. using the same line of thinking, we as teachers achieve a greater understanding of culturally relevant practice by listening to one another. our own experiences of listening to each other about events in our classrooms have solidified this belief for us. stories of successful pedagogical practice with diverse populations help to reinforce the ideas behind culturally relevant pedagogy as it translates from theory into practice. narratives from our classrooms our scripts are based on life experiences, students’ needs, and required curriculum. through narratives, we have attempted to move the curriculum from the noun to verb form by restoring the fluidity to curriculum. by utilizing a concept of fluidity the curriculum becomes reflexive instead of linear. students are able to accept diversity and develop and enhance critical thinking skills, where as those in a linear environment settle for dichotomous understanding. worded differently, the inability to make connections through teachable moments when the interpretation of standards is a curriculum that insists upon specific objectives and pages covered reduces the fluid nature of dialogue within the classroom, and the understandings that can emerge about one another and the curriculum. as teachers we need to realize that narratives are powerful tools that can positively or negatively affect our students. through narratives we are presented with a safe environment to experience, explore, and understand with a different openness . the following narratives represent some of our own personal explorations with culturally responsive pedagogy in classrooms that are the most familiar to us – our own. narrative i: recently my literature classes read a short story about two pre-teens (boy and girl) that are in conflict with their family, cultural tradition, and community. the children were preparing to endure a cultural ritual that takes place when the boy child becomes a warrior and the girl becomes a woman. in the introductory discussion the students and i talked about traditions. in each class, i had at least one student per class to express that the traditions of the featured culture was “stupid.” i asked my students two questions that took our discussion to a new level. the questions: why do you think this tradition is stupid? how would you feel if someone called your family tradition stupid? i could realize these students were in some instances speaking from learned stereotypes. they honestly did not know why they spoke so negatively about differences. after our class discussions, i could tell some of the students realized the pain their closed mindedness and negative words could cause. i believe this storytelling also allowed the students to see the conflict from the “other” point of view. the students were able to understand how it feels to be torn between following family tradition and how others perceive your difference. in one class a student shared a narrative that served as the perfect bridge into our literature story. this student began with her feelings of fear of an indian woman in her neighborhood that wore clothing that covered all but her eyes. she thought this woman was deformed. her mother was friends with this lady and arranged for the indian woman to tell her daughter of her culture and beliefs. the student was even allowed to try on one of the woman’s garments. quickly she clarified that she did not try on a garment but a jhumn (head and body covering) and a ghago (dress). she eventually completed a social studies project on the culture of her neighbor and got an a. this student was beaming with excitement as she told this story to the class. while she talked, her peers stared and clung to every part of her story. by gaining exposure to a different culture, history, and literature the students gained experience, learned respect for difference, and developed empathy and a greater understanding of self and others. in reflecting upon the above narrative there is displayed an instance in which the traditional curriculum has stepped apart from the rigid steps and rules process of teaching. the students had the opportunity to experience “otherness” and use that unique experience to see the literature story from a different lens. the lessons that incorporate narratives, like the above, encourage students to be autonomous, find a connection, and allow for personal reflection on diversity. “the purpose of critical reflection is not to indict teachers…but to improve practice, rethinking, philosophies, and become more effective narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum 5 for today’s ever-changing population” (howard, 2003). reflection through critically relevant pedagogy enhances education one component of narrative teaching is the opportunity for self-reflection. the value of reflection in education has been documented in history through the era of john dewey. dewey (1933) viewed reflection as a form of problem solving developed in the framework of using experiences as a deliberate cognitive process. this philosophical process is interwoven with many contemporary approaches to education. in order for this process to be beneficial in a diverse society, we should be cognizant of moral, political, and ethical concepts presented. ladson-billings (1994) argues on the same lines of dewey that a reflective approach provides students with an authentic belief that culturally diverse students are capable learners. she argues that if students are treated as morally and ethically competent, they will demonstrate these expectations through actions. to become culturally relevant, we as teachers need to engage in honest, critical reflection and discourse that challenges our colleagues and students into reevaluating their positionality. “good intentions and awareness are not enough to bring about the changes needed in educational programs and procedures to prevent academic inequities among diverse students” (gay, 2000, p. 13). this discourse will explore the areas of race, culture, social class, and gender and how these characteristics shape our learning, thinking, and understanding of our curriculum, society, and the world. narrative ii: poetry is another unit placed within the literature curriculum for k-12 student. within the thematic unit and standardized curriculum, students are required to read and explain from a literary canon to which they cannot connect. as with most topics, students come alive when they are able to read, learn, and write about something that is of interest to them. ladson-billings (1995) asserts, “if the students’ home language is incorporated into the classroom, students are more likely to experience academic success” (p. 159). in many instances musicians speak the home language of our students. many required poetry units feature traditional works that are considered foreign to students that live in the popular culture era. narratives by those outside the school environment can be used to find that connection so that students are capable of relating to the unit of study. the first day of the poetry unit the students entered my room with sad faces and despair. the question on many of their mind was how long we had to study poetry. i waited until i got everyone’s attention and began to name the poets that would introduce our unit. i told the students that i would hope they recognized some of the names and began to call names of the rap artists and singers they recognize from radio and television. within two minutes my class was electric. the students understand and listen intently to popular rap songs, and this was the needed connection to re-ignite the spark for poetry. rap music is a global phenomenon that my students understand. i decided to use the genre of the hip-hop culture to introduce poetry and get my students excited about poetry. the idea behind rap as poetry is to encourage the students to remove the melody of a song they know and like and realize that once the words are spoken, there is a poem. once the excitement developed, it was an easy transition from rap to the required poetry for the curriculum. one important feature of culturally relevant pedagogy is that the teacher does not teach as if the student has deficits of knowledge (howard, 2003, p. 14). in this above instance, the students were affirmed and their knowledge of popular culture was treated as worth knowing. in addition, this introduction to poetry further helped to explicitly make a “connection between culture and learning” (howard, 2003, p. 15) as well as “ incorporate a wider range of dynamic and fluid teaching practices” (howard, 2003, p. 15), both of which are important understandings of what culturally relevant pedagogy entails. choosing excellence "culturally relevant teaching requires that teachers attend to students' academic needs, not merely make them ‘feel good.’ the trick of culturally relevant teaching is to get students to ‘choose’ academic excellence" (ladson-billings, 1995, p. 160). narrative iii: just this week i witnessed one of those moments where students chose academic excellence. the students had been working diligently as we studied the elements of mythology. to keep the excitement high, i decided to incorporate an art activity. the students chose partners or small groups. the objective was to create a mythic cartoon that had characterization, foreshadowing, a mythic hero, and a moral. while meeting the current issues in education vol. 8 no. 22 students’ needs in academics, i saw culturally relevant teaching pay off as a bond develops between two of my most ‘unlikely’ students. j is an african american male student that was recently mainstreamed into the regular classroom from the behavior disorder class. he is opinionated, loud, and very independent. a is a white male student that comes from a very conservative environment. he is the typical child with the need to please. a is independent (when he believes the teacher wishes it). i assume from a’s mannerisms and reactions to the other students and to me that he has limited interactions with minorities outside the school environment. both boys love sports and wanted to use that love as the framework for their mythic cartoon. they had the same idea and very reluctantly decided to work together. a is an excellent writer with a keen sense of creativity. j is an excellent artist with a flair for drawing what others request. the boys worked diligently and actually produced the best product of all the classes that completed the assignment. their classmates were in awe of the final project.three days later, i noticed them talking in the hall and sitting together during lunch. j (the behavior problem) is much calmer and contributes positively to the class. i watched a have an opinion in a discussion, and he did not back down when other students disagreed. what an amazing transformation for both boys. i am almost certain that these two students would have been in the same class for the entire year and never talk. however, their love for football and art created an unlikely friendship and connection. the above narrative is an interesting example of choosing excellence. not only did the assignment allow the students to succeed while using their strengths, but it also created a bridge between cultures – showing each student that the other has strengths to bring to the table, focusing on positive interaction rather than negative interaction. culturally responsive pedagogy in majority white schools through narratives, teachers are able to look inward. this allows teachers to know themselves and their students. palmer (1998) asserts that “we teach who we are.” hard questions are then asked: are the students that fail unlike us? we feel that culturally responsive pedagogy is not only important for schools who have a large representation of diverse populations, but also important in schools that do not have a large diverse population. ladson-billings (1994) states, “culturally relevant teaching is about questioning (and preparing students to question) the structural inequality, the racism, and the injustice that exist in society” (p. 128). nieto (2000) elaborates on this point further: racism is seldom mentioned in school (it is bad, a dirty word) and therefore is not dealt with. unfortunately, many teachers think that simply having lessons in getting along or celebrating human relations week will make students nonracist or nondiscriminatory in general. but it is impossible to be untouched by racism, sexism, linguicism, heterosexism, ageism, anti-semitism, classism, and ethnocentrism in a society characterized by all of them….therefore, part of the mission of the school becomes creating the space and encouragement that legitimates talk about racism and discrimination and makes it a source of dialogue. (p. 307) this element is why we include stories that show the importance of examining and affirming cultures in the classroom when the majority of the faces are white. not only do these teachers have a responsibility to the students in their rooms who are not part of the dominant culture, they also have a responsibility to all of their students to learn to accept and appreciate one another. “we must cultivate in ourselves a capacity for sympathetic imagination that will enable us to comprehend the motives and choices of people different from ourselves, seeing them not only as forbiddingly alien…but as sharing many problems and possibilities with us” (nussbaum, 1997, p. 85). there are so many differences in society that it makes acceptance of different people, diverse cultural beliefs, or various points of view harder. through the development of understanding and sympathy we can hopefully learn to collaborate across cultural boundaries. narrative a: in one of my classes recently, i had a class discussion based on something that i found that was entitled “if the world were a village of 100 people” (some of this information, found below, can be found at http://www.pratyeka.org/library/text/100peo ple.html). the following represents some of the information that we discussed:  70 would be nonwhite, 30 would be white  61 would be asian, 13 african, 13 from north and south america, 12 http://www.pratyeka.org/library/text/100people.html http://www.pratyeka.org/library/text/100people.html narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum 7 europeans, and the remaining one from the south pacific.  33 would be christians, 19 believers in islam, 13 would be hindus, and 6 would follow buddhist teachings. 5 would believe that there are spirits in the trees and rocks and in all of nature. 24 would believe in other religions, or would believe in no religion.  17 would speak chinese, 9 english, 8 hindi and urdu, 6 spanish, 6 russian, and 4 would speak arabic. that would account for half the village. the other half would speak bengal, portuguese, indonesian, japanese, german, french, or some other language.  in such a village with so many sorts of folks, it would be very important to learn to understand people different from yourself and to accept others as they are. but consider this. of the 100 people in this village, o 20 are undernourished, 1 is dying of starvation, while 15 are overweight. o of the wealth in this village, 6 people own 59% (all of them from the united states), 74 people own 39%, and 20 people share the remaining 2%. o of the energy of this village, 20 people consume 80%, and 80 people share the remaining 20%. o 75 people have some supply of food and a place to shelter them from the wind and the rain, but 25 do not. 17 have no clean, safe water to drink. o if you have money in the bank, money in your wallet and spare change somewhere around the house, then you are among the richest 8. o if you have a car, you are among the richest 7. o among the villages, 1 has a college education. 2 have computers. 14 cannot read. i decided that for this activity i would present this information by writing it on the board, but that i wanted my students to copy it. groans of how “mean” i am followed from some students, but i believe that by having the students copy the information, the possibility of them absorbing what was presented was greater. it certainly allowed for more introspection. after the students had finished copying most of the information, i asked them how this relates to perspective, our focus of discussion. one child said that we are very fortunate. many of them had never thought that a college education could be considered rare – after all, most of their parents have college educations. somehow in the conversation, someone said that this is a reminder to treat others the way that you want to be treated, and i asked in return “is it really?” this brought us into a discussion of how different cultures have different social mores, and the way that people within that culture want to be treated may be very different from the way that “i” want to be treated. as i reflected back on how the conversation progressed in both classes, i thought to myself that more students need to be engaged in conversations like this one, and how good it felt to be engaged in dialogue that was on such a high level with nine and ten year olds. moments like this one are one of the reasons that i teach. one of the reasons we include this particular narrative is that this activity shows a white teacher who is becoming more comfortable with discussing race, class, gender, and other differences in her classroom. this step is important, as howard (2003) notes: as the teaching profession becomes increasingly homogeneous, given the task of educating an increasingly heterogeneous student population, reflections on racial and cultural differences are essential. in order to become a culturally relevant pedagogue, teachers must be prepared to engage in a rigorous and oftentimes painful reflection process about what it means to teach students who come from different racial and cultural backgrounds than their own (p. 18). narrative b: i was leading my fifth-graders in a discussion of current events, which is a daily practice in my classroom. one of our first events was a discussion of shirin ebadi, who current issues in education vol. 8 no. 22 is the recent recipient of the nobel peace prize, and the first muslim woman to receive this prestigious award. one of my students, m, immediately raised his hand and said, “why in the world would they give the nobel peace prize to a muslim?” another student, t, immediately erupted from his chair and said, “excuse me, ms. h., but i really need to deal with this.” he faced the students and entered into a heartfelt speech on prejudice and racism. he told m that he still liked him very much as a person, but was deeply offended by what m had said. he said, “how dare you judge an entire group of people based on what a few people from one religion have done?” what ensued was a class debate—totally unplanned! the students explored racism, prejudice, and the many factors that shape our perspectives. when one student stated that the world would be boring if we were all alike, i asked him to look around our classroom. there were actually gasps when they realized that we were sitting in a class with no diversity whatsoever. this led into a discussion of how it can be detrimental to assume that we are the “norm.” the students also discussed how sometimes people do judge an entire group of individuals because they are different from themselves or because of what a few of those individuals have done. at the end of this profound debate, the original student who had made the comment about the nobel peace prize asked to make a statement. he told the class that his perspective had totally changed and that he now fully understood the merit of this amazing muslim woman. he actually thanked the student who had helped to open his eyes. when i later shared this event with colleagues, i stated that this was one of the most amazing teaching moments of my career. when students are given the freedom and the forum to discuss relevant issues in our world, we are all enriched. (k. harrell, personal communication, november 12, 2003) activities such as these in a predominantly white setting also shows culturally relevant pedagogy. ladson-billings (1995) states that in order to have culturally relevant teaching as pedagogy, three criteria must be in place: “(a) students must experience academic success, (b) students must develop and/or maintain cultural competence, and (c) students must develop a critical consciousness where they challenge the status quo of the current social order” (p. 160). in an environment where the students are exposed to monoculture instead of multiculture, students need to develop a broader sense of sociopolitical consciousness to realize the cultural norms, values, and mores of others. these students need to know that race matters (west, 1994). it always has, and it always will. it matters in whose version of history is presented, what canon is adopted, and in who is seen as invisible. perspectives presented through narratives enhance inquiries just as the use of narratives in a classroom (and narratives about classrooms) can enhance learning and help make important connections for our students, the use of narratives have not been lost upon educational researchers. educational researchers are utilizing a variety of different approaches that include the use of narratives: personal narrative and narrative inquiry (e.g. josselson, 1996; connelly and clandinin, 1990), narrative multiculturalism (e.g. phillion, 2002; he, 2002), reflexive ethnography (pink in mullen, 2001); portraiture (e.g. garcia, 1999); fiction as inquiry (morrison, 1970); and cultural inquiry (e.g. gee, 1999), just to name a few. many of these approaches have common characteristics. the above-mentioned researchers each seek to discover cultural roots to encourage participation from students of diverse cultures in the classroom. the importance of culturally relevant teaching is immeasurable. ethically speaking, all students should receive equal educational opportunities and enrichment experiences. one thread that runs through each of these inquiries is the attempt to connect the researchers with personal and cultural experiences of a diverse population. this knowledge allows the researchers to develop an understanding of complications, concerns, and cultural issues that affect the diverse student population. the emphasis on “narrative,” or story telling, in each of these modes of inquiry is important when translating theory into practice. “we see; we hear; we make connections; (greene, 1995, p. 186). in our classrooms, we realize that each person has a story to tell. some of these stories may actually show the prejudices that our students have developed. many times we would not have the opportunities to act as multicultural educators if we did not have opportunities to discuss such prejudices, just as illustrated in the story about the muslim woman winning the nobel peace prize. as one reviewer of this article commented, “the stories many students will tell draw from racist, sexist and misinformed accounts which dominate popular narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum 9 culture. these are easier for students to find the words to speak…narratives show how unplanned pedagogical interventions can give students access to subjugated stories – and enable other stories to be told and heard.” we encourage the use of personal narratives in our classes for this reason, as well as to help students make connections with the curriculum just as we encourage the telling of personal narratives so we can better understand the cultural backgrounds and heritage that our students bring to the classroom. “cultural background…plays a part in shaping identity; but it does not determine identity” (greene, 1995, p. 163). these stories remain dormant if the focus is on curriculum, not on culturally relevant pedagogical practices. relationships that are fostered through the use of narrative, then, become important for both the student and the teacher in maneuvering through the curriculum. conclusion ohanian (1999) makes numerous cases against the use of education standards. she asserts with much research that current educational reform is from a business framework and excludes the voices of teachers and students. schools would benefit when the curriculum expands as to provide options so that the diverse student population may become aware of the knowledge presented and find opportunities for self-reflection. ohanian (1999) believes there is a need for more accountability, but standardization without inclusion of diversification is not the answer. ignoring cultural differences may also lead to unfair testing practices. for example, the illustrations, wording, and contextual information given on standardized tests may reflect the experiences and languages of a particular group. this privilege will benefit some students while penalizing many that are not aware of the cultural differences. through narratives, students gain exposure and perception of diverse cultures. for students who are not a “participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly the rules of that culture makes acquiring power (understanding) easier” (delpit, 1995, p. 24). the proliferation of standardized testing and standardized curriculum ignores the beauty of diverse cultures and divergent thinking that can be fostered in our classrooms. it ignores the power of the teachable moment that occurs when we stop and listen to each other’s stories, focusing instead on a measurable product. delpit (2003) well sums up the difference between a focus on standardization and culturally responsive teaching: …we can educate all children if we truly want to. to do so, we must first stop attempting to determine their capacity. we must be convinced of their inherent intellectual capability, humanity, and spiritual character. we must fight the foolishness proliferated by those who believe that one number can measure the worth and drive the education of human beings, or that predetermined scripts can make for good teaching. finally, we must learn who our children are – their lived culture, their interests, and their intellectual, political and historical legacies. (p. 20) every class will have a unique cultural make-up. whatever commonalities exist, it is important to realize that no two schools, classrooms, or students will be exactly alike. therefore, examinations of the impact of narratives as well as the narratives themselves will be a continual and ever changing process. a superior academic education is dialogical in nature – it is not standardized. it initiates all students in the art of participating in a creative interplay between different cultural perspectives. a dialogue between cultures through narratives alerts them to personal biases a gain in itself and enables them to reduce such biases in a non-threatening way. culturally relevant pedagogy is an empty phrase without action, and transformation of the standardized educational system can not happen without action. in order for success, we must include action and reflection without new pedagogy. one element needed to begin this transformation is dialogue of teachers with their colleagues, teachers with students, and teachers with parents and community representatives. dialogue adds awareness and perspective as teachers and students begin to broaden their view. from the dialogue will come the stories from teachers on how culturally relevant pedagogy emerged in their classrooms. thus we have developed an appropriate step for bridging theory into practice. as our population becomes more diverse, and teachers of all races and genders are seeking ways of meeting the challenge of increased standardization, successful practices need to be chronicled and shared with others, in turn reducing more biases that are inherent in the standardized curriculum. the narratives presented here from classrooms familiar to us represent only the beginning of our endeavor to chronicle these stories. references banks, j., cookson, p., gay, g., hawley, w., irvine, j., nieto, s., schofield, j., stephan, w. 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(2002). leave no teacher behind: a bold proposal for teacher education [electronic version]. international journal of qualitative studies in education,15(6), 727-738. retrieved october 5, 2003, from academic search premier. west, c. (1994). race matters. new york: vintage. http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-%09texte/1-02/1-02review-mullen-e.htm http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-%09texte/1-02/1-02review-mullen-e.htm http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/race/stee%09le/htm http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/race/stee%09le/htm current issues in education vol. 8 no. 22 2005 article citation baker p.b. & digiovanni, l.w. (2005, july). narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum. current issues in education [on-line], 8(15). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number22/ author notes paula booker baker georgia southern university paula baker received her doctorate in curriculum studies from georgia southern university. her area of interest is critical narrative inquiry, culturally relevant pedagogy, and academic affects of identity exploration with a particular focus on linguistically and culturally diverse student education. her dissertation study focused on critical narrative identity exploration and resiliency and the effects on african american women with doctorates in the field of education. lee woodham digiovanni georgia college and state university cbx 71, georgia college & state university, milledgeville, ga 31061 lee.digiovanni@gcsu.edu lee woodham digiovanni is an assistant professor of early childhood education at georgia college and state university. her research interests focus on the application of multicultural and feminist understandings to education. she completed her ed.d in curriculum studies from georgia southern university. her dissertation study focused on white female elementary teachers who have internalized the importance of teaching for diversity. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 22, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation baker, p. b., & digiovanni, l. w. (2005). narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum. current issues in education, 8(22). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1611 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number15/index.html mailto:lee.digiovanni@gcsu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1611 foreword: the final installment current issues in education, 22(1) 1 volume 21, issue 2 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age foreword: the final installment samantha adams becker arizona state university sean m. leahy arizona state university abstract: this final installment of the shapingedu special issue was inspired by the concept of a “sibling” body of work to compliment the first publication installment. the themes of both bodies of work overlap in their calls to action, yet each article stands solidly on their own. educators, learning designers, and education leaders have felt the responsibility of helping to usher in the right solutions that will spur student engagement, inclusion and success. eleven articles unpack the various intertwined journeys we must embark on together to bolster digital equity and inclusion, to recognize all forms of learning and to spur an even more harmonious connections between our institutions and the workforce of the future. keywords: shapingedu, humanizing, learning citation: becker, s. a., & leahy, s. m. (2021). foreword: the final installment. current issues in education, 22(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1974 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 1/5/2021 introduction 2020—the year of the covid-19 pandemic, of course, but also the year taylor swift (2020) released two surprise albums: folklore and evermore. not only that, but she characterized them as “sister” albums—sonically similar with intersecting narratives and themes. so when it http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/xxxx foreword: the final installment current issues in education, 21(2) 2 came time for us to compile the second and final installment of our shapingedu special edition of the cie journal, we felt inspired by this concept of sibling bodies of work with songs in both installments that overlap in both themes and calls to action. and yet, each article stands on its own solid footing on the forest floor. the criteria for articles in this edition are the shapingedu actions (shapingedu, n.d.) that help us to understand and advance the futures of learning in the digital age. and, as we escaped further into the brush-filled woods that covid propelled whole education systems into, we have been enthralled by the new possibilities—afforded by untethering ourselves from traditional learning paradigms. our first installment centered us as it delved into how we can humanize learning experiences during a time in life where we are all realizing just how human we are, as discussed in the special issue introduction (becker et al., 2020). educators, learning designers, and education leaders have felt the responsibility of helping to usher in the right solutions that will spur student engagement, inclusion and success. with new territory to chart, many of us have had the opportunity to create our own folklore when it comes to shaping the future of learning. what does utopia look like? how do we get there? eleven articles unpack the various intertwined journeys we must embark on together to bolster digital equity and inclusion, to recognize all forms of learning and to spur an even more harmonious connections between our institutions and the workforce of the future. we’re pleased to share with you our own track list that both concludes this special edition and points at next steps toward the future as we continue to shape education together—forevermore! track list 1. designing learning experiences for the future of learning in the digital age thurber 2. inclusive access for all – dority baker, lindburg 3. an untapped resource for fostering student success whitmer 4. helping stem students thrive: adult learning pathways prusko 5. the digitization of white women’s tears messmore 6. innovatively preparing the teacher workforce reinking 7. self-mapped learning pathways crosslin 8. a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism geringer 9. catalyzing a culture of care and innovation through prescriptive and impact analytics to create full-cycle learning kil, baldasare and milliron 10. thinking backward haymes 11. the castle and the paths berman for the first track, derek thurber opens the journal installment by grounding us in what is practical. we already have hundreds of years of pedagogical research and best practices to build upon, so how do we get started? the article focuses on designing learning experiences that build on existing instructional design models but also incorporates a deep understanding of humans, how we learn, and ultimately what motivates us. track two reveals the major hook—the lynchpin of shaping the future of learning: inclusion and access. a duet from authors marcia dority baker and jaci lindburg for this article share firsthand how their oer (open education resources) and inclusive access pilots are helping students save money and gain access to vital learning materials. learn how the approach to service is being iterated in an agile manner thanks to a growing chorus of stakeholder feedback. https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/announcement/view/35 foreword: the final installment current issues in education, 21(2) 3 track three, authored by susan whitmer, strikes a utopian chord, envisioning an education system that honors every learner’s unique lived experiences and supports the expectations of learners for their individual life goals. principles of universal design for learning (udl) provide a framework for creating this caliber of digital and physical environments. we reach a crescendo in our installment as we arrive at track four. patrice prusko illuminates three women’s reactions as they have been surrounded by stories of underrepresented and first-generation students who were lagging behind or dropping out. they launched an online series dedicated to helping stem students thrive, leveraging the women in stem cooperative—56 institutions, eight organizations, four countries, and 23 states. talk about backup vocals! look at how these tears ricochet. it’s worth noting that track five historically represents what ms. swift considers to be the most vulnerable track on every album (bain, 2020). in our track five, author and poet niki messmore gets candid on how sometimes the higher education practitioners and scholars discussing social justice across social media may unintentionally perpetuate the same systems of oppression they detest. the sixth track in the installment is from anni reinking that explores the innovative practice of virtual training for teachers in an effort to reduce stress, and increase success of the educator workforce. this paper looks at a small study of novice and preservice educators, and the use of virtual professional development to address the challenges of the profession in an effort to reduce professional burnout. in the seventh track matt crosslin highlights the effectiveness of self-mapped learning pathways that cut through the traditional (perhaps outdated) paradigm of a single predetermined pathway. crosslin’s paper explores course design leveraging instructivism and connectivism modalities, and offers design considerations based on practical application and research findings. the eighth track in this anthology from laura geringer explores the relationship between research and reflection around faculty experiences navigating bilingualism. the research study examines faculty experiences of native french speakers working in an english-language university and academic setting. through a thoughtful reflection, geringer highlights the firsthand experience of embarking on a research process and her thoughts on the relationship between research and field practice. david kil, angela baldasare, and mark milliron raise the beats per minute (bmp) as we hit the ninth track. the authors explore the central tenet of student success to the mission of higher education, and examine the gap between the idealized synergy of people, processes, and machine learning (ml) and what is often not the case. their paper examines how ml can be used in promoting a culture of care and innovation through full-cycle learning. the tenth and penultimate track on this installment is tom haymes’s thought piece challenging us to look backwards and understand the implications of the newtonian-rooted paradigm of our current educational information exchange, so we can be better prepared for the future of information. this paper posits the needs to shift from the aforementioned information exchange schema and transition to an einsteinian (or relativistic) model to intentionally facilitate the augmentation of human knowledge. haymes provides a vision for what this information exchange might look like, and how it might be able to be built. the final track crafted by michael berman, is an engaging story that takes place in a village setting where the townspeople look to the mysterious castle upon a craggy rock imbued https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/11/26/track-5-meaning/ foreword: the final installment current issues in education, 21(2) 4 with intrigue and exclusivity. a king working to limit the number of villagers who could enter this prestigious castle and earn their “badge” of honor and prosperity. as the villagers increase their demand for access to the castle, the king has to make decisions—this story has two endings for you the reader to choose. does this story end happily ever after for the king and townspeople? or does it end on a darker cautionary tale of greed and exclusion that leads to the ruin of the castle? that will be up to you. references bain, e. (2020, november, 26). taylor swift’s track 5 meaning explained: fifth song on every album has a hidden message! hitc. https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/11/26/track-5meaning/ becker, s. a., leahy, s. m., flintoff, k., & scragg, b. (2020). introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age. current issues in education, 21(2). retrieved from: https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1946. shapingedu. (n.d.). 10 actions to shape the future of learning: our origin story. shapingedu. https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions swift, t. (2020). evermore [album]. taylor swift. swift, t. (2020). folklore [album]. taylor swift. author / guest editor notes sean m. leahy, phd arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/11/26/track-5-meaning/ https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/11/26/track-5-meaning/ https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1946 https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au foreword: the final installment current issues in education, 21(2) 5 volume 21, issue 2 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stampler melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice: current issues in education, vol(number) 1 volume 22, issue 2 may 18, 2021 issn 1099-839x curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice: from the common to the exceptional alicia brianna saxe university of denver jodie l. wilson university of denver abstract: the unique capacity of aesthetic methods to provoke a variety of consequential educational outcomes has attracted considerable scholarship. less developed, however, is an exploration of teacher perspectives and implementation of six aesthetic themes of teaching: connections, risk, imagination, sensory, perceptual, active engagement (crispa). using an educational criticism and connoisseurship inquiry method, we asked two questions: 1) what are the intentions and practices of a high school teacher as he teaches english? 2) what are the intentions and practices of the same teacher as he teaches english incorporating crispa? we present an analysis that spotlights uncovered themes observed from applying crispa to teaching literature. we discuss the connection between crispa and the complementary curriculum; the capacity of crispa to enhance curriculum development and implementation; and add to literature that links aesthetics to social justice pedagogy. we include implications for educators seeking to enhance their practices. keywords: curriculum, aesthetics, social justice, complementary curriculum citation: saxe, a. b., & wilson, j. l. (2021). curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice: from the common to the exceptional. current issues in education, 22(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1963 accepted: month/day/year introduction in moments where the objectives of education are convoluted by standardization, corporate interests, and political polarization, it is essential that researchers and practitioners challenge highstakes and high-stress environments with pedagogical practices that honor educators’ present realities and promote deep engagement and learning. aesthetic approaches to education have been supported by a number of influential scholars who emphasized perceptive, creative, and sensorial aspects as vehicles for engaged learning experiences for both teachers and students (barone, 2000; http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1963 saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 2 dewey, 1934; eisner, 1972, 2005, 2017; girod & wong, 2002; greene, 1988, 1995, 2001; huebner, 1962; meng & uhrmacher, 2017; moroye & uhrmacher, 2018; sinclair, 2009; uhrmacher, 2009; uhrmacher et al., 2016). less developed, however, is an exploration of the impact of aesthetically derived pedagogical approaches and their relationship to teacher beliefs and practices, particularly at the secondary level. one such pedagogical approach is a perceptual mode of teaching, which emphasizes the use of the senses as both a source of knowledge and more pragmatically as an aesthetically informed heuristic for lesson planning and teaching (uhrmacher et al., 2013). our study is concerned with the aesthetic themes—a research-based method of enacting a perceptual orientation to teaching (uhrmacher, 2009). we employed educational criticism and connoisseurship (eisner, 2017; uhrmacher et al., 2017), an arts-based approach grounded within the interpretive paradigm to explore and understand the impact of the intentional incorporation of six aesthetic themes on the curricular and instructional experiences of a high school english teacher. our research was designed to address the present gap in the extant literature regarding aesthetically-informed methods of teaching—specifically, how this pedagogical approach influences teacher beliefs and practices. to achieve these objectives, we asked two questions: 1) what are the intentions and practices of a secondary teacher as he teaches english, and 2) what are the intentions and practices of a teacher as he teaches english using the aesthetic themes? in this essay, we analyze and synthesize the role of six aesthetic themes in supporting a high school teacher’s personal beliefs and his intentions for his students. we conclude by outlining implications for educators and the larger field. approaches to education analyses of modes of teaching have historically focused on behavioristic (hunter, 2004; taba, 1962; taba, 1962; hunter, 2004; tyler, 1949), or more recently, constructivist (bruner, 1966, 1977; marzano et al., 2001; wiggins & mctighe, 2005) frameworks. rooted largely in john dewey’s (1934) ideas about art and experiences, aesthetic approaches to education have been theorized and implemented to invite innovative alternatives to traditional frameworks. dewey (1934) distinguishes ordinary experience from aesthetic experience, emphasizing incoherence, indistinction, and distraction in the former and unity, satisfaction, and completeness in the latter. more contemporary scholars have applied dewey’s ideas to aesthetic approaches in the classroom. for example, eisner (1994) expands on dewey’s emphasis of sensory stimulus, defending that “one of the major aims of education is the development of multiple forms of literacy,” which are fostered through, “a variety of forms of representation that humans use to represent the contents of their consciousness” (p. x). maxine greene (2001) describes aesthetic experience as “concerned about perception, sensation, imagination, and how they relate to knowing, understanding, and feeling about the world” (p. 5). conrad et al. (2015) portray aesthetic experience as “being fully present and riveted in the moment, when one’s senses are heightened, and when one might describe his or her experience as having been ‘consummated’ or fully complete” (p. 5). aesthetic approaches to education include the role of perception, imagination, and creativity—often via artistic means—in developing, implementing, and experiencing aesthetic curriculum and instruction for teachers and their students. several studies have specifically explored aesthetic teaching practices including the perceptual (uhrmacher et al., 2013), and deep aesthetic engagement (uhrmacher et al., 2016). other scholarship has applied qualities of aesthetic education within specific content areas such as science and math. as one example, mark girod and david wong (2002) explored aesthetic experience in a fourth-grade science classroom, emphasizing qualities of anticipation and saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 3 imagination. nathalie sinclair’s (2009) work called for a conception of aesthetic awareness in mathematics as a “connective force” (p. 45), arguing that “school mathematics offers few opportunities for the kind of mathematical inquiry described by dewey” (p. 52). mark faust (2001) conjoined literary theory with aesthetic education and argued that the experience of reading can be considered an ‘in-the-moment’ aesthetic process that has the potential for personal transformation for the reader. this scholarship, to which the present study aligns, provides evidence that aesthetic approaches to education can exist across a variety of conceptual and practical contexts. the impact of aesthetically designed curricula within the pragmatic realm of the secondary classroom, however, remains an area for further exploration. the aesthetic themes of education: crispa uhrmacher (2009) conceptualized a pragmatic approach to engaged learning distilled from both john dewey’s (1934) theories on art and aesthetic experience and from empirical research with teaching artists and educators at the aesthetic education institute of colorado. from this research, uhrmacher delineated six aesthetic themes, known by the acronym crispa, that educators and others may draw on to cultivate aesthetically engaged learning experiences: connections, risk-taking, imagination, sensory experience, perceptivity, and active engagement. uhrmacher maintained that although teachers seeking aesthetically engaged learning experiences for their students should strive to incorporate as many of the themes as possible, the core themes of connections, sensory experience, and active engagement are foundational. the first core theme, connections, is characterized by relationships between a person and their environment (uhrmacher, 2009). how people actively engage with ideas, literature, media, or other materials in a learning environment (conrad et al., 2015) can manifest through intellectual, emotional, sensorial, communicative (csikszentmihalyi & robinson, 1991), or social connections (conrad et al., 2015). teachers who can facilitate these various types of interactions encourage genuine and elongated engagement in the classroom. the second foundational element, sensory experience, refers to the use of one’s senses to experience an object or place. a sensory-rich learning environment fosters aesthetic experiences by inviting students to interact with and investigate subtle qualities in objects and places (conrad et al., 2015). active engagement, the third foundational element, necessitates student agency and active participation in the learning process (conrad et al., 2015). teachers who collaborate with students and integrate physical activity, choices, and/or personal meaning can cultivate a learning environment abundant in meaningful learning experiences. conrad et al. (2015) describe the concept of imagination in crispa as concerned with the manipulation of qualities or ideas: imagination may be intuitive, in which a person has a sudden insight; fanciful, in which a person combines unexpected elements such as with a dancing tree; interactive, in which a person works with materials to yield a product; or mimetic, in which a person mirrors or mimics the creative work of another. (p. 5) risk-taking refers to opportunities for students to engage in novelty—“a venture into the unknown” (uhrmacher, 2009, p. 624). research focused on risk-taking suggests that these experiences may increase students’ cognitive development, as well as their creativity, selfmotivation, and student interest in subject matter, such as science (uhrmacher & bunn, 2011). the next component, perceptivity, relates to sensory experiences in that a student develops a more nuanced understanding of an object’s particular qualities or context through their senses. saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 4 this involves closely examining subtle qualities that may normally go unnoticed in order to see or re-see for the sake of learning something new (conrad et al., 2015). creating an environment that invites students to remain open to new possibilities and “re-seeing” increases the potential for meaningful and aesthetically engaged learning experiences. in contemporary literature, scholars examining the aesthetic themes have theoretically and practically associated this approach with curriculum disruption (conrad et al., 2015), ecological educational experience (moroye & uhrmacher, 2018), perceptual lesson planning (uhrmacher, et al., 2013), and a tool to analyze chinese pedagogical methods such as chan teaching (meng & uhrmacher, 2014, 2017). emphasizing that aesthetic experiences are fundamentally sensorial, connective, and engaging, and that incorporating the aesthetic themes can engender enlivened classroom experiences, uhrmacher (2009) noted several potential outcomes of aesthetically engaged learning: an increase in student satisfaction and joy, long-term memory, perceptual knowledge, and personal creativity and meaning-making. this study aims to extend previous research on aesthetically oriented modes of teaching through an analysis of a teacher’s pedagogical choices and actions, both with and without the incorporation of aesthetic themes, in his lesson planning and classroom teaching. methods our study pursued two questions: 1) what are the intentions and practices of a secondary teacher as he teaches english? 2) what are the intentions and practices of a teacher as he teaches english using the aesthetic themes? to answer our research questions, we employed educational criticism and connoisseurship (eisner, 2017), an empirical, qualitative approach derived from the interpretive paradigm (guba & lincoln, 1994). similar to other qualitative approaches, educational connoisseurship and criticism seeks to discern and express the nuanced meanings of the educational situation through thick description (geertz, 1973) and critical analysis of patterns derived from multiple lines of evidence, including in-depth observation, interviews, and artifacts. although connoisseurship implies a certain degree of skilled knowledge, in this particular sense, it also speaks to the ability of the researcher, or critic, to seek and attend to the often subtle and unexpected qualities of the educational environment, including curriculum, pedagogy, and/or structure. while connoisseurship denotes the appreciation of qualities, criticism aims to disclose those qualities in a public form (eisner, 2017). widely aligned with aesthetics and the arts (conrad et al., 2015), the structure of educational criticism and connoisseurship is organized according to four interrelated elements: description, interpretation, evaluation, and thematics. the goal of description is to portray a vivid account that will “enable readers to get a feel for the place or process and, where possible and appropriate, for the experience of those who occupy the situation” (eisner, 2017, p. 89). interpretation involves explicating description by illuminating meaning, exploring consequences, and providing a discussion of the reasons for educational events. in short, description and interpretation within an educational criticism work simultaneously to enable vicarious participation (uhrmacher et al., 2017). evaluation accounts for the major function of educational connoisseurship and criticism—to improve the process of education (eisner, 2002)— by providing a vital link between interpretation and appraising the educational significance of the saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 5 specific educational context being studied (eisner, 2017). thematics allows for the generalization of findings that may extend beyond immediate settings and participants: educational critics provide the reader with an understanding of the major themes that run through the educational matters being studied. in turn, these themes provide the reader with ideas or guides for anticipating what may be found in other places. (uhrmacher et al., 2017, p. 3) taken together, the dimensions of description, interpretation, evaluation, and thematics enable the educational critic to “focus on the perception of qualities, interpreting their significance, and appraising their value, all toward educational ends. in short, the educational critic helps others see and understand what may otherwise go unnoticed” (uhrmacher et al., 2017, p. 22). theoretical framework we paired the methods from educational criticism and connoisseurship with the theoretical lens of the instructional arc (uhrmacher et al., 2017, p. 25). the instructional arc delineates three aspects of the curriculum: the intended (the planned for and anticipated); the operational (what actually happens), and the received (what students “take away” or experience). the instructional arc informed the entirety of the study from inception to analysis. site of study and participants participants included mr. marlin, a thirty-one-year-old white male high school english teacher, and his seventeen 12th-grade students from his advanced placement1 (ap) english literature course at an urban, independent high school in the western united states. in addition to observing mr. marlin’s students, we collected survey data from eight students and conducted an in-depth, semi-structured interview with one student. however, these data are limited and are beyond the scope of this particular article. mr. marlin was selected to participate in this study due to his prior training and experience using the aesthetic themes. in particular, we were interested in the intended and operational (uhrmacher et al., 2017, p. 25) aspects of the curriculum—what is planned by the teacher as well as what is actually enacted in the classroom. informed consent was secured from all participants. our role as researchers was informed by several perspectives. although both researchers had prior familiarity with the aesthetic themes, we were not acquainted with the teacher participant prior to the study. further, our perspectives as public and private school educators with over 15 years of combined teaching experience were managed to the extent possible so as not to interfere with the objectives of the study. finally, we engaged our reflexivity throughout data collection and analysis through written personal introspections and several mutual debriefing sessions (finlay, 2002). research design we investigated mr. marlin’s intended and operational curricula over four weeks through three data sources: interviews, in-person classroom observations, and artifacts. we began by 1 the advanced placement program offers 37 high school courses across 22 subject areas, which are standardized by an end-of-year exam. the exam is scored on a scale of 1–5 with many us colleges and universities awarding course credit for scores above 3 and often acknowledging students who have done ap coursework as having pursued greater academic challenges (schneider, 2009). saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 6 interviewing mr. marlin before he taught a unit—a novel study of the grapes of wrath by john steinbeck—seeking to reveal answers to our first research question regarding his intentions and practices. during this initial interview, we asked the following questions: what are your intentions for your students? what personal beliefs, if any, play a role in these intentions? do your personal beliefs affect your practice? if so, in what ways? do you make your intentions clear to your students? if so, how do they respond? to answer our second research question, we intensively observed mr. marlin teach the ap english curriculum for approximately four weeks, both in tandem and separately, using the same observation protocol. this protocol (see appendix) was specifically designed to capture the various elements of the aesthetic themes, the quality and form of the content being taught, the incentives employed by mr. marlin, and the quality and form of student engagement. during the first two-week observation period, mr. marlin taught a traditional ap english literature curriculum, and during the second period, he intentionally incorporated the aesthetic themes into his lesson planning and teaching. we conducted a concluding interview with mr. marlin where we asked him to reflect on his experiences both with and without the intentional incorporation of the aesthetic themes through the following questions: please tell me about your experience planning and teaching using the aesthetic themes (crispa). in what ways, if any, did crispa influence your intentions and practices? what metaphor would capture your crispa-influenced vs. non-crispainfluenced lesson planning? we collected observational and survey data from eight students and interview data from one of those eight students in an effort to investigate the received curriculum, however those data are addressed in a separate article. consistent with a qualitative paradigm, observational and interview data were iteratively analyzed for emergent themes throughout the process of data collection and analysis. consistent with educational criticism and connoisseurship methods for analysis, data were initially annotated (an arts-based perspective analogous to ‘coded;’ see uhrmacher et al., 2017) for emergent themes independently by each researcher and subsequently in tandem for consensus. our overall strategy was to analyze these data holistically, with an eye toward emergent relationships grounded in the data that perceptively illuminated relevant features within this particular context (uhrmacher, moroye, & flinders, 2017). these emergent relationships and subtle qualities were advanced toward thematic categories and frameworks which served to inform our interpretations and evaluations. additionally, we employed member-reflecting (tracy, 2010) during our concluding interview with mr. marlin, which is defined as “sharing and dialoguing with participants about the study’s findings and providing opportunities for questions, critique, feedback, affirmation, and even collaboration” (p. 844). findings the primary objective of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of one teacher’s intentions and practices with a specific interest in the potential impact of six aesthetic themes (crispa) on his curriculum and instruction. three salient findings emerged from our interpretive analysis of mr. marlin’s intentions and practices, both as he taught using a more traditional saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 7 pedagogical approach and also by implementing crispa. first, mr. marlin possesses profound beliefs in developing his students’ orientations towards social justice and he views literature as the vehicle through which he can accomplish this. second, due to these personal beliefs, professional tensions exist as mr. marlin encounters obligations to teach through more traditional methods that do not explicitly emphasize social justice. third, incorporating the crispa elements appears to enhance the pedagogical expression of mr. marlin’s embedded social justice beliefs. in the following section, we contextualize these findings by narrating descriptive vignettes of mr. marlin’s beliefs and classroom practices. we then synthesize how incorporating the six aesthetic themes enhanced mr. marlin’s curricular and pedagogical strategies. we conclude with the contributions of our research to the larger field, including key points of departure for educators who desire to explicitly surface more meaningful aspects of their own beliefs and classroom practices through the incorporation of the aesthetic themes. prioritizing social justice if you’re going to read literature, it should have a purpose toward ends that you believe in, and justice and social justice are ends that i want to bring about to my students. i think the big question of the course is what power does literature have? what can it do for us in our lives that is relevant to helping us think about the world today? (mr. marlin) as part of the specific design for this inquiry, mr. marlin adopted two different pedagogical approaches: a traditional program guided by the a priori objectives of the ap literature curriculum and a more aesthetically centered approach informed by the six elements of crispa. our interview and observational data of the different approaches revealed evidence of a seemingly inextricable intent to infuse themes of social justice into the ap format. in terms of the intentional curriculum, the quote at the beginning of this section demonstrates mr. marlin’s priority of embedding social justice themes into his literature curriculum to help his students “think about the world today.” he makes content choices that differ from his colleagues with the “purpose toward ends” that he believes in, contending later that conventional ap english curriculum often fails to emphasize “bigger more important questions” which has the potential to damage students’ sense of satisfaction by “dissecting every line and word and phrase.” he chose literary works as “vehicles” that can both address structural inequalities and create opportunities for students to “apply [them] to their own lives.” while mr. marlin emphasizes social justice themes in his intentional curriculum, he concurrently acknowledges the importance of preparing the students to succeed on the ap exam and expressed sincere intentions to do so. he spoke about different techniques he would employ, many of which he learned by attending a national ap “boot camp” for ap literature teachers. he included spotts literary analysis, poetry analysis, and even a review of previously submitted ap essays in his lesson plans. these lessons, along with his participation in the extensive training, demonstrate an intention and commitment to guide the students to succeed on the ap exam. beyond the intentional curriculum, mr. marlin’s operational curriculum—what we observed in the classroom—aligned with his intentions to prepare students for successful performance on the end-of-year ap exam. however, mr. marlin found ways to simultaneously prioritize themes of social justice as he implemented his daily lessons. the scenario below portrays mr. marlin’s multitasking style, where he ensures that the students are engaging in an analysis of literary symbolism, while also attending to his social justice priorities. saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 8 “how do these characters interact with the world?” mr. marlin asks the class as he paces alongside the brick walls in the back of the room. “what does this say about steinbeck’s view of women?” the space fills with examples, anecdotes, and brave statements shared between peers regarding the depiction of women in the text. one student imitates her grandmother; shaking her index finger, “…it’s like we need two strong men around here!” a male classmate shares his perception with a different group, “the man here is incredibly stereotypical, don’t you think?” “what is the symbolism of the chrysanthemums?” mr. marlin poses after bringing the discussion back to the whole group. youthful voices embark on a short, fluid discussion of femininity, societal expectations, and gender roles. what does this story and our novel say about steinbeck? was he a feminist? conservative? how do you know? mr. marlin looks at the clock and abruptly shifts to reminding the class about upcoming assignments while the students rustle with their belongings and head out the door. mr. marlin made curricular choices and actions, such as reading chrysanthemums—a short story by steinbeck with deep symbolism regarding femininity and a woman’s identity—to explore the literary concept of symbolism. hence, while students “dissected” the text, they also engaged with social justice topics. personal tensions and professional diversions mr. marlin’s creed imbues his intentional and operational curricula with social justice, although not without a sense of conflict. although he is acutely sensitive to the fact that he must prepare his students for the ap exam in the spring, he worries about the more lasting implications of their learning experiences: mr. marlin elucidates conflicts around his implementation of the ap curricula and reveals that infusing justice themes into his lessons offers a way to navigate and resolve these tensions. “it’s a conflict that i’ve not had to negotiate previously… do we talk about choices that authors make with respect to syntax or symbolism? yeah, but they’re secondary, i would argue, significantly, to the larger themes that we’re trying to get at.” the following vignette depicts his seamless negotiation of ap needs and social justice priorities in his operational curriculum. ‘what is the role of the individual in confronting injustice?’ is written in maroon on the long whiteboard that stretches the entire width of the room. seventeen students sit at long wooden tables arranged in a large rectangle, heads peeking over the top of their macbooks, their spiral notebooks open, hands furiously writing. mr. marlin darts toward the board and draws three vertical lines down the front, separating it into sections. he calls for volunteers. one group of students congregates near the whiteboard while a second group moves to the hall to work on two additional whiteboards that are screwed into the burnt green wall. temporarily distanced from the sensitive ears of mr. marlin, a tall, brownhaired boy quips sarcastically: “the injustice was that this book was 450 pages.” a few students giggle but refocus quickly. with dry-erase markers in hand, students quickly begin answering the question by drawing out their ideas on the role of the individual in confronting injustice. one student draws stick figures with dialogue bubbles while another watches. another group is carefully drawing arrows connecting large boxes. after fifteen minutes, students are reconvened in the saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 9 classroom and mr. marlin asks them to reflect on and share their drawings with the rest of the class. “the role of the individual is to create power for the masses,” a girl responds astutely, pointing to the drawing in front of her. “one thing i noticed in all of our drawings is that they’re showing action, and i think that’s something we need more of,” gestures a boy with shaggy black hair. a tall boy in a grey hoodie resolutely declares, “i don’t think at this time we can have any faith in our elected leaders. it’s up to us.” another girl chimes in: “i personally have faith that our government is founded on principles we all can believe in. if we come together and protest or write letters, we can create change.” mr. marlin deftly moves to turn on the projector where “the phalanx theory” is showing on a slide. he elaborates on notions of groupthink as a student interjects her thoughts on the women’s march and other rallies happening across the nation. “how do we see this play out in the grapes of wrath?” mr. marlin asks. “here’s a counter to the phalanx theory,” he says, intensely darting behind the rectangular tables as he distributes excerpted copies of steinbeck’s the vigilante. the scene depicts the class in action, using different modes of expression (drawing, writing, talking) to communicate their ideas regarding a theme from their novel study. the students are able to connect the novel to their lives and the current context, and then they artistically link those connections back to another piece of writing. their abilities to analyze the texts in profound ways is evident, all the while they are grappling with large themes pervading the world around them. after observations were completed, mr. marlin confirmed his belief in the centrality of social justice in the curriculum. he describes his responsibility to teach through a lens of social justice in order to “...help students understand their place in the world and their privilege in the world and how it relates to their identity— race, wealth, and gender." beyond pedagogical choices, it appears that mr. marlin possesses a sense of moral and social obligation that resides at the core of his perspective about what is needed to make the world a better place. the conflict he experiences may never be completely resolved, but by diverging from the ap curriculum just enough, mr. marlin tries to meet the expectations of the students, who want to pass the ap exam, while simultaneously developing knowledge and skills around large issues of justice that they are bound to encounter long after the national exam in the spring. apples and cherries: the fruit of aesthetics during our investigation of mr. marlin’s intended and operational curricula, we observed his acute beliefs in social justice come alive. unexpectedly, we witnessed an intensified manifestation of these beliefs when he deliberately incorporated crispa into his lessons, as compared to when he was teaching with a more didactic and heavily prescribed ap curriculum. the vignette below depicts an intricate entanglement of crispa and social justice within the operational curriculum: students trickle into the classroom on a glorious fall morning, sunshine gleaming through the south-facing windows, illuminating the time-worn grains of the heavy wooden tables. “did you get a haircut marl?” asks a tall dark-haired girl after noticing the recent trimming. “is that crispa?” she teases. mr. marlin and the saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 10 other students break out in laughter in response to her cleverness. he composes himself and instructs the class. “please write the five senses in your notebooks and then circle one of them.” the students write swiftly in their spiral notebooks. mr. marlin takes four bright green apples and one equally vibrant green pear out of a brown paper sack and places them on the rectangular table in front of him. he asks the students who circled taste and smell to close their eyes. “if you chose sight, describe what you see with as much detail as you can.” the students with their eyes closed suppress giggles as they explore the items with the sense they selected. mr. marlin asks students to describe their experiences through the sense they have chosen. “what did you see? who got to eat? what did you hear?” he jots their comments on the whiteboard and then directs them to open their books to page 340 of grapes of wrath. “so... we’ve just continued this scene,” mr. marlin says. “i want you to look at all the sensory detail steinbeck provides. which senses are coming to life? how do authors create meaning?” two boys sitting side-by-side identify “the scent of decay” and eagerly take note of it. a few minutes pass before mr. marlin asks, “do we have any examples?” a student directs us to a passage describing fruit and furthers the classroom dialogue regarding the power of sensory details to foreshadow an underlying feeling of despair that all of the fruits are going to rot. the class calmly transitions into a daily routine of following along as one student summarizes the previous night’s reading assignment. as part of the task, the student is expected to send mr. marlin some sort of connection they made to that chapter. the students demonstrate creativity with this task, often presenting newspaper articles, historical pictures, or popular songs. this morning an image of beautifully ripe, red cherries is projected on the whiteboard as the student narrates the report of farmers dumping out over 30 million pounds of ripe cherries. surprised, the students begin debating the rationale of these actions and attempt to make sense of the situation, which mr. marlin seamlessly connects with another digital article. this one reports how a popular clothing brand instructed employees to tear holes in and throw out clothing that was not sold. “why would anyone do this?” mr. marlin asks. the discussion on literary uses of senses effortlessly transforms into a heated examination of the morality of wasting products for profit. “it’s just greedy,” remarks one student. “they’re just protecting their company,” replies another. “would you have given away the cherries?” mr. marlin poses to the class. an array of fervent standpoints zooms around the room, ranging from a business owner mindset to an altruistic stance of giving to those in need regardless of profits. in this example, mr. marlin leverages the six aesthetic themes of crispa— connections, risk, sensory experience, perceptivity, active engagement, and imagination— to propel his students to think differently about objects they are familiar with in order to flavor the recognizable with a sense of freshness. first, he orchestrates a sensory experience with the apples and pear that enables students to attend to more subtle qualities of the familiar fruits and enhance their perception of these familiar fruits in a new way. next, he connects these experiences directly to the text, prompting students to invoke their imaginations to engender new meanings from steinbeck’s intentions. finally, mr. marlin creates conditions for active engagement by encouraging his saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 11 students as they delve into an ethics-centered debate of industrial food and material waste practices. by inviting students to use their senses to understand literary content, mr. marlin creates aesthetically derived conditions that enable them to explore critical perspectives in ways they had not considered previously. mr. marlin later admitted that he was a bit nervous about this lesson, as he had never incorporated this particular experience for his students. likewise, the students also appeared skeptical in the beginning, suggesting that both the teacher and the students took risks in engaging in this experience. the lesson concluded with meaningful conversations that represented students’ complex contemplations surrounding sensory experiences, literature, and ethical industrial practices. crispa afforded mr. marlin the opportunity to create a dynamic learning experience that successfully attended to more traditional ap literature objectives while also amplifying his belief in the importance of teaching for social justice. the final assignment for the class is a further example of the intensified expression of his commitment to social justice. designed with the crispa elements in mind, mr. marlin asked the students to represent their learnings and takeaways from the novel study through any mode they wish. this kind of freedom on a task that is more commonly assigned as an essay involves students being able to connect with the text on a level of their choosing; take risks to express their learning (considering the unconventional format); apply their imaginative capacities to work with mediums other than essay-writing; engage their senses through artistic expression; spark nuanced thoughts through creative expression; and actively engage with the text in a new way. mr. marlin’s complementary social justice curriculum manifested itself throughout his intentional and operational curricula—what he planned to teach and what he actually taught. interview data illustrate his profound beliefs around social justice and concomitantly illuminate tensions mr. marlin experiences when emphasizing the ap curriculum rather than prioritizing themes of social justice. additionally, we witnessed a dance between the ap curriculum, themes of social justice, and crispa as mr. marlin waltzed through the mechanics of ap objectives while seamlessly twisting and spinning in lessons on justice and aesthetic experiences using crispa to choreograph the traditional and personal priorities of his curricular ballroom. discussion in this study, we ventured into the nuances of a teacher’s practice to expand what is known about six aesthetic themes of education and their potential to enhance the meaningfulness and vibrancy of teaching and learning. our analysis provides us with three prominent points of discussion. first, in support of previous research on the complementary curriculum (moroye, 2009), teacher beliefs play a significant role in what and how they teach. second, for educators teaching a heavily prescribed curriculum such as ap, crispa offers an alternative way to not only adhere to the former with fidelity, but to elevate the curriculum for themselves and their students. third, our data aligns with scholarship connecting aesthetic modes with various objectives in social justice education, and bolsters potentiality to foster empathy and critical thinking through crispa. we elaborate on each of these points below. complementary curriculum moroye (2009) delineates the concept of the complementary curriculum as the manifestation of an educator’s deeply held convictions, representing “the kind of experiences teachers provide for students, as well as in the ‘pedagogical premises and practices’ that result from the teacher’s beliefs” (p. 791). the complementary curriculum directly and indirectly saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 12 influences the way teachers approach their practice, often revealing aspects central to their identity. drawing from the work of parker palmer (2007), who argues that integrity is integral to a teacher’s selfhood and, therefore resides at the core of a teacher’s greatness, moroye (2009) notes that the complementary curriculum can be viewed as the “manifestation of a teacher’s wholeness or completeness of his or her integrity” (p. 805). as previously described and illustrated through the vignettes in our findings section, we observed the expression of mr. marlin’s complementary social justice curriculum across his intentional and operational curricula as well as augmented representations when realized through the six themes of crispa. social justice is integral to mr. marlin's identity and beliefs and this complementary social justice curriculum is explicitly woven into his pedagogical choices, both in his selection of literature, prose, poetry, and other texts as well as in the choices he makes in structuring learning experiences for his students. commenting on another teacher’s literature selection, he states, “it’s not my comfort level and i don’t think that it gets at some of the different, bigger themes that i’m hoping to get at.” he reiterates the need for his teaching to connect students with relevant issues related to justice, ethics, and morals. in addition to curricular and instructional manifestations, mr. marlin’s complementary social justice curriculum further materializes through his relationships and classroom management style. two principal elements in the social justice literature involve fostering an environment for the development of liberatory thinking and actions (carlisle et al., 2006) and building relationships of trust and reciprocity by listening to concerns and taking them seriously as part of a social justice agenda (gorski, 2013). in mr. marlin’s classroom, this takes the form of an open seating chart, no hall passes, loud and improvised large-group discussions, and grade contracts. as students arrive, they sit with friends and continue conversations until he makes a request for class to begin. we observed several students get up and leave the classroom and then return a short time later, all without any conversation or acknowledgment between teacher and student. mr. marlin creates grade contracts with each student, where each course begins with students signing an agreement for the grade they want based on predetermined measures of attendance, participation, and work quality. the students then receive a grade based on how well they fulfilled their contract. these pedagogical choices highlight mr. marlin’s commitment to socially-just learning experiences, which align and complement his intended and operational curricula. moroye (2009) found that when teacher beliefs reside within ecological perspectives, they will naturally bring those unique perspectives to bear on the curriculum, in both subtle and overt ways, regardless of the content focus of the class. moroye contends that the complementary curriculum may also be applied to other teacher beliefs and perspectives, including the arts or social and emotional learning. understanding one’s own complementary curriculum and applying it to their practice may offer educators a way to teach more authentically across curricular obligations. crispa as a curricular amplification a second discussion point from our analysis revolves around the opportunity crispa may provide to educators who seek to enhance their curriculum. our data suggest that crispa offered mr. marlin a mechanism through which he was able to enrich his intentional, operational, and complementary curricula. the intentional curriculum is what a teacher plans to do, therefore lesson planning can help reveal the intentional curriculum. a previous study of the impact of crispa on lesson planning found that crispa provided teachers with a means to “rethink the aims and processes of lesson planning itself.... a transformational tool that shifts lesson planning from writing down a linear saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 13 sequence of state-approved lessons, to a process that inspires teachers in their teaching (conrad et al., 2015, p. 14). when we asked mr. marlin to compare his two different approaches to lesson planning, both with and without crispa, he explained: the non-crispa teaching—getting definitions of various poetry and writing in a prescriptive way for the ap and things along those lines—the skills that are needed—it almost feels like a really simple rhythmic song, just like clapping. we just have to do this, and we just have to stay on pace and beat. as long as we hit all of the right notes, then it may not sound amazing, but it's gonna sound good enough to get by. teaching with crispa is like jazz music… you never know where it's gonna go. there are so many different possibilities with it. it’s an ensemble, there’s lots of different sounds, and plays, and unexpected turns and it’s not objectivebased, there's these—you know the eisner idea of expressive outcomes—it can have such an important influence and it can change mood, it can bring people to— i really like jazz music, so maybe that's why i am thinking about it that way, but it's not boring, it activates and makes you want to hear more. his analogy demonstrates that applying crispa to lesson planning (e.g., the intentional curriculum) has the potential to transform the process, supporting conrad et al.’s (2015) assertion of crispa as a transformational tool within the intentional curriculum. crispa also had an aggrandizing impact on mr. marlin’s operational curriculum. greene (1980) explains the holistic nature of aesthetic education as, “integral to the development of persons—to their cognitive, perceptual, emotional, and imaginative development. we see it as part of the human effort (and so often forgotten today) to seek greater coherence in the world” (p. 7). in this sense, she promotes aesthetic modes as a means to attend to a multitude of learning objectives. in our vignette, apples and cherries: the fruit of aesthetics, we witness a sensory experience providing the means to explore, fruit, literature, and justice simultaneously in what developed into a critical analysis of real-world social issues. we observed mr. marlin’s efforts to “seek coherence” in his intentional and operational curricula by not only infusing social justice, but by enhancing social justice ideals through the six themes of crispa. further, we defend that mr. marlin’s integration of crispa not only enhanced his operational curricula, but simultaneously brought to life his complementary curricula. as witnessed in the same example, mr. marlin used crispa to intertwine ap and social justice. this discussion is aimed toward educators who teach a prescriptive curriculum such as ap, with a resource that could exhilarate the more rigid program without diminishing the learning outcomes. we expand on this notion in the subsequent section. aesthetics and social justice while we maintain that crispa has the potential to amplify the articulation of various curricula, our research supports previous literature that underscores the specific capacity of aesthetic methods to catalyze learning in social justice education. sleeter (2014) synthesizes recent social justice education literature, extracting from it four common dimensions. social justice education: 1) situates families and communities within an analysis of structural inequities; 2) develops relationships of reciprocity from student to community; 3) teaches to high expectations by building on students’ backgrounds; and 4) develops and implements an inclusive curriculum that integrates marginalized perspectives and addresses themes of inequity and power (sleeter, 2014). saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 14 maxine greene (1980) advocated for aesthetic education experiences that urge for the development of “more active sensibility and awareness in our students” (p. 8). her extensive scholarship demonstrates that aesthetic methods can empower students to know and understand enough to make sound choices through critical judgments, imaginative projections, and transformative actions. these fundamental skills provide pathways for students to develop empathy and compassion through “the capacity to see through another’s eyes, to grasp the world as it works and sounds and feels from the vantage point of another” (greene, 1995, p. 102). young (2019) draws from the work of greene (1995) and other curricular giants (see tom barone, 2000; wolgang iser, 1978; pinar et al., 1995) and her own experiences to argue that aesthetic curriculum methods evoke the senses. she defends: ...that by evoking the senses learners are also evoking the imagination, which in turn evokes an empathetic emotion toward others. by empathizing with others, learners may move toward social change or at least begin to conceptualize a theory and practice of social change because the senses enable learners to experience (even if only briefly) a different perspective and begin to act on their empathy. (p. 46) other research examined urban english language arts teachers and found that integration of aesthetic theories and methods of education in the curriculum provided opportunities for teachers to explore critical perspectives and issues of social justice and democracy within a neoliberal, test-based accountability educational system (costigan, 2013). this literature suggests that aesthetic approaches to education can facilitate social justice education goals as put forth by sleeter (2014). our data corroborate the work of greene (1995), costigan (2013), and young (2019) as we observed mr. marlin’s deep-seated beliefs in teaching for social justice reflect the four dimensions of social justice education that sleeter (2014) outlines. for example, he expressed his sense of responsibility to teach through this lens in order to “...help students understand their place in the world and their privilege in the world and how it relates to their identity—race, wealth, and gender.” it became clear that mr. marlin’s beliefs in social justice materialize in his intentional curriculum. he explained, [the grapes of wrath] has these chapters that are just narrative… they’re highlighting symbols or motifs. those sorts of things are what i’ll want to highlight. additionally, some big essential questions. this is a book that’s really about justice and how does an individual judge right from wrong? the cross-sections of social justice and aesthetics in mr. marlin’s curricular choices and actions are evident and we propose that expanding teacher capacities to connect social justice themes through aesthetic learning experiences may provide teachers with guidance to foster the skills and knowledge endorsed by both lines of study. implications we defend that our research has implications that extend across various contexts and stakeholders in education. first, gaining a deeper understanding of one’s complementary curriculum can elucidate the relationship between beliefs and practices (moroye, 2009). this awareness paired with the intentional implementation of crispa can allow teachers to better integrate their complementary curriculum to connect their selfhood to their teaching. while we don’t have evidence that crispa is a conduit for any or all complementary curricula, teachers saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 15 wishing to coalesce their complementary curriculum (whether that be social justice, spirituality, peace education, tolerance, environmentalism/conservation, etc.) into their daily pedagogical practice should consider crispa as a viable prospect. for instance, a science teacher with a complementary spirituality curriculum could integrate audio clips of different heartbeats during an anatomy lesson and ask students to engage with different mediums as they explain what they learn about the heart from hearing it. a math teacher with a complementary tolerance curriculum could apply native american basket-weaving techniques to their geometry lessons and encourage students to empathize with teachings from different cultures through mathematics. in this way, the aesthetic themes can invigorate a teacher’s complementary curriculum to encourage more meaningful teaching and learning. in a similar vein, our data aligns with the scholarship that links the power of aesthetic modes to meet various objectives in social justice education and reinforces the potentiality to foster empathy and critical thinking through crispa. as barone (2000) notes: “success in leading students out from where they are requires that the teacher offer stories or suggest other aesthetic projects that first speak to students in their present locations” (p. 130). just as mr. marlin demonstrated, educators can use personal, political, and historical stories, along with aesthetically designed assignments and projects to connect with students’ own narratives to lead them “out from where they are” and create the conditions to foster empathy. finally, as part of the current high-stakes environment, teachers frequently use (or are forced to use) curriculum giants such as common core and ap to inform and/or dictate their teaching. regardless of one’s stance on these standardized approaches, there are data suggesting that many teachers value the arts and wish to incorporate alternative, arts-based pedagogical practices (gulla, 2009; pinhasi-vittorio & vernola, 2013). aesthetics, and crispa specifically, offer a vehicle to enhance lesson planning, learning experiences, and a teacher’s deeply held beliefs. overall, crispa is not presented here as an alternative to the varying curricula the teachers engage with, but rather a mechanism through which they can expand, heighten, and enliven the curricular experience from beginning to end. future research this study offers further evidence and ideas about aesthetic modes of teaching; however, it looks very specifically at one teacher and one classroom. further research should involve formal and informal educational contexts across regions, demographics, and content areas. a second area to investigate involves the third component of the instructional arc: the received curriculum or what the students experience. while we collected data on student perspectives and experiences with crispa, that analysis goes beyond the scope of this particular article. future research must investigate youth perspectives and the impact of crispa, and other perceptual modes of teaching on p-16 students. finally, a deeper dive into aesthetic modes and social justice pedagogy could offer educators tangible tools to creatively foster empathy and attend to real world issues, regardless of their course content. conclusion research on pedagogical practices that emphasize the human experience is more needed than ever. much of the contemporary research effort contributes to the high-stakes system that prioritizes large sample sizes and (over)generalizations to further prescriptive practices. these meta investigations largely fail to encapsulate the vehicles available for teachers that humanize and inspire teaching and learning that “activates and makes you want to hear more.” saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 16 by intentionally incorporating crispa, teachers may explicitly connect how their deeply held beliefs—their complementary curriculum—are infused into their pedagogy. thus, we maintain that teacher identity and integrity may be enhanced through implementing crispa. additionally, for teachers who take seriously the important work of educating for justice, crispa provides teachers a means to not only facilitate such priorities but also as an entry point to overlay prescriptive curriculum with personal beliefs and values to invigorate the lesson planning experience. last, while we seek to preserve the fidelity of moroye’s (2009) original definition of the complementary curriculum, we also wish to provide shading that might illuminate another contour of the term. we offer a concomitant way to conceptualize the complementary curriculum as not only an expression of a teacher’s embedded beliefs, also as an empowering force that ripens deeply held passions brought to bear in the classroom. references barone, t. 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(2005). understanding by design. ascd. young, k. (2019). exploring a curricula of visual and poetic aesthetics. canadian review of art education: research & issues, 46(1). saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 19 appendix observation protocol date: classroom: school site: duration: dimensions of educational connoisseurship & criticism description interpretation evaluation thematics open observations (e.g., wide-angle, multi-sensory, single-sensory, episodic, lens-specific, visual2) instructional arc intended operational received crispa: aesthetic themes connections risk-taking imagination sensory experience perceptivity active engagement quality of the content quality and forms of student engagement forms of representation incentives employed 2 adapted from uhrmacher, p. b., moroye, c. m., & flinders, d. j. (2017). saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 20 author notes alicia brianna saxe university of denver aliciasaxe7@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0526-311x jodie l. wilson university of denver https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5550-0166 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ student-led undergraduate journals: a catalyst for comprehensive research experience and professional growth current issues in education, 24(2) 1 volume 24, issue 2 august 28, 2023 issn 1099-839x student-led undergraduate journals: a catalyst for comprehensive research experience and professional growth mayank bansal & caitlyn dignard queen’s university abstract: this opinion piece underscores the critical role of undergraduate academic journals in fostering a comprehensive research experience for students, with a spotlight on qapsule, an open-access journal at queen’s university led by undergraduates. these journals offer a unique platform for students to engage in the full spectrum of scientific inquiry, from conducting research to writing, peer review, and publication. the paper emphasizes the importance of undergraduate students’ involvement in all aspects of research, discussing its crucial role in intellectual growth and professional development. however, these journals often remain underutilized due to a lack of awareness. the paper discusses the importance of universities actively promoting these journals and providing the necessary resources for students to establish such platforms, thereby nurturing a culture of academic collaboration, creativity, and excellence. it also addresses quality concerns about undergraduate journals, asserting that with appropriate mentorship and guidance, undergraduate students are capable of contributing to the academic community. keywords: undergraduate journals, academic institutions, undergraduate students, open-access journals citation: bansal, m. & dignard, c. (2023). student-led undergraduate journals: a catalyst for comprehensive research experience and professional growth. current issues in education, 24(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss2.2183 accepted: august 15, 2023 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss2.2183 bansal & dignard: student-led undergraduate journals current issues in education, 24(2) 2 introduction in the realm of academic pursuit, where knowledge and curiosity intertwine, there exists an undeniable allure—a realm where student voices yearn to break free from the confines of lecture halls and textbooks, eager to make their mark on the vast canvas of scholarly conversation. as undergraduate students, we are given the opportunity to explore the world of research and gain invaluable insights. however, there is a crucial aspect that often eludes us—the profound significance of sharing our findings with the broader community. as posited by john r. jungck, “research is not complete until it is published” (siegel, 2004, p.24). yet, as we navigate through textbooks, attend lectures, and engage in traditional labs, we find ourselves missing out on the core values that define the scientific profession: publishing and peer review. the full spectrum of undergraduate research while some of us may receive acknowledgments or even co-authorship in professional journals, it is rare for undergraduate students to be fully immersed in the intricate writing and peer review processes. unless we wholeheartedly embrace the entire scientific process, including the rigorous journey of publication and peer review, we may never truly grasp the trajectory of our potential career paths. this is not to say that there are few opportunities for canadian undergraduate students to engage in the academic community. in canada, there are several initiatives and platforms that recognize the importance and value of undergraduate academic practices and research. these initiatives aim to provide opportunities for undergraduate students to showcase their work, engage in scholarly activities, and contribute to the scientific community. a notable example is the canadian undergraduate conference on healthcare—an annual conference that provides a platform for undergraduate students from across canada to present their research findings. it serves as a forum for students to share their work, receive feedback from peers and experts, and network with fellow researchers. there is also the undergraduate student research awards program that supports undergraduate research through resources, grants, and professional development opportunities. while these initiatives and platforms provide valuable opportunities for undergraduate students to engage in research and present their findings, they often fall short in emphasizing the importance and practice of the publishing process. many of these programs primarily focus on performing research and presenting results without giving due attention to the essential process of conveying and disseminating findings in a written format and engaging in rigorous peer review. this raises the question: is conducting research alone more important than the critical process of conveying and validating research through the peer-reviewed publication process? by focusing on research performance and presentation, without adequately incorporating peer review, we risk overlooking a fundamental aspect of scientific scholarship. to effectively equip undergraduate students for success, it is imperative to expose students to the full spectrum of the research process. undergraduate academic journals play a crucial role in filling this gap. since the rise of the digital era, the landscape of research participation has been democratized, opening doors of opportunity for undergraduate students to engage in scientific exploration like never before. with open access to online databases, scientific literature, and research platforms, students can delve into diverse fields, uncover new knowledge, and contribute to the broader bansal & dignard: student-led undergraduate journals current issues in education, 24(2) 3 academic community. however, navigating this vast expanse of information and successfully conducting research requires the guidance and support of experienced researchers and professors. experienced researchers play a vital role in mentoring and guiding students through the entire research process, from formulating research questions to designing experiments and collecting data. their expertise and guidance ensure that students receive proper training and learn to navigate the complexities of scientific research. furthermore, as students embark on their research journeys, these mentors help them understand the importance of peer review, providing valuable insights and feedback on their work. engaging in the peer review process under the guidance of experienced researchers is a transformative experience for undergraduate students. it exposes them to the rigors of critical evaluation, constructive feedback, and effective communication—the pillars of the peer review process. mentors help students navigate the intricacies of peer review, teaching them how to present their findings clearly, respond to reviewers’ comments, and refine their work to meet the standards of the scientific community. through this mentorship, students not only learn the importance of thorough and thoughtful evaluation but also develop essential skills in collaboration, scientific integrity, and attention to detail. this collaborative approach fosters a nurturing environment where students can thrive, acquire invaluable skills, and contribute meaningfully to the scholarly community. this is where undergraduate academic journals play a pivotal role as “training grounds” for students to fully engage in the complete research cycle. incorporating the peer review and publication process within the undergraduate research experience bridges a crucial gap in their education. it ensures that students not only conduct research but also learn the importance of effectively communicating their findings and engaging in scholarly discourse. this comprehensive experience prepares them for future endeavors in academia and beyond. therefore, it is imperative that we recognize the significance of undergraduate academic journals as platforms that enable students to go beyond the boundaries of traditional research experiences and embrace the full spectrum of scientific inquiry. they serve as catalysts for student growth, fostering a generation of researchers who are not only knowledgeable in their respective fields but also skilled in the art of publication and peer review upon graduation. quality control is a significant concern raised against undergraduate research journals. scott f. gilbert argues that if the research is of high quality, it should be published in a professional journal (siegal, 2004). gilbert questions the ability of undergraduate students to provide constructive peer review and maintain consistent high quality, especially given the rapid turnover in the undergraduate student population. there seems to be a fear that if the journal were run solely by undergraduates, it might lead to the publication of subpar work due to a lack of experience and knowledge required to effectively review and critique research papers. however, such an argument underestimates the capabilities of undergraduate students. as seymour papert posits, “much of education is designed to infantilize students” (papert, 1980, p.31). this critique suggests that by doubting the ability of undergraduate students to engage in peer review and publication, we are limiting their growth and development as researchers. in response to these concerns, it is important to note that the majority of students engaged in undergraduate education are adults who are capable of making significant contributions to our economy and society (siegal, 2004). they are often involved in the governance of higher education institutions, serving on committees and boards of trustees. as such, there is a vast bansal & dignard: student-led undergraduate journals current issues in education, 24(2) 4 potential for undergraduate students to expand their involvement in publishing in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. therefore, it is crucial to develop an “adult model of science education” that recognizes student creativity and productivity in all aspects of the research process, including publishing and peer reviewing. undergraduate research journals can play a pivotal role in this endeavor, providing a platform for students to showcase their work, receive feedback from peers and experts, and contribute to the scientific community. by doing so, students learn to navigate differing perspectives, engage in respectful debates, and refine their work based on the valuable input received. this holistic experience not only fosters intellectual growth but also instills a sense of responsibility and professionalism in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. quality control can be addressed through proper mentorship and guidance from experienced researchers. undergraduate students, when given the proper support, are fully capable of participating in every aspect of the research process. a case in point: qapsule now let’s shift our focus to qapsule: queen’s undergraduate health sciences journal (https://www.queensqapsule.ca/), a student-led, open-access journal at queen’s university that works towards the common goal of publishing undergraduate work, opinions, and insights into contemporary topics in the health sciences. qapsule offers a unique opportunity for students to share their research findings and engage in the peer review process, empowering undergraduates to participate actively in scholarly discourse and make valuable contributions to the academic community. qapsule embraces the goal of providing students with a comprehensive experience of the scholarly publishing process. to ensure credibility and integrity, qapsule utilizes the open journal system (ojs), a widely recognized platform that enhances the transparency and trustworthiness of the journal. in addition, qapsule follows a rigorous double-blind review process, where each submitted article undergoes thorough evaluation by expert professors who specialize in the respective topic. this process exposes undergraduate students to the principles and challenges of peer review, fostering their understanding of critical evaluation, constructive feedback, and effective communication. what makes qapsule particularly noteworthy is its commitment to inclusivity and equitable opportunities. it recognizes that not all students have access to a principal investigator or extensive research experience, yet their insights and perspectives are valuable contributions to the scholarly dialogue. qapsule offers a platform where undergraduate students, regardless of their background, can submit their contemporary insights into the health sciences and related topics. these submissions go through a similar process of peer review, editing, and publication, ensuring that all students have an equitable opportunity to share their ideas and contribute to the scholarly discourse while upholding high standards for academic publishing. while undergraduate journals play a significant role in disseminating scientific research, they also serve an equally important purpose of exposing students to the scholarly publishing process. qapsule’s approach goes beyond traditional research submissions, encouraging students to explore various forms of academic work. whether it is a research manuscript, abstract, opinion piece, or another type of contribution, students gain firsthand experience in navigating the intricacies of the publishing world. this exposure allows them to develop essential skills in research communication, critical analysis, and scientific writing, preparing them for future bansal & dignard: student-led undergraduate journals current issues in education, 24(2) 5 academic endeavors. it empowers students to share their unique perspectives, promote interdisciplinary collaboration, and contribute meaningfully to advancing knowledge in the health sciences and related disciplines. undergraduate journals, such as qapsule, not only serve as platforms for scholarly publishing but also provide the journal executives with invaluable opportunities to enhance their leadership and collaborative abilities. these journals are managed by students, offering a unique avenue for skill development in project management, teamwork, and communication. taking an active role in running an undergraduate journal can be a valuable addition to students’ resumes, setting them apart from other employment candidates. managing the journal and producing scholarly publications have proven to be highly beneficial for students. for example, despite being in its first year of operations, qapsule executives have received employment offers directly linked to their role in this endeavour. effective project management is a vital aspect of overseeing an undergraduate journal. it encompasses setting clear objectives and deadlines, assigning tasks to team members, and monitoring the project’s progress. through their involvement with undergraduate journals, students gain valuable experience in planning and organizing large-scale projects, a skill that has broad applications in academic and professional domains. for example, being a student-led initiative, qapsule demands exceptional teamwork and cooperation, ensuring that all team members share common goals and make meaningful contributions to the project. this requires ongoing communication, constructive feedback, and the ability to collaborate effectively as a group. managing an undergraduate journal offers students more than just project management experience; it also provides opportunities to enhance their communication skills and expand their networks. this involves engaging with other journals and academic organizations, as well as effectively communicating with the team, contributors, and external stakeholders. by participating in qapsule, students learn how to communicate effectively with diverse stakeholders and cultivate relationships within the academic community. it is imperative for universities to prioritize increasing student awareness of open-access, peer-reviewed undergraduate journals, as well as providing the necessary support for motivated students who aspire to establish such journals within their own university. to accomplish this, a variety of methods, such as workshops, seminars, and campus-wide events, can be employed. as well, professors may choose to develop assignments fostering original research for submission to these journals. by prioritizing the promotion and cultivation of open-access journals, universities can foster a culture of academic collaboration, creativity, and excellence among their students. universities can play a crucial role in supporting the efforts of students who wish to launch their own open-access and peer-reviewed academic journals. in addition to financial assistance, such as funding for website development, marketing, and hosting costs, universities can provide technical support, mentorship, and direction to these students. this can include workshops on journal editing, peer review procedures, and copyright concerns, helping students navigate the complexities of academic publishing. universities can also provide access to essential infrastructure, such as library resources and technical support services, which can be instrumental in facilitating the production and dissemination of open-access publications. by leveraging their resources and expertise, universities can serve as a platform for open-access journals by hosting these publications on their websites or by providing links to them. the provision of these resources and services by universities can enable students to focus on producing high-quality content, engaging in scholarly dialogue, and advancing their academic careers through publication. bansal & dignard: student-led undergraduate journals current issues in education, 24(2) 6 the establishment of qapsule at queen’s university has been significantly influenced by queen’s library and faculty members. the library’s contribution has been vital in gaining access to the ojs platform, a free and open-source software that facilitated the entire publishing process. the platform is crucial to the double-blind peer review process and aids in maintaining proper workflow, as well as assisting with the assignment of digital object identifiers to articles. in addition, the library provides extensive guidance and coaching to the qapsule team, ensuring that the journal adheres to the gold standards in academic publishing. topics such as copyright and licensing, metadata standards, and best practices for digital publishing have been addressed. faculty members have also made invaluable contributions to qapsule’s success, offering advice on academic standards and the publishing process, as well as serving as peer-reviewers for journal submissions. undergraduate academic journals, such as qapsule, play a pivotal role in providing a comprehensive research experience, bridging the gap between conducting research and the critical process of peer-reviewed publication. they serve as catalysts for intellectual growth, instilling a sense of responsibility and professionalism in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. however, the full potential of these journals is yet to be realized, with universities playing a crucial role in their support and promotion. looking ahead, universities should prioritize increasing student awareness of these journals and provide the necessary support for students aspiring to establish such platforms. in doing so, we can empower the next generation of researchers, fostering a culture of academic collaboration, creativity, and excellence. references papert, s. (1980). mindstorms: children, computers, and powerful ideas. basic books. siegel, v. (2004). points of view: should students be encouraged to publish their research in student-run publications?: weighing the pros and cons of undergraduate-only journal publications. cell biology education, 3, 22-27. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.04-01-0021 https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.04-01-0021 bansal & dignard: student-led undergraduate journals current issues in education, 24(2) 7 author notes mayank bansal https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6334-7146 queen’s university bansmay@outlook.com caitlyn dignard https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1560-1824 queen’s university caitlyndignard465@gmail.com more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6334-7146 mailto:bansmay@outlook.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1560-1824 mailto:caitlyndignard465@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ cie template current issues in education, 19(2) 1 volume 19, issue 2 august 29, 2016 issn 1099-839x reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change kathleen m. hill pennsylvania state university miles orchinik arizona state university abstract: among policy makers, there is an ongoing discussion about the need to improve undergraduate education in science and engineering. with many undergraduate students being taught by graduate teaching assistants (gtas), it is important to explore the development of stem knowledge for teaching by gtas. this study follows ten gtas as they participated in a gta teaching program that included attending a “scientific teaching” course. data collection consisted of open-ended questionnaires and concept maps. analysis revealed that a majority of the gtas employed more didactic, teacher-centered practices while having varied levels of development in the areas of student understanding and instructional strategies. those gtas with regularly scheduled opportunities to work directly with students increased their knowledge for teaching. additionally, gtas with lower levels of prior teaching experience and an expressed desire to improve their teaching had the highest levels of knowledge development. from this study, we suggest that gta programs support gtas by initiating the preparation for teaching early in the ta experience. finally, we recommend that science departments place more emphasis on teaching by providing gtas with additional science education coursework as well as structured opportunities to work directly with students and to practice making use of reformed teaching strategies. keywords: pedagogical content knowledge, undergraduate, biology education, graduate assistant, teaching assistant, gta, gta training apa-style citation: hill, k. m., & orchinik, m. (2016). reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change. current issues in education, 19(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1487 accepted: august 8 th , 2016 among policy makers there is an ongoing discussion about the need to improve undergraduate education in science and engineering (the president’s council of advisors on science and technology, 2012). in a study of science majors at seven u.s. colleges and http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1487 hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 2 universities, students who left science majors pointed to unsupportive environments in which introductory-level classes were unstimulating and often seen as weed-out courses taught by unfriendly professors (seymour & hewitt, 1997). in addition, those students who complete undergraduate stem degrees often do not possess adequate scientific knowledge and skills to meet the 21 st century workforce needs (national research council [nrc], 2012). many reason that by improving undergraduate education, more science and engineering students will persist in these fields and fill the ongoing shortage that exists in the united states. additionally, improving undergraduate education in the sciences will ensure that all students in higher education become scientifically literate. that is, they will be able to reason through scientific claims that are shared in the media (e.g., genetic engineering, personalized medicine, global climate change). one particular pathway for improving undergraduate education in the science fields is to reform teaching in undergraduate courses. publications from the national academy press stated that undergraduate education should embrace (a) active learning environments, (b) fewer key concepts, and (c) cooperative learning groups (nrc, 1998; 2000; 2003; 2015). the methods discussed give undergraduates an opportunity to build deep knowledge in certain areas and allow them to participate in learning communities. the vision and change documents (american association for the advancement of science [aaas], 2009; 2015) provide recommendations intended to result in fundamental changes to the way that colleges and universities engage in teaching undergraduate biology courses. recommended reforms include shifting away from lecture-based instruction to a focus on student-centered learning to “ensure that undergraduate biology courses are active, outcome-oriented, inquiry-driven, and relevant” (p. 29) along with providing required training to graduate students in how to teach biology (aaas, 2009). graduate teaching assistants (gtas), who teach undergraduates, may be the most likely to adopt more student-centered instructional methods, such as facilitating small group interactive exercises, challenging students’ naïve conceptions, and capitalizing on students’ interests. many higher education institutions employ gtas for the teaching of undergraduate stem courses, which include lectures, recitations, and laboratory classes. often, undergraduate students have more contact with gtas than faculty members in large introductory courses (rushin et al., 1997). moreover, gtas, like new teachers, are just learning to teach. just like new teachers, they need a solid preparation program that ensures they build their skills and knowledge in their instructional area. according to schussler et al. (2015), there is a lack of consistency in professional development for gtas with many programs being limited to 10 or fewer hours and providing insufficient pedagogical information and critical feedback. the design and implementation of effective gta programs are critical components to successfully reforming undergraduate science teaching in both the near and long term as many gtas will become faculty at institutions of higher education. to support student persistence in stem fields and increase the science learning of nonmajors, stem departments can leverage gtas in the effort to reform of undergraduate science teaching. a teacher’s knowledge base ultimately effects how they teach and what students learn. this study serves as a first step in characterizing gta’s knowledge of science teaching and identifying critical supports and barriers to their knowledge development. it expressly looked at how gtas developed their knowledge to teach science as they participated in a gta teaching course entitled “scientific teaching.” the development of a knowledge base for teaching science among gtas was documented through qualitative methods to address the following research questions: hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 3 1) what are the gtas’ orientations toward teaching undergraduate biology during the “scientific teaching” course? 2) what are the shifts in the gtas’ knowledge of students and pedagogical knowledge during the “scientific teaching” course? 3) what are the barriers and bridges to building the gtas’ knowledge to teach? pck: a conceptual framework of teacher knowledge in the science education literature, many studies have investigated and sought to characterize the professional knowledge to teach, often referred to as pedagogical content knowledge (pck). initially conceptualized by shulman (1986; 1987), this knowledge has been described as the transformation of content knowledge and other professional knowledge domains into instruction that impacts student learning (grossman, 1990; wilson, shulman, & richert, 1987). studies in this area have provided insights into how the knowledge to teach develops in k-12 teachers (e.g., friedrichsen, van driel, & abell, 2011; geddis, 1993; gess-newsome, 1999; lee et al., 2007; van driel, verloop, & de vos, 1998). while the vast majority of studies have involved elementary and secondary teachers, few studies have focused on the development of this knowledge for teachers at the postsecondary level. figure 1. model of teacher professional knowledge and skill including pck and influences on classroom practice and student outcomes (adapted version from berry, friedrichsen, & loughran, 2015). many different pck models are presented in the literature, (e.g., cochran, deruiter, & king, 1993; grossman, 1990; loughran, mulhall, & berry, 2004; magnusson et al., 1999; park & oliver, 2008), however, a synthesized model culminated from a “pck summit” held in 2012, which involved a select group of science education researchers. consensus was reached in defining pck as “the knowledge of, and reasoning behind, and planning for teaching a particular topic in a particular way for a particular purpose to particular students for enhanced student outcomes” (gess-newsome, 2015, p. 36). pck&s refers to a teacher’s observed act of teaching hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 4 that manifests in the classroom as a result of drawing upon pck. the proposed model of pck for science teaching (gess-newsome, 2015) includes teacher general professional knowledge bases (tpkb) and topic-specific professional knowledge (tspk) along with as set of amplifiers/filters leading to pck development (figure 1). the diagrammatic depiction illustrates that pck is influenced by teachers’ professional knowledge, their beliefs and orientations toward teaching, and the context in which they teach. professional knowledge bases both general professional knowledge and topic-specific professional knowledge are important in pck development. tpkb is a generic set of professional knowledge about (1) assessment, (2) pedagogy, (3) content, (4) students, and (5) curriculum. tspk is knowledge about teaching a particular topic to students at a particular developmental level. this knowledge base would include instructional strategies, ways of representing the content, common naïve conceptions, and integration of science practices, all of which are directly related to a specific disciplinary topic (e.g., chemical equilibrium, natural selection, radiometric dating). amplifiers and filters of the teacher the model indicates that these knowledge bases are filtered or amplified by a set of conditions unique to a teacher. as defined in the literature, teachers’ orientations toward science teaching include their conceptions of teaching and preferred instructional approaches (friedrichsen et al., 2011). friedrichsen (2002) grouped previously identified teacher orientations into three main categories: (1) teacher-centered orientations (didactic and academic rigor), (2) orientations based upon reforms of the 1960s (process, activity-driven, and discovery), and (3) orientations based upon more recent reform efforts (conceptual change, project-based science, inquiry, and guided inquiry). the teacher-centered orientation category includes conceptions of teaching as the transmission of knowledge from a science expert to a novice with lecturing as the primary instructional approach. the other two categories are more student-centered in nature such that the conceptions of teaching revolve around students’ ideas and instruction includes structured activities designed to build students’ knowledge and skills. teaching context in addition, teachers experience varying conditions within the context of their teaching, which ultimately impact their teaching practices. particularly influential elements of the teaching context include curricular resources and supplies for science teaching, allotted planning and instructional time, as well as political and cultural values of the schooling environment (gessnewsome, 2015). both teachers’ orientations and teaching contexts mediate the learning, acceptance, and integration of new knowledge into their classroom practice. this study explored gta’s knowledge development (tpkb) during an introductory “scientific teaching” course while seeking to identify the orientations and elements of the teaching contexts that served as bridges or barriers to their knowledge development. review of relevant gta literature in response to the recent calls for reforming undergraduate science teaching, studies indicate that widespread change has been slow with any major shifts resulting from the efforts of a select few faculty members (hederson et al., 2011). brownell and tanner (2012) reported on faculty-identified barriers to pedagogical change, with the most common including insufficient training, time, and incentives. insufficient training is consistent with faculty lacking knowledge of student-centered pedagogy (luft et al., 2007; yarnall et al., 2007) and maintaining beliefs that reformed teaching methods are no more effective than traditional approaches (ebert-may et al., hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 5 2011; handlesman et al., 2004). one strategy to address the lack of faculty training is to design and implement professional development programs for gtas. many colleges and universities offer training for gtas, but programs have historically been limited in scope, covering only general topics. studies of gta programs indicated a lack of mechanisms for developing important pedagogical and discipline-specific knowledge required for effective teaching practice (luft et al., 2007; hardre, 2012; honeycutt et al., 2010). in addition, gtas have reported little to no feedback from supervisory faculty (dechenne, enochs, & needham, 2012; prieto, 2001). however, some colleges and universities are making efforts to provide more focused gta programs. the literature includes reports of gta programs being extended to include various components, such as pre-semester multi-day workshops, teaching seminars, laboratory preparation meetings with instructional support, observations of gtas’ teaching, lesson study, and formal courses in science teaching for gtas (addy & blanchard, 2010; dotger, 2011; gormally et al., 2011; honeycutt et al., 2010; lockwood et al., 2014). in recent review of gta programs across the u.s. and canada, schussler et al. (2015) indicated that “many institutions or individual faculty or staff members at those institutions are rising to the challenge of providing formal pd opportunities to these key teachers of gateway and introductory biology courses” (2015, p. 10). some gta programs include one or more formal science teaching courses. the literature provides recommendations for courses designed specifically for gtas, such as modeling reformed teaching strategies (marbach-ad et al., 2010; 2012), embedding cooperative learning techniques (wyse et al., 2014), challenging the teacher-centered beliefs of student learning (addy & blanchard, 2010), writing research-based teaching philosophy statements (schussler et al., 2011), and including participation of faculty in the course studies (dotger, 2011). based upon these recommendations, an introductory “scientific teaching” course was designed and implemented as a primary component of a biology gta training program. method this study is based on a cohort of gtas who participated in a “scientific teaching” course held during a spring semester at a large research institution. quantitative and qualitative data were collected at the beginning and end of the course and used in the designed mixed methods study (creswell & plano clark, 2010). study setting in working toward a broader goal of improving undergraduate science teaching and learning at a large research institution, faculty and administrators requested that a course be designed and implemented to support gtas in teaching undergraduate biology courses. the “scientific teaching” 1-credit course was designed to support gta learning in targeted areas in science education through a series of small group projects and selected readings. ten class meetings were held weekly over a 12-week period with each class session lasting for a one-hour period. emphasis each week was the practical application of the topics to teaching science in a large research university setting (table 1). the course was designed based upon recommendations from prior research, which aligned with developing knowledge and orientations for building effective pck. since teachers build their knowledge when they are engaged in practice (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999), all of the gtas in the course were active teaching assistants. throughout the class sessions, the instructor modeled innovative instructional strategies, and engaged the gtas to challenge their teacher-centered beliefs. in addition, the gtas wrote a research-based rationale to support their hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 6 instruction (schussler et al., 2011). the course was specifically focused on building gta’s knowledge in the areas of instructional strategies and (2) student understanding. table 1 target topics covered in the “scientific teaching” course week target topics specific discussion elements and activities target knowledge base (tpkb) 1 constructivism, concept maps created concept map of “science education”, discussed how students learn students 2 goals of undergraduate science education, inquiry discussed goals of undergraduate biology education, small group evaluation of labs curriculum, students 3 conceptual change drew models of how students learn, paired and whole group discussions students, pedagogy 4 conceptual change discussed status of ideas and naïve conceptions (photosynthesis, evolution) for undergraduate students students 5 active learning and 5e lesson plan discussion of active learning and examined different strategies, co-constructed 5e lesson plan for specific topic in biology students, pedagogy 6 5e lesson plans small group presentations of 5e lesson plans, peerreview of lesson plans using rubric curriculum, students, pedagogy 7 confronting realities of active learning group evaluation and discussion of videos of active learning environments assessment, students, pedagogy 8 formative assessment small group discussions of opportunities for ongoing assessment using classroom scenarios and instructional decisions based upon student responses assessment, students, pedagogy 9 student motivation discussed model of self-determination theory, small groups developed a lab using the elements the model students, pedagogy, assessment 10 summative assessment small and whole group evaluation and discussion of multiple-choice questions and assignment rubrics using revised bloom’s taxonomy, small groups developed multiple-choice questions and rubrics for 5e lesson assessment participants the participants in the study included a purposeful sample of ten gtas in the biology department of a large research institution located in the southwestern region of the united states. the gtas participated in the course as they were actively serving as gtas in large, upperdivision undergraduate biology courses. the names of the gtas were replaced by pseudonyms for the purpose of protecting their anonymity. the sample included six female biology gtas and four male gtas. all gtas were doctoral-level graduate students, however, they came from varied fields of biology that ranged from ecology to cellular and molecular biology. the participants also differed in their extents and levels of teaching experience (table 2). three of the gtas had previous experience teaching at the secondary level. given the small sample size (n = 10), the findings of this study are not considered to be representative of a large population of graduate assistants. data collection data were collected at the beginning and end of the “scientific teaching” course using concept maps and open-ended questionnaires. concept maps are graphical representations used hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 7 for organizing knowledge and depicting relationships among concepts (novak & cañas, 2006). concept maps have been used as an assessment tool in educational research (gess-newsome & lederman, 1993; morine-dershimer, 1993). more recently, hay, kinchin, and lygo-baker (2008) discussed using concept maps to make understandings visible including prior knowledge, the learning of new concepts, and the links between existing and new knowledge structures. although claims have been made that concept maps may reflect internal cognitive structures, it has not been established that the constructed diagrams are literal depictions of knowledge stored in the memory (baxter & lederman, 1999). in this study, the use of concept maps is limited to identifying any change in knowledge during a semester-long “scientific teaching” course. table 2 participant quantities and types of prior teaching experience name* gender prior k-12 teaching (years) prior gta experience (semesters) bruce m 0 over 9 ellen f 0 over 9 judith f 1 8 scott m 3 6 danielle f 0 4 patrick m 0 4 rose f 0 3 annie f 0 2 joe m 1** 2 laura f 0 1 * pseudonym ** experience in k-12 after-school program table 3 gta interview questions and associated target information target information interview question amount and nature of prior teaching experience 1. how many semesters have you taught at the undergraduate level? 2. how many years have you taught at the k-12 level? orientation toward being a gta and supports/barriers to developing as a gta 3. why are you a ta? 4. what were your primary responsibilities as a ta? please describe in detail. 5. what were some additional responsibilities as a ta? please describe in detail. 6. did you have an opportunity(ies) to work directly with students in the course? if yes, how often did this occur during the semester? please describe the interaction(s) in detail. administered at the end of the “scientific teaching” course, an open-ended questionnaire was designed to collect demographic information and information about the gtas’ orientation hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 8 toward teaching. we specifically sought to capture information about the types and amounts of the gtas’ previous teaching experience, their reasons for being a gta, a detailed description of their responsibilities as a gta during the semester, and detailed descriptions of their direct interactions with students. many of the questions posed were extremely general to allow the gtas to report the information they deemed to be important (table 3). procedure concept maps. the change in gtas’ tpkb, in the areas of knowledge of student understanding and knowledge of instructional strategies, was operationalized as the change in concept map scores. the gtas created concept maps during the first and last class sessions of the teaching course. to effectively construct concept maps, the gtas received approximately 20 minutes of training immediately prior to their constructing the concept maps on both occasions. the training included instruction about the components, organizational structure, and process of building concept maps. following the training, the gtas were asked to create concept maps for the general topic of “science education”. steps were taken to quantify the concept map data. traditional methods of scoring concept maps were explored, however, this did not provide fruitful results. an alternative scoring method employed by weizman et al. (2008) assigned scores ranging from 0 to 3 for each tpkb domain. the nodes and links were examined against a list of a priori indicators to assess the knowledge level evidenced in the concept maps. scores were assigned for each tpkb domain using a scoring rubric (figure 2). score 0 1 2 3 level of explanation of component of tpkb the topic is not present. the topic was just mentioned. the topic was partly elaborated. the topic was clear and explained. figure 2. scoring system for preand post-concept maps presented in weizman et al., 2008. table 4 list of indicators for the targeted tpkb indicators of knowledge of students indicators of pedagogical knowledge • knowledge of common student naïve conceptions • connected to students’ lives (authenticity) • typical student trajectories of understanding (learning progressions) • knowledge of student understanding through assessment • consider students’ ideas and experiences • include multiple representations and learning experiences • cooperative learning • instructional design is student-centered (5e, active learning, inquiry) • motivating environment a similar approach was used for this study. a list of indicators was generated based upon the goals of the “scientific teaching” course for the two tpkb: knowledge of student understanding and knowledge of instructional strategies (table 4). rather than assigning a general score for each domain, the scoring rubric was used to assign a score for each indicator. an average score for each domain was calculated using the indicator scores. after the concept maps were scored, the differences in the average tpkb domain scores were calculated between the preand post-concept maps for each gta. open-ended questionnaire. the gtas’ responses to the open-ended questionnaire served as the source of qualitative data, which pertained to the amplifiers and filters that hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 9 influence their teaching practice – their orientations toward teaching and the context of their teaching experiences. the questionnaire was completed during the last class meeting. open coding of the gtas’ responses was conducted to identify themes regarding their reported interactions with students during the course. this process followed bogdan and biklen (2006). the emergent themes were used to classify each gta in terms of their orientation towards teaching into one of two broad categories: teacher-centered or student-centered. given that the open-ended questions were general in nature, information gathered from the questionnaire regarding the gtas’ orientations toward teaching and specific instructional practices may be limited. results question 1: what were the gtas’ orientations toward teaching biology during the “scientific teaching” course? the questionnaire responses describing the gtas’ interactions with students were coded, and emergent themes were used to classify the gtas’ orientation toward teaching. based upon the emergent themes derived from the reported interactions with students, the gtas were classified in one of two broad categories: teacher-centered or student-centered. six of the gtas’ were classified as having a teacher-centered orientation while four were classified as having a student-centered orientation toward teaching. annie illustrates a typical student-centered orientation. she served as a gta during the 2011-2012 academic year and had no prior experience as a graduate teaching assistant. although annie did not have direct interactions with students as a gta in the spring, her response described the nature of her interactions with students as a gta during the fall semester prior to the teaching course. annie described these interactions as follows: i worked with the students directly every week during recitation. at first i was primarily lecturing and taking questions from students. later in the semester, i had them work in groups to solve problems; i would walk around to the groups and ask them questions about the problems, and take questions from them. i would also pick individuals or groups to explain how to solve the problems to the class. annie’s orientation toward teaching emphasized instruction that supported students to construct their knowledge in collaboration with their peers. her role was to facilitate student learning through questioning and having students articulate their explanations. scott, joe, and judith reported having similar interactions with students and thus also held student-centered orientations toward teaching. bruce was classified as having a teacher-centered orientation toward teaching biology, and was typical of this group. his interactions primarily involved lecturing to students. bruce reported having over nine semesters of experience as a graduate teaching experience. as a gta, he was provided with the opportunity to work directly with students in lecture and in the laboratory setting. bruce described his interactions with students as follows: i interact with students in the lecture as well as the lab that meets two times a week. the lecture interaction involved me presenting lecture material as well as facilitating small group discussions. the laboratory section allowed me to work with students on a 1 on 1 basis as well as assist the lead lab ta. i lectured roughly 50% of the time and was present in lab 50% of the time. hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 10 bruce’s orientation toward teaching emphasized the transmission model of teaching in which knowledge from a science expert is delivered to a novice via lecture. danielle, rose, laura, patrick, and ellen reported having similar interactions with students and thus also held teacher-centered orientations toward teaching. question 2: what are the shifts in the gtas’ knowledge of students and pedagogical knowledge during the “scientific teaching” course? the “scientific teaching” course was designed to build the gtas’ tpkb within two knowledge bases, (1) knowledge of students and (2) pedagogical knowledge, with an emphasis on their general knowledge of student understanding and knowledge of instructional strategies. the scores from the preand post-concept maps were used to identify shifts in gtas’ knowledge of student understanding and knowledge of instructional strategies. score results for the two targeted knowledge bases are presented in figures 3a and 3b.  pre-concept map score  post-concept map score figures 3a and 3b. preand post-concept map scores for knowledge of student understanding and knowledge of instructional strategies along with score differences. the pre-concept maps revealed that none of the gtas related student understanding to the general topic of “science education”. at the conclusion of the teaching course, four of the ten gtas represented indicators of student understanding on the post-concept map. the six remaining gtas did not mention student understanding on the post-concept map. overall, the gtas had little to no positive shifts in the knowledge domain of student understanding during the teaching course. on the pre-concept map, seven of the gtas did not mention instructional strategies, while three of the gtas included one or more indicators of instructional strategies. at the end of 0 1 2 3 laura bruce rose ellen judith joe patrick danielle scott annie knowledge of student understanding 0 1 2 3 bruce ellen patrick laura rose judith danielle joe scott annie knowledge of instructional strategies hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 11 the teaching course, all of the gtas included some indicators of instructional strategies. the three gtas that included indicators on the pre-concept map also included the same level of indicators on the post-concept map, indicating that they had no shift in this particular area. however, seven of the gtas had some level of positive shift in the knowledge domain of instructional strategies. the calculated score differences for both knowledge domains were averaged to generate an overall average score (table 5). following the “scientific teaching” course, two of the gtas had positive shifts in their tpkb (average differences greater than 1.0), however, eight of the gtas had little to no shift. table 5 changes in tpkb indicated by difference between preand post-concept map scores and overall score averages name average concept map scores post pre difference student understanding post pre difference instructional strategies avg. post –pre differences annie 1 1.8 1.4 scott 1 1.2 1.1 danielle 0.8 0.6 0.7 joe 0 1 0.5 judith 0 0.6 0.3 rose 0 0.6 0.3 patrick 0.4 0 0.2 laura 0 0.4 0.2 bruce 0 0 0 ellen 0 0 0 question 3: what were the bridges and barriers to building the gtas’ knowledge to teach? to address this research question, the amplifiers/filters to the gtas’ pck were examined by merging the qualitative data and quantitative data along with demographic information. the gtas’ orientations toward teaching were compared to the overall average shift in tpkb. in addition, demographic data were included in the analysis, which illuminated bridges and barriers to building the gtas’ professional teaching knowledge. on the open-ended questionnaire, the gtas reported their number of semesters of previous experience as a gta and their reasons for being a gta. they also described their teaching context by reporting the gta roles assigned to them by their faculty mentors. the gtas differed in their overall tpkb gains as well as their orientations toward teaching and reasons for being a graduate teaching assistant. the individual overall tpkb gains are presented in table 6 with the gtas grouped by teaching orientation and purpose for being a gta. half of participants reported being a gta to gain experience teaching at the undergraduate level while the other half reported being a teaching assistant primarily for funding purposes. four of the gtas were determined to have a student-centered orientation toward teaching, with three participants being among those that had the greatest positive shifts in tpkb. hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 12 table 6 overall tpkb gains with gtas grouped by their reported purpose for being a gta and teaching orientation orientation purpose of being a gta gta for experience gta for funding student-centered orientation annie (tpkb gain = 1.4) scott (tpkb gain = 1.1) joe (tpkb gain = 0.5) judith (tpkb gain = 0.3) teacher-centered orientation danielle (tpkb gain = 0.7) rose (tpkb gain = 0.3) laura (tpkb gain = 0.2) patrick (tpkb gain = 0.2) ellen (tpkb gain = 0) bruce (tpkb gain = 0) note. tpkb gains are based on differences of gtas’ average concept map scores; shown in (). gtas for undergraduate teaching experience: annie, scott, joe, danielle, and rose. five of the ten gtas – annie, scott, joe, danielle, and rose – reported being a gta to gain teaching experience and/or improve their teaching practice. on average, the gtas in this group had less than four semesters of undergraduate teaching experience, but varied in their gains in tpkb. in comparing the overall score differences, scott and annie had greater shifts in their tpkb than all of the other gtas. joe and danielle had moderate gains, and rose’s concept map scores indicated minimal gains. orientations toward teaching. this group of gtas had varying orientations toward teaching. three of these five gtas reported having interactions with students consistent with the student-centered orientation toward teaching: scott, annie, and joe. however, rose and danielle were classified as having a teacher-centered orientation as they reported employing didactic methods of teaching. teaching context. this group of gtas had vastly different roles assigned by their faculty mentors, which influenced the nature of their interactions with students. scott and annie were assigned roles that allowed them to have frequent direct interaction with students independent of their faculty mentor. scott and annie had regularly scheduled weekly meetings with students during recitation. the gta roles assigned to joe and danielle by their mentor faculty provided opportunities for them to work directly with students, however, these interactions were irregular and unstructured. although the meetings were not regularly scheduled, joe and danielle met with the students independent of their faculty mentors for exam review sessions. rose was extremely restricted in her interactions with students as she served as an assistant during faculty-led lectures. her primary role was to answer questions posed by students during small group work. gtas for graduate degree funding: judith, patrick, bruce, ellen, and laura. five of the ten gtas – judith, patrick, bruce, ellen, and laura – reported being a gta for funding purposes without making mention of gaining teaching experience. three of these gtas reported a desire to be funded as a research assistant rather than a gta. on average, the gtas in this group had more than six semesters of undergraduate teaching experience and had similar gains in tpkb. in comparing the overall score differences, the gtas in this group had little to no shifts in their tpkb. orientations toward teaching. based upon their reported interactions with students, four of the five gtas in this group were classified as having a didactic orientation toward teaching. hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 13 bruce, ellen, patrick, and laura all reported interactions with students that were consistent with a didactic orientation. in contrast, judith was classified as having a student-centered orientation toward teaching. she indicated that her faculty mentor directed her to engage in teaching practices aligned with a student-centered approach, however, judith expressed that she found this approach to teaching to be very difficult for her. teaching context. similar to the previous group, these gtas were assigned vastly different roles by their faculty mentors, which influenced the nature of their interactions with students. bruce, ellen, and judith were provided with regular opportunities to work directly with students independent of their faculty mentor (e.g., course lab sessions, recitations). however, patrick and laura were extremely restricted in their interactions with students. patrick was assigned to deliver a single lecture to the class along with answering student questions during office hours. laura occasionally answered student questions at the end of faculty-led lectures, however, her primary function was to grade assignments and tests. discussion this study was conducted to identify shifts in tpkb for ten gtas during a “scientific teaching” course and examine the influence of the gtas’ teaching orientations and teaching contexts as amplifiers and filters of their knowledge development. concept map scores indicated that the gtas increased their knowledge in the area of instructional strategies more than in the area of student understanding. consistent with the concern-based theory of teachers, the gtas focused primarily on the instructional tasks of the teacher and the student, and did not transition to thinking about student understanding during the course (fuller, 1969; fuller & bown, 1975). the “scientific teaching” course provided to the gtas was limited to the ten contact hours with the instructor and fellow gtas. as a minimum of 80 hours of professional development are needed before changes are found in teacher practices, the “scientific teaching” course was not sufficient to produce significant changes in the gtas’ teaching practices (supovitz & turner, 2000). the orientations and teaching context that serve as amplifiers and filters to the gtas building their pck were also investigated in the study. gtas’ self-reported interactions with students revealed varied orientations toward teaching; however, the gtas with the highest gains in tpkb held student-centered orientations. the teaching contexts of the gtas were dictated by the roles assigned by the course faculty members, and the gtas’ primary responsibilities varied widely such that they had different levels and frequencies of interactions with students. (e.g., regular weekly recitations, irregular and limited number of lectures coupled with weekly offices hours, and assignment and exam graders). the gtas having regularly scheduled direct interactions with students, independent of the mentor professor, had the highest gains in tpkb. these settings provided gtas with consistent opportunities to implement reformed teaching practices and receive feedback from students. those gtas with restricted interactions with students had limited tpkb development. this is consistent with educational research reporting that teachers build their knowledge when they are engaged in practice (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999). prior experience as a gta also influenced their knowledge development. on average, the gtas with the largest increase in their tpkb had lower levels of experience whereas those with higher levels of experience made little to no gains. in addition, the gtas’ motivation for being a teaching assistant was a factor. those gtas with the desire to develop their teaching practices had larger increases in their tpkb than those who elected to be a gta for funding purposes. hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 14 conclusions this exploratory study sought to characterize gta’s changes in knowledge of science teaching in the context of a “scientific teaching” course and identifying critical supports and barriers to their knowledge development. programs would better support gtas by providing longer and more sustained teacher professional development that is initiated early in ta experience. to facilitate gtas moving from thinking about what students are doing to how students are learning, departments could ensure that assigned gta-roles provide regular and structured opportunities, which optimize working directly with students and encourage practice of innovative teaching strategies. building a community of faculty and graduate students that values teaching would support the gtas in seeking to improve their teaching practices. as part of a community that values teaching, the gta program would serve to promote gta assignments as opportunities for developing teaching skills and diminish the view of the position as simply being a source of funding. to further understand bridges and barriers to building successful gta programs, future studies should investigate the gta training programs in biology across multiple institutions to further define the amounts and types of professional development needed by gtas that is specific to science teaching and learning, the assigned roles of gtas, and the context and culture of teaching community in which gtas function. while gtas may increase their knowledge of reformed science teaching through a formal course or training sessions, the translation of knowledge in to teaching practice. additional research should focus on the impact of sustained professional development and instructional coaching on gtas’ knowledge for teaching as well as changes in their teaching practices. this work would be bolstered by direct observations of gtas’ teaching practices rather than self-reported approaches to teaching. for institutions working to make reforms to undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistant training, the findings of this study offer important information to consider in designing gta programs for undergraduate science teaching. as such, we suggest that biology faculty and graduate students across institutions work together toward developing more meaningful programs, which may lead to certification in teaching in higher education, that build gtas’ professional knowledge bases for implementing reform-based strategies as well as provide regular opportunities for gtas to practice engaging with students in a supportive environment. references american association for the advancement of science. 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(2007). adapting scenario-based curriculum materials to community college technical courses. community college journal of research and practice, 31(7), 583-601. hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 19 author notes kathleen m. hill associate director and assistant professor of science education center for science and the schools pennsylvania state university kathyhill@psu.edu kathleen hill is the associate director of the center for science and the schools at penn state. her professional activities focus on teacher professional development at both the k-12 and higher education levels. her research studies focus on investigating teachers’ pedagogical and content knowledge development as they engage in the practice of teaching. miles orchinik associate professor school of life sciences arizona state university m.orchinik@asu.edu miles orchinik is a neuroscientist in the school of life sciences at arizona state university who studies how stress alters behavior, brain function, and the endocrine system. he is also interested in science education research, particularly in how undergraduates learn core concepts, and which teaching methods are most effective at promoting learning. mailto:kathyhill@psu.edu mailto:m.orchinik@asu.edu hill & orchinik: reforming undergraduate biology teaching through graduate assistants: identifying bridges and barriers to making change current issues in education, 19(2) 20 volume 19, issue 2 august 24, 2016 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh niels piepgrass bethany richmond olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers inclusive campus environments: an untapped resource for fostering learner success current issues in education, 22(1) 1 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age inclusive campus environments: an untapped resource for fostering learner success susan whitmer susan whitmer studios abstract: the purpose of this paper is to consider new possibilities for higher education, where the principles of universal design for learning (udl) provide a framework for creating digital and physical environments that honor every learner’s unique lived experiences and support the expectations of learners for their individual life goals. each learner brings their own unique lived experience; multi-level intersectionality; and cognitive and social learning variabilities to their educational journey. many of these present obstacles to their realizing successful learning outcomes. understanding the lived experiences in the learner’s journey and creating environments that remove barriers to learning requires a deep understanding of inclusion, which is central to the framework of udl. how can we create a campus that promotes a sense of belonging, community, and well-being — a campus that has the potential to increase the number of learners who persist to completion? it begins with honoring the uniqueness of every learner. keywords: universal design for learning, inclusion, community, sense of belonging, social justice citation: whitmer, s. (2021). inclusive campus environments: an untapped resource for fostering learner success. current issues in education, 22(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1902 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 11/9/2020 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1902 whitmer: inclusive campus environments current issues in education, 22(1) 2 introduction the force factors of the covid-19 pandemic, the rise of social injustice, and political polarization have deepened the erosion of trust and confidence in the value of higher education and in our society. in may of 2020, the american association of colleges & universities (aac&u) convened a panel of higher education leaders to discuss the opportunities that exist by shifting our mindset from a traditional model, ruled by categories and silos, to the possibilities that exist in a culture that values equity, diversity, inclusion, and human dignity. in the words of panelist daniel pascoe aguilar, “part of our work in preparing a new generation of leaders is to work with our students to help them understand the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion. it is not only an important part of their realities and experiences, but as an asset to our decisionmaking and as an asset to our effective performance as individuals, as organizations, as nations, and as a world” (aac&u, 2020). the learner’s journey the principles of universal design for learning (udl) provide a framework for creating digital and physical environments that honor every learner’s unique lived experiences and supports the expectations of learners for their individual life goals. each learner brings their own unique lived experience; multi-level intersectionality1 and cognitive and social learning variabilities to his/her/their educational journey. many of these present obstacles to their realizing successful learning outcomes. learners on the journey are racially and ethnically diverse, and identify as: lbgtq+; first-generation learners; veterans; older adults; international learners; learners with physical disabilities, neuro-diversities2 and mental health challenges; and learners with housing and food insecurities. understanding the lived experiences in the learner’s journey and creating environments that remove barriers to learning requires a deep understanding of inclusion. inclusion is a broad umbrella of social justice requirements such as antiracism, equity, accessibility, and diversity. there is no inclusive campus ecosystem without addressing these social justice requirements. recent data on learners’ diverse variabilities highlights potential challenges for learners: • as of the academic year 2015-2016, 56% of undergraduate students, defined as firstgeneration students, had parents who did not have a bachelor’s degree (rti international, 2019). • from 2000 to 2018, college enrollment rates among 18to 24-year-olds increased for those who were black (from 31% to 37%) and hispanic (from 22% to 36%). the college enrollment rate was not measurably different between 2000 and 2018 for those who were american indian/alaska native, but rates were lower in 2018 than in 2010 for those who were american indian/alaska native (24% vs. 41%; nces, 2020). 1 kimberlé crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality, describes the current context of the term as “a lens, a prism, for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other” (steinmetz, 2020). 2 neurodiversity refers to neurological differences in how the brain organizes and responds to stimuli. dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autistic spectrum disorders, tourette syndrome, and others are included in the concept of neurodiversity. https://neurodiversitysymposium.wordpress.com/what-is-neurodiversity/ https://neurodiversitysymposium.wordpress.com/what-is-neurodiversity/ whitmer: inclusive campus environments current issues in education, 22(1) 3 • a 2016 survey of more than 33,000 students by the american college health association found that 10% identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, asexual, pansexual, or questioning (best colleges, 2020). • sixty-eight percent of post-9/11 veterans do not have a bachelor’s degree or higher. of the 32% who do, 20% of the degrees were attained at for-profit institutions (cate et al., 2017). • the number of international students in the us reached 1.09 million in 2018 (education usa, 2018). • ninety-four percent of learners with learning disabilities receive accommodations in high school, compared with 17% in college3 (cortiella & horowitz, 2014). • researchers estimate that 30-50% of students attending post-secondary education experience food insecurities at some point during their school year (ciciora, 2019). • research on housing insecurities indicates “at least one-third of 2-year students are housing insecure, including up to 14% who are homeless, whereas between 11% and 19% of 4-year students are housing insecure” (broton & goldrick-rab, 2018). a learner-centric framework for creating inclusive physical and digital environments requires an awareness of what learners need from a campus ecosystem that recognizes the realities of neurodiversity, social justice, multi-level intersectionality, and cognitive, social, and physical well-being. as shown in figure 1, maslow’s (1943) hierarchy of needs provides a mental map for developing inclusive solutions that support every learner: figure 1 maslow’s hierarchy of needs 3 to receive accommodations in higher education, the student must contact the disability resource office and complete a process to be accepted for accommodation. this process is referred to as self-advocate. https://pnpi.org/lgbtq-students-in-higher-education/ whitmer: inclusive campus environments current issues in education, 22(1) 4 the positive and negative implications for maslow’s hierarchy of needs are incorporated into the principles and strategies of udl. unmet needs lead to anxiety and depression, which are among the biggest factors that negatively affect academic performance. food and housing insecurities are those hidden struggles that harm the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of learners, and negatively impact their academic performance and their desire to persist. research indicates there is a statistically significant relationship between food and housing insecurities, a learner’s academic performance, and persistence to completion (goldrick-rab et al., 2018; martinez et al., 2016). learners perform better when they feel safe in their environment. the rise in racist violence and cyber-bullying makes safety top of mind for learners, whether the learning environment is physical or digital. an inclusive environment is a place where all learners, regardless of their lived experiences and learning variabilities, feel safe to engage with peers academically and socially, without fear for personal safety. an inclusive environment is also one where learners feel emotionally and mentally safe to fail, fail fast, and recover, so they develop the resilience necessary to thrive in their chosen career. this type of support leads to the development of a sense of belonging. sense of belonging, connectedness, and community take on heightened importance for learners who are traditionally underserved.4 a sense of belonging is defined by author terrell strayhorn (2019): “students’ perceived social support on campus, a feeling or sensation of connectedness, and the experience of mattering or feeling cared about, accepted, respected, valued by, and essential to the group (e.g., campus community) or others on campus (e.g., faculty, peers)”. feeling accepted for their uniqueness and being connected to the campus community expands opportunities for the positive outcomes of engagement, improved performance, well-being, and persistence to completion. the current organizational mindset of higher education puts a roadblock on the journey to becoming a unique individual, which creates policies, curricula, campus planning, and metrics of success based on the false notion of the “average” learner. the average learner does not exist: no two brains are alike, and all learners bring their own lived social and cultural experiences to the learning community (rose, 2016). if, as maslow argues, developing healthy self-esteem and empowerment is a result of honoring the uniqueness of every individual, then the organization bears responsibility for creating physical and digital environments that are welcoming and safe for all learners. as with every big challenge facing administrators, faculty, instructional designers, and technology developers, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for teaching and learning. there is a framework, however, that provides sustainable strategies for educators across the learning spectrum that empowers all learners to activate a passion for lifelong learning. universal design for learning framework universal design for learning (udl) is a framework based on research in the learning sciences (e.g., education, educational psychology) and the brain sciences (e.g., cognitive science and neuroscience). udl calls for an emphasis on honoring the uniqueness of every learner and their lived experience. although udl does not explicitly call out all the social, psychological, and emotional barriers to learning, the strategies and guidelines within the udl framework 4 underserved students can include learners with disabilities, veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd), students with autism spectrum disorder (asd), international students, first-generation students, students in the lgbtq+ community, students in racially and ethnically minorities, and others. whitmer: inclusive campus environments current issues in education, 22(1) 5 provide pathways for addressing the barriers in learning and removing the obstacles in the path of becoming an expert learner. the udl framework clearly establishes three principles that correlate to the organized structure of the brain (kurzweil education, 2019): 1. multiple means of engagement-tap into learners' interests, offer appropriate challenges, and increase motivation. 2. multiple means of representation-give learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge. 3. multiple means of expression-provide learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know. in her recent book antiracism and universal design for learning, andratesha fritzgerald (2020, p. 24) provides a summary of the 2018 udl guidelines that help educators create instructional pathways that are flexible, customizable, and culturally sustainable. such pathways: • activate or supply background knowledge, • highlight patterns, critical features, big ideas, and relationships, • foster collaboration and community, • vary the methods for response and navigation, • promote expectations and beliefs that optimize motivation, • facilitate personal coping skills and strategies, • heighten salience goals and objectives, • promote understanding across languages, • optimize relevance, value, and authenticity, and • minimize threats and distractions. curricula, assessments, and classroom management practices must be developed with these principles and guidelines in mind for learners to establish a sense of belonging, boost their self-esteem, and cultivate their self-actualization. adoption of pedagogical practices based on research on how learning happens have elevated the need to introduce research-based practices that recognize cognitive and social learning variabilities. consider a neuro-diverse learner, a veteran with ptsd, an international learner, or a learner whose lived experience is at the intersection of all three identities. each of these learners may have elevated levels of stress in active learning environments due to the expectation of higher levels of engagement. opportunities to mitigate their stress include: 1) engage with all learners, 2) open opportunities to guide learners who need help with the team or group dynamics, 3) find ways to introduce content into coursework or physical/digital environments that connect diverse learners’ lived experiences and cultures to the content, 4) organize the environment to promote predictable routines and transitions, and 5) give learners a choice for how and where they like to work in the learning environment. the udl principles and strategies can also serve as guideposts for designing physical and digital environments in the education ecosystem. legibility is a crucial element of inclusive physical and digital environments. on an inclusive campus, no matter where the daily journey takes the learner, walkways and paths should be physically accessible. paths should include established edges that create order, and physical cues should provide wayfinding, fostering a whitmer: inclusive campus environments current issues in education, 22(1) 6 connection from one building to the next. examples of physical cues are sculptures, cultural artifacts, and digital dashboards. the spaces within the buildings themselves should be straightforward and easy to navigate. inclusive environments have surroundings, furniture, and tools that help learners understand how the space will support their activities and behaviors. what learners see in the environment around them, such as physical artifacts and messaging, tells them whether they belong or not. inclusive environments activated remote learning in 2020 has amplified the barriers of the digital divide that has existed for many years. the difference is that pre-covid-19, these barriers had not been acknowledged in the us to the extent they have in other parts of the world. and even when learners have access to a computer and hours of zoom classes, inequities are amplified in the disparity of what is in the physical background of every learner’s space. many learners hesitate to join a class with their camera on because they are embarrassed by the environment around them, adding to the stress and anxiety that already exists. at a very basic level, a shift in mindset that focuses more on the learner and less on traditional practices would permit the learner to join with their camera off. and in the spirit of new possibilities, curated virtual backgrounds that replicate an inclusive environment where no one is judged, and everyone feels welcomed, should exist. a more robust platform for inclusive learning is developed at arizona state university (asu). asu sync is described as a platform that “provides students with technology-enhanced, fully interactive remote learning using live lectures via zoom. this approach can be combined with in-person instruction to accommodate students in various circumstances and enable social distancing measures in classrooms, or as stand-alone technology. it offers the benefits of face-toface instruction in an interactive group learning environment” (arizona state university, 2020). figure 2 features of asu sync whitmer: inclusive campus environments current issues in education, 22(1) 7 consider the learner who might be struggling with food or housing insecurities. providing a food pantry and a “nap space” where learners with housing insecurities can rest if needed can make all the difference in performance and persistence for these learners. one example of this type of space is located in the wellness suite of the lola & rob salazar student wellness center at the university of colorado (uc) denver (2019). the wellness suite is socialized across campus as well as the uc denver website so that learners are aware that there is a place where they can go for food and respite. in addition to providing physical spaces on campus that support learners with these insecurities, uc denver is developing a framework for empowering learners to have a voice in policies that impact their lived experiences.5 the lola & rob salazar student wellness center is an exemplary model for learner support spaces that are clearly defined, foster a sense of belonging, build community, and add to the legibility of the campus. permeability, defined as the ability to be passed through, is another crucial element of inclusive physical and digital environments. environments that are permeable support the connection between learners’ academic content, activities, and experiences throughout their learning journey, anytime, anywhere. a permeable campus reduces barriers to learner interaction both physically and digitally, reduces cognitive stress, and fosters a sense of belonging and community. for the digital experience, the asu sync platform provides a model for how a learner’s experience can exist in a digital environment and permeate to the physical. asu has also developed a digital campus using collaboration hub, slack. it is described as a way for learners to connect with each other and their faculty through real-time messaging, content sharing, and learning6. interdisciplinary programs can provide connectivity of content, but often the learners’ experience building-to-building across the campus is not permeable. one example of permeability on the physical campus is in common spaces in corridors just outside of or adjacent to classrooms, where students can continue discussions after a class or talk to faculty before or after class. when these spaces are designed for every academic building on campus, the campus becomes more permeable. other examples of permeable spaces are the multi-sensory spaces near the classroom. multi-sensory spaces are quiet spaces that provide respite for learners who might need a few minutes to decompress or to soothe their anxieties brought on by the chaotic motions of active learning. multi-sensory spaces are designed according to specific lighting and acoustic properties that help to relieve anxiety and stress. locating multi-sensory spaces in every building on campus serves the social and quiet activities that are part of every learner’s experience. a variation of multi-sensory spaces could serve international learners as a safe and comfortable environment for private connections to their families. anecdotal evidence has shown that many international learners sit in dingy, dark stairwells to skype with their families because it is the only quiet, available space where they feel they can share family time. multi-sensory or safe quiet spaces should be considered in the library, student center, wellness centers, and residence halls. an environment that is ideal for modeling inclusive practices is makerspaces. well designed and curated makerspaces offer opportunities to make the principles of udl actionable and on display. makerspaces offer learners multiple means of engagement—they tap into 5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=124&v=lxs91jankeq 6 https://uto.asu.edu/slack https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=124&v=lxs91jankeq https://uto.asu.edu/slack whitmer: inclusive campus environments current issues in education, 22(1) 8 learners’ interests, offer appropriate challenges, increase motivation, offer multiple means of representation, provide different ways of acquiring information and knowledge, offer multiple modes of expression, and provide learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know. makerspaces are chaotic due to the nature of the engagements within them. makerspaces should be: welcoming; legible, meaning that there is a balance of chaos and order; safe; and supportive of learners who need consistency to learn and perform at their best. it is the activity of making that is the most essential ingredient of makerspaces, so it is the activities that become the permeable agent from the engineering building to the fine arts building to the library. a learner should be able to connect their journey through the learning activities of makerspaces across campus (and across the curriculum), no matter the physical form, scale, or complexity of the spaces. while makerspaces have great potential to build and support an inclusive campus culture, research suggests that work must be done to better promote a sense of belonging in makerspaces (melo, 2020; wood, 2018). the origins of makerspaces, centered around a narrow gender and ethnic community of makers, has manifested into the culture and design of the current makerspace framework, which has been slow to fully embrace inclusivity. melo (2020) writes, “makerspaces are both physically and ideologically at odds with serving racially, economically, and gender diverse communities.” as innovation environments like makerspaces continue to evolve, there is a need for greater inclusivity in their design. creating an inclusive campus environment that is legible, permeable, and enacts inclusive classroom management practices can only succeed by using a blended approach that includes the digital experience: digital dashboards that serve as landmarks in every building, campus maps with rich wayfinding graphics, spaces and tools that support digital maker activities, layered technologies in learning spaces, and personal technologies that enhance the learning experiences of neuro-diverse learners—these are just a few examples of integrating the physical and digital campus experiences. measuring what matters is essential. assessing the performance of an inclusive campus environment requires evaluation of space and building performance based on how well the physical, social, and cognitive needs of all learners are being met. additionally, assessing performance requires an evaluation of curricula to make sure coursework is designed to engage all learners through multiple means of engagement, representation, and expression. each of the following organizations is currently working on revising their built environment assessment tool to include metrics for inclusive design: • universal design for learning (udl) https://udl-irn.org/ • learning space rating system (lsrs) https://www.educause.edu/eli/initiatives/learningspace-rating-system • well building standard https://resources.wellcertified.com/articles/why-universal-design-is-critical-to-creatingtruly-healthy-spaces/ transforming the organizational culture of academic planning and campus planning can be complicated and is not always an integrated process. the best place to start an integrated planning process for an inclusive campus environment is conversations with stakeholders. such conversations can occur in workshops with learners who have self-advocated for a disability, or https://udl-irn.org/ https://www.educause.edu/eli/initiatives/learning-space-rating-system https://www.educause.edu/eli/initiatives/learning-space-rating-system https://resources.wellcertified.com/articles/why-universal-design-is-critical-to-creating-truly-healthy-spaces/ https://resources.wellcertified.com/articles/why-universal-design-is-critical-to-creating-truly-healthy-spaces/ whitmer: inclusive campus environments current issues in education, 22(1) 9 learners in peer support groups. in such conversations we can find out from learners about a valuable learning moment they experienced, what makes them motivated to learn, and when in their learning experiences they forget about their disability or challenges. we can also ask faculty about the innovative ways they respond to learner variabilities and what practices have been successful, and what regulations or obstacles have kept campus leaders from promoting a culture of inclusivity and care. we can empower cross-disciplinary teams to ideate, create and implement academic and campus plans that foster student engagement, a sense of belonging, and community leading to improved performance and persistence to completion (bracken & novak, 2019). assessment tools are a vital part of the transformation process. traditional thinking is that these tools are only used for post-occupancy evaluation, but they can be most effective when they are incorporated into the strategic planning process, where they can help build a roadmap for successful planning. creating an inclusive campus environment can also have a positive impact on the institution’s financial planning. research indicates that increasing the number of students who persist to completion reduces the amount of loss in unrealized tuition, fees, and alumni contributions (raisman, 2013). while an inclusive campus environment does not eliminate the need for all accommodations, coaching, or counseling, it certainly would reduce the scale of such accommodations. conclusion learning environments have been designed based on inclusive design principles to ensure that access to well-designed built environments, services, and products is available to and can improve the lives of all users. such inclusive environments improve the learner’s experience, increase value of the higher education ecosystem, and enhance local communities and the larger world. to create such environments will require a shift in mindset across the education ecosystem and an organizing framework—such as universal design for learning—that opens new possibilities for planning a physical and digital campus that humanizes learning for everyone. the work of bracken & novak (2019) is a reminder that the most critical work of the education community is to create inclusive learning environments that foster learner engagement and develop expert learners who graduate realizing “their true learning potentials in the wider worlds of social well-being, creativity, and employment” (p. 6). is this not the purpose of education? references aac&u. 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(2018, july 31). making space for everyone in makerspaces. ubc vancouver student services. https://stu https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/779141 https://www.kurzweiledu.com/udl-three-principles-p4.html http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_cpb.pdf https://educationalpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1302_policyperspectives-1.pdf https://educationalpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1302_policyperspectives-1.pdf https://firstgen.naspa.org/files/dmfile/factsheet-01.pdf https://time.com/5786710/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality/ https://time.com/5786710/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality/ https://www1.ucdenver.edu/wellness/facilities https://resources.wellcertified.com/articles/why-universal-design-is-critical-to-creating-truly-healthy-spaces/ https://resources.wellcertified.com/articles/why-universal-design-is-critical-to-creating-truly-healthy-spaces/ https://stu/ whitmer: inclusive campus environments current issues in education, 22(1) 11 author notes susan whitmer susan whitmer studios susanwhitmer@susanwhitmerstudios.com guest editor notes sean m. leahy, phd arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au mailto:susanwhitmer@susanwhitmerstudios.com mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au whitmer: inclusive campus environments current issues in education, 22(1) 12 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf helping stem students thrive: adult learning pathways current issues in education, 22(1) 1 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age helping stem students thrive: adult learning pathways patrice torcivia prusko, mba, phd teaching and learning lab harvard graduate school of education abstract: surrounded by stories of underrepresented and first-generation students lagging behind or switching out of stem majors, three women saw an opportunity to shift the narrative. they created a new online speaker series, the next 10 years: helping stem students thrive; where faculty, staff, and students could share ideas, learn from one another, and build a community. they were all members of the women in stem cooperative, which consists of a group of volunteers who are dedicated to advancing women in stem in their respective communities. it is now in its third season with participants from 56 institutions, eight organizations, four countries, and 23 states. keywords: stem, women, equity, thrive citation: prusko, p. t. (2021). helping stem students thrive: adult learning pathways. current issues in education, 22(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1934 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 11/2/2020 helping stem students thrive: adult learning pathways surrounded by stories of underrepresented and first-generation students lagging behind or switching out of stem majors, three women saw an opportunity to shift the narrative. they created a new online speaker series, the next 10 years: helping stem students thrive; where faculty, staff, and students could share ideas, learn from one another, and build a community. http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1934 reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 2 they were all members of the women in stem cooperative, which consists of a group of volunteers who are dedicated to advancing women in stem in their respective communities. they created this series as an attempt to address some of the systemic challenges faced by students in stem, and highlighted opportunities for improving student success. in addition to sharing knowledge, one of the goals for this series was to provide a space where students and guest speakers could interact with one another, as well as share challenges and successes that would ultimately build a community where, together, everyone could contribute to and perpetuate stories of stem students thriving. the women quickly learned that there was a global desire to better understand how we can help stem students thrive when 140 people from 56 institutions, eight organizations, four countries, and 23 states registered for this event. institutions spanned 4-year colleges, community colleges, k-12, and the private sector. they included: paris ile-de-france digital university, universidad del sagrado corazón, greenfield community college, harvard, penn state, university of wisconsin madison, union college, schreiner university, cornell, university at buffalo, and the society of nuclear medicine, to name a few. the first in the series aired on october 11, 2017 featuring dr. lynne molter, dr. julia thom-levy, dr. elisabeth etopio and dr. richard lamb, discussing trends and innovation in higher ed. season one covered topics related to teaching and learning, and season two covered topics surrounding the stem environment and how we might reimagine it in ways that impart a sense of belonging to women in the field. guests and specific topics are listed in appendix 1. the series is currently led by four women in institutions in the northeast. they just kicked off season three, helping stem students thrive: adult learning pathways, which focuses on shifts in student demographics and how that intersects with women’s experiences in different educational environments, such as community college, online schooling, undergraduate and graduate school, and alternative forms of education. this season, in addition to guests sharing their research and discussing programs they are leading, we are including the authentic, personal stories of women. the first session took place on oct. 23, focusing on community college, with bilge avci, economist working on social justice issues and policies impacting disadvantaged communities, and dina refki, executive director, center for women in government and society, rockefeller college, suny albany, sharing their research, and ashley stenel, phd student, roswell park-cancer sciences sharing her journey from single mother attending community college to her phd. each session begins with an introduction by our distinguished thought leaders, followed by institutional representatives who share insights from their campuses. participants may join the conversation, ask questions, share experiences, build networks, and learn more about: • innovations that can expand female or underrepresented minority student participation and success in stem undergraduate education, • effective evidence-based stem teaching practices commonly adopted at research universities, • unique institutional and cultural challenges to achieving stem diversity, • what “difference at scale” looks like. the author’s research was on nontraditional women returning to school to study stem. each woman in her study initially pursued stem, but, lacking a support system and meaningful goals, did not persist. later in life, they arrived at a “tipping point” where all the pieces were https://www.linkedin.com/in/bilge-avci-a0a89317 https://www.linkedin.com/in/dina-refki-43a5014 https://www.linkedin.com/in/dina-refki-43a5014 https://www.albany.edu/womeningov/ https://www.albany.edu/womeningov/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyestenzel reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 3 finally in harmony, rekindling their motivation to return to school to complete a stem degree. each of these women experienced a “critical event” that enabled them to see how a stem degree could empower them to achieve personally meaningful goals. additionally, they now had guidance from a mentor and, crucially, a support system in place. it was these transformations that initially motivated the author to start this series, in hopes that it could be a “tipping point” for other women. it begs the question: how might we use technology to connect women across the globe? if you are interested in speaking or being added to our list-serv please contact the coordinators of this effort. please go here to view recordings from 2017-18, 2018-19 and 201920. appendix 1 season one covered topics related to teaching and learning: higher education trends ● lynne a. molter, scd, swarthmore college, professor of engineering, consortium for stem success ● julia thom levy, phd, cornell university, professor and vice provost for academic innovation ● elisabeth etopio, phd, university at buffalo, interim assistant dean for teacher education, interim director of the teacher education institute ● richard lamb, phd, university at buffalo, associate professor and director of the neurocognition science laboratory learning spaces ● jeanne l. narum, learning spaces collaboratory ● rebecca rotundo, ma, university at buffalo, instructional technology specialist at the center for educational innovation ● lisa stephens, phd, office of the suny provost, sr. strategistsuny academic innovation ● xin li, phd, cornell university, associate university librarian institutional practices ● nancy shapiro, phd, university system of maryland, associate vice chancellor for education and outreach and special assistant to the chancellor ● renetta tull, phd, university of maryland, baltimore county, associate vice provost for strategic initiatives at the university of maryland, baltimore county (umbc), and founding director/co-pi for the 12-institution university system of maryland’s (usm) promise agep, and codirector/co-pi for the usm’s louis stokes alliance for minority participation (lsamp) ● letitia thomas, phd, university at buffalo, director of stem diversity programs ● amy godert, phd, cornell university, executive director academic success programs introductory undergraduate courses in stem ● jay labov, phd, national research council, senior advisor for education and communication, national academies of sciences https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=plqwjbtqvhmcv64w98ejnhw4lnypx52kck https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=plt1ove34eaucfbjk83u0dkznshxxjyr73 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=plt1ove34eaua9vhpjidahlovfrkz5lsgl https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=plt1ove34eaua9vhpjidahlovfrkz5lsgl reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 4 ● catherine middlecamp, phd, university of wisconsin-madison, professor in the nelson institute for environmental studies ● liesl folks, phd, mba, university at buffalo, dean of the school of engineering and applied sciences and a professor of electrical engineering ● michael fontaine, phd, cornell university, professor and associate vice provost of undergraduate education season two covered topics looked at the stem environment and how we might reimagine it in ways that women can have a sense of belonging. sexual harassment in stem /sexual harassment report from national academies ● alexis stokes, director of diversity, inclusion and belonging, harvard john a. paulson school of engineering and applied sciences ● sharon nolan weiss, director, equity, diversity and inclusion, university at buffalo ● irene ngun, associate program officer with committee on women in science, engineering, and medicine (cwsem), a standing committee of the national academies course design for inclusion in stem ● roberta sullivan, emerging technologies librarian and head of media services, university at buffalo ● martin samuels, harvard university ● thomas tobin, program area director—distance teaching & learning, university of wisconsin at madison mentoring women in stem ● bryan dewsbury, assistant professor, university of rhode island ● letitia thomas, assistant dean for diversity, school of engineering and applied sciences; school of engineering and applied sciences, university at buffalo ● florence hudson, founder & ceo of fdhint, llc ● lisa utzinger shen, doctoral student, harvard graduate school of education the current state of women in stem: what the research says ● mia ong, terc ● liesl folks, dean of the school of engineering and applied sciences, university at buffalo reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 5 author notes patrice torcivia prusko, mba, phd teaching and learning lab, harvard graduate school of education patrice_torcivia@gse.harvard.edu guest editor notes sean m. leahy, phd arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au mailto:patrice_torcivia@gse.harvard.edu mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 6 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf current issues in education, 26(2) 1 volume 26, issue 2 november 20th, 2025 issn 1099-839x a systematic review of reviews on problem-based learning and its effectiveness portia amoa-danquah washington state university kira j. carbonneau washington state university abstract: this systematic review of reviews is an exploratory study that aims to synthesize the myriad of reviews about problem-based learning (pbl) to provide a consensus regarding the definition, components, effectiveness, and most common areas of application of pbl. this will provide educators and policymakers with a robust framework to enhance instructional design and implementation in various educational contexts. the review examined 22 studies, primarily focusing on healthcare education but also including other fields. findings indicate that pbl is consistently defined as a learner-centered approach, emphasizing collaborative learning and problem-solving. evidence supports the effectiveness of pbl in enhancing student engagement, critical thinking, and professional competencies, although its impact on theoretical knowledge is mixed. factors such as instructor expertise, cultural context, and subject matter influence the effectiveness of pbl. keywords: problem-based learning, pbl, systematic review, student-centered, problem-solving citation: amoa-danquah, p., carbonneau, k.j. (date). a systematic review of reviews on problem-based learning and its effectiveness. current issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2293 accepted: 05/09/2025 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2293 amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 2 a systematic review of reviews on problem-based learning and its effectiveness problem-based learning (pbl) is defined as a teaching approach in which students acquire knowledge and skills by addressing and resolving real-world issues (marra et al., 2024). pbl emerged decades ago at mcmaster university in canada as a response to the limitations of traditional teaching methods (servant-miklos, 2019). this innovative instructional strategy was soon recognized as a superior approach for equipping medical students with the skills and knowledge essential for their future careers (barrows, 1996). studies have delineated the effectiveness of pbl in the classroom. however, some studies have highlighted the aversion some students and teachers have to the application of this method. although pbl is implemented in some schools (hallinger & bridges, 2017; gao et al., 2020; manuaba et al., 2022; merritt et al., 2017), studies have found that it may not be pedagogically sound for certain teachers and learners (kong et al., 2014). not only are there diverse and conflicting definitions of pbl, but there also does not seem to be a consensus about its effectiveness across disciplines. a systematic review is considered a structured, reliable, and valid method for providing a comprehensive synthesis of available pertinent studies on a specific topic (aromataris & pearson, 2014). nevertheless, the downside of having multiple reviews on the same topic is that the differing results can be confusing for decision-makers, making it challenging for them to draw definitive conclusions. jadad et al. (1997) proposed a solution to this problem by suggesting systematic reviews of reviews. this approach helps determine the divergence or uniformity of review results. the aim of this systematic review of reviews is to synthesize findings on the effectiveness of pbl and identify factors influencing its success. it also seeks to explore what 21st-century skills are nurtured by pbl, establish a consensus on its core components, explore its common applications across disciplines, and examine teacher and student responses to this instructional method. overall, the primary goal of this review of reviews is to provide a comprehensive understanding of pbl’s instructional efficacy by synthesizing the existing literature, while also identifying the right questions to ask moving forward. a plethora of systematic reviews have been conducted over the years on the topic of the effectiveness of pbl (e.g., akl, 2014; manuaba et al., 2022; qin et al., 2016; sayyah et al., 2017). this review encompasses a broad analysis of the literature, aiming to classify existing research based on study designs spanning diverse educational populations from elementary to professional graduate school. another reason for conducting a systematic review of reviews on the topic of pbl is the wealth of research in this area and the need for a comprehensive synthesis of findings. pbl has garnered significant attention as an instructional strategy, and numerous reviews have been conducted across diverse academic domains. however, a consolidated review of these reviews is essential to distill overarching patterns, identify consensus, and uncover any disciplinary nuances. such an inclusive examination is essential for offering educators, researchers, and policymakers a better understanding of the broad applicability and effectiveness, and challenges of pbl. by examining the collective evidence across disciplines, we provide an overview that can inform educational practices and guide our future research in pbl. research questions 1. what is the consensus across the articles included in this review about the definition of pbl? amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 3 (a) what are the components of a pbl classroom? 2. what does the evidence in the reviews present regarding the effectiveness of pbl? (a) what are some factors that could impact the effectiveness of pbl (e.g., anxiety)? 3. in what discipline is pbl most commonly applied in education? method in this study, we gathered information about the consensus on pbl and synthesized findings from the included reviews to answer the research questions. we thoroughly checked to ensure that the data from individual studies in each meta-analysis were not used more than once (smith et al., 2011). search parameters our inclusion criteria required each review to: (a) have examined the effectiveness of pbl on students’ learning; (b) explicitly mentioned pbl in the title; (c) have been published in english, and employ a review methodology, such as systematic review, scoping review, narrative review, critical review, or meta-analysis; (c) have been published in a peer-reviewed journal; and (5) have been conducted in a formal educational environment with a student population (e.g., healthcare program versus at a museum). reviews were excluded when the study: (a) did not assess the effectiveness of pbl, (b) compared pbl in its entirety to a different method of pbl, or (c) lacked a clear statement identifying pbl as the primary focus of the study. a flow diagram illustrating the literature search process and the outcomes of the study selection is shown in figure 1. figure 1 flow diagram of study amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 4 publication search we conducted a search in the eric and psycinfo electronic databases with publication years ranging from 2014 to 2023. it generated 66 reviews across both databases. our decision to limit our search to these two reputable databases is based on the fact that eric is recognized as one of the best databases for peer-reviewed education research. given that one of our research questions enquires about the factors that impact pbl’s effectiveness, such as anxiety, we included psycinfo as a relevant database for our search. we also searched the references of the chosen studies, and new reviews were included (n = 6). following the removal of duplicates and those that did not meet the inclusion criteria after reviewing the titles and abstracts, we were left with a total of 22 reviews included in our systematic review of reviews. as illustrated in figure 1, six studies from this pool of 22 were excluded due to reasons such as focusing on a specific type of pbl, comparing versions of pbl, or examining unrelated outcomes. this brought the total to 16 studies. from the reference search, 11 additional studies were identified, of which five were excluded because they either did not meet the inclusion criteria or could not be retrieved. this resulted in 6 additional reviews included in our synthesis, bringing the total number of studies to 22. our search term was “problem-based learning” and systematic review for both databases. we opted not to include unpublished reviews due to time constraints and to streamline the screening process by focusing on a select number of studies. results our analysis delves into both the consensus on the definition of pbl and the identified components of pbl, thereby providing an overview of current perspectives and structures in the reviewed literature. definition of pbl central to the definitions of pbl in the reviews was the portrayal of pbl as a studentcentered educational approach, emphasizing collaborative learning in small groups. according to the reviews, pbl incorporates collaborative learning (ma & lu, 2019), where students work together in small groups to construct knowledge (davidson & major, 2014). however, pbl differs from collaborative learning in several ways. for instance, although collaborative learning is a central component of pbl, pbl itself extends beyond collaborative learning by integrating a structured problem-solving process into its methodology. in pbl, students not only collaborate to solve a problem and construct knowledge but also engage in solving real-world problems that require critical thinking, the application of theoretical concepts, and interdisciplinary approaches (wosinski et al., 2018). collaborative learning, on the other hand, primarily focuses on students working together to achieve shared learning goals without the necessity of solving real-world problems. it emphasizes teamwork, communication skills, and cooperative knowledge construction, which are valuable in various educational contexts but may not always require the depth of inquiry and application required in pbl (davidson & major, 2014). another example of the way pbl differs from and extends collaborative learning is that it places students in an environment where they are not just working together but are also required to engage in deeper cognitive processes, such as solving real-world problems and engaging in self-directed learning, and the application of critical thinking skills (abdul ghani et al., 2022; tan, 2021). while collaborative learning emphasizes teamwork and shared responsibilities among group members, pbl goes several steps amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 5 further by requiring students to take individual accountability for their learning as well as to incorporate knowledge from various sources to solve ambiguous, ill-structured problems (chang et al., 2022; hung et al., 2019). pbl is uniformly highlighted across the reviews as essential for addressing real-world problems effectively. the consensus among these studies emphasizes pbl's focus on active student participation, collaborative teamwork, and the application of theoretical knowledge to practical problems. the definitions provided by demirel and dağyar (2016), zhang et al. (2015), and wosinski et al. (2018), reinforced this perspective. they similarly depicted pbl as centered on student engagement and practical problem-solving, aligning with the broader consensus on the method's educational philosophy. for instance, demirel and dağyar’s (2016) explanation that pbl encourages students to accumulate knowledge across different subjects resonates with the broader understanding of pbl as a mostly multidisciplinary approach that facilitates deep learning. these authors also emphasized that the pbl process enables students to learn how to think critically, operationalize research, engage actively in the learning process, and construct their own knowledge of the subject matter. with their description of pbl as a method that enables students to acquire and nurture problem-solving skills by making use of their diverse experiences, they also subtly highlighted the concept that pbl is a pedagogical strategy designed to align with how students naturally learn (turcotte et al., 2022). in a pbl classroom, the individuality of each learner can be better supported, allowing them to explore, enquire, question, and construct their knowledge in a manner that is meaningful to them. while variations in terminology and specific emphases exist across the reviews, the foundational elements of pbl, its student-centered nature, collaborative learning, and focus on practical application, remain consistent. these elements collectively affirm that pbl is a tool that aims not only to impart theoretical knowledge but also to equip students with the critical skills needed to navigate real-world problems they may encounter in their professional careers. in the next section we present our findings for the three key components of pbl, namely: ill-structured problems, collaboration process, and teacher-led facilitation. however, while conducting this review of reviews, we noticed an emerging theme through each of these components: iteration. iteration, as observed in some reviews, is a feature of pbl that influences the stages in the problem-solving process. rather than following a linear path to arriving at a solution to the ill-structured problem, students engage in cycles of inquiry where they ask themselves and their peers questions, revisit their ideas and approaches, and adjust them based on new information and feedback from peers and the facilitator. this iterative approach is important because it mirrors the complexity of real-world problem-solving, where initial attempts often call for adjustments based on feedback. by acknowledging that iteration is a constant and crucial part of the knowledge acquisition process during pbl, we gain a better understanding of how students evolve in the learning process. as they tackle ambiguous, illstructured problems, work collaboratively with their peers, and interact with the facilitator, iteration opens them up to consider more information, think critically, deeply reflect on the problem and potential solutions, and refine their thinking. components of pbl in this section, we identify the key components that define a learning environment as pbl. these components of pbl, namely ill-structured problems, collaboration process, and teacher-led facilitation, are drawn from the studies included in our review. according to the literature, these are the essential features that distinguish pbl from other instructional amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 6 approaches. before doing so, we begin by examining the role of iteration in the problem-solving process. iteration during pbl problem-solving. in problem-solving during pbl, iteration is crucial as real-world problems often demand iterative approaches for effective resolution, deeming important the need to test and refine ideas continuously (carlson et al., 2018). iteration in problem-solving has been highlighted as significant in the problem-solving context, where each cycle of testing and revision brings new insights and improvements (adams et al., 2003; wynn & eckert, 2017). although this was not present in all our included reviews, nine of the 22 studies provided detailed information about the problem-solving aspect of pbl by describing the iterative nature of this process. according to the review by wilder (2015), the pbl process begins with students identifying the problem, brainstorming for potential solutions, and recognizing areas in their comprehension where they may need extra help from a peer or a facilitator. this initial phase sets the stage for iterative cycles, where students refine their hypothesis based on new information and feedback from peers. the iterative nature of pbl is further exemplified by the continuous formulation, testing against evidence, and refinement based on new insights and information gathered during self-directed learning (abdul ghani et al., 2022; kong et al., 2014; merrit et al., 2017). for instance, kong et al. (2014) emphasized that the pbl process involves students encountering “problem-solving situations in small groups” (p. 2), where they actively search for information and integrate it into their understanding through iterative group discussions and feedback loops. this iterative process supports the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for effective learning. although hung et al. (2019) did not emphasize iteration in the pbl process, they touched on how pbl shifts paradigms from passive reception to active inquiry and iterative problemsolving. they also observed that pbl encourages students' engagement in problem analysis, information gathering, collaborative discussion, and solution formation. alrahlah (2016) supported this view, describing in detail how pbl uses problems as the starting point, leading students through cycles of research on the topic, discussion, solution-finding, and reflection. specifically, a pbl session begins with the presentation of a complex problem to a group of students. to delve deeper into the problem, students gather additional information through research. during the investigation phase, students pause to reflect on and analyze the gathered information, posing questions and making assumptions to grasp the root causes of the problem. subsequently, they develop new theories based on their own knowledge, observations and discussions. they then break into smaller groups or work alone to delve deeper into specific aspects of the problem. afterward, they come back together to discuss their findings, reconsider initial ideas, and incorporate new insights. at the end of the session, they reflect on their problem-solving journey, receive feedback, and assess the quality of their work. according to the reviews, these three essential components also emphasize the integration of both prior and new knowledge in practical contexts, fostering self-directed learning, critical thinking, and problem-solving. the teacher’s role in guiding students as they construct their own understanding emerges as a constant theme across definitions, highlighting its importance in cultivating an enriching pbl environment. in examining the reviews of reviews, we noticed that not all reviews included in this study provided detailed description of how ill-structured problems, active peer-collaboration, and teacher-led facilitation are applied within pbl. amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 7 the following paragraphs will examine how various reviews have detailed the implementation of these components. ill-structured problems. ill-structured problems, typically characterized by their complexity, ambiguity, and the absence of a single correct solution, serve as the central mechanism for driving student engagement and learning within pbl. the reviews show that the presentation and format of ill-structured problems vary significantly. alrahlah (2016), for example, described how pbl scenarios, such as patient case simulations, written scenarios, and even video clips, reflect real-life situations, requiring students to integrate knowledge from multiple sources to solve them. similarly, hung et al. (2019) mentioned the evolution of ill-structured problem presentation in pbl with the advent of electronic and internet-based tools and environments for delivering content. authenticity and realism are also crucial in the design of ill-structured problems. abdul ghani et al. (2022) emphasized the importance of “high fidelity simulations” in creating authentic learning experiences. in their review, they observed that these simulations involve role playing and using real medical equipment, for example, to replicate clinical settings, making the learning process more relevant and engaging for students. the authenticity of scenarios is paramount, and expert advice is often sought to ensure the cases reflect real-life situations. furthermore, akl (2014) cited an example of a scenario where a motivated student’s academic performance declines. this example enables pbl learners in teacher education programs to investigate the relationships among motivation, learning theories, and student behavior. across different reviews (abdul ghani et al., 2022; alrahlah, 2016; hallinger & bridges, 2017; hung et al., 2019; merritt et al., 2017), a recurring emphasis emerged on the realism and complexity embedded within ill-structured problems. the operationalization of ill-structured problems also varied significantly based on the students' educational level and the instructional approach (merritt et al., 2017). for younger students, problems tend to be more structured with clear guidance. for instance, merrit et al., (2017) cited karaçalli & korur, (2014), who described elementary school students in a pbl class being provided with essential information about how electricity impacts their daily lives, after which they completed projects involving basic electric circuits from the curriculum. additionally, the degree of student involvement in defining the ill-structured problem and learning objective varies. some approaches are more instructor-led, providing structured problems and objectives (hallinger & bridges, 2017), while others are more student-centered, encouraging learners to take ownership of their learning process by identifying their own problems and solutions. for instance, in a student-led pbl assignment, students identify a genuine issue at their school and create a tool to aid in understanding and resolving the problem, whereas in an instructor-led problem, the instructor presents students with the school problem and a data set to guide their analysis. collaboration process. the reviews offered nuanced perspectives about how the collaboration process is operationalized in pbl. a recurring theme showed an emphasis on small-group dynamics. for example, in their review, alrahlah (2016) stated that students, often organized into groups of five to nine, engage in collaborative activities where they initiate discussions, identify learning objectives, and collectively solve complex problems. additionally, in healthcare education settings, students work together to analyze patient case studies to propose comprehensive treatment plans. their review outlined a five-step process where groups are formed, roles are clarified, tasks are assigned, independent research is conducted, and findings amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 8 are collaboratively reviewed and synthesized. this structured approach ensures that all group members actively contribute and learn from each other. further, zhou et al. (2016) provided cultural insights into collaborative practices within pbl, particularly in chinese educational contexts. these authors observed the importance of respectful communication styles that influence group interactions. in chinese pharmacy education, for example, students participate in structured group discussions to explore clinical scenarios, with an emphasis on consensus-building and collective decision-making to address patient care challenges effectively. in their review, introverted students tend to have difficulty participating in these discussions. technology in pbl was also discussed. for instance, merritt et al. (2017) noted the integration of digital tools to enhance the pbl experience. high-fidelity simulations and multimedia tools (akl, 2014) can create engaging and interactive learning environments, allowing students to collaborate more effectively. for example, in healthcare education, digital platforms enable students to simulate real-world clinical environments, practicing teamwork and communication skills essential for professional practice. additionally, kong et al. (2014) highlighted a structured approach to collaboration within pbl, detailing a five-step process: analysis of problems, establishment of learning objectives, collection of information, summarizing, and reflection. in this model, students work in small groups to tackle problem-solving situations. each group must determine the necessary information to understand the problem, communicate findings, and re-formulate the problem to address it effectively. in the realm of management education, hallinger and bridges (2017) briefly mentioned the importance of student-led learning within small groups. they discussed a “model of problem-based management” (p. 3), which includes characteristics such as learning centered around real-world problems, students taking charge of their own learning, and implementing simulated solutions that they demonstrate to the group and facilitator, if possible. they also emphasized the crucial role of small-group collaboration, where students collectively analyze significant workplace issues, pursue self-directed learning, and receive ongoing formative feedback from peers and facilitators. the collaboration process was also explored through a detailed description of student roles in pbl. in their review, abdul ghani et al. (2022) stated that students are placed in groups of 8 to 10 to discuss problem triggers, identify and clarify terminology, categorize issues, brainstorm hypotheses, develop inquiry plans, and refine their hypotheses based on evidence they gather through their research. this review also underscored several themes that foster collaboration, including establishing guidelines to ensure equal participation among group members, fostering teamwork within groups, and promoting healthy competition between groups to motivate students. the authors also emphasized the use of interactive tools, such as online quizzes and social media, for sharing knowledge. wosinski et al. (2018) highlighted the role of group learning in developing clinical reasoning skills in nursing education. students collaborate in small groups to exchange, evaluate, and discuss information to address clinical case studies. the process involves dividing tasks among group members, researching topics, summarizing findings, and organizing the knowledge constructed. this review outlined essential skills students need to master this process, such as managing emotional states, adapting to a seemingly unstructured format common to pbl, time management, and learning from and collaborating with peers. for instance, when presented with a clinical case study, students must actively listen to each participant's contributions, focus on problem-solving, and leverage each member's strengths. amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 9 teacher-led facilitation. out of the 22 studies included in our review, only seven specifically described the role of teacher-led facilitation in pbl. it is the facilitators' job to orchestrate inclusive discussions where all group members actively participate (abdul ghani et al., 2022). according to the authors, the facilitator is also responsible for assigning specific learning roles tailored to each student's strengths and interests, thereby fostering a collaborative environment enriched by diverse perspectives that contribute to comprehensive problem-solving strategies. additionally, abdul ghani et al. (2022) stated that facilitators guide students’ learning by implementing specific tasks within pbl to incentivize student engagement and achievement. these rewards, specifically focused on students’ learning process and not necessarily the final result, are given at the end of the pbl process. although they did not state what exactly the rewards should be, they mentioned that they are designed to recognize and reinforce positive learning behaviors during both individual and collaborative problem-solving activities, aiming to sustain students’ individual motivation and commitment to the collaborative learning process. similarly, akl (2014) emphasized the importance of the tutor focusing on the learning process rather than just the result. although he did not delve deep into this component, wilder (2015) briefly noted the impact of teacher expertise and experience on pbl process and outcomes. he specifically highlighted that for tutors to better facilitate meaningful learning experiences, it is imperative they have extensive pbl experience and robust subject matter knowledge. only then can they effectively guide students through complex problems, provide timely feedback, and scaffold learning experiences that align with the curriculum's objectives. this makes the issue of tutor expertise somewhat complex, as alrahlah’s (2016) review showed that students taught by peer tutors who facilitate the process but are not necessarily subjectmatter experts performed slightly better on final exams compared to those taught by content experts. the reason was that the experts overdo it and may be somewhat rigid due to their expertise in the field, whereas student tutors are able to better relate and understand the challenges and process students go through when constructing knowledge. additionally, merritt et al. (2017) delineated the multifaceted role of tutors as facilitators in pbl, detailing their responsibilities beyond mere information dissemination. the authors stressed that tutors should not only distribute worksheets and lead discussions but also play a crucial role in guiding students through the knowledge construction process. this guidance includes prompting students to explore and analyze information critically, verify hypotheses, and construct reasoned arguments among their peers. according to alrahlah (2016), it is essential to recognize that one primary goal of pbl is not only to impart knowledge but also to foster a broad range of essential learning outcomes. these include assisting students in constructing a broad and adaptable knowledge foundation, enhancing collaboration skills and the ability to successfully solve problems, fostering intrinsic motivation for learning, and developing selfdirected learning skills. the review included an example where tutors guide students by prompting them with questions that encourage deeper understanding and more efficient problemsolving, an approach which empowers students to engage in self-directed inquiry and mutual stimulation within their group. hallinger and bridges (2017) discussed the differences between "problem-stimulated" and "student-centered" projects and the role the tutor plays. in problem-stimulated projects, the tutor provides necessary resources, discussion questions, as well as the learning goals. this structure suggests that the instructor takes the lead in setting the educational agenda and ensuring that students focus on specific learning outcomes predetermined by the instructor. on the other hand, in student-centered projects, students have more say in identifying learning objectives, amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 10 sourcing resources, and formulating guiding questions. finally, akl (2014) stated that tutors must know how to adapt their instructional strategies to suit the dynamic nature of pbl. this may involve preparing mini-lectures or providing targeted feedback to address specific learning gaps identified during problem-solving sessions. effectiveness of pbl several of the studies we reviewed, including wang et al. (2016) and qin et al. (2016), affirmed that pbl effectively enhances the overall learning outcome. they emphasized pbl’s role in deepening understanding and promoting higher-order thinking skills such as analytical thinking and problem-solving abilities (hallinger & bridges, 2017). for example, qin et al. (2016) observed that students in pbl classes scored significantly higher in various aspects of the medical educational environment compared to those in lecture-based learning (lbl) classes. specifically, they found substantial differences favoring the pbl group in medical educational environment scores (wmd 9.10, p < 0.00001). additionally, students' perceptions of learning (wmd 2.84, p < 0.0001), perceptions of teachers (wmd 1.77, p < 0.0001), academic selfperceptions (wmd 1.06, p < 0.00001), perceptions of atmosphere (wmd 1.76, p < 0.00001), and social self-perceptions (wmd 1.19, p < 0.00001) were significantly higher in the pbl group. the authors concluded that pbl is more effective in enhancing students' knowledge and skills, leading to improved performance in clinical exams and faculty evaluations. pbl also promotes critical thinking, creates a supportive and pleasant learning environment, and positively influences students' attitudes and opinions about their educational programs. wang et al. (2016) corroborated qin et al.’s (2016) findings by demonstrating that pbl significantly enhances students' knowledge and clinical skills compared to traditional teaching methods. their analysis showed a significant improvement in knowledge scores for the pbl group (smd 0.76, p = 0.0006). in terms of clinical skills, studies revealed a substantial advantage for the pbl group (smd 1.46, p < 0.001). their studies found that pbl students consistently achieved better knowledge and skill scores. results from another study (ma & lu, 2019) indicated that pbl may not improve factual knowledge acquisition. however, the authors also stated that pbl did appear effective in fostering deeper cognitive processing and enhancing student comprehension of complex concepts. for example, the authors stated that there were significant improvements in theoretical knowledge, skills, and case analysis scores with pbl compared to lbl. the analysis reported an increase of 1.16 points in theoretical knowledge (p < .00001), a 1.56-point improvement in skills, and a 1.54-point enhancement in case analysis for pbl groups versus lbl groups. these results provide evidence of pbl's capacity to markedly enhance students' skill performance. in fields such as pediatric medical education, where mastering clinical diagnostic skills and problem-solving abilities is crucial, pbl has emerged as a superior instructional approach compared to traditional teaching methods. in terms of critical thinking, manuaba et al. (2022) and kong et al. (2014) presented mixed results. whereas kong et al. (2014) found pbl to be useful in improving nursing students’ critical thinking skills when compared to the traditional teaching method, manuaba et al. (2022) suggested that pbl does not consistently actually demonstrate a significant advantage over traditional teaching methods in terms of developing problem-solving skills (p=.47), critical thinking (p=.29), and self-directed learning. this discrepancy underscores the variability in pbl’s impact on critical thinking across different educational contexts. conversely, alrahlah (2016) and abdul ghani (2022) stated that during the pbl process, the facilitator ensures that learners are actively engaged in their learning process. other reviews amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 11 highlighted pbl’s positive impact on learner engagement and the development of practical competencies essential for professional settings. for example, demirel and dağyar, (2016) discovered that, compared to traditional teaching methods, students taught through pbl generally had a more positive attitude towards their courses. nevertheless, their study, which calculated the effect sizes of pbl on student attitudes, indicated that while pbl positively influenced attitudes, the effect size was relatively small (g=.44) in conclusion, while specific outcomes may vary, the collective evidence supports pbl as an effective educational strategy. it enhances learning outcomes, fosters critical thinking in a specific context, boosts learner engagement, develops practical competencies, enhances attitudes, and improves specific skills and knowledge necessary for professional practice across diverse educational settings. challenges to pbl’s effectiveness. some reviews emphasized the challenges that could impact the effectiveness of pbl and admitted that pbl may not always be suitable for learning (kong et al., 2014; zhou et al., 2016). for example, zhou et al. (2016) identified several obstacles to implementing pbl, including the need for instructors to undergo professional development training to effectively facilitate this method. they also highlighted the logistical challenge of reducing class sizes because smaller class sizes are better suited for pbl, and this could potentially increase educational costs. kong et al. (2014), however, argued that pbl may not be universally suitable for all students and instructors, suggesting variability in acceptance and effectiveness of pbl across different educational settings. they went on to emphasize the facilitator’s role in pbl programs, specifically stating that effective facilitation significantly enhances learning outcomes. for instance, facilitators who provide clear guidance, foster collaborative environments, and manage group dynamics effectively can mitigate issues such as poor communication, absence of mutual support, and unresolved conflicts among group members. these challenges emphasize the importance of skilled facilitators and supportive educational environments in maximizing the benefits of pbl. other challenges mentioned in the reviews were the management of teacher and student anxiety (hallinger & bridges, 2017), group dynamics (jin & bridges, 2016), and assessment methods (hung et al., 2019). hallinger and bridges (2017) delineated concerns regarding student and faculty anxiety in adapting to pbl. they noted that both students and instructors may experience apprehension about their new roles, including learning collaboration skills and adapting to new teaching, learning, and assessment methods. with regards to assessment methods, the traditional assessments used for traditional pedagogy will not be effective in assessing the higher-order thinking skills in pbl, and as such could lead to some anxiety. a similar finding was presented in jin and bridges’s (2016) review, which found that students’ learning outcomes and the way they learn in pbl classrooms are influenced by the assessment methods used, which can have both positive and negative effects. the adjustment process from traditional instruction to pbl instruction requires sufficient time for pbl lesson preparation, resources that support effective project implementation, and flexible scheduling to accommodate intensive learning sessions. cultural differences were also considered as a factor. for instance, ma and lu (2019) discussed how the effectiveness of pbl in china could be affected by the country’s culture and educational system, which differs from that of the west. this perspective was echoed by gao et al. (2020), who also pointed out the significance of cultural differences in the success of pbl, specifically pointing out the reluctance of chinese teachers and learners to engage in learning amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 12 this way because of the discomfort with students being in control of their learning. specifically, manuaba et al. (2022) noted factors such as how long students have been taught via pbl, the subject matter being studied, and students’ prior knowledge. wilder (2015) and kong et al. (2014) also briefly noted that lack of communication skills, discord, and stress during the peer collaboration process could impact pbl’s effectiveness. qin et al. (2016) and hung et al. (2019) underscored the significance of frequent evaluation and adaptable educational methods within pbl. the review also showed that both eslami et al. (2014) and wosinski et al. (2018) mentioned the critical role of instructor proficiency in pbl. eslami et al. (2014) noted that for pbl to be effective, the facilitator must be well-versed in the use of the instructional tool as well as have a high level of content knowledge, as this may significantly impact students’ performance. similarly, wosinski et al. (2018) highlighted that a tutor’s ability to combine content knowledge with pedagogical skills has a positive impact on learning outcomes. course type was also found to play a significant role. zhang et al. (2015) found that pbl is more effective in practical, hands-on courses compared to theory-based courses. their study suggests that the hands-on practical nature of laboratory settings aligns better with the pbl approach. this finding is supported by wilder (2015), who emphasized how important it is for students to have adequate prior knowledge about the subject matter in order to successfully participate in the pbl process and be able to be practical and apply it in certain courses. lastly, the duration of pbl exposure and the subject matter being taught were identified as influencing factors by manuaba et al. (2022). they suggested that these factors, along with students’ prior knowledge, play a role. this perspective adds another layer of complexity, indicating that the length of time students are engaged in pbl and the specific content area can influence outcomes. to conclude, while there are commonalities in recognizing the importance of instructor expertise and the influence of cultural and educational context, differences exist in the emphasis on general versus specific factors. for instance, demirel and dağyar (2016) suggested that general mediator variables (i.e., class sample size, field of science, education level, and application time) do not significantly impact students’ attitude towards pbl classes. other studies (e.g., gao et al., 2020; hallinger & bridges, 2017; kong et al., 2014; manuaba et al., 2022; wilder, 2015) highlight the importance of specific factors such as instructor expertise, course type, anxiety, group dynamics, communication, assessment methods, duration of exposure, and subject matter. these findings collectively highlight the multifaceted nature of factors influencing pbl’s effectiveness, suggesting that its success depends on a combination of contextual, instructor-related, and course-specific factors. disciplines table 1 is in answer to our final research question, which asks in what discipline pbl is most commonly applied in education. amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 13 table 1 distribution of disciplines utilizing pbl disciplines studies medical education alrahlah, (2016); demirel & dağyar, (2016); eslami et al., (2014); gao et. al, (2016); gao et al., (2020); hung et. al, (2019); jin & bridges, (2016); kong et al., (2014); ma & lu, (2019); manuaba & wu, (2022); merritt et al., (2017); qin et al, (2016); sayyah et. al. (2017); wang et. al, (2016); wilder, (2015); wosinski et al., (2018); zhang et al., (2015); zhou et. al, (2016); educational leadership hallinger & bridges (2017) gamified elements abdul ghani et al. (2022) teacher education akl (2014) discussion the goal of this study is to synthesize findings from a diverse array of literature to provide a comprehensive understanding of pbl’s definition, components, effectiveness, disciplinary applications, and influencing factors. the findings of this review reinforce that pbl, when implemented thoughtfully, can enrich educational outcomes in multiple ways. across diverse reviews, pbl has been associated with higher student engagement and the development of key skills, such as communication, teamwork, and domain-specific reasoning. in professional programs like medicine, for example, the collaborative analysis of patient cases in pbl is credited with sharpening students’ clinical reasoning and interpersonal skills. however, the evidence also indicates that the benefits of pbl are contingent on certain conditions. the positive effects tend to emerge most strongly under well-structured implementation, including appropriate problem design, effective facilitation, and supportive learning cultures. notably, while pbl generally enhances problem-solving capabilities and enthusiasm for learning, its impact on critical thinking remains equivocal, with some reviews finding significant gains (kong et al., 2014) and others reporting no difference compared to traditional methods (manuaba et al., 2022). this nuanced picture suggests that educators must carefully consider how to adopt pbl in order to maximize its advantages. in the discussion below, we elaborate on the broader implications of these findings for educational practice, from instructional design and teacher training to cultural adaptation and future applications, and we offer recommendations to navigate the challenges of pbl implementation. implications for educators and instructional design for educators and curriculum designers considering a shift toward pbl, this review highlights several key practices that can make the approach more effective. first, it is essential to structure small-group collaboration deliberately. pbl relies on students working in teams, and clear organization within those teams helps ensure that learning is productive. effective pbl amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 14 groups often assign clearly defined roles (wosinski et al., 2018) and responsibilities to each member, which promotes balanced participation and accountability (alrahlah, 2016). establishing such roles and norms guards against common pitfalls of group work. for instance, it helps prevent scenarios where a few students do all the work while others remain passive. instead, every student is expected to contribute, and the team can tackle the problem through coordinated effort. by attending to group structure and task distribution from the outset, educators can foster a collaborative climate in which students actively learn from one another (li et al., 2022). this finding resonates with social constructivist principles that knowledge is coconstructed; indeed, pbl’s success hinges on productive group processes, which effectively become the backbone of the learning experience (johnson & golombek, 2016). another crucial design element is the nature of the problems used in pbl. our review underscores the value of using ill-structured, authentic problems as the driving force for inquiry (hallinger & bridges, 2017; merritt et al., 2017). in contrast to well-defined textbook exercises, ill-structured problems have multiple unknowns, ambiguous parameters, and no single “right” solution (liu et al., 2020). such real-world complexity is by design: the aim is to push students to integrate knowledge from various subjects and think deeply about how to apply what they know. when confronted with a messy, authentic problem scenario, learners must draw on different disciplines and connect concepts in a holistic way, rather than simply recalling isolated facts. this process promotes more integrative and deep learning. for example, a medical pbl case on a patient’s condition might require understanding anatomy, biochemistry, and ethics simultaneously, mirroring the interdisciplinary problem-solving required in actual practice. research has found that problems situated in meaningful contexts compel students to engage in analysis and evaluation more rigorously, yielding a deeper grasp of the material (smith et al., 2022). the authenticity of pbl scenarios is likely to boost intrinsic motivation when learners perceive that the problem has real-world significance. thus, to leverage pbl’s full potential, educators should design problem scenarios that are realistic, complex, and open-ended, providing fertile ground for students to research, discuss, and learn actively. role of facilitators and teacher development central to the success of pbl is the role of the facilitator. rather than delivering content through lectures, the facilitator in pbl acts as a guide on the side, a subtle but pivotal shift in teacher function. the review findings repeatedly emphasize that skilled facilitation is critical for steering the inquiry process, prompting reflection, and maintaining an inclusive dialogue among students (akl, 2014; merritt et al., 2017). in a typical pbl session, the facilitator is present throughout the discussion to guide the students’ tutorial activities and thinking. this guidance does not mean giving students the answers; instead, effective facilitators use techniques such as asking open-ended questions, encouraging students to elaborate on their ideas, and periodically summarizing or clarifying key points. at some institutions with pbl, facilitators receive training on how to perform these roles (li et al., 2022). they learn how to ask probing questions, stimulate discussion, and prompt students to reflect on their reasoning. such training is important because traditional instructors may not innately know how to facilitate without lecturing. the facilitator must strike a balance between stepping back to let students direct their own learning and stepping in at the right moments to keep the group on track or to deepen the inquiry with a well-placed question. in sum, the central role of the facilitator means that pbl’s effectiveness is closely tied to teacher practices. educational leaders should thus make facilitator training and amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 15 support a priority, as a well-trained facilitator is the linchpin that keeps the student-centered inquiry both rigorous and inclusive. interdisciplinary and global applications of pbl one of the exciting implications of these findings is the potential for pbl to foster interdisciplinary learning and to be applied on a global scale. by its very design, problem-based learning breaks down traditional subject silos: real-world problems do not respect disciplinary boundaries, and students in a pbl setting quickly learn that they must draw knowledge from multiple domains to develop a solution. this aligns with modern educational goals of producing graduates who can think holistically and work across disciplines. in doing our review, we found that authentic problems often require a blending of perspectives. for example, a public health problem might involve biological, social, and statistical considerations all at once. through pbl, students routinely practice this kind of integrative thinking. they learn to see connections between theory and practice because the problem demands it. educators can leverage this by designing pbl curricula that intentionally span subject areas. the interdisciplinary nature of pbl is thus a strength that can inform future curriculum development. this suggests that pbl could be a core strategy in programs aiming to address complex societal issues where understanding the problem from multiple angles is crucial. in addition to crossing disciplinary lines, pbl also has a strong resonance with 21stcentury skills that are globally relevant. the skills nurtured by pbl, such as problem-solving, collaboration, self-directed learning, adaptability, and critical thinking, are often cited as essential for the modern workforce and for global citizenship (ahmed, 2024). as our world becomes more interconnected, the challenges we face (e.g., pandemics, environmental crises, social inequalities) are global in scope and require collaborative problem-solving on an international scale. pbl prepares students for this reality by giving them practice in tackling complex problems in teams. it is not surprising, then, that pbl has been adopted in various forms around the world, in both developed and developing countries. this review’s findings encourage educators to view pbl as a globally transferable model. with appropriate adaptation, a problem-based approach can be used to teach anything from primary school science to graduate-level business strategy. indeed, pbl has been successfully implemented in fields as diverse as law, nursing, engineering, economics, and beyond. this versatility speaks to a fundamental aspect of pbl, as it focuses on learning how to learn, a meta-skill that transcends disciplines and national curricula. finally, in light of these points, one broad implication is that educational policymakers and institutions might consider pbl as a framework for interdisciplinary programs and global partnerships. pbl’s emphasis on student-centered learning makes it a natural platform for interdisciplinary projects, design thinking challenges, and international case competitions. as a recommendation, schools and universities could pilot joint pbl modules across departments or even with partner institutions abroad, assessing outcomes in terms of student learning and engagement. if done carefully, such initiatives could produce graduates who are not only experts in their field but also skilled collaborators and innovators with a global outlook. limitations a few limitations of this study should be noted. first, the inclusion criteria were restricted to articles published in english, which may have led to the exclusion of relevant studies in other languages. second, the reliance on accessible reviews and peer-reviewed journals might have amoa-danquah et al.: a systematic review of problem-based learning current issues in education, 26(2) 16 introduced a publication bias, potentially overlooking valuable insights from non-peer-reviewed sources or even gray literature. across the reviews, methodological concerns such as lack of randomization, blinding, and allocation concealment were reported, increasing the risk of bias and reducing internal validity (gao et al., 2020; zhou et al., 2016). variability in study design, implementation, and evaluation of pbl, including differences in outcome measures, populations, and intervention types, further complicated comparisons and generalizability (eslami et al., 2014; zhang et al., 2015). geographic concentration was another limitation, as many included studies were conducted in china, restricting the applicability of results to broader educational contexts (ma & lu, 2019; qin et al., 2016). other reviews have also highlighted the reliance on self-report measures, such as interviews and reflective journals, which may be influenced by social desirability and fail to accurately reflect actual learning outcomes (eslami et al., 2014; jin & bridges, 2016). lastly, several studies evaluated outcomes over short time spans (e.g., one academic year), leaving the long-term effects of pbl largely unexplored (manuaba et al., 2022). conclusion to begin this review of reviews, we first identified and synthesized findings from 22 reviews of pbl to understand its definition, components, and applications across different educational contexts. from this, we found that pbl is consistently described as a studentcentered, collaborative approach that emphasizes solving real-world, ill-structured problems through collaborative work. we also analyzed how pbl is implemented across various disciplines, revealing that while it is currently predominantly used in healthcare education, its principles are adaptable to fields such as educational leadership and teacher training. finally, in our review of reviews, we explored factors that influence the success of pbl, such as instructor expertise, cultural context, group dynamics, and assessment methods. these factors were shown to either enhance or hinder the effectiveness of pbl, depending on how well they are managed in a classroom setting. the goal of this study was to synthesize the existing reviews to provide a comprehensive understanding of pbl’s instructional effectiveness, clarify its core components, and identify the key factors that contribute to its success or challenges. our findings suggest that while pbl is effective in promoting student engagement, critical thinking, and the development of practical, real-world skills, its impact on theoretical knowledge acquisition is mixed. factors such as the role of the facilitator, the complexity of the problems, and the cultural readiness for studentcentered learning play a significant role in determining how successful pbl is in various educational settings. to conclude, pbl’s success is largely dependent on contextual factors, including facilitator expertise, the design of ill-structured problems, group collaboration, and the cultural and institutional environment. while it shows great promise, particularly in healthcare education, its broad applicability across disciplines requires careful consideration of these variables to ensure it meets the learning needs of students. this review of reviews underscores the need for more standardized methods of implementation and long-term evaluations to further understand its impact and refine its application across different fields. references abdul ghani, a. s., abdul rahim, 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(2016). effectiveness of problem-based learning in chinese pharmacy education: a meta-analysis. bmc medical education, 16(1), 23. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-016-0546-z author notes portia amoa-danquah, m.a. https://orcid.org/0009-0004-7502-3933 washington state university portia.amoa-danquah@wsu.edu kira j. carbonneau, ph.d. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4686-1290 washington state university kira.carbonneau@wsu.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://orcid.org/0009-0004-7502-3933 mailto:portia.amoa-danquah@wsu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4686-1290 mailto:kira.carbonneau@wsu.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ understanding sel to create a sense of belonging: the role teachers play in addressing students’ social and emotional well-being current issues in education, 23(2) 1 volume 23, issue 2 october 28, 2022 issn 1099-839x understanding sel to create a sense of belonging: the role teachers play in addressing students’ social and emotional well-being blanca n. ibarra university of texas rio grande valley abstract: this inquiry examines the benefits of utilizing social-emotional learning in today’s classrooms to address students’ academic and social-emotional needs. now, more than ever, as teachers have transitioned from remote instruction to face-to-face or blended learning, particular emphasis must be placed on addressing students’ social and emotional needs (fagell, 2021) while addressing learning loss. social-emotional learning (sel) may have been in place in school systems before the covid-19 pandemic; however, understanding sel and the instructional practices that contribute to developing a learning environment that nourishes students’ sense of belonging is necessary to inform teacher pedagogical practices post-pandemic. teachers play a critical role in establishing a learning environment suitable for nurturing students’ sense of belonging (jennings & greenberg, 2009). as teachers attempt to provide a sense of normalcy in the classroom, they must skillfully balance designing instruction, creating an inviting classroom community, and helping students “feel” safe and supported. keywords: social-emotional learning, sense of belonging, teacher role, academic benefits, wellbeing citation: ibarra, b. (2022). understanding sel to create a sense of belonging: the role teachers play in addressing students’ social and emotional well-being. current issues in education, 23(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss2.2049 accepted: september 2, 2022 introduction today’s students face many social and emotional issues. the pandemic has created a need for educators to understand their role in creating an optimal learning environment for students to ensure their overall well-being and academic success. social-emotional learning (sel) is an approach that promotes the well-being of students and prepares them for the challenges of the 21st century. sel program academic benefits are well documented in the research (durlak et al., 2011; greenberg et al., 2017; mahoney et al., 2018-2019; osher et al., 2016); however, there is a gap in the literature about how teachers can utilize sel principles to address students’ social and emotional well-being in the classroom. there is insufficient research into the impact of a social and emotional learning climate in classrooms on student engagement https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss2.2049 ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 2 and academic achievement. this research specifically positions teachers at the forefront of creating the classroom’s social and emotional learning climate where sel principles have a more direct impact on addressing students’ social and emotional well-being. much research abounds examining the benefits of sel program implementations. however, the problem is that it focuses on implementing a specific program rather than focusing on sel principles that teachers can use to create the conditions in the classroom to provide social and emotional support within the learning environment. this research addresses the gap in teachers’ role in developing students’ sense of belonging in the classroom. sel has an essential role in the educational system, especially today, because “social and emotional competencies are not secondary to the mission of education, but concrete factors in the success of teachers, students, and schools” (jones et al., 2013, p. 65). this year, many students returned to school for the first time since the pandemic started with learning gaps, fear, and a lack of personal connection with peers and teachers (texas school safety center, n.d.). in postpandemic education, failure to address students’ social and emotional needs in the classroom may result in disengagement and poor academic performance (yorke et al., 2021), which schools cannot afford to occur if they are to address students’ learning needs successfully. teachers can no longer be solely responsible for teaching content knowledge (ferraira, 2021). findings from jennings and greenberg (2009) suggest that teachers influence students’ social and emotional development; unfortunately, there is limited research on this topic (gimbert et al., 2021). in today’s climate, where the term sel is permeating schools and classrooms across the nation, it is imperative that teachers understand what sel is but, more importantly, be aware of how the place where students spend most of their time in, the classroom, is the place that needs to be supportive. this article asserts that while social-emotional learning impacts students’ well-being and academic success, it is dependent on teachers’ active role in developing students’ sense of belonging by creating a learning environment that is safe, nurturing, and supportive. therefore, this paper aims to answer what educators should know about sel and how they can create a learning environment that supports students’ social and emotional well-being. method the literature included in this review relied on the following search terms: sel, sel competencies, benefits of sel, and academic benefits of sel on academic databases and google scholar. articles that appeared in educational research or practitioner journals had priority for inclusion. through the numerous articles obtained, commonalities began to emerge and overlap and are the rationale for including specific literature in this article. for example, the collaborative for academic, social, and emotional learning (casel) main sel theoretical components consistently appeared as a reference in the literature. several meta-analyses conducted by a combination of the following authors (durlak, dymnicki, taylor, & weissberg) were repeatedly cited in other literature referenced in this article. the authors, as mentioned above, have well-documented research supporting the fact that the use of sel program implementation has academic benefits. an important finding emerged from this literature: sel programs were more effective when implemented by the classroom teacher. as a result of this finding, an additional search explored the role of teachers in supporting students’ social and emotional well-being in the classroom. the search terms used included: teachers and sel, teacher social-emotional competence, and developing a sense of belonging. jennings and greenberg’s research (2009; 2017) frequently appeared as a reference in research addressing teachers’ social-emotional competence and their role in sel. for this reason, their research ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 3 anchors the focus on teachers’ role in developing students’ social and emotional well-being in the classroom. i will first provide a brief overview of sel and its theoretical components in the literature review. understanding the sel framework helps explain the array of benefits to students (academic, social, and emotional). second, i will discuss the benefits of sel as documented in meta-analytic studies. understanding sel’s benefits are essential for educators since they play a significant role in addressing students’ well-being. third, i will delve into the teachers’ social-emotional competence, instructional practices, and the specific role they have in preparing the learning environment for addressing students’ social and emotional well-being. the classroom is where students spend most of their time in school with one adult to teach and guide them and, therefore, should be a place where they feel safe, secure, and nurtured. finally, i will conclude with implications for educator practices in post-pandemic learning environments. historical background of social emotional learning theory social-emotional learning (sel) is the application of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that allows individuals to manage behavior and emotions and set goals. sel, as defined by the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning (casel), is “the broad process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships and make responsible decisions” (mckown, 2017, p. 160). sel research dates back to 1900, but it was not until the 1990s that research began focusing on the role of sel in the school climate (osher et al., 2016). the term social-emotional learning (sel) first appeared in promoting social and emotional learning: guidelines for educators (elias et al., 1997), and it outlined the goals of sel as being to promote the creation of a nurturing learning environment and to develop five core components: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, and relationship skills (osher et al., 2016). social-emotional learning draws from other learning theories, including social learning, behavioral, and multiple intelligences. according to osher et al. (2016), social learning theory emphasizes self-expectancies which correlate to sel’s emphasis on social awareness and self-awareness. cognitive behavior theory emphasizes the roles of thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes that influence feelings and affect behaviors, such as making choices that align with sel’s emphasis on self-management and responsible decisionmaking (osher et al., 2016). lastly, gardner’s multiple intelligence theory, specifically interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence, emphasizes empathy and understanding, aligning with the sel components of self-awareness and self-management (taylor & larson, 1999). theoretical components sel encompasses three types of skills: thinking, behavioral, and self-control. thinking skills involve interpreting and reasoning information about other people’s behavior; behavior skills refer to the specific actions people take to form and maintain relationships; and self-control skills refer to the ability to control emotions to preserve and achieve goals (mckown, 2017). these skill sets serve as a foundation for the five core sel competencies, which casel identifies as self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, and relationship skills. self-awareness involves recognizing one’s emotions, strengths, and weaknesses to develop a sense of self-worth (denham & brown, 2010; osher et al., 2016), while self-management is the ability to control emotions and behaviors (weissberg & cascarino, 2013). social awareness involves recognizing social and cultural norms (osher et al., 2016), ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 4 being empathetic toward others, and understanding support systems and resources available for assistance (frank, 2020; weissberg & cascarino, 2013). relationship skills refer to sustaining healthy and positive relationships with parents, peers, and teachers (frank, 2020), as evidenced by practicing effective communication, listening, and collaboration skills. lastly, responsible decision-making involves making rational choices and understanding the consequences of decisions on others and oneself (denham & brown, 2010; weissberg & cascarino, 2013). the development of these five components is the short-term goal of sel, but the long-term benefits are developing socially adjusted students who have less stress and are thriving academically (weissberg & cascarino, 2013). benefits of using social-emotional learning social-emotional factors such as a sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and a sense of caring impact students’ academic success (jennings & greenberg, 2009). the use of sel programs has many benefits, such as improved social-emotional competence of students, fewer conduct problems, reduced emotional distress (weissberg & cascarino, 2013), and a positive learning climate (osher et al., 2016). short-term benefits of sel include increased student engagement, positive attitudes, and a sense of belonging, while long-term benefits include academic achievement, social-emotional competence, college readiness, mental health, and 21st-century skills (greenberg et al., 2017; mahoney et al., 2018-2019). however, an additional benefit identified in some meta-analyses (durlak et al., 2011; payton et al., 2008) reveals positive academic outcomes and increased student engagement. sel benefits three areas significantly: academic achievement, students’ social-emotional competence, and 21st-century skills. academic achievement a significant benefit of sel frequently mentioned in the literature (durlak et al., 2011; greenberg et al., 2017; mahoney et al., 2018-2019; osher et al., 2016) is academic achievement. specifically, academic achievement in the literature refers to improved performance by students on standardized exams in reading and math, report card grades, and overall gpa (durlak et al., 2011). payton et al.’s (2008) review of 317 studies involving 324,303 students revealed that, on average, students enrolled in sel programs demonstrated an achievement gain on standardized test scores from 11 to 17 percentile points. additional support for these findings includes durlak et al.’s (2011) meta-analysis, which revealed an 11-percentile gain in students’ academic achievement in reading and math standardized test scores and overall gpa when they participated in classrooms with an sel program. mahoney et al.’s (2018-2019) analysis of four meta-analyses of sel programs found that the effect size on academic achievement (standardized test scores) remained constant across all four meta-analyses (r = 26 to r = 33), indicating a direct and moderate relationship, thereby supporting the argument that one of the benefits of sel programming in schools is improved academic achievement. furthermore, a more recent study also revealed significant effects of sel on reading (g = 0.25) and math (g = 0.26) achievement on standardized tests indicating a direct and moderate relationship as well (hart et al., 2020). ragozzino et al. (2003) write that casel has identified four ways sel initiatives can positively impact academic achievement. first, it allows students to apply sel skills to classroom behaviors that can enhance learning, such as setting educational goals, mastery of content within a particular subject, and identifying strategies to address areas of difficulty to achieve academic goals (ragozzino et al., 2003). second, providing students the opportunities to ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 5 apply sel skills such as writing from a certain point of view, providing students with choices, and using cooperative learning results in self-directed and academically engaged students (moore-mcbride et al., 2016). lastly, forming relationships with students allows teachers to provide feedback on academic progress, contributing to developing students’ self-awareness and social-emotional competence (denham & brown, 2010). social-emotional competence social-emotional learning supports students’ social and emotional development by helping them develop positive relationships, learning to work cooperatively with peers, managing emotions, and setting and achieving goals (ragozzino et al., 2003). students who are socially and emotionally competent are actively engaged, have a good rapport with peers, are motivated to learn, and have grit which is the persistence and desire to achieve goals despite obstacles encountered (mckown, 2017). a competent person has the skills “to generate and coordinate flexible, adaptive responses to demands and to generate and capitalize on opportunities in the environment” (waters & sroufe, 1983, as quoted in durlak et al., 2011, p. 406). weissberg and cascarino (2013) add that academically successful students develop persistence and determination, which are positive habits of mind that allow students to be academically successful, and that an sel program further develops. 21st-century learners to be prepared for the 21st century, today’s students need to be creative, critical, reflective, and conceptual thinkers (erickson, 2007). devaney and moroney (2018) argue that sel develops 21st-century skills since “it builds upon the practices and strategies inherent in youth development, project-based learning, and college and career readiness activities” (p. 255). kaufman (2013) explains that 21st-century skills include problem-solving, being flexible, taking personal responsibility for decisions, communicating effectively, working collaboratively, and having initiative. devaney and moroney (2018) add that 21st-century skills encompass skills addressing literacy (economic, technological, and information), internal and learning processes, social interactions, and, more recently, the development of social-emotional competence as a 21st-century skill. sel helps develop flexibility, collaboration, and critical thinking skills, making students college-ready and preparing them to succeed and function in the 21st century (osher et al., 2016). another benefit of sel is improved student-teacher relationships, increased motivation for learning, and academic and life success (kress et al., 2004), such as earning a high school diploma and attaining gainful employment (devaney & moroney, 2018). while sel develops students’ cognitive, social-emotional, and behavioral readiness to succeed academically and citizenship skills to actively participate in a democratic society (kress et al., 2004), it is contingent on the classroom teacher. role of teacher in developing students’ sense of belonging ferraira et al. (2020) write that the teacher is instrumental in implementing sel. in addition, allen et al.’s (2018) meta-analysis revealed that teacher support in the classroom was the factor that had the most substantial effect size (r = 0.46) on a student’s sense of belonging, indicating a moderately strong impact. a student will have a stronger sense of belonging if they perceive that their teachers are genuinely caring and supportive (allen et al., 2018; freeman et al., 2007; ibrahim & zaatari, 2020; osterman, 2000). a sense of belonging is “the extent to which students feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported by others in the ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 6 school environment” (goodenow & grady, 1993, p. 60-61). strayhorn (2019) writes that belonging is a necessity to ensure a student’s success and is “vital for optimal human functioning” (p. xiv). more specifically, autonomy, support and involvement, caring relationships, fairness, and friendliness significantly impact students’ sense of belonging (allen et al., 2018). jennings and greenberg (2009) and allen et al. (2018) assert that the teacher plays a pivotal role in contributing to students’ sense of belonging; hence if students feel they belong in the classroom and have a positive and trusting relationship with teachers, they will be more inclined to participate and be engaged (texas school safety center, n.d.). teachers can cultivate a sense of belonging by ensuring they know their students socially, culturally, and academically (thayer-bacon, 2014) to create an optimal environment for academic engagement, collaboration, relevant learning, and academic success. educators often conduct activities at the start of the school year to learn about their students’ interests; however, early attempts often dissipate (miller, 2021). ibrahim and zaatari (2020) argue that teachers must invest time forming relationships with their students instead of just focusing on meeting accountability standards. they also believe that “the power relationship has to be balanced” (p. 393), and teachers need to self-reflect and determine if their word choice, intonation, and interactions with students convey caring and support or disrespect and lack of appreciation. students need to perceive that they have a positive relationship with their teachers to feel like they belong (allen et al., 2018), which teachers can cultivate by making themselves available to assist students with academic and nonacademic issues. however, for teachers to develop students’ sense of belonging, they must be socially competent to create a prosocial classroom learning climate and use instructional practices conducive to student interaction and the development of social-emotional competence (greenberg et al., 2017; jennings & greenberg, 2009). social-emotional competence of teacher teachers play an essential role in shaping the hearts and minds of students, and they must be intuitively aware of their strengths and weaknesses as an educator to nourish relationships with students effectively (jones et al., 2013). research (coelho & sousa, 2018; durlak et al., 2011) reveals that sel program implementation is more successful when the classroom teacher implements it, thus supporting the notion that teachers play an integral role in developing the social and emotional competence of students. jennings and greenberg (2009) and greenberg et al. (2017) affirm that teachers play a pivotal role in the development of students’ socialemotional development; however, for classrooms to improve, teachers not only have to be motivated to learn and use sel but must be socially and emotionally competent (ferraira, 2021; jones et al., 2014; jones et al., 2013). socially and emotionally competent teachers are socially aware, recognize the differences between students and their emotions, and are sensitive to others’ perspectives (gimbert et al., 2021; jennings & greenberg, 2009; oberle et al., 2020). teachers with low social-emotional competence tend to have issues with classroom management (jones et al., 2013), which can create negative classroom experiences for both students and teachers and result in teacher burnout and an adverse climate (jennings & greenberg, 2009). teachers need to have the capacity to show empathy and compassion (collie, 2017) to de-escalate conflict and a deep awareness of sel in order to understand their students better and communicate with them more effectively (kress et al., 2004). therefore, teachers must receive pedagogical training on identifying and developing their sel competence to understand how to create a learning environment conducive to students’ social-emotional development (greenberg et al., 2017). ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 7 schools can address teachers’ social-emotional competence by developing their social awareness skills (gimbert et al., 2021) to develop compassion and empathy. gimbert (2021) suggests three guiding principles to develop teachers’ social-emotional competence. the first principle is to ensure teachers understand the casel competencies (self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, and relationship skills) for sel since understanding allows teachers to be cognizant of how their actions and behaviors demonstrate social-emotional competence. second, teachers need to develop positive collaborative relationships with colleagues, which can occur through plcs. utilizing the plc, teachers can discuss ways to incorporate casel competencies within their classroom and develop an understanding of them. third, school leaders need to provide teachers with “a safe space to reflect, dialogue, make connection to their past experiences and see immediate relevance” (p. 25). through critical self-reflection (schon, 2017), teachers can refine their sel understanding, reflect on their social-emotional competence, and improve their instructional practice. classroom learning climate the development of a safe and supportive learning environment promotes student risktaking to tackle educational tasks, inquiry, engagement, and a sense of community (jones et al., 2013). range et al. (2013) suggest that teachers develop a nurturing learning environment by adopting a student-centered approach to teaching and learning. the learning environment should allow for student input, frequent praise, and classroom choices that contribute to student empowerment (cooper, 2014), a sense of belonging, and self-efficacy, factors that influence student engagement (battistich et al., 1997). an optimal social and emotional climate has minimal conflict, effective transitions between activities, positive feedback, and engagement and supports all learner differences (jennings & greenberg, 2009). the creation of an optimal classroom learning environment begins with the establishment of a community which battistich et al. (1997) defined as a “place where members care about and support each other, actively participate in and have an influence on the group’s activities and decisions, feel a sense of belonging and identification with the group and have common norms, goals and values” (p. 137). the ideal learning community should function on the principle of mutual enhancement in which both students and teachers understand that there is an expectation of “equanimity and universal respect” (gallagher & goodman, 2014, p. 309) governing the classroom. therefore, teachers must be aware of the learning climate because the classroom environment can contribute to or derail student social-emotional growth (coelho & sousa, 2018). jennings and greenberg (2009) assert that “teachers must establish relationships that promote each student’s discovery of the intrinsic reward for learning and create responsive environments that allow autonomy and cooperative learning” (p. 510). harnessing students’ funds of knowledge can create positive relationships between teachers and students and between and among students (connery & curran, 2014). students who feel welcomed, supported, and appreciated feel comfortable in class (ibrahim & zaatari, 2020; texas school safety center, n.d.; schonert-reichel, 2017) and participate in academic learning experiences (furrer & skinner, 2003). student perceptions of teacher interest and caring (pendergast et al., 2018) contribute to participation, on-task behavior, engagement, and self-directed learning (ryan & patrick, 2001). emotional security, a feeling of support and safety to make mistakes, and fulfillment of basic needs can contribute to a student’s engagement in academic settings (roorda et al., 2011; schonert-reichel, 2017). however, if students feel that their teacher does not like them, it can contribute to disengagement and lack of motivation for learning (jennings & greenberg, 2009). ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 8 instructional practices classroom practices such as student choice, brain breaks, games (texas school safety center, n.d.), cooperative learning (casel, 2012), and teacher-student interaction (ibrahim & zaatari, 2020) contribute to students’ social-emotional development and academic achievement. teachers establish routines, procedures for cooperation, discussion, and norms for participation; however, the quality of the tasks and activities assigned by the teacher often determines participation (ferraira, 2021; ryan & patrick, 2001). teacher practices such as cooperative learning, self-assessment, teacher-led activities, and language of instruction can contribute to social-emotional development (osher et al., 2016). small group and cooperative learning practices allow for the teacher to serve as a facilitator (ghorbani et al., 2018) and provide both individual assistance, personalized immediate and corrective feedback, which contribute to the development of students’ self-awareness in the mastery of content and their sense of self-efficacy (ferraira, 2021). taylor and larson (1999) indicate that cooperative learning strategies such as jigsaw, think-pair-share, and numbered heads help students develop their communication and relationship skills. teachers can create a social-emotional learning environment through interactions with students and instructional practices, primarily through learner-centered instruction (greenberg et al., 2017). teachers can incorporate sel principles in the classroom by allowing students to express their opinions and interact with others (ferraira, 2021; taylor & larson, 1999; wang & holcombe, 2010) by doing debates, structured dialogues, role play, simulations, and reflective journaling. by participating in debates, students can articulate their perspectives, listen to their peers’ differing points of view, and develop a sophisticated understanding of issues under discussion, resulting in cognitive engagement (ferraira, 2021; wang & holcombe, 2010). perspective-based writing allows students to express their feelings about a topic, event, or issue discussed in class. however, teachers need to recognize that students’ perceptions about their self-efficacy affect their ability to complete assigned academic work and heighten feelings of stress (zimmerman, 2014). also, in terms of motivation, some students show engagement in learning while others feel alienated, and for all students to be autonomous learners and develop a sense of belonging, differentiated learning experiences are necessary (pendergast et al., 2018; wang & holcombe, 2010). teacher practices that empower students to express themselves have choices in learning, and opportunities to master learning produce positive teacher-student relationships, educational benefits, and emotional well-being (greenberg et al., 2017; wang & holcombe, 2010). implications for educator practices this inquiry on the benefits of social and emotional learning is significant because it helps educators understand the importance of developing a learning environment conducive to nurturing students’ social and emotional needs. as schools across the country strategically plan to adjust instruction and address learning loss, they need to understand that “there is no manual for helping vulnerable children-or-adults-to thrive in the aftermath of the pandemic, but we can start by ensuring that everyone feels seen, nurtured, and valued” (fagell, 2021, p. 55). considering that the literature review revealed that sel helps students academically and contributes to their social-emotional well-being, teachers need to understand how to prepare the learning environment to sustain and nurture students’ social-emotional well-being organically. teachers must understand that knowing an sel program’s components or implementing sel activities is insufficient. instead, teachers need to teach effectively and model socialibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 9 emotional skills, be aware of their social-emotional competence and recognize that “feeling” (brackett, 2019) is a part of the human condition. research into the role of teachers in developing a sense of belonging is a timely contribution to educators since there is a priority on addressing students’ emotional needs through the use of sel practices. students returning to school may be experiencing a mixture of emotions, and “true feelings can be messy, inconvenient, confusing, even addictive [which often] leave us vulnerable, exposed, naked to their world” (brackett, 2019, p. 7). therefore, the findings from this inquiry suggest that addressing students’ social and emotional needs begins with teachers creating a safe, supportive, and nurturing environment. the classroom environment is crucial to ensuring students feel safe and welcomed. teachers need to understand that “sel is developmental” (ferraira, 2021, p. 31), and instructional practices in the classroom will need to vary based on students’ individual needs. to assist students in readjusting to face-to-face instruction, teachers must emphasize class-building and help students rebuild trust within their learning community—the classroom. part of developing a classroom community requires students to have the opportunity to know their peers (elias, 2016) and feel valued. teachers can design an environment that allows for autonomy, cooperation, collaboration, and support by using kagan cooperative learning structures (kagan, 2001) to promote discussion and simultaneous equitable participation by all students in the classroom. they can encourage conversation in the classroom by providing students with nonacademic discussion questions (ex. talking about favorite foods, hobbies, tv shows, or sports), thus allowing everyone to talk, share, and learn about their peers. casel (2020) also offers question stems (ex. “what are some things that make you feel mad? sad? happy? what are some ways that you let your friends in your class know you care about them?”) that support the sel competencies and engages students in self-reflection. to have a more structured discussion that encourages respect and listening but allows students to “feel” and share their emotions, teachers can use the talking circle strategy (alarcon et al., 2017). in this strategy, the teacher poses a question or topic and then passes an object to students to take turns sharing their opinions while everyone else listens. students can talk when the object gets to them or pass, but everyone has to respect, be quiet and listen. teachers can utilize this strategy to have students express how they feel about returning to school and discuss feelings of anxiety, stress, and nervousness, which can also help students develop empathy. next, teachers need to get to know their students and incorporate opportunities for students to learn about their culture to develop their identity and understand who they are. for example, through a student identity activity such as “who am i” (the linking network, 2022), students can share personal life stories, experiences, or information about their family background. identity activities (facing history & ourselves, 2009) allow students to get to know their peers in a non-threatening manner resulting in class-building. often schools select a popular entertainment trend/theme in society to be the theme for the school’s bulletin boards (ex., star wars, lego, marvel avengers, harry potter), and decorations reflect that theme throughout the school. similarly, teachers can embrace culturally responsive pedagogical practices to promote diversity, inclusivity, trust, and belonging (mason, 2021; elias, 2021) as their themes. creating an inviting classroom space communicates to students that it belongs to them (smith-gillman et al., 2014). for example, having a designated area for students to read a book, listen to music, or take a mental break before resuming class work provides them with a safe place to de-stress. brain breaks function as opportunities for the brain to stop thinking about learning (desautels, 2016). also, dedicating some wall space for a picture wall for students to post pictures of their ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 10 accomplishments and give shout-outs (inquired, 2019) to peers contributes to building that sense of community in the classroom. in addition, teachers can nurture a classroom community by having each student assume a role in the classroom, such as technical expert, motivator, influencer, timekeeper, or materials manager (herrmann, 2021). students feel they belong when they know they are essential and have responsibilities in the classroom community. to maintain a safe and nurturing classroom, teachers should use a firm but calm voice instead of yelling and use close kneeling proximity to be on an equal footing with students to address individual misbehavior discreetly instead of in front of the whole class (brunzell et al., 2020) so students understand and feel that you want them to be better and not that you are punishing them. this inquiry revealed the importance of teachers understanding that students need to be doing well mentally to do well academically. while many schools’ focus this year is learning loss, teachers need to consider adjusting their instructional design to ensure students do not feel overwhelmed but are relatively supportive in a classroom where they feel safe to learn, make mistakes, and be themselves. brunzell et al. (2020) recommend that when it comes to instructional planning, lessons should: (1) reflect students’ readiness for learning, (2) provide clear goals for learning with differentiated paths for completion but the same criteria, and (3) provide students with immediate and corrective feedback aligned to established criteria. following these recommendations helps students meet their individual learning needs at their own pace. furthermore, teachers need to embrace mindfulness practices (philibert, 2021) to ensure their stress level does not transfer into the learning environment (dicarlo et al., 2019). teachers need to plan for non-academic mental breaks such as having students stand up and stretch, playing meditation music, or doing a puzzle or brain teaser to help students de-stress. at the same time, though, teachers also need to address their own social and emotional needs. for example, learning about mindfulness techniques can help teachers regulate their emotions to avoid stress and burnout at school (zolkoski & lewis-chiu, 2019). mindfulness practices may assist teachers in finding the right balance between planning and teaching, using technology, and addressing learning loss without feeling overwhelmed. teachers’ social-emotional competence is also a necessity that requires an investment in professional development to ensure they can model sel skills and develop the learning environment that nourishes students and helps them feel valued, supported, and nurtured. conclusion the pandemic resurfaced interest in social-emotional learning to address students’ social and emotional needs. while sel helps develop academic dispositions, social skills, academic grit (mckown, 2017), and improve academic achievement (durlak et al., 2011; payton et al., 2018), it also helps to address students’ emotional well-being. as teachers readjust to face-toface instruction and deal with the impact of the pandemic on the educational system, they must be prepared to address not only the academic needs of students but their social and emotional needs. fagell (2021) stresses that in this post-pandemic educational system, “safe-guarding students’ mental health and well-being will be key to ensuring their future success” (p. 51). thus, teachers must understand their critical role in establishing a safe and secure classroom environment (allen et al., 2018; ibrahim & zaatari, 2020) to positively develop trusting relationships with students and utilize instructional practices conducive to addressing students’ social and emotional needs. at the same time, school leaders must invest in professional ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 11 development to help teachers develop their social-emotional competence to nurture students’ social-emotional well-being. though this article suggests some practical strategies for educators to create a supportive and nurturing learning environment to develop students’ sense of belonging, more research is necessary. while there is much research on sel pre-pandemic, the pandemic warrants newer research on post-pandemic sel programs and best practices, including possibly redesigning sel programs to address students’ emotional well-being effectively. in addition, further research on effective ways to help develop and sustain teachers’ socialemotional competence through professional development and effective teaching practices that help promote students’ sense of belonging in a post-pandemic environment would benefit practitioners. as schools navigate teaching and learning post-pandemic, they must make a concerted effort to prioritize students’ social and emotional well-being, assist teachers in nurturing positive relationships with students, and develop their social-emotional competence, which in the end, will result in academic success. academic success is measurable through performance on academic achievement tests or subject area grades on report cards or observable as in the development of study habits, resiliency, and a growth mindset which facilitate longterm success in pk-12, university, and post-graduate settings. as educators, our goal is to develop life-long learners, which begins with removing the social and emotional barriers students face and nurturing the love of learning. references alarcon, j. d., marhatt, p., & price, e. 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(2019). alternative approaches: implementing mindfulness practices in the classroom to improve challenging behaviors. beyond behavior, 28(1), 46-54. author notes blanca n. ibarra https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4893-2902 university of texas at rio grande valley blanca.ibarra02@utrgv.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://doi.org/10.1080/00098659909599420 https://txssc.txstate.edu/tools/covid-mh/ https://thelinkingnetwork.org.uk/resource/identity-activities/ https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831209361209 https://doi.org/10.1177/003172171309500203 https://doi.org/10.35489/bsg-rise-ri_2021/025 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4893-2902 mailto:blanca.ibarra02@utrgv.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ the digitization of white women’s tears current issues in education, 22(1) 1 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age the digitization of white women’s tears niki messmore indiana university abstract: social media is a digital mirror of society. across disciplines, scholars have written of social justice as it exists and as it should be within higher education and beyond. looking to social media spaces where higher education practitioners and scholars interact with one another, we can see how scholars who discuss social justice initiatives can themselves perpetuate systems of oppression. utilizing mamta motwani accapadi’s (2007) article “when white women cry: how white women's tears oppress women of color” as a foundation, i reflect through poetry on how white women in positions of power within higher education engage in harmful behavior in digital spaces. finally, i provide recommendations on how fellow white women can disrupt these acts of oppression. keywords: race, social media, whiteness, gender citation: messmore, n. (2021). the digitization of white women’s tears. current issues in education, 21(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1908 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guestedited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: october/27/2020 the digitization of white women’s tears http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1908 messmore: the digitization of white women’s tears current issues in education, 21(2) 2 mamta accapadi told us in 20071 the power, the fragility of white women’s tears mamta accapadi told us about “one up, one down” white women always thinking they’re “down” when that reality is disrupted? they cry a river their whiteness a raft carrying them downstream far from judgement but on social media? minoritized folks share their voice in a way they can’t always at work in the digital space there is power in the digital space there is voice in the digital space… there’s still white woman’s tears. we keep seeing it in higher ed these white women with 3 letter acronyms c. r. y. they take issue with a meme because they got time in an 80-hour work week because they got time to misgender folks they call folks a dumpster fire because folks talk about oppression at work because folks aren’t shiny happy people because folks aren’t cis, white, nondisabled content with the status quo call them out? call them in? 1 for more information on this reference, review dr. accapadi’s 2007 article “when white women cry: how white women's tears oppress women of color”. messmore: the digitization of white women’s tears current issues in education, 21(2) 3 watch the digitization of white women’s tears pie is delicious but the p.i.e. defense mechanisms?2 leaves a bitter taste the bitterness of “the black list” threatening that these minoritized folks won’t get hired the bitterness of their privilege of legal teams threatening a lawsuit online or off white women’s tears are a protective force (for them)(for us) but what can we do? we white women? how do we hold our people accountable? how do we hold ourselves accountable? we retweet (online and off) folks of color and their critiques we dam their white women tears we talk to them we teach we visibly interrupt their acts of oppression we make it known that it is unacceptable if there’s a black list? they’re on it we can’t let white women’s tears keep drowning folks 2 for more information on this reference, please review dr. watt’s 2007 article “difficult dialogues, privilege and social justice: uses of the privileged identity exploration (pie) model in student affairs practice.” messmore: the digitization of white women’s tears current issues in education, 21(2) 4 references accapadi, m. m. (2007). when white women cry: how white women's tears oppress women of color. college student affairs journal, 26(2), 208-215. watt, s. k. (2007). difficult dialogues, privilege and social justice: uses of the privileged identity exploration (pie) model in student affairs practice. college student affairs journal, 26(2), 114-126. author notes niki messmore indiana university nmmessmo@iupui.edu guest editor notes sean m. leahy, phd arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au mailto:nmmessmo@iupui.edu mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au messmore: the digitization of white women’s tears current issues in education, 21(2) 5 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf cie template current issues in education, 19(2) 1 volume 19, issue 2 august 15, 2016 issn 1099-839x professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis hea-jin lee ohio state university at lima s. asli özgün-koca wayne state university abstract: this study is based on a task design and analysis activity from a year-long professional development program. the activity was designed to increase teacher growth in several areas, including knowledge of mathematics, understanding of students’ cognitive activity, knowledge of good questions, and ability to develop and improve high quality tasks. the study collected data from 30 classroom teachers. results include teachers’ initial understanding of the task, teachers’ interpretations and awareness of the strategies their students used to solve the task, and the pattern of revised tasks. the process and findings of the study will expand teacher educators’ understanding of structured approaches to link an inservice pd with teachers’ work context as well as develop a better analytic framework within which teachers and teacher educators analyze student work. keywords: task design and analysis, professional development, teacher growth apa-style citation: lee, h.-j., & özgün-koca, s. a. (2016). professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis. current issues in education, 19(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1519 accepted: may 3 rd , 2016 an integral component of instruction is the notion of a task. a mathematical task is a set of problems or a single complex problem that focuses students’ attention on a particular mathematical idea (stein, grover, & henningsen, 1996). mathematical tasks are central to student learning and require various levels of cognitive demand (henningsen & stein, 1997). the content and context of tasks influence the way students think and how they understand mathematics. beside the benefit to students, a task serves to inform the teacher’s instruction. the quality of a task and how the task is implemented have a great influence on how a student learns mathematics (krebs, 2005; thompson, carlson, & silverman, 2007). in order to develop a http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1519 lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 2 student’s active reasoning process and high-level thinking skills, the classroom environment should provide every student with opportunities to engage in rich mathematical tasks. the strategies used by students need to be understood in order to facilitate the mathematical discourse about these strategies, and to help students build on their mathematical knowledge and develop new strategies (kazemi & franke, 2004; meyer, 1997). therefore, it is critical that the teacher be capable of designing quality tasks. this study is based on a professional development (pd) activity in task design and analysis. the activity was included as part of a year-long professional development program, aimed to improve a teacher’s knowledge and skills needed for designing high quality mathematics tasks. the study has two goals: (1) to develop a conceptual framework for a pd program that uses student work to enhance a teacher’s professional growth; and (2) to provide an analytic framework within which teachers and teacher educators analyze student work. the work of both students and teachers was analyzed in order to meet these goals and to investigate: teacher knowledge of mathematics, teachers’ understanding of students’ cognitive activity, and a teacher’s ability to develop high quality tasks. the theoretical framework the theoretical framework of the study (lee & özgün-koca, 2013, 2014) is based on the steps of the progression of mathematical tasks (stein et al., 1996) and the relationships among various task-related variables and students’ learning outcomes (henningsen & stein, 1997). this is carried out using student work in teacher education (kazemi & franke, 2004), the life cycle of tasks (namiki & shimizu, 2012), and professional noticing of children’s mathematical thinking (jacobs, lamb, & philipp, 2010). figure 1. theoretical framework of the study. as seen in figure 1, the teacher participates in five phases, their role transforming from student, instructor, task analyzer, to task designer.  phase 1: initial participation; understanding the original task: in this phase, participating teachers interpret the intention of the original task and predict multiple solution strategies that students might use. for teacher educators, this phase may be used to evaluate a teacher’s content knowledge and develop an appropriate pd plan to deepen it. lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 3  phase 2: setting up a task: this is an onsite activity lead by teachers. in this phase, teachers collect students’ solutions and “encourage students to use more than one strategy, to use multiple representations, and to supply explanations and justifications.” (henningsen & stein, 1997, p. 529)  phase 3: becoming aware of student strategies: teachers analyze students’ solution strategies and develop an understanding of students’ cognitive activity. teachers might use a commercially designed rubric or a self-designed rubric to create an official report of student work. for the purpose of the pd, teachers share sample student solutions and their analyses of the solutions with other teachers. comparing students’ solutions from different grade levels and different demographics can expand a teacher’s understanding of a student’s learning progress, as well as possible factors that impact the student’s cognitive process.  phase 4: eliciting student ideas: in this phase, teachers develop appropriate questions for each student in order to respond to the student’s needs and to improve their learning outcomes. as part of the pd, teachers can follow up on each student’s solutions by posing several thought-provoking questions. these questions should aim to enhance the student’s understanding of the mathematical concept presented in the task, to encourage the student to examine their own cognitive process, to provoke higher level thinking, and, eventually, to improve the student’s learning outcomes.  phase 5: developing an instructional trajectory: this final phase is also the beginning of a new task design and analysis cycle. teachers in this phase reflect individually on the entire cycle of the task design and analysis activity. they revise the original task to better respond to their students’ needs and improve their readiness. jacobs et al. (2010) introduced a framework named professional noticing of children’s mathematical thinking, which concentrates on the interweaving and interacting skills of: (a) attending to children's strategies, (b) interpreting children's understandings, and (c) deciding how to respond on the basis of children's understandings. our becoming aware of student strategies and eliciting the phases of the strategies agree with the first two skills of the noticing model. as in the community of practice framework (heinze & procter, 2004; kahan, 2004), communication and interaction among teachers are critical in this model. in both frameworks, the final phase is devoted to formulating a response and/or reaction as a result of the analysis of student understanding and thinking. each phase should be followed by an exchange of ideas and in-depth reflective discussion for collective inquiry (kazemi & franke, 2004). methods this study was part of a year-long professional development program funded by the improving teacher quality program. the main content foci of this externally funded pd were “number sense and operations” and “algebra”. the pd program was designed using a hybrid model. teachers participated in: monthly face-to-face workshops meetings; five 6-hour summer sessions; four 6-hour fall sessions; and four 6-hour spring sessions. between sessions, participants established online professional learning communities by communicating with each other and the instructors. these virtual learning included textbook reading discussions, implementing student-centered discovery lessons and reflecting on them, sharing instructional ideas, providing comments on other participants’ lessons, watching a best practice lesson and reflecting on it, and reviewing and evaluating web-based mathematical instructional resources. this task design and analysis activity was among several year-long pd activities implemented in the fall, connecting professional learning and practice. the purpose and detailed explanation of the task design and analysis pd activity are summarized in table 2. thirty inlee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 4 service teachers participated in the program, and their demographic information is summarized in table 1. table 1 demographic information of participants (n=30) n gender female 28 male 2 race/ethnicity white, non-hispanic 30 position teacher 20 special education, resource or inclusion teacher 7 building coach 3 grade level taught primary (k-3) 13 intermediate (4-6) 16 middle (7-8) 1 classroom type self-contained class (for all or most subjects) 17 math only 3 math and science 2 other or multi-subject combinations 8 data collection the mathematics problem used in this study can be found in comparing quantities, algebra of the mathematics in context series (kindt et al., 2010). the question provided the total price for two umbrellas and one hat ($80) and the total price of one umbrella and two hats ($76) and asked for the price of one hat and the price of one umbrella. before the comparing quantities section, students learned two strategies for solving similar problems: (1) exchanging and (2) making a combination chart and using number patterns found in the chart (van reeuwijk, 1995). students were expected to “apply the strategy of exchanging to solve problems involving the method of fair exchange.” (p. 16) for algebra teachers and students in grades 6 and higher, this problem involves two variables and two equations. according to meyer (1997), 6 th graders can solve this problem without using equations. if so, how about students in earlier grades? can they also solve the problem and what strategies would they be using? how will these strategies differ from those used by students exposed to pre-algebra and algebraic concepts? and how about the strategies used by teachers to solve the problem; will they differ depending on assigned teaching grade levels? data were collected in each phase of the theoretical framework of the study (figure 1). a detailed description of the task design and analysis activity and data are summarized in table 2.  understanding teacher knowledge: (1) understanding the original task: as part of the initial phases of the task design and analysis project, the teachers were asked to solve the problem. teachers worked individually for 5 15 minutes, shared their solutions in the small group and developed a rubric, graded each other’s work using the rubric, and then discussed the whole process with the entire lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 5 class. there were no pre-instructions similar to those given prior to the hats and umbrellas problem in the pd.  understanding students’ strategies: (2) setting up a task: after the first phase, teachers were asked to use the task in their respective classes and collect the students’ solutions. (3) becoming aware of student strategies: teachers were asked to analyze students’ strategies by using a commercially designed rubric focusing on students’ problem solving skills. teachers shared their grading criteria with other project teachers. teachers were also asked to select the three most interesting solutions (regardless the accuracy) provided by their students, along with their rationale behind their selection. a total of 90 solutions (30 teachers providing 3 solutions each) were thus selected for consideration. (4) eliciting student ideas: the project team reviewed 90 selected student strategies and chose 15 solutions for the activity of the next phase: developing efficient and high level thought-provoking questions for individual students. teachers were asked to pose appropriate questions for each student to respond to their needs and to improve their learning outcomes.  developing/revising a task: (5) developing an instructional trajectory: teachers were asked to reflect on the entire cycle of the task design and analysis pd activity and develop two revisions to teach the same mathematical concept as the original task. table 2 professional development (pd) activity and data purpose phase pd activity data collected understanding teachers’ content knowledge 1.understanding the original task face-to-face pd workshop (sept.) 1) solve the task individually 2) group discussion (small & class) teachers’ solution understanding students’ strategies 2. setting up a task classroom (sept. oct.): teachers use the task in their own teaching. students’ solutions 3. becoming aware of students’ strategies off campus (oct. nov.) 1) grade students’ work 2) analyze students’ strategies 3) select three most interesting students’ solutions 4) rationalize for selecting the three solutions. graded scores selections of students’ solutions rationale for selecting three solutions 4. eliciting students’ ideas face-to-face pd workshop (nov.) 1) share students solutions and grades 2) develop questions for each student questions with reasoning for supporting each question developing/ revising a task 5. developing an instructional trajectory off campus (nov. – dec.) 1) reflect on the pd activity 2) develop two revisions reflection paper revised tasks data analysis due to the nature of the qualitative data and in order to investigate emerging themes (miles & huberman, 1994), the analysis was based on categorizing. teachers’ solutions were lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 6 analyzed for common codes to create patterns. instead of sharing all their student data with the pd group, teachers were asked to select the three most interesting student solutions, and to provide the rationale they used for selection. polya’s problem solving model was used as a framework to analyze to teachers’ selections. the teachers’ revisions (revised tasks) were then analyzed for common codes to look for patterns. rittle-johnson and koedinger (2005) state that “well-structured knowledge requires that people integrate their contextual, conceptual and procedure knowledge in a domain” (p. 313). the design of a learning environment, therefore, scaffolds all these knowledge types. during the data analysis of revised tasks, we were guided by the idea of “well-structured knowledge” provided by rittle-johnson and koedinger (2005), and used contextual, conceptual and procedural changes, as a framework. throughout the data analysis process, common codes and patterns were tallied (miles & huberman, 1994) and percentages of participants sharing similar revisions were calculated from those tallies. each investigator coded the data independently. the project team then conducted a co-coding session in order to resolve conflicts and create the common codes where the individual codes were compared. when the investigators coded an item differently, they negotiated an agreement through discussion. investigators and data triangulation ensured the trustworthiness of this study (denzin & lincoln, 1994). results teacher knowledge of mathematics: understanding the task the in-service teachers employed two different approaches in their work on the hats and umbrellas problem: symbolic manipulation and the guess and check method. ten teachers started the problem by trying out some numbers. the guess and check method was not successful for five of those teachers, but it may have helped them gain insight into the possible range of solutions. among the five who did obtain the correct answer, one teacher was able to intuit that an umbrella costs $4 more than a hat. the teacher shared that this informed his or her guess and check process. the symbolic method, used by 25 (89%) teachers, was the major primary or secondary method used to solve this problem. only 3 teachers relied solely on the guess and check method. however, teachers used the symbolic approach in different ways. thirteen set up a system of equations and all thirteen solved it using the substitution method (see figure 2). the rest used more than just symbolic manipulation. a b figure 2. symbolic approach using substitution. lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 7 ten teachers used the idea of exchanging, which van reeuwijk (1995) called reasoning through exchanging. looking at the hats and umbrellas problem, one can see that an umbrella costs (exactly $4) more than a hat. five teachers used the equation u= h+4 and solved one of the equations for the price for one hat or the price of one umbrella. so, exchanging the umbrella in the second equation would lead to three hats and four dollars, which can then be easily solved for the price of one hat. the other five teachers used reasoning with exchanging slightly differently. they were able to conclude that one hat and one umbrella together would cost $52, by adding the two initial equations and dividing by 3. then they exchanged the total for 1 hat and 1 umbrella in one of the equations to obtain the price for 1 hat or 1 umbrella (see figure 3). two of the thirteen teachers who solely used the symbolic approach, used this idea of exchanging symbolically. they were able to see that there was a $4 difference between the two equations and used it to set up a new equation as seen in figure 4 to obtain that u= h+4 solely symbolically. then they solved one of the equations using this newly constructed equation. teachers’ understanding of student cognitive activity: understanding student strategies the teachers graded the students’ solutions in five areas: mathematics language, representation, presentation, problem solving, and mathematical accuracy. the teachers were asked to rate a student’s weak areas based on how they graded the student’s solution. figure 5 summarizes the findings of the grading outcomes. approximately one-quarter of the teachers reported mathematical language as an area weak of weakness, while mathematical accuracy seemed to have the least concern to teachers. during the grading process, teachers engaged in a lengthy discussion about the difference between presentation and representation. figure 4. symbolic exchanging. a b c figure 3. reasoning with exchanging. lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 8 teachers also analyzed students’ strategies and developed an understanding of the students’ cognitive activity. students’ strategies that teachers noticed and valued are understanding the problem, using prior knowledge, using heuristics, being able to use algebraic representations, and checking and looking back a solution. as part of this phase, teachers were asked to select the three most interesting solutions after grading the student work and analyzing the solution strategies. all teachers valued the basic steps of a problem solving process: understanding the problem, working on the solution using heuristics, and looking back. understanding the problem was one of the ideas highlighted by almost 50% of teachers. teachers were pleased to see a student realize that they needed to work with both equations simultaneously, or that the price of one hat or one umbrella should be the same for both equations. if a student neglected this fact, then the student could not solve the problem correctly, and teachers saw this as a major deficiency. one teacher pointed out that a certain student (see an example in figure 6) did not understand “the directions (hat/umbrella cost should remain constant throughout)” when working on this problem. teachers were gratified to see some students bring their previous knowledge such as operational skills to the solution process. approximately 30% of the teachers valued that students were able to carry on computations correctly. the teachers (almost 43%) noticed that some students divided a total price by 3 when there were 3 items in each situation of the problem. being able to take into account both equations and analyzing their relationship leads to the conclusion that there is a $4 difference between the price of one hat and the price of one umbrella. whether or not a student was able to make this conclusion was mentioned by approximately 40% of the teachers. a teacher shared that she/he chose the student work shown in figure 7, because the student “found that an umbrella costs $4 more than a hat. he then used reasoning to $76-$4 for the umbrella in row 2, and then divided the $72 left by 3 items.” figure 6. assigning different prices for items. figure 5. areas of student weakness. matematical accuracy 17% problem solving 18% presentation 19% representation 22% mathematical langugage 24% lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 9 teachers valued the heuristics used by students during the problem solving process. the most commonly used heuristic was the guess and check method, and approximately 74% of teachers discussed this as one of the reasons for selecting interesting student work. some of the teachers highlighted that they especially appreciated a student’s use of additional strategies to make an informed guess. in one example, a student noticed the $4 difference, which subsequently affected their guess and check process. other students, as described by one of the teachers, informed their guess and check process after dividing 80 or 76 by three. being able to use algebraic representations was mentioned by five teachers. a teacher explained that even though some students did not pursue the algebraic approach to solve the problem, constructing an algebraic representation was important. two teachers mentioned the similarity between their own solutions and the student solutions they selected. finally, even though checking a solution should happen naturally during the guess and check method, almost 22% of the teachers highlighted the importance of checking a solution/looking back in the problem solving process. teacher ability to develop high quality tasks: revision pattern when analyzing the changes that teachers made to the task, the main categories for revisions were contextual changes, conceptual changes, procedural changes, and format related changes. teachers made two different types of contextual changes (32%) to the original problem: enhancing the story by giving more background to the story and changing the objects in the story. conceptual changes (38%) were made by changing the pattern of objects, key questions, mathematical signs, comparisons, or dollar amounts. teachers also revised the task to help students at the procedural level (23%) by adjusting the numbers in the problem or asking students to create their own combination before or after solving the problem. some teachers changed the format (7%) of the task by providing a chart to help students organize their thoughts and keep track of their guesses or providing boxes to enter specific answers. figure 8 summarizes details within each revision area. teachers used different objects and different numbers to revise the original task. changing the story (direction) and pattern were also common ways of task revision. the original problem had a pattern umbrella, hat, umbrella (uhu) and uhh. as can be seen in figure 8, revisions to the pattern of the objects were the most commonly adopted approach in revising the task conceptually. some early grade teachers provided patterns with only one object, and other changes focused on making sure that students would understand that a hat in the first pattern and the second pattern would be same price (see figure 9). also, another way to revise the task conceptually was to change key questions. for example, instead of providing the total prices of multiple items, revised tasks provide one of two items and total prices and ask students to find the price of the other item. others asked additional questions such as the price after tax or discount. the last conceptual changes were about representation of the figure 7. price difference. lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 10 problem. some teachers added plus signs or equal signs between objects with the aim of helping students transfer the problem from the contextual world to the mathematical world. teachers also revised the task to help students at the procedural level by adjusting the numbers in the problem, or asked students to create their own combinations before or after solving the problem. figure 8. task revision pattern. figure 9. task revision example. the findings of the study suggest that teachers attempted to adjust the level of difficulty of the task based on their students’ knowledge and tried to engage students through contextual changes. for example, some teachers changed the items in the story (e.g. christmas items due to timing of the academic year as in figure 9 or toys) to arouse the interest of students. other teachers changed the story altogether. however, there was not enough evidence to claim, according to swan’s (2007) criteria, that the teachers of this project succeeded in developing high quality tasks. developing a cognitively demanding quality task requires the teacher to be 14% 18% 14% 8% 6% 2% 8% 18% 5% 7% st o ry ( in tr o ) d if f o b je ct s p at te rn ke y q u e s si gn s co m p ar is o n sa m e $ d if f #s as k st s cr e at e / n u m b er se n te n ce o rg c h ar t contextual conceptual procedural format lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 11 exposed to a number of exemplary tasks, not just the practice of developing and analyzing a single task. teachers’ end-of-program reflection teachers’ reflections on their experience in the task design and analysis activity were categorized in three major areas (figure 10): (1) reflecting on self/practice (light blue items), (2) reflecting on the overall professional development experience (orange items), and (3) connecting the learning from the professional development program to own instruction (purple items). figure 10. teacher reflections on the task design and analysis experience. the issues teachers discussed in relation to the pd experience were mainly about different phases of pd such as analysis of task, analysis of student work, and revision of the task. teachers also mentioned that they enjoyed working on these tasks together as a group and building a community. i couldn't wait to share my ideas with my group and i also had an ah ha moment when listening to my classmates approach. the "big idea" that i have learned is that working together makes us better educators. the most beneficial aspect for me was the discussion that we held as educators when looking at the papers and discussing the results. our small group noticed details of each student's work that i may not have as an individual. many of them also reflected on themselves as a “doer of mathematics” and “teacher of mathematics.” when focusing on the doer of mathematics perspective, they discussed how their mathematical thinking and mathematical problem solving were influenced as a result of the pd. lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 12 before working on modifying this problem, i thought that i was proficient at amending problems for students’ and teachers’ benefit. amending this problem caused me to grow professionally. more than ever, i found myself thinking deeply about the math; i worked problems algebraically; i worked with tables in a guess and check format; and i struggled to make this problem better not easier! when they were reflecting as teacher of mathematics, their reflections centered on their teaching practice. for instance, how they can enhance their future implementation to support students' understanding or how student knowledge could be assessed more efficiently. i have learned to look beyond finding whether an answer is simply right or wrong. i have always tried to give partial credit for showing the thinking process and the logic involved but the rubric we used made it much easier and i had never seen anything like it used in mathematics before. it made it easier to identify where students’ misconceptions were and whether they truly understood mathematical processes involved in problem-solving. teachers’ reflections indicated that they want to connect the learning experience gained from the pd to improve instruction in the area of ways to support student learning by better understandings students' strategies and allowing them to struggle productively. one big idea that i have learned is that i need to not simply call on students for the answer, but for the explanation of how they achieved their answer. many students think that math is just calculating numbers, but it is so much more. students today are not always very good at explaining how they find answers. i would love to have students write a “how to” speech about solving a problem so each of them could see all of the steps it takes to explain their own thought processes. the cool thing about that would be that everyone thinks a little bit differently, so hopefully we would have the same end result, but several different strategies to find it. i am trying to stretch my questioning ability to encourage deeper thinking. it is tempting to use straight forward questioning that is easy to write and quick to answer. however, these questions do not lead to persisting through a multiple step problem and creates an apathetic learner that looks only for key words and does not read for understanding. discussion the quality of a task depends on its features and cognitive demands, the thinking processes used while performing the task. the level of cognitive demands can range from memorization to the use of procedures and algorithms to complex thinking and reasoning lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 13 strategies involving conjecturing, justifying, or interpreting (henningsen & stein, 1997). mathematics educators have identified tasks as represented in curricular/instructional materials or as set up by the teacher in a classroom. tasks set up by a teacher are influenced by the teacher’s goals, subject matter knowledge, and knowledge of students and student thinking and understanding. by reflecting on and taking into consideration students’ thinking and understanding, the teacher can provide a task that better improves/advances students’ thinking. to foster a more active implementation of tasks, teachers should encourage students to use various strategies, use multiple representations, and provide justifications. this study had two main goals: (1) to develop a conceptual framework for a professional development (pd) program that uses student work to enhance a teacher’s professional growth; and (2) to provide an analytic framework within which teachers and teacher educators analyze that student work. before we can start to think about how to help students learn and do mathematics, we need to be able to understand how a student perceives a task and thinks about its solution. in this study, we designed a professional development activity involving task analysis and redesigning a common mathematics task. teachers engaged in 5 phases (shown in figure 1: theoretical framework) to complete this activity. the purpose of the activity was to help teachers improve their teaching as a result of analyzing student work, understanding student’s strategies, and learning to develop a high cognitive task. in the first stage of the activity, the teachers worked on the problem by themselves. the main aim of this stage was to focus on the content of the problem, hence the mathematical knowledge of the teachers. participants, as doers of mathematics, first solved the problem individually, and then as a group. even though the majority of teachers (89%) solved this problem algebraically, they knew not to expect the same from their students. before using the task with their students, the teachers reflected on the mathematics of the problem. this was crucial to the discussion on what to anticipate from their students and how to prepare the task for their own students and keeping in mind the importance of making sure that the students justify their solution and explain their strategies and thinking. once the teachers administered the problem in their classrooms, they collected the student work for further analysis. the analytical framework for the analysis of student work included: (1) grading student work, (2) analysis of student strategies, (3) selecting student work, and (4) providing rationale for their selections. most teachers’ authentic classroom work is limited to just the first level of this framework, simply grading the students’ work. in the second stage of the analytical framework, the teachers took a closer look at their students’ work, by analyzing their students’ strategies. in the third stage, teachers selected “interesting” solutions and in the fourth stage they were asked to explain why they selected a particular solution. two main overarching categories for selecting a solution were: choosing a successful student solution and an unsuccessful solution. while successful solutions showcased teachers’ accomplishments in their classrooms, unsuccessful solutions helped them to think about their next instructional steps. teachers valued that their students were able to use their previous knowledge, make correct computations or successfully used the informed guess and check method. however, most teachers also concluded that students had difficulties understanding the problem or analyzing the context of the problem in order to reach a solution; for instance having the same price for a hat in both situations. as a natural next step, specific questions were developed to be posed to students and scaffold their high level thinking. such follow up questions can lead to a more effective instructional trajectory. lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 14 teachers see a multitude of student work on a daily basis. most of the time, the major goal is to quickly assign a grade to the homework or an exam without reflecting too much on student thinking or use such assessment materials as foundational information for the following lesson. so many questions appear in a homework assignment or exam, that it would be unrealistic to expect teachers to analyze each of them in detail. instead, we suggest that if teachers assigned one or two rich tasks, which can be approached and solved in multiple ways, to students and carefully analyze their solutions, they would gain more information about their students’ thinking and inform their instruction more efficiently. references denzin, n. k., & lincoln, y. s. 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(2012, july). on the nature of mathematical tasks in the sequence of lessons. paper presented at the 12th international congress on mathematical education, seoul, south korea. rittle-johnson, b., & koedinger, k. r. (2005). designing knowledge scaffolds to support mathematical problem solving. cognition and instruction, 23(3), 313-349. doi:10.1207/s1532690xci2303_1 stein, m. k., grover, b. w., & henningsen, m. (1996). building student capacity for mathematical thinking and reasoning: an analysis of mathematical tasks used in reform classrooms. american educational research journal, 33(2), 455-488. doi:10.3102/00028312033002455 swan, m. (2007). the impact of task-based professional development on teachers’ practices and beliefs: a design research study. journal of mathematics teacher education, 10(4-6), 217-237. doi:10.1007/s10857-007-9038-8 thompson, p. w., carlson, m. p., & silverman, j. (2007). the design of tasks in support of teachers’ development of coherent mathematical meanings. journal of mathematics teacher education, 10(4-6), 415–432. doi:10.1007/s10857-007-9054-8 van reeuwijk, m. (1995). the role of realistic situations in developing tools for solving systems of equations. paper presented at the annual conference of the american educational research association, san francisco, ca. retrieved from http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/publicaties/literatuur/3781.pdf http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/publicaties/literatuur/3781.pdf lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 16 author notes hea-jin lee, ph.d. the ohio state university at lima, department of teaching and learning 4240 campus dr. lima, oh. 45804 lee.1129@osu.edu dr. hea-jin lee is associate professor of mathematics education at the ohio state university. her research addresses: improving reflective thinking and practice; assessing professional growth; designing teacher-needs based professional development programs; analyzing the effectiveness of technology-enabled teacher professional development; and teaching mathematics to children at various levels. s. asli özgün-koca, ph.d. wayne state university 5425 gullen mall, 249 education building, detroit, mi. 48202 aokoca@wayne.edu dr. s. asli özgün-koca is associate professor of mathematics education in the college of education of wayne state university with special expertise in the use of technology to enhance middle school and high school mathematics education. her major area of research interest is to study the process by which students use graphing calculators, other handheld devices and software, and to develop curriculum materials with authentic contexts for middle school students. mailto:lee.1129@osu.edu https://email.osu.edu/owa/redir.aspx?c=r5ayptxxjesmkbu_q84vpb42tzxl5neiz7mv7hwyephalqo3m8wqx-c190btyi0wizrjldzwyw0.&url=mailto%3aaokoca%40wayne.edu lee & özgün-koca: professional development for mathematics teachers: using task design and analysis current issues in education, 19(2) 17 volume 19, issue 2 august 15, 2016 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh niels piepgrass bethany richmond olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers current issues in education, 25(1) 1 volume 25, issue 1 date 04/09/2024 issn 1099-839x hip hop, social reproduction, and the possible selves of young black men shantá r. robinson the university of chicago abstract: twenty-seven years ago, the documentary hoop dreams solidified a theory—that the world of athletics was one of the few places where adolescent black males could find success. by the late 1990s, researchers were framing athletics as the next direction in the civil rights movement. in this article, i argue that the historical framing of black boys in athletics—as a way up, a way out—is similar to the contemporary framing of black boys in hip hop based education (hhbe). using an ethnographic case example of the homeboys, a group of adolescent black males experiencing homelessness, i maintain that hhbe, without critical implementation and reflection, limits the possible selves of black boys in socially reproductive ways. unlike hoop dreams, which historically created an incentive to stay invested in formal educational settings, hhbe offers little “possible selves” development for young black men. this research asserts that if hhbe, and the myriad ways hip hop is taken up in formal and informal educational settings is not dually paired with the critical process of institutional actors envisioning all the possible selves that black boys can become, then it becomes another hegemonic socially reproductive tool wielded by educators. keywords: hip hop, black boys, possible selves, homelessness, ethnography citation: robinson, s. r. (2023). hip hop, social reproduction, and the possible selves of young black men. current issues in education, 25(1). doi: https://10.14507/cie.vol25iss1.2143 accepted: 09/04/2023 “the white world—specifically the white community of the united states—finds it difficult to accept blacks as being best in anything except basketball and popular music” (herb snitzer, 1991, p. 33) introduction in 1994, sundance film festival debuted hoop dreams, an intimate delve into the lives of two african american teen boys as they worked to realize their goals of basketball stardom. current issues in education, 25(1) 2 the film was heralded as a landmark documentary and labeled as one of the best films of the ‘90s (baumgaertner, 2015). the film, flawed in some ways and a triumph in others, provided a much-needed glimpse into the lives of black youth and their families as they navigate school district bureaucracies, the politics of college athletics, and the thin line between dreams and reality. the two chicago teens, arthur agee and william gates, went on to college and other careers, but never satisfied their goals to play in the nba. the film solidified a theory—that the world of athletics was one of the few places where black males could find success, be accepted, and achieve a slice of the american dream (singer & may, 2011). while neither made it to the nba, both went on to finish college degrees. by the late 1990s, researchers were framing athletics, particularly those that led to college scholarships, as the next direction in the civil rights movement (edwards, 2000; clark, 1993). twenty-seven years after the success of hoop dreams, there remain few places where young black men can find success— whether in communities (dufur et al., 2016; tolliver et al., 2016; staggers-hakim, 2016), in the workplace (kreisman & rangel, 2015; offerman et al., 2014), and especially, in schools (edwards, 2020; little, 2017; harradine et al., 2013). black male students are disproportionately suspended or expelled (gregory et al., 2010). their teachers and peers are less likely to think of them as “smart” or “academically gifted” (ispa-landa, 2013; davis, 2003). and two-thirds of all black men who enter higher education leave before completing their degree—the highest attrition rate among all races and both sexes (strayhorn, 2014). the evidence suggests that young black men are at the bottom of nearly every statistical metric of educational excellence (harper & williams jr., 2013). to combat the preponderance of negative and deficit-focused narratives of black boys, researchers have introduced new frameworks to assist educators in not only actively creating meaningful relationships with black students, but doing so in ways that connect their underachievement to systemic injustices and hegemonic schooling policies. one framework that has grown in volume and scope is hip hop culture (petchauer, 2015). ranging in name from hip hop based education, rap pedagogy, critical hip hop pedagogy (akom, 2009), to culturally relevant hip hop pedagogy (gosa & fields, 2012), the primary focus is one of practice—the applications and implications of what teachers do with hip hop in the classroom (petchauer, 2015). a growing body of scholarship has explored the convergence of hip hop youth culture and pedagogy to formulate a concept that contemporary scholars have termed hip hop based education (hhbe) (hill, 2009). the field of hhbe has drawn from a variety of theoretical and methodological practices that demonstrate how educators use hip hop cultural texts to generate favorable educational outcomes, processes, and learning environments. shaping the framework for hhbe is a mixture of theoretical underpinnings drawn from critical pedagogy (freire, 1970), culturally responsive teaching (gay, 2000; ladson-billings, 1994), critical race theory (ladsonbillings, 1998; ladson-billings & tate, 1995; delgado & stefancic, 1995), multicultural education (banks, 2001) and culturally sustaining pedagogy (paris & alim, 2014). it is an expanded vision of teaching and learning that re-imagines the classroom space, not as an educational intervention, but as “a reinvention” (dando, 2017, emphasis in original). while criticisms of hhbe are few, those that exist are worthy of increased empirical examination. love (2015) notes the absence of hhbe in the early grades, and in highlighting the positive educational outcomes (such as sophisticated linguistic patterns) of hbbe, pushes the field to incorporate hhbe in early childhood and elementary education. petchauer (2015) shares that researchers tethered hip hop education and pedagogy to teaching practice from the beginning of its formal study, which has led to theoretical underdevelopment, conceptual current issues in education, 25(1) 3 murkiness, and methodological stagnation. further insights from paris and alim (2014) recommend a deliberate vigilance against the “white gaze” that considers hip hop to be the next trendy thing to hook students, only to draw them back into the same old hegemonic, hierarchical structures. they advise scholars and practitioners alike to question their work and ask: hip hop for what purposes and with what outcomes? i take up these questions in my research on hhbe. in this article, i argue that the historical framing of black boys in athletics—as a way up, a way out—is similar to the framing of black boys in hhbe; using a case example of young black homeless males, i maintain that hhbe, without critical implementation and reflection, limits the possible selves of black boys in socially reproductive ways. hhbe, specifically the way educational systems and actors have taken it up in pedagogy and practice, should be challenged and revised forward in ways that attach it to all of the possible selves of young black men. i add that when possible selves are shaped by hegemonic structures and their actors, the result is not a framing produced from the individual’s imagination of all that is appropriate or reasonable for them given their experiences and circumstances, but what is permissible based on social constructions of who black boys are and who they are destined to become in society. the selves of black boys are, therefore, not infinitely possible but socially constrained and unimagined. literature review hip hop based education: promises and pitfalls hip hop is a growing presence in k-12 public school classrooms, an obvious nod to any casual observer of the expressionistic style and innovation of young people today (akom, 2009). according to petchauer (2009), hip hop music and culture has become relevant to the field of education and educational research in three distinct ways. he emphasized that (a) teachers are centering rap music texts in urban high school curricula, (b) hip hop exists as more than a musical genre, and (c) higher education institutions throughout north america are engaging hip hop in an academically stringent demeanor through courses, research, conferences, and symposia (ladson-billings, 2014; petchauer, 2009). williams (2008) has identified three additional ways that hip hop has crept into classrooms: (a) hip hop is in afterschool programs where teachers are taking an entrepreneurial approach with students as they are constructing their own music and expressions (anderson, 2004); (b) hip hop has been used to scaffold subject matter in formalized classroom settings at both elementary and secondary levels (morrell & duncan-andrade, 2002; sitomer, 2004); and (c) hip hop is utilized in classrooms to introduce critical analysis of systemic forms of oppression that corrupt society. forman (2004) argues that hip hop is too important for teachers to ignore and that avoiding it “would be irresponsible since literally millions of people worldwide are influenced by hip hop on a daily basis” (p. 3). indeed, hhbe, particularly as a pedagogy, has emerged as a powerful cultural force seeking to address youths’ engagement and motivation in schools and in out-of-school contexts (baldridge, 2014). researchers have emphasized that if the curriculum does not reflect cultural relevance, then alienated students will embrace a hip hop culture because it readily accepts them (emdin, 2010; elmesky, 2005; paul, 2011; prier & beachum, 2008). educators and scholars have researched and experimented with the use of hip hop music and culture to improve the empowerment of students, skills of literary analysis, critical literacy and cultural responsiveness moving toward a hip hop pedagogy (petchauer, 2009). author and educator marc lamont hill argued that hip hop pedagogy is not a set of prescribed strategies or current issues in education, 25(1) 4 techniques for reaching students through hip hop culture. rather the growth of hip hop scholarship over recent years has shown how the nine elements of hip hop culture (e.g. rap, deejaying, b-boying, graffiti art, beatboxing, knowledge, street fashion, street language, street entrepreneurialism) are used within classrooms and educational spaces to improve student motivation and engagement, teach critical media literacy, foster critical consciousness, and transmit disciplinary knowledge (hill, 2009). there is also a growing realization that students must be actively involved in the creation of a hip hop curriculum to actively and constructively engage with it. youth are not just consumers, but producers, of literacies. if hip hop is rooted in the voicing of previously silenced groups and experiences, then it is particularly important that its incorporation into school includes the very voices that are most often silenced—those of youth (alim, 2007). alim (2007) writes: it is one thing to view the culture of our students as a resource for teaching about other subjects, and it is quite another to see our students as the sources, investigators, and archivers of varied and rich bodies of knowledge rooted in their cultural-linguistic reality. (p. 17) dyson (2004) re-affirms the need for hip hop to maintain relevancy to those who first helped create and maintain it. ginwright (2004) realizes that his failure to enact a hip hop informed curriculum stemmed from his attempt to decide what is relevant for—rather than with—students. the body of scholarly work promoting hhbe is impressive. however, the field’s engagement with hhbe has less often situated the power and possibilities of the art within a larger ethos of responsibility. researchers now contend that using hip hop does not automatically transform the curriculum as more relevant, especially if teachers do not fully embody a hip hop worldview or they continue to act as the only authority (kim & pulido, 2015). indeed, researchers have made it clear that the understanding of hip hop’s place in the classroom must mature beyond the ubiquitous rapping teacher and make better use of the endless complexity, beauty, history, and internal contradictions of hip hop culture (ladson-billings, 2014). this embodiment of hip hop may be particularly difficult given the current and predicted demographics of the public school teaching force. of the 3.2 million public school teachers in the us, between 79-85% are white (howard, 2016; us department of education, 2020), 77% are women (90% at the elementary grades), and the average age is 42 (taie et al., 2017). according to howard (2016), “the need for teacher preparation is obvious, particularly given the fact that most practicing and prospective white teachers are themselves the products of predominantly white neighborhoods and predominantly white colleges of teacher education” (p. 6). therefore, the “ubiquitous rapping teacher” (ladson-billings, 2014) is statistically likely to be white, female, and removed from the history and context of urban hip hop culture. in this article, i examine the development and implementation of hhbe in an out-ofschool educational context and the probable negative outcomes that occur when its place in educational settings do not mature beyond stereotypical definitions and usages. in particular, i explore the implications of the use of hhbe for a group of young black men who are experiencing homelessness and look to the services of a local nonprofit for their everyday needs. in so doing, i use the “possible selves” theory (oyserman & fryberg, 2006) to frame my argument that hip hop, created as a cultural outlet for young people of color to speak back to the hegemonic socio-political and economic systems of the urban context, has evolved into a tool for social reproduction. current issues in education, 25(1) 5 possible selves theory possible selves are the selves we imagine ourselves becoming in the future, we hope to become, we are afraid we may become, and we fully expect we will become (oyserman & fryberg, 2006). possible selves theory describes the importance and dynamics of self-relevant, future-oriented self-concepts and how these self-views relate to motivation for present and future action. these self-concepts pertain to “how individuals think about their potential and their future” (markus & nurius, 1986, p. 954), and may reflect an individual’s expectations, including hopes, aspirations, fears, and threats that she or he anticipates in the near or distant future. the formation of various possible selves could include an unlimited and diverse array of future selfprojections, but it is important to note that the formation of possible selves is connected with representations of the current self. that is, future selves are derived from individually salient desires, hopes, reservations, and fears, but these aspirations and fears are influenced by an individual’s current (and past) specific social, cultural, and environmental experiences. because possible selves are thought to be created within the parameters of an individual’s social context, projections of the self are likely derived from what is valued, or perceived to be valued, within an individual’s specific social experiences. possible selves are social constructions. successes and failures are always relative to the attainments of comparable others. values, ideals, and aspirations are shaped by social contexts (oyserman, 2001). specific others and social contexts play an important role in creating and maintaining possible selves. possible selves are also tightly connected to racial, ethnic, gender, and cultural identities, and perceived in-group norms. individuals learn not only who “people like them” can become, but also who people not like them can become, creating both a set (or series) of possible ‘me’s’ and a series of ‘not me’s’. adolescents learn about what is possible and what is valued through engagement with their social context (oyserman & markus 1993). social contexts provide important feedback to adolescents and young adults about whether a possible self is positively or negatively valued. in this paper, i argue that hhbe, specifically the way it has been taken up in pedagogy and practice for this particular out-of-school educational context, should be challenged and revised forward in ways that attach it to all of the possible selves of young black men. i make this call with deep respect for the work i have cited to this point, for it has articulated a necessary stance on the education of urban youth of color who are deeply embedded in hip hop culture. the critiques and problematic framings provided in the following pages are not about hip hop, urban culture, or young black men, as the issues defined herein are not about them, but are more about the hazards of the white gaze and structural forces at work in hhbe. i push for a more intentional teaching and defining of hhbe in a way that speaks directly back to oppressive and reproductive framing of who young black men are and who they are destined to be in contemporary society. methods this study represents a small segment of a larger intensive 2-year ethnographic research study. methods used included semi-structured interviews and ethnographic participant observations conducted in the tradition of ethnography and social constructivism (creswell, 2013; patton, 2002). given the size of the study and the ethnographic method utilized, the traditional limitations exist and the findings should be read with those in mind. however, the current issues in education, 25(1) 6 analytic goal is to speak to how the reported accounts from homeless youth and organization staff members reveal truths about them, the social worlds from which they come or currently live, and how possible selves are imagined. their descriptions and explanations—or the data— are also examined and presented in such a way that the final analysis provides readers with an understanding of the consequences of the adolescents’ and staff members’ constructions of participants’ lives and behaviors in relation to their socially constructed identities. data collection i interviewed 12 homeless young adults with the recruiting assistance of the nonprofit organization empower (pseudonym), which provided temporary shelter, counseling, educational support, and other services for homeless adolescents in a midwest metropolitan city. empower served young people between the ages of 10 to 20 and was almost always at full capacity; the demand for the services that empower provided, including family counseling, food and clothing pantries, and temporary housing, far exceeded its institutional capacity. i spent more than 150 hours conducting participant observations at empower in an effort to understand the young clients’ seemingly typical, or common, interactions with one another and empower staff. i composed observation fieldnote memos after each visit. i paid particular attention to client-client and client-staff discussions about educational experiences, occupational histories, and aspirations. data analysis my method of analysis involved an iterative process between data collection, coding, and memo generation as informed by constant comparative analysis (charmaz, 2006; patton, 2002) and the possible selves theory. i created an initial coding scheme that reflected the following categories: social class, homelessness, educational experiences, race/ ethnicity, gender-related issues, and the intersections among and between them. i selected these categories based on what is specified in the relevant literature and my broader interests in the educational experiences and occupational aspirations of homeless young adults. for example, i created a descriptive code, “educational barriers,” that was based on current scholarly literature (tierney et al., 2008). this initial coding scheme enabled me to stay attuned to important issues related to homeless young adults, while also remaining open to disconfirming evidence. table 1 homeboy demographics pseudonym age race gender educational status benji 17 black m enrolled in h.s. frank 18 black m h.s. graduate henry 19 black m drop-out james 14 black m enrolled in h.s. jeremy 16 latino and black m drop-out john 17 black m drop-out karim 18 black m drop-out manuel 18 latino and black m drop-out michael 17 white m drop-out current issues in education, 25(1) 7 nathan 18 black m enrolled in h.s. terrance 19 black m drop-out william 17 black m enrolled in h.s. i utilized atlas.ti to analyze the interview data using open and focused coding methods (emerson et. al., 1995), a process in which during the open coding process, all codes were identified in line-by-line inductive coding (e.g., “good at math and science”), with a continued focus on the analytical frame of possible selves. in the focused coding phase, i refined and synthesized the inductive codes to put “like” ones together, making the overall number of codes more manageable (e.g., synthesizing “good at math and science” and “loves english class” to form a broader theme of “positive school experiences”). at the same time, i deductively identified theoretically relevant themes (e.g., “internalized failure”). the primary codes of interest to this article fall under the parent code occupational aspirations. analyses concluded with thematic saturation and when i achieved a high level of coherence. findings: the possible selves of the homeboys with this study, i sought to determine how empower aims to serve its diverse population of homeless youth. based on observations and interviews, i found that within the population that regularly relied on empower, there were three peer subcultures: the homeboys, a mostly black male group; the sistergirls, an all-black female group; and the emocores, a mixed-gender all white clique. the staff at empower, in their efforts to serve the clients in relevant and personally engaging ways interacted with these subcultures in intentionally disparate ways. these markedly distinct interactions influenced the enactment of educational opportunities empower provided its clients. enactment, or execution, of these opportunities had the effect of bolstering, in some cases, challenging or weakening the educational and occupational aspirations of the youth in these different sub-cultures. this paper focuses exclusively on the homeboys, their educational and occupational aspirations, and how empower used hhbe to engage them in organizational programming. the homeboys and hip hop culture the homeboys were a distinct sub-group of young men at empower. nearly all members of the group embodied an affinity for black male hip hop culture, a speech pattern that portrays their love of rapping and rap music, collective hobbies, and a shared background of adversity, abuse, and isolation that has resulted in self-ascribed and diagnosed mental health concerns. while they also identified and championed several of the other aspects of hip hop culture (e.g. deejaying, street art/ graffiti, etc.), they failed to have the resources to engage fully in them. the homeboys, as regular attendees at drop-in, represented about half of empower’s clientele. there were between 8-10 homeboys at the drop-in on any given night, and that number grew to 15-20 on evenings when music-based events were scheduled. the homeboys were a racially diverse group of young men (see table 1) led by charismatic leaders john, nathan, frank, and will. the youngest homeboy was james at 14 and the oldest was marcus at 20. the group was a closed system; all of the members were homeless or unstably housed. the homeboys all shared the same single-minded occupational goal—to be famous hip hop rap artists. while they enjoyed playing video games and basketball, their current issues in education, 25(1) 8 favorite pastime was writing rap lyrics, performing them in front of their peers, and listening to the music they create. for example, writing rap lyrics was karim’s hobby in the evening. author: what do you do in your free time? karim: not much free time. but when, like at night or when i get a chance i work on my rap lyrics, write them down. i have a notebook where i keep all of them. just trying to perfect the lyrics. it was also terrance’s go-to activity: author: what do you do in your free time? terrance: i just work on my lyrics. i write a lot of lyrics and try to come up with new beats. writing rap lyrics was william’s pastime at school: fieldnote, july 11, 2014: i sat with william most of the evening today. he brought his lyric notebook so that i could take a look. it is a two-subject blue composition book, and it is about 1/3 filled with rap song lyrics that he has come up with. just glancing through, most of the lyrics seem to be about the same things: money and violence. no dates-i asked him how often he wrote in the journal. he said almost every day, mostly when he is at school. and an activity john shared with his brothers: author: what do you do in your free time for fun? john: i work on my lyrics, i write new songs. author: what’s getting a lot of play on your ipod now? john: oh, my music, me and my brothers' music. that's what's gettin' the most play. author: you and your brothers make music together? john: yeah. author: you play that a lot around the house? john: twenty-four seven, well, if i'm around my mom, there are certain songs that i don't play. i can't play them all because some of the lyrics are—they're kinda explicit, but yeah, i play our music every day, and then when i'm tired of listening to me rap all day, i'll listen to some songs by like frank ocean or some old songs by j. holiday or something like that. this process of coming up with new rap lyrics was not a secret hobby. like john and his brothers, the ultimate goal was to record the songs and let others hear them. the homeboys typically shared their musical creations with each other at the rhapsody and rhyme nights. the performer list was filled with homeboys, and while others in the drop –in expressed an interest in performing, they were often put on the schedule by empower staff at the end of the allotted 2 hours, leaving little time to display talents outside of the hip hop genre. the homeboys and education all of the homeboys were school-aged at the time of this research, and as such, education remained a relevant, non-threatening topic of discussion for me to initiate in my daily interactions with them. fieldnotes, april 18: i played video games with henry and lance today. i asked them if they were in school, and they both started laughing and said no. i asked why that was a funny question, and they first looked at each other. then lance said, “i don’t know, most current issues in education, 25(1) 9 people don’t ask us that question.” i asked lance how old he was. he said 16. i then asked why he wasn’t in school. he smiled and said, “because i got grown people problems.” the topic of school often emerged between me and the homeboys (brought up by myself) over video game sessions or during mealtime. information about their homeless status or family background emerged over weeks of building trust and came in small segments, giving me the task of putting the stories together. the most delicate stories emerged during our private one-onone interviews. but the homeboys were at ease speaking about their schooling experiences and their educational status, often talking about their classroom encounters with me in the common areas as other homeless young people and staff members listened. few of the homeboys were enrolled or attending local high schools. the “grown people problems” comment was revealing, as henry and lance were representatives of several of the homeboys who, due to circumstances beyond their control, had to leave formal educational settings. for example, karim had to quit school to take care of his younger siblings. karim: i remember one day my mom said i had to stay home to watch my siblings. i cried because i couldn't go to school. and that's why i'm out here today. i'm trying to get my ged finished and stuff like that. it sucks i've got to settle for a ged, but it's a credential. i can't really complain, but i rather had gotten a diploma though……you know, i go on facebook and all my friends from high school and stuff talking about they're graduating. oh, my goodness. i haven't been on facebook in a while because every time i go on there, it's like either prom or graduation because you know everybody is getting out of school this week, so that's all i see in my newsfeed is like oh, i'm finally graduating, i'm done with high school, blah, blah, blah. it sucks, but whatever. yeah, just rolling with the punches and that's how i ended up out here. through no fault of his own, karim missed the typical high school experience, which included more than the academic components. he also missed important social events, and he seemed aware of how foregoing these traditional rites of passage differentiated him from his peers. empower filled an important social role for the homeboys, giving them a peer group and activities that, even though they were homeless and dealing with tremendous challenges, allowed them to feel and act their age. the homeboys did have options for formal education and its credentialing, however, and a select few remained continuously enrolled in school despite the hardships in their personal lives. empower held various types of educational workshops and ged (general educational development) preparation seminars for all interested homeless youth. young people who resided in empower’s temporary housing must remain enrolled in school, and the organization becomes the educational advocate for them. i asked faith, empower’s case manager, how they assisted youth with their educational needs: author: so, what help do you give the kids who are still in school? faith: well, we used to do “homework help wednesdays” but the program was discontinued because the kids would either not come in or they would leave because they didn’t want to participate. author: the ones in school didn’t want to do their homework here? why not? faith: i don’t know. it could be because maybe they didn’t think it was cool, current issues in education, 25(1) 10 especially for the boys. they come here to hang out and socialize, so doing work was not something they wanted to do. they would leave and go to the public library or to the park and hang out. we hope to start the program again though. i hope it’s better next time and that the kids use it. author: what about the ged workshops? faith: now those are popular and we push those a lot to the kids. they show up for those workshops and we try to let them know what will be on the test, how to study, and we help them register for the exam and everything. there was much complexity in faith’s answer, but what was compelling here was the push for the ged workshops. empower staff often spoke of the young peoples’ pressing needs—a stable home, food and clothing, and financial security, and traditional schooling limited the hours in a day young people could acquire these necessities. instead of pushing the homeboys to study and stay enrolled in their local high schools, empower staff encouraged them to take the ged in order to move past the formality of “schooling”, get the credential, and obtain the financial means to take care of themselves. although the staff often mentioned the ged workshops when i asked about educational programming, i never saw a workshop take place or any flyers advertising the possibility in my many months of observing and participating in the space. the homeboys still enrolled in a traditional comprehensive high school were the minority, which may be why most boys failed to attend the homework help wednesdays. william was one of the few exceptions. he remained in school and was tracked into a college preparatory program called the early college alliance program. it provided college credit for courses and students remained at their high schools throughout the school day. the program also provided college application counseling and financial aid workshops, as well as some intrinsic skills: william: i’m in the early college alliance program. and they kind of broke the shackles of public schooling. they basically give you the tools that you need to teach yourself, educate yourself and be educated. you know, they let you go on your own personally educational journey, you know, instead of trying to build onto you like an assembly line, you know, they allow you to expand, you know, and grow. they give you college assignments. william was the only homeboy in a college preparatory program. his educational and occupational aspiration, however, was to be a hip hop rapper and, in his words, “a hip hop holistic mogul”. the more common experience for the homeboys in traditional high schools was a vocational training program. nathan: well, i wanted to take the automotive classes because i want to be a mechanic in a few years. work on cars and motorcycles. author: what did you end up taking? nathan: my counselor said that i didn’t sign up soon enough, so i took culinary arts again. i took that last year too, and i’m in it again this year. author: are you interested in being in the culinary field? a chef or cook? nathan: not really. i mean i am now. i have the most courses in it, so i think i could do it. like nathan, the homeboys had limited options in the local vocational programs. none of them were enrolled in the more prestigious automotive, health occupation, or construction programs that provided additional credentialing. because the young people were very transitory, they often current issues in education, 25(1) 11 registered in new schools late, and as such, they settled for culinary arts or beginner automotive or construction for the second or third time. the majority of homeboys had some experience as a high school dropout, even the ones who go on to be enrolled in alternative schools or those who eventually finish with a high school diploma or ged. michael spent a year out of school deciding which institution to enroll in after being suspended from his local high school. frank spent periods of time out of school, moving from one school to another as his housing situation changed before he finally graduated with a diploma. the homeboys not enrolled in any schooling institution all shared that they all had every intention to enroll in another school or a ged program, and when i asked them how one makes it in the united states, they all offered the answers “hard work” and “higher education”. even lance, who quipped that he was not enrolled in school because he had “grown people problems,” added later, “i’m going to go back to school soon though and get my diploma. as soon as i get a little more stable.” future occupations: hustle and flow ideology the homeboys are familiar with the dominant achievement ideology—the widespread belief that society is one of equal opportunity and that education and hard work leads to economic and social success. they verbally encouraged other homeless youth, including the sistergirls, to stay in school and go to college or get their ged. they acknowledged that formal education is important, but they did not believe that higher education, and by extension the dominant achievement ideology, worked for their particular lives. strikingly, it had not worked for their family or community members, and this could be the reason they never internalized the ideology as one that could work in their lives. some of their parents graduated high school and had stable jobs but were still unable to make ends meet financially. with the exception of william (whose mother received her real estate licensure after high school) none of the parents of the homeboys attended post-secondary schooling. they could name several friends who were high school graduates but were still working minimum wage jobs side by side with high school dropouts. discouragingly, some of the homeboys worked hard in school, stayed out of trouble, but correspondingly, experienced peer violence and teacher indifference. thus, the dominant achievement ideology, while valid for other young people, was expressively not an ideology the homeboys believed relevant or true for their livesit existed only as a possible self for others. the following sections offer insight into why the homeboys believed this—from the available culture they see in their communities and the media, to their occupational role models. emulating the (visible and available) culture the homeboys are a subgroup of homeless youth who express through dress, speech, and hobbies an affinity for hip hop and black male-centric culture. the social location of the homeboys narrows this conception to black males who 1) they access through their families or local communities or 2) are visible in the narrow renderings of the mainstream media. the african american men in the community that the homeboys knew and had access to gained economic success through other means than education. according to the homeboys, most of the men in their families or communities sold drugs. others dabbled in illegal markets, selling stolen goods or using violence to secure money and other resources. these community members promoted their lack of formal educational credentials and how school was not a factor in them becoming, as they saw it, successful entrepreneurs. the homeboys seemed to embrace this philosophy—an ideology i call hustling and flowing. the homeboys maintained that if they current issues in education, 25(1) 12 hustled hard enough and long enough, that the money and success would begin to flow their way regardless of how many educational credentials they had. hard work in the conventional, academic way was traded for a different type of hard work, one they were more accustomed to engaging in to survive their circumstances. every day i asked nathan how he was doing, and his standard reply was “you know me, i stay hustlin’”. the other black males the homeboys had access to were ones who are visible in the mainstream media—particularly the music-based programming like mtv and bet. the artists, the lyrics, the commercial endorsements, and the music videos are selling a lifestyle that is steeped in material consumerism and monetary excess (pope, 2005). it requires (through de facto means) an adherence to these and other cultural codes, such as fashion and speech, to prove or confirm belonging, all of with the homeboys do and maintain as a component of homeboy membership (thomas, et al., 2008; hammond, 2002). the homeboys spend their extremely limited money and resources (legal or not) acquiring the latest jeans, t-shirts, and shoes that are being marketed by hip hop moguls. few of them can afford these items; hence they repeatedly wear the items they have acquired over and over. if their ambition is to become rappers, then they must “walk the walk” in order to be considered legitimate. individual responsibility and role models interestingly, the homeboys did not ascribe to the dominant achievement ideology for themselves, but they did not blame institutional or systemic bias on their potential to make their dreams come true. the only thing that stood in their way of making all their dreams come true was the amount of hard work they were willing to put into it. to them, they could be millionaires before their 21st birthdays if they wanted it bad enough, if they hustled fast enough. all but william answered with a non-hesitant “yes” when i asked if they thought the playing field was level for everyone in us society. william was the only homeboy to mention issues of racism, prejudice, and social class oppression in his interviews and daily conversations. he was acutely aware of his social position and that of his less fortunate friends, and he often tried to “educate” the others on the inner workings and conspiracies of “the man”. the homeboys may internalize their success and failure as a personal, individual attribute because of their occupational role models. the homeboys’ role models were drawn not from a diverse array of successful men in society but only from rap and hip hop icons who have gained great success rapping about their unfortunate circumstances growing up. for instance, these popular rap lyrics by lupe fiasco could often be heard in empower: i was once that little boy terrified of the world now i’m on a world tour i will give up everything, even start a world war for these ghettos girls and boys i’m rapping round’ the world for africa to new york, haiti then i detour, oakland out to auckland gaza strip to detroit, say hip-hop only destroy tell em’ look at me, boy the homeboys rapped these lyrics over and over in the drop-in. the homeboys also listed kendrick lamar as a role model. he rose to hip hop success at the young age of 17. one of john’s favorite songs, and therefore, a favorite for all of the homeboys, is poe man dreams by kendrick lamar: this is the ism this is the vision current issues in education, 25(1) 13 you know what i’m talkin’ about? you gotta get up off your ass and get it, man that’s the only way your pockets gonna expand, i tell you every day, you know what i’m talkin’ about apply yourself to supply your wealth, only limitations you’ll ever have are those you place upon yourself. in this song, lamar puts the onus for success on the individual, telling the audience that if they want something, go get it, as if it is a linear want-it-get-itprocess. if you fail, it is because you failed at applying yourself. like lupe fiasco and kendrick lamar, the rap stars of today are young prodigies, growing up impoverished and often in communities rife with violence. they are discovered in what seems to be the most serendipitous ways, going from “ghetto to gucciliving” overnight. for example, lamar began circulating his mixed tape to people in his community (southern california, compton) when he was 16 years old. within months, executives at a record company heard the tape and offered him a music deal (collins, 2012). the homeboys see little difference between themselves and these successful stars, and as such, aspire to be the next big thing on the hip hop cultural landscape—the rapper was their only possible self. to them, rapping was the most viable career option—they already have tragic background stories, they emulate the culture in sincerity, and they seem to wholeheartedly subscribe to the hustle and flow ideology that emanates from the lyrics of successful artists. all that was missing was a lot of hard work and hustle in order for their possible self to be fully actualized. luck or serendipity was never mentioned as a condition of success. when pushed, the homeboys offered other occupations that may make them happy if the music dreams derail—occupations for which they had little to no prerequisite skills. for example, john mentioned to me during our interview that if he needs a “backup” occupation to the music business, he wants to be a mixed martial arts (mma) fighter. he took some classes as a tool of anger management and while it has been years since he has taken a class, he remembered the teacher telling him he was really good at it. he knew no mma fighters, however, or how to enter the occupation. terrance would consider being a psychologist after his music career, but at the time, he knew no one who had successfully navigated this vocation. benji would like to enter a science field, and nathan mentioned that he could work as a cook as he took several years of culinary classes in school and already held a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant. william wants to travel the country and find himself: william: yeah, i’m hoping to start a life in california that will extend all the way out here. i want to travel. i want to find my soul. yeah. vegas, or i’m thinking about portland or seattle. i’ve been thinking about new orleans too or even miami. author: so, on this journey to find yourself, where do you see yourself ending up? william: i really want to start a multipurpose studio. i want it to have a recording studio, i want it to have a dance studio, an art studio, a kitchen, a computer room and i want it to be in the ghetto. white ghettos, brown ghettos, black ghettos, you know, just any area where people are restricted…i want to be able to give people a voice. i want to community build. i do. thus, the homeboys held firmly to the occupational aspiration of becoming rappers or hip hop stars through an engagement in a hustle-and-flow ideology, not a traditional educationally current issues in education, 25(1) 14 engaged ideology. their “fall back” occupations require advanced educational preparation, all of which they were not receiving or actively seeking out. one homeboy stood out as an exception—michael—who told me during a rhapsody and rhyme night that he had no dreams of college. he did, however, have existing social capital in the automotive field that could provide a viable, stable future occupation. author: michael, are you going to be a rapper as well? michael: me? no, not me. let’s just say i’m not blessed in that department. in the rapping skills department. author: then what will you do in the future? michael: i don’t know. probably be a mechanic. that’s what most of my cousins do and they can get me a job. the role of empower: selling hip hop dreams the excitement at the empower drop-in was palpable on the day the music engineering and production workshop was to begin. empower’s development office had secured a sizable grant that permitted the purchase of new music production equipment, including a state-of-theart soundboard, microphone, computer, and editing software, all so that empower participants could learn the ins and outs of music production. there were over 40 young people in attendance, prompting the staff to find additional seating and reconfigure the workshop space. a 21-year old white male, dale, was in charge of the equipment and the workshop, and he gathered everyone in the living room for the information session. by the end of the two-hour seminar, everyone who desired to try their hand at performing had an opportunity to do what would become routine at these workshops; they held the microphone, rapped their hand-written or free-styled rhymes, and looked on in wonder as dale interacted with the equipment and played back studio-quality recordings of their voices. the music workshop was designed and implemented by empower staff for the benefit of a large segment of its client base—the homeboys. in their grant proposal to a private foundation, empower staff focused on the rise of hhbe, particularly hip hop pedagogy, noting the empirical results of increased engagement, motivation, and enhanced learning and creativity of creating such a curriculum in educational spaces. while all empower clients were invited and welcomed to participate in the workshop, the homeboys expressed a single-minded determination to be rappers. to make those dreams come true, they needed music demos to sell locally. with demos in circulation, they believed that their talents would be discovered by music executives who would be compelled to offer them a record deal and access to a different life trajectory. unfortunately, the homeboys have little to no training in music production. the grantfunded workshop on music production resulted in no additional skills for the youth. in all my days of observing these workshops, none of the youth ever put their hands on the actual soundboard or apple macbook pro computer. none of them left the sessions with demos to sell or share. the extent of their talents and accomplishments with the grant-funded workshops rest in writing lyrics and rapping, which is what empower staff encourages. in separate encounters, i asked staff members faith, emilia, and clinton about john’s talents and where they thought john would be in the future: faith: john is smart, he just doesn’t like people to think or know that he is smart. he was enrolled in the really good high school here but he dropped out. current issues in education, 25(1) 15 but he could be anything he put his mind to. he is really good at rapping and doing music, so i think he will end up doing something in music. emilia: i don’t know. i think he’ll probably do something in music, like rap music. he is interested in it and is good at it. clinton: john has some skills in rapping and doing music-based things, so i think he will be successful if he keeps focused on that. he is super smart too. he is. these staff members encourage john to present at every rhapsody and rhyme, and emilia often allows john to determine who performs and how long they are on the living room stage. they acknowledge john’s intellectual and natural leadership abilities, often remarking “john is smart”, yet they do not encourage him to explore and find other dreams that may work for him. they also neglect to mentor him in how to fine tune his artistic craft of rapping, as they know nothing about the art of rapping or the entertainment industry themselves. the more significant issue is that the organization offers little more than lip service to the educational and occupational aspirations of the homeboys. john shared with me that he is interested in attending a school of the arts in the state, although he is hard-pressed to remember the name of the school or where it is located. john: at first, i didn't really want to go to college unless it—it, i was like openminded about it. i didn't wanna go, i just wanted to do whatever would get me on a set track to my music career, but then my probation officer started telling me about these colleges for music and stuff, music programs, that have good music programs…but yeah, so then i thought like, alright, i'll do that and it'll help me better like with a trade or whatever. yeah. here, john expresses an interest in higher education as long as it assists him in his music-based aspirations. his interest was piqued, however, by his probation officer, not empower staff. this is surprising because the local community college, which is a short bus ride from the drop-in, offers a certificate in music production and engineering. while i witnessed emilia, faith, and dylan spout seemingly memorized information about registration dates, withdrawal deadlines, and credit hour costs, i never heard them offer information about the music-based offerings of the community college. instead, they touted their music workshop and the grant that enabled them to purchase state-of-the-art engineering equipment that the young men and women of the drop-in would never be allowed to touch. discussion the occupational aspirations of homeboys appear unsullied by glass ceilings or statistics on economic and educational disparities. although they display symptoms of depression and are at times knocked down by the adversities in their lives, they are teenagers who are optimistic, hopeful, and excited about the trajectory of their futures. it is clear the homeboys understand the prevalent achievement ideology—they know that education is important and credentials are the key to upward social mobility, but they respond as though those messages are not for them. in the time i spent at empower, none of the homeboys who were considered drop-outs enrolled in a formal schooling institution. yet i witnessed them time and time again supporting their peers in their academic pursuits, seeming to be genuinely happy when a peer achieved a high school diploma or ged certificate. current issues in education, 25(1) 16 based on the homeboys’ affiliation with limited role models, the homeboys reflect messages of achievement from those in a similar social positioning. indeed, the voices of rappers speak of an achievement ideology seemingly based on the reality of most homeboys’ lived experiences. thus, the homeboys speak of depending on their individual-level hard work, talent, and good fortune as their achievement ideology leading to an eventual occupation as a professional hip hop star. this does not mean that they ignore or downplay the role of systemic inequality and rampant bias in societyindeed, they speak of these challenges in their rhymes and their conversations with mesomething hhbe has given them the language to engage in freely. but the homeboys fail to link systemic inequalities in society to their lack of opportunity and mobility because their possible selves as hip hop entertainers rest outside of these constraints. because empower staff focuses on hip hop as only a skill of words and provides no critical context to the genre, particularly for its anti-oppressive history, the homeboys were unable to connect the systemic inequalities they often rap about to the difficulties they had in making any of their educational or occupational dreams come true. research by milner et al. (2015) maintained that students, particularly those in urban communities, are often underserved because people in educational systems have “superficial understandings of these students, their families, and their communities” (p. 545). indeed, in this study, the staff members of empower too often forged their relationships with homeless young people on narrow conceptions of who they thought they were or should be instead of deepening their understandings. they were unable to translate the homeboys’ aspirations—to be hip hop stars—into tangible resources, opportunities to build social capital, and viable occupational outcomes for youth of color. the homeboys wanted to be hip hop stars, and since that was a path that the staff knew as a site of economic and social mobility for young black males, they seized on its narrow conception and never looked beyond it to envision other occupational futures for them. empower staff pushed the homeboys to pursue their dreams and aspirations to a fault; staff provided this population with a singular occupational track, offered no substitute or additional options, and consequently, gave institutionally supported practice time for their rap dreams without social capital and tangible resources. for example, staff provided no additional counseling for the homeboys to enroll in the music engineering program at the local community college. the possible selves of the homeboys were constrained by the staff of the organization based on stereotypical conception of who society thinks young black males and who they are destined to be in the future. unlike hoop dreams, which creates an educational incentive to stay invested, hip hop based education offers little “possible selves” development for young black men. this research asserts that if hhbe, and the myriad ways hip hop is taken up in formal and informal educational settings is not dually paired with the critical process of institutional actors envisioning all the possible selves that black boys can become, then it becomes another hegemonic socially reproductive tool wielded by educators. conclusion: yearning for hoop dreams a few years ago, i was presenting a lecture in which i enumerated the myriad ways in which black people have been used to enrich this society and made to serve as its proverbial scapegoat. i was particularly bitter about the country's practice of accepting black contributions and ignoring the contributors. indeed, i suggested, had black people not existed, america would have invented them. from the audience, a listener reflecting current issues in education, 25(1) 17 more insight on my subject than i had shown, shouted out, 'hell man, they did invent us' (bell, 1988, p. 767). as research indicates and teachers believe, hip hop can be a powerful force in the classroom and in society offering a “space for solace” for marginalized young people (emdin, 2010, p. 2). learning and teaching, in school-based and out-of-school contexts, are fundamentally cultural processes (nasir & hand, 2006; gorski, 2020), and hhbe can assist disenfranchised students in finding representations of themselves and their stories in the world and empower them to become agents of change (love, 2017). critical hip hop pedagogy (akom, 2009), in particular, creates space for and centers the issues of race, racism, and antioppressive paradigms. however, if derrick bell’s postmodern heckler is correct (quote above), and the white gaze is always upon its creation, is it ever possible for hip hop based education to be truly liberatory or transformative when wielded by an overwhelmingly white teaching force? twenty-seven years after the premiere of hoop dreams, black people are still searching for, fighting for, and pushing for meaningful positive movement in the quest for civil rights. while school-based athletics still hold promise for the talented few, the young black men in this study looked to hip hop as a panacea, and unfortunately, their constrained selves, not constructed by them but positioned on them, further limit their chances to find upward social and economic mobility. while sports offer, at least in theory, an education-based path to economic stability or mobility, hip hop dreams existed outside school walls and formal education often in direct contradiction to how one “makes it” in the entertainment industry. this study maintains that educational scholars and practitioners must critically examine hhbe and any other educational intervention that purports to center black children and other children of color and ask for what purpose and toward what outcome? references akom, a. a. 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(2020). race and ethnicity of public school teachers and their students. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2020/2020103/index.asp williams, a. d. (2008). re-membering freire: the links between hip-hop culture and paulo freire. journal of thought, 43(1-2), 71-85. author notes shantá r. robinson, phd orcid 0000-0001-6171-7863 the university of chicago srrobinson@uchicago.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2020/2020103/index.asp https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, current issues in education, 21(2) 1 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience laura geringer loyola university chicago abstract: this article is both a research paper and a reflection piece, describing the core of a research project about examining faculty experience and some of the author’s related self-learning and reflection fueled by the project. this qualitative case-study asked: for bilingual faculty whose native language and academic discipline is french, in what ways is language intertwined in their experience of higher education in english-language universities in the united states midwest? semi-structured interviews with three individuals suggested this multifaceted idea: for these faculty members, their experience of higher education is intertwined with 1) their relationships with individuals and groups of various linguistic characteristics; 2) complexities of identity/personality; and 3) power dynamics. parallel to this research about faculty experience was the author’s experiential learning about the research process and reflections on her relationship to research and practice in the field of education. this article sketches this learning alongside the research study. keywords: higher education; international higher education; faculty; french; bilingual citation: geringer, l. (2021). a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience. current issues in education, 22(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1927 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 12/18/2020 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1927 geringer: a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience current issues in education, 21(2) 2 introduction how is language intertwined in the experiences of bilingual faculty? to what extent do i enjoy conducting research? as a masters of education student at loyola university chicago, i initiated this independent research project seeking clarity in two areas: first, a research question about faculty and language, and second, the role that i want research to play in my professional work. i took care to document and write up my findings for the first topic (to conclude this project in fall of 2018) and i share much of that content here. though i was open with my research committee about the second, parallel research aim, i took less care in documenting my (arguably more important) learning in this area. in this piece, i aim to share a bit of both — the core of my research project and some of the related self-learning and field reflection it has fueled. this article is ordered around the research process, using a likely recognizable paper structure and a more formal tone of voice for these sections. my reflections and experiences in conducting the research are interspersed throughout and marked with “[reflections]” to indicate a more personal narrative that reflects my parallel learning. the research project english is increasingly used as a language for academic scholarship globally. in numerous contexts, it appears as a language for research and for teaching (altbach, 2016). this trend raises questions about the benefits, disadvantages, and complexities of the evolving linguistic landscape (altbach, 2016; ives, 2010). my research project took place in the context of broader discussions surrounding language use in academia, particularly the use of a common language for scholarship across various institutions and countries. currently, english is the primary common language under discussion, though these tensions may be seen with other languages in other contexts; for example, russian could be considered a common language among some post-soviet countries (altbach, 2016; cunska, 2010; galbreath, 2006; ives, 2010; silova, 2015). a review of the literature suggested a question that could further our understanding of this topic and as well as considerations for the construction of the research project. literature review altbach (2016) and ives (2010) provided a high-level perspective on the influences and complexities of english in the international higher education community and the relevant theoretical context. both authors provided a valuable foundation on the topic. yet, their macrolevel foci could not address with precision nor depth the varied experiences of individuals and organizations within this international higher education context. much of the current research surrounding linguistic use in higher education centers on european countries and the european union (eu). gerhards’ (2014) study, especially when considered alongside gazzola (2016), highlights the question of how to define linguistic and communicative ability in research. the theoretical framework presented in these articles was helpful for my conceptualization of linguistic difference and suggested elements to look for in my own research. significant research has been done on language use of faculty in various contexts. this literature in particular shaped the content and the methods of my inquiry. gentil and séror’s (2014) dialogue-based self-case study explored the linguistic experiences of researchers in geringer: a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience current issues in education, 21(2) 3 canada’s bilingual context. their work provided a strong methodological example for the formulation of my study, and modeled thoughtful validity practices in a case study design. kuteeva and airey (2014) and lópez-navarro, moreno, quintanilla, and rey-rocha (2015) explored some of the complexities related to language use and academic discipline. these two studies suggested academic discipline as an important factor in bi/multilingual faculty experiences. with this in mind, my study focused on faculty whose academic discipline is french. muresan and pérez-llantada (2014) examined the publication language(s) used by romanian scholars. this study modeled a qualitative-first mixed methods study and suggested the use of self-assessment of language proficiencies in my study (muresan & pérez-llantada, 2014). this study, along with lópez-navarro et al. (2015), also suggested the inclusion of publication-related questions in my semi-structured interview protocol. research question the goal of my research study was to better understand, on both a specific and personal level, the multilingual faculty experience within english-language universities in order to further contribute to the larger ongoing discussion surrounding the experience and roles of language in international higher education. specifically, the central question of this study was: for bilingual faculty whose native language and academic discipline is french, in what ways is language intertwined in their experience of higher education in english-language universities in the united states midwest? a review of the literature suggested several research opportunities that i considered in constructing a project to expand our understanding of higher education. much of the existing research focuses on language use for publication, faculty use of english in non-english speaking regions or institutions, and language in europe and the european union. my research builds upon the existing work and contributes to our understanding of some outstanding related questions. first, my study included questions about publication, but its focus went beyond academic writing. second, this study was conducted in an english-speaking national and institutional context with a focus on faculty whose native language does not match their current environment. third, this study was situated in the united states, where much research has been done on international or multilingual students (see marshall et al., 2012; shi, harrison, & henry, 2017; tardy, 2004), but very little on bilingual faculty. in addition to contributing to the quantity of knowledge on this topic, this study could contribute to future theoretical developments or refinements. finally, the experience of participating in this study and thoughtfully exploring the research question impacted the researcher, and perhaps also the research participants. [reflections]. yes, it definitely impacted the researcher. positionality particularly because this project follows a qualitative case-study design, it is important to acknowledge my positionality as a researcher. this project focused on language and academia and touched on ideas of linguistic ability, identity, and power. in the introduction to my first interview with each participant, i shared a little of my own linguistic background. my native language is english and my second language is french; i can be described as an advanced independent french speaker. conversely, the study participants’ first language is french and their second language is english. i invited each participant to change the language of our conversation from english to french if they preferred, but there was likely some form of pressure on the participants to continue our conversation in english. this means that our conversations geringer: a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience current issues in education, 21(2) 4 took place almost exclusively in my primary language and their secondary language. as one participant, martine, suggested: there is arguably power in speaking your primary language. my other identities also shape my positionality relative to this research, including the following: white, cisgender woman (her, her, hers pronouns), heterosexual, and u.s. american. additionally, i discussed with each faculty member their experiences in academia while i was simultaneously a participant in academia as a graduate student, intern, and recent staff member. because of this, it is possible that my relationship with each research participant contained elements of a researcher-research subject, student-professor, and staff-faculty dynamic. my position as a student may even have aided me in conducting this higher education research. acknowledging elements of my positionality is an important step toward the goals of fairness and trustworthiness in this study. methodology this study followed a qualitative collective-case study design consisting of three individual faculty cases. participants were selected through a non-random convenience sampling technique from the population of francophone multilingual faculty at two research-active english-language universities (johnson & christensen, 2013). to collect data, i conducted two semi-structured interviews with each participant and analyzed the first round of data to inform the second round of interviews. this study aimed to explore the experiences of faculty participants in order to understand how language is intertwined in their academic lives. because the primary goal of the study is exploration, an in-depth consideration of several case studies was the most suitable of the qualitative methods. the focus of the research question is such that generalizability is of minimal interest, and random sampling is not possible. for these reasons, quantitative methods were not the best choice for this study (johnson & christensen, 2013). this study method facilitated the investigation of the research question in a way that was feasible and valuable. definitions this study considered the experience of bilingual or multilingual faculty whose native language and academic discipline is french, asking in what ways language is intertwined in their experience of higher education in english-language universities in the united states midwest. this question includes several terms that are important to clarify: • bilingual: in this study, the self-reported ability to function well in two languages; • native language: in this study, the self-reported first language and/or the language of the individual’s home, country, culture, or family; and • academic discipline: in this study, a broad topical and theoretical area of scholarly specialization. participants context & population participants for this research study were selected from two english-language universities with high levels of research activity in the united states midwest. multiple universities were included to both increase the size of the target population and increase the diversity of experience represented. the specific institutional culture and experience was not of interest to this study. i chose to focus on research-active universities because research involvement appeared as a geringer: a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience current issues in education, 21(2) 5 component of faculty experience in the literature review (lópez-navarro et al., 2015; muresan & pérez-llantada, 2014). specifically, i selected two r1 research institutions as defined by the carnegie classifications of institutions of higher education (the carnegie classification, n.d.). the midwest region of the united states was chosen for convenience. within this context, the sample was selected from the population of faculty who met the criteria specified by the research question. while i originally intended to focus on tenure-track faculty members, this came to be impractical during the recruitment phase. i did, however, exclude temporarily visiting faculty from institutions outside the united states. sampling this qualitative collective case-study employed nonrandom sampling techniques: convenience and snowball sampling (johnson & christensen, 2013). i selected the sample for convenience from the population with the necessary characteristics and used snowball sampling to identify additional potential participants. participant selection was designed to maximize variation in the following areas: • self-reported gender identity and • self-reported ethnicity and/or country of origin. the purpose of these techniques was to increase population inclusivity and, to the extent possible for such a small number of cases, provide a holistic picture of the ways in which language is intertwined in the experience of francophone faculty. additionally, these sampling methods were chosen for feasibility — to create a study that i could reasonably complete based on temporal and funding constraints — while maintaining the usefulness of this study. the primary weakness of these sampling practices and sample size was that they restrict the generalizability of the study. generalizability of these findings could be increased over time through the accumulation of literature that replicates these findings with other populations. however, generalization was not a goal of this study, and the research question could be addressed with a sample size of three faculty members. recruitment to recruit participants, i first identified two potential research sites to which i could obtain access and verified the existence of my target population using online resources. after receiving approval from the institutional review board at loyola university chicago, i proceeded to recruit individual participants. i relied on online resources and readily available information to identify potential participants, and used snowball sampling to identify additional potential subjects (johnson & christensen, 2013). for those faculty interested in participation, i shared additional information about the project and verified that they fit the selection criteria. unfortunately, only three potential participants both met the criteria and were interested in participating, limiting my ability to maximize variation in the selection of participants. i invited these three to participate and arranged the initial meetings and consent form reviews. geringer: a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience current issues in education, 21(2) 6 [reflections]. i underestimated both the time required and the frustration of identifying and recruiting research subjects, and was perhaps too hesitant to leverage my professional network in this endeavor. i argued, both in my research proposal and in the final write-up, that an exhaustive search for all faculty who met the study’s criteria was unnecessary and impractical, and yet i pressured myself to do as much of this as i could. procedure data collection data was collected following a semi-structured interview instrument. this protocol was developed based on relevant literature and revised with feedback from my research supervisory committee. the choice of a semi-structured interview approach allowed for a thoughtful but not restrictive exploration of the topic. for each subject, i conducted two semi-structured interviews in a location of the participant’s choosing, approximately one month apart. the first-round interviews were all inperson, but, due to travel and illness, two of the second-round interviews were conducted via phone/video conference. with the participants’ consent, i audio recorded each interview. the first semi-structured interview for each participant focused on the individual’s story of becoming bilingual and their relationship with language in professional settings. in this and subsequent conversations, i used member checking to verify that i correctly understood the participant’s comments. after a round of data analysis, i conducted the second semi-structured interview with each participant. the focus of these interviews was to verify that i correctly understood the participant’s comments from the first interview, discuss emerging themes from the first round of data analysis across all cases, and provide each participant the opportunity to share anything else they wanted me to know. [reflections]. as i talked with these individuals and analyzed the qualitative data, i found myself frustrated by the barrier between my world and theirs. in my role as researcher, i was the observer; i could not act in the space occupied by my participants. they shared challenges, raised questions, and described interesting interpersonal dynamics within their professional worlds. i listened and learned from their sharing but could not impact their experience of international higher education. in other roles within higher education i have felt energized, and often internally compelled, to address the leadership, communication, and teamwork challenges of the groups of which i have been a part. this research process was unique in that my potential agency was purposefully and necessarily limited to a pre-defined sphere and the role of researcher. looking to the future, i am drawn to the possibilities of projects that challenge and deconstruct the barriers between researcher and research subject, practitioner and client, educator and learner. as my first research experience, i perhaps overly cautious in maintaining the formality of our interactions; i’m still not sure i have the perspective to determine this. it’s left me wondering how i could have enacted the principles of ethical and respectful research while letting more of my humanity, my complexity shine through in those interactions. analysis process data analysis occurred during and after the data collection process. interim analysis between the first and second round of interviews enabled me to better focus the next stage of data collection. throughout this process, i used memoing to record my emerging thoughts geringer: a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience current issues in education, 21(2) 7 and interpretations. audio data from interviews was transcribed by an automated transcription service, and i corrected the transcripts. next, i coded the data using inductive codes and looked for co-occurring codes. a factsheet including demographic data was attached to each transcript. borrowing from grounded theory coding procedures, i followed a process of open, axial, and selective coding that led me to several themes shared across cases (johnson & christensen, 2013). i focused on thematic analysis and identifying suggested relationships between the categories that arose in the data. i reviewed themes and categories between single-case data sets and then analyzed these themes across cases, searching for shared and unique experiences of these bilingual faculty (johnson & christensen, 2013). these study-wide themes and their associated questions and complications make up the findings for this study. [reflections]. i loved finding themes in my interviews, connections and contradictions in the experiences of my different participants, and possibilities to explore. rather than systematic coding, i wanted to spread everything on the floor and attack it with colored markers and scissors; to follow the bounds and swerves of intriguing ideas without having to document my path, and then turn my attention to what i could do with these ideas. instead, i coded the data, and tried to be as procedural as possible. i wonder about the intersection of fluid, nonlinear analysis and systematic coding for future projects. limitations the primary limitation of this study is generalizability. the non-random, small-scale, convenience case-study sampling approach used greatly restricts my ability to generalize findings to a larger population. generalizability is relevant to this study only insofar as it may assist in shaping future discussions of theory. as the research community accrues additional studies, generalizability may become increasingly feasible. nevertheless, it was necessary to address several validity considerations for this study to be trustworthy and valuable. my primary strategies for increasing validity were reflexivity and member checking as triangulation (johnson & christensen, 2013). first, to reduce and illuminate my impact on the data and analysis, i engaged in written and non-written reflexivity. in searching for themes and answers to the research question, i looked for elements that did not meet my expectations or that disagreed with the themes i developed, specifically by asking my research participants for feedback on emerging themes. second, i used member checking as triangulation to increase the validity of my results. i communicated with each study participant at various stages in the data collection, analysis, and writing process to verify that i was accurately representing their experiences and associated meaning-construction. while i am the sole investigator on this study, a research project supervisory committee provided a degree of critical oversight (johnson & christensen, 2013). [reflections]. with the perspective of a year’s break from this project, i am willing to say that this study would be improved by expanding the scope — speaking with more people and/or speaking with the three participants an additional time or two. it was frustrating to feel like i had barely scratched the surface; that my findings we a long way from being actionable; and that i had succeeded in accumulating more questions and weariness than findings. as my learning around that second, personal research question grew, my willingness to expand my pursuit of the first research question — at least in this research process — diminished. geringer: a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience current issues in education, 21(2) 8 findings subject introductions the three participants in this study, martine, thomas, and françoise have several characteristics in common. they are all native french speakers, have strong english language skills, and identify as white. each participant is a faculty member working in an englishlanguage university context in the u.s. midwest, with an academic discipline of french. the subsequent paragraphs contain a brief overview of each participant’s linguistic history. martine martine has been a faculty member for 31 years and has lived in an english-speaking country for 33 years. she describes her english skill as fluent. martine identifies as a woman (her, her, hers pronouns), belgian, and is 64 years old. martine grew up in belgium and learned french as her first language. she attended school in france and began studying english in high school. after high school, she spent a year in the united states as an exchange student. having learned british english, it took her some time to become comfortable with american english. upon returning to belgium, martine initially had some difficulty with french but it came back to her quickly. her university studies in belgium were in french. when she moved back to the united states, she had no trouble with english the second time. it did take some time for her to feel linguistically and culturally comfortable in the united states. after teaching in the united states for a while, martine went back to school in the united states to get a master’s degree, and so began using english academically. thomas thomas has been a faculty member for 1 year and has lived in an english-speaking country for 9 years. his second language is english. thomas identifies as a gay man (he, him, his pronouns), french, and is 40 years old. thomas grew up in france and learned french from his family and from his surroundings. he attended school in france in french until his later move to the united states. in secondary school, he studied german as his first foreign language and english as his second foreign language. during his last year of high school, thomas took an intensive english class. he lost most of his english ability in subsequent years due to lack of practice. during his doctoral work in france, thomas decided to come to the united states to start a second phd in english. he worked to learn english on his own while still living in france. when he arrived in the u.s., he found it difficult to speak and work in english, and to some degree, still finds it difficult. thomas completed both of his phds and found a job as a faculty member. françoise françoise has been a faculty member off-and-on for about 33 years, 26 years at her current university. françoise has lived in an english-speaking country for 46 years. she describes her english skills as fluent in most contexts. françoise identifies as a woman (her, her, hers pronouns), french, and is 65 years old. françoise grew up in france and learned french as her native language. she had some exposure to the english language through english family members. though she did not speak english, françoise spent a week in england just before high school at the english-language school where her aunt taught. she started studying english in high school. françoise moved to geringer: a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience current issues in education, 21(2) 9 england shortly after high school. she engaged in intellectual discussions and read philosophy in english and completed her university studies in french. she later moved to canada and then to the united states. most of françoise’s english language ability comes from living in englishspeaking countries. themes my interviews with martine, thomas, and françoise suggested this multifaceted idea: their experience of higher education is intertwined with relationships with individuals and groups with various linguistic characteristics, complexities of identity/personality, and power dynamics. while my research question implied a focus on the professional lives of bilingual faculty, it was difficult to maintain a separation of professional and personal linguistic experiences in conversation, and arguably this distinction is an unnecessary or false dichotomy. for these reasons, examples related to participant’s personal and professional lives are included. relationships in the experiences of martine, thomas, and françoise, language and interpersonal relationships are deeply connected, both within and beyond higher education. specifically, the language these faculty use in communicating with someone is shaped by their interlocutor’s characteristics and norms of the relationship between them — and this in turn may shape the relationship itself. the language that martine, thomas, and françoise use is influenced by the language ability and linguistic comfort of their audience. in general, françoise speaks french with her french-speaking colleagues and english with other colleagues. in her personal life too, she takes her audience’s preferences into account. as thomas put it, “if i can speak english or if i can speak the language of my interlocutor, i think it's polite to do so. and i think also that if it's more efficient that way, i will go to efficiency.” martine’s experience is similar: “i guess it’s just uncomfortable to speak whatever language they speak, french, with somebody who does not speak very well, if you’re not in a teacher-student relationship where it’s quite natural” (martine). furthermore, thomas, françoise, and martine all described relationships in their personal and/or professional lives that take place specifically in one language, even if they shared multiple languages with an interlocutor. for these faculty, speaking with someone in a language other than the established language feels uncomfortable. as martine put it, in general, i feel that when you establish a language with a person, you stick with it. it's often difficult to change. if you've established a relationship in french, it's kind of a little awkward to continue in english, or the other way around (martine). thomas suggested that the performance of who you are changes when you switch languages. “if you change the language the interaction cannot be the same” (thomas). françoise shared similar observations in her personal and professional life. for colleagues with whom she speaks french, “if one of us tried to speak english to the other systematically it would actually be offensive” (françoise). françoise also described relationships that are not characterized by a single language. with her daughters, and one daughter in particular, it is normal to switch between french and english within a conversation. perhaps, this is an example of relationships without a set geringer: a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience current issues in education, 21(2) 10 linguistic nature, or perhaps it is a relationship with an expectation of switching. my conversation with françoise touched briefly on both possibilities: “you could say that our linguistics sphere is one of switching. it's never one of mixing” (françoise). all three research participants commented on the discomfort inherent to breaking the linguistic expectations of a relationship. one such complication occurs when another person joins the conversation, someone whose presence causes a language switch. the impact of this switch on the relationship of the original conversation pair seems to vary. for françoise, this switching does not make the relationships between their first conversation partner feel ‘weird.’ thomas described something about the initial relationship shifting. martine describes it as “a little strained.” in conducting this research, i shared two languages with each participant. i initiated communication in english in the recruitment emails. as part of the first interview, i switched momentarily to french to invite each participant to change the language of conversation if they preferred. nobody chose to switch languages with me for more than a couple words here or there. perhaps this is because my french language ability was inferior to their english language skill; because of a language-power dynamic; or perhaps because our initial communications were in english, setting a linguistic expectation for our relationship. identity expression martine, thomas, and françoise suggest that a person may have a different identity or personality in french and in english. my interviews with these three faculty members raised several interesting ideas around this topic, but there is also room for confusion and ambiguity particularly about the meanings of terms like identity and personality. additional research in this area could be useful to clarify. for thomas, who he is is different in each language and he has a wider vocabulary, wider possibilities to express an identity in french than in english. specifically, he performs a different identity in each language. i don't believe that we have any identity that pre-exists what we perform. so, it means that the identity i perform in french isn’t the same as the one that i perform in english. of course, there is a lot of commonalities between the two, but i would never go as far as to say there is my true self and i express this true self differently in french and in english…. and so, i would say even though there is no true self beyond what we performed, there is room for many misunderstandings (thomas). françoise suggested that personality is how you are with other people. “i suppose then i have two different personalities with the two different languages and there's no way around it” (françoise). françoise feels that she is more outgoing in french than in english, probably because the expectations for conversation are different in french and in english. she feels she is less talkative in english, perhaps in part because she does not want to interrupt or break the conversational expectations in english. furthermore, when she uses language in her professional sphere, her identity is not at stake. martine has noticed some people who have a different personality in each language. she suggested that language could be thought of as an integrated part of a person's personality, and so someone’s personality really can be different from one language to another. “i do think that the geringer: a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience current issues in education, 21(2) 11 language definitely assimilates, probably, a part of your personality that can be different according to the language” (martine). power in the research participants’ professional settings, there appeared to be relationships between power and language. power dynamics likely interact with other language-experience factors like relationships and identity expression. the participants’ experiences raise interesting questions and highlight the need for further research, but do not provide enough information to make claims about common power experiences or specific power-language relationships in higher education. below are some of the observations and experiences that they shared. all three of the study participants work in departments that teach other language(s) in addition to french. in each, english is used in official communication and official meetings, regardless who was involved. however, martine shared an example that complicates this picture: teaching-track faculty meetings often take place in french, even though official meetings take place in english. this raises the question of what makes a meeting or communication ‘official,’ who decides what language is appropriate, and how this language choice shapes who has power within the group. participant experiences similarly suggest language-power complications that go beyond official situations. thomas shared a couple of examples of language excluding or including people in professional conversations, and perhaps being used intentionally to do so. martine suggested that when communicating with someone with whom you share multiple languages, choosing to speak in your native language asserts power. “say i speak with an american colleague, if i decide to speak french i'm the dominant one. if they speak english, they are the dominant one” (martine). furthermore, each participant noted different levels of french language competence and comfort among their colleagues who teach french subject matter. this raises questions about the way in which language interacts with, facilitates, or obstructs connections between people in professional settings, and how this intersects with power and career success. martine also suggested that historic relationships between countries or between peoples are carried by individuals, and sometimes this comes out in how individuals interact with each other. she shared an example of a grammatical disagreement in which french speakers from france seemed to have more linguistic authority than french-speakers from other countries. one important unanswered question is how a faculty member’s linguistic identity intersects with their other identities, and what influence this has on their higher education experiences. conclusion this qualitative case-study aimed to better understand the bilingual faculty experience within english-language universities, and in this way, contribute to the ongoing discussion of language in higher education. interviews with three francophone faculty members working in english-language universities suggested that their experience of higher education is intertwined with 1) their relationships with individuals and groups of various linguistic characteristics; 2) complexities of identity/personality; and 3) power dynamic. this research suggests several directions for further inquiry and raises questions about the implications of these faculty’s experience for several aspects of higher education. exploration of several variables and topics could deepen our understanding of bilingual faculty experience. first, because my research participants shared an academic discipline, this geringer: a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience current issues in education, 21(2) 12 study cannot speak to the potential relationship between subject matter and faculty experience. second, the relationships between language and academic publication — an important feature of existing literature — appeared only minimally in the experience of these faculty members, possibly because of their academic discipline or job positions. third, the topics of power, identity, and intersectionality are touched on to various degrees in this project, but warrant additional study. an expanded understanding of individual faculty experiences raises questions about group experience, department function and purpose fulfillment, and leadership. what role does language play in connecting faculty members and in the power dynamics of these relationships? for example, do sub-groups of faculty form within a french department based on language skill, with different groups dominating in different types of internal meetings? what does this mean for department function and the fulfillment of its teaching or research missions? for example, perhaps students sense an implied hierarchy of french-speakers based on the interactions of faculty from different countries. finally, what are the implications of these faculty experiences for the ways faculty and staff engage in formal and informal leadership, both within and beyond a multilingual department? who has power over departmental functions and educational activities in different situations? how does leadership take place across official english-language meetings, informal conversations in various languages, and other professional interactions? do bilingual faculty use different leadership processes inside and outside their department? further research could expand our understanding in these areas. [reflections]. i love the learning that sits at the heart of research and have immense respect for researchers; yet my energy faded in the face of the incremental pace, methodological demands, and isolation i experienced in this project. most of all, i struggled with the purpose and value of my research — why do this if it had little hope of positively impacting the lives of my research participants, who volunteered their time and thoughts? i am irrevocably drawn to the ‘why’ behind my efforts, and the alignment of my work with purposes and values that i believe is a driving force behind my career shifts. this project illuminated and sifted some of these ‘whys’, helping me distinguish between purposes that appeal to me intellectually and ones that speak to my mind and my energy. for example, in my flexible time i found myself repeatedly deprioritizing my research project tasks — preferring to grab some brainstorming supplies or dig into a leadership textbook in response to a challenge or opportunity in my other education contexts. over the course of this research project, i pinpointed a core point of friction for me: the mission of addressing my research question was less intriguing to me than the dream of joining my research participants in their context and working together to shape their experiences within higher education. i have learned that i am drawn to scholarship that is very close to practice and to practice that is intertwined with intentional discovery and learning. i am driven to engage in education leadership and change processes, and to do so in a way that is grounded in theory and scholarship. the intriguing combination of educational practice and action/participant research, or less formal “research” speaks directly to the frustration i felt with this project, and describes a compelling path for me, and i expect, others in the field. references altbach, p. g. 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(2004). the role of english in scientific communication: lingua franca or tyrannosaurus rex? journal of english for academic purposes, 3, 247-269. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2003.10.001 the carnegie classification of institutions of higher education (n.d.). about carnegie classification. http://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/classification_descriptions/basic.php. author notes laura geringer, med arizona state university, content strategist + shapingedu community manager loyola university chicago, international higher education m.ed alumna laura.geringer@asu.edu guest editor notes sean m. leahy, phd arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2003.10.001 mailto:mailto:laura.geringer@gmail.com mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au geringer: a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism, with reflections on the research experience current issues in education, 21(2) 15 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf cie template current issues in education, 22(3) 1 volume 22, issue 3 december 8, 2021 issn 1099-839x becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times: valuing compassion and care above productivity and performance grace i. blum seattle pacific university leah m. dale central washington university abstract: this qualitative inquiry presents a duoethnographic reflection by a pre-service teacher and teacher educator on their individual and collective experiences navigating teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. emails of gratitude exchanged between both authors serve as the beginning of their inquiry and analysis. their narratives reveal the ways in which they experienced humanizing pedagogies, received compassion and care, and engaged in culturally sustaining pedagogies within their teacher preparation program. implications for reimagining teacher preparation embedded in humanizing pedagogies are explored. keywords: teacher education, humanizing pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogies, pandemic citation: blum, g. i., & dale, l. m. (2021). becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times: valuing compassion and care above productivity and performance. current issues in education, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1992 accepted: november/1/2021 june 13, 2020 dear dr. blum, i apologize for not responding to your check-in email earlier. this quarter has been overwhelming, and even writing an email seemed like a task on a never-ending list of things to do. my mom is home and healthy, thank you for asking. she received the treatment she needed that was originally being denied because of a ban on june 16, 2020 dear leah, over the last few days, i have read your email over and over again. in fact, i have it printed out and posted on my wall so i can gaze over to it while i work. what a kind, generous gift you have given me through these words. i cried when i first read it… and to be honest, i needed these words. i have second-guessed some of my instructional https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1992 blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 2 elective surgeries in wa. i am also happy to share that my 90-year-old abuelita has fully recovered from covid even though she has an underlying health condition. incredible news! i want to thank you personally for your support this quarter. you are the only professor of the five total professors i had this quarter that i believe responded appropriately to courses post-covid. by removing the textbook from being a required purchase, to making assignments complete/incomplete, to accepting late work without penalty. this all made a huge difference, not only for me, but all in my cohort who are tesl minors. when i and others reached out to our other professors, our suggestions and requests were deemed not possible, and my cohort was told that we would do well to distract ourselves from covid by focusing on our studies and better managing our schedules. i found this statement inappropriate and offensive, and i found the minimal "support" that other professors provided to be greatly lacking. the other professors provided "support" on a case-by-case basis, only if they deemed our individual trauma was worth supporting, instead of considering the unprecedented levels of stress, anxiety, and economic instability we are all facing post covid. among my cohort are several students with children home full-time, an essential worker putting in 12-hour shifts, two students diagnosed with covid, one classmate with four family members who have passed away, one student with unreliable access to wifi, and several classmates who were laid off/furloughed. this was all before protests began in the streets. you are the only professor who said the names breonna taylor, ahmaud arbery, and george floyd. know that i noticed this, and that i also noticed that my other four professors remained silent. you are the only professor of the five who showed solidarity with ascwu's resolution to make finals optional. when i read these two announcements back-to-back, mentioning their names, and your decision to show solidarity, i cried. out of relief, but mostly to know that at least one professor was modeling what they teach us to do as teacher candidates, provide education that is rooted in equity and compassion. thank decisions this quarter as some of my colleagues have made differing choices… but your email was such an encouragement to me and an affirmation that i need to continue to pursue humanizing pedagogies in my work and attempt to model that to my own students. i haven’t always gotten it right, but i’m vowing to do better. be better. i really can’t say enough about what your kind words meant to me. truly, your email is one of the greatest gifts i’ve received in my time at normal state university. many thanks, grace blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 3 you. know that making your final optional lifted a weight off of those in my cohort in tesl. dr. x contacted us to let us know our final was mandatory, and after i emailed them both asking if they'd support the resolution, dr. y and dr. z both refused. after the hardest quarter of our student careers, and after some of the hardest months many of us have ever faced, this was disappointing to say the least. despite choosing not to complete your final, know that i learned so much from your class, and i will continue to learn more about siop. i'm also passing on what we learned in your class to others in my cohort who are not tesl minors. today i marched in the seattle children's march, inspired by the 1963 children's march in birmingham, al. walking alongside these children, their families, their teachers, and their neighbors as we chanted, "no justice, no peace," i was reminded why i decided to become a teacher. know that because of professors like you, i think about what is possible, not what is impossible. know that i think about the american education system critically, that i analyze my place within it, and that i will decide not to sit idly by like too many of our professors did this quarter. instead, like you, i will use the power i have to provide an education that is rooted in equity and compassion. thank you for being an example of the kind of teacher i hope to be. kindest regards, leah introduction shortly before the start of the spring academic quarter of 2020, as the covid-19 pandemic spread rapidly throughout the united states, our university along with higher education institutions across the world, swiftly decided to shift all instruction to virtual, online settings. with only a few weeks to prepare, faculty across campus moved quickly to pivot and redesign their courses to be delivered in a virtual environment. both faculty and students made significant adjustments in terms of procedures, plans, and pedagogical approaches. in addition to the challenges of teaching and learning amid a global pandemic, we were simultaneously dealing with the “racial reckoning” that communities were experiencing as a result of the public killings of black citizens including george floyd, ahmaud arbery and breonna taylor. the collective trauma, stress, and unrest that we both experienced as a student and faculty during this time were unlike anything we had previously experienced in our years at our institution. blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 4 although initially unwarranted, the challenges of this quarter catalyzed a time of deep reflection upon our shared pedagogical approaches and experiences that i (grace) had established through my years of work as a teacher educator. as i privately wrestled with coming to terms with my own pedagogical tensions and contradictions, i received an unexpected email from leah, a teacher candidate enrolled in one of my courses, sheltered instruction for linguistically diverse students. uncertain as to whether any of the pedagogical decisions i had made in spring quarter were of any significance to my students, leah’s email spoke directly to the impact of the accommodations i had made for the students during this challenging quarter (blum & flores, 2021). in the correspondence and conversations to follow, we began to engage in dialogic introspection (rose & montakantiwong, 2018) of our respective experiences as teacher educator and student navigating the challenges of the pandemic. our informal discussions evolved into a duoethnographic conversation in which we collectively examined our teaching and learning practices, pedagogies, and praxis (norris & sawyer, 2012). drawing upon the theoretical lens of critical humanizing pedagogies in teacher education (bartolomé, 1994; freire, 1970; salazar, 2013), a set of structured questions (fontana & frey, 2000) were developed. we responded independently in written reflection to each structured question. this qualitative inquiry describes several emerging themes that surfaced from our collective reflections upon this letter and the subsequent narratives and conversations. we organize the paper as follows: first, we provide the theoretical framework of humanizing pedagogies that inform our findings; next we describe the emerging themes in the form of a dialogic reflection to consider the ways in which certain pedagogical moves, from the perspective of the teacher educator and teacher candidate provide insight into humanizing practices that allow for meaningful teaching and learning opportunities for both students and faculty. our paper culminates with several implications for further examination considering the emergent themes of this paper and an invitation for educators to critically examine their own pedagogies and practices. theoretical background originating in freire’s (1970) conceptualization of humanization and pedagogy, humanizing pedagogy counters dehumanization in education (salazar, 2013). humanization is defined as “the process of becoming more fully human as social, historical, thinking, communicating, transformative, creative persons who participate in the world.” (salazar, 2013, p. 126) in order to become more fully human, individuals become increasingly conscious of their presence in the world as a means to both individually and collectively reimagine their social world (freire; 1970; salazar, 2013). freire’s framing of pedagogy as inherently political requires a radical reconstruction of teaching and learning experiences where all pedagogy must be meaningful and connected to social change so that students can engage in the world to transform it (giroux, 1988). humanizing pedagogy, therefore, is a revolutionary approach to instruction that “ceases to be an instrument by which teachers can manipulate students, but rather expresses the consciousness of the students themselves” (freire, 1970, p.518; also see osorio, 2018). central to humanizing pedagogy is the development of “conscientização” or critical consciousness which is “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (freire, 1970, p. 17). to enact humanizing pedagogy, educators must work towards “mutual humanization” with their students through dialogue and problem posing education that leads to action (freire, 1970, p. 56). blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 5 in her comprehensive review of the literature centered on humanizing pedagogy in education, salazar (2013) identifies five core tenets of humanizing pedagogy: 1) the full development of the person is essential for humanization; 2) to deny someone else’s humanization is also to deny one’s own; 3) the journey for humanization is both an individual and collective endeavor toward critical consciousness; 4) critical reflection and action can transform structures that impede our own and others’ humanness, thus facilitating liberation for all; and 5) educators are responsible for promoting a more fully human world through their pedagogical principles and practices. (p.128) bartolomé (1994) further clarifies the freirean definition of humanizing pedagogy beyond a technical methods-focused approach towards instructional programs and strategies considering the “reality, history, and perspectives of students as an integral part of educational practice” (p. 173). a humanizing pedagogy “values the students’ background knowledge, culture, and life experiences, and creates learning contexts where power is shared by students and teachers” (bartolomé, 1994, p. 190). specific to humanizing pedagogy for teacher education, carter andrews et al. (2019) call for social justice-oriented teacher education programs to commit to “critical self-reflection, truthtelling, radical honesty, resisting binaries, demonstrating activism, and enacting ontological and epistemological plurality” in program structure, curricular alignment, and instructional practice (p. 24). the authors describe how humanizing pedagogy is a process of becoming for both teacher educators and their studentsin that becoming is an ongoing process where we can never be fully culturally competent or fully human (p. 6). carter andrews and castillo (2016) describe the teacher educator who enacts humanizing practices as one who continually works towards facilitating preservice teachers to create and cultivate learning environments in which the needs of the whole student are considered and addressed. they posit that the enactment of humanizing pedagogy in teacher education is a project of humanization for both the teacher educator and the students. further, carter andrews, bartell, and richmond (2016) state “if the teacher educator does not possess a humanizing pedagogy, it is difficult to cultivate this pedagogical stance with preand in-service educators” (p.171). camarotta and romero (2006) extend the scholarship on humanizing pedagogies in education by bringing together three interrelated ideas: critical consciousness, authentic caring and the enactment of social justice curriculum. they call for critically compassionate intellectualism to guide educators in attending to students’ overall well-being, to demonstrate compassion for the dehumanizing experience students of color encounter and situating learning and social issues that are relevant to the experiences of marginalized communities. adding to the literature on humanizing pedagogies, camarotta and romero (2006) weave together the scholarship on authentic care (valenzuela, 1999) as a critical element of the critically compassionate approach to education. the social justice curriculum component of the critically compassionate curriculum can be found in approaches towards culturally responsive (gay, 2018), culturally relevant (ladson-billings, 1995) and culturally sustaining (paris & alim, 2017) pedagogies. building on important asset-pedagogies including culturally relevant/responsive teaching (gay, 2018; ladson-billings, 1995), culturally sustaining pedagogies offers a “2.0” version of culturally responsive teaching (ladson-billings, 2014). culturally sustaining pedagogies “seek to blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 6 perpetuate and foster-to sustain-linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of schooling for positive social transformation” (paris & alim, 2017, p.1). it exists to sustain the communities who have historically been and continue to be damaged and erased through formal learning environments (paris & alim, 2017). methodology duoethnography is a collaborative methodological approach in which “two or more researchers of difference juxtapose their life histories to provide multiple understandings of the world" (norris & sawyer, 2012, p. 9). duoethnography is a qualitative methodology that allows for two or more individuals to bring together different lived experiences, ways of knowing and being, and perspectives to shared phenomena (norris, 2017). in our case, our shared experience as faculty and student in our teacher preparation program, and more specifically, in our experience participating in our class during the spring of 2020 at the height of the global pandemic. as duoethnography is a relatively new, evolving form of inquiry, researchers are reluctant to provide a prescriptive procedure to this form (breault, 2016). nonetheless, norris (2017) outlines four central tenets critical to the implementation of a duoethnographic study: 1) the dialogic nature of the research where the narratives of the researchers are juxtaposed to each other; 2) the examination of past experiences and stories; 3) differences are crucial to exploring a larger shared experience; and 4) the methodology must be open and flexible, not restrictive in terms of procedure. the duoethnography allows individuals to re-examine their narratives and challenge the perspectives in which they viewed their previous experiences. it is a collaborative methodology that allows for researchers to share their histories in both oral and in written form to make sense of experience, generate reflection, and deepen understanding (norris & sawyer, 2012). in our approach to duoethnography, we initially began with an informal phone conversation regarding the emails sent to one another in june. what began as an informal chat, quickly morphed into a series of more structured conversations around our shared yet divergent experiences around the events of spring quarter, both in and out of our classroom. as we began to discuss the themes that emerged (strauss & corbin, 1997) from our initial emails to one another, we developed a series of structured questions (fontana & frey, 2000) to further extend our reflections. our data includes our email correspondence, excerpts of written transcriptions of our phone conversations, and our written narrative reflections on the structured question prompts (fontana & frey, 2005). our data analysis was collaborative, participatory, and iterative (corbin & strauss, 1990). duoethnography provides the opportunity for critical, dialogic reflection, but it also allows for opportunities for transformative action (monzó & soohoo, 2014). in sharing our juxtaposed narratives, we aim to not only revisit our histories, but reflect on the ways in which we can work towards a more humanizing approach towards teaching and learning within the context of a teacher preparation program. positionality grace is a korean american woman working as a tenure-track teacher educator within three programs at her university: early childhood education, elementary education, and bilingual/ teaching english as a second language (tesl). she is the daughter of korean immigrants and mother to two biracial school-aged children. prior to her work as a teacher educator, she was an elementary school teacher having worked in both bilingual and mainstream classrooms in public blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 7 schools in the greater chicagoland and los angeles areas. her primary role at the university is teaching pre-service teachers at the university satellite centers. leah is a mexican american woman from a bicultural family. she recently graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in elementary education with a minor in tesl. she brings experience from her work in primary and secondary public schools in the czech republic and spain, as well as american preschools. she credits paulo freire and john dewey as the primary influences on her pedagogical ideology. she is currently pursuing a graduate degree in instructional design. context we work and study at a satellite campus of normal state university (pseudonym), a large public institution proudly acclaimed as preparing the largest number of educators in the state. students majoring in elementary education are enrolled in a 7-quarter program. at the university centers, students enter the teaching program having received their associate degrees at local community colleges. university center students are largely considered “non-traditional” (hussar et al., 2020) in that they often work full-time, and have family caregiving responsibilities while attending to a full academic course load. during the spring quarter of 2020, all courses were abruptly shifted to a virtual online environment. some courses met asynchronously in a traditional online format where students accessed their course at their convenience, while other courses met synchronously via various platforms such as zoom and blackboard ultra. the sheltered instruction for linguistically diverse students course met asynchronously and was designed with a variety of instructional activities that students could engage with on their own schedules. synchronous class meetings were scheduled for students that wanted to meet in “real-time”, but they were entirely optional for students. there were 27 students enrolled in the class spring quarter. findings in attending to the tenets of duoethnographic research, our inquiry centers on both authors using ourselves as the research site via dialogic introspection. our inquiry examines our lived experiences as a teacher candidate (leah) and teacher educator (grace) navigating the pandemic. in the following section we present the themes that emerged from analytic discourse of our correspondence to one another, and our subsequent conversations. humanizing pedagogies in practice to deny someone else’s humanization is also to deny one’s own. (roberts, 2003, p. 178) leah in january 2020, our state reported the first confirmed case of covid-19 within the united states. case numbers quickly rose, resulting in the decision for all k-12 schools to close and move to remote learning. likewise, our university took swift action to transition all subsequent courses to an online format. by late march, our governor issued a state-wide stay at home order. in early april, an unprecedented spring quarter commenced. repeatedly, teacher candidates were asked to be patient, told that information was developing in real time, while knowledge of the virus itself was also developing in real time. no one knew precisely how the virus spread, how dangerous it was, or all the symptoms one could expect if infected. our state’s economy was at a standstill, with all non-essential workers unable to transition to remote work blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 8 laid off or furloughed. within my own cohort of 14 teacher candidates, four were laid off and left scrambling to apply for unemployment benefits in an already overwhelmed system. four candidates, students themselves, now doubled as teachers aiding in their children’s at-home learning as statewide k-12 teachers transitioned into first of its kind remote instruction. one classmate, categorized as an essential worker, began working 12 hour shifts while also attending classes full-time, taking on the burden of a community that was terrified and lashing out. it was not long before two teacher candidates and members of their households were diagnosed with covid-19. our cohort was also not spared from the death of loved ones to the virus. it is in this backdrop, that our university’s courses resumed. we received many, “i hope this email finds you well,” acknowledgments, but little to no questions about how we could best be supported by our professors, the educators aiming to produce the future’s educators. the university decided to provide students with the option to receive an emergency pass/fail grade for most courses to avoid effects on students’ overall gpa. this decision provided professors with a choice. they could be inspired by the changes made by the university and support students by making changes within their own classes, or not. regrettably, most professors instructing my cohort chose the latter. as the quarter continued, it became clear that we would be expected to function as if our entire world had not just dramatically shifted. our cohort of 14 consists of a diverse group of teacher candidates. ages range from 19 to 40 with multiple races, ethnicities, languages, and religious affiliations represented. the majority of candidates work part-time, full-time, and on occasion 60 hours per week while being enrolled in courses full-time. four candidates have young children living within their household for which they are primary caregivers. as a relatively small campus, many elementary education courses are taught by the same group of professors. this provides the opportunity for professors and candidates to learn about each other over the course of the seven-quarter teacher preparation program. regarding spring quarter, four of the five professors had taught our cohort in the past, and as such knew many of the details of our lives outside of the university. for this reason, it is particularly disappointing that, in my opinion, of the five courses i was enrolled in only one professor appropriately catered to the needs of teacher candidates post covid-19. grace’s response to the university’s transition to remote learning provided insight into the many actions that are within a professor’s power to adapt within their own classrooms. premeditated adaptations adopted by grace were comprehensive. she began with the distribution of an online survey before the start of the quarter to assess candidates’ access to internet, devices, and software. candidates were asked to describe their learning environment, availability for office hours and meetings, and to rate their level of confidence with technological platforms. additionally, space was provided to communicate pronouns, pronunciation of names, and to inform the professor of any information of a personal nature they wished to share. prior to the course start, she sent an email informing candidates that the previously required textbook had been removed and would be replaced with open access sources. further accommodations made to the course included switching to a complete/incomplete grading system, acceptance of late assignments without penalty, and no mandatory meeting requirements. learning modules were concise and accompanied by purposeful assignments that could be completed within a short amount of time. all of grace’s office hours were recorded to allow for future viewing by students needing extra support without requiring a set appointment. after receiving a resolution from the university’s student government requesting all professors make their final exams optional in support of an unprecedented academic quarter, grace chose to show solidarity with the resolution. it is in this professor’s example that i began to understand the power that blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 9 professors have within their institutions to alter their courses to better support students. it also then became glaringly clear that the other professors with this same power chose not to use it. in an email, grace stated, “whatever path our learning takes this quarter, we will move forward in centering your health and wholeness during this time.” this statement was proven true by all the actions taken to modify her course. it was clear from the beginning that she understood the totality of our experiences as university students in the middle of a pandemic, and through all the actions taken she succeeded in centering our health and wholeness. this served as a rare example of a professor’s adoption of humanizing pedagogy within the teacher preparation program. a more common response was the lack of any truly impactful modification or adaptation to curricula. on several occasions, i and other teacher candidates advocated for a reduction in what we perceived to be repetitive assignments that functioned only to keep us busy for several hours while in no way enriching our learning. mandatory meetings were extremely difficult for teacher candidates with young children at home, and for those without access to consistent internet. feedback was encouraged or even required by professors, yet requests for changes were rarely acknowledged, discussed, or considered possible. grace’s decision to make the final exam optional prompted me to request that two other professors show solidarity with the university’s student government resolution. both professors declined while another preemptively informed us that the final was mandatory after news of the resolution began to spread. meaningful accommodations, a willingness to sincerely consider candidates’ suggestions for improvement, and a show of solidarity with student government’s resolution would have communicated to teacher candidates an understanding of, and compassion for the unprecedented levels of stress we were enduring all quarter. yet only one professor chose to acknowledge our humanity and take seriously the grave realities affecting us all. that examples of humanizing pedagogy are rare leads me to question the metrics by which our university counts itself a successful preparer of future educators. grace all the “unprecedented challenges” that we were experiencing afforded me the opportunity to reflect on my own pedagogical practices and consider the ways in which my courses reflected my commitment towards implementing a humanizing pedagogical approach towards teacher education. during the spring quarter, i was teaching four courses across three different programs: early childhood education, elementary education, and the tesl/bilingual education program. even prior to the pandemic, i was already feeling uneasy preparing for four very different courses in terms of content and delivery, one of which i had never taught previously. while i would have liked to think that even during normal times that my pedagogical decisions were driven by my own vision of humanizing education, the pandemic and its implications, made visible the many ways in which some of my policies and practices were in conflict with my own moral and ethical commitment to preparing educators in humanizing ways. during the first days of course preparation, i scrambled to find resources to redesign my courses. i quickly joined several professional social networks that were created to support faculty online. i found a varying set of resources, voices, and differing perspectives on how to engage learners during this time. these spaces became places where ideological lines were clearly drawn. one position in these online communities held that faculty should operate “business as usual” with policies and practices mirroring those of pre-pandemic times. the rationale here being that providing students with stability and consistency was what students would most need. blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 10 the counter-perspective erred towards extending compassion and care to students during these “unprecedented times” and to adjust classroom policies and practices accordingly. as i reflected on my own practice, i found that my pedagogical convictions aligned most closely with scholars who publicly charged their communities to express generosity and care in pedagogical decision-making. i was heartened and encouraged by the public messages on twitter by drs. django paris (2020) and pedro noguera (2020). dr. betina hsieh’s (2020) tedxtalk during the pandemic, which centered on the possibilities of humanizing approaches to teacher education, resonated so deeply within me. while i largely felt disconnected and disjointed from colleagues at my own institution, i found mentorship and wise counsel in the public voices of scholars whom i deeply admired. in many ways, these public declarations affirmed and eloquently articulated what i knew to be true. in many ways, the voices of scholars, of whom i deeply respect, gave me permission to shift and pivot in both small and significant pedagogical moves to align the work i was engaging in towards more humanizing ways. i chose to pare down learning tasks and assignments to only what i considered essential to the learning outcomes and consider the ways in which i could foreground issues of access and equity. in reviewing assignments and expectations, norms, and policies, i realized the many ways in which i had “inherited” policies and practices that i felt were arbitrary and unnecessary and to a great extent, dehumanizing. being a junior faculty member, given pre-developed courses, i had adopted previously established course assignments and practices, without applying a critical lens towards whether these facilitated a deeper sense of critical consciousness among my students. my syllabi revealed the many ways in which i had not modeled humanizing pedagogies in my own instructional practices and policies. one policy, for example, that i re-examined and in turn, did away with, was my policy on “late work”. prior to the pandemic, i had a policy in most of my courses where students were penalized a certain percentage of their grade for failure to submit work by a certain deadline. in light of the pandemic, and the challenges of access and equity, penalizing students for failure to meet arbitrary deadlines seemed no longer comprehensible. deadlines were reimagined as targets and students were no longer penalized for submitting work “late”. this is a practice that i have continued to implement in my subsequent courses. compassion and care dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. the naming of the world, which is an act of creation and recreation, is not possible if it is not infused with love… because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is a commitment to others. (freire, 2000, p. 89) leah: compassion and care were largely absent. despite the existence of multiple concurrent nationwide crises including covid-19, economic instability, and racial violence, we were expected to perform in the same manner as quarters passed. this was by no stretch of the imagination a typical quarter. the president of the university released a statement in acknowledgment of the unprecedented times we found ourselves in, and students received communication alerting of mental health services available at any time of the day or night. it was unquestionably understood by the university that what we were experiencing was deeply traumatic. yet our productivity was expected to remain at the same level as quarters pre-covid, or in some cases to increase. worse still, it was one professor’s opinion that our studies should serve as a distraction from the grave events taking place and that we were more than capable of blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 11 committing several hours each day to our learning and “growth”. yet a brief consideration of events would have shown that returning to “business as usual” was impossible. we were expected to carry on as if we were not isolated in our homes in a state-mandated shutdown, afraid to even touch produce at the local grocery store because modes of transmission were still unknown. we were expected to carry on as if the lines at food banks that some of our families relied on were not growing in size and decreasing in provisions, or as if we were not concerned with how to pay rent after being abruptly laid off. we were asked to perform as if we had been provided sufficient time to grieve family members killed by covid-19, whose bedsides and funerals we were not permitted to attend, thereby postponing the natural grieving process. these expectations, lacking in empathy and compassion and far removed from reality only served to further dehumanize us at a time when we needed compassion and care more than ever. personally, i was struggling through the worst cases of anxiety and depression i have ever experienced. there were days when i did not have the strength to brush my hair, let alone attend to my studies. i would often find myself sitting in front of my laptop for hours, blankly staring at deadlines that i could not physically complete, accompanied by feelings of extreme guilt and shame at my lack of productivity. i was not alone in this experience. several classmates privately confided in me about their struggle with anxiety and depression during this time. i chose not to inform any of my professors of my struggle with depression because i did not believe that i should be forced to. to what extent must we require students to perform their trauma before they are granted support? i reached out for support many times and was largely denied while others were granted support only after providing specific details about the event(s) that were occurring in their personal lives warranting additional support. why was no premeditated plan for support in place, motivated by an interest in prioritizing empathy and compassion for the students those professors claim to care about? verbal expressions of care without action are meaningless. the lack of compassion displayed by professors was hypocritical. repeatedly we are reminded of the importance of fostering personal relationships between teachers and students. we are shown data lending to evidence of the relationship between positive teacher-student relationships and high academic achievement. we know that building relationships is the most valuable tool a teacher can wield, that care must come before content, and compassion should never be compromised. professors were provided with an opportunity to model that which they teach holds precedence above all else and failed to do so. of my five professors, grace is the only one that repeatedly displayed compassion through action. as mentioned earlier, through both premeditated and real time responses to unfolding events, she drastically modified her course to reflect our new reality. the field of education requires constant reflection and modification, yet too often the status quo is upheld within institutions of higher education without justification. whether out of fear of not meeting syllabus requirements, or out of an attitude of apathy towards change, the resulting negative effect on students is the same. alternatively, it is because of all the modifications that grace made that i was capable of being successful in her course. by focusing on the most important content material, not establishing arbitrary requirements (e.g., page length minimums), and removing stress inducing deadlines, she ensured that i was able to perform at a capacity that was suitable to my current reality. by being aware of her students’ realities, she not only proved her compassion through action, she also raised the likelihood for our academic success. blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 12 grace as a tenure-track faculty member, mother-scholar, i found that navigating my own personal and professional challenges of adjusting to the pandemic to be at times overwhelming. caring for my two school-aged children, grieving over the death of a close family member, all the while trying to maintain my teaching and scholarship agenda was incredibly difficult. at the start of the pandemic, faculty received various generic emails from university administrators expressing concern for our overall well-being. these were not personal or individualized in any way. often, these emails focused solely on faculty resources for online instruction. while this display of concern was more than anything offered before the pandemic, it still felt short of an adequate response. the only practical demonstration of it came in the form of an offer to extend the tenure promotion timeline. during this critical time, i realized the ways in which my own experience working for this large institution over the years had been de-humanizing. concurrently, while i felt the need to experience care, i felt the tension and responsibility to extend compassion and care to my own students. the shifting of the instruction online, being invited into students’ homes, in many ways removed this pre-existing invisible barrier of work and home and in our case, school and home. an unintended result of this made the teaching and learning experience much more personal and intimate. in turn, this expanded the ways in which i chose to engage my students and overall, i felt the education was a more holistic, humanizing experience. this became clearer as i learned of the challenges students were experiencing. as i learned of specific challenges that my students had been experiencing because of the pandemic including increased caregiving responsibilities, illness, grief over covid-related deaths, coupled with the collective trauma that all of us were experiencing, it seemed unimaginable to prioritize as valenzuela (1999) describes, aesthetic care over authentic care. where aesthetic care is largely characterized by concern in academic achievement as narrowly experienced in the formalized schooling environment, authentic care considers students’ whole being (valenzuela, 1999). where the home/school divide was no longer, their overall well-being was of greater importance. culturally sustaining pedagogies csp [culturally sustaining pedagogies] seeks to perpetuate and foster linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling and as a needed response to demographic and social change. (paris & alim, 2017) leah throughout the teacher preparation program, culturally sustaining pedagogies are frequently referred to, but rarely modeled at the university level. candidates are rarely asked to share their cultural and linguistic backgrounds, the same information that we are taught should always inform our own curricula so that is based on a deep knowledge of our future students. our individual cultures, countries of origin, linguistic diversity, and socioeconomic statuses inform not only our learning styles, but also our developing pedagogical ideologies. as a small campus with candidates organized into cohorts, and with professors teaching multiple courses to the same cohort, the opportunity to know us is well within reach. literature on the topic of culturally sustaining pedagogies is required reading throughout the preparation program yet candidates see few concrete examples of this modeled by their professors. candidates are expected to have a deep knowledge of their future students yet are largely unknown themselves. additionally, the space and time provided for creation of these practices, scaffolded by professors, is absent. a prime example of this during spring quarter 2020 was the rise in protests blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 13 across the country. the murders of breonna taylor, ahmaud arbery, and george floyd posed an opportunity for a broader discussion on systemic racism, including its presence within the american education system. mass protests were occurring every day in multiple cities within the counties neighboring the university. this was not distant news from a far-off city but occurring daily right in our own neighborhoods. in fact, myself and others within the cohort attended several of these protests and relied on each other as first contacts in case of an arrest. those of us in attendance witnessed acts of violence by our own police department in the form of rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, and beatings. it is no surprise then that conversations occurred frequently between teacher candidates during our personal time, reflecting our deep desire to engage in broader issues of racial violence and systemic racism. even though nationwide black lives matter protests had broken a record previously only held by the assassination of martin luther king jr., no space was provided within the teacher preparation program to discuss this movement. in fact, only one of my five professors, grace, even mentioned the events. an opportunity to briefly pause normally scheduled curricula and engage future educators in a topic that will inform the rest of their careers was neglected. that it was not even mentioned in passing, by four of my five professors is astounding in its absurdity. carter andrews et al. (2019) argues that “schooling ideologies and teacher practices have always been—and will continue to be—shaped by the continually changing sociopolitical and sociocultural landscape in a society, in addition to policies and practices that foreground particular types of oppression” (p. 4). as a racially, linguistically, and religiously diverse cohort, teacher candidates bring unique perspectives and lived experiences to the classroom. providing the time and space for such discussions could have served as a powerful model for future educators in how to develop critical consciousness among their future students (freire, 1970). witnessing repeated acts of racially and politically motivated violence both from afar and personally served to further trigger a group of university students already experiencing multiple crises linked to covid-19 and the subsequent economic collapse. being particularly traumatic for black students within the cohort, professors should have made an effort to foster culturally sustaining pedagogies (as they have taught us, we must do) within their own classrooms by providing students with a safe space to communicate their collective trauma. by avoiding even a discussion of the sociopolitical events that were currently unfolding, professors in turn avoided acknowledging systems of oppression that students within the cohort themselves experience. grace implementing csp has been an ongoing epistemological tension that i have had in my work as a teacher educator. driven by the imperative to prepare pre-service teachers to be social justice oriented, critically conscious educators, i have grappled with how to effectively implement culturally sustaining practices in my own pedagogical practices within a program designed not to support this. the paradox of preparing culturally sustaining educators in culturally dispiriting ways has been characteristic of our institutional approach towards teacher preparation. students in our program take standalone courses in culturally responsive teaching or multicultural education, but rarely do they authentically experience culturally responsive teaching within their own teacher education programs. this is a common critique that i have heard from frustrated students and advisees throughout the last several years in our program. as i mainly teach content-based methods courses as opposed to theoretical foundations courses, i have worked to intentionally approach these courses with an equity, asset-based framing of content-based instruction. i have tried to center students’ “funds of knowledge” (moll blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 14 et al., 1992) and cultural wealth (yosso, 2005) to inform instruction and co-create the curriculum in order to develop critical consciousness (freire, 1970) and facilitate culturally sustaining experiences without directly teaching the subject matter of “culturally responsive teaching” as course content. as an asian american teacher educator, i have often reflected on the many ways in which disrupting norms, speaking out, and going against the grain of the systems surrounding me has been extremely uncomfortable, and at times countercultural to my own patterns of cultural norms situated in conformity and assimilation. my entire life, i have worked towards assimilating and accommodating the dominant culture. yet, while i had been conscientiously working through my own internal cultural tensions, i realized how my lack of speaking out could be perceived as indifference, especially in spaces, i.e., my classrooms, my home, in which i was uniquely situated with greater power and positionality. my silence in speaking out about inequities and injustices committed against minoritized communities was antithetical to my values and commitment to living and learning in culturally sustaining ways. i had to press through the discomfort, the fear of not stating things perfectly, and my own inner critique of being performative to break the silence around allowing students to grieve, mourn, process, and protest the killings and ongoing injustices committed primarily against the black community and other minoritized communities of color. in the context of an online, asynchronous teaching environment, the silence was broken largely through email exchanges and discussion board conversations, which often felt impersonal and imperfect in many ways, but choosing to press into my own personal discomfort and choosing to speak out publicly was a small step into more authentically teaching and learning in culturally sustaining ways. discussion several important themes emerged from our duoethnography that are important to consider in the work of humanizing teacher education. freire (1970) describes the process of humanization as one of becoming. in the process of becoming an educator, carter andrews et al. (2019) describes the role of the teacher educator as “consistently and continually working to help psts [pre-service teachers] develop and maintain mindsets and practices that foster learning environments where the needs of whole students are considered and addressed” (p. 6). both narratives reveal the ways in which the teacher educator, grace, was working towards “becoming” more humanizing in her practice, and in turn, how leah experienced a learning environment where her needs were considered and addressed. our narratives also reveal the ways in which we failed to experience humanizing pedagogies in our respective roles within the teacher education program. experiences of authentic care during the pandemic were infrequent while performative actions of aesthetic care were abounding. expressions of compassion were generally missing. students were expected to function and perform in the same manner as previous quarters and encouraged by faculty to “use your studies as a distraction” which was not a viable option. productivity was expected at a time when it was nearly possible. the overall culture of compassion was absent, rather, students were shown compassion on a case-by-case basis. the requirement to “prove their trauma” provided individualized moments of caring, but the overall acceptance that these were unprecedented times did not inspire universal compassion that should have already been present. whether that feeling was expressed in words, it was not expressed through action. lastly, spring quarter of 2020 revealed considerably the disconnect in our experiences of culturally sustaining pedagogies in teacher education. teacher preparation programs aim to blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 15 instruct teacher candidates in the recognition and adoption of best teaching practices. practices that are rooted in the creation and sustainment of an equitable classroom environment, and the use of diverse methods to reach diverse learners. the overarching goal of our teacher preparation program is to instruct teacher candidates in use of the constructivist model. it is explicitly stated on every syllabus for every course within the program. the aim is to empower our future students to be active participants in their own learning. the constructivist model requires teachers to acknowledge that students, however young, arrive in classrooms with prior knowledge and a variety of personal experiences that inform the way they learn. it is these best practices that teacher candidates study throughout the preparation program and are required to demonstrate evidence of in their own teaching in order to graduate. what happens then, when the classroom that prepares future educators, is not itself modeling best practices? when the personal experiences, prior knowledge, and diverse identities that teacher candidates bring to the university are ignored, or worse, silenced? how can future educators be expected to create and maintain classroom practices that are humanizing, when their own experience has been dehumanizing? these are the questions that arose through our experiences in a teacher preparation program during spring quarter of 2020 at the start of the pandemic. conclusion the pandemic revealed the ways in which, and to what extent we, individually and collectively, experienced humanizing practices in teacher education. our duoethnography contributes to the growing body of research focused on humanizing teacher education and the emerging scholarship on the impact of the pandemic on education. while we have yet to see what the full implications of this pandemic will be on institutions of higher education and teacher education programs, we hope that these “unprecedented times” can lead towards a re-imagining of humanizing teacher education spaces where both teacher candidates and teacher educators are engaged in humanizing practices, culturally sustaining pedagogies, and critically compassionate intellectualism with and among one another. references bartolomé, l. 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(2020, september 22). learning from one another: lessons in (educational) excellence | dr. betina hsieh | tedxcsulb https://youtu.be/_0wbdch9jum yosso, t. j. (2005). whose culture has capital? a critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. race ethnicity and education, 8(1), 69-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 author notes grace i. blum seattle pacific university blumg@spu.edu leah m. dale central washington university leahmardale@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8425-4689 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732x12464032 https://youtu.be/_0wbdch9jum https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/orcid.org/__;!!ikrxdwav5bmarq!niyih5dgb8biotoidwa0k5sltpwipel9l2wpayc-xzw-1adf4lenufhg5ivhfhe$ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 6, number 8 april 28, 2003 issn 1099-839x effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty good news or bad news? tonya r. moon, carolyn m. callahan, & carol a. tomlinson university of virginia in school districts across the country, accountability enacted through testing initiatives is beginning to play a more important role in documenting student attainment of high academic standards. critics of the testing movement have argued that standardized testing is narrowing the curriculum resulting in instructional practices ineffective in promoting meaningful student learning. using a nationally stratified random sample, public school teachers were surveyed on the effects of state testing programs on their practices. results indicate that classroom practices were affected, most of these effects afflicted teachers in impoverished schools. findings suggest that increases in test scores is not necessarily a result of student academic attainment but more of test preparation, calling into question the validity of such outcomes. in our continuing quest for better schools and high achieving students, testing has taken center stage. society has begun to consider good test scores a major goal of schooling. thus, there is great pressure, particularly in schools with large populations of low-achieving students, to demonstrate academic progress and success through improved test scores. skeptics have begun to wonder if the effort to raise standards for all students through high-stakes testing initiatives has too steep a price, including a narrowing of the curriculum and a deemphasis on curricular depth, an abandonment of constructivist-type activities that give meaning to learning, and a curtailment of extracurricular activities. while standardized tests have become the driver of curriculum in many schools, resulting in less instruction in non-tested areas (ascher, 1990) as well as less emphasis on higher-order thinking skills, some literature indicates that there is an even stronger influence of tests on the instructional process (ascher, 1990; cimbricz, 2002; dorr-bremme & herman, 1986; haertel, 1989; darling-hammond, 2003; herman & golan, 1993; knapp & associates, 1995; mcneil, 2000; mcneil & valenzuela, 2000; orfield & kornhaber, 2001; stecher, barron, kaganoff, & goodwin, 1998) in schools with high concentrations of students from improvished environments (hoffman, assaf, & paris, 2001). schools with high concentrations of poverty, when compared to schools with low-poverty (a) rely more on basal readers and textbook-driven reading curriculum and less on literature and trade books; (b) do more reading aloud than silent reading; and (c) place less emphasis on analytic mathematical concepts using problem solving and word problems, or working on mathematical reasoning (ascher, 1990; knapp & associates, 1995; lomax, west, harmon, viator, & madaus, 1996; solomon, battistich, & hom, 1996). evidence also suggests a greater emphasis on drill and practice and the use of worksheets in higher poverty schools (ascher, 1990). in economically improvished schools teachers report spending more time instructing students directly current issues in education vol. 6 no. 8 about test-taking strategies (herman & golan, 1993; monsaas & engelhard, 1994; stevens, 1984). solomon et al. (1996) demonstrated that the greatest differences in terms of instruction between schools with low and high socioeconomic status students were the amount of student activity, interaction, and autonomy allowed and encouraged, all of which are in short supply in high poverty schools. lower teacher expectations may also impact the instructional methods used by teachers to prepare economically disadvantaged students. several studies suggest that teachers tend to have lower expectations for students from improvished backgrounds and they often formulate these expectations before they have significant interaction with students. teacher suppositions are based on their knowledge of students' test scores, tracking or ability placement, and previous teachers' comments (gonder, 1991; lumsden, 1997; ornstein & levine, 1989; pajares, 1992; solomon, et al., 1996). as a result, teachers are apt to deliver instruction based on a different, simplified curriculum (ornstein & levine, 1989), often reinforcing the drill-and-practice of basic skills while ignoring higher-order thinking skills that enable complex and meaningful learning to occur. in essence, teacher expectations of students from impoverished backgrounds devalue the educational opportunities provided to these students. an increasing emphasis on state testing initiatives over the last five years may have lead to even more negative effects on students from impoverished environments. if increased testing pressures continue to create differential ways by which teachers respond to students in high and lowpoverty schools, it can be expected that negative modes of test preparation in schools with high concentrations of student poverty will rematerialize in the near future. this study sought to address the following question: do teachers in high-versus low-poverty schools differentiate their instructional practices when faced with high-stakes tests given the population of students they teach? to understand the actions of others one must consider insider perspectives (eisenhart & howe, 1990). in schools, teachers make decisions based on their interpretation of the cultural and societal norms of the school and community environment (eisenhart & howe, 1990). as teachers are pressured to produce better test scores, they make specific choices to accomplish this goal for the betterment or determent of sound instructional practices. are their choices and actions influenced by a school culture related to poverty? methodology in order to describe the effects of student poverty on teachers instructional practices when faced with high-stakes tests, a 1% nationally stratified random sample of k-12 teachers, stratified on school metropolitan status and poverty level, were sent a survey designed specifically for this study. sampling framework market data retrieval (mdr) provided teacher-level information for all public elementary schools in the united states. based on the mdr information, 928,170 elementary teachers (defined as grades k-8) were employed in schools across the nation at the time of the sampling. it is important to note that approximately 15,000 elementary schools housed grades k-8. because of the large numbers of public school elementary teachers, a 1% stratified random sample from each state at each level was drawn, stratifying on metropolitan status and poverty level indicators (as defined by the u.s. census bureau, 1990) associated with each school (n = 8,044 elementary). the survey a 99-item teacher questionnaire was developed and piloted specifically for use in this study. the questionnaire asked about the perceived influence of state testing on curriculum and instruction, the pressure, if any, the teacher felt to improve test scores, the amount of time and attention given to test preparation, the perceived positive and negative effects of standardized testing, the teacher's perceptions of the consequences of testing, and teacher background data including geographic and school level poverty indicators. based on the pilot of the survey, principal component analyses were conducted to confirm the intended scales of the survey. using a factor saliency criterion of +/0.50, 59-items were retained, accounting for 64% of the variance. four factors emerged from the 59-items: standardized tests influence on class time, teachers attention to tests during instruction, pressure felt to improve test results, and teacher attitudes about state testing. coefficient alphas for each of the survey scales are presented in table 1. for a complete description of the final questionnaire, see appendix 1. table 1 final state testing questionnaire subscale no. of items range alpha standardized tests influence on class time class time preparation how much time do you 9 5=regularly -> 0.93 effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty good news or bad news? 3 spend in your classroom on various test preparation activities? 0=none how much time do you spend in your classroom on worksheets for test preparation? 3 5=regularly -> 0=none 0.92 how much time do you spend in your classroom on various test preparation activities after state testing? 4 5=regularly -> 0=none 0.84 teacher attention to tests during instruction how have state test results affected your instruction? 4 3=strongly -> 1=not at all 0.72 how frequently are various nontraditional item formats used in your classroom? 3 1=yes -> 0=no 0.73 pressure to improve test scores to what extent do you feel pressure to improve test scores from various groups? 9 5=extremely high -> 0=no pressure 0.84 how often during the year does your administration engage in various activities for improving test results? 5 3=many times > 0=not at all 0.85 what is the potential for various consequences to teachers whose students perform poorly on state tests? 5 1=yes -> 0=no 0.76 if test scores have changed, how important are various classroom factors? 5 3=major factor > 0=no factor 0.81 pressure on students and teachers 5 3=strongly agree -> 1=strongly disagree 0.82 emphasis on state test outcomes 2 5=extremely high -> 0=no pressure 0.55 teacher attitudes about state testing 5 3=strongly agree -> 1=strongly disagree 0.77 questionnaire packets, including a brief study rationale and directions for completing the survey, were mailed to teachers. teachers were provided postage-paid return envelopes for mailing the questionnaire back to the researchers. data were received from 1,330 elementary teachers (return rate = 16% 1 ). sample the final sample included teachers from all 50 states and the district of columbia. approximately 15% of the teachers worked in schools with 0-5.9% poverty (n = 200), 35% worked in schools with 6.0-15.9% poverty (n = 465), 34% worked in schools with 16.0-29.9% poverty (n = 452), and 16% worked in schools with 30% or more poverty (n = 213 ). seventeen percent of the teachers reported teaching first grade, 16% second grade, 21% third grade, 21% fourth grade, 19% fifth grade, and 6% sixth grade. the average number of years teaching was 16.7 years (sd = 9.6 yrs.). data analysis data were coded by state, metropolitan status, and poverty level of the school. descriptive statistics were computed at the item level and reported by the categories verified by a factor analysis. one-way analyses of variance were used to examine differences among teachers' responses by school poverty level, adjusting alpha to control for multiple comparisons (overall alpha was set at .05). where overall significant differences were found, post hoc comparison procedures were used to determine which poverty level groups were significantly different. findings – effects of testing on teachers teachers reported spending substantial time preparing students for state-mandated tests. however, when compared to teachers in low poverty schools, teachers in schools with high concentrations of poverty reported spending more time on direct test preparation activities, such as instruction focused directly on test-taking strategies, reviewing and practicing state released test items, and giving students other practice opportunities on the types of item formats found on the state tests. comparisons of mean responses for each item across poverty levels indicated, in general, statistical differences in the use of such practices both before and after testing and between teachers in schools with low poverty and schools with high poverty. table 3 displays the percentage of teachers across school poverty levels that reported regularly using the test preparation activities. as can be seen, across all time periods prior to the administration of state test(s), the percentage of teachers reporting the regular use of test preparation activities markedly increased prior to the administration of the test(s) with a sharp decline in use after the state test(s). in general, across all poverty levels, over half of the teachers reported regularly using the test preparation activities specified the month prior to state testing, with over three-fourths of teachers in schools with the highest concentration of poverty reporting regular current issues in education vol. 6 no. 8 usage. surprisingly, after administration of the state test(s) almost one-third of the teachers in schools with high poverty levels reported the continued use of test preparation activities. table 2 use of test preparation activities reported by teachers across poverty levels (means and standard deviations) item available range*** poverty level a (lowest) b c d (highest) how much time do you spend in your classroom on the following test preparation activities during the first 1/3 of the year? 0-5; none to regularly instruction on test-taking strategies* 2.8 (1.9) 2.8 (1.9) 3.0 (1.9) 3.4 (1.8) review/practice using statereleased test items** 2.1 (2.0) 2.1 (2.0) 2.3 (2.1) 2.8 (2.0) student practice in the kinds of item formats that are on state test(s)** 2.8 (2.0) 2.9 (1.9) 3.0 (2.0) 3.6 (1.8) how much time do you spend in your classroom on the following test preparation activities during the second 1/3 of the year? 0-5; none to regularly instruction on test-taking strategies** 3.0 (1.8) 3.2 (1.8) 3.3 (1.8) 3.9 (1.7) review/practice using statereleased test items** 2.3 (2.0) 2.6 (2.0) 2.7 (2.0) 3.4 (1.9) student practice in the kinds of item formats that are on state test(s)** 2.9 (1.9) 3.2 (1.8) 3.3 (1.9) 4.0 (1.6) how much time do you spend in 0-5; none to your classroom on the following test preparation activities during the month prior to state testing? regularly instruction on test-taking strategies** 3.3 (1.9) 3.7 (1.8) 3.8 (1.7) 4.3 (1.5) review/practice using statereleased test items* 2.8 (2.10 3.3 (2.0) 3.5 (2.0) 3.9 (1.8) student practice in the kinds of item formats that are on state test(s) * 3.4 (1.9) 3.7 (1.8) 3.9 (1.8) 4.3 (1.5) how much time do you spend in your classroom on the following test preparation activities after state testing? 0-5; none to regularly instruction on test-taking strategies* 1.6 (1.9) 1.6 (1.9) 1.9 (2.0) 2.2 (2.2) review/practice using statereleased test items* 1.1 (1.7) 1.2 (1.8) 1.4 (1.9) 1.8 (2.0) student practice in the kinds of item formats that are on state test(s)* 1.7 (2.0) 1.9 (2.0) 2.0 (2.0) 2.4 (2.1) *: a & b group means differ significantly from group d mean at p < .05. **: a, b, & c group means differ significantly from group d mean at p < .05. ***: 0 = none; 1 = 1 day; 2 = a few days; 3 = one week; 4 = one month; 5 = regularly poverty levels: a (0-5.9%); b (6.0%-15.9%); c (16.0%-29.9%); d (30.0% or greater) teachers were asked the frequency with which certain non-traditional assessment formats were used in the classrooms (table 4). constructed response items, where short essays are required, were the most frequently used format reported across all poverty levels. long-term projects were reported as the least frequently used format across all poverty levels. statistically significant differences were found in the usage of long-term projects and performancetype items, with wealthier schools reporting more effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty good news or bad news? 5 regular use of such formats than poverty-stricken schools. table 3 percentage of teachers who report regular use of test preparation activities by poverty level item first third of year second third of year month prior to tests after tests how much time do you spend in your classroom on the following test preparation activities... instruction for students on test-taking strategies  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 34.5% 33.6% 36.9% 47.7% 35.5% 39.3% 42.6% 60.6% 50.8% 59.5% 63.7% 77.3% 16.8% 17.2% 21.1% 30.5% review/practice using state-released test items  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 23.6% 22.2% 27.0% 33.7% 25.6% 29.9% 34.2% 48.6% 43.5% 52.3% 59.8% 68.2% 8.8% 11.6% 14.7% 20.9% student practice in the kinds of item formats that are on tests  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 35.2% 35.1% 41.2% 53.4% 35.4% 39.5% 45.5% 64.4% 55.4% 62.8% 67.7% 79.0% 19.0% 20.7% 24.9% 31.8% the percentage of teachers in each poverty level responding to the frequency of use of the nontraditional assessment formats is presented in table 5. the large proportion of teachers, across all poverty levels, indicated only occasionally using these assessment formats. several interesting patterns were also found in the reported percentages. regardless of poverty level, less than 25% of the teachers reported using constructed-response items or long-term projects often. performance-type items were reported as the most often used/utilized assessment format, with over one-third of the teachers in schools in the lowest poverty level reporting using the format often. less than one-fourth of the teachers in schools with the highest poverty level reported using performancetype items often. table 4 assessment formats used in classrooms (means and standard deviations) item available range poverty level a (lowest) b c d (highest) how frequently are the following practices used in your classroom… 1-3; rarely to often use of constructed response items (short essays) 2.3 (.75) 2.2 (.75) 2.2 (.79) 2.1 (.78) use of longterm projects (e.g. research project)* 2.0 (.69) 1.9 (.72) 1.8 (.75) 1.8 (.77) use of performancetype items (e.g. experiment)* 2.2 (.65) 2.1 (.68) 2.1 (.69) 1.9 (.72) *: a group mean differed significantly from d group mean at p < .05 poverty levels: a (0-5.9%); b (6.0%-15.9%); c (16.0%-29.9%); d (30.0% or greater) table 5 types of assessment formats used reported by teachers item often sometimes rarely how frequently are the following practices used in your classroom... use of constructed response items (short essays)  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 17.2% 22.7% 22.8% 24.1% 35.4% 39.0% 34.2% 38.5% 47.4% 38.3% 43.0% 37.4% use of long-term projects (e.g., research or other type projects)  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 23.7% 20.0% 21.1% 20.5% 51.5% 47.2% 41.9% 35.8% 24.7% 32.8% 37.0% 43.8% use of performance type items (e.g., presentations, experiments)  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 34.4% 27.6% 28.7% 24.0% 53.3% 53.4% 51.3% 49.1% 12.3% 19.1% 20.0% 26.9% current issues in education vol. 6 no. 8 table 6 pressure felt from administration (means and standard deviations) item available range poverty level a (lowest) b c d (highest) how often during the year does your administration engage in various activities for improving test results? 0-3; not at all to many times reviews test scores at staff meetings 1.8 (.81) 1.8 (.75) 1.8 (.82) 2.0 (.78) discusses ways to improve test scores* 2.0 (.90) 2.2 (.86) 2.1 (.96) 2.4 (.79) provides materials to improve test scores* 1.8 (1.0) 1.8 (1.0) 1.9 (1.1) 2.2 (.83) checks to see that teachers are emphasizing areas which showed weakness from past test results* 1.4 (1.2) 1.6 (1.1) 1.6 (1.1) 2.0 (1.6) introduces or discusses important new instructional ideas 1.8 (1.1) 1.8 (1.0) 1.8 (1.8) 2.1 (.93) *: a, b, & c group means differ significantly from group d mean at p < .05. poverty levels: a (0-5.9%); b (6.0%-15.9%); c (16.0%-29.9%); d (30.0% or greater) teachers indicated that their administrators engaged in various activities focused on improving test results several times per year (table 6). discussions of ways to improve test scores were the most frequently reported activity across all poverty levels. significant differences were found between lower poverty schools regarding the types of discussions used to improve test scores, materials being provided to improve test scores, and the methods by which administrators monitored teachers. the schools with the three lowest levels of poverty differed from those with the highest poverty level while teachers from the poorest schools indicated this occurred with greater frequency. results indicated that administrators in schools with the most poverty subjected teachers to activities to improve test scores table 7 pressure felt to improve test scores item many times a few times once not at all how often during the year does your administration engage in various activities for improving test results? reviews test scores  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 18.5% 17.2% 21.4% 24.3% 42.5% 51.7% 45.7% 51.9% 34.5% 27.5% 27.7% 19.3% 4.5% 3.5% 5.2% 4.4% discusses ways to improve test scores  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 32.2% 37.5% 40.5% 51.9% 45.7% 47.1% 39.2% 37.6% 13.6% 8.1% 9.7% 6.1% 8.5% 7.4% 10.6% 4.4% provides materials to improve test scores  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 26.8% 28.0% 31.6% 42.5% 43.4% 44.4% 39.7% 44.1% 13.6% 10.9% 10.4% 7.3% 16.2% 16.6% 18.3% 6.1% checks to see that teachers are emphasizing areas which showed weaknesses from past results  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 19.8% 24.5% 24.8% 41.3% 35.5% 38.2% 37.2% 36.9% 10.7% 12.9% 10.8% 5.6% 34.0% 24.5% 27.1% 16.2% introduces or discusses important new instructional ideas  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 29.6% 27.1% 29.2% 36.1% 44.4% 45.0% 39.8% 46.1% 6.1% 9.6% 10.8% 6.7% 19.9% 18.3% 20.2% 11.1% consistently and most often. interestingly, test preparation discussions were not found to be effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty good news or bad news? 7 significantly more likely to occur in schools with lower poverty levels. the percentage of teachers indicating that administrators led activities designed to improve test scores is shown in table 7. for those teachers indicating that the activities occurred many times throughout the school year, a crescendo effect was seen. that is, as the poverty level of the school increased so did the percentage of teachers indicating the activity occurred. for example, approximately 52% of teachers in the highest poverty schools noted that discussions of ways to improve test scores occurred many times during the year compared with the lowest poverty level school where only 32% of the teachers reported the activity occurring many times throughout the year. another interesting pattern was evident regarding how often administrative leaders checked to see that weak areas from past table 8 consequences to poor student performance on state test(s) (means and standard deviations) item available range poverty level a (lowest) b c d (highest) what are the potential consequences to teachers whose students perform poorly on state test(s) in your school? 0-1; no yes potential loss of position* 0.13 (0.33) 0.18 (0.39) 0.20 (0.40) 0.26 (0.44) reassignment of grade level or type of student taught**, *** 0.20 (0.40) 0.30 (0.46) 0.35 (0.48) 0.43 (0.50) private reprimand* 0.24 (0.43) 0.30 (0.46) 0.32 (0.47) 0.38 (0.49) pressure to change teaching strategies**** 0.51 (0.50) 0.66 (0.48) 0.66 (0.48) 0.72 (0.45) no consequences**** 0.35 (0.48) 0.24 (0.43) 0.23 (0.42) 0.14 (0.35) *: a group mean differed significantly from d group mean at p < .05 **: a and b group means differed significantly from d group mean at p < .05 ***: a group mean differed significantly from c group mean at p < .05 ***: a group mean differed significantly from b, c, & d group means at p < .05 poverty levels: a (0-5.9%); b (6.0%-15.9%); c (16.0%-29.9%); d (30.0% or greater) results were being emphasized. forty-one percent of the teachers in the lowest poverty schools reported the activity occurring many times throughout the year compared to only approximately 20% of teachers reporting the activity occurring in the lowest poverty schools. in addition, 34% of teachers in the lowest poverty schools reported administrators did not check at all compared to only 16% of teachers in the highest poverty schools. the frequency that administrators introduced or discussed new instructional ideas was fairly consistent across each school poverty level. table 9 types of consequences resulting from poor student performance on state tests reported by teachers across different poverty levels item yes what are the potential consequences to teachers whose students perform poorly on state test(s) in your school? potential loss of position  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 12.5% 18.0% 19.8% 26.1% reassignment of grade level or type of student taught  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 19.5% 29.9% 35.4% 42.8% private reprimand  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 24.0% 30.3% 32.4% 37.8% pressure to change teaching strategies  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 28.6% 34.5% 23.6% 23.4% no consequences  0-5.9% poverty  6.0-15.9% poverty  16.0-29.9% poverty  30% or more 34.5% 23.6% 23.4% 13.9% current issues in education vol. 6 no. 8 finally, teachers were asked to respond to the consequences that threatened them as professionals if students in their classrooms performed poorly on the state tests. as seen in table 8, differences among poverty levels were found per consequence. while teachers indicated all of the consequences might impact them, pressure to change teaching strategies was the most frequently reported consequence across all poverty levels. a larger percentage of teachers in the schools with the highest level of poverty indicated potential loss of job, reassignment, or reprimand as consequences of poor student performance. the largest percentage of teachers who reported no consequences for posting poor test scores taught in schools with the least reported poverty levels (table 9). summary and conclusions these survey findings support previous studies' findings in that accountability, as implemented through testing initiatives, has tremendous effects on teachers and the teaching and learning process. substantial amounts of time are spent in special test preparation activities prior to and after state test(s), administrators encourage attention to test scores by engaging in activities with teachers designed specifically to increase test scores (e.g., discussion of and provision of materials to improve test scores), and whether real or perceived, teachers associate potential negative consequences with poor student test performance (e.g., reassignment, loss of job). all of these effects are evidenced more prominently in schools with students from improvished backgrounds. whether the study findings are good news or bad news depends on one's philosophical ideas about testing initiatives. if one holds the view that the test(s) and what they are measuring are educationally valid then certainly these results are good news that testing initiatives are tools through which educational reform can be obtained. if, however, one holds the opposite view, that an increased emphasis on testing decreases the likelihood of meaningful systemic reform, then the results from this study indicate that testing initiatives negatively impact the instructional process by which children learn, distort the curriculum, and replace effective instructional practices by focusing on test preparation. several conclusions can be drawn based on this study's findings: 1. the use of tests as an accountability mechanism appears to define the curriculum, oftentimes with substantial attention given to the form and format of the questions on the test(s). regardless of the school's poverty level, a great deal of class time is devoted to reviewing and practicing for state tests, increasing in intensity until testing is completed. however, a larger percentage of teachers in schools with the highest concentration of poverty appear to maintain a more consistent focus on test preparation throughout the school year than teachers in schools with lower poverty levels. 2. teachers presume high-stakes decisions are associated with test results, and consequently align their instructional practices with state tests. one risk to this approach, which cannot be clearly determined from this study, is the deemphasis of non-tested materials. this may narrow the curriculum and result in practices that may counter effective instruction, teaching for student understanding, selfdirection and autonomy, and opportunities for interaction with other students. 3. because of the potential narrowing of curriculum and the tremendous amount of time devoted to test preparation activities, the importance of ensuring the validity of a testing initiative's ability to serve as an accurate indicator of student achievement and learning is paramount. are schools producing individuals who are ready to live in and make contributions to the complex society of today or are they producing individuals who excel at taking a test? we need to heed an observation made by e.g.a. holmes in the first part of the 20 th century in britain: ...and in proportion as we tend to value the results of education for their measurableness, so we tend to undervalue and at last to ignore those results which are too intrinsically valuable to be measured. (holmes, 1911, p. 128) unfortunately, in the minds of the teachers who responded to the survey, high test scores appear to have become a primary criterion against which an educational system's worth is judged. students in poverty, who are most in need of developing high level skills which could prepare them for future careers, educational advancement, or opportunities needed to overcome the circumstances from which they come, are the most likely to be exposed to increased levels of test preparation activities. while some will argue that the testing initiative's purpose is to ensure educational equity for all american students, regardless of economical circumstances, the reverse appears to be the reality. based on this study, students from poverty are less likely to be exposed to challenging curricula and instructional methods. results from this study would suggest that accountability through student testing is effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty good news or bad news? 9 a vehicle to restrict educational opportunities from those who need opportunities most. endnotes 1 according to krejcie and morgan (1970), based on a population over 75,000 teachers, 382 returned surveys were needed for a representative sample. references ascher, c. 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(eric reproduction service no. ed252581) u.s. bureau of the census. (1990). statistical abstracts of the united states: 1990. washington, d.c.: government printing office . effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty good news or bad news? 11 appendix elementary teacher questionnaire state testing program 1. in what state do you teach? _________________ 2. grade(s) you currently teach: k 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 3. grade(s) you taught last year: k 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 4. years you've been teaching (including this year): ________ years 5. years you've been teaching at this school (including this year): ________ years 6. content areas you are responsible for teaching:  english / language arts  mathematics  history / social studies  science  other: _________ 7. please indicate your estimate of your class's academic achievement/ability level. much above grade level somewhat above grade level at grade level somewhat below grade level much below grade level 8. approximately what percentage of your current students: a. qualify or receive free/reduced lunch: ______% b. are limitedor non-english proficient: _____% c. receive special education services: _____% d. are considered gifted/academically talented: _____% 9. how would you characterize the emphasis on the outcomes of state-level tests in your school during the past year? _____ extremely high _____ very high _____ moderate _____ low _____ no emphasis 10. how has the emphasis on outcomes of state-level tests changed over the past 3 years?  increased greatly  increased slightly  remained about the same current issues in education vol. 6 no. 8  decreased slightly  decreased greatly 11. to what extent to you feel pressure from the following groups to improve your students' standardized test scores? extremely high very high moderate little no pressure a. my principal 5 4 3 2 1 b. central office administrators 5 4 3 2 1 c. other teachers 5 4 3 2 1 d. local school board members 5 4 3 2 1 e. parents 5 4 3 2 1 f. local community including the press/media 5 4 3 2 1 g. professional organizations 5 4 3 2 1 12. rank the order of the effectiveness of the following curriculum and instructional approaches for increasing student learning. (assign a ranking of 1 to the most effective, 2 to the next effective, and so on. please do not use the same ranking for any items.) rank _____ focusing clearly and consistently on the topics covered on the state test(s) _____ using an interdisciplinary curriculum _____ differentiating the curriculum (e.g. using tiered assignments, lessons targeted to student past achievements, accelerating pace of learning for some students) _____ doing hands-on work _____ using alternative (e.g., performance) assessments _____ providing broad coverage across many areas of basic knowledge _____ teaching which allows for in-depth exploration where one critical exemplar of a concept or principle can be understood as a basis to generalize to other exemplars. 13. how would you rank the order of the degree to which you balance the following curricula and instructional approaches as effective in increasing scores on state tests? (assign a ranking of 1 to the most effective, 2 to the next effective, and so on. please do not use the same ranking for any items.) effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty good news or bad news? 13 _____ focusing clearly and consistently on the topics covered on the state test(s) _____ using an interdisciplinary curriculum _____ differentiating the curriculum (e.g. using tiered assignments, lessons targeted to student past achievements, accelerating pace of learning for some students) _____ doing hands-on work _____ using alternative (e.g., performance) assessments _____ providing broad coverage across many areas of basic knowledge _____ teaching which allows for in-depth exploration where one critical exemplar of a concept or principle can be understood as a basis to generalize to other exemplars. for question 14 we would like you to consider each item twice. first, we ask you to rate each item according to the scale noted. second, we ask you to rank the relative influence of each item. assign a ranking of 1 to the most influential, 2 to the next most influential and so on. please do not use the same ranking for any items. 14. to what extent do the following factors influence your instructional planning? strongly to some extent not at all ranking a. having academically advanced students in your class b. having struggling learners in your class c. having to prepare students for state test(s) d. making sure the content and skills covered on the state test(s) are reviewed prior to the test(s) administration e. my current students' most recent state test(s) results f. our school's overall test results g. test performance of the students i had last year h. a need for adjusting curriculum sequence based on the content coverage of the state test(s) current issues in education vol. 6 no. 8 15. how frequently are the following practices used in your classroom and to what extent have their frequency changed as a result of the state testing program? (dk = don't know) frequency change often sometimes rarely increased same decreased dk a. use of constructed response items (short essays) b. use of multiple-choice items c. use of long term projects (e.g., research or other projects requiring a week or more) d. use of performance type items (e.g., presentations, science experiments) e. test preparation (e.g., homework and classwork) f. making sure the content and skills covered on the state test(s) are reviewed prior to the test(s) administration g. adjusting the curriculum sequence based on the content coverage of the state test(s) 16. how much attention are you able to give to the following curricular areas in your classroom and to what extent has this changed as a result of the state testing program? (dk = don't know) attention change effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty good news or bad news? 15 often sometimes rarely increased same decreased dk a. higher-order thinking skills b. problemsolving skills c. topics which are not assessed on the state tests(s) d. the fine and performing arts (e.g. music, art, drama) e. basic skills (e.g., computations, grammar, vocabulary) f. factual knowledge g. enrichment or extension of the curriculum according to student interest and/or ability to delve deeper 17. how much time do you spend in your classroom on the following test preparation activities... ... during the first 1/3 of the year? regularly one month one week a few days one day none current issues in education vol. 6 no. 8 a. student worksheets b. instruction for students on testtaking strategies c. review/practice using statereleased test items d. student practice in the kinds of item formats that are on the state test(s) ... during the second 1/3 of the year? regularly one month one week a few days one day none a. student worksheets b. instruction for students on testtaking strategies c. review/practice using statereleased test items d. student practice in the kinds of item formats that are on the state test(s) ... during the month prior to state testing? regularly one week a few days one day none a. student worksheets b. instruction for students on testtaking strategies c. review/practice using state-released test items d. student practice in the kinds of item formats that are on the state test(s) effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty good news or bad news? 17 ... during the period following state testing? regularly one month one week a few days one day none a. student worksheets b. instruction for students on testtaking strategies c. review/practice using statereleased test items d. student practice in the kinds of item formats that are on the state test(s) 18. how often during the year does your school administration engage in the following activities with teachers? many times a few times once not at all a. reviews test scores at staff meetings b. discusses ways to improve test scores c. provides materials to improve test scores d. checks to see that teachers are emphasizing areas which showed weakness from past test results e. introduces or discusses important new instructional ideas 19. how much of the feedback or evaluation you receive as a teacher from administrators is related to the test performance of your students? (check only one)  100%  three-quarters  about half  about one-quarter  practically none  none at all current issues in education vol. 6 no. 8  i never receive feedback 20. how has your school's performance on the state test(s) changed over the last three years? (check only one)  scores have increased  scores have decreased  scores have remained about the same (go to question 22)  some grade level scores have increased while others have decreased  i don't know (go to question 22) 21. if test scores have changed, how important are the following factors? major factor moderate factor minor factor no factor a. changes in school population b. alignment of instruction with state test content c. attention to test-taking strategies d. changes in instructional strategies e. changes in assessment strategies f. changes in teacher effectiveness g. changes in school climate h. changes in funding support 22. how have state test results affected your instruction? (check all that apply)  i teach to the state test(s) more than i normally would.  i omit certain information because there is not enough time to fit it in because of state test(s).  i do not do certain things that look interesting or beneficial for students unless they are on the state tests.  i do not do anything differently because of the state tests. 23. read each item and indicate your degree of agreement with it. effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty good news or bad news? 19 strongly agree neutral strongly disagree a. state tests help clarify and specify learning goals b. learning outcomes measured by state test(s) are the most important ones to measure c. test results are an accurate picture of student learning d. many of the students i teach are not capable of learning the material on the state test(s) e. state testing is helping schools improve f. my school is more interested in increasing student test scores than in improving overall student learning g. teachers in my school feel there is discrepancy between what they think should be taught and what the state tests emphasize h. state tests give me important feedback about how well i am teaching the curricular area(s) i. students are treated as test-takers rather than learners j. students are under too much pressure to increase test scores k. students see learning as a chore because of pressure from state testing programs l. students feel badly if they do not have high test scores m. teachers are under too much pressure to increase test scores 24. what are the potential consequences to teachers whose students perform poorly on state test(s) in your school? (check all that apply.)  potential loss of position as a teacher in this school or school district  reassignment of grade level or type of student taught  private reprimand current issues in education vol. 6 no. 8  pressure to change teaching strategies  other (please describe): ___________________________________________  no consequences if you have any additional comments on the ways state testing is helping or hurting your instructional practices, please use the space below. effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty good news or bad news? 21 2003 article citation moon, t. r., callahan, c. m., & tomlinson, c. a., (2003, april 28). effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty-good news or bad news? current issues in education [on-line], 6(8). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume6/number8/ author notes tonya r. moon university of virginia curry school of education p.o. box 400277, 405 emmet street s, charlottesville, va 22904-4277. trm2k@virginia.edu tonya r. moon, ph.d. is an assistant professor in the curry school of education at the university of virginia and a principal investigator for the national research center on the gifted and talented. her areas of expertise include educational measurement and assessment. her professional publications include refereed journal articles, book chapters and monographs. she works both nationally and internationally with educators on appropriate use of assessment techniques for the improvement of student learning. carolyn m. callahan university of virginia curry school of education carolyn m. callahan, ph.d. is a professor in the curry school of education at the university of virginia and is also associate director of the national research center on the gifted and talented. she teaches courses in the area of education of gifted and has authored more than 100 articles and 25 book chapters and monographs on the topics of creativity, the identification of gifted students, program evaluation, and the issues faced by gifted females. carol a. tomlinson university of virginia curry school of education carol a. tomlinson, ed.d. is a professor in the curry school of education at the university of virginia and a principal investigator for the national research center on the gifted and talented. she currently is president of the national association for gifted children and has authored many journal articles, book chapters, and staff development materials. she works with educators nationally and internationally on issues related to teaching academically diverse students. note from the spring 2016 executive editor, constantin schreiber april 15, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number8/index.html mailto:trm2k@virginia.edu current issues in education vol. 6 no. 8 2016 article citation moon, t. r., callahan, c. m., & tomlinson, c. a., (2003). effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty-good news or bad news? current issues in education, 6(8). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1683 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1683 is consistency possible? course design and delivery to meet faculty and student needs current issues in education, 23(3) 1 volume 23, issue 3 december 12, 2022 issn 1099-839x is consistency possible? course design and delivery to meet faculty and student needs taralyn mcmullan, david s. williams, yolany lagos ortiz, & jackie lollar university of south alabama abstract: as online learning continues to rise, students find educational value in consistency of instruction and technological support. with the significant increase in faculty designing courses, success lies with faculty education in instructional design. additionally, students need support to navigate through the lms and course elements to achieve success and increase their knowledge level. determining the needs of nursing students and faculty is essential to the process of developing an effective course design for students leading to valuable content delivery and achievement of student outcomes. the purposes of this study were: (1) to measure attitudes toward online course design, (2) to compare online course delivery with instructor involvement, and (3) to determine changes to online courses. a significant finding is consistency within the lms in course design and increased use of technology in content delivery. keywords: instructional design, nursing education, outcomes, blended and fully online learning, technology citation : mcmullan, t., williams, d.s., ortiz, y.l., & lollar, j. (2022). is consistency possible? course design and delivery to meet faculty and student needs, current issues in education, 23(3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss3.2092 accepted: 10/21/2022 introduction blended and fully online learning has been a cornerstone for many colleges and universities as today's students face challenges causing in-person learning to be cumbersome. although instruction varies by institution, degree, course, or even faculty, student mastery of content remains the primary goal and serves as a foundation for curricular development. according to the national center for education statistics (n.d.), over 7 million students were enrolled in some form of distance or online learning in 2019. hence, students are faced with many options when it comes to their learning pathway, and delivery of instruction is just one facet that facilitates their decision. https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss3.2092 mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 2 accrediting bodies such as the american association of colleges of nursing (aacn) developed a standard of principles that each program could deliver, mimicking those of a traditional classroom environment. as such, the importance of consistency among student outcomes in relation to the institution's mission, goals, and objectives of the program, while establishing a measure of student and program success serves as a core element. furthermore, faculty must facilitate appropriate technical support, clinical competence, professionalism, and resources while engaging in ongoing faculty development (aacn, 2021) to support teaching practices. with the increase in online learning being offered, it is of no surprise that the number of students reported to take an online course has increased from 37% (fall 2019) to 51.8% (20192020) (hill, 2021). while many different platforms exist in the development and execution of learning, most rely on pedagogy as a foundation to the instruction. therefore, it is essential for faculty to be supported with technology and instructional design theories that support the construction of courses while enhancing the student's experience. martin et al. (2019) found that faculty teaching online may need a variety of professional development support in terms of administration, personnel, technology, and pedagogy. as blended and fully online teaching becomes more of the norm, it is important to measure if learning outcomes are being achieved and how the selected instructional technology is used to help achieve those outcomes. therefore, the need to measure success of learning is necessitated by whether technology gaps exist, thus influencing student achievement. we must be cognizant of demographics impacting students and faculty, experiential learning, instructional design properties of the learning management system (lms), self-efficacy, and the tools used in the classroom as important variables. the purposes of this study were: (1) to measure attitudes toward online course design, (2) to compare online course delivery with instructor involvement, and (3) to determine changes to online courses. for the purposes of our study, we draw a distinction between technical requirements and technology. technical requirements refer to how to find assistance in using required computer software and hardware. the use of technology refers more broadly to using the tools needed to complete the required course instruction and learning activities. course design is built on the needs of the learner and should begin with transparent learning outcomes, along with intentional and strategic design rooted in evidence-based practice (bradshaw et al., 2021). the theoretical knowledge of malcolm knowles postulates learners must: (a) be aware of why they must learn; (b) learn by experience; (c) learn through problemsolving activities, and (d) perceive an immediate value (knowles, 1990 as cited in bradshaw et al., 2021). similarly, it is of equal importance to allow faculty who design the courses to be wellversed in instructional design methods to allow for proper dissemination of the course material. likewise, learners also rely on previous experiences and potential outcomes of their learning to affect their future as an incentive to pursue education. therefore, learners may be more inclined to be self-directed in learning, but consistency may not always be present in the content delivery (spies & botma, 2020), minimizing users' ability to access resources and materials to enrich their overall learning experiences. educational developers often rely on evidence-based design frameworks when collaborating with instructors. one of these frameworks is quality matters (qm) which is a set of rubric standards that focus on alignment of course objectives to assessments to help foster quality assurance in online course design (quality matters, 2021). likewise, the online learning consortium's quality scorecard suite is a series of design rubrics based on best practices and mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 3 principles for online course development to help educational developers and faculty implement accessible and quality learning environments (online learning consortium, 2022). in course development, alignment of objectives, activities and assessments must be threaded throughout the course (markari et al., 2020; smith & kennedy, 2020). applying standards-based design frameworks like qm criteria and the online learning consortium's quality scorecard framework can strengthen design consistency among learners, course developers, and instructors (king & nininger, 2019; lancaster et al., 2019). khamis et al. (2018) found that among medical students, information technology was instrumental to the perceived learning experiences. positive outcomes included improving work speed, relevancy, extending learning/knowledge outside the classroom, connections, and accessibility which are essential in the college experience. interestingly, their study also revealed that male and female students would like to see even more technology usage via email, videosharing, web portals, medical wikis, and even through online educational games. these findings may help faculty to ensure the design incorporates methodologies and platforms which can be readily accessible through a variety of devices (cobanoglu, 2018; mackavey & cron, 2019) both in the classroom and in the field. actively engaging learners provides for a perception of social presence, yielding more positive results among students while supporting learning (chung & chen, 2020; olson & benham-hutchins, 2020; smith et al., 2019) and retention efforts (serembus & riccio, 2019). while surveys do exist to measure student engagement, other factors, such as analytical measurement through the lms platforms, also provide capabilities to determine how much time students spend viewing different areas of the course leading to better academic performance. this information is paramount when considering course design (serembus & riccio). similarly, faculty satisfaction with using a lms can be highly influential to the student's perceived learning and actual utilization of the system. perceived usefulness and quality of service are additional variables reinforcing instructor and student satisfaction (almarashdeh, 2016). faculty self-efficacy and personal competence serve as fundamental building blocks to instructional effectiveness and can be influenced by other concepts such as: ability to control the environment, technology, lms platform, and the ability to create successful strategies for students' learning outcomes (hampton et al., 2020). programs should be based on evidencebased principles that guide the learner through the process of learning rather than instruction (sinclair et al., 2017). method our research occurred within a regional public university in the southeastern united states, with the college of nursing (con) serving as the targeted site. the university enrolls an average of 14,000 students, with the con being the largest college within the system. average enrollment in the fall/spring semesters is 3000+ students and includes undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students. a concurrent triangulation mixed methods design was used to answer our research questions (creswell, 2013). to investigate the research questions, we developed a set of questionnaires administered to faculty and students in the con that included quantitative and qualitative questions. the online learning consortium's quality scorecard suite (olc, 2021) was used as a theoretical framework to develop scale questions measuring online course features like consistent design, instructor involvement, learning activities, grading, feedback, use of video content, and technology requirements. the wording of likert scale question items was adjusted between the faculty and student versions of the questionnaires to accommodate each audience. mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 4 the following scale was used for the likert items: 1) strongly disagree, 2) somewhat disagree, 3) neither agree nor disagree, 4) somewhat agree, and 5) strongly agree. open-ended and demographic questions were also adjusted based on each audience to allow for the strongest comparisons. we were also interested in investigating additional issues related to online course delivery from faculty and student perspectives because of institutional changes in the learning management system and other instructional technologies. we anticipated that data gathered from the study could inform continuous improvement to both training programs for faculty and potential changes to college-level course delivery policies to support a stronger student experience. the following table shows the alignment between the research purposes and questionnaire items to provide context for the various terminology used in the study. it also shows specifically where in the results section details about the questionnaire items are located. table 1 alignment of research purpose to questionnaire research purpose questionnaire items results section measure attitudes toward online course design items measuring elements of course experience table 3 compare online course delivery with instructor involvement items measuring elements of course facilitation table 4 items measuring instructor involvement table 5 items measuring technical requirements narrative following table 5 items related to video content table 6 determine changes to online courses. open-ended items tables 7 and 8 additionally, we included demographic-type items for faculty and students to investigate if any notable commonalities or trends would be found in the data. sample after obtaining institutional review board (irb) approval, the pilot version of the questionnaire was administered in october 2019 via qualtrics online survey tool to faculty and students from four undergraduate and four graduate online courses that were implemented in the institution's previous lms. we hoped the pilot questionnaire would provide a benchmark regarding online course experiences in faculty and students that would serve as a comparison point once the change in lms was completed in additional courses. we originally planned to mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 5 make any adjustments to the questionnaire and then implement it again in spring 2020 and fall 2020 as the lms migration commenced. the impact of the covid-19 pandemic redirected the focus of this research project and caused a shift in our data collection plan. we were able to resume this research project in april 2021, toward the end of spring term, and well after the migration of all courses to the new lms was complete. because of the amount of time that had passed and the impact of covid-19 on the institution, we became most interested in how students and faculty felt about their online course experiences now that a new system had been implemented. we made only slight updates to the questionnaires, including asking faculty and students to identify specifically how the use of the new lms could be improved. we also included openended questions regarding the most positive take-aways taking or teaching the course as well as suggestions for improvement of the course. we did not change the likert scale questions or categories. the updated questionnaires were approved by the irb, and all college of nursing faculty (full-time and part-time) and students were invited to complete the survey via qualtrics online survey tool in april 2021. the response rate of the 2021 implementation is detailed below in table 2. table 2 participant response rate questionnaire version faculty student n response rate % n response rate % spring 2021 questionnaire 58 53.21% 107 3.10% the response rate for students was low, with busy schedules, timing of the administration at the end of the semester, and survey fatigue being possible explanations. the results of the 2021 survey implementation are addressed in the next section. results in order to compare attitudes and experiences of nursing faculty and students, an independent sample t-test was conducted on the questionnaire items measuring elements of course experience (e.g., syllabus, expectations, clarity of assignments and resources, online course facilitation, instructor involvement), technical requirements, and video content. mean differences between faculty and student scores on relevant items are reported below. homogeneity of variances, as assessed by levene's test for equality of variances, was found on some question items; for question items that violated the assumption of homogeneity of variance, the welch (1947) method to adjust the degrees of freedom was used. table 3 shows the mean differences from items measuring general online course experiences. the words in parentheses are the word adjustments to the items for the faculty version. nine question items were included to measure online course experience. the two items in the table reflect mean differences between faculty and students larger than .6. mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 6 table 3 items related to course experience. question faculty student t df p m sd m sd your (the) workload throughout the course was evenly distributed. 4.59 .747 3.90 1.207 -3.769 62.248 .00 course activities were appropriately paced and evenly distributed. 4.57 .742 3.92 1.193 -2.750 141 .007 note: there was homogeneity of variances for "course activities were appropriately paced and evenly distributed" (p = .098). these questions were the only items with statistically significant mean differences, which indicated a slightly stronger view among faculty that the schedule of the course and the pacing of learning activities were evenly distributed. in terms of practical significance, the mean scores for faculty and students in the 2021 data for all items measuring course design factors were near or above 4.0, indicating fairly strong agreement in perceptions among faculty and students. table 4 shows the mean differences from items specifically measuring online course facilitation. nine question items were included to measure this construct. the eight items in the table reflect mean differences between faculty and students larger than .6. table 4 items important to online course facilitation question faculty student t df p m sd m sd having consistent order in left bar navigation among different courses. 3.35 .915 4.15 .914 4.288 143 .00 having a "start here" module that is similar among courses (you facilitate). 3.26 .930 3.99 1.243 3.055 142 .003 mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 7 table 4 (continued) question faculty student t df p m sd m sd having (recording) a welcome video for the class (from the instructor). 2.97 .912 3.68 1.358 3.435 70.571 .001 having (recording) a video to introduce new content. 3.03 .875 4.19 1.065 5.535 142 .00 having synchronous web conferences during the term (to give student) opportunities to ask questions or to attend live lectures. 2.73 .907 3.78 1.299 5.061 64.539 .00 having weekly modules or lessons that follow the same sequence through the course. 3.45 .768 4.10 1.069 3.145 142 .002 having weekly modules or lessons that follow the same sequence among different courses. 2.81 .980 3.79 1.184 4.231 142 .00 having (providing) the same process for accessing resources across all courses (you facilitate). 3.30 .877 4.38 .869 6.041 141 .00 note: the homogeneity of variances assumption was only violated on "having (recording) a welcome video for the class (from the instructor)" and "having synchronous web conferences during the term (to give student) opportunities to ask questions or to attend live lectures." for these items, the values for equal variances not assumed are presented here. the mean scores of students for each of these questions were higher than the faculty scores, likely because of the larger n of students. still, in terms of practical significance, items related to recording video content, providing web conference sessions, and consistent module sequencing among different courses were at or just below 3.0. student scores on these same items reflect a much stronger desire for more use of video and module consistency. data on these questions from the 2019 pilot were used anecdotally by college of nursing faculty and staff for course design planning in preparation for the new lms. mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 8 table 5 shows the mean differences from items specifically measuring instructor involvement. seven question items were included to measure this construct. the two items in the table reflect mean differences between faculty and students larger than .6 table 5 items related to instructor involvement question faculty student t df p m sd m sd instructor (i) provided timely feedback on your assignments. 4.55 .850 3.81 1.381 -3.706 78.217 .00 instructor (my) presence was notable throughout the course. 4.61 .803 3.72 1.379 -4.614 83.209 .00 note: there was homogeneity of variances assumption was violated on both of these items. the values for equal variances not assumed are presented here. interestingly, the mean scores of students for each of these questions about the instructor's involvement in the course were lower than the faculty scores. in terms of practical significance, all mean scores for items in this question block for faculty and students were closer to 4.0 on the scale, indicating broad agreement on instructor activities. the next block of questions in the instrument measured technical requirements, such as the following: providing information about where to find technical assistance; information regarding computer, hardware, and software requirements; and netiquette with appropriate online behavior guidelines. none of the three items measuring technical requirements had differences in mean scores larger than .6. though there were statistically significant differences for items on finding technical assistance and information about computer requirements, there was no practically significant difference among students and faculty. further, the mean scores for each group were near or well above 4, indicating consistent agreement that technical requirement information was provided in their course sites. table 6 shows the mean differences from items specifically measuring video content. six question items were included to measure this construct. the four items in the table reflect mean differences between faculty and students larger than .6 mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 9 table 6 items related to video content question faculty student t df p m sd m sd the course videos were useful. 4.60 .770 3.96 1.332 -3.42 80.264 .001 the course videos were well presented. 4.67 .606 3.91 1.293 -4.592 102.51 3 .00 the course videos had good audio quality. 4.63 .615 4.12 1.204 -3.195 93.065 .002 i find the (recording) course videos overwhelming. 2.83 1.605 2.09 1.359 -2.504 138 .013 note: there was homogeneity of variances for "i find the (recording) course videos overwhelming" (p = .069). the values for equal variances not assumed are presented here for the remaining values. though there was no statistically significant difference in "the videos were no longer than 15 minutes," there is practical significance here in the similar mean scores about how to improve the use of video content in online nursing courses. the difference in mean scores on these items reflects a slightly stronger agreement among faculty in the use and presentation of video content. the use of video content was not viewed as overwhelming. the qualitative data presented below further confirms the desire from students for consistent, high-quality videos provided by their instructors. qualitative data qualitative data was collected from two open-ended items in the faculty version of the questionnaire and three open-ended items from the student version of the questionnaire. response summary table 7 shows the number of responses to the three open-ended questions in the student's instrument. mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 10 table 7 students' responses to open-ended questions question n what suggestions would you make to instructors about ways to improve video content in this course? 66 what are your top 3 most positive feelings about your experience in the course? 79 what are your top 3 suggestions to improve the use of canvas in the course? 69 table 8 shows the number of responses to the two open-ended questions in the faculty instrument. table 8 faculty responses to open-ended questions question n what are your top 3 positive take-aways from teaching your courses? 24 what are your top 3 suggestions to improve the use of canvas at the college of nursing? 25 coding process we used inductive, open coding to create codes and then categories of codes for the faculty and student responses. one researcher open coded responses for both faculty questions and the student questions related to video content and suggestions for course improvement. a second researcher open coded the responses of students’ positive feelings about the course. these researchers met to review each other's data set and present the list of codes that had emerged from each of the questions. the researchers reviewed the codebook and then resolved any disagreements in how the codes were applied to come to consensus on the larger categories of codes to represent participant meaning and achieve intercoder reliability (johnson & christensen, 2017). subsequently, the researchers met to specifically review the coded themes in the faculty responses to the top three positive takeaways and top three suggestions and the coded themes in the student responses to the top positive feelings and suggestions for improvement. we coded the individual faculty/student responses separately to get more saturation of themes, as each group of participants had themes that were inherently linked to their characteristics as faculty or students. moreover, we used the themes that emerged from the faculty response to analyze where similar responses from the student data sets could be found to present overlapping thoughts or ideas to present meaningful comparisons. the coding process and categories of codes were shared with the remaining two researchers, who also agreed with the analysis of these questions mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 11 results when selecting which themes to report, we decided to report those that had relevance to the research purpose and objectives. the categories of codes, or themes, are presented in the following figures. figure 1 shows the top themes extracted from student suggestions for improving video content in their online courses. figure 1 student suggestions to improve video content figure 2 shows the top themes extracted from student responses when asked to list their top three positive take-aways from teaching their course (faculty) and from their overall experience in taking their courses (students). the results for each group are presented here together for ease of comparison. figure 2 student and faculty positive take-aways from their course experiences mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 12 figure 3 shows the top themes extracted from student and faculty responses when asked to list their top three suggestions to improve the use of the lms in their courses within the college of nursing. figure 3 student and faculty suggestions to improve the use of the lms in their courses discussion measuring attitudes towards online course design and comparing experiences we sought to measure the attitudes and experiences of nursing faculty and students about blended and fully online learning and course design to allow for meaningful comparisons of their experiences. the olc quality scorecard suite (olc, 2021) framework that organized our instrument helped highlight where faculty and students had consensus and where notable differences could point to improvement in the design and delivery of online courses. our study participants indicated that flexibility in blended and fully online learning is crucial to their ability to adapt to an environment that is ever-changing. course experience faculty and students overall expressed strong agreement on the items measuring course experience. these results were positive and indicated that faculty and students agreed that elements such as clear expectations listed in a syllabus and ease of accessing needed resources were present in the blended and fully online delivery. the notable difference in the quantitative results between faculty and students was found in perceptions of workload distribution and pacing of course activities; this finding relates to qualitative data gathered from the student and faculty positive take-aways from their course experiences. the theme of organization was the largest, with the most coded responses from the open-ended question about course positives from faculty. in terms of organization, one faculty participant stated that "having a consistent format in each module that includes the unit resources, the assignments, and the content" was an important course feature. the theme of organization was the largest theme in the data from student positive take-aways and may help explain student feelings about workload, design, and pacing. similar to the faculty participant, students commented that their course was "well organized" and "digested." another student expressed, "canvas use should be standardized. mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 13 instructors should be required to put assignments in the same place and be consistent." this sentiment may explain the lower agreement from students regarding workload and pacing. tables 9 and 10 show the largest selected codes from the faculty and students regarding their top positive take-aways and suggestions for improvement with representative comments for each. table 9 codes for faculty responses code positive or suggestions n representative comment organization positive 11 "i love my other course coordinator's organization of the class" speedgrader and rubrics capabilities positive 8 "in addition to annotated feedback, video and audio recording are the best tools available to support student success" videos positive 6 "short, precise videos" consistent design template suggestions 13 "organization of content needs to be improved to facilitate finding everything in one place" canvas orientation suggestions 3 "students may need more orientation to use in general v. just training" standardized assignments and rubrics suggestions 2 "have all assignments with a similar template and make sure the instructions match the rubric" table 10 codes for student responses code positive or suggestions n representative comment organizatio n positive 36 "well organized", "easy access to modules" instructor support positive 24 "the instructors were excellent at keeping students informed" flexibility positive 20 "flexibility to read material on my own time" mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 14 table 4 (continued) code positive or suggestions n representative comment course content videos suggestions 33 "record a lecture for each section and post it to canvas" course design consistency suggestions 27 "canvas use should be standardized. instructors should be required to put assignments in the same place and be consistent" more instructor engagement suggestions 7 "instructors should be more responsive to students by replying to emails and answering questions and clarifying information" online course delivery and instructor involvement students had overall stronger agreement on items measuring online course facilitation, but faculty had overall stronger agreement on the significant items measuring instructor involvement. the data indicate reasonably strong student preference for consistent course navigation throughout the course and for some design consistency within and across their online courses. faculty indicated moderate disagreement in module consistency among different courses, and this could be related to the different types of courses facilitated within the degree programs (e.g., clinical courses, didactic courses, orientation/information sites). despite some of the differences noted here, the qualitative responses further illustrate student and faculty experiences. one faculty participant emphasized, "organization of content needs to be improved to facilitate finding everything in one place," while a student participant similarly expressed that "canvas use should be standardized. instructors should be required to put assignments in the same place and be consistent." students agreed (more so than faculty) that having a welcome video from the instructor to the course, having a video from the instructor to introduce new content, and having synchronous conferences facilitated by the instructor were important course features. the feedback on the use of synchronous web conferences stood out. synchronous web conferences have been used by nursing faculty intermittently and with varying degrees of success given the nature of student schedules and the fact that courses are delivered asynchronously. while unlikely to be adopted more uniformly at the program level, faculty may consider ways to incorporate some synchronous sessions for check-ins, content review, or other ways to connect students to the course, the instructor, and their peers. in terms of instructor involvement, feedback from the instructor and overall presence in the course emerged as points of comparison between faculty and students. still, the mean scores for items in this question block for faculty and students were closer to 4.0 on the scale, indicating broad agreement on instructor activities. one faculty participant commented, "students feel more confident with frequent faculty involvement." the following student comments further highlight their feelings about the importance of faculty involvement and interaction. mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 15 ● "the instructors put a lot of effort into providing information and communications about the course" ● "instructors should be more responsive to students by replying to emails and answering questions and clarifying information" ● "loved the video feedback" ● "instructor was positive with feedback" video content students and faculty overall believe that effective use of video content is important to the course experience. in addition to student preferences for course welcome videos and content videos, the difference in mean scores on these items reflects a slightly stronger agreement among faculty in the use and presentation of video content. the use of video content was not viewed as overwhelming, in either recording videos for the faculty or viewing the videos for the students. the qualitative data about use of video provided further insight into how nursing faculty can continue improving their creation and curation of content in their courses. contentrelated video instruction was the largest theme in the student data regarding how to improve online videos, as noted by the following quote. "i feel there should be more videos with the course to present content. the material is quickly presented with little to no explanation of key concepts. rarely do the instructors provide "real world" examples that allow the student to apply the knowledge to actual examples. i feel the online experience should somewhat emulate the classroom experience; providing more than a topical outline/discussion is key." faculty training that is focused on how and when to best use video tools within the lms may serve as one way to maximize the use of multimedia to help students achieve their learning outcomes. another student commented that "video lectures were very helpful and very important in helping me to learn." on the faculty side, one participant noted, "videos introducing assignments with the instructor's face included seems to drop stress levels of students." technology was also incorporated into the design of the college-level course template by including prompts for faculty to upload videos. creating opportunities for different types of technology can also assist all students, empowering them to self-regulate (sinclair et al., 2017; wu et al., 2018). providing feedback using technology is another distinct way to engage students (decelle, 2016). thus, course design helps to maximize course structure impacting overall navigation by faculty and students and alignment to universal standards, as seen in meeting the quality matters rubric (lancaster et al., 2019). faculty can also participate in additional training sessions and courses to enhance their use of video technology, but they are not required. we can affirm that our participants positively responded to any form of video content provided. in fact, our survey indicated the desire for more videos throughout each course across the curriculum and among the various degrees. this point is further exemplified in the literature but is more highly discussed among those courses offering acquired skills ranging from mathematics to pre-licensure nursing programs (beisiegel et al., 2018; hadi, 2019; stone et al., 2020). faculty can use this information to improve their own technology needs to incorporate in future assignments or coursework. as faculty transition curriculum to online learning or simply enhance their instruction with more technology, the creation and use of video content should be a priority competency in professional development. beisiegel and colleagues (2018) suggest that faculty who are selfmcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 16 aware of their own teaching strategies and analyze their video instruction are more likely to increase their knowledge and student learning opportunities. furthermore, it increases the probability that a variety of learners will critically think through the material, thus asking more questions with challenging concepts, thereby increasing overall engagement (haidi, 2019) and student-centered approach (decelle, 2016). while most of the literature focuses on the application of video content in a clinical or applied skill circumstance, assumptions can also be applied to theory courses as clinical skills are typically influenced in part by theory or concept-based applications. therefore, all courses, even those with assignments predominantly centered around writing or testing, could equally benefit from video content. while video content is highly encouraged, the integration of this technology is solely reliant on the faculty development itself. determining changes to online courses personal background or professional training can affect how faculty design and deliver their online courses. it is important to provide a format that intentionally demonstrates consistency for both faculty and students alike. our college of nursing implemented an ad hoc committee to assist in creating a basic structure and consistent course design path. our goal was to determine whether the course design was easy to access given that it was built using a standard canvas template and how important the tools in the course were for students and faculty. while faculty can still incorporate personalization into the course, the basic structure includes a universal start here module across sites in the lms that incorporates fundamentals needed for any course, such as college of nursing and university policies, writing assistance, access to student service faculty contact, the syllabus and course schedule. creating a consistent approach to the design helped reinforce survey results that consistency among courses was still a priority among students and faculty. the ability to offer course design in a consistent manner can help ensure various quality matters standards are met, but when course material is presented consistently over time, the efficacy of the course may also be positively influenced (baker et al., 2020). navigating courses that are all different may thus have a negative impact on the student's ability to learn and the faculty's ability to teach if approaches are haphazard in design (ralph et al., 2017). delivery of assignments is a high priority among students. variation in learning strategies that appeals to multiple learners and desire to have prompt feedback on assignments is highly representative of our student cohort. the top themes of course design consistency, clear instructions and expectations, and more instructor engagement underscore this ideal. mahasneh et al. (2021) found that the transformation of information is best applied when the instructor develops an initial assessment of student learning at the beginning of each course to ensure faculty gather information to better serve students' needs. progression through the nursing program (mahasneh et al., 2021), advancement in degree (gonzales et al., 2017), and generational differences (blevins, 2021) are factors that impact students and the different ways they approach learning. creating a culture of lifelong learning is best achieved when a variety of methods match the needs of the learners (angeline & ranadev, 2018). limitations with the switch to remote and online learning that occurred across the nation and at our institution, students who were already in an online learning program felt little impact with course changes. however, we did send this study to students at all levels of the curriculum (fully online courses, blended courses, in-person courses) to determine any significant differences. the lack of mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 17 undergraduate participation in our study makes it difficult to determine specific changes needed in courses tailored to undergraduate nursing students. therefore, undergraduate students may not have felt compelled to answer the questions related to a survey since their courses are not exclusively online. likewise, distribution of surveys was also near the end of the term when other course evaluations were due, possibly contributing to the lack of participation by this cohort. due to the large nature of our program enrollment, course design is managed by one coordinator, while many faculty members facilitate the daily interactions and grading of course sections. specifically, in our study we know that in 2019 21 of 29 faculty respondents held a coordinator role. therefore, our organization of coordinator structure limits deviation from overall course design or technology implementation, thereby maintaining more consistency in format and design. this finding is significant as it may limit the lack of consistency felt among faculty (coordinator) respondents because their priority is to maintain course consistency among multiple sections of the same course. transferability of results to other smaller colleges of nursing may be limited if individual sections are designed independently of a course coordinator overseeing course duplication. when inquiring about the timing of feedback received, there was some drastic variation in responses, causing us to evaluate the wording and perspectives. while we assume that most faculty and students would consider feedback in regard to assignments and grading, there is an uncertainty that it might also be related to addressing questions either in the course or via email. if administered again, this question would need to specifically address this issue due to the variability in responses. another limitation noted relates directly to the lms training prior to taking the survey. the initial training orientation to the learning management system is an additional contextual factor that differentiates faculty and students. basic training on the lms is required of anyone teaching a course at the university, regardless of instructional modality. faculty learn the basic features of the lms as they perform required practice activities assessed by staff at the teaching and learning center. part of this basic training includes how to work with suggested course templates, which are designed to help faculty become confident in using the lms tools. although students are highly encouraged to participate in a self-paced lms orientation training, accountability of training is self-regulated. students are provided with resources and guides within each course site for how to use the lms and are provided access to the 24/7 help desk from canvas should they encounter issues needing assistance. our survey data may be indirectly affected by these differences between faculty and students in lms training and familiarity. thus, required training for students may be something to consider prior to the first day of class. conclusion our survey demonstrated that consistency and use of technology should be of the utmost importance when designing curricula for all students. as we navigate our way through a highly advanced, technology-driven world, faculty must embrace this need with creative ways to engage students, encourage critical thinking and empower students with the tools to successfully master learning outcomes. course layouts should incorporate consistency in structure, high standards of transferability semester to semester, course to course, and offer a variety of teaching strategies appealing to reach and engage all learners. additional areas of need expressed by students include the use of video technology throughout the learning process. offering instruction using multiple strategies will create opportunities for learning for a variety of learners. in a world where technology is moving at a fast pace, it is imperative that students can access learning from mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? 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(2018). a systematic review of online learning programs for nurse preceptors. nurse education today, 60, 11-22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2017.09.010 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f1044207319826219 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2020.102834 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2019.104230 https://doi.org/10.1093/biomet/34.1-2.28 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2017.09.010 mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 22 author notes taralyn mcmullan https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6182-946x university of south alabama tmcmullan@southalabama.edu david s. williams https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4457-2505 university of south alabama dwilliams@southalabama.edu yolany lagos ortiz https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0172-7888 university of south alabama yll1721@jagmail.southalabama.edu jackie lollar university of south alabama jmlollar@southalabama.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6182-946x mailto:tmcmullan@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4457-2505 mailto:dwilliams@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0172-7888 mailto:yll1721@jagmail.southalabama.edu mailto:jmlollar@southalabama.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ video content thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 1 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century tom haymes ideaspaces.net abstract: the standards of educational information exchange are still firmly rooted in a newtonian paradigm that emphasizes strict rules of information exchange. with the explosion of information since world war ii, and especially its accessibility through the mechanism of the internet, this paradigm has become a barrier to effective exchanges of information at all levels. vannevar bush recognized this problem as early as 1945 and provided a roadmap to addressing it in his famous as we may think. douglas engelbart and theodore holmes nelson applied bush’s vision to technology but we have never fully realized its potential in part due to our newtonian information paradigm. this article argues that what bush, engelbart, and nelson proposed is essentially an einsteinian (relativistic) notion of information flows with tools specifically designed to facilitate the augmentation of human knowledge. it further posits what such a system of knowledge exchange might look like and how we might begin to build it. keywords: knowledge networks, information exchange, technology systems, paradigm shift, systems of information, vannevar bush, douglas engelbart, ted nelson, concept mapping, visual thinking, data visualization, textual thinking, networked improvement communities, dynamic knowledge repositories citation: haymes, t. (2021). thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century. current issues in education, 21(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1913 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 12/14/2020 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1913 haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 2 introduction: stepping through paradigms the world of education creates, shares, and processes information according to established sets of rules. this is necessary or we would have informational chaos. however, the underlying paradigm of technology has shifted even as education attempts to hold onto familiar patterns developed in a world where newtonian physics was seen as the highest calling. in physics, this paradigm was disrupted over a century ago by einstein’s theory of relativity but our informational paradigms have been much slower to change. the newtonian worldview was straightforward with rigid sets of rules and structures and this fit well within the industrial system of thinking that required a high degree of human coordination and conformity. conversely, the relativistic world is malleable with unexpected bends and gravity holes. this kind of thinking undermines rigid patterns of thought and information exchange because rules are conditional on circumstance. arguably, this is a closer parallel to how humans, and groups of humans, think. however, our knowledge systems have not kept up with physics. as early as 1945, just as he completed the manhattan project, the great relativistic endeavor of the 20th century, vannevar bush recognized that we were living in a relativistic information environment but still trying to cope with newtonian tools of thought. douglas engelbart and ted nelson, working in subsequent decades, envisioned that the general purpose, networked computer, with its ability to infinitely connect and recombine information, would provide a key bridge over the discontinuity described by bush. however, more than a century after einstein, most of our knowledge systems continue to be based on a newtonian paradigm even as our supposedly fixed points of information become ever more relativistic. einstein’s theories took over a decade to be accepted. information paradigms are even more resistant to change because we cannot experimentally confirm the disruption of the old paradigm in the way that arthur eddington observationally confirmed relativity in 1919. we still think of the computer as an electronic version of stacks of paper. this is in part due to the desktop metaphors that xerox implemented in the 1970s that was extended to the concept of web “pages” by tim berners-lee’s version of the world wide web promulgated in the 1990s. as nelson (2009) lamented, “a document can only exist of what can be printed” (p. 128). despite the limitations of this metaphor, it is unlikely that the vast majority of computer users who flocked to the new technology in the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond would have been able to process the kind of metaphor that ted nelson had in mind as he was contemplating xanadu and thinkertoys in the 1970s. the paper metaphor was a necessary bridge to introduce computing into the existing knowledge paradigm. in doing so, however, these metaphors accelerated the information processing ability of society without augmenting its knowledge-processing ability. it is like the idea of a paperless office that was the rage in the early 1990s. people were surprised that precisely the opposite happened when we essentially gave every worker access to a printing press. the computers and networks of the 1990s and 2000s have made us tremendously efficient in handling information but have not significantly improved our ability to turn information into knowledge. like bush, ted nelson and doug engelbart were always more focused on the knowledge-creation aspect of computing than they were on its information storage capabilities. they took those for granted. instead, they were struggling with a new language designed to push us beyond linear, textual newtonian thinking. in the process they left behind tantalizing tools, from hyperlinks to graphical user interfaces to the concept of the internet itself, for bootstrapping (to use engelbart’s term) ourselves into new ways of thinking about the world. the tools have haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 3 been eagerly adopted and adapted to the achieve efficiencies in the existing linear paradigm but their true potential has remained elusive. from the 1500s to the 1800s humanity underwent a profound transformation from magical thinking to linear scientific thinking to explain the world. magical thinking is something that every teacher struggles against even today as he or she tries to teach what we now call mental disciplines such as critical thinking and the scientific method. as rational modes of thinking are increasingly challenged by the relativistic information environment we find ourselves in, this struggle can become even more intense. most of what we are trying to teach in our undergraduate classrooms today can be dated back to nineteenth century concepts. there is an objective reality, at least in the sciences, and even areas where objective reality is harder to achieve such as the social sciences and humanities, there are tools and structures that guide us toward understanding. until you get to the outer edges of science and math, this is still fundamentally true. however, the outer edges of that paradigm have resided, at least since einstein, in a far more ambiguous structure. as leonard shlain (1991) argued in art & physics: aristotle, bacon, descartes, locke, newton, and kant all bested their respective philosophical citadels upon the assumption that regardless of where you, the observer, were positioned, and regardless of how fast you were moving, the world outside you was not affected by you. einstein’s formulas changed this notion of “objective” external reality. if space and time were relative, then within this malleable grid the objective world assumed a certain plasticity, too. (p. 136, emphasis in original) now if you imagine a grid of information instead of a grid of space-time, the fixity of rationalistic indexing systems of knowledge is similarly impacted by relativistic forces. arguably, this is what we are experiencing today. there is so much information flooding our systems that many conceivable stories can be shaped out of cherry-picking information without context. this is making a mockery out of rationalistic methods and structures of organizing knowledge. pre-rational theories such as the flat earth theory and others are actually experiencing a resurgence due to the blindness created by a lack of information perspective. information literacy is a constant challenge in this environment. we need better technology to lead us out of the swamp lest we sink into it. rationalism increasingly finds it difficult to be a candle in the dark as carl sagan so eloquently put it in his 1997 book the demon-haunted world. our brains struggle with rational thought and regress easily into magical thought. as we have done for hundreds of millennia, we need to develop technological solutions that will allow our species to survive and these need to start with information if we hope to be able to develop answers to the next set of human challenges on the horizon. our most urgent need now lies in creating a technological solution that will lead us to a paradigmatic shift in how we structure knowledge, thought, learning, and inquiry. vannevar bush’s challenge in prescientific times people or buildings being struck by lightning were seen as the actions of a vengeful god even if there was no logic behind those actions. now tragedies such as children with autism are explained as the actions of vengeful scientists even when no rationale for such actions exist. science is dismissed for what it doesn’t know instead of appreciated for what it reasonably knows. the unknown and opaque is most easily explained by magic and we haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 4 easily fall back into magical thinking patterns when we can’t seem to find a rational one. even what science does know is obscured by the vastness of the information it now possesses. this was already apparent at the height of the rationalist paradigm when vannevar bush wrote “as we may think” in 1945. bush’s challenge to us in 1945 was directed, not at technology, but at the limitations of human intellect and our societal capacity to manage knowledge. his technological solution, the “memex” was designed (but never built) with the fundamental purpose of using machines to help us organize and, most importantly, connect our collective knowledge. he laments, “professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose” (waldrip-fruin & montfort, 2003, p. 37). in the intervening 75 years nothing much has changed other than the speed and volume of information we are dealing with. academia is still largely stuck in an analog paradigm. information is still, often artificially, siloed. instead of using digital technology to create systems of knowledge that are associative and re-combinatorial, we have used it to create new and better walls. instead of organizing knowledge and creating new pathways to solving our ongoing and persistent open-ended problems (to bush’s worry about the atomic age, we can add climate change, education, the maintenance of democracy, and dealing with the speed of technological change), we have created a bewildering array of seemingly disconnected data that is easily challenged and undermined. instead of taking advantage of technology to broaden our horizons we have doubled down on existing cultures of specialization. in short, we have created highways when we should have been creating webs. douglas engelbart, ted nelson, and many others iterated on bush’s basic idea of connecting knowledge and used that as the basis for attempting to shape technology in the intervening decades. yet the interconnectedness that was at the core of the visions that brought us humanized interfaces with our technology and even the internet itself has provided a constant source of disappointment to these thinkers. this is because true “networked improvement communities,” as engelbart put it late in his career, have always proven to be tantalizingly out of reach. at its core both thinkers are trying to explore a new language that fundamentally challenges the text-based linear newtonian thinking that is deeply ingrained in our academic institutions and beyond. we have been willing to grasp the “shiny toys,” from hypertext to graphical user interfaces, that their thinking has led us to. however, we have failed to understand the deeper implications of the paradigmatic shift in thinking that they were trying to show us. we continue to struggle with the misshapen technologies that have descended from that time. the realities of our information environment are increasingly disconnected from our understandings of how to address them. this is because we are in the midst of a profound shift in the volume and intensity of information available to us and lack the necessary tools to manage them effectively. most fail to perceive this is the root of many of our problems or the depths to which this will shake the foundations of our societies in education and beyond. it’s easy to look back and analyze how previous paradigm shifts, such as the invention of the printing press in 1453, have impacted the shape of the world. however, it is unlikely that someone living in weimar in 1520 would have perceived the tectonic shifts that this sudden proliferation of pamphlets would wreak upon their society or the terrible bloodshed that would mark the next 150 years. the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, sparked by the paradigmatic shift brought upon europe by sudden democratization of information away from the catholic church, are something that would be globally catastrophic today. even in 1945 bush saw the danger. haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 5 the applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. they have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons. they may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. he may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process or to lose hope as to the outcome. (waldrip-fruin & montfort, 2003, p. 47) as bush foresaw, information is both the source of the paradigmatic shift before us and our only hope for surviving it. this can easily evolve into a meta-meta discussion about the importance of designing webs of knowledge in order to understand webs of knowledge but that is precisely where we are today. despite the warnings of bush, we are still woefully deficient in our ability to leverage technology to connect diverse strands of knowledge. this results in a fundamental lack of perspective in understanding and addressing the complex problem sets that we need to address, whether that is designing educational systems more attuned to the nature of societal and economic realities that face our graduates or to create open-ended efforts to address the realities of climate change. we live in a society rich in information and poor in the connective tissue necessary to contextualize it. unlike bush in 1945, we now have the means to design systems to help us see the world in new, relativistic ways. a thinker in 1520 might have perceived the future with the kind of information tools we have today. however, even then he would not have been able to map an alternative course without the power to contextualize that information. we have at our disposal a set of tools unimaginable to this renaissance thinker. these tools have the power to provide us with new contexts that change the way we see. as bush points out, “the abacus, with its beads strung on parallel wires, led the arabs to positional numeration and the concept of zero many centuries before the rest of the world; and it was a useful tool—so useful that it still exists.” (waldrip-fruin & montfort, 2003, p. 42). in other words, the creation of a practical technology led to an unexpected conceptual breakthrough. unlike the renaissance thinker, in conceiving the memex, bush mapped out a conceptual framework but didn’t have the capacity to realize it. bush lamented that the technologies that he envisioned for the memex were still tantalizingly out of reach. the potential for creating an abacus-like technology that would lead to unexpected outcomes is much more possible today, however. we can, if we wish to, finally realize the vision of the memex and open up unexpected opportunities in seeing the world in different ways. we have the abacus but are just using it to add numbers together instead of changing numerology. after bush, engelbart and nelson sought to couple systems that would augment thinking to tangible technology in order to address complex problem sets. while they invented radical new ways to apply technology to human problems, they never really undermined the paradigm they sought to subvert. subverting index-based thinking our thinking systems have never evolved beyond the indexing systems pioneered in libraries and, already in 1945, only 70 years after the first promulgations of the dewey decimal system, bush realized how counter these systems were to the way that our brains worked. he intuitively recognized that, like many other products of the industrial age, these kinds of indexing systems fundamentally forced humans to adapt to the machines, in this case card indexing haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 6 systems, rather than the other way around. they force us into linear thinking processes that are inefficient at best and misleading at worst, as well as being subject to institutional biases. his vision for a memex addressed this discontinuity. our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. when data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. it can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome…. the human mind does not work this way. it operates by association. with one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. (waldrip-fruin & montfort, 2003, p. 44) one of the central challenges lies in our technological ability to dynamically perceive and reshuffle patterns of information, a particularly hard task in a world constrained by paper. it parallels the struggles that science has had to overcome when the dynamic properties of einstein’s relativistic world come into contact with the much more rigid rule structures of newton’s. the challenge that relativity posed to newton’s universe is that it discards much of the “indexing” system that served as the foundation for mechanistic physics. the basis for physics could no longer be perceived as a fixed fundament. instead, it was system of underlying and varying relationships that could have had unexpected effects on the structured physical world that newton has laid out in his masterpiece principia. it doesn’t invalidate the notions of newtonian physics but adds a new layer on top of it. post-rational doesn’t have to reject rationalism, in other words. however, it does highlight the importance of looking beyond the fixed points of information and rigid parameters that exist in newtonian mechanics. in a relativistic world it’s the relationships that matter much more than the nodes that they connect. bush perceived this problem and set his memex the task of solving it. however, the vision presented in “as we may think” tells us what the system should do but doesn’t effectively explain how it is accomplished. for instance, how exactly do you share “trails” of knowledge? his system of what amounts to annotation can have tremendous value, but it only goes part of the way in creating new opportunities to view a dynamic grid of knowledge in both space and time. seventeen years later douglas engelbart proposed a different approach to the problem in “augmenting human intellect.” in his proposal for a “a research center for augmenting human intellect,” engelbart imagines an electronic version of the paper-based card indexing system he had constructed to more dynamically manage his information network. with an electronic system engelbart envisioned that this could assume a far more dynamic environment in which the information can exist. these statements were scattered back through the serial list of statements that you had assembled, and joe showed you how you could either brighten or underline them to make them stand out to your eye—just by requesting the computer to do this for all direct antecedents of the designated statement. he told you, though, that you soon get so you aren't very much interested in seeing the serial listing of all of the statements, and he made another request of the computer (via the keyset) haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 7 that eliminated all the prior statements, except the direct antecedents, from the screen. the subject statement went to the bottom of the frame, and the antecedent statements were neatly listed above it. (waldrip-fruin & montfort, 2003, p. 105) by deprecating the “serial” record, engelbart is pointing out the fundamental inadequacy of text (and paper) in his analysis of how to “augment human intellect” and his next act as a way to struggle out of this box (with 1962 technology, i might add), is most revealing. as a way of both explaining how his program will work as well as a goal for the program to more clearly realize, he gives us this diagram. figure 1 engelbart’s “a total program” map from “augmenting human intellect” source: waldrip-fruin & montfort, 2003, p. 106) haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 8 in order to clearly explain the research program that he is proposing to undertake, engelbart breaks free of the constraints of text to illustrate an iterative map forward. “when you get used to using a network representation like this, it really becomes a great help in getting the feel for the way all the different ideas and reasoning fit together – that is, for the conceptual restructuring.” (waldrip-fruin & montfort, 2003, p. 106) instead of giving us a fixed textual stream, computers open up the possibility of viewing the relationships in knowledge visually. for the first time in this diagram we can start to perceive bush’s trails. constructing this in 1962 was undoubtedly a manual process but engelbart was not one to let technology dictate his larger vision. he clearly saw this as a dynamic possibility because he goes on to say, “it is a lot like using zones of variable magnification as you scan the structure – higher magnification where you are inspecting detail, lower magnification in the surrounding field so that your feel for the whole structure and where you are in it can stay with you.” (waldrip-fruin & montfort, 2003, p. 107) this is not about inventing mice. it is about opening a gateway to thinking on the level that bush demands. it is about abandoning archaic text-based indexing systems for something more appropriate to a digital vision of the world. it is about creating a visual language as a first step toward creating a relativistic conceptual language. engelbart thinks that the old way of working with information (text) is severely limited and that technological systems might offer way out of that. i found, when i learned to work with the structures and manipulation processes such as we have outlined, that i got rather impatient if i had to go back to dealing with the serial-statement structuring in books and journals, or other ordinary means of communicating with other workers. it is rather like having to project three-dimensional images onto two-dimensional frames and to work with them there instead of in their natural form. actually, it is much closer to the truth to say that it is like trying to project n-dimensional forms (the concept structures, which we have seen can be related with many many nonintersecting links) onto a onedimensional form (the serial string of symbols), where the human memory and visualization has to hold and picture the links and relationships. i guess that’s a natural feeling, though. one gets impatient any time he is forced into a restricted or primitive mode of operation—except perhaps for recreational purposes. (waldrip-fruin & montfort, 2003, p. 108) engelbart articulated this vision almost 60 years ago. yet “modern” information storage and retrieval systems, including the current version of the internet developed by tim bernerslee, have continued to double down on the library indexing model of information sharing. while there are dynamic linkages, the fundament of the internet’s addressing structure still views sites as a sequence of pages that metaphorically might as well be stacks of paper on millions of desks. sure, it’s nice to have access to all of those desks but, like the warehouse at the end of raiders of the lost ark, this plethora of information is only useful to the extent that you can connect it up and recombine it in new ways. the site/page metaphor resists atomic manipulation of its contents, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly. like this journal article itself, the metaphors of text and paper lead us down certain pathways in understanding the connections between ideas. one of my struggles as its author has been to pull together a complex web of breadcrumbs into a linear narrative. this skill is important but at the same time, we have to recognize all that must be discarded for it to be haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 9 presented in this form. it serves as a demonstration of how we are forced down linear channels rather than creating constellations of ideas. text has limited our tools and these tools have, in turn, only created to this point opportunities to perceive an exploding universe of text-driven pathways instead of shifting our larger perceptual paradigms. without context, information never becomes knowledge. ted nelson perceived the complexity of knowledge and our limitations in expressing it early in his life and he has struggled to realize this vision ever since. it was an experience of water and interconnection […] i was trailing my hand in the water and i thought about how the water was moving around my fingers, opening on one side and closing on the other. and that changing system of relationships where everything was kind of a similar and kind of the same, and yet different. that was so difficult to visualize and express, and just generalizing that to the entire universe that the world is a system of ever-changing relationships and structures struck me as a vast truth. which it is. so, interconnection and expressing that interconnection has been the center of all my thinking. and all my computer work has been about expressing and representing and showing interconnection among writings, especially. and writing is the process of reducing a tapestry of interconnections to a narrow sequence. and this is in a sense elicit. this is a wrongful compression of what should spread out. (nelson, as quoted in werner herzog’s “lo and behold” [2016], emphasis added) decades before, in 1970, nelson argued that “we do not make important decisions, we should not make delicate decisions, serially and irreversibly. rather, the power of the computer display (and its computing and filing support) must be so crafted that we may develop alternatives, spin out their complications and interrelationships, and visualize these upon a screen.” (waldrip-fruin & montfort, 2003, pp. 332) he is arguing that technology should allow us to design, to see how relationships play out, and to experiment iteratively instead of fixing us onto a serial path. our emphasis on tool building must focus on creating thinkertoys to support learning and experimentation, not be used to cement fixed paths and relationships. some of the facilities that such systems must have include the following: • annotations to anything, to any remove • alternatives of decision, design, writing, theory • unlinked or irregular pieces, hanging as the user wishes • multicoupling, or complex linkage, between alternatives, annotations or whatever • historical filing of the user’s actions, including each addition and modification, and possibly the viewing actions that preceding them • frozen moments and versions, which the user may hold as memorable for his thinking • evolutionary coupling, where the correspondences between evolving versions are automatically maintained, and their differences or relations easily annotated (waldrip-fruin & montfort, 2003, p. 332) haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 10 what nelson is describing here is a dynamic system of relativistic relationships, not a fixed indexing system in any way. the water may close back around your fingers, but it is important to understand where you are and were on the sea. it is easy to get lost in the sea of knowledge and the metaphor of “drowning in information” is completely apropos in this context. like einstein, bush, engelbart and nelson are not rejecting the principles of the rationalist newtonian model. rather, they are arguing that it is no longer sufficient in organizing and explaining our world. computers are a tool for taking over the mundane aspects of creating navigation systems to help us better see relationships. they can provide compasses and waypoints on the relativistic sea of information they are capable of storing. it is up to us to perceive the relationships that then become apparent. for centuries we have had such tools at our disposal, but they were reserved to a narrow spectrum of artists who had the technical skill to execute them. art is fundamentally about the creation of new connections in the world, whether that is in the assemblage of tonal elements into a new kind of music or the assemblage of visual elements into paintings, photographs, or films. computers have significantly lowered the technical barriers to executing thinking on this level. both engelbart and nelson seem to be pointing us in the direction of using the new technology to open up new ways of connecting knowledge in ways previously reserved to artists. nelson has struggled for decades trying to realize his vision through his xanadu project (http://www.xanadu.net) but he recognizes that at its root even xanadu is about connecting textual ideas. realized to its fullest potential, a xanadu project for the 21st century would eliminate the word “text” from that statement and focus on our ability to simply connect “ideas.” conclusion: visual thinking, relational thinking and a concept for deep thought engelbart gave us many clues in how to start using technology to shape thought in “augmenting human intellect” in 1962. one was the thought diagram illustrated previously. his concepts were connected by a series of fluid relationships rather than being fixed in a linear textual arrangement. the idea of concept mapping goes back to the 1930s but technical limitations (it was obviously not a fluid arrangement) limited it to illustrative purposes. modern toolsets allow us to start to approach the dynamic kinds of relationships that bush, engelbart, and nelson seem to have in mind, at least in form if not in substance. all knowledge is a process of interchange between thought and understanding, whether that is an internal process or the product of collaboration with others. there are geniuses throughout history that have instinctually combined many of these elements internally. however, as thinkers such as steven johnson, frans johansson, and others have demonstrated, all ideas are a product of social processes as much as they are of individual inspiration. it is beyond the scope of this paper to explore that fully. however, what is clear is that process of turning thoughts into understanding is not always a simple one. today we have a large variety of tools that can help us put that into context such as the simple concept mapping tool i used to create this diagram. http://www.xanadu.net/ haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 11 figure 2 from thought to understanding, an example of a simple concept map it interesting that you can see a train of concept mapping throughout the work of bush, engelbart, and nelson. what all three thinkers are essentially suggesting this that we may need to invent a whole new language that effectively combines text and visual elements with a language of connections. concept mapping gets us there in form, if not in substance. it is a way to leverage the dynamic mapping of visual representations of ideas to create new perceptions of problem sets. i’ve used it for years in brainstorming sessions and have recently introduced it to my pedagogical repertoire. it adds a second dimension by lifting textual bits of information out of their linear context and places them into a manipulatable graphic context which adds a second dimension. even this simple, one-dimensional hop opens up many new possibilities for exploring ideas. however, it is not sufficient in and of itself. concept mapping lacks depth. it is the difference between going from a line to a canvas. however, most of the emergent challenges we have been discussing throughout this work have additional dimensions of depth and time that a conceptual map still struggles to represent.1 as such, concept mapping and visual thinking can represent extremely important new tools for breaking free from linear, textual thinking. they allow us to reimagine our informational connections and can represent accessible explorations of those connections. however, concept 1 virtual reality might be a possible tool capable of providing a bridge for visualizing data in a dynamic concept mapping environment. an interesting first step might be the noda project. however, the step of seamlessly linking this to a robust information network is still missing here. http://noda.io/ haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 12 mapping usually fails to document or capture the intervening journey of how those connections are formed, which is a key element of the vision originally articulated by bush in 1945. for this, we need to build something far more conceptually ambitious. as is often the case, science fiction may provide us with an important conceptual insight. douglas adams created the supercomputer deep thought as a key plot point to his series the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. in the novel deep thought was created to provide the answer to “life, the universe, and everything.” after gestating on the answer for 7 ½ million years, the computer responded with the enigmatic “answer” of “42.” when its creators expressed consternation over the answer it replied, “i think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never really known what the question is” (adams, 1989, p. 121). the entirety of the hitchhikers guide saga is spent searching for an elusive question as if it were an answer. this is a perfect metaphor for the open-ended kinds of questions we need to harness our knowledge network to engage, not answer. there is no ultimate answer to democracy, climate change, poverty, or augmenting human intellect. these are questions that will challenge humanity until the next great paradigmatic shift and beyond. we need to develop systems to manage our engagement with these questions. our newtonian knowledge systems are not up to the task for they seek answers instead of questions. this does not mean that we should stop seeking answers but that we have to expand our mental universe to accept that some questions, like that of “life, the universe, and everything,” simply do not have answers. this is a level of abstraction that is at least two steps removed from magical thinking, which is often our natural state. magical thinking relies on a faith in one set of answers. rational thinking relies on faith in a fixed set of rules that will lead us to answers. relativistic thinking plays with those rules to perceive entirely new sets of solutions but accepts that these may not represent final “answers” and considers the possibilities that the rules themselves may need to be questioned. our intellectual tools need to be adapted to that purpose. we made tools to overcome gravity and fly. now we need tools to overcome our mental limitations and accept ambiguity and an evolving emergent future. a 21st century deep thought system would allow us to explore ideas more dynamically with a vast amount of data at our disposal. in other words, it’s a system designed to facilitate connections between varied and abstract pieces of data. once again, engelbart provides us with a vision for how this might be done. in the 1980s and 1990s douglas engelbart was not working on new and improved versions of the mouse. his ongoing frustration with peoples’ seeming inability to grasp the deeper purpose of the work he was doing at sri in the 1960s led him into organizational thinking (rheingold, 2000). as part of his “bootstrap strategy,” now carried on by his daughter christina at the engelbart institute, he developed the concept of “networked improvement communities.” an improvement community that puts special attention on how it can be dramatically more effective at solving important problems, boosting its collective iq by employing better and better tools and practices in innovative ways, is a networked improvement community (nic). if you consider how quickly and dramatically the world is changing, and the increasing complexity and urgency of the problems we face in our communities, organizations, institutions, and planet, you can see that our most urgent task is to turn ics into nics. (http://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/191/268/) http://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/191/about/collective-iq.html http://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/191/about/collective-iq.html http://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/191/268/ haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 13 we already have semi-functioning networked improvement communities, but they lack critical conceptual and communication tools. at a local level, as engelbart points out, improvement communities have functioned for centuries. the coffee houses of europe, particularly england, have been highlighted by steven johnson and others as central to the incubation of the enlightenment (johnson, 2010). expanding this on a global scale, however, remains an ongoing challenge, as networked improvement communities such as shapingedu demonstrate. turning ics into nics requires a complementary technology, the dynamic knowledge repository. the engelbart institute describes dkrs as: a dynamic knowledge repository is a living, breathing, rapidly evolving repository of all the stuff accumulating moment to moment throughout the life of a project or pursuit. this would include successive drafts and commentary leading up to more polished versions of a given document, brainstorming and conceptual design notes, design rationale, work lists, contact info, all the email and meeting notes, research intelligence collected and commented on, emerging issues, timelines, etc. (http://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/190/163/) we have vast databases that store and index data but these are often technically divorced from our communities. the tools are simply not there to create an ongoing and dynamic relationship between the information and network. this is because those databases are not dynamic knowledge repositories. they are fundamentally designed around text-based indexing systems that bush rejected as inadequate 75 years ago. as a consequence, modern databases do not effectively “record exchanges,” as engelbart put it, at least not in the sense of knowledge. like many technologies today we are missing that critical connection between the vast amounts of information stored in databases and the human processes needed connect that information into actionable knowledge. deep thought is conceptually a “dynamic knowledge repository.” at its root it would be designed to connect data to form new sets of questions, and therefore knowledge. using principles of “emergent design” as recently described in ann pendleton-jullian’s and john seely brown’s excellent design unbound (2018), the project would create a wide range of tools based on visual mapping to create a truly dynamic database tool designed to support a wide variety of networked improvement communities. this toolset will be explicitly designed to dynamically grow and change as circumstances demand. tools such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and blockchain (for authentication, not sequestering information) would form valuable adjuncts in helping us to visualize knowledge in completely new and dynamic ways. instead of replacing human thought processes artificial intelligence would be employed to guide us to potentially interesting patterns in connections and knowledge that reside in the intersections between traditional disciplines. the deep thought concept can trace its roots back to bush via engelbart and nelson. however, it is also deeply rooted in the history of ideas. the enlightenment was sparked by a flurry of intellectual activity in the late 17th century in europe by the network of ideas embodied by “the republic of letters.” its correspondence formed a dynamic knowledge repository for the networked improvement community created by its scientists and thinkers. this networked community helped to plot a way out of the religious wars brought about in part by the invention of the printing press two centuries earlier. http://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/190/163/ haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 14 “[the republic of letters] was an institution perfectly adapted to disruptive change of unprecedented proportions. its history raises the question of why europe’s diversity brought progress in scholarship when by rights disunity ought to have crippled it. the answer is as simple as it is radical: with existing institutions of learning in crisis or collapse, the republic of letters founded its legitimacy on the production of new knowledge.” (mcneely & wolverton, 2008, p. 123) the internet is the printing press of our age. we find ourselves at a new crossroads lost in a sea of information. vannevar bush may have perceived this challenge earlier than most, and douglas engelbart and ted nelson busied themselves in solving the technical challenges it represented, but we still find ourselves in the place that they warned us about. society is once again in danger of becoming unstuck from its informational anchors. in the 1500s this resulted in more than a century of bloodshed. we have it in our power to bypass that fate, fast forward 200 years, and create a digital republic of letters. by combining the best of what text offers with the new vocabulary of digital tools now at our disposal, we must finally create systems that augment how we really think. references adams, d. (1989). the more than complete hitchhiker’s guide. random house. doug engelbart institute. (n.d). doug englebart institute. http://www.dougengelbart.org herzog, w. (director). (2016). lo and behold, reveries of the connected world. [documentary]. netscout. johansson, f. (2006). the medici effect. harvard business school press. johnson, s. (2010). where good ideas come from. penguin. mcneely, i. f., & wolverton, l. (2008). reinventing knowledge: from alexandria to the internet. w.w. norton. rheingold, h. (2000). tools for thought (2nd ed.). mit press. pendleton-jullian, a., & seely brown, j. (2018). design unbound. mit press. sagan, c. (1997). the demon-haunted world: science as a candle in the dark. ballantine. shlain, l. (1993). art & physics: parallel visions in space, time, and light. harpercollins. waldrip-fruin, n,, & montfort, n. (eds.) (2003). the new media reader. [print ed.]. mit press. online version available at https://archive.org/details/thenewmediareader http://www.dougengelbart.org/ https://archive.org/details/thenewmediareader haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 15 author notes tom haymes ideaspaces, founder tom@ideaspaces.net guest editor notes sean m. leahy, ph.d. arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au mailto:tom@ideaspaces.net mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au haymes: thinking backward: a knowledge network for the next century current issues in education, 22(1) 16 volume 22, issue 1 date issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf cie template current issues in education, 23(1) 1 volume 23, issue 1 may 9, 2022 issn 1099-839x school curriculum in the news: black lives matter and the continuing struggle for culturally responsive education abe feuerstein bucknell university abstract: this project examines similarities and differences in the ways that major u.s. newspapers (e.g., the new york times, the washington post, etc.) and the more focused ethnic and minority press (e.g., the baltimore afro-american, the milwaukee courier, etc.) characterize educator’s efforts to adopt more culturally responsive educational practices and curriculum. the analysis utilized two distinct full-text proquest news databases, u.s. major dailies and ethnic news watch, and boolean search logic to identify a corpus of 72 relevant articles. within these articles, a process of close reading and coding identified three major frames that cut across articles drawn from both databases: challenging the dominant narrative; activism and engaged citizenship; and defending american heritage and patriotism. differences in the use of these frames across the two datasets are discussed. these frames are interpreted in light of conflicting views on the nature of the american dream. keywords: curriculum, culturally responsive education, media framing, black lives matter citation: feuerstein, abe. (2022). school curriculum in the news: black lives matter and the continuing struggle for culturally responsive education. current issues in education, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.1997 accepted: april 19, 2022 introduction the killing of george floyd in the summer of 2020 by minneapolis police officer derek chauvin, who kneeled on floyd’s neck, making it impossible for him to breathe, catalyzed protests across the united states against racism and police violence. these protests were part of the larger black lives matter (blm) movement, which began in 2012 following the killing of trayvon martin. the size, intensity, and duration of the protests held during the summer of 2020 demonstrated the strength of the movement and the depth of concern over continued police violence. these protests raised white awareness of racial inequality in the united states and reinforced efforts to hold police and other public institutions—including public schools— accountable. https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.1997 feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 2 although the blm movement has been at the forefront of black activism over the past decade, its emergence as a force for social justice is rooted in a long history of black social and political thought. according to lebron (2017), the ongoing struggle for equal rights is rooted in the efforts of earlier activists such as ida b. wells, frederick douglas, james baldwin, and others who clearly articulated the injustice experienced by black americans. concerning the issue of police violence, blm is also connected to the black power movement of the 1960s, which brought attention to police brutality and the unequal treatment of blacks in the prison system. in addition, the black power movement also focused on community organizing and education by developing “liberation schools” that sought to address the failure of public schools to provide black youth with a deeper understanding of their history. according to huggins and leblanc-ernest (2009), these schools also sought to help black students gain the skills and knowledge they would need to challenge racism and social inequality. taking up this legacy, school-focused organizations associated with the blm movement, such as the movement for black lives (m4bl) and black lives matter at school (blms), have sought to raise awareness of educational inequality and disrupt what education scholars refer to as the “school to prison pipeline.” according to watson, hagopian, and au (2018), this pipeline “starts with a curriculum that conceals the struggles and contributions of black people and other people of color. it is a curriculum that fails to respect young black people as intellectuals and ignores their culture, communities, and concerns” (p. 9). when public schools fail to teach about black history and black contributions, “black people are themselves denied” (watson et al., 2018, p.10). key to understanding the perpetuation of systemic racism is the public-school curriculum. this curriculum, particularly in the areas of social studies, has generally excluded black history while simultaneously including “inaccurate, silenced, stereotypical characterizations” of black americans (brown et al., 2013, p 30). according to brown, heilig, and brown (2013), public schooling has failed to “address issues of whiteness and racism” (p. 34) that are deeply embedded in u.s. social institutions. while pressure to change the curriculum to address these concerns has been ongoing since the 1920s (dubois, 1935, 2009; locke, 1925, 1986; woodson, 1933), the issue has gained new momentum as calls for racial justice have gained support among the american public (kendi, 2020). for example, blms believes that there is “new urgency and radical possibilities for advancing abolitionist practice and uprooting institutional racism” (black lives matter at school, n.d., para. 3). movement leaders have worked to organize educators from around the united states to teach about “structural racism, intersectional black identities, black history, and anti-racist movements” (black lives matter at school, n.d., para.3). beyond addressing problems with the curriculum, the organization’s goals extend to issues such as discipline and policing in schools (watson et al., 2018). along with the efforts of groups like black lives matter in school, journalistic projects such as the 1619 project have also sought to provide teachers and schools with new perspectives, curricula, and insights about the way history shapes the present. opposing these efforts are conservative politicians, including president trump (2020a), who derided these types of curricular reforms as “left-wing indoctrination” (para. 10). in his public remarks on constitution day in 2020, president trump claimed that the american people should “clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms” (para. 2), which “make students ashamed of their own history” (para. 10). president trump also claimed that critical race theory was being forced into public schools, teaching students that “america is a wicked and racist nation” (trump, 2020a, para. 14). rather than work to help students feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 3 understand the cause and consequences of structural racism, the president supported the development of a “pro-american curriculum” that “celebrates the truth [emphasis added] about our nation’s great history” (para. 23). given these differences in perspective and the fact that the blm movement gained greater exposure in the mainstream media during the summer of 2020, the purpose of this project is to examine similarities and differences in the ways that major u.s. newspapers (e.g., the new york times, the washington post, etc.) and the more focused ethnic and minority press (e.g., the baltimore afro-american, the milwaukee courier, etc.) characterize the efforts to adopt more culturally responsive educational practices and curriculum. in a democracy, the media plays an essential role in informing the public about important issues and also provides political actors with a platform for sharing their ideologies, interests, and preferred policies with the public. however, journalists, editors, and news organizations do more than simply transmit information; they also highlight certain aspects of stories while overlooking others. this process, known as framing, influences the goals and initiatives that are viewed as legitimate by the public. individuals, interest groups, networks, and other political actors, sometimes referred to as frame sponsors, often have a strong interest in shaping both the framing of the news and the public policy outcomes associated with their interests. in the sections that follow, i examine the ways in which the news depicts the efforts of those encouraging schools to adopt more culturally relevant forms of education. before describing this work, however, i consider the political context within which efforts to reshape the school curriculum exist and review the role of media in shaping public discourse. i then describe the methodology that i used to both select and analyze a corpus of news articles for study. through this analysis, i was able to identify three dominant news frames that i describe as “challenging the dominant narrative,” “activism and engagement,” and “defending american heritage and patriotism.” in addition, i examine differences in new framing based on whether the news source is national in scope or more focused on an ethnic audience. i conclude the article by interpreting these frames in light of conflicting views on the nature of the american dream. context of the study the inspiration for this study is the 1619 project which provides a recent example of the role race plays in debates over school curriculum (understood broadly to include both content and educational practices). this collection of essays, published in the new york times in 2019 to mark the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved africans arriving in virginia — reevaluates the centrality of slavery and the contributions of black americans to the growth and development of the united states. according to nikole hannah-jones, who was awarded a pulitzer prize for her writing as lead author of the project, “this essay was about democracy and the unparalleled role that black americans have played almost always without getting credit and actually creating the democracy that we have and making those glorious words of the declaration actually true for all americans” (shapiro, a., 2020, para. 7). hoping to use the essays in the collection to improve the teaching of u.s. history, the pulitzer center, a non-profit organization supporting public interest journalism (and independent of the pulitzer prize organization), invested in the development of a free downloadable curriculum that “asks students to examine the history and legacy of slavery in the united states, as well as our national memory” (will, 2019, para. 1). the curriculum provides teachers with source material, lessons, and activities appropriate for all grade levels and also identifies how the lessons could be used to address common core standards. feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 4 conservative think tanks, including the heritage foundation, quickly began to critique the curriculum. mike gonzales, a heritage center senior fellow, claimed that, the [pulitzer center] curriculum provides reading material, activities, videos, graphic organizers, etc., that will indoctrinate young minds on how america and its capitalist system are racist to the core. its goal: destroy our present institutions, economic system and ways of thinking, and replace them. (gonzalez, 2020, para. 5) in september 2020, president trump called for the u.s. department of education to investigate whether california schools were using the 1619 project as part of the public-school curriculum. he said that he intended to “defund” schools found to be using the curriculum (cnn, 2020). to further support “pro-american” education, president trump also established the 1776 commission in november of 2020. the goal of the commission was to “improve understanding of the history and the principles of the founding of the united states among our nation’s rising generations” (trump, 2020b, para. 1). the president also ordered “federal agencies to prioritize patriotic education in the delivery of federal resources” (trump, 2020b, para. 5). such efforts to make the school curriculum explicitly “pro-american” and “patriotic” illustrate the challenges faced by those attempting to broaden the curriculum and embrace culturally relevant forms of pedagogy. they also demonstrate the importance of the school curriculum as a means to advance or hinder the adoption of particular values and ideologies. individuals and groups seeking to change the school curriculum understand that the things students learn at school will influence the decisions they make regarding political, economic, and moral issues later in life (spring, 2005). because the stakes are high, struggles over the content of school curricula are commonplace, and there are many impediments that have limited the adoption of culturally relevant curricula and educational practices.1 the following subsections review some of these impediments while also highlighting the efforts of groups such as blm and m4bl to make meaningful change. impediments to curricular reform the current political context described above is rooted in a history of omission and evasion with respect to the inclusion of culturally relevant curriculum. following the supreme court decision in brown v. board in 1954 and the passage of the civil rights act in 1968, there was significant pressure on schools to address obvious omissions and inaccuracies in the school curriculum related to issues of race. according to gay (1983), black students and other students of color began to work together during this period, forming a broad-based movement in support of multicultural education and ethnic studies. the number of multicultural education programs grew as educators sought to respond to the demands of historically oppressed groups for greater representation in the curriculum. however, gorski (1999) notes that most of this growth “focused on slight changes or additions to traditional curriculum” (para. 5). the problem with this additive approach, he explains, is that it serves to further define traditional curricular topics as “the curricular ‘norm’ and curriculum that deals with issues of race and ethnicity as the marginalized ‘other’” (para. 7). smith (2017) explains that this is just one of several reasons why more robust efforts to teach and discuss race have remained on the margin of mainstream curricula. other reasons include, but are not limited 1 ladson-billings (1995) defines cultural relevant curriculum and pedagogy as resting on three criteria: (1) the development of academic skills; (2) the utilization of student culture to support learning; and (3) the development of “broader sociopolitical consciousness that allows them to critique cultural norms, values mores, and institutions that produce and maintain social inequities” (p. 162). feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 5 to, disagreement about the goals of multicultural education, fears that education about race will be divisive, and the influence of standards and testing on what is taught. as the conflict over the 1619 project curriculum demonstrates, the possibility that the public-school curriculum might begin to teach students about the role of slavery and segregation as causes of social inequality makes some political and educational leaders uncomfortable. such leaders believe that openly focusing on controversial topics will lead to division and conflict (kandrovy, 2005) and might potentially disrupt the status quo. this is a long-standing perspective. according to blum (1997), “antiracist education can seem to pit groups against each other, and encourage anger in victimized groups and resentment among white students (e.g. ‘i didn't have anything to do with slavery or segregation; don't blame me!’)” (p. 23). such concerns, blum (1997) argued, are often exaggerated and are much less of a threat to the development of a unified society than existing inequality marked by the creation of an internationally-oriented class of wealthy americans with little loyalty to their nation, the flight of capital and jobs overseas, the enclaving of wealthy, and overwhelmingly white, people in self-enclosed communities (often with their own security systems), the decreasing lack of public contact between people of different classes. (p. 23) in other words, learning about inequality in school through reading and discussion is likely less divisive than the lived experience of inequality. nonetheless, opponents of multicultural education and ethnic studies still fear that curricular inclusion will not only foment division but also provide an unfair advantage to historically disadvantaged groups. such fears are certainly behind recent efforts to limit students’ ability to learn about racial inequality and america’s history of racial oppression. according to schwartz (2021), writing in education week, “since january 2021, 41 states have introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism, according to an education week analysis. fifteen states have imposed these bans and restrictions either through legislation or other avenues” (para. 4). while not explicitly part of the k-12 public school curriculum, critical race theory (crt), which focuses on the systemic nature of racism in american society, has “been warped from its original meaning” and “used by opponents of diversity training as a catch-all to refer to anything that makes race or gender salient in conversations about power and oppression” (schwartz, 2021, para. 10). this kind of widespread denial about the role race plays in social inequality helps to illustrate the immense challenge facing those interested in the adoption of more culturally relevant curricula. enter black lives matter public education’s continued failure to adequately address issues of race and injustice has led groups like m4bl and blms to agitate for more culturally responsive forms of education (cre). according to johnston, montalbano, and kirkland (2017), cre is aimed at creating “more inclusively-minded and more asset-focused instruction of diverse student populations” (p.19). citing gay (2010), the authors argue that this type of education treats students’ backgrounds as assets and seeks to make education “comprehensive, multidimensional, empowering, transformative, and emancipatory” (gay in johnston et al., 2017, p. 20). to address educational inequalities, watson, hagopian, and au (2018) explain that educators in seattle began working together in 2016 to support black students and began to teach more explicitly about black history and the ongoing struggle against racism. this movement has feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 6 since grown into a national coalition of educators known as “black lives matter at school,” which organizes a yearly “week of action” in february and advocates for the following changes in public schools: 1. end “zero tolerance” discipline, and implement restorative justice 2. hire more black teachers 3. mandate black history and ethnic studies in k-12 curriculum 4. fund counselors, not cops (black lives matter at schools, n.d.) these demands are consistent with the goals of cre and seek to reform educational practices that have disadvantaged black students and other students of color for decades. the blms agenda is similar, though it focuses more explicitly on “zero tolerance” disciplinary practices that have been shown to harm black students. by naming specific educational practices and goals, this agenda is an effort to change the educational environment in ways that are attuned to both historical and current forms of oppression that are embedded in schools. having considered some of the barriers that limit the adoption of more culturally responsive forms of education alongside efforts by some groups to overcome these hurdles, i now turn to the role of the media in shaping the way the public understands and responds to these issues. as mentioned earlier, the media’s framing of issues matters because it influences the public’s understanding of which goals and perspectives are legitimate or proscribed. theoretical framework studying the way that the media frames efforts to address issues such as the push for cre is necessary because this framing has the potential to influence the way individuals think about the content of the school curriculum and the overall purpose of public education. rather than simply transmitting information, journalists, editors, and news organizations highlight certain aspects of stories while omitting others. this process, known as “framing,” provides the public with a particular interpretation of issues and events (nisbet, 2009, p. 15). according to nisbet (2009), framing is an unavoidable byproduct of journalists’ efforts to pare down information and highlight what they consider to be important. in this sense, journalists play a mediating role as they receive, interpret, and transmit information to the public (d’angelo & kuypers, 2009). these efforts, suggest d’angelo & kuypers (2009), are influenced by the ways that “politicians, issue advocates, and stakeholders… communicate their preferred meaning of events and issues” (p. 1). van gorp (2009) notes that news texts are part of an ongoing discourse that involves media producers, media consumers, and other social players in a process that helps to define and reproduce cultural values and norms (p. 88). the goal of news framing analysis is to identify the various and often competing frames being used to shape the public’s understanding of a particular issue. over several years, gamson and his colleagues developed a methodology for characterizing the various ways that issues were framed in the news (gamson, 1989; gamson & lasch, 1981; gamson & modigliani, 1989). this methodology involves identifying a mix of framing and reasoning devices gamson called the “interpretive” or “frame” package. framing devices included metaphors, catch-phrases, and depictions used in the description of a particular issue. reasoning devices provide explanations of causes, consequences, and appeals to principles associated with the same issue. building on these ideas, authors such as entman (1993), van gorp (2010), and others have sought to identify the interpretive packages embedded in news stories surrounding issues feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 7 ranging from environmental regulation to charter schools. these frame packages often align with the narratives offered by public officials, politicians, interest groups, and other political actors who can be considered frame sponsors. frame sponsors have a strong interest in shaping the public discourse surrounding particular issues and in the policy solutions that are eventually adopted. a primary goal of this study is to identify the major themes embedded in the news surrounding efforts to make schools more culturally responsive. another goal is to examine the similarities and differences in the way news organizations frame these kinds of stories depending on their intended audience. for example, major daily newspapers like the new york times and the washington post have a large audience that includes a cross-section of the country’s population. according to the pew research center (2012), many daily papers “have audiences whose partisan and ideological breakdowns are fairly similar to the public’s” (para. 20). at the same time, grassroots, community, and independent presses often have smaller and more ethnically homogeneous audiences based on nationality, religion, and/or language. comparing the way major u.s. daily papers and the more focused ethnic press frame efforts to make schools more culturally responsive has the potential to yield new insights into the way media operates in different cultural settings. in the next section, i outline the steps that i took to both select and analyze the newspaper reports at the heart of this study. methodology the process of identifying the dominant themes within news coverage of particular issues requires close reading and analysis (feuerstein, 2014; gamson & lasch, 1981; van gorp, 2005). close reading is central to identifying patterns and themes within qualitative data. according to braun and clarke (2006), a goal of thematic analysis is identifying the “underlying ideas, assumption, and conceptualisations” (p.84) that go beyond the surface meaning of the data. for this study, i began with news articles published from 2012 through 2020 that focused on efforts to broaden the school curriculum with a particular emphasis on black lives. to find relevant articles, i utilized two distinct full-text proquest news databases. the first database, u.s. major dailies, includes the chicago tribune, the los angeles times, the new york times, the wall street journal, and the washington post. these papers are all national in scope and have a broad readership while also covering local issues. the second database, ethnic news watch, covers newspapers drawn from the ethnic, minority, and native press and is aimed at providing researchers “access to essential, often overlooked perspectives” (proquest, n.d., para. 1). these papers have smaller audiences and are more focused on news relevant to their more targeted readership. using boolean search logic, i identified all of the news articles published in these databases between january 1, 2012, and september 18, 2020, which included the term “black lives” or “1619 project” as well as “curriculum,” “ethnic studies,” “multicultural education,” or “social studies.” the goal of combining these terms was to limit the search results to articles that focused on efforts to address omissions and evasions in the school curriculum by including more culturally responsive content related to black lives and black history. this time period spanned the protests following the killing of trayvon martin in 2012 to those taking place in the summer of 2020 following the killing of george floyd. this search resulted in 187 articles from the u.s. major dailies database and 135 articles from the ethnic news watch database. next, i read each set of articles and excluded those lacking sufficient focus on k-12 curricular issues and/or educational practices. this process resulted in my selection of 41 articles feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 8 from the u.s. major dailies database and 36 from the ethnic news watch database. these articles encompassed new stories as well as commentary (sometimes referred to as editorials). the breakdown of these categories across the two samples of articles is summarized in figure 1 below. figure 1 article type by database these articles were then uploaded into a qualitative analysis software package (nvivo) for the purpose of carrying out more careful and systematic content analysis. the goal of my analysis was to identify the dominant frames used to characterize efforts to adopt more culturally responsive curricula and educational practices. i have used this process in a number of other studies focused on the framing of educational issues. for example, one study looked at the framing of “parent trigger” laws aimed at converting public schools to charter schools (feuerstein, 2015a), while others examined the general framing of charter school reform (feuerstein, 2014, 2015b). similar methodologies have been employed to study the media’s representation of teachers (goldstein, 2011). outside of education, these methods have been used to study issues ranging from the coverage of climate change (stecula & merkley, 2019) to the war on terror (reese, 2009). coding of the articles was carried out in a multi-step process that utilized the questions in the framing protocol below to identify the constellations of ideas (frames) used by the press to convey news about curricular issues. the use of protocols is recommended by altheide and schneider (2012) as a way to guide data collection and capture the meaning of text. clarifying the characteristics of the emerging themes was an ongoing process and involved a comparative feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 9 technique, whereby coded material was constantly compared with other coded excerpts and source material in order to further refine and name the themes (glaser & strauss, 1967). table 1 summarizes the central elements of this protocol. table 1 framing protocol depiction ● general focus of article. ● how is the issue described? ● nature of the problem/issue. is there a particular problem or issue that is emphasized? ● who is affected by the issue? causal roots ● what is the main cause of the issue or problem? ● who or what is to blame/praise for the situation? solutions ● what are the views on the current policy or situation? ● what solutions are proposed or implied? ● who is suggested or implied as having sufficient agency to address the issue? core values ● what values or principles are evident in the problem presentation? (e.g., choice, efficiency, quality, equality) while helpful in identifying recurring themes in the data, it is important to note that this type of protocol involves interpretation and judgment. the analysis that follows reflects my best efforts to identify the dominant frames in the news articles described above. because elements of these frames are closely related, it was sometimes possible to code excerpts in multiple ways. in this sense, the patterns in the data were more like a web than a discrete outline, and other readers approaching this data with different questions might develop varied interpretations. in the following section, i describe the dominant frames that emerged from my analysis of the news reports discussed earlier and provide excerpts from the data to illustrate the subthemes embedded within each frame. analysis after reading and coding the articles drawn from the u.s. major dailies and the ethnic news watch databases, i identified three major types of framing concerning efforts to adopt more culturally responsive curricula and educational practices. these frames cut across articles drawn from both u.s. major dailies and the ethnic news watch databases. i’ve named these frames challenging the dominant narrative; activism and engaged citizenship; and defending american heritage and patriotism. the first, challenging the dominant narrative, focused on the efforts of individuals and groups to address ongoing racism within schools while also stressing the importance of teaching students more about their racial and ethnic heritage. the second frame, activism and engaged citizenship, is related to the first but focuses more on the ways in which the blm movement has created new ways for students, parents, teachers, and community members to engage in political action and to learn first-hand about the function of feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 10 democracy. the final frame, defending american heritage and patriotism, encompasses the reactions and efforts of individuals and groups to defend an ideology of american exceptionalism in the face of challenges by movements like blm. figure 2 below illustrates that the bulk of the articles analyzed for this study were published in 2020. the number of articles about efforts to implement more culturally responsive curriculum and educational practices has increased over time as this issue has gained greater prominence in mainstream public discourse. in addition, the number of articles in u.s. major dailies on this topic surpassed the number in the ethnic press in recent years. figure 2 articles by year of publication and database figure 3 shows the three most common frames identified in the sample. the number of articles from each database with this framing is also indicated. feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 11 figure 3 article frame by database frame 1: challenging the dominant narrative the most prominent framing that emerged from reading and coding the articles was centered around the idea that schools need to do more to address ongoing racism while also providing students with a deeper understanding of their racial/ethnic heritage. this framing was evident in 21 of the 36 articles drawn from the ethnic news watch database (58%) and 16 of the 41 articles drawn from the u.s. major dailies database (39%). looking across these articles, a common set of perspectives emerged that focused on the necessity of recognizing and addressing racist incidents in schools while also correcting systemic inequalities in the treatment of black students and other students of color in relation to their white peers. this framing encompassed three sub-themes – everyday racism, systemic racism, and the importance of being reflected in the curriculum. everyday racism some of the articles with this framing focused on the way teachers and students were treated in school. for example, one article in the la times in 2020 (agrawal, 2020) describes what happened to a black teacher who wore a t-shirt to class with the words “i can’t breathe” feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 12 printed on the front as a protest against the killing of eric garner. in this case, the father of one of her students viewed this choice as inappropriate and posted a screenshot of her wearing the shirt on social media. according to the paper, “a torrent of threats poured in on social media, frightening the teacher enough that she fled her home with her daughter and sought restraining orders against the parent and the media commentator” (agrawal, 2020, para. 4). these threats were critiqued by school administrators and a fellow teacher who noted that “educators need to be able to teach about racial and social injustice without threats, harassment, bullying, or scaretactics'' (agrawal, 2020, para. 17). such an example underscores the vulnerability of black teachers who dare to publicly address issues of race in their classrooms. building on this theme, other articles emphasized the need to address the day-to-day racism endured by black students and other students of color in both public and private schools. for example, the nyt included a story about racism in elite girls’ schools in the city where a black alumnus described her treatment while she was a student (shapiro, e. 2020). she explained that “she had been a chapin student for less than a month when she was pulled into an office by a staff member and asked if she had taken $20 from a white classmate’s bag” (shapiro, e., 2020, para. 32). even though she explained that she had not stolen the money, her parents were called. according to the article, “the white classmate eventually found her misplaced bill” (shapiro, e., 2020, para. 33). these articles described both subtle and more overt instances of racism that seem to occur on an everyday basis. one article in the washington post (meckler et al., 2020) provided examples from across the country: in a school near tacoma, wash., a wrestling coach was fired after posting a photo of himself with another person's knee on his neck and the words "not dead yet." a michigan school board voted to fire its superintendent following a facebook comment partially blaming floyd for winding up in custody. and in rural colorado, a student posted on instagram a photo of a student kneeling on what looks like a young black cow's neck, with a caption that included the name "george" and the hashtag #icantbreathe. (para. 5) in another article in the washington post from 2017 (whitfield, 2017), a teacher from st. louis observed that male students discussed how, when walking with a group of friends, being questioned by the police was commonplace. these are kids i teach daily, who horseplay in the halls, cry when a classmate takes their pencils, laugh at corny jokes and fart loudly during instruction. they're children. but when police see them, these immature boys morph into suspects. the thought of one of my students being accosted by police and shot dead makes my ears red and my blood run boiling hot. and they recount these interactions with police as if they are telling me the weather. no emotion. it's normal to them. (para. 15) later in the article, the author laments the fact that she can’t spend time helping her students better understand the source of this racism and must instead continue to address curricular goals and standards that seem inconsequential in relation to her students’ lives. systemic racism while many of the articles in the previous category focused on examples of racism endured by individuals along with efforts to address those issues, other articles conveyed a broader systemic focus. for example, several articles focused on california’s effort to address feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 13 widespread inequality in educational outcomes between black and white students. one of those articles from the sun reporter in san francisco in 2016 (otiko & muhammad, 2016) discussed a research report, black minds matter, that focused on the academic achievement of black students in california. the article noted the importance of such a report because it clearly demonstrated that black students in california were “much more likely to be suspended or put into remedial or special education programs” as compared to their white peers (otiko & muhammad, 2016, para. 5). this article also cited the reports finding that “only 40 percent of black students who attend segregated (or predominantly black) high schools in low-income areas graduate” (otiko & muhammad, 2016, para. 13). such knowledge, the article suggested, was needed if these structural inequalities were to be remedied. other articles described the efforts of black lives matter activists to get schools to adopt curricula with a greater focus on the structural and systemic nature of racism. for example, one article from the los angeles times in 2020 (smith, 2020) discussed the efforts of local activists to get their school district to adopt “a curriculum developed by black lives matter, which includes lessons about structural racism, antiracism, the intersectionality of black and queer identities, and black history that goes beyond the 1960s” (smith, 2020, para. 10). other articles emphasized similar efforts to expand the curriculum to include a greater emphasis on black history, particularly reconstruction and the united states’ legacy of racial violence and exclusion. several articles about curriculum focused on the 1619 project and the zinn education project, both of which were designed to help students understand more about the roots of contemporary racial conflict. for example, one teacher in a 2018 article from the washington post (thomas-lester, 2018) noted that “u.s. history is often taught in this continuous arc of improvement, but post-reconstruction kind of destroyed that myth” and that teaching about this period helps students understand “that race-related advancements have often been followed by backlash” (thomas-lester, 2018, para. 18). “if you don’t teach that,” explained the teacher featured in the article every generation thinks that the things they are going through are new…when president trump won, i wasn't surprised at all because it fell in line with the way u.s. history has gone since the beginning. you have the election of the first black president followed by a president who supports white supremacy. that is actually how the united states works. (thomas-lester, 2018, para. 19) a similar statement was included in an article from the michigan chronicle in 2019 (hunter, 2019), focusing on detroit’s efforts to help students better understand the cause of racial division in the united states. according to the detroit teacher interviewed in the article, until teachers do a better job of educating their students about the harsh realities and racial injustice of slavery, as well as the humanity and creativity of those who were enslaved, they will never be able to help students understand today's disparities in wealth, education and incarceration. (hunter, 2019, para. 12) such framing suggests that knowledge about racial inequality is essential if students are to truly understand the way the united states works. other articles with this framing pointed out the structural impediments faced by teachers who wished to include black history more prominently in the curriculum. for example, an article in the new york times in 2019 (goldstein, 2019) focused on michigan’s efforts to reduce the amount of time dedicated to studying racial conflict within the social studies standards. feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 14 protesting these changes, one insightful student wrote to the state board of education pleading for greater coverage of these issues. “hiding our nation's sins isn't the right way to do it,” wrote the student, “teach us about everything -the good and the bad, so we can learn to think for ourselves” (goldstein, 2019, para. 24). the student also noted that the proposed changes would leave out discussion of the practice of redlining, which enforced and amplified the segregation of cities in michigan (goldstein, 2019, para. 25). the importance of being reflected in the curriculum finally, in addition to pointing out the need for schools and teachers to address the challenges posed by individual and systemic racism, these articles emphasized the value of school curricula that reflects black students’ history and culture. as one 2019 article from the afro american in baltimore emphasized (jordan, 2019), black students and students of color need to be able to understand that the version of history shared in most textbooks is incomplete. a teacher quoted in the article explains that “[a] lot of our work is centered around teaching the history that's left out of the curriculum, and ensuring from early childhood on to high, that we challenge the dominant narrative around race, class and gender,” (jordan, 2019, para. 6). the argument here is that challenging the dominant narrative requires a curriculum that recognizes the accomplishments and contributions of black americans while simultaneously critiquing existing inequality. another example of this framing comes from a 2015 article published in seattle’s international examiner (wu, 2015) explaining the importance of teaching about the united states’ history of discrimination in order to help black students and other students of color better advocate for social justice and racial equality. according to the author, for the majority of u.s. k-12 students, the american history that they learn are [sic.] about presidents, patriotism, and ideals such as liberty, democracy, and freedom. for students of color, this type of history negates their experience. ethnic studies give students of color the chance to learn about their history, empowering them. once students are empowered and activated, they will begin to question the racial hierarchy, advocate for their communities, and create radical change. that's what makes ethnic studies so dangerous, the discipline defers to people of color and challenges white supremacy. (wu, 2015, para. 16) this argument emphasizes the importance of knowing one’s history as a source of strength and empowerment – a central feature of this framing. many of the articles with this framing, 14 from the ethnic news watch database and 21 from u.s. major dailies, discuss the 1619 project and the curriculum designed to go with it. several of these articles explained that one of the goals of the project was to reframe the way black citizens understand their place in america. in one of these articles, nikole hannah-jones, the project’s leader, asserts her hope that the project will help black people “feel a sense of ownership over this country and a sense of pride in our resilience" (jones in gyarkye, 2019, para. 16). this type of framing suggests the importance of historical knowledge as a foundation for understanding contemporary issues. another example, published in 2018 in the los angeles times (kaleem, 2018), focused on efforts to implement ethnic studies programs in a wide variety of states, including texas, kansas, and california. this article articulated the value of surfacing history about the roots of racism and inequality in the u.s. the article emphasized the importance of ethnic studies as an antidote to the erasure and deletion of ethnic histories that often occurs in the public-school feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 15 curriculum. emphasizing the value of ethnic studies, the author describes an ethnic studies class at santa monica high school in california, where a recent lesson revolved around students discussing activism against gentrification in boyle heights, where art galleries and coffee shops have attracted white and more welloff newcomers in the traditionally mexican american, working-class neighborhood. (kaleem, 2018, para. 17) according to the article, such discussions help students explore multiple viewpoints and challenge students to think critically about their communities: the class really challenges you to think about your identity yourself,” said diana hernandez, a mexican american sophomore. “it helps us make more sense of what we're learning throughout the school day. (kaleem, 2018, para. 21) consistent with the sentiment expressed here, many of the articles with this framing emphasized the need for students to have access to accurate knowledge of past injustices so that they might better understand current issues. while the importance of being reflected in the curriculum framing was found in articles from both datasets, there were 21 articles with this framing in the ethnic news watch dataset, but only 16 in the u.s. major dailies. such a difference in framing between these datasets might be explained by differences in the intended audiences of the newspapers included in each set. for example, many of the articles in papers such as the washington red star, the international examiner, and the philadelphia tribune, as well as other papers included in the ethnic news watch database, are written to address the concerns of black readers and the members of ethnic groups. these concerns often include issues such as racism and inequality in american society. news in the mainstream press also addresses these concerns but may do so in ways intended to resonate with a whiter audience. according to the pew research center (2014), white readers make up the largest proportion of daily newspaper readership at 33%, while black readers make up 28%, and spanish/hispanic readers make up 20%. frame 2: activism and engaged citizenship the second most prominent frame cutting across articles in both datasets focused on the role of black lives matter in promoting opportunities for engaged citizenship, such as participation in protests, petitions, and teaching that emphasized the democratic process. this frame positioned schools as institutions with the capacity to address and potentially curb racism. there were 18 total articles with this framing: 12 were from u.s. major dailies databases, and six were from the ethnic news watch database. the first category below, blm is driving positive change included articles focused on developing the capacity for collective action and activism. the second category, curbing racism at school, focused on articles discussing schoolbased efforts to address systemic racism. the third category, counselors not cops, included articles aimed at defunding school safety officers. blm is driving positive change several examples in this category focused on the actions of students, student groups, teachers, and schools to further aspects of the blms agenda, such as ending “zero tolerance” discipline and including black history and ethnic studies in the school curriculum. for example, an article in the los angeles sentinel in 2020 (keller, 2020) described a rally held by el segundo high school students in los angeles to communicate a set of desired changes in the way the school district operates. according to a student quoted in the article, feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 16 the students for change coalition came up with a short list of demands that was somewhat promoted during various segments, such as, a request to modify curriculum, a better diverse faculty, and the implementation of a zero-tolerance policy… natasha lee, a senior at eshs, called for more hispanic and p.o.c. teachers in our faculty, so [the student-body] can see themselves represented. and integrate black and indigenous history into our curriculum because that history is our american history! (keller, 2020, para. 8) this focus on changing school culture and curriculum illustrates the connection between increased levels of student activism and the efforts of blms. this theme was also illustrated by a 2015 article in the new york amsterdam news (ashby, 2015) focused on a rally held by students at baltimore’s academy for the college bound. in this rally, the author explains that students held handmade signs, some with the names of young lives lost, such as mike brown and tamir rice. signs stating, “the dead cannot cry out for justice, it is a duty of the living to do so for them” and “black lives matter” were held high. (ashby, 2015) here, the author notes that the students in this school had studied the news and were familiar with the circumstances surrounding the deaths of sandra bland, trayvon martin, and freddie gray. another article from 2015 in the milwaukee courier (vaccaro, 2015) describes a school protest in response to the killing of freddie gray. the article focuses on the efforts of an eighthgrade social studies class that “took to the sidewalk, donning handmade signs, chanting the words ‘black lives matter; stop the violence!’” (vaccaro, 2015, para. 3). the article describes the teacher’s purpose in bringing his students to the protest as follows: to conley, the march was dual-purposed. it allowed students to live their lessons on the first amendment -the right to peaceably assemble and the right to free speech. not only that, but being able to experience protest first-hand as a participant gave students insight on what current issues require their attention and their efforts as nonviolent protestors. (vaccaro, 2015, para. 5) in this case, as in other articles in this category, teachers are described as using protests as opportunities for students to better understand their civics lessons by engaging directly in political action. this perspective is also evident in a 2019 article in the nyts focusing on youth activists (shapiro, 2019). this article described the actions of several youth leaders active in community politics. one student named aliyah is described as “joining protests and rallies as part of the new york civil liberties union's youth activism program” (shapiro, 2019, para. 25). she is also described as having attended a black lives matter rally that inspired her to get more involved. according to the article, she wants her friends back in the bronx to experience fewer arrests and suspensions in schools, for their metal detectors to be removed and for them to stop having to face police officers in schools. (shapiro, 2019, para. 26). articles with this framing emphasized the way black lives matter inspired young activists to get involved. in another example, from the washington post (lumpkin, 2020), students were described as being “[m]otivated by the death of george floyd, and eager to ride the national momentum generated by movements like black lives matter” (lumpkin, 2020, para. 4). in this particular case, the students wanted to get more involved in school politics so that they could feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 17 “demand that maryland schools rewrite their curriculum to be more honest about systemic racism and slavery” (lumpkin, 2020, para. 4). curbing racism at school many of these articles were also framed around the need to address racism in schools and challenge the racist treatment of black and minoritized youth by peers, teachers, and school administrators. several articles highlighted the efforts of student advocates to make schooling more equitable. for example, a 2020 article in the washington post describes one teacher who “helped organize a virtual conversation about race and inequity” (meckler, et. al., 2020, para. 1) where white and black students were grouped together for initial conversation but also had white students and black students discussing issues in homogeneous groups. in these discussions the white students talked about participating in protests during the pandemic and how to support black students without overstepping. black students spoke about their frustration that institutional racism doesn't end, despite protest after protest. (meckler et al., 2020, para. 12) such examples emphasize schools as places where differences in perspectives around race can be explored and worked out in a peaceful manner. in another example from 2020 in the chicago tribune (elbaum, 2020) a letter to the editor following the death of george floyd in minneapolis explains the pivotal role that social studies education could play in helping students challenge racism: as americans watched the police brutality in minneapolis, and the civil unrest that has followed, social studies educators were hopeful that their students could put the events into a broader perspective. u.s. history students should be able to see the parallel to america's long-standing reckoning with racial division, dating to 1619. civics students should be able to marshal their emotions into civic actions such as protesting, letterwriting, lobbying local officials and organizing to effect change. geography students should be able to understand how political and economic decisions have influenced cultural and environmental characteristics in certain neighborhoods and regions. (elbaum, 2020, para. 3) here again, this excerpt reinforces the idea that public schools can prepare students to both understand racism and address it through civic action. counselors not cops many of the articles were also critical of the role of police in schools and raised questions about whether or not police presence was beneficial. examples of the kinds of questions raised by these articles can be observed in a 2015 piece published in the washington post (brown, 2015). this article focused on the large number of school resource officers (43,000) and security guards (39,000) and connected these statistics with a long list of problematic and high-profile police actions in schools, such as the following: a florida school police officer was arrested and charged with child abuse in june for allegedly slamming a 13-year-old student to the ground and twisting his arm. in august, the american civil liberties union sued a kentucky sheriff after a deputy was caught on camera handcuffing disabled children who didn't follow directions. and in september, a federal judge ruled that school police in birmingham, ala., had used unconstitutional and excessive force when they routinely pepper-sprayed children for minor disciplinary feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 18 infractions -including a pregnant student whose offense was crying in a hallway. (brown, 2015, para. 9) the framing here suggests that incidents such as these, and the disproportionate number of disciplinary actions brought against black students and other students of color, have led students, parents, and others to demand that school funding for resource officers be reduced. such critique is consistent with blms’s effort to reduce funding for school resource officers in the hope that the funds saved will be able to support more school counselors. this desire to replace mechanisms of punishment and control with greater support and counseling is also represented in the following excerpt drawn from a 2020 article in the boston banner (miller, 2020). this excerpt describes boston teachers union president jessica tang’s efforts to convince school officials to reduce police presence in the schools: “we believe counselors need to be a higher funding priority over theoretically increasing the number of police in schools,” tang told school committee members. “with limited budgets and cuts we believe adequate access to social-emotional well-being, restorative practices and other efforts are more effective than increasing police presence in our schools.” tang joined dozens of teachers and students from bps schools at the school committee meeting who wore black lives matter tee-shirts. while not affiliated with the national black lives matter movement, the local effort is part of a national movement of teachers advocating against policies they say harm black children. (miller, 2020, para. 8) such framing suggests that the problems experienced by black students and other students of color at the hands of school police justify a reconsideration of the way that limited school funds should be spent. frame 3: defending american heritage and patriotism another prominent frame found in the news articles analyzed for this study centered on defending an ideology of american exceptionalism in the face of critiques by activists and scholars. of the 18 articles with this framing, ten were from u.s. major dailies databases and eight from the ethnic news watch database. many articles exhibited what some journalists have described as a “whitelash'' narrative. this term, which implies a white backlash against racial progress, was first used by the journalist van jones in his effort to explain why president trump was elected immediately following the presidency of barak obama (ryan, 2016). articles with this framing included a focus on the concerns of conservative whites and other groups who believe that highlighting inequality and ongoing injustice tarnishes the image of the united states and encourages students to adopt the identity of victims rather than selfmotivated individuals (will, 2020). articles with this framing suggest that it is better for students to understand what is admirable about the country and its founding values than it is to understand past wrongs and enduring inequalities. such a view has been frequently communicated by president trump. in a statement in october 2020, just prior to the presidential election, he expressed his view that “the united states of america is the most just and exceptional nation ever to exist on earth,” and schools should play a more active role in furthering this belief (trump, 2020b, para. 1). in analyzing these articles, it became clear that there were several distinct perspectives supporting this overarching view of american exceptionalism. these perspectives included the belief that efforts to address racism were divisive, fears that students were being indoctrinated with liberal perspectives, and general optimism about the benefits associated with patriotic and pro-american education. feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 19 one important caveat influencing this analysis is that all seven of the articles with this framing identified in the ethnic news watch database came from a single new york-based newspaper: the epoch times. according to roose (2020), writing in the new york times, the epoch times is associated with the falun gong religious movement. according to the paper’s founder, it was developed in response to censorship and persecution of the falun gong movement – a religious movement originating in china. the epoch times is highly critical of the communist party in china and supports conservative and far-right political perspectives. according to roose (2020), “the epoch times and its affiliates are a force in right-wing media, with tens of millions of social media followers spread across dozens of pages and an online audience that rivals those of the daily caller and breitbart news” (para. 6). such an overt conservative perspective is inconsistent with most of the other newspapers included in the ethnic news watch database. more typically, as shown in the sections above, the papers in this database support more liberal and left-leaning positions. addressing racism is problematic and divisive articles with this framing generally critiqued the efforts of educators and others wishing to address racism by broadening the school curriculum to include more black history and a better understanding of the nature of systemic racism. for example, one commentary in the epoch times (bauerlein, 2019) described such efforts as paving the way for the adoption of socialism in the united states. according to the author fifty years of revisionist history, multiculturalist literature and art classes, “hey, hey, ho, ho, western civ has got to go!” women’s studies, ethnic studies, black studies, native american studies, critical race theory, and queer theory have done their job. they have created a different america, a wicked one. they don’t speak of the “miracle at philadelphia,” as the constitutional convention was once labeled. they don’t appreciate the fact that in 1800 and in 1900, the united states was the most diverse country in the world, nor do they honor the united states for fighting germany and japan, the most venomously ethnocentric nations at that time. the american past is, instead, a ledger of national crimes. (bauerlein, 2019, para. 9) this mocking tone suggests that efforts to address inequality are unnecessary. moreover, the author advances the idea that multicultural history and literature make students think less of the united states. in several articles exhibiting this framing, the 1619 project is singled out as being particularly problematic because it provides a view of american history that challenges the idea of american exceptionalism and continuous progress. according to one author, the 1619 project is “a deliberate effort by the new york times to displace the moral authority of the signing of the declaration of independence as the heart of america's founding” (humphrey, 2019, para. 2). this same article suggests, “we should see the 1619 project for what it is: part of a comprehensive attempt at political revolution. it seeks to transform the american republican regime, which is based on equal rights for individuals, into one defined by identity politics and the unequal treatment of identity groups” (humphrey, 2019, para. 5). this framing suggests that efforts to educate students about the history of various racial and ethnic groups within the united states are destructive because it produces rancor among students as they begin to recognize patterns of injustice. this framing is also partially evident in several articles included in the u.s. major dailies database, some of which reported on president trump’s concern that “american schools feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 20 have become infected with revisionist ideas about the nation's founding and history, producing a new generation of ‘marxist’ activists and adherents of ‘critical race theory’ who believe american society to be fundamentally racist and wicked -and who have taken to the streets in recent months” (crowley, 2020, para. 8). while this article also critiqued president trump as becoming increasingly “unhinged,” elements of the article reflected the idea that those on the right perceive efforts to expand what is taught in school as part of a broader effort to destabilize american society. this point of view is also evident in the following example from the wall street journal (wall street journal editorial board, 2020) critiquing california’s efforts to develop an ethnic studies curriculum for public schools. according to the article, enforced identity politics and ‘intersectionality’ are on their way to replacing civic nationalism as america's creed. liberals who consider themselves moderate and don't understand the sense of urgency and assault felt by so many americans ought to read this curriculum. (wall street journal editorial board, 2020, para. 7) other articles with this frame go so far as to suggest that “barraging minorities with constant reminders of the injuries their ancestors suffered only discourages them from working to surmount the obstacles in their way” (woodson, 2019, para. 4). here again, is the idea that efforts to recognize inequality are more problematic than the underlying inequality itself. overall, this framing advances the view that efforts to teach students about historical injustices will create deeper divisions and problems for american society. rather than teach students about racial inequality, this framing suggests that educators should work to establish a universal sense of civic identity that transcends race and ethnicity. concerns about indoctrination a second concern within this framing suggests that students are being, or might be, indoctrinated with left-leaning ideologies that would lead to the adoption of socialism or possibly communism in the united states. for example, one author in the epoch times makes a comparison between current efforts to broaden the school curriculum and the strategy thought to be used by communists to sow discord in the united states during the cold war (holmquist, 2020). the author quotes the naked communist, an anti-communist book written in 1958, to illustrate what she believes is now occurring in public schools. get control of the schools. use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda. soften the curriculum. get control of teachers' associations. put the party line in textbooks…we've had not a little experience with riots and protests lately, many of which have been heavily attended by young people. are they mere tools in the hands of an ideology we don't realize is pulling the strings? (holmquist, 2020, para. 3-5) such a perspective reveals the fear held by some conservatives that left-leaning teachers and schools will indoctrinate and manipulate students in an effort to undermine traditional democratic and capitalist ideologies. this framing is evident in several articles from the u.s. major dailies database that focus on president trump’s concerns about school curriculum. according to one article, “president trump pressed his case … that u.s. schools are indoctrinating children with a left-wing agenda hostile to the nation's founding fathers, describing efforts to educate students about racism and slavery as an insult to the country's lofty founding principles” (balingit & meckler, 2020, para. 1). the president is quoted as saying, “patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 21 children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country… american parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at work or the repression of traditional faith, culture, and values in the public square. not anymore” (balingit & meckler, 2020, para. 5). a similar editorial in the wall street journal, focusing on supporters of senator bernie sanders, summed up this perspective in its title: young adults today received a steady diet of socialjustice, secular-progressive and climate-change dogma from grade school to graduate school (peters, 2020). within the article, the author maintains that if you are blessed to be born in a country that has outperformed the world for 400 years and still offers better prospects for a comfortable lifestyle than any other nation, and you think the country needs a radical makeover by bernie sanders, you were punked by the left-wing ideologues teaching your social-studies classes. (peters, 2020) the suggestion that social studies teachers are radicals pushing a socialist, communist, and antiamerican agenda underscores the growing distrust of public institutions. this discourse has pitted those who would like to see greater recognition of diverse perspectives and identities in american society against those who are intent on preserving traditional perspectives and values that privilege whites. patriotic and pro-american education several articles with this pro-american and patriotic framing highlighted the president’s effort to “restore patriotic education to our schools” (crowley, 2020, para. 2). some of these articles featured president trump’s plan to develop, with the aid of conservative historians, an overtly pro-american curriculum. he titled the group working on this curriculum the “1776 commission” so as to commemorate the american revolution and also challenge the “1619 project” described earlier. in one of these articles, president trump explains his belief that this project will “encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of american history and make plans to honor the 250th anniversary of our founding” (crowley, 2020, para. 18). supporting this patriotic approach to education, one article in the wall street journal reported on an interview with e.d. hirsch, the conservative english professor and founder of the core knowledge foundation (schaefer-riley, 2020). hirsch’s most recent book is titled how to educate a citizen. hirsch is described in the article as agreeing with the sentiments of political scientist richard rorty, who believed that “in the name of 'the politics of difference,' [the left] refuses to rejoice in the country it inhabits. it repudiates the idea of a national identity, and the emotion of national pride" (rorty in schaefer-riley, 2020, para. 8). following up on this idea, hirsch explains that “[p]atriotism is important because we want to make our society work” (hirsch in schaefer-riley, 2020, para. 12). another piece published in the wall street journal (fields, 2020) provides a similar perspective on the importance of traditional values. according to this author, “public schools today—like the ones using "1619" in their curriculum—rely on one-size-fits-all secular humanistic indoctrination to dumb down american children and drive wedges between them and their parents” (fields, 2020, para. 8). to remedy this attack on traditional values, the author suggests that, we must safeguard our children's innocence by opposing the false prophets of our day while constructing a viable alternative for them. this project entails returning to our first love, judeo-christian values, and our first principles of liberty and justice codified in the declaration of independence by imperfect but prescient men. (fields, 2020, para. 11) feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 22 this kind of patriotic rhetoric, couched in biblical terms, demonstrates the underlying sense among a segment of the population that traditional values are under attack and must be reinforced if they are to be preserved for the next generation. such perspectives fail to acknowledge the role of race in perpetuating present-day inequality. looking at the defending american patriotism and heritage frame across datasets reveals that, except for articles published in the conservative epoch times, there were no other articles drawn from the ethnic news watch database that reflected this point of view. looking at the u.s. major dailies database, six of ten articles with patriotic framing were published in the wall street journal. the number of articles with this type of patriotic framing by news source is illustrated in figure 4 below. figure 4 number of articles with patriotism/heritage framing by newspaper conclusions if one steps back from the close reading of the news presented above, it is possible to detect the outlines of two competing narratives. the first narrative is about efforts to recognize and address systemic injustice and racism. this story encompasses the first two frames identified in my analysis, changing the dominant narrative and activism and engaged citizenship. both of these frames highlight the effort of students, teachers, and parents to address various forms of racism as they work toward realizing the, as yet unfulfilled, ideals of the declaration of independence. such ideals, explains beach (beach, 2007), include “equality; inalienable rights; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; government ruled by the consent of the governed; laws for public good and principles of freedom for all” (p. 160). the second narrative emphasizes the role of schools in developing a strong national identity as a strategy to promote civic and political stability. this narrative is at the core of the third frame identified in my analysis, defending american heritage and patriotism. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 the epoch times, ny edition wsj nyt washington post los angeles times n u m b er o f a rt ic le s number of articles with patriotism/heritage framing by newspaper feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 23 understood from a historical perspective, these narratives align closely with two longstanding perspectives on the american dream. these views, explains beach (2007), are as old as the nation itself yet still resonate in the modern-day. from one perspective, the american dream is seen as being radically egalitarian and focused on the moral imperative of achieving greater equality and broader access to opportunity. from the other perspective, the american dream is understood as being more focused on maintaining the social order through meritocratic processes. these contrasting visions of the american dream have been invoked by competing political interests for generations as they seek to legitimate their desired approach to education. according to the conservative view of the american dream, the nation has made sufficient efforts to address past discrimination; the remaining social inequality is simply the result of a fair and well-functioning meritocracy. this view has informed efforts in as many as forty-one states to limit public schools' ability to offer ethnic studies, diversity training, or to discuss concepts such as racism and sexism in particular ways (schwartz, 2021). however, such a view ignores centuries of discrimination and existing inequalities that track too closely to racial boundaries for this assertion to hold. to some degree, the defending american heritage and patriotism frame rests on white grievances about supposed “reverse discrimination.” while popular on the right, such a view lacks empirical support and fails to consider how the idea of meritocracy might serve as a cover for systemic injustice and structural racism (hochschild & scovronick, 2004). moreover, many in the blm movement believe that public schools have not done nearly enough to help students understand that racial discrimination has been and continues to be a defining feature of american society. while the blm movement has largely been concerned with inequalities in policing based on race, its efforts have also raised questions about inequality in many social spheres ranging from issues of economic status to sexual identity, gender identity, disability, and inequality in public education. through sustained political action, this movement has demanded that the united states consider the various ways that black lives have been devalued. in doing so, the movement has provided further support for the egalitarian version of the american dream focused on creating a more equal society. part of this vision rests on efforts to make the school curriculum and educational practices more culturally relevant. along these lines, the historian jill lepore (2022) reports that since 2020 seventeen states have made efforts in this direction which expand the teaching of anti-racist history. as the blm movement has gained momentum, it has also created anxiety among those interested in maintaining the status quo. supporting this perspective, waldstreicher (2020), addressing a conservative critique of the 1619 project, observed that efforts to reconsider historical questions such as whether or not the american revolution was truly anti-slavery are often met with resistance because they have the potential to empower the disenfranchised. such backlash is easily observed within the articles conforming to the defending american heritage and patriotism frame. one clear example is former president trump’s creation of the 1776 commission in order to promote “patriotic” education. this move can be interpreted as a not-sosubtle effort to restore “traditional” values in the public schools and bolster meritocracy. such a move, however, also conveys the president’s fear that he and his supporters are quickly losing their grip on some of the systems that have successfully conveyed status and privilege to a narrow (i.e., white) segment of the american population based on my analysis, stories reflecting both versions of the american dream can be found in the mainstream press as well as the more narrowly focused ethnic press. however, my feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 24 findings suggest that these stories are not equally represented in each dataset. i found more stories with the changing the dominant narrative frame in the articles from the ethnic news watch database (see figure 1, above) than in the u.s. major dailies database. except for articles from the epoch times, there was also a greater focus on the egalitarian version of the american dream in news articles from the ethnic news watch database than in the u.s. major dailies database. while it is difficult to discern an overarching pattern in these differences, they make sense, given the intended audience of these news outlets. for example, the fact that black and ethnic newspapers would be more likely to print articles framed around challenging the dominant narrative—a framing that recognizes anti-black racism and injustice makes more sense than framing that conforms with defending american heritage and patriotism, which likely resonates more strongly with whiter audiences. the stakes in this ideological struggle are high. as the blm protests in the summer of 2020 involving over half a million people (buchanan et al., 2020) demonstrate, public debate regarding the true nature of the american dream endures. as the divisions in our society grow, developing a stronger understanding of the role of the news media in shaping public sentiment becomes more important. as shannon (2011) explains, news frames often compete with each other for dominance and have the power to shape our thoughts and actions. our ability to understand the way that news framing shapes discourse and ultimately our perceptions is an important factor influencing our ability to decide which vision of the american dream should ultimately prevail. the efforts of blm and other groups to press for social, political, and educational change have emphasized the cause of social justice. while an increased focus on social justice in the mainstream media is welcome, the backlash is strong, and citizens are far from united in a common vision of the american dream. given the divisions in our society, it is incumbent on educators to help the public discern and grapple with the competing frames frequently concealed in the news. feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 25 references agrawal, n. 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(2015). the elephant is still in the room: race and the backlash against ethnic studies. international examiner, 21, 3. http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2019/08/the_1619_project_curriculum_challenges_teachers_reframe_us_history.html?cmp=soc-shr-fb http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2019/08/the_1619_project_curriculum_challenges_teachers_reframe_us_history.html?cmp=soc-shr-fb feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 30 appendix a articles used in the analysis from the proquest ethnic news watch database date of publication city of publication newspaper article title 5/9/2015 mil milwaukee courier eighth-graders protest for school and black lives 7/25/2015 mil milwaukee courier student to uwm mentor: 'thank you for being a role model' 8/5/2015 seattle international examiner connecting disproportionality, achievement to educational policies and practices 8/13/2015 nyc new york amsterdam news children march for peace 11/4/2015 seattle international examiner the elephant is still in the room: race and the backlash against ethnic studies 12/3/2015 jacksonville fl the jacksonville free press will race be an issue in the 2016 election? 2/4/2016 nyc new york beacon why we celebrate black history month 2/11/2016 jackson miss. jackson advocate what's needed: black history with a purpose 2/18/2016 san fran sun reporter black minds matter movement: california is failing black students 5/5/2016 whippany, nj jewish news 'justice educator' on 'white skin' privilege 10/3/2016 new orl. the louisiana weekly naacp, baeo at odds of charter schools 3/24/2017 ind the indianapolis recorder revolutionary reading 4/1/2017 mil milwaukee courier vote april 4 for children, curriculum, culture, community 1/31/2018 seat and port the skanner black lives matter vancouver seeks volunteers 2/17/2018 balt afro-american local school teach black lives matter 2/16/2019 wdc afro-american red star school week of action brings go go, education 8/20/2019 nyc the epoch times the 1619 project and the fight for the minds and hearts of american children 9/18/2019 mich michigan chronicle 1619 project discussion sails into detroit 11/21/2019 nyc the epoch times the nation must be re-educated! 1/25/2020 mil milwaukee courier we’ve come too far to turn around: why milwaukeeans should support mps’ referendum feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 31 date of publication city of publication newspaper article title 2/13/2020 bos the boston banner teachers give lesson on black lives matter 2/20/2020 la los angeles sentinel author and historian, blair imani sheds light on great migration 3/20/2020 nyc the epoch times bob woodson and the birth of the 1776 initiative 6/4/2020 la los angeles sentinel the heinous murder of george floyd and race in america 6/24/2020 dearfield beach, fl jewish journal alumni call on jewish day schools to do more to fight against racism 7/3/2020 ind the indianapolis recorder ips created racial equity policy 7/9/2020 la los angeles sentinel students for change rally at library park 7/14/2020 phi philadelphia tribune philly school district right to pursue anti-racism initiative 7/26/2020 phi philadelphia tribune senator targets funding for teaching 1619 project 8/1/2020 mia caribbean today caribbean american candidate wants black history education 8/4/2020 nyc the epoch times let's take back our schools 8/5/2020 nyc the epoch times the 1958 'psychological warfare' plan playing out before us 8/13/2020 bos the boston banner a hopscotch step backwards? 9/1/2020 nyc the epoch times love is the answer making america great again 9/17/2020 wdc washington informer has 'unhinged trump' secured 'political popularity' through racist tropes? 9/22/2020 nyc the epoch times kids must learn history to avoid being gaslighted by media feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 32 appendix b articles used in the analysis from the proquest u.s. major dailies database date of publication city of publication newspaper article title 8/2/2016 nyc nyt at school, a 'march' through the civil rights movement in visual detail 8/21/2016 nyc nyt condemnation of charter schools exposes a rift among black americans 9/18/2016 nyc nyt readers' stories about race and education 10/19/2016 nyc nyt teaching seventh graders in a shocking election season 2/19/2017 nyc nyt when the equation is unequal 5/9/2017 wdc washington post driver's ed in va. to teach about traffic stops 10/8/2017 wdc washington post facing racism is part of life in st. louis and my classroom 1/15/2018 wdc washington post drawing lessons from largely forgotten history 2/16/2018 la los angeles times ethnic studies programs thriving; national tensions over race and immigration fuel the curriculum trend in public schools. 4/8/2019 nyc nyt a more perfect civics lesson? 'democracy' itself is up for debate 8/18/2019 nyc nyt how the 1619 project came together 8/18/2019 la los angeles times ethnic studies to get another look; 8/21/2019 la los angeles times expansion would hobble ethnic studies, critics say 8/23/2019 la los angeles times war of words delays ethnic studies bill; an ethnic studies requirement for all high school students in california is placed on hold. 8/29/2019 nyc wsj the 1619 project' hurts blacks 9/5/2019 nyc nyt change from within: city's students are on the front lines 11/25/2019 nyc nyt teacher threw away students' black lives matter posters, the a.c.l.u. says 1/24/2020 la los angeles times glendale unified may add black lives matter week; board discusses holding observance in february to cultivate pride and self-worth. 2/19/2020 nyc wsj upward mobility: a bid to revise the new york times's bad history feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 33 date of publication city of publication newspaper article title 2/19/2020 nyc nyt why the big swarms of young sandernistas? 6/8/2020 chicago chicago tribune voice of the people 6/12/2020 wdc washington post protests provide teachable moments 6/13/2020 nyc nyt some districts remove police from the schools, seeing them as a threat 6/17/2020 nyc nyt elite nyc girls’ schools have a racist culture, black alumni say 6/17/2020 la los angeles times activists, students, parents rally to eliminate l.a. school police; 6/20/2020 wdc washington post baltimore students press for anti-racist curriculum 7/21/2020 la los angeles times who gets to be called an 'activist'? 8/1/2020 la los angeles times 1619 project discussion sails into detroit 8/2/2020 la los angeles times accounts of racism spur change at elite l.a. schools 8/2/2020 wdc washington post the lies our textbooks told my generation of virginians about slavery 8/20/2020 nyc wsj the left still blames america first 8/28/2020 la los angeles times t-shirt ignites threats against teacher 8/31/2020 nyc wsj california's radical indoctrination 9/7/2020 nyc nyt lightfoot: trump's threat to cut funding to districts that teach '1619 project' is 'hot air' 9/9/2020 chicago chicago tribune lightfoot: trump's threat to cut funding to districts that teach '1619 project' is 'hot air' 9/9/2020 la los angeles times trump's diversity training issues 9/11/2020 nyc wsj god, parents and the '1619 project' 9/12/2020 nyc wsj bad teaching is tearing america apart 9/18/2020 nyc nyt trump calls for 'patriotic education' for american children 9/18/2020 wdc washington post trump attacks public schools feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 34 author notes abe feuerstein https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4343-6854 bucknell university abe.feuerstein@bucknell.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4343-6854 mailto:abe.feuerstein@bucknell.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience: the case of national board certification. current issues in education, 22(3) 1 volume 22, issue 3 december 8, 2021 issn 1099-839x supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience: the case of national board certification laura k. handler, teresa m. petty, amy j. good university of north carolina at charlotte abstract: amidst increasing globalized pressures to raise student achievement, nations are heavily investing in various forms of teacher professional development. in the united states, teachers are increasingly electing to pursue national board certification, yet few studies have analyzed the experience within the greater complex system of teaching and learning. viewed from this approach, findings from this study suggest that numerous dynamic forces— relationships, partnerships, structures, and policies—interact in various patterns that can potentially support effective teacher professional development. implications suggest a need for broader conceptualization, greater cohesion, and more strategic integration of teacher learning in education policy. keywords: professional development, national board certification, teacher support, complex systems, politics and education citation: handler, l.k., petty, t.m., good, a.j. (2021). supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience: the case of national board certification. current issues in education, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1976 accepted: october 25, 2021 introduction current focuses on teacher learning and professional development is predicated on the notion that the instruction teachers receive will in turn improve the instruction their students receive in the classroom. in this sense, the desire for effective professional development is driven by its potential to indirectly raise student achievement. since no child left behind (nclb, 2001) was passed, this potential impact—raising test scores—has been of paramount importance in relation to professional development. in fact, funds from title ii, part a of the current every student succeeds act (essa, 2015) directly support professional learning with a focus on recruiting, preparing, training, and developing teachers and school leaders through sustained, data-driven, research-based activities. https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1976 handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 2 while some researchers in the field center their work on studying the specific programs, practices, and activities that aim to support learning—the what of professional development— others focus on the processes related to the topic, debating the sequence of components in a linear framework to achieve this end of increased student learning (desimone, 2009; guskey, 2002). still others in the field advocate for a shift in the research analysis to use a more cyclical, comprehensive, and recursive approach that takes into account the dynamic complexities of the nested systems in which professional development occurs—the how of professional development (clarke & hollingsworth, 2002; cochran-smith et al., 2014; keay et al., 2018; o’leary & wood, 2017; opfer & pedder, 2011; sanford et al., 2015). recognizing that certain particularities in the environments, aims, and contexts of professional development inherently differentiate its direct application or replication to other settings, these authors instead aim to conceptualize professional development “as a complex system rather than as an event” (opfer & pedder, 2011, p. 378), decontextualizing the teaching and learning to elucidate patterns of how and why they occur. a key aspect of teacher learning in this complex systems model is analysis of the dynamic processes simultaneously occurring alongside teachers’ professional development experiences in order to aid understanding and interpretation of learning outcomes. while the literature has fairly consistently identified several design factors integral for high quality learning (see birman et al., 2000; darling-hammond & richardson, 2009; desimone, 2011), a large-scale study surveying more than 1300 educators across the united states found that teachers overwhelmingly hold negative views of current professional development efforts, stating that they are “not relevant, not effective, and most important of all, not connected to their core work of helping students learn” (boston consulting group, 2014, p. 3). coupled with the innovative affordances of technology, a heightened focus on differentiated and personalized learning within professional development models has shown potential to remediate such dissatisfaction, allowing teachers to customize their learning experiences to meet their individual needs and expertise (fox et al., 2015; gamrat et al., 2014). consistent with the desires expressed by teachers in the bcg study, this shift towards personalized professional development allows teachers the autonomy and relevance they are seeking, actualizing the flexibility that researchers have long advocated in professional development (borko, 2004; darling-hammond & richardson, 2009; garet et al., 2001; guskey & yoon, 2009). however, just as integral to addressing these particularities of professional development initiatives is the recognition that these experiences take place among interactive, dynamic contexts. these contexts, supports, and interacting relations of this complex system of learning are unfortunately less detailed in the literature. a consistent trend across countries in the field of education, including the united states, is this heightened commitment to elevate the standards of the profession and to raise student achievement, especially in the current link between educational attainment and participation in the global marketplace (hutt et al., 2018; kennedy & mckay, 2011). in some locations in the united states, such as the states of north carolina and washington, great numbers of teachers are seeking national board certification (nbc) as professional development that will improve their practice and earn a status that will recognize their expertise (nbpts, 2019b). given its personalized nature, requiring the development of a portfolio over a year-long period of analysis and reflection centered on one’s own students and instruction, this structure seems in line with the relevant, sustainable elements teachers desire and research has proven effective (bcg, 2014; desimone, 2009, 2011). while research offers mixed results on the statistical correlation of nbc on student achievement with numerous variables confounding test scores and growth (see cowan handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 3 & goldhaber, 2016), in the authors’ previous study focused on teachers’ own perceptions on the impact of the certification process on their classroom, an overwhelming majority (87.7%) reported a positive influence on student learning (petty et al., 2016a). however, instead of focusing on the what of this professional development, this current study seeks to examine the systems and contexts of how such teacher learning might occur, continuing the use of teacher voice to inform the analysis of the interrelation of the conditions, agents, and knowledge in this complex system of professional development. in particular, the political context surrounding this study fuels inquiry into the complexities of enacting effective teacher professional development. once a priority of the state of north carolina, education received ample support and funding under the leadership of governor jim hunt, serving as an example for the nation of having a strategic and comprehensive plan (darling-hammond, 2010). more recently, education has been seemingly cast aside by policymakers as the state legislature has made cuts to teacher tenure, incentive pay for advanced degrees, and teacher recruitment programs (dewitt, 2014). having slipped to one of the lowest states in the national rankings (bernardo, 2017), efforts are again being made to raise teacher salaries to more competitive levels and reinstate initiatives such as the teaching fellows program (stancill, 2017). support for nbc is one such example of reform efforts being subject to the fluctuating agenda of state budgets and policymakers, and inquiries, such as this one probing for teacher perspectives, offer valuable insight into the nuances and ramifications of educational policy on teaching and learning. hence, the purpose of this study was to examine nbc more broadly in the dynamic contexts of professional development and teacher learning in the united states, specifically the state of north carolina. the question we posed to teachers, what support did you receive while pursuing national board certification? was designed to consider the varying systems and spheres of influence affecting teachers’ pursuit of additional certification in education. this inquiry thus serves as a contribution for analysis and discussion of the patterns and particularities in this complex system of teacher learning. after a review of the relevant literature and summary of the methods employed by this study, we share findings of teachers’ experiences having gone through this certification process, detailing the varying supports in districts across the state of north carolina. we then draw implications from this analysis of nbc to shed light on the various nested and interacting systems of education and policy that might influence high quality professional development and emphasize the big-picture, comprehensive outlook and approach needed for supporting such powerful learning experiences. review of literature with public education increasingly scrutinized in nations across the world, driven by heightened pressures of globalization, competition in the international marketplace, and student performance on international assessments such as the program for international student assessment (hutt et al., 2018; o’leary & wood, 2017), the role and influence of teachers have been examined, expanded, and increasingly emphasized, resulting in a sizable body of literature extending in many directions. because research has pinpointed strong correlations between teacher quality and student achievement (i.e., boyd et al., 2009; darling-hammond, 2000), continuous efforts to train and maintain teachers with the most effective pedagogical practices consume the focus of many districts and researchers across the nation. while the volume of studies examining such numerous initiatives is consequently monumental, in this review we will primarily focus on synthesizing the features of such professional development experiences that handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 4 the literature suggests foster teacher learning. then, in conceptualizing professional development with a complex systems approach, we will consider how particular aspects of teacher learning, namely the layered contexts and supports, influence learning. finally, we will narrow our focus to one particular form of professional development, national board certification (nbc), in considering the historical, political, empirical, and organizational factors that affect teachers undergoing that process. teacher professional development focused on improving the content and pedagogical knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, and instructional practices of teachers, and thus, learning outcomes of students (guskey, 2002), professional development seeks to utilize a systematic approach in undertaking these goals. although the approach may vary greatly in form—as informally as self-reflections and collaborative conversations, or as formally as structured observations, portfolios, conferences, workshops, professional learning communities, book clubs, selfor peer observations, or even inquiry/action research projects (borko, 2004; desimone, 2009, 2011)—the literature on professional development does, however, consistently identify several key characteristics for high quality learning. research (birman et al., 2000; bcg 2014; desimone, 2011) suggests the following attributes: a) to be of sizable duration—desimone (2011) notes at least 20 hours— sustained over time; b) to be coherent, consistent, and connected to teachers’ own knowledge, other current professional development, and the policies and practices of the teacher’s school, district, and state; c) to be focused on content with specific concept development rather than general teaching practices; d) to be active, hands-on learning that engages the participant with meaningful tasks to aid the learning process; and e) to elicit collective participation and collaboration rather than individual consumption. more recently, differentiation of learning that takes into consideration teachers’ backgrounds in relation to their years and types of experiences has shown to positively impact learning (fox et al., 2015). approaches to professional development that solicit and value teachers’ own input and inquiries heighten both morale and professionalism (flint et al., 2011; hutt et al., 2018). these elements hint at the complexity of the conditions under which professional development takes place, as numerous systems interact in a variety of capacities. as such, beyond the characteristics of effective professional development, numerous researchers have sought to examine the process by which learning occurs for teachers and, consequently, affects learning for students. conceptual approaches have included linear models that attempt to detail the sequence of events for teachers’ learning, change in attitude and practice, and ultimate goals of improved student outcomes (desimone, 2009; guskey, 2002). alternatively, diverging from such a cause-and-effect approach, complexity theorists investigate education, learning, and professional development as a more dynamic, cyclical, and recursive system of actions, mechanisms, and elements from numerous layers and levels of influences (clarke & hollingsworth, 2002; cochran-smith et al., 2014; davis & sumara, 1997, 2007; keay et al., 2018; mason, 2008; o’leary & wood, 2017; opfer & pedder, 2011). recognizing the nested systems in which interacting agents of the experience itself, the individual teacher, and the school exist, there are multiple pathways of interconnected domains during professional development that mediate the professional growth of teachers (clarke & hollingworth, 2002; opfer & pedder, 2011). examined with this conceptual approach of a complex phenomenon, professional development can be detailed with the contextual specificity of systems but also handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 5 decontextualized to look for recurring patterns or common affordances emanating from these particularities. unique because of its national recognition that spans local, state, and even federal initiatives, nbc offers an interesting case of professional development to be examined from such a complexity theory approach. various aspects of the certification process can, and have been, analyzed to explain the content features of the required products that prompt teacher learning. a few previous researchers have also conceptualized the nbc process through a framework of complexity theory to examine the emergence of professional communities (rhoades & woods, 2013), which then has the potential to improve instructional practices among an extended network of teachers (rhoades & woods, 2015). along with specifics of what the certification entails, crucial to understanding the contexts of this particular form of professional development is the historical background of the creation of the national board for professional teaching standards, both of which are explained in the following section. from this explanation, the authors shift the study to a concerted consideration of the supports surrounding the certification process, using data from teachers’ self-constructed responses to detail this aspect of their learning. as framed by complexity theory, authors propose that the numerous agents, interacting in various capacities and frequencies, will elucidate the need for a highly intentional, comprehensive, and unified approach to professional development across educational institutions and government leaders. national board certification responding to the dismal portrayal of public education in the report a nation at risk (us ncee, 1983), the national board for professional teaching standards (nbpts) was created in 1987 in order to set forth a plan to develop, retain, and reward accomplished teachers through a system of advanced certification. to be eligible for this esteemed accreditation, candidates must hold a baccalaureate degree, a valid state teaching license, and have taught in a public or private school for at least three years (nbpts, 2021a). there are 25 certificate areas in which teachers can apply, each with their own set of standards that are developed under the guidance of the board’s five core propositions (nbpts, 2021b): 1. teachers are committed to students and their learning. 2. teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students. 3. teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning. 4. teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience. 5. teachers are members of learning communities. board certification is voluntary and gives teachers an opportunity to demonstrate their expertise through a rigorous, performance-based portfolio process as well as a computer-based assessment involving self-constructed responses. teacher learning and mastery are evidenced by four components: content knowledge, differentiation in instruction, teaching practice and learning environment, and effective and reflective practitioner. candidates are provided standards in each certification discipline to facilitate understanding of accomplished teaching, incorporating the analysis of video recorded lessons, student work samples, and their contributions to developing connections between the profession and the community (nbpts, 2021a). as common to other forms of professional development, the goal is to demonstrate a positive impact on student learning. handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 6 while there is some debate on the direct impact of nbc on student achievement as measured through test scores (belson & husted, 2015; boyd & reese, 2006; clotfelter et al., 2007; cowan & goldhaber, 2016; goldhaber & anthony, 2005; harris & sass, 2009; rouse, 2008; smith & colby, 2011; vandevoort et al., 2004), many researchers have documented the rich learning experiences gained by teachers throughout the certification process. with more than 80 percent of study participants attributing a positive impact on student learning through board certification, citing evidence of students’ academic achievement, of their own improved teaching practice, and/or use of effective assessment strategies, researchers suggest a strong link exists between the nbc process and heightened teacher self-efficacy (petty et al., 2016a). the positive impact of national board certified teachers (nbcts) can extend beyond student learning in their individual classroom to improved collegial relations schoolwide, supported by the leadership and collective work that the status distinction promotes (anagnostopoulos et al., 2010; gaudreault & woods, 2012) and the professional networks that the certification process help create (rhoades & woods, 2013, 2015). more likely than their non-certified counterparts to help fellow educators, nbcts provide added value in their willingness to offer instructional support to peers and those in their professional networks or learning communities (frank et al., 2008). policy can thus play an instrumental role in shaping the magnitude of professionalized pedagogical and organizational structures in the field of education. all fifty states offer some sort of support for board certification, and a significant number of states and school systems offer financial incentives. according to nbpts, (nbpts, 2021c) these inducements range from allowances covering the $1900 certification fee to a sizeable salary increase. north carolina leads the nation in total number of nbcts with 23 percent of the state’s teachers holding certification (ncdpi, 2021). the state has offered incentives for teachers to pursue certification, such as a 12 percent salary increase for the life of the 10 year certification, and provided supports such as low-interest loans to pay the certification fee and three release days to work on completion of the certification portfolio. with significant changes in education policy at both the federal and state level over the past decade, in this research we continue efforts to voice teachers’ perceptions of the effect on the profession in relation to nbc. by asking nbcts to detail the supports they received—and sometimes sharing what they did not receive—we aim to provide a better understanding of the intersecting contextual factors that contribute to meaningful teacher learning. research design this study is part of a larger research project in which authors analyze teachers’ perceptions and experiences related to national board certification. researchers developed a survey including nine demographic questions, 20 likert item questions based on the five core propositions, and seven open-ended questions (appendix). in this particular analysis authors utilized participants’ responses to one of the open-ended questions, what support did you receive while pursuing national board certification? following dillman’s total design method (dillman, 2000), authors employed numerous techniques to encourage survey response. to protect participant anonymity, a letter was sent to regional directors of national board certification in north carolina to invite nbcts from their respective regions to participate in the study. this letter included relevant information about the study: who was conducting it, its purpose, why the individual was asked to participate, the time commitment required, and then the secure link to participate. two weeks later, regional directors sent a reminder email, and then an additional week later, a follow-up. in this way, researchers handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 7 worked to maintain frequent communication with potential study participants while simultaneously assuring these individuals that their responses could not reveal their identity. participants a total of 496 nbcts who are all currently teaching in north carolina public schools completed and submitted the survey. of the 115 school districts in north carolina, nbcts in 46 districts participated in the study, representing 40% of school districts in the state. the majority (63%) of participants were from rural schools, 10% of participants reported an urban setting, and 27% identified their schools as suburban. participants have taught across multiple grade levels (see figure 1). figure 1 grade levels taught by participants most participants (85%) graduated from traditional education teacher preparation programs while 15% entered the teaching profession through lateral entry. the various disciplines of nbc (i.e., art, english language arts, music) are represented in this sample with the highest relative frequency (34%) of the participants holding a generalist certificate. the development area for certification is also represented by the participants of this study, with teachers educating the span of ages from early and middle childhood through early adolescence into young adulthood. participants have taught for 5 to 41 years with the mean years of classroom teaching experience being 18.66 years. analysis the open-ended question was coded using thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006). to establish trustworthiness through this qualitative process, various levels of analysis occurred (nowell et al., 2017). initially, researchers immersed themselves in the data, rereading participant responses before beginning to search for meanings and patterns they could represent through deductive coding. each researcher evaluated the data independently, making notes about possible codes along the way (lincoln & guba, 1985). next, they compared their analyses and determined inconsistencies. these inconsistencies were discussed in order to establish a codebook (fereday & muir-cochrane, 2006). for example, data points referring to “friend,” 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 8 “mentor,” and “co-worker” were identified by the code “relationships”; responses acknowledging a “workday” or “paid leave” were coded “policy”. authors discussed these codes and revised them as necessary throughout the entire data set. this method of analysis allowed researchers to establish inter-coder reliability (neuendorf, 2002), with unanimous consensus achieved for each code, as well as to ensure that all data points had been coded. the initial analysis generated several codes that demonstrated recurring themes emanating from the source of the support described by the participant. these emerging themes were united and categorized into larger themes by each researcher (aronson, 1995), then discussed collectively to reach consensus on the final themes for this study. these final themes represented a consistent pattern in responses across participants, emanating from the type and source of support they described. for example, researchers recognized that “relationships” included both “colleagues” available through personal relationships and “mentors” assigned to them through district programs. considering these important tiers, researchers identified the overarching themes of this study as the following: 1) colleague support, 2) district support, 3) state support, and 4) professional organization/partnership support. each data point that was coded and then themed was tallied to determine the frequencies of each theme. these frequencies are presented in figure 2 to assist in the interpretation of the findings (wade, 1993). participants’ responses to open-ended questions asked on the survey were further analyzed and included in the findings section to offer the perspectives of the nbcts on the rationale for choosing to pursue certification. finally, in determining themes, authors recognize that as with most research studies, limitations do exist. first, this study focused exclusively on nbcts from north carolina, which has the most nbcts of any state in the nation. the supports that these teachers receive differ from other states, and thus the responses from these teachers could vary from those in other locations. second, the small sample size, in relation to the total number of nbcts in north carolina, is a limitation that confounds the generalizability of this study, even to the population it was intended to represent. researchers utilized personal contacts and in particular relied on the regional directors of nbc identified by the state department of public instruction to distribute the survey to possible participants. however, response rates varied by region and district, which could be attributed to the relationship between the director and nbcts as well as the adherence to protocols outlined in recruitment efforts. third, this study focuses on teachers who have achieved nbc rather than those who went through the process. responses from those who did not pass nbc could vary from those who did, particularly if the supports (or lack thereof) could have been a contributing factor in their submission process. finally, the data collected for this study was limited to the qualitative responses to the survey items; as common with this methodology, our findings suggest that additional research utilizing interviews might further extrapolate the relationships among the dynamic and interactive contexts referenced by participants. findings the participants of this study were asked through an open-ended survey question what support they received while seeking nbc. their responses varied but fell under the themes of colleague support, district support, state support, and professional organization/partnership support, with specific mention of the north carolina center for the advancement of teaching (nccat), north carolina association of educators (ncae)/professional educators of north handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 9 carolina (penc), and local colleges/universities. figure 2 displays the frequencies of each theme identified in the data set. figure 2 supports received by teachers during national board certification support from colleagues support from colleagues was mentioned most frequently by classroom teachers when asked why they chose to pursue nbc. of the 496 participants, 211 (42.5% of participants) mentioned receiving support from colleagues during the certification process. one teacher said, “we (colleagues) created our own network throughout the us and chatted and collaborated. it was great!” another described her collaboration with others in more detail: in my school, there were seven teachers who worked together from october to december. in january of that year, i worked with the other middle childhood generalist to complete the portfolio process. we met after school regularly and on the weekends until the process was completed. a third teacher commented, “i participated in the process with two other colleagues and we supported each other. there were two other teachers that i knew (one at my school and one at another), who were already certified that answered questions for me as well.” data repeatedly showed that colleague support was provided for many of the participants of this study. while some participants received support from other colleagues going through the certification process simultaneously, others received support from colleagues who had previously gone through the certification process. support from district participants also noted that they received support from their school districts. this support came in the form of workshops, support sessions, mentor/mentee pairing, and portfolio reading. of the 496 participants in this study, 206 (41.5%) mentioned receiving some type of support from their school districts as they were going through the certification process. one participant said, i was working in county x at the time, and they provided extensive national board support. they held monthly workshops on each of the portfolio sections and provided a mentor to help us through the process. they also held workshops solely for one-on-one portfolio critique and revision. 0 50 100 150 200 250 professional organization state district colleague handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 10 another study participant detailed numerous district supports as such: i received five days of paid leave and use of a school system laptop to use while going through the certification process. upon receiving national board certification, we received a bonus. we also received $250 for making copies and a paid mentor. additional details of the meaningful supports provided by districts were evident in this teacher’s response: “we had monthly meetings for all county nb candidates. we also had an ‘away to work’ weekend where we could work all weekend long and we had nbcts to read and offer suggestions for revision.” data such as these reiterate the positive role district supports played in the certification process for these teachers as well as the collaboration with state incentives offered, which are detailed in the next section. support from state (north carolina) as previously described, the state of north carolina provides supports for teachers pursuing nbc. of the 496 teachers surveyed for this study, 76 (15.3%) made some mention of a support that they received specifically from the state of north carolina. one teacher shared, “at the time (of my certification process) my fees were paid by the state. we also had three work days to work on our (portfolio) entries and readers were provided on one of those days.” another teacher confirmed this stating, “our state provided 2-3 days we could take to write and work on our portfolio.” a third nbct elaborated her experiences: when i attempted nbct status in 1994-1995, governor hunt had a lot of programs in place to help teachers to go through what was a then very new process. the state of north carolina had money to help pay for the cost of the program. there were [sic] some not very useful local support in 1994 and 2002. when i attempted nbct status in 20012002, north carolina again paid for the cost. while north carolina no longer pays for the certification application fee, the state still offers a low interest loan for which teachers can apply, three release days to work on the portfolio components, and a 12 percent pay increase to those that achieve nbc. other states offer similar incentives for teachers seeking nbc. south carolina provides an annual $5000 supplement for the life of the certification while kansas offers an annual $1000 bonus (nbpts, 2021c). nevada nbcts receive a 5% salary increase while florida offers a salary bonus (nbpts, 2021c). participants cited the financial compensation as a major motivator for their pursuit of the certification (petty et al., 2016b), and these responses further detail the value of state policies supporting nbc. the number of nbcts continues to rise across the united states. even amidst the pandemic of 2020, an additional 2570 teachers achieved nbc while 2484 board-certified teachers successfully renewed their certification, bringing the number of nbcts to over 128,550 across all 50 states (nbpts, 2021d). support from professional organizations/partnerships support from nccat the north carolina center for the advancement of teaching (nccat) was established by the state legislature in 1985. nccat has several facilities in north carolina where teachers can attend intensive professional development, to ‘advance teaching as an art and a profession’ handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 11 (nccat, 2014). of the 496 study participants, 78 (15.7%) mentioned the support that they received from nccat while they were pursuing nbc. one teacher said, the north carolina center for the advancement in teaching was very influential in my pursuit of nbc. they assigned me a mentor that guided me through the process. it also gave me the opportunity to network with other middle school science teachers across the state. another participant commented, “i was also able to attend the north carolina for the advancement in teaching for a four-day session that greatly helped me refine and finish up the writing needed for my portfolio.” with even more detail, a third stated, i attended a week-long session at nccat. this time to dedicate on the front end of the process was unbelievably important in fostering my confidence and general knowledge about what i had to do. it helped me develop a reasonable timeline and establish shortterm and long-term goals. my mentor from nccat provided support throughout the process. nccat continues to be a resource that benefits many teachers from north carolina. support from ncae/penc just under 10% of study participants (n=46) mentioned support that they received from two professional organizations: north carolina association of educators (ncae) and professional educators of north carolina (penc). one teacher commented, “i attended sessions through my professional organization (penc).” another said, “ncae had a boot camp in raleigh for candidates.” a third commented, “i attended several workshops offered by ncae.” these professional organizations continue to assist teachers who are pursuing nbc. support from institutions of higher education a few study participants (n=29) said that they had received support from colleges/universities during the certification process. “i attended national board sessions at my closest university,” stated one participant. another said, “i went to one university’s support group meetings one saturday each month during the process.” other participants mentioned courses that they took at higher education institutions that prepared them for the nbc process. discussion these findings reveal important details from teachers’ perspectives of the conditions and contexts influencing their professional development experience of nbc. when considered as a complex system, it becomes apparent that nbc takes place among numerous nested systems and interrelational agents active in the process of teaching and learning. previous research has provided insight into the relationship between teachers and the experience itself, suggesting positive reciprocal interactions with the process improving pedagogical practices of teachers and their colleagues (anagnostopoulos et al., 2010; frank et al., 2008; gaudreault & woods, 2012; petty et al., 2016b; rhoades & woods, 2013). several characteristics of the nbc process seem to align with research findings of effective learning experiences, namely the voluntary participation (flint et al., 2011), extended duration of time required to complete the process (desimone, 2011) with submission taking place over the course of a year, and the direct relevance of the work in application to teaching practices taking place in one’s own classroom handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 12 (birman et al., 2000; bcg 2014; gore et al., 2017). furthermore, the rigorous portfolio process of analyzing and reflecting upon one’s lessons are practices commonly recognized of effective professional development (borko, 2004; darling-hammond, 2009; fox et al., 2015). the increasing number of teachers pursuing nbc (nbpts, 2021d; will, 2017) speaks to the appeal of this professional development experience. as seen in figure 3, these characteristics and dynamics of teacher learning through nbc are at the center. figure 3 teacher learning through nbc as a complex system of supports and policies beyond the interaction between the individual and the activity, the what of the professional development, in this study we take a broader look at the complex system of professional development with nbc as a process amidst numerous dynamic forces and contexts, particularly the supports helping facilitate teacher learning. from this data, the relationships among teachers become increasingly significant, as teachers cited this collaboration with colleagues as an influential support both in persisting with the challenge of the task and in sharing their expertise. while this notion of collaboration is consistent with descriptors of professional development (birman et al., 2001; desimone, 2011; gore et al., 2017), participants’ responses offered insight into the intersecting components of autonomy and collaboration. it is noteworthy that participants not only mentioned appeal and appreciation for the support and working in conjunction with other teachers, but also described their self-driven efforts to forge these partnerships. rhoades and woods (2013) explain this self-emergence of organization as a product of the complex system of nbc and conceptualize its development of a shared repertoire among candidates. similarly, in this data, whether virtual or face-to-face, teachers reported allying themselves with a colleague to strengthen their learning during the certification process and honored their joint determination to achieve the higher standards set forth by nbpts. the handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 13 flexibility and autonomy of these decisions in combination with collaboration with colleagues seems to be a condition in this data that supports teacher learning. this support, its characteristics, and interactions are depicted in the top circle of figure 3. additionally, mentorship was another pattern of collaboration evident in the data, as participants credited help they received from more experienced nbcts as influential to their certification. whether the mentor was assigned from an outside organization such as nccat or provided through the local school district, these pairings offered the one-on-one support participants needed to critique their reflections. although mentorship has been repeatedly shown to support and retain early career teachers (e.g., hobson et al., 2009, ingersoll & strong, 2011), current challenges such as inadequate resources in districts (hall et al., 2017) and increasing pressure for evaluative roles (carver & feiman-nemser, 2009; fransson, 2010), have shown to be hindrances for such beginning teacher support programs. also, while mentorship is often a focus of teachers and teacher candidates in their early stages of licensure (henning et al., 2015), the nbc process promotes continued mentorship beyond the first three years of a professional career. this additional layer of support which the nbc process was able to provide for the professional development of teachers shows the intersecting roles of community organizations, district level staff, and school-based mentorship programs. this support, its characteristics, and intersections are depicted in the bottom right circle of figure 3. teacher learning also took place with the classes and workshops offered by local organizations and institutions of higher education. outside of their own efforts to engage in the reflective practices facilitated by the nbc portfolio process, teachers report gaining valuable development from nccat, ncae, and universities. such partnerships exist in other states and are even more pronounced, evident by kentucky’s state university system integrating nbc with graduate and doctoral level courses. the national recognition of this certification process aids the collaboration across grade levels, content areas, districts, and groups with its common language and vision of pedagogy and practice outlined through the standards. previous researchers have suggested that coherence is a vital element of professional development, with learning thriving when it is consistent with teachers’ own belief systems (desimone, 2009), connected to and builds off of their own knowledge and other current professional development (birman et al., 2000), and is integrated with the policies and practices of the teachers’ school, district, and state (darling-hammond, 2000). in this case, the availability of resources outside that which teachers’ own school and district could provide proved to offer pivotal learning experiences for teachers. a number of variables surround the effectiveness of this support, from the proximity of these partnering organizations to teachers’ locations all the way to the policies that allowed for teachers’ paid leave to enable these opportunities. this support is then depicted in the bottom left circle of figure 3. this latter point segues into a major intersecting domain in the complex system of professional development—the policy and political context of the local/state education. in some locations such as the site of this study, north carolina, educators are awarded three release days from the classroom in order to work on their nbc. in this study participants voiced a strong appreciation for this policy, as it allowed them the time to fully immerse themselves in their learning. reflective of the interactive nature of this complex system, this policy influenced some teachers’ use of existing supports: some teachers used this time to attend workshops, multipleday sessions, or collaborate with others to refine their portfolio entries. when combined with the financial incentives offered by the state, a 12 percent salary increase and low-interest loan to help with the application fee, these policies have resulted in the state having the highest number of handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 14 nbcts, almost double the next leading state. previous authors have found monetary compensation to be a leading motivator for teachers to pursue nbc (anagnostopoulos et al., 2010; petty et al., 2016b), and thus this incentive is part of the complex system of incentives and supports influencing teacher learning. these policies are the backdrop of the professional development experience and depicted as such in figure 3 by the largest oval in which the systems of supports are nested. policies at the local or district level either reinforced state incentives or even supplemented them to help teachers make use of available supports and resources. particularly in large districts, participants credited the established programs that assigned them nbcts as mentors and the additional district-led workshops that facilitated networking and collaboration during the certification process. with nbc a commonly recognized form of professional development supported at both state and district levels and integrated into the work of professional organizations in the area, there is consistency and alignment across these layers of support. though this data was limited to participants in north carolina, the leading state of nbcts, additional incentives have been instituted in other states, including the recent recognition of “national board certified teacher day” in louisiana (nbpts, 2021f). table 1 details the supports and incentives offered by states with the highest number of nbcts to show the various intersections across levels of supports from the state, district, and community. table 1 national board certification incentives and supports of states with most nbcts state nbcts incentives supports north carolina 23,032 12% pay increase -low cost loan program -three release days -local partnerships and varied district support florida 13,572 varies by district -varies by district washington 11,598 annual bonus of $5,296 -conditional loans for application fee -jump start and home stretch support programs south carolina 9,284 annual supplement of $5,000 -district assigned staff person for nbct -cerra and professional organizations mississippi 4,441 annual supplement of $6,000 -low interest loan program -four campuses of state university system offer world class teaching program kentucky 4,105 annual bonus of $2,000 -application fee reimbursement -two state universities offer jump start support program implications for policy just as the provisions of title ii funds allow states the flexibility and autonomy to determine use of professional development, this data suggests that teachers in north carolina likewise make use of available flex days and personalized choice for learning opportunities through the process of nbc. north carolina designates title ii, part a funds to support teacher learning through professional development plans (pdps) with a partnership model that engages its department of public instruction, community partners such as nccat, and schooland handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 15 district-level professional learning networks (ncdpi, 2017). this partnership model emerged in this study’s data, suggesting some effectiveness of reaching teachers in the classroom. because title ii, part a funds are aimed to improve teachers’ instruction, particularly of educationally disadvantaged children, states can consider how to incorporate the standards set forth by the national board across various partners engaged in these professional development efforts. when states, districts, and professional institutions hold a common vision—national standards—for teaching, there is consistency in the learning these various entities offer to educators. when priorities shift, however, such as a heightened emphasis on student achievement evidenced by test scores as promoted by nclb (2001) legislation and the race to the top competitive grant program launched in 2009, there can be conflict in the policies and structures incentivizing teacher learning, leadership, and performance. for example, in 2012, charlotte mecklenburg schools, the second largest district in north carolina and seventeenth in the nation, initiated success by design, a program aimed at offering highly-effective teachers opportunities to advance their careers—and boost their paycheck—without leaving the classroom by increasing instructional responsibility. supports for nbc detailed by this study’s participants— district workshops, readers, and mentors—are no longer mentioned (cms, n.d.). with recent policy changes in essa (2015) once again allowing states the flexibility to measure teacher quality beyond impact on student test scores, the district might choose to ignore or respond to such changes. this fluctuation in policy hinders the collaboration among entities detailed in this study to support teacher learning yet needs to be addressed by all stakeholders. similarly influenced by federal policy, the current teacher evaluation system in north carolina includes six standards, one of which is directly tied to teacher pay: teachers contribute to the academic success of their students. if the state utilizes the newly-granted provisions of essa (2016) for more autonomy in teacher evaluation systems, other standards (i.e. teachers demonstrate leadership, teachers know the content they teach) closely aligned to the five propositions might be emphasized more. in this way, teacher professional development and evaluation might be more aligned, with policies and supports, such as mentorship and professional learning communities, all working towards common professional goals. in fact, it is this sort of coherent continuum of the profession that nbpts advocates in building a “pipeline to accomplished teaching” (nbpts, 2021e). recently redesigned in 2016, nbc has already adapted to be more compatible to state licensure processes, including the shift from a ten-year to a five-year cycle of renewal. coordinating these learning experiences and requirements for teachers would help streamline and professionalize the work of teachers. conclusion with increasing pressures to raise student achievement in countries around the world, the quality of teacher education and teacher learning has come to the forefront of the educational agenda. in the united states, professional development consumes approximately $18 billion annually of education budgets in accordance with this focus on strengthening the teaching force, yet teachers are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the learning opportunities presented to them (bcg, 2014). similarly, researchers in the field lament that these professional development experiences are “woefully inadequate…fragmented, intellectually superficial, and do not take into account what we know about how teachers learn” (borko, 2004, p. 3). despite this, teachers are increasingly electing to pursue national board certification, which makes it worthy of study not just in the context of what the experience offers, but also the how with its place in the greater complex system of teaching and learning. handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 16 viewed from this approach, these findings suggest that the numerous dynamic forces detailed in this study—the relationships, partnerships, structures, and policies—interact in various patterns and pathways that can potentially support effective teacher professional development. in this nuanced examination of nbc, driven by the voices of teachers themselves, researchers elucidate the complexities in education and offer some of the most pressing considerations from the perspective of members of the workforce. while these findings may not serve as characteristics to guarantee effective professional development, by describing the overlapping and interconnected relations and patterns in this study, authors point to the need for broader conceptualization, greater cohesion, and more strategic integration of teacher learning in practice and education policy, as called for by other researchers (darling-hammond, 2014; keay 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(2017, january 10). more teachers seek national certification. education week. https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/01/11/more-teachers-seek-nationalcertification.html https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/01/11/more-teachers-seek-national-certification.html https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/01/11/more-teachers-seek-national-certification.html handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 22 appendix survey of national board certified teachers 1) in what state did you achieve national board certification? 2) in what state are you currently employed? 3) which term best describes your school? a) rural (school is located in a small town/country) b) urban (school is located in the city) c) suburban (school is located within driving distance of a city) 4) what grade level do you teach? select all that apply. a) kindergarten b) 1st grade c) 2nd grade d) 3rd grade e) 4th grade f) 5th grade g) 6th grade h) 7th grade i) 8th grade j) 9th grade k) 10th grade l) 11th grade m) 12th grade 5) how long have you been teaching? 6) which term best describes you? a) traditional education b) graduate c) lateral entry graduate 7) what year did you certify? 8) what national board certificate subject area do you currently hold? a) art b) career and technical education c) english as a new language d) english language arts e) exceptional needs specialist f) generalist g) health education h) library media i) literacy: reading language arts j) mathematics k) mathematics l) music m) physical education n) school counseling o) science p) social studies – history handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 23 q) world languages other than english other: 9) select a development area for the certificate you hold. a) adolescence and young adulthood b) early adolescence c) early adolescence through young adulthood d) early and middle childhood e) early childhood f) early childhood through young adulthood g) middle childhood for questions 9-29, consider your teaching prior to pursuing national board certification and after the nb process. rate yourself both before the certification process and after the certification process using the given scale: strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly disagree. 10) i am dedicated to making knowledge accessible to all students. i believe all students can learn. 11) i treat students equitably. i recognize the individual differences that distinguish my students from one another and take into account for these differences in my practice. 12) i understand how students develop and learn. 13) i respect the cultural and family differences students bring to their classroom. 14) i am also concerned with the development of character and civic responsibility. 15) i have mastery over the subject(s) i teach. i have a deep understanding of the history, structure and real-world applications of the subject(s). 16) i have skill and experience in teaching my content area, and i am very familiar with the skills gaps and preconceptions students may bring to the subject. 17) i am able to use diverse instructional strategies to teach for understanding. 18) i deliver effective instruction. i move fluently through a range of instructional techniques, keeping students motivated, engaged and focused. 19) i know how to engage students to ensure a disciplined learning environment, and how to organize instruction to meet instructional goals. 20) i know how to assess the progress of individual students as well as the class as a whole. 21) i use multiple methods for measuring student growth and understanding, and i can clearly explain student performance to parents. 22) i model what it means to be an educated person. i read, i question, i create, and i am willing to try new things. 23) i am familiar with learning theories and instructional strategies and stay abreast of current issues in american education. 24) i critically examine my practice on a regular basis to deepen knowledge, expand my repertoire of skills, and incorporate new findings into my practice. 25) i collaborate with others to improve student learning. 26) i am a leader and actively know how to seek and build partnerships with community groups and businesses. 27) i work with other professionals on instructional policy, curriculum development, and staff development. handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 24 28) i can evaluate school progress and the allocation of resources in order to meet state and local education objectives. 29) i know how to work collaboratively with parents to engage them productively in the work of the school. for questions 30-41, please respond yes or no and explain as indicated. 30) why did you choose to pursue national board certification? 31) what support did you receive while pursuing national board certification? 32) have you renewed? yes no 33) if not, do you plan to renew? yes no 34) explain your answer to question 33. 35) does your district financially support the renewal process? yes no 36) if so, how? 37) have you seen evidence of improved student learning in your classroom as a result of going through the nb process? yes no 38) explain your answer to question 37. 39) what have you learned about yourself as a teacher by going through the nb process? 1) 40) have you experienced leadership opportunities as a result of the nb process? yes no 40) explain your answer to question 40. handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 25 author notes laura k. handler university of north carolina at charlotte laura.handler@uncc.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3396-6392 teresa m. petty university of north carolina at charlotte tmpetty@uncc.edu amy j. good university of north carolina at charlotte agood5@uncc.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9557-1495 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3396-6392 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9557-1495 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 26, issue 1 may 02, 2025 issn 1099-839x a comparative study of health, school performance and wellbeing in perúvian school children and adolescents who meditate lee fergusson university of southern queensland, toowoomba, and maharishi vedic research institute, gold coast, australia javier ortiz cabrejos instituto maharishi de ciencia y tecnología del perú, lima, perú anna bonshek maharishi vedic research institute, gold coast, australia abstract: our prior research with indigenous school children and adolescents in perú, often in remote high-altitude andean locations, mostly centers on an exploration of health and school performance and their relation to the practice of transcendental meditation, a natural and easy-tolearn technique for mental and physiological rest and stress reduction. we have established that higher levels of health and school performance are associated with regularity of meditation practice. however, most attempts to identify a causal link between the two have been deferred until more reliable data become available. the present cross-sectional study seeks to build on these earlier findings in three ways: first, we have expanded the variable range from health and school performance to include personal well-being as a measure of holistic student development; second, we compare educational outcomes at three new schools in cusco, huancayo, and acomayo (n = 248) with normative data (n = 610) from five other schools in perú and with sample international educational settings; and third, using multiple linear regression, we endeavor to establish preliminary evidence of a possible causal link between the regularity with which students practice transcendental meditation (y) and physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance, and personal well-being (x). the preliminary results mainly support, and in some cases strengthen, our earlier findings about the relationship of transcendental meditation to health and school performance, and now include results for personal well-being. we conclude that controlled, longitudinal research on meditation, health, and well-being may be warranted in primary and secondary school settings in perú. keywords: health, school performance, well-being, perú, school children and adolescents, transcendental meditation fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 2 citation: fergusson, l., ortiz cabrejos, j., & bonshek, a. (2025). a comparative study of health, school performance and well-being in perúvian school children and adolescents who meditate. current issues in education, 26(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2281 accepted: 03/31/2025 a comparative study of health, school performance and well-being in perúvian school children and adolescents who meditate this exploratory study is part of a broader research program in perú that spans the pre-, peri-, and post-pandemic periods, focusing on the health and well-being of students, teachers, parents, orphans, and caregivers who practice the transcendental meditation technique for personal and social development (e.g., fergusson et al., 2020; 2021a; 2023a; 2023b). rather than seeking probative value, this line of research emphasizes confirmatory and predictive insights. our continuing examination of these topics now seeks to analyze data from 248 primary and secondary school children and adolescents at three new perú schools to compare results to previous findings from five other schools (n = 610) and several diverse international educational settings. the purpose of the study is to determine whether these new data provide enough reliable evidence to undertake further longitudinal research related to meditation, education and well-being, particularly with indigenous aymara and quechua populations who make up 27% of the country’s population (bullock et al., 2021). this study builds on a growing body of evidence about the potential value to students practicing meditation as part of their school curriculum, and is supported by a significant corpus of international empirical research in educational settings beyond the borders of perú, for example, in the work of conti et al. (2022), nidich et al. (2011), and travis et al. (2009). while an exhaustive critical analysis of this evidence is unnecessary here, a brief summary of it will contextualize our present endeavor. literature review wellness and stress-reduction programs in schools the integration into school curricula of various wellness techniques for coping with stress, and for mental, physical, and social improvement, is not new (e.g., shapiro et al., 2016). over the last five decades, research suggests that at least some of these initiatives may benefit some students in reducing stress and anxiety, developing cognitive function, enhancing interstudent relations, and boosting academic performance. although the most dominant approach to stress management in education is cognitive behavioral therapy (cbt), such as anti-stress training (ast) and cognitive restructuring (shapiro et al., 2016), school-based mindfulness training (sbmt) and mindfulness-based stress reduction (mbsr) programs have become increasingly popular in school mental health initiatives because they have shown to reduce stress and promote well-being (marshall et al., 2024; vuijk et al., 2024), addressing more than the cognitive challenges associated with adolescence. yet, the evidence base remains mixed. in a study involving 3,678 students in the u.k., kuyken et al. (2022) found that sbmt was no more effective than teaching-as-usual in https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2281 fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 3 managing students’ mental health. a larger follow-up study with 8,376 students revealed that sbmt produced slightly worse outcomes in terms of depression and well-being, although the differences were “small and not clinically relevant” (montero-marin et al., 2022, p. 171). the authors further noted that sbmt might be contraindicated for students with existing or emerging mental health concerns, and that increased exposure did not necessarily yield better outcomes. other meditation-like initiatives have been evaluated as well. for example, stressoff strategies combines cognitive behavioral techniques (e.g., cognitive restructuring, progressive muscle relaxation) with mindfulness practices (e.g., present-moment awareness and acceptance) to improve students’ willingness to engage in stress-reduction activities. research showed that this approach increased students’ willingness to participate in stress reduction (shapiro et al., 2016). similarly, research on the healthy high school (hhs), implemented with over 2,000 students, found that stress prevention was more appreciated by students with lower stress levels, raising questions about how to best engage those who may benefit the most (bonnesen et al., 2020). transcendental meditation and contemplative education among the first and most publicized examples of contemplative education (waters et al., 2015) was the introduction of the transcendental meditation technique to u.s. secondary schools in the early 1970s and its subsequent implementation in schools around the world through the david lynch foundation (conti et al., 2022). the technique is taught in four, onehour group sessions and involves the easy and unforced use of a specific sound called a ‘mantra.’ it has been described as a simple and effortless mental procedure that allows the conscious mind to relax and experience a state of deep silence along with a corresponding level of deep physiological rest (schneider et al., 2024). the technique requires no changes in lifestyle or beliefs, with students practicing it for 10–15 minutes in their classroom at the beginning and end of the school day. as noted by vela valenzuela et al. (2022), this experience is associated with “a unique state of restful alertness and increased brain wave coherence” as well as “improved efficiency and coherence of brain functioning during cognitive tasks outside the practice” (p. 102). this observed state of inner peacefulness arsing from transcendental meditation is said to serve as preparation for more dynamic and successful action in daily life (schneider et al., 2024). waters et al. (2015) reviewed a number of school meditation programs with respect to wellbeing, social competence, and academic achievement, and concluded “transcendental meditation programs had a higher percentage of significant effects than mindfulness-based and other types of meditation programs” (p. 103). empirical research on the effectiveness of transcendental meditation is significant, with more than 650 published studies in peer-reviewed journals over the past five decades (dillbeck, 2020), many in top international scientific journals. of the many findings associated with transcendental meditation, we highlight the ones that are most relevant to this study. first, research has documented reductions in stress and anxiety and increased well-being, with the practice apparently impacting biological stress system functioning (avvenuti et al., 2020; klimes-dougan et al., 2020). second, the approach also has led to reduced depression, anxiety, stress, and sleep disturbance (azizoddin et al., 2021). third, high school students in mexico, for example, benefited from increased intellectual ability, personal well-being, and academic performance (vela valenzuela et al., 2022). lastly, research found improvements in mental health and well-being (nestor et al., 2023). fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 4 the latin american context and the perúvian case despite this robust international literature, the practice of transcendental meditation in schools has yet to be thoroughly investigated in latin america generally, and in perú specifically, hence the need for extending our current research program to measure new variables in other schools with different cohorts of students to aid in its evaluation by educators and school administrators. as waters et al. (2015) argued, “schools need reliable evidence about the outcomes of meditation programs before they consider if and how such programmes can influence learning agendas, curriculum and timetables” (p. 103). through this study, we aim to extend our longitudinal research program and contribute to a growing international interest in context-sensitive, non-pharmacological strategies for enhancing student well-being. our work is guided by the following four research questions: rq1: how do self-reported scores of physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance, and personal well-being in perúvian school children and adolescents who practice transcendental meditation compare with normative data from a larger sample of perúvian students who meditate and others who do not? rq2: are physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance, and personal well-being related to each other in perúvian school children and adolescents who meditate? rq3: is there any evidence to indicate that the regularity with which school children and adolescents meditate is related to physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance, and personal well-being? and rq4: do these data suggest controlled, longitudinal research of meditation, health, and personal well-being may be warranted in perú? method participating schools and students a total of 248 students participated in this study. students were convenience sampled primary (n = 143) and secondary (n = 105) school children and adolescents who practice transcendental meditation (mage = 11.1 years; sdage = 1.28 years) in three perúvian schools: institución educativa sol radiante; gotitas de rocío; and institución educativa la merced. across the three schools, students received transcendental meditation instruction in small groups (i.e., 30 students per group at the first two schools and 25 at the third school). at both i.e. sol radiante and gotitas de rocío, 150 students participated out of approximately 350 enrolled. at i.e. la merced, 150 students participated out of an estimated 200. table 1 provides descriptive data on these students and schools. school no. 1: institución educativa sol radiante from i.e. sol radiante, 82 primary school students participated (mage = 11.1 years; sdage = 0.70 years). located in the municipality of santiago, a province of cusco, sol radiante is a government-run, co-educational primary school (grades 1–6) located at an altitude of approximately 3,400m. the school seeks to be a leader in education by providing comprehensive high-level academic training to the students of santiago and seeks to use creative and innovative teaching to promote thinking which ensures students will have a range of professional options in fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 5 the future as well as cultivate virtues in them that contribute to the development of the cusco region. school no. 2: gotitas de rocío from gotitas de rocío, 105 primary and secondary students participated (mage = 11.5 years; sdage = 1.65 years). a private primary (grades 1–6) and secondary school (grades 1–3) in san carlos, huancayo, gotitas de rocío is located at an altitude of 3,250m in the central highlands of perú in a fertile basin drained by the mantaro river. huancayo is the capital city of junín region, in central perú, and is linked to the capital lima via the trans-andean ferrocarril central andino, one of the world’s highest train routes. san carlos’ parque de la identidad huanca pays homage to the region’s pre-incan culture, and its neoclassical catedral de huancayo overlooks the central plaza de la constitución. school no. 3: institución educativa la merced from i.e. la merced, 61 primary school students participated (mage = 10.9 years; sdage = 1.07 years). la merced is a primary school (grades 1–6), located in acomayo in the cusco region at an altitude of 3,220 m three hours from cusco, the capital city. acomayo is the capital of acomayo province with a population of about 5,000 people. the normative data of school children and adolescents presented in tables 2, 4 and 5 are the average results from students who meditate at five schools in perú: 1) emblematica cesar vallejo in lima (n = 280); 2) i.e. privada prescott in puno (in two cohorts: n = 53 and n = 54); 3) i.e. colegio santa maría reyna in callao (n = 70); 4) colegio tomasa ttito condemayta in acamayo (n = 117); and 5) hogar de niñas virgen de fatima de chejoña in puno (n = 36), for a total of n = 610 children and adolescents (fergusson et al., 2022a, 2022b, 2023c). the published sources of other international normative data have been cited in table 6. table 1 descriptive statistics by school, gender, age, and grade level school total girls boys 4th grade 5th grade 6th grade 1st grade 2nd grade 3rd grade (prim) (prim) (prim) (sec) (sec) (sec) i.e. sol n = 82 41 41 — 39 43 — — — radiante 33% 50% 50% — 48% 52% — — — mage = 11.1 11.1 11.1 — 10.6 11.6 — — — sdage = 0.70 0.70 0.70 — 0.48 0.54 — — — gotitas n = 105 52 53 44 27 14 8 4 8 de rocío 42% 50% 50% 42% 25% 13% 8% 4% 8% mage = 11.5 10.8 12.2 9.7 10.9 11.7 12.9 14.2 15.0 sdage = 1.65 1.46 1.84 0.46 0.32 0.47 0.35 0.50 0.53 i.e. la n = 61 27 34 16 17 28 — — — merced 25% 44% 56% 26% 28% 46% — — — mage = 10.9 10.7 11.0 9.6 10.7 11.8 — — — sdage = 1.07 1.03 1.09 0.50 0.70 0.59 — — — fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 6 total n = 248 120 128 60 83 85 8 4 8 100% 48% 52% 24% 34% 34% 3% 2% 3% mage = 11.2 10.9 11.4 9.65 10.7 11.7 12.9 14.2 15.0 sdage = 1.13 1.06 1.21 0.48 0.50 0.53 0.35 0.50 0.53 research design this study used a cross-sectional, post-transcendental meditation research design, meaning all measures were completed after students had learned and practiced meditation for approximately six months. participants learned transcendental meditation in june 2023 and practiced it together thereafter in their classrooms at the beginning of each school day. then, they completed two test instruments under conditions of information privacy in single classroom sittings in november and december 2023. research instruments two test instruments were used in this study. first, the test de autoevaluación de meditación transcendental (i.e., self-assessment test of transcendental meditation) was developed in perú by instituto maharishi de ciencia y tecnologia del perú to measure selfreported levels of physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, and school performance as a result of practicing transcendental meditation, as well as the regularity of meditation practice. the design and implementation procedures of this paper-and-pencil test have been thoroughly documented in fergusson et al. (2021b; 2022a). for the purposes of this study, we defined and measured the following domains: physical health as a student’s level of tiredness, energy, sickness, quality of sleep, and athletic ability; cognitive health as a student’s capacity for memory, comprehension, and problem-solving ability; emotional health as a a student’s level of aggression, affective relations, friendliness, and happiness at school; and school performance as a student’s satisfaction with their school and schooling, getting along with classmates, academic achievement, and truancy. this spanish-language questionnaire consisted of 47 statements, requiring a self-reported rating on a 1–10 likert-type scale, with 1–3 (definitely disagree), 4–5 disagree), 6–7 (agree), and 8–10 (definitely agree). scores of < 5.50 meant that a student definitely disagrees or disagrees with the statement that transcendental meditation salutarily affected their health or school performance, while scores of ≥ 5.50 indicated a student agrees or definitely agrees with the statement. physical health was measured by 13 items (score range: 13–130); cognitive health by 10 items (10–100); emotional health by 12 items (12–120); and school performance by 12 items (12–120). average scores for each of the four health categories were normalized by scale maximization to 10 (i.e., total score for each category/number of items). participants were also asked to rank the regularity with which they practice transcendental meditation, using a five-point scale: 5 (the recommended routine of twice a day), 4 (once a day), 3 (from time-to-time), 2 (when required), and 1 (never). a recent psychometric study has revalidated the instrument, revising the original 47 items into 43, which were grouped into five newly identified latent factors, and are available in spanish, thai, portuguese, italian, nepali, and english versions (fergusson et al., 2024). second, the personal wellbeing index (pwi) was used to measure subjective or personal well-being, following guidelines outlined by the instrument’s developer for administration to fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 7 children and adolescents (cummins, 2005). although well-being has been conceptualized in many ways––with tomyn and cummins (2011) identifying over 1,000 instruments designed to measure it––this study adopted a definition of personal well-being as an individual’s perceived level of life satisfaction across key domains: standard of living, health, achievement, personal relations, safety, sense of community, religion or spirituality, and the future. five variations of the pwi have been documented in the literature. the most common version includes seven questions (q2–q8 below), as used in studies by alfaro et al. (2016), casas, sarriera et al. (2012), lau et al. (2005), and schutz et al. (2022). an extended version includes these seven questions plus two hybrid questions on satisfaction with school and management of time (casas, bello et al., 2012). in another version, the two additional hybrid questions focus on satisfaction with self and time management (casas, sarriera et al., 2012). an eight-item version (q1–q8 below) appears in the work of pérez-belmonte et al. (2021) and casas et al. (2007). finally, versions designed specifically for children include seven or eight questions, as noted by anand and sharma (2011) and tomyn and cummins (2011). both the children and adult versions of the pwi have been psychometrically validated (tomyn et al., 2013). across the literature, these versions have been inconsistently labeled, including designations such as pwi, pwi-a, pwi-7, pwi-9, pwiadp, pwi8adp, pwi-sc, and pwi-scb. most use an 11-point likert-type scale (0–10), with total score ranges varying from 0–70, 0–80, or 0–90, depending on the number of questions included. the spanish-language version used in this study closely aligns with the eight-question version (excluding q1) reported by bullock et al. (2021), and includes the following nine questions, each rated on an 11-point likert-type scale: q1. thinking about your own life and personal circumstances, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole? (pensando en tu propia vida y circunstancias personales, ¿qué tan satisfecho estás con tu vida como entero?) q2. how satisfied are you with your standard of living? (¿cuán satisfecha/satisfecho estás con tu nivel de vida?) q3. how satisfied are you with your health? (¿cuán satisfecha/satisfecho estás con tu salud?) q4. how satisfied are you with what you have achieved in your life? (¿cuán satisfecha/satisfecho estás con lo que has conseguido en tu vida?) q5. how satisfied are you with your personal relationships? (¿cuán satisfecha/satisfecho estás con tu relaciones personales?) q6. how satisfied are you with how safe you feel? (¿cuán satisfecha/satisfecho estás con tu seguridad?) q7. how satisfied are you with feeling part of your community? (¿cuán satisfecha/satisfecho estás con tu sentimiento de formar parte de una comunidad?) q8. how satisfied are you with your future security? (¿cuán satisfecha/satisfecho estás con tu seguradid futura?) q9. how satisfied are you with your spirituality or religion? (¿cuán satisfecha/satisfecho estás con tu espiritualidad o religión?) we specifically used the nine-question, rather than the seven-question, version designed for children (i.e., pwi-sc) for the following reasons. first, a variation of it (q2–q9) was recently fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 8 used successfully by bullock et al. (2021) in perú with indigenous school children as young as 11 years. second, sarriera et al. (2014) suggested the addition of q9 and lai et al. (2018) psychometrically determined the value of including it with the original (q2–q8) seven questions. lastly, alfaro et al. (2016) found only weak correlations between questions on the children’s (pwi-sc) version. finding that q1 correlated to the total pwi scale at r = .58, p < 0.01, casas, sarriera et al. (2012) added it to the original pwi to account for holistic personal well-being or what they called ‘overall life satisfaction’, and thus, along with the addition of q9 by sarriera et al. (2014), the nine-question version used in the present study was created. data analysis for purposes of clarity, participating students (n = 248) were collectively referred to in this study as belonging to the three perúvian schools and comparison data (n = 610) belonging to the normative perúvian schools. in addition to standard descriptive measures, including tests of normality (i.e., skewness and kurtosis) and reliability (i.e., cronbach’s alpha and split-halves), multivariate analysis of variance (manova) was conducted to compare data from the three perúvian schools with that of the normative perúvian schools to answer rq1. where necessary for comparative purposes, scale maximisation conversion (%sm) was performed to account for scores on different versions of the pwi, and tukey’s post hoc honestly significant differences (hsd) were calculated to determine inter-school characteristics. to answer rq2 and rq3, pearson product moment correlation coefficients were calculated. to answer rq4, multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine the predictive power of regularity of meditation to health and well-being outcomes and to determine whether longitudinal research may be warranted. all measures were tested at the two-tailed, 99.9% (p < 0.001) confidence level. we applied this more stringent confidence level because of arguments about type i errors and replicability advanced by benjamin et al. (2018). ethics this research was approved in may 2023 by the research ethics approval committee of maharishi vedic research institute (mvri) in australia, in accordance with both mvri’s code of research practice and procedure and the australian code for the responsible conduct of research and was conducted under approval number mvri-2023-31. the project was countenanced in advance by the administrators of i.e. sol radiante, gotitas de rocío, and i.e. la merced (instituto maharishi de ciencia y tecnología del perú, 2022). school administrators provided written informed consent on behalf of parents and student participants under the terms of their teaching and research agreements with instituto maharishi de ciencia y tecnología del perú. results descriptive statistics skewness and kurtosis variable items ranged from skew[–0.07 to –1.07] (average skew[–0.39]) for physical health; skew[–0.77 to –1.16] (average skew[–0.84]) for cognitive health; skew[–0.55 to –1.16] fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 9 (average skew[–0.62]) for emotional health; skew[0.04 to –1.28] (average skew[–0.47]) for school performance; and skew[–0.79 to –1.69] (average skew[1.00]) for personal well-being. kurtosis of variable items ranged from kurt[–0.36 to 2.49 (average kurt[–0.49]) for physical health; kurt[–0.19 to –2.49] (average kurt[0.80]) for cognitive health; kurt[–0.07 to –1.58] (average kurt[0.08]) for emotional health; kurt[0.12 to 11.40] (average kurt[0.30]) for school performance; and kurt[–0.15 to 3.65] (average kurt[1.45]) for personal well-being. in the results reported by casas, sarriera et al. (2012) from brazil, chile and spain, the skewness of pwi scores ranged from –1.02 to –1.88 and kurtosis from 0.98 to 4.11, which are comparable to our findings. while casas, sarriera et al. pointed out that skewness and kurtosis values are considered acceptable for statistical analysis within the range of −7.0 to 7.0, following cohen and cohen (1983) and west et al. (1995), more recent guidance has recommended narrower thresholds. hair et al. (2022) suggested values between −2.0 and 2.0 are deemed acceptable, and values between −1.0 and 1.0 are considered excellent and, therefore, preferable. in this study, seven of the 57 total items exceeded the acceptable range for kurtosis— specifically, one item measuring physical health, three measuring school performance, and three pwi items. however, the average skewness and kurtosis values for the remaining 50 variables fell within either the acceptable or excellent range. cronbach’s alpha for this cohort of three perúvian schools, cronbach’s alpha coefficients indicated internal consistencies of cα = 0.85 for physical health, cα = 0.84 for cognitive health, cα = 0.87 for emotional health, cα = 0.85 for school performance, and cα = 0.78 for personal well-being. in all cases, cronbach’s alpha were in the ‘good’ internal consistency range (kennedy, 2022). the average reliability score for physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, and school performance (cα = 0.85) was somewhat lower than that observed in normative data of 550 meditating students in perú, as reported earlier (fergusson et al., 2022a). however, personal well-being results demonstrated comparable scale reliability to normative data presented by lau et al. (2005) for adults in hong kong (cα = 0.80) and australia (cα = 0.73), but are slightly lower than data presented by casas, sarriera et al. (2012) for children and adolescents in spain (cα = 0.84), chile (cα = 0.83), and brazil (cα = 0.81). split-half reliability reliability coefficients were all significant at p < 0.001: r = 0.73 for physical health; 0.67 for cognitive health; 0.74 for emotional health; 0.70 for school performance; and 0.65 for personal well-being. these values represented ‘good’ internal reliability (setyaedhi, 2024). table 2 presents the means and standard deviations by school and by normative perúvian schools’ data for physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance, and personal well-being to help answer rq1. there was a noticeable difference between the average of the three perúvian schools and the normative perúvian schools on some measures, but standard deviations were mostly consistent across the data set. some variation in means between gotitas de rocío and the other two schools was observed for physical health, cognitive health, emotional health and school performance. however, gotitas de rocío showed consistency with the normative perúvian schools’ data. in contrast, there was general consistency in personal well-being scores among students across all three perúvian schools. fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 10 at the time of this study, no normative data were available on the personal well-being of other perúvian school students who practice meditation and, therefore, no comparison is presented in table 2. as shown in table 3, a manova confirmed a significant difference between the three perúvian schools and the normative perúvian schools’ data across all variables. but age and gender did not contribute to this difference. for example, when included as a covariate in the analysis of physical health, age was not a significant factor (f = 0.32, p = 0.57), and gender was also non-significant (f = 2.75, p = 0.10). table 2 means and standard deviations for health, school performance, and personal well-being at three perúvian schools and normative perúvian schools measure i.e. sol gotitas i.e. la three perúvian normative perúvian radiante de rocío merced schools schools physical health m = 7.46 m = 6.52 m = 7.91 m = 7.29 m = 5.98 sd = 1.5 sd = 1.6 sd = 1.4 sd = 1.5 sd = 1.2 cognitive health m = 7.68 m = 6.90 m = 8.01 m = 7.53 m = 6.46 sd = 1.3 sd = 1.7 sd = 1.5 sd = 1.5 sd = 1.6 emotional health m = 7.55 m = 6.80 m = 8.32 m = 7.55 m = 6.48 sd = 1.5 sd = 1.6 sd = 1.4 sd = 1.5 sd = 1.7 school performance m = 7.68 m = 6.65 m = 8.32 m = 7.66 m = 6.55 sd = 1.5 sd = 1.7 sd = 1.4 sd = 1.5 sd = 1.6 personal well-being m = 68.1 m = 70.2 m = 75.8 m = 71.3 — sd = 12.2 sd = 11.4 sd = 13.1 sd = 12.2 — table 3 multivariate analysis of variance for health and school performance at three perúvian schools vs. normative perúvian schools measure ss df ms f p physical health 41478 3 13826 29.3 <0.001 residual 360228 764 472 — — cognitive health 18830 3 6277 21.3 <0.001 residual 224866 764 294 — — emotional health 19104 3 6368 16.5 <0.001 residual 294744 764 387 — — school performance 19379 3 6460 16.3 <0.001 residual 303267 764 397 — — fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 11 table 4 post hoc tests of difference results for health, school performance, and personal well-being at three perúvian and normative perúvian schools measure and school gotitas de rocío i.e. la merced normative peruvian schools physical health i.e. sol radiante q = 3.82* q = 1.63† q = 6.35* gotitas de rocío — q = 5.21* q = 1.79† i.e. la merced — — q = 7.61* cognitive health i.e. sol radiante q = 3.07† q = 1.16† q = 5.58* gotitas de rocío — q = 4.03* q = 1.96† i.e. la merced — — q = 6.34* emotional health i.e. sol radiante q = 3.10† q = 2.76† q = 3.23* gotitas de rocío — q = 5.74* q = 0.69† i.e. la merced — — q = 6.28* school performance i.e. sol radiante q = 4.19* q = 2.29† q = 3.05† gotitas de rocío — q = 6.25* q = 2.39† i.e. la merced — — q = 5.54* personal well-being i.e. sol radiante q = 1.14† q = 3.74* — i.e. la merced q = 2.28† — — † not significant; * p < 0.001 post hoc results presented in table 4 identified where significant differences occurred within the data set. for example, gotitas de rocío did not differ from the normative perúvian schools on any variable, nor from sol radiante on cognitive health and emotional health, but it did differ from la merced on all variables. gotitas de rocío did not differ from sol radiante or le merced on personal well-being. la merced did not differ from sol radiante on any variable except personal well-being. sol radiante, in turn, differed from the normative perúvian schools on physical health and cognitive health, but not on emotional health or school performance. across the comparative data sets, nearly half (13 out of 27) showed statistically significant differences between students from the three perúvian schools and those from the normative perúvian schools, with students from the former generally scoring higher. there was no evidence that age played a part in these personal well-being results (e.g., 72.8 for 4th grade students vs. 74.3 for 6th grade students, q = 1.15, p = 0.85; 61.8 for 1st grade vs. 68.4 for 3rd grade students, q = 0.66, p = 0.98), and gender also did not appear to play a role. another way of comparing these data was to examine the percentage of students who rated their health and school performance either unfavorably (i.e., disagreeing with a statement) or favorably (i.e., agreeing with a statement) as a result of practicing transcendental meditation. table 5 presents the percentage of students who definitely disagreed/disagreed with health and school performance statements and the percentage who agreed/definitely agreed for both the three perúvian schools and the normative perúvian schools. fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 12 table 5 number and percentage of students reporting agreement or disagreement on health and school performance items at three perúvian and normative perúvian schools school scale i.e. sol gotitas i.e. la three normative response radiante de rocío merced peruvian peruvian schools schools physical health definitely disagree/ 10/82 26/105 7/61 43/248 36/610 disagree 12% 25% 12% 17% 6% agree/ definitely 72/82 79/105 54/61 205/248 574/610 agree 88% 75% 88% 83% 95% cognitive health definitely disagree/ 4/82 22/105 2/61 28/248 203/610 disagree 5% 21% 12% 17% 33% agree/ definitely 78/82 83/105 59/61 220/248 407/610 agree 95% 79% 97% 89% 67% emotional health definitely disagree/ 6/82 26/105 3/61 35/248 162/610 disagree 7% 25% 5% 14% 27% agree/ definitely 76/82 79/105 58/61 213/248 448/610 agree 93% 75% 95% 86% 73% school performance definitely disagree/ 6/82 34/105 5/61 45/248 156/610 disagree 7% 32% 8% 18% 26% agree/ definitely 76/82 71/105 56/61 203/248 454/610 agree 93% 68% 92% 82% 74% consistent with the findings presented in table 2, students in three perúvian schools were generally more likely to agree that their health and school performance had improved as a result of transcendental meditation compared to those in the normative perúvian schools. however, in all cases, more students in both cohorts agreed than disagreed that the practice had a positive effect. for example, 89% of students in the three perúvian schools agreed or definitely agreed that their cognitive health had improved as a result of practicing transcendental meditation, compared to 67% of students in the normative perúvian schools. similarly, 82% in the three perúvian schools agreed or definitely agreed that their school performance improved, compared to 74% in the normative perúvian schools. table 6 presents comparative personal well-being data from three perúvian schools and schools in australia, brazil, chile, perú, and spain to help answer rq1. personal well-being results for students from the three perúvian schools were equivalent to other indigenous students fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 13 in perú (bullock et al., 2021) and comparable to within one-half sd-unit for similar aged students in australia (tomyn & cummins, 2011), brazil (schutz et al., 2022), and chile (alfaro et al., 2016). personal well-being results were also between one-half and one sd-unit for similar students in brazil, chile and spain (casas, sarriera et al., 2012) but were dissimilar to other students in spain (casas, bello et al., 2012). table 6 descriptive statistics for three perúvian schools, other schools in perú, and normative data from other countries for personal well-being school and author(s) sample age pwi sd pwi scale location (date) size (n) range raw score maximization (years) (%sm) total average of three peruvian — 248 9–15 71.3 12.2 79.2 schools (peru) rural village high bullock, stumpf, school in the loreto and chang (2021) 172 11–16 — 13.6 77.7 region (peru) schools in various urban and regional tomyn & centers in victoria cummins (2011) 338 12–18 73.8 13.5 82.0 (australia) public and private primary schools in schutz, sarriera, rio grande de sol & bedin (2022) 1,787 10–12 58.0 11.4 82.9 (brazil) undisclosed (brazil, casas, sarriera, chile, and spain) et al. (2012) 4,853 12–16 80.3 13.1 89.2 undisclosed (chile) alfaro et al. (2016) 1,096 10–12 59.8 17.7 85.4 undisclosed (spain) casas, bello, et al. (2012) 834 11–14 87.8 — 97.5 table 7 presents the correlation matrix for physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance, and personal well-being, all of which were significantly correlated at greater than 99.9% confidence level, to help answer rq2. findings indicate that student scores from three perúvian schools and normative perúvian schools for each of the three health variables, school performance, and personal well-being were correlated at p < 0.05. figure 1 presents a proto-theoretical model of the positive associations between regularity of meditation (to the left), physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance (in the centre), and personal well-being (to the right), all of which were significant at greater than the 99.9% confidence level to help answer rq3. fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 14 table 7 correlation statistics for three perúvian schools and normative perúvian schools data for health, school performance, and personal well-being schools and physical cognitive emotional school measure health health health performance three perúvian schools cognitive health r = .71* — — — emotional health r = .73* r = .71* — — school performance r = .51* r = .68* r = .84* — personal well-being r = .70* r = .50* r = .54* r = .54* normative perúvian schools cognitive health r = .74† — — — emotional health r = .72† r = .77† — — school performance r = .68† r = .77† r = .83† — † p < 0.01; * p < 0.001 data in figure 1 indicate that the regularity with which students practice transcendental meditation was positively related to physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance, and personal well-being. the association of regularity of meditation to the first four variables was the subject of earlier research by these authors in perú (fergusson et al., 2021b; 2022b). in those studies, regularity of practice was positively, albeit rather weakly, correlated to physical health (average r = 0.28; p < 0.01), cognitive health (average r = 0.37; p < 0.01), emotional health (average r = 0.34; p < 0.01), and school performance (average r = 0.34; p < 0.01). figure 1 proto-theoretical model of correlations for regularity of meditation to health, school performance, and personal well-being at three perúvian schools * p < 0.001 fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 15 in this present study, these associations were much stronger. but what cannot be determined from these data is whether regularity of practice is a reliable predictor of these outcomes. to help answer rq4, results presented in table 8 indicate when regularity of meditation was used as a predictor variable (y) in multiple linear regression, whether increases in physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance, and personal well-being outcomes (x) were statistically likely. data in table 8 indicate they were at a reasonably high level of confidence. only the regularity with which students practice transcendental meditation predicted higher levels of physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance and personal well-being. school, gender, age, and grade levels did not do so. for example, the school a student attended (t = 1.39, p = 0.21) and their grade level (t = –1.78, p = 0.11) did not predict physical health, and neither school (t = 2.03, p = 0.20) nor grade level (t = –2.01, p = 0.17) predicted personal well-being, even when weighted for gender. table 8 multiple linear regression results for regularity of meditation at three perúvian schools as a predictor of health, school performance, and personal well-being measure r2 estimate se t p physical health intercept 0.27 62.51 3.41 18.32 — regularity of meditation 9.14 0.95 9.57 <0.001 cognitive health intercept 0.20 54.0 2.69 20.0 — regularity of meditation 6.02 0.75 7.98 <0.001 emotional health intercept 0.25 61.8 3.18 19.4 — regularity of meditation 8.11 0.89 9.11 <0.001 school performance intercept 0.31 57.6 3.16 18.2 — regularity of meditation 9.28 0.88 10.5 <0.001 personal well-being intercept 0.08 60.9 2.24 27.1 — regularity of meditation 2.96 0.67 4.71 <0.001 discussion to determine how self-reported scores of physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance, and personal well-being by perúvian students who practice transcendental meditation compare with those of normative students who also meditate and other children who do not, we have presented table 2. from these data, we conclude there are some differences between the three schools and normative data. for example, student scores of physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, and school performance from two schools— i.e. sol radiante and i.e. la merced—were statistically the same but generally higher than other meditating students for health and school performance when compared to students from gotitas de roció and normative schools, but student scores from gotitas de roció were essentially the same as students from the other schools. the average scores for these variables of the three perúvian schools were generally higher than the normative perúvian schools. fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 16 nevertheless, students at the three perúvian schools personally rated their experiences of practicing transcendental meditation as positive: 83% agreed or definitely agreed it improved their physical health, 89% agreed or definitely agreed it improved their cognitive health, 86% agreed or definitely agreed it improved their emotional health, and 82% agreed or definitely agreed it improved their school performance. these outcomes are on average 12% lower than normative perúvian schools for physical health (83% vs. 95%) but are on average 17% higher than normative perúvian schools for cognitive health (89% vs. 67%), emotional health (86% vs. 73%), and school performance (82% vs. 74%). furthermore, these findings are largely consistent with prior international research which suggests practice of transcendental meditation has a salutary effect on stress, quality of sleep, anxiety, depression, intellectual ability, and academic performance (e.g., avvenuti et al., 2020; azizoddin et al., 2021; klimes-dougan et al., 2020; nestor, lawson, & fischer, 2023; vela valenzuela et al., 2022), all of which have been directly or indirectly measured by the test de autoevaluación de meditación transcendental. the personal well-being comparison of indigenous students in our study to students in other settings is generally lower by 11% (compared to students in australia, brazil, chile and spain). comparison to students in bullock et al.’s (2021) study, who were sampled from a rural perúvian village school (reached by boat in the amazon forest in a remote part of the loreto region) is perhaps most valid given the similarity of educational setting. in that comparison, both cohorts self-reported essentially the same levels of personal well-being (79.2% in our study vs. 77.7% in the rural village school). from this, we conclude the present study does not provide enough conclusive evidence to support the proposition that children and adolescents who meditate have elevated levels of personal well-being. scores for personal well-being from the three perúvian schools were mostly the same as other schools in perú and somewhat lower than schools elsewhere in the world, thereby answering rq1. being cross-sectional, this finding does not account for pre-transcendental meditation scores of physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance, or personal well-being by perúvian students at i.e. sol radiante, i.e. la merced, and gotitas de roció and hence there is no way of knowing if the present levels represent change. our earlier research with girls of a similar age in perú (fergusson et al., 2023c) did indicate that after three months of meditation practice, personal well-being increased from 42.8% to 55.1% (f = 11.08, p = .03), a statistically significant difference when compared to two similar non-meditating groups. prior research by pérez-belmonte et al. (2021) with adults found pwi scores correlate positively with compassion and satisfaction (r = 0.39; p < 0.001) and negatively with burnout (r = –0.27; p < 0.001). bullock et al. (2021) also found perúvian students with higher levels of resilience, for example, higher levels of social engagement (r = 0.40; p < 0.001) and sense of cultural citizenship (r = 0.37; p < 0.001), were more likely to score higher on the pwi. similar positive associations were observed in this study, with scores on the pwi correlating with physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, and school performance, thereby answering rq2 in the affirmative. the regularity with which perúvian school students practice transcendental meditation was correlated to physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance, and personal well-being, thereby answering rq3 in the affirmative. the strength and direction of the linear regression used to answer rq4 and presented in table 8 suggest practice of transcendental meditation (the independent variable in the regression model) predicts these outcomes (i.e., of the five dependent variables in the regression model) and is not merely associated with them. we conclude this finding provides further evidence that the practice of fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 17 transcendental meditation by children and adolescents in perú may positively influence health, school performance, and personal well-being outcomes. study limitations we have concluded that the findings from this study answer research questions at a reasonably high level of confidence, but the use of convenience sampled participants is relevant. and while convenience sampling is of value in hard-to-reach educational settings such as those in our study, subject bias (or participant reactivity, where participants change their behaviour to meet the expectations or outcomes of research) was possible, possibly affecting external validity. however, we took five steps to minimize the potential impact of subject bias on results: (1) both test instruments were administered anonymously; (2) prior to testing, participants were informed their responses would be kept confidential; (3) the earlier research to gather normative perúvian schools’ data effectively served as a pilot test to the present study; (4) study objectives were clearly communicated to both students and administrators prior to data collection; and in addition to the aforementioned steps, (5) sample size likely reduced non-representativeness because a larger sample generally provides a better chance of capturing the full range of legitimate (i.e., unbiased) student responses within any given population, thereby leading to more accurate results. we cannot be sure that other students in perú would have the same levels of physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, school performance, and personal well-being when practicing transcendental meditation as those reported here, but our goal is not not generalizability; we are concerned, like others before us, to examine under-researched indigenous communities and unique, high-altitude andean educational settings and hence nonprobabilistic sampling is appropriate. interestingly, similar to this study, none of the six studies presented for comparative purposes in table 6 used random selection. for example, bullock et al. (2021), tomyn and cummins (2011), casas, sarriera et al. (2012), and alfaro et al. (2016) used undeclared sampling techniques, which may have involved participation, and only schutz et al. (2022) and casas, bello et al. (2012) used volunteers; none used random selection. nevertheless, the potential for subject bias necessarily limits the reach and veracity of our findings. we therefore do not attempt to generalize these results to perú more widely or to other regional or international educational settings and have used them for confirmatory and predictive purposes only, not for their probative value. thus, the extent to which the evidence provided by these data could rationally help determine whether the probability of regularly practicing transcendental meditation by perúvian students results in greater health and well-being has yet to be fully determined. the use of a cross-sectional design has benefits and impediments. for example, taris et al. (2021) point out that such designs are suited to testing “relationships of interest…at a given point in time” (p. 1) but are disadvantaged by their inability to test causal relations. they go on to say that cross-sectional designs therefore typically explore antecedents (i.e., predictors), consequences (or outcomes), and moderating variables at a single point in time, as occurred in our study. in our case, due to the linear regression findings presented in table 8, the practice of transcendental meditation can be thought of as the antecedent, with health, school performance, and personal well-being as consequences. this can be inferred by the model presented in figure fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 18 1. further, school, gender, age and grade levels can be thought of as potential moderating variables. it is also reasonable to ask if assumptions driving the proto-theoretical model in figure 1 are stable across different educational settings and over time. but there is no way of knowing if this stability will show in longitudinal research, nor indeed if the localized elements and timespecific associations of the model are correct. further conceptual research, based on emergent empirical data in both perú and elsewhere over time, will be required to crystallize these assumptions and confirm the model. these two issues associated with cross-sectional research— i.e., the relationship between practice of transcendental meditation as a predictor (y) of health, school performance, and personal well-being (x) on the one hand, and stability of this relationship (if it exists) over time, on the other hand—are at the heart of this study. but the observed associations have precedent. indeed, prior randomized research has indicated practice of transcendental meditation is a reliable predictor of reduced stress and improved mental and physical health. for example, while joshi et al. (2022) reported practice of transcendental meditation by 80 health workers “did not significantly decrease acute distress [over a three-month period] compared with usual treatment,” it “significantly reduced chronic stress, particularly burnout, suggesting that [transcendental meditation] could be an effective strategy to prevent or mitigate chronic stress, and potentially burnout” (p. 1). similarly, across 18 studies (n = 1,207), transcendental meditation improved both systolic and diastolic blood pressure compared with comparison groups (schneider et al., 2022). these and other results have been more fully examined and explained by fergusson (2022). conclusion this study suggests implementation of transcendental meditation in primary and secondary schools may have a salutary impact on health, school performance and personal wellbeing. while definitive causal evidence for an increase in these variables was not within the scope of the present study, the positive association of meditation practice with each educational variable was identified, and the predictive value of meditation was also noted. moreover, the practice was reported to be easy to teach, easy to learn, easy to practice, and acceptable to school administrators, at least in perú (a majority catholic country). prior research by these authors also indicates that the introduction of transcendental meditation into a school’s curriculum has the support of parents (fergusson et al., 2021a). finally, and most importantly in conclusion, multiple linear regression indicated practice of transcendental meditation by school children and adolescents is a reliable predictor of health, school performance, and personal well-being, thereby answering rq4, suggesting further controlled, longitudinal research is warranted in perú. along with the collective findings of our previous research in perú, three final observations are important: 1) self-reported data from this study indicate an average of 85% of primary and secondary school students agreed or definitely agreed the practice of transcendental meditation was beneficial to their health and school performance; 2) clear statistical associations between practice of transcendental meditation and a range of psychophysiological benefits deemed important to education and observed in this study confirm, and indeed strengthen, our earlier findings in other settings; and 3) regularity of the practice was a predictor of these benefits. when considering programmatic innovation, the present study therefore provides futher real-world empirical evidence that transcendental meditation as an adjunct to traditional pedagogical theory and practice may be of benefit to school administrators who wish to improve learning, curricula, and other fundamental aspects of the contemporary educational experience. fergusson et al.: health & well-being in meditating peruvian youth current issues in education, 26(1) 19 references alfaro, j., guzmán, j., garcía, c., sirlopú, d., reyes, f., & varela, j. 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(1995). structural equation models with nonnormal variables: problems and remedies. in r. h. hoyle (ed.), structural equation modeling: concepts, issues, and applications (pp. 56–75). sage. author’s notes dr lee fergusson orcid: 0000-0002-1041-3760 university of southern queensland, toowoomba, and maharishi vedic research institute, gold coast, australia email: lee@maharishivedicresearch.org javier ortiz cabrejos orcid: 0000-0002-9332-0809 instituto maharishi de ciencia y tecnología del perú, lima, perú email: javierortizc1@gmail.com anna bonshek maharishi vedic research institute, gold coast, australia email: anna@maharishivedicresearch.org more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. mailto:lee@maharishivedicresearch.org mailto:javierortizc1@gmail.com mailto:anna@maharishivedicresearch.org https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ orcid: 0000-0002-9332-0809 instituto maharishi de ciencia y tecnología del perú, lima, perú pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 1 volume 21, issue 1 april 29, 2020 issn 1099-839x pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment karee e. dunn, university of tennessee denise t. airola, university of arkansas takuya hayakawa, university of tennessee abstract: in this study, teacher education students’ concerns, sense of efficacy, and anxiety related to the future use of data to drive educational decision-making were explored. in alignment with prior research with practicing teachers, this sample of pre-service teachers reported concerns (thoughts, preoccupations, and feelings) that indicate they are not interested in engaging in data driven decision-making (dddm). moreover, they had a low sense of efficacy for dddm and high levels of anxiety for dddm; further indicating that they are unlikely to adopt dddm practices. we explain these results, but we go further and propose a new way of talking about data that may mitigate some of these concerns. specifically, we propose a new paradigm for evidence-based practice in which teacher experience and intuition are deemed of equal import with data. we propose anchored judgment as an integrated decision-making model in which the intersection of teacher experience, teacher intuition, and classroom data creates the context for optimal instructional decision-making. this model is based on established research about effective decision-making in psychology, medicine, and business, and may help support the international educational mandate for dddm. keywords: teacher efficacy; anxiety; concerns; data driven decision-making; anchored judgment; evidence-based practice citation: dunn, k. e., airola, d. t., & hayakawa, t. (2020). pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment. current issues in education, 21(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1856 accepted: 02/05/2020 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1856 pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 2 pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment previously, our research has focused on teacher and pre-service teacher engagement in data driven decision-making (dddm) or evidence-based practice. we have explored teachers’ and pre-service teachers’ affective and cognitive responses to the concept and to targeted training for dddm. in this study, we focus on the critical and captive population of pre-service teachers. specifically, we examine pre-service teacher efficacy, anxiety, and concerns related to dddm after being introduced to a new approach to dddm, which we will describe in this paper, anchored judgment. first, we would like to define teacher dddm as the systematic collection of a variety of data from multiple sources, ranging from teacher observations and other behavioral data to teachermade assessments and standardized assessments, in order to guide instructional decision-making to help students learn (choppin, 2002; marsh, pane, & hamilton, 2006; von geel, keuning, vissher, & fox, 2016) and for continuous instructional improvement (lai & schildkamp, 2013). classroom-level dddm involves identifying patterns of understanding that reveal students’ strengths and weaknesses relative to learning objectives and goals in order to refine the selection and planning of instruction and interventions to facilitate achievement of teaching and learning goals (dunn, airola, lo, & garrison, 2013a, 2013b; walker, reeves, & smith, 2016). we further propose, that at this level of dddm, dddm teachers use learning and assessment activities to produce classroom data, close to the learning and the learner, to uncover students’ conceptual understanding and develop competencies specific to learning objectives which may be discrete content standards or more complex and interdependent competencies across multiple subject areas. hypothetically, teachers then use these comprehensive data to assist in designing learning experiences to respond instructionally to students’ needs, as revealed by the data, and to inform stakeholders, parents, educational partners, and students about learning progress and needs. while this definition captures what classroom level dddm includes, the research reveals that teachers do not struggle to use classroom generated data, ranging from student behavior to teacher-made assessments (wachen, harrison, & cohen-vogel, 2018). instead, teachers often struggle to integrate the standardized data available to them throughout the school year to their instructional decision-making and planning (athanases, bennet, & wahleithner, 2013; hoogland et al., 2016; reeves & chiang, 2017; von der embse, schoeman, kilgers, wicoff, & bowler, 2017). we believe that the current conception of dddm needs to be more fully explored in both preand in-service teachers. thus, the research portion of this paper, which examines pre-service teacher efficacy, anxiety, and concerns related to dddm, focuses on pre-service teachers’ understanding of standardized assessment and proposes a framework for developing anchored judgment as a means of integrating this definition with different components of how teachers really make decisions in the classroom, relying on data, experience, and intuition. teachers’ sense of efficacy for dddm, or dddm efficacy, is a teacher’s beliefs in his or her ability to successfully engage in using standardized assessment data to guide instructional decision-making in order to bring about positive student outcomes (dunn et al., 2013b). conversely, dddm anxiety reflects a teacher’s “trepidation, tension, and apprehension” related to engaging in dddm (dunn et al., 2013b, p. 87). concerns were defined as one’s thoughts and feelings about an instructional innovation (george, hall, & stiegelbauer, 2006), in this case dddm. pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 3 we also sought to explore the influence of pre-service teacher concerns and anxiety regarding dddm on their sense of efficacy for dddm. this study focused on dddm in the united states (us); however, the movement to dddm and resistance to that movement are educational change challenges experienced around the globe (dantow & hubbard, 2016; marsh et al., 2006) in the us, the 2001 no child left behind (nclb) act was in place 15 years, placing emphasis on the results of standardized assessments as the primary indicator of student achievement (koretz & hamilton, 2006) and increased the use of standardized assessment results in high stakes accountability at the student, school, and national level. subsequently, nclb was replaced by the every student succeeds act (essa) of 2015. essa provided states with some flexibility in developing systems of accountability allowing the integration of other forms of data beyond assessment results. states were given some latitude in setting long-erm goals and measurable progress expectations. additionally, states were able to create systems of meaningful differentiation that could include achievement, progress in achievement, school quality and student success indicators, and for high schools, the four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate. in the area of school improvement, essa extended beyond the requirements of nclb to use evidence-based practice and collect data to evaluate the impact of the practice for the children in the school. this requires the school to select improvement strategies (evidence-based practices) from welldesigned studies, to provide a well-formed rationale for the efficacy of the practice in the local school, and to assess the local efficacy of the practice in the classroom and school (essa, 2015). while these mandates exist at the policy level, we know many practicing teachers still hold strong reservations about the role of standardized assessment and dddm in their profession and in their schools (airola & dunn, 2011, von der embse, schoemann, kilgus, wicoff, & bowler, 2017). one message shared by teachers is that they feel their professional training, knowledge, and experiences as educators are placed in an inferior position to standardized data (airola & dunn, 2011). recently, a teacher shared they felt “bullied by data,” noting that financial consequences attached to standardized assessment data and related negative media coverage heavily contributed to this sense of being disempowered and abused. however, from our perspective pertinent data extend far beyond standardized assessment data to include comprehensive information from a wide array of sources, which may include sources such as teacher observation, parent perspectives, behavioral data, standardized assessment, classroom assessment, exhibitions of learning, and more. the final purpose of this article is to propose a new way to talk about dddm. we propose that the human, teacher-factor, i.e., the professional educator, must regain a central role in our discussions about teachers, students, and data. thus, we will share the idea of anchored judgment, which borrows emphasis on experience and intuition in decision-making processes from other fields like business and healthcare. anchored judgment will be explored in the context of the discussion of findings as a possible alternative for re-empowering teachers in the context of the data era of k-12 education. review of the literature regardless of the decades of empirical evidence that support the assertion that classroom level dddm results in positive student outcomes (e.g., carlson, borman, & robinson, 2011; edmonds, 1979; evans, 2009; fuller & johnson, 2001; lai & mcnaughton, 2013; von geel et al., 2016; wayman, midgley, & stringfield, 2006; weber, 1971) and nearly two decades after the push to incorporate dddm in u.s. classrooms (dunn et al., 2013a, 2013b; nclb, 2001; reeves & honig, 2015) and abroad (faber & visscher, 2014; schildkamp, karbautzki, & vanhoof, 2013; pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 4 van geel et al., 2016; vanhoof & schildkamp, 2014), these practices are still not common place nor fully realized as intended (dunn et al., 2013a; u.s. department of education, 2010). many practicing teachers openly report that they primarily do not use data because they feel underprepared, and in some cases unprepared, to do so (athanases et al., 2013; hoogland et al., 2016; reeves & chiang, 2017; von der embse et al., 2017). in their study, wachen and his colleagues (2018) found “few teachers were able to articulate an ability to bridge the divide between using data to identify students in need of help and using data to modify instruction” (p. 296). reeves and chiang (2017) recently stated, “the current status of teacher capacity and teacher learning for data use have thus led to calls for enhanced attention to data use during pre-service teacher education” (p. 156). notably, in a review of dddm research performed prior to their focus group study on teachers and dddm, hoogland and her colleagues (2016) found teachers are often still lacking in data literacy and skills, critical components of teacher data use in the classroom. the teachers in their focus groups recognized dddm is important to teaching; but, also shared that they recognize they sorely lack the requisite skills for successful classroom dddm. teachers also report that using data remains challenging (athanases et al., 2013) and anxiety provoking (dunn et al., 2013a, 2013b; piro, dunlap, & shutt, 2013). prenger and schildkamp (2018) found that teachers’ perceptions of data and their abilities in relation to data are predictive of the use of data to guide instructional decision-making and, ultimately, the quality of their instruction. perhaps more importantly, they found that professional development that targeted these psychological variables increased this effective data use. when training targeted teacher beliefs and attitudes towards data, teachers were significantly more likely to use data. generally, teachers report a sense of being extremely underprepared to integrate all the standardized data in their decision-making processes with their teacher made classroom assessments (von der embse, et al., 2017). when reviewing the requisite skills for effective data use, one teacher more poignantly stated, “when i read all of these competences, if i match them all, i should wear a t-shirt that says ‘super teacher’! that teacher does not exist” (hoogland et al., 2016, p. 382). reeves and chiang (2017) emphasize that to address these contraindications of teacher readiness for classroom data use requires targeted training in pre-service teacher preparation (mandinach & jimerson, 2016; reeves & chiang, 2017). further, this type of targeted training has improved data use in practicing teachers (pringer & schildkamp, 2018); thus, it is important that we begin to gain a better understanding of these variables in our pre-service teachers, to address these in teacher education programs directly, and subsequently, to better prepare them for data use in their future classrooms. the developmental trajectory of dddm in education and the catalysts driving those changes (i.e., related policy and public perception) have not always aligned with teacher interests or pre-service education. teachers and data have a long history that became increasingly contentious in the nclb era (von der embse et al., 2016). during these decades, standardization of assessment for the purpose of providing comparability among groups began to play an increasingly important role in our schools for such purposes as measuring student progress and achievement, evaluating teacher performance, and determining schooland teacher-level consequences for achievement outcomes. nclb (2001) created a federal, systemic model that elevated the stakes of standardized assessment data use for rewarding and punishing schools with various consequences, including fiscal ones. across this history, teachers became increasingly skeptical of the tests used to gauge student achievement and frequently perceived themselves as punished by standardized assessments and dddm-based reforms (von der embse et al., 2017). in addition, teacher education programs have only relatively recently begun to incorporate explicit pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 5 responsibility within programs for providing training to prepare future teachers to use data in the instructional process (council of chief state school officers [ccsso], 2011; council for the accreditation of educator preparation [caep], 2014). thus, many teachers report feeling underprepared to engage with data (reeves, 2016; volante & fazio, 2007; walker et al., 2017; wayman, 2005). individuals are less likely to engage in practices or actions for which they lack confidence or efficacy (bandura, 1997; bruce, esmonde, ross, dookie, & beatty, 2010; straub, 2009). efficacy and anxiety are malleable variables that respond well to training (bandura, 1997), and, when improved in teachers, research supports increased engagement in the trained area (reeves, summers, & grove, 2016; tschannen-moran & hoy, 2001), in this case dddm (airola & dunn, 2011; dunn et al., 2013a). in addition, when teacher concerns about an innovation are addressed, the teacher is also more likely to implement innovation related practices (george et al., 2006). given that research supports that the effective use of data by teachers to differentiate instruction leads to positive student outcomes, it is important to better understand teachers and preservice teachers’ beliefs and abilities related to dddm and to identify approaches to increasing their efficacy and competencies in dddm. to do so, it is critical to have effective tools to assess the likelihood a teacher may engage in dddm. previous research has validated the 3d-mea inventory (dunn et al., 2013b; walker et al., 2016) and the socq as it relates to dddm (airola & dunn, 2011; dunn et al., 2013a; george et al., 2006) with in-service teachers. research has also established a relationship between dddm efficacy and concerns (dunn et al., 2013a). however, no research to date has validated these measures on pre-service teachers. the current study explored the validity of the 3d-mea inventory and the socq for dddm with pre-service teachers, and the relationship of efficacy, anxiety, and concerns to one another in order to better understand where pre-service teachers are with regard to dddm and to recommend next steps to helping them become effective and active data-driven decision makers in their future classrooms. 3d-mea inventory dunn and her colleagues (2013b) created the 3d-mea to assess practicing teachers’ sense of efficacy and anxiety as they pertain to dddm. the 3d-mea consisted of 20-items, which assessed four dimensions of teachers’ sense of efficacy for dddm and one dimension of dddm anxiety using a 5-point likert scale. dunn et al. (2013b) originally validated the instrument with a sample of 1,728 teachers from 193 oregon schools. the participants were engaged, at varying levels, in a statewide dddm professional development program. a split-half sampling method was utilized to explore and subsequently confirm the factor structure (n1 and n2 = 864). participants were randomly allocated to the two subsamples. the exploratory factor analysis (efa) supported a five-factor model. the five resultant scales were efficacy for data identification and access (identification, 3-items), efficacy for data technology (technology, 3-items), efficacy for data analysis and interpretation (interpretation, 3-items), efficacy for application of data to instruction (application, 6 items) and dddm anxiety (5-items). confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) was used to test the data model fit, and the maximal reliability with 95% confidence interval was calculated to provide a robust reliability estimate (hancock & mueller, 2001; raykov, 2007). the cfa results supported the validity of the measure according to hu and bentler’s (1999) standards for data model fit. cronbach’s alpha for the scales ranged from .81 to .92; thus, the scales were deemed reliable. more recently, walker and his colleagues (2016) confirmed the validity of the internal structure and reliability of the 3d-mea inventory with a sample of midwestern teachers (n = 365). while the measure has been validated pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 6 with practicing teachers, no research was found that validated the 3d-mea with pre-service teachers. the identification scale was designed to assess practicing teachers’ perception of their ability to identify, access, and collect suitable reports needed to connect data to their instructional practice (dunn et al., 2013b). the technology scale was developed to assess teachers’ perceptions of their ability to use the available technology tools to access information for dddm. the interpretation scale assessed teachers’ judgment of their ability to analyze and interpret basic components of student performance data. the application scale measures teachers’ perceptions of their ability to connect what data reveals to their instructional decision-making in order to tailor instruction for increased student learning. the dddm anxiety scale was designed to assess teachers’ “sense of trepidation, tension, and apprehension” as it pertains to their ability to understand and engage in dddm (dunn, 2013b, p. 93). based on the work of tschannen-moran and hoy (2001) with the teacher sense of efficacy scale (tses), it was hypothesized that the inexperience of pre-service teachers with the nuances of classroom level dddm would likely result in the four efficacy scales collapsing into one general efficacy scale for dddm in lieu of four distinct scales. socq also of interest in this study was the socq. hall, wallace, and dossett (1973) proposed the concerns based adoption model (cbam) as an explanation of the processes or stages teachers experience as they are asked and trained to use new practices or innovations. to assess and understand this process, hall and his colleagues (1979) developed the socq, which has been used by teacher educators and researchers alike for nearly 40 years (e.g., cicchelli & baecher, 1989; dunn et al., 2013a, 2013b; gabby, avargil, herscovitz, & dori, 2017; shotsberger & crawford, 1999; yan & deng, 2018). the cbam proposed three levels of concern that incorporate seven stages of concern measured by the socq. the first level, self concerns, focus on the needs of the teacher and the impact of the innovation on the teacher. the first three stages of concern fall under self concerns (stages 0-2). in stage 0, or the unconcerned stage, the teacher may either be unaware of the innovation or lack any interest or worry related to the innovation. in stage 1, informational concerns, the teacher expresses awareness of and interest in the innovation. in stage 2, personal concerns, the individual is concerned about how the innovation may impact him or her, manifesting concerns about personal ability and demands of the innovation (george et al., 2006). task concerns comprise the second level of concerns and consists of only one stage, stage 3 or management concerns. in this stage, the individual expresses concerns related to the logistics and efficient use of resources, as they relate to the innovation. the final level is impact concerns, which includes stages 4, 5, and 6. these stages focus on how the innovation will impact students and colleagues. in stage 4, consequence concerns, the individual is concerned about how the innovation may impact student achievement outcomes. in stage 5 or collaboration concerns, the individual expresses concerns related to working with others in order to implement the innovation. in stage 6, refocusing concerns, the individual possesses concerns regarding how to improve or modify the innovation and how to facilitate co-workers use of the innovation (george et al., 2006). efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about dddm the majority of the research on educators and dddm focus on their skills and a great deal of capital has been channeled into training these skills and assessing the same (means, chen, debarger, & padilla, 2011; von der embse et al., 2016), but to date, this has done little to produce pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 7 teachers that are more skilled in dddm (dunn et al., 2013b; deluca & bellara, 2013). while teacher beliefs powerfully influence their practice, currently, there is a dearth of literature pertaining to teachers’ beliefs and perceptions of themselves and dddm (dunn et al., 2013b). the purpose of this study is to add to this nascent body of literature that explores teachers’ perceptions of their abilities, anxiety, and concerns about dddm. the limited literature on the topic is reviewed below. bettesworth, alonzo, and duesbery’s (2008) conducted a qualitative study in which they found participating practicing teachers possessed low levels of confidence in their ability to engage in dddm. the u.s. department of education (2010) reported similar findings. they shared that teachers had low levels of confidence in their dddm abilities, which decreased the likelihood they would engage in dddm. airola and dunn (2011) used the 3d-mea inventory and reported the teachers in their sample held low levels of efficacy for dddm. efficacy and anxiety are often inversely related (bandura, 1988; gresham, 2009; hoffman, 2010). more specifically, researchers reported that as teachers’ general sense of efficacy for teaching increases, stress decreases, and vice versa (greenwood, olejnik, & parkay, 1990; schwarzer & hallum, 2008). in the 3d-mea inventory validation studies, the researchers reported an inverse relationship between dddm efficacy and dddm anxiety (dunn et al., 2013b; walker et al., 2016). further, dunn and her co-researchers (2013) used structural equation modeling to support their hypothesis that teachers’ anxiety influenced teachers’ dddm efficacy, which subsequently, influenced their concerns about dddm. no research was found that explored these variables in the critical population of pre-service teachers who are in the ideal arena in which to receive effective dddm training that addresses not only skills, but also belief sets that drive the adoption of dddm and the overcoming of obstacles to implementation of new dddm practices. the current study seeks to fill this gap. purpose of the study in this study, we sought to complete the following tasks. first, we aimed to validate the 3d-mea inventory with pre-service teachers. second, we pursued testing a valid and reliable version of the socq for pre-service teachers regarding dddm. next, we addressed the following research question— do concerns, as measured by the dddm socq, and anxiety, as measured by the 3d-mea inventory, relate to a teacher’s dddm efficacy, as measured by the 3d-mea inventory? finally, we wanted to introduce the concept of anchored judgment, a new way of thinking about dddm that may empower teachers in the current data-driven educational paradigm to reprise their professional judgment as a valued skill to use in dddm, perhaps a first step in mending the bridge between educational reformers and researchers to educational practitioners, particularly teachers (dunn, 2015). method this section describes the validation of the 3d-mea inventory and the socq regarding dddm on pre-service teachers. specifically, the methods used to identify the latent structure of the two measures and to assess internal consistency of each measure are described. in addition, multiple linear regression was used to identify the variance explained in dddm efficacy by dddm anxiety and concerns regarding dddm and will be discussed. pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 8 participants respondents were 602 pre-service teachers enrolled in a master’s of arts in teaching (mat) degree program (a five-year degree program) at a large mid-southern university in an urban city. in this mat program, students earn a baccalaureate degree from the college of arts and sciences and a minor in elementary, middle school, or secondary education from the college of education at the end of the fourth year. during the fifth year, students enroll in a one-year internship to complete requirements for a teaching license and to earn graduate credits toward their master’s degree. the majority of participants were under the age of 24 (n = 503), 52 participants were aged 25 to 30 years, and the remaining 47 respondents were over the age of 31. as with many teacher education programs, the sample was primarily female (85%, n = 512) and caucasian (91%, n = 548). the remaining ethnic breakdown of the sample was as follows, 20 were african american, two were asian, eight were hispanic, five were native american, six categorized as other, and seven participants selected, “i’d rather not identify”. the majority of participants reported wanting to teach at the elementary school level (60%, n = 359), the remaining plan to teach middle school (n = 62) and high school (n = 179). of those who reported being trained to teach something other than general elementary curriculum, participants reported wanting to teach art (n = 31), english (n = 60), foreign language (n = 30), mathematics (n = 21), technology (n = 1), or special education (n = 211). procedure students enrolled in an introductory applied educational psychology course required of all degree-seeking and licensure-seeking teacher education students were asked to participate in the study prior to completing the dddm unit for the course. responses were required for the course, but students could opt to not have their data included in the study. a total of 637 students were asked to complete the surveys and participate in the study. a total of 602 completed the survey and submitted a signed informed consent document, a participation rate of 95%. measures along with demographic items, two self-report survey instruments were used for the purposes of this study. the 3d-mea is a relatively new measure, which has been validated, but requires further scrutiny. the socq has been used for nearly 40 years; however, overtime both social change and methodological practice change require a re-examination of the factor structure of the socq (george et al., 2006; hall, george, & rutherford, 1979). thus, this measure also necessitates fresh evaluation. 3d-mea inventory the full 3d-mea inventory was used for this study. it consisted of 20-items and used the following 5-point likert response format— 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, and 5 = strongly agree. the identification scale consisted of 3items. an example item from this scale was, “i am confident in my ability to access state assessment results for my students.” the technology scale also consisted of 3-items. an example item from this scale was, “i am confident that i can use my district’s data analysis technology to access standard reports.” the interpretation scale consisted of 3-items. an example item from this scale was, “i am confident in my ability to understand assessment reports.” the application scale consisted of 6-items. an example item was, “i am confident that i can use assessment data to pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 9 provide targeted feedback to students about their performance or progress.” the dddm anxiety scale included 5-items, which measured a respondent’s self-judgment of his or her sense of apprehension and tension related to their ability to successfully engage in dddm. an example item was, “i am intimidated by the task of interpreting students’ state level standardized assessments.” socq the socq has been widely used to identify the intensity of a stage of concern related to the adoption of an innovationan educational practice or set of practices (george et al., 2006). it consists of seven scales coinciding with each of the seven concern stages. five statements comprised each of the seven scales in the original model. respondents are asked to select their degree of concern based on an 8-point likert type scale, which describes how much each statement reflects the respondent’s current feelings. for each of the 35-items, the respondent selects one value that indicates how he or she feels about the statement as well as the magnitude of that feeling (0 = “irrelevant”, 1 to 2 = “not true of me now,” 3 to 5 = “somewhat true of me now,” 6 to 7 = “very true of me now”). participants in the current study responded to all 35-items. george and his colleagues recommend placing the name of the target innovation in place of the word innovation in the survey. thus, innovation was replaced with dddm in survey items for this study. the socq was designed to represent varying types of concerns that teachers have when they are introduced to an educational innovation, begin to use it, and then move to more mature perspectives along with increased confidence in the use of the innovation (negrete, 2004). “i have very limited knowledge about the innovation.” is an example of a low-level concern (george et al., 2006, p. 81). a higher score on higher-level concerns is indicative of an innovation user profile whereas a higher score on a lower level concern is indicative of a non-user profile. a high score on this suggests the individual is more likely to be a user whereas a low score indicates the respondent is not likely engaging in the innovation. an example of a higher-level concern item is, “i would like to excite my students about their part in this approach.” (george et al., 2006, p. 81). a higher score in this case indicates likely innovation engagement, and a low score would suggest the respondent is less likely to use the innovation in the classroom. for clinical use, the scores on each scale may be used to produce a profile in which the relative position of each scale’s score to the other scale scores are used to help interpret the likelihood of adopting the new innovation and to create targeted training (george et al., 2006). the socq was originally validated with a group of teachers working towards adopting team teaching practices (n = 830). a sub-sample (n = 132) of this group participated in a test-retest of the instrument over a two-week period (hall et al., 1979). cronbach’s alpha was used to establish reliability. for the seven stages or scales, alpha coefficients ranged from .64 to .83. the test-retest sub-sample correlation ranged from .65 to .84, indicating acceptable levels of internal consistency for each of the seven stages or scales (hall et al., 1979). george et al. (2006) validated the socq using intercorrelation matrices, interview data regarding expert judgments of concerns, and confirmation of expected group differences and changes across time. the socq has been used successfully in numerous studies over the course of nearly four decades (see george et al., 2006 for a detailed presentation of examples). while the socq has been used with pre-service teachers (i.e., dunn, 2016; reeves, 2017), it is important to explore the latent factor structure for this population. no published research was pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 10 found that completed the task of assessing the stability of the factor structure in pre-service teachers. analysis to address the first two research purposes, efa was used to explore the factor structure and validity of the 3d-mea and the socq with pre-service teachers. prior to conducting the factor analysis, kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) and bartlett’s test of sphericity were examined in order to determine if the use of efa was appropriate with the dataset. efa is deemed appropriate if the kmo approaches 1.0 (> 0.80 is excellent) and the bartlett’s test is significant at the 0.05 level (hair, anderson, tatham, & black, 1995). hair and colleagues (1995) suggested that a sample size of 100 to 400 is adequate; thus, the sample size of 602 was deemed appropriate for efa analysis. principal-axis factoring (paf) with an oblique rotation was employed to study the latent constructs of the two measures. paf is recommended as the appropriate extraction method when the assumption of multivariate normality may be violated (costello & osborne, 2005). when variables are expected to correlate with one another, an oblique rotation is recommended. the number of factors were not constrained in order to allow the factorial structure to emerge through the analysis. a scree test and a parallel analysis were conducted in accordance with reise, walker, and comrey’s (2000) recommendation. the third research purpose was to answer the following question—do concerns, as measured by the socq, and anxiety, as measured by the 3d-mea inventory, predict a significant portion of the variance in dddm efficacy, as measured by the 3d-mea inventory? to address this question the data were analyzed using multiple linear regression. the dddm efficacy score was entered as the dependent variable, and concerns and anxiety were entered as the independent or predictor variables. the significance and size of the coefficient of determination were examined to determine if the independent variables had a significant influence on dddm efficacy. additionally, the magnitude of impact for each independent variable was examined and interpreted. results 3d-mea efa the means and standard deviations from the 3d-mea are presented in table 1. efa was deemed appropriate as the kmo was less than one at .90 and the bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (p < .05). the initial efa results included a scree test that did not clearly support a two or three-factor model. thus, two-, three-, and four-factor (plus and minus one) models were explored. the parallel analysis supported a two-factor model over both the original four-factor model and the three-factor model. in the three-factor model, items loaded substantially on more than one factor and the third factor had an insufficient number of items per factor with only twoitems. items were considered to meaningfully load on a factor if the factor was 0.40 or greater and less than 0.40 on the other (comrey & lee, 1992; floyd & widaman, 1995). pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 11 table 1 item content and descriptive statistics item m sd skew kurtosis 1. i am confident in my ability to access state assessment results for my students. 2.78 1.05 0.10 -0.90 2. i am confident that i know what types of data or reports i need to assess group performance. 2.48 0.92 0.45 -0.27 3. i am confident that i know what types of data or reports i need to assess student performance. 2.67 0.98 0.29 -0.71 4. i am confident i can use the tools provided by my district’s data technology system to retrieve charts, tables, or graphs for analysis 2.93 1.04 -0.07 -0.96 5. i am confident i can use the tools provided by my district’s data technology system to filter students into different groups for analysis. 2.80 1.02 0.12 -0.83 6. i am confident that i can use my district’s data analysis technology to access standard reports. 2.78 1.03 0.07 -0.93 7. i am confident in my ability to understand assessment reports. 3.22 0.96 -0.48 -0.42 8. i am confident in my ability to interpret student performance from a scaled score. 3.10 0.96 -0.38 -0.72 9. i am confident in my ability to interpret subtest or strand scores to determine student strengths and weaknesses in a content area. 3.20 0.98 -0.44 -0.69 10. i am confident that i can use data to identify students with special learning needs. 3.14 1.02 -0.27 -0.74 11. i am confident that i can use data to identify gaps in student understanding of curricular concepts. 3.16 0.94 -0.47 -0.66 12. i am confident that i can use assessment data to provide targeted feedback to students about their performance or progress. 3.20 0.93 -0.56 -0.48 13. i am confident that i can use assessment data to identify gaps in my instructional curriculum. 3.16 0.97 -0.40 -0.71 14. i am confident that i can use data to group students with similar learning needs for instruction. 3.31 0.91 -0.66 -0.24 15. i am confident in my ability to use data to guide my selection of targeted interventions for gaps in my students’ understanding. 2.90 0.95 0.01 -0.68 16. i am intimidated by statistics.* 2.89 1.12 0.09 -0.93 17. i am intimidated by the task of interpreting students’ state level standardized assessment data.* 3.06 1.01 -0.89 -0.96 18. i am concerned that i will feel or look “dumb” when it comes to data driven decision-making.* 2.95 1.07 0.10 -0.88 19. i am intimidated by my district’s data retrieval technology.* 3.10 0.83 0.02 0.05 20. i am intimidated by the process of connecting data analysis to my instructional practice.* 3.07 0.97 -0.12 -0.69 note: items originally published by dunn et al. (2013, p. 92). *reverse coded items. pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 12 the efficacy scales collapsed into one scale, the dddm efficacy scale (15-items), and the anxiety items remained on the second scale, dddm anxiety scale (5-items). table 2 presents the factor loadings and communalities from the two-factor solution. the two latent factors accounted for 100% of the variance as compared to 93% with three factors. these factors were identified as the following scales of the measure (see table 2). the dddm efficacy scale assessed pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their abilities to successfully engage in dddm to guide instructional decision-making. the dddm anxiety scale assessed teachers’ self-judgment of their trepidation, tension, and apprehension related to their ability to successfully engage in dddm (dunn et al., 2013a, 2013b). reliability (cronbach’s alpha) was calculated for each of the two scales, dddm efficacy scale (0.93) and dddm anxiety scale (0.86). these correlation coefficients indicated that the pre-service teacher version of the 3d-mea inventory (p3d-mea) exhibited strong internal consistency. table 2 exploratory factor analysis two-factor solution: oblimin rotation item f1 f2 factor loadings 12 .79 15 .76 13 .75 11 .73 9 .72 14 .72 8 .71 7 .69 6 .69 5 .67 4 .66 10 .65 3 .62 2 .62 1 .61 17 .80 18 .76 20 .75 19 .73 16 .67 factor correlation f1 f2 -0.16 note: items originally published by dunn et al. (2013, p. 92). *reverse coded items. socq efa efa was deemed appropriate as the kmo was less than one at .90 and the bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (p < .05). the initial efa results included a scree test supported a one-factor model consisting of nine items. items were considered to meaningfully load on a factor pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 13 if the factor was 0.40 or greater and less than 0.40 on the other (comrey & lee, 1992; floyd & widaman, 1995). the means and standard deviations of the retained socq items are presented in table 3. table 3 presents the factor loadings from the one-factor solution. the two latent factors accounted for 100% of the variance as compared to 93% with two factors. for pre-service teachers without practical experiences, it is common for teaching related scales to collapse into one factor (tschannen-moran & hoy, 2001). this factor was identified as the pre-service data concerns scale. this factor assessed pre-service teachers’ concerns, or thoughts, preoccupations, and desires, about learning more about dddm and how to use it. cronbach’s alpha was calculated to be 0.89 for this scale, indicating the scale has strong internal consistency. table 3 socq item descriptive statistics and factor loading original socq item no. m sd skew kurtosis factor loading 10. 4.58 2.19 -0.27 -0.96 0.69 14. 4.81 1.83 -0.40 -0.33 0.62 15. 5.33 1.89 -0.75 0.62 0.71 19. 5.14 1.94 -0.42 -0.48 0.56 26. 5.42 1.80 -0.66 0.13 0.64 27. 4.54 2.00 -0.27 -0.67 0.75 28. 5.28 1.92 -0.57 -0.22 0.69 33. 5.44 1.96 -0.72 -0.06 0.70 35. 5.48 2.08 -0.72 -0.29 0.65 note: items available in george et al. (2006). multiple linear regression multiple linear regression was used to determine if concerns regarding dddm and dddm anxiety significantly explain the variance in pre-service teachers’ sense of efficacy regarding dddm. the dddm efficacy score was entered as the dependent variable, and dddm concerns and anxiety were entered as the independent variables. the means, standard deviations, and correlations among all the variables are presented in table 4. table 4 correlation, means, and standard deviations for dddm concerns, dddm anxiety, and dddm efficacy dddm scale 1 2 3 m sd (1) concerns 1.00 46.00 12.99 (2) anxiety 0.15 1.00 15.07 4.03 (3) efficacy 0.17 -0.19 1.00 44.01 10.51 the two independent variables were entered simultaneously into the regression model. preliminary examination of the results indicated no extreme multicollinearity in the data (variance inflation factors were less than five), and the assumptions underlying the application of multiple linear regression (i.e., independence, normality, heteroscedasticity, and linearity) were met. the pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 14 regression results indicated the set of independent variables significantly explained 7.7% of the variance in pre-service teacher dddm efficacy (f(2, 600) = 21.28; p < .001). the order of influence of the variables was dddm anxiety (t = -4.89; p < .001) and dddm concerns (t = 4.39; p < .001). discussion using dddm in the classroom is an imperative for current and future teachers, supported by research literature as good instructional practice (carlson et al., 2011; lai & mcnaughton, 2013; van geel et al., 2016), required by credentialing agencies (caep, 2014; ccsso, 2011; means et al., 2011), and mandated by leaders at the federal, state, district, and school level (nclb, 2001; walker et al., 2016) and globally (faber & visscher, 2014; vanhoof & schildkamp, 2014). yet supporting, requiring, and mandating dddm has not led to tremendous integration of dddm in classroom teaching practice. one argument with empirical support is that even when teachers are trained to use data, negative perceptions of standardized assessment, anxiety related to dddm, concerns about its effect on students, schools, and personal evaluations, and doubts in their skills and abilities to engage in dddm remain as significant obstacles to dddm reform efforts gaining traction in classrooms (dunn et al., 2013a, 2013b; reeves et al., 2016; volante & fazio, 2007). while some researchers have helped better prepare teachers to use data (lai & mcnaughton, 2013; van geel et al., 2016; vanhoof & schildkamp, 2014), the majority of teachers find many challenges to utilizing standardized data in their instructional planning (athanases et al., 2013; hoogland et al., 2016; reeves & chiang, 2017; von der embse et al., 2017, wachen et al., 2018). reeves and his colleagues have done significant work connecting teachers’ dddm efficacy to the use of data to drive instruction. specifically, when teachers’ sense of efficacy is low, they found teachers are less likely to ground decision-making with data (reeves et al., 2016; walker et al., 2016). as teacher education is an ideal arena in which to prepare future teachers in dddm by bolstering their related knowledge, skills, and efficacy, it is imperative that we have the necessary tools to understand these variables and continue to expand the small body of literature related to this population (deluca & bellara, 2013; reeves, 2017; reeves & honig, 2015; reeves et al., 2016). this study found the 3d-mea to be a valid and reliable tool for assessing teachers sense of efficacy and anxiety, but the four efficacy scales collapsed into one dddm efficacy scale. this finding aligns with the expectation of the researchers and the previous work of tschannen-moran and hoy (2001) in which the tses’ subscales collapsed into one efficacy scale for pre-service teachers. we propose, as did tschannen-moran and hoy, that pre-service teachers’ inexperience with the nuances of classroom practice are less able to distinguish their perceptions of their abilities in an idiosyncratic way, but they are more than capable of evaluating their overall abilities to teach. while dunn and her colleagues (2013a) and walker and his colleagues (2016) have validated the 3dm-ea inventory with practicing teachers, this was the first study to validate the measure with pre-service teachers. the dddm efficacy scale assessed pre-service teacher’s selfevaluation of his or her ability to successfully engage in dddm to bring about positive student outcomes. the dddm anxiety scale assessed pre-service teachers’ sense of “trepidation, tension, and apprehension” related to engaging in dddm (dunn et al., 2013b, p. 87). the efa findings for the socq were similar and interesting. we propose that the seven scales collapsed into one scale due to lack of experience with the unique facets of classroom practices. moreover, many items did not load onto any one factor clearly because the pre-service teachers’ do not yet understand the related aspects assessed or are even aware of the related issues. pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 15 for example, this sample of teachers did not respond in a consistent pattern to socq items such as, “i would like to know the effect of dddm on my professional status.” perhaps this was because these students are not even considering their status in the profession, as they have not yet formally joined the profession. however, they did respond in a patterned fashion to, “i am concerned about evaluating my impact on students”. a likely explanation to why this item loaded onto the dddm concerns scale is that a primary focus of teacher preparation course work pertains to how to best help students learn and grow. the validation of the dddm concerns scale for pre-service teachers adds an important tool in better understanding how likely these future teachers are to engage in dddm. understanding concerns not only helps us understand how likely these future teachers are to use an innovation, it also provides invaluable information regarding how to tailor instruction to address concerns and improve the likelihood of innovation engagement (dunn, 2016; dunn et al., 2013a; gabby, avargil, herscovitz, & dori, 2017; george et al., 2006; shotsberger & crawford, 1999; yan & deng, 2018). the dddm concerns scale assessed pre-service teachers’ thoughts, preoccupations, and desires pertaining to learning more about dddm and how to successfully engage in dddm in their future classrooms. the findings of this study not only validate measures of pre-service teachers’ efficacy, anxiety, and concerns, but also reveal this sample of pre-service teachers did possess relatively low levels of dddm efficacy (m = 15.07), high levels of dddm anxiety (m = 15.07, lower scores indicate greater anxiety), and only a moderate level of concerns about learning more about dddm (m = 46.00). while the examination of pre-service teachers’ concerns about dddm is a unique addition to the literature, the findings of low dddm efficacy and high dddm anxiety aligns with pervious work with in-service teachers (dunn et al., 2013a, 2013b; walker et al., 2016). finally, the findings of this study revealed dddm anxiety and concerns are predictive of pre-service teachers’ dddm efficacy, which reeves and his colleagues (2016) found to predict teacher engagement in dddm. dunn and her colleagues (2013) reported similar findings in which structural equation modeling revealed teachers’ dddm anxiety was predictive of their dddm concerns, and subsequently, concerns were predictive of their dddm efficacy. the current study reveals that anxiety and concerns are significantly predictive of dddm efficacy, but to a lesser degree than with practicing teachers. this may be because of the aforementioned lack of experience and nuanced understanding of classroom teaching. yet, these results do indicate it is important that teacher educators identify and address pre-service teacher dddm anxiety and concerns in order to improve their dddm efficacy, which has been connected to teacher use of data to anchor decision-making (reeves et al., 2016). in order to decrease anxiety, address concerns, increase efficacy, and ultimately increase the likelihood pre-service teachers’ will become data driven teachers, we would like to recommend a new direction in dddm that empowers teachers to ground decision-making with data, but to also value their professional training and experience, coupled with their intuition. teachers have been disempowered by extreme external oversight and control in their classroom, and advocates of dddm often further downgrade the role of what a teacher knows in decision-making. the assessment industry, seeking to make their products more desirable, have evolved their standardized reports of student achievement to include more information in a variety of ways with the intent of increasing the utility of the standardized assessments at the classroom level and easing the burden of interpretation and valid use. these efforts increase the complexity of reporting, necessarily, which also impacts teachers’ efficacy and anxiety in use. as a result, dddm is a phrase that often unintentionally causes a visceral reaction in teachers, making its fourpre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 16 letter acronym exceedingly unpopular. thus, we suggest a new approach to dddm labeled anchored judgment in which ideal judgment occurs at the intersection of intuition, professional experience, and data, (see figure 1), an approach supported by and used in research in other fields such as medicine and business. figure 1. anchored judgment intersection of teacher intuition, teacher experience, and available data a number of studies from various fields have compared purely intuitive models to purely statistical models and found the former lacking in accuracy (e.g., dawes, faust, & meehl, 1989; whitecotton, sanders, & norris, 1998). such dichotomous perspectives of intuition have proven less than useful in other fields such as management (blattberg & hoch, 1990; dane & pratt, 2007) and healthcare (robert, tilley, & peterson, 2014; whitecotton et al., 1998). researchers in these fields have found, in information-rich contexts, a combination of quantitative data and intuition is the most powerful decision-making approach, as it is driven by experience, qualitative information, and quantifiable data. anchored judgment what if we reconceptualized dddm from the classroom up rather than the summative assessment down? qualitative information in the classroom which arises from demonstrations of learning through teacher and/or student designed learning tasks and assessments, results in directly observable data, specific to each learner’s progress and/or attainment of concepts, skills, and competencies in one or more learning progressions. these qualitative data, which are distinctly different from data obtained through standardized assessments, inform the answers to questions about students’ learning within the moment of students’ attempts to learn. these learning and assessment activities result in student-produced evidence that helps to uncover the extent to which each student has developed conceptual understanding, as well as demonstrated sufficient evidence of attaining competencies specific to each student’s learning progression(s). teachers then use this more visible, student-centered set of data to assist in designing learning experiences to respond to students’ needs, as revealed by the data, and to engage students and their parents in discussions about learning progress. this leads to more question-informed data pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 17 collection to identify supports needed to make progress or to assist in integrating across learning progressions. it also leads to student-contributed ideas for how to meet those needs or what new challenges or steps the student may be ready to take on next. these qualitative, concrete data become a critical part of developing anchored judgment through a combination of experience, intuition, and reflection on these questionand learninginformed data. data from standardized sources can be used to assess the veracity of the teachers’ inferences based on the directly observable data and to calibrate the content and cognitive rigor of the tasks they are designing for student learning and assessment. we assert that this iterative process of reflection on inferences drawn from the concrete classroom data, inserted and integrated into the dddm process, over time, results in teachers learning how to calibrate their experience and intuition with more standardized data –leading to anchored judgment. and, as they anchor their judgment about student learning in both qualitative and quantitative sources of data the likelihood of changed practice in response to what they learn from dddm is increased. anchored judgment as new way to frame dddm pre-service and in-service teachers has the potential to build their self-efficacy for using classroom data to inform instruction. effectiveness of anchored judgment is expected to grow with more experience and professional development. when embedded in a data-rich environment, anchored judgment, or the coupling of intuition, experience, and more quantifiable data, increases the accuracy of judgment (blattberg & hoch, 1990; robert et al., 2014; whitecotton et al., 1998). we define teacher intuition as a coalescence of extant knowledge and affect, grounded in current observations of class and individual-level unique behaviors and patterns of behaviors that may guide in-the-moment decision-making and inform strategic planning. teacher professional experience includes the wide array of past, stored experiences related to teaching, ranging from experiences as students, experiences in teaching, and professional development. while we do not naively expect pre-service teachers to be highly skilled, we do propose that approaching dddm from this perspective with pre-service or in-service teachers should illicit less anxiety and quell concerns, while providing a paradigm that facilitates rather than inhibits teachers’ sense of efficacy. teachers often feel pressured to focus on standardized test outcomes for dddm and rightly believe that tests provide incomplete and, sometimes, inaccurate descriptions of their students (ingram, louis, & schroeder, 2004; pandina scot, callahan, & urquhart, 2008). moreover, teachers and future teachers have seen data misused to force an innovation through, to hide facts, or to misrepresent reality, making it “difficult to treat facts as their friends” (ingram et al., 2004, p. 1276). thus, statistics can be used to mislead and teachers have felt the sting of these numerical violations. however, intuition is not always accurate. evidence suggests statistical models are sometimes more accurate than individual intuition when directly compared (dawes et al., 1989; miller & ireland, 2005; whitecotton et al., 1998), but teachers are not blindly unaware of the fallibility of their intuition (ingram et al., 2015; johansson & kroksmark, 2004). if numbers can be misused or fail to capture the entire spectrum of information and intuition is often less accurate than numbers, on what should teachers depend? we propose the answer is finding an appropriate system of checks and balances between intuition and quantitative data dependent upon contextual variables. yanniv and hogarth (1993) found that when individuals have an information rich context, like the k-12 classroom, in which to make decisions, they outperformed solely statistical models. in education research, soland (2013) found teachers made similarly accurate predictions of dropout rates when compared to statistical models because they relied on their judgments of students’ academic tenacity based on daily observations. research pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 18 from other fields and the limited findings in education suggest the model of anchored judgment has the potential to improve teacher perspectives of dddm, teacher decision-making, and student outcomes. limitations and future research the current study was limited in three ways. first, the sample was a convenience sample. future research should look to validate these measures using random sampling. in addition, the participants were all from one mid-southern university. the measure should be validated using random sampling from a variety of institutions using different teacher education programming. for example, at the institution studied, students earn a five-year master’s degree, not a four-year undergraduate degree in education. finally, participants in this study were relatively homogeneous, being primarily caucasian females. thus, future validation work with the current measures should seek a more heterogeneous sample of pre-service teachers. future researchers should also consider investigating the efficacy of the anchored judgment model of dddm instructional model for students. while the benefit of similar models has been supported in other fields such as business (dane & pratt, 2007; miller & ireland, 2005) and nursing (crumlish & kelly, 2009; dinesh, 2008; falzer & german, 2009; mcgrath, 2008; robert et al., 2014; welsh & lyons, 2001), it has not been tested widely in education (åsvoll, 2012; soland, 2013). additionally, future research should explore, if this model is more readily acceptable to inservice and pre-service teachers as compared to a pure dddm instructional model. finally, future research should replicate prenger and schildkamp’s (2018) study exploring the impact of targeted training on teacher psychological reactions to data and their use of data. the profile should extend to include concerns, and the model of anchored judgment should be included in the curriculum to explore if this model moves the psychological profile toward that of an effective teacher data-user profile. conclusions the current pre-service teacher findings of high anxiety and concerns with low dddm efficacy levels that require improvement to indicate the likelihood that we have prepared them to engage in dddm align with past research on in-service teachers (bettesworth et al., 2008; dunn et al., 2013a, 2013b; u.s. department of education, 2010). additionally, the results suggest that dddm anxiety and concerns are predictive of pre-service teachers’ dddm efficacy, which has been found to predict engagement in dddm (reeves et al., 2016; ringer & schildkamp, 2018). this pattern was also similar to previous research findings in practicing teachers (dunn et al., 2013). there is much more we need to learn about pre-service teachers and dddm preparation. the two validated measures should be useful to those who wish to expand our understanding and to those who wish to use data to drive their dddm instruction in teacher education courses. further, it is important that we scientifically study the impact of targeted intervention on these variables in pre-service teachers and test if this type of training increases new teacher use of data in the classroom, as pringer and schildkamp (2018) found such training increased teacher data use and instructional quality. in summation, there is a great deal more we need to learn about pre-service teachers and dddm, but as we see patterns of anxiety and concerns manifesting in similar patterns to practicing teachers, we propose that it is time we consider a new approach to dddm. after nearly two decades of heavy emphasis on evidence-based practice in education with little traction gained, perhaps, we should move from a solely data-based approach to one that empowers teachers to pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 19 value their professional training and experience but also to anchor these decisions to the multitude of available student data. by no means do we suggest dddm should be forgotten, just incorporated into a new paradigm of anchored judgment. as often happens in educations iterative reform process, the pendulum has swung from teacher-driven to data-driven across the past 60 years. perhaps in the new millennium it should come to a rest at anchored judgment, a more centered approach on this continuum. the essa (2015) specifies requirements for the use of evidence-based practices. under essa, state and local education agencies that plan to use their federal education dollars to support activities or interventions for struggling students must justify their selection of interventions based on a tiered, strength-of-evidence model. this creates a need for pre-service and in-service teachers to engage in new or deeper learning of statistical information and research design in order to evaluate the possibility of a particular intervention or activity and the impact of any implemented practice for their students. anchored judgment has the potential to help teachers reduce anxiety and concerns related to using data and other statistical information when situating new learning within their professional experience and current work context. references athanases, s. z., bennett, l. h., & wahleithner, j. m. 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(1993). judgmental versus statistical prediction: information asymmetry and combination rules. psychological science, 4, 58-62 author notes karee e. dunn university of tennessee kareedunn@utk.edu denise t. airola university of arkansas dairola@uark.edu takuya hayakawa university of tennessee thayakaw@vols.utk.edu mailto:kareedunn@utk.edu mailto:dairola@uark.edu mailto:thayakaw@vols.utk.edu pre-service teacher’s efficacy, anxiety, and concerns about data and the new idea of anchored judgment current issues in education, 21(1) 25 volume 21, issue 1 april 29, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf cie template current issues in education, 22(3) 1 volume 22, issue 3 december 8, 2021 issn 1099-839x more than a babysitter: looking back on an effective summer enrichment program benterah c. morton university of south alabama kelly o. byrd university of south alabama elizabeth allison western governors university andré m. green university of south alabama abstract: each summer families across the globe send their children to summer camps and daycares for what amounts to babysitting. this study takes the discussion beyond babysitting and explores a unique summer enrichment program offered to rising second through fifth grade students in a modified enrichment camp model. during the four-week program, students were engaged in standards-based academic instruction in reading, mathematics, and science designed to provide enrichment activities to better prepare them for academic success in the upcoming year. students were pre-tested over standards from the first quarter of the upcoming year. then, they were taught the standards and post-tested. analysis of the pretest and posttest data suggests that the program was successful in increasing students’ content knowledge in each of the subject areas taught. the findings imply that summer programs intentionally offering standards-based academics in an enrichment camp environment can be used to provide learning opportunities that diminish academic opportunity gaps. keywords: summer enrichment programs, standards-based instruction, academic opportunity gaps citation: morton, b. c., byrd, k. o., allison, e. & green, a. m. (2021). more than a babysitter: looking back on an effective summer enrichment program. current issues in education, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1964 accepted: november 9, 2021 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1964 morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 2 introduction during the summer of 2018, a summer enrichment program (sep) for local elementary school students was initiated to better prepare the students for academic success in the upcoming year. developed within a partnership of a local university’s college of education and professional studies, one local school district, and the local 100 black men organization, the four-week enrichment program focused on providing accelerated instruction for students from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. funded as a joint venture among the partners, this program was offered at no cost to students enrolled in title i schools. in contrast to traditional summer school or summer camp opportunities, the sep did not seek to remediate students, but rather provide a strong foundation and preview of the upcoming school year through enrichment. enrichment, rather than remediation, challenges students to engage in experiences beyond traditional classroom contexts (hodges et.al., 2017; miller & gentry, 2010). the program was designed to engage students in meaningful, real-world, learning experiences to best prepare them for success with the upcoming year’s first quarter reading, mathematics, and science content while also supporting the development of physical and social-emotional skills. the purpose of this study was to examine the impact of participation in the sep on student achievement gains in core subject areas. the following research question guided the study: what was the impact of participation in the sep on students’ content knowledge in reading, mathematics, and science? the impact of the program on students’ content knowledge was evaluated using a pretest and posttest design, which allowed for a focused analysis of content knowledge attainment. before delving into the literature review, we believe it is necessary to provide the rationale behind the development of the reading and stem-focused (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) sep within which this study was conducted. providing a glance into the context here will help illuminate the theoretical and historical frameworks that underpinned the development and evaluation of the sep and inform the ways in which the program was developed through a culturally responsive pedagogical lens (gay, 2002, 2010, 2013). during the 2017-2018 academic school year, 60.46% of the elementary schools in the local school district, predominantly serving students of color, received a grade of c (70-79) or below – with most elementary schools receiving grades that were less than desirable (report card, 2018). although it is realized that one assessment does not define a school or a student, the fact remains that many students in the region were underperforming academically in reading and mathematics compared to other students in the state and the nation. the sep described in this study combined both traditional and enrichment summer program design methods. uniquely, the sep utilized preservice teachers as the workforce to accelerate the academic learning of academically underperforming second through fifth grade students in the local school district. literature review the following sections explore the literature surrounding the development of the sep. the first focuses on identifying the role of academic opportunity gaps in student learning related to strategies utilized to accelerate learning for students who have been identified as academically behind their peers. these strategies coupled with the summer enrichment program components described provide the foundation for this study. morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 3 academic opportunity gap achievement gap is the term frequently used by education scholars to denote the difference between standardized test score means for diverse groups of students (darlinghammond, 2013; ladson-billings, 2006; milner, 2012). in the united states, this term most often compares the scores of white students to that of other populations of students. this racially informed, deficit-framed application in which white students are the normal population to which other students are compared, currently besmirches achievement gap research. recent scholars have challenged and reimagined frames through which to understand the academic differences between diverse populations of students. while some scholars understand academic gaps as a function of cultural difference between teachers and students (delpit, 1995), others see it linked to teacher practices (milner, 2012), and still others have tried to link it to socioeconomic status (duncan & magnuson, 2005). ladson-billings (2006) re-imagined the achievement gap as the education debt and theorized solutions that provided lasting positive impacts on meeting the needs of diverse populations of students. since then, achievement gaps have been reframed as academic opportunity gaps or gaps that are caused by the inequitable distribution of resources leading to inconsistent opportunities to access educational goals (darling-hammond, 2013; milner, 2012). a wealth of strategies and interventions have been identified and designed to help accelerate the learning of student populations academically behind their peers and shrink academic opportunity gaps. according to von hippel and hamrock (2019), summer enrichment programs are valuable avenues for providing additional academic opportunities for students outside of the traditional classroom. further, diminishing these academic opportunity gaps relies on the development of educators’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes of a culturally responsive pedagogy (crp). crp embodies the interplay between culturally responsive teaching (gay, 2002, 2010, 2013) and culturally relevant pedagogy (ladson-billings, 1994, 2014). crp provides diverse theoretical frameworks supported by empirical research toward closing academic opportunity gaps. the greatest probability of changing the negative educational trends that plague many students of color and students from communities of low socioeconomic status rests within the school environment and will require an innovative plan of action (bailey & paisley, 2004; orrock & clark, 2018). if these children are to have a chance to survive, interventions must take place early and often within their educational careers (davis, 2003; dumas & nelson, 2016). at the current pace, they are falling further behind each year. if this trend continues, the anticipated outcome will impact the ability of these groups of children to compete within a global economy that requires a skilled and well-educated workforce. if children from these communities are to have a chance at a future, then more resources must be invested in them. equitable investments in education not only benefit students but the communities in which they live and society in general. however, previously used funding models based on the equal distribution of resources have proven not to be equitable (ladson-billings, 2006). thankfully, when distributed equitably, funding can be used to fund summer education programs that provide some remedy to academic opportunity gaps (von hippel & hamrock, 2019). summer enrichment programs summer education programs – including traditional summer school, summer enrichment camps, and summer enrichment programs – offer content-specific topics and activities that closely align with content standards taught in local schools. traditional summer schools, for morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 4 example, often provide the student with remediation support in specific content areas. summer enrichment camps and programs, however, seek to extend and augment student learning. where summer enrichment camps do have connections to curricular themes (henderson, 2018), these connections are intentionally more tenacious in summer enrichment programs (kaul et al., 2016). regardless of the content focus, the goal becomes to provide additional academic opportunities for the students attending the program. variations in summer enrichment program designs are as diverse as the number of summer programs offered each year. using a strengths-based approach, some summer enrichment programs are designed to strengthen participants’ skills in order to provide a head start on learning the content taught. the difference in these programs then shows up in their individual design and target audience. according to hodges et al. (2017), student outcomes are positively impacted by providing engaging and challenging student experiences throughout the program. these experiences, including the integration of stem learning opportunities, engage and challenge the students to make real-life connections increasing their understanding of the content (ihrig et al., 2018). additionally, hiring the right human resources (teachers), and intentionally preparing them for the target population, leads to greater student gains and a decrease in the academic opportunity gap (kim et al., 2017). methodology the purpose of this study was to examine the impact of participation in the sep on student achievement gains in core subject areas. the following research question guided the study: what was the impact of participation in the sep on students’ content knowledge in reading, mathematics, and science? a repeated measures pretest and posttest design was used to address the research question. context of the study the purpose of the sep program was to provide rising second through fifth grade students with a preview of reading, mathematics, and science content from the first quarter of the upcoming academic school year, giving them a solid base on which to build their knowledge and understanding of the content. the sep described in this study was initially advertised as a summer enrichment camp hoping to reap the benefits of summer camp and traditional school at the same time. however, the developers, all k-12 focused educators, designed a program more in line with traditional schools, accented with camp-like activities and field trips. the sep offered a unique and innovative day-camp-like experience that emphasized academic achievement, character development, community partnerships, and connections for students from socioeconomically disadvantaged environments. in contrast to traditional summer school, the sep did not seek to remediate students, but rather provide a strong foundation and preview of the upcoming school year. the sep, held on a local elementary school campus, was made available – at no cost – for students enrolled in title i schools across a large school district in the southeastern region of the united states. most of the students were bussed from their “home school” each day to mitigate travel concerns and costs for guardians. the program was offered four days a week (monday thursday) from 7:30 am 2:30 pm during the month of june. the students were placed in grade-level teams – based on the upcoming school year – and rotated daily through reading, mathematics, science, and integrated stem content courses, as well as physical education, and character, art, and self-esteem (case) curricula. morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 5 the reading, mathematics, science, and integrated stem content sessions engaged students in hands-on, inquiry-based activities focused on concepts for the students’ upcoming grade level as an extension and preparation for the upcoming school year. this was done intentionally to better prepare rising second through fifth graders for future learning, rather than simply remediating previous learning, and thereby diminishing the academic opportunity gap through learning experiences outside of the traditional classroom. using the local school district’s academic pacing guides, first quarter content knowledge and skills were the focus of the activities developed within the program. the state adopted reading program, reading wonders (august & mcgraw-hill, 2014) served as the foundation for the reading curriculum. the alabama math, science, and technology initiative (amsti) program served as the foundation for mathematics, science, and the integrated stem curricula. lessons and activities from investigations in number and space (terc, 2007) were used for the mathematics content and were based on the constructivist view of learning. using concrete and pictorial representations, the student developed a conceptual understanding of the mathematics content, building procedural fluency and mathematical reasoning. for the science content, specific lessons were selected from the grade-level appropriate amsti curriculum, including a teacher’s guide and all the supporting material for each investigation (eie, 2011a, 2011b; foss, 1995; stc, 2013). these kit-based units included hands-on, student-centered investigations that engaged students with the processes of science and engineering. the investigations within the integrated stem classes were created by the university faculty and focused on the engineering design process, using that process to solve a real-world problem. additionally, the use of preservice teachers as primary instructors for the program allowed for a multi-dimensional learning experience not only for the students, but for the preservice teachers. in effort to assure the development of the right human resources (kim et al., 2017) the preservice teachers were recruited from the sponsoring university the semester before the sep was set to begin. they were assigned to content areas and grade levels in pairs, working collaboratively with mentor teachers and university faculty to plan and implement effective lessons with meaningful, engaging activities (hodges et al., 2017). there was an average ratio of ten students to one preservice teacher in each class. the preservice teachers participated in two days of training prior to the program, as well as four additional days of professional development offered during the program. fifteen veteran elementary teachers from the local school district served as mentors to the preservice teachers, providing them with academic and behavioral support throughout the program. further support was provided by university faculty who created and facilitated professional development in the content areas and behavior management as well as assisted mentor teachers with curriculum development and lesson planning for each content area. finally, an on-site leadership team of three state certified educational leaders, being mentored by instructional leadership faculty, facilitated and supervised the program. participants a convenient voluntary sample was used for this study as the participants were elementary school students (entering second through fifth grade) from 30 title 1 schools in the local school district with an average of 290 students attending each day. participants in this study included students who completed the pretest and posttest in each content area with 99% being students of color, primarily african american. of the participants, 99% were from families that were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. the total number of participants (shown in tables 1 morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 6 – 4) varied for each grade level and content area due to a variety of factors discussed within the data collection and analysis. instruments the instruments used in this study were developed in collaboration with university faculty and mentor teachers. reading, mathematics, and science content knowledge was assessed at the beginning and at the completion of the program using the same pretests and posttests specific to each grade level and content area. to assess the participants’ reading content knowledge and skills, grade-level assessments were adapted from the state-adopted reading wonders curriculum (august & mcgraw-hill, 2014) to include only first quarter skills reflected in the local school district’s content pacing guide. similarly, to assess the participants’ mathematical content knowledge, the investigations in number and space (terc, 2007) curriculum grade-level assessments were adapted to include only first quarter skills reflected in the local school district content pacing guide. the science assessments were developed in two ways. the second grade assessment was developed by an amsti specialist to address the selected concepts taught in the unit. the third, fourth, and fifth grade science pretests and posttests were adapted from assessments provided in the grade-level-specific curriculum (eie, 2011a, 2011b; stc, 2013). data collection and analysis a repeated measures research design was utilized to answer the research question, “what was the impact of participation in the sep on students’ content knowledge in reading, mathematics, and science?” pretests were administered at the beginning of the four-week program prior to the delivery of instruction in reading, mathematics, and science. then, the elementary preservice teachers engaged the students in appropriate and meaningful grade-level learning experiences for a total of 14 days. the posttests in each content area were then administered at the completion of the program. the posttests were administered using a staggered approach – different content on different days – so that the participants did not spend the last day of the program completing assessments in each content area. as the content area pretests and posttests were administered at different times and on different days, the number of participants within each grade level varied due to factors including late registration, late dropoffs, early pick-ups, and absences. using spss statistical software, exploratory data analysis was conducted to check for missing values or entry errors. complete pretests and posttests scores for each grade level and content area were used to compare the growth in content knowledge and skills over the 14 days of instruction. descriptive statistics, including measures of central tendency, were used to describe and interpret the data summarizing overall growth in the participants’ content knowledge and skills for each grade level and content area. comparisons of pretest to posttest scores changes were conducted using paired-sample (repeated measures) t-tests with a two-tailed 95% confidence interval. findings the findings are organized by grade level and content area below. for each grade level, the sample size, descriptive statistics, differences, statistical significance, and effect size using cohen’s d are reported. findings revealed overall positive changes in content knowledge for the morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 7 participants in each grade level and content area after participation in the summer enrichment program. second grade results table 1 shows the pretest to posttest change for the rising second grade participants across the reading, mathematics, and science tests. as can be seen in table 1, there were statistically significant changes in performance on all the assessments. an examination of the effect sizes for the pretest to posttest change indicated that the effects were large, ranging from 1.47 to 2.00 standard deviations difference from pretest to posttest. table 1 pretest and posttest means for rising second grade participants in content knowledge content pre-test post-test n m (sd) m (sd) t sig. effect size (cohen’s d) reading 60 51.18 (20.35) 76.15 (19.69) 11.48 p < .001 1.47 mathematics 51 57.92 (18.33) 87.37 (11.25) 13.31 p < .001 2.00 science 44 45.29 (17.60) 73.18 (15.62) 11.60 p < .001 1.74 third grade results the results for the rising third grade participants are shown in table 2. as seen in the table, there were statistically significant differences between the pretest and posttest for all subject areas. the impact for reading and mathematics are large (over 1 standard deviation of improvement as indicated by the cohen’s d). however, the change from pretest to posttest in science was small (0.27 standard deviations). table 2 pretest and posttest means for rising third grade participants in content knowledge content pre-test post-test n m (sd) m (sd) t sig. effect size (cohen’s d) reading 72 50.34 (17.92) 76.23 (15.24) 14.69 p < .001 1.74 mathematics 70 40.31 (24.72) 71.78 (25.05) 11.69 p < .001 1.39 science 96 35.54 (14.93) 44.98 (26.32) 3.75 p < .001 0.27 fourth grade results table 3 shows the results for the rising fourth grade participants. as can be seen in the table, there were statistically significant differences between pretest and posttest scores in each morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 8 subject area. an examination of the effect sizes found the differences to be large (differences greater than 1 standard deviation between pretest and posttest). thus, there were improvements in all the subject areas. table 3 pretest and posttest means for rising fourth grade participants in content knowledge content pre-test post-test n m (sd) m (sd) t sig. effect size (cohen’s d) reading 59 36.33 (22.34) 63.62 (19.87) 9.34 p < .001 1.21 mathematics 53 32.42 (16.51) 51.03 (22.88) 8.63 p < .001 1.27 science 59 49.02 (16.04) 72.17 (17.86) 11.43 p < .001 1.48 fifth grade results table 4 shows the pattern of results for the rising fifth grade participants. as can be seen there were statistically significant differences between pretest and posttest in all the subject areas. additionally, all the pretest to posttest differences were large. effect sizes indicated greater than one standard deviation improvement between pretest and posttest. table 4 pretest and posttest means for rising fifth grade participants in content knowledge content pre-test post-test n m (sd) m (sd) t sig. effect size (cohen’s d) reading 70 49.21 (17.83) 79.17 (12.63) 14.20 p < .001 1.74 mathematics 68 32.57 (19.02) 66.44 (20.12) 13.92 p < .001 1.68 science 69 50.09 (12.72) 73.83 (16.39) 11.27 p < .001 1.37 discussion this study investigated how participation in the sep impacted student achievement gains in reading, mathematics, and science better preparing the students for academic success in the upcoming school year. data analyses revealed a statistically significant increase in content knowledge in each of the disciplines for each grade level, as demonstrated through pretest and posttest gains. our discussion focuses on the overall academic progress composite gains across all levels of the program. the increase in assessment scores over such a short period of time in each content area of each grade level is quite promising. in 14 days of instruction, students experienced academic gains that could possibly carry them through the first quarter of the morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 9 upcoming school year. these findings, specifically the statistically significant increase in content knowledge across disciplines, is consistent with the findings of von hippel and hamrock (2019) who note that summer enrichment programs are a productive method of closing academic gaps. these gaps are closed by providing participants with opportunities to engage with academic content they otherwise may not. as noted across each content area of findings in this study, if students have enriching learning experiences over the summer (i.e., through a summer enrichment program), they will learn. the relaxed academic environment of this sep provided multiple opportunities for students to connect new learning to personal experiences and prior knowledge. the modified design of the sep program (academic acceleration within specific content areas seeking to extend and augment student learning accented with camp-like activities) provided a foundation for students to engage with the academic content in a less traditional summer school environment. furthermore, embracing the format of an enrichment program – intentionally focused on meeting the needs of students from low-income areas – provided a curricular foundation that is often not the focus of enrichment camps (hodges et al., 2017; ihrig et al., 2018; kim et al., 2017). limitations while the program was successful in increasing students’ content knowledge, as evident in the pretest and posttest results, limitations of the study have been identified related to changes in test form (von hipple & hamrock, 2019), assessment type (formative versus summative), and variations in the program’s design (hodges et al., 2017; ihrig et al., 2018; kim et al., 2017). aligning with the research findings of von hippel and hamrock (2019), this study worked to illuminate issues posed by test scaling and changes in the test form. in doing so, the tests were offered within a defined period that did not require measurement scales to spread across different age groups. further, the pretests and posttests were identical to assure that there were no changes in content across testing iterations. while this method of assessment causes concerns with internal validity (koh & owen, 2000), it provided the researchers with an opportunity to verify student learning over congruent assessment administrations. the use of only summative assessments (pre and post) was also identified as a limitation of this study. moving forward, we recommend using formative assessment data that can be collected systematically on the daily implementation of lessons through reflective-based documentation completed by the preservice teachers or mentors, or through analysis of daily student work. this would have given a more accurate representation of the gains in student achievement, as well as inform the preservice teachers of their own practices daily (nctm, 2013). furthermore, all pretests were administered on the first day of the sep, leading to student fatigue and boredom. if pretests were staggered throughout the first two days of the program, this would allow students to immediately engage with student-centered lessons, rather than all-day testing. a further limitation centers on the potential role program design and variations played in supporting the academic growth of the students served through the sep. as noted in the methodology, the sep designers were intentional to provide meaningful, challenging, and engaging experiences (hodges et al., 2017) for all involved. in doing so, one key aspect was to spend time hiring and developing the right human resources (kim et al., 2017). the preservice teachers, selected for the program by university faculty, were open to increasing their understanding of how to work with african american students who were also from low-income areas. the university faculty intentionally assigned the preservice teachers to a specific grade morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 10 level and content area based on strengths – content and pedagogy – observed in respective methods of instruction courses. however, the content and grade-level preferences of the preservice teachers were not collected or considered by the faculty prior to making these teaching assignments. while most preservice teachers were satisfied with their placements, several expressed some concern or discomfort with their grade level or content area. more consideration needs to be given to the preservice teachers’ preferences and, more importantly, strengths concerning their teaching placement during the sep and to determine if these had any impact on the achievement gains of their students. conclusions the sep program design involved the integration of stem components (ihrig et al., 2018) as a way of providing engaging and challenging student experiences (hodges et al., 2017). keeping students engaged in the daily content posed its challenges, however being able to get them out of their seats to engage in hands-on stem activities specifically in engineering and science exploration may have aided in content retention. further, the unique design of the sep, including the intentional hiring and development of the teacher workforce and providing engaging and challenging student experiences through integrated stem, added value to the student outcomes discussed in the findings (hodges et al., 2017; kim et al., 2017). as school districts structure their summer school or summer camp opportunities, several innovative components of this program should be considered. first, enrichment, rather than remediation (rollins, 2014), may be a factor in the significant academic gains in a relatively short period of time. second, the impressive partnership between the school district, local university, and community members created a collaborative framework that benefited all parties involved. students made academic gains, and preservice teachers gained invaluable experience. additionally, the student data presented supports current research (von hippel & hamrock, 2019) that summer enrichment programs can play a role in closing academic opportunity gaps for all students attending the programs. more specifically, this study supports using summer enrichment programs to reduce academic opportunity gaps for students of color (e.g., african american), especially those who are also from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. simply stated, by attending the summer enrichment program, students were provided additional opportunities to learn. after an in-depth analysis and evaluation of the sep, future research topics emerged. while participation in the sep was effective in achieving student success in the content modules presented during the four-week program itself, it is yet to be determined if students are indeed better prepared for their upcoming grade level. in order to thoroughly determine whether learning that occurred in the sep was retained after the start of the school year, further evaluation of student academic knowledge must continue in the subsequent school year. additionally, using an experimental research design, the end of quarter, district-level assessment data from those attending the sep could be compared to those students who did not attend to determine the impact of participation in the sep on academic achievement of first-quarter skills. lastly, this research opportunity focused on what was done to address the reading, mathematics, and science needs of students in the sep. the next step of this program evaluation will consist of exploring the attitudes and experiences of preservice teachers as the participants. by engaging preservice teachers in the summer enrichment program as facilitators of classroom learning, the preservice teachers made impressive gains in culturally responsive teaching strategies and dispositions based on observations and reflections. therefore, we expect that the morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 11 experience of implementing new culturally responsive teaching strategies will improve academic outcomes of their future k-12 students as they work to actively meet the needs of all students. while we did not anticipate the extent of this impact on students or the preservice teachers, further exploration is needed. in future studies and iterations of the sep it would be helpful to intentionally record the culturally responsive teaching strategies and dispositions of the preservice teachers to ascertain their impacts on student academic growth. references august, d., & mcgraw-hill education. 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(2019). do test score gaps grow before, during, or between the school years? measurement artifacts and what we can know in spite of them. sociological science, 6, 43-80 https://doi.org/10.15195/v6.a3 https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353216640938 https://doi.org/10.1177/1076217517690190 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1401-5_11 https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x033007003 https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.84.1.p2rj131485484751 https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934712442539 https://doi.org/10.1177/1932202x1002100403 https://www.nctm.org/uploadedfiles/standards_and_positions/position_statements/formative%20assessment1.pdf https://www.nctm.org/uploadedfiles/standards_and_positions/position_statements/formative%20assessment1.pdf https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085915613546 https://www.alsde.edu/ https://doi.org/10.15195/v6.a3 morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 13 author notes benterah c. morton leadership and teacher education, university of south alabama morton@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8220-6138 kelly o. byrd leadership and teacher education, university of south alabama kbyrd@southalabama.edu elizabeth allison western governors university elizabeth.r.allison@gmail.com andré m. green leadership and teacher education, university of south alabama green@southalabama.edu this research was supported in part by a grant from the mobile county public school system and the 100 black men of greater mobile, al. more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:morton@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8220-6138 mailto:kbyrd@southalabama.edu mailto:elizabeth.r.allison@gmail.com mailto:green@southalabama.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ current issues in education, 25(2) volume 25, issue 2 november 22, 2024 issn 1099-839x recognizing teacher well-being as essential for professional development: lessons learned from collaborating with teachers at a private tutoring center in china robby lee robinette arizona state university abstract: many educators are required to further their knowledge and skills through professional development initiatives. these programs are affected by numerous elements. a crucial but often overlooked factor is the well-being of teachers. this qualitative case study explores how acknowledging the well-being of two participants and addressing their needs influenced their involvement in a professional development initiative. these educators worked on developing their pedagogical knowledge and practices related to reading instruction for students learning english as a foreign language. recognizing these participants’ well-being necessitated being cognizant of whether they were in a healthy place. this awareness emerged from direct observations of lessons, interviews with teachers, and the journey maps they created and narrated. the participants voiced concerns about how to engage with this program independently. they also had to contend with contextual factors that regulated how they responded to and progressed through this program. appreciating these aspects of their affective states led to a calibrated approach to support and guidance based on the unique needs of each participant. when they received assistance tailored to their needs, these teachers were better positioned to benefit. keywords: teacher well-being, professional development, qualitative research, china, private supplementary tutoring, reading instruction, english as a foreign language. citation: robinette, r. l. (2024). recognizing teacher well-being as essential for professional development: lessons learned from collaborating with teachers at a private tutoring center in china. current issues in education, 25(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2204 accepted: 11/07/2024 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2204 robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 2 recognizing teacher well-being as essential for professional development: lessons learned from collaborating with teachers at a private tutoring center in china professional development initiatives are an opportunity to positively affect the work teachers do. they are conceived as a chance for educators to enhance their knowledge and skills (falecki & mann, 2021). these teachers, however, work in multifaceted environments that affect how they proceed through such programs. consideration by professional development facilitators of teachers asked to go through these initiatives is a necessary aspect of developing and implementing such projects to ensure they prove beneficial to participants. one of the most salient factors influencing teachers is their affective states. these individuals contend with numerous emotions as they complete their duties. they confront the unpredictability of life and are unaware of what they will feel at any given moment (babic et al., 2022; mercer & gregersen, 2020). that is the reality of being human. for individuals in education, however, that normal state of being is not always acknowledged or appreciated (mercer, 2023). this sentiment stems from working in contexts with multiple stakeholders who have distinct ideas of how educators are to engage with their work. many administrators, parents/caregivers, and students emphasize the duties expected of teachers and disregard how they feel (fullan et al., 2015; mercer & gregersen, 2020). professional development facilitators are one group of stakeholders who might neglect the people they are meant to help in favor of focusing on the tasks related to furthering the knowledge and skills of teachers. yet, these educators are people who experience life with all its unexpectedness. research on teacher metacognition has shown that their emotions affect pedagogic choices (hiver et al., 2021). the decisions teachers make in the classroom emerge from combining what they know as academically best for their students with the unique circumstances that occur during lessons (mercer & gregersen, 2020). the quality of their teaching is not just based on their training and wealth of knowledge; it is also based on their well-being and the effort they are able and willing to exert for their students (mercer & gregersen, 2020). my awareness of the importance of teacher well-being emerged in my doctoral research as i collaborated with educators at private english supplementary tutoring centers in southern china. this work occurred as part of an action research dissertation designed to facilitate the learning and development of participants. my goal with this project was to understand how teachers could develop the pedagogic knowledge needed to instruct guided reading lessons to students learning english as a foreign language. in this regard, two research questions guided my work: 1. how does the professional development program i initiated influence teachers’ instruction related to reading in english as a foreign language? 2. how do my actions affect teachers in this process of learning and applying what they learn from the professional development program? as i collaborated with participants, i became aware that addressing their well-being was crucial for the success of this project. their affective states influenced not only how they thought about the work we did together but also how they engaged with it as a professional development opportunity. to elucidate why recognizing teacher well-being was essential in the program i initiated, i first present contextual information regarding teacher well-being within private supplementary tutoring centers. next, i describe the initiative the teachers undertook and explain the methodology i used for my research. subsequently, i share the findings of this study regarding how consideration of teachers’ well-being affected the project, followed by a discussion of those findings. i conclude with my final thoughts. robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 3 background and context teacher well-being in private supplementary tutoring centers teachers are a conglomeration of their experiences and knowledge, but how they apply that knowledge to their work is a metacognitive act (hiver et al., 2021). teacher’s metacognition focuses on how teachers adapt their thoughts and behaviors within their contexts (hiver et al., 2021). it encompasses multiple aspects of themselves that are constantly at play in the decisions they enact moment to moment, every day, in their interactions with students, administrators, parents/caregivers, and others in their work environment. this process incorporates the logical and emotional components of the self (babic et al., 2022). how teachers feel at any moment influences the decisions they make. even though teachers may know they should take specific actions in their work, their feelings about those actions can vary based on contextual factors present at the time of decision-making (hiver et al., 2021). what educators feel comfortable doing one day can change the next. the mood of one class can influence what they do compared to another class. while teachers may logically understand what they should do, their actions are influenced by these factors unique to specific moments and how they feel as they make decisions. this state of being human encompasses teachers’ well-being. mercer and gregersen (2020) define well-being as “the experience of mental and physical health, including having a sense of life satisfaction, meaning, purpose, and social connection” (p. 136). this multifaceted definition reflects the complexity of being human and how our emotional and physical wellbeing affects every moment. acknowledging the well-being of teachers is an act of recognizing the complexity involved with being a human in an environment where they continuously enact metacognitive acts that affect their students and themselves. for teachers working at private tutoring centers, they face challenges that impact their well-being and how they conduct their work. the for-profit nature of these centers has led to administrators prioritizing maintaining and increasing their profit margins (bray & zhang, 2023). teachers are expected to teach lessons of high caliber, cater to the needs of parents/caregivers and students, promote the organization through marketing campaigns, and assist with enrollment and renewal drives (liu & sammons, 2021; xiong et al., 2022; yung, 2019). while these tasks are considered standard procedures for teachers, increasing disturbances to this equilibrium have greatly affected them as well. from 2020 to 2022, governments worldwide implemented protocols that affected how education institutions were managed and how lessons were taught due to covid-19 (tang, 2023). many teachers at private tutoring centers were required to teach online without sufficient time to plan or familiarize themselves with the different tools they were expected to use (talidong & toquero, 2021). this situation left many teachers feeling uncertain about the effectiveness of their lessons and the learning gains of their students (gao & zhang, 2020; moorhouse & kohnke, 2021). this reality has deep ramifications for teachers and how they experience their jobs. for those working at private tutoring centers, professional development can positively affect their well-being within the workplace (babic et al., 2022; mercer, 2021, 2023). the growth in their knowledge and skills can help educators develop a sense of personal betterment. mercer (2023) encountered such a situation while working with teachers in the private sector of malta. some of the teachers in this study experienced positive work conditions. managers of these teachers encouraged them to develop their professional skills and knowledge and offered opportunities robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 4 within the institution or provided funding for continued learning and development elsewhere. as a result, these teachers felt positive about their work and their relationships with administrators. many chose to continue to work for these institutions for multiple years. conversely, the absence of these opportunities also impacts educators. pan and zhou (2023) reported on teachers in china who felt discouraged within their work context. from observations and interviews, they learned that administrators at private tutoring centers saw teachers as expendable and chose not to invest in their professional development. as a result, they overworked their teachers until many were too exhausted to continue. these teachers felt discouraged and reported low motivation for continuing to teach at their respective institutions. trent (2016) shared similar insights regarding teachers at private tutoring centers in hong kong. these teachers identified the absence of opportunities to discuss english pedagogy, plan lessons collaboratively, and develop learning communities as negatively affecting their approach to work. the absence of such opportunities proved frustrating, as these teachers wished to build and enhance their knowledge and skills. professional development opportunities within private tutoring can influence teachers and how they relate to their work. the presence or absence of these initiatives affects teachers’ wellbeing and their engagement with their duties. incorporating professional development opportunities is an important consideration in fostering a positive work environment for teachers at private tutoring centers, especially given the stressful nature of their work. the professional development initiative to help alleviate the concerns teachers in my organization had about reading instruction for students learning english as a foreign language, i initiated a program to assist them in developing their knowledge and skills. i asked those who participated to use an innovation configurations map for reading instruction to better recognize what was involved in the reading curriculum and how they could implement it (hall & hord, 2020; hord et al., 2006). the organization’s curriculum team divided the document into six configurations they deemed important for a balanced reading lesson: prior knowledge, vocabulary, reading skills and strategies, reading comprehension, class discussion, and written responses. each configuration contained four to nine components. these components, when taken together, provided participants with information the curriculum team considered necessary for implementing that configuration. each component was further subdivided into three to six variations, ranging from the ideal to the nonideal, outlining how individuals could enact it. the curriculum team based the contents of the map on personal experiences teaching similar classes, previous observations, interviews with teachers, and research from the relevant literature. see figure 1 for an example of the beginning of an innovation configuration. robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 5 figure 1 beginning of the reading comprehension instruction configuration the goal of the innovation configurations map was to help teachers discern what they needed to include in their lessons and what implementation would look like in practice. this information would provide teachers with the opportunity to reflect on and plan how they could improve their instruction (hord et al., 2006). participating teachers collaborated on the map with fellow participants and worked alongside an experienced guide who mentored and supported them as they worked on the innovation configurations map. methodology to understand the impressions teachers had regarding this program, i conducted a qualitative case study with teachers at two centers as part of my doctoral research (yin, 2018). this broader study involved examining in detail the process they went through to develop their knowledge and skills as part of that initiative. as the project progressed, i became conscious of the importance of the participants’ well-being and their affective states. this awareness informed my understanding of the link between the well-being of teachers and professional development. recognizing this importance emerged from my collaboration with those who participated. for this paper, i share the experiences of two teachers at one of those centers. participants from january to early july 2022, i worked with teachers at an english private tutoring center in southern china. after i received institutional review board approval and permission from this organization’s administration, i asked the four teachers at the center if they were interested in participating. i met with all four teachers to explain the program and what they robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 6 could expect, and i addressed any questions they had. two of the teachers agreed to participate as key participants. each signed a consent form and returned it to me. we then established a schedule for when and how often we would meet. for each key participant, i assigned a pseudonym to help protect their identity. key participant 1: ash the first key participant i collaborated with was ash, who worked as a headteacher. originally from the united kingdom, ash had a background in theater, with experience as both an actor and drama teacher. he also earned a master’s degree in drama. he started teaching english first in northwestern china and later in southern china at private supplementary tutoring centers. he worked at these centers for nearly two years before he took up his position as headteacher. at the start of this project, ash had worked at this center for eight months. key participant 2: elliot the second key participant i collaborated with was elliot, who worked as a senior teacher. like ash, elliot hailed from the united kingdom. her background was in nutrition sciences, and she earned a master’s degree in this field. she entered the field of english language teaching when she began working on a joint british-chinese program at a university in southern china. for three years, she participated in this program as a biochemistry instructor, teaching english to support her primary courses. at the end of this project, elliot chose to remain in china and sought employment at the center involved in this study. she had worked at this center for six months at the start of this project. methods understanding how ash and elliot learned to use and apply the innovation configurations map required me to utilize a variety of methods. i collected data from three primary sources: direct observations of lessons, interviews with key participants following those observations, and a journey map that each participant created and narrated at the end of the project. employing these methods ensured i gained a clear sense of their progression. see figure 2 for the frequency and relative dates when i collected each strand of data. direct observation observations occurred once every three to four weeks. i observed ash and elliot as they taught their respective reading lessons, conducting a total of six direct observations for each participant. i sat for the entire duration of either a 45-minute virtual lesson or a 90-minute inperson lesson. the medium used for a lesson was based on covid-19 requirements at the time of the observation. during these lessons, i focused on the teachers as they taught their students. for each lesson, i used the innovation configurations map to identify which configurations and components the teachers were enacting in their reading lessons (blamey et al., 2012). i then assigned a variation for each identified component. i took brief notes during each observation and completed my detailed notes within a day. i later shared these notes with the participants before our scheduled interviews. robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 7 interview within a week of each observation, i interviewed each key participant about what had happened in the class. by the end of the study, i had met ash and elliot six times each to discuss their lessons. each semi-structured interview lasted between 45 and 60 minutes. speaking with each participant allowed me to learn their thought process in using the innovation configurations map from their perspectives (brinkmann & kvale, 2015). we began with the teachers answering questions about how they used the innovation configurations in their planning, how they implemented it in class, and their thoughts about how well they used the innovation configurations during their lesson. we also discussed any issues or concerns they had. throughout our discussions, i shared my thoughts based on the observation notes or what the key participants had shared in our talks. these meetings were recorded after i received consent from the participants. figure 2 frequency of data collection from january to july 2022 journey map and narration in early july, i asked participants to create a journey map reflecting their involvement with this project (see figures 3 and 4). these maps allowed ash and elliot to visually depict their experiences and reflect on the learning paths they took throughout the study (futch & fine, 2014). i shared a general prompt for creating the map with each participant and asked them to take a week to complete it. i also informed them that we would review their maps during a summative interview at the end of that week. when we met, each participant and i spent about one hour discussing their journey map. ash and elliot first shared their maps and narrated their journeys. each participant described their experiences with the program, the people and tools that supported or hindered them, the challenges they faced, and the lessons they learned. at the end of their narrations, i asked follow-up questions to learn more about different aspects of their maps or narrations. these narrations and discussions were recorded after i received consent from each participant. robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 8 figure 3 journey map ash created and shared at the conclusion of the project figure 4 journey map elliot created and shared at the conclusion of the project robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 9 data analysis concurrent with data collection, i began data analysis. throughout this process, i wrote memos to help me think about the data and findings. i used maxqda 2020 to organize and explore the data. for all recorded data, i first transcribed the recordings using otter.ai to create an initial transcript, which i then uploaded into maxqda 2020. i listened to the audio recordings multiple times to refine the transcripts. additionally, i uploaded my notes and participants’ journey maps onto maxqda 2020. once all the information was organized and cleaned, i began the first of three coding rounds (saldaña, 2021). in the first round, i coded each strand of data to highlight the actions and inactions of participants using process and in vivo codes. an example process code for a participant’s action included “using a pedagogically robust method.” an example vivo code for a participant’s inactions included “i’m not sure what to do.” i then reviewed these initial codes to assess their relevance and appropriateness, making adjustments when necessary. for example, i consolidated codes when they were similar in content. in the second round, i looked through initial codes to identify the most frequent codes to develop focused codes. this second round of coding allowed me to develop tentative categories for use across the different data sources. this involved a recursive process of refining and reducing categories while assessing their applicability to the data. in the final coding round, i finalized the list of categories and tested them against all data strands to ensure their durability. the final categories included the affective states of participants, teacher metacognition, teacher-student dynamics, and the researcher’s role. once these categories were finalized, i used them to understand how the participants used the innovation configurations map. i additionally sought outside perspectives to review my analysis and findings. i asked the participants if they wished to review my analysis and discuss their thoughts or concerns. i aimed to give them the opportunity to review my interpretation of their words and actions, so i might better represent them in my study. however, none of the participants accepted this offer. i also had three outside scholars review my work as i finalized my analysis and findings. they provided insights into their understanding of the data, asked questions to clarify points they had, and provided suggestions for further review or reporting. one of these scholars, for example, recommended highlighting the emotional content of the data. their observations led me to look over the data once more. with their ideas percolating in my mind, i reassessed the significance of the participants’ well-being throughout the project and how i engaged with them. as i became conscious of how important their well-being affected them, i also realized i had modified my actions to better address their needs during our collaboration. being mindful of how their well-being shaped their involvement with the project became a crucial aspect of how we moved forward to complete the project. to explain how i reached this conclusion, i share the experiences of ash and elliot in the following section. findings ash and elliot’s initial foray into working with the innovation configurations map required them to learn how to use it in ways that met their needs. their progress in that endeavor proved challenging. ash and elliot’s concerns about the innovation configurations map affected them at the start of the project. they also had to deal with contextual factors that influenced them in unpredictable ways. in contrast to these challenges was the level of support and guidance each robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 10 participant received, which affected their experiences. ash and elliot needed to deal with these concerns multiple times as they worked to achieve their desired outcome with this project. to help them move forward, they needed someone who could assist them while being mindful of their needs. concerns with a novel initiative professional development initiatives are typically imposed by outsiders to develop educators (hall & hord, 2020). participants in such programs may feel unsure about their value and overwhelmed with information (guskey & yoon, 2009). when ash and elliot first learned about this program, they felt wary of its usefulness. part of their concerns stemmed from their prior experiences with professional development, training, and onboarding programs. ash, for example, expressed skepticism about whether this initiative would prove beneficial. ash explained: but just from previous experiences, i genuinely was a bit apprehensive if this was going to be helpful. and that was nothing against you, or [the organization]. … i am now very thankful that i joined. and i think it’s a shame that other people didn’t. because i can imagine other people didn’t join because they [had] the same … thoughts. elliot, conversely, felt overwhelmed regarding the amount of information presented in the innovation configurations map. upon seeing the map for the first time, she shared in her journey map narration, “there’s just so much to look through that it can seem a bit overwhelming at first.” for the foundation of her journey map, elliot used a maze as both a design motif and an underlying metaphor for her journey. she commented, “but just if you weren’t here, it would literally be like this maze, except i wouldn’t have found any way through it.” elliot felt that had she had to decipher and interpret the innovation configurations map without help, she might have been unable to do so. for both ash and elliot, then, they felt some trepidation about the utility of this initiative and how best to start. while ash and elliot had concerns about the efficacy of this program and how to use the innovation configurations map, they also felt a responsibility to develop themselves as educators. professional development programs may serve as a source of growth and development for teachers (hall & hord, 2020). they may embrace such initiatives for professional satisfaction as well (mercer & gregersen, 2020). ash felt a personal need to improve so he could better instruct his students. during his education journey map narration, ash shared: the pressure from me on me, because i know that i want it to get to, and also, like, i feel because i am … headteacher, now regional headteacher, that i should be of a certain level already. you know? whether that’s right or wrong, that’s what i feel. this concern about ensuring he developed professionally influenced ash’s initial foray into this project. the desire ash and the other participants felt to improve also affected how they initially understood how to use the innovation configurations map. as elliot recounted, “when i saw it … i was like, ‘oh, my gosh, this is so, so much. like, how am i …. i’m not even doing any of this.’ i think, like, i don’t do any of it.” upon looking at the map for the first time, elliot felt as if she needed to enact all the content as described. she felt anxious based on her estimation that she was not applying the contents of the map to her lessons. that feeling left her in a state of uncertainty about how to proceed. while ash and elliot felt it necessary to develop their robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 11 pedagogical practices, they were unsure how they could accomplish such a task by using the innovation configurations map. ash and eliot began this project with concerns about its usefulness and how to proceed with using the innovation configurations map. their initial affective states left them predisposed to take a wait-and-see approach. they needed time to determine the efficacy of this project, as well as whether it was too much for them to carry out effectively. yet, they also felt an internal desire to succeed and better themselves for their students. but when left alone to decipher the innovation configurations map, they felt apprehensive about how they could use it. these internal conditions affected them, but external factors influenced them as well. contextual effects the context individuals are in shapes their emotional state and how they approach their everyday lives (mercer & gregersen, 2020). novel professional development initiatives disrupt the normal routine educators have established, which influences their motivation and the level of effort they are willing to exert on such programs (hall & hord, 2020). when extraordinary events occur, they exasperate educators’ emotional states, and their willingness to engage with such programs may wax and wane. for ash and elliot, factors related to covid-19 in their respective communities complicated their use of the map. at the beginning of 2022, city officials responded to an increasing number of covid-19 cases in different neighborhoods with policies that locked individuals within their homes and required private tutoring centers to institute emergency remote teaching. both these requirements impacted the participants and how they approached learning about and applying the innovation configurations map. the effects of these policies for each participant varied due to unique circumstances. elliot’s experience with the lockdown and emergency remote teaching impacted her physically and mentally. elliot stated: i’m on a lockdown currently as well. it’s been like day six so far and i think you may have noticed that i’ve just been rocking a bit back and forth during this class because normally i would just go to the gym in the mornings, and like do the treadmill, but i feel like i’m getting antsy from not doing so much, like not being active. i’m getting lower back pain and it’s like, “oh my gosh! i need to do something.” gosh. it feels like being in prison. just as being in lockdown affected elliot personally, it also affected her professionally. in our second interview, we discussed how she used the innovation configurations map for the observed lesson. she explained: if i’m being completely honest … i’ve not really been able to apply it much because everything’s been online, and many classes were canceled, and ... i guess i didn’t think about applying it to all the [guided reading] classes, because, yeah, for no reason. i guess i could do that just to put it into practice. i guess. for the first two and half months of this project, elliot’s classes were irregularly scheduled. many parents choose not to have their children attend online lessons, which led to the cancellation of many of her classes. when they did occur, sudden changes upended her plans. in one of the observed classes, only one student attended. elliot learned of this change minutes robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 12 before the beginning of the lesson. as the lesson progressed, she continuously modified it. in the post-observation interview, elliott shared with me her uncertainties: i guess i just thought am i doing the right thing with one student here? like is there more that i could be doing? were there any awkward moments? did i misinterpret anything? did i rush the student at all? did i guess ... what was i doing wrong? her concerns affected how she viewed her work and how she was progressing in this professional development program. uncertainties during this period influenced pedagogic decisions as well. ash expressed his apprehensions in our third interview about how he initially taught students synchronously online. regarding silence in the lesson, he shared, “it’s easier to monitor in a face-to-face class. so, i think sometimes i ... when i first started online teaching, having silence online is more uncomfortable than having silence in class.” being unsure of how to deal with silence online affected ash and the pedagogical decisions he made. teaching online also influenced how ash and elliot applied the innovation configurations map via the online platform the organization used for lessons. lessons were reduced from 90 minutes to 45 minutes, and the online tools required them to modify activities. elliot, during this time, focused on the configuration related to how students read a text during a lesson. there are numerous ways teachers may have students read that are motivating and beneficial to their learning development (grifhorst et al., 2012). elliot, however, felt constrained by the online medium and what her students could do concerning how they approached reading texts. the choices she considered appropriate were not always well received by her students, which then affected her. in our third interview, she shared, but others, obviously, … they didn’t read it. the others who are just kind of not as interested didn’t do that. so there are times where it did get a bit frustrating. i found that sometimes online classes, kind of, i can feel my blood boiling sometimes. and i’m like, “okay, calm down.” elliot chose to read texts online based on her understanding of how best to involve her students using this medium. the lack of engagement from her students, however, triggered an emotional response from elliot that left her feeling upset. the experiences ash and elliot had with emergency remote teaching affected them as educators. teaching online with students proved challenging in how they planned and taught lessons, the decisions they made on how to use the innovation configurations map, and how they engaged students during those lessons. for elliot and ash, the effects of lockdowns and emergency remote teaching impacted how they participated in this professional development program. their anxiety, frustrations, and concerns during this period affected them and how they responded to their work. to manage this situation and to engage with the innovation configurations map, they needed to receive support and guidance that responded to their needs. tailored support and guidance when i asked ash and elliot to join this program, i initially focused on how they could help me and what technical skills and knowledge they might develop. their well-being and fluidic contextual situations were an ancillary matter. as we continued to work together, i became aware of how their well-being was a central concern. as we collaborated and developed a rapport, ash and elliot began to seek my help and support. my role gradually shifted from one robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 13 i initially envisioned as a curriculum developer helping teachers to one more aligned with a mentor-mentee relationship. as we worked together, the participants saw i was tailoring my feedback and advice based on what they said they needed instead of me imposing my ideas on them. for example, ash noted this approach proved useful in helping him work through answers that were meaningful for him. he explained: you have a calming effect, i think, which is nice. and you are the guide who’s showing the way. … you could help point in the direction, or we’ve had like a discussion where we can figure something out. … it’s been like, kind of, okay, i’ve got a question, then you ask the question back, and then it leads to, you know, that moment. and i think also, again, … the reason i chose like a guru, instead of like a teacher figure, is sometimes a guru’s job is to make you look back at yourself to then get the answer with you asking questions. i aimed to support and guide ash and elliot in ways they asked for and that i thought would prove beneficial. we negotiated this role over time as we mutually learned about each other’s needs and how we could best interact with one another. one area where the participants’ actions and thoughts indicated a hindrance to their participation in this project emerged from the experiences related to covid-19. lockdowns and emergency remote teaching were two of the main incidents influencing participants. i realized we had to address them to ensure they were in the right frame of mind for working with the innovation configurations map. as we developed our relationship, i opened myself to whatever avenue of discussion they wished to talk about. providing them a forum to share their concerns, vent their frustrations, or talk about their general well-being allowed them to decompress. elliot, for example, needed this opportunity due to her frustrations about emergency remote teaching. ash also needed a space to vent his frustrations. i offered them an outlet because i wanted them to be in the right frame of mind to ensure they benefited from the work we did. elliot explained in her journey map interview, “and it’s like, [our work is] a space where you feel comfortable talking about things. and i felt comfortable talking about my teaching with you.” that feeling of safety was important for our collaborative efforts. being receptive to my advice and suggestions emerged from being aware of their well-being. with that awareness, we could better work together productively. how i interacted with the teachers also affected their experiences with this project. elliot mentioned in her journey map narration how i influenced her. she commented that i helped her better understand herself as a teacher and what she wanted to accomplish. as she said: there are just so many ways that are possible … to do things the right way. like, it’s not that a million things are wrong, and one or two ways are right. it’s like a million things are right if done in a certain way. elliot identified me as someone who could support her and sought my advice to receive the assistance she needed to move forward. ash also expressed a similar sentiment: i had a bad day here, and it was so much work. … and it was kind of like, this is, it’s too much. well, i’m going to have to start saying no. and this is when we talked about different things, you know … the reason i put it in this section, because even though i was having this pressure, you did help alleviate stuff like that. and especially like, obviously, i know, there’s only so much within your control. but the … this program, the robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 14 pressure that maybe i felt before this, you know, our first interview, immediately went away, you know, so i have pressure in other parts, but that was gone. ash’s stress related to his work duties affected both him and his general well-being. however, his participation in this project and his interactions with me helped alleviate some of the pressure he felt. attaining this level of trust required learning what ash and elliot needed and considering their well-being throughout the project. in calibrating my approach to focus on the needs of ash and elliot, i emphasized ensuring they reached a positive frame of mind for their engagement with this initiative. i was there to offer knowledge, support, and guidance as they needed it throughout the project. how they used the innovation configurations map, and their willingness to do so, emerged from my work with them through their trepidations, giving them concrete ideas, providing insights we developed collaboratively, and experiencing different ways of using the innovation configurations map in their classes. my job as the facilitator of this project was to provide them with assistance and advice so they could achieve those aims. professional development programs are ideally designed to meet the needs of participants (hall & hord, 2020). for individuals to gain from these initiatives, they need to be in the right mindset that empowers them to meet their goals. at the end of the program, ash and elliot took ownership of the innovation configurations map and made it their own. to reach that outcome, however, i needed to consider how their well-being affected their participation. discussion the professional development project i initiated for my doctoral study emerged from my aspiration to help teachers develop as reading instructors. while i understood from the beginning that they would need guidance and support, i was naïve in how i conceptualized what that would involve. i focused on the technical aspects of this project and what teachers would need to know and do. however, i neglected to consider how each participant’s affective states and general well-being would influence them (babic et al., 2022; mercer & gregersen, 2020). both our collaborative work and actively listening to what they shared as their needs proved consequential in how ash and elliot progressed. their well-being influenced how they approached and thought about this project, as well as how they moved forward. ash and elliot came to this project with an open mind, though, they had concerns. they shared their trepidations about what they would gain from this project and the best way for them to engage with the innovation configurations map and me. they faced daunting contextual events that affected them. lockdowns and emergency remote teaching due to government-issued covid-19 edicts influenced their affective states. as they progressed through the roughly six and a half months of this project, they experienced unease about how successful they were in using the innovation configurations map. to help them work through these concerns, i needed to develop my awareness of how best to engage each participant. it required an understanding that these teachers were multifaceted with numerous factors influencing their decisions at every moment (golombek, 2015; hiver et al., 2021; song, 2016). ash and elliot needed me to recognize them as individuals and listen to what they said they needed through their words and actions. near the end of the project, ash and elliot commented in interviews and their journey map narrations how they appreciated being seen as people and how that positively affected them. robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 15 that recognition of their humanity proved consequential for them and what they accomplished with this project. reaching that outcome emerged from recognizing the participating teachers and their unique needs. for those who implement programs meant to benefit teachers, listening to these educators and working to understand their concerns is critical (hall & hord, 2020). they are the ones who are tasked with making changes to their practices and ideas about teaching. while many teachers may embrace change, others may not. these educators need support and guidance that considers how they feel about these programs (mercer & gregersen, 2020). this support and guidance, however, need to be tailored to the requirements of each teacher. those who implement such programs should respond in ways that respect these teachers. incorporating the well-being of teachers and ways of addressing their needs in project designs can prove consequential in whether teachers are willing to exert the effort to implement these initiatives (hall & hord, 2020). including time for tiny chats with teachers to share their concerns is an example of a small act that can be incorporated in the planning of such initiatives (golombek, 2022; hall & hord, 2020). these talks can provide insights into how teachers are engaging with the initiative and how, in more formal encounters, these concerns can be addressed expeditiously and respectfully. during scheduled discussions, providing a space to discuss ancillary matters can also benefit participants. teachers are affected by their contexts. they may need the opportunity to share how these outside factors impact their actions and motivation. these ideas are based on the basic premise that for professional development initiatives to be successful, those asked to make changes are listened to and supported. they are the ones meant to benefit from such programs; as such, they should take precedence. this switch in mindset from a focus on the initiative itself to those actively involved in implementing it represents a shift toward focusing on individuals. it is a call to elevate their needs over those of program designers and implementers. while those who fund and mandate these changes are an important aspect of any activity system, they are generally not the ones tasked with making changes to their practices. with the intent of professional development programs being to enhance the knowledge and skills of educators (falecki & mann, 2021), focusing these initiatives on how they navigate that process is critical for their success. implementers, thus, would benefit from taking an inquisitive stance to understand participants and finding ways of addressing their needs as they arise (hall & hord, 2020). through trial and error, i learned of this importance with the initiative i spearheaded. while my initial focus was on gathering data for my dissertation, what proved consequential was what ash and elliot gained from their participation. they came into this project with questions and concerns about whether it would prove beneficial. as they progressed, they began to see constructive developments in the areas they had identified for their goals. by the end of the project, they had a positive outlook on the work we did together and what they gained from their participation. that outcome resulted from the work these two teachers were willing to put in, given the challenges they faced within their contexts. providing these teachers with the intellectual and emotional support they needed proved necessary in ensuring they reached their goals. this required me to shift my focus from me to them. their well-being became integral to the success of this project. robinette: recognizing teacher well-being current issues in education, 25(2) 16 considerations regarding the study while i report on only two individuals who went through this project, their experiences highlight the importance of considering their well-being as they navigated this professional development program. learning from them has helped me develop an awareness that everyone has specific needs (tracy, 2010). additionally, learning from the experiences of others within similar contexts may help develop a fuller understanding of teachers’ experience with using the innovation configurations map for reading instruction. equally important is working with teachers over a longer period, as professional development initiatives require multiple years for them to take hold (hall & hord, 2020). much work remains in exploring how teachers can use the innovation configurations map. from my collaboration with ash and elliot, there is much potential in using this document. for that work to prove meaningful, implementers should consider the well-being of participants as a key component in the planning and implementation of these projects to ensure their success. conclusion implementers of professional development programs need to take a dynamic approach to understanding the individuals who go through them. to achieve the aims of these programs, one of the most important things implementers need to accomplish is to understand the people being asked to make these changes. they are people with lives beyond these programs, and their lives impact how they engage with them. equally important is the quality of those opportunities and the individuals who enact them. participants need to feel these programs are worthwhile and that they receive the support and guidance required to succeed. however, support and guidance can only be useful if those who provide them are aware of the unique needs of those to whom it is being given. the wellbeing of teachers and how they feel about these programs are considerations to be taken into account. moving beyond the content, timeline, and implementation plan of professional development opportunities require placing the individuals asked to participate within that mix. the well-being of 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(2019). learning, teaching, and researching in shadow education in hong kong: an autobiographical narrative inquiry. ecnu review of education, 2(1), 64–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/2096531119840871 author notes robby lee robinette orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1633-705x arizona state university rlrobine@asu.edu https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccaa062 https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168820973510 https://doi.org/10.1177/00336882211053052 https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809221140321 https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.312 https://doi.org/10.30935/ejimed/9683 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10671-022-09319-y https://doi.org/10.1007/s10671-022-09319-y https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800410383121 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10671-015-9182-3 https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2020.1805728 https://doi.org/10.1177/2096531119840871 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1633-705x mailto:rlrobine@asu.edu current issues in education, 25(2) 19 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices: getting students to chill current issues in education, 23(3) 1 volume 23, issue 3 december 12, 2022 issn 1099-839x teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices: getting students to chill stacy bailey university of northern colorado abstract: if the recent turbulent times have shown educators anything, it is that we need to be prepared to address our own and our students’ social and emotional needs. however, moments of tension are not the time to start. rather, students need to be prepared to engage in meaningful ways with skills and competencies. to achieve this state of readiness, teachers can use selfregulation strategies such as the one i call “chill.” chill is an easy-to-implement five-step process designed to reduce tension in moments of crisis and create the conditions whereby students are prepared to reengage with instruction, both with the teacher and with the class. c is for calm down, h is for hear yourself breathe, i is for investigate your condition, l is for let yourself know what you need, and the second l is for let others know what you need. based on the unique developmental aspects of the adolescent brains, chill is designed to support both preand in-service teachers as they seek to negotiate tense classroom situations and build skills in self-regulation and resiliency. importantly, chill is a strategy for de-escalation that supports students and teachers in the face of student behavioral challenges. keywords: sel, adolescent social and emotional learning, trauma-informed teaching, titp, secondary teacher education, self-regulation citation: bailey, s. (2022). teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices: getting students to chill. current issues in education, 23(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23.iss3.2057 accepted: 11/02/2022 two years ago, the teacher-preparation program (tpp) in which i teach developed a new methods course designed to address two increasingly significant challenges faced by our teacher candidates (tcs): the effects of trauma on students and the need to cultivate both their own and their students’ social and emotional learning (sel) skills. the need for our curricular change was apparent in light of the national education association’s assertion that the rising levels of trauma students experience are tantamount to an epidemic (national education association, https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23.iss3.2057 bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 2 2019). while teaching the resulting course, i encountered the fallout when one of my tcs posed a startlingly simple question: “how do i talk about sel strategies when a student is about to hurl a desk across the classroom?” in such moments of crisis, even the best pedagogical intentions are sometimes insufficient. tcs seeking licensure in secondary education are, of course, working with adolescents, so teacher training raises a number of very particular issues. first and foremost, adolescents are living through substantial developmental changes. researchers have described these changes as “similar to early childhood in terms of the significance of the brain’s growth and development” (craig, 2017, p. 31). highlighting, if not compounding, these developmental changes are the consequences of the covid-19 pandemic and larger political turmoil. for their part, educators at all institutional levels face the shortand long-term effects. the situation is complex, particularly because on the front lines will be a new generation of teachers who will have experienced these events themselves and be responsible for guiding their still-younger students. accordingly, tpps must adapt the ways they ready these future teachers for the day-to-day classroom by addressing more than their students’ academic needs: they must prepare tcs to consider the whole student. after all, for those wrestling with trauma or with limited skills to address social and emotional challenges like self-regulation, focusing on learning is a struggle (deci & ryan, 2002; lüftenegger, 2012; pintrich, 2003). according to the substance abuse and mental health services administration (2014), adolescents struggling with trauma or without the skills to address sel challenges often wrestle with anger, anxiety, and disorientation. or, they can appear moody, emotionally detached, or unable to control their emotions and reactions. thinking that teachers can simply deliver content or address academic standards without attending to students’ sel needs is an idea fraught with problems. as researchers have begun to recognize, “instructional strategies that teach students self-regulation techniques have demonstrated positive results for both behavioral and academic outcomes” (popham et al., 2018, p. 240). further proof of the value of this type of instruction can be found in the fact that 27 states have adopted k-12 sel competencies (bunting, 2022). similarly, tpps have begun to introduce trauma-informed teaching practices (titp) into their curricula. at the same time, two considerations are essential alongside sel and/or titp. the first is ensuring that secondary teachers design instruction that addresses adolescents specifically (yeager, 2017) and the adolescent brain in particular (dorado et al., 2017). the second is recognizing that no strategy, however thoughtful and well-intentioned, can be implemented when students are in a moment of crisis and unable to self-regulate (thiers, 2020). in the following discussion, i begin by addressing how any titp or instruction in sel must be developed with an eye to the particulars of the adolescent brain. from that starting point and with those particulars in mind, i introduce a strategy for de-escalating situations where students are in crisis. only after such a de-escalation will the student—and the teacher—be prepared to introduce titp or sel competencies designed to address the student’s academic or social and emotional needs. this strategy, which i call “chill,” is designed for preand inservice tcs to help them negotiate tense situations and build skills in self-regulation and resiliency for both their students and themselves. each letter of my chill strategy, discussed in detail below, addresses a step in the process of de-escalation: c is calm down, h is hear yourself breathe, i is investigate your condition, l is let yourself know what you need, and l is let others know what you need. chill helps maintain positive teacher-student relationships even in the face of student challenges. derived from approaches associated with titp and sel, chill is designed to reduce tension in moments of crisis and create the conditions whereby a bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 3 student or students can subsequently reengage with the class community and curricular instruction. in this light, my formulating this slang-ish term is a deliberate act. the urban dictionary (2019), a source of all hip definitions, explains that to be “chill” is to “go with the flow,” to “calm down,” or “to be okay.” this general attitude aligns with the purpose of the chill strategy, and the accessibility of using an acronym that comes from the lexicon of our students makes it more congenial for them to carry the practice from inside the classroom to the world beyond it. dealing with trauma and vicarious trauma social and emotional challenges brought on by trauma cut across age, race, gender, and socioeconomic status. moreover, certain triggers are nearly universal because almost all students experience some degree of stress from academic, social, or out-of-school pressures. most conspicuously, going through adolescence involves forming and maintaining relationships with peers, a process that can vary widely (allen & loeb, 2015). additionally, individual students experience widely different levels of support from the adults in their lives, which, in turn, affects their ability to learn and the nature and extent of their engagement with school. when students find themselves a bit wobbly on their feet, teachers should not be surprised. in their response, teachers are best served by having a tool for immediate action to address the causes of their student’s behavior. chill is just such a tool. as with all the pedagogies they implement, teacher educators should instruct their candidates in the theories and practices that will prepare them to remain steadfast to their curricular mission even while responding meaningfully to students who are experiencing trauma. for these reasons, it is essential that, alongside instruction in content and pedagogy, tpps prepare tcs to recognize and address the effects of trauma on students. equally important is that tpps provide tcs with the skills to also deal with the effects of vicarious trauma—what is sometimes called compassion fatigue. with such fatigue, the effects of exhaustion, burnout, and even chronic illness on their own lives are magnified (eyal et al., 2019). like their students, beginning teachers often experience social isolation and, for many, economic hardship. preparing them to address trauma-driven behavior with their students can, at the same time, help them deal with their own anxieties and stressors—it is what yeager and walton (2011) call a “stealthy approach” (p. 284) whereby, in working to help their students, teachers concurrently heal themselves. to be clear, even the most experienced teachers are not immune from the effects of trauma. most notable has been the covid pandemic. there is no need to document here the balancing act teachers have been forced to master: it has been the subject of academic journals, national news, and social media (cardoza, 2021; casey, 2022; pressley et al., 2021). indeed, younger teachers are mistaken if they believe that veteran teachers are more secure in their status because they have somehow weathered the challenges of teaching unscathed. rather, all teachers, regardless of their level of experience, benefit from meaningful strategies that serve their students and themselves. addressing adolescent brain development in approaching chill trauma, it seems, is everywhere. researchers refer to the traumatic events of children from age 0 to 17 as adverse childhood experiences. data from the national survey of children’s health (2016) confirm that 55 percent of america’s children between the ages of 12 and 17 have had at least one such experience, while one in five u.s. children has had two or more. in short, trauma has been “hiding in plain sight” for decades (national education association, 2019, p. 2). given the numbers, it is safe to say that tpps have always had to prepare their tcs to work with bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 4 diverse situations. for example, tpps typically include courses on educational psychology, although these are often introductory overviews of “development, learning, and assessment” (patrick et al., 2011, p. 73). only recently, schools and tpps have begun to address trauma in meaningful ways. in particular, titp offers significant benefits for students who have experienced trauma. still, given the multiple ways that trauma can suddenly manifest, teachers need a strategy that allows them to respond effectively, and especially in the moment, to support students who struggle with trauma. overall, my chill strategy aims to de-escalate moments of crisis in the classroom and prepare teachers and students to address the effects of trauma. in addition to elements of titp and sel, chill seeks to cultivate mindfulness and self-regulation in students. integral to this approach is how chill accounts for what is unique about the adolescent brain. focusing on the particulars of the adolescent brain is key when it comes to addressing students’ social and emotional competencies and the effects of trauma, especially in terms of how trauma affects particular areas of the brain. equally important is differentiating practices for secondary education from those addressing elementary education (yeager, 2017). such differentiation accounts for the unique features and opportunities that stem from adolescent brain development. useful to framing chill is some basic information about the effects of trauma on the adolescent brain, most significantly, the amygdala (ganzel & morris, 2011; norbury & goodwin, 2007). the amygdala is essential to emotional learning and memory, emotional modulation of memory, emotional influences on attention and perception, emotion and social behavior, and emotion inhibition and regulation (phelps & ledoux, 2005). importantly, it is the portion of the brain that mediates the acquisition and expression of conditioned fear and the enhancement of emotional memory (koenigs & grafman, 2009). as a result, alterations in the amygdala that result from trauma can affect emotional behavior in significant ways. when the amygdala has been required to react to a traumatic event, it can make an individual more likely to react to triggers—even mild ones—by combining them with the stress of a previous traumatic event (ganzel & morris, 2011). the result can be greater emotional extremes and a struggle to self-regulate. in school, these struggles can manifest as excessive reactions to stressful events. in such instances, the sooner teachers intervene to de-escalate the moment, the better. helping teachers to recognize the causal relationship between trauma, the brain, and student behavior achieves two important ends. most obviously, it better prepares teachers to recognize and address the social, emotional, and academic needs of students suffering from trauma. additionally, and equally important, it is a means for understanding and addressing their own emotional exhaustion that manifests in teacher burnout. the statistics regarding this latter point paint a worrisome picture: researchers found that 37.9% of secondary teachers experience “severe emotional exhaustion” (garcia-carmona et al., 2019, p. 201) and that emotional exhaustion has been on the rise since covid (sojkal et al., 2020). at the core of the emotional exhaustion are negative interactions between teachers and students. titp are an essential step towards addressing both student trauma and teacher burnout because they shift how classroom behavior is understood. instead of approaching self-regulation problems as classroom management issues, titp encourage teachers to perceive self-regulation problems as potential indicators of trauma. in advocating for schools to be more trauma aware, dorado et al. (2016) promote a mindset shift for teachers: far different from beginning with the question, “what is wrong with you?” teachers begin by asking, “what has happened to you?” (p. 164). without the training to make this shift, these researchers warn, “trauma-impacted students are at risk of being seen as children with ‘problem behaviors’ rather than as children in need of bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 5 help who have made adaptations in order to survive trauma” (dorado et al., 2016, p. 164). titp is also an approach endorsed by the substance abuse and mental health services administration and the center for developing adolescents, which has advocated for those who work with adolescents to improve their “understanding of the mechanisms that affect sensation-seeking, cognitive control, and emotional regulation” (institute of medicine and national resource council, 2011, p. 44). in their classrooms, teachers benefit from an approach such as chill by understanding that when a student reacts to a stressor in a way that is disparate to the stressor, that reaction could be based on previous factors. for example, students who yell at teachers who ask that they simply “sit down and take notes” might seem to be exhibiting unreasonable behavior. teachers not trained in titp are more likely to perceive such a reaction as a “bad behavior” and proceed with a disciplinary strategy (public counsel, 2015; west et al., 2014). this assumption, however, can lead to what jennings and greenburg (2009) refer to as a “burnout cascade” (p. 492)—that is, a tumble of repeated ineffective teacher responses to student behavior problems that result in increased student anger and teacher frustration and emotional exhaustion. the outcome is often more intense and frequent punishments for students, which can lead to “vicarious traumatization” (pawlo et al., 2019, p. 38). for teachers trained in titp, the situation calls for a more measured response to reduce escalation and implement calming strategies. recognizing trauma can clarify the link between students who have experienced trauma or are struggling with self-regulation and vicarious trauma. developing the skills needed to distinguish trauma-informed behavior and implement trauma-informed strategies must become a central component in teacher education. teachers who understand the effect of trauma recognize that students’ actions could result from a combination of previous trauma and a current event. as a result, the strategies teachers implement and their composure in addressing the behavior in the moment are key to reducing stress in the classroom. during moments of high tension, teachers need a strategy for de-escalation based in evidence-based practices. to start, the difference between the brain-based behaviors of adults and children must be understood. neuroscientists have called adolescence an age of opportunity in terms of the ability to learn new resiliency skills and how to overcome adversity (national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine, 2019; rimm-kaufman & jodl, 2020). a report by the institute of medicine (2011) also addressed the uniqueness of brain development in adolescence, noting that changes in the adolescent brain make this age a prime time for “modulating behavioral responses . . . and exert[ing] control over impulses and emotional and social responses” (p. 37). a consortium called the adolescent brain cognitive development project established that adolescent brains have “tension[s] between developing capacities for cognitive control and the emergence of strong incentive strivings” (luciana et al., 2018, pp. 67-68). the unique cognitive development in adolescents can lead to behaviors such as increased risk-taking and increased reliance on peers for validation and support (collaborative association of social and emotional learning, 2015; luciana et al., 2018). not surprisingly, then, growth in the regions of the brain that result in these behaviors outpaces growth in the regions of the brain that are used for making judgment calls and planning (willoughby et al., 2013). any strategy for addressing adolescent behaviors must account for the development of the adolescent brain. finally, in the same way that it is important to distinguish the adolescent brain from that of adults and children, any classroom strategy such as chill must differentiate between the experiences and needs of elementary and secondary teachers and students. yeager (2017), in his study of social and emotional learning programs for adolescents, explains that promoting the use bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 6 of elementary sel practices in the secondary setting is common. such practices can explain why “typical sel programs, which directly teach skills and invite participants to rehearse those skills over the course of many classroom lessons, have a poor track record with middle adolescents (roughly age 14 to 17), even though they work well with children” (p. 73). these “aged-up versions of childhood programs” (p. 74) do not address the particular challenges of working with adolescents, and the “poor track record” (p. 74) of such programs creates frustrations for students and teachers. moreover, unlike children, adolescent behavior is more frequently characterized by risk-taking. discussing this concept, siegel (2014), a clinical professor of psychiatry at ucla, described counseling a high-school student who was expelled for bringing alcohol to a school dance. the student remarked, “i guess i knew what might happen. . . but the fun of it just seemed like too much to turn down” (katey, 2014, as cited in siegel, 2014, para. 3). any strategy that fails to account for what is unique to the adolescent brain, summarily stated, stands little chance of sustained success. taking time to chill when the effects of trauma or anxiety or frustration interfere with implementing instruction, teachers need a strategy that can diminish tension—for an individual student or an entire class—and create a climate wherein the student is better prepared to self-regulate and engage without anxiety or anger. chill is a self-regulation strategy designed to de-escalate tense situations quickly. for example, when the risk-taking adolescent challenges a teacher publicly, even aggressively, the response must be immediate and effective. at the same time, when frustration or anxiety prevents a student from engaging or performing, teachers need a strategy that helps students to focus. because the chill technique is based on research surrounding self-regulation and effective sel interventions, it can be effective in all such instances, for as researchers have determined, self-regulation strategies “have been successfully implemented across a variety of settings including general education classrooms” (popham et al., 2018, p. 240). what follows is a section about each of the five steps of chill and then a section about how the strategy can be modeled in the classroom. once students are familiar with the process and the practice, the entire chill intervention can be implemented in as little as two to three minutes. importantly, students who are taught the chill process can (and should) practice “chill-ing” before a tense situation escalates. indeed, researchers have concluded instruction in self-management techniques can actually “serve as a cue” to help students self-manage (mooney et al., 2005, p. 204). and, chill strategies can be applied to situations inside and outside school. it is the ease and speed with which it can be implemented that makes chill invaluable for teachers and students: almost any practicing teacher will relate that trying to stop an entire class to have a fifteen-minute counseling session with one student invites chaos. instead, teachers can simply ask students who are escalating whether they would like to take a few minutes to chill. equally important, chill can be used as a tool for the teachers themselves. when teachers learn to chill, they build their own self-regulation and sel skills and are more authentic models for implementing the strategy. c: calming yourself down to begin, creating calm in tense situations asks students to practice the competencies of self-management and responsible decision-making. the sense of calm is created through selftalk, an internal dialogue during which we tell ourselves to be calm and take control of our emotions—in the common expression, “to be the boss of you.” researchers have found that selfbailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 7 talk is an effective strategy for helping students self-regulate (popham et al., 2018). this step, to be sure, involves more than saying the words “calm down.” rather, it is a process. thomas (2020), a cognitive psychologist, advises teachers that counseling their students about managing stress in the middle of stress is counterproductive: “telling students to calm down doesn’t give them the tools to manage their stress levels and their anxiety. how can one do something (like calming down) if they don’t know how to do it?” (as cited in thiers, 2020, p.12). teachers, in other words, need to model the calming behaviors they expect in their students. part of this strategy involves tapping memories. the neuroscience of memory demonstrates that accessing sensory memories results in strengthening the synapses in the brain, a process called myelination (xin & chan, 2020). synapses, which are the small gaps between neurons, must be bridged in order for messages to travel from one neuron to the next. the more often that bridge is traversed, the more myelinated those synapse pathways become, and the more efficiently messages can cross that gap or synapse (fields & bukalo, 2020). one analogy that helps explain this process is driving a car. city traffic moves slowly in starts and stops. highway driving moves quickly, with few, if any, stops. the lesser myelinated synapse is like city driving—stop and go. the higher myelinated synapses are like speeding down the interstate—smooth sailing. when students experience moments of high stress, it is more difficult for the brain to access these smooth-flowing pathways. however, by practicing chill and focusing on creating calm, we can strengthen the brain’s synapses, effectively clearing the traffic. the practice of calming yourself down involves not only self-talk but visualization, the two together tapping into a pleasant sensory memory and practices that directly affect the brain (norelli et al., 2021). self-talk can take the form of a personal or occasional mantra that the student summons as needed. visualization, also known in research studies as “guided imagery,” asks students to return to or imagine a place that makes them feel at peace—their particular “happy place”—a spot they can envision when overwhelmed by emotions or anxieties (skeens, 2017, p. 92). the more often students practice these strategies in moments of calm, the easier it will be to access them in moments of need. to extend the driving-a-car metaphor, the more often student practice using the on-ramp to their myelinated highway, the easier it will be to find that route when they are stressed. in some instances, sharing these memories can help students concretize them. we can ask them to write a description, draw a picture, or find a photograph. still, teachers must be wary. with all elements of chill, it is important to remember the high risk of asking students to disclose or share personal matters in the classroom. students living with trauma often work daily to hide their trauma. envisioning one’s safe spaces does not require sharing with the class or the teacher. h: hearing yourself breathe after engaging in self-talk, students are better prepared to attune themselves to their bodies. “h” advises them, “hear yourself breathe.” hearing is an important mindfulness practice (kuppusamy et al., 2020). in particular, listening for our audible breath forces us to breathe deeply. this kind of breathing is a common practice in meditation and mindfulness, and research acknowledges the effect of such practices on the body. neuropsychologist rhoades explains that “deep breathing (sometimes called diaphragmatic breathing) is a practice that enables more air to flow into your body and can help calm your nerves, reducing stress and anxiety” (as cited in princing, 2022, para. 4). in implementing chill, teachers can help students to move beyond deep breathing to what is called expiratory breathing. practitioners of yoga might be familiar with ujjayi breathing, which is a soft, whispering breath that is expiratory. expiratory breathing bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 8 involves producing a wheezing or hissing sound with each exhale—a sound loud enough to be audible. expiratory breathing engages the parasympathetic system, the part of the autonomic nervous system that functions as a counterpart to the sympathetic nervous system. whereas the sympathetic nervous system controls the body’s responses to a perceived threat and is responsible for the fight or flight response, the parasympathetic nervous system controls the body at rest by slowing both one’s heart and breathing rate (roelofs & dayan, 2022). because when the sympathetic nervous system is engaged, self-regulation is more difficult (mccraty & zayas, 2014), chill uses breathing techniques to engage the parasympathetic system. expiratory breathing encourages the body to slow its heart rate and breathing speed, thereby exiting the fight-or-flight mode brought on by stressful events. research specifically designed to assess the effects of parasympathetic breathing on adolescents found that repeated practice led to a stronger ability to regulate the autonomic nervous system (kuppusamy et al., 2020). an additional study conducted at the department of stress and health science at mie university graduate school of medicine examined the physiological effects of expiratory breathing, concluding that it significantly activates the parasympathetic system (komori, 2018). noteworthy to the mie university study was the fact that, although participants were able to vary their breathing without any kind of training, practicing the kind of deep breathing needed to engage the parasympathetic system took repeated practice. i: investigating your condition the signs of stress can be difficult to recognize or even deceiving, so it is essential to investigate the body for those signs. some of the signs are easy to spot: queasiness, headaches, or aching muscles. however, these effects are not always associated with stress. research has shown that adolescents can decrease immediate stress by learning about these symptoms, recognizing that their bodies deliver messages to them about their emotional as well as physical well-being, and working to manage them through mindfulness-based strategies (fulambarkar et al., 2022; mccraty & zayas, 2014). investigating one’s body, taking inventory of areas of pain or tension resulting from stress, and working deliberately to mitigate those effects is a concrete way for students to take control of their bodies and, by extension, the situation. this step in the chill process is designed to help students de-escalate by directing their own reactions to stressful situations. one way to engage in self-investigation is through progressive muscle relaxation (pmr) (marksberry, 2012; rausch, 2006). pmr begins by focusing on an area of tension identified through the process of investigation. to address areas of tension—a tight muscle or a clenched jaw, for example—pmr involves focusing intently on that one spot and using our breathing to help ease that tension. on each inhale, we tense the spot even further—tightening the muscle or clenching even harder—and on each exhale, we release that tension. in the same way that stress tells muscles to tense, when we work to relax our muscles, we send a reverse message back to the brain telling it to relax, meaning that stress can cause muscle tension in the same way that prolonged muscles tension can cause stress reactions in the brain (american psychological association, 2018). because our nervous systems are bi-directional feedback loops, the process of working to relax areas of stress-induced tension has a powerful reverse effect on the stress itself. pmr, in this way, helps reduce feelings of stress and fear, and, as a result, the tension subsides. in studies conducted specifically with adolescents, pmr was found to be effective in reducing stress (damodaran & paul, 2015; manjushambika, 2017) and maintaining a steady bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 9 psychological state (tsai et al., 2021). pmr then becomes an important step in helping adolescents self-regulate. l: letting yourself know what you need the first three steps of the chill practice are designed to prepare students to move from being reactive to being proactive. “letting yourself know what you need” begins with another kind of self-talk: self-instruction (meichenbaum & goodman, 1971). this step helps students self-regulate by transitioning from focusing on feelings to focusing on thinking. self-instruction can be a tool for analyzing one’s situation, behaviors, anxieties, or fears. practicing this type of internal communication is an important way of continuing to reduce stress and increase selfmanagement. self-talk has become an essential component of self-management (callicott & park, 2003; lidstone et al., 2010; popham et al., 2018). mooney et al. (2005) found that strategies based on self-instruction resulted in significant positive changes across a variety of settings. studies on the use of self-talk in public health situations have shown very positive results indicating that individuals trained to use self-talk were able to “enhance rational thinking and quell worry” (hatzigeorgiadis et al., 2011, p. 388). these are the same results we seek when we ask students to practice and use chill. what one needs at a particular moment can vary. as a result, self-appraisal must be deliberate. for example, one could have a physical need for food or water or sleep, resulting in feelings of anxiety. or, one’s needs could be emotional, so it is important to understand what underlies feelings of sadness or frustration. harsh words with a friend or frustration with events at school or at home can require different responses. this kind of self-talk has been a subject of study in multiple areas—from sports psychology and public health policy to early childhood and behavioral development (daugherty & white, 2008; de dios & montero, 2003; winsler & naglieri, 2003). for example, in sports psychology, an analysis of self-talk interventions found that there was a positive effect when subjects practiced self-talk (hatzigeorgiadis et al., 2011; van raalt et al., 2016). because chill is a strategy designed to support students in moments of stress for which they were previously unprepared, this research suggests that the results of chill will be similarly effective. l: letting others know what you need the simple act of asking for help can seem daunting to students in ordinary circumstances. it can be especially difficult when they are in crisis. the culminating step of the chill strategy is “letting others know what you need.” asking for help is an act of agency to which the chill strategy has been building. placing this step in the context of a larger strategy empowers students to speak up for themselves in order to get their needs addressed. boonekamp et al. (2022) write, “for young people to aspire to what is not readily available, they need to be able to form conceptions of what they desire, and to perceive themselves as having the potential for goal-oriented action towards its achievement” (p. 2). this final step needs to be diligently scaffolded. because chill is a deliberate process of working towards de-escalation, students are well prepared, even in the brief time it takes to work through the steps, to begin the process of taking control of the moment. boonekamp et al. (2022) also assert that critical to engaging in agency is teaching adolescents how to assume “the responsibility to reflect and be responsible for their own choices” (p. 3). building the skills needed to practice agency has multiple benefits. wilson & deane (2001), in their study of high-school-aged students, confirmed that when adolescents engage in help-seeking behaviors, they tend to feel more “heard, valued, accepted, and treated with dignity” (p. 358). these perceptions make engaging in bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 10 help-seeking behaviors more likely. as with the other steps of chill, students need to be taught how to seek help. there are three variables involved in help-seeking behavior: the task, the person needing help, and the person whose help is being sought. for this last step, students need to know about the multiple others to whom they can turn for support. for their part, teachers need to explain the available sources for help, whether from classmates and friends, trusted adults in their immediate environment, teachers and school counselors, or professionals such as social workers, psychologists, and other medical professionals. in this light, self-advocacy introduces and depends on a skill set that is different from what is required at other steps in the chill strategy. with the other steps, students focus primarily on intrapersonal skills, including self-management, self-awareness, and intrapersonal communication. advocacy addresses the interpersonal skill of social awareness, one that requires a level of trust that a student might not yet have achieved. asking for help can be a psychologically difficult task that depends on one’s emotional competence. emotional competence is an important factor both in avoiding and engaging in help-seeking behaviors: the higher a student’s level of emotional competence, the more likely they are to seek help (cherland, 2004). modeling chill the goal of the chill process is for students to learn an approach that allows them to regulate their behavior in moments of crisis or escalating tensions. there are multiple ways to introduce the complete strategy to students. although the skills associated with chill are different from the content area skills on which their classrooms are centered, the familiar structure of “i do, we do, you do” can make the practice seem less daunting to students. this kind of modeling both ensures explicit teaching of strategies and provides support for students before they are expected to perform the strategy on their own. it also allows teachers to monitor students’ levels of mastery as they move through the chill steps. before beginning instruction in the process, teachers should explain the purpose and benefits of each step of the strategy. how much or how little of the scholarly basis for chill teachers choose to share will depend on their classroom situations. for example, some students might find the brain-based research compelling, while others might need proof before they are open to a process that seems out of sync with typical classroom behavior management tools. teachers can create a lesson or series of lessons that offer direct instruction on the theories that undergird the strategy. or the steps can be discussed in the context of social and emotional learning competencies. here, i shall describe the process i use to introduce chill to students, one in which i move through the steps one at a time, first modeling my practice (and thereby building trust) and then walking students through their own unique methods of chill-ing. i begin by writing the acronym on the board and briefly describing each of the steps. as with any instruction, i use questioning to engage the class to ensure their understanding and to clarify any misunderstandings about the individual steps and the entire process. i explain that chill is a technique that can reduce stress and lower their anxiety, and i make clear that before i ask them to practice, i shall model each step for them to show how easy it is to implement. if students are familiar with the activity called a think-aloud, then they should recognize the self-talk of the first stages of chill during the “i do” process and be comfortable at the next stage, “you do.” in brief, the think-aloud technique is a strategy that teachers use during instruction whereby they engage in the practice while verbalizing the thoughts and decisions that they are making. they are, in essence, modeling the thoughts that underlie the practice. the value of the think-aloud in bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 11 this instance helps to ensure that students are hearing examples from which they can build their own internal monologues. my modeling starts with vocalizing self-talk that encourages calm. although during chill self-talk is typically an internal monologue, i remind students that my modeling is a think-aloud, so i am sharing my personal approach to achieving calm. as part of modeling, teachers should share, if they are comfortable, a mantra, a calming memory, or a description of a calming space. i explain to students that first, i tell myself to calm down. then, repeating the phrase, “calm down,” i locate a calming place of memory or a calming space i can visit in my head. i share how sitting in the sun and petting my dog always gives me a sense of peace. so, i travel to that spot in my imagination, and i can feel my body relaxing. having modeled calming myself, i guide the class through their own calming practice. “first,” i tell them, “i want you to tell yourself to calm down.” then, i continue, “in repeating that mantra to yourself, find a pleasant memory or create a calming space in your mind.” while the students engage their own memories or create their own spaces, i remain silent. after a few moments, i bring the class back to the center. after practicing each step, we make time for discussion and how the process felt or worked. this self-reflective pause is the same kind of check for understanding teachers should do regularly during instruction in new academic content or skills. once we have worked through the first step of chill, i introduce students to breathing exercises. i remind them that they want to hear themselves breathe. i model deep breathing, describing while i do the method of raising the tongue to the roof of the mouth and vocalizing as i inhale and exhale. i remind them that they should be breathing at a normal or comfortable pace. because students can feel awkward practicing deep breathing, we engage the process as a whole class. we breathe deeply together until we find our own rhythms. once students are comfortable, we again take a moment to discuss the process and how they feel about the strategy before moving to the next step. before moving on, i explain to students that these first two steps are designed to create a condition where they are able to directly address the causes of any stress or anxiety. i advise them, “now you need to investigate your body’s condition for signs of stress.” i model for them how i do a mental check of each region of my body to locate areas of tension. “for me,” i tell them, “i carry my tension in my shoulders.” then, i walk them through the pmr process, explaining, “i find that tension in my shoulders, i inhale, and then i squeeze them as tightly as i can creating even more tension.” i show them how i breathe in, hunch my shoulders tightly, and then pause. on my hissing exhale, they watch me release my shoulders back to their regular position. “the tension begins to dissipate,” i tell them, noting that it might take a few breaths to release it all. as with the previous steps, students practice the process of investigating their bodies, and after a few rounds, we discuss the process—not only this step but the first three. now, i tell them that they are ready to take control of the situation, and taking control, i explain, means asking for help. as i have already remarked, the first three steps of chill focus on students’ intrapersonal skills. starting with “let yourself know what you need,” we are moving students outwards towards seeking and getting the support they need in a moment of crisis. i explain to students that after releasing tension and achieving a state of calm, we want to understand the origins of our stress or anxieties. “by engaging again in self-talk,” i tell them, “we put words to our needs.” these needs vary across the physical, social, emotional, and academic, and i make clear to students that their needs can be multiple. in discussing this step and how they feel about bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 12 it, i do not ask students to share their needs. rather, i ask them if they feel comfortable identifying their needs and encourage them, as educator mcgee (2022) suggests, to write them down. next, i tell them, “we are at the hardest step—asking for help.” in moving to the “letting others know what you need” step, i want students to understand that they do not have to deal with things that challenge them on their own. asking for help can involve seeking the support of a professional; however, it can also be an act as simple as turning to a neighbor in class, asking the teacher for support, or sharing with a friend. at this step of chill, there is real activity on which to reflect with students. this is an opportunity to talk as a class about the people we can ask for help and the resources available to us in the school and community. throughout this introduction to chill, i share with students those times when the chill process can be helpful outside the classroom. i do so by sharing my own moments of anxiety or tension. in all cases, when i share with students, i remain cautious about boundaries. before modeling any element of the process, teachers must decide in advance what topics they will and will not address with students. the issue here is not simply what is appropriate. examples we use must be relatable to students. our experiences as adults are typically very different from those of our students. walking students through the phases of chill gives them the opportunity to practice the steps on their own. i remind them that there is no right way to breathe, no one mantra to recite, no best “happy place,” and no single place in our bodies where tension resides. likewise, there is no single moment when the strategy can be implemented. as well, students who have lived with multiple traumas are less likely to be trusting. it can take time to build the kind of trust necessary to engage willingly in the process of chilling. modeling is one way for teachers to demonstrate trust with their students. by modeling, we provide the tools students need to take control of stressful situations and give them permission to advocate for themselves. chill is thus not only a powerful skill for self-management and practice for intraand interpersonal communication but a means for building authentic trust between teacher and students and between the students themselves. considering the implications to chill as teacher educators, we have a bifurcated view of our tcs. on the one hand, we picture them as teachers with their own classes; on the other, we see them still as students in our classes. although the description of modeling and implementing the chill strategy is designed for teachers at any stage in their careers and in any classroom, it is also the very process that i use with my tcs as i introduce them to the strategy in our methods course. tpps are unavoidably stressful. the closer students get to student teaching and then their own classrooms, the more their natural enthusiasm collides with their anxiety and apprehension. research indicates that building initial titp and sel skills are best done in an indirect fashion. those who study socialpsychological interventions designed to help individuals overcome social and psychological hurdles advocate stealthy guidance over direct instruction, noting that the latter feels controlling (hulleman et al., 2010; yeager & walton, 2011). introducing a strategy such as chill follows the indirect approach, for it gives tcs a valuable classroom strategy for addressing students’ social and emotional needs as well as preparing the tcs to address their own anxieties, whatever their source. it is, truly, “win-win. whatever is one’s view of classroom management, though, just as it is shortsighted to think that teachers can simply deliver content or address academic standards without attending to the extraacademic needs of the students in their classrooms, it is equally so for tpps to think that content expertise and pedagogical training is sufficient to prepare tcs for the classroom. no matter how bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 13 well we prepare teacher candidates with content expertise and best practices, supplemented with training in social and emotional learning and trauma-informed teaching practices, they will confront moments of crisis in the classroom. during these moments, teachers need to be able to maintain their own equanimity and the well-being of students in their care. both they and their students need to take a moment, as it were, to chill out by chill-ing. references allen, j. p., & loeb, e. l. 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(2011, june). social-psychological interventions in education: they’re not magic. review of educational research, 81(2), 267-301. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311405999 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedro.2020.100016 https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9101319 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chill https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.08.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2014.01.013 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2013.09.008 https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532768xjepc1204_03 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00561 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00561 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-020-00379-8 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-020-00379-8 https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.2017.0004 https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311405999 bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 18 author notes stacy bailey https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8661-8068 university of northern colorado stacy.bailey@unco.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8661-8068 mailto:stacy.bailey@unco.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ designing learning experiences for the future of learning in the digital age: a proposed framework current issues in education, 22(1) 1 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age designing learning experiences for the future of learning in the digital age: a proposed framework derek thurber arizona state university abstract: while our understanding of how we learn has grown exponentially, our knowledge of how to incorporate these ideas when designing instruction has not. this paper proposes a new framework for designing learning experiences which build on existing instructional design models but also incorporates a deep understanding of humans, how we learn, what motivates us, what causes us to lose interest, and what instruction will get us to remember and use our knowledge. the learning experience design framework includes three parts which form a continuous cycle of development and improvement: planning, creating, and refining, all informed by key situational factors. while non-linear, each part is further divided into two sections to address both sides of designing a learning experience: the learning and the experience. these sections can guide anyone into designing better learning experiences for the future of learning in the digital age. keywords: learning experience, design thinking, learning science, instructional design, lx citation: thurber, d. (2021). designing learning experiences for the future of learning in the digital age: a proposed framework. current issues in education, 22(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1890 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 11/04/2020 introduction the future of learning is being shaped by dynamic forces. courses are becoming more adaptable and modular. training is becoming more on-demand. online classes are becoming http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1890 educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 2 current issues in education, 22(1) 2 more engaging: technology is becoming more adapted to connecting people rather than separating them, assessment is becoming more data-driven, and instruction is becoming more active and engaging. we have never known more about how humans learn and how to develop the experience to support learning than we do today. yet, from grade school to grad school and community foundations to major corporations, this knowledge often never makes it into the actual design and delivery of learning experiences. instructional design models developed before the creation of the internet are still the most often used systems for designing learning experiences of all kinds, even today. after a brief review of the current state of instructional design, this paper proposes a new framework for designing learning experiences, which builds on existing models while also incorporating a deep understanding of humans, how we learn, what motivates us, what causes us to lose interest, and what instruction will get us to remember and use our knowledge. with this framework, we can begin to create learning experiences that will shape the future of learning in the digital age. literature review although people have been designing learning and instruction for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, the field of “instructional design” is a relatively modern concept. instructional systems design (isd) models are focused on defining systematic processes which instructional designers can follow to create a workshop, course, curriculum, instructional program, or training session. isd models were born out of largely behaviorist approaches from the 1950s and 60s. in one of the first articles to describe attributes that make effective instructional materials, b.f. skinner (1954) suggested instruction should be self-paced and include small steps, frequent questions, and immediate feedback. skinner called this instruction “programmed instructional materials.” around the same time, benjamin bloom (1956) published his highly influential taxonomy of learning, building in complexity from knowledge and comprehension to synthesis and evaluation. though bloom’s taxonomy has seen some revision in recent years (krathwohl & anderson, 2009), the core ideas remain widely used in all areas of instructional design and have had wide-ranging influence on the development of formal isd models. by the 1970s, these early ideas about instruction and learning began to be codified into formal isd models. the first, and still by far most common, isd model is addie, which was first proposed by the u.s. military in 1975 to create a systematic approach to designing military training programs (branson et al., 1975). addie follows five steps based on the acronym that is its name: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. another model, first introduced in the 1970s and now in its 6th edition, is dick and carey’s (2005) system design process, which pushed instructional design towards thinking from a systems perspective. however, all of these early models have been criticized for following a linear process in which each step should be completed in order. several newer isd models have arisen in reaction to allow for more iteration. these include the successive approximation model (sam; allen & sites, 2012) and the morrison, ross, & kemp (mrk) design model (morrison et al., 2010). both of these models incorporate many of the steps from addie and dick and carey but specify more need for iteration and flexibility. the rise of prominence of constructivism in the 1990s and early 2000s also saw a revision in instructional systems design models. for example, assure builds on addie with a focus on incorporating new media and requiring student participation in learning (smaldino, lowther, russell, & mims, 2018). this focus on constructivism has also been born out in the educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 3 current issues in education, 22(1) 3 highly influential backwards design theory, which posits that all instruction should be designed starting with the end goal in mind, then consider instructional evidence, followed lastly by designing learning materials (wiggins & mctighe, 2005). in the past decade, education research has largely focused on the science of how humans learn (ambrose et al., 2010; brown et al., 2014). this focus has led to many advances in our understanding of how to teach more effectively (e.g. bain, 2011; lang, 2016). it has also led to greater discussion of learning design (newlin, 2016), learning engineering (saxberg, 2015), and lx design (kilgore, 2016), but since the early 2000s, there have been no major revisions to our understanding of instructional design models and theories to implement learning science research. to fill this gap, this proposed learning experience design framework identifies how the field of designing learning and instruction needs to evolve to incorporate new concepts from learning sciences and other disciplines. a new paradigm instructional design is primarily focused on ensuring that a learning experience works, is easy to use, and is intuitive. it is also focused on making sure learners can accomplish the goals set out for the learning (alignment). for example, instructional designers focus on: (1) navigation: how does the learning experience work? where does a learner click to accomplish key tasks? does the learning experience make sense to users? (2) content: is the content clear and is it the right level of content at the right time? is the content accessible to different audiences? and (3) cognitive load: is there content or information that doesn't lead the user to completion of the learning goals? or links/tasks the learner did not expect? learning experience design has a broader focus beyond instructional design. if instructional design asks "how easy is a learning experience to use?", learning experience design asks "how useful is the learning experience?". making a learning experience easy to navigate, aligned to outcomes, and clear to understand are essential objectives, but learning experience design also focuses on making sure learning experiences contain content, features, and functions that are most useful to learning (not simply features which work well). instructional design vs. learning experience design the building blocks of the learning experience design process focus on several interrelated aspects, all impacting the overall experience. what learning experience design focuses on differs in some critical ways to traditional instructional design practices. focus of power traditional instructional design is described as separate from faculty or subject matter experts who provide input, materials, and guidance as the instructional designer creates the course, training, or other learning experience. in this model, instructional designers are professionals who create solutions for subject matter experts. however, we know that change is adopted by people when they are part of making that change. learning experience design envisions the design of learning experiences as a collaborative effort with all parties involved. as such, learning experience designers are partners with faculty and other subject matter experts. opinionated framework traditional instructional design frameworks create a structure for the design to flow through a process such as addie’s analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (branson et al., 1975). instead of focusing on the process, learning experience design focuses on the output. learning experience designers draw on a diverse body of literature in educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 4 current issues in education, 22(1) 4 crafting complex and meaningful learning including existing isd models when relevant, but also research on best practices in teaching, the learning sciences, change management, user experience design, and student development theory. each step of the learning experience design process should be completed when it is most relevant for incorporating the concepts (output) from that section into the learning experience. learner-centered experiences focusing on experiences allows for more openness in how learning occurs and does not constrain thinking to rigid course structures and traditional formats. instead of focusing on the content, style of instruction, structure of the course, or mode of delivery, learning experience design aims to “meet learners where they are,” based on their needs, experience, prior knowledge, and motivations. instead of asking "how can we best teach knowledge or skills to learners?", learning experience designers ask "how will learners best learn knowledge or skills from us?". designing learning experiences: a framework the learning experience design framework is organized into three parts which form a continuous cycle of learning experience development and improvement: planning, creating, and refining, all of which is informed by key situational factors that influence the learning experience and design process. the three parts are divided into two steps so that each part considers the two sides of a learning experience: the learning, and the experience. this is visualized in figure 1. figure 1 visualization of the design of learning experiences framework educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 5 current issues in education, 22(1) 5 the framework is deliberately depicted as non-linear. each step can be used when it helps incorporate the ideas from that stage into the design or improvement of the learning experience. the steps might be completed multiple times and in multiple configurations as the entire design goes through iterations. a key emphasis of the entire learning experience design process is the importance of developing learning that fits the needs and capabilities of people. learning experience designers should not jump to solutions for the problem that is given to them but instead take time to understand what the real issues are. as such, the entire process should be thought of as design thinking. design thinking is used across all types of problems and industries but always includes common themes of iterating through stages of observation, generation, prototyping, and testing (norman, 2013). these stages are infused throughout the entire learning experience design process, but none of that can happen without first adhering to the overarching maxim of all design thinking: solve the right problem. of course, design thinking is often at odds with the constraints and forces placed on the design of a learning experience. we often want to make learning design easy, or at least straightforward, but the truth is that any design process worth engaging in will be inherently messy. part of the charge of a good learning experience designer is to think creatively and bring in new perspectives. however, we do still have to consider real constraints which impact the design process. in the design of everyday things, don norman (2013) suggests a number of constraints on any design process which are highly applicable to the design of learning experiences: (1) meeting the needs of multiple, conflicting requirements from clients (i.e. faculty, programs, schools, corporations, etc.) and end-users (i.e. learners); (2) needing to reach the audience that will use it (i.e. modality, timing, format, etc.); and (3) completing everything within a defined budget. engaging in learning experience design is thus a balancing act between challenging conventions with creative thinking to solve the right problem and meeting the needs of real and defined constraints. each stage of the design of learning experience framework and the theoretical underpinnings for it are discussed in detail in the rest of this section. planning the planning section includes the necessary inputs into the process. this is what would be covered in the analysis stage of addie and other similar isd models. however, instead of just aiming to understand current behaviors, we look at whether we are asking the right questions for ideal behaviors. this section consists of two areas which are necessary to understand the bigger picture: understanding characteristics and prior knowledge of learners, and defining the landscape and desired outcome of the learning experience. understanding the learner this step asks the designer to take on the perspective of the learner to develop comprehensive profiles of target learners. in his book the inmates are running the asylum, alan cooper (1999) describes how in the early days of software development, those who were creating the technology were also those who were using it and so they were willing to forgive software for not working smoothly since they knew what went into creating it. as the user base for technology expanded, new users who were not technologists were not as forgiving of a product with a bad interaction just because of the difficulty of building it. as such, designers and developers had to start to design for their ideal end user in mind. the same issue comes up over and over again in education. those who are teaching already know all of the knowledge of their field and are willing to accept the difficult path they took to acquire that expertise, but learners educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 6 current issues in education, 22(1) 6 may not be willing to accept those same challenges just because of the difficulty of creating a better learning experience. to combat this issue in software development, alan cooper proposed using short user personas to develop empathy for the end-user in the design process (cooper, 1999). this is now a widely used tool in all areas of user experience design, and can be applied to the design of learning experiences. a learner persona should incorporate several things about the learner: a description of the factors which impact knowledge organization, the level of intellectual development, the progress through social-identity development, and the goals and motivations for learning. this information should always be gathered directly from target learners through interviews, surveys, focus groups, etc. rather than guessing at or inferring characteristics based on ideal representations or stereotypes (e.g. all millennials are technology literate). knowledge organization. how we organize our knowledge is fundamental to how we learn. as we grow up, we make connections all the time between the things we see in the world. as these associations get progressively more complex, so does the level of new information we can incorporate into our existing knowledge structure (brown et al., 2014). however, the way we organize knowledge varies based on our experiences, the nature of our knowledge, and how that knowledge is used in our lives (ambrose et al., 2010, p. 47). this knowledge organization can be affected by several factors, including our previous educational experiences, cultural background, and how we have used knowledge in the past. no organizational structure is better than another, but knowledge organization develops to support the tasks being performed and is most effective when well-matched to the way knowledge needs to be accessed and used in the future (ambrose et al., 2010). as such, this section of the profile should include information such as the cultural background of the learner, what prior education the learner has had related to the topic, what tasks the learner has been asked to perform in the past related to the topic, and any misconceptions the learner could have faced related to the topic. intellectual development. to center teaching on our learners, it is necessary to understand the complex set of social, emotional, and intellectual challenges we all face throughout our lives and bring with us to our learning. this does not mean it is necessary to guide learners through their social and emotional development, but being aware of where they are developmentally helps to understand how to create a more productive learning experience for them. one good way to do this is to use the nine vectors of student development created by chickering (1969). these vectors span social, emotional, and intellectual development processes and how learners navigate each of them shapes how they will grow personally with one another, the instructor, and the content of their courses. the learners’ development along these nine vectors also has implications for how they will gain a sense of agency and identity within their chosen field, which has implications for their motivation and persistence (ambrose et al., 2010). the learner profile should, therefore, include the level of development of the learner along chickering's (1969) nine vectors. social-identity development. in addition to this overall view of development, understanding the complexity of individual learner’s social identity allows us to bring in the learner’s perspective in our experiences and be responsive to learner needs. social identity theory posits that identity is not a given but must instead be developed and continually negotiated as individuals try to balance different developmental tensions throughout their lives (erikson, 1963). this identity development is particularly salient in how learners identify with certain social groups, especially those which are often the target of prejudice or discrimination. while many theories exist for understanding the identity development of individual groups such as educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 7 current issues in education, 22(1) 7 asian americans, african americans, and jewish identity, hardiman and jackson (1992) attempted to pull together the threads of all these theories by highlighting the similarities faced by different minority groups. the hardiman-jackson model describes the following stages: naïve, which is devoid of any preconceptions or prejudice, acceptance of certain messages about different groups, resistance to the accepted worldview, immersion, in which people prefer to socialize only with members of their own group, and finally redefinition and internalization, where people’s social identity becomes one part of their make-up but not the defining characteristic (ambrose et al., 2010). the learner profile should include what identities learners are developing and how far they are in realizing those identities, so that the learning experience can meet the needs of these learners and avoid causing harm. learner goals. it is critical to include learner goals in a persona, since learner’s goals for themselves will often differ from our goals for them. if we understand our learners’ goals for themselves, then we can design learning experiences that might motivate them across multiple goals (ambrose et al., 2010). learners are motivated primarily by performance goals, which include things like protecting a desired self-image and projecting a positive reputation (ambrose et al., 2010). when learners are focused on performance goals, they are often trying to determine what is necessary to complete an assignment or activity and gain recognition and praise (usually through a grade), rather than on what they will learn from completing that activity (learning goal). learners may have other goals as well, such as work-avoidant goals (meece & holt, 1993)—for example, to finish the work as quickly as possible—or affective goals and social goals (ford, 1992)—for example, not being bored and making friends. the learner profile should honestly describe the goals learners have for themselves in the learning experience. defining the experience in this step, designers should articulate the desired end result of the learning experience and leverage that to write measurable learning goals. understanding by design (wiggins & mctighe, 2005) popularized the notion that courses should be designed with a defined end goal in mind—often called backwards design. while this learning experience design framework does not dictate that all learning experiences should follow a backwards design approach, backwards design’s focus on the end goal is born out of a recognition that not all learning and understanding is the same. defining goals helps us to foreground for our learners what they will get out of the experience, what they can contribute to that experience, and also remind us that learning is about more than just reception of new information (hanstedt, 2018). to do this, we need to do three things: understand the landscape for the learning experience, determine the desired end result, and define measurable learning goals. understand the landscape. learning experiences are not designed in a void. when designing the experience, we have to understand how it relates to knowledge within the discipline, how sgimilar experiences are designed, and what standard conventions exist for knowledge in the topic area. following existing conventions in design makes it easier for learners since they can transfer knowledge and practice from one area to another easily (norman, 2013). for example, if learners were taught math based on older conventions or common core standards, then how does that affect the learning experience design? this does not mean that learning experiences have to be uniform or follow existing conventions, but to break away from the norm for a topic or type of experience should be a deliberate decision based on knowledge of existing conventions. determine the desired end result. the desired end result is not an assignment or deliverable learners create—that is covered in other parts of the framework. the end result educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 8 current issues in education, 22(1) 8 should be the desired state of knowledge learners possess as a result of completing the learning experience. wiggins and mctighe (2005) call this the “big idea” (chapter 3). big ideas are the concepts which are at the very heart of understanding a topic, and failing to learn the big idea would result in not truly understanding the topic. a big idea is also an anchor for organizing knowledge around the topic. if learners grasp the big idea, then we will know they have learned what we wanted them to learn from the experience. big ideas should come from an understanding of the field, but we must be careful of our expert blind spots which can prevent us from identifying big ideas that seem obvious to us (and thus, not like big ideas), but are conceptually difficult for learners to understand (nickerson, 1999). while we are all susceptible to having an expert blind spot when we are experts in our field, if we explore the topic in-depth to get at that heart of what we want learners to know or be able to do as a result of their participation, we can define the desired outcome of that learning experience. measurable learning goals. in addition to the desired end result, we also need to define measurable learning goals for our learning experience. this concept of measurable goals often rubs up against our idealism for learners. how can we measure the way a story changes our learners’ lives or the degree to which learners appreciate cultural diversity? however, if done correctly, articulating learning goals should not be seen as a process of narrowing down possibilities, but instead as providing expansive opportunities for learners to learn complex topics in authentic ways. in creating wicked students, paul hanstedt (2018) suggests we negotiate this tension by writing goals that give learners more authority to apply concepts in authentic ways. by doing so, we can create goals which challenge learners to reach closer to our most idealistic goals for them while remaining measurable. when we design learning experiences with this type of goal in mind, we push our learners to achieve our ideals for them, rather than settle for what is easiest to measure. regardless of how we do it, writing measurable learning goals for our learning experiences is an essential step in designing the overall experience and has massive implications within the other stages of this framework. creating the creating section is focused on the design and development of a learning experience— the two “d”s in addie. however, in addition to planning and creating learning artifacts, the design of learning experiences framework focuses on integrating learning sciences, the visual look and feel, and the desired environment for learning that is being created. as such, the two areas within this section focus on the two necessary outputs of learning experience design: developing the learning and designing the experience. developing the learning at this step, designers need to break down the learning into component skills which scaffold learner’s development of mastery. anyone who has ever tried to teach someone how to drive a car knows that learning involves developing multiple component skills. to drive on a road, we have to first learn how to put a car into gear, move the steering wheel, check the mirrors, and push the gas pedal, then practice them all in tandem. these component skills may seem very easy to experts, and that familiarity can obscure the complexity of the component skills that go into learning anything. but, if learners lack necessary component skills, their ability to complete an overall task or learn a topic is diminished (resnick, 1976). breaking down complex tasks helps instructors identify skills learners need to learn through practice. to develop learning, ambrose et al. (2010) provide a good framework learners must work through to gain mastery: acquisition, practice, and application. a single learning experience may not cover all educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 9 current issues in education, 22(1) 9 levels of mastery development but instead only complete one or two steps as part of a larger sequence of learning experiences that culminate in mastery. acquire component skills. recognizing that learners need to learn or reinforce component skills through targeted practice, learning experience design should focus first on identifying what those component skills are. this involves breaking down complex tasks, such as those identified in measurable learning goals into its constituent parts. for example, to know how to apply research principles to the study of historical texts, the learner needs to first understand how to conduct research, how to find historical texts, how to read historical texts, and how to write an analysis paper. with component skills identified, we can plan targeted practice which should be designed to either be completed in isolation or as part of the more complex whole task. which type of practice is better depends on the circumstances and the desired outcome of the practice. research suggests it is generally better to use whole-task practice if the overall task is fairly simple or if the component parts do not make sense in isolation while it is better to practice tasks in isolation when the overall task is highly complex and can be easily divided into component parts which could then be progressively combined (ambrose et al., 2010, pp. 101– 102). practice integrating skills. if breaking down the learning into component skills is the first step, then practicing those skills to gain a level of familiarity and automaticity is the second step in developing mastery. when learners combine multiple skills they know independently, they often struggle putting them together because of the total information processing demand required. this is referred to as cognitive load (moreno & park, 2010). experts do not suffer from cognitive overload as much because of the level of automaticity they have gained with the component skills. as such, those tasks no longer require as much of their cognitive resources. gaining this familiarity requires practice, but not all practice is created equal. to push learners to develop mastery, we have to challenge them to the limits of what they already know without getting beyond what they are capable of learning. this "zone of proximal development" was first described by lev vygotsky in 1978 and remains a powerful framework for how to conceptualizing scaffolding of practice to develop mastery (vygotsky, 1978). we also know, however, that practicing a new skill in the zone of proximal development requires a lot of cognitive resources while practicing skills we are already familiar does not. if we sequence activities so that learners can practice new skills followed by familiar ones, then new ones again, we can reduce the cognitive demands of learning new content (dirksen, 2016). structuring practice in this way also encourages two other important concepts from the learning sciences: spaced practice and interleaving in which practice is spread out and concepts are interspersed rather than taught back to back (ambrose et al., 2010; brown et al., 2014). this practice of component skills should not be underestimated for both its importance in learning and also its time requirements. designing learning experiences requires creating appropriate opportunities for practice and integration of those skills to gain familiarity. know when to apply skills. the final step towards mastery of content is learning how and when to apply skills. this is commonly referred to as transfer. transfer is arguably the goal of all learning experiences, but it is neither simple nor automatic. ambrose et al. (2010) identify two challenges from the research that impact transfer: (1) learners may associate knowledge too closely with the context they learned it in, and (2) learners may not have a robust enough understanding of the underlying principles—they know what to do, but not why (pp. 108-109). to better facilitate transfer to authentic contexts, hanstedt (2018) suggests creating assignments which nurture authority in our learners by: (1) making meaning (i.e. constructing new ideas or educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 10 current issues in education, 22(1) 10 solutions to problems), (2) integrating (i.e. facilitating useful connections), (3) synthesizing (i.e. bringing together ideas to create understanding), (4) making decisions (i.e. taking action based on their thinking), and (5), whenever possible, requiring learners to complete the assignment in a context of uncertainty (p. 66). by creating assignments with these criteria in mind, we can design learning experiences that push learners to better transfer knowledge to new contexts and apply abstract knowledge to authentic problems. reflection and metacognition. experiences at all levels of mastery should also incorporate opportunities for learners to develop their own thinking—often called metacognition. while we know that one of the major challenges learners of all levels face is their ability to manage their own learning and assess their own understanding (ambrose et al., 2010), metacognition is rarely addressed within learning experiences. in order to incorporate metacognition into learning, we have to address learners’ beliefs about their intelligence and learning so that learners can accurately assess their own knowledge, strengths, and weakness (not an easy task), and continuously monitor changes in their understanding. doing so helps learners get past the common misconception that intelligence is fixed and helps them achieve greater learning gains as a result (dweck, 2007). ambrose et al. (2010) suggest a number of strategies to incorporate metacognition into any learning activities. these include being more explicit in directions than may seem necessary to combat assumptions learners might have about assignments, telling learners what we do not want, checking learners’ understanding of what they think they need to do to complete an assignment, requiring learners to explain what they did and why to reflect on their work, asking students to create plans for completing larger assignments, and using peer reviews to analyze peer work and provide feedback. whatever strategies are employed, the research suggests that metacognition does not develop on its own and incorporating strategies to develop metacognition into learning experiences helps learners succeed. designing the experience creating the appropriate learning activities to develop mastery is only half the battle. designers also need to design how their content should be delivered, including the look and feel of the content as well as planning for the climate of the environment in which the content will be taught. this step is an often-undervalued piece of designing learning experiences or instruction. we tend to jump straight to determining what activities and assignments learners should submit, and blame failures to achieve our standards on the learners for not trying hard enough, not reading our directions, or just not getting it. however, when learners struggle with learning, it is often because of the way the learning experience is designed, not because of a failure of the learners. in designing learning experiences, there are three main areas to spend our time and attention: designing experiences to reduce extraneous cognitive load, creating content that supports all types of learners, and developing a supportive learning environment. extraneous cognitive load. when creating learning experiences, we should focus on how to make sure learners focus on learning the content rather than how to figure out the experience—in learning science language this is referred to as reducing extraneous cognitive load (ambrose et al., 2010). one key way to reduce extraneous cognitive load is by making sure learners can discover what the activity or content is, how it works, and what actions are possible to do with it. don norman (2013) provides a good framework for the five fundamental psychological principles that go into making things discoverable: (1) affordances (i.e. how a person sees what actions are possible), (2) signifiers (i.e. communicating where the action should take place), (3) constraints (i.e. what actions are not possible), (4) mapping, (i.e. the relationship educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 11 current issues in education, 22(1) 11 between different things), and (5) feedback (i.e. communicating the results of an action). in designing learning experiences, we should consider these five principles to create learning materials and activities which are easy for the learner to discover what they are and how to use them. the visual look and feel of content can also help to reduce extraneous cognitive load by making learning materials easy to find, understand, and use. when designing the visual look and feel of learning content, the principles of c.r.a.p. proposed by robin williams (2015) are highly relevant. c.r.a.p. stands for contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity which williams (2015) describes as the four basic principles to adhere to when creating well-designed information, including learning materials. universal design. todd rose (2016) has famously said there is no such thing as an average student. all learners—even geniuses—have a “jagged profile” based on their strengths and weaknesses in different areas. the learner profiles within this learning experience design framework is a recognition of this principle. because of this, when we design for the average— as we often do—we are failing our learners. instead, we should focus on how we can design our experiences to be adaptable rather than force learners to fit into an average experience. universal design provides insight into how to make this happen. universal design is a concept that is used across many disciplines to describe the design of environments, buildings, experiences, etc. to be accessible to all different user needs rather than just the average. universal design for learning posits that all learning experiences should be designed to provide multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation, and multiple means of action and expression (meyer, rose, & gordon, 2014). practically speaking, this means if we can design for the extremes of learner needs, in doing so we will create learning experiences which can support all types of learners. supportive environment. learners’ perceptions of an environment can have drastic effects on their motivation to pursue goals. if the environment is supportive, learner motivation is likely to be enhanced, but if the environment is unsupportive, learner interest can be eroded. ambrose et al. (2010) suggest several dimensions to plan for in designing learning environments: stereotypes, content, and tone. stereotype threat is a complicated concept but boils down to the threat members of a group feel when they are worried about being judged by stereotypes about that group (steel, 2010). this threat does not need to be overt or intentional— often seemingly innocuous comments, examples, or actions can trigger stereotype threat. stereotype threat also acts across both cognitive performance and learner motivation, making how we frame materials and activities something of great importance for learning and performance. the content we teach and, sometimes what we don’t teach, can send signals to learners which can influence their perception of the environment. consider, for example, the impact it might have on young women in sciences to hear numerous examples highlighting the contributions of women to the sciences. or, what does it do for a black learner's motivation to hear constant examples of crime in african american communities in an economics course? the brain desires to be part of a welcoming and supportive community that is free of threats. to promote a positive environment for learning and performance, we have to familiarize ourselves with common actions and conditions which might make learners feel unsafe and seek to enhance actions and conditions which can make culturally and linguistically diverse learners feel more included (hammond, 2015). for example, one study examined the difference in student helpseeking behavior in two classes with identical syllabi except for the tone of their policies. they found that students were more likely to seek help from the professor whose policies were worded using rewarding language rather than punitive language (ishiyama & hartlaub, 2002). emotions educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 12 current issues in education, 22(1) 12 can harness attention, maximize working memory potential, enhance memory consolidation, and motivate learners (cavanagh, 2016). all of which indicates that the tone we convey within our learning experiences has a lasting impact on learning and performance. refining the refining section is about iterative improvement both before and after the implementation of a learning experience. the first area focuses on taking a step back to make sure the learning is aligned to the inputs from the planning section and best practices in the creating section. the second area emphasizes the need to use data for evaluation and assessment of the experience. enhancing the learning during this step, designers evaluate the design of the learning experience to better understand the underlying goals and expected outcomes of learners. at this point, designers often revise elements of the experience previously created based on a holistic view of the learning experience once it has been more fully created. one key challenge in designing and assessing learning is that every assignment and activity is unique. even two activities which, on paper, appear to be the same, can have drastically different outcomes for learners based on how they are framed, presented, or supported. while there are numerous ways content and teaching can be developed or enhanced, broadly speaking we can lump these into three categories to use in the design of learning experience: learner engagement, technology infusion, and community. learner engagement. to be effective at transferring knowledge, learning experiences should be engaging for students and allow them the opportunity for creativity and authority. chi and wylie (2014) provide a framework for understanding and planning for how learners engage with activities. their icap framework looks at the type of engagement an activity promotes in learners and is based on the understanding that active engagement in learning is preferable to passive. icap stands for the four modes of overt engagement behaviors from most to least engaging: interactive, constructive, active, and passive. accordingly, the learning outcome of an activity increases based on the mode of engagement exhibited by learners within that activity (chi & wylie, 2014). we can use this framework to better design our learning activities and plan our instructional delivery to involve higher-level modes of engagement and thus increase learning outcomes and transfer. technology infusion. it's a safe assumption that learning experiences of the future will incorporate some amount of technology regardless of modality (online or in-person). introduced by punya mishra and matthew k. koehler in 2006, tpack provides a framework for understanding how to meaningfully integrate technology into learning experiences (mishra & koehler, 2006). tpack requires us to account for content knowledge (ck; i.e. what content are we teaching and what is our knowledge of the subject?), pedagogical knowledge (pk; i.e. what instructional strategies should we use to meet the needs of our learners?), and technological knowledge (tk; i.e. what digital tools are available, which do we know well enough to use, and which would be most appropriate for the learning experience?). when we integrate these ideas, we can explore the best practices for teaching content for our specific learners (pck) and how digital tools can transform content (tck) or how we teach (tpk; mishra & koehler, 2006). all of this taken together makes up technological, pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) and understanding each of these pieces in our learning experience allows us to thoughtfully integrate technology into the experience. educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 13 current issues in education, 22(1) 13 community of learners. research has long supported the claim that thinking and engaging collaboratively create deeper and more meaningful learning experiences (e.g. garrison & archer, 2000; garrison et al., 2010; johnson, 2016). as such, we should be developing learning experiences which support and promote the types of collaboration that will enhance learning. the community of inquiry (coi) framework proposed in 2000 by garrison, anderson, and archer provides a theoretical understanding of how to create a community of learners who all engage in discourse to facilitate inquiry, construct meaning and validate understanding (garrison et al., 2000). the coi describes three interdependent elements to design and deliver deep and meaningful learning experiences: social presence (i.e. the interaction between peers in a trusting environment), cognitive presence (i.e. co-constructed knowledge through social learning based on critical thinking and inquiry), and teaching presence (i.e. guiding learners toward cognitive and social presences; garrison, 2017). since all three presences are required to create a community of inquiry, evaluating and improving existing learning materials and instructional plans for how they will help to facilitate the development of each of these presences can have a direct impact on learning. assessing the experience this step is where designers determine what assessment evidence can be used and how to measure the success of the learning experience to make iterative improvements. this stage requires us to step away from the designer’s mindset to think about assessment—what wiggins and mctighe call “thinking like an assessor” (2005, chapter 7). there are two key components of this stage: mapping how all elements of the learning experience are aligned to measurable goals and learners’ needs and determining appropriate assessment evidence. aligning assessments with goals. a critical question of any learning experience should always be: are learners understanding what the learning experience is intending? we can do this with a curriculum map following the schema of mastery learning from the creating section in which we determine how and where outcomes are introduced, practiced, and mastered within learning activities. this mapping ensures each goal is appropriately addressed and scaffolded within the experience (suskie, 2018). at this point, it might also be appropriate to adjust the type of activity being used for a given learning goal if the assessment strategy is not aimed at the appropriate goal, and to ensure that assessments are reliable indicators of learner performance. reliability refers to whether our assessment reflects a consistent pattern. for example, does a low performance on one test reflect a learner's understanding of the topic or the fact that they didn't sleep well the night before? to ensure reliability, it is best to have multiple points of assessment which are varied in types of evidence over time (wiggins & mctighe, 2005). determine assessment evidence. in addition to ensuring alignment of activities to goals, we also have to ensure that the assessment evidence is appropriate to determine if learners are meeting our goals. wiggins and mctighe (2005) suggest asking three questions at this point: (1) what kinds of evidence do we need? (2) what specific characteristics in learner responses, products, or performance should we examine? and (3) does the proposed evidence enable us to infer a learner’s knowledge, skills, or understanding? (p. 150). to address these three questions, we should focus on the development of high-quality rubrics for assessment. the value of rubrics should not be underestimated. rubrics support instructors in grading according to explicit criteria which remain consistent across a given assignment. rubrics also provide learners better insight into the assignment requirements and, when used for grading, where their strengths and weaknesses lie to focus their efforts to improve knowledge or skills (ambrose et al., 2010). rubrics also help to make sure assessment evidence is valid and reliable. to be valid, the educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 14 current issues in education, 22(1) 14 assessment evidence should be measuring true understanding. for example, is an assignment easy to get a good grade because of good writing rather than a deep knowledge of the topic? as such, validity is about inferring deep understanding based on learner products or performance. addressing these three questions related to assessment measures will make sure learners’ outcomes from learning experiences can be measured. this, in turn, should always inform revisions and improvements over time (suskie, 2018). like all well-designed things, learning experiences are iterative and should always be updated and improved based on the newest knowledge and understanding of the entire experience. conclusion ultimately, the learning experience design framework is not proposed to be prescriptive. based on a holistic understanding of learning and developing instruction, the framework includes sections and steps which can guide anyone into designing learning experiences. grounded in the growing body of literature surrounding how we learn, the learning experience design framework might ultimately be most useful as a tool for how to better incorporate our understanding of teaching and learning into learning experiences, rather than as a replacement for existing instructional systems design models which can work in parallel to the ideas presented here. as with any new methodology, the success of this learning experience design framework will be dependent on how it shapes the practice of educators at all levels and in all types of organizations, with the design of new and better learning experiences for the digital age. references allen, m., & sites, r. 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(2005). understanding by design (2nd ed.). ascd. williams, r. (2015). the non-designer’s design book (4th ed.). peachpit press. author notes derek thurber arizona state university derek.w.thurber@asu.edu guest editor notes sean m. leahy, phd arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au mailto:derek.w.thurber@asu.edu mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 17 current issues in education, 22(1) 17 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf humanizing online teaching to equitize higher education current issues in education, 21(2) 1 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age humanizing online teaching to equitize higher education michelle pacansky-brock, foothill-deanza community college district michael smedshammer, modesto junior college kim vincent-layton, humboldt state university abstract: online courses are increasing access to college for students who have been traditionally left out of higher education. however, minoritized students are less likely to succeed online when compared to their white and asian peers. as the student population becomes more diverse, colleges and universities have an opportunity to improve this problem by preparing faculty to design and facilitate inclusive online learning experiences that more effectively support the needs of all learners. this paper presents a model for humanized online teaching using a theoretical framework influenced by culturally responsive teaching (crt), social presence, validation theory, and universal design for learning (udl). humanized online teaching ensures the noncognitive components of learning are addressed through instructor-student relationships and community, allowing connection and empathy to drive engagement and rigor. six humanizing strategies with real teaching examples are discussed, in addition to goals for meaningful professional development to support the adoption of humanized online teaching. keywords: online teaching, interaction, equity, minoritized students, diverse students, inclusive teaching citation: pacansky-brock, m., smedshammer m., & vincent-layton, k. (2020). humanizing online teaching to equitize higher education. current issues in education, 21(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1905 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 6/14/2020 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1905 humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 2 introduction online courses are playing a more critical role in higher education, as they continue to provide access to low-income students who do not have the privilege of being on campus fulltime. however, students from minoritized groups are less likely to succeed in online courses. “humanizing” is a pedagogical strategy that seeks to improve equity gaps by acknowledging the fact that learning environments are not neutral; rather, they often operate to reinforce a worldview that minoritizes some students. the assumption that student engagement and academic achievement are inherent student attributes is deeply embedded in the culture of higher education, and trickles down to the way courses are taught. this assumption privileges students who have been cued to think they are college material, as well as those who learn effectively through reading and writing. humanizing recognizes that engagement and achievement are social constructs developed through the background and experiences students bring to college and the educational environment provided for them. looking at engagement and achievement through this lens nudges educators to shift the burden from students to the barriers within our own practices. humanizing removes the affective and cognitive barriers from online learning, and provides a pathway towards a more equitable future for higher education that supports the success of all students. as online course enrollments continue to increase and serve more diverse learners, research is needed to identify strategies that effectively foster an inclusive course climate from a distance. while the theoretical frameworks that underpin inclusion in online courses are similar to those in on-campus courses, how to best implement these frameworks in asynchronous online courses presents unique challenges, remaining a murky topic for institutional leaders, instructors, instructional designers, and instructional technologists. the research-based peralta equity rubric (2019) is one resource that institutions are beginning to use to foster inclusive learning in online courses, and is a sign that online courses are emerging as a critical component of equity efforts. humanizing offers clear, practical teaching strategies for online instruction that cultivate an inclusive online course climate better able to support the cognitive and affective differences that co-exist within a college course. instructor-student relationships lie at the heart of humanizing, serving as the connective tissue between students, engagement, and rigor. humanizing strategies use welcoming visuals and warm asynchronous communications to establish positive first impressions, trust between the instructor and students, and a culture of care in the online environment. to leverage the potential that humanized online education offers for equitizing the future of higher education, institutions must keep students at the center of decisions and invest in professional development to prepare faculty who teach online. theoretical frameworks humanized online instruction is informed by many well-known theoretical frameworks including validation theory, culturally responsive teaching, social presence, and udl. validation theory online education is at a crossroads in higher education in the united states. to many institutions, it appears as an “easy” way to cut costs and is used as a vehicle to increase enrollments. courses at those institutions are more likely to feel like they’re on auto-pilot than taught by a real person. other institutions are beginning to recognize that online courses have real potential to move the needle if they are designed and facilitated effectively. as the diversity of college students increases and the workforce continues to demand more skilled workers, the humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 3 latter scenario will become critical for institutional leaders to recognize and value. the online modality is distinct from classroom instruction and, as such, online courses should be designed to leverage the full potential that the web and digital technologies bring to teaching and learning. however, some classic elements of effective teaching transcend modality. in the 1990s, rendón (1994) showed that students who entered college with self-doubt about their ability to succeed were more likely to be transformed into “powerful learners” when they experienced in-class academic validation from a faculty member. academic validation, which was found to be needed most by low-income, first generation college students, was achieved when faculty demonstrated concern, were personable and approachable, treated students with respect, provided scaffolded learning experiences that allowed students to develop confidence in their abilities, worked independently with students who needed support, and provided meaningful feedback. in 2011, linares, muñoz et al., wrote, “when validation is present, students feel capable of learning and have a sense of self-worth (p. 18).” validation theory has served as a developmental framework for institutions serving diverse student groups for decades. humanized instruction uses validation theory and answers the question, “what does that look like online?” culturally responsive teaching crt theory recognizes that groups of students are comprised of diverse cultures and contribute to a richer learning environment when diversity is viewed as a value. many students come from cultures that are collectivist in nature, meaning they emphasize relationships, interdependence within a community, and cooperative learning (hammond, 2014). in contrast, higher education in the united states values an individualist culture, expecting students to independently navigate challenging new situations, which contributes to competition and celebrates individual achievement. when crt is embraced, learning environments are designed to be inclusive, valuing more collectivist cultural archetypes and ensuring all students feel included. a humanized online learning environment embraces crt by establishing a safe, trustworthy course climate through instructor-student relationships and rigor through empathy and collaboration. in research supporting rendón’s early findings, palacios and wood (2016) conclude that “personal relationships typified by trust, mutual respect, and authentic care were necessary and were primary conditions that foregrounded effective pedagogy” (p. 5) among african american men in college. palacios and wood go so far as to suggest the idea of “relationships before pedagogy” (p. 5); in other words, it is essential to establish a caring and trusting environment where students believe the instructor knows and supports them so that learning can then take place. a supportive and trusting community of learners happens more readily when instructors humanize themselves. as hammond explains, “the most powerful thing we can do to create a culture of caring is to allow ourselves to be seen as human beings, not just in our role as teachers” (2014, p. 80). but the act of humanizing does not mean “oversharing.” hammond calls it practicing “selective vulnerability” (2014, p. 79). we need not share all the skeletons in our closets, but in appropriate situations it helps students when we narrate our own struggles and, sometimes, our own failures. telling our stories helps establish trust and model perseverance for students, many of whom are suffering greatly from self-doubt and fear of being exposed, a condition known as the imposter syndrome. humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 4 social presence despite evidence that validates the importance of instructor-student relationships, research shows that interactions in online courses tend to be infrequent and often limited to written text, which may lead students to feel isolated and unsupported (jaggars & xu, 2016). more institutions have begun adopting the use of a rubric to improve the quality of online courses; however, rubrics that address interaction generally limit the focus to quantity. improving the quality of interactions in an online course is what promotes social presence -the degree to which a person is perceived as “real” in mediated communications (gunawardena, 1995). social presence is important because it is shown to increase students’ satisfaction with their instructor, interactions, and perceived learning (tu & mcisaac, 2002; picciano, 2002; richardson & swan, 2003; russo & benson, 2005; swan & shih, 2005). humanized instruction encourages the use of a supportive tone in written communications and incorporating asynchronous videos of the instructor, which have been shown to increase social presence (borup, west, & graham, 2012) through their ability to convey affective indicators (expression of emotions, use of humor, and self-disclosure). universal design for learning udl is a popular framework used in k12 teaching that is gaining traction in higher education. the principles of udl derive from neuroscience and are designed to support learner variability. a helpful analogy that explains udl is to imagine if all people were given a size 8 shoe and expected to wear it every day. while that seems ridiculous, udl suggests that the design of a learning environment operates much the same way, privileging some students and leaving others out. the udl guidelines provided by cast in 2018 support the affective, recognition, and strategic networks of the human brain, which influence the “why,” “what,” and “how” of learning. humanizing strategies model these guidelines by emphasizing relationships and community, using images and videos for instructor communications and student-student discussions, and providing high-touch support for the students who need it most. further, in a humanized online course, students who have a known cognitive difference, like dyslexia, or a disability, like hearing loss, are more likely to be supported without needing to ask for an accommodation. this removes a barrier for students who may feel stigmatized by the need to request an accommodation in the first place. why is humanizing key to the future of learning? as the demand for online courses increases and the diversity of the online student population grows, humanizing will become essential to support students in achieving their academic goals. the number of postsecondary students taking online courses continues to grow (ginder, kelly-reid, & mann, 2017): in fact, nearly 30% are taking at least one online course (allen & seaman, 2017). community college students are more likely than undergraduates at four-year public institutions and four-year private colleges to take at least one online course, underscoring the appeal of online learning to minoritized student groups (ginder, kelly-reid, & mann, 2017). overall enrollment increases are expected to continue in the following groups: female, ethnically diverse, age, pell grant recipient, and first-to-college (ginder, kelly-reid, & mann, 2017). the demand for online courses and changing demographics among the students they serve bring significant implications for the future of learning. to ensure maximum success for all, institutions will need to adapt to meet rapidly changing student needs. humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 5 online education matters especially to minoritized student groups because it increases access in areas where they have historically been left to fend for themselves. equity-minded educators consider these students high opportunity students. but the question remains, how does this translate to the practice of teaching? when teaching online, each name on the screen must be recognized as a real human with a story. faculty who teach online need to understand how and why to unveil these stories, to design a course that values and celebrates students’ unique experiences, and to facilitate assignments that invite students to share. one must also acknowledge that sharing is not easy for students, especially when they feel marginalized. online instructors must first establish trust with learners before meaningful peer-to-peer interactions are expected to occur (palacios & wood, 2016). possessing an understanding of how to establish an inclusive class climate at a distance will be an essential skill for online educators as the students served by colleges and universities continue to become more diverse. why is humanizing especially important for stem courses? humanizing undergraduate online stem courses is of particular importance as the united states works toward increasing the diversity of the stem workforce (estrada et al., 2016). according to a study by estrada, et al. (2016), only 14.7 percent of stem bachelor’s degrees were attained by minoritized students in the united states in 2010. the academic pathway that contributes to this workforce flow is fraught with performance gaps, particularly for minoritized students. these gaps are even greater for minoritized students in the online learning environment (figlio, rush, & yin, 2013; hart, friedmann, & hill, 2018; jaggars & xu, 2014). while much ink has been spilled in recent years about the link between student mindset and academic success (dweck, 2008; center for community college student engagement, 2019), there has been a dearth of literature that looks at how faculty mindsets affect student performance. this is changing. recent research shows that the beliefs faculty hold about their students’ abilities is a concerning and largely overlooked contributor to equity gaps. a 2019 study by canning, muenks, green, and murphy comprised of 150 stem professors and more than 15,000 students found larger racial opportunity gaps in courses taught by faculty with a fixed versus growth mindset about student ability. professors with fixed mindsets tend to believe that some students are more naturally inclined to succeed in stem. these mindsets are influenced by cultural stereotypes that portray white and asian students as more innately poised for success in math and the sciences than students from minoritized groups. as such, faculty are more likely to use demotivating cues in their interactions with students of color. for example, following a poor grade on a single test, a black or latinx student in a math course may receive the message that “not everyone is cut out for math,” whereas a white or asian student is cued to “try harder next time.” fixed faculty mindsets also work to reinforce the competitive nature of stem courses, which rely on summative exams designed with the expectation that students will succeed independently. these findings are telling, especially in light of previous research that links sense of belonging to student persistence in stem majors. rainey, et al. (2018) found that students from minoritized groups are less likely to feel they belong in stem courses and now we have evidence demonstrating that the way faculty teach and communicate with students is part of this problem. in short, teaching matters. faculty who teach stem courses must have access to professional development that emphasizes the value of interpersonal relationships in their discipline (shaffer, marx, & prislin, 2013) and engages students in self-reflective activities about their own beliefs surrounding intelligence (center for community college student engagement, humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 6 2019). it is rare for these types of growth opportunities to be provided in higher education, and when they are, they almost always assume that faculty are teaching in a traditional classroom - leaving online courses out, as if they aren’t even part of the picture. humanizing is customized for online education and holds significant potential for improving the climate in online stem courses by ensuring faculty possess the skills and tools to construct their presence online and foster positive instructor-student relationships at a distance. how does one equitize higher education through humanized online teaching? online courses can provide welcoming and supportive learning environments for students when faculty have a foundational understanding of equity as well as the skills and support to design and facilitate inclusive, culturally responsive online learning environments with strong instructor social presence. below is a summary of six key strategies that support humanized online instruction. 1. a liquid syllabus the syllabus plays many roles in a college-level course. often, instructors labor over their syllabus, filling it with course policies and procedures, as well as institutional regulations. to students, the syllabus can feel more like a list of do’s and don’ts, which can increase a learner’s anxiety and self-doubt. many practitioners have reimagined new opportunities for the syllabus -bain explores the concept of a promising syllabus in what the best college teachers do (2004), and harrington and thomas write about the transformative power of a syllabus in designing a motivational syllabus (2018). in a 2011 study, harnish and bridges found that a syllabus written in a friendly tone has a significant impact on how students perceive an instructor by unhinging the common student expectation that “faculty are unapproachable” (p. 1). in short, a course syllabus offers many opportunities for making a meaningful first impression with students at a moment when they are most vulnerable. and first impressions matter to students -in fact, they are shown to matter more than an instructor’s reputation (buchert, laws, apperson, & bregman, 2008). in an online course, the syllabus is the first connection a student has with an instructor, and in humanized online courses it is intentionally designed to welcome and support students. it is written in a supportive tone and uses asset-based language to encourage growth, cultivate hope, establish expectations for success, and recognize the array of experiences and knowledge students bring to the class as a value that enriches learning. but a humanized online course takes the syllabus one step further. humanizing involves designing a liquid syllabus that is created using a website tool (google sites, adobe spark page, wordpress, etc.) that can be viewed by students without logging in to a learning management system (lms) or other secured environment (pacanskybrock, 2014b, 2017). by using a tool that is native to the online environment, a liquid syllabus responds to a student’s viewing device, rendering clearly scrollable text when viewed on a smartphone phone -and maximizes an online instructor’s first impression on students. depending on the device settings, students may also be able to make text larger and opt for a dark view, which is easier to view in low light setting. a liquid syllabus also provides unique opportunities for fostering social presence. a syllabus created with a website creation tool allows instructors to embed a brief video on the page, ensuring students have the opportunity to be greeted with a warm, smiling face and hear supportive words prior to reading the content (more like a face-to-face classroom experience). humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 7 digital images can be easily interspersed through a liquid syllabus to establish a welcoming tone and to more effectively support the understanding of content by students from different cultural backgrounds who represent diverse groups of people. instructors of humanized courses send a pre-course email to students during the week prior to a course that includes a link to the liquid syllabus. student who read this email on a smartphone may click the link, be welcomed by their instructor, and have direct access to the information they need to start day one on the right foot. to learn more about the benefits of a liquid syllabus, view the 3-minute video below. > view a sample of a liquid syllabus created by arnita porter, faculty at west los angeles college. 2. adaptive teaching one of the first concerns faculty often voice when learning about humanized online teaching is, “how can i offer a high touch learning experience when i have so many students?” the answer to that question is illuminated through what we call adaptive teaching. while adaptive learning technologies are designed to adapt on-the-fly to provide additional support or challenge for students based upon their competencies, adaptive teaching is a pedagogical strategy that helps faculty use locally sourced micro-data provided by students to identify which students will benefit most from high-touch communications. faculty then cultivate high-touch communications throughout a course with these high opportunity students. to collect the qualitative data that helps faculty identify their high opportunity students, a survey is assigned in week one. by completing the survey, students receive their first points in the course, feel a sense of achievement and, simultaneously, provide essential information about themselves that faculty use to guide their teaching. while questions on the form may vary, it is important to keep in mind that, in addition to providing the instructor with important information, this form also conveys to students that their instructor cares about them. some suggested questions are listed below: ● select your preferred pronouns from the list below. ○ she/her/hers ○ he/him/his ○ they/them/theirs https://sites.google.com/view/dr-porter-re-005-f19 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90bmvcuxmoi humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 8 ○ other: _______ ● which of the following describes you (check all that apply): ○ this is my first semester of college. ○ i am the first in my family to attend college. ○ this is my first time taking an online class. ○ i work more than 15 hours per week. ○ i am a caretaker for at least one person. ● this question provides students with the ability to opt out of receiving voice/video communications from the instructor without being expected to reveal why (which may unjustly require students to disclose a disability). i may communicate with you through voice or video messages this semester. ○ that sounds great to me! ○ i would prefer written communications ● “in one word, describe how you are feeling about this class.” from past experience, most students will reply with neutral (fine, ok) or positive (excited, intrigued) responses but there are always a few students in a course that convey responses like “nervous,” “overwhelmed,” and “anxious,” which may indicate a student is experiencing stress that may jeopardize their likelihood of staying in the course. responses to this question quickly allow an instructor to identify high opportunity students who would benefit most from the human touch. reaching out immediately to these students with a supportive message, delivered in video, promotes psychological safety and fosters trust, which are the foundations of relationships. these high touch interactions in week one ensure students know their instructor cares and reduces the sense that they’ll be on their own throughout the course. ● “identify one thing that may interfere with your success in this course.” this open-ended question can transform a name on a screen into a human with a complex life. it informs instructors about a host of issues that would otherwise remain invisible and be left out of the teaching and learning process. responses often include descriptions of work obligations, learning differences, injuries, parental responsibilities, upcoming surgeries, childbirths that will occur during the course, care for ailing family members, and recent return from military service. instructors collect this data in week one and reference it throughout the duration of the course while observing student performance and engagement. if a student does not log in one week, an instructor can reference the students’ situation and reach out with a brief, supportive email like this one, “hi sarah. i noticed you didn’t submit last week’s assignment. i remember you mentioned that you have been caring for your mom and i thought i’d reach out and see how you’re doing. what can i do to support you? hope to see you back in the class soon.” to ensure the micro-data from the survey is utilized to guide teaching throughout an online course, instructors are encouraged to incorporate it into the roster. in canvas, for example, the grades area includes an optional notes column, which is especially useful. as participation ebbs and flows, the notes can be referenced and updated to ensure that the instructor’s teaching adapts to each students’ needs and that the instructor’s presence supports the growth and development of high opportunity students. view a sample student information survey you can use in your own online course. https://brocansky.com/humanizing/student-info humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 9 3. visually appealing and dynamic homepage in the same way that the syllabus plays a key role in establishing a positive first impression with students, a course homepage also influences students’ lasting perceptions about a course. within seconds of students’ first entrance into a course, the aesthetics and function of the course homepage forms their perceptions about the course’s credibility and usability (david & glore, 2010). a visually appealing homepage that clearly communicates what to do next can improve students’ self-efficacy and motivation in an online course. at the start of a new term, a humanized online course greets students with a homepage that contains minimal text; a colorful and visually appealing banner (with alt-text for accessibility); a brief, captioned welcome video from an instructor; and a clearly labeled “start here” link to ensure students navigate to the correct area of the course. as the term progresses, the homepage changes to reflect current content, communicate essential information to students, and convey instructor presence. view the video below to experience a humanized course homepage in canvas, featuring mike smedshammer and tracy schaelen, facilitators for the humanizing online teaching and learning course offered by california community colleges california virtual campus online education initiative (cvc-oei)/@one. > 4. asynchronous video communications video is commonly used in the teaching of online courses, often as a vehicle for delivering lengthy lectures. however, research from massive open online courses (moocs) shows that online students are more likely to watch videos that are no longer than 6-minutes, and videos with a “personal feel” may be more engaging than slick recordings made in a studio (guo, kim, rubin, 2014). further, research shows listening to an instructor’s voice increases a student’s sense of being connected to a community, improves retention of the spoken content, and establishes the sense that the instructor cares about the student (ice, curtis, phillips, & wells, 2006). in humanized instruction, video is used in line with this evidence. instructors use brief videos with a low-production value recorded with a simple webcam or their smartphone and, in some cases, created with free and low-cost tools like adobe spark or screencast-o-matic. not only do the videos explain content, they also convey an instructor’s active engagement and presence throughout an online course. instructors use them in announcements sent to the whole class, in learning modules to provide embedded preview and review segments or tell a story to connect content with the real world, and to deliver warm, personalized feedback in the gradebook for high opportunity students (see adaptive teaching above). in humanizing, faculty are encouraged to create videos that are off-the-cuff, unpolished, and recorded in locations untethered from the academic workplace. when professors portray https://youtu.be/788w8y9nsxu humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 10 their imperfections -the “ums,” quizzical expressions, background interruptions like a cat jumping on the desk or a child peeping in the background, and move away from their desks to record in their daily settings -they become real and relatable. in other words, they become “humanized.” students begin to sense that their online instructor is a real person with imperfections and a busy life, much like them. these types of similarities contribute to positive teacher-student relationships (gehlbach et al., 2016) by establishing psychological safety and trust, which is especially important in the early weeks of an online course when students are most likely to withdraw. the video below, by denise maduli-williams, who teaches english for speakers of other languages online at san diego miramar college, was made with clips, a free app for apple mobile devices that provides auto voice-text captions (that can be edited on the fly). in the video, denise shows her students where to find her office on campus. in the example below, fabiola torres, ethnic studies professor at glendale college, demonstrates how to use a smartphone to record a “video postcard” (a term she has coined) for students. torres uses video postcards to remind students that she is thinking about them even when she is away from campus. in the video below, michelle macfarlane, agriculture professor at sierra college, uses adobe spark, a free tool, to tell a story about her life that also introduces her students to their q&a discussion group, which she has titled the truckstop. personal anecdotes like this help macfarlane connect with her students. https://youtu.be/wbbcoayca58 https://youtu.be/bl_jacdjdx4 humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 11 the video below, created by matt mooney, history professor at santa barbara community college, is included at the start of a new content module. with adobe spark, mooney visually communicates sticky topics included in the module that students are known to struggle with. 5. asynchronous video discussions even the most committed online faculty can struggle with feeling disconnected from their students. synchronous video conferencing tools like zoom, adobe connect, and skype are great, but pose barriers to students who take online courses to accommodate their busy schedules. it is common for online faculty to excitedly arrange a zoom session only to have one or two students attend. this is why asynchronous discussion tools are so important in online courses, as they allow students to learn on their own time. but when students are only given the option to express themselves in writing, it may be more difficult for instructors and students to bond with one another, as textual communication lacks paralanguage, which is the non-spoken dimension of speech that includes body gestures, intonation, speed, sounds made between words, and facial expressions. further, relying on writing alone creates learning barriers for students with cognitive differences. a student with dyslexia, for example, may comprehend a concept and be able to articulate her knowledge verbally, while her written expression of the same concept may convey to an instructor that she doesn’t understand. providing multiple means of expression (and, better yet, giving students options in how they express themselves) is a principle of udl and a powerful way to foster inclusivity in a course. https://youtu.be/n90_9hoto6g https://youtu.be/l-1rf6uyqvg humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 12 designing discussions with warm, asynchronous voice and/or interactive video technologies like voicethread and flipgrid opens new opportunities for community building and cognition in online courses. data from student surveys of online community college students conducted by pacansky-brock (2016) showed that regular use of asynchronous voice/video tools increased students’ sense of belonging to a community and resulted in improved verbal skills. when students move from recording videos with a webcam to their smartphone, more possibilities for making connections emerge. mobile videos allow students to venture into their own surroundings and show aspects of their environment to their peers. this feature of mobile video can inspire instructors to design engaging prompts that encourage students to connect the course content with their everyday lives -like a field trip, only virtual. for example, jaime hannans, a nursing faculty at california state university, channel islands has her students venture into their local communities to identify locations of automatic external defibrillators (aeds). through the student-student and instructor-student interactions, the group discovered that the aeds were located in different locations, based upon the student’s county. janet mitchell-lambert, english faculty at cerritos college, has her students read several poems and then go to a location that is referenced in the poem. students then reflected on why they selected that particular poem, how their location connected with it, and spoke their favorite lines. using video in this manner not only connects course curriculum with the real world, making learning more relevant, but it also increases opportunities for students to discover similarities with their peers that are shown to foster relationships (gehlbach et al., 2016). however, asynchronous voice and video technologies can create barriers for some students. recording oneself places a person in a vulnerable position as it discloses more information about a person than written communications. instructors must be sensitive to the fact that some students who learn online may take the course at a distance to avoid judgments that come along with being seen or heard. this may include judgments made about a student’s accent, the color of their skin, a physical disability, or a speech impediment like stuttering or slurring of words. having students use video instead of writing to express themselves may also increase instructor bias. a 2018 study found instructor race and gender biases in online discussions, showing that white male students receive more responses from an instructor (baker, dee, evans, & john, 2018). when students use video to express themselves, instructors must be more vigilant about their unconscious biases. to support all students, an instructor must take care to introduce a new technology in a mindful manner. this includes explaining why the tool has been selected for use in the course. this is a great opportunity to include positive feedback from past students. when students feel included in the rationale of the design of a course, they are more likely to be willing to try something new. instructors should also provide students at the start of the term with a clear plan that describes the frequency they will be expected to use these types of technologies, as well as instructions for getting started and troubleshooting. further, it is especially important to ensure students are given clear instructions about how to use the mobile app for the tool, as this can be tricky especially if the tool is integrated into the lms. smartphones are typically the preferred recording method for college students. and to counteract one’s own bias, instructors are encouraged to track the frequency of responses to all students using lms analytics. using a voice or video tool for an ice-breaker activity is a good way to begin a new term in a humanized online course. ice-breakers that elicit information from students about their life experiences, particularly those that link in some way with the curriculum, offer students a lowstakes opportunity to try out a new tool while also weaving the early threads that form humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 13 community. when possible, it is advisable to give students choices in their commenting method, but students may feel apprehensive about recording themselves and, therefore, be more likely to default to writing if that option is provided. pacansky-brock (2014a) found that students are more willing to choose to record a voice/video over writing if all students are asked to use the media recording in a low-stake activity with an actively engaged instructor who provides supportive feedback to each student. view an excerpt from jaime hannan’s virtual field trip with voicethread: view an excerpt from janet mitchell-lambert’s mobile poetry assignment with flipgrid: 6. wisdom wall including the experiences of students within the design of a course makes learning more relevant. to put this strategy into practice in a digital learning environment, pacansky-brock (2012) encourages the use of the wisdom wall, a simple activity that can be applied in a variety of ways. at the end of the course, a project, or after an exam, the instructor asks students to reflect on their experience, identify a piece of advice for future students, and share that advice on the wisdom wall. when the wisdom wall is shared with future students, it becomes a treasure trove of voices with which students identify more intimately than advice from an instructor. also, the wisdom wall is a practical way to promote students’ growth-mindset. when students recognize growth and development in their peers, they are more likely to adapt the concept to themselves. instructors can use a variety of tools to create a wisdom wall including google docs, padlet, or a wiki page within the lms; however, asynchronous voice and video tools like https://youtu.be/9qxbh91tcw https://youtu.be/08tlydaeece ttps://youtu.be/9qxbh91tcwc https://youtu.be/9qxbh91tcwc humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 14 voicethread and flipgrid allow the advice to resonate more intimately with students. view an example of a wisdom wall from michelle pacansky-brock’s course made with voicethread. fueling systemic change through professional development ensuring faculty master the skills to teach effectively will become more important as colleges and universities attract and enroll more diverse student groups. and becoming an effective online teacher will require innovations in faculty development that transcend face-toface workshops. colleges and universities must place a priority on preparing faculty to teach online humanized courses and be innovative in the preparation and delivery of professional development (pd). the california community colleges (ccc) system offers more for-credit online courses than any public system in the united states. more than 20% of the roughly 2.1 million students served by cccs takes at least one course online (johnson & mejia, 2014). the ccc chancellor’s office funds a statewide effort, cvc-oei, to connect students with more high quality and fully supported online courses across california’s 114 community colleges. to support this initiative, a robust offering of online, low-cost pd courses, programs, and events are provided by cvc-oei/@one. among these offerings is a 4-week course on humanizing online teaching and learning and another course on equity & culturally responsive teaching in the online environment. the following quote from a course participant demonstrates the impact of preparing faculty to teaching online with humanized online pd: “my presence matters so much more than i thought. i was guilty of trying to be a neutral voice with a professional (aka sterile) presentation of content. i see now that being active, responsive, present, and empathetic is so vital to … my students.” there is no ad lib when teaching online. the visual feedback cues that instructors receive from students in face-to-face instruction are not present in an online class. presence must be intentionally constructed, and placing faculty in the seat of an online learner with an engaged, empathetic online instructor is the best way to begin to prepare faculty to teach online. professional development that preparers faculty to teach humanized online courses should be designed with the following goals in mind: 1. foster empathy for students. to grow into empathetic online educators, faculty must be immersed in online learning environments themselves to experience them the way students do. doing so creates powerful mind-shifts as faculty recognize unexpected challenges and find themselves reaching out to ask for an extension on an assignment. it is not uncommon to have faculty say, “i now know what it is like to be an online student.” 2. model humanized instruction with one (or more) present, aware, empathetic facilitators. faculty who resist online teaching have likely never experienced a well-facilitated online course. as a result, they approach their first course with the mindset that all online courses are dry and disconnected. every online pd experience is an opportunity to shift faculty mindsets about the rich and rewarding potential of online teaching. 3. empower faculty to become self-starting creators of digital content. when faculty teach online, they need to be capable of solving their own technical problems producing their own digital content. most faculty teach part-time and cannot rely on support from oncampus teaching centers. they need digital toolkits and training to be able to work independently. moreover, slickly produced videos and publisher-provided powerpoint https://voicethread.com/share/5304832/ humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 15 presentations are more likely to feel sterile to students. creating one’s own content may not result in hollywood quality, but it is more likely to capture an instructors’ personal touch and character (guo, kim, rubin, 2014). 4. provide a safe, judgment-free zone for experimentation. feeling vulnerable in new situations is part of being human. for college instructors, the fear of looking stupid in front of one’s peers is especially nerve-racking and has been shown to be a factor that can prevent faculty from teaching with technology (herckis, scheines, & smith, 2017). professional development must recognize and support risk-taking by couching these uncomfortable experiences within the context of growth-mindset. facilitators of professional development must be transparent, openly admit when they’ve made a mistake, and share stories about their own growth with using digital tools. 5. ensure faculty master the basics of the asynchronous video workflow. the mobile era has revolutionized video. like their students, nearly all faculty now have a video creation tool at their fingertips in the form of a smartphone. faculty who master the art of chunking content into brief videos, recording from a mobile device and webcam, evaluating proper lighting and sound, uploading videos to a server (e.g. youtube), captioning videos, and embedding them in an lms possess critical digital fluencies for humanizing online courses. 6. model udl and ensure it is embedded in the content creation process. ensuring all students can access content is not only a federal requirement, it is also a commitment to inclusion. further, providing students with multimodal learning environments will ensure more students have what they need to succeed without needing to ask for accommodations. udl also cuts down on the expensive and time-consuming task of remediating inaccessible digital content. 7. help faculty understand how to use quantitative lms analytics paired with qualitative student data to recognize which students need support, when the support is most needed, and where it is likely to have the most impact. ultimately, faculty should use student data to adapt their teaching to the changing needs of students throughout a course. 8. provide a safe, judgment-free environment to experiment, make mistakes, and grow. instructors often feel vulnerable when asked to record their imperfect presence on video. faculty must be encouraged to reflect on their growth and consider the changes in how they feel about using new tools. 9. be designed to eliminate “pd melt.” faculty are most likely to make actionable changes to their teaching during the period immediately following professional development when. however, returning to everyday routines often undercuts even the most wellintentioned changes. to remedy this, faculty-support peers (instructional designers, distance education coordinators, instructional or academic technologists) must be in place as a post-pd scaffold to support faculty with course redesign. evidence of the spread of humanized online instruction in california each year, roughly 98,000 california state university students earn undergraduate degrees, and about 50% of them transfer from a california community college. through crosssystem collaborations and sharing of faculty development oers, humanized online instruction is gaining traction, and research will soon examine its impact on equity gaps. in 2015, csu channel islands began to offer a 2-week humanizing course as part of its online teaching preparation program. in the first four years, 91 or about 18% of all faculty have humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 16 completed the program, which is coordinated through ci’s teaching and learning innovations team. for a period of time, faculty from other institutions were invited to participate in the program and offered a creative commons-licensed version of the humanizing course. as a result of that collaboration, the professional development course has also been offered at csu humboldt and santa barbara community college. between 2018-2019, more than 200 faculty and staff from across the 114 colleges in the ccc system completed the cvc-oei/ @one humanizing course (referenced earlier). at the time of writing, cvc-oei/@one is preparing to share an oer version of the course in the canvas commons (instructure’s lms resource repository) so it may be adopted by any institution that uses canvas. in 2019, a cross-system group of 7 faculty received a $1.3 million grant from the california education learning lab to examine the impact of humanizing practices on equity gaps in online stem courses. the 3-year grant project entails developing a 6-week humanizing stem academy that will scale across the ccc, csu, and uc systems. the project will culminate in 2022 with a free, online humanizing stem conference and publicly shared oers including research findings and a humanizing toolkit showcasing resources shared by stem faculty participants. after the grant period, the humanizing academy will be absorbed into the cvc-oei/@one pd offerings. institutional support for faculty who teach online and a commitment to improving concerning equity gaps are the key factors that contribute most to making systemic changes in the pedagogy of online courses. both of these priorities derive from placing students at the center of all that we do. conclusion looking ahead, one can imagine two futures for online education. in one version, institutions with an eye on maximizing enrollments and cutting costs will choose to invest funds in the latest technologies to build large-scale learning models that can be easily replicated. in this scenario, faculty play no role in the design of courses, and are hired on the cheap to fulfill tasks that ensure compliance with accreditation requirements, like sending canned announcements and applying rubrics to grade student work. for students, these courses will be akin to grabbing dinner from a drive-through. in the alternative future, institutions value the students they serve and invest in faculty, instructional designers, and instructional technologists to support the design and facilitation of authentic learning experiences that guide students towards their academic goals. faculty and support staff feel valued, and instructors feel connected to both the courses they facilitate and the students who take them. for students in these courses, learning is more like experiencing a delicious meal customized to one’s own dietary needs with meaningful dialogue and connections. as bots and algorithms play a bigger role in online courses, institutional leaders will need to make a conscientious decision to ensure relationships remain at the heart of learning. humanized online instruction is central to a future in which technology increases access to college and supports the individualized needs of all students. references allen, i. e., seaman, j. 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(1991). a sociocultural approach to socially shared cognition. in l. b. resnick, j. m. levine, &; s. d. teasley (eds.), perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 85100). washington, dc: american psychological association. author notes michelle pacansky-brock foothill-deanza community college district michael smedshammer modesto junior college kim vincent-layton humboldt state university guest editor notes sean m. leahy, ph.d. arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff, m.ed macel curtin university, learning futures advisor k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au http://dx.doi.org/10.12691/education-2-5-13 mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au humanizing online teaching current issues in education, 21(2) 21 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monical kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf volume 26, issue 1 may 02, 2025 issn 1099-839x empowering female students through esports programs: insights from a vocational high school mila zhu southeastern oklahoma state university abstract: this paper explores gender dynamics within a vocational esports high school, focusing on the experiences of female students. utilizing cultural-historical activity theory (chat) and digital feminism as theoretical frameworks, the research examines how educational practices, digital cultures, and socio-cultural contexts influence participation and identity formation among female students. data collected through interviews, observations, and document analysis highlight significant disparities in participation and the impact of institutional structures on gender norms. findings reveal that while competitive esports environments often perpetuate traditional gender roles, collaborative settings in coding and design facilitate more inclusive interactions and empower female students. the study proposes strategic educational modifications to foster gender equity and suggests that vocational esports programs can effectively challenge and transform gender norms in educational settings. keywords: gender equity, esports education, vocational training, stem education, digital feminism citation: zhu, m. (2025). empowering female students through esports programs: insights from a vocational high school. current issues in education, 26(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2269 accepted: 10/27/2024 empowering female students through esports programs: insights from a vocational high school the rise of the digital arena the integration of esports into educational curricula represents a transformation in educational paradigms, illustrating the profound impact of digital cultures on learning environments and career pathways, highlighting how digital cultures shape learning environments and career opportunities. historically viewed as entertainment, esports has https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2269 zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 2 evolved into a robust industry with substantial economic impact, with global market revenue surpassing $1.5 billion as of 2023 (newzoo, 2020). this expansion reflects broader increase digital consumption and the increasing legitimacy of gaming as a professional and academic field. in educational practices, particularly within vocational high schools—institutions that focus on equipping students with specialized career and technical skills—esports serves as a conduit for diverse competencies encompassing technical aptitude, strategic planning, and collaborative teamwork (steinkuehler & williams, 2006). these institutions are both preparing students for gaming careers and leveraging esports as a new pathway for broader educational outcomes, including digital literacy and social competency (ranucci, 2022). furthermore, vocational high schools utilizing an esports curriculum are uniquely positioned to explore and influence societal trends, such as integrating digital technology into education (richard & gray, 2018). thus, esports in educational settings serve a dual function: they equip students with new skills necessary for thriving in a rapidly expanding industry while offering a lens through which to analyze the socio-cultural impacts of digital media. (kafai et al., 2010; richard & gray, 2018). according to taylor (2018) and prescott and bogg (2014), competitive environments in digital media often mirror and magnify existing societal gender norms, influencing perceptions and behaviors. by integrating esports into their curricula, vocational high schools actively participate in the sociocultural discourse, positioning themselves as pivotal venues for investigating and influencing gender dynamics within digital culture (jenson & de castell, 2010; richard & gray, 2018). therefore, these educational settings play a crucial role in preparing students for future careers and shaping the frameworks through which gender equity is understood and potentially transformed. esports 101: beyond casual gaming esports, short for electronic sports, refers to organized, competitive video gaming, often between professional players or teams. unlike casual gaming, esports is characterized by its structured leagues, tournaments, and substantial prize pools, with competitions spanning a wide variety of video game genres including strategy, sports, and first-person shooters. further distinguishing traditional, casual video gaming from esports is the formalized competition and the large-scale professional ecosystem surrounding it, including coaches, analysts, and sponsorships akin to traditional athletic sports. this distinction is important in educational settings because while video games can be a leisure activity, esports incorporates the dynamics of teamwork, strategy, and skill development that mirror many of the competencies needed for future digital careers. in this research study, esports is analyzed as a pedagogical tool that fosters technical and strategic skills as well as serves as an entry point for addressing gender disparities in stem and technology-related fields. by integrating esports into educational settings, institutions create opportunities for diverse student populations to engage with digital literacy, computational thinking, and collaborative problem-solving which are areas traditionally dominated by male participation. identifying the boss level: gender challenges in esports despite the initial integration of esports into educational settings, significant gender disparities in participation and representation persist (cunningham, 2006; taylor, 2018). these disparities are embodied in vocational high schools, where diverse career pathways should zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 3 ideally support gender equity (shaw, 2014; taylor, 2012). researchers (bristot et al., 2018; witkowski, 2012a) pointed out that while involvement in esports can bolster cognitive, social, and emotional skills, female students remain underrepresented in the industry and confront unique challenges that can adversely affect their educational trajectories and career prospects in this emerging field. similar to the stem field (jenson & de castell, 2010), these challenges are emblematic of the broader gender disparities within digital and gaming cultures, where societal norms often perpetuate gender biases (fox & tang, 2017). addressing these disparities necessitate a focused examination of the educational structures and cultural norms currently shaping esports programs in vocational settings to uncover and mitigate the barriers hindering female participation and success. quest purposes: unpacking gender dynamics this study aims to explore the gender dynamics within a vocational esports high school using a qualitative case study approach. traditionally, vocational education bridges the gap between academic theory and industry practice, preparing students for specific professions through a curriculum that combines theoretical knowledge with practical skills (freeman & wohn, 2017). the inclusion of esports in vocational education reflects a broader shift in workforce preparation, where emerging digital industries influence curricular decisions. this integration is driven by institutional stakeholders recognizing the economic potential of esports and the growing need for skills in digital media, game development, and event management. as a result, esports programs within vocational schools not only cater to industry demands but also serve as a response to shifting norms around digital literacy and career viability in technologydriven fields (seo & jung, 2016). by employing cultural-historical activity theory (chat) and digital feminism as theoretical frameworks, this research seeks to unravel the interconnectedness between digital culture, educational practices, and gender dynamics. these frameworks will facilitate a nuanced understanding of how these elements shape the experiences and identities of female students in the esports domain (daniels, 2009; engeström, 2001). in addition to identifying the barriers to inclusion faced by female students in esports education, this study also focuses on activity systems—comprising the tools, rules, and community norms within esports educational settings—which allows for an analysis of how gender norms are perpetuated (kaptelinin & nardi, 2006) so that they can be challenged. by understanding these activity systems, the research aims to propose pedagogical and policyoriented strategies that can mitigate gender disparities. this study contributes to broader discussions on how educational settings can act as catalysts for social equity. through exploring how the integration of esports into school curricula may enhance learning outcomes, this study proposes that the gamification of learning and esport in vocational schools could serve as a platform for countering and transforming gender norms (prescott & bogg, 2014) found in traditionally male-dominated professions. by advocating for a more inclusive esports education, this research aligns with the efforts to reshape educational practices to promote campus inclusivity and diversity (richard & gray, 2018). zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 4 literature review: scouting the terrain mapping the esports ecosystem esports, or electronic sports, refers to competitive multiplayer video game tournaments, often involving professional players or teams competing in organized leagues (taylor, 2018). over the last two decades, esports has experienced exponential growth, driven by advancements in technology, the internet, and social media, expanding from niche gatherings to global events that fill stadiums and attract millions of viewers (hamilton et al., 2014). supported by a robust infrastructure of teams, leagues, sponsorships, and media coverage, esports has gained mainstream recognition, even being considered for inclusion in international sporting events like the olympic games (taylor, 2018). this thriving industry is projected to generate over one billion dollars annually, highlighting its growing economic significance within the entertainment and media sectors (nelson & lawrence, 2021). the esports ecosystem comprises game developers, players, spectators, and broadcasters, all contributing to its rapid evolution (newzoo, 2020). as esports continues to gain traction, educational institutions are recognizing its potential as a tool for enhancing students’ skills in strategic thinking, teamwork, and communication (witkowski, 2012b). schools and universities are increasingly integrating esports programs to engage students and prepare them for careers in the expanding digital economy, reflecting broader trends in digital literacy and technology integration (verdoodt et al., 2021). additionally, esports fosters 21st-century skills such as collaboration and critical thinking, aligning with educational competencies outlined by jenkins (2009). research by freeman and wohn (2017) further underscores the benefits of esports programs in developing students’ social and emotional skills. however, the integration of esports into educational settings is not without its challenges. despite the increasing participation of female gamers, women remain underrepresented in professional esports, and gender disparities persist (richard & gray, 2018). factors such as cultural perceptions of gaming as a male-dominated activity and the prevalence of harassment and bias in gaming communities continue to hinder female participation (bristot et al., 2019). addressing these issues is essential for realizing the full educational potential of esports. as esports evolves, it presents opportunities for promoting inclusivity, interdisciplinary collaboration, and digital citizenship, but this requires ongoing research and the development of thoughtful policies to ensure equitable participation for all students (taylor, 2018). character profiles: females in the gaming world according to the entertainment software association (2020), approximately 46% of gamers are female, yet this demographic is vastly underrepresented in the professional esports scene. as taylor (2012) points out, gaming culture has historically been male-dominated, and female gamers often face marginalization and underrepresentation, particularly when it comes to recognition and career advancement in esports. this underrepresentation not only reinforces existing gender stereotypes but also limits the opportunities available to women in gamingrelated careers. the portrayal of female characters in video games has been a significant factor contributing to the broader issue of gender inequality in gaming. studies by prescott and bogg (2014) highlight a persistent trend where male protagonists dominate video games, while female characters are frequently relegated to secondary or objectified roles. often designed with exaggerated sexual characteristics, these female characters are typically positioned as side zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 5 characters, emphasizing their appearance over their abilities or narrative importance. this portrayal influences players’ perceptions of gender roles within gaming and beyond, shaping how both male and female gamers internalize societal norms around gender (fox & tang 2017). examples from mainstream games illustrate this trend. in the league of legends series, characters like ahri the nine-tailed fox and miss fortune the bounty hunter embody these problematic representations. ahri’s design emphasizes charm and allure, reinforcing stereotypes of femininity, while miss fortune is often portrayed in revealing outfits, underscoring the ongoing trend of sexualizing female characters, even those in roles traditionally associated with power and aggression (burgess et al., 2007). ivory (2006) further explores how these depictions influence broader gender dynamics, suggesting that the frequent portrayal of women in passive or sexualized roles reinforces outdated stereotypes and limits how both genders perceive women’s abilities in and outside of gaming contexts. this gendered representation has tangible effects on the gaming community. lynch, tompkins, van driel, and fritz (2016) found that such stereotypes can decrease the presence of female gamers and alienate them, perpetuating a gender gap in gaming engagement and retention. female gamers often find it difficult to fully participate or identify with these characters, leading to decreased involvement in certain genres and reinforcing the perception of gaming as a male-dominated space. efforts to counteract these disparities have included initiatives aimed at creating more inclusive gaming communities and developing games that challenge traditional gender norms. organizations like anykey, for example, advocate for diversity and inclusion in gaming, providing resources and support for underrepresented gamers (anykey organization 2021). additionally, more recent portrayals of female characters have attempted to subvert traditional gender roles. the reimagining of lara croft in the tomb raider series is a prime example. in the 2013 reboot and subsequent releases, lara croft is portrayed as a more realistic, relatable character whose strength, intelligence, and resilience take precedence over her sexuality (kennedy 2016). this shift resonated with a wider audience and demonstrated the potential for strong female leads to challenge gender stereotypes in action-oriented games. similarly, aloy from horizon zero dawn serves as another example of a female character breaking away from traditional portrayals. as a skilled warrior and hunter in a post-apocalyptic world, aloy’s character is defined by her abilities and leadership, rather than her appearance or relationships, marking a departure from the objectified roles often assigned to female characters in video games (forni 2020). despite these positive developments, significant challenges remain in achieving gender equity in the gaming world. harassment and toxicity continue to plague gaming environments, particularly for women. bristot et al. (2019) point out that the persistence of these issues deters many women from participating fully in the gaming community. fox and tang (2017) further illustrate the extent of this harassment, which can range from sexist remarks to more severe forms of abuse, such as threats of violence. these hostile interactions create a toxic environment that discourages women from engaging in certain gaming genres, limiting their opportunities for participation and career growth. griffiths et al. (2013) also suggest that the normalization of harassment within gaming communities perpetuates these behaviors, making them harder to address. the anonymity of online gaming environments often exacerbates this problem. wang (2018) argues that the lack of face-to-face interaction in these spaces reduces accountability, enabling individuals to engage in hostile behavior they might otherwise avoid in physical settings. this dynamic is particularly problematic in competitive gaming, where tensions run high, and the stakes are often perceived as significant. zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 6 the integration of esports and gaming into educational settings presents a unique opportunity to challenge gender dynamics. research by witkowski (2012a) highlights how structured esports programs within schools can foster a sense of community and teamwork, which is foundational to creating inclusive environments. additionally, granic, lobel, and engels (2014) suggest that gaming can be utilized as a platform for teaching emotional and social learning skills, which are critical in combating gender-based stereotypes and promoting gender equality. these programs, when designed with inclusivity in mind, can help students navigate issues of online behavior, respect, and the consequences of toxicity, preparing them for more positive interactions within the gaming community. moreover, integrating esports into educational curricula can serve as a catalyst for broader cultural change within the gaming industry. prescott and bogg (2014) argue that promoting diversity and inclusion from an educational standpoint can influence the future development of game designs, marketing strategies, and community management practices, reflecting a more equitable representation of gender. this approach benefits female students by providing them with opportunities to engage in gaming on equal terms, promoting values that transcend the gaming world and impact broader societal interactions (kafai et al. 2018). gaming framework: applying chat and digital feminism this study of gender dynamics within esports education is anchored in two critical theoretical frameworks: cultural-historical activity theory (chat) and digital feminism. these frameworks provide powerful lenses through which the interconnectedness of educational practices, digital culture, and gender can be examined and understood. cultural-historical activity theory (chat), derived from the work of lev vygotsky (1978), offers a valuable tool for analyzing the social contexts and systems within which learning occurs. chat focuses on the interactions between individuals and their environments, emphasizing how cultural artifacts, community, and institutional norms shape human activity (engeström 2001). within the context of esports education, chat allows us to examine how educational settings, gaming culture, and the tools of esports—such as video games and gaming platforms—mediate educational outcomes. when applied to the study of gender norms in esports, chat helps illuminate how specific mediators—like tools, rules, community, and the division of labor—shape gender identities and either perpetuate or challenge existing gender norms. for example, tools in esports, including gaming hardware and software, are critical in understanding gendered access. research by jenson and de castell (2010) shows that if female students have less access to advanced gaming equipment or are not encouraged to engage with competitive gaming software, it can reinforce existing stereotypes about technology and gender. conversely, equitable access to these tools can empower female students and challenge the dominant assumption that technology and gaming are male domains. rules also play a significant role in shaping participation. formal and informal regulations governing esports can implicitly favor aggressive play styles, which are often culturally associated with male gamers. such rules may deter female participation or reinforce perceptions of women as less competent players (taylor 2012). by analyzing these rules, we can uncover how they shape both the participation and identity of female students within the esports environment. chat emphasizes the role of community in shaping activity. the broader gaming community—including peers, instructors, and gaming networks—greatly influences how gender norms are expressed and enforced. richard and gray (2018) highlight the importance of zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 7 supportive communities in creating inclusive environments that challenge traditional gender roles. within esports programs, the presence of role models, peer support groups, and inclusive gaming clubs can foster a more welcoming environment for female students, allowing them to thrive in a space that is typically dominated by male norms. finally, the division of labor in esports education offers insights into how gendered roles are distributed within teams and gaming activities. female students may be relegated to peripheral or supporting roles, while male students dominate leadership positions (bristot et al. 2019). analyzing this division of labor through a chat framework enables us to identify these imbalances and propose strategies to create more equitable opportunities for leadership and active participation for female students. digital feminism extends the discourse of feminism into the digital space, exploring how digital cultures both influence and are influenced by gendered power relations. this framework focuses on issues of access, representation, and identity within online environments (daniels 2009). in the context of esports, digital feminism provides a critical perspective on how gender is constructed, contested, and negotiated in digital gaming communities. digital feminism also highlights the barriers that women face in digital spaces, such as harassment, exclusion, and underrepresentation. massanari (2017) points out that digital platforms can reinforce traditional gender roles, but they also have the potential to empower women by providing spaces for resistance and advocacy. in the case of esports, female students may face marginalization in competitive environments, yet they can also find solidarity and empowerment through online communities or gaming groups that prioritize inclusivity (richard & gray; shaw 2014). moreover, digital feminism helps identify how digital platforms can be leveraged to challenge traditional gender norms. for instance, female gamers who actively participate in online communities may resist societal expectations, using digital platforms as spaces to assert their identities and advocate for gender equity (daniels, 2009). this is particularly relevant in esports, where digital spaces often serve as both arenas of competition and places of community building. by integrating the perspectives of digital feminism, we can better understand how female students navigate these spaces to challenge or subvert the gendered power dynamics that exist within the broader gaming culture. integrating both chat and digital feminism allows for a comprehensive analysis of the structural and cultural dimensions of gender within esports education. these frameworks help us examine how educational settings function as activity systems where social structures and cultural artifacts—such as gaming platforms and school policies—interact with personal actions and community practices (kaptelinin & nardi 2006). furthermore, by combining these perspectives, we can better critique the digital culture that pervades esports, highlighting how online environments simultaneously empower and marginalize female gamers (massanari 2017). this dual approach provides a deeper understanding of the observable practices within educational settings and the underlying digital cultural forces that influence them. methodology: crafting the playbook research design this study employs a qualitative case study methodology, drawing on the work of yin (2014) and merriam and tisdell (2016), to examine gender dynamics within a vocational esports high school designated as eswt high in this study. a case study approach enables a deep, zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 8 contextually rich exploration of the social, cultural, and institutional factors shaping gendered experiences within esports education. this methodology facilitates an in-depth investigation of eswt high’s educational practices, student interactions, and the embedded cultural norms influencing female students’ participation in esports. through this approach, the study seeks to generate insights that extend beyond eswt high, contributing to broader discussions on gender and digital culture in educational settings. context eswt high, situated in an urban center recognized for its strong technological infrastructure and educational resources, has emerged as a pioneering institution in integrating esports into vocational education. the school serves a diverse student body of approximately 500 students and has maintained a dedicated esports program for over five years. as part of a forward-thinking district known for aligning educational programs with evolving industry needs, eswt high was strategically selected for this case study due to its distinctive position within the k-12 system. it is among the few vocational high schools offering a specialized esports program that not only enhances students’ technical and strategic skills but also provides opportunities for participation in regional and national competitions. the school’s infrastructure includes gaming labs, digital media production studios, and collaborative workspaces that mirror industrystandard environments. moreover, its faculty comprises professionals from the esports sector, ensuring that students receive industry-relevant knowledge and practical insights. research questions to explore the gender dynamics within a vocational esports high school, this study was guided by the following research questions: 1. how do the socio-cultural and historical contexts of esports influence gender dynamics within a vocational esports high school? 2. what educational practices and structures within vocational esports settings perpetuate or challenge traditional gender norms? 3. how do female students navigate their identity within an esports-focused educational environment 4. how do female students engage and participate in an esports-focused educational environment? data collection data were collected using a combination of semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and document analysis. interviews semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 15 participants, including students (n=8), faculty members (n=4), and administrators (n=3) involved in the esports program at eswt high. each interview lasted between 45 to 75 minutes and was conducted either in person or via video conferencing. interview questions focused on participants’ experiences with the esports curriculum, perceptions of gender dynamics, and the impact of these dynamics on student engagement and career aspirations. this approach aligns zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 9 with qualitative case study methodology, enabling an in-depth exploration of lived experiences (dicicco‐bloom & crabtree, 2006). observations the researcher conducted 20 hours of participant observation across training sessions, classroom discussions, and competitive events. observations focused on social interactions, gendered behaviors, and instructional practices within the esports environment. the researcher recorded field notes, emphasizing patterns in engagement, collaboration, and exclusionary practices. this method allowed for data triangulation, capturing aspects of gendered experiences that might not be fully articulated in interviews (kawulich, 2005). document analysis relevant school documents, including curriculum guides, promotional materials, and policy documents related to esports and gender equity, were analyzed. document analysis helped contextualize the institutional attitudes and approaches toward gender inclusivity within the esports program. this approach is crucial for understanding the formal and informal rules (prior, 2003) that govern educational settings. data analysis data collected from interviews, observations, and documents were analyzed using thematic analysis, as described by braun and clarke (2006). this method enabled identifying, analyzing, and reporting patterns within the data. initially, the data were coded in an iterative manner to refine and categorize themes that emerged prominently across the dataset. this coding process involved multiple rounds of refinement to ensure the themes accurately reflected the underlying data. after the initial coding phase, themes were reviewed and defined. this part of the analysis focused on how each theme related to the theoretical frameworks of cultural-historical activity theory (chat) and digital feminism. the thematic analysis also involved critically examining discrepancies between data sources to ensure a better understanding of the observed phenomena. this triangulation of data sources (creswell, 2013) helped enhance the findings’ consistency and credibility. the final step in the analysis involved mapping the themes against the research questions to ensure that all aspects of the study’s objectives were addressed. ethical considerations this study adhered to strict ethical guidelines to protect participants and ensure the validity of the findings. ethical approval for the research was obtained from the relevant institutional review board (irb), and all participants provided informed consent prior to participating in interviews and observations. the following key strategies were implemented to address potential ethical concerns: mitigating bias to minimize researcher bias, reflexive practices were employed throughout the study. the researcher maintained a reflexive journal to critically reflect on their positionality and the zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 10 potential impact of personal assumptions on the interpretation of data. additionally, efforts were made to recruit a diverse group of female participants in terms of their level of engagement with the esports program (e.g., competitive and non-competitive players) and their roles within the school’s gaming community, such as team captains, casual players, and student organizers. outreach was conducted through school announcements, faculty recommendations, and direct invitations during esports club meetings to encourage participation from individuals with varying experiences. this diversity allowed for a more comprehensive understanding of female students’ experiences. according to sieber (2006), addressing diversity in participant selection is crucial for ensuring that research findings are valid and reflective of varied experiences within the study population. ensuring transparency multiple strategies were used to enhance the trustworthiness of the findings. credibility was strengthened through data triangulation, collecting insights from diverse sources, including interviews, observations, and relevant documentation, to provide a holistic understanding of the research context. member reflections were also employed, allowing participants to engage with preliminary interpretations and provide feedback to refine the analysis. this process fostered transparency and ensured that the findings authentically represented participants’ lived experiences. confidentiality and participant protection the confidentiality and anonymity of all participants were strictly maintained. pseudonyms were used for all interviewees, and identifiable details were omitted from the final report. participants were reminded of their right to withdraw from the study at any point without penalty. all data were securely stored, and access was limited to the research team to ensure participant safety. additionally, participants were debriefed after the study, ensuring they understood how their data would be used and providing an opportunity to ask any further questions. findings the following section outlines the core themes identified in the analysis, providing a structured framework for understanding the lived experiences of female students in the esports program. these themes emerged through iterative coding and analysis of interviews, observations, and relevant institutional documents, revealing key insights into gender dynamics within esports education. table 1 presents a thematic analysis summary, categorizing the major themes and illustrating their alignment with the study’s research questions. the findings are organized into four sections, each corresponding to one of the four research questions. while the subheadings do not appear as questions, they are designed to thematically respond to the respective inquiries regarding identity, participation, educational structures, and sociocultural contexts. each theme represents an interconnected aspect of the participants’ experiences, highlighting structural barriers, cultural norms, and pathways of resistance. the themes will be further elaborated in the subsequent discussion, with representative excerpts demonstrating their significance in shaping student participation and engagement. zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 11 table 1 thematic analysis summary theme supporting data excerpts research question identity negotiation “the competitive atmosphere is tough, and there's a real pressure to conform to aggressive styles that don’t reflect who i am.” rq4: how do female students navigate their identity in an esports-focused educational environment? participation barriers “in competitions, i feel like i have to prove myself twice as hard.” rq3: how do female students engage in participation in an esports-focused educational environment? mentorship and support “having a mentor who understands the challenges i face is really helpful.” rq2: how do educational structures and practices impact gender norms in esports? community and informal networks “we started a gaming group, and it’s been a safe space to just be ourselves and play without judgment.” rq2: how do educational structures and practices impact gender norms in esports? technology access and confidence “getting used to the high-end rigs was a bit intimidating at first. i didn’t have that kind of setup at home like some of the guys did.” rq1: how do sociocultural and historical contexts influence gender dynamics in esports? harassment and inclusivity “the boys don’t seem to realize how much space they take up, and sometimes my ideas get drowned out.” rq3: how do female students engage in participation in an esports-focused educational environment? finding 1: sociocultural and historical contexts’ influence on gender dynamics this section examines how sociocultural and historical contexts shape the gender dynamics observed at eswt high, particularly within its esports program. the findings draw upon interviews, observations, and document analysis, illustrating how societal perceptions of gender roles influence student experiences and expectations. interview insights interviews conducted with students, faculty, and coaches at eswt high revealed nuanced perspectives on the gender dynamics within the school’s esports program. these discussions highlighted the contrasts between female students’ experiences in competitive gaming versus their involvement in other areas like coding and design. one female student on the varsity esports team shared her experience, emphasizing the isolation she feels: “being the only girl on the team, it’s tough.” when prompted to elaborate, she added, “it’s like you’re constantly having to prove yourself ...in what many see as a boys’ zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 12 world.” her team coach echoed her sentiment and noted, “we’re trying to foster teamwork, but there’s an obvious gap. the boys sometimes overlook her contributions, which is something we’re actively working to change.” paused, he added, “like, we’ve started to incorporate more examples of successful female and non-binary gamers to provide our students with a broader perspective.” conversely, interviews with female students engaged in the school’s coding and design classes painted a different picture. one remarked, “in coding, it’s your skills that talk.” another echoed, “it feels like what matters is… your code running smoothly.” meanwhile, a faculty member involved in digital media courses observed, “the girls in my classes are thriving because we focus on creativity and skill, not competition. it’s a more collaborative environment, which seems to empower them…better than the competitive gaming.” these contrasting experiences highlight the variable impact of the school’s educational environment on gender dynamics. for instance, a female student mentioned: i was part of the group project that redesigned famous female game characters to be more diverse…. it felt good to bring a female perspective into our projects, showing that women can be more than just supporting roles, or amateur players; they can be creators who change the gaming culture a school administrator also participated in the interviews to provide additional context from a leadership perspective and shared, “we’re aware of these disparities and are in the process of revising our esports curriculum to include more collaborative projects where everyone, regardless of gender, can contribute equally.” he continued, “i do believe we need to balance competition with collaboration.” these insights illustrate the challenges female students face in breaking into traditionally male-dominated areas of esports and the opportunities that exist in more equitable and collaborative educational settings. these participant quotes help to bring these issues to life, offering a vivid snapshot of the ongoing efforts to address gender equity in a vocational esports educational context. observational insights field observations conducted at eswt high provided a glimpse into the gender dynamics. these observations highlighted the disparities in participation and engagement between male and female students, particularly in the varsity esports team and other tech-related activities. during a typical varsity esports practice session, the dynamics were stark. the male students dominated both the gameplay and the strategic discussions that followed. male students tended to talk over their female teammates, who often hesitated before speaking. notably, during these sessions, the coach had to remind the team to allow everyone to speak repeatedly. field notes from this observation highlight one moment where the female student tried to suggest a new strategy but was quickly overshadowed by louder voices and her idea was dismissed without consideration. conversely, in the character redesigning workshop, the atmosphere was different. here, female students were much more engaged and vocal. observational notes describe a scene where a female student led her group’s presentation, confidently explaining the design choices specifically aimed at “promoting gender fluidity” in-game characters. the reaction from the classroom was generally positive, with peers from all genders engaging in a meaningful and zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 13 constructive discussion about their opinions. another observation in the coding lab showed similar trends of inclusivity. female students were seen fully engaged in troubleshooting and collaborating on par with their peers. an interesting moment captured in the field notes occurred when a female student solved a particularly challenging bug in the game code, which was met with supportive cheers from the whole workshop. these observational insights underscore the influence of competitive versus collaborative settings on gender dynamics and participation. the positive responses to female leadership in design and coding suggest that when the educational environment promotes inclusivity and collaboration, gender disparities are less pronounced, allowing female students to speak up more confidently and take on more visible and influential roles. document analysis analysis of the school’s promotional materials and curriculum documents revealed an emphasis on success stories of male students and alumni in esports, with little mention of female students’ achievements. this kind of representation can reinforce the perception that esports is a male-dominated field, potentially discouraging female students from participating theoretical integration the divergent participation patterns observed between competitive esports sessions and collaborative coding or design classes can be analyzed through these theoretical lenses to understand the underlying gender dynamics: according to chat, an activity system's tools, rules, and community significantly shape interactions and outcomes (engeström, 2001). in competitive esports sessions, traditional gaming tools and the rules of competitive play often reinforce male dominance and aggressive behaviors, which are culturally coded as masculine. this aligns with chat’s emphasis on how cultural artifacts (like gaming software) and institutional norms (such as competition rules) mediate social interactions and learning outcomes. conversely, in the collaborative settings of coding and design workshops, the tools (software for design and coding) and the community norms (focused on creativity and problem-solving) facilitate a more equitable environment where female students thrive and take on leadership roles. meanwhile, digital feminism provides a lens to understand how digital spaces can reproduce or challenge gender inequity. the contrast in female students’ experiences across different settings highlights how digital environments can be structured to perpetuate traditional gender roles or empower women (daniels, 2009). in the varsity esports team, the digital interaction patterns often mirrored broader societal biases, marginalizing female participation. however, the digital space was a platform for empowerment and visibility in coding and design, demonstrating how alternative digital cultures can foster gender equity. finding 2: educational structures and practices impact on gender norms this section of the findings explores how the specific educational structures and practices implemented at eswt high influence gender norms and dynamics within the school’s esports program. insights were gleaned from interviews, observations, and document analysis, highlighting the school’s role in perpetuating traditional gender norms or fostering an equity environment. zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 14 interview insights interviews with faculty and students revealed mixed feelings about the effectiveness of current educational practices in promoting gender equity. a female student interviewed expressed satisfaction with their school’s innovative curriculum, stating, “our school allow us to express different perspectives, which i think helps debunking a lot of stereotypes about what girls can or cannot do.” however, another female member noted: i sometimes feel the classes are tailored more towards the boys, especially when it comes to selecting which games we use as examples, for discussions or group projects… it’s like they assume girls aren’t interested in certain types of games a school administrator reflected on the recruitment and training practices, “we’ve been trying to recruit more girls into the program by showcasing our successful female alumni, but there’s still a sense that esports is a boys’ club… or worse, bad kids’ club.” the additional sentiment of bad kids’ club indicates a dual-layered stigma not only against female participation but also against the esports activity itself within the broader educational or community context. this could reflect traditional biases against gaming, often seen as a less valuable or less constructive activity than other extracurriculars. such stigma could be particularly challenging for female students who might already be battling stereotypes about their suitability for gaming and tech-related fields. observational insights during esports practice sessions and classroom activities, observations provided concrete examples of how gender norms are reinforced or challenged. for instance, boys were often chosen first during team selection when forming teams for popular games like first-person shooters (fps), which are perceived as more competitive and aggressive. this practice subtly reinforces the stereotype that such games are better suited for boys. however, in coding and design classes, the division of labor was less noticeable. projects were often assigned in a way that required collaborative input from all students, regardless of gender. observations noted that female students were particularly active and engaged in roles that required both technical skill and creative input, suggesting that when given equal opportunities, gender disparities in participation diminished. theoretical integration chat emphasizes the role of cultural tools, rules, and the community in shaping human activities and interactions. in the context of eswt high. the school’s promotional materials and curriculum design act as cultural tools that either perpetuate the perception of esports as a maledominated field or attempt to counteract these stereotypes by highlighting female achievements and diversifying gaming genres to be more inclusive. recruitment practices and team selection processes are institutional rules that currently favor traditional, competitive aspects of gaming, often aligning with male-dominated norms. observations indicated a need for rules that promote equal participation and recognize diverse talents beyond competitive gaming, which could help dismantle the prevailing ‘boys’ club’ mentality. community norms within the esports program, as observed during practices and classroom interactions, often mirror broader societal biases. zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 15 however, in settings where collaboration and creativity were emphasized, such as coding and design classes, gender norms were visibly less rigid, suggesting a pathway toward more equitable engagement. meanwhile, at eswt high, the digital environment of the esports program often replicates broader societal gender biases. however, it also presents unique opportunities for challenging these norms. for example, the engagement of female students in digital design and coding initiatives highlights the empowering potential of digital spaces when they are structured to be inclusive and equitable. finding 3: navigation of identity and participation within esports this section explores how female students at eswt high navigate both their identity and participation within the esports program, emphasizing the interplay between how they see themselves and their engagement in competitive and collaborative activities. interview insights interviews with female students at eswt high revealed the complex ways in which they navigate both their identity and participation within the esports program. these students shared how the male-dominated environment often placed pressure on them to conform to aggressive gaming styles that did not align with their self-perception. one female student on the varsity esports team explained, “the competitive atmosphere is tough, and there’s a real pressure to conform to the aggressive styles that don’t really represent how i want to play.” such explanation highlights a recurring theme: the conflict between how female students perceive their identity and how the esports environment pushes them toward behaviors traditionally coded as masculine. in addition to the pressures of identity, female students also discussed the barriers to participation, particularly in competitive gaming sessions. one student noted, “in competitions, i feel like i have to prove myself twice as hard. the boys don’t seem to realize how much space they take up, and sometimes my ideas get overlooked or drowned out.” this sentiment was echoed by several participants who expressed feeling hesitant to fully engage in the competitive atmosphere, where male students often dominated the conversation and gameplay strategies. however, female students were more comfortable participating in non-competitive or collaborative settings. another student shared, “in coding or design sessions, i feel more comfortable contributing, because it’s more about creativity and skills, not about proving who’s the best.” this contrast illustrates how participation levels were influenced by the type of esports activity—students felt more engaged and confident in environments where collaboration was prioritized over competition. the digital realm also provided a mixed experience for female students. while some felt marginalized in competitive online spaces, others found solace in digital communities within the school’s esports network. research shows that digital platforms can act as safe spaces for marginalized groups, providing opportunities for negotiation of identity and empowerment. as van den brink and benschop (2014) explain, such spaces allow for recalibration and mutual support, particularly in male-dominated fields, fostering resilience and professional identity development among underrepresented groups. one student reflected, “there’s definitely a mix of good and bad online, but finding a supportive community within our school’s digital platforms has been a game-changer.” this supportive digital space enabled female students to connect with zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 16 others who shared their experiences, fostering a sense of belonging. jenkins (2009) similarly suggests that these online environments often suspend traditional norms in favor of more fluid interactions, while daniels (2016) highlights the potential of digital platforms to foster inclusive communities, offering female students a place to assert both their identity and participation. ultimately, these interviews shed light on the intertwined relationship between identity and participation for female students in the esports program. while their identity often clashed with the competitive aspects of the program, collaborative environments and supportive networks provided spaces where both identity and participation could flourish. observational insights observations conducted at eswt high provided a vivid picture of how female students navigate both their identity and participation within the esports program. these insights revealed that female students often found themselves less visible in competitive esports environments, particularly during varsity team practice sessions. during these sessions, male students frequently dominated both gameplay and strategic discussions. in one instance, a female student attempted to suggest a new tactic during a match, only to be overshadowed by louder male voices. this hesitation to assert ideas in competitive settings was a recurring theme, reflecting the identity struggle faced by female students in these male-dominated spaces. however, in noncompetitive and collaborative settings, female students were observed to be far more confident and engaged. for example, during a coding and design workshop, female students took on leadership roles, with one student leading a group presentation on redesigning game characters to promote gender fluidity. the atmosphere in these collaborative environments was markedly different, with peers engaging in constructive discussions and valuing each other’s input equally, regardless of gender. this suggests that female students feel more empowered to express their identity in spaces where creativity and skill are prioritized over competition. mentorship also played a critical role in how female students navigated their participation and identity within the program. observational data showed that female students were more actively engaged when supported by mentors, particularly during collaborative projects. one female student shared that “having a mentor who understands the challenges i face is really helpful,” and this support translated into increased participation, especially in non-competitive esports activities. mentorship provided a sense of validation, allowing students to feel more comfortable expressing their ideas and participating in a meaningful way. as ramaswami et al. (2010) argue, mentorship creates a safe zone for female students, empowering them to negotiate their identity and enhance their engagement in male-dominated spaces. in addition, female students were observed forming informal networks and gaming clubs as safe spaces where they could freely express themselves and play without the judgment often associated with competitive gaming environments. these informal communities provided students with opportunities to navigate their participation in a more supportive setting, fostering both their identity and engagement. one student commented, “we started a gaming group, and it’s been a safe space to just be ourselves and play without judgment,” illustrating how these informal networks helped female students build confidence in their participation and self-expression. challenges related to technology access also surfaced during observations. female students often expressed discomfort when using high-end gaming equipment, with one student mentioning, “getting used to the high-end rigs was a bit intimidating at first. i didn’t have that kind of setup at home like some of the guys did.” this disparity in prior exposure to technology created an initial barrier to participation, which may have contributed to lower confidence levels zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 17 in competitive settings. however, with time and mentorship, many female students were observed to overcome this initial discomfort and become more engaged participants in the esports program. theoretical integration the intertwined experiences of identity and participation for female students at eswt high can be understood through the lenses of cultural-historical activity theory (chat) and digital feminism. these theoretical frameworks shed light on how educational structures, social dynamics, and technological tools within esports influence both how female students perceive themselves and how they engage within the program. cultural-historical activity theory (chat). chat helps explain how the tools, rules, and community norms within the esports program shape the identity and participation of female students. the tools of esports—particularly gaming equipment and digital platforms—were initially perceived as barriers by many female students. as one student noted, “getting used to the high-end rigs was a bit intimidating at first,” suggesting that unequal access to advanced technology outside of school created an early disadvantage for female students, impacting both their confidence and participation levels. chat emphasizes how such tools mediate learning and engagement, and here, the disparity in prior exposure to gaming technology underscores the gendered access to tools. the community norms within competitive gaming also played a significant role in shaping female students' identities and participation. the competitive aspects of esports, often characterized by aggressive play styles, were perceived as incompatible with how some female students viewed themselves. this tension between identity and the competitive environment aligns with chat’s emphasis on how cultural and community norms influence participation in activity systems. in this case, traditional gaming norms—often masculine in nature—created pressure for female students to conform, inhibiting both their identity expression and full participation in these spaces. however, in collaborative environments, where community norms were more inclusive, female students were observed taking on leadership roles, suggesting that alternative community structures fostered greater engagement and empowered these students to express themselves more fully. the school’s mentorship program also aligns with chat’s emphasis on the division of labor and rules that structure activities. mentorship provided a crucial form of scaffolding, allowing female students to gain confidence, navigate their identity, and participate more actively. this reflects how institutional rules—such as establishing formal support structures— can promote inclusivity, allowing marginalized groups to thrive in traditionally male-dominated spaces. through mentorship, female students not only became more engaged in esports activities but also found the confidence to challenge existing gender norms within the community. digital feminism. digital feminism provides a critical lens to understand how female students’ identity and participation are negotiated within digital spaces. the digital realm, while replicating some of the societal biases present in physical esports environments, also offered female students opportunities to build supportive communities and express their identities in ways that challenge traditional gender roles. as ramaswami et al. (2010) explains, digital platforms can serve as crucial sites of negotiation and recalibration for marginalized groups, offering spaces where traditional norms can be suspended, and more fluid interactions can emerge. for female students at eswt high, digital platforms—such as the school’s esports discord group—created a community of support that was critical for both their identity zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 18 formation and their participation. “finding a supportive community within our school’s digital platforms has been a game-changer,” one student remarked, illustrating how these digital spaces provided a refuge from the pressures of competitive esports and allowed for more meaningful engagement. furthermore, digital feminism highlights the ways in which female students created their own spaces within the broader esports community, using digital tools to form informal networks and gaming clubs where they could participate without the judgment or marginalization often present in male-dominated competitive environments. such observation aligns with daniels’ (2009, 2018) argument that digital spaces can foster inclusive communities that challenge the exclusionary practices common in traditional gaming. these informal networks empowered female students to assert their identity and engage in esports on their own terms, suggesting that digital spaces, when structured inclusively, have the potential to counteract the gendered barriers present in competitive gaming. overall, the integration of chat and digital feminism underscores the importance of educational structures, mentorship, and digital platforms in shaping both identity and participation for female students in esports. these frameworks reveal the complexities of how female students navigate their roles within a traditionally male-dominated space, showing that inclusive structures and supportive communities can foster both greater participation and stronger expressions of identity. discussion this study at eswt high has revealed nuanced insights into the gender dynamics within its esports program, highlighting both challenges and opportunities for fostering gender equity. drawing from interviews, observations, and document analysis, the findings illustrate the complex ways educational structures, cultural norms, and individual agency influence female students’ experiences in esports. the discussion that follows is organized into three key sections. first, the findings are interpreted through the dual lenses of cultural-historical activity theory (chat) and digital feminism to deepen theoretical understanding. second, the study’s practical implications are outlined, including actionable strategies in areas such as technology access, curriculum design, and mentorship. third, directions for future research are proposed to extend the study’s impact and examine broader applications across contexts. this structure offers both conceptual clarity and practical relevance, framing the study’s contributions to gender equity in esports education. integration of theoretical perspectives the competitive nature of esports, often seen as a domain dominated by aggressive and masculine behaviors, presents barriers to female participation. however, the school’s efforts to integrate more collaborative elements into the curriculum, such as coding and design, demonstrate how changing the tools and rules of engagement can create more equitable environments. these changes align with chat’s emphasis on the transformative potential of redesigning activity systems to promote learning and inclusion. meanwhile, the findings suggest that when female students engage in digital spaces that value creativity and technical skills over competitive prowess, they experience greater empowerment and belonging. this shift challenges traditional gender roles and supports the creation of a digital culture that is more inclusive. the zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 19 positive impact of mentorship programs and supportive networks further underscores the potential for digital platforms to serve as spaces of resistance against gender norms. practical implications in light of these findings, this section outlines several key implications for practice, including strategies to improve technology access, address cultural stereotypes, reform institutional practices, and strengthen mentorship and support networks within esports education. technology access and familiarity female students have reported feeling intimidated by high-end gaming equipment, often due to less prior exposure compared to their male counterparts. establish introductory sessions specifically designed to familiarize students with gaming technology. it is thus recommended that equal access to equipment be provided during non-school hours and that female students have the same opportunities to become comfortable with the technology. cultural perceptions and stereotypes despite efforts to integrate females into the esports program, a strong cultural perception of gaming persists as a male-dominated field. female students often feel isolated and must continuously prove their legitimacy within the program. thus, it is recommended to implement awareness campaigns and workshops that educate students and staff about gender stereotypes in gaming. institutions should also celebrate and publicize the achievements of female gamers both within and outside the school to normalize female participation in esports. institutional practices and curriculum current curricular and extracurricular activities may inadvertently favor male students by emphasizing competitive aspects of gaming, which align with traditional masculine traits. thus, it is recommended that the curriculum be redesigned to include a wider variety of gaming genres that appeal to diverse interests. institutions should also incorporate more collaborative and strategic gaming elements that require different skills beyond fast reflexes and aggression. mentorship programs the existing mentorship program at eswt high has been instrumental in helping female students gain confidence and visibility within the esports community. to enhance the mentorship program, campuses could recruit more female mentors actively involved in the broader esports industry. regular mentor-mentee meetups that include career talks, skill-building workshops, and networking opportunities are also recommended. supportive networks and clubs female students have initiated clubs and networks that provide a supportive environment for sharing experiences and strategies. campuses should officially recognize and fund these initiatives to ensure they have the resources necessary to expand and sustain their activities. zhu: empowering female students through esports current issues in education, 26(1) 20 policymakers should also encourage cross-collaboration between clubs to foster a larger community of support and learning. policy and enforcement the school’s anti-discrimination policies and codes of conduct are pivotal in creating a safer and more equitable environment. school leaders are recommended to conduct regular reviews of these policies to adapt to evolving needs. implementing a transparent enforcement mechanism that encourages students to report issues without fear of repercussion is crucial. future research in conclusion, exploring gender dynamics within eswt high’s esports program has highlighted significant opportunities for fostering environments that support all students, regardless of gender. by continuing to challenge traditional norms and implementing supportive educational practices, schools can play a crucial role in shaping the future of esports and technology fields to be more inclusive and equitable. this study offers practical insights for schools looking to enhance their esports programs. 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(2014). case study research: design and methods (5th ed.). sage publications. author’s notes mila zhu orcid id: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7771-6897 southeastern oklahoma state university mzhu@se.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://doi.org/10.4236/sn.2018.71004 https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412012454222 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7771-6897 mailto:mzhu@se.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 5, number 4 may 29, 2002 issn 1099-839x does it matter with what i write? comparing performance on paper, computer and portable writing devices michael russell boston college tom plati wellesley public schools this study builds on three previous studies (russell, 1999; russell & haney, 1997; russell & plati, 2001) to examine the effect of administering extended composition test items on paper, on computer, or on a portable writing device has on student performance. this study employs writing items from the 1999 massachusetts comprehensive assessment system (mcas) to examine the mode of administration effect in grades four and eight. similar to previous studies, this article finds that open-ended language arts items that require students to generate responses using paper and pencil, severely underestimate the achievement of fourth grade students accustomed to writing using a computer. this study also finds that open-ended tests administered on paper underestimate the achievement of eighth grade students accustomed to writing with an emate (a portable writing device). combining the effects found in this study with those found in russell's 1999 study, this article estimates that the mcas language arts test underestimates the performance of students accustomed to writing using a computer by four to eight points on an eighty point scale. this article concludes by recommending that state testing programs that employ open-ended items in language arts provide students with the option of composing responses using the writing tools with which they are accustomed to working. over the past decade, the presence of computers in schools has increased exponentially. one of the many areas in which teachers use computers is writing. as several studies demonstrate, regular use of computers for writing over extended periods of time can lead to significant improvements in students' writing skills (see russell & plati, 2001 for a more detailed review of the literature on computers and writing). to capitalize on these benefits, a few schools have made laptop computers available to all of their students. in most schools, however, the relatively high cost of desktop and laptop computers prohibit schools from acquiring a sufficient quantity of computers for all students to use simultaneously. to provide an entire class of students access to computers, some schools place large numbers of computers into a computer lab. while this strategy succeeds in providing large numbers of students simultaneous access to computers, it may encourage teachers to treat writing with computers as a special event rather than central to their classroom teaching current issues in education vol. 5 no. 4 (kleiman, 2000). however, the recent introduction of portable writing devices, such as alphasmarts, dreamwriters and emates, provide schools with a more affordable option that allows all students to write with a word processor in their classrooms. schools are able to purchase about eight portable writing devices for the same price as one desktop computer. instead of sharing a limited number of computers in a classroom or taking turns using computers in a lab, portable writing devices allow all students within a classroom to write using a word processor. basic word processors allow students to compose, edit, cut-copy-and-paste text, print, and in some cases perform spell-checking. although portable writing devices are relatively new to schools, their presence is increasing rapidly. as table 1 displays, sales of dreamwriters more than doubled each year between 1995 and 1998. similarly, the presence of alphasmarts in schools has increased steadily over the past three years such that there are now just over 10,000 alphasmarts in massachusetts schools alone. although the number of computers in schools remains greater than the quantity of portable writing devices, schools are rapidly turning to portable writing devices as a strategy for providing all students regular and extended time writing with a word processor. table 1: sales growth of dreamwriter and related peripherals year sales in canadian $ millions 1994 1.12 1995 3.85 1996 9.50 1997 20.58 1998 34.03 (nts computer systems, 1998) during the past decade, the prominence of educational testing has also increased. according to education week, all 50 states now use statewide tests to assess student performance in different subject areas (meyer, orlofsky, skinner & spicer, 2002). as a report issued by the council of chief state school officers (1998, p. 17) stated, "possibly the greatest changes in the nature of state student assessment programs have taken place in the 1990s as more states have incorporated open-ended and performance exercises into their tests, and moved away from reliance on only multiple-choice tests." currently, 46 state testing programs include sections in which students must write extended answers or written explanations of their work (meyer, orlofsky, skinner & spicer, 2002). recent research, however, demonstrates that these two strategies for improving education, namely state level testing programs and writing on computers, may work against each other. although several studies have concluded that multiple-choice tests administered on paper or on computer yield equivalent scores (bunderson, inouye & olsen, 1989; mead & drasgow, 1993), more recent research shows that open-ended tests administered on paper significantly under-estimate the achievement of students accustomed to writing on computers (russell, 1999; russell & haney, 1997). in both studies, the effect sizes for students accustomed to writing on computer ranged from .57 to 1.25. effect sizes of this magnitude are unusually large and of sufficient size to be of not just statistical, but also practical significance (cohen, 1988; wolf, 1986). effect sizes of this magnitude, for example, imply that the score for the average student in the experimental group tested on computer exceeds that of 72 to 89 percent of the students in the control group tested via paper and pencil. although prior research on computer use and performance on open-ended test items administered on paper does not call into question the value of state level accountability systems, it does suggest that we should begin thinking about alternative ways of administering open-ended items. as state level accountability tests begin to transition from paper administration to computer administration, several issues arise. first, until all students are accustomed to writing on computers, a better understanding of the extent to which the mode of administration affects student performance at different grade levels must be developed. second, given the many computing devices available, the effect of performing open-ended items on desktop computers needs to be contrasted with performance on cheaper and more portable writing devices such as emates and alphasmarts. third, before testing programs offer students the option of performing tests on paper or on computer, the extent to which handwritten versus computer printed responses influence raters' scores needs to be explored. fourth, administrative procedures for administering tests on computers in schools must be developed. the two studies presented here build on the previous work of russell (1999) and russell and haney (1997) and address the first two issues presented above. whereas previous studies have focused only on middle school students, the two experiments presented here focus on students in fourth and eighth grade. more importantly, whereas the previous studies have compared performance on does it matter with what i write? comparing performance on paper, computer and portable writing devices paper and on computer, the studies presented here examine a third mode of administration, namely portable writing devices. finally, whereas the previous studies examined the effect on relatively short open-ended items that ranged from two to thirty minutes in length, the two studies presented here focus on extended composition items to be completed during two 45 to 60 minute blocks of time. more specifically, the first experiment presented here focuses on the mode of administration effect for emates in grade eight. the second study presented here examines the mode of administration effect for both desktop computers and alphasmarts in grade four. three future articles will: a) examine the mode of administration effect for special education students; b) examine the influence computer versus handwritten responses have on raters' scores; and c) explore policy and administration procedures that may reduce the effect mode of administration has on students' performance. study design to explore the mode of administration effect for portable writing devices, two separate experiments were conducted. the first experiment occurred with students in grade eight and compared performance on paper with performance on an emate. the second experiment was conducted with fourth grade students and compared students' performance on paper, on a desktop computer, and on an alphasmart. an alphasmart is a portable word processing device that allows students to enter text into a small window that displays four lines of text with forty characters per line. students may edit text on the alphasmart using arrow keys and the delete button. cutting and pasting are not available to students using an alphasmart. to better enable students to revise their composition, students who composed their rough drafts on an alphasmart were allowed to edit and finalize their composition on a desktop computer. an emate is also a portable word processor, but differs from an alphasmart in three important ways. first, the screen is capable of displaying up to twelve lines of text with sixty characters per line. second, students may use a stylus to select blocks of text and to place the cursor in different locations. third, in addition to allowing students to cut, copy and paste, emates also provide a basic spell-checker. students in both grade levels responded to an extended composition item from the 1999 massachusetts comprehensive assessment system (mcas). in both studies, three types of background information were collected for all students: prior grades in english, prior computer use, and keyboarding speed. the study occurred in three stages. during stage 1, prior english grades were collected for each student. for all students, year-end grades from the previous year and mid-term grades from the current year were collected. the course-end grades were used during the stratified group assignment process and the mid-term grades were used as covariates during some analyses. during stage 2, all students completed the computer use survey and performed the keyboarding test. during stage 3, students performed the composition item. to the extent possible, the same administration procedures were employed in this study as occurred during the 1999 mcas administration. in the actual mcas composition administration, students completed a composition item during two sessions. during the first session, students composed a first draft. after a fifteen-minute break, students then revised and finalized their composition during a second writing session. both sessions were designed to last for forty-five minutes, but students were given additional time as needed. in some cases, students were reported to take up to an additional hour to complete the composition item. in this study, time constraints and scheduling conflicts challenged efforts to replicate the mcas composition administration. in grade eight, only two hours of total testing time were available. for this reason, the two sessions were completed during two consecutive fifty-minute blocks. in grade four, students working on paper and on computer completed the two sessions on the same day. students who composed their first draft on alphasmarts were not able to access a computer to edit their final drafts until the second day. sampling and group assignment all students included in this study attended wellesley public schools, a suburban school district located outside of boston. within the district, half of the eighth grade students attending the middle school participated in the study (the second half of the class participated in a related study that compared performance on a desktop computer with performance on paper). in fourth grade, students attending three of the six elementary schools participated. within each grade level, the process of assigning students to groups was identical. students' prior grade in english was used to stratify participating students within each grade level. students within each stratum were then randomly assigned to groups. in grade eight, the composition item was administered in two formats, namely on paper and on emate. thus, two groups were formed in grade eight. in grade four, the composition item was administered in three formats: on paper, on a 3 current issues in education vol. 5 no. 4 desktop computer, and on an alphasmart. thus, three groups were formed in grade four. table 2 summarizes the study conducted within each grade level and indicates the number of students assigned to each group. table 2: summary of study designs paper computer alphasmart emate grade 4 49 50 53 - grade 8 42 --42 prior computer use in addition to performing the composition item, all students completed a computer use questionnaire and a keyboarding test. the computer use questionnaire focused on students' use of computers at home, in school, and during their normal writing process. in addition, the questionnaire collected information about students' use of emates or alphasmarts in school and during the writing process. finally, the questionnaire queried students about their preference for taking a writing test on: a) paper or computer, and b) paper or emate/alphasmart. keyboarding test to measure keyboarding skills, all students performed a computer based keyboarding test. the keyboarding test contained two passages. students had two minutes to type each passage verbatim into the computer. words per minute unadjusted for errors were averaged across the two passages and were used to estimate students' keyboarding speed. for the grade eight students, both keyboarding passages were taken directly from encyclopedia articles to assure that the reading level was not too difficult. for the grade four students, the keyboarding passages were taken from a book read in many fourth grade classes. although there is considerable debate about how to quantify keyboarding ability (see west, 1968, 1983; russon & wanous, 1973; arnold, et al, 1997; and robinson, et al, 1979), for the purposes of this study, students' average words per minute (wpm) was recorded uncorrected for errors. scoring all responses were scored independently by two raters. of the nine raters employed for this study, seven were full time classroom teachers and two were advanced doctoral students in an educational research program. all of the raters were blind to the study design, student identities, and the mode on which student responses were created. all raters participated in a one-and-one-half to two hour training session prior to scoring student responses. for all of the items, the scoring criteria developed for mcas were used. the mcas scoring guidelines for the composition items focused on two areas of writing, namely topic/idea development and standard english conventions. the scale for topic development ranged from 1 to 6 and the scale for english conventions ranged from 1 to 4, with one representing the lowest level of performance for both scales. table 3 presents the category descriptions for each point on the two scales. table 3: category descriptions for mcas composition rubrics score topic development english standards 1 little topic/idea development, organization, and/or details little or no awareness of audience and/or task errors seriously interfere with communication and little control of sentence structure, grammar and usage and mechanics 2 limited or weak topic/idea development, organization, and/or details limited awareness of audience and/or task errors interfere somewhat with communication and/or too many errors relative to the length of the essay or complexity of sentence structure, grammar and usage, and mechanics 3 rudimentary topic/idea development and/or organization basic supporting details simplistic language errors do not interfere with communication and/or few errors relative to length of essay or complexity of sentence structure, grammar and usage, and mechanics 4 moderate topic/idea development and organization adequate, relevant details some variety in language control of sentence structure, grammar and usage, and mechanics (length and complexity of essay provide opportunity for students to show control of standard english conventions) 5 full topic/idea development logical organization strong details appropriate use of language 6 rich topic/idea development careful and/or subtle organization effective/rich use of language (massachusetts department of education, 1999a) in addition to the general descriptions, mcas also provides anchor papers and benchmark papers for each category. these exemplars are grade does it matter with what i write? comparing performance on paper, computer and portable writing devices level specific and respond to the prompt administered at each grade level. to reduce the influence handwriting has on raters' scores (powers, fowles, farnum & ramsey, 1994), all responses to the open-ended items administered on paper were transcribed verbatim into computer text. the transcribed responses were randomly intermixed with the computer responses. all student responses were formatted with the same font, font size, line spacing and line width. in this way, the influence the mode of response might have on the scoring process was eliminated. scoring guidelines designed for each item were used to score student responses. all responses were scored by two raters. to reduce the influence any one pair of raters might have on student scores, student responses were spiraled such that each rater was paired with all other raters and all raters scored an equal number of responses produced in each mode. at the conclusion of the scoring process, scores awarded by two raters were added together to produce a topic development scale that ranged from two to twelve and an english standards scale that ranged from two to eight. to estimate inter-rater reliability, the original scores from both raters were used. the resulting scores were compared both via correlation and percent agreement methods. table 4 shows that for most items the correlation between the two raters' scores ranged from .57 to .68. agreement within one point ranged from 88 % to 100%. although the interrater correlations were lower than desired, they suggest that when discrepancies arose, one set of raters was not consistently more or less lenient than the second set of raters. although no information has been published regarding inter-rater reliability of composition scores for the actual administration of the mcas composition items, the extent to which raters were within one point of agreement is similar to the frequency of agreement obtained for the actual mcas short-answer, open-ended items (massachusetts department of education, 1999b). table 4: inter-rater reliability for open-ended items correlation % within 1 point grade 4 topic development .57 88% english standards .68 96% grade 8 topic development .67 100% english standards .59 94% results the first of these two studies explores the relationships between prior computer use and performance on an extended composition item administered on paper and on a portable writing device in eighth grade. the second study is similar to the first except that it focuses on fourth grade students and includes a third mode of administration, namely desktop computers. to examine these relationships, three types of analyses were performed within each grade level. first, to compare performance among groups, independent sample ttests were employed in grade eight and analyses of variance (anova) were employed in grade four. second, total group regression analyses were performed to estimate the mode of administration effect controlling for differences in prior achievement. third, sub-group regression analyses were performed to examine the group effect at different levels of keyboarding speed. before the results of these analyses are described, summary statistics are presented. summary statistics summary statistics are presented for each grade level included in this study. for the student questionnaire, keyboarding test, and english grades, summary statistics are based on all students included within each grade level. keyboarding test. the keyboarding test contained two passages. as described above, the total number of words typed for each passage was calculated and divided by 4 to yield the number of words typed per minute (wpm) for each student. due to the passage length, the maximum keyboarding speed students in grade eight could obtain was 59 words per minute. table 5 indicates that the mean wpm was approximately 24 in grade four to 29 in grade eight. table 5: summary statistics for the keyboarding test n mean wpm std dev min max grade 4 152 23.71 9.91 5 62 grade 8 84 28.95 8.59 10 59 student questionnaire. the student questionnaire contained 12 questions. although comparative data is not available, tables 6a and 6b suggest that on average, students in both grade levels included in this study had substantial experience working with computers. the vast majority of students reported using a computer for three or more years, using computers in schools regularly, and using a computer in their home nearly every day. 5 current issues in education vol. 5 no. 4 table 6a: summary statistics for the student questionnaire grade 4 never less than one one two three four or more years using computer 1% 3% 9% 26% 74% never less than 1 hour/we ek 1-2 hour s/ week 2-5 hours/ week 1-2 hours/ day more than 2 hours/day use computer in school 3% 46% 32% 16% 2% 1% use computer at home 1% 18% 23% 31% 16% 11% use emate/alp hasmart in school 6% 62% 22% 0% 10% 1% never 1-2 times/ year 3-4 time s/ year once a mont h 2-3 times/ month about once a week compose first draft w/ computer 23% 17% 18% 16% 14% 12% edit w/ computer 12% 14% 26% 16% 23% 9% type final draft w/ computer 2% 11% 21% 26% 18% 23% compose first draft w/ emate/alp hasmart 20% 20% 18% 16% 20% 7% edit w/ emate/alp hasmart 31% 26% 13% 12% 10% 8% type final draft w/ emate/alp hasmart 29% 29% 13% 14% 10% 5% paper comput er /emate paper or computer preference 42% 58% paper or emate/alp hasmart preference 57% 43% table 6b: summary statistics for the student questionnaire grade 8 never less than one one two three four or more years using computer 0% 0% 2% 5% 11% 82% never less than 1 hour/we ek 1-2 hour s/ wee k 2-5 hours/ week 1-2 hours/ day more than 2 hours/d ay use computer in school 7% 59% 28% 5% 1% 0% use computer at home 1% 6% 8% 28% 40% 17% use emate/alp hasmart in school 88% 12% never 1-2 times/ year 3-4 time s/ year once a month 2-3 times/ month about once a week compose first draft w/ computer 8% 8% 17% 16% 19% 31% edit w/ computer 15% 4% 16% 16% 21% 29% type final draft w/ computer 2% 0% 7% 11% 29% 51% compose first draft w/ emate/alp hasmart 10% 17% 30% 27% 13% 4% edit w/ emate/alp hasmart 11% 18% 27% 27% 13% 5% type final draft w/ emate/alp hasmart 5% 17% 27% 23% 21% 8% paper comput er /emate paper or computer preference 13% 87% paper or emate/alp hasmart preference 27% 74% does it matter with what i write? comparing performance on paper, computer and portable writing devices furthermore, most students reported that they use a computer at least once a month when writing a first draft. slightly more students reported using a computer two to three times a month to edit the first draft. and most students reported using a computer regularly to write their final draft. similarly, most students indicated that if given the choice, they would prefer to write a paper on computer than on paper. table 6a and 6b also show that many students in both grade levels use portable writing devices to write first drafts often. indicator of prior achievement. mid-year english grades were collected for all students included in this study. in fourth grade, students' english grades are categorized into four category scores that range from one to four. to calculate student's english grade, the scores from these four categories were totaled. the resulting scale ranged from four to sixteen. for grade eight, alphabetic grades (e.g., a, b-, c+) were awarded. these alphabetic grades were converted to a numeric scale as indicated in table 7. table 7: letter grade to numeric grade conversion chart letter grade number grade a+ 97 a 95 a92 b+ 87 b 85 b82 c+ 77 c 75 c72 d+ 67 d 65 d62 f 50 table 8: summary statistics for mid-year grades n mean std dev min max grade 4 152 11.0 1.91 8 16 grade 8 84 88.8 5.73 75 97 table 8 displays the mean and standard deviation for mid-year grades for each grade level. table 9: summary statistics for composition scores n scale mean std dev mean on mcas grade 4 topic development 152 2-12 7.64 2.04 6.74 standard english 152 2-8 6.02 1.27 5.36 grade 8 topic development 84 2-12 8.29 1.83 7.18 standard english 84 2-8 6.33 1.05 5.67 comparing performance by mode of administration as is explained in greater detail above, the study designs differed for the eighth and the fourth grade. for this reason, results are reported separately for each grade level. in grade eight, independent ttests (assuming equal variances for the two samples and using a pooled variance estimate) were employed to examine differences between the pre-assigned modes of administration. the null hypothesis was that the mean performance of the emate and paper groups did not differ. within grade four, an anova was performed to compare mean performance for each mode. the null hypothesis for this test was that the mean performance of the paper, the computer and the alphasmart groups did not differ. in both grade levels, the analyses test whether performance on a portable writing device and on computer (in grade four) had a statistically significant effect on students' test scores. to examine whether prior achievement or keyboarding skills differed between the groups of students who performed each test, independent samples t-tests were also performed for students' midterm grades and wpm in grade eight and anovas were performed in grade four. in addition, independent samples t-tests were performed to examine differences in the length of students' responses in grade eight and anovas were performed in grade four. finally, in grade eight, the amount of time students spent working on their compositions was also collected. given concerns that the mcas tests consume a large amount of time, 7 current issues in education vol. 5 no. 4 testing time was recorded to examine whether drafting and revising on emate might reduce testing time without jeopardizing student performance. for this reason, testing time was also compared. grade 8. table 10 displays results for the paper versus emate experiment. although the midterm grades were slightly higher for students in the paper group, this difference was not statistically significant. on average, however, students writing with an emate produced passages that were twenty percent longer than those composed on paper. students who composed with an emate also received higher scores for both topic development and english standards. on average, students composing on emate scored 1.4 points higher on topic development and .7 points higher on english standards. when the two sub-scores are combined, the emate group performed over two points higher than the paper group (see figure 1). in addition, students writing with an emate finished more than twenty-five minutes faster than did students writing on paper. table 10: between group comparisons for paper versus emate experiment mean std. dev. std. error tstatistic significance effect size mid-term grade paper 89.0 5.7 .87 emate 88.5 5.9 .90 .34 .73 -.06 topic development paper 7.6 1.5 .23 emate 9.0 1.9 .30 3.56 .001 .89 english standards paper 6.0 .99 .15 emate 6.7 .97 .15 3.57 .001 .77 total score paper 13.6 2.29 .35 emate 15.7 2.70 .42 3.84 <.001 .91 passage length paper 448 106 16.4 emate 536 160 24.6 2.97 .004 .82 finish time paper 107.0 9.4 1.44 emate 75.8 9.1 1.41 15.42 <.001 -3.32 wpm paper 29.2 8.2 1.27 emate 28.7 9.0 1.40 .28 .78 -.06 n for paper group=42 n for emate group=42 figure 1. mode of administration effect on mcas language arts scores grade 8. note that statistical significance for the ttests reported above was not adjusted to account for multiple comparisons. given that seven comparisons were made within each experiment, there is an increased probability that reported differences occurred by chance. employing the dunn approach to multiple comparisons (see glass & hopkins, 1984), for c multiple comparisons, pc, is related to simple for a single comparison as follows: pc = 1 (1 )1/c hence, for seven comparisons the adjusted value of a simple 0.05 alpha level becomes 0.007. analogously, a simple alpha level of 0.01 for a simple comparison becomes 0.001. once the level of significance is adjusted for multiple comparisons, the difference in passage length, finish time, and all categories of composition scores remain statistically significant. moreover, as shown in table 10, these differences in composition scores represent effect sizes of .77 to .91 (glass's delta effect size was employed). these effect sizes fall in between those reported by russell and haney (1997) and by russell (1999). the effect size for the total score suggests that while about half of the students writing with an emate scored above 15.7, less than 19% of students performing the test on paper scored above 15.7. to control for differences in prior achievement, a multiple regression was performed. table 11 presents the results of each test score regressed on mid-term grades and group membership. for these regression analyses, the regression coefficient (b) for group membership indicates the effect group membership has on students' performance when the effect of mid-term grade is controlled. group membership was coded 0 for the paper group and 1 for the emate group. a positive regression coefficient indicates that performing the test on emate had a positive effect on students' test performance. a negative regression coefficient suggests that on average students who performed the does it matter with what i write? comparing performance on paper, computer and portable writing devices test on emate scored lower than students who performed the test on paper. table 11 indicates that mid-term grades were a significant predictor of students' scores. for every increase of one standard score unit in mid-term grade, on average students experienced between a .50 and .54 standard score increase in their test score. table 11 also indicates that after controlling for differences in mid-term grades, performing the composition item on an emate had a positive impact on student scores. this impact ranges from a .39 to .41 standard score increase in student test scores. all of these effects are statistically significant. table 11: composition scores regression analyses for paper versus emate experiment topic development r=.62 b std. error beta t sig. constant -6.7 2.49 mid-year grade 0.16 0.03 .50 5.75 <.001 group 1.40 0.31 .39 4.41 <.001 english standards r=.63 b std. error beta t sig. constant 2.31 1.14 mid-year grade 0.09 0.02 .51 5.88 <.001 group 0.80 0.18 .39 4.54 <.001 total score r=.66 b std. error beta t sig. constant 8.98 3.50 mid-year grade 0.25 0.04 .54 6.46 <.001 group 2.20 0.45 .41 4.93 <.001 grade 4. the study in grade four compared performance on paper with performance on computer and on alphasmarts. students were randomly assigned to one of these three groups. table 12 indicates that mean scores for topic development, total score and passage length differed among the three groups (see also figure 2). table 12: summary statistics by mode of administration paper computer alphasmart mean std. dev. mean std. dev. mean std. dev. mid-term grade 10.7 1.71 11.0 1.88 11.2 2.12 topic development 7.0 2.01 8.3 1.96 7.7 1.99 english standards 5.8 1.30 6.1 1.29 6.0 1.22 total score 12.8 3.09 14.4 3.12 13.7 2.99 passage length 305 141.1 445 258.7 332 159.2 wpm 22.1 9.04 24.2 8.48 24.8 11.76 figure 2: mode of administration effect on mcas language arts scores grade 4. to examine whether these differences were statistically significant, a one-way analysis of variance was performed. table 13 indicates that the group means for topic development, total score and passage length did differ significantly among the three groups. scheffe post-hoc comparisons were then performed for these three variables. table 14 indicates that none of the differences between paper and alphasmarts were statistically significant. however, the differences between paper and computer were all statistically significant. specifically, the mean scores for topic development and total score were significantly higher for students who performed the composition item on computer as compared to performance on paper. in addition, students who worked on computer wrote longer passages than students who wrote on paper or on alphasmarts. 9 current issues in education vol. 5 no. 4 table 13: mode of administration anova mean square between within f sig. mid-term grade 3.36 3.67 .92 .40 topic development 20.94 3.94 5.31 .006 english standards 1.18 1.16 .73 .48 total score 31.91 9.39 3.40 .03 passage length 274,892 37,359 7.36 .001 wpm 99.19 98.26 1.01 .36 table 14: scheffe multiple comparisons for topic development, total score and passage length paper vs computer paper vs. alphasmart computer vs. alphasmart me an diff std. erro r sig. mea n diff std. erro r sig. mea n diff std. erro r sig. topic develop ment 1.3 0 .40 .006 .68 .39 .28 .62 .39 .29 total score 1.6 .62 .036 .88 .61 .35 .73 .60 .49 passage length 140 38.8 .002 27.5 38.3 .77 112 38.1 .014 although the computer group scored significantly higher than the paper group, the computer group also had slightly higher mid-term grades. to control for differences in mid-term grades, topic development, english standards and total score were each regressed on mid-term grades and on group membership. for these regressions, two dummy variables were created for group membership. the first, called computer, was coded as 1 for students who performed the test on computer and 0 for all other students. the second dummy variable, called alpha, was coded 1 for students who performed the test on an alphasmart and 0 for all other students. table 15 indicates that after controlling for differences in mid-term grades, performing the composition item on computer still had a significant effect on students' topic development and total scores. it is interesting to note that although students working on computer had access to a spell-checker, this access did not result in significantly higher english standards scores. access to a computer, however, did enable students to write longer passages and, in turn, receive significantly higher scores for topic development. conversely, access to an alphasmart did not have a significant effect on student scores. table 15: composition scores regression analyses for grade 4 topic development r=.54 b std. error beta t sig. constant 1.53 .83 mid-year grade 0.51 .07 .48 6.88 <.001 computer 1.17 .35 .37 3.34 .001 alpha 0.42 .35 .10 1.21 .23 english standards r=.54 b std. error beta t sig. constant 2.06 .52 mid-year grade 0.35 .05 .53 7.67 <.001 computer 0.21 .22 .08 0.96 .34 alpha 0.02 .22 .01 .09 .93 total score r=.57 b std. error beta t sig. constant 3.58 1.24 mid-year grade 0.86 .11 .53 7.81 <.001 computer 11.37 .52 .21 2.64 .009 alpha 0.44 .52 .07 0.85 .40 examining keyboarding speed and mode of administration effect the regression analyses presented above (tables 11 and 15) indicate that mode of administration had a significant effect on students' performance in grade eight and that administration on computer had a significant effect on students performance in grade four. to test whether the effect of mode of administration varied for students with different levels of computer skill, students' wpm was used to form three groups. the first group contained students whose wpm was .5 standard deviations below the mean. the second group contained does it matter with what i write? comparing performance on paper, computer and portable writing devices students whose wpm was between .5 standard deviations below the mean and .5 standard deviations above the mean. the third group contained students whose wpm was .5 standard deviations above the mean. for each group, the composition total score was regressed on mid-term grades and group membership. below, these three sub-group regressions are presented separately for grade eight and grade four. grade 8. in grade eight, "slow" keyboarders were defined as students whose keyboard speed was lower than 23.8 words per minute. "average" keyboarders typed between 23.8 and 32.4 wpm. and "fast" keyboarders typed more than 32.4 wpm. table 16 displays the results of the three separate regressions. for all sub-groups, performing the composition item on computer had a positive effect on students' scores. however, the size of the effect increased as keyboarding speed increased. for slow keyboarders, the effect represented an increase of about .33 standard score points. for fast keyboarders, the effect was about 1.7 times larger. table 16: wpm sub-group regression analyses for the paper versus emate experiment wpm<23.8 n=22 r=.48 b std. error beta t sig. constant -1.71 6.86 mid-year grade 0.17 0.08 .43 2.09 .049 group 1.38 0.84 .33 1.63 .119 23.8>wpm<32.4 n=33 r=.65 b std. error beta t sig. constant -8.93 5.98 mid-year grade 0.26 0.07 .52 3.82 .001 group 2.07 0.78 .37 2.67 .012 wpm>32.4 n=26 r=.71 b std. error beta t sig. constant -5.69 6.61 mid-year grade 0.22 0.07 .44 3.02 .006 group 2.68 0.71 .55 3.77 .001 grade 4. in grade four, "slow" keyboarders were defined as students whose keyboard speed was lower than 18.7 words per minute. "average" keyboarders typed between 18.7 and 28.7 wpm. and "fast" keyboarders typed more than 28.7 wpm. table 17 displays the results of the three separate regressions. for fast keyboarders, performing the composition item on computer or on an alphasmart had a moderate, positive effect on students' scores. the size of the effect was substantially smaller for average keyboarders who composed on a computer and was slightly negative for students who composed on an alphasmart. and for slow keyboarders, using a computer had virtually no effect while using an alphasmart had a negative effect. note that the effects were only statistically significant for fast keyboarders. table 17: wpm sub-group regression analyses for the paper versus computer experiment wpm<18.7 n=52 r=.66 b std. error beta t sig. constant 1.69 1.76 mid-year grade 1.00 0.17 .65 5.98 <.001 computer 0.18 0.77 .03 0.24 .82 alpha -.65 0.69 -.11 .94 .35 18.7<wpm<28.7 n=56 r=.30 b std. error beta t sig. constant 10.0 2.06 mid-year grade 0.36 0.19 .26 1.97 .05 computer 0.63 0.90 .12 .70 .49 alpha -.32 0.93 -.06 .34 .73 wpm>28.7 n=44 r=.64 b std. error beta t sig. constant 3.11 2.72 mid-year grade 0.89 0.23 .49 3.94 <.001 computer 2.25 0.89 .36 2.54 .02 alpha 2.22 0.89 .36 2.48 .02 discussion the two experiments described here extend the work of russell (1999) and russell and haney (1997) in two important ways. in addition to examining the mode of administration effect in grade eight, these studies examine the effect in grade four. in many state testing programs as well as the national assessment of educational progress and international studies such as the third international mathematics and science study, these two grade levels are commonly tested. thus, it is important to understand the extent to which mode of administration affects the performance of students in these commonly tested grade levels. second, these two experiments introduce a third mode of administration that provides schools and testing programs with a cheaper word processing option, namely alphasmarts and emates. 11 current issues in education vol. 5 no. 4 as in the two previous studies, the fourth grade study presented above found that students who wrote their compositions on computer produced longer responses that received higher scores. this computer effect was statistically and practically significant. in addition, substituting an emate for a desktop computer also had a positive effect on students' performance in grade eight. substituting an alphasmart for a computer in grade four, however, had a less pronounced effect. across both studies, the relationship between keyboarding speed and the mode of administration effect was inconsistent. as russell (1999) found, the fourth grade study presented here indicates that students need to have sufficient keyboarding speed before the mode of administration effect becomes meaningful. in grade eight, however, this pattern did not emerge. although the effect was largest for fast keyboarders who produced their composition on an emate, the effect was positive and of practical significance at all levels of keyboarding speed. one reason why this finding differs from that reported by russell (1999) may stem from the relatively high level of keyboarding speed for most students included in the grade eight experiment. whereas russell (1999) reported an average keyboarding speed of about 15 words per minute, average speed for the grade eight students included in this study was nearly twice as fast. moreover, the average speed of students included in the "slow" keyboarding group for the eighth grade study exceeded the cut point for the high keyboarding level in russell's (1999) study. it appears that once eighth grade students achieve keyboarding speed of roughly 20 to 24 wpm, the mode of administration effect becomes meaningful. fourth grade students, however, may need better keyboarding skills before the effect occurs. in addition, when students use portable writing devices rather than desktop computers, the size of the effect may increase. limitations these two experiments focused on students in grades four and eight attending school within a single district. this district tends to perform well above the state average on standardized and state level tests. in the studies presented here, very few students performed at low levels on the composition item. as a result, it was not possible to examine the mode of administration effect across the full range of performance levels. similarly, students included in this study were generally accustomed to working with computers. the relatively high level of keyboarding speed complicated efforts to examine the mode of administration effect at low levels of keyboarding speed in grade eight. additionally, students' familiarity with computers prevented an examination of the mode of administration effect for students who are not accustomed to working with computers. despite this high level of access to computers within wellesley's schools, it should be noted that approximately 25% of the school districts across the state have a better student to computer ratio than does wellesley. finally, due to a limited number of computers in grade four, students who composed their first draft on an alphasmart were required to wait one school day before they could edit their final draft on computer. students who worked on paper or who composed their first and second drafts entirely on computers completed their compositions during two consecutive one-hour blocks. it is possible that the extended time between composing the first and second drafts may have affected the performance of fourth grade students who worked on alphasmarts. implications this series of studies provides further evidence that students accustomed to writing on computers or on emates perform significantly better when open-ended tests are administered on a computer. for the mcas language arts test, this improved performance translates into approximately two points on the composition item. but in addition to the composition item, the mcas language arts test contains four short answer open-ended items each worth four points. assuming that the effect found for the composition item and that the effect reported on the shorter open-ended items by russell (1999) holds across all language arts open-ended items, students accustomed to writing with computers may perform better by an additional two points on these open-ended items. across all short and extended open-ended mcas items, the mode of administration effect may result in an increase of four raw score points if students were allowed to compose responses on a computer. an increase of four raw score points translates into between four and eight point scale score points, depending upon where on the scale a student's score resides. this score increase may be even larger for fast keyboarders in grade four. clearly, as state testing programs such as mcas begin or continue to use test scores to make critical decisions about graduation and promotion, steps should be taken that allow students who are accustomed to working on computers to perform at their highest level. school level effect. within wellesley, eliminating the mode of administration effect for both the composition item and the four shorter open-ended items would have a dramatic impact on district level results. as figure 3 indicates, based on last years does it matter with what i write? comparing performance on paper, computer and portable writing devices (1999) mcas results, 19% of the fourth graders classified as "needs improvement" would move up to the "proficient" performance level. an additional 5% of students who were classified as "proficient" would be deemed "advanced." similarly, figure 4 shows that in grade eight, four percent of students would move from the "needs improvement" category to the "proficient" category and that 13% more students would be deemed "advanced." as figure 5 displays, within one elementary school (bates), the percentage of students performing at or above the "proficient" level would nearly double from 39% to 67%. figure 3. mode of administration effect on grade 4 1999 mcas results. figure 4. mode of administration effect on grade 8 1999 mcas results. the mode of administration effects reported here and in previous studies (russell, 1999; russell and haney, 1997) highlight a complicated challenge testing programs must overcome as they continue to use tests containing open-ended items to make inferences about student and school achievement. to reduce the mode of administration effect, state testing programs should consider allowing students to select the mode by which open-ended responses are composed. for the past decade, the province of alberta has employed this strategy for its graduation testing program (alberta learning, 2000). over the past five years, the province has seen the percentage of students opting to perform the english, social studies, biology and french tests on computer increase from 6.7% in 1996 to 24.5% in 2000. within high schools, the percentage of students opting to perform the test on a computer ranges from 0 to 80% (sakyi, 2000). figure 5. mode of administration effect on bates elementary school 1999 mcas results. although this approach adds to the complexity to test administration procedures (see russell & haney, 2000 for a more detailed review), providing students the option of working on paper, on computer, or on a portable writing device would create writing conditions that more closely reflect normal practice. in turn, the authenticity of testing would increase, students would be able better able to demonstrate their best work, and more valid measures of student writing would be available to judge student and school achievement. references alberta learning. 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(1986). meta-analysis: quantitative methods for research synthesis. sage university series on quatitative applications in the social sciences, series no. 07-059. newbury park, ca: sage. http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/99release.html http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/99release.html http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n20/ http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v5n3.html http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n19.html http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?conte%09ntid=10709 http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?conte%09ntid=10709 does it matter with what i write? comparing performance on paper, computer and portable writing devices 2002 article citation russell, m., & plati, t. (2002, may 29). does it matter with what i write? comparing performance on paper, computer and portable writing devices. current issues in education [on-line], 5 (4). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume5/number4/ author notes michael russell technology and assessment study collaborative center for the study of testing, evaluation and educational policy boston college russelmh@bc.edu tom plati director of libraries and educational technologies wellesley public schools tom_plati@wellesley.mec.edu note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 26, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation russell, m., & plati, t. (2002). does it matter with what i write? comparing performance on paper, computer and portable writing devices. current issues in education, 5(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1621 15 mailto:russelmh@bc.edu mailto:tom_plati@wellesley.mec.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1621 cie template current issues in education, 23(1) 1 volume 23, issue 1 may 9, 2022 issn 1099-839x more than strength from within: cultivating teacher resilience during covid-19 harriet b. fox george washington university heather l. walter george mason university abstract: significant added stressors during the covid-19 pandemic are likely to compound and exacerbate historic concerns about burnout and turnover within the teaching profession. this study used a convergent mixed methods design to investigate experiences of teacher well-being in the beginning months of the covid-19 pandemic. specifically, quantitative surveys investigated relationships among stress, school connectedness, and teacher efficacy among 146 teachers. interviews with 16 teachers explored their qualitative perceptions of well-being, how they personally navigated the challenges of teaching remotely, and what their school and/or districts did to support teacher well-being. interviewed teachers could be classified as growing, coping, or discouraged. findings suggest that both individual and environmental factors contributed to a sense of well-being among growing and coping teachers. keywords: teacher well-being, resilience, covid-19 citation: fox, h. & walter, h. (2022). more than strength from within: cultivating teacher resilience during covid-19. current issues in education, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.1978 accepted: march 14, 2022 introduction under normal circumstances, teacher burnout and attrition are systemic problems, with significant numbers of teachers in the united states experiencing pervasive symptoms of psychological distress, stress, and burnout (jennings et al., 2017; roffey, 2012). burnout affects teachers’ physical and mental well-being and ultimately impacts the academic and socialemotional experiences of the students they teach (fleming et al., 2013; jennings et al., 2017; roffey, 2012). within the context of a worldwide pandemic and great economic uncertainty, teachers’ physical and mental well-being is at risk, with many experiencing heightened levels of stress or anxiety (bushweller, 2020; hamilton et al., 2020; kraft et al., 2020). additionally, https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.1978 fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 2 exacerbated inequalities have led many teachers to struggle to meet the needs of all students (bushweller, 2020; reich et al., 2020). yet, in spite of the great challenges facing educators during this time, some teachers have exhibited incredible resilience and maintained a sense of workplace well-being. recent literature has investigated not only why teachers leave the profession but also what makes teachers stay and what factors contribute to teacher well-being (mccallum et al., 2017; walter, 2020). protective factors at the individual and environmental levels, such as high levels of teacher-efficacy or strong connections with peers and colleagues, can support wellbeing (jennings et al., 2017; renshaw et al., 2015). increased school support and connectedness can serve as a buffer for morale (kraft et al., 2020; ladd, 2011), which may be all the more critical during the covid-19 pandemic. thus, the current study investigated protective factors at the individual and environmental levels that may have been associated with teacher well-being in the beginning months of the pandemic (i.e., spring 2020). literature review in this study, we address several factors associated with teacher well-being, including teacher stress, teacher efficacy, perceptions of school connectedness, and teacher resilience. we review the literature related to teacher stress, efficacy, and connectedness and how these constructs are associated with various levels of teacher resilience and well-being. teacher stress over the past few decades, there has been considerable interest in teacher stress as an indicator of subjective well-being. stress is broadly defined as strain (physiological or psychological) experienced by a person when striving to meet changing demands from one’s environment (carson et al., 2000; renshaw et al., 2015). in educational contexts, changing demands related to instructional standards, accountability, and evaluation have placed considerable stress on teachers (renshaw et al., 2015). work-related stress among teachers has been associated with burnout and a number of other negative outcomes, including low job satisfaction, poor student outcomes, and attrition (skaalvik & skaalvik, 2009; grayson & alvarez, 2008; spilt et al., 2011). during the covid-19 pandemic, teachers were expected to transform their classrooms virtually overnight, often with limited support or preparation. changing demands from school and district administrators likely led to increased stress among teachers, and there has been considerable concern that many teachers would choose to leave the profession as a result of such heightened demands (edweek research center, 2020). teacher well-being despite growing interest in factors associated with teacher well-being, most research has relied on targeting negative indicators (e.g., stress and burnout) at the exclusion of positive aspects of teachers’ work (renshaw et al., 2015). positive indicators of teacher well-being—such as efficacy, positive affect, or relationships with students and colleagues—have been associated with a number of critical educational outcomes, including teacher effectiveness, student wellbeing, classroom climates, and retention (collie et al., 2015; renshaw et al., 2015). among these indicators, teacher self-efficacy and prosocial relations, including connectedness to one’s school, have repeatedly demonstrated strong predictive validity of teacher stress and burnout (de biagi et al., 2018; mankin et al., 2018; renshaw et al., 2015). these factors may also be critically fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 3 important to maintaining a sense of well-being during significant crises or periods of stress, such as teaching during the covid-19 pandemic. teacher efficacy teacher efficacy is the degree to which teachers believe they are able to effectively support student engagement and learning (bandura, 1977). teacher efficacy has been associated with many significant educational outcomes, including teacher retention, job satisfaction, and student achievement (tschannen-moran & hoy, 2001). teacher efficacy has also been linked to greater levels of persistence and resilience when faced with challenges or setbacks (kraft et al., 2020). levels of efficacy vary according to teachers’ levels of experience, school setting, and student population (podolsky et al., 2019). teacher efficacy is also impacted by crises (e.g., natural disasters). in a crisis, teachers may experience a feeling of “role overload” from responding to multiple demands and supporting the well-being of their students and impacted communities. this can decrease their sense of efficacy (seyle et al., 2013). given the abrupt transition to remote teaching in spring 2020 and related reductions in school morale (edweek research center, 2020), it is possible that teachers experienced a decrease in efficacy. prior research indicates that low levels of efficacy are associated with higher levels of burnout and attrition and lower levels of student achievement and engagement (wong et al., 2017). school connectedness feeling connected to and supported by colleagues at work has been found to contribute to general workplace well-being and satisfaction, and this appears to be the case for teachers as well (renshaw et al., 2015). teachers who reported collegial support and a good atmosphere at work tended to have stronger occupational well-being (renshaw et al., 2015). those in negative atmospheres, such as schools experiencing friction in their community or a lack of leadership, reported lower levels of well-being (bower & carroll, 2017; kern et al., 2014). recent studies of teacher experiences during the spring of 2020 have shown that factors associated with school connectedness, such as the principal’s leadership, collegial relationships, and the school’s organizational culture, mattered most to teachers (kraft et al., 2020). schools that experienced the greatest success with remote teaching and learning relied on flexible, teamoriented cultures to navigate uncertainty amidst the global pandemic (greenberg, 2020; kraft et al., 2020). when teachers feel disconnected from their students and colleagues and increasingly isolated, as may have been the case for many during the spring of 2020, they are more likely to leave the profession (johnson & birkeland, 2003). ensuring teachers feel supported and that they are part of a team is critical under any circumstance but may be particularly important during periods of crisis or transition. teacher well-being and resilience resilience has typically been used to describe individuals’ capacity to adapt or even thrive despite adversity (beltman et al., 2011). resilience in the face of adversity may not be a response to a specific traumatic event but can also include one’s daily response to accumulating challenges (clara, 2017). more nuanced understandings of resilience have suggested that resilience is a complex process resulting from the interplay between risk and protective factors at both the individual and environmental levels (beltman et al., 2011; ungar, 2012). those who do fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 4 exhibit resilience are more likely to experience professional engagement, motivation, satisfaction, and well-being (beltman, 2015; mansfield et al., 2012). at the individual level, teachers who exhibit resilient traits, such as a sense of efficacy and accomplishment, flexibility, a sense of purpose, or use of coping strategies, may be more likely to persevere in spite of challenging circumstances (mansfield et al., 2012). in contrast, teachers who have greater difficulty coping with the emotional demands of their work are at higher risk of stress and burnout (mansfield et al., 2012). social-ecological perspectives of resilience emphasize the significant impact of the environment in which individual teachers are situated (beltram, 2015; unger, 2012). environmental contributors can include new teacher support (e.g., mentors, pre-service experiences), positive relationships with colleagues and school administrators, a positive school culture, and positive experiences while working with students (ainsworth & oldfield, 2019; howard & johnson, 2004; mansfield et al., 2012). critical perspectives of teacher resilience (e.g., johnson & down, 2013; price et al., 2012) also emphasize the importance of context, questioning whether the term “resilience” has become a “means to enable overworked teachers” to cope with the intense pressures of capitalism and globalization rather than attempting to resist or change toxic systems (price et al., 2012, p. 84). resilience and well-being are arguably related but distinct constructs (harms et al., 2018). the relationship between resilience and well-being is likely bidirectional, and it may also be the case that under duress, resilience serves as a moderator between stress and well-being (harms et al., 2018). resilient individuals may be more likely to maintain a strong sense of wellbeing when confronted with stress. it is also likely that individuals with a strong sense of wellbeing may be more likely to exhibit resilient behaviors (harms et al., 2018). as described above, resilience involves both individual and contextual factors. thus, cultivating teacher resilience to support or maintain workplace well-being during periods of high stress should involve attention to the structure and institutional nature of teachers’ work (including school management and culture) as well as individual teacher dispositions (ainsworth & oldfield, 2019). given the challenges associated with teaching during the covid-19 pandemic, researchers were interested in how teachers experienced stress and well-being and if their individual actions and those of their schools supported resilient responses to facilitate well-being. research purpose the purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ perceptions of their well-being and stress during the first few months of the pandemic (i.e., spring 2020) and the extent to which their personal actions and school or district leaders facilitated resilient responses. specifically, this study asked the following research questions: 1. what were teachers’ levels of perceived stress according to the perceived stress scale (cohen, 1983) and teacher well-being according to the teacher subjective well-being scale (renshaw et al., 2015) during the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic in spring 2020? 2. what individual and environmental factors contributed to teachers’ resilient response and subsequent well-being during the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic in spring 2020? fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 5 methods this study used a convergent mixed methods design (creswell & plano clark, 2017) in which quantitative and qualitative data were collected simultaneously, followed by separate analyses of each data set. for logistical purposes, teachers participated in interviews after taking the surveys, but quantitative analyses did not inform qualitative data collection methods. following analyses of each data set, quantitative and qualitative data were then merged for interpretation. the integration of quantitative and qualitative data allowed for a more complete understanding of what factors contributed (i.e., individual or environmental) to teacher wellbeing during covid-19 than either data set alone (creswell & plano clark, 2017). data collection a team of two researchers collected quantitative and qualitative data over the course of two months in the spring of 2020. participants were recruited using snowball convenience sampling. all participants (a) were at least 18 years old; (b) held a teacher licensure in the united states (c) were teaching full time; (d) were teaching remotely due to mandated physical distancing and school closures at the time of the study; and (e) taught in grades k-12. this study was approved by the university’s institutional review board (irb). surveys were completed online, and interviews were conducted via video call (e.g., zoom). sample the full sample consisted of 146 participants. a majority (85%) of participants were female. participant age ranged from 20s (n = 18) to 60s (n = 13), with most teachers in their 30s (n = 53). most participants (n = 85) had over ten years of experience; 55 had 3 10 years of experience, and six were in their first or second year of teaching. most teachers worked in a public school (n = 110), though some were in private settings (n = 25) or in a public charter school (n = 10). most participants reported teaching elementary school (k 5th; n = 93), 22 reported teaching middle school, 22 reported teaching high school, and six reported teaching grades k 8. sixteen participants from the quantitative sample opted into an interview. among the interview participants, seven self-reported that they were special education teachers. interview participants represented a range of ages, settings, and years of teaching (see appendix a for additional details). quantitative data collection teacher participants responded to two survey instruments measuring stress and wellbeing. researchers administered the perceived stress scale (cohen, 1983) and the teacher subjective well-being scale (renshaw et al., 2015). teacher participants also self-reported demographic information (e.g., gender, school setting, years of experience, grade level). perceived stress scale the perceived stress scale (pss; cohen et al., 1983) is a widely used 10-item instrument that measures participants’ perceived levels of stress over the past month (e.g., “in the last month, how often have you felt nervous and stressed?”; vallejo et al., 2018). participants responded on a 5-point likert-type scale (0 = never, 4 = often). four items are reverse coded, and then an average score is taken across all items. high scores indicate high levels of stress. in this study, the pss showed strong internal reliability (𝛼 = .89). fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 6 teacher subjective well-being scale the teacher subjective well-being questionnaire (tswq; renshaw et al., 2015) is an 8item instrument that includes two subscales related to teachers’ well-being: (a) a teacher’s efficacy (e.g., “i am a successful teacher”) and (b) a teacher’s sense of school connectedness (e.g., “i feel like i belong at this school”). teacher efficacy and connectedness have consistently demonstrated strong structural properties, and there is evidence of strong external validity for these constructs among diverse populations of teachers (arslan, 2018; de biagi et al., 2018; mankin et al., 2018; renshaw et al., 2015). on the tswq, participants respond to items using a 4-point likert-type scale (1 = almost never, 4 = almost always). scores on each subscale were calculated independently; high scores reflect high levels of connectedness and efficacy. internal reliability estimates on the tswq school connectedness and tswq teacher efficacy subscales for this study were high (𝛼 = .80, 𝛼 = .88). qualitative data collection participants had the option to participate in an interview at the conclusion of the survey. two researchers, who were special education teachers and now pk 12 university special education and teacher preparation researchers, conducted virtual interviews that lasted 30 60 minutes. interview questions were semi-structured and asked teachers to describe their experiences related to well-being during the spring of 2020 (e.g., “how has your well-being changed as a result of remote teaching?”). this method was chosen so that we were able to elaborate on questions and probe participants further if necessary. teachers were also asked to talk about factors that supported their well-being at the individual and school level during the pandemic. interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed by the authors. several measures were taken to establish trustworthiness throughout the study, including member checking and triangulation. interview questions were checked by content experts, and participants were asked to review interview transcripts for accuracy and clarity (lincoln & guba, 1985). data analysis quantitative descriptive statistics were analyzed using microsoft excel and spss v. 27 to identify trends across participants. qualitative analysis included a three-cycle coding process. first, participant interviews were open-coded by two researchers using maxqda 2020. based on the emergent codes, researchers created a codebook that included individual and environmental factors affecting teacher well-being. the codebook was then applied to all interviews. finally, researchers assigned participants profiles according to their perceptions of well-being during the spring of 2020. specifically, researchers examined the level of support received by participants (e.g., school, colleagues) and classified the level of professional support as low, medium, or high. researchers also examined participants’ personal disposition toward work (e.g., positive versus discouraged), coping strategies (e.g., effective versus ineffective), and sense of professional efficacy (e.g., believed they could be successful versus did not think they would be successful). participants were then coded according to one of three categories. those with generally low support and a pessimistic outlook, ineffective coping strategies, or low professional efficacy were identified as “discouraged.” participants who reported low support but expressed a positive outlook, effective coping strategies, or strong professional efficacy were identified as “coping.” finally, participants who expressed strong support and a positive outlook, effective coping strategies, or strong professional efficacy were identified as “growing.” fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 7 when conducting qualitative analyses, it is important to consider how researchers can ensure that findings are trustworthy. one approach for supporting validity in qualitative research is peer debriefing (creswell & miller, 2000). a peer debriefer reviews the research and analysis process, challenging the researchers to justify their research decisions and pushing their next steps methodologically (lincoln & guba, 1985). in the current study, a third researcher initially served as a peer debriefer after qualitative and quantitative analyses were complete, then remained engaged in the research process to support integrated analyses, interpretation, and writing. the three researchers integrated quantitative and qualitative data for the purpose of triangulation and expansion (greene et al., 1989). participants’ quantitative scores were compared to participants’ qualitative profiles using a data matrix and visual display (see figures 1 and 2). the integration of quantitative and qualitative data allowed for a more complete understanding of what factors contributed (i.e., individual or environmental) to teacher wellbeing during covid-19 than that provided by either data set alone (creswell & plano clark, 2017). results quantitative results researchers calculated descriptive statistics for all participants (n = 146) as well as among those who participated in interviews (n = 16). mean, standard deviation, median, and range were calculated for each scale and subscale across all participants. teachers’ reported stress levels varied from 0.20 (low stress) to 3.10 (high stress) and, on average, were moderate (m = 1.85, sd = 0.61). school connectedness levels as measured by the tswq ranged from 1.50 to 4.00. average connectedness was 3.23 (sd = 0.61), suggesting that most participants tended to feel positively about their level of school connectedness. teacher efficacy levels as measured by the tswq ranged from 1.75 to 4.00. on average, efficacy levels were also high (m = 3.45, sd = 0.54). mean, standard deviation, median, and range were also calculated among interview participants and compared to the larger sample. independent samples t-tests confirmed that there were no significant differences between the full group and the interview group. pearson’s correlations between scales were also analyzed. school connectedness and perceived stress were significantly inversely correlated (r = -.35, p < .01); efficacy and perceived stress were also significantly inversely correlated (r = -.32, p < .01); school connectedness and efficacy were significantly positively correlated (r = .44, p < .01). this suggests that individuals with higher levels of school connectedness and teacher efficacy tended to have lower levels of perceived stress. although the average levels of teacher well-being and stress indicate that many participants appeared to cope well in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, the wide range of responses suggests that some participants may have coped better than others. qualitative results teachers’ well-being was affected by factors at the individual and environmental levels. using response patterns based on these factors, researchers identified three groups, including teachers who were (a) growing, (b) coping, and (c) discouraged. individual factors individual factors influence how one copes with environmental factors and persists in response to stress or adversity. individual factors as defined by the current study included positive dispositions, confidence, coping skills, self-care strategies, and desire for professional fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 8 growth. having a positive disposition, including a commitment to student learning and the ability to reframe challenging situations, was important for teachers’ sense of well-being. many teachers with a positive disposition talked about how they tried to see the “silver lining” in challenging situations or focus on things that were going well, such as improved parent relationships, rather than on everything that was hard. for example, one teacher stated that they could “accept that i am doing the best that i can and adopt a growth mindset” (pid 2624). teachers also talked about gaining confidence over time and that this helped them feel better about their job, especially when working with colleagues. one participant shared how feeling that “we are all rowing in the same boat” helped her have a positive attitude (pid 5518). as they got used to new technological tools and online teaching, they felt more efficacious. others discussed specific coping strategies, including setting boundaries around their work. additionally, motivation to learn and grow through professional development opportunities came up as an important contributor to wellbeing. lastly, self-care was mentioned by many teachers who tried to manage their stress and well-being by taking lunch breaks, talking with friends, asking for support, or exercising. environmental factors teacher participants also described environmental factors that contributed to their wellbeing. environmental factors included teachers’ interactions with others and the availability of resources, including district interactions or support, school administrator and peer support, family and friends, and working with students. these interactions ranged from very positive to very negative depending on the individual teacher and school environment. district supports included free resources, professional development opportunities, empathetic superintendents, acknowledgment of physical or mental health needs, or flexibility with work schedules. school administrator support included tangible support (e.g., technology) as well as emotional support. some teachers described very “aloof” administrators, whereas others felt their school leaders were working around the clock to protect teacher well-being and support learning. one participant, for example, felt relief when she received “weekly emails from my superintendent” (pid 2715), while another thought administrators “were forcing them to teach in a one-size-fitsmost approach,” which was not the way she was used to teaching (pid 2622). many teachers also brought up the role of peer support—either socially connecting with colleagues online or collaborating with other teachers to adapt to online teaching. participants discussed the importance of relying on friends and family for emotional support as well as for household needs. finally, teachers discussed working with students. for some, the move to virtual learning ruptured student-teacher relationships; for others, it encouraged more one-on-one time and fostered a sense of meaning or purpose. teachers who generally felt more supported by their environment tended to report better overall experiences during the spring of 2020 than those who felt less supported. growing teachers six of the 16 teachers interviewed were identified as “growing” or having high levels of social and school-based support as well as strong individual coping strategies that allowed them to learn and grow as professionals. this group of teachers tended to describe their experiences more positively than other participants. they felt that teaching remotely may have presented challenges but had not been an entirely negative experience. growing teachers had a more optimistic outlook than others, some sharing that this experience helped them improve as individuals or professionally. for example, one teacher specifically stated that her health fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 9 improved because she was able to eat better and get outside for walks more frequently (participant id 2002), and others shared the virtual classroom helped them learn new skills. growing teachers spoke about environmental factors that contributed to their well-being, such as positive administrator and district support. teachers described administrators as “awesome” (pid 7461), highly effective, and understanding of what teachers needed during a crisis. strong social networks and school connectedness amongst family and friends were major themes that growing teachers focused on. these teachers relied on others in their school community for support. one teacher specifically talked about how colleagues helped each other through virtual formats: “[we] really were there for each other and there was a lot of conversation, and it was great. if someone was overwhelmed it was like, we can work this out” (pid 1164). another described frequent team check-ins as beneficial, sharing, “we have a group meeting where everybody just checks in every day and says, good morning, [and] makes sure everybody is okay” (pid 1686). many growing teachers found comfort in their family and friends. one teacher explained that “even though we were doing it remotely, i’m still staying connected with my church. so, i think that’s probably what really helps me to get through” (pid 7461). another described leaning on her family to help with household responsibilities and taking care of elderly parents (pid 2002). lastly, growing teachers mentioned how working with students in new ways provided opportunities for learning and growth. for many in this group, teaching in new online formats was a “silver lining.” teachers found opportunities to connect with parents more frequently or to work more closely with some students one-on-one. others loved the chance to try online tools and improve their pedagogical practices. growing teachers saw silver linings in their work, were able to use productive coping mechanisms and self-care strategies, and often reported high levels of school-based and social support to help them adjust to remote teaching. coping teachers five teachers were identified as coping, including one outlier. these teachers tended to have positive mindsets, good coping mechanisms, and used a variety of self-care strategies. however, unlike growing teachers, they felt less supported by their school and administrators. thus, while coping teachers persisted despite challenges associated with remote teaching, they also tended to feel more isolated and relied more heavily on individual coping strategies. the participant outlier reported strong school connectedness and administrative support but faced significant obstacles with childcare and thus also reported very high levels of stress. coping teachers tended to share greater frustration with school-based administrators or their district. one felt “dissonance and disconnect” between what the district was asking and what was feasible (pid 7653). others felt “a lot of anxiety” because the “school hasn’t really told us anything” (pid 1686). this differed significantly from the growing group of teachers who commonly reported high levels of school-based support. although they felt less supported by their school or district, teachers in the coping group spoke of having a few (one or two) colleagues they could turn to or family members they felt connected to. despite many frustrations, this group of teachers found ways to manage uncertainty even without school or district support. they tended to have very positive attitudes, high levels of selfefficacy, and found ways to cope to do their job. like growing teachers, coping teachers also saw the “silver lining” in a crisis and were able to verbalize positive moments and learning experiences. fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 10 some described excitement over “delivering content in a whole new way” and providing “way more personal assessment and feedback to kids” (pid 7653). others similarly found students’ reflections on their learning to be deeply moving (pid 8542). another teacher shared that she gained “a lot more confidence [in] things i would not have done” and was “more comfortable [teaching remotely] to the point where i kind of liked being at home” (pid 6132). one teacher discussed how in a virtual learning environment she gets “to completely reinvent [the] job… i feel a sense of urgency around that. like how can i do that so i can set my kids up in a way so that when they come back, school will never look the way it looked” (pid 7653). this group of teachers also reported communicating more frequently with parents, sending “positive notes” home, or helping parents support their students who had learning differences (pid 6132, 1686). coping teachers found ways to take care of themselves, either by starting a yoga practice (pid 1686), taking regular walks (pid 6132), or making dog walks “sacred” time (pid 7653). some also talked about the importance of keeping schedules and thinking in smaller chunks of time to get to the end of the year (pid 1686, 7653). teachers in this group also reported that they found a lot of joy and meaning from student interactions. some described hosting social “hangouts” with their students. they provided students opportunities for unstructured time during lunch or breaks to play games and talk to one another informally (pid 7653, 1686). these moments cultivated a sense of meaning and purpose that teachers felt was often lacking from remote instruction. another teacher found meaning from seeing students who “struggled in the classroom” do “so much better at home” (pid 6132). she shared that “seeing that was kind of motivation for me to just keep going, i learned every day for them.” one teacher found promise in the idea of forming relationships with students in a very personal and private way that may be deeper than relationships formed in a traditional classroom (pid 7653). there was one outlier in this group who, unlike others, had very high levels of school support but also very high self-reported levels of stress. she shared, “we are being given more tools and being asked to do more” in comparison to most schools that are asking teachers to do more, with less. however, she had a very challenging time teaching remotely because of a lack of childcare for her pre-school-aged daughter. balancing teaching and parenting made the spring of 2020 incredibly challenging for this teacher. had she had child support, she may have reported growing, but without it, she relied heavily on her colleagues to get through. thus, her resilience stemmed from strong school support rather than simply relying on individual coping strategies. apart from the outlier in this group, coping teachers spoke more negatively about environmental factors such as low school and district support than growing teachers. they did, however, speak very positively about working with children and found individual coping mechanisms to be effective. discouraged teachers the third group of teachers had a much more difficult time navigating remote teaching than other participants. these “discouraged” teachers reported far less support and tended to have lower levels of confidence and more negative outlooks on their situation. discouraged teachers spoke of the lack of support they received from their district and school administration. one teacher shared that her administrators were not adequately addressing teacher needs during this period. she stated: fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 11 i feel like they said that a lot but there was no actionable [steps]… like i thought about what if someone needs to take a day off?...there was never any mention of what would happen....and so there was a lot of like, these emails that would come and say things like “in these unprecedented times, etc., etc.” and “you need to care for yourself first,” but it was like, what does that even mean? (pid 5695) another teacher similarly shared that her school had a counselor to check in if needed but said, “did she really provide any services to the teachers? no, not at all” (pid 5130). this group of teachers also felt there was too much “back and forth” from the district or administration about expectations, making it difficult to plan because “no one really knew what to do, it was really confusing” (pid 5130). one teacher shared, “i just felt like their plan was… haphazard… they need to have a more structured plan moving forward” (pid 2624). another described a “disastrous” rollout after ten weeks of missed learning time, feeling the district could have had a better plan in place without losing so much time (pid 5695). these disparate standards made some teachers feel like there were wide interpretations of how teachers should spend their time, with some going “above and beyond” and others “not doing anything at all” (pid 5103, 5695), which created a feeling of resentment among some staff. many teachers in this group also expressed their concern about equity of access for students and their families. these teachers stated that they couldn’t assure equity of access to online materials, could not get computers to families, or software was not updated. even if these issues were solved, discouraged teachers worried that their students had not been seen or provided with services in weeks. discouraged teachers also spoke of how stressful it was to keep students engaged and motivated online and how hard it was to teach when some students did not even have their basic needs met (e.g., food, social services). all five teachers in the discouraged group also happened to be special educators (although not all self-identified special educators were classified as “discouraged,” with one classified as coping and one as growing). many discouraged teachers reported concern that they were unable to provide services to students and feared future legal battles (pid 5695, 5130). one teacher shared, “just knowing that they’re not being serviced in the way that they should” impacts “how effective you feel as a teacher” (pid 5130). another felt her job became very compliance-driven, sharing, “once we actually started teaching… it felt very legal… like there wasn’t anything really as a teacher i was contributing” (pid 5695). similarly, a participant said, “our role really changed… like we weren’t really just teachers anymore—we were more like government representatives” (pid 8630). some teachers spoke of peer support, but many said that as special education teachers, they often felt isolated in their role. this group did talk about some positive coping and self-care strategies such as relying on family members, venting to friends, trying to exercise, or working with private therapists. unlike other participants, this group did not speak of positive professional growth or report any particular “silver linings” associated with teaching remotely. integrated analysis and results after analyzing quantitative and qualitative results independently, results were integrated into joint displays (guetterman et al., 2015), which combined qualitative and quantitative findings in a visual illustration for analysis and interpretation. first, researchers organized scores on measures of stress, school connectedness, and teacher efficacy together with qualitative responses to overarching themes in a meta-matrix by participant (miles et al., 2014). participants were sorted by their qualitative profile of growing, coping, or discouraged. visual analysis of the fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 12 integrated joint displays triangulated qualitative and quantitative results, revealing overlapping and distinct patterns in quantitative scores among the different qualitative profiles. first, we compared mean scores of perceived stress, school connectedness, and selfefficacy by participant profile (figure 1) to explore patterns among each teacher profile group. the results showed that all three groups reported similar stress levels, m = 1.85, 1.74, and 1.92 for growing, coping, and discouraged participants, respectively (range = 0.7 2.5, 0.9 3.1, 1.2 2.3). however, differences emerged in the school connectedness and teacher efficacy scores. consistent with qualitative findings, growing teachers reported the highest levels of teacher efficacy (m = 3.83, range = 3.5 4.0) and school connectedness (m = 3.79, range = 3.5 4.0). teacher efficacy scores for coping (m = 2.9, range = 2.25 3.25) and discouraged teachers (m = 3.0, range = 2.5 3.75) were slightly lower than the growing group. reports of school connectedness diverged further, with coping teachers reporting levels of school connectedness that were strong (m = 3.5, range = 3.25 4.0) but lower than that of growing teachers (m = 3.8, range = 3.5 4.0). consistent with qualitative reports, struggling teachers reported the lowest levels of school connectedness (m = 2.4, range = 2.0 3.0). figure 1. participant profile group by average score note. stress = average score on the perceived stress scale (scale of 0-4) for participants in the growing, coping, and discouraged groups; school connectedness = average score on the tswq (scale of 1-4); self-efficacy = average score on the tswq scale (scale of 1-4). because using mean scores for each group can mask individual participant variability, we also visualized integrated profiles for each participant by mapping each participants’ reported score of school connectedness and perceived stress (figure 2). the results suggested that fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 13 although stress levels varied across all three groups, measures of school connectedness differentiated among teachers’ reported experiences of well-being; teachers who described experiences of growing reported strong school connectedness (3.5 or higher), while teachers who were discouraged reported lower connections to their schools (3.0 or lower). coping teachers generally reported levels of school connectedness between the discouraged and growing groups, with the exception of one coping participant who indicated school connectedness of 4.0. however, the interview with this participant suggested that she felt less support from her school than suggested by the quantitative scale. figure 2 individual participant perceived stress by school connectedness note. stress = average score on the perceived stress scale (scale of 0-4) for participants categorized as growing, coping, and discouraged; school connectedness = average score on the teacher subjective well-being questionnaire (scale of 1-4) discussion the results of this mixed-methods investigation indicate that teacher responses to remote teaching during the spring of 2020 varied, with some teachers embracing opportunities to grow professionally and others feeling discouraged by their role. more specifically, integrated findings suggest that feeling connected to one’s school community served as a protective factor for many teachers. however, special educators had unique challenges and were more likely to describe feelings of isolation or frustration than general education teachers. additionally, findings suggest that despite heightened stress, individuals with communities of support and strong individual coping mechanisms can still find ways to thrive. fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 14 school connectedness as a protective factor this study found that individual experiences of well-being during the pandemic varied according to levels of environmental support, specifically school connectedness. it is possible that connectedness allowed teachers to be more resilient in the face of stress and thus experience higher degrees of well-being during the pandemic. school connectedness may have served as a protective factor against the stress associated with remote learning and covid-19. teacher participants who felt supported by their school had colleagues with whom they could collaborate or problem solve and had networks of support outside of school tended to report better overall well-being. those who felt they were a part of a team tended to report relying less on individual coping mechanisms in response to stress. feeling connected to their school community may have bolstered feelings of belonging and reduced anxiety associated with remote teaching. teachers reported many ways they stayed connected during remote learning. supportive school leaders created intentional opportunities for collaboration among pairs or teams of teachers and held regular staff meetings, including informal opportunities to connect online. teachers also felt a deeper sense of community and connection when provided with professional development opportunities and appropriate technological tools to adapt to online learning. finally, teachers felt more connected when school leaders embraced an attitude of empathy and flexibility. although schools prioritize the needs of students and families, it is equally important to consider the needs of teachers during a pandemic. flexibility in teaching approaches or work schedules, for example, can make teachers feel supported and cared for. special education teacher resilience while the focus of this study was on teachers’ well-being in general during the pandemic, one auxiliary finding from the qualitative interviews was that all teachers who were classified as “discouraged” also self-reported that they were special educators. these teachers expressed feelings of isolation, limited support, and mixed messages from administrators. under normal circumstances, special education teachers experience higher levels of stress and burnout than their general education peers (haslip & gullo, 2018). special education teachers in this study similarly described higher levels of stress and feelings of discouragement than the general education teachers in this study. discouraged special education teachers particularly struggled with online service delivery, confusion around compliance with individualized education programs (ieps), and feeling professionally isolated from their general education colleagues. in a traditional classroom environment, teachers can rely on multiple visual and verbal cues with ample opportunities to check for understanding, redirect students if they are on task, and work one on one. remotely, few of these strategies were viable, and for some students with disabilities, learning from a computer screen for hours each day was not developmentally appropriate. special education teachers also reported mixed messaging from administrators regarding iep compliance and service delivery. many of the interviewed teachers were the only special education teacher in their grade level or specialty area. even teachers who collaborated with general education teachers for push-in support were unclear as to what their role was in an online classroom. confusion and isolation likely contributed to feeling discouraged among this group of special educators. when considering the needs of special education teachers, particularly during remote learning, it is important to provide clear and structured guidance in terms of compliance obligations. support for special education teachers can also include greater opportunities for fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 15 collaboration with general and special education colleagues and professional development specifically targeting special education teachers’ needs, such as effective online accommodation tools, strategies for student engagement in a virtual environment, or clear guidance for iep compliance. stress study findings also raise important questions about teachers’ experiences of stress and how feelings of stress are related to teachers’ perceptions of professional well-being. the perceived stress scale measures general stress, not stress specific to teaching during the pandemic. however, stress experienced in other parts of one’s life can impact an educator’s professional well-being. for example, most interviewed participants did not have children at home, either because their children were old enough to self-monitor their own online learning, were adults, or because they did not have children. teachers who are parents may experience additional stressors as they juggle teaching and parental responsibilities. future research should investigate how other life stressors impact teacher well-being at work. additionally, this study raises some questions about the use of stress as a measure of well-being. despite responding to a survey during a time in which teachers were arguably experiencing significant stressors, both the larger sample and qualitative sample showed moderate stress levels. as expected, school connectedness and teacher-efficacy were negatively correlated with stress, but these correlations represented a small effect. furthermore, integrated findings suggested that teachers’ reported stress levels were not strongly related to their qualitative perceptions of their own well-being. in other words, integrated findings suggested that it was possible to experience high levels of stress while still feeling that one was growing or coping as an educator. such findings suggest that general measures of stress may not fully or accurately reflect teachers’ perceptions of well-being. future research should make use of multidimensional measures or methods to understand the relationship between stress and teachers’ experiences of well-being. limitations it is important to recognize several limitations to this study. first, the quantitative scales were designed to address general stress and teacher well-being; they were not specifically worded to address participant experiences during the spring of 2020. for example, our survey did not ask teacher efficacy questions as they specifically related to remote teaching and learning (i.e., we did not revise the tswq). had we designed the survey to target efficacy more intentionally towards remote teaching, our findings may have been different. the pss also asked participants about their stress levels in general, not specifically related to teaching. thus, teacher stress levels may be related to external stress associated with the pandemic. second, participants were recruited through snowballing and were not randomly selected, which means that results cannot be generalized to a larger population of teachers. additionally, because some demographic information was not collected (e.g., race/ethnicity), it is not possible to understand how this sample compares with characteristics of the general teaching force. although interview participants’ scores on quantitative measures did not differ significantly from the full sample, interview participants self-selected, and their views may not fully capture all participant perspectives. additionally, the interview protocol did not define “well-being” for teachers. thus, participants may have had differing ideas of what well-being is as the construct is often not fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 16 consistently defined (mccallum & price, 2017). finally, it is important to note that the survey and interviews were conducted either during or immediately after the 2019-20 school year. this was a period of emergency instruction at the beginning of the pandemic when teachers across the us found themselves in the unanticipated situation of teaching remotely. teachers’ experiences of resilience may shift under prolonged pandemic conditions as “emergency” teaching scenarios become a long-term reality. conclusion although media outlets have painted a grim picture of teaching and learning during the pandemic, teachers in this study shared incredible moments of innovation, adaptability, and community. in cases where schools cultivated teacher resilience by providing adequate emotional support, teachers were able to maintain a sense of well-being and excitement about their work. although these individuals may have been more “resilient” in response to covidrelated stress and thus experienced higher levels of well-being, they also reported greater levels of support from administrators and connectedness to their school communities. unfortunately, in places where teachers felt isolated or disregarded by their administration and school community, self-reported well-being suffered. teacher resilience during covid-19 was not just a story of individuals exhibiting great strength to overcome obstacles but rather one that included strong community connections and holistic support. these findings suggest that fostering teacher resilience, and thus well-being, during periods of undue stress must include strategies at the individual level but also 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coping 8542 high avg. avg. f 30s 5 10 private 9th – 12th coping (outlier) 2624 high avg. avg. f 40s 10+ public k – 2nd discouraged 1686 avg. avg. low f 20s 0 2 charter k – 2nd coping 9136 low high high m 60s 10+ public 6th 8th growing 8370 low low low f 20s 2 5 public 3rd – 5th discouraged 3310 low high low f 40s 0 2 public 6th 8th coping 1886 high low age. f 60s 10+ public k – 2nd discouraged 2378 high high high f 30s 2 5 charter k – 2nd growing 7461 avg. avg. high f 50s 10+ public 3rd – 5th growing 2002 high high avg. f 30s 10+ public k – 2nd growing note. pss = perceived stress scale (scale of 0-4; low < 1.6, average = 1.6 2.0, high > 2.0); sc = school connectedness on tswq (scale of 1-4; low < 3.0, average = 3.0 3.5; high > 3.5); te = teacher efficacy on tswq (scale of 1-4; low < 3.0; average = 3.0 3.5; high > 3.6). fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 21 appendix b teacher semi-structured interview questions 1. in general, how is your well-being as a teacher? 2. in what ways has your well-being as a teacher changed as the result of the global pandemic? 3. how has teaching remotely impacted your well-being as a teacher? 4. what personal strategies have you found helpful to improve your well-being as a teacher and reduce stress during this time? 5. what has your school or district done to support your well-being as a teacher during this crisis? 6. what do you need from your school or district right now to improve your well-being as a teacher? 7. *if you are going to teach remotely next year, what ideas do you have to support teachers’ well-being at your school? 8. what is giving you meaning right now in teaching? 9. what have you/your school done to forge connections with other staff/students? fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 22 author notes harriet b. fox george washington university halliefox@gwu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7381-7677 heather l. walter george mason university hwalter2@gmu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7390-2051 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:halliefox@gwu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7381-7677 mailto:hwalter2@gmu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7390-2051 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ innovatively preparing the teacher workforce: virtual learning environmentsvirtual learning environments: virtual learning environments current issues in education, 22(1) 1 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age innovatively preparing the teacher workforce: virtual learning environments anni reinking southern illinois university edwardsville abstract: as one of the hardest professions, teaching can lead to burnout, stress, and other physical and emotional reactions throughout one’s professional life. however, implementing the innovative practice of training teachers in virtual learning environments can reduce stress and increase the success of the teacher workforce. therefore, in this study, the researchers focused on a small group of novice teachers and teacher candidates in the midwest in order to reduce initial stress during teaching segments. the findings indicate that practice and coaching, within a virtual learning environment, can reduce stress. however, feedback and peer interactions are also essential. keywords: stress, teachers, virtual learning environment citation: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce: virtual learning environments. current issues in education, 22(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1906 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 11/2/2020 innovatively preparing the teacher workforce: virtual learning environments across the nation school districts and classrooms are experiencing a teacher shortage, which is creating an atmosphere where many schools are “scrambling to find qualified teachers” (papay et al., 2018, para. 1). the result is often placing unqualified or underqualified individuals in classrooms with students. while this is a reality, it is not a goal or an effective best practice in education. http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1906 reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 2 researchers and policymakers have studied this shortage and report the complexity of the reasoning behind the shortage. it spans from low pay to lack of preparedness (walker, 2019). although these roadblocks, along with many others, are recognized, arguably policymakers have “historically failed to … understand and fix the problems contributing to the shortage” (walker, 2019, para. 14). however, groups of researchers around the nation have started to take the charge of addressing a handful of issues leading to teacher shortage through the innovative and immersive practice of virtual learning environments. one of the areas researchers have focused on, in reference to the teacher shortage or burnout rates, is to focus on the teacher stress levels experienced in the classroom setting. why stress? in one study, stress was found to be one of the causes of teacher resignation (dinham, 1993). furthermore, other researchers have found that stress can lead to “burnout”, which means “to tire or suffer due to a demanding job” (rankin, 2016, para. 2). some researchers have even stated that teaching constitutes the hardest job of all in our society (glasser, 1992). as one of the hardest professions, teaching can lead to burnout, stress, and other physical and emotional reactions throughout one’s professional life. however, researchers and educators, who understand the impact of high stress environments in the teaching field, created effective training, professional development, and techniques for teachers and teacher candidates to use as a way to reduce the negative reactions and side-effects of high stress working environments through the use of training teachers in low-stress virtual learning environments. virtual learning environments are rapidly demonstrating utility for expanding experiential learning for teachers, as well as teacher candidates. virtual learning environments incorporate the learned knowledge of best practices with “real life” situations in a simulated environment. these experiences offer safe, flexible, and appropriate training conditions to practice pedagogical skills. in these environments, teachers are coached and given real-time feedback, rather than after-lesson feedback or no feedback at all with the time constraints of administrators. additionally, in the virtual learning environment there are avatars that are able to provide real-time responses, interruptions, questions, and answers. the research on virtual learning classrooms indicates that there is a nine second suspension of disbelief, in which the teachers and teacher candidates participating in the experience feel as though they are teaching in a real classroom rather than in a simulated classroom (dieker et al., 2008). this suspension of disbelief assists in the training of teachers in high-stress environments in a low-stress simulation. therefore, the purpose of this study was to focus on a small group of novice teachers and teacher candidates in the midwest in order to reduce initial stress during teaching segments, which included addressing the practice of giving a lesson while students (avatars) displayed challenging behaviors. the experience in the virtual learning environment for the novice teachers and teacher candidates included virtual classroom simulations, in the moment coaching/feedback, and peer critiques. this type of learning environment has been shown to increase teachers’ confidence and proficiency on topics such as classroom management or instruction, (dieker et al., 2008), which, in effect, creates coping strategies to reduce stress in future teaching experiences. it should also be noted that the findings reported in this paper are part of a larger study focused on several other areas, however in this paper the level of stress will be the focus. reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 3 theoretical perspective this study was based on two similar perspectives that focus the trajectory of moving a professional from novice to expert. one of the perspectives was designed by patricia sawyer benner (1982) in the field of nursing known as the trajectory of novice to expert. the second theory was designed by dreyfus and dreyfus (1985), who named the model after themselves, the dreyfus model (2004). this specific model took the ideas of benner’s model and focused specifically on teachers moving from novice to expert through five levels: 1. novice 2. advanced beginner 3. competent 4. proficient 5. expert the dreyfus model represents the widely agreed upon notion that professionals move through a developmental continuum in which they progress from a novice to an expert. specifically, dreyfus and dreyfus (1985) identified that professionals move through five stages of career development, which has an impact on future success and career sustainability. therefore, through the use of the dreyfus model (dreyfus, 2004) the researchers were able develop an understanding of where each teacher and teacher candidate began and the growth or development experienced during the innovative and immersive practice of virtual learning. methodology in this qualitative study, specifically grounded theory, researchers integrated the innovative and immersive technology of virtual learning as a way to educate the teacher workforce and develop a sense of confidence and sustainability within the profession. the purpose of this study was to focus on a small group of novice teachers and teacher candidates at in the midwest in order to reduce initial stress during teaching segments. the researchers also developed an overarching question for this specific portion of the larger study. the research question was: how did the interactions in the virtual learning environment impact the participants overall learning and sense of confidence? background the research occurred in two teacher education courses at a four-year university in the midwest and at professional development sessions for novice teachers in surrounding districts. one course was titled collaborative professional, family, and community relationships. this course had novice early childhood teacher candidates and novice teachers enrolled in graduate credit hours. the objectives of the course focused on the participants understanding the importance of family and community in the life of a student and school building. the specific assignment in this course, which related to stress reduction and workforce development, focused on the practice of co-teaching a lesson with a peer. the second course included in this study was titled learning environments. this course enrolled both elementary and early childhood novice teacher candidates. the objectives of the course included learning about classroom management theories, interacting with various teaching styles, and developing challenging learning environments for students. the specific assignment in this course, which related specifically to reducing stress through clear classroom reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 4 practices and procedures, focused on implementing classroom management techniques that had been learned in the course. finally, the professional development included in this study varied for each group of novice teachers, however the focus on stress reduction and workforce longevity was constant. some of the professional developmental focused specifically on behavior management strategies while others focused on the impact of trauma in the classroom. regardless of the professional development title, one goal was consistent throughout: reduce stress in the teaching workforce through innovative and immersive experiences. participants the participants in the study were selected through convenience sampling, which a qualitative non-probability is sampling technique used when subjects are selected because of their convenient accessibility and proximity to the researcher. all of the participants were part of the courses listed above or professional development sessions utilizing the virtual learning environment. it was made clear by both of the researchers that the students/participants did not have to partake in the research; it would not impact their grade or standing within the school district. therefore, not every student/participant completed the research survey. overall, there were 89 participants. fifty-eight or 65% of the participants were novice teachers in the various professional development sessions. there were 12 participants or 20% of the participants were pre-service teacher candidates in the learning environments course and 19 participants or 33% of participants were pre-service teacher candidates in the collaborative professional, family, and community relationships course. the specific demographics (i.e. age, race, sex) of each participant was not collected during this study. procedures the research began when the researchers engaged novice teachers in professional development focused on behavior management, and novice teacher candidates in two teacher preparation courses. the participant engaged in coursework or training focused on a specific topic, such as behavior management strategies, prior to entering the virtual learning environment. after the coursework and/or professional development, the participants interacted with student avatars in real time through the virtual simulation. while the virtual simulations varied, the level of stress-inducing behaviors was set at a high level. some examples of stress-inducing behaviors included ‘students’ (virtual avatars) hitting each other, talking back to the teacher, not listening, and overall interrupting the lesson. all of the interactions the avatar students displayed were based in real classroom scenarios to provide a realistic experience for the participants to practice and to build confidence and perseverance in the classroom setting. by engaging in this practice in a real-time simulated environment, the participants were able to practice stress coping strategies, as well as teaching strategies in a low risk environment (i.e. ‘no students were hurt in the training of this teacher’.) the process to the virtual simulations, during the simulation, and after the simulation were all similar. first, as stated above, all of the participants received a version of training. second, the participants engaged in the virtual learning environment while the professor/trainer and peers watched in a fishbowl setting. if a participant became overwhelmed during the simulation, they were able to pause and regroup. after the simulation, the participant received feedback from his/her peers and the professor/trainer. through this process, the participant not reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 5 only learns from the feedback, but each of the peers in the lab also learn from the feedback, therefore creating more knowledge and confidence as a professional. after the experience, as a way to analyze the impact of the virtual learning environment, surveys were distributed to participants and qualitatively analyzed. as a reminder, this was a larger study, however the information focused on reducing stress-levels will be reported. data analysis once all of the participants implemented their lesson in the virtual learning environment, the researchers provided a survey for the participants to complete. the survey included open ended questions regarding the teacher candidates’ experience in the virtual learning environment. one example of a question on the survey that relates directly to the stressreduction study was, “did you confidence level change after participating the virtual learning environment? explain.” after the eighty-nine surveys were received, the researchers analyzed and coded the data simultaneously. the grounded theory process was used for analyzing the data, which is a way to find the development of conceptual categories. the themes focused on this specific portion of the larger study (i.e. stress reduction) was evident in written feedback on the surveys focusing on the ability to practice teaching techniques in a low-risk environment, along with receiving constructive feedback from the professor/trainer and peers. these specific findings will be discussed. findings implementing innovative and immersive experiences through the virtual learning environment in teacher training programs, both for pre-service and in-service teachers, has the potential to reduce stress and burnout in the teacher workforce. the teacher workforce is able to practice, try, and receive feedback in a low-stress environment without the pressure of impacting real students. the founding themes from this study, specifically aimed at reducing stress for the teacher workforce, include two areas: consistency/calm and feedback. consistency/calm the ability to think under pressure, cope with changes in the structure of a day, and calmly handle the flexibility of the teaching profession can be summarized in the theme of consistency/calm. this concept was found after data analysis; however, a few quotes provide context. one participant stated, “i forgot y’all were even in here. that was stressful, but i paused and got it back together. that was nice.” another participant stated, “i was relaxed and composed, even when the students acted out.” the ability to practice in a low-risk learning environment, rather than a high-risk “real” environment, provided the participants the ability to relax rather than increase their levels of stress. another participant stated, “things will never go exactly the way you planned them and that is okay.” this statement points to the concept that staying calm under press is an imperative quality to embrace as a teacher. finally, one other participant stated, “i was stressed out prior to the simulation, but i like having the practice to interact with students (in the simulation) and seeing what i can work on before i’m in my future classroom.” although this was a qualitative study, the data indicated that 52% of the responses on the survey reflected the overwhelming feeling of consistency/calm, as opposed to stress, in the virtual learning experience. overall, the innovative practice of virtual learning displayed a reduction in stress for the participants, as well as a sense of confidence to take the skills they learned and practiced into their real classrooms. reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 6 feedback feedback, the second theme, also provided a reduction in stress for the participants. the participant comments and reactions focused on the feedback that was provided in the fishbowl setting from peers and the professor/trainer during the virtual learning environment. the reduction in stress, especially when difficult disruptions arose in the classroom, was evident in one participant statement, “i was able to pause the classroom (in the virtual learning environment) if i had a question. i could make mistakes without actually effecting real students.” another participant stated, “i like the fishbowl. i think it is a great way to bounce ideas off of other students, and it is just a more engaging way to talk about things. i like hearing what others have to say then being able to bound off of that” and implement the learned practices in the virtual learning environment. these statements support the theme of feedback as a way to brainstorm, collaborate, and overall reduce teacher stress. although this was a qualitative study, the data indicated that 97% of the participants found the virtual learning experience transformative for practicing skills in a low-stress environment where feedback can be asked for and received. overall, the ability to provide feedback, in real time, rather than after the moment, creates an environment where participants work collaboratively to improve their practice, gain more confidence, and reduce stress. implications there are implications from this study for both teacher training programs and the wider teaching field. implications specifically for the teacher training field include the ability to use time more efficiently, increase the quality of feedback, and support the development of teacher candidates’ confidence levels in classroom settings. specifically, traditional teacher preparation programs place pre-service teachers in classrooms immediately, with none to limited training. this creates an environment of high-stress, low-confidence, and the possibility of learning or solidifying inefficient teaching practices. overall, this is an inefficient use of time in teacher preparation programs. however, virtual learning environments have the potential to increase coaching/feedback time, build teacher candidates’ confidence and knowledge of best practices prior to entering a real classroom, and the ability for teacher candidates to ask in the moment questions, rather than wait until the end of a school day. this study also has implications for the wider teaching field. it has been stated that, “most teachers deal with lots of job stress…. public school teachers face additional problems of lack of respect from students, and even from students’ parents” (brinson, 2018, para. 1 & 2). one way to reduce the stress of dealing with increasingly demanding situations is through the use of practicing, developing coping strategies, and discussing with professionals/peers on ways to management changes in the teaching field. virtual learning environments not only use simulated students in real-time interactions, but there is also the ability to use adult avatars simulated conversations with parents, principals, community members, school boards, and more. discussion the process of implementing the virtual learning environment in both pre-service teacher preparation programs and in-service teacher training workshops/professional development sessions could revolutionize the teaching field. the virtual learning environments provide lowrisk, innovative, and immersive environments to practice, learn, and improve teaching strategies, as well as problem-solve through difficult situations based on a real classroom. the experiential learning, implemented through the virtual learning environment, allows teachers and teacher reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 7 candidates to actively construct their knowledge acquisition by experiencing the learning context (kolb, 1984). this type of experiential learning, through the immersive virtual learning environment, has the potential to serve as an intensive learning experiences for educators without potential harmful effects on student performance, reducing both student and teacher stress-levels. overall, simulation in virtual learning environments has existed in other disciplines for many years, however it is new to the field of education. airplane pilots, police officers, and healthcare professionals use virtual simulation. many fields outside of education understand the transformative potential of virtual simulation to increase confidence and reduce stress when under pressure. therefore, the implementation of virtual learning environments in the field of education is important, needed, and reduces the stress level in one of the most stressful professionals in our country. in order to increase student performance and decrease teacher stress, implementing virtual learning environments can have the intense impact of restructuring the profession of teaching. references benner, p. (1982). from novice to expert. ajn the american journal of nursing, 82(3), 402 407. brinson, l. c. (2019). 10 most stressful jobs in america. how stuff works. retrieved from https://money.howstuffworks.com/10-most-stressful-jobs-in-america7.htm dieker, l., hynes, m., hughes, c., & smith, e. (2008). implications of mixed reality and simulation technologies on special education and teacher preparation. focus on exceptional children, 40(6), 1. dinham, s. (1993). teachers under stress. the australian educational researcher, 20(3), 1-16. retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/bf03219547 dreyfus, s. e. (2004). the five-stage model of adult skill acquisition. bulletin of science, technology & society, 24(3), 177-181. glasser, w. (1992). the quality school curriculum. the phi delta kappan, 73(9), 690-694. kolb, d. a. (1984). experiential learning. prentice hall. kyriacou, c. (2001). teacher stress: directions for future research. educational review, 53(1), 27-35. papay, j. p., bacher-hicks, a., page, l.c., & marinell, w. h. (2018, january 9). american’s teacher shortage can’t be solved by hiring more unqualified teachers. the washington post. retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/09/americas-teachershortage-cant-be-solved-by-hiring-more-unqualified-teachers/?utm_term=.c3cde92363ed rankin, j. g. (2016, november 22). the teacher burnout epidemic, part 1 of 2. psychology today. retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/much-more-commoncore/201611/the-teacher-burnout-epidemic-part-1-2 walker, t. (2019, april 3). teacher shortage is ‘real and growing, worse than we thought’. neatoday. retrieved from http://neatoday.org/2019/04/03/how-bad-is-the-teachershortage/ https://money.howstuffworks.com/10-most-stressful-jobs-in-america7.htm https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/bf03219547 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/09/americas-teacher-shortage-cant-be-solved-by-hiring-more-unqualified-teachers/?utm_term=.c3cde92363ed https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/09/americas-teacher-shortage-cant-be-solved-by-hiring-more-unqualified-teachers/?utm_term=.c3cde92363ed https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/much-more-common-core/201611/the-teacher-burnout-epidemic-part-1-2 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/much-more-common-core/201611/the-teacher-burnout-epidemic-part-1-2 http://neatoday.org/2019/04/03/how-bad-is-the-teacher-shortage/ http://neatoday.org/2019/04/03/how-bad-is-the-teacher-shortage/ reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 8 author notes anni reinking southern illinois university edwardsville anreink@siue.edu guest editor notes sean m. leahy, phd arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au mailto:anreink@siue.edu mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 9 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf current issues in education, 25(2) volume 25, issue 2 november 22, 2024 issn 1099-839x balancing acts: navigating the complexities of female online doctoral journeys staci gilpin, ph.d. rural pathways mckenzie rabenn, ph.d. universities of wisconsin abstract: this study delves into the experiences of two female online doctoral students who navigate the complexities of motherhood and rural living, aiming to enhance understanding and improve persistence rates in their academic pursuits. by employing a narrative inquiry approach, the research highlights the transformative power of narratives and storytelling in gaining insights into the lives of these students. the findings illuminate systemic barriers that limit their access to research opportunities and collaborative spaces. the study underscores the necessity of creating inclusive environments, fostering effective virtual mentorship, and offering comprehensive support for health and well-being. through these targeted strategies, educational institutions can play a pivotal role in fostering a more equitable and supportive landscape for all doctoral students, particularly those identifying as female. such efforts are instrumental in not only enhancing their academic success but also in ensuring their personal well-being and growth. keywords: female online doctoral student, online learning environments, work-life balance, graduate student experiences, diversity in doctoral journeys, narrative inquiry, gender disparities in graduate programs citation: gilpin, s., & rabenn, m. (2024). balancing acts: navigating the complexities of female online doctoral journeys. current issues in education, 25(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2245 accepted: 10/02/2024 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2245 gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 2 balancing acts: navigating the complexities of female online doctoral journeys the growing body of research and public discourse has increasingly highlighted the professional inequities and stigmas that women face in higher education. seminal works by scholars such as acker and armenti (2004), armenti (2004), and the american association of university professors (aaup) council (2001) have laid the groundwork for understanding these challenges, particularly in relation to faculty experiences. more recent analyses by gardner (2009) and hirakata and daniluk (2009) continue this line of inquiry, further exploring the impact of gendered expectations and institutional policies on women's academic careers. public commentaries by chenoweth et al. (2016), gray (2015), and waxman and ispa-landa (2016) broaden the conversation, emphasizing how these challenges extend beyond faculty to include students and staff. together, these works underscore the importance of acknowledging how life stage changes and family-related circumstances can profoundly affect women’s professional trajectories in academia. while much of the literature has focused on faculty, it is important to note that these issues also affect other groups, suggesting a need for institutional policies that provide robust support across different stages and roles in academic life. this context sets the stage for a deeper examination of the unique experiences of the understudied population in this study, as we shift focus to explore these dynamics among students. purpose and positionality despite the increasing attention these issues have received from scholars recently, there remains a notable gap in the literature concerning the specific challenges faced by women enrolled in doctoral programs. this study aims to bridge this gap by exploring the experiences of two white cisgender women who undertook collaborative roles as graduate research assistants at the same mid-sized research institution in the united states. notably, our paths to pursuing online doctoral programs were shaped by distinct personal circumstances. staci’s choice to pursue her ph.d. in education foundations was primarily influenced by her geographic isolation in a rural area, highlighting the accessibility and flexibility that online programs can offer. conversely, mckenzie’s decision to pursue an online doctorate degree in teaching and learning stemmed from her urban living situation and the demands of motherhood, with three children to care for. this contrast not only illustrates the diverse motivations behind choosing online doctoral studies but also emphasizes the need for academic institutions to consider the varied life situations of their students when designing and implementing support mechanisms. our collaboration on various research projects prompted discussions about our experiences as fully online doctoral students. these conversations led us to delve into the complexities of dissertation studies and collaborative work with faculty on research projects. recognizing the importance of a supportive network, we embarked on a study aimed at exploring our experiences as online doctoral students, with a specific focus on the intersectionality of gender-related challenges within the academic landscape. a key question driving our research is: how can we establish supportive spaces for prospective online women doctoral students? by sharing our stories, this process has allowed us to make sense of and authentically express our lived experiences, identifying the unique challenges that women face in online doctoral studies while also recognizing the opportunities offered by these modes of learning. our ultimate goal through this study is to support institutions, faculty, and academic gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 3 communities in developing evidence-based strategies that can help contribute to the support and success of all online doctoral students, but especially women. literature review the landscape of higher education, especially within the realm of online doctoral programs, presents a complex array of challenges and opportunities for students and faculty alike. this section delves into the multifaceted experiences of doctoral students in the united states, with a particular focus on gender disparities and the unique hurdles encountered by women in these programs. drawing upon a wealth of research, we explored the impact of societal norms, gender-specific life events, and the process of graduate student socialization on the academic and personal lives of women doctoral candidates. through examining the nuances of these experiences, the discussion aims to shed light on the importance of tailored support systems, equitable mentorship models, and the creation of inclusive academic communities. cognitive imperialism cognitive imperialism critically impacts individuals and communities subjected to eurocentric colonialism and imperialism, drawing attention to the adverse psychological and emotional effects of such dominance (battiste, 2016). this concept is critiqued through various frameworks, including the banking model of education (freire, 2004), cultural imperialism (carnoy, 1974), mental colonization (chinweizu, 1987; hotep 2003), and encompasses a spectrum of practices such as cultural racism, epistemic violence, cultural genocide, and cognitive assimilation. according to battiste (2016), unlike related concepts that may also consider cultural dimensions, cognitive imperialism specifically targets the alteration of consciousness and knowledge systems, setting it apart as a distinct form of cultural and intellectual subjugation. the prevalence of cognitive imperialism is further exemplified in the design of higher education systems, which are predominantly shaped by white eurocentric norms (aparicio et al., 2016; plotts, 2020a, 2020b). these systems are often structured to cater to an idealized archetype, epitomized by a financially secure, highly mobile 25-year-old white man (carlton, 2020). this narrowly focused educational model risks marginalizing a significant portion of the student population, particularly women and diverse groups, by prioritizing a specific set of cultural and social norms over a more inclusive and representative approach. such marginalization not only reflects broader societal inequities but also perpetuates them within the academic sphere, underscoring the urgent need for educational reforms that embrace and accommodate the diversity of student experiences and backgrounds. moreover, the persistence of gender disparities in graduate program participation, despite overall increases in enrollment, highlights the systemic barriers that women and other historically marginalized groups continue to face in higher education (posselt & grodsky, 2017; u.s. census bureau, 2022). these disparities are heavily influenced by societal norms and gender-specific life events that significantly influence individual choices and experiences within the academic environment. the vital role of graduate school socialization with faculty and peers, particularly for women, emphasizes the importance of fostering an inclusive, equitable, and supportive educational landscape. addressing these challenges requires a concerted effort to dismantle cognitive imperialism within academia, ensuring that higher education systems not gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 4 only recognize but actively support the unique needs and aspirations of all students, thereby contributing to a more just and equitable academic community. societal norms women in graduate education face unique challenges, including societal expectations, geographic limitations, and gender-specific life events (e.g., menopause, pregnancy, breastfeeding). pasque and errington-nicholson (2011) highlighted the struggle women graduate students face in balancing academic demands with work and personal responsibilities. this challenge is exacerbated by the disproportionate burden of household and childcare duties women typically shoulder, often leading them to prioritize their partners’ careers over their own educational goals. global statistics show that women and girls perform about 75% of unpaid care and domestic work daily (united nations, 2020; moreira da silva, 2019). this unequal distribution of labor significantly impacts women's ability to fully engage in and complete graduate education, often causing delays or forcing them to abandon their academic pursuits altogether. feminist economists, such as chung (2020), have highlighted the concept of the 'third shift,' which refers to the often overlooked and unpaid emotional labor predominantly undertaken by women. this labor extends beyond household chores and caregiving duties, encompassing the management of their families' emotional well-being and the maintenance of relationships. women are expected to perform this emotional labor while also balancing professional and academic commitments. this 'third shift' adds to the already demanding 'second shift' of unpaid domestic work, complicating the societal narrative that women can 'have it all,' as discussed by slaughter (2015). an additional factor contributing to the challenges women face in graduate education is the 'trailing spouse' phenomenon, where women often relocate to support their spouse's career or educational goals. this situation has been shown to contribute to higher dropout rates among women in ph.d. programs (groenvynck et al., 2013). these overlapping burdens—emotional labor, caregiving responsibilities, and the trailing spouse phenomenon—create significant barriers to women's academic and professional advancement. online courses offer a partial solution by providing flexibility and reducing commute times, which can help women manage caregiving responsibilities more effectively (moreira da silva, 2019). similarly, the rise of remote work provides comparable benefits, allowing for better integration of work and family life (murray, 2023). however, while these solutions alleviate some pressures, they do not fully address the structural inequalities that contribute to the disproportionate emotional and domestic burdens placed on women. gender-specific life events the health-related challenges that disproportionately affect women, particularly those above the age of 40, are crucial to address. this demographic, making up nearly 15% of all female doctoral students (women in academia, 2022), often faces the onset of perimenopause and menopause, which can exacerbate the documented impact of mental health issues students experience in phd study completion (podsakoff et al., 2007), as these issues have been linked to perimenopause and menopause (mayo clinic, 2023). therefore, educational institutions and faculty must foster inclusive and adaptable environments sensitive to the diverse needs of gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 5 women students across generations. this includes support for life events such as pregnancies, maternity leaves, childcare needs, and menopause (weiss-wolf, 2023). graduate student socialization the role of socialization and fostering a sense of community, essential for student success and persistence in graduate education (devos et al., 2017; shepherd & bollinger, 2023; weidman & stein, 2003) and is often facilitated through mentorship, which is vital for developing academic skills and knowledge (mollica & nemeth, 2014). while on-site students benefit from direct, face-to-face interactions with faculty in graduate teaching and research (gardner, 2009), online settings present different challenges. in these environments, mentorship and advisor relationships require alternative approaches (mollica & nemeth, 2014; deshpande, 2017). jameson and torres (2019) noted that mentorship in online contexts differs significantly from traditional models in terms of the lack of face-to-face interactions, the need for proactive relationship building strategies to ensure students feel supported, and the increased reliance on virtual communication methods such as phone calls, video meetings, and emails, posing challenges for faculty accustomed to campus-based programs. the observed disparity in mentorship models between on campus and online modalities undermines the effectiveness of guidance provided to online doctoral students, directly affecting their dissertation success rates and capacity to publish academic works. for example, gilpin and azizova (2021) found that a lack of mentorship contributes to a diminished volume of scholarly publications prior to graduation, which is a crucial element for doctoral graduates to advance in academic careers. beyond mentorship and support for publications in online doctoral programs, gender disparities have also been found in research and teaching opportunities in traditional doctoral programs as male doctoral students in traditional settings are more likely to obtain research assistantships, while their female counterparts are predominantly assigned teaching responsibilities (lubienski et al., 2018). this imbalance likely has roots extending well before doctoral program entry and implicates faculty. findings by milkman et al. (2014) revealed that faculty members are more prone to ignore requests for information from prospective female students than from male students, a trend evident even among female faculty members. this pattern suggests that disparities in faculty support, family commitments, and career goals play a critical role in the gender disparities observed in publication outputs among on-site and online ph.d. students. such challenges are potentially more severe for female online doctoral students, impacting not only their immediate academic achievements but also their long-term professional prospects and family responsibilities. consequently, it is imperative to overhaul and tailor mentorship strategies within online doctoral programs to ensure successful academic and professional outcomes, providing comprehensive support that caters to the diverse career ambitions and personal needs of students. theoretical framing in our study, we adopted a narrative approach (clandinin & caine, 2013; clandinin (1985, 2016) to delve into the disparities perpetuated by the cognitive imperialism that permeates higher education, along with the societal norms and gender-specific life events that influence the choices and experiences of women doctoral students. this decision was heavily influenced by the work of rice (2023), who illuminated the limitations of traditional research methods, such as gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 6 surveys and interviews, in fully capturing the complexities of online learning experiences. these methods often fall short in addressing the full depth of individual needs, positionality, and identities, as they offer limited response options or rely on structured interactions, inadequately representing complex identities like race, gender, and disability status. to address these limitations, we turned to a narrative-based approach, essential for understanding the dynamic interplay of identities and experiences in online learning environments. this approach, informed by social constructionism, feminist theory, and narrative theory, allows for an in-depth exploration of experiences, yielding rich insights into the phenomena of digital learning environments. narratives provide a unique window into sociocultural understandings and self-construction, offering transformative potential (byrne & lentin, 2000; somekh & lewin, 2005) from a feminist perspective, narratives serve as a tool for personal and collective expression and agency (couch et al., 2021; wright, 2009), particularly relevant in the context of women in online doctoral education programs. our research emphasizes the importance of incorporating diverse voices to enhance our understanding of the world, aligning with the perspectives of clandinin and caine (2013), clandinin (1985, 2016), and rice (2023), who underscored the value of narrative inquiry in unraveling the complexities of online learning. this method illuminated the unique circumstances, motivations, and strategies of learners, providing a more inclusive and comprehensive view of the online learning experience. central to our study is the concept of intersectionality, as articulated by crenshaw (1989). intersectionality encompasses the idea that individuals possess multiple intersecting identities— such as gender, race, religion, disability, class, and sexual orientation—that together shape their experiences. these identity markers do not exist in isolation; rather, they intersect and interact in ways that can compound systemic marginalization and profoundly impact an individual’s lived experiences. in our exploration, we recognize that our narratives are intertwined with our intersecting identities. this recognition is crucial as it acknowledges the nuanced and evolving nature of identity and experience within the context of online learning. our approach, therefore, fostered relational research spaces, where individuals can explore how they perceive their identities in relation to others and how these perceptions influence their experiences over time (josselson, 2006; mcadams, 1988). furthermore, our study underscores the interconnectedness of texts and the transformative power of narratives, particularly from a feminist perspective. anchored in feminist theory and cognizant of the historical, social, professional, and institutional contexts of higher education, our research acknowledges the systemic barriers and entrenched power structures that often disadvantage women (glazer et al., 1993). recognizing these barriers is a fundamental step in understanding the challenges faced by women in higher education and is crucial for driving transformative change. guided by the central research question, “how can we create supportive spaces for future doctoral students?” our study seeks to explore how online learning environments can be structured and nurtured to foster inclusivity, equity, and success for all participants. this exploration is particularly focused on addressing the needs and challenges faced by female doctoral students, contributing to a more equitable and inclusive understanding of online learning environments. through this lens, our study highlights the importance of diverse narratives in shaping both individual experiences and broader educational practices, ultimately advocating for the creation of supportive and transformative spaces in higher education. gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 7 methods this section describes the methodology employed in our research to explore the experiences of online doctoral students, with a particular focus on the impact of gender-related challenges. our approach integrated narrative inquiry ( clandinin & caine, 2013; clandinin (1985, 2016) with thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006; ryan & bernard, 2003), enabling a comprehensive examination of the complexities inherent in online doctoral education. this approach not only illuminated the diverse experiences of online doctoral students but also underscored the importance of narrative methods in capturing the nuanced realities of higher education. participants and data collection data collection was centered around narrative inquiry (clandinin & caine, 2013; clandinin (1985, 2016). each author independently composed two narratives, encapsulating their distinct experiences as online doctoral students. before writing, the authors engaged in a discussion with each other, reflecting on their academic journeys, challenges faced, and how they navigated their responsibilities as online learners. this discussion served as an informal foundation for their narratives, helping to surface key themes and experiences to explore. afterward, they wrote their narratives without any formal prompts, time limits, or structured guidelines, allowing for a more organic and personal reflection of their unique experiences in an online doctoral program. staci, living in a rural area, primarily reflected on the impact of geographic isolation on her educational journey. conversely, mckenzie, an urban-dwelling mother of three, shared her experiences of balancing family responsibilities with doctoral studies.these initial narratives laid the groundwork for our subsequent data collection, which involved integrating additional narratives from the authors themselves as part of our data analysis. as we progressed through the research, we each composed further reflections to capture evolving insights and experiences, allowing for a more comprehensive exploration of our journeys as online doctoral students. this iterative process helped to deepen our understanding of how our perspectives shifted over time, providing a richer, more nuanced set of data for analysis. data analysis the data analysis process was structured in two main phases, involving both independent analysis and collaborative analysis efforts. see table 1 for an overview of the data analysis process. phase one: independent analysis initially, each author independently examined their narratives, focusing on identifying key themes and insights. for instance, staci’s narratives highlighted the challenges of geographic isolation, while mckenzie’s experiences illuminated the complexities of balancing family responsibilities with academic aspirations. during this phase, we individually coded our narratives, identifying patterns that reflected our unique experiences. gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 8 we employed a thematic analysis approach following the steps outlined by braun and clarke (2006). these steps included familiarization with the data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and producing the report. thematic coding (ryan & bernard, 2003) was used to systematically categorize narrative elements, facilitating the extraction of significant patterns. this independent analysis laid the foundation for further exploration of the themes during the collaborative phase. phase two: collaborative analysis in the next phase, we engaged in collaborative discussions to refine and deepen our analysis. we conducted regular discussions, meeting bi-weekly, to reflect on our analyses and refine emerging themes. the purpose of these discussions was to ensure alignment in our approach and to deepen our understanding of each other's narratives through collective reflection. throughout this phase, we continued to refine the themes identified in the independent analysis, ensuring that the analysis captured the nuanced intersectionality of challenges such as geographic isolation, work-life balance, and gender-related issues within the academic context. below we outline our collaborative analysis through the phases of burrowing, broadening, and storying and re-storying. burrowing in this collaborative phase, the authors engaged deeply with the data by employing the 'burrowing' technique as outlined by connelly and clandinin (1990). this method allowed us to delve into the specific contexts that shaped our experiences, including the institutional learning environment and broader political issues. the purpose of these discussions was to explore how external factors, such as institutional policies and societal expectations, subtly influenced our experiences as doctoral students. by examining these underlying contexts, we uncovered intricate details and influences that impacted both our personal and academic lives. broadening following the burrowing phase, we utilized the 'broadening' approach to expand our understanding of the data. this phase involved integrating additional narratives—additional reflections from the authors themselves—enriching the data pool and allowing us to situate our individual experiences within a broader context. these additional narratives were discussed in weekly meetings, during which we refined our thematic categories to encompass both personal and collective experiences. by connecting individual vignettes or stories to wider themes such as geographic isolation, work-life balance, and gender-related challenges, we expanded and evolved the focus of our research. storying and re-storying to further refine our analysis, we employed the 'storying and re-storying' tool. drawing on the narrative inquiry techniques described by white (2007), “storying and re-storying” allowed us to reinterpret and reshape our experiences through alternate perspectives. this gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 9 process is used to explore different interpretations of life events, helping to reveal overlooked possibilities and shifts in identity. through continuous discussions and reflections, we traced how our professional identities and personal lives intertwined and evolved over time, revealing crucial patterns in our journeys as online doctoral students. table 1 summary of data analysis phases and techniques phase title step description key reference 1 independent analysis thematic analysis each author independently examines their narratives, identifies key themes and insights. braun & clarke (2006), ryan & bernard (2003) 2 collaborative analysis burrowing deep dive into specific contexts, uncovering how institutional and societal factors shape experiences. connelly & clandinin (1990) 2 collaborative analysis broadening expand the scope of analysis by integrating additional reflections and situating individual experiences within broader contexts. connelly & clandinin (1990) 2 collaborative analysis storying and re-storying reinterpret and reshape experiences through alternate perspectives, revealing evolving professional and personal identities. white (2007) results in this section, to provide a glimpse into our experiences as female online doctoral students, we invite you to delve into the following vignettes or stories, where we share personal experiences that illuminate our research. but before we embark on this journey, let us introduce ourselves. meet staci my roots trace back to the farmlands of northwest iowa, where my journey began amidst open fields and the solid values of a close-knit community. this geographic backdrop has been both a canvas of natural beauty and a barrier, limiting my access to a wider array of cultural experiences, educational opportunities, and diverse sports and activities. fast forward a decade or so and i’m living in northern minnesota, another rural area. for years, i nurtured a dream of delving into research and earning a ph.d., but the constraints of my location, coupled with a deep reluctance to uproot my family again, seemed to narrow my path. this dream felt increasingly out of reach, a distant aspiration that i struggled to align with the realities of my life. gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 10 however, just as i was on the brink of sidelining this dream, i encountered a transformative approach to education that reignited my hope. the university of north dakota extended an incredible opportunity, offering to accommodate my educational pursuits in an online format. moreover, they generously funded my ph.d. journey. with their support and a newfound sense of purpose, i did more than just persevere—i thrived. their gesture was immensely meaningful, embodying a truly humanizing approach to learning and growth, and allowing me to seamlessly integrate my aspirations into the tapestry of my reality. meet mckenzie my story unfolds across the expansive plains of fargo, north dakota, where the winds of change whispered of the transient nature of my journey. as a first-grade teacher joyfully anticipating the arrival of my first baby, the impracticality of a traditional ph.d. program loomed large. my deliberate choice of online learning emerged as a strategic decision. recognizing the importance of flexibility in navigating the demands of raising a young family, i sought a transformative educational experience that could adapt to the evolving dynamics of my life. the university of north dakota, with its commitment to online education, became the guiding force, offering not just academic growth but a flexible pathway that aligned seamlessly with my vision. this intentional choice was driven not only by the current joy of growing my family but also with an eye toward the future. with plans to expand my family and welcome more children in the near future, the flexibility afforded by online learning took on even greater significance. it became a lifeline, allowing me to balance the responsibilities of motherhood with the pursuit of a ph.d. the university of north dakota’s unwavering support in providing a flexible and supportive learning environment became the linchpin of my academic journey, embodying the power of choice and adaptability in harmonizing personal and academic aspirations. theme one: finding our footing staci, a doctoral student who faced the challenge of living four hours away from her university campus due to her partner’s career. this distance was mitigated through online/hybrid course offerings. meanwhile, mckenzie chose online learning for its flexibility, which was essential for balancing the responsibilities of raising a young family. yet, for both of us, we were in the “minority” as most students were on-site due to the primarily unspoken, but sometimes spoken, notion among faculty and leadership that on-site is the superior way to learn and research. this notion impacted access for online students to research opportunities and collaboration with faculty and peer research groups. yet, due to the actions of our advisors, each of us had a different outcome. staci shares… excitement washed over me, followed swiftly by panic. my advisor, whom i had only spoken to once over the phone, emailed me requesting to assist her on a summer research project. the catch? it was an unpaid opportunity, but i could earn a credit. as a second-semester doctoral student grappling with severe imposter syndrome, i felt entirely out of my lane. i barely knew anything about research. however, the constant refrain from my peers and instructors about the gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 11 importance of publishing echoed in my mind. publish, publish, publish—that seemed to be the key to securing a tenure track position after graduation. driven by these thoughts, i hastily responded, “i’d love to!” yet, inside, i was a bundle of nerves. two weeks later, a relieving email arrived outlining the specific tasks i would be undertaking for my advisor. they had considered my skill set, assigning me the task of reviewing articles in a google folder and documenting their attributes in a spreadsheet. this initial phase involved contributing to a meta-analysis—an unfamiliar concept that required a quick google search. despite my lack of expertise, i completed the project, and a glimmer of confidence sparked within me. this experience yielded my first publication and presentation, making me believe that perhaps i was capable after all. as fall arrived, my advisor approached me with a request to write a few paragraphs for a book chapter she was working on. initially hesitant, i voiced my concerns, but my advisor’s response was encouraging: “i know you can do it. give it a go and send me a draft.” taking their words to heart, i took on the challenge, and once again, they were proven right. i distinctly remember attending zoom classes later that year, where my fellow doctoral students proudly shared stories of their publications. some of my peers were on-site students, relishing their involvement in research work groups and the luxury of lunchtime meetings with their advisors. intrigued by their experiences, i reached out to the lead of one such work group, hoping to join their ranks. sadly, my request was declined simply because i was an online student. i couldn’t comprehend it. other requests to be a gra were also declined for similar reasons. despite my online status, my advisor treated me no differently; we engaged in various research endeavors throughout my program. nonetheless, this exclusion from other spaces left me perplexed. ultimately, it mattered little, as i accumulated more publications than any of my scholarly peers, including those on-site students, by the time i graduated. however, i could only help but wonder about others who needed an advisor like mine. how did they navigate the realm of research in online spaces? mckenzie shares… i remember sitting in my statistics class via zoom during the second year of my phd program. the instructor asked how many pieces we had published at that point. i scoffed. but then, slowly my peers started raising their hands. oh shit. the instructor went on to urge those of us who had not been publishing to start. our time was now. we needed to build our cv. he went on to share that when he was a part of hiring committees, publications was the first section he looked at. does the candidate have any published pieces? if not, he writes them off almost instantly. gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 12 my mind started racing. i didn’t know the first thing about publishing. i started asking around. much to my surprise, my colleagues were getting these opportunities with their advisor. i called her. can we publish something together? “don’t worry,” she assured me. we would publish at least three articles from my dissertation. the conversation did not ease my anxiety. i needed to publish something before then. i needed to forge alliances with another professor who was actively publishing. but how? this was not going to be easy as a distance student. i signed up to take a class with a professor i knew was actively publishing. the course was asynchronous. i turned in quality assignments and corresponded with her via email frequently and signed up for the one meeting she offered during the semester that i could speak with her about my final project. at the end of the semester, i shot my shot. i sent her an email that outlined my research interests and how it aligned with her research agenda. i asked if she would be willing to collaborate on a piece together. she skirted my question and instead offered me other articles to look at on the topic. sigh. would this be so difficult in an in-person setting? would my eagerness to publish and knowledge of the topic be better conveyed in an in-person setting. i have to believe so. both narratives in this set of vignettes or stories explore several themes that resonate within academia and online learning. they delve into the experiences of staci and mckenzie, doctoral students grappling with their multiple identities and the pressure to publish for future career prospects. the stories highlight the challenges online students face in accessing specific research opportunities and spaces (gilpin & azizova, 2021) while emphasizing the crucial role of a supportive advisor (gilpin & azizova, 2021; gardner, 2009; jameson & torres, 2019; kumar & dawson, 2018; marston & gopaul, 2020; rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016; zhou & okahana, 2019). through overcoming doubts and stepping outside her comfort zone, staci experiences both personal and professional growth, achieving publications and accomplishments that surpass many of her on-site peers. this growth is not solely due to resilience but is deeply influenced by her intersecting identities, which shape her experiences in complex ways. drawing on crenshaw’s (1989) concept of intersectionality, staci’s journey highlights how multiple identity markers, such as race (white), gender (woman), and online student status, create unique challenges and opportunities. staci’s racial identity as a white woman significantly influences her academic experiences. as a white individual, she benefits from seeing herself represented among her professors and colleagues, offering a sense of belonging and affirmation. this representation grants her access to spaces and opportunities that students of color may not easily obtain. however, her gender introduces additional challenges. academia, shaped by white male norms (aparicio et al., 2016; plotts, 2020a, 2020b), often marginalizes women’s contributions, creating obstacles that staci must navigate. her intersectional identity as being white and female places her in a position where she benefits from racial privilege but simultaneously contends with gendered expectations that may limit her visibility and influence in male-dominated fields. this duality allows staci to reflect on how her racial privilege has shaped her achievements. while she faces challenges related to sexism, her ability to accumulate publications and surpass some of her peers may, in part, be linked to her racial privilege. in this reflection, staci gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 13 acknowledges that her experiences do not fully encompass the broader struggles faced by individuals with different racial identities, particularly women of color. this self-awareness allows staci to recognize that, while her journey is marked by resilience and success, it does not represent the full spectrum of academic experiences— particularly for women like mckenzie, whose intersecting identities may present greater barriers to publishing and academic success, despite similar persistence. in contrast, mckenzie, who also navigates complex intersections of identity, successfully completed her doctoral program without a single publication, despite her strong desire, interest, and perseverance. these narratives bring to light the need for empathy towards online students and underscore the importance of supportive advisors who understand and navigate the multifaceted experiences of students with intersecting identities. overall, both stories portray the complexities and triumphs of pursuing research in an online learning environment, highlighting the critical role that intersectionality plays in shaping these experiences. theme two: resilience in the face of adversity in the intimate narratives of mckenzie and staci, the theme of resilience weaves a compelling tale of navigating personal tribulations within the realms of academia and motherhood. mckenzie, concealing pregnancies and navigating the intricate dance of childbirth and research in the online space, grapples with the choices between familial responsibilities and academic ascent. on the other hand, staci’s story unfolds as a delicate interplay between health challenges and her academic journey, with the transformative impact of the covid-19 pandemic prompting reflections on the absence of online work and learning options as the norm. together, their narratives illuminate the strength required to surmount the often-unseen challenges within academia, challenging traditional norms and advocating for a more compassionate and flexible approach in the world of virtual learning. mckenzie shares… march. two pink lines. what a relief. this baby would arrive in mid-december. i could take three weeks over winter break for maternity leave. even better, i didn’t need to tell anyone that i was expecting. my belly could hide under the computer screen. my daughter came 14 days early, throwing my plans off only slightly. thankfully, i was able to continue my research without anyone knowing about the birth of our second child. fast forward, 13 months. january. two pink lines. i immediately started calculating. instant dread. september due date. this was the worst-case scenario. i was hoping, no praying, that the ultrasound would tell us an earlier due date in august. doctor’s appointment. the due date was confirmed for mid-september. while i could keep the pregnancy a secret, i wouldn’t be able to hide a newborn. i kept thinking about the ways that i could make it work. continuing my research while raising a newborn and two toddlers. the baby will sleep for the first three months. you can still get your work done. i assured myself. thursday, february 17. blood. why was i bleeding? i should be 11 weeks. walk into ultrasound and confirm my worst nightmare. no heartbeat. tears. instant feelings of guilt for ever regretting gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 14 the timing of this baby. no time for tears. stop. more tears. doctor scheduled surgery for that evening. i was sore. i needed to heal: physically and mentally. could i give myself the time to grieve without telling my colleagues or advisor what had happened? i reluctantly explained i had a family emergency and needed to take the rest of the week off. when i returned, i certainly was not healed. but saw no choice other than to press on. i vowed that i would not make excuses for myself and wouldn’t speak about the events. july 3rd. two pink lines. start calculating the due date. spring of 2023. the same semester i planned on defending my dissertation and graduating. maybe this baby will arrive around spring break. that could work. due date of march 4th. as a virtual student, my secret was safe until then. i didn’t tell my research advisor until the end of fall semester. i asked if i could work one week over winter break so that i could take one week off for the birth of my child in spring. she congratulated me and agreed. during my one-week maternity leave, i received an email from my research advisor. she encouraged me to take all the time i needed and come back when i was ready. was this a trap? were my efforts not important? would i miss out on publishing opportunities? i already felt guilty for missing a week of progress. i couldn’t possibly miss more. even though i could barely walk from the cesarean surgery and was in a sleep deprived fog, i declined. i would be back on monday morning. i earned my ph.d and worked part time as a research assistant while being pregnant three different times and birthing two beautiful babies. i kept my pregnancies a secret because i didn’t want my advisor or my colleagues to think of me as less capable. i wanted to be given the most challenging of tasks without pause. in this way, the online environment was as much of a blessing and it was a curse. a blessing because i could hide an entire pregnancy and be given the same opportunities as my male colleagues. a blessing because i could attend work and conduct research, virtually, with a newborn. curse because i needed to choose between being a mother and being a researcher. a curse because i needed to choose between grieving and continuing to climb the academic ladder. staci shares… i vividly recall sitting in my office on-campus, where i balanced roles as a lecturer and an online doctoral student. suddenly, i felt an alarming sensation, as if blood was pouring from within. hastily, i made my way to the bathroom and was confronted with the sight of blood. a flurry of questions raced through my mind – was it a tumor or another grave illness? then, it struck me that this could be perimenopause, considering my age. the episodes of uncontrolled bleeding persisted. upon visiting my medical provider, who displayed a concerning lack of concern, tests were conducted, all returning normal results. notably, my blood pressure was alarmingly high during this visit. headaches, dry eyes, and severe anxiety had become part of my daily life, which i attributed to the stress of juggling my various responsibilities. i held onto the belief that completing my phd would restore my health. gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 15 then, in march 2020, the covid-19 pandemic reshaped our world. suddenly, i found myself working from home as the courses i taught were now online and all of my doctoral courses, too, were online. this shift offered a much-needed reprieve, not just from travel but also from the strain of managing health issues while on campus. the transition to a fully online environment allowed me to attend to my health needs more effectively, without the added pressure of seeking accommodations from my employer or instructors. however, this period was not without its challenges. despite the convenience, my health concerns continued to escalate, reaching a critical point shortly after i defended my dissertation. confronted with no other choice, i turned my full attention to addressing my health issues, which i am grateful to say have since been successfully resolved. reflecting on this journey, i realize how pivotal the pandemic was in facilitating my ability to work and learn online, a circumstance that was instrumental in navigating through these tumultuous times. yet, i wonder why online work and learning options are not part of the norm? what if a pandemic hand not hit? the narratives presented in this vignette delve into multifaceted themes relevant to women in academia and online learning, intricately weaving together the personal and professional challenges faced by mckenzie and staci. both women grapple with profound choices concerning their lives, shedding light on the complexities that arise when women must conceal pregnancies, navigate childbirth, and address health concerns while pursuing advanced degrees. these experiences mirror findings in the literature on the struggles women graduate students face in balancing academic demands with personal responsibilities (pasque & errington-nicholson, 2011). on the other hand, it often reinforces cognitive imperialism (battiste, 2016), as many platforms and courses are designed with western, eurocentric biases, privileging certain knowledge systems while marginalizing others. this can perpetuate the dominance of certain ideologies unless actively countered. the online learning environment serves as a double-edged sword, offering both opportunities and challenges. while it can be a sanctuary that grants access to diverse perspectives, challenging dominant narratives and giving marginalized voices a platform, it can also reinforce cognitive imperialism (battiste, 2016). many online platforms are shaped by western, eurocentric biases, privileging certain knowledge systems and marginalizing others, perpetuating the dominance of particular ideologies. for women like mckenzie and staci, this duality extends further. mckenzie’s hidden pregnancies highlight the paradox of online flexibility—while it creates opportunities, it also forces tough decisions. viewed through the lens of intersectionality, as crenshaw (1989) describes, the interplay of gender, motherhood, and student status shapes their unique, often difficult experiences. staci’s journey, navigating both health challenges and academic life, reveals the transformative potential of online education but also underscores its limitations. these women's intersecting identities—balancing academia, health, and personal life—illustrate the complex layers of discrimination and privilege in the online learning space. despite their differing circumstances, both sets of narratives converge on the central theme of resilience, highlighting the shared strength required to navigate the intricate intersectionality of women’s experiences in the academic landscape and online education. gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 16 additionally, one critical aspect raised by these narratives is the limited sharing of personal information among faculty and peers. the absence of community, socialization, and in-person relationships can contribute to feelings of isolation, potentially impacting dropout rates among women (devos et al., 2017; shepherd & bolliger, 2023; weidman & stein, 2003). this lack of connection underscores the importance of fostering supportive communities and open communication within online educational settings to better address the unique challenges women face, particularly when these challenges are shaped by the intersecting dimensions of their identities. a way forward: supporting female online doctoral students in this section, we present the findings from our study through vignettes and themes, offering insights into the unique challenges female online doctoral students encounter. the narratives of mckenzie and staci serve as illustrative examples that bring these themes to life and prompt critical discussions on how to bolster support for women in this educational setting. the themes identified include health and well-being, virtual mentorship, and intersectionality. health and well-being supporting the health and well-being of female online doctoral students requires institutions and faculty to create inclusive and flexible environments that accommodate the diverse needs of students from various generations––from boomers to gen z (weiss-wolf, 2023). this involves addressing life events like pregnancies, maternity leaves, childcare needs, and menopause. for instance, mckenzie's experience highlights the importance of clear maternity leave policies, allowing students to pause their academic journey for childbirth and recovery without jeopardizing their progress or financial aid. these policies need to be widely disseminated and supported through accessible documentation, orientation sessions, and continuous institutional support. staci’s journey, which involved navigating academic work during perimenopause and the covid-19 pandemic, underscores the profound impact health can have on academic success. providing access to healthcare and mental health resources is crucial in this context (podsakoff et al., 2007; mayo clinic, 2023). institutions must recognize these needs through policies that ensure students can continue their studies without feeling pressured to leave academia due to health challenges. additionally, balancing personal life with academic commitments, especially during pregnancy or motherhood, remains a significant issue. mckenzie's struggle to manage multiple responsibilities points to the need for flexibility, a point supported by scholars like moreira da silva (2019) and johnson (2023), who note that many women juggle work, household responsibilities, and caregiving duties alongside their academic careers. virtual mentorship effective mentorship is another critical area for supporting female doctoral students. mckenzie and staci’s outcomes were shaped by the quality of mentorship they received, pointing to the need for formalized training for advisors working with virtual students (ruben, 2020). faculty mentorship programs can bridge the gap for online learners, providing them with gilpin & rabenn: balancing acts current issues in education, 25(2) 17 equal access to research collaboration, career opportunities, and guidance. these programs also help students feel connected to the academic community, which is essential for their success. additionally, peer-to-peer connections in online environments are vital. both mckenzie and staci benefited from informal support, but relying on chance encounters for such connections is not ideal, especially since online students often seek out peer support more actively than their oncampus counterparts (berry, 2017; studebaker & curtis, 2021). implementing formal orientation programs that foster student interaction with faculty, staff, and peers (peacock & cowman, 2019) and creating student-driven social spaces such as group chats or virtual study halls (gilpin & azizova, 2021) can strengthen these connections, leading to greater student success and wellbeing. intersectionality it is essential to recognize the layered identities of female online doctoral students and the unique challenges they face, particularly those related to race, ethnicity, and gender nonconformity. our perspectives, informed by our experiences as white cisgender women, do not fully encompass the broader range of experiences faced by women at the intersections of marginalized identities. as crenshaw (1989) explains, intersectionality highlights how race, gender, and other identity markers converge to create compounded experiences of marginalization. future research must delve deeper into these intersectional experiences to better understand and support all female doctoral students. doing so ensures a more inclusive and equitable academic environment where diverse voices are acknowledged and valued. conclusion delving into narrative inquiry, whether in part or in whole, creates opportunities for uncovering new understandings of the experiences of online doctoral students and their faculty supporters. by bringing to light the distinct challenges women face in their pursuit of doctoral degrees, we take an important step towards creating equitable, inclusive, and just environments within online academic research and education. our exploration into the stories of two female online doctoral students navigating the pursuit of research opportunities and spaces adds a valuable perspective to this critical dialogue. through our narratives, we not only highlight the barriers encountered but also showcase the resilience and notable achievements that emerge in the face of these challenges. in essence, effectively supporting female online doctoral students necessitates a comprehensive strategy that acknowledges the complex interplay of their experiences. this strategy should aim to cultivate inclusive spaces, promote virtual mentorship, and ensure thorough support for their health and well-being. by proactively addressing these factors, academic institutions can play a pivotal role in fostering a more supportive and equitable environment for female online doctoral students, empowering them to excel both academically and personally. furthermore, by championing the expansion of diverse online research opportunities for future students and disseminating insights and strategies for success, we contribute to the creation of a more equitable educational landscape in the digital realm. this 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(2019). the role of department supports on doctoral completion and time-to-degree. journal of college student retention: research, theory and practice, 20(4), 511–529. https://doi.org/10.1177/1521025116682036. author notes staci gilpin orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9836-2955 the university of north dakota & rural pathways llc staci.gilpin@ruralpathways.org mckenzie rabenn universities of wisconsin mckenzierabenn@gmail.com more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9836-2955 mailto:staci.gilpin@ruralpathways.org mailto:mckenzierabenn@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 10, number 1 december, 2008 issn 1099-839x perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation jennifer l. gay the university of texas houston health science center sara corwin university of south carolina participation in after school programs is associated with increases in academic achievement and improved behavior in students at risk. process evaluation data from participants and key stakeholders was used to gauge implementation, satisfaction, and program attendance of an after school arts program. lack of scheduling flexibility resulted in low attendance. students and community partners reported problems with school staff. students reported being less likely to react negatively to teachers and peers, and liked being in a safe place. careful selection of staff members who provide autonomy, perceptions of safety, and varied activities may result in increased program attendance and satisfaction. participation in after school programs is associated with increases in academic achievement (scott-little, hamann, & jurs, 2002), attendance (goerge, cusick, wasserman, & gladden, 2007) positive socio-emotional functioning (scott-little et al., 2002), and a decrease in negative behavior (gottfredson, gerstenblith, soulé, womer, & lu, 2004). furthermore, these programs allow children to develop friendships and special abilities in areas such as arts and sports (goerge et al., 2007; grossman, walker, & raley, 2001; halpern, 1999). posner and vandell (1994; 1999) found that children in formal programs were more involved in academic and extracurricular programs, and had parents who participated in more school activities, compared with informal settings, which fostered television watching and hanging out. researchers have found that after school programs, especially for middle school students, increased student perceptions of safety and well-being (grossman et al., 2001; halpern, 1999; kane, 2004). after school programs are frequently targeted towards students who are under-performing academically including, but not limited to, students from low socio-economic backgrounds, students who are receiving free or reduced-priced lunch, africanamerican or hispanic youth, or children who have problem behaviors themselves or have families with problem behaviors (scott-little et al., 2002). importance of process evaluation success of after school programs depends largely on participant satisfaction, as that influences future participation and goal attainment. process evaluation data can be used to identify areas in need of improvement and program elements to retain (mcgraw et al., 2000). interventions with multiple sites can affect implementation, making process evaluation even more valuable (saunders, ward, felton, dowda, & pate, 2006). westmoreland and current issues in education vol. 10 no. 1 little (2006) suggest that program quality includes opportunities for students to have choice, take on leadership roles, and build relationships of mutual respect between students and staff. westmoreland and little (2006) also recommend that staff be trained and evaluated on their positive modeling and relationships with students, not just their ability to supervise and discipline. process evaluation provides insight about what types of assessment and intervention methods can and cannot be delivered in specific settings with regard for quality, and differs from formative evaluation where the primary objective is to assess efficacy (windsor, clark, boyd, & goodman, 2004). in school settings, program process evaluation can include examining student recruitment and retention, student-staff interactions, and student satisfaction (seppanen et al., 1993). data can be collected from participants, key stakeholders, as well as program staff to evaluate the intervention implementation (linnan & steckler, 2002). this information can be used to determine the quality of the program, completeness, exposure, satisfaction, and contextual influences such as aspects of the environment that may affect program success (saunders, evans, & joshi, 2005). data may be used either during the program to identify strengths and weaknesses, or after the end of an intervention, to provide better future programming (mcgraw et al., 2000). steckler and linnan (2002) recommend collecting data from multiple sources to evaluate intervention implementation, program quality, completeness, exposure, satisfaction, and contextual influences (saunders, evans, & joshi, 2005). the primary purpose of this study was to use process evaluation data to gauge program implementation using participant satisfaction and program attendance data from an after school arts program. more specifically, we had two goals: 1) determine dose delivered and dose received (the number of sessions provided to and received by each group), and 2) explore the quality of the after school program implementation by using student focus groups, community partner interviews, and program fidelity data. methods description of the program the program was designed for students from two urban south carolina middle schools during the 2005-2006 school year. poverty levels for the two schools ranged from 87% to 99%, where 91% of students received free or reduced-price lunch. ninetynine percent of students at these schools are africanamerican, and more than half score below basic on state achievement tests (south carolina department of education, 2006). the crime rate in the area is more than twice the national crime index average. all students in the sixth grade at two urban middle schools were notified of the after school program. teachers assisted in identifying 35 students from each school to enroll in the program. the program was implemented over two school semesters, at four sites (two each semester). the program selected a museum of art, a children’s museum, a local theatre, and a zoo and botanical garden for the after school program sites. programs with an arts focus encourage creativity by applying math, science, and writing skills to arts projects, and may also increase student self-esteem and increase parent participation (scott-little et al., 2002). program sites were encouraged to adapt the visual and performing arts standards (south carolina department of education, 2003) into site activities. program activities included, but were not limited to, journaling, sculpting, anti-gang violence projects, planting gardens, and poetry. one of the most important aspects of the program was the opportunity to create positive mentoring and rolemodeling relationships, which payne (1996) suggests are the most significant motivators and keys to achievement. the process evaluation the purpose of the process evaluation was to examine the after school program’s level of implementation (i.e., dose-response), student participants’ satisfaction with program activities, and staff perceptions of the program. development members of the evaluation team were contracted external evaluators who observed the implementation of the after school program. this evaluation team, that is trained and experienced in qualitative data methods, conducted interviews and acted as moderators for the focus groups. informed assent was obtained from students and informed consent from their parents prior to participation. focus group moderators informed participants that evaluation staff would not share responses with any teachers, and participants could withdraw from the group at any time. all student and community partner sessions were audio-taped. a professional service transcribed all data verbatim and removed any personal and identifying information for confidentiality purposes. the institutional review board approved the materials and procedures prior to data collection. evaluation staff developed a 7-item discussion guide for the focus group interviews in order to elicit student responses relating to the following: a) what students liked and disliked, b) what students told others about the program, c) what students heard about other program sites, d) how perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation 3 students thought they were different because of the program, and e) what students thought an ideal program would include. all students enrolled in the after school program were invited to participate in the focus groups. a convenience sample of 65 sixth graders (58% female, 100% african-american; ages ranged from 11 to 14 years) participated in focus groups in order to assess the implementation quality and participant satisfaction of the after school arts programs. a total of eight focus group interviews were held, six for the four community partner sites and two for participants who had dropped out during the program. staff (n = 6, 66.7% white, 50% female) from each of the four program sites were interviewed in the spring of 2006. the staff was composed of site program coordinators responsible for program delivery at each site. a total of four interviews were held to examine perceptions of program fidelity, implementation, and quality from the community partner perspective. staff members were asked to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the after school program, student engagement, effects on students, and barriers and recommendations for the program, following a 9-item interview guide. attendance records and program coordinator notes were used to determine dose delivered and dose received. dose delivered (i.e., the amount of the program provided by community partners) was assessed using start and end times (in minutes) at each site. dose received (i.e., the amount of time students were engaged in the after school program activities not including transportation) was assessed through the analysis of attendance records and program coordinator notes. analyses the evaluation team, in collaboration with school administrators, established attendance and program time benchmarks a priori. the intervention program goals included having a minimum of 30 students regularly attend each site per semester, having each student attend at least seven sessions per semester, and having community partners deliver 100 minutes of intervention per session. to determine the dose delivered, each site provided detailed information on the activities, start and end time, by date. these records were examined for total numbers of instructional minutes and instructional sessions, as well as how they aligned with the implementation plan. dose received was determined using attendance data. following established guidelines for thematic analysis (aronson, 1994), two evaluation team members independently read one focus group transcript in order to develop a preliminary codebook for the focus groups and interviews. next, the two team members examined each data collection instrument for potential codes and themes unique to the activity and/or respondent. all subsequent codes were added to the master codebook, all documents were then coded and reviewed for accuracy by comparison with original source documents and audiotapes. the verified and corrected documents were imported into qsr nvivo version 2.0 (qualitative solutions and research pty. ltd., 2002). results attendance was not reported at the individual student level, but at the aggregated community partner site level. therefore, some children from the fall semester may have participated in the spring semester as well. process objectives included having a minimum of 30 students regularly attend each site, each semester, and have each student attend seven sessions per semester. during the fall semester, a total of 68 students participated in the program, whereas only 50 students participated in the spring semester. the number of sessions provided to participants is defined as the dose delivered. the program scheduled two sessions per week. seventeen sessions were provided in the fall semester at each of the two sites, while 20 sessions were delivered at each of the two spring sites. the average dose delivered was 101.7 ± 6.1 minutes per day (range of 94-107 minutes per day) of off-site, after school enrichment education. this exceeded the a priori benchmark of 100 minutes set by the evaluation team. dose received is defined as the participant’s interaction with the program (linnan & steckler, 2002). the average number of sessions attended by students at the four community sites over both semesters was 7.3 ± 1.6 (range of 10-16 sessions). the number of students who attended each session ranged from 12 to 19 (m = 15.0 ± 4.87). therefore, students actively participated in 43% of the fall sessions and 36% of the spring sessions. these dosereceived numbers are well below the desired 30 students per session. however, students attended 7.3 sessions each semester and were expected to attend seven, achieving the attendance process objective. student focus groups. during the student focus groups (n = 8), the moderators asked student participants what they liked and disliked about the activities, scheduling, and program personnel, as well as what they told their parents and friends about the after school program. the four most common themes from the focus groups were: thinking the programs were fun, improving students’ grades or behavior, scheduling, and interacting with the staff. thinking programs were fun. participants reported telling their family and friends about the current issues in education vol. 10 no. 1 after school program activities and what they thought about the program. participants from all sites and groups reported telling others that the program was fun, for example, “i hate when i miss a day because i be missing out on fun things.” table 1 questions and common responses from student focus groups prompt student responses what did you like or dislike about the program schedule? “i like the schedule of monday and friday.” “i think we should also have on mondays and fridays.” “i think we should go monday through thursday because on friday, we have a lot of other things like to do.” “we get home too late.” “i have no time to be with my family.” “on monday it’s kind of not going to work cause when i go home i be having, i be having homework and stuff and then i be having to wash and stuff.” “i think we should go monday through thursday because on friday, like she [another participant] just said we have a lot of things to do on the weekend and we really want to go.” have you seen an improvement in your grades or other ways? “i get better grades then i used to.” “it helped my grade in drama.” “when i start going to the [program] my grade, my grade, i had a 2.7 now my grade is, now my gpa’s up to a 3.7.” “mostly everybody that works here has been increasing almost everybody’s brains.” “telling [my sister] not to bully me anymore”. “so at school you change that too cause you don’t talk back to teachers at school, at school if you don’t talk back to teachers out here [at after school program].” what do you think of the people who work with the program? “i like most of the people who work here because they’re nice if you come here every single day then she’s going to give you a [inaudible] treat.” “i disliked some of the people that work here.” “i kind think that they don’t really want to work with us.” “they be yelling at us for no reason.” “when we be trying to have fun [teacher’s name] will try to stop us.” students were also asked to describe their ideal program. they responded with activities such as sports, field trips, and parties. other students also wanted educational games and a place where they could be safe; for example one student said, “mine be about no gangs, no violence and if they were to get in trouble one time they would be kicked out of this program.” table 1 provides selected quotations from the focus group participants. scheduling. focus group participants were asked what they liked and disliked about the after school program. table 1 provides additional comments from student focus groups. all groups reported liking the activities they were doing. however, there was some disagreement on the days of the week that the program is held, with some students preferring friday and others not because of family or other program obligations. one of the primary reasons students did not like the after school program was that they arrived home late and had other things to do in the afternoon and evening. staff. the most controversy arose when students were asked if they liked the people who worked with the after school programs. some commented positively, as seen in table 1, with responses that staff from the sites were “friendly,” “nice,” and “cool.” however, students from two sites reported hostility and disrespect from the school and program site staff. one student responded, “i didn’t like when i was drawing a picture and the teacher messed it up.” another echoed this sentiment saying, “i don’t like some of them because they try to put stuff on your picture that you don’t even like and they don’t even ask.” other comments about the staff indicated that there was a lack of respect for the students’ work and this characteristic influenced the students’ perceptions of the entire program. improving students’ grades or behavior. some of the most positive comments about the program were responses to the prompt, “has the program affected you in any other ways?” one student responded by saying, “i’ve been leading more.” several students reported not wanting to be “bad” anymore and that they had more respect for the teachers. additionally, students stated that, “i told [my parents] that it’s helping me in life by helping my behavior at school and at home and in the street too.” another student responded similarly, “i told my parents it’s helpful and very useful in life and that we will remember this and we will remember this when we’re growing up.” table 1 provides additional comments. lowor non-attendees. lowor nonattendees also participated in focus groups. program rosters classified these students as participating as of the enrollment deadline, but they had very low attendance, defined as attending ≤5 sessions during one semester, or dropped out of the program. students most frequently reported competing activities and conflicts with the friday meetings that perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation 5 were scheduled. one student remarked, “i didn’t go on mondays sometimes because i had tennis practice.” other reasons cited by participants as being barriers to participation included family responsibilities, such as babysitting for siblings, household chores, and family illness, and disciplinary or academic reasons. as one student reported, “the only time i wouldn’t come is if something come up or if i’m suspended or in detention.” lowand nonattendees also mentioned programmatic concerns as a barrier. community partner interviews the community partner interviews yielded many comments that described partnering with schools, communication, teamwork, and relationships with students. table 2 themes and responses from community partner interviews theme responses partnering with schools “i hope it doesn’t end… i’d hate to see a really good thing go away. and i would hate to see the partnership between [the district] and these partners go away…” communication “i felt like i needed a point person that knew everything about the kids in my program. i don’t always feel like i could have gotten the information that i needed. also, things like calendar dates of schools. there were a lot of times that we didn’t know the kids were coming or didn’t know they had an after school holiday…and so that communication got blurred.” teamwork “i think the parental piece is important and we haven’t really explored that as much as we should have…” “we haven’t done anything other than until now … we’re inviting parents to the final gala.” relationships with students “there was a bond between the kids and the instructors even though they only met two days a week and friday programming was limited… the connection was stronger than i expected.” “we have been able as a staff to sort of develop relationships with them and they have developed relationships with each other where they feel comfortable. and, you know, we can talk to them about music what’s on tv and stuff like that. sort of puts us on … our level.” partnering with schools. all of the partners agreed that the program itself was a “good thing” and “a good program for inner city children who don’t get to see art and culture.” however, interviewees from each site acknowledged that there were “bumps in the road”. for example, one participant stated that, “it went fairly well… it has gotten better towards the end of the year. there were a few bumps in the beginning.” table 2 has additional comments from community partners. communication. all sites indicated that communication at the school and district level was inadequate and problematic. one community partner representative summarized the sentiments expressed by all interview participants: we needed more communication on several levels. from the very beginning we did not know what upper level administration at the school felt about the program or what they thought the students needed. we needed much more regular communication with the school personnel. the lack of communication among all parties was one of the primary barriers to implementation and program quality. as shown in table 2, community partner staff cited examples of poor record-keeping, and inconsistencies in information as reasons for not liking the program. teamwork. when commenting about teachers or staff, the students were clear to make a distinction between their day school teachers and staff and the community partner “teachers.” community partners echoed student dissatisfaction with teachers and chaperones from their school who accompanied them offsite. one partner said, “the second semester school staff who chaperoned the students were dedicated and more enthusiastic and supportive than the first semester staff.” promotion of teamwork and mutual respect in curricular activities and organizational cultures was key (the after school corporation (tasc), 2004). in both the student focus groups and the community partner interviews, several participants noted “a real sense of team work” and the cohesion in the groups, especially in preparation for the end-ofthe-year projects and presentations. according to one community partner, “the sixth graders really seemed to separate their differences and get the project done. the team work really came together.” this reinforced the students comments that, “they [games] are fun to do in teams.” and “i like that when we had to do the picture making that you had to all work in the group of people like your friends and you got to talk and stuff.” another aspect of teamwork is involving parents in after school programs. several of the community partners noted that their programming efforts did not include as much of a parental component as they could have. example comments are shown in table 2. the primary reasons parents were contacted through the after school programs were functional (e.g., early dismissals and inquiries about low attendance) or disciplinary in nature. current issues in education vol. 10 no. 1 relationships with students. every community partner commented on their own personal connection, or “bond,” that they developed with the students over the course of the year. two of the partners noted that they would be disappointed that this year’s cohort (of 6th graders) would not be back (as 7th graders) next year. other comments are included in table 2. discussion process evaluation was essential to this program because participant satisfaction and implementation strengths and weaknesses were discovered. the students identified a number of activities and aspects that they liked about the program, such as contests, painting, and writing. the success of future programs depends not only on continuing the successful aspects identified by the students as fun and helpful (e.g., behavior, grades, and projects), but also by improving upon the negative characteristics reported by the students. one recurring theme was the staff. groups who reported liking the staff seemed to hold more favorable attitudes toward the after school program in general. unfortunately, a number of students reported staff members who were yelling, angry, and disrespectful. perceptions of autonomy, safety, and careful selection of high-quality staff members are also themes that have appeared repeatedly in the literature (grossman et al., 2002; halpern, 1999; hollister, 2003; westmoreland & little, 2006). one of the primary aims of this process evaluation was to explore the quality of the after school program implementation utilizing participant satisfaction as an indicator. this information was valuable in an effort to increase participation and retention in the immediate future (hollister, 2003). grossman (2002) suggests that flexible programs may be more successful in attracting older children. this was expressed by the students as recruiting and retention for this program was problematic due to the strict attendance policy. the lack of flexibility and competing priorities (babysitting, sports, etc.) resulted in low attendance numbers throughout the year. students reported preferring a wide variety of programs when asked about an ideal program, but no single activity was reported by all groups. this illustrates that even within one program site a variety of activities may lead to improved retention and satisfaction. community partners mentioned a number of issues similar to the student comments, including scheduling. this may have been made worse by the poor communication among community partners, schools, and the school district. both groups were also dissatisfied with the staff from the schools who accompanied the children off-site. while community partners commented on the students’ lack of enthusiasm, students felt that there was a lack of respect and trust among all groups. however, there were numerous positive comments about the program that focused on the relationships students built with each other and the community partners. these relationships may have been enhanced with more parental involvement throughout the semester and not just for informational or disciplinary purposes. students provided suggestions for improvement that included more choice when selecting activities and program components, activities where they could be physically active, scheduling, and prohibitive attendance policies. community partners also recommended more smallgroup interaction, activities that encourage physical activity, and more parental involvement. given the national trends toward obesity in younger age groups, it was encouraging that both groups wanted more activities involving physical activity. it is important to note that many of the suggestions were in areas where change can occur. providing community partners with school schedules and information regarding relevant similar activities may improve overall communication. additionally, schools often have a systematic infrastructure for contacting parents. therefore, initiating parental involvement may be easier if parent contact was coordinated with schools and the community partners. there is anecdotal evidence that artsfocused programs are helping students in outcome areas, such as achievement and behavior. students reported their grades and attendance improved. perhaps more importantly, they acknowledged being less likely to react negatively towards teachers and friends. projects focused on teamwork and preventing gang violence seemed to strongly influence the students. some students felt that the after school program “kept them off the streets” and away from becoming involved in unsafe and risky behaviors. this is encouraging given the impoverished background from which these students come. as reported by other researchers (grossman et al., 2001; halpern, 1999; kane, 2004), after school programs do have the power to influence perceptions of safety, behavior, and achievement, especially in middle school. these findings are consistent with other after school program evaluations for students at high risk for low achievement. in seppanen et al. (1993), focus groups of children noted that they would like to have more choice in which activities they participate during after school program. also, seppanen et al. (1993) supports the notion that child-staff interactions “sets the tone” (p. 146) by providing positive role models and helping students develop a sense of being in charge of their own environment. perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation 7 this is a quality some of our sites lacked, as revealed in participant satisfaction. scott-little, hamann, and jurs (2002) stated that after school program staff was the second most documented challenge, and several studies mention additional staff training and high staff turnover are related to program quality. while few studies support the link between increased attendance and achievement gains in middle schools (scott-little et al., 2002), our evaluation, as well as reisner, white, brimingham, and welsh (2001), found that participants reported social and emotional benefits from participation in after school programs. according to barker (1997), hudley (1999), and huang et al. (2000), students in after school programs demonstrated decreases in aggressive behavior and conflict with peers, in addition to other behavioral improvements. conclusions and recommendations for future research the findings from this study are situated in a particular context and generalizations may be limited. the sample was a sample of convenience of students selected by teachers from urban middle schools in south carolina. while only african-american children were selected to participate, and caution should be used when making inferences about other populations, this sample was similar to others in after school programs based on level of risk associated with low ses, urban or inner-city location, and minority groups. the qualitative methods in this study allowed students and community partners to speak in their own words about their experiences and satisfaction with the program. the collection of data from multiple sources allowed for a more comprehensive picture of program fidelity, implementation, and quality, and validated the statements from both groups. a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between participant satisfaction and program personnel, as well as the preferences of middle school children for after school programs and reasons for not attending, will provide valuable information for future interventions. as urban, african-american middle school children are increasingly influenced by negative peer behavior (beal, ausiello, & perrin, 2001), it is imperative that future programs provide safe, enriching activities to encourage positive social development and academic achievement. after school programs may be especially important for students who experience bullying or other alienation in home, school, or other environments (reisner, white, birmingham, & welsh, 2001). process evaluation can be a valuable component of a formative or impact evaluation as process elements assess the program quality, fidelity, and feasibility (linnan & steckler, 2002). the next steps in process evaluation of after school programs might be to examine a dose-response relationship between academic outcomes and dose-delivered and received. additional elements of process evaluations, including examination of recruitment procedures, scoring implementation, and assessing the fidelity with which intervention providers deliver a program, may be added to explain whether or not a program is successful. to strengthen future process evaluations, researchers could collect additional data, such as fidelity to an arts-based curriculum, as well as support the training of intervention providers. references aronson, j. 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(2006). examining the link between program implementation and behavior outcomes in the lifestyle education for activity program (leap). evaluation and program planning, 29, 352-364. scott-little, c., hamann, m. s., & jurs, s. g. (2002). evaluations of after-school programs: a meta-evaluation of methodologies and narrative synthesis of findings. american journal of evaluation, 23(4), 387-419. seppanen, p. s., love, j. m., kaplan devries, d., bernstein, l., seligson, m., marx, f., et al. (1993). national study of beforeand after school programs. portsmouth, nh. south carolina department of education. (2003). visual and performing arts curriculum standards. retrieved july 4, 2006, from http://ed.sc.gov/agency/offices/cso south carolina department of education. (2006). 2006 state of south carolina education accountability act report cards. retrieved december 13, 2007, from http://ed.sc.gov/topics/researchandstats/scho olreportcard/2006/default.cfm steckler, a., & linnan, l.. (2002). process evaluation for public health interventions and research: an overview. in l. linnan & a. steckler (eds.), process evaluation for public health interventions and research (pp. 1-24). san francisco: jossey-bass. the after school corporation (tasc). (2004). building a quality after school program. retrieved june 26, 2006, from http://www.tascorp.org westmoreland, h., & little, p. (2006). exploring quality standards for middle school after school programs: what we know and what we need to know. a summit report: harvard university. windsor, r., clark, n., boyd, n.r., & goodman, r.m. (2004). evaluation of health promotion, health education, and disease prevention programs (3rd ed.). new york: mcgraw-hill. http://ed.sc.gov/agency/offices/cso http://ed.sc.gov/topics/researchandstats/scho%09olreportcard/2006/default.cfm http://ed.sc.gov/topics/researchandstats/scho%09olreportcard/2006/default.cfm http://www.tascorp.org/ perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation 9 2008 article citation gay, j. l., & corwin, s. (2008, december). perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation. current issues in education [on-line], 10(1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume10/number1/ author notes dr. jennifer l. gay the university of texas at houston health science center school of public health, brownsville campus 80 fort brown, brownsville, tx 78520 jennifer.l.gay@uth.tmc.edu acknowledgments this research was supported by a grant from the john s. and james l. knight foundation, wachovia financial center, suite 3300, 200 south biscayne boulevard, miami, fl 33131-2349, (704) 973-4566. the researchers respectfully acknowledge and thank the foundation and our project liaison, ms. susan patterson, for their continued support over the past five years. we also thank our community partners, school personnel, and the students for their participation in this project. the findings and conclusions reported are the authors' and do not necessarily represent the official views of the foundation. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation gay, j. l., & corwin, s. (2008). perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation. current issues in education, 10(1). retrieved from: retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1568 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume10/number1/ mailto:jennifer.l.gay@uth.tmc.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1568 current issues in education, 25(1) 1 volume 25, issue 1 04/09/2024 issn 1099-839x pipeline disruption: the impact of covid-19 on the next generation of teachers aubrey scheopner torres saint anselm college lisa andries d’souza assumption university abstract: this qualitative study aims to provide insight into why teacher candidates, interested in pursuing k-12 teaching, made the decision to leave their traditional teacher preparation programs during the covid-19 pandemic. the researchers utilized sociocultural theory as the framework to ground the research. the study finds the educational disruption caused by the pandemic added a layer of complexity to candidates’ experiences, including missed opportunities, limited clinical experience, and a general sense of uncertainty, which altered teacher candidates’ outlook on the teaching profession, impacted their education journeys, and ultimately shifted their immediate career trajectories. the results from this study indicate that clinical experiences are an important predictor of whether teacher candidates remain in their preparation programs. with this research study, we hope to support the development of a more robust teacher pipeline. keywords: teacher preparation, covid-19, pandemic, teacher pipeline, clinical experiences citation: scheopner torres, a. & d’souza, l. a. (2024). pipeline disruption: the impact of covid-19 on the next generation of teachers. current issues in education, 25(1). doi: 10.14507/cie.vol25iss1.2125 accepted: 10/06/2023 the united states faces a teacher shortage. the shortages are particularly acute in math, science, special education, and english as a second language (u.s. department of education, 2022b). the causes are multifaceted, including well-documented attrition among early career teachers (carver-thomas & darling-hammond, 2019; ingersoll et al., 2018) and a projected rise in demand for teachers with the increasing population of school-aged children (sutcher et al., current issues in education, 25(1) 2 2019). in addition, total enrollment in teacher preparation programs has been declining by over one-third since 2010 (partelow, 2019). the number of students completing teacher preparation programs has declined by 28% between 2008-09 and 2016-17 (partelow, 2019). thus, the teacher pipeline has been leaking, with fewer entering and completing teacher preparation and many never entering teaching or leaving early in their careers. this is especially true for teachers of color who are less likely to enter the field and leave teaching at higher rates (e.g., ahmad & boser, 2014; sutcher et al., 2019). this leaky pipeline has dire consequences for k-12 students. a shortage of teachers results in more emergency licensed or non-licensed teachers in classrooms who lack sufficient preparation to teach effectively. student engagement and academic success are negatively impacted in the absence of high-quality teachers (e.g., sutcher et al., 2019). studies demonstrate that urban districts and districts serving students from low-income backgrounds and nondominant racial/ethnic communities, who arguably are most in need of high-quality teachers, are especially impacted by teacher shortages (e.g., carver-thomas & darling-hammond, 2019; ingersoll et al., 2018). the global pandemic intensified factors leading to attrition for all teachers (e.g., zamarro et al., 2021). studies from early in the pandemic indicate that teacher turnover declined in some districts, with economic conditions encouraging teachers to stay in their positions (rosenberg & anderson, 2021), but as the 2020-21 school year began, many districts were unable to fill teacher vacancies (dabrowski, 2021; hill-jackson et al., 2022). teacher workloads increased as teachers adjusted once again to completely different modes of teaching, and morale decreased (diliberti & kaufman, 2020; pressley, 2021). pressure “to simultaneously teach online and in-person, with limited material…and preparation, and mixed messages about whether teachers…were valued by their schools and communities only served to exacerbate pre-existing frayed conditions” in teaching (wilson & kelley, 2022, p. 14). the pandemic was not the only event that put pressure on teachers. factors in the broader social, cultural, and political contexts, including the racial reckoning with the murder of george floyd, as well as “economic precariousness, and environmental catastrophe additionally have caused disequilibrium” (hill-jackson et al., 2022, p. 5). for example, teachers were and continue to be caught in ongoing battles over curricula and even word choice related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. this has led teachers to resign or lose their jobs (natanson & balingit, 2022). while there is growing research on the impact of the pandemic on those already in teaching, research is limited on how these factors impacted those preparing to enter the field (teacher candidates), which is a “critical point in the teacher pipeline” (wilson & kelley, 2022, p. 4). once enrolled, teacher candidates either complete their programs and enter the teaching profession, complete their programs and decide not to pursue teaching, or leave their preparation programs prior to completing the requirements. research on where candidates go once “they leave the pipeline is spotty” (wilson & kelley, 2022, p. 25). studies indicate that between 7090% of those who have completed their teacher education programs enter a teaching position the following year (darling-hammond, 2000). among those who complete 4-year bachelor's programs, 75% enter teaching within four years (sutcher et al., 2019). there is very little research focusing on those who successfully complete their preparation program but do not enter teaching (e.g., struyven & vanthournout, 2014). even more limited are studies that focus on those who enter teacher preparation programs and leave prior to completing the program. this research study hopes to fill this gap in the literature to support building a stronger teacher pipeline. current issues in education, 25(1) 3 the researchers examined the impact the pandemic had on candidates in two traditional teacher preparation programs, interviewing students who left prior to completing licensure requirements. typically, traditional preparation programs are defined as undergraduate or postgraduate degree programs at institutions of higher education where students complete coursework and clinical placements, including student teaching (e.g., podolsky et al., 2019; u.s. department of education, 2022a). clinical placements include field experiences where teacher candidates are placed in k-12 schools to observe and/or teach several lessons in a classroom setting, whereas student teaching is typically a semesteror year-long placement where teacher candidates gain experience gradually assuming all responsibilities of the classroom teacher. while there have been some studies on the impact on those who were in student teaching placements in march 2020 when schools were forced to shift to online instruction (e.g., vanlone et al., 2021; walker & ardell, 2020), very little research has been completed on how the pandemic affected those students still enrolled in earlier stages of teacher preparation programs. the 2020-21 school year forced many schools to provide online or hybrid instruction, which disrupted opportunities for clinical experiences. additionally, veteran teachers and teacher candidates noticed significant challenges during the 2021-22 school year, including increased mental health needs, challenging student behavior, and pressure to make up for lost learning (e.g., u.s. department of education, 2021). no research was found on how these circumstances might have impacted teacher candidates considering entering the field. this study aims to fill this gap in the literature. the article begins with a review of the literature on traditional teacher preparation programs, which is the site of this study. the literature review then shifts to the challenges of teacher preparation during a global pandemic. next, the researchers include a description of sociocultural theory, the framework that grounds the study. the methods section details the research design, sample, and participant characteristics, as well as the limitations of the study. the article then provides detailed findings for each research question, including discussion and implications for research and practice. review of the literature teacher candidates in traditional teacher preparation programs the majority of those in teacher preparation programs in the 2018-19 academic year were enrolled in traditional programs (416,000 out of about 560,000 total; u.s. department of education, 2022a). despite efforts to increase enrollment of teacher candidates of color, the majority were white (61.4%) and female (73.5%; u.s. department of education, 2022a). still, this represents an increase in enrollment of candidates of color; in 2010-11, 75% were white. teacher candidates enter teacher preparation programs for a variety of reasons. many are drawn to teaching because family members are teachers or they experienced a positive teacher role model in their lives (wilson & kelley, 2022). intrinsic rewards are also often cited as reasons for pursuing teaching, including a desire to work with young people, a sense of the importance of teaching, intellectual stimulation and love of learning, and the ability to help others (sinclair et al., 2006; watt et al., 2012). external motivators, like flexible work hours and vacations, job security, and a sense that teaching is easy, can also draw people to the field (sinclair et al., 2006; watt et al., 2012). sinclair and colleagues (2006) found that motivation to teach decreases within the first semester in a traditional teacher education program. their quantitative design did not allow the researchers to determine why. still, they speculated that as current issues in education, 25(1) 4 teacher candidates entered clinical placements and complete coursework, they gained a more realistic understanding of the profession that decreased external and intrinsic motivators. traditional preparation programs often result in students earning a bachelor’s or master’s degree at a college or university. these programs include required elements set forth by the state for teacher licensure, including coursework, testing, and clinical experience hours that students must complete to obtain a license (see, for example, massachusetts educator licensure and preparation program approval regulations, 603 cmr 7.04(2); new hampshire approval of professional preparation programs, ed 603.02). required coursework in traditional programs helps to ensure mastery of content knowledge as well as pedagogical content knowledge, or how to convey and teach content effectively, as well as pedagogies for meeting the needs of all learners (e.g., darling-hammond, 2000). teacher candidates learn about how students learn, curricular theories and development, classroom management, assessment practices, and other essential skills and knowledge to support the diverse learning needs of students effectively. clinical experiences include both early placements where teacher candidates observe and assist with teaching among a variety of tasks, as well as a culminating clinical placement or student teaching, where teacher candidates are expected to assume most of the roles of the classroom teacher. in clinical placements, the teacher of record in the classroom, or the clinical educator, acts as a mentor, observing the teacher candidate and providing feedback. the student teaching experience must also be supervised, with an assigned supervisor from the teacher preparation program who observes, provides feedback, and completes evaluations to determine candidate readiness for licensure (e.g., massachusetts educator licensure and preparation program approval regulations, 603 cmr 7.04(4); new hampshire approval of professional preparation programs, ed 604.04). particularly important elements in teacher preparation are clinical experiences and student teaching. studies have found that those who have at least one semester of practice teaching prior to entering a full-time position are three times more likely to stay after their first year of teaching compared to those with no practice teaching experience (ingersoll et al., 2014). the more hours candidates spend in student teaching, the more prepared they feel to teach but this does not necessarily translate to effectiveness in terms of observation ratings from their clinical educators or principals in their first year of teaching (ronfeldt, 2021). what did have an impact, however, was the schools where teacher candidates were placed. teacher candidates were more effective in their first year of teaching when they had clinical experiences and student teaching in schools that promoted professional, collaborative learning environments among teachers and that had a history of strong achievement gains among their students. working with clinical educators who model effective teaching practices and provide frequent, quality coaching also leads to increased instructional effectiveness in the teacher candidate’s early career (beck et al., 2020; ronfeldt, 2021). clinical experiences or student teaching in schools that serve racially, ethnically, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse students can also improve teacher candidate effectiveness (beck et al., 2020; ronfeldt, 2021). aligning clinical experiences with coursework and reflection remains critical to teacher development. this allows teacher candidates to make connections between the theory and approaches they learn in coursework with the practices they are seeing in classrooms (beck et al., 2020; ronfeldt, 2021). it also helps to avoid “pitfalls” or common misinterpretations of classroom observations, including making assumptions based on experiences as a student (feiman-nemser & buchmann, 1985). just as coursework is not enough to prepare candidates, traditional programs assert that clinical experiences must be integrated with coursework so current issues in education, 25(1) 5 candidates can analyze successes and identify why they are successful (e.g., feiman-nemser & buchmann, 1985). teacher preparation during a global pandemic the pandemic abruptly shut down elementary, secondary, and postsecondary schools nationwide in march 2020 before a rapid and challenging transition to online and distance learning. teachers and students at all levels were working and learning from their own homes, often surrounded by their families. this brought new insight into student home lives and blurred what was private and public (e.g., kidd & murray, 2020). while teaching online introduced new pedagogical approaches, many, including teacher educators, expressed that the format was impersonal, less engaging, and removed from the realities of classroom teaching, which was particularly concerning for teacher educators (e.g., kidd & murray, 2020). this directly impacted student learning among k-12 students and college students; 80% of high school and college students struggled to stay focused on school, and 20% of college students reported that their mental health was significantly worse during the pandemic (active minds, 2020). many were and are concerned about “learning loss” and widening the achievement gap as a result, particularly since these impacts were felt most by those from low-income backgrounds, students of color, and students with disabilities (e.g., kuhfeld et al., 2020; u.s. department of education, 2021). the pandemic and shuttering of classrooms also had a direct impact on teacher candidates’ ability to complete clinical and student teaching experiences. those in student teaching placements in march 2020 had to shift to online instruction along with their clinical educators, while those in clinical placements often had to leave prior to completing their hours. following the shutdown, in the 2020-21 school year, 67% of adults with school-aged children reported that their child’s school moved to distance and online learning (irwin et al., 2021). schools that provided in-person instruction rearranged hallways and classrooms to maintain social distance from classmates, with new routines for lining up, walking through the halls, and seating. many districts offered hybrid instruction with students attending in-person 2-3 days a week and online learning at home on the remaining days. often, the modes switched depending on the number of covid-19 cases in the area (e.g., zamarro et al., 2021). masking and vaccination requirements were implemented depending on state and school board decisions. those in higher education enacted similar changes as well, moving many courses online, requiring vaccination and masking, restricting class sizes, and limiting access to cafeterias, libraries, and other facilities in efforts to reduce large gatherings and maintain social distance (e.g., pressley, 2021). for both k-12 and tertiary education, quarantine protocols were in place for those exposed to or who tested positive for covid-19. during the initial shutdown, many families continued to experience financial hardship. those with elementaryand secondary-aged school children often reported strain from having to find childcare during quarantine and isolation periods (e.g., heggeness & fields, 2020). in this context, some school districts welcomed teacher candidates for clinical placements and full-time student teachers, while others did not for a variety of reasons, including limiting student exposure to only school staff for the health and safety of their students and the inability of clinical educators to take on the task of mentoring a teacher candidate with the added demands. as a result, states had to relax or even waive clinical requirements for certification. new hampshire and massachusetts, for example, gave teacher preparation programs flexibility to develop plans to complete clinical requirements, including the use of alternative experiences current issues in education, 25(1) 6 such as simulations, mixed reality, and video observations (american association of colleges for teacher education, 2020). this study was conducted in two traditional preparation programs that were impacted by the pandemic. thus, it adds to the growing research base on the impact of the pandemic on education with a specific focus on the effect on those in teacher preparation programs. it also helps to fill the gap in the literature on attrition among teacher candidates, which is one point in the leaky teacher pipeline. theoretical framework this study utilizes sociocultural theory. sociocultural theory explains how social environments interact and influence one another and in turn human development (e.g., bronfenbrenner, 1979). these contexts include immediate environments of family, friends, and school, as well as cultural and political patterns and economic systems (e.g., bronfenbrenner, 1979; sarason, 1971; wenger, 1998). applying this to teacher candidates, learning to teach happens within the distinctive cultures in which teacher candidates interact. these cultures include their preparation programs, the communities surrounding their preparation programs, and the k-12 schools where they complete their clinical placements, as well as larger societal contexts and events such as the pandemic. sociocultural theory posits that as people engage within their various cultures, they negotiate and create shared understandings of what it means to live and be within those cultures (sarason, 1971; wenger, 1998). history, tradition, race, power, cultural myths, and societal norms, as well as school norms and values, all impact these shared understandings, which in turn affects how people interpret their experiences, preferences, emotions, choices, and identity (e.g., bronfenbrenner, 1979; eisenhart, 2001; wenger, 1998). thus, culture influences an individual’s sense of self. a sociocultural perspective understands identity as an interplay between interactions within cultures and how individuals interpret and negotiate these interactions with preconceived notions of what it means to be a member of the culture. for example, individuals enter teaching with preconceived ideas of what it means to be a teacher based on their experiences as students (lortie, 1975). as teacher candidates advance through their preparation programs and clinical placements, their preconceived notions about the role of the teacher and their identity as a teacher are tested and renegotiated (lortie, 1975). research from a sociocultural perspective focuses not just on individual participants but also the complex interactions within and among different contexts, seeing participants “as part of a matrix of existing relationships, practices, and ideas” (sarason, 1971, p. 171). using this lens allows an exploration into how teacher candidates’ exchanges within and among their different contexts influenced their decision to leave teacher preparation. the research questions guiding this study reflect this perspective by focusing on how the pandemic impacted the cultures teacher candidates experienced and their decisions to leave teacher preparation. methods research design this qualitative study aims to provide insight into why teacher candidates who were interested in pursuing k-12 teaching decided to leave their traditional teacher preparation programs during the covid-19 pandemic. qualitative studies seek “to construct descriptions of phenomena” (goetz & lecompte, 1984; see also coffey & atkinson, 1996; miles et al., 2014). thus, given the research goals, qualitative methodologies are appropriate for investigating current issues in education, 25(1) 7 teacher candidates’ perceptions of entering and leaving teaching as a career. the following research question guided the study’s design and analysis: why do secondary teacher candidates enrolled in traditional four-year, undergraduate teacher preparation programs decide to leave prior to completion? in addition, the following sub-questions were explored: ● how do teacher candidates perceive the teaching profession? ● what role has the covid-19 pandemic had on teacher candidates’ experiences in teacher preparation programs? a systematic analysis of interview data with eight teacher candidates who left their teacher preparation programs between 2020-2022 helped to address each of these questions. sample for this study, interview data were gathered from teacher candidates attending one of two small, liberal arts colleges located in the northeast. both colleges offer similar education majors with a state licensure path for secondary education. teacher candidates are required to double major in education and the content area they plan to teach (e.g., english, history, mathematics, natural sciences, fine arts, spanish). students must complete eight education courses in addition to their content major courses. both programs have clinical hours matched with coursework and conclude with a semester-long student teaching experience with more than 400 hours of classroom experience. there are two notable differences in the programs. one college begins both education coursework and clinical hours during sophomore year and then shifts to coursework with and without clinical experience during junior year. the other begins education coursework during the first year and then adds limited clinical hours during the sophomore year with full clinical experiences matched with coursework during the junior year. in addition, the two institutions had different covid-19 protocols and regulations. one college had limited testing, optional masking, and fewer restrictions, while the other mandated testing and masking. both enforced quarantine and isolation periods. to participate in the study, teacher candidates had to have declared education as a major or minor, participate in at least one semester of education coursework, and dropped the major during the 2020-21 or 2021-22 academic years. in total, 10 teacher candidates were identified and interviewed across two distinct preparation programs. two were in elementary preparation programs, which have a different set of coursework and clinical requirements. thus, this paper focuses on the eight teacher candidates who were enrolled in secondary education preparation programs. all teacher candidates were white; two identified as male and six as female. candidates had completed between 13% (one course) to 50% (four courses) of their education coursework and 0-40 hours in clinical placements before leaving their teacher education programs. most candidates were pursuing english degrees (n = 5); one was majoring in history, another in music, and one was a biology major (see table 1). table 1 participant characteristics pseudonym gender age at departure semester departed program content major percent of education courses completed clinical hours completed prior to expected clinical hours at point of current issues in education, 25(1) 8 departure departure cecelia female 20 5 english 50% 13* 13 dorothy female 21 6 music 25% 3 60 hazel female 21 5 english 25% 10 60 kana female 20 5 english 50% 0 13 lynn female 20 5 biology 13% 20 30 matthew male 21 7 english 38% 40 60 monica female 20 5 english 13% 0 0 robert male 20 5 history 13% 0 0 note. *clinical hours were conducted all online. data collection and analysis a semi-structured interview protocol was used with each teacher candidate (see appendix a). each interview was 30-60 minutes in length and recorded to ensure accuracy. interviews were conducted via zoom utilizing the transcription tool. these transcriptions were checked for accuracy by the researcher who conducted the interview. given the purpose and data sources for this study, descriptive analytic approaches were used. first, qualitative open coding methods were utilized to identify common codes (patton, 2002). each researcher read the interviews she conducted, identifying codes and themes that cut across the candidates as well as those that were unique to each candidate. researchers used both deductive codes directly related to the research questions (goetz & lecompte, 1984; patton, 2002) as well as inductive codes to represent concepts and ideas that seemed significant (glaser & strauss, 1967). researchers discussed their findings and agreed upon a set of emerging themes. for example, lack of clinical experience, life during the pandemic, and reasoning for entering the field were all identified as emerging themes. as a next step, each researcher prepared a case study description of each of their candidates to represent each of the emerging themes (miles et al., 2014; patton, 2002). these narrative descriptions were shared and checked by the other researcher against the original interview transcript to identify whether important data were missing as well as any disconfirming evidence. the narratives emphasized and brought to light how different contexts interacted with one another. as a final step, the researchers used more direct and conceptual forms of coding, focusing on defining categories that represented larger amounts of the data, and reorganized the findings according to broader analytic interpretations, which provided the “core” of the emerging findings (charmaz, 2000; coffey & atkinson, 1996; glaser & strauss, 1967). theoretical coherence was also used, interpreting and “systematically explor[ing the data] to generate meaning” (coffey & atkinson, 1996, p. 46). in this step, interpretations move beyond the data to broader, general conceptual frameworks “that can account for the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the phenomena under study” (miles & huberman, 1994, p. 261). current issues in education, 25(1) 9 throughout the coding and analysis process, memos were drafted. memos helped researchers “grapple with ideas about the data,” defining analytic direction or refining categories and hypotheses (charmaz, 2000, p. 518). in addition, they helped guard against potential biases and helped increase the reliability and validity of the findings. researchers shared memos with one another to discuss the ideas, questions, and emerging themes and findings. limitations this study is limited to two small teacher preparation programs with a purposive sample. thus, the external generalizability of the findings is extremely limited. the purpose of this study is not to provide a representative understanding of leaving traditional teacher preparation programs (stake, 2000; yin, 2006); rather, the goal is to offer detailed descriptions that allow readers to understand factors that influenced teacher candidates’ decisions to leave their preparation programs and the possible impact of the covid-19 pandemic. this research relied on interview data with candidates who knew the researchers well. both researchers were academic advisors and/or professors of each of the candidates in the study. this presented both benefits and limitations. for example, candidates readily shared their experiences because they had already discussed their decision to leave with the researcher in the role of advisor. precautions were made to ensure that candidates knew that they could keep information confidential and often researchers asked questions to which they already knew the answer to ensure that candidates wanted that information to be included in the study. the analyses sought to create a true account by using candidates’ words as much as possible, enhancing the validity of the findings (miles & huberman, 1994). the report was shared with each of the candidates to conduct member checks and candidate validation (miles & huberman, 1994; patton, 2002; stake, 2000). this helped to ensure the credibility and trustworthiness of the data analysis and presentation of the findings. findings the researchers found the pandemic disrupted the candidates’ teacher preparation experiences during analysis of the main research question: why do secondary teacher candidates enrolled in traditional four-year, undergraduate teacher preparation programs decide to leave prior to completion? the educational disruption caused by the pandemic added a layer of missed opportunities, limited clinical experience, and a general sense of uncertainty, which altered teacher candidates’ outlook on the teaching profession, impacted their education journeys, and ultimately shifted their immediate career trajectories. changing perceptions of teaching unpacking the first sub-research question, how do teacher candidates perceive the teaching profession?, the data suggest teacher candidates’ perceptions of the teaching profession were greatly influenced by the pandemic. while the pandemic was the focus of the second subquestion, the analysis found the pandemic was the thread that wove throughout the candidates’ experiences and shaped their perceptions of the teaching profession. for each candidate, their impressions of teaching were suddenly framed by a global pandemic. our senior teacher candidates, in particular, expressed grave concerns about the changing landscape of the profession. lynn stated that she believed “teachers are underappreciated and overworked.” she continued by explaining how teachers are asked to: current issues in education, 25(1) 10 wear a lot of hats that are not teaching…especially now [with]…vaccine mandates [and] mask mandates. how can you even teach somebody to do the things that teachers are being asked to do [with] all this other stuff that as a teacher you don’t picture that being part of your job? hazel noted how impactful the media had been on her perceptions of the profession. she stated, “just seeing on the news, teachers protesting and then even some students are protesting now too.” like lynn, hazel felt the mandates and legal battles involving teachers, because of the pandemic, altered the focus of the profession in a negative way away from teaching and learning. at the classroom level candidates noted how the pandemic changed their perceptions of teachers’ daily experiences. matthew highlighted how limited socialization and delayed maturity impacted classroom management. he noted, “[the students’] socialization level is significantly lower than where it's supposed to be, and it's just extreme behaviors, like not respecting anyone in the school or just doing whatever they want.” in addition to student behavior issues, candidates also had concerns regarding remote learning. hazel noted the daily uncertainty with the constant shifts between in-person and remote instruction: “sometimes you see the school bus, sometimes you don't because [the schools are] always [shifting] online or in person.” across teacher candidates, the pandemic altered their views of the teaching profession. while the pandemic weighed heavily on the candidates’ perceptions of the teaching profession on a broader scale and in the day-to-day classroom experience, candidates also discussed professional considerations that extended beyond the pandemic, including, for example, lynn’s concerns about school violence: school shootings and teachers going to be armed to protect themselves and their classrooms is not something that a teacher should think of. i wouldn’t want to be in that position—nobody should have to be in that position…so those are always things in the back of my mind, like is this really the profession i want to go into? for lynn, school violence added a layer of contemplation beyond the pandemic. while this was one of multiple reasons why she shifted away from the profession, it added to the complexity of how teacher candidates were viewing the teaching profession. as noted above, candidates in their senior year, rather than junior year, elicited concerns about the teaching profession. the researchers attribute this primarily to the fact that seniors had just one semester left in college when they were interviewed. thus, it is possible that the senior candidates were more likely to be in a place to deeply consider the next phase of their lives. for juniors, the pandemic had consumed their college experience, with just their very first semester unaffected and uninterrupted. for junior candidates, the researchers found their mindset was centered on “what can i still get out of my fractured college experience?” overshadowed and underprepared by the pandemic unpacking the second sub-question, what role has the covid-19 pandemic had on teacher candidates’ experiences in teacher preparation programs? the researchers found that candidates attributed their under preparation for teaching to pandemic-related shifts, including fewer clinical experiences and remote coursework. in addition, candidates were trying to get the most out of their limited remaining time in college while staying true to their passions. candidates also grappled with their love of their content major and disrupted entry into the education program during a global pandemic. ultimately, candidates expressed how their entire college experience was overshadowed by the pandemic, which ultimately impacted their decision current issues in education, 25(1) 11 to leave the preparation pipeline. robert felt completely overwhelmed by his return to campus after 18 months of remote learning from home: i left when i was 19 [and] i came back [when] i was almost 21, so a big chunk of formative years of my life was just gone…it felt like being a freshman for the first five weeks again a second time. i had to reassimilate into everything. i had to get used to living away from home, i had to get used to the campus, i had to get used to [the city], i had to get used to in-person classes and it was just a lot at once. while not all candidates had such strong responses to the pandemic’s impact, all shed light on the many ways their disrupted education ultimately led them to pause in their pursuit of teaching. unprepared to teach each candidate grappled with feelings of unpreparedness for teaching in a classroom. for some, it stemmed from their limited time as an in-person learner in college, and for others, it was fueled by canceled or truncated clinicals. for one senior, lack of teaching opportunities impacted his decision to leave teacher preparation just before the capstone student teaching experience. matthew’s first clinical experience, where he was to deliver two observed lessons and gain feedback, had been truncated and he was unable to complete the two lessons. matthew expressed, “i sort of felt very not confident about going into a full-time student teaching placement with not really having delivered an in-person lesson before.” matthew’s struggle with limited clinical experience resonated across candidates. dorothy felt extremely apprehensive about the prospect of full-time student teaching. she had hoped for a more gradual experience rather than “i was all of a sudden going to be thrown full-time in the classroom and that was terrifying because i had no experience.” as a junior, cecelia left teacher preparation before beginning her clinical experiences even though she had thought she would be a high school english teacher for as long as she could remember. cecelia explained how remote learning limited her opportunity to practice preparing to be in the classroom. she explained, “i felt like i don't even know how to interact with these children…we've learned all the things, but i feel like we didn't have it put into practice enough to feel comfortable.” while the preparation program faculty reassured that they would begin with observation hours before teaching, candidates still struggled with the anticipation of moving from the role of student to the role of teacher. remote coursework remote teacher preparation coursework served as another factor impacting teacher candidates’ decisions to leave the pipeline. while candidates acknowledged that it is “not the [college’s] fault and [there’s] nothing that can be done, the reality of learning to be a teacher online was challenging.” cecelia noted, “i haven't even been in-person, at that point, yet for anything so…here you're going to be an actual teacher [and] i feel like maybe there weren't as many smaller steps.” such concerns were a constant challenge in teacher preparation as institutions and faculty balanced safety protocols and best practices, which led to fewer “smaller steps” into classroom teaching. kana chose to study as a remote student her entire sophomore year. upon her return to campus her junior year, she reiterated, “i’m missing out on being inperson and having the actual learning experience.” kana equated real learning with practicing pedagogical strategies in-person. a common sentiment among candidates was the uncertainty candidates felt after spring 2020 when they were all sent home. this meant candidates failed to experience introductory coursework as a means of determining their “fit” for the profession. this sense of uncertainty current issues in education, 25(1) 12 was never resolved as lynn shared, “covid definitely did not help…if i was able to finish out that course and i was able to teach my lessons, would i still be more drawn to [teaching]? i still don't have the answer for that.” candidates acknowledged that maybe they would have left sooner or never left at all had they benefitted from an uninterrupted experience in teacher preparation coursework. limited clinical experiences in addition to remote courses, teacher candidates experienced canceled and disrupted clinical experiences in the field across three semesters. clinical experiences serve to support the gradual transition from student to teacher; without these, teacher candidates were unable to assess their interest or success in the field. during the shutdown semester, teacher candidates were just getting to the point in the semester where they teach lessons in the field. matthew explained, “i loved learning about all this stuff, but because of covid, we were sent home before we were even able to give an in-person lesson to our students.” similarly, hazel acknowledged how impactful it was to lose the opportunity to teach early in the program: “we stopped doing the in-person student teaching and we had just started with that so i feel like that's a big deal because it's everyone's first in-person [teaching] and then we all just stopped.” lynn believed that the missed clinicals would have been the time when she would have known how she felt about teaching. she explained how missing clinicals “definitely had an effect because i think that would have been the time to really show myself whether or not i could do it and if i enjoyed it.” the collective impact of remote coursework and fractured clinicals left teacher candidates with less certainty about their interest or possibility for success in the classroom. for robert, the pandemic pause meant he struggled with his sense of readiness for teaching: “i did not feel ready for [teaching] coming off the pandemic.” he found assimilating to college after an 18-month period of learning from home to be a real challenge. robert explained, “i come back to school after not having been there for a year and a half [and] to go out and teach students, i did not feel prepared enough.” limited and disrupted clinical experience impacted each teacher candidate who ultimately chose to leave the teaching pipeline. fear of missing out half the teacher candidates lamented how much of their college experience was lost because of the pandemic. these feelings intensified when candidates returned to campus, especially those who chose remote learning for one or more semesters. they wrestled with the idea of missing out on more of their college experience due to the demands of clinical work and a semester-long student teaching. matthew described his view of student teaching as “it’s eight hours—7am-4pm—then you get home and it’s like all lesson planning…i feel like i’d be missing out on campus life.” often there was a particular extracurricular experience creating an intense struggle for the candidate. for monica it was the dance team which she’d been a part of since her first year, but the team had practiced online for three semesters. once in-person practices began, she grasped the full-time commitment: “after the first month of practice, i realized how big of a commitment it was.” in addition to evening practices, her weekends were spent fundraising for team travel. student teaching would have been difficult to manage on top of these obligations. robert was pulled to balance his time as a member of the cross-country team, knowing he’d only have two years to compete athletically before graduating. he was concerned that he “wouldn’t be able to [commit] the energy that i should to the team…i feel like i would be selling current issues in education, 25(1) 13 them short if i didn’t fully give what i could to the team.” when thinking about student teaching his final semester on campus, robert wondered, “is this practical during my last semester?” ultimately, robert chose to give his time and energy to his athletic team. cecelia realized that she wanted to have more time to explore the offerings at a liberal arts institution. as a secondary education and english major in the honors program, cecilia had her tight schedule planned since her first year with no flexibility or exploration outside the core options. as she contemplated leaving the education major, she “saw a new light” with her advisor and thought “i can actually…take these other courses…to explore some other things.” cecelia recognized that she had made her decision to become a teacher long before she entered college or knew what college would be like, so she reflected on how “i don’t want to make this big life decision without having enough room to take other classes and explore other options.” cecelia feared that she would miss out on something she didn’t even know about if she stayed in the rigid structure of a double major with student teaching. whether it was extracurriculars or academics, the fear of missing out on more after three covid-19-affected semesters meant candidates felt they needed more flexibility and more time to explore their interests without the constraints of a teacher preparation program. love of content the intense love of their content impacted secondary candidates’ decision to leave teaching. candidates expressed a deep passion for the subject matter they planned to teach. lynn explained, “i really love science. i would want to teach science because i’m a science nerd, and i would just want to share it with everyone.” while their love of content was often an initial reason why they considered becoming teachers, this love also became an impetus to push them away from teaching. for matthew, it was the lack of buy-in and poor behavior from the students in the classrooms, but also the realization that he was more interested in teaching the type of content taught at the college level. he explained, “i was subbing [and i realized] i didn't really want my day to be so focused on dealing with correcting behavior issues rather than actually teaching.” matthew continued: i was looking at what assignments teachers give their students in high schools and what texts they're reading and what type of books they're reading and i realized…most likely [i’m] never going to be able to [teach what i want] in a high school setting. i realized my own academic interests and my own happiness might be better suited at a college-level position. like matthew, candidates’ love for their content pushed them to realize that they wanted to teach on their terms without the confines of state curricula. while initial assumptions might lead to conclusions that the candidate’s love of content was outside of the influence of the pandemic, the researchers found a layered effect where candidates’ love of content coexisted with their beliefs about being unprepared to teach and fear of missing out; the collective sum was departure from teacher preparation. late entry into the program similar to teacher candidates’ love of content, late entry into the program created an additional layer of complexity which, when coupled with the pandemic, led to increased feelings of being overwhelmed and underprepared. two candidates in the study struggled with the demands of the education program due to late entry. shifting to a double major halfway through their collegiate experience meant the candidates had to take summer courses or extra courses current issues in education, 25(1) 14 during the semester to meet all program requirements. they were also forced to drop minors and the honors program. like so many of the pandemic-related themes, entering the program late felt overwhelming to the candidates. monica explained how she felt in her first 300-level course: “i was immediately overwhelmed because we were already starting to do lesson planning and they were using acronyms that i didn't understand…a lot of my classmates had some [clinicals] so i was one of very few people who hadn't been in the classroom.” from the first day of class, monica felt less prepared than her classmates due to her late entry. like monica, robert felt his delayed decision to enter the teacher preparation program meant added pressure to complete all the coursework. he noted, “if i declared that major early in freshman year, i would have really felt less stress.” robert had to figure out how to condense a double major into three semesters, which added both pressure and financial demands to take summer courses he needed to graduate on time. as robert considered his late entry, he mentioned, “if i had a little bit more time to think about it…i would have been a lot more prepared, but it was a lot on my plate at once and i didn’t feel fully ready for it.” the pandemic meant robert experienced an immediate onslaught of demands upon his return, which made him reconsider his decision to enter the education program. discussion the pandemic added a layer of complexity which ultimately pushed candidates to make the decision to leave the pipeline—at least for the time being. many participants were adamant that they would return to education. some envisioned going into k-12 classrooms, in fact, one has already accepted a position as an assistant teacher, while others aspired to teach in higher education settings. the findings indicate that participants in this study entered and left their teacher preparation programs for many of the same reasons as candidates in any given year. in fact, many might have left even without the pandemic as they experienced many of the same factors the researchers have heard from candidates in past years. these include entering the program late in the undergraduate experience and feeling pressure to fulfill all the requirements for licensure, experiencing an intense love for the content area and wanting to take more coursework in that subject, and facing doubt at realizing the realities of teaching. as matthew explained, the pandemic added to these considerations: if you’re looking to see the impacts of covid on [teacher candidates leaving teacher preparation], i would definitely say that the people who are still passionate about going into education and knowing that this is for them will still do it. i think it was for the people who are maybe 90% sure, but the other 10% were a bit on the fence, it might be something to push them over. i definitely don’t think it helped. these findings are consistent with sociocultural theory as this study found that the pandemic compounded factors within participants’ various contexts leading them to leave teacher preparation. tighter covid restrictions did not lead to more leavers. neither did the number of uninterrupted semesters of college prior to covid; the same number of juniors and seniors departed. seniors were more reflective on the impact of the pandemic on the broader landscape of education (e.g., swift transition to remove learning, enforcing mask mandates), where the juniors focused on their personal educational journeys (e.g., athletics, clubs). the findings also indicate that the pandemic resulted in new barriers, including remote coursework and limited clinical experience, that left candidates feeling unprepared to teach. this study's findings mirror research about why individuals enter the field and documents why some leave. participants spoke to intrinsic motivators of wanting to make a positive current issues in education, 25(1) 15 difference in the lives of young people and follow in the footsteps of family members who were teachers, both of which are consistent with research findings on why teachers enter the classroom (sinclair et al., 2006; watt et al., 2012; wilson & kelley, 2022). as the literature suggests, after the first semester, motivation to teach decreased for several candidates (sinclair et al., 2006). part of the decreased motivation certainly had to do with coming to grips with the realities of teaching and the many hats that teachers are tasked to wear, as mentioned by several participants. in addition, the pandemic amplified mental health needs, led many to reevaluate priorities, and made it difficult for students—both k-12 and college students, including the teacher candidates in this study—to focus on their work (active minds, 2020). these factors in their sociocultural contexts intersected with one another as well as factors of the pandemic and drove candidates in this study “over the fence.” several candidates had envisioned becoming a teacher since before they could remember. even with the pull of long-held beliefs that teaching was their future, candidates struggled to make sense of their path given the pandemic disruptions to their educational journeys that brought into focus doubts about the teaching profession as well as new interests. similar to teacher candidates the researchers had advised in the past, some candidates felt pressure to complete their licensure requirements in condensed timeframes and others were eager to take more courses in their content area, which precluded them from completing their education requirements. the pandemic heightened these factors for several participants. lack of in-person learning at the college, feeling overwhelmed upon return to campus, and a sense of wanting to engage in activities like sports, clubs, and other extracurriculars all had an influence on the desire to complete education coursework requirements. often, these factors in their sociocultural contexts were layered upon one another. the pandemic had the greatest impact on clinical experience hours. limited, truncated, and virtual clinical experiences deterred candidates in the study from continuing in their teacher preparation program. as research has found, clinical experiences prior to student teaching are an important predictor of early career teacher retention (ingersoll et al., 2014). the results from this study indicate that clinical experiences are also an important predictor of whether teacher candidates remain in their preparation programs. disrupted and virtual clinical experiences also prevented many teacher candidates from establishing strong relationships with their clinical educators. given the positive impact clinical educators can have when they model effective practice and provide quality mentoring and coaching (beck et al., 2020; ronfeldt, 2021), this, too, may have exacerbated teacher candidates' early departure from the pipeline. in addition, coursework could not be aligned with clinical experiences when hours were canceled or suspended. courses typically designed around clinical experiences were not always able to integrate new pedagogies in ways that candidates found effective. collectively, disrupted clinical experiences impacted teacher candidates’ confidence and willingness to persevere in the pipeline. implications the results of this study highlight the need for continued research on teacher candidates leaving the pipeline. the researchers have anecdotal evidence that the reasons these eight participants gave for leaving (e.g., pressure to complete licensure requirements, uncertainty about the profession) are common among secondary education teacher candidates from their experience as faculty and academic advisors. little research has been conducted on why teacher candidates leave their preparation programs. determining whether these factors are common current issues in education, 25(1) 16 could help teacher preparation programs provide needed support that might help keep candidates in the pipeline. longitudinal studies are also needed to track whether and how those who leave teacher preparation programs return to the pipeline. further, continued research on this point in the pipeline could help to determine how factors in sociocultural contexts intersect and interact with one another in ways that assist teacher candidates when faced with challenges. for example, the pandemic has brought to light the important role of mental health in student learning. further research that explores these intersections could provide helpful insight into how best to support teacher candidates as they are preparing to enter the field. in terms of implications for practice, the findings underscore previous research on the critical component of clinical experience in teacher candidate development and decision-making related to continuing in their teacher preparation programs and entering the profession. teacher candidates in this study could not envision themselves as teachers due to a lack of experience in the classroom. many were uncertain and felt unprepared to enter student teaching because their clinical experiences were abbreviated or canceled. most had never taught a lesson. the prospect of student teaching and taking over all teacher responsibilities was daunting. ensuring that teacher candidates have plenty of “small steps,” or clinical experiences in the classroom that allow them to explore and gain confidence in their decision to pursue teaching is needed. increased clinical experience hours could provide teacher candidates with opportunities to gain more confidence and help support candidates in cases where they are unable to complete some of those hours. while the pandemic was the major cause for candidates’ missed clinical hours, candidates who declare the major late, experience illness, or study abroad for a semester often are unable to complete all the scheduled clinical hours. given the findings, both researchers plan to approach their departments about ways to increase the number of hours. both researchers also know from experience that it is more difficult to teach the content of the coursework when candidates lack clinical experience in the classroom. candidates in this study noted this as well. when courses with clinical components had to cancel clinical hours, the courses fell flat. alternatives, like teaching to a group of peers rather than students in a classroom, lacked authenticity, especially for classroom management. the ability to support teacher candidates in reflecting on how theory relates to practice is much more limited when they are not in classrooms. teacher candidates also have fewer opportunities to reflect on their own developing conceptions of what it means to be a teacher with support from teacher preparation faculty and k-12 practitioners when they have fewer clinical experience hours. references active minds. (2020). covid-19 impact on college student mental health. https://www.activeminds.org/studentsurvey/ ahmad, f. z., & boser, u. (2014). america’s leaky pipeline for teachers of color: getting more teachers of color into the classroom. center for american progress. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed561065.pdf american association of colleges for teacher education. (2020, may). aacte state policy tracking map: state actions to support epps and teacher candidates. https://aacte.org/state-actions-covid19/ https://www.activeminds.org/studentsurvey/ https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed561065.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed561065.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed561065.pdf https://aacte.org/state-actions-covid19/ https://aacte.org/state-actions-covid19/ https://aacte.org/state-actions-covid19/ current issues in education, 25(1) 17 beck, j. s., lunsmann, c., & garza, t. 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(2022b). teacher shortage areas 2021-2022 school year. office of postsecondary education. https://tsa.ed.gov/#/home/ vanlone, j., pansé-barone, c., & long, k. (2022). teacher preparation and the covid_19 disruption: understanding the impact and implications for novice teachers. international journal of educational research open, 3. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedro.2021.100120 walker, n. t., & ardell, a. (2020). reconsidering preservice-mentor relationships in complex times: new possibilities for collaboration and contribution. issues in teacher education, 29(1-2), 132-141. watt, h. m. g., richardson, p. w., klusmann, t., kunter, m., beyer, b., trautwein, u., & baumert, j. (2012). motivations for choosing teaching as a career: an international comparison using the fit-choice scale. teaching and teacher education, 28, 791-805. https://doi.org/10/1016/j.tate.2012.03.003 wenger, e. (1998). communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge university press. wilson, s. m., & kelley, s. l. (2022). landscape of teacher preparation programs and teacher candidates. national academy of education committee on evaluating and improving teacher preparation programs. https://naeducation.org/evaluating-andimproving-teacher-preparation-programs-commissioned-paper-series/ yin, r. k. (2006). case study methods. in j. l. green, g. camilli, & p. b. elmore (eds.), handbook of complementary methods in education (pp. 111-122). american educational research association. lawrence erlbaum associates.’ zamarro, g., camp, a., fuchsman, d., & mcgee, j. b. (2021). how the pandemic has changed teachers’ commitment to remaining in the classroom. brookings institute. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/09/08/how-thepandemic-has-changed-teachers-commitment-to-remaining-in-the-classroom/ appendix a introduction it is critically important to train and retain qualified teachers for k-12 schools. many are leaving teaching and fewer students are enrolling in teacher preparation programs. with the covid-19 pandemic and its impact on teaching, many are wondering what impact this might have on teacher attrition. this interview is part of a study that seeks to understand why students who initially had an interest in going into k-12 teaching leave their preparation program. your participation in this interview will provide valuable insight into what might be some factors that could help the profession recruit and retain quality teachers for elementary and secondary schools and the long-term impacts that the covid-19 pandemic might be having on the profession. https://tsa.ed.gov/#/home/ http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedro.2021.100120 https://doi.org/10/1016/j.tate.2012.03.003 https://naeducation.org/evaluating-and-improving-teacher-preparation-programs-commissioned-paper-series/ https://naeducation.org/evaluating-and-improving-teacher-preparation-programs-commissioned-paper-series/ https://naeducation.org/evaluating-and-improving-teacher-preparation-programs-commissioned-paper-series/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/09/08/how-the-pandemic-has-changed-teachers-commitment-to-remaining-in-the-classroom/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/09/08/how-the-pandemic-has-changed-teachers-commitment-to-remaining-in-the-classroom/ current issues in education, 25(1) 21 everything you say in this interview is confidential; i will not share your name or identify you in any reports from the study. if i want to share what you have to say, i may quote you, but i will identify you as, for example, “participant 1.” you may decline to respond to any questions or stop the interview at any time. this interview will take approximately 30-45 minutes. i will begin by asking general questions about your background, then move to questions about why you entered the education major and your experiences in those courses, and then ask about why you decided to drop the major. do i have your permission to record this interview with you? [note: if a participant does not wish to be recorded, take notes, but do not proceed with recording. if the participant agrees to be recorded, turn on the recorder and repeat the question so that the positive responses to this question and subsequent responses are recorded.] before we start, do you have any questions or concerns about this interview or the study? background information 1. tell me a bit about why you were interested in going into elementary or secondary education. a. when did you declare your education major? b. did you think of teaching as a long-term career? why/why not? c. when did you leave education? what is your major now? experiences in education courses 2. what courses did you take when you were in the education major? 3. what were your experiences like in your education major? a. what did you think of the content of the courses? b. what did you think of the rigor of the courses? c. what did you think about the other students in your courses? d. what grades did you receive in these courses? e. how did your education courses compare to other courses that you were taking? (which did you prefer more? which were more rigorous?) 4. did you have clinical experiences while you were in the program? a. if so: i. tell me about those experiences: where were you placed, how many hours did you complete, did you have to complete any assignments in your placement? ii. what was it like working with your clinical/cooperating teacher? what was it like working with students? iii. were there any changes that had to be made to your clinical experiences due to the covid-19 pandemic? did you do a remote placement? b. if not: i. why not? ii. were you hoping to have a clinical placement? decision to leave the major 5. when did you start thinking that you were going to drop the education major? 6. why were you thinking that you wanted to drop the education major? current issues in education, 25(1) 22 a. did the covid-19 pandemic have an impact at all on your decision? if so, how so? b. what pushed you to leave the major? 7. did you have any concerns about going into k-12 teaching? 8. are you still planning to go into k-12 teaching? a. if so, what is your plan to get licensure? b. if not, what career path are you pursuing now? 9. what is your new major? a. what made you decide to pursue that major? b. have you already taken courses in your new major? i. if so, how do they compare to your education courses? 10. what are your career plans after graduation? conclusion 11. overall, what are your thoughts about leaving the education major? 12. is there anything that i haven’t asked that you think is important for me to know? author notes author name: aubrey scheopner torres (corresponding author) author affiliation: saint anselm college author email: ascheopnertorres@anselm.edu author orcid: 0000-0002-6251-5873 author name: lisa andries d’souza author affiliation: assumption university author email: ldsouza@assumption.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. mailto:ascheopnertorres@anselm.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ catalyzing a culture of care and innovation through prescriptive analytics and impact prediction to create full-cycle learning current issues in education, 22(1) 1 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age catalyzing a culture of care and innovation through prescriptive analytics and impact prediction to create full-cycle learning david kil, chief data scientist, civitas learning angela baldasare, senior principal strategic consultant, civitas learning mark milliron, svp & executive dean of the teachers college, western governors university abstract: student success, both during and after college, is central to the mission of higher education. within the higher-education and, more specifically, the student-success context, the core raison d'être of machine learning (ml) is to help institutions achieve their social mission in an efficient and effective manner. while there should be synergy among people, processes, and ml, this synergy is not often realized because ml algorithms do not yet connect the dots on fully understanding and strategically fostering student success. transitioning from risk to impact prediction is a catalyst for institutional transformation, which can lead to continuous learning and student-success process innovation. this paper explores how ml can complement and facilitate organizational transformation in promoting a culture of care and innovation through virtuous full-cycle learning. keywords: machine learning, data-informed decision making, impact prediction, predictionbased propensity score matching, real-world data, real-world evidence, prescriptive analytics, student success knowledge base, influence diagram, change management, impact elasticity citation : kil, d., baldasare, a., & milliron, m. (2021). catalyzing a culture of care and innovation through prescriptive analytics and impact prediction to create full-cycle learning. current issues in education, 22(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1903 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 10/27/2020 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1903 kil et al.: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation 2 introduction in the past 15 years, higher education has undergone a shift in the focus of institutional data use related to student success, moving from a culture of accountability to a culture of care. whereas in the culture of accountability, the focus was on reporting and performance metrics, the culture of care has embraced the use of data to inform proactive practices that support students in their educational journey, improving experiences and outcomes. in the pursuit of improved reporting metrics and student-experience optimization, there has been an increased use of predictive analytics and other data-informed approaches to impact student success in higher education. gagliardi and turk (2017) discuss the importance of creating a data-enabled executive focusing on improving student success outcomes. romero, ventura, pechenizkiy, and baker (2011) discuss various data mining techniques used in education in the learning space, including case studies using both structured and unstructured data. mandinach and jackson (2012) explore ingredients in a culture of data-driven decision making and examine easton’s cycle of inquiry consisting of problem identification using data, solutioning, monitoring progress, and using research to examine impact. dowd (2005) discusses a culture of evidence in institutional decision making, explaining various forms of benchmarking practices in higher education. a common primitive underpinning of all these efforts to improve institutional effectiveness and to move toward an informed culture of care is the knowledge base of what’s working for whom, when, and with what. in healthcare, for example, many researchers and companies are building knowledge bases on evidence-based medicine and precision medicine to provide more effective and personalized treatment to patients (chow et al., 2018). this knowledge base is, in most institutions, fragmented and incomplete, largely undocumented, often anecdotal or evidenced by descriptive data rather than rigorous evaluation methods. highereducation leaders want to be data-informed in their student success efforts but lack a bridge that links evidence-based student-success knowledge to current actions that can be taken to specific students with a high probability of impact. a student-success knowledge base would identify the types of evidence-based programs, practices, policies, or interventions that have been demonstrated to have the largest impact on the success of specific student populations. unfortunately, today’s ml applications are not geared toward building an understanding of efficacy, instead focusing almost exclusively on risk prediction. in healthcare, kil, shin, and pottschmidt (2004) highlight that predicted risk is not equal to impactability or statistically significant and replicable student success outcomes. an initial pilot targeting patients with diabetes based on predicted risk scores showed promising results. this intervention focused on lifestyle coaching leveraging behavioral science. when the pilot was expanded to all patients prioritized by prediction scores, the same impact analysis showed negative outcomes despite the overall targeted population being much sicker. a thorough, scientifically rigorous, drill-down impact analysis revealed a mismatch between intervention and sub-population characteristics. this finding led to differentiating risk prediction from the potential for positive impact or impact elasticity. it also facilitated the use of social psychological factors derived from the patient activation measure to personalize interventions further (hibbard et al., 2004). in the end, a portfolio optimization approach was developed to assign patients to various patient-care programs, each personalized to the unique impact elasticity profile of a group of patients. creation of a student success knowledge base similar to this portfolio of patient-care programs is not a trivial task. there are multiple challenges associated with the creation. kil et al: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation current issues in education, 22(1) 3 • conflict between randomized experiments and observational studies: there is an academic bias towards randomized controlled trials (rct). black (1996) posits that rcts and observational studies can complement each other. he examines the strengths and weaknesses of randomized experiments and observational methods while suggesting that hypotheses be derived from retrospective observational studies and be confirmed through randomized experiments for higher success rates in prospective clinical trials. the biggest weakness of observational studies, according to black, is the potential for confounding factors being unevenly distributed between intervention groups. could data-driven ml approaches help us infer important confounders from data so they can be used in the matching process to address the biggest shortcoming? • population heterogeneity in the real world coupled with sparsity of results from rcts: rcts, while important, are no panacea in replicating results in the presence of heterogeneities of treatment and population in the real world. it is well known that drugs approved based on rct results from relatively homogeneous clinical trial populations resulted in unexpected side effects in heterogeneous real-world populations, thus requiring pharmacovigilance using real-world health data (who, 2002). the national academies of science, engineering, and medicine (2019) held a workshop to explore how to maximize the impact on medical product development of real-world evidence from observational studies. franklin, glynn, martin, and schneeweiss (2019) also discuss potential use cases of real-world data for regulatory decision making. • sparsity of high-fidelity time-scale metrics to chart student success progress and responses to heterogeneous treatments: the longer the time span between intervention and outcome, the more noise the measurement process needs to deal with. in healthcare, there are a lot of -omics efforts in immunomics, genomics, radiomics, metabolomics, and related internet-of-things (iot) sensor technologies to understand and untangle the mysteries of how human bodies respond to various dynamic treatments (caron et al., 2007). jones and agusti (2006) talk about the need for new markers or surrogate endpoints in the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in conjunction with observable patient symptoms. the key idea here is to use fast surrogate endpoints highly correlated with primary endpoints to strengthen the discovery of causality between treatment and outcomes consisting of multiple time-scale metrics. • lack of a unifying framework around intervention opportunities and impact results: oreopoulos and petronijevic (2019) report that they failed to replicate earlier promising results from scalable online and text-message interventions to improve college achievement. however, student characteristics may differ across the interventions in terms of relative magnitudes of student success drivers and intentionality in intervention design that accommodates such potential differences. too frequently, intervention results are viewed in isolation without examining differences in student success drivers and intervention design intentionality, personalized to target population characteristics. yeager and walton (2011) explore how wise psychological interventions should be designed kil et al.: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation 4 with the intention of having a long-lasting impact by addressing the underlying social psychological impediments with many nuances. • lack of consensus on consistent methodologies in measuring impact results across time and space in the presence of noise and confounders in observational studies: there appears to be a lack of consensus among academic researchers on the best ml-based impact analysis algorithms in the presence of real-world constraints and challenges despite recommendations from what works clearinghouse (wwc, 2019). the most frequent argument against ml-based approaches in causal inference is dependence on the practitioner’s skill level in building ml models (king & nielson, 2019). however, more and more robust ml modeling algorithms are being made available through ml libraries offered by most cloud analytics vendors, leading to ml modeling democratization. despite these challenges, the time is ripe for a connected ml approach that goes beyond predictive modeling. the authors’ goal is to reinforce the importance of connected ml in catalyzing institutional transformation. connected ml is defined as a set of complementary ml algorithms with a focus on improving student success, not just on predicting student risk. this paper is organized as follows. the building blocks of student success problem solving are first presented. next we discuss how the proposed ml framework can catalyze institutional transformation that involves people and processes by empowering a data-informed culture of care. finally key concepts are reinforced through real-world examples and recommendations. method figure 1 shows the analytics building blocks that power ml applications focused on solving the problem of student success (baer et al., 2019). while descriptive and predictive analytics solutions are designed to help explain who is at risk and why, they just represent the tip of the iceberg. figure 1 the five synergistic building blocks of ml analytics. descriptive and predictive analytics predictive models assign success probabilities to students based on student and institutional variables. going beyond the role of traditional predictive models, not only should ml recommend intervention strategies, but it also needs to gather and provide evidence that the recommended intervention strategies will bear fruit in a cost-effective, scalable way. another important need is to create and sustain a rewarding user experience for the key stakeholders by helping them see how their actions are helping students do better. nir eyal (2014) mentions the importance of variable intrinsic reward while mihaly csikszentmihalyi (2009) talks about how to https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/ https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/ kil et al: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation current issues in education, 22(1) 5 create the optimal user experience called flow by immersing the user in a deeply engaged and satisfying state. this paper posits that, given the social psychological and motivational profile of stakeholders in higher education, the optimal user experience comes from empowering them to maximize human intelligence in designing intentional interventions and knowing how they are contributing to student success. ml can help stakeholders stay engaged by transforming their roles from operational to empowered through intentional intervention design and execution with timely feedback on how much difference they are making and what they can do differently to further improve student success. those higher-education leaders who are engaged innovators deploy interventions in a data-informed way, testing, learning, and applying that learning in an iterative cycle of improvement. a range of data is necessary to employ this iterative improvement strategy. both descriptive and predictive analytics can be used to provide a comprehensive dashboard view of student and stakeholder health statistics and trends, where health can encompass student-success and stakeholder-engagement metrics. prescriptive intervention opportunity analytics the key tenet behind prescriptive analytics is understanding the relationship between impactable levers, or simply impact levers, and student success rates, which is called elasticity, borrowing a term from economics, such as price elasticity of demand. the same concept is directly applicable to student success science. for example, academic performance can be inelastic for certain groups of students, such as those contemplating on early transfer or those with logistical challenges. in these situations, engagement matters far more. for other student segments, the opposite can be true. it all depends on the characteristics of students in heterogeneous student populations. figure 2 illustrates the basic concept of impact elasticity. the steeper the magnitude of the slope, the more elastic. for this example, programs designed to improve student engagement through peer mentoring or sense-of-belonging nudges by faculty can be more effective. figure 2 the concept of impact elasticity kil et al.: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation 6 student success rates can be defined in different time scales, spanning multiple dimensions, such as academic performance, engagement, thriving quotient, learning metrics, persistence, completion, job success, and donations. the longer the time duration from treatment to impact, the greater the amount of performance ambiguity for treatment. this is why elasticities should be measured with respect to short-term metrics or surrogate endpoints, such as persistence, lms engagement, grades-in-progress, successful course completion, term gpa, or course-based net promoter scores. impact levers should be derived from time-series student records. let’s explore student enrollment behavior. from data, students who enroll early tend to persist higher than those who enroll at the last minute, often getting into sections at unpopular times or being forced to take non-optimal courses that may not count towards graduation. the magnitude of the elasticity metric by student segment can provide insights into how to nudge the right students at the right time to be more proactive in enrollment or in seeking assistance with enrollment barriers. nudging can be more effective by understanding the key differences between students who register early and those who do not (descriptive analytics) as well as investigating and addressing in intentional intervention design key impediments to proactive re-enrollment, such as financial aid, registration blockers (satisfactory academic progress, parking tickets, etc.), or personal issues. moreover, the registration timeliness nudging is more precisely applied when student segments whose behavior-to-outcomes predictions are less elastic (e.g., strong students registering late when the institution cancelled their original course) are identified and removed from treatment protocols. they clearly do not need the reminder nudge even though a traditional risk prediction trigger would have been activated. in summary, prescriptive analytics is a set of ml techniques to evaluate and rank order various static and dynamic groups of students based on n and impactability. this is the first step in improving student success in an efficient manner. impact analytics ml-based impact analysis forms the core of the student-success knowledge base creation process given the relative lack of rcts in real-world, heterogeneous observational settings. while there are many algorithms for causal inference, here we focus on observational studies relying on rwd given the reality of how most student-success programs operate. rosenbaum and rubin (1983) proposed that, in observational studies, pilot and control samples should be matched in a single-dimensional projection of known covariates (x) about the samples or students in this case. this projection or data compression is typically performed using ml, which is known as propensity score modeling. propensity score is defined as 𝑝(𝑧 = 1|𝑥), where z is the treatment variable and x is the student covariate vector. that is, a propensity score model is built using covariates of patients (x) in the pilot (z = 1) and control (z = 0) pools by training a model to learn differences between pilot and control students in the covariate vector space. the next key question is on covariate selection as there is typically no clear guideline. through experimentation, kil et al. (2004) found that constraining covariates to the best features of a model designed to predict an outcome metric produced consistent, high-quality impact results. this finding led to a two-dimensional matching algorithm in the predictionand propensity-score space. figure 3 shows a pictorial depiction of prediction-based propensity score matching (ppsm). kil et al: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation current issues in education, 22(1) 7 figure 3 the core concept of prediction-based propensity score matching. brookhart et al. (2006) also found that using the same approach resulted in the highest statistical power. mccall, cromwell, urato, and rabiner (2008) similarly used prediction scores in evaluating impact results of medicare health savings demonstration programs even when they were relying on cluster-based randomized controlled trials. leacy and stewart (2014) found similar advantages of prognostic-propensity score matching. recently, there have been more validations in ml-based algorithms for causal inference (hill & su, 2013; wager & athey, 2018). furthermore, the judicious use of ecological momentary assessment and feature engineering on time-series student data can overcome the key objections of observational studies by inferring non-academic factors from data. feature engineering algorithms, especially digital signal processing, are often less appreciated in ml due to a recent proliferation of deep learning networks. however, deriving features from linked-event data inspired by subject matter experts can be very helpful in impact analysis by incorporating into the matching process inferred nonacademic factors, such as response to adversity, enrollment behavior, and engagement, to ensure that they are evenly distributed between pilot and control. many higher-education institutions conduct impact analyses of their student success programs using ppsm (milliron et al., 2017). based on impact analysis results and intervention insights, they identify how to improve intervention efficacy further, make those changes, and then “rinse and repeat,” resulting in full-cycle learning. evidence-based student success knowledge base creation the student success knowledge base should be constructed from a scientifically rigorous impact analysis of each student-success program in a portfolio of student success programs. at a minimum, impact results should be a function of student segments and program operational parameters. the strength of evidence can be assigned based on design intentionality, treatment specificity, efficacy results with p value/confidence interval, and replicability that accommodates population heterogeneity. this knowledge base with evidence strength is of paramount importance in resource allocation optimization -unless decision makers know what works for whom by how much, it is impossible to allocate resources optimally. kil et al.: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation 8 each institution has a portfolio of student success programs and interventions designed to improve various influenceable factors associated with student success. these factors can be grouped into academic, non-academic, and financial aid categories. more specifically, we can identify impact levers that can be influenced through interventions in the areas of engagement, enrollment behavior, academic performance, academic progress, and financial aid. ppsm can be used to measure impact results of each intervention for the overall population and various drilldown student segments under different operating conditions. this ability to drill-down and see differential results for sub-segments of the student population creates the opportunity to optimize interventions by matching interventions to those for whom they will be most effective. having this knowledge can facilitate the identification of further opportunities for continuous process improvement and portfolio optimization. while there are multiple methods for resource allocation optimization borrowing ideas from financial portfolio optimization, one popular ml approach is an influence diagram (owens et al., 1997). the fundamental ideas are summarized succinctly below: 1. the building blocks are three types of vertices and edges that connect them. 2. the first type of vertex represents a probabilistic state of variable important for student success, such as an impediment to success or student success drivers that depend on student segments. they are represented as circles in figure 4. 3. the bayesian network describes a causal relationship among the vertices that are associated with student success, such as student segments, student success drivers (impact elasticity levers), impediments (social psychological blockers), and intentional intervention design (iid). iid consists of call to action (c2a) and behavioral science algorithms used in content design to address impediments and success drivers in order to maximize compliance with prescribed call to action. 4. the utility vertex (diamond in figure 4) is constructed from and analogous to the evidence-based student success knowledge base. the utility value can be mean persistence lift or its sharpe ratio version, which is defined as mean over standard deviation. standard deviation can be derived from confidence interval. 5. the decision or action vertex (rectangle in figure 4) represents a student’s action in response to delivered intervention. 6. an edge represents a direction of conditional probability relationship. for example, student success drivers depend on student segments. figure 4 shows a student-success influence diagram. one of the nicer features of the influence diagram framework is that the a priori and conditional probabilities can be derived from data or entered by subject matter experts. they can be refined continuously as more data is gathered. a main use case for the influence diagram can be thought of as an air traffic controller, precisely engaging students with the right programs where they are likely to benefit the most based on heterogeneities in student characteristics in terms of impact elasticities, treatment, and timing of treatment based on external stimuli. this framework promotes the design, test, and implementation of the best-of-breed intervention programs that engage the right students at the right time, leading to student success portfolio optimization at an institutional level. an influence diagram can be used to decide on optimal strategies for each student segment based on (1) conditional probability relationships inferred from data and/or instantiated by subject matter kil et al: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation current issues in education, 22(1) 9 experts and (2) instantiated evidence for vertices, i.e., known nodes. here, utility is a function of student segment and call to action subject to their action or response to intervention. figure 4 student-success influence diagram when targeting new, struggling, first-time-in-college (ftic) students whose main social psychological blocker is stigma inferred from their good academic performance in high school, those evidences can be entered into the network, which will propagate and update state probabilities in each remaining vertex as shown in figure 5. for example, social norming becomes more important (33% to 56%) in the behavioral science algorithm node while academic program is the call to action with the highest probability (41% to 53%) and utility (4.01% to 4.75% predicted lift in persistence). furthermore, utilities for the uninstantiated node values (below the probability bar) change by propagating the entered evidences through the network. kil et al.: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation 10 figure 5 after two pieces of evidence are entered into the impediment and studentseg vertices, probabilities and utilities change across the board, reflecting the new evidence, compared to figure 4. such information is crucial in designing intentional interventions where appropriate behavioral science algorithms are leveraged to address the key social psychological blockers and to give students an incentive to comply with the call to action that has the highest probability to improve student success. given the likely success drivers, it looks like an academic program has the highest utility score of 4.75% persistence lift, followed by a social engagement program with 3.95% persistence lift utility. the utility vertex can be instantiated from impact analysis results. once the top success drivers are known from prescriptive intervention opportunity analysis, they can be entered into the network, thereby influencing intervention design based on which call to action will have the highest probability of impact. discussion: putting together building blocks the ultimate goal is to leverage data and evidence on student success in catalyzing institutional transformation, where students and stakeholders are the key beneficiaries of the transformation. unfortunately, on-ground realities from our recent user study feature these comments from educators trying to lead student success innovation: kil et al: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation current issues in education, 22(1) 11 ● it is very hard for me to get timely answers to basic questions that should help me make daily decisions. ● i struggle to understand where my team and i are spending time on day to day and how much difference we are making towards student success. ● i do not know how to find the best opportunities for student success. ● i don’t know which student success programs are working. ● it is not obvious what actions i should be taking. besides, i am so busy with handling inbound student traffic that i have little time for proactive, intentional student success interventions. ● we have silos and a high degree of organizational inertia. i find it difficult to manage cross-team planning and execution to transition from analysis to action. to address these pain points, it is very important to have a fully-connected ml analytics suite in figure 1. based on the authors’ collective experience, success begets more success. figure 6 shows the necessary ingredients in creating full-cycle learning for organic organizational transformation. figure 6 creation of a virtuous cycle in an organization the first task is to identify and rank prescriptive intervention opportunities for various static and dynamic student segments. rule-induction algorithms can be used to find compelling intervention opportunities with appropriate guidance from subject matter experts. the second task is to compile a list of student success programs with taxonomy, organized around impact levers. this step is crucial in constructing a portfolio of student success programs with an eye towards resource allocation optimization and impact prediction-informed investment decisions. scientifically rigorous impact analysis can help an institution create its kil et al.: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation 12 own knowledge base. a network effect can be especially helpful when a comparable group of institutions undertakes the same behavior to accelerate the pace of learning. figure 7 shows an example of such a knowledge base for new and early-term students compiled from approximately 1500 programs submitted by more than 60 institutions, analyzed through ppsm. figure 7 a table of a subset of student success programs along with their efficacies for new (left) and returning students. this information exists for a large number of meaningful student segments for various types of institutions. there are more detailed metrics to assist in resource allocation and investment optimization. another option to accelerate the pace of learning is multi-armed bandit intervention design (vermoral & mohri, 2005). here the study population is split into multiple arms consisting of different treatments and control, where control is the business-as-usual (bau) treatment. n-wise randomization, going beyond the usual pairwise randomization, is helpful in maximizing the pace of learning by virtue of evaluating n-1 treatments concurrently. multiarmed bandit design has exploration and exploitation phases. during the exploration phase, the impacts of n-1 treatments are evaluated in comparison to the bau treatment. during the exploitation phase, more students are assigned to more effective treatments, thereby improving the overall impact results. figure 8 shows the multi-armed design framework. kil et al: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation current issues in education, 22(1) 13 figure 8 multi-armed bandit intervention design framework to accelerate the pace of learning in student success the third step is intentional intervention design. walton (2014) explores wise psychological intervention as a means of addressing key social psychological blockers. yeager et al. (2019) show the results of cost-effective scalable behavioral science algorithm-based interventions on large numbers of students. an influence diagram in figures 4-5 can provide a bayesian network framework to help with intentional intervention design. the key here is to give strong incentives to students so that they are more likely to comply with recommended calls to action highly personalized to the most elastic impact lever. the final step is execution, followed by rinse and repeat. multi-armed bandit intervention design is highly appropriate to accelerate the speed of learning (agrawal & goyal, 2012). people in higher education are highly motivated by seeing student success. even more motivating is the knowledge that they are playing an important role in cracking the mysteries of student success science. change management based on evidence for continuous improvement the process of building and activating a student success knowledge base will require not only the methodological building blocks described above, but also commitment and leadership. despite accreditors’ mandates for both program and co-curricular assessment in higher education, mantras about being data-informed, and significant institutional investments in data infrastructure and analytics capacity, there often remains a shortage of impact measurement and a gap between the proliferation of potentially useful data and meaningful action informed by that data. it takes purposeful change management and alignment of people, processes, and technology to create a data-informed student-success culture. some of the most common challenges that need attention in transforming an institution in this way include: kil et al.: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation 14 ● intervention fatigue. more is not necessarily better with interventions, particularly when resources are limited and the window of opportunity with students is short. yet there is enormous pressure to continue adding interventions to make gains in student success metrics. creating an inventory of student success programs is an important first step in establishing clarity of purpose and design, identifying duplicative efforts, planning for measurement, and beginning to parse out effects. ● fear of measurement. the onus is on leaders to create an institutional climate where measurement of interventions is seen as an opportunity to learn and improve rather than an existential threat (lakos & phipps, 2004). in our healthcare experience, the single most effective strategy to improve patient care was the benchmarking of patient-care programs, where rigorous impact analysis results were used to collaborate on how to best improve patient care from a systems perspective, leading participants to a positive-sum mentality. ● lack of a positive-sum mentality: while rigorous measurement is required for optimal resource allocation, it’s not necessary to hack away at every intervention or program that shows a smaller impact. in our study of over 1500 student success initiatives across more than 60 institutions of all types and sizes, we found that 40% had little to no overall impact. however, each of those “ineffective” programs was impactful for approximately 16% of the student segments in drill-down impact results. institutions can use data like these to optimize those interventions by targeting them toward students for whom they are effective, while also perhaps making programmatic adjustments to increase effectiveness for other student segments. improving existing interventions reduces the need to add new interventions and is, therefore, an antidote to intervention fatigue. ● siloed efforts and territoriality. recognizing student success as a shared responsibility is an important part of creating a culture of care. realizing that shared responsibility, however, requires that key functional players from across units coordinate, collaborate, and even share resources. collaborative development and use of a student success knowledge base are a solid foundation for cross-functional teams, empowering them to identify the presenting issues of students they collectively serve, match them to the indicated interventions, and coordinate service delivery to maximize impact without duplication of efforts. ● putting programs before students. every program or initiative on campus is someone’s “baby” and sometimes the needs of the program overshadow the needs of students. “best-practicism,” the blind adoption of popularized strategies without evidence of effectiveness accounting for heterogeneities in population and environment, is another manifestation of a program-centric rather than a studentcentric approach tailored to an institution. a student success knowledge base ensures that the opportunity to positively impact students is the driving force of interventions. from our consulting engagements with numerous higher-ed institutions, we have seen these practice patterns emerge as catalysts for successful stakeholder engagement and institutional transformation. ● start small, scale fast: early success begets more success. identify low-hanging fruits and work on them with a clear measurement plan. use anecdotes and quotes https://go.civitaslearning.com/student-success-impact https://go.civitaslearning.com/student-success-impact kil et al: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation current issues in education, 22(1) 15 from participating students to attract more similar students who can benefit. communicate measurement results with the broader campus community to raise awareness of resources and increase appropriate referrals in addition to campaigns and targeted efforts. ● invest in behavioral science in crafting alert messages: many institutions use humanor auto-generated alerts, too frequently, alert messages sent to students are transactional, incorporating very little of behavioral science. our internal impact analyses of 49 alert-triggered interventions show that impact results are largely negative with 44 out of 49 interventions generating statistically significant negative results. an example of what gets sent to students when they miss n consecutive classes is: “you missed n consecutive classes. you are in danger of failing.” from a behavioral science or any perspective, that is a terrible thing to say to students when they are most vulnerable or when early-alert systems do not have a complete picture of what is going on. paunesku et al (2019) found similar results on the opposite side when they administered mind-set interventions to academically underachieving students. ● leverage conflict: conflicts can be a great catalyst for institutional change. honest conversations around educational and operational goals can turn conflicts into opportunities for hard conversations and deeper collaborations--particularly with vital issues such as closing achievement gaps and diversity, equity, and inclusion outcomes. ● positive sum, not zero sum: everyone wins from student success. in healthcare, benchmarking was the most effective way to collaborate and improve as long as everyone embraced system-level performance improvement as the goal regardless of where a department was. ● human relationship building: we have seen great success whenever interventions included human relationship building (colver, 2018). invest in teaching soft skills to students and those who work with students every day. faculty have a large influence on student success. their timely and empathetically grounded nudges can go a long way in helping students feel that they belong and that they can thrive. conclusion the world of education is going through a major transformation. hao (2019) discusses a grand experiment in china, where artificial intelligence (ai) tutors and human teachers work together to accelerate learning and usher in a new era of learning analytics. baer, hagman, and kil (2020) describe how ai and human intelligence can complement each other in preventing an ai winter of disillusionment and creating a virtuous cycle of student success from both crossindustry and pragmatic perspectives with case studies. machine learning and human creativity can complement each other. while machine learning can discover and recommend interesting patterns and opportunities for student success interventions, student success people need to be willing partners in maximizing synergy. indeed, the future of this work will be a thoughtful interplay of data strategy, domain expertise, and design thinking all aimed at helping more, and more diverse students learn well and finish strong. kil et al.: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation 16 references agrawal, s., & goyal, n. 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(2011). social-psychological interventions in education: they’re not magic. review of educational research, 81(2), 267–301 https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/why-propensity-scores-should-not-be-used-formatching https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/why-propensity-scores-should-not-be-used-formatching https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2019.11 https://escholarship.org/content/qt0843106w/qt0843106w.pdf https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0843106w what%20works%20clearinghouse%20standards%20handbook%20version%204.1 http://ies.ed.gov/ kil et al.: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation 18 yeager d., et al, (2019, aug). a national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y author notes david kil chief data scientist, civitas learning david.kil@civitaslearning.com angela baldasare senior principal strategic consultant, civitas learning angela.baldasare@civitaslearning.com mark milliron svp & executive dean of the teachers college, western governors university mark.milliron@wgu.edu guest editor notes sean m. leahy, phd arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1466-y.pdf https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y mailto:david.kil@civitaslearning.com mailto:angela.baldasare@civitaslearning.com mailto:mark.milliron@wgu.edu mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au kil et al: catalyzing a culture of care and innovation current issues in education, 22(1) 19 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf current issues in education 26(2) 1 urban-rural stem education’s influence on creativity in public and private middle schools of pakistan kamlish national university of sciences and technology khushal das university of calabria abstract: this study examines the influence of stem (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education on nurturing creativity and innovation among middle school students in pakistan. a total of 164 students participating in diverse stem programs nationwide provided data through a comprehensive questionnaire addressing demographics, perceptions, stem engagement, and creativity skills. the findings highlight a gap in the current curriculum’s ability to develop essential skills while also underscoring the positive impact of stem education on nurturing creativity, critical thinking, and analytical capabilities. there were differences in the levels between urban and rural settings and public and private schools regarding the intensity of engagement and perceived benefits of urban and private institutions. therefore, this study will inform educators, policymakers, and curriculum developers about the necessity of integrating inschool stem programs into the pakistani educational system. future research may employ longitudinal and qualitative approaches to better understand students’ experiences and the sustained impact of stem education. keywords: stem education, middle school students, creativity, educational policy, stem education in pakistan, curriculum development citation: kamlish, & das, k. (2025). urban-rural stem education’s influence on creativity in public and private middle schools of pakistan. current issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2229 accepted: 11/08/2025 volume 26, issue 2 november 20th, 2025 issn 1099-839x https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2229 kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 2 urban-rural stem education’s influence on creativity in public and private middle schools of pakistan stem (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education has emerged as a key component in preparing students to handle the complexities and opportunities brought about by the 21st century (tytler, 2020). the emphasis that stem education has received in most countries is informed by the increasing demand for a competent workforce in scientific inquiry, technological innovation, engineering design, and mathematical problem-solving (perry, 2022). this thrust, particularly in pakistan, where human resource development in the field of stem has become increasingly dire, remains highly relevant for economic modernization and international competitiveness (mohib, 2023). aslam et al. (2022) have resonated with the notion that improving stem education in pakistan directly impacts the national aspiration of achieving sustainable economic growth coupled with technological development. as indicated by the report on education statistics from the pakistan institute of education (team, 2024), a total of 313,418 educational institutions are in pakistan. of those, 43.8% represent private schools, and 52.2% are public. interestingly, about 46.5% of the students are enrolled in private schools as opposed to 53.5% in public ones, shown in figure 1. figure 1 overview of pakistan’s education system by institution type (team, 2024) recent studies have highlighted the role of computational thinking in enhancing student performance. bounou et al. (2023) found a positive relationship between computational thinking ability and high school students’ performance in languages and stem. this highlights the role of integrating computational skills in stem curricula to enhance academic performance. beyond curriculum reform, parental influence plays a critical role in shaping students’ attitudes towards stem. küçükaydın and ayaz (2025) indicate that parents’ knowledge regarding stem is directly related to their children’s career choices and attitudes. this suggests that a positive home climate can be as influential as augmenting in-school resources in promoting engagement in stem. furthermore, recent studies point to a positive role for a curriculum integrating stem in fostering design thinking attitudes. thomason and hsu (2024) demonstrated that integrating stem disciplines can enhance middle school students’ capacity for creatively solving problems and developing critical design thinking skills, a prerequisite for innovative learning. this is consistent with the overall goal to prepare students for 21st-century challenges. middle school is a formative stage in students’ academic life for developing their interest in improving their critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills (israel fishelson & kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 3 hershkovitz, 2022). these formative years can shape their future academic and professional trajectory and motivate them to pursue a career in fields related to stem (tai et al., 2006). however, pakistan’s education system for stem is marked with disparities in access and quality (nazli & noman, 2023). there is a wide contrast between public and private schools and urban and rural areas in resources, infrastructure, and pedagogy. this difference is further evidenced by a recent study by hali et al. (2021), which showed that private schools in pakistan tend to have more visible and robust stem education programs compared to their public counterparts, highlighting the need for targeted interventions to improve stem education access and quality in public schools (team, 2024). the report (team, 2024) also shows that rural areas have a higher percentage of public institutions (51%) compared to urban areas (49%), while urban areas have a greater share of private institutions. for student enrollment, 69% in public and 36% in private institutions are in rural settings, indicating a larger rural presence. however, urban areas show stronger representation in private enrollments. in terms of teaching staff, rural public schools employ 81% of teachers, whereas urban areas account for a higher percentage in private schools. the distribution of educational institutions, student enrollment, and teachers in middle schools across rural and urban areas for the year 2021-22 is shown in figure 2. figure 2 geographical distribution of educational institutions, enrollments, and teachers (2021-22) (team, 2024) contextualizing stem education in pakistan stem education in pakistan is characterized by a dichotomous structure with public and private schools catering to different socio-economic groups. according to the pakistan education statistics 2021-22 report, middle school education consists of 47,822 institutions throughout pakistan; 16,238 and 31,584 institutions operate in the public and private sectors, with the majority being private schools (team, 2024). despite their more expansive reach, public schools often lack adequate resources and infrastructure to support quality stem education. in contrast, private schools, while accessible to a smaller segment of the population, generally offer better facilities and a more conducive learning environment for stem subjects (awan et al., 2017). however, both sectors have their curses. public schools lack good teachers, curricula, and labs. kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 4 moreover, examination-oriented learning rather than practical usage and critical thinking is crucial for learning education in stem (malik, 2017). the government of pakistan has also identified a need for stem education and thus introduced several initiatives to popularize stem education. these include establishing stem schools, introducing courses related to it in the curriculum, and providing scholarships to students studying about it (desk, 2019). however, all these remain to be seen, and many comprehensive and sustained efforts are yet to be made to improve stem education in pakistan (anwar, 2017). perception, engagement, creativity, and innovation in stem education the development of stem education depends on building an executive perception of the stem area among students (chen et al., 2024). research has proven that aspects such as perception about stem subjects significantly impact student engagement, motivation, and academic achievement (abdi et al., 2024). positive perceptions can be built in engaging and relevant classroom activities and real-life applications of concepts created in a supportive learning environment (council et al., 2012). engagement is a critical development of innovative skills (wang, 2019) and reflects the extent to which students are actively involved in learning (fredricks et al., 2004). more engaged students can be more inquisitive, asking questions, initiating discussions, and seeking further information (o’malley & chamot, 1990). the deep involvement in learning allows for a deeper understanding of the concepts of stem that encourages students to go further into the field. engagement has been linked to deep learning, improved retention of knowledge, and the development of skills in critical thinking (darlinghammond et al., 2020; das et al., 2021). student engagement is influenced by several factors, including teacher enthusiasm and knowledge, relevance and currency of curriculum, and active and project-based learning activities. the inclusion of project-based learning, in which groups of students address real-world problems, has increased engagement and motivation in the disciplines of stem (council et al., 2000). creativity and innovation are closely related concepts: creativity refers to the ability to generate new and valuable ideas, while innovation involves applying those ideas to develop new products, processes, or services (astawan et al., 2023). stem education can foster both creativity and innovation by encouraging students to think out of the box, considering multiple solutions to problems, and taking risks. zakeri et al. (2023) found that implementing stem activities has encouraged students to develop different non-standard solutions and novel ideas. susilowati et al. (2020), observed that stem education activates critical thinking to enhance innovative problem-solving. and majeed et al. (2021) reported significant improvements in students’ creative thinking skills after participating in stem education programs. public vs. private schools and urban vs. rural settings in pakistan a stark contrast between public and private schools characterizes the pakistani education system. while public schools, which cater to most of pakistan’s population, have limited resources, outdated infrastructure, and a dearth of skilled teachers (jstep, 2023), private schools have improved facilities, small class sizes, and skilled teachers (creative, 2023). these contrasts have a significant bearing on the quality of stem education in each school (farooq et al., 2017). a recent systematic literature review carried out by aslam et al. (2022) reported trends in research in pakistan’s stem education, citing a lack of resources and awareness in public schools in contrast to private schools. kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 5 similarly, there are vast contrasts between urban and rural schools in pakistan (lloyd et al., 2005). urban schools have improved access to resources and technologies, while rural schools face challenges such as limited connectivity, outdated textbooks, and a shortage of skilled teachers. these disparities can lead to unequal access to opportunities for students in different settings, stifling overall progress in pakistan’s stem education (r. m. wood, 2023). a recent research paper carried out by acelabs emphasized the importance of providing good stem education to students in rural settings to reduce gaps and improve innovation and economic growth in pakistan (“breaking down barriers: revolutionizing stem access for rural communities,” 2024). while there is increased realization in pakistan about the importance of stem education, there is a lack of research on the specific role of stem education in enhancing students’ creativity and innovation. moreover, there is limited knowledge on how these effects vary across different settings, particularly between public and private schools and urban and rural schools. this research gap restricts our ability to design effective stem education programs that address the diverse needs of students in pakistan. this study aims to bridge this research gap by examining how stem education influences creativity and innovation in pakistani middle school students. by comparing public and private schools as well as urban and rural settings, this research seeks to provide a better understanding of the factors that encourage or hinder creativity and innovation in different educational environments. research questions to address the gaps identified in the literature and to better understand the influence of stem education on creativity and innovation among middle school students in pakistan, this study is guided by the following research questions: 1. rq1: how does stem education influence the development of creativity and innovation among middle school students in pakistan? 2. rq2: what are the differences in the impact of stem education on creativity between public and private schools? 3. rq3: how do urban and rural settings differ in terms of stem education’s effectiveness in fostering creative problem-solving skills? gender-based dimensions in stem education our analysis reveals that while female students comprise 60.4% of our sample, their engagement in stem subjects is simultaneously marked by high creativity and cautious optimism, but it is constrained by socio-cultural stereotypes and limited role models, which hinder their long-term participation in these fields (hollows et al., n.d.). evidence from nationwide assessments further indicates that although girls often outperform boys in sciencerelated tasks, performance differences in mathematics are less pronounced or even favour boys in certain contexts (bhutta et al., 2024). in addition, studies examining broader educational trends in pakistan underscore that systemic gender discrimination—manifested through unequal household resource allocation and persistent cultural norms—continues to impede female advancement in stem (pasha, 2023). these challenges are compounded by the scarcity of kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 6 visible female stem role models and mentorship opportunities, which are crucial for nurturing self-efficacy and long-term interest in stem careers. consequently, addressing these issues through gender-sensitive curricula, enhanced teacher training, and targeted mentorship initiatives is imperative to dismantle prevailing stereotypes and foster a more inclusive stem environment that fully leverages the potential of both female and male students. theoretical framework social cognitive theory (sct), a core pillar in our research framework, defines learning to be a dynamic and bidirectional process between environmental, cognitive, and behavioral factors (bandura et al., 1986). bandura developed sct, a rich theory through which we can interpret how students’ perceptions, engagement, and performance in stem education are formed and affected. sct highlights that learning is not an individual process but one within a social setup, highly influenced by observing other individuals’ behavior, attitudes, and outcomes (bandura, 2001). self-efficacy, in bandura’s sct, has a significant role in influencing students’ academic and professional decisions, and research has established that gender differences in stem self-efficacy, in math and science classes, emerge early and persist, influencing academic performance and feedback responses (stewart et al., 2020). our research investigates various aspects of sct, starting with observational learning. this sct aspect is concerned with modeling in learning, whereby students learn from observing what their peers and teachers do and what happens to them (bransford et al., 2005). to measure this process, our survey questions were designed to assess the extent and nature of exposure students have to stem activities and what they perceive about them. we were particularly interested in role models and how peers and teachers who themselves are working in and promoting stem can have a big role in influencing students’ engagement and interest in such fields (usher & pajares, 2008). survey results provide insights into how observational learning influences students’ attitudes towards stem and their engagement in related activities. another crucial aspect of sct that is explored in our research is reciprocal determinism (wood & bandura, 1989). this concept highlights the bidirectional influence between personal factors, behaviors, and the environment. specifically, our research investigates how students’ beliefs about their capabilities in stem affect their engagement in these subjects and how their engagement and experiences in stem influence their self-efficacy. the survey questions addressing reciprocal determinism were crafted to uncover these intricate interactions. by analyzing these responses, we elucidate how students’ confidence in their abilities (a personal factor) interacts with their behaviors (engagement in stem activities) and the educational environment, creating a cyclical pattern that can either bolster or hinder their academic journey in stem (pajares, 1996). a pivotal construct within sct that our study focuses on is self-efficacy, which refers to an individual’s belief in their capacity to execute tasks and achieve goals (bandura, 1997). in stem education, self-efficacy is a crucial determinant of students’ willingness to tackle challenging projects and their perseverance in problem-solving tasks (zimmerman, 2000). our self-efficacy survey items were designed to gauge students’ confidence in their ability to succeed in stem-related tasks. this includes their perceived competence in handling specific stem projects and problem-solving skills. understanding self-efficacy levels among students provides valuable insights into their motivation and persistence in stem fields, which are essential for their long-term success and interest in these areas (lent et al., 1994). kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 7 drawing on social cognitive theory, our study investigates complex aspects of observational learning, reciprocal determinism, and self-efficacy related to stem education. by investigating how students’ exposure to role models, their personal beliefs of capability, and recursive interaction between behaviors and environment influence their engagement in and outcomes from stem, the study identifies strategies to improve stem education and support the development of a science-capable and science-literate generation. the insights from this research work can highlight key factors shaping students’ intentions and engagement in stem, offering educators, policymakers, and curriculum developers valuable guidance for advancing the best practices in stem education. stem education in pakistan: program structure, activities, and challenges a representative stem program in pakistan typically integrates theoretical instruction with hands-on, experiential learning to foster critical thinking and innovation, although significant disparities exist between public and private schools. in private institutions, stem curricula are often delivered through an interdisciplinary approach that combines project-based learning, laboratory experiments, coding, robotics, and design thinking exercises to create a dynamic, student-centered learning environment (awan et al., 2017; thomason & hsu, 2024). in contrast, public schools have a more traditional, exam-based system with restricted access to state-of-the-art laboratories and technological resources, restricting frequency and scope for hands-on stem activities (malik, 2017; team, 2024). to address these imbalances, recent government initiatives, such as the national stem schools project, have piloted better stem programs in a small subset of public schools through science laboratory renovations and specialized teacher training (anwar, 2017; desk, 2019). despite these initiatives, ongoing resource constraints and sociocultural challenges—especially in rural areas—continue to hinder the effective implementation of stem education. this emphasizes the need for stronger policy interventions to ensure equitable access to high-quality stem programs across all learning contexts (nazli & noman, 2023; wood, 2023). research methodology survey design the research design utilized in this study is cross-sectional, which allows for a snapshot to be taken of middle-grade students’ engagement, creativity, and innovation in stem education, and their perceptions about stem education from all over pakistan. this design allowed for data collection from a wide range of the student population all at once. online survey mode was selected due to its efficiency and ability to reach a geographically dispersed sample. easy-to-use interfaces, instructions, and required validation checks were all incorporated in the design to deliver high-quality data. this was selected to maximize response rates and to make the instrument accessible and engaging to middle school students with different backgrounds. perceptions of stem education we included items in the questionnaires on how students perceived the relevance and usefulness of stem subjects to assess their perceptions of the relevance and usefulness of learning stem subjects. these items were intended to capture students’ perceptions of the role of stem subjects in developing critical thinking, problem-solving, and communicative kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 8 competencies. additionally, we queried students’ perceptions about career opportunities in stem fields to assess how they perceive their study of a stem discipline as a way to obtain employment and capitalize on personal development. these are necessary to pinpoint misconceptions or knowledge gaps that can be addressed by proper educational intervention. engagement in stem activities to understand students’ engagement with stem in and beyond the classroom, we surveyed the frequency and type of students’ engagement in hands-on experiments in science, technology, engineering, and math, how technology was integrated into their stem subjects, and whether students took part in extracurricular activities related to stem. we investigated how frequently students engage in practical experiments at school, as these activities play an important role in supporting the teaching and learning of science concepts through real-world application. we also looked into integrating technology into a student’s learning process about stem subjects, considering the importance of technology integration in contemporary education. further, questions related to extracurricular activities aimed at establishing students’ interest in stem and a willingness to support it outside of school hours. creativity and innovation another essential dimension measured in our questionnaire was students’ confidence in creative skills within stem contexts. items captured students’ enjoyment of innovative problemsolving, their willingness to take on challenges, and their comfort with open-ended problems requiring creative solutions. the survey also included questions about experiences with projects that foster creativity, such as designing experiments, developing new technologies, or working in maker spaces. these responses provided insights into whether students viewed themselves as creative and enjoyed the opportunity for innovation — factors that are critical for supporting students in developing the creative thinking skills essential for future careers in the stem disciplines. our research design is empirically structured to comprehensively analyze the engagement, creativity, innovation, and perceptions of middle school students regarding stem education across pakistan. in this process, we investigated key themes that provided us with valuable data related to the current strengths. the analysis also allowed us to identify areas for improvement in the stem curriculum that may be used in bolstering several educational experiences for educators, policymakers, and developers. this would eventually develop better stem education practices and mold the psyche of a generation of students who, though knowledgeable in the subjects, were confident, creative, and innovative thinkers. population and sampling our sample consisted of middle school students in grades 6 to 8 in pakistan, selected from schools with a stem-related curriculum or extracurricular programs. this criterion ensured that all participants had prior exposure to stem education, making their responses directly relevant to the study. students outside grades 6 to 8, as well as those from schools with no stem-related offerings, were excluded to maintain a focused and comparable sample. to achieve representativeness and diversity, we employed a stratified random sampling method. student populations were stratified in terms of geographical area (urban/rural) and kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 9 school type (public or private). this was to control for variations in educational contexts and resources in different geographical locations and school environments. the stratified random sampling method was chosen in particular to ensure that our sample is representative of pakistan’s diverse socio-economic and educational contexts. we ensured proportionate representation from each subgroup via stratification along urban/rural region and public/private school affiliation. this research design move enhances the external validity of our findings and allows for a more nuanced comparison between pakistan’s heterogeneous educational contexts. data collection data was gathered through an online survey, chosen for its flexibility and ability to reach a large and diverse student body across pakistan. this approach overcame geographical and infrastructural barriers by allowing remote submissions from both urban and rural settings, while also providing a standardized and cost-effective tool for large-scale educational research (afzal et al., 2024). we designed the questionnaire to be user-friendly, with simple and clear instructions, easy navigation, and interactive elements. it was also optimized for multiple devices — including computers, tablets, and smartphones — to accomodate varying levels of technological proficiency. additionally, obligatory fields and validation checks were introduced to minimize incomplete or erroneous responses, enhancing the accuracy and quality of the data. reliability and validity reliability was established through cronbach’s alpha, a widely used measure of internal consistency. high cronbach’s alpha values indicate strong internal consistency across survey items (gong et al., 2024; hajjar, 2018). our obtained value of 0.9655 demonstrated excellent internal consistency among survey items, confirming that the instrument reliably measures student engagement, creativity, innovation, and perceptions regarding stem education. to further establish construct validity, principal component analysis (pca) was conducted, a robust statistical technique for data reduction while maximizing variance retention. in our study, the scree polt showed a distinct “elbow” after the second component, leading us to extract only two principal components, which accounted for 62.2% and 5.9% of total variance, respectively. these components captured the dominant underlying factors pertinent to our study — primarily student engagement and perceptions toward stem education. combined with a high cronbach’s alpha, the variance captured by these components reinforces our measurement instrument’s internal consistency and construct validity. the selection of pca, along with other methods employed in this study, was driven by the need to ensure that the most salient aspects of the data were accurately represented while minimizing redundancy. the scree plot analysis justified the decision to focus on two principal components, which clearly demonstrated a significant drop in the eigenvalues beyond the second component. this approach ensures that our analysis remains both parsimonious and theoretically meaningful. data analysis descriptive statistics provided a summary of the data in terms of the overall distribution and general patterns of the data set. these included measures of central tendency, such as means, and variability, such as standard deviation. the mean represented the average value for each kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 10 survey item, serving as the center of gravity for the data, while the standard deviation indicated how much individual values deviated from this average. by capturing key trends and patterns, descriptive statistics allowed the researchers to identify common responses as well as outliers. this analysis, simple yet essential, preceded higher-order statistical procedures once the primary features of the data were established. the general workflow used in processing the data is illustrated in figure 3, promoting transparency and reproducibility. it comprised three stages: research preparation, data processing, and communication. in the research preparation stage, we developed the research questions necessary to conduct the research work and data collection methods aligned with the variables of interest. during the data processing phase, the data were analyzed using appropriate statistical methods. summary statistics were calculated through descriptive analysis, and advanced statistical modeling techniques were applied to examine deeper relationships and patterns in the data. data visualization tools, including charts and graphs, were then used to facilitate interpretation and presentation. during the communication stage, findings were synthesized into clear, detailed reports with visual aids to effectively communicate the results to stakeholders. descriptive statistics were systematically applied within this structured workflow to create a detailed summary of student responses, ensuring that analyses were thorough, findings were robust, and a solid foundation was established for further statistical analysis and interpretation. figure 3 data processing workflow for analyzing stem engagement kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 11 ethical considerations before data collection, procedures for research were established to safeguard all participants’ rights and welfare. due to the research being carried out with middle school students who are minors, informed consent was obtained in a two-step process with minors and their parents or legal guardians. detailed information sheets explaining the purposes, procedures, potential risks, and voluntary nature of participating in research were provided. this ensured that both minors and their guardians fully understood the study and their rights, including the ability to withdraw at any point in time without consequences. additionally, no personal identifying information was obtained from students, ensuring total anonymity throughout the research process. it should be pointed out that, in line with guidelines from the institution and in light of the non-invasive nature of this research, a formal institutional review board (irb) approval was not necessary. research was conducted within standard educational research procedures and was deemed to present minimal risk to participants. nonetheless, all ethical considerations were observed in every aspect of research, with rigorous measures to maintain participant anonymity and data security. all data obtained were kept securely and only shared with members of the research team. while this study is quantitatively driven to assess the role of stem education, further use of qualitative measures, such as in-depth interviews or focus groups, would better capture student experience and contextual factors influencing engagement in stem. mixed-method designs are recommended for future studies to better capture the complexities in learning environments. results demographic characteristics we studied and analyzed data from 164 middle school students in pakistan, considering various demographic backgrounds, including gender, location, and school type, to assess the impact of stem education across different groups. this approach allowed us to understand how various demographic factors influence students’ engagement and perceptions of stem education. table 1 demographic characteristics of middle school students in pakistan (n=164) category sub-category frequency percentage(%) age group 11-12 years 70 42.7 13-14 years 94 57.3 gender female 99 60.4 male 65 39.6 location urban 100 61.0 rural 64 39.0 school type public 76 46.3 kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 12 private 88 53.7 table 1 presents the demographic characteristics of the sample, comprised of 99 females (60.4%) and 65 males (39.6%), with 70 students aged 11–12 years (42.7%) and 94 students aged 13–14 years (57.3%). in terms of location, 100 students (61%) are from urban areas, while 64 (39%) are from rural areas. furthermore, 76 students (46.3%) attend public schools, and 88 (53.7%) attend private schools. the diverse demographic composition — highlighting a higher proportion of female students and balanced urban–rural and public–private representation — provides a robust foundation for understanding how varied educational settings and sociocultural contexts influence stem engagement and creative outcomes. this heterogeneity is crucial for drawing nuanced conclusions about the differential impacts of stem education in pakistan. perceptions of stem education students held highly positive perceptions regarding the benefits of stem education in developing crucial skills. a majority, 54.3%, strongly agree that stem education stimulates curiosity and exploration. additionally, 54.9% strongly believe it enhances problem-solving skills, and a slightly higher percentage, 59.1%, feel it encourages critical thinking abilities. moreover, 56.7% strongly agree that stem education improves collaboration and teamwork skills, while 52.4% believe it enhances communication skills. table 2 descriptive statistics of student perceptions on stem education aspect urban mean (sd) rural mean (sd) private mean (sd) public mean (sd) promotes curiosity and exploration 4.25 (1.10) 4.05 (1.17) 4.30 (1.08) 4.05 (1.18) encourages problem-solving skills 4.32 (1.02) 4.11 (1.10) 4.35 (1.02) 4.10 (1.09) encourages critical thinking abilities 4.35 (0.99) 4.21 (1.05) 4.38 (0.97) 4.20 (1.05) enhances collaboration and teamwork 4.18 (1.15) 4.08 (1.20) 4.22 (1.10) 4.10 (1.20) improves communication skills 4.15 (1.22) 3.92 (1.24) 4.17 (1.21) 3.93 (1.24) table 2 summarizes the descriptive statistics of student perceptions regarding various aspects of stem education. for instance, scores on “promotes curiosity and exploration” indicate a mean of 4.25 (sd = 1.10) for urban students versus 4.05 (sd = 1.17) for rural students. similar trends appear for problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication skills. kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 13 the data reveal that urban and private school students consistently report higher mean scores in key areas such as curiosity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. this suggests that resource-rich environments foster stronger positive perceptions of stem education and enhance the foundational skills necessary for creative and innovative thinking. in simple terms, when students are taught in settings that encourage exploration and hands-on learning, they feel more confident and better prepared to tackle real-world challenges. these findings directly address rq1 by demonstrating that effective stem education is pivotal in nurturing creativity and critical thinking. engagement in stem learning activities the assessment of student engagement in stem-related activities reveals significant participation across different settings. among students surveyed, a majority showed high levels of involvement in hands-on experiments or projects (56.1%), frequently collaborating with peers on stem tasks (53%), utilizing technology tools or software (51.8%), attending stem workshops, events, or competitions (51.8%), and exploring stem resources outside of school (51.2%). descriptive statistics further illustrate these trends: urban students reported slightly higher mean scores across all categories than rural counterparts, with private school students consistently indicating marginally higher engagement levels than public school students. these findings underscore a robust interest and active participation in stem learning among students, reflecting varied levels of engagement influenced by educational context. table 3 descriptive statistics of student engagement in stem learning activities aspect urban mean (sd) rural mean (sd) private mean (sd) public mean (sd) hands-on experiments 4.20 (1.20) 3.98 (1.27) 4.25 (1.19) 3.96 (1.28) collaborating with peers 4.22 (1.10) 4.08 (1.17) 4.27 (1.10) 4.03 (1.17) using technology tools 4.20 (1.15) 4.02 (1.18) 4.24 (1.14) 4.00 (1.18) attending stem workshops 4.10 (1.23) 3.92 (1.26) 4.14 (1.21) 3.91 (1.27) exploring stem resources 4.05 (1.20) 3.88 (1.25) 4.09 (1.22) 3.87 (1.26) table 3 summarizes student engagement across various stem activities. for example, the mean score for participation in hands-on experiments is 4.20 (sd = 1.20) among urban students compared to 3.98 (sd = 1.27) for rural students, with similar differences noted in collaborative work, technology use, attendance at stem workshops, and exploration of stem resources. higher engagement scores among urban and private school students underscore the critical role that enhanced facilities, better access to technology, and interactive teaching methods play in driving active participation. in practical terms, this means that students who are exposed to more dynamic and resourceful learning environments are more likely to be involved in stem activities, which, in turn, builds their problem-solving and innovation capacities. this directly supports rq3 by illustrating that geographical and institutional contexts significantly influence how effectively stem education fosters creative problem-solving skills. table 4 reports on aspects of creativity and innovation, including confidence in generating new ideas, exploring innovative solutions, interest in stem careers, and kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 14 improvements in problem-solving and critical thinking. urban students, for instance, report a mean confidence score of 4.22 (sd = 1.05) compared to 4.07 (sd = 1.09) for rural students, with private schools showing similar positive trends over public schools. the results indicate that students in urban and private settings not only feel more confident in generating new ideas but also show a stronger inclination toward pursuing stem careers. in other words, these students are more likely to see themselves as innovators and future leaders. this enhanced creativity and innovation is the direct outcome of engaging stem curricula that emphasize hands-on experiments, collaborative projects, and the effective use of technology. in relation to rq2, the insights suggest that differences in resources and teaching methods between private and public schools significantly shape students’ creative outcomes and career aspirations. table 4 descriptive statistics of student creativity and innovation skills in stem contexts aspect urban mean (sd) rural mean (sd) private mean (sd) public mean (sd) confident in ideas 4.22 (1.05) 4.07 (1.09) 4.27 (1.04) 4.04 (1.08) exploring innovative solutions 4.32 (1.01) 4.17 (1.06) 4.34 (1.00) 4.15 (1.06) interest in stem careers 4.10 (1.30) 3.89 (1.34) 4.15 (1.29) 3.86 (1.34) improve problem-solving skills 4.16 (1.18) 4.00 (1.20) 4.19 (1.17) 3.98 (1.19) enhanced critical and analytical thinking 4.18 (1.22) 4.00 (1.25) 4.21 (1.20) 3.99 (1.23) reliability and validity analysis the questionnaire’s reliability was assessed using cronbach’s alpha, which yielded an outstanding value of 0.9655, indicating excellent internal consistency among the items. this suggests that the questionnaire items consistently measure the intended constructs, effectively capturing the dimensions of students’ engagement, creativity, innovation, and perceptions regarding stem education. kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 15 figure 4 pca scatter plot: clustering of student response patterns principal component analysis (pca) was conducted to examine the construct validity of the questionnaire. pca is a statistical technique used to reduce the dimensionality of data while preserving as much variability as possible (yesilkaya et al., 2023). the scree plot, figure 6 indicated that two principal components should be retained, which together explained 62.2% and 5.9% of the total variance, respectively. the first component, accounting for a substantial proportion of the total variance, suggests that the questionnaire items measure a dominant underlying factor — likely representing the core aspects of students’ engagement and perceptions towards stem education. figures 4 and 5 further illustrate the clustering of responses and the distribution of scores along the primary component, respectively. kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 16 figure 5 histogram of principal component 1: distribution of engagement and perception scores the exceptional reliability and the clarity offered by the pca results not only validate our measurement tool but also reinforce the trustworthiness of the data. in layman’s terms, the survey effectively captures the key dimensions of stem engagement and creativity, ensuring that our subsequent interpretations and policy recommendations are built on a solid empirical foundation. integration of findings and addressing research questions our findings provide compelling evidence that stem education significantly enhances students’ creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills (rq1). moreover, our data indicate that private schoolspresumably benefiting from superior resources and more innovative pedagogical practicesyield more pronounced positive outcomes than public schools (rq2). in addition, the elevated levels of engagement and creative outputs observed among urban students underscore the critical role that modern educational infrastructure plays in fostering creative problem-solving abilities (rq3). these results not only substantiate the theoretical framework underpinning our study but also underscore the urgent need for targeted policy interventions to mitigate educational disparities across pakistan. kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 17 figure 6 scree plot: eigenvalue distribution of principal components discussion our findings provide critical insights into the state of stem education in pakistani middle schools, highlighting both its benefits and existing disparities. students generally hold positive perceptions of stem education, recognizing its role in enhancing essential skills such as curiosity, problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. these perceptions directly influence students’ engagement and long-term interest in stem fields. high levels of engagement, particularly in practical activities, were found to significantly strengthen students’ interest and sustained participation in stem learning. experiments and projects that are carried out in collaboration make clear the effectiveness of interactive and experiential learning of these skills. in the era of ai, the integration of technology in education — through e-learning tools during covid-19 (das et al., 2021), immersive stem learning (chng et al., 2023), urdu sign language translation (das et al., 2024), and predictive modeling techniques (abdrakhmanov et al., 2024; das, 2024; dutta et al., 2025; yang, 2022) — demonstrates its transformative role in addressing educational challenges. however, our research has indicated significant differences in stem education outcomes across educational setting. students from urban settings consistently reported higher engagement and positive perceptions than their rural counterparts. similarly, students from private schools were more engaged and showed greater perceived benefits from learning stem subjects than their public school counterparts. these disparities reflect the broader socio-economic and infrastructural challenges faced by rural and public schools in pakistan. urban and private schools generally benefit from better resources, more qualified teachers, and curricula aligned with modern educational needs, while rural and public schools remain underfunded, rely on outdated teaching methods, and lack essential resources such as laboratories and technology. kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 18 these discrepancies must be addressed to ensure equitable access to quality stem education for all students. closing resource and infrastructure gaps in rural and public schools is especially critical. this requires government funding, upgraded facilities, teacher training in modern pedagogy, and providing essential resources for learning, engineering, technology, and mathematics. partnerships with private organizations and ngos can further supplement and support these efforts. improvement in the quality of stem education at the school and college level would not only enhance student performance but also contribute to regional development, fostering innovation and economic growth. our findings also underscore the importance of including stem-based coursework within the middle school curriculum. incorporating hands-on laboratory experiments, group projects, and problem-solving drills into the curriculum will help instructors develop more active and pertinent learning environments. such approaches align with constructivist theories of learning, which emphasize experiential methods for building problemsolving and critical thinking skills. ultimately, these efforts will better prepare students with the competencies needed to thrive in a rapidly changing 21st-century world. policy recommendation the wide diffusion of best practices in stem calls for policy enhancements that prioritize providing educators with resources, followed by training on how to implement stem practices. this should include professional development programs on current stem teaching methods, the integration of technology in education, and strategies to foster creativity and innovation. curriculum developers should also work to align the national curriculum with global stem standards, ensuring that students are exposed to the latest technologies and best practices. to fully realize the benefits of stem education, schools must foster supportive learning environments that encourage inquiry, experimentation, and risk-taking. teachers play a pivotal role since their enthusiasm and expertise go a long way in influencing students’ attitudes toward stem subjects. in addition, schools should create opportunities for extracurricular engagement in stem activities like clubs, competitions, and workshops, to further cultivate their interests and skills. limitations and future research despite these findings, there are various limitations in our study that need to be overcome in future research. the reliance on self-report data introduces the possibility of bias, as responses may be influenced by social desirability or other factors. added to this is the fact that the crosssectional nature of our present study limits our ability to draw inferences about causality. longitudinal studies are needed to probe the impacts of stem education on students’ long-term creativity, innovation, and career trajectories. qualitative methods such as interviews and focus groups could provide even deeper insight. the interviews will yield information on experiences and student perceptions that might give an understanding of factors deeper than those involved in students’ stem education engagement and outcomes. conclusion the study depicts evidence of how stem education instills creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills in students during middle school in pakistan. it was observed through various test results that active engagement in different stem activities increased the capability of students to think more critically, approach problems in a creative manner, and function well kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 19 within a team. these skills are significant for preparing students to meet the challenges of the 21st century and to compete in the global labor market, underlining the transformational potential of stem education. at the same time, the research highlights significant inequalities in the quality of stem education across different educational contexts. a clear urban-rural divide was observed: schools in urban areas benefit from better resources, qualified teachers, and modern teaching methods, leading to greater student motivation and more positive perceptions of stem. on the other hand, rural schools often face inadequate infrastructure, outdated teaching practices, and a lack of stem facilities, which hinder student learning. bridging this gap will require targeted investments in rural education, facility improvement, expanded access to technology, and ongoing teacher training. public vs. private school differences private schools consistently achieve higher in stem subjects than their public peers. the reasons are, among others, smaller class sizes, better-trained educators, and curricula that are often more closely aligned with international standards. public schools struggle with outdated curricula, scarce finances, and limited extracurricular opportunities for stem subjects. for the gap to be bridged, there must be government policy reforms, more funding in public education, and public-private partnerships for resource and expertise sharing. gaps in the curriculum most stem curricula within schools are not designed to emphasize creativity and innovation. most teaching remains examination-oriented, restricting the exploratory and practical modes of learning in students. in this particular environment, experiential learning—through project-oriented assignments, teamwork, and problem-solving activities—can be ignited with the aim of fostering creative thinking. these changes would require curriculum developers to revise existing standards and incorporate interdisciplinary approaches to learning. the role of the teachers effective stem education depends on well-trained educators who foster curiosity and support continuous exploration and inquiry. new innovative stem pedagogies should be stressed during professional development, such as using technology effectively, project-based learning, and fostering critical thinking. this will eventually equip educators with the ability to shift away from rote learning toward a more dynamic classroom environment. this can be achieved with the incorporation and development of stem in middle school education in pakistan, which is a crucial factor in motivating the ‘future innovators and leaders.’ this study has brought to the limelight the need for multidimensional reforms, including curriculum revision, targeted investments, enhanced teacher training, and policies to reduce disparities and create a more inclusive and practical framework for stem education. these changes can empower a new generation capable of making meaningful contributions to pakistan’s technological, economic, and social sustainable development. kamlish & das: urban-rural stem education current issues in education, 26(2) 20 references abdi, a. i., omar, a. m., mahdi, a. o., osman, m. a., & asiimwe, c. 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(1989). social cognitive theory of organizational management. academy of management review, 14(3), 361–384. yang, c. c. (2022). explainable artificial intelligence for predictive modeling in healthcare. journal of healthcare informatics research, 6(2), 228–239. yesilkaya, b., sayilgan, e., yuce, y. k., perc, m., & isler, y. (2023). principal component analysis and manifold learning techniques for the design of brain-computer interfaces based on steady-state visually evoked potentials. journal of computational science, 68, 102000. zimmerman, b. j. (2000). self-efficacy: an essential motive to learn. contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 82–91. author’s notes kamlish orcid: 0009-0003-3526-0945 national university of sciences and technology (nust), pakistan email: kamlish@outlook.com khushal das orcid: 0000-0001-8833-0888 university of calabria, rende (cs), italy email: khushal.das@dimes.unical.it more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/b current issues in is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university https://creativecommons.org/licenses/b https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ figure 1 overview of pakistan’s education system by institution type (team, 2024) figure 2 geographical distribution of educational institutions, enrollments, and teachers (2021-22) (team, 2024) contextualizing stem education in pakistan perception, engagement, creativity, and innovation in stem education public vs. private schools and urban vs. rural settings in pakistan research questions gender-based dimensions in stem education theoretical framework stem education in pakistan: program structure, activities, and challenges survey design population and sampling data collection reliability and validity data analysis figure 3 data processing workflow for analyzing stem engagement ethical considerations demographic characteristics table 1 demographic characteristics of middle school students in pakistan (n=164) perceptions of stem education table 2 descriptive statistics of student perceptions on stem education engagement in stem learning activities table 3 descriptive statistics of student engagement in stem learning activities table 4 descriptive statistics of student creativity and innovation skills in stem contexts reliability and validity analysis figure 4 pca scatter plot: clustering of student response patterns figure 5 histogram of principal component 1: distribution of engagement and perception scores integration of findings and addressing research questions scree plot: eigenvalue distribution of principal components discussion conclusion references author’s notes bilingual cognition and growth mindset: a review of cognitive flexibility and its implications for dual-language education current issues in education, 22(2) 1 volume 22 issue 2 may 18, 2021 issn 1099-839x bilingual cognition and growth mindset: a review of cognitive flexibility and its implications for dual-language education kandice s. grote california state university northridge emily e. russell california state university northridge olivia bates california state university northridge rosemary gonzalez california state university northridge abstract: the united states has seen an increase in cultural and linguistic diversity of student populations. policy makers have looked toward existing research in dual language education, alternative curriculum, and bilingualism to support the needs of dual-language learners. in this paper, we review two areas of research that have implications for educational policy, and also have theoretical implications for early cognitive development. the first area focuses on cognitive flexibility in bilingual populations. the second area focuses on growth mindset. we highlight the parallels in these constructs, arguing that bilinguals may be uniquely receptive to growth mindset interventions due to their increased cognitive flexibility. we identify specific ways that growth mindset interventions could be applied to support dual-language learners. lastly, we argue that future research in both areas may provide researchers and educators with a better understanding of early cognitive development in bilingual populations and the emergence of growth mindset in all populations. keywords: dual language learners; bilingual advantage; growth mindset, multilingual education policy; cognitive flexibility citation: grote, k. s., russell, e. e., bates, o., & gonzalez, r. (2021). bilingual cognition and growth mindset: a review of cognitive flexibility and its implications for dual-language education. current issues in education, 22(2). http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1958 accepted: 3/19/2021 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1958 grote et al: bilingual cognition and growth mindset current issues in education, 22(2) 2 introduction over the past decade, the number of dual-language learners (dlls) in the united states has grown by 24% (park et al., 2017). dlls are defined as children 8 years and younger with at least one parent who speaks a language other than english at home. this population now makes up nearly one-third of all young children in the nation and more than 20% of the early childhood population in 24 states (park et al., 2017). the dll population is a subset of english-language learners (ells). ells are defined as students who are learning to speak english. they now represent approximately 1 in 10 students in public schools (sanchez, 2017). despite these large numbers, ells and dlls are less likely than their peers to enroll in high-quality early childhood education programs, which may delay readiness for kindergarten (park et al., 2017). without native-language support, students may continue to exhibit academic lags through elementary school and increased school dropout rates (mcfarland et al., 2018). these realities have fueled a movement towards supporting dual-language education and increasing its effectiveness. policy makers are currently looking to research for guidance on developing effective instructional approaches for diverse classrooms (sugarman & geary, 2018). states like california have passed legislation increasing the number of elementary dual-language education programs (e.g., the 2016 multilingual education act and the global 2030 initiative), but the transition will take time and effort (e.g., bilingual teacher training, curriculum changes, etc.). there are two promising areas of cognitive development research that may help policy makers and educators identify successful practices in the classroom. the first area of research focuses on the cognitive flexibility exhibited by bilinguals. many studies suggest that proficiency in two (or more) languages leads to enhanced executive function (ef) and metacognitive abilities, which in turn leads to enhanced problem solving (wiseheart et al., 2016) and memory abilities (kroll et al., 2012). by understanding the impact of bilingualism on children’s cognition, educators can create more specialized approaches for instructing dlls. the second area of research that may help identify successful practices in the classroom is the study of growth mindset (gm), which is the belief that one’s intelligence can improve. research suggests that gm may be especially valuable in helping students overcome academic challenges (dweck, 2000). indeed, a number of elementary schools have recently incorporated gm training into their curricula (claro & loeb, 2017). gm training may promote dlls’ academic persistence and success; however, research is scarce. in this review, we posit that bilingual students, including dl and/or el, may be uniquely receptive to gm interventions because they possess enhanced cognitive flexibility. further, we suggest that the integration of research on gm and the bilingual cognitive advantage has important theoretical and practical implications. first, we will review current literature on the bilingual cognitive advantage. then, we will introduce a new conceptual model of gm, highlighting parallels between proposed components of gm and the bilingual cognitive advantage, and examine current methods of measuring gm. lastly, we suggest possible gm interventions for dl and el students, and their parents and teachers. the bilingual cognitive advantage peal and lambert (1962) were the first to document the "intellectual advantage” of bilinguals. the authors compared monolingual french and bilingual french-english children on a battery of cognitive tests and found that bilinguals outperformed monolingual peers, and displayed enhanced mental flexibility. there is now a large body of research suggesting that, compared to monolinguals, bilinguals possess enhanced attention (soveri et al., 2011; zhou & grote et al: bilingual cognition and growth mindset current issues in education, 22(2) 3 krott, 2016), ef (blom et al., 2014; brito et al., 2014), creativity (kharkhurin, 2009, 2010), metalinguistic awareness (friesen & bialystok, 2012), and memory (brito et al., 2014; schroeder & marian, 2012). these advantages are present throughout the lifespan (bialystok et al., 2008). currently ef is considered both an example of cognitive flexibility and a potential mechanism driving the bilingual cognitive advantage. bilinguals are thought to develop enhanced ef because they are managing their multiple languages all the time (costa et al., 2009). several findings support the hypothesis that bilinguals’ languages are active simultaneously (kroll & dussias 2013, thierry & wu 2007; dijkstra, 2005) and that, in addition to regulating their own language use, bilinguals need to attend to the language of the other speaker, and choose the correct language in which to respond to, while suppressing the interference of other languages. thus, a bilingual speaker’s ability to construct explicit representations of linguistic knowledge may result in an increased ability to control and process information. this cognitive flexibility may lend itself to flexibility and advantages in gm. research on theory of mind, metacognition, ef, and attention support this possibility. another interesting finding regarding bilinguals is that theory of mind emerges earlier among bilingual populations. theory of mind is a form of perspective taking, specifically the ability to ascribe mental states to others (premack & woodruff, 1978). for example, kovács (2009) found that more than twice as many 2and 3-year-old romanian-hungarian bilingual children passed a false-belief test than intelligence-matched 2 and 3-year-old romanian monolingual children. several studies also provide evidence that bilingualism accelerates theory of mind development (diaz & farrar, 2017; farhadian et al., 2010; goetz, 2003; han & lee, 2013); bilinguals’ enhanced theory of mind is correlated with higher ef (bialystok & senman, 2004; goetz, 2003; kovács, 2009). studies suggest that the degree of ef is a significant predictor of performance on theory of mind tasks (devine & huges, 2014), particularly those involving attentional control. enhanced attentional control could serve to regulate one’s own mental state including their own beliefs and knowledge, while also directing attention to someone else’s mental state (devine & huges, 2014; schroeder, 2018). theory of mind not only involves the coordination of ef processes, but also reasoning, and conceptual skills (carlson & moses, 2001; carlson et al., 1998; frye et al., 1995; sabbagh et al., 2006; wellman et al., 2001). taken together, this research suggests that young bilinguals possess enhanced attention, metacognition, and cognitive flexibility before they enroll in elementary school. importantly, these are all proposed components of gm. therefore, it is possible that the bilingual cognitive advantage also includes gm. in other words, bilingual populations may possess increased frequency of growth mindset and be especially receptive to gm interventions. however, exploring this possibility further necessitates a careful examination of existing research on gm. growth mindset and cognitive flexibility growth mindsets can be defined as implicit beliefs about the malleability of intelligence—specifically how people perceive their own and others’ intelligence (dweck, 2006). carol dweck first introduced the idea of growth mindset (see dweck & leggett, 1988, for review), and contrasted it with the idea of fixed mindset, the belief that intelligence is fixed and unchanging (dweck, 2000). a large body of work has identified multiple aspects of growth mindset, including increased cognitive flexibility, metacognition (rattan et al., 2018), motivation and goal planning (bostwick et al., 2017) and perceptions of ability and motivation (schmidt et al., 2017). grote et al: bilingual cognition and growth mindset current issues in education, 22(2) 4 a new model of gm research on gm has spanned across multiple disciplines, including psychology and education. across studies, inconsistent operational definitions of gm have led to inconsistent findings. although some researchers and educators tout the positive outcomes associated with having gm (e.g., boaler, 2013; yettick et al., 2016), others question the role of gm in increasing cognitive flexibility—and even its validity as a construct (bahník & vranka, 2017; dixson et al., 2017; orosz et al., 2017). to determine the validity of gm, and the usefulness of gm interventions in educational settings, particularly those involving dlls, the findings of gm research must be systematically organized. to this end, we created a new conceptual model of gm (see figure 1). through a thorough review of the literature, we identified proposed components of gm that have been supported by data. we then grouped these components into three domains: cognitive, social, and behavioral. we believe this model provides more clear and comprehensive answers to the questions, “what is gm?” and “how is gm nurtured within an individual?”. the model also serves to highlights parallel between gm and the bilingual cognitive advantage. we can identify a number of components of gm (e.g., metacognition, attention, and ef) that are also abilities in which bilingual individuals excel. it is these commonalities that should be investigated further, as they may carry important implications for academic interventions for el and dl populations. we elaborate on the model below. figure 1 proposed growth mindset model components and subcomponents the cognitive domain encompasses components of gm having to do with an individual’s mental functions and flexibility (ravenscroft et al., 2012), specifically ef and attention (schroder et al., 2017) as well as perceptions of intelligence as malleable. research has shown grote et al: bilingual cognition and growth mindset current issues in education, 22(2) 5 that belief in the power of “yet” enhances individuals’ ability to apply effective learning strategies in the face of academic and linguistic challenges (blackwell et al., 2007). the power of “yet” is a type of cognitive reframe and refers to a shift in thought that expands what is possible. it is widely known in the field of cognitive behavioral therapy and the application of cognitive restructuring that shifting one's thoughts can alter one's emotions and behaviors (e.g., knapp & beck, 2008). this process can also apply to beliefs about one’s academic potential. using the words “not yet,” to contextualize a failure emphasizes to the students that the outcome is not final (dweck, 2006). framing failure as temporary may inspire hope of future success and thus increase students’ persistence. a concept that dovetails with the power of yet is the idea of “the brain as a muscle,” which challenges the commonly-held naive theory that biology trumps experience (dweck, 2008). in other words, using the phrase “the brain is a muscle” can begin to counter the cognitive schema that intelligence is fixed. the social domain of gm encompasses the ways in which social partners or norms may influence individual effort as well as the individuals’ identity in relation to others. it encompasses effort praised by others, which emphasizes how external feedback can influence our formation and maintenance of gm (dweck, 2007). if only the outcome of effort is praised, individuals may learn to value the outcome rather than the experience of learning. they may seek tasks that prove their intelligence and avoid ones that do not (dweck, 2006). they may even hide their mistakes (nussbaum & dweck, 2007). in contrast, individuals who receive external praise for the effort will be more likely to engage with and seek challenges and be less concerned with how they appear or compare socially. identity speaks to this outcome and the social elements that influences our mindsets and our academic perception of ourselves as learners. for example, the perception of failure as an opportunity could impact both a selfand social-identity whereby individuals who view failure as an opportunity may seek to learn from others versus be threatened by their success (dweck, 2006). the behavioral domain encompasses individuals’ actions that exemplify and/or sustain gm. persistence speaks to an individual’s ability to continue on a challenging task. this component may also include increases in strategy use, overall motivation, and overall performance (o’rourke et al., 2014). we found a similar series of behavioral traits in the component of grit (duckworth et al., 2007). like gm, grit is a multifaceted construct. duckworth et al. (2007) discuss grit as both passion and perseverance. therefore, we suggest that grit falls under both the social domain (e.g., passion and courage) of gm as well the behavioral domain (e.g., perseverance and action) of gm. measuring the gm framework while each component in the proposed gm model has been investigated experimentally, no studies have examined them in regard to dl and el populations. in addition, studies on gm have relied on brief, self-report questionnaires, which are limited in capturing cognitive processes through a set of uniform tasks in an experimental design. in other words, self-report questionnaires (a) make it difficult to identify specific areas and components of gm; and (b) have limited validity/reliability among youth who are not yet literate or balanced bilinguals. recently, studies have begun to use more objective measures of gm, including neurological paradigms (moser et al., 2011; schroder et al., 2017). for instance, mangels, butterfield, lamb, good, and dweck (2006) tested adults’ general knowledge on a variety of academic domains (e.g., art and music history, world and us history, etc.) and measured brain activation via erp in addition to self-report questionnaires. the researchers found that the participants’ beliefs grote et al: bilingual cognition and growth mindset current issues in education, 22(2) 6 influenced learning success through increased attention and conceptual processing and that participants were more likely to correct their mistakes on a surprise retest (mangels et al., 2006). moser, schroder, heeter, moran, and lee (2011) extended these initial findings by identifying evidence of conscious attention allocation towards errors, and overall improved performance during a surprise retest. both of these studies suggest a relationship between attention and gm. schroder, fisher, lin, lo, danovitch, and moser (2017) replicated this previous correlational work and found growth-minded children also demonstrated better accuracy after mistakes (mangels et al., 2006; moser et al., 2011). these studies aimed to identify how beliefs influenced attention on a moment-to-moment basis and provide support for a neurocognitive model of a gm. the findings of these studies on the cognitive flexibility associated with gm may inform our understanding of the cognitive flexibility associated with bilingualism. cognitive flexibility could speak directly to the ef cognitive flexibility. investigating similarities between the mechanisms underlying both gm and ef may help researchers identify more appropriate measures for dl and el populations. the first author of this paper is pursuing two veins of research that investigate the development of gm, and the effectiveness of gm interventions in younger populations. the first aim is to assess gm in younger children who may struggle with languageor literacy-based paradigms. focusing on younger populations offers the opportunity to understand when gm emerges and how gm interventions might be implemented. thus far, only a few studies have found that gm is present in kindergarten and first-grade populations (cain & dweck, 1995; smiley & dweck, 1995). understanding how and when gm develops among younger children may be especially useful given that initial transitions from pre-k to formal educational settings often have the most impact on academic achievement (blackwell et al., 2007; dweck et al., 1995). we have created a series of vignettes for use with 4to 6-year-old children that we believe improves on existing measures of gm in younger populations in a number of ways. first, the vignettes are designed to be read aloud to children and are coupled with pictures to circumnavigate any language or literacy barriers. each vignette describes a problem with a particular outcome (e.g., a child character is asked by the teacher to count to ten [problem] and the child counts to 10 without making a mistake [outcome]). the problems themselves are cognitive, social, and behavioral in nature—in other words, not limited to academic performance, which is a realm in which children of this age are only just becoming exposed to. after being read the vignette, children are asked to reason about the outcome; their attributions of the child character’s successes and failures are classified as consistent with gm (e.g., the character’s practice, hard work, increased effort) or fixed mindset (e.g., the character’s luck or natural talent). this measure will help us determine when cognitive aspects of gm emerge for monolingual and bilingual children. however, we hypothesize that, compared to monolingual children, bilingual children will exhibit gm earlier and more frequently, due to their enhanced theory of mind and ef. the second area of our research seeks to identify the potential benefit of a gm intervention to enhance persistence in completing a challenging problem-solving task. in this study, 4to 6-year-old children’s baseline gm is measured using the methodology described above. next, they are asked to participate in a challenging task, during which their degree of persistence is measured. children then participate in a gm intervention, followed by another challenging task. lastly, children’s gm is assessed. the intention is to compare pre-and-post intervention persistence and gm scores. we predict that an intervention will increase both grote et al: bilingual cognition and growth mindset current issues in education, 22(2) 7 persistence and gm scores, but that bilingual participants will demonstrate more flexibility in their perceptions of intelligence and persist longer when challenged. this study builds upon previous research by introducing a novel approach to testing the behavioral components of gm. both of these studies are in the early stages of piloting, but we are confident they will be integral first steps towards enhancing our ability to assess gm among younger populations, especially those who are bilingual, and improve methodological challenges in assessing gm. importantly, each of these studies are coupled with cognitive flexibility tasks commonly assessed with bilingual populations to identify potential relationships between elements of gm and bilingual cognition. however, given our review of ef, attentional control, cognitive flexibility, and reasoning, we see potential for a bilingual gm advantage. we cannot claim that bilingualism leads to gm, but we do suggest that learning more about the mechanisms of cognitive flexibility in bilingual populations may tell us more about how increased cognitive flexibility could benefit all children. additionally, these studies may provide additional information about how language impacts the brain and how children’s educational success can be attributed to learning more than one language. implications for dual language academic achievement and intervention although definitions of gm vary across studies, there is agreement that gm ideology has implications for improving learning environments, class culture, and academic intervention (schmidt et al., 2017; rattan et al., 2018). likewise, many studies suggest that possessing a gm can be advantageous in academic settings (e.g., blackwell et at., 2007; bostwick et al., 2017; schmidt et al., 2017). conversely, possessing a fixed mindset can lead to lack of persistence during moments of increased difficulty, and feelings of failure or defeat (dweck & leggett 1988; rattan et al., 2018; reavis et al., 2018; wang et al., 2019). for this reason, promoting gm in students has become a popular academic intervention (blackwell et al., 2007; chao et al., 2017; dixson et al., 2017; enriquez et al., 2017; schmidt et al., 2017). however, only recently have studies begun to investigate how students’ mindsets predict their learning or achievement (claro & loeb, 2017). two studies have looked at this relationship on a larger scale (claro & loeb, 2017; yeager et al., 2019). both studies identified the long-term economic and social impacts of gm in diverse populations. the findings of yeager et al. (2019) suggest that gm interventions need not be within the classroom at all. subjects participated in a short online gm intervention, which taught them that intellectual abilities can be developed. training resulted in improved grades among 6,320 lower-achieving ninth grade students. these results are especially encouraging because they suggest that gm interventions can be successfully implemented with minimal funding, teacher training, and time taken away from the students’ other school-related tasks. a recent report from the brookings institute assessed the responses to a gm measure from 125,000 students in third-eighth grade, across five school districts in california (claro & loeb, 2017). this study found students with a stronger gm learn more in a given year compared to those with lower gm. it also found that traditionally underserved students including students in poverty, ells, and ethnic-minority students, are less likely to hold a gm (claro & loeb, 2017). although this study revealed that all groups with a gm learn more over the course of a year than those who do not have a gm, further research is needed to identify how mindsets vary across socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and are particularly important for at-risk populations (claro & loeb, 2017). grote et al: bilingual cognition and growth mindset current issues in education, 22(2) 8 additionally, this area of research may reveal why at-risk populations are prone to low levels of gm given factors such as perceptions of structural barriers of success (e.g., perceptions of inequality in accessing opportunity, stereotype threat, etc.; claro & loeb, 2017). in the united states, ells make up a large part of these at-risk populations, and dll programs seem to have offered some recourse for these programs, however it is clear that more is needed to close the achievement gap. dl programs are one way to remedy these gaps. studies suggest that students enrolled in dl programs excel academically (valentino & reardon, 2015) and emotionally (lindholm-leary & borsato, 2001) and develop cross-cultural competence (lindsey et al., 2009). dl programs can also close the achievement gap for ells (collier & thomas, 2012). one approach to addressing this gap is to identify the role of language proficiency in cognitive development. we know that balanced bilinguals (i.e., those with proficiency in both languages) demonstrate more success on challenging tasks and tasks that have higher cognitive demand (bialystok et al., 2005; yoshida, 2008). research suggests this is due to the higher demand of switching between languages (bialystok, 2017). by investigating the relationship between language use and cognitive flexibility among bilingual populations, researchers may be able to identify potential gm interventions for language learners. together, both ef (best et al., 2011) and gm are significant predictors of academic performance and gm may be likely to respond with enhanced resilience when challenged and show greater learning and achievement in the face of difficulty (dweck, 2006). since gm studies have been conducted at the elementary school level, we recommend researchers examine the effectiveness of early gm interventions within educational settings particularly during the initial transitions into formal schooling. these years can be challenging for children and often predict later achievement and success within school settings (duncan et al., 2007). educators and policy makers alike may become increasingly invested in examining gm interventions to support high quality early childhood multilingual education. therefore, now may be an opportune time to conduct this research given the increasing need to support ells (park et al., 2018) and dls (department of education, 2015). incorporating alternative methods to predict student success would require the development of evaluative measures of gm, particularly for accountability and assessment (goldhaber & özek, 2019). thus, multilingual learning environments provide a rich context to explore these questions in order to optimize language learning environments. there is a clear need to better support native language development in the classroom. implementing gm interventions may address these concerns, and may inevitably be applicable to all early education populations. there is still very little we know regarding what mindsets children hold, at what age, how mindsets vary from grade-to-grade, the validity and reliability of gm measures, and if whether gms are significant predictors of academic learning. what we know so far, does show promise of immediate practical application and the benefit of an approach aimed towards helping all children become intrinsically motivated to learn. practical implications in this paper, we have highlighted gm in bilingual individuals as a promising area of research, with important theoretical implications. we turn our attention now to some possible benefits of using gm inventions in educational settings, especially those with el and dl populations. el and early dl populations face a unique challenge: they are often labeled as “behind”—linguistically and academically—upon entering the classroom. many ells and early grote et al: bilingual cognition and growth mindset current issues in education, 22(2) 9 dlls feel stigmatized and inferior compared to more proficient speakers (banse & palacios, 2017). additionally, their lack of proficiency results in negative preconceptions of ability and intelligence (jones & mixon, 2016), resulting in a lack of motivation for learning (williams, 2014), which may result in more of a fixed mindset. for example, dlls sometimes experience initial vocabulary delays in one language, which may lead to initial lower academic performance (meisel, 2004; paradis et al., 2011; pearson et al., 1997). additionally, dlls often exhibit lower scores in literacy in english due to their ongoing acquisition of two vocabularies (williams, 2014). while younger dlls eventually catch up and exceed monolingual scores in later grades (scheffner hammer et al., 2014), these initial dips may leave dlls feeling inadequate, or behind their peers (williams, 2014) and therefore may leave dl programs prematurely (ackerman & tazi, 2015). efforts toward addressing the achievement gap for ells have often relied on segregation from mainstream classrooms either in the form of (1) temporary instruction (e.g., ells are removed for additional instruction) or (2) separate dedicated classrooms (e.g., sei programs; jones & mixon, 2016). however, research suggests these efforts only exacerbate the stigma of being an ell (jones & mixon, 2016) and that separation within schools lead to feelings of social isolation from the greater school community (klingner et al., 1998). in contrast, researchers suggest greater inclusivity of peers within the classroom, less division, and more positive self-esteem when ells are enrolled in dl programs (plazza et al., 2015). research found that when ell students are instructed in both their primary language and english, they achieve higher scores on tests of reading and math in english when compared to ells in monolingual english-only settings (genesee et al. 2006). however, dl programs are not without their own challenges. dl programs face obstacles in identifying and implementing effective approaches in the classroom to help students through early language dips and maintain motivation for attaining dual language proficiency (ackerman & tazi, 2015). some programs have attempted to utilize vocabulary-building interventions, but findings suggest that they may not be powerful enough to close the achievement gap (marulis & neuman, 2013). in-class gm interventions for ells and dlls may be a way to maximize the benefits of dl programs, by reducing fixed mindsets and improving levels of positive beliefs and approaches towards the learning process as a whole. the potential benefits of gm interventions may also be applicable for both dll educators and parents. developmentally appropriate gm pedagogy one potential solution to address the challenges faced by ells and dlls is to integrate research-based gm pedagogy in the classroom. for example, brainology is a 4-unit program (40 mins per unit) for children ages 10-14 that integrates gm components (e.g., the brain is a muscle, praising effort to improve self-efficacy) and walks the learner through understanding how the brain grows and learns over time (mindset works inc., 2017). this concept presents learning as something of a long-term ongoing learning marathon, rather than an immediate sprint. there is some promising data suggesting the brainology training can shift gm – at least in the short-term. after the success of brainology, another program was developed for younger children. growing early mindsets (gem), released in 2019, adapts elements of the brainology program for children in prek-3rd learning environments, integrating gm, socio-emotional learning, and mindfulness principles and practices (mindset works inc., 2017). the added element of socioemotional learning and mindfulness is especially applicable since younger children are beginning to self-regulate their emotions and develop their sense of self at this time. more research is grote et al: bilingual cognition and growth mindset current issues in education, 22(2) 10 needed to determine the long-term effects of these programs, but gm training with younger children could be useful – especially so for ells and dlls who face early language learning challenges. we suggest two critical features of a successful pedagogy: a) emphasizing different components of gm at developmentally appropriate times; and b) providing long-term scaffolding to promote long-term retention of ideas and change in mindset. given that successful dl programs begin early (pre-k) and build momentum through high school, the implementation of gm pedagogy should be ongoing and evolve to meet the unique demands required for dual language acquisition. to accomplish this, we suggest introducing gm components that map onto children’s natural developmental milestones. for example, some gm components may be more salient to younger language learners than others. in preschool or kindergarten, children who are beginning to recognize and control their own feelings and emotions may be more adept at identifying and contextualizing challenges or problems before they can develop gm strategies to overcome them. educators can connect the emotional component of learning to help foster children’s sense of agency and self-efficacy to build a future framework for how to approach future problems or challenges (enriquez et al., 2017). this can be done by reading stories about characters experiencing challenges and creating games around identifying those challenges. once identified, educators can scaffold concepts of resilience, optimism, and early goal setting, in addition to celebrating initial milestones (lippard et al., 2018). these components of gm are related to the process of learning and directly mirror the process of emotional development among this age group (e.g., recognizing and managing your emotions, planning responses, etc.). as children develop, early gm pedagogy can begin to form schemas of neuroplasticity “the brain is a muscle.” the idea of the brain as a muscle might be particularly salient because it is a concrete analogy that children can understand. educators have also introduced the idea/metaphor that problems and challenges are chances to “grow our brains,” and that this experience can make people feel strong, happy, and excited to learn new things (pawlina & stanford, 2011). therefore, by engaging a child’s imagination through playful and relatable images, gm interventions may also result in children becoming encouraged to make multiple attempts at a hard tasktasks that they tackle because they are framed as “strengthening their brains.” in later years, when children strive towards independence, a developmentallyappropriate gm intervention may reinforce efforts towards self-efficacy. the benefit of this intervention would be two-fold: a) different components of gm are emphasized at developmentally appropriate times; and b) the spaced training would promote long-term retention of ideas and change in mindset. these approaches are crucial for multicultural environments that require more cognitively complex thinking to develop caring about others who exhibit differences linguistically and culturally (hanson et al., 2016). gm curriculum also supports children’s ethno-racial socialization in a context where dl programs value both languages. by growing in the ability to engage multiple perspectives and strategies for solving problems may counter the myth of “one right way” of doing things (enriquez et al., 2017) and support greater concern for others who exhibit differences linguistically and culturally (hanson et al., 2016). dll educators’ professional development dl educators experience ongoing, targeted professional development that ensures they possess the expertise that is necessary for dlls’ academic success (ortiz & fráquiz, 2017). dll grote et al: bilingual cognition and growth mindset current issues in education, 22(2) 11 educators are often overwhelmed by the limitations of bilingual programs, including but not limited to, availability of classroom materials in both languages, everchanging policy changes, and pressure to integrate research and pedagogy (ackerman & tazi, 2015). unlike english-only programs, few dl programs are housed in public schools and are often found within charter and independent schools (christy et al., 2014; u.s. department of education, 2015). coincidently, dl educators, like their students, may also feel inadequate within the demands of these language learning environments. therefore, gm interventions may also have bidirectional benefits for educators in regard to in-classroom practice, professional development and maintaining positive morale. dl educators must be up-to-date on policy recommendations, and newly available resources for dl programs. coincidently, dl educators, like their students, may also feel inadequate within the demands of these language learning environments. therefore, gm interventions may also have bidirectional benefits for educators in regard to in-classroom practice, professional development and maintaining positive morale. teacher efficacy matters, especially in implementing the interventions we have described. to achieve much of what has been described thus far, educators must also possess gm (dweck & leggett, 1988; fraser, 2018). studies suggest that teachers with lower teaching efficacy are also less engaging with children (lippard et al., 2018). this suggests that teachers may need support as individuals to effectively engage children. if dl educators are fixed in their own teaching methodology, they may not take advantage of opportunities to affirm and validate dl linguistic resources and language learning experiences. like their students, dl educators may already be feeling ongoing pressure surrounding proficiency and testing and may benefit from gm themselves when feeling overwhelmed. for this reason, we need educators equipped with gm strategies and efficacy to take on the multiple challenges they face within multilingual educational environments. we suggest that gm interventions become an integrative part of the dl teacher-training process so that educators may feel confident integrating gm into existing classroom pedagogy. like any k-12 teacher, each educator must possess the necessary foundation knowledge to teach their students effectively. therefore, educators also need to be well-versed in gm and its components. this gm expertise may help dl educators take on the immediate and upcoming challenges within dl education with a proactive approach that will help in decreasing negative feelings toward the ongoing changes within multilingual education. the potential here is to increase self-efficacy for the educator so that they can model gm for students in the classroom and effectively encourage parents to support gm at home. teachers can do this by showing enthusiasm for learning new things and bring awareness to fellow teachers, students, and parents, to the times when effort and practice yielded positive results. dl parents dual language learning is most effective when the support for learning two languages continues at home (lindholm-leary, 2005). several studies support parental involvement both at the school and the home, and in some cases incorporate the community. ideally, gm curriculum would support both the child in the classroom and at home in developing biliteracy. parents of dlls are often worried about the timing and trajectory of their children's language acquisition. parents are often dismayed by low test scores, and sometimes prematurely remove their children from dl programs before their children have experienced their eventual vocabulary gains (jones & mixon, 2016). for example, english-only parents who enroll their grote et al: bilingual cognition and growth mindset current issues in education, 22(2) 12 kindergartener who is in a 90/10 model (where 10% is english instruction), may immediately be concerned their child’s lack of english proficiency. in some circumstances, older el parents may be asked to share with younger parents to trust the process of language acquisition and share their own experiences with early language lags (ackerman & tazi, 2015). alternatively, staff and educators may attempt to teach the parents about dl models and the process of biliteracy development in this context. however, neither of these approaches may be sufficient to yield long-term results. dl schools are already overburdened and are often tasked with parental outreach and recruitment. one way to ease this burden is to provide gm interventions for parents in an effort to help them understand that language learning is an ongoing process. for example, if parents were to experience a gm intervention, they would learn that the brain as a muscle and incremental growth of intelligence is similar to their child’s linguistic experiences. over time, their vocabulary will grow, just like their brain. gm interventions may also assist parents of early-grade dlls that the arch of language proficiency takes time and feel encouraged to contribute rather than doubt the dl process entirely. we would also recommend that these gm interventions for parents integrate the families’ native language to help promote school-based interventions and to help promote at-home support for children’s learning (mendez & westerberg, 2012). one possibility is to provide take-home short stories as part of the school curriculum that feature gm and fixed mindset scenarios for parents to read to their children. these stories may be formatted similar to our current research. through this method, parents can support discussions of mindsets while simultaneously supporting their native language and literacy development. by slowly integrating gm across each of these populations, we may help ease the transition of dual language acquisition for all. conclusion by proposing a new conceptual model of gm, we have identified promising areas of research on both gm and the bilingual cognitive advantage. we have argued that studying gm in younger and bilingual populations presents a unique and important opportunity to learn more about how all children develop cognitive flexibility. we have proposed specific ways in which dlls, and their educators and parents, may benefit from gm interventions. however, prior to significant investment in gm-oriented curricula, further research and improved methodology is necessary. in sum, by understanding how gm emerges in early development and across demographics, we may ensure that all children persist in their learning and 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(2016). data trimming procedure can eliminate bilingual cognitive advantage. psychonomic society, inc., 23, 1221-1230. https://www.edweek.org/ew/projects/mindset-in-the-classroom-a-national-study.html grote et al: bilingual cognition and growth mindset current issues in education, 22(2) 19 author notes kandice s. grote, ph.d. assistant professor, child and adolescent development california state university northridge kandice.grote@csun.edu emily e. russell, ph.d. associate professor, child and adolescent development california state university northridge emily.russell@csun.edu olivia bates, b.s. olivia.bates.347@my.csun.edu rosemary gonzalez, ph.d. professor, child and adolescent development & chicana/o studies rosemary.gonzalez@csun.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. mailto:kandice.grote@csun.edu mailto:emily.russell@csun.edu mailto:olivia.bates.347@my.csun.edu mailto:rosemary.gonzalez@csun.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ current issues in education 25(2) volume, issue 25(2) november 22, 2024 issn 1099-839x editorial introduction: in the face of urgency, making space for the emerging victoria desimoni arizona state university courtney stone arizona state university minji kim arizona state university tipsuda chaomuangkhong arizona state university abstract: this editorial introduction reflects on the challenges and complexities facing education amidst political, social, and environmental crises, emphasizing the need to engage with emerging solutions rather than being paralyzed by urgency. in the context of the current multicrisis, it envisions cie as a beacon of hope—a space to step back and recognize emerging efforts. we call for slowing down, not as a passive act but as an active effort to nurture the possibilities arising from these crises. the introduction highlights the five articles in this issue, featuring scholars addressing real problems in education, exploring alternatives, and uncovering unexpected possibilities. from teaching white nationalism in the trump era to navigating the challenges faced by women in online doctoral programs, or examining skateboarding as a counterculture in higher education, these studies illuminate the layered realities of education and society. keywords: current issues in education; emerging possibilities; multicrisis; unexpected possibilities; complexity. citation: desimoni, v., stone, c., kim, m., & chaomuangkhong, t. (2024). editorial introduction: in the face of urgency, making space for the emerging. current issues in education 25(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2302 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2302 current issues in education 25(2) 2 editorial introduction: in the face of urgency, making space for the emerging in this second issue of vol. 25 in current issues in education (cie), we continue a journey that began with the inaugural volume in 1998. produced and led by doctoral students at mary lou fulton teachers college of arizona state university, cie is an open-access, peerreviewed academic journal dedicated to advancing scholarly dialogue on pressing issues in education. this issue continues that tradition, bringing together five thought-provoking articles that explore different challenges and possibilities within education, offering fresh perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches that enrich our understanding of the field. as an interdisciplinary journal that creates space for a variety of approaches and perspectives on education topics, cie is open to diverse theoretical views, methodological approaches, and submission formats. this issue reflects our commitment to this openness, with methodologies spanning from a systematic literature review (greta g. freeman and brooke l. hardin) and critical theoretical analysis (eric m. davidson) to collaborative case study research (robby lee robinette), reflections on educators’ perspectives teaching about white nationalism, grounded in critical race theory (crt), exploring pedagogical approaches and impact of the anti-racist teaching (beth ribet and leslie bunnage), and narrative inquiry with thematic analysis (staci gilpin and mckenzie rabenn). this rich mix of methodologies speaks to the value of an inclusive, interdisciplinary journal that brings diverse voices into dialogue. theoretical perspectives also reflect this diversity, encompassing frameworks such as crt, intersectionality theory, and critical analysis. as we continue this tradition of 26 years of publishing scholarship, this issue comes at a time of profound uncertainty and instability, marked by global political, social, and environmental crises. globally, ongoing injustices and inequalities affect the purpose and potential of education and access to it. the war in gaza is so devastating that it is projected to set back the education of children and youth by up to five years, potentially leading to a lost generation of palestinian youth deeply impacted by permanent trauma (unrwa, 2024). in afghanistan, september 2024 marked three years since the taliban re-deprived women from education beyond grade 6 (fetrat, 2024), erasing decades of progress toward educational access and equal opportunities for women. this is a direct attack on women’s rights with long-lasting effects on afghan society. in the same month, south korea faced an alarming escalation of its deepfake crisis, with students at more than 500 schools involved in generating or possessing aigenerated explicit content targeting female students (smith & brake, 2024). this disturbing trend mirrors the nth room case in 2018–2020, which involved blackmail and cybersex trafficking (mackenzie & choi, 2024) and underscores persistent failures to address systemic inequities. the recurrence of these crises highlights the urgent need for school reforms that foster safer and more equitable environments for women. in venezuela, increased poverty, hyperinflation, and heightened emigration—perpetuated by a dictatorship that claimed to win democratic elections again this past july—have caused a serious crisis of teacher loss (moleiro, 2024), undermining the capacity of schools to respond to students’ needs. additionally, climate disasters caused by global warming are disrupting children's access to education all around the globe, especially in countries lacking infrastructure like cooling systems or resilient school buildings. events like wildfires, floods, and earthquakes destroy schools, and even resourceful nations face challenges. for example, in north carolina, thousands of students missed over a month of classes this fall due to hurricane helene, which damaged infrastructure and hindered online learning options (wong, 2024). not to mention, the lasting effects of covid-19 on educators’ and students’ mental health remain significant, with current issues in education 25(2) 3 many still seeking ways to recover, particularly those from low-income and disadvantaged communities (paun, 2024). in the united states, the potential impacts of the second trump administration loom large, threatening to exacerbate existing inequities. policies aiming to dismantle the department of education (alfonseca, 2024), cut federal funding for schools teaching critical race theory (meltzer, 2024), and ban transgender female athletes from participating in school sports (migdon, 2024), are just a few examples of proposed changes that undermine efforts toward equity and inclusion in education. this moment calls for strategic and collective resistance—not merely opposing these measures but also finding ways to advance the field of education and support areas under attack. it is in this context of urgency that we envision cie becoming a beacon of hope in the coming years—a space to step back and recognize emerging efforts. there are countless researchers, practitioners, politicians, and activists working to create an education system that addresses these crises and advocates for those most negatively affected and vulnerable. echoing bayo akomolafe, we want cie to serve as a space for slowing down, attending to, and amplifying these ongoing efforts to make education better. it is no longer time to rush through the contested world blinded by fury and anger – however worthwhile these are. now, we think, is the time to ‘retreat’ into the real work of reclamation, to re-member again our humanity through the intimacy of our relationships. the time is very urgent – we must slow down. (akomolafe, n.d.) this call to slow down is not about taking a passive stand but an invitation to nurture the possibilities emerging from these crises. it reminds us to look beyond the noise of the moment and to focus on the constructive responses already happening. journals like cie serve as spaces for these efforts, providing a platform for scholars to present their work towards resilience and transformation. the title of this editorial reflects that shift—from being paralyzed by the urgency to highlighting the powerful and creative responses emerging from it. recognizing that “we have gotten so distracted by the urgent, that we stopped listening to the emergent” (“becoming monster opening ceremony,” 2024), we invite contributors and readers to embrace this perspective too: to acknowledge the challenges while engaging with the innovations and solutions already taking shape and embracing unexpected possibilities. this issue reflects this approach, featuring the work of scholars presenting real problems in education, thinking of alternatives, and revealing unexpected possibilities. for instance, gilpin and rabenn, in their article “balancing acts: navigating the complexities of female online doctoral journeys,” explore the unique struggles women face in navigating online higher education programs and offer reflections on navigating such spaces as rooted in intersectionality theory to highlight the malleability of privilege. using narrative inquiry, their research brings attention to systemic barriers, including limited access to research opportunities and collaborative spaces, while highlighting the power of storytelling to shed light on these complex realities. by sharing the stories of these women, the study not only highlights their resilience and accomplishments but also underscores the urgent need for systemic changes to better support female doctoral students. similarly, ribet and bunnage, in their article “teaching about white nationalism: ethics, vulnerability & racial pain in learning environments,” explore another urgent topic: the challenges and strategies for teaching about white nationalism in higher education. their study considers the impact of raising white nationalism on black students and challenges the idea of a current issues in education 25(2) 4 post-racial society—timely topics illustrated by the case of black students receiving racist text messages after trump’s election (faheid et al., 2024). through their piece, these authors aim to provide insights from the educators’ perspective and to provide pedagogical support to other educators. they do so by addressing ethical considerations when teaching about white nationalism, as well as the structural and historical relationships among white privilege, white nationalism, and white supremacy. moreover, the article delves into the complexities of teaching students about white nationalism across three key areas: a) empathy, distancing, and humanization, b) racial vulnerability, grief, and rage, and c) physical safety. this study demonstrates the urgent need to resist bans on crt, especially in higher education, as it equips students to recognize that white nationalism is a manifestation of systemic racism rather than isolated extremism with tangible and harmful consequences (e.g., the 2021 capitol riot). davidson, in “insider knowledge, outsider practice: the disruptive, liberatory potential of skateboarding in us higher education,” also offers a novel approach to challenge current educational issues. he employs a critical theoretical analysis through the lenses of skateboarding culture to challenge the systemic inequalities and power dynamics embedded in higher education spaces. by reframing skateboarding not just as a means of transportation but as a tool that “provides a unique capacity for uncovering truth and challenging injustice” (p. 4), the author underscores its potential as a critical framework. this framework has to balance the complex duality of skateboarding’s social transgressiveness and the exclusionary norms within the subculture itself, which continue to reflect cisheteropatriarchal values. skateboarding culture’s potential within its duality is particularly valuable, as it mirrors the positioning of most critical perspectives that seek to disrupt the system from within. the opportunities that skateboarding culture offers for rethinking power dynamics, design, and institutional norms in higher education are significant, even as they embody contradictions. acting as a developer and facilitator in a professional development initiative, robinette, in “recognizing teacher well-being as essential for professional development,” details a collaboration with two teachers, describing how his initial goal of providing technical support transformed into a comprehensive approach addressing the teachers’ well-being. this shift revealed that well-being is not just an important aspect of teacher development—it is foundational to meaningful and lasting changes in teaching practices. this article underscores the importance of acknowledging and supporting the complex, evolving needs of educators, reminding us that prioritizing teacher’s well-being is fundamental to effective professional development. finally, in “text sets: a comprehensive analysis of literature,” freeman and hardin focus on expanding our knowledge of an instructional strategy known as “text sets” and their effects on student achievement and growth. noticing a gap in comprehensive literature explaining and organizing the multitude of text sets’ styles, the authors reveal interchanging terminology used to describe this instructional strategy and highlight its impact on student learning and engagement in class across the p-20 landscape. in line with the ongoing multicrisis we described above, another theme that resonates across all five manuscripts in this issue is complexity. whether navigating the complexities of teaching white nationalism in the trump era or the complexities of online doctoral programs as women (and mothers living in rural areas), or exploring skateboarding as a counterculture with its own internal tensions, these studies reveal the layered realities of education and society. also, the shift from mere professional support to a more holistic approach addressing teachers’ wellbeing and the overlapping and myriad terms for text sets and their historical/theoretical underpinnings, speak to the complexities embedded in any research or praxis within the current issues in education 25(2) 5 education field. in this way, all of these articles remind us that when we embrace complexity, we uncover hidden, unexpected possibilities—possibilities that have the power to move the field forward in transformative ways. in this issue of current issues in education, we are reminded of the complexities, challenges, and possibilities that define the educational landscape. as we navigate an era marked by political, social, and environmental crises, the contributions in this issue demonstrate the critical importance of slowing down to reflect, connect, and engage with the emergent. each of these studies reveals the intricate interplay between systemic structures and individual agency, urging us to confront the enduring and pervasive inequities while embracing the potential for change from innovative perspectives. at the heart of this issue lies a call to resist the paralysis of urgency and instead amplify the creative and solution-oriented responses learned from the crises. whether addressing systemic racism, navigating gendered and geographic barriers in education, or rethinking professional and cultural practices, these works underscore the critical role of education in fostering resilience, innovation and social transformation. *** we want to close this introduction by expressing our gratitude to everyone who has contributed to making this issue possible. first, we extend our thanks to the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 editorial boards. the voluntary work and commitment of our student editors have been essential to ensuring the smooth operation of the journal. we also deeply appreciate our reviewers; in these challenging times it is increasingly difficult to find committed reviewers, so we are especially grateful to both our longstanding and new reviewers for their dedication, which makes this journal possible. to the authors who entrusted us with their manuscripts, we are honored to publish your thoughtful and important contributions. your work enriches our field and keeps the journal moving forward. we would like to extend special thanks to our consultant stephanie mcbride-schreiner for her invaluable support of our student-led journal, and to felicity warren for providing guidance and useful resources. additionally, we are thankful to our faculty advisors, danah henriksen and frank serafini, whose guidance and encouragement provide vital support. finally, we encourage students to engage in this enriching and unique experience, whether as authors, reviewers, or members of the editorial team. your participation is essential to the continued growth, consolidation, and evolution of the journal. we are excited to move forward together, building on this foundation, and continue to contribute to the vibrant conversations about current issues in education. references akomolafe, b. (n.d.). the times are urgent: let’s slow down. https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/the-times-are-urgent-lets-slow-down alfonseca, k. (2024, november 11). dismantling the department of education? trump’s plan for schools in his second term. abc news. https://abcnews.go.com/politics/dismantlingdepartment-education-trumps-plan-schools-term/story?id=115579646 “becoming monster opening ceremony.” (2024, october 30). becoming monster conference. faheid, d., williams, a. r., forrest, j., sykes, j., & lyngaas, s. (2024, november 10). authorities work to find the source of racist texts sent to black people nationwide after https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/the-times-are-urgent-lets-slow-down https://abcnews.go.com/politics/dismantling-department-education-trumps-plan-schools-term/story?id=115579646 https://abcnews.go.com/politics/dismantling-department-education-trumps-plan-schools-term/story?id=115579646 current issues in education 25(2) 6 the election. here’s what we know. cnn. https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/09/us/racisttexts-black-people-investigation-what-we-know/index.html fetrat, s. (2024, september 16). taliban’s attack on girls’ education harming afghanistan’s future three years since girls have been out of school beyond grade 6. human rights watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/17/talibans-attack-girls-education-harmingafghanistans-future. mackenzie, j., & choi, l. (2024, september 2). inside the deepfake porn crisis engulfing korean schools. bbc. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpdlpj9zn9go meltzer, e. (2024, july 16). cut federal funding for schools teaching critical race theory. chalkbeat. https://www.chalkbeat.org/2024/07/16/project-2025-and-gop-platform-targetwoke-schools-would-rewrite-title-ix/. migdon, b. (2024, october 16). trump suggests he will ban transgender athletes through executive action. the hill. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4936727-trump-banstransgender-athletes/ moleiro, a. (2024, october 10). venezuela calls on retired teachers to return to school amid staff shortages. el pais. https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-10-10/venezuela-callson-retired-teachers-to-return-to-schools-amid-staff-shortages.html paun, c. n. (2024). the long-term impacts of covid-19 on education: a focus on students’ enrollment and attainment. conference proceedings. the future of education 2024. https://conference.pixel-online.net/library_scheda.php?id_abs=6462 smith, g., & brake, j. (2024, november 19). south korea confronts a deepfake crisis. east asia forum. https://eastasiaforum.org/2024/11/19/south-korea-confronts-a-deepfake-crisis/ wong, a. (2024, october 16). many schools in north carolina still closed weeks after hurricane helene, worrying teachers about long-term impact. pbs news. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/many-schools-in-north-carolina-still-closed-weeksafter-hurricane-helene-worrying-teachers-about-long-term-impact unesco. (2021). getting every school climate-ready: how countries are integrating climate change issues in education. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379591/pdf/379591eng.pdf.multi united nations relief and works agency for palestine refugees (2024). palestinian education under attack in gaza: restoration, recovery, rights and responsibilities in and through education. faculty of education, university of cambridge. https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/real/publications/palestinian_education_under_attac k_in_gaza.pdf author notes victoria desimoni orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-7194-5898 arizona state university vdesimon@asu.edu https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/09/us/racist-texts-black-people-investigation-what-we-know/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/09/us/racist-texts-black-people-investigation-what-we-know/index.html https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/17/talibans-attack-girls-education-harming-afghanistans-future https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/17/talibans-attack-girls-education-harming-afghanistans-future https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpdlpj9zn9go https://www.chalkbeat.org/2024/07/16/project-2025-and-gop-platform-target-woke-schools-would-rewrite-title-ix/ https://www.chalkbeat.org/2024/07/16/project-2025-and-gop-platform-target-woke-schools-would-rewrite-title-ix/ https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4936727-trump-bans-transgender-athletes/ https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4936727-trump-bans-transgender-athletes/ https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-10-10/venezuela-calls-on-retired-teachers-to-return-to-schools-amid-staff-shortages.html https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-10-10/venezuela-calls-on-retired-teachers-to-return-to-schools-amid-staff-shortages.html https://conference.pixel-online.net/library_scheda.php?id_abs=6462 https://eastasiaforum.org/2024/11/19/south-korea-confronts-a-deepfake-crisis/ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/many-schools-in-north-carolina-still-closed-weeks-after-hurricane-helene-worrying-teachers-about-long-term-impact https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/many-schools-in-north-carolina-still-closed-weeks-after-hurricane-helene-worrying-teachers-about-long-term-impact https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379591/pdf/379591eng.pdf.multi https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/real/publications/palestinian_education_under_attack_in_gaza.pdf https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/real/publications/palestinian_education_under_attack_in_gaza.pdf https://orcid.org/0009-0006-7194-5898 mailto:vdesimon@asu.edu current issues in education 25(2) 7 courtney stone orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7773-6751 arizona state university crstone4@asu.edu minji kim orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9865-0084 arizona state university mkim292@asu.edu tipsuda chaomuangkhong orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1009-711x arizona state university tchaomua@asu.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7773-6751 mailto:crstone4@asu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9865-0084 mailto:mkim292@asu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1009-711x mailto:tchaomua@asu.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ current issues in education, 25(1) 1 volume 25, issue 1 04/09/2024 issn 1099-839x teacher sel space: addressing beginning teachers’ social emotional learning in a support group structure peter clyde martin ithaca college abstract: there is evidence that ongoing social emotional learning (sel) needs among teachers negatively impact teacher retention and student learning. at the same time, teachers’ sel has been insufficiently addressed in teacher preparation. as a consequence, preservice and early-career teachers often lack the tools, perspective, and support to address their own sel needs. the article describes a pilot project where current candidates and recent graduates in a teacher preparation program came together in an ongoing support group structure to share struggles, successes, and initiatives, support and advise each other, and reflect on their ongoing journey. after a review of the literature on teachers’ sel needs, gaps and models in teacher preparation, and the potential benefits of support groups, data from the pilot “sel space” meetings are presented and discussed, with an emphasis on thematic patterns, evolution over time, and participants’ reflection on the process. implications for practice and research are presented. keywords: social emotional learning, teacher education, teacher retention, teacher effectiveness, collaboration citation: martin, p.c. (2024). teacher sel space: addressing beginning teachers’ social emotional learning in a support group structure. current issues in education, 24(3). doi:10.14507/cie.vol25iss1.2186 accepted: september 19, 2023. current issues in education, 25(1) 2 introduction although the issue is certainly not new, the need for the education world to attend to the general wellness of teachers has become increasingly acknowledged (almerico, 2018; katz et al., 2020). for years, teachers leaving the profession early in their careers has been a defining concern (greenberg et al., 2016). with teaching and learning themselves in upheaval during the reality of covid-related lockdowns and the ensuing uncertainties, we have to regard the exodus of teachers before they have fully developed their practice as one of our most pressing problems. indeed, there is ample evidence that high stress, low morale, and burnout have become constants in the teaching profession (cipriano & brackett, 2020), to the point where they are almost defining characteristics. while the realities that make teaching stressful to begin with may be deep-seated and beyond easy fixes, we have to address teachers’ preparedness to work successfully, happily, and healthily in these stressful conditions to a greater degree. indeed, while social emotional learning (sel) in children has been increasingly recognized and targeted by schools as an area of need, the sel needs of teachers have been largely overlooked (donahue-keegan et al., 2019; jones et al., 2013). this gap is especially critical in teacher preparation. katz et al. (2020) suggest that “sel is sometimes called the ‘missing piece’ in education because it represents a part of learning that is inextricably tied to school success and positive student performance, yet it has not been explicitly addressed or given much attention until recently” (pp. 2-3). the result is that preservice teachers are not prepared to understand and manage their emotions when they urgently need to do so as they take over a classroom (donahue-keegan et al., 2019; katz et al., 2020). it is increasingly clear that one of the main problems faced by public schools in various countries is the failure to keep teachers in the profession, with clear evidence that burnout and low morale, especially, drive teachers to leave for a different career within the first few years (amitai & van houtte, 2022; greenberg et al., 2016; høigaard et al., 2012). it has also become evident that, internationally, some of the biggest concerns beginning and early-career teachers face are not just about understanding the curriculum and being able to plan and implement effective instruction, but instead about dealing with the toll their work as teachers places on their well-being (donahue-keegan et al., 2019; gustems-carnicer & calderon, 2013; hosotani et al., 2011; lindqvist, et al., 2017; väisänen et al., 2018;). furthermore, while we know teachers are often unwell, the reasons that make teaching seem unsustainable are numerous, varied, and hard to sum up and address uniformly. finding ways to help teachers themselves identify and address those needs and stresses that are particular to them has to become a priority as well. it is urgent that we provide teachers with the means, the space, and the voice to define and address those sel-related issues that make it hard to keep the profession sustainable. there are a number of questions teachers need to consider. additionally, they need a space and agency to answer those questions. for example, what are they most unhappy about? what problems do they want to solve? what solutions might they be arriving at but have difficulties implementing consistently? also, how can this be a shared rather than a lonely, isolating exploration? as it is, however, we current issues in education, 25(1) 3 are still lacking definitive blueprints on how to guide beginning and early-career teachers in this process. this article discusses a pilot project by a master’s-level teacher education program in the united states preparing candidates for state-level certification to address some of these gaps in sel support with current student teachers and recent graduates who were in their first and second year of teaching—in other words, early-career teachers who are at risk of leaving the profession prematurely due to struggles with stress and work-related burnout (amitai & van houtte, 2022). in particular, this pilot project sought to address teacher sel challenges that are by their nature ongoing, making sure to give voice to and address truly individualized, actual teacher struggles, involving both an individual process of sel-related reflection and planning; and a communal process whereby colleagues could share, support one another, process together, ask for and give help, problem solve, and generally feel that they were not alone. the project sought to explore how to give teachers ongoing opportunities to express and share emotions, frustrations, puzzles, discoveries, and successes with one another in ways that were honest yet still constructive and forward-looking, and ultimately help them develop a personal teaching practice that was successful, healthy, and sustainable findings from the literature: the need to focus on teachers’ sel teachers’ struggles and the need for sel support there is long-standing evidence that teachers, as a group, suffer more from job-related stress and burnout than many other professions, leading to high levels of staff turnover in schools (greenberg et al., 2016). kiriacou (2001) defines teacher stress as “the experience by a teacher of unpleasant, negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, tension, frustration or depression, resulting from some aspect of their work as a teacher” (p.28). the helping professions in general involve frustrations that make the risk of burnout acute (ratliff, 1988). research indicates that job-related stress has been steadily increasing over the years and that up to 40% to 50% of beginning teachers leave the profession within the first three years (oberle & schonert-reichl, 2016). since teacher turnover is likely to affect high-needs schools and districts to a disproportionately high degree, this crisis in teacher retention also contributes to social and economic inequities (greenberg et al., 2016). chronic stress and job-related burnout have also had a significant impact on the wellbeing and effectiveness of teachers who continue to work in schools. studies have found a close connection between teachers’ levels of stress and a range of debilitating struggles, including decreases in motivation and professional engagement, health impairments, and challenges in self-esteem, self-confidence, efficacy, and personal relationships (cipriano & brackett, 2020; howard & johnson, 2004; ransford et al., 2009). given the severity of this wellness crisis among teachers, there have been calls for a more concerted effort to provide support for teachers’ sel (palmer et al., 2019; schonert-reichl, 2017). a widely referenced definition of sel is as follows: “the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to current issues in education, 25(1) 4 understand and manage emotions, situations, set, and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make decisions” (collaborative for academic, social, and emotional learning [casel], 2019). indeed, sel has been found to be central to a teacher’s work, serving as a cornerstone for effective relationship building with students, classroom management, and implementation of instruction (jones et al., 2013). teachers’ ability to successfully regulate and make use of their own emotions during instruction is a crucial aspect of teaching (hosotami & imai-matsumura, 2011). however, despite evidence that fostering and supporting teachers’ sel is crucial, it has been largely overlooked in conversations and research around teacher quality, preparation, and professional development (collie et al., 2011; jones et al., 2013). more than anything, teachers’ sel needs to be addressed because of its impact on the well-being of students. because teachers are “the engine that drives social and emotional learning practices in classrooms” (schonert-reichl, 2017, p.137), teachers’ stress has a contagious effect on students. jennings and greenberg (2009) describe a “burnout cascade” where “the deteriorating climate is marked by increases in troublesome student behaviors, and teachers become emotionally exhausted as they try to manage them” (p. 492). as schonert-reichl (2017) words it, “simply put, stressed out teachers tend to have stressed out students” (p. 137). consequently, if teachers and schools are to support students’ sel as part of their education, teachers’ own sel has to be addressed and supported as well (jennings, 2019; poulou, 2017; jones et al., 2013; schonert-reichl, 2017; waajid et al., 2013). facility in emotional understanding and management has been found to be at the core of skills teachers rely on in their daily practice. research has pointed to the centrality of sel in helping teachers effectively exercise self-control in challenging situations, collaborate, and plan instruction for their students (palmer et al., 2019). sel is also instrumental for teachers to feel professionally adequate and to accept the dependence on colleagues that is central to the collaborative setup of schools (lindqvist et al., 2017). regarding the longer-term sustainability of teaching, it has been found that teachers who experience greater well-being in their work lives are more committed to the teaching profession as a whole (collie et al., 2011). given that the social emotional challenges of teaching are situational and therefore unpredictable, kyriacou (2001) has emphasized the importance of reliable social emotional coping skills. these are, in turn, separated into direct action coping strategies, that are meant to be proactive and allow the teacher to set up themselves and their instruction so as to minimize possible stress, and palliative coping skills that allow them to address challenges as they arise. kyriacou (2001) argues that both are requirements for successful and sustainable teaching. it is not surprising that preservice and early-career teachers are especially vulnerable to stress and burnout factors (vesely et al., 2014). studies have found that teachers in training frequently experience fear for their immediate safety during the school day, fear for the near future as effective teachers, and fear for the long-term sustainability and success of their work (delamarter & ewart, 2020) and a general feeling of professional inadequacy stemming from powerlessness and uncertainty (lindqvist et al., 2017). current issues in education, 25(1) 5 value of connection and community while there exists a substantial body of research examining the benefit of collaboratively working on developing wellness-related abilities in group settings, much of this literature focuses on nurses and social workers (barak et al., 2008; gunusen & ustun, 2010; medland et al., 2004) and very little is targeted at teachers. this strengthens the sense that the teacher burnout crisis and accompanying social emotional needs continue to be largely overlooked. yet a prominent factor that can bind otherwise disconnected individuals to each other in mutually helping groups is having to cope with similar conditions of heightened anxiety (davison et al., 2000). this is true for support groups around addiction or grief, for example, but also for members of a professional group that shares a common level of job-related stress (barak et al., 2008). here rosenberg (1984) defines “support group” as “sharing one’s problem with others suffering from the same stress” (p. 173). in a study on support groups for nurses, participants reported that hearing about the concerns of others gave them a useful perspective on their own situation, helping them understand their own challenges and feel less alone (peterson et al., 2008). certainly, various 12 steps movements have demonstrated that group processes can be instrumental in providing participants in stressful situations with emotional relief. here, there is a distinction between a therapy group, where a service provider implements a treatment, and a support group, where peers share, listen, and offer support and relief to one another (barak et al., 2008; peterson et al., 2008). in fact, the knowledge that one is helpful to others by listening and providing encouragement is a key benefit of being in a support group, as it allows participants to gain a sense of competence and confidence that is often lacking (kirk & walter, 1981; rosenberg, 1984). the communal, peer aspect of this group process, where challenges are shared, and everyone can contribute their own insider knowledge to help one another with challenges all identify with, facilitates understanding of the common struggles, a sense of belonging and community, and an increase in self-confidence (peterson et al., 2008). the social support provided by a group process has been shown to be effective against the kind of burnout endemic among teachers (um & harrison, 1998). indeed, the stress caused by job-related uncertainty and volatility is especially effectively addressed through the reflective process of a support group (etzion, 1984; medland et al., 2004). it can allow participants to find ways of organizing, reflecting on, and arriving at practical responses to their fears rather than being overwhelmed by them (delamarter & ewart, 2020). in the long run, having regular meetings with peers allows for important community building and opportunities for periodic check-ins that help participants to be seen, cared for, and cared for others (korman et al., 2022). in this way, a significant impact is to break through the isolation that typically exacerbates both the anxiety and the feeling of helplessness in addressing it (korman, et al., 2022; rosenberg, 1984; sononne & rochford, 2020). in a study specifically about teachers with such a support group, it was found that the process helped with resilience, letting them know that there were others who cared about them current issues in education, 25(1) 6 and would be ready to help when things got hard (howard & johnson, 2004). similarly, kirk and walter (2008) found it important for participants to share both their challenges and their successes in order to steer the conversations toward overcoming problems rather than merely reaffirming them. it was clearly important, above all, for participants to speak openly and to listen to one another supportively. summing up: support groups to address teacher sel as is amply documented in the research literature, there is a long-standing sel crisis among teachers (delamarter & ewart, 2020; lindqvist et al., 2017; vesely et al., 2014) that has a substantial negative impact on both p-12 students (cipriano & brackett, 2020 ; ransford, et al., 2009) and on the retention of teachers within the profession (greenberg et al., 2016). teachers as a group are especially subject to feelings of isolation and job-related stress, leading to a high level of burnout (cipriano & brackett, 2020). while this crisis is and has been acute, there has been insufficient regard given to teachers’ sel in teacher preparation and support of beginning teachers (almerico, 2018; hadar, et al., 2020; schonert-reichl et al., 2015). among other approaches, it has been found that a collaborative support group process can help professionals in high-stress sectors feel less isolated and anxious and develop a sense of selfconfidence, belonging, and greater resilience through an ongoing process of sharing, listening, problem-solving, and mutual support (howard & johnson, 2004; kirk & walter, 2008; korman, 2022; peterson et al., 2008). “sel space” the sel crisis for teachers and the sel-related gap in teacher preparation that are documented in the literature were also evident in the teacher education program this study focuses on and the surrounding school districts where most of the graduates of the program spend their first years as teachers. even before the covid-19 pandemic, there was an acknowledgment that preservice teachers’ sel, while addressed here and there in classes and advising sessions, was given insufficient space within the teacher preparation curriculum and was clearly set on a lower rung of importance than other less person-related skill areas. at the same time, a substantial amount of effort was spent trying to find ways to support student teachers who were overwhelmed with stress and found themselves in serious wellness crises, leading some to withdraw from the program with the explanation that they needed to prioritize their mental health. furthermore, a number of recent graduates were prematurely resigning from their teaching positions to switch to “kinder” professions outside of schools. in response to what was viewed as an entrenched crisis and a program gap, and drawing on some of the findings from the research literature, the author piloted an ongoing support group structure that would specifically address sel areas with current student teachers and graduates who were in their first two years of teaching. modeling the initiative after some of the promising interventions documented with healthcare workers (gunusen & ustun, 2010; current issues in education, 25(1) 7 korman, 2022; medland et al., 2004; peterson et al., 2008), the author set up a group that combined preservice and early-career teachers, all graduates from the same program, tasking them to reflect individually on their own sel-related situations, needs, and accomplishments, and meeting on a regular basis to share, support one another, and plan and chart their own growth. the stated goals were to develop a supportive community of peers who shared and understood the struggles of being a beginning teacher, provide a space to voice and hear personal experiences and give opportunities to help, strategize, and give and receive ideas for successfully tackling the challenges at hand. the researcher hoped that these beginning teachers would help and be helped and feel less isolated in the process. methodology participants and structure the pilot project this study focuses on took place over the course of four months in the second half of the school year and involved a total of thirteen current students and recent graduates of an american graduate education program, leading to state-level teacher certification on the elementary and secondary level. students were selected from three different cohorts that had all been affected by the covid-19 pandemic. to the extent that there really is a ‘before’ and ‘after’ the beginning of the pandemic in terms of the reality of schools, it seemed important that some of this experience was shared by all participants. the author invited students to participate based on an attempt to ensure representation across cohorts, grade levels taught, subject matter, and type of community setting. of the thirteen invited students and graduates who agreed to participate, five were in their second year of teaching, five were in their first year, and three were current students in the second half of their culminating student teaching experience. they taught a range of content areas in high schools, middle schools, technical schools, and elementary schools in large cities, small cities, and rural areas. all aspects of the project were facilitated by the author, an education professor who had worked extensively with each of the participants in their teacher preparation program. at the onset of the project, participants created a personal sel plan that addressed fundamental aspects of sel adapted from the framework by casel (2020), which related to common challenges for teachers as had been identified in the literature (cipriano & brackett, 2020; greenberg et al., 2016; oberle & schonert-reichl, 2016). these aspects were defined as attending to personal well-being, managing own emotions, managing challenging situations, and engaging in problem-solving for students. in each case, participants defined specific areas they were focusing on, struggles and/or successes they were experiencing, specific actions they were already taking to address this area, and actions they were planning to take moving forward. in alignment with research pointing to the importance for teachers learning how to identify and approach stressors proactively (gustems-carniver & calderon, 2013), participants updated their sel plans on a monthly basis to ensure that these remained living documents, allowing for ongoing stock-taking, planning, and reflection. current issues in education, 25(1) 8 once a month, participants gathered for a two-hour online support group meeting, split into two sessions in the same week, with six or seven participants in each. each of the sessions was structured in the same way, with an intent to provide both clarity and structure, opportunities for open self-guided conversation, and a focus on pragmatic problem solving, in keeping with research findings that ongoing training in proactive strategies for emotional regulation reduced student teachers’ perceived exhaustion and feeling of inadequacy (vaisanen et al., 2018). after initial greetings and a reminder of the general structure of the meeting, each session began with individual check-ins on current situations and open conversation on whatever topics participants were latching onto. other than keeping time, the facilitator provided little guidance during this section to ensure that the conversation was truly about what the participants wanted to talk about. this part of the meeting was then followed by an overview of common themes that had emerged in the latest revisions of participants’ individual sel plans and a more pointed discussion of recent struggles and successes. after a break, the group was split up into smaller sessions with two or three participants in each. each group was asked to identify one or two problems they would like to solve and discuss ideas on how to approach them, exchanging experiences and building on one another’s discoveries. the whole group then reconvened, and participants were asked to share out what they had discussed. this then led to a larger and sense-making conversation where participants were asked to problemsolve together and build on each other’s ideas. to end the meeting, the facilitator asked each participant to identify insights they gained from the meeting and suggested the next steps for themselves moving forward. as in all previous phases of the meeting, open conversation was encouraged, and guidance by the facilitator was kept at a minimum. each of the four monthly meetings followed this same structure. research questions in order to examine what challenges participants were facing and wanted to address, how this process helped them face sel-related issues, and whether they found it helpful, the study defined the following three research questions: 1. what themes did participants focus on, and what problems did they try to solve? 2. how did the themes evolve from meeting to meeting? 3. what did teachers seem to gain from this process, and what evidence is there that this process was helpful to them? data collection and analysis with participants’ written consent, each of the four pairs of online meetings was recorded, and written transcriptions were generated. at this point, all data was anonymized, and strict confidentiality protocols were followed. the author then broke down the transcripts into conversational turns, each delineated by a change of speaker. a conversational turn seemed a significant unit, as it indicated an instance when a given student found a particular topic point to current issues in education, 25(1) 9 be important or compelling enough to introduce and weigh in on. the author then gave each of these segments a descriptive topic label, using an open coding system to allow for patterns among themes to emerge. given that all of the first three pairs of meetings took place as the school year was proceeding and teachers were facing ongoing day-to-day challenges, similar codes were used and could be compared. the fourth pair of monthly meetings, however, took place at the very end of the school year and featured different, more summative topics of conversation, leading to a different set of codes. once the data from the first three pairs of meetings was coded, the author identified patterns and changes across sessions and identified and analyzed them in relation to the research questions. the fourth pair of meetings was analyzed separately. once each turn-based segment was attributed a descriptive label, the emerging list of codes was then further sorted and combined into a smaller number of themes. these themes were, in turn, separated into the three larger categories of struggles, successes, and ongoing constructive initiatives. in the case of the struggles category, the assembled themes suggested two separate perspectives that separated the larger category into two distinct topics (overall challenges and feelings of dissatisfaction, and specific, troubling situations that teachers had difficulties addressing). the number of segments for each theme and for each larger category was tabulated, first for each meeting, and then for the combined meetings. thus coded, organized, and tabulated, the data lent itself to a comparative analysis. the sorted and tabulated data relating to participants’ struggles, successes, and ongoing constructive initiatives were then examined in terms of their variety and the prominence of the different themes. frequencies of code-based themes were examined to determine which of these three categories were discussed most often. struggles, successes, and ongoing initiatives will first be examined in terms of overall codes. a second examination of the same tabulated data will pertain to how these changed over time. finally, the author will present data to examine the participants’ reflections on the sel meeting process and where they felt it left them. data from the last meeting and the closing sections of the previous meetings will be examined here. findings major topics upon looking at the data overall, while the majority of conversational turns focused on struggles students were facing, it is to be noted that participants also substantially addressed the successes and initiatives they were actively working on (see table 1). struggles within the general category of struggle, most participants’ turns connected to their general feeling of challenge and unhappiness rather than specific instances or situations that needed to be negotiated. the distinction seems meaningful, as difficult situations might be talked about in terms of practical problem solving. in contrast, general statements of feeling and current issues in education, 25(1) 10 table 1 sel meetings: discussion themes, with frequency of coded turns in total thematic categories struggle (167) general struggle (96) addressing specific difficult situations (71) success (109) ongoing initiatives (35) reflection (31) personal situations are less obviously turned into actionable steps and are maybe more likely to feed into a sense of hopelessness. table 2 general struggle: frequency from combined meetings breaking down this category further, it was found that participants talked most often about struggles related to personal wellness (see table 2). they discussed not taking care of themselves physically, in terms of sleep, diet, and exercise, and feeling constantly tired. they said they felt overwhelmed with stress, struggled with feeling competent, and worried about being able to adequately prepare their students for high-stakes exams. they expressed feeling lonely and struggling with what it means to adopt a teacher identity. often, they mentioned struggles with personal boundaries, feeling that they were working all the time and did not have a private or home life that was separate from their work life as teachers. after personal wellness, they mentioned struggles with colleagues, administrators, the school culture, and being young teachers. participants talked about disrespect or even abuse by more veteran colleagues, administrators they felt not supported by, and a general school culture that they thought did not welcome them or respect them because of their relative youth and themes number of turns personal wellness 56 school and colleagues 25 parents and students 15 current issues in education, 25(1) 11 inexperience. finally, participants talked about general unhappiness in their relationship with disrespectful or even hostile parents and with students themselves. it was noteworthy how little of these beginning teachers’ expression of general distress was related to the actual ins and outs of instruction and connected curriculum, lesson planning, and assessment, which so much of teacher preparation focuses on, and how much had to do with matters of wellness and relationships. participants’ main sources of unhappiness, it appeared, came from not feeling able to take good care of themselves and not feeling supported or respected by the people they worked with. table 3 struggles—challenging situations: frequency from combined meetings when asked more specifically about challenging situations they were facing and did not know how to address successfully, the most frequently mentioned points had to do with a lack of support and clear structures and rules that they attributed to general chaos in their schools (see table 3). they did not know what the disciplinary protocols were, what their school expected of students, teachers, and families, or even what the rules were regarding teachers’ sick and personal leave. the next most frequent type of challenging situations related to student behavior, in terms of disrespect, unruliness, and refusal to do assigned schoolwork. participants mentioned not knowing how to address levels of student disrespect that they thought felt outside of the usual norms and that they attributed to pandemic-related home instability and being “covid kids” who had not been socialized into school norms in the same way as students previously had. students were anxious and, according to one participant, “easily triggered.” especially given the lack of administrative and collegial support, some teachers stated not knowing how to motivate students who were already far behind academically and knew they were likely to fail their classes. a major challenge, again, concerned difficult situations with other teachers. one participant stated that even when she was starting to feel settled and less anxious in her work, “other teachers make it hard for me, as though they want to watch the young female teacher fail.” participants mentioned not knowing how to deal with unfriendly gossip and conflict among teachers, the choice being to either participate without wanting to or stay away and have even less contact with colleagues. other challenging situations connected again to their own wellness. the participants wanted a stable routine they could build boundaries and sustainable habits around, yet found that the professional demands kept changing. because of staff shortages and turnover in their buildings, they found themselves asked to take on additional extra-curricular responsibilities and themes number of turns students, colleagues, and chaos 56 personal anxiety 15 current issues in education, 25(1) 12 substitute assignments with little notice or preparation. it added to the chaos of the workday and made it harder to organize their time. how to address these additional demands was seen as challenging. teachers were unclear about what they had to do, what they could say no to, and when they were being taken advantage of because they were new. some mentioned being afraid to say no and being viewed as “not being a team player.” three mentioned wanting to leave their placement for a district that seemed less chaotic, but they were anxious about leaving schools that were clearly in need and thus add to the general inequity. they felt a responsibility to their students and yet thought that their current work situation was not sustainable for them. successes while participants struggled considerably, they also voiced substantial successes and reasons for hope, often in the same areas they were struggling with (see table 4). in over onethird of all turns with this theme, teachers talked about things getting better in general. they mentioned becoming more skilled as instructors, feeling more comfortable with their teacher identity, and building a positive professional reputation. they also mentioned getting resources and interesting work opportunities and the school implementing structures they liked. the most frequently mentioned reason for positivity was presented as a general sense that things were getting better and that they were hopeful. table 4 success: frequency, combined meetings themes number of turns generally better--teaching, reputation, identity, hope 30 better relations with teachers, administrators, and staff 21 better relations with students 16 better self-care 10 better with classroom management 10 better at managing time 8 more kind to myself 8 less isolated 6 the next most prominent source of feeling of success related to improved relations with other teachers, staff, and school administrators. participants mentioned receiving support from colleagues and appreciating the fact that other teachers shared with them that they had similar struggles with students. they felt validated and comforted by veteran teachers in their buildings. finally, some referred to feeling newly supported and appreciated by school administrators. current issues in education, 25(1) 13 to a similar extent, participants found success and hopefulness in their relations and interactions with students. a number of teachers talked about connecting better with students, some pointing to the positives of being open with students about who they were and how they felt. participants spoke of the validation they received from their students, being in tune with them, and providing them with sel opportunities organically through improved relations. they also mentioned having students help with discipline issues because they were invested in the relationship as well. participants acknowledged actions they had deliberately undertaken that had contributed to the relationship-building. they told of having visited students at their places of work and their sporting events and becoming better at understanding and adjusting to demands placed on students in their other classes. they felt successful in validating students, expressing empathy, and generally showing personal curiosity. participants also talked about improvements in how they managed their own well-being. they shared general success at self-care, some stating that they had become better at developing healthier habits, and managing their personal stress through exercise. they were getting more sleep, generally decreasing the pressure they placed on themselves, and following advice they had received in a previous group meeting to maintain a list of activities they did for fun. participants also reported successes in managing their time. several shared that they were becoming better at knowing what grading tasks to prioritize, as grading had often been reported as particularly time-consuming. they had become better at grading assignments right away. one teacher reported success at spending less time creating assignments and freeing themselves to instead spend more time carefully reading students’ work, which they considered a more valuable use of time. another mentioned giving students more independent work to do in class, during which time she could do work that she would otherwise have to do after school. participants also noted becoming kinder to themselves. several shared that they felt better at forgiving themselves and acknowledging that they did not have to be perfect teachers at all times. some mentioned accepting that teaching evolves and that making and correcting mistakes is an integral part of this evolution. one said a breakthrough had been taking the initiative to ask other teachers for help when she was struggling with a group of students. it was noteworthy that this was seen as a success and not as a shortcoming. another success area related to handling classroom discipline. participants noted a greater understanding of students and their situation and a better appreciation for generational differences. teachers also mentioned choosing their battles more and using humor when redirecting students. some participants noted that they were generally more patient and less quick to react to student behavior emotionally. they had become better at giving themselves time to calm down. a noteworthy success over the course of these meetings related to a decrease in isolation. several participants talked about seeing the importance of finding opportunities to connect with others. one teacher mentioned participating in a group chat with peers from the same graduate school cohort. some mentioned feeling less isolated in the school, and finding much-needed peer support among their colleagues. current issues in education, 25(1) 14 ongoing initiatives in addition to areas where they felt they had made tangible progress, participants also pointed to current initiatives that appeared to be promising, even if these were still works in progress (see table 5). the most frequently mentioned area in this regard was boundary setting and time management, with various participants describing efforts they were making to establish clear personal boundaries with students and families. to this effect, one teacher said that they were in the process of building a true wall between home and work in order to protect their personal time. two participants pointed to their ongoing efforts to have grading take less time to make it easier to end the work day early enough that they could have a life outside of it. some teachers were still exploring what boundary setting actually involved for them, including what aspects of themselves to share with their students and what to maintain as private. table 5 ongoing initiatives: frequency, combined meetings themes number of turns boundaries and time management 10 improving classroom management 8 doing what is right for me/taking care of myself 5 being positive/avoiding negativity 5 connecting with people and asking for help 4 accepting my own learning and growth 3 the next most frequently mentioned area is related to becoming better at classroom management. several talked about making efforts to become more deliberate and consistent in addressing disciplinary issues. some talked about wanting to determine when to forgive students for inappropriate behavior and when to hold them accountable. one mentioned wanting to determine when it was appropriate to actually remove a student from the classroom as a consequence of disruptive and disrespectful behavior. two teachers talked about wanting to give students room to advocate for themselves respectfully and, in the process, give them more control over how behavioral norms were to be maintained in the classroom. participants also stated focusing on taking care of themselves and, more generally, trying to find ways to do what was right for them as individuals with lives beyond the classroom. teachers mentioned wanting their next steps to involve being mindful of stepping away from their school-related tasks, making sure they also engaged in activities that brought them joy, and developing better, more healthy eating and sleeping routines. one teacher was trying to become better at advocating for themselves, prioritizing what was in their own interest. another was current issues in education, 25(1) 15 currently working on managing their emotions in difficult situations by learning from veteran colleagues. in a similar vein, participants shared that they were working on finding ways to be positive and avoid the negativity they found themselves often slipping into and that they sensed from many of their colleagues. one teacher mentioned intentionally avoiding negative thoughts and negative talk from other teachers by avoiding eating her lunch in the teacher’s lounge. one explained that she focused too much on her challenges and was disciplining herself to think more about the joy she experienced as a teacher. another participant wanted to strategize how to bring more joy into her classroom instruction. yet another was trying out a system to consistently hold on to positive comments by students, so she could remember them during challenging times. reaching out more was a goal for several of the participants. one explained that she wanted to become better at asking colleagues for help. another added that she was working on soliciting help before finding herself in a crisis situation rather than when she was already struggling. two teachers mentioned wanting to find, within their school buildings, other people to be open and vulnerable with, similarly to how they could be open and vulnerable during these monthly meetings. going along with this larger theme of wanting to find ways to be kinder to themselves and less constantly anxious, several teachers talked about becoming better at accepting their own status as beginning teachers, that they were still learning and growing in their practice. one mentioned wanting to work on not feeling incompetent. another talked about wanting to teach herself that her lessons, in fact, didn’t have to be perfect. one participant spoke about wanting to accept their learning curve and focus on how much they were learning this year in order to improve their teaching for next year. patterns among struggles, successes, and ongoing initiatives comparing the themes that were emphasized when participants talked about struggles, successes, and ongoing initiatives, one notes a considerable overlap (see table 6). in each of the categories, themes can be further grouped into three separate yet connected topic areas, namely, wellness, relationships, and classroom management. participants focused considerably on the area of personal wellness, which in turn included time management and professional boundary setting, experiencing joy, self-efficacy, and concerns around loneliness. here concerns were widespread, but participants also experienced successes and engaged in ongoing problem-solving activities. a separate area that was highlighted related to relationships and coping with the school environment. the teachers emphasized relationships with other teachers, as well as with administrators, students and families, and general structures and supports within the school. again, participants voiced struggling significantly in these areas, yet also achieving important successes and continuing to find approaches to improve their situation. finally, participants highlighted student behavior and classroom management as areas of struggle, success, and continuous endeavor. based on the data, it appears as though the sel needs and work of these current issues in education, 25(1) 16 teachers was largely defined by these three interrelated areas of personal wellness, work-based relationships, and classroom management. table 6 main themes: struggles, successes, and ongoing initiatives struggles successes ongoing initiatives general sense of struggle wellness and loneliness school environment relationships student behavior general sense of hope and progress wellness relationships and connectedness classroom management wellness and boundary-setting being positive and kind to oneself connectedness classroom management struggles, successes, and ongoing initiatives over time struggles while participants spoke about struggles, successes, and ongoing initiatives concerning the same general areas, how much they emphasized each theme/area varied considerably from meeting to meeting. table 7 change over time—general struggle: frequency by meeting themes number of turns meeting 1 meeting 2 meeting 3 current issues in education, 25(1) 17 personal wellness 19 19 18 school and colleagues 8 13 4 parents and students 9 0 6 among sources of struggle, personal wellness was a constant throughout the process, remaining the most frequently mentioned subject of concern (see table 7). here specific struggles with boundary-setting were the most emphasized in the first two meetings, but not in the third. conversely, the topics of physical well-being, tiredness, and being overwhelmed or stressed became more prominent with each meeting. however, concerns with a general sense of loneliness that were prominent in the first meeting were not brought up after that. while personal wellness as a general struggle featured relatively evenly across the three meetings, , other areas fluctuated. thus, general struggles with relationships with students and their parents were mentioned frequently in the first meeting, not at all in the second meeting, and were again talked about a bit in the third meeting. general struggles related to school issues and colleagues were brought up substantially as a topic in the first meeting, spiked in prominence during the second meeting, and received little attention in the third meeting. all in all, it may not be surprising that the focus on work situations fluctuated over time, presumably based on particular events, while struggles with feeling well remained constant. examining the data on specific situational struggles, the extent to which participants talked about challenging situations with students, chaos, and general instability within their school was a consistent focus over the course of all three meetings (see table 8). regarding more narrow themes, challenges related to student behavior and home instability, on one hand, and general chaos and lack of support within the school, on the other, were consistent concerns throughout the meetings. table 8 change over time, challenging situations: frequency by meeting themes number of turns meeting 1 meeting 2 meeting 3 students, colleagues, and chaos 18 16 22 personal anxiety 6 3 6 while the general feeling that participants struggled to be personally well remained constant from meeting to meeting, the overall sense that things were going poorly with students and colleagues fluctuated. when it came to talking about specific challenging situations, current issues in education, 25(1) 18 however, teachers mentioned struggles with students and with other staff on a fairly consistent basis over time. successes regarding successes, there were very different patterns from one meeting to the next (see table 9). examining the frequency with which different areas of success were mentioned, one notices that, for some, there was little variation from one meeting to the next. in some cases, there was erratic fluctuation; in other cases, there was a trend of increased frequency over time, and in one category, there was considerable mention of in the first meeting, but not subsequently. indeed, a great number of participants mentioned successes in receiving validation from other colleagues in the first meeting, but not in the second and third meetings. one might speculate that participants were worried and therefore focused on this area at the beginning, given the general anxiety of chaos in the school and a lack of supportive relations with colleagues. table 9 change over time—success: frequency by meeting themes number of turns meeting 1 meeting 2 meeting 3 generally better--teaching, reputation, identity, hope (30) 6 14 10 better relations with teachers, administrators, and staff 16 3 2 better relations with students (16) 5 4 7 better self-care (10) 0 7 3 better at managing time 0 0 8 more kind to myself 2 1 5 better with classroom management (10) 0 0 10 less isolated 0 6 0 conversely, teachers did not mention having achieved success in the area of classroom management and student discipline until the third meeting. this seems especially significant given how much teachers referred to this as an area of struggle. arguably, while success at building supportive relationships with colleagues is important early on in order to establish positive working conditions, feeling successful in terms of classroom management takes time, especially for early-career teachers, and success is likely to come later. similarly, participants spoke more frequently about successes in the area of time management late in the process, only mentioning by the third meeting that they had become current issues in education, 25(1) 19 better at knowing when to grade assignments, working less from home, and generally becoming more time-efficient. there was also a notable increase in teachers mentioning becoming better at being kind to themselves. there was more fluctuation and less of a clear trend from one meeting to the next in problem areas that are arguably less easily solved. thus, mentions of successes in their actual teaching, and the feeling that their practice was improving were mentioned in each of the meetings. however, it increased significantly in the second meeting and decreased again in the third. similarly, while no one mentioned successes in the area of self-care during the first meeting, a number of teachers did so during the second meeting, but that number decreased again for the third meeting. no one talked about achieving success in breaking through loneliness and isolation during the first and third meetings, but a number of participants did so during the second meeting. finally, there were consistently a substantial number of participants who mentioned experiencing success, connecting with, and feeling validated by students. given the long-term work of establishing relationships with students, this should perhaps not seem surprising, and the fact that successes were mentioned throughout would seem encouraging. a small number of participants also mentioned successes at establishing positive relationships with administrators during each of the three meetings. overall, then, it seems that some of the trends regarding participants’ successes, as shared in the meetings, may have been connected to what areas were most prioritized early on and which required a longer learning curve. indeed, successes in building relationships within their schools, which was talked about as an area of concern, were mentioned early in the process. successes in classroom management and time management, however, were only brought up in later meetings, possibly because they involved a slower growth process. ongoing initiatives while the ongoing initiatives participants were engaged in were mentioned with relative consistency, for the most part, the pattern was different in two noteworthy areas (see table 10). a number of participants mentioned intentionally working on boundary-setting and time management in the first meeting, but this decreased in the meetings that followed. conversely, while teachers hardly mentioned wanting to focus on becoming better at classroom management during the first two meetings, the topic was mentioned a considerable number of times during the third meeting, at which point it seemed to have become a clear priority. in the areas of self-care, being positive, finding others to connect with, and being kind to oneself, a relatively small number of participants mentioned ongoing initiatives at each of the three meetings. last meeting: personal state at the end of the school year whereas the initial three monthly meetings were approached as a way to connect about ongoing situations, challenges, successes, and initiatives, the final meeting at the very end of the school year had, understandably, a very different tenor. although it followed the same structure as the previous sessions, it was clearly a summative, stock-taking meeting, where participants current issues in education, 25(1) 20 table 10 change over time—ongoing initiatives: frequency by meeting themes number of turns meeting 1 meeting 2 meeting 3 boundaries & time management 5 3 2 improving classroom management 1 0 7 doing what is right for me/taking care of myself 0 3 2 being positive/avoiding negativity 1 2 2 connecting with people and asking for help 2 0 2 accepting my own learning and growth 1 1 1 reflected on where they had arrived to close out this academic year and, in many cases, how they positioned themselves for the year to come. generally, what participants brought up as summative points for the school year relates to their own well-being, in terms of understanding, achievement, and ongoing work they felt they still needed to engage in (see table 11). indeed, the thematic categories that were clearly about teachers’ own wellness were by far the most frequently mentioned. the most prevalent theme concerned the realization that teachers needed to be able to find a way to “go back to neutral” from heightened emotional conditions they found themselves in by the end of the school day, because of intense feelings of joy and excitement or, more frequently, because of strong frustration, disappointment, anger, and/or hurt that was often paralyzing and deeply disillusioning. table 11 personal state at the end of the school year: frequency, last meeting themes number of turns our need to go back to neutral 6 coping with being emotionally overwhelmed 7 setting goals for next year 7 impact of “sel space” meetings 7 accepting that only so much can be done 6 ongoing worry about failure and negativity 6 teachers spoke considerably about the importance of calming themselves down and finding a way to refocus when they were emotionally overwhelmed during the school day, in order to conserve energy and be able to focus on their next teaching tasks rather than finding current issues in education, 25(1) 21 themselves immobilized by the stress of the moment. again, there seemed to be a general understanding that knowing how to affect an emotional “reset” was an important skill to develop moving forward. connected to this focus on making their teaching lives more emotionally sustainable, a number of participants mentioned the importance of accepting that they could only do so much to get past those problems and limitations beyond their control. they spoke about needing to acknowledge that some problems were indeed not theirs to solve. they also needed to accept that instruction does not always go according to plan and that they would inevitably have setbacks and unexpected turns. they realized that they needed to continue becoming better at not viewing this as a sign of their own incompetence or personal failure. at the same time, several participants mentioned still being worried about failing and about “catastrophizing” when things do not seem to be going well. one teacher mentioned still getting “stuck in a cycle of negativity” that seemed unsustainable. another added that unless she became better at breaking out of such “emotional ruts,” she didn’t think she could remain a teacher for very long. in regard to this, a substantial number of participants pointed to the impact of the “sel space” meetings as a way to combat the negativity. one participant contrasted the constructive tenor of these meetings with the defeatist tone of typical conversations with colleagues in their school. teachers mentioned that while it was good to hear different perspectives within the group, they felt in sync. their commonality, one said, didn’t feel forced. one teacher mentioned the importance of ending this school year and these meetings with the knowledge that they were not alone. importantly, a number of teachers talked about areas they were excited to work on moving forward on feasible tasks. one mentioned looking forward to building on lessons she created this year rather than having to create everything from scratch. another was intent on starting the next school year with a clearer curriculum map. another wanted to spend time noting what all went well this year so they could build on it. teachers also talked about wanting to develop better classroom management approaches and stronger professional relationships with colleagues. finally, one stated that they simply wanted to take a “long mental break,” which in itself was likely to solve many of their problems. reflection on the “sel space” process participants also reflected on the meetings’ impact (see table 12). the most prevalent theme was that the meetings cut into their isolation and provided the relief of knowing that others were in similar situations. several teachers stated that participating in these “sel space” meetings made them feel less alone. others talked about the importance of seeing familiar faces on a regular basis and the comfort this provided. the teachers also reported feeling the relief of knowing that others were struggling with similar issues, that their difficulties were not unique to them or indicators of their own personal inadequacy. one pointed to how the sharing and collaborative problem-solving that occurred in these meetings highlighted for them the ongoing need to find peers to work with. current issues in education, 25(1) 22 table 12 reflection: frequency from combined meetings themes number of turns feeling less alone 13 perspective—helping me focus on growth 5 helping/learning from one another 4 this is sel--safe space 4 reminder of the importance of reflection 2 comfort in knowing other teachers are struggling 2 value of puzzling together 1 another common theme was that this process helped provide the beginning teachers with a more developmental and longer-term perspective on their professional reality and helped them focus on those areas they most needed to attend to. one mentioned the importance of understanding that the challenges she was experiencing now will not simply go away in the next year of teaching or the one after that. another was comforted to know that how she was feeling about her day-to-day was not unusual, that it was acceptable to feel the way she did. on a more practical level, one first-year teacher valued learning from others that if the first few weeks of the school year are strong, the rest of the year will benefit. another noted learning from others about the importance of taking time to calm down in a crisis situation. one spoke about the clear priority she needed to place on learning how to handle challenging situations with individual students and individual colleagues. not surprisingly, participants also talked about the benefit of having a space to help one another and be able to learn from the experiences of others. novice teachers pointed to the importance of having teachers in their second or third year in the profession to get advice and perspective from. one mentioned the networking opportunities and the sharing of information on job openings. another spoke about the importance of being able to puzzle over truly challenging issues together. teachers also pointed to the importance of having these meetings simply to have them. one teacher, describing the value of the process, stated “this is sel.” another mentioned that it provided a safe space to talk and be themselves in a way that they did not think was possible in their school. one participant, echoing the importance of the relationships that these meetings helped foster, mentioned how she started connecting with some of her “sel space” peers at other times as well, getting needed help and solidarity. finally, teachers mentioned the sheer importance of having a place where they were brought to reflect on their lives as teachers. one phrased it as being brought back into an “ethical state of mind” where she could reflect on the big picture of what she was doing rather than get caught up in the practicalities of the day-to-day. current issues in education, 25(1) 23 she wondered how she could get into this state of mind without these meetings. another mentioned, point-blank, that she was so tired on a daily basis that she didn’t know how she could engage in true reflection without these meetings. discussion based on our findings, there were marked trends in topics the participating teachers talked about, how they talked about them, and how these evolved over time. in order to make sense of the data in light of the bigger issues and needs this pilot project aimed to address, each of the research questions will be taken in turn. what teachers talked about: topics and problems to solve while teachers talked about a wide variety of topics during these meetings, the areas of personal wellness, work-based relationships, and classroom management were especially emphasized. echoing what is found in the research literature (almerico, 2018; schonert-reichl, 2017), a major area of focus for teachers was their own wellness. participants repeatedly mentioned their struggles with being physically and mentally well, with particular difficulties ensuring they slept enough, exercised, and managed time and tasks well enough to lead satisfying lives outside of work. while this was also an area where participants mentioned experiencing successes, taking care of themselves, setting work-life boundaries, remaining positive, and being kind and forgiving toward themselves were discussed as ongoing growth areas that needed to remain priorities. in a sense, the fact that participants focused on those areas that we know are issues in the teaching profession and are often linked to teachers burning out and leaving the profession (cipriano & brackett, 2020) points to the authenticity of the meetings and the conversations participants engaged in. indeed, they used these opportunities to discuss areas we know are critical and that teachers are generally underprepared in. teachers talked about broader feelings of unhappiness and loneliness, but also discussed and problem-solved around specific, practical considerations such as how to ensure they also did things that were fun, recognized their accomplishments, and spent less time grading and preparing outside of school. there was a combination of vulnerable emotional sharing and trading of practical questions, strategies, and discoveries. given the possible truism that only other beginning teachers can fully appreciate the physical and emotional hardship of being a beginning teacher, the fact that so much time was spent discussing these areas seems to indicate that the opportunities were well-taken advantage of. furthermore, the fact that participants mentioned struggles, successes, and ongoing initiatives also gives a sense that these concerns continued to be taken seriously, but that teachers were learning, actively trying to tackle their areas of wellness, and that they were experiencing growth. given the danger of low morale and burnout, successes and ongoing initiatives around the area of personal wellness seemed especially significant. connected to emotional well-being and a struggle against loneliness was the emphasis on work-based relationships with colleagues, administrators, and students. while this area was current issues in education, 25(1) 24 defined as separate from personal wellness, the two are certainly connected. issues related to loneliness and self-confidence were affected by the quality of participants’ relationships with other teachers, especially. participants struggled with finding supportive teachers they could trust within their buildings, especially as young teachers who did not always feel that they were given adequate professional respect. feeling supported and connected within their school buildings was talked about at length as general and situational struggles, areas of success, and ongoing areas to work on. if social emotional wellbeing has to do in part with feeling supported, validated, and understood, then it figures that the topic of work-based relationships would be central to these conversations. again, the fact that these were major themes speaks to the authenticity, perhaps validity, of the meetings. the third major subject area that was mentioned at length is related to classroom management. student behavior was a significant point of struggle, but teachers also mentioned successes in terms of classroom management and ongoing initiatives they were engaging in. this, too, might not come as a surprise, linked as it is to how teachers are likely to feel about their daily work lives. indeed, if stress and a feeling of helplessness are the basis of professional burnout, then the area of classroom management and addressing student behavior would, in all likelihood, be a critical area. disrespectful, non-compliant, or confrontational student behavior can be personally hurtful, make it challenging to teach a lesson successfully, make teachers doubt their competence, and lead them to a level of emotional and nervous crisis that is exhausting and extremely difficult to manage given the professional setting and norms. again, the fact that this topic was a mainstay during the meetings makes sense and confirms the relevance of the conversations. as a whole, then, the process seemed to focus on topics that are clearly relevant and critical, and arguably areas of challenge that are difficult to prepare for or “fix,” and where understanding, solidarity, and practical support are most likely to be found among peers who are effectively “in the same boat.” in this way alone, the “sel space” process was meaningful and occupied a role that was difficult to fill otherwise. the process: how the conversations evolved over time not surprisingly, the data shows variation in terms of how much these topics were addressed in the various meetings. indeed, while some of the areas of struggle, success, and/or ongoing initiative remained constant in conversations over the course of the process, others increased or decreased in prominence. again, other topics fluctuated without a clear pattern of increase or decrease. to the extent that a dual aim of “sel space” was to be able to provide a reliable place to talk about certain issues and to solve problems in collaboration with peers, these evolutionary patterns are important to note. attention here will be paid to those areas where there seemed to have been a discernible trend over time. strikingly, the main areas of struggle, with personal wellness, in-school relationships, and student behavior, were constants in all meetings. they were always mentioned to a similar degree, and while the specific concerns changed, they clearly remained challenges that were not current issues in education, 25(1) 25 going away regardless of specific successes or initiatives. in every meeting, the struggle to be well and feel connected in their schools, especially with other teachers, was mentioned as obvious, along with the difficulties of addressing student disrespect and non-compliance. it may be that having these shared baseline struggles identified the participants as members of the same group. ultimately, of course, there were reasons why they had all chosen to participate in this “sel space” process, and sharing these deep-seated challenges may well have been the common draw. in terms of areas of success and ongoing initiatives, there were more changes between meetings. there was a decrease in mentions of success regarding relations with colleagues and initiatives to improve boundary-setting and time management. it may be that these are areas that can be addressed through specific action steps whose results will either come quickly or not at all, rather than remaining topics to build on and revisit over the course of the meetings. it is noteworthy that there was an increase in conversation around successes in the area of classroom management and important aspects of personal wellness. indeed, as the meetings went on, there were more mentions of improvements in time management and participants being kinder to themselves. furthermore, there was an increase in conversation about implementing targeted initiatives to help with addressing student behavior and time management. given that wellness and addressing student behavior were discussed as constant struggles across meetings, the fact that teachers felt that some things had gotten better in this regard is important and points to growth in at least some critical sel-related areas. it seems significant, then, that some of the themes evolved over time while others remained constant. importantly, participants increasingly mentioned successes in the areas of classroom management and aspects of personal wellness that related to the goal for teachers to feel less anxious and close to burnout—to feel happier—and to gain a sense of self-efficacy that failure in classroom management arguably undermines most directly. while this would be beyond the scope of the current study, it might be hypothesized that the problem-solving and strategy sharing that was engaged during the meetings contributed to some of the successes participants talked about. underneath it all, however, the larger struggles with personal wellness, connectedness within the school, and addressing student behavior were constant. they were consistently shared and validated as important and legitimately challenging within the safe space of these meetings. outcomes: what teachers got out of the process while the nature of the topics that teachers discussed during the meetings seemed to confirm its positive impact on their sel, participants also pointed out how the process was valuable to them. the teachers highlighted three areas that were particularly impactful. for one, the meetings helped teachers feel less isolated and reminded them that they were not alone in experiencing the hardship they were going through. this seems particularly crucial, given how teachers struggled with feeling disconnected and unsupported by other teachers in the schools where they worked and given what is reported in the literature about the impact of isolation on current issues in education, 25(1) 26 teacher burnout (almerico, 2018). if there is a single sel area that one would want to prioritize above all, having a sense of belonging and being supported may be the most prominent. another benefit mentioned was that these meetings, bringing together early-career teachers with varying amounts of professional experience, allowed brand-new teachers to learn from the experiences and perspectives of others who had a bit more experience, and for the latter to recognize that they had indeed grown as a result of their developing practice. thus, participants were able to help—teach—one another on a practical level, while also gaining a better sense of their own development as teacher. finally, the participants valued the space for being safe. during these meetings, they felt that they could have a voice and be heard, without having to worry about the interpersonal complexities that they encountered in their schools. here they felt they could be themselves. reiterating what one participant said about the process, “this is sel.” in summary, participants focused on personal wellness, work-based relationships, and classroom management in their discussions across the meetings. while the topics themselves remained constant, there was a noticeable evolution as the meetings went on regarding personal successes. indeed, while work-life boundary setting, relationships with colleagues, and addressing disrespectful student behavior continued to be discussed as struggles, there was a noteworthy increase in successes in the area of classroom management and key aspects of personal wellness. overall, participants found the process to be valuable, helping them feel less isolated, learn from peers with different levels of experience, and feel that they could have a voice in a truly safe space. implications these meetings, clearly, were beneficial for participants and provided a venue 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(2006). teachers' beliefs about mental health needs in inner city elementary schools. journal of the american academy of child and adolescent psychiatry, 45(1), 61–68. author notes author name: peter clyde martin author affiliation: ithaca college author email: pmartin@ithaca.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 26, issue 1 may 02, 2025 issn 1099-839x adopting science of reading standards: one department’s story kimberly a. davidson duquesne university amy williams university of north georgia cristina washell university of north georgia kellie whelan-kim university of north georgia abstract: as more states continue to call for reforms of reading education and mandate the adoption of standards aligned with the science of reading, educator preparation programs are reviewing and redesigning their curricula. in this paper, faculty from our department of elementary and special education share some potential challenges, successes, and insights programs might encounter when accommodating these new requirements. we outline the process and outcomes of reviewing our curriculum as a resource for other programs undergoing similar revisions. the paper concludes with eight tips to support university faculty in educator preparation programs transition to structured literacy standards. keywords: educator preparation, academic standards, science of reading, literacy, dyslexia, elementary and special education, curriculum review citation: davidson, k.a., williams, a., washell, c., & whelan-kim, k. (2025). adopting science of reading standards: one department’s story. current issues in education, 26(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2246 accepted: 01/14/2025 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2246 davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 2 adopting science of reading standards: one department’s story the purpose of this article is to offer a summary of our experiences as faculty members and the department chairperson while adapting our elementary and special education (ese) certification program at a state university in response to newly mandated p-12 literacy instruction requirements and associated initial teaching preparation literacy standards based on the science of reading (sor). the process entailed challenges, successes, and insights as we worked to interpret the new teacher preparation standards mandated by the state. by sharing our approach, we hope to offer some guidance to others engaging in similar work. undeniably, the professional knowledge and instructional practices of elementary school teachers greatly impacts student learning and can continue to affect literacy outcomes years into the future (rosenshine, 1987; konstantopoulos & chung, 2011). accordingly, it is essential that educator preparation professionals establish programs that support the development of highly skilled teachers (hudson et al., 2021). to this end, government regulatory agencies and professional accrediting organizations have developed and disseminated guidelines through standards of practice that are typically based on scientific evidence of effectiveness. however, the research base for what constitutes best practices in literacy education continually evolves and expands. moreover, academic standards are generally written as guidelines that are open to a certain amount of interpretation rather than specific prescriptions for practice. these factors can cause variations in how the standards are implemented in the classrooms. the latest efforts to increase student literacy outcomes involves reform of literacy standards to encompass a particular view of research and practice which includes a structured approach to literacy education. literacy research, also known as the science of reading (sor), is an area of education that has been the subject of especially contentious debate for over two hundred years (shanahan, 2020). recounting the entire history of the so-called “reading wars” is beyond the scope of this paper. however, the changing and sometimes contrary perspectives around what constitutes literacy practices based on evidence from the sor informs our department’s current efforts to reform our educator preparation program (epp) to meet the new p-12 and corresponding initial teaching preparation literacy standards mandated by our state department of education. relevant distinctions between previous and newly initiated approaches to educator preparation in literacy are briefly outlined below. our department’s situation is not unique– many epps, like ours, have prepared future teachers to use what is known as the balanced literacy approach to reading instruction, aligned with our state’s english language arts (ela) standards that were based upon the common core state standards (ccss) adopted in 2010. indeed, for the past thirty years, most published reading curricula available in the united states have incorporated the balanced literacy method of reading instruction, so epps and p-12 school districts were literally on the same page (kurtz et al., 2020). balanced literacy methods reportedly work for some students. however, despite the best efforts of educators and epps, standardized assessment data across the nation has consistently shown that by grade 4, early reading outcomes for more than a third of students remain persistently below proficient levels (irwin, et al., 2022). these disappointing data, along with parental advocacy for their children with dyslexia (ga. comp. r. & regs. r. 160-4-2-.39, 2022) have led to a top-down overhaul of the ela standards in 39 states and territories. proponents of the reforms cite evidence from the sor indicating that systematic, structured literacy instruction in five foundational reading skills, (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension), is effective for almost all students and is essential for those davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 3 with reading disabilities (national reading panel, 2000). therefore, public schools and epps are adopting literacy standards with a heightened focus on structured, rather than balanced literacy (schwartz, 2022). our state legislature, department of education, and professional standards commissions followed suit and have called for the alignment of standards, curriculum, instruction, and assessment with structured literacy. although the new standards apply across grade levels, critical foundational reading instruction begins in the early grades. therefore, it is crucial that pre-service teachers in our department of ese are empowered with the most up-to-date evidence-based practices. under our new laws, our state department of education and professional standards commissions provide the following definition of the sor: an evidence-based approach to teaching reading and writing that is rooted in the understanding of cognitive science and its connection to educational outcomes. this method trains educators to teach reading by addressing syllables, morphology, soundsymbol correspondence, semantics, and syntax in a clear, systematic, and diagnostic manner. the approach holistically integrates speaking, listening, reading, and writing by offering explicit, systematic, and tailored instruction in areas such as phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics, syllable patterns, morphology, semantics, and syntax, ensuring a comprehensive and inclusive literacy development experience. (georgia general assembly, 2023a) this conception of the sor is somewhat at odds with the balanced literacy framework, which teaches phonics incidentally, rather than systematically, for example. the new p-12 structured literacy standards based on the sor were developed and disseminated first, so even before we received the initial teaching preparation standards, the faculty in our department of ese realized our curriculum would require considerable revisions to prepare our future educators to teach their young students to read with structured literacy methods. with this task set before us, faculty engaged in preliminary discussions to agree upon a theoretical framework from which to better revise our literacy curriculum and instruction in the department of ese. theoretical and conceptual frameworks as a department, we were aware of the impending changes in the reading landscape and wanted to avoid making the mistake of overcorrection by grounding ourselves in a solid theoretical foundation before the call to action was initiated. we began with the simple view of reading (gough & tumner, 1986; hoover & gough, 1990). at its most basic, learning to read can be modeled as a product of two components: language comprehension and word recognition. this conception of reading is sufficiently broad to encompass how we currently were teaching literacy instruction as well as the new perspective we needed to adopt. many faculty members were familiar with this model of reading, so it seemed like an appropriate starting point. but to undergird our understanding of the new structured literacy framework, we would need to break these components into additional subcomponents that capture the structured literacy framework. scarborough’s reading rope is a visual model that represents language comprehension and word recognition as two intertwining strands comprised of multiple substrands leading to skilled reading (scarborough, 2001). we adopted this model because the reading rope further conceptualizes the simple view of reading into smaller components. for example, language comprehension is modeled as the interrelation of the following subskills: background knowledge, davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 4 vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. in scarborough’s model, word recognition is depicted as an interweaving of phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition. the increased level of detail in this model would enable us to envision how each of the individual strands of literacy already were represented in our curriculum in an initial review prior to receiving the new state initial teaching preparation literacy standards. furthermore, the international dyslexia association (2010) adopted this model when crafting their knowledge and practice standards for teachers of reading which would form a foundation for our state’s new structured literacy standards. additionally, to support a renewed focus on writing standards and instruction, we adopted sedita’s writing rope (sedita, 2023) as another guiding model. sedita’s model features 5 interrelated strands essential for successful writing: critical thinking, syntax, text structure, writing craft, and transcription. coupling the reading and writing ropes provides a comprehensive theoretical model from which to initially review our curriculum before applying more specific structured literacy standards when we received them from the state. context our university is situated in the southeastern part of the united states. approximately 20,000 students attend classes offered on five campuses in a range of formats. the department of ese is organized by elementary, literacy, and special education courses and corresponding faculty. within the department of ese, there are four elementary, six literacy, and five special education faculty who all hold terminal degrees and are primarily responsible for teaching the 14 courses offered in the undergraduate program (see table 1). on average, 150 juniors and 130 seniors are enrolled in the undergraduate certification program. students complete our 127-hour program and earn one degree with a dual major that can lead to certification in both elementary and special education. historically, students earned a reading endorsement as well, however, the state has now requested that we phase the endorsement out of the initial certification program. table 1 department of elementary and special education courses by curricular area curricular area course name literacy education assessing literacy in early childhood education children’s literature and language arts reading in the content areas teaching of reading and writing in the elementary grades elementary general education child development classroom management educational assessment elementary curriculum, methods, and materials language and cognition strategies for supporting children and families from diverse communities special education applied behavior analysis characteristics of students with special needs educational assessment of students with special needs instruction of students with special needs davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 5 we have a history of shared governance, meaning that the creation and implementation of policies and regulations are the joint responsibility of faculty and administrators, alongside the state governing boards. faculty meet regularly to collectively review data regarding multiple facets of our program, such as: certification assessment data, student performance on institution standardized assessments, retention and completion rates, and program alignment with council for the accreditation of educator preparation (caep) standards. in response to university-led initiatives, and revised international and national education standards, faculty in our department have taken on tasks of examining the program’s curriculum on multiple occasions. for example, the department appraised the curriculum’s coverage of technology, dyslexia, and mathematics standards, as well as identifying and integrating opportunities for high-impact practices. our review experiences provided department of ese faculty familiarity with the curricular scope and sequence and informed our work with the initial teaching preparation literacy standards. faculty were able to apply processes that were already in place to the new task we had received. our process in response to state standardized reading assessment results, the georgia professional standards commission (gapsc) and the georgia state university system (gsus) developed a reading task force composed of literacy experts that were asked to make recommendations based on research related to the sor. in their recommendations the task force identified the necessity of providing pre-service teachers with the knowledge and skills needed to teach reading based on the sor. the results of these recommendations became the foundation for the adoption of the initial teaching preparation literacy standards in our program. although epps were aware of the upcoming changes, the gapsc’s implementation guidance (2023f) document was still pending adoption and there was little information regarding the implementation of the new standards. the gapsc initially provided guidelines (2023d) that offered a broad overview of the new legislation (georgia general assembly, 2023). this document included information regarding individual program requirements, a suggested timeline consisting of three phases of implementation, proposed action plan instructions, and a list of available resources and references. however, there was a limited level of specificity for each of the document’s components. rather than wait for additional clarification, the college of education leadership advised department heads to review the general guidelines with faculty and lead their respective departments in the development of an action plan to incorporate the new initial teaching preparation literacy standards. so, the department of ese conducted a first phase of reviewing our courses using methods we had established in previous reviews. upon receipt of the more detailed psc implementation guidance (2023f) and additional supporting documents, we underwent a second phase of analysis. we used a multi-step process to analyze the curriculum for aspects of literacy instruction aligned with the new sor-based initial teaching preparation literacy standards. within each section of our courses offered, faculty have flexibility around the lessons and learning activities they offer to meet course objectives. however, the courses each have a culminating key assessment, which remains consistent across sections. literacy faculty began by identifying elements of the initial teaching preparation literacy standards represented across all four literacy courses (see table 1) and determined the depth to which the standard was taught. for example, a component of a standard may be introduced in one course practiced within another course and davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 6 mastered in another. it was important to indicate this level of depth and breadth as standards often contain subcomponents and build on one another. these data were entered in a faculty-created spreadsheet using a simple color-coding scheme to visually cue the level of representation in each course. each standard was listed in the first column and additional columns were labeled with the names of reading courses. if a standard was fully met, the standard was highlighted in green and the applicable elements from the key assessments were entered in their corresponding cells. if a standard was partially met, it was highlighted in yellow and the relevant aspects of the key assessments that partially met the standard were entered in the spreadsheet. finally, standards that were not met at all in a course were designated with red font. once this stage of review was completed, the elementary and special education faculty completed their reviews in the same manner. with all the courses represented, we were able to see standards and parts of standards that were introduced, taught in depth, and mastered, as well as components that were missing. these initial steps positioned us to undertake the second phase of review after receiving the gapsc’s implementation guidance (2023f), self-assessment (2023e), and action plan template (2023c) documents. the self-assessment (2023e) document consisted of four components: a) knowledge literacy acquisition, b) applicationmethods & assessment (curriculum and instruction), c) applicationmethods & assessment (assessment and evaluation), and d) literacy professional dispositions and practices (see table 2). faculty re-evaluated the outcomes of the course syllabus review using this new framework, rating each area on a scale from 0 (no evidence of the component) to level 3. to receive a level 1 rating, courses should contain a reading, modeling, discussion, test, lecture, demonstration, presentation or quiz of the reviewed component of literacy. to attain a level 2, the level 1 criteria should be met in addition to the syllabi containing a case study, project, lesson plan study, observation, project or activity connected to the reviewed component of literacy. for a level 3 rating, at least one item for level 1 and 2 was required, in addition to small group tutoring, student teaching, or a whole group internship. although the format of the self-assessment tool provided by the gapsc differed from our self-made spreadsheet and color-coding system, results of the curriculum review we already completed provided an organized resource from which to obtain data. when the self-assessment was completed, we used our responses to complete the action plan template (2023c). table 2 self-assessment components and ratings component rating knowledgeliteracy acquisition application methods & assessment (curriculum and instruction) application methods & assessment level 0 no evidence of the component level 1 courses should contain a: • reading • modeling • discussion • test • lecture • demonstration • presentation or • quiz level 2 the level 1 criteria should be met. in addition to a • case study • project or activity • observation • lesson plan study level 3 at least one item for level 1 and 2 is required. in addition to • small group tutoring • student teaching or • whole group internship davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 7 (assessment and evaluation) literacy professional dispositions and practices connected to the reviewed component of literacy connected to the reviewed component of literacy connected to the reviewed component of literacy the gapsc’s action plan template (2023c) included five elements: program of study adjustments, standard alignment and syllabi, curriculum and supporting materials, field and clinical experiences, candidate assessments. faculty identified areas in which they could improve their courses by changing course content, assessments, resources (textbooks, articles, etc.), and assignments. for each of these elements, we were to address the action steps we would take to change our program. in addition to action steps, we were to report who would be responsible for each item, completion dates, and means for demonstrating successful completion. all ese faculty had the opportunity to review the department of ese’s self-assessment results and the proposed action plan before they were compiled and submitted to the coe’s dean and associate dean for final review and integration into the epp action plan (2023b). a summary of ratings and examples of changes to the ese courses and program incorporated in our action plan resulting from the self-assessment are provided in the outcomes section below. outcomes of curriculum review with a clear understanding of the depth and breadth of coverage of initial teacher preparation literacy standards in place from our initial department of ese review, we focused on evaluating our courses using the ratings and four components in the gapsc’s self-assessment document (see table 2). within each component, we compared course elements to individual sub-standards of teacher preparation literacy standards and accounted for which courses covered standards strongly, moderately, weakly, or not at all. in addition, we identified courses where additional standards could potentially be incorporated. where differences of opinion occurred, we continued to discuss and clarify ratings until consensus was reached. knowledge: literacy acquisition overall, a rating of level 2 was demonstrated in our program on this component. all level 1 criteria in this component were addressed through the four literacy, four special education, and two of the general elementary education courses (see table 1). an example of how level 2 was achieved can be found in our assessing literacy in early childhood education course. this course includes a case study key assessment wherein our teacher candidates demonstrate knowledge of evidence-based approaches to literacy acquisition by designing and implementing literacy instruction to a student 1: 1 based on the results of literacy assessments they have administered in a p-5 field placement setting. to achieve a level 3, literacy instruction would need to be provided in a small group, whole group, or student teaching context. the review of this component resulted in redesigning the teaching of reading and writing in elementary schools course to focus on six additional standard elements that would strengthen the use of a structured literacy approach. in addition, faculty found some standards pertaining to teaching the cognitive characteristics and aspects of language development that form the foundation for reading were an immediate fit with the language and cognition and child davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 8 development courses. the faculty agreed that the case study key assessments in both courses could potentially be adapted to include elements of the new literacy guidelines related to cognitive and language development. the faculty also identified some overlap between the two courses, so further collaboration will ensure that the cognitive and language development concepts can be appropriately introduced, reinforced, and mastered. application: methods & assessment (curriculum and instruction) for this component, our program achieved a rating of level 2. level 1 criteria were evidenced through four reading courses and one special education course (see table 1). for instance, integration of literacy skills across subject areas, with a focus on informational text, is emphasized in the reading in the content areas course. to receive a level 2 rating, faculty considered the unit plan key assessment from the children’s literature and language arts course. the children’s literature and language arts course is aimed at upper elementary grades (3 – 5) and traditionally focuses more on literature than foundational structured literacy skills. teacher candidates in this course critically examine and select high-quality multimodal texts and develop interdisciplinary thematic text sets incorporated into a coherent, integrated, motivating literacy program for all learners. a unit plan and digital teacher’s guide are developed that incorporate the text set and meet a level 2 criterion. the development of curriculum and instruction in foundational reading and writing skills is primarily addressed in the teaching of reading and writing in the elementary grades course, taken by first semester juniors in the program. however, analysis of this component uncovered a pronounced need to include additional content related to written expression to fully address standards that were not being adequately addressed. as noted previously, the content of this course will be integrating several standards that fall under the literacy acquisition component. to avoid overburdening one course with too much content, it was determined that standards addressing the developmental progression of writing, teaching of written expression and genres, and elements of handwriting could be appropriately incorporated into the children’s literature and language arts course in a modified key assessment. application: methods & assessment (assessment and evaluation) for this component, faculty observed criteria meeting a level 2 rating overall. level 1 criteria were met through course material in three reading courses, two special education courses, and one general education course (see table 1). for instance, dyslexia modules were embedded into the characteristics of students with special needs course. this was done in part to satisfy the state’s knowledge of dyslexia (ga. comp. r. & regs. r. 160-4-2-.39, 2022) requirements, but also to ensure that students are taught the fundamentals of scientifically based research related to literacy assessment and instruction early in the program. similarly, in the educational assessment of students with special needs course explicit reading instruction, screening and diagnostic tests for reading difficulties, with an emphasis on characteristics of dyslexia are covered in depth. to illustrate attaining a level 2 rating, faculty noted the assessing literacy in early childhood education course focuses on using methods of literacy assessment for a variety of purposes and the use of assessment data for instruction. as noted previously, this assignment is administered 1:1, rather than in small or whole groups or as a part of student teaching, which would bring the rating up to level 3. davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 9 faculty observed an opportunity to incorporate additional standards related to assessments and evaluation in two special education courses. in the applied behavior analysis course, students discuss how behavior may impact academic achievement, in the functional behavioral analysis and behavior intervention plan key assessment. this key assessment could be modified to specifically address assessment of behavior and its impact on reading and writing. likewise, in the instruction of students with special needs course, the key assessment includes elements of the standards related to interpreting assessments and using them to inform instruction. discussions and readings in the course could be extended to include demonstrations for literacy assessments and interventions. literacy professional dispositions and practices a rating of 3 was obtained in this component. evidence in all four reading courses and two of the special education courses supported a level 1 rating. for example, in the assessing literacy in early childhood education and characteristics of students with special needs courses the assignments, materials, and assessments focusing on dyslexia and its impacts on literacy address seven sub-standards of this component. the rating of 3 was supported by evidence from several courses. juniors and seniors in our program spend three full days per week for 12 weeks per semester in field placements or student teaching. during these placements, teacher candidates design literacy (and other) lessons as part of their courses using a template we provide and implement them with p – 5 students. opportunities for professional reflection are integrated in the department of ese lesson plan template used in every class that has a field experience. in addition, teacher candidates complete self-ratings of their dispositions and receive ratings by their university supervisor and mentor teacher throughout the program. finally, the standards aligned with this component reach a level 3 through completion of an ethics exam during the student teaching experience in our program. overall, the results of our self-assessment indicated that our program includes many strengths. in three of the four components, we are meeting the new initial teaching preparation standards based on the sor to at least a moderate (level 2) degree. the professional dispositions and practices component is represented especially well in our courses and connected field experience opportunities. however, the review also allowed us to uncover some aspects of our courses that could be amended to better address the new literacy standards and better prepare our teacher candidates to instruct their students using evidence-based, structured literacy practices. the results of our self-assessment became the basis for our department of ese action plan. we formulated action steps based upon areas of need uncovered through the review and transferred them to the template. faculty from each curricular area were identified to take a lead role on modifying existing courses, adapting syllabi, creating new assignments and key assessments, acquiring textbooks, articles, and other curricular resources based on familiarity with courses and content expertise. once the self-assessment and department of ese action plan reports were submitted, the authors dedicated time to intentionally reflect on the process and outcomes of the review to distill challenges, successes, and considerations for future curricular reviews in our department. davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 10 challenges the transition to initial teaching preparation literacy standards based on the sor was not without complications. logistics, implementation guidance, course composition, reporting methods, background knowledge, and ideological viewpoints all presented certain challenges during the process. timing most of the work that was required at the department level was conducted during the summer and early fall semesters. given that all faculty in the department of ese were on 10month contracts, it was especially difficult to schedule a time for groups to meet during the summer months when many faculty members were unavailable. clarity after reading the legislation (georgia general assembly, 2023) and guidelines (2023d) documents, it was clear that there was insufficient information for the department of ese to complete the action planning process. even after the implementation guidance (2023f), selfassessment (2023e), and action plan template (2023c) documents were shared, there were many gray areas left open to interpretation. for example, the level of details expected in the action plan template was not specified. our program was left to determine the amount of information that needed to be included in this document. questions emerged regarding this process that could not be answered without further guidance from the gapsc. for example, could the program modify our action plan once it was submitted to the gapsc or was this plan final? the lack of procedural clarity presented an initial obstacle to incorporating the new initial teaching preparation literacy standards in our curriculum. curricular content along with the gaps in our literacy courses related to structured literacy, the larger review of curriculum in ese required faculty teaching courses that do not specifically emphasize reading to re-evaluate their syllabi to potentially encompass components of the new standards. some of the components, such as cognitive and linguistic developmental factors and assessment methodology, were a logical fit, while others were more difficult to incorporate. essentially, our faculty was required to look at our entire curriculum through a structured literacy lens. this new lens seemed unnecessarily restrictive to some faculty who are experts in their fields and would prefer to maintain autonomy over the substance of their courses. organization epps, departments, and faculty expertise groups have different cultures, goals, and ways of organizing systems and information. for example, faculty in the department of ese reported the benefits of using the color-coded spreadsheet as an organizational tool to help them review the alignment between course curricula and legislation (georgia general assembly, 2023) standards. however, this organizational tool did not align with the gapsc’s self-assessment (2023e) and action plan template (2023c) tools that we were required to use to submit our results and final reports. the transfer process between formats was time-consuming and difficult davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 11 because faculty included non-essential information that was not transferable given the template limitations. educational the educational background of the faculty in our program is paramount in providing quality learning experiences for our students. each of our faculty members holds a terminal degree in a field related to the courses they teach, so to incorporate content not necessarily explicitly related to our fields or the methods included in our doctoral programs presents a challenge. certainly, our professional experiences provide further expertise from which to draw, and most topics are at least tangentially, if not directly, related to the skills and knowledge required to teach in an elementary or early childhood setting. so, in making the shift to embedding the science of reading approach into all aspects of our curriculum, our faculty have continued their commitment to lifelong learning to broaden their expertise. some of the faculty in the department of ese lacked training in the sor. the expectations associated with the legislation (georgia general assembly, 2023) calls for a shift in what literacy and other faculty teach and how they teach it. although there were a few exceptions, most ese faculty recognized that they needed additional training to effectively understand how to support pre-service teachers’ development of literacy skills and understandings. this lack of understanding and experience with the sor had a profound impact on the self-assessment and action planning process. afterall, it is hard to know what you need to modify in your courses if you do not have the necessary background knowledge to fully understand the new expectations. philosophical since faculty have expertise in the specific courses, and content, methods, and strategies are predominantly agreed upon, there is often a tendency to develop a territorial connection to the curriculum and content that has been created. when there is a requirement to incorporate different standards or elements that cross content areas, there is sometimes a natural tendency for faculty to be protective over the content and methods in which they strongly believe or have been implementing for an extended period. curriculum review sessions in the context of mandated initiatives have required a shift to a more collective approach and broadened view of the overall curriculum across content areas. successes while the initial shifts in the curriculum and methods presented several challenges, there were also ancillary benefits gained from the process. as a result of revising our literacy program, positive growth was realized in areas of communication and knowledge. communication our previous consistent, collaborative efforts in curriculum review served us well as we evaluated the curriculum related to the new reading standards. we met according to our expertise areas first in order to determine how the standards could meaningfully be incorporated into the existing content. as the faculty discussed the standards, channels of communication across the ese program opened, as well, to see the bigger picture of content being addressed in other, davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 12 related courses. our faculty engaged in monthly curriculum meetings prior to the whole group consideration of the action plan for the new standards. in those meetings, faculty met in mixed small groups to look at the overall landscape of the curriculum and discuss the specific content introduced, emphasized, and evaluated in courses throughout the program. this process provided a more thorough awareness for all faculty of content, methods, and strategies taught in other courses, as well as the specific areas of expertise of each of our faculty. broadened knowledge to engage in the process of incorporating the new legislation (georgia general assembly, 2023) and sor standards, it was necessary for faculty in all expertise areas to conduct some level of research and receive opportunities for training and discussions on various topics. in the years preceding the deadline for adopting the new standards, the faculty received training on dyslexia and a pre-packaged structured literacy program. those training sessions, in addition to discussions with faculty who had more expertise in specific aspects of the new standards, served to strengthen the knowledge base of our faculty. remaining current on best practices for reading benefits the faculty and allows us to present a comprehensive curriculum to our students throughout their program. considerations mandates can be complicated to integrate and enact at times due to any number of reasons, whether related to the requirements of the mandates themselves or the personnel involved in implementing them. we have learned a few key lessons that may be helpful to others who are integrating initial teacher preparation literacy standards based on a structured literacy approach in their programs or may be doing so in the future. tip 1. review courses on an annual basis we recommend at least a yearly review of the alignment of standards and content taught across courses. not all universities regularly allocate time to course standard review. because our faculty was familiar with analyzing and adjusting course content based on initiatives no less than annually, faculty had a familiarity with the expectations and the process. faculty members who analyze course content routinely will find the task less cumbersome. moreover, frequent curriculum review provides an opportunity to develop shared communication and processes. tip 2. get organized and figure out what works for your program facilitate open communication, establish guidelines, and align formats for review and reporting across departments and expertise areas. when initiatives such as incorporating the sor standards are mandated, there is no single “right way” to accomplish the task. for example, other departments in the coe at our university approached the process differently from the department of ese. however, operationalizing important terms and agreeing to uniform procedures will help avoid issues of incompatibility and misunderstanding later in the process. tip 3. change and growth are the name of the game davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 13 being open to change and growth is paramount to the process. it can be challenging to adapt, but it is an expectation that educators pursue continual improvement. while faculty may feel like they are providing excellent instruction, it may be that the content, methods, and materials in their courses could benefit from adjustments to meet the standards more frequently than assumed. approaching your review with a growth mindset will enable you to see the inherent challenges as potential opportunities to improve yourself and your program. tip 4. start with a comparison of standards a good starting point for faculty integrating the sor educator preparation standards is to look for similarities with the professional standards already aligned with their courses. for example, our literacy courses are aligned to international literacy association (ila) standards for the preparation of literacy professionals. likewise, special education courses are aligned to the council for exceptional children’s (cec) professional preparation standards. consider creating a crosswalk of relevant standards you already use with the new the professional standards to help you determine where standards are already addressed. tip 5. seek elements of standards in all courses it is important to examine all courses in a program rather than only the literacy courses. there may be opportunities for including standards in courses that were not previously recognized. throughout our experience, it was evident that components of the standards could be found across the ese program. although you may not envision literacy as a component of your course, the process of review will help build a better understanding of strengths and gaps in the curriculum overall. as a result, you may find natural opportunities for the components of the sor professional standards in your content. tip 6. develop a specific system related to standard coverage it is helpful to categorize whether standards or parts of standards are introduced, practiced, or mastered in each course. one way to record this information is to determine if a standard is a) not addressed, b) addressed but not assessed, c) addressed and assessed (formatively), d) addressed and assessed (summatively), or e) addressed, assessed, and applied. this systematic approach can help faculty determine the appropriate courses for introducing concepts as well as appropriate courses for developing proficiency or mastery of the concept. tip 7. develop course assignments and assessments last only after strengths and gaps have been identified through your program review, is it time to consider assignments and assessments within courses. suggesting and debating course content too early in the review process pulls focus from the task at hand. consider taking a backward design approach to course design by fully distributing standards across courses first to ensure comprehensive coverage and mitigate redundancy. faculty can then adapt or create content to address them in unique ways or move well-designed assignments to other courses that better align with the content. davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 14 tip 8. provide professional development formal training for faculty is central to realizing successful outcomes of reform efforts. while faculty routinely attain professional development and seek evidence-based practices, the sor standards may diverge from the types of educational opportunities faculty have previously acquired. ideally, faculty should obtain professional development specific to the sor in advance of curriculum review. however, if the implementation timeline is brief, professional development should be provided as soon as possible to support faculty through the processes. potential areas for future work although we have completed the review of our program and integrated the initial teaching preparation literacy standards to meet the requirements of sor structured literacy, the work is ongoing. as we continue to refine our program, we will request input from our stakeholders. for example, we will request that faculty reflect upon how the changes are working in their courses and whether they have suggestions for further revisions. aside from minor adjustments, we will gather two cycles of data as evidence before entering another major phase of reform that might include the elimination, consolidation, or creation of courses. another area of future work would be to examine whether there are any potential causal relationships between our graduates' scores on professional certification exams and the integration of the new standards in our program. further, it could be illuminating to survey our alumni and examine whether there are any meaningful differences in their feelings of preparedness to teach reading and writing based on whether they graduated from our program before or after the shift in our alignment from balanced to structured literacy. ultimately, the literacy outcomes for students in p-12 settings will determine if the programmatic reforms have been successful in the long-term. as we begin to accumulate standardized testing data from other states and our own, it can provide another rich opportunity for future research. researchers should determine if there are significant differences between literacy outcomes for students in states who have adopted sor-informed, initial teaching preparation literacy standards compared to states who have not. in addition, data from states who have adopted sor literacy standards should be analyzed to identify possible moderators and mediators of success. more than just a catchphrase, “continuous improvement” in education has important implications in our profession. systematically collecting evidence and evaluating our programs’ strengths, challenges, and opportunities for growth will better position us to meet the evolving needs of our students and society. conclusion the urgent push to ensure elementary teacher candidates acquire and develop more indepth knowledge and skills using a structured literacy approach to the foundations of reading required not only integration of new initial teacher preparation literacy standards, but also major shifts in the curriculum and methods used in the department of ese program. our program’s literacy courses were based on a balanced literacy approach, including some elements of teacherled instruction but emphasizing shared and guided reading and exploring the workshop model. these models were also being implemented in many of our partner schools, so there had been consistency between what teacher candidates were learning in class and observing in action in davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 15 their placements. the change to the more explicit sor model and its implementation has been a collective change experienced by our department, the coe, and our partner schools and stakeholders. although this widespread change has presented some challenges, it has also paved the way for new opportunities for our faculty, program, and most importantly future elementary teachers and their students. references common core state standards initiative. (2010). common core state standards for english language arts & literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. ccsso & national governors association. ga. comp. r. & regs. r. 160-4-2-.39 original rule entitled "dyslexia identification and support" adopted. f. aug. 25, 2022; eff. sep. 14, 2022. retrieved from https://rules.sos. state.ga.us /gac/160-4-2-.39?urlredirected=yes&data=admin& lookingfor= 160-4-2-.39 georgia early literacy act, h.b. 538, 2023-2024 session (2023) https://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/all georgia professional standards commission. (2023a). educator preparation rule 505-3-.03, the foundations of reading, literacy, and language. https://www.gapsc.com/rules/current /educatorpreparation/505-3-.03.pdf?dt=%3c%2 georgia professional standards commission. (2023b). epp action plan for implementation of rule 505-3-.03 and other reading-related requirements. https://www.gapsc.com /educator preparation/resources/downloads/ gapsc%20foundations%20of%20 reading%20implementation%20guide%20for%20epps%20v1.2%20july%202023.pdf georgia professional standards commission. (2023c). foundations of reading action plan template. https://www.gapsc.com/educatorpreparation/resources/ downloads/gapsc %20foundations% 20of%20reading%20implementation%20guide%20for%20 epps%20v1.2%20july%202023.pdf georgia professional standards commission. (2023d). foundations of reading, literacy, and language implementation guide for educator preparation providers. https://www.gapsc.com/educator preparation/resources/downloads/gapsc%20 foundations%20of%20reading%20implementation%20guide%20for%20epps%20v1.2 %20july%202023.pdf georgia professional standards commission. (2023e). foundations of reading self-assessment for elementary (p-5), special education general curriculum/elementary, and middle grades reading programs. https://www.gapsc.com/educatorpreparation/resources/ downloads/gapsc%20foundations%20of%20reading%20implementation%20guide% 20for%20epps%20v1.2%20july%202023.pdf georgia professional standards commission. (2023f). guidance for program approval standards. https://www.gapsc.com/educatorpreparation/resources/downloads/ihe/ guidance_for_ georgia_standards_2023_taps_rev.pdf gough, p. b., & tunmer, w. e. (1986). decoding, reading, and reading disability. remedial and special education, 7(1), 6-10. davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 16 hoover, w. a., & gough, p. b. (1990). the simple view of reading. reading and writing, 2, 127-160. hudson, a. k., moore, k. a., han, b., wee koh, p., binks-cantrell, e., & malatesha joshi, r. (2021). elementary teachers’ knowledge of foundational literacy skills: a critical piece of the puzzle in the science of reading. reading research quarterly, 56, s287-s315. international dyslexia association. (2010). knowledge and practice standards for teachers of reading. baltimore, md. author. irwin, v., de la rosa, j., wang, k., hein, s., zhang, j., burr, r., roberts, a., barmer, a., bullock mann, f., dilig, r., and parker, s. (2022). report on the condition of education 2022 (nces 2022-144). u.s. department of education. washington, dc: national center for education statistics. retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/ pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2022144. konstantopoulos, s., & chung, v. (2011). the persistence of teacher effects in elementary grades. american educational research journal, 48(2), 361-386. https://doi.org/ 10.3102/0002831210382888 kurtz, h., lloyd, s., harwin, a., chen, v., & furuya, y. (2020). early reading instruction: results of a national survey. editorial projects in education. national reading panel (u.s.) & national institute of child health and human development (u.s.). (2000). report of the national reading panel: teaching children to read: an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. rosenshine, b. (1987). explicit teaching and teacher training. journal of teacher education, 38(3), 34-36. scarborough, h. s., neuman, s., & dickinson, d. (2009). connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis) abilities: evidence, theory, and practice. approaching difficulties in literacy development: assessment, pedagogy and programmes, 10, 23-38. schwartz, s. (2022, july 20). which states have passed ‘science of reading’ laws? what’s in them? education week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/ which-states-havepassed-science-of-reading-laws-whats-in-them/2022/07 sedita, j. (2023). the writing rope: a framework for explicit writing instruction in all subjects. brookes publishing shanahan, t. (2020). what constitutes a science of reading instruction? reading research quarterly, 55, s235-s247 authors’ notes kimberly a. davidson orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2826-234x duquesne university, department of instruction and leadership in education davidsonk2@duq.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2826-234x mailto:davidsonk2@duq.edu davidson et al.: adopting science of reading standards current issues in education, 26(1) 17 amy williams university of north georgia amy.williams@ung.edu cristina washell university of north georgia cristina.washell@ung.edu kellie whelan-kim university of north georgia kellie.whelankim@ung.edu we would like to acknowledge the many vital contributions of our colleagues in the college of education at the university of north georgia to the curriculum review and adoption of the science of reading standards. more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:amy.williams@ung.edu mailto:cristina.washell@ung.edu mailto:kellie.whelankim@ung.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ not “just” an undergrad: undergraduate journals as a portal to participating in academic discourse communities current issues in education, 24(2) 1 volume 24, issue 2 august 28, 2023 issn 1099-839x not “just” an undergrad: undergraduate journals as a portal to participating in academic discourse communities paige france and christopher eaton university of toronto mississauga abstract: this essay examines a case study that investigated how students learned and how they applied their writing skills as they pursued publication in an undergraduate scientific journal at a canadian university. as we conducted a genre analysis of student drafts submitted to the journal and interviewed students who published in the journal’s inaugural year, we noted the desire and eagerness that students had to publish at the undergraduate level. we also noticed certain barriers to students fully participating in research for their discourse communities, including challenges accessing publication opportunities and revising their work for new audiences and contexts. undergraduate journals offer a tremendous space for them to hone a variety of skills in a supportive environment while also taking the first steps to fully participating in scholarly practice. keywords: undergraduate publishing, scientific journals, student perspectives, discourse communities citation: france, p. & eaton, c. (2023). not “just” an undergrad: undergraduate journals as a portal to participating in academic discourse communities. current issues in education, 24(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss2.2188 accepted: july 5, 2023 introduction undergraduate journals provide a means to disseminate student research while becoming immersed within the scholarly publishing community (weiner & watkinson, 2014). these opportunities also offer undergraduate students a chance to develop their writing skills as they participate in their academic discourse communities (caprio, 2014; rifkin et al., 2010). despite their benefits—better understanding published works, learning to manage collaborative and individual work, forging an area of interest, and inspiring postgraduate career trajectories (madan & teitge, 2013)—undergraduate journals have not been used to their maximal potential to support student success. in the sciences, opportunities for undergraduate students to publish are not common. as such, science students have little opportunity to transfer knowledge gained https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss2.2188 france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 2 in the classroom to new contexts and different audiences. their work with a paper often ends with their course, and, as such, they miss out on the profound learning opportunities that disseminating research can provide them early in their academic and professional lives. this essay will report on an intrinsic case study conducted to understand how students learned and how they applied their writing skills as they pursued publication in a journal to showcase scientific research at the university of toronto. in our canadian context, students enrolled in undergraduate programs are pursuing a three or four-year program at the university. they are, most often, coming from secondary school (we call it high school) and just beginning their professional journey as young adults. undergraduate students do not usually get opportunities to publish their coursework, which was part of the inspiration for starting this journal. for this reason, the paper will focus on undergraduate journals being unique learning experiences not frequently offered to students at this academic level, with particular emphasis on how the journal can immerse students in their academic discourse communities and offer them opportunities to develop skills—such as applying feedback—that are not always available in their coursework. the essay aims to bring undergraduate perspectives about undergraduate journals to the table and underscore the fact that so many students feel that they are inferior members of their discourse communities who cannot fully participate in the activities related to these communities; they believe they’re “just” undergraduates and are not qualified to publish. our findings suggest the opposite is true: students are eager and ready to participate in these scholarly activities, but they are not always ready to adapt their work for these communities. undergraduate journals offer a tremendous space for them to hone skills in a supportive environment while also taking the first steps to fully participate in scholarly practice. the journal the university of toronto’s journal of scientific innovation (jsi) is a tri-campus interdisciplinary journal dedicated to the breadth of sciences. paige launched the journal in 2021, and chris has acted as the faculty sponsor for the journal since its inception. this project arose from our mutual desire to understand how the journal was impacting students and how we could enhance the journal’s editorial structure to ensure long-term success. the journal’s mission is to provide a platform for undergraduate students to disseminate their research to academic audiences. using the open journal systems (ojs) publishing software to promote easy access to the publication for the public, the jsi is operated under the university of toronto’s robarts research library. this student-led, faculty-supported initiative blends academic and public discourse practice. in the first year, two issues were launched. two more issues will be released in the second year. the jsi is managed by students who are divided into two positions: peer reviewers as well as associate editors. peer reviewers are tasked with deciding the success of anonymous papers submitted as well as providing their own feedback. this team decides what are the shortcomings of each paper and what will need to be edited if the submission is accepted or revised for a following issue. the associate editors then work to integrate these edits alongside the author(s) as well as complete some minor adaptations in preparation for publication. the journal aims to provide first-time publications for undergraduate students. students from various scientific disciplines at the university of toronto can submit a course paper but must adapt their submission to discuss the ways in which their topic, experimental design, or scientific research fuels scientific innovation and future discovery. this learning opportunity france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 3 allows undergraduate students in the sciences to transfer their writing skills from the science classroom to a new, more public context. in the process, student authors undergo a modified version of peer review. submissions are anonymized and reviewed by a panel of undergraduate students from the sciences at the university. these students select successful papers and suggest revisions. these revisions are then synthesized by the editor-in-chief and associate editors to soften language, focus the revisions, and provide direction for the next steps in the publication process. successful authors are then paired with a student mentor who supports their revisions. in this process, both authors and editorial team members gain first exposure to academic peer review and revisions. publishing in the journal is, in many ways, more of a pedagogical exercise and experiential opportunity than a scientific endeavor. literature review benefits for authors and editors studies that discuss undergraduate journals often point to their benefits for student authors. undergraduate authors can develop their skills through the publication process, which teaches them how to revise their work for new audiences, critically analyze and implement feedback, and apply writing strategies learned in the classroom (bendinskas et al., 2020; mariani et al., 2013; walkington, 2012). similarly, students on a journal editorial team benefit from assessing scholarship and learning about how academic knowledge is disseminated (downs, 2021; mariani et al., 2013; walkington et al., 2013). in both roles, authors and editor, students refine communication skills through peer review and feedback (walkington, 2012), and they learn to engage with their academic discourse communities (rifkin et al., 2010). a study of an undergraduate journal by garbati and brockett (2018) found that undergraduate journals offer students important opportunities to develop writing, interpersonal, and communication skills. caprio (2014) framed student journals as a pedagogical initiative that enables students to begin transitioning from students to community-engaged scholars. likewise, neville et al. (2012) argued that students can use undergraduate publications to become producers of knowledge in their communities rather than simply consumers of academic research. when students participate in publishing in an undergraduate journal, they enhance their academic toolkits by disseminating their ideas through a collaborative, formative, and dialogic space. developing these skills and participating in discourse communities can have long-term benefits for learners’ careers. lave and wenger (1991) noted that novice learners who participate in the practices of their discourse communities can shift their locations in those communities; they can move from novices to full participants and contributors. the benefit of this immersion parallels bendinskas et al.’s (2020) note that publication should not be the only goal for student participation in journals. participating in journal production or preparing a paper for publication offers important skill-building opportunities for students. participating in knowledge-building activities with an undergraduate journal, such as conducting and disseminating research, repositions learners so they can participate in the future. undergraduate journals and future opportunities if students do publish a paper in an undergraduate journal, their success can help them pursue future opportunities. from an academic perspective, publication increasingly becomes a factor in hiring, promotion, and career advancement as students advance through their studies (lee & norton, 2003). building a curriculum vitae is equally important for students pursuing france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 4 professional programs, such as medical and law schools. while publications are not essential for successful admissions, they can be beneficial in a competitive admissions environment. moreover, many graduate programs assume that students possess writing skills that they can transfer to graduate school (sallee et al., 2011) despite evidence that students often require support as they transition to new genres and means of knowledge dissemination (eaton & dombroski, 2022; sallee et al., 2011). undergraduate journals offer students a chance to practice these genres in a supportive environment before they must participate in higher-stakes publication contexts. one challenge, however, is that opportunities to publish and practice knowledge dissemination are difficult for students to obtain. in a study of education graduate student participation in academic publications, garbati and samuels (2013) found that less than nine percent of papers surveyed had graduate student authors. notably, few students were solo authors, and none of the papers surveyed contained student-student collaborations. the ability for students to participate in publication is often contingent on faculty contexts. jones et al.’s (2010) review of productivity in educational psychology journals found that faculty who publish the most and who have the highest publishing demands are less likely to include student contributors, while less productive faculty (by publication quantity) and departments are more likely to provide an environment that welcomes student participation in publications. garbati and samuels (2013) and jones et al. (2010) both refer to graduate students, but if graduate students have limited access to publication opportunities, then it is likely that undergraduate students would have even less access. as we will discuss later, our undergraduate participants emphasized a lack of opportunities for them to meaningfully participate in academic research dissemination. undergraduate journals and science communication in the context of our undergraduate scientific publication, it is worth considering the undergraduate research environment that impacts students who participate in our journal activities. this context is intertwined with wider writing and communication practices that negatively impact students’ abilities to translate their learning beyond the classroom. junior scientists often learn to communicate their research during coursework. they, like most undergraduate students, become socialized into their disciplines (lea, 2004; street et al., 2015) as they replicate the writing and communication practices most prominent in their field. the problem is that they often do this work within their disciplinary bubble. classroom projects rarely get adapted for a context beyond that space, which means that they do not learn how to translate their work for wider audiences.  a combination of specialization and lack of formal training in research writing dissemination has contributed to the problem (brownell et al., 2013). bankston and mcdowell (2018) highlighted that this lack is at the core of challenges to address misinformation, combat distrust in scientists, and influence policy to resolve social problems. the solution, for many sources (e.g., brownell et al., 2013; norris et al., 2019), is increased communication training in scientific programs to resolve what bubela et al. (2009) called a “deficit” in scientific communication pedagogy. the idea is that emphasizing communication skills in the scientific classroom will better prepare junior scientists to engage with wider audiences. undergraduate journals may offer an alternative way to mitigate this deficit. given the range of opportunities that journals offer students to develop communication and research skills (garbati and brockett, 2018; rifkin et al., 2010; walkington, 2012; walkington et al., 2013), an france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 5 undergraduate journal of science can, hypothetically, offer undergraduate scientists a venue to hone these skills and consider wider audiences. in the process, they will be better positioned to become what caprio (2014) calls “change agents” who can fully participate and contribute to their fields. methodology this paper comes from an intrinsic case study that was framed by the papers published in the first year of the journal. an intrinsic case study, according to stake (2003), is undertaken because the researcher seeks a deeper understanding of a case. the intention is not to theorize but rather to deepen knowledge of a particular situation or issue. in an intrinsic case study, the case itself is “of secondary interest, it plays a supportive role, and it facilitates our understanding of something else” (p. 137). our case was the jsi’s first year of publication, but we were less studying an issue with the journal than the circumstances around which it was produced. we wanted to gain a better understanding of the journal’s publication process so that we could refine our workflow and publication strategy. six of our fourteen authors agreed to reflect on their publication experience. to maintain anonymity, the author names have been changed to a pseudonym of their choice. participants came from a range of program years. two participants had recently graduated and were publishing their undergraduate work. two had just completed their first year of university studies. two others were entering their third year of a four-year program. the papers also represented a large variety of disciplines. for example, some papers came from psychology classes, one was about innovation in energy sources, another combined science with sociology, and others focused on chemistry. most papers from participants were research papers, though the journal has adapted lab reports for publication. the journal has not yet published parts of dissertations due to contextual challenges related to lab data and requirements for graduation. the study was motivated by a desire to refine the journal’s editorial approach. as the student editor-in-chief and faculty sponsor for the journal, we wanted to establish a sustainable model that would persist for years to come. using a case study framework allowed us to connect the phenomenon—in this case, students revising a paper for publication—with the context of the journal editorial process (stake, 2005; yazan, 2015). to accomplish this, we focused on two areas of the publication process. firstly, we investigated what brought authors to pursue publication in the journal and what their expectations were. this then allowed us to examine how student authors and student editors collaborated to revise successful submissions. we used two methods to gather information from our participants. the first step was a semi-structured interview with the participants. the interviews occurred in the first half of 2022. prior to the interviews, we established a list of questions to guide the discussions. the questions were designed to establish a thread for the interviews but also leave space for us to pursue discussion points specific to each participant. this way, interviews could respond to individual participant contexts, with the questions acting as a gravitational center for the discussions as a whole. in this interview, we asked participants about what attracted them to publish and how the journal impacted their undergraduate education. we also asked them about their revision experience and the changes they made to their paper as they adjusted their work to suit the journal context. these interviews were recorded on zoom, and we then cross-referenced the zoom-generated transcript with the recording to correct inaccuracies. the second step involved a genre analysis. the aim of the genre analysis was to compare how revisions the students made on their papers compared to their process and what they said france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 6 they revised when we interviewed them. we drew upon bhatia’s (2016) critical genre analysis because it prioritized the context in which the documents were produced as much as it emphasized the end product and their effects on intended audiences. whereas traditional genre analysis has focused primarily on textual output (bhatia, 1993; swales, 1990), bhatia’s (2016) framework emphasizes professional practice “through the medium of genres” (p. 9) in an attempt to “demystify, understand, explain, and account for the kinds of professional practices in which we are engaged in our everyday professional life” (p. 23). since we were investigating an undergraduate journal, this approach fits well with our context. when they publish in a journal, students are practicing skills they will need to become more fully immersed in their communities, and they are honing skills that could translate to their professional practice later on (caprio, 2014). how student authors accommodate the publication context, how they think about and revise their paper to speak to their target audiences, and how they critically engage with feedback to suit the unique demands of a publication (e.g., meeting the journal theme, using literature that joins the conversation held in the journal) all offer insight into what they students are learning as they publish their work. these same factors also provide insight into how student editors are equipped to work with authors and support them through the publication process. we analyzed two document types. the first document was a chart where authors and editors exchanged feedback and documented their revisions to the paper drafts. each published paper had one of these documents. we then investigated each draft authors submitted. this included at least the original submission and the final revised draft for each participant. we individually went through the drafts and the charts and coded preliminary themes. we then discussed and analyzed these themes together before returning to the interview transcripts to compare the thematic connections to the participants’ perceptions. this allowed us to crossreference the genre analysis with the participants’ discussions of their professional practice (what skills they learned elsewhere that they drew upon for the publication) and the professional culture that influenced their work (their motivation for publication). altogether, we connected data from three sources: the interview transcripts, the revision charts, and the genre samples students provided. this allowed us to cross-reference the participants’ subjective experiences with their writing itself (and vice versa). we individually examined the interview transcripts, charts, and samples and developed a list of themes. we then met to discuss our themes, narrowing them down to the most salient points. we then discussed which themes applied more to the journal process and which ones applied to the journal’s impact. this division allowed us to organize the codes and make space for areas where we differed. although there were many aspects of the journal that we discussed as we analyzed our themes, two findings became centerpieces of our discussions. the first was the unique position that undergraduate publishing played in the participants’ undergraduate education. the second was that participants often struggled to implement feedback as they revised; with the right structure, however, journals offer a fantastic opportunity for them to hone these skills. we will discuss each finding more extensively in the discussion that follows. discussion a uniquely positioned learning experience for undergraduate scientists france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 7 undergraduate journals offer a unique learning experience rarely presented to students. these opportunities, with their ability to contribute to students’ future ability to work with academic audiences, allow for a more thorough focus on critical thinking and writing skills. one of our participants, may, noted that journals grant students the opportunity to “learn or explore ideas outside of the motivation that it is for a grade or for a course,” providing students with the means to contribute to work in their fields. another participant, frida, acknowledged our journal’s ability to offer an “accessible and friendly environment to publish your work... with a great university-accredited publication.” the journal offers students the ability to be “published without a high gpa or a supervisor.” the journal can even the playing field, allowing all students to feel valid in their capabilities as scientists. the participants emphasized how the journal inspired students to continue research designed for a course and adapt it for new audiences. our participants were motivated to think outside the systemic restrictions of their disciplines to contribute to the wider scientific discussion. steven, for example, noted his ability to be able to “communicate the dense scientific information into an easier way, but then making that accessible for other people and easier to digest articles” by revising his work for publication. the theme of students teaching students is potent within student-operated, student-directed academic opportunities. frida, a student interested in pursuing graduate studies that merge the humanities with the sciences, felt as if the journal allowed for students like her to expand beyond their disciplinary community: “it is definitely my personal agenda that i am hoping to share with others in the future. a lot of it is bench work... and i am hoping that what i am doing is a call to action [for my field].” may, after wanting to find a topic largely influenced by the concept of innovation, landed on a new field of interest: “that wasn’t a field that i thought i was going to be interested in. i feel like [undergraduate publications] can allow their ideas or their voices to be reached to other disciplines.” there is a desire for undergrads to pursue publication, to see their work go farther, to participate as scholars would, and to orient themselves in their topic’s direction as they continue through higher education. one participant, who chose the moniker “mysterious wanderer,” spoke on the initial motivation of being able to have something publishable, “but then, as [he] got more into researching [his] topic, it became more about... is researching, publishing, and writing something that i really enjoy?” elemmy wrote her paper through a research course and saw publishing in our journal as a milestone in her research and skill acquisition. she noted that, with the journal, there is “a team that will help you put this paper together, edit it and help you see and understand where changes are needed, and then you can use this feedback and apply it to your next project.... this is definitely exclusive to a journal opportunity.” she pointed out that the publication route was not discussed as being a feasible endeavor with the course being content heavy. opportunities like our journal can have tremendous value if they work adjacent to formal research courses. formal opportunities to participate in scholarly communities are scarce within undergraduate education, mainly because programs and courses often prioritize content review and coursework rather than extracurricular initiatives like a journal. one thing that stood out amongst our participants is that they demonstrated a great deal of humility; undergrads do not expect to be able to participate in their community conversations. they did not feel like they had many avenues to join the academic conversation. may reflected on her experience, claiming that many first-year students may feel as though they “don’t have enough experience.” may noted that believing they aren’t “worthy” enough to have their paper submitted and critically analyzed france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 8 by even upper-year students causes students to think, “then maybe i should wait?” she reflected that “we admire people in higher fields because not only do we want to be like them, but because we know how hard it takes to be there and the time you need to put in.” similarly, to frida, the journal “felt like a community of students highlighting each other’s work.” she continued to mention that academic acknowledgment is not always reciprocated from research involvement – “i feel like we don’t really get that much credit” in wider academic circles. as frida mentioned, the success of the journal can be attributed to “strategically not defining it as an undergrad journal.” because, as steven and elemmy explained, “the barrier is out there” when it comes to pursuing opportunities that assist in your ability to progress through higher education. it is a “starting point” but one that is difficult to access. publications and participating in a scholarly community offer a significant opportunity for students. showing that they are part of the community to which they wish to belong—that they have taken the first steps to do the work of a scholar—is integral in standing out from the crowd in post-grad programs. undergrad publications like our journal open not just an opportunity but an ability to immerse students in their discourse communities. elemmy reflected on the journal’s ability to “help you build a resume, start creating a reputation, and have your name in the science community,” allowing for the “competitive edge that [she] is looking for.” becoming a better candidate for masters, contributing to the research that is out there, and enriching the science that is available are points that steven also deemed influential with journal involvement. he noted that it is beneficial to “have your name associated with the journal and to see what other people are up to and what research is being put out there.” learning experiences were not exclusive to those editing their paper for publication. elemmy, who was recruited as a peer reviewer after publishing her paper, discussed what she learned from being, instead, behind the critical chair. she says the opportunity to lend her own critique “[helped her] be a little more objective with your own work.” the ability to learn is a significant and valuable part of publishing and can be further facilitated with the help of similar undergraduate opportunities. the challenge to implement feedback despite participants’ desire to publish and participate in their communities, their initial foray into the publishing world had challenges that are worth discussing. these challenges point to ways that undergraduate publications can refine their approaches to support students and help them develop their skills through publishing. when we compared the interview transcripts to the genre analysis results, we noticed a discrepancy in how participants described their revision process and how they revised their papers for publication. in the interviews, participants would regularly discuss a major change they made in their paper and the central area of improvement that was required by their peer editor. the common area for all participants was aligning with the journal’s theme of innovation. for example, elemmy described needing to incorporate innovation more overtly in the paper. during her revision, she explained that she took “that feedback from my editor, [and] i was able to make my paper more innovative and integrate more innovation in it.” another participant, taylor, noted that their paper did not initially “fit the innovation aspect of the [journal] because it was really focused on a single source” due to the assignment parameters from their class. in the interviews, we could tell that the authors were thinking about the publication context and a wider audience. they were also aware that it was necessary to join and participate in the larger academic conversation. they all described an eagerness and willingness to do so. france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 9 when we analyzed the drafts, however, it was clear that they did not participate in as substantial of a revision as they believed. the revision charts from participants like elemmy, steven, and taylor, for example, all emphasized the need to enhance the discussion around what made their research innovative. there are notes from may’s editor indicating a need to “introduce more innovation into the piece while making it more modernly relevant.” the authors would then respond with an indication that they had inserted innovation more in the paper. for example, the participant noted, “we overcame this obstacle by looking into some articles that provided information about small advancements in the field. the author embedded this research in the conclusion as an indicator of innovation.” when we examined the drafts, we could see that the authors had pointed to innovation a bit more overtly. they’d mention why their idea was innovative. taylor brought in more literature to expand the literature review, and they mentioned innovation more. but most authors did not make the larger discursive changes that would demonstrate their research as innovative. their theses did not change fundamentally, and their discussion of the results did not change significantly, so the idea of innovation was held together by their data and conversation with the literature. these are the higher-order discursive moves that scholars make when they disseminate their research; it seemed like these undergraduate students were still developing this ability. the undergraduate student editors were also still developing this ability. as the ones guiding the authors, they provided notes to include more innovation but did not always provide specific suggestions for how to do this. instead, when the authors indicated that they added more innovation to their articles, the editors often accepted the revision without pushing further. for example, elemmy’s editor responded simply that they “discussed scientific innovation connection in introduction, discussion, and conclusion section more thoroughly (added 1-2 sentences more).” it was as if they were using a checklist to indicate completion rather than fully engaging dialogically with the authors. from a genre perspective, the authors and editors were thinking about all the components of the publication process that would be demanded of them in a professional publication. bhatia (2016) outlined that analyzing discourse as a genre “extends the analysis beyond the textual output to incorporate context in a broader sense to account for not only the way text is constructed, but also the way it is likely to be interpreted, used and exploited in particular contexts, whether social, institutional or more narrowly professional, to achieve specific goals” (p. 6). the participants described this in their interviews. they would point to constructing the text so that it accommodated various external interpretations and contexts. for example, may described how her editor pointed out areas where her analysis “this might have been better, or this [approach] is the better wording, or this would have given a better impression [for the audience].” may and her editor were aware of the wider audience, and they concentrated on matching the paper with the publication context. however, most participants implemented these ideas in their writing in only cursory ways; they could think about accommodating the context and audience, which was a positive first step for the revision. still, the final drafts did not match the contextual demands of the publication as well as they could have. the final papers were still strong, but they could have been enhanced, and the student authors could have had a deeper learning experience. this suggested that authors had not fully adapted their disciplinary knowledge to the new context. instead, they stuck with their original line of thinking and tweaked the paper around the edges. the discrepancy between the interview and genre analysis results prompted us to consider why students struggled to implement feedback that met the journal’s requirements. the papers they wrote were strong despite requiring revisions. the revisions suggested by the editors france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 10 were astute. these students were all intelligent and accomplished. they were all eager to participate in the publication and engage with the feedback process. what they had not fully developed yet was the ability to implement feedback. because many of the course contexts in which they developed their work did not emphasize dissemination, many of these students were not overtly taught how this may happen. frida summarized this context well: “when i write for class, i keep in mind the preferences my professor and the tone they want, the voice they want, the message they want, and the context” of the assignment. the assignments were designed for a grade and written for a different purpose, and an advanced engagement with feedback and revision was not something they considered before the publication; they were thinking instead about their instructor’s requirements. each student indicated that publication opportunities were rare for undergraduates, so the publication was a novel experience. the journal also seemed like a terrific environment for the students—editors and authors alike—to practice because it was so uniquely positioned in their undergraduate learning. we realized that we needed more support for authors and editors. one case where the author, frida, did take up feedback well helped us determine how this could be done. this participant, frida, made significant changes to their work based on the feedback. they worked with paige to revise their paper, and they went back and forth several times. they engaged in what lillis (2003) would call dialogic feedback as frida shifted her paper to focus more on the innovative scientific processes that were a subsidiary component of the paper they submitted. frida described this as “how to write and edit more than like the actual content of the paper,” which “contributed to my educational development.” the difference between frida and paige is that they had been involved in other publications before this interaction. they had prior training to draw upon, and they brought this training to the revision process. if we could provide similar training to future editors and offer more content-driven revision suggestions, authors would be in a better position to revise their work. from a science communication perspective, these results from the genre analysis underscore how authors may not know how to adapt to new contexts in their undergrad. this is an important transferable skill, and it takes time to learn. we believe that an undergraduate journal can help improve this skill if students are given the proper support. for this reason, we have been working to implement faculty support and increased editorial training (that focuses on giving feedback and prompting deeper revision). the journal offers a fantastic outlet to support authors as they learn to disseminate research, engage with publication editors, and hone their communication skills. with the right structures, with the right mentorship, and with the right training, both the authors and the editorial team can enhance their undergraduate education through the publication experience. limitations because we concentrated on only the first year of publication, we had a small number of participants. future research would benefit from an expanded sample size that could look at more factors that affect student journals. for example, an expanded sample size would allow for more disciplinary and interdisciplinary analyses. there may be compelling information gathered from a longer and larger study about who submits to undergraduate publications, why they submit, and how this information changes depending on the disciplinary culture. we also entered this project knowing that we wanted to refine the journal’s publication process. we often had specific areas we wanted to improve, and we recognized the possibility that we could steer the participants to discuss these specific areas or that we could filter our france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 11 analyses around these areas. we wanted to be as open as possible to what our student participants could tell us. although we tried to expand our purview as we analyzed, particularly by discussing individual participant results before looking at the aggregate themes, our analysis is still filtered through the role that our specific journal and institutional context played in starting a new journal on campus. research in other contexts with other lenses would be instructive and provide important information across institutions. conclusion while the study results offer compelling insight into the role that undergraduate publications may play in students’ learning, we view it as the start of a bigger conversation. despite having a small sample size, our findings are encouraging for a couple of reasons. each participant pointed to the lack of opportunities that existed for them to disseminate research and participate in publications. these findings are consistent with wider conversations about student publications (garbati & samuels, 2013; jones et al., 2010). similarly, challenges with implementing feedback resonate with other literature on dialogic feedback processes and student writing support (eaton, 2023; grauman, 2022; lillis, 2003). our research has taught us much about how publication opportunities can help cement skill-building within undergraduate education. however, the benefits can be further reaching than solely skill-building ones; undergraduate journals have the ability to touch on the personal and career development of students – a benefit that is oftentimes overlooked or impaired during the uncertainty of career trajectories and abilities during undergraduate programming. our participants all believed that their involvement in research would always pale in comparison to that of postgraduate students, mainly due to their educational level and the responsibilities afforded by experience. while higher status in academia is not something to be overlooked, opportunities like undergraduate publication go about developing students in a more individualistic way. for example, students building confidence and seeing themselves as contributing members for the academic discourse is important for how they see themselves as learners and participants in their field. it also leads to recognition amongst peers and the rest of the journal’s audience. this recognition may not have the same magnitude as students advance in their careers, but it’s an excellent starting point. validating undergraduate students’ research, participation, and hard work can have lasting impacts on how they view higher education and their willingness to partake in this path as their education advances. the findings from this study offer compelling insight into future research pathways. investigating how undergraduate students take up feedback across various undergraduate publications would offer insight into what editorial structures may best support student authors as they learn to disseminate their research. such an investigation could enhance the learning experience for student authors and editors alike. moreover, it is worth investigating the social, institutional, and cultural factors that prevent undergraduate students from fully participating in research. our participants indicated that there is an appetite for undergraduate involvement in publishing opportunities, but there are many barriers to their participation. most of their apprehensions are linked back to institutional culture and the fact that undergraduates are not typically perceived as knowledge-makers in their discourse communities. going forward, conversations examining why this is the case warrant increased attention to enhance the capabilities of these undergraduate scientists. undergraduate journals have much further-reaching properties than simply an opportunity to publish past coursework. they are breeding grounds for confidence building and france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 12 act as assessable publication opportunities to amplify undergraduate successes and research within their community. from a science communication perspective, our observations derived from the genre analysis emphasize the importance of adapting content to new contexts as well as it being a transferable skill that takes practice to master. publication opportunities are rare, so novel experiences can act as a spark to support undergraduate research interests and applications of writing skills not usually exercised in the classroom. france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 13 references bankston, a., & mcdowell, g.s. 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(2014). what do students learn from participation in an undergraduate research journal? results of an assessment. journal of librarianship and scholarly communication, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1125 https://doi.org/10.1080/09500780308666848 about:blank about:blank https://doi.org/10.1177/0092055x12437969 about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 15 yazan, b. (2015). three approaches to case study methods in education: yin, merriam, and stake. the qualitative report, 20(2), 134-152. https://doi.org/10.46743/21603715/2015.2102 https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2015.2102 https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2015.2102 france & eaton: not “just” an undergrad current issues in education, 24(2) 16 author notes paige france university of toronto mississauga paige.france@mail.utoronto.ca christopher eaton university of toronto mississauga chris.eaton@mail.utoronto.ca more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:paige.france@mail.utoronto.ca mailto:chris.eaton@mail.utoronto.ca about:blank current issues in education, 26(2) 1 volume 26, issue 2 november 20th, 2025 issn 1099-839x leave, move, or stay? an examination of retention factors among novice dual-certified teachers of color cathy d. kea north carolina agricultural & technical state university fanica young clark atlanta university tahnee l. wilder howard university laura sirgany university of virginia–charlottesville stanley trent university of virginia–charlottesville abstract: novice teachers of color (toc) leave the profession at higher rates than their white peers, often due to inadequate preparation, poor working conditions, and racialized school climates. guided by bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, this study investigates how structural factors influence the decisions of novice dual-certified toc who leave, move, or remain in the profession. as part of a larger research project, in this quantitative study, we surveyed 17 participants who completed a dual general and special education undergraduate program at a historically black college and university (hbcu). through our analysis we identified four primary drivers of retention: educator preparation; mentorship; administrative and district support; and diversity, equity, and inclusion. findings provide empirical evidence that novice dual-certified toc navigate unique challenges and supports that influence their professional trajectories. implications emphasize the importance of educator preparation, intentional mentorship, and systemic reforms at school and district levels, with recommendations for future research to address teacher attrition and retention. keywords: novice teachers, teachers of color, special education, attrition, retention kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 2 citation: kea, c. d., young, f., wilder, t. l., sirgany, l., & trent, s. c. (2025). leave, move, or stay? an examination of retention factors among novice dual-certified teachers of color. current issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2284 accepted: 10/17/2025 leave, move, or stay? an examination of retention factors among novice dual-certified teachers of color the demographic landscape of the american pk-12 education system has evolved over time, indicating significant changes in student populations. these changes are particularly evident in the increasing diversity of both general and special education students (national center for education statistics [nces], 2023). however, this shift is not reflected in the teaching workforce. despite some progress in the past several decades, the teaching profession has never mirrored the diversity of the u.s. student population, including special education students (data usa, n.d.). in fact, only one in five teachers across the united states are from historically underrepresented backgrounds (noble et al., 2024). in addition, 40% of the nation’s public schools do not have a single teacher of color (toc) on record (education trust, 2022). currently, toc comprise just 20% of the national educator workforce and only 18% of special education teachers, resulting in a profession still dominated by white teachers (education trust, 2022; nces, 2023). the predominance of white, middle-class, monolingual, female teachers fails to represent the varied backgrounds and experiences of the students they serve (de brey et al., 2021; wang et al., 2022). the persistent lack of diversity and cultural competence among the current teacher workforce contributes to disparate educational outcomes for students of color, both with and without disabilities, and perpetuates systemic inequities within the education system (el-mekki, 2023; kozleski & proffitt, 2020). for example, black and brown students are often subjected to disciplinary removal, experience high dropout rates, increased special education referrals, and are least likely to be considered or identified as gifted compared to their white peers (annamma et al., 2014; ford, 2014; hart & lindsay, 2024; osep, 2023; reddig, 2024). further, research shows that exposure to general and special education toc positively impacts the social and academic progress of all students, and especially students of color (farinde-wu et al., 2020; redding, 2019). for instance, students of color benefit from having teachers who mirror their race or ethnicity (redding, 2019), as toc are more likely to hold higher expectations for students of color, resulting in higher reading and math achievement scores, and increases in high school graduation and college enrollment rates (gershenson et al., 2021). additionally, toc who share similar backgrounds and cultural experiences with their students are more responsive to students’ mental health needs and less likely to make referrals for minor disciplinary infractions, which often contribute to systemic inequities and harsher punishments (blazer, 2021). toc are also less inclined to use exclusionary discipline practices or refer students for special education services (annamma et al., 2013; cormier, 2021; griffin & tackie, 2017; lindsay & hart, 2017). likewise, toc who share cultural identities with their students are more attuned to community and home cultural norms as well as students’ lived experiences (farinde et al., 2016; griffin & tackie, 2017; kea et al., 2024). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2284 kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 3 it is clear that general and special education toc play a critical role in meeting the needs of diverse students who remain the most underserved in our schools. however, the rising diversity of the student population and an overwhelmingly white female teacher workforce (data usa, n.d.) presents a clear problem for the education system. moreover, the teaching profession continues to face high turnover, with annual attrition rates of about 7%, with novice and special education teachers leaving at two-to-three times the rate of their peers (carverthomas & darling-hammond, 2019; diliberti & schwartz, 2025; mockovciak et al., 2023). additionally, toc leave the profession at higher rates than their white peers (steiner & woo, 2021), creating a retention crisis that threatens the future diversity of the teaching workforce. to address the critical need of retaining toc, it is essential to examine the factors leading to their attrition in both general and special education spaces, and develop strategies that foster their long-term commitment to the profession. to this end, we sought to answer the following research question: what are the main drivers of attrition and retention for novice teachers of color who completed an undergraduate dual certification program in general and special education at a historically black university? review of literature in recent years, there has been an increase in research exploring the factors influencing attrition and retention for both general and special education teachers (e.g., bettini et al., 2017, 2018; billingsley, 2004; billingsley & bettini, 2017; boe et al., 2007, 2008). for example, comprehensive literature reviews have described the current crisis in teacher retention by examining both qualitative and quantitative studies of novice teachers’ attrition, retention, or mobility rates (e.g., billingsley & bettini, 2019; bettini et al., 2021; scott et al., 2021). however, few studies have investigated why toc, especially novice dual-certified educators, choose to leave, move, or remain in the profession. this study addresses that gap in the literature. challenges influencing teacher attrition and retention novice teachers often encounter significant challenges during their first five years in the profession. they must learn to master curriculum content, design lesson plans, deliver culturally responsive instruction, manage student behavior, and build relationships with administrators, colleagues, and diverse communities (jones et al., 2013; youngs et al., 2011). for those working in special education, these challenges are compounded by the responsibility of meeting the unique needs of students with disabilities (cormier, 2021; fore et al., 2002). compared to their general education peers, special educators report higher levels of role ambiguity, professional isolation, and dissatisfaction with mentoring and induction programs (brunsting et al., 2014; youngs et al., 2011). they frequently cite excessive caseloads, insufficient administrative support, and overwhelming paperwork as reasons for leaving the profession (carver-thomas & darling-hammond, 2017, 2019; ingersoll & may, 2016). many also describe inadequate preparation and limited access to instructional resources, which hinder their ability to address student needs effectively (billingsley & bettini, 2019). in addition, feelings of isolation are common, as special educators often lack opportunities for collaboration and experience a diminished sense of belonging within their school communities (billingsley & bettini, 2019; hester et al., 2020; sutcher et al., 2019). the emotional and physical demands of the special educator role contribute to heightened risks of burnout among these educators (billingsley & bettini, 2019). collectively, these systemic issues not only create difficult working conditions for all novice teachers but exacerbate the shortage of qualified special educators, negatively kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 4 affecting outcomes for students with disabilities (cormier, 2021; fish, 2017, 2019; gershenson et al., 2018, 2021; redding, 2019). importantly, these substantial obstacles are magnified for toc, who remain underrepresented in urban, diverse, and underserved classrooms nationwide (bettini & park, 2021; scott et al., 2021, 2022). teachers of color research demonstrates that toc face systemic barriers, including racial bias and daily microaggressions, that contribute to racial battle fatigue, job dissatisfaction, limited retention, and, ultimately, attrition (bettini et al., 2020; farinde-wu & fitchett, 2018; ingersoll et al., 2021; scott et al., 2024; scott et al., 2023). despite increased recruitment efforts, retention rates of toc remain disproportionately low and continue to pose a significant challenge (kohli, 2018). many toc report that the absence of same-race peers and the lack of cultural competence among administrators and staff foster feelings of isolation and a diminished sense of belonging, further accelerating decisions to leave the profession (cormier, 2021; dixon et al., 2019; griffin & tackie, 2017). specifically, studies focusing on novice general and special education toc have indicated that attrition is driven by difficulties with students and families (e.g., navigating complex family dynamics), colleagues and administrators (e.g., limited support, lack of collegiality, inadequate mentoring), and curriculum and pedagogy (e.g., exclusionary practices), in addition to broader issues such as challenging working conditions, insufficient preparation, and racial battle fatigue (bhana-lopez et al., 2024; bettini et al., 2021). these challenges often manifest differently across teaching contexts, with general and special education toc navigating distinct yet overlapping barriers that impact their career trajectories and decisions to stay, move, or leave the profession. general education teachers general education toc face persistent challenges in recruitment and retention, driven by both structural and racialized barriers (dixon et al., 2019). the voices from the classroom report notes that few toc enroll in education programs due to financial constraints and loan debt, and among those who do enter the field, only 43% plan to remain long term compared to 86% of white peers (educators for excellence, 2022). salary is a top reason for white teachers to stay (78%), but only 22% of toc identify it as central to their decision-making; instead, they emphasize leadership opportunities (41% vs. 8% of whites) and access to meaningful professional development and support (41% vs. 7%). at the same time, many teachers cite heavy workloads as a primary reason for leaving. these trends are echoed in studies of black teachers, who are leaving the profession at disproportionately high rates (terada, 2021). interviews with black female teachers highlight lack of administrative support, limited advancement, unsupportive school climates, and overwhelming workloads as key drivers of attrition (farinde et al., 2016). however, satisfaction among these teachers increased in urban schools with stronger racial-cultural alignment and supportive leadership (farinde-wu & fitchett, 2018). beyond workload and pay, racism and daily microaggressions often weigh most heavily in toc’s decisions to remain in or leave the profession (frank et al., 2021). other studies highlight that novice general education toc frequently describe antagonistic school cultures, feelings of being undervalued, and a lack of agency and belonging as central to attrition (dixon et al., 2019; steiner & woo, 2021). kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 5 special education teachers the experiences of special education toc, particularly those in their early careers, remain largely overlooked in research, even though their pathways into and through the profession differ significantly from their peers. despite this, very little scholarship has directly examined their trajectories. for example, we found just one study that focused specifically on the challenges faced by novice special education toc during their first three years in the classroom (i.e., scott, 2020). this leaves much about why special education toc stay, move, or leave the profession unexplored in both quantitative and qualitative literature. expanding this lens, scott and colleagues (2021) conducted a meta-analysis of 47 studies on special education teacher retention, finding that only four explicitly addressed race and ethnicity in relation to attrition and retention for mexican american and black teachers (i.e., lópez-estrada & koyama, 2010; scott, 2020; scott et al., 2020; scott & alexander, 2019). for example, lópez-estrada and koyama (2010) reported that mexican american special education teachers drew on bilingual skills, prior paraprofessional experience, administrator support, and collegial “la familia” networks as supports for remaining in the profession (p. 95). studies of black special education teachers further highlight how cultural identity, mentorship, and advocacy influenced retention. for instance, scott and alexander (2019) found that black men pursued special education to challenge stereotypes of black boys, provide culturally relevant instruction, and assume leadership roles. mentorship from fellow black educators proved to be critical to these teachers’ persistence. similarly, scott and colleagues (2020) showed that black special education teachers across career stages were motivated by advocacy for students and families of color, but many also described systemic bias, professional isolation, and limited belonging as major barriers. these barriers appeared most consequential for novices, as scott (2020) documented in a study of early-career black special education teachers, where inadequate mentoring, racial battle fatigue, role abuse, cultural insensitivity, and insufficient classroom resources contributed to early departures from the profession. overall, these findings suggest that while special education toc often enter the profession with a deep commitment to supporting students with and without disabilities, systemic inequities and oppressive school structures continue to undermine their retention. educator preparation at historically black colleges and universities (hbcus) only 7% (5% females, 2% males) of the public-school teachers in the u.s. identify as black/african american (carr, 2022; farinde-wu et al., 2020; terada, 2021). historically black colleges and universities (hbcus), which represent just 3% of u.s. higher education institutions, produce 50% of the country’s black teachers, play a pivotal role in addressing persistent teacher workforce shortages, particularly among teachers of color (copridge et al., 2023). research suggests hbcus are especially effective in recruiting, preparing, and retaining black educators by embedding culturally affirming frameworks into their curricula and faculty practices (ladson-billings, 1995, 2021; lee, 2019). however, a critical gap remains in the preparation of black teachers. in 2019, only 3.6% of bachelor’s degrees in special education were awarded to black/african american students, compared to 80.6% to white students and 8.7% to hispanic/latino students (cormier et al., 2021). thus, strengthening educator preparation programs (epps) at hbcus is critical to increasing the number of black teachers in the profession. however, the lack of representation, coupled with a general shortage of wellqualified teachers (billingsley & bettini, 2019; peyton et al., 2020), presents a significant challenge to providing culturally responsive and effective education for students with disabilities. kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 6 the attrition and retention of black dual-certified general and special education teachers prepared in undergraduate preservice programs remains underexamined. expanding research in this area is critical to better understanding the challenges novice black teachers face as they enter and navigate the profession, as their experiences are markedly different from those of their white peers. theoretical framework we employed bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecosystems perspective to view novice toc experiences as existing within a broader system of educational settings. the model provided a multi-layered framework for understanding these teachers’ experiences at various levels of interaction. although bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory was originally developed to explain the developmental experiences of children, its emphasis on nested social systems and multilevel environmental influences makes it particularly appropriate for examining the complex, systemic factors that shape the professional trajectories of novice dual-certified toc. this framework allowed us to analyze how individual experiences are situated within broader institutional, community, and societal contexts that influence decisions to leave, move within, or remain in the teaching profession. the framework posits that a person’s development is an ongoing process occurring within overlapping and concentric social spheres (bronfenbrenner, 1979). utilizing this model, we come to understand novice toc experiences through microsystem interactions, which directly affect them (e.g., relationships with their students, families, colleagues, and administrators). these interactions are further influenced by the mesosystem, which represent the relationships between components of the microsystem, such as the connections between families, colleagues, and administrators within the broader school community. together, these interconnected relationships impact the daily experiences and professional environments of novice toc. beyond these immediate environments, the exosystem and macrosystem introduce wider external influences that affect novice toc experiences. the exosystem consists of indirect factors such as district-level administration and local or state government policies related to education. while these influences do not involve direct engagement with the teacher, they significantly impact working conditions, job expectations, and available resources. the macrosystem, at the highest level, includes larger societal structures, such as cultural norms, socioeconomic factors, economic systems, and federal policies, which affect educational institutions and the overall climate in which novice toc operate. these macrosystem influences often perpetuate systemic or structural oppressions that may manifest through institutional racism, discriminatory practices, and limited access to resources and opportunities (edwards, 2021; xu et al., 2024). understanding these systemic dynamics is essential to addressing the structural challenges that affect novice toc attrition and retention. method this research is part of a larger mixed-methods study that investigated the systemic and structural factors contributing to the attrition and retention of novice toc who were dualcertified in general and special education. while the larger study incorporated both quantitative and qualitative components to capture the complexity of novice dual-certified toc experiences, the present paper focuses solely on the quantitative analysis. specifically, this study employed a cross-sectional survey design (creswell & creswell, 2018) to analyze data from an original kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 7 instrument developed to examine patterns and relationships among factors influencing teacher retention, mobility, and attrition. guided by bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (1979), the analysis situates participants’ experiences within interconnected systems, including individual characteristics, classroom interactions, school climate, district structures, and broader sociopolitical contexts. context of study the study was conducted as part of project culturally responsive exceptional educators for diversity (creed), a federally funded personnel preparation grant housed within the department of educator preparation at a large hbcu in a southeastern state. the institution serves a predominantly underrepresented minority student body, with 89% identifying as african american, hispanic, native american, or two or more races, while the remaining 11% identify as asian, non-citizens, unknown, or white. reflecting this demographic composition, project creed aimed to prepare culturally responsive educators to serve diverse families, schools, and students in urban communities by recruiting, mentoring, and supporting students from traditionally underrepresented groups and those with disabilities. participants pursued a bachelor of science (b.s.) degree with licensure in elementary education (k-6), special education general curriculum (k-12), and special education adapted curriculum (k-12). the 120-credithour dual general and special education undergraduate preservice program was extended to 4.5 years instead of the typical four, requiring scholars to complete three additional courses, two extended field-based experiences, 300 professional development hours, and a yearlong student teaching internship in title i high-need school settings. participants scholars funded by the federal grant agreed to participate in the present study by completing an online survey. of the 17 participants, 13 identified black/african american, one biracial, one hispanic/latino, one multiracial, and one white. sixteen were female and one was male, ranging in ages between 25–29 years (n = 11) and 20–24 years (n = 6). three acknowledged having a disability (e.g., attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd): 2; learning disability (ld): 1). participants graduated from the epp between 2016-2021. participants’ school demographics at the time of completing the survey, the participants in this study primarily worked in urban, high-need educational settings, with the majority serving in title i schools (n = 14; 82%). the participants, divided into three cohorts, represent a range of experiences in both general and special education, with most having 0-4 years of teaching experience. further disaggregating their teaching experience, 12 participants were teaching in special education settings (six for 3–4 years and six for 1–2.5 years) and five were teaching in general education settings. the instructional settings included separate day school (n = 2; 12%), adaptive classroom (n = 3; 18%), self-contained (n = 4; 23%), inclusion classroom (n = 7; 41%), general education classroom (n = 8; 47%), special education resource (n = 15; 88%), and other (n = 2; 12). those in general education later transitioned to special education positions to fulfill grant service obligation requirements. kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 8 positionality statement our research team consists of scholars from both hbcus and predominately white institutions, with backgrounds in special education, educator preparation, and educational research. as former educators and current faculty members, we bring a range of perspectives shaped by our diverse racial and institutional affiliations. some team members have direct ties to the hbcu where participants completed their preparation, offering valuable insight into the program’s structure and objectives. however, we recognize that these affiliations, along with our shared professional experiences, may have influenced our research lens and data interpretation. we also acknowledge that participants’ awareness of our connections to the institution may have impacted their responses, particularly regarding their perceptions of their preparation. in addressing our relationality, we utilized survey instruments grounded in established research frameworks, ensured participant anonymity, and incorporated researchers without direct program ties in data analysis. while our backgrounds provide important context for understanding novice toc retention, we prioritized empirical rigor to ensure our findings reflect participants’ authentic experiences rather than our expectations. by remaining critically aware of our positionality in relation to this study, we aimed to contribute data-driven insights that inform the attrition and retention of novice dual-certified toc. survey development to answer the question underlying this study, an online project creed impact surveytm (kea et al., 2021) was developed in the following five stages. first, we conducted an extensive review of empirical studies on specific attrition, retention, and support factors shared by novice and seasoned general and special education toc. second, the first author consulted with experts (griffin & tackie, 2017) to review relevant literature and methodologies to inform the development of the survey questions. third, input was sought from project creed’s all-black eight-member (six females; two males) advisory board, who were viewed as content experts due to their levels and years of teaching experience as special educators, ranging from 8–15 years of classroom experience prior to administrative roles (i.e., district exceptional children’s program area coordinator, principal, retired university professor, and school special education department chair). each board member was asked to read three studies (i.e., dixon et al., 2019; griffin, 2018; griffin & tackie, 2017) prior to scheduled zoom sessions and to generate survey questions individually. during the zoom sessions, advisory board members leveraged their collective expertise in special education to refine the survey. they clarified questions, eliminated duplications, restated items for clarity, and developed additional inquiries based on their experiences in the field. the first and fourth authors categorized the survey questions into nine sections: (a) demographics; (b) school factors; (c) racial battle fatigue; (d) mentorship; (e) leavers, movers, and stayers; (f) cultural competence; (g) professional development; (h) educator preparation programs (epp); and (i) induction and mentoring support from epp, district, and school. the advisory board members engaged in an additional three review rounds to refine the questions to be included in the final survey. an internal validity check was done between the advisory board members serving as content experts and two graduate research assistants. the creed impact survey instrument™ resulted in a 130-item questionnaire to gather data on novice dual-certified toc. this research serves as an initial study that aligns with a series of related studies focused on attrition and retention among novice toc. this study contributes to the limited body of kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 9 quantitative research on novice toc by examining critical factors influencing whether they leave, move, or stay in the teacher workforce. data collection all 17 project creed alumni were invited to participate in a one-hour online project creed impact survey™. to encourage full participation, a $50 gift card was provided as an incentive for completing the survey. this approach yielded a 100% response rate, ensuring complete and representative data from the entire alumni cohort. independent variables the study investigated retention factors of novice toc using three independent variables: leaver, mover, and stayer. leavers were defined as special education teachers who exited the teaching profession within 4 years. movers were defined as special education teachers who transitioned to new roles within the field while remaining in the profession. stayers were those who continued teaching in the same school or district without changing positions. data analysis figure 1 illustrates how an initial set of ten critical factors, identified through a broad review of the literature (see figure for full list of sources), was refined through survey analysis into four main drivers of teacher retention. we reviewed research on teacher retention and attrition to identify the most common factors influencing why teachers remain, move, or leave the profession. searches were conducted in eric, education source, and google scholar using combinations of key terms such as teacher retention, teacher attrition, teacher turnover, teachers of color, general education teachers, and special education teachers. this review included four major literature syntheses (billingsley, 2004; billingsley & bettini, 2019; bettini et al., 2021; scott et al., 2021), practitioner-focused studies (dixon, 2019; griffin, 2018; griffin & tackie, 2017), and studies on black female teachers’ experiences (farinde-wu et al., 2016, 2020; farinde-wu & fitchett, 2018). to ensure comprehensive coverage, we conducted ancestral searches of reference lists and progeny searches to identify newer studies citing these key publications. in total, 35 peer-reviewed articles were identified: 25 focused on general education teachers of color and 10 on special education teachers of color. each article was summarized in a data extraction chart that documented study purpose, design, sample demographics, and key findings. using an inductive qualitative approach, we examined the extracted data for recurring themes related to teacher retention and consolidated them into ten key factors: (a) administrative support, (b) work conditions (e.g., caseload, paperwork, resources), (c) collegiality, (d) racial battle fatigue (e.g., isolation, microaggressions), (e) mentor support, (f) teacher advancement, (g) educational preparation, (h) induction program support and professional development, (i) school context and location (rural, suburban, urban), and (j) salary. kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 10 figure 1 process of identifying the four key drivers of teacher retention guided by the ten literature-derived factors, we analyzed survey responses to identify four primary drivers of teacher retention. we categorized responses according to these factors and aligned them with the ecosystems model adopted for the study (see table 1). to determine which factors most strongly influenced teacher retention, we conducted a multi-step statistical analysis that involved testing internal consistency with cronbach’s alpha and retaining only scales with reliability scores of α ≥ 0.75. the resulting composite scales revealed educator preparation and mentorship as primary determinants of retention. responses concerning administrative and district-level supports were combined under administrative and district support, while items addressing racial battle fatigue were consolidated into a broader diversity, equity, and inclusion (dei) category. in the final stage, descriptive statistics were used to compare mean scores for the four identified drivers: (a) educator preparation, (b) mentor support, (c) administrative and district support, and (d) dei, across three participant groups identified as leavers, movers, and stayers. these comparisons revealed systemic conditions most strongly associated with teacher satisfaction and decisions to remain in or leave the profession. table 1 four driving factors of retention and subquestions factor questions cronbach’s α education preparation program please rate the following statements: my educator preparation program prepared me to … 0.928 kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 11 • develop a community of learners when my class consists of students from diverse backgrounds. • design instruction that matches my students’ developmental needs. • design a classroom environment that reflects a variety of cultures. • use my students’ cultural background to help make learning meaningful. • use examples that are familiar to students from diverse cultural backgrounds. • explain new concepts using examples that are taken from my students’ everyday lives. • critically examine curriculum to determine whether it enforces negative cultural stereotypes. • revise instructional material to include a better representation of cultural groups. • design a lesson that shows how other cultural groups have made contributions. • teach students about their culture’s contributions. • work within a variety of educational settings. • work with a diverse set of students & families. • collaborate well with other educators & staff. have you been prepared to maximize your cultural and linguistic assets in the classroom? what could epps do to support teachers during their induction years? please respond to the following statements • epps should provide ongoing professional development during the induction years. • epps should conduct on-site visits with graduates during the induction years to hold annual focus group meetings with alums 1, 3, and 5 years after graduation. • epps should invite alums to speak in classes as guest lecturers and conduct workshops with future teachers. kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 12 please rate how well your epp, school, or district provided induction & mentoring support. • epp supported my transition to teaching. • school/school district supported my transition to teaching. • i had resources needed to transition as a new teacher. • i had time & support i needed to build meaningful relationships as a new teacher. • my school collaborates effectively with special education services. mentor support did you have an assigned mentor during your induction years? 0.896 which best describes the mentor’s roles and responsibilities? • assisted with goal setting • identified resources • provided motivation and guidance • gave emotional support • modeled demonstration lessons • provided feedback • assisted with classroom management and setup • helped with clerical responsibilities • provided orientation to expectations and protocols how beneficial was it to have a mentor? how would you rate the importance of an effective mentor? overall, how satisfied were your mentee/mentor experiences during your induction years? i had the time & support i needed to build meaningful mentoring relationships as a new teacher. administrative and district supports please rate the following statements in terms of how important they are for staying in a position as a special educator: • compensation and loan forgiveness • administrative support & strong leadership • leadership opportunities & decision-making • mentorship & relationships with staff • professional development & training 0.777 kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 13 • instructional resources & materials • clearly defined roles & responsibilities • positive school culture & school policies • district level support & policies dei support please respond to the following based on your experience with the leadership team at your school: the team has had adequate training in culturally responsive leadership. 0.900 have you encountered hurdles embedded in the realities of your teaching context (e.g., curricula, colleagues, administrator expectations) that reflect limiting views? please rate how strongly you agree or disagree with these statements in your special education school setting … • general educators in my school consistently implement culturally responsive instruction. • special educators in my school consistently implement culturally responsive instruction. • the leadership team at my school embraces diversity & equity. • special educators in my school embrace diversity & equity. • the general educators in my school embrace diversity & equity. • the special educators communicate well with diverse families & communities. • the students of color at my school feel a sense of belonging. • i feel a sense of belonging. findings our analysis of the survey data yielded valuable insights into the factors affecting toc retention. we identified four key drivers that emerged as crucial influences on novice dualcertified toc decisions to leave, move, or stay in the profession. we then examined the key drivers in relation to participants’ retention status, revealing important patterns and correlations that shed light on the complex dynamics of teacher retention (see figure 2). these factors, which span various levels of bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, served as the dependent variables in our analysis. figure 2 kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 14 scales of by retention status education preparation we identified educator preparation as the first key driver about epps (cronbach’s alpha = 0.928), operationalized as the coursework, field experiences, and training designed to prepare teacher candidates for the educator workforce. the questionnaire included items such as “please rate the following statement: ‘my educator preparation program prepared me to develop a community of learners when my class consists of students from diverse backgrounds’” and “please rate how well your epp, school, or district provided induction and mentoring support.” this driver yielded the highest overall scores, with a range of 2.50 to 3.85 and a mean of 3.40 (sd: 0.41) across participants. we did not reverse-code any items. educator preparation scores were high and did not vary in any meaningful way across retention status, suggesting that the participant’s epp effectively prepared them for the classroom. movers had the highest scores (3.675), indicating they felt most prepared by their epp experiences, yet still chose to leave their initial positions. leavers and stayers had similar scores (3.375 and 3.275), suggesting that preparation alone may not enough to keep teachers in their roles long-term. our analysis of this key driver revealed how initial teacher preparation influenced educators’ readiness for diverse classrooms. we examined how the participants’ epp equipped them during their preservice education to navigate culturally and linguistically diverse teaching environments, and how this preparation affected their classroom confidence and competence. the high overall scores implied that participants generally had positive experiences with their epp, particularly in areas related to culturally responsive teaching and induction support. the findings indicate that epps are instrumental in preparing novice dual-certified toc for diverse classrooms. these results emphasize the impact of preservice training on their confidence and competence during the critical first five years of teaching. thus, the ability of epps to prepare kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 15 preservice teachers for real-world challenges may be a determinant in their long-term persistence in the profession. mentor support we identified mentor support as the second driver (cronbach’s alpha = 0.896), defined as a supportive relationship in which experienced educators provide professional, instructional, and emotional guidance to novice teachers. the questionnaire included items such as “how satisfied were you with the following aspects of your mentee/mentor relationship?” with sub-questions addressing “level of experience,” “communication,” “assistance/support provided,” “activities/classroom strategies suggested,” and “level of cultural responsiveness.” participants’ scores averaged 1.43 (sd: 0.58), ranging from 0.50 to 2.10. we did not reversecode any items. mentoring scores showed mixed results, indicating that a single mentor may not be sufficient to support retention when faced with other, more pressing factors. although leavers reported slightly higher mentoring support than movers and stayers, all groups rated their experiences poorly (below 2.0). movers (1.225) and stayers (1.192) had the lowest ratings, suggesting that inadequate mentorship may have contributed to both instability and movement in their careers. the low mentoring scores across all groups indicate that insufficient mentoring may be a systemic issue impacting retention. our analysis of this key driver examined the impact of mentorship and professional relationships on novice dual-certified toc development and retention. we evaluated the quality and availability of mentoring during the induction period, as well as the nature of professional guidance and peer support. the findings of this key driver suggested that mentor support is critical for novice dual-certified toc growth and sustainability, yet participants reported less favorable mentoring experiences. low ratings in mentor experience, communication, support, and cultural responsiveness indicated that many of them may not have received adequate or relevant mentorship during their induction years. therefore, the quality and availability of mentorship may have been inconsistent, possibly leaving participants without the necessary support to navigate the complexities of being a novice teacher and their professional growth. administrative and district support we identified administrative and district support as the third driver (cronbach’s alpha = 0.777), conceptualized as the structures (e.g., school leadership teams) that influence novice toc dual-certified experiences. the questionnaire included items such as “please rate the following statements in terms of how important they are for staying in a position as a special educator: ‘administrative support and strong leadership’ and ‘leadership opportunities and decision-making.’” participants’ scores ranged from 1 to 2, with a mean of 1.63 (sd: 0.31). we did not reverse-code any items for this driver. movers had the highest scores (1.813), meaning that with macro-level supports in place, even teachers who are unhappy with their current placement remain in the field, albeit potentially moving to another setting. leavers (1.609) and stayers (1.536) had similar low scores, suggesting that lack of administrative and district support is a key factor in attrition. the fact that stayers did not rate this driver much higher than leavers indicates that even those who stayed in the profession may not feel adequately supported by their schools or districts. our analysis of this key driver investigated the broader administrative and institutional backing that sustains novice dually toc. the relatively low mean score indicates that participants perceived these supports as limited or inconsistent, potentially contributing to kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 16 workplace dissatisfaction. additionally, participants highlighted mentorship, leadership opportunities, and inclusion in decision-making as essential aspects of administrative and district support that influenced their experiences. the findings from this key driver indicate that administrative and district-level support significantly influence novice toc’s job satisfaction and risk of burnout. moreover, differences in the effectiveness and accessibility of these supports may affect their long-term retention in the profession. diversity, equity, and inclusion support we identified dei as the fourth driver (cronbach’s alpha = 0.900), described as the policies and practices enacted by schools and districts that foster representation, fairness, and inclusion for novice dual-certified toc. the questionnaire included items such as “please respond to the following based on your experience with the leadership team at your school: the team has had adequate training in culturally responsive leadership” and “have you encountered hurdles embedded in the realities of your teaching context (e.g., curricula, colleagues, administrator expectations) that reflect limiting views?” participants’ scores ranged from 0.9 to 3.4, with a mean of 2.31 (sd: 0.31). we reverse-coded one item: “have you encountered hurdles embedded in the realities of your teaching context (e.g., curricula, colleagues, administrator expectations) that reflect limiting views?” stayers had the highest dei support scores (2.494), suggesting that stronger dei efforts in schools are associated with higher retention. leavers (2.175) and movers (2.1) had lower dei scores, implying that a lack of dei support may contribute to teacher transitions and attrition. schools with stronger dei practices may foster a more inclusive environment, which can contribute to higher retention rates among novice dualcertified toc. our analysis of this key element assessed how cultural competencies, systemic equity, and inclusion efforts within the educational environment influenced novice dual-certified toc’s experiences. we examined the extent to which schools and districts promoted and practiced dei principles, including addressing systemic racism, fostering inclusive curricula, and supporting diverse student populations. participants reported mixed experiences, with some describing supportive environments while others encountered challenges such as inadequate culturally responsive leadership training and systemic barriers within their teaching contexts. these results highlight the varying levels of dei implementation across schools and districts, implying novice dual-certified toc’s workplace experiences are influenced by the extent to which dei principles are actively promoted and practiced. discussion our findings affirm the extant literature on teacher retention, provide additional depth and complexity to this phenomenon, and highlight some important differences regarding the unique factors influencing novice dual-certified toc decisions to leave, move, or stay in the field. using bronfrenner’s ecological model, we were able to (a) examine participants’ experiences within their unique school environments, including relationships with students, colleagues, and administrators, as well as access to resources, lesson adaptation, and collaboration with staff at the micro and mesosystem levels; (b) assess how larger societal structures and cultural norms at the macrosystem level, including systemic racism, educational policies, and societal attitudes toward diversity in education, impacted their experiences; and (c) explore how their experiences were influenced by and connected to broader institutional factors, such as school district policies, professional development opportunities, and community kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 17 involvement at the exosystem level to understand their experiences and retention in the field. our analysis underscores that novice dual-certified toc encounter systemic and professional barriers that influence their early career trajectories. educator preparation at the microsystem level, participants’ epp equipped them with foundational knowledge and skills while also linking them to mesosystem supports in academic and professional contexts. our findings align with prior research indicating that epps, particularly those at hbcus, play a critical role in competency-building and culturally responsive preparation (e.g., bettini et al., 2021; billingsley & bettini, 2019; roegman et al., 2017). however, retention outcomes revealed that preparation alone does not overcome systemic barriers, including inequitable workplace conditions, limited mentorship, and restricted leadership opportunities, which were especially challenging for dual-certified novice toc. participants who felt most prepared by their epps were more often movers, indicating that strong preparation may give teachers the confidence to seek better aligned opportunities instead of remaining in unsupportive roles or schools. mentor support mentorship represented a critical direct interaction within the microsystem level, yet our findings revealed a complex relationship between the participants’ experiences and retention. prior research highlights the importance of strong mentoring relationships for novice teachers, particularly when mentors share their racial or cultural identity and can provide content expertise (e.g., bettini et al., 2021; billingsley & bettini, 2019; coffey & farinde-wu, 2016; scott, 2020), and epps based at hbcus are well positioned to instill the value of culturally responsive support. in this study, however, more than half of the participants were paired with white mentors, and many did not have mentors within special education, which may have influenced how support was perceived and applied. although participants reported moderately positive experiences, only a minority rated their mentorship as highly beneficial, and those with the most positive ratings often became leavers, suggesting that mentorship alone did not determine retention. instead, mentorship appeared to interact with mesosystem and exosystem factors such as administrative support, district policies, and workplace conditions that shaped participants’ long-term career decisions. strengthening mentor-mentee relationships within schools and districts, particularly through intentional pairing of novice dual-certified toc with experienced educators who possess subject-matter expertise and engage in culturally responsive practices, may help ensure that mentorship more effectively supports toc in their early careers. administrative and district support support from administrators and district leadership represented a crucial component of the macrosystem that influences novice dual-certified toc retention. our findings suggest that novice teachers experience increased stability when macrosystem supports are reinforced through exosystem practices like access to administrators, professional development, and decision-making opportunities (billingsley & bettini, 2019; bettini et al., 2020; farinde-wu & fitchett, 2018). participants who placed the greatest importance on these macro level supports were primarily movers, seeking better-aligned positions rather than leaving the profession altogether, consistent with prior research showing that inadequate support often results in school transfers rather than full attrition (farinde et al., 2016). leavers in our study reported weaker perceptions of exosystem supports, while stayers described somewhat stronger backing. amid a kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 18 teaching profession that remains majority white (data usa, n.d.; de brey et al., 2021), novice toc face compounded challenges, echoing scott’s (2020) findings on racial battle fatigue and early career departures among black special educators. together, these results indicate that exosystem supports frame teachers’ immediate environment, whereas macrosystem structures set the broader policy and cultural context in which those conditions are experienced. diversity, equity, and inclusion support stronger dei support was closely linked to higher retention rates, reflecting macrosystem influences (i.e., policies, values, ideologies, and systemic norms) on the importance of inclusive school environments in sustaining a diverse educator workforce. while previous studies on toc (farinde et al., 2016; scott, 2020) have primarily used qualitative case studies to examine racialized experiences, the quantitative nature of this study strengthens the empirical connection between dei practices and novice toc retention. the strongest correlation between variables and retention outcomes was tied to participants’ perceptions of how well their schools supported racial dei. stayers reported more favorable perceptions of dei practices, such as culturally responsive pedagogy, engagement with diverse families, and affirming school cultures, while leavers were more likely to describe limited dei support, suggesting that the absence of inclusive policies and practices contributes to early career departures. these findings illustrate how exosystem factors, such as school and district policies and professional development offerings, shape teachers’ day-to-day contexts, while macrosystem set the conditions for whether those local policies are affirming or exclusionary. the findings also align with bettini et al. (2021) and roegman et al. (2017), who emphasized the role of equitable workplace conditions and culturally affirming leadership in retention, as well as farinde-wu and fitchett (2018), who confirmed the positive influence of diverse leadership representation. in a context where dei initiatives face increasing scrutiny and reduction at the macrosystem level (green, 2024; dhanani et al., 2024; wong & ma, 2025), these findings validate the potential consequences of limiting these efforts. effective dei policies across various institutional levels may help create inclusive environments where novice dual-certified toc feel valued and supported, while diminishing commitments to these policies and practices poses risks to sustaining a diverse educator workforce. limitations several limitations warrant consideration in the research design and findings. first, while the use of quantitative methodology was effective for identifying patterns, it limited a deeper understanding of novice dual-certified toc’s personal experiences and decision-making processes. incorporating the qualitative data (e.g., interviews or focus groups) from the larger study could have provided richer insights into their nuanced perspectives, motivations, and challenges that quantitative measures alone may overlook. additionally, the small sample size (n=17) drawn from a single hbcu restricts the generalizability of findings to broader populations (lakens, 2022). although this limitation reduces external validity, it also serves as a strength. few studies have focused on this issue, making our findings a valuable contribution to this underexplored area. another limitation is researcher positionality. due to personal associations between researchers and participants, there was a potential for response and selection bias. participants may have consciously or subconsciously reported feeling well-prepared due to their familiarity kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 19 with the researchers. therefore, the familiarity may have influenced participants’ responses, limiting the objectivity and generalizability of the findings. further, the survey instrument had limitations in capturing microsystem influences on teacher retention. for example, the survey did not include questions on the participants’ family dynamics (e.g., emotional support, cultural expectations, or financial pressures), parent or family partnerships, or teacher-student relationships, all of which could have yielded deeper insights into support systems and barriers. finally, limitations also exist at the macrosystem level. our survey did not account for broader sociocultural influences such as religion and communitybased organizations, which could significantly impact teachers’ decisions to stay, leave, or move within the profession–providing an opportunity for future studies to expand on this research. implications as our data illustrate, the pipeline approach to diversifying the teacher workforce by recruiting and graduating candidates from quality epps is insufficient to guarantee the success and retention of novice dual-certified toc once they enter the profession. our findings suggest that retaining novice dual-certified toc may require implementing robust supports across multiple levels of the education ecosystem. the study results point to several implications across our four key drivers to strengthen retention. educator preparation programs our examination of educator preparation reveals several critical implications for epp reform. given that novice dual-certified toc described persistent challenges including daily cultural insensitivity, disrespect for diverse communities served, curriculum and pedagogy centered on dominant narratives, and exclusionary practices, epps must fundamentally transform their approach to preparing future toc for unwelcoming and oppressive educational systems that can erode professional commitments. this transformation is both urgent and achievable, as evidenced by our finding that novice dual-certified toc who strongly endorsed their epp preparation were more likely to move positions within the field rather than leave entirely, demonstrating the retention benefits of comprehensive preparation. therefore, epps should expand their curricula beyond traditional teaching skills by acknowledging and demonstrating to preservice candidates how schools function as microcosms of a larger society that has historically supported race-based privilege through systemic inequities, exposing students to non-eurocentric ideologies within educational frameworks to signal that diverse cultural perspectives are valued, and providing concrete tools for creating social and structural change. creating well-designed, developmentally appropriate, anti-racist epp curricula that explicitly connect systemic inequities and race-based privilege to student outcomes is foundational to comprehensive transformation (bennett et al., 2017; williams, 2021). schools and districts the impact of mentoring on novice toc retention has critical implications for practice and policy at the microsystem, mesosystem, and exosystem levels. novice dual-certified toc considered their mentorship experiences inadequate, inconsistent, and often misaligned due to mismatched mentor-mentee pairings, limited subject-specific guidance, and the absence of systemic supports across their schools and districts. schools and districts should intentionally assign mentors who reflect their racial and cultural backgrounds, when possible, and have relevant teaching experience to better support novice toc. additionally, districts should create kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 20 leadership pathways for novice toc to build a stronger mentor pipeline, while principals must ensure mentors have the time and resources to provide meaningful support. since racial/ethnic identity alignment is not always feasible in the mentee-mentor partnership, culturally responsive mentor training can improve mentor-mentee relationships and enhance toc retention efforts. strengthening mentorship structures supports novice toc while also contributing to long-term approaches for sustaining a diverse education workforce. furthermore, support from administrators and district leadership emerged as an important element in novice dual-certified toc retention, as participants emphasized the importance of access to professional development, inclusive decision-making, and supportive workplace conditions. yet, many lacked strong administrative support and meaningful leadership opportunities, contributing to instability in their early careers. schools and districts should look beyond preparation and strengthen the structures novice toc encounter once they enter the profession to enhance retention. expanding leadership pathways, increasing teacher participation in decision-making, and strengthening mentorship programs are concrete ways schools and districts can create more supportive environments. improving these supports across ecosystem levels can improve workplace conditions and provide novice toc with the resources needed to succeed and advance within the profession. lastly, with recent measures at the state and federal levels to roll back and restrict programs, policies, and pedagogy that promote dei in higher education, our education system is at increasing risk of losing ground on recruiting and retaining toc and potentially sacrificing student outcomes in the process (farinde-wu et al., 2020; ginsberg, 2025; jackson, 2025; redding, 2019; sayman, 2025). this underlines the need for policy reforms at the school and district levels to improve the teaching experience of novice toc to ensure retention. policies must go beyond dei rhetoric and address school racial climate to ensure novice toc feel a sense of belonging. schools should implement policies that promote cultural competency training, equitable leadership opportunities, and structured support systems for novice toc. moreover, at the district level, policies should require transparent tracking of staff and leadership diversity and establish confidential mechanisms for gathering novice toc feedback. additionally, culturally responsive training in classroom management and family engagement should be mandated to reduce the burden on novice toc as cultural brokers. establishing measurable dei benchmarks and regular policy evaluations will be critical for sustaining progress in toc retention. future research novice toc who experience strong school (microsystem & mesosystem) and district (exosystem) support are more likely to transition within the field rather than leave the profession entirely. future research should explore how epp provides explicit objectives and goals across program courses and field-based internships to develop dispositions, knowledge, and skills to work equitably with culturally different communities, families and students to promote social and structural change during the induction years. future research should explore how administrative leadership, professional development, workload expectations, and collaboration contribute to long-term retention. examining exosystem-level supports (e.g., leadership pathways, advancement opportunities) alongside microsystem and mesosystem supports (e.g., workload management, access to resources, peer collaboration) could provide greater clarity into the conditions necessary for sustained engagement in the profession. kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 21 mentorship continues to be essential for teacher retention, yet racial/ethnic identity alignment between mentors and mentees remains an underresearched area. future research should examine how shared identity characteristics, such as race, gender, and area of expertise, impact job satisfaction and career commitment. additionally, investigating the effectiveness of culturally responsive mentorship training could provide insight into best practices for supporting novice toc when mentor-mentee identities do not align. understanding how mentorship structures contribute to long-term retention may help districts strengthen support systems for new teachers. while this study emphasizes the role of dei in teacher retention, further research should examine how belonging (deib) and accessibility (deia) contributes to sustained engagement and professional growth for novice toc. exploring how workplace culture, leadership practices, inclusive policies, and accessibility measures (e.g., access to facilities, technology, and professional supports) influence retention could provide informative findings for improving school environments. employing mixed-methods approaches and larger sample sizes would allow for greater insight into understanding how deib or deia initiatives impact teacher retention and overall job satisfaction. conclusion given our findings and those of related studies (e.g., billingsley & bettini, 2019; bettini et al., 2021; scott et al., 2021), the way forward is clear: the retention of novice dual-certified toc depends on well-developed educator preparation and school, district, state, and federallevel policies and practices that affirm diversity while fostering a sense of belonging for all educators, students, and families. beyond recruitment, sustained efforts are needed to create supportive environments through mentorship, leadership opportunities, and structural supports that address workload and professional development needs. schools and districts must move beyond rhetoric to actionable, evidence-based strategies that reduce barriers for novice dualcertified toc and ensure they have the resources and supports necessary to stay within the profession. references annamma, s. a., connor, d., & ferri, b. 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(2011). how beginning special and general education elementary teachers negotiate role expectations and access professional resources. teachers college record, 113, 1506–1540. author notes cathy d. kea https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4907-7378 north carolina a&t state university cdkea@ncat.edu fanica young https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6517-0906 clark atlanta university fyoung@cau.edu tahnee l. wilder https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3007-1590 howard university tahnee.wilder@howard.edu laura sirgany https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6355-1879 university of virginacharlottesville las6g@virginia.edu stanley c. trent https://orcid.org/0009-0003-6716-0738 university of virginacharlottesville sct3m@virginia.edu we have no conflicts of interest to disclose. this work was supported by the office of special education programs (osep), u.s. department of education, under grant no. h325k150404. the content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of osep or the u.s. department of education. https://apnews.com/article/trump-dei-education-diversity-equity-inclusion-20cf8a2941f4f35e0b5b0e07c6347ebb?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share https://apnews.com/article/trump-dei-education-diversity-equity-inclusion-20cf8a2941f4f35e0b5b0e07c6347ebb?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share https://apnews.com/article/trump-dei-education-diversity-equity-inclusion-20cf8a2941f4f35e0b5b0e07c6347ebb?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312241278597 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4907-7378 mailto:cdkea@ncat.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6517-0906 mailto:fyoung@cau.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3007-1590 mailto:tahnee.wilder@howard.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6355-1879 mailto:las6g@virginia.edu https://orcid.org/0009-0003-6716-0738 mailto:sct3m@virginia.edu kea et al.: examination of retention factors current issues in education, 26(2) 29 correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to cathy d. kea, department of educator preparation, north carolina agricultural and technical state university, 1601 east market street247 proctor hall, greensboro, nc 27411. email: cdkea@ncat.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ cie template volume 19, issue 1 march 1, 2016 issn 1099-839x investigating the effects of an experimental approach to comprehension instruction within a literacy clinic evan ortlieb st. john’s university f. d. mcdowell del mar college abstract: reading comprehension levels of elementary students have not significantly improved in the 21st century and as a result, the need for systematic and intensive reading interventions is as high as ever. literacy clinics are an ideal setting for struggling readers to experience success through the implementation of a cyclical approach to individual assessment, planning, instruction, and evaluation. yet, additional research is needed to create current and relevant models of literacy clinics for today’s diverse learners. this investigation aimed to measure the effects of an experimental approach to reading comprehension instruction for third graders within an offcampus literacy clinic; the intervention involved a scope and sequence of comprehension strategies in which students had to demonstrate skill mastery before progressing to the next skill. there was a statistically higher achievement rate in the experimental group as measured by the crct statewide assessment with a cohen’s effect size value (d = .79) suggested a moderate to high practical significance. its findings are relevant to those involved in literacy improvement, including literacy clinic directors, preservice educators, and curriculum directors. keywords: literacy, reading clinics, intervention, remediation, individualized instruction, elementary apa-style citation: ortliebe, e., & mcdowell, f. d. (2016). investigating the effects of an experimental approach to comprehension instruction within a literacy clinic. current issues in education, 19(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1437 accepted: october 1st, 2015 school-wide literacy success has been nearly a universal goal since the inception of the no child left behind act, the common core state standards, and now the every student succeeds act. having rigorous expectations alone is not enough (cassidy, ortlieb, & grotegarcia, 2016); advancement occurs from building on what has worked and taking informed risks. refining and tuning existing programs of excellence is incredibly difficult work that often goes unrealized (ricci, 2011). nevertheless, more research is needed within turn-around pedagogies current issues in education, 19(1) 1 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1437 ortlieb & mcdowell: investigating the effects of an experimental approach to comprehension instruction within a literacy clinic (comber & kamler, 2012) for students who experience difficulties developing reading skills and comprehension of what they read in print and digital environments, as concepts of capable learners struggling to read are merely 120 years old (harris, 1967; ortlieb, 2012). as a university partner to a local school, it was the lead investigator’s role to develop a creative approach to strengthen its existing excellence through redesigning its off-campus university reading clinic. a review of disaggregated formal assessment data from third grade students’ standardized tests revealed that students needed improvement in predicting, summarizing, and questioning skills. although it was not surprising that third graders struggled with aspects of reading comprehension, it was commonly perceived that these areas were being addressed via whole class instruction as well as in the clinic’s tutoring sessions. as a result of the identified needs, investigators created a plan for change that entailed preservice educators creating 60-minute biweekly lessons that infused more explicit, researchbased instruction tailored to these comprehension skills. this study aimed to determine if an experimental approach to reading comprehension instruction could improve comprehension scores for struggling readers in a literacy clinic. theoretical framework this research project is grounded on notions of explicit sequencing of skills (ortlieb, 2014) towards cognitive development and schema acquisition (bartlett, 1932). within the development of reading skills, sequences include strategies such as prediction, previewing, and summarizing. these techniques share the common ground of encouraging learners to use their existing knowledge towards acquiring new information and ideas in a text (anderson & pearson, 1984; ausabel, 1968; pearson & johnson, 1978; stauffer, 1976, 1980). schema is a concept that describes how knowledge experiences are stored and play a role in the comprehension process (anderson, reynolds, schallert, & goetz, 1976; bartlett, 1932). students’ varied background knowledge and experiences lead to different levels of understanding of a text or different interpretations (anderson et al., 1976). connective understandings, or the creation of informational bonds, need to be modeled and taught to children. schema is the foundation to comprehension in literacy. in school, educators often assume that students have prior background knowledge that will take them to the level of comprehension that is needed for academic and career success. part of comprehension development consists of using prior schema to fill in “gaps” created by new knowledge (anderson et al., 1976). readers have to make sense of the new knowledge gains by connecting it with prior knowledge by using logical inferences. for schema to make sense, these thoughts also have to repeat in the order that they originally occurred (bartlett, 1932). this makes the process of gathering schema more accessible in order to reach full comprehension. the reader has to construct meaning from the message and schema (anderson et al., 1976). scaffolding is intended to serve as a temporary structure in supporting students in overcoming their struggles (dixon, 1994; ortlieb, grandstaff-beckers, & cheek, 2012) and leading them towards independent literacy success (tompkins, 2014). providing modeling to learners allows them to develop their literacies as apprentices and contributors to their own learning (kucer, 2014; williams & ortlieb, 2014). applying the schema theory of learning to this study encourages literacy development by building on background knowledge and observations to understand more complex content (hinrichs, 2004; reznick, 1983). review of literature a myriad of research-based literacy methods and strategies currently prevail in the field of reading education (block, parris, & morrow, 2008; rasinski & padak, 2008; walpole & current issues in education, 19(1) 2 ortlieb & mcdowell: investigating the effects of an experimental approach to comprehension instruction within a literacy clinic mckenna, 2004). while acknowledging individual successes in programs around the nation, hearty problems remain in the field of reading. despite significant efforts since 1992, the national state of 4th grade reading scores has stagnated (u.s. department of education, 2013). as many states have recently adopted (and even repealed) the common core state standards (ccss), perhaps core reading programs could benefit from alternative means of literacy improvement. literacy clinics a literacy clinic is a site where k-12 learners can attend sessions with preservice or inservice teachers who hone their pedagogical skills through delivering an individualized plan for literacy improvement, often occurring in a one-on-one setting. literacy clinics have been an integral part of successful reading programs for many decades (bates, 1984; smith, 1965/2002). however, literacy clinics remain a scantly researched field (cassidy, 2009; garrett, pearce, salazar, & pate, 2006). interest in literacy clinics has fluctuated primarily due to financial costs and time considerations (bader & wiesendanger, 1986). yet, the support system that literacy clinics provide to participants including students, tutors, and clinicians is a staple to their success and unlike any other (elish-piper, 2001; hanes & mulhern, 1981). using models designed decades ago primarily for caucasian students may not be a viable option; instead, models of modernized literacy clinics must be created to provide the framework from which success for all is fostered (cleland, 1982; ortlieb & doepker, 2009). the ability to read effectively is particularly salient for success today in a fast-paced society. early intervention combined with appropriate assessments and subsequent instructional methods may eliminate the need for reading intervention in later grades (foorman et al., 1998; snow, 2002; wanzek & vaughn, 2010). evidence indicates that the number of children with reading difficulties can be reduced from current levels (20-40%) to a much lower percentage with comprehensive, systematic, and intensive reading interventions (invernizzi, 2003; torgesen, 2000). hence, students should have access to immediate and intensive interventions to ensure optimal progress; a literacy clinic is a suitable forum for accomplishing just that (houge & geier, 2009). literacy clinics afford teachers the time and effort to concentrate on instructional practices directed towards individual students. within clinics, teachers can modify, expand, polish, and experiment with instructional practices designed to improve students’ abilities in multiple literacies. through a cyclical approach to individual assessment, planning, instruction, and evaluation, struggling readers can experience success (dunston, 2007; ortlieb & cheek, 2008), which is the undisputable best educational motivator. literacy clinics provide a useful alternative to the available programs by offering components like a thorough assessment and a personalized plan for instruction; they also foster student motivation, attitude, and skills (bracken, 1967; fernald, 1943; johns & lunt, 1975). comprehension strategies effective reading programs are composed of not only teaching techniques but also strategies for students to improve their comprehension of complex texts and text structures. strategies that good readers use must be explicitly taught regardless of the grade level. the strategies must be aimed at transferability, that is, students can use them across disciplinary areas and grade levels, as their importance is significant to understanding fiction and non-fiction topics. the primary investigator decided to focus on strategies for the improvement of text comprehension derived from duke and pearson’s book chaptereffective practices for current issues in education, 19(1) 3 ortlieb & mcdowell: investigating the effects of an experimental approach to comprehension instruction within a literacy clinic developing reading comprehension within farstrup and samuels’ (2002) what research has to say about reading instruction. good readers apply a host of strategies to read and interpret the meaning of text (pressley, 2000; wade, 1990). explicit instruction of prediction leads students to predict and constantly adjust those predictions throughout their active reading experiences (allbritton, 2004; caverly, hand, franke, & radcliffe, 2008; eilers & pinkley, 2006). effects of using strategies like prediction include increased levels of metacognition, especially in struggling readers (brownwell, golos, klinger, menon, & urbach, 2010). think alouds, or the reader’s verbal thoughts, depict what reading strategies are being used and create a focused reading environment around the task at hand (smith, 2006). understanding content, though, begins with identifying and analyzing the arrangement of ideas or text structure (armbruster, 2004). then, readers can use visual representations of text and/or summarizations to concisely explain their understanding of the text resulting in increased levels of comprehension (haystead & marzano, 2009). having the ability to delete unnecessary information, select a topic sentence, and maintain sequence of events is of primary focus when summarizing (boulware-gooden, carreker, thornhill, & joshi, 2007). questions/questioning strategies promote critical thinking skills that focus on the construction of meaning and interaction with the text (parker & hurry, 2007; trinkle, 2009). these six strategies were selected to aid students’ comprehension in this quasi-experimental study by equipping them with skills necessary to be thoughtful independent literate consumers of information. just as bader and wiesendanger (1986) noted that major changes occurred in reading clinics during the 1980s, literacy clinics should evolve today to meet 21st century needs. more research is needed to formulate optimal models of literacy clinics. this investigation aims to determine the effectiveness of an experimental scope-and-sequence approach to comprehension strategy instruction in the third grade within an off-campus literacy clinic. methods participants after obtaining irb approval, investigators conducted an analysis and found that 93.4% of third graders met or exceeded benchmarks for achievement on the state-wide standardized test, criterion-referenced competency test (crct), in 2009. of the 139 (73 male/66 female) third graders’ crct scores, the lowest 60 scorers (36 male, 24 female) were selected for inclusion in the ‘study buddy’ program including two who were repeating third grade (caucasian 62%; african american 24%; hispanic 8%; other 6%). their ages ranged between 8 and 10 years old. each third grader was randomly paired with a university senior-level student majoring in early childhood education. this off-campus literacy clinic program was a coordinated effort between the nearby university and this elementary school, where preservice educators tutored students at southside elementary to remediate their difficulties in literacy led by their university professor. participatory third graders were pulled from their physical education class twice per week to receive supplementary one-on-one clinical instruction. all third grade teachers at southside elementary used the open court reading program. this research-based, systematic, and comprehensive framework is primarily structured around a scripted basal reader inclusive of a scope and sequence of reading strategies that begins with word knowledge and moves on to comprehension via authentic literature. university students were fulfilling requirements for completion of their undergraduate early childhood program. the 20-hour practicum for 10 consecutive weeks in a semester current issues in education, 19(1) 4 ortlieb & mcdowell: investigating the effects of an experimental approach to comprehension instruction within a literacy clinic included informal pretesting, progress monitoring, semi-structured lessons, and post-testing. preservice teachers received three courses related to reading education, and one course in language arts prior to participating in the literacy clinic. tutors participated in workshops detailing how to proctor, score, and interpret informal reading inventories. preservice teachers were also educated before, during, and after the tutoring process about designing effective lesson plans for struggling readers. emphasis was placed on the tutoring portion of the course as it was the preservice educators’ role to provide opportunities for elementary student success within the university partnership. the literacy clinic director scheduled weekly observations of tutoring sessions to provide ongoing feedback and guidance. in instances of student absenteeism, university preservice teachers collaborated with another group. design/procedure a quasi-experimental study ensued as half of the literacy clinic participants (30) were randomly assigned to be included in an experimental group, while the others (30) were designated in the control group. though the treatment assignment was randomized, a t-test was conducted to compare the preexisting level of reading achievement as measured by the previous year-end crct. among 3rd graders in the research study (n = 60), there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups, treatment group (m = 825.4, sd = 14.21) and control group (m = 828.1, sd = 20.38), t(58) = 0.5952, p ≥ .05, ci.95 -11.78, 6.38. essentially, both groups scored similarly and as a result, intervention gains, if any, could be compared after its duration to determine if the experimental approach to clinical instruction had a significant effect on reading comprehension of third graders. the independent variable in this investigation was the scope and sequence for explicit comprehension strategies. the control group of third graders received instruction using the traditional lesson plan that included a list of reading comprehension strategies for which their tutors selected one or more each day to target based on their book selections and applicability to the created lesson (see figure 1). in contrast, students in the experimental group used a modified lesson plan inclusive of a scope and sequence of reading comprehension strategies (see figure 2). comprehension strategies included in the scope and sequence (prediction, think-aloud, text structure, visual representations of text, summarization, and questions/questioning) on the lesson plan were derived from duke and pearson’s (2002) summary of research-proven explicit techniques for reading comprehension development. the order of strategies on the experimental lesson plan reflects an approximation of the scope and sequence of strategies taught in third grade within three popularly used basal reading series in the united states. preservice educators in the experimental group began with the first comprehension skill (predicting) and continued addressing that skill until a student demonstrated mastery as measured by a standardized strategy use rubric. there was also a minimum of two days of tutoring per skill to ensure that a student maintained mastery, and that multiple measures (i.e., work sample completion, rubric rating, and/or direct observation of strategy use) provided a sufficient evidence base before moving to the next comprehension skill. the null hypothesis (h0) was that there would be no difference between control and experimental groups’ reading comprehension improvement over 10 weeks of tutoring. three dependent measures were used in this study: a) oral reading comprehension scores obtained from the qualitative reading inventory-4 (qri-4) (2005), featuring an alternate-form reliability of .80 (leslie & caldwell, 2005); b) silent reading comprehension scores from the qri-4; and c) georgia state-wide standardized test (crct) scores in reading for elementary current issues in education, 19(1) 5 ortlieb & mcdowell: investigating the effects of an experimental approach to comprehension instruction within a literacy clinic read aloud (optional) guided reading (book title) familiar rereading book title or chapter strategies used/neglected    before reading during reading teacher will: student will: after reading comprehension strategies used □ text structure □ questions/questioning □ think aloud □ summarization □ visual representations of text □ prediction comprehension extension activity: assessment/evaluation target area(s): □ comprehension □ fluency □ vocabulary □ other _________________ data/evidence: observations of student behavior(s) student’s improvements: student’s struggles: vocabulary strategies □ direct instruction □ context clues □ word parts □ word consciousness activity: words used: reflections how successful was the lesson? what do you need to do differently? what does the student need to learn next? interactive/guided writing objectives: (skills/strategies taught) objective 1: activity: objective 2: activity: figure 1. literacy lesson plan (control group). current issues in education, 19(1) 6 ortlieb & mcdowell: investigating the effects of an experimental approach to comprehension instruction within a literacy clinic read aloud (optional) guided reading (book title) familiar rereading book title or chapter strategies used/neglected    before reading during reading teacher will: student will: after reading comprehension strategies used □ text structure □ questions/questioning □ think aloud □ summarization □ visual representations of text □ prediction comprehension extension activity: assessment/evaluation target area(s): □ comprehension □ fluency □ vocabulary □ other _________________ data/evidence: observations of student behavior(s) student’s improvements: student’s struggles: vocabulary strategies □ direct instruction □ context clues □ word parts □ word consciousness activity: words used: reflections how successful was the lesson? what do you need to do differently? what does the student need to learn next? interactive/guided writing objectives: (skills/strategies taught) objective 1: activity: objective 2: activity: figure 2. literacy lesson plan (experimental group). current issues in education, 19(1) 7 ortlieb & mcdowell: investigating the effects of an experimental approach to comprehension instruction within a literacy clinic grades. preand post-test scores on the qri-4 were collected by tutors during the first two and last two tutoring sessions, allotting 16 of the 20 sessions for skills-based tutoring. the georgia state-wide standardized test (crct) grade 3 reading component is designed to measure knowledge, content, and skills in the following areas: a) reading skills and vocabulary acquisition; b) literary comprehension; and c) reading for information. the standardized test consisted of three or four multiple-choice questions that follow literary passages. this standardized assessment was used to measure the differential between elementary students’ scores at the end of the second grade versus the end of the third grade. in addition to the between-group comparisons, students involved in the off-campus literacy clinic were also compared with other third graders at southside elementary who did not participate in the study buddy program. the primary investigator collected all standardized test scores with district and school permission. participant training data collectors (preservice teachers) were trained in the administration and scoring of the qri-4. they were first provided with a presentation by the primary investigator on the theory and rationale for qri-4. the investigator modeled implementing qri-4 with a third grade student as well as passage scoring procedures. data collectors practiced administering and scoring the responses. data analysis mean scores and standard deviations from experimental and control groups were calculated from the three indicators: informal oral reading comprehension, informal silent reading comprehension, and formal reading comprehension. a t-test was performed to compare differences between means for informal pretest and posttest scores for both oral and silent reading comprehension within and between groups. a t-test was also utilized to evaluate the means and standard deviations from the formal, state-issued crct between the two groups, as well as to compare the progress of students in the clinic versus other third graders at southside elementary. cohen’s effect size was used to demonstrate the strength of the correlations. results iri oral and silent scores between groups the results of the quasi-experimental design study indicate there was no statistically significant difference between the oral reading gains (measured in grade level equivalents) of the control group (m = 1.45; sd = 1.30) and the experimental group (m = 1.5; sd = 1.69), t(55) = 0.13 p ≥ .05, ci.95 = -.085, 0.75 (see table 1) using the informal measurement. therefore, we fail to reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference between the instructional approaches to oral reading comprehension development, as evidenced by the informal reading inventory scores on the qri-4. on the subsequent silent reading comprehension test, students again increased their scores with close resemblance between control and experimental groups. gains in silent reading comprehension of the control group (m = 1.21; sd = 1.80) were comparable to those of the experimental group (m = 1.22; sd = 1.37), t(55) = 0.98 p ≥ .05, ci.95 = -0.86, 0.84 (see table 1). again, we fail to reject the null hypothesis there is no difference between approaches to instruction on silent reading development, according to qri-4 scores. crct scores between groups among 3rd graders at southside elementary who maintained participation in the reading clinic (n= 57), there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups, control group (m = -3.66; sd = 14.17) and the experimental group (m = 5.56; sd = 8.69), t(55) = 2.95, p ≤ .05, current issues in education, 19(1) 8 ortlieb & mcdowell: investigating the effects of an experimental approach to comprehension instruction within a literacy clinic ci.95 = -15.49, -2.95 (see table 2) on this formal, standardized measure. therefore, we reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference in reading scores between the improvements to reading comprehension between the two groups. further, cohen’s effect size value (d = .79) suggested a moderate to high practical significance. two students scored below the 800-point passing mark with each earning a score of 795 respectively. one of the two students had already repeated third grade and improved his score by 14 points from 2013 to 2014. table 1 iri oral and silent scores of control and experimental groups n m sd t df p 95% ci iri oral scores control 29 1.45 1.30 ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ experimental 28 1.50 1.69 ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ total 57 1.47 1.49 0.13 55 0.9006 -0.85, 0.75 iri silent scores control 29 1.21 1.80 ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ experimental 28 1.22 1.37 ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ total 57 1.21 1.59 0.02 55 0.9813 -0.86, 0.84 table 2 crct differential scores from 2013 to 2014 between groups n m sd t df p 95% ci crct scores control 29 -3.66 14.17 ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ experimental 28 5.56 8.69 ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ total 57 2.29 11.48 2.95 55 0.0047 -15.49, -2.95 crct scores between clinic participants and non-participants in the third grade improvements from 2013 to 2014 on the crct of participatory students (m = 5.56; sd = 8.68) in the study buddy program (lowest scorers on 2009 crct) were slightly higher, but not statistically significant compared to the scores of non-participatory students (m = 4.12; sd = 5.27), t(134) = 1.20, p ≥ .05, ci.95 = -0.93, 3.81 (see table 3). thus, we fail to reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference in comprehension development for students in the reading clinic and non-participatory third graders at southside. table 3 crct scores between clinic participants and non-participants in the third grade n m sd t df p 95% ci crct scores participants 57 5.56 8.68 ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ non-participants 79 4.12 5.27 ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ total 136 4.72 6.70 1.20 134 0.2321 -0.93, 3.81 current issues in education, 19(1) 9 ortlieb & mcdowell: investigating the effects of an experimental approach to comprehension instruction within a literacy clinic implications informal reading inventory test results indicate that students in the reading clinic developed approximately 1.5 grade levels in oral reading comprehension and 1.25 grade levels in silent reading comprehension (as measured by the qri-4) regardless of their inclusion in the experimental or control group. the only significant difference between the two groups was detected in the formal testing posttests measured by the crct, where students in the experimental group outperformed their peers in the control group to a statistically significant rate. although students in the control group (where preservice teachers selected comprehension strategies that coincided with texts of their choosing) increased both their oral and silent reading comprehension abilities as measured by the qri-4 instrument, their scores on the formal crct declined from 2013 to 2014. meanwhile, those in the experimental group had additional opportunities to master comprehension skills, but may have not received instruction on all six strategies listed on the lesson plan. students in the experimental group improved their scores significantly more than those in the control group; thus, reinforcing the notion of depth over breadth within educational settings (kornhaber, 2001). although control group participants were exposed to all six comprehension strategies throughout the 10 weeks of reading intervention, some students likely failed to master some of those strategies and in turn, struggled to transfer the use of those comprehension reading strategies to independent tests such as the crct. tutoring sessions were structured in a one-onone format with heavy emphasis on teacher facilitation and scaffolding. however, it is apparent that scaffolding from teacher directed strategies/reading toward independent reading and the application of those strategies did not fully transpire (pearson & gallaher, 1983). in turn, standardized test scores did not show improvement in the control group. these outcomes have significance in school systems, tutoring programs, and other remedial courses. while the differences in the improvements was not statistically significant between study buddy participants to non-participatory third graders at southside elementary, the fact that the struggling readers improved to a greater but similar extent to students who had already mastered many reading strategies prior to beginning third grade supplies evidence that the study buddy program provided opportunities for growth and development in literacy for its at-risk participants. these teacher-led sessions assisted to develop their particular needs in reading comprehension. limitations of the initial 60 students in the study, 57 completed the intervention and all of the testing. a few students (n = 3) in the study either relocated or were withdrawn from the study buddy program prior to the 10th week when post-testing occurred. in addition, the second grade and third grade formal crcts are not identical tests. the crct was used as a second measure of reading comprehension before and after the tutoring process. further study literacy clinics have consistently and historically demonstrated that participants enhance their abilities to effectively use literacy strategies (ortlieb & cheek, 2013). clinics are an optimal environment to explore and refine approaches to literacy remediation.literacy remediation will advance alongside experimental research. one particular avenue of needed research is determining the most effective scope and sequences for specific types of reading difficulties. for instance, students identified as word callers can be put into several programs of intervention, where research can yield data regarding which instructional approaches are most current issues in education, 19(1) 10 ortlieb & mcdowell: investigating the effects of an experimental approach to comprehension instruction within a literacy clinic effective. with revitalization in the popularity of literacy clinics, it is an ideal time to determine best practices in literacy clinics. conclusion though the basic tenets of reading are universally understood to be word reading and subsequent comprehension, knowing how to precisely teach these strategies to individual children is challenging. this investigation supported what is known from extant literature in that schema acquisition occurs from building on background knowledge and making connections in a carefully and pragmatically scaffolded environment that is highly individualized, studentcentered, and constructed from high interest reading materials. using a bevy of pedagogies and approaches to support reading skill development and content knowledge acquisition is necessary for students, especially those who have previous experienced difficulties in literacy. it is through refined research and practice (not delivering scripted curriculums) that educators become enhanced in their abilities to foster reading development from emergent to complex literacies, and then apply those skills in independent learning environments and real-world scenarios. one method of instruction does not behoove every population of students and their unique schemas; methodological evaluations supply the evidence base for a delineation of their strengths and emerging skills necessary to plan for instructional success. in this study, comprehension strategies were targeted based on trends in standardized test performance, leading towards greater levels of comprehension and higher test 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(2010). research based implications from extensive early reading interventions. in t. a. glover & s. vaughn (eds.), the promise of response to intervention: evaluating current science and practice (pp. 143-186). new york: the guilford press. williams, a., & ortlieb, e. (2014). reading specialists’ perceptions and pedagogical practices towards struggling readers. journal of international education, 6(2), 82-97. current issues in education, 19(1) 15 http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/main2013/pdf/2014451.pdf human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games author notes evan ortlieb, ph.d. st. john’s university 8000 utopia pkwy, sullivan hall 4.18, jamaica, ny 11439 ortliebe@stjohns.edu evan ortlieb is an internationally recognized leader in the field of literacy education whose expertise centers on struggling readers. his book series and publication of over 100 manuscripts substantiate some of his contributions to the field. his current collaborations with the international reading association relate to redefining the role of a reading specialist/literacy coach. f. d. mcdowell, ph.d. del mar college 101 baldwin blvd., coles building, rm. 119, corpus christi, tx 78404 buddymcdowell@yahoo.com f. d. mcdowell is the reading lab coordinator and reading instructor charged with directing remedial reading efforts and teaching developmental reading courses. his scholarship focuses on investigatory analyses of struggling learners. most recently, his influential work has aided international students improve their english language proficiency. current issues in education, 19(1) 16 mailto:ortliebe@stjohns.edu mailto:buddymcdowell@yahoo.com human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games volume 19, issue 1 march 1, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh bethany richmond lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers current issues in education, 19(1) 17 figure 1. literacy lesson plan (control group). figure 2. literacy lesson plan (experimental group). crct scores between groups current issues in education, 25(2) volume 25, issue 2 november 22, 2024 issn 1099-839x teaching about white nationalism: ethics, vulnerability, and racial pain in learning environments beth ribet repair and ucla gender studies leslie bunnage seton hall university abstract: u.s. white nationalism is virulent and escalating, expressing itself through a variety of digital and media spheres, violent assaults on black, jewish, muslim, migrant and indigenous communities, and via increasing participation and alliance-building in mainstream politics. notwithstanding the public presence, impact, and persistence of white nationalist organizations, education remains thin. these educational deficits have alarming implications, signaling a lack of public readiness to engage and challenge white nationalist movement building. fostering a conversation between educators is therefore both productive and compelling. such dialogue can catalyze increased communal and scholarly commitment to providing education about white nationalism, grounded in the premise that critical education is a necessary element of effective racial justice work. as a contribution to this vital discourse, we attend to the complex ethical challenges involved in the process of learning about white supremacist organizing, using the example of u.s. white nationalism. keywords: whiteness, pedagogy, white nationalism, nazism, populism. citation: ribet, b. & bunnage, l. (2024). teaching about white nationalism: ethics, vulnerability, and racial pain in learning environments. current issues in education, 25(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2174 accepted: 04/02/2024 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2174 ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 2 teaching about white nationalism: ethics, vulnerability, and racial pain in learning environments the 2021 attack on the united states capitol building powerfully illustrated the extent to which white nationalism and far-right incarnations of patriotism have become increasingly visible in public space (glaude, 2021; kirby, 2021; thompson & fischer, 2021). while donald trump’s presidency has undoubtedly inflamed and emboldened certain expressions of white rage and entitlement in the united states, notable growth of white nationalist movements manifested during and after barack obama’s initial successful presidential campaign in 2008 (miller & graves, 2020). the present moment reflects an entrenchment of white supremacy in u.s. institutions (speed, 2020). as shannon speed elucidates, no comprehension of white supremacy can be effective without a deeper engagement with the politics of colonialism, as a driving force undergirding u.s. society, structures, and ways of making meaning. in this discussion, we center recognition that contemporary white nationalism is powerfully rooted in colonial and white supremacist histories. while u.s. media trumpeted the birth of a “post-racial” society in 2008 and beyond, white nationalist groups and enclaves experienced rapid growth in participation and membership from white people (anderson, 2014, 2016; hooker, 2017). the new recruits were disproportionately, though not exclusively, white males, who were affronted, unsettled, and often rageful at the prospect of black leadership in the united states’ highest public office. in addition to looking to proximate contemporary causes, existing racial and social movement scholarship gives us a solid, though still developing foundation to understand the roots of contemporary white nationalism in community mobilization dating back to the 19th century post-civil war reconstruction era, and earlier phases of colonization and nation-building (byrne, 2018; ridgeway, 1990). notwithstanding a growing field of knowledge to help ground our contemporary observance of white nationalist mobilization, too little information is reaching the public (swain, 2002). we find that it is common for our university students, and even some academic colleagues, to find elements of the rhetoric or ideological frames surfacing in contemporary white nationalist mobilization to be inexplicable, confounding or seemingly without context, absent more of a theoretical and historicized foundation of colonization and white supremacy. college-level pedagogy about white nationalism is notably and painfully under-developed, with higher educational institutions typically offering no courses devoted fully to the subject. more limited modules manifest only sporadically in courses addressing u.s. racial histories or political extremism. the need for pedagogy about white nationalism is nevertheless pressing and timesensitive (brown & au, 2014). learning about white nationalism enables several possibilities for students who are preparing for future professional and community work. nuanced and critical study of white nationalism, nazism, and related movements can substantially deepen student comprehension of the broader landscape of white supremacy and settler colonialism and ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 3 strengthen student recognition of the ways in which “everyday” whiteness and structural racism set the stage for overt white nationalism. white nationalist reactivity to the black lives matter movement remains relentless such that, as educators attempt to mobilize critical pedagogy about anti-black racism, curriculum about white nationalism should be understood as a vital element of explicating white resistance to black lives matter frames and visibility. this paper is a collaboration grounded in our experiences as faculty teaching students about white nationalism, nazism, and related far right, white identity-based organizing. in 2019, beth ribet designed an interdisciplinary first-year undergraduate seminar at ucla entitled “white nationalism and nazism in the u.s.,” utilizing relevant concepts and frames from crt. she has since launched a second course in gender studies, entitled “gender, populism and white nationalism,” and a third course in sociology entitled “white nationalism and rightwing populism.” the first-year courses were for small groups (under 20), although the gender studies and sociology courses were larger lectures. the majority of those enrolled were students of color, although white students also were present. leslie bunnage developed a research project focused on the rhetoric and mobilization strategies of the tea party movement. as an outgrowth of that work, she developed an applied learning course in sociology at seton hall university in 2010, entitled “research practicum on the tea party movement” in which undergraduate students were able to assist and accompany her in field visits to tea party movement rallies and meetings, and interviews with tea party leaders. the course included 13 students. twelve of the 13 were female, and eight of the 13 were white, while the remaining five were students of color. upon dialogue, we rapidly recognized affinities between our respective courses, while also acknowledging the distinctions between classroom and applied learning, the topical differences in our respective curriculum, and the differing political landscapes in which we launched our curriculum (respectively during the obama and trump eras). while the white nationalism courses centered white nationalism squarely as their organizing theme, the tea party movement practicum surfaced white nationalism as a driving and sometimes unconscious theme embedded in tea party mobilization. both courses interrogated strong expressions of u.s. patriotism coupled with organized opposition to policies, people and practices that would serve to upset white dominance or to disrupt the position of white people as the normative template for citizenship and american identity (enck-wanzer, 2011; oliver, 2017). our intended audiences for this paper are primarily educators who have an existing foundation in anti-racist teaching, and some foundational awareness of the structural and historical relationships between white privilege, white nationalism, and white supremacy. the entry point for this discussion involves explication of the ethical challenges in pedagogy about white nationalism, for educators who are already both invested in and familiar with analyses of structural and ideological racism and white supremacy, whether through critical race theory (crt), or related spheres in ethnic studies, or subfields in the social sciences and humanities. in other related work, we discuss strategies for explicating the relationship between white privilege and white nationalism in the classroom (ribet & bunnage, 2023). ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 4 our priorities and emphases in this discussion are shaped by our investments in crt. this project implicates the application of tenets of crt to the study of white nationalist movements (hiraldo, 2010). the broader field of crt embodies a set of analyses and tools for challenging white supremacy and is a valuable foundation for any educator interested in delivering pedagogy about white nationalism. one of these tenets in particular serves as an implicit guidepost in this discussion, namely the recognition that racism (and white nationalism specifically) is neither aberrational nor extraordinary, but rather is grounded in the major institutions of white supremacist societies, including law and education (crenshaw et al., 1995; decuir & dixson, 2004). this tenet has traction in any study of white nationalism, particularly since it is often normative, in and out of academia, for white nationalism to be understood within the frame of “extremism,” and conceptualized as distinct from other expressions of whiteness and white privilege (ribet & bunnage, 2024; cottom, 2018). while we hold this epistemological frame as a foundation of our work in this paper, we are also concerned with the “nuts and bolts” of pedagogy addressing racially charged and traumatic content. as we considered the simultaneously productive and disturbing aspects of our pedagogy, we recognized some congruent themes and imperatives in our educational work. an array of political factors inform pedagogy about white nationalism. these include considerations that are normatively at play in critical and race-conscious curricula. such considerations include (and are not limited to): a) historicizing our contemporary analyses, b) situating and supporting communal knowledge that students of color bring to dialogue, c) managing and responding to exercises of white privilege in the classroom, and d) grounding discussion in recognition of both structural and rhetorical manifestations of racism (alderman et al., 2019; gilbert 2020; ullucci, 2010). in essence, this paper is a think-piece about our experiences as educators and is informed by (but is not a vehicle for presenting any data from) our prior research. instead, the paper develops an initial discussion of ethics in critical pedagogy about white nationalism, drawing informally on our classroom and field experiences with students. to this end, we incorporate review of physical and emotional vulnerabilities for students, and the complexity of varying student reactions to learning in more depth about white nationalist politics and the people who embody them. in this paper, we offer some additional reflection on the array of ethical challenges implicated in crafting and delivering pedagogy about white nationalism. the discussion is broken into three areas: a) empathy, distancing and humanization, b) racial vulnerability, grief, and rage, and c) physical safety. empathy, distancing, and humanization to study white nationalism thoughtfully and holistically requires learning more about who white nationalists are in the contexts of their lives and subjective realities. in some instances, the content of testimony, text and other data sources will be unambiguously repellent to students and faculty. study of such content is not simple, as it generates intense emotional ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 5 reactions and provokes difficult reflection on the nature and sources of sadism and cruelty, and the virulence of white racism. yet, in these moments, white nationalists are -to those who study them -clearly understood enemies, rarely provoking empathy or identification. however, many white nationalist movements recruit disproportionately among young, traumatized, mentally ill, and economically vulnerable white people (blazak, 2003; blee, 2003; lennings et al., 2010.) some rely on intergenerational socialization of children who are indoctrinated continuously (see e.g. saslow, 2018). they can involve marked internal hierarchies with patterns of exploitation and (often gendered) violence targeting their own members (giroux, 2017; toop, 2020). it is somewhat common for people to commit to exiting white nationalist movements after some period of exposure and immersion. at least some of these individuals give public testimony, and take physical, legal and emotional risks in the interests of accountability (see e.g. franco & radford, 2018; hunter-gault & kane, 2019; picciolini, 2017; saslow, 2018). for students (and for faculty), one of the challenges in studying white nationalism involves navigating experiences of empathy, partial identification, and humanization of the individuals who make up white nationalist movements. these social-psychological processes may be both meaningful and deeply uncomfortable for some students of color, as well as for white students who are jews, muslims, or otherwise belong to a targeted community (e.g., lgbtq students). they may also provoke intense discomfort -and ideally, critical selfreflection -for white students who are used to perceiving white nationalists as entirely different from themselves and to framing white nationalism as aberrational. in the white nationalism courses, students of color and a few white students began to initially articulate surprise and confusion about their own emotional reactions. the strongest such reaction was often the students’ surprise and discomfort in response to feeling any compassion for individuals in white nationalist movements. these reactions surfaced as the class studied recruitment and exit politics, focusing on what needs or biographical factors drive entry into these movements, and on the process and the emotional and sometimes extreme physical risks involved in exiting these movements. the students viewed the independent film “skin” (director guy nattiv, 2018), based on the lived experiences of bryon widner, a young white nationalist who was recruited as a vulnerable teen, and repeatedly threatened, injured, and eventually hospitalized as he attempted to escape. when making sense of the film, students developed complex reactions to white nationalists, and recognition of stark internal hierarchies within white nationalist movements. deeyah khan’s 2017 powerful documentary, “white right: meeting the enemy,” in which she identifies herself as a left-wing muslim, south asian feminist, and meets and questions white nationalists and former white nationalists, further enhanced student recognition of the class differences and politics within white nationalist movements, and strengthened recognition of white nationalist movements as simultaneously very dangerous, and comprised of individuals who, in some instances, are also vulnerable and struggling. the second incarnation of the “white nationalism and nazism” class (in 2020) included an in-class guest lecture by shannon foley-martinez, a former teenage nazi, who has since spent ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 6 more than two decades engaged in anti-racist organizing, and in assisting and mentoring white nationalists who are attempting to exit. students were invited to ask her direct questions about her past violent behavior, her feelings about that behavior, her vulnerabilities as a young person, her current understanding of white nationalist movements and their ideologies, and her insights about anti-racist counter-mobilization. in subsequent debriefing, students highlighted her visit as one of the best aspects of the course and discussed how useful it was to comprehend how a vulnerable teenage girl could embrace such politics, and with what social psychological effects. as students processed and made sense of their emotional reactions, discussion focused on empathy and humanization as concepts. the class explored questions such as: what does it mean to humanize someone, and specifically to humanize someone who is positioning themselves in opposition to you (or others) as an expression of racism (ivie, 2008; wiebe, 1996)? is it possible to empathize with someone doing harm, specifically racial harm, without presumptively forgiving, minimizing, excusing, or justifying that harm? does empathy deepen analysis, strengthen political strategy, or usefully complicate critical theorizing? are there dangers in empathizing? for instance, does empathizing with someone who is a perpetrator of white racism necessarily or easily displace or shift attention from victims of racial harm? does the focus on white psyches and receipt of empathy divert attention from structural racism? in exploring this latter question, the students examined “exit politics,” and screened a ted talk by christian picciolini, who is a well-known former nazi, a best-selling author, and was the producer of the television series, “breaking hate” on msnbc. the students discussed a moment in the closing of his ted talk in which picciolini exhorts the audience to empathize with the trauma and turmoil people in white nationalist movements have experienced. at the close of his talk, he tells his audience that empathy and compassion are the most important elements that contribute to “extremists” choosing to leave nazi organizations. he then issues a challenge, stating, “go out there today, tomorrow, hopefully every day. find somebody that you think is undeserving of your compassion and give it to them, because i guarantee you, they’re the ones who need it the most.” (picciolini, 2017). participants in the discussion examined picciolini’s framing critically -specifically the notion that nazis need compassion “the most,'' relative to the presumptive burden it could easily impose on people of color to prioritize or elevate white pain. class members also reflected on the question of a former white nationalist building a relatively lucrative career based on that identity. the discussion included comparative and critical acknowledgment of the potential danger in focusing on perpetrator vulnerability and trauma when examining white violence, in contrast with the racially charged and often far less empathetic public responses to violence committed by persons of color and/or by muslims. posing a question like -“have we ever, in popular media, heard anyone talking about the trauma, vulnerability or emotional needs of people who are framed as “muslim terrorists”?” -can help to initiate critical reflection on the comparative public willingness to humanize and empathize with perpetrators of white racist violence. notably, when some students began raising the question of empathy, a few white students were among those most expressively resistant to feeling or validating any empathy towards ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 7 former white nationalists. as discussed previously, empathy or emotional identification with a white nationalist can be challenging to some white students, specifically because it disrupts the ability to position white nationalists as thoroughly differentiated from their own experience of whiteness (for a related discussion, see cottom, 2018). in this dialectic, a white nationalist is a kind of mono-dimensional trope held up in contrast to white people who are nice, and “not racist.” recognizing commonalities between white nationalists and “good” people who are white is disruptive, and challenges white students to grapple with the uneasiness of recognizing similarities between their own navigation of racial power, and the movements and people under study. empathy, therefore, can be discomfiting or psychologically threatening, precisely because it establishes commonality or identification (zembylas & papamichael, 2017). course materials and discussion ultimately supported students in comprehending white nationalism as part of a contiguous landscape of white racist behaviors, perceptual patterns, choices, and civic engagement in which any/every person with white privilege is implicated and can potentially engage in conscious and unconscious decision-making. as the course progressed, and the relationships between white nationalist movements, white privilege, and mainstream racism continued to be interrogated, white student resistance to contemplating or acknowledging empathy dissipated. the pedagogical process in the “white nationalism and nazism” course highlighted the emotional challenges and opportunities involved in studying the white right. a common trait of almost all students was a marked motivation to learn and to make sense of the material. many of the students took on extra work out of interest, student preparation for each class discussion was relatively high and demonstrated thought, and absences were rare. students also indicated that they were discussing and sharing course materials with friends and family members, to a greater degree than they normally would in other courses. given the intensity of the material and the commitment the students brought to learning, it is unsurprising that students would struggle with how to humanize and empathize, as well as how to experience and articulate their experiences of horror and distress. learning can be a process of strengthening “emotional intelligence,” as well as a theoretical or analytical process. in discussion, students were encouraged to consider that empathy does not have to presumptively be burdened with expectations of premature (or any) forgiveness, or of defense or minimization of racism. for students of color struggling with the complexity of their reactions, it was vital to acknowledge that empathizing with or recognizing sympathetic elements within individual white experiences need not presumptively constitute a betrayal of self, community, or anti-racist commitments. it was also helpful to recognize that empathy and humanization can be useful. for instance, empathy can deepen student relationships to theory and narrative, can aid in recognizing and strategically mobilizing against white nationalist recruitment and retention practices, and is part of the emotional work of comprehending racism. simultaneously, empathy and identification with white nationalist experiences and traumas can become depoliticizing. depoliticization occurs both by shifting focus from the harms visited on communities of color, ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 8 and by elevating preoccupation with personal and psychological manifestations of white distress and vulnerability over recognition of the function of white nationalist movements as an outgrowth of structural racism (for related discussion of the risks of empathy, see e.g. bloom, 2017). effective pedagogy will necessarily anticipate that student relationships to content will be emotionally charged and rarely simple. crt, again, can be a guidepost in this work, in offering educators a body of literature about storytelling and narrative as central to critical education, and in disrupting white supremacist epistemologies (aguirre, 2000; miller et al., 2020; solórzano & yosso, 2002). in the tea party movement course, one of the white students grappled with making sense of her mother’s tea party membership. the student initially came to the subject material out of curiosity and shared the perception that the tea party was perhaps on the fringe, or a bit “wacky.” during examination of tea party imagery, the students confronted a graphic featuring barack obama with a noose around his neck. the word “hope” had been replaced with the word “nope,” as a parody of some of the obama campaign messaging. the image was chilling for all students and illustrated the movement’s investment in white supremacist messaging. for the student whose parent was a tea party member however, contemplation of the graphic was an emotional shock, and substantially shifted her comprehension of her parent’s political activity. the invocation of lynching implicated in the graphic belied the frame of the tea party as merely embodying “fringe” politics and located her parent’s politics more squarely within the terrain of contemporary white nationalist mobilization. recognizing that white nationalist politics were present in her immediate family shattered her ability either to distance herself from the tea party movement, or to trivialize its significance. though very emotionally difficult, ultimately this aspect of learning was productive. with the support of the class, the student was able to develop a familial dialogue, and interrogate and engage with her parent’s racism. attending tea party rallies generated a high degree of alienation and dislike among the students, many of whom were also making sense of suspicious or intimidating reactions to their presence from tea party members. as a result, the challenges associated with empathy were less common. such challenges did, however, become relevant for students when trying to make sense of tea party members who were (atypically) friendly or seemed to behave kindly. students were more likely to feel very distant from the social realities of tea party members, while simultaneously recognizing the movement as dangerous and alarming. the tea party movement demographics also shaped this orientation. members are disproportionately over 40, and immediately noticed the presence of college students in their late teens and early 20s. further, the tea party movement advances an anti-education narrative as among its central themes, continually emphasizing that colleges and universities are bastions of left-wing propaganda and multiculturalism (skocpol & williamson, 2016; bunnage, 2012). so, students (especially though not exclusively students of color) were generally not targets for recruitment and corresponding friendly treatment, as they (or at least, those students who were white) might have been in some other white nationalist spaces. the tea party movement also has no equivalent to literature and discourse about movement exit, as compared to nazi movements ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 9 and organizations, for instance. thus, student learning was confined to direct observation and study of the public face of the movement. consequently, although most students were less conflicted in their reactions to tea party members (excepting the student with a parent in the movement), the class also had to work a bit harder to make sense of the motivations and worldviews of tea party membership. we can imagine pedagogical approaches which intentionally avoid scrutiny of the social psychology of white nationalism, and focus more exclusively on public discourse analysis, and on legal, economic, and structural dimensions of white nationalist mobilization and state responses. however, we note that even if the course material is intentionally less engaged with learning in ways that better enable empathy or humanization, at least some students will struggle regardless, in trying to comprehend the psychological elements of white nationalist socialization and participation. therefore, preparing for these questions or conversations ideally should be an organic element in the development of rigorous and ethical pedagogy. racial trauma, vulnerability, grief and rage in several ways, studying white nationalist movements, texts, and rhetoric invites students to recognize and confront white racism without the quasi-apologetic veneer of post-civil rights era claims to tolerance, “color-blindness,” or (depoliticized) diversity (brown, 2013; knowles et al., 2009; lewis, 2004). in some key respects, white nationalism is contemporary white racism laid bare and grounded admittedly and unabashedly in its histories of colonization, slavery, xenophobia, and in the united states, to jim crow practices and policies. student responses to the material inevitably reflect their own lenses and comprehension of white supremacy. for many white students, and for some students of color, the material generates some shock or confusion, as students struggle to make sense of the chaotic and inconsistent ideologies that typify white nationalist discourse, against the backdrop of their own consciousness about lived experiences of race and racism. some students of color and a few white students find the study of white nationalism simultaneously troubling and satisfying. that is, here is white racism that does not deny (or at least, denies less of) its agenda. white nationalism makes no pretense to inclusion or racial equity while it promotes the mechanisms of structural racism. while it would be untenable to define white nationalism as consistently “honest,” given its historical revisionism and distorted representations of racial power, studying contemporary white nationalism can be empowering or clarifying for students who are continuing to hone their analyses of the logics of racial domination in the united states. nevertheless, whether experiencing shock, clarity or both, the study of white nationalism relentlessly implicates racial violence, sadism, and objectification (de genova, 2020; deliovsky & kitossa, 2020). for students, particularly those students of color who are aware of or developing consciousness of ancestral trauma in the united states, the study of white nationalism is in part an encounter with and contemplation of concentrated racist destruction and racial pain. ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 10 such an encounter can constitute a profound learning opportunity, and for some students can be productively politicizing or generate fresh or strengthened commitment to anti-racist scholarship and organizing. simultaneously, particularly for students of color, and in some instances for white jews or white muslims, confronting white nationalism can tap into communal and personal trauma. it is not uncommon for students studying white nationalism to experience grief, rage, hurt, or feelings of marked vulnerability. the distinction between a classroom or fieldwork setting, and for instance a group therapy or community healing space, is an important one. neither the students nor the instructor will typically fully control the composition of or the dynamics emerging within the class. that is, “safe space” may not be a realizable or reliable goal. the imperatives of grading and course structure, and the dynamics of power and authority in student/faculty relations may also complicate or escalate student experiences of racial vulnerability (harlow, 2003; johnson-bailey & cervero, 1998). despite these realities, an ethical approach to teaching about white nationalism should anticipate the presence of racial and ancestral trauma as an aspect of student learning. we should acknowledge that neither author encountered the challenge of having enrolled white students who were avowed white nationalists, or who were expressing identification or solidarity with white nationalist movements. in each instance, students self-selected and enrolled for elective credit. though not all enrolled students explicitly identified with anti-racism or had substantial prior access to anti-racist pedagogy, our students shared, at minimum, a recognition of white nationalism as a social problem. while we did not experience white nationalist presence within our student cohorts, we recognize that more overt white resistance and hostility in learning environments is among the likely challenges some educators will encounter, particularly if critical pedagogy about white nationalism becomes more widespread. this reality amplifies the point that faculty cannot reliably plan for consistent or complete “safety” as a realizable goal, even while safety planning remains a necessary element of course or content planning. broader conversations about trauma-informed teaching, healing-centered engagement in classroom settings, healing pedagogy, racism and pedagogy, transgressive teaching, and comparative educational models provide an array of frameworks to guide faculty in developing effective and ethical approaches to race-conscious pedagogy (see e.g., freire et al., 2018; hooks, 2014; stachowiak, 2020; tarver & acosta, 2020). we add only two elements to the conversation, relative to white nationalism as a curricular focus. first, we note that encountering violently racist messaging directed against one’s own community is, of course, a psychologically vulnerable and often heartbreaking experience. while white nationalists have a very wide array of racist messaging directed at many populations, they also target and direct aggression at particular populations in some moments, with black, latinx immigrant, indigenous, jewish and muslim populations among the most frequent contemporary targets. in the present moment, the black lives matter movement remains a very frequent target of white nationalist vitriol, a dialectic which can invite students to contemplate more deeply why and how the black lives matter movement is understood as a profound threat to white supremacy. ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 11 in small seminars, in applied research cohorts, and particularly on campuses struggling with under-representation and exclusion of black, latinx, indigenous, or international students, the likelihood is high that in one or more moments, a student will be “the only”: an isolated member of a racialized population, in a classroom in which the faculty member and peers do not share the same history or experience of racial trauma and vulnerability. it is vital to consider how to navigate such moments. educators can embrace this challenge through acknowledgment of distinct histories and vulnerabilities, demonstrable solidarity, or through the inclusion of course materials (including guest lectures) that articulate and validate student experiences of racial vulnerability and anti-racist critique. failing to consider and to plan for student experiences of racial isolation and trauma amplifies the likelihood that while confronting the virulence and viciousness of white nationalist rhetoric, students will experience alienation from the learning environment. the nexus of racially charged subject matter, when coupled with disconnection from collective learning and camaraderie with peers and faculty, can readily become (re)traumatizing or harmful. second, we note that pedagogy about white nationalism implicates specific questions about the use of humor, sarcasm, or mockery, whether by the instructor or by the students. when studying white nationalism, it is virtually inevitable that learners will have moments of recognition that, if not for their location in broader and deeply destructive racist systems, white nationalists can often be ridiculous or seem laughable. their rhetoric tends to be riddled with internal contradictions, some invent fantasy titles for themselves otherwise reminiscent of a “dungeons and dragons” tournament or cyber-gaming science fiction scenario. when studying their recruitment pathways and biographies, it is evident that some are embracing notions of “superiority” as a reaction to various social insecurities. humor often functions as a coping mechanism and can be an embodiment of student or faculty strategy to manage trauma or other strong emotional reactions. reactions utilizing humor, sarcasm, or ridicule of white nationalism are certainly to be expected. they can potentially be trust-building in context, especially if they reinforce anti-racist critiques, or remind students of their collective capacity to resist or disempower white nationalist ideological constructs. a caveat, however, is that humor can also convey that the subject or target of a witticism is unimportant or negligible. while this may be a viable discursive strategy to delegitimize white nationalists in some moments, it also runs the risk of trivializing the harms they commit or the dangers they pose (ford et al., 2017; van der elsen, 2020). this risk becomes more troubling when coupled with student vulnerabilities and racial isolation, as discussed in this section. for instance, imagine a scenario in which an indigenous student is confronted with white nationalist statements, imagery and rhetoric celebrating and re-writing colonization (de finney, 2015; stineback, 1977). whether there are any other indigenous people in the immediate learning environment (or not), the student may have a particularly acute understanding of the racial harm implicated in the white nationalist communication. if the student is the only indigenous participant in the conversation, the student may also be aware that in this environment, no one else will or can fully comprehend the impact of that communication for ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 12 indigenous people. if the faculty member and peers proceed to simply laugh at white nationalism and ridicule white nationalist actors, and then move on, in this instance humor might easily reinforce the student’s experience that racial harm is unrecognized. as a result, the student receives the message that the learning environment is not one in which indigenous experiences of white nationalist aggression will be validated. simply put, being surrounded by unqualified laughter as one grieves or rages alone, can become deeply harmful. our aim here is not to encourage wholesale repression of humor, which as noted, can serve meaningful social and political functions within anti-racist pedagogy. however, with racially traumatic and loaded subject matter, its use should be coupled with reflexivity and intention, and may require a preface or subsequent acknowledgment to reinforce that while the class may mock white nationalists, the harms they commit should not be trivialized, and humor should not undermine the validity and urgency of grief, hurt, or outrage. a final consideration involves exposure to racist imagery and language. white nationalist testimony, iconography, web content, social media, and video footage are riddled with images and phrasing that merit the common designation “hate speech.” perhaps more precisely, such content is itself an offensive expression of racism, such that receiving it will commonly be or feel violent and traumatic (bilewicz & soral, 2020; leets, 2002; stordeur-pryor, 2016). elizabeth stordeur pryor’s work on the “n word” has been particularly useful in confronting the inherent violence that can infuse or operate through language. a challenge in teaching about white nationalism manifests in the reality that at least some of the potential curriculum is inherently degrading or harmful, and can exact a psychological toll for students, particularly those who are targeted by racist rhetoric. in field settings, primary ethical obligations vested in instructors involve preparing students for what they may encounter and remaining both available and conscientious in debriefing about student experiences. reinforcing student capacities to exit the research encounter as needed is an essential measure. however, in fieldwork there are otherwise fewer choices to be made about exposing students to imagery and language. the setting determines what material students will be exposed to. in classroom and community learning settings, boundaries and expectations will often need to be collectively discussed, explicit (including warnings about content in video, audio, or written materials), and calibrated – as in field settings – to allow students to “exit” or terminate exposure to particular materials as needed, or to allow for collective decision-making in some instances about what content to include in the class. physical safety physical safety is a consideration in both classroom and applied settings, though we readily recognize that the risks are substantially increased in fieldwork. white nationalist patterns of violent assaults do affirm that school settings can be a target. given that college campuses are among the sites of white nationalist recruitment, it is wise to acknowledge classroom spaces as at least conceivably vulnerable to white nationalist physical aggression. as a ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 13 precaution, for the white nationalism courses, the course location was removed from all publicly accessible schedules and directories, including the published syllabus. enrolled students received the classroom location directly from the instructor and were asked not to share it further. this mechanism would not have eliminated the possibility of a white nationalist student enrolling in the course. however, it did reduce the prospects of any outside entities finding the class location. for the “tea party” course, minimizing physical risk was an option for students who chose to avoid engaging in unobtrusive or participant observation at tea party meetings and rallies, and opted not to sit in on interviews with leaders advanced by the instructor. the array of social media and web documents and communities maintained by the tea party movement allowed students who preferred to avoid physical encounters to participate in purely digital engagement, textual and image analysis, and observation. almost all students did opt to enter inperson field settings, after collective discussion about the context, possible emotional and physical risks, and benefits associated with on-site study. one student chose not to continue field visits after the first one, although she identified that the initial experience was worthwhile. none of the students encountered actual physical threats or altercations, so physical safety plans for exiting were not ultimately implemented. overtly negative responses to students of color were essentially limited to hostile facial expressions, and in some instances, intrusive or confrontational questions about their presence accompanied by a suspicious tone. white students experienced some of the latter as well, to a lesser degree. preparation included discussion of risk assessment, student comfort zones, and strong and repetitious encouragement to exit any setting in which the level of physical or emotional risk seemed or felt untenable. in debriefing, students noted that they struggled with feeling empowered to terminate observation in field settings, because of learned and internalized pressure to complete assignments. for this reason, advance discussion of the prioritization of safety, and the ability to revoke consent or participation (including in their role as studentresearchers) became an ongoing imperative. in addition, students were strongly encouraged not to enter field settings alone, and generally either accompanied the instructor, or observed in groups or pairs, to increase safety. we stress that field research in white nationalist contexts is not a viable or reasonable option across all sites, and that the level of risk may have escalated since bunnage’s field-driven course in 2010, given the increasingly violent tenor of public white nationalist rhetoric and encounters. although there were no expressed physical threats or assaults occurring during the tea party movement course fieldwork, one mostly unanticipated issue arose as several young, white, female students entered tea party movement settings. tea party members, who are disproportionately elderly and middle-aged white males did, in several instances, attempt to flirt, objectify, and establish potential romantic or sexual connections with white, female students (whereas young women of color in this setting were treated with suspicion, but were not the targets of sexual advances). student responses essentially involved avoidance and polite rejection, with interventions by the instructor to reinforce and support student boundaries. none of the students experienced any subsequent harassment or contact outside the field setting. ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 14 however, the incidents did raise questions of gender and sexual safety, and the affected students experienced some emotional discomfort (bunnage, 2012). we continue to contemplate whether and when applied student learning involving inperson interaction or observation with white nationalists can be ethical and remain open to the argument that it should not ever occur, whether because of physical or emotional safety concerns, or a combination. at the organizational level, colleges and universities may also consider liability as a factor in assessing proposed curriculum. despite the anticipated and unanticipated risks, the students in the tea party movement course evaluated the experience very highly and stressed that they were able to learn in ways that classroom study, or purely digital research could not have enabled. at least in this setting, their collective and individual feedback supported the position that the value of the learning opportunities justified the risks and challenges. we turn next to reflection on the overarching lessons learned from our work, and their implications for educators committed to doing similar work. conclusion in an era in which overt white nationalist rhetoric, public demonstrations, and acts of violence and harassment are ascending, doing damage, and finding affirmation from at least some prominent politicians, students are likely to remain highly motivated to learn about the origins, structure, tactics, and ideological mainstays of white nationalist movements. meaningful delivery of course material requires empathic recognition of student (and faculty) racial trauma and generates a corresponding need for anti-racist analysis and social praxis. white nationalism consistently implicates gender and gender-based hierarchies, heteronormativity, exploitation of class tensions, exploitation of trauma and mental disability, and ethno-religious scapegoating. in turn, in addition to a foundation in ethnic studies and critical race theory, useful pedagogy in the u.s. context requires awareness of heteropatriarchal tropes, class stratification and division, historical and contemporary anti-semitic ideologies, the foundations and impact of the black lives matter movement, mental disability stigma and rhetoric (i.e. white nationalism as “crazy”), and preand post-9/11 anti-muslim rhetoric. as we constructed this paper, we reflected on some of the ways that pedagogy might manifest in the absence of one or more of these elements. we can readily picture student alienation, invalidation of complex vulnerabilities, curriculum that reinforces notions of white nationalism as aberrant and exceptional and correspondingly detached from histories and from structural racism, poor attention to the impact of racially charged imagery and racist language, curriculum that privileges analysis of psychological deviance at the expense of structural analysis, or in contrast, curricula that fails to engage or recognize trauma. we share a recognition that self-reflexivity and emotional and political accountability are essential practices for educators with an interest in teaching about white nationalism. given the complexity and volatility of the subject matter and the racial vulnerability of many students, it would not be an overstatement to claim that absent selfreflexivity, pedagogy about white nationalism could become harmful, in some of the ways delineated above. educators may find that such self-awareness is somewhat more difficult to ribet & bunnage: teaching about white nationalism current issues in education, 25(2) 15 cultivate or sustain, without dialogue, points of comparative engagement, and support from peers. notwithstanding every dilemma that can manifest in developing and delivering pedagogy about white nationalism, we recognize without reservation that our teaching experiences have been deeply meaningful, and invaluable for us as anti-racist educators. the work is urgent, and the potential for holistic and powerful learning is substantial. education about white nationalism responds to many of the questions that are salient and motivating for our students, and constitutes a foundation for mobilization and movement building, particularly in the black lives matter movement era. each of these factors reinforces our commitment to continue to 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(2020). beyond thoughts and prayers: understanding mass violence through an investigation of masculinity in the white nationalist movement. western libraries undergraduate research award. ullucci, k. (2010). what works in race-conscious teacher education? reflections from educators in the field. teacher education quarterly, 37(2), 137-156. van der elsen, m. w. j. (2020, august 31). educating america on race: absurdist humor as critical public pedagogy in the works and performances of kara walker, dave chappelle, and jordan peele. radboud university educational repository. https://theses.ubn.ru.nl/items/60b29847-b6ac-4e9a-9c70-1f03aa867bdf wiebe, r. h. (1996). humanizing nationalism. world policy journal, 13(4), 81-88. zembylas, m., & papamichael, e. (2017). pedagogies of discomfort and empathy in multicultural teacher education. intercultural education, 28(1), 1-19. author notes beth ribet orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1372-7239 repair and ucla gender studies beth.ribet@gmail.com leslie bunnage orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-7654-0209. seton hall university bunnagle@shu.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/several-well-known-hate-groups-identified-at-capitol-riot/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/several-well-known-hate-groups-identified-at-capitol-riot/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1372-7239 mailto:beth.ribet@gmail.com https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/orcid.org/0009-0002-7654-0209__;!!ikrxdwav5bmarq!aza2hbnkpilvrqhwbcyaapqlz71zafwzrmc5o33nsg6gviykx4flttsy458hl5ekwak2hwiohj99iklwxduz1qs4dookca$ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ current issues in education, 26(2) 1 volume 26, issue 2 november 20th, 2025 issn 1099-839x the micropolitics of literacy curricula adoption: an exploratory actor network theory analysis of curricula adoption jennifer barrett-tatum, western carolina university roya q. scales western carolina university margaret vaughn washington state university elizabeth y. stevens roberts wesleyan college sonia kline illinois state university ann van wig eastern washington university karen k. yoder goshen college, retired debra wellman rollins college, professor emeritus abstract: in the realm of literacy education, curriculum is driven by politics, finances, standardization, and accountability. how specified curricular materials make their way into the classroom often baffles educators. the one thing educators do know is that it "isn't the one we voted for." this study includes a review of literature on how curricula were historically adopted and provides a current view of how literacy curricula are selected across multiple states. to make this adoption process more visible and discernible, participants were interviewed and asked to barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 2 provide visual diagrams explaining the process. actor network theory was utilized to examine not only the actors involved in the adoption process, but also the flow of decision-making and the hierarchies involved. while understandings of process and flow varied, the one consistent finding indicated that classroom educators were not the most essential actors in the adoption network. keywords: literacy curriculum, curriculum adoption process, literacy curriculum adoption, actor network theory, ant citation: barrett-tatum, j., scales, r. q., vaughn, m., stevens, e. y., kline, s., van wig, a. yoder, k. k., & wellman, d. (2025). the micropolitics of literacy curricula adoption: an exploratory actor network theory analysis of curricula adoption. critical issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2308 accepted: 04/18/2025 the micropolitics of literacy curricula adoption: an exploratory actor network theory analysis of curricula adoption although teachers prefer to have the autonomy to use their professional judgment to decide which literacy curriculum materials to use in their classrooms (e.g., barrett-tatum & ashworth, 2021; manak et al., 2022; narayanan et al., 2024), teachers continue to be pressured to adhere to prescriptive curricula mandated by district-wide personnel (lenski et al., 2016; vaughn et al., 2020; yeigh et al., 2017). educational reform policies, such as no child left behind in 2002, every student succeeds act (essa) in 2015, race to the top (rtt) of 2009, and the 2010 common core state standards, led to standardization to the degree that sulzer (2014) refers to as a “basalisation of today’s youth” (p. 135). the restoration of the simple view of reading and the requirements of “non-fail” curricula using the science of reading further constrains district leaders, administrators, and educators in their efforts to make autonomous decisions surrounding literacy curriculum adoption (e.g., cervetti et al., 2020; reinking et al., 2023; schwarz-franco, 2022). as of the end of 2024, half of the states have policies that require school districts to select from state pre-approved lists of published curricula that they believe adequately aligns with the science of reading (peak, 2024). states’ departments of instruction have varying processes for how these initial lists are determined. for example, some states’ departments of instruction may create a panel of reviewers, while others have members of the superintendent's office review and select options. this would indicate an administratively selected list of reviewers who then begin the selection process by refining the initial lists of curricula. our study seeks to question the level of choice and autonomy districts and schools hold to select their own curriculum as we wondered: at the heart of all the actors in the adoption network, who really chooses school literacy curricula? https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2308 barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 3 narrowing and refining literacy curricula a review of literature investigating educational stakeholders’ involvement in the process of literacy curriculum adoptions revealed a notably limited body of information. in our review of literacy journals, a total of 29 articles broached literacy curricular policies, with less than a third specifically addressing the actual adoption process. the processes of curricular adoptions were largely controlled at the state level, by limiting the options from which districts and schools might select. tulley’s (1985) examination of the textbook adoption process in 22 states revealed that often the adoption processes occur at the state level to promote statewide uniformity of the curriculum and assure the quality of adopted texts. school districts select from a chosen few options named by the state. fletcher et al.’s (2012) study further indicated state adoption criteria may include allowing only curricula with specified dimensions within their materials. these texts are examined for diversity components such as race and gender, in addition to positive pedagogical instructional strategies. following fletcher et al.’s study, scudella (2013) reported the education commission of the states’ explanation of textbook selection by state, which indicated legislative language regarding processes involved. eight states included language about citizens or the public participating in curriculum adoption processes. 13 states specifically addressed minority representation in laws about adopting curriculum materials. localized selections if curricular adoption decision-making did occur at the more localized levels, administrators, curriculum specialists, and administratively selected teachers were chosen to serve on adoption committees (glatthorn et al., 2016). those elected to have a “seat at the table” during curriculum adoption often found that the adoption lists provided for selection contained only basal programs, and that most often it was title 1 schools who were able to adopt the least amount of supplemental curricular resources (glatthorn et al., 2016). allen and seaman’s (2017) survey of 584 k-12 school districts across 48 states and the district of columbia indicated which decision-makers were involved in curriculum adoption processes: these included teachers, district-level administrators, and principals. additionally, approximately half of the districts included outside experts and parents, but few districts allowed them a say in the decision-making process. the widespread adoption of curriculum materials with science of reading (sor) alignment (e.g., doan et al., 2022; falk-ross et al., 2024; peak, 2024), may leave teachers feeling overwhelmed at the multitude of resources, including challenges such as the difficulty in adapting instructional materials to meet students’ learning needs when implementing highly scripted literacy curriculum materials (pak et al., 2020). this new era of sor adoptions mirrors that experienced a decade ago with common core adoptions, illustrating teachers’ continued lack of flexibility and agency in implementing selected curriculum (lenski et al., 2016; timberlake et al., 2017; yeigh et al., 2017). while many experienced and skilled educators continue to enact their own agency by adapting curricula to meet the needs of their learners, administrative focus on fidelity of curricula implementation make it increasingly challenging (fogo et al., 2019; thomas, 2024). as teacher educators, we often find ourselves sitting across from teacher candidates trying to negotiate the tightrope walking of our “best practices” expectations and the lived realities of the mandatory curricula implemented in schools (vaughn et al., 2021; young et al., 2017). however, while we note the poignancy of teacher enactment of reading curriculum, the focus of the present study is how literacy curricula and curricular barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 4 materials are adopted. said another way, we wonder how specific curricula winds up in the hands of the teachers in the first place. this study extends our prior work (vaughn et al., 2021) on decision-making processes for literacy curricula adoption processes across eight states in the united states. in this article, we focus on eliciting visual representations with principals, specifically asking participants to create, explore, and detail their understandings about literacy curricula adoption. our aim in doing so is to contextualize the narrative surrounding literacy curricula adoption, specifically by using multiple modes to examine how principals viewed literacy curricula adoption in their respective schools and districts. our guiding research question is: what insights can we gain from principals’ visual representations and understandings of literacy curriculum adoption and implementation processes? theoretical framework the research question bids us to examine the myriad of stakeholders at various hierarchical levels, the curricula being examined and adopted, as well as the interlocking network of adoption itself. as adoption processes are not always linear decision-making processes, we selected actor network theory (ant) as our guiding framework. ant has undergone diverse interpretations across multiple fields since callon and latour’s (1981) publication on interpreting macro-systems, but has taken root in education and education policy analysis studies. for this study, we describe ant as related to payne’s (2017) assemblages that focus on emergent and fluid networks of material objects, discourses, practices, and people. this is an ideal framing for the study of literacy curricula (both conceptual and concrete), the people who evaluate and adopt them, the discourses around the evaluation and adoption processes, and the state/district/school practices related to the process of literacy curricula adoption. to best represent the actors and the network of curriculum adoptions, we selected ant analysis diagrams (aads) for administrative representation of the adoption process (payne, 2017). the aads are intended to help study and understand the process and interactions of the actors rather than focus on the result of the process (law & singleton, 2013; payne, 2017). the use of visual diagrams paired with participants’ descriptions of the diagram and the process helped us to better understand the agency, or lack thereof, of the actors within. visual diagramming methodologies (pauwels, 2011; rose, 2016) informed data collection and analysis. visual diagrams were essential to answering our research question because, as ganesh (2011) notes, they “can be used to elicit individuals’ understandings of a specific idea or construct” (p. 237), as well as support research analysis of actors networking within a process system (payne, 2017). diagrams were non-algorithmic, with prompts allowing openness in the use of pictures and/or words as participants drew processes. specifically, this study uses visual diagrams (i.e., aads) representations created by participants to study the actors and flow of the process in districts’ curriculum adoption and implementation processes. methodology in this qualitative multi-case study (miles et al., 2020), we used purposive sampling to recruit principals based on varied regional locations of the united states that were within a twohour drive from the researcher conducting the in-person interview. this study targeted elementary school-level administrators as they are the actors who function as the middle persons between districts and schools, and therefore, hold insider knowledge of curriculum adoption processes. thus, participating principals were within the bounded system of cases for this study barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 5 (i.e., purposefully selected cases). further, the researchers had previously conducted some research or pre-service teacher supervision in these participating principals’ schools and were familiar with the workings of the district, school, and literacy curricula. six public elementary school principals from five states (i.e., california, illinois, new york, north carolina, south carolina) agreed to participate. north carolina is the only state to have two participating principals, as requested by the superintendent for district-level irb permission. principals’ years of experience as administration ranged from 2 – 17 years. schools were located across rural, suburban, and urban settings, and ranged in enrollment from a small school with 2,500 students to a large school with 9,926 students. while all were considered elementary schools, grade levels represented in schools varied, including one school containing 3rd-5th primary grades, three schools containing k-5th grades, and two with k-8th grades. to protect anonymity while not assuming gender identity, we assigned gender neutral pseudonyms to all participating principals. see table 1 for participants’ demographics. table 1 participant demographics principal state years of principal experience school enrollment school ryan ca 8 193 k-5 sam ny 2 520 k-5 alex sc 3 648 3-5 andy il 10 425 k-5 jamie nc 17 492 k-8 connor nc 7 569 k-8 each researcher conducted an in-person, audio-recorded interview with the participating principal, which was later transcribed. the final question in the interview was to explain the adoption process of literacy curricula at the district and school level by creating an illustrated diagram. they were then prompted to explain their diagram and their thoughts behind its construction. hence, interview questions focused on principals’ creating and explaining the visual representations. each researcher scanned their participant’s visual representation and uploaded that file to a password-protected online site. transcribed interviews were uploaded to that same site. we followed miles et al.’s (2020) standards for quality of conclusions in qualitative work by attending to the overall trustworthiness of this research. to address dependability, we described in detail the process of aad’s in ant using this theory to guide analysis of all data, as described below. to address reliability in coding, all data were jointly coded by the authors and compared against the theoretical tenants described above. barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 6 data sources & analysis data sources included researcher-initiated visuals created during individual audiorecorded interviews and the interview transcripts. we asked principals to show: ● how literacy curriculum materials (including programs) are chosen in their school district; ● who makes these decisions and why; and ● what are the processes and pathways of decision-making? we left these questions broad in nature, and we did not ask participants to delineate any structures beyond their school building. additionally, we asked that the diagrams be hand-drawn, “to emphasize the working nature” of the system’s process (payne, 2017, p.124). diagram development must take into context the knowledge level and possible biases of the interpreter, thus influencing not only what is drawn but the language used around it (glazer, 2011; meza et al., 2022). the complexity of this development was evident when principals commonly stated that they were not artists and tended to say how difficult it was to put such a complicated process into a drawing, though they verbalized the process as they drew and after diagram completion. visual diagramming methodologies (pauwels, 2011; rose, 2016) informed data collection and analysis. visual diagram (i.e., aads) representations were researcher-initiated, where participants were prompted to respond to interview questions indicating curriculum adoption processes. visual diagrams were selected because they “can be used to elicit individuals’ understandings of a specific idea or construct” (ganesh, 2011, p. 237), as well as support research analysis of actors’ networking within a process system (payne, 2017). diagrams were non-algorithmic, with prompts allowing openness in the use of pictures and/or words as participants drew processes. we did not rate the quality or artistic components of the visual representations. instead, we focused on content and descriptions. that is, we considered how principals’ words in the interview transcripts and their visuals worked in conjunction to explain literacy curriculum adoption processes. the first two authors coded data together using ant assemblage analyses. diagrams were analyzed for the ant concepts that appear in table 2. table 2 ant analysis coding concepts concept codes defined actors human subjects or bodies of governance involved in adoption process, whether involved in decision process or influenced by others hierarchies positions of power, situations of control or decision-making that influences other actors flow trajectories and directionality of materials, decisions, discussion processes materials items involved in adoption process or that influence the process purpose/guiding intentions the “why” behind people, places, items, or movement in decision-making that was either drawn in diagram or verbally paired with drawings first, we noted the above ant concepts from within each visual and then compared the concept codes across visuals. next, we overlaid each principal’s interview transcript that barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 7 described their process for diagram creation with the diagram itself. we added direct quotations to the diagrams based on creation descriptions. finally, we used in vivo coding (miles et al., 2020) to identify repeated words, phrases, and elements presented in visuals as they were paired with transcripts where principals described their visuals. findings visual representations and transcripts worked together to convey deeper meanings than just analyzing each in isolation (ganesh, 2011; miles et al., 2020; pauwels, 2011; rose, 2016). subtle nuances in visuals were overlooked until we read the transcripts and noted items that were discussed but not drawn. the same was true for the drawings; items were added but not described within the discussion. in conjecture, the diagrams and creation discussions provided a more complete portrayal of how curricula adoption processes work across states. principals organized their visuals through notably different designs. the wide variation in diagramming included flowcharts, concept clouds with relational concept arrows, and ecological models. throughout coding, we were struck by visual representations, noting the complexity of actors, relationships, hierarchical control, and actor interaction flow or pathways. we identified larger themes around the objective purpose of adoption and decision intentionality, essential actors, and hierarchical trajectories. essential actors interestingly, students were often named the most essential actor within the network by principals, yet were the only actors with zero decision-making abilities. regardless of the number of stakeholders involved in the diagrams, students represented the common actors within all the networks. multiple principals’ visual representations and transcripts placed students at the center of the literacy curriculum adoption process, and although some visuals lacked reference to students, interview transcripts described students as the focus of the adoption process. yet, students were given no power or action within the flow of decision-making. the actors with the most power in the network were district administrative gatekeepers. these administrative figures were often represented as actors of significant power by providing them with a symbol that represents power, such as a crown or a key. for example, andy from illinois described the district’s director as the gatekeeper and the curriculum council in a cloud (see figure 1) and explained: she’s (district curriculum director) going to be the one who talks to our salespeople. she’s the gatekeeper, so i’ll give her a key. she’s the key to what curriculum gets to the curriculum council… she’s going to say, hey, there’s probably thousands of curricula that’s available to be purchased by districts…obviously we can’t have our council looking at all of those... i guess that she selects certain ones that are approved by her, approved by her team, to be options to be chosen to be purchased for the district. barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 8 figure 1 visual representation illustrated by principal andy from illinois andy speculated that a hidden hierarchy within the district related to the curriculum director and council clouded the teachers’ understanding of the adoption process by stating that there were pervasive underground networks of power structures in place for literacy curriculum adoption. this was often represented in multiple diagrams through multiple arrows flowing both to and from essential actors. principals’ use of metaphors in visuals and in transcripts further illuminated the complexity of relationships, control, and interactions involved throughout literacy curriculum adoption processes. for instance, in south carolina, alex indicated that it was the reading coaches that held considerable positions of power for literacy curriculum adoption and implementation, which principals acted as the enforcing body (see figure 2). while schools were provided a list of options and were allowed “a quote unquote vote” for their preference, the district selected the list of curricula from a pre-approved state list. the district relied heavily on reading coaches to create the options list for teachers because they are viewed as experts and trusted professionals. alex stated: oftentimes the assistant superintendent will go directly to them [reading coaches] and say ‘you’re trained on this, this needs to be happening, meet with your principal.’ then sometimes it goes this way. [assistant superintendent] tells us and then i’ll call my barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 9 reading coach in... i think there’s a lot of collaboration that does take place here. and teachers can go directly to our reading coach as well. alex’s explanations describe the reading coaches as experts who serve as needed across the school district, selecting curricula and resources, and providing regularly scheduled professional development sessions. school leaders expected the information shared by the coaches to be fully implemented in reading instruction. this flow of power between actors creates a network in which administration is mostly informed about curricula choices through discussions with the reading coaches, and then acting as enforcers for the coaches (decision-making actors), while classroom teachers have more passive roles of selecting from a narrowed menu and enacting their selected mandated curricula. in connection with the ant assemblages, it is not only the actors that matter, but also the flow or trajectories of materials, power, and messages being passed amongst their actors. figure 2 visual representation illustrated by principal alex from south carolina hierarchical trajectories findings revealed the complexity of relationships, control, and interactions involved throughout literacy curriculum adoption processes, illustrating the interconnectedness among all involved. while all actors were connected, the pathways of power, choice, and voice were not barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 10 always equitable. four principals’ diagrams and discussions highlighted hierarchical trajectories within the state's process for providing approved lists, a process in which the power of selection began at the top (state office) and trickled down, while two of the principals described district systems that had a more circular process focused on a common goal. given the complexities of district bureaucracy, connections between actors are represented in diagrams and described in transcripts to illustrate the flow and trajectories of decision-making and decision-making powers. top-down flow illustratively, ryan in california sketched the literacy adoption process and stated that decision-makers were in a silo (see figure 3). ryan pointed out the humanities team as part of the superintendent’s leadership team, which also includes the deputy superintendent and the chief academic officer. ryan said: these are kind of the three head honchos, way up at the top… decision-makers, supervisors. then you have the humanities team, which i drew it as a circle, it could sort of be seen as a silo though. so, they’re like one agency within the district. they’re not in the same building as these folks, they’re all the way across town. the humanities team is made up of supervisors and program administrators, and then teachers on special assignment. figure 3 visual representation illustrated by principal ryan from california barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 11 ryan further explained that the large urban district had a prevailing practice of administration hand-selecting school leaders to be on the district teams. ryan summarized that these leaders were noted as having micro political connections, while other classroom teachers were on the periphery because they were not selected by the administration and either did not know they could ask, or did not feel they could ask, to be on the leadership teams. ryan pointed to the drawn silo and stated: the reason i drew these arrows is that these people [teacher leaders on the humanities team] then become the sellers and the messengers and send it back to schools. the strategy behind that is a good one. the strategy is teachers listen to teachers better than if these folks up here [superintendent, deputy superintendent, chief academic officer] are delivering the message. while the silo metaphor and power structures explain which actors have power and how they may elect to contain or disseminate the power. in ryan’s above figure, the flow of decisionmaking is manipulated by specific actors. for example, the literacy curriculum adoption process is initially driven by classroom teachers advocating for specific programs, but their request is brought forward to the district by a humanities team, who ultimately act as the decision-making body. once decided, teacher leaders on the humanities team task school principals in the district to assure professional development is provided to the schools’ teachers. given the ongoing communication with the teacher leaders from the humanities team and schools, this indicates the complexity and interconnectedness of relationships and processes regarding literacy curriculum adoption. circular flow while power structures are noted in the visual representations and in the interview transcripts, two principals specifically pointed out the importance of collaboration and ongoing dialogue among stakeholders for intentional processes regarding literacy curriculum adoption. this was evident in two of the visual representations and supported by transcripts. sam in new york drew a continuous circle with students at the center (see figure 4) to represent the continual back and forth circular flow of decision-making across actors, and stated: so as the state determines what kids need, in the middle, then they’ll keep telling us, we’ll develop our curriculum, and then we’ll implement, and as we’re implementing, we are monitoring, revising, and assessing, but it’s all got to be centered around the student. barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 12 figure 4 visual representation illustrated by principal sam from new york figure 4 shows the constant nature of curriculum adoption and implementation as a never-ending circular journey. while the state has expectations in the form of standards, those standards are frequently revised as policies shift. the expectations inform curriculum alignments and guidance for instructional practices. sam explained that teachers are provided with districtwide professional development that accompanies information about changes to standards, but teachers have the autonomy to make decisions about how they teach. district curriculum specialists influence the curriculum and professional development by creating curriculum alignment and guidance documents to relay information that helps classroom teachers and administrators implement instructional practices that support the state standards, monitor barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 13 students’ learning, revise instructional practices to better support students’ learning, and assess learning. assessment data within and across schools in the district then provides policymakers with information that leads to further shifts in the expectations (standards). hence, the process is ongoing. sam’s visual representation and interview transcript indicated the interconnectedness of actors and power pathways throughout the adoption process. similarly, connor in north carolina drew and explained the necessity of two-way dialogue among school leaders, teachers, and district-wide professional learning communities for influencing instruction that benefits students (see figure 5). connor stated: that’s a mouth. they’re talking. so here are teachers, talking. we’re watching and listening. they’re talking amongst each other, and they can go to any one of us (principal, assistant principal, lead teacher) and ask stuff. or it could be the lead teacher says something and she’s bringing it back here [to the principal and assistant principal]. or it could be that we go back [to the teachers] and say, “hey, we found this.” everybody’s talking and listening. it could also be something we observe, like this teacher needs help learning how to do guided reading so the lead teacher goes in to observe and coach. the two principals and districts that have more of a circular flow tend to have more student focused diagrams. this would indicate that the districts and all the actors share in an intentionality that whatever curriculum is adopted needs to meet the needs of the children and the children’s learning outcomes. figure 5 visual representation illustrated by principal connor from north carolina barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 14 discussion findings indicate that complex relationships among essential actors, trajectories within the hierarchy, and the flow of control/power heavily influence what materials are adopted and used for literacy curricula. we wondered who ultimately held the authority for curriculum adoption and implementation processes. that is, when it comes to literacy curriculum, who is really driving the cart? the state for limiting the selection? the district and administration for selecting who sees the materials and who votes? or the teachers and reading specialists who make requisitions? while districts directed adoption, each participant described the literacy curriculum adoption process as being driven by mandates or standards/expectations. this indicates the pervasiveness of accountability pressures and the unspoken fear of being considered a school where students are not achieving at or above grade level, based on mandated standardized tests (hussar et al., 2020). standardized testing and big-name testing companies might then be considered the most influential actors of them all within the adoption network. findings from this study indicate that educators have the least selection power based on hierarchies and trajectories of decision-making. yet, educators continue to advocate and take power in their own day-to-day practices (hinnant-crawford, 2016) by deciding what and how they may use curriculum materials in their classrooms (lenski et al., 2016; theodorou et al., 2017; yurdakul, 2015). this is supported by a few of the principals in this study indicated that teachers have flexibility to decide which literacy curriculum materials to include in their instruction, as long as the stateor district-required programs are taught. mandated programs were considered by some principals to be a way to ensure every child got the same instruction, which would presumably lead to higher test scores (dennis, 2017). administration sometimes indicated that they believe in teacher autonomy while also touting teaching programs to fidelity. for example, jamie from north carolina described the provided phonics and guided reading programs as being taught with fidelity and conducted walkthroughs to ensure that fidelity. however, teachers were permitted to add to the literacy programs once fidelity was met. this was true in other schools, too, with the checklists of what school leaders were looking for being present during reading instruction and extra opportunities on the side during additional instructional time that was often dedicated to differentiation and intervention. administrators addressed issues of differentiation and meeting diverse learning needs through curricular use and fidelity. conclusion & implications we gleaned valuable insight into the curriculum adoption processes across five states in the united states through examining principals’ visual representations paired with interview transcripts. when paired, these data sources noted a complexity of actors, relationships, hierarchical control, and actor interaction flow or pathways. while principals shared commonalities in hierarchies and communication, the interactions and issues of control among actors differed. some principals described how their districts featured top-down curriculum adoption processes with gatekeepers and silos, and others described circular journeys and backand-forth communication. regardless of location, students remained the essential actors, i.e., the center of the process. while our study was limited to at least one principal from each of the five states, patterns of power and locus of control among specific stakeholders are evident. curriculum adoption processes are a complex series of interactions between the current research and trends in barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 15 education, literacy-based policies, national corporations, for-profit corporations, state departments of education, district and school administration, and classroom teachers. while the research presented here is not a representation of how all states navigate this process, several commonalities related to top-down administrative decision-making are evident. often, teachers across america turn to each other after new textbook adoptions and ask, “who selected these materials?” as teachers, we were often told that a panel of our peers selected the text, or the school did, when we all voted. yet when we asked our peers, almost no one claimed to have voted for adopted texts. in an era of accountability and fidelity, teachers want a say in the curricular resources that are being mandated (schwarz-franco, 2022). professionally trained educators may seek resources, but not necessarily in a way that narrows or restricts what they see as viable, high-quality options. indeed, those who hold the voting power are most often those at the state department who have created the initially refined list. from there, it is most common that administrators and district and school levels select which curricula they wish their district to select from and who they wish to be voting members for curricular adoption. in some instances, administrators felt that actors needed to be “in the 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(2017). teachers’ professional judgment in contrast with policy mandates: instructional material adoption and students’ needs. northwest journal of teacher education,12(2), article 5, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.15760/nwjte.2017.12.2.5 young, j. r., scales, r. q., grisham, d. l., dobler, e., wolsey, t. d., smetana, l., chambers, s., ganske, k., lenski, s., & yoder, k. k. (2017). student teachers’ preparation in literacy: cooking in someone else’s kitchen. teacher education quarterly, 44(4), 74-97. yurdakul, b. (2015). perceptions of elementary school teachers concerning the concept of curriculum. educational sciences: theory & practice, 15(1), 125-139. author’s notes jennifer barrett-tatum western carolina university jabarrett@email.wcu.edu roya q. scales orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3368-1880 western carolina university rqscales@wcu.edu margaret vaughn orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8832-8366 washington state university margaret.vaughn@wsu.edu elizabeth y. stevens orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-5885-7891 roberts wesleyan college stevens_elizabeth@roberts.edu sonia kline illinois state university skline@ilstu.edu ann van wig eastern washington university avanwig@ewu.edu karen k. yoder goshen college, retired kkyoder@yahoo.com debra wellman orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1747-8794 rollins college, professor emeritus dwellman@rollins.edu https://doi.org/10.15760/nwjte.2017.12.2.5 mailto:jabarrett@email.wcu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3368-1880 mailto:rqscales@wcu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8832-8366 mailto:margaret.vaughn@wsu.edu https://orcid.org/0009-0003-5885-7891 mailto:stevens_elizabeth@roberts.edu mailto:skline@ilstu.edu mailto:avanwig@ewu.edu mailto:kkyoder@yahoo.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1747-8794 mailto:dwellman@rollins.edu barrett-tatum et al.: the micropolitics of literacy curriculum adoption current issues in education, 26(2) 19 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 8, number 20 july 20, 2005 issn 1099-839x children's stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation j. thomas kellow and brett d. jones university of south florida st. petersburg stereotype threat refers to the risk associated with confirming a negative stereotype based on group membership. we examined this effect in a sample of african-american high school students. stereotype threat was manipulated by presenting a visual spatial reasoning test as (a) diagnostic of mathematical ability or (b) a culture and gender fair test of mathematical reasoning. support was found for the general effect, and while tests of the effect of the manipulation on anxiety and perceptions of ability and expectancies for success were statistically inconclusive, the data trended in the predicted direction. implications related to the high-stakes testing of african-american students are discussed. with the advent of the no child left behind (nclb) act of 2001 (u.s. department of education, no date), the focus on high-stakes standardized testing has become even more intense as states have been coerced into developing testing programs to measure and report student achievement. to avoid leaving children behind, nclb increased accountability for states, school districts, and schools and required students to be tested in grades three through eight in the basics of mathematics, reading or language arts, and science. while the intent behind nclb may be admirable, standardized testing is often problematic for minority students who, as a group, consistently score lower on standardized measures of achievement (steele, 1997). in fact, african-american and hispanic students continue to score well below white students on academic achievement tests (national center for education statistics, 2004). this finding has often been labeled the “achievement gap” because of the large gap between the higher test scores of white students and the lower test scores of minority students. although some progress has been made (coley, 2003), the achievement gap has failed to substantially close over several decades. as a result, researchers have searched for causes of the achievement gap, several of which have been identified, such as family and community differences (jencks & phillips, 1998), fewer opportunities for minority students to study a rigorous curriculum with highly qualified teachers (oakes, gamoran, & page, 1992), social expectations (lumsden, 1998; rosenthal & jacobson, 1968), and negative stereotypes concerning academic abilities (steele, 1997). to reduce the achievement gap, we suspect that some combination of these types of potential causes must be addressed. however, one of these potential causes, negative stereotypes concerning academic abilities, is of particular interest to us because so little research has been conducted about its effects on k-12 students. steele and aronson (1995) have researched this phenomenon with college students and labeled it “stereotype threat” (p. 797). stereotype threat for an african-american student is the risk that she feels of confirming a current issues in education vol. 8 no. 20 negative stereotype about her ethnic group. for instance, an african-american student might feel the risk of confirming the fact that african-american students generally score lower than whites and asians on standardized measures of achievement when she is taking a standardized mathematics test. in an era of high-stakes tests, stereotype threat is important to consider because it has been shown to have negative effects on student test scores (steele & aronson, 1995). although the effects of stereotype threat have been well documented at the college level (see steele, spencer, & aronson, 2002, for a review), few studies have specifically measured the effects of stereotype threat on k-12 students (walton & cohen, 2003). given the unprecedented use of high-stakes testing in k-12 schools to determine grade promotion and graduation, this population seems deserving of study. if k-12 students experience stereotype threat during standardized state testing, this phenomenon could partially explain the achievement gap between white and minority students. the purpose of this study was to investigate whether african-american high school freshman students experienced stereotype threat when given a test that is seen as a predictor of their success on a high-stakes test. we chose this population for several reasons. first, many high school students across the country must pass exit-level criterion-referenced tests in various content domains in order to obtain a diploma. students transitioning from middle to high school are often explicitly or implicitly reminded of this fact by parents, teachers, administrators, and their peers. second, these exit-level tests are typically given at the 10 th and sometimes the 11 th grade level. if stereotype threat is indeed a phenomenon that exists with these students, the 9 th grade would seem to be a minimum starting point for interventions designed to reduce the threat (although ideally efforts would begin well before this grade level). narrative and expository schemata indeed, a large body of research shows that narrative and exposition do invoke different schemata. traditional stories start by describing relations among settings, characters, and plots; they contain clear markers between episodes (e.g., beginnings and endings, setting and goal attainment); and conclude with a global ending (mandler, 1984). socio-linguistic models likewise find a well-defined structure in narrative discourse composed of six elements: abstract, orientation, complication, evaluation, result, and coda (labov & waletsky, 1967). the narrative structure of text has been shown to affect information reduction, organization, storage, and retrieval of textual information (mandler & johnson, 1977). in contrast, expository discourse is organized into statements that allow readers to follow text flow through logic and causality, exposition relies primarily on declarative statements, logic, and reason, and it is evaluated in terms of its accuracy and strength of argument (bruner, 1986, 1990). expository text is generally analyzed in terms of propositional structure (e.g., meyer & rice, 1984; otero & kintsch, 1992). a well-written expository text uses a macroproposition early in the paragraph to organize subsequent propositions and connect them to the larger goals of the author. still, knowing how schemata differ does not tell us how these differences affect comprehension. this is not only dissatisfying from a research perspective, it creates practical limitations as well. there are many differences to be found between exposition and narrative, and therefore likely to be many sources of differences in processing. we focus on one that, based upon prior work in psycholinguistics, we believe to be of particular importance: that narrative and expository text tend to differ in the scope of processing they receive. literature review stereotype threat the phenomenon of stereotype threat was first examined by claude steele and his colleagues at stanford university (e.g., steele & aronson, 1995). steele and aronson proposed that differences in academic performance between minority and nonminority students, as measured by standardized achievement tests such as the sat, could partially be explained by anxiety and evaluation apprehension produced by knowledge of negative stereotypes related to group membership. consistent with his hypothesis, steele found that when a task was presented to african-american college students as indicative of verbal academic ability, they performed far worse than a matched group of students who were told the identical task measured psychological processes involved in verbal problem solving. another popular manipulation of evaluation apprehension is to present a measure as a “traditional” test of achievement or intellect (evaluative) or as a “culture-free” or “non-biased” test (non-evaluative). interestingly, steele (1997) found that, irrespective of presenting the task as evaluative or non-evaluative, simply indicating one’s race prior to taking the test was sufficient to activate stereotype threat. similar findings have been produced between males and females using the same paradigm with mathematics performance as the dependent variable (e.g., spencer, steele, & quinn, 1999). moreover, the effect has been produced not only with academic achievement tests, but also with visual spatial children's stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation 3 reasoning tasks (mayer & hanges, 2003; mckay, doverspike, bowen-hilton, & martin, 2002). a number of potential mediators of stereotype threat have been proposed. of these, only anxiety and performance confidence have emerged as likely candidates (smith, 2004). anxiety a number of studies, beginning with steele and aronson (1995), have examined the role of anxiety in producing the steretype threat effect (smith, 2004). these researchers hypothesize that fear of confirming a negative stereotype related to one’s group membership (e.g., african-american) elicits an anxiety response which, in turn, produces cognitive interference that undermines test performance. the anxiety variable has been operationalized in a variety of ways, including (a) self-report inventories, (b) physiological measures such as blood pressure, and (c) word fragment tests designed to elicit negative adjectives related to the stereotyped group (mayer & hanges, 2003; smith, 2004). results from studies that examined the role of anxiety in mediating stereotype threat are mixed, with some studies demonstrating an experimental effect on anxiety and others producing no effects. in the present study, we chose to assess the role of anxiety because it potentially has a more profound effect on adolescents than adults. this assertion is based on an adolescent developmental phenomenon known as the “imaginary audience.” numerous studies (see vartanian, 2000, for a review) have documented the existence of the imaginary audience, wherein adolescents tend to believe they are constantly being evaluated by others with respect to their personal characteristics (e.g., ethnicity and intelligence) and behavior. this preoccupation with the way in which others evaluate them often enhances anxiety when the person is called upon to perform a task, even if that performance is private or not directly observable. this would seem to make performance on a test that is presumably diagnostic of one’s ability particularly anxiety provoking for this population. perceptions of ability and expectancy for success eccles and her colleagues (eccles et al., 1983; eccles, adler, & meece, 1984; eccles & wigfield, 1995; wigfield & eccles, 1992) have developed an expectancy-value model of motivation that predicts that student performance is directly affected by both expectancies and values. they have tested their model empirically with elementary through secondary school students in mathematics and english and have found that students’ selfperceptions of ability and expectancies for success relate strongly to their achievement (eccles, 1984a,b; eccles et al., 1983; meece, wigfield, & eccles, 1990) and their use of more effective cognitive and metacognitive strategies (pintrich, 1989, 1999; shell, murphy, & bruning, 1989). interestingly, the relationship between students’ achievement level and their perceptions of ability and expectancies for success is not as strong for african-american students as it is for white students (stevenson, chen, & uttal, 1990). this appears to be true, in part, because african-american students tend to have higher self-perceptions of ability and expectancies for success (cooper & dorr, 1995; graham, 1994), yet have lower grades and lower levels of performance on standardized achievement tests (graham, 1994). stereotype threat researchers have speculated that facing a challenging test in a diagnostic context may lead minorities to question their ability (steele and aronson, 1995, call this an “ability-indicting” interpretation, p. 799) and perhaps withdraw effort to perform based on low expectations for success. rationale and purpose of the study there are several important limitations in the current body of research on stereotype threat. first, of the more than 40 empirical studies conducted with minority participants, all but one have used college students and other adult samples. the sole study conducted with high school students employed a very select sample (i.e., those taking the advanced placement calculus examination). second, the majority of studies have used individual as opposed to group testing sessions. while this affords a certain amount of additional control over the experimental setting, it is hardly realistic in the context of realworld academic achievement testing. in the present study, we attempt to advance knowledge of stereotype threat by addressing these deficiencies in the literature while focusing on two possible mechanisms that may be associated with decrements in performance evinced by african-americans facing a diagnostic challenge: (a) anxiety and (b) perceptions of ability and expectancies for success. we chose to use a visual spatial representation task in the experiment because it seemed better suited than a traditional achievement test when presented as a culture fair instrument (non-evaluative) or one highly correlated with academic achievement – in this case mathematics (evaluative). directional hypotheses h1: after controlling for pre-existing differences in mathematics ability, african-american participants in the evaluative condition will score lower on the visual spatial task relative to white participants in the same condition; h2: after controlling for pre-existing differences in mathematics ability, african-american participants in the evaluative condition will report current issues in education vol. 8 no. 20 lower self-perceptions of ability and expectancies for success than white participants in the same condition; h3: african-american participants in the evaluative condition will report higher levels of anxiety than white participants in the same condition. method design the present study employed a quasiexperimental 2 x 2 factorial design. the factors were ethnicity (african-american or white) and experimental condition (evaluative or nonevaluative). the dependent measures were (a) performance on a visual spatial reasoning task, (b) self-perceptions of ability and expectancies for success, and (c) level of state anxiety. results from a standardized test of mathematics achievement were used as a covariate for analyses related to the first two measures. participants participants were recruited from freshman critical thinking courses at a large urban high school in florida. before initiating student recruitment, approval was obtained from the institutional review board at the university of south florida and the local school district. in addition, we received the approval and support of the principal at the targeted high school. all freshman students at this high school were required to enroll in this critical thinking course. informed consent forms for parent or guardian approval were provided to 393 students. the study was presented as an investigation of mathematical reasoning. parents were informed that the study had been approved by the school district and a university institutional review board. for their participation, students received a gift card for a free meal at a local restaurant. ninety (23%) of the forms were signed and returned. the ethnic composition for students returning forms was: white 61%, african-american 36%, hispanic 2%, and asian 1%. fifty-eight percent of the students were female. based on the demographics of all 9 th grade students at this school, whites and females were slightly, but not statistically significantly, overrepresented in the sample. since the focus of the study was on african-american and white students, data for the three hispanic students and one asian student that participated in the experiment were excluded from the final sample. in addition, five students (four white and one africanamerican) were absent on the day of the experiment, leaving a final sample of 81 participants. measures after exposure to the evaluative or nonevaluative condition and completing the visual spatial task, all participants completed a seven-page survey. survey items were ordered to address (a) perceptions of test bias, (b) state anxiety level, and (c) selfperceived ability and expectancies for success. test bias. a single item, “this test was biased against minority students,” was used to assess the degree to which students felt the apr visual spatial reasoning task was a biased measure. respondents indicated their belief using a sevenpoint likert scale anchored at 1 (not at all) and 7 (a lot). florida comprehensive assessment test (fcat) in mathematics. the 8 th grade criterionreferenced fcat scale scores were used as a covariate in several analyses. the content of the test is linked to the florida sunshine state standards, and has been thoroughly content validated. concurrent validity coefficients based on a comparison with the stanford achievement test (sat-9) in mathematics are in the .75 to .85 range across grades. internal consistency estimates using kr-20 range from .88 to .92. apr spatial ability test. the apr was developed by wiesen (1996) as a personnel selection test for skilled clerical applicants. it is a timed test (we allowed 5 minutes) consisting of 50 items that relate to a set of blocks that are stacked in various configurations (see figure 1 for an example item). figure 1. example apr test item respondents must indicate how many other blocks are touched by a specific block. for instance, for the example in figure 1, respondents indicate the number of blocks touching the block labeled a (the answer is two – one above and one below block a). this type of problem is consistent with the types of knowledge and skills that are expected of ninth grade students. in fact, the national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm) geometry standards specifically state: “in grades 9-12 all students should visualize three-dimensional objects from different perspectives and analyze their cross sections” (nctm, 2000, p. 308). the correlation of number children's stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation 5 correct on the apr and fcat mathematics scores was .4 in the present data. we performed a modified split-half procedure appropriate for speeded tests (anastasi, 1988) on a sub-sample of 24 students in the present study and obtained a spearman-brown adjusted score reliability of .92. the apr served as the primary dependent variable in the study. selfand task-perception questionnaire (stpq). this measure has been used with adolescents to assess a variety of constructs related to their beliefs, values, and attitudes regarding an academic domain, such as mathematics (eccles & wigfield, 1995). we used five items from this scale that pertained to ability and performance expectations. each item was scaled using a 7-point likert format. the reported score represents an average of the five items. a sample item is, “compared to other students, how well do you expect to do in math this year?” students responded on a 1 (much worse) to 7 (much better) scale. previous researchers (e.g., eccles, adler, & meece, 1984; eccles & wigfield, 1995) have empirically evaluated the psychometric properties of the scale and report strong factorial validity and reliability of scores. the correlation between the total score and fcat mathematics in the present study was .4. we conducted an internal consistency analysis (cronbach’s alpha) on the present data and found a reliability estimate of .85. state trait anxiety inventory (stai). a short-form of the stai (spielberger, gorsuch, & lushene, 1970) consisting of eight items with a fourpoint likert scale anchored at 1 (not at all) and 4 (very much) was used to assess state anxiety of students while taking the apr test. items were summed to produce a total score. a sample item is, “while taking the test i felt nervous.” the stai has a strong psychometric reputation built on numerous empirical studies (see anastasi, 1988, for a review). in the present study, the stai and apr scores were modestly negatively correlated (r = -.15). in addition, the scale yielded a respectable internal consistency estimate (α = .80). procedure the high school from which students were recruited was on a 4-block (period) schedule, so the four blocks (groups) of students were randomly assigned to be either (a) evaluative or (b) nonevaluative (there were no significant differences in prior mathematics ability between the four groups). students were tested in groups during the period they ordinarily would have their critical thinking class. at each of the four blocks, students came from three different critical thinking classrooms to the school media center, which is often used for make-up testing on the fcat (and thus, is not a novel testing environment). the groups ranged in size from 14 to 24. there were a total of 46 students in the evaluative condition (28 white and 18 african-american) and 35 students in the non-evaluative condition (23 white and 12 african-american). after arriving at the media center, participants were provided with a pencil and a booklet containing the student assent form, the apr, and the various instruments described previously. after reading and signing the assent form, students received one of two sets of instructions described below. evaluative condition instructions. “you will be taking a test that consists of challenging questions about mathematical reasoning. we are very interested in this test because students who score highly on this test tend to score highly on the 10 th grade mathematics fcat and students who do poorly on this test tend to do poorly on the 10 th grade mathematics fcat. you will have 5 minutes to complete this mathematical reasoning test. it is important that you do your very best, because we will use your scores to give you information about your strengths and weaknesses that will help you pass the 10 th grade mathematics fcat.” non-evaluative condition instructions. “you will be taking a test that consists of challenging questions about mathematical reasoning. we are very interested in this test because research has shown that boys and girls score the same on it. research has also shown that students of different ethnicities, such as white, black, or hispanic students, score the same. we call this test a gender and culture fair test because it is unbiased. you will have 5 minutes to complete this mathematical reasoning test. it is important that you do your very best, because we will use your scores to give you information about your strengths and weaknesses that will help you pass the 10 th grade mathematics fcat.” following the instructions, students were guided through an example item to ensure that they understood the proper procedure for interpreting and responding to the items. after completing the example, students were told: “when you are told to begin, go to the next page and complete as many of the problems as you can. please do not skip any of the problems. give your best answer. you only have 5 minutes, so you must work quickly.” soon after the experiment the researchers revisited the school and debriefed students as to the true purpose of the study, as well as answered any questions the students had pertaining to the experiment. in addition, they were provided with a debriefing sheet to share with their parent or guardian. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 20 results reporting and analysis for reporting purposes, the critical level for statistical significance (p) was set at .05. exact p values for all results are reported, supplemented by partial eta-squared (η 2 part) as an uncorrected effect size measure. in addition, 95% confidence intervals (ci 95%) based on non-central f distributions were calculated for the effect size estimates using an spss routine developed by smithson (2001). overall model fit was assessed using unadjusted r 2. all analyses were conducted with spss 12.1 using the general linear model procedure. for all analyses, both main effects and interaction effects were examined. in addition, since the fcat scores were statistically significantly related to both the apr (r = .41 and to the stpq (r = .38), we included this measure as a covariate (after testing for violations of assumptions related to analysis of covariance) in these analyses. text bias the first analysis consisted of assessing the extent to which participants felt the apr visual spatial reasoning task was biased toward minorities. these data are found in table 1. table 1. student perception of test bias there was a statistically significant effect for ethnicity that accounted for 11% of the variance in bias ratings. neither condition nor the ethnicity by treatment interaction were statistically significant. the group means for this item are presented in figure 2. figure 2. mean perception of test bias against minority students by ethnicity and condition african-american students were statistically significantly (p = .00) more likely to perceive the apr as biased, irrespective of experimental condition. interestingly, mayer and hanges (2003) found a similar result using the raven’s advanced progressive matrices, another visual spatial reasoning task. they attributed the lack of perceived bias in the evaluative group (as opposed to the non-evaluative condition) to the ambiguous nature of the test itself. indeed, given the range of possible values (1 to 7) on this item, the overall means between evaluative (x = 1.7) and non-evaluative (x = 2.0) conditions suggest a relatively low presence of perceived test bias. apr visual spatial reasoning task results of analysis of the primary dependent variable, the apr, are presented in table 2. the fcat scores in mathematics were used as a covariate in this analysis to control for pre-existing differences in achievement. table 2. student performance on the apr by ethnicity and condition a statistically significant main effect for ethnicity (p = .00) was found that accounted for 14% of score variance. in addition, a statistically significant interaction effect (p = .02) for ethnicity * condition was present that captured 5% of score variance. the estimated marginal (adjusted) means are presented in figure 3. figure 3. mean adjusted number correct on the apr by ethnicity and condition in the non-evaluative condition the performances of african-american (x = 17.3) and white students (x = 19.5) were similar. in the evaluative condition, however, white students (x = 21.0) outperformed children's stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation 7 african-american students (x = 12.3) by nearly nine correct responses. self and task perception questionnaire (stpq) analysis of the stpq data also employed the fcat as a covariate. these results are found in table 3. table 3. stpq scores by ethnicity and condition neither the main effects nor interaction effect for the stpq were statistically significant after statistically controlling for actual ability as measured by the fcat mathematics scale. the plotted marginal means are displayed in figure 4. figure 4. mean adjusted stpq scores by ethnicity and condition although not statistically significant the means trend in the predicted direction, with african-american students in the evaluative condition reporting slightly lower perceptions of mathematics ability and expectancies for success after controlling for actual ability. state trait anxiety inventory (stai) results for the analysis of stai scores are presented in table 4. table 4. stai scores by ethnicity and condition neither ethnicity nor condition was statistically significant. the hypothesized interaction effect was not statistically significant either, although there was a modest η 2 part value of .02. the plotted means for the interaction may be found in figure 5. figure 5. mean stai scores by ethnicity and condition despite the non-significant p value, the results are clearly in the hypothesized direction. students as a whole in the non-evaluative condition were very similar in their self-reported levels of anxiety, while african-american students (x = 14.3) in the evaluative condition were more anxious than their white counterparts (x = 11.9). discussion the present study represents the first effort of which we are aware to examine stereotype threat in an academically representative (as opposed to elite) high school african-american sample. the findings suggest that stereotype threat is indeed a phenomenon that exists with these students. africanamerican students in the evaluative condition scored significantly and substantially lower than white students on the apr. to put this effect into perspective, we calculated cohen’s d (cohen, 1988) for the group mean differences using the pooled standard deviations. the effect size was 1.3, which is well above the 1.0 value cohen suggested as a “large” effect. this effect size is illustrated in figure 6, which shows the superimposed distributions of the apr results for the respective groups. figure 6. distributional differences on apr number correct by ethnicity (evaluative condition) current issues in education vol. 8 no. 20 although there were no statistically significant differences between white and africanamerican students on the stpq, the means trend in the directions we predicted. as mentioned previously, research generally indicates that africanamericans have higher self-perceptions of ability and expectancies for success (cooper & dorr, 1995; graham, 1994). in the non-evaluative condition, african-americans had higher perceptions of their competence. however, in the evaluative condition, their perceptions were slightly lower and very close to the mean values reported by whites. if this trend were to hold true with a larger sample of students, it would indicate that the evaluative condition lowered african-american students’ perceptions of their competence. interestingly, it would also suggest that the evaluative condition slightly raised white students’ perceptions of their competence. walton and cohen (2003) have labeled this phenomenon “stereotype lift” in non-minority students, whereby knowledge of the negative stereotype associated with minority students improves the performance, sense of competency, and social worth of the non-stereotyped group. their meta-analysis of 43 stereotype threat studies provides some evidence for this effect. although the effect was not statistically significant and η 2 part was small, we did find that the interaction effect for the anxiety variable was in the expected direction. this provides at least some support for the potential role of anxiety as a concomitant of the stereotype threat effect. it also is interesting that white students in the evaluative condition tended to be less anxious, which again raises the possibility of a stereotype lift effect. limitations and directions for future inquiry in the present study we chose to use a visual spatial reasoning task rather than a traditional test of mathematics achievement. while we had legitimate reasons for selecting this option, one may wonder how the results might have differed if, instead, a traditional achievement test had been administered. several recent studies ( mayer & hanges, 2003; mckay, doverspike, bowen-hilton, & martin, 2002) have indicated that the stereotype threat effect is less pronounced when a visual spatial task, as opposed to a traditional achievement test, is used to assess performance. thus, it is conceivable that a replication using a traditional test might yield even stronger effects than those reported in the present study. because of the relatively small (n = 81) size of the sample employed in the study we were limited in several ways. first, with only 30 africanamerican students, the cell sizes for this group in each condition were less than ideal. a larger sample would have improved the statistical power of the study (all other things being equal) and likely allowed us to obtain statistically significant results for the last two tests. second, we were unable to conduct formal tests of mediation using, for instance, a structural equation modeling approach with any real confidence. third, steele (1997) has suggested that the stereotype threat effect is most pronounced in individuals who are “identified” with the academic domain being tested. one way this variable has been operationalized is to study individuals who previously have demonstrated strong academic prowess in the domain as evidenced by high test scores (thus explaining his early focus on stanford university students). in the present study we used previous mathematics achievement as a covariate in several analyses, which statistically adjusts the dependent variable scores to what they would have been if all participants were “equal” on the covariate. unfortunately, they are not equated on any number of other moderating or mediating variables that are associated with academic achievement, so the approach is not entirely satisfactory. in summary, while the present data suggest a rather strong stereotype threat effect in this population, the quest for definitive answers regarding the underlying causal mechanisms that produce the effect continues. several researchers (e.g., mayer & hanges, 2003; smith, 2004) have suggested that no one variable, such as anxiety, may explain the stereotype threat effect satisfactorily. rather, the effect may be caused by a complex interaction between multiple mediating variables. smith has suggested that other variables, such as achievement goals, play a part in the causal process. future studies of this population might gain noteworthy insights into the causes of stereotype threat by employing larger samples and modeling multiple mediators and moderators simultaneously within a structural modeling framework. as mayer and hanges (2003) note, “it is possible that stereotype threat influences test scores through several mediators with only a slight affect on any one mediator. it is also possible that these variables influence one another making simple mediation models inappropriate” (p. 211). finally, we are unaware of any systematic efforts to examine stereotype threat in hispanic students, a rising demographic in the united states. it is reasonable to assume that these processes may be operating in other groups who are stereotyped based on low group performance. indeed, during the debriefing process, two of the three hispanic students whose data were excluded from the analysis pointedly asked the researchers, “what about hispanic and multi-ethnic kids”? conclusion and implications the results of this study raise serious concerns about the use of high-stakes tests as a children's stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation 9 measure of african-american high school students’ knowledge and skills. these findings indicate that the achievement gap may be explained, in part, by the stereotype threat felt by african-american students during high-stakes tests. consequently, compared to white students, african-american students may be at a disadvantage because they are unable to demonstrate their true abilities on tests in which african-americans have been shown to consistently score lower than white students. if stereotype threat and its associated mechanisms are indeed even partially responsible for decrements in the performance of african-american students, researchers and educators are morally and professionally obliged to uncover the specific mediators of this effect. once these variables have been identified, it may be possible to develop effective interventions for minority students that would reduce the negative impact of stereotype threat. the implications of failing to address this charge, from a social justice perspective, are (at least) twofold and are embodied in the nclb legislation. first, african-american children are disproportionately left behind by virtue of failing high-stakes tests and consequently being retained in grade. second, schools with large african-american enrollments face sanctions based on the performance of these students. if tests are to be used in this fashion, we must at least have some assurance that the performance of african-american and other minority students is not being distorted by influences that are irrelevant to the task at hand. references anastasi, a. 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(2005, july 20). stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation. current issues in education [on-line], 8(15). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number20/ author notes j. thomas kellow college of education university of south florida st. petersburg 140 seventh ave south, coq 201, st. petersburg, florida 33701 kellow@stpt.usf.edu j. thomas kellow is an assistant professor of measurement and research at the university of south florida st. petersburg. his research interests include high-stakes testing, applied statistics, and program evaluation methodology. he received his ph.d. in educational psychology from texas a&m university-college station. brett d. jones. college of education university of south florida st. petersburg bjones@stpt.usf.edu brett d. jones is an assistant professor of educational psychology. his professional interests include applying cognitive and motivational theories to instruction and examining the effects of high-stakes testing on students, teachers, and administrators. he has published several articles related to test-based accountability, as well as a book entitled the unintended consequences of high-stakes testing. note: this work was supported in full or in part by a grant from the university of south florida st. petersburg new investigator research grants fund. this support does not necessarily imply endorsement of the research conclusions by the university. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber august 8, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number15/index.html mailto:kellow@stpt.usf.edu mailto:bjones@stpt.usf.edu current issues in education vol. 8 no. 20 2015 article citation kellow t. j., & jones, b. d. (2005). stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation. current issues in education, 8(20). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1663 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1663 cie template current issues in education, 23(1) 1 volume 23, issue 1 may 9, 2022 issn 1099-839x exploring long-term impacts of self-regulated learning interventions in k-12 contexts: a systematic review erin cousins, linda bol, tian luo old dominion university abstract: while research illustrates the benefits of interventions designed to improve selfregulated learning (srl) and academic achievement, far fewer studies have examined the durability of these effects. this review synthesizes research on the lasting effects of 17 comprehensive srl interventions on variables related to metacognition, cognition, motivation, and achievement in k-12 populations. results reveal common patterns of design, domainspecificity, intervention complexity, and style of measurement instrument. intervention effects tend to be durable regarding achievement and srl but were mixed when presented across multiple measures of srl. overall findings imply that srl interventions can lead to enduring effects on achievement and better achievement outcomes than content-strategy instruction alone and can be implemented successfully in a variety of contexts and subjects. keywords: self-regulated learning, durability, k-12, systematic review citation: cousins, e., bol, l., & luo, t. (2022). exploring long-term impacts of self-regulated learning interventions in k-12 contexts: a systematic review. current issues in education, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.2013 accepted: march 14, 2022 introduction self-regulated learning (srl) refers to the cyclical process wherein learners manage their own behaviors, emotions, and cognition before, during, and after a learning task (panadero, 2017; sitzmann & ely, 2011). srl is beneficial and related to students’ academic performance in many contexts (dorrenbacher & perels, 2016; panadero, 2017). beyond formal academic environments, srl is also valuable in ongoing personal and professional learning throughout one's life (dignath et al., 2008; sitzmann & ely, 2011). unfortunately, while srl is clearly beneficial for learners, many individuals are not engaging in adequate self-regulation of learning and are unlikely to improve on their own; however, researchers have found that interventions can be helpful in improving learners’ self-regulation (dorrenbacher & perels, 2016; panadero, 2017; richardson et al., 2012). srl is a rich area of research, and over time many interventions have been studied in an attempt to support srl in a variety of contexts and populations. many https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.2013 cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 2 researchers have reported positive effects on students’ academic achievement and srl (dignath & buttner, 2008; donker et al., 2014; sitzmann & ely, 2011). given the relevance of srl for learning throughout one's educational career and beyond, it is valuable to explore the lasting effects of such intervention over time. however, only a small portion of srl intervention studies have included follow-up or maintenance data after the implementation period. synthesizing these empirical studies affords important implications regarding the lasting effects of srl interventions, practical applications for designers and instructors, and gaps in research. theoretical and conceptual framework several models and variations of srl have emerged over time, but one of the most enduring and widely used models is zimmerman’s (2002) social cognitive model of srl (panadero, 2017). in fact, many of the studies included in this systematic review cite this model as the basis for their own theoretical frameworks. this model conceptualizes srl as encompassing the metacognitive and cognitive processes that take place as a learner directs themselves through a learning task and cyclical feedback loop (zimmerman, 2002). zimmerman’s (2002) model includes three phases: forethought, performance, and self-reflection. the first phase, forethought, occurs before learning and involves setting goals, planning what strategies to employ, assessing one’s self-efficacy related to the task, and forming expectations about outcomes. it also includes the orientation of their learning goal (e.g., performance or mastery) as well as its intrinsic value (zimmerman, 2002). the second phase takes place during learning and involves processes of self-control and self-observation. in this performance phase, learners employ cognitive strategies, self-instruction, attention focusing, and self-recording. the final stage of self-reflection includes self-evaluation, making causal attributions for performance, and reacting to the learning experience with emotions and adaptations. other models of srl have commonalities with zimmerman’s model and often include phases that capture learners’ processes of preparing for, completing, and reflecting on a learning event. they further emphasize many of the same subprocesses and components, such as motivation, goal-setting, metacognition, strategy use, reactions, and adaptations (panadero, 2017; sitzmann & ely, 2011). srl is associated with academic achievement, and this relationship has been supported by research in many subject areas and with a wide range of grade levels. srl interventions have led to academic improvements in content areas such as reading, writing, science, and math at levels ranging from elementary through college populations (dignath et al., 2008; richardson et al., 2012). some research has shown the particular importance of srl at times when students are transitioning to a novel environment with greater expectations for autonomy as a learner, such as moving between levels of schooling (dorrenbacher & perels, 2016). further, srl is helpful for professional and personal learning beyond academic contexts and throughout an individual’s life (sitzmann & ely, 2011). unfortunately, many students lack adequate self-regulation skills, which is detrimental to their learning and performance (dignath et al., 2008; zimmerman, 2002). meta-analyses and reviews offer insight regarding the construction of effective srl interventions (e.g., dignath & buttner, 2008; donker et al., 2014). while students are unlikely to make spontaneous improvements to their self-regulation of learning, research reveals that students can see improvements in srl as a result of training and intervention (sitzmann & ely, 2011). such interventions have been successful even with elementary students for enhancing srl and academic achievement (sitzmann & ely, 2011). cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 3 although research on srl interventions is encouraging and offers useful, practical implications for designing instruction, most of these studies only evaluate short-term effects assessed at an immediate posttest. relatively few studies have included delayed follow-up measures. given srl’s importance for learning at various stages, examining the durability of intervention effects is extremely valuable. when supporting srl, educators should aim to bolster these skills so that students are able to continue engaging in these processes beyond the intervention period and contribute to ongoing academic success. however, there is a lack of comprehensive reviews and meta-analyses investigating these ongoing effects. one metaanalysis conducted by de boer et al. (2018) explores the durability of metacognitive strategy interventions. however, while metacognitive strategies are a component of srl, there are no systematic reviews or meta-analyses which examine the lasting effects of interventions targeting srl more holistically and addressing multiple phases and subphases. given the paucity of evidence, a review of studies which incorporate a comprehensive srl intervention and assess its long-term effects is warranted in order to identify patterns for practical applications and gaps in the research literature. research questions this paper follows the guidance of alexander (2020) in structuring a systematic review to address the following research questions: 1. what trends are present in srl intervention studies that include follow-up measures? 2. do srl interventions have durable effects on students’ achievement and selfregulated learning? method in addition to alexander’s (2020) framework, guidance from gough’s work (2007) was utilized in developing the methodology. it involved defining inclusion and exclusion criteria, identifying sources of information and search terms, screening studies, extracting data, assessing methodological rigor of included studies, synthesizing the data, and interpreting overall findings. inclusion and exclusion criteria in choosing appropriate inclusion and exclusion criteria, several factors were considered. first, the review was confined to studies within an academic context, rather than self-regulation that is behavioral, such as smoking cessation or weight-loss interventions. further, since the relationship between srl and achievement is critically relevant, the intervention should be designed based on self-regulated learning principles and intended to improve participants' srl or their academic performance. additionally, because of the strong academic benefits of srl, this review is limited to interventions which approach srl more comprehensively and address one or more components of all three phases. hacker and bol (2019) reported that more comprehensive srl interventions were associated with more accurate metacognitive judgments and improved academic outcomes. in the present document, the interventions included are termed holistic. because this review is specifically focused on long-term effects of srl interventions, included studies must involve a delayed follow-up measure eight or more weeks following the intervention implementation period. eight weeks was chosen as the lower limit to ensure that measured effects were lasting beyond just a few days or weeks after the intervention, targeting impacts that were, in fact, long term. eight weeks is also a similar timeframe for cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 4 evaluations in response to intervention (rti) programs as well as grading periods in k-12 school systems (averill et al., 2014). finally, this review is limited to k-12 populations. the importance of srl for k-12 students’ academic achievement has been well demonstrated, and srl interventions have been impactful for this population and within k-12 school settings (dignath & buttner, 2008; panadero, 2017). it is also theorized that students may rely on srl even more as they transition to more autonomous learning environments, such as college and many workplace settings (bembenutty, 2011; dorrenbacher & perels, 2016). therefore, early intervention may promote student development of effective srl skills. the focus on k-12 is further warranted due to validity threats present in higher education samples. college student samples often require incentivization and may not reflect students in k-12 education, given barriers to entry of postsecondary education (ferguson et al., 2004; peterson, 2001). this review also excluded studies published in a language other than english as well as gray literature. there were no limiters associated with the year of publication. to summarize, the inclusion and exclusion criteria were as follows: 1. the context of the study is academic. 2. the study involves an intervention based on self-regulated learning principles aimed at improving students’ srl and/or academic achievement by way of srl. 3. the srl intervention is holistic, meaning that it targets subcomponents from each srl phase of forethought, performance, and reflection, rather than focusing on a singular phase or subcomponent, or subcomponents from only two of the three phases. 4. the study includes a delayed posttest follow-up measure which takes place at least eight weeks after the intervention period. 5. the study sample consists of k-12 students. 6. the study is published in a peer-reviewed journal available in english. search strategy first, search terms were identified. the first search term was “self-regulated learning” or “self-regulation of learning.” the word “learning” was included in these specific search phrases as the review is not focused on simply self-regulation of a specific behavior. rather, this review specifically concerns self-regulation as it pertains to learning. while metacognition is at times used synonymously with srl, it was not included since it is nested within the overall framework of srl (dinsmore et al., 2008). because several concepts and processes are subsumed by srl, searching for each of these individually would not have been feasible for the scope of this review. further, interventions grounded in the srl framework of srl guided this review. additional search terms included “follow up,” “delayed follow up,” “longitudinal,” “lasting,” “long term,” “long-term,” “maintenance,” “intervention,” and “treatment.” these key terms were selected in order to retrieve studies which included a delayed posttest or follow-up measure, as well as experimental studies that included an intervention or treatment. searches were conducted using the following databases: education source, apa psycinfo, education research complete, eric, psychology and behavioral sciences collection, academic search complete, apa psycarticles, and google scholar. with the exception of google scholar, all databases were searched simultaneously utilizing a platform, ebscohost, which automatically removes duplicates. this initial search resulted in a total of 170 results. the first ten pages of google scholar results were reviewed, adding another 100 search results (n = 270). cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 5 study selection after searches were conducted, the resulting potentially relevant studies were initially screened using primarily abstracts and full texts as needed for clarification. at this point, studies were excluded if they did not include an srl intervention, did not include delayed follow-up measures, were not in english, were not a peer-reviewed journal publication (such as a dissertation), or were purely aimed at behavior change or physical skill development rather than academic learning. duplicate studies were also excluded at this time. following this initial round of screening, a total of 35 studies were identified (22 from ebscohost searches, 13 from google scholar). an additional 11 studies were identified through reference tracking, bringing the total studies to 46. these remaining studies were retrieved in full for a more detailed screening against the identified inclusion and exclusion criteria. following this detailed evaluation against the above inclusion and exclusion criteria, 18 remaining studies were retained for coding and analysis. one study conducted by fidalgo et al. (2008) is an additional delayed follow-up assessment to the earlier study published by torrance et al. (2007), which also included its own shorter-term follow-up measures. due to this occurrence, there are only 17 unique interventions within the 18 identified articles. the search process is illustrated in figure 1, and the final set of articles is listed in table 1. figure 1 search process 270 search results from 8 databases 35 studies remaining after screening against initial selection criteria 11 additional studies identified through reference tracking 46 studies screened against final inclusion criteria 18 selected studies, 17 unique interventions cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 6 table 1 reviewed studies author and year journal antoniou & souvignier, 2007 learning disabilities: a contemporary journal cleary et al., 2017 journal of school psychology dresel & haugwitz, 2008 the journal of experimental education festas et al., 2015 contemporary educational psychology fidalgo et al., 2008* contemporary educational psychology gidalevich & kramarski, 2019 instructional science hacker et al., 2015 reading and writing quarterly minnaert et al., 2017 frontiers in education sanz et al., 2003 european journal of psychology of education schunemann et al., 2013 contemporary educational psychology schunemann et al., 2017 instructional science sontag & stoeger, 2015 learning and individual differences souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006 learning and instruction sporer & schunemann, 2014 learning and instruction stoeger et al., 2014 journal of educational psychology torrance et al., 2007 learning and instruction vandevelde et al., 2017 the journal of educational research wagner & perels, 2012 international scholarly research network education *study contained an additional delayed follow-up for the intervention in torrance et al. (2007). data analysis articles were read in full and analyzed through an extensive coding scheme. in addition to authors, publication year, and journal, codes related to rq1 included research design, type of data, participants, setting, domain, nature of control group, treatment conditions, duration of intervention, length of delay before follow-up measures, srl measures, achievement measures, implementers of intervention, training provided for implementers, intervention components and materials, intervention instruction and timing, and use of existing or prescribed intervention programs. codes related to rq2 included srl results, achievement results, and additional results. additional codes were used to evaluate the methodological rigor and limitations of studies, including assignment to groups, attrition, equivalency of groups, monitoring fidelity of implementation, additional threats to external validity, additional threats to internal validity, and additional limitations identified by authors. results the majority of the studies were from well-regarded journals with strong metrics. for example, three articles were from contemporary educational psychology, and an additional three articles were found in learning and instruction, which each have an acceptance rate of 13% according to cabell’s international and have 2020 impact factors of 4.277 and 5.146, respectively. however, because the review aims to be comprehensive, no journals were excluded. the studies were rigorous and most utilized a quasi-experimental design with random assignment of intact classrooms and incorporated control or comparison groups without cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 7 intervention. exceptions from these standards are discussed in more detail in the following subsections. results are further presented in response to each research question. research question 1: what trends are present in srl intervention studies that include follow-up measures? some salient trends were present amongst the reviewed studies. these will be addressed in the following subsections. research designs and treatment conditions as noted, the reviewed studies were almost exclusively quasi-experimental in design. one notable exception is cleary et al. (2017), a true experimental study. another exception is fidalgo et al. (2008), which is an additional delayed follow-up using some individuals from a previous treatment group from another reviewed study (torrance et al., 2007) but a newly sampled comparison group. additionally, all included studies utilized quantitative data for analysis, including quantified scores and frequency counts from open-ended data and thinkalouds in some cases. only one study lacked a comparison group (gidalevich & kramarski, 2019). comparison conditions are listed in table 2. the reviewed studies most frequently included one treatment group receiving an srl intervention and compared them to a control group with unaltered classroom instruction or, in other words, a “business as usual” (bau) control group (n = 8) (dynarski, 2016). however, several studies did include two treatment groups (n = 7). of these, four studies included a treatment group receiving only content strategy instruction in addition to a treatment group receiving the same content strategy instruction combined with srl training (schunemann et al., 2013; schunemann et al., 2017; stoeger et al., 2014; wagner & perels 2012). each of these also included a no-treatment comparison group. other studies included a treatment group that received strategy training that addressed only a component related to srl, in addition to a treatment group receiving that same strategy training within a holistic srl intervention (dresel & haugwitz, 2008; minnaert et al., 2017). the remaining study with two treatment groups did not incorporate a control condition and instead compared an intervention group with fixed scaffolds to one with scaffolds that were gradually removed (gidalevich & kramarski, 2019). studies with three treatment groups each included one treatment group receiving a holistic srl intervention including content strategies, which was compared to a treatment group receiving only content-strategy instruction and a treatment group receiving content-strategy instruction combined with a component of srl (souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006; sporer & schunemann, 2014). treatment conditions are listed in table 2. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 8 table 2 conditions author and year treatment condition control condition antoniou & souvignier, 2007 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau cleary et al., 2017 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau dresel & haugwitz, 2008 2 treatment groups: 1 received attribution feedback, 1 received feedback and metacognitive control questions control group worked with the same math software with no feedback or metacognitive questions festas et al., 2015 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau fidalgo et al., 2008* 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau gidalevich & kramarski, 2019 2 treatment groups receiving srl interventions: 1 group had consistent prompts, 1 group had faded prompts no control group hacker et al., 2015 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau minnaert et al., 2017 2 treatment groups: 1 received self-regulated strategy instruction (srsd), 1 combined this with behavioral support bau sanz et al., 2003 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau schunemann et al., 2013 2 treatment groups: 1 group received a reading strategies intervention, 1 group received reading strategies combined with srl bau schunemann et al., 2017 2 treatment groups: 1 group received reciprocal teaching (rt) intervention, 1 group combined this with srl bau sontag & stoeger, 2015 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006 3 treatment groups: 1 group receiving a reading strategies intervention, 1 group combining that with cognitive self-regulation, and 1 group combining reading strategies with cognitive and motivational self-regulation bau sporer & schunemann, 2014 3 treatment groups: 1 group receiving reciprocal teaching (rt) combined with strategy implementation, 1 group combining reciprocal teaching with outcome regulation, and 1 group combining all components control group receiving reciprocal teaching program stoeger et al., 2014 2 treatment groups: 1 group receiving text reduction intervention, 1 group combining that with srl training bau torrance et al., 2007 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau vandevelde et al., 2017 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention via tutoring control group not receiving tutoring wagner & perels, 2012 2 treatment groups: 1 group receiving translation instruction, 1 group combining that with srl training bau cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 9 populations under study this review was restricted to k-12 populations, but within that constraint, there are still variations regarding the participants, which are detailed in table 3. participants ranged from 4th grade to 10th grade, with each grade in between represented in at least one study. the highest proportion of studies were completed with an elementary population (n = 9) and a middle or junior high school population (n = 8), with some studies including multiple grade levels and thus reflected in both counts. there were fewer studies completed with high school participants (n = 2). grade levels refer to the status of participants at the time of the intervention rather than at follow-up. sample sizes ranged from 40 to 763, with the majority of studies including over 100 participants. most of the studies focused on participants with no special demographic characteristics and described students as typical. however, five studies included more unique populations based on demographics, socioeconomic status, or academic risk factors such as learning disabilities or low grades in a subject area. table 3 study samples author and year number of participants participant grade special characteristics antoniou & souvignier, 2007 73 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th learning disabilities cleary et al., 2017 42 7th low math scores and/or lacking motivation (teacherreported) dresel & haugwitz, 2008 151 6th none festas et al., 2015 380 8th none fidalgo et al., 2008* 77 6th none gidalevich & kramarski, 2019 134 4th none hacker et al., 2015 393 7th title 1 schools, most eligible for free or reduced lunch minnaert et al., 2017 249 9th prevocational sanz et al., 2003 40 8th none schunemann et al., 2013 323 5th none schunemann et al., 2017 244 5th none sontag & stoeger, 2015 322 4th students without migration background souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006 593 5th none sporer & schunemann, 2014 535 5th none stoeger et al., 2014 763 4th none torrance et al., 2007 95 6th none vandevelde et al., 2017 401 5th, 6th majority students of low socioeconomic or immigrant background wagner & perels, 2012 109 10th none cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 10 intervention structure the studies under review all included an srl intervention, but the contexts, timeframe, and structure of these interventions vary; details for individual studies are included in table 4. the majority of interventions were situated within a specific domain, with the most frequent being reading (n = 7), followed by writing (n = 4) and math (n = 3). most interventions were also implemented during class, even when implemented by researchers rather than teachers. one notable exception is the intervention implemented by vandevele et al. (2017), which took place during tutoring sessions. interventions also ranged in frequency and length of intervention sessions as well as the duration of the overall implementation period. intervention sessions ranged from 30 minutes to two hours in length, with 45 minutes as the most commonly reported amount of time. studies reported sessions taking place from one time per week to daily. overall durations of interventions ranged from three weeks to two years. the length of time between the end of the duration and the time of the delayed follow-up measure ranged from the initial inclusion criteria of eight weeks up to 28 months. table 4 intervention structure author and year domain duration time between posttest and follow-up antoniou & souvignier, 2007 reading one academic year 3 months cleary et al., 2017 math 4 months 2 months dresel & haugwitz, 2008 math 5 months 5 months festas et al., 2015 writing 4 months 2 months fidalgo et al., 2008 writing 10 weeks 28 months gidalevich & kramarski, 2019 math 7 weeks 3 months hacker et al., 2015 writing 6 weeks 2 months minnaert et al., 2017 writing 3 months 1 year sanz et al., 2003 not-domain specific two academic years two years schunemann et al., 2013 reading 7 weeks 8 weeks schunemann et al., 2017 reading 8 weeks 8 weeks sontag & stoeger, 2015 reading and science 7 weeks 11 weeks souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006 reading 4 months 5 months sporer & schunemann, 2014 reading 8 weeks 8 weeks stoeger et al., 2014 reading and science 7 weeks 11 weeks torrance et al., 2007 writing 10 weeks 12 weeks vandevelde et al., 2017 not-domain specific 3 months 2 months wagner & perels, 2012 latin 3 weeks 8 weeks note. language used in the table is based on the authors’ language in the original studies. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 11 common intervention programs several studies utilized existing intervention designs which they implemented or adapted for their studies. three studies incorporated a writing intervention using the self-regulated strategy development (srsd) framework developed by harris and graham (1996) (festas et al., 2015; hacker et al., 2015; minnaert et al., 2017). three other studies utilized the same reciprocal teaching (rt) framework developed by palincsar and brown (1984) for the content strategy component of their interventions and appeared to share many common components within the srl elements of their interventions as well (schunemann et al., 2013; schunemann et al., 2017; sporer & schunemann, 2014). two other studies employed an intervention framework developed by stoeger and zeigler (2008) (sontag & stoeger, 2015; stoeger et al., 2014). other existing frameworks used in single studies included the self-regulation empowerment program (srep) designed by cleary & platten (2013) and improve metacognitive prompts developed by mevarech and kramarski (1997) (cleary et al., 2017; gidalevich & kramarski, 2019). other interventions were developed for studies by the authors, all of whom extensively cited srl research. intervention components srl interventions tended to involve a combination of teaching approaches, including combinations of direct instruction, teacher modeling and examples, in-class activities and tasks to facilitate guided practice, class discussion, interactive in-class games, and independent work on assignments. interventions also often included tools to remind students about processes involved in srl, such as cards, help sheets, mnemonic devices and charts, graphs, visual aids such as posters, and prompts within class content assignments and homework. these supplementary materials were sometimes just external aids to encourage students to engage in srl processes. at other times, they were tools students had to use tools such as worksheets, logbooks, journals, and diagrams that required students to set written goals, monitor progress, plan and track strategy use, reflect on feedback, evaluate performance, and describe adaptations. interventions typically followed a set schedule and introduced different components of srl on a timeline, and some interventions reduced srl scaffolding over time to encourage students to engage in the processes more autonomously. interventions differed in complexity, but most were intricate and involved many components and tools in concert. one intervention which deviated from this pattern was implemented by dresel and haugwitz (2008). this simplified intervention required students to answer questions that were designed to support metacognitive control as they worked on math exercises. students were also provided computer-generated attributional feedback alongside their scores. some studies included clear information about the intervention’s theoretical basis, topics, and learning objectives, but offered only limited descriptions of the actual intervention implementation, which made them more difficult to compare to others (sanz et al., 2003; wagner & perels, 2012). the use of group work in interventions to support shared or co-regulation of learning was less consistent than some other characteristics across studies. six studies explicitly mentioned group, team, or partner work and/or peer feedback or discussions as a component of the intervention; three of these studies used a common intervention framework which incorporates rotating roles within small group activities (schunemann et al., 2013; schunemann et al., 2017; sporer & schunemann, 2014). an additional two studies involved interventions that took place exclusively in a small group format: vandevelde et al. (2017) implemented an intervention through small group tutoring, and cleary et al. (2017) used a small group coaching format. it is cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 12 possible that additional interventions involved small group work during some of the included activities and did not explicitly differentiate group activities from individual activities. intervention implementation interventions were most often implemented by existing teachers within their classrooms, but in multiple other studies, researchers or research assistants implemented the intervention. exceptions included one intervention which was implemented by a handful of trained school employees, such as counselors, and one intervention that was facilitated by trained graduate student tutors with some supervision from classroom teachers (cleary et al., 2017; vandevelde et al., 2017). all studies utilizing teachers or school employees for implementation included training, with the exception of dresel and haugwitz (2008), which was heavily computer-based. most trainings were reported to be several hours long and often over multiple days. they typically included materials for use during implementation, such as manuals containing sequences, structure, and guidelines for the intervention. many authors also described ongoing meetings with teachers and school employee facilitators for support and training ranging from one additional meeting to weekly meetings throughout the implementation period. some researchers also utilized checklists which served to aid facilitators in correctly implementing the intervention as well as offer evidence of fidelity for researchers. other means of monitoring fidelity of implementation included periodic observations, facilitator notes and reports of sessions, and analysis of student materials for task completion. measures most studies included measures of both srl and academic achievement; measures for all studies are listed in table 5. in multiple studies, srl was measured exclusively via student selfreport measures, often primarily likert-style rating scales. other studies included a variety of other measurement forms for srl, often in combination with one or more self-report scales. some less complex additional measures included a calculation of calibration accuracy, a teacher self-report scale, and multiple-choice tests to assess understanding of content strategies. other measures of srl were more expansive, such as process logs, a think-aloud, and coding openended responses to reading tasks, scenario-based questions, or after an exam. the majority of studies that included measures beyond self-report scales also triangulated srl data across multiple measures, with the exception of schunemann et al. (2017) and torrance et al. (2007). while studies included similar theoretical frameworks for their research, there is variation in how srl was measured beyond the type of instrument employed. some studies included one measure or a combination of measures that addressed all major phases and multiple subprocesses of srl. measures assessed subprocesses such as motivation, self-efficacy, self-concept, metacognition, metacognitive control, understanding and application of cognitive strategies, calibration, and attributions; however, the included subprocesses assessed were inconsistent from study to study. studies which included a comprehensive measure to assess all phases of srl also revealed few commonalities, with only one questionnaire being utilized in two different studies: the questionnaire of self-regulated learning-7, developed by ziegler et al. (2010), was used by both stoeger et al. (2014) and sontag & stoeger (2015). other studies that measured srl only included measures addressing a relatively small portion of srl subprocesses. for instance, minnaert et al. (2017) assessed only goal orientation. other studies included a measure of domain-specific strategy knowledge or application along with a measure of self-efficacy or cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 13 motivation (antoniou & souvignier, 2007; schunemann et al., 2013; sporer & schunemann, 2014). achievement measures in the reviewed studies typically consisted of one or two content tests and included both multiple-choice and open-ended measures. most reading and math measures were standardized, but some reading measures involved longer responses and were analyzed for correctly identified main ideas. writing tasks were scored for a variety of elements, including structure, coherence, quality, word counts, paragraphs included, and structural elements included. researchers utilizing open-ended measures of achievement reported at least a portion of responses being scored by two or more independent raters. one writing measure was scored by an automated essay-scoring system (hacker et al., 2015). only one study incorporated course grades as a measure of achievement (sanz et al., 2003). table 5 measures author and year srl measures achievement measures antoniou & souvignier, 2007 reading-strategy knowledge task (students had to “grade” strategy use of others); reading self-efficacy general intelligence; vocabulary knowledge; decoding speed; reading comprehension (multiple choice and open-ended) cleary et al., 2017 srl scale; hypothetical test preparation scenario; microanalytic attributions; microanalytic adaptive inferences; self-efficacy for selfregulated learning mathematics standardized exams dresel & haugwitz, 2008 internality of success attributions; stability of failure attributions; ability self-concept; helplessness scale; metacognitive control strategies math achievement (researcherdeveloped based on the official mathematics curricula) festas et al., 2015 none writing, opinion essay task (scored for number of words and for number of structural elements) fidalgo et al., 2008 writing metaknowledge/motivation open-ended questionnaire (coded for substantive processing, low-level processing, ability, and motivation); writing self-efficacy; writing processes log writing quality (scored for structure, coherence, and general quality); number of paragraphs and words and introductory and concluding paragraphs gidalevich & kramarski, 2019 metacognitive awareness; calibration judgments; motivation (achievement goals) standardized math achievement test cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 14 author and year srl measures achievement measures hacker et al., 2015 none persuasive essay task (scored using an automated essay scoring system) minnaert et al., 2017 goal orientation questionnaire none sanz et al., 2003 learning strategies (to measure frequency of use of metacognitive strategies) general intelligence; average grades in mathematics, language, and natural sciences schunemann et al., 2013 self-efficacy for reading; strategyrelated task performance activity (coded for strategy use) reading comprehension; reading fluency schunemann et al., 2017 strategy-related task performance activity (coded for strategy use) reading comprehension sontag & stoeger, 2015 preference for srl main ideas (number of correct main ideas identified in training materials) souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006 reading strategies test; open-ended application of reading strategies task (scored for correct strategy application); self-efficacy; motivational learning goal orientation reading comprehension sporer & schünemann, 2014 reading strategy application task (coded for quality); reading motivation reading comprehension; reading fluency stoeger et al., 2014 preference for srl reading comprehension; main ideas (number of correct main ideas identified in training materials) torrance et al., 2007 writing processes log writing quality (scored for structure, coherence, and general quality); number of words and number of paragraphs by type. vandevelde et al., 2017 teacher rating scale; srl scale think-aloud protocols none wagner & perels, 2012 srl scale latin translation test research question 2: do srl interventions have lasting effects on students’ achievement and self-regulated learning results of the reviewed studies are included in table 6. of the studies that included a delayed measure of achievement, results for the majority (n = 12) indicated lasting effects on students’ achievement after a delay. only two interventions deviated from this pattern; results for each indicated significant effects on achievement at an initial posttest, but these did not remain after a delay (dresel & haugwitz, 2008; stoeger et al., 2014). while some of the successful cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 15 interventions resulted in similar effects at an initial posttest, in other studies (n = 5), significant differences did not emerge between the holistic srl intervention treatment group and a control group until a delayed posttest (antoniou & souvignier, 2007; hacker et al., 2015; schunemann et al., 2017; souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006; sporer & schunemann, 2014). gidalevich & kramarski (2019) did not include a control group in their study and similarly did not report statistically significant within-group changes at an initial posttest, but did after a delay. results of a few studies indicated lasting effects on student achievement with a holistic srl intervention and included an additional treatment group targeting only content strategies; in each of these studies, the holistic intervention treatment group significantly outperformed or improved achievement more than the group receiving only strategy instruction (schunemann et al., 2013; schunemann et al., 2017; wagner & perels, 2012). in other studies showing durable achievement results, additional treatment groups varied regarding the phases of srl that were supported in the intervention; however, results did not follow a clear pattern wherein the most comprehensive intervention led to the strongest achievement results (souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006; sporer & schunemann, 2014). in souvignier and mokhlesgerami’s (2006) study, while the holistic srl treatment group did outperform a control group at a delay, it had no statistically significant differences from the group receiving only strategy instruction or the groups receiving strategy instruction combined with less comprehensive srl interventions. in sporer and schunemann’s (2004) study, students in the holistic srl treatment group outperformed students receiving only reading strategy instruction but did not have higher achievement scores than treatment groups which supported only one or two phases of srl. overall, of the holistic srl interventions resulting in long-term effects on achievement, most featured inclusion of domain-specific strategy instruction. of the studies that included a delayed measure of srl, the majority (n = 14) indicated lasting effects on one or more components of students’ srl after a delay. only one study measured srl after a delay and provided no significant effects (vandevelde et al., 2017). studies differed greatly in the extent to which srl was assessed, including how many measures were utilized and how many srl processes were measured. some studies included only a singular, close-ended self-report instrument designed to assess all phases of srl; data from each of these studies suggested lasting effects on students’ srl (sanz et al., 2003; sontag & stoeger, 2015; stoeger et al., 2014; wagner & perels, 2012). other researchers utilized a combination of measures to address all phases of srl; each of these studies resulted in mixed findings at a delay, rather than exclusively positive findings for all components of srl (cleary et al., 2017; fidalgo et al., 2008; gidalevich & kramarski, 2019; torrance et al., 2007). other researchers explored only limited components of srl rather than including measures for each phase. some of these studies similarly had mixed results for different components of srl after a delay (minnaert et al., 2017; souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006; sporer & schunemann, 2014). however, other studies addressing limited components of srl found exclusively positive results for all the components examined (antoniou & souvignier, 2007; dresel & haugwitz, 2008; schunemann et al., 2013; schunemann et al., 2017). three studies included treatment groups targeting only parts of srl in addition to a holistic srl intervention (dresel & haugwitz, 2008; souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006; sporer & schunemann, 2014). none of these studies showed the holistic srl intervention having significantly stronger results regarding srl at a delayed follow-up on all measures of srl, but they did show stronger results on some measures. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 16 table 6 study results author and year results posttest follow up antoniou & souvignier, 2007 no significant differences on reading comprehension; treatment group significantly increased reading strategy knowledge compared to control; no significant differences on reading self-efficacy. treatment group had significantly higher reading comprehension; treatment group had significantly increased reading-strategy knowledge and reading selfefficacy compared to the control. cleary et al., 2017 no significant differences in math achievement; treatment group had significantly higher scores for microanalytic attributions and adaptive inferences and test preparation; no significant differences on selfefficacy or maladaptive regulatory behaviors. no significant differences in math achievement; treatment group maintained significantly higher scores for microanalytic attributions and adaptive inferences; no significant differences on self-efficacy, maladaptive regulatory behaviors, or test preparation. dresel & haugwitz, 2008 both treatment groups had significantly greater increase in math knowledge and motivation than control; combined treatment group had significantly higher metacognitive control than the attributional feedback and control conditions; no significant differences on math knowledge; combined treatment group had significantly higher metacognitive control than the attributional feedback and control conditions; both treatment groups had significantly higher motivation than control. festas et al., 2015 treatment group had significantly greater improvements in writing. treatment group had significantly greater improvements in writing. fidalgo et al., 2008 posttest results from torrance et al. (2007): treatment group had significantly greater increase in time on task and time spent planning than control; no significant differences for revising. within-group results: treatment group significantly increased text quality treatment group had significantly higher quality writing; treatment group had significantly higher time spent planning and metaknowledge of text structure; no significant differences on revisions or selfefficacy. gidalevich & kramarski, 2019 no significant differences on math; no significant differences on srl measures. faded treatment group had significantly higher math scores than fixed treatment group (no control group). faded treatment group had significantly higher scores than fixed treatment group on some srl measures: knowledge of cognition, mastery goal and performance-approach goal orientation; fixed treatment group had significantly more accurate confidence judgments than faded treatment group. hacker et al., 2015 no significant differences on writing scores. treatment group had significantly higher writing scores. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 17 author and year results minnaert et al., 2017 mainly modest declines in motivation across groups. significantly less decline in motivation for combined treatment group on task orientation, ego-enhancing orientation, and ego-defeating orientation than control; for the strategy instruction only, ego orientations showed significantly less decline than control. sanz et al., 2003 treatment group had significantly higher scores for general intelligence and academic achievement; treatment group had significantly higher frequency of use of metacognitive strategies. treatment group had significantly higher scores for general intelligence and academic achievement; treatment group had significantly higher frequency of use of metacognitive strategies. schunemann et al., 2013 both treatment groups had significantly higher reading comprehension than control, but treatment groups did not differ; both treatment groups had significantly higher strategy-related task performance and reading selfefficacy than control, but treatment groups did not differ. both treatment groups had significantly higher reading comprehension than control, and the combined treatment group had significantly higher reading comprehension than the rt treatment group; both treatment groups had significantly higher strategy-related task performance and reading self-efficacy than control, and the combined treatment group had significantly higher strategy-related task performance than the rt treatment group. schunemann et al., 2017 no significant differences on reading comprehension. combined srl treatment group had significantly higher quality feedback and significantly more improved strategy-related task performance than the rt-only treatment group. sontag & stoeger, 2015 within-group results: treatment group including high achieving subgroup, average achieving subgroup, and average intelligence subgroup, had significantly increased self-reported srl; treatment group including all subgroups had significantly increased scores for correctly identified main ideas. within-group results: treatment group, including all subgroups, had significantly increased self-reported srl. souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006 comprehensive combined treatment group had significantly greater effects for reading comprehension compared to control; partially combined treatment group had significantly higher understanding of reading strategies and significantly reduced learning goal orientation compared to control; no significant differences between treatment and control groups for selfefficacy. comprehensive combined treatment group had significantly higher reading comprehension compared to control; comprehensive combined treatment group had significantly higher understanding of reading strategies and application of reading strategies compared to control; no significant differences between treatment and control groups for self-efficacy. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 18 author and year results sporer & schunemann, 2014 no significant differences for reading strategies or motivation. all treatment groups had significantly higher reading comprehension than control; combined srl treatment group and strategy implementation treatment group had significantly higher reading strategy scores compared to the outcome regulation treatment and control groups; outcome regulation treatment group had significantly higher motivation than the combined srl treatment. stoeger et al., 2014 when migration data was included as a predictor, the combined treatment group had significantly higher reading comprehension scores than the text reduction treatment and control groups; the combined group had a significantly higher preference for srl and identified significantly more main ideas than other groups. no significant differences for reading comprehension; the combined group showed a significantly higher preference for srl than other groups. torrance et al., 2007 treatment group had significantly greater increase in time on task and time spent planning than control; no significant differences for revising. within-group results: treatment group significantly increased text quality. treatment group had significantly greater increase in time on task and time spent planning than control; no significant differences for revising within-group results: treatment group sustained increased text quality. vandevelde et al., 2017 treatment group had a significantly greater increase in teacher-rated srl and significantly lower decrease in external regulation and memorizing compared to control. treatment group had a significantly greater decrease in teacher-rated srl; no significant differences on self-reported or think-aloud measures of srl. wagner & perels, 2012 both treatment groups had a significantly greater increase in translation competency and translation strategy application than control group; both treatment groups had significantly higher srl scores than control group. within-group results: the combined treatment group maintained translation competency and translation strategy application; the translation-only treatment group significantly decreased in translation competency and strategy application. note. results included in the table are between-group results unless otherwise noted. discussion this review evaluated studies that include holistic srl interventions targeting all phases of srl and were intended to improve students’ srl or academic achievement. because this review focused on the durability of effects of srl interventions, only studies with a delayed follow-up measure that took place at least eight weeks following the intervention period were included. the studies are further restricted to k-12 populations. these studies included a wide range of participants from elementary to high school grade levels, including both typical student populations and populations with more specific characteristics typically related to academic risk. studies generally included large sample sizes, and researchers executed rigorous, quasicousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 19 experimental designs. the holistic srl interventions tended to be complex, multi-faceted, and lengthy interventions typically implemented in classroom settings and within core academic domains. given the quality of the identified studies, conclusions drawn from compiled results can be viewed as strong empirical evidence for the effectiveness of such interventions. these studies included mainly positive outcomes related to srl variables after a delay and overall indicate that srl interventions can have a lasting impact on students’ self-regulation, though results were mixed in several studies that included multiple measures of srl. there were many differences in how srl was operationalized and assessed due to the variety of subprocesses subsumed by srl, which made it difficult to draw conclusions regarding the specific contributing factors that led to these results beyond the general trends amongst the interventions previously described. other researchers have similarly noted the challenges in measuring srl and variations between studies (rovers et al., 2019). achievement results from these interventions were also largely positive after a delayed follow-up measure and were more readily synthesized. after examining the durability of intervention effects on achievement, one can conclude that holistic srl interventions do often have lasting effects on student achievement, at least within the content area in which they were implemented. furthermore, one study included a widespread intervention and showed lasting positive effects on a global measure of achievement, but this was not replicated in other studies (sanz et al., 2003). enduring achievement effects occurred across multiple domains, including reading, writing, math, and foreign language. these results were present for typical students, atrisk populations, and across grade levels. this pattern of effects on achievement across domains and populations illustrates the flexibility of these interventions to improve student success in a variety of contexts and without exacerbating existing achievement gaps. another pattern from the reviewed studies indicates that combining srl strategies with domain-specific strategy instruction leads to better long-term achievement outcomes than domain-specific strategies alone (schunemann et al., 2013; schunemann et al., 2017; sporer & schunemann, 2014; wagner & perels, 2012). this is an important implication for our classrooms, where instructors may focus on one domain at a time. although students may receive a great deal of instruction regarding domain-specific strategies, they may consequently be provided with less emphasis on strategies that are transferable across domains. finally, while most researchers that assessed achievement after a delay reported positive effects of holistic srl interventions on achievement, several of these studies did not have the same results at an immediate posttest; rather, they did not see these effects emerge until the delayed follow-up. this finding implies that in some instances, the effect of holistic srl interventions on academic achievement may not be realized until a delay, at which time many educators and administrators may have failed to continue to evaluate lingering effects and prematurely abandoned the srl programs. overall, this review supports the assertion of other researchers that holistic srl interventions have the potential to induce lasting effects on students’ achievement. hacker and bol (2019) described a similar pattern supporting holistic interventions on metacognitive judgments and achievement; however, they did not focus on the durability of findings or differences across domains. dignath and buttner (2008) did address durability and concluded from their meta-analysis that longer srl interventions were generally more effective for primary and secondary school students. similarly, another review (de boer et al., 2018) did focus on long-term effects but more broadly included interventions involving metacognitive strategy instruction. de boer et al. (2018) reported that student achievement generally improved following cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 20 the intervention and that these improvements were sustained and sometimes increased further after a delay. while the studies reviewed here generally did not address transfer from one academic domain to another, and most achievement results are domain-specific, such results consistently occurred across domains. this suggests that similar supports could be implemented in a wide variety of classes, subjects, and domains and lead to improved student success. while domainspecific learning strategies are already being utilized within k-12 education, these results lend support for the implication that combining srl training and domain-specific strategies can lead to better achievement outcomes in the long term. results of this review translate into practical implications for educators. designers and instructors should include comprehensive srl supports in various domain areas. there is a need for more srl support in our k-12 schools. if these interventions seem to work and lead to lasting effects, they should be incorporated frequently. additionally, srl is an important predictor of academic achievement in college environments as well (dorrenbacher & perels, 2016). fostering srl in earlier grades can have long-term benefits and help prepare students for continued academic success as they advance to postsecondary education. limitations of studies reviewed the reviewed studies are not without limitations, many of which were identified by the authors themselves. regarding methodology, the researchers typically utilized quasiexperimental designs. although intact classrooms were generally randomly assigned to conditions, there was not true random assignment of participants to treatment and control groups. selection bias cannot be ruled out completely as a potential confound. also, in most studies, the control group was a “business as usual” condition, which limits clarity of conclusions given that it is not a true control condition (dynarski, 2016). this is particularly salient when few details are provided regarding the bau condition or when comparison groups are selected from classes taught by different teachers or from different schools, as occurred in many of the reviewed studies. there are also limitations regarding the fidelity of implementation of interventions. while most studies described steps taken to monitor and assess fidelity, these ranged in rigor, such as whether they included frequent observations or relied on few or no observations and instead focused on teacher self-reports. in other studies, the intervention was implemented by researchers or trained assistants; while this may improve the fidelity of implementation, it reduces the ecological validity of the studies (schunemann et al., 2013). another limitation is the frequent reliance on self-report measures to assess srl. while there were some other creative approaches utilized, such as process logs, think-alouds, and analysis of writing tasks and other artifacts, these kinds of additional measures were less frequent, leading to a lack of triangulation of srl data as well as the potential for self-report biases (rovers et al., 2019). also, as previously discussed, there was variation among studies in the components of srl targeted and the instruments utilized. gaps remaining in the literature become clear when examining the trends amongst the studies. there is a lack of exploration of the transfer of srl skills across academic domains, with most interventions implemented and evaluated in only one domain. most studies also took place with typical student populations resulting in less information regarding at-risk, neurodiverse, or ell students. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 21 limitations of present review there are also limitations of this systematic review. the review includes a relatively small number of articles, and only articles available in english were selected. the review also excludes gray literature, further limiting the scope. an additional challenge of the present review concerns the complex nature of srl. srl is broad and encompasses many phases and subprocesses (zimmerman, 2002). it is difficult to measure srl comprehensively, and there are a multitude of ways to approach assessment (rovers et al., 2019). there are also myriad options for interventions designed to target different combinations of subprocesses, and srl is applicable in all different content areas. because of these complexities, it can be difficult to make clear comparisons between studies which lack commonalities in measurement and intervention design. suggestions for further research authors of the reviewed studies had several suggestions for future research. they described extending research to other populations of grade levels and demographics, utilizing larger sample sizes, and including more treatment groups. researchers also recommended including additional measures to address more components of srl and to move beyond selfreport measures. authors discussed the need for additional interventions of varying structures of time blocks and implemented by teachers rather than researchers. the need for more observation of treatment groups was also noted, including video recordings and observations of control groups. the present authors agree with these identified areas for ongoing research. increased monitoring of fidelity via observations would improve the rigor of future studies. further, frequent observations of control groups would improve studies as well. observations could also be a vehicle for assessing srl and could be video recorded for in-depth analysis. additional srl measures are also needed in further research, such as think-aloud protocols, microanalytic measures, document analysis, and other process measures. including more measures of srl would consequently allow for triangulation of data to reduce bias in results. future research could also explore long-term transfer effects of srl and achievement in other domain areas and with global measures. additionally, studies could include interventions that are reinforced periodically over time after the initial implementation period in comparison to those that are not to evaluate differences in durability. also, as noted, srl interventions were successful in many domain areas. future research could explore interventions which are implemented in multiple domains simultaneously. future reviews of lasting effects of srl interventions can also be more comprehensive by including additional populations beyond k-12 as well as additional forms of literature. ultimately, more studies which meet the inclusion criteria of this review are needed to form a larger data set to examine patterns and draw conclusions about specific intervention designs and components that are most effective in a variety of different contexts. although this review illustrates the potential of holistic srl interventions to improve k12 students’ academic achievement and self-regulation of learning, knowledge is still limited due to the relative paucity of studies that include longer-term follow-up outcome measures. this dearth of research could be explained by the complexities of designing and implementing holistic srl interventions, including the resources required. in sum, these studies can be burdensome to conduct and sponsor, yet well worthwhile in order to enhance the validity, generalizability, and durability of findings. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 22 references alexander, p. a. 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(2012). evaluation of an intervention program to foster self-regulated learning and academic achievement in latin instruction. international scholarly research network education, 2012, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.5402/2012/848562 ziegler, a., stoeger, h., & grassinger, r. (2010). assessing self-regulated learning with the fsl–7. journal für begabtenförderung, 10, 24 –33. http://refhub.elsevier.com/s10416080(15)00144-2/rf0240 zimmerman, b. (2002). becoming a self-regulated learner: an overview. theory into practice, 41(2), 64-70. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2 https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.2014.999363 https://doi.org/10.5402/2012/848562 http://refhub.elsevier.com/s1041-6080(15)00144-2/rf0240 http://refhub.elsevier.com/s1041-6080(15)00144-2/rf0240 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2 cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 26 author notes erin cousins old dominion university ecousins@odu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7508-147x linda bol old dominion university lbol@odu.edu tian luo old dominion university tluo@odu.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:ecousins@odu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7508-147x mailto:lbol@odu.edu mailto:tluo@odu.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ centering love as the foundation of a racially just and decolonizing student affairs current issues in education, 23(2) 1 volume 23, issue 2 october 28, 2022 issn 1099-839x centering love as the foundation of a racially just and decolonizing student affairs dian d. squire loyola university chicago rachael blansett oyster river cooperative school district raquel wright-mair rowan university abstract: in writings on humanizing pedagogy, the concept of love is often presented as the core principle grounding all action. however, love, as it is currently conceptualized, leaves much room for interpretation (hooks, 2000; levinas, 1998; matias & allen, 2013). therefore, it is critical as educators and student affairs professionals we challenge the idea of how we commonly think about love as an abstract notion (“fight hate with love”) and, rather, reimagine what love means within a movement that challenges oppressive structures within student affairs. by not recognizing or taking actions to correct higher education’s past acts of indifference (noting the gross injustices against indigenous populations and the exploited labor and enslavement of africans rooted within the history of college campuses), we are perpetuating the protection of a historical lie and continuing the legacy of settler colonialism and dehumanization within the profession. in this manuscript, we provide an overview of settler colonialism and its impact in student affairs, review how love is academically and culturally defined across fields, and present an alternative framework for building love as an actionable "skill set" that allows educators to move the field toward racial justice and humanization. keywords: love, racial justice, decolonization, dehumanization, settler colonialism, student affairs citation: squire, d., blansett, r., & wright-mair, r. (2022). centering love as the foundation of a racially just and decolonizing student affairs. current issues in education, 23(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss2.2033 accepted: october 16, 2022 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss2.2033 squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 2 love as action over the last seven years, the american college personnel association (acpa)-college student educators international has grappled to fully understand what it means to be a truly socially just field. after much conversation, feedback, and wrestling with the realities of the field in relation to the value of social justice, acpa leaders penned the document, a bold vision forward: a framework for the strategic imperative for racial justice and decolonization (quaye et al., 2019), that laid out a powerful approach to work in student affairs. the framework is focused on equity, inclusion, and transformative change, which student affairs educators can utilize to (re)imagine their work and its impact. the framework centers love as the “core” (quaye et al., 2019, p. 10), the groundwork from which all other transformative action should stem and which guides the underlying principles of humanization, radical democracy, and critical consciousness. the document moves beyond the commonly held conceptualization of love as amorous (hooks, 2000) and extends love to the community as a whole. additionally, the framework notes that “we must not only resent and be angered at injustice; we must simultaneously be in love with justice” (quaye et al., 2019, p. 11). but what does it mean to be in love with something? to articulate love in this way is to recognize that love is not simply a non-critical display of emotion, affection, or care. it is not an ethic but rather an actionable concept which can spread throughout a community in tangible ways. in relation to reconstructing a racially just and decolonizing field, we argue that love acts upon the call for justice, which requires particular outcomes and a set of skills, knowledge, and behaviors; we must become competent at love, especially in a field that so heavily centers transformation and development of self and others (patton et al., 2016). here we attempt to help expand upon the framework’s call for building love as an actionable philosophy in student affairs and for student affairs educators. for the purpose of this paper, we will be using “educator” as an all-encompassing term to embody practitioners, scholars, graduate students in student affairs preparation programs, and other professionals who are actively engaged and involved in student affairs work. noting that educators should be striving to cultivate love as the foundational groundwork for humanization and decolonization in student affairs (quaye et al., 2019), we first explore our understanding of settler colonialism and how it impacts higher education broadly. next, we review how the notion of love extends throughout seminal texts on humanization partially by understanding dehumanization. although love shows up in many texts, its articulation of purpose and utility varies widely from simple notation (tuck & yang, 2012) to described behavior (hooks, 2000). extending the arguments of “love scholars,” we then create a bricolage of skills necessary from those who work from a framework of love that moves from idea to reality. if educators want to use love as a concept to forward justice in the field of student affairs, then we must build our capacity to love. following an examination of how love is currently defined in multiple disciplines and society versus how the term could be (re)envisioned, we articulate moments in which student affairs may have acted from a place of indifference, a term we are borrowing from author elie weisel (1986). in doing so, we do not indict anybody involved with purposeful indifference, but rather come from an analytical place of impact. bell hooks (2000) argues that we only know love when love is absent; therefore, this exercise may allow educators to imagine possible ways forward when acting from a place of love (quaye et al., 2019). finally, we make the argument that love as a skill can be used to fast track the trajectory of racial justice and decolonization praxis within the field of student affairs, a project that is ongoing and unending (dotson, 2018). squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 3 situating settler colonialism to uphold indifference is to engage in dehumanization. and to understand dehumanization is to understand settler colonialism and its impact on student affairs. this understanding proves important as we move through this argument and juxtapose acts of indifference and their relation to settler colonialism to cultivating a skill-set of love as an action within student affairs. the dark history of colonization and settler colonialism continues to enact violence upon oppressed peoples that negates their humanity (la paperson, 2017; levinas, 1998). freire (2000)1 writes that “dehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human” (emphasis original, p. 44). afropessimist scholars argue the idea of social death (patterson, 1982) in reference to the specific and perpetual condition of [black] people not being fully accepted as human or offered opportunities for humanization in larger society. this notion is especially emphasized by frank b. wilderson iii (2020), stating, “human is not an organic entity but a construct; a construct that requires its other in order to be legible” (p. ix). therefore, within an educational setting, one who is not able to bring their full selves to the university, or have had their selves stolen, by way of oppressive forces such as ongoing settler colonialism/indigenous erasure, anti-black racism, whiteness’ technologies, sexism, ableism, etc., has been dehumanized (la paperson, 2017; stewart & nicolazzo, 2019). these dominating forces, supplemented by imperialist capitalism, lend themselves to the eradication of humanity (levinas, 1998). in our view, the conditions that facilitate dehumanization draw upon settler colonialism and its intertwining sinews of capitalism and neo-imperialism (wolfe, 2006). these core philosophies, policies, and progressions of society are to blame (harvey, 2007). student affairs must find a way to identify and engage in reparative action to battle these historic and ongoing wrongs (steinman, 2016). the sinews are not gossamer but heavy and weigh on the spirit of student affairs. one way forward is actionable love. technologies of domination as australian scholar wolfe (2006) professed, “the structural complexity of settler colonialism could sustain libraries of elaboration” (p. 392). therefore, we attempt to paint a broad picture of settler colonialism for us to imagine student affairs, where settler colonialism is not ubiquitous or opaque. in short, settler colonialism is an ever-present and changing technology of domination (la paperson, 2017). in thinking of settler colonialism in this way, the project of decolonizing higher education does not reach a completion point until colonization, along with capitalism and imperialism, are destroyed. there is much work to do, and the analysis is complicated. 1 we do want to acknowledge the benefits and problematics with citing freire here within the scope of discussing settler colonialism. author 1 has read and taught this book at least a half dozen times. each time, he returns to some of the questions that we cite in this paper and which this paper hopes to answer as well as some contradictions and opaque statements freire makes regarding humanizing pedagogy. without belaboring the point, there are a few limitations. these are also supported by tuck and yang (2012) in their seminal manuscript decolonization is not a metaphor. specifically, we are interested in their critique of freire’s liberation which they define as a liberation of the mind; indigenous erasure includes stealing of land and exploiting nature. therefore, there is no rectifying a disconnect between his epistemic liberation and decolonization. this critique helps to ground this manuscript’s analysis as we attempt to provide a possible way forward. we do not mean that there is no benefit to understanding his text, but rather that there is a distinct limitation regarding teaching it ahistorically and apart from context. squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 4 settler colonialism is the process by which land and people become property (la paperson, 2017). it is the movement of native life and lifeways to production, consumption, exploitation, and destruction. current settler colonialism is a set of technologies, rather than a particular set of actions, meant to alienate, separate, and subjugate peoples through the turning of people and land to property (la paperson, 2017). for example, the recent battles taking place over the enbridge line 3 pipeline in minnesota provide a prime example of the federal government’s failure to honor an 1855 treaty by stealing and poisoning ojibwe land and decimating areas of hunting, fishing, and farming. the pipeline would also create 190m tons of greenhouse gasses per year and carry tar oil to the great lakes damaging the ecosystem and making pipeline 3 a problem for all people (the years project, 2021). this example demonstrates how settler colonialism can impact us all because, as previously noted, it is not a particular set of actions against a certain people, though the genesis of settler colonialism was the attempted destruction of indigenous peoples/societies that continues to be a key feature. clearly evident, those technologies are the intersection of whiteness, indigenous erasure, and anti-blackness. by noting these as technologies of domination, we mean to say that they are ever-changing, providing never-ending opportunities for exploitation and colonial rule. thus, settler colonization is always happening, as is decolonization (dotson, 2018). dotson (2018) noted that in order for decolonization to happen, a project of remembering and locating one’s self and historicity in relation to settler colonization must also occur. in this way, relationality is built and maintained between the colonizing and potential decolonizing self. people who engage in this liminal, yet material space, may be what la paperson (2017) called scyborgs. for instance, a thorough history of how enslaved native and black bodies were used to build both the first physical universities in the u.s. and catalyze a scientific racism that permeates university life today (wilder, 2014), is not common knowledge. the ways colonial logics, embedded within slave plantations, continue to organize epistemologies and action on college campuses today (squire et al., 2018) is unconscionable. the property rights of white people (i.e., whiteness) over enslaved black people (i.e., anti-blackness) continues in multiple forms today in institutional reliance on, for example, chief diversity officers as plantation drivers, campus cultural centers as underground railroad systems, and black student bodies as entities from which to profit. wilderson iii (2020) highlights slavery (much like settler colonialism) as an ongoing and adaptive process rather than a moment in time, noting “blackness and slaveness are inextricably bound in such a way that whereas slaveness can be separated from blackness, blackness cannot exist as other than slaveness” (p. 42). therefore, student affairs educators, particularly student affairs educators of color who hold subordinate social identities but are not indigenous, must engage in a (re)membering of their past colonial history in relation to their decolonizing present desires and actions (tengan, 2008). to be clear, when we say that land and people are turned to property, what we mean to say is that land and people are made into property that can be utilized to forward whiteness and anti-blackness, both enacting various forms of violence on indigenous peoples and communities of color. the concept of whiteness as property (cabrera et al., 2017; harris, 1993; smith, 2012) means law, treaties, and rights are the government’s vessels (technologies) of continued subjugation of “land and nonhuman life to deathlike states” (la paperson, 2017). in understanding whiteness as property, we understand that not only was land stolen from native people and black folx made into property, but that only white people could then own land, and almost all slaves were not white (harris, 1993; john, 1999; squire, williams, & tuitt, 2018), thereby creating a racial hierarchy and encoding in u.s. law what it meant to be white and the squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 5 rights associated with white people based on the “nature” of their whiteness (smith, 2012). this re-encoding of racial privilege/property rights linked to the law continues to permeate u.s. socio-cultural milieus today. one can see this currently in the challenge of affirmative action and the clashing understandings of who deserves the right to enjoy “tangibly and economically valuable benefits” (harris, 1993, p. 280), including access to higher education (poon et al., 2019). the belief that one has a right to a community good or that a public good can be privatized for one’s personal gain at the exclusion of others is the definition of white privilege (and settler colonialism) (harris, 2020). whiteness is the “embodiment of white privilege” and becomes “usable property” when it is codified in law, as anti-affirmative action proponents hope to complete (harris, 1993, p. 282). the affirmative action battles are a modern-day manifestation of what is known as the right to use and enjoyment, and the absolute right to exclude in the conceptual understanding of whiteness as property. when, and if, educators teach about affirmative action in student affairs, if it is not linked to a discussion on settler colonialism and property rights, then it is void of important historical context and has the potential to reproduce harmful systems that reinforce anti-black racism (poon et al., 2019). property is a legal construct which is inherently contradictory to indigenous knowledge systems. even in the case of arguing that native tribes have sovereignty, sovereignty is still based within a colonial legal system; it is not necessarily inherent to native lifeways in the way it is described constitutionally. with this brief example, we hope to help the reader understand how settler colonialism is linked to property and, consequently, whiteness. disconnection from land in this section, we focus on the importance of land to decolonization. we believe this requires special attention because the discussion of land can often be lost behind the liberal inclusion of land acknowledgments. there is a mental block that disconnects a person not just from the land, but what the land provides. in a system where many can access anything they need at any time (e.g., a slew of food delivery services available at our leisure), society forgets the source of that nourishment in the first place. land is a valuable resource and therefore fought over and required to survive. universities sit on stolen lands, expand on stolen lands, and profit from stolen lands (i.e., land grant universities; historically black colleges and universities) (lee & ahtone, 2020; wilder, 2014). every time a new residence hall is built, the university expands on stolen native land without consideration of past histories and current relations. every time university students engage in service trips to build homes on colonized lands for non-native peoples, student affairs engages in settler colonization. however, the use of land in unnatural ways does not have to be so visible; the extension of settler colonial land abuse can also run through intermediaries toward what vendors a division uses and how they respect the land and in what their vendors/partners invest. for example, the university of texas’s endowment hit $31b in 2018, making it the second biggest endowment in the u.s. (mcdonald, 2018). this boost in funds came because of oil rights on the traditional and ancestral lands of the comanche and mescalero apache in what is now west texas. universities are settler colonial projects and terra nullius, a term meaning “nobody’s land,” is a false doctrine that must be reckoned with by each institution (wolfe, 2006). it should also be noted that there is a persistent narrative of indigenous erasure in the form of once being. that is, through narratives of settler exceptionalism and modernity, there is a belief that the indigenous peoples who once lived on the lands that universities are situated are no longer there. squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 6 as somebody who worked at a university that is situated upon multiple traditional and ancestral lands [author 1], in a town that was once a logging community, with the mascot of a lumberjack, we can confidently say that indigenous peoples have never left these lands and continue to have a significant presence in multiple communities. therefore, even with a compulsory mission to “serve the community,” a university cannot and must not neglect indigenous peoples in their missions, goals, and educational visions. the existence of native peoples on these lands and the continual erasure of their bodies points to the unfinished processes of settler colonialism. settler colonialism is not a finite process; it is a kind of shapeshifter, an ever-bending, enduring understanding that history is the present and continues to inform how we think about and honor indigenous communities (kauanui, 2016). similarly, this disconnection from the land lends itself to define generational traumas and identity dissonance of the black diasporic experience. wilderson iii (2020) positions that the antagonism between the postcolonial subject and the settler cannot be mutually exclusive with the violence of social death in that “slavery is a relational dynamic…and that relational dynamic can continue to exist once the settler has left or ceded governmental power” (p. 41). as such, the ongoing process of slavery has yet to lament the loss of indigeneity and the trauma of black people being abducted from the lands that would define their identities which has resulted in legacies of “‘de-culturalized’ africans, denied knowledge of language, clan, family, and land base, denied even knowledge of who their nations are” (amadahy & lawrence, 2009, p. 127). with this, sexton (2014) posits that this loss of indigeneity can only be acknowledged abstractly with its recovery being lost to the historical violence of enslavement. however, this process of de-culturalization is foundational in the narrative of black-native solidarity as one of the defining characteristics of colonization is the “systematic disconnection (and dispossession) of indigenous peoples from [their] homelands” (waziyatawin, 2012, p. 72) which ultimately situates black and indigenous peoples in kindred positions within settler colonialism. current theories of love often, theorizing love in decolonizing work occurs by understanding it as an amorphous, differentially understood, and liberal notion. this is not to say that love is not a useful tool for interactions with other b/beings, but rather to say that love, as it is typically defined, is often misunderstood within student affairs and may be too narrowly characterized to be valuable in the move toward racial justice and decolonization. with this, we assert that evolving love from its current indeterminate form and definitions towards a more action-oriented ideal will operate as a tool in dismantling settler colonialism and dehumanization within the field. finding a singular definition for the concept of love may prove elusive, particularly if it is only defined through an amatory lens. often as humans, we find comfort in the ambiguous nature of love because it then places the onus on the individual to seek self-meaning rather than bearing the weight of being held accountable to a collective definition. this “self-meaning” generally allows one to mold the idea of love into an incorporeal, inherent feeling with which one is born as human that typically extends itself into either a romantic, monogamous experience between one partner, the platonic joy of friendship and kinship, or the enthusiasm one possesses for general passions and hobbies. simultaneously, the non-defined term of love is at times weaponized as a form of liberal ideology that is expressed as the solvent to structural violence (i.e., “fighting hate with love” or the one love movement). hooks (2000) noted, everyone assumes that we will know how to love instinctively” (p. xxvii) ...our confusion about what we mean when we use the word ‘love’ is the source of our squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 7 difficulty in loving. if our society had a commonly held understanding of the meaning of love, the act of loving would not be so mystifying” (p. 3). in the literature, authors theorize love in multiple ways, all leading to a somewhat confusing amalgamation of the term. for instance, in loving whiteness (matias & allen, 2013), an examination of love’s unconsciousness is a treatise on how true love can be understood in relation to how a mother loves the child she birthed and how love cannot exist if abusive power relations are present. clearly articulated is the notion that there exists a “problematic relationship between two types of love: romantic and humanizing” (matias & allen, 2013, p. 288). in short, a woman who experiences childbirth experiences a humanizing love because the woman experiences both the “pain and struggle that positively binds the humanity of one person to another” (matias & allen, 2013, p. 289). like fromm (1956), love requires a mutuality of growth and development between two beings and in that loving relationship between two humans both can love the whole of humanity. basically, a neo/liberal notion of the connection of individuation, competition, desire for acceptance/conformity, and relations for the purpose of tangible outcomes (matias & allen, 2013), characteristics of whiteness (cabrera et al., 2017; gusa, 2010; la paperson, 2017) and perhaps what boggs (2012) would call the “shadow side” of love (p. 33), all create an inability to love in this context. at the same time, love that extends from these social realities, noting that this unconsciousness becomes the love that grasps onto power in whiteness, begs for challenge. while we agree that this notion of love can exist, it still falls short of understanding how to love in a communal context like student affairs and how love can instruct social change, namely racial justice and decolonization. understanding the power dynamics between two loving individuals in a humanizing loving relationship is important to dismantling whiteness; however, we are not sure if recognizing the power of love moves us in a decolonizing way. in examining other humanization/ontological scholars, such as bell hooks (2000) in all about love and grace lee boggs (2012) in the next american revolution, one begins to understand why love is operationalized inconsistently across contexts. specifically, bell hooks writes that “there can be no love without justice” (p. 19). for hooks, love is a combination of care, commitment, trust, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and it is unconditional, meaning that it is non-transactional. love is an action. love turns to selflessness. for boggs (2012), love is a precursor for justice. are these perspectives incommensurate? hooks (2000) drew from fromm’s work and her own lived narrative, as do matias and allen (2013), when they noted that “love and abuse cannot coexist” (p. 6), perhaps leading her to this conclusion which is informed by her experience as a black woman. boggs (2012) instead drew from martin luther king, jr., where love “is based on the willingness to go to any lengths to restore or create community. practicing this concept of love empowers the oppressed to overcome fear and the oppressors to transcend hate” (boggs, 2012, p. 95). perhaps the answer lies in the backgrounds of these two women, their experiences extending from interactions with anti-blackness, one directly (i.e., hooks) and one through the filter of her relationship to antiasian racism, radicalization within leftist politics, and her solidarity work embedded in the detroit black community (i.e., boggs). this means that how one understands themselves in relation to the world around them may determine how they conceptualize love. to complicate the matter, levinas (1998), a french existentialist who is known for his work in ontology, wrote that love forgives injustice and injustice is the limitation of freedom. in this case, his thinking aligns with boggs, who does not believe that one needs justice to have love. hooks (2000) extended this idea in all about love, writing, “when love is present the desire squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 8 to dominate and exercise power cannot rule the day. all the great social movements for freedom and justice in our society have promoted a love ethic” (p. 98). while it may be unnecessary to explicate which came first, justice or love, one can clearly see the implication of the relationship. therefore, the application of love as an analytical tool for understanding social justice movements becomes unclear when one does not understand the personal and social context and applies the tenets of love in discretionary manners without completely understanding the intent and impact of such prior analysis. or perhaps, love can exist in one venue (a place where love exists before justice, i.e., boggs), but not another (a place where there is injustice and no love, i.e., hooks), thereby weakening the theory of love as a holistic answer to injustice while at the same time providing hope for love as a mediating factor in an unjust world as people can apply it at will; love is a choice, a “transformative force” (hooks, 2000, p. xix). perhaps this brings one to a place where there is an inability to decide upon one theory of love in the sea of possibilities of the concept, and perhaps that is okay because settler colonialism indeed asks us to continually choose one way of being over another. the art of love in the next section, we provide the tenets of love that are critical in practice if student affairs educators are ever to adopt the art of loving properly as the framework within the field. incorporating love as a core value within student affairs allows educators to begin to own their historical truths of colonization and enslavement (responsibility), address and reconcile the ongoing legacies of genocide and settler colonialism (care), position indigenous, black, and brown people’s ways of knowing as the foundation of educational practices (knowledge), and include indigenous, black, and brown people’s values and perspectives within policies and operations of the institution and specifically within student affairs (respect). ultimately, a community built on supporting each other and building a more human world full of love is what student affairs should work toward being (boggs, 2012). with this, the infrastructure of student affairs operations and functions should be working to incorporate the framework of love as a form of creating justice within the community. learning and mastering the art of love is a requisite skill in the toolkit for student affairs educators in their work and praxis. the propositions listed to theorize breaking the cycle of abuse are a nonexhaustive list and an ever-going process requiring educators to build the capacity to love as a collective. love is a skill, and the skill becomes a form of art; the field of student affairs owes it to its legacy and future to commit to this art (fromm, 1956). love as skill in the exploration of love and the absence of love within student affairs, it becomes clear that creating the idea of love as an actionable framework within the field is critical. love resists power over another and instead asks both people to understand themselves as inseparable from the other and the self (fromm, 1956). the totality of human relies on the relationship between individuals and the freedom that exists among people (levinas, 1998). love is non-transactional, but still requires accountability and responsibility (levinas, 1998). hooks (2000) noted that when one loves somebody, they see the world the way it is. from this, in thinking back to the question of humanization, what this means to say is: “i see you existing in the world in the way that it is.” that is, since i understand the ways that systemic oppression, racism, sexism, ableism, genderism, transantagonism, and classism impact your life, i will act in a different way and therefore see you as human and love you as such. therefore, love demands knowledge of the squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 9 other and love of the other demands knowledge (levinas, 1998). lastly, love is an act, so when one “risks an act of love” (freire, 2000, p. 50), they get to the core of what love can do for justice. love is often seen as “the great intangible” (hooks, 2000, p. 4). thus, how can educators begin to reimagine and transform this idea into an actionable practice that can be utilized as a tool to achieve justice in student affairs? first, this requires that “love” be reframed as an ontological philosophy and decolonizing project that humans can adopt within their worldview and how they shape themselves in relation to others and the land. that is, one must understand all beings as being human and human beings from the start, not as something one must prove to gain respect. furthermore, we need to re-envision love as a skill-set that one would continue to learn and aspire to master over time; as such, we would begin to view the act of loving as a multi-faceted and dynamic process that would also consider the overarching goals of humanization, racial justice, and critical consciousness and ultimately, the field of student affairs. from this, it can be argued that the skill-set of love becomes a core value that student affairs educators embody and incorporate into practice and field. incorporating a core value of love ultimately redefines the ways one will think, operate, and currently evaluate our mastery within the field and educators’ future vision for student affairs work. love as a core value embodies the tenets stated by fromm (1956) as care, knowledge, responsibility, and respect (later to be extended and modified by hooks (2000) to also include “commitment” and “trust”). to accomplish the art of love fully demands educators to incorporate these tenets into their daily work and overall vision of the student affairs profession. in addition, all these tenets must be taken into consideration and practiced in a holistic sense for love to truly operate and exist within our field. in this way, student affairs professionals must make the conscious choice to love. treating love as intentional practice rather than a form of nature defaults to the human assuming accountability by identifying past and present acts of indifference, committing to unlearning relational forms that do not center love, and working towards repairing harm and healing. by not recognizing or taking actions to correct higher education’s past acts of indifference (noting the gross injustices against the indigenous and the exploited labor and enslavement of africans rooted within the history of college campuses), educators are perpetuating the protection of a historical lie and continuing the legacy of settler colonialism and dehumanization within the profession. however, educators are purposefully socialized to fear the truth of indifference. when one buys into the lie of history as the past and denies the envisioning and creation of a loving world, “we are all potential victims” (hooks, 2000, p. 47) of indifference. when the field of student affairs has decided to love the lie more than justice, it has sealed the justice and humanity of the profession within a tomb of continued colonization and abuse. without reserve, we must be able to build the “capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other” (boggs, 2012, p. 47). in order to survive, it is time for the field of student affairs to embrace the tenets of love (i.e., care, knowledge, responsibility, and respect) as the basic elements that encapsulate the concept of love as a skill and actively embed these principles within their institutional practices. we default to the document, a bold vision forward: a framework for the strategic imperative for racial justice and decolonization (quaye et al., 2018) additionally to explore the tenet of trust and commitment. squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 10 care the concept of care is shown as being interwoven into the idea of loving through the evidence of familial ties and relationships. “love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love” (fromm, 1956, p. 26) and as such, if active concern and care for fellow brethren and human life are absent, then love is not present. for example, drawing upon her upbringing, hooks (2000) highlights that though she was raised in a household where basic necessities (i.e., food, shelter, water) were met, the action of love was not present in the home because “aggressive shaming and verbal humiliation coexisted with lots of affection and care” (hooks, 2000, p. 6). she and her siblings grew up in a household where they did not feel love, but they did feel cared for; however, this lack of feeling loved ultimately did not “positively nurture the growth of [their] spirit” (p. 7). though this example is shaped within the confines of familial experiences, these actions are shown within the work of student affairs. if college campuses choose not to address and repair harm and abuse that was caused during the initial birth of higher education, then institutions are fundamentally showing a lack of care and concern for the marginalized populations in which they now serve. care requires intent and an awareness of impact. a care that is intentional removes itself from the confines of neoliberal whiteness; that is, it removes itself from considerations of efficiency, competition, and individualism and places decisionmaking in the scope of community and communal justice. knowledge knowledge proves to be a crucial factor in one’s ability to love in that it emphasizes the idea of continually learning about oneself and deepening a connection, learning, and understanding of others. this idea of knowledge stems from knowing a person for their true, authentic self rather than through a distorted picture that a person has painted of the other. humans have two routes for obtaining this truth: (a) having complete power over another person or, (b) in the act of love (fromm, 1956). with this, “only if i know a human being objectively, can i know him in his ultimate essence, in the act of love” (fromm, 1956, p. 31). the idea of objectively knowing another extends itself to the student affairs profession because educators actively need to engage all students critically who hold a complex set of identities and experiences. if student affairs educators do not uphold and learn about these different cultures and perspectives and allow space for them within our institutional practices, then these professionals will continue to subjectively paint a picture of humans in a way that does not align with their truth. the idea of knowing a person (e.g., a student, staff, or faculty member) objectively is difficult. love requires all of us to engage in the hard work of figuring out how to live inquisitively. levinas (1998) spent much time writing about the idea of betrayal and eliminating the occasion for betrayal in the transactions in which humans engage. student affairs educators betray each other when we have no knowledge of each other; student affairs educators betray ourselves when we do not recognize that we are betraying our own humanity when we do not know those around us. to love is to know a person in relation to the oppressions thrust upon them (hooks, 2000). to know love is to engage in a critical examination of the world as it is, full of oppression and opportunities for liberation. squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 11 responsibility often, the idea of responsibility can denote a task or a duty that is generally imparted onto a person by someone else. however, an alternative definition of responsibility allows a person autonomy in participating in the choice: “...responsibility, in its true sense, is an entirely voluntary act; it is my response to the needs, expressed, or unexpressed, by another human being” (fromm, 1956, p. 28). responsibility is at the heart of student affairs work as educators have an inherent duty to the student. thus, if student affairs educators are not accountable for the historical racial projects of colonization and settler colonialism, then ultimately, they absolve a responsibility to the indigenous land they occupy and the black, indigenous, and other racially minoritized communities with whom they work alongside and serve. the field of student affairs, and the reader as an educator in the field, has a duty to engage in the action of responsibility and, therefore, the act of love. in the example of self-care being utilized as a tool of exploitation and commodification, the project required an education in knowing what settler colonialism is and how it exists today, caring enough to examine a dehumanizing issue impacting the field, and engaging the duty to be responsible for the field, for those in the field, and for the students served. student affairs educators cannot absolve their duty not only to serve students but must take responsibility for how they reproduce oppression in service of students and responsibility for the liberation of all humans. respect if it were not for respect, responsibility could easily turn into domination and possessiveness (fromm, 1956). respect is “not fear and awe; it denotes...the ability to see a person…, to be aware of [their] unique individuality” (fromm, 1956, p. 28). even though student affairs has a responsibility to every student, educators must also recognize that every student harbors their own individual spirit that deserves growth and nourishment with the absence of exploitation. within the art of loving, the idea that respect is sought through the nonexistence of exploitation makes it paramount for student affairs [educators to “grow in [their] own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me [i.e., the student affairs professional]” (fromm, 1956, p. 28). respect is integral to building a skill-set of love in that it centers the most vulnerable and marginalized ways of knowing at the heart of the institution and the field of student affairs. indifference in student affairs in this section, we provide two examples of indifference in student affairs (weisel, 1986). as one reads these examples, attempt to note how the tenets of love were or were not present and what applying a loving logic would achieve. while engaging in this sorting activity and thinking through what love looks like, hooks (2000) suggests that by tracking a history of indifference, one might come to a clearer understanding of love. we have chosen to analyze two distinct (yet non-exhaustive) acts of indifference in student affairs that showcase the continual pattern of settler colonialism, dehumanization, and white supremacy and have ultimately asked ourselves what can educators potentially learn from those moments? we describe two scenarios below, knowing that these are not complete accounts of the events but understanding that an examination through a love framework may illuminate some ways forward. the first case is a recollection of an event that occurred at an acpa-college student educators international convention (acpa), a student affairs professional association, with information drawn from publicly available blog posts and articles related to the case. the second is based on an article squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 12 written by two scholars in the field relating to their experiences teaching in a student affairs program. analysis of these cases in relation to the proposed love framework is situated at the end of this manuscript. t*circle at acpa tampa convention in 2015, acpa held their annual convention in tampa, fl. the scheduled keynote speaker was laverne cox, a black transwoman, actress, activist, and star of the netflix show orange is the new black. due to unforeseen circumstances, cox canceled her trip. searching for a replacement, the convention team asked a group of queer and trans* association members to supply the names of potential replacements. paying attention to the intersections of race and gender identity, the members provided a list that included an extensive register of racially minoritized trans* educators, but the association chose none of the names on the list and instead chose to invite michael sam, a black gay athlete who recently came out and was in popular media for being the first gay football player to be drafted to the national football league. sam eventually canceled two days before the event, and the association invited two black cis-men to engage in a dialogue instead. a group of trans* members had already organized a session called t*circle 2: a dialogue on intersectionality among trans* and gender non-conforming educators, which extended previous work done by t*circle, a group of trans* student affairs professionals, graduate students, and faculty making a space for collectivism and solidarity around identity against the genderism, transphobia, and transantagonism present in the field broadly (jourian et al., 2015; simmons, 2016). once the events transpired in tampa, the group decided to kick off t*3: trans*form! trans*cend! trans*gress! where the group used the space to act against the genderism, transphobia, and transantagonism present in the association and within its membership at the intersections of race and racism, as was evidenced by the erasure of black and brown trans* bodies in the association’s most recent decision. the purpose of the space according to a poster hung up in the area read: “t*3 is a counter-space where trans* and genderqueer people regroup and heal as well as gather to talk about and enact a resistance against genderism and intersecting oppressions in higher education and student affairs.” the space, held for only trans*-identifying members, was centrally located in the convention hall so that trans* members could be visibilized and so that they could have a space of solidarity. important to the context was the fact that genderism, transerasure, and transantagonism had been present in the association from some of the highest leadership positions despite the association’s values of social justice and inclusion (simmons, 2016). an unauthored acpa convention blog post following the convention noted, some members felt that we did not do the right thing in doing so (selecting non-trans* speakers). they protested at convention. some members protested their protest...some felt negatively impacted and we grieve that reality while feeling excited about the extraordinary ‘push/pull’ mobilizing force that was present in the stories of the speakers. (acpa, 2015, para. 9-10) in the context of love and loving, this incident, to us, serves as a potential moment of indifference. these moments exist in all aspects of educators’ lives. educators often describe them as intent v. impact, but love extends beyond the incident into the space of healing that is opened or precluded from happening. squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 13 initial analysis it is not that the association leadership did not react without some level of concern for the situation, but rather that the actions neglected a historical understanding of the situation and any ongoing subjugation of the trans* community within this context. specifically, the reactions to the real-lived experiences and emotions of the trans* communities in this context and within the field at large were largely dismissed (simmons, 2016). in the block quotation above, one can see that some association members were not able to see and know the trans* community at that moment. that is, to love people within the context of both them as individuals and their space within an interlocking system of oppression (hooks, 2000). the association members who “protested the protest” did not see the world the way it is (hooks, 2000) and to see the world the way it is and the way it impacts individuals and groups is to engage in love. additionally, educators must “let beings be, to understand them as independent of the perception that discovers them and grasps them” (levinas, 1998, p. 6). in this case, the perceptions were of trans* members who “felt negatively” rather than “were negatively” impacted – an impact that discovered them and grasped onto them through the eyes of dominating cis-identifying leadership within the association. this grasp centered the trans* members as the problem, as disruptive to the convention and association rather than the convention or association as disruptive to full trans* humanity. in the context of t*circle being an intersectional space for trans* members (jourian et al., 2015), the action of “racializing assemblages provide[s] visual modalities in which dehumanization is practiced and lived” (weheliye, 2014, p. 6). importantly, it must be remembered that not only did trans* erasure occur, but it was black trans* erasure specifically. the racializing of the body both compounded the importance of laverne cox as the speaker (a black trans*woman) and elucidated the fact that the association believed replacing cox with a black gay man, and then two black men (one gay and one heterosexual) to “appease” trans* members would make everything okay. ironically, this elucidation was a move away from intersectionality. ultimately, the world will “emancipate itself only by constructing a world in which it eliminates the occasions for betrayal” (levinas, 1998, p. 30). justice presents itself as an opportunity in each transaction and each person has the choice to “naively choose injustice or even present injustice” (levinas, 1998, p. 30). perhaps, in this case, the association did both; it betrayed its members and its values in the name of injustice rather than love. self-care as a settler colonial logic next, we must examine settler colonial logics that underscore the field’s move toward self-care rhetoric as the antidote to neoliberal moves in student affairs (squire & nicolazzo, 2019). utilizing a settler colonial framework, the notions of production, competition, quantifiable outcomes, and individualism underscore an ontology of dehumanization, particularly of graduate students and other marginalized groups on college campuses. instead of student affairs divisions shifting the norms of work, they rely on individuals to engage in selfcare as an incremental relief to stress and burnout while divisions ratchet up work demands. congruent with settler colonialism, graduate students, and others with minoritized identities are utilized as property and their labor extracted for the benefit of the university (la paperson, 2017; squire & nicolazzo, 2019). as noted, “‘productivity,’ ‘consumption,’ and ‘profit’ are all settler colonial concepts reinforced by an ever-evolving capitalistic system, of which u.s. universities are a reproducing component” (squire & nicolazzo, 2019, p. 8) squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 14 at the same time, student affairs leaders utilize coercion as a tactic to socialize graduate students into the hegemonic notions of work that are being perpetuated in the field: in this perspective, self-care rhetoric attempts to soften the harsh realities of capitalism that works to turn people’s livelihoods, mental health, and social well-being into quantifiable outputs and institutional profit. it maximizes the amount of labor that a graduate student puts out while minimizing the need to authentically care about the ‘humanness’ of a person. (squire & nicolazzo, 2019, p. 5) initial analysis in this possible articulation of indifference, one can draw back to matias and allen’s (2013) articulation of the negative, power-driven notions of indifference that are grounded in neoliberal ideas of engaging in relations for the purpose of competition, desire for acceptance/conformity, and tangible outcomes (matias & allen, 2013). because love and abuse cannot exist simultaneously (hooks, 2000), and self-care rhetoric is an abuse of humanness, an argument exists for an articulation of indifference. applying a loving framework to the cases in harkening back to the examples of the acpa convention t*circle protests and the idea of self-care tied within settler colonial ideology, we choose to re-examine how these examples of indifference could be transformed into acts of justice utilizing the proposed framework of love as an actionable skill set and core value within student affairs. in reference to the tampa convention protests (and the response to these protests), it was evident there was an inability to see the harm and pain that was placed upon the trans* community within this context. although the original space was provided for the trans* educators to engage their voices, in this case there was little love present because, based on the manuscripts published by the trans* educators, there was little intent of nurturing growth, understanding the spirit of their concerns, and to know those who were identified as “the other.” if choosing a loving approach that embodies the four tenets (i.e., care, knowledge, responsibility, and respect), it is argued that this harm could have been avoided by examining acpa’s intent in providing specific replacement speakers within the context of the history of the association, the field, and the world. utilizing a love framework within this scenario would have allowed for the association to have used the absence of its originally planned speaker, as an avenue for reflection and a pathway for a replacement presenter who identified similarly; the association could have also used the opportunity to provide a space for visibility and healing, listening, and developing. given the detailed background of society’s trans-erasure rhetoric and practices within cultural mediums, policies, and higher education institutions, it proves to be a significant statement when dedicating spaces and platforms for trans-identified individuals to exist authentically and be represented. the association, choosing to substitute a black, transwoman keynote speaker with less regard to the recommendations of queer and trans* association members, displays a lack of care. in distinction, acpa convention leadership supplanting the keynote speaker with someone who would have also been living within the critical intersections of race and gender, epitomizes this core tenet. in examining the whole of actionable love, care proves to remain only one aspect as an act toward justice. in fact, “care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving” (hooks, 2000, p. 22). within this example, if the convention leaders would have squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 15 supplemented another speaker using the suggestions prompted from queer and trans* individuals, this would have demonstrated an understanding of the intention behind recommendations offered (care), allowed for alternative representation and visibility of some of the most marginalized identities within acpa and society (knowledge), prioritized space for racially minoritized queer/trans* to share their truths and narratives (respect), and actively showed a deep commitment as an association by centering the voices and epistemologies of the universally disenfranchised (responsibility). though acpa’s choice of replacement for the keynote speaker could be argued as a misstep, the response that followed the t*circle protests further perpetuated the harm caused. alternatively, the association centering a love foundation, could have allowed healing around the impact of the actions. however, the justification of the counter-protests in relation to the original dissent displayed by members of the t*circle and the lack of radical validation and acknowledgment of the group’s outcry shows an unethical response on behalf of the association in that it continued to center an act of indifference. there are widespread misinterpretations of ethical behavior, but, in actuality, “living ethically ensures that [we].... nurture our spiritual growth” (hooks, 2000, p. 17). when those who are harmed choose to address their wounds, others may belittle or mock these efforts, which is a form of psychological terrorism (hooks, 2000). if seen through a loving lens, the protests displayed by t*circle could have been viewed as an act of “accountability and responsibility both from themselves and from those who were the agents of their suffering as well as those who bore witness” (hooks, 2000, p. 23). as addressed, educators can use love as a tool of constructive confrontation which can aid them in healing and promotion of justice within institutions and organizations embedded in the foundations of structural violence and disenfranchisement. centering settler colonialism in student affairs’ rhetoric of self-care punctuates production and capital over one’s holistic self and becomes a dehumanizing practice perpetuating acts of colonization (squire & nicolazzo, 2019). since global capitalism is built and structured alongside the creation of higher education (wilder, 2014), the foundations of student affairs work, rooted in exploitation of labor (physical, emotional, intellectual), further promotes power dynamics, neoliberal ethics, and settler colonialism. typically, this exploitation lands in the fate of graduate students and other subjugated individuals on campus, which gives legacy to the ontology that the most marginalized are coined as property on behalf of institutional white supremacy. to reframe the work of student affairs through a love context that situates the humanity of the person in relation to the land they occupy would require substantial transformation and reconstruction in the ways one envisions the field. in applying a loving approach within the previous two examples, it begs the question: are we ready or able, as educators, to decolonize student affairs? first, the ever-rising productivity standards within the field allowed student affairs to fail in “[appreciating] the importance of work resistance, not merely as a weapon of class rebellion, but as an essential element of sustainability for the planet” (kivel, 2018, p. 21). this highlights how a societal obsession with constant expansion and production of labor inherently remains a detriment to the maintenance of the person and survival of the land. additionally, due to the lack of resources, sustainability, and the pervasiveness of oppressive systems, “the outcome is that student affairs professionals with marginalized identities are often left responsible for their own care and healing” (sambile, 2018). the idea of individualism upheld against the disconnection of the other allows individuals to view healing as a solo pursuit rather than a communal goal. from this, the capacity for self-care to actualize the capacity for one individual to escape burnout and exploitation in the squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 16 face of exponential labor and production proves paradoxical and the antithesis of decolonization praxis. as it stands, self-care rhetoric “attempts to soften the harsh realities of capitalism that works to turn people’s livelihoods, mental health, and social well-being into quantifiable output; it turns people into property to be used for institutional profit” (squire & nicolazzo, 2019, p. 5). this argument shows that the institution encourages the maximization of labor from the graduate student and other marginalized individuals while actively attempting to minimize their humanity. in maintaining the norm that time, work, and labor is tied to humanity is to further the settler colonial goal of turning “people and land into property, a property that can be utilized for the benefit of the capitalist gains to reproduce whiteness” (squire & nicolazzo, 2019, p. 4). framing self-care through a context of love requires several transformative changes within the field of student affairs. in particular, colleges and universities need to work towards identifying and diagnosing the structural influences that are creating this amount of unsustainable labor and then proceed to disrupt and transform this function (care). however, this cannot be done without viewing student affairs’ work as a tool to resist neoliberalism, decoupling the notions of productivity tied to self-worth (knowledge). the institution must shift its connection to the capitalist state and dismantle the settler colonial concepts of productivity, consumption, and profit because universities currently serve as a mode of reproducing these ideals (responsibility). and lastly, institutions of higher education and their student affairs units need to reposition their hegemonic culture of domination and redistribute structural power with equity towards its labor force (e.g., graduate students and others oppressed within institutional settings) (respect). self-care utilized through a love framework emphasizes divesting from extraction practices geared towards the “purpose of transformation into property to be used for the benefit of capitalistic endeavors” (squire & nicolazzo, 2019, p. 3). this divestment must center the reimagining of work for the person, the institution’s abusive relationship to the land they occupy, and the dying spirit within the field of student affairs. conclusion: are we ready to love? “knowing love or the hope of knowing love is the anchor that keeps us from falling into that sea of despair” (hooks, 2000, p. 78) offers the optimism student affairs professionals need to rock transformational change. with this manuscript, our desire is not to replace love with some other form of foundational principle, but rather to help us know love and have hope of knowing and executing love as an actionable and definitive concept within the field of student affairs. the question “are we ready to love?” operates as an invitation for student affairs educators to adopt a loving skill set—which should go beyond the material and individual and instead be communal and authentic. love has been touted as the basis upon which all justice work is done; however, love, as an amorphous and liberal notion, then falls short of fully engaging in racial justice and decolonization. by fully explicating how love acts and, therefore, how student affairs educators, as purveyors of a field, act, there is hope for moving toward true racial justice and decolonization. as difficult as it sounds, “awakening to love can happen only as we let go of our obsession with power and domination” (hooks, 2000, p. 87). to fulfill the imperative for racial justice and decolonization, one must analyze how the field of student affairs engages in acts of power and domination daily and then replace those with the proposed loving tenets of care, knowledge, responsibility, and respect. to do so moves student affairs toward decolonization and engages the field in “more humanizing love” (matias & allen, 2013, p. 302). student affairs educators squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 17 can engage as “scyborgs” (la paperson, 2017) within their institutions. as scyborgs, student affairs educators act as both machines of the university replicating its parts, and decolonizing agents deconstructing and indigenizing it. the call for this paper is to become decolonizing student affairs educators by centering love, to love the field enough to recreate student affairs in a vision of justice, and 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(2006). settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. journal of genocide research, 8(4), 387-409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240 author notes dian squire, ph.d. loyola university chicago dsquire@luc.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3455-4936 rachael blansett oyster river cooperative school district rachaelblansett@gmail.com raquel wright-mair rowan university wrightmair@rowan.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6744-371x more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240 mailto:dsquire@luc.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3455-4936 mailto:wrightmair@rowan.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6744-371x https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ love as action situating settler colonialism to uphold indifference is to engage in dehumanization. and to understand dehumanization is to understand settler colonialism and its impact on student affairs. this understanding proves important as we move through this argument and juxtapose acts of ... current theories of love love as skill indifference in student affairs applying a loving framework to the cases conclusion: are we ready to love? current issues in education, 25(2) 1 volume 25, issue 2 november 22, 2024 issn 1099-839x insider knowledge, outsider practice: the disruptive liberatory potential of skateboarding in us higher education eric m. davidson university of california, riverside abstract: this conceptual paper articulates how the unique social, experiential, and navigational perspectives of college skateboarders contribute to their potential as changemakers in higher education. drawing from the theory of campus ecology and multidisciplinary body of skateboarding scholarly literature, this paper applies the unique navigational and analytical lenses of skate culture to render visible oppressive institutional conditions that are currently absent from educational scholarship. in order to accomplish this application, i conduct an extensive search for literature, and begin the writing by contextualizing the macroand micro-systemic elements of the u.s. tertiary system and emplacing skateboarding within them. then, i use skate scholarship to argue that skateboarding provides new critical perspectives on the philosophies of public space, policing, and social deterrence that manifest in university spaces. additionally, this work explores campus skaters’ resistance to systemic challenges such as racism, cisheteropatriarchy, and neoliberal capitalism. i conclude by offering future directions for both theoretical and empirical research that employ skateboarding as a lens through which to examine u.s. higher education. keywords: higher education, skateboarding, campus ecology, public space, philosophy citation: davidson, e. (2024). insider knowledge, outsider practice: the disruptive liberatory potential of skateboarding in us higher education. current issues in education, 25(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2233 accepted: 10/04/2022 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2233 davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 2 insider knowledge, outsider practice: the disruptive liberatory potential of skateboarding in us higher education skateboarding1 is a widely popular social phenomenon in the united states, boasting more than six million participants in 2017, roughly 50% of whom are college-aged––at least 18 years old (corwin et al., 2019b). as both an individual sport and cultural community, skateboarding plays a significant role in the social identity development of its participants, shaping their navigations of and interactions with the broader society (glenney & mull, 2018). many of the sport’s core values align well with the goals of education and schooling, including physical and mental health development, skill-building and demonstration of mastery, creativity, intrinsic motivation, and self-authorship (beal & weidman, 2003; corwin et al., 2019b; seifert & hedderson, 2010). however, skateboarding’s liminal position between mainstream and subculture (beal et al., 2017; dinces, 2011; nolan, 2003) as well as its longstanding association with criminality (dickinson et al., 2022; németh, 2006) have prevented the sport and its associated interest groups from developing substantive formal relationships to colleges, universities, and higher education research communities. this is in direct contrast to other sport cultures present in u.s. higher education. for example, the highly integrated relationship between american higher education and the sports it sponsors in intercollegiate competition is well-documented (e.g.,bass et al., 2015; comeaux, 2020). outside of college athletics, other active transit sports such as cycling are typically welcomed on campus in both political and infrastructural capacities. nevertheless, skateboarding maintains a significant, yet underexamined, presence on u.s. campuses as both an athletic performative practice and a subcultural community. skateboards provide students and other campus affiliates with a transportation option that requires fewer economic and logistic commitments than cars or bicycles (fang & handy, 2019). in addition, university grounds commonly hold public space designations, inviting skaters to enjoy the well-maintained infrastructures and unique physical features on campuses. on the other hand, institutional administrations, facilities teams, law enforcement agencies, and other members of the campus community have their own views and perspectives––often negative––on the sport’s presence in campus life that can vary between institutions (jackson et al., 2018). a brief survey of college and university newspaper articles written since the onset of the 21st century reveals this variety of perspectives about skateboarding on campuses (alvarenga, 2014; dinh, 2012; spallone, 2016). these opinions and reactions to the sport often mirror those shared by broader society, but they are influenced by the unique institutional contexts present in higher education. while a robust campus discourse about skateboarding abounds, the scholarly conversation about the sport and its relationship to higher education is severely limited. the topic is almost nonexistent from education research outlets, and existing scholarship on skateboarding and higher education focuses primarily on skateboarding as a mode of transportation (e.g., fang & handy, 2019) or a learning tool (e.g., zeng et al., 2022). this dearth of social scientific and theoretical knowledge about skateboarding and its relationship to u.s. higher education prevents education scholars from accessing and utilizing the analytical skills that skaters employ when navigating their environments. these skills include active assessment of the built environment’s accessibility and functionality, recognition of exclusionary and hostile design, and intellectual capacities for problem-solving and social development. in the practice of 1 i use skateboarding/skateboarders and skating/skaters interchangeably throughout this paper. davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 3 skateboarding, skaters may employ them with mindful intention, but over time they become intuitive and embodied. if better understood, these skills will provide increasingly pointed opportunities for education scholars, institutional administrators, and activists to expose, critique, and restructure the oppressive ecological elements of the u.s. tertiary system that shield dominant social groups and cause harm to its marginalized stakeholders. purpose statement the purpose of this writing is to articulate a critical social-political-economic framework for examining u.s. higher education using skateboarding’s uniquely transgressive worldview and its associated scholarship’s multidisciplinary approach. it is paramount to articulate the scope of this work clearly. it is neither a call for universities to welcome skateboarding as a mode of transportation nor a recommendation to the reader to begin participation in the sport, although both of these aims should definitely be priorities of future writing. rather, it is an invitation for conventionally trained education scholars to frame their empirical and philosophical examinations into the tertiary system through the lens of the skateboarder; a lens that i argue provides a unique capacity for uncovering truth and challenging injustice. given the ever-present need for expanded modes of inquiry in educational scholarship, engagement with alternative subcultures such as skateboarding can provide researchers with new epistemological frameworks through which to ground their work. thus, this writing engages with perspectives from outside the intellectual traditions of the education field to render visible elements of higher education previously unconsidered in the discipline’s literature. author positionality and acknowledgements as a lifelong skater raised in the communities from which skateboarding emerged in san diego county, california, my ecological orientation in any environment is significantly influenced by skateboarding. my sense of movement through space, interpretations of my physical and cultural environments, and worldview cannot be divorced from my participation in the sport. i have used these emotional and cognitive orientations as a collegiate skater, from the time i entered my undergraduate program through my doctoral program, both at large public research universities. these same orientations bring me to this work and drive my passion to improve the visibility of skateboarding in higher education, particularly at institutions like the ones i have attended, where i believe significant social and cultural reimagining is a particularly urgent necessity. given this passion, it is also important for me to acknowledge that my worldview and capacity to bring about holistic change is limited. as a white, cisgender, straight man, both the u.s. collegiate environment and skateboarding culture reflect my specific socialization to the detriment of my marginalized peers. to this end, i commit to engaging decolonial, indigenous, antiracist, and queer perspectives and voices in my writing. “the word ‘thank you’ doesn’t exist in o’odham culture … sharing is simply implied, and we believe that all good deeds come back to the giver in some way” (escalante, 2007). this paper was prepared on the lands of the kumeyaay, luiseño, tongva, cahuilla, and serrano peoples, upon which i am an uninvited occupier and temporary steward. i skate, learn, and grow on all these lands as well as those of the tohono o’odham, pascua yaqui, diné (navajo), and apache peoples. davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 4 methodology to accomplish the aims of this work, i draw on prior empirical and theoretical work situating skateboarding within the campus ecologies of u.s. higher education institutions (corwin et al., 2019a; davidson, 2023). the scholarship used in this study was collected via a robust literature search process from the following online databases: academic search complete, google scholar, and the educational resource information center. as skateboarding is a relatively young subject in social scientific and philosophical scholarship, i also conducted targeted searches for authors who presented at the stoke sessions: an international conference on the culture, history and politics of surfing and skateboarding hosted by the san diego state university surf/skate studies collaborative. i have created the term insider-outsider to position college students who skateboard within their campus ecologies, as they are integrated within the institutional environment yet simultaneously transgressing its prescribed physical and cultural boundaries. with this novel role in mind, i discuss how skateboarding culture and practice offer ways to resist social, educational, and economic injustice on college campuses. as insider-outsiders, the skateboarding community interprets engagement with public space, capital generation, and the realization of human potential in ways that directly challenge the american tertiary system’s settler colonial neoliberal status quo, a status quo that is upheld by a spatial-natural imaginary that renders many oppressive institutional policies invisible to campus-goers. in the ensuing passages, i discuss the roles and perspectives of the insider-outsider identity in university spaces. i begin with a broad philosophical approach to understanding how the physical and cultural dimensions of campuses form unique urban ecologies rife with latent tensions over public space, social norms, and economic productivity. skateboarding’s presence on campuses often renders these tensions explicit. with this approach established, i turn to an exploration of how campus skateboarders interact with their universities in three alternative capacities: (1) interpretations of campus environments, (2) semiotic navigation of physical infrastructure, and (3) disruptions to the rhythm of capital production. next, i turn to the issue of social justice in higher education, and how skateboarding’s presence on campus offers novel challenges to, or reinforcements of, dominant social orders that marginalize university students and other affiliates. i conclude by providing future directions for skate scholarship in higher education, including theoretical, empirical, and practical methods for scholars and practitioners to utilize the insider-outsider perspectives of campus skaters as means to advance justice. philosophical orientation: higher education and skateboarding ecologies it is important to consider that the relationship between skateboarding and u.s. universities is informed by the philosophical and operational underpinnings of the nation’s tertiary system. this system’s settler colonial (e.g., lee et al., 2020; nash, 2019), and neoliberal (e.g., giroux, 2014; slaughter & leslie, 1997; slaughter & rhoades, 2004) functions are well documented in the discipline’s literature. the u.s. tertiary system’s prominent interest groups, including governments and private enterprises, maintain a complicated subversive set of political and discursive mechanisms by which to shield the true destructive nature of u.s. university operations from the public. these mechanisms highlight tertiary institutions’ contributions to social mobility, benign economic development, improved civic engagement, and other benefits yet belie their keystone position in maintaining the dominant status quo. in the ensuing passages, davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 5 i interrogate the higher education ecology from broad to narrow and emplace skateboarding within this ecology. institutional enterprise, pollution, and leisure under the present global neoliberal economic regime largely driven by u.s. imperialism, engines of knowledge production and dissemination, such as universities, enjoy a privileged position (giroux, 2014). this economic regime’s consequences include the solidification of academic capitalism as the modus operandi for u.s. universities, wherein state disinvestment in higher education forces institutions to move to the market and privatize the knowledge they generate via patents, technology transfer, and state/private contracts (mcclure, 2016; slaughter & rhoades, 2004). in many ways, the operation of academic capitalism and its contributions to anthropogenesis is inexorably tied to pollution and pollutives. pollutives can be material, such as toxic chemicals used in industry and manufacturing, but they can also be considered perversions or defilements of normative social orders, such as the skateboarding community’s encroachment into public spaces (o’connor et al., 2022). thus, while material pollutives are often objectively measurable, social pollutives are context-dependent, existing only insofar as one or more dominant systems consider them aberrant. relationships between universities, governments, and private enterprises contribute to materially pollutive knowledge uses including war, energy, pharmaceuticals, heavy industry infrastructure, and manufacturing, which undoubtedly have a negative impact on the global community (e.g., barron et al., 2023; giroux, 2014). at the same time, u.s. campuses maintain physical infrastructures marked by expansive land use and the notable integration of natural-environmental elements such as lawns and shade trees, widely considered contributors to ecological well-being normally absent from urban spaces. (bruce, 2011; fiene & sabbatini, 2011; kriken, 2004). while nominally open to the public, these spaces are heavily policed in order to maintain institutional reputations as urban oases––breaks from normal networks of residential and commercial development; leisure sites amongst a broader pollutive, entropic climate that the institutions themselves help create. universities’ accumulated wealth, foundationally stolen from dispossessed indigenous communities and enslaved africans (lee et al., 2020; nash, 2019; wilder, 2014), contributes to the construction of heavily monitored, architecturally totemic built environments and fabricated green spaces. in the wake of these processes i argue that such seemingly unpolluted, “green” campuses create and maintain a kind of spatial-natural imaginary in the minds of university affiliates such as students, faculty, and staff, which shields them from the pollutive disjointedness between the campus grounds and their marginalia. the spatial-natural imaginary is an ontological orientation––a specific confluence of existential modalities––in the minds and behaviors of campus interest groups. these ways of being that make up the spatial-natural imaginary are informed by normative educational culture and campus physical environments, as well as the social, political, economic, and geographical relationships between institutions and their surrounding communities. campus affiliates such as students, faculty, staff, and even members of the public are trained to consider university grounds as green islands in gray oceans of urban blight, where cleanliness, safety, and prosperity are reinforced in two key capacities: (1) discursively via campus communication with the public and (2) semiotically via architecture and landscape. the spatial-natural imaginary is especially pronounced in environments such as deserts and dry coastal climates common to the southwestern united states, where skateboarding is particularly popular (e.g., california, arizona, new mexico). in these spaces, davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 6 colonial logics motivate universities to exercise violent dominion over land use, leading to the implantation of green spaces in arid locales populated by non-native plants which require significantly more water than the environment can sustain. prior examinations of space and social difference––particularly race––have determined that space and place are inherently contested (neely & samura, 2011; soja, 2010), and that sociocultural dominion is (1) the most significant determinant in the development of built environments and (2) often shielded from public scrutiny in said environments (lipsitz, 2007). systems of social power and subordination such as whiteness and settler colonialism assign tacit meaning to spatial contexts depending on who inhabits them, in which “certain spaces come to be known as welcoming, safe, and desirable, while others are rendered dangerous, unsafe, lacking in value, and inferior” (duran et al., 2022, p. 614; lipsitz, 2007). in keeping with this theorization of space, i posit that institutions of higher education reinforce the spatial-natural imaginary via a set of discursive strategies which promote universities’ contributions to social welfare and human progress while reordering historical and current practices of land seizure, labor exploitation, military industrialism, and knowledge gatekeeping. i move to understand that university leadership maintains a contradictory relationship with pollution, with institutions investing significant capital in material pollutives while expending great energy and intention on eliminating what leadership deems social pollutives from the campus grounds (o’connor et al., 2022). the u.s. higher education system is foundationally informed by various systems of dominion and marginalization including white supremacy (gusa, 2010; wilder, 2014), neoliberal economics (giroux, 2014; slaughter & rhoades, 2004), and settler colonialism (lee et al., 2020). thus, the social pollutives that institutions seek to eliminate include the perceived ills in the communities surrounding institutions as well as the personhoods, conducts, beliefs, challenges to authority, and lifeways that exist in defiance of these dominant orders––those of the racially, sexually, and socioeconomically marginalized (duran et al., 2022). in addition, universities’ safety discourses dehumanize members of the subaltern such as the unhoused, undocumented, and those participating in informal economies such as sex work, drug dealing, graffiti art, and panhandling. a recent development in the discipline of leisure studies is the chromatic conceptualization of leisure sites––i.e., green spaces such as public parks or national forests and blue spaces such as public beaches, rivers, and lakes (o’connor et al., 2022). skateboarding, by its nature, occurs in gray spaces; access to urban infrastructure is a necessary prerequisite to participation (o’connor et al., 2022). i offer that the subtextual implications of chromatic language matter significantly in understanding the impact of the spatial-natural imaginary on the campus community, and ultimately how skateboarding disrupts it. whatever greenness does exist on university campuses contributes to campus interest groups’ notions of their institutions as sites of social and ecological wellness and leisure, despite the fact that the built environments of college campuses contribute to anthropogenesis at vastly accelerated rates when compared to other human-built spaces, rendering them gray spaces in green cloaks. for example, campus leaders, influenced by normative colonial perceptions of how university spaces are designed, consider the maintenance of fabricated green leisure spaces more important than the conservation of precious water resources, even in climates where these water resources may be better directed to sustain human life off campus. this masks grayness, which in turn carries pollutive connotations. as a form of leisure, skateboarding’s dependence on urbanicity thematically associates it with ideas of urban blight and the “darkness” of u.s. cities. skateboarding’s presence on campus, therefore, forces campus community members to disengage from the davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 7 spatial-natural imaginary, as the sport’s presence has a de-cloaking effect on those who observe it on campus. institutional operation, oppression, and control university leadership and planning teams design, construct, and maintain the built environments of campuses with purposes specific to tertiary education’s academic capitalist operations (fiene & sabbatini, 2011; kriken, 2004; renn & patton, 2011; slaughter & rhoades, 2004). stakeholders groups are invested in the campus’ ability to catalyze the production and dissemination of knowledge capital and serve as a site of place-based institutional identity development (bruce, 2011; fiene & sabbatini, 2011; mcclure, 2016; renn & patton, 2011; slaughter & rhoades, 2004). to maintain this capital generation operation institutional leaders maintain rigid perspectives on conduct, control, deterrence, and aesthetic order despite a public perception of social permissiveness (dickinson et al., 2022; howell, 2001; renn & patton, 2011). for example, the culture of law and order influences the policing of college and university campuses in terms of both the structural arrangements of campus agencies and campus officers’ perceptions of their roles within their jurisdictions despite the significant difference in public safety needs of campuses vis-à-vis the wider community (dizon, 2021). institutions employ hyper-policing as a form of doctrinal protectionism against perceived external social and ecological threats to the campus physical environment, which is designed to center places of institutional mythmaking, heritage, or memory that students, alumni, and other members of the campus community venerate; these include sports facilities, monuments, and historic campus buildings (craig et al., 2011; dyreson, 2010). frequently, the myths that these sites uphold are underpinned by the same white supremacist, imperialist, and exclusionary philosophies that inform the experiences of numerous marginalized student groups, particularly people of color, women, and queer communities (e.g., duran et al., 2022). racism and white supremacy are fundamental to the campus ecologies of u.s. higher education given the american tertiary system’s inexorable connection to black enslavement (wilder, 2014) and indigenous dispossession (lee et al., 2020; nash, 2019). these historical systems of dominion continue to operate in the present day, rendering u.s. universities as embedded sites of white supremacy (gusa, 2010). ecological interpretations of race and higher education reveal the violence inherent to people of color’s experiences on american university campuses both in their built environments (duran et al., 2022; krusemark, 2010) and their cultures (gusa, 2010; oxendine et al., 2020; patton et al., 2016; renn & patton, 2011). systemic racism impacts campus policing practices as it does in wider u.s. society, forcing students of color––black male students in particular––to endure enhanced surveillance, antagonistic treatment, and outright violence at the hands of campus police (dizon, 2021; smith et al., 2007). based on the u.s. tertiary system’s long and foundational history of cisheteropatriarchy, colleges and universities are also sites of de jure and de facto exclusion for women and lgbtq+ people (patton et al., 2016; renn & patton, 2011). this exclusion manifests ecologically in the campus social and physical environments, which commit discrimination and violence upon people in marginalized positions on the gender and sexuality spectrums (patton et al., 2016). as higher education is a raced and gendered system, so is skateboarding; the sport remains heavily white-dominated (corwin et al., 2019b) and male-dominated (abulhawa, 2008). critically, white cisheteropatriarchal spatial dominance within skate culture has created an environment for marginalized skaters which alienates, ridicules, objectifies, and excludes them davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 8 (geckle & shaw, 2020; mackay & dallaire, 2013, 2014; williams, 2020). thus, interpretations of skateboarding as counterculture must attend to the multiple forms of social dominion that inform its current constitution. of particular importance to this work, a significant tension exists in the space between skateboarding’s inherent social transgressiveness and its reinforcement of cisheteropatriarchy. while the presence of skateboarding in urban spaces often disrupts the rhythms and anthropological norms undergirded by dominant forces in american society, its challenges to (in)justice in the realms of racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identities must push against not only these rhythms and norms, but also the oppression present within skateboarding subculture. movements among marginalized skaters have long challenged the dominant status quo in the skateboarding community, and in doing so they also doubly challenge unjust externalities in wider society. for example, despite public perception to the contrary, skaters of color are integral to the sport’s history, culture, and continued development (sueyoshi, 2015; williams, 2021), and female and queer subcultures within the sport have made significant challenges to the heteromasculine hegemony in public spaces (abulhawa, 2008; corwin et al., 2019b; fang & handy, 2019; geckle & shaw, 2020). additionally, despite its anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian cultural origins and continued valuation of resistance to mainstream society, skateboarding has not been immune to the same economic regime catalyzing changes to higher education (beal et al., 2017; corwin et al., 2019b). thus, academic capitalism and skateboarding corporate interests share a common capitalist logic, particularly with regard to how profit interests influence the discourse of both higher education and skateboarding as public goods committed to community development (beal et al., 2017; hartley & morphew, 2008; morphew & hartley, 2006). while college skaters may view their position on college campuses through a lens of subcultural identity, the actual extent to which participation in skateboarding constitutes a rejection of the capitalist order is mitigated by how much of this identity is constructed by capitalist interests (batuev & robinson, 2017; cantin-brault, 2015; dinces, 2011). in fact, the corporate underpinnings of skate culture as seen through skate equipment, new media, lifestyle goods, and organized competition serve to legitimize skateboarding’s cultural identifiers within a capitalist order (batuev & robinson, 2017; cantin-brault, 2015; corwin et al., 2019a; dinces, 2011) in a manner similar to the ways that universities employ campus mythologies and institutional symbols to create marketable commodities. the insider-outsider position the preceding points of critique highlight the fact that skate culture contains similar sites of struggle to those in higher education and broader society––the struggles for justice, liberation, and free expression on the bases of race, gender, sexuality, and economics. however, the sport’s worldview is quite culturally distinct from that of the modern university. skateboarding celebrates cultural aberrance, critical thinking, and the questioning of authority for authority’s sake, all values that shape social movements for change and run counter to institutional policies and practices. thus, despite the systemic challenges inherent to skate culture, the sport offers significant liberatory potential within the higher education environment. beal et al. (2023) postulate that skateboarding is not inherently progressive, but it is almost certainly transgressive. transgressiveness comes not from an outright rejection of social norms, systems, and practices, but from a willing extension of thought and behavior beyond their prescribed boundaries; a challenge to the assumption that these boundaries should exist in the first place. for those who davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 9 are simultaneously interested in resisting the oppressive higher education status quo, yet hold affiliation with their institutions, the question of how to ontologically self-realize looms large. institutions enact the spatial-natural imaginary to make both social ills and marginalized experiences invisible. in higher education, skateboarding is an act of rendering visible using insider knowledge of the campus environment and an outsider practice of observational performance to disclose concealed mechanisms of social control and oppression. one compelling argument regarding skateboarding’s transgressiveness asserts that “a skater can be both ‘in place’ and ‘out of place’ at the same time” (nolan, 2003, p. 311). as i attempt to situate skateboarding and its participants within the higher education ecology, this may be the most apt argument with which to proceed. students and other campus affiliates who skateboard exist simultaneously in multiple ecological realms. they are undoubtedly affiliated with their institutional and broader higher education cultures, yet also associate with a sport culture that encourages counterinterpretation of social environments. the sport’s reputation, either earned or perceived by mainstream society, as independent, countercultural, and transgressive often labels participants as threats to public order (borden, 2001; chiu, 2009; dickinson et al., 2022; nolan, 2003). skaters typically occupy regulatory positions as pedestrians, whereas the other most common type of active transport, bicycles, are considered motor vehicles. therefore, skateboards may not be permitted on roadways, but also may be restricted, either materially or temporally, from walk-only zones on campus given the perceived (unfounded) threat they pose to pedestrian safety. thus, campus skaters’ positions are, due to the social and political structure of the campus-built environment, liminal by nature. thus, skateboarders on campus are insider-outsiders; members whose spatial location within and impact upon the campus ecology is fluid. the skater’s ecological orientation to campus the skater notices intrinsically what the trained higher education scholar does not. this is, of course, a generalization, yet critical gaps in the discipline’s literature show evidence to support such a statement. in the ensuing passages, i provide an analysis of the skateboarder’s ecological navigation of the university environment via a multidimensional framing of skateboarding participation. affiliation with the sport renders visible elements of the campus ecology that stakeholders attempt to cloak from public scrutiny. in the following sections, i explore the various capacities in which the insider-outsider perspectives of skateboarding create modes of environmental interaction and interpretation unique to participants. alternative interpretations of campus environments given that physical infrastructures make up the necessary underpinnings of skateboarding as art and practice, skaters are heavily invested in the development of built environments, yet may care little for the intended use of these environments and whether or not they succeed on their own merits (mcduie-ra, 2022). rather, the skateboarding community is an adjacent infrastructural public, assessing infrastructure on the basis of its mis-use value and experiencing physical spaces differently than those for whom this infrastructure was developed (collier et al., 2016; mcduie-ra, 2022). on university campuses, skaters’ membership in this adjacent public manifests in both practical and expressive capacities. commuters or travelers occupy a liminal zone between infrastructures developed for pedestrians, bicycles, or cars, as campus davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 10 transportation initiatives do not consider skateboarding as a present and viable modality (fang & handy, 2019; jackson et al., 2018). more critically, skateboarding’s elements of play and performance have a transformative effect on the relationship between campus infrastructure and the individual. these infrastructures’ restrictions on car travel, broad open pathways, creative energies, and public gathering opportunities all position university grounds as ideal playgrounds with which to engage in both the material and social dimensions of skating practice. rather than adhering to built environments’ nominal roles as engines of capital generation and sites of quiet leisure, skaters view them as “playgrounds,” where distinctive elements of the urban campus geography yield greater access and compatibility with the sport’s methods and improved opportunities for social engagement among fellow skaters (aschenbrand, 2022; woolley & johns, 2001). as participants in a multi-sensate artistic and athletic practice, skateboarders constantly seek out new ways of interacting with physical space and its associated social environments, which allows them to see their university campus through the lens of a skilled, creative residentpractitioner (bäckström & sand, 2019). they consider the skateability of the institution’s built environments as the primary metric of infrastructural quality and in doing so reconstitute the derivation of pleasure from these environments, simultaneously contributing to yet disrupting the campus’ existing organizational saga (aschenbrand, 2022; bäckström & sand, 2019). this form of place-based resistant celebration challenges the notion of the academy as authoritarian, managerial, ideally constituted, and functionally ordered (glenney & mull, 2018). sensate relationships between the material worlds of the university and the embodied performances of the skater can even construct novel social realities for the campus community (maier, 2016); transgressing the prescribed rhythms of the spatial-natural imaginary. in these capacities, the skater moves though the college campus with a kind of “elemental wildness” (glenney & mull, 2018, p. 442), creating a new, more fluid anthropological rhythm of the higher education environment (glenney & o’connor, 2022). in most cases, the spaces which skaters traverse were designed with ritualism or legacy in mind, as temples to intellectual or athletic achievement, particularly within a white, western, masculine framing. institutional memoryscapes such as stadia, monuments, landmarks, or other physical components of the university saga contribute to skaters’ abilities to reorder, transgress, and simultaneously celebrate public spaces in a playful capacity (glenney & mull, 2018; mcduie-ra, 2021; o’connor, 2018). in particular, student skateboarding participants express both their identities as skaters and members of the campus community by mis-using these memoryscapes to explore dual polarities––resistors of institutional norms, yet contributors to institutional memories (manan & smith, 2014; mcduie-ra, 2021). as members of their institutional communities, skaters likely circulate amongst themselves mythical places apart from what campus stakeholders consider significant (manan & smith, 2014; mcduie-ra, 2021; o’connor, 2018), as well as defy leadership’s preordained expectations of reverence and deference toward certain monuments. banal architectural features, quiet courtyards, and hidden pathways through campus all contribute to an institution’s ecology of skateboarding, demonstrating how the historic and emotional art of placemaking is embedded into the sport and its participants (o’connor, 2018). the extent to which alternative uses of institutional spaces and resources pose a threat to the actual operations of u.s. universities is indeterminate. however, institutional leadership’s significant focus on maintaining a relatively rigid social order and a pervasive organizational saga definitely influence the ways in which certain types of behaviors are encouraged or constrained; how challenges to institutional values, histories, or figureheads davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 11 are received. subtextually, important components of the institutional saga may represent white supremacy, industriousness, western ascendancy, settler colonialism, or state violence. it is critical for higher education scholarship to seek alternative perspectives on which spaces within the university environment should be considered central and how scholarly examinations into these spaces should interrogate the priorities of the dominant order. differentiated patterns of semiosis skateboarding has a long history of interactions with the legal and political systems in the united states; in many cases these interactions are antagonistic in nature. thus, the skater’s navigational lens within “public” spaces operates differently than those outside the sport. universities’ investments in the maintenance of (imagined) public safety and capital assets lead to a policy structure undergirded by the assumption that skateboarding is disruptive to the campus community (jackson et al., 2018). from early design phases through construction of built environments, campus planners and administrators engage with “defensive architectural tactics” (howell, 2001, p. 1) for deterring skateboarding including skatestoppers (dickinson et al., 2022). in maintaining existing facilities, universities set policies and novel physical barriers intended to protect the intended-use value of campus property (carr, 2010). in traversing their environments, skateboarders engage in vigilant observations of hostile architecture, a concept that is all but absent from the scholarly conversation in higher education. while features like skatestoppers directly target skating, other examples of hostile architecture disclose the ways in which universities maintain the spatial-natural imaginary. for example, benches with regular armrests designed to prevent unhoused people from resting tacitly communicate that only those who engage with campus spaces in an intended-use capacity––that is, contribute to the regular flows of capital production––are entitled to free use of the institution’s physical infrastructure. thus, skateboarding offers education scholars with a semiotic lens through which to critically examine institutional design choices. infrastructure communicates both inclusive and exclusionary messages to the observer. in the case of skateboarding, the university welcomes participation via the implementation of skateboard racks in living, learning, and community spaces. painted or posted signifiers akin to the bicyclist symbol also present campus transportation infrastructure as encouraging to skaters and removes anxieties about legal repercussions toward participation. conversely, skatestoppers demonstrate an institutional commitment to protectionism and prohibition (howell, 2001). the commonplace nature of signs prohibiting skateboarding in certain spaces operate in a much less clearly delineated capacity than elements constructed to expressly permit or deter the practice. skateboarding’s intrinsic resistance to authority causes many participants to ignore or actively defy these signs (nolan, 2003); universities may post them on campus as a signifier of safety to members of the campus community with negative perceptions of the sport. safety discourses abound as a means of determining who is welcome on campus and to what extent; these discourses reinforce the spatial-natural imaginary and justify protectionist policing practices, particularly toward quality-of-life crimes. these crimes encompass a wide range of social behaviors, including skateboarding. many campuses have policies to prevent the performance of skate tricks (jackson et al., 2018). skateboarders may ignore these policies to take advantage of the mis-use value of institutional property, leading to tension between campus authorities and skaters, which is magnified by the abstract physical and cultural threats of skateboarding to the campus (borden, 2001; carr, 2010 davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 12 mcduie-ra, 2022). thus, the campus policy climate regarding skateboarding ranges from lukewarm to cold. institutions without formal policies restricting skateboarding do little to encourage it as a mode of transportation or practice of wellbeing, and those with formal policies typically take a punitive approach, particularly toward street skating’s supposed criminality, danger to others, and propensity for property destruction (fang & handy, 2019; jackson et al., 2018). motivated by their perceptions of skateboarding as dangerous and skaters as inconsiderate and reckless, university police departments strictly enforce these policies through confiscation of skateboards and removal of skaters from campus grounds. given the connection between racism and campus policing, officers likely target skaters of color with greater frequency, contributing to the criminalization of black, indigenous, and brown existence on campus (dizon, 2021; smith, 2007). skaters’ insider-outsider awareness of surveillance and deterrence offers an abolitionist perspective. while communities of color, immigrant communities, and transient communities have endured heightened surveillance and harassment from law enforcement for generations, white, socioeconomically, and politically privileged scholars and practitioners would do well to question how the policing of leisure, alcohol and drug use, spatial encroachment, and “disorderly” conduct advance institutional arguments for funding and maintaining hostile law enforcement agencies and encourage a misguided white public perception of higher education as an ordered space free from social ills. disruptions to the flow of capital generation examinations into skateboarding on college campuses estimate that the most widespread motivation for participation is transportation (fang & handy, 2019; jackson et al., 2018; walker, 2013). although relatively uncommon compared to other primary modes of travel into, within, and out of higher education spaces, “skating to school” offers several benefits above and beyond these modes. those who choose skating as their mode of transportation in college appreciate how skateboards provide the user with an active transportation method that is frequently more convenient, less expensive, and less mechanically complex than bicycles (fang & handy, 2019). the ability of the skater to take their transportation mode with them into most campus spaces eliminates the need to find adequate storage or parking that is present among cyclists and drivers (fang & handy, 2019). additionally, skating aligns with campus initiatives to promote active transportation among students and other affiliates on both ecological and wellness grounds (corwin et al., 2019b; jackson et al., 2018). despite these benefits, colleges and universities typically do not engage skateboarding in transportation initiatives, leaving participants to create novel physical pathways through transit networks designed for other modalities. compared to users of other transportation modes, college skaters consider the fact that their mode is fun to be the most important influencing factor in mode choice rather than convenience or cost (fang & handy, 2019; seifert & hedderson, 2010). i argue that students who skate to and from their institutions utilize their inside-outsider perspectives, considering campus transit from an adjacent lens (mcduie-ra, 2022). in navigating campus transit networks, the commuting skater traverses multiple urban terrains, pedestrian, auto, and bicycle, in order to determine the most efficient, creative, and enjoyable routes to their destinations rather than following a prescribed infrastructural and semiotic pathway (bäckström & sand, 2019; chiu, 2009; borden, 2001). they develop a highly self-reflective, growth-oriented method of campus navigation and consider the physical environment’s optimum transit potential based on its capacity for skateboarding rhythm and flow (chiu, 2009; seifert & hedderson, 2010). this davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 13 reinforces the idea of skateboarding as “an act of spatial reinterpretation” (walker, 2013, p. 15), a reordering of seemingly inflexible built environments into a dynamic and fluid ecosystem that delivers both practical and spiritual benefits to the participant (aschenbrand, 2022; vivoni, 2013). similarly, the choice to skate on campus represents an implicit rejection of the academic capitalist strategies that undergird institutional transportation initiatives. transportation programs frequently act as revenue-generating auxiliaries, relying on the necessity of car travel and parking scarcity to charge affiliates––particularly students––for the ability to move to, from, and within campus. however, skateboarding transgresses the institutional capitalist climate as skateboards do not require payable storage, nor do they depend on spatial security and fineable enforcement policies like cars. skaters do not contribute to the pollutive enterprise of fossil fuels, in which many u.s. institutions are invested (barron et al., 2023; whitford, 2021). as a discordant practice, skateboarding disrupts the ordinary rhythms of capital generation by taking advantage of spontaneous celebration and temporal disjuncture (borden, 2001; carr, 2010; glenney & o’connor, 2022). for example, the skater making their commute longer to enjoy specific components of the campus infrastructure en route to their destination constitutes an oppositional perspective to the “time-is-money” productivity culture of u.s. universities. this type of leisurely disruption may invite resistance from campus actors heavily invested in maintaining and reinforcing regularly scheduled capital production. additionally, skateboarding’s countercultural roots play out in unapologetic mis-uses of public and private spaces and assets, frequently in direct defiance of legal and economic authorities in charge of controlling them (dinces, 2011; mcduie-ra, 2022; nolan, 2003) from this perspective, i argue that skateboarding provides sites of resistance to late capitalism at the institutional level via skaters’ discordant social and performative practices (dinces, 2011; glenney & o’connor, 2022; mcduie-ra, 2022; nolan, 2003). skateboarding’s challenges to the dominant order the prior sections of this writing have articulated (1) the ecological spheres in which higher education and skateboarding exist and interact with one another and (2) the uniquely attuned ways in which college skaters navigate their position within those ecological spheres. i now turn to the sport’s multidisciplinary body of literature to draw connections between empirical and scholarly understandings of the sport to issues of social justice in higher education. race and indigeneity in examining communities of color, a clear connection exists between higher education experiences and skateboarding participation. groups of color in the united states’ navigation of institutional and social environments is indisputably informed by their racial backgrounds (patton et al., 2016; williams, 2020). college skaters of color must maneuver through both institutional and skate cultures invested in the reproduction of whiteness and co-opting of black culture (gusa, 2010; williams, 2020). however, skating offers numerous sites of resistance to white racially dominant systems and narratives at universities. skateboarding participation can act as counterstorytelling since the sport’s “informal nature … create[s] the opportunity to challenge or adhere to the broader pressures of racialized norms, offering the prospect for empowerment” (williams, 2020, p. 324). skaters of color reject the white institutional norms of davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 14 conduct, behavior, and being via spatial reclamation and reconstitution of campus spaces into sites of play and celebration (tichavakunda, 2021). additionally, skaters of color offer a challenge to performative institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion discourses via the creative, sensate practice of skateboarding which highlights their centrality in a campus environment that seeks to render them invisible. skateboarding offers a pathway toward decolonizing and indigenizing higher education due to its alternative engagements with dominant understandings of physical environments (borden, 2001; fisher, 2017). native american activism has been central to shifting the ontological understandings of space and place in the u.s. tertiary system, and skateboarding contributes to these understandings because “it is intimately connected to, and in conversation with, the landscape” (fisher, 2017, p. 58). u.s. universities reside on stolen native land, and indigenous skaters on campus have the power to “utilize skateboarding to express sovereignty on and within their land” (fisher, 2017, p. 58) in opposition to these institutions’ land occupation. in addition, asian pacific american participation in skateboarding recaptures the sport’s indigenous pacific roots in surfing and its early adoption and development among the asian american diasporic communities of southern california (sueyoshi, 2015). for asian pacific islanders, skateboarding is a mode of expressing, not requesting, belongingness, highlighting the integral role of these communities in the social ecology of the united states and therefore higher education (sueyoshi, 2015). black skateboarders use the sport to enact rebellion against racialized norms and crime culture as well as enhance their commitments to intellectual development and personal growth in both formal and informal capacities (corwin et al., 2019a; edwards, 2015; williams, 2020). many black skaters also center reflectiveness and nonviolence in their practices as a means of refusing ghettoization by the white-dominant state authority and policing systems (edwards, 2015; williams, 2020). this “subculture of rebellion” (edwards, 2015, p. 40) is a powerful means for black campus skaters to claim their rights to liberation and education in an institutional environment that views them as unwelcome. latinx2 skaters report increased self-efficacy and educational confidence as a result of participation in skateboarding, and use the sport to develop their senses of perseverance in the face of significant odds (corwin et al., 2019a). while white claims of ownership over culture and space abound in higher education and skateboarding alike, these cultural groups’ skating on campus reveals the racist logics behind these claims and offers counterperspectives to the white institutional majority. gender and sexuality given the higher rates of skateboard participation by college men and the gender dynamics present in both skateboarding and higher education, women skaters are significantly more salient on campus than their male counterparts. female skateboarders occupy a marginalized position within the hyper-independent, hypermasculine culture of the sport, so their participation alone is an act of gendered performance (atencio et al., 2009; bäckström, 2013; abulhawa, 2008). women “write themselves into” (abulhawa, 2008. p. 59) skating in a manner similar to their agentic resistance to exclusion in the collegiate environment; in this way, college women who skate are engaged in a doubly subversive performance of gender. female skateboarders navigate their status as co-eds in the chauvinistic american university culture and 2 there is disagreement over the use of “latinx” in its associated communities. while the term is imperfect and language-context dependent, i employ it here based on its familiarity to u.s. audiences and the absence of another term in that context that accounts for the range of gender identities in the latin diaspora. davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 15 their simultaneous engagement with the “pariah femininities” (bäckström, 2013, pp. 33, 40) associated with their participation in skateboarding. skateboarding media and college-culture social networks sexualize women’s bodies, challenge women’s intellectual capacities and human potential, and enforce rigid norms of gender and sexuality expression (abulhawa, 2008; patton et al., 2016). community building efforts among groups of women skateboarding participants have created sites of resistance to these problematic cultural forces, establishing a positive womens’ skate culture neither defined by nor centered within its masculine norms (atencio et al., 2009; mackay & dallaire, 2013, 2014). in the campus environment, women skaters assert their right to spatial engagement, challenge their institutions’ hierarchical gender orders, and establish room to enact different femininities (bäckström, 2013). skateboarding has the potential to offer “a capacity to imagine and enact alternatives outside of the expectations and pressures of the dominant social order” (geckle & shaw, 2020, p. 132). in this way, the very act of skateboarding on college campuses is an act of queerness, of simply challenging the hegemonic social order of the higher education environment. unfortunately, the hetero-masculine foundations of the sport frequently require queer skaters to choose between marginalization due to their authentic expressions of their identities, or tentative acceptance into skate culture by relegating their identities to obscurity (geckle & shaw, 2020). in a similar fashion, college and university environments enforce strict boundaries of gender and sexuality expression, relegating queer members of the campus community to a peripheral position within the campus culture (patton et al., 2016). thus, queer collegiate skaters engage in acts of resistance not only within the traditional modalities of their sport, but also in the defiant performativity of skating while queer in the university environment, which disrupts hegemonic notions of the sexed/gendered academic landscape while offering transformative glimpses into future ways of being on campus (geckle & shaw, 2020). institutional culture while relatively day-to-day engagements with skateboarding characterize the sport’s presence in higher education ecology, it is critical to consider the social-philosophical elements that skating imprints upon participants. namely, the collective set of cultural practices and worldviews that identify someone as a skater play a role in how they conceptualize themselves based on their affiliations with these cultural practices and their subsequent associated interactions with the surrounding environment. despite public and institutional perceptions of skateboarding frequently tending toward the negative, the social values common across the sport align well with higher education and community development. skateboarding relies on a balance between self-reliance and social engagement. as a highly individual and self-determined activity, skating allows the participant to move from space to space freely without a formalized authority structure (beal & weidman, 2003). additionally, skateboarding contributes to participants’ intrinsic motivation (seifert & hedderson, 2010) and affinity for skill development (corwin et al., 2019b). skaters practice these skills on their own, but just as importantly seek support from and reliance on multigenerational informal communities of other skaters who provide encouragement and advice (haines et al., 2010; woolley & johns, 2001). additionally, skaters frequently identify themselves as observant nonconformists with values, perspectives, and experiences outside those of the mainstream (beal & weidman, 2003). when skateboarders bring these three interwoven abilities––individualism, cooperation, and criticality––into the college environment, they bring a uniquely fine-tuned set of tools to help them and their peers davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 16 succeed academically and socially. skateboarding’s longstanding activism work in the realms of counterculture, public space, social marginalia, and alternative aesthetics benefits universities’ much-needed efforts to widen their epistemological frameworks, challenge dominant perceptions, and seek inclusion for diverse populations (glover et al., 2019; németh, 2006; vivoni, 2013). imagining skate futures in higher education skateboarding’s embeddedness in the campus ecology of u.s. higher education provides scholars, educators, and skaters alike with opportunities to improve the skateboarding conditions at universities. such improvements have the potential to bring about systemic change in higher education on a number of levels. in order to realize these improvements, there is much more scholars and practitioners need to understand about skateboarding on campus. future research should consider the following arenas, among others. new directions for research first, there is a need for qualitative, first-hand inquiry into college skaters’ experiences, particularly skaters of color, queer skaters, and women, who are under-examined in and underserved by both the higher education and skateboarding literatures. this work can provide greater insight into the insider-outsider worldviews of college skaters and how their experiences are both centered and peripheral in the campus environment. second, critical analyses of campus discourses on skateboarding will help researchers and practitioners alike understand the campus climate surrounding skateboarding as well as provide insight into how to change negative perceptions of the sport. third, continued examinations of skateboarding as campus practice and performance will aid the development and promotion of inclusive, welcoming campus infrastructure networks and call attention to the harmful effects of the spatial-natural imaginary, holding institutions to account. finally, as an ultimate goal, any research into skateboarding and american higher education must contribute to broader abolition and decolonization movements within both fields. concluding arguments university students at large engage in a constant push-pull between the demands of college and their senses of self and wellbeing. as an unstructured, self-directed practice, skateboarding carries a liberatory ontological and epistemological quality that separates it from other campus activities and cultures. therefore, participants can employ skating as a kind of reclamation of the campus environment, freeing them (even momentarily) from the rigid, hierarchical structure of their institution and its associated stressors. additionally, skateboarding invites institutions to shift their view of student success from “resilience” and “grit” in the face of an unchangeable, oppressive academic climate toward creative expression and placemaking as paramount modes of transforming university culture toward inclusivity and responsiveness. as mentioned in the opening passages of this writing, formal relationships between higher education institutions and the skateboarding community are extremely rare, so these dynamics of interaction between campuses and skaters typically occur without dialogue between the parties save for the occasional conflict between skaters and law enforcement. however, as the scholarship on skateboarding suggests, opportunities for universities to leverage skating as a davidson: insider knowledge, outsider practice current issues in education, 25(2) 17 practice of wellbeing or mode of sustainable transportation should be plentiful (e.g., corwin et al., 2019a; fang & handy, 2019). future research and writing should elaborate on these opportunities, including the ways in which the authority-averse skateboarding community might enact or respond to formal relationships with institutions. i conclude by offering words of knowledge from a group of diverse college skaters and advocates at the university of california, san diego (skateboarding at ucsd, n.d.): ● skateboarding can be a positive influence on the student population and should not be treated as an act of rebellion. ● it is an activity which you can meet people instantly. ● skateboarding brings all kinds of people together. ● skateboarding is great because it is something you can do all afternoon or it is something you can do on a study break, but most importantly it is best to do with friends. ● it will always keep you motivated to improve your own skills. ● the sport also promotes self-expression and creativity. ● it is such a variable sport and hobby that the possibilities are endless. as critical evaluations and changemaking initiatives of higher education attempt to expand the flexibility of the campus environment, university skaters offer an insider-outsider model for how this can be accomplished. as insiders, they are intimately familiar with their home institutions as students, but also possess additional embodied, experiential knowledge of their campuses vis-àvis their non-skating peers. as outsiders, they maintain critical lenses of navigation and interaction with their institutions that counter normal rhythms of capital generation and social marginalization. using these perspectives, skateboarding participant-advocates can take an active role in disrupting systems of dominion and oppression, promote skating on campus, celebrate the sport’s role in shaping college culture, and improve educational experiences for all. references abulhawa, d. 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(2022). a skateboarding experiential learning activity for introductory physics. the physics teacher, 60, 196–199. https://doi.org/10.1119/10.0009688 author notes eric m. davidson orcid: 0000-0002-1072-0680 university of california, riverside eric.davidson@email.ucr.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2021.0003 http://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2012.714761 https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/intermediateredirectforezproxy https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/intermediateredirectforezproxy https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/04/28/divestment-gains-some-colleges-can-it-spread-where-oil-rules https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/04/28/divestment-gains-some-colleges-can-it-spread-where-oil-rules https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/handle/10289/13741 https://doi.org/10.1080/13574800120057845 https://doi.org/10.1119/10.0009688 mailto:eric.davidson@email.ucr.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 26, issue 1 may 02, 2025 issn 1099-839x returning to reach higher: exploring the perceptions and lived experiences of adult learners pursuing bachelor's degrees tijuana rollins, edd university of central florida abstract: as adult learners increasingly seek bachelor’s degrees for career advancement and personal fulfillment, understanding their unique challenges and experiences becomes crucial for higher education institutions. this study focuses on the academic journeys of nine adult learners aged 29 to 53 who attended community colleges in florida before seeking a bachelor's degree at one of florida's public universities. using schlossberg's (1989) transition theory and weiner's (1972) attribution theory as frameworks, this study examines participants' perceptions of the situational and dispositional experiences that impact their pursuit of a bachelor’s degree. the results revealed narrative themes categorized as learning curves, demotivating experiences, and influential factors, including balancing multiple responsibilities, overcoming financial aid policy constraints, and the need for strong support systems to sustain their academic persistence. this study highlights the resilience and determination of adult learners in achieving their educational goals despite challenges. the findings offer practical insights and recommendations for higher education practitioners to better support adult learners in undergraduate programs, emphasizing the importance of tailored student services and flexible academic policies that support their retention. keywords: academic persistence, adult learners, non-traditional students, community college transfer students, transfer student capital citation: rollins, t. (2025). returning to reach higher: exploring the perceptions and lived experiences of adult learners pursuing bachelor’s degrees. current issues in education, 26(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2276 accepted: march 8, 2025 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2276 rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 2 returning to reach higher: exploring the perceptions and lived experiences of adult learners pursuing bachelor's degrees higher education is significantly shifting, with a new standard emerging in student enrollment. current trends project an increase in adult learner college enrollment and a decrease in traditional student enrollment by 2024, with continued demographic changes through 2027 (huron et al., 2019; gardner et al., 2020). this article, therefore, is not just an exploration of adult learners' experiences but a timely and relevant examination of a growing demographic in higher education. the article highlights the experiences of adult learners who have returned to college to pursue their goal of earning a bachelor’s degree. approximately one-third of today’s undergraduate college students are adult learners (gardner et al., 2020; bahr et al., 2021). formerly known as non-traditional students, adult learners are individuals aged 25 and older actively pursuing postsecondary education (chung et al., 2017; karmelita, 2020). adult learners may have little to no postsecondary education experience, identify as parents, are most likely employed full-time while attending college part-time, and are typically financially independent (chung et al., 2017; schwehm, 2017; karmelita, 2020). many of these factors contribute to their less-than-average degree-completion rates. adult learners who return to postsecondary institutions to pursue bachelor’s degrees are challenged to overcome the odds of achievement. research indicates that students ages 25 and older often complete postsecondary education at lower rates than students ages 18 – 24 (bahr et al., 2021). while approximately 80% of community college students aspire to transfer to a university, only 33% of them transfer to a university within six years, and of those, 35% obtain a bachelor’s degree (chung et al., 2017; schwehm, 2017; karmelita, 2020; the city university of new york (cuny) office of policy research, 2021; worsham et al., 2021). another significant aspect about adult learners is that there pursuit of increased wages, career advancement, and personal growth often drives their return to college, and they often choose the shortest amount of time and least expensive route to earning a degree (karmelita, 2020; bahr, 2021). therefore, it is common for learners ages 25 and older to enroll at community colleges for decreased tuition costs and convenience when choosing a pathway to begin a bachelor’s degree (causey et al., 2020; kamer, 2023). exploring students’ experiences of these degree pathways can reveal the policies and common approaches used to support adult learner undergraduate students. considering the increasing enrollment of adult learners, analyzing these experiences can also help reshape traditional campus culture to better serve current and future student enrollment trends. in examining the lived experiences of adult learners in pursuit of bachelor’s degrees, schlossberg’s (1989) transition theory and weiner’s (1972) attribution theory guided the following research questions: (1) what are the experiences of adult learners in florida who return to community colleges and transfer to a university to pursue a bachelor's degree? (2) how do these adult learners attribute the experiences that impact their persistence? background community colleges, a well-known middle ground between secondary education and four-year institutions, initially filled a gap between continued education and graduating from high school for those who chose not to complete a four-year degree (handel, 2021). over time, states developed articulation agreements to bridge the gap between affordability and accessibility for community college students to continue their education. mainly, articulation agreements created by the state of florida (also known as 2+2 transfer pathways) are intended to “provide rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 3 students access to a seamless path toward a bachelor’s degree no matter where in the state a student lives” (florida college access network, 2018, p.1). therefore, community colleges and universities are linked in a mutually reliant relationship. the florida postsecondary system was structured with two-year community colleges serving as transfer schools for four-year universities (backes & velez, 2014; bragg, 2017). in florida, articulation agreements were enacted due to transfer inefficiencies: time spent on degree completion and minimizing excess credit hours of transfer students (worsham et al., 2021). these agreements permit two-year and four-year institutions to collaborate and achieve standards for directed pathways for students who plan to transition into a four-year institution. about 37 percent of florida’s undergraduate students are 25 or older, with one institution reporting nearly half of its community college student population as non-traditional (florida college access network, 2018; seminole state college, n.d.). transfer and transition processes begin before completing the associate of arts (a.a.) degree and continue through admission and orientation within the four-year institution. students are expected to complete specific general education courses required by the state of florida, in addition to the admission requirements of the in-state four-year institutions (backes & velez, 2014; florida college access network, 2018; jabbar et al., 2021; worsham et al., 2021). furthermore, florida was selected for this study because its public universities rely on transfer student success (e.g., bachelor’s degree completion rates) as one of the metrics to meet for state government funding. recognizing the benefits of simplified transfer processes for student achievement, institutions are increasing their investment in strengthening these paths. improved transfer streamlining can increase transfer students' retention and graduation rates at four-year colleges (ortagus et al., 2020). many adult learners, in turn, enroll in community college transition programs to pursue a bachelor's degree at a nearby institution. despite these efforts, community college graduates often trail first-time-in-college (ftic) students in completing university bachelor’s degrees (grubbs, 2020; the city university of new york (cuny) office of policy research, 2021). problem statement a substantial body of research has explored the factors influencing transfer students’ experiences moving from community colleges to four-year institutions (townsend, 2008; allen et al., 2014; xu et al., 2018; lukszo & hayes, 2019; umbach et al., 2019; elliot & lakin, 2020). for example, umbach et al. (2019) examined community college institutional traits associated with transfer student degree completion at a public four-year institution. the researchers examined how individual pre-transfer measures (e.g., number of credit hours and community college grade point average) and demographics are related to four-year institutional success. the results demonstrated that community college grade point averages (gpas) statistically significantly predicted academic success at four-year institutions. furthermore, the study found that transfer students from community colleges near public four-year institutions tended to have higher gpas than those from other community colleges (umbach et al., 2019). however, the study did not account for age-related factors or examine individual behavioral and situational elements underpinning transfer students’ persistence. factors influencing transfer student experiences is also exemplified in the work undertaken by lukszo & hayes (2019) who investigated how community college students acquired and used transfer student capital (tsc) to navigate the transfer process. according to lukszo and hayes (2019), tsc refers to the resources students use to gather academic, social, rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 4 and navigational resources that empower them to navigate the transition between institutions toward academic achievement. these authors found that students rely on the assistance of their peers, instructors, administrative personnel, and academic advisors to transfer to four-year colleges effectively. moser (2014) also found that students are more satisfied with their transfer experience when they know how to pay for their education and have direct contact with university staff members. while these findings reveal the reasons for student success, they do not offer reasons why transfer students, specifically adult learners, graduate at lower rates than traditional students. this study addresses this gap in the literature by exploring transfer student experiences, the choices they made that are influenced by these experiences, through the lens of adult learners. much of the previous research on transfer students has been exploratory through broad perspectives that overlooks differences among sub-groups based on age, race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. as a result, limited research examines the experiences of adult learners who transfer. while adult learners sometimes complete a bachelor's degree, they are likelier to drop out of an institution before earning their degree (starobin et al., 2016; chung et al., 2017). thus, there is a need to explore adult learners' experiences beyond self-efficacy and gpas, particularly for those who attend community colleges intending to transfer to a university to get a bachelor's degree. this is especially relevant given that less than one-sixth of community college students who transfer with associate degrees to four-year universities complete their degrees (martin et al., 2014; shaw et al., 2019). therefore, this study aims to inform higher education practitioners must understand the contextual elements influencing adult learners' decisions, outcomes, and perseverance in pursuing a bachelor's degree. theoretical framework attribution and transition theories were employed to analyze adult learners' experiences as transfer students. these frameworks provide a distinct perspective on how the situational and dispositional aspects of returning to school and transferring across institutions influence adult learnerpersistence. attribution theory (weiner, 1972) has been used throughout educational research to understand how individuals perceive why experiences happen and the subsequent outcomes from those experiences (tarman, 2012; gaier, 2015; li et al., 2020). seminal research on attribution theory examined how educators’ and students’ causal beliefs influence their academic achievement. weiner (1972) found that how individuals explain the reasoning behind their successes and failures influences their feelings about the outcomes of those experiences. when individuals attribute their success or failure to specific causes, such as their effort or external factors, it can impact their drive toward achievement. therefore, different people will have various ways of interpreting why things happen, and these interpretations can be linked to how motivated they are to succeed. in essence, attributions are what individuals think about the causes of their successes and failures, and how these outcomes are perceived directly influences their choices (weiner, 1972; harrington, 2018). according to weiner (1972), the distribution of an individual’s responsibilities influences future decisions and behavior. people construct beliefs based on their perceptions of an experience. this is significant because attributions reflect human opinions about the sources or causes of success and failure (weiner, 2005). to examine how individuals ascribe the reasons for their experiences and outcomes, the perceptions of individual events are grouped under an internal or external locus of control lens. locus of control refers to people's beliefs about whether the outcomes they experience result from their actions or external forces such as fate, luck, or circumstances beyond their control rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 5 (sagone & caroli, 2016). for example, students exhibit an internal locus of control when attributing their successes and failures to their actions. in contrast, when students attribute their losses to task difficulty or bad luck, they tend to have an external locus of control (thoron & bunch, 2017; harrington, 2018). however, internal and external loci are fluid and can change based on positive or negative experiences (barclay, 2017). students may perceive situations as either within or outside their control, and these interpretations are shaped by their experiences, which in turn influence how they understand their role in the outcomes. ability and task difficulty are two factors of attribution theory that rely on a long-term, stable connection between the causal element and the behavior (or outcome) (weiner, 1972). for example, when people explain why things happen, they sometimes say it is because of factors beyond their control—essentially, they attribute outcomes to luck (thoron & bunch, 2017; weiner, 2005). in contrast, people make unstable attributions when they believe that events occur due to factors they can control—like a student deciding to study more after a poor exam grade. in short, when people believe that outcomes are fixed and beyond their control, they are less likely to think they can change them (thoron & bunch, 2017). conversely, people feel greater control when they view outcomes as changeable. ultimately, everyday experiences and interactions influence how much control people beleive they have in various situations. institutional policies, accessibility, course availability, and the quality of student support are all factors beyond a student's control. thus, controllability interacts with a person's sense of control over their life. understanding the locus of control becomes essential for determining whether participants make decisions due to situational or dispositional factors. situational factors include cultural norms, peer pressure, rewards, or punishments, whereas dispositional factors include personality traits, work ethic, attitudes, and individual values (weiner, 2005). transition theory was applied in conjunction with attribution theory. according to schlossberg (1989), ‘‘transition theory can be applied to…young or old, male, female, minority, or majority, urban or rural’’ (p. 13). schlossberg’s (1989) transition theory created a lens for understanding circumstances that cause a shift in relationships, routines, assumptions, or roles in the context of one’s self, career, family, health, or financial situation. adult learners who transfer to universities to pursue bachelor's degrees rely heavily on positive student experiences (tinto, 1988; shaw et al., 2019; worsham et al., 2021). over time, transitions occur in phases known as moving in, moving through, or moving out (schlossberg, 1989). transitions typically begin with an ending and a beginning, such as finishing at one college and beginning at another (chickering & schlossberg, 2002; anderson et al., 2012; barclay, 2017). a critical element of adult learnerstudent success is the adult learner’s ability to integrate into the college environment. one of the ways students can successfully integrate into new environments is through mattering (schlossberg, 1989). according to rosenberg and mccullough (1981), mattering is “the feeling that others depend on us, are interested in us, are concerned with our fate” (p. 165). a symbiotic relationship exists between mattering and what schlossberg (1989) refers to as feelings of marginality for adult learners. marginality, or the feeling of exclusion, can intersect with various aspects of identity, such as age, race, gender, low socioeconomic status, and sexuality, and can significantly influence a student's sense of inclusion in collegiate settings. mattering is significant because it impacts learners' sense of control, belonging, and ability to integrate into a new environment. returning to school or transferring from one institution to another will likely lead to increased feelings of exclusion if the environment is unwelcoming or difficult to integrate (schlossberg, 1989). campus cultures that cater to traditional-age students and perpetuate the stigma often associated with being a transfer student may lead to adult rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 6 learners' feeling marginalized or excluded in traditional higher education institutions due to their age. the stigma associated with state college affilliation and age comparisons between traditional-age students and adult learners can negatively influence adult learners’ sense of belonging in unwelcoming academic environments (shaw et al., 2019; karmelita, 2020; worsham et al., 2021). depending on the extent of a change a person experiences, these feelings can be temporary or permanent. socially constructed exclusion based on age is subtle when those affected perform an essential role in their community (schlossberg, 1989). this means that the stigma of ageism is minimized when adult learners can contribute meaningfully to their academic community (e.g. serving on advisory boards or leading mentoring programs on college campuses). institutions can improve students' feelings of belonging and bridge age-based exclusion gaps by welcoming new students with rituals or other strategies that help them acclimate to their new surroundings and offer a sense of belonging. rituals can include new student orientations and other welcome events that help support student’s feelings of inclusion during transitions (tinto, 1988; schlossberg, 1989). additional examples include highlighting adult learners in a school newsletters or providing fellowship and other opportunities traditionally offered to ftic students. schlossberg’s (2011) four s’s, including situation, self, supports, and strategies, categorize the coping techniques students in transition use to manage the changes they experience. individuals might adapt well to utilizing one strategy over another (schlossberg, 2011). the first factor of coping pertains to an individual’s situation. when a transition coincides with another life event, the naure of those events influences how individuals process the occurrence (schlossberg, 2011; barclay, 2017). second, self reflects an individual’s ability to cope with certain situations (schlossberg, 2011). a person’s perception of whether an event is in their control or not (i.e., locus of control) influences whether that person opts for an optimistic or pessimistic view of the event (schlossberg, 2011; sagone & caroli, 2016). consequently, an individual’s ability to persevere in changing environments is directly connected to their level of optimism. third, the support provided to individuals in transition is imperative to their sense of security (schlossberg, 2011). a lack of support may influence how well individuals adapt to changing environments. fourth, as schlossberg (2011) explained, an individuals' strategies help them adjust to changing environments. for example, an individual who is experiencing stress may decide to attend therapy. table 1 provides examples of anticipated, unanticipated, and non-events that precede or often ignite the 4s process. table 1 phases of transition anticipated transition unanticipated transition non-event graduation birth of a baby retirement marriage transferring between institutions career change illness death loss of employment job promotion natural disasters anticipated events that failed to occur note. an overview of the stage’s individual experiences when navigating significant life changes. adapted from schlossberg’s (2011) transition model. source: schlossberg’s (2011) transition model. rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 7 as with attribution theory, transitions alter individuals’ perceptions of their good or bad reality. according to schlossberg (2011), the four coping stages (i.e., the four s’s) help us understand how individual’s react to change and how they are affected by transitions. individuals' responses are determined by how they interpret difficulties in conjunction with other life events, their internal coping abilities, whether they believe the outcomes are manageable, and the supports they receive during those events (schlossberg, 2011; sagone & caroli, 2016; barclay, 2017). therefore, coping strategies do not change a transition or event, but can alter how an individual perceives a transition or event, and even facilitate the acceptance of a transition. methods participants and sampling procedures for this study, i recruited adult learners aged 25 and older seeking a bachelor’s degree at two public universities in florida. nine participants, aged 29 to 53, were interviewed using a purposive qualitative approach, focusing on descriptive data relevant to this study (fraenkel et al., 2012). participants attended community colleges and universities, with student populations between 38,000 and 69,000, within three years of the data collection. participants were identified via email in cooperation with each research site’s compliance offices. as a higher education administrator at one site, i had pre‐authorized access to that institution’s student database, which i queried to locate transfer students (i.e., students who transferred within the past three academic years) with an associate degree. i obtained irb approval at the second site by providing a copy of the first site's irb approval letter, a digital copy of the participant solicitation email, and a digital flyer distributed to all transfer students aged 25 or older. the policy is limited to three email solicitations per calendar year. these procedures enhanced the study’s validity by ensuring all identified transfer students received correspondence to their designated student email accounts. the digital flyer provided details of the study, the target audience, and my contact information, and was disseminated to participants at two-member institutions within florida. respondents answered pre‐screening questions to confirm they were at least 25 years old, had attended a regional community college, earned an associate degree, and transferred to a regional university. in exchange for contributing to this study, participants received a $5 amazon e‐gift card. all names, including institution names, are pseudonyms to protect the participants’ identities. data collection and analysis this single-semester study included 10 participants. past studies used an average of seven participants to conduct narrative research on adult learners (karmelita, 2018; nuriddin-little, 2020; wang & geale, 2015). additionally, this range of participants is not atypical for “sampling to the point of redundancy” when no additional information is brought forth from the data (patton, 2002; butina, 2015, p. 192). using riessman’s (1993) narrative analysis approach, participants completed semi-structured interviews between june 2022 and september 2022, providing details about their backgrounds, ages, and educational experiences. this step was simplified by reframing and contextualizing participant narratives in a way that portrayed each participant's identity (wang & geale, 2015). through storytelling, participants provided details that explained the experiences they viewed as meaningful to them and what they felt an audience rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 8 should know (denzin, 1989). while there are several methodologies of narrative inquiry, the data in this study were derived from topical stories provided by participants that were contextualized around their student experiences (clandinin & connelly, 2000). sixty to ninety-minute interviews were recorded, transcribed, and revised for corrections via video and audio crossreferencing. participants co-constructed their narratives through validation checks during and after data collection. validation checks, also known as member checking, guide researchers in negotiating the meaning of the stories participants describe during storytelling (creswell & miller, 2000). narrative analysis to begin the data analysis, i provided each participant with electronic copies of their interview transcriptions for member checking and cross-referenced them with audio recordings for accuracy. i analyzed the data by breaking stories into blocks representing complete narrative sections and creating core concepts by comparing story codes across interviews. i reduced each transcript into core narratives and numbered each line to simplify comparisons. as reissman (1993) notes, narrative blocks transform "the whole story" into comparable parts (p. 43). next, i applied bell’s (1988, 2002) method by reading each transcript to identify stories and labeling them based on event type using delve software. for clarity, each story was segmented into components (abstract, orientation, conflicting action, resolution, and evaluation). i grouped similar narrative codes to facilitate participant comparisons and conducted my analysis through textual storyboarding (reissman, 1993). this method enabled a more nuanced understanding of participants' perceptions of the experiences that influenced their decision-making and progress toward completing their bachelor’s degrees. the data is triangulated through the diversity of participants’ identities, inclduing "different people or groups" (e.g., diverse genders, ages, races, and ethnicities), varying life experiences, and participants "from different places" (carlson, 2010, p. 1104). results the following participant profiles are narrative summaries encompassing the participants’ experiences within the scholarly discourse on adult learning as community college transfer students. comprehensive narratives included transcriptions of educational experiences, plots, characters, and settings but did not encompass their entire lives (clandinin & connelly, 2000). table 2 participant demographics pseudonym first generation age ethnicity /gender state college transfer university sandra yes 29 black/african american woman crocodile state college pineapple university rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 9 note. participant demographics: a summary of key characteristics (e.g., age, gender, academic background) of the study sample. community colleges in florida are referred to as state colleges and are referenced as such throughout the remainder of this study. participants attended various state colleges and enrolled in two public universities, strawberry and pineapple universities. the participants were transfer students who each attended a state college and then transferred to a university between the fall 2019 and spring 2022 semesters. three participants completed their bachelor’s degrees within one year of the data collection. participants identify as wives, mothers, fathers, daughters, sisters, fiancés, and employees, except nathan, a full-time stay-at-home dad and student. the transcribed data were used to depict the following narratives, which served as a lens to evaluate the research topics addressed in this study. darla yes 50 white woman peacock state college pineapple university joshua yes 33 white man crane state college pineapple university maria yes 49 hispanic woman crane state college pineapple university chelsea yes 32 white woman orange flower state college strawberry university – atlantic campus nathan no 42 white man golden state college strawberry university – main campus tracy no 30 white woman golden state college strawberry university – main campus daphne phoenix yes 28 white woman orange flower state college strawberry university – atlantic campus william yes 53 white man atlantic reef state college strawberry university – main campus rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 10 sandra sandra, 29, a first-generation college graduate and mother of a 6-year-old, graduated with her bachelor's degree in may 2022. she began working full-time and studying part-time at flamingo university immediately after high school but was dismissed after her grandfather's death; she then transferred to crocodile state college and finally to pineapple university to complete her degree. she shared, “i stopped going to classes, i stopped doing everything, and i, uh, flunked out of flamingo university, and i had to come back home.” after some time, sandra enrolled in crane state college, and explained: so, once i um (participant pause) kind of like forgave myself for that [failing out of flamingo university]. i blamed god a lot about it and once i overstepped that and did what i needed to do to become better for myself, i was able to get into school, pay out of pocket, get to where i needed to be to do that and just be who i needed to be and be able to graduate and like i said it's nobody but god. sandra unenrolled from crane state college and began school at crocodile state college to complete the remainder of an a.a. degree. she transferred to pineapple university and balanced full-time employment with parenting and attending school part-time. sandra used family and church support to encourage her to complete a bachelor’s degree program. while attending crocodile state college, she worked part-time as a substitute teacher, which inspired her desire to become a licensed schoolteacher. this role helped to finance her education since she was ineligible for financial aid, resulting from a below-average cumulative grade point average that began at flamingo university. “i could not be a teacher without a bachelor’s degree... [which] pushed me to do that [obtain a bachelor’s degree] even more.” sandra also attributed her academic persistence to her daughter, stating, “i knew i needed a better education to provide a life for her.” sandra described her transition to pineapple university was “smooth” because, as she explained, “they [student services advisors] gave me everything i needed and told me who i needed to talk to and apply at, so it was pretty great.” an advisor at crocodile state college outlined a success plan for sandra and provided her with a list of contacts within pineapple university's undergraduate education department. sandra completed most of her classes at crocodile state college online, making it easier to balance work and parental duties. she compared the differences between entering college as an ftic student and becoming an adult learner who was also a parent. i had a full-time job as well, so it was a lot going on, when i first transferred to pineapple university…so it was a lot to handle and very different than just being a teenager going to college for the first time and being able to do what you want to with no children. additioanlly, sandra explained how it was “difficult trying to get used to kind of part-time to balance it. the workload for classes…the workload of work, motherhood (participant pause) all that.” there was one instance when an online course at pineapple university became difficult, which resulted in course failure. she described the course's workload was unsustainable because of the time required to finish the assignments. she decided to retake the course in person for her second attempt but did not achieve a passing grade. she then “cut back at work” and placed more rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 11 effort into completing the required course during her third and final attempt at passing the course, which was successful. sandra described how she sacrificed sleep to write papers and complete assignments for class late at night after her daughter fell asleep. this course was one of sandra's final courses to earn her bachelor’s degree successfully. ultimately, sandra graduated from pineapple university within three academic years of transferring. darla darla, 50, identified as a wife and mother in her final term at pineapple university. despite a recent breast cancer diagnosis, she balanced part-time studies with parenting after attending peacock state college. darla spoke with pride of earning as and bs since returning to college as an adult learner and exuded a jovial demeanor as she provided her narrative. much of darla’s collegiate experience was as a part-time student, balancing academics and parenting. she emphasized, “i never wanted...college homework to get in the way of the time with my kids.” this was a recurring theme throughout the interview. darla initially attended peacock state college twice before returning to complete an associate degree, motivated by her love of learning. she shared, “i love the process of learning, and i feel like you grow as a person when you get to learn new things.” when asked to describe a time when plans did not go as expected, she discussed moments when her aspirations failed due to fear of failure. this fear led darla to enroll in a licensed practical nurse (lpn) program immediately following high school rather than attending a state college or university. since childhood, she tended to avoid situations where there was a chance she would not do well. thus, darla attempted to complete an lpn to registered nurse (rn) program but realized she preferred healthcare administration over nursing. during our discussion, darla explained that her desire to pursue an rn license was motivated by external expectations. for example, she described when an academic advisor attempted to convince her to remain in the lpn to rn program. once she acknowledged that this was no longer a career trajectory she wanted to pursue, the advisor introduced her to the transition program at pineapple university where she could earn a bachelor’s degree. with over 15 years of experience in healthcare administration, she wanted to obtain a bachelor’s degree in the field; thus. encouraged by her husband and a close friend, she pursued a bachelor’s degree in healthcare administration. she shared, “but i also raised my two kids; that was so important to me to be there at their sporting events.” due to part-time enrollment, darla took several years to complete her a.a. degree from the state college. she faced some administrative challenges with transcripts and updated records upon transferring to pineapple university and quickly built a relationship with the program advisor at the university to help resolve the issues. darla enrolled as an online student, completing courses at pineapple university with six credit hours each term. she explained that she preferred online school "because i can do it on, in my own time, and i don’t have somebody else wasting my time [in the classroom].” this quote describes her perspective of attending in-person courses with traditional-age students. she increased her credit load to 10-12 hours per term once she determined the need to increase the speed of her degree completion. she said, “if i continue to take just two classes, this is going to take me forever to get through.” darla then added two minors to her degree program once she became comfortable balancing home and school responsibilities. darla faced multiple life events, including a motorcycle accident that briefly deterred her academic studies and a breast cancer diagnosis. she shared her experinces, stating, “that's probably been the hardest thing...i've still rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 12 turned every assignment in on time...done everything” [while undergoing chemotherapy]. darla described how she fulfills her academic pursuits by working ahead, staying organized, and planning for her homework, ultimately succeeding despite the challenges she faced. joshua joshua, 33, is a second-year, part-time student at pineapple university majoring in business. he is a full-time blue-collar employee, a husband, and a father of small children. joshua initially enrolled in crane state college in 2019 to pursue accounting after deciding against an emergency medical technician career. joshua explained his experiences with receiving inadequate academic advice at crane college, and he was unsure if he had earned an aa degree before transferring. he sought support from pineapple university counselors stationed at crane. joshua described how he felt when he transitioned to pineapple university as "mostly excited because it was the halfway mark to the halfway point of a degree and career in accounting." he found his onboarding experience at pineapple university's new student orientation stimulating and enjoyable, and he especially appreciated that the orientation suited his degree. joshua first learned about pineapple university from a professor who taught at crane college and pineapple university, and through a social media community for pineapple university's business majors. he praised crane state college's encouraging environment: i don't know how they find these professors that genuinely care, but you can tell that most...eight out of ten of the professors at crane genuinely care about the students...that's at least the vibe that i got. however, joshua’s college experience was impacted by the covid-19 pandemic, leading him to go from in-person to fully remote classes. he explained, “i didn’t realize how burnt out i was until driving this past semester to pineapple university.” he has since returned to attending classes in person three to four times a week: “during the spring was brutal...i realized how burnt out i was during the spring, and i’m like, ‘wow i gotta wrap this up because this driving is killing me.’” he highlighted the convenience of remote learning and remotely meeting with teachers, explaining that he felt more at ease asking the course instructor questions about course content at the end of class meetings. since enrolling at pineapple university in 2020 (the same semester as the global pandemic), he has never met with an academic advisor and uses online course catalogs to plan future courses. he expects to graduate nearly four years after enrolling. knowing he might apply for and receive pell grants and scholarships, he limited his course load to nine credits at a time, depending on tuition expenses and self-financing. when asked about transfer student challenges, joshua recalled dropping an accounting class during his first semester to avoid failing. joshua noted that courses at pineapple university were significantly more challenging than those at crane college. “i would say i had to study for crane’s classes maybe 60% of what i had to study for pineapple university classes.” he adjusted his time management and prepared to retake the course. he explained that his family plans and the financial benefits of completing his degree motivate him: “a career change will provide the flexibility and freedom to do things with friends and family that i might not be able to do in another job that didn’t pay as good.” rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 13 maria maria, 49, is the mother of a traditional college student and has worked full-time as an adult learner. seeking career advancement and personal growth, she began her college journey over 30 years ago at lady liberty community college, where she completed several courses before discontinuing her studies. more than twenty years later, she enrolled at crane community college to complete the associate degree she had started at lady liberty. as a first-generation college graduate, maria finished pineapple university in seven semesters, leveraging previously earned credits from lady liberty and crane community college to meet her associate and bachelor’s degree requirements and accelerate her time-to-degree completion. although maria graduated with a degree in interdisciplinary studies, she originally planned to pursue a degree in public affairs upon transfer to pineapple university. she described the initial interactions with advising during her new student orientation at pineapple university as discouraging, explaining, i don't know why he discouraged me, but the first thing that he said is, ‘you don't want to go into public affairs…there's no– there's no growth for you there. it's not going to be easy you – you're, you're…you're not gonna benefit from it. consequently, maria doubted her ability to succeed in college, which led to tears and feelings of inadequacy. she asked herlsef, “why am i going back to school at this late stage of life?” maria described a vulnerable interaction with one of her professors, stating that it was “frightening to have to tell a professor, ‘i don't know if i’m smart enough to do that assignment (participant cried).’” maria explained the crucial role of her crane college professors in helping her achieve her goal of earning a bachelor’s degree. she recounted the substantial support and reassurance from professors and colleagues that motivated her to continue her education. maria also faced obstacles when registering for classes during her second semester at pineapple university. all the required courses for her degree program were enrolled to capacity, therefore, she could not enroll in pre-requisite courses needed for future coursework. this resulted in fears and worry about prolonging the time to degree completion. maria met with a healthcare services academic advising office counselor to help her navigate the program’s trajectory and course requirements. she described this interaction as “warm, welcoming, and encouraging, and passionate about that arena of study.” maria continued, explaining, “they (student services) actually made a personal connection with me…so in that regard the transfer process was easier, but first three semesters i was pretty much swimming out in the sea by myself.” maria shared her life experiences with peers and professors as an approach to connecting with them. she explained, “i think once i got over the intimidation of, ‘i’m the oldest one in the room,’ and i embraced it, and i have a voice.” maria welcomed the exchange of information with her professors and peers, which significantly aided her progression towards her degree. she recalled, “it was good to do those exchanges of thoughts, and it took, you know, it took about five classes – yeah, about five or six classes at pineapple university to get to that point.” maria completed her aa degree in two years at the state college and her bachelor’s degree in seven semesters at pineapple university. she took on a full-time schedule each semester and applied her professional work experiences to the classroom to help her navigate the coursework. rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 14 chelsea chelsea is 32 years old. she is enrolled at strawberry university and does not have any children. she is completing her bachelor's degree in communication at strawberry university and has completed one year of coursework. chelsea values the legacy of her late grandfather, a graduate of strawberry university, and has spoken about him several times. an intense hurricane disrupted her life, prompting her to return to orange flower community college after several years of absence. she explained her decision, “i lost everything and when you lose everything (participant sighs) you – where do you have? where else do you have to go? and the only place i wanted to go was back to school.” during her final semester at orange flower state college, chelsea discovered that she needed to complete a state civic literacy exam, which nearly prevented her a.a. degree from being conferred. despite her lack of preparation, she overcame this barrier by signing up for the computer-based exam on campus. she recalled, "well, pass or fail…i have to at least try. i don't want to just stop this close to the finish line." however, she learned she was exempt from the requirement since her first college attempt was years before the policy’s implementation. chelsea became acquainted with an administrative staff member, named susan, in the graduation department whom she referred to as her “guardian angel.” susan assisted chelsea in getting an exemption from the state’s civic literacy requirement. from chelsea’s perspective, failing the exam would have been detrimental to her future success if she had not gotten the exemption. she recounted, if it weren’t for susan (participant laughs) i don't know that i would have graduated from orange flower – which would have screwed me because it would have screwed me out of pell grant money for strawberry university. it could have screwed me getting into strawberry university entirely like it really could have jeopardized my whole future – that stupid test. chelsea also described her experiences at the state college as supportive, especially for her as a returning, older student; stating, “orange flower has a great support to the system for students. i mean, there are academic labs set up all over that campus. there are peer tutoring centers that are heavily advertised.” however, chelsea struggled to develop a sense of belonging upon transferring to strawberry university. she exaplined, “strawberry university – atlantic is not set up that way. you get on campus. you are on your own. there are no road maps… there, there, you, you, you, just…you're kind of just thrown to the wolves.” when asked about what motivated her to pursue her bachelor’s degree, chelsea highlighted the validation she felt upon seeing her name on her aa degree: “i want that feeling. i'm chasing that feeling again, that feeling of accomplishment… like earning a degree. i've never felt so elated in my life.” chelsea also explained that another reason she is pursuing a bachelor’s degree is to take care of her mother: i'm doing it for the degree...i need a bachelor's degree. i need that piece of paper. i need this piece of paper to get me a real job, and i need to do it that way my mom (participant paused) so she doesn't have to worry. rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 15 nathan nathan, 42, a full-time husband and stay-at-home father attending strawberry university, is completing double bachelor’s degree programs in his final semester. he first attempted college 25 years ago at a new york institution. he made three attempts before returning to golden state college in 2018. he explained that, for him, “college never stuck.” he stated, because i had to relearn how to be a student, because, you know, there was a….so i, i graduated high school in 1997 so i went….my first college was in ‘97. the second attempt was in ‘98, and then it was 2008 when i tried culinary school. nathan encountered admission challenges at golden state college due to unpaid tuition from a previous institution. he shared, “i somehow had not paid off the actual tuition, so i had to deal with paying that off, and i had to get all my transcripts, which was a pain in the butt.” despite not initially qualifying for financial aid, nathan was accepted to golden state college and began his fourth attempt at college. the state college assisted him with institutional grant funds to prevent a fourth dropout and paid his tuition for the first term. he spent two years at golden state college and, after taking a semester off, transferred to strawberry university in 2020. he explained that he “felt like initially like ‘this isn't even going to work like, why am i trying to do this? i'm 38 years old, and you know this isn't gonna work.’ but once i got through that, it started to become easier.” nathan initially attended golden state college as an online student, which was convenient for his schedule as a stay-at-home parent. nathan began at strawberry university with courses 100% online due to the global pandemic but transitioned to in-person classes by his second semester. he explained, “there was a learning curve from switching.” he found a difference in teaching styles between the professors at golden state college and strawberry university, with some professors at the latter being less invested in student success: he recounted, “some of my professors are clearly—they don't care. they're just teaching their class, and if you fail, you fail.” before transferring to strawberry university, nathan completed an associate degree at golden state college. while he described the new student orientation at strawberry university as “good,” he felt that it did not fully prepare him for the academic rigor required. he had to relearn the customs of student life, which was made easier by golden state college's flexible online coursework. again, nathan stated, "i had to kind of relearn how to be a student." he was also challenged with adjusting to the pace and workload at strawberry university compared to golden state college. he explained, “golden state college was very student-friendly, and strawberry university, at least in my first semester, was not so student-friendly. it was very much kind of like sink or swim.” overcoming his first semester and earning all a’s gave nathan the confidence to continue. he recounted, “getting through that first semester, getting all a's really gave me the confidence like, ‘ok, i can do this.’” however, he was required to complete remedial math at golden state college due to a difference in skill level and academic rigor between the state college and the university. “i had to do remedial math at golden state college…so that was fun.” nathan pursued his academic path without much assistance from academic advising at golden state college but utilized advising at strawberry university when needed. he managed excess credit hours and financial challenges, including a scholarship from golden state college. since transferring to strawberry university, nathan joined a greek letter organization for his rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 16 major but has limited participation due to at-home obligations. his career goals motivate him to pursue a degree, as he explained how he is a stay-at-home father who previously worked fulltime as a chef and wanted to shift professions. he stated, “an education was the only real door to open.” he completed two separate degrees within two years and one semester after transferring from golden state college with his associate degree. with his wife's support, he completed classes every summer, taking 1215 credits each term, and full-time enrollment in the fall and spring semesters. he recounted this expeience, “that one summer i did 15 [credits] was crazy. i did one course that went the entire summer, and then four short courses, two in the beginning of the summer and two at the end of the summer.” tracy tracy, a 30-year-old mother majoring in education at a full-time university, returned to college driven by her longstanding desire to become a teacher. her academic journey began at age 16 as a dual enrollment student at golden state college. after a break from school due to motherhood, she returned to her education at age 20 and completed an aa degree. later, she enrolled again at golden state college to take prerequisite courses for a chemistry major at strawberry university to join her family’s water quality business. however, struggles with chemistry led her to change direction. in 2019, she decided to pursue teaching. a former pastry chef who takes pride in her culinary skills, tracy reentered college with a well-mapped plan to earn a bachelor’s degree that reflects her passion for teaching and commitment to personal growth. she explained, "i've always wanted to be a teacher, but i finally just got the nerve to figure out how to do it.” during her fourth return to golden state college, she completed the 90 credit hours she had been working toward since she was 16. then, at 28, she transferred to strawberry university. planning significantly impacted tracy’s success, as she emphasized having her bachelor’s program "mapped out" from start to finish. this meticulous planning helped her manage multiple obligations, including balance parenting with her studies. tracy involves her 10-year-old in her studying, which aids in overcoming the challenge of balancing these roles. tracy described her transition to strawberry university as "smooth" and said that she did not face significant obstacles during matriculation. however, her new student orientation experience differed from her expectations. she recalled, "they talked a lot about parking and football games and meal plans...what i wanted to know more about was how to get scholarships." she found connecting with younger students challenging, feeling somewhat like an outsider. despite this, she tried connecting with peers through group assignments and navigating new software programs. she found solace in her rapport with faculty, particularly one professor who provided valuable information on financial resources and scholarships, which tracy initially struggled to find independently. she describes herself as "proud to be a student" and looks forward to earning her degree; stating, "i'll be proud with my degree and i'm gonna work my butt off so i don't have to pay for very much of it” daphne-phoenix daphne-phoenix, a 28-year-old first-generation college graduate and mother of two, began her academic journey at age 15 after earning a ged, though she stopped attending after a few weeks. returning to college in the summer of 2018, daphne-phoenix earned an aa from orange flower state college in the summer of 2020. she then transferred to strawberry rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 17 university, atlantic campus, and completed her first bachelor’s degree in 2021. as a seconddegree-seeking student, she has leveraged her life experiences to overcome numerous obstacles and pursue an education that she hopes will positively impact society. she recalled that she “had an f and two withdrawals when i went back in [to college] when i was 25 years old. that's what i had to work with. i was on community probation or uh financial aid probation and uh academic probation. being placed on academic probation when she returned to college, hindered daphnephoenix from qualifying for financial aid during her first semester at orange flower state college in 2018. therefore, she paid tuition and fees out-of-pocket during her first semester until she regained satisfactory academic progress (sap), which qualified her for financial aid. upon returning to college, she was hesitant about her course load, attributing much of her apprehension to doubts about her academic potential. she said, “i only took three classes because i, i didn't know what school was like, and i wasn't really sure what my capabilities were.” by her final semester at orange flower state college, the academic department had authorized her to earn up to 21 credit hours per semester. she explained, “after i took three classes, i realized i could handle it. i started taking four, and i got to the point where i was taking seven classes a semester.” she attributes her flexible work schedule to her ability to complete extra classes. when discussing the topic of flexibility with classes, daphne-phoenix said that about one-quarter of her classes were online before the pandemic. one of the dilemmas she faced with attending hybrid or mixed-mode classes while balancing parenting and work with school was when a class voted for which day they would attend in-person class meetings. the conundrum made caused overlapping between school and work. “for me that's like choosing between getting fired and going to class.” daphne-phoenix felt dissatisfied with the limited support from guidance counselors. she attributed her transfer to strawberry university to her orange flower state college professors, stating, “i didn't have any of the support that i have at strawberry university um [at] my state college.” she pursued an associate degree, utilizing available resources, which included friends and two teachers in her academic department. she recalled, “a lot of it was just navigating it myself... that was really hard. i had to make sure i was taking classes oriented towards what i wanted to do.” when daphne-phoenix was asked to describe her experiences transitioning into strawberry university, atlantic campus, she stated: “i was a little scared because i left behind everyone i knew. strawberry university is pretty much solely people aged 18 to 24.” she started a club for orange flower state college students to connect with students who transferred to strawberry university-atlantic campus and was awarded a scholarship that covered some of her tuition and fees each semester until graduation. she stated, “so, i was the orange-strawberry scholarship recipient, and that was a big ‘wow!’ moment for me. i…i didn't know it was going to happen.” flower state college had smaller class sizes, but she was overwhelmed by the larger classes at strawberry university, atlantic campus, where she pursued her second bachelor's degree. she explained, “so that's that's a big difference between strawberry – atlantic campus and strawberry university, main campus. at strawberry, atlantic campus, the max [sic] size of classes i’d say is 30 people. now i'm in classes of 200 to 300 people.” when asked about being in classes with younger peers, she shared her perspective on how this dynamic influenced her academic experience: “i'm still the mom in the group…always the person with the snacks (participant laughs) but um, i find comfort in it.” daphne-phoenix learned to be comfortable asking professors questions and became “less humiliated” about it. rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 18 during her narrative, daphne-phoenix described the importance of having people “in your corner rooting for you” to help motivate her academic pursuits. she found her inspiration from family and friends, explaining, “to me when i have no one…having a professor just sitting there saying ‘you know i know you can do this’ or ‘let me help you do better,’ those things were the motivating factors that made me go on.” daphne-phoenix will complete a second bachelor’s degree four years after returning to orange flower state college to earn an associate degree. william william, a 53-year-old retired law enforcement officer, is now studying criminology online at strawberry university while balancing full-time work. after a sporadic educational journey in the 1980s, william completed his aa degrees at atlantic reef state college in 2020 and 2021 and transferred to strawberry university in spring, 2022. despite several life events that altered his educational path, he pursued a career in law enforcement, spending twenty-one years on the job before retiring. he attempted to complete his degree multiple times, prioritizing his family's needs over his education. at 50, william returned to college to achieve a bachelor’s degree and continue to graduate school. he went back to work after retirement and works fulltime in law enforcement while completing a full-time class schedule. he transferred to strawberry university in the spring of 2022. william’s welcoming demeanor exuded throughout the interview, with moments of laughter and tears. william completed high school with a 1.9 gpa and limited socioeconomic resources. he felt inadequate in his collegiate abilities when he first attended atlantic reef state college after high school. consequently, he joined the police academy and placed college on hold. years later, a motor vehicle accident involving his wife and children, though non-fatal, changed his plans, causing him to delay college again. as his children grew up and went to college, william experienced a divorce. eventually, inspired by his children’s achievements, he returned to college. "my kids are really supportive, and they think it's fun," he shared. william recounted a significant challenge he faced when he transfered to the university. ten days before starting at strawberry university, he learned that a high school spanish course would not count toward his a.a. degree. however, it was accepted for his a.s. degree. this situation nearly prevented him from transferring. he contacted the state’s department of education for the course’s learning objectives but found they no longer had records from the 1980s. he filed a grievance with atlantic reef state college, and the course was eventually accepted. his a.a. degree was conferred three months after he started at strawberry university. while explaining his experience, he stated, "i'm 52 years old. you're [the state college administrators] not going to get through this with me.” william carefully plans his academics while juggling a full-time job and studies. "i have to make schedules and these sheets that tell me exactly what i’m gonna do for the day," he explained. he sahared his academic planning book filled with detailed plans. when his plans faltered—for example, when he dropped a chemistry course due to inconsistent expectations— william adapted by enrolling in a course that better aligned with his employment goals. he noted, “the computer applications for criminal justice...will be helpful for me in my daily work." william compared his current experiences to his earliest college attempts in the 1980s by sharing, "it's fantastic, much more customer friendly." determined to finish his bachelor’s degree and continue to graduate school, william concluded, "i just enjoy it. i feel like it keeps my mind going, so i don't think i'll stop." he attributed his upbringing as part of what influences his decision to return to college after several years, explaining, “well, what makes me appreciate it rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 19 more (participant clears throat) and um…you know, getting more into my background. i came from a very tumultuous home, broken home.” william applied professional work experiences to the classroom to help him navigate the coursework and build rapport with younger classmates and professors. he plans to continue his coursework and move onto graduate school due to his career aspirations of teaching undergraduate criminal justice courses. discussion the following details are derived from the interpretations of three core themes that emerged across all participant narratives: learning curves, demotivating experiences, and influential factors. as explained in the theoretical framework, individuals' perceptions of the reasons for their triumphs and failures are known as their attributions (weiner, 1972; harrington, 2018). an individual’s motivation may be influenced by attributions based on whether they view the experiences as unexpected, favorable, unfavorable, or significant and based on the situation, personal traits, support systems, and coping strategies during change (schlossberg, 1989; weiner, 2005). these core narratives provide common perceptions of all participants' experiences as adult learners who transferred from state college to university. the subordinate core narratives serve as tools for understanding how participants attribute the situational and dispositional experiences that influence their decisions. rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 20 table 3 situational and dispositional attributions for adult learner student experiences narrative theme sub-themes representative quote learning curves school-life balance, navigating administrative processes, academic rigor, class sizes, state college to university transition "what made it difficult was the workload… i had a difficult time with that one class… i ended up taking that class 3 times because i couldn’t get it done and go to work." — sandra "but no matter how many times i spoke to them it wasn't made clear that you have to go on to pineapple university website, fill out the application, pay your transfer fee, and request all your transcripts." — maria demotivating experiences financial hardships, unpleasant staff encounters, negative impacts of repeat coursework, dispositional self-doubt "i had to write an appeal to the office to basically expunge all of those credits from my previous college attempts, and then thankfully, they accepted my reasoning and did it." — nathan. "what scared me the most is my inability to grasp the concepts." — joshua influential factors unanticipated events, supportive faculty/staff, leveraging life experience, sense of belonging, family/friends, academic achievement "i think about my grandpa a lot… he didn't live to see me go to strawberry university, but he would be so proud… that's what keeps me there." — chelsea "if i have anything i’m curious about, i’ll just reach out to one of the professors. they’re all really helpful." — tracy note. summary of core themes and sub-themes related to adult learner experiences: learning curves, demotivating experiences, and influential factors. while participants’ experiences were unique, they each faced similar challenges. for example, overcoming academic obstacles, balancing work and school, and adjusting to new rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 21 routines were factors all particpants experienced. multple participants seemed to navigate differences in academic rigor better and assimilate to the culture of the university environment when a sense of belonging was established and academic and financial resources, as well as social support, were provided. several participants described school-life balance as a primary element of going from a state college to university. most participants made decisions based on their ability to balance home effectively and professional life with coursework requirements. nevertheless, some negative comments about procedural experiences also revealed challenges with administrative processes that especially influenced the participants’ persistence. this aligns with research by bailey et al. (2017), who found that students who transfer from community college to universities often have more coursework than necessary or are misinformed about the requirements for selected bachelor's degree programs. further, while this study supports the findings of chung et al. (2017), who found that past experiences serve as tools for facing current and future challenges, it contrasts with the work of allen and zhang (2016), who suggested that limited time spent on campus has a negative influence on adult-learner academic persistence (allen & zhang, 2016). based on this study’s findings, adult learners value the quality of the encounters and support they receive more than the need to spend time on campus. theoretically, these findings contribute to the understanding of transition theory by highlighting elements of the 4s framework and situational attributions that shape the participants' experiences. understanding where participants believe control lies—internally within themselves or externally in their environment—was crucial for interpreting whether their decisions were driven by their characteristics or by the context and situations they faced. the varied situational themes throughout the narratives demonstrate how adult learners rely on self-advocacy as their primary resource for overcoming barriers to returning to school and transferring between schools to get bachelor's degrees. perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes influence the outcomes of overcoming the situations described within this study that participants perceived as both within and beyond their control. for example, several participants who returned to college after an extensive hiatus faced penalties for past college attempts through academic probation, excessive credit hours (less than 67% degree completion rate), and previous unpaid debt, disqualifying them from receiving federal financial aid or accessing official transcripts from previous institutions. one participant sought and received institutional support through institutional grant funding to satisfy tuition payments as part of onboarding at the state college. other participants worked to finance their tuition and fees to continue their education. likewise, support and campus culture proved essential to the participants’ academic experiences. as schlossberg (1989) suggested, ritualistic onboarding processes are essential to providing a sense of belonging and minimizing feelings of marginality for adult learners due to age or time spent away from school. participants had varying instances of situational self-doubt based on their onboarding experiences. for instance, one participant considered transferring to a different university because of a perceived lack of care or concern from the transfer institution during the first semester. this belief contributed to a lack of sense of belonging experienced by the participant during onboarding and throughout the first school year at the university. furthermore, adult learners benefit from professional work experiences in the classroom, which help them connect with classmates and negotiate the rigor of the curriculum (allen & zhang, 2016). for example, traditional university students welcomed maria and william’s professional work experiences in classroom discussions and group assignments. this form of rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 22 mattering created a reciprocal relationship that fostered classroom engagement and a dispositional sense of belonging for these participants despite being older students (schlossberg, 1989; tinto, 1988). through faculty support, they discovered practical methods of applying professional experience to academics, which positively influenced their abilities to complete courses. task difficulty and ability were reoccurring elements throughout the situational themes highlighted in the research findings. participants attributed task difficulty and rigor to elements within and beyond their control. for example, sandra and joshua each explained the impact of school-life balance and ability on completing courses they each struggled to pass. both attributed time management as the solution to circumventing course failure. this implies that a learner’s individual beliefs of internal locus of control enhance the likelihood of perceived academic effectiveness (weiner, 1980, 2005; sagone & caroli, 2016). additionally, there was a contrast between professors' teaching styles and approaches at community colleges versus universities. one participant felt that professors at the university level were less invested in student success or less approachable. in contrast, others sought out professors for moral support and felt more comfortable seeking professors' assistance before seeking student support services. this implies the need for academic support through coaching or other supportive means from faculty and staff at community colleges and universities. the findings validate the influence of perceived internal locus of control on academic persistence based on individual perceptions of each participant’s situational and dispositional experiences. previous research comparing academic self-efficacy and self-concept with locus of control has indicated that students' present and future self-assessments are positively influenced when they perceive themselves as academically capable (sagone & caroli, 2016). favorable experiences at community colleges and universities strengthen this positive self-assessment. because of this, adult learners, who are usually more stable in their behavior, are likelier to remain committed to their degree programs (weiner, 2005). interestingly, participants faced several common situational factors influencing their experiences. by combining weiner's attribution theory with schlossberg's 4s framework, these events can be better understood in terms of their external factors. first, participants were challenged with transitioning from state college to university environments. they balanced academic responsibilities with other life obligations such as work, parenting, and adjusting to a new environment. class size differences between state colleges and universities contributed to participant experiences. additionally, participants were challenged with navigating administrative processes and determining whether transfer credits were applicable. several participants experienced difficulties applying, transferring credits, and obtaining official transcripts, highlighting a lack of clarity and support in administrative procedures that caused frustration and delays. multiple informants reported using self-advocacyto overcome barriers by challenging administrative decisions or seeking alternative support from campus partners. these types of situations led to mixed feelings about campus culture and experiences. while some participants were satisfied with their campus experiences, others had frustrations with disruptive classmates or felt lost in their academic journey, particularly at the university. participants experienced feelings of belonging, supportiveness, or a lack thereof. some expressed disappointment with the lack of a warm welcome or a sense of community after transferring to the university. furthermore, participants experienced discrepancies in advisor and student support. participants received varying levels of support from different institutions. some described a lack rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 23 of proper guidance and assistance navigating their academic journey at community colleges and universities. regarding the learning environment, participants sought flexibility with online learning demands resulting from the global pandemic. one participant disclosed her disdain for taking in-person courses with traditional students in one instance. on the contrary, other participants benefited from the flexibility of managing distance learning with their personal lives and intermingling with traditional students in class to connect to the university. all participants attended virtual and in-person classes. they preferred online courses because they were more flexible in balancing school with other responsibilities, such as work and family. there was a contrast between professors' teaching styles and approaches at community colleges and universities. some participants felt that professors at the university were not as invested in student success or were less approachable. others sought professors for moral support and felt more comfortable seeking professors' assistance before seeking student support services at community colleges and universities. in addition to navigating teaching styles, participants were challenged with barriers to federal financial aid. several participants faced satisfactory academic progress warnings or ineligibility for financial assistance at some point in their return to college. excess credit hours, low credit completion rates, and less-than-average grade point averages contributed to participants pursuing alternative methods to finance their education at various stages of enrollment. given the various challenges, schlossberg's 4s framework was illustrated by the dispositional attributes exhibited by participants. participants' persistence and advocacy illustrated self-reliance in coping with anticipated, unanticipated, and non-events. participants’ sense of belonging reflected how well they perceived fitting into the academic environment. the support participants received after discrepancies in advisor or student support services positively influenced coping with and overcoming obstacles. participants applied persistence and selfadvocacy when faced with obstacles and sought alternative support when challenged with difficult administrative decisions. these categories provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the challenges of returning to college and the transition from state college to university for adult learners. limitations this study relies on self-reported data. socially acceptable questioning and member checking help to support the validity of the initial responses, addressing the risk of intentional and unintentional recall bias. furthermore, there was an overrepresentation of white male and female participants, which does not represent the overall adult learner demographic. thus, the field could benefit from studies that focus on how adult learners of color experience transitions and educational pursuits. participants completed coursework before, during, and after the 2020 global pandemic; therefore, mandatory virtual school attendance could influence their narratives, potentially altering their overall experiences. future research & significance of the study to higher education practitioners higher education leaders would benefit immensely from regular policy assessments to ensure accuracy in interpretation and implementation, and to provide proper training for support staff who administer the policies. additionally, future research should investigate the long-term consequences of the situational and transitional challenges that adult learners face as undergraduate students. explicit language on specific policies for retroactive college credits rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 24 should be detailed to maintain the legality of articulation agreements. current standards for transfer credit hours do not consider the disadvantages of securing financial aid that students experience when returning to college to complete an incomplete degree. institutions acknowledge the nuances of excess credit hours for students who attended accredited programs years prior but are penalized for past unsuccessful attempts (kramer et al., 2018). these suggestions can bridge gaps in administrative processes that interfere with a returning student's success. first, adult learners value the experiences a college education provides for their professional and personal lives. this includes a desire to fulfill personal goals, assist family, and earn more money for an enhanced quality of life. secondly, adult learners, particularly those who return after more than five years, seek the shortest route to completing degree programs (chung et al., 2017; karmelita, 2020). third, stigma is significant among state college student populations (shaw et al., 2019; turk, 2019). therefore, it is essential that practitioners not misconstrue adult learners’ maturity and life experiences to mean that they only need limited support. adult learners require support just as much as traditional ftic students. finally, there is a difference between what support looks like for adult learners and ftic students (karmelita, 2020). thus, institutional support could be tailored to specific student groups and needs and not generalized. although articulation agreements provide universities access to community college students, policymakers must consider the implications of prior coursework on financial aid. returning students frequently face academic probation or ineligibility for financial assistance due to past failed courses or too many credits taken (kramer et al., 2018). policies should instead address the significant impact of the cost of dealing with excessive credit hours and academic eligibility, as these laws have minimal effect on reducing the time to degree completion for students who rely on financial aid (spencer, 2023). as illustrated in the findings, adult learners are gratified by sharing professional work experiences with classmates and professors, which contributes to a sense of belonging for adult learners (tinto, 1988). alternative scheduling options are suggested to meet the needs of working adults and increase accessibility. despite positive interactions with traditional students in classes, some adult learners desire to engage in an academic environment that limits their interactions. additionally, live virtual or fully online on-demand classes can aid students with unique life situations that can place them in scenarios of choosing between school or work. clear and concise educational pathways and policies serve as tools that support adult learners in their academics (karmelita, 2020). adult learners require significant institutional support to complete a bachelor's degree and rely on peers, faculty, and student support services for successful student integration (snyder & zona, 2018; lukszo & hayes, 2019; karmelita, 2020). the findings suggest that universities could assess the situations in which adult learners are placed in terms of administrative processes, flexibility with online learning, academic coaching support, and a welcoming campus culture. conclusion in summary, adult learners are challenged with adjusting to collegiate environments, overcoming academic and financial obstacles, and balancing school and life. based on the findings, adult learners weigh the opportunity costs for pursuing a bachelor’s degree and their ability to sustain their livelihood and receive the support they need to be successful. higher education practitioners and policymakers can significantly impact adult learners' outcomes by rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 25 assessing experiences with transfer and transition programs, returning to college, and the influence of current policies and practices on their ability to earn a bachelor's degree. this study provides insight into how adult learners perceive and attribute their experiences as transfer students by identifying themes that capture the core narratives underlying participants’ transitions, including their learning curves, demotivating experiences, and the key factors they credit for their outcomes. further, this study advises postsecondary institutions to analyze how broad policies affect the many subgroups of students they are supposed to support. future researchers are encouraged to examine the depths that learning curves, demotivational experiences, and influential factors and experiences have among distinct transfer student populations. rollins: returning to reach higher current issues in education, 26(1) 26 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(2018). collaboratively clearing the path to a baccalaureate degree: identifying effective 2-to-4-year college transfer partnerships. community college review, 46(3), 231–256. author’s notes tijuana rollins, edd orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1869-7828 university of central florida tijuana.rollins@ucf.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2018.1520658 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1869-7828 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ background problem statement participants and sampling procedures data collection and analysis narrative analysis sandra darla joshua maria chelsea nathan tracy daphne-phoenix william discussion limitations future research & significance of the study to higher education practitioners conclusion cie template current issues in education, 19(1) 1 volume 19, issue 1 may 2, 2016 issn 1099-839x what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity terri peters marywood university marcia margolin and kristi fragnoli the college of saint rose diane bloom kean university abstract: this study examined changes in student teachers’ white racial identity and color-blindness (using scores on the wrcds-r and cobras), as well as their perceptions of working with students of color, following a semester of student teaching in diverse classrooms. paired samples t-tests demonstrated student teachers were more color-blind about institutional discrimination and blatant racial issues at the conclusion of student teaching. responses to open-ended questions showed that white student teachers entered placements with biased expectations, and most stated that students of color were biased toward white teachers, yet their explanations neglected the impact of sociological factors, such as institutional racism and historical oppression. keywords: white racial identity, preservice teachers, diverse classrooms, field placements apa-style citation: peters, t., margolin, m., fragnoli, k., & bloom, d. (2016). what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity. current issues in education, 19(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1661 accepted: march 24 th , 2016 as the student population in the united states becomes increasingly diverse, the teaching population remains predominantly white (howard, 2011; national center for education statistics, 2011). schools of education must train white teachers to be culturally responsive in their teaching. cultural responsiveness necessitates an understanding of students’ cultural backgrounds, as well as factors that affect student performance (zamudio, 2011). white preservice teachers enter teacher preparation programs with minimal cross-cultural experience (keengwe, 2010) and often adopt a color-blind approach to teaching, failing to http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1661 peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 2 understand the role that race plays in teaching (fasching-varner, 2012). without adequate training, white teachers remain unaware of biases and privileges affiliated with whiteness (fasching-varner, 2012) and perceive aspects of the white dominant culture as the norm. the purpose of our study was to examine whether experiences in racially diverse settings influenced student teachers’ white racial identity development and their perceptions about teaching students of color. our research extended a prior study we conducted on student teachers’ white racial identity (groff & peters, 2012) in a different state in the northeastern united states. collecting additional data, we hoped to determine pathways to culturallyresponsive teaching and to identify areas in need of attention. for this study, we were interested in examining student teachers placed in racially diverse settings, specifically student teachers placed in “high needs” schools where greater than 50 percent of the students received free or reduced lunch. high needs schools were also deemed racially diverse, as greater than 50% of the students were students of color (see table 1). review of literature white teachers’ perceptions of students of color given the diversity of students in today’s classrooms, teachers will undoubtedly teach students of color. evidence suggests, however, that white teachers struggle to understand the role that race plays in their interactions with students of color (ruggles-gere, buehler, dallavis, & shaw-haviland, 2009). without a critical understanding of racial issues, biased and racist practices will inadvertently permeate classroom practices (cross, 2005; zamudio, 2011). white teachers are often unaware of their biases (ruggles-gere et al., 2009; rychly & grave, 2012) and have lower expectations of students of color (cross, 2003; howard, 2010). moreover, some research indicates that white teachers might perceive themselves with the capability to rescue their students of color, as if students of color are deficient due to their cultural backgrounds (endres & gould, 2009; howard, 2010; pennington, brock, & ndura, 2012). many white preservice teachers enter teacher preparation programs with little, if any, exposure to cultures of people dissimilar to themselves (howard, 2010; keengwe, 2010). white teachers with limited knowledge about cultures beyond their own are likely to perceive other cultures as inadequate (howard, 2010), which manifests in teachers’ attitudes, beliefs, and expectations (howard, 2010; zamudio, 2011). for example, white teachers offer higher praise for students of color more than for white students when demonstrating low quality work (harber et al., 2012). white preservice teachers who enter racially diverse placements for the first time frequently feel uncomfortable, as the setting is incongruent with their past experiences (groff & peters, 2012). feeling uncomfortable, coupled with lack of understanding, might be responsible for negative first impressions of racially diverse neighborhoods and schools. prior research (groff & peters, 2012) demonstrated that white preservice teachers entered urban and racially diverse settings with biased assumptions; results showed negative stereotypes of diverse neighborhoods as “unsafe” and “rundown,” as opposed to preservice teachers in predominantly white settings who initially perceived the environment as “safe” and “clean” (groff & peters, 2012). lacking cross-cultural experience, white preservice teachers need guidance to confront racial issues that arise in the classroom. research indicates, however, that white teacher educators tend to avoid discussions of race and racism in the classroom (haviland, 2008; ruggles-gere et al., 2009), often for fear of saying the wrong thing (keengwe, 2010). moreover, haviland (2008) found that white educators avoid discussions of white privilege, peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 3 stating that, “…these practices in white-dominated educational settings that may constitute the ‘white educational discourse’ that can insulate participants from implication in social inequality, value social cohesion over challenge, and promote a noncritical stance to race, racism, and white supremacy” (p. 44). before white educators can attempt to dialogue about the conditions of people of color in the united states, dekoven (2011) suggests that white educators must first understand privilege and teach preservice teachers about the history of racism. kendall (2013) defines white privilege as inherent advantages associated with being white, wherein the white culture is the norm, creating a system of white superiority, racial stratification and racism. without critical examination and discussion of racial issues, white preservice teachers have no mechanism to address these challenging issues. avoiding these topics cannot lead to positive teacher growth. as research has shown, white student teachers who had a semester of student teaching in racially diverse settings exhibited lower teacher efficacy than student teachers placed in predominantly white classrooms (bloom & peters, 2012); the diversity of the placement negatively affected teacher efficacy. siwatu (2011) similarly reported that preservice teachers in suburban settings, with a lower percentage of students of color, had higher teacher efficacy for working with diverse students than those who were placed in urban settings. therefore, experience in racially diverse settings, by itself, does not appear to positively influence teacher efficacy for working with students of color. color-blindness educators should consider that omitting discussions of race and racism might fallaciously signify to white preservice teachers that race is irrelevant, leading to false assumptions about teaching. delgado and stefancic (2001) define color-blindness as a “belief that one should treat all persons equally, without regard to their race (p. 144).” without adequate preparation, white teachers are likely to adopt a color-blind approach to teaching, failing to address students’ cultural backgrounds in their teaching (cross, 2003). lensmire (2010, p. 161) stated, “colorblind racism is the current racial ideology that sustains racial inequality in the united states.” white teachers often espouse a color-blind approach to teaching, failing to recognize the long-term effects of oppression and racism in the united states on student performance (howard, 2010; zamudio, 2011). without awareness of the history of oppression and institutional racism, white teachers may adopt a belief in meritocracy, that success is based solely on hard work (howard, 2010). such beliefs ignore the long-term sociological impact of oppression and racism and sustain the status quo (gushue & constantine, 2007; howard, 2010). white teachers with a color-blind approach might depreciate the value of multicultural education and fail to see the impact of race on learning (han, west-olatunj, & thomas, 2010). though seldom addressed, inequities between the white dominant culture and people of color still exist in the united states (lensmire, 2010; zamudio, 2011), and the curriculum in schools is one avenue through which inequities are maintained (cross, 2005; howard, 2010). a curriculum that primarily reflects the dominant culture signifies to students of color that their cultures and ways of knowing are less important (howard, 2010; zamudio, 2011). “when hegemonic assumptions about the nature of knowledge and learning go unquestioned, schools normalize ‘whiteness,’ thus privileging affluent and middle-class white students” (gainer & larrotta, 2010, p. 42). examination of critical race theory is essential to any discussion of white privilege and racial identity with profound implications for education programs touting the preparation of preservice teachers capable of serving diverse student populations with culturally-relevant pedagogy (lynch, 2006). using critical race theory as a lens through which one approaches the peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 4 education of teachers, white privilege and racial identity can and must be addressed; teacher training should require reflection on the inherent belief that color-blindness can erase decades of political, social, and economic injustice in the evolution of american education, egregiously and disproportionately affecting people of color as well as those who are ethnically and socioeconomically different than teachers who are representative of the dominant culture (lynch, 2006). without the systematic use of critical race theory as a framework in confronting the complex landscape of inequity, preservice teachers, predominantly white, middle-class females, cannot confront and reflect on their own narratives of white privilege and racial identity to consider their roles as educators (lynch, 2006). continued deference to colorblindness and empathy (bigelow, 1994) promotes and sustains inequity rather than advancing the understanding and practice of meaningful and effective culturally relevant pedagogy. fasching-varner and siriki (2012) underscore that the examination of white privilege and racial identity is essential if educators are to effectuate culturally relevant teaching practices. teacher preparation programs cannot legitimately suggest that preservice educators can become adept at understanding and initiating culturally relevant pedagogy if in the context of said programs there is not systematic and explicit attention to critical race theory as a framework for identity work. fasching-varner and siriki (2012) state, the idea of being culturally competent is not just an awareness of what teachers assume to be their students’ cultures but rather a complex understanding of teachers’ own identities and how culture is framed and understood with the context of students’ lives, reconciling differences in open and transparent ways. (p. 3) if schools of education seek to prepare teachers who serve historically underrepresented populations in diverse settings, explicit and systematic attention to issues of privilege and identity in coursework is imperative. by ‘foregrounding’ race (lynch, 2006) in preparatory courses, preservice teachers from historically overrepresented groups have the opportunity to develop efficacious, culturally relevant practices. schools of education and multicultural competence teacher preparation programs have attempted to address the lack of cross-cultural experience of their white preservice teachers through placements in diverse settings, but experience alone might not produce positive teacher development (gainer & larrotta, 2010; rychly & graves, 2012). for example, gainer and larrotta (2010) found very few examples of culturally responsive pedagogy in their work with white preservice teachers who were placed in diverse settings. moreover, white preservice teachers appeared to downplay the importance of diversity in their teaching methods (gainer & larrotta, 2010). additional research suggests that white preservice teachers negate the existence of racism (haviland, 2008). further evidence supports the need to move beyond diverse placements to effect teacher change. for example, a previous study by the lead author (groff & peters, 2012) compared white preservice teachers in racially diverse and non-diverse settings and found that those in diverse placements exhibited no change in color-blindness or white racial identity. however, those in the predominantly white settings became more color-blind by the end of the semester, indicating the deleterious, insular nature of lack of inter-cultural experiences. furthermore, their (groff & peters, 2012) findings indicated that white preservice teachers in racially diverse placements commented about the cultural differences between them and their students of color. therefore, experiences in diverse settings may create opportunities for dialogue about racial peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 5 issues that emerge during these placements, which is not documented as common practice in empirical studies of wri. cross (2003) reported that white graduates of a teacher education program felt that their programs failed to prepare them for the realities in the field. graduates failed to connect with their students in meaningful ways and thus were not teaching in culturally-responsive ways (cross, 2003). in a subsequent article, cross (2005) conveyed the importance of analyzing: the larger systems in place that maintain the privileges of whiteness, power, and racism. because teacher education reform efforts are too silent on these issues, along with the inequities and injustices manifested by them, those prepared to teach through these programs are taught to blindly, silently, and paradoxically reproduce the same inequities and injustices under the rhetoric of diversity and multiculturalism. (p. 265) if our goal is to promote teachers who are culturally responsive, we must move beyond merely placing white preservice teachers in racially diverse settings. some (faschingvarner, 2012; middleton, erguner-tekinalp, williams, & dow, 2011) recommend that preservice teachers engage in rigorous, painstakingly honest self-exploration about their own race before entering classrooms. amos (2010) conducted research on white and non-white preservice teachers enrolled in a multicultural education course and concluded that, “…acknowledging the fact that inequality still exists was the starting point to becoming a multicultural teacher” (p. 34). amos’s (2010) study elucidated the challenges of dialoguing about race, as non-white preservice teachers were fearful of their white peers’ reactions to their instructor’s discussions of racism and became silent; they also expressed outrage over their white peers’ color-blind approach to teaching. therefore, ongoing dialogue and critical discussion of racial issues are paramount to foster multicultural competence. white racial identity in addition to ensuring that white preservice teachers have experience in diverse placements, schools of education also attempt to address multicultural competence through coursework, typically through a single course on diversity. coursework seldom addresses tenets of white racial identity, such as racism, historical oppression, and white privilege. research by amos (2010) and middleton et al. (2011) suggests that exploring white racial identity should be a major component of teacher preparation programs. furthermore, johnson and jacksonwilliams (2014) found that white racial identity (wri) influences multicultural competence. helms (1990, 1995) proposed a theory of white racial identity development that consists of six different statuses at two different levels. at lower-level statuses, whites are unaware of whiteness and the history of racism or deny the existence of institutional discrimination. at higher-level statuses, they understand the impact of their whiteness on inter-cultural relationships. higher-level statuses represent greater awareness of white privilege and historical oppression, a shift to a non-racist identity, and a commitment to social justice. teacher preparation programs seldom address tenets of white racial identity, yet selfawareness is an important component of developing multicultural competence. as seen in prior research, color-blind attitudes are related to less advanced levels of white racial identity (gushue & constantine, 2007). other research (pollock, deckman, mira, & shalaby, 2010) indicates that preservice teachers recognize the need to come to terms with their own white privilege and guilt before they can attempt to develop specific classroom skills for working with students of color. understanding one’s own white privilege promotes multicultural competence (hays, chang, & peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 6 havice, 2008). therefore, we need to address issues of whiteness and white privilege before introducing culturally-responsive pedagogical strategies for working with students of color. research questions as white educators of white preservice teachers who are placed in schools with a high percentage of students of color, we are committed to enacting change. our first step is to identify preservice teachers’ self-awareness and perceptions of students of color. prior research has been limited primarily to small sample sizes, so we hope to add to the body of literature on this topic. using both quantitative surveys and responses to open-ended questions as our data sources, our study addressed the following two questions: (1) do student teachers placed in schools identified as high needs, with greater than 50 percent of students of color, show change in white racial identity following a semester of student teaching? (2) do student teachers placed in schools identified as high needs, with greater than 50 percent of students of color, show change in color-blindness following a semester of student teaching? (3) what are student teachers’ initial perceptions about their diverse placements? (4) what are student teachers’ perceptions about working with students of color following a semester of student teaching in high needs schools? method participants and context our study took place at one private, comprehensive, independent, coeducational institution enrolling nearly 5,000 students, offering 70 undergraduate programs, 52 masters’ degrees, and 22 certificate programs. the school of education is one of three schools at the college, responsible for over 2000 students, with approximately 1,500 graduate students and 700 undergraduates. the school of education offers programs leading to certification in early childhood, elementary, special education, adolescence, and bilingual studies. in the spring of 2013 we asked all undergraduate and graduate preservice teachers in degree programs for initial teacher certification, enrolled in student teaching seminar courses, to participate in our study. of the 103 student teachers enrolled, 97 agreed to participate. given our focus exclusively on white student teachers, our target sample was 87 white student teachers. however, our final usable sample consisted of 75 (70 f, 5 m) white student teachers (response rate = 86%), as 12 failed to complete both pre and post surveys. most participants were enrolled in programs for initial certification in elementary education (n = 23) or dual certification in elementary education and special education (n = 32). twenty were enrolled in adolescence education. interestingly, 14 student teachers reported no prior diversity training or coursework. others stated that they had previously completed one workshop (n = 19), two workshops (n = 23), or one or two courses on diversity (n = 12). seven participants omitted the question on diversity. in addition, prior to student teaching, participants completed an experience in a high needs school, designated as high needs if greater than 50 percent of its student population qualified for free lunch. the demographics of the “high needs” schools are aligned with enrollment data provided by the new york state education department (2013-2014). the approximate breakdown of the schools included in this study can be seen in table 1. each undergraduate and graduate teacher candidate completes two eight-week student teaching placements. prior to student teaching, candidates must also complete programmatic mandates, 5-25 hours of course-embedded fieldwork, in a high needs school. the requirement is peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 7 verified by a checkmark on an evaluation form indicating that the preservice teacher has worked in a high needs school, indicating eligibility to student teach. looking at the racial distribution of the high needs placements, although expressed as policy for placement, the economic diversity is concomitant in each case with at least 50% students of color enrolled in designated high needs schools. table 1 student demographics_________________________________ black/african american 18% hispanic/latino 25% american indian or alaska native 1% white 46% asian or native hawaiian/ 9% other pacific islander multiracial 1% -------------------------------------------------------------------- limited english proficient 8% economically disadvantaged 53% students with disabilities 16% _____________________________________________ 
courses common to all programs of study for initial certification include early childhood/childhood/adolescence psychology and development, educational psychology/ instructional technology, foundations of education, curriculum and instruction, literacy, methods, student teaching, student teaching seminar. there is no course dedicated to the study of multicultural education in programs for initial certification. the researchers in this study all had published previously on the topic of white racial identity. the lead researcher had previously conducted focus groups with counselor education students who were enrolled in a group counseling course that focused on whiteness. two of the researchers worked for several years with preservice teachers in a racially diverse high school. our research team consisted of white female researchers, and we all struggled with ways to teach preservice teachers to effectively work with students of color. we frequently discussed our own wri development and the impact of our wri on our own work with preservice teachers. therefore, our critical perspectives influenced our choice of instruments (e.g., wrcds, cobras) and our interpretation of the data. instruments color-blind racial attitudes scale (cobras). the cobras (neville, lilly, duran, lee, & brown, 2000) is a 20-item, self-report instrument that utilizes a 6 point likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 6 = strongly agree) and assesses three dimensions of color-blind racial attitudes: unawareness of racial privilege; unawareness of institutional discrimination; and unawareness to blatant racial issues. higher scores on each subscale indicate greater colorblind views and a belief in meritocracy, that is, that a person’s success is individually determined and based on hard work; racism and discrimination are not perceived as determinants (neville et al., 2000). lower cobras scores, therefore, represent greater awareness of the influence of societal factors on outcomes for persons of color. peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 8 a prior study provides evidence of the cobras’s reliability and validity. neville et al.’s (2000) research demonstrated concurrent validity with two other measures of prejudice. interitem reliability analyses indicated cronbach alphas that ranged from .70 to .86 for each of the subscales (neville et al., 2000).we conducted reliability analyses, using our data set of 75 student teachers. results indicated moderate-to-high reliability for each subscale: (1) .73 for unawareness of racial privilege; (2) .53 for unawareness of institutional discrimination; and (3) .52 for unawareness of blatant racial issues. white racial consciousness development scale-revised (wrcds-r). the wrcds-r is a 40-item instrument aligned with four of helms’s white racial identity statuses (lee et al., 2007). (1) contact reflects ignorance or obliviousness to racial issues; (2) reintegration suggests that as individuals become aware, they begin to resent ideas of racism and resist thoughts of racism and oppression and perceive people of color as inferior to whites; (3) pseudo-independence represents the awareness of white privilege and the long-term impact of oppression and discrimination on people of color; and (4) scores on autonomy indicate a nonracist identity, wherein individuals embrace racial differences and are committed to equitable treatment of all individuals.. the instrument utilizes a 5-point likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 2 = disagree; 3 = neither agree nor disagree; 4 = agree; 5 = strongly agree), with higher subscale scores representing agreement with that particular status (e.g., a high contact score would represent greater obliviousness to issues pertaining to racism). past research indicates high levels of reliability and validity of the wrcds-r. lee et al. (2007) revised the original wrcds-r based on results of an extensive study. the original scale was much shorter, thus lee et al. conducted individual and focus group interviews with white students to gather feedback. after adding several new items to the original scale, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted. the final 40-item scale shows high reliability, with cronbach alpha coefficients as follows: (1) .81 for contact; (2) .86 for reintegration; (3) .84 for pseudo-independence; and (4) .71 for autonomy. our past research (bloom & peters, 2012) also shows high levels of reliability, with cronbach alphas ranging from .77 .84. we again conducted our own reliability analyses and found high inter-item consistency. cronbach alphas ranged from .72 to .81 for the four subscales. open-ended questions. to support the quantitative findings, we also gathered participants’ perceptions about working with diverse students. we collected written responses to open-ended questions at the culmination of their student teaching semester. based upon prior research (groff & peters, 2012), we asked the following five questions: (1) what were your initial impressions about the neighborhood of your fieldwork school?; (2) how did the diversity in your field placement make you think about your own ethnic background and social status?; (3) how have you changed your thinking about working with diverse students?; (4) has your student teaching experience influenced your level of confidence for working with diverse students?; and (5) do you think that students of color have biases toward white teachers? research design. we utilized a quantitative single group pre-post design. we quantitatively examined pre-post changes on the cobras and wrcds-r following a semester of student teaching. qualitative data, responses to the five open-ended questions, were utilized to substantiate the quantitative findings. procedures. this study draws upon our own recent research (bloom & peters, 2012). our study was approved by the institutional review board and followed all guidelines for ethical treatment of participants. after gaining approval, one researcher contacted all instructors of all sections of student teaching seminars and received permission to attend all seminars to solicit peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 9 participation. a researcher first read the informed consent form aloud to each class and collected signed consent forms from those who agreed to participate. next, the researcher handed out packets that included a demographics questionnaire, the wrcds-r, and cobras. participants placed completed packets into individual envelopes, which were collected when everyone was finished. the researcher arranged to revisit the seminar classes at the culmination of student teaching to collect post-test data. at that time, participants were asked to complete the wrcdsr, cobras, and an additional five open-ended questions. the quantitative data were entered into spss, and the open-ended responses were entered into a microsoft word file to facilitate coding. data analysis. for the quantitative analysis, we conducted paired sample t-tests to investigate changes on the wrcds-r and cobras after a semester of student teaching. for the qualitative analysis, we initiated the coding process, using a reliable, previously validated coding template from a parallel study on wri as a point of departure (groff & peters, 2012). since the current investigation closely replicates the structure of our prior study, we conducted a confirmatory analysis of the open-ended responses to ensure a reliable coding template for this study. in addition, based upon findings from a previous study by the lead author, we added an additional open-ended question. we deductively coded questions one through four, using the prior coding scheme to examine consistency and discrepancies. for the new question (#5), the responses were compiled and themes/categories developed with a tri-level, recursive analysis, commencing with the extrapolation of descriptive, interpretive, and pattern codes. once the coding scheme was finalized with satisfactory inter-coder reliability, the researchers proceeded independently to code responses (miles & huberman, 1994; strauss & corbin, 1998). for each open-ended question, inter-coder agreement was greater than .90. a third researcher utilized the coding scheme to independently recode 25 percent of each data set for each of the five questions. inter-coder agreement remained greater than .90. given the high reliability, we adopted our pre-established themes/categories derived from our prior work, and added the categories we developed for question five, to code responses. themes, definitions, frequencies and percentages are reported subsequent to the quantitative data that follow. results quantitative results we first conducted paired-samples t-tests on all subscales of the cobras and wrcdsr to investigate changes in white racial identity and perceptions of students of color (e.g., colorblindness). the results indicated no significant changes on any of the wrcds-r subscales; after a semester of student teaching in a racially diverse school; scores on all aspects of wri (contact, reintegration, pseudo-independence, and autonomy) were similar to scores prior to those student teaching experiences. therefore, placing students in diverse student teaching contexts with no prior multicultural education coursework did not impact their wri. for the cobras, however, we found significant changes on two of the three subscales: unawareness of institutional discrimination and unawareness of blatant racial issues. as previously noted, higher scores on each subscale represent less awareness of societal factors related to race. examination of the preand post-test means illustrated that individuals became less aware (higher scores on unawareness) of these racial issues after a semester of student teaching in racially diverse schools (see table 2). therefore, despite experience with students of color during student teaching, student teachers became less aware of institutional discrimination, which represents a denial that racism exist and a disbelief that policies are needed to eradicate the history of the consequences of racism that have permeated institutions (neville et al., 2000). peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 10 unawareness of blatant racial issues represents an overt denial of the pervasiveness of racism in our society (neville et al.), and again, student teachers showed less awareness of the pervasiveness of racism after experience in a racially diverse school. table 2 paired-samples t-tests examine semester changes on wrcds-r and cobras source m time 1 m time 2 df t p wrcds-r contact 18.07 17.91 74 .30 .763 reintegration 35.27 36.00 74 1.05 .298 pseudo-independence 20.95 20.65 74 .55 .585 autonomy 30.39 30.13 74 .45 .652 cobras urp 29.75 30.07 74 .59 ,554 uid 22.25 23.42 74 2.21 .031* ubri 16.07 17.07 74 2.45 .017*_____ note. urp: unawareness of racial privilege; uid: unawareness of institutional discrimination; ubri: unawareness of blatant racial issues. qualitative results: five open-ended questions we coded all responses to the five open-ended questions. we calculated frequencies and percentages for each question separately, with frequencies representing the number of student teachers whose comments indicated that particular category. the first question asked student teachers to share their first impressions of the locations of assigned student teaching placements. most commonly (25%), participants’ comments demonstrated biases, conveying assumptions, expectations, and/or judgments about the students or community, without mentioning any previous personal experience in the school or the neighborhood. several participants mentioned issues pertaining to safety (16%). teacher candidates also noted the level of diversity of the school and community (15%), and some remarked either about the similarities or dissimilarities to their prior experiences (12%), with statements that reflected feelings of comfort or discomfort with their placement schools. other comments referred to economic status or the cleanliness of the environment (see appendix). while engaged in the process of coding each response with the designated coding template, we noticed a trend. student teachers apparently equated diversity with an inner-city environment, noticing people of color, poverty, few employment options, issues of safety, and “shabby” conditions. when discussing diversity, student teachers frequently used terms such as, “dirty and in disrepair,” few job opportunities,” “uneasiness,” “poverty,” and “people of color.” the second question asked student teachers if they had changed their perceptions about their own ethnicity and social status. see table 3 for codes, definitions, and exemplary quotes. thirty percent of respondents noted the level of diversity among their students. statements also commonly showed that student teachers were aware of the advantages/privileges they possessed in contrast to their students (20%), and other statements suggested they became more cognizant of their race and economic status (15%). taken together, 35 percent demonstrated an increased self-awareness of the disparity between themselves and the backgrounds of their students. furthermore, an additional nine percent stated that the setting/ environment was familiar/congruent with past experiences, noting the comfortable setting; the student teachers perceived the setting as “ordinary,” “common,” “ normal.” a few (7%) reported no change in peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 11 thinking about their own race, ethnicity or economic status, or they maintained a belief that everyone learns the same, recognizing the need to treat everyone equally, statements akin to color-blindness (4%). table 3 perceptions of own ethnicity and social status themes definitions sample quotes frequency and percentage of responses level of diversity awareness about students’ diversity/economic status (either noticing lack of diversity or abundant diversity) “the diversity in the classroom made me grasp my ethnic background because all of the students are very aware of their backgrounds.” “there was not much diversity in my student teaching placement and most of the students were the same ethnic background as me.” n = 22 (30%) privilege recognizes advantages or benefits due to one’s own socio-economic or racial background “i feel that i was much more privileged than the students. and my home life was stable.” “the students made me feel as if my ethic background automatically provided me with better opportunities than my students. many of them did not speak english and came from broken homes. it made me understand that social status does exist because i had never seen an example of it until my student teaching placement.” n = 15 (20%) self-awareness awareness about one’s own race or economic status “it made me feel superior but due to the population being very diverse. i felt i did not belong.” “the lack of diversity made me reflect upon my own educational upbringing and the lack of diversity i was exposed to as well.” n = 11 (15%) familiarity the setting/ environment is familiar/congruent with past experiences; experience seems ordinary, common, normal, thus feeling comfortable in the environment. “the diversity of the community did not make me think of my ethnic background or social status. [town] is a town similar to my own in economic and diversity. “ “it appears to me that the students i had the privilege and pleasure to teach were/are very similar to my own childhood background.” n = 7 (9%) no change participants stated there was no change in thinking about their own race, ethnicity or economic status “the diversity of the student population did not play much of a part as i try to teach to the entire group first and then learn individuals preferred learning style.” “there really wasn’t much diversityso i didn’t do much thinking about my own back-ground and social status.” n = 5 (7%) color-blindness a belief that everyone learns the same; recognize the need to treat everyone equally “i didn’t think about ethnic background going into this internship. a student and myself were the only white people in the class, but it didn’t change my views of anything. everyone should be looked at evenly.” “i actually didn’t think of my background and social status at all. we get children from some of the richest and poorest towns in the state. when they arrived at school the color of their skin and how much money their parents made had no effect on me educating them.” n = 3 (4%) the third question asked student teachers if they had changed their thinking about working with diverse students. see table 4 below for codes, definitions, and sample quotes. one common response (20%) showed that participants felt comfortable working with diverse students. an additional 20 percent indicated that they had not changed their thinking about working with diverse students. very few offered explanations for this lack of change, but some explanations reflected preconceived bias (e.g., “i knew all the risks of being in the diverse placements, and everything happened as i expected. the schools and the kids were bad, but my peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 12 peers, professors, and supervisors warned me. i thought i could make a difference. i could never go through that again.”). another 20 percent of student teachers also remarked about the need to learn about their students’ backgrounds, perhaps a starting point to becoming a culturally-responsive teacher. less frequently (5 %), student teachers discussed equality, not equity, stating that race is not a factor in the classroom (color-blindness). the respondents’ comments about equality and equity were used interchangeably, with no indication of an awareness that equality suggests equal outcomes expected for all students and equity means equal access to educational opportunities. the distinction between these terms, used randomly by the respondents, may affect how student teachers interpret pedagogy. also, a few participants (4 %) either recognized that each student learns differently or that teaching accommodations might be useful to reach each student. table 4 changes in perceptions about diverse students in the classroom themes definitions representative quotes frequency and percentage of responses no change the experience did not change the way they view working with diverse students. “i haven’t really changed my view” i do not think my views have changed.” n = 15 (20%) cultural awareness expressed the need to learn more about cultural differences and understand students' cultural backgrounds and home lives. “it’s important to learn about their home lives because there is such a large range of support and backgrounds.” “i have not realized that home life and customs are an important part of a child’s life and makeup. and so they should be studied and taken into consideration when having a diverse population in your classroom.” n = 15 (20%) comfort participants stated that they feel comfortable teaching in diverse settings. “teachers should be using the diversity as a positive learning experience.” “you need to meet all students in terms of diversity. whether its differences in economics, race, ethnicity, or disabilities. n =15 (20%) color-blindness belief that skin color does not define students; all students are the same; “everyone is equal.” “i have come to realize that they are capable of learning just like white students; they should be held to the same expectations.” “i treat everyone the same.” n = 4 (5%) teaching accommodations belief that students need additional support & modified lesson plans; need to reach all students. “i am more open minded and try to accommodate all different types of students.’ “i have seen how i can change the way i respond to them and how much i take their person life into account when i teach them. i try not to let stereotypes affect the way i teach and respond to students.” n = 3 (4%) individuality participants stated that they embrace & appreciate unique talents of every individual; they recognize that all students learn differently. “i have learned to view every student independently and not base anything off of racial stereotypes.” “each student brings in their own strengths.” n = 3 4% next, when asked if their student teaching experience influenced their level of confidence in working with diverse students, 75 percent indicated that the experience did influence their peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 13 level of confidence, whereas 11 percent stated that the experience did not change their level of confidence. only two student teachers (3%) reported that their level of confidence in working with diverse students remained the same. student teachers who reported an increase in their level of confidence gave extremely positive responses. exemplary statements included, “i never worked with diverse students, and they like me. it was good,” and “i was worried at first working with diverse students, but now i can’t imagine not being in a school with a diverse student population. yes!” for student teachers who indicated that the student teaching experience had not influenced their level of confidence for working with diverse students, the majority of comments were negative, moving on a continuum from “i don’t know how the cooperating teacher can handle this. the kids need constant discipline,” to blatantly pejorative, “i would never work with these diverse students again!” the final question, new to this study, asked student teachers if students of color have biases toward white teachers. forty-four percent said yes. among these responses, student teachers often attributed biases to students’ home lives, transmission of intergenerational biases, or the neighborhood. sample quotes included, “at times, some who have been taught all by white people are racist,” and “yes, because they feel inferior.” twenty-five percent of student teachers did not believe that students of color were biased against white teachers, with explanations often related to the establishment of mutual respect during the student teaching experience. sample quotes included, “no, i think some have respect for them,” and “i do not see that in my school, so i have no reason to believe they are bias [sic].” an additional 11 percent said that students of color are sometimes biased toward white teachers. these participants typically mentioned conditions that might contribute to biases, such as the student’s background, family, parents, or home life. examples of statements included, “i do think some students of color can have biases toward white teachers depending on what they were taught and family values,” and “i think that depends on the family values/past experiences. a bias is not something a young student would be born with. it would have to be influenced or experienced.” discussion this study examined whether white student teachers changed their white racial identity and color-blindness, as well as their perceptions of working with students of color, following a semester of student teaching. according to the quantitative results, student teachers were more color-blind at the conclusion of student teaching, particularly regarding awareness of institutional discrimination and blatant racial issues. the qualitative data provide additional insight about the challenges white preservice teachers face when working with students of color. color-blind racial attitudes have negative effects on teaching and learning, negating the history of racism and discrimination in the united states and its continued influence on people of color. this obliviousness also ignores the influence of a student’s culture on learning (cross, 2003; han et al., 2010). ignoring race enables white teachers to avoid discussions of racism and historical oppression and deny the benefits associated with being white (delgado & stefancic, 2001; howard, 2010; zamudio, 2011). as delgado and stefancic (2001) state, “whites do not see themselves as having a race, but being, simply, people. they do not believe that they think and reason from a white viewpoint, but from a universally valid one—“the truth”—what everyone knows” (p. 80). we believe that teacher education must address tenets of white racial identity throughout the curriculum so that preservice teachers continuously reflect on issues of race, including the role that whiteness plays in their interactions with students of color (fasching-varner, 2012). peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 14 many teachers entered their placements with biased expectations, similar to findings from a prior study (groff & peters, 2012). castro (2010) suggested that prior cross-cultural experience makes it more likely that white preservice teachers will have positive views toward teaching diverse students. although most of our participants noted prior workshops or coursework on diversity issues, it is difficult to discern the quality of their cross-cultural experiences prior to their field placements. we need to ensure that diverse experiences are coupled with background knowledge and critical reflection (cross, 2005). failure to effectively address race may promote a color-blind approach wherein white preservice teachers depreciate the value of multicultural education (han et al., 2010). we asked participants if their student teaching experiences changed their perceptions about working with diverse students, and forty percent said they either experienced no change or were comfortable teaching diverse students. in addition, a few said that a student’s race was irrelevant, a color-blind approach. one-fifth of the participants stated that they became more cognizant of the need to be culturally aware of their students’ backgrounds (fasching-varner, 2012). despite the higher levels of color-blindness as measured by the cobras, as well as the number (40%) who noted little change in their perceptions about working with diverse students, the majority of student teachers indicated greater confidence to teach diverse students. we were curious about these apparent discrepancies in the data, and although some student teachers stated the need to know more about their students’ cultural backgrounds, perhaps most desire to appear non-racist, thus ascribing to a color-blind approach. critical race theorists believe it is paramount that schools of education address issues related to historical oppression, discrimination, institutional racism, as well as white privilege (fasching-varner, 2012; zamudio, 2011). ample evidence suggests that whites resist acknowledging that racism still exists (delgado & stefancic, 2001) and avoid discussions of race (haviland, 2008). looking at the origins and evolution of american education, it is imperative to explore the effects of institutionalized education on those who have historically been marginalized. if race remains a determinant of increasingly predictable outcomes for students of color in public education, understanding why is central to the issue. as we found in our study, white preservice teachers enter the classroom with biased expectations, based on the location of the school. we recognize the inequities and de facto segregation still exist across schools in the united states today (kozol, 2012). when the supreme court ruling in the plessy v. ferguson (1896) case upheld separate but equal schools, segregation and institutionalized racism were essentially codified and considered acceptable. the ramifications were seemingly redressed with the 1954 brown v. board supreme court decision to integrate public schools. frequently cited as a pivotal consideration by the supreme court for the transformative ruling is the work of an african-american psychologist, kenneth clark, and his co-investigator. clark reported that african-american children, as young as three, were acutely aware of the social and psychological impact of race, expressing rejection and self-deprecation (clark & clark, 1939, 1940, 1950). when we asked our white student teachers whether students of color harbored biases toward white teachers, most said yes, but primarily attributed the biases to what the students observed or learned in their own personal lives. the student teachers did not exhibit any introspective remarks recognizing that whiteness carries a sense of dominance and superiority that students feel and react to, covertly or overtly (fasching-varner, 2012). furthermore, white peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 15 teachers tend to ignore cumulative negative effects of inferiority that people of color experience (dekoven, 2011). when white teachers fail to openly discuss racial issues or lack acknowledgement of historical oppression and racism, students of color will perceive teachers to be biased. before white educators can attempt to understand the reasons behind student performance or disengagement from school, they must first understand historical, political, social, and economic issues (dekoven, 2011). struggles and challenges persist contemporarily at the state and federal levels of government. the brown v. board (1954) ruling underscores the schism between the de jure and de facto realities of our educational institutions. candidates in teacher preparation programs are still identified as predominantly white, whereas the student body continues to diversify (nces, 2011). castro (2010) investigated changes in the focus of research on white preservice teachers’ views of cultural diversity from 1985 through 2007. he found that white preservice teachers maintained misconceptions; the trend showed that they lacked critical consciousness about privilege and social inequities and held beliefs in meritocracy. thus, despite over two decades of emerging research and attention to culturally relevant teaching, preservice teachers maintained biases about teaching diverse students (castro, 2010). our qualitative results indicated that after a semester of working with students of color, some student teachers changed their perceptions, with several reporting greater comfort and confidence. entering diverse settings, many student teachers noticed the differences between the school setting and their own prior life experiences, comparable to prior findings (groff & peters, 2012), which also suggested that student teachers frequently felt uncomfortable in a setting that was incongruent with their past experiences. although respondents in our study showed awareness of the diversity of their students and noted increased levels of comfort with students of color at the end of the semester, very few expressed any need to adapt their teaching to meet a range of student needs. cross (2003) provides an explanation of these results, noting that white teachers who espouse color-blindness fail to address students’ cultural backgrounds in their teaching. han et al. (2010) also note that white teachers with a color-blind approach to teaching might depreciate the value of multicultural education and fail to see the impact of race on learning. howard (2010) reports that white teachers may perceive other cultures as inadequate, which may account for the preservice teachers’ intransigence and unwillingness to confront the fact that culturallyresponsive teaching may be efficacious for the student, inferring the possibility of preconceived notions about students of color and potential inherent biases made manifest in their comments. durden and truscott (2013) provided evidence that even when white preservice teachers articulated culturally relevant teaching strategies for working with diverse students, their classroom behaviors did not exemplify culturally-responsive teaching. furthermore, one example demonstrated a preservice teacher whose explanations for a culturally relevant lesson reflected a deficit view of student learning (durden & truscott, 2013). considering all the evidence gathered, it appears that some student teachers in our study began to understand that race is an issue in teaching, yet many remained oblivious or convinced that race did not matter. culturally-responsive teaching requires, first and foremost, that teachers understand and integrate their students’ cultural backgrounds into teaching (stairs, 2010). given that most white preservice teachers enter schools of education with limited cross-cultural experience, preparation programs must include critical content on racism, historical oppression peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 16 and white privilege, along with immersion experiences and constant critical reflection (cross, 2005; durden & truscott, 2013; fasching-varner, 2012). to frame the research findings of this study in the context of helms’s (1990, 1995) theory of wri development, based on the confluence of both quantitative and qualitative data, our findings suggest that participants remained at what helms would describe as a lowerlevel status of wri development. institutions of teacher preparation must confront wri as it pertains to the attitudes and efficacy of white teachers and the effects on student achievement. mindful of increasingly diverse student populations in our public schools, there is little empirical verification that exposure to diversity impacts wri and the perceptions of white preservice teachers. our findings, coupled with the emergent literature on wri, suggest that avoidance of or minimal attention to wri perpetuates a systemic stratification in our schools, sustaining the achievement gap and perhaps inadvertently maintains long-standing control by the dominant culture. implications for practice. we posit that the development of wri requires a concerted effort in teacher education programs to prepare candidates poised to enter the profession. there are critical features of all programs that must work in tandem to maximize the likelihood that preservice teachers will make conscious and effective pedagogical choices for their students. the suggestions are: (1) ongoing dialogue and critical discussion of racial issues in multiple courses throughout all programs (chao, 2013; fasching-varner, 2012; mcgaha & linder, 2012); (2) self-awareness by introspection, reflection, and discussion of personal narratives to facilitate the development of an in-depth and integrated understanding of wri and its relationship to classroom practice (fasching-varner, 2012; pennington et al., 2012); (3) fluid transitions and support in the field to avoid the possible disconnect between theory and practice in working with students (cross, 2003; fasching-varner, 2012); and (4) immersion in the community where the schools are located (cross, 2003; fasching-varner, 2012). the efficacy of teacher education may depend on incorporating multiple opportunities to cohesively and systematically address wri. based on data regarding current demographic shifts in public schools, preservice teachers are likely to work in racially diverse settings, which may be inconsistent with their own educational and personal experiences. the awareness that white privilege is related to classroom practice and may directly influence students is a point of departure in developing non-racist identities and aspirations of equity and achievement in public schools for all k-12 students. in summary, we suggest the following steps for promoting multicultural competence and culturally-responsive pedagogy for teacher candidates: 1) faculty must undergo training on critical race theory, white racial identity, and privilege, and they must be trained on how to integrate this information in their programs and courses; 2) incorporate tenets of critical race theory, white racial identity and privilege throughout the curriculum. this coursework must be simultaneously coupled with reflection and guided dialogue prior to entry into the field and also continue throughout field experiences; and 3) the exploration of counter-narratives that evoke understanding of what it means to be a member of a marginalized group, along with reflection on how students of color perceive white teachers as members of the dominant group, must be a significant component of teacher training. limitations this study examined student teachers placed in diverse schools during one semester at one institution in the northeastern united states. additional research could replicate this study and include a larger sample of multiple universities to add validity to the findings. furthermore, peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 17 we elected to use the cobras and wrcds-r to assess color-blindness and white racial identity, and it is possible that items on either instrument might have evoked a social responsibility bias. items on the instruments might also have influenced student teachers’ responses on the open-ended questions. references amos, y. t. 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(2011). critical race theory matters. new york, ny: routledge. http://data.nysed.gov/enrollment.php?year=2014+state=yes http://www.eric.ed.gov/pdfs/ej912044.pdf peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 20 appendix first impressions of fieldwork school themes definitions representative quotes frequency and percentage of responses bias statements reflect assumptions and expectations based on race and ethnicity and economic status: passes judgment about students and community without direct experience “it was very different than my first placement. due to being a little more urban, i was a little uncomfortable in the beginning because i didn’t grow up in an urban environment.” “i was very leery at first because i know that it was a poorer district and i heard from others that it was incredibly difficult to switch from a private school to a public school. driving through the neighborhood, it was a little run down, but i wanted to come to a placement with a clear state of mind.” n = 19 (25%) safety discusses whether or not one feels scared or threatened; mentions crime rate or presence of gangs “i was very skeptical. it was a bad neighborhood, and i have heard about a lot of car breakins.” “it was very different than my first placement. due to being a little more urban, i was a little uncomfortable in the beginning because i didn’t grow up in an urban environment.” n= 12 (16%) level of diversity discusses the level of diversity in the classroom, school, or community. “my second placement was in the same district as my first placement, it is a very small population of african americans and a slightly larger population of english language learners.” “my placements were in my hometown. it was how i expected it to be n = 11 (15%) peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 21 predominantly white, nonhispanic.” familiarity the setting/environment is familiarity/congruent with past experiences; experience seems ordinary, common, normal, thus feeling comfortable in the environment. “my second placement and my first were mostly white. my second placement was pretty suburban.” “it was very different than my first placement. due to being a little more urban, i was a little uncomfortable in the beginning because i didn’t grow up in an urban environment.” n = 9 (12%) economic status mentions the economic conditions of school or community. “i thought it was middle income based on the houses and overall appearance.” “it is low income. all apartments with very few houses. run-down.” n = 7 (9%) cleanliness of environment mentions the physical appearance of the school, classroom, or community. “first not very clean or nice. second, suburban, nice area.” “it was a small town and seemed like a nice place to live and work.” n = 6 (8%) peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 22 author notes terri peters marywood university reap college of education and human development 2300 adams avenue, scranton, pa, 18509 (732) 272-7319 peters@marywood.edu dr. peters is dean of the reap college of education and human development at marywood university. she has published and presented various articles on the white racial identity development of teachers and counselors. dr. peters also participates in actions to improve inclusive environments of college campuses. marcia margolin the college of saint rose lally school of education 432 western ave, albany, new york 12203 (518) 337-5698 margolim@strose.edu dr. margolin is a professor of teacher education at the college of saint rose in albany, new york. her most recent work includes research on white racial identity, teacher preparation, and and discipline literacy. kristi fragnoli the college of saint rose lally school of education 432 western ave, albany, new york 12203 (518) 454-2866 fragnolk@strose.edu dr. fragnoli is a professor in the lally school of education at the college of saint rose located in albany new york. she has been involved in multiple forms of research and educational community dialog. dr. fragnoli’s research interests include white racial identity, civic literacy and include primary document analysis. diane s. bloom college of education kean university 1000 morris avenue union, nj, 07083 (908) 675-7277 dbloom@kean.edu dianebloom@comcast.net dr. bloom is a professor in the college of education at kean university. she has published and presented articles on white racial identity development of teachers, advises and assists teachers building a teacher work sample portfolio, and serves as dissertation committee chair or member for students enrolled in education leadership programs. mailto:peters@marywood.edu mailto:margolim@strose.edu mailto:fragnolk@strose.edu mailto:dbloom@kean.edu mailto:dianebloom@comcast.net peters et al.: what's race got to do with it? preservice teachers and white racial identity current issues in education, 19(1) 23 volume 19, issue 1 may 2, 2016 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh bethany richmond lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers factors associated with online doctoral student persistence: volume 22, issue 2 may 18, 2021 issn 1099-839x factors associated with online doctoral student persistence: a critical integrative review of the literature tara j. lehan, phd heather d. hussey, phd & thomas hotz, mpa northcentral university abstract: online doctoral students may be at especially high risk for not completing their program. the purpose of this paper is to synthesize and critically analyze the body of research examining factors associated with persistence among online doctoral students, a relatively understudied population. consistent with the notion that integration and institutional factors exert more influence on doctoral persistence than student characteristics, with the exception of leadership and motivation, few student-related characteristics examined were found to be associated with online doctoral student persistence. however, findings should be considered in light of the limitations of the existing research. based on this critical integrative review of the literature, implications for research and practice as well as recommendations for next steps are offered. keywords: higher education, online doctoral students, persistence, completion, attrition citation: lehan, t. j., hussey, h. d., & hotz, t. (2021). factors associated with online doctoral student persistence: a critical integrative review of the literature. current issues in education, 22(2). http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1961 accepted: 3/20/2021 introduction in higher education, enrollment in online courses and programs continues to grow and outpace that of traditional programs (lederman, 2019). however, one of the greatest issues for higher education administrators (bergman et al., 2014; lee & choi, 2011) is the reportedly higher attrition rates for online programs compared to traditional face-to-face programs (cochran et al., 2014; stevenson, 2013; ivankova & stick, 2007; rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016; terrell et al., 2016; terrell et al., 2009; wladis et al., 2014). it has been found that doctoral students are less likely to persist to degree completion than undergraduate and master’s students (cockrell & shelley, 2010; spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). varying by field and modality (terrell et al., 2012), the proportion of students who leave doctoral programs is relatively high (30-70%) and http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1961 current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 has remained steady for about 50 years (zahl, 2015). taken together, it seems that online doctoral learners are at an especially high risk for not completing their program (cross, 2014). this is problematic for a number of reasons, including loss of student self-esteem and a potential reduction in institutional profit (lee & choi, 2011). the majority of retention research in higher education has focused on students in traditional face-to-face programs (bergman et al., 2014; cochran et al., 2014; hachey et al., 2014; stevenson, 2013); however, online doctoral programs and learners warrant scholarly attention, as they have unique characteristics and needs (akojie et al., 2019; cockrell & shelley, 2010; hachey et al., 2014; stevenson, 2013). somewhat complicating the research is the myriad of factors that likely impact online doctoral students’ decision to persist as well as the difficulty in tracking students once they withdraw (fetzner, 2013; layne et al., 2013; stevenson, 2013; willging & johnson, 2009; zahl, 2015). the purpose of this paper is to synthesize and critically analyze the body of research examining factors associated with persistence among online doctoral students. online doctoral student persistence does not seem to be the result of a single factor (akojie et al., 2019; spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). instead, it involves the interaction of multiple factors relating to both students and the institution (ivankova & stick, 2007). it is theorized that these factors contribute to the extent to which the student becomes integrated into the university, which is essential to persistence (tinto, 1993). this framework will be used to organize the existing literature. methodology to meet the inclusion criteria, a journal article had to (1) be peer-reviewed, (2) include original data, (3) examine persistence, (4) include only doctoral students taking courses online, (5) be written in english, and (6) be published within the last 15 years. relevant research articles were located using education research complete, eric, ebscohost, and google scholar. no article in which master’s and doctoral students were incorporated in the same sample were included because it was impossible to distinguish what was true of just doctoral students. in addition, no dissertations or book chapters were included. the following search terms were used: "persistence" or "retention" or "attrition" or "drop out" or "dropout" or "completion" or "graduation" and "online" or "distance" or "distributed" or "blended" or "hybrid" or 'limited residency" and "doctoral students". articles with seemingly relevant titles were identified, then their abstracts were read. if the article still appeared to be relevant, the entire document was reviewed. the reference list of each relevant article identified was also searched to locate additional articles. ultimately, 20 articles were deemed to meet the inclusion criteria. each of these articles was reviewed closely, and the most relevant information was documented in the table in the appendix. findings settings and programs as shown in the appendix, more than half the research comes from only two research groups: terrell and colleagues and rockinson-szapkiw and colleagues. terrell and colleagues examined students or graduates from a limited-residency doctoral program at a private metropolitan university in the southeast. rockinson-szapkiw and colleagues recruited students or graduates from a doctor of education program requiring 50 online credit hours and 10 residential credit hours at a private, religious, non-profit, liberal arts university. in addition to the limited diversity of perspective that characterizes the research, it is problematic because the two programs lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence from which these authors recruited students have unique characteristics; therefore, the ability to generalize the findings beyond these institutions might be limited. with few exceptions (e.g., fiore et al., 2019; lee et al., 2020), the participants in these studies reviewed were current or former students or graduates from one or two programs (usually education-related) at one institution. moreover, most of the programs examined in this body of literature were limited residency or hybrid in nature. such programs have different characteristics and outcomes than completely online programs (davidson et al., 2014). in some cases, the research reportedly was initiated in association with a large number of students’ leaving the program (e.g., brown, 2017; terrell, 2005b). methodologies and frameworks as shown in the appendix table, qualitative (case study, phenomenology, grounded theory), quantitative (correlational, causal-comparative), and mixed (sequential explanatory) methods were employed in the body of literature on factors associated with online doctoral student persistence. in addition, with the exception of the studies involving grounded theory, most previous researchers identified a conceptual or theoretical framework that guided the study. frequently, their work was informed by one or more models of attrition, most commonly that of tinto (1993), bean (1980), and bean and metzner (1985). in his model of institutional departure, tinto maintains that students need integration into formal (academic performance) and informal (faculty/staff interactions) academic systems and formal (extracurricular activities) and informal (peer-group interactions) social systems to persist. in his model, bean stressed that student integration and interactions combine with subjective evaluations of the educational process, institution, and experience to influence satisfaction directly and intentions to persist indirectly. at the same time, external factors that are beyond the control of the institution, such as opportunity to transfer, family commitments, and financial constraints, directly influence intention to leave and drop out. in their model, bean and metzner (1985) included four sets of variables: academic performance, intent to leave, background and defined variables, and, most importantly, environmental variables. according to the model, student attrition is most directly affected by environmental variables, such as finance, working hours, outside encouragement, family responsibilities, and opportunity to transfer. it is important to note that tinto’s model was created with a focus on traditional undergraduate students, whereas bean’s (1980) and bean and metzner’s models focused on nontraditional undergraduate students. that is, neither was developed to explain attrition among online and/or doctoral students. in general, the sample sizes in qualitative studies were under 20, although brown (2017), spaulding and rockinson-szapkiw (2012), and deshpande (2016) included 75, 76, and 91 online doctoral students, respectively. the sample sizes in quantitative studies were relatively larger (range: 51 [terrell, 2005a] to 303 [gomez, 2013]). variables and constructs whereas some researchers measured their variables and constructs of interest directly (e.g., terrell, 2005a, 2005b, 2014, 2015), others did so indirectly by soliciting participants’ perceptions and seeking to understand their lived experiences (e.g., kennedy et al., 2015; terrell et al., 2016; spaulding & rockinson-spakiw, 2012; zahl, 2015). researchers also varied the way they measured online doctoral student persistence, with some conceptualizing it as choosing to remain continuously enrolled (e.g., brown, 2017; rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016), and others as the successful completion of the program (e.g., gomez, 2013, spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 2012). in general, when reported, the completion rates of the students in the programs examined were relatively low (e.g., 49% in terrell, 2005a; 37.6% in terrell, 2005b, 42.9% in terrell, 2014). student-related factors demographic factors. despite the importance of demographic factors to online doctoral student success (see spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012), only some researchers presented demographic information about the individuals in their studies; even fewer included demographic factors in their analyses. gomez (2013) examined the influence of gender, whereas terrell (2005b, 2014) explored the impact of gender as well as age and ethnicity on online doctoral student persistence. gender was not a significant predictor of persistence in either study. in addition, neither age nor ethnicity significantly predicted persistence. academic factors. only one researcher analyzed the educational background of the online doctoral students in their samples. gomez (2013) found no significant influence of master’s grade point average or application summary score on program completion (e.g., gomez. 2013). cognitive factors. researchers also examined the potential impact of online doctoral students’ critical thinking and learning styles. in gomez (2013), although graduates had higher critical thinking scores by an average of 4.5%, it was not significantly associated with program completion. in an examination of 216 students who began a limited-residency doctoral program, approximately 38% of them graduated but those rates did not differ significantly by learning style (terrell, 2005b). although not statistically significant, the effect sizes in one study showed that students with a preference for information perception through sensing were more likely to succeed in programs like the one examined (terrell, 2005a). however, in a study about a decade later, neither learning style or preference appeared to be related to attrition (terrell, 2014). the relationship between brain hemispheric preference and attrition has also been examined, but has found to not significantly predict attrition (terrell, 2015). personality. one researcher examined the influence of leadership behaviors and psychological type on program completion among online doctoral students (gomez, 2013). graduates had higher leadership practice inventory modeling the way scores by an average of 3.8% and exhibited higher percentages (average of 10%) in the myers-briggs type indicator categories of introvert, sensing, thinking, and judging. only leadership practices inventory modeling the way emerged as a significant predictor of graduation. ivankova and stick (2007) also reported that self-motivation was one of the most important factors to persistence. similarly, fiore and colleagues (2019) reported that students believed that “persistence comes from within.” experience of disruption and loss. qualitative studies offered richer descriptions of online doctoral students’ experiences impacting their persistence. individuals with earned doctorates described personal sacrifice (e.g., summer breaks, sleep, time with loved ones) and disruptive life experiences (e.g., job promotion, marriage, layoff of a partner) (spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). death and illness of either a loved one or a dissertation committee member also delayed progress for students (spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). material loss (e.g., furniture, utilities, home) and relational loss due to divorce, death, and exposure to drug, alcohol, and physical abuse was also transformative for many students from backgrounds of poverty (rockinson-szapkiw, spaulding, swezey, & wicks, 2014). among these students, risk factors served as resilience mechanisms. for them, education was as a way out of their previous circumstances. for this reason, they reportedly felt compelled to continue their education. in rockinson-szapkiw, spaulding, swezey, and wicks (2014), it was reported that students’ inability lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence to consistently rely on adults influenced them to become more independent. their faith also played a role in their self-reliance. at the same time, these students could easily name one or two significant individuals who helped them to develop positive traits and values. integration researchers have found a link between persistence and online doctoral students’ sense of community and positive interactions with others (e.g., terrell et al., 2009); however, the research has been mixed (e.g., ivankova & stick, 2007). zahl (2015) defined community as “the development of social networks through relationships in the academic setting” (p. 302), using kadushin’s (2004) work in defining social networks as “relationships that one can draw upon as resources during graduate study” (p. 302). these relationships then serve as resources for doctoral students who often face unique challenges while pursuing their degree, and the lack of these relationships or removal of can have a negative impact on student persistence (zahl, 2015). online doctoral students report that “doctoral research feels lonely” (fiore et al., 2019). for those attending doctoral programs part-time and online, developing these supportive relationships can be extra challenging due to distance, lack of time together, changing of cohorts, as well as outside competing obligations (ivankova & stick, 2007; rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016; zahl, 2015). however, the literature continues to grow in showing the importance of these relationships for online doctoral students (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016). relationships within the institution. researchers have found online doctoral students’ relationship with their advisor to be critical to their success, including the time spent together, frequency of interactions, and the sense of care and trust that they perceive (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016). relatedly, ivankova and stick (2007) found that graduate students who were inactive or had withdrawn were less likely to rate their advisors positively. consistent scholarly interactions with peers and faculty have also been found to build a sense of community (zahl, 2015). further, supportive faculty mentors are perceived as having a profound impact on student persistence (zahl, 2015), with students often looking to their faculty for guidance and support more than their academic peers (ivankova & stick, 2005). assigning a faculty advisor to help doctoral students build this positive relationship can help support student success (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016). many students recommend carefully selecting their chair and committee members, as negative experiences with these relationships is often one of the biggest challenges reported by online doctoral students (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016; terrell et al., 2016). this can result in a lack of connectedness and increases attrition (terrell et al., 2009). it is also important to note that online doctoral students may be looking to their advisors to foster these relationships, which may not happen without effort on the student’s end (terrell et al., 2009). online doctoral students recommend new student orientations where students are matched with peer mentors to establish connectedness and supports for persistence as well as formal processes throughout students’ programs to ensure student connectedness to peers, advisors, and faculty (terrell et al., 2016). relationships with academic peers also appear to impact online doctoral student persistence, as many students look to their peers for support when facing challenges (rockinsonszapkiw et al., 2016; zahl, 2015). however, formal academic peer relationships formed through assigned group work at the graduate level led to reported dissatisfaction with courses in some cases (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016) and, in others, helped form peer mentors between those earlier and later in their academic journeys (ivankova & stick, 2005). these informal interactions with peers as well as staff and faculty helped develop a sense of connectedness to academic departments current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 and a sense of belonging (zahl, 2015). novice students appeared to be drawn to and appreciative of the support of students further along in their academic programs (ivankova & stick, 2005). nevertheless, many online doctoral students struggle to establish long-term relationships with their online academic peers (ivankova & stick, 2007), and this sense of isolation can lead to drop out (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016). this may be due in part to students’ lack of selfefficacy to communicate easily with other in the online learning environment (terrell et al., 2009). helping build these relationships through scaffolded communications in courses can help build students’ abilities to more effectively communicate with peers online and develop those longlasting connections (ivankova & stick, 2005). for example, students reported preferring classes that were not too small or too large (ideal was 6-10 students) with opportunities for synchronous communication and those communications were with those who shared similar goals and values (ivankova & stick, 2005). creating informal discussion areas or places to gather (e.g., “virtual cafeteria”) are another way students reported building a sense of community in their online learning environments (ivankova & stick, 2005). spaulding and rockinson-szapkiw (2012) mentioned economic integration as an important contributing factor to online doctoral student persistence. likewise, deshpande (2016) noted the impact of financial difficulties as an impediment on the road to doctoral persistence. rockinson-szapkiw, spaulding, and spaulding (2016) pointed to financial integration (the interaction between financial support from the higher education institution and the student’s personal finances) as a source of both support and emotional strain felt by online doctoral candidates. this was distinguished from financial support, which was specified as economic support provided solely by the higher education institution. relationships outside the institution. for online doctoral students spending much of their time at school and work, their peers at work can help address feelings of isolation often felt by online students who struggle to make academic peers (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016). as many doctoral students also work, their work peers are sometimes also their academic peers, which has been viewed both positively and negatively by students trying to manage those dual roles (zahl, 2015). successful online graduate students reported the greatest perceived support from employers, family, and friends compared to those who were inactive or had withdrawn (ivankova & stick, 2007). a lack of support from employers reportedly lead to financial strain and decreased likelihood of persistence (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016). supportive partners and family members who can help with childcare and household responsibilities have also been reported to support student success (spaulding & rockinsonszapkiw, 2012). in addition, remaining connected to family while also working to complete a doctoral degree has been shown to support persistence (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016); others use their family as motivation to obtain their degree (spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). however, this can be a challenge for online doctoral students who often report sacrificing time spent with family in order to complete their degree, which adds an additional emotional toll (spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). online doctoral students reported using financial gains and promotions as motivators to help with persistence (spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). institutional factors several researchers investigated program and/or institutional factors associated with persistence in online doctoral students. in spaulding and rockinson-szapkiw (2012), program characteristics frequently were associated with persistence. students’ finding a reputable program with similar values that are compatible with their circumstances and learning styles was also lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence mentioned as being important. brown (2017) also explored doctoral students’ perceptions of the university that contributed to their choice to remain continuously enrolled in their online degree program. support services. in particular, support services, such as academic advising, career services, and library resources, seem important to online doctoral student success (fiore et al., 2019; rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016), as do the quality of academic experiences, support, and assistance (ivankova & stick, 2007). brown (2017) described how some students taking courses online can become overwhelmed by program requirements in combination with work and family demands. in this study, the students’ most prevalent university support centered on assistance from instructors and advisors. however, online doctoral students also expressed that they did not feel that they were receiving adequate or consistent support (fiore et al., 2019; terrell et al., 2009). relatedly, inadequate advising and program supports were reported to have contributed to students’ leaving their doctoral program (kennedy et al., 2015). brown (2017) examined supports not received that students believed would have helped them to achieve additional success. one theme that emerged was that, although students sought an online program for the flexibility, they missed some aspects of traditional programs, such as faceto-face communication and professor availability after business hours. a lack of time was cited as the greatest challenge for these students. similarly, deshpande (2016) reported that the absence of human interaction was a barrier to persistence. full-time student enrollment was found to be correlated with persistence and degree completion in zahl (2015), as part-time students perceived faculty as being unavailable to them and at times and that they catered to full-time students. rockinson-szapkiw and colleagues (2016) suggested that programs can assign a faculty member to serve in an advisory capacity from program entry through program completion. they argued that this faculty member can support acculturation into academia and socialization surrounding the nature of the doctoral journey and the skills and knowledge needed across the distinct phases. in addition, institutional technology supports are important for online doctoral students’ success. technology issues when computers crashed were noted as impediments to student progress (ivankova & stick, 2005). in addition, the online learning environment was cited as important to persistence in ivankova and stick (2007). moreover, in lee and colleagues (2020), the ease of use, flexibility, and usefulness of available technology was highlighted. curriculum and instruction. curriculum and instruction have also been found to be important to online doctoral student persistence (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016), with some students reporting course structure and workload as barriers to persistence (deshpande, 2016). in spaulding and rockinson-szapkiw (2012), many participants cited earlier coursework as preparing them for the challenges associated with the dissertation. “knowledgeable” and “highquality” faculty were identified as key to success. similarly, in ivankova and stick (2005), the course instructor was described as “a participant, expert, leader, designer, facilitator, and mediator of the course” (p. 8). in the words of one student, “the instructor is the course” (p. 8). according to ivankova and stick (2007), instructor accessibility and promptness of feedback were found to be more important that the quality of feedback and willingness to accommodate student needs. likewise, terrell and colleagues (2012) found that longer-than-expected response times from dissertation supervisors might contribute to a lack of student success. these authors also highlighted a need for mentorship and other assistance with the dissertation process. challenges in completing the dissertation were reported to have contributed to students’ leaving their doctoral current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 program (kennedy et al., 2015). in spaulding and rockinson-szapkiw (2012), participants also mentioned challenges associated with the dissertation impacting their success. discussion previous researchers used diverse methodologies and measures to focus on widely varying student, integration, and institutional factors in their attempts to understand persistence in online doctoral students. the resulting lack of overlap makes it difficult to identify convergence and divergence in the research. nonetheless, important takeaways exist. the purpose of this literature review was to examine factors related to online doctoral student persistence. this review shows that the literature is not clearly aligned in terms of the factors examined and the definition of persistence. therefore, it is difficult to ask more sophisticated questions relating to under what conditions factors are related to persistence. consistent with the notion that integration and institutional factors exert more influence on doctoral persistence than student characteristics (lovitts, 2001), with the exception of leadership and motivation, few student-related characteristics examined were found to be statistically significantly associated with online doctoral student persistence. there is evidence that students’ sense of community and positive interactions with others reportedly are linked to their persistence (e.g., fiore et al., 2019; terrell et al., 2009; zahl, 2015). zahl (2015) postulated that research has yet to elucidate how doctoral students develop community. however, “an ideal online learning environment has high levels of faculty-to-student and student-to-student connectedness evidenced by authentic and ongoing discourse and information sharing”, with less than ideal conditions leading to attrition (terrell et al., 2009, p. 114). during their moments of despair, having just one supportive person in the online learning environment can help create a sense of community and support student success (zahl, 2015). in addition, program and institutional characteristics frequently were associated with persistence (spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2017). brown (2017) argued that faculty members need to be encouraged to communicate often with online students and to be provided with the technological tools necessary to facilitate that communication. that is, institutions must provide the time, opportunities, and resources for such support to occur. implications for future research to connect and build upon the current body of literature, future researchers can take several steps. first, they can examine some of the same factors included in previous research in an attempt to replicate the findings. second, they can study completely online students as opposed to students taking one course online or students in a hybrid program. third, given that most of the students included in previous studies were in an education-related program, it is critical to examine students from a variety of programs, disciplines, and institutions. researchers have found differences across programs in terms of persistence. attrition rates can be as high as 70% for doctor of education (edd) programs compared to 40% to 60% for other doctoral programs, with online programs having a 10% to 20% higher attrition rate than traditional face-to-face programs (nettles & millett, 2006). fourth, future researchers can use more direct measures of variables and constructs of interest as opposed to soliciting participants’ perceptions and seeking to understand their lived experiences. fifth, more research might be done on external and informal support, including family members and pets. sixth, more research on factors, such as the impact of caregiving, is needed. seventh, whereas individual and institutional factors have received a great deal of scholarly attention, academic factors might be examined to a greater extent. eighth, other factors, such as learning outcomes and time to completion, might be explored. lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence appendix table 1 articles included in the critical integrative review of the literature citation focus framework methods participants & setting brown (2017) doctoral students' perceptions of work, university, and patterns of familial support that contribute to students' choice to remain continuously enrolled in the online degree program andragogy qualitative interview and demographic questionnaire 75 students enrolled in a university's newly developed online doctoral program in educational leadership deshpande (2016) challenges in persistence in an online dba program in england unclear qualitative interviews and survey 91 doctoral students at one institution 63.5% males, approx. 36% females fiore, heitner, & shaw (2019) online doctoral students’ perceptions of the role of academic advising on their persistence as they transition from coursework to research in doctoral study unclear, but mentioned tinto’s work, bean and metzner’s work, the abd phenomenon qualitative interviews 18 abd students who were currently enrolled in an online doctoral program (n=6), online abd students who completed their coursework within the past five years but were no longer enrolled in an online doctoral program (n=5), and students who had graduated from an online doctoral program in the past five years (n=7) 5 men, 13 women 8 participants identified as white, 10 identified as non-white current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 participants’ ages ranged from under 45 years of age (27.8%), age 45-54 (33.3%), and over 55 years of age (38.9%) the most popular fields of doctoral study were education (39%) and psychology (28%) gomez (2013) predictive impact of student characteristics on persistence in an online doctoral leadership program unclear quantitative secondary and program-specific data 303 doctoral students in a multi disciplinary online doctoral program in organizational and in strategic leadership at a private graduate university 179 graduated (113 male, 66 female), 124 attritted (86 male, 38 female) ivankova & stick (2005) experiences reported by doctoral students in an online course related to community building and persistence. unclear qualitative online discussion questions 34 doctoral students in educational leadership in higher education program enrolled in online course. all had completed at least one online course. approximately 50% had completed 3 or more online courses. students were from around the globe, with 31 paying non-resident tuition. students ranged in age from 33-52 and all were employed full-time. ivankova & stick (2007) predictive power of internal and external factors on tinto’s student integration theory, bean’s student attrition model, and mixed methods 207 active and inactive students who took more than half their classes online in educational leadership in lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence doctoral students’ persistence kember’s model of dropout from distance education courses interviews, academic transcripts and student files, elicitation materials, questionnaire, archived courses, survey higher education program (202 admitted and active, 13 admitted but inactive, 26 graduated, and 37 withdrawn or terminated from the program) typical participants were between 36 and 54 years of age, predominantly women, employed full-time, mostly out-of-state, and married with children kennedy, terrell, & lohle (2015) a grounded theory of persistence in a limitedresidency doctoral program unclear grounded theory interviews 17 students who left a limitedresidency doctoral program. lee, chang, & bryant (2020) impact of technological factors (tf) and relational factors (rf) on doctoral student learning success (sls) tf, rf, sls quantitative survey 210 doctoral students from 26 online doctoral leadership programs in the u.s. 140 female students, 70 male students rockinsonszapkiw, spaulding, & lunde (2017) how distance education women edd students who are mothers balanced and integrated their multiple identities to persist jones and mcewen’s conceputalization of identity, conceputalization of intersectionality drawn from critical race theory, tinto’s theory of integration qualitative questionnaires, life maps, and interviews 17 women candidates in one of two distance education edd programs with second-generation characteristics at universities in the southeastern us rockinsonszapkiw, spaulding, & spaulding (2016) identifying significant integration and institutional factors that predict online doctoral persistence classic persistence models of tinto, bean, and bean and metzner quantitative archival survey 148 doctoral candidates enrolled in an online doctor of education program with second-generation characteristics 24 african american, 116 caucasian, 3 latino, 4 asian, 1 american indian participants current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 majority was 30-49 and female, married, and working full time rockinsonszapkiw, spaulding, swezey, & wicks (2014) poverty and persistence: a model for understanding individuals' pursuit and persistence in a doctor of education program deci and ryan’s selfdetermination theory, tinto’s integration theory, resilience framework qualitative survey and interviews 12 students (7 female, 5 male) enrolled in a doctor of education (edd) program requiring 50 online credit hours and 10 residential credits at a private, religious, non-profit, liberal arts university in the eastern united states 1 africa-american, 1 hispanic, 10 caucasian students spaulding & rockinsonszapkiw (2012) to analyze the narratives of successful doctoral candidates to uncover the personal, social, and institutional factors and contexts leading to the completion of the doctorate resilience framework, tinto’s integration theory qualitative interviews data from 42 women and 34 men with earned doctorates in education and employed in the field were analyzed 55 caucasian, 16 african-american, 2 latino, 2 asian, and 1 “other” participant(s) terrell (2005a) a longitudinal investigation of the effect of information perception and focus on attrition in online learning environments jung’s theory of psychological type quantitative longitudinal survey 51 students in limited residency doctoral program. 84.3% male, 37.3% identified as members of a minority group. average age 42 (range 24-64), 78.4% married. 51% dropped from the program or failed to finish within 7 years lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence terrell (2005b) relationship between age, gender, ethnicity, learning style and their effect on attrition from an online doctoral program. kolb’s learning styles quantitative longitudinal survey 216 students who began a limitedresidency doctoral program between 1993 and 1998 and graduated or left by 2003 54.6% male, 22.2% identified as members of a minority group, average age was 43.37 years old and approximately 38% graduated . terrell (2014) the use of experiential learning styles to predict attrition from a limitedresidency information systems graduate program kolb’s learning styles quantitative surveys 56 students enrolled in a course within a limited-residency information systems program 82.1% male, 37.5% identified as a member of a minority group, and 42.9% graduated terrell (2015) relationship between brain hemispheric preference and attrition in students enrolled in a limitedresidency doctoral program. theory of brain hemisphericity quantitative longitudinal surveys 152 students in a limited-residency information systems doctoral program 53.9% female, average age of 44, and 19.7% identified as belonging to a minority group terrell, lohle, & kennedy (2016) lived experiences that contributed to persistence for students who graduated from a limited-residency information systems doctoral program. unclear qualitative interviews graduates from a limited-residency doctoral program although 7 students who had graduated agreed to participate, data collection stopped after 5 due to saturation terrell, snyder, & limited-residency doctoral students' feelings of connectedness towards unclear mixed methods survey 223 students in a limited-residency doctoral program currently working on their dissertation as part of a current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 dringus (2009) each other and the faculty by using a survey developed specifically for that purpose degree in either educational technology or information systems terrell, snyder, dringus, & maddrey (2012) a grounded theory of connectivity and persistence in a limited residency doctoral program unclear qualitative survey, online questionnaire 17 students, representing three different dissertation advisors approximately 80% of students were in at least their fourth year of the program and had enrolled in an average of 5.8 terms for dissertation credit 65% male, with 64.7% of all students yet to complete their idea paper zahl (2015) ways part-time ph.d. students develop community within the academic department and how a sense of community is related to persistence tinto’s theory of doctoral student persistence weidman et al.’s four stage model of doctoral student socialization qualitative interviews 12 participants (10 students and 2 program chairs) in 2 academic departments (4 from nursing and 6 from education) at one urban research institution students were at or near the qualifying examination phase of their program (they were allowed to have up to two courses remaining) lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence references akojie, p., entrekin, f., bacon, d., & kanai, t. 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(2015). using hemispheric preference as a predictor of success in a limited-residency information systems doctoral program. online journal of applied knowledge management, 3(2), 127–133. http://www.iiakm.org/ojakm/articles/2015/volume3_2/ojakm_volume3_2pp127133.pdf terrell, s. r., snyder, m. m., & dringus, l. p. (2012). a grounded theory of connectivity and persistence in a limited residency doctoral program. the qualitative report, 17(62), 1– 14. http://www.nova.edu/ssss/qr/qr17/terrell.pdf terrell, s., snyder, m., & dringus, l. (2009). the development, validation, and application of the doctoral student connectedness scale. internet and higher education, 12(2), 112-116. tinto, v. (1993). leaving college: rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition (2nd ed.). the university of chicago press. willging, p. a., & johnson, s. d. (2009). factors that influence students’ decision to dropout of online courses. journal of asynchronous learning networks, 13(3), 115-127. wladis, c., wladis, k., & hahey, a. (2014). the role of enrollment choice in online education: course selection rationale and course difficulty as factors affecting retention. online learning, 18(3), 1-14. zahl, s. b. (2015). the impact of community for part-time doctoral students: how relationships in the academic department affect student persistence. international journal of doctoral studies, 10, 301-321. author notes tara lehan, phd northcentral university tlehan@ncu.edu heather d. hussey, phd northcentral university thomas hotz, mpa northcentral university more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. http://www.iiakm.org/ojakm/articles/2015/volume3_2/ojakm_volume3_2pp127-133.pdf http://www.iiakm.org/ojakm/articles/2015/volume3_2/ojakm_volume3_2pp127-133.pdf http://www.nova.edu/ssss/qr/qr17/terrell.pdf https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 9, number 7 march, 2006 issn 1099-839x the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community audrey p. watkins western illinois university this qualitative study of how parents teach their children to excel academically in the african american community seeks to establish the validity of the pedagogical practices of working class african american families by investigating the educational leadership of two families on chicago's south side. the study acknowledges the significance of non school factors (schubert, 1986) that contribute to academic success. parent pedagogical strategies are consistent with research findings on the sponsored independence parent involvement style reported by clark, (1983). findings demonstrate the significance of intergenerational educational practices, expectations, experiential motivation, parent advocacy, rituals and other factors. “the reason i wanted her and my son to go to an ivy league school was because i felt that they would be able to have contact to do whatever they wanted to do. so what i’ve found is that if you don’t put boundaries on the children that you’re having a close relationship with they can go far, far, far” (billye jo). "we have to deprive our kids of things in order to spark ambition. if they have everything, what is there left for them to want? achievement usually comes out of a desire for something. i believe even if we have to do it artificially, we have to create deprivation in our children’s lives in order to inspire them to want something more" (constance).  despite acknowledgement and growing recognition of the importance of home and out-of-school factors (schubert, 1986) that contribute to academic success and educating the whole person, little attention is still being given to parents’ views of their roles in their children’s schooling and education. this study of the pedagogy of african american parents seeks to make visible the educational leadership of parents who design and implement curriculum at home to enable their children to attain educational excellence.  my admiration for billye jo ford’s successful work as a family educator led me to this area of research. billye jo has worked to successfully enable the outstanding scholastic achievement of her children and grandchildren. she is also a community teacher in that she is frequently solicited to teach adults to read and to prepare children to attain standardized test scores that qualify them to enter elite, prestigious schools. billye jo's success is particularly intriguing since a high school diploma is the extent of her schooling. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 this level of formal education was not unusual for teachers in the african american community immediately after slavery. however, contemporary conceptions of educational experts and elite constructions of knowledge production obstruct and obscure the educational contributions of those without formal teaching credentials. in addition, the diverse dynamics of family and community education in the african american community must be documented, and our knowledge of teaching and learning is incomplete if the theory and practice of those considered noncredentialed are ignored. power and justice in a democratic society are linked to educational excellence and equity for disenfranchised groups such as african americans, whose continuing struggles for equal and quality education are multifaceted, shape american society, and serve to define the collective hopes, dreams, and strivings of a people for justice, dignity, and equality. the case studies presented here explore how two working class african american families on chicago's south side--one single-parent, and the other a two-parent family--strategized to prepare their children for academic excellence and scholastic success. these parents whom i refer to as billye jo and constance began educating their children at home with the goals of academic achievement beyond mere school completion. billye jo's husband, matthew, was also involved in their children's education. the parents aimed for excellent grades and prestigious institutions as their children's means of social capital and social mobility. these families attained these goals in that their children won scholarships to, are attending, or have graduated from educational institutions such as harvard, dartmouth, stanford, northwestern, and iowa state university. billye jo continues to instruct her grandchildren and others to achieve academic excellence. in the context of this study, i define educational excellence as superior acquisition, mastery, and demonstrated accomplishment in and of the cultural knowledge, skills and competencies highly valued by and required for mobility and success in america's macroculture as well as demonstration of that knowledge, competence, learning and achievement in outstanding standardized test scores. clearly parent pedagogies in african american communities are diverse, and this qualitative study is illustrative only of two families. this work is significant, however, because it has the important goal of documenting and establishing these parents' educational leadership as well as establishing the validity of the pedagogical practice of working class african american families. through semistructured conversational life history interviews with both mothers, an audio taped homework/tutoring session with billye jo and two of her grandchildren, and an interview with one of constance's children when she was a college sophomore, i examine the mothers' roles in their children's education, particularly their explicit teaching in the home which include the strategies and rituals parents used to fulfill their educational goals and related contextual factors that affect education and schooling. history and context n america, upward mobility is linked to education, specifically to a college education (hale, 2001, p. 25; jackson, 2001, p. 259; tidwell, 1988, p. 153; winter, 1993), and graduating from an ivy league school generally means access to privileged social status. as brunious (1998, p. 24-25) explains, however, this view is contested, particularly by social reproductionists who "argue that education does not level the playing field; rather it is a means of reproducing the social order, the dominant ideology and the work force. the school maintains class structure and takes an active role perpetuating and maintaining the existing social strata." for many african americans and others in oppressed groups academic achievement does not necessarily result in economic success and upward mobility (price, 2000, p. 6; bowles & gintis, 1977; spring, 1993). the construction of education as the great equalizer is a prominent idea which accompanies the view of gradualism (watkins, 2001). this ideology nurtures the hope/belief that african americans’ status will improve little by little by means of schooling over successive generations and neglects the more immediate struggles for justice and equality. gradualism and similar beliefs ensure that blacks, as a group, remain at the bottom of society because for many of america’s poor and minority children education perpetuates the status quo. as a group, african americans have always desired and striven for schooling. from the inception of public education for blacks, however, schooling offered to african americans has been largely separate and unequal. obtaining education and schooling for america's former slaves has been a struggle of epic proportions which still impacts our society socially, politically, economically, as well as morally and spiritually. during slavery, even learning to read was a criminal act in some areas for many slaves, and in 1810 most southern blacks were illiterate (jones, 1986; spring 2001). amott and matthaei (1991) report that: "history is clear that denying african americans access to education, and then arguing that their illiteracy proved their inferiority, was a central tool in white's subordination of blacks; proving whites wrong in theory and practice was a main concern of the free black community" (p. 154). the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 3 after slavery, former slaves’ compelling desire for schooling was firmly opposed by most whites, and burning schools and lynching teachers were some of the tactics used to keep blacks uneducated. in 1915, twenty-three southern cities with populations of over 20,000 including tampa, new orleans, charleston, and charlotte had no public high school for blacks. yet, these twenty-three cities had 36 high schools for whites (hine et al., 2003, p. 337). even with the establishment of public schooling, "one of the most important barriers african americans faced was the extremely poor conditions of black schools, especially those in the rural south. at the beginning of the 20 th century, nearly all black parents had low education levels and most black schools were in poor condition” (bauman, pp. 502, 504, 1998). once public education was established in america, there was much resistance to funding schools for blacks with public monies. the latter was the case, even in the north (hine et al., 2003, p. 161). after the brown v. board of education ruling in 1954 overturned plessy v. ferguson by declaring separate but equal education illegal, american mainstream society became even more creative in confining blacks to inferior education. tracking, ability grouping, special education designations (hale, 2001; jackson, 2001, p. 61; reglin, 1995, p. 73; rosciggno, 1998) unequal funding, different curriculums, underprepared teachers, outdated books and other means such as inferior resources and facilities are still being used to deny blacks educational equity. because of the latter, it is unconscionable to place the blame for the achievement gap and other educational problems solely on the black family while winking at the aforementioned inequities (franklin, p. 11, 2000). today's dropout rates and standardized test scores are constant reminders of america’s history and the need for equity and excellence in the education of all americans (jackson, 2001; steele, 1992). statistics illustrating the closing of the education gap must be scrutinized. "in 1940, 26 percent of whites, but only 7 percent of african americans over age 25 were high school graduates. currently, the figures are close for both races. however, the increasing number of black high school graduates does not mean blacks are being better educated (malveaux, 1998, p. 64). malveaux wonders about the quality of their [blacks’] high school education as well as the resources allocated for their education. jeremy price (2000, p. 6) continues this line of reasoning by observing that "although there has been a steady decline over the past 30 years in the number of african american youth dropping out of school, more than one out of five black youth in the 18 to 21 age group do not have the necessary skills for entry level jobs, apprenticeship programs, or post secondary education (gibbs, 1988)." corroborating evidence exists to support price's contention (yan, 1999). ideas of black inferiority seem to be perennially nourished around the standardized test score table; however, berry (1989, p. 288) believes that "the old labels of the past that have inferred cognitive, motivational, self-esteem, and learning deficits of black children, youth and college age young adults should be looked at with a jaundiced eye….cultural attributes found in the family, community and peer groups do not by themselves explain the lower levels of academic and social achievement experienced by some black people." on the other hand, berry (1989) and tucker (1999) do link the educational attainment of african americans to the need for school and community programs that emphasize solid parenting skills which are important to the future achievement of the child, his or her selfesteem, and the survival of black people" (berry, p. 291; cooper and datnow, 2000; sanders , 2000, p. 365). notwithstanding the historical and contemporary challenges, african american parents still strive for quality education to inoculate their children against unemployment and minimum wage jobs and as a means of social uplift. berry (1988, p. 288) echoes this claim that “contrary to much of the conventional wisdom, black families, even of the socalled underclass, believe in education and schooling as a pathway to a better life. frequently, however, the socioeconomic circumstances and experiences of the parents do not adequately provide the early educational orientation that prepares the child to be successful in a classroom that does not value the strengths of his or her life-style.” bauman (1998) reports that sociological surveys indicate, “african american students from disadvantaged backgrounds have higher educational and occupational aspirations than comparable whites (rosenberg and simmons 1972; hout and morgan 1975; hauser and anderson 1991)…. one cannot read much of the literature on black education without seeing many assertions of the desire, respect and even reverence for education held in the black community" (p. 504). despite this critical, compelling need for quality education, schooling and education, in the context of our society, are neither solutions nor panaceas for discrimination, inequality, injustice and oppression. however, the very existence of a black middle class indicates that some african americans current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 are able to use schooling and education to move out of poverty. the focus of this study is not the relationship between schooling and social mobility. rather, the goal of this research is to investigate the pedagogy of working class african american parents who help their children achieve educational excellence. features of the context and content of the pedagogical strategies and tactics of these parents should prove instructive to other parents and the educational community as well. review and rationale this examination of african american mothers' family pedagogies and parenting practices in the achievement of educational excellence addresses multiple areas such as informal education, parent involvement, and parent pedagogical practices. hoover-dempsey and o'connor's (2002) study of factors responsible for how parents construct their roles for involvement in their children's education derived findings which suggest, "it is the implementation of values and goals--parents' cognitions and actions related to those cognitions-that are most closely associated with student achievement"(p. 19). it is therefore important to examine various areas of these families' lives in order to reveal the values and goals reflected in their practice. clark's (1983) concept of sponsored and unsponsored independence forms part of the conceptual framework used in this study. his ethnographic case studies of ten black families compare and contrast child development strategies used by parents of five high achieving students with the strategies of parents of five students who are not high achievers. clark concluded that, “psychological processes and social communication patterns of family life come closest to capturing the essence of human learning experiences in homes” (p.3). he maintains that parents use either “sponsored independence” or an “unsponsored independence” style of parenting to prepare their children for major life roles. high achieving families use the “sponsored independence” style of communication in which parents use their influence in an authoritative manner, maintain high involvement and interest in their children’s activity in the home, and consistently monitor their children’s use of time and space. these parents also engage in frequent, almost ritualistic, parent and child activity which involves studying, reading, writing, conversing, and creating, regular parental explanation, advisement, and demonstration of everyday life skills. praising and acknowledging the child’s talents and abilities; consistent parental expectations and standards for responsible and restricted child behavior are factors as well as generally disciplined parental role behavior modeled to the child, and regular use of special parent-child role etiquettes to get the child’s compliance. in low achieving children’s homes the “unsponsored independence” parenting style is generally characterized by permissive or authoritarian parental behavior patterns as well as the opposite of the sponsored independence style described above. for example, there are infrequent parent child activities involving literacy tasks such as studying, reading, writing, information sharing and creating; limited parental teaching, advising and demonstrating of concepts and ideas to the child; inconsistent or non existent parental expectations and standards for “responsible” child behavior in home, classroom, and neighborhood settings; inconsistent discipline or irresponsible role behavior modeled before the child. other studies have supported these findings see yan (1999). clark concludes his investigation by calling for more studies which trace and analyze family educational practices over three generations of a family and the discovery of patterns of family pedagogy used by diverse strata, including never employed parents. he (1983, p. 213) observes that: "although several important research projects on family learning processes are now being done, there is not enough carefully done research on the role of parents' home teaching practices." this study of the pedagogy of these african american families in the inner cities is an addition to this literature. research by bempechat (1992) concurs with the data above: the literature on home influences in african american families suggests that the importance of parental educational socialization practices--both cognitive and academic--cannot be overstated. thus, it would be fruitful for parenting programs to focus in part on parental teaching strategies. parents who learn how to organize their homes around learning, and, in particular, how to engage their children to better meet the demands of the school, will better prepare their children to meet the demands of the school (p. 46). most of the strategies and tactics devised by the parents in this study can be considered forms of parent involvement, but there are myriad ways of conceptualizing parent involvement. yan’s (1999, p. 1) analysis follows: in the search for strategies that foster academic success among african american students, attention has been focused on increasing parental involvement in these students' schooling. however, parental the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 5 involvement has multiple meanings (cassanova, 1996), and it has been operationalized in studies in a variety of ways. nonetheless, parental involvement is widely recognized as an important contributor to the academic success of african american students (coleman, 1991; comer & haynes, 1991; cooper & datnow, in press; epstein, 1995; lareau, 1989). winters (1993, p. viii) conceives of parent participation as referring “to parents who become an integral part of their children's education." while this conception is necessary to defining constance’s and billye jo's roles in their children's educational achievement, i conceive their involvement as going beyond common meanings of “involvement” and see them, in addition, as being educational leaders who organize and use schooling as one of the many strands designed to produce specific characters and lifestyles for their children. much of the literature on parent involvement, parents as teachers, informal education, and parent participation construct or describe parents as clients who need motivation to assist their children with homework and other duties. some of these approaches define parent involvement in ways that exclude parent leadership and representations of parents as sources of transforming knowledge and pedagogy that can contribute to scholarship and to the field of education. the focus is generally for teachers and other school personnel to urge or direct parents to become involved in the school and/or with their children. recently, more emphasis has been placed on school family partnerships to improve educational outcomes (lewis, 1992). according to lewis, "no discussion of school reform and school or education policy issues these days seems complete without references to 'parent involvement.' most educators would agree this term goes far beyond the traditional view of parents as field trip chaperones and cookie bakers from preparing children for education choice, to new forms of school governance. nevertheless, much of the literature still defines parent involvement as those activities supporting what the schools define as involvement, and continues to address what parents should do" (lewis, 1992, p. 1). while efforts to enhance parent participation are commendable and clearly necessary, we must also examine what teachers, administrators, and the wider educational community can learn from the theory and practice of parents who have successfully mastered the art and science of teaching their children to succeed academically. in his study of the role of parental involvement in successful african american students, yan (1999, p. 1) decries how "studies examining the effect of parental involvement on african american students often focus on the factors that place these students at risk and ignore the ways in which african american families promote successful school achievement and experiences." louque (1999) agrees that insufficient studies have focused on successful black students. she critiques discussions of the educational achievement of blacks that blame black pathology for educational failure, but completely overlook black students who succeed despite overwhelmingly negative caricatures of their culture and home environments. louque further asserts that: “the effectiveness of education can be improved by what we learn from the ones who experience academic success. since most studies have focused on black underachievers, little is known about the influences that stimulate academic achievement by blacks, particularly females” (p. 2). jenkins (1989, p. 140) observes that: “successful academic achievement appears to be greatly influenced by good parenting skills and positive parental involvement.” he cites research, which indicates that parents’ educational level, reading activities and behaviors on the part of family and child enhance reading proficiency. the absence of these activities was found to be important in explaining lower achievement of black and hispanic children. jenkins (p. 141) discusses another study, which found that lavish praise, teaching responsibility, and buying trade books were critical to parents’ pedagogy. a national institute of education document (june 1985) explains that “programs fostering parent involvement in at-home teaching improve achievement, particularly for low-income elementary school children, but more elaborate parental programs and parent education are needed. the pedagogies of the two mothers who participated in this study exemplify the parenting practices discussed above. harris et al (1999, p. 490-491) write that: ...contemporary investigations examining the teaching practices of african american mothers (with the exception of low-income mothers) and the influence of education or schooling on the teaching practices of african american mothers are virtually nonexistent (brody & flor, 1997; heath and thomas, 1984; scott jones, 1987). this seems puzzling given that for the past few years, social scientists have argued for racehomogenous studies that explore the cultural aspects of child rearing, parenting style, and current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 behavior (peters, 1988). conversely, research on the teaching behaviors of caucasian mothers has expanded rapidly during the past two decades. the diversity in parenting and methodology of in home education among african americans demands examinations of a range of family types and settings. the literature discussed reveals the usefulness of this examination of various aspects of participants’ pedagogy from the early years of parenting until the children leave for college. in the case of billye jo, her family pedagogy continues with her grandchildren's schooling. a significant benefit of this research is this intergenerational educational experience. scott-jones, (1987) establishes the need for information about both contextual and intentional teaching by parents in the following: the current popular educational practice of encouraging parental help with children’s schoolwork needs to be carefully implemented and needs to be informed by more extensive research. conceptualizations of the mother’s role in her children’s school achievement must be developmentally based. research with older children as well as with preschoolers is needed to establish effective roles for parents to assume as children progress through school. the indirect ways in which parents influence their children, in addition to directly teaching skills, must be assessed….greater knowledge in these areas may lead to both families and schools being more successful in the socialization and education of children” (p.34). bempechat (1992, p.1) also stresses the research needs in this area: "while much research has underscored the importance of parental educational socializational practices in children's academic achievement, little is known about the ways in which high achieving black families differ from one another. the educational value orientations of families can be quite complex.... more research on within group differences will deepen an understanding of the home factors that mediate high achievement in african american families" multiple aspects of parents as teachers need to be investigated to illuminate and facilitate teaching and learning. laura desimone (1999, p. 15) advocates developing "a better understanding of the mechanisms through which parent involvement affects children’s school success.” billye jo and constance are not simply models of excellence from the african american community, but their educational experiences can contribute to an examination of how/whether or not the system of education held up as ideal works for diverse constituencies in a democracy. this study could also help to inform further exploration and assessment of the relationship between school and home in our society. finally, this study has implications for the educative process in general and for curriculum and methodology in formal and informal learning communities and can serve to enlighten classroom teachers and parents who need to be informed, encouraged, and connected as to the efficacy of their efforts towards the educational success of children. using parents’ narratives gained from conversational interviews i explored:  parents' beliefs about schooling and education  the role and source of parents’ motivation and action/agency for schooling and education  the role of literacy and parent selfeducation and research in their children’s achievements  parents’ practice--strategy and tactics used to educate their children/home/ methodologies parents’ formal and informal teaching/learning in the home introducing billye jo billye jo and matthew married after their high school graduation in 1955; she was 17, he was 20 years old. their daughter, sybil, was born the following year. matthew completed junior college during this period, but billye jo's schooling ended with her high school graduation. intelligence and a desire to work did not unlock job opportunities closed to blacks in memphis, and the frustratingly futile efforts to get a job as a postal clerk in memphis led matthew and the family to leave the jim crow south and join the “great migration” to chicago. unlike in memphis, passing the postal service test in chicago allowed matthew to begin a 32-year career as a postal clerk. he welcomed the chance to work and soon he was a full-time bus driver and a part-time postal worker. when he became a chicago police officer two years later, matthew continued working two jobs so that billye jo could remain at home and teach their children. billye jo's self educational efforts, talents, hard work, and educational strategizing led her to not only provide educational leadership for her family, but also to her being asked to serve as the teaching assistant in the first open classroom in chicago’s public school system. in addition, parents of students at the university of chicago laboratory schools recommended her as a tutor for children who needed the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 7 academic help. when billye jo told parents who requested her services that she did not have a college degree, they simply responded, “what’s your fee?” billye jo's family socialization despite their economic locations on the other side of the american dream, billye jo's parents created an atmosphere of confident hope. she and her siblings sat on orange crates because the only chairs were for the family’s adults. billye jo recalls however that: "the table always had a tablecloth on it.” the table was always set and floral arrangements from their garden mediated the starkness of poverty. despite the family’s circumstances, billye jo’s mother and grandmother provided informal education, which laid a foundation for the children’s adult lives. in addition to a flower and a vegetable garden, there was an herb garden, and everything was used to instruct: “my grandmother would walk with us and tell us the names of the flowers and the plants. she would pick off some leaves and say, ‘here's peppermint, smell this, taste this sweet gum.” an important piece of billye jo's family's education was the love of reading that her mother and grandmother inculcated into the children. billye jo says her mother and grandmother always read: “i think my mother probably had a fifth or sixth grade education and probably my grandmother even less, but the thing that impressed me the most was that we always had this big box and it was full of books, and my mother and grandmother read, you know, all the time. and when we got through with our homework we would sit and they would tell us folktales or riddles and read to us." the behaviors these women modeled, impacted the children's lives. billye jo spent most of her free time reading. she particularly liked reading fairy tales. in addition to reading, the curriculum of the home included arts and crafts projects, which ranged from sewing, quilt making, drawing, and painting to woodworking. arts and crafts are on billye jo’s home curriculum, just as it was when she herself was a child. one of her brothers earned his college tuition by tailoring. the result of this home training is obvious in billye jo’s life. tiffany’s of new york purchased some of her dolls for their “dolls and diamonds” exhibit. billye jo has conducted quilting and origami workshops in schools, and she has been commissioned to make quilts for schools and organizations such as jack and jill of america. she strives to learn and produce any art or craft that intrigues her. introducing constance the second participant, constance, was a housewife during her three children's infancy. her husband was a financial aid administrator at a university, and she says she held middle class status during her marriage. the couple divorced, and constance and her three children slipped into the underclass, coping with the pervasive poverty, which accompanied single parent status. "in a social climate in which only 23 percent of american children are growing up in two parent families and 85 percent of african american children are in single parent families" (hale, 2001, p. 6), constance and her children were surrounded by others in similar circumstances. yet, she raised her three high achieving children while dealing with abuse from her former husband and earning a bachelor's degree in communications. the degree helped her work her way up to becoming a public housing manager. while in this position, constance developed a training program to teach public housing residents who were supervisory trainees skills ranging from business etiquette to using a calculator and writing reports. constance’s family socialization i have more information on billye jo than i do on constance because i have been investigating billye jo’s practice for a longer time. constance had a difficult relationship with her mother. her mother believed in african derived religious practices and constance wanted no part of it. she remembers: because i resisted my mother’s attempts to include me in a religious practice called “roots”, we were never close. she was an interesting dichotomy; she sent us to church every sunday, but she wanted me to be a “root worker” as well . because i was steadfast in my refusal to participate in any of the rituals she practiced, i became the family goat. my mother was a terrifying woman. she drank, she smoked, she fought men and women all her life. i didn’t drink, i didn’t smoke. i was an “a” student and as straight as i could figure out how to be. she would look at me and get mad. when she got mad, she would beat me. she was a funny, fearless, intelligent woman who lived a life completely out of control. maintaining control over her children was of paramount importance to her. when i left her house, it was to marry yet another controlling personality. despite the above, constance credits her mother "for teaching me how to persevere in the face of extreme adversity." she remembers that her father motivated her to excel. she credits him: current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 for giving us a sense of self. my daddy insisted that all of his children were exceptional. he taught us that we were all blessed with high intelligence, which increased our responsibility to our race, our community, and our family name. we were taught to always be aware that other people are watching what we do. my father loved the church. he did not always live an exemplary life, but he loved god all of his life. in the church, they say that if you’re a christian, you’re supposed to be a stand up example, and i’ve used that most of my life. i have always wanted to create a positive environment where people are encouraged, where people are convinced that the dream they have is attainable. clark (1983, p. 112) explains that, “the case studies of high achieving students indicate the existence of an intergenerational transmission of behavior patterns.” the lives of billye jo and constance illustrate this transmission in multiple areas. both women are successful in their personal and professional endeavors. billye jo discovered an extraordinary talent when a friend took a sample doll billye jo had made to the american bar association and received 400 orders that first day. connie excels as housing manager in the public and private sectors and is currently assistant housing manager of a city in the eastern united states. method billye jo's enthusiasm for excellence in educational achievement fuels her desire to see parents infected with hope and equipped with strategies to help their children succeed and excel. constance is also gratified with her own and her children's educational successes and agreed to participate in this study. a third parent, billye jo's neighbor, whose son recently was graduated from harvard university with a double major, declined to participate. clark (1983, p. 9) observes that the “most promising new research on the topic of ‘families’ as educators is taking a more holistic view of family units as producers of knowledge.” my goal is to look holistically at these lives so as not to, a priori, exclude information that may inform our understanding of their family education. i use background information from a previous study of billye jo's practice which i conducted in 1994 for doctoral coursework because this knowledge is inextricably part of the data i use to conceptualize her pedagogy. i also use information from an audio taped tutoring session with the two grandchildren she worked closely with, simon and jill. i recorded an interview with constance's oldest daughter, pauline, in 1999 about her perceptions of her family's educational journey during her tenure at dartmouth. i recorded and transcribed life history conversational interviews with both mothers in 2000, and i conducted follow up interviews by telephone and in person in 2003. semi-structured conversational life history interviews enabled the excavation of embedded information about participants' lives and teaching. both mothers' philosophies and practices are interspersed/suffused/located in several areas of their experiences. not wanting to disembody them from their individuality, which is critical to examining and understanding their pedagogy, i look at them individually and jointly. the diversity and similarity in their approaches should be valuable to our understanding in many areas. i use narrative methodology (riessman, 1993) because it gives agency to participants and allows them to discuss how their life experiences shaped their decisions, strategies and tactics as successful family educators. interviews are similar to informal conversational ones used in etter-lewis' (1993) study of older professional black women. themes (eisner, 1988, p. 64) and patterns (polkinghorne, 1988) are identified and analyzed. both inand out-of school factors influence education and academic achievement, and this study acknowledges the conceptual framework derived from schubert's (1986) theorizing on the significance of the relationship between the in-school and nonschool curriculum. schubert suggests that answers to questions such as “what messages do students get about the value of schooling; what do they see it as being good for; do students come into contact with persons who are actively trying to become educated in their homes and families; is such an education of a formal or informal variety; do family members take an interest in or discuss ideas or projects dealt with in school; and what does the family environment teach," must inform the practice of educational stakeholders and therefore should be investigated. the answers to these questions will not only inform us as about the various influences on education but will also illuminate the pedagogy of the parents in this research. narrative data from this study address questions similar to schubert's that explore family education. the significance of the out-of-school curriculum and pedagogy of these parents in their children's academic success will be demonstrated. academic achievement of participant's children/grandchildren her children's elementary school teachers often told constance that her children set the curves on examinations. two of her three children majored in mathematics. however, her son mark was notable in that: the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 9 the teachers recognized that he needed challenging, so from seventh grade on every summer he went to a different college for high-level mathematics. and so they kept trying to engage him, and by his junior year he was taking his math at the university of chicago, because there wasn’t anything else for him to take. by third and fourth grade he figured out that school was easy, work was dumb. and so that was the struggle i had with him. mark did not learn until after he entered the master’s program how to study because he never needed to. mark earned a master's degree in electrical and computer engineering and is thriving in his profession. billye jo's daughter, sybil, was in kindergarten for only three weeks when the teacher requested a conference; “i was like what could sybil have done, why is she calling me? so i go up and she said, 'you know your daughter is very, very bright.' i was like, she is? and she said, 'yes, we want to move her from kindergarten to second grade.' and so i said okay she could go, you know, and sybil felt all right with it. and so then i started paying attention to what sybil was really doing.” sybil scored in the 99 percentile on her high school entrance examination and won scholarships to prestigious high schools such as the latin school and frances parker. billye jo and matthew, unaware of the reputation of these schools, sent sybil to a catholic girls’ school close to home, however, because they believed she would be safer. under her mother's tutelage, sybil became valedictorian of her class and won academic scholarships to institutions such as harvard, yale, and dartmouth. she became a lawyer and married a doctor. when sybil and her husband were expecting their first child, billye jo challenged herself to see if she could make her first grandchild a genius. billye jo's grandchildren, sybil's two children, represent the maturation of billye jo's pedagogy. billye jo began teaching jill soon after she was born, and at four years old, billye jo applied to have jill admitted to a program for the gifted at northwestern university. jill’s comprehension impressed the program’s instructors when they noticed that she knew the difference between “rain,” “reign,” and “rein.” jill enrolled in all honors classes at the university of chicago laboratory schools, won the brown university award for literature, and earned perfect sat verbal scores. she is now completing her freshman year at an ivy league university. her brother, simon, is just as accomplished, although not as disciplined, according to billye jo’s standard. he has been admitted to the high school rated by chicago magazine and the chicago sun times as one of the top five high schools in chicago where he has been invited to enroll in honors mathematics and science. contextualizing – struggles and dreams – education as motivation and motivation for education poverty was a ubiquitous, oppressing force in both families--a legacy they did not want their children to inherit. their lives were influenced by their struggles to survive and escape poverty. yet, they refused to allow poverty to define them and fix their destinies. both families saw schooling and education as a means of empowerment and upward social mobility, and they shared these values with their children explicitly, both verbally and nonverbally. in addition to single parenthood and financial disaster, constance coped with knowing that her husband was stalking her. billye jo and constance are both characteristic of clark’s (1983, p. 116) description of the high achieving students’ parents he describes as being: distinguished by their hopeful, forthright sensibilities about themselves and their children. specifically, they possessed a belief in their own ability to see to it somehow that their children’s needs would be provided for, a strong sense of goal direction and a hope and belief that things would get better, a penchant for managing their time and material resources prudently, a strong sense of self-reliance and independence, deep self-pride and personal integrity, a sense of the salience of the needs of their children.... they saw themselves and their own efforts as indispensable to attaining educational goals they willingly sacrificed to obtain. this willingness to sacrifice demonstrates their beliefs in and commitment to assuming responsibility for the education of their offspring. throughout her struggles, constance focused on her educational goals for the children as well as for herself. she explains: i was paying all of the little money i was making out in babysitting, and tuition and we were eating raviolis and ramen pride-three for a dollar. we were struggling, but i knew that--i kept my eyes on the prize--i knew that the struggle was worth it, and i was able to convince the children that we could do anything in a short period of time…but all through our lives education current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 was the key to the change and the children saw it once i got my degree. after earning her bachelor's degree, constance's salary climbed from $13,000 a year to $25,000, "and that seemed like a fortune. we were middle class at 25 grand." the children noted that they no longer shopped in thrift stores once their mother became manager of a department at sears. billye jo and matthew’s strategy meant that he worked two jobs so that she could remain at home and educate their child. despite his working two jobs, money was still scarce. “here comes one-suit-ford,” matthew’s coworkers would say. “what if you make this sacrifice and your daughter gets pregnant,” some of them would ask him. he was resolute, however, in his determination to see his daughter well educated. even before sybil was born, billye jo dreamed of the life she wanted for her daughter. andy hardy movies exposed billye jo to the link between a diploma from an ivy league school and upward mobility. “the girls attended mt. holyoke and others of the seven sisters. there’d be a big ball at harvard or dartmouth and the girls always looked fabulous." billye jo reminisces that the message she got from the media and society was that "blacks had to excel; we had to have something special. when i watched the kids on the screen, i just thought, that looks like a much better life than i had, and i decided i wanted that for my child.” by the time sybil enrolled in high school, billye jo had researched "ivy league schools, and i figured, why shouldn’t she go? never mind we didn’t have any money. never mind all of these other things, you know." epps reveals that his survey research indicates that parents and students who believe opportunities are not open to them have lower educational aspirations (epps in clark 1983). mavis sanders' (1998) investigation of students' beliefs also links beliefs about social mobility and achievement in schooling: students' achievement ideologies or beliefs about the relationship between schooling and future success and prosperity also have been found to influence academic performance.... if youth view education as an effective means of social and economic improvement, they are more likely to value educational attainment and academic achievement. on the other hand, if they are pessimistic about the role of education for socioeconomic mobility, they are less likely to value academic achievement. indeed, in an analysis of fifth-grade attitudes, brookover and schneider (1975) found that students' sense of futility in the school system accounted for nearly 45% of the remaining variance in academic achievement after controlling for student background variables. expectations and boundaries kitano's (1998, p. 2) observation applies to how billye jo and constance were raised and how they in turn trained their children: in general african american families hold high expectations for schooling and are motivated to support children’s academic achievement (stevenson, chen, & uttal, 1990). within african american families, achieving students are more likely than their unachieving peers to have nurturing but firm parents who are optimistic and who perceive themselves as having effective coping strategies, engage in activities that enhance their children’s literacy, and are assertive in their interactions with the schools ( clark, 1983). overall, there is a strong belief in education as means to a better life across economic groups (clark; prom-jackson, johnson, & wallace, 1987; willis, 1992). some of the factors critical to the children's success were that their parents set high standards of academic performance, explicitly communicated these goals/expectations/dreams, and supported their children's own goals and efforts by implementing strategies for their success. billye jo was not an outstanding student, but she was aware of her parents' expectations: “i could never catch on as fast. i could catch on, but it took time for me to catch on. i felt that i was dumb…but going through school i guess i was like ahm low average. i never brought home ds, but bs and some cs because my parents did not do ds. so that’s what i grew up with, but my place was in the peach tree. i would sit up in the peach tree and just daydream all the time and “star light, star bright….” these dreams may well have been sites where young billye jo envisioned breaking boundaries. constance’s parents were also quite explicit in conveying their academic expectations: “my daddy used to say that anybody could get a “c.” the only thing he really expected you to bring home was an “a” or a “b,” so i did tell the children that as well-so i passed that on. anybody could get a “c”--you might as well be flunking. all you gotta do is show up; you get a “c;” so they accepted it. it was easy for them to get “a”s. ...my children would get “a”s. they would set the curves on exams.” when her children were three, five, and seven years of age, constance communicated to them her vision of how they would survive and thrive: after my divorce, i used to sit and talk to my children. after being a stay at home the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 11 mother, it was time for me to go to work. i sat down and talked to them. i said i’ve got to go to work and that’s going to be my job…i told them that you’ve got a job too. your job is to make good grades… your mother’s poor. we’re poor now and i am not sure that i’ll be able to send you to college. but you can go if you make good grades. you make good grades and they’ll give you scholarships. you can go anywhere in the world you want to go. you can go to paris, you can go to austria, you can go anywhere. your job is to make those grades and the world is yours. i had no intention of staying poor enough for my kids to get to school based on financial hardship, …[but] i knew if they didn’t make the cut financially, they needed to make it academically. as it turned out, all three of them went to school on academic scholarships. like connie, billye jo was explicit with sybil. “i’m telling her, oh sybil, i want you to go to an ivy league school, either yale or harvard or whatever. i said, you know, your grades have to be perfect, but her grades always were. she was always in the junior classical league, honors, everything." billye jo explained that students who excelled in latin were invited to join the junior classical league. both families exemplified persistent dedication by working daily towards their goals. information such as the academic rankings of educational institutions was part of the social capital that helped them compete in a world where knowledge and information can mean the difference between success and failure. the word 'boundaries' represents opposition to limits on their children's potential, which billye jo and constance reject. instead, they strove to harness all areas of life to holistically support educational achievement. constance stresses: “i never told them there was a limit to anywhere they could go. i never told them there was a limit to their aspirations, because how would i know? i told my children they could be anything they wanted. i told them that with the understanding that they needed to know what they wanted. i never said that they would be the president of the united states, but i fully--i let them know they could be the president of something.” billye jo expresses similar sentiments: “what i found is that if you don’t put boundaries on the children that you are having close relationship with, they can go far, far, far." billye jo adds that her daughter “sybil wanted to be the best, and i would tell her, you are the best. i told her my hopes and dreams for her.” the latter conveys both positive expectations and boundary defying worldviews that bore fruit by inculcating positive self-concept. an adult sybil informed billye jo that: “i wanted them (these goals) for myself, but for you, too." these mothers' practices exemplify bempechat's findings (1992, p. 1) in the following: "the messages parents communicate to their children about learning and schooling, while often subtle, can be very powerful in their children's developing notions about achievement. caregivers who communicate the importance of effort and of taking responsibility for personal academic outcomes may foster in children greater persistence and diligence in the pursuit of achievement goals." both families used explicit as well as subtle means of educational socialization. clearly these parents’ beliefs in the viability of education as the way to upward mobility, and their focus support clark’s finding that parents of high achievers seem more optimistic and believe they can cope with life challenges, whereas parents of low achievers view things as hopeless ( clark 1983). even in their interactions with the youth in their communities, billye jo and constance share similar messages of setting high standards, personal achievement, and fulfilling potentials. constance told the youth at the housing projects she managed not to limit themselves: “they have people in their lives that are telling them what they can’t do. i don’t want people to think in a provincial way. i don’t want people to believe that where they are is the only place for them to be.” parental responsibility and advocacy although their tactics differed, both mothers demonstrated persistent, informed advocacy as a form of parent involvement. this advocacy meant high visibility in school affairs. connie taught her children how to negotiate with adults and to solve problems in the school environment, so they could learn to handle situations independently. however, she knew when to intervene: now if one of my children took my advice and did as i suggested, and i did not like the report they brought back to me, i appeared at the school. the favorite phrase at the school was, ‘now ms. clark, now ms. clark, (laugh) let me explain what happened...’ but what it did, in matters where my children seemed to have been victimized or mistreated, p.s. 25 knew that i was going to show up. i think that too, affected my children’s academic careers. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 the children got to the point where they would rather take care of the problem than see me show up at the school. i was never ignorant, never abusive to the administrators, but i was very firm, and very determined to get the problem resolved. and that’s how we went through their secondary school years. i would go to the school, i would make it very clear to whoever was involved in the matter, that whatever their problem was, they should visit it upon somebody else. my child was not the one. it’s interesting in that once a teacher had met me, from that point on, my children would cease to have problems with that particular teacher. whatever their personality problems were, they did not want those dialogues to happen again and they would leave my children alone. billye jo and matthew both visited a high school teacher they thought was being unfair to sybil. the presence of both parents, united in their concern and support, undoubtedly left an indelible impact on the school. their approach seems subtler than constance's, though. billye jo's advocacy was frequently expressed in assertively researching information to help sybil fulfill her dreams and goals. like constance, billye jo believes passionately that parents must assume responsibility for and take charge of their children’s education. when sybil wanted to be the valedictorian of her class, but worried that other classmates who were smarter than she might prevail, billye jo responded, "oh well, you can be that if you want to be.” action followed those words: “ i went to school to find out what it took to be valedictorian, and she ended up valedictorian; so that taught me a lot of times you can’t wait for circumstances. if you want something you have to go after it." now that billye jo's granddaughter jill wants to win the service award for jack and jill of america, the same parental assertiveness is guiding her towards her goal. findings of hoover-dempsey’s and jones o'connor's (2002) study of the role of parental role construction in parent involvement and children's education affirm the link between billye jo’s and constance’s concept of responsibility for their children's educational success and their children’s academic achievement. these researchers define parental role construction for involvement in education "as parental beliefs about what one is supposed to do, as a parent, in relation to the child's education. it functions as a motivator of parental involvement because it enables the parent to imagine, anticipate, plan, and behave in relation to a host of activities potentially relevant to the child's educational success" (2002, p. 5). hoover-dempsey and jones o'connor (2002, p. 15) found that: "student achievement, the focal student outcome for much parental involvement research, was associated with components of parental role construction. parents of lower achieving children tend to focus on the school's responsibility in both day to day and common crisis situations; parents of higher achieving students tended to focus on their own responsibilities in day-to-day education and on partnership-focused responsibilities in common crisis situations.” constance's response to my question if she believes the educational system works for african americans since it has worked for her children follows: i believe that it is the parents’ responsibility to see to it that it works. i believe in public education. my children got an excellent education from the public school system, but i am somewhat concerned about the tendency of parents to abdicate total responsibility for their children’s education to the school system. i do not believe it’s possible for the school system to totally serve the needs of black children, and i think that we are fooling ourselves when we try to structure a situation where that is. because all it means to me is that we are abdicating responsibility. i believe that the primary basis for ensuring the education of our children remains in the home. i’ve always believed that. and i believe that we as parents have to take full responsibility for our children. if my children were mad at me because i wouldn’t let em go somewhere, well that’s just too bad. i’d just have to take that hit. they still couldn’t go! the economic and social stressors should not be minimized, but these families’ lives demonstrate the faith as well as the works needed to overcome the barriers they faced. constance's position on the role of parents in the educational achievement of their children is informed partly by her observation of how "southern blacks, maids, people with third grade educations sent five, six kids to college because they insisted that that’s what was going to happen." the latter illustrates the power of parent leadership as well as the influence of community and the force of history to motivate educational achievement. the intergenerational transmission of values is evident here as well. clark (1983, p. 211) notes: “parents who expect public schools and other public agencies to take the major responsibility for their children are the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 13 likely to see their children leave school sooner than they should and with inadequate preparation for social responsibilities.” clark advocates practical training and information to help black parents improve the quality of their children's academic experience. for this training to be most effective, i believe it is critical to investigate parents’ perceptions of the role of the school and their own roles in the educational process. family pedagogical strategies educational rigor/commitment/discipline that these parents accepted the responsibility for the academic goals they chose for their children as discussed above is reflected in the level of educational rigor they sustained. they sought the educational experiences and rewards of elite institutions, and therefore accepted the accompanying challenges. the following remarks by billye jo about her grandchildren's schools are self-explanatory: "but another thing that i like about lab and lenard, is that no matter what the parents think, you know, a lot of parents say i don’t want my child under stress, i don’t want my child this, i don’t want my child that, but we live in a real world. you have to either do it or not do it. if you’re gonna be successful there are things you’ve gotta do. and if you’re not, you’re not. so this has taught jill and simon i’m gonna budget my time and i’m going to do this, this, and this. and then the stress is not stressful." billye jo acknowledges the parents' challenges in the following: "…but if you go to the meetings there are parents there who complain that there’s too much homework, you shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do that, and you shouldn’t do the other. and i feel the same way; i feel there is an awful lot of homework at both schools, awful lot, plus they have an awful lot of after school things that are going on too that they want to participate in, so you have to find a way to do all of it.... if you’re gonna do it, you might as well do it well.” in addition to school work, billye jo's grandchildren have elected to be involved in extra curricular activities such as foreign study, music, tennis, children's choir, soccer, and theatre. each child also has to plan and cook dinner one night per week at home. clark (1983, p. 5) asserts: “there are at least three types of home activity that prepare children for the competent performance of school responsibilities.” the first of these is “home educational-instructional activities, such as deliberate teaching in the three rs, home recreational activities, and health maintenance activities.” the first two factors are particularly relevant in this study. both mothers conscientiously implemented early literacy. during sybil's infancy, the family’s weekly shopping trip always ended with the purchase of a golden book. by the time sybil was six years old, she owned about 100 of these books. sybil took a book instead of a toy on family outings, her father read to her nightly, and books were always part of her life. billye jo remembers, "i talked to sybil a lot and because of my love for reading, every time i saw a book i'd bring it to sybil. and ahm, we'd talk and we'd read stories together and she--i wanted her to have the love of reading because when i discovered reading from that box my mother had, it was like a whole world opened up. you could dream about traveling and dream about this and that. so when sybil was born i had all these dreams for sybil." the multidimensional connections between education and dreams are repeatedly apparent in their dialogue. the period after sybil was skipped from kindergarten to second grade was decisive. billye jo noted: i really started paying attention to what sybil was doing. so when she came home and talked about phonics--i had never really heard about phonics because i grew up in the 50s, so i went to school and i sat in the back of class and told the teacher you need to teach me phonics because i’ve never heard of this. so the teacher was gracious and she taught me phonics, then i could help sybil. i attended school with her at least two times a week to learn what she was learning, then i’d improve on the lesson and teach it to her. billye jo diligently used the school or any other resource that she could learn from, so that she could teach the information to her cooperative daughter: “people often think that i overpowered sybil, but i always asked her opinion and agreement before we did things. even when sybil was only in the fifth grade i’d get her opinion on what i planned to cover with her. i’d say, sybil, i think this is what we should do, what do you think?” both mothers pursued early literacy for their children. on observing a first grade classroom where many children were not being taught to read at grade level, hale’s (2001, p. 137) remarks address the critical nature of early literacy: "they want to learn. however, many of these children are not being taught to read at grade level. teaching reading is hard work. many children who are not taught to read by their parents before entering school fall through the cracks." constance shared some teaching techniques she used with mark when he was a preschooler: current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 when i taught him it was big a, it might have been like a song, i had a book. it said big a--little a. what begins with a, a-apple, something else, it all began that way. it was a poem. but i also found when i was teaching him, and this is helpful to young parents who try, you have to teach him both cases. you have to teach him the big “a” the little “a,” big “b”, the little “b” at the same time because the children take what you say as law. so if you teach them the upper case and then you try to introduce the lower cases, they’re going to think you’re crazy. no, no you told me this other thing was the “a.” what do you mean this is an “a” too? so i found that out in the course of me working with them, you have to teach them both cases of the letters going in, and you have to pick a book that reflects the fonts that are most regularly used in books. of her after school sessions with grandchildren simon and jill, billye jo remarked: "i make learning a game, it's not just a matter of do this or do that.” she also mentioned arts and crafts: “there's a big box of papers, origami things, scissors, i have crafts, it's so much fun, they cry when they have to go home." even though single parenting meant she had to enter the workforce, connie says she developed an abbreviated method of instruction, which included a minimum of 15 minutes per day with each child, and like billye jo, she stresses the importance of making learning fun: what i did was i combined it with love, you know. if they got it right i’d kiss em all up and tickle em all, and they just loved it. and so then they’d want to do the next one. and then i’d say “what’s this?” and he’d say big "a," and i’d say what’s that and he’d say little “a.” and i’d tickle, tickle, tickle and then we’d go. and so i would introduce maybe three letters at a time, you know. maybe a, b, c then d, e, f and then we’d go back and check those other ones just to make sure he retained it. and it was nothing. they picked it up like that. both parents bought educational toys with alphabets or numbers, blocks or puzzles of the united states. constance limited her purchases to “anything ...that taught them how to do something.” she bought a few non-educational toys such as he man and she ra for christmas, though. teaching and learning were neither relegated to a particular time nor space. billye jo kept a map on the wall, and whenever she took one of her many trips to places such as japan, israel, or china, for example, jill charted the countries on the map and studied them. the world almanac, ripley’s believe it or not, greek and indian myths, the "iliad" and the "odyssey," great artists for children, shakespeare for children, a question and answer book (the latter is reminiscent of general knowledge textbooks i used in jamaica under the british system of education) were some of the texts in billye jo's home curriculum. "i’ve got this great new book, it’s gonna teach you how to remember the capitals,” was billye jo's introduction to a memory system to help jill, who was now in the fourth grade, remember the state capitals and the american presidents. jill now says that her grandmother’s enthusiasm motivated her to love learning. one of billye jo's goals was for jill to be equally interested in all subjects. this plan was eminently successful because as a high school student jill was enrolled in honors physics, chemistry, english, literature, and writing. in preparing to teach her grandchildren, billye jo took her neighbor’s advice and purchased the book how to give your child a higher i.q. one of the book's techniques that she used was teaching her granddaughter colors even before she could speak. “this is a red rattle,” billye jo would say. “people would wonder why mention the color when she didn’t understand, but i’d always mention it. by the time jill was one and a half years old, she knew all her colors.” every day billye jo picked up her two grandchildren from school, supervised their schoolwork, helped them with homework, and instructed them. as mentioned above, arts and crafts were integral to the curriculum in the home. ritualized learning practices began so early that the children knew no alternatives. early in their family education efforts, matthew, billye jo’s husband, came home in between his two jobs to teach sybil mathematics. unlike billye jo, constance received no help from her husband with the children, but she was undeterred from her daily teaching ritual. she says her son received more teaching time because she did not work outside the home during his infancy. billye jo's neighbor who declined to be part of this study shared many successful techniques with her such as how to use alphabet blocks and flash cards to instruct the children. billye jo threw flash cards on the floor and used them to compose words for jill. she would then have jill compose her own words. next, billye jo moved the words around to make sentences. soon she would assign the five-year-old jill to make a sentence, and competition heightened the challenge. “my sentence is the best, billye jo would say; i bet you $100 you can’t make a better sentence than mine.” jill might fail and become concerned that she the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 15 owed her grandmother money, but billye jo would graciously give jill opportunities to clear her debts by earning double the money if she could produce more than the agreed on number of sentences. progress came quickly, and soon jill would be composing “asking sentences,” “statement sentences,” and so on. one day, billye jo announced to four-year old jill, "i'm giving you a test; i’m putting you on the clock." jill looked puzzled, but began the process of becoming familiar with taking timed tests. billye jo had been afraid of tests in her youth and the realization that her children would be competing in a stratified society mandated this approach. one of the teachers interviewed in cynthia jackson's reference handbook on african american education believes if african american students are taught test taking skills, "they could probably do equally as well as other children" (2001, p. 81). a synonym finder and the study of critical thinking were soon added to the home curriculum. billye jo's husband’s belief that if one knows the rules for a particular procedure, one can do anything, guided the family’s focus on the rules for grammar, math, latin, and other subjects. jill’s teachers at the university of chicago laboratory schools did not believe in such a focus on rules, but billye jo and matthew insisted on it anyway. they wanted their children and grandchildren to study latin to help them with root derivatives, for example, and they are pleased with the results. although billye jo never studied geometry in high school, she read books and taught jill geometry before jill learned it in school. the goal was to keep jill ahead of her class. jill was the only student of color and the only female at a prestigious national engineering summer camp for honor students, and it is obvious that the fruit of these labors of love is evident. these parents conceived of these strategies as giving their children "a little leg up." teachers recognized the achievement, preparedness for learning, and the superior performance of these students. billye jo believes that success comes in "having and working a plan," and her pedagogy is illustrative of this. the educational strategies she currently uses with her grandchildren reflect her ingenuity and initiative to research and develop ways to achieve her educational goals. she consulted with upper class asians at her grandchildren’s schools to learn how they helped their children excel academically. she discovered that these parents acquired required readings for the coming school year and prepared their children over the summer. they examined papers and other schoolwork to anticipate what their children would need and provided the appropriate resources in advance. billye jo began to apply these same principles, and her grandchildren were always ahead of their classes. she explains, "i keep em ahead. that’s the key; you have to keep them ahead of what the teacher’s asking. when jill was in third grade if i knew the teacher’s gonna give a test on whatever, i would teach it to her. she already knew it because i would teach it to her. when i had her with me, i’m teaching her.” hale's (2001, p. 134) discussion of affluent white parents is descriptive of what constance and billye jo sought to do by means of their pedagogy: "these parents left nothing to chance. they did not depend upon the schools to teach their children to read and calculate. the children came to school reading, having being taught by their mothers." i tape recorded an after school session during which billye jo worked with simon on rhyming words while jill did her mathematics homework. in one segment billye jo tells four-yearold simon, “ok now, this might be a little hard” and receives the expected reply: simon: not hard for me, hard for you! billye jo responds: oh, is that what it’s going to be? let’s see! and the challenge is on. billye jo: okay, what’s the next word? simon: spoon. billye jo: and what rhymes with it? simon: poon? billye jo: spoon, what? simon: moon? billye jo sounds delighted and a bit surprised. oh, that’s great, okay! jill, who has been working independently asks, jill: grandma, billye jo: yes, jill? jill: what does it mean when it says tell how many hundreds tens and ones? i did not sense anything spectacular except devotion, diligence, patience and a disciplined, yet fun approach to the work. billye jo tells simon, “look at the word so when you see it again you’ll know it.” undoubtedly, the day-by-day consistency counts. while working on rhyming words, simon sees the word 'money' and begins singing "more money, more money, more money, more!" billye jo firmly guides him back to the rhyming sentences. when billye jo invested in learning aids such as the evelyn woods reading course. the speed-reading and comprehension helps sybil in her work as a lawyer. constance stressed the importance of going beyond commitment to being informed: "....it’s a time, it’s a time commitment, for sure. and then you current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 educate yourself. i mean, i went to the teachers’ stores...." i asked these parents repeatedly if these were bright children who would do well academically under any circumstances. rather than claiming their children are geniuses, both mothers believe their early and consistent home education efforts were instrumental in their children's academic excellence. connie responds: i believe my children are bright. i don’t know that they are necessarily brighter than other people’s children. i’ve had this conversation with other people. my children represent the third generation of college educated people on both sides of their family; both my ex-husband’s family and my own. we are intelligent people. but i have become convinced that if you take the time out when they are very small, then almost any child can achieve similar results. i didn’t expect people to consider my children geniuses when they went to school. i just wanted them to be adequately prepared. everybody went nuts every time one of my children came through the first grade because they knew how to read. i believe just doing that isolates the children. in our educational system, the category they assign you to going in oftentimes determines how the system will respond to you. my children were given opportunities and advantages that other children were not given. that is unfortunate. as a parent of a student in the high school constance's children attended, my observations of the teachers with whom i interacted led me to conclude that some of them were more enthusiastic, responsive, protective of, and helpful to these students who already had the strong foundation of the "little leg up" and were outstanding scholastically. my perception was that the "ordinary" students were not 'feathers in teachers' caps,' and therefore resources and opportunities were different. this is probably what billye jo referred to when she said blacks need "something special to succeed." in addition, constance's daughter pauline who graduated from dartmouth noticed that her friends who attended all black high schools were pushed to graduate from high school, but not to attend college. these students did not get the referrals and college information her integrated high school offered. pauline claims guidance counselors made a difference because at her high school, "there were three really good counselors. i kept close to them. a friend of mine was telling me how guidance counselors didn’t tell them anything. they had to go to the counselors. i understand having to go to them, but you have to pry information; and, like, if you don’t ask the right questions you don’t get info. no information is volunteered as far as like college or higher education. the higher education information is like chicago state or robert morris, columbia. so i mean, i found that very interesting.” discipline this study’s parents were not engrossed with academic achievement to the exclusion of discipline, the effect of peer influences, and such. their holistic plans included discipline as a critical component of the various methods they used to shape their children’s consciousness and steer them towards their educational goals. i asked constance if the children rebelled; she replied, “well now, i didn’t do a lot of that;” she continued with a laugh: “i know that parents today worry about that, but my children never--i never gave them that latitude. this is how they lived, you know, this was it! ‘can you go?’ ‘no, mother’s not goin’ let me go,’ (whiney voice) you know. it wasn’t like they had witnessed another option, so this was normal life.” constance adds that while she separated the children from negative forces, she also made home life fun. constance's behavior echoes that of the high achieving parents clark (1983, p. 114) describes: “a significant amount of television watching was monitored at home and was supplemented by parental discussions and explanations. parents believed that television programs influenced the way a person thinks.” constance agrees, and explains: throughout my children’s lives i only had one tv in this house, so whatever was watched, everybody watched it--from sesame street to whatever. we weren’t sitting in the house in four different bedrooms all doing our own thing. i constantly interacted with the kids. we laughed. we joked. i refused to get cable. i didn’t get cable until my last child went away to college because i believe that there was too much sexual material, you know, too many incendiary things on cable for young children. we would watch the tv program and then i would ask them questions about the program. that’s what we did, we would pick out stuff. i would say, “what do you think about what that girl just did, do you see that? and we would talk about it. we are a very chatty family. the foregoing supports research by yan (1999, p. 8), and others that "the finding of higher levels of home discussion in successful african american students' families is consistent with the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 17 previous literature (clark, 1983; ritter, montreynaud, &; dornbusch, 1993)." like billye jo's family in memphis, one of constance's family's favorite entertainments was nature walks, which were also used to instruct: "we would just all go outta the house and we’d just walk, and we’d examine flowers, people’s houses, people who passed us….” they would return home and discuss their adventures. in his case studies of high achieving black children clark (1983, p. 114) found that parents encouraged and maintained “cohesion building family rituals that involved group singing, conversation, and reading aloud within an affectauthority relationship characterized by firm but warm supervision and support.” in addition to nature walks, the family skipped and sang together. i remember being incredulous at seeing an adult female singing and skipping down the street with her daughters. at the time it seemed odd and maybe slightly offensive to my sensibilities. i did not realize the role this and similar activities played in their family cohesiveness. the impact of these rituals is apparently life long. connie explains: they loved the singing, even bruce, he’d be embarrassed, but even he would do the ‘off to see the wizard’ song. we had a favorite song; it was the ‘greatest american hero’ song--it went ‘believe it or not, i’m walking on air, i never thought i could feel so free”! we would skip down the sidewalk and sing these songs. it’s so funny, mabel and i were riding back from maine the other day, it started thunder storming and she started singing one of our songs. we had power songs and we had happy songs. our power song was ‘ if it had not been for the lord on my side, tell me where would i be?’ we would sing that song at the top of our lungs. this thunderstorm was coming down and she just broke into that song and we both sang it. if we were happy, we would sing ‘look at what's happened to me, i can’t believe it myself’, suddenly i’m on top of the world, it could have been somebody else.' and if we were angry, it was ‘don’t push me ,cause i’m close to the edge.' we’ve sung together since my divorce from their father. it’s been a part of our family life for many years. billye jo and her family sang and performed oldies, particularly on saturdays, as they hurried through housework so they could do fun things later on. particularly in constance's family's case, it seems as if the songs were modes of communication that were also used as coping mechanisms used to communicate various states of being. the family could solicit/elicit various modes such as support, comfort, or communicate anger, frustration or other emotions or simply see the song as a call to rejoice in the moment with hope. motivation and social control in addition to telling their children that education could enable them to travel to exotic destinations, the parents vividly illustrated to their children what their destinations in life could be if they made other choices. modern day object lessons were features of this experiential learning. connie took her middle school daughters to a chicago housing authority building: when my girls were 10 and 11, i made them walk a 16-story building with me. and i said, ‘you know your mother has been struggling for many years. it’s been hard, taking care of all of you by myself. i need you to understand that i’m not going to take care of you and a baby, too. if you look around, do you see my mother? no? well when you have a child, you’re going to be the mother. you’re going to have to take care of them like i take care of you. look around, if you don’t finish your education, this is where you’ll stay. i can get you a place here, and i can get it cheap. if you decide you want to get pregnant for some boy, be sure to have a plan. if you want, you can plan to live here. but you’re not going to live with me.' and they believed me. standing in a urinestained hallway in robert taylor homes, they believed me… billye jo used similar techniques to instruct and motivate her grandchildren. when simon and jill were even younger than constance's children were, billye jo drove them by the same housing projects and asked, “do you want to live this way?” next, she drove by upscale hyde park residences and asked the same questions. “if you want to live this way, then education is the key. you have to decide. what do you want your life to be like? it’s up to you.” she sometimes watched the "jerry springer" show with jill to teach her what to avoid. billye jo states that at times she would ask jill, “here is a young man who is not a christian, has no job, he doesn’t respect his parents, why are these girls fighting over him?" connie walked with her children to the neighborhood hangout and discussed the behaviors they observed. “i’d say look at that one, they’re up to no good. my favorite quote was ‘look to your current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 friends, there goes your future. i would say that child’s future is not going to be yours. you cannot be with this person." constance pointed out that her separating her children from others had nothing to do with economic status, because some of her children’s friends were as poor as her family was. “i wasn’t going to have them running with kids whose parents didn’t want anything for em, who were ill-supervised, you know. if there was a kid who could run around and do whatever they wanted to do then that wasn’t the kid for them to hang out with because that meant their parents were not on the case. so i couldn’t trust my children to that parent.” billye jo conveyed the same message to her children and grandchildren by using the exhortation: “you have to decide who is your kind. you deal with people that are your kind." the grammar of the macroculture was the foundation of the curriculum, and, so speech, and language and other aspects of mainstream american culture had to be mastered. billye jo's parents told her and the other children to speak like the words they read in the books. constance's older daughter observed: my mother and father were, you know, very correct speaking people. they spoke standard english. they expected us to speak standard english, especially my father. if we said something in slang, he’d say, 'what?' and at my school everybody spoke the same way that being the type of school it was, even though it was a public school. and when i moved around here...everybody called me little white girl, called me and my sister, you know the two little white girls or whatever. when sybil was invited to a cotillion, given by a parent who was a member of the links, billye jo and her sister, capri, researched the proper etiquette so that sybil would fit in. billye jo even instituted her own manners week as a part of sybil’s social grooming. some of this information on "proper etiquette" billye jo learned from wealthy whites her mother worked for in memphis. i conceptualize the parental roles of these mothers as life coaches in that they addressed every area of their children's lives and pursued their educational goals continuously and relentlessly. every component of the family culture: peers, recreation and entertainment were vehicles for the desired outcome. billye jo wanted sybil to not only excel in school, but to be well rounded in the social graces also. sybil enjoyed being popular, and the family subscribed to time and newsweek magazines to keep her informed and to ensure that she knew enough about current events to converse effectively with people at all levels. connie’s daughter pauline remembers the catch in her voice as she responded “stamps” when the proprietor of the arab store across the street from our building asked 'cash or stamps?' she also remembers vividly the embarrassment of wearing thrift store and hand me down clothing while students in her middle class school wore the latest fashions. according to pauline, a strong desire to avoid this deprivation helped motivate her focus on education as a way out of poverty. work both families approached the discipline of work in the lives of their children differently. constance explained: i carried the ball with the eating and i would tell them, you know 'mama doesn’t have it. -but if they wanted extra stuff, they had to work (stated very emphatically)! all of them. the only one that didn’t work every summer was mark, and that was because he was always at a math camp. but he was working on his education. my children could not sit around the house during the summertime. that was the other thing. my mother used to say, ‘when i get up, everybody has to get up.’ and that was my philosophy. when i get up, everybody has to get up. and you have to have something to do. you just can’t sit around this house. so they started, each one of them started working at 13.... but, now, they got to keep all of their own money, and they got to spend it any way they wanted. i never saw their checks. i would encourage them to save it. i would give them suggestions. referring to her youngest daughter, mabel, who spent her money on her friends rather than save for school clothing, constance offers: "i never made up for the difference. i mean however your money turned out that’s the way it turned out because i believe that experience is the best teacher. so she would treat everybody, and… she’d never have a dime.” constance fervently believes: “we have to deprive our kids of things in order to spark ambition. if they have everything, what is there left for them to want? and, and achievement usually comes out of a desire for something. i believe even if we have to do it artificially, we have to create deprivation in our children’s lives in order to inspire them to want something more.” billye jo's family had the benefit of income from matthew’s full time and his part time job. although her children did not have to seek employment, the discipline of work was still inculcated in them because they were responsible for keeping their rooms clean and performing household the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 19 chores. matthew and billye jo did not deny sybil anything the family could afford. billye jo believes that if children are taught the right values and they know them, that is sufficient. matthew would leave twenty dollars on the dresser each week so that sybil and andy could get what they needed, whenever they needed it. they were accountable for the money, and they used it judiciously. constance told her children that she expected them to move out after high school. if they decided to attend college, however, they could remain in the home for four more years. they clearly acceded to the added motivation to pursue a college education. billye jo’s grandchildren have been told that their parents’ possessions belong to their parents. the expectation is that jill and simon will make their own ways in life. clearly the seeds of family education are designed to direct and equip them to pursue formal education that will guarantee social mobility and a secure future. one of constance’s children who earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from an ivy league school now earns over $100,000 annually while she is still in her twenties. i doubt if she is being asked cash or stamps any longer when she shops in her new neighborhood. race sanders (1997) interviewed high-achieving african american students from urban areas and reported that black parents' efforts to promote their children's positive racial/ethnic socialization helped promote academic success as a response to racism and discrimination in yan (1999, p. 2). as a means of helping their children excel, these mothers were careful about how they taught about racism, or whether they mentioned racial discrimination at all. although racism impacted their lives in diverse ways, neither family taught about the issue directly. this was a part of their strategy to help their children cope with a stratified society. billye jo says she did not present racism as a barrier. she taught her children that some people would dislike them for various reasons, but that was not their problem; rather, it was the problem of those who disliked them. reasons for dislike could be jealousy, because sybil had a car when some of her peers did not, for example. according to constance: even now, my children believe that it’s going to be all right, and that’s the sense that i wanted to give. i didn’t want them to go into any experience anticipating that it’s going to go wrong. i want them to approach every situation as a human being. so i never said that this happened to you because you’re black, or that happened because you’re black. i think i only started to make comments like that since they started working. and even then, it’s a rare occurrence. i didn’t want my children to start thinking along those lines…i taught my children that most things can be negotiated, and either they’re going to negotiate it for themselves, or i’m going to negotiate it for them. constance 's approach seems empowering, particularly in view of comer's research, in hale (2001, p. 146), which indicates that a "key element of academic achievement in schoolchildren is the ability to elicit a positive response from school personnel and peers. this requires a high level of social skill. often the parents of inner-city children were unsuccessful in negotiating the school themselves and therefore are unable to impart those skills to the children." constance gave her children advice in the form of suggestions such as: “why don’t you go talk to them, and this is what you say, or make appointment with so and so and do this and this.” the children learned well and began to coach one another, and connie only went to school when they failed to resolve the problem themselves. connie found the results of her approach rewarding: "and it empowered them, it taught them that even in their interactions with adults, that they had the capacity to affect the outcome. i didn’t tell them that they were limited in any way because of racism. if something happened that i thought smacked of racism, that’s when i became involved. i would show up, we’d have a meeting, and we would reach a resolution. i didn’t say that white lady was trying to do this or that to you.” connie says she expected her children to learn about racism through her experiences. i talked about my own experiences growing up in the south. because those experiences created some negative attitudes, my children considered me racist most of my life. i may be a racist. i may be a little bigoted, but i have never attempted to visit my personal perspectives upon my children. i discussed politics with them. they did know the concepts. but they all attended a very diverse high school, and they thought that racial problems were a part of the past. when they went to college, it hit them. their first years, their freshman years, were traumatic. they came back to me and said, mom, you should have told us, (she laughs). i said, “well i did talk about these things.’ current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 i have found african american students who believe racial problems to be a part of the past quite a challenge in my african american classes. this discussion helps my understanding of why some of them believe as they do. the following from webster (1974, p. 119) illuminates constance’s rationale: the “works of rotter, seeman, and liverant (1962) and coleman (1966) have clearly documented the fact that achievement and motivation are significantly related to feelings of personal worth, competency, or power. in the case of black americans, second-class citizenship is held to be the cause of feelings of stigmatization and unworthiness, which inhibit levels of motivation and aspiration.” i believe the parents’ approach to racism may have played a significant role in developing confidence, and this confidence stimulated the self-esteem needed to achieve excellence. research which investigates the children’s conception of race and racism and the relationship to academic achievement would be most informative. without resources such as financial aid all of these dreams and hard work would be invisible epitaphs on the graves of stillborn visions. billye jo describes her family's financial miracle which helped them fulfill their dream and demonstrates their faith in god: when she got in high school, i started dreaming about sybil going to an ivy league school, and so when it was time, god stepped in and a man called me. his name is ahm, silas parnell, and he usually, he helped the black children get into college, and it’s all public school, so i have no idea how he got sybil’s records; and he called me the summer of her going--you know when she got out of junior year, and he said, 'have you ever thought of your daughter going to an ivy league school?' i said all the time. i said, but i can’t, we can’t pay for her to go to an ivy league school. how would you like harvard, yale? yes, i want em all, you know. he arranged for sybil to go visit the schools, and she got an academic scholarship to yale, to harvard to dartmouth. we chose dartmouth because i could not see sybil at yale because it’s urban. she’d been sheltered and i could not turn her loose… harvard was the same but dartmouth is wonderful. the whole town is dartmouth, if you’ve ever been on that campus, it’s phenomenal! so we were glad that she went along with us and wanted to go to dartmouth. she was in the first class of women that went to dartmouth and had no problems. none whatsoever. she made the transition. we had talked to her about you know these were very rich people. the kennedys and the rockefellers were there.... constance says she was "savvy enough about the financial aid situation--my ex husband had been a financial aid administrator for a university, but again that’s the advantage that my children had over a lot of other children. their parents went to college." early information about the right courses to take early in high school and financial aid are important to students’ decision to attend college (jamilah, 1998). an example of constance's resourcefulness is that she was one of the few parents in our community with the information and foresight to prepare her children in their precollege, even in their preteen years, to fulfill scholarship requirements. working as a golf caddy, for example, helped mabel to enter college on a golf scholarship. further investigation of the roles of constance and billye jo’s christian beliefs should illuminate our understanding of their motivation to persevere. it is clear that their faith under girds the worldviews that helped them hurdle the barriers they faced, but this is a topic for another paper. to omit their source of faith that helped them succeed would be untruthful. in discussing some of her most challenging moments after her husband left, constance recalls times such as when she had no money and a commonwealth edison employee came to disconnect the electricity. “i would get down on my knees and pray sometimes when i just, i couldn’t figure out what was goin' happen next. i couldn’t figure it out. the next day the sun would shine, i mean-----something would come to me and i know it wasn’t me. i knew it wasn’t me. an idea…." four years after the initial interview, constance responded to reading her data with the following statement: “my hopes were not built on deprivation. i was making over $60,000 a year by the time my last child went to college. i never doubted for a moment that i and my children would do well. i knew that faith in god and hard work would see us through. we were “education poor”. at one time, i had all three of them in college at the same time. but i never, ever doubted the way our lives would turn out. it was not need, but faith and confidence in god, in each other, and in the future. we expected to excel.” conclusion focusing solely on the role of the family in the education of african american students would be inaccurate, insufficient and thus, inappropriate. however, it is critical that we learn from parents' educational experiences. thus, this study examined the educational leadership, inclusive of some of the specific teaching and learning strategies, of two the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 21 african american mothers, billye jo and constance. a goal of this work is to address the need for information that depicts black parents as proactive successful teachers of their children. these parents’ pedagogies affirm the sponsored independence approach described by clark (1983). in addition, their attitudes and approaches to education become acts of empowerment for their children. they engaged the system on its own terms and won. from positions of seeming weakness and powerlessness they ‘flipped the script.’ since these models of teaching in african american families exist, there is a need to realign our epistemologies to see these parents as producers of useful/valid knowledge that can inform other parents and the educational community as well. this research forms part of the mosaic that seeks to acknowledge and document the “great diversity found in the teaching practices of african american mothers and [demonstrates] that...african american mothers of all social status groups have been remarkably effective and resilient in preparing and helping their children cope with the schooling process” (slaughter, 1987, pp. 7 & 11). these families’ achievements are not simply due to the natural evolutionary processes of a kind and gentle society. rather, these achievements are the results of dreams and deliberate decisions to strategize and to work to achieve these dreams. the word “dream” was used as a verb and as a noun, repeatedly in both women’s narratives. early in her account billye jo began with: “when i discovered reading from that box my mother had, it was like a whole world opened up. you could dream about traveling and dream about this and that. so when sybil was born i had all these dreams for sybil." billye jo’s mother and grandmother had stressed: “don’t let your circumstances keep you from dreaming and wanting to be something.” part of constance’s goal is “to create a positive environment where people are encouraged, where people are convinced that the dream that they have is attainable.” clearly, this envisioning of a better life is inter generational, begins in the soul, and forms the very environment that sustains, invigorates, and energizes these families. billye jo's explanation that she wanted her children to attend ivy league schools because “they would be able to have contact to do whatever they wanted to do," illuminates another facet of these parents' goals of empowerment by means of a certain type of schooling. connie's discussion with her children in which she linked education with the ability to travel to exotic places denotes a similar goal to that of billye jo's. i observed substantive evidence of how organizations such as the dartmouth club served as mechanisms for these goals. before attending law school, sybil sought a career in international banking, and dartmouth club members helped open doors for her. semesters in spain and brazil, wall street internships, backpacking across europe, and particularly for sybil, lifelong friendships with other women who are also at various levels of the legal profession are some of the social capital enjoyed by dartmouth graduates. these parents’ open communication with their children bonded the family together in partnerships to achieve educational goals which were made explicit and which were strategically operationalized throughout the school years. education was both formal and informal as well as didactic and experiential. billye jo’s statement that “experience is the best teacher” is indicative and illustrative of these parents taking their children to the projects and neighborhood hangouts to demonstrate what deviation from their educational goals could mean for their futures. children and parents agreed on the out of school curriculum and the rigor needed to implement it. clearly, the early years were foundational and preparatory to these academic achievements. non-school learning was valued as much as school learning, or maybe even more so, because the informal curriculum harnessed the totality of their lives to develop realities which ensured/supported school achievement. that both mothers did not work outside the home in the early years of parenting meant that time was available for critical foundational training. on the other hand, it is quite clear that these parents' achievements cannot solely be attributed to their remaining at home during their children’s infancy. for numerous reasons many parents with more resources, time, formal education as well as other forms of social and human capital fail to attain the results these parents have attained. children's cooperativeness should also not be underrated, and in some cases, competitiveness was a factor, at least in billye jo’s family. early literacy, diligently providing and pursuing an enriched curriculum, particularly as is demonstrated in the case of billye jo's granddaughter, jill, also enhanced educational achievement for these children. alluding to the benefits of an enriched curriculum berry mentions: “excellence for black students will not become a reality unless and until they receive enriched curricular opportunities in elementary and secondary schools..." (berry, 1989, p. 293). connie and billye current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 jo referred to their pedagogy as giving their children a "little leg up," and clearly this allowed the children to make giant strides forward. the parents' discipline and love for learning, enthusiasm, and encouragement helped to build confidence and competence and shaped contexts in which these children fulfilled the goals they and their parents set. i interpret billye jo and constance's definitions of parent involvement to include responsibility for exercising leadership in their families’ education. they saw themselves as their children's first and most important teachers, and they were unintimidated by teachers and schools in their advocacy for their children. the approach to knowledge, particularly exemplified in billye jo's words, is that the answer to every question exists somewhere--in an individual, a book or in some other resource. this approach is liberating and frees the individual to be a seeker of information, a self-educator and a producer of knowledge. clearly communicating goals and having open communication were indispensable. faith that they could succeed was also important. an interesting finding of this study is that in the process of educating their children the mothers themselves were transformed. winters (1993, p. 99), observes that a basic thesis of her book--african american mothers and urban schools: the power of participation--is that “participation and its educational benefits contribute to personal development." accomplishments such as teaching her granddaughter, jill, geometry when billye jo herself had never studied the subject brought a sense of accomplishment that was transferable to other areas. billye jo says she began to think, "i made a doll’s dress, maybe i can make a dress!" an origami workshop in an alternative high school, a commissioned quilt for a graduating class, being consulted on decorating an apartment for visiting soviet scientists, coordinating weddings, in addition to designing and making dolls and, of course, teaching a bus driver to read, are accomplishments which continuously spiral into other areas for billye jo. recently two parents, both of whom hold doctorates in the sciences, sought billye jo's advice and tutoring services to prepare their eight-year old son to gain entrance into a school for the gifted. validation of her expertise is apparent in that she has never advertised her services. i have suggested to billye jo that attending college might have limited the development of her potential. by this i mean that her creativity and confidence in her ability might have been stifled through socialization to a field, profession, or a discipline in a traditional classroom. billye jo's life is an advertisement for the value of literacy. under the auspices of a university of illinois research team, she conducted a workshop to help parents at a chicago public school which serves a nearby housing project teach their children . a workshop for university teachers in a field master's program, one for undergraduate students, and another for students at an alternative high school are illustrative of the range of billye jo’s contributions to both parents and educators. one of the teachers in the master’s degree in education program commented: the last class we just had allowed me the pleasure of meeting billye jo. what an experience! i couldn’t wait to get home to tell everyone i know about her. she was so inspiring in so many ways. i tried to explain her to my family, but they did not quite get the same impression as i did. as i tried to describe her and talk of her accomplishments to my audience, they could not truly understand her prestige. they too wondered why she wasn’t “college educated” as did i before i met her. when she first started speaking of her childhood and her family, i started making assumptions in my mind. the wrong assumptions at that. i was wondering what was so special about her that would have you ask her to come speak to us. but as time past, [sic] i became quickly absorbed in her life experiences and views. i was truly inspired. she spoke modestly as if she’s an average person, but she is not…. i am very appreciative for having the opportunity to have listened to her life story. i wish everyone could also, too. i hope to remember her for the rest of my life and lead some of my decisions in a more productive way. she is a perfect example of selfdetermination...thank you for bringing billye jo into my life. as life goes on, i am sure that i might forget some of her words, but i will always remember her spirit to strive to succeed. while there are things any parent can do to improve her children's education, not all parents can overcome societal challenges to produce the results these two parents and others have achieved. as much as they want their children to excel in school, not many fathers can work or maybe even find two jobs as matthew did. not every parent possesses the information and ability to teach and supervise children while coping with external pressures, as constance was able to do. we need to continue to find and implement solutions that will make quality education available to all students. i am curious about these parents' definitions of worthwhile or useful knowledge. what type of the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 23 curriculum do they see as being most worthwhile for various groups in american society? what type of curriculum would they advocate as ideal for public schools? do they uncritically accept mainstream society's conception of education and the public school's definition of knowledge, as well as the curriculum being offered? how would they change the educational system to accommodate all children? do the successful outcomes for their children mean that the educational system works for african americans? do their philosophies and practices indicate acceptance of the current educational system? do they hold different ways of conceptualizing/defining knowledge that would be more liberating for society? references bauman, k. 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(2006, march).the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community. current issues in education [on-line], 9(7). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number7/ author notes audrey p. watkins, phd., assistant professor western illinois university department of african american studies macomb , illinois 61455 ap-watkins@wiu.edu ph.d., education, university of illinois at chicago, 1996, curriculum and instruction/curriculum design. dissertation topic: "educational experiences in the family, school, and work lives of african-american women." m.a., communication, university of illinois at chicago, 1983, research area: culture and communication -wrote, produced, and directed video documentary on jamaicans in chicago. b.a., communication/english emphasis, with high honor, depaul university, chicago, illinois, 1981. research interests include: schooling and education of africans in diaspora; education of women of color; social justice and education’ christian schooling and education; transnationalism of caribbean women note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation watkins, a. p. (2006). the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community. current issues in education, 9(7). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1599 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number7/index.html mailto:ap-watkins@wiu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1599 institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic: faculty and administrator experiences current issues in education, vol 22 no. 3 1 volume 22, issue 3 december 8, 2021 issn 1099-839x institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic: faculty and administrator experiences narketta sparkman-key old dominion university tammi f. dice old dominion university alexandra c. gantt old dominion university abstract: the onset of the covid-19 pandemic required shifts in operations for institutions of higher education everywhere. faculty and administrators were asked to adapt to meet the needs of students. we conducted a qualitative content analysis to understand institutional responses and examine the experiences of faculty and administrators during the covid-19 pandemic through the lens of chaos theory. institutional responses to the pandemic varied. participants identified supports and resources deemed helpful, as well as those found to be inadequate or unwanted. we also found that the pandemic resulted in some positive outcomes for faculty and administrators, which led to growth in teaching and self-care. implications for strategic planning and future directions for research are explored. keywords: covid-19, disaster preparation, higher education, institutional response, faculty support citation: sparkman-key, n., dice, t.f., & gantt, a.c. (2021). institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic: faculty and administrator experiences. current issues in education, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1993 accepted: october/9/2021 institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic: faculty and administrator experiences to date, over 756,962 covid-19-related deaths have been reported in the united states (centers for disease control and prevention [cdc], 2021). amidst the tragedies and unknowns of the pandemic, university faculty, students, and administrators experienced major transitions in both their personal and professional lives as institutions of higher education across the country https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1993 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 2 transitioned to remote learning environments to reduce the spread of the virus. such transitions, coupled with personal and collective traumas and stressors, warrant exploration of impact, both professionally and emotionally. holmes and colleagues (2020) called for exploration of related mental health effects and potential mitigation on the general population, while other researchers have specifically called for exploration of the impact of education’s transition from residential to remote learning on university faculty (watermeyer et al., 2020). with awareness of the multiple stressors facing university faculty and the pressing need for faculty support, we conducted a qualitative content analysis and engaged chaos theory to better understand faculty experiences and needs in response to the covid-19 pandemic. the effects of covid-19 the novel coronavirus disease 2019, or covid-19, was recognized by the world health organization (who) in december of 2019 and is associated with a variety of physical and mental health outcomes at both individual and community levels (fauci et al., 2020; von braun et al., 2020; who, 2020). impacts of the pandemic have disproportionately affected marginalized populations (von braun et al., 2020) and brought attention to the need for preventative work regarding infectious disease outbreak (fauci et al., 2020). americans have also experienced various challenges related to job loss and economic insecurity due to the pandemic. for example, according to a study by parker et al. (2020), 25% of adults have reported having trouble paying their bills since the covid-19 outbreak, 17% have sought food from a food bank, and 50% of individuals who lost their jobs because of the pandemic remain unemployed. mental health outcomes appear similarly troubling. pfefferbaum and north (2020) highlighted some possible mental health impacts of the pandemic, including: insecurity, feelings of isolation, emotional distress, increased substance use/abuse, insomnia, and fear. pfefferbaum and north also noted how negative mental health outcomes may disproportionately affect individuals from certain groups, such as the elderly, and called for “...already stretched health care providers...to [monitor the] psychosocial needs” of their patients (para. 11). others have also emphasized the critical need for future research to examine the mental health implications of the pandemic (roy et al., 2020; torales et al., 2020). covid-19 and higher education considering the wide-ranging implications of the covid-19 pandemic, it is plausible to consider potential impacts on higher education, specifically on university faculty and administrators. such impacts would be far-reaching, given the 4,234 higher education institutions and over 25 million college students in the united states (entangled solutions, 2020). watermeyer et al. (2020) engaged a sample of over 1,000 university faculty in the united kingdom to explore their thoughts and feelings regarding the transition from residential to online learning due to the pandemic. participants reported negative outcomes, including distrust of remote learning, and the researchers noted: “online migration is engendering significant dysfunctionality and disturbance to [university faculty’s] roles and their personal lives'' (p. 1). other challenges to faculty members during the pandemic are related to work-life balance and changes in job responsibilities (watermeyer et al., 2020). moreover, researchers have found disproportionate effects of the pandemic regarding gender, with female faculty members experiencing decreased research productivity compared to males (cui et al., 2020). media outlets have also begun to explore the impact of covid-19 on academia, suggesting chronic faculty sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 3 stress, perceptions of work as more difficult, and even experiences of secondary trauma (flaherty, 2020). thus, in the present qualitative study, we engaged chaos theory to increase understanding of the needs of faculty in higher education in response to the covid-19 pandemic and sought to answer the following research questions: (1) what accommodations have been implemented by universities for university faculty and academic administrators to adapt to the covid-19 pandemic? and (2) how have faculty and academic administrators responded to the changes stemming from the covid-19 pandemic? theoretical framework relative to the field of psychology, chaos theory is defined by ayers (1997) as “a systems approach which looks at process and not a static state, examining the change or movement of systems” (p. 374). chaos theory maintains that systems are deeply complex, interconnected, nonlinear, and affected even by small changes (chamberlain & butz, 2016). additionally, chamberlain and butz (2016) described movement away from equilibrium within a system as an increase in chaos, possibly including increased opportunity for reorganization, new choices, and general change. the theory has been used in framing the impact of pandemics (chamberlain & butz, 2016) and in understanding higher education leadership, planning, and policy (swenk, 2001). moreover, chaos theory does not refer to total randomness or pandemonium as some may assume by the title; rather, the theory is concerned with varying behavior, meaning one cannot predict what will exactly happen in the future (swenk, 2001). the theory describes a system as being influenced by internal feedback (swenk, 2001). feedback loops within an institution modify the system and predictability is only possible in short time frames. constant change, unpredictability, instability, and disequilibrium are expectations for a system (swenk, 2001). in higher education, chaos theory has been applied to strategic planning within this complex system (cutright, 2001). relative to the current covid-19 pandemic, chaos theory “implies that a small change of one parameter (e.g., length of lockdowns) might create a very different outcome on many variables; thus, various aspects that interact with each other have to be taken into account” (zenker & kock, 2020, p. 2). zenker and kock (2020) called for future researchers to explore the impacts of related chaos on complex system outcomes during the covid-19 pandemic. inside higher ed (2020) partnered with gallup to examine the financial impact of the pandemic on higher education institutions. many institutions immediately lost sources of revenue (e.g., campus housing and sports) while concurrently assuming increased expenses to meet technology demands of both students and staff with the migration to remote work and online learning (anderson and alonso, 2020). through a survey of university presidents, researchers found that 70% of participants felt that their institution needed to make fundamental changes to its business model, programming, and other operations (inside higher education, 2020). the pandemic has seemingly produced fears for the future and effective strategic planning could help institutions reduce those fears. strategic planning is an “attempt to systematize the processes that enable an organization to achieve goals and objectives'' (crittenden, 2000 as cited in goldman and salem, 2015). academic institutions engage in strategic planning in a variety of ways. hinton (2012) suggests that the mission of the institution be the foundation of higher education strategic planning. the supporting components of the strategic plan are the values, institutional goals, and vision. the plan itself includes operational goals, objectives, and an implementation plan. according to sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 4 goldman and salem (2015), the general structure of strategic planning is like a pyramid. at the very top is the university vision, followed by the university mission, and then specific goals, objectives, and key performance indicators. the environment, both inside of the institution and external to the institution, informs each level of the pyramid because the environment can impact the strategic planning process and the goals initiated within the plan. institutions often do an analysis of the environment prior to beginning the planning process (alexander & alonso, 2020). some universities begin by appointing a strategic planning committee which assumes the role of initiating the strategic planning process. however, this can vary by institution. capturing the voice of key stakeholders is an important aspect of planning and this is typically done through focus groups (nutefall, 2015). focus groups and/ or open forums are used at multiple phases in the planning process typically to provide feedback on the vision/mission, and goals and objectives of the strategic plan. in addition, some institutions hire outside consultants to assist in the strategic planning process, finding that they garner greater participation from stakeholders when an outside consultant is used (nutefall, 2015). communication and implementation plans are often developed in conjunction with the strategic plan. this helps to ensure there is a streamlined process for communication of information related to the plan and for garnering support from key stakeholders. the common element of these strategies is the notion that the mission and vision of the institution is the foundation of the plan. in the present study, chaos theory is applied with regard to how it informs strategic planning within higher education by accounting for the complexity of institutions and the impact of change on those institutions. change in this study is defined in terms of the impact the pandemic has had on institutional operations and key stakeholders. according to cutright (2001), chaos theory has ten propositions that frame the basis for strategic planning. each proposition informs institutions of guidelines critical in strategic planning and preparing for change that can impact institutional goals. these guiding propositions are outlined in table 1. each of these propositions detail foundational guidelines for effective strategic planning. the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on higher education institutions presents an opportunity to better prepare for the future. in this study, we considered participants’ experiences within and in relation to their institutional response to the pandemic, academic work environments, personal health, family systems, and social contexts during the time of the covid-19 pandemic. chaos theory is applicable to the conceptualization of university faculty and administrators’ experiences during the covid-19 pandemic due to the rapidly changing nature of the university environment currently, along with the influences of innumerable other personal and collective factors. chaos theory is also applicable because of its use in strategic planning within higher education which can assist institutions in planning after the impact of the pandemic. results of this study can be used to help shape strategic planning for institutions moving forward. sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 5 table 1 the 10 propositions of chaos theory proposition definition 1 “the ideal outcome of planning is planning, not a plan” (p. 61) 2 “planning begins with a distillation of the institution’s key values and purposes” (p. 62) 3 “the widest possible universe of information should be made available to all members of the institution. this universe of information includes ongoing, rich, and current feedback” (p. 64) 4 “dissent and conflict are creative, healthy, and real. the absence of conflict is reductionist, illusory, and suspect” (p. 65) 5 “linearity doesn’t work in strategic planning. it doesn’t work in dictationplanning and plans imposed from above, or in collation-planning, and plans created solely by the collection of unit information” (p. 66) 6 “the institution should budget-fiscally and psychically for failure. pilots are alternate futures. not all can be realized or succeed” (p. 68). 7 “the considerable expense of time on the front end is an investment. it is recouped, with interest, in the future” (p. 69) 8 “the executive is not demoted or minimized. the executive is the most critical shaper and champion of the process. ultimately, the executive is empowered by the process” (p. 70) 9 “that which can be quantified is not to be overvalued, and that which can not be quantified is not to be discounted” (p. 72) 10 “the future is a creation, not a prediction. this power of agency is distinguishing the context of human chaotic systems” (p. 73) note. adapted from cutright, m. (2001). chaos theory & higher education: leadership, planning, & policy. higher education: questions about the purpose (s) of colleges & universities. volume 9. peter lang. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1017978827715 method using qualitative content analysis, we examined participants’ responses to open-ended survey questions to gain insight into the experiences, perceptions, and overall mental health of college and university faculty and administrators amid the covid-19 pandemic. a qualitative approach was selected due to the dearth of information currently known about universities’ responses to covid-19 and the impacts on university faculty and administrators (hunt, 2011). qualitative content analysis was best suited for this study as it is a “research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1017978827715 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 6 of coding and identifying themes or patterns” (hsieh & shannon, 2005, p. 1278). specifically, conventional content analysis was used with the intent to derive themes inductively from the raw data to describe the experiences of the faculty and administrators (hsieh & shannon, 2005; zhang & wildemuth, 2005). this approach allows for both quantifying coded data and qualitatively interpreting the quantitative counts of the codes. participants we utilized purposeful sampling methods to recruit participants through email and listserv postings, and asked participants to meet the following criteria: over 18 years of age and currently employed as a faculty member or academic administrator at a college or university. more specifically, we utilized a random university generator to select university departments in the united states, and then retrieved faculty emails from the respective department webpages to request participation. we emailed 1,000 individual potential participants in total. other means of recruitment included emails to various faculty email listservs (e.g., cesnet) and posts to faculty facebook and linkedin groups. ultimately, 212 respondents met the criteria, consented to participate, and were included in the study. of these, 70.3% (n = 149) identified as female, while 29.2% (n = 62) identified as male and .5% (n = 1) as non-binary. most participants (34.4%; n = 73) were between the ages of 51 and 64 years old. the remaining 27.4% (n = 58) were between 29-40 years old, 23.6% (n = 50) were 41-50 years old, 11.8% (n = 25) were 65 or older, and 1% (n = 2) were between the ages of 18 and 28. four participants did not report their age. ninety percent (n = 191) of participants identified as white, while the remaining 10% identified as a racial minority (n = 8 african american, and n = 9 asian) or declined to answer (n = 4). seventeen participants (8%) identified as hispanic, latino or of spanish origin. the majority (72.2%; n = 153) reported they were married and 89 (42%) indicated caring for children in the home. participants also provided information pertaining to their primary job positions. the majority were tenured or tenure eligible faculty with 27.4% (n = 58) identifying as assistant professors, 25% (n = 53) as full professors, and 25% (n = 53) as associate professors. faculty respondents also included lecturers/instructors (8.5%; n = 18) and adjunct instructors (8%; n = 17). administrators made up 7.1% (n = 15) of participants. two indicated dual roles as faculty and administrator. a little over half (54.5%; n = 114) of participants reported working for public colleges and universities, and the remaining were affiliated with private colleges and universities. most participants (50%; n = 106) reported being employed by a large college or university (at least 15,000 students). those at mid-size institutions (5,001-14,999 students) accounted for 29.2% (n = 62) of respondents, and those at small institutions (5,000 or fewer students) accounted for 20.8% (n = 44). variations also existed by type of institution: 44% (n = 93) were teaching institutions, 31.1% (n = 66) were r1, 19.3% (n = 41) were r2, 5% (n = 10) by another type of institution (such as a community or technical college), and 1% (n = 2) declined to answer. finally, faculty and administrators from colleges and universities in the southeastern united states accounted for 41% (n = 87) of respondents. the remaining 23.1% (n = 49) were from the midwest, 14.2% (n = 30) from the northeast, 8.5% (n = 18) from the northwest, 7.5% (n = 16) from the west, and 6% (n = 12) from the southwest. data source the data set for this study consisted of open-ended responses to a survey taken by participants via qualtrics, an online survey software. the questions included: (1) what sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 7 accommodations, if any, has your department/university made for faculty due to the pandemic?; (2) if any, please list accommodations and/or resources that would be helpful during this time that your department/university has not provided; (3) please describe any coping strategies you have utilized while working at home; and (4) what skills, attitudes, or ideas have you gained/learned from your experience working remote that you will continue to apply postpandemic? procedure the university’s institutional review board provided exempt status for the study. we then sent the survey, including demographic questions and the four open-ended questions, to faculty and administrators throughout the united states via emails directly to faculty members, to department chairs for dissemination, and to listserv postings. we sent three follow-up emails encouraging individuals to participate in the study to promote data saturation. efforts were taken to ensure that participants were not coerced to participate; specifically, participants were provided an informed consent form and assured that confidentiality would be maintained. no identifying information was used when quoting participants in this article. all survey responses, data, and analyses were maintained on a password-secured computer. data analysis the responses to each of the four open-ended items on the survey were analyzed separately. we followed hsieh & shannon’s (2005) procedures for conventional content analysis. two of the authors participated in the analyses to enhance credibility through researcher triangulation (elliott et al., 1999). initially, we immersed ourselves in the raw data to gain an overall sense of responses. each researcher maintained an independent code book to record the data and note frequency of responses by hand. the codes included key words and phrases that were recorded directly and inductively from the raw data without imposing preconceived perspectives or categories. the coded data was then organized into preliminary categories and patterns. each researcher maintained a research memo to note reflections pertaining to the codes and emergent categories and patterns. we then came together for consensus coding. the independent code books were compared, and congruity and inconsistencies were discussed. meaningful and consistent themes and subthemes were defined. see the appendix for the final code book. themes that emerged were supported with verbatim quotes to mitigate researcher bias (hsieh & shannon, 2005). the third author reviewed the analyses and confirmed the emergent themes. results themes emerged in each of the four open-ended questions on the survey. the first question produced three themes, the second produced five, the third produced four, and the fourth produced three. question 1: institutional response three themes emerged from the first question on the survey which asked, “what accommodations has your department/university made for faculty due to the pandemic?” the themes addressed professional adaptations (subthemes: teaching and work), professional supports (subthemes: technology, information, materials, and funding), and no/minimal or sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 8 unwanted accommodations. see table 2 for an overview of the themes and subthemes for question 1. table 2 question 1: what accommodations were made for faculty? theme freq. % summary 1. professional adaptations teaching adaptations 151 79 53.4 choice of online or face to face teaching; or full shift to online; online teaching trainings work adaptations 72 teleworking; extending the tenure clock; eliminating course evaluations; extending deadlines 2. professional supports technology resources materials information funding 95 67 14 7 7 33.6 equipment; technology support office supplies at home; covid resources such as ppe meetings; email stipends; reimbursements 3. no/minimal/unwanted 37 13.0 total 283 100.0 note. since many responses had more than one code applied to them, the total frequency will be more than the total number of respondents. the first theme of professional adaptations, shared by 53.4% of participants (n = 151), consisted of two subthemes. the first addressed teaching adaptations such as accommodations to teaching formats in which faculty were permitted to choose whether they wished to teach faceto-face, hybrid or fully online, or all courses were transitioned fully online. this sub theme also included online teaching trainings provided by institutions. the second sub theme addressed work adaptations and included accommodations such as a shift to teleworking, as well as flexibility regarding extending the clock for tenure and pre-tenure review, eliminating course evaluations for the spring semester, and extending deadlines for things such as grading. quotes included, “full shift to online teaching…,” “many online teaching resources/trainings…,” “allowed fully remote work,” and “option to postpone going up for tenure.” sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 9 the second theme of professional supports was apparent in 33.6% (n = 95) of participants’ responses. it consisted of four subthemes. the first of which addressed technology resources, including both equipment, such as access to laptops, headsets, and software, and support, such as troubleshooting issues and providing trainings for the use of technology such as zoom. the second sub theme addressed material supports such as office supplies being sent to faculty’s homes for teleworking and access to covid-related resources, such as personal protective equipment (ppe). the third sub theme included supportive information through meetings and email, particularly from administrators, and the final sub theme addressed the provision of funds through stipends and reimbursements. participants stated, “faculty receive ppe and online teaching kits (hardware),” “lots of it support,” “they offered us training on zoom,” “dean hosts weekly zoom meeting to discuss and update,” and “assistance with personal phone bill and assistance with stationary supplies.” the third and final theme for this question was “no/minimal or unwanted accommodations” and was expressed by 13% (n = 37) of participants. these individuals felt that their institutions had done very little to nothing to address the pandemic. the sentiment was captured in the following: “unknown, it seems like we have all been on our own,” “none, other than working from home,” and “none. there was only more work added.” question 2: additional supports five themes emerged from the second item on the survey which stated: “if any, please list accommodations and/or resources that would be helpful during this time that your department/university has not provided.” the themes addressed technology, enhanced system support, no accommodations needed or not sure what is needed, manageable workload, and teaching. see table 3 for an overview of the themes and subthemes for question 2. the first theme, technology, was addressed by 25.5% (n = 36) participants. these individuals expressed a desire to have more access to equipment and training. one participant stated, “not all faculty have laptop/digital tools needed; hardware has been very slow to be disseminated.” another specified, “definitely better technology, and better tech support.” enhanced system support, the second theme, was highlighted by 23.4% (n = 33) of participants and included things such as desiring better communication from leadership, mental health supports, financial support, and covid-19 safety measures. these were captured in the following quotes: “mental health check-ins for faculty (they did it with students, but not faculty),” “more money, or at least, you know, not being furloughed,” “…more consistent and detailed communication,” and “more masks!” the third theme which emerged was that no other accommodations were needed, or that participants were not sure what else was needed. this was expressed by 19.1% (n = 27) of participants and captured in the following: “nothing comes to mind,” “none needed,” and “unknown at this time.” the fourth theme, manageable workload, was addressed by 16.3% (n = 23) of participants and included support with balancing childcare with work, and reducing nonessential work and meetings so more time would be available for adjusting to online teaching and maintaining research. participants stated: “identifying which faculty have childcare or other caregiving responsibilities that impact their daily schedule and designing accommodations– e.g., lessen service work,” and “more protection of our time to do research for pre-tenure faculty.” the fifth and final theme for this question addressed teaching accommodations that would have been helpful, such as additional online teaching trainings, graduate teaching sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 10 assistants, and being able to select a preferred teaching modality. these were highlighted by 15.6% (n = 22) of participants. statements included, “better training on hybrid course design,” “access to a graduate assistant,” “ta [teaching assistant],” and “autonomy over whether classes are moved online for the fall.” table 3 what accommodations would be helpful that have not been provided? code freq. % summary 1. technology 36 25.5 greater access to equipment and training 2. enhanced system support 33 23.4 better communication, mental health supports, financial support, and covid safety measures 3. none needed/not sure 27 19.1 no accommodations needed or unsure of what needed 4. manageable workload 23 16.3 support to balance childcare; reducing nonessential meetings and work 5. teaching 22 15.60 online teaching trainings; gas, select teaching modality total 141 100 note. since many responses had more than one code applied to them, the total frequency will be more than the total number of respondents. question 3: coping strategies four themes emerged from the third item on the survey which stated, “please describe any coping strategies you have utilized while working at home.” the themes addressed activities (with sub themes including physical, social, and enjoyable), mental health boosters, work habits, and not using any/none needed. see table 4 for an overview of the themes and subthemes for question 3. for the first theme, activities, 58.9% (n = 219) of participants shared endeavors in which they have engaged to cope while teleworking that fell into three subthemes: physical, social, and enjoyable. physical activities included exercising, going for walks, practicing yoga, and gardening. social activities included connecting with friends and family, engaging with colleagues, and continuing writing groups via zoom. many examples of enjoyable activities were provided, including watching tv or movies, baking, playing with pets, reading for pleasure, playing and/or listening to music, engaging in crafts and hobbies, and playing games. this sub theme also included indulgences such as eating junk food and drinking wine. activities were addressed in the following statements: “going outside daily and taking lots of walks. zoom meetings with family and friends,” and “going for walks, cooking, staying connected to friends.” sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 11 the second theme, mental health boosters, was identified by 24.2% (n = 90) of participants. these included stress reducing techniques such as taking breaks, practicing patience, gratitude and self-compassion, engaging in prayer and meditation, and setting limits around watching the news and social media. participants specified the following: “taking breaks from the computer when needed,” “daily meditation,” “taking ‘news vacations’,” and “practicing gratitude particularly being thankful i have a job.” theme three addressed work habits used to help cope. these were identified by 14% (n = 52) of participants and included strategies such as following a set schedule, creating a separate space in their home for work, and managing the dual roles of work and childcare. one participant said they were coping by, “designating a workspace from home space, maintaining a set schedule, and dressing as if [she were] going to work.” another expressed coping by “developing a new schedule/routine, alternating childcare responsibilities with partner.” for the final theme, a smaller percentage of participants indicated that they weren’t using coping strategies or didn’t need any (3%; n = 11). several individuals responded, “none,” or “n/a.” for these, it is impossible to know whether they indicated not using coping skills because they did not need them or if they were not using them but should. others clarified their lack of use with statements such as, “minimal without childcare,” indicating the challenge of utilizing coping strategies when balancing work and parenting. others indicated that coping strategies were not needed with statements such as, “i usually work from home, so to me, this was a no big deal type of situation.” table 4 coping strategies utilized code freq. % summary 1. activities physical social enjoyable 219 111 45 63 58.9 exercise; walks; yoga; gardening connecting with friends and family; engaging colleagues; writing groups tv/movies; baking; pets; reading; music; hobbies; games; food and drinks 2. mental health boosters 90 24.2 stress reduction techniques; prayer and meditation; limiting exposure to news and social media 3. work habits 52 14.0 setting a schedule; creating work space; managing childcare 4. not using any/no need 11 3.0 not applying coping skills total 372 100 note. since many responses had more than one code applied to them, the total frequency will be more than the total number of respondents. sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 12 question 4: growth and learning three themes emerged from the fourth and final question on the survey which asked, “what skills, attitudes, or ideas have you gained/learned from your experience working remotely that you will continue to apply post-pandemic?” the themes addressed teaching skills, professional insights, and personal insights. see table 5 for an overview of the themes and subthemes for question 4. table 5 skills, attitudes, ideas gained that you will continue post-pandemic code freq. % summary 1. teaching skills 89 48.9 online teaching tools; connecting with students; teaching more online or not teaching online 2. professional insights 55 30.0 continue meeting online; maintaining a set schedule 3. personal insights 38 20.1 realizing adaptability; importance of self-care total 182 100 note. since many responses had more than one code applied to them, the total frequency will be more than the total number of respondents. the first theme of teaching skills was shared by 48.9% (n = 89) of participants. they addressed continuing to use more online teaching tools, regardless of modality. they also expressed a desire to continue to take strides to connect more with their students and be more flexible and empathic. some realized they would like to continue teaching more online courses while others realized online teaching is not for them. one respondent stated: just pertaining to teaching, i have learned many ideas and approaches that i think will improve my teaching whether online or on ground. the situation has forced us to reexamine assumptions about what we do and online makes many of us who taught mainly on ground to rethink how you make connections with students, structure courses, and prepare students for challenging situations. another said, “spending more time with students, being a little less task-focused and a little more person-focused.” professional insights, the second theme, accounted for 30% (n = 55) of responses. participants expressed a desire to continue meeting online either in place of or in addition to face-to-face. this was captured in the following statement, “administrative meetings can be more conveniently scheduled as video calls.” another said, “zoom meetings are, overall, as efficient or more efficient than face to face meetings.” some also intend to continue to work more from home. a respondent said, “i will likely do more work from home because i'm confident i can be productive now.” being more organized and maintaining a set schedule with sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 13 boundaries to the workday was shared as well. participants stated, “time management,” and “setting workday schedule and stopping.” the final theme addressed personal insights and was expressed by 20.1% (n = 38) of participants. these participants reportedly experienced a shift in perspective. there was a realization of how adaptable they were, and how important it is to engage in self-care and practice setting more realistic expectations for themselves. one participant shared, “…the unplugged coffee time, bullet journaling, and more intentional gratitude practice are something i hope to keep applying.” others said, “i must take care of myself,” and “resiliency and grace!” discussion findings from this study indicate that institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic varied and resulted in mixed experiences for faculty and administrator participants. some expressed feeling supported and well resourced, while others felt uninformed, unheard, and under-supported. when asked about accommodations made by institutions, participants identified professional adaptations in the form of modified teaching and work expectations, and professional supports such as additional technology, information, materials, and funding. however, 15% of participants reported that their institutions had not offered any accommodations or had instituted accommodations that were burdensome or unwanted. the lack of accommodations could indicate that some institutions felt ill prepared for the impact of the pandemic or unaware of what accommodations were needed. burdensome or unwanted accommodations could indicate limited resources to meet the needs or unaware of what the needs were. these factors could also be an indication of the lack of preparedness to address the demands that resulted from the impact of the pandemic. chaos theory implies that a small change could create different outcomes on many variables, and all variables that interact must be considered (zenker & kock, 2020). employing feedback loops among all stakeholders, as suggested by chaos theory, could possibly have prevented institutions from invoking burdensome and unwanted resources, and promoted application of helpful resources. to address state and national requirements to social distance, quarantine, and slow the spread of the covid-19 virus, institutions of higher education across the country responded quickly and instituted accommodations to allow for courses to continue, albeit online. researchers found that the pandemic negatively impacted individuals across disciplines, which aligns with our findings concerning negative faculty experiences such as perceived lack of support and a dearth of accommodations. pfefferbaum and north (2020) highlighted mental health impacts of the pandemic, while watermeyer et. al. (2020) noted challenges with work-life balance due to changes in job responsibilities. these findings may help explain our findings surrounding the perceived increased need for university-provided supports, as well as negative feelings of stress and lack of support. additionally, cui et. al. (2020) reported disproportionate effects of the pandemic on female faculty members experiencing decreased research productivity compared to males, while flaherty (2020) noted chronic faculty stress, negative perceptions of work, and experiences of secondary trauma being perpetuated because of the pandemic. in line with the findings of these studies, participants in the present study noted various changes in personal and professional functioning, needs, and related changes in ways of thinking about themselves and their jobs. though limited, the extant literature seems to consistently suggest the need for universities to be prepared to respond to crises in support of their faculty, both professionally and regarding mental health. sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 14 accommodations and adaptations were necessary steps in meeting the needs of the university community. however, developing strategies to meet these needs without first gathering employee input could have led to accommodations that benefited institutions, but not necessarily the individuals they were intended to support. we found that many institutions offered a multitude of accommodations to support faculty; however, some institutions seemingly struggled to make such accommodations. for instance, some participants reported that no/minimal or unwanted accommodations” were provided by their university. these differences in accommodations provided may be due to varying resources from one institution to another, with some far more financially salient and able to provide a litany of support across varying needs, and others having to strategically apply limited resources to a small portion of targeted needs. another contributing factor may be differences in leadership, with some universities focused more on the business and financial solvency of the institution as opposed to the needs and well-being of the faculty and staff. a lack of preparedness for addressing the impact of the covid-19 pandemic certainly may have also contributed to some institutions responding with minimal, none, or unwanted accommodations for faculty. while approximately 20% of participants expressed not needing any additional accommodations other than what had already been provided, the remaining 80% offered a range of suggested supports that would have been helpful during their institution's response to the covid-19 pandemic. almost half stressed the need for additional technology and system support. also emphasized was the desire for additional teaching support and more manageable workloads. previous research identified technology as causing disturbances and dysfunction for faculty during the pandemic (watermeyer et al., 2020), particularly since they had to make the adjustments to an online environment immediately, often without online teaching experience or proper equipment. based on our findings on the perceived need for greater technological support from nearly half of our sample, we infer that administrators often assumed faculty had the technology needed to teach courses from home, including computers, microphones and effective wi-fi at minimum, though this was not always the case. the effort needed to resolve these issues, on top of learning new technologies and transferring course content to online modalities without the necessary resources and support, translated to greater workloads and heightened stress for many. our findings align with the extant literature which suggests that faculty workloads have increased due to additional service responsibilities and new pressures related to teaching and research (krukowski et al., 2020; johnson et al., 2020). these professional challenges, in combination with concerns about the virus, may be related to heightened levels of stress, and the subsequent utilization of coping strategies like physical activity, meditation, and connecting with friends and family. the covid-19 pandemic provoked stress and uncertainty about the future regarding work and personal matters for many across the globe, which likely led to feelings of fear and anxiety (flaherty, 2020) and subsequent new or refocused utilization of various coping skills. more specifically, this study revealed strategies used by faculty and administrators to cope with the many challenges, changes and concerns stemming from the covid-19 pandemic. it was found that participants managed to cope through various activities, such as working out, watching movies, and engaging with friends on zoom. many also relied on wellness practices such as prayer and meditation, and setting limits on exposure to the news and social media. our findings are supported by research on coping strategies. physical activity and mental health related activities are among the most prescribed coping mechanisms for combating stress and sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 15 anxiety (iqbal & kokash, 2011). however, new and modified coping strategies may be needed when faced with the unique stressors of a pandemic. during the pandemic, many states completely shut down, which restricted individuals to working from their homes. for many, the pandemic resulted in major shifts in daily schedules and work habits, necessitating adjustments. rather than taking a break from work to get lunch with a colleague or leaving the office at a set time to return home at the end of a workday, faculty and administrators needed to identify ways in which they could set boundaries on their work, fulfill social needs, and create a work-life balance despite being home almost exclusively. specific professional practices, such as creating a separate space in their home for work, and continuing to engage in writing groups via zoom, were identified to help reduce work stress. institutions could play a role in providing support to faculty, such as offering online meditation sessions, scheduling online coffee hours, and providing online writing workshops. strategic, proactive planning may have better prepared institutions to support faculty in these ways. participants in the present study provided insights on what they gained or learned from working remotely during the pandemic. for example, one participant shared that they have learned more about “resiliency and grace,” while another noted a lesson learned about taking time away from technology. many identified new skills and practices that they will continue post covid-19. almost half of participants stated that they learned new online teaching skills that they will continue to apply, even if they return to face-to-face teaching. likewise, some participants indicated a preference to continue online meetings as opposed to face to face meetings, finding them to be more efficient and productive. in addition, faculty noted a heightened awareness of the value of engaging in self-care through both personal and professional practices. these ranged from plans to continue following set schedules to improve the work-life balance, to deliberately incorporating wellness activities in daily routines. ultimately, many participants realized that they are quite adaptable and resilient. they also noted being more empathetic and understanding toward students as they supported their students through the pandemic. these results shed light on some positive outcomes stemming from the pandemic, suggesting that perhaps not everything needs to return to how it was prior to covid-19. institutions would be wise to consider these outcomes and strategize plans for incorporating some of the modified work and teaching formats that have proven to be effective. institutions may also consider encouraging faculty boundary setting and allowing greater flexibility with regard to responding to student challenges. a greater focus on wellness for faculty, staff, and students may positively impact productivity. systems that prioritize the health and wellness of their employees have demonstrated positive trends in return, such as improving employee health behavior and lowering elevated health risks (kaul, 2020). strategic planning may assist institutions in planning for modified operations after the pandemic. implications the findings from this study may be used to inform higher education strategic planning. institutions of higher learning would benefit from adopting the strategic planning processes espoused by chaos theory. for example, according to swenk (2001), the theory posits that institutional strategic planning processes should include steps to adequately prepare for the future, foster a culture of planning, and utilize appropriate feedback loops. strategic planning has been identified as the best way to consider possible futures (swenk, 2001). planning for the sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 16 future could include actions such as preparing reserve funding for emergencies and developing plans to pivot in case of natural disaster or similar pandemics. the financial impact on institutions of higher education resulting from the pandemic were often severe. inside higher ed’s 2020 study of college and university presidents found that 53% of campus leaders were worried about the impact the economic downturn could have on their institutions in the future. through strategic planning, institutions can prepare to proactively decrease such negative effects when faced with future disasters or emergency situations moving forward. if a crisis plan to provide resources to faculty, staff, and students has already been developed, institutions would be activating a plan already in existence instead of devising a plan while in the throes of the crisis. even without this proactive stance, in the event of a pandemic, universities with “planning cultures'' would be prepared for an institutional response, immediately taking action to address the needs of all parties. it is important to note that chaos theory rejects a top-down approach to strategic planning, as planning is not seen as linear (swenk, 2001). rather, the theory suggests a collection of plans created by each department and brought together to inform the master strategic plan (swenk, 2001). an example of this in a university comprised of individual colleges would be each college formulating a plan, and those individual plans informing the university’s master plan. covid-19 had a major impact across the nation, and participants within this study identified accommodations that their institutions could have provided to be more helpful to them. effective planning during the time of crisis could have been helpful in ensuring faculty received accommodations that were needed. chaos theory advocates for creating a culture of planning which involves every stakeholder having a voice in the planning process even when responding to crises. moreover, institutions should consider how they might receive ongoing feedback from various stakeholders as a necessary source of information. stakeholders should include individuals from all levels of the system: students, staff, faculty, administrators, and members of the community. such information should be shared with all members of the institution (swenk, 2001). feedback is a necessary component of planning, especially in planning for the future and a possible crisis response. pertaining to the covid-19 pandemic, a planning culture would have captured faculty experiences very early in the process, as they would have been a part of the crisis response planning (swenk, 2001). the inclusion of faculty experiences in the planning process could have improved the impact of accommodations on the population they were meant to support. often, institutions were planning support without faculty input, which may have resulted in unwanted or less helpful accommodations. future planning should capture the experiences of all stakeholders prior to and during the pandemic to inform crisis responses in higher education. these responses need to include socioemotional supports. researchers call for institutions to adopt an ethic of care in crisis responses to minimize the emotional impact on faculty, staff and students (corbera et. al., 2020). limitations and future directions as with all qualitative research, it should be noted that our findings may not be generalized to all populations. the results are intended to provide insight on the lived experience of the participants in the current study. limitations of the present study include lack of diversity in some areas including the sex and university size of participants. notably, the majority of our participants were from large schools, which may mean their universities in general benefit from resources unavailable to those at small universities, possibly influencing the results of this study. sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 17 furthermore, in future studies, researchers may expand upon the current study by utilizing quantitative methods to explore broader covid-19 impacts on faculty and administrators and their satisfaction with their institution’s response to the pandemic. future research may also focus on specific related issues, such as the incidence of anxiety and depression among higher education faculty resulting from covid-19. this study is also limited to faculty and administrators’ experiences while in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic. it does not account for institutions’ evolving response to the pandemic over time. future research should be conducted following the pandemic to fully capture the university response to the covid-19 pandemic and the experiences of faculty, staff and students. in addition, op-eds were published more rapidly during the pandemic to capture and address the experiences of faculty, staff, and students. published research on the topic was limited during the time of this publication. future research could include a systematic review of all the studies published about university experiences and responses during the pandemic to gain a comprehensive understanding of existing gaps and to inform future institutional strategic planning. there is still a need to understand how strategic planning was used in institutions' responses to the pandemic and future research should be conducted to uncover this and inform future higher education strategic planning initiatives. conclusion this study explored the experiences of faculty and staff during the covid-19 pandemic concerning their transition to remote work. institutional accommodations, coping strategies, and growth were integral aspects of participants' experiences. this study identified the strengths of institutional responses to the pandemic as well as challenges for participants. through the lens of chaos theory, 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(2005). qualitative analysis of content. human brain mapping, 30(7), 2197-2206. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/09/24/economic-fallout-from-covid-19-continues-to-hit-lower-income-americans-the-hardest/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/09/24/economic-fallout-from-covid-19-continues-to-hit-lower-income-americans-the-hardest/ https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmp2008017 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102083 https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764020915212 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc2255 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00561-y https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unkown-cause-china/en/ https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unkown-cause-china/en/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2020.104164 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 20 appendix theme code book by question q1: what accommodations were made for faculty? code freq. % 1. professional adaptations teaching adaptations · online teaching trainings · teaching format o choice to teach f2f, hybrid, online o teach online with documented accommodations o fully online o smaller class sizes 151 79 34 45 31 11 2 1 53.4 work adaptations · remote work · flexibility o extend the clock for tenure and pre-tenure review o not counting course evaluations o extended deadlines/extra time for grading o accommodating those with children 72 33 39 23 4 9 3 2. professional supports technology resources · equipment (mics, headsets, cameras, hot spots, laptops, zoom, online textbooks) · support (troubleshooting and trainings) information · from admin (meetings, emails, understanding, flexibility) · from colleagues · mental health support workshops materials · office supplies sent to home · access to office phone calls · 1 day off per week · covid resources o masks/ppe o testing o social distancing funding · stipends · reimbursements for supplies · reimbursement for personal phone bill · emergency sick leave fund 95 67 38 29 7 5 1 1 14 3 1 1 9 6 1 2 7 3 2 1 1 33.6 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 21 3. none/minimal/unwanted none provided already teach/work online must teach online not allowed on campus without permission more work 37 25 6 1 3 2 13.0 total 283 100 q2: what accommodations would be helpful that have not been provided? code freq. % 1. technology resources/equipment support/trainings support for students (wi-fi, laptops) 36 25 9 2 25.5 2. enhanced system support mental health support better communication/instructions/information from leaders faculty input in decisions better support from support staff safe access to offices/labs ppe, cleaning supplies financial support · not being furloughed/laid off · insurance for adjuncts · stipends/reimbursements 33 8 10 1 1 2 4 7 2 1 4 23.4 3. none needed/not sure 27 19.1 4. manageable workload support with balancing childcare and work pause p&t clock reduce nonessential work, service load and meetings so more time for adjusting to online and maintaining research 23 11 3 9 16.3 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 22 5. teaching online teaching training gas/tas/support choice of teaching modality all classrooms zoom capable assistance addressing field placements more collaboration reduce course load more time to grade 22 4 5 8 1 1 1 1 1 15.60 total 141 100 q3: coping strategies utilized code freq. % 1. activities physical · exercise (such as running) · walking/hiking/outdoor activities · yoga/stretching/deep breathing · yard work/gardening social · talking/collaborating with colleagues and students · connect with friends and family · zoom writing/research group · virtual community events enjoyable · watch tv/movies · cook/bake · play with pets · reading for pleasure · playing/listening to music · hobby/crocheting/crafts · play games (video, board, etc.) · go for drives · remodel/organize house · social media/internet · indulgences o wine/alcohol o take-out/junk food o smoking 219 111 49 43 17 2 45 12 28 4 1 63 7 6 6 7 6 6 4 2 2 3 14 6 7 1 58.9 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 23 2. mental health boosters taking breaks! prayer meditation antidepressant/antianxiety medication naps therapy practice patience & gratitude/self-talk/self-compassion/selfcare/crying/relax goals avoiding the news/disconnecting/limiting tv/not checking email during certain times humor 90 25 4 15 3 3 4 22 12 2 24.2 3. work habits follow a schedule/routine/put boundaries on workday creating a separate space in house for work got improved internet managing children · got assistance (babysitter or sharing children's responsibilities with spouse) · allow more screen time · send to daycare 52 26 17 1 8 5 2 1 14.0 4. not using any/no need 11 3.0 total 372 100 q4: skills, attitudes, idea gained that you will continue post-pandemic code freq. % 1. teaching skills more flexibility with students/more connections with students use of more online teaching tools regardless of format will teach more online courses learned that do not want to teach online 89 32 45 10 2 48.9 2. professional insights more use of zoom/online meetings rather than in-person or in addition to apply scheduling/organization to day/boundaries will work more from home learned that cannot work well from home continue to use digitized processes (signing forms) importance of connecting and being patient with other faculty 55 28 13 8 2 1 3 30.0 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 24 3. personal insights crisis response skills/being adaptive/staying positive/selfcare/less hard on self importance of connecting with people more use of fun activities in life more use of telehealth 38 26 7 3 2 20.1 total 182 100 note. since many responses had more than one code applied to them, the total frequency will be more than the total number of respondents. sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 25 author notes narketta sparkman-key old dominion university nsparkma@odu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1438-6704 tammi f. dice old dominion university tmillike@odu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1754-6232 alexandra c. gantt old dominion university agant002@odu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0889-2109 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1438-6704 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1754-6232 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0889-2109 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ cie template current issues in education, 23(1) 1 volume 23, issue 1 may 9, 2022 issn 1099-839x school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships: what’s missing and what matters? kristan n. russell prairie view a&m university melissa m. burnham university of nevada, reno sarah a. trescher university of nevada, reno victoria a. knoche youth justice institute, the university of albany abstract: reports of sexual relationships between teachers and their students have risen across the country. this study qualitatively examines existing school district policies in nevada to determine what the existing policies cover, how the potential consequences are outlined, whether the policies give teachers guidance on how to navigate tricky ethical situations, and lastly, what information is not covered within these policies. our findings indicate that most districts use required boilerplate language about sexual harassment but lack specific guidance for navigating complex situations where boundaries seem to get crossed (e.g., social media). we conclude with recommendations for policy reform and continued education. keywords: teacher-student relationships, teacher sexual misconduct, ethics training, policies, nevada, school districts citation: russell, k. n., burnham, m. b., trescher, s. a., & knoche, v. a. (2021). school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships: what’s missing and what matters? current issues in education, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.2027 accepted: april 4, 2022 introduction sexual relationships between teachers and their students are on the rise across the country (abbott, 2015). reports indicate that approximately one in every ten students experiences sexual misconduct by a school district employee (department of justice, 2017; 9.6% of all students’ 8thhttps://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.2027 russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 2 11th grade shakeshaft, 2004). the texas education agency (2018) found that the number of investigations of inappropriate relationships between teachers and students increased 42% between 2017-2018 and increased by 249% in the past decade. although there appears to be a clear uptick in cases based upon the media attention nevada schools have received in the past decade, it is difficult to ascertain specific rates of educator sexual misconduct without a systematic reporting system. accurate estimates of educator sexual misconduct rates can be difficult to obtain for two reasons. first, there is no federal-level database or collection system to track reporting (u.s. government accountability office, 2014). second, many of our prevalence estimates are based upon cases that made it to the legal system; however, it is possible that many cases would not be included in these estimates because they go unreported (irvine & tanner, 2007; wurtele et al., 2019) or in some cases, teachers move school districts to avoid disciplinary action or legal repercussions (reilly, 2016), also known as “passing the trash” (irvine & tanner, 2007). several high-profile cases (e.g., mary kay letourneau, debra lafave) covered in the media have increased the public’s awareness of educator sexual misconduct (abboud et al., 2020). a number of teacher sexual abuse cases that have occurred within the state of nevada have received considerable media attention in recent years (see ford, 2021; mcandrews, 2019; shoro, 2019; and sonner, 2019, for a few examples), raising concerns for students, parents, school district employees, and legislators (whitaker, 2015, 2016). these mainstream media outlets often question why these relationships are happening and why teachers cross ethical boundaries with their students (see bradshaw, 2016). one thing that could contribute to this apparent rise in inappropriate teacher-student relationships is a disparity of research evidence assessing school district and state-level laws and policies that are aimed at preventing, intervening, and responding to cases of sexual misconduct of educators (grant, wilkerson, & henschel, 2018). the increase in arrests for sexual relationships between teachers and students is particularly concerning to parents as they expect schools to be safe learning environments (national coalition to prevent child sexual abuse and exploitation, 2012) for their children, and the risk of sexual abuse by teachers jeopardizes student safety and learning (u.s. department of education, 2017). teachers might utilize the power imbalance between themselves and their students to target their victims (knoll, 2010; sullivan & beech, 2002). sexual offenses, particularly offenses committed by an authority figure, can cause long-term trauma to the victims (knoll, 2010; sullivan & beech, 2002). further, social media and online communication platforms may be where many of these relationships are initiated and fostered (texas education agency, 2016). it is evident that inappropriate relationships with teachers and students are a concern for many school districts, yet there does not appear to be a large focus on preventing these relationships from happening in the first place. thus, the focus should be shifted from reactionary responses to these crimes to preventative measures to stop these relationships from occurring. in order to elicit these changes, policymakers, school personnel, and researchers must understand the current legislation and the role of school-district-level policies on teacher sexual abuse. this present research is a case study of nevada school district policies and is a first step in better understanding existing policies regarding relationships between teachers and students, as well as identifying areas that need to be better outlined within these policies. nevada was chosen for this study due to the researchers’ connections to the education system, which ensured russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 3 access to all necessary documents for analysis. further, by focusing the analysis on one state, we are better able to draw connections between the legislative and school district policy language. state laws and repercussions in the state of nevada, the age of consent is 16 years old (nrs 200.364; adopted in 1997 and most recently revised in 2017; see appendix a for a full description of laws). thus, children ages 15 and under cannot legally consent to sexual intercourse. this law includes a ‘close in age’ or a ‘romeo and juliet’ exception in which adults can have consensual sex with children under the age of consent (16) if they are less than four years apart in age. if charged, a person who engages in consensual sexual intercourse with someone under the age of 16 risks up to 10 years in prison, up to $10,000 in fines, and will be mandated to register as a tier three sexual offender on the nevada state registry. if the person being charged is under the age of 21, they can still be charged with statutory rape but with reduced punitive sanctions: up to one year in jail, up to $2000 in fines, and tier one sexual offender registration. nevada state law (nrs 201.540 & nrs 201.550; adopted in 1997 and most recently revised in 2017; described in appendix a) prohibits all sexual contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, physical contact of genitals) between school teachers and their students, even if the student is older than the age of consent (i.e., 16 years old). in other words, all sexual contact is prohibited between school employees and students at that school, regardless of the student’s age. this law does not apply to teachers or school employees under the age of 21, though almost all teachers and employees exceed this age. another exception to this law is if the student and teacher are legally married. if convicted, a teacher can face up to five years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines. further, teachers will be guilty of a category c felony. the nevada legislature rationalized their expansion of sex offense laws to include teacher/school district employee-specific legislation by stating that students should be free from influence by individuals who have power and authority over them. in addition to the legal ramifications of inappropriate conduct between teachers and students, school districts and licensing agencies can also impose punishments on the teachers. if accused or found guilty of sexual misconduct toward a student, school districts retain the right to impose hefty penalties, including suspension and termination. teachers might also face the loss of their teaching license for violating the ethical policies set out by their license granting agency. in the state of nevada, this agency is the nevada department of education. why district level policies matter with one in every ten students experiencing sexual misconduct by a school district employee, identifying potential issues within existing policies is critical (department of justice, 2017). the most common recommendation in the literature is that each district should have written policies prohibiting any inappropriate relationships between educators and students (shakeshaft, 2004). further, they recommend that behaviors that could be considered misconduct should be clearly defined, with examples, to ensure there is no ambiguity (shakeshaft, 2004). most school districts have incorporated sexual harassment policies adhering to these recommendations; however, teacher violations of these policies appear to be continuing to rise (abbott, 2015). research shows that early career teachers are more likely to engage in inappropriate sexual relationships with students (robert & thompson, 2019), highlighting the importance of ensuring district-level policies are clear to those entering the profession. existing policies cannot russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 4 be effective if teachers and staff are unaware of them. many school districts provide their policies or handbooks on their school website; however, anecdotal reports from case law and media demonstrate that many teachers are unaware of the policies or potential consequences of their relationships with their students (see quinn, 2018 for an example). this raises concerns about the orientation process and expectations of teachers to read, understand, and abide by existing district policies. additionally, studies show that school staff who read and understand the policies regarding their own behavior may remain unaware of how to identify such behaviors in others and how to report them (grant, 2011). this highlights the need for comprehensive policies that not only outline expected behavior but also provide steps for responding to suspected violations (shakeshaft, 2013). social media and online communication platforms might be where many of these relationships are initiated and fostered (texas education agency, 2016; whitaker, 2016). a recent investigation determined that approximately eighty percent of educator sexual misconduct cases involved private communication between a teacher and a student, such as texting or messaging over social media (whitaker, 2016). despite this, many school district level policies do not comprehensively cover appropriate use of social media and online communication between teachers and students. in 2015, clark county school district in nevada had no explicit policy forbidding online communication or texting between teachers and students, despite having more than thirty employees arrested for sexual misconduct in the previous decade, many cases of which involved private communications (whitaker, 2015). mainstream media outlets have also identified social media and online communication as a potential ‘gray area’ in the districts’ policies and ethical guidelines, which may be contributing to such relationships occurring, as teachers do not have clear rules on how to navigate these online settings, particularly with regard to student interactions (e.g., abbott, 2015; fleming, 2014; jimenez, 2019; mcneil, 2016). in a recent study of school sexual misconduct cases, 71% of offenders used technology to communicate with their victims (henshel & grant, 2018). in response to increased reporting of sexual misconduct and increased concerns, clark county school district (ccsd) in the state of nevada implemented a new social media policy in 2018 to regulate communication between teachers and students over electronic channels and to educate students on what to do if these boundaries are crossed (ortiz, 2018). however, ccsd teacher arrests for sexual misconduct have continued to be highly publicized (e.g., lupiani, 2019; shoro, 2019; torres-cortez, 2019), drawing attention to whether these policies are sufficiently comprehensive to prevent such misconduct. laws and school district policies are important as they clarify the law, set the stage for what types of behavior will be accepted within that school district, provide specific examples of violations, and indicate what the repercussions will be for misbehavior. policies can also be useful in reminding teachers or even making teachers aware of what behaviors are illegal and can lead to legal ramifications and/or licensure removal, not just consequences within their job at the school district. however, researchers have posited that existing policies are not sufficient to set clear guidelines in a changing world. for instance, is it appropriate for teachers to ‘friend’ their students on social media? the teacher’s union in nevada indicated that they are open to policy changes, while the s.e.s.a.m.e. (stop educator sexual abuse misconduct & exploitation) advocacy group supports a no-tolerance policy to prohibit this type of behavior and activity (whitaker, 2016). some experts have suggested guidelines for reforming policies which include recommendations such as (1) being clear and explicit regarding what constitutes sexual abuse and (un)acceptable russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 5 behaviors; (2) detailing how to report and prevent educator sexual abuse; and (3) explaining repercussions for violations (shakeshaft, 2013). it is important to also note that the push for district policy reform does not appear to coincide with any comprehensive analyses of existing policies to identify what topics are and are not covered. in fact, some policies have already been amended but offending continues to persist, indicating a need to assess existing policies more comprehensively to identify what is already included, whether language about social media and/or electronic communication and other potential ‘gray areas’ for boundary-crossing are missing altogether, and if the existing language regarding these specific topics (e.g., social media) is too vague and might be a source of confusion. we believe that having a more comprehensive understanding of the existing state of school district policies in nevada will allow for a more strategic approach to reform and can also provide insights into whether efforts need to be made beyond reform (e.g., better training to ensure teachers are aware of the policies). current study despite the laws, district-level policies, and ethics training many teachers receive – inappropriate relationships between teachers and their students appear to be on the rise (abbott, 2015). the state of nevada has been highly publicized for such relationships (e.g., lupiani, 2019; mcandrews, 2019l; shoro, 2019; sonner, 2019; torres-cortez, 2019). given the substantial repercussions of these inappropriate and illegal relationships, it is critical that school districts shift their attention from reactive to preventative measures (e.g., education and training, policy reform) so that the relationships do not occur in the first place. in this study, our primary goal is to comprehensively examine the school district policies in the state of nevada to determine what aspects regarding these ethical boundaries are comprehensively covered and also to identify potentially important elements that are missing from these policies. we anticipate that policies will address explicit sexual relationships (e.g., no sexual contact with students) but may lack language around more contemporary issues such as how to navigate whether to ‘friend’ a student on social media. as such, this study addressed the following research questions. rq1: what are the current nevada school district policies on school personnel relationships/interactions with students? rq2: are the consequences of inappropriate relationships with students clearly outlined in the current nevada school districts’ policies? rq3: do nevada school district policies provide explicit guidance to school personnel across various potential circumstances that they might have to navigate (e.g., social media use)? rq4: what is missing in the policies? (e.g., ‘friending’ students) method there are 17 independent school districts and 678 schools operating within the state of nevada (state of nevada department of education, 2019). district information is summarized in table 1. complete policy handbooks1 were acquired for each of these districts between december 2018 and april 2019.2 most of the policies were posted online for public access; all remaining policies were obtained through email by contacting the district administration. each policy was then read and reviewed by the researchers in this study. all policy sections that were 1 of the policies obtained, 15 were complete handbooks with all policy sections, 1 district only provided the personnel policy section, and 1 district provided only the student and personnel policy sections. 2 we attempted to obtain the most recent copies of all policies from each district. it is possible that policy sections have been updated since the time of data collection. russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 6 related to teacher-student relationships and personal interactions with students were selected for analysis. a preliminary coding scheme was developed by one of the researchers via an initial reading of the policies to gain familiarity with the content, in combination with reading the literature regarding boundary crossing and policy ‘gray areas.’ our inquiry into the policies was two-fold. on the one hand, it was critical for our analyses that we captured what is present in the existing policies so we can determine what level of guidance is already being provided to teachers. if the districts are providing clear and comprehensive guidance in all areas, perhaps the issue would then lie within training, lack of reading and understanding the policies, or in some other explanation. on the other hand, we also wanted to determine if any of the key areas highlighted in the media and literature as being potential boundary-crossing areas (e.g., friending on social media) were missing from the guidelines, providing further evidence that there may be ‘gray areas’ that need further elucidating. thus, in the final coding scheme, the codes were generated by both the researchers’ familiarity with the content and knowledge of factors the previous research deemed important (e.g., technology-based communication; henschel & grant, 2018). we conducted a content analysis of the policies for all 17 school districts in nevada. there were 19 primary themes, mostly related to broad policy sections and the inclusion of language around specific topic areas (e.g., sexual harassment) with a series of subthemes to code for more detailed intricacies within these policy sections. the policy documents were subjected to a systematic, line-by-line coding. an iterative approach was taken so that the coding scheme was flexible to allow for new codes to emerge. table 1 district descriptions district district size* district type district 1 small rural district 2 medium rural district 3 large urban district 4 very small rural district 5 medium rural district 6 small rural district 7 small rural district 8 small rural district 9 very small rural district 10 large urban district 11 small rural district 12 very small rural district 13 very small rural district 14 medium rural district 15 medium rural district 16 very small rural district 17 medium rural note. districts were sorted to be large, medium, and small. large districts have over 50,000 students. medium districts have between 49,999 and 5,000 students. small districts have between 4,999 and 1,000 students. very small districts are all districts with less than 1,000 students. russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 7 next, the documents were examined and coded by two external coders. this coding was completed in dedoose, which allowed us to examine inter-coder reliability (dedoose, 2018). our initial test of 25 excerpts yielded a cohen’s kappa statistic of .73, which indicates sufficient inter-coder agreement (cicchetti, 1994). coders then underwent a second training to examine the current coding scheme and address any differences in coding. the bulk of the errors occurred for excerpts that needed multiple codes but were instead only given one code by one of the coders. all disagreements in coding were resolved through discussion and consensus between the raters. further, definitions were revised to be more specific for future coding. ethical approval by an institutional review board (irb) is not always necessary for qualitative assessment of existing records. however, since several school districts had to be contacted directly to acquire the policies, we sought and received irb approval prior to data collection and analysis. findings what is covered in the policies? rq 1. what are the current nevada school district policies on school personnel relationships/interactions with students? of the 17 districts, 100% had policies on general sexual harassment for the district and for student-specific sexual harassment. these policies were specific not only to teachers, but all persons employed with or volunteering for the school district. we also assessed the content covered within these policy sections. we found that 11 (64.71%) of the districts provided a definition for what ‘sexual harassment’ is, while 15 (88.24%) of the districts provided examples of sexual harassment. (district 14) sexual harassment is generally defined as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for favors and other verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual or genderdirected nature when: 1. submission is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of the student’s education or educational opportunities; 2. submission to or rejection of that conduct or communication by an individual is used as a factor in decisions affecting the student’s education or educational opportunities; or 3. that conduct or communication has the purpose or effect of substantially or unreasonably interfering with the student’s education or educational opportunities, or of creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive educational environment (district 6) examples of behavior which constitute sexual misconduct include, but are not limited to: making sexual advances or gestures toward a student; coercing, forcing, or attempting to coerce or force sexual intercourse or any sexual act with a student; engaging in sexual intercourse or any sexual act with any student; touching oneself sexually or talking about one’s sexual activity in front of students; spreading rumors about or discussing students’ sexual activity; and sexually motivated or inappropriate touching, patting, grabbing, or pinching a student’s body, whether that student is of the same or the opposite sex. fifteen (88%) nevada school districts outlined general instructions for all individuals on how sexual harassment should be reported to the district. thirteen (76%) districts had specific instructions for students on how to report sexual harassment if they have experienced it themselves or know of someone who has experienced sexual abuse. (district 3) sexual harassment or misconduct directed at a student may be reported by any individual using the district’s online reporting tool (website …); to a counselor, administrator, teacher or any other district staff member; to (…) the district’s civil rights russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 8 compliance director/title ix coordinator (email: …); or to a school police or local law enforcement officer. while all of the policies referenced nevada law, only 10 (58%) explicitly described nrs 201.540, which indicates that it is a felony for a person over 21 years of age, who is/was an employee or volunteer of the district to engage in sexual conduct with students 16 or older. (district 11) the district acknowledge[s] the applicability of criminal statutes relating to sexual conduct toward a student, including nrs 201.540, which indicates that it is a felony for a teacher, administrator, coach, volunteer or teacher’s aide or auxiliary nonprofessional employee who assists with instruction or supervision of pupils, to engage in sexual conduct with pupils ages 14 through 17. next, we examined districts’ network policies because many media assessments of teacher misconduct identify online and technological outlets as being where a lot of inappropriate behavior takes place or where illegal relationships can start (e.g., abbott, 2015; fleming, 2014; jimenez, 2019; mcneil, 2016). sixteen (94%) of the school districts had a network policy, which dictates what is/is not permitted on the school district networks, for example, the prohibition of looking at or sharing obscene imagery (14 districts; 82%). (district 8) technology protection measures, installed and in continuous operation, that protect against internet access by both adults and minors to visual depictions that are obscene, child pornography or, with respect to the use of the computers by minors, harmful to minors; rq 2. are the consequences of inappropriate relationships with students clearly outlined in the current nevada school districts’ policies? we explored if and how consequences are described in each district policy. we implemented several codes to capture whether the school district policies clearly outline the consequences of sexual harassment of students. the first of these captured if any general mention of consequences was made within the specific policy section itself; ten districts (58%) did mention consequences. further, we implemented a code to capture whether the policy had specific language around possible termination of employment if sexual harassment of a student takes place. nine (53%) of the school districts mentioned termination as a possible consequence. (district 13) any employee who is found to be in violation of this sexual harassment regulation will be disciplined up to and including termination. although all policies reference the nevada law with regard to consequences of engaging in sexual harassment of students (and some of the policies describe the law), the descriptions tended to be vague, and none emphasized the legal and professional consequences of a relationship with a student, even if that student is of the legal age of consent. teachers can not only lose their jobs but can lose their teaching license and be charged criminally. only one school district policy, district 17 (6%), indicated that employees can have their teaching license suspended or revoked if they are in violation of the sexual harassment policy: “if the employee is the holder of a license issued pursuant to chapter 391 of nrs, may recommend to the board of trustees of the schools [sic] district that the board submit a recommendation to the state board for the suspension or revocation of the license.” fifteen (88%) of the school districts had a broad statement that outlines or explains the potential consequences for violating the sexual harassment policy. rq 3. do nevada school district policies provide explicit guidance to school personnel across various potential circumstances that they will have to navigate (e.g., social media use)? of russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 9 the 17 districts, 11 (65%) had specific policy language about social media use. however, the content of these policies typically pertained to either the district employee using social networking during working hours or specific social media use as it relates to the district. social media policies were vague and indicated that the school district does not take a position on employees’ social media activities. (district 4) the district takes no position on an employee’s decision to start or maintain a blog or participate in other social networking activities. however, it is the right and duty of the district to protect itself, its employees, and students from unauthorized disclosure of information. the district’s social networking policy includes rules, guidelines, and best practices for districtauthorized social networking and personal social networking. the district will not request user names and passwords for personal social media accounts. this policy applies to all board members, administrators, management, employees, and volunteers. blogging or other forms of social media or technology include, but are not limited, to video or wiki posting, sites such as facebook and twitter, chat rooms, personal blogs, or other similar forms of online communication journals, diaries, or personal newsletters not affiliated with the district. unless specifically instructed, employees are not authorized and, therefore, restricted to speak on behalf of the district. employees are expected to protect the privacy of the district, its employees, and students. only three school districts (18%) had explicit policies regarding “friending” students on social media accounts. of those three districts, only two school districts (12%) had specific policies prohibiting “friending” or “following” students on their social media. (district 3) staff should not “friend”, “follow”, or otherwise interact with students individually or personally from social media accounts. for example, a teacher should not “friend” a former student of the teacher while that student remains enrolled in the district. the third school district strongly discouraged “friending” but did not prohibit it: (district 14) employees are strongly discouraged from texting messaging using a personal phone number, and “friending” students on social media. rq 4. what is missing in the policies? research notes that missing or ‘gray areas’ in district policies may be a source of confusion or may foster misbehavior among teachers. to determine if any of these ‘gray areas’ existed within nevada school districts’ policies, we utilized media reports and the literature to inform our coding scheme development to ensure all areas of potential boundary crossing were included in our codebook. there were several items in our original codes (e.g., friending; sexual harassment consequences – authorities, license, suspension; power as a factor of sexual harassment pertaining to students) we had hoped to see present that our analyses revealed were largely missing from the existing policies. thus, the discussion below regarding the findings of research question #4 is uniquely situated around code absence rather than presence. ten (58%) districts made specific mention of consequences that would result if they violated the sexual harassment policy, with nine (52%) of those school districts mentioning termination as a possible consequence. however, we also had codes to capture two other important potential consequences: (a) language letting the teacher know that if they violated the policy, they would be reported to the authorities and (b) letting them know they would be reported to the state board and potentially lose their license to teach. for each of these, only one district (6%) mentioned these as potential consequences. russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 10 (district 17) if the employee is the holder of a license issued pursuant to chapter 391 of nrs, may recommend to the board of trustees of the school district that the board submit a recommendation to the state board for the suspension or revocation of the license. only three districts (18%) had a policy specific to home visits. surprisingly, the language within most of these policies encouraged home visits. these policy sections had vague guidelines and did not appear to have any additional information about ethical considerations to be made when making home visits. one school district did provide some detail about potential situations the teacher may have to navigate when conducting home visits, but they centered on interactions with parents and potential conflicts. the other districts provided reasoning for why home visits are encouraged. (district 5) home visits by teachers are encouraged by the board in order that better communication between home and school can be realized. the board believes that home visits yield a better understanding of the relationship between the classroom teacher and the student, so that a better educational experience will result for the student. further, only six (35%) of the districts had clear policies regarding the transportation of students in personal vehicles. the policy language within these sections was clear and consistent – transporting students in personal vehicles is prohibited in all situations unless under exceptional circumstances or prior approval by the districts. the only exception was one district whose policy stated that: (district 1) under no circumstances should students be transported in personal vehicles except during off-duty times. last, despite many districts having social media policies and almost all districts having network policies, only two (12%) of the districts had policies specific to social media use with regard to interacting with students. similarly, two (12%) of the districts had language about whether a teacher is able to ‘friend’ their students on social media, both of which prohibit this behavior unless under special circumstances. (district 2) employees must not “friend” or otherwise connect current students to their personal blog or social networking site. exceptions may be approved for employees with parental responsibilities. (district 14) employees are strongly discouraged from text messaging using a personal phone number, “friending” students on social media. discussion and suggestions for improvement the purpose of this study was to examine existing nevada school district policy, identify important areas that are missing or vague within the current policy content, and make recommendations for policy reform to address the identified issues. many of the school districts included identical, general sexual harassment and student sexual harassment policy language. these policies generally defined sexual harassment, provide examples, mention potential consequences of policy violation, and reference relevant state law. however, most of the policies lacked any guidance or specific rules regarding how to navigate certain issues (e.g., social media ‘friending’ of students). this is problematic, as research and anecdotal reports point out that these ‘gray area’ situations (e.g., communicating through technology) are those in which boundaries are more likely to get crossed and where these relationships may begin (henschel & grant, 2018). without clear boundaries outlined in the policies, teachers are left to operate under their best judgment in these situations. given the rising rates of teacher-student sexual misconduct, letting teachers use their best judgment in ‘gray area’ situations does not appear to russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 11 be the best approach. moving forward, school districts should aim to set clear rules within their policies surrounding social media and contact with students outside of the classroom, both in person and online. nevada legislation could also require this language to be included within school district policies to explicitly state what is expected of district employees. though most district policies mentioned that violations of their sexual harassment policies will result in consequences, many lacked language specifying the nature of potential consequences, such as termination or being banned from employment within a district. beyond school district-level consequences, the teacher may also lose their license, incur fines, be sentenced to jail time, and be mandated to publicly register as a sex offender in the state of nevada. media reports covering the cases of teachers who have been charged with sexual offenses often indicate that they were unaware they were breaking the law and of the potential consequences. moving forward, school districts should clearly describe all potential consequences in district policies that may be experienced as a result of violating the policy–both as a result of school district action and from the criminal justice system if the offense is reported to authorities. with the constant advancements being made with regard to electronic communication, revisiting policies regularly is necessary. some school districts utilize apps outside of the classroom as teaching and tracking tools. these practices became even more common with the shift to remote learning during the covid-19 pandemic. while these might be effective tools to promote learning in both traditional and remote-learning environments, clear rules must be established regarding their use to ensure that boundaries do not get crossed. for instance, new jersey school boards have all banned teachers from “friending” students on their social media accounts and prohibited any electronic communication between teachers and students unless through district computers or phones (abbott, 2015; mcglone, 2014). our results show that all districts within nevada do not have similar policies (only 2 out of 17 school districts in our study had a similar policy). following new jersey school boards’ lead might be beneficial in limiting teacher-student sexual relationships. further, school districts should implement routine ethical training and assess teacher knowledge regarding existing policies to ensure that they are familiar with the policies and are prepared to navigate situations that can pose potential ethical dilemmas. in 2015, the national association of state directors of teacher education and certification (nasdtec) published the model code of ethics for educators (mcee). since then, many states, including nevada, have adopted this code of ethics. the mcee could be used to develop specific trainings for educators on appropriate, and inappropriate, conduct with students. in the summary section of nasdtec’s rationale for developing the mcee, the authors note: “by establishing the mcee, nasdtec provides a model of best practice which jurisdictions can adopt or adapt to help ensure states, epps, and leas are effectively equipping educators in ethical understanding and decision making so as not to violate the boundaries of professional practice. this critical work will lead to a more intentional emphasis, at national, state, and local levels, being placed on ethics and ethical preparation. ultimately, not only will ethical violations in education be reduced, children will be safer in classrooms.” (https://www.nasdtec.net/page/mcee_rationale) within principle iii: responsibility to students, the mcee specifically notes that the professional educator should “acknowledg[e] that there are no circumstances that allow for educators to engage in romantic or sexual relationships with students” (p.3). several webinars and podcasts are linked on the mcee website to assist with teacher training. https://www.nasdtec.net/page/mcee_rationale russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 12 in addition to in-service training, educator preparation providers should strive to infuse the mcee into their coursework leading to teacher and administrator licensure. this practice would help to ensure that all future educators have a deep understanding of their ethical responsibilities as professionals. adopting the mcee into coursework at the state level is a good start, but as mentioned earlier, a substantial portion of educator sexual misconduct cases are perpetrated by early career teachers. thus, we also recommend that states should strive to include knowledge of the mcee in their educator licensing and re-certification regulations. incorporating additional ethical leadership content into the teacher certification exams would hold educator preparation and professional learning providers accountable for covering the content of the mcee. limitations and future research directions there are several limitations of the current study that need to be noted. first, this study was limited to the state of nevada and, therefore, cannot be generalized to district policies across the country. further, this study was limited to assessing the content of existing policies and did not assess supplemental materials and trainings the teachers may receive from the school district. additionally, this study did not examine the dissemination of or teacher familiarity with the policies, which is important in understanding not only if the policies are lacking important information, but also if the existing policies are being distributed to teachers in a way that promotes long-term retention and comprehension. even if policy language is very clear and all potential ethical situations are covered, they are only effective if accessed, read, understood, and followed. existing policies are already very lengthy and dense. for example, districts that provided their handbooks and policies to us often sent hundreds of pages. policies are typically broken down for students, parents, employees, trustees, and the community. however, even the policies and regulations specific to employees only can be hundreds of pages in length and cover a range of topics from sexual misconduct to requesting time off. as such, it may be difficult for teachers to read and retain all relevant policy information. future research needs to better examine how teachers receive training on the policies and if they are assessed in any way to ensure their familiarity. if research demonstrates a disconnect between the policy content and what teachers know, it would be beneficial to examine various methods of distribution (e.g., required reading of handbook, media/visual based distribution, etc.) to determine which method results in the most retention. further, research should examine teachers’ ethical training background and continuing education specific to ethics. this will allow researchers to identify potential targets for better training (e.g., college-level courses). researchers should examine what teachers currently believe about navigating ethical issues (e.g., friending students on social media) and their perceptions of the existing policies which address these scenarios. this will allow for a better understanding of how boundaries get crossed and how policies can be improved to address the issues. a final limitation is highlighted by the teacher-shortage crisis, which was exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic. understaffed schools are turning to desperate measures to cover classrooms, including the use of emergency contract teachers, increased use of substitutes, using administrators to periodically cover classes, teacher residency programs, and providing alternative and accelerated routes to teacher certifications. these various pathways to the classroom may complicate the training and education-based solutions proposed in this article. we recommend that every person serving in a teaching role, regardless of prior training and path russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 13 to the position, is held to the same expectation for knowing and abiding by professional teaching ethical standards and district ethics guidelines. references abbott, 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[gao]. (2014). federal agencies can better support state efforts to prevent and respond to sexual abuse by school personnel (gao-14-42). http://www.gao.gov whitaker, i. (2015). 5 charged in 3 months: school district battles history of personnel violating students. las vegas sun. https://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/aug/24/5-charged-clarkcounty-school-sexual-abuse-child/ whitaker, i. (2016). arrests prompt ccsd to study policies on contact between teachers, students. las vegas sun. https://lasvegassun.com/news/2016/apr/05/arrestsprompt-ccsd-to-study-policies-on-contact-b/ wurtele, s. k., mathews, b., & kenny, m. c. (2019). keeping students out of harm’s way: reducing risks of educator sexual misconduct. journal of child sexual abuse, 28(2), 160-186. https://doi.org/10.1080/10538712.2018.1486933 https://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/aug/24/5-charged-clark-county-school-sexual-abuse-child/ https://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/aug/24/5-charged-clark-county-school-sexual-abuse-child/ https://lasvegassun.com/news/2016/apr/05/arrests-prompt-ccsd-to-study-policies-on-contact-b/ https://lasvegassun.com/news/2016/apr/05/arrests-prompt-ccsd-to-study-policies-on-contact-b/ https://doi.org/10.1080/10538712.2018.1486933 russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 16 appendix a nrs 200.364 definitions. as used in nrs 200.364 to 200.3788, inclusive, unless the context otherwise requires: 1. “forensic laboratory” has the meaning ascribed to it in nrs 176.09117. 2. “forensic medical examination” has the meaning ascribed to it in nrs 217.300. 3. “genetic marker analysis” has the meaning ascribed to it in nrs 176.09118. 4. “offense involving a pupil or child” means any of the following offenses: (a) sexual conduct between certain employees of a school or volunteers at a school and a pupil pursuant to nrs 201.540. (b) sexual conduct between certain employees of a college or university and a student pursuant to nrs 201.550. (c) sexual conduct between certain employees or contractors of or volunteers for an entity which provides services to children and a person under the care, custody, control or supervision of the entity pursuant to nrs 201.555. 5. “perpetrator” means a person who commits a sexual offense, an offense involving a pupil or child or sex trafficking. 6. “sex trafficking” means a violation of subsection 2 of nrs 201.300. 7. “sexual assault forensic evidence kit” means the forensic evidence obtained from a forensic medical examination. 8. “sexual offense” means any of the following offenses: (a) sexual assault pursuant to nrs 200.366. (b) statutory sexual seduction pursuant to nrs 200.368. 9. “sexual penetration” means cunnilingus, fellatio, or any intrusion, however slight, of any part of a person’s body or any object manipulated or inserted by a person into the genital or anal openings of the body of another, including sexual intercourse in its ordinary meaning. the term does not include any such conduct for medical purposes. 10. “statutory sexual seduction” means ordinary sexual intercourse, anal intercourse or sexual penetration committed by a person 18 years of age or older with a person who is 14 or 15 years of age and who is at least 4 years younger than the perpetrator. 11. “victim” means a person who is a victim of a sexual offense, an offense involving a pupil or child or sex trafficking. 12. “victim of sexual assault” has the meaning ascribed to it in nrs 217.280. (added to nrs by 1977, 1626; a 1979, 572; 1991, 801; 1995, 700; 2009, 231, 1296; 2013, 2426; 2015, 2234; 2017, 2316, 2887, 2888) https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-200.html#nrs200sec364 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-200.html#nrs200sec3788 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-176.html#nrs176sec09117 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-217.html#nrs217sec300 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-176.html#nrs176sec09118 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-201.html#nrs201sec540 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-201.html#nrs201sec550 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-201.html#nrs201sec555 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-201.html#nrs201sec300 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-200.html#nrs200sec366 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-200.html#nrs200sec368 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-217.html#nrs217sec280 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/59th/stats197707.html#stats197707page1626 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/60th/stats197903.html#stats197903page572 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/66th/stats199104.html#stats199104page801 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/68th/stats199504.html#stats199504page700 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/75th2009/stats200903.html#stats200903page231 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/75th2009/stats200903.html#stats200903page231 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/75th2009/stats200913.html#stats200913page1296 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/77th2013/stats201315.html#stats201315page2426 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/78th2015/stats201521.html#stats201521page2234 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/79th2017/stats201713.html#stats201713page2316 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/79th2017/stats201716.html#stats201716page2887 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/79th2017/stats201716.html#stats201716page2888 russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 17 nrs 201.540 sexual conduct between certain employees of school or volunteers at school and pupil: penalty; exception. 1. except as otherwise provided in subsection 2, a person who: (a) is 21 years of age or older; (b) is or was employed by a public school or private school in a position of authority or is or was volunteering at a public or private school in a position of authority; and (c) engages in sexual conduct with a pupil who is 16 years of age or older, who has not received a high school diploma, a general educational development certificate or an equivalent document and: (1) who is or was enrolled in or attending the public school or private school at which the person is or was employed or volunteering; or (2) with whom the person has had contact in the course of performing his or her duties as an employee or volunteer,  is guilty of a category c felony and shall be punished as provided in nrs 193.130. 2. the provisions of this section do not apply to a person who is married to the pupil at the time an act prohibited by this section is committed. 3. the provisions of this section must not be construed to apply to sexual conduct between two pupils. (added to nrs by 1997, 2522; a 2001, 703; 2013, 2098; 2015, 1445, 2242; 2017, 2320) nrs 201.550 sexual conduct between certain employees of college or university and student: penalty; exception. 1. except as otherwise provided in subsection 3, a person who: (a) is 21 years of age or older; (b) is employed in a position of authority by a college or university; and (c) engages in sexual conduct with a student who is 16 years of age or older, who has not received a high school diploma, a general educational development certificate or an equivalent document and who is enrolled in or attending the college or university at which the person is employed,  is guilty of a category c felony and shall be punished as provided in nrs 193.130. 2. for the purposes of subsection 1, a person shall be deemed to be employed in a position of authority by a college or university if the person is employed as: (a) a teacher, instructor or professor; (b) an administrator; or (c) a head or assistant coach. 3. the provisions of this section do not apply to a person who is married to the student at the time an act prohibited by this section is committed. 4. the provisions of this section must not be construed to apply to sexual conduct between two students. (added to nrs by 1997, 2523; a 2015, 1446; 2017, 2321) https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-193.html#nrs193sec130 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/69th/stats199717.html#stats199717page2522 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/71st/stats200105.html#stats200105page703 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/77th2013/stats201313.html#stats201313page2098 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/78th2015/stats201513.html#stats201513page1445 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/78th2015/stats201521.html#stats201521page2242 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/79th2017/stats201713.html#stats201713page2320 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-193.html#nrs193sec130 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/69th/stats199717.html#stats199717page2523 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/78th2015/stats201513.html#stats201513page1446 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/79th2017/stats201713.html#stats201713page2321 current issues in education, 23(1) 18 appendix b table 2 example codes, definitions, and excerpts definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) general sexual harassment policies any broad policy language regarding the prohibition of sexual harassment within the district. statements usually relate to all members of the district; teachers, staff, students, volunteers, etc... in compliance with title ix, [this] school district prohibits sex discrimination, including sexual harassment. no student on the basis of sex will be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity conducted by the district. the district will treat its students without discrimination on the basis of sex as this pertains to admission, course offerings, athletics, counseling, employment assistance, and extracurricular activities 17 (100%) definitions specific language defining “sexual harassment.” “sexual harassment” is defined as sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that: g. explicitly or implicitly bases an educational decision on the student’s submission to such advances, requests and other conduct; or h. that is sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive to create a hostile or abusive educational environment for the student 12 (70.6%) examples specific examples provided for what “sexual harassment” is. examples often talk about inappropriate behaviors, unwanted sexual advances, request for sexual favors, etc…. “sexual harassment includes, but is not limited to: a) making unsolicited written, verbal, physical, and/or visual contact with sexual overtones. (written examples: suggestive or obscene letters, notes, or invitations. verbal examples: derogatory comments, slurs, jokes, or epithets. physical examples: assault, touching, impeding or blocking movement. visual examples: leering, gestures, display of sexually suggestive objects or pictures, cartoons, or posters.) b) continuing to express sexual interests after being informed that 14 (82.3%) current issues in education, 23(1) 19 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) the interest is unwelcome. (reciprocal attraction is not considered sexual harassment.) c) making reprisals, threats of reprisal, or implied threats of reprisal following a negative response. for example, either implying or actually withholding support for an appointment, promotion, or change of assignment suggesting a poor performance report will be prepared or suggesting probation will be failed. d) engaging in implicit or explicit coercive sexual behavior which is used to control, influence, or affect the career, salary, and/or work environment of another employee. e) offering favors or employment benefits, such as promotions, favorable performance evaluation, favorable assigned duties or shifts, recommendations, reclassifications, etc., in exchange for sexual favors.” reporting statement that includes instructions for how to report suspected/experienced sexual assault or who to report to. sexual harassment or misconduct directed at a staff member may be reported to the staff member’s first level supervisor who is not involved in the alleged harassment; the district’s civil rights compliance director / title ix coordinator; the department of labor relations; or a school police or local law enforcement officer. ii. staff complaints may also be filed with the nevada equal rights commission (nerc) or the u.s. equal employment opportunity commission (eeoc). 15 (88.2%) student reporting policy language specifically directing students how to report sexual assault they have experienced or how to report if one suspects that a student has been sexually assaulted. sexual harassment or misconduct directed at a student may be reported by any individual using the district’s online reporting tool [website name]; to a counselor, administrator, teacher or any other district staff member; to [name], the district’s civil rights compliance director/title ix coordinator [email address]; or to a school police or local law enforcement officer. 17 (100%) current issues in education, 23(1) 20 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) sexual harassment – students policy language that specifically refers to sexual harassment of students by staff, employees, etc. these codes are not used when it is just a broad review of sexual assault regarding district employees but rather, must be specific to the sexual harassment of students. the district prohibits and will not tolerate any form of sexual misconduct (including sexual abuse, sexual molestation, and sexual harassment) toward students on the part of district employees, administrators, officials, volunteers, or third parties. 17 (100%) age policy language within the sexual harassment policies that mention age or minor-status of students staff and volunteers are prohibited from soliciting a romantic, intimate, or sexual relationship with a current district student or a graduate of a school within the district for one (1) year after the student’s graduation, regardless of the student’s age. 12 (70.6%) power policy language that mentions the power differential between teachers and students or the authority that teachers have over students. it is unlawful for a person employed in a position of authority (teacher/instructor, administrator, coach or paraprofessional or auxiliary non-professional employee who assists licensed personnel) by a public or private school from engaging in sexual conduct with a pupil. 2 (11.8%) law describe anytime the policy describes or explains specific laws that may relate to sexual misconduct of a student including those preventing lewdness against a child under 16, etc.. (examples: nrs 201.540, nrs 201.230, nrs. 200.366, nrs 200.368, nrs 201.560) any conduct or communication that is immoral conduct within the meaning of nrs391.311(4) including but not limited to sexual assault, statutory sexual seduction, incest, commission of certain sexual acts in public, open or gross lewdness, indecent exposure, and lewdness with a minor. 10 (58.9%) laws reference this is coded for anytime the policy see nrs 201.540 8 (47%) current issues in education, 23(1) 21 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) refers to laws that may relate to sexual misconduct of students. (examples: nrs 201.540, nrs 201.230, nrs 200.366, nrs 200.368, nrs 201.560) teacher law describe specific statement indicating that relationships between teachers and students are a violation of the state law. use this code if they specifically outline the illegality of this type of relationship (not just reference the law itself without explaining it). (nrs 201.540) the district acknowledges the applicability of criminal statutes relating to sexual conduct toward a student, including nrs 201.540, which indicates that it is a felony for a teacher, administrator, coach, volunteer or teacher’s aide or auxiliary nonprofessional employee who assists with instruction or supervision of pupils, to engage in sexual conduct with pupils ages 14 through 17. 10 (58.8%) teacher law reference this is coded for anything the policy refers to the law regarding relationships between teachers and their students by policy name (nrs 201.540). see nrs 201.540 8 (47%) sexual harassment – consequences this is any statement that broadly outlines or explains the potential consequences and/or punishments one might incur for violating the sexual harassment policy. if it is determined that illegal harassment has occurred, the district will take remedial action commensurate with the severity of the offense. this remedial action may include, but is not limited to, verbal and/or written reprimands, counseling, transfers, suspension without pay, and/or termination. action will also be taken to defer any future harassment 15 (88.2%) authorities mention that sexual harassment of students will be as required by nrs 432b.220, in situations where there is reasonable cause to believe that a child has been abused or neglected, a 1 (5.8%) current issues in education, 23(1) 22 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) reported to the appropriate authorities by the school. school administrator, teacher, librarian, or counselor must report this to child welfare services or a law enforcement agency within 24 hours. license policy language indicating that employees and teachers will experience potential loss of teacher license if they violate the sexual harassment policy. if the employee is the holder of a license issued pursuant to chapter 391 of nrs, may recommend to the board of trustees of the school district that the board submit a recommendation to the state board for the suspension or revocation of the license. 1 (5.8%) suspension policy language indicating that employees and teachers may experience potential suspension if they violate the sexual harassment policy. any school district action taken pursuant to this policy will be consistent with requirements of applicable collective bargaining agreements, nevada revised statutes and […] school district policies. the […] county school district will take such disciplinary action it deems necessary and appropriate, including warning, suspension, or immediate discharge to end sexual harassment and prevent its recurrence. 4 (23.5%) termination statement indicating that employees and teachers may experience potential termination if they violate the sexual harassment policy. subject to discipline, up to and including dismissal. 10 (58.8% retaliation statement regarding the prohibition of retaliation against someone who reports sexual harassment. the district will not tolerate any form of retaliation toward any person who reports alleged sexual misconduct in good faith, assists another in filing a complaint, or provides truthful statements during an investigation 11 (64.7%) network policy policy language specifically around network policy (e.g., using resources for school related purposed only). this code is specific to the it shall be the responsibility of all staff to educate, supervise and monitor appropriate usage of the online computer network and access to the internet in accordance with this policy, cipa, the neighborhood children's internet protection act, and the protecting children in the 21st century act. 16 (94.1%) current issues in education, 23(1) 23 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) network/internet of the district. this also includes use of district devices (which usually use the school district network) including cellphones, laptops, etc.. bullying statement about the prohibition of bullying on district networks specifically. using a district technology resource to actively engage in procuring or transmitting material that is in violation of district policies and regulations and/or applicable state and federal laws and regulations, to include those related to bullying, cyberbullying, harassment, discrimination or hostile work environment 11 (64.7%) obscenity statement about prohibiting the sending/receiving obscene language and/or images over district networks specifically. parents/legal guardians are encouraged to provide proper guidance to students regarding electronic communications, including the use of the internet, and the importance of internet safety, as well as discouraging improper conduct such as: sending or displaying offensive messages or pictures of themselves or others and/or linking them to teachers, other staff or students; using obscene or vulgar language toward teachers, staff or students; 14 (82.3%) social media policy policy language that generally refers to appropriate use/behavior of social media. access to social media for individual use during working hours is prohibited. this policy extends to student teachers and substitute teachers. 11 (64.7%) friending specific language around whether or not the teachers & staff may/may not “friend,” “follow,” or “add” their students over social media platforms. employees may be flattered when students ask for access to social network sites or other personal information; however, employees are strongly discouraged from text messaging using a personal phone number, “friending” students on social media or contacting students or parents/legal guardians with personal email addresses. fraternization between employees and students via the internet is prohibited except for legitimate email exchanges pertaining to 3 (17.6%) current issues in education, 23(1) 24 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) educational matters (such as class assignments). friending permitted statement that encourages and/or allows “friending,” “following,” and “adding” of students in certain scenarios. n/a 0 friending prohibited statement that prohibits “friending,” “following,” and “adding” of students regardless of the situation. employees must not “friend” or otherwise connect current students to their personal blog or social networking site. 2 (11.8%) electronic communication specific statement regarding electronic communication between teachers and students outside of class. may relate to communication over emails, texts, apps, etc… the district recognizes that technological advances fast outpace the district’s ability to keep up. the district also acknowledges that boundaries may be blurred between acceptable and inappropriate behavior between employees and students in this arena, particularly for young teachers who may have become accustomed to the use of the latest technology to communicate with professors 2 (11.8%) personal transportation specific language around the transportation of students in school district employees’ personal vehicles. under no circumstances should students be transported in personal vehicles except during off-duty times. 6 (35.3%) home visits policy language regarding the visitation of students in their homes. in order to maximize parental involvement and participation in their children’s education, arranging school meetings at a variety of times, or conducting in-home conferences between teachers or other educators, who work directly with participating children, and with parents who are unable to attend those conferences at school. 3 (17.6%) current issues in education, 23(1) 25 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) home visits encouraged statement that encourages home visits with students in certain scenarios. home visits by teachers are encouraged by the board in order that better communication between home and school can be realized. the board believes that home visits yield a better understanding of the relationship between the classroom teacher and the student, so that a better educational experience will result for the student. 3 (17.6%) home visits prohibited statement that prohibits home visits with students regardless of the situation. n/a 0 current issues in education, 23(1) 26 author notes kristan n. russell, ph.d. prairie view a&m university knrussell@pvamu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6256-8879 melissa m. burnham university of nevada, reno mburnham@unr.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2570-0092 sarah a. trescher university of nevada, reno satrescher@gmail.com victoria a. knoche youth justice institute, the university of albany tknoche@albany.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1352-9339 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:knrussell@pvamu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6256-8879 mailto:mburnham@unr.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2570-0092 mailto:satrescher@gmail.com mailto:tknoche@albany.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1352-9339 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 26, issue 1 may 02, 2025 issn 1099-839x aligning education with student needs: lessons from gifted and talented education talbot s. hook university of connecticut gregory t. boldt university of saskatchewan abstract: american education has inherited beliefs and practices unaligned with 21st-century needs, which prevents us from providing an appropriate education to many students. to reimagine what education could and should be, we must understand tensions between shifting societal values, developmental goals, and educational structures. after discussing some of the values that pull education toward different goals, we present several lessons learned from gifted and talented education pertinent to changing broader educational structures. a key theme in these lessons is that pivoting away from the age-in-grade model to one that flexibly addresses diverse individual learning pathways can help to increase equity and excellence, as well as develop individual talent for self-fulfillment and societal betterment. keywords: education reform, gifted and talented education, individualized education, interdisciplinarity citation: hook, t. s., & boldt, g. t. (2025). aligning education with student needs: lessons from gifted and talented education. current issues in education, 26(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2274 accepted: 03/12/2025 aligning education with student needs: lessons from gifted and talented education the american education system has faced growing challenges in the 21st century, including widening achievement gaps, shifting workforce demands, and debates over the purpose https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2274 hook & boldt: lessons from gifted education current issues in education, 26(1) 2 of schooling (brandt, 2010). to address these issues, it is important to imagine how we might reshape our education system to adapt to these evolving needs. educational reform is a complex and formidable task, and our intention is not to simplify its many challenges. rather, the aim of this conceptual paper is to highlight the tension between ongoing calls for an education system that accommodates diverse developmental pathways and entrenched educational structures built upon the myth of the average student. we argue that our current education system falls short of its full potential because, in designing schools to meet the needs of the average student, we have created a system that truly fits no one. to illuminate possible paths forward, we draw on lessons learned from reform efforts in the field of gifted and talented education (gate), which highlight the need to move beyond a one-size-fits-all model and toward a system that maximizes student development through more flexible, individualized learning pathways. this piece represents a synthesis of several years of coursework, personal research, and work on gate-related grants throughout our doctoral program in giftedness, creativity, and talent development. during the course of our studies, we have attempted to map gate research onto the larger educational landscape, especially in terms of broad structural reforms. based on these insights, we offer practical recommendations for educators and researchers seeking to effect change at both grassroots and systemic levels. the goals and values of contemporary education systems to reimagine american education, we must first consider the overarching goals this system should seek to achieve. do we aim to cultivate a base level of knowledge and skills that will help students in adulthood? or, is our focus to equip the next generation of workers with the tools needed to drive economic development? or, to realize the maximal development of each student’s unique potential? within this limited sample of objectives, each goal has distinct implications regarding the ideal education system. what is more, each goal is embedded in a larger context of core tensions that have long existed in american education, making consensus on goals a difficult task. and although goal definition is emphasized in educational design (e.g., ideo, 2012) and curriculum development (e.g., wiggins & mctighe, 2005), such fundamental questions are commonly overlooked in public discourse about education. yet, to transform our approach to education, asking these questions is a necessary first step. this discussion of goals cannot happen without reference to the larger system of values in which education is embedded. the goals of our education system have changed significantly over time and will continue to do so (labaree, 2018; tyack & tobin, 1994). given the nature of american discourse—with its pluralism, plethora of cultures, and distinct political factions—it should be no surprise that education is pulled in many directions at once. our educational system occupies an ever-shifting position on a landscape where distinct pulls produce tensions along at least two different spectrums: one between equity and excellence, the other between selffulfillment and societal contribution. the first tension is born of having to educate every schoolage child up to a common standard with limited resources; the second stems from the ongoing dialogue between individual liberty and our responsibilities to others. these tensions are always in flux, and because they are among the fundamental “competing, legitimate values” of our society, they do not admit of an obvious balance (kaestle, 2001, p. 17). in our minds, the ideal system of education should balance all these values and adapt dynamically to shifting contexts. as david labaree (1997, 2018) has written, the goals of american education have changed significantly throughout history. education was first centered around shaping a virtuous citizenry, then around producing capable workers, and, presently, it focuses on readying hook & boldt: lessons from gifted education current issues in education, 26(1) 3 individuals for competition in the modern economy. as labaree (1997) wrote, the first two perspectives (the public roles of the citizen and taxpayer) are fundamentally different from the latter perspective, which is a private one: that of the consumer. whereas the first two educational outlooks place society at the center, with individuals working in the service of a larger good, the latest—and current—model places the individual at the center, with society working for a single person’s good. this is a profound shift in terms of educational aims, with consequences for how students navigate the american school system. alongside these developments in educational goals, american schools transitioned from one-room schoolhouses to the current system of age-graded schools; schooling, in the minds of many, has come to mean a system of grades and classes wherein students are divided first by age, and then by subject—a system that tyack and tobin (1994) refer to as the “grammar” of schooling. to most americans, this is the grammar that seems most reasonable. however, “there was nothing inevitable about organizing students into age-based cohorts and having them move together in lockstep . . . but over time, that came to seem natural. to most americans today, that’s what a ‘real’ school looks like” (heller, 2020, p. 33). as present-day educators, we have inherited these goals and systems. they do not reflect static truths about education, they are not always in alignment with one another, and they were not specifically created to meet the needs of 21st-century students and societies, which require more student-centered approaches that accommodate diverse developmental pathways (gonzález‐pérez & ramírez‐montoya, 2022; subotnik et al., 2011). indeed, much of the tension we currently experience, and the corresponding impetus to reimagine american education, stems from misalignment between the goals and systems we have inherited and the modern needs we strive to meet. when facing the massive systemic problems inherent in educational reform, analogous contexts can often offer inspiration and guidance. we believe that the field of gate—one related, yet distinct educational space—can offer a number of insights relevant to broader educational reform. trends in gifted and talented education as both authors research within the context of gate, we hope to bring some lessons from our field to bear on this conversation. we do not suggest that these are the only principles fit to guide american education, but we believe they can helpfully inform the discussion over where our educational system is headed. ever since gate’s inception in the early twentieth century—where it arose following the import of intelligence testing to the united states—it has occupied a strange space in the educational landscape. dai and chen (2013) noted two primary inspirations for gifted education, roughly centered around the work of lewis terman (1925) and leta hollingworth (1942). in their view, terman saw high-achieving students (those that would eventually be called “gifted”) as the drivers of societal betterment, whereas hollingworth saw the gifted experience as something requiring unique educational opportunities. even since the beginning, gate has had multiple, sometimes contradictory reasons for existing; in this way, gate has long been a part of schools, but it is also apart from schools. one beneficial aspect of this relative isolation is that gate has had more space and freedom than general education to ask questions about its identity and existence. just what should gate be, and for whom? like the rest of the educational system, we have often struggled with the four tensions outlined above. recently, researchers and practitioners in the field have been exploring the complex relationship between equity and excellence—something not unique to our field, but present in all conversations of american educational reform (dai, 2013; meyer & plucker, 2022). when education became universal and mandatory, people began to voice concerns about how we could hook & boldt: lessons from gifted education current issues in education, 26(1) 4 manage an excellent education for an unprecedented number of students. it was no different for gate. throughout history, the field has been swept up in several distinct paradigms, trying to answer fundamental questions about how to conceptualize, identify, and develop students’ gifts and talents (dai & chen, 2013; 2014). at the same time, gate has vigorously debated its raison d’être—does it work for students as individuals, for the benefit of society, or on behalf of both simultaneously? for a number of decades our field has floated the idea that gifted youth and advanced learners are a precious national resource not to be squandered (mcclain & pfeiffer, 2012; office of educational research and improvement, 1993), reflecting a similar opinion to that of terman, mentioned above. after all, it is argued, these students will one day become the country’s leaders. this line of justification for gifted education is still popular, with some arguing that “the country needs these children to be highly educated to ensure its long-term competitiveness, security, and innovation” (wright, 2022, para. 8). as with all forms of american education, gate has been pushed and pulled by these different but equally-legitimate values, producing a series of transformations mirroring broader ethical and political trends. to give a brief overview of our field’s history, we can mark several distinct paradigms with lo and porath’s (2017) framework of demystification, identification, and transaction. prior to the 20th century, our field began with attempts to demystify the nature of intelligence through psychometric testing. as researchers got better at measurement, they began to hone in on identifying and serving the intellectually gifted. originally, students were identified solely through iq testing. yet, throughout the 20th century, scholars began noting elements of highachievement and talent that were not always identified with intelligence tests. thus, the field saw ever-expanding conceptualizations of giftedness beyond iq, and advocates sought to create better ways to identify and serve more diverse forms of giftedness—for instance, serving those advanced in leadership or creativity, as advocated for by the critically important marland report, which put gifted education on the federal map (gallagher, 2023). gate is currently moving toward a transaction paradigm focused on providing individual students with what they need to develop academically or in specific talent domains. at present, our field is intensely focused on issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. we are moving toward models that provide all students with the educational support and challenge they need to develop their potential. these paradigms illustrate the origins of our field in terms of its service models and lines of research. we have largely moved from stringent conceptions of innate giftedness based around general intelligence to expansive definitions inclusive of things like leadership and creativity (national association for gifted children [nagc], 2019), even though many states still rely heavily on iq testing to determine gifted status (mcclain & pfeiffer, 2012). several decades ago, scholars (e.g., gagné, 1995; renzulli, 1978) began to move away from entity-based conceptions of giftedness, and many now view giftedness in largely contextual and developmental ways, increasingly through a talent-development lens specific to various domains (e.g., nagc, 2010; subotnik et al., 2021). scholarship focuses more on universal enrichment (e.g., renzulli & reis, 2014) and advanced academics models (peters et al., 2013) that eschew the “gifted” label altogether. perhaps most importantly, our field is striving to right historical wrongs stemming from gatekeeping based on ethnicity or class (for an analysis of historical inequities, see gentry et al., 2019). much of our current energy is being channeled into identifying and serving students from minoritized populations. in short, the arc of gate has grown continually to encompass more notions of giftedness, more service models, and greater hook & boldt: lessons from gifted education current issues in education, 26(1) 5 numbers of students who receive an appropriate level of challenge in schools. having traced the trajectory of our field, we now present several key takeaways relevant to broader educational reform. lessons learned from gifted and talented education lesson 1: education is most transformative when it accommodates students’ diverse learning profiles and equally diverse learning needs in tandem with evolving conceptualizations of giftedness, gate has experienced broader shifts in efforts to identify students for gifted and talented programming. early identification practices involved a narrow focus on standardized intelligence tests, but this approach has long been criticized for overlooking talents in both marginalized populations and areas beyond general intellectual ability (callahan et al., 2017). it is now more common for states and districts to screen all students for gifts and talents using a combination of assessments, which can include teacher ratings, behavioral checklists, and achievement, performance, and creativity tests (mcclain & pfeiffer, 2012). although specific practices vary across states and districts, schools increasingly use universal screening and decision-making rubrics that consider multiple sources of data (e.g., cognitive tests, teacher ratings, work portfolios), rather than relying on a single cutoff score (e.g., iq > 130; callahan et al., 2017; rinn et al., 2022). more emphasis is also placed on identifying domain-specific gifts and talents, such as marked potential in ela or mathematics (gubbins et al., 2021). paralleling trends in general education, researchers have argued that specific considerations must be made for traditionally underserved populations, including culturally, linguistically, economically, and neurologically diverse students, who remain chronically underrepresented in gate programs (al-hroub, 2013; ezzani et al., 2021). contradicting rigid expectations, tests, and curricula that neglect or deny differences in student development, these advances in identification parallel broader trends in which gate has intensified its efforts to provide equitable, individualized, interdisciplinary learning. although there is room for continued improvement, it is well-recognized that best practice involves identifying students from diverse backgrounds for programming aligned with their interests, strengths, and needs (corwith et al., 2019). lesson 2: gate can offer research-based practices important to meeting students’ varied needs unsurprisingly, views on how to provide optimal programming in gate have evolved in similar ways. few in the field currently defend the “country club” model in which privileged students are removed from the regular classroom to spend time among intellectual peers. rather, scholarship and corresponding practice have pivoted toward providing opportunities for domainspecific talent development (e.g., subotnik et al., 2021) and universal enrichment (e.g., renzulli & reis, 2014). these developments have been informed by decades of research demonstrating that the most effective gate practices include acceleration (moving through curricula at a faster-than-typical rate), ability grouping (flexibly placing students into groups in response to specific learning needs), curricular interventions (using structured lesson plans), and enrichment (engaging students in authentic disciplinary work; plucker & callahan, 2020). collectively, the evidence supporting these shifts underscores the importance of balancing targeted skill hook & boldt: lessons from gifted education current issues in education, 26(1) 6 development with authentic, enriched learning opportunities to support diverse learners and cultivate their unique talents. lesson 3: to achieve any goal we set for education, we must move from age-based grades to more individualized learning aligning with shifts in identification, changes in gate programming highlight another notable trend: learning has become increasingly student-centered. in our minds, individualized learning is the most viable means of simultaneously achieving equity, excellence, personal fulfillment, and societal contribution. however, entirely individualized learning is also costly, demanding, and poorly aligned with the entrenched age-in-grade paradigm. as a result, differentiation within mixed-ability classrooms is the most prevalent approach (gubbins et al., 2021), despite the fact that it is challenging to implement in classrooms where readiness levels span up to seven grade levels (peters & borland, 2020) and is rarely used to challenge students who have already mastered grade-level content (ritzema et al., 2016). just as special education services are necessary for students who require greater support in their learning, students with gifts and talents deserve educational services that meet their unique needs (corwith et al., 2019). without appropriate services, students with gifts and talents are at risk of underachieving (siegle et al., 2017; snyder & adelson, 2017), and failing to realize these students’ full potential will have negative consequences for both their individual growth and their ability to contribute meaningfully to society. to better meet such students’ needs, researchers have stressed the importance of sustained professional learning opportunities on research-supported practices such as acceleration, flexible ability grouping, and enrichment (johnsen et al., 2020). lesson 4: providing a meaningful, modern education involves expanding beyond a narrow focus on academics our field has welcomed many different disciplines—some never before included in traditional education. doing so has pushed gate beyond education’s fixation on literacy and numeracy. although we do not intend to undermine the value of these subjects, literacy and numeracy do not represent the sole indicators of a meaningful education. to develop skills important to life in the 21st century, researchers have called for more authentic learning in schools (e.g., abrami et al., 2015; hashemi & cederlund, 2017). this approach involves providing students with scaffolded opportunities to work with real-world content in a manner similar to discipline experts (koh, 2019), with the aim of developing 21st-century skills like creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication (brandt, 2010). within gate, these opportunities are commonly offered through the schoolwide enrichment model, which involves scaffolded experiences where students are introduced to authentic disciplinary content and activities (type i), develop higher-level thinking and social-emotional skills (type ii), and engage in self-directed projects resembling the work of professionals in the field (type iii; renzulli & reis, 1985, 2014). enrichment programs typically represent a fraction of instructional time, yet considerable research has shown that they improve both academic achievement and social-emotional development (kim, 2016). complementing arguments for individualized learning, providing interdisciplinary opportunities further adds to diversity in education, a perspective that undermines “the expectation that everybody should be moving in lockstep through a series of 10-month years in a standardized system and coming out at pretty much the same place by age 18” (eisner, 2001, p. 372). hook & boldt: lessons from gifted education current issues in education, 26(1) 7 where does education go from here? the lessons above highlight a clear trend: a shift from schools providing a baseline level of knowledge and skills to maximally developing each student’s unique potential. parallelling broader societal trends, this shift also helps ease tensions between equity, excellence, selffulfillment, and societal contribution. it is our belief that achieving this goal of maximal development would simultaneously address each of these four dimensions. educational goals have shifted in this direction, but our educational structures continue to lag behind. just as these goals have evolved, so too must the systems that seek to achieve them. so, what structures are needed to maximally develop students’ various potentials? lessons learned from gate indicate that this would involve individualized learning with diverse areas of focus. in such a system, the common curriculum would be supplemented with personalized education plans aligning with each student’s psychosocial needs, specific interests, and developmental readiness. although perhaps ideal, this system could also prove to be disorganized, inefficient, and difficult to manage. furthermore, it is entirely in conflict with entrenched educational structures that were designed for homogenous services and outcomes. yet, to achieve modern educational goals, it is precisely these structures that must be challenged. researchers in our field have proposed paths forward, presenting approaches that could help educational institutions evolve to better meet students’ needs. in the following section, we highlight several of these arguments. however, it is important to first note that systemic change requires the coordinated efforts of diverse parties, from politicians to parents, and from teachers to students. rinn et al. (2022) emphasized the need for policy, funding, training, programming standards, and accountability to support meaningful progress in gate, and these same conditions will be required for broader educational reform. many necessary changes are beyond the scope of any one teacher, school, or district. therefore, we describe both the broader structural changes that are necessary to transform our educational landscape and the steps that individual educators and researchers can take to contribute to these efforts. what can policymakers do? a broad overhaul of existing educational structures may be ideal for achieving the level of individual specialization required to develop students to their potential, but meaningful progress often requires incremental, actionable steps. one key step will involve rethinking the rigid age-in-grade paradigm and developing within-school structures where students could be flexibly grouped (not permanently tracked) according to readiness in specific subject areas. student needs and talent areas vary considerably, so any movement away from our ossified and homogeneous system would push us closer to individualized learning pathways in diverse talent domains. when considering the tension between individual interests and a body of common knowledge underpinning a shared society, we imagine a hybrid system. feldman (2020) proposed a half-and-half structure to education, in which half the day is dedicated to a basicskills curriculum while the other half focuses on individual areas of interest. to us, this model would go a long way in pulling our system closer to balance between the major tensions outlined above. of course, these broadest shifts will be made difficult by systemic barriers, such as policy constraints, resource limitations, and an ingrained culture that is resistant to change. the funding and training necessary to support these changes will require significant resources, and reform efforts must balance federal and state guidelines with sensitivity to local contexts (harris & jones, 2018; rinn et al., 2022). hook & boldt: lessons from gifted education current issues in education, 26(1) 8 what can districts and schools do? more locally, districts and schools can expand their multi-tiered systems of support (mtss) to scale upward for advanced learners, just as these systems are often used to scaffold for learners who need additional help. the advanced academics model (peters et al., 2013) proposes this type of tiered support for advanced learners, operating under the belief that such learners have the right to be educated at the appropriate level of challenge. an expanded notion of mtss is a start, though we would like to point out that this framework is still predicated on a homogeneous view of learners and education, resting upon the comforting-but-specious notion of an “average” group of students for which a solid curriculum and good classroom instruction are sufficient. any expansion of mtss is good, but we encourage educators and administrators to move beyond systems built upon such tired myths. at the school level, some have broken away from traditional notions of the lockstep education model. rhim (2020) described summit sierra high school in seattle, which creates student-specific learning pathways, allowing all students to meet weekly with mentor groups that provide many types of support: “this structure, in which every student learns at their own pace, creates an inclusive environment without a stark delineation between general and special education” (p. 20). we would like to say that this excellent structure could be adapted for use with all learners, therefore blurring the boundaries between general, special, and gifted and talented education. in fact, most school-level changes toward the ideal we describe come from blurring as many educational lines as possible. renzulli academy in hartford, connecticut promotes enrichment for all its students and is dedicated to universal talent development. indeed, enrichment should never be just for students identified as gifted; enrichment is a wide window onto many worlds, and the more subjects and domains students come into contact with, the more likely we are as educators to spot individual talents and passions. likewise, schools should not hesitate to accelerate students, either in specific domains or across grades. of course, this must be done prudently, but acceleration is one of the most effective tools we have for promoting maximal development in students (colangelo et al., 2004). the tools of gate should be adopted to promote student learning among all school populations. as vantassel-baska (2006) wrote, “in an ideal system, gifted education could be considered an equal collaborative partner in raising achievement for all” (p. 209). what can teachers do? the teacher’s role in all this is to push for diverse, individualized learning pathways as much as possible, whether this means fighting to get more students involved in enrichment activities at school or to accelerate a student who needs it. likewise, teachers can increasingly use flexible ability grouping. at times, this might involve within-class differentiation, whereas other situations might necessitate movement between different classrooms and grade levels. paralleling the school-level recommendations presented above, teachers can increasingly engage in broad enrichment to diminish barriers between gate and general education, while using acceleration or readiness grouping to blur the harsh lines between age-based grades. overall, teachers are the grassroots advocates for school-level change. while still working within the constraints of our current educational structures, teachers can model these research-supported practices and present a powerful example of how providing flexible learning pathways is a more effective approach to developing diverse students’ unique potentials. with enough time and examples, these changes will spread across teachers, schools, districts, and beyond. hook & boldt: lessons from gifted education current issues in education, 26(1) 9 what can researchers do? while researchers can continue to study acceleration, flexible ability grouping, and other practices, we envision researchers going beyond individual practices to investigate broader structural issues. for instance, we know that many of the suggested practices are supported by evidence, but we need to assess whether their affordances can be leveraged within the general education system. we can foresee several interesting avenues of research, based on our argument above. scholars could study how schools might transition from an age-in-grade model to one that is more sensitive to developmental differences. they could pilot other structural changes at the local level—with schools that wish to champion these reforms—to determine their feasibility at the level of individual schools or districts. finally, because we are advocating broad, systemic change, scholars could inform broader policy development by studying the scalability of these structural changes. a unifying characteristic of these recommendations for policymakers, districts, schools, teachers, and researchers is that analyzing and restructuring education at any of these levels requires careful consideration of modern students' needs, the existing state of education systems, and the broader goals we seek to achieve. importantly, no reform effort can ignore the influence of local contexts. within the united states, there is tremendous variability across states, districts, schools, and students. to effect meaningful, lasting change, we must carefully balance shared objectives and local needs, in addition to equity, excellence, self-fulfillment, and societal betterment. conclusion: what should we hope for american education? we hope that two things have become clear: 1) american education as currently conceived is a far cry from what it could or should be; and 2) any movement away from the convenient myth of the average student is welcome so long as it moves in the direction of flexibly addressing diverse individual learning pathways—whether that be at the level of instructional differentiation in the classroom, a single school relaxing its norms around acceleration, or an entire school district reimagining its age-in-grade structure. as all teachers know, there is no average student, leading us to one last analogy: during world war ii, the united states air force aircrafts were crashing at a higherthan-expected rate even though no mechanical and human errors could be detected. after much probing, the air force commissioned a study in 1950 to design a better fitting cockpit based on the average of more than 4000 pilots on 140 body measurements. yet, when lieutenant gilbert s. daniels did an exercise to see how many pilots fit the so called “average pilot” on 10 dimensions … it was impossible to find even one individual who fit the average … essentially, by designing the cockpit to fit the average airman, it was ensured that it fit no one. (subramanian et al., 2018, p. 78) similarly, by designing a school system to fit the average student, we have ensured that it fits no one. to return to the landscape of tensions we mentioned at the beginning, we believe that maximally developing student potential would provide necessary balance between competing, legitimate values. an education based both on common standards and individual learning pathways would provide students a high level of knowledge and skills, promoting excellence. hook & boldt: lessons from gifted education current issues in education, 26(1) 10 likewise, it would grant all students the personalized tools they need to succeed, ensuring equity. the individual focus on student passions and talents would satisfy the human need for self-fulfillment. finally, synthesizing these values will lead to maximal development, yielding new technologies, philosophies, arts, and experiences for all of society. as it takes all kinds to make a world, diversifying and individualizing learning is a necessary step toward reshaping american education for the betterment of students and all of society. hook & boldt: lessons from gifted education current issues in education, 26(1) 11 references abrami, p. c., bernard, r. m., borokhovski, e., waddington, d. i., wade, c. a., & persson, t. 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(2022, december 6). the case for gifted education. the thomas b. fordham institute. https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/case-gifted-education. author’s notes talbot s. hook orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1709-6681 university of connecticut talbot.hook@uconn.edu https://doi.org/10.1080/13598139.2017.1302873 https://doi.org/10.1080/00220973.2016.1268087 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.04.027 https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100611418056 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-56869-6_24 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-56869-6_24 https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312031003453 https://doi.org/10.1177/001698620605000302 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1709-6681 mailto:talbot.hook@uconn.edu hook & boldt: lessons from gifted education current issues in education, 26(1) 15 gregory t. boldt orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6135-2689 university of saskatchewan gtb601@usask.ca we have no known conflict of interest to disclose. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to talbot s. hook, university of connecticut, 2131 hillside road unit 3007, storrs, ct 06250-3007. email: talbot.hook@uconn.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6135-2689 mailto:gtb601@usask.ca https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 26, issue 1 may 02, 2025 issn 1099-839x value creation in social learning spaces: scale development ed harris oklahoma state university katherine curry oklahoma state university jentre olsen oklahoma state university ashlyn fiegener oklahoma state university jam khojasteh oklahoma state university abstract: wide agreement exists about the value and power of learning in social contexts, and social influences on learning have been studied from multiple perspectives. however, before this study, no known measure of the value of learning that happens in social spaces had been developed. this study operationalizes the cycles of the value creation framework proposed by wengertrayner and wenger-trayner (2020) and introduces a scale to measure value created through participation in social learning spaces. data were collected from 18 distinct echo® education and health learning communities in new mexico, oklahoma, india, and nigeria. these echo® communities align with the conceptualization of social learning spaces. findings resulted in a parsimonious survey that represents the distinct cycles of value creation. the results of the cfa support the validation of this scale and suggest that the instrument accurately represents the value cycles in wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner’s (2020) framework. this protocol has utility across educational institutions, organizations, and agencies. keywords: social learning, value creation, professional learning communities, communities of practice, echo citation: curry, k., harris, e., olsen, j., fiegener, a., & khojasteh, j. (2025). value creation in social learning spaces: scale development. current issues in education, 26(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2265 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2265 higher education tuition and fees in china current issues in education, 26(1) 2 accepted: 02/10/2025 value creation in social learning spaces: scale development changing demographics, a shift toward globalization, and increased competition have illuminated the need for continual professional growth for adult workers across all industry sectors (chuang, 2021). in education, these changes, along with enhanced understandings of the necessity and value of high quality professional development for teaching that leads to increased student achievement, have caused an emphasis on continual professional growth for educators as they strive to meet student needs (borko, 2004; smith, 2020; desimone, 2009; darlinghammond, wei & andree, 2010; yoon, duncan, lee, scarloss & shapely, 2007). new forms of professional learning in education have gained prominence as a result and include revised mentoring techniques (lashway, 2003), peer sharing and support (browne-ferringo & muth, 2004;), online principal professional development (ross, 2011), professional learning communities (stoll, et al., 2006), and communities of practice (wenger, 2011). these opportunities for professional learning for educators reflect a dramatic shift from passive and intermittent forms of learning to active and consistent professional development that is embedded in educational contexts and supported by peers (stewart, 2014). professional learning communities (plcs) have become the “norm” for enhanced professional growth, and evidence suggests that plcs thrive “when all participants are invested in the work they are doing” (stewart, 2014, p. 28). these changes in the way professional development is offered are aligned with historical philosophical understandings that learning is a social activity (dewey, 1963; lindeman, 1926) and the belief that learners share responsibility for their learning by becoming active and engaged participants (vacca & vacca, 2002; wilkinson et al., 2010). social learning opportunities are especially important for adult learners who are motivated for learning when they recognize immediate utility for learning, focus on issues that concern them, experience autonomy in their learning, and learn in a respectful and collaborative climate (knowles, 1973). further, scholars have long emphasized the strong influence of social context on learning and interventions that address both social and cognitive dimensions of human development. for example, vygotsky (1978), piaget (1959), and bandura (1977) emphasized social interaction as a key mechanism in the development process. bandura (1977) emphasized the interaction of environmental and cognitive factors to influence development and behavior modeling to support cognitive learning. vygotsky (1978) posited that social interaction precedes development, and that consciousness and cognition are the product of socialization and social behavior. these examples along with other broad theoretical understandings have provided a foundation for the rise of innovative social learning through platforms such as communities of practice. most recently, communities of practice and social learning have advanced to online, virtual learning environments as rapid technological advancements have revolutionized opportunities for social interaction in virtual spaces. learning management systems, virtual classrooms, massive open online courses (moocs), and platforms such as zoom or teams technology have expanded opportunities for social learning in unprecedented ways (raspopovic et al., 2017). further, virtual learning spaces have proven essential as the globe has adapted to the complexities of a “new normal” for learning in a post-pandemic world. what the pandemic taught us is that these virtual spaces provide flexibility and connectedness through social interaction that may enhance learning. current issues in education, 26(1) 3 social learning through project echo® in 2003, dr. sanjeev arora, physician and professor at the university of new mexico, introduced a model of online professional learning after a patient, a 43-year-old widow and mother of two, died of a treatable illness before she could receive medical care (unm health sciences, 2023). dr. arora realized that if health care professionals in her rural community would have had the requisite knowledge to treat her disease, she would have survived the illness (unm health sciences, 2023). he also noted that, at that time, out of the 28,000 patients who had been diagnosed with hepatitis c in new mexico, only 1,500 had received treatment (unm health sciences, 2023). in response, dr. arora established an online professional learning platform, project echo® (extension for community healthcare outcomes), as a virtual “community of practice” where doctors could learn from experts and from each other. the echo® platform provided an infrastructure for knowledge sharing and collaborative learning that has expanded to rural and underserved communities around the globe (unm health sciences, 2023). while the echo® platform originated in the medical field, it has been adapted to meet the learning needs of professionals in primary, secondary, and higher education. notably, in 2017, the unm headquarters established an official division for echo® education to support educational applications of the echo® platform. echo® protocol the echo® protocol was initially founded on the notion of clinical rounds, a process where medical professionals review patient cases, access best practice procedures, and collaboratively determine best treatment strategies. building on this notion, the echo® model uses a virtual hub-and-spoke knowledge sharing approach through zoom technology. in these virtual settings, teams of experts (i.e., “hub teams”) lead virtual telementoring sessions for either health care or education professionals in their local contexts (i.e., “spoke sites”), thereby amplifying the capacity of these individuals to deliver optimum services to their local communities. typically, echo® sessions last one to two hours and are offered weekly, biweekly, or monthly. much like a clinical round, each session incorporates a three-part format: a case or problem of practice, a didactic or learning presentation concerning state-of-the-art practices, and discussion/recommendations. cases and problems of practice focus on real-life issues that are context-based and relevant to day-to-day practice. the didactic is a fifteen-minute, theory-topractice presentation typically delivered by a hub-team member or guest presenter. both the case and didactic promote interactive hub/spoke interaction leading to recommendations for best practices and strategies. in both health and education, application of echo principles and processes help cultivate a dynamic, professional learning community in which “all teach; all learn.” in 2017, the echo® platform spread to oklahoma state university’s center of health sciences (osu-chs). osu-chs was also designated as a “superhub,” which is an echo® partner authorized to provide training and technical assistance to those who wish to start echo® programs. soon after, a group of osu educational leadership faculty partnered with the osu-chs to incorporate the echo® education platform to provide professional learning for oklahoma educators in rural areas (harris et al., 2020). during the covid pandemic, every county in oklahoma was served through osu echo® health and echo® education. at this time, the participation rate in some echo® sessions soared from the average twenty participants current issues in education, 26(1) 4 per session to the maximum 500 participant limitation on zoom (harris et al., 2020). currently, osu-chs offers over 25 education and health related echo® programs to meet the learning needs of educators and health care professionals across the state. before this study, qualitative evidence existed regarding participants’ perceptions of their learning experiences in echo® including the formation of professional networks and application of learning to practice (harris et al., 2020). however, while echo® participants articulated the benefits of learning in these social learning spaces, the actual effectiveness of the learning experience was difficult to quantify and understand across diverse echo® social learning spaces. specifically, echo session participants include a very diverse participant population who meet together regularly across 23 different echo lines to address challenges in healthcare, mental health, or education. each of these lines follows the same protocol; however, topics and cases differ considerably. purpose of the study one way the effectiveness of learning in social learning spaces like echo® can be understood is by understanding the value that participants create through their learning experiences and the extent to which they apply new learning to their own practice (wengertrayner & wenger-trayner, 2020). the concept of value creation in learning communities is not new. for example, elkjaer (2003) explains that value creation happens within a social context as a result of the exercise of human agency within learning communities. he further distinguishes “learning as knowledge acquisition” and “learning as participation” and explains, “learning is a meeting between learners and environment within the community of practice at hand” (elkjaer, 2003, p. 481) additional studies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries identify teams as adding value through knowledge creation that leads to knowledge dissemination and enhanced performance (anderson & west, 1996. 1998; lawson et al., 2009; pitsis et al., 2003; tataw, 2023). these studies suggest that value is created as learning occurs within groups. more recently, tataw (2023) concludes, “teams as learning communities are important structures in the creation and sustainability of value in both organizational and instructional settings” (p. 2). in wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner’s (2020) work, the term, “value,” is not used to signify a person’s or group’s principles or standards of behavior. rather, value implies worth, usefulness, or benefits of the activities and experiences generated by participants in the professional learning process that can potentially lead to better practices and systemic change. the value creation framework provides a lens for explaining the value – for example, the knowledge, resources, networks, and practices – that is constructed within social learning settings and how participants apply this value beyond the space in their respective contexts. in any given social learning context, participant experiences and what they take away from the space may differ. the value creation cycles offer a systematic way of categorizing the different types of value participants may construct within the learning space and how they leverage this value to shape their own practice and in some cases, transform the broader environments to which they belong. previous studies have used the value creation framework to explain this progression of learning (amersfoort et al., 2019; bertram et al., 2014; cowan & menchaca, 2014). for example, van amersfoort et al. (2019) used the framework to explain how value was created in teacher learning networks. bertram et al. (2014) used the cycles to assess the value that graduate students and professors constructed in a community of practice and how the value contributed to enhanced academic outcomes. in a study of a community of practice in a master in educational current issues in education, 26(1) 5 technology program, cowan and menchaca (2014) utilized the value cycles in their evaluation of the program. these studies demonstrate that an understanding of the value that is created within and among participants has strong implications for those who organize and lead social learning spaces as it can inform the design, implementation, and continuous monitoring of the spaces. however, all previous research on value creation has approached the measurement of value through a qualitative lens. while providing a strong foundation upon which value creation can be understood and studied, this approach presents some limitations in how value creation can be assessed on a larger scale across a larger number of participants and contexts. a quantitative measure would offer a means by which a wider range of participant perceptions could be captured, thus providing a broader representation of value creation and learning outcomes which could inform program design, evaluation, and decision-making. therefore, we build upon the theoretical work of wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020) by operationalizing participant perceptions of value created through participation in project echo®. no instrument existed before this study to measure participant perceptions of value created in a social learning space. the purposes of this study, therefore, were: 1) to develop an instrument that captures participant perceptions of value created in social learning spaces using wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner's (2020) value cycle framework and 2) to test the validity of the value creation scale. specifically, this study utilized exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to test participant perceptions and explore how they load on wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner’s (2020) seven theorized factors of value creation. literature review communities of practice and social learning spaces in the latter decades of this past century, lave and wenger (1991) furthered the scholarship of social learning by focusing on its collective and contextual aspects and coined the now popular concept “communities of practice” (cops) to explain how social learning occurs and the structures needed for its enhancement. wenger (1998) defined cops as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (p. 1). an emphasis on concern and passion for learning in the conceptualization of cops is important to note because it expands the understanding of social learning by providing a foundation for motivation toward individual and collective participation in the learning process. the community of practice (cop) model has been applied in a wide variety of organizational contexts (kerno, 2008) including business, government, education, professional organizations, project development, and civic life (wenger-trayner & wengertrayner, 2015). in fact, wenger-trayer and wenger-trayner (2015) suggest that “hardly any organization of a reasonable size [exists] that does not have some form of communities of practice initiative” (p. 4). however, most recently, wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020) extended their work on social learning by distinguishing between communities of practice (cops) and social learning spaces (slss), which are inherently more organic, egalitarian, and spontaneous. this distinction expands the understanding of collective learning to a broader spectrum of social learning experiences that are not limited to, but can include, cops (mcknight et al., 2023; wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner, 2020). slss are distinguished from cops because, theoretically, slss emphasize the effort that people employ as they strive to make a difference in current issues in education, 26(1) 6 something that they care about (mcknight et al., 2023). additionally, and of importance to this study, wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner’s (2020) conceptualization of slss operationalizes social learning in terms of the value that is created by participants as they pursue their passion to make a difference. this conceptual understanding of created value in social learning advances theories of social learning by explaining participant perceptions of the outcomes of social learning as motivation for engagement. further, this understanding is important because, whether social learning occurs in a cop, social network, or other circumstance of social interaction, participant perceptions of outcomes, or value, created through social learning may provide important insights regarding social contexts and processes that support learning. value creation in social learning spaces in their work, learning to make a difference: value creation in social learning spaces, wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020) argue that value creation is essential in slss because value gives meaning to the learning process and drives motivation for engagement. specifically, participants engage in the process because they find value in their efforts as they seek to make a difference in what they care about. wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner’s (2020) conceptualization of value creation in slss is an iterative process that moves through cycles of individual and collective benefits across activities that occur within the sls. their original model included five value creation cycles: immediate, potential, applied, realized, and transformative. value that is created within the first four cycles may eventually, but not always, lead to transformative value, which encompasses the broader, collective impacts that learning can have on people, systems, and contexts. these initial cycles provided a solid framework for understanding how participants construct value from their experiences in slss. however, learning within these spaces does not occur in a vacuum but rather is influenced by rich contextual factors, such as the diverse backgrounds of participants, the goals of organizations to which participants belong, and the organizing structures that create an efficient learning space. therefore, wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020) expanded the value creation cycles to include three additional cycles – orienting, enabling, and strategic – which represent contextual factors that play a role in supporting learning that occurs within the sls. these value cycles are illustrated in figure 1. wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner’s (2020) value creation framework has been used in multiple social learning contexts to explain the value that participants create in a learning experience and the applications of that value in their respective contexts. for example, in a study of graduate students and professors belonging to a community of practice in a graduate program, bertram et al. (2014) found that the value created by participants was applied in ways that enhanced academic outcomes. similarly, cowan and menchaca (2014) studied a community of practice embedded in a graduate program and found that the value created in the space influenced the sustained duration of the cop for almost 13 years. vrieling-teunter et al. (2019) found in their study of teacher-learning groups in a teacher training college that the value creation cycles and social network analysis explained how knowledge was created and shared among participants. mavri (2021) used the cycles to explain value creation in a community of practice involving university students and representatives from industry companies. the value creation framework was also used by van amersfoort et al. (2019) to explain how teachers generated value as they collaborated with colleagues in teacher learning networks. the study found that these collaborative learning experiences led teachers to reframe their views on learning and the value that their peers bring to their own learning processes (van amersfoort et current issues in education, 26(1) 7 al., 2019). clarke et al. (2020) applied the value creation framework to evaluate a professional learning network across geographic boundaries in ireland. whisler et al. (2017) documented their use of the framework in evaluating and re-designing a tutoring program. this body of literature has established an empirical foundation for studying value creation in a variety of social learning contexts. there is a need, however, for a quantitative tool that could capture a larger number of participant perceptions in a systematic, categorized manner. an understanding of the distinct value cycles is necessary to develop such an instrument. figure 1 value creation cycles for social learning spaces note: value creation cycles are adapted from wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020) value cycles within the sls wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner theorize that four cycles of value creation occur within the sls. these cycles include immediate, potential, applied, and realized value. immediate value immediate value occurs when participants find inherent value in the activities and interactions themselves (wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner, 2020). motivated by caring to make a difference, participants in a social learning space may find fulfillment in being part of a connected community of learners who share a collective commitment to engage complex topics current issues in education, 26(1) 8 and mutual uncertainties. examples of immediate value are enjoyment in interacting with other participants, enthusiasm about the topics being addressed, feelings of belonging and support from the group, and feeling like one is part of a team. in sum, “the value lies in the experience of being in this space or this moment together, regardless of whether or not it leads to something else” (wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner, 2020, p. 80). potential value potential value refers to the process of taking from the sls “something that has the potential to make a difference” (wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner, 2020, p. 84). this type of value reaches beyond just the enjoyment of the activities and experiences themselves to capture knowledge, skills, dispositions, and resources that may possibly be realized later. potential value can emerge in both tangible and intangible ways. tangle ways include obtaining resources that could be used in future situations, new practices or approaches, answers to questions, and new skills. intangible ways include personal connections and networks that may later lead to further collaboration and renewed confidence in one’s ability (van amersfoort et al., 2019; wengertrayner & wenger-trayner, 2020). applied value applied value captures the changes in practice participants make in their respective contexts as a result of what they gained in the sls. examples of applied value include trying a new idea, adapting an idea or resource, and initiating a new collaborative effort that resulted from connections made in the sls. applied value often emerges in a natural progression as participants negotiate how potential value fits within their environment (wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner, 2020). for example, participants may take away from the sls a resource that they see as having potential value; later, that resource becomes relevant in a situation they encounter in their context. as they actively “reshape the idea to fit the new context” (wengertrayner & wenger-trayner, 2020, p. 90), the knowledge becomes applied. wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020) assert that applied value is not an isolated process that occurs after learning takes place, rather, “putting things into practice is a learning event in its own right” and is an integral part of the learning itself (p. 90). knowledge gained through practice then becomes a catalyst for further collective learning as participants bring their experiences back into the sls. realized value realized value reaches beyond the application of knowledge capital and considers the extent to which the outcomes make a meaningful difference to stakeholders (wenger et al., 2011). changes in practice can influence larger goals and performance both positively and negatively. there are also cases in which learning has no effect on outcomes. as wengertrayner & wenger-trayner (2020) argue, the application of new ideas, resources, and practices does not necessarily lead to improved outcomes. however, whether the effects are positive, negative, or non-existent, the act of reflecting upon realized value is a learning process in itself. in this way, participants not only reflect upon the difference that learning makes, but they actively learn from how and why changes had a particular effect. realized value is often bound by context. any given context may have goals and common aspirations that are shared by individuals, the group, broader stakeholders, the organization as a whole, and even more broadly, society. these shared goals and expectations become a filter through which changes in practice current issues in education, 26(1) 9 are evaluated as learners determine to what extent learning made a meaningful difference in relation to what matters in their environments (wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner, 2020). transformative value transformative value goes beyond an individual participant’s desire to make a difference and extents to transformation in the larger context that can include boundaries, mindsets, identities, institutions, or power relations. transformative value has both internal and external components. internally, transformation can occur because of “radical or disruptive change” that influences the social learning space. for example, new developments in medicine may influence the interactions or mindsets of individuals seeking to solve a medical dilemma, an area in which they care to make a difference. external transformative value refers to benefit that is created within the sls that causes a transformation outside of the sls. these changes may influence participants’ experience in their own personal trajectory or how they interact with the world. in the example above, if participants in a sls advance new understandings of how to address a medical dilemma, that learning may influence the practice or mindsets of others outside of the sls. supporting or facilitating value cycles wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020) further theorize that four value cycles, outside of activities or processes that occur with slss, influence learning that occurs within the social learning space. these cycles are explained below. orienting value orientating value includes the contexts and histories of participants that are relevant and enriching to their learning in the sls. this value includes the unique, individual contexts represented by participants form the broader landscape within which the learning space is situated (wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner, 2020). participants bring into the social learning space diverse, complex “experience and identities that reflect their participation elsewhere” (wenger-trayner & wenger-trayner, 2020, p. 115). these intricate contextual factors may include cultural differences, historical considerations, social and political contexts, and influences from other organizations or spaces. wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020) sometimes combine their discussion of both orienting and transformative value because both reflect conditions in the broader social context. however, orienting value has utility for explaining the foundation or conditions upon which learning develops within the sls, whereas, transformative value reflects the influence that learning within the sls has on the broader, external landscape. enabling and strategic value enabling and strategic values are complementary value cycles that raise the effectiveness of learning in the sls, and both are influenced by internal and external factors (wenger-trayner & wengertrayner, 2020). enabling value addresses the question, “what makes [learning in this space] possible?” (p. 98). enabling value ensures continuity in participation and shared processes and rituals that can become an integral part of how the sls functions. examples of enabling value include the facilitation of slss, including creating conditions for caring about what current issues in education, 26(1) 10 matters to participants. enabling value can also include setting up meeting times and agendas or documenting important achievements. external enabling value may include inviting a professional facilitator to run meetings or to examine budgetary or technical resources that facilitate the effectiveness of the sls. strategic value addresses the quality of engagement between and across stakeholders both within and outside of the sls. strategic value adds “clarity that animates the learning of a social space” by reflecting the extent and quality of conversations and relationships that facilitate the usefulness of the sls (wenger-trayner & wengertrayner, 2020, p. 106). strategic value rarely takes the form of shared vision, project aims, or a set of goals. instead, strategic value is reflected in ongoing conversations in which participants revisit, reinterpret or even reshape their vision as participants, circumstances, and feedback change. examples of internal strategic value include awareness of differences among participants and their respective needs and expectations. external strategic value recognizes the influence of external stakeholders on the sls. examples include relationships with managers, funders, or potential partners. concerning strategic value, on-going conversations among all relevant stakeholders are essential for effective functioning of the sls. methods in this study, 1,765 participants from 18 distinct echo® education and health learning communities in new mexico, oklahoma, india, and nigeria served as the population. each echo® community represented multiple and diverse organizations, fields of expertise/training, and professional roles. communities served in the echo® platform for this study included covid-19, addiction medicine, hepatitis c, high-risk ob, hiv, infant mental health, heal the harvester (mental health resources for farmers and ranchers), help for the healer (resiliency in healthcare providers and administrators), obesity, pediatric behavior and emotional health, psychiatry, veteran care, rural superintendents, special education, first-year principals, school counselors, family community partnerships, and rural educators. the commonality across echo® communities is that each one follows the prescribed three-part echo® protocol that includes a short 10-15 minute didactic presentation, case presentation, and collaborative problem solving. this protocol supports the professional development needs of these diverse areas of expertise and training and has utility across institutions, organizations, and agencies as participants address topics that they are interested in and are relevant for them. each of these separate and independent echo® communities utilized the three-part protocol to meet their professional development needs across their respective area of expertise. further, we chose the echo® platform for this study because each of these learning communities aligns with wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner’s (2020) conception of a social learning space, which they define as an event arising out of a confluence of three factors of participation: caring to make a difference, engaging uncertainty, and willingness to focus on the learning process. because participation in echo® is entirely voluntary and focuses on selfidentified areas for growth within a defined area of expertise, individuals who attend echo® meet these three factors for qualification as a sls as identified by wenger-trayner and wengertrayner (2020). most individuals pursue medicine and education as careers because they want to make a difference by helping people and positively impacting society (podolsky et al, 2019; sinclair, 2020). this desire to make a difference is the key driver of social learning capability and a key feature of project echo® (project echo, n.d.). the platform exists to improve society through current issues in education, 26(1) 11 improved health and education. echo® equips educators and health providers with the pertinent knowledge to improve practice by leveraging technology to facilitate professional learning. experts and participants collaborate to solve problems and incorporate best practices and create a networked system that supports sustainable, equitable opportunities for growth and innovation. echo® learning spaces also provide opportunities for participants to address uncertainties (harris et al., 2020). the case or problem of practice presented in every session engages participants in the knowledge construction necessary to contextually apply new knowledge. most participants who attend echo sessions come voluntarily to engage in the learning process (harris et al., 2020). application of echo principles and processes help cultivate a dynamic, professional learning network in which “all teach; all learn.” paying attention to the social learning process affects how participants apply knowledge and go about their lives. developing the value creation scale an instrument that captures participant perceptions of value creation in social learning spaces can advance understandings of communities of practice and social learning. to this end, the following validation procedures were followed toward the creation of an instrument to measure value creation in project echo®. researchers often use two primary techniques in scale development – deductive, sometimes called logical partitioning, and inductive, also known as grouping (hinkin, 1998; hunt, 1991). we chose to combine both deductive and inductive approaches to define the domain of interest and identify the items to best assess it. these complementary processes are explained in the sections below. phase one: specifying operational definitions of value cycles the first phase of scale construction consisted of explicitly defining seven cycles of wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner’s (2020) value creation model: immediate, potential, applied, realized, enabling, strategic, and transformative. it is important to note that orienting value was not included in the scale development. wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020) note that value creation can happen both internally and externally of the social learning space. however, orienting value creation occurs more externally than the other cycles and includes human capital resources that individuals bring with them into the sls and/or find outside of the sls. wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020) confirm this understanding by stating, “orienting value represents an effort to reach beyond the learning space and its stakeholders and take the broader landscape into account” (p. 114). while the contextual intricacies associated with orienting value are certainly vital and relevant to the learning process, they represent nuanced factors that, we believe, can be more meaningfully explored and robustly captured through qualitative rather than quantitative methods. although wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020) often combine orienting and transformative values and explain transformative value as an outcome of the other cycles, we included the transformative value cycle because of our interest in “recognizing broader or deeper transformations that social learning can give rise to” (p. 113). we recognize that participant perceptions regarding the extent that social learning activities have transformed their context and community is only a self-report and does not detail explicit transformative effects. for example, on the likert scale of the current instrument, participants self-report the extent to which current issues in education, 26(1) 12 “mindsets have been transformed that influence the larger community.” the specific mindsets can be further explored and delineated through qualitative methods such as observations, interviews, and existing data sets. thus, a more holistic portrait can be created through the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. phase 2: identifying indicators the next phase consisted of identifying succinct criteria, which we refer to as indicators, that could be associated with each cycle. in addition to wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020), additional sources aided significantly in this process, such as bertram et al. (2014), vrieling-teunter et al. (2019), cowan and menchaca (2014), littlejohn et al. (2019), van amersfoort (2019), and wenger et al. (2011). the development of the indicators was an iterative process whereby the research team repeatedly delved into the literature for wording and clarification, met collectively to discuss suitable identifying information for the indicators, and made consequent refinements until unanimity was reached among team members on the clarity of indicator connotation. consequently, four concise indicators were identified to describe key features of each of the seven cycles. phase 3: item construction throughout the survey development process, important considerations included what to measure, our target population, and how we can best design and word the items to elicit responses suitable for quantitative assessment. for example, a six-point likert scale was used to capture the sentiment of respondents by encouraging them to carefully consider each item and make a choice that leans either positively or negatively. after the initial pool of questionnaire items were written, qualified experts reviewed the items to make sure they accurately represented the cycles and their respective indicators. in all, 52 original items were written to reflect the seven cycles of value creation: immediate value, potential value, applied value, realized value, enabling value, strategic value, and transformative value. value creation validation procedures central to the mission of this exploratory study was development of a scale to measure value creation. hinkin (1998) instructs that the development of a well-articulated theoretical foundation is key to successful item generation, for it is a strong theoretical foundation that indicates the content domain for any new measure. as such, in the formation of the value creation measure, items reflecting the various cycles of value creation were grounded in the theoretical groundwork laid by wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020). establishing construct validity before the value creation scale as a measure operationalizing the seven cycles of value creation can be empirically tested, a validation study needed to be conducted to evaluate the validity of the value creation measure. the current view of validity theory is constructed on the seminal work of samuel messick (1989, 1995), which emphasizes that all validity is assumed under construct validity. construct validity is the ability of a measure to yield truthful judgments about the object it purports to measure (messick, 1989, 1995; miller, 2008). messick outlines six facets of construct validity: content, substantive, structural, generalizability, external current issues in education, 26(1) 13 (convergent), and consequential. these facets adhere to the same logic, “that validity exists to the degree that the measure represents the underlying theoretical construct and informs credible judgements about the phenomenon of interest” (p. 683, adams & miskell, 2016; messick, 1995; cronbach, 1971). in the developmental process of the value creation measure, construct validity was initially assessed by employing exploratory factor analysis to examine the content validity and substantive validity of the measure. additionally, construct validity was further assessed utilizing confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) to evaluate the data model fit of the factor structure. content validity content validity refers to the degree to which the items of the data collection instrument are a representative sample of the domain or universe of what is being explicitly measured (hopkins et al., 1990). in accordance with berk (1990), this is a systematic process involving expert judgment to determine, “(a) the appropriateness of the content for the intended respondents, (b) the accuracy of the content and domain structure, and (c) the representativeness of the content coverage in relation to the domain” (p. 660). to establish content validity, the original bank of items was submitted to a team of experts, which included educational researchers well versed in social learning. these experts vetted the questions, offering trimming suggestions, language substitutions, and item rephrasing. to equally represent the seven cycles, the original value creation measure consisted of 52 items with roughly 7 items per cycle or domain. the value creation measure is conceived of and measured as an individual/participant belief. to best capture participant perceptions, question stems were composed to help situate each item within a consistent context. the following question stems were used: “in this social learning space… as a result of participation in this social learning space… as a result of changes in practice from participating in this social learning space. individual items for each of the seven value creation domains can be seen in table 3. additionally, the scale utilizes a likert response, ranging from strongly disagree (coded as 1), disagree (coded as 2), somewhat disagree (coded as 3), somewhat agree (coded as 4), agree (coded as 5), to strongly agree (coded as 6). substantive validity substantive validity addresses the need to move beyond content validity as demonstrated solely by professional judgment. messick (1995) instructs that this is done by acquiring empirical evidence that emphasizes the “theoretical rationales for the observed consistencies in test responses…along with empirical evidence that the theoretical processes are actually engaged by respondents in the assessment tasks” (p. 745). essentially, the substantive aspect of construct validity provides empirical evidence to the content aspect by validating response consistencies which reflect domain processes (loevinger, 1957). as such, exploratory factor analysis (efa) is well suited for substantive validity toward the early stages of instrument development and can be used as an effective method in providing empirical evidence of construct validity. efa seeks to examine the factor structure and the internal reliability of a measure by exploring the underlying pattern of the data set, illuminating how the different items relate to each other and adhere to a similar logic. through the process of efa, researchers can locate items that empirically do not belong to the intended construct and as a result be removed from the survey (leandre et al., 2012). current issues in education, 26(1) 14 confirmatory factor analysis to further examine construct validity, confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) was utilized to test the measurement structure of the value creation construct. in the psychological assessment literature, cfa is a widely supported statistical method for providing evidence of construct validation (thompson & daniel, 1996). using cfa, an estimation technique is used to calculate parameters and fit indices, which then requires a match between the requirements of the technique and the data being analyzed. maximum likelihood is the most widely used estimator, which in turn requires continuous and multivariate normally distributed data to obtain accurate parameter estimates, standard errors of parameter estimates, and model fit indices (bollen, 1989; rakov & marcoulides, 2000). data collection cycles for this validation study, two separate data collection cycles were completed, the first being in the fall of 2021. during this collection cycle, the 52-item value creation scale, utilizing wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner’s (2020) theoretical conceptualization of the value creation cycles in slss, was administered to the identified population. responses were then factor analyzed using an exploratory factor analysis (efa) conducted in spss version 24. the efa employed principal axis factoring and an oblique rotation (promax) due to the correlated nature of the factors (tabachnick & fidel, 2010). the target number of responses was 250 participants, or roughly five responses per item (crocker & algina, 2006). the survey was distributed through qualtrics to all participants in medical and education related echo lines in new mexico and oklahoma who had attended at least three echo sessions. it is important to note that two of the educational echo lines based in oklahoma included an international population with individuals attending virtual echo sessions from india and nigeria. a total of 1,765 echo participants received an invitation to participate in the testing of the value creation instrument. of the 1,765 potential participants, 370 surveys were completed, reflecting a 21% response rate. consistent with current survey research, response rates are trending lower due to attributing factors such as concerns over data privacy and increased electronic survey methods, leading to survey fatigue (dillman, smyth, & christian, 2014). while a high response rate is always preferable, we did receive more than the initial targeted number of responses (i.e., 250 participants) as mentioned earlier in this paragraph. ten surveys were only partially complete; therefore, those responses were removed from the database. a detailed description of participants in the initial data collection cycle can be seen in table 1. table 1 echo® participant information (efa) years in current field % 0-5 11.8% 6-10 18.4% 11-15 16.5% 16-20 12.9% 20+ 40.4% echo® participation length 1 year or less 18.8% 2-5 years 81.2% current issues in education, 26(1) 15 echo® participation frequency > twice monthly 18.8% twice monthly 62.5% once monthly 6.2% 2-3 times quarterly 12.5% student participant 5.9% non-student participant 94.1% hub team member 6.3% non-hub team member 93.7% note: n=272 for descriptive information. for the confirmatory factor analysis (cfa), a separate data collection cycle was employed. an additional data collection cycle, resulting in two independent samples, was necessary when utilizing cfa to avoid any contamination of the results of the efa. data for the cfa analysis were collected in the spring of 2022. informed by the efa, a 26-item parsimonious value creation scale was administered in this second round of data collection. responses were analyzed using the lavaan package in r 4.1.2. a more roboust sample size was needed for the cfa, with a target number of responses being at least 10 responses per item, or roughly 250 responses. similar to the prior data collection cycle, the value creation survey was distributed through qualtrics. the 26-item value creation survey was again sent to all participants in medical and education related echo lines in new mexico, oklahoma, india, and nigeria who had attended at least three echo sessions. after removing individuals who had responded in the first data collection cycle and to ensure an independent sample, a total of 1,395 echo participants received an invitation to participate in testing of the trimmed value creation instrument. of the 1,395 potential participants, 359 surveys were returned. however, 133 surveys were only partially completed and therefore removed from the dataset (resulting in 226 completed responses). a detailed description of participants in the second data collection cycle can be seen in table 2. table 2 echo® participant information (cfa) years in current field % 0-5 14.1% 6-10 18.3% 11-15 14.8% 16-20 10.2% 20+ 42.6% echo® participation length 1 year or less 30.8% 2-5 years 50.0% 6+ years 19.2% echo® participation frequency > twice monthly 30.8% twice monthly 46.2% once monthly 7.7% 2-3 times quarterly 7.7% current issues in education, 26(1) 16 2-3 times yearly 7.6% student participant 8.4% non-student participant 91.6% hub team member 9.9% non-hub team member 90.1% note: n=263 for descriptive information. results the value creation scale was initially validated using exploratory factor analysis, which informed the trimming process of several original items within each of the theorized value creation factors. due to low factor loadings (< .70) and some cross loading items, we ultimately eliminated half of the original 52 items (tabachnick & fidel, 2010). in factor analysis, simple structures are desirable (i.e. strong factor loading > .70) that load on only one factor, with cross loading factors traditionally removed. as noted, a large item pool was initially generated with the understanding that some of the original items would not load as strongly as others. as a rule, we followed tabachnick and fidel (2010) when determining which items to trim while simultaneously taking into account our theoretical factor structure. this trimming process resulted in keeping the majority of items that loaded strongly (~ .70 or higher) on the hypothesized factors, yet still maintaining the simple structure goals of factor analysis. this resulted in a parsimonious 26-item operational measure with strong factor loadings along the seven theorized value creation factors. these factors include: 1) immediate value, 2) potential value, 3) applied value, 4) realized value, 5) enabling value, 6) strategic value, and 7) transformative value. all items were reported on a six-point likert type response set. factor 1, immediate value, resulted in four items with factor loadings from .704 to .905. factor 2, potential value, resulted in four items with factor loadings from .715 to .900. factor 3, applied value, resulted in two items with factor loadings from .705 to .905. factor 4, realized value, resulted in four items with factor loadings from .652 to. 881. factor 5, enabling value, resulted in three items with factor loadings from .596 to .982. factor 6, strategic value, resulted in four items with factor loadings from .626 to .933. factor 7, transformative value, resulted in five items with factor loadings from .777 to .920. the complete results are summarized in table 3. table 3 exploratory factor analysis results: 26-item value creation measure pattern matrixa factor 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 immediate value (4 items) 1. i feel comfortable engaging in discussions. .819 2. i feel comfortable sharing challenges i face. .905 3. i feel that others listen to my viewpoint. .735 4. i feel connected to the group. .704 potential value (4 items) 5. i can gain knowledge that may advance my future success. .725 current issues in education, 26(1) 17 6. i can access important resources that can potentially help me in the future. .900 7. i have gained new ways of looking at situations. .815 8. i have acquired new skills that i may potentially apply in my context. .715 applied value (2 items) 9. i have changed at least one way i do things. .705 10. i have applied suggestions from the group. .905 realized value (4 items) 11. stakeholders are better served. .712 12. collective decision-making has been improved. .652 13. stakeholders have been empowered. .881 14. collective stewardship of resources has been improved. .704 enabling value (3 items) 15. we have adequate funds for necessary activities. .810 16. we have adequate technology for our activities. .982 17. a strong external team helps in facilitating and coordinating. .596 strategic value (4 items) 18. participants focus learning discussions on the needs of all in the social learning space. .792 19. contextual applications are considered when discussing learning outcomes and suggestions. .933 20. participants consider those outside the group during learning discussions. .804 21. participants share enough information to translate learning into different contexts. .626 transformative value (5 items) 22. mindsets have been transformed that influence the larger community. .777 23. changes have occurred that positively shift power dynamics in the organization. .794 24. new definitions and measures of success have emerged. .786 25. new policies and practices have been developed that influence the broader community. .912 current issues in education, 26(1) 18 26. new norms and narratives have emerged that influence the culture in the broader community. .920 note. extraction method: principal axis factoring. rotation method: promax with kaiser normalization. additionally, to further test the validity and internal consistencies of the seven theorized factors, means, standard deviations, correlations, and cronbach’s alphas for the factors are presented below in table 4. the factor correlations among the theorized factors were strong for social science research (as seen in table 4), which signaled the use of an oblique rotation, promax (tabachnick & fidel, 2010). further, the factor reliabilities were high, given that the internal consistencies (i.e. all items measuring the same construct, cronbach’s alpha) for all of the theorized factors were above the .8 threshold (crocker & aligna, 2006). table 4 means, standard deviations (sd), correlations, & cronbach’s alpha (n=370) factor mean sd iv pv av rv ev sv tv iv 4.91 0.84 (.861) pv 5.29 0.81 .483 (.922) av 4.93 0.95 .532 .665 (.885) rv 4.95 0.82 .617 .600 .676 (.910) ev 4.51 0.99 .486 .451 .496 .625 (.810) sv 4.93 0.77 .671 .616 .662 .724 .628 (.910) tv 4.53 0.87 .527 .561 .685 .720 .626 .717 (.924) note: iv = immediate value, pv = potential value, av = applied value, rv = realized value, sv = strategic value, tv = transformative value, cronbach’s alpha on the diagonal, all correlations among factors significant, p < .001. results of the cfa further confirmed the validity of the value creation measure, with the measurement model fitting the data well. assessment of model fit was adequate considering hu and bentler’s (1999) recommendations and included the following commonly reported fit indices: model’s scaled χ2 value, the comparative fit index (cfi), the standardized root mean residual (srmr) and the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea). furthermore, parameter estimates were examined to test the strength of the hypothesized structural relationships among the variance and co-variance of the sample data. results of the cfa were: χ2 (278) = 627.414, p<.001; cfi = 0.930; srmr = 0.056; rmsea = 0.075, 90% ci (0.067, 0.082). the rho coefficient, which is an estimate of the reliability of a latent construct, (raykov, 1997) and parameter estimates for the observed indicators were also calculated and are referenced in table 5. while chronbach’s alpha is widely used as an estimate of internal consistency, this statistic is not as appropriate for measuring reliability for latent factors. thus, the reported rho coefficients for the value creation latent contracts are provided. further, the unstandardized and standardized factor loadings are overall strongly related to the latent factors, indicating that the items are significantly linked to the latent factor. current issues in education, 26(1) 19 table 5 cfa factor reliabilities & parameter estimates (unstandardized and standardized) parameter estimate rho coefficient unstandardized standardized p iv → q1 0.612 1.000 0.796 iv → q2 0.882 0.702 <0.001 iv → q3 0.872 0.694 <0.001 iv → q4 1.125 0.896 <0.001 pv → q5 0.730 1.000 0.716 pv → q6 1.053 0.753 <0.001 pv → q7 1.130 0.808 <0.001 pv → q8 1.131 0.809 <0.001 av → q9 0.740 1.000 0.885 av → q10 1.012 0.896 <0.001 rv → q11 0.710 1.000 0.760 rv → q12 1.103 0.838 <0.001 rv → q13 0.980 0.744 <0.001 rv → q14 1.033 0.785 <0.001 ev → q15 0.592 1.000 0.908 ev → q16 1.021 0.927 <0.001 ev → q17 0.903 0.820 <0.001 sv → q18 0.711 1.000 0.716 sv → q19 0.980 0.701 <0.001 sv → q20 1.098 0.786 <0.001 sv → q21 1.034 0.740 <0.001 tv → q22 0.697 1.000 0.786 tv → q23 1.087 0.855 <0.001 tv → q24 1.056 0.830 <0.001 tv → q25 1.059 0.832 <0.001 tv → q26 1.102 0.866 <0.001 discussion the purposes of this study were to develop an instrument that captures participant perceptions of value using wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner’s (2020) value cycle framework and to test the validity of the value creation scale. the efa resulted in a parsimonious survey that represents the distinct cycles of value creation. the results of the cfa support the validation of this scale. this combined evidence suggests that the instrument accurately represents the value cycles in wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner’s (2020) framework. the findings of this study align with previous research using the value creation framework as they corroborate in a quantitative sense what has been studied qualitatively for many years (bertram et al., 2014; cowan & menchaca, 2014; van amersfoort et al., 2019). the theorized value creation cycles that have been used widely in studies to understand the effectiveness of learning in social spaces are indeed aligned with participant responses in the developed measure in this study. these findings advance this previous work by not only strengthening the empirical grounding for studying value creation in social learning settings, but current issues in education, 26(1) 20 they also offer a complementary measurement tool that may be used to understand value creation more broadly as it allows for capturing a larger number of participant perceptions across a variety of social learning spaces. while we utilized the social learning space of project echo as the context for this study, this validated instrument has utility for measuring value creation across diverse social learning settings. important to any social construct is the ability to reliably and validly measure its utility in practice. this study proposes an initial instrument by which to measure the “value created” in social learning. the understanding of participant perception of value is important because, while learning in social contexts has been theorized from multiple perspectives, no known measure of value creation from social learning has been developed. further, value creation is not only concerned with knowledge acquisition, but it is heavily dependent on the implementation and contextual application of ideas, skills, and knowledge acquired in the social learning process. consequently, comprehending participant perceptions on their application of learned skills within the various value creation cycles can be useful in understanding the extent to which they transfer acquired knowledge to actual practice. this instrument may also provide insight into participant motivation for continued engagement in slss as they pursue learning as means to make a difference. further, individual and organizational improvement and change are dependent upon individuals who actively seek to engage in social learning as a means to better themselves and the world around them, and it is increasingly common for organizations to build capacity through social learning opportunities. as social learning has shifted to include both in-person and virtual social learning, it is essential to be able to capture the effectiveness of organic and strategic learning experiences. these understandings are especially salient in the field of education, where opportunities for professional growth may emerge organically in social contexts as individuals pursue answers to increasingly complex challenges facing education. development of the value creation scale is important because, for decades, the importance of the setting in which education takes place and the powerful cultural and social norms that influence learning have been emphasized in social psychology, cognitive psychology, and anthropology. in the 1950s, for example, cognitive science emerged as an approach to understand learning from a multidisciplinary perspective and to explain the complexity of human learning within learning environments (norman, 1980, 1993; newell & simon, 1972). subsequently, further efforts were made to understand the importance of the social and cultural contexts for the advancement of learning (e.g., cole, 1995; lave, 1988; lave & wenger, 1991; rogoff, 1990; rogoff et al., 1993), and these conceptual frameworks of learning helped to explain the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and attitudes within social contexts (aliakbari et al., 2015). theorists such as bandura (1985), bourdieu (1980), engestrom (2015), vygotsky (1978), and wenger (1999) have theorized, from different perspectives, that a key mechanism in the process of learning and development is social interaction. implications effective professional learning is a social activity in which adults choose to be active, collaborative participants in the learning process (vacca & vacca, 2002; wilkinson et al., 2010). research suggests that this type of professional learning is enhanced through supportive leadership and dedicated organizational resources (littlejohn et al., 2019). moreover, this type of professional learning can be continually enriched through effective evaluation and feedback that ensure systematic improvement across organizations and communities. current issues in education, 26(1) 21 consequently, this study has a myriad of implications for research, theory, and practice. toward research and practice, this study provides a heuristic by which to capture the varying perceptions of value individuals experience through participation in social learning experiences. as scholars and practitioners alike seek to better understand the effects of social learning, whether that be strategic intervention or organic professional learning, it is essential to be able to capture the varying degrees of value participants experience. this tool for evaluating professional learning can be used to demonstrate successful outcomes to stakeholders, garner additional support for activities, identify specific ways to improve implementation, and make strategic decisions about what activities to continue or change. from immediate value, to realized value, to enabling value, to transformative value, insights from each of these types of created value provide utility to better understand the effectiveness and process of social learning. additionally, this work builds upon the seminal work of wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner (2020) as it seeks to build upon the theoretical understanding of slss. future research this initial conceptualization, measurement development, and confirmatory factor analysis provides a foundation upon which future work may build. the population for this study was chosen because the salient features of project echo®’s learning contexts are closely aligned with wenger-trayner and wenger-trayner’s (2020) criteria for social learning spaces. to advance knowledge on social learning spaces, this scale should be tested in other populations that are characterized as social learning spaces. data yielded from this instrument may inform leaders and policy makers of the extent to which participants create value as well as assimilate, apply, and share new learning in their respective contexts. further inquiry might also include a structural equation model, which could provide insight into how the five initial value cycles – immediate, potential, applied, realized, and transformative – might operate differently than the cycles that function as supports for the learning process – orienting, strategic, and enabling value. it is possible that the five central cycles could have a more proximal relationship with outcome variables while the other cycles, being somewhat tangential to what occurs within the sls, may have a more indirect relationship with outcomes. a structural equation model could begin to uncover these relationships. furthermore, the instrument can be used in conjunction with qualitative research, which asks different questions and incorporates different methodologies. using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods can improve evaluation and research by providing more holistic portraits of professional learning contexts and ensuring that the limitations of one type of data are balanced by the strengths of the other. current issues in education, 26(1) 22 references adams, c. m., & miskell, r. c. 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(2010). developing a model of quality talk about literacy text. in m.g. mckeown & l. kucan (eds.), bringing reading research to life (142-169). new york: the guilford press. yoon, k., duncan, t., lee, s., scarloss, b., & shapley, k. (2007). reviewing the evidence on how teacher professional development affects student achievement. issues and answers report, rel 2007-no. 033. washington, dc: us department of education, institute of education sciences, national center for education evaluation and regional assistance, regional educational laboratory southwest. retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs. https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/11736 https://www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/ https://www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/ current issues in education, 26(1) 27 author’s notes ed harris oklahoma state university orcid: 0000-0001-7169-444x ed.harris10@okstate.edu katherine curry oklahoma state university orcid: 0000-00024977-538x katherine.curry@okstate.edu jentre olsen oklahoma state university orcid: 0000-0002-4678-5478 jentre.olsen@okstate.edu ashlyn fiegener oklahoma state university orcid: 0000-0003-3756-8460 ashlyn.fiegener@okstate.edu jam khojasteh oklahoma state university orcid: 0000-0002-6668-5810 jam.khojasteh@okstate.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:ed.harris10@okstate.edu mailto:ashlyn.fiegener@okstate.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ current issues in education, 25(1) 1 volume 25, issue 1 04/9/2024 issn 1099-839x identifying and navigating the barriers of parental involvement in early childhood education mark e. wildmon1, kenneth v. anthony2, & zion j. kamau1 1department of counseling, higher education leadership, educational psychology, and foundations, mississippi state university 2department of teacher education and leadership, mississippi state university abstract parental involvement in early childhood education significantly impacts children's academic, socio-emotional, and behavioral outcomes. extensive research indicates that parental involvement plays a more influential role in a child's academic success compared to socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or educational background. however, a noticeable gap exists between the desired and actual levels of parental involvement, often attributed to identifiable barriers. this study aims to delineate these obstacles and proposes cost-effective, actionable steps to overcome them. we introduce specific strategies that enhance the homeschool partnership and recommend that schools actively teach and promote these activities. these practices highlight the dual importance of parental support for school-based learning and school support for home-based activities. keywords: parental involvement in school, family engagement in education, school partnerships citation: wildmon, m.e., anthony, k.v., and kamau, z.j. (2024). identifying and navigating the barriers of parental involvement in early childhood education. current issues in education, 25(1). doi: https://10.14507/cie.vol25iss1.2146 accepted: 9/28/2023 current issues in education, 25(1) 2 parent involvement in education the concept of parental involvement (pi) has been defined in various ways. for example, grolnick and slowiaczek (1994) describe pi as multidimensional and involving a parent's commitment, time, values, and dedication to resources. pi has also been defined as "parental participation in the educational processes and experiences of their children" (jeynes, 2005, p. 245). most would agree that pi encompasses ongoing communication with teacher(s), visits or volunteer work in the school, parental encouragement, and help with homework. these actions lay the foundation for further discussion of how such engagements enhance children's educational experiences and outcomes. epstein developed a framework of six major types of parent involvement following many years of research (epstein, 2011). the six types of involvement defined include 1) parenting – help all families establish home environments to support children as students and to help schools know their families; 2) communicating – design effective forms of school-to-home and home-toschool communications about school programs and children's progress, 3) volunteering – recruit and organize parent help and support for the school and students, 4) learning at home – provide information and ideas to families about how to help students at home with homework and other curriculum-related activities, decisions, and planning, 5) decision-making – include parents in school decisions; develop parent leaders, representatives, and advocates; include all parents' voices, and 6) collaborating with the community – identify and integrate resources and services from the community to strengthen school programs, family practices, and student learning and development; conduct activities for students to assist the community. wilder (2014) synthesized the findings of nine meta-analyses that investigated the impact of different definitions. the results of this research suggested a favorable correlation between pi and academic achievement, regardless of the definition or measurement of pi. however, the findings indicated that this association was strongest when pi was characterized as parental expectations for their children's academic progress and weakest when defined as assistance with homework. across grade levels and ethnic groups, the association between pi and academic achievement was found to be consistent. pi in early childhood education takes on different forms in both home and school settings, each playing a vital role in a child's overall development (barger et al., 2019). at home, pi involves actively engaging parents in their child's educational journey beyond the classroom. this includes creating a nurturing home environment that supports the child's learning and growth. parents can designate a space for educational activities, help manage time effectively, engage in educational conversations, encourage shared reading, and introduce the child to culturally enriching experiences. on the other hand, pi at school entails parents actively participating in the education program itself. barger and colleagues (2019) suggested this involves activities such participating in school events, attending parent-teacher conferences, volunteering in the classroom, participating in governance activities such as membership in the parent-teacher association (pta) or school board, and engaging in discussions with the teacher. both forms of pi are often seen as valuable in early childhood education, potentially working together to create a comprehensive and supportive learning environment. while pi at home is thought to possibly enhance the child's foundational skills and attitudes toward learning, pi at school is believed to strengthen the educational community, enriching classroom activities, and fosters a sense of collaboration among parents, educators, and young learners. current issues in education, 25(1) 3 pi in early childhood education in this paper we aim to demonstrate the efficacy of pi in preschool through early elementary years, encouraging schools to advocate for home-based pi to support student success. pi in preschool and pre-kindergarten helps establish a foundation for parent-school partnerships. it is important for parents to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to collaborate with teachers and other school personnel during these years. this is critical in the early years of a child's life for encouraging early academic and social abilities that predict later school performance (ma et al., 2016; powell et al., 2010). studies have shown that early school success is associated with pre-kindergarten social competencies such as attention skills (duncan et al., 2007) and behavioral regulation (bronson, 2000). long-term benefits for children's school readiness, academic achievement, and general well-being can be attributed to pi and family support services (reynolds et al., 2022). the interactions between parents and their children, along with the bonds formed with teachers and caretakers during the preschool years (ages 3-5) are critical for fostering a child's social-emotional, cognitive, and physical preparedness for school (powell et al., 2010; rimmkaufman & pianta, 2001). during these years, children develop early cognitive, socialemotional, and regulatory abilities and competencies, which serve as precursors to longstanding adaptation and functioning (levine & philips, 2022; sheridan et al., 2010). pi with preschoolers is associated with several adaptive qualities, including preliteracy development (arnold et al., 2008). reynolds et al. (2022) stated that pi is critical in perpetuating a cycle of achievement and motivation throughout elementary school. the research of hayakawa et al. (2013) utilized path analyses from chicago longitudinal study (2005) participants to evaluate relationships between early parent school participation, student motivation and achievement, and later parent engagement. the study found that early parent school involvement was associated with improved kindergarten performance, which increased student motivation to do well in school and increased pi in later elementary school. this study emphasizes the need to start pi at a young age so that the cycle of motivation and achievement can begin early in a student's academic career, as reported by reynolds et al. (2022). pi research is well-established in early childhood education. much of the preschool pi research has focused on low-income, ethnic minority families enrolling in head start. according to bierman et al. (2017), low-income families frequently encounter numerous challenges in providing their children with high-quality preschool programs. children are better prepared for school, have fewer behavioral problems, and have better social skills if we assist parents in helping their children develop throughout the preschool years. the act of parents helping their children can be conceptualized as home-based pi for our purposes. effective pi initiatives can help close the achievement gap for children from low-income families. for example, mothers' and fathers' participation in head start is associated with improved levels of emotion regulation in children from low-income families (downer & mendez, 2005). furthermore, a study of head start parents found that home-based parenting methods, including reading and learning activities, predicted considerable development in attention and language skills during preschool and reduced behavior problems (fantuzzo et al., 2004). in head start, parents are encouraged to participate in various ways at home and school. for example, involvement at home might mean accepting school visitors, reading to children, and teaching them numbers and letters. home-based pi also includes various non-academic current issues in education, 25(1) 4 activities that provide alternative opportunities for learning, such as playing games, singing with them, and taking them on field trips to the store, playground, or park. henrich and blackmond-jones (2006) described pi at school as a goal for head start program goal, supported by several activities to engage parents. for example, head start provides parent education seminars, social activities, and volunteer opportunities in the classroom. parents can also participate in program creation, policy review, and governance through the local head start council. in general, research has demonstrated that pi for early childhood education in the home and at school improves program effectiveness and enhances all facets of school readiness. in related research on family engagement in early childhood education, halgunseth et al. (2009) extend pi research to include the importance of the entire family in the home-school relationship and refer to this as family engagement. according to halgunseth et al. (2009), the home-school relationship in early childhood education refers to the formal and informal relationships between families and their young children's educational settings. participation in preschool-based activities and regular communication between parents and teachers are associated with better results for young children. parent-teacher conferences, participating in more extended class visits, and assisting with class activities are all examples of parent participation techniques. participation in such activities is associated with children's development in language, self-help, social, motor, adaptive, and fundamental school abilities (marcon, 1999). marcon found in their study that pi in program activities was linked to greater preschool success and better adaptive and socially competent behaviors. parents who volunteered at the school had a greater impact on their children's performance than those who simply attended parent-teacher conferences. in a study conducted by mcwayne et al. (2004), they found that consistent and direct communication between parents and schools positively impacted how kindergartners from lowincome, ethnic minority backgrounds perceived their engagement with peers, adults, and learning. strong home-school relationships boost children's outcomes during their early childhood years and over time. for example, regular communication with a teacher, volunteering in the classroom, and participating in school activities were linked to children's advancement from kindergarten to first grade (mantzicopoulos, 2003). increased participation of parents in preschool events helps parents by increasing their knowledge of the school programs and experiences. furthermore, pi at school may serve as a model for the child, emphasizing the importance of education. a greater number of studies focus on school-based pi compared to home-based pi. according to mcdowell et al. (2018), home-based pi is crucial to students' success and achievement, particularly in the early years. researchers may focus on home-based pi less frequently than school-based because it is more challenging to quantify and examine home-based pi. according to research, parents are more likely to be involved at home than at school while their children are in pre-kindergarten. preschool children's educational results and early literacy abilities may benefit from involvement at home, such as reading books to children and parentchild interactions (mcdowell et al., 2018; powell et al., 2012). pi benefits on achievement and social-emotional outcomes many studies have been conducted detailing the benefits of pi on academic achievement and social-emotional outcomes. pi supports children's learning, but parents’ attention toward current issues in education, 25(1) 5 their children's well-being also contributes to long-term effects (reynolds et al., 2022). for our purposes, we review the findings of one seminal study by barger et al. in 2019. barger et al. (2019) conducted a quantitative review of 448 studies that found a positive association between academic achievement, engagement, and motivation, as well as parents' naturally occurring involvement in their children's education. their meta-analysis concluded that parental participation enhances academic performance, reduces delinquency risk, and improves social and emotional integration. these results were significant and remarkable as the research findings were consistent across age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. barger and colleagues (2019) compared the associations for pi for school-based involvement and home-based involvement to six dimensions of child adjustment, including achievement, engagement, motivation, social, emotional, and delinquency. the results suggest that school-based pi had a small, significant association with positive adjustment across children and all dimensions. however, home-based pi was significantly associated with positive adjustment across children and all dimensions. home-based pi also presented more substantial effects than school-based effects. because of this, we recommend that early childhood educators focus their efforts on increasing home-based pi, and we offer specific examples of home-based pi activities that schools can teach, encourage, and support. for our purposes of navigating the barriers of pi, it is important to note that this metaanalysis concluded that both home-based and school-based pi are positively related to academic achievement and social-emotional outcomes. barger et al.'s (2019) meta-analysis of the effectiveness of pi, paired with the research we described above on the positive impact pi has in early childhood, is a compelling reason why preschools should work to increase pi. because our goal is to suggest ways to increase pi, the fact that home-based pi had a greater impact than school-based pi suggests that, to increase overall pi, early childhood educators should focus on encouraging pi at home as well. the home-school partnership can motivate parents to assist their children with classroom-related activities in the home setting. according to powell et al. (2012), it may be helpful for school efforts to promote pi at home to stress parental instructional strategies that match with specific child outcomes on a meaningful level. for instance, a school seeking parent support for boosting students' mathematical skills may have better results if parents are provided with specific mathematics-related practices rather than general pi suggestions. overcoming barriers to pi research reviewed within this study suggests that pi may benefit students across all grades, including those in early childhood settings. the findings indicate that pi generally enhances both academic and social outcomes for students, highlighting its positive impact on children's development. furthermore, barger et al. (2019) suggests the benefits of parental involvement can be observed across varying levels of engagement, emphasizing its importance in supporting children's educational and social well-being. castro et al. (2015) conducted a metaanalysis on pi with kindergarten through secondary students. the results generally support positive outcomes for all students, and found the level and type of involvement matter, with certain types of involvement being more strongly associated with positive academic achievement. the effectiveness of pi, therefore, can vary based on the nature of the involvement, suggesting that not all forms of pi are equally impactful, but all contribute positively in varying degrees. however, according to hornby and lafaele (2011), there is a gap between the rhetoric and reality of pi. hornby and lafaele proposed that the gap between rhetoric and reality in pi current issues in education, 25(1) 6 exists because of factors that act as barriers to developing effective pi. these include parent and family, parent-teacher, child, and societal factors. it is important to understand these barriers so educators can help parents navigate them to increase pi. this section discusses each of the factors and actions schools can take to overcome each barrier. additionally, we labeled the actions early childhood educators can take to overcome the barriers by categories of support: communicate, partner, support, and encourage. for the purpose of this paper, we defined communicate, partner, support, and encourage. communicate refers to the process of effectively sharing and exchanging information between schools and parents. this fosters transparency, understanding, and mutual respect, creating a conducive environment for the child's development. partner implies the establishment of a collaborative relationship between parents and schools, working together toward the shared goal of enhancing the child's academic and socio-emotional outcomes. this partnership encourages mutual responsibility and a sense of shared ownership in the child's education. support denotes the provision of guidance, resources, and aid to parents, enabling them to contribute positively to their child's educational journey. this may include providing educational materials, conducting workshops, or offering emotional support to parents. encourage signifies motivating and inspiring parents to participate actively in their child's education. this could involve recognizing their efforts, providing opportunities for involvement, and creating an inclusive environment that values their input and involvement. we define pi as the active participation, engagement, and collaboration of parents or guardians in their children's learning and educational experiences. as in previously defined descriptions of pi, this involvement can take various forms, including supporting academic activities at home, communicating with teachers and school staff, attending school events, and promoting a positive learning environment. individual parent and family factors the first level of barriers that hornby and lafaele (2011) addressed were individual parent and family factors (see table 1). to increase pi, schools must address these factors. first, schools can directly influence parents' beliefs about pi and perceptions of invitations for pi. they can do this by communicating and demonstrating that education is a partnership between parents and schools and by directly inviting parents to participate in specific activities that support pi. early childhood educators can mitigate the impact of two factors (current life contexts and class, ethnicity, and gender) by providing support to pi that recognizes the home and work reality of many families that may discourage pi. schools can also encourage and support parents from all backgrounds to be involved. according to bierman et al. (2017), preschool children's school readiness can be enhanced by extensive and targeted efforts, as indicated by rigorous intervention studies with socioeconomically disadvantaged parents. the strongest evidence that parent participation programs can improve child outcomes comes from evidence-based interventions that have been examined in randomized controlled trials. many of these programs include home visits or parent-group interventions to enhance parenting skills related to socialemotional and academic readiness in young children. others have concentrated on establishing preschool teacher-parent relationships to improve child learning. table 1 individual parent and family factors current issues in education, 25(1) 7 individual parent and family factors traditional school context (hornby & lafaele, 2011) school action category of pi support parents' beliefs about pi if a parent believes it is their job "only to get their children to school," they are less likely to be involved in home-based or school-based pi. communicate that education is a partnership between home and school. communicate perceptions of invitations for pi parents' perceptions of the teacher's or school's openness to pi encourage or discourage pi. directly invite parents for specific pi activities. partner current life contexts parent education level, work, and career situations encourage or discourage pi. support pi activities that recognize the reality of some family contexts. support class, ethnicity, and gender ses, ethnicity, and gender serve to encourage or discourage pi. there are disparities based on each. some groups have less time; others have less trust. women are more likely to engage in pi. encourage and support pi with all parents. encourage parent-teacher factors parents' and teachers' views of pi can differ in three ways, according to hornby and lafaele (2011), and these can be barriers to pi in education: differing goals and agendas for education, differing attitudes about school and education, and the different language used to talk about education. to address these factors, early childhood educators must maintain open communication about their goals for education, recognize and respect parents' goals, and make sure their parents and schools understand the language used to discuss pi. these can be addressed in regular communication sent to parents, parent-teacher meetings, and other school events. in our local preschool setting, we surveyed parents and teachers to determine what school-based pi they felt most contributed to academic and social-emotional adjustment. the survey comprised of 180 participants, which included 125 parents and 55 teachers across four rural public schools for pre-kindergarten through second grade. the good news is that based on current issues in education, 25(1) 8 our survey of parents and teachers at two schools in our community, there is general agreement that school-based pi is important. the goal for our local survey was not to generalize to a larger population but rather demonstrate to schools’ specific areas where they can engage parents to increase school-based pi. we learned from our local setting that parents believe school-based pi is important to their child's success. the next step that should guide all school pi efforts is open communication that respects differences and aims to use a common vocabulary about pi efforts. to overcome barriers related to parent-teacher factors, pi should strengthen these partnerships during preschool. evidencebased programs are available to promote this relationship. bierman et al. (2017) describe several programs, one of which provides multi-session workshops (8-12 sessions) for parents and children taught by preschool teachers. teachers demonstrate learning activities and give parents materials to use with their children at home. these programs documented improvements in children's academic skills in the targeted areas. the getting ready program aids teachers in making routine home visits and hosting collaborative parent-teacher conferences; it improved children’s language use and pre-reading skills. table 2 lists and describes the parent-teacher factors and provides school actions in response. table 2 parent-teacher factors parentteacher factors traditional school context (hornby & lafaele, 2011) school action category of pi support differing goals and agendas differing beliefs about general goals of education or about the purpose and goals of pi can lead to conflict and decreased pi. communicate school goals. ask about parent goals. communicate differing attitudes parents and school professionals may have different opinions about the nature of school and education. if education equals schooling, then teachers have the most influence and power. if it is bigger than schooling, then the power shifts to teachers. respect differing opinions and attitudes about schools and schooling focus on partnership between home and school. partner differing language used words mean different things to different people. “partnership” means one thing to schools and another develop a shared or common vocabulary in the school community about pi communicate current issues in education, 25(1) 9 thing to parents. this differing understanding leads to conflict and less pi. child factors hornby and lafaele (2011) identified four child factors that can serve as barriers to pi (see table 3): age, learning difficulties and disabilities, gifts and talents, and behavioral problems. as children get older, school-based pi tends to decrease. of the remaining three factors, learning difficulties and disabilities, gifts and talents, and behavioral problems, two (gifts and talents and behavioral problems) tend to decrease the amount of pi, and one (learning difficulties and disabilities) tends to increase pi. both gifts and talents and learning difficulties can have the opposite effect depending on the nature of cooperation between parents and the schools. the remaining three factors offer the most opportunity for parent-teacher or parentschool engagement and, therefore, increase pi if there is agreement on the issues addressed. early childhood educators can take specific actions to encourage positive and sustained pi in response to these barriers (see table 3). table 3 child factors child factors traditional school context (hornby & lafaele, 2011) school actions category of pi support age pi decreases as student age increases. the nature of pi also changes. directly invite parents for specific pi activities. encourage learning difficulties and disabilities parents with struggling students are more likely to be involved in pi, but if there is a disagreement over the issues, this can discourage pi. focus on partnership between home and school to address student difficulties or disabilities. partner gifts and talents if a child is not academically challenged and becomes frustrated, this can discourage pi due to a conflict between parents and the school. sometimes, parents of gifted and focus on partnership between home and school to support an academically challenging student. partner current issues in education, 25(1) 10 talented students are more motivated to engage in pi. behavioral problems parents of students with behavioral problems are often less likely to be involved in school. focus on partnership between home and school to address student behavior problems. partner societal factors the societal factors that hornby and lafaele (2011) describe are not easily addressed by schools and parents, but some of the actions listed above can be used to help ease their impacts as barriers to pi. schools and parents need to widen their view of what pi can be (as discussed in the section on what we can learn about pi from home schools) and focus on the partnership between parents and schools. societal factors may include a narrow definition of pi along with a family-specific issue such as parents working hours, transportation, both parents working, and divorces leading to single parenting issues. schools can support parents by offering various communication methods. parents and teachers alike recognized the value of proactive parent involvement that does not require parents to be present at school or assist teachers in the classroom throughout the year. for example, schools can provide parents with opportunities to help from home and connect with teachers via school websites or email (olmstead, 2013). see table 4 for more details. table 4 societal factors societal factors traditional school context (hornby & lafaele, 2011) school actions category of support historical and demographic narrow definitions of pi (school based and school supporting) and rigid bureaucratic nature of schools discourages pi. broaden our view of pi focus on partnership between home and school. partner political little government push to encourage pino laws requiring it. encourage pi through education and direct invitations to specific pi actions. encourage economic little money dedicated to encouraging pi because there are no encourage pi through education and direct encourage current issues in education, 25(1) 11 short-term rewards related to performance of accountability. invitations to specific pi actions. support behaviors for overcoming barriers it is in the best interest of schools to increase pi as most of the research about pi associates it with academic success. if early childhood educators want to increase pi, they must recognize these barriers and work to satisfactorily address them with concerned families. in this section, we described the barriers to pi that hornby and lafaele (2011) identified. we also identified actions that schools can take to address these barriers. these school actions fall into four categories of support behaviors: communicate, partner, support, and encourage. first, as schools work to increase pi, they must communicate with parents that pi is important by inviting parents to be involved in specific ways. next, they must focus on being a partner with parents in education. this includes parents supporting school-based activities and the school supporting home-based learning activities. third, schools must support parent pi. this includes providing resources and information on the operations of pi. finally, schools must encourage pi. school administrators can encourage pi by setting up professional development programs for teachers and staff that focus on helping them explore and overcome their preconceived notions about children and families, as well as any challenges that may stand in the way of greater pi (yulianti et al., 2020). according to jeynes (2005), schools that invest more in teacher professional development have more policies fostering parent involvement in school and home activities. more high-quality teachers in these schools equate to more school programs to engage parents in helping their children with homework and learning at home. effective teachers can and do impact how schools prioritize and invest in parent involvement for both minority and white children. home-school parents as models for pi in traditional school if we accept the evidence that pi contributes to student academic success, we should encourage pi. one of the barriers to pi is parents' beliefs about pi (hornby & lafaele, 2011). parents need to know they can make a difference and help their children achieve. if they think their effort matters, they will be more involved. but parents need examples. home-schooling families can serve as one example of what pi looks like in action. in another study (anthony & wildmon, 2021), we conducted an analysis of homeschooling "how-to" books to identify specific techniques that traditional school parents could use as pi activities. to increase pi, early childhood educators must help parents understand what specific pi they can do at home that benefits students generally and supports school-based learning specifically. one of the benefits of using homeschool parents' activities as examples of traditional school pi is that homeschool parents usually do not possess expertise in education. some use this to criticize homeschooling as an educational practice, but the fact that families that homeschool are not experts places these practices within the realm of possibility for most parents. additionally, most families experience “homeschooling” their children during covid-19 means that they have most likely actively engaged in some of these home-school practices that can be considered traditional school pi. the homeschooling population is growing and becoming increasingly diverse. in 2021, steven duvall, a home school defense legal defense association (hsdla) researcher, current issues in education, 25(1) 12 reported that the number of families in america who report homeschooling their children grew from less than 2 percent in 1999 to 3.3 percent in 2016. in the same period, white families homeschooled at higher rates than black and hispanic families. for example, in 2016, 3.3 percent of families reported homeschooling their children. 3.8 percent of white families reported homeschooling in 2016 whereas 1.9 percent of black and 3.5 percent of hispanic families reported homeschooling in the same year. homeschool participation remained at about that level until the pandemic in 2020, resulting in record numbers of families reporting homeschooling their children. according to the census bureau, in 2021, the total number of families reporting homeschooling increased to greater than 18% for white, black, and hispanic families (duvall, 2021). post-pandemic, the number of homeschool families decreased but not to pre-pandemic levels. in 2022, the percentage of families reporting homeschooling was 9.9 % for white families, 10.3% for black families, and 8.9% for hispanic families (duvall, 2022). recent statistics on homeschooling indicate that the gap between minority and white families who are homeschooled has closed. in 2023, 5.4% of families in america reported homeschooling their children. the same report indicated that 6.1% of white and 6.3% of black families homeschool their children (smith & campbell, 2023). data on the increases in homeschooling and the increased diversity of those who homeschool is relevant to our argument that homeschool activities can be used as models of pi by parents in traditional schools. it demonstrates that many families have already conducted similar activities during the pandemic and continue to post-pandemic. further, families who homeschool and may have conducted these activities are diverse, similar to families with children in traditional schools. according to brian ray (2022) at the national home education research institute, 41% of homeschoolers are people of color. in short, the recommendations we make can be done by most parents at home as parents are currently doing them from all demographic groups. home-school practices that can be traditional school pi according to barger et al. (2019), home-based pi has a more pronounced impact than school-based pi. we propose that schools should consider home-based pi as a starting point to enhance pi within their institutions. to achieve this, schools must comprehend the specific pi activities outlined below and address the obstacles by employing the four categories of support discussed: communication, partnership, support, and encouragement. early childhood educators can effectively communicate the existence and value of these activities, collaborate with parents to select activities that align with the curriculum and support in-school learning, provide educational resources and training to support parents' home-based pi efforts, and encourage parents' engagement in home-based pi through newsletters and parent-teacher conferences. nine specific homeschool practices could serve as pi for traditional early childhood education (anthony & wildmon, 2021; see table 5). most of these practices are low-cost and within reach of most parents and can be used by parents with children in early childhood education as homebased pi. early childhood educators and parents who look to home-school parents for pi practices will find that these actions expand pi beyond supporting school activities to supporting greater student responsibility for learning. the last three homeschool practices listed in table 5 are less concrete than the first six, but they focus on the parent taking an active role in supporting student learning at home. this may require a shift in school professionals' and parents' thinking current issues in education, 25(1) 13 about learning. in this model, the goal is a greater partnership between parents and schools to support student learning at home with the goal of improving overall academic achievement and social adjustment in a school setting. next, we discuss how each of the practices can be used by parents of preschool children as pi. schools should work to increase these home-based pi activities by communicating their existence and value, defining them as a key component of the home-school partnership, supporting families with resources, and encouraging parents. table 5 home-school practices that can be pi home-school practice 1. parent modeling learning 2. parent finding and providing resources based on student interest or need 3. parent providing a home learning environment 4. parent trusting the child to learn 5. parent supporting the child's interests 6. parent making the world a classroom 7. parent developing learner independence/ responsibility 8. parent cooperating with the child to learn 9. parent expanding their view of education parent modeling learning parents should include their children in everyday activities and see those activities as an opportunity for learning. young children learn from the adults in their lives from the moment they are born. children as young as 14 months old are known to mimic what they watch on television (meltzoff, 1988). shrier (2014) suggests considering the home as the child's first classroom. young children are learning from the "teachers" or people in the home right from the start. parents can demonstrate to their children that asking for help is one approach to dealing with a frustrating situation. they can provide opportunities to solve problems that arise in the home regularly. it could be learning how to get a ball off a shelf, tie a shoe, or build a blockhouse. parents can model writing, following rules, and saying "thank you" and "please.” parents can read in front of their children (not just to their children). when children see that parents are reading, this demonstrates that it is important, and children will want to mimic the action (even before they know how to read). parent finding and providing resources based on student interests or needs dunst et al. (2001) showed that learning opportunities for preschoolers that are interesting and engaging and that give children spaces to explore, practice, and improve their skills were the most developmentally stimulating. the study implies that if children's everyday experiences are interest-based and engaging, they are likely to aid in their growth and learning. every parent knows what their children like and are interested in. parents can take their children to the library to look for books about dinosaurs, fairies, dragons, or any other topic that interests them. parents can also use tv time to allow their children to view shows about subjects they are interested in. the subject does not have to be intellectual for young children; it simply current issues in education, 25(1) 14 needs to be something that interests them. parents can then look for books, toys, and media relating to the topic and ask their children questions about it, allowing them to share what they already know and talk about what they want to learn. parent providing a home learning environment creating a high-quality home learning environment during early childhood has been shown to mitigate the effect of disadvantage and socioeconomic status on cognitive abilities and socio-emotional issues (hartas, 2011; niklas & schneider, 2013). children play, and much of what they play is based on what they perceive adults do. just like we can provide play kitchens or workshops, we can also support play activities that support learning. this includes educational toys that allow them to explore their world (magnifying glasses, microscopes, binoculars), make things (building blocks, construction paper, glue, scissors), and learn about their environments (maps of their playground, nature walks, encouraging questions). parents can also help their children leverage the internet and other media for learning purposes. we often find amusing videos of children entertaining themselves (and their parents) with smartphones. but we can transform our media consumption from entertainment to education. this aligns with the idea that children are naturally curious and ask questions about their surroundings. parents can provide valuable resources, like the internet, to encourage exploration and learning about the world. children also need a place dedicated to learning. this place can be used for their informal homebased learning, and as the child ages, it can become their headquarters for school-based learning activities, including homework. parent trusting the child to learn research indicates that intellectual curiosity serves as a fundamental driving force for childhood learning, critical thinking, and reasoning. through curiosity, children find motivation to expand their knowledge and personal growth. encouraging and sustaining this motivation throughout their lives is crucial (price-mitchell, 2016). formal learning experiences at home are not always necessary. instead, we can empower children with the freedom to explore and learn. by creating an environment that fosters curiosity, we become role models for learning. as parents, we can inspire our children to ask questions when they feel confused or encounter something new in the community. although less tangible, this approach acknowledges that children possess a natural desire to comprehend their world and can acquire knowledge through inquiry. parent supporting the child's interests while parents may stimulate preschool children's interests through the provision of toys or the arrangement of experiences, leibham et al. (2005) discovered that parental influence on interest maintenance is more about acknowledging the child's continuing interest than it is about meeting a specific quota of interest-related experiences. if we trust students to learn, we should support what they are interested in learning. these interests will shift over time and are often based on what they see in media or what shows are popular on tv. parent making the world a classroom parents may be tempted to provide their children with devices such as ipads throughout the day to help promote learning and entertainment. preschoolers should have less screen time and more time learning from real-world experiences. a growing body of evidence indicates that current issues in education, 25(1) 15 young children's excessive screen time is related to several adverse health consequences (stiglic & viner, 2019). young children learn best through hands-on activities such as physical play, outdoor play, community events, and social interaction with family and friends. preschool children learn a lot at school, but parents should find out-of-school learning opportunities in their community or at home. examples of home and community-based learning opportunities include children's museums, parks, and libraries. additionally, parents can take advantage of community activities, including fairs, livestock shows, rodeos, music performances, and other festivals that provide opportunities for children to informally learn about their world. parents can conduct low or no-cost learning activities at home that help their child understand their world. these may include tracking cloud movement and discussing how this affects weather, creating a simple weather chart, making a rainbow with a water nozzle on a sunny day, or coloring the four seasons. parents can teach their children about science through gardening or growing potted plants. young children can learn early math measurement concepts by using their hands or fingers to measure length, blocks for measuring area, or using juice in a cup to demonstrate capacity. children love learning and exploring their world, and parents can encourage these activities and answer questions along the way. parent developing learner independence/responsibility children in preschool have an innate desire to discover and learn. opportunities to gain independence are critical for developing a sense of self, self-esteem, and a tolerance for frustration and resilience (levine & philips, 2022). there are numerous activities that preschoolers can do daily at home to foster independence. children want to engage their world. parents can support learner independence by asking children what interests them, providing resources to support their learning, and allowing children to do tasks independently. additionally, parents can provide children with an area set aside for learning with low-cost resources and allow the child time to learn without parental involvement. when a child asks for help, the parent can work collaboratively with the child to find the answer rather than providing the answer immediately. this ensures that the child continues to learn and establishes a learning partnership. this learning partnership allows the child to observe the parent's learning, and as the child becomes an independent reader, the parent can shift to assisting the child in finding the answers they seek. parent cooperating with the child to learn the basis for future academic performance in school is built on responsive interactions and language-rich experiences for children in their early years (national scientific council on the developing child, 2020). parents should interact and talk with their children about their interests. parents cooperate with their child on learning when they allow children to pursue their interests at home, provide resources to enable them to learn about their interests, and use community resources to let their children see the wider world as a classroom. with preschool children, this may require the parent to read books to the child that help the child learn about her interests. parents can cooperate by asking the child about their interests and searching for lowcost community learning opportunities related to those interests. parents expanding their view of education according to thomas (2017), providing children with opportunities to study outside of the classroom can be beneficial. it is important to highlight that "learning outside" is a broad current issues in education, 25(1) 16 concept with no clear definition. some of the few examples are outdoor play, environmental education, adventure, and recreational activities. learning outside is more inspiring and realistic and has a more significant influence on young children. parents should see the whole world as a classroom for their childrenincluding their home and community. likewise, parents should find opportunities to informally teach their children about the world as they live life. if there is a solar eclipse or another astronomical event, it can be an opportunity to talk about planets and stars. children are interested in these, and parents do not need expert knowledge to help their children learn about these things. parents truly can support school-based learning by supporting student learning at home. most parents, regardless of ses or education level, can teach their children shapes, numbers, letters, matching, sorting sizes, or days of the week. they can take their children to the library and find books about topics that interest their children. they can read these books to their children. parents can take children to a community garden or a children's museum. these informal learning opportunities are home-based pi that are low-cost in terms of both money and expertise. we have summarized research about pi, demonstrated that it has positive effects on social and academic outcomes, and provided nine specific practices from homeschool settings that can be used as pi with early childhood students. examples are low-cost, require little expertise, and have a demonstrated history of use (in the homeschool setting). further many parents will have engaged in some of the practices while teaching their children at home during the covid-19 pandemic. schools need to understand these home-based pi practices inspired by homeschool practices, but it is also essential that they envision them as critical components of the school's pi. early childhood educators must expand their view of pi from school-based activities and embrace and encourage home-based pi. next, we discuss how early childhood educators can leverage increased home-based pi to increase school-based pi. leveraging home-based pi to increase school-based pi we have deliberately focused on home-based because these are things that parents can do that are low cost, do not require additional time (i.e., visits to the school), and do not require expertise. the goal is to encourage parents to be involved in their child's education at home, assuming that increasing pi at home will also increase pi at school. to do this, schools should conduct activities within the four categories of support we identified earlier: communicate, partner, support, and encourage. first, schools should communicate that education is a homeschool-based partnership. effective communication strengthens the partnership between the school and parents. most schools have efficient ways of reaching parents, like newsletters, websites, and messaging. but very few schools have the same method of getting feedback from parents, such as polls or surveys. schools with information and communications technology, including messaging groups, social media platforms, email, and interactive phone systems, can help improve the exchange of important information. the next stage is establishing a partnership that emphasizes the value of parents supporting school-based activities and the importance of the school supporting home-based learning activities. this begins with the establishment of productive connections and the building of trust with each parent. teachers must exhibit their faith in the ability of parents to assist their children. the school can provide staff development training on the importance of pi and equivalent training for parents. a successful pi requires the cooperation of parents and teachers, which creates friendly school environments that encourage active parent engagement. scheduled home visits allow teachers to provide guidance on home-based activities. current issues in education, 25(1) 17 third, schools must provide pi support for school-based learning. provide parents with a list of the mastery skills required at each grade level for their children. invite parents to talk about their hopes and concerns for their children, as well as how school-based pi can help them achieve those goals. teachers can use workshops or scheduled virtual parent meetings to provide parents with home-based goal suggestions. schools that promote pi at home can provide parents with the assistance they require to implement instructional strategies that are appropriate for their children's individual schoolwork. use workshops and other school-based activities to inform parents about what is going on in their children's classrooms. find meaningful ways for a parent to help if they can volunteer. involving parents in classroom activities and school events has been shown to increase parents' confidence and attendance. finally, early childhood educators must encourage pi in school-based learning as well as home-based activities. parents can be encouraged to participate in pi by keeping them informed and soliciting their feedback. schools can invite parents to use the family resource center and provide workshops on related topics. teachers can be flexible when scheduling quarterly parent meetings, encouraging parents to attend and discuss new goals for their children. teachers and parents collaborate on areas of concern in the child's development within the school and home environments. using common ground to support school-based pi barger et al. (2019) provided an excellent list of school-based pi. we recommend that schools consider starting school-based pi on common ground. some common ground may exist based on parents' experiences teaching their children at home with the school's support during the pandemic. our local school survey conducted within the local schools was not aimed at extending generalized conclusions to a broader population. instead, its primary objective was to pinpoint concrete areas where schools can engage parents to increase school-based involvement. the responses gathered from our local schools affirm that parents perceive school-based involvement as a significant contributor to their child's academic success. our task here is not to report the total findings of the survey, which we will do elsewhere, but to demonstrate that early childhood educators should determine what parents believe about pi before engaging parents in pi. for example, table 6 provides information about what schoolbased pi parents believe positively affects social adjustment at school. they value the types of things that schools traditionally do for pi (i.e., parent-teacher conferences, attending school programs, regular communication). the task of the school is to determine the plan for engaging parents and encouraging targeted school-based pi. we probed deeper and asked parents to identify the most critical school-based pi. the parents who answered the survey indicated that parents maintaining regular communication with teachers was most important to them. therefore, the school should create a medium for regular parent-to-teacher communication. then, once this communication channel is open and functioning, use it to encourage other school-based pi and support home-based and aspirational pi. this is one community school setting; we would encourage schools to conduct a similar survey of what parents value to see what common ground exists and use that as a starting point to engage parents in school-based pi. table 6 percentage of parents who strongly agree or agree that a specific school-based pi activity contributes to social adjustment current issues in education, 25(1) 18 school-based pi activity percentage of parents who agree or strongly agree barriers that can be addressed through this pi 1. it is important to attend parent-teacher conferences. 96.3 individual parent and family factors 2. it is important to attend open houses. 94.5 individual parent and family factors 3. it is important to attend and support school programs (including student performances and athletics) 94.6 parent-teacher factors and child factors 4. it is important to volunteer in the classroom. 87.3 parent-teacher factors and child factors 5. it is important to maintain regular communication with teachers. 96.4 parent-teacher factors and child factors 6. it is important to serve on the school board or other school offices. 61.8 societal factors 7. it is important to participate in the parent teacher association (pta), parent teacher organization (pto), or other similar parent organizations. 83.6 societal factors the agreement that exists between the school and the parents who participated in the survey demonstrates an opportunity to address some of the barriers hornby and lafaele (2011) identified. earlier, we identified specific actions that schools can take for each of the four levels of barriers in tables 1 through 4. using the results of this survey, we can align specific schoolbased pi activities with school actions that can help address the various barriers. the last column in table 6 aligns barriers that we believe can be addressed through a specific action by the school. for example, schools can use communication and direct invitations (from table 1) to encourage parents to attend parent-teacher conferences and open houses. in this way, schools can proactively address existing individual parent and family factors that may serve as barriers to pi using activities that parents and teachers agree are valuable activities. next, schools can focus on building partnerships between home and school (table 2) through efforts to increase parent volunteerism at the school. this can help to dismantle parent-teacher barriers to pi. further, schools encourage parents to remain involved in specific pi activities related to their children who have learning disabilities, are in gifted and talented programs, or have behavioral problems (table 3). they can do this through regular communication about their child. this will help address barriers related to child factors. finally, in the survey, parents rated serving on school boards and in school offices as low compared to the other pi activities. schools can work to current issues in education, 25(1) 19 encourage parents from all backgrounds to participate in school organizations (pta/pto) or serve in school offices, including the school board. in this way, the school is working to remove societal or economic barriers to pi related to parent involvement in school governance and policy (table 4). in addition to expanding the pool of parents involved in these types of pi, recruiting parents for leadership roles from a broader range of families is also likely to help increase the number of families that see education as a genuine partnership. conclusion pi in early childhood education plays a critical role in academic, socio-emotional, and behavioral outcomes. according to barger et al. (2019), when parents know what their children are learning in school, they can help or provide related opportunities to target these skills. pi in preschool and pre-kindergarten helps lay the groundwork for parent-school relationships. parents gain the knowledge and skills needed to collaborate with teachers and other school personnel during these years. these abilities and knowledge are critical in a child's early years for encouraging early academic and social skills that predict later school performance. low-income families frequently face numerous challenges in providing high-quality preschool programs for their children. as a result, there is a significant early achievement gap between lowand high-income children. if we help parents help their children develop throughout the preschool years, children are better prepared for school, have fewer behavioral problems, and have better social skills. effective pi initiatives can help close the achievement gap for children from low-income families. the home-based pi activities that homeschool families inspire are within reach of most families, including those in poverty. schools can help address family resource shortfalls that prevent families from conducting some of the home-based pi we recommend by making resources available in learning centers or libraries that parents can check out as needed. parents must believe they can make a difference and assist their children in reaching their full potential. they will be more involved if they believe their efforts are valued, but parents must set a good example. home-schooling families provide several evidence-based examples of how pi looks in action. a study of parents of children enrolled in head start, for example, discovered that home-based parenting practices, such as reading and learning activities, predicted significant growth in areas of attention and language skills during preschool, as well as a reduction in behavioral problems (fantuzzo et al., 2004). we identified specific home-school methods that could serve as a reference point for traditional early childhood education. our research revealed that most of these home-school practices are pi-based and correspond to what home-school families call instructional practices. notably, most of these techniques are low-cost and accessible to most parents, but they involve a shift in school and parents' attitudes toward education and what it means to educate and learn. pi in early childhood education lays the groundwork for parent-school partnerships. parents gain the knowledge and skills needed to collaborate with teachers and other school personnel during these years. we identified significant barriers and provided specific low-cost, evidence-based procedures for parents and schools to collaborate to overcome these challenges. we recommend that early childhood educators teach, support, and encourage parents to conduct these home-based pi activities at home. with an emphasis to increase the partnership focus, home-based pi may be an essential starting point for schools. current issues in education, 25(1) 20 references anthony, k.v. & wildmon, m. e. 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(2020). school efforts to promote parental involvement: the contributions of school leaders and teachers. educational studies, 48(1), 98-113, https://doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2020.1740978 https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/ https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74617-9_6 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74617-9_6 https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5ca4v https://doi.org/10.1080/10409280902783517 https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/young_children_learn_by_copying_you https://reason.org/commentary/homeschooling-is-on-the-rise-even-as-the-pandemic-recedes/ https://reason.org/commentary/homeschooling-is-on-the-rise-even-as-the-pandemic-recedes/ https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-023191 http://www.powerfulschools.org/learning-outside-the-classroom-and-benefits/ https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2013.780009 https://doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2020.1740978 current issues in education, 25(1) 24 author note mark e. wildmon https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6061-5766 mississippi state university mew10@msstate.edu kenneth v. anthony https://orcid.org/0000-0003=4771-5807 mississippi state university kva3@msstate.edu zion j. kamau https://orcid.org/0009-0001-0597-3552 mississippi state university zjk31@msstate.edu declarations of interest: all authors declare that there are no competing interests. mississippi state university, email: mew10@msstate.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. mailto:mew10@msstate.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ using certificates to engage faculty in professional development current issues in education, 21(2) 1 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age using certificates to engage faculty in professional development heather mccullough, university of north carolina at charlotte kim buch, university of north carolina at charlotte abstract: the center for teaching and learning (ctl) at the university of north carolina at charlotte is helping to shape the futures of learning in diverse ways. in this paper, we describe a recently implemented micro-credential option for faculty and graduate students, the essentials of teaching and learning certificate program. we also report findings supporting microcredentialing as a popular, flexible, and cost-effective approach to faculty development and teaching excellence. keywords: faculty development, teaching certificate, teaching, learning, pedagogy, andragogy citation: buch, k. (2020). using certificates to engage faculty in professional development. current issues in education, 21(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1924 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 5/28/2020 micro-credentialing in higher education micro-credentialing is a new approach to documenting learning and professional development that is growing rapidly in higher education. as its name suggests, microcredentialing allows small skill development achievements and incremental learning to be documented as steps toward larger goals on specified learning pathways while many universities use micro-credentialing as a means to recognize the skills and knowledge developed by students, it is increasingly a tool used for faculty development. the use of micro-credentialing enables https://teaching.uncc.edu/services-programs/teaching-certificate https://teaching.uncc.edu/services-programs/teaching-certificate http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1924 using certificates to engage faculty in professional development current issues in education, 21(2) 2 faculty, staff, and graduate students flexibility to select learning experiences and set their own personal learning pathways (yu, dyjur, miltenburg, & saito, 2015). two popular models of micro-credentialing in higher education are certificate programs (cp’s) and digital badges (muilenburg & berge, 2016). typically, digital badges represent a shift from attendance-based certificates to criteria-based accomplishments. in order to receive a badge, participants most often meet a learning outcome or demonstrate their learning or new skills (yu, dyjur, miltenburg, & saito, 2015). for example, indiana university has developed a three-tier micro-credentialing system for faculty members engaged with new learning technologies (hart, 2015). the “basic-level badge” recognizes faculty members who have developed a basic understanding of learning technologies; the “proficient-level badge” recognizes faculty members who have implemented technologies in the classroom, and the “advanced-level badge” recognizes faculty members who have led broader implementation of new learning technologies. texas wesleyan university developed a complex badging system that awards points for faculty members who attend or present workshops or engage in professional development activities through social media (hart, 2015). certificate programs are another approach to micro-credentialing that are more like traditional professional development, typically measured by the number and type of learning experiences completed or the amount of time spent in training. in order to receive a certificate, participants most often complete a specified number of courses or experiences on a given learning pathway. the most common form of certificate programs in the context of faculty development is a teaching certificate program (tcp). while tcp’s differ across institutions, most are offered through a university’s center for teaching and learning (or similar faculty support office). centers for teaching and learning traditionally utilize a wide range of professional development formats, including online tutorials and face-to-face workshops, and have recently embraced the tcp model. for example, the center for teaching excellence at the university of south carolina offers faculty a selection of certificate of completions, including fostering proactive learning environments, teaching towards inclusive excellence, and integrative and experiential learning (hamson-utley & heyman, 2016). yale university offers graduate students and postdocs a comprehensive training program in effective college teaching, the certificate of college teaching preparation (cctp). microcredentialing—both digital badges and tcp’s—have many purported benefits that have contributed to their growth in faculty development (yu, dyjur, miltenburg, & saito, 2015). first, they may motivate people to engage meaningfully with professional learning activities through the provision of a small extrinsic reward (certificate or badge). second, they are flexible and allow learners to create individualized learning goals and pursue learning pathways according to their own preferred order and timeline. third, micro-credentialing can document informal and formal learning accomplishments achieved outside of credit programs in a meaningful package that fits nicely into a vitae or rtp file. there is a burgeoning literature supporting these purported benefits of micro-credentialing, but most of it is for its use with students. one study examined the impact of digital badging with university faculty and found dramatic increases in professional development workshops and high levels of support among those who did (hart, 2015). another study found that faculty at the university of colorado value the use of badges as a means to document professional development, which was identified as a motivator of early adopters of micro-credentialing (stephaniak & cary, 2019). in spite of these promising early reports, there is little empirical research on the use of micro-credentialing with faculty. using certificates to engage faculty in professional development current issues in education, 21(2) 3 the teaching certificate program at unc charlotte unc charlotte is a public urban research university that enrolled 29,710 students (including 5,323 graduate students) in fall 2018. it has just over 1,000 full-time faculty and approximately 400 part-time faculty. the center for teaching and learning (ctl) enhances the university’s mission of teaching and learning excellence, provides enterprise level instructional technologies, and champions the advancement of scholarly teaching. the ctl supports the teaching mission of the university through a range professional development programs including instructional design and technology consultations, workshops and webinars, faculty learning communities, faculty academies, a scholarship of teaching and learning grants program, a teachers observing peer program, and the teaching certificate program. a comprehensive program assessment of the 2016-2017 academic year identified several trends in ctl participation rates. first, we observed a disproportionate decline in attendance in pedagogy workshops relative to instructional technology workshops. we classify pedagogy workshops as those that help faculty incorporate best practices in teaching and learning into their in-person and on-line courses, while instructional technology workshops focus on the university’s learning management system (lms), student response system (srs), and web conferencing tool. these findings were puzzling because many pedagogy workshops were among the most highly rated ctl offerings by participants during the same time period. another observed data trend was an under-utilization of the top program, which was among our most highly rated programs. the teachers observing peers program (top) consists of a structured observation of a “master teacher” teaching a regular ug course, either in a faceto-face or in an online format, followed by a debrief session between the teacher and the observer(s). the face-to-face courses are in an active learning classrooms or use active learning techniques and the online courses have achieved quality matters designation. top teachers are from a range of disciplines and teach a wide range of course using diverse teaching strategies. observers choose a course to observe from the ctl website and prepare for the observation by selecting a structured observation form from the website. the peer observation forms are designed to facilitate and guide data collection during the observation which is then used during the debriefing session. another trend identified by the program assessment revealed that part-time faculty and graduate students comprised an ever-increasing percentage of participants in all ctl programming, relative to full-time teaching faculty. other research with our part-time faculty (see buch, mccullough, & tamberelli, 2018) had identified unique professional development needs and challenges facing this population that we were keen to address. a comprehensive needs assessment of our part-time faculty had shown a strong desire for flexible, on-demand professional development programming that would support them in the classroom while also providing documentation of their training investment that could be included in their vitaes. we knew from other university data that graduate students shared similar professional development needs and goals. in response to these trtends, ctl leadership explored ways to increase faculty (and graduate student) engagement with under-utilized but highly rated professional development opportunities. we wanted to offer programming that would attract more faculty to our mosthighly rated pedagogy workshops. we also wanted to address the flexibility and documentation needs of our part-time faculty and graduate students. finally, we wanted to significantly increase the numbers of program participants without sharply increasing resource demands in the ctl. https://teaching.uncc.edu/services-programs/teachers-observing-peers-program https://teaching.uncc.edu/services-programs/teachers-observing-peers-program using certificates to engage faculty in professional development current issues in education, 21(2) 4 our over-arching goal was to provide programming that would enhance the teaching and learning mission of the university. ctl leadership reviewed best practice trends in the literature seeking strategies most aligned with these goal, and the tcp approach to micro-credentialing fit the bill. considering the tiered approach developed at indiana, we decided to begin with a first-tier program that we called the essentails of teaching and learning certificate program, which was implemented in the fall of 2018. instead of creating new workshops and experiences that would offer participants a foundation in teaching and learning essentials, we incorporated pre-existing pedagogy workshops and adapted them in both content and delivery mode. the workshops included are syllabus 101: roadmap to success; introduction to learning objectives and backward design; using feedback to improve teaching and learning; inclusive teaching and learning; and getting started with active teaching and learning. completing the certificate takes approximately twelve hours of faculty time. the program is administered by the ctl and most workshops are taught by the ctl staff. the inclusive teaching workshops and some of the learning objectives workshops are led by staff from the following offices: the office of academic diversity and inclusion, the office of identity, equity, and engagement, the office of international programs, and the office of assessment. tcp participants are also required to participate in the teachers observing peers program, described above. although faculty may observe a full range of top teachers, only one observation and debrief session is required toward completion of the tcp. the utilization of existing programs and services was intended to ensure the cost-effectiveness and sustainability of the tcp. the tcp was designed to be faculty-centered in terms of access, flexibility, and timing. faculty may earn a certificate in a single semester but can also extend it as long as needed, with the ctl monitoring their progress via digital transcripts. faculty can also begin the program on the learning pathway that is best suited to their immediate teaching assignment, instructional needs, and development goals. the tcp thus meets the just-in-time pedagogical needs of teaching faculty whose investment in instructional development is rewarded with tangible evidence that can be included in their annual teaching review as formal documentation of these efforts. as a micro-credential, it is anticipated that a certificate of teaching and learning essentials will be more meaningful and easier for recipients to package into the teaching sections of their vitae than a random listing of workshops they have taken. another benefit of the tcp as a microcredentialy tool is that even pre-completion participation can be used to document progress and milestones and to inform other professional development decisions. it was anticipated that these features would appeal to all teaching faculty, and it may be especially attractive to part-time faculty and graduate students. results and discussion since implemented in 2018, 169 faculty have participated and 70 completion certificates have been issued. at the end of each academic year, an online survey is sent to faculty who have completed the tcp during that year. based on data collected from participants, the tcp is among our most popular initiatives, with 100% agreeing that their skill level was improved and that this translated into changes in their teaching practices. 68% reported that these teaching changes resulted in measurable improved learning outcomes for their students. these findings place the tcp at the very top of the most well-received ctl offerings during this time period. overall participation rates in pedagogy workshops has also risen dramaticaslly since the tcp was introduced. as reported above, prior to its implementation, 17 of the 20 workshops https://teaching.uncc.edu/services-programs/teachers-observing-peers-program using certificates to engage faculty in professional development current issues in education, 21(2) 5 with the highest overall registrations were instructional technology (focused on the learning management system [lms], student response system [srs], and web conferencing tool) and 3 were pedagogy (focused on universal design and inclusive teaching). data collected after its implementation (the 2018-19 ay), revealed that of the 20 workshops with the highest overall registrations, 7 were instructional technology and 13 were pedagogy workshops—all of which were part of the essentials of teaching and learning certificate program. during the same year, the top five workshops with the highest overall registrations were pedagogy workshops from the tcp program and the workshop with the fifth highest overall registrations was an instructional technology workshop focused on the lms. similar increases in participation rates have been observed during this time period for the teachers observing peers (top) program. thus, it appears the tcp has increased the reach of ctl offerings in a very cost-effective way. early anecdotal data also provide support for the tcp. we have heard from faculty (especially part-time faculty) that they value the certificate as a measurable indicator of their professional development investment as much as they value it as a process for becoming better teachers and facilitators of their students’ learning. this may explain the disproportionately higher participation rates in the tcp of part-time relative to full-time faculty, although the program has clearly appealed to both populations. anecdotal reports from participants in our adjunct faculty learning community (see buch, mccullough, & tamberelli, 2018) suggest that adjunct (part-time) faculty believe the program provides a micro-credential valued by hiring department chairs and deans that strengthens their qualifications for teaching (full-time as well as part-time) positions. another unexpected benefit of the tcp has been for ctl faculty and staff who report more satisfaction with workshop delivery due to the increased numbers of attendees resulting from the tcp. conclusion and future directions this paper adds to the emerging literature on the viability of micro-credentialing for faculty and graduate students in higher education, as both a professional development and documentation tool. in particular, our findings suggest that a teaching certificate program can be a powerful tool for engaging (or re-engaging) participants in new and existing teaching and learning programming. similar to the findings reported in the literature, our results suggest that micro-credentialing is a flexible, cost-effective faculty development strategy. of course, we base these findings on preliminary data and we plan to continue to monitor the tcp in terms of participation, completion, and satisfaction rates. we also hope to improve the way in which we assess changes to participants’ teaching skills and methods from self report to a more objective indicator. based on demographic participation trends and anecdotal results, we also plan to market the program more directly to part-time teaching faculty, especially those teaching large sections of high-enrollment first-and second-year undergraduate courses. another goal is to utilize participant feedback for program improvement. our preliminary analysis of participant responses to open-ended items on the program assessment survey has already identified a desire for a second certificate that builds on the basics covered in the essentials tcp, with a more “advanced” tc for those who have completed the first. this would be similar to the tiered approach used elsewhere that may eventually include a more complex set of tiered programming across more diverse learning pathways. using certificates to engage faculty in professional development current issues in education, 21(2) 6 references buch, k., mccullough, h., & tamberelli, l. (2018). understanding and responding to the unique needs of adjunct faculty: a longitudinal study. international journal of learning, teaching, and educational research, 16(10), 27-40. hamson-utley, j., & heyman, e. (2016). implementing a badging system faculty development. in d. ifenthaler, bellin-mularski, n., & d.-k. mah (eds.), foundations of digital badges and micro-credentials (pp. 237-258). springer international. hart, m. (2015). badges: a new measure of professional development. retrieved from http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/01/14/badges-a-new-measure professional-development.aspx?page=2 muilenburg, l., & berge, z. (2016). digital badges in education: trends, issues, and cases. new york: routledge. stefaniak, j., & carey, k. (2019). instilling purpose and value in the implementation of digital badges in higher education. international journal of educational technology in higher education, 16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-019-0175-9 yu, l., dyjur, p., miltenburg, j., & saito, k. (2015). micro-credentialing: digital badges in faculty professional development. in p. preciado babb, m. takeuchi, m., & j. lock (eds.). proceedings of the ideas: designing responsive pedagogy conference (pp. 82-89). calgary, canada: werklund school of education, university of calgary. http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/01/14/badges-a-new-measure-%20professional-development.aspx?page=2 http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/01/14/badges-a-new-measure-%20professional-development.aspx?page=2 using certificates to engage faculty in professional development current issues in education, 21(2) 7 author notes heather mccullough university of north carolina at charlotte heathermccullough@uncc.edu kim buch university of north carolina at charlotte kim.buch@uncc.ed guest editor notes sean m. leahy, ph.d. arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff, m.ed macel curtin university, learning futures advisor k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au mailto:heathermccullough@uncc.edu mailto:kim.buch@uncc.ed mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au using certificates to engage faculty in professional development current issues in education, 21(2) 8 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age current issues in education, 21(2) 1 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age samantha adams becker arizona state university sean m. leahy arizona state university kim flintoff curtin university ben scragg arizona state university abstract: the shapingedu community was established in 2018, with a call to action for a global gathering of dreamers, doers and drivers. this diverse group came together and began to form a new vision for the pathways to the future of a more connected and relevant global approach to education. emerging from this group was the vision that learning and teaching are inherently human activities, and that even in an increasingly digital and regulated world, all learning should support and enhance our development as people, communities, and societies. this brief introduction outlines the driving factors that brought forth the call for proposals, and provides a contextual grounding for the first selection of papers to be included in this first installment of the special issue. keywords: shapingedu, humanizing, learning citation: becker, s. a., leahy, s. m., flintoff, k., & scragg, b. (2020). introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age. current issues in education, 21(2). retrieved from introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age current issues in education, 21(2) 2 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1946 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 6/15/2020 shapingedu is a community of dreamers, doers, and drivers shaping the future of learning in the digital age. the vision is for changemaking individuals from a wide variety of learning-focused organizations across the world to collaborate on big ideas for transforming education. by deliberate design, shapingedu is action-oriented and believes the future is what we invent it to be. (https://shapingedu.asu.edu) introduction the shapingedu community was established in 2018, with a call to action for a global gathering of dreamers, doers and drivers. in april of that year, 129 leading practitioners, theorists, and thought leaders came together at skysong in scottsdale, arizona. behind the call was a small team of inspired and inspirational educators based at arizona state university. with the vision of asu’s chief information officer (cio), lev gonick, and the dynamic community-building capabilities of samantha becker guiding the mission, the dreamers, doers, and drivers came together and began to form a new vision for the pathways to the future of a more connected and relevant global approach to education. the resultant neighbourhoods began to focus on the primary concerns for the future of learning that became the inaugural 10 actions to shape the future of learning in the shapingedu skysong communique and represents our origin story. the 10 actions that were identified are as follows: 1. promote access and equality 2. connect education and the workforce of the future 3. build constellations of innovation 4. recognize all forms of learning 5. personalize learning 6. humanize learning 7. bolster intergenerational leadership for learning futures 8. foster immersive learning 9. innovate artificial intelligence applications 10. embed data-driven approaches for student success (shapingedu, n.d.) underpinning the ideas that emerged from that first meeting was a unified vision that learning and teaching are inherently human activities, and that even in an increasingly digital and regulated world, all learning should support and enhance our development as people, communities, and societies. these ideas were aggregated in our 2019 shapingedu memorial union communique, and they represent our commitment to human values, innovation, and action. it was after the 2019 event that the call went out for this special issue, which was to be launched when we met again in 2020. at that time we were unaware of the looming relevance of http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1946 https://shapingedu.asu.edu/home https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions https://shapingedu.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2019-shaping-edu-communique_0.pdf https://shapingedu.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2019-shaping-edu-communique_0.pdf introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age current issues in education, 21(2) 3 our commitment: education leaders must continuously explore and anticipate possible outliers that will impact every facet of teaching and learning (shapingedu, 2019). as we came together in 2020, the early influences of the covid-19 pandemic were being felt. some of us had been excluded from travelling, and preparations were made to accommodate virtual participation with those collocated at our regular meeting site at asu. over the course of the three days of activities the entire gathering transitioned to a fully online event. that set the scene for the global experience over the months following. as an editorial team we were affected. as founding shapingedu members within the original 130 dreamers, doers, and drivers, we were all intending to put the final touches to this special issue so it could be launched at the 2020 shapingedu gathering, we were all profoundly affected by the rapid changes in circumstances and ways of working that we suddenly faced. our regular work, and family responsibilities took on an urgency as we began to mitigate and adapt to the effects of the pandemic; our priorities shifted to ensuring we could work, communicate, and support others; our working days became a flurry of missions and responsibilities that saw us all working extended hours, and meeting at all hours of the day and night. like the rest of the world, we were coming to terms with a rapidly reimagined way of living and working. in many ways, it was because this group comprised of people who were used to working at the bleeding edge of educational technology in practice, and were adept at community engagement, and had the lived experience of being innovators and early adopters that we were able to not simply ride out the storm but to set new goals and new questions that would carry us well beyond the crisis we were experiencing. now, as institutions and schools around the world are diving into their new normals, we are able to return to the task of launching this special issue of current issues in education. the submissions selected for this edition are unintentionally prophetic. they were all created prior to the realisation of the covid-19 interruption to our lives. and as such, they highlight the foresight and vision of our community in relation to global priorities in education. when we launched the call for proposals for this special issue, we were living in another world – one that predominantly viewed online learning as experimental – or second class. what happens when the alternative choice becomes the mainstream reality, nearly overnight? for starters, we leverage the extensive body of research on effective pedagogy. next, we consider new visions for ideal future states for education, especially from the people who have been living and doing that research. the global asu shapingedu community of practice is brimming with education changemakers. our shared vision for the future of learning is a framing for the new normal we need to create. the articles submitted by these changemakers resonate today more than ever as they reflect the shifts that need to happen – from small steps to seismic efforts. special issue summaries over the coming months, we will be releasing the special issue articles in installments that capture specific calls to action for shaping the future of learning in the digital age. this first installment underscores the vitality of humanizing learning, no matter what form it takes. making learners feel welcome, embracing inclusive practices, and leading with authenticity are core to helping learners thrive. it is in this same spirit that we welcome you, special issue readers, to dream big with us. the first contribution of this installment entitled “humanizing online teaching to equitize higher education” by michelle pacansky-brock (foothill-deanza community college introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age current issues in education, 21(2) 4 district), michael smedshammer (modesto junior college), and kim vincent-layton (humboldt state university) addresses the gaps in traditional online learning and presents a model for humanized online teaching based on a theoretical framework that draws from culturally responsive teaching (crt), social presence, validation theory, and universal design for learners (udl). this paper discusses real teaching examples that explore a range of humanizing strategies to promote non-cognitive components of learning, and also addresses the identification of meaningful professional development around humanized online teaching. the second contribution from tom haymes (ideaspaces), entitled “the stac model: rethinking basic functionality of informal learning spaces” explores the realm of the “third space” and the role these often-underutilized spaces can play in student success, and argues that these spaces can be identified as a key facilitator for student success. in this paper haymes provides the stac (stickiness, toolsets, adjacencies, and community) model that can be used as a framework for prioritizing design and technologies within any contextual space to retain students into said learning environment. third, karen costa presents a multimedia exploration entitled “the value of imperfect videos” in which she shares her philosophy of creating imperfect videos as a tool for humanizing learning. costa explores how this strategy is aimed at connecting with new and traditional learners. this contribution to the special issue also stands out as a unique video-based contribution, which by its own nature explores contemporary ways of engaging with our diverse and talented shapingedu community. fourth, heather mccullough, and kim buch, university of north carolina at charlotte present the work and recent findings of their center for teaching and learning on a recently implemented micro-credential option for faculty and graduate students. in this paper mccullough and buch explore the increasing role of micro-credentialing in higher education, and discuss the outcomes and implications on professional development through the lens of the teaching certificate program at unc charlotte. this paper offers a contemporary look into the observations, and identification of future challenges of higher education institutions moving towards or adopting micro-credentialing strategies. the fifth contribution to this first special issue installment is “spatial computing: creating the future of learning” by emory craig (digital bodies) and maya georgieva (the new school). in this article craig and georgieva position spatial computing as the fourth paradigm of the digital revolution and discuss the potential to change the landscape of learning. the authors position the reader to think beyond the simple use of the underlying technologies (as interesting and complex as each of those may be) and to think about the deeper connection to learning, and development of social interactions in a truly virtualized environment. the paper presents a critical line of inquiry that explores the potential to leverage new and emergent technologies to transform the human experience. these pieces, and the ones that will follow over the next couple of months, also explore the futures landscape and raise thought-provoking questions and scenarios that challenge the reader to think critically and openly about the anticipated journey we are collectively embarking on. as the editors of this special issue, we would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the realization of this publication. not just the courageous and hard-working contributors but all those who have travelled with them through our community. every idea, every thought in this issue was informed and influenced by the relationships, the discussion, the commitments to action, and the considered, critical evaluation of all the work of all our community. introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age current issues in education, 21(2) 5 the authors of the works presented have courageously challenged us to reconsider our purpose and practice in education, they offer new ways of seeing, and alternative pathways to the outcomes we all hope for. they have set about to highlight the way markers, and the emerging shifts that will be required to ensure that the digital age of learning also serves as an amplification of our collective humanity, connectedness and responsibilities to our future; they shed light on the pluralities of our dependence upon each other and the planet that supports us; they unify us while accepting all our differences and nuances of being. references shapingedu. (n.d.). 10 actions to shape the future of learning: our origin story. shapingedu. https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions shapingedu (2019) dreaming, doing, and driving the future of learning the 2019 shapingedu memorial union communique. shaping edu. https://shapingedu.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2019-shaping-edu-communique_0.pdf author/guest editor notes samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu sean m. leahy, ph.d. arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu kim flintoff, m.ed macel curtin university, learning futures advisor k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions https://shapingedu.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2019-shaping-edu-communique_0.pdf mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au mailto:bscragg@asu.edu introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age current issues in education, 21(2) 6 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf telengage: enhancing collaboration between families and schools current issues in education, 24(1) 1 volume 24, issue 1 february 13, 2023 issn 1099-839x telengage: enhancing collaboration between families and schools katherine a. curry, edward harris, jentre j. olsen, younglong kim, & dominic egure oklahoma state university abstract: findings in the literature strongly support the importance of family engagement in education. however, effective partnerships between families and schools are rare , especially in ethnically diverse communities where families may lack efficacy or face structural challenges for engagement. additionally, educator perspectives toward engagement are often framed by white, middle-class paradigms. educators often fail to acknowledge structural challenges faced by low-income families or the cultural contributions low-income and/or minoritized families can bring. to facilitate engagement between families and schools, a new echo® line, telengage, was developed at oklahoma state university, educational leadership program. echo®, traditionally used in the field of medicine, has utility for professional development for educators because it offers a platform for case-based learning where real problems are addressed in real-time. additionally, didactic presentations provide professional development for collaborative learning. through the lens of communities of practice (cop), this qualitative case study explores how relationships between families and schools changed as a result of participation in telengage. tenets of cop, negotiated meaning, mutual engagement, and a shared repertoire, support a collaborative approach to addressing complex problems. findings suggest that a cop has emerged through telengage and has resulted in changes in perspectives across families and educational leaders about “what it means to be engaged,” enhanced family efficacy for engagement, and changes in engagement practice as family voice has expanded through sharing of concerns/perspectives. these findings have important implications for equitable engagement in a convenient, cost-free environment where educators and families can communicate and develop mutually supportive understandings and practices. keywords: family engagement, professional development, family/school partnerships, echo, communities of practice citation: curry, k., harris, e., olsen, j., kim, y., egure, d. (2023). telengage: enhancing collaboration between families and schools. current issues in education, 24(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss1.2089 accepted: january 24, 2023 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss1.2089 curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 2 introduction several paradigm shifts have occurred in the last two decades in the line of research examining relationships between families and schools. one shift has been a move from “parent involvement,” which focused on school-centered strategies, to “family engagement,” which prioritized strategies aimed at empowering families to become change agents within their school communities (ishimaru, 2019; stefanski et al., 2016). this shift addressed concerns regarding previous approaches that may have unconsciously proliferated a deficit perspective because it limited family participation to the types of activities that schools perceived as “involvement,” and it failed to address community-level barriers that often limit family participation in those activities (ishimaru, 2014). additionally, parent involvement approaches failed to consider societal inequities or acknowledge “fundamental historical, cultural, and social divides between parents and schools” (ishimaru, 2013, p. 189). the movement away from parent involvement and toward family engagement presupposed that most families were already doing what they could to help their children succeed in school, and the shift recognized that community structural factors often limited families in their engagement efforts. this perception further acknowledged barriers such as poverty, language and cultural differences, immigration status, lack of dependable transportation, childcare needs, and demands of inflexible work schedules that sometimes limit family presence on school campuses (baker et al., 2016; christianakis, 2011; ishimaru & bang, 2016). it also addressed the importance of shared understandings so that families and schools could collaborate more effectively (alameda-lawson, 2014). despite movement from a parent involvement to a family engagement perspective, ishimaru (2019) argues that both approaches fall short of their intended outcomes because they tend to emphasize “changing – or ‘fixing’marginalized parents and families” (p. 3). the result is a perpetuation of racialized narratives regarding low-income families or communities of color (ishimaru, 2019). in contrast, ishimaru (2019) calls for new practices that provide parents and families “a place at the table to contribute their expertise in shaping the education agenda” (p. 4). in these efforts, educational leaders can build and enact equitable collaborations “as a process that moves beyond the ‘good parent/bad parent’ dichotomy to foster solidarities amid difference toward community-determined educational justice and well-being” (ishimaru, 2019, p. 4). the new perspective of transformative equitable collaboration provides space for families, schools, and communities to work together to support student success. problem advancements in perspectives should arguably lead to enhanced collaboration between families and schools; however, solidarities and understandings between schools and families remain relatively rare, and low-income households and families of color continue to have interactions with schools that are less empowering or satisfying than interactions between schools and white or middle-class families (rispoli et al., 2018). socio-economic factors, understood as predictive of involvement (bardhoshi et al., 2016), continue to limit family access to schools, and educator perspectives toward collaboration continue to be framed by white, middle-class paradigms, which fail to acknowledge that low-income families are often hindered by the structural challenges they face on a daily basis (alamedalawson, 2014). additionally, educators often enter the profession with limited understanding curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 3 of students’ cultural contexts (epstein et al., 2011), and they fail to recognize the cultural contributions that low-income and/or minoritized families can bring (ishimaru, 2014). new practices must be shaped, therefore, that position parents as co-leaders and decision makers in schools in order to disrupt barriers and integrate the cultural capital of diverse families. these instances are challenging because, when power sharing between schools and families is implemented, existing norms and practices are disrupted, and consistent attention is needed to implement these changes with fidelity (ishimaru, 2013). school-centric perspectives that inhibit understandings of how families are actually engaged in education and, as a result, limit family voice in collaborative efforts must be replaced with opportunities for transformative collaboration in equitable spaces to support student educational needs. background in 2017, a group of educational leadership faculty at oklahoma state university (osu) partnered with the osu center for health sciences to incorporate the echo® platform, traditionally used in the field of medicine, into the field of education. project echo®, originally developed at the university of new mexico to provide professional development to health care specialists/providers in under-resourced communities, consists of four basic principles (arora, 2019) with a focus on de-monopolizing knowledge: 1. cost-effective technology to leverage scarce resources 2. case-based and problem-based learning to master complexity. 3. assessment strategies to track and monitor outcomes. 4. pedagogical and andragogical learning strategies to facilitate learning (“all teach; all learn”). utilizing teleconferencing zoom technology, echo® links expert specialists at “hub” sites with primary care clinicians in local communities referred to as “spoke” sites. hub team members serve as the planning team for echo® sessions, and spoke site members serve as participants in these social learning spaces. during echo® clinics, two activities are advanced: 1) participants present patient cases that promote interactive hub/spoke discussions that lead to recommendations for best treatment strategies, and 2) participants present a short, ten-to-fifteenminute didactic presentation regarding a topic of mutual interest. in medical echo® lines, rather than referring clients to specialists in larger metropolitan areas, rural physicians can receive training to meet the health needs of their clients, resulting in substantial savings and health care efficiency for both the client and the state. in transferring the echo® platform to educational leadership, three educational echo® lines were launched in 2017: teleed, telesped, and teleedge. these lines provided professional development support centered around bolstering statewide professional growth in three ways: support for remotely located rural educators (teleed), special education support (telesped), and support for leadership initiatives set forth by the oklahoma state department of education (teleedge). the purpose of each educationrelated echo® line is to provide an online, social learning space for professional growth and development to meet the needs of educators across the state. instead of traditional professional development opportunities that bring educational leaders to an urban area to receive specialized training, echo® expands learning opportunities across the state by meeting educational leaders “where they are.” specialized training, often unavailable in remote areas, is delivered through the zoom platform during bi curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 4 weekly, hour-long meetings. each meeting is planned by a member of a hub team, and the schedule consists of presentation of an anonymous case and a short, ten-to-fifteen-minute, didactic presentation. each case, presented anonymously, involves a dilemma or concern that is common to most educational leaders. adhering to strict anonymity, details are shared with all participants, and participants work together to suggest potential solutions to address the challenges of the case. the echo® mantra, “all teach; all learn,” undergirds all discussions as exchange of ideas and hearing the “voice” of all participants facilitates an equitable learning space. it is important to emphasize that echo® is not a webinar; instead, it is a collaborative virtual learning space where all participants can experience professional growth and development. echo® education lines have proven vital for facilitating high-quality professional development and communication, particularly during the covid-19 pandemic when participation in echo® lines exceeded the five-hundred participant capacity of zoom. family/school collaboration introduced in echo® in fall 2020, a new echo® line, telengage, was launched at osu. the purpose of telengage was to enhance relationships, facilitate collaboration, and promote shared understandings between families and schools. telengage connects families and schools through virtual zoom meetings for exchange of ideas to enhance collaborative understanding and capacity building, a mission that is essential as families have assumed additional educational responsibilities related to the covid-19 pandemic. telengage met twice each month for one hour on zoom during the course of this study, from fall 2020 through spring 2021. participants were encouraged to attend through email invitations sent to district and building leaders. district and building leaders forwarded the invitations to the families in their districts/buildings. all families were invited to participate, providing a space for “belonging” regardless of ethnicity, identity, or income. participation in telengage ranged from 25 to 55 participants during the pandemic, with attendance from teachers, educational leaders, and family members. participation grew as the pandemic progressed, and relational networks were established for the purpose of knowledge production and shared control of knowledge. because telengage is a new application of the echo® platform for collaborative efforts, the purpose of this study is to understand how participation in telengage has influenced transformative equitable collaboration between families and schools. theoretical framework the theoretical framework applied for this study is relational congruence (garbacz et al., 2015) embedded in wenger’s (1998) communities of practice (cop). wenger defines a cop as “a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and they learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (wenger & wenger-trayner, 2015, para. 4). telengage functions as a cop through bi-monthly, online interactions with a specific focus on enhancing collaboration to support student success. wenger (1998) explains that a cop is a system of (1) joint enterprise through negotiated meaning, (2) mutual engagement, and (3) shared repertoire. joint enterprise refers to how members negotiate their response to the conditions/goals of the cop; mutual engagement involves sustained interaction and roles/relationships that arise from interaction; and shared repertoire consists of signs, symbols, tools, and language used as resources and have meaning to the cop (wenger, 1998). curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 5 in this work, we expand on wenger’s cop model by integrating the concept of relational congruence. relational congruence is defined as “a multidimensional relationship concerned with the degree of similarity and shared perceptions among participants” (sheridan et al., 2004, p. 125). we argue that relational congruence, through congruence in communication (garbacz et al., 2015), is a necessary condition for enhancing the mutual engagement dimension of successful cops. specifically, congruence in communication leads to relational congruence as participants begin to understand the perspectives of one another. findings by garbacz et al. (2015) support this contention. they examined congruence in communication across parents and teachers in consultation efforts regarding student behavior and goals. their findings indicated that congruent communication moderated the effect of behavioral consultation on student social skills. we argue that relational congruence, through congruent communication, is necessary for joint enterprise, mutual engagement toward the development of negotiated conditions/goals of the cop, and a shared repertoire of language, signs, and symbols that must be present to provide meaning to the cop. the overall success or effectiveness of the cop depends on the strength of these three overlapping dimensions: domain, the identity of the cop; community, the quality of relationships and interactions between members; and practice, the activities related to acquiring and sharing knowledge (snyder et al., 2004; wenger & wenger-trayner, 2015). these dimensions support a process of learning that involves participation, membership, and identity formation. identity formation begins with the processes of self-identification, changes as a product of participation, and, ultimately, influences practice. snyder et al. (2004) argue that effective cops are imperative for increasing an organization’s collective intelligence and creating true learning systems equipped to address large-scale, complex challenges of our global society. we add that relational congruence, through congruent communication, can enhance the effectiveness of a successful cop, acting as a conduit and increasing the flow of information and usable insights among all participants. a model of the embeddedness of relational congruence into wenger’s (1998) cop is provided in figure 1. figure 1 model for enhancing family and school collaboration through communities of practice joint enterprise shared repertoire mutual engagement relation al curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 6 theoretical framework and telengage due to the volunteer, interactive nature of telengage, communities of practice as a theoretical framework aligns seamlessly with the function of telengage. telengage participants are individuals brought together by a common desire to learn and solve problems in schools. as individuals become more involved with telengage through continual participation, the core components of a cop are naturally facilitated: joint enterprise, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire. therefore, utilizing wenger’s dimensions and the practices associated with them could help provide an understanding of how collaboration is enhanced through participation in telengage. research questions how has telengage influenced transformative equitable collaboration between families and schools? subquestions: 1. how has participation in telengage enabled communication congruence between families and schools? 2. how has participation in telengage influenced educator and family identities toward relational congruence? 3. if present, how has relational congruence influenced negotiated meaning and goals of the cop (joint enterprise)? 4. if present, how has relational congruence influenced mutual engagement within this cop (mutual engagement)? 5. how have tools and resources made available in this cop promoted collaborative approaches to decision-making (shared repertoire)? literature review educational leaders and scholars agree that family engagement in education is critical for student success (ackley & cullen, 2010; cheung & pomerantz, 2012; gonzalez & jackson, 2013; mcconnell & kubina, 2014; oberg de la garza & kuri, 2014). family engagement can have a positive effect on key educational measures, including student motivation (cheung & pomerantz, 2012), student behavior (sheldon & epstein, 2002; sheridan et al., 2012), student optimism toward school (oberg de la garza & moreno kuri, 2014), and student attendance (mcconnell & kubina, 2014; sheldon, 2007). students whose parents are engaged experience higher levels of homework completion (dettmers et al., 2019), enhanced school satisfaction/optimism (oberg de la garza & moreno kuri, 2014), higher engagement in school (hughes & kwok, 2007), higher graduation rates (midel & reynolds, 1999; parr & bonitz, 2015), and higher academic outcomes such as test scores and grades (gonzales & jackson, 2013; hughes & kwok, 2007) and college entrance rates (ou & reynolds, 2014; pernam & titus, 2005). ackley and cullen (2010) also found that home/school collaboration has a positive effect on family relationships, often reducing stress on parents and children in the home. family engagement perspectives over time understandings regarding family engagement have evolved over the past several decades. epstein’s (1986) seminal work on “overlapping spheres of influence” was framed during the time when three primary perspectives guided the thinking of researchers: separate curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 7 responsibilities of families and schools (weber, 1947), shared responsibilities of families and schools (bronfenbrenner, 1979), and sequential responsibilities of families and schools (bloom, 1964; piaget & inhelder, 1969). epstein’s model of overlapping spheres of influence most closely aligns with bronfenbrenner’s (1979) model as it builds on the ecology-nuanced engagement reality. in epstein’s model, three spheres—home, school, and community—overlap in shared goals and missions, and with unique and combined influences on children through the interactions of parents, educators, community partners, and students across contexts. epstein (2011) suggested that, when the spheres of the family, school, and community closely resemble each other through “family-like schools” and “school-like families” (p.46), student learning is supported and facilitated. the degree of overlap of influence is determined by a twin set of forces: time, experiences in families and schools, and also, by shared experiences, philosophies, and practices (epstein, 2011). barton et al. (2004) viewed the practice of parent engagement as ecologies, emphasizing space and capital to describe engagement practices. they also recognized parents’ mental nodes of engagement practices. their conceptual work is built from cultural-historical activity theory and critical race theory to point to engagement practices regarding how the community and its values make or mar engagement practices. according to barton et al. (2004), all engagement practices are mediated by power and politics. in the light of their framework, barton et al. (2004) described parental engagement as the mediation between space and capital by parents in relation to others in school settings, and they emphasized that this mediation must be understood as both an action and an orientation to action. further, baquedano-lopez et al. (2013) questioned previous approaches to family engagement, which they perceived as “neo-deficit perspectives” (p. 150), because they believed that previous models did not acknowledge power relations between educational stakeholders nor inequity issues that influence the ways that families engage in schools. they argued that the “tropes of parents as first teachers, parents as learners, parents as partners, and parents as choosers and consumers find their counterpart in government policies on education and reflect deeply held beliefs about parental roles” (baquedano-lopez et al., 2013, p. 172). they argued that these roles are disadvantageous to non-dominant groups but may provide an advantage to white middle-class parents. the authors consequently offered a decolonized and empowerment approach to parent engagement that considered the intersecting dimensions of race and class in engagement efforts. to be noted, along with this work, are efforts centering communities and families along a framework of culturally sustaining pedagogy (csp) (ladson-billings, 2017; paris & alim, 2017). at its core, csp advances educational contexts as sites for “sustaining the lifeways of communities rather than eradicating them” (alim et al., 2020, p. 262). this important work further promotes a paradigm shift away from deficit-minded family engagement as csp positions diversity, or cultural dexterity, as a necessary good whereby the work of engaging cultural pluralism is viewed, not by replacing deficits, but rather through critically enriching the strengths of the diverse school community (paris, 2012). current status of engagement of non-dominant families despite advancements in understandings regarding how non-dominant families can be included in engagement efforts, true collaboration between families and schools remains relatively rare, especially in ethnically diverse communities. research indicates lower levels of collaboration between low-income families or families of color than between schools and white, curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 8 middle-class families. socio-economic factors, often predictive of involvement (bardhoshi et al., 2016; green et al., 2007), and cultural/ethnic disparities between minoritized groups and schools tend to negatively influence collaboration between schools and families (rispoli et al., 2018). one potential reason for disparities between low-income families and schools is that school efforts to include families are often framed by white, middle-class paradigms (curry-stevens et al., 2013). curry-stevens and colleagues (2013) state, parent engagement has long favored self-motivated parents who are aligned with dominant school culture, meaning white, professionally credentialed parents. this leaves many parents out, to the detriment of both schools becoming the hub of their communities and the elimination of disparities (p. 20). specifically, structural challenges faced by low-income families (alameda-lawson, 2014; kohl et al., 2000) and deficit mentalities attributed to misunderstandings of the cultural capital and strengths that diverse families can bring to education result in disparities in the effectiveness of partnerships (christianakis, 2011; ishimaru, 2013). these challenges are important because without addressing community-level barriers, collaboration efforts cannot equitably engage families from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, and they prevent schools and families from forming shared understandings that can ultimately influence student success. further, even when school personnel are able to identify structural challenges that impede family engagement, evidence suggests that they struggle to conceptualize the need to address such barriers or to determine strategies that may enhance common understandings (baker et al., 2016). baker et al. (2016) suggest that many educators simply lack the training and resources needed to equitably engage all parents. transformative equitable collaboration: a move away from deficit-based strategies a more recent approach to collaboration has been to collaborate with families in an equitable manner that involves family capacity-building, relationship-building, and systemic capacity-building efforts (ishimaru, 2017). this process, referred to as “transformative equitable collaboration” (ishimaru, 2017, p. 2), moves away from deficit-based strategies (ishimaru, 2017; olivos, 2006) toward equitable interactions to promote transformative educational change (ishimaru, 2017). it further recognizes cultural wealth that is present in all neighborhoods (yosso, 2005) and repositions leadership as a collective effort (bertrand & rodela, 2018). this strategy differs from family engagement in that, even though family engagement efforts attempted to empower and include families as “change agents who can transform urban schools and neighborhoods” (shirley, 1997, p. 73), transformative equitable collaboration addresses power inequities between families and schools by challenging the “rules of engagement” in traditional partnership efforts (ishimaru, 2017, p.5). equitable collaboration encourages reciprocal strategies that recognize the “funds of knowledge” and cultural/intellectual resources for more equitable, collaborative interactions between families and schools (bryk et al., 2010; moll et al., 1992). the echo® platform and telengage telengage uses the exact process, technology, and infrastructure as echo®; however, instead of medical counsel, telengage unites families, schools, community members, and professionals to support shared understandings regarding student learning. through bi-monthly, hour-long meetings, telengage virtually connects interdisciplinary stakeholders to create a learning network and to enhance family contributions to their school communities. in line with curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 9 the echo® model, participants include a hub team and spoke sites. the role of the hub team is to help with session organization, identification and sharing of cases, and didactic presentations. the hub team for telengage consists of nine members: two university professors, one building leader, one district leader, a classroom teacher, a parent, a school psychologist, a district leader from one of the tribal nations in the state, and a representative from a national parent/school networking platform. spoke site participants consist of a diverse group of teachers, administrators, state-level educational leaders, family members, and community leaders. invitations for telengage are sent through email, and anyone who is interested in the discussion may join as a spoke site participant. the goals of telengage include: 1. encouraging shared understandings between educators and families regarding collaboration in education 2. communication capacity building of families and educators as they learn to work together. 3. shared understandings of challenges faced by families and schools. 4. development of strategies to address those challenges. 5. enhanced family and educator efficacy for collaboration 6. enhanced family social capital (access to resources, support, etc.) through networks established. the salience of the timing of telengage cannot be overstated. in spring 2020, the covid19 pandemic propelled families to the center of educational responsibility. telengage addressed networking needs by providing the following benefits: • case-based discussions to address “real” problems in “real” contexts in “real” time • sharing of perspectives, including cultural capital embedded in diverse communities • multidisciplinary collaboration in a mutually supportive space. additionally, telengage will provide a platform to enhance understandings between families and schools as new post-pandemic educational norms begin to emerge. methods the design for this qualitative case study provides a “holistic description and explanation” (merriam, 1998, p. 51) of participant perspectives exploring the influence of participation in 2020 telengage bi-monthly sessions on engagement practices. telengage participation involves a nine-member hub team and 40-50 spoke site members. hub team members are responsible for identifying and presenting anonymous cases during bi-weekly sessions and for “taking turns” presenting short didactic presentations focusing on an issue related to school/family partnerships. spoke site members include administrators, educational leaders, parents, teachers, and other stakeholders across the state of oklahoma. these spoke site members receive an invitation to bi-weekly telengage meetings, and attendance at each meeting has been between 44-50 spoke site members. in the spirit of “all teach; all learn,” spoke sites participants engage in each telengage session by asking clarifying questions and providing recommendations regarding the case that is presented. participants purposeful criterion sampling was used to select six hub team and six spoke site members for semi-structured interviews. criteria included attendance at more than half of all curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 10 telengage sessions, active participation through telengage discussions or presentations, and diversity in professional affiliation. registration data that had been gathered before each telengage session included attendance, participant email addresses, and occupation/position. these data were utilized to identify possible participants in the study, and participants who had attended more than half of the telengage sessions during 2020 were invited to participate through email. as potential participants volunteered to participate, purposeful selection was utilized to select participants from a variety of professional positions to access diverse perspectives. hub team participants included one district leader, one building leader, one classroom teacher, one parent, one representative from the family engagement network, and one school psychologist. spoke site participants included two building leaders, one district leader, two parents, and a community stakeholder. as with the sample from the hub team, spoke site participants were selected to gain diverse perspectives. two university professors led the interview process (one from the hub team and another from a related program in the university). data analysis data collection and analysis occurred simultaneously following merriam’s (1985) constant comparative method. data sources included interviews with twelve participants (6 hub team members and 6 spoke site members), didactic powerpoint and case presentations posted on the telengage webpage, notes that recorded recommendations for addressing problems identified in case presentations, and observation of recorded telengage sessions and accompanying field notes. interviews were conducted via zoom technology because of pandemic protocols, and each lasted approximately 45 minutes to one hour. all telengage sessions were recorded, and all session recordings were included in data analysis. data were also collected from interactions in the “chat” feature of telengage bi-weekly meetings. interview transcript data were coded following merriam’s (2016) constant comparative method of analysis. each researcher conducted open coding independently so that comparisons could be made across researchers as data were coded. open coding was followed by axial coding (charmaz, 2006) to identify relationships among the codes. researchers met to collectively condense codes into categories, and categories were utilized to identify themes following merriam’s (2009) analysis process called “sorting categories” (p. 187). powerpoint presentations, telengage session recordings, participant comments in the “chat” feature of zoom, case documents, and recommendations for case-based problems were analyzed through the creation of reflective memos (creswell & poth, 2018). these additional data sources were utilized for triangulation and to promote trustworthiness of the findings (lincoln & guba, 1985). coding of memos was an iterative process, allowing continual consideration of how each piece of data related to the study’s purpose and research questions. following the process of constant comparison, reflective memos were coded as data were collected (merriam, 2016) and were then analyzed to compare findings with themes that emerged from transcript data to further promote trustworthiness of the findings (lincoln & guba, 1985). themes that emerged from data analysis included: (1) shared understandings of “what it means to support student success,” (2) enhanced family efficacy for collaboration, (3) change of practice through sharing of concerns, ideas, and perspectives, (4) the influence of covid-19 closures on family/school communication, and (5) collaborative problem solving curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 11 between families and schools. the themes were then utilized to answer research questions, and the theoretical framework was applied in the discussion of the findings. findings what it means to support student success enabling conversations interview and observational data revealed that telengage created channels of communication between families and schools. due to the intentional lack of hierarchy among telengage echo® participants, through the “all teach; all learn” mantra, all voices are given space and equal weight. telengage sessions, we found, served as a mechanism to facilitate the flow of dialogue, back and forth communication between schools and families, enabling communication congruence. one participant explained her perception of communication during telengage sessions by stating, “i always forget who is on the hub team and who are spoke sites. it doesn’t make any difference. we all participate in problem solving together.” another participant stated, “at first, i thought i would be afraid to speak up, but everyone made me feel comfortable. i really look forward to discussions now.” the case presentations, specifically, provided an opportunity for all participants to participate in meaningful conversations. for example, during conversations regarding suggestions for case presentations, differing opinions and perspectives were presented. however, each suggestion for addressing the situation in the case was presented respectfully, and diverse perspectives enabled conversations to deepen. as one educator participant shared her perspective, a parent participant responded, “i never thought of [the problem presented] that way. that helps me understand why school leaders may respond this way.” in this way, telengage served as a community of practice in promoting expanded understandings of different ways to support student success. it is unknown, exactly, how the degree or type of parent input to school staff differed from conversations between schools and families prior to telengage; however, observations of dialogue during telengage sessions suggest that the efficacy of families to share their perspectives or concerns were strengthened during telengage and that these diverse perspectives helped participants to understand the viewpoints of others. school staff comments during telengage, such as, “there have been suggestions that parents have made that i had not considered,” support the conclusion that, during telengage, school staff heard parent voices in ways that differed from their previous interactions. relational congruence, therefore, was deepened through first establishing communication congruence. family perspectives when conversations began in early fall 2020, parents often described their actions as “getting [name of child] ready for school,” “attending parent conferences,” “helping in the classroom,” “making copies for teachers,” or “volunteering for after school events.” however, as discussions during telengage sessions continued, it became apparent that perceptions were changing. for example, during one telengage session, the role of the parent teacher organization (pta) was discussed. parents and educators were very quick to point out that parent teacher organizations often fulfill roles that are not within the originating purpose of the organization. one parent stated, “i think people are confused about what pta is meant for. pta is supposed to be about advocating for our children, not making curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 12 copies or hosting bake sales. i think we need to change what we are doing.” another parent agreed by stating, “yes, we need a discussion of how [children’s] needs have changed and how pta can bridge the gap for those needs.” during interviews, both educator and family participants explained that the opportunity to engage in discussions and didactic presentations through telengage encouraged them to perceive collaboration more as “shared responsibility” for learning. during an interview session, one parent noted, “i used to think i sent [name of child] to school to get an education. now, i see that it is my responsibility too.” a second parent stated during an interview, “[education] shouldn’t all fall on the shoulders of the teachers. we can help at home.” this comment represents perceptions of parent participants during telengage sessions who expressed that they had always thought of their roles as “getting the child to school” and “supporting the teacher.” many had not considered the understanding expressed by an educator during a telengage meeting that “a parent is a child’s first teacher.” these findings from both interview and observational data suggest a deeper recognition of individual contributions that both parents and educators make in promoting student success. educator perspectives during early meetings of telengage, when educators were asked, “what does collaboration look like? how do you know that parents are involved?” educator responses aligned with the responses of parents. they often suggested activities that were schoolcentric, such as, “attending parent/teacher conferences,” “helping kids with homework,” or “communicating with the teacher.” as time progressed, however, actions and activities such as “talking with [name of child] about the school day,” “family traditions,” and “communicating expectations for learning” have been recognized. one educator stated, “…when parents say things like ‘when you graduate from high school, not if.’ those comments let children know that families have high expectations for learning.” additiona lly, as families have shared their perspectives during case discussions, educators have noted the important contributions that they bring. during an interview, one educator responded, “there have been suggestions that parents have made that i had not considered. their comments help me understand different ways to address these problems.” prior to a more established relational congruence between parents and educators, important parent suggestions and usable insights easily fell by the wayside. however, as communication increased during telengage sessions, so did the shared repertoire of language and tools to reinforce consistent messaging for student success. these shared understandings were evident in observational data as well as interview data. consistent communication and collaboration during telengage sessions allowed for the creation of opportunities toward the mutual exchange of usable insight. when families and educators more consistently engaged in this shared learning space, a shared repertoire of tools and language was reinforced, and the resulting knowledge creation was beneficial both in the home and in the school. family efficacy the mantra of echo®, “all teach; all learn,” provides a platform for equitable discussion among participants. professional titles and affiliations are not mentioned, and all participants have the opportunity to voice their opinions. as participation in telengage curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 13 progressed, parents gained efficacy to engage in conversations with educational leaders. this finding was evident in observational data from telengage sessions. during an interview, one parent stated, “it’s getting easier [to participate]. i didn’t know, at first, if my opinion would matter.” during a separate interview, another parent stated, “with all of the experts in the meeting, i didn’t know if i could speak up or not.” this efficacy was further reflected in enhanced participation during discussions when parent input did align exactly with educator responses. during one of the sessions, when a case study addressed the issue of parents feeling like an administrative decision had limited their participation at the school, one parent stated, “parents just want to know they are welcome and that their help is appreciated.” this parent made this statement in a sess ion with educational leaders present. parent confidence to express their perspectives is further evidenced in the “chat” feature of online meetings. one parent stated, “[administrators need to] find ways to show parents sincere appreciation for their willingness to help and for the tasks that they complete.” enhanced efficacy is further evidenced in the frequency of family participation in telengage discussions. parents participated freely, and they often addressed educators and each other in their discussions. these findings from interview and observational data collected during telengage were supported in comments in the “chat” feature of telengage sessions. as time progressed, family members increasingly offered their comments through discussion or in “chat” comments. these interactions suggest an increase in relational congruence as family participant efficacy increased. as parents began to feel more comfortable and established in their role as a partner in these discussions, all stakeholders benefitted, and the goal of supporting student success was mutually advanced. changes in practice hearing the opinions, suggestions, and challenges from both educators and families led to less separation or distinction in roles. during one telengage session, one part icipant stated, “i often forget if i am wearing my ‘educator’ or ‘parent’ hat [during telengage meetings]!” evidence suggests that, as identities consolidated toward a unified community with the common goal of enhancing education for students, changes in practice resulted. during one of the telengage sessions, a spoke site participant suggested that schools need to “touch base” with parents and students on a regular basis during the pandemic. numerous comments were made from educators regarding how they have integrated this practice in their districts, with one educator stating, “i understand that families are struggling right now and doing all that they can. i need to continue to ask how i can support them at home.” during another telengage session, an educator responded to a parent's suggestion by stating, “i love the suggestion of also getting feedback from students. it keeps them engaged!” during an interview with a spoke site district leader, she stated, “we can’t do this alone. we are very dependent on families to help students learn. knowing what they care about will help us support them.” an additional perspective that has emerged is the recognition of the social and cultural capital that diverse families can bring. observational data revealed that par ticipation in telengage has grown increasingly diverse, with approximately 25-30% individuals of color during each session. spoke site participants included individuals from both rural and urban schools, highand low-poverty families, families and school leaders with high english language learner populations, and family members from black, native american, and curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 14 hispanic/latinx families. because urban and rural schools in the state serve a diverse population of families and students, this trend is important. while enhanced diversity continues to be a goal of telengage, participants openly shared suggestions that reflect the social capital that they bring. during one telengage session, a spoke site participant explained, “my family is a large, extended family. we make sure that our babies have what they need [to succeed in school]. if schools let us know what they need, we will all join in to help.” another spoke site participant stated, “if they can’t get it [academic help] at school, we have plenty of help at my church.” another telengage family participant explained, “i have a job that is flexible. i know many don’t have that, but i look for ways to enrich my child’s education. it can’t be all worksheets [to keep them engaged]. i depend on other parents to help me with that.” at the family level, changes in practice are evidenced as families looked for ways to enhance learning, particularly those whose children are attending class virtually. during interview sessions, families explained that they had learned new approaches to supporting student success, such as reaching out to other families to plan learning activities such as trips to the aquarium or coordinated efforts to tutor students in algebra 1. educator practice has been influenced as they began to understand some of the challenges that families were experiencing. for example, participants who were also parents on both the hub team and spoke sites shared frustration with working from home while also trying to support student learning. this commonality caused blurring of roles as both educators and family members experienced similar dilemmas. demanding work schedules was a common frustration among telengage participants as well. during telengage sessions, educators openly shared some of their frustrations with online learning, and they reached out to parents for ideas and support. for example, educators expressed their concerns with a lack of student engagement in online learning and asked family members for ideas of how to engage students more fully. conversations during telengage sessions involved discussion of delays in learning during school closures that will likely have long-term consequences if not addressed. educators participating in telengage offered ideas such as reading time, adhering to a learning schedule, and other supportive practices that can support learning in the home. these findings suggest that an increase in communication congruence resulted in more clearly defined relational congruence as educators and family members understood each other’s perspectives. as communication increased, not only between family members and educators, but also among different families and out into the community, the nature of a joint enterprise seemed to be more clearly established. this interdependence seemed to solidify the negotiated meaning and goal of the collective by keeping the promotion of student success at the fore, as explained further in the discussion section of this manuscript. covid and telengage the launch of telengage coincided with school closures due to high rates of covid-19 infection in the state. school closures strongly influenced discussions during telengage sessions. during telengage sessions, parents were eager to discuss their “new responsibilities” as a result of at-home learning. during an interview with a family member participant, she expressed that telengage has helped her adjust to the changes that the covid-19 pandemic “has propelled [her] into.” although perspectives regarding online learning were always positive, dialogue helped to support both families and educators during curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 15 this trying time. during interview sessions, parents described their roles as more active and “hands-on” in the education of their children, and they expressed that covid-19 closures have caused “quite a bit of stress” in their homes. one parent stated, “having my children at home all day means that our [family] schedules have changed dramatically. i really didn’t know how to structure a school day before this [pandemic] started” one parent stated, “i am now a teacher for [name of child]. i used to think teaching was all on the school.” all participants in this study recognized that family roles and responsibilities have rapidly changed because of the pandemic and that “a new normal” is likely to evolve. during an interview, one educator summed this sentiment when he stated, “this is a perfect time to reflect upon and clarify roles. all schools should do that now and after the pandemic, as roles and responsibilities may not be the same.” it is clear that the covid-19 pandemic has caused a disruption of normality for both schools and families. during an interview with a district leader, this leader mentioned that one benefit of disruption, however, “is that it forces innovation.” this leader explained, “as schools and families have been forced to pivot, the need for communication and collaboration between these vital entities has never been greater.” unintentionally, the echo® model and telengage were perfectly positioned for such a unique time in human history. as evident in our findings, families and schools were forced to lean into communication and collaboration to promote the success of students during the pandemic. telengage helped to provide the structure for these interactions, enabling communication congruence towards re-identified relational congruence. collaborative problem solving within the telengage framework, as participants engaged in conversations and made recommendations regarding cases that were presented, educators and parents became aware of diverse solutions to complex problems. observational and interview data suggest that they also become aware of the care and concern that both families and schools have for student success. problems that were addressed during case presentations included miscommunication between families and schools, misappropriation in parent-led band booster club activity accounts, challenges with online learning, social and emotional needs of families during crisis events, and expanded learning gaps during covid closures. during one case presentation that involved a disagreement between several families in the school and an administrator, one educator suggested, “it is important to take the high road, rather than to assign blame. all involved have their own perceptions of what happened. pick up the pieces and move forward.” a parent agreed with this statement by indicating, “i think it is important to listen as much as share.” an educational leader stated, “we need to be able to apologize sincerely when we make mistakes and laugh with families about our missteps. we are learners too. we need to be genuine.” this finding suggests an ongoing process of reidentification as schools and families grow toward relational congruence. relational congruence was supported in interview data when educators and family members recognized the important contributions of the other to support student success. the dialogue back and forth during case presentations further supported this understanding as goals and strategies to support learning were discussed and as all parties mutually engaged in collaborative efforts. furthermore, this finding suggests that, the more interactive the conversation, the greater the opportunity for sharing of tools curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 16 and resources that, ultimately, benefitted the collaborative. this process enriched the shared repertoire, and all participants benefitted from increased learning. discussion negotiated meaning: “what it means to support student success” wenger’s (1998) cop model suggests that, in order to become a functioning cop, a group must develop joint enterprise through negotiated meaning. from this negotiated meaning, individuals within a cop learn collectively as they participate together in a “shared domain of human endeavor” (wenger & wenger-trayner, 2015, para. 4). in telengage, joint enterprise explains the process of how members negotiate their response to the conditions and goals of the group. concerning negotiating meaning, our findings suggest clarification of “what it means to support student learning” for both educators and families through participation in telengage. during early meetings, participants identified support activities that were very “school-centric,” such as “attending parent conferences,” “returning signed forms,” and “communicating with the teacher.” this finding aligns with findings in the literature that educators often perceive families as “helpers” rather than co-contributors of knowledge in the educational process (christiankis, 2011). our findings further suggest that families also perceived themselves in the “helper” role. however, didactic presentations and case-based learning have expanded perceptions of collaboration. this conclusion is important because previous perceptions dramatically limited collaborative potential when they were focused on simply “train[ing] individual parents to better conform to existing educator expectations and school practices” (ishimaru, 2013, p. 191). in this cop, communication has developed, and varied perceptions indicating the recognition of parents as co-contributors or partners in education have emerged. this recognition aligns with understandings in the literature regarding the more salient forms of engagement, such as family expectations for learning/achievement (jeynes, 2012) and the social and cultural capital that families can bring (mcintosh & curry, 2020). findings further align with the explained difference between “community ownership,” where community voices are heard through direct engagement, versus “community buy-in,” where communities acquiesce their voices for “compliance with someone else’s [namely political and educational leader’s] vision and agenda” (stovall, 2016, para. 9). further, as perceptions changed, participants began recognizing the contribution of others, regardless of role or position. relational congruence was evidenced as participant perspectives reflected shared understandings. participants were able to share their stories and experiences to provide illumination of persistent conditions that minimize traditionally marginalized voices (stovall, 2016). as an example of enhanced shared understanding and in promoting a less “schoolcentric” approach to engagement, telengage has highlighted family contributions, cultural norms, and cultural capital in homes and communities that may not be visible to educators. an example of cultural capital emerged when an african american participant reminded participants of the resources available through her church, a black church in the community. she indicated that members of her church have partnered with schools to provide tutoring and mentoring for students. these findings align with findings by curry and mcintosh (2020) and mcintosh and curry (2020) regarding the cultural resources that are readily available, yet infrequently accessed, in lower-income communities. curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 17 mutual engagement: enhanced family efficacy mutual engagement can best be understood through a discussion of the “community” aspect of the cop model and enhancement of family efficacy. “community” reflects the quality of relationships and interactions between members (wenger, 1998). communication in telengage allowed participants to freely share diverse perspectives. according to wenger (1998), for a true community to form, relationships must develop that allow members to “learn from each other” (wenger & wenger-trayner, 2015, para. 8). in this instance, the “all teach/all learn” mantra of telengage created a space where relational congruence developed through inclusion of all participants and promotion of mutual respect and understanding. even families that indicated that they felt uncomfortable, at first, to speak up in front of educational “experts” over time actively participated and expressed their satisfaction with interactions during telengage meetings. participants felt free to share concerns and challenges as well as successes in supporting student needs. for example, one case discussion described strained relationships between parents and a building administrator in a small, rural district. a parent participated by suggesting, “parents just want to know that their voice is heard. it makes us feel like we are needed.” additionally, one parent stated, “i care very much about my child’s education. sometimes, i feel like my efforts aren’t recognized.” these parents’ contributions enhanced understandings between families and educators and encouraged a re-envisioning of how family members support their children’s education both at school and at home. family members felt that their voice was heard and that their actions were recognized. through communication, relational congruence was enhanced, and this finding aligns with our previous finding regarding the expansion of family and educator perceptions regarding how families support student success. further, the enhancement of family efficacy can be explained through wenger’s (1998) cop model. wenger (1998) suggests that identity formation in a cop requires participation, membership, and identity formation. identity formation begins with the process of selfidentification/reflection and changes as a product of participation. as families participated in discussion and offered their opinions, they developed confidence, and their participation increased. telengage discussions offered the opportunity for differing perspectives without judgment, and they encouraged self-reflection regarding preconceived ideas and perceptions of the efforts and actions of others. both educators and families explained that their perspectives were widened in statements, such as “i had never thought about [the problem] this way.” the function of communication practices in telengage differ significantly from understandings advanced in traditional parent involvement research. historically, family engagement practices were formed with the intention of passing along information to families (hirsto, 2010). this intention stands in stark contrast to the acknowledgment of the importance of congruent conversations where family members and schools come together to enhance shared perceptions and mutual understandings. in summary, “community” is reflected as relational congruence has developed through sustained congruence in communication. telengage has provided an opportunity, as christianakis (2011) explains, to “come together….in order to jointly accomplish sustain[able] change” (p. 173). as explained through wenger’s (1998) communities of practice (cop), all participants in telengage share a common goal accompanied by a passion for children and a desire to facilitate learning. telengage supports this common desire and provides an opportunity to “learn how to do it better as [participants] interact regularly” (wenger & wengertrayner, 2015, para. 4). curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 18 shared repertoire: collaborative decision making according to wenger (1998), shared repertoire consists of the signs, symbols, tools, and language used as resources that have meaning to members of the cop. the tools utilized in each telengage session include didactic presentations and case-based discussions. the cases presented in each telengage session include complex situations that lack an easily identified or defined solution. participants must make sense of these situations through perceptions that have been shaped by prior training, experiences, cultural norms, and other contextual factors. therefore, hearing both educator and parent perspectives on issues provides balance and the opportunity to learn from each other, creating a shared repertoire of meaning, enhancing the congruence of communication. additionally, even though all cases are presented anonymously and closely adhere to confidentiality and ferpa requirements, the issues addressed are widely applicable to educators and parents in districts across the state. many times, participants made statements such as, “i have had the same thing happen in my district!” these anonymous discussions lead to enhanced problem-solving as educators and parents apply their learning to their own contexts. recommendations made by both educator and family participants provide a balanced perspective as educator and family input is equally valued and as input is received from diverse contexts across the state. because cases presented in each echo® session are real cases happening in real-time, families benefit from the ability to “analyze and change their conditions” as they “develop the capacity to utilize their own skills and expertise to address issues and concerns” (stovall, 2016, p. 7). recommendations from all participants are recorded and provided to the school or district represented in each case. these recommendations are also recorded and posted on the telengage website for later reference, creating a set of tools and resources for participants to utilize when needed. the second tool utilized in all telengage sessions is short didactic presentations lasting approximately ten to fifteen minutes. didactic presentations have addressed a variety of issues, including trust in schools, covid information, online learning support, psychological needs of students, student engagement, and 21st-century learning skills. each presentation is also posted on the telengage website, and participants can use them as needed. participants have indicated that they have used powerpoint presentations during faculty/staff meetings at their schools, exemplifying a shared repertoire for continual learning. a symbol that has been utilized in each telengage session is that of a wagon wheel with a hub and spokes. the hub team represents the hub of the wheel, and all other participants represent the spoke sites. participants have become well acquainted with this language, and although they recognize which participants represent the hub team and which participants represent the spokes, these lines become blurred very quickly. participants on both the hub team and spoke sites represent a very diverse group of individuals interacting toward common goals. educator positions range from classroom teachers to building leaders to district leaders to state leaders. family participants vary in ethnicity, socio-economic status, educational level, location, and experience with schools. it is likely that family participants in telengage sessions would rarely have the opportunity for dialogue with this diverse group of educators, and it is likely that many would lack the navigational capital or efficacy for active engagement on their own. additionally, it is equally likely that these educators may be limited in the feedback they receive from such a diverse group of families. these conversations, and the resulting recordings from each telengage session, establish a repertoire of resources available to all participants, further cultivating the relational congruence of this cop. curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 19 implications findings from this study suggest that telengage has important implications for furthering the understanding of transformative equitable collaboration between families and schools. this understanding has been, historically, limited by deficit perspectives that educators often held of lower-income families (christiankis, 2011; ishimaru, 2013) and, sometimes, deficit perspectives that families may have of schools. these deficit perspectives have proliferated “fundamental, historical, cultural and social divides between families and schools” (christiankis, 2011, p. 189). additionally, this study has implications for the lack of educator preparedness to effectively interact with culturally diverse families (blackmore & hutchison, 2010). telengage has provided a platform for shared understandings and interactions so that schools and families can learn the perspectives of each other. these implications for practice are important because teachers who are underprepared to work with diverse populations often avoid interactions with families because of cultural differences that could, potentially, be difficult for them to address (bronson & dentith, 2014) and also because findings in the literature indicate that family-school relationships tend to be weaker in schools with high percentages of lower socio-economic families (frew et al., 2012). further, limited collaboration with lower-income families has, historically, been explained through the understanding that low-income families are less likely to engage in school-initiated activities because they feel that they may be inadequate or because they lack the resources for collaboration that most middle-class families possess (blackmore & hutchison, 2010). in contrast, telengage has provided a platform for equitable collaboration in a convenient, cost-free environment that allows educators and families to communicate and develop practices that support the needs of each other. while it is imperative to note that limitations for collaboration in telengage do exist (e.g., access to internet, access to a compatible technological device, and/or time of day/work conflicts), the virtual nature of telengage, as well as its “all teach, all learn” philosophy, helps to break down many of the historical barriers that remained evident in parental engagement efforts. the availability and flexibility of telengage, as a cop to meet family and school needs, may enhance understandings of sustainable, transformative, equitable collaboration. further research is recommended on the influence of social learning spaces to facilitate collaborative efforts. implications for theory include the utility of the cop model for explaining effective, transformative, equitable collaboration between families and schools. the findings of negotiated meaning, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire created through telengage sessions indicate the formation of an authentic cop. the application of cop to collaboration efforts may address some of the challenges related to sustainability of partnerships between families and schools (rispoli et al., 2018). additionally, embedding relational congruence into the cop framework provides possible insight into how cops may develop. further, this study illuminates the common critique of “abstract theorizing” often present in empirical work regarding social justice issues (stovall, 2016) by advancing understandings of how individuals can engage to enrich experiences of families that may frequently experience disinvestment, marginalization, and isolation in traditional partnership efforts (stovall, 2016). concerning research, this study expanded understandings of transformative equitable collaboration, and through the lens of relational convergence, explained the shared meaning that can emerge when families and schools experience congruence in communication. this study accentuates the importance of creating belonging and identity for all families within education systems. belonging and identity formation, in this study, enhanced family efficacy for collaboration. telengage facilitates opportunities for two-way communication between curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 20 families/schools, enabling relational congruence and the opportunity to re-imagine schools to represent students and their families. further, our findings suggest that through congruence in communication in telengage sessions, a mechanism for critical discourse emerged. as the covid-19 pandemic has forced many students into virtual learning from home, the implications of such research have never been more timely. in sum, shifting from parent involvement, when a school “leads with its mouth—identifying projects, needs, and goals and then telling parents how they can contribute,” telengage, instead, focuses on transformative equitable collaboration where both schools and families “lead with its ears—listening to what [others] think, dream, and worry about…not to serve clients but to gain partners” (ferlazzo, 2011, p. 12). these findings have important implications and support the preponderance of evidence that suggests when schools and families work together, students thrive. curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 21 references ackley, m.k., & cullen, p.m. (2010). strengthening 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(2016). born out of struggle: critical race theory, school creation, and the politics of interruption. university of new york press. weber, m. (1947). the theory of social and economic organization. oxford university press. wenger, e. (1998). communities of practice: learning as a social system. systems thinker, 9(5), 2-3. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 wenger, e. & wenger-trayner, b. (2015, june). introduction to communities of practice: a brief overview of the concept and its uses. wenger-trayner. https://www.wengertrayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/ yosso, t. j. (2005). whose culture has capital? a critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. race ethnicity and education, 8(1), 69-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 https://doi.org/10.1177/0013124512447810 https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x12441244 https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.2014.917256 https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2005.11772296 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0022466918757199 https://doi.org/10.3200/joer.100.5.267-275 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f001312402237212 https://doi.org/10.1080/02796015.2012.12087374 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 https://www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/ https://www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/ https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 25 author notes katherine a. curry, ph.d. https://orcid.org/0000-00024977-538x oklahoma state university katherine.curry@okstate.edu ed harris oklahoma state university ed.harris@okstate.edu jentre olsen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4678-5478 oklahoma state university jentre.olsen@okstate.edu rachel kim oklahoma state university rachel.kim@okstate.edu dominic egure oklahoma state university dominic.egure@okstate.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://orcid.org/0000-00024977-538x mailto:katherine.curry@okstate.edu mailto:ed.harris@okstate.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4678-5478 mailto:jentre.olsen@okstate.edu mailto:rachel.kim@okstate.edu mailto:dominic.egure@okstate.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 26, issue 1 may 02, 2025 issn 1099-839x motivations for entering the teaching profession: illuminating the voices of female preservice teachers on the u.s.-mexico border blanca n. ibarra, ed.d. texas a & m international university abstract: teacher retention is a global problem, and why individuals choose the teaching profession can help sustain teacher motivation. this study surveyed 29 predominately mexican american female students enrolled in the college of education at a border university in south texas. the participants were selected using convenience sampling from two courses taught by the researcher in the spring of 2024. a 15-question survey, including likert scale and open-ended questions, was used to gather data. findings revealed that pre-service teachers selected teaching as a profession for altruistic and intrinsic reasons. participants' educational experiences, both positive and negative, impacted their decision to become educators. the concept of altruism emerged to describe the interdependency of altruistic and intrinsic motivations. the study underscores the importance of examining the educational experiences of minority women living along the u.s.-mexico border to understand their aspirations and motivations to enter the teaching profession. keywords: pre-service, motivation, teaching, retention, altruism citation: ibarra, b. n. (2025). motivations for entering the teaching profession: illuminating the voices of female pre-service teachers on the u.s.-mexico border. current issues in education, 26(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2304 accepted: march 1, 2025 motivations for entering the teaching profession: illuminating the voices of female preservice teachers on the u.s.-mexico border pre-service educators enrolled in educator preparatory programs in universities across the nation have made a choice to become educators. while their reasons for entering the profession may vary, researchers have discovered that the most common reasons for entering the teaching field tend to focus on intrinsic and altruistic motivation (kwok et al., 2022; van den borre et al., 2021; gore, 2018). experiential factors can also influence the motivation to enter the teaching field. for example, chandran et al. (2024) found that 38.57% of pre-service teachers were https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2304 ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 2 motivated to enter the teaching profession because of an educator. unfortunately, not all who enter the teaching field remain in the profession (le velle, 2019). thus, understanding preservice teachers' motivations to enter the teaching profession is essential to help sustain their motivation to remain in the field. worldwide the field of education is faced with tackling two significant issues. the first is teacher attrition (shuls & flores, 2020), and the second is a diminishing number of individuals entering the teaching profession (casley-hayford et al., 2022). during the pandemic in 2021, 14% of public school teachers abandoned the field, opting to work in non-education-related fields (national center for education statistics, 2023). in the u.s. alone, roughly 8% of the nation's teachers leave the profession yearly, and this number has remained constant since 2012 (national center for education statistics, 2023; sutcher et al., 2016). in addition, it is estimated that 50% of early service teachers abandon the teaching profession within the first five years of teaching (alam & asmawi, 2024; mclean, 2019; ingersoll et al., 2018). while the reasons teachers abandon the field are due to many factors (e.g., personal, financial, and job-related), motivation is a significant factor in teacher retention (casley-hayford et al., 2022). however, it is important to understand that motivation can change. teachers need to continually practice selfreflection and be in tune with the internal compass that oriented them to select teaching as a career since that understanding is crucial to remaining in the field (manuel & hughes, 2006). hence, the purpose of this research was to understand pre-service educators' initial motivations for entering the teaching profession. motivation is important because it fuels teachers' actions to complete their day-to-day instructional tasks to teach and nurture children and ultimately is a factor in their decision to remain in the field (casley-hayford et al., 2022). understanding preservice teachers' motivations for entering the teaching profession could help school leaders address their teacher retention issues (watt & richardson, 2007). furthermore, van den borre et al.'s (2021) research of 11,613 early career teachers from 3,998 schools across 31 countries indicated that there was a positive relation between a teacher's motivation for entering the teaching profession and staying in the profession. while many studies have explored the factors that motivate educators to enter the teaching profession, the participants, though predominately female, often are white and nonhispanic (van den borre et al., 2021; ye et al., 2021; ivanec, 2020; yu, 2015), leaving a dearth in research that highlights hispanic voices around motivations of pre-service teachers. to address this gap, this research centers the voices of hispanic female pre-service teachers from a border university in south texas regarding their motivations for entering the teaching profession. researching pre-service teachers' motivation for entering the teaching profession from diverse cultural backgrounds helps contribute to the research literature on understanding motivational factors for choosing teaching as a career of choice (klassen et al., 2011). this research brings to the forefront the experiences of minority women from the u.s.-mexico border. while the intention of this study was to understand why pre-service teachers chose to become educators, what is revealed are bold, complex stories showcasing the significant impact teachers make on students' lives who experience bullying, discrimination, and feelings of otherness. examining the educational experiences of pre-service teachers when they were enrolled in the k12 system helps bring to the center the aspirational voices of the periphery-minority women living along the u.s.-mexico border into the realm of teacher motivation. this research asked: (1) what factors (intrinsic, extrinsic, or altruistic) motivated pre-service teachers to enter the teaching profession? ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 3 (2) how do past educational experiences influence the decision to enter the teaching profession? literature review motivation qin et al. (2015) define motivation as the "force that drives us to do something" (p. 3). ryan and deci (2000) further add that "to be motivated means to be moved to do something" (p. 54, emphasis in original). when someone is motivated, their internal compass (e.g., beliefs, values, goals) guides them to act and do something in their lives. it is the internal compass that will continually guide an individual's actions. self-determination theory suggests that individuals have a need to feel successful, connected, and be in control of their actions. when these basic needs are met then individuals will be more motivated. however, one aspect of ryan and deci's (2017) self-determination theory suggests that motivation can be "volitional" (p. 14) because it is a manifestation of an individual's preferences. as human beings, we are prone to change; therefore, our level of motivation is prone to fluctuate based on day-to-day experiences. however, motivational origins and impact vary for everyone. motivation may be internal, external, or situational, and depending on the source, it will lead to a specific action. specifically, the motivation to teach can be identified as a "self-selection" (van den borre et al., 2021, p. 3) factor affecting the choice to become a teacher. individuals make the innate choice to become teachers. no one tells them to do so, and neither does society. the question, though, is, what factors contribute to an individual's decision to select teaching as a profession? pop and turner (2009) write that motivation influences a pre-service teacher's decision to enter the teaching profession, even though the contextual factors of individuals may be different (e.g., experiences, background). the authors further contend that an individual's identity, beliefs about teaching, and general confidence also affect the decision to enter the teaching profession. as ryan and deci (2000) explain, the crux of motivation is an internal combination of our beliefs, values, and aspirations, which, when combined, steer us to make a choice. in the case of pre-service educators, it involves understanding the reasons that contributed to their decision to become a teacher. scholars who research motivation for entering the teaching profession generally agree that motivational factors can be classified into three broad categories: intrinsic, extrinsic, and altruistic (kwok et al., 2022; van den borre et al., 2021; ivanec, 2020; heinz, 2015; gore, 2018; tang et al. 2018). as illustrated in figure 1, these motivational categories are each distinct. intrinsic motivation, as defined by van den borre et al. (2021), is when an individual does something out of pure enjoyment because it makes them happy. for pre-service teachers, an example is the love of teaching and working with children in general (reeves & lowemhaut, 2016). intrinsic motivations of pre-service teachers can also include the desire to make an impact and a belief that they are good at working with children (ivanec, 2020). altruistic motivation is defined as putting the needs of others first before their own to ensure well-being or success and extrinsic motivation is focused on the opportunities and benefits that a job provides (van den borre et al., 2021). while individuals may choose to enter the teaching profession for various reasons, in terms of motivational factors, prior research (chong & low, 2009; reeves & lowemhaut, 2016) has concluded that the primary reasons for individuals entering the teaching profession fall into both altruistic and intrinsic motivational reasons. ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 4 figure 1 motivation categories note: author created figure. icon represents a characteristic of the motivation type but is not all-inclusive. altruistic factors for entering the teaching profession include wanting to be of service to others, making an impact on the lives of students, and making a societal contribution (fray & gore, 2018). pre-service teachers enter the profession eager to make a difference and with a "sense of mission: to transform the lives" (manuel & hughes, 2006, p. 21) of students. altruistic reasons are the most common motivational factor that individuals indicate for entering the teaching profession (kwok et al., 2022). when individuals select teaching as a profession to make an impact/difference in society (bilim, 2014; bergmark et al., 2018) or because they see teaching as a worthwhile profession and want to help children grow (noor et al. 2012), it is out of altruistic motivation. on the other hand, when an individual engages in a task or action due to pure enjoyment, self-satisfaction, or because "it is inherently interesting" (ryan & deci, 2000, p. 55), then they are driven by intrinsic motivation. individuals who possess the abilities to teach in general, specific abilities in a given subject, or a general belief that teaching is their true calling enter the teaching profession intrinsically motivated (kwok et al., 2022; fray & gore, 2018). however, when individuals enter the teaching profession to yield a gain, such as a reward or approval, they are driven by extrinsic motivation (ryan & deci, 2000). external factors that motivate individuals to enter the teaching profession include the work schedule, career stability, pay, work environment, and time off for holidays (fray & gore, 2018). whether altruistic, intrinsic, or extrinsic, the reality is that there is a great need for teachers. teacher attrition and retention is a global problem, and identifying the motivational reasons pre-service educators enter the profession needs to be a priority because, as chiong et al. (2017) argue, educators who enter the teaching profession for intrinsic reasons tend to remain in the profession. methodology the purpose of this exploratory survey research was to identify the reasons (extrinsic, intrinsic, or altruistic) that motivated pre-service teachers to enter the teaching profession and to understand if experiences with educators in their past influenced their career choices. participants and context the sample consisted of 29 primarily hispanic pre-service teachers who were enrolled in the college of education at a border university in south texas. the research utilized a convenience sampling approach since the participants were enrolled in courses taught by the ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 5 researcher and fit the population of interest for the research. the students were enrolled in courses addressing literacy and social studies instruction for ec-6 learners. 100% of the respondents were female, 6.9% were sophomores, 58.6% were classified as juniors, and 34.5% were seniors. while all respondents were enrolled in the college of education, 62.1% were pursuing an ec-6 generalist specialization, and 37.9% were pursuing a bilingual education specialization. table 1 shows the demographic profile of each of the 29 participants in this study. about 51.7% of pre-service teachers indicated that they had a family member who was an educator, while 48.3% indicated that they did not have a family member in the education field. the majority of pre-service teachers indicated wanting to work with children in pre-kinder/1st grade (48.3%) and 2nd/3rd grade (48.3%), and one indicated a preference for teaching middle school. table 1 pre-service teachers (pst) profile demographics pst classification program pst classification program amy junior ec-6 generalist cindy senior ec-6 generalist eliza junior bilingual sylvia senior bilingual vanessa senior ec-6 generalist ana junior bilingual karen senior ec-6 generalist lydia junior ec-6 generalist kimberly junior bilingual brianna senior bilingual kayla junior ec-6 generalist brenda senior ec-6 generalist jessica junior ec-6 generalist alexandra senior ec-6 generalist denise junior bilingual elena junior bilingual valentina junior ec-6 generalist adriana senior bilingual victoria sophomore ec-6 generalist beth junior ec-6 generalist claudia sophomore bilingual julie junior ec-6 generalist brenda junior ec-6 generalist veronica senior ec-6 generalist iliana junior bilingual jackie junior ec-6 generalist alice senior ec-6 generalist esther junior bilingual sara junior ec-6 generalist note: the table displays demographic information collected about the participants. the names listed are pseudonyms for the pre-service teachers that participated in the research study. data collection data was collected from 29 pre-service teachers enrolled in a border university in south texas. a researcher-developed survey was emailed to pre-service teachers via their university email to complete. the collected data consisted of both quantitative and qualitative responses. the researcher developed an instrument consisting of 15 questions, of which 13 were likert scale items (1-strongly disagree, 5-strongly agree) and 2 were open-ended. the likert scale items asked pre-service teachers to indicate the extent to which they agreed on the reasons why they chose to enter the teaching profession: (1) altruistic "to make a difference in a child's life," (2) intrinsic "enjoy working with children," "good at explaining and showing others how things work," and (3) extrinsic "the job of teaching seems easy to do," "because of the work schedule." the open-ended questions provided pre-service teachers with information regarding why they chose to become educators and whether they had a positive or negative experience with an educator. ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 6 data analysis to better understand the motivational factors influencing pre-service teachers' reasons for entering the teaching profession, likert scale data was quantitatively analyzed using descriptive statistical analysis, which is reported as percentages. in the likert scale questions, pre-service teachers indicated their level of agreement with the statement regarding their choice to enter the teaching profession. the statements addressed altruistic reasons (items # 6 and 15), intrinsic reasons (items # 7, 8, and 9), and extrinsic reasons (items #10, 11, 12, 13, and 14), or experiences (items # 16, 17, and 18). for the open-ended items (#19 and 20), two rounds of thematic coding were performed. during initial coding, each experience was classified as being either positive (coded 0) or negative (coded 1), and initial codes were identified. first, each pre-service teacher's response to open-ended question #19 was read and coded as being either a positive or negative experience. if participants used the word "positive" or "negative" in their response, the response was coded as such. there were 16 pre-service teachers who had a positive experience and 12 who had a negative experience. during the first coding phase, the researcher identified a word or short phrase and used in vivo coding to identify themes. during the first phase, predominant codes that emerged included "teacher help and support," "learning environment," and "teacher pedagogy." these three predominant themes were utilized to focus on during the second coding phase to re-code the experiences. during the second coding phase, thematic codes were narrowed down to the following themes: encouragement/teacher support, teacher pedagogy, and sense of belonging, to describe pre-service teachers' experiences with educators. the same process was followed for the question asking pre-service teachers to explain why they chose to become educators. first, pre-service teachers' answers were classified as either altruistic, intrinsic, or extrinsic. if participants indicated enjoyment or passion working with children that contributed to the experience being classified as intrinsic, and if they indicated wanting to make a difference, impact, or change, the reason was coded as altruistic. there were 13 pre-service teachers who had altruistic motivations for entering the profession and 15 who had intrinsic motivations. during the first coding phase, the researcher identified keywords or a short phrase to identify themes. during the first phase, predominant codes that emerged included "make a difference or impact," "passion," and "working with children." these three predominant themes were utilized to focus on during the second coding phase to re-code the experiences. during the second coding phase, the thematic codes that were predominant included: make a difference, passion, and experience/true calling. pre-service teachers gave no extrinsic reasons for entering the teaching profession for the open-ended question. findings motivational factors the analysis of the data (see figure 2) indicated that 89.7% of pre-service teachers strongly agreed they entered the teaching profession for altruistic reasons, such as to make a difference, and 79.3% because they generally agreed that it was a worthwhile profession. as for intrinsic reasons, 79% of pre-service teachers strongly agreed that their self-efficacy in working with children influenced their decision to enter the teaching profession, while 86.2% generally agreed that they chose to enter the field because they enjoyed working with children. however, only 65.5% generally agreed that their self-efficacy in explaining to others influenced their ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 7 decision to enter the teaching profession. as for extrinsic reasons, 51.7% of pre-service teachers generally disagreed that their choice to become an educator was due to teaching being an easy profession; however, 41.1% indicated uncertainty that their choice was influenced by the perception that teaching may be easy. pre-service teachers generally disagreed (62%) with being motivated to enter the teaching profession due to pay. however, 55.2% generally agreed that the flexibility of the work schedule influenced their decision to become an educator. also, 62.1% of pre-service teachers indicated they generally disagreed that working with children was easy as a reason for entering the profession. furthermore, 58.6% of pre-service teachers see the teaching profession as a stepping stone to other positions within the education field. the results, therefore, indicate that pre-service teachers generally are motivated to enter the teaching profession for altruistic and intrinsic reasons. while some may be attracted to enter teaching because of the work schedule, pay is generally not a motivating factor for becoming an educator. aside from altruistic, intrinsic, and extrinsic factors influencing teaching as a career choice, it is also important to note that experiential situations can also be influencing factors. for example, while 57.1% of the pre-service teachers had a family member who was an educator, it did not influence their decision to become a teacher themselves. however, 72.4% of pre-service teachers indicated that their positive interaction with an educator influenced their decision to become a teacher, while 41.3% of pre-service teachers' negative experiences with an educator influenced their decisions to enter the teaching profession. furthermore, 44.8% of pre-service teachers indicated they had a negative experience with an educator but generally disagreed that it influenced their decision to enter teaching. figure 2 pre-service teachers' motivations note: numbers represent percentages. (a) denotes altruistic motivation, while (i) denotes intrinsic motivation ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 8 altruistic motivation in the survey, pre-service teachers were asked to describe why they chose to become an educator. responses were thematically coded and classified as either altruistic, intrinsic, or extrinsic. analysis of the data indicated that 44.8% (n = 13) of pre-service teachers provided an altruistic reason for entering teaching, while 51.7% (n = 15) of pre-service teachers indicated intrinsic reasons for entering the education field. no pre-service teachers indicated extrinsic reasons for choosing to become an educator. the self-reported reasons for entering the teaching profession support prior findings that the pre-service teachers indicated in their level of agreement for entering the profession, where most indicated both altruistic and intrinsic reasons. the codes that emerged for altruistic motivations included those of being a role model (n = 3), creating a safe space (n = 5), and making a difference or impact (n = 10). role model. teachers are not only responsible for teaching content, but they also serve the roles of nurturers and caregivers, and impressionable young minds often see them as role models. in this research, pre-service teachers indicated serving as role models and wanted students to view them as "someone that they can trust and depend on as well" (amy). perhaps belinda wrote it best, stating that "teaching is a profession that requires you to play many roles… counselor…nurse…but most importantly, a teacher must be the base of foundations that the students rely on." teachers are often the individuals that students can look to for hope and serve as inspiration. as esther explains: "i came from a low-income school and had the support and empathy of my teachers, which made me realize the impact one person can have in making a child's life better. i want to be one of those people." these pre-service teachers are altruistically motivated to assume the responsibility of nurturing their future students and being someone who can be counted on for support in the classroom. safe space. a classroom requires more than books, desks, students, and a teacher. it requires love, understanding, and a sense of safety. a classroom should feel like a second home. teachers have the responsibility to create a learning environment that helps students feel welcomed, safe, and supported. pre-service teachers indicated wanting to become teachers because they wanted to create learning environments for their students where they felt safe and supported, just as when they were students. vanessa writes, "because as a young kid, i had to deal with unstableness and unsafe at home, so i used school as an escapism. i know there will be children in my classroom with similar experiences, and i want to make a difference and inspire them to become someone in life." feeling safe at school is important, as kimberly explains, because "without the sense of safety, children cannot learn." teachers wear many hats in the classroom, one of those being to create a sense of belonging because as denise writes, "for some of these students' school is the only place that they feel safe and loved, you never know what a child is going through at home." a classroom is a second home for students, and these preservice teachers understand that developing a safe and secure learning environment is essential to the social and emotional well-being of students. make a difference/impact. pre-service educators driven by altruistic motivation have a goal in mind: to make an impact. the impact that they make may involve creating a nurturing and supportive learning environment, but it also entails being an advocate for students. rita peirson (2013) said, "every child deserves a champion-an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insist that they become the best they can possibly be." the most common altruistic reason that pre-service teachers gave for entering the teaching profession was to make a difference/impact in the lives of children. pre-service teachers ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 9 understand that what they teach is impactful "because they will use those skills for the rest of their life" (victoria) in "a beautiful career to teach our potential future leaders" (iliana). others want to teach students "to be able to create without having limits" (claudia) in an environment where "failing is okay because i will help them get back on track" (brenda). pre-service teachers believe that "the next generation deserves educators who care in developing their young minds" (lydia) and help them "create courage to overcome their obstacles" (belinda). pre-service educators understand that they are the chief inspirational officers in the classroom; they have the power to unlock students' potential, support their dreams, and guide students on the right path to success in the future. intrinsic motivation intrinsic motivation involves having a love and passion for doing something (van den borre et al., 2021). the pre-service teachers in this research indicated intrinsic motivations as a factor for entering the teaching profession. the analysis and coding of pre-service teachers' openended responses revealed the following themes: passion, working with children, and experience/true calling. passion. individuals who have a passion for something can immerse themselves in it for a long time and genuinely reap satisfaction from doing it. pre-service teachers indicated they entered the teaching profession because they genuinely had a passion for teaching. a teacher who has a passion for the profession, as victoria writes, "love teaching in general" and they experience a sense of joy when teaching others; as beth explains, "i love when people come and ask me for help with something because it makes me feel proud of myself when they understand the concept after i have explained it to them." eliza adds, "i am a very passionate and patient person, which seem to be two strong characteristics of a well-grounded teacher. i've always wanted to become a teacher and hope to achieve my dream of educating little ones to the best of my ability." continuous learning in the field is another characteristic that some pre-service teachers who are passionate share. for example, alice explained, "it is something i am very passionate about and a career that will constantly push and challenge me. it is a career that will help me to learn every day and allow me to mold and shape young children to also want to constantly learn and grow." intrinsically motivated pre-service teachers indicate a genuine love for teaching others and feel enjoyment when they are successful at helping others learn. working with children. anyone who enters the teaching profession understands that the job entails working with children. a common theme that developed from pre-service teachers' open-ended responses about why they entered the teaching profession centered around their enjoyment of working with children. for valentina, the "experience of being with kids and watching over them and having the trust of others to be around their kids" influenced her to choose a teaching profession. veronica writes that "the amazing part is seeing them grow and accomplish more than they thought they could," and in essence, that is the major responsibility of all educators, "empowering them with knowledge to help make the world better." intrinsically motivated pre-service educators understand that working with children is a major responsibility, but they chose the profession because they enjoy working with children. experience/true calling. choosing a career can be a difficult task for many people; however, for others, it comes easy because they have always known what they want to do with their lives. another intrinsic motivation indicated by pre-service teachers was that they felt it was their calling to teach, and often, this calling was attributed to past experiences they had. for ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 10 example, one pre-service teacher, cindy, referred to having a "knack for it" and explained, "i have many younger siblings and as the older sibling i practically raised them, looked out for their studies, and taught them when i had the chance." sara explained, "by the time i reached high school, i took on leadership roles in clubs and enjoyed when people would ask me for help and i loved providing answers and solutions. by then i knew for a fact i wanted to become a teacher." it is evident that pre-service teachers' innate understanding of their abilities and their educational/familial experiences influenced their decision to enter the teaching profession. altruistic/intrinsic relationship correlational analysis was performed using spearman's rho to determine the strength of the relationship between intrinsic and altruistic motivations for entering the teaching profession. as seen in table 2, there is a correlational relationship between the reason for choosing to be an educator to make a difference (altruistic) and the intrinsic factors of being good at working with children (rho = .394, p = .032) and being able to explain to others (rho = .478, p = .015) which is statistically significant. the result indicates that as the level of agreement for choosing to teach for altruistic reasons increases, so does the intrinsic motivation for why they chose to become an educator. table 2 intrinsic/altruistic motivation correlations (n = 29) 6. “i want to make a difference in a child's life.” 7. “i am good at working with children.” 8. “i enjoy working with children.” 9. “i am good at explaining and showing others how things work”. spearman's rho 6. i chose to become an educator because i want to make a difference in a child's life. correlation coefficient 1.000 .400* .349 .449* sig. (2tailed) . .032 .064 .015 n 29 29 29 29 7. i chose to become an educator because i am good at working with children. correlation coefficient .400* 1.000 .589** .502** sig. (2tailed) .032 . <.001 .006 n 29 29 29 29 8. i chose to become an educator because i enjoy working with children. correlation coefficient .349 .589** 1.000 -.009 sig. (2tailed) .064 <.001 . .963 n 29 29 29 29 9. i chose to become an educator because i am good at explaining and showing others how things work. correlation coefficient .449* .502** -.009 1.000 sig. (2tailed) .015 .006 .963 . n 29 29 29 29 *. correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 11 experiences with educators in the survey, pre-service educators were asked if they chose to become educators because of a positive or negative experience with an educator. in the likert scale portion of the survey, 72.4% of pre-service teachers generally agreed that a positive experience with an educator influenced their decision to enter the teaching profession. while 41.3% of pre-service educators generally agreed that a negative experience with an educator influenced their career choice. when they were asked how educational experiences (either positive/negative) influenced their decision to enter the teaching field, 16 pre-service teachers (55%) indicated a positive experience, while 12 pre-service teachers (41.3%) indicated a negative experience as an influential factor. pre-service teachers' experiences were thematically coded to identify specific influential factors that contributed to the choice to enter teaching. during the coding phase of pre-service educators' open-ended responses to experiences with educators, several themes emerged: encouragement/teacher support, teacher pedagogy, and sense of belonging. encouragement. the most common theme (16 of 29 pre-service teachers) that emerged from qualitative analysis of respondents' open-ended responses to experiences with teachers that had influenced their career choice was encouragement. whether the experience was positive or negative, encouragement or lack thereof was a significant factor in respondents' experiences with teachers. teachers can have a positive impact on their students; as sylvia explained, "i had a really strong support from my teachers. until this day, it amazes me how i was able to learn a whole new language with the help and dedication of my esl teacher." lydia adds, "i carry with me the invaluable lessons learned from mrs. prado's example of dedication, empathy, and belief in the potential of every student. as a naturally reserved student, i struggled with confidence, particularly in my writing. yet, mrs. prado saw potential in me that i didn't even recognize myself. i'll never forget the day she encouraged me to enter a poetry contest, despite my reservations about sharing my work with others." on the other hand, there are pre-service teachers whose experiences were not as encouraging, especially when they were spanishspeaking immigrants enrolling in public schools in the united states. as a recent arrival on the border from mexico, eliza recalls having trouble acclimating to the learning environment in the school system, writing, "my first-grade teacher didn't improve things as she lacked patience and empathy and was quick to point out my mistakes in front of my peers, developing internal insecurities and doubts and making me feel dumb." belinda further elaborates on a similar experience, stating, "the teacher i had knew little to no spanish which made it very difficult for me to learn the new material of the class lessons." karen, who identified herself with a learning disability recalls being "bullied by students and educators saying i would never comprehend anything." encouragement of students is a major responsibility that educators are tasked with doing, and when they fail to provide it, it can leave a lasting impact on students, as the participants in this study indicated. teacher pedagogy. another common theme (11 of 29 pre-service teachers) that characterized pre-service teachers' experiences referred to the pedagogical practices of the teacher. an educator's philosophy to teaching can impact student learning, as described by victoria: "my 5th grade teacher ['s] philosophy was play to learn. it made learning more fun as well as easier" and also challenged them to think critically as elena said, "dr. nelson…she would encourage us to answer our own questions". at times, educators go beyond teaching required content to teach important life skills. as sara explains, "my pathway teacher….she taught me essential skills like how to present myself professionally and speak professionally. not ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 12 only did she teach her students, how to act professionally, but she also taught us life skills". preservice teachers who indicated a negative reference to teachers' pedagogical practices included lack of instruction, as described by iliana: "she would not offer her students help nor teach in the classroom but only play youtube videos for lecture" and "they just showed up to class, gave an assignment of the day, and sat at their desk for the rest of the day or only lectured for a short period of time" (beth) and an unwillingness to provide instructional clarification as brenda (native spanish speaker) described "whenever we ask her for help or to repeat the instruction, she will mumble under her breath and make a face of annoyance." teacher pedagogical practices affect the learning dynamics of the classroom and can also contribute to students' sense of belonging. sense of belonging. the last theme (7 of 29 pre-service teachers) that emerged from preservice teachers' experiences was feeling like they belonged because "school was a safe space" (kimberly) and "the classroom felt like a second home" (kayla). however, that was not always the case, as eliza describes her experience upon initially arriving in the united states from mexico and having difficulty adjusting. she explains, "my first-grade teacher didn't improve things as she lacked patience and empathy and was quick to point out my mistakes in front of my peers, developing insecurities and doubts and making me feel dumb." brenda, also an immigrant, described how a third-grade teacher's "classroom never felt like a safe learning environment, which caused me to never ask for help in classes as the years passed." esther adds that her negative experience "was when the teachers were rude to students and would humiliate them." creating a sense of belonging is a teacher's responsibility and it is their actions that can nurture a child's overall social and emotional well-being to help them thrive or silence them to exist invisibly as the years go by. there is a correlational relationship between pre-service teachers' self-analysis of influential experiences for choosing to enter the teaching profession and the level of agreement that a positive experience influenced their career choice (rho = -.460, p = .014), indicating that as the level of disagreement decreases the influence of the positive experience increases which is statistically significant. in addition, as the level of agreement that a negative experience influenced their career choice increases, so does the influence of a negative experience (rho = .596, p < .001), which is statistically significant. the results indicate that educational experiences, in some part, influenced the career choice of pre-service teachers. discussion this survey research aimed to investigate the motivational factors of why pre-service teachers chose to enter the teaching profession and how their past educational experiences influenced their career choices. specifically, this research focused primarily on mexicanamerican women studying at a border university in south texas. the results from this study confirmed prior research findings (chong & low, 2009; reeves & lowemhaut, 2016) that the most common reasons why people enter teaching are due to either an intrinsic or altruistic reason. this research study, however, goes beyond prior research, which primarily focused on the motivations of white pre-service teachers because the participants were female mexicanamericans. regarding altruistic reasons for entering the teaching profession, 89.7% of preservice teachers indicated wanting to make a difference, and 79.3% because it was a worthwhile profession. as for intrinsic reasons, 79% believed they possessed self-efficacy in working with children, while 86.2% indicated they enjoyed working with children. kwok et al.'s (2022) ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 13 research findings revealed that in terms of altruistic reasons, some pre-service teachers pointed to nurturing students' social and emotional well-being by "creating a safe classroom environment" (p. 586). in this research study on pre-service teachers' motivations for entering teaching, 44.8% of pre-service teachers indicated an altruistic reason for entering teaching. the thematic reasons that emerged from qualitative coding included being a role model, creating a safe space, and making a difference. the results add to kwok et al.'s findings as participants desired to create a safe learning environment because "school is the only place that they feel safe and loved" (denise), and "without the sense of safety, children cannot learn" (kimberly). furthermore, analysis of pre-service teachers' open-ended results indicated a combination of both altruistic and intrinsic factors for choosing teaching as a profession, suggesting that the lines between identifying clear altruistic and intrinsic factors may often become blurred. instead, what emerges is this notion of "altruism," which indicates that altruistic individuals may be driven by intrinsic motivation. correlation results indicated there was a statistically significant correlational relationship between the reason for choosing to be an educator to make a difference (altruistic) and the intrinsic factors of being good at working with children (rho = .394, p = .032) and being able to explain to others (rho = .478, p = .015). as seen in figure 3, intrinsic motivation for teaching involves a genuine desire to work with children because of a love of teaching. in comparison, altruistic motivation is a desire to make an impact on the lives of children. specifically, to teach them important life skills, build the leaders of the future, and empower them with knowledge. pre-service teachers indicated they "love teaching" and want "to mold and shape young learners" but also want to "empower with knowledge" and help "make the world better" by "watching over them." interconnecting these desires for their future learners creates a sense of altruism. altruism suggests that pre-service educators who want to make a difference in the lives of children are often driven by intrinsic motivational factors for entering the teaching profession. though some may indicate that they desire to make a difference or impact, deep down, that desire must be fueled by an intrinsic desire to do so. noor et al.'s (2012) research findings indicated that the most common reason people select teaching as a profession is because they want to make a difference, which is altruistic, but they are also highly motivated, indicating intrinsic motivation. why is this important? as van den borre et al. (2021) argue, teachers who entered the profession for intrinsic reasons or altruistic reasons, such as to make a difference, will more likely stay in the profession longer. for school leaders, this indicates that it is necessary to feed the teacher's soul and continue to nourish their intrinsic and altruistic spirit early on during initial entry into the field, as shuls and flores (2020) recommend using induction programs to help retain teachers. however, it is necessary to redesign induction programs that focus on the altruistic and intrinsic reasons why they entered the teaching profession to ensure sustainment over time. ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 14 figure 3 path to altruism note: author created figure the results from this study indicated that educational experiences, in some part, influenced the career choice of predominately mexican american female pre-service teachers. in this research study, 72.4% of respondents indicated that a positive interaction with a teacher influenced their decision to enter the teaching profession, and 41.3% generally agreed that a negative experience with an educator influenced their career choice. the results indicate that an individual's educational experiences play a role in their choice to become an educator. specifically, the correlational analysis indicated that the level of disagreement that they had a positive experience with an educator decreased (rho = -.460, p = .014). as the level of agreement that a negative experience influenced their career choice increases, so does the influence of a negative experience (rho = .596, p < .001). the findings from this research confirm yu's (2015) and ye et al.'s (2021) findings, which indicated that some pre-service teachers were motivated to become teachers by interactions or experiences they had with a teacher. factors such as encouragement/lack of pedagogical practices and a feeling of a sense of belonging emerged as influential themes in participants' responses. as ryan and deci (2000) argue, motivation is "volitional" (p. 4), and the results indicate that while an experience with an educator influenced their decision to become an educator, the reason was different for all participants. while some recounted memories of support, encouragement, and patience, others recalled experiences of bullying, humiliation, and unwelcomeness. despite the influential experiential differences, what unites the participants is a shared peripheral experience from the exteriority. olsen (2008) writes that "teacher development is circular even as it is also forward-moving: a teacher is always collapsing the past, present, and future into a complex mélange of professional beliefs, goals, memories, and predictions while enacting practice" (p. 24). in revisiting their narrative experiences, these female mexican-american pre-service educators collectively recalled and confronted their past educational experiences, validated their existence, and empowered themselves to not remain in the exteriority but instead propel themselves to the center of the totality. their experience will fuel their future actions in the classroom, and their intrinsic drive ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 15 will be altruistic to avoid a reliving of the past and ignite a transformative educational journey that school leaders are tasked with maintaining. contributions to the field prior research into teacher motivation (chong & low, 2009; reeves & lowemhaut, 2016; kwok et al., 2022; van den borre et al., 2021; ivanec, 2020; heinz, 2015; gore, 2018; tang et al., 2018) indicated that individuals chose to enter the profession for intrinsic and altruistic reasons. however, the participants in prior research were predominantly white and nonhispanic. the findings from this research confirmed that mexican american pre-service educators' motivations for entering teaching are also both intrinsic and altruistic. the data analysis for this study is unique because pre-service teachers' responses to likert scale items were cross-referenced with open-ended responses regarding their past educational experiences. the written narratives of pre-service educators helped to illuminate their voices regarding their choices and motivations for entering the teaching profession. thus, the perspectives of mexicanamerican women living along the u.s.-mexico border are now represented in the larger scope of pre-service teacher motivation. kwok et al. (2022) argue that some research literature indicates that pre-service teachers' motivations for entering the teaching profession are influenced by culture and specific circumstances. hence, this case study situates the experiences of predominately mexican american pre-service teachers living along the u.s.-mexico border, which represent motivational voices from the exteriority. while prior research on teacher motivation has been performed in both national and international contexts of both westernized and non-westernized nations, the perspectives of minority women, particularly mexicanamericans, have not been significantly studied. specifically, some of the pre-service teachers in this study were immigrants whose educational experiences described difficulty in the classroom due to a language barrier and an unsupportive learning environment. educator preparatory programs in border universities must take note of this finding and take steps to include coursework in teaching in a culturally and linguistically diverse classroom with an emphasis on nurturing the social and emotional well-being of students. the findings from this study indicate that for some pre-service teachers who happened to be immigrants, their educational experiences played a significant role in their choice to become educators. while this case study is on a small scale, it does help to expand the literature to look at the cultural motivational factors that influence pre-service teachers on the u.s.-mexico border to enter the teaching profession. future research is needed to investigate if initial motivations for entering the teaching profession remain after entering the profession. it would be noteworthy to investigate if educators entering the profession for intrinsic reasons stay longer as opposed to those for altruistic reasons and if the results vary by school level (elementary as opposed to secondary). conclusion teacher retention is a worldwide problem that is well-documented in the research literature (mcinerney et al., 2015; reeves & lowenhaut, 2016; ingersoll et al.,2018; le velle, 2019; shuls & flores, 2020; casley-hayford et al., 2022). the findings from this research indicate that those who choose to become educators do so because they are genuinely interested in teaching children and making a difference in their lives. whether the reason is intrinsic or altruistic, they are not in it for the money. they are in it for the satisfaction of shaping the young ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 16 minds of tomorrow's leaders and teaching them something worthwhile because they love children. moreover, it is that love that school leaders need to nourish to ensure that these heroes remain in the field. school leaders must triangulate recruitment from all angles, pay a good wage, nurture the teaching soul, and provide the necessary support. examining the motivations of pre-service teachers helps to demystify the experiences that helped shape the identity of the altruistic and intrinsically motivated pre-service teacher. many have had a positive experience with an educator who illuminated their path to teaching, while others who were silenced, ignored, or humiliated chose to be different. our goal as educators is to support our field from within and encourage reflective practices and motivational support to retain educators who selected teaching as their profession for the right reasons: because they have the motivation to teach young minds and make a difference. references alam, m. s., & asmawi, a. 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(2018). what attracts young people to become teachers? a comparative study of pre-service teachers' motivation to become teachers in hong kong and macau. asia pacific education review, 19, 433-444. https://doi.org/10/1007/s12564-018-9541-x van den borre, l., spruyt, b., & droogenbroeck, f. v. (2021). early career teacher retention intention: individual, school and country characteristics. teaching and teacher education, 105, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2021.103427 watt, h. m. g., & richardson, p.w. (2007). motivational factors influencing teaching as a career choice: development and validation of fit-choice scale. journal of experimental education, 75(3), 167-202. ye, w., wang, z., zhang, x., ding, y., & ye, w. (2021). comparing motivations of pre-service and beginning teachers in china: impact of culture and experience. journal of education for teaching, 47(4), 576-589. https://doi.org/10.1080/026074.2021.1898911 yu, s. (2015). becoming a teacher in a gambling city: a case study of two pre-service teachers' motivation for teaching in macau. journal of education for teaching, 41(4), 447-450. https://doi.org//10.1080/02607476.2015.1080431 appendix pre-service teachers' motivations for entering teaching profession survey instructions: read each question carefully and select the answer that best represents you. 1. what is your gender? (a) male (b) female (c) prefer not to say 2. what is your classification? (a) freshman (b) sophomore https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.03.011 https://doi.10.1006/ceps.1999.1020 https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/coming-crisis-teaching https://doi.org/10/1007/s12564-018-9541-x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2021.103427 https://doi.org/10.1080/026074.2021.1898911 https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2015.1080431 ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 19 (c) junior (d) senior 3. what is your specialization? (a) special education (b) bilingual education (c) ec-6 generalist (d) other 4. do you have a family member that is an educator? (a) yes (b) no 5. which group of children would you prefer to work with? (a) pk-1st (b) 2nd-3rd (c) 4th-5th (d) 6th-8th (e) 9th-12th motivations select the response for each question that best represents the influence of each factor on your decision to enter the teaching profession. 6. i chose to become an educator because i want to make a difference in a child's life. (a) strongly disagree (b) disagree (c) neither agree or disagree (d) agree (e) strongly agree 7. i chose to become an educator because i am good at working with children. (a) strongly disagree (b) disagree (c) neither agree or disagree (d) agree (e) strongly agree 8. i chose to become an educator because i enjoy working with children. (a) strongly disagree (b) disagree (c) neither agree or disagree (d) agree (e) strongly agree 9. i chose to become an educator because i am good at explaining and showing others how things work. (a) strongly disagree (b) disagree (c) neither agree or disagree (d) agree (e) strongly agree 10. i chose to become an educator because i think the job of teaching seems easy to do. ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 20 (a) strongly disagree (b) disagree (c) neither agree or disagree (d) agree (e) strongly agree 11. i chose to become an educator because it is a well-paid and stable career path. (a) strongly disagree (b) disagree (c) neither agree or disagree (d) agree (e) strongly agree 12. i chose to become an educator because of the work schedule (ex., weekends off, holidays off, long summer break). (a) strongly disagree (b) disagree (c) neither agree or disagree (d) agree (e) strongly agree 13. i chose to become an educator because i think working with children is easy. (a) strongly disagree (b) disagree (c) neither agree or disagree (d) agree (e) strongly agree 14. i chose to become an educator as a stepping stone to later becoming a counselor, school administrator, or librarian. (a) strongly disagree (b) disagree (c) neither agree or disagree (d) agree (e) strongly agree 15. i chose to become an educator because teaching children is a worthwhile profession. (a) strongly disagree (b) disagree (c) neither agree or disagree (d) agree (e) strongly agree 16. i chose to become an educator because of a family member. (a) strongly disagree (b) disagree (c) neither agree or disagree (d) agree (e) strongly agree 17. i chose to become an educator because of a positive experience i had with an educator. (a) strongly disagree (b) disagree ibarra: motivation for entering current issues in education, 26(1) 21 (c) neither agree or disagree (d) agree (e) strongly agree 18. i chose to become an educator because of a negative experience i had with an educator. (a) strongly disagree (b) disagree (c) neither agree or disagree (d) agree (e) strongly agree open-ended please respond to these questions with as much detail as possible and to the best of your ability. 19. what experience (s) (positive or negative) influenced in some part your decision to become an educator? 20. you have chosen to become an educator. why do you think the teaching profession is for you? author’s notes blanca n. ibarra, ed. d. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4893-2902 texas a & m international university blanca.ibarra@tamiu.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4893-2902 mailto:blanca.ibarra@tamiu.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ "not motivated but frustrated": preservice teachers’ career choice motivations and professional identity in an african context current issues in education, 24(1) 1 volume 24, issue 1 february 13, 2023 issn 1099-839x "not motivated but frustrated": preservice teachers’ career choice motivations and professional identity in an african context adaobiagu n. obiagu university of nigeria abstract: this study examines preservice teachers’ career choice motivations and professional identity in an african context, nigeria, using a narrative research method. it draws on the stories of 37 social education preservice teachers at a university in nigeria about their teacher-becoming trajectory and teaching practice experience to realize its aims. findings show that in nigeria, the choice of teaching is highly motivated by fallback higher education programs, extrinsic and socialization influence factors, while intrinsic, perceived abilities, and altruistic factors are the least motivators. the choice of teaching is influenced by gender in nigeria, with women’s sociocultural status and traditional gender roles influencing their choice of teaching and intention to remain in the teaching profession. the majority of the preservice teachers (83.78%) have poor and negative teaching professional identities. also, intrinsic and altruistic motivation factors are associated with positive teacher professional identity in nigeria. preservice teachers’ professional identity develops from social influences, intrinsic perspectives, and their teacher education experiences and institutional factors such as teacher welfare and development policies. the findings provide insights into social education teacher pedagogic and ethics training needs that could, drawing on teacher agency to navigate the structural challenges confronting the education profession in nigeria, foster preservice teachers’ strong interest in teaching and possibly reduce teacher attrition in developing contexts. keywords: preservice teacher career choice motivations, teacher professional identity, teaching ethics, fit-choice model, nigeria citation: obiagu, a.n. (2023). “not motivated but frustrated”: preservice teachers’ career choice motivations and professional identity in an african context. current issues in education, 24(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss1.2069 accepted: january 18, 2023 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss1.2069 obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 2 introduction research on teachers’ career motivations has been largely general in nature, covering teachers of all subjects (kiliniҫ et al., 2012; leech et al., 2019; lin et al., 2012; manuel & hughes, 2006; parr et al., 2021), with few of these research comparing the career motivations of teachers of various disciplines of which social science education teachers were referenced (glutsh & könig, 2019; kiliniҫ et al., 2012). there are, however, subject-specific studies that have considered teachers’ motivation, and their findings are similar to the findings of studies on teaching motivation generally (coon, 2020; spittle & spittle, 2014; topkaya & uztosun, 2012). there seems to be no study that has specifically studied social education teachers’ career choice motivations. social education programs deal with preventing and solving social problems through promoting pro-social, economic, political, and environmental behaviors. they include subjects like social studies, civic education, political science education, history education, economics education, geography and environmental education, human rights education, and peace education. these disciplines share some characteristics that could impact students’ choice of them as a career. for example, some of the social topics are difficult and controversial, thereby presenting discomfort and classroom management challenges to teachers (kuş & öztürk, 2019; misco & patterson, 2007). social education deals with affective, complex, and dynamic issues that are usually elusive or contested. commitment to some of its goals—such as protecting human rights and promoting justice and activism—is associated with stress, trauma, depression, and other mental health issues (knuckey et al., 2018; parnes et al., 2020). these characteristics of social education make it imperative to particularly explore why pre-service teachers choose to study and teach them, along with their teaching professional identity. understanding the motivations behind social education preservice teachers’ choice to teach or study social education is important for a better appreciation of their positionality (worldviews and practice) about social education. also, understanding the motivations behind choosing social education as a career is important for making sense of the challenges and problems (e.g., theory-practice gap, uncritical implementation of social or global issues, emphasis on cognition and achievement, and misunderstanding of the scope of social education) observed with social education implementations (obiagu, 2022; idowu, 2017; kwenin, 2021; mezieobi et al., 2012) and for making decisions on how to address the observed challenges since motivations are central to behaviors, practice and willingness to change. it is also worth mentioning that most teachers’ career choice motivation studies are quantitative (parr et al., 2021) and mainly situated in developed contexts. employing a qualitative approach to the study of teachers’ career choices will contribute to the richness of data on this topic by providing more nuanced perspectives from studied participants. this study is a step in this direction. the study draws on a qualitative method (narrative data from 37 social education preservice teachers in a university in nigeria) to explore issues of teachers’ career motivations and professional identity. structural challenges notwithstanding, the findings of the study revealed social educators’ knowledge and competency skills’ training needs that are prerequisites to decolonial, critical and transformative practices largely emphasized in social education research today. such prerequisite training needs will prepare teachers to appreciate social education’s purpose, contents, and pedagogy. the findings of the study could further offer insights into social science education practices, including how to defeminize the profession, in countries with similar social dynamics. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 3 theoretical framework the interpretation of this study’s findings is guided by fit-choice (factors influencing teaching as a career choice) theory, grounded in eccles et al.’s (1983) expectancy-value theory and developed by watt and richardson (2007). eccles et al. (1983, 2005) expectancy-value theory assumes that academic choices or behaviors are mainly motivated by the chooser’s expectancies of success in the chosen task and perceptions of the values (immediate and continuous gains and costs) of the task and minimally influenced by the chooser’s socialization and previous experience’s perceptions. watt and richardson (2007) extended expectancy-value theory to the teaching career and built on the theory to develop fit-choice integrative model designed to assess the reasons why individuals choose teaching as a career. fit-choice theory holds that the choice to teach is motivated by teachers’ socialization influences (e.g., peers, family, and teachers’ encouragement or dissuasion); perception of teaching task demands (e.g., expected expertise and availability of opportunities) and task returns (e.g., social status and salary); perceptions of self-ability to teach; values’ perceptions such as intrinsic values (love for and interest in teaching), personal utility or extrinsic values (e.g., job security and time for family) and social utility or altruistic values (e.g., desire to nurture future generation and make social contributions); and perception of teaching as a fallback career. the model, though designed for preservice teachers’ motivation assessment, has been replicated and validated in studies assessing both preservice teachers’ (bergmark et al., 2018; kilinҫ et al., 2012; sinclair, 2008) and in-service teachers’ (leech et al., 2019; parr et al., 2021) motivation to teach in both developed and developing countries, with findings of the validating studies similar. anchoring the present study on the fit-choice model is based on the speculation that it will aid the understanding of preservice teachers’ (of all subjects) motivation for choosing to teach in nigeria’s context. the next section reviews previous literature on teaching career choice motivations and teacher professional identity to put the study in context. literature review this section reviews existing literature on two related factors, pre-service and in-service teachers’ career choice motivation and professional identity. teachers’ motivation for choosing teaching as a career teacher motivation is "what attracts individuals to teaching, how long they remain in their initial teacher education courses, and the teaching profession" (sinclair, 2008, p. 37). shortage of teachers and teachers’ recruitment and retention needs have mostly informed studies on teachers’ motivation for a teaching career in developed countries, while the need to improve teachers’ active practice and effective classroom practices have been additional motivating factors for similar studies in developing countries. teacher motivation is usually categorized into intrinsic, extrinsic, and altruistic motivations. it is believed to impact teachers’ professional identity, teaching practice, and students’ educational outcomes, including students’ interest in learning. over the last ten decades, studies have explored the motivations behind the choice of teaching career using similar models (brown, 1992; chivore, 1988; gould, 1934; greene & scott, 1962; lin et al., 2012; olasehinde, 1972; parr et al., 2021; sinclair, 2008; tudhope, 1944; willcox & beigel, 1953). post-2007 teaching career choice studies have relied more on an integrated fit-choice model developed in 2007 by watt and richardson (watt & richardson, 2007). however, both pre-2007 and post-2007 studies, in both developed and developing obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 4 contexts, consistently point to intrinsic, extrinsic, and altruistic motivations for choosing teaching. in developed countries, studies have consistently shown intrinsic and altruistic factors to strongly motivate preservice teachers’ choice of teaching career than fallback career and socialization reasons, though these factors occur in varying degrees in these contexts. studies in the contexts of australia (manuel & hughes, 2006; sinclair, 2008; watt & richardson, 2007, 2012), the united states (lin et al., 2012; thomson et al., 2012), china (lin et al., 2012), sweden (bergmark et al., 2018), germany (glutsh & könig, 2019; könig & rothland, 2012), spain (alvariñas-villaverde et al., 2022), and turkey (kilinҫ et al., 2012) consistently showed the top motivations for choosing teaching among preservice teachers to include perceived ability to teach and intrinsic and altruistic reasons, such as a passion for teaching, a desire to make a social contribution, and a desire to work with children; with fallback career and socialization influence reasons the least ranked motivations in these contexts. the findings of studies exploring in-service teachers’ motivation for choosing teaching across these contexts (alexander et al., 2020; parr et al., 2021) are consistent with the findings of studies that explored preservice teachers’ motivation. in developing contexts, findings are inconsistent and mostly reverse of what exists in developed countries. in countries such as zimbabwe and nigeria, studies showed that extrinsic and mercenary factors, such as salary, working conditions, and job transferability (chivore, 1988; nwagwu, 1981), and socialization influences, including referrals by family and friends (yusuf et al., 2018), were the highest ranked motivating factors for choosing teaching as a career. in these contexts, changes or improvements in students’ interest in choosing a teaching career were observed when the working conditions of teaching service were improved, as shown by findings of a nigerian comparative study of two settings whose participants were secondary school, final-year students—first setting being in 1972 (when working conditions of teachers were poor) and second setting being in 1977 (when teaching conditions were better) (nwagwu, 1981). recent studies in ghana, nigeria, and zambia showed that the desire to make social contributions and shape children’s future were the highest motivating factors for preservice teachers’ choice of teaching (abonyi et al., 2021; akpochafo, 2020; mweemba & allida, 2021) while job security and salary were the least chosen factors in nigeria and zambia (akpochafo, 2020; mweemba & allida, 2021). preservice and in-service teachers in nigeria reported negative attitudes towards the teaching profession, with most of them preferring other professions to teaching, defining teaching as a feminine profession, and doing teaching because they have no other options (egwu, 2015; olasehinde, 1972). sociodemographic factors, such as gender and education programs, are also implicated as influencing teachers’ motivation. female teachers report stronger intrinsic and altruistic motivations, especially the desire to work with children and shape their future, for choosing teaching than males (kilinҫ et al., 2012; spittle & spittle, 2014; ṡtemberger, 2020; yüce et al., 2013) while male teachers rank higher in negative motivations such as choosing teaching based on extrinsic values, fallback career and social influence reasons (alexander et al., 2020; kilinҫ et al., 2012; sinclair, 2008; yüce et al., 2013). more women than men chose to teach on intrinsic grounds and for time for family in ghana and nigeria (abonyi et al., 2021; akpochafo, 2020). women were also found to have stronger positive attitudes towards the teaching profession and greater intention to remain in or continue with teaching than men (nwagwu, 1981; sinclair, 2008; ṡtemberger, 2020): this is due to their higher intrinsic and altruistic motivations (watt & richardson, 2007). obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 5 for study programs variable, findings are inconsistent. kilinҫ et al. (2012) found that preservice teachers of non-science programs, including social science education programs, scored higher on intrinsic and altruistic motivations for teaching, while preservice teachers in science-related programs scored higher on fallback career and socialization influence motives. in another study, social studies/humanities preservice teachers were reported to show lower intrinsic, social, and pedagogical motivations compared to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (stem) and language preservice teachers (glustch & könig, 2019). the authors explained the finding as strange given that social studies/humanities programs deal with human behaviors and humanity (glustch & könig 2019). this inconsistency between findings of previous studies adopting various approaches calls for a robust study focusing specifically on social science education program preservice teachers’ motivations for choosing this teaching course, and this is part of what the present study considers. the following section reviews the literature on another variable of this study, the teachers’ professional identity, given its connection with teachers’ teaching choice motivation. teachers’ professional identity and how it develops there is no universally agreed definition of teacher professional identity. the concept is represented differently and sometimes approached as teachers’ motivation, attitude, or belief in the existing literature. the reason for this is not farfetched. as day et al. (2006) noted, the understanding of self is important to beliefs, attitudes, and actions; and identity "is a key influencing factor on teachers’ sense of purpose, self-efficiency, motivation, commitment, job satisfaction and effectiveness" (p. 601). additionally, beijaard et al. (2004) stated that belief is a part of identity. a review of the literature shows that the concept is defined from two perspectives, individualistic and collectivistic or normative perspectives, with an individualistic perspective representing personal identity and a collectivistic perspective representing group identity. sachs’s (2001) definition of teacher professional identity as "a set of attributes that are imposed upon the teaching profession either by outsiders or members of the teaching fraternity itself" (p. 153) represents a normative or collectivistic perspective. some of these attributes or norms expected of or ascribed to the teaching profession include caring, mastery of content and pedagogical knowledge, tolerance, patience, social-emotional competencies, and global competencies, among others. most definitions in literature take the individualistic perspective that involves selfawareness and self-conception in relation to being a teacher and teaching. one’s awareness and conception of self in a teaching role, just like career motivation, is influenced by one’s idiosyncrasies and biography, personal experiences from culture, schooling, intrinsic, extrinsic, and social factors, as well as by institutional factors like educational policies and political and economic contexts. from this perspective, beijaard et al. (2004) noted teachers’ professional identity as an answer to the question, "who am i as a teacher"? kelchtermans (1993) outlined five components of teacher professional identity as self-image, self-esteem, job motivation, task perception, and future perspectives. notably, one common feature with the various representations of teacher professional identity is its characterization as a dynamic, nonstraightforward, and ongoing process (beijaard et al., 2004; day et al., 2006; sachs, 2001). to focus this article, this study defines teacher professional identity from an individualistic perspective to mean a teacher’s perception of teaching both as a career and practice along with their conception of self in a teaching role or as a teacher. it implies a teacher’s identity that reflects an interconnection between the self, the teaching professional obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 6 community, and the teaching profession. this definition allows for distinction between components of teacher professional identity—teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and motivation—from teacher professional identity itself and for a clearer assessment of teacher professional identity. where a teacher’s perception of teaching does not come simultaneously with (or is not woven into the teacher’s) conception and narrative of self in relation to the teaching role, then the perception is the teacher’s professional belief and not the teacher’s professional identity. teacher professional identity can be negative or positive. it is negative when teaching is perceived from a contemptuous view as non-demanding or less interesting, with the perceiver disassociating themself from the teaching role now or in the future. it is positive when teaching is perceived as noble, interesting, satisfactory, and fulfilling, with the perceiver associating themself with the teaching role in the present and in the future. to be regarded as positive, the teacher must perceive teaching as noble and interesting and, at the same time, exhibit the intention to remain in the teaching profession. just like teachers’ teaching motivation studies reviewed in the previous section, studies have evidenced that teacher professional identity develops from institutional factors, such as educational policies and sociocultural factors, intrinsic and extrinsic factors, and personal experiences (day et al., 2006; flores & day, 2006; kelchtermans, 1993; thomas & beauchamp, 2011; ye & zhao, 2018). it is also found that new teachers express a lack of confidence and a sense of powerlessness in their professional lives (thomas & beauchamp, 2011). thomas and beauchamp (2011) found that new teachers lack a strong and positive feeling about their professional selves, despite the fact that some came into the profession with a positive identity (flores & day, 2006). where new teachers hold positive teacher professional identity, negative school cultures and contexts that challenge the meanings, values, and images they bring into teaching destabilize the positive identity, and hence make the work a routine and less creative job for many (flores & day, 2006). ensuring that teachers develop a positive professional identity is imperative. this is because a teacher’s understanding of their professional identity impacts their decisions about curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and student learning (mockler, 2011). for preservice teachers, zhang et al. (2016) found that their professional identity influenced their performance in their program through impacting their task value belief. zhao and zhang (2017) showed that preservice teachers’ professional identity is positively impacted by teaching practice fieldwork and mentor support. yet, teacher education programs fail to provide opportunities and experiences for preservice teachers to develop a strong positive professional identity (flores & day, 2006; thomas & beauchamp, 2011). reviewed studies offer general knowledge about teacher professional identity and the identity holder’s success in teaching programs or practice. additional specialized knowledge of teacher professional identity is important for an effective teacher education practice of respective programs. hence, this present study is more concerned with understanding how social education preservice teachers undergoing teaching practice view teaching as a profession and themselves as teachers at present and in the future, along with how held identity develops in the nigerian context as well as how the identified identity relates with their intention to teach. the present study this study examines preservice social educators’ motivations for choosing social education, their professional identity, and how it relates to their motivations. the study was conducted in a developing context, the south-east region of nigeria and appears to be the first obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 7 specifically exploring social educators’ motivation for choosing to teach social education across teachers’ career choice literature. the factors (such as teacher shortages, teacher attrition, and the entrance to the teaching profession by people from high-paying and prestigious disciplines) that mainly motivate studying motivations for the choice of a teaching career in developed countries are not pronounced in sub-saharan africa. hence, it is considered important to explore, using qualitative methods, why people choose to teach in this context, given factors—such as overcrowded classrooms, poor working conditions, and poor and delayed salaries, amongst others—that embroil the teaching profession in sub-saharan african contexts. also, all reviewed studies in developing contexts and most reviewed studies in developed contexts relied on quantitative methods. given the nature of the items measured in these studies, quantitative methods are highly susceptible to social desirability and unconscious bias. it will be difficult not to pick ‘the desire to make contributions to society or shape children’s future’ as strong motivating factors. these options will most likely be ranked highly by anyone, irrespective of discipline, whether medicine or teaching. my study will contribute to the discourse by drawing on qualitative data, which has the potential to give a nuanced picture of career choice’s trajectory and also reveal the point at which preservice teachers developed altruistic motivations for teaching. findings will most likely be remarkably different from the findings of previous studies and inform policies that could impact teacher education practices. it is further anticipated that the evolving complex and sometimes controversial nature of social education will impact differently social educators’ motivations for choosing teaching as a career and the professional identity they develop. method this study employs a narrative research method. narrative research is focused on how individuals experience the world and assign meaning to their experiences via the stories they tell (connelly & clandinin, 1990; moen, 2006). the sources of narrative data include field notes of shared experiences, storytelling, interviews, journal entries, and autobiographical and biographical writing (connelly & clandinin, 1990). narrative research is criticized as open to fraud or unethical practices since researchers can tamper with participants’ original stories (connelly & clandinin, 1990). this risk notwithstanding, narrative data, collected through stories, is adopted for this study because of its potential to allow sep teachers freedom to share their thoughts and experiences without pretense and with limited room for social desirability bias. again, the question of motivations and identity is best revealed through stories: this is because stories are the embodiment of our identity and experiences, and "without a story, there is no identity, no self, no other" (lewis, 2011, p. 505). also, telling stories does not confine participants to items that may not be representative of their identities or items that are highly susceptible to social desirability/unconscious bias. it gives the participants the opportunity to reflect on their journey, process their experiences, and share it accurately. as observed by parr et al. (2021), "researchers’ overreliance on quantitative methods signals an important gap in the study of teacher education. more qualitative… research is needed to better understand the complexities of how teachers define and interpret their motivations for teaching." narrative research is one of the qualitative methods mainly used in educational studies. it has been applied in studying educational issues, especially curriculum making and human rights, and multicultural education, and a reflective approach is usually adopted in data reporting (coulter et al., 2007; mcgraw et al., 2017; mittson-kiikner et al., 2010; oser & zhu, 2011; valdez et al., 2000). the present study aligns itself with the practice of previous educational obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 8 narrative research but focuses on teachers’ career motivations and professional identity. relying on narrative data for this research aids the understanding of the complexities of motivations for teaching and professional identity. from this perspective, this study considers narrative research as appropriate since the paper sought to explore sep teachers’ teaching career choice motivations and professional identity. the following specific research questions guided the study: 1. what motivates social science education (sse) preservice teachers to choose teaching and their specific programs? 2. what professional identity do sse preservice teachers have? and, how do they develop that professional identity? participants the sample of the study comprised 37 (22 females and 18 males; see table 1 for participant profile) social science education preservice teachers out of the 40 preservice teachers supervised by the author in four schools in the 2018-2019 session who gave consent to have their stories used for this research. the area of the study is enugu state in south-east nigeria. table 1 profile of participants—preservice teachers for the 2018 – 2019 session sn gender specific course program program level school subject taught class taught preservice teacher [pt] 1 male (m) – 300 1 government sss3 pt 2 m – 300 1 civic edu sss2 pt 3 m – 400 1 government sss 2 pt 4 m – 400 1 government sss2 pt 5 female (f) – 400 1 social studies jss3 pt 6 m – 400 1 civic edu sss3 pt 7 f – 300 1 economics sss3 pt 8 f – 400 1 economics sss2 pt 9 f – 300 2 crs sss1 pt 10 f – 400 2 economics sss1 pt 11 f – 300 2 economics sss2 pt 12 f – 300 2 civic edu sss1 pt 13 m – 300 2 social studies jss2 pt 14 m – 400 2 government sss2 pt 15 f – 400 2 civic edu jss2 pt 16 m – 300 2 civic edu jss2 pt 17 m – 300 2 government sss1 pt 18 m – 300 3 civic edu sss1 pt 19 m – 300 3 civic edu sss3 pt 20 f – 300 3 civic edu jss1 pt 21 m – 400 3 government sss3 pt 22 f – 300 3 social studies jss2 obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 9 sn gender specific course program program level school subject taught class taught pt 23 f – 400 3 civic edu jss3 pt 24 m – 400 3 government sss1 pt 25 f – 400 3 social studies jss1 pt 26 f – 300 3 economics sss1 pt 27 f – 400 4 government sss2 pt 28 m – 300 4 social studies jss2 pt 29 f – 400 4 economics sss2 pt 30 f – 300 4 economics sss1 pt 31 m – 300 4 civic edu jss2 pt 32 f – 400 4 civic edu jss1 pt 33 f – 300 4 government sss1 pt 34 f – 300 4 social studies jss3 pt 35 f – 400 4 social studies jss2 pt 36 f – 400 4 social studies jss1 pt 37 m – 300 1 civic edu sss1 note. specific course program details (education/economics, education/political science, and education/social studies) were removed to further blur the identity of the participants. procedure for narrative data collection this study adopts storytelling as a method for narrative data collection (connelly & clandinin, 1990). data was collected on preservice teachers’ teacher-becoming and teaching practice experiences. the study further constructed interpretations about the experiences of the participants and the meaning attributed to the experiences. the narrative data were collected using an instrument, ‘supervisee’s teaching program (tp) motivations, experiences and practice inquiry template,’ developed by the author for eliciting the stories of tp supervisees. the template was administered to the supervisees on a day prior to their actual instructional and classroom practice supervisions. this occasion for eliciting information is a pre-teaching conference –an interactive meeting between the supervisor and their supervisees where the supervisees share stories of their teaching trajectory or teacher becoming. the goal of a preteaching conference is to help the supervisor identify their students’ needs and improve the supervisor’s practice that could meaningfully impact the professional growth of the students. more broadly, the conference aimed to: • build supervisees-supervisor trust; • understand (and encourage or inhibit) the psycho-sociocultural factors that may influence, positively or negatively, preservice teachers’ practice and professional development; • reduce the high level of anxiety, caused partly by observation by supervisors, found among preservice teachers (see danner, 2014) through establishing a first interactive contact with them; • raise supervisees’ consciousness about and reflection on their teaching trajectory, their challenges, and their improvement opportunities; • identify, from the perspectives of preservice teachers, areas of improvement for supervisors and teacher programs. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 10 the inquiry template comprised five questions. in your story: • tell us your motivation for choosing the program you are studying; • tell us the challenges you have so far encountered in your journey in this program; • tell us what you enjoy about teaching; • share with us your difficulties in your teaching practice exercise; • where do you see yourself in the future? do you intend to teach after graduation? preservice teachers were asked to follow the above template in telling their stories about their journey into the social education program and how the journey has been for them. through these questions, the supervisor allowed themselves into their students’ perspectives and thoughts and explored ways of helping them improve their practice. the supervisor also used the forum to create opportunities for preservice "teachers to map and understand the patterns of their lives experience, both in their personal and professional lives, in order that they may better understand their current purposes and practices" (leitch & day, 2000, p.188). preservice teachers were informed that participation in the conference does not carry any reward or consequence and will not influence their tp assessment; that the conference is aimed at understanding their idiosyncrasies and challenges with teaching; and that their stories will be used for research on understanding social education preservice teachers’ motivations for choosing to study social education, their professional identity, and challenges with teaching. they were informed of their right to choose not to share their stories. three elected not to share their stories, while 37 shared them. the author took handwritten notes of the stories with the students’ consent. permission was further obtained from the department of social science education of the university of nigeria to use the data for research purposes. using the collected data, the study explored social science education preservice teachers’ motivation for choosing the social science education program and their professional identity through identifying themes on these variables from the shared stories and the meanings preservice teachers attributed to their shared experiences. data analysis the collected data were used to draw conclusions on preservice teachers’ motivations for teaching, professional identity, and challenges in nigeria; only findings on career choice motivations and professional identity are reported in this study. the researcher’s handwritten notes (stories or narrative data) collected on each study participant were deductively thematically analyzed using an analytical coding method (strauss & corbin, 1990) to identify codes that are present in previous literature, including in watt & richardson’s (2007) fit-choice model. the stories of individual participants were compared for similar and divergent views or contents. noteworthy is that the codes were quantified to enable percentage calculations. final themes, together with their percentage level of emphasis by participants, were developed by harmonizing collected codes resulting from the analysis of individual data. the generated final themes were grouped and presented as subheads under the two variables, namely preservice teachers’ motivations and preservice teachers’ professional identity, captured in the research questions guiding this study. eight themes emerged under preservice teachers’ motivations, while four themes emerged under preservice teachers’ professional identity. a peer researcher reviewed the themes to reduce interpretation bias and ensure that they accurately represented the information contained in the field notes. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 11 findings the results showed that a number of intrinsic and extrinsic factors motivate social science education preservice teachers to choose their course of study. it further showed that preservice teachers’ professional identity is in flux and shaped by mostly sociocultural experiences. these results are presented below. social education preservice teachers’ motivation for teaching choice this part presents findings on the first variable, pre-service teachers’ career choice motivation, explored in this study. the result showed that preservice teachers’ choice to study social science education (sse) is motivated by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. the extrinsic factors are similar to those discussed in fit-choice theory by watt and richardson (2007). the extrinsic factors include broader sociocultural context and immediate social context factors influencing preservice teachers’ decision to teach or study teaching programs. unemployment and economic reasons, fallback higher education and gender expectations, problems, and norms are the broader sociocultural factors, while family influence, previous teaching experience, and secondary teacher’s personality are the immediate social context factors. the intrinsic factors include a love of teaching, a desire for social change, and a perceived oratory or leadership ability. these factors are represented in figure 1 and subsequently discussed in detail. figure 1 social education preservice teachers’ motivation for program choice socialization (family and friends’) influences family members, both extended and nuclear, and friends are instrumental in influencing the choice of teaching career or program among social science preservice teachers, as depicted in the following statements: pt18: i wanted law but my mum hated it because she believes they are liars. i tried it for years. didn’t work. so, i later tried education/political science and got it. preservice teachers' teaching motivations extrinsic motivation broader sociocultural context factors high unemployment and economic reasons fallback higher education programme gender expectations, norms and problems immediate social context factors family/friends' influence secondary teacher's personality previous teaching experience intrinsic and altruistic motivation love of teaching social change desire perceived oratory ability obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 12 pt4: i wanted to do business at onitsha with my father. but all my siblings who are graduates were begging me to go to university that i can’t be the only one that didn’t go to school in our house. they encouraged me to try jamb ones, if i didn’t make it then i should go into business… pt16: i don’t talk too much. my mum is a lecturer and she wants someone to succeed her. i am the one she chose. the influence of family and friends on one’s career choice is defined as a socialization factor (watt & richardson, 2007). generally, socialization factors featured in the stories of 23 out of the 37 (62.16%) participants. this indicates that socialization influence is the strongest motivating factor for choosing to teach in nigeria. this factor, however, is strongly mediated by a prolonged stay at home without admission and connects with fallback higher education motivation. fallback higher education program the fallback higher education program factor noted in this study is similar to watt and richardson’s (2007) fallback career factor, except that individuals in a fallback career consider teaching as a career option in the future while those who chose it as a fallback higher education program do not have interest in a teaching career in the future, but are only interested in becoming higher education graduates and working in any financially better sector. in fact, an education program is a course of last resort for this group of preservice teachers. this factor, the fallback higher education program, ranked as the second highest motivating factor for choosing to teach among the studied sample. out of the 37 participants, 19 (51.35%) indicated choosing to study education program because they could not get admitted into their desired programs. pt19: i wanted political science major. i tried jamb [nigerian joint admission matriculation board examination] four years without getting admission. i was teaching in lesson center before admission. i had to go for education/political science. i was not motivated but frustrated. pt5: i stayed 5 years without getting admission into my choice of course, political science. i was advised by my friends to try guidance and counselling. i tried it and got the admission. pt30: i wasted 3 years trying to get admission to study economics (major) because they have many job opportunities. my friend told me to try education/economics that it is easier to get… so, i tried it and got it. i even prefer it to economics major now. pt10: i wanted law. my family hated education. stayed at home for long. i decided to do education. it is better than not going to school. few students who chose teaching as a fallback higher education program later developed an interest and love for the profession, as shown in the section reporting their professional identity. economic and employment reasons the results showed that economic reasons are strong motivators for choosing to study sse among preservice teachers. economic reasons involve aims to acquire a source of livelihood and improve one’s standard of living. this reason featured strongly in their responses. nine (24.32%) out of the 37 preservice teachers who shared their stories identified economic reasons as motivating their choosing sse. they believed that it is easy to get a teaching job and that demand for teaching services is steady, though the pay is poor. these factors are deducible from preservice teachers’ [pt] statements presented below. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 13 pt 1: initially, i wanted to do philosophy. but the nature of philosophy in nigeria is useless. i then decided to go for political science. but i was advised by people to go for education/political science so i can have double opportunities. pt 3: i wanted mass communication because of a friend who is a radio presenter. in senior secondary, i noticed i wasn’t understanding literature… lack of job motivated me to attach education to political science. so, i went for political science education. pt 2: i wanted mass communication. my dad was advised by an uncle that education is lucrative now. that was how i found myself in education. i didn’t like the course before. i like it now. pt 9: i wanted to do psychology. my dad wanted law. not being able to get law, i enrolled for guidance and counselling and social studies education. but my parents and friends were not happy that i went for education. i got to love g & c because my aunt abroad called me and told me to continue with the course that it sells abroad. so, i continued. before i resumed my 3rd year, my mum asked me how far? i informed her that i have settled with my dad. i promised him that i will do law as a 2nd degree. the above quotes also indicate a belief that sse offers double opportunities for graduates: teaching job opportunities and employment opportunities in any industry that employs graduates of the program, which they combined with education. gender expectations, norms, and problems time for family, which watt and richardson (2007) group under personal utility value, featured as a factor for choosing teaching. however, in the nigerian context, this factor is noted only by female preservice teachers. even though time for family has been used in most western studies, where both male and female teachers consider it important, this study identifies this factor as rather propelled by gender expectations and norms in nigeria. gender expectations or issues were behind the choice of teaching social education by six out of the 22 female social education preservice teachers (i.e., 27% of the female sample; 16.23% of the total sample) who shared their stories, with three of these women expressly pointing to their traditional gender roles as women. for example: pt22 said "i wanted social studies education. my motivation is because i am a woman. i want a profession that will give me time to take care of my family… i want to be closer to my children. social studies education does not require much commitment." pt12 said "i love teaching because as a woman. it will give me time to take care of myself and my family." there seems to be a connection between intrinsic motivations and time for family in the above excerpts from their narratives. the intrinsic factor is, however, connected with gender expectations that seem to limit the career exploits of women or their genuine independence in making career choices. the excerpts strongly emphasize “less work time and less demand,” “being female,” and “carer roles” as strong motivating factors. aside from gender expectations as motivating female preservice teachers’ choice of teaching, gender problems featured as motivating preservice teachers’ choice. pt23 narrates, "i went to a missionary school. i had a counsellor. the school was in northern nigeria, plateau state. in berom culture, it is the tradition for a girl child to give birth at home so that when you marry there will be children singing at home. thank god my teachers were good and supportive and you must know jesus whether you like it or not. so, i escaped teenage pregnancy. this made me choose guidance and counselling/social studies against my dad’s taste for law. i don’t look forward to teaching. my mother is a teacher and obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 14 she complains of salary delay. i learnt tailoring. so, i will go into fashion and designing, be a youth counsellor and fight immorality." notably, pt23’s experience of high teenage pregnancy (which she also connects to nonspirituality) and her encounter with a school counsellor and teachers who helped some of them avoid the menace motivated her choice of program. this, though related to gender norms factors, also strongly indicates altruistic goals and previous school experiences as motivating factors to choose teaching. in another scenario, the choice of teaching by women features as a consequence of both poverty and patriarchy that enable the dependence of women on men or dichotomizes young nigerian women’s fate into either furthering with education or entering into (early) marriage. pt7 recounts, "i wanted accountancy. i wrote jamb three times but didn’t make it. my father said he can’t continue like this; that he has eight children. and suitors were already coming; i was refusing. my father appointed one for me… i told my husband i can do business education because it is related to accountancy. my husband chose education/economics for me." this situation, though it did not indicate that the participant chose the course by imposition but with influence, seemingly reflects patriarchy as a reason for choosing teaching. intrinsic motivations for choosing social education few preservice teachers choose teaching on intrinsic grounds. in all, six preservice teachers (5 females and 1 male; 16.23%) show love and interest in teaching as behind their choice of the teaching study program. this is reflected in the following statements: pt13 (male): i have loved teaching. i am the last to go to school in my family after i helped train my younger ones. teaching interests me since it provides me the opportunity to do what i like doing, training younger ones. pt17: i love teaching that is why i chose my course. teaching is also cheap and easy to do. in some cases, as explained in the section on gender expectations, the intrinsic motivation is associated with gender expectations. secondary teacher’s personality secondary school teachers’ personalities featured as an influencing factor among the participants’ choice of teaching (5 of the 37 preservice teachers, i.e., 13.51%). it is interesting that despite poor working conditions of teaching in nigeria, some teachers are able to serve as career models for their students. four preservice teachers note being positively motivated, by their teachers’ practices, to choose teaching. the story of pt23 under a subhead above (i.e., gender expectations, norms, and problems subhead) showed that her school teachers impacted her program choice. pt11: i wanted nursing so i will have opportunity to care for people. but things scare me. my economics teacher was caring and this motivated me to go for education… pt20: i didn’t know anything when i was in secondary school. i couldn’t speak english. i chose to study education so i can speak like my teachers… pt22: my teachers in secondary school motivated me to study education. they cared for… my dream is to be a teacher. my students don’t give me trouble. on another hand, one preservice teacher noted negative experiences with teachers as their reason for choosing teaching with the intention to change the status quo. according to pt24: "…i see teachers in school, i thought the teachers do not do well because they went to nti or nce. so, i decided to go to university…" obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 15 altruistic motivations for choosing social education despite the social utility and altruistic nature of social education, only four (10.81%) of the study’s participants showed altruistic reasons for choosing their program. only two of these students (out of all participants) expressly connected their motivations to their specific programs. refer to the statements of pt23, pt 11, and pt13 presented in previous subheads. additionally, pt 25 noted; "i like teaching. my motivation for going for social studies is to teach students and direct them to behave well. it will give me time for my family. job opportunities in education is much. i am older than my students. i feel i am in charge of the class." the small number of sep teachers choosing the program on altruistic grounds is disappointing and raises very strong implications for social education teacher training reforms. perceived ability to teach three preservice teachers (8.11% of the total sample) chose social education because of their perceived qualities which they assume indicate an ability to teach. statements reflecting this motivation are presented below. pt32: i chose teaching myself. i like talking and teaching is about talking. i enjoy to teach and didn’t have difficulty with my students. pt24: i see myself as a motivational speaker. i made inquiry on what course will fit me more. i deemed it fit to go for political science/education. pt28: i have the talent to make people understand things. like, i can easily convince people during discussions that is part of the reason i decided to go for teaching when my dream to study publication admission failed. these students believed that they possess some inherent qualities, including oratory skills, attributed to the teaching profession. this perception motivated them to choose teaching and social education that deals with human beings. previous teaching experience the results further show that some preservice teachers gained motivation to choose a teaching career from their previous engagement in teaching in extramural lesson centers or private schools. this is the least motivating factor for choosing to teach in nigeria, as shown in this study. two preservice teachers, including pt19, who "was teaching in lesson center before admission" and whose experience with the course contributed to their finally choosing a teaching course because "it is easy and not stressful" fall into this category. pt21, who wanted to be a priest or politician, "taught in church and private school before starting this program." their previous backgrounds in teaching were an encouraging factor for their decision to enroll in the program. social education preservice (sep) teachers’ professional identity this part presents findings on the second variable, pre-service teachers’ professional identity, of this study. the narratives of sep teachers revealed the teacher professional identity they hold, including their future career goals. positive and negative self-imagination as a teacher or teacher professional identity, how teacher professional identity develops, and the intention to remain in teaching were revealed. each of these components of professional identity is individually discussed below. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 16 positive self-image as a teacher in all, only four preservice teachers (pts 13, 15, 22, and 25) exhibited positive teacher professional identity, which implies a satisfaction with their self-image as a teacher and a positive identity about the teaching profession. this is measured by their perception of the teaching profession, along with their intention to remain in the profession. one participant perceived teaching as demanding expertise, though with a poor task return (salary). this belief developed from her experience with her mother, who is a teacher. as she noted: pt15: ‘i hated teaching because my mum is a teacher. she is always marking scripts at home. teaching is stressful and the pay is small. i am beginning to like it… i look forward to teaching.’ evident in the above story is that the pre-service teacher perceived the teaching task as requiring expertise and was satisfied with the teaching profession irrespective of the poor working condition bedeviling the profession. this indicates a positive professional identity. another participant defined the profession as interesting. pt13: i have loved teaching…teaching interests me since it provides me the opportunity to do what i like doing, training younger ones. i will teach after graduation if i get the opportunity. pt13 did not, at any point, associate teaching with poverty but is satisfied with the profession. other participants who have a good attitude towards the teaching profession but lack interest in remaining in the profession are not recognized as having positive teaching professional identity. negative self-image as a teacher negative teacher professional identity was more profound in the stories shared by the study participants. many of the social education preservice teachers shared the perception that "teaching is a cheap course and easy to do course" (pt17) and an easy and less timeconsuming job (14 of the 37, that is, 37.83% of sep teachers). three participants represented teaching as a disrespected and very poor profession. consider the story below: "my first day in class, i was evaluating my lecturer. can he afford suv? can he buy a good house in a cool town? i looked him from head to toe and i was like, no, i can’t [i can’t do teaching job]. the only thing i like about teaching is that it makes me come in contact with people with different views" – (pt4). two pre-service teachers, although they defined teaching as noble and the mother of all professions, perceived it as a poor and disrespected profession with regard to nigeria’s context and hence, disassociated themselves from teaching in the future. for example, pt31 said, "…teaching is a noble profession. in ancient days, it was a job done by only philosophers, like plato, who were intellects. in some countries, teachers are respected. but in nigeria, the job is disrespected and teachers remain poor and do not care to improve on their knowledge. i plan to go and study law after graduation." the above statement additionally depicts that teachers in the nigerian context are perceived as unintelligent and lacking knowledge. this perception impacts pre-service teachers’ self-image as teachers. intention to continue with teaching self-image and self-esteem as a teacher and the intention to remain in teaching are important components of teacher professional identity. overall, the preservice teachers with negative professional identity were not satisfied with their self-image as teachers, and they planned to switch professions. the preservice teachers that did not identify themselves in a obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 17 teaching role, at the pre-higher education level, in the future amounted to 83.78% of the sample (i.e., 31 out of the 37 participants). two out of these 31 participants, however, wish to lecture at a higher institution level. some others consider moving abroad or pursuing a second degree in a non-teaching course, while many others dream of doing business or moving into politics. consider the following statements: pt18: … i don’t have interest in education. my interest is in politics. so, if i get into politics, the interest of teachers will be my priority. pt24: … if i have my way, i will recommend to ministry of education to make a policy that no school should be licensed without projectors. i will switch to criminology and retire as a lecturer there. although the above participants did not identify with the teaching profession in the future, they showed an intention to contribute to improving the conditions of teaching and teachers in nigeria if they find themselves in a position of political power. only seven pre-service teachers (pts 7, 12, 13, 15, 22, 25, and 34) out of the 37 participants identified (18.92% of the study sample) with the teaching profession in the future. these pre-service teachers are satisfied with their self-image as teachers and, as pt22 puts it, "dream to be a teacher," although few of them characterized teaching as non-demanding. it is worth highlighting that six of these preservice teachers who hold the intention to teach in the future belong to the seven (7) participants who either chose teaching for intrinsic or altruistic reasons, including three of the women who chose teaching on gender grounds. how teacher professional identity develop the results showed that negative professional identity among social education pre-service teachers initially developed from their interaction with their social networks, especially family and friends, as highlighted under the previous section. for example, tp9 noted: "i wanted to do psychology… i enrolled for guidance and counselling and social studies education. but my parents and friends were not happy that i went for education. my dad hates the program…i promised him that i will do law as a 2nd degree." they also develop professional identity through their teacher training experiences. sadly, preservice teachers’ experiences with the teacher education schooling system consolidate their negative identity more than they disrupt it. this observation is supported by pt24’s statement below, "…i thought the teachers do not do well because they went to nti or nce. so, i decided to go to university. unfortunately, when i got to university… the lecturers are archaic. no innovative ideas. they dictate from old handouts and teach everyday stuffs." additionally, pt14 noted, "…i love teaching. the first course i learnt was introduction to education. the lecturer told us teachers are poor and education is cheap. i was discouraged. the course is simply cheap..." it is obvious that the hope and positive identity that some students brought with them to the program were dashed by their experiences with learning practices, especially the hidden curriculum. the broader university system, in which teacher education students encounter professional harassment from professional “others,” additionally compounds the negative professional identity reported by participants. pt26 said, "my friends do mock me for doing education. my defense to my friends is that i will be a lecturer". positive professional identity appears to develop from within an individual through the process of self-awareness than from external factors like social networks and pay. this obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 18 observation is evidenced in pt13’s statement thus, "i have loved teaching…since it provides me the opportunity to do what i like doing –training younger ones." the way some preservice teachers feel about teaching changes with time during the course of their study, as evidenced in the stories shared by some of the participants. specifically, 16.22% of the preservice teachers (pts 6, 8, 9, 15, and 30) who lacked initial likeness for or interest in teaching developed a likeness for teaching at a later stage, usually their second or third year into the program. these students’ stories showed that they overcame professional harassment and developed weak positive teacher self-image through focusing on the strengths of their profession, such as (1) the future of other professions and sustenance of the future generation depends on their services as teachers, (2) the program, which is combined with other major non-educational courses, presents many job opportunities, and (3) some of the programs, such as guidance and counselling/social studies, offer higher chances of migrating to advanced countries. their positive self-image as teachers is characterized as weak because they are not sure whether they would want to continue with teaching. discussion this study explored social education preservice (sep) teachers’ motivation for choosing teaching and their professional identity. findings on each variable are individually discussed below. social education preservice teachers’ motivation for choosing teaching findings showed that the motivating factors for choosing teaching among social education preservice teachers include socialization influence, fallback program choice, task demand (economic and employment reasons such as availability of job factors), gender factors including time for family, intrinsic factors (love of teaching), secondary teachers’ personality, altruistic factors (desire to contribute to the society and shape younger ones), perceived ability to teach, and previous teaching experiences. these reasons are listed from the highest to the least referenced. evidently, participants’ choice of teaching program is strongly motivated by mercenary, extrinsic, and negative factors. noteworthy is that socialization influence, the highest motivating factor, interlinks with fallback program choice in nigeria because many students who chose social education as a fallback program did so due to the pressure from family and friends to start higher education. this finding compares to the findings of studies that explored teachers’ career choice motivations in developing contexts (chivore, 1988; nwagwu, 1981; yusuf et al., 2018) and contrasts with findings of similar studies in developed countries (bergmark et al., 2018; glutsh & könig, 2019; lin et al., 2012; parr et al., 2021; thomson et al., 2012; watt & richardson, 2007). this can be explained by the poor social welfare and social representation of teaching in nigeria. teachers receive one of the lowest salaries and are owed a salary more than any other group of civil servants. work conditions are poor; schools and classrooms which serve as teachers’ offices lack modern facilities and are, in some cases, dilapidated; and teachers’ promotion policies are unfriendly – postgraduate degrees are not recognized or rewarded (for promotion purposes) at k-12 education levels and 20 years teaching experience in a public school is required to head or lead a public school. the condition of work as the explanation for extrinsic motivations for the choice of a teaching career is supported by nwagwu’s (1981) findings that students’ interest in the teaching profession fluctuates/varies with changes or improvements in service conditions of teaching in nigeria. another reason for greater fallback program and extrinsic motivations for teaching program choice in nigeria is the nature of obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 19 employment in the country: employment in a sector is not determined by specialized qualification in most cases but by one’s social network. hence, studying education is largely not for it to serve as a future career but for getting a higher education certificate required for employment in any sector or for belonging to the class of highly educated people in a classed society. intrinsic and altruistic motivations were the least reported factors for the choice of social education by preservice teachers. this contrasts with akpochafo’s (2020) finding of altruism as the highest motivating factor in nigeria. the contradiction may be explained by akpochafo’s (2020) use of a questionnaire which is highly susceptible to social desirability bias. yet it is interesting that despite a poor social representation of teaching in nigeria, some preservice teachers were motivated to choose teaching on intrinsic and altruistic grounds, just as it is interesting to find that some chose the profession due to their previous positive experiences of their teachers. however, the fact that these factors were the least reported motivators in social education preservice teachers’ stories is disappointing. since the discipline deals more with moral and civic values and character formation, it is expected that its students and practitioners would be more motivated by and inclined to moral and civic needs. a similar result was found among social studies and humanities preservice teachers in a turkish context (glustch & könig, 2019). this indicates that something is lacking in social education teacher training programs across the world. the disappointing result can be explained by the high-stakes testing focus of educational activities in nigeria. it can further be explained by the non-consciousness of preservice teachers about the specialty and peculiarities of their disciplines as one pattern was predominant in participants’ stories: they focused on their reasons for choosing teaching and ignored pointing to their specific programs. only one of the two students with altruistic motivations particularly connected her motivations to her specific programs. this pattern strengthens the greater fallback program motivation factor revealed by this study. findings showed that the choice of teaching is influenced by gender in nigeria. female teachers are more likely to choose teaching on intrinsic, personal utility, and altruistic goal grounds. this is consistent with previous findings (abonyi et al., 2021; akpochafo, 2020; spittle & spittle, 2014; ṡtemberger, 2020). cultural and social norms are behind women’s choice of teaching on gender grounds. teaching is perceived as a feminine profession in nigeria (egwu, 2015; olasehinde, 1972). women’s income is seen as a supplement to men’s income in this context (obiagu, 2022); hence, women do not mind doing any job – underpaid or uninteresting to them – because they are socialized to be carers, non-ambitious, unassertive, and “theoretical non-providers”; theoretical non-providers because women are active providers in nigeria’s family. also, society’s expectation of women as carers and nurturers of a family is a strong influence on their choice of teaching, which they perceive as providing adequate time needed to be effective in traditional women’s roles. some married female preservice teachers were also found to not have a hand in their choice of the teaching profession; instead, their husbands chose it for them. this is the consequence of a patriarchal society where men make decisions on or determine the future of their wives, who they mostly expect to be home carers. beyond the poor working conditions of teachers in many countries across the globe, especially in the global south (see tikly et al., 2022), the motivation of these female preservice teachers seems to be another major reason for the gradual feminization of the teaching profession (obiagu & nwaubani, 2020; oecd, 2017). linking teaching to being a non-demanding task, usually associated with women, as seen in this study, runs the risk of misconceiving a teaching career as a non-valued or non-technical task. this false knowledge, which contradicts the obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 20 expectations of teaching in nigeria, is the consequence of the poor attitude to work by the nigerian teachers who preservice teachers encounter and observe. this deceptive knowledge can topple the transformative task of education if female teachers are not empowered to challenge traditions that limit their ability and involvement in social change and agency (obiagu & nwaubani, 2020, p. 19). also embedded in the findings are preservice teachers’ stereotype of some cultural societies (that they are non-indigene of), preservice teachers’ inability to distinguish societal problems (teenage pregnancy “out of wedlock”) from culture, and their inability to distinguish cultural issues from immorality (spiritual issues); if at all out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancy is part of a culture. all these could hamper constructive/disruptive classroom practices and social change goals. these and the non-involvement of some married women in choosing their teaching career have implications for social education teacher training. social education preservice teachers’ professional identity results revealed that social education pre-service teachers’ career choice motivation factors, discussed in the previous section, influenced their teacher professional identity. teacher professional identity develops from social influences, intrinsic perspectives, and more strongly from the teacher education training experiences of the preservice teachers. it found that the preservice teachers who were motivated by altruistic and intrinsic factors were the only ones who had positive teacher professional identity –that is, good self-image and self-esteem as teachers alongside the intention to become a teacher. a majority of the studied preservice teachers have a negative professional identity. many of them explained teaching as an easy and non-demanding job. the finding of the study that preservice teachers conceive teaching as easy-to-do work corresponds with egwu’s (2015) finding that only 9% of participants thought teaching is a difficult task. this finding agrees with studies that found that nigerian preservice and in-service teachers have negative attitudes towards the profession (egwu, 2015; olasehinde, 1972). it is surprising that while teachers in developed worlds report classroom practices as overwhelming and define teaching as demanding, stressful and difficult (chaplain, 2008; klassen & chiu, 2011), most preservice teachers in nigeria define teaching as simple, non-demanding, and less stressful. this can be explained by the prescriptive nature of contents emphasized in nigerian curricula and textbooks and the dominance of lecture methods in nigerian classrooms (obiagu, 2019). their perception of teaching as cheap, non-demanding, and unfit for them is arguably informed by the general poor perception of teaching held in nigerian society. preservice social teachers with negative professional identities do not want to continue with the teaching profession in the future. preservice teachers in this study also prefer law, business (trading), criminology, and ‘politics’ and described them as high-esteem jobs. most of them plan to train in and do these jobs after graduation from the teaching program. this is consistent with egwu’s (2015) finding that 71% of preservice teachers in nigeria prefer other professions to teaching. their disassociation of themselves from teaching can be explained by the poor socioeconomic status of teaching in nigeria, as earlier noted. however, the fact that the teaching profession is respected and desired in contexts such as usa and australia, where they are also among the least paid professions, suggests factors beyond socioeconomic status of teaching in nigeria as the cause of preservice teachers’ disrespect of teaching in the country. a greater cause of this could be the inadequate and low-quality teacher education training they receive, resulting in a lack of a sense of purpose by social educators, along with a poor understanding of the purpose of the teaching profession and the power of social education in society. some of the findings support this argument. it was found that some of the preservice obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 21 teachers came into the program with strong hopes but were disappointed by their teacher training schooling experiences. this is similar to thomas and beauchamp’s (2011) findings regarding new teachers who lost or lack a positive feeling about their professional selves due to the school contextual issues, such as values and policies, they experienced in their job. notably, some preservice teachers who initially disliked teaching later developed a likeness for the profession. these findings have implications for teacher education. pedagogic and ethics implications for social education teacher training we need to have the majority of social education teachers motivated to pursue a teaching career for intrinsic and altruistic reasons. this is because teachers with altruistic motivations and positive professional identities are found to be more committed to teaching and making social change via teaching (sinclair, 2008). that social education preservice teachers have strong extrinsic and socialization influence motivations for choosing to study social education programs, and stronger negative professional identity is revealing of some program intervention needs, especially pedagogic and ethics needs, of social education teacher training programs. focus on program intervention needs is not a denial of the importance of (or the challenges presented by) systemic structural factors and broader sociocultural issues in changing the status quo and improving teacher professional identity. priestley et al. (2015) noted how policies require teachers to be creative in their working practices, while effectively ignoring the structural and cultural challenges that disable or constrain teachers’ pedagogic practices. in nigeria, these structural disablements are in the form of poor working conditions, politicization of teacher recruitment, and the non-implementation of policies seeking to improve teachers’ welfare. hence, teachers and teacher educators need to fight back against systemic structural disablement or neglect through disruptive pedagogic practices, while hoping for systems changes to take effect. sequel to the above, the intention of emphasizing pedagogic solutions is to project the roles of teacher-educator agency and pedagogical resistance practices in contexts where structural agency or changes is slow. this is especially as findings showed that getting admitted into the programs or studying experiences of the programs did not disrupt the poor perception of teaching that the majority of the pre-service teachers came into the program with; it, in many instances, worsened their negative professional identity. teacher agency means teachers’ engagement with/in actions or practices that counter societal constraints to educational goals and outcomes. according to priestley et al. (2015), the achievement of teacher agency is always informed by past professional and personal experiences. hence, the findings of this study on teachers’ career motivation and professional identity have implications for teacher education pedagogic practices, including professional ethics, that could promote social education teachers’ agency and resilience. these teacher education pedagogic practices necessary to promote teacher professional identity and agency among social education preservice teachers include program emphasis on developing a sense of purpose that tilts towards social justice, altruism, and social engineering, and a strong professional self-image or self-esteem. this is because self-esteem is an important aspect of teacher professional identity (kelchtermans, 1993). for the development and sustenance of a positive teacher professional identity, professional self-esteem is needed. selfesteem can be initiated through developing and teaching professional ethics in social education teacher training programs. the specialized professional ethics course is central to the professionalism of disciplines, such as law and medicine, as well as crucial in empowering obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 22 professionals with professional identity, purpose, and esteem necessary for resisting and rewriting sociocultural practices that underestimate their profession. yet teaching professional ethics courses is omitted in nigerian universities, and teacher educators ignore or neglect coaching their students on it. even though scholarship on teaching and teacher ethics exists (boon, 2011; campbell, 2000, 2008), the advocated principles (e.g., reflecting moral rules such as caring, honesty, compassion, and diligence) are usually unimplemented, unregulated, or often taken for granted. notably, educational ethics concerns arise in questions of moral dilemma, especially in cases of unprecedented events, conflicts of interest in student-teacher relationships (e.g., campbell, 2000; colnerud, 1997), and implementing school justice regulatory policies capable of occasioning ‘moral injury’ (levinson, 2015; levinson & fay, 2016). emphasizing these topics in teacher education will help to empower teachers with the ability to distinguish between elements of culture and moral dilemmas encountered in their practice. in social education, ethics of (political) belief’s non-disclosure and disclosure or neutrality in teaching controversial topics, such as sexuality, race, and political ideologies, are argued to be necessary (journell, 2017, 2011; kelly, 1986). in addition to these ethics, some ethics are embedded in the united nations convention on the rights of the child (crc) 1990. they are the four crc cardinal principles of non-discrimination and equality, best interest of the child, participation and inclusion, and survival and development. also important for the development of a professional sense among preservice social educators is training on ethics of fashion, lifelong learning, social leadership, civic leadership, communication, and civic cum social justice agency. all these ethics could be harmonized and adopted in planning, conducting, managing, and implementing social education goals and content. social education teacher training programs should pursue (1) exposing social education students to general teaching and specific subject ethics in their first year (in fact, first class) and (2) emphasizing professional ethics throughout their programs’ tenure. presenting these ethics to students in their first year is important for the reasons listed below. exposing pre-service teachers to teaching professional ethics will contribute in: • disrupting preservice teachers’ poor attitude towards the teaching profession formed prior to being admitted into the program; • challenging preservice teachers to seriously commit to and be intentional about their programs; • transforming preservice teachers’ extrinsic, fallback program and socialization influence motivations to intrinsic and altruistic motivations; • increasing preservice teachers’ consciousness about their roles in promoting human rights, peacebuilding, democracy, and civic and social justice in and through education; • imbuing preservice teachers with a sense of professional responsibility and expertise; • empowering preservice teachers with a worldview of themselves as sitting at the center stage of the implementation of local, national, and global development plans; • launching preservice teachers into a new educational and teaching world that is different from their previous experience with learning and teaching either as students or teachers in secondary school or extramural lesson centers. this includes empowering them with the real expectations of the teaching profession that will disrupt their current poor understanding of the profession as less demanding and consuming, which false expectation is the product of the poor attitude to work of the teachers they experienced. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 23 real committed teachers sure know that teaching is not less demanding or less timeconsuming. • empower preservice teachers with consciousness of the strengths of their programs and prepare them to focus only on the strengths. the success stories of some participants who later liked teaching after some years into their program provide hope about the success of this approach for developing a positive professional identity. based on the above, it is suggested that social educators across the globe, via organizations such as the social studies educationist association of nigeria (sosan) and the national council for the social studies (ncss), begin conversations on articulating social education ethical codes, and developing social education ethics courses and intervention programs for preservice teachers around the world. we need a universal but contextualizable textbook or social education ethical code manual in this regard. it is very imperative that social education teacher program pedagogical practices begin to defeminize teaching through questioning (1) assumptions of what it means to be feminine, how the assumptions affect teachers’ commitment to their duties, and (2) social expectations of women and the impact such expectations have on women’s effectiveness in their participation in human and national development. this questioning and deconstruction process will empower female teachers with the goal and capabilities to engage in active social change-making, while caring for children via their teaching practices, thereby disrupting their tendency to minimize teaching roles and time. the defeminization should also target encouraging men to continue with teaching to serve as role models for younger boys and girls in schools. moreover, while waiting on policymakers and leaders to tackle structural challenges, the leadership of social education programs and associations can engage in systems-oriented change approaches, such as partnering with the private sector to create opportunities for students to experience the social engineering, service, and development aspects of social education. this could increase their teacher professional identity and foster altruistic motivations for entering the teaching workforce. limitations of the study and future directions despite its many strengths, including providing a picture of preservice teachers’ career motivation and professional identity in a developing context, this study is limited by its use of a narrative method that restricted the use of probing questions that could interrogate and clarify some statements made by students in their stories. yet the approach is more reliable since questionnaire items on an individual’s motivation for choosing teaching as a career and professional identity are highly susceptible to social desirability bias, especially in a context where teachers face ridicule. the researcher’s interpretations of the stories may also be affected by unconscious bias. the sample of the study is small because of the interactionist and qualitative nature of this study. these limitations did not affect the quality of the study but its generalizability. future studies in developing contexts should consider adopting a mixed-method design in exploring these issues. the discussed study implications raise some important future research goals, including the need for studies on (1) how teacher education programs confront the structural challenges to teacher development and (2) teachers’ perceptions of what teaching ethics and social education ethics involve. exploring these could lead to the creation of teacher development support tools in contexts of structural neglect and the development of a scientific body of universal but contextualizable professional ethics courses for teaching professionals generally and social educators in particular. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 24 conclusion with pre-service teachers’ lack of interest in teaching and the increasing need to reduce the attrition of qualified teachers, especially in sub-saharan africa, examining the career choice motivations and professional identity of pre-service and in-service teachers becomes important. this is because teaching career choice motivations and professional identity can be crucial factors in teachers’ retention or withdrawal from schools, especially in a context where the economic conditions of most professionals are similar. following this perspective, this study explored the motivations behind social education preservice [sep] teachers’ choice of social education teaching program and profession, as well as their professional identity. it found that sep teachers have a poor and negative professional identity and that extrinsic, socialization, and mercenary factors are the strongest motivations for choosing to study social education in nigeria. these findings suggest, as theorized in past literature, that context –intrapsychic and social factors– influence teaching career motivations and professional identity. not neglecting the importance of structural factors, the study points to the need to explore and emphasize social educators’ knowledge, ethics, and socioemotional skills training needs that are important for empowering social education preservice teachers with altruistic motivations and positive professional identity about teaching. this empowerment is important to realize the goals of social education, including promoting empathy, peace, and human rights, since an individual’s identity connects to their practices. by exploring these issues in a west african country, nigeria, this paper contributes to the literature on teaching career choice motivations and professional identity and further provides insights into the causes of teachers’ attrition in the region. 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(2016). chinese preservice teachers’ professional identity links with education program performance: the roles of task value belief and learning motivations. frontiers in psychology, 7:573, 1–11 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00573 zhao, h., & zhang, x. (2017). the influence of field teaching practice on preservice teachers’ professional identity: a mixed methods study. frontiers in psychology, 8:1264, 1–11, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01264 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00573 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01264 obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 31 author notes adaobiagu n. obiagu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8591-0489 university of nigeria adaobiagu.obiagu@unn.edu.ng more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8591-0489 mailto:adaobiagu.obiagu@unn.edu.ng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ complementary medicine in the classroom: is it science? current issues in education, 24(1) 1 volume 24, issue 1 february 13, 2023 issn 1099-839x complementary medicine in the classroom: is it science? frank trocco lesley university abstract: this academic essay provides a strategy for teaching complementary and alternative medicine (cam) in the classroom, a subject typically critiqued as unconventional and nonscientific. it demonstrates how students can enhance their critically reflective skills by examining polarizing and controversial medical topics, which are often considered by conventional doctors and researchers to be on the fringes of credible western medicine. included are examples of hands-on cam experiments that can easily be incorporated in the classroom. it demonstrates how, by using an inquiry-based constructivist pedagogy, examining controversial and sometimes pseudoscientific ideas deepens learning. keywords: cam, complementary medicine, constructivist education, critical reflection, inquirybased, pseudoscience citation: trocco, f. (2023). complementary medicine in the classroom: is it science? current issues in education, 24(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss1.2093 accepted: january 5, 2023 complementary medicine in the classroom: is it science? i searched the juice section of the shelves for something the color of urine. i finally settled on green tea, and when watered down in a glass jar, it truly looked like the real thing. walking into class, i held up the jar, explained that instead of drinking my urine that morning i decided to bring it in, and asked: “anyone want a hit?” for a moment, i broke through the students’ usual blasé haze, and i could hear gasps of surprise as i sipped on my morning libation. urine is drunk by americans as part of a routine health regime for cancer treatment, aids, and migraines (gardner, 2001). drinking urine is widespread in india (where indians also drink sacred cow urine) and in the middle east (where they also drink camel urine). but in the classroom that day, my “tea” got the students’ attention focused on complementary medicine. when i pitched the course complementary and alternative medicine (cam) to the science department, i faced mathematicians, a physicist, a chemist, a biologist, and an ecologist—all scientists and research scholars. for years whenever courses came up for our review (e.g., biology 101 or anatomy and physiology), there was no question that the students, https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss1.2093 trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 2 through experiments, mathematical analysis, and research, would be conducting and learning “science.” there was never anything contentious about these courses “being science.” the only suggestions from faculty involved tweaks to the learning outcomes and assessment. however, when i brought up cam to this group, someone said: “frank, how can you teach students about these ideas (e.g., reiki, magnet therapy, therapeutic touch, chi) when none of them are supported by scientific evidence? is it science?” i replied that the class was not going to teach “about” these topics (i.e., we were not going to learn the techniques of, say, traditional chinese medicine), but we were going to work on understanding why these modalities, mostly without accepted scientific credentials, are used so extensively in the us and around the world, even to the exclusion of conventional medicine (national center for complementary and integrative health, 2016b). the course would be centered on critical reflection but not in the abstract. instruction would involve applying our studies to real-world medical issues, demonstrated by in-class experiments (paris, 2016, para. 24). this was pedagogy my scientific colleagues could understand, and the course was approved. the cam course always begins by discussing the scientific method, measurement, and a central tool of medical research, randomized controlled trials (rcts). it turns out that the modalities, medicines, and procedures contained in cam almost entirely do not pass muster with any of these scientific standards. you could say that cam is a grouping of modalities that, for the most part, lives outside the western biomedical model (wbm) or biomedicine (i.e., scientific medicine) and is generally not found in conventional hospitals or the doctors’ offices that students normally visit. as opposed to the body of knowledge conventional doctors learn in medical schools, cam modalities originate from ancient traditions, folk beliefs, traditional and spiritual belief systems, and are passed on by word-of-mouth and (mostly) unlicensed practitioners. what divides science from not-science is a surprisingly open question (trocco, 1998). for most people, this is a seemingly easy distinction, but for myriads of philosophers, historians, and anthropologists of science, it is a pivotal yet embarrassing distinction. this is at the root of why cam is an epistemic gift for students, as they try to determine a clear definition for science and find out that “the devil is in the details.” for no lack of trying, researchers have been hardpressed to say definitively whether something like, for example, the ancient navajo nine-night nightway ceremony, which heals “diseases of the head” (bell’s palsy, headaches, and bad dreams), is medically scientific or not (francis, 2012; joe et al., 2016). the cam course does not argue that cam treatments actually do what their proponents say they do, only that looking at cam pushes the boundaries of what we think of as science, what we consider as evidence, and who is in the position to make those choices. an underlying question is what is “legitimate knowledge,” how is it determined, and who gets to decide? the surety of western epistemology is at stake, which is why the confirmation of something seemingly as simple as someone using reiki, or “energy healing,” to help with stress receives a full frontal assault from skeptical opponents (engler & mielczarek, 2014). this is why the cam students need to grapple with critical, constructivist pedagogy and look at ideas that seem firmly set, such as the scientific method, but which may be based on underlying cultural assumptions about what is credible and what is not (collins & pinch, 1982; pinch, 1979). it is why cam researchers call for a paradigm shift, as even experiments do not always reveal the truth: . . . experimental evidence is not unambiguous. it may appear to be unambiguous so long as the assumptions upon which it is based are not examined too radically. one might say that experimental evidence appears unambiguous within a taken-for-granted set of rules of trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 3 induction but that different rules of induction operate in different scientific paradigms. a fortiori we may expect different rules of induction to operate in radically different societies, yielding different, but self-consistent, pictures of the world. (collins & pinch, 1982, p. 182). sometimes convincing faculty to work with constructivist pedagogy, where students have more control over what they are learning, rather than teaching endless content, can be provocative: “i have attended more than one faculty meeting where some version of the question, ‘what do we want our students to know?’ has led to a curricular rift between the lumpers and the splitters. typically, the splitters are the most vocal, wanting to add more academic content to the existing courses, and add additional required courses to the curricula covering areas that they see as critical to undergraduate enlightenment. they do not fully grasp perkins’s point: ‘knowledge and skill in themselves do not guarantee understanding. people can acquire knowledge and routine skills without understanding their basis or when to use them’ (perkins, 1993, para. 8). on one occasion, we divided into groups to address this question, each group reporting out the results of its discussion. i was the spokesperson when it was my group’s turn, and i stood up and said: ‘we want our students to know how to figure out, in each discipline, what the questions are that interest them most. our role as teachers needs to be to help them figure out how to answer those questions.’ i continued, in response to the splitters’ suggestions for new essential coursework, ‘there’s an endless amount of “stuff” that we can tell them about, but it doesn’t mean it leads them into deep understanding.’ some colleagues still believe in aristotle’s tabula rasa and what freire (2018) termed the ‘banking model’ method of instruction. in this view, students’ brains are mostly empty and in order to educate them we have a responsibility to open them up and pour in endless information—sophisticated thinking is then (somehow) an epiphenomenon of this process. in the sciences, this sort of pedagogy is often criticized as a ‘cookbook’ approach, as students work on experimental problems with known solutions and expected results (fukami, 2013) [similar to a skeptic’s a priori assumptions about cam being pseudoscience]. the splitters never like it when objections are raised to this instructional narrowness.” (trocco, 2014, p. 1) the experiences included in this analysis are recounted from over ten years of teaching cam to undergraduate students. after a decade, i noticed from class discussions and student assignments how similarly their reactions were to both cam practices and to the intense reactions that skeptical researchers had to these practices. it was after 20 semesters of teaching cam that i realized certain themes in student attitudes were emerging, as well as the same comments and anxiety with the wbm. i spent three recent semesters soliciting the students’ thoughts and feelings through assignments, emails, and interviews, receiving their permission to include their statements in this paper, which have all been marked “personal communication.” all the comments in the present paper echo the students’ reactions from the previous ten years, although they have only been collected from about three semesters. this paper describes unique cam experiments the class engages in and includes the results and responses of students performing those experiments. the cam classes at a university in massachusetts are typically composed of 20 predominately white, 18-22 years old, mostly female college students and several asian and african-american students majoring in psychology, holistic studies, and health. they make up a fairly homogenous group of young people, and there are no relevant differences in the students trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 4 who provided the interviews which accompany this paper. the demographic of the classes reflects the use of cam in the general population of us young adults: “in 2007, more than onethird of adults aged 18 to 29 years used any complementary and alternative medicine in the previous 12 months, suggesting that adults are incorporating complementary and alternative medicine into their healthy lifestyle behaviors early on” with the smallest percentage use among african-americans (upchurch & rainisch, 2012, para. 2). similar results were found by cam students who surveyed 40+ undergraduate students from a number of universities during a citizen science project: we found that there are many reasons students choose to use cam practices rather than turning to conventional medicine. there was a theme throughout the surveys and interviews of strong dissatisfaction with western medicine, and a mindset of “how can i help myself if no one else is going to help me?” when students felt unsupported by western practitioners. this led them to seek out cam modalities instead. by far the most common reason for the switch, cited by 35.29% of students who used cam, was that students had fewer concerns about side effects and dependence with cam, whereas they felt that western medicine was unhealthy and would lead to those negative outcomes. (bianco et al., 2022, p. 8-9). the cam classes are not lecture-oriented, but based on hands-on, constructivist learning, first-person research, citizen science projects, discussions, and experiments. constructivist teaching starts from the assumption that students can build their own learning and answer the questions that are most important to them if given the proper tools and direction (hein, 1995). in this educational model, students are given control over what questions interest them and are helped in trying to figure out how to research and answer those questions. as the cam semesters passed, it was apparent that student learning was built around the discoveries and analysis from the rich results of our experiments. it was clear that the student observations and conclusions described below could eventually be incorporated into the present research report. a typical class could involve a brief lecture from the instructor, one or two small group discussions analyzing proponent or skeptic approaches to cam, a discussion of the weekly readings, a student group presentation, and a segment of the experiments outlined below as they can carry over through a number of class sessions. the instructor and the weekly lessons maintain an agnostic and balanced view toward cam (trocco, 1998), as many students have deeply held and familial beliefs for and against cam modalities. beyond that, there are many potent academic and medical criticisms of cam, especially since they are seen as non-scientific, distracting, and perhaps dangerous when used instead of conventional medical treatments (werneke et al., 2004). while there are undoubtedly truly fraudulent cam practitioners, the entire field of cam is seen as pseudoscience by an overwhelming number of medical and scientific researchers: “we [skeptics] will confidently stand by our position. cam proponents, like creationists, have nothing but weak and fallacious—and long-discredited—arguments on their side” (novella, 2012, p. 25). the class structure and pedagogy make no attempt to convince students that cam is the correct choice in medicine, only to complexify the debate between proponents and skeptics, which can initially seem to many students as being black and white. to work with this, the class demonstrates and practices how cam can be empirically studied (trocco, 1998). during the class’s study of cam, the students review the historical successes of the wbm, which has achieved dominance in medical practice throughout the world. some might say this is because a system of healing developed in europe and the near east which is far superior trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 5 to any medicine or treatment that evolved anywhere else on earth. perhaps this is correct, but through colonialism, conquest, and forced education, cultures throughout the world were coerced into accepting the wbm as the only medicine. in the process, these world cultures neglected, and eventually lost, most of their original ways of knowing, including thousands of years of the nature-based knowledge they had developed about health and well-being. symbolic healing, spirituality, and herbalism, enacted through mythic ritual and ceremony, constituted the healing focus of most non-western cultures, but were openly denigrated by western colonizers as being primitive and superstitious—public perceptions which remain today. although the development of the wbm provides critical historical context, the cam course focuses on what was “neglected and forgotten” as the west reached near total authority and hegemony in world medicine. science’s semi-permeable membrane cam includes medicines and applications not found in (most) conventional hospitals, and even teaching cam at the university level is contested (flatt, 2013): it is okay to teach about so-called complementary and alternative medicine (cam) as a sociological phenomenon or even as an example of pseudoscience. practitioners also need to learn about any method their patients may be using or about which they are curious. credulously teaching cam, however, is an endorsement, the granting of the imprimatur of the university. (novella, 2012, p. 24) few cam modalities are scientifically credible by the standards of the wbm, with its emphasis on measurement and the experimental requirements of double-blinded randomized controlled trials (rcts) (hall, 2012; jackson & scambler, 2007; verhoef et al., 2005). over the years, the cam class has arrived at a working metaphor for distinguishing these two sides and the difficulty that cam has in becoming validated and certified, especially by hospitals and insurance companies (national center for complementary and integrative health, 2016a). this metaphor can be visualized as a semi-permeable “wall” between cam modalities and the accredited medical modalities which are approved by the wbm. on the left side of this wall is the incredible, and on the right side is the credible (figure 1). the wall is not impenetrable, which is why it is portrayed as semi-permeable. first, ideas about what is considered credible and incredible change with time, experiences, experiments, and the public and scientific ethos. second, occasionally a cam modality will make it through the semi-permeable wall to the other side, as mindfulness has (because neuronal changes as a result of meditation can be measured with an fmri); and parts of acupuncture have because some treatments (e.g., for morning sickness) can be measured (boccia et al., 2015; smith et al., 2002). for the most part, cam modalities will not be able to move from the left to the right, from the incredible to the credible, which is why there is a visible distance between the two sides. this includes in classrooms because what counts as “quackery” and what counts as legitimate knowledge is fiercely entrenched (brosnan, 2015). one possible way through the wall is by negotiating the methodology of the scientific method itself. whole systems research attempts to develop a scientific methodology and discovery process for medicine, which could show that some cam modalities can achieve scientific recognition for their healing effects, perhaps without passing rcts, by examining the whole person’s life and their health rather than focusing on specific medical symptoms. from whole systems analysis, it might even be possible to convert anecdotal and testimonial evidence into scientific data (verhoef et al., 2005). trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 6 figure 1 science’s semi-permeable membrane note. illustration commissioned by the author. cam researchers on both sides of the wall take strong positions—does cam have healing value (snyderman & weil, 2002), or is it “flim-flam” (brosnan, 2015; engler & mielczarek, 2014; huston, 1995; randi, 1982;), “quackery” (barrett, 2021), “magical thinking” (stevens, 2001), and “snake oil science” (bausell, 2009)? this means cam has spectacular value for critical reflection, involving “creativity, great intuition, and deep insights” (aacu, 2009, p. 4; list, 2021, p. 1). students weigh and analyze polarized opinions, which, because they involve personal and family health care concerns, matter deeply to them. cam students have no alternative but to practice navigating the territory between facts and fiction (paul, 2005; murawski, 2014; vickers, 1997): “controversies, it will be seen, are settled in science as they are settled in other walks of life—by negotiation, not revelation” (collins & pinch, 1982, p. 6). researchers who study cam mostly fall into being either believers or skeptics, which creates a radical ideological division. many skeptical researchers are only interested in demonstrating the absurdity of cam treatments (randi, 2013), and their lack of credible scientific evidence (barrett, 2021; beyerstein & sampson, 1996; hall, 2019; mccutcheon, trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 7 1996). they are intent on keeping all of cam on the left side of the wall, while students frequently point out that collaboration among cam & wbm researchers would lead to deeper awareness and discovery, as some researchers agree (vuolanto et al., 2020). an alternative is that some folks turn to cam only when nothing else has helped, as this student points out: in the western world, everything is all about measurements when it comes to medicine. people only fully believe something works if there is a randomized controlled trial where the results can be properly measured. however, when it comes to cam, there is not much “proof” that it works; hence, there are no randomized controlled trials that “prove” anything as of yet. because of this, it is incredibly hard for cam medicines to be taken seriously in places such as the united states. people do not want to believe that these forms of medicine are real medicine. everyone is so accustomed to traditional allopathic medicine in the modern day that they really only use cam as a last resort. it is only when all other hope is gone that they turn to it. (student #1, personal communication, may 2021). the skeptical community is populated by researchers, scientists, and theorists who are concerned by what they see as bad science and, in the case of cam, they see practitioners who take advantage of people who are sick and vulnerable. much publishing takes place in two central journals, the skeptical inquirer and skeptic. while the skeptical inquirer calls itself “the magazine for science and reason,” and complains about cam in the name of science, some sociologists of science have labeled these skeptical communities “scientific vigilante group[s]” (collins & pinch, 1982, p. 5). others have very low opinions of the scientific credibility of the most prominent skeptics (gale, 2019), which is often echoed by students who use these skeptics as sources in research papers: auras and aura reading have been argued to be fake by skeptics who use historical art and literature examples combined with medical symptoms to prove their points. in comparison, believers in auras and aura reading use historical art and literature along with first accounts to prove their points. i align myself with the skeptics that auras and aura readers are fake, but i disagree with how they argue their points. while researching auras and aura reading, there were many skeptics that were just horrible to the believers. i was not surprised by this; i was just more disgusted by it. many skeptics claim to be scientists; however, science as a whole is rarely my way or the highway death threats when it comes to analytically arguing their facts. (student #2, personal communication, november 2021) one notable skeptic was james randi, not a scientist but a magician who was an expert at investigating people he saw as charlatans and hucksters—because he knew all the tricks he could easily see when they were making one (1982): wherever we went [in china], randi helped quickly devise controlled tests so we could see what was going on. the qigong master’s powers seemingly to influence the movements of a nearby woman worked at first, when she could see him. when we placed her in another room where she couldn’t see him and kept careful records in both locations, their motions went totally out of phase. she had been responding only to what she saw him do; when she couldn’t see him any longer, it didn’t work. there was no transmission of “qigong” energy. (frazier, 2021, para. 18-19) the pedagogical approach used in the cam class is to show students both sides of the argument and let them make up their own minds. in every assignment, they are tasked with demonstrating that they understand what is being claimed by both proponents and skeptical trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 8 researchers. they are assigned to review a number of prominent skeptics and their critique and research of cam, for example: “whither chiropractic?” (hall, 2019b), “how thinking goes wrong” (shermer, 1994), homeopathy (randi, 1982), quackwatch: your guide to quackery, health fraud, and intelligent decisions (barrett, 2021), and “traditional medicine and pseudoscience in china: a report of the second csicop delegation” (beyerstein & sampson, 1996). although many students come loaded with discomfort about the wbm from their personal experiences, it is important for them to balance that by learning there is deceit and fraud in many places in medicine, including in cam, and it is important to know how to detect it (synovitz & larson, 2018, pp. 263-276). when you go looking for fraud in cam practices, it is very easy to find claims that most cam is false and deceitful. this is because many researchers believe cam is fraudulent from the get-go because of its lack of scientific validity: alternative medicine embraces many things: treatments that have never been tested or have not been adequately tested; treatments that have been tested and shown not to work; treatments that are based on nonexistent phenomena such as human energy fields and acupoints; treatments such as homeopathy that if true would violate established scientific knowledge; and treatments that have been proven to work but that mainstream doctors have good reasons not to recommend. (hall, 2019a, para. 2) the views on both sides are backed up by volumes of research and testimony and are always being challenged. this means that a convincing adjudication of the “truth” comes under the disciplines of cultural studies or social psychology rather than through determining certain scientific evidential clarity (collins & pinch, 2008): . . . philosophies of science that depend heavily upon the invocation of experimental evidence to decide between major differences in theoretical perspectives are not tenable. it would seem that evidence is so bound up with the society or social group which gives rise to it that theories held by members of radically different scientifico-social groups cannot be adequately tested against each other by experiment. it matters not whether the evidence is intended to corroborate, “prove,” or refute the theories in questions. similarly, these differences cannot be settled by logical argument. (collins & pinch, 1982, p. 184) what science is and what it is not, what truth is and what it is not, has never been clearly demarcated and is constantly debated. it may be that looking at cultural or psychological influences can offer a better adjudication than the results of contentious scientific experiments. [this is because] “there is a basic difference between western scientific epistemology and all other secular worldviews. the western analytic approach claims that the reality content of other belief systems can be critiqued and evaluated from within its model: ‘ . . . science is not only a means of categorizing the world, but of categorizing science itself in relation to other knowledge systems that are excluded’ (nader, 2014, p. 3). western science claims to be able to judge how closely other worldviews accurately describe the empirical world of everyday reality, and how close their versions of the world are to the truth. the knowledge of other cultures is evaluated against the criteria of a single belief system. this hegemonic confidence has led to ever-increasing trust in the western view of reality: [‘while there is no a priori reason to expect that knowledge generated out of non-western paradigms or social processes should be empirically or predictively less adequate, it has been an affect of western ethnocentrism to construe non-western knowledge processes as “pseudoscientific,” “protoscientific,” or merely “unscientific’” (scott, 2014, p. 69)] the [cam] pseudoscientists are the ones who have come under the scrutiny of this analytical model. in our tightly dichotomous trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 9 worldview, if the category ‘science’ exists, the category of ‘not-science’ is a necessity. just as the demarcation of sixteenth-century demons indirectly affirmed the existence of god, the accusations against pseudoscience reinforce our trust in contemporary orthodoxy.” (trocco, 1998) students come to the cam course with both believer and skeptical opinions, although all the orthodox scientific evidence is on the side of the skeptics: for most cam modalities, there is virtually no measurable evidence that, for example, bee stings (for arthritis), magnet therapy (for muscle aches), or chiropractic (for any condition beyond back pain) leads to a cure (although these interventions may provide relief). that said, cam modalities are paid for out of pocket by countless people because the left side of the wall is generally not covered by insurance (levine, 2020; nahin et al., 2007). even skeptical scholars can be persuaded that having students interrogate controversial ideas non-judgmentally and without a priori bias has great value. although ferreting out the scientific “truth” will not ultimately determine an individual’s behavior, students are eager to learn how to follow the data. the important thing is to give them the scholarly tools to determine what is credible and what is incredible, what is possible and what is impossible. extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence most students come to cam with a dim understanding of what cam means: “complementary medicine is used to describe therapeutic techniques that are not part of conventional medicine. . . they are used as a ‘complement’ or addition to conventional medicine” (breastcancer.org, para. 1, 2022). students arrive holding a range of unchallenged beliefs in cam modalities. their understanding is typically based on “testimonial evidence,” stories they have heard from friends, relatives, and media that are unsupported by medical science. testimonial evidence counts for very little in the scientific method (beyerstein & sampson, 1996; hall, 2021). frustratingly for skeptics, even though students do not reject evidence-based science, they are sometimes willing to combine it with testimonial evidence (vuolanto et al., 2020, p. 518). as skilled learners, they develop their own sense of what it is to think critically from their experiences and local knowledges. this approach should not be discounted out of hand (irwin et al., p. 48, 2003) simply because it does not fit the standard definitions: . . . science has no special status for everyday life but must instead compete with all other sorts of knowledge and understanding (especially those categorized here as “local” knowledges). very often the “test” for the applicability of these knowledges is the extent to which they assist in the understanding and control of one’s life. (irwin et al., p. 63, 2003) an underlying mantra of skeptical researchers is that if a healing modality is making a big counterintuitive claim, it needs extraordinary evidence to verify it. in almost all cases for cam, this evidence does not exist, and most students are unaware of this distinction (figure 2), rigidly held by cam critics (nova, 1996). at the same time, definitively proving a modality does not work is near impossible, which some cam treatments depend on for unofficial confirmation. trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 10 figure 2 extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence note. cartoon commissioned by the author. in practice, deeply held beliefs are seldom changed by evidence (lambert et al., 2003, p. 81; snelson, 1992). if we are going to influence the students’ understanding of the real and the imaginary, the methodology has to come from a reflective critical pedagogical direction, not from one of outlining undeniable facts. more evidence and more facts will not necessarily convince students to believe one way or the other, as this student insisted: when researching an alternative medicine modality, it is extremely important to look at both sides of the argument. looking at just one side will not give the entirety of the truth because each source has a biased opinion which they are arguing towards. (student #3, personal communication, may 2021) what is the fundamental difference between cam and the wbm, and why do so many people choose cam in the face of serious illness? the wbm is very good for some things. in the west, we taught ourselves the systems of the body, the germ theory of disease, antibiotics, vaccines, and amazing diagnostic tools. these attributes are what built our metaphorical wall and what gave us immense confidence that eventually the wbm could cure any disease. today, sick patients do not have to tell their doctors very much about themselves, but they wait for the blood tests and fmri scans to come back to be interpreted by the doctor so the doctor can tell them what is wrong (burke, 2009; carman et al., 2010; porter, 1997). the citizen science students found this reflected in their study: on a related note, the second most common reason students cited for cam use over western medical practices, cited by 17.65% of students, was a belief that complementary trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 11 and alternative practices were “more natural” than what they would find with conventional medicine. . . being able to take charge of their own health, without needing a referral from a doctor, led some students to more feelings of control over their treatment. for example, one student stated that “through conventional medicine, i find i get lost in the illness and symptoms and lose myself in the process.” (bianco et al., 2022, p. 9) that said, many healthcare practitioners are caring, sympathetic providers (hall, 2010), doing whatever they can to help their patients (hall, 2014). importantly, some physicians have embraced integrative medicine, which is a sort of “whatever works” approach, using alternative and complementary techniques along with allopathic treatments (snyderman & weil, 2002). in comparison to most conventional doctors, cam practitioners focus on lifestyle, diet, exercise, stress levels, an empathic doctor/patient relationship, and an emphasis on “balance” (samuels & bennett, 1983; zollman & vickers, 1999). this speaks powerfully to patients, and all students are patients at one time or another. the usual impersonal, clinical nature of the wbm does not offer the compassionate care that cam practitioners do (rees & weil 2001), and so people turn to cam modalities because they provide something more satisfying than surgery, drugs, and 15-minute office visits (national center for complementary and integrative health, 2021; rabin, 2014). students recognize this even if they remain uncertain about the efficacy of cam modalities: part of the reason why i sometimes dread going to the doctor is because i know when they are busy, i will be rushed in and out of the office without my opinions or concerns being heard--which is ironic considering it is a consultation about my body. i have talked to a few people who feel the same, and why doctors offices shouldn’t operate like businesses but healing centers where patients feel like people, not numbers who get checked in and out as fast as possible. (student #4, personal communication, december 2021) chinese chi and american vitalism life is a mystery. actually, many mysteries, but the one that often concerns students is what makes life, alive? what enlivens our bodies? is it simply the hamburgers, salad, and beans we eat every day that gives us life, or is there something more? does life come from some intangible spark or energy? in tcm, this is called chi, or vital energy. a belief in chi and its seamless movement through the body is fundamental in tcm, and is the basis of acupuncture, cupping, qigong, and pulse diagnosis (grippo, 1993). however, chi is problematic because it cannot be measured in any way accepted in the west, with a thermometer, blood test, geiger counter, x-ray, fmri—with anything other than the (imagined) testimony of practitioners and patients. but there is something very compelling about the presence of an ineffable life energy, something that is enlivening us beyond burgers and beans. it is so compelling that, at one time, this same belief was widespread among doctors in the us. vital energy, the spark that makes us alive, was called vitalism (coulter et al., 2019; greco, 2005; melzer, 1904). people did not believe that it was all burgers and beans, and for the most part, lay people still do not. however, the wbm could not find any measurable evidence for vital energy and, while it was a central component of medicine in the us in the 19th & early 20th centuries, as we learned more and more how to measure our bodies inside and out, we no longer had a need for vitalism to explain life. vitalism disappeared from medical diagnoses and texts. from the point of view of the wbm, life turned out to be just burgers and beans after all: trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 12 scientists abandoned the notion of life energy over a century ago because there was no evidence that such a force exists (and there still isn’t). after figuring out all the basic processes of life, there was essentially nothing left for the alleged life force to do. (novella, 2012, p. 25) when students understand the history of vitalism, it puts skeptical eurocentric diatribes against chi in perspective (huston, 1995), as this student remarks: i find that there is a pattern with skeptics where no amount of proof or evidence is enough to even open their minds to a new idea, let alone believe it is effective. those who believe in alternative or integrative medicine do not discredit the effectiveness of “real” medication, rather they aim to expand this field to include other ways of healing. the skeptics do not accept cam as even a potential option for someone in need of healing. i think to dismiss these studies is a mistake, and i am unsure if any amount of proof will be enough for true skeptics. (student #5, personal communication, december 2021) the hand’s-on cam classroom preparing a homeopathic super-dilution maybe experiencing the testing of cam modalities themselves would deepen students’ critical reflection and dissuade them from too-quick judgments about impossible things? homeopathy is a 1.2 billion dollar industry in the us (plante, 2019, para. 10) and is used throughout the world (williams, 2013, pp. 147-49). its basic principle, developed in the 19th century by samuel hahnemann, is to find a substance which causes a certain symptom, put a small amount of this active ingredient in a jar, and dilute it with water beyond the existence of the original substance. then use a few drops of that inert solution to cure the symptom. thus, counterintuitively, coffee works as a sleep aid, and poison ivy might work to cure a rash. students can make their own remedy in class, including “potentizing” the solution by “succussing” it—meaning rapping the dropper bottle in their hands 40 times while they hold their intention for the benefits of the remedy (figure 3). this copies hahnemann’s language and process (simpson, 2018). figure 3 succussing a homeopathic dilution trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 13 skeptics believe this is absurd, and anyone who uses homeopathy is deluded (plante, 2019). curiously, when students go through the process for themselves, most do not find it nonsensical. the drops of the remedy they put under their tongue or rub on a sore knee (100% water) remind them of the intention they held while making their remedy, and some report positive results: after listening to james randi’s skeptic talk on homeopathy, i can see how scientifically it does not really make sense. substances are so diluted to the point that there is essentially nothing left but water. when i think of homeopathy in this way, i can see why many people think there is no medical value. on the other hand, my reasoning as to why homeopathic remedies have some medical value is because of the placebo effect. our mindset can affect our health. (student #6, personal communication, december 2021) students’ conclusions in the classroom approximate the reactions to homeopathy in the world outside. even when cam classroom experiments following experimental protocol reach inconclusive results, it does not mean students toss out the entire modality. however, a number of students always remain unconvinced because in class, they are encouraged to stay tuned in to their “baloney detection” à la carl sagan (2011, pp. 201-218): try as i might, homeopathy is an alternative medicine that i believe is a sham (aside from the ones that are obviously a sham like drinking cow urine). this opinion was further solidified when we were told that the potency of the homeopathic cures was made stronger by hitting the bottle. (student #7, personal communication, december 2021) the key point here is the tension between balancing empirical results with personal belief systems. looking over the results of their experiment, one student remarked: i think that homeopathic remedies and placebos have a lot in common. i would say that the success is less about the number of times that the substance is diluted and shaken, and more about the intention and confidence that we put behind it. (student #8, personal communication, may 2021) detecting the human energy field in 1998 11-year-old emily rosa co-authored a paper in the prestigious journal of the american medical association (jama) (rosa et al., 1998). she completed a class science project that challenged practitioners of therapeutic touch (tt) and set off a firestorm of oppositional journalism. tt practitioners believe there is a human energy field (hef) in and surrounding our bodies (a la chi and vitalism) and that by using their hands to feel and control the hef, they can reduce pain and anxiety and help someone who is sick. tt is used in some conventional hospitals, and nurses can receive in-service tt training (mount sinai, 2021), which particularly irritates skeptics as this cam modality is sometimes accepted on the right side of the wall (sarner, 1998). emily performed a simple, yet ingenious experiment. setting up a piece of cardboard with holes in the bottom for the practitioners’ hands, she sat across from the practitioners and had them put their hands palms up through the holes. then, on the other side of the cardboard and out of their sight, emily held a hand randomly above the practitioner’s hands and asked 20 times whether her hand was above the practitioner’s left or right hand. emily repeated this with 21 trained tt practitioners. the practitioners “guessed” correctly where emily’s hand was about 50% of the time, no better than chance. embarrassingly, emily had explained the experimental protocol to each of them and asked them whether, under these conditions, they would be able to trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 14 detect the hef. they all said yes. emily reported in her jama paper that the hef was undetectable (if it existed at all), and tt was a sham. for the skeptical community, this was a slam dunk (sarner, 1998). hef did not exist, and tt was finished. for practitioners, advocates, and patients, not so much. in fact, the publication of these results did not affect the use of tt in hospitals (bleske-rechek et al., 2019). when students perform this experiment in the classroom, and it is easy as all you need is a large piece of cardboard with two holes in the bottom (one student role-playing the practitioner and one roleplaying emily), students get the same results as emily: about 50% correct guesses (figure 4). figure 4 detecting the human energy field students are assigned emily’s jama paper, sarner’s skeptical critique, and a contemporary account in time (lemonick, 1998), to examine the argument. does this tell them that the hef does not exist? does it make them feel that tt is a foolish modality? not at all. it does lead to an involved discussion on the question of “what’s going on here?” this inquiry does not demonstrate analytical naivete on the students’ part, but a strengthening of their critically reflective imagination, as the following two statements demonstrate: i really enjoyed replicating emily’s therapeutic touch and human energy field experiment. this was an awesome and educational way to bring in the assigned readings and alternative perspectives into the classroom. as a spiritual person myself, i found that my perspective around therapeutic touch and human energy field was different before and after completing the in-class experiment. if we were only assigned to read the articles instead of completing the experiment ourselves, i do not think that i would have had the ability to change perspectives and really think about therapeutic touch and human energy field from a personal point of view (student #9, personal communication, december 2021). trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 15 here is another student who acknowledged the class had confirmed emily’s results: i thought emily's experiment in class was interesting because none of the students claimed to be able to sense human energy fields. we received the same results as emily did in her experiment, which i think further proves that her experiment meant bad news for the touch therapists. even if therapeutic touch is a placebo effect, it still manages to help some people live an easier, happier life; why should we try so hard to invalidate that? (student #10, personal communication, december 2021). placebos without deception it is an ongoing mystery as to why people turn to cam and why many claim it “works.” why should foot massages (reflexology) or ocean bathing (balneotherapy) work as cures, against all scientific evidence? we all have an answer for this. when someone recovers from an illness by taking or doing something that is unconventional, it is common to hear, “well, that’s just a placebo.” placebos have always gotten a bad rap. they are the sugar pill used to prove the “real” medicine works in an rct (collins & pinch, 2008). this placebo story is incomplete, as research is continuing to explore how effective openlabel placeboes might be, i.e., a prescription that someone takes knowing it is a placebo (feinberg, 2013; kaptchuk et al., 2010; robson, 2018). the thinking is that something about taking a placebo pill, especially prescribed from an empathic listener, may amplify the body’s “self-healing network” and provide drug-free relief (silberman, 2010, para. 7). students can demonstrate this in the classroom. divided into pairs, as a practitioner and client, the client comes to the practitioner with some condition of their choosing, for example, nervousness about an upcoming exam. the practitioner, suspending their disbelief and listening compassionately, prescribes placebos based on published experimental data (silberman, 2010), and the client leaves with a prescription in a “child proof” vial of “pills” (for example, colored beans or lentils) (figure 5). it turns out that red placebos can be a stimulant, yellow an antidepressant, green can reduce anxiety, and the amounts and sizes of placebos have measurable effects (silberman, 2009). figure 5 a medicine bottle of placebo “pills” trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 16 to begin, the students are assigned a number of readings outlining experiments using open-label placebos. the experiment lasts two weeks, during which time the clients are asked to swallow the prescribed placebos. (if they cannot manage to swallow the bean pills, then it works just as well for them to make their placebos at home using different colored vegetables.) in the first week, the practitioner, listening empathically, prescribes placebos based on the “condition” their client presents them with, usually something having to do with stress, for example, they do not sleep well or are nervous about an upcoming exam or relationship. at the end of the (usually 10minute) session, the practitioner hands the client a written prescription listing the prescribed bean pills. a week later, during the second consultation, the practitioner listens carefully to what the client reports about their use of the placebos and makes a second prescription based on their client’s self-report, often different from the first. a week later, the practitioner meets for the last time with their client and hears how the placebos worked over the two-week period. everyone knows that they are “just swallowing beans” and that this is a classroom role-play where they are asked to “suspend their disbelief.” even in clinical situations, placebos do not work all the time, especially for certain aliments (resnick & hoddinott, 2021), but the point of this class experiment is not only to see if they “work” for the client’s condition, but for students to experientially explore the potential power of their relationship with the client and the placebo effect. for the most part, the students find this experiment exciting, and backed up by substantial reading, are amazed by a placebo’s potential, which is seldom realized during the class experiment. the biggest challenge is suspending their disbelief around swallowing “just beans,” and for some, they can find it challenging to simply keep taking them! students are struck by the power of this experiment, and (in some cases) the clients report positive outcomes from inert pills they know are “just beans,” as one student wrote: “it is an amazing discovery that we can train our brain to activate our self-healing abilities through the use of placebos” (student #11, personal communication, may 2021), and another commented: during our placebo experiment, i realized that my negative connotations with placebos had to be uncovered and changed so that i could experience the placebos for what they really were. the legitimacy of placebos is easier to accept when hard science is proving the real and concrete evidence that placebos are altering brain structure (student #12, personal communication, may 2021). this student used the research data we read in class to make their prescription: the [kaptchuk] ibs study uses the following contexts to ensure the placebo’s efficacy: “1) an accurate description of what is known about placebo effects, 2) encouragement to suspend disbelief, 3) instructions that foster a positive but realistic expectancy, and 4) directions to adhere to the medical ritual of pill taking” (kaptchuk et al., 2010, p. 6). i believe that my class’s assignment successfully covered these four contexts by reading articles about placebos prior to the beginning of the assignment and finding that they have some potential, discussing thoughts and opinions on the matter, and being assigned to prescribe and accept specific times and amounts to take the placebo. i found it fascinating to learn about how effective placebos can be, and how different variables can contribute to their efficacy whether we can see the label on the bottle or not. i think that a lot of their success has to do with confidence, intention, and trust in the person providing the placebo (student #13, personal communication, december 2021). trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 17 all of the experiments reviewed here for the hands-on cam classroom, the homeopathic super-dilution, detecting the human energy field, and placebos without deception, are meant to give students a direct sensory, somatic, and emotional classroom experience about cam practices. they are not meant to convince them one way or another as to the efficacy of cam, and they usually do not. what they accomplish is deepening their interest in cam while demonstrating that decisions about the efficacy or usefulness of cam modalities are more complex than either proponents or skeptics claim they are. does critical reflection always lead to a single conclusion? cam skeptics would like us to believe that science and the “truth” will lead students away from “believing in weird things” (shermer, 1997). many faculty have a definite view (or bias as described by students) about what is a reasonable topic to study and what is on the fringe (trocco, 2000), but if students perceive inflexible cynicism, they are turned off to skeptical arguments. if we move away from the binary choice of science or pseudoscience, students are adept at finding a sensible middle ground. by maintaining an agnostic position regarding truthclaims, they can find credible approaches to investigate seemingly far-out modalities. as citizen scientists, cam students become peer reviewers and community-based investigators, adding to their expertise and the scientific discourse (collins & pinch, 2008; irwin & wynne, 2003). is cam scientific? here is a definition of science that cam students can work with: “science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence” (science council, para. 1, 2021). skeptics think adjudicating the lines between science and pseudoscience is easy. as we have said, for decades, philosophers of science and anthropologists (nelson, 1993) have protested that the boundaries between science and not-science are not as cleanly demarcated as skeptics would have us believe (collins & pinch, 1993; hepeng and jiao, 2007; trocco, 1998). investigating this liminal tension makes students better scholars, not gullible believers. many of the skeptics cited in this paper have an investment in the students’ conclusions (e.g., barrett, 2021; randi, 2013; shermer, 1997;). for them, “critical thinking” only leads in one direction. they can be so focused on explaining the silliness of cam ideas that they skip the step of giving students the interdisciplinary tools to truly examine them. but this approach does not change minds or hearts (inside or outside the classroom) and does not lead to deep critical reflection, as irwin et al. point out: “. . . if scientists are sincere in their desire to communicate more effectively with the rest of society—then this will involve a willingness to engage with alternative worldviews and ‘knowledges’ rather than labeling them in advance as emotive and ignorant” (2003, p. 64). working with cam in the classroom, given sometimes impossible and contradictory problems to solve, leads to a path of inquiry-based learning that places students in a “disorienting dilemma” (mezirow, 1991)—a mismatch between what we think we know and something previously seen as implausible. students are then compelled to question their assumptions, which can lead to a transformative educational experience (western governors university, 2020). the strategy is to position students in learning situations in which they are faced with multiple realities. the process often gets messy before it is resolved as they are pushed to narrow down the choices and edge closer and closer to a solution that makes the most analytical sense. trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 18 is pedagogy more important than the truth? the question in this sub-title does not have to be the choice! to deepen thinking skills, we can personally engage students in the problems we give them, even to the point where arriving at a single truth may be unlikely. aristotle did not believe there could be multiple epistemic truths (see his law of non-contradiction), and, buoyed by the scientific ethos, his belief has seeped into our primary assumptions that two conflicting truths cannot inhabit the same space. the pedagogical magic is in allowing students to solve tangled problems while the instructor remains unattached to them, arriving at the “right” answer. most critical thinking seminars involving cam are deterministic; their goal is to have students achieve a particular outcome. this mimics pedagogy from a banking model of education rather than a constructivist model where students collaboratively build individual and integrated knowledge (hein, 1995). the design of these classroom experiments can always be improved by other teachers, as they are meant to fit within a class period. even more exciting, it would be easy to create simple experiments for other popular cam modalities in the classroom, for example: reiki, acupressure, coining, hypnosis, astrology, and prayer. these experiments would not reach the level of rcts, or create any real proof one way or the other, as they are meant as illustrative teaching tools to demonstrate to students the complexity of cam modalities and why it is difficult for these modalities to move to the “credible” side of the wall. the unsolved larger question for cam is whether it will ever be possible for these modalities to achieve scientific credibility without proving themselves against the scientific method and rcts. it would be intriguing for other faculty to make these experiments into classroom citizen science projects for their students and part of student presentations to their community. there may be further benefits about teaching students about cam as students interviewing other students discovered: when asked about their experience of cam, one student stated, “i believe the mindset these modalities force you into encourages you to focus on your health in a way you hadn’t before.” many students also cited cam as a way to improve their physical health and reduce/prevent pain or treat injuries. several students shared with us that they believed cam practices improved their mental health/emotional well-being, helped them feel more balanced/grounded, gave them a way to express emotions, or helped give them better separation from their thoughts and feelings. (bianco et al., 2022, pp. 7-8) as classroom teachers incorporate these experiments and a constructivist pedagogy into their classrooms, it will be apparent that a limitation of the present study was the student population itself, with similar ethnicity, age, and class. it is hard to know how this may have skewed the student responses included here. we do know that healthcare practices are often determined by cultural factors that are stratified along racial lines. it may be that the receptiveness to these class experiments is due to the mostly caucasian audience; however, significant numbers of african-americans use cam modalities, “cam is substantially used by african-americans, particularly among those with chronic conditions. african-americans tend to use cam for treatment versus prevention” (barner et al., 2010, p. 2). there is every reason to believe the reception to these classroom experiments would be consistent across student populations. it is not important that students arrive at the correct (that is, the teacher’s) answer, only that they follow an evidence-based process that makes sense to them and their collaborating peers while drawing from the research and data. unbiased critical reflection means the freedom trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 19 to come to any result, as long as students are using all the data and a considered process to arrive at a defensible conclusion—and that’s science! acknowledgements the author thanks pia gibson for figure 1. the author thanks peaco todd for figure 2. trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 20 references aacu (2009). learning and assessment: trends in under-graduate education. american association of colleges and universities. https://www.fredonia.edu/sites/default/files/section/about/offices/president/baccgoals/_fil es/learning%20and%20assessment-trends%20in%20undergraduate%20education.pdf barner, j. c., bohman, t. m., brown, c. m., & richards, k. m. 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(2018). consumer health & integrative medicine: a holistic view of complementary and alternative medicine practice. jones & bartlett learning. stevens, p. (2001). magical thinking in complementary and alternative medicine. skeptical inquirer, 33, 25(6), 32-37. https://skepticalinquirer.org/2001/11/magical-thinking-incomplementary-and-alternative-medicine/ trocco, f. (1998) how to believe in weird things. public understanding of science, 7. 187-193. https://doi.org/10.1177/096366259800700206 trocco, f. (1998) how to study weird things. skeptical inquirer. 23(5). https://skepticalinquirer.org/1998/09/how-to-study-weird-things/ trocco, f. (2000). encouraging students to study weird things. phi delta kappan. 81(8), 628-31. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297701109_encouraging_students_to_study_w eird_things trocco, f. (2014). the road less traveled: leading students into messy learning. journal of pedagogy, pluralism and practice, 6(1). https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/jppp/vol6/iss1/3/ upchurch, d. m., & rainisch, b. k. w. (2012). racial and ethnic profiles of complementary and alternative medicine use among young adults in the united states: findings from the national longitudinal study of adolescent health. journal of evidence-based complementary & alternative medicine, 17(3), 172-179. https://10.1177/2156587212450713 verhoef, m. j., lewith, g., ritenbaugh, c., boon, h., fleishman, s., & leis, a. (2005). complementary and alternative medicine whole systems research: beyond identification of inadequacies of the rct. complementary therapies in medicine, 13(3), 206-212. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctim.2005.05.001 vickers, a. (1997). a proposal for teaching critical thinking to students and practitioners of complementary medicine. alternative therapies in health and medicine, 3(3), 57-62. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9141292/ vuolanto, p., bergroth, h., nurmi, j., & salmenniemi, s. (2020). reconfiguring health knowledges? contemporary modes of self-care as ‘everyday fringe medicine’. public understanding of science, 29(5), 508-523. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662520934752 werneke, u., earl, j., seydel, c., horn, o., crichton, p., & fannon, d. (2004). potential health risks of complementary alternative medicines in cancer patients. british journal of cancer, 90(2), 408–413. https://10.1038/sj.bjc.6601560 western governers university. (2020, july 17). what is the transformative learning theory? https://www.wgu.edu/blog/what-transformative-learning-theory2007.html#close williams, w. f. (2013). encyclopedia of pseudoscience: from alien abductions to zone therapy. routledge. zollman, c. & vickers, a. (1999). abc of complementary medicine: what is complementary medicine? british medical journal, 319(7211), 693-696. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.319.7213.836 https://skepticalinquirer.org/2001/11/magical-thinking-in-complementary-and-alternative-medicine/ https://skepticalinquirer.org/2001/11/magical-thinking-in-complementary-and-alternative-medicine/ https://doi.org/10.1177%2f096366259800700206 https://skepticalinquirer.org/1998/09/how-to-study-weird-things/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297701109_encouraging_students_to_study_weird_things https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297701109_encouraging_students_to_study_weird_things https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/jppp/vol6/iss1/3/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctim.2005.05.001 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9141292/ https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662520934752 https://www.wgu.edu/blog/what-transformative-learning-theory2007.html#close https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.319.7213.836 trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 26 author notes frank trocco https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2151-4222 lesley university ftrocco@lesley.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2151-4222 mailto:ftrocco@lesley.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ to begin, the students are assigned a number of readings outlining experiments using open-label placebos. the experiment lasts two weeks, during which time the clients are asked to swallow the prescribed placebos. (if they cannot manage to swallow the... a week later, during the second consultation, the practitioner listens carefully to what the client reports about their use of the placebos and makes a second prescription based on their client’s self-report, often different from the first. a week lat... breastcancer.org what is complementary medicine? (2022, november 22). breastcancer.org. gale, r. (2019). stephen barrett: wikipedia’s agent provacateur against natural medicine. skeptical about skeptics. https://skepticalaboutskeptics.org/wikipedia-captured-by-skeptics/stephen-barrett-wikipedias-agent-provacateur-natural-medicine/ hall, h. (2014). defending science-based medicine: 44 doctor-bashing arguments… and harriet hall’s rebuttals. skeptical inquirer, 38(6). https://skepticalinquirer.org/2014/11/defending-science-based-medicine-44-doctor-bashing-arguments-and-rebuttals/ hall, h. (2019b) whither chiropractic? skeptical inquirer. 43(6), 1-3. hall, h. (2021, march 22). no, no, no, no! testimonials are not evidence! skeptical inquirer. https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/no-no-no-no-testimonials-are-not-evidence/ mount sinai. (2021). therapeutic touch: what is therapeutic touch? https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/treatment/therapeutic-touch national center for complementary and integrative health. (2016a). paying for complementary and integrative health approaches. national institutes of health. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/paying-for-complementary-and-integrative-health-approaches rabin, r. c. (2014, april 21). 15-minute doctor visits take a toll on patient-physician relationships. pbs news hour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/need-15-minutes-doctors-time trocco, f. (2014). the road less traveled: leading students into messy learning. journal of pedagogy, pluralism and practice, 6(1). https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/jppp/vol6/iss1/3/ werneke, u., earl, j., seydel, c., horn, o., crichton, p., & fannon, d. (2004). potential health risks of complementary alternative medicines in cancer patients. british journal of cancer, 90(2), 408–413. https://10.1038/sj.bjc.6601560 cie template volume 19, issue 1 march 15, 2016 issn 1099-839x educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice renée a. greenfield university of hartford abstract: this study followed a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design. phase i involved the collection of quantitative data to examine inservice teachers’ (n=69) attitudes about language and linguistic diversity as well as their teacher education coursework. all participants were graduates from the same teacher education program. phase ii included interviews with a subsample (n=9) of phase i participants. the interviews were used to explain teachers’ attitudes and practices with regard to linguistically diverse students and special education. findings indicate that teachers’ professional practice vary based on teachers’ understanding of and attitudes about policy, assessment, and instructional practice. findings suggest that teachers’ actual professional practice is inextricably linked to and contextualized in classroom, school, and district structures. implications for teacher education are discussed. keywords: mixed methods, teacher education, language, teachers’ attitudes, teacher practice apa-style citation: greenfield, r. a. (2016). educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice. current issues in education, 19(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1530 accepted: january 18th, 2016 while the demographics of elementary classrooms are changing rapidly, both linguistically and culturally, linguistically diverse students (lds) continue to be poorly served in public schools (harry & klingner, 2007; losen & skiba, 2011). in fact, students with lower english proficiency skills are at the highest risk for failure in school (klingner, artiles, & barletta, 2006; lesaux, 2006), and are often disproportionally represented in special education (artiles, rueda, salazar, & higareda, 2005; donovan & cross, 2002). compounding this rapid growth and failure in school is the fact that teacher education programs are only beginning to address how best to prepare teacher candidates to educate lds (darling-hammond, 2004; u.s. government accountability office, 2009). to examine these phenomena, it is necessary to examine research on teacher preparation and teachers’ attitudes, to make sense of how lds are educated, particularly during the elementary years. however, there are few studies on how specific teacher preparation current issues in education, 19(1) 1 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1530 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice coursework impacts teachers’ perceptions about lds (dekutoski, 2011; greenfield, 2013), or teachers’ practice (lo, 2009). before, during, and after engaging in coursework, teachers generate, reflect and sometimes shift their attitudes and perceptions about the students they teach. for lds, their teachers’ attitudes about language, culture, and diversity – if affirming – can positively impact student engagement, motivation, and, in turn, academic outcomes (garcianevarez, stafford, & arias, 2005; nieto, 2002; lucas & villegas, 2013; rader-brown & howley, 2014). the purpose of this mixed methods study was to explore the influence of teacher education coursework and teachers’ attitudes on teachers’ practices for and about the lds they educate. theoretical framework this study employed sociocultural theory (sct) (vygotsky, 1978) to examine the interactions between teachers and their social and cultural contexts, in particular the lds that exist within teachers’ classrooms. sociocultural theorists believe that human views are generated in concert with an individual’s engagement with the world around them (gee, 2001; heath, 1983). teachers and students engage daily in social activities, in the form of teaching and learning. scholars in teacher education (cochran-smith, davis, & fries, 2003; crawford & bartolomé, 2010; villegas & lucas, 2013) argue that the preparation of preservice teachers must include a critical, sociocultural view of education. for example, teachers must be aware of the interactions between language, culture, ideology, and power, because schooling is inherently sociopolitical (cochran-smith, 2004). while teachers educate students within this context, they must be cognizant of these interactions and their impact on practice. if teachers are aware of the context, they are more likely to be responsive educators. this idea undergirds both multicultural (mc) teacher education (cochran-smith et al., 2003) and culturally responsive teaching (crt) (gay, 2002) frameworks. both serve as essential for teacher preparation, but lucas and villegas’ (2010) framework for linguistically responsive teaching extends the focus to educating lds. examining teachers’ practices, attitudes and coursework through a sct lens focuses perspective on interactions in social and cultural contexts. this lens alone is not sufficient for studying lds; this study combines the sct perspective with the framework for linguistically responsive teaching (lrt) (lucas & villegas, 2010). the framework includes (p. 302): (a) sociolinguistic consciousness; (b) value for linguistic diversity; (c) inclination to advocate for english language learners (ells); (d) learning about ells’ language backgrounds, experiences, and proficiencies; (e) identifying the language demands of classroom discourse and tasks; (f) knowing and applying key principles of second language learning; and, (g) scaffolding instruction to promote ells’ learning. this collective framework allows for examination of teaching practices using sct with particular focus on teachers’ sociocultural and pedagogical practices. teachers’ attitudes, coursework and practice have historically been linked with student achievement. this study is centered about these three domains to ultimately better understand how attitudes, coursework and practice impact academic outcomes for lds. while determining specific variables that contribute to student achievement has proved somewhat elusive, some researchers (feiman-nemser & remillard, 1996; garmon, 2004; pintrich & schunk, 2002; rosenthal & jacobson, 1992) argue that teachers’ attitudes predict practices, which in turn, predict academic outcomes. the academic outcomes for lds underpins this study – in order for lds to achieve in schools, their teachers’ attitudes, coursework and practice must be examined. current issues in education, 19(1) 2 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice relevant research low student achievement (samson & lesaux, 2015), increased high school dropout rates (nces, 2007), and the disproportionality of lds in special education (see donovan & cross, 2002) are all sobering outcomes for lds in today’s schools. this may be in part due to the fact that many teachers are underprepared to educate lds (menken & antunez, 2001; samson & lesaux, 2015), or a function of teachers’ attitudes about language and linguistic diversity, as well as, special education referral practices. while an exhaustive review of the literature about the relationship between teacher education coursework, teachers’ attitudes, and teachers’ practice do not exist, there are three distinct and growing bodies of research that examine these factors in relationship with lds. a discussion about all three areas follows. teacher education coursework lucas and villegas (2010) argue that most teacher preparation programs provide “inadequate attention to educating students of linguistically diverse backgrounds” (p. 297) and that without effective preparation, “classroom teachers are left to sink or swim, much as the [lds] in their classes” (lucas & grinberg, 2008, p. 609). the most recent u.s. government accountability office report (2009) states that less than 20 percent of traditional teacher preparation programs require at least one course about lds and 28 percent require field placements with lds. these statistics do not reflect recommendations from language scholars (lucas & villegas, 2010) who argue that teachers need to know more about language, regardless of the linguistic composition of their classrooms. to date, some researchers have broadly recommended increased preparation for general education teachers (gebhard et al., 2002), while others have suggested providing specific language and pedagogical knowledge for pre-service teachers (coady, harper, & de jong, 2011). others identified specific one-on-one experiences with lds (jurchan & morano, 2010) as integral to programs and others highlight the need for increasing teacher education faculty’s knowledge of teaching lds (costa, mcphail, smith, & brisk, 2005). specific research on preparing general education teachers for lds is limited, but growing. teachers’ attitudes while there is conflicting research about the impact of teacher education and early teaching experiences on teachers’ attitudes (zeichner, 1996), researchers agree that, regardless of when, where or how attitudes are generated, teachers’ attitudes have a direct effect on students' motivation, self-esteem, and educational outcomes (cummins, 2000; nieto, 2000). scholars (byrnes, kiger, & manning, 1997; youngs & youngs, 2001) believe that the following variables predict positive attitudes about lds: (a) coursework in multicultural education or second language learning; (b) working directly with lds; (c) personal experience abroad; (d) specific training to teach lds; (e) completion of a graduate degree; and, (f) living in a geographic region where legislature supports lds. walker, shafer and iiams (2004) surveyed over 400 teachers whose attitudes toward lds were largely neutral, but then spanned to strongly negative. in contrast, karabenick and noda (2004) surveyed over 700 teachers’ attitudes after a professional development experience and reported that 70 percent of general education teachers reported favorable attitudes toward lds. the attitudes teachers have about language and students with linguistic diversity can vary, but researchers have identified two attitudes necessary to best educate lds, including affirming views of bilingualism and language diversity (karabenick & noda, 2004; nieto, 2000; valdés, 2001) and knowledge of the sociopolitical aspects of language education and use (caldas & caron-caldas, 2000). current issues in education, 19(1) 3 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice teachers’ practices previous research on teachers’ practices shows that assessing and making special education eligibility decisions about lds are inherently biased (donovan & cross, 2002). prereferral strategies (instructional strategies recommended before referring to special education) are not consistently used (klingner et al., 2006). assessors tend to use formal, biased measures (abedi, 2006; macswan & rolstad, 2006). authentic assessments are used minimally (klingner, hoover & baca, 2008) and eligibility is based on limited information (wilkinson et al., 2006). determining whether or not lds have learning disabilities (ld), in particular, is multi-layered and difficult even for special educators (klingner et al., 2008). however, it is general education teachers who typically refer students to special education. therefore, a number of researchers have called for examination of teachers’ pre/referral and assessment practices (harry & klingner, 2007; mccardle et al., 2005). research questions three research questions guided this study: rq1: what are the relationships between teachers’ practices, language attitudes, and teacher education coursework? rq2: how do teachers’ coursework and attitudes influence their practices? rq3: how do the qualitative results explain results from quantitative data? method design rationale in order to reasonably address these questions, a mixed method approach was used. while mixed research offers the ability to integrate quantitative and qualitative data (creswell, 2014; creswell & plano clark, 2011; teddlie & tashakkori, 2003), it also provides a space for researchers to move toward the “radical middle” (onwuegbuzie, 2012, p. 194). this “radical middle,” proposed by onwuegbuzie (2012) provides a “space in which a socially just and productive coexistence among all research traditions is promoted actively, and in which mixed research is consciously local, dynamic, interactive, situated, contingent, fluid, strategic, and generative” (p. 194). onwuegbuzie purports that this “radical middle” serves as a place where privileging traditions is discouraged, and where mixed research is purposefully chosen to address complex, significant questions. questions for this study required a pragmatist approach, but more importantly, the explicit awareness that research about teaching and learning exist within a sociocultural context. within educational research in particular, scholars klingner and boardman (2011) argue, “[experimental research] is not well-suited for addressing the complex issues found in today’s culturally, linguistically, and socio-economically diverse classrooms,” (p. 216). the complex issues klingner and boardman refer to exist within the sociocultural context of today’s schools. in order to examine these relationships – between and among teachers’ coursework, attitudes and practice – a mixed method design is not only pragmatic, but also the only design that values and allows for multiple vantage points to view this sociocultural context. research design this study employed a sequential explanatory research design (creswell & plano clark, 2011; creswell, 2014; tashakkori & teddlie, 1998) (see table 1) and was comprised of a fivestep process. first, quantitative data were collected. second, quantitative data were analyzed and used for qualitative sample selection. third, qualitative data were collected. next, qualitative data were analyzed. finally, the entire corpus of data was interpreted. the quantitative component of this study was comprised by the collection and analysis of survey data (phase i). current issues in education, 19(1) 4 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice then, the interpretation of the survey data results guided the selection of participants for the qualitative portion of the study (phase ii). here, a heterogeneous representative sample of participants (n=9) was identified from the larger surveyed group. a regression-based residual analysis1 allowed for the identification of participants to be interviewed. because of its sequential explanatory design, the study began with a larger sample (n=69) to test variables and then used a few cases to explore qualitative questions (creswell & plano clark, 2011). the design allowed for the interpretation of the entire analyses to explain the results. table 1 sequential explanatory mixed method design, procedures & outcomes (adapted from ivankova & stick, 2007) phase quantitative data collection quantitative data analysis subsample selection qualitative data collection qualitative data analysis integration and interpretation of results procedures • lats survey • 3yo-social justice survey • 3yodesirable practices survey • teacher education coursework histories • use of spss • frequencies • principal component • exploratory factor analysis • confirmatory factor analysis • regression analysis • regression analysis • residual analysis • developing interview questions • semistructured interviews • participants’ transcript review • use of hyper research • across-case theme development • integration and interpretatio n of both data outcomes • descriptive statistics • identifying outliers • case selection • interview protocol • interview transcripts • codes, themes, supporting evidence • combined findings • discussion • implications participants and recruitment all participants in this study graduated from chapman college (a pseudonym), a private university in the northeast (see table 2). first, i emailed 300 former undergraduate and graduate teacher education students inviting them to be part of the study and 75 agreed to participate. participants completed the language attitude teacher scale (lats) (byrnes, kiger, & manning, 1997), but six of these responses were unusable. then, i retrieved course histories and three-year-out (3yo) survey data (obtained by the university) from the 69 remaining respondents. i then asked the same participants if they would agree to participate in phase ii of the study. ninety-four percent of participants were female and six percent male. eighty-two percent of teachers were white, 4.3 percent hispanic, 2.8 percent black, 1.4 percent asian, 1.4 percent 1 residual analysis is a technique used to understand how independent variables are related to a dependent variable. this analysis is commonly used to make predictions; it estimates the average value of the dependent variable when the independent variables remain fixed. current issues in education, 19(1) 5 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice table 2 participants’ information description n percentage gender female 65 94 male 4 6 race american indian 1 1.4 asian 1 1.4 black 2 2.8 hispanic 3 4.3 unknown 5 7.2 white 57 82 school type public 63 91.4 private 4 5.8 religious 2 2.8 school setting urban 28 40.6 suburban 38 55.1 rural 3 4.3 table 3 subsample participants’ information pa rti ci pa nt s school context* chapman college teacher education experience professional role demographics g ra de le ve l(s ) sc ho ol s et tin g* * % o f s tu de nt s – l1 e ng lis h % o f s tu de nt s – re ce iv e sp ec ia l ed uc at io n se rv ic es la ng ua ge c ou rs ew or k sp ec ia l e du ca tio n co ur se w or k u nd er gr ad ua te d eg re e g ra du at e de gr ee y ea rs e xp er ie nc e li ce ns e ty pe ** * g ra de / se tti ng ** ** g en de r r ac e rachel prek-8 u 34.5 10 x x 6 p prek, two-way f white rita prek12 s 85 16.3 x x 6 p 6th, sei selfcontained f american indian josephine prek-8 u 55 21 x x x 3 i 5th – 6th, sei f white megan prek-5 s 93 11.6 x x x 4 i 5th f white ann prek-5 u 89 16.7 x x x 4 p 1st f hispanic lauren prek-4 r 97 19 x 4 p 2nd f white troy prek-8 u 72 19 x x x 5 p 6th m asian leigh prek-5 s 95 15 x 4 p 4th f white marie prek-2 s 73 7.4 x 4 i 1st f white note. *all participants taught in public schools; ** u=urban, s=suburban, r=rural; *** i=initial license, p=professional license; ****rachel taught in a two-way (spanish/english) bilingual classroom, rita and josephine taught in sei (sheltered english immersion) classroom current issues in education, 19(1) 6 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice american indian, and 7.2 percent did not provide their race. ninety-one percent of the teachers taught in public schools, 5.8 percent in private schools, and 2.8 percent in schools with religious affiliations. fifty-five percent of participants reported teaching in suburban school settings, 40.6 percent in urban schools, and 4.3 percent in rural settings. it is important to note that 15 teachers reported teaching more than one grade level. of the subsample of teachers (n=9) in phase ii of the study, four of the nine teachers taught in urban schools, four taught in suburban schools, and one taught in a rural district (see table 3). five of the nine teachers took language coursework and one teacher took special education coursework at chapman college. eight teachers received undergraduate degrees and five teachers earned graduate degrees. undergraduates and graduates were grouped together for this study because both had access to language and special education coursework and shared the same elementary teacher education experience. quantitative data collection and analysis quantitative data collection. this study used four quantitative sources. first, participants completed the lats, a 13-item questionnaire where participants responded to statements using a five-point likert scale, designed to measure attitudes toward language and linguistic diversity (see appendix a). then, i gathered data from the 3yo survey, using a fivepoint likert scale, sent to graduates three years after graduation from chapman college to gather data about teacher graduates’ practices and their perceptions about teaching for social justice. drawn from the larger 3yo survey, eight questions were identified because they addressed current practices relevant to diverse learners (referred to as 3yo-practices), and eight questions addressed teachers’ attitudes and perceptions about teaching for social justice (referred to as 3yo-sj) (see appendix b). the 3yo-practices questions asked teachers to rate their engagement in such practices, identified by the university as indicators of best practice, and the 3yo-sj questions asked teachers to rate their levels of reflectivity around diversity and diverse students as well as their teaching practices that support social justice and students with disabilities. both subsets of the 3yo survey attempted to capture graduates perceptions of their current practices. finally, i gathered teachers’ coursework histories and grouped participants based on: (1) degree (under/graduate); (2) elementary education, plus special education coursework (minor – ug, major – g); and, (3) elementary education, plus language coursework (minimum of 3 credits). quantitative analysis. quantitative analyses were carried out using spss. principal component analyses (pca) determined that each survey measured a separate, unidimensional construct, so i examined the correlations between language attitudes and practices. finally, to understand the relationships between the variables, the predictive value of the independent variables on teachers’ practice for social justice and teachers’ practices were explored. for the multiple regression models, i explored: (a) language attitude (lats score); (b) type of degree (under/graduate); (c) teacher education language coursework (yes/no); and, (d) teacher education special education coursework (yes/no). to select participants for rq2, i randomly selected three participants whose residuals (observed minus the predicted score) were in line with the predictive model. analyses indicated 16 participants whose residuals were +/one standard deviation around the regression line. of the 16 identified, nine agreed to participate in phase ii. for example, the participant (unidentified by a number) with a lats score of almost + 3 sd and desirable practice score of almost 4 sd was asked to participate, but declined. an attempt was made to identify at least one participant in each of the four quadrants. the final nine selected participants are identified in figure 1. current issues in education, 19(1) 7 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice qualitative data collection and analysis qualitative data collection. this study used a semi-structured interview protocol (see appendix c), informed by the work of brantlinger, jimenez, klingner, pugach, and richardson (2005) that focused on the use of qualitative research in special education. ten practicing teachers piloted the protocol, providing detailed feedback to clarify and enhance the tool. this iterative process allowed me to revise the protocol, with the following foci: special education referral process, thoughts and action about lds, and school context. sample questions included (1) describe the referral process for students with suspected learning disabilities in your school/district. (2) does the process of referring students to special education differ based individual students? the interviews were based on consent and each interview was 60-90 minutes. responses were transcribed and identified using an identification number. qualitative analysis. data analyses were carried out using hyperresearch, software used to manage and code data. this study employed traditional qualitative procedures, including coding methodology (strauss & corbin, 1990) and developing themes and domains (creswell, 2014). first, open ending coding techniques were used to identify salient ideas, patterns, and concepts within the responses to interview questions. second, the data and initial codes were reanalyzed using axial coding. third, the codes were assigned to broader domains. next, i looked for similarities in patterns and ideas across all nine cases. data that appeared in four out of nine cases were retained. then, when appropriate, i identified disconfirming evidence. finally, domain analyses (spradley, 1979) were used to identify semantic relationships in the data. based on the domain analyses, i generated a taxonomy to build a visual representation of the relationships among and within the data. findings quantitative survey data. data from self-report surveys (lats, 3yo-sj, and 3yo-practice) and coursework histories answered rq1. table 4 displays the means, standard deviations, t-scores, and p values, disaggregated by group. of the three surveys, the lats was the only measure that reported group differences2. there were differences found between participants who took language coursework ( =24.94, sd=5.7) and those who did not ( =28.92, sd=6.6). participants who took some degree of language coursework had stronger positive attitudes toward language and linguistic diversity. while group sizes were different, the differences found between the two groups were significant (p=.033). overall mean statistics indicated teachers’ strong engagement in social justice practices ( =32.36, sd=3.57) and moderate engagement in desirable practices ( =28.94, sd=2.8). there were no statistically significant differences found between the three group means for teachers’ reported use of practices for social justice, or desirable practices. regression analysis. i used multiple regression techniques to investigate the role of the independent variables (language attitudes, degree, teacher education language coursework, and teacher education special education coursework) in predicting both teachers’ desirable practices and practices for social justice. fitting the model – practice for social justice. table 5 displays the model-fitting process for this exploratory model. model 1 displays the effect of language attitude on practice for social justice, with 5.2 percent of the variation explained. however, once the teachers’ degree was added to the model, the effect of language attitude was significant, but the total model was insignificant; the variation explained increased to 6.6 percent. models 3 and 4 tested the 2 it is important to note that a lats score of 13 is the most positive and 65 the most negative score. current issues in education, 19(1) 8 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice contribution of language coursework and special education coursework, with no significant effects. there were no significant effects of any independent variables on teachers’ practices for social justice, so i examined the effects of the same variables on desirable practices. table 4 language attitudes, practice for social justice, and desirable practices – disaggregated by group language attitudes practice for social justice desirable practices n m (sd) t p m (sd) t p m (sd) t p total 69 28.00 (6.6) 32.36 (3.57) 28.94 (2.8) type of degree undergraduate 36 29.39 (5.66) -1.86 .068 32.58 (3.25) -.534 .595 28.92 (2.8) .075 .940 graduate 33 26.48 (7.28) 32.12 (3.93) 28.97 (2.87) teacher education coursework: elementary/ special education elementary coursework only 52 28.1 (6.4) -.252 .802 32.4 (3.48) -.168 .867 29.08 (2.7) -.689 .493 elementary and special education coursework 17 27.65 (7.4) 32.2 (3.96) 28.53 (3.18) teacher education coursework: language no language coursework 53 28.92 (6.6) -2.18 .033* 32.25 (3.74) .492 .624 29.09 (2.66) -.811 .420 some degree of language coursework 16 24.94 (5.7) 32.75 (3.0) 28.44 (3.39) *p <.05 table 5 regression models investigating the role of teacher coursework and language attitudes on teachers’ practice for social justice model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 b se b se b se b se intercept 35.83 1.85 36.65 2.03 36.88 3.38 36.78 3.61 language attitude -.124 .064~ -.138 .066* -.143 .110 -.140 .119 degree -.864 .866 -.900 3.99 -.981 4.08 teacher education: language -.267 1.09 .104 4.81 teacher education: special education .572 1.28 r squared .052 .066 .067 .071 df 67 66 64 62 * p<.05; ~ p<.10 fitting the model – desirable practices. table 6 shows the second model-fitting process. model 1 included a negative coefficient and indicated a significance effect (p=.021) of current issues in education, 19(1) 9 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice language attitude (the lower the mean score, the more positive the attitudes) on desirable practices. this explained 7.8 percent of the variation. once the type of degree was added to the model, the effect of language attitude on practices for social justice remained significant, but the total model was insignificant; the explained variance was 8.1 percent. models 3 and 4 tested the individual contributions of coursework, but neither model had significant effects. when combined with any of the other predictors, the effects of language attitude were eliminated. thus, model 1 proved to be the best-fitting model tested. the fact that the language attitude predictor made a significant contribution to teachers’ reported use of desired practices was an important finding. the regression solution for model 1 was: . this meant that if the language attitude predictor variable had a value of 0, there would be a predicted desirable practice score of 32.28. however, it is not possible to have a predictor score of 0, because the lats outcome was on a scale from 13-65, with a higher score indicating a stronger engagement in desirable practice. these values indicated that with every 1-point increase in language attitude (as measured by the lats) there was almost a 0.1199 point decrease in desirable practices (as measured by the 3yo-practices). for example, if a participant scored a 30.0 on language attitude, their predicted score for desirable practice was: 35.85= 32.28 + (0.119 x 30.0). according to this model, participants with strong positive language attitudes (scores 13-23.4) also had stronger engagement in desirable practices. regression models confirmed that language attitudes were influential in predicting a portion of teachers’ reported use of desirable practices table 6 regression models investigating the role of teacher coursework and language attitudes on teachers’ desirable practices model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 b se b se b se b se intercept 32.28 1.45 32.58 1.59 31.42 2.58 32.5 2.7 language attitude -.119 .05* -.124 .052* -.071 .084 -.111 .089 degree -.315 .687 3.14 3.04 2.85 3.07 teacher education: language -1.31 .829 -5.81 3.61 teacher education: special education -.456 .978 r squared .078 .081 .142 .168 df 66 65 63 61 * p<.05 figure 1 shows the role of participants’ language attitudes on desirable practices3. based on the regression model, i used residual analysis to select participants for rq3. i calculated participants’ residuals (observed minus predicted score) and identified 16 participants whose 3 based on the participants’ raw scores, a standard score was calculated based on the distribution of the sample; this allowed for the standardization of the raw scores. y ∧ desirablepractice = 32.28 + (−0.119)xlanguageattitude current issues in education, 19(1) 10 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice scores were +/1 sd around the regression line, three of whom had residuals in line with the model. of the 16 identified, nine agreed to participate in phase ii. for example, the participant (unidentified by a number) with a lats score of almost + 3 sd and desirable practice score of almost 4 sd was asked to participate, but declined. an attempt was made to identify at least one participant in each of the four quadrants. the final nine selected participants are identified in using boxes with their corresponding identification number. figure 1. regression model: role of language attitudes on teachers’ desirable practice. qualitative based on results from teacher interviews, table 7 displays the qualitative results, including the three domains. the first domain – know – included three themes: (a) language, (b) professional practice; and, (c) special education practice. the second domain – do – included four themes: (a) general assessment practices; (b) instruction; (c) professional practice; and, (d) special education practice. the third domain – think – included four themes: (a) language; (b) perceptions; (c) professional practice; and, (d) special education practice. what teachers say they know. data included teachers’ reported knowledge about language, professional practice, and special education practice. half of the teachers discussed policies about language instruction and teachers who articulated language policies were in schools with large numbers of lds, or in classrooms educating lds. teachers reported uncertainty about language policy and procedures about language instruction or assessment. six teachers – ann, josephine, leigh, marie, lauren, and troy – reported not knowing of any professional development (pd) opportunities about lds and special education. megan, who did have pd experiences, reported that teachers frequently discussed referring lds to special education; “we would bring [the issues] up ourselves.... it came up a lot.” in general, she said they “always heard a lot of statistics about how the percentage is so much higher [for lds to be current issues in education, 19(1) 11 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice placed in special education]. we know.... but there wasn’t any – ‘this is what you should do’ type thing, so i guess it was sort of like observe and use your professional judgment.” at rachel’s two-way bilingual school there were “in-house, very short workshops.” she continued, “we’re in need [of pd], i’d say.” all the teachers in the study were able to explain the special education referral process in their schools. in general, teachers reported knowing about their students’ language backgrounds and the special education referral process, but knew less about language policies and available pd. table 7 qualitative data taxonomy domain theme evidence what teachers say they know language policies about language instruction assessment in native language professional practice professional development – lds and special education special education practice special education referral process what teachers say they do assessment general assessment practices assessing language skills instruction practices for all students designing instruction for lds professional practice advocating collaborating outsourcing to colleagues special education practice prereferral referral of lds to special education what teachers think language learning native language instruction perceptions speech-language pathologist esl teacher and caseload families and parents integration of lds with peers professional practice collaboration assessment professional development special education practice prereferral process referrals special education special education decisions for lds what teachers say they do. teachers reported engaging in assessment, instruction, professional practices, and special education practices. all teachers reported using a variety of assessments: formal and informal, formative and summative. general assessments were more pervasive in teachers’ reported practice than assessment specific to language, yet teachers reported using this information to drive future instruction. for example, troy reported “reteaching from the information i get from the formal assessments.” six of the nine teachers reported assessing students’ language skills through the assessment of students’ oral language and five of the nine reported assessing using the combination of oral language and written work. in contrast, marie, explained, “i don’t really assess [students’] language skills that much. if i notice them having language difficulties often i’ll take notes and just write it down so that i can tell our speech and language teacher and ask her what she thinks of it.” current issues in education, 19(1) 12 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice three of the nine teachers discussed instructional practices used with all students, regardless of their native language (l1). when asked, “how do you design instruction to meet students’ linguistic needs?” teachers responded in a variety of ways, including rachel who answered, “in a million ways.” teachers described varied grouping strategies: using visuals, teacher modeling, tapping into students’ background knowledge, conferencing with students, creating situations for peer interaction, and implementing theme-based and/or activity-based instruction. while rita and megan integrated practices disseminated by their state, troy, marie, and josephine provided specific, linguistically-based practices. in contrast, ann, lauren, leigh, and rachel reported designing instruction for lds, but did not give specific examples for the particular population. it is important to note that lauren, marie, and leigh reported having little contact with lds, yet in their interviews recounted designing instruction for lds. further, rita, josephine, and rachel, who primarily educate lds, talked about their instruction implicitly; they discussed the education of all students, including their individual, linguistic needs. within professional practice, teachers reported advocacy and collaboration skills as well as the specific ways they outsourced students to their colleagues. all teachers reported advocating for students in general, and four teachers discussed advocating for students, or “fighting for” students to be deemed eligible for special education services. two of the four teachers advocated for appropriate referrals to special education for lds and the other two for monolingual students. suburban teachers in the study, who rarely educated lds, said they would outsource their struggling lds, compared to the urban teachers who discussed ways they would reevaluate their instruction and/or collaborate with colleagues to meet the needs of the student. six of the nine teachers reported participating in the prereferral team process in their schools. two teachers reported referring one or more lds to special education. two other teachers reported that lds in their school contexts were given time, compared to their monolingual peers, before referral to special education. responses varied, when teachers in the study were asked: are (special education referral) determinations/decisions about linguistically diverse students any different than their monolingual peers? in most cases, teachers reported what they thought about this question, rather than what they do in their schools. what teachers think. interview data were replete with examples of what teachers think, organized in the following themes: language learning, perceptions, professional practice, and special education practice. some teachers thought l1 instruction was essential to their school communities, while others reported that learning english is the ultimate goal of instruction, and still others offered conflicted responses. josephine said, “i think it’s ridiculous that we don’t have native instruction here. in a community like [urban center] where there’s so many different languages it’s something that we should be really excited about and try and foster.” like megan, troy and marie argued that they were unsure how l1 instruction could be put into practice. megan argued, “i guess in theory it seems like such a good idea to instruct them in both english and their native language, but it seems really impractical.” lauren and leigh discussed how they could “see both sides” and that l1 instruction “has pros and cons,” respectively. in the end, they did not take a specific stand about l1 instruction. data showed that some teachers took a stand about l1 instruction, while others did not. data from the study revealed some teachers have distinctive perceptions about the speech-language pathologists (slps), ell teachers, students’ families as well as the integration of lds in their schools. two teachers viewed slps as distinctly different professionals, meaning slps had discreet skills that could not be duplicated by other professionals. the majority of teachers mentioned having slps in their schools, but did not provide individual perceptions. in current issues in education, 19(1) 13 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice contrast, seven of nine teachers specifically discussed their perceptions of their ell teachers. over half of the teachers revealed their perceptions of parents and families, with regard to the referral process and families’ languages. a few teachers said they thought parents slowed down the referral process, another perceived families to complete language forms inaccurately, and one teacher perceived families as adding value to lds school experiences. the sei teacher, josephine, and self-contained ell teacher, rita, were the two teachers who provided their perceptions about the integration of lds with their peers. in both cases, teachers reported that their lds were isolated from their monolingual peers. teachers’ thoughts about their professional practice, including collaboration, assessment, pd, and training, were evident across the data. teachers in the study that acted collaboratively in their environments were the same five teachers using response to intervention (rti), a prereferral, problem-solving structure in their schools (see fuchs & fuchs, 2006, for detailed explanation). these teachers reported feeling “safe,” and surrounded by “helpful, supportive, collegial” colleagues, while the other four teachers thought their school cultures did not foster collaborative environments. teachers overwhelmingly reported that there was not enough pd to examine lds and special education. teachers had varied thinking about the prereferral and referral process as well as special education eligibility decisions made for and about lds. in general, all teachers described the referral process and commented on the factors contributing to the effectiveness of the process, including collegiality, the school’s political context, and the pace of the process. teachers thought the process of determining eligibility to be different for lds, due to differences in language development, english language skills, and acquisition time. while the previous domains, what teachers say they know and do, reflect a fair amount of agreement among teachers, there is great variation in this domain. in addition to having great variation, it is important to note what is missing from the data in this domain. all teachers responded to direct questions about l1 instruction and the availability of pd about lds and special education. however, the rest of data reported in this domain were derived indirectly throughout the interview. these qualitative data provided evidence to support the generated themes. this study’s first research question examined the relationships between practices, attitudes and coursework. data indicated that participants who took language coursework had more positive attitudes toward language and language diversity. further, results from rq2 showed that participants with positive language attitudes predicated a greater use of desirable practices. following the sequential explanatory design, the next section will describe the findings from rq3, findings from across all data sources. combined findings and discussion the foci of this study included examining the relationships between teachers’ attitudes, teachers’ coursework, and teachers’ practices. this study examined data from graduates from one university, in order to determine whether their university coursework and/or attitudes impacted their current teaching practices (including practices that support educating lds and students who receive special education). ultimately, this study was intended to inform teacher education, special education, and teacher practice. examining the corpus of data allowed for a greater understanding of the relationships between teachers’ practices, attitudes, and coursework as well as the specific practices of a subsample. this section provides descriptive results from the subsample as well as data that describe what teachers say they know, what teachers say they think, and what teachers say current issues in education, 19(1) 14 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice they do. discussion of these data is across three contexts: language, special education, and professional practice. subsample’s descriptive results after interviewing the subsample of participants, it was important to reexamine the subsamples’ school context and teacher education background (table 3). four of the nine teachers taught in urban schools, four taught in suburban schools, and one teacher taught in a rural district. five of the nine teachers interviewed took language coursework and one teacher took special education coursework. eight received undergraduate degrees and five teachers earned graduate degrees. the selected teachers were moderately representative of the larger sample. table 8 reports the subsamples’ individual scores on the quantitative measures, including standards scores used to contextualize the results. since data from 3yo-sj were not found to be significant with the larger sample, they were not used in the collective analyses. instead, lats and 3yo-practices scores were examined in detail. on both the lats and the 3yo-practices, the subsample’s means were not statistically significantly different from the larger sample. to determine patterns within the data, the scores were examined individually. at this stage of the data analyses, patterns across and within lats and 3yo-practice standard scores were investigated and found to have little variability. aside from the statistically significant positive relationship between participants’ lats scores and 3yo-practice scores, there were no other significant patterns identified. table 8 subsample participants’ profiles participants language attitude desirable practice raw score standard score continuum raw score standard score participants in line with the model megan (#31) 28.00 0.00 moderate positive 29.00 0.02 marie (#2) 28.00 0.00 moderate positive 29.00 0.02 leigh (#20) 29.00 0.15 moderate positive 29.00 0.02 participants +/1 sd rachel (#50) 14.00 -2.12 strong positive 30.00 0.37 rita (#42) 14.00 -2.12 strong positive 32.00 1.08 josephine (#39) 16.00 -1.82 strong positive 27.00 -0.69 ann (#43) 25.00 -0.45 moderate positive 19.00 -3.51 lauren (#9) 39.00 1.67 neutral 31.00 0.73 troy (#53) 34.00 0.91 neutral 28.00 -0.33 sample mean 28.00 (6.60) moderate positive 28.94 (2.83) language examination of lats scores in conjunction with participants’ responses to interview questions about language, built more robust descriptions of teachers’ language attitudes and practices. teachers with more negative attitudes towards language and language diversity responded similarly in their interview. teachers who did not take language coursework had more negative attitudes toward language. interview data confirmed the quantitative findings that there was a statistically significant positive relationship between language attitudes and desirable practice. for example, rachel displayed her strong positive language attitude, explaining, “[l1 instruction is] essential to complete really meaningful literacy development.” then, when asked how she designed current issues in education, 19(1) 15 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice instruction to meet students’ linguistic needs, she responded, “in a million ways.” rachel reported using a variety of strategies, such as teacher modeling and conferencing with students. in contrast, marie, who had a moderate positive language attitude, reported, “i don’t really assess [students’] language skills that much.” while she had strong engagement, her interview data inconsistently reported desirable practices. within their interviews, four participants discussed language policies, but their explanations and interpretations lacked depth. for example, the suburban teachers discussed district language-screening forms used to determine if language evaluations were appropriate. while results from the lats provided insight into participants’ attitudes, it did not measure their knowledge about language. aside from teachers in bilingual or sei programs, interview data showed that participants’ knowledge and understanding about language policy were minimal. this suggests that their individual teacher education experience, particularly coursework in language, impact teacher’s knowledge about language and lds. the lats item analysis revealed some interesting patterns about attitudes and practice. lauren, megan, troy, and marie’s lats’ responses (moderate to neutral attitudes) were corroborated within the interview data. when asked their opinion of l1 instruction, marie, megan, and troy said they were not sure how it could be implemented. while megan agreed that l1 instruction was valuable, troy and marie rejected the idea, and lauren did not take a stance. in contrast, rita, rachel, josephine, and ann (with strong positive language attitudes) agreed that l1 instruction was valuable in particular circumstances, highlighting the benefits for lds. teachers in school settings that supported language instruction, like rachel and josephine, discussed their instructional strategies implicitly, referring to desirable practices like making accommodations and using visuals. this may imply that discussions in this context do not require explicit conversation about strategies. for example, rachel said, “i treat the entire class as if they were learning in a second language, and at the same time i teach regular kindergarten.” megan, who took language coursework, reported using specific language objectives when teaching her students, saying: “i try to have a language objective with every lesson what we do.” teachers in other settings reported using similar instructional methods for all students, regardless of students’ linguistic diversity. these data support the quantitative results that link positive language attitudes with practice, in particular the assessment of students’ language skills and use of specific instructional strategies. in other words, if teachers’ have more positive attitudes about language they are more willing to expand their instructional and assessment repertoire. participants with deeper knowledge about language policy and more positive attitudes about language, typically students who took language coursework, were the same participants who taught in urban schools or within language contexts. special education all participants educated students who received special education services and the majority of teachers participated in the preor referral process. while only one member of the subsample (troy) took coursework in special education, the others completed at least one introductory special education course during their time at chapman college. interview and survey data confirmed that participants reported having a general understanding of the referral process. this suggests that teachers know cursory information about the special education process. all teachers reported making accommodations and using differentiated instruction, and six reported participating in the pre-referral process. all teachers reported needing specific support to help them make informed instructional and referral decisions about and for lds. current issues in education, 19(1) 16 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice two teachers actually referred a lds for special education services. but, seven of the nine teachers reported that the referral process for lds was different. if only two teachers had actually referred a lds, then how would the other five teachers know if the process was the same or different for lds? this may be a limitation of self-report data as well as a realistic portrayal of what teachers think they should do, what they know they should do, and what they actually do. six teachers reported that they did not know about or have access to pd about lds and special education, two teachers had a one-time conversation about the topic, and one teacher created her own professional learning community to investigate issues around referring lds to special education. again, these data create concern. teachers reported not having any pd to help them make special education eligibility decisions for lds and the majority said they had little contact with their esl teacher. without language coursework or the support of a second language expert, coupled with a lack of pd, these teachers are not prepared to educate lds, nor make appropriate decisions around special education. professional practice while the lats measured attitudes, the 3yo-practice survey asked about teachers’ desirable practices, and results were positively skewed. teachers reported they engaged in decision-making, assessment, and reflection. interview data also showed evidence about decision-making as well as collaboration and assessment practices. data from the 3yo-practice survey reported that participants “often” or “sometimes” make decisions about teaching based on classroom evidence (item 29) and make teaching decisions based on the results of pupil assessments (item 32). in fact, eight of nine participants responded “often” to item 29, which means that participants overwhelming reported using evidence to make decisions. however, these survey data conflict with interview data. during their interviews, some participants reported making decisions based on evidence (item 32) and using differentiated instruction (item 36), but offered few examples. limited evidence was offered to support survey results of item 35 (modifying lessons for students from diverse racial/ethnic/cultural/linguistic backgrounds); one participant discussed ways to modify lessons, but they were modifications to address learning differences, and one participant (megan) reported making modifications, but when she described her actions, she was actually creating accommodations. regarding collaboration, lauren, megan, and troy reported limited access to the ell teacher in their schools. lauren and megan both reported low incidence of lds in their building, which may have contributed to their perceptions that the ell teacher was difficult to access. marie reported outsourcing her lds who struggled to the speech-language pathologist in her building, while lauren outsourced struggling students to the title one teacher. this provides evidence that teachers may outsource their students to other colleagues; in fact, most suburban teachers with little contact with lds reported that they would likely outsource students who were struggling. findings in context combined results from this study suggest teachers’ coursework and attitudes across two domains – language and special education – inform teachers’ professional practice (figure 2). relationships between teachers’ attitudes and coursework inform their knowledge of language, including policy, assessment, and instructional practices. these results support lucas and villegas’ (2010) framework for linguistically responsive teaching, which, among other factors, calls for teachers to have “sociolinguistic consciousness,” “value for linguistic diversity,” current issues in education, 19(1) 17 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice know and apply “key principles of second language learning,” and scaffold “instruction to promote students’ learning” (p. 302). similarly, teachers’ attitudes and coursework informed their knowledge of special education, including policy, assessment, instructional practices, and referral practices. collectively, these findings suggest that both bodies of knowledge interact with each other and merge to inform and generate teachers’ professional practice, including collaboration, professional development, reflection, decision making, outsourcing, and problem solving. all of these relationships are nested within the school or district context. figure 2. overall findings. implications for teacher education this study showed that language coursework is predictive of teachers’ attitudes about language. since participants were not surveyed prior to their language coursework, it is difficult to know if their attitudes about language were established prior. in addition, as language coursework is not required at chapman college, those students who elected to take such coursework did so on their own accord. this, coupled with the exponential increase of lds in schools (aud et al., 2010), should be compelling enough for teacher preparation programs to rethink the coursework they offer to support teachers who educate lds. as dejong and harper (2005) remind us, being a good teacher is simply not enough. however, recent federal policy changes (e.g., nclb) require teachers to be “highly qualified” to teach lds, making these requirements essential within teacher preparation programs. teacher preparation includes more than just content and methods coursework. with regard to pre-service teachers’ reflection and reflective judgment, teacher educators must support candidates’ understanding of sociocultural theory and implications for practice. teacher education programs must embrace bartolomé’s concepts of “ideological clarity,” which asks teachers to evaluate their personal beliefs, attitudes and assumptions. in doing so, pre-service teachers examine their beliefs and compare them to the dominant socioeconomic and political ideals. instead of our current culture of recognizing students by their deviances or differences (crawford & bartolomé, 2010), teacher educators can be better prepare pre-service teachers by guiding them through the complicated, but necessary process of examining their personal beliefs, views, and assumptions. data from this study showed teachers at varying levels of attitudes and practices. this disparity provides further evidence that explicit work to examine pre-service teachers’ attitudes and practices are necessary. current issues in education, 19(1) 18 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice results from this study show that teachers with exposure to students with varied languages and linguistic abilities generally had more positive attitudes about language and linguistic diversity. teachers’ personal attitudes, knowledge, and practices contribute to where they choose to teach. based on this study, teachers who had more positive language attitudes and used more desirable practices taught in urban contexts with linguistic diversity conclusion situating this study within onwuegbuzie’s (2012) “radical middle,” allowed for a systematic analysis of teachers’ attitudes, coursework and practice, understanding that both quantitative and qualitative data were necessary – this mixed approach valued the collection of multiple data sources, creating a more insightful view than if quantitative and qualitative measures were used exclusively (greene, benjamin, & goodyear, 2001). findings from this study suggested school contexts and language attitudes matter. teachers’ engagement in professional practices, like collaboration, reflection, and problem solving, were dictated by the district or school context. teachers with more positive attitudes worked more frequently with lds and had coursework in language. teacher educators and schools need to be reminded that language coursework and attitudes impact practice, ultimately providing more positive outcomes for lds. references abedi, j. 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(2006). english language learners with reading-related ld: linking data from multiple sources to make eligibility determinations. journal of learning disabilities, 39(2), 129-142. current issues in education, 19(1) 22 http://libill.hartford.edu:2106/eric/indexingvolumeissuelinkhandler/23469/teachers+college+record/02014y01y01$232014$3b++vol.+116+$285$29/116/5?accountid=11308 http://libill.hartford.edu:2106/eric/indexingvolumeissuelinkhandler/23469/teachers+college+record/02014y01y01$232014$3b++vol.+116+$285$29/116/5?accountid=11308 http://libill.hartford.edu:2106/eric/indexingvolumeissuelinkhandler/23469/teachers+college+record/02014y01y01$232014$3b++vol.+116+$285$29/116/5?accountid=11308 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice youngs, c. s., & youngs, jr., g. a. (2001). predictors of mainstream teachers’ attitudes toward esl students. tesol quarterly, 35(1), 97-120. zeichner, k. (1996). educating teachers for cultural diversity. in k. zeichner, s. melnick, & m. l. gomez (eds.), currents of reform in preservice teacher education (pp. 133-175). new york, ny: teachers college press. current issues in education, 19(1) 23 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice appendix a language attitudes teacher survey (lats) (byrnes, kiger, & manning, 1997) directions: select one of the following responses: strongly disagree, disagree, uncertain, agree, or strongly agree. 1. to be considered american, one should speak english. 2. i would support the government spending additional money to provide better programs for linguistic-minority students in public schools. 3. parents of nonor limited-english-proficient students should be counseled to speak english with their children whenever possible. 4. it is important that people in the us learn a language in addition to english. 5. it is unreasonable to expect a regular classroom teacher to teach a child who does not speak english. 6. the rapid learning of english should be a priority for non-english-proficient or limitedenglish-proficient students even if it means they lose the ability to speak their native language. 7. local and state governments should require that all government business (including voting) be conducted only in english. 8. having a nonor limited-english-proficient student in the classroom is detrimental to the learning of the other students. 9. regular-classroom teachers should be required to receive pre-service or in-service training to be prepared to meet the needs of linguistic minorities. 10. most nonand limited-english-proficient children are not motivated to learn english. 11. at school, the learning of the english language by nonor limited-english-proficient children should take precedence over learning subject matter. 12. english should be the official language of the united states. 13. nonand limited-english-proficient students often use unjustified claims of discrimination as an excuse, for not doing well in school. current issues in education, 19(1) 24 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice appendix b three-year-out (3yo) survey questions desirable practices directions: thinking about your classroom and school experiences, use the scale a = often, b = sometimes, c = rarely, d = never, e = not applicable to rate the extent to which you have used the following practices in your teaching. 28. reflecting on and improving my teaching performance. 29. making decisions about teaching based on classroom evidence. 31. understanding educational plans and providing appropriate accommodations for students with special needs in my classroom. 32. making teaching decisions based on the results of pupil assessments. 34. understanding the concepts, principles, and reasoning methods of the subject areas i teach. 35. modifying lessons for students from diverse racial/ethnic/cultural/linguistic backgrounds. 36. using differentiated instruction to enhance student learning. 37. integrating issues of social justice into my curriculum. social justice practices directions: thinking about your teaching experiences over the past year, respond to the following statements about your teaching practices using the scale a = strongly agree, b = agree, c = uncertain, d = disagree, e = strongly disagree. 39. an important part of being a teacher is examining my attitudes and beliefs about race, class, gender, disabilities, and sexual orientation. 40. issues related to racism and inequality are openly discussed in my classroom. 41. for the most part, covering multicultural topics is not relevant to the subjects i teach. 42. i incorporate diverse cultures and experiences into my classroom lessons and discussions. 43. the most important goal for me in working with immigrant children and english language learners is to assimilate them into american society. 44. it’s reasonable for me to have lower classroom expectations for students who don’t speak english as their first language. 45. part of my responsibility as a teacher is to challenge school arrangements that maintain societal inequities. 48. although i appreciate diversity, it’s not my job as a teacher to change society. current issues in education, 19(1) 25 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice appendix c interview protocol part i: special education 1. describe the referral process for students with suspected learning disabilities in your school/district. probe: how is it supposed to happen? what is the “official” process? probe: do you feel like the process is effective in identifying appropriate students to receive special education services? why or why not? 2. does your school/district have a pre-referral team (e.g. child study team [cst], teacher advisement team [tat])? if so, how does it work? 3. does the process of referring students to special education differ based on individual students? probe: are determinations/decisions about linguistically diverse students any different than their monolingual peers? part ii: linguistically diverse students description of context/knowledge of learners 4. where do you teach? tell me about your school community. 5. describe the students in your classroom. probe: where are your students (and their families) from? 6. how many of your students receive special education services? probe: what kind and who provides the service? 7. how many of your students receive instruction in their native language? probe: what kind of instruction do they receive and who is/are the provider(s)? probe: what’s your opinion about native language instruction. instruction 8. how do you design instruction to meet students’ academic needs? assessment 9. in what ways do you assess your students? 10. do you (in/formally) assess your students’ language skills? if so, how? 11. what happens when you assess a linguistically diverse student and you confirm the student is not accessing the general curriculum? collaboration 12. is your school environment one that fosters collaboration? if so, in what ways? professional development 13. describe the type(s) of professional development, if any, available to address concerns about referring linguistically diverse students for special education services. current issues in education, 19(1) 26 greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice author notes renée a. greenfield, ph.d. university of hartford college of education, nursing & health professions 200 bloomfield avenue, w. hartford, ct 06117 rgreenfie@hartford.edu dr. renée greenfield is an assistant professor of special education at the university of hartford in connecticut. renée prepares pre-service teachers to learn about diverse students (with and without disabilities) and how to best support their learning. her research centers around language development, learning disabilities, and preparing teachers to educate linguistically diverse students with and without disabilities. renée was an elementary and high school special educator. current issues in education, 19(1) 27 mailto:rgreenfie@hartford.edu greenfield: educating linguistically diverse students: a mixed methods study of elementary teachers’ coursework, attitudes, and practice volume 19, issue 1 march 15, 2016 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh bethany richmond lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers current issues in education, 19(1) 28 current issues in education, 25(2) volume 25, issue 2 november 22, 2024 issn 1099-839x text sets: a comprehensive analysis of the literature greta g. freeman university of south carolina, upstate brooke l. hardin university of south carolina, upstate abstract: text sets (also referred to as linked text sets, multimodal texts, thematic texts, multi texts, focus units, reading across texts, and paired readings or sets) are utilized in classrooms to promote reading, learning, and understanding of multiple perspectives. there has not been a thorough analysis of studies on text sets or on the wide-ranging effects of text sets. the purpose of this review was to conduct a comprehensive analysis of text sets and their effects on student achievement and growth. several writings describing text sets and their development, as well as experimental studies reporting on the effects of text sets, were identified through a thorough database search. findings from this review reveal that there are over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters and theses related to text sets. there is evidence to support the use of text sets for helping young children to college age students gain multiple perspectives on a topic, become highly engaged and motivated, and improve critical thinking, comprehension, content knowledge, and social emotional skills. keywords: text sets, paired texts, multimodal, interdisciplinary, intertextual citation: freeman, g. g., & hardin, b. l. (2024). text sets: a comprehensive analysis of the literature. current issues in education, 25(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2122 accepted: 04/03/2024 text sets: a comprehensive analysis of the literature instructional strategies are the techniques or methods that a teacher utilizes to meet the learning objectives of a lesson or unit-of-study. one such instructional strategy, known as text sets, are a purposeful and differentiated collection of resources (print, non-print, classic, contemporary, fiction, nonfiction) gathered on a topic, theme, essential question, or core conceptual (abstract) idea (donham, 2013; giorgis & johnson, 2002; kern, 2014; moss, 2011; young & ward, 2010). the use of text sets in k-16 classrooms is considered an interdisciplinary instructional strategy, spanning multiple time periods and genres. text sets offer choice, variety, https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol25iss2.2122 freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 2 and multiple perspectives on a topic, allowing students to “read, learn, synthesize and deeply understand information” (beck, 2014, p. 13). text set collections are often created by teachers (elish-piper et al., 2014) and employed in early childhood, elementary and middle school classrooms (mathis, 2002; souto-manning, 2015). there is also evidence (fernandez, 2000; hynd, 1999; porter, 2018; tunnell, 1996; twichell, 2018) of the benefits the use of multiple text sets provides at the high school and college level. mcglynn and kelly (2019) state that “if students aren’t invested in what they read, they won’t remember it” (p. 36), however many classrooms continue to utilize the one-text model where students rely on a single textbook for information related to the subject area. there is a substantial body of literature related to text sets. books, journal articles, websites, blogs, and marketplaces, in addition to publishing, educational, and media companies, boast the effectiveness of text sets in increasing student interest and engagement, enhancing student achievement, and developing interdisciplinary skills. while barzilai, zohar, and morhagani (2018) and reynolds (2022) provide valuable yet limited reviews of the literature, they recommend future, more widespread research, and reviews. barzilai, zohar, and mor-hagani (2018) specifically discuss the need for a comprehensive review of text sets and the diversity of terms depicting the concept. this group of researchers also suggest a review of the literature based on age group, discipline, and duration of unit of studies is necessary. other important aspects of text sets underexplored in the literature include understanding assumptions behind models of text set construction (reynolds, 2022), the need to understand how text sets support comprehension of challenging texts to build background knowledge (lupo et al., 2017), and the relationships between text sets, instructional approaches, student learning, and feelings of teacher efficacy (salerno et al., 2020). given the identified gaps and lack of a general review of the literature, an investigative review is necessary to present overarching themes, provide a comprehensive understanding of what is known and has been published, and guide future studies related to text sets. considering the numerous pedagogical benefits of text sets, it is important to provide a review of the related information for those interested in learning about or utilizing this concept, or who are contemplating furthering the research on the topic. therefore, the aim of this investigative review is to determine the scope of the information related to text sets available in the literature, and to document and merge that information into a single, pragmatic record. this comprehensive and systematic review of the literature and repository of core ideas and examples crystallizes the many instructional benefits of text sets and supplies a centralized review for those interested in this pedagogical phenomenon. accordingly, we reviewed over 50 years of literature (1970-2023), on text set history and instructional use in k-16 educational settings. this systematic analysis reports key terms, descriptions, instructional design and application, empirical studies, and informational texts, as well as the overall effectiveness of text sets on student achievement and engagement. the following research questions guided the review: 1. what are the trends in publications and research related to text sets? 2. what themes emerge in a review of the literature of text sets and related terminology? 3. how has the concept of text sets as an instructional strategy evolved over time? 4. what effects does the use of text sets as an instructional strategy have in k16 education? freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 3 below we will offer background information by providing a historical and theoretical overview of text sets. historical foundations there is a wide array of terminology and descriptions surrounding the value of referencing one text versus a text set philosophy. an understanding of the historical underpinnings of texts and education can bring light to the decades-long discussion and evolution of the text set phenomenon. reviewing this historical evolution of multiand varied texts on a topic supports background knowledge and appreciation for the characteristics and themes presented in the results portion of the review. although formal education in the united states did not begin until the 1800s (urban et al., 2008), information provided to children or students began earlier, by tutor, instructor, or parent. eventually instructors used a sanctioned text in the 1700s and 1800s (called schoolbooks) in the form of the new england primer and webster’s blue-backed speller (wakefield, 1998). in the early years of formal education, written documents and texts were limited due to the lack of printing materials and machines available. even after the printing press made such an impact, classrooms continued to utilize the single-text method for convenience (hartman & hartman, 1994). the specific idea of multi-text classrooms, based on a topic or theme follows the initiatives put forth by progressive educators beginning in the 1930s, and goes back decades in academic literature (harste et al., 1988). at the time, progressives argued that students were not seeing the full scope of a topic through a single text and encouraged the reading of several texts on a topic (hatfield, 1935; weeks, 1936). in a new english curriculum document (hatfield, 1935), evidence emerged for an out-with-the-old, authoritarian style of teaching, and in-with-anew experiential, imaginative, and connection-to-self and world ideal. encountering a variety of texts on a topic to obtain multiple perspectives was one of the new teaching strategies promoted in the curricula. with a lack of resources, technology, and money, however, this idea soon faded, and the notion of the lone text continued to be the norm. the multi-text teaching strategy was reimagined by herber (1970) who discussed using a main text, supported by multiple interdisciplinary or subsidiary texts to promote a topic. the idea, however, fell short due to similar issues educators faced in the 1930s. money for education was scarce and widespread computer technology was not yet on the horizon for educational institutions. in the 1990s the phrase “text set” began to take hold in the literacy classroom and the literature (hamman, 1994; hartman & hartman, 1993), and the idea has intermittently alternated between trendy and antiquated over the past three decades. prior to and immediately after the turn of the 21st century, when text sets were gaining popularity, authors such as opitz (1998), explained text sets as “collections of books related to a common element or topic” (p. 622). in 1990, taberski wrote about a simple form of text set or paired text, where the teacher utilized one fiction and one non-fiction book read aloud together. lewis and walpole (2016), through a “four-text framework” (p. 34), suggested choosing texts for background knowledge and interest, information, content knowledge, and increased topic understanding. over twenty years into the 21st century the term text no longer refers to a single, written work (especially in reference to an academic textbook). authors such as rowe (1987), are finally seeing their multi-text notion realized, that texts are not only print sources [linguistic], but any source that communicates meaning [semiotic] (giorgis & johnson, 2002; hartman & hartman, freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 4 1993, 1995). nichols (2009) states that “text should no longer conjure an image of traditional books neatly lining library shelves” (p. 34). it should move beyond a single book, and even beyond printed words on a page. texts in this context can include all or some of the following: books (including textbooks, picture books, reference books, narrative expository texts, explanation texts, how-to books, chapter books and novels); biographies and journals; field-guides; cartoons (including political); poems and song lyrics; documentaries, interviews, diaries, news footage or articles; public service announcements and propaganda; photographs, brochures, postcards, and timelines; artistic works such as film, performances, theatrical pieces, paintings, pictures, galleries and exhibits; digital texts such as webcasts, live feeds, podcasts, blogs, tweets, videos, and social media posts; field trips (in person and virtual); graphic organizers including charts, maps and graphs; data; digital essays; artifacts; and personal experiences (balkus, 2019; dunkerly-bean & bean, 2015; ivey, 2002; kern, 2014; pytash et al., 2014; tracy et al., 2016). today’s text sets contain a rich and complex main text, often called a launch text (nichols, 2009), springboard text (dunkerly-bean & bean, 2015), or anchor text (folk & palmer, 2016). the anchor text is supported by subsidiary or elaboration texts (folk & palmer, 2016), also known as a document or information source (barzilai, zohar & mor-hagani, 2018). lewis and walpole (2016) call these subsidiary texts, “knowledge builders” (p. 34), because they may also include instructional strategies, literacy lessons, or responses to the text set. subsidiary texts provide scaffolds that support vocabulary and comprehension of the main text (folk & palmer, 2016). supplementary texts should be “of high interest, short and accessible” (pytash et al., 2014, p. 54), and support a “methodical order” (babino et al., 2019, p. 50). giorgis and johnson (2002) add the texts should be varied in “genre, readability and content” (p. 200). theoretical foundations as with important historical information regarding text set evolution, reviewing the theory behind the phenomena moves the discussion forward, and supports the literature analysis. there are several theoretical frameworks that support the development and use of text sets in k16 classrooms. freire (1970, 1995) wrote about giving students input and looking beyond the text to see power structures and voices. he believed humans should learn to read the world with a critical eye and challenge the single story. freire’s critical theory and critical pedagogy supports text sets, as the reader senses a broad view of a topic that spans culture, geography, and universal issues. bishop’s (1990) theory of mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors, also challenged the single story through the belief that employing a variety of texts allows the reader to not only view the lives of others through text, but to see ourselves in context (tschida et al., 2014). adichie (2009) expanded on the theories of freire and bishop with his “danger of the single story” presentation. he is quite direct in the belief that we must take information from a variety of sources to understand the different voices, perspectives and opinions. wineburg’s (1991) theoretical framework of historical reasoning involved the reading of several documents by historians to learn about, determine discrepancies, and identify similarities written about a topic. he discussed three methods in his structure including corroboration (comparing and contrasting documents), sourcing, and contextualization. this framework supports the idea of intertextuality, or “the process of making connections between other texts to facilitate the construction of meaning of new texts” (pytash et al., 2014, p. 54). kristeva coined the term and developed the theory of intertextuality (zengin, 2016). shanahan’s (2013) cognitive flexibility theory and intertextual model complements kristeva’s (1980) theory of intertextuality freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 5 as support for multiple text use, where individuals understand information best through multiple representations. methods following the recommendations of mertens (2023) this study adhered to a systematic review approach to gain insights into the concept of text set history, background information, and effects on student engagement and academic achievement through empirical research and practical instructional applications. an initial preliminary source search of ebsco host and world wide web (www) sites using the keywords text sets, reading, interdisciplinary, and multiple texts determined that there is much literature on the topic. based on abstract examinations, it was found that none of the works initially reviewed included a complete review of the literature and many were missing important historical resources and material. the initial search led to over 300 resources that were screened by the authors independently and collectively. from this initial screening, inclusion and exclusion criteria were established to determine the next steps. it was decided that the final collection must include the term “text set” or a related term such as multimodal texts. all peer-reviewed publications were included. non-peer-reviewed writings (e.g., articles, books, book chapters, theses, dissertations) that integrated instructional strategies and sample text sets, were also incorporated due to the practical application contribution. blogs, magazine articles, teacher resource sites and opinion reviews were removed from the final list due to lack of academic rigor, time constraint, and relevance to the study purpose and research questions. after the initial review, a new search was performed to include additional search terms ascertained from prior search publications (e.g., multimodal texts, paired texts, twin texts, and intertextual) and search databases (i.e., ebsco host education, eric, education index retrospective, research gate, google scholar, academic search ultimate, academic search premier, and proquest—including dissertation abstracts international). reference lists from the first set of publications were evaluated to add to the updated library for more thorough review. the final review of the literature on text sets brought forth over 100 written works, of which were given an in-depth reading, and organized and evaluated using zotero, a reference management software. the screening process is illustrated in figure 1. a notes editor through the zotero software allowed for consolidation of themes, points of interest, direct quotation consensus, and metadata. themes were identified, listed and color-coded in the note’s column of the software. the authors worked independently via digital means, and met weekly for several months to organize, discuss, and evaluate the information. prior to the final draft of the paper, themes were again evaluated. some less obvious strands were folded into more prominent themes while others were deleted altogether to be discussed later in the recommendations section. freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 6 figure 1 screening process results and analysis the results from this systematic review present information gathered from a total of 110 sources: seven books, 33 book chapters, 62 peer-reviewed journal articles, four master’s theses, two dissertations and two technical reports. although there are hundreds of websites, blogs, and other online depictions of text sets, only published, peer-reviewed and edited sources are discussed in this context. of the reviewed works, the following terminologies were discovered and interchangeable, as a means to describe a set of texts to teach a topic or theme: text sets, multiple texts or intertextual integration (barzilai, zohar, & mor-hagani, 2018; lenski, 1998); multimodal multi-genre texts (cappiello & dawes, 2013); paired texts, readings or sets, or twin books (gao & bintz, 2015; taberski, 1990); tri-texts (ciecierski & bintz, 2017); quad texts (lewis & walpole, 2016; lupo et al., 2017); alternative texts, conceptual text sets, thematic text sets (ivey, 2002; tschida & buchanan, 2015); personal text sets, generative text sets (mathis & giorgis, 1999; souto-manning, 2015); reading across texts (hartman & hartman, 1993); and multiple perspectives, reading ladders or multimodal text scaffolds (witte & rybakova, 2017). the phrase “text set” is applied throughout the results section to represent the comprehensive understanding of the concept exemplified by the previous terms and phrases. the concept of intertextuality, the belief that no text ever stands alone, or that every text is connected to another text, was the overarching idea that ran constant throughout the literature. thematic arrangement it is important to determine major themes found in a literature review to support a study’s purpose and categorize the information for quick reference. through thematic coding, an analysis of the scholarly literature available on text sets brought forth several interrelated characteristics of text set information. these themes will support readers in a concise search for initial review ebsco host, www “text sets” = preliminary sources (323) final review ebsco host education, eric, education index retrospective, research gate, google scholar, academic search ultimate, academic search premier, and proquest—including dissertation abstracts international “text sets” or equivalent terminology = peer-reviewed or edited sources (110) included excluded peer reviewed sources non peer-reviewed sources articles blogs book chapters magazines books teacher resource sites non peer-reviewed sources websites articles opinion reviews books book chapters theses dissertations freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 7 specific information in a sufficient manner. the specific themes will also address gaps in the literature and guide future research. all of the reviewed works had some type of definition or description of text sets. eighteen percent of the representative works shared background information including historical evidence and/or theoretical foundations. eighty-eight percent of the readings shared the value for utilizing text sets in a classroom setting (categorized by student engagement, motivation, literacy and reading comprehension, benefits of multiple perspectives, critical thinking, and social emotional support). seventy-four percent presented instructions for developing text sets, and approximately twenty-five percent of the works included full examples of text sets. the final review revealed the following key themes: background information (provided in the introduction of this paper for reader orientation and context); student engagement and motivation; literacy and reading comprehension; multiple perspectives and critical thinking; social emotional support; guidelines for development; and sample educator and student created text sets. each theme is presented in an autonomous section, followed by a short discussion and analysis. student engagement and motivation text sets have been used for several decades to support student engagement and motivation of reading as well as to encourage excitement for content (mcglynn & kelly, 2019; monobe & turner, 2018; tovani, 2004). when students have a choice, and see themselves in the text, they are motivated to continue the discovery. students are engaged and motivated when they are interested and see relevance in a topic or see the ability to transfer information to their own lives. single textbook reading has been reported by students and teachers as “too difficult, too boring or both” (ivey, 2002, p. 20) as well as “too broad and prescriptive” (lent, 2012, p. 146) and “not student friendly” (mcglynn & kelly, 2019, p. 37). they have also been said to be encyclopedic (haley, 2016), mundane, and disconnected from events they portray (vansledright & kelly, 1998). beck (2014) claims that “readers must be able to understand and process what they are reading” (p. 12). if this becomes difficult or the texts are boring, there will be a lack of motivation and engagement. text sets support motivation and engagement in high school english courses, while students read a book from the canon along with more engaging supplementary texts (wold & elish-piper, 2009). witte and rybakova (2017) never use the term text set, however, describe the same concept under a different name reading ladders or multimodal text scaffolds. they use the concept of text sets but utilize the required canonical texts supplemented with contemporary texts related to a theme. when students encounter an interesting text that is on their reading level, it may encourage them to read more difficult texts on the topic. ward and young (2008) believe teachers should include a range of levels in a text collection so that students can experience a variety of topics and themes, making research and reading more engaging and rewarding. textbooks provide basic information. they often fail to engage students on a deeper level and make connections to their lives. text sets support student engagement through reading levels (giorgis & johnson, 2002), relatability (haley, 2016), and multiple genres and complexities (mcglynn & kelly, 2019). coombs and bellingham (2015) share a set of ideas for having students engage in text set development and usage. they share that when authentic texts through text sets are discovered, students ask and answer tough questions, and improve their knowledge of a topic. they also learn how to honor differences (benner, 2018; clark-alexander, 2018; dimitriadou et al., 2011; fleischaker, 2018; kelewae, 2018; lacina & griffith, 2020), increase freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 8 background knowledge (leland & harste, 1994), make connections to their own lives, and improve reading, writing and collaborative skills. hawkinson and freedman (2012) support this in their statement that “background knowledge increases” with exposure to “far ranging visuals and concepts” included in text sets (p. 2). all students deserve to be in classrooms that are interesting, relatable, and engaging. oftentimes students who are non-english speakers or bilingual, are in classrooms where they fail to see and read about people like themselves. a feeling of disconnect may contribute to a lack of engagement. through text sets students are able to learn about the world, rather than only gaining information about local communities. researchers (anokhin, 2018; bintz, 2018; bintz et al., 2018; culp, 2018; dowdy & fleischaker, 2018; mccaffrey & corapi, 2017; scullin, 2018; tan, 2018; werner, 2018) report that multicultural and global text sets motivate and engage students because they are able to see a variety of cultures, settings, genres and formats from around the globe. babino (2019) believes that through text sets, multilingual students are able to see themselves and connect with the literature. creating captivating text sets that allow students to employ “their entire linguistic repertoire is a practice in social reflexivity for educators” (babino, 2019, p. 48). young (2018) communicates an example of this type of connection when she shares how a kindergarten student connected to a book because she saw herself and her family in the images of the book characters. this supports and builds on bishop’s (1990) mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors theory where students see themselves in texts (mirrors), the lives of others in texts (windows), and have the ability to walk through real life into the imaginary (sliding glass doors). students are engaged if they can relate to what they are reading. tracy et al. (2016), discuss the importance of diversity of interests and texts to promote student engagement. older students, as well as young people of various ages, are not always readers. text sets support these students and increase their reading habits. elish-piper et al. (2014), believe that text sets “help high school students choose to read” (p. 573). other authors (borgerding, 2018; foraker, 2018; hair & fleischaker, 2018; krasniqu, 2018; lee, 2018) support a multicultural, multidisciplinary set of texts to learn about self and others. with such a large amount of literature boasting the benefits of text sets on student engagement and motivation, it is deduced that text sets should be a fundamental and core instructional strategy in k-16 education. literacy and reading comprehension skills literacy skills such as print and phonological awareness, vocabulary, and writing, support student’s grasp of important concepts, allow for critical thinking as well as fluent and comprehensive communication, and permit students to gain a deeper understanding of their world. research (babino, 2019; balkus, 2019; cervetti et al., 2016; folk & palmer, 2016; tracy et al., 2016; strop & carlson, 2010) has found that text sets support literacy skills and provide choice. guthrie and wigfield (2000) demonstrate that choice increases motivation, which in turn enhances literacy knowledge (gambrell & morrow, 1996). lieberman and looney (2013) found that when text sets are selected and implemented carefully, they strengthen literacy development. the use of text sets is a multimodal strategy, referring to definition, and literacy experts and researchers provide a rationale for their use in classroom settings to support integration among content areas (balkus, 2019; barzilai, zohar, & mor-hagani, 2018; batchelor, 2017). balkus (2019) demonstrated cross curricular teaching in her research thesis by utilizing text sets to connect literacy and social studies. multimodal texts vary meaning through words, illustration, freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 9 design, genre, readability and content and provide a range of perspectives for the reader (balkus, 2019). batchelor (2017) believes that “without this synergy and interaction, a true understanding of the reading would be incomplete” (p. 15). students who struggle with reading and learning often have difficulty with single-text, one-size-fits-all instructional practices (beck, 2014). teachers who utilize the single-text model may leave some readers behind due to reading level and lack of personal connection. all students are individuals with different background knowledge and expectations. text sets reinforce concepts (mccaffrey & corapi, 2017); support acquiring background knowledge for new concepts (ciecierski & bintz, 2017); and make content accessible to all students (lent, 2012). by adding to the schema of children, text sets support students with or without prior knowledge about a topic (soalt, 2005). wold et al. (2010), believe that linked text sets provide students with distinguishable reading opportunities because in selecting texts all reading levels are recognized and students with different backgrounds and knowledge can find success. it is important in any 21st century classroom to have a variety of texts for different reading levels and in different languages. lupo et al. (2017) believe a variety of reading levels in text sets are important so that students can have a mix of difficulty in their reading, and struggling readers and english learners are supported in the process. ogle and correa-kovtun (2010) share the importance of repeatedly encountering content-specific terms (as would take place through text sets) to support building vocabulary. fernandez (2000) discusses the importance of text sets for english language learners, and state that a combination of prior knowledge on a topic together with new knowledge gained from text sets will “activate their reading schemata and aid their comprehension” (p. 743). students may read words fluently, but they may not always understand what they are reading. researchers (babino, 2019; balkus, 2019; cervetti et al., 2016; ciecierski & bintz, 2017; lieberman & looney, 2013) have found that text sets support the building of comprehension skills and background knowledge. in order to enjoy what is read and make connections, students must have good comprehension skills. when a student is comprehending what they are reading, they are understanding the meaning and merging it with what they already know and understand. soalt (2005) found that background knowledge and vocabulary can improve comprehension skills, especially if explored in a variety of contexts such as through text sets. teachers often search for new ways to help students comprehend what they read. ivey (2002) suggested different reading materials to build comprehension and interest. cervetti et al. (2016) determined that focusing text sets on concepts improved student comprehension, knowledge and vocabulary, and batchelor (2017), agreed that through text sets reading comprehension is improved and history comes to life. standards-based teaching and high stakes accountability measures is a paradigm shift in k-12 education beginning in the 1980s and, although under constant debate, remains a fixture in schools across the globe. when educators develop new instructional strategies or ideas, they often link them to state and national academic standards. balkus (2019) speaks of the changes that came with the implementation of the common core state standards (ccss). with these new standards came stricter requirements to integrate content areas such as social studies and literacy, and text sets make it easier to integrate subject areas. a large number of works reviewed explicitly refer to specific standards such as the ila/ncte, and ccss (donham, 2013; finley, 2015). if text sets support literacy and reading comprehension, as the literature has defined, freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 10 utilizing this instructional strategy regularly could possibly lead to higher academic achievement and test scores. multiple perspectives and critical thinking using one text to tell a story or learn a concept in history or other area of social science often only provides one perspective which can lead to stereotypes and a lack of character’s voice. it can also turn students off reading when they fail to see different perspectives or make connections to their own lives. hartman and hartman (1993), state “just as a camera lens magnifies details to the point of blurring the background, so can one text be magnified to the point where its context becomes a blur” (p. 110). crawford and zygouris-coe (2008) share the importance of students learning about “complex issues” (p. 199) and hearing different perspectives from multiple texts. when students start to review several texts on a topic or theme, they are able to witness different interpretations and points of view, inconsistent information, and changes over the course of history (mccaffrey, 2014). balkus (2019) states, “each text has made its own decisions about what should be included and what should be left out, creating its own interpretations” (p. 32). this helps them to evaluate the credibility of a text, determine multiple biases, understand issues, and draw reasonable conclusions (barzilai, zohar & mor-hagani, 2018). they must make an ultimate decision on what is the best and most accurate information. as students read and collaborate with classmates on a variety of texts related to a topic, they begin to think critically about what might be missing from the reading, and identify elements to promote understanding (brugar, 2015; hynd, 1999; scales & tracy, 2017). they also develop questions that “lead to critical inquiry processes and engaging class discussions” (bersh, 2013, p. 49). barzilai, zohar and mor-hagani (2018) describe this as rhetorical transformation, or the production of new text structures that connect ideas and transfer to a new dimension. experts in the concept of text sets (beck, 2014; elish-piper et al., 2014; vansledright & kelly, 1998), have found that using text sets in classrooms support critical or deep thinking, problem solving and inquiry. students utilize critical thinking skills as they integrate knowledge and ideas through texts that are based around the same theme. vansledright and kelly (1998) performed a research study with 5th graders exposed to multiple texts on a topic and determined critical thinking skills increased as well as historical understanding. text sets support deep thinking as students read with an inquiry stance, identify with characters, understand difficult issues, make discoveries about themselves and others, translate sign systems, and have a general understanding of authors purpose and point of view (elish-piper et al., 2014; pytash et al., 2014; nichols, 2009). social emotional support collaboration is an important 21st century skill. students at all levels need communication and collaboration to support positive social and emotional behaviors. opitz (1998) supports this by stating that text sets allow students to learn from one another through discussion and idea sharing. he states that “text sets cultivate and support a social learning environment, an atmosphere where students can think and learn together” (p. 14). young people have always dealt with challenging and even threatening life issues: bullying, violence, discrimination, death, politics, sexuality, friendships, physical appearance, and an array of other social, emotional, and traumatic issues. text sets can be developed to freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 11 support almost any difficult or controversial life issue as well as promote character traits such as empathy, perseverance, caring, kindness, understanding, thoughtfulness, honesty, loyalty, responsibility, curiosity, bravery, sharing, tolerance, and respect. tschida and buchanan (2015) promote text sets for supporting controversial issues, or “conflicting points of view and longstanding social debates related to a theme, event or experience” (p. 43). text sets should be used by teachers to promote advocacy, support social justice issues, and disrupt the single story (dodge & crutcher, 2015; dunkerly-bean et al., 2014; moran & keith, 2016). for example, bersh (2013) shares a text set for discussing bias related to immigration. having a variety of perspectives through a multitude of texts supports marginalized students in making connections to their own lives and finding their voice. generative text sets are created based on themes of conflicts and anxieties and are “designed for equity and universal access” (souto-manning, 2015, p. 80). text sets allow students to feel a sense of belonging and offer a “non-threatening environment from which children can explore and resist daily challenges” (babino et al., p. 45). martin (2018) suggests the use of blues music as a part of a text set to promote understanding. guidelines for development of text sets in the review of the literature, many of the readings share instructions or ideas to support teachers and students in the development of text sets (hartman & hartman, 1993; lent, 2012; tschida & buchanan, 2015). the main goal is to determine a topic or idea and choose an anchor text followed by several subsidiary texts. due to the large number of sources including text set development guidelines, the authors felt this should be included as an important theme running throughout the literature. tschida and buchanan (2015) share a four-step process for creating text sets: 1) identify the topic; 2) recognize multiple perspectives; 3) locate suitable texts; and 4) select texts. once texts are chosen, babino et al. (2019), believe each subsidiary text should be presented in a prescribed order to support the topic. hartman and hartman (1993) share strategies for arranging texts by type and structure. arranging texts by type focuses on theme, whereas arranging texts by structure focuses on the structure between texts. to build on their 1993 strategies, hartman and hartman (1994) later came up with four questions to support text set development: 1) what types of texts can be used? 2) what are ways to arrange texts? 3) in what activities can students engage? and, 4) how can outcomes be represented? in searching for the types of texts that are available and can be used appropriately in text sets, hoch et al. (2019) believed creators must organize texts based on themes and questions and locate sources that are easy-to-challenging. donham (2013) discussed that texts must include a range of complexity, style, or genre. in addition, lupo et al. (2017) suggested a variety of easyto-challenging texts, especially including more interesting ones to help motivate students to persevere through the difficult ones. generative or personal text sets are “generated from the interests, tensions and realities of learners” (souto-manning, 2015, p. 79). multimodal, multigenre text sets include texts from a variety of sources and genres. thematic text sets cover a topic and span reading levels and genres. intertextual integration refers to the requiring of activation of information read from another text. paired texts, readings or sets and twin books generally utilize two books on a topic, whereas tri-texts include three, and quad texts include four texts. reading ladders or multi-modal text scaffolds focus on a theme and build from one text to another framing information along the way. freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 12 the search for the perfect anchor and subsidiary texts takes time and effort. fortunately, there are hundreds of previously created text sets available online and in books or digital libraries. lent (2012) explains that to create text sets one must begin by determining what questions they wish to answer before beginning the search for texts. hawkinson and freedman (2012) also support asking essential questions before creating text sets. an essential question related to civilizations would be related to what elements make a civilization. griffith (2018) coined the phrase “constantly curating” or constantly searching out and adding new texts to sets or creating new text sets (p. 39). he explains that as teachers we know our topics and are constantly locating resources to add to our teaching toolbox. for example, he states, “when a song i’m listening to connects to a book i’m teaching, which makes me think of an image that would help tie the two together, i’m curating a potential text set for my students” (p. 39). fernandez (2000) supports griffith’s concept of constantly curating in that text sets should be “defined to be flexible and the addition or subtraction of materials is likely to occur over time” (p. 742). a variety of authors (dunkerly-bean & bean, 2015; shanahan, 2003; tracy et al., 2016) provide activities and creation of steps for immediate implementation of text sets. lupo et al. (2019) provide a framework for creating text sets based on motivation, complexity, challenge, and comprehensibility. there are several projects, and activities shared in the research for how to represent text sets and outcomes from their representation. inquiry, digital learning, writing, collaboration, reader’s theater, character maps, biographical sketches, and letter writing (hoch et al., 2019; smolen et al., 2008) are a few examples provided in the literature. educator and student created text sets there are complete text sets and activities for all age levels on internet sites and published in books and peer-reviewed journal articles. there were over 150 text sets discovered in the review of the literature. themes surrounding the human story (i.e. heroes, family, character traits, celebrating differences, rights, identity, and growing up) are highlighted by a number of researchers (bersh, 2013; coombs & bellingham, 2015; dodge & crutcher, 2015; dunkerly-bean & bean, 2015; elish-piper et al., 2014; mccaffrey & corapi, 2017; nichols, 2009; tracy et al., 2016; ward & young, 2008; wold et al., 2010). there are a number of text sets based on academic content especially in the social sciences and literacy areas (batchelor, 2017; brugar, 2015; cappiello & dawes, 2013; cappiello & dawes, 2021; crawford & roberts, 2016; fernandez, 2000; folk & palmer, 2016; giorgis & johnson, 2002; haley, 2016; kimmel, 2019; lendak, 2018; lent, 2012). many of the text sets that fit into the content area category have a multicultural theme running through them (kurkjian et al., 2004; robb, 2002; rodesiler, 2017; smolen et al., 2008; witte & rybakova, 2017). although this article cannot focus on the specific elements in each of the text sets discovered in the literature, it is worth knowing there are endless resources available for teachers wishing to utilize text sets. discussion and analysis the results from this comprehensive review of the literature on text sets provide readers with over twenty interchangeable terms or phrases depicting a set of texts on a topic or theme and used in an educational setting. findings also include a thorough historical and theoretical freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 13 foundation in support of the text set phenomenon. a variety of reasons for creating and using text sets in a classroom were discovered through this review. with eighty-eight percent of the publications reviewed for this article sharing values and rationale for utilizing text sets, it is obvious that this is seen as an important instructional strategy. in addition to a thorough historical and theoretical foundation, findings include themes alluding to the important outcomes from the use of text sets in classrooms to support student learning and growth. effective text sets engage and motivate readers (balkus, 2019; giorgis & johnson, 2002; lent, 2012); build prior knowledge (balkus, 2019); support comprehension (beck, 2014; coombs & bellingham, 2015); improve writing skills (coombs & bellingham, 2015); teach vocabulary in context (balkus, 2019); allow students to explore a topic in-depth and gain a wide-ranging perspective (coombs & bellingham, 2015; mcglynn and kelly, 2019; tatum et al., 2009); support collaboration where students learn from one another and gain new insights (beck, 2014; opitz, 1998); support all reading levels and struggling readers (giorgis & johnson, 2002; lent, 2012); and deepen student thinking on a topic (balkus, 2019; beck, 2014). it was found through the review of the literature that text sets are appropriate for early childhood, elementary, middle, and high school classrooms, as well as twoand four-year colleges and universities. young children benefit from being exposed to multiple texts on a topic. in the 21st century young children have an abundance of picture books and other texts to support multi-perspective learning. batchelor (2017) supports the idea of using text sets with young children and shares several text sets utilizing picture books. opitz (1998) describes the importance of young children’s exposure to a wide variety of texts, and states that text sets allow all children to be exposed to real information at an early age. older students at the elementary level also benefit from text sets. at this age, students are becoming abstract thinkers. tschida and buchanan (2015), and ebbers (2002) believe text sets allow for a “historical thinking approach” by elementary students (p. 42). text sets also provide an interdisciplinary approach, for example teachers can encourage connections between literacy and science inquiry (ebbers, 2002). hynd (1999) promotes the use of text sets in middle and high school classrooms to encourage students to think like historians. in the high school setting, english teachers must teach a required canon (tatum et al., 2009) which can be challenging when it comes to student engagement. however, teachers have utilized text sets as a strategy for keeping the interest of students through supplemental, enriching texts, while still teaching the required canon (witte & rybakova, 2017). babino et al. (2019) shares strategies for locating “compelling” anchor books such as checking out award winners, talking to librarians, and looking at literacy related websites and social media accounts. fernandez (2000) shares text sets for use in a community college developmental reading course. she explains that textbooks for community college students may be too easy or too difficult, but with text sets she can have a variety of resources related to a topic and all students at all levels can be successful in learning the content. the idea of text sets as an instructional strategy has recently seen much publication and classroom use, based on the increase in technology access, however there are still teachers who are hesitant about the text set notion, due to their feelings about time constraints in creating them (doolittle, 2016). dunkerly-bean and bean, (2015) dispute this argument by stating that, “the ease with which they can be constructed and utilized has made them much more attractive and pragmatic for classroom use for both critical literacy and standards-based purposes” (p. 3). findings from this study demonstrate a large number of predesigned text sets and guidelines for creating text sets, making their construction and classroom utilization less cumbersome for teachers. with hundreds of text sets created and available on the internet, through teacher freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 14 resource sites and books, there finally seems to be a real paradigm shift taking place, moving away from the single text paradigm (hartman & hartman, 1994) to the multi-text, multi-genre text set paradigm. today the concept is widely known in the education community and is a staple in many k16 classrooms. conclusions and recommendations the idea of text sets has been around for decades, but only since the ease of access with technology has the concept been able to move forward in production and implementation. the peer-reviewed literature and research available on text sets show they are valuable for supporting multiple perspectives, as well as literacy, comprehension, collaboration, and content skills. much of the literature has ready-made text sets for use in k-16 classrooms. several of the articles reviewed are older and a large number of resources have been developed or published since the time of publication, however with additions of more current texts, they can be utilized in modern classrooms. based on the findings of this systematic literature review on text sets, the authors envision text sets being used in k16 classrooms and across all content areas to support student engagement and motivation, academic achievement, critical thinking, multiple perspectives, and social emotional skills. although the authors have completed a thorough review of the available literature, there are limitations to this systematic analysis. search databases are selective about the journals and topics they include so there is possibly more information available that has not been included in this paper. time and space are a limitation on the part of the authors and publishers. the authors performed a comprehensive review of the literature, however given more time, additional publications and categories may have been included. journals have restrictions on space; therefore, a limitation is that some important information could have been left out. new information is continually added to websites and publications; therefore, a final limitation is that as this paper is published, new literature may become available. implications for future practice this review supports a deeper understanding of the text set phenomena and has initiated a valuable collection of information, ideas, plans, and guidelines for practitioners. to optimize text set classroom applications, the following recommendations are presented. first, available text sets should be identified by grade level(s), and new sets should be planned and developed to include missing topics and state standards. the current literature on text sets indicates variety in text set creation, arrangement, and implementation. following the advice of donham (2013), the focus of these newly identified text sets should follow the various components of current sets and should be conceptual. texts should represent dimensions of a topic (for example immigration). dimensions of this topic would include the why and how, as well as the impacts, challenges, external characters, and destinations related to the topic of immigration. practitioners could also follow the ideas of hartman and hartman (1993) who discussed dividing the support texts into categories: companion, complementary, synoptic, disruptive, and rereading. companion texts are by one author; complementary texts are by a variety of authors; synoptic texts give different versions of the same idea; disruptive texts give a different outcome of an event; and rereading is reviewing the texts a person has already visited. freeman & hardin: text sets current issues in education, 25(2) 15 finally, with hundreds of text sets available it is recommended that available text sets be reviewed, and a repository established for teachers and categorized by grade level and theme or topic. many educators are not allowed access to scholarly publications that higher education students and faculty are given. to obtain the full benefits and variety of available text sets, the authors recommend a dissemination of curated research outcomes and practical application examples via social media and other digital means to reach a more diverse audience. there are multiple curriculum standards, topics and themes that need text sets created for them. ultimately, text sets support teachers and students and will most likely grow in popularity and volume in the future. implications for future studies based on the findings, the authors propose several implications for future research to address the limitations of the available literature. the authors agree with barzilai, zohar, and mor-hagani (2018), reynolds (2022), lupo et al. (2017) and salerno et al. (2020), that future, specialized studies should be conducted. specific research should address age group, discipline, duration of unit of studies, models of construction and instructional approaches, support of challenging concepts, student learning, and feelings of efficacy. it is also suggested for further research and review to study connections between text sets and academic achievement or assessment results. in addition to mccaffrey’s (2014) findings that the exemplary text sets of the common core state standards are not diverse enough to engage all learners the authors believe there must be additional text sets created by teachers to supplement the ccss sets to make sure diverse learners are considered. research related to ccss, and diverse text sets are recommended. last, we advocate for future research curation of text set studies and practical applications. this should come from peer-reviewed, nonpeer-reviewed and edited literature. it may also be beneficial to review and publicize text sets available on websites. curation will lead to diversity of audiences obtaining the information, and more practitioners and researchers understanding and using the concept. this could lead to higher academic achievement, test scores, and positive social emotional responses. dissemination through online communication channels can help mobilize research on a global scale. conversations and collaborative efforts could move the conversation and important instructional strategy elements to a larger audience. ultimately, our research has unfolded an expansive conversation on the text set phenomenon. text sets as an instructional strategy have value for a variety of educational stakeholders including students, teachers, administrators, and curriculum coordinators. the conversation should continue to develop so the benefits reach a wider audience. professional development and curriculum materials could further the knowledge and background information as well as general understanding of the concept. references adichie, c. n. 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(2010). engaging high school students in reading and understanding the canon through the use of linked text sets. college reading association yearbook, 31, 391-401. young, m. (2018). counting our way through kindergarten using text sets. in j. k. dowdy & r. fleischaker (eds.), text sets: multimodal learning for multicultural students (pp. 73-84). leiden/boston: brill sense. young, t. a., & ward, b. a. (2010, june). classroom extension: an amphibian text set. book links, 19, 21. zengin, m. (2016). an introduction to intertextuality as a literary theory: definitions, axioms and the originators. pamukkale university journal of social sciences institute / pamukkale üniversitesi sosyal bilimler enstitüsü dergisi, appendix 1, 299-326. https://doi org.uscupstate.idm.oclc.org/10.5505/pausbed.2016.96729 author notes greta g. freeman orcid: 0000-0003-4986-2675 university of south carolina upstate freemang@uscupstate.edu brooke l. hardin orcid: 0009-0009-7815-4476 university of south carolina upstate bhardin2@uscupstate.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://doi-/ mailto:freemang@uscupstate.edu mailto:bhardin2@uscupstate.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ monobe, g., & turner, s. (2018). using biographical multicultural and international literature volume 26, issue 1 may 02, 2025 issn 1099-839x strategies for efficacy and belongingness towards foundational stem skills for at-promise graduate students: the qmer learning community andrew pendola auburn university john appiah university of cape coast william murrah auburn university clarissa beavers auburn university abstract: increasing representation of first-generation, low-income, and students of color has been considered critical in developing an inclusive and competitive future workforce. however, research has noted significant difficulties with continued engagement and persistence for those engaged in stem-based activities, with literature showing at-promise students face difficulties in two areas: (1) lack of basic exposure to processes and norms undergirding advanced material, and (2) low self-conception surrounding issues of efficacy and belongingness. this paper reports on the findings of implementing a stem-focused learning community in a flagship southeastern university to improve graduate student research efficacy and social belongingness. the learning community program was aimed at (1) broadly supporting foundational stem skills through supplementary and specialized curriculum; and (2) providing social and professional supports geared towards at-promise students. survey and interview results demonstrate that graduate students participating in the learning community reported high senses of self-efficacy and belongingness. in addition, low-income, first-generation, and black graduate students reported higher levels of self-efficacy and belongingness on average. this paper concludes that the learning community approach can be highly beneficial in developing research efficacy across the board, but at-promise students specifically benefit from professional skills development to undergird and contextualize their research confidence. keywords: graduate stem, graduate efficacy, graduate belongingness, at-promise, learning community. pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 2 citation: pendola, a., appiah, j., murrah, w., & beavers, c. (2025). strategies for efficacy and belongingness towards foundational stem skills for at-promise graduate students: the qmer learning community. current issues in education, 26(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2260 accepted: 03/08/2025 strategies for efficacy and belongingness towards foundational stem skills for atpromise graduate students: the qmer learning community it has become increasingly clear that preparing students with skills germane to science, technology, engineering, and math (stem) careers is a central thrust of postsecondary education and critical for the future development of the workforce. it is also clear that strategies to support engagement and persistence for low-income, racially minoritized, and first-generation (atpromise students1) are needed to ensure advancement and broader participation in this workforce (national science foundation, 2022). research has broadly shown that much of the difficulty for at-promise students stems from two areas: (1) lack of basic self-efficacy regarding tools, norms, and processes undergirding advanced work (e.g., graduate norms, software skills), and (2) an uncertain sense of belongingness in a program, field, or university (e.g., graham et al., 2013; hurtado et al., 2010). while investigation on strategies to improve either efficacy or belongingness has increased, research explicitly dealing with both in tandem have been "sorely understudied" (kitchen et al., 2021, p. 1) despite the notion that they are mutually reinforcing (feldon et al., 2016; preuss et al., 2020). as a result, the goal of this research is to explore new ways to facilitate high-quality educational practices that advance students’ research capacity whilst supporting both efficacy and belongingness, as well as add to the body of literature on supporting at-promise student success. there is an extensive body of work documenting the learning community format as a means to improve student engagement and persistence in graduate work (jiang & koo, 2020; romsdahl & hill, 2012), as well as improve the experiences of at-promise students (culver et al., 2021; russell, 2017). although there are several iterations, learning communities have been defined as cohort-based, curricular-centric groups that use a horizontal co-learning model rather than a hierarchical teacher-student structure (brower et al., 2007). given that research at the intersection of graduate school pedagogy, stem career skill attainment, and at-promise student experiences is still developing (nsf, 2020), the learning community format may offer a promising means to advance both high-level and inclusive learning for at-promise students in the areas of efficacy and belongingness. given the possibility of learning communities as a means to simultaneously support two critical areas to at-promise graduate student success, this research describes the exploratory approach of a graduate, research-focused learning community developed over a period of four 1 we use the term at-promise to shift the focus toward the strengths and potentialities of students who may face structural economic, social, or cultural challenges in higher education institutions. we differ from prior use of the term in that we separate out racial identification from this category (culver et al., 2021), not to deemphasize the structural economic, social, or cultural challenges, but to deal with them in a more granular way. https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2260 pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 3 years at a flagship southeastern university, called the quantitative methods education for research (qmer) learning community. qmer was based on an understanding of the literature on learning communities, the desire to advance graduate skills foundational to stem, faculty observations of at-promise student needs, and a vision to create a more inclusive environment for student growth. through a combination of collaborative workshops and extracurricular support groups, the qmer learning community has focused on improving access to, and attainment of: (1) academic professional skills and competencies; and (2) foundational stem skills and advanced research methods. more specifically, the qmer learning community has sought to explore the extent to which a targeted learning community model might simultaneously address issues of efficacy and belongingness for at-promise students—and as such become a model for other programs and schools. below, we describe the qmer learning community's pedagogical structure and curricular design. next, we use an exploratory sequential mixed methods approach (creswell & clark, 2018) to assess the program thus far in terms of the following research questions: (1) to what extent has qmer’s learning community approach impacted perceptions of academic selfefficacy and sense of belonging, specifically for at-promise graduate students?; and (2) how do aspects of qmer’s learning community approach foster or detract from students’ self-efficacy and belongingness? we then present results from a survey of participants that includes scales of academic self-efficacy and sense of belonging. these results suggest that at-promise participants in qmer felt an increased sense of self-efficacy, inclusivity, and belongingness. next, we present follow-up interviews, where students noted that the programmatic aspects of supplementary support, focus on academic ‘soft skills,’ development of interdisciplinary connections, opportunities for validation, and a low-risk learning environment contributed to feeling more academically confident and like a welcome member of the university. finally, we conclude with a discussion of how specific aspects of the learning community may help support at-promise students more broadly and delimit areas of future investigation. the qmer learning community model the qmer learning community was started by a pair of assistant professors at a flagship southeastern university under the observation that graduate students in education pursuing advanced-level quantitative, empirical research tended not to be from diverse backgrounds. at the same time, there was a desire to enhance methodological options for students beyond the standard three-course graduate sequence to better support and improve what we call foundational stem skills—skills that include data literacy, analysis, coding, statistical reasoning, and reproducible research techniques (gibson & mourad, 2018; national science foundation, 2020). qmer was thereby developed under the guiding mission: “to improve the rigor, quality, and inclusivity of quantitative research in alabama and beyond,” and its core values were: (1) collegiality and collaboration; (2) distinction in scholarship and preparation; (3) open access and open science; (4) continuous improvement. over the course of five years, participation in qmer has grown rapidly, hosting 70+ learning community workshops, two research teams, and multiple other gatherings. it has retained a highly diverse group and hosted students from virtually every academic discipline on campus. below we detail the pedagogical model and curricular design. pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 4 pedagogical structure qmer was designed on the learning community model, with specific consideration of the barriers that students often face when engaging in advanced quantitative research and thought. given that at-promise students have often shown great benefit from approaches that emphasize personal value, contribution, group belonging, and academic-self efficacy (buckley & park, 2019; murphy & destin, 2016), the learning community model’s structural focus on community, non-hierarchy, diversity, relatedness, and engagement (dost & mazzoli smith, 2023; lenning et al., 2013) offered an ideal format. specifically, qmer sought to directly address resource inequalities common to atpromise students engaging in foundational stem learning. while the research is growing in this area, at-promise students are often overrepresented in schools less able to prepare students for graduate-level work (ghose et al., 2018). this preparation may also not provide exposure to the technology and tools common to stem and quantitative research (estrada et al., 2016), provide familiarization with the specific disciplines, specializations, and institutional supports (johnson, 2016), or model social and professional norms common to the institutional culture and expectations of graduate programs (okahana et al., 2018). moreover, lower levels of representation of at-promise students often result in fewer role models with similar backgrounds, including smaller peer groups (estrada et al., 2016) and fewer representative mentors (griffin et al., 2020). to facilitate qmer’s mission of inclusivity, the learning community was designed as a voluntary, supplementary organization that operates independently of students' coursework. it provides topical learning sessions where all graduate students are invited to attend as many or as few events as needed. in general, qmer offers two content-based learning community workshops a month in the evenings and orientation sessions at the beginning of each semester. learning community workshops average about 12 participants but have ranged from 4 to 38. some foundational workshops are repeated given academic year (e.g., how to be efficient & effective in graduate school) while most are determined by student input (e.g., data visualization in r). at the beginning of each event, a statement is given that this is a learning community where there is no hierarchy of knower-learner, there are no grades and therefore no risk of failure, everyone is at a different place in their academic development, no prior knowledge is expected, and all questions are welcome (culver et al., 2021; lenning et al., 2013; parker, 2009). after the announcement, the facilitator begins with questions and conversation around a particular topic (e.g., graphics in r), and solicits learning objectives to be agreed upon amongst the group with the question “what should i walk out with?” a facilitator (student and/or faculty, depending on the topic) will then begin guiding the discussion and present a lesson, walkthrough, or strategy. the lesson is followed by inquiry time where learners apply or explore the topic along a series of questions developed in the discussion (e.g., how can ggplot2 tell the story of my research?). facilitators offer individualized attention during this time, and throughout learners are encouraged to contribute with collaborative experience-sharing (e.g., how they approached a task), along with personal stories, anecdotes, and concrete examples. at the end of the session, input on what to address in the next session is discussed, students are encouraged to explore and prepare for the upcoming topic, and volunteers to facilitate or contribute next time are solicited. finally, a survey for self-reflection is given. given the aforementioned issues surrounding academic and technological exposure, qmer has followed the open science and open educational resources models whereby all pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 5 resources, including manuals, articles, software, and computer access are free and available before & after events (nipa & kermanshachi, 2020). to ensure transportation or scheduling are not problems, events are held in a common campus room and hosted online. workshops are recorded and posted for free at a non-public hosting site meeting university accessibility criteria. this includes a posted space online to ask questions and maintain discussion asynchronously (jiang & koo, 2020; nipa & kermanshachi, 2020). these techniques have been used to address the needs of at-promise students while removing identified barriers to research participation and persistence in graduate and stem programs (estrada et al., 2016; griffin et al., 2020). curricular design topics are co-designed between graduate students and faculty as part of a group visioning session that occurs each semester, with continuous feedback from participant students. in the visioning session, which is part of a larger student orientation, students are asked to identify their career goals and identify learning needs, gaps, and uncertainties. these topics are discussed and refined. some students volunteer to facilitate sessions and curriculum is coordinated with a faculty member. qmer focuses on two tracks of topics that are discussed in the learning community: (1) academic professional skills and competencies, and (2) foundational stem skills and advanced research methods. given the research on inequities in socialization and expectations (johnson, 2016; okahana et al., 2018), the professional skills workshops emphasize the academic norms, expectations, and social elements of higher education. topics have included: professional identity development, publication process, interview skills, and more. second, the research skills track emphasizes skills foundational for—but not isolated to—stem research competencies including complex modeling and data science (gibson & mourad, 2018). topics include specific skills such as data cleaning, visualization, coding, or techniques for reproducible research. other workshops focus on advanced techniques outside of the normal statistical course sequence such as multilevel/mixed effect modeling or time-series analysis. table 1 provides a sample schedule of topics to serve as an example from the 22-23 academic year. table 1. qmer sample schedule of topics fall meetings spring meetings 1 welcome: goalsetting & orientation 1 job market preparation: cv development 2 integrating coursework, dissertation, and professional development into your schedule 2 job market preparation: interviewing 3 working with your advisor and finding mentors 3 clean code 1: loops 4 introduction to statistical software 4 clean code 2: branching & commits with github 5 basics of coding and syntax: python & r 5 research and publication workflow pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 6 6 finding conferences and writing proposals 6 identifying and writing for external grant funding 7 conference presentations & networking 7 multilevel/mixed-effects modeling 8 data cleaning techniques with r 8 multilevel structural equation modeling 9 data visualization techniques with ggplot2 9 open session: lessons learned in grad school the curriculum and design of each workshop emphasize an integrated set of techniques aimed at promoting the type of thinking and problem-solving aligned with foundational stem skills (gibson & mourad, 2018; national science foundation, 2020). workshops center around a problem to be addressed, and are discussed using the design thinking process (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test) (li et al., 2019; simeon et al., 2020). workshops focusing on research skills model problem-solving with a combination of computational thinking or statistical reasoning processes, and learners are encouraged to use these processes when engaging in inquiry and sharing their experiences. for computational thinking, the process of decomposition, abstraction, algorithmic representation, and pattern recognition are used (lyon & j. magana, 2020). statistical reasoning emphasizes concepts of aggregation, distribution, randomness, variation, and trend-seeking are based on practicing connections from a problem-based standpoint (son et al., 2021). these models (design, computational, and statistical reasoning) are aimed at offering the metacognitive structures to pursue success in advanced research that are often not overtly integrated into postsecondary education (lyon & j. magana, 2020). overall, qmer has sought to improve the research efficacy and belongingness of graduate students—specifically at-promise students—through participation in a learning community focused on (1) academic professional skills and competencies, and (2) foundational stem skills and advanced research methods. given this approach, we aim to assess to what extent the program has been successful by assessing two main research questions: (1) to what extent has qmer’s learning community approach impacted perceptions of academic selfefficacy and sense of belonging, specifically for at-promise graduate students?; and (2) how do aspects of qmer’s learning community approach foster or detract from students’ self-efficacy and belongingness? below we detail our method for addressing these questions. method to address our research questions, we utilize both survey data and participant interviews as part of an explanatory sequential mixed methods approach (creswell & clark, 2018). this consists of two sequential phases to gain a broad swath of data necessary to identify qmer’s potential impact on student academic self-efficacy and belongingness. in the first quantitative phase—aligned with research question one—we assess the degree of impact of qmer on student experiences using a participant survey with scales for academic self-efficacy and belongingness. in the second qualitative phase—aligned with research question two—we used survey responses and results to inform semi-structured follow-up interview questions. the rationale for this approach is that the first stage aims to establish the magnitude of qmer’s potential impact on participants, and the second stage helps to explain such results and inform the mechanisms by which they operate (creswell & clark, 2018). pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 7 data to assess the impact of the qmer learning community approach, in the first stage we collected data from a participant survey sent at the end of the academic year to every student who engaged with qmer over a four-year period. in the second stage, we conducted in-depth follow-up interviews with students who were involved in the learning community for at least an academic year, asking about which features helped or hindered students' sense of confidence in their research, and feelings of belongingness. the survey and interviews were both designed to assess perceptions of two main aspects of the learning community: academic self-efficacy and sense of belonging. below, we outline our first stage survey measures and sample, followed by our second stage qualitative interview strategy. first stage survey academic self-efficacy. for our survey, we included questions regarding academic selfefficacy, which can be defined as students’ beliefs about their ability to manage research demands, preserve during difficult times in their studies, or handle challenges (cheng et al., 2019). as noted by bartimore-aufflick et al. (2016) “perhaps the single most important (and reliable) predictor of university student achievement in recent decades is self-efficacy” (p. 1918). academic self-efficacy has been linked with improved academic performance, resilience, and persistence (chemers et al., 2001; cheng et al., 2019). adapting questions from cheng et al. (2019), we included two scales of academic self-efficacy, self-efficacy of graduate studies (seg) and self-efficacy of research (ser). seg included questions surrounding a student’s confidence in comprehending graduate school concepts and performance (e.g., “i am confident i can take more advanced courses”). ser included questions aimed at evaluating a student’s confidence in being an independent scholar (e.g., “i’m confident i can develop my own research”). sense of belonging. we next included questions regarding sense of belonging, which refers to students’ general sense of value, acceptance, inclusion, connectedness, care, respect, and importance in a group or among others on campus (strayhorn, 2018). research has found that belongingness is associated with important educational outcomes such as academic selfconcept, academic success, motivation, persistence, and self-efficacy (hausmann et al., 2007; ostrove et al., 2011; strayhorn, 2018). specifically, graduate student belongingness is positively influenced by factors such as professional relationships, mentoring, and microaffirmations (kirby & thomas, 2022; o’meara et al., 2017). moreover, socialization with diverse groups and displays of inclusive goals have been shown to improve feelings of belongingness (maestas et al., 2007). considering the literature surrounding the importance of a sense of belonging, specifically for at-promise students, we adapted two scales: perceptions of inclusivity, and perceptions of belongingness, developed and validated by maestras et al., (2007). inclusivity deals with perceptions of the social inclusiveness of the learning community itself (e.g., “i feel that the learning community values and respects all students’ voices and opinions”). belongingness addresses a student’s sense of personal acceptance into the community (e.g., “i feel like i can share my thoughts freely with others”). pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 8 scale items and qualitative questions each question for academic self-efficacy and belongingness was based on 5-point likerttype scales ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” table 2 presents each statement along with cronbach’s alpha () for reliability, which is similar to the original validation studies (seg  0.69; ser  0.87; inclusivity  0.76; belongingness  0.90). the survey also included two open-ended response questions: (1) “what about qmer has been helpful to you?” (2) “are there other ways where qmer could better support you as a graduate student?” these openended responses were then coded for themes and will be presented in the results below. table 2. scale items and reliability scale/question measure alpha scale: self-efficacy of graduate studies 0.845 prompt: has participation in qmer supported you in the following aspects? seg1 "succeeding in my future methods coursework" seg2 "understanding basic statistical concepts" seg3 "understanding advances statistical concepts" seg4 "being successful in my program" seg5 "taking more advanced courses" seg6 "working with statistical software" seg7 "having an advantage in my own program" scale: self-efficacy of research 0.720 prompt: has participation in qmer supported you in the following aspects? ser1 "thinking more like a researcher" ser2 "develop my own research" ser3 "understand and critique research" ser4 "applying learning to my own projects" ser5 "having an advantage on the job market" scale: inclusivity 0.712 prompt: "do you think qmer…" inc1 "helps work cooperatively with diverse people" inc2 "supports tolerance of others with different beliefs" inc3 "values and respects all students' opinions" inc4 "shows openness to different/challenging viewpoints" inc5 "allows space to see from different perspectives" inc6 "operates with awareness of cultural backgrounds & needs" scale: belongingness 0.845 prompt: "has participation in qmer made you feel.." bel1 "like i am part of the university community" bel2 "like i have things in common with others" bel3 "more comfortable being myself" bel4 "like i can share my thoughts freely" bel5 "like there are others like me around" bel6 "like my contributions and ideas are valued" pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 9 bel7 "like i belong to the group" second stage interviews using open-form responses from participants and in-depth, semi-structured follow-up interviews, we provide further information on how the program has been viewed by students. interviews lasted between 15-25 minutes, and students were asked which aspects of qmer were most helpful to them, as well as aspects that were not so helpful. follow-up questions aimed to narrow in on those features that helped or hindered students' sense of confidence in their research, as well as features that helped or hindered feelings of being included and belonging at the university. in total, we interviewed 15 students who had been involved in qmer for a year or more, with interview sample characteristics shown in table 2. sample as noted above, the survey was sent to each student who had participated in a qmer event over the past four years. every graduate student at the university was invited to qmer workshops through a graduate student listserv, and interested students could register for any workshop using a qualtrics registration link. since workshops were held virtually over zoom, emails of students attending workshops were compiled from zoom reports. from this list, emails were sent to each student who had attended a workshop. five, 15-dollar gift certificates were raffled off to incentivize participation in the email survey invitation. of the 160 registered participants, 59 completed the survey, resulting in a 37% response rate. table 3 provides the compositional characteristics of the sample, and also includes interview sample characteristics. table 3. survey & interview sample characteristics survey interviews sample # events participants # events female 55% 4.03 8 6 male 45% 4.19 7 5 asian 26% 4.39 4 5.5 black 23% 4.79 4 5.75 latinx 9% 6.08 1 6 white 36% 2.00 5 4 other 6% 3.39 1 4 first generation student 38% 4.95 6 4.83 low-income background 43% 4.95 7 6.5 # of participants 59 15 # of qmer events attended 4.19 5.29 # of years in grad school 3.16 2.86 notably, our survey sample includes a relatively high proportion of asian (26%) and black (23%) students, considering the graduate student population at the host university is roughly 3% asian, 8% black 4% latinx, and 65% white. much of the sample is comprised of first-generation and low-income students, the latter of whom make up roughly 17% of the pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 10 graduate student population but represent 43% of the sample.2 given that those indicators are not mutually exclusive, 72% of the sample identified themselves as being at-promise in one or more dimensions. respondents also came from all across the university, including agriculture, architecture, biosystems engineering, forestry, mechanical engineering, political science, and more. however, given that qmer’s faculty are from the college of education, the majority of participants were from education-related fields. overall, respondents attended just over 4 events and were in their 3rd year of graduate school. however, it is notable that on average white students attended relatively fewer events (2) compared to latinx (6) and black (4.8) students. in addition, first-generation and low-income students attended nearly 5 events each. analysis & limitations the goal of this analysis is to gain an understanding of the value of the learning community approach for students in terms of self-efficacy and belongingness, as well as to see what differences may exist between student groups, particularly at-promise students. we therefore present descriptive statistics to demonstrate broad trends and group differences, supported by qualitative responses to help explain these trends. to present our survey data, we constructed scores for each scale using stata’s alpha function which complies items into a single scale variable and standardizes to a set length. in this manner, each scale score is reported on a continuum of 1-5, with 1 representing a low agreement score (“strongly disagree”) on seg, ser, inclusivity, or belongingness, and 5 representing a “strongly agree” score on the respective scale. this is followed by a series of themes presented from our open-ended questionnaire and interviews. responses to questions on how students felt about their self-efficacy and belongingness were independently coded, cross-checked, and reconciled by the researchers until certain themes developed. themes were member-checked with interview participants. these themes are presented following the descriptive section. it should be noted that our sample is not random nor necessarily representative of students attending qmer. while the authors can anecdotally note that the demographic makeup of the sample does seem to align with observations, we do not collect information on students participating in qmer events as we do not want self-identification to be a barrier to participating. given the low number of observations (59) and non-random sample design, the representation of sub-groups is limited and power is low. for this reason, while we report independent sample t-test results to demonstrate sample group differences, these are not to be considered representative of all participants. in addition, selection bias is a concern, and it is possible that, for example, certain types of students are more likely to take surveys or be motivated by financial incentives. moreover, our goal is not to actively posit that the qmer learning community causes overall improvements in student perceptions—we do not have the resources at present for a proper control sample or repeated measures design. rather, we intend to make an introductory case that the qmer approach may show initial effectiveness and that this may serve as grounds for future research into how programs may better engage at-promise students in stem learning. 2 as a limitation, it should be noted that we do not have information on the composition of graduate students pursuing advanced quantitative research, which may be differently distributed amongst graduate students at the university. pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 11 results the results of our exploratory sequential mixed methods investigations are presented below. we begin by presenting overall trends from our survey regarding academic self-efficacy and belongingness. next, we present qualitative results that enrich our understanding of the survey results and address factors that foster or detract from students’ self-efficacy and belongingness. rq1: to what extent has qmer impacted perceptions of research self-efficacy and sense of belonging? table 4 presents the mean and median for each of our four scales: seg, ser, inclusivity, and belongingness. these are then decomposed by respondent-identified gender, race, firstgeneration, low-income, and first-generation status. independent samples two-tailed t-tests are included to illustrate group differences, with a group being compared to the non-group mean. for example, the mean of asian respondents is compared to all non-asian respondents. given the number of group comparisons, we present these results as box plots in figure 1 to more clearly illustrate trends and response distributions. for reasons of parsimony, we will only focus on the main trends here. table 4. scale score means of qmer survey respondents seg ser inclusivity belongingness mean median mean median mean median mean median all respondents 4.34 4.43 4.42 4.4 4.68 5 4.33 4.43 (0.56) (0.52) (0.46) (0.62) female 4.34 4.43 4.42 4.6 4.61 5 4.29 4.43 (0.72) (0.57) (0.52) (0.66) male 4.34 4.29 4.43 4.4 4.74 5 4.35 4.43 (0.4) (0.49) (0.41) (0.59) asian 4.49 4.5 4.5 4.7 4.71 5 4.31 4.5 (0.44) (0.63) (0.37) (0.79) black 4.76* 4.79 4.75* 4.8 4.94* 5 4.75* 4.86 (0.21) (0.3) (0.16) (0.32) latinx 4.37 4.43 4.16 4.4 4.85 5 4.49 4.71 (0.3) (0.36) (0.22) (0.54) white 4.85 4 4.30 4.3 4.53 4.75 4.12 4 (0.67) (0.48) (0.55) (0.49) other 3.95 4 3.93 4 4.17 4 3.81 4 (0.08) (0.5) (0.76) (0.73) first generation 4.54 4.57 4.48* 4.4 4.84 5 4.59* 4.71 (0.38) (0.45) (0.37) (0.55) low income 4.61* 4.71 4.58* 4.7 4.84 5 4.48* 4.79 (0.36) (0.47) (0.29) (0.69) note: *p<0.05 on independent samples two-tailed t-test against non-inclusive group mean. standard deviation in parentheses pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 12 row 1 of table 3 shows that, on average, students perceived inclusivity as the strongest component of qmer (mean = 4.68, median = 5), followed by self-efficacy in research (mean = 4.42, median = 4.4), self-efficacy in graduate studies (mean = 4.34, median = 4.43), and belongingness (mean = 4.33, median = 4.43). when looking at participant-identified gender, we see roughly similar trends for both females and males, with females having slightly lower scores on ser and slightly higher on belongingness. when looking at participant-identified race, black graduate students reported the highest average levels of agreement for each scale, being statistically higher than the non-black group mean. notably, the high agreement with inclusivity was shared across each racial subgroup, while belongingness is most strongly agreed with by black and latinx students. slightly different trends show up across first-generation and low-income students. notably, from figure 1, we see that first-generation and low-income students all had a generally higher agreement with self-efficacy, inclusivity, and belongingness than the non-first-generation or low-income student groups. in particular, first-generation and low-income students all had a statistically higher agreement for seg. moreover, first-generation and low-income students had higher feelings of belongingness from qmer. pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 13 rq2: how do aspects fo qmer’s learning community approach foster or detract from students’ self-efficacy and belongingness? given the above results reporting that qmer participation has improved students’ sense of academic self-efficacy and belongingness—particularly for at-promise and black students— we now turn to provide a deeper sense of ways in which the program has been viewed as part of the second stage of our explanatory sequential mixed methods approach. figure 1. seg, ser, inclusivity, and belongingness scales by student characteristics note: higher scores represent stronger average agreement with the scale. pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 14 practical and supplementary approach several participants noted that they experienced improved mastery of statistical software, as well as translating it into coursework and research. this was often attributed to the emphasis on supplementary practical skills that did not repeat what was in the normal coursework sequence. in response to a question on what was helpful about participating in qmer, one student noted: overall, qmer equipped me with the motivation and confidence to be an independent graduate student and a future researcher. i have been exposed to the requisite research skills and tools to initiate and complete a research project on my own. –first-generation, low-income, international, black, male, educational leadership student. some students noted the opportunities to “slow down” and “process” much of the material, noting that “…the information is valuable and more personable than regular classes.” as noted by one student: essentially [qmer is] a place to apply practically the knowledge we are learning in grad school. to be frank, this is the most needed practical experience that is not taught in grad school. – first-generation, lowincome, black, male, adult education student. other students noted the importance of simply introducing the software that is used in coursework (such as r), while others emphasized the practical and developmental nature of the curriculum: qmer helped me in different stages of my program. it helped me with getting familiar with statistical methods, software usage [r, stata], and research workflow in the first year of my ph.d. program. it helped me to navigate the process of journals and conferences as i started manuscript writing when i was in the second year of my program. –first-generation, low-income, international, asian, female, educational psychology student. focus on academic soft skills a second theme that developed under the area of improving academic self-efficacy was an emphasis on the soft skills surrounding academic research, which has shown to be particularly difficult for underrepresented and at-promise students (estrada et al., 2016; okahana et al., 2018). several at-promise and underrepresented students emphasized the importance of “hearing the personal experiences of professors,” as well as an emphasis on “professional development […] and assistance with preparing [my] work to align with my goals.” others emphasized the treatment of soft skills such as job market preparation, resume building, networking, “communication with my advisor,” and “learning how grad school works in general.” one student noted: i truly enjoyed the workshops on succeeding in our graduate programs. i found learning about the doctoral journey […] leading towards dissertation necessary and helpful. –first-generation, low-income, black, female, higher education administration student pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 15 connecting students outside of programs several students noted the importance of meeting with others outside of their programs, supporting the notion that graduate student’s sense of belongingness is found to be positively influenced by factors such as socialization with diverse groups (maestas et al., 2007) and professional relationships (o’meara et al., 2017). for example, a fourth-year doctoral student stated that participating in qmer gave her: …the opportunity to feel connected. i have been done with my coursework for some time now and there is very little within the program that created a similar sense of graduate student community once coursework is completed…it is a relief that there are student peers and faculty who are willing and available to answer your questions or help you problem solve…-white, female, adult education student a student from human development and family studies noted: "often it's too easy in the later years of graduate school to become siloed, and qmer offers some connections.” another noted that “…joining [qmer] taught me different perspectives and approaches to research that i now use myself in my daily work.” validation through contribution several students noted that the learning community format “offered a chance to be heard” and “a sense of contribution.” for some students, not being able to share and contribute to learning led to a sense of detachment and invisibility. as one student noted: yeah, there was this sense that once i was asked to share out how i was looking at [the topic], i was kind of ‘part of things.’ and i guess i had always kind of felt that no one needed to hear anything from me and i guess that made me feel, like, separate, you know? so it was crazy it was like, once i contributed [the learning strategy] to the group it was like, yeah i’m actually here and i’m real and i’m part of this. – first-generation, black, male, agrisciences student contribution activities such as collective goalsetting, experience-sharing, or facilitating the learning community format appeared to offer support for a sense of belonging (o’meara et al., 2017), as well as interpersonal validation (s. anderson & blankenberger, 2023). noting that research has long noted that many at-promise students feel a sense of alienation in graduate programs (loo & rolison, 2016), offering chances for students to voice themselves and contribute to the community may help improve the sense of connection and validation. removing risk finally, students noted that since the learning community existed outside of the traditional class setting it did not have the normal teacher-student hierarchy and had no grades or assessments attached. this allowed for learning to take place in a low-risk environment. as one at-promise student in counseling psychology stated, “it feels very open. i don’t feel judged.” this low-stakes environment allowed for better overall connections as well: i was able to connect with students and faculty members more easily in this setting, and able to learn things that were not dealt with during the class or pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 16 things that i wanted to learn in-depth—low-income, asian, female, adult education student. following the abovementioned barriers to at-promise students in higher education, such as unfamiliarity with academic norms, feelings of inadequacy, or fear of failure (estrada et al., 2016; maestas et al., 2007; o’meara et al., 2017), operating in a low-risk environment appears to support further learning in spaces that might otherwise be prohibitive. discussion & conclusion the goal of this paper has been to describe and evaluate the qmer learning community model in terms of its effect on academic self-efficacy and belongingness for graduate students. the model of supporting foundational stem skills through a supplementary, interdisciplinary, and professional-skills-oriented learning community format has shown that (1) generally students felt qmer supported self-efficacy in research, self-efficacy in graduate studies, inclusivity, and belongingness; (2) black, first-generation, and low-income students reported higher perceptions of self-efficacy in research and belongingness than their peers; and (3) the supplementary approach, soft-skill focus, interdisciplinary connections, opportunity for voice and contribution, and low-risk environment were aspects of the qmer learning community model that stood out to students. this work supports prior literature regarding three key implications for institutions looking to simultaneously improve students’ experience and capacity. most notably, it serves to demonstrate how efforts to improve self-efficacy and belongingness for at-promise graduate students can be combined into a comprehensive program. first, instructional structures that operate outside of the traditional methods sequence may be increasingly important as more specialized and differentiated research expertise is needed in many areas of the workforce (tytler, 2020), and high student-to-faculty ratios in many programs make socioemotional support and communication more difficult to foster (crocker et al., 2014). second and related, explicit attention to professional norms (e.g., what to put on a cv), soft skills (e.g., networking at conferences), and baseline competencies (e.g., file structuring, coding) surrounding foundational stem skills may offer a means to further support underrepresented and at-promise students who have less exposure and mentorship within their respective field (estrada et al., 2016). whether addressed within the traditional class structure or not, students noted that these supplementary skills were needed. third, offering a format for students to interact across disciplines and actively contribute to inclusive academic goals may help foster notions of shared identity, community, and interpersonal validation that serve to advance both goals of research equity and excellence (s. anderson & blankenberger, 2023; culver et al., 2021). as some students felt ‘siloed’ or ‘invisible’ in their programs, this supplemental learning community format offers a ‘third space’ that suspends organizational hierarchies and expectations for the development of wider personal and professional relationships and informal mentoring, as well as low-risk opportunities for experience-sharing, validation, and microaffirmations essential to belongingness (elliot et al., 2016; maestas et al., 2007). these features may help students feel a greater sense of shared belonging as well as prepare them to engage in collaborative and interdisciplinary research (national science foundation, 2022; o’meara et al., 2017; stachl & baranger, 2020; thornton et al., 2020). given that this learning community has multiple facets, it is difficult to pinpoint specific aspects that had the greatest contribution to the success of the program. however, it was clear that qmer's structure operated best alongside regular coursework, rather than in lieu of it. pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 17 students reported that much of its importance was in offering a ‘different perspective’ on the same skills, furthering the understanding and context needed for learning (hilliard, 2012). to gain a better understanding of just which aspects are most important, it will be important to continue with research on which specific learning outcomes have resulted from the program— which is a limitation of the current study. while the present study has focused on self-efficacy and sense of belonging, it is unclear to what extent such an approach may impact other aspects of success including persistence, time to completion, and placement. moreover, it will be important to assess the capability of scaling the program. as participation has more than tripled in the past two years, maintaining personal and individual connections will become more difficult, and administration of the program may become more complex. however, these preliminary results do offer a promising start to 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(2020). stem education for the twenty-first century. in j. anderson & y. li (eds.), integrated approaches to stem education: an international perspective (pp. 21–43). springer international publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52229-2_3 pendola et al.: qmer learning community current issues in education, 26(1) 21 author’ notes andrew pendola orcid: 0000-0002-3726-4072 auburn university pendola@auburn.edu john appiah orcid: 0000-0001-7717-8614 univerity of cape coast jappiah@ucc.edu.gh william murrah orcid: 0000-0001-9822-2522 auburn university wmm0017@auburn.edu clarissa beavers orcid: 0000-0003-3439-8590 auburn university csb0076@auburn.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:pendola@auburn.edu mailto:jappiah@ucc.edu.gh mailto:wmm0017@auburn.edu mailto:csb0076@auburn.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ the qmer learning community model pedagogical structure curricular design method data first stage survey academic self-efficacy. for our survey, we included questions regarding academic self-efficacy, which can be defined as students’ beliefs about their ability to manage research demands, preserve during difficult times in their studies, or handle chall... scale items and qualitative questions second stage interviews sample analysis & limitations results rq1: to what extent has qmer impacted perceptions of research self-efficacy and sense of belonging? rq2: how do aspects fo qmer’s learning community approach foster or detract from students’ self-efficacy and belongingness? practical and supplementary approach focus on academic soft skills connecting students outside of programs validation through contribution removing risk discussion & conclusion references current issues in education, 25(1) 1 volume 25, issue 1 04/7/2024 issn 1099-839x transforming courses across teaching modalities in higher education james a. bernauer, richard g. fuller, alicia m. cassels robert morris university abstract: this article explores the transformation of courses among online, traditional, and hybrid modalities with a special focus on transforming an online course into a traditional classroom format. while there has been much written about transforming courses from traditional to online, especially as a consequence of the covid-19 pandemic, there has not been much written about the reverse kind of transformation; that is from online to traditional. we have found that you cannot simply use the same course shells and methods that were used in online instruction. this article provides both a context and specific advice regarding how to conduct a successful transformation from online to traditional modalities based on both failures and successes with successes primarily emanating by enlisting students as full partners in this transformation. the article uses three voices (instructor, student, program director) to explore the context of the problem as well as to offer direction to those who undertake such transformations. although the course cited in this article is a doctoral course in statistical procedures, we think that the lessons learned here transcend this specific course and can be useful in most other courses whether taught face-to-face or online. keywords: teaching modality; integrated assessment; online instruction; traditional instruction; hybrid instruction; learning management platform, simulcast citation: bernauer, j.a., fuller, r.g., cassels, a.m. (2024). transforming courses across teaching modalities in higher education. current issues in education, 25(1). doi: 10.14507/cie.vol25iss1.2157 accepted: month/day/year introduction this study was initiated because of the challenges encountered when we were trying to convert an online course to a face-to-face traditional modality. although the particular class was a doctoral-level class in statistical procedures, the authors were immediately intrigued by the fact current issues in education, 25(1) 2 that while much attention in recent years has been directed to transforming traditional classes to an online modality, especially beginning with the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, to our knowledge, little attention has been directed to transforming from online to traditional while this article focuses on the transformation from online to traditional, it is important to contextualize this article by first providing a description of the different teaching-learning modalities and how these modalities might be transformed across higher education. in addition, as we continued our collaboration, we realized that there were larger issues regarding course modalities and transformations that have emerged during the past few years which may have been accelerated due to the covid-19 pandemic. therefore, to offer insight into the broader challenges and opportunities related to transforming higher education courses for adult learners across delivery modalities, we employed a descriptive case study, informed by constructivist theory and adult learning principles, to provide practical insights and recommendations for instructors engaged in course transformation. literature review teaching modalities moore (1997) explains this in his theory of transactional distance, the concepts of distance education and learning relationships, as the separation of the learner and instructor through both time and space. asynchronous learning is separation of learner and instructor by both time and space, while synchronous learning is separation by space but simultaneous. traditional or face-to-face learning occurs when the instructor is at the same time and space. moore (1997; 2006) further explains that distance learning also creates a communication or psychological separation, where more dialogue and less structure reduce the distance between student and instructor, while less dialogue and more structure increase the distance. much of this is also driven by learner autonomy or learner control. this is at the heart of adult learning theory or self-directed learning. the pandemic taught us how to utilize the three basic modalities of face-to-face or traditional classroom learning with online synchronous and asynchronous opportunities resulting in a broad variety of online settings of teaching and learning (fabriz et al., 2021). faculty and institutions began to find the right balance to reduce the distance between students and instructors through the use of integrating all three modalities in what has traditionally been termed blended, hybrid, flipped classrooms, or hyflex. by necessity, institutions and faculty found that they could meet student needs by blending a variety of pedagogies within the three modalities. faculty began coming back on campus responding to students who were not able to attend physically and needed to remain remote. the integration of synchronous equipment in the classrooms allowed face-to face-students to sit alongside students at a distance. through a simulcast system which allows for students to engage in technology-enhanced learning whether in the classroom or via computer off-campus through a number of different platforms such as zoom, google meet, microsoft teams, adobe, and others. we realized that this was the best of both worlds allowing students to learn with the same instruction and with the same positive results. during the pandemic, many of the aforementioned synchronous providers evolved their platforms to provide significant viable pedagogical opportunities. for example, google meet increased capabilities to include breakout rooms and question and answer polling. there were many challenges, mostly the need to clarify roles and responsibilities (flumerfelt & banachowski, 2011, p. 236) and gain a better understanding of the best pedagogies to employ. current issues in education, 25(1) 3 much was learned about when and how to coordinate them, and what worked and what did not work. traditionally, there are some things that are taught better online than in a traditional setting and others that are better traditionally rather than online. this has not changed. adult learners despite changing times and opportunities, faculty should not forget that many students are adult learners with specific needs. adult learning theory can be described in terms of selfdirected learning, clear course goals, structures, and subject matter content being of critical importance that result in a feeling of safety (milheim, 2012; philips et al., 2017). most adult or non-traditional learners return to school bringing rich life experiences and perspectives that serve as a solid platform on which to continue learning. this distinguishes the adult learner from high school students who do not have this range of life experiences. consequently, the learning experiences of adults should be considered transformative in nature (mezirow, 2000; taylor, 2008) and to internalize new knowledge and theories, an adult’s prior experiences and former perspectives should serve as the foundation to introduce new knowledge and skills. knowles (1984) suggests that adult learners are more motivated to learn if the content is relevant to their goals and has an immediacy of application. due to their maturity, adult or nontraditional learners (as they are sometimes referred to), are characterized as autonomous selfdirected learners who take responsibility for their own learning to fit the needs of their chosen roles. day, lovato, tull, and ross-gordon (2011) also found that adult learners should be provided with structure to comfortably and effectively organize their learning. while adults do not always know the specifics of what they want or need to learn, they are nonetheless selfdirected in achieving personal goals albeit not understanding all that goes into achieving those goals. adult learners’ preference for relevance to life situations and autonomy fit nicely with principles of constructivism (huang, 2002), where educators serve to model the way for adults to emulate in achieving their goals. the purpose of teaching adult learners should be to inculcate lifelong, profound learning practices and related processes into learning experiences that build upon one another (kroth et al., 2022). constructivist learning theory the goal of instruction can be seen to create or develop pedagogies that will enhance a student’s abilities to engage in the learning process through active rather than passive actions. the constructivist theory of learning argues that students learn by creating new knowledge based upon their experiences (gredler, 1997; uredi, 2013). the constructivist model emphasizes that learners must have a solid base of knowledge, a foundation that is built through traditional teaching and learning methods of reading and lecture and out of class assignments. the constructivist model promotes “active construction of new knowledge by the learner based on experiences” (paily, 2013, p.39) and that “active involvement of students helps them to construct knowledge (cubukcu, 2012, p. 52). the constructivist theory of learning supports the value of models of instruction where student-centered activities enhance learning through active and reflective processes that are applied and processed in the classroom (paily, 2013). learning is not necessarily an individual or passive process but rather a social activity that is related to what is already known by the learner (pritchard & woollard, 2010). dewey thought that learning should be integrated with life and be grounded in active engagement in the real world. “the inclination current issues in education, 25(1) 4 to learn from life itself and to make the conditions of life such that all will learn in the process of living is the finest product of schooling” (dewey 1916, p.51; frenette, 2015). constructivist learning theories place “less emphasis on the sequence of instruction and more emphasis on the design of the learning environment” (jonassen, 1994. p. 35). the classroom-learning environment is one that promotes active participation of students and real-life experiences (uredi, 2013). research supports positive effects of the constructivist-learning environment such as enhanced academic success of students, promotion of critical thinking skills, increased creativity and positive teachers and student perceptions (uredi, 2013). in constructivist learning environments “active learning can develop by thinking about the detail of thoughts, experiences, perception, and emotions that come about during experiences” (cubukcu, 2012, p. 51). cognitive load no discussion of learning in any modality should occur without a conscious awareness of cognitive load theory. with increased pedagogical opportunities comes the need for faculty to become aware of the volume of work that is posted or required given the increased pedagogical modalities that can be blended using online synchronous, asynchronous, and face-to-face instruction. cognitive load theory (paas et al. 2003; sweller et al. 1998, 2011) uses an understanding that working memory (wm) is limited in capacity and duration and helps us to understand the relationship between working or short-term memory and moving concepts into long term memory systems. understanding this relationship helps both faculty and instructional designers to maximize learning opportunities without supplanting proficient with nonproficient pedagogies. through the expansion of new technologies and learning modalities such as synchronous and asynchronous learning environments, research has expanded so that the learning environment can influence wm load and learning (liu et al. 2014). through the field of forensic psychology, vredeveldt et al. (2011), illustrate that while working on a task, working memory can be consumed through focus on the learning environment. the assumption is that instructional strategies and emotional factors need to be considered when designing learning environments and choosing which learning modalities or combination, and the overall volume of work will best meet learner needs. each of the three authors had an understanding and appreciation of the importance of teaching and learning modalities, adult and constructivist learning theory, and cognitive load, prior to undertaking this study. however, because of our different roles and experiences, our perspectives reflected these differences which helped us to develop a deeper appreciation of the phenomena that we sought to investigate. methods the course that is the subject of the current study was transformed during the covid-19 pandemic from online to traditional modality. unlike the many higher education courses that were quickly posted online for delivery during the initial covid-19 lockdowns, the transformation of this course from online to traditional took place about one year after the emergency covid-19 campus closures ended. at the time of course delivery, many faculty, were forced to try new online course delivery options. these faculty adopted these new technologies as part of everyday teaching in the classroom. among the new opportunities that presented themselves were the use of synchronous platforms where faculty and students were current issues in education, 25(1) 5 separated by space but were teaching and learning at the same time. real time interactions in this synchronous modality or methods to augment online asynchronous have been used previously but not to the scale seen during the pandemic. this collaborative effort could probably be most clearly hypothesized as action research since it emerged as an integral part of our work. edwards-groves and rönnerman (2022) contends that action research is indispensable as a form of educational inquiry because it allows professionals to direct their own practice transformations by eliciting and applying new understanding. hoppe (2019) noted that action research attained greater legitimacy with innovation-focused journals in recent decades, with higher-tier journals increasingly publishing articles that incorporate action research methods. david coughlin, when talking about action research said, “… let’s go after things that matter and do research on how we build collaboration to address them and build rigorous, relevant and reflective methods to cogenerate actionable knowledge” (personal communication, may, 2019). the researchers employed a descriptive case study approach to explore the real-life challenges, opportunities, and insights derived from the experience of transforming a course. the case study approach allows investigators to “study current, real-life cases that are in progress so that they can gather accurate information not lost by time” (creswell, 2018, p. 97). in this case, investigators collected real-time observations from multiple perspectives, took detailed notes, examined real-time course discussion board postings, and engaged in reflective discussion of their experiences to uncover insights and develop recommendations for future practice addressing the following questions: 1. what factors should be considered when transforming a course for adult learners from one modality to another? 2. how can instructors leverage formative assessment data to inform real-time changes in course delivery? what follows are the voices of instructor (jim), student (alicia), and program director (rick) who viewed the problem of transforming from an online to a traditional modality from their unique perspectives which subsequently expanded into a more general examination of transforming among modalities. the use of “voices” as a dialogic approach in inquiry can be used to invite readers into a pseudo-conversation (bakhtin, 1975; 1981) and in this way these voices can be used to contextualize the investigation of phenomena. there can be multiple participants and voices as in this article or just one person who uses different voices in an imaginative manner (e.g., bernauer, 2012; um, 2021). however, voices were used here as the most practical way to draw a more complete picture of what actually happened while trying to transform a course from an online to a traditional classroom approach based on the perspectives of critical actors in this process. because this study does not fit into a traditional qualitative design (such as phenomenology or grounded theory), we did not use coding per se but rather viewed it using critical thinking and drawing on our experiences as educators (see bernauer, et. al, 2013). three voices while we did not explicitly identify this study as ‘action research”, it dawned on us that this was the research design that emerged naturally after we began exploring and writing. although we taught and were similarly taught to identify the research design prior to “collecting data”, action research is an approach where there is a seamless transition between practitioner current issues in education, 25(1) 6 and researcher (see gaskill, 2013). we suppose this study could also be classified as a case study since the “boundaries are quite explicit given its focus on only our university. however, because this article emerged from our immersion in our “practice” and our respective roles in this practice, it seems that we have indeed engaged in action research. jim will first describe what he encountered when he was assigned a traditional classroom setting to teach a doctoral-level course that he had previously taught online for ten years and his perspective as to what transpired as the semester progressed. alicia will then describe this process from her perspective as doctoral student in this class while rick, as doctoral program director as well as director of faculty professional development, will then provide a more holistic and practical view of this phenomenon. we think that this three-part approach will allow readers to appreciate this problem in a more complete context which will then hopefully facilitate their ability to transfer findings to their own settings. instructor’s voice (jim) perhaps the best way to set the stage for this article is captured in an online discussion that i had with one of my master’s students (noah firmstone) in an online course that i taught simultaneously with this doctoral class where he talked about the struggle of adapting from a traditional modality to an online one: dr. b., when the pandemic began in march of 2020, i was in my last semester of completing my undergrad degree. the transition to online learning was certainly strange, but at the time seemed to be the only option. i found myself with a lack of motivation to tune into online classes that were not engaging or interactive in any way. often times classes would be canceled and we would be left with assignments that just felt like busy work with no real purpose, again adding to the lack of motivation. it was hard to focus and it was often impossible to find a quiet place to actually be able to tune into class. being at the college level during this time, i know this was even more difficult for younger kids. young children who were thrown into online learning fell significantly behind in their learning levels when compared with kids in prior years who were in person. the burden for parents was extreme also as many were forced to play teacher with a lot of the actual teachers either going through the learning curve into teaching online or simply not putting forth the effort. here is my response: noah, thanks so much for sharing your experience! i am currently dealing with a reverse issue; that is, converting/transforming an online course back to traditional classroom -i am finding it to be a surprisingly challenging and so since my goal is always to create a "learning classroom" (cooper & garner, 2012) i am now asking my students for their ideas and advice as to how we might do this together. and, like any good academic, i am currently collaborating with a colleague and one of my students on an article whose purpose is to describe and analyze this whole matter in order to create a better learning experience and to offer practical advice on how to go about this. first, it is important to note that i use assessment-driven instruction which i refer to as “integrated assessment” (author, 1997) in all of the courses that i teach, whether undergraduate, masters, doctoral, online, or traditional courses (author, 1998; author, 2017). it should be noted that the course from which this study emanated is a doctoral-level course in statistical procedures current issues in education, 25(1) 7 and so the criterion of transferability should be kept in mind by readers. this course is not a class on statistics per se but rather how to use statistical procedures and spss to analyze quantitative data and is one of the first classes required of our doctoral student cohorts. it is also the case that because my co-authors and i view teaching as more art than science that the same course taught be different instructors can vary greatly both in the way it is taught and the way it is received and perceived by students. as dewey (1938) so aptly put it: it is not enough that certain materials and methods have proved effective with other individuals at other times. there must be a reason for thinking that they will function in generating an experience that has educative quality with particular individuals at a particular time (p. 46) because integrated assessment is a central component of what follows, generalizing to other contexts and instructional approaches needs to take this into account. while assessmentdriven instruction can sometimes be described as “teaching to the test”, which has been perceived both positively and negatively, i have found that if assessments are consistent with the following three criteria that they can serve as powerful forms of instruction. 1. comprised of essay/open-ended items vs. selected response items such as t/f. 2. captures the knowledge and skills that the instructor has identified as most important. 3. given to students at the beginning of a course to help guide both learning and instruction. as an early opponent of assessment-driven instruction, i am reminded of hearing something like this from a proponent -“teaching to the test is ok if the test is a good one.” however, the arguments against high-stakes tests-driven instruction are longstanding (see for example, harris et al., 2011; madaus et al., 2009.). teaching to the test or tailoring your learning to tests or assignments may indeed, not only result in narrowing of the curriculum, but also require large amounts of instructional time being spent on preparing students to do well on highstakes tests. the problem, as many teachers in our nations k-12 schools have discovered, is that these tests may not mesh with their instructional goals or whose timing when administered may be out of synch with instructional plans. however, at the higher-education level, i have found that if assignments are well-constructed and match to my instructional goals then they provide both my students and myself with a roadmap to follow as the term progresses. i have tried to develop assignments that, while they “drive” instruction, are also flexible enough so that individual approaches to learning are honored. in the present case, where the course i taught was a doctoral course on statistical procedures, the assignments were designed to facilitate student understanding of the concepts underlying these statistical procedures and linking these concepts to practical applications using spss statistical software, so that students could develop the skills to effectively analyze numerical data. i think that this same approach, focusing on important concepts and then linking these concepts to their practical applications, can also be used in other types of courses and disciplines including english, history, math, science, social studies, etc. while the content and applications may differ, the underling rationale is the same. another contextual element is that the course that i was asked to teach in a traditional format was taught in the spring, 2022 term after nearly two years of the covid-19 pandemic where the world learned to do online what it had previously done in-person. in my case, i had actually taught the doctoral statistical procedures class online since 2012 when the online doctoral program was launched alongside the traditional program. hence, i was quite acclimated to teaching online well before the pandemic began; in fact, i had converted the traditional statistical procedures course (as well as other courses) from traditional to online in 2012. current issues in education, 25(1) 8 subsequently, when i was asked to teach this class in a traditional format in 2022, i had a modicum of concern because i had become comfortable with online teaching and learning. however, while i sensed that i might encounter some challenges as i sought to transform my lms shell and my instruction from an online to a traditional modality, i thought that any required modifications would be relatively minor and that finding solutions would be painless. i soon discovered that i was mistaken on both counts -even with a small doctoral class of seven students, the challenges were much more daunting than i had anticipated. as an online instructor for ten years, i had developed an approach that was honed over those years and which i found to be effective based on student feedback and my own sense of teacher efficacy. one of the first lessons i learned was that teaching online required teacher presence, the level of intervention and degree of visible involvement demonstrated by the instructor is dependent upon the pedagogical choices and personal preferences of the instructor (bowden, 2012; costley, 2015; ravenna, 2012). the pedagogical choices are critical to the learning process and the role of the instructor, while interacting with students in an authentic way (cranton & carusetta, 2004). establishing an lms course shell, even if well-organized with weekly goals, simply does not adequately engage most students in learning just as lecturing in a traditional classroom without connecting with students is often simply an exercise in academic rhetoric. as i began the academic term asking students who had always been in a traditional setting to adopt and integrate online practices such as working collaboratively to respond and interact to discussion prompts during the week, i found that a mismatch began to emerge almost immediately – similar to trying to fit the proverbial square peg into a round hole. i continued to try and ameliorate this mismatch for approximately two weeks until the students (most notably my co-author alicia) made it clear that things were simply not working – and it was from student discontent and the forthcoming suggestions from these students that led to what turned out to be a successful transformation from an online lms and teaching approach back to a traditional format. i had to ask my doctoral students only once for their help because as adult learners, they immediately proceeded to not only suggest changes but to actively restructure how we went about learning and teaching reciprocally during our wednesday evening class. i used a flipped classroom approach where students are more actively involved and helped me shape both what and how i did things in the classroom – while there were seven students in this doctoral class, there were indeed eight teachers! probably the first thing to notice about this forum that was originally developed for an online class is the number of items and their complexity which was based on the assumption that 1) students made the decision to take online classes which in this case they did not; 2) there was 24/7 access to respond asynchronously; 3) students recognized that online learning requires a special kind of self-discipline since most (but not all) work was done asynchronously and where the routines of the traditional classroom are absent. in retrospect, none of these assumptions were met when i was trying to overlay this forum on a traditional class setting which led to the need to be open to how i might transform this class which then led to listening to and encouraging students to suggest needed changes! see figure 1. first class session what follows are the steps that i followed at the first class for this course on statistical procedures. while this is where i tried to overlay my online teaching approach in the traditional classroom setting. i have placed clarifying comments in brackets at the end of each step: 1. i stressed that assignments serve as advance organizers (ausubel, 1963) and include references to relevant sections of the text to promote self-learning that includes current issues in education, 25(1) 9 knowledge, understanding, and application which is consistent with “assessment-driven instruction” (see assignment a1 appendix 1). (this same approach was used when the course was taught online so thus far no “mismatches” arose!). 2. i then stressed the underlying concepts or “big ideas” in relation to assignment a1. this continued my use of advance organizers. [i’m not sure to what extent that i did this when teaching the course online, but i just felt for this group of students in the traditional setting that it was important to do so-see assignment a1]. 3. when it came time to decide what teams would work on which items on assignment a1 for the next class, students decided this for themselves (this was a change to what i had done online where i randomly assigned teams prior to the first-class session. in retrospect, i could see clearly that students had come to know each other and to form teams based on their predilections—after all these are adult learners. it may be the case that students in a traditional setting get to know each other better than online students which suggests to me that perhaps more synchronous sessions may be beneficial for online students so they have the opportunity to get to know each other better. in addition, perhaps some sessions should be without the instructor present to give students more freedom to be themselves and to learn from each other). students would work on the questions posed during the week and they would then do a formal team-led discussion on class day. while this seemed like a reasonable approach, whether i did have some lingering doubts. then came that first class where alicia (after talking to her classmates) explained to me that students were simply doing double-work. to complicate matters (but as it turned out helped matters). i always use a flipped approach based on “measurement driven” instruction (author, 1998; author, 2017). students respectfully let me know that there was simply a lot of extra work going on because while online offers a 24/7 window for learning, these students signed-up for a traditional format because that is how they prefer to learn. online learning requires a different kind of discipline compared to the traditional classroom; for example, whereas students and instructor in a traditional face-to-face classroom have direct visual contact and interact intimately via both visual and auditory cues (including assignments), online learners are physically distant and typically engage in mostly (though not completely) in asynchronous interactions. thus, the impetus for completing readings, assignments, etc. must emanate primarily from self-directed or intrinsic motivation. figure 1 individual parent and family factors current issues in education, 25(1) 10 this does not mean that the traditional classroom setting also does not require self-direction but that online learning requires that students regularly set aside time for focused study and posting 1. your first task is for each of you to update us on anything you would like to share on the introduction forum -new jobs, new house, new kid, new dog etc.!! for the following questions, please place the question number in front of each of your responses so that we can keep our discussions clear and organized both for your own team and for other teams as they "snoop"!!! 2. how about sharing any questions regarding anything that you are unclear about in terms of the syllabus or assignments? hopefully your team members, other team members, and maybe even me (if i know the answer) will chime in and help!! 3. assignment a1 (statistics fundamentals) part i asks that you first indicate your emerging sense of your area of inquiry. this may require some of you to transform research questions into those that can be answered by collecting quantitative data--a variation of creswell's "turning the story"! so, how about sharing your problem statement and research questions that can be answered by collecting quantitative data and consequently using statistical procedures to analyze these data. you might even want to ask teammates for advice regarding how to transform qualitatively-focused questions into quantitative questions! 4. part i also asks that you write a paragraph that explains in your own words what various statistical terms mean and how they connect to each other and to your research questions. these terms include populations, samples, variables, parameters and statistics, descriptive and inferential statistical procedures, and sampling error. after you read pp. 2-10 of the gravetter text and have worked through the learning checks, how about discussing some important things you have learned and any questions? 5. regarding a1b, you are asked to explain data structures and to describe how you might use each in your own study which will again may require you to "turn the story" in terms of your research questions. maybe you can begin to share your ideas and questions -we are all eager to collaborate! 6. a1c: "constructs" are what we are really after in research -these include things such as motivation, anxiety, achievement, self-efficacy, satisfaction, etc! however, because we cannot directly see these invisible constructs we develop "operational definitions" and "variables" to represent these constructs. these variables can be defined in different ways (such as discrete and continuous) and then can be further defined by their "levels of measurement". this stuff is important when we get to statistical procedures and so the assignment asks you to describe "in a nutshell" what you have learned. can you share some of your thoughts here? 7. a1d: the only way to learn "statistical notation" is to read the assigned pages (25-29), work your way through the learning check on page 28 and demonstration 1.1 on pp. 30-31. notice that you do not need to submit any report for a1d; however, how about sharing insights and questions with teammates? 8. part ii is hands-on work. how about if your team shares your work here for problems 7,11. you can snoop on the other teams for the other problems! note: each of you individually need to submit your work for problems 19 and 21 as part of a1. please remember that the purpose of these exercises is to increase your understanding, so please try and work through these problems before peeking at the answers at the back of the book! share any questions here!! 9. finally, how about "snooping and posting" on the other two teams including to see how they solved their assigned problems for question #8??!! current issues in education, 25(1) 11 to discussion boards which is sometimes quite challenging when children, household tasks, jobs, and a myriad of other responsibilities are constantly clamoring for attention. interim one-week period between classes 1 and 2 and class 2 at this point, while i was feeling some angst about teaching this course in the traditional classroom, i still thought that required changes would be minor. 1. students and instructor posted responses to the blackboard tasks for the second class [while some students posted responses to the assigned prompts, it was nowhere near the engagement when i taught this class online. however, i still labored under the illusion that with but a few “tweaks” to my online shell and teaching approach all would be well. in retrospect, this was indeed an illusion!]. 2. week 2 forum: i continued to trust that my online format would work with this traditional class. also notice that while i did. see figure 2. third class session when i told rick that i think all of these students are going to earn an “a” grade, he said something like “so…what is the problem…they are all learning and demonstrating a high level of achievement – why shouldn’t they all earn an “a”: grade?” he was exactly right – why do we feel the need to issue grades based on the normal curve especially for doctoral students? while rigor in learning is important, it comes about based on effective teaching practices that are informed by relationship-building and relevancy-building (see cooper & garner, 2012). i should have been celebrating student success rather than bemoaning a lack of “spread” among student grades! it was at this session that we began to hit our stride in transforming from an online to an on ground approach! if you look at the blackboard forum for week 3 (figure 2), you will see that we became even more “assessment driven” but in a way that allowed space for each student and student-team to approach tasks on assignment a2 in a way that made the most sense to them. each student exhibited great diversity in how they led us through their responses to each figure 2 current issues in education, 25(1) 12 week 3 overview task with some projecting their work using powerpoint while others used spss (our statistical program) and others used a combination of methods including engaging the class in dialogue. most importantly, was their recognizing and exhibiting the admonition from week 3 – “however, you are not expected to always know exactly what to do or how to answer a question—that is what our class sessions are for—to learn collaboratively” that i found most satisfying. indeed, that is what we did including me as both instructor and fellow learner. i listened to my adult-learner students and began to shape and transform this class to “meet them where they were” and in the process ended up with something new and exciting! i conclude by saying that although i had been teaching this same topic at two universities for about 15 years, that this was the most exciting learning experience that i had! while it all began with relatively high hopes as i sought to transition from an online to a traditional classroom format and encountered confusion along the way, this experience ultimately led to a renewed appreciation for both the subject matter and a re-affirmation that there are no limits to pedagogical creativity. i was reminded that the purpose of education is not to categorize students and issue grades but learning and growth itself. i hope to carry this realization throughout the remainder of my career. student’s voice (alicia) i entered the program with a small cohort of seven learners and we likely fit the profile of students who would do well in an online program. our group included several teachers, an instructional designer, a former daycare center director, and a social service agency director. all of us were familiar with online learning. since the covid-19 pandemic had forced educational institutions to quickly offer socially-distanced learning options in 2020, most members in our cohort were actively designing or delivering online instruction in their professional roles. several cohort members had completed all or part of their master’s degrees online. i had worked in the development and delivery of online instruction in higher education settings for more than ten years. despite our experiences with online teaching and learning, we had each elected to enroll based on our class discussion, we decided to refashion our forums to focus directly on the assignments starting with a2. we also parceled out who would work on specific items during the week and would then lead discussions on those items in class. however, you are not expected to always know exactly what to do or how to answer a question--that is what our class sessions are for—to learn collaboratively. so, here is who we decided will sorta lead the discussions for questions on a2 on 3/23- q1: ariel and rob q2: roe q3: alicia q4: ashleigh q5: monica q6: lauren see the forums below for each of these questions and i encourage discussion among us as we move boldly forward with this new approach! thanks! captain kirk current issues in education, 25(1) 13 in the on-ground instructional management and leadership ph.d. program in the summer of 2021, when health and safety concerns related to attending class in person were significant. our decisions were based on our personal learning preferences and needs. for example, i had selected the on-ground program because i found engaging with my instructor and peers in a faceto-face setting important. i appreciated that most interaction with the instructor and my peers would occur during the established class session days and times. i valued the autonomy that onground learning afforded for completing reading and homework assignments independently, at days and times that fit my schedule. as adult learners, each of us had established strategies for completing schoolwork within the context of our professional and personal commitments that enabled our success over the first year. and so, we entered the statistics course at the end of our first year in the program. as an instructional designer, my role involves working with on-ground and online courses. as the time for class grew close, i looked forward to engaging with the instructor and the course materials. at first review of the online course shell in the university learning management system, i noticed that the content was well-aligned with the course learning objectives. the instructor developed and posted an extensive collection of lectures and assignments in the learning management system. i noted immediately that the instructor’s passion for the role of statistics in our research was evident and almost contagious. i also noticed that, curiously, the assignments involved substantial online interaction and discussion. the course featured multi-step activities and discussion board interactions to be completed and submitted online before class each week. in short, the class seemed structured as an online class. it was a well-designed online class, but an online class, nonetheless. our instructor posted eight online messages before the first class to welcome our group and provide guidance about the requirements to be completed and submitted as online discussions before the first meeting. in response to the online posting requirements, cohort members posted nearly thirty comments, items, and replies on online discussion boards in the first week. as a result, it was necessary to log into the online course shell regularly to upload completed assignment content and comment on the posts made by the instructor and peers to remain engaged with the conversation. coordinating assignment completion activities with assigned team members required additional time. even if learners kept up with reading and homework during the week, those unable to review discussion boards and post comments regularly feared they were falling behind. several cohort members expressed confusion about the online requirements. it is important to note that the content we were reading in the text was excellent. the lectures provided by the instructor helped illuminate concepts in meaningful ways, and the assignments provided opportunities to apply what we were learning. nevertheless, the online requirements presented a cause for concern. what we were learning was not the problem. how we were required to engage with course content, the instructor, and our peers was beginning to present barriers for us as on-ground learners. challenges included the requirement that students work remotely to complete online group assignments during the week, post completed work in online discussion boards, and engage in online discussions about the content we had posted before presenting the same content in the on-ground class session at the end of the week. over the first two weeks, it was clear that our collective efforts at coordinating ongoing group work online, posting assignment content, and generating meaningful online discussions were a bit shaky. we were murky about the purpose of online and on-ground presentations of the same content to the same cohort. for adult learners, the situation was problematic for at least two reasons. first, cohort members had already shown a willingness to incur risk to attend in-person current issues in education, 25(1) 14 class sessions despite the availability of online options. we valued and thrived on the opportunity to engage in live, on-site discourse. one of the primary benefits of in-person learning, in-the-moment discussions about class content, was diminished because we had already presented and discussed course content online before each live class. the overlapping expectations for in-class and online discussions left cohort members unsure where and how to best engage. although our professor sent multiple messages to generate meaningful discussion online, they were to no avail. presenting the same work in class that we had already submitted and discussed online made in-class discussions seem redundant. a second concern was the requirement that we log into the online course shell frequently to review and post discussion board contributions to build meaningful, week-long discourse online. instead of stimulating meaningful online discussion, the required chat board postings pressured learners to make changes to work schedules, created barriers for those unable to post regularly, and led to confusion about the purpose of presenting the material again during live class sessions. in week three, a change occurred. the instructor invited collaboration with learners to reimagine how we might complete assignments. through discussions about course transformation, learners voiced the value each of us placed on live engagement in class. the instructor used formative assessment data collected through the first two weeks of class and through collaboration with learners to make adjustments to the course delivery strategy. the course assignments and learning objectives did not change. instead, on-ground class meetings were established as the primary setting for student presentations and discussions to better align with our needs as adult learners who had selected on-ground as our learning modality. instead of throwing out the online discussion board, the new design allowed learners to leverage the discussion board, which now served as a resource site for posting authentic questions and relevant information when we needed assistance building presentations for upcoming class meetings which were structured as flipped class sessions. instead of repeating information we had posted online, student-led in-class discussions focused on explaining solutions to homework due later in the week. this learner-developed content was augmented in real-time by discussion presented by the professor and input from cohort members. instead of grading comments posted on the discussion board, the professor began to grade the content presented in live presentations and discussions. rather than passively listening to peer presentations, learners focused closely on the content that would help us complete weekly assignments and asked questions to ensure our understanding. contributing to the now graded in-class discussions required that we prepare for, learn from, and contribute to the presentations of our peers. class discussions naturally began to delve more deeply into meaningful content areas as each of us was responsible for contributing to in-class discussions as a primary means of demonstrating our understanding. as a result, we experienced an authentic enhancement to our learning that fit well within the context of the onground modality and addressed our needs as adult learners. it was a transformation of the course modality and the learning trajectory! researchers have highlighted the importance of using formative assessment data from learners to make real-time changes in course delivery to support learner achievement (veugen, et al., 2021). black and wiliam (2009) noted that the defining value of formative assessment is that it provides data that can be used by learners and instructors to make changes that promote improved learning outcomes. in this case, the instructor used formative assessment data from discussion boards, in-class discussions, and performance on assignments when collaborating with learners to transform the course from an online to an on-ground modality. several areas stand out to me as a learner: first, more online use does not always lead to better engagement current issues in education, 25(1) 15 and achievement, especially in cases where adult-learners have selected on-ground as their course modality. the instructor used formative assessment data to determine that the use of technology and the assignment completion procedures presented barriers for learners and made the decision to adjust the strategy. next, the instructor worked collaboratively with cohort members to reimagine assignment completion procedures and leveraged technology to increase learner engagement. collaborating with learners to address how we wanted to engage through the technology supported self-directed learning skills and promoted our achievement of course learning objectives. next, consistent with adult learning principles, the instructor restored learner autonomy by adjusting online posting requirements to reflect the on-ground modality leading to more meaningful discussions during class and more authentic use of the discussion board. finally, because the formal assessments were already fully aligned with the course learning objectives, it was not necessary to change them. instead, the instructor used the assessments to guide the transformation and generate data to keep learning on track. program director’s voice (rick) as the director of the center for innovative teaching (the faculty training and development department of the university) and the director of our ph.d. program, i have a close and personal perspective of faculty growth and development as well as student perspectives. over the past two years, forced by the necessity of the pandemic lockdown, faculty moved to online synchronous or asynchronous environments. moving all the educational activities online showed that many universities already had the tools and resources necessary for digitalization and for implementing effective decisions (strielkowski, 2020). during this pivotal time, faculty learned a great deal about pedagogical opportunities beyond their traditional comfort zones. they discovered that there were other viable alternatives to teaching and that some things were better taught synchronously while others were better taught asynchronously and still others better taught using traditional face-to-face strategies (f2f). these lessons, after moving out of the pandemic and transitioning back into, a “new normal” have brought new opportunities and new ways for higher education faculty to think about and practice their teaching craft. dumelescu and mutiu (2021) pointed out that an adaptive institution is oriented by taking unpredictable contexts and turning them into impactful opportunities for constituents and that openness to change and becoming resilient are essential dimensions of the challenges facing higher education. the pandemic triggered many challenges but also produced many new opportunities for growth and change. they have kept pedagogies that have worked and redeveloped others to maximize the learning opportunities and many no longer view education as an either or but an inclusive set of teaching perspectives with an enhanced “tool box” of possibilities to differentiate instruction to meet learner needs. by combining or blending modalities, new pedagogies and higher levels of flexibilities were and are still being created. with the use of enhanced technologies that use virtual cameras, hardware, and software, faculty have the option to teach f2f students alongside distance students in what we term a simulcast format. through synchronous computer connections, while incorporating asynchronous platforms and other software and internet tools, faculty can now create a seamless network of strategies that increase student interaction with content, other students, and the instructor in real time (virtually and f2f) as well as asynchronously, separated by time and space. current issues in education, 25(1) 16 all of these changes have created a phenomenon of transitional pedagogy that has allowed faculty who have taught and used online materials, asynchronously and synchronously, to see that it is not an either-or situation but a menu of potential combinations (figure 3). faculty can now see the integration of different modalities used on a sliding scale that is dependent on their understanding of the content, their student’s needs, and the modality that matches best to different lessons or lesson components to convey the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for learning and the internalization of course content. transitional pedagogy provides greater flexibility in the choices that faculty can employ in their teaching from lesson to lesson and from course to course. because of all the pedagogical options that faculty have available to them to achieve course and lesson objectives (i.e., lecture, presentations, direct teaching, demonstration, cooperative learning and group activities, debate, case study, discussion, guest speakers, journaling, learner presentations, and problem based learning) faculty are no longer limited to a single modality but have options that can be used to differentiate instruction. because of these pedagogical opportunities, teaching in the higher education classroom is not a static method but a dynamic paradigm (author, 2015) where faculty utilize their powers of observation, knowledge of content, and understanding of their learners to decide what methods and modalities should be used. the hard edges of solely using, f2f, synchronous, or asynchronous approaches have been softened and different pedagogies and modalities can be integrated based upon the proprietary techniques that faculty choose to employ. figure 3 graphic depiction of transitional pedagogies as figure 4 illustrates, we now have pedagogical options that transcend face to face, synchronous, or asynchronous modalities. to employ these properly, faculty must be constantly current issues in education, 25(1) 17 aware of adult learner needs as well as cognitive load. this awareness assist faculty to make proper modality choices and decide which pedagogy is best for student learning. this ongoing assessment goes beyond formative assessment and moves into a unique form of data driven analysis that informs practice. faculty including the instructor in this article, listened to his students and what they are telling him they need, which is at the heart of adult learning theory and self-directed learning. empathetic teaching practices that take into consideration the realtime needs of students are paramount. choosing, developing, and continuously improving practices are the educational foundations for deliberately developing profound learning (davin, carr-chellman & rogers-shaw, 2022 p. 34). figure 4 venn diagram depiction of hyflex pedagogies as noted earlier, awareness of cognitive load is imperative for an instructor to effectively make the transition from one modality to another or the integration of new pedagogical modalities when transitioning as jim did. when moving from onground to online or current issues in education, 25(1) 18 onground to online the instructor must develop and practice transitional pedagogies while being cognizant of the work load required of students. in transitioning from online to onground, the instructor has an increased number of pedagogies already in place and may be more likely to “pile on work” believing that more is better. this can have a deleterious effect on learning and the learner especially in relation to working and long-term memory. incorporating varying levels of the three modalities in figure 4 provides a unique opportunity when curriculum mapping and understanding the overall value of education through outcomes measurement. “data-driven” means far more than just testing, it relates to using formative assessment data to informs practice. as student-centric instructors, we can focus on student needs and their perspectives on which to build our pedagogies rather than being driven primarily by a need to rigorously “cover the material.” through increased teaching opportunities we find that faculty also have developed skills to map what they are teaching back to program and any outside curriculum standards (i.e., discipline specific goals or outcomes, state standards, accreditation standards, department or school goals). mapping also provides greater opportunity for both formative and summative evaluations through the combination of modalities that can be utilized for individual and group outcomes measures. faculty can now employ online or traditional exams, online or traditional projects (i.e., papers, projects, presentations etc.…) and use the inherent properties of online software and platforms to design interesting and effective outcomes measures. they also have the capabilities to formatively assess (as demonstrated in the dialogue between jim and alicia) their students through more effective forms of online review. in a traditional f2f setting, faculty must rely on their abilities to read body language through questioning techniques in order to know if students are comprehending and ready for new information. with the inclusion of online asynchronous and synchronous opportunities, faculty can utilize a variety of ongoing assessment reviews (i.e., synchronous polling and questions, asynchronous review of discussion board, blog, wiki posts, assignment posts etc). these help faculty to assess a student’s understanding of content. through the use of the different modalities faculty are able to apply more tools to establish outcomes measures. in this new learning environment instructors have both the opportunity and responsibility to decide what might work best. as director of the ph.d. program during the pandemic, i was approached by a group of first-year doctoral students who had signed up with the understanding that the program would be a traditional face to face program with all classes meeting on campus and in person. due to the restrictions of the pandemic and the lockdown, all classes at our university and the vast majority of higher education across the country and the world, were moved to remote learning described by hodges et al. (2020) using synchronous platforms. during one meeting with these first-year students, they requested to talk about the way things were working. i was initially expecting mostly negative feedback only to hear that they were quite pleased with the remote instruction of two different courses and stated that if i wanted to run the entire program this way, they would be supportive! as discussed earlier, some things are better taught and assessed f2f and others taught and assessed better online through synchronous or asynchronous modalities or a combination. one example is the use of discussion boards. an instructor may see value in the f2f discussion at one time while at another time they see the benefit of an online discussion board or both for a particular concept. having the choice to use a variety of options provides greater freedom to choose the best pedagogy in the appropriate modality to meet the established objectives and curriculum. choosing how to meet the objectives in their individual courses is based upon their current issues in education, 25(1) 19 perspectives, discipline specific nuances, and perceived student need to differentiate instruction. we hear a great deal about differentiating to the needs of students which to many has been extremely difficult to meet. now with the integration of multiple modalities on a sliding scale the opportunities become limitless to accomplish this task. voices of reflection instructor’s voice what actually sparked my interest in investigating the problem of course transformation was the unexpected challenges encountered when trying to convert an online doctoral class using blackboard as the lms into a traditional f2f class. while i had transformed courses from a traditional to an online modality, i had never done the reverse. although i vaguely felt that there might possibly be some minor issues in this transformation, i thought that because i have taught at the university level for more than 15 years, that i would be easily be able to resolve any issues with the help of my students. well, while i was right about the willingness of students to help, i was wrong about the issues encountered being “minor”; rather it required a major overhaul to the way that i teach and how the blackboard shell was constructed. what i learned almost immediately from my students is that “more is not better”. alicia in particular helped me (and the rest of the class) understand this. because i had taught several doctoral level courses online since i transitioned these courses from a traditional to an online format in 2016, i had confidence that i could use the same learning processes again with a traditional class with minor adjustments. however, as noted this has not been the case. whereas i recall there was not a great deal of difficulty transforming traditional to online classes, the reverse transformation proved much more difficult. faculty were always told that the quality of our online and traditional classes should be equal; however, i do not think it was emphasized enough that while quality might be equivalent that it would need to be attained in different ways. while i am not sure to what extent there will be a need to transform courses from an online to an on ground modality as the pandemic and other circumstances continue to unfold, i now feel like i am more ready to face the challenges of course transformation. student’s voice what is most remarkable about this case is the instructor's openness to considering options for how assessments would be completed and graded. this openness was instrumental in transforming the course from an online class into a custom offering that effectively addressed the needs of adult, on-ground students while leveraging technology to enhance learning. the experience was one of the most formative learning experiences of my graduate career. in addition to acquiring valuable statistics knowledge that i applied in completing my dissertation, i have had the opportunity to participate in the real-time transformation of a course from one modality to another from the learner's perspective. i witnessed what can happen when an instructor carefully monitors and applies assessment information, changing course delivery strategy to ensure that learners meet the target learning outcomes. although i have participated in course transformation in my work as an instructional designer, this was the first time i experienced course transformation from a learner's perspective. i will apply the lessons learned in my research and instructional design work. program director’s voice current issues in education, 25(1) 20 we are seeing a shift in expectation from faculty and students as well as some new opportunities that have emerged for higher education. the dynamics of either face to face or online learning as divergent options have grown into a different set of expectations for higher ed teachers, learners and for universities in general. through the use of technological opportunities, we are now seeing, what used to be some crossover through blended learning, flipped classrooms and hybrid approaches has exploded into an entirely new combination of learning environments where faculty can employ and learners can learn through a variety of traditional, synchronous and asynchronous online pedagogies. no longer is higher education limited to the uniqueness of one way. all need to be aware of these new teaching and learning modalities and the implications they have for practice. from a faculty’s perspective, it opens up so many new options for deploying a mixture of dynamic pedagogies that can better serve the learners based upon the instructors understanding of the content, discipline and student needs. from the learner’s perspective, they now have more opportunities for learning and internalizing content in ways that differentiated instruction to strategies that are preferred and more convenient for adult learning styles. from a university’s perspective, this not only provides better opportunities for teaching but also can open and expand learning markets. online asynchronous has done that to a degree over the years but now with what was learned about the inclusion of synchronous learning coupled with asynchronous a new world of online learners becomes possible. there has always been a certain faction of learners who didn’t want to learn at a distance because of the limited real time interactions of asynchronous lms alone modalities. this can now be rectified and provide distance learners with an appealing alternative through simulcasting. coll & ruch (2021), stated that leaders must guide their institutions to be studentoriented, have technologically based programming, and have relevant fiscal plans in place. this implies the need for rapid innovation by administrative leaders in higher education with awareness in how to respond to covid or other threats to instruction and pedagogical designs. the constructivist theory of learning supports models of instruction where student-centered activities enhance learning through active and reflective processes that are applied and processed (paily, 2013) which hyflex provides through the transitional pedagogies providing an enhanced or broadened set of opportunities. moore (1997; 2006) opines that distance learning creates a communication or psychological separation where greater discussion and less structure reduce the distance between student and instructor and less interaction and more structure increase that distance. much of this is also driven by learner autonomy or what could be described as learner control. this is at the heart of adult learning theory and models of learning. consequently, the learning experiences of adults are considered transformative in nature (mezirow, 2000; taylor, 2008) and to internalize new knowledge and theories, an adult’s prior experiences and former perspectives serve as the foundation to introduce new knowledge and skills through new and fresh educational modalities. day, lovato, tull, and ross-gordon (2011) also found that adult learners should be provided with structure to comfortably and effectively organize their learning which the hyflex model with the transitional pedagogies supports. this provides the instructor with an expanded set of tools and pedagogical modalities to deliver content in manners that best fit adult learner needs blending the clarity of real time learning through either f2f or synchronous interactions with the self-directed nature of asynchronous content connections as depicted in figure 4. limitations and delimitations current issues in education, 25(1) 21 there are, of course, both limitations and delimitations of this study. regarding the latter, we were concerned only with our university and did not place transferability (“generalizability”) at the forefront of our study. therefore, we have with kind intentions placed the onus on our readers to determine the extent to which our environment and circumstances (context) resemble those that they confront or are of interest. all three of us hereby make ourselves available for any further clarification that you may need, and we wish you the very best in your own explorations. conclusions, implications, and recommendations the “three voices” reflect our unique perspectives based on our roles as instructor, student, and program director and what we each took away from this “actionable knowledge” since we got to learn from each other as we reflected on the same phenomenon. specific findings that we think are important to note include the student voice (alicia) related to formative assessment where she notes how vital it is for instructors to be open to their students’ voices. since all three authors have engaged in teaching in higher education, we all agree that without student feedback, we would have blithely gone our own way thinking that all was well. while this is sometimes the case, most often it is not. because of his unique position and vantage point, the program director (rick) due to his unique vantage point has been able to discern that that while good teachers can thrive under many different circumstances, pedagogy itself has been transformed as a consequence of the pandemic and how technology can be blended in diverse ways with both traditional classroom teaching as well as with online teaching. finally, while the instructor (jim) started off this inquiry based on the surprising challenges he encountered when transforming an online class to a traditional class, he benefitted tremendously from the depth, breadth, and richness that resulted from collaboration with alicia and rick. this collaborative effort resulted in a mosaic depicting a more complete gestalt compared to what we each would have learned in isolation about traditional and online learning and teaching – it was almost like a literature review in real time. what we learned or more accurately re-learned is that student-centered teaching is much more than an oft-repeated expression but rather gets at the heart of the matter – what do we want students to walk out of our classroom door with at the end of a course with, whether that door is real or virtual, in terms of knowledge, understandings, appreciations, and predispositions to continue learning and growing? the instructor voice re-learned this lesson when reminded by the student voice that teaching modalities cannot trump student needs and that formative evaluation (aka listening to students) is a powerful component of quality instruction. the program director’s voice is one that provides a kind of wisdom that accrues from being intimately connected to the uniqueness of both students and faculty in terms of who they are and how they learn and teach – and the value inherent in this uniqueness. because of our collaborative efforts, the three voices are now more in harmony with each other and open to future opportunities to improve learning and teaching no matter the modality. because every university, program, students, and teachers are unique, we hesitate to offer sweeping recommendations; however, if one thing stands out as essential, it is that by creating a culture of collaboration wonderful synergistic things can happen. we look at this article as one of these because it far transcends an academic exercise. rather, it has set the tone for expanded collaborative efforts based on nurturing the “small” ideas that a faculty member may have and creating a field of inquiry that can go far beyond an individual’s vision. in a word, it can be exhilarating and we hope that others can create their own unique versions of collaboration! current issues in education, 25(1) 22 instructor voice addendum during the writing of this article, we have passed inexorably from one semester to another and now i find myself teaching yet another course that i originally developed in the online modality which i now am teaching face-to-face. i felt that it was important to not only reinforce the lessons that i learned based on what we wrote above but to share this lesson with yet another group of doctoral students. here (figure 5) is what i announced to them prior to our second class meeting- figure 5 announcement to a new group of students all three voices now fully understand and agree that the days of fixed demarcations among teaching approaches are outdated and that learning and teaching should no longer be circumscribed by shopworn labels. rather, it is time for us to be open to innovative and multiple approaches that are authentic to real-life learning and designed to engage, excite, and energize our students. dear students, old habits die hard as i continue to put a bit of an online spin on a face-to-face class - such as calling this week 2 instead of class 2! as i mentioned previously, i learned from a previous class that we can't just overlay an online modality on a face-to-face class. face-to-face students (such as yourselves) chose this modality because it is you preferred way of learning even though you are aware of the convenience and flexibility that online learning offers. however, one of the most important characteristics of online learning is that learning is seen as 24/7 and not confined to particular class meetings. based on this preamble, i try to offer the best of both worlds when teaching a face-toface class by doing a few things like providing all assignments at the beginning of the term so that you can integrate these assignments with collaborative team planning and discussions during the week in our online forums. this in turn should help each of your teams prepare to take these discussions "live" at our thursday class. for our class session this week, your teams will lead us in discussing the following chapters from our text which are extremely relevant at this stage of your scholarly journey chapter 4: scholarly reading as a model for scholarly writing chapter 5: working with tensions: writing for publication during your doctorate chapter 6: the process of transforming the dissertation into publication i look forward to more great learning experiences both online and face-to-face! thanks and see you thursday! jim current issues in education, 25(1) 23 references ausubel, d. 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(2021). we agree on what we see: teacher and student perceptions of formative assessment practice. studies in educational evaluation, 70, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2021.101027 vredeveldt, a., hitch, g., & baddeley, a. d. (2011). eyeclosure helps memory by reducing cognitive load and enhancing visualization. memory & cognition, 39, 1253–1263. author notes james a. bernauer, university professor emeritus (corresponding author) orcid http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2480-5087 affiliation robert morris university email bernauer@rmu.edu richard g. fuller email fuller@rmu.edu alicia m. cassels email cassels@rmu.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2480-5087 mailto:bernauer@rmu.edu mailto:fuller@rmu.edu mailto:cassels@rmu.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ current issues in education, 25(1) 27 education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts: teachers’ perceptions of best practices for literacy current issues in education, 23(2) 1 volume 23, issue 2 october 28, 2022 issn 1099-839x comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts: teachers’ perceptions of best practices for literacy jennifer a. manak, rollins college chelsey bahlmann bollinger, james madison university courtney shimek, west virginia university jennifer barrett-tatum, western carolina university debra wellman, rollins college abstract: this study illuminates the voices of literacy teachers. findings from this study were based on a questionnaire about what teachers perceive as best practices in literacy instruction. we received 44 fully completed questionnaires. the 44 teacher respondents ranged from pre-k through 6th grade with experience ranging from 1 to 20+ years of teaching. teachers came from rural, suburban, and urban schools, with 40% of these teachers in title i schools. more than 130 best practices in literacy instruction were identified by our teacher participants. teachers’ responses illustrated many of the components of comprehensive literacy instruction that covered a broad array of practices from the initiation of instruction through the assessment of student learning. literacy teachers’ responses were organized into three themes: preparing for instruction, literacy instruction, and student assessment and differentiation. keywords: literacy instruction, best practices for literacy instruction, teacher preparation citation: manak, j., bollinger, c.b., shimek, c., barrett-tatum, j., & wellman, d. (2022). comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts: teachers’ perceptions of best practices for literacy. current issues in education, 23(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss2.2029 accepted: april 28, 2022 introduction within the last decade, there have been several public challenges to the teaching of reading, which suggest that literacy teacher preparation programs are “ignoring the sound science behind how people become readers” (hanford, 2018). attention-grabbing headlines like “why are we teaching reading the wrong way?” (hanford, 2018) and “why johnny still can’t read—and what to do about it” (wexler, 2018) are incredibly misleading. the underpinnings of such attention-grabbing headlines ignore the voices of teachers and reinforce detrimental myths about reading instruction. they misrepresent what’s happening in classrooms, higher education teacher preparation programs, and current research. what gets misconstrued is the https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss2.2029 manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 2 literacy teachers’ professional judgment and ability to determine what works best for their own students. after all, shavelson and towne (2002) argued, “scientific findings interact with differing views in practical and political arenas. the scientist discovers the basis for what is possible. the practitioner, parent, or policy maker, in turn, has to consider what is practical, affordable, desirable, and credible” (p. 49). given the lack of teacher voices in the aforementioned articles and a dearth of research exploring what current teachers conceive of best practices, this research set out to understand what teachers perceive to be best literacy practices in their elementary classrooms. while there is no one “right way” to teach reading, there are a multitude of effective instructional practices. we have good evidence that access to text that can be read with accuracy is an effective practice (lindsay, 2013). additionally, opportunities to engage with text are also related to improved reading achievement (e.g., allington et al., 2010). we know that when children are allowed to self-select books, their engagement and reading achievement are improved (guthrie & humenick, 2004). we also know that when students engage in bookrelated conversations focused on higher-order understandings, students benefit greatly (ivey & johnston, 2013; nystrand, 2006). in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms, using explicit decoding instruction for about 10-minutes per day provides the best results (national reading panel, 2000). lastly, we know that teachers matter. not because they have specialized degrees or know how to manage time but because they know what to do with time to maximize student learning (allington & johnston, 2002; pressley et al., 2001). today’s teachers are equipped with a breadth of research-based instructional practices and pedagogical knowledge. in an era where society questions teachers’ professionalism and their ability to teach reading, how do educators describe the best practices used in literacy instruction? our study went directly to the teachers of reading in the elementary grades to hear their voices and better understand their perceptions of best instructional practices. rather than collecting a “top 10” list of the most widely used literacy practices, 44 teachers identified more than 130 effective practices and strategies. the search for best practices in reading instruction the process of eliminating subpar practices and standardizing the most efficient practices has been applied across countless fields. concepts such as “maximum prosperity” in business management (robbins & judge, 2009, p. 270) and “best practices” in education arose from this process (kuh, 2001, p. 66). the central idea is that inefficient practices should be eliminated while those that streamline a process should be encouraged. george kuh used the term “best practice” to identify collegiate practices in “schools that performed better than expected” (kuh, 2001, p. 66), and this term has worked its way into the lexicon of k-12 schools. literacy’s “best practices” include methods that help more students achieve literacy goals at a pace better than expected. in the 1960s, the u.s. office of education sponsored research to identify “best practices” in literacy instruction for elementary students. one of the most famous studies during this time was an examination of first-grade reading instruction conducted by bond and dykstra (1967). they concluded that the teacher, not the materials nor the methods of instruction, had the largest effect on student achievement. research continues to untangle what quality literacy teaching encompasses through the identification of effective classroom practices as defined by student literacy achievement (wharton-mcdonald, pressley, & hampston, 1998). manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 3 in 1999, congress convened the national reading panel (nrp) with the charge to “determine the most effective evidence-based methods for teaching children to read” (2000). according to this panel, the best approach to reading instruction included “explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, systematic phonics instruction, methods to improve fluency, [and] ways to enhance comprehension” (nrp, 2000). this led to the focus on the five pillars of literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency (cassidy, valadez, & garrett, 2010). views of effective literacy instruction were noted as a balance of phonics-based instruction for encoding and decoding and meaning-based comprehension and writing with vocabulary instruction encompassed throughout (fisher, frey, & akhavan, 2019). despite the view of balance, the “science of reading” focused namely on phonological and graphophonemic aspects of literacy and teachers’ knowledge or lack thereof for providing effective literacy instruction (hudson et al., 2021). burkins and yates (2021) discuss that as educators are rethinking what balance looks like within literacy instruction, it is important to review research, reconsider practices, and envision new instructional possibilities. for instance, many teachers overlook the role of listening comprehension in reading comprehension, the student’s capacity to understand spoken language. the authors share research supporting that understanding spoken language and understanding written language are two different things, so opportunities to grow oral language help in developing the comprehension mechanism of reading (quinn et al., 2015; lervåg, a., hulme, c., & melby‐lervåg, m., 2018). burkins and yates (2021) seek to “shift the balance” by encouraging teachers to revise some current literacy practices while continuing to use other practices common to both balanced literacy and the science of reading as they make instructional decisions based on their knowledge of their students. what are best practices in literacy? while many research programs and curricula guides refer to “best practices,” scholars examining the field of literacy research have disagreed on what are best practices for literacy teaching (bricker et al., 2017). since we were interested in how teachers determine best practices, this review of literature emphasizes studies that include the voices of teachers and examine highly effective teaching practices. interwoven and responsive to students wharton-mcdonald, pressley, and hampston (1998) set out to determine best practices in literacy education by examining teaching practices of those identified by language arts coordinators as being “highly effective.” they observed and interviewed teachers nominated as “outstanding” or “typical” in their ability to teach literacy skills and determined eight aspects common among the teachers with the highest student success. their research found that the most effective teachers provide: (a) coherent and thorough integration of skills with high-quality reading and writing experiences, (b) a high density of instruction (integration of multiple goals in a single lesson), (c) extensive use of scaffolding, (d) encouragement of student self-regulation, (e) a thorough integration of reading and writing activities, (f) high expectations for all students, (g) masterful classroom management, and (h) an awareness of their practices and the goals underlying them (p. 101). although some researchers argue that these qualities are challenging to produce, if not worthy teaching goals, the delicate art of weaving all these eight skills together emphasizes the complexity of strong literacy instruction. on a smaller scale, scott et al. (2009) interviewed three manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 4 literacy educators with extensive experience in urban schools to determine what learners need most. they, too, found that teaching literacy is a complex process that requires well-trained teachers that can respond to students’ motivations, cultural differences, and emotional needs. contextually and culturally situated in smagorinsky’s (2018) reflection of his own practice, he problematized one-size-fits-all literacy practices by highlighting the need for contextual teaching practices. his experiences conducting literacy education development in guadalajara, mexico emphasized the need for culturally situated teaching practices and that literacy teaching relies upon the context and cultural knowledge of the students. smagorinsky argued that any notion of best practices in education will fail students if the contextualized, relational, and situational nature of human commerce is not considered first. smagorinsky highlighted the intricate process of determining best practices and supporting others’ beliefs that best practices need to be contextually situated. lastly, peck (2010) conducted a study of a school’s faculty-led process of switching literacy curricula and amplified the teacher’s opinions of the process. in hearing teachers’ voices, peck emphasized teachers’ ownership of the curriculum based on the contextual needs of their students but found that teachers asked for significant amounts of support and professional development. ultimately, the faculty transformed their school through a focus on inquiry-based learning, curriculum alignment, and assessment-based literacy instruction, which were areas the teachers determined as best practices. peck found that targeted and useful professional development empowers teachers to take ownership of their instruction, encourages culturally relevant teaching, and provides ongoing support from instructional leaders and administration. even though the most effective practices of teaching literacy are still being debated amongst researchers (bricker et al., 2017), examinations of effective literacy teachers demonstrate that best practices include having confident teachers that understand the complexities of their job, professional development aligned with teacher’s needs, and allowing teachers to adapt curricula to meet the contextual needs of a community. how do teachers determine their teaching practices? considering the mixed messages about best practices from literacy researchers, government stakeholders, and advocacy groups, we contemplated how teachers determine best practices. some researchers approached how teachers determine best practices by examining their teacher education programs. scales et al. (2017) conducted a seven-year longitudinal study to better understand how teacher education programs shape the teaching identities of pre-service and in-service teachers. after examining teacher preparation program documents, they conducted a multi-case study by following former teacher candidates located in seven different environments across the u.s. throughout their first year of teaching. they conducted three observations of the new teachers’ classrooms, conducted interviews, and collected field notes. their findings illustrated that teacher education programs greatly influence the identities of novice teachers, but that each local and school context also shaped the teaching practices of their participants. ultimately, they found that pre-service and in-service teachers think of themselves as decision-makers, and strong teacher education programs help foster this identity. in a similar, but different approach, roe (2004), conducted a study of one excellent literacy teacher and found that this teacher relied upon professional development, colleagues, dialogue, state and district initiatives, and her established theoretical framework when making instructional decisions. later, brunetti and marston (2018) took up a similar study on a larger manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 5 scale and interviewed 53 early and mid-career teachers (years 1-10) about professional development and what they found helpful throughout their careers. all participants were former graduates of a 5-year teacher education program at a mid-size liberal arts university on the west coast of the united states. brunetti and marston (2018) found that teachers primarily emphasized validation, collaboration, relationships with students, continuing professional engagement, leadership, and balance as important themes contributing to their professional growth. they argued that these themes are correlated with teacher identity development and should be considered by teacher educators and school personnel. finally, squires and bliss (2004) explored teachers’ best practices by focusing on two teachers that appeared to have similar beliefs but acted in dramatically different ways. squires and bliss (2004) discovered a more nuanced and complex understanding of the teacher’s beliefs towards student autonomy, literacy development, and the role of the teacher in the classroom. the two teachers demonstrated that beliefs are not always visible as actions in the classroom, and thus understanding teachers’ practices is a deeply complex process. ultimately, squires and bliss (2004) argued for the importance of listening to teachers’ voices and explanations of their practices. considering the previous research on best practices, we were curious to better understand elementary literacy teachers’ conceptions of best practices. this led five professors of literacy education from four institutions to contemplate how elementary teachers navigate their literacy instruction, including scientifically based literacy research. thus, this study’s research question was: what do teachers believe are “best practices” in literacy instruction? findings from this study were based on a national questionnaire gathering rich descriptive voices of teachers regarding what they perceive as best practices in literacy instruction and how they orchestrate these effective practices. conceptual framework working from an understanding that learning to teach is grounded in experiences of practice (e.g., korthagen, loughran, & russell, 2006; peercy & troyan, 2017), we argue that it is critical to listen to teachers’ voices, as they are the experts. this perspective is born from a sociocultural understanding of learning that learning occurs in interaction with one’s environment, including the experiences and other people, texts, and tools embedded therein (e.g., bakhtin, 1986; putnam & borko, 2000; vygotsky & cole, 1978; bruner, 1984). zeichner et al. (2015) similarly raised the question of whose knowledge counts for informing teacher education. they argue about the importance of hearing a variety of voices to transform approaches to teacher education and suggest horizontal expertise as a way to bring together the unique knowledge of a range of different people, spaces, and situations. methods data collection for this study included a qualitative questionnaire designed by the research team, which was administered to elementary literacy teachers (prek-6th). the questionnaire consisted of eight open-ended questions that prompted participants to describe items related to their perceptions of best practices for literacy instruction (see appendix a). the present study focuses solely on two questions relating directly to teachers’ perceptions of best practices. as both questions related to participants’ perceptions of best practices, reliability between their perceptions and their implementation of these practices was not dependent upon what was reported versus what was implemented. https://www.tandfonline.com/reader/content/17f16745b7f/10.1080/01626620.2019.1675201/format/epub/epub/xhtml/index.xhtml#cit0068 manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 6 each of the five researchers initially emailed the qualtrics questionnaire to 20 elementary school teachers within our professional networks (approximately 100 teachers). next, colleagues from a professional research group emailed the questionnaire to elementary teachers within their professional networks. forty-four complete questionnaires met the criteria of educators who taught literacy (reading and writing) in grades pre-k through 6th. the 44 teacher respondents from eight states across the eastern united states ranged from 1 to 20+ years of teaching experience. teachers came from rural, suburban, and urban schools, with 40% in title i schools (see appendix b for participant demographics). data analysis this analysis focused on the first two questions of the questionnaire relating to teachers’ descriptions of literacy instruction best practices in the ideal classroom: 1. in your ideal classroom, describe what literacy (reading and writing) instruction looks like? 2. when you think about best practices in literacy instruction (reading and writing), what comes to mind? responses to these two questions were recorded, tallied, and categorized. there were numerous phases of thematic coding. in phase 1, the researchers worked together to establish codes and definitions based on 5% of the questionnaire responses. in phase 2, members of the research team coded all responses individually using the pre-established codes and definitions. in phase 3, members of the research team split into two groups to discuss their coding and ensure validity. each group achieved consensus amongst their individually-determined codes and worked together to employ descriptive coding (miles & huberman, 1994; strauss & corbin, 1998) by assigning phrases that summarized passages of participants’ responses. these phrases later became larger themes presented in the findings. in phase 4, the two groups reconvened and employed pattern coding (miles & huberman, 1994) by examining the descriptive codes and larger themes determined by each individual group for commonalities between the different coding teams. once consensus was reached amongst all members of the research team about the larger themes and responses that fit under these themes, they were further consolidated into a smaller number of categories (glaser & strauss, 1967). reliability was reached through regular bi-weekly meetings held by zoom, and an iterative, recursive process continued until the researchers reached a consensus on the themes to be discussed in the findings. lastly, once the larger themes and questionnaire responses were agreed upon by the research team, we went back to the original responses from the questionnaire and sorted the responses by demographic information such as primary (k-2nd) and intermediate (3rd-5th) grade-level bands, geographic location, and identifying information about the teacher (e.g., race, school ses). findings more than 130 best practices in literacy instruction were identified by our teacher participants. teachers illustrated many of the components of morrow and gambrell’s (2014) comprehensive literacy instruction. teachers’ responses covered a broad array of practices from the initiation of instruction through the assessment of student learning. literacy teachers’ responses were organized into three themes: preparing for instruction, literacy instruction, and student assessment and differentiation (figure 1). manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 7 figure 1 moving towards comprehensive literacy instruction: literacy teachers’ perceptions of best practices within these categories, teachers described practices, strategies, and theories that were further organized into subcategories. in the following subsections, we highlight the authentic language teacher respondents used when describing best practices. although we parsed these into discrete subcategories, we saw overlap in comments and that some practices could be incorporated within various categories and across grade levels. our data analysis considered the context in which the teachers identified these best practices within their responses and organized them accordingly. teachers’ top responses in each category and/or subcategory were identified and analyzed by grade-level bands (see appendix c). regardless of teachers’ different school settings, years of experience, and/or numbers of students identified as ell or ese within their schools, teachers’ responses illustrated the complexity of reading instruction and the multitude of tools teachers have available to address the needs of their students. for instance, a white, female, intermediate-grade teacher in an urban, title one school in massachusetts (51-75% ell and 10-25% ese) with a master’s degree and 10-14 years of teaching experience explained: in my ideal classroom, i would love to be able to follow a true reader’s and writer’s workshop format. i would like to do a mini-lesson for each subject and then have them move into independent practice. in reading, after the independent practice, i would have guided reading groups and would like to meet with two out of four of my reading groups each day. the two groups i do not meet with would manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 8 be working on independent projects that focus on the skill i am teaching for the week, or enrichment projects for the advanced readers. similarly, a white, female, primary-grade teacher in a suburban, title one school in georgia (less than 10% ell and ese) with a bachelor’s degree and less than four years of teaching experience articulated: ideally, reading instruction looks like flexibly grouped small groups, differentiated based on what each individual group needs during instruction. this would give me more time to effectively work with each individual student in a small group setting/individually to meet their needs. (this is somewhat the plan each day, but the chaos of first grade seems to get the better of us on many days!) ideally, writing instruction looks like writer’s workshop, with a brief whole group mini lesson, leading to individual work time through the writing process (brainstorming, bubble maps, rough drafting, conferencing with students about writing, self-evaluating truthfully using rubrics, peer evaluating, etc.). furthermore, a white, female, intermediate-grade teacher in a suburban school in massachusetts (less than 10% ell and ese) with a master’s degree and 15-19 years of teaching experience stated: in an ideal classroom literacy would be balanced and differentiated to the needs of my individual learners. there would be time for engaging, authentic texts read individually, as a class, small group, and as shared reading. there would be time for word work and building vocabulary as well as directed phonics instruction for students who needed it. i would use a writer’s workshop model with students that connected with themes and texts in the reading block of the day. analysis of the data, such as the excerpts above, made us even more aware of the comprehensive nature of literacy instruction. preparing for instruction within the subcategories for preparing for instruction, teacher responses demonstrated many considerations that they use to guide the preparation of their literacy environment. teachers identified the importance of preparation for establishing a meaningful, supportive literacy environment as a foundation for engaging and motivating reading and writing instruction. these were grouped into five subcategories: (1) theoretical and scholarly basis, (2) literacy environment, (3) motivating literacy practices, (4) grouping options, and (5) literacy tools. table 1 provides a comprehensive list of the best practices that teachers identified within these categories. table 1 preparing for instruction subcategories theoretical and scholarly basis 6+1 traits (culham) bloom’s taxonomy daily 5 (boushey) fountas & pinnell lucy calkins reading workshop writing workshop zpd zone of proximal development manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 9 literacy environment balanced (see our definition) class size comfy and cozy environment develop life-long learners fluid instruction integrated joyful experiences literacy block/ uninterrupted time love of reading/writing materials readily available share [sharing] teacher as facilitator teacher voice in curriculum motivating literacy practices challenging choice (students) engagement meaningful literacy experiences student interest grouping options collaboration small groups individual/1:1 with teacher partners whole group literacy tools anchor charts anchor text w/ supplemental level readers authentic texts brainstorming bubble maps graphic organizers* literature (use of quality) mentor texts scope and sequence standards sticky notes technology wide variety of texts/genres theoretical and scholarly basis teachers reflected both explicitly and implicitly on the theoretical and scholarly foundation for their teaching practices. responses in this category were evenly distributed between primary and intermediate grade teachers. while one teacher with primary and intermediate teaching responsibilities specifically mentioned the zone of proximal development (zpd) (vygotsky, 1978), we see evidence of other teachers across grade levels referring to the theoretical underpinnings of zpd with descriptions such as “teaching that is based on where your students are—not a one size fits all model.” another teacher mentioned bloom’s taxonomy (1956) explicitly. however, other teachers implicitly identified practices imbued with bloom’s taxonomy, such as using “metacognitive strategies,” “challenging” students, identifying “learning targets,” and utilizing “higher order questioning.” while teachers did not explicitly name other theories or theorists, we see evidence of theoretical basis in teachers’ instructional manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 10 practices. for instance, we see instructional practices grounded in theoretical concepts such as reader response theory (rosenblatt, 1978), constructivist approaches (vygotsky, 1978; bruner, 1991), and sociocultural theory (vygotsky, 1934/1986). teachers also mentioned literacy scholars and/or their approaches, such as the daily 5 (boushey & moser, 2006), fountas & pinnell’s guided reading (1996), and 6 +1 traits (culham, 2003); however, the greatest number of responses across grade-levels focused on grounding their instruction in calkins, (1994) reading and writing workshop approaches. literacy environment with the most frequent number of mentions, fifteen k-5 teachers emphasized that an ideal literacy environment would have an uninterrupted block of time for literacy instruction. one intermediate teacher highlighted “a designated amount of time daily for writing instruction and practice,” while a primary grade teacher mentioned “a 90-minute ela block” and then further described the components that it would include. teachers across grade levels articulated the significance of creating an instructional environment that supports a love of learning. within the literacy environment subcategory, teacher comments emphasized “developing life-long learners,” “developing a love of reading,” and engaging students in “joyful experiences” within a “comfy and cozy environment.” teachers also frequently commented on the importance of balanced, integrated literacy experiences as well as interconnecting reading and writing instruction. motivating literacy practices motivating literacy practices (turner & paris, 1995) played a prominent part in teachers’ thoughts about best practices. overwhelmingly, teachers’ responses most frequently included choice and engagement with meaningful experiences and student interest followed by challenge. slightly more intermediate than primary teachers identified the importance of allowing students to make choices in various aspects of their literacy learning. a teacher with primary and intermediate teaching experience articulated the motivational aspect of choice in combination with student interest when she explained, “it is important for kids to read what they want and write what they want. . . . i think they need to explore and find out what they love so that we build on it as they grow.” while teachers often referred to choice within their students’ independent reading and writing topics, an intermediate grade teacher emphasized the role of choice in assessment with “students making choices as to how they would like to demonstrate their learning/understanding of important skills/concepts.” student engagement was also slightly more emphasized by intermediate than primary grade teachers. responses included “engagement with all kinds of literature” and “engagement in whole group and small group instruction.” illustrative of the interconnected nature of engagement, student interest, and meaningful literacy experiences, an intermediate teacher explained, “students should be engaged in personal narratives, writing in various genres, and learning about the writer’s craft . . . if we are to encourage students to become strong writers they must learn to love writing first. that happens with students writing about themselves and their lives.” a primary grade teacher highlighted that in an ideal reading environment, “students engage in guided reading every day, time for phonics instruction, and center work where they engage in comprehension and fluency practice.” as seen in the previous quotes, teachers’ responses were woven with the importance of providing meaningful experiences and identifying students’ interests. one primary grade teacher wrote, “…reading instruction in an ideal manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 11 classroom is when students’ interests in a wide variety of genres are nurtured, and they are engaged with all kinds of literature.” grouping options teachers identified a variety of grouping practices ranging from whole group to small groups to one-on-one individual instruction. small groups represented the grouping practice most frequently articulated by the k-6 teachers, whole groups were the second most frequent response. small groups, mentioned by a few more primary than intermediate teachers, were identified for a variety of uses, including collaborative work groups, direct instruction, and differentiated, targeted instruction. whole group instruction and independent/individual instruction, the third most common grouping option, were both identified nearly equally between both groups of teachers. teachers often included multiple grouping options within their responses. for instance, a primary grade teacher explained, “in the ideal classroom, there is a mix of whole group and small group instruction. mini lessons, strategy groupings, student/teacher conferencing are all part of the classroom.” similarly, an intermediate teacher articulated the importance of implementing multiple grouping options in a “workshop model where kids are constantly reading and writing independently to practice their skills while the teacher conferences 1:1 or teaches guided instruction through small groups.” with slightly more intermediate teachers mentioning collaboration and partner work in their responses, these were the least frequently mentioned but included collaborative practices between students such as “partner talk,” “think-pair-share,” and “turn and talk.” teachers’ flexibility in using different grouping options based on the context of their instruction was an important aspect woven throughout their responses. literacy tools often at the forefront of thinking about best practices was using the standards as a guiding tool for instruction. nearly twice as many primary grade teachers than intermediate grade teachers cited standards. the use of a wide variety of texts/genres and authentic texts were the next two most frequently identified best practices respectively by both groups of teachers. one intermediate teacher highlighted the significance of “texts that feature characters and situations that reflect the student population with a good variety of mentor texts and classic children’s literature.” teachers’ comments about best practices often included a “wide variety of texts,” “authentic texts,” “literature,” and “anchor and/or mentor texts.” teachers named several other tools for literacy instruction, with some broader in nature (e.g., graphic organizers and technology), while others were more concrete and specific (e.g., post-it notes and bubble maps). literacy instruction at the heart of comprehensive literacy instruction is the actual implementation of instruction and the ways teachers engage learners. teachers’ responses revealed a broad definition of literacy, including reading, writing, listening, speaking, and visually representing. the majority of best practices were categorized in this section. while developing and preparing for instruction are important for setting the stage for the instructional process, actual teaching happens when students are actively engaged in learning. we further divided the best practices into two categories: teacher-centered instruction and student-centered learning in table 2 below. manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 12 table 2 literacy instruction teacher-centered instruction student-centered practice/application activating and building prior knowledge aligned instruction assigned activities balanced literacy book units close reading gaps comprehension daily five deepen students’ understanding developing reading & writing skills direct instruction grammar guided practice guided reading higher order questioning integrated with content interactive read alouds learning targets (objectives) matching students with books metacognitive strategies mini-lessons model(ing) reading phonemic awareness phonics read aloud shared reading shared writing sight words flexible, small group instruction skill/strategy-based instruction think alouds unit-based instruction vocabulary word study applying strategies book talks book to write in & highlight literacy centers/stations discussion enrichment fluency practices hands-on learning independent reading independent writing interactive notebooks invented spelling literacy integration with content-area units journaling literature circles making connections notice and note partner talk/think-pair-share/ turn & talk personal narratives practice with a variety of texts project-based learning reader’s workshop rereading student-centered writing process writers and readers notebooks quick writes rewriting revising/editing response writing responding to books rough drafting student accountability sustained silent reading (ssr) think critically varied writing tasks writer’s workshop manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 13 teacher-centered instruction best practices within this category focused on the teacher’s instruction and guidance of students’ learning. more specifically, this category included a variety of practices that focused on the teachers’ role, instructional strategies and skills, curriculum, and lesson design. guided reading, mini lessons, and read alouds were the top three most frequently mentioned practices by both primary and intermediate grade teachers. guided reading stood out with over 33 mentions, which was nearly twice the other most frequently identified categories. slightly more intermediate than primary teachers identified guided reading as a best practice. an intermediate teacher highlighted, “small group guided reading allows the teacher to focus on individual strengths and weaknesses, which can be done with the whole class book or secondary texts” before further adding, “[r]ead aloud is an important time of the day in the elementary classroom and allows students to explore reading concepts in a stakes-free setting.” similar to many teachers’ responses, one primary grade teacher addressed several practices stating, “teachers teach mini lessons based on the comprehension skill of the day. then, students spend time in independent reading while teachers are conferencing with students, pulling strategy groups or guided reading groups depending on the grade level.” the bulk of practices that teachers shared focused on their role leading and facilitating instruction. interestingly, all categories except book units and deepening students’ understanding were mentioned by both primary as well as intermediate teachers. in addition to emphasizing guided reading, teachers also mentioned modeling as well as shared reading and writing activities within the classroom. within their explanations, teachers identified ways they intentionally craft their instruction, such as deepening students’ understandings, developing reading and writing skills, activating and building prior knowledge, and even how they taught comprehension and vocabulary strategies. student-centered practice/application best practices that involved the student’s active engagement in learning were included in this category. more specifically, these best practices are student-centered and focus on students practicing and applying what they are learning. independent reading, independent writing, writer’s workshop, and literacy centers or stations were the top four most frequently mentioned practices by both primary and intermediate grade teachers. independent reading and writing were two practices identified as essential components of literacy instruction. several teachers emphasized independent reading, such as one primary grade teacher who emphasized that “students [should] spend time independent reading while teachers are conferencing with students, pulling strategy groups, or guided reading groups depending on the grade level” and an intermediate teacher who noted, “students should be independently applying strategies taught in the classroom to their independent book of choice.” primary and intermediate teachers echoed the importance of independent reading opportunities for their readers. in addition to independent reading and writing, teachers emphasized reading and writing workshops, such as the intermediate grade teacher who wrote, “reading and writing workshops should be taking place in every classroom, every day. allowing students to read books they love… students should write about what they know--themselves. writer’s workshop should be taking place daily.” furthermore, writing practices overall took a prominent role in the teachers’ responses. aspects of the writing process, although not always within the context of writing workshops, were articulated throughout their comments, including brainstorming, drafting, manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 14 revising, editing, teacher conferencing, peer-editing, and rewriting. just as teachers discussed a variety of reading experiences, a variety of writing activities were also emphasized. some writing activities identified were journaling, personal narratives, quick writes, response writing, and writing notebooks. one teacher emphasized “writing tasks where they have some choice about craft and audience.” multiple teachers noted the importance of providing varied literacy experiences, including a wide genre of texts, multiple reading and writing activities, opportunities to work on individualized and small group projects as well as integrating literacy learning across content areas. for example, a primary grade teacher shared, “when i think of best practices for ela, i think of reading and writing being integrated into all subject areas…[they] are intertwined and it’s so important to include collaboration for students.” collaborative experiences were recognized as an important aspect of student learning. interestingly, an equal number of primary and intermediate grade teachers referred to small, collaborative group work in literacy centers or stations. while a first-grade teacher highlighted that students should work in “literacy centers to work on phonics, grammar, writing, and reading strategies,” an intermediate teacher similarly stated in an ideal classroom, students should be “moving through meaningful small group stations focused on different aspects of literacy (reading, writing, word study).” one teacher commented, “in my ideal classroom...there would be a lot of discussion, opportunity to talk to others about our subject matter, and time to truly read/write.” student assessment and differentiation the final category includes best practices that teachers use to monitor student learning and accommodate individual students’ abilities and needs. the placement of this category at the end is a bit misleading since the differentiation and assessment of learning are interwoven throughout the instructional process; however, we know these practices bind together instructional decision making with student learning. table 3 details a comprehensive list of best practices within this assessment and differentiation category. table 3 student assessment and differentiation review/assessment differentiation based on students’ needs anecdotal recording (good note taking) conferencing formative assessment peer evaluating rubrics running records self-assessing/evaluating setting reading goals tracking student progress additional instructional support differentiated instruction leveled books leveled instruction pacing instruction reading recovery scaffolded support targeted, small group direct instruction words their way manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 15 review/assessment this category highlights an array of formative assessment practices used to assess student progress. notably, these best practices reveal the importance of the teacher’s role in the use of assessment as a guide for their instruction. the two most frequently identified practices were the use of formative assessments and conferencing with students. teachers’ comments also included “anecdotal records,” “rubrics,” helping students to set “reasonable and attainable goals for themselves,” and “tracking student progress.” one teacher summarized her view of assessment, “i think best practices in literacy instruction come from unpacking the standards and knowing what our students already know and what they’re expected to know in the next grade level. this enables the teacher to set expectations and students to set reasonable and attainable goals for themselves.” differentiation based on students’ needs within this category, best practices highlighted ways that teachers address their students’ needs. the data clearly delineated that teachers believe that small group instruction is a vital best practice. many of the best practices mentioned by teachers used the terms “flexible,” “small group,” “targeted,” and “leveled” to describe small group instruction. another practice, “scaffolded support,” was mentioned several times by teachers. one teacher wrote that it is necessary “to scaffold learning from where students are to where they need to be.” additional instructional support, leveled books and instruction, as well as pacing also provided a window into the ways teachers differentiate instruction for their students. discussion considering bond and dykstra’s (1967) research demonstrating that teachers determine the effectiveness of a literacy program, this research study asked teachers to articulate what they perceived to be best practices. the analysis of this questionnaire reiterates what bond and dykstra discovered: best practices are teachers intentionally selecting tools, approaches, and programs that support students’ diverse needs in specific contexts. yet, in our study, we discovered through the voices of the teachers that the popular term “best practices” may actually be more limiting than illuminating. we believe that teachers practice “best practices” in literacy instruction through a broader scope than detailed by the balanced approach that focuses on the science of reading. our findings indicate that teachers engage in comprehensive literacy instruction. comprehensive literacy instruction, as defined by morrow and gambrell (2014), is a balanced approach that emphasizes both skills-based instruction and meaning making. it incorporates evidence-based practices to meet the needs of all students through whole-group, small-group, and individualized instruction. it incorporates children’s funds of knowledge by building on the knowledge that students bring to school and acknowledging the role of motivation in writing. while recognizing the fundamental role of phonics and orthography, it also recognizes that comprehension is the ultimate goal of literacy instruction. in other words, it recognizes the science of reading but contextualizes it to the students who make up the community of learners. comprehensive literacy instruction is an approach more widely known in the field of inclusive education rather than general elementary education (e.g., hunt et al., 2020; kozlski et al., 2021) due to the approach’s attention to individual needs and individualized or small group instruction. yet comprehensive literacy instruction is receiving increased attention in the general education classroom as teachers use these inclusive practices as part of their day-to-day manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 16 instruction (hunt, 2019) and has gained some momentum among administration (e.g., national association of secondary school principals). while “best practices in balanced literacy instruction” encompass the teachers’ ability to orchestrate a variety of skill-based and strategy-based instruction within authentic learning experiences, our research indicates that today’s teachers use the more nuanced comprehensive literacy approach to reading instruction that considers each child’s reading development and experiences with literacy learning. explicit, systematic phonics instruction needs to be situated within a classroom context where reading is conducted meaningfully to motivate students to utilize these newfound letter-sound relationships to make meaning from texts. furthermore, best practices in comprehensive literacy instruction emphasize a combination of student-centered and teacher-directed instruction (cooper, robinson, slansky, & kiger, 2014). teachers strategically use their cumulative knowledge of research-based literacy teaching practices to address their students’ needs and the families they serve. teachers also discussed what was expected of them in their unique cultural circumstances. ultimately, it was a combination of all of their knowledge situated within a specific cultural context that shaped what teachers understood to be comprehensive literacy practices (smagorinsky, 2018). as we analyzed the data, we came to realize that in comprehensive literacy instruction, teachers consider both abstract and explicit considerations for their classrooms ranging from the need for and use of authentic texts to the emotional learning of their students and the physical space for their classrooms. many approaches that are touted as best practices were identified as including components of comprehensive literacy instruction (morrow and gambrell, 2014), universal design for learning (udl) (meyer, rose, & gordon, 2014), five pillars of literacy (nrp, 2000), sheltered instruction observation protocol (echevarría, vogt, & short, 2013), and echoes of theoretical underpinnings. ultimately, the numerous best practices in comprehensive literacy instruction identified by our respondents highlights the complexity of teaching and learning that teachers consider in determining their classroom instruction. although there are fundamental aspects of literacy instruction we need to explicitly teach, perhaps there are hundreds of best practices. our understanding of best practices should shift from labeling specific strategies to recognizing the interplay of a variety of strategies situated within a particular context (shavelson & towne, 2002). unlike some of the op-ed pieces that have received mainstream media attention attacking teachers’ knowledge (e.g., hanford, 2018; wexler, 2018), the teachers in this questionnaire demonstrated a wealth of knowledge and expertise. although curriculum decisions may be made at the state or district level, the questionnaire responses highlight how teachers intentionally design their literacy practices to fit their context and students’ needs. literacy learning is viewed as more than solely the actions of the teacher but is rather the meaning making of the collective (bakhtin, 1981; gutiérrez, 2008). teachers emphasized the shared learning experiences between all members of the classroom rather than focusing on the simplification of the actions of the teacher. in sum, the teachers from this survey demonstrate that the notion of best practices is actually an orchestration of literacy instruction between teachers and students. many of the practices teachers provided as “best” were not specifically “teacher-centered” or “studentcentered,” but rather focused on their interactions as the place where learning occurs. it is the compenetration, or the infusion, of the teachers’ and students’ actions and responses in intentionally designed environments that result in best practices. https://www.nassp.org/top-issues-in-education/position-statements/comprehensive-literacy-education/ https://www.nassp.org/top-issues-in-education/position-statements/comprehensive-literacy-education/ manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 17 implications this study illuminated forty-four teachers’ voices about best practices in literacy instruction. teachers’ responses clearly articulated practices that are effective for their students and the importance of data, and how to use it to support literacy teaching and learning. analysis of these teachers’ responses revealed a convergence of teachers’ understanding of literacy practices. while numerous respondents from a randomized national sample would significantly add to the findings, this core sample of teachers clearly illustrated the multilayered nature of comprehensive literacy instruction required to effectively meet students’ needs in today’s diverse classrooms. this is not surprising given literacy researchers’ consistent argument that context matters, especially for literacy practitioners (shavelson & towne, 2002; smagorinsky, 2018). furthermore, in-depth interviews with individuals would further enhance our understanding of what these practices look like in the classroom. educational terms morph over time (scales & wellman, 2016), but the theoretical underpinnings that support best practices remain. given that the field of education defines effective literacy instruction practices with a myriad of terms for the wide range of diverse and complex contexts in which they teach, we propose morrow and gambrell’s (2014) comprehensive literacy instruction as the most appropriate terminology to represent the reading instruction teachers are actively implementing. comprehensive literacy instruction is inclusive of all elements of instruction, from the teachers’ ability to structure their literacy environment, to determine instructional approaches, to consider ways to engage students in literacy learning and to assess and differentiate for students’ needs. this term addresses the convergence of the complexities and nuances of the ever-shifting definition of literacy combined with the professionalism of teachers’ decision making within the socially contextualized elements of literacy instruction’s best practices. teachers’ knowledge is demonstrated through higher education degrees, products for accreditation portfolios, and required educator exams. this research illustrates that teachers are not just using “best practices,” they are providing students with comprehensive literacy instruction that is solidly built upon research and theory across multiple disciplines. while teachers specifically identified strategies, skills, and tools, they also identified intangible qualities that motivate, engage, and foster their students’ love of literacy learning within each of their own social contexts. teachers should be viewed as 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(2015). democratizing teacher education. journal of teacher education, 66(2), 122-135. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487114560908 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0022487114560908 manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 22 appendix a questionnaire ● what are the best practices in literacy instruction (reading and writing)? ● what informs your view of best practices? how do you know which practices are best? ● in your ideal classroom, describe what literacy (reading and writing) instruction looks like? ● how well does your ideal vision and view of best practices align with what you are asked to do during literacy instruction at your school? ● describe the supports from within your school that help you implement your ideal literacy instruction. ● describe the supports from outside your school that help you implement your ideal literacy instruction. ● describe the barriers from within your school that help you implement your ideal literacy instruction. ● describe the barriers from outside your school that help you implement your ideal literacy instruction. manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 23 appendix b participant demographics state florida georgia illinois maryland massachusetts new york grade levels taught pre-k k 1 2 3 4 5 6 other # of years teaching 0 to 4 5 to 9 10 to 14 15 to 19 20+ highest degree earned bachelors degree masters degree ed.s. specialist type of school rural urban suburban other dll/esl/ell # less than 10% 10-25% 26-50% 51-75% 76-89% title one school title one school non-title one school unanswered sped # less than 10% 10-25% 26-50% 51-75% 76-89% manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 24 appendix c teachers’ top responses analyzed by grade level bands preparing for literacy instruction 0 5 10 15 20 25 6+1 traits (culham) bloom's taxonomy daily 5 (boushey) reading workshop writing workshop theoretical and scholarly basis k-2nd 3rd-5th 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 balanced literacy block/ uninterrupted time love of reading/writing materials readily available sharing reading/writing interconnected literacy environment k-2nd 3rd-5th 0 5 10 15 20 25 challenging student choice engagement meaningful literacy experiences student interest motivating literacy practices k-2nd 3rd-5th manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 25 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 collaboration small groups individual/1:1 with teacher partners whole group grouping options k-2nd 3rd-5th 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 authentic texts graphic organizers mentor texts standards wide variety of texts/genres literacy tools k-2nd 3rd-5th manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 26 literacy instruction 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 literacy centers/stations literature circles discussion extension/enrichment independent reading independent writing project based learning reader's workshop varied writing tasks & genres writer's workshop student-centered practice / application k-2nd 3rd-5th 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 comprehension developing reading & writing skills guided writing guided reading mini-lessons modeling reading/writing phonics read aloud flexible, small group instruction word study teacher-centered instruction k-2nd 3rd-5th manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 27 student assessment and differentiation 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 additional instructional support differentiated instruction leveled books leveled instruction targeted, small group direct instruction differentiation based on students' needs k-2nd 3rd-5th 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 anecdotal recording (good note taking) conferencing formative assessment peer evaluating rubrics review / assessment k-2nd 3rd-5th manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 28 author notes jennifer a. manak rollins college jmanak@rollins.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8987-924x chelsey bahlmann bolling james madison university bahlmacm@jmu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8213-0180 courtney shimek west virginia university courtney.shimek@mail.wvu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3299-5033 jennifer barrett-tatum western carolina university jabarrett@wcu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6508-8520 debra k. wellman rollins college dwellman@rollins.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1747-8794 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:jmanak@rollins.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8987-924x mailto:bahlmacm@jmu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8213-0180 mailto:courtney.shimek@mail.wvu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3299-5033 mailto:jabarrett@wcu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6508-8520 mailto:dwellman@rollins.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1747-8794 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 26, issue 1 may 02, 2025 issn 1099-839x academic achievement and postgraduate career commitment among pre-service teachers: the mediating role of science identity i̇lhan i̇lter kahramanmaraş sütçü i̇mam university stefan rathert kahramanmaraş sütçü i̇mam university abstract: this cross-sectional study investigated the relationship between academic achievement (measured by gpa) and a science-related psychological variable, science identity, in higher education. specifically, the study examined the mediating role of science identity in the relationship between academic achievement and commitment to a postgraduate career. data drawn from 309 pre-service teachers were analyzed using structural equation modelling. the results revealed positive relationships between academic achievement, science identity, and postgraduate career commitment. academic achievement and science identity significantly predicted pre-service teachers’ postgraduate career commitments. furthermore, science identity served as a mediator in the relationship between academic achievement and career commitment. these findings point to the benefits of effective interventions that support the development of science identity in teacher education and development to encourage pre-service and in-service teachers’ commitment for postgraduate career. these strategies can foster pre-service and inservice teachers to engage in science-based practices, enhance their scientific competences, gain recognition from their colleagues or educators, and implement science-based practices in their own teaching. keywords: science identity, postgraduate career, academic achievement, pre-service teachers citation: i̇lter, i̇., & rathert, s. (2025). academic achievement and postgraduate career commitment among pre-service teachers: the mediating role of science identity. current issues in education, 26(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2238 accepted: 01/04/2025 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2238 i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 2 academic achievement and postgraduate career commitment among pre-service teachers: the mediating role of science identity the need to encourage young people and adults to engage in science––encompassing its branches of natural science and social sciences and humanities––is imperative given its significance to provide responses to the social, environmental, and economic challenges of our times (unesco, 2021). this necessitates the development of academic aspiration and science identity in students for various reasons. an obvious reason is to increase their interest in science with the perspective of encouraging them to start postgraduate studies and choose scienceoriented occupations, especially when they belong to groups that are usually not recognized by themselves or others as prone to science (bodnar et al., 2020; stets et al., 2017). science and research may be identified as an area in which, for example, women and ethnic minorities (archer et al., 2020; görkem altunbaş et al., 2024; sheldrake & mujtaba, 2019) are not expected to navigate, because it is assumed to be reserved for experts, a group that is often believed to consist of male members of the majority society. in addition, non-expert participation may be discouraged by authorities (e.g., political actors, school managers, parents) as it potentially empowers them to question decisions made in their immediate environment (whitney et al., 2012). against this backdrop, the call to give societal actors outside academia competences and “a voice in developing research that is compatible with their concerns, needs, and aspirations” (unesco, 2021, p. 14) underscores the crucial role of developing students’ interest in natural and social sciences/humanities. moreover, science identity as a self-concept is associated with hard work and the intention to contribute to the betterment of the community, thereby strengthening academic performance and creating an impact on society (stewart, 2022). from an educational perspective, the demand for a shift away from transmission-based forms of teaching towards educational practices in which learners and teachers adopt forms of systematic inquiry to develop awareness of global issues along with critical thinking and problem-solving has a long history. nearly a century ago, dewey (1933) noted that schools have the task of shaping a “scientific attitude of mind” (p. v) in the younger generations; the establishment of this attitude requires the development of science identity in teachers as well. dewey’s work has been influential as it highlights the need to promote reflective practice (i.e., the inquiry into own practices as well as the immediate and external environment). reflective practice enables professionals to understand and develop their own beliefs, attitudes, and practices. furthermore, reflective practitioners can better identify the needs of people in their immediate and wider social context to empower them and strengthen their agency, thereby contributing to social, economic, and technological progress at the local, national, and global level (moon, 2004; shelley et al., 2020; van beveren et al., 2018). as a firm conclusion, the development of science identity in pre-service teachers and teachers is desirable. given the context of this study—pre-service teachers at a turkish state university—an examination of science identity among undergraduate students enrolled in different departments, such as those in the natural or social sciences, and their commitment to postgraduate study appears particularly justified. while national educational policies have been initiated to encourage pre-service teachers and teachers to pursue postgraduate studies, previous research has shown that incentives to pursue academic careers are insufficient (sevim & akın, 2021). various factors referring to both the educational system and the wider social situation exert adverse effects on pre-service and in-service teachers’ willingness to enroll in postgraduate programs i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 3 (koşar et al., 2020). current problems in turkish education (şener, 2018; yaraş & turan, 2021), however, call for attempts to strengthen pre-service and in-service teachers’ willingness to develop their science identity, which, in turn, enhances their commitment to postgraduate careers, so that they actively contribute to the development of educational policy and practice. it is noteworthy to point out that postgraduate career commitment, such as earning an ma or ph.d. degree, can significantly influence career paths. graduates may choose to become teacher educators and researchers in higher education or return to their roles in primary or secondary classrooms. in the former case, postgraduates are expected to make inquiry-based teaching a subject of their teaching at university. in the latter case, a more direct impact on school classrooms can be expected as the experience of doing research in postgraduate study may encourage teachers to implement inquiry-oriented elements in their instructional practice. this does not exclude utilitarian motives (economic gains, enhanced prestige) that may guide teachers and pre-service teachers in their intentions to undertake postgraduate studies (harvey et al., 2005; lohbeck & frenzel, 2022). from the above, it is evident that the promotion of science identity––which is the competence to understand scientific content, the ability to engage in scientific practices and the recognition of oneself and by others as a science person (carlone & johnson, 2007)––along with the aspiration to pursue academic studies is desirable to raise people’s interest and engagement in science. pre-service teachers and in-service teachers with a strengthened science identity in their field are likely to embrace educational practices rooted in experiential and discovery learning principles in their own teaching (zhai et al., 2024). exposure to inquiry-based forms of instruction supplemented with psychosocial support, in turn, guides learners towards research practices and helps them gain a perspective of what science actually entails, that is to say science identity (kuchynka et al., 2022). this mechanism is in line with accounts of social psychology of education that, for a long time, have recognized schools as a key factor in the learners’ social environment to profoundly shape their perceptions and attitudes, thereby contributing to identity formation (goodnow, 1992; mcmillan, 1978). in sum, a teacher with a developed science identity is likely to contribute to science by doing research and to education by employing teaching methods and techniques that assign learners the roles of discoverers (rushton, 2021), thereby strengthening educational practices at schools. this study aims to contribute to previous research by exploring the following research question: what is the potentially mediating role of science identity in the relationship between academic achievement and postgraduate career commitment among pre-service teachers enrolled in various departments encompassing fields of natural or social sciences? in the subsequent sections, we aimed to examine science identity in relation to postgraduate career commitment, explore academic achievement (measured by gpa) in relation to science identity and postgraduate career commitment, and outline the current situation of preservice teachers’ intentions to engage in a postgraduate study in türkiye (officially changed country’s name recognized by the united nations as of june 1,2022) (united nations türkiye, 2022). conceptual framework science identity and postgraduate career commitment the study of identity explores the meanings that determine who a person actually is in terms of their unique characteristics, roles in society, memberships in groups, and belonging to i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 4 social categories. identities develop in relation to and through interactions with others, making them inherently social (burke & stets, 2023). a person has multiple identities, and each identity is assigned a specific set of meanings (huvard et al., 2020). research on identity is concerned with a variety of aspects mirroring divergent theoretical considerations and research foci such as the stability of identities, how identities are constructed, and how affordances and constraints contribute to or impede identity formation (vignoles et al., 2011). science identity, which applies to any field within the natural or social sciences and humanities, involves both an individual’s sense of oneself as a scientist and their feeling of belonging to a scientific community (huffmyer et al., 2022). students may have science identity to varying degrees indicating the extent to which they are learning or are interested in science (kim & sinatra, 2018). the development of science identity is context-based and nurtured by the availability of communities of scientists or opportunities to engage in scientific practice. communities can be provided in or outside schools (e.g., through science professionals in families), and they appear to be crucial to raising science aspirations (aschenbach et al., 2010; cameron et al., 2020; syed et al., 2011; wulff et al., 2018). science identity acts as a feedback loop between a person behaving, thinking, and discovering as a scientist and others understanding this meaning and restoring this identity to the original person (carlone & johnson, 2007). drawing attention to the complex nature of science identity, carlone and johnson (2007) proposed a now widely recognized model that considers competence, performance, and recognition as interrelated dimensions underlying the formation of science identity. specifically, competence refers to an individual’s knowledge of scientific content and motivation to approach a problem systematically. performance is the ability to apply competence in scientific practices (e.g., to employ methods or participate in scientific discourse) whereas recognition refers to how people see themselves as scientists or are perceived by others as scientists. similar to this model, hazari et al.’s (2010) framework is appropriate to explaining the science identity of pre-service teachers. this framework consists of three components: recognition, interest, and performance/competence. recognition refers to the pre-service teachers’ perception of being seen or recognized as a scientist by others or educators. interest represents the degree to which pre-service teachers long to learn more about science or desire to pursue a career in science through postgraduate study. finally, performance/competence describes pre-service teachers' ability to demonstrate their scientific skills and science learning efforts to their students in their teaching practice. when pre-service and in-service teachers develop science identity, they can be expected to improve the quality of their teaching by inquiry-based forms of instruction so that their learners’ interest in and commitment to science are likely to be developed as well (godwin et al., 2016; hazari et al., 2010). building science identity guides pre-service teachers into the direction of pursuing an academic career in postgraduate degree programs (artess & hooley, 2017; carlone & johnson, 2007). commitment to a postgraduate career refers to an undergraduate student’s or graduate’s orientation towards attending an ma or ph.d. program, meaning that it is closely connected to career planning and the disposition to appropriate academic efforts and study habits (i̇lter, 2020a; london, 1985). it is noteworthy that graduates taking up postgraduate studies do not comprise a homogeneous group but experience transition processes differently (o’donnell et al., 2009) and are driven by several motivations, most often in combination. research conducted in different geographical contexts reveals that intentions for postgraduate study is induced by the desire to acquire skills and knowledge that improve career i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 5 prospects, to acquire a theoretical understanding of a field of study, to contribute to society, and to experience personal satisfaction or to receive economic gain (see donaldson & mcnicholas, 2004; fényes et al., 2021; harvey et al., 2005; koşar et al., 2020; lohbeck & frenzel, 2022; mellors-bourne et al., 2014; nas et al., 2016; valencia-arias, 2023). de oliveira pires (2009) noted that postgraduate intentions are multifaceted, and distinctions between, for example, professional and personal motives cannot easily be drawn: someone’s wish to pursue an academic career to contribute to knowledge production and dissemination may actually be a way to receive personal satisfaction. the transition from undergraduate to postgraduate study, however, is also likely to be accompanied by feelings of uncertainty, disorientation, and anxiety (mcpherson et al., 2017) because postgraduate studies force students to more rigorously engage in autonomous learning, analytical and critical thinking, and extensive academic reading and writing (bamber et al., 2019; lin et al., 2023). research on science identity has particularly dealt with the science identity of students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (stem) and groups underrepresented in academic and scientific domains in order to better understand underlying mechanisms. studies point to the provision of mentored programs in which learners can experience scientific inquiry as pedagogical interventions conducive to forming science identity (atkins et al., 2020; chemers et al., 2011; hunter et al., 2006; z. jiang et al., 2020; mccartney et al., 2022; robnett et al., 2015; syed et al., 2019; vincent-ruz & schunn, 2018). such interventions are not restricted to certain age groups. cases documented in the literature report on programs and projects in which, for instance, sixth graders are assigned with the roles of scientists (s. jiang et al., 2020), partnerships between high schools and medical research centers are established (rocha et al., 2023), or undergraduates in mentored research projects present results of their own studies at conferences (robnett et al., 2018). studies also have considered the effects of cognitive processes for science identity. for instance, guo et al. (2022) showed epistemological beliefs about science and reflective thinking exert effects on science identity. a branch of research has shown that science identity predicts science career aspiration (alhadabi, 2021; bodnar et al., 2020; merolla & serpe, 2013; robinson et al., 2018; vincent-ruz & schunn, 2018). stets et al. (2017) stated: “that only the science identity itself, among all the factors considered [such as science self-efficacy, performance approach, or mentoring], influences moving into a science occupation upon graduation, [while] other processes indirectly influence entering a science occupation through the science identity” (p. 12). in sum, strong science identity encourages young people and adults to engage in sciencerelated studies and occupations, especially when they belong to minority groups whose right to participate in science is far from settled. academic achievement and its role in science identity building and postgraduate career commitment academic achievement refers to the intended outcomes of formal instruction, often measured in grade points, thereby testifying to a student’s performance. academic achievement awarded by teachers or an examining body is therefore a gatekeeper that decides whether or not, for example, a graduate will have access to postgraduate programs (butera et al., 2021). plausibly, students are interested in receiving high scores, which makes the grade point average (gpa) a widely employed measure in educational research. related to science identity and postgraduate study intention as the other two variables explored in this study, the role of gpa can be summarized as follows: stets et al. (2017) i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 6 identified gpa as a main factor influencing science identity. the authors pointed to the observation that individuals resolve positive discrepancy (i.e., when others’ judgements about someone’s science identity are more positive than one’s own judgment), their science identity improves so that it becomes a better fit to how they are recognized by others. a high gpa score would strengthen someone’s science identity because the science identity is then a better fit for their academic achievement. in a nutshell, science identities are calibrated against academic achievement. claiming a reverse direction, white et al. (2019) hypothesized a model with science selfefficacy as a mediator in the relationship between science identity and academic achievement. the authors reported a full mediation effect of science self-efficacy, as science identity had a statistically significant indirect effect on gpa but no statistically significant direct effect. previous research has consistently indicated that students with high gpas are more likely to pursue postgraduate studies (kim-prieto, et al., 2013; scarbecz & ross, 2007; strayhorn, 2007). given that academic achievement influences both science identity and postgraduate study intention, it is expected that science identity mediates the effect of academic achievement on postgraduate study intention. merolla and serpe (2013) reported similar findings, stating that “students with high levels of science identity salience are more likely to translate high college gpas into graduate school matriculation compared to students with lower levels of science identity salience” (p. 591). postgraduate education for teachers in türkiye it is important for teacher education in the 21st century that teachers gain scientific selfefficacy and science identity, communication, collaboration skills, and new teaching and alternative assessment approaches as well as improving their professional and field knowledge through postgraduate education. against this backdrop, teacher education and instructional practice delivered at schools in türkiye have been identified as areas that require drastic steps in terms of guiding teachers towards enhanced professional development and postgraduate education. international comparative studies show that turkish teachers’ low cognitive abilities correlate with low student performance (hanushek et al., 2019), and teacher participation in professional development remains unsatisfactory (oecd, 2019) in spite of attempts to provide more inquiry-based professional development programs shifting away from predominant centralized top-down delivery of training (özer & suna, 2023). these problems lead to transmission-based instructional practices observed in turkish schools depending on a variety of factors encompassing multiple-choice exams, large classes, unsuitable materials and working conditions of teachers (şener, 2018; yaraş & turan, 2021). addressing these conditions, the scientific and technological research institution of türkiye (tübi̇tak, 2005) identified strengthening teacher education by establishing a career system and promoting postgraduate opportunities for teachers as one of the aims in the “vision 2023 technology foresight project. education and human resources results report and strategy document”. the turkish ministry of national education (mone, 2017, 2019) has defined general competencies for teachers that are in line with the goal of increasing the number of teachers who take up postgraduate programs to reach global standards in educational policy. recent legislative novelties provide opportunities to gain the status of a chartered teacher by earning a master’s degree or to gain a principal by earning a phd degree (gül & dikbaş, 2023). in spite of those incentives, teachers’ willingness to engage in postgraduate education is hampered by several factors. while teachers and pre-service teachers are aware of the potential i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 7 to meet needs for personal and professional development, and they desire to start an academic career (sevim & akın, 2021; vural & başaran, 2021), workload, lack of financial support, requested efforts in postgraduate studies as well as personal circumstances discourage teachers from pursuing academic careers (can, 2019; i̇lter, 2020b; koşar et al., 2020). study context study purpose social, environmental, and economic challenges necessitate the education of young people and adults who can address current problems with scientific approaches. from the perspective of teaching and learning, exposing pre-service teachers to research is fundamental in fostering inquiry-based teaching methods, which are proven to promote more effective learning. this approach not only enhances their own understanding of science but also plays a crucial role in helping students develop a strong sense of identity in science (havu-nuutinen et al., 2019). additionally, it can be assumed that pre-service teachers and teachers will be equipped with the ability to respond to problems in their own educational context. based on these assumptions, we investigated the question of whether science identity plays a mediating role in the relationship between academic achievement (measured by gpa) and commitment in postgraduate career among pre-service teachers. the decision to examine the potential mediating role of science identity as an independent variable was guided by the role of science identity and sense of belonging to science as stimuli for pre-service teachers' future academic career choices (rodriguez et al., 2017; stets et al., 2017; trujillo & tanner, 2014) as well as the significance of gpa as a factor in undergraduates’ decision to enroll in postgraduate degree programs (i̇lter, 2020a; kim-prieto et al., 2013; scarbecz & ross, 2007; strayhorn, 2007). building on existing research that demonstrates the influence of science identity and a sense of belonging on pre-service teachers’ career choices, this study aims to examine a more complex mechanism by examining science identity as a mediating factor between academic achievement and commitment to a postgraduate career. while previous research emphasizes the direct effect of science identity on career choices, this study extends this perspective by proposing that science identity may serve as a crucial link between academic achievement and postgraduate career commitment among pre-service teachers. by examining this mediating effect, we aim to provide a deeper understanding of how undergraduate academic achievement can translate into career aspirations, particularly through the development of a strong science identity. this approach offers a novel contribution to the literature by suggesting that science identity might be a vital process through which pre-service teachers’ academic achievement fosters their commitments to a postgraduate career in teacher education programs and teacher development. furthermore, the interplay of science identity, postgraduate career commitment and academic achievement have not been examined in a turkish per-service teacher context to the best of our knowledge. as it is known, science identity in any domain of natural or social sciences is widely identified as the primary driving force that encourages people to pursue scientific careers. other variables (e.g., goals, self-efficacy, and attitudes) operate via mechanism of science identity (stets et al., 2017). in this study, the selection of gpa as the other exogenous variable is justified based on two considerations. first, it is an objective indicator for academic achievement (richardson et al., 2012). second, there is evidence that it influences both science identity and i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 8 commitment to pursue a postgraduate career (merolla & serpe, 2013). our participants, preservice teachers enrolled in undergraduate programs at a turkish university, appeared to be a study group conducive to improving understanding of how academic achievement and science identity interact and potentially influence the commitment for a postgraduate career. examining interactions can help determine whether interventions designed to increase participation in postgraduate education should focus on science identity or academic achievement, or whether a dual intervention approach––improving both academic achievement and science identity––is most effective. it is therefore essential to examine whether science identity mediates the relationship between pre-service teachers’ academic achievement and their commitment to a postgraduate career. as pre-service teachers’ postgraduate career aspirations may be influenced by other external factors, it is not yet clear whether career commitment can be explained synonymously with their academic performance and scientific identity. this study is important in terms of expanding our understanding of the factors that support pre-service teachers’ pathways to a postgraduate career commitment. hypotheses of study in this study, we formulated the following hypotheses (h) to explore the relationships between pre-service teachers' academic achievement, their perceptions of science identity and their commitment to a postgraduate career: h1. academic achievement predicts science identity. h2. academic achievement predicts commitment to a postgraduate career. h3. science identity predicts commitment to a postgraduate career. h4. science identity mediates the relationship between academic achievement and commitment to a postgraduate career. methodology participants this study used a cross-sectional design research model. participants were 309 preservice teachers enrolled in different programs covering natural and social sciences of a faculty education at a state university located in the mediterranean region of türkiye. we purposefully recruited participants who were in their fourth-year of their undergraduate education because it was assumed they would have a deeper understanding of science and higher awareness of postgraduate study opportunities (akgun & kaya, 2020). in addition, as undergraduate students progress through their education, their interests often begin to overlap with their career goals (beggs et al., 2008). among our participants, 83 (25.4%) were male and 225 (68.8%) were female. the majority of the participants being female was expected as faculties of education in türkiye are more frequented by female students than male students, an indicator of the feminizing of the teaching profession observed in türkiye and elsewhere (sari, 2012; yüce et al., 2013). for example, a similar gender distribution was observed in a longitudinal study of çiftçi and karadağ (2024) that involved 32 faculties of education in türkiye. participants were aged 20–38 years, with a mean age of 21.5 years. the majority were turkish (n = 296, 95.79%), and the other ethnic groups included syrians (n =13, 4.21%). participants were enrolled in six departments: elementary mathematics education (n= 64, 20.71%), science teaching (n = 63, 20.39%), english language teaching (n = 58, 18.77%), social studies education (n = 54, i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 9 17.48%), guidance and psychological counseling (n = 43, 13.92%), and turkish language teaching (n = 27, 8.73%). the pre-service teachers took the following courses as defined by the council of higher education (cohe, 2018) during their four-year undergraduate program: science and research ethics, science, technology, and society; nature and teaching of science; and history and philosophy of science. measures science identity scale this scale, thereafter referred to as sciid, has been developed by chemers et al. (2011) and translated into turkish by i̇lter (2023). it is a six-item measure assessing the extent to which participants believe that being a scientist (including scientists in social sciences/humanities) is part of their personal identity. the scale used a five-point likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), with higher scores indicating a stronger science identity. sample items included: “in general, being a scientist is an important part of my selfimage,” “i am a scientist.” these items reflect students’ self-perceptions of science identity and how they believe others perceive them in science-related tasks and activities (aschbacher et al., 2010). confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) supported the construct validity of the sciid, yielding fit indices of χ2/degrees of freedom (df) = 2.27, goodness of fit index (gfi) = .95, tucker lewis index (tli) = .94, comparative fit index (cfi) = .95, and root mean square error of approximation (rmsea) = .057 (i̇lter, 2023). following taber (2018), the scale demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency, with a cronbach’ s alpha of .85 in our study. postgraduate career commitment this scale, thereafter referred to as pgcc, originally developed in turkish by i̇lter (2020a), is a six-item measure designed to assess participants’ intentions to pursue a postgraduate career. the items were scored on a five-point likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). high scores on the pgcc indicated strong a commitment to pursuing postgraduate study. sample items included: “i believe in it is necessary to complete a postgraduate program after graduating with an undergraduate degree,” “i am interested in postgraduate education due to my desire to pursue an academic career,”, “i intent to undertake postgraduate education after completing my undergraduate degree,” “postgraduate study is an opportunity to enhance my academic-oriented personal skills and performance.” construct validity of the pgcc was examined through a cfa conducted by i̇lter (2020a). the fit indices of the scale were as follows: χ²/df= 2.24, gfi = .92, cfi = .95, tli =. 92, and rmsea = .061. the rmsea of .061 was slightly above the more stringent threshold of .05 but below .08, which indicated acceptable model fit (kline, 2016). similarly, rmsea values ≤ .08 are generally considered indicative of a good fit, whereas values ≤ .10 suggest an acceptable fit (kenny et al., 2015). in our study, the cronbach’s alpha for the pgcc scale is .88, indicating a high level of internal consistency (taber, 2018). academic achievement academic achievement (aca) was measured by the participants’ cumulative gpa. this independent variable included the gpa of the participants during the undergraduate education i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 10 period, from year 1 through year 4. gpa was selected as an independent measure because it is a widely recognized and easily accessible indicator of academic achievement, commonly used by students, teachers, and academics (gladstone et al., 2018). grades in higher education play a crucial role in shaping students’ academic trajectories by influencing the quality of the university experience (parker et al., 2012). in türkiye, gpa is frequently used as a criterion for increasing career prospects in higher education, after undergraduate graduation, and for admission to postgraduate programs (cohe, 2016). researchers have noted that gpa is considered an objective indicator of students' academic achievement (bae, 2022; gutiérrez-braojos, 2015; richardson et al., 2012; sticca et al., 2017; sucuoğlu, 2018). in addition, it is considered an objective measure of the successful performance of student science identity (stets et al., 2017). in our study, gpas reported by students ranged from 2.00 to 4.00 points, with higher scores indicating higher levels of academic achievement in undergraduate education. participants had an average gpa of 3.12, with scores ranging from 2.18 to 3.85. data collection the study was conducted with the permission of the social and human sciences ethics committee of a higher education institution with the decision dated 06.12.2021 and numbered e. 81222. prior to administering the study measures, participants were provided with an informed consent form to confirm their willingness to participate. we informed participants about the aims and protocols of the study and shared that their participation was voluntary and that they could withdraw from the survey if they wished. all measures used were filled out face-to-face and using pen and paper. we also explained to participants that their data would not be shared with third parties and that their responses would be kept confidential to avoid social desirability bias. participants took approximately 20 minutes to complete the measures which included items on their demographic characteristics. data were gathered between october 2022 and december 2022. data analysis we analyzed the data using ibm spss 22 (version 22) and amos (version 22). participants’ demographic characteristics were summarized using descriptive statistics. before conducting the mediation analysis, we examined the three specific constructs—academic achievement, science identity, and commitment to a postgraduate career—for their interrelationships using pearson correlation. subsequently, we tested the mediating role of science identity in the relationship between academic achievement and commitment to a postgraduate career. structural equation modeling (sem) with maximum likelihood estimation was used to examine the direct and indirect relationships between the variables, using amos (version 22). to test the study hypotheses, the mediated analysis framework proposed by baron and kenny (1986) was employed. initially, the measurement model was verified, followed by testing the causal relationships between the variables using path analysis. in the first stage of the sem analysis, the measurement model was assessed to confirm its theoretical validity, based on the framework outlined by kline (2013). the measurement model was evaluated using cfa. model fit was assessed using the following fit indices: χ² goodness of fit, rmsea, cfi, gfi, the ratio of χ² to degrees of freedom (cmin/df), and tli (hu & bentler, 1999). for cfi, tli and gfi values .85 or over; for rmsea, values under .08 are accepted as good fit values (kline, 2013). i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 11 before conducting any analysis, we first assessed whether our data set met the assumptions required for sem. within the scope of this study, the relationships between the variables were examined, and the homogeneity of the variables was tested. first, missing data and extreme-value analyses were performed on the data set (field, 2009). analysis results showed that there was no missing data in the data set. multivariate extreme-value analysis was analyzed in accordance with mahalanobis distance values p < .001 (büyüköztürk, 2014). seven data points outside the ±3 range by the z-score were not included in our analysis. in order to determine the multi collinearity of the data, tolerance value (1-r2) and variance inflation factor (vif) values were analyzed. tolerance value and vifs are used to assess the potential multicollinearity problem. when the vif value is 10 or higher, it is considered to be highly dependent (smith & campell, 1980). for our data, vif values ranged between 2.61 and 3.57 and tolerance values ranged between .37 and .88 for all factors. as the vif value was below 10 and the tolerance values were above .1, indicating that the absence of multicollinearity assumption was satisfied (field, 2009). in our study, p value < .05 was accepted as statistical significance. prior to conducting the analyses, kurtosis and skewness values were examined to assess whether the data met the assumption of normality. skewness coefficients of the total scores of academic achievement, science identity, and postgraduate career commitment were -.124, .073 and -.113, while the kurtosis coefficients were -.736, -.371 and -.689, respectively (see table 1). kurtosis and skewness values were within an acceptable range between -1.5 and +1.5, indicating normal distribution (tabachnick & fidell, 2013). results descriptive results the pearson correlation coefficients, skewness and kurtosis values for the variables are presented in table 1. table 1. descriptive statistics and correlations for variables 1 2 3 skewness kurtosis 1.aca -.124 -.736 2.sciid .346** .073 -.371 3.pgcc .389** .512** -.113 -.689 note. **p < .001, pgcc = postgraduate career commitment, aca = academic achievement, sciid = science identity. as seen in table 1, the results of the correlation analysis revealed statistically significant positive relationships among the variables. academic achievement was positively correlated with science identity (r = .346, p < .001), and science identity was positively correlated with postgraduate career commitment (r = .512, p < .001). furthermore, a positive relationship was observed between academic achievement and postgraduate career commitment (r = .389, p < 001). i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 12 measurement model the measurement model was evaluated using cfa. as the first step of the sem analysis, the measurement model was tested to verify its theoretical appropriateness. in sem, the initial step involves evaluating a measurement model in which all variables in the model are modeled together. this model, which defines the relationships between observed variables and latent variables, is examined using cfa. the measurement model serves to explain the relationships between observed variables and latent variables (kline, 2013). our measurement model had three observed and three latent variables. academic achievement, science identity, and career commitment were treated as latent variables. in our model, academic achievement was defined by a single latent variable, formed by students’ overall undergraduate gpa. as the sciid consisted of six items and one dimension, it was added to the model as a single latent variable. pgcc was added to the model as a single latent variable consisting of six items. the measurement model was tested with cfa using the amos. cfa results showed that the model fit indices for the measurement model are within acceptable ranges, as suggested by kline (2013) [χ²/df = 2.11, p < .05, cfi = .95, incremental fit index (ifi) = .94, tli = .93, rmsea = .061]. mediation analysis in the model, we examined both the direct and indirect effects of academic achievement on postgraduate career commitment, with science identity as the mediating variable. sem analysis was conducted to assess the predictive power of academic achievement and science identity on postgraduate career commitment. the structural effects and relationships between the observed variables in the proposed model are illustrated in figure 1, which presents the mediation analysis results. figure 1. default model findings note. **p < .001 as seen in figure 1, academic achievement positively significantly predicted science identity (β = .224). in addition, academic achievement directly significantly predicted postgraduate career commitment (β = .173) and science identity also significantly predicted career commitment (β = .342). path analysis with the exclusion of science identity as a mediating i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 13 variable showed that academic achievement directly predicted the variable of career commitment. the examination of the path coefficient revealed a meaningful increase (β = .250, p < .05), while the effect decreased when science identity was included as a mediator in the model (from β = .250 to β = .173). despite this reduction in the effect of the exogenous variable of academic achievement and commitment, the effect was statistically significant. this suggests that science identity serves as a partial mediator in the relationship between academic achievement and commitment, although its mediator effect was close to full mediation. to test whether the indirect effect of science identity was significant, we conducted bootstrap analysis (5000 re-sample) and examined the confidence interval values as shown in table 2. bootstrapping analysis showed that the indirect effect was significant (p < .01). this is because there was no zero between the lower and upper limits of the confidence interval (bootstrapping coefficient = .142, se = .096, 95% ci [.43, .75]). this suggests that science identity development mediates the relationship between pre-service teachers’ gpa and their commitment to a postgraduate career. together, all variables accounted for 32% of the variance in postgraduate career commitment. the fit indices of the model were χ2/df= 2.32, rmsea = .059, cfi = .95, ifi= .94, gfi = .93, tli = .94, indicating a good fit of model (kline, 2013). the effect size of the predictor variables on career commitment, as measured by cohen’s d, was d = .35 for academic achievement and d = .53 for science identity. both effect sizes can be interpreted as medium (cohen, 1988), with science identity playing a more significant role in predicting postgraduate career commitment than academic achievement. table 2 direct and indirect effects and 95% confidence intervals for the structural model pathway standardized effects 95% cis (5000 bootstraps) direct effects indirect effects lower bound upper bound pgcc ← aca .173** .122* .043 .075 pgcc ← sciid .341** pgcc ← sciid ← aca .221** note. *p < .01, **p < .001, bootstrap re-sampling=5000, ci= confidence interval, aca = academic achievement, sciid = science identity, pgcc = postgraduate career commitment discussion this study examined the mediating role of science identity in the relationship between academic achievement and commitment to pursuing a postgraduate career among pre-service teachers. the correlation analysis revealed significant relationships between the variables. the findings supported our hypothesized model as they provided evidence that: • academic achievement significantly predicts science identity (h1), i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 14 • academic achievement has both direct and indirect effects on commitment to a postgraduate career (h2), • science identity significantly predicts commitment to a postgraduate career (h3), • science identity mediates the relationship between academic achievement and commitment to a postgraduate career (h4. these findings support the central role of science identity in the formation of undergraduate students’ postgraduate career commitment or aspiration to pursue a science career (alhadabi, 2021; bodnar et al., 2020; stets et al., 2017). our results also underscore the role of academic achievement as a predictor for intentions to pursue postgraduate study (kim-prieto et al., 2013; scarbecz & ross, 2007). moreover, this study provides evidence for the significant role of gpa in the development of science identity (stets et al., 2017) and its influence on students’ interest and intentions to pursue post graduate education and careers in science (merolla & serpe, 2013). our results suggest that students’ career commitment is more affected by their perceptions of science identity than their academic achievement scores. another important finding is that science identity partially mediates the relationship between academic achievement and postgraduate career commitment. our findings point to the underlying mechanism that describes the experience of academic achievement as mediating a more pronounced science identity, which, in turn, enhances students’ aspirations for a career in their specialized field, whether in natural or social science. this aligns with theoretical explanations and empirical evidence that science identity can contribute to developing career pathways. furthermore, the results suggest that an increase in academic achievement can positively influence students’ career trajectories in science by increasing the quality of their science identity over time. this explanation is supported by social cognitive career theory, which posits the need to develop enduring career-related interest by developing self-efficacy beliefs and positive outcome expectations generated in direct, indirect, and vicarious experiences (lent et al., 2002). it is the task of schools to provide such experiences by establishing compelling programs that value the diversity of interests and backgrounds of learners, thereby contributing to the dynamic construction of identities in children (oyserman & destin, 2010), adolescents (vondracek & skorikov, 1997), and young adults (lundberg, 2010). undergraduate programs are particularly important for developing a science identity to nurture commitment to postgraduate education because students’ career trajectories are often formed during their undergraduate studies (wisker, 2007). although teacher learning is undoubtedly a process that continues throughout a teacher’s career, integrating inquiry-based activities initially provided in the teacher preparation program will foster pre-service teachers’ science identity building (national research council, 2010). in this study, we examined pre-service teachers enrolled at a faculty of education in the final year of their undergraduate programs. existing studies suggest that pre-service teachers preparing for and teachers practicing in teaching-intensive contexts may hold vague or simplistic understandings of science (akgun & kaya, 2020; peters-burton et al., 2023; schouteden et al., 2016). these understandings prevent them from implementing research-validated practices into their teaching, applying inquiry-based forms of instruction in their classrooms, and selfinspection of their instruction through research practice (colognesi & märz, 2023; ronda & danipog, 2022). therefore, the implementation of inquiry-based activities in teacher education and development is imperative to introduce pre-service and in-service teachers to research so they can perform scientific practices in their area, develop competence, and experience i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 15 recognition by educators, thus benefiting from the sources of science identity (carlone & johnson, 2007). as inquiry-based learning is cognitively challenging ––and, thus, more likely to yield better learning outcomes––scaffolding is imperative to provide academic achievement, and, consequently, to strengthen science identity and commitment to a postgraduate career (atkins et al., 2020; kuchynka et al., 2022). additionally, the value of a school environment that demonstrates institutional commitment to involving learners in science cannot be underestimated. approachable teachers, advisory sessions for learners and parents, extracurricular activities such as open science days, and cooperation with outside partners generate spaces for learners to negotiate their science identities (kuchynka et al., 2022; ramosmontañez & pattison, 2022). teachers intending to attend postgraduate programs may not be driven by ambitions to leave the domain of teaching and become full-time researchers but to improve their knowledge and skills related to their current occupation (vural & başaran, 2021). however, this should not be seen critically because we can assume that their enhanced science identity guides them toward the delivery of experiential learning and reflective teaching (rushton, 2021). conclusions this study highlights the mediating role of science identity in pre-service teachers’ decisions to pursue postgraduate education offering insights into the factors shaping postgraduate career pursuits. the findings have significant implications for policymakers and curriculum designers as they underscore the need to implement inquiry-based forms of teacher education and professional development. providing adequate mentoring can help ensure academic success, which can also encourage teachers to pursue postgraduate studies. in turn, this may enhance the quality of teaching, as future generations of students will have greater opportunities for experiential and discovery-based learning, fostering deeper engagement and stronger science identities across natural and social sciences and humanities (rushton, 2021). however, this optimistic perspective should be considered alongside structural constraints such as fixed curricula, limited resources, and schools’ economic priorities. assumed benefits of teachers with postgraduate qualifications do not inherently resolve systemic challenges in education. additionally, some teachers may transition into academic or research careers, which can potentially reduce the number of highly qualified educators in schools. nevertheless, those who remain in the classroom will bring advanced competencies that enable them to address current educational problems in türkiye and beyond. it is also important to note that this study specifically examined the mediating role of science identity in the relationship between academic achievement and postgraduate career commitment. the current study design does not allow for causal conclusions regarding the relationships among these variables. limitations and recommendations for further research this study has some limitations. first, the use of a longitudinal design, particularly with investigations into instruction in teacher education, would offer distinct advantages. researchers could more closely examine the impact of research opportunities in undergraduate teacher education programs on the development of science identity and track the extent to which preservice teachers pursue postgraduate studies. furthermore, this study does not provide information about the research experiences participants may have gained during their studies or i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 16 elsewhere. to expand the scope of future research, it would be beneficial to qualitative data collection methods, such as observing students during inquiry-based activities their undergraduate studies or eliciting narrative accounts of their experiences. moreover, with the inclusion of academic achievement in the default model, only one dimension contributing to the science identity was considered. the formation of science identity and career aspiration, however, is influenced by multiple factors. in addition, the demographics of the participants in this study were heavily skewed toward female students, as faculties of education in türkiye are more commonly chosen by women (yüce et al., 2013). although it would be interesting to examine gender differences in science identity, this was beyond the scope of the present study. future studies should explore multiple group variables (e.g., age, gender, race) using sem. finally, the participants in this study were pre-service teachers at a turkish university. expanding the study to include pre-service teachers from different locations or exploring the science identity of practicing teachers and its manifestation in instructional practices and/or commitment to postgraduate careers could offer valuable insights. another important aspect for future research is the role of expected economic gains and increased prestige in influencing teachers’ decisions to pursue postgraduate studies. despite these limitations, this study makes a significant contribution to the literature by focusing on postgraduate career commitment and exploring the interplay between academic achievement and science identity among pre-service teachers. 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(2024). science teacher identity research: a scoping literature review. international journal of stem education, 11(1), 20 – 30 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-024-00481-8 author notes i̇lhan i̇lter https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1473-7172 kahramanmaraş sütçü i̇mam university, türkiye ilhanilter23@gmail.com stefan rathert https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3282-0201 kahramanmaraş sütçü i̇mam university, türkiye strathert@gmail.com more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-018-0140-5 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-0045.1997.tb00537.x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2018.11.006 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevphyseducres.14.020113 https://doi.org/10.37669/milliegitim.763393 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-013-9258-9 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-024-00481-8 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1473-7172 mailto:ilhanilter23@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3282-0201 mailto:strathert@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ i̇lter & rathert: mediating role of science identity current issues in education, 26(1) 25 volume 26, issue 1 may 02, 2025 issn 1099-839x adapting educational practices and technologies in the postcovid-19 era: a scoping review sara gonçalves university of trás-os-montes and alto douro bárbara longa university of trás-os-montes and alto douro isabel barroso university of trás-os-montes and alto douro and university of porto conceição rainho university of trás-os-montes and alto douro and university of porto vítor rodrigues university of trás-os-montes and alto douro and university of porto abstract: the transformative impact of online tools in post-covid-19 education is explored through a scoping review encompassing eight fundamental studies. this scoping review uniquely contributes to the existing literature by addressing specific gaps, such as the detailed comparison between preand post-pandemic educational practices and the underexplored aspects of digital tool integration across different disciplines. the analysis encompasses studies exploring the effectiveness of digital tools in libraries, archives, and museums and the feasibility of mobile app development for teaching practices. it also investigates the impact of subtitles on language learning, the implementation of flipped classrooms in geography education, and the effectiveness of scaffolding in online learning environments. additionally, the review assesses islamic education teachers' methods to enhance student motivation and engagement and compares the outcomes of online versus face-to-face anatomy teaching in medical schools. the findings reveal significant insights into the evolving landscape of education, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges of digitalization and online instruction. overall, the research underscores the importance of adapting pedagogical strategies to meet the diverse needs of learners in the current and post-pandemic educational landscape. keywords: online tools; education; post-covid-19; online teaching; teaching practice citation: gonçalves, s., longa, b., barroso, i., rainho, c. & rodrigues, v. (2025). adapting educational practices and technologies in the post-covid-19 era: a scoping review. current issues in education, 26(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2253 accepted: 02/10/20 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss1.2253 gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era current issues in education, 26(1) 2 adapting educational practices and technologies in the post-covid-19 era: a scoping review education plays a crucial role in shaping individuals and societies, providing knowledge, skills, and opportunities for personal and professional development (idris et al., 2012). the covid-19 pandemic has disrupted educational systems worldwide, and there was an urgent need to shift to online and distance learning (li, 2022). in response to these challenges, audiovisual tools—such as video conferencing, pre-recorded lectures, instructional videos, and multimedia content—became essential components of the educational environment (mayer, 2014). these tools have facilitated remote instruction by bridging physical distance, providing educational content access, and supporting interactive learning experiences (bates & sangra, 2011; li, 2022). in the post-pandemic educational landscape, audiovisual materials offer numerous advantages, including flexible, personalized, and independent learning opportunities. students can access pre-recorded lectures and instructional content at their convenience, enhancing engagement, motivation, and comprehension (huffman & huffman, 2012). furthermore, video conferencing platforms and multimedia resources enable real-time communication and collaboration, allowing for a blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning that encourages active participation, discussion, and peer-to-peer support. however, the rapid integration of these tools also poses challenges, including limited access to technology and connectivity, varying levels of digital literacy among students and educators, and the persistence of a digital divide that impacts equitable access to quality education (stoian et al., 2022). while previous studies have explored integrating audiovisual tools in education, there remains a significant gap in understanding the specific changes in instructional methodologies and technologies preand post-pandemic. given the transformative changes brought by covid-19, this scoping review aims to assess the integration of audiovisual technology in education, particularly in the post-pandemic era. specifically, this study addresses the following research questions: 1. how have educational institutions and educators adapted instructional methodologies and technologies to optimize student engagement and learning outcomes in the postcovid era? 2. what are the observed impacts of specific digital tools—such as mobile apps, subtitles in language instruction, flipped classroom models, scaffolding techniques, and engagement methods used—on pedagogical effectiveness and student motivation? 3. what gaps exist in the current research on digital education and audiovisual integration, and what implications can be drawn for future educational policies and practices? this review uniquely contributes to the existing literature by comprehensively examining audiovisual technologies across diverse educational contexts, including traditional, blended, and fully online learning environments. additionally, this study highlights the timeliness of these insights, given the novelty of the post-covid educational landscape and the continuous evolution of teaching strategies in response to technological advancements. in doing so, this review aims to inform educators, policymakers, and researchers by providing an overview of current practices, identifying gaps, and outlining recommendations for future research. the findings are expected to contribute to a better understanding of how audiovisual tools can support more inclusive, adaptive, and effective educational experiences in a digital age. gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era current issues in education, 26(1) 3 research gaps this review highlights several research gaps in integrating audiovisual technologies in post-covid-19 education. first, while the current literature documents the effectiveness of digital tools in engaging students, there is limited research on the long-term impact of these tools on sustained motivation and learning outcomes across diverse educational levels. additionally, studies examining the role of mobile applications in supporting real-time interaction and feedback are focused mainly on primary and secondary education, leaving a gap in understanding their effectiveness in higher education and specialized fields. there is also a need for comparative studies to determine the specific impacts of subtitles on language learning across various proficiency levels and language contexts. furthermore, the scalability and sustainability of flipped classroom models in resource-limited and rural settings remain underexplored, posing a challenge for inclusive access. finally, the literature lacks sufficient studies on culturally responsive audiovisual methods, particularly in fields like islamic education, where tailored engagement strategies are crucial. addressing these gaps in future research could provide a stronger foundation for implementing digital tools that are both effective and equitable. methods scoping review methodology the primary objective of the scoping review is to comprehensively chart the landscape of existing research, identifying its scope and depth while pinpointing areas where research gaps exist, offering valuable direction for future investigations (pham et al., 2014). within this review, we adhere to the recommended five-stage approach (arksey & o'malley, 2005), encompassing: (1) formulating the research question, (2) identifying pertinent studies, (3) selecting studies, (4) organizing and synthesizing data, and (5) compiling, condensing, and presenting the outcomes. search strategy research question our study posited the following question: how do educational institutions and practitioners adapt to and optimize instructional modalities and technologies in the postcovid-19 era to enhance learning outcomes and student engagement? identifying relevant studies to address the research objectives of this study, a comprehensive literature search was conducted over an extended period to ensure thorough coverage of relevant studies. the search spanned from september 1, 2023, to october 1, 2023, to identify relevant articles related to utilizing audiovisuals in education after the covid-19 pandemic. the search was performed in the following databases: pubmed (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov), web of science (https://www.webofscience.com), b-on (https://www.b-on.pt), google scholar (https://scholar.google.com/), and scopus (https://www.scopus.com). these databases were selected based on their coverage of relevant fields, including education, technology, and psychology. the search terms were developed through an iterative process, considering the key concepts of audiovisuals, education, and the post-covid-19 context. the search queries were constructed by combining the relevant keywords and search terms using boolean gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era current issues in education, 26(1) 4 operators. for example, the query "(audiovisuals or multimedia) and education and postcovid-19" identified articles encompassing all three key concepts. inclusion criteria studies included were: (1) articles discussing the integration, utilization, impact, or implications of audiovisual technologies in educational settings post-covid-19 pandemic. (2) studies focusing on various educational settings, including but not limited to traditional classrooms, blended learning environments, or fully online/remote learning scenarios, were included to capture diverse applications of audiovisual technologies. (3) articles that evaluated or discussed the impact of audiovisual tools on learning outcomes, student engagement, pedagogical approaches, access to education, or any other relevant educational outcome were included. (4) peer-reviewed articles published between 2022 and 2023 were considered, ensuring the review covered the most recent and up-to-date literature within the chosen timeframe. the selection of peer-reviewed articles between 2022 and 2023 for this scientific study, which explores post-covid education and integrating audiovisual technologies, is paramount due to its alignment with the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. this timeframe ensures the inclusion of the most recent and relevant literature, capturing emerging practices and innovations adopted in response to the transformed educational landscape. focusing on this period also guarantees the incorporation of up-to-date insights, methodologies, and trends specific to the post-pandemic educational context, enhancing the study's credibility and relevance. by considering peer-reviewed articles within these two years, the research maintains a balance between timeliness, quality, and managing the scope of the review, which is crucial for comprehensively analyzing and synthesizing the dynamic changes in education following the covid-19 crisis. (5) research conducted globally, capturing diverse applications and contexts from different regions worldwide. exclusion criteria studies excluded were (1) grey literature, conference abstracts, unpublished studies, review articles, books, book chapters, and non-empirical studies. (2) articles not directly addressing the impact or utilization of audiovisual tools in education post-covid-19 were excluded. (3) studies not conducted within an educational setting or lacking explicit relevance to educational contexts were excluded. the search summary is summarised in table 1. table 1 the search strategy summary items specification date of search 09/01/2023 – 10/01/2023 database and other sources searched pubmed, web of science, b-on, google scholar, and scopus search terms used audiovisuals, multimedia, education, post-covid-19 timeframe articles published between 2022 and 2023 inclusion criteria all included studies were available in english and portuguese; all selected studies were relevant to the review topic. exclusion criteria studies in other languages only contained abstracts, papers published in conferences, books or book gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era current issues in education, 26(1) 5 chapters, and studies not conducted within an educational setting or lacking explicit relevance to educational contexts. selection process all sources selected by the first author types of outcomes measured the outcome measured in this scoping review is the impact or implications of audiovisual technologies on various aspects of education in the post-covid-19 era. this includes evaluating the effects of audiovisual tools on learning outcomes, student engagement, pedagogical approaches, access to education, and any other relevant educational outcomes. the review aims to capture the multifaceted impacts of integrating audiovisual technologies into educational settings following the covid-19 pandemic, focusing on understanding how these technologies have influenced different facets of education. study selection two authors conducted the screening process independently, each performing a duplicate review. one author (sg) meticulously examined all citations, reviewing titles and, when available, abstracts to identify potentially relevant studies. concurrently, another author (bl) conducted a parallel screening. we obtained the full-text articles for additional evaluation for citations deemed relevant or lacking sufficient information for a clear decision. any disagreements over eligibility during the screening or full-text review phases were resolved through team discussions, ensuring a comprehensive and rigorous assessment of the selected studies. data extraction files (.ris format) containing the exported search results were saved and imported into the rayyan web tool (ouzzani et al., 2016). rayyan facilitated the screening process by allowing the researchers to collaborate on selecting articles. the tool was used to import search results from multiple databases, conduct initial screening based on titles and abstracts, apply inclusion and exclusion criteria systematically and resolve any conflicts through discussion among the researchers. each article was reviewed in detail within rayyan to extract relevant information related to the integration, utilization, impact, or implications of audiovisual technologies in educational settings. key data points such as study objectives, methods, sample size, results, and conclusions were systematically recorded. next, a data extraction table (sg) was developed. the extracted data included the journal, year of publication, title, main findings, limitations and effects of audiovisual tools. one author (sg) abstracted the information above, which a second author (bl) doublechecked. data analysis after selecting the studies for review, we employed a thematic analysis approach to identify key characteristics and recurring themes across the literature. we developed a coding framework to ensure a systematic analysis based on an initial reading of the selected articles. this framework was organized around central themes related to integrating audiovisual technologies in post-covid-19 education, such as mobile app usage, subtitles in language gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era current issues in education, 26(1) 6 learning, flipped classrooms, and scaffolding in online environments. each study was coded according to these thematic categories, which allowed for structured data extraction and facilitated comparisons across studies. we applied a two-stage coding process. in the first stage, open coding was used to identify each study's emerging concepts or unique characteristics. this included factors such as educational level, subject focus, and type of audiovisual tool employed. in the second stage, we used axial coding to group these initial codes into broader themes, such as "student engagement," "instructional challenges," and "technological accessibility." this approach helped to capture the commonalities among studies and allowed us to examine the relationships between different educational practices and outcomes. the coding framework guided our analysis by providing a structured means of capturing and comparing the data across diverse study contexts, helping us systematically identify overarching trends and unique insights. additionally, this framework enabled us to recognize gaps in the literature, such as the limited focus on long-term impacts, scalability, and accessibility challenges within specific educational levels and settings. results study selection the search was executed in the selected databases, initially retrieving 128 articles. duplicate articles were removed and marked as ineligible by automation, resulting in a preliminary pool of 85 unique articles. the search included peer-reviewed articles published between 2022 and 2023 written in english or portuguese, the languages the researchers speak. titles and abstracts of the articles were reviewed to identify potentially relevant studies. articles irrelevant to the research topic were excluded at this stage, leading to a refined set of 13 articles. full-text access to these articles was obtained through institutional subscriptions and interlibrary loan services when necessary. however, two reports based on titles and abstracts were not retrieved during the screening process due to the inaccessibility of the full text. the search process and the inclusion of articles were documented and tracked using reference management software. the entire search process is summarised in a flowchart (figure 1), illustrating the number of articles identified, screened, and included at each stage under the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (prisma) guidelines (page et al., 2021). gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era current issues in education, 26(1) 7 figure 1 diagram of article selection and inclusion process on the prisma methodology by page et al., 2021 this figure illustrates the number of articles identified, screened and included at each stage. following rigorous application of inclusion and exclusion criteria, eight articles were considered suitable for analysis, as displayed in table 2, including the main findings, limitations and effects of audiovisual tools. table 2 scoping review articles (n=8) article title, year, reference main findings limitations effects of audiovisual tools technologies changing in the post pandemic era, 2022, (oyelude, 2022) -there is a greater need for digital tools in libraries, archives, and museums in the postcovid-19 era. -these digital tools offer services that can be accessed anytime, anywhere, and from any device, highlighting the importance of remote access. -libraries need to adapt to the changing nature of education by incorporating more artificial intelligence, audiovisual immersive technologies, and digital and media literacy initiatives. -technologies such as cloud-based systems, security measures, analytics, and automation the study might provide a general overview without delving deeply into specific challenges or opportunities libraries, archives, and museums face in integrating audiovisual technologies post-covid-19. the study may not cover all aspects of the integration of audiovisual technologies into post-covid-19 education, potentially overlooking important factors or developments in this area on student engagement. digital tools increased student engagement by providing remote access to services. on access to education: emphasized the role of digital literacy initiatives in improving remote access. on pedagogical approaches: suggested incorporating ai and immersive technologies in education records identified from database searching web of science (n = 3) google scholar (n = 117) pubmed (n = 0) scopus (n = 2) b-on (n = 6) total records (n = 128) records removed before screening: duplicate records removed (n = 9) records marked as ineligible by automation tools (n = 34) records removed for other reasons (n = 0) records screened (n = 85) records excluded (n = 72) reports sought for retrieval (n = 13) reports not retrieved (n = 2) reports assessed for eligibility (n = 11) reports excluded: not in an educational context (n = 3) reports of included studies (n = 8) identification of studies via databases and registers id e n ti fi c a ti o n s c re e n in g in c lu d e d gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era current issues in education, 26(1) 8 are essential for thriving in the new normal of service delivery. -library, archives, and museum workers need to prioritize re-skilling to adapt to the evolving service delivery landscape in the postpandemic era. findings from specific libraries, archives, and museums featured in the study may not be applicable universally, limiting the generalizability of the conclusions. the feasibility of digitalizing teaching practice through mobile app development: supervisors' reactions, 2023, (davids et al., 2023) the study discusses the need for a mobile app solution to transition teaching practice (tp) from manual to digital due to the demands imposed by covid-19. this adaptation involves addressing the absence of digital solutions, enhancing ict capacities, and overcoming connectivity challenges. the mobile app facilitates communication and feedback between supervisors and students, enabling real-time interaction, immediate feedback, and efficient storage of evaluations. this enhanced communication supports student learning and development. the study highlights how the mobile app promotes student collaboration and interaction, reducing isolation and fostering a sense of community. this collaborative environment supports knowledge sharing and improves teaching practice. the findings discuss the importance of addressing anxieties and challenges related to internet connectivity, data costs, and digital literacy. this includes providing training and support to students and supervisors and ensuring access to necessary hardware and internet connectivity. while the mobile app is seen as a supplementary innovation, the study acknowledges concerns about online and distance learning quality compared to traditional classroom experiences. it emphasizes that the app cannot fully replace inperson interactions and experiences. the study highlights potential resistance to technological innovations among academic and administrative staff, which could hinder the successful implementation of the mobile app project. this resistance may stem from concerns about job security or unfamiliarity with digital tools. the study suggests the need for pilot studies and continuous monitoring to improve the mobile app's functionality and ensure its effectiveness. this indicates that the full impact and efficacy of the mobile app solution may not be fully understood until further evaluation is conducted. on student engagement: enhanced real-time interaction and feedback through mobile apps reduced student isolation and promoted community. on access to education: addressed connectivity challenges and enhanced ict capacities to improve education access. on pedagogical approaches: mobile apps promoted collaboration and interaction among students. effectiveness of subtitles in l2 classrooms: a meta-analysis study, 2023, (alotaibi et al., 2023) the meta-analysis of 26 studies found that the overall effect size of using subtitles on l2 learning was medium (d = 0.69), indicating a positive impact of subtitles on language learning. context: subtitles had a medium effect size in foreign language (fl) learning contexts but did not significantly affect second language (sl) learning contexts. language skills: subtitles had large effect sizes for listening, speaking, and writing skills, a medium effect size for reading comprehension, a small effect size for vocabulary, and no significant effect for mixed skills. educational level: subtitles had medium effect sizes across different institutional levels, including schools, universities, and language institutes. learners' l2 proficiency levels: subtitles had a large effect size for advanced learners, a medium effect size for intermediate learners, and no significant effect for beginner learners. native language used in subtitles: effect sizes varied depending on participants' native languages, ranging from large to negative effects. subtitles implementation method: subtitles had a large effect size when learners were asked to create them, a medium effect size in mixed implementation, and a medium effect size when learners only viewed subtitles without participating in their creation. limited number of studies. there was a lack of diversity in the target languages used in the included studies, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to other language pairs. further research is needed to explore the effectiveness of subtitles in different language combinations. the measurement of participants' native language proficiency varied across studies, which could have influenced the effect sizes reported. standardized measures of native language proficiency would enhance the comparability of results across studies. some variables, such as the impact of subtitles on grammar, pronunciation, and other language skills, were not extensively explored due to the limited number of studies available. future research should investigate these aspects to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of subtitles on language learning. while the study examined the effect of different subtitles implementation methods, such as viewing and creating subtitles, a limited number of studies explored these aspects. more research is needed to assess the effectiveness of on pedagogical approaches: subtitles significantly improved various language skills, with a large effect size for listening, speaking, and writing skills, indicating their effectiveness in enhancing pedagogical approaches in l2 classrooms. gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era current issues in education, 26(1) 9 various subtitles implementation methods in language learning contexts. a hidden benefit in the covid-19 pandemic: rethinking physical geography pedagogy in higher education using a flipped classroom approach,2023, (taylor, 2023) most students (69%) preferred the flipped classroom approach over traditional lecturebased methods for online delivery. this approach involved pre-recorded lectures and live class activities, providing more significant interaction between students and staff. students appreciated using multimedia resources, including pre-recorded lectures with detailed slides and audio, live class activities, graphs, images, and google earth imagery. this multimedia approach facilitated engagement and deeper learning. the flipped classroom approach led to increased engagement and understanding among students. qualitative feedback highlighted the effectiveness of repetition in learning, consistency in upload times, and the helpfulness of audio transcripts or captioning. in a post-covid-19 scenario, students preferred a hybrid approach that combines online and on-campus flipped classroom methods. this preference indicates a shift from traditional lecture-based undergraduate physical geography education methods. technological proficiency and broadband access did not significantly influence student preferences for lecture delivery methods. both basic and proficient technology users preferred the online flipped classroom approach. the average exam grade increased by 2% compared to the previous year, which utilized traditional lecture-based delivery methods. this improvement suggests a positive impact of the flipped classroom approach on learning outcomes. despite the positive findings, the study acknowledges several limitations, including reliance on self-reported data, the need for larger sample sizes, and the potential challenges posed by student-directed aspects of the flipped classroom approach. on student engagement: flipped classroom methods increased engagement through multimedia resources. the effects of using scaffolding in online learning: a metaanalysis, 2023, (zuo et al., 2023) scaffolding significantly impacts students' online learning performance, with an overall effect size of 0.53 (p < 0.001), indicating that scaffolding is more effective than learning without scaffolding. scaffolding is effective across different learning disciplines, including language and literature, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, science, and educational technology. while the effect sizes varied across disciplines, scaffolding significantly benefited online learning in all fields. scaffolding was effective for students across different grade levels, including elementary school, secondary school, and university students. there was no statistically significant difference in the effect sizes among these learner populations. scaffolding has a moderate impact on various learning outcomes, including the affective, cognitive, and meta-cognitive domains. the effect on the affective domain was significantly more robust than the other domains. scaffolding is beneficial for both individual online learning and collaborative online learning. while scaffolding showed a medium effect size for personal online learning, it substantially impacted collaborative online learning more. different types of scaffolding, including conceptual, meta-cognitive, procedural, and strategic scaffolding, were analyzed. conceptual scaffolding had the greatest impact on students' online learning performance, followed by meta-cognitive and procedural scaffolding. however, strategic scaffolding limited research focus the study only includes articles published in english, which may introduce language bias. the study mentions a limitation regarding the scarcity of articles focusing on scaffolding's affective and metacognitive outcomes in online learning. this suggests that the analysis might not fully capture the impact of scaffolding on these essential aspects of learning. the study suggests several avenues for future research, indicating areas where additional investigation is needed to address the limitations identified in the current literature. this highlights the ongoing nature of research in this field and the need for continued exploration and validation of findings. on pedagogical approaches: digital scaffolding significantly improved online learning performance across various disciplines. gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era current issues in education, 26(1) 10 showed a smaller effect size, possibly due to the limited number of studies focusing on its application. enhancing online instructional approaches for sustainable business education in the current and postpandemic era: an action research, 2023, (ng & lo, 2023) study of student engagement online traditional classrooms resulted in disengagement and passive learning flipped classroom showed no significant improvement in student participation. gamified flipped classroom significantly increased student engagement and participation. improvements in perceived learning and behavioural engagement were shown. technical issues such as network problems, software disruptions, and inadequate digital skills hindered effective online teaching. students sought collaborative learning experiences, missed in-person interactions, and valued authoritative input from teachers. students exhibited competitive behaviour, competing while collaborating, fostering discussions, and seeking to win in group activities. students expressed interest in continuing discussions and studying with peers beyond online class sessions. flexible learning hours aided self-study, but technical issues required additional technical support and digital skill development among educators. developed a framework emphasizing flexibility, all-inclusive learning, competition, sustainable learning, and technical support for effective online pedagogy. the study was conducted in one discipline, limiting the generalizability of findings to other educational fields or institutions. findings on student engagement and perceptions were subjective, demanding further studies for scientific validation. studies with larger participant samples are required to strengthen the scientific validity of findings. invites exploration of other pedagogical options (e.g., personalization, vr) to enhance student engagement and learning. higher education institutions must consider budget constraints while developing engaging online pedagogies. on access to education: highlighted the importance of flexible learning hours and technical support. methods of islamic religion teachers in improving postonline student learning motivation at mts alwashliyah 18 tembung academic year 2021-2022, 2023, (nasution & mahariah, 2023) -emphasizes the importance of intrinsic motivation in driving active learning behaviours in islamic religious education. reduced interest, peer influences, residential environment, and gadget use were identified as significant factors negatively impacting student motivation. highlighted the application of interactive, inspirational, pleasant impression, challenge, and motivation-based strategies by teachers. teachers utilize urgency explanations, competitive groups, rewards, punishments, conducive atmospheres, and consultation opportunities to boost student motivation. cooperative learning, project-based learning, and interactive multimedia are effective methods teachers use to motivate students. findings might be specific to the context of mts alwashliyah 18 tembung and might not apply universally to other educational settings. the research doesn't delve deeply into the sustained impact of these methods on long-term student motivation and academic outcomes. the study might have limitations in its scope, possibly missing out on exploring other potential factors influencing student motivation. external factors beyond the scope of the research, such as socioeconomic status or broader cultural influences, could impact student motivation. on student engagement: interactive and motivational strategies, including competitive groups and cooperative learning, significantly improved student engagement and motivation in post-online islamic education. achievement of learning outcomes in nontraditional (online) versus traditional (faceto-face) anatomy teaching in medical schools: a mixed method systematic review, 2023, (abualadas & xu, 2023) 19 studies found no significant difference in academic performances between online and face-to-face teaching. quantitative and qualitative analyses of test scores revealed comparable outcomes. 26 studies indicated higher satisfaction with face-to-face teaching compared to online teaching. factors influencing satisfaction include technical issues, interaction, visualization, and reduced eye strain. while academic performance remained comparable, online teaching couldn't replace face-to-face teaching due to various factors. cadaveric dissection, interaction, and spatial learning remained significant in face-to-face teaching. varied study designs and quality from cross-sectional to randomized controlled trials affected the systematic review's consistency and comparability. some studies lacked participant characteristics across online and face-to-face groups, leading to potential bias. subjective satisfaction responses collected through likert scales lacked uniformity and might not fully capture nuanced student experiences. english-only inclusion might overlook valuable non-english publications, potentially introducing language and publication bias. lack of standardized examination formats across schools limited the on access to education and pedological approaches: while academic performance was similar in both settings, face-to-face teaching was preferred due to better interaction and visualization, indicating that while online education improves access, certain pedagogical benefits are more pronounced in traditional settings. gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era current issues in education, 26(1) 11 comparability of academic performance data. study characteristics all studies acknowledge the profound impact of the covid-19 pandemic on education and the necessity to adapt instructional modalities and technologies in response to the challenges posed by the pandemic. many studies discuss the shift from traditional, faceto-face instruction to online or hybrid learning models necessitated by the pandemic. they explore various technologies and approaches used to facilitate this transition (abualadas & xu, 2023; alotaibi et al., 2023; davids et al., 2023; ng & lo, 2023; oyelude, 2022; taylor, 2023; zuo et al., 2023). across the studies, there is a common emphasis on integrating digital tools and technologies to enhance teaching and learning experiences. this includes videoconferencing, mobile apps, multimedia resources, and online platforms. several studies highlight the importance of student engagement in online learning environments and discuss strategies to promote active participation and interaction. they explore gamification, flipped classrooms, and scaffolding methods to enhance student engagement (ng & lo, 2023; taylor, 2023; zuo et al., 2023). each study recognizes the challenges and limitations of online learning and technological integration. these include issues related to technical infrastructure, internet accessibility, digital literacy, and concerns about the quality of online instruction compared to traditional methods. despite the challenges, the studies also identify pedagogical innovations and best practices for effective online teaching. these include cooperative learning, project-based learning, interactive multimedia, and scaffolding techniques. many studies employ a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative analysis with qualitative insights to understand the research topic comprehensively. this approach allows for a nuanced exploration of the complexities of online learning and instructional technologies. the interconnected cloud of concepts centered around covid-19, learning, and intelligence suggests an intriguing convergence of themes within the scientific article (figure 2). this conceptual nexus reveals how these domains interrelate and inform one another, offering a comprehensive lens through which to examine contemporary educational and cognitive dynamics. the prominence of covid-19 within this cloud underscores its role as a transformative force. the pandemic has disrupted traditional educational models and accelerated the adoption of digital learning technologies and methodologies. this shift likely encompasses discussions on remote learning adaptations, namely on how schools and universities transitioned to online platforms, the effectiveness of these measures, and the longterm implications for educational delivery; also on equity and access since the pandemic highlighted and, in some cases, exacerbated disparities in access to technology and quality education. examining these issues provides insights into the socioeconomic dimensions of educational resilience and mental health and well-being because of the psychological impact of the pandemic on students and educators, including stress, anxiety, and the challenges of maintaining engagement in a virtual environment. the concept of "learning" within this framework suggests a deep dive into various educational strategies and the adaptive measures necessitated by the pandemic, like innovative pedagogical approaches, such as flipped classrooms, blended learning, and gamification. another aspect is how educational institutions managed interruptions, shifted to asynchronous learning, and developed new curricula to suit an online format. it also included analyzing how remote learning environments affected student engagement, motivation, and academic performance, including the challenges and successes experienced. including "intelligence" suggests a nuanced examination of cognitive processes and how the pandemic influenced them. this might encompass how students and educators gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era 12 adapted cognitively to new learning environments and the impact of these changes on cognitive development and problem-solving skills; the broader implications of prolonged remote learning on intellectual growth, critical thinking, and creativity; and the role of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies in supporting learning during the pandemic, and their potential to shape future educational landscapes. intelligence, a multifaceted concept encompassing cognitive, emotional, adaptive, and practical dimensions, is critical in education. cognitive intelligence involves logical reasoning, mathematical skills, and analytical thinking; emotional intelligence pertains to understanding and managing emotions; adaptive intelligence emphasizes adjusting to new situations and solving novel problems; and practical intelligence relates to everyday tasks. understanding these dimensions has profound implications for developing educational technologies and practices. for instance, adaptive learning systems and ai-driven feedback tools can personalize learning experiences, while vr and ar can create immersive, engaging environments that enhance practical intelligence. social learning platforms can foster collaboration, boosting cognitive and emotional intelligence, and crisis management tools can improve resilience in educational settings. by embracing a comprehensive view of intelligence, we can create innovative educational solutions that address both immediate challenges and long-term needs, ultimately fostering more resilient and effective educational systems. the interconnected cloud of concepts highlights the profound and multifaceted impact of covid-19 on education and cognitive processes. it underscores a period of significant transformation, innovation, and adaptation, offering valuable insights into the future of learning and the evolving nature of intelligence in response to global challenges. figure 2 word cloud representation of key themes in the scoping review literature gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era 13 discussion this review underscores the transformative impact of audiovisual technologies in reshaping educational practices, student engagement, and pedagogical outcomes in the postcovid-19 era. the integration of these tools has shifted from mere facilitators to essential pillars that enhance instructional delivery, bridge physical divides, and cater to diverse student needs. audiovisual technologies have provided critical support for both instructors and students across various educational fields, from business to religious studies and from language acquisition to science education. however, these tools do not replace the irreplaceable value of face-to-face instruction; instead, they highlight the potential of a hybrid educational model that combines the strengths of in-person and online learning to maximize student engagement and inclusivity. amid this progress, several challenges persist, such as the digital divide and inequalities in access, which underscore the importance of continued efforts toward equitable education. mobile app development for teaching mobile apps for teaching and learning emerged as a valuable resource during the pandemic, allowing for real-time interaction, feedback, and collaborative learning. these applications enable instructors to communicate with students directly, providing instant feedback that enhances student learning and reduces feelings of isolation. nevertheless, successful implementation of mobile applications requires sufficient infrastructure, digital literacy, and strategies for overcoming connectivity challenges, particularly in under-resourced areas. further research could focus on expanding the use of mobile applications beyond primary and secondary education into higher education and specialized fields, exploring usability, accessibility, and their role in student-centered learning (davids et al., 2023). impact of subtitles on language learning subtitles have become a powerful tool in language education, effectively aiding listening comprehension, vocabulary building, and overall language proficiency. by reinforcing auditory input with visual text, subtitles make language learning more accessible and cater to different proficiency levels (alotaibi et al., 2023). research shows that intermediate and advanced learners benefit significantly from subtitles, but there is a gap in understanding their impact on beginner learners (bianchi & ciabattoni, 2008; wong et al., 2020). future studies could examine the effects of various subtitle types—such as same-language and translated subtitles—on learning in different linguistic contexts. this line of research would support language educators in tailoring instruction to diverse learner needs and preferences. flipped classrooms in geography education flipped classroom models have proven particularly useful in geography education, where spatial concepts and visual learning are critical. in this model, students engage with core content through multimedia resources before class, allowing for deeper, application-based learning during interactive sessions (ng & lo, 2023; taylor, 2023). geography education benefits from this approach, as students can explore complex spatial data, maps, and visualizations at their own pace before working collaboratively in class (obi, 2024). however, implementing flipped gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era 14 classrooms effectively requires carefully balancing self-paced learning with guided instruction (agyeman & aphane, 2024). future research should explore adapting the flipped model to meet the needs of various geography curricula, addressing factors such as student engagement, access to technology, and the integration of experiential learning activities. scaffolding in online learning environments scaffolding techniques are essential in online learning environments, providing students with step-by-step guidance as they navigate digital coursework (zuo et al., 2023). scaffolding is precious in disciplines like science and mathematics, where sequential learning and skill-building are fundamental (anghileri, 2006; dominguez & svihla, 2023). while research on scaffolding has primarily focused on procedural and conceptual types, further studies could examine the impact of meta-cognitive scaffolding, which encourages students to self-assess and regulate their learning. additionally, exploring scalable scaffolding approaches for large online classrooms could address the diverse learning needs of a broader student population and support a more inclusive learning experience. adapting pedagogical practices and educational technologies integrating emerging technologies into education necessitates a dynamic interaction between adapting existing pedagogical practices and ensuring these technologies respond to identified educational needs (ibrahim, 2024). traditionally, pedagogical practices have been developed within the constraints and possibilities of the available technologies (pliushch & sorokun, 2022). with the advent of new educational technologies, there is a need for these practices to evolve (t. lim et al., 2024). for instance, online learning platforms require educators to adopt new methods for delivering content, engaging students, and assessing their progress (faridi & shaheen, 2024). this adaptation includes designing interactive and multimedia-rich curricula, incorporating synchronous and asynchronous communication tools, and using data analytics to personalize learning experiences (f. lim, 2023; sengupta et al., 2024). conversely, educational technologies should be developed with a deep understanding of pedagogical principles and educational needs. technologies that fail to align with or support effective teaching strategies are unlikely to be successful or widely adopted. thus, a feedback loop is essential, where educational needs inform technology development, and new technologies inspire pedagogical innovation (mhlongo et al., 2023). the context significantly alters this interaction. when technologies complement an inperson educational environment, they are typically used to enhance and extend traditional teaching methods (smith et al., 2000). for example, blended learning models combine face-toface instruction with online activities, leveraging the strengths of both approaches. in this scenario, technologies act as supplementary tools that provide additional resources, facilitate collaboration, and offer flexible learning options. in contrast, when technologies entirely replace in-person education, as seen during the initial years of the pandemic, the demands on both technologies and pedagogical practices increase dramatically. here, technologies must provide a comprehensive platform for all aspects of education, including content delivery, student engagement, assessment, and support services. this shift requires a thorough rethinking of pedagogical practices to ensure they are effective in a wholly digital environment. gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era 15 similarly, the success of online instructional approaches in business education is influenced by factors such as student preferences, technical support, and pedagogical frameworks (volery & lord, 2000). these findings emphasize the need for personalized, context-specific approaches to technology integration that align with learners' diverse needs and preferences. furthermore, the studies highlight the importance of ongoing evaluation and adaptation of technology-enhanced teaching methods. continuous monitoring, pilot studies, and feedback mechanisms are essential for assessing the impact and effectiveness of technological interventions in educational settings (kushwaha et al., 2024). the application of audiovisual technologies in education reveals significant variations across different educational levels and local contexts. these technologies are often utilized at the primary and secondary education levels to enhance engagement and interactivity, catering to younger students' visual and auditory stimulation needs (balalle, 2024). however, deploying such technologies must be age-appropriate, considering cognitive development stages and attention spans (vedechkina & borgonovi, 2021). in higher education, audiovisual tools are increasingly sophisticated, supporting complex simulations, virtual laboratories, and multimedia presentations that cater to more mature learners. these technologies also facilitate research and collaborative projects, which are pivotal at the tertiary level (jensen et al., 2005; samaniego erazo et al., 2015). local context significantly influences the effectiveness and implementation of audiovisual technologies (jeljeli et al., 2022). in regions with robust digital infrastructure, integrating these tools can be seamless, offering high-quality, uninterrupted educational experiences. conversely, deploying audiovisual tools faces significant challenges in areas with limited access to technology and internet connectivity (xie & zhang, 2024). socioeconomic factors also play a critical role; students from underprivileged backgrounds might lack the necessary devices and internet access to fully benefit from these technologies (joshi et al., 2024). moreover, cultural factors influence the adoption and adaptation of audiovisual technologies (jeljeli et al., 2022). for instance, traditional teaching methods may be deeply rooted in some educational contexts, making transitioning to technologically enhanced education more challenging (mhlongo et al., 2023; noroozi et al., 2023). educators must be culturally sensitive and aware of these dynamics to effectively integrate audiovisual tools into their teaching practices (eden & chisom, 2024a). tailoring such technologies to fit the local educational culture and infrastructure is essential for maximizing their benefits and ensuring equitable access for all students (eden & chisom, 2024b). challenges and limitations of the audiovisual technologies several challenges and limitations must be addressed in transitioning educational practices from in-person to online formats using audiovisual technologies. firstly, technology and internet connectivity pose significant barriers, particularly in regions with limited infrastructure (ferrari et al., 2022). this digital divide can exacerbate educational inequalities, as students without reliable internet access or adequate devices may struggle to participate fully in online learning (miah, 2024). additionally, both students and educators may face challenges related to technology literacy, necessitating comprehensive training to ensure the effective use of these tools (mhlongo et al., 2023; mokhtari, 2023). there are also pedagogical challenges, such as adapting interactive and hands-on learning experiences to a virtual environment, which can impact student engagement and comprehension (kazu & kuvvetli, 2023; verma et al., gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era 16 2023). furthermore, the overreliance on audiovisual materials may lead to issues of screen fatigue, reducing the effectiveness of learning over extended periods (kaur et al., 2022; wolffsohn et al., 2023). continuous monitoring and feedback mechanisms are essential to address these limitations and refine audiovisual technologies' integration, ensuring they enhance rather than hinder educational outcomes (cavalcanti et al., 2021; kushwaha et al., 2024). to address the cognitive, emotional, personal, and educational implications of fully transitioning the educational environment from in-person to online formats, several key factors must be considered. cognitively, the shift to online learning requires students to develop new skills in self-regulation, time management, and digital literacy, which can be both a challenge and an opportunity for growth (miertschin et al., 2015; rahman et al., 2020; vishwakarma & tyagi, 2023). emotionally, isolation from peers and teachers can lead to feelings of loneliness and anxiety, potentially impacting mental health and motivation (brandt et al., 2022; loades et al., 2020). however, online platforms can also offer personalized support and flexibility, catering to individual emotional needs (gligorea et al., 2023). personally, students may experience a significant change in their daily routines and environments, affecting their overall well-being and work-life balance (chu & li, 2022). educationally, the transition can disrupt traditional pedagogical models, necessitating the adaptation of curricula to suit digital platforms, which can initially lead to a decline in the quality of education if not appropriately managed (singh et al., 2023). nevertheless, it also opens the door to innovative teaching methods, such as gamified learning and interactive multimedia resources, which can enhance engagement and learning outcomes if effectively implemented (lampropoulos & kinshuk, 2024). also, this study does not deeply explore the role of cultural contexts in shaping the adoption and efficacy of digital tools. cultural norms and values significantly influence educational practices and attitudes toward technology, yet these dimensions remain underexplored in the reviewed literature. the studies included in this review may reflect selection bias, as they predominantly focus on recent english-language research. this focus limits the generalizability of findings to non-english speaking regions or settings where digital infrastructure is less developed. a notable gap exists in understanding the long-term impacts of digital tools on educational outcomes, including sustained student engagement, knowledge retention, and motivation. the lack of longitudinal studies in the existing literature constrains the ability to conclude the enduring efficacy of these tools. also, measuring the nuanced effects of digital tools, especially in diverse and evolving educational settings, poses a challenge. the heterogeneity of methodologies and metrics across studies further complicates comparisons and synthesis. limitations of this study while this scoping review provides valuable insights into integrating audiovisual technologies in post-covid-19 education, several limitations must be acknowledged. first, the study was restricted to articles published in english and portuguese, which excluded potentially relevant research in other languages. this language constraint may have introduced bias and limited the generalizability of findings to non-english-speaking or non-portuguese-speaking contexts. additionally, the review focused solely on peer-reviewed journal articles, excluding books, book chapters, conference papers, and grey literature. while these sources can offer significant insights, their exclusion may have narrowed the scope of evidence considered. the study also employed a relatively short timeframe, analyzing only articles published between 2022 and 2023. this temporal limitation may have excluded earlier research with gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era 17 relevant findings or emerging studies published after the review period. furthermore, the reliance on specific databases may have inadvertently omitted studies from smaller or less commonly indexed journals, potentially affecting the comprehensiveness of the review. the review predominantly examines audiovisual technologies' immediate and short-term effects, leaving the long-term sustainability and broader educational impacts underexplored. finally, although the review spans multiple disciplines, it may not fully capture the nuances of how audiovisual technologies perform across various educational levels, socioeconomic contexts, or regions with differing levels of digital infrastructure. by acknowledging these limitations, this study underscores the need for more inclusive, diverse, and comprehensive research efforts to inform future educational practices and policies. future research directions future research in this realm should extend beyond the confines of these initial studies to encapsulate a broader spectrum of educational settings and contexts. for instance, exploring the integration of audiovisual technologies in specific disciplines such as language learning, science education, and religious studies could provide a more nuanced understanding of their unique impacts on pedagogy, motivation, and learning outcomes. additionally, investigating audiovisual tools' long-term effects, sustainability, and scalability across diverse demographic groups and resource-limited settings would offer invaluable insights, especially concerning digital divide challenges. emerging technologies such as virtual and augmented reality represent promising areas for future exploration, particularly their integration within audiovisual frameworks to enhance student engagement and practical learning experiences. to address socioeconomic and cultural factors influencing access to educational technology, future studies should focus on how these variables impact digital equity and the effectiveness of hybrid and flipped classroom models in underserved communities. moreover, as islamic and other religious education may have specific engagement needs, the research could further develop culturally responsive audiovisual strategies in these fields. finally, longitudinal studies on audiovisual tools' evolving use and continuous impact in post-covid education would deepen understanding of their transformative potential and inform sustainable, inclusive educational practices. future studies should investigate how cultural factors influence audiovisual technologies' adoption, adaptation, and success. comparative studies across regions could reveal critical insights into culturally responsive pedagogical practices. expanding research to include diverse geographical, linguistic, and socioeconomic contexts will enhance understanding of digital education's global applicability and equity challenges. conducting longitudinal research to track the sustained impacts of audiovisual tools on learning outcomes, engagement, and educator efficacy is crucial. such studies can provide evidence of the durability of benefits and inform long-term policy and implementation strategies. cross-regional studies examining variations in access, usage, and outcomes of audiovisual technologies can highlight inequities and drive solutions tailored to local challenges. employing innovative methods, such as data analytics and artificial intelligence, can offer more precise measurements of the impacts of digital tools, particularly in large-scale educational settings. gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era 18 conclusion according to the analysis of the articles selected, integrating audiovisual technologies into post-covid-19 education has unveiled a transformative landscape, redefining the essence of pedagogy, student motivation, and learning outcomes. the multifaceted impacts observed underscore a paradigm shift in educational methodologies, marked by the omnipresence of audiovisual tools. these technologies, once mere facilitators, now stand as pillars reshaping educational delivery and engagement. a resounding narrative emerges across varied studies, from techno-pedagogy in business education to innovative methods in islamic and religious teachings and the comparison of online versus traditional anatomy teaching. these technologies bridge physical gaps, augment interactive learning experiences, and address diverse learning needs. however, while showcasing promising strides in learning outcomes and student engagement, they don't eliminate the irreplaceable essence of face-to-face instruction. thus, the future heralds a hybrid 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(2023). the effects of using scaffolding in online learning: a meta-analysis. education sciences, 13(7), artigo 7. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13070705 author’s notes sara gonçalves orcid: 0000-0002-8287-1357 university of trás-os-montes and alto douro sgoncalves@utad.pt bárbara longa orcid: 0009-0005-8583-7452 university of trás-os-montes and alto douro barbaralonga2009@hotmail.com mailto:sgoncalves@utad.pt mailto:barbaralonga2009@hotmail.com gonçalves et al.: educational practices in the post-covid era 24 isabel barroso orcid: 0000-0001-5112-6015 university of trás-os-montes and alto douro and university of porto imbarroso@utad.pt conceição rainho orcid: 0000-0002-3162-2086 university of trás-os-montes and alto douro and university of porto crainho@utad.pt vítor rodrigues orcid: 0000-0002-2795-685x university of trás-os-montes and alto douro and university of porto vmcpr@utad.pt funding: this work was supported by the project “poch-02-53i2-fse-000049 skills 4 póscovid skills for the future in higher education”, financed by the human capital operational program (poch), with co-financing from portugal 2020 and the european social fund. credit author statement: vr, ib and cr conceptualization, funding and supervision; sg methodology, project administration, visualisation and writing – original draft; sg and bl formal analysis, investigation, resources and data curation; sg, bl, ib, cr and vr writing – review & editing; bl validaton. more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:imbarroso@utad.pt mailto:crainho@utad.pt mailto:vmcpr@utad.pt https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ trends and issues in student-run peer-reviewed journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 1 volume 24, issue 2 august 28, 2023 issn 1099-839x trends and issues in student-run peer-reviewed journals of education tim t. andress & alex j. armonda the university of texas at austin abstract: the purpose of this mixed methods bibliometric study was to identify the trends and issues in student-run peer-reviewed journals of education and to determine predictive factors of journal longevity. to that end, a search for journals was conducted, yielding 11 journals and 1,105 records. journals were coded for editorial procedures, goals, and guidelines. records were coded for publication characteristics, author characteristics, keywords, and abstracts. the analysis consisted of calculating descriptive statistics for journals, authors, and affiliations, implementing text mining on titles, keywords, and abstracts, and fitting a logistic regression model to predict journal longevity. results revealed that student-run journals are somewhat prone to gaps in publication, but that effective editorial practices such as requiring abstracts and publishing issues consistently predict journal longevity. three themes emerged across the content of journals: a transformative focus (e.g., content aimed at analyzing and transforming inequitable structures in and beyond education), leaning into the margin (e.g., content that challenges the boundaries of academic knowledge production), and inconsistent guidelines & processes related to the formal aspects of manuscript submissions (e.g., paper abstracts,). recommendations for student-run peer-reviewed journals of education are to (a) form sustainable editorial structures, (b) publish consistently, (c) solicit authors purposefully, and (d) continue leaning into the margin. keywords: student-run journals, journals of education, mixed methods, bibliometric analysis citation: andress, t. t., & armonda, a. j. (2023). trends and issues in student-run peerreviewed journals of education. current issues in education, 24(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss2.2180 accepted: august 3, 2023 trends and issues in student-run peer-reviewed journals of education student-run peer-reviewed journals of education are hubs of scholarly research that are generally housed within a college or university. by the nature of their name, they are distinct from mainstream academic journals of education in that they are managed by students rather than https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss2.2180 andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 2 academics with terminal degrees. they vary in their editorial structure, goals, and publishing practices. there is a dearth of information about student-run peer-reviewed journals of education in the united states. presently, there is no definitive list of student-run journals and no common location to access them; they are mostly unavailable on education resource information center (eric), which is the foremost database for educational journals, despite overhauls to existing indexing practices in recent years (corby, 2009). accessibility issues, and the related lack of impact factor calculation, contribute to why student-run journals typically garner far less attention from educational scholars and practitioners alike than do more mainstream education journals (e.g., review of educational research, exceptional children, the elementary school journal), in terms of both submissions, readership, and citations. that scholars in other fields, like medicine and law, have underscored the value of student-run journals—from their formative role in the training of future researchers and practitioners (hopwood, 2010) to their increasing visibility and impact on the production and dissemination of new scholarship (see alamri, 2016, 2018; murray et al., 2017)—the lack of attention paid to student-run educational journals strikes us as curious. rather than accept this inattention as indicative of a lack of value, we start from the opposite assumption: there is indeed a value in student-run peer-reviewed educational journals. value is subjective. does an educational journal’s value lie in its impact factor? its rate of publication? its number of downloads and citations? of course, student-run journals are not at all competitive with long-standing mainstream journals if their value is conceived solely in terms of these metrics and standards. unlike mainstream journals, student-run publications typically do not have access to dozens of editors, are not supported by publishing giants such as sage, elsevier, or wiley, and are unable to produce an equivalent quantity of publications. however, student-run peer-reviewed journals offer other value. existing on the margins, they are an outlet for creative and unorthodox scholarship on pressing topics and issues, highlighting perspectives and orientations that may not fit within the more restrictive methodological scope and stylistic boundaries of higher-ranking journals. they provide invaluable editorial experience for student researchers and serve as a veritable first step into scholarly service to the field. most importantly, student-run peer-reviewed journals provide spaces for commentaries on critical issues in education and alternative perspectives that break down barriers between research, teaching, and practice. purpose given the complete lack of synthesis work on the content and publication processes of student-run peer-reviewed journals of education, there are many questions that have not been investigated. there is incredibly limited quantitative and qualitative data on the foci and methodologies of articles published in these journals. additionally, the review processes, publication rates, and contributions to databases have not been analyzed. therefore, there exists an incomplete understanding of the work of student-run journals and their contribution to the field of education. to address this knowledge gap, we performed a bibliometric analysis. bibliometric analyses rely on metadata commonly aggregated by journals, such as records’ titles, authors, affiliations, dates, keywords, abstracts, and citation metrics. they can be used to identify publication trends in a specific journal, in a particular research area, or more broadly across a field. systematic reviews and meta-analyses differ from bibliometric analyses in that they rely on data contained within publications, rather than their metadata. simply put, a bibliometric analysis can be performed without performing full-text reads, while systematic reviews and metaandress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 3 analyses cannot. to date, there are no bibliometric analyses of student-run journals. thus, the purpose of this bibliometric analysis is to synthesize the work of student-run peer-reviewed journals of education in the united states. using quantitative and qualitative methodology, we investigated the following research questions: 1. what are the trends in student-run peer-reviewed journals of education? 2. which factors predict maintained patterns of publication in student-run journals? method search strategy as previously mentioned, there is no definitive list of student-run peer-reviewed journals in education. moreover, because these journals are often not included in common databases, it would be difficult to be confident in the ability of a typical systematic review to identify every journal that meets our criterion. instead, the search for journals consisted of three procedures. first, the authors consulted two non-definitive lists of journals that may be relevant provided by the editor-in-chief of a student-run peer-reviewed education journal (i. l. vilches, personal communication, january 25, 2023; available from https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12b9u 6c-srymturwdbi8n_hydtx0cxpszo6l0fxkb7uu/edit?usp=sharing; https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k2jmhve2htwtnekjhbsrijps3povtkk3lqvrnlf5ao4 /edit#gid=0). next, the authors reviewed the list of databases housed by eric for any studentrun journals. eric is a widely-used database of educational research that includes both professional and student-run journals. additionally, the authors completed a non-exhaustive internet search for student-run peer-reviewed journals in education. this internet search included various combinations of keywords such as ‘student-run,’ ‘student-led,’ ‘journals of education,’ ‘education journals,’ ‘graduate journal,’ and ‘university journal.’ given that there is no centralized source of student-run journals, this broad search was used to capture lesser-known journals that were not identified by the aforementioned search procedures. finally, the authors reviewed the websites of tier i universities with education programs in which relevant journals are most likely to be housed. in conceptualizing the framework of this analysis, it was necessary to limit the scope of included journals so as not to synthesize journals with fundamentally different goals and editorial procedures. the following inclusion criteria were applied: • the journal’s website indicates that it is student-run, meaning that the editorial board consists of students, rather than scholars who have graduated with a doctoral degree. • the journal focuses primarily on education as a whole (e.g., not psychology, social policy, or primarily higher education). • the journal is based in the u.s. notably, we chose to exclude the longest-standing and most broad-reaching student-run journal of education: the harvard educational review. upon analyzing the content and editorial processes of harvard educational review relative to the other journals listed below, we determined that it was too dissimilar to the corpus we created in terms of the number of publications per year, editorial scope, longevity as a journal, and prestige. we suggest that it would be more appropriate to perform a separate bibliographic analysis on the published works of the harvard educational review than to include it in the present analysis. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12b9u6c-srymturwdbi8n_hydtx0cxpszo6l0fxkb7uu/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12b9u6c-srymturwdbi8n_hydtx0cxpszo6l0fxkb7uu/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k2jmhve2htwtnekjhbsrijps3povtkk3lqvrnlf5ao4/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k2jmhve2htwtnekjhbsrijps3povtkk3lqvrnlf5ao4/edit#gid=0 andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 4 data collection all included journals housed their published issues on a university repository or affiliated website, making the data available digitally. the first author created a spreadsheet of every record published by included journals on or before march 1, 2023 (see supplementary materials). introductions written by editorial board members were excluded because they summarized articles that were already included in the corpus. video media were excluded because their data could not be effectively represented within the coding sheet. all other records, including manuscripts, commentaries, reviews, and short essays were included. coding the first author developed a coding sheet including the following variables: journal name, publication title, volume number, issue number, issue type (i.e., open call or special issue), authors, author affiliations, keywords, abstracts, current activity, and availability on eric. the first author coded 100% of identified records. in cases in which data were not available, ‘na’ was indicated. the second author double-coded 10% of identified records, spanning across all included journals. interrater reliability was 99.8% between the authors, and discrepancies were settled by agreement. analytic procedure constraints to running a full bibliometric analysis were identified due to the limitations of the corpus of data available from the student-run peer-reviewed journals. first, the journals do not index with the same rigor expected of mainstream academic journals. second, the journals are mostly not housed in large databases, such as eric or psycinfo. this greatly increases the difficulty of performing network analyses. therefore, a procedure using the data available was devised to perform a limited bibliometric analysis. quantitative analysis after coding was completed, the spreadsheet was converted to a csv file and analyzed using r (r core team, 2022). the csv and r files are available in the supplementary materials. first, the following publication-related metrics were calculated for each journal: total publications, number of volumes and issues, number of open calls and special issues, number of contributing authors, number of sole-authored publications, number of co-authored publications, number of active years of publication, and productivity per active year of publication. second, a word analysis was conducted in which keywords and full abstracts, when available, were analyzed to determine which words appeared at the highest frequency for each journal. third, an authorship analysis was conducted to determine whether there were patterns in repeated publications by authors within and across student-run journals and to assess the spread of affiliations (e.g., universities, school districts) present in each journal. finally, logistic regression was used to create a predictor model for journal longevity. qualitative analysis alongside the quantitative methodology described, a supplemental qualitative content analysis (merriam & tisdell, 2016) was conducted. examining the student-run journals’ webpages, key discursive contents—including author guidelines and expectations, the core principles and aims of the journal, and other contents indicative of the journals’ orientation andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 5 toward the field of education—were interpretively coded for emergent and intersecting themes. the authors deployed a “winnowing” approach to categorizing and classifying codes, distilling from a greater number of contents the most relevant statements across journals, attending to key signifiers that expressed the “desire” of journals (e.g., “we seek,” “we encourage,” “we strive,”); once identified, coded statements were aggregated into three thematic strands representing common or underlying ideas (creswell, 2013). consistent with our mixed-methods approach, the authors interpreted these themes by situating them alongside the key trends and patterns identified and unfolded in the quantitative analysis, allowing for a more contextualized and holistic interpretation of data related to abstract keyword frequency, thematic foci, and other important factors identified as predictive of journal longevity. results the present bibliometric analysis addressed two research questions using a mixed methods approach: “what are trends in student-run academic journals of education?” and “which factors predict maintained patterns of publication in student-run journals?”. the quantitative and qualitative analyses for each question are presented in this section. what are the trends in student-run academic journals in education in the u.s.? quantitative analysis table 1 peer-reviewed student-run journals of education journal name abbreviation affiliated university pubs./year status berkeley review of education bre university of california, berkeley 8.00 a current issues in comparative education cice columbia university 10.52 a current issues in education cie arizona state university 14.45 a emerging voices in education journal evie drexel university 10.50 i literacies across the lifespan journal lal university of illinois chicago 6.50 a neag school of education journal nsej university of connecticut 5.00 a texas education review txed university of texas at austin 18.20 a the assembly the assembly university of colorado boulder 9.33 i the cutting edge the cutting edge stanford university 7.25 i the nebraska educator the nebraska educator university of nebraskalincoln 6.12 a william & mary educational review w&m the college of william & mary 15.50 i andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 6 note. a = active, i = inactive, pubs./year = mean publications per year. status was determined at time of submission. eleven student-run educational journals met the inclusion criteria for this study (see table 1). notably, this list includes journals that are currently active, were formerly active, and that are in the process of publishing their first issue. collectively, these journals have published 1,105 records that are included in the present analysis. figure 1 displays the number of records published by each journal. journals primarily published two issues per volume, consisting of roughly three to ten articles per issue. however, journals published up to four issues during select years. figure 2 displays the years in which journals published at least one issue. at the time of submission, the most recent issues were published issues in 2023. figure 1 total publications by each journal andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 7 figure 2 timeline of issue publication note. gaps indicate years in which the journal did not publish at least one issue. additionally, student-run journals varied in their publication of records as part of open calls and special issues. publications in open calls are not solicited and do not conform to a specific theme. alternatively, publications in special issues center around a common theme and are submitted in response to a call for papers. figure 3 highlights differences in journals’ publishing habits in terms of call type. most student-run journals published articles in open calls. however, txed published roughly equally between call types, and cice and the assembly primarily published articles in special issues. andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 8 figure 3 number of publications by call type authorship for each record was coded in order of first to seventh author in the order in which authors were listed by the journal or the title page of the record. authors’ affiliations, including institutions of higher education, agencies, businesses, and governmental organizations were also coded sequentially. the number of publications in student-run journals of education by each author was calculated. table 2 displays data on the affiliation(s), number of publications, and the most frequent journal in which authors with four or more publications in student-run journals of education published. notably, some top-publishing authors were affiliated with the universities in which the journals are housed. taylor, charran, and khan completed their doctoral studies at the universities that correspond to the journals where they published several studies. additionally, ginsburg and steiner-khamsi held faculty positions at columbia university, where cice is housed. table 2 authors with four or more publications in student-run journals of education author affiliation # of pubs. most frequent journal john r. slate sam houston state university 7 cie (7) zachary w. taylor university of texas at austin 7 txed (6) chelseaia charran university of texas at austin 5 txed (5) andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 9 author affiliation # of pubs. most frequent journal steven j. klees florida state university, university of maryland 5 cice(5) minha khan stanford university 5 the cutting edge (5) mark b. ginsburg university of pittsburgh, university of maryland 4 cice (4) gita steiner-khamsi columbia university 4 cice (4) diana j. larocco university of hartford 4 cie (4) evan ortlieb texas a&m university – corpus christi, monash university 4 cie (4) note. multiple affiliations are listed, when reported. pubs. = publications the 15 most common affiliations of authors (i.e., first to seventh author) across all journals are shown in figure 4. many of the most common affiliations are represented by the universities that house the journals themselves. frequency of submissions by authors from the college of william & mary, the university of nebraska-lincoln, and stanford university were inflated due to their journals (i.e., william & mary educational review, the nebraska educator, and the cutting edge) primarily publishing work by authors affiliated with their own university. moreover, records published by multiple authors may have skewed this distribution if several authors were affiliated with the same university. figure 4 top-publishing affiliations for student-run journals of education lists of words that commonly relate to a specific type of publication (e.g., commentary, mixed methods manuscript, qualitative manuscript, quantitative manuscript, review of research) andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 10 were formed (see supplementary materials). text mining was used to analyze the titles, keywords, and abstracts of each record. for instance, the word “regression” and the absence of any words related to qualitative research or reviews of research would yield a label of “quantitative,” whereas the word “editorial” would yield a label of “commentary.” records that did not contain any of the code words in the five publication categories were labeled “unknown.” fifty-eight point five percent of records had at least one keyword, and 73.2% included an abstract; thus, many records had incomplete data in the test mining analysis, yielding a high number of unknown record types. importantly, record type was not coded explicitly, and the categorization of the records in figure 5 are assumed based on the inclusion or absence of words commonly related to types of articles. an anecdotal and non-systematic review suggested that many of the records in the “unknown” category are commentaries that do not include keywords to be sorted into the “commentary” category. figure 5 record types in student-run journals qualitative analysis for the eleven journals included in the study, a thematic coding of discursive contents contained in the journals’ publicly accessed websites (see table 3 for links) revealed three overarching motifs. it is important to note that the location of relevant statements varied according to each journal’s website design and interface. information regarding the journal’s thematic focus, for example, might be detailed in the call for papers, the about section, the history page, the mission statement, or the front matter. such variability may be partly attributed to design differences in the content management systems (e.g., wordpress, ojs) made available to editorial teams at a given college or university. at any rate, website management marks a key difference between student-run journals and mainstream outlets, such as those managed by taylor & francis (which regularly contain “about this journal” and “aims andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 11 and scope” sections), where prospective authors can quickly find useful information on thematic focus, thematic emphases, issues of concern to the journal, and so forth. the first thematic motif, registered in each of the eleven student-run publications examined, is a transformative focus (see table 3). transformative focus conveys a thematic, interdisciplinary, and practical focus on advocacy-based scholarship, or research aimed at analyzing and transforming inequitable structures within and beyond education. that overarching term emerges from more distinct and localizable themes designated across the journals in question: the bre is perhaps the most direct in this regard, specifying interest not just in “educational diversity and equity,” but “critical scholarship... that analyzes, evaluates, and problematizes power and dominant structures, and helps us to imagine something new.” similarly, nsej solicits work that aims to “improve educational and social systems in order to facilitate increasingly effective, equitable, and socially just practices for educators.” such transformative emphasis is likewise reflected in discipline-specific terminologies: expressed across the outlets is avowed interest in research exploring the political economy of education (cice); sociopolitical issues in education policy (txed); and critical, culturally sustaining approaches to rethinking curriculum and teaching practice (lal). lastly, transformative focus is evoked in journals’ philosophies and/or guiding principles. the assembly and w&m, for example, speak of a journalistic orientation toward “service,” both in terms of social engagement and justice-centered action, and in terms of the development of novice researchers seeking to disseminate new scholarship. table 3 transformative focus journal website location relevant journal statements berkeley review of education (bre) call for papers the berkeley review of education (bre) encourages senior and emerging scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to submit articles that address issues of educational diversity and equity from various intra/interdisciplinary perspectives. critical scholarship. the bre welcomes a broad range “critical” scholarship, particularly work that analyzes, evaluates, and problematizes power and dominant structures, and helps us to imagine something new. current issues in comparative education (cice) history cice aims to provide a multi-faceted view of comparative education by addressing changes in world politics, economic markets and the social milieu as they affect education, as well as by welcoming submissions from professors, researchers, students, advocates, policy-makers, and practitioners. emerging voices in education (evie) about evie, a journal run by doctoral students, seeks to advance theory and practice of education by cultivating, disseminating, and archiving innovative scholarly research by doctoral students and early career researchers throughout the globe. https://bre.berkeley.edu/call-for-papers/ https://bre.berkeley.edu/call-for-papers/ https://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice/editorial-board/ https://evie.soe.drexel.edu/?page_id=49 andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 12 journal website location relevant journal statements current issues in education (cie) front matter cie publishes articles on a broad range of education topics that are timely and have relevance nationally and internationally. we seek innovative scholarship that tackles challenging issues facing education using various theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. cie welcomes original research, practitioner experience papers, and submissions in alternative formats. literacies across the lifespan journal (lal) front matter literacies across the lifespan seeks to represent diverse and new paradigms, methodologies, and perspectives, and to promote ethical scholarly writing that honors learners and educators. literacies across the lifespan is run by graduate students at uic’s center for literacy. neag school of education journal (nsej) mission statement aligning with the mission of its governing institution, the neag school of education journal places significance on pieces seeking to improve education and social systems in order to facilitate increasingly effective, equitable, and socially just practices for educators and practitioners from a variety of fields, perspectives, and theoretical lenses as they serve their local communities. texas education review (txed) front matter, call for papers the texas education review (txed) is located directly on the university of texas’s campus in the heart of downtown austin. its close proximity to the texas capitol, texas education agency, and state board of education offers unparalleled access to the thought leaders, policy makers, and academics who are driving education policy in texas. we are currently accepting submissions that address sociopolitical, economic, cultural, and organizational issues in education on a rolling basis. the assembly about we are particularly interested in publishing work aimed at both transforming systems and local practices in the service of educational equity and social justice. because we are a colorado-based journal, in addition to publishing work by national contributors, we highlight work that engages with critical issues in our state and the rocky mountain region. cutting edge about our mission statement is as follows: e – explore educational research d – disseminate diverse opinions and experiences g – gather creative scholarship e – encourage intellectual curiosity the nebraska educator front matter this journal is produced by unl graduate students and publishes articles on a broad range of education topics that are timely and have relevance in the field of all levels of https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu https://cfl.uic.edu/overview/redi/literacies-across-the-lifespan/ https://education.uconn.edu/neag-journal/about-us/ https://education.uconn.edu/neag-journal/about-us/ https://txedrev-ojs-utexas.tdl.org/txedrev/index https://txedrev-ojs-utexas.tdl.org/txedrev/index https://txedrev-ojs-utexas.tdl.org/txedrev/index https://www.colorado.edu/journal/assembly/about-assembly https://ojs.stanford.edu/ojs/index.php/ce/about https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nebeducator/ andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 13 journal website location relevant journal statements education. we seek original research that covers topics such as: 1. curriculum, teaching and professional development 2. education policy, practice and analysis 3. literacy, language and culture 4. school, society and reform 5. teaching and learning with technologies the william & mary educational review (w&m) about the william & mary educational review is grounded in a philosophy of service. our mission is to provide scholars with the guidance, experience, and reach needed to become successful in their research pursuits. note. website locations link to journals’ websites. the second found theme of interest is leaning into the margin (table 4). the margin is not just a useful and evocative term for identifying the “place” of student-run journals in the hierarchy of scholarly production, it informs the boundary-challenging and subversive tone struck by many of these journals. in one sense, this is reflected in an explicit desire to solicit work that challenges the foreclosed bordering or policing of academic knowledge (we note the fact that these outlets are open access), and to undermine the exclusions, in and beyond the academy, that this hierarchy maintains. ber states that its goal is to foster “new and existing relationships within and beyond the academy”—reaching activists and practitioners in the field. the assembly seeks accessible scholarship understandable by those “who most feel the impact,” which tacitly connotes a repudiation of the jargon-heavy language of mainstream social science and educational research. beyond this ostensible emphasis on border-breaking language—a kind of scholarly discourse transcending divisions usually erected between the university and community, the school-world and home-world (see lal, table 4), leaning into the margin is also indicated in student-run journals’ stated commitment to showcasing work from individuals “traditionally excluded from academia in the publishing process” as stated by the w&m. further analysis suggests that this attention to the “margins” is reflected not only in the individuals or communities declared to be featured (as contributors) and reached (as audiences), but in the “non-traditional” categories or types of academic work solicited and accepted. the cutting edge welcomes creative works of fiction for example, while the nsej directly mentions publishing research in its preliminary or germinal stage. across these outlets—in mission statements, paper calls, and “about” sections—we find expressed an “ethos of the marginal,” one which leans into the blurry space between traditional categories, authorial practices, and audiences typically associated with academic production, publication, and dissemination. table 4 leaning into the margin journal website location relevant journal statements berkeley review of education (bre) call for papers pushing borders & boundaries. the bre seeks to promote scholarship that re-conceptualizes and transcends academic identities, labels and categories. we encourage https://scholarworks.wm.edu/wmer/about.html https://bre.berkeley.edu/call-for-papers/ https://bre.berkeley.edu/call-for-papers/ andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 14 journal website location relevant journal statements work from all disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary work that builds towards new understandings of educational processes and practices. forging communities. the bre seeks to foster new and existing relationships within and beyond the academy. as an open-access journal, we aim to democratize knowledge and encourage work that originates from and speaks to a wide range of scholars, practitioners, activists and educators. literacies across the lifespan journal (lal) front matter literacies across the lifespan contributes to ongoing conversations about literacy across learners’ lives, from early childhood to adulthood, and in contexts across home, school, and community settings. the investigation, exploration, and pedagogizing of non-textual literacies (e.g., artmaking, oral storytelling, digital/media literacies, etc.) is welcome, in addition to studies of textual reading and writing meaning-making practices. neag school of education journal (nsej) mission statement of particular interest are pieces providing reflection on student experience with their research processes and manuscripts showcasing research in the preliminary stages. the journal offers students and early-career scholars the chance to publish work through diverse types of academic writing including, but not limited to, research articles (e.g., qualitative and quantitative research), essays, literature review, as well as personal experience and reflective pieces. the assembly about public scholarship is: ● timely: it is responsive to and engages with current debates and realities. ● relevant: it is relevant to educators, policymakers and community members seeking to make informed decisions about their work. ● critical: it illuminates and interrogates the power dynamics that shape policy and practice. ● place-based: it informs the socio-political context from which it emerges and for which it is used. ● accessible: it can be understood by and is useful for those who most directly feel the impact of the scholarship. ● expansive: it broadens the boundaries of what counts as scholarship and redefining expertise in education research. the cutting edge about the cutting edge is stanford university’s undergraduate educational research journal. it is a platform where https://cfl.uic.edu/overview/redi/literacies-across-the-lifespan/ https://education.uconn.edu/neag-journal/about-us/ https://education.uconn.edu/neag-journal/about-us/ https://www.colorado.edu/journal/assembly/about-assembly https://ojs.stanford.edu/ojs/index.php/ce/about andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 15 journal website location relevant journal statements students can publish their research papers, opinions, fictional works, or other pieces pertaining to education. the william & mary educational review (w&m) about we strive to break barriers and build sustainability in academia by actively seeking opportunities to include undergraduate and master’s students who have traditionally been excluded from academia in the publishing process. change begins with those who are positioned as gatekeepers. note. website locations link to journals’ websites. it was important to consider submission guidelines considering student-run journals’ focus on boundary-transcending work. we deploy the term inconsistent guidelines & processes to capture the third theme. inconsistent guidelines & processes highlights certain symmetries and dissymmetries across the student-run journals (see table 5), restricting our focus to the “main submission type” discussed in each outlet (i.e., the submission type having the most extensive description and prescribed formal criteria, viewed in relation to other manuscript types). these summarized findings reveal characteristics common to the genre of academic literature. each journal, for example, requires abstracts (normally 150-200 words), with the notable exception of lal, which does not publish abstracts. relatedly and with more variation, journals specify the inclusion of keywords—this is explicitly mentioned in guidelines in five of the eleven outlets. interestingly keywords appear in papers published in three journals in which they are not explicitly asked for (cice, the assembly, w&m), reasonably leading us to conclude that some outlets may be soliciting keywords at a later stage in the review and/or formatting process. of the eleven journals surveyed, all but two provide prospective authors information regarding peer-review processes: seven specify a double-blind review process, and require submission of anonymized documents, one (the assembly) indicates a peer-review, but does not discuss methodology, and three outlets (cice, nsej, the cutting edge) give little to no information regarding peer-review processes and practices. finally, it is important to note that all journals set standards for manuscript length of the main submission type (whether by word count or page length) and require style and formatting according to apa guidelines. other notable requests included are evie’s “why this matters” feature that asks authors to include a 200-word synthesis of “practical applications of their research” and nsej’s requirement that manuscripts submitted be first-authored by a current graduate student. table 5 inconsistent guidelines & processes journal main submission type summary of submission guidelines berkeley review of education (ber) research manuscripts ● abstract ● up to 5 keywords ● limit 30 pages ● double-blind peer review (2 rounds) ● apa 6 https://scholarworks.wm.edu/wmer/about.html andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 16 journal main submission type summary of submission guidelines current issues in comparative education (cice) research manuscripts ● abstract ● keywords (in papers, but not specified in guidelines) ● 5000 – 7000 words ● review process not detailed ● apa (latest) emerging voices in education (evie) research manuscripts ● abstract ● five keywords ● 3000 – 5000 words ● double-blind peer review (2 rounds) ● apa 6 ● 200 word synthesis for “why this matters” feature current issues in education (cie) research manuscripts ● abstract ● up to 5 keywords ● limit 12000 words ● double-blind peer review ● apa 7 literacies across the lifespan journal (lal) empirical research ● no abstract specified ● no keywords specified ● 4000 – 6500 words ● double-blind peer-review ● apa 7 neag school of education journal (nsej) research manuscripts ● abstract ● no keywords specified ● limit 30 pages ● must be written by graduate students (as first author) ● review process not specified ● apa 7 texas education review (txed) research manuscripts ● abstract ● 3-5 keywords ● 4000 – 7000 words ● double-blind peer-review ● apa 6 or latest the assembly research manuscripts ● abstract ● keywords (not specified, but appear in papers) ● 3000 – 5000 words ● peer-review (process not specified) ● apa 6 the cutting edge research manuscripts ● abstract ● no keywords ● 4000 – 6000 words andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 17 journal main submission type summary of submission guidelines ● peer-review process not specified ● apa the nebraska educator research manuscripts ● abstract ● up to 5 keywords ● limit 7500 words ● double-blind peer-review ● apa 7 the william & mary educational review (w&m) research manuscripts ● abstract ● keywords (not specified, but appear in papers) ● limit 5000 words ● double-blind peer review ● apa 6 text analysis. examination of the most frequent keywords (figure 6) and words identified in abstracts (figure 7) across published articles in the eleven student-run journals reveal some striking connections between the articles’ contents and the overarching themes of interest already identified on the journals’ websites (mission statements, calls, guidelines, etc.). we note that data in figures 6 and 7 overrepresents outlets whose published articles contain these elements and underrepresents those that do not (see limitations below); additionally, these representative snapshots necessarily favor outlets with the highest number of published records (cice, cie, txed; see figure 1 above). as other researchers suggest (see kim et al., 2022), keywords signify concepts, and offer a handy point of entry for identifying thematic and conceptual foci within and across academic journals. we here offer a modest set of preliminary connections: given the journals’ transformative focus, and their aim to solicit critical, inter-disciplinary, and community-focused work, do we see a thematic resonance between these stated aims and the conceptual contents represented in published work? the centrality of teacher education (figure 6), for example, might serve as an indicator that publications across outlets are indeed involved in exploring connections between theory and practice, specifically as it pertains to processes or challenges related to the training of educators (teacher preparation, and professional development, also strike us as relevant here). it is, however, curious to note that the most frequent keywords connote very “traditional” educational contexts and institutional settings: schools, teachers, and terminologies specific to university-based professional development (field experiences, preservice teachers, etc.), one can well reason, seem in part to recapitulate the very institutional and discursive “enclosures” that many journals explicitly seek to challenge and transcend. evidence for the latter is suggested in keywords that convey theoretical orientation. critical race theory, equity, whiteness, critical pedagogy, and bilingual education will connote both a conceptual and methodological leaning toward a critique of school power structures articulated along the axes of racism and white supremacy, linguistic and cultural hegemony, and class-based domination. more suggestive of this intersectional critique of institutional power is the striking frequency of terms such as neoliberalism and charter schools, signifiers which, taken together, evoke pejorative descriptions of market-based and privatized school reform andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 18 agendas which disproportionately impact communities of color and low-income communities (buras, 2011; lipman, 2015). given the relative saliency of these terms, it is very reasonable to surmise that although the student-run journals in question are publishing research focusing on “more traditional” educational sites, settings, and subjects, they are following through on their commitment to solicit, publish, and feature research engaging these topics from a more critical conceptual, analytical, or methodological angle. figure 6 most frequent keywords across journals figure 7 most frequent words in abstracts across journals andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 19 these conclusions are given further credence when examining the 50 most frequent terms used in titles, abstracts, and keywords across the 12 student-run journals (table 6). organized by category, where focus designates terms related to the thematic, phenomenal, or ontic unit of study, context terms related to institutional settings, and orientation terms related to research methods and/or theoretical framings, we see evidence of “traditional” education-related foci and settings. terms such as “students,” “teachers,” and “learning” appear quite salient for focus, and for context, we find “school” and “schools” appearing together (n = 1,243) almost eight times as often as “community” (n = 159), for example. meanwhile, the frequency of terms for orientation seems to evoke “transformative” standpoints and lenses, as reflected in the relative salience of signifiers such as “social” (n = 351), “critical” (n = 237), “theory” (n = 179), and to a lesser extent, “political” (n = 135), giving added weight to the notion that although “traditional” sites and categories of education-based research are emphasized in the student-run journals, the standpoint for analysis remain broadly reflective of a social-critical theoretical focus, rather than, say, a more strictly individualistic, cognitive, or behavioralist focus, which to us would suggest a much more “status quo” educationalist approach to the salient foci: students, teachers, learning, development, and so on. one final point of interest, which we take up in the discussion section, is that despite the abundance of methodological terms, like “research” (n = 467), “data” (n = 233), “analysis” (n = 225), and “findings” (n = 183), we note a striking absence of terms related to specific methods-related criteria, like “qualitative,” “quantitative,” or “mixed-methods.” table 6 50 most frequent terms in titles, abstracts, and keywords organized by category focus (n) context (n) orientation (n) education (1511) school (818) study (578) students (1143) schools (425) research (467) teachers (716) college (256) social (351) teacher (624) public (214) critical (237) learning (593) academic (199) data (233) student (471) classroom (199) analysis (225) educational (438) program (184) article (190) teaching (296) policy (289) programs (166) community (159) findings (183) theory (179) development (257) texas (154) studies (168) language (246) university (137) results (154) experiences (213) literature (153) practices (193) implications (149) curriculum (183) black (136) reading (170) political (135) support (165) impact (133) experience (160) literacy (157) educators (156) instruction (147) andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 20 focus (n) context (n) orientation (n) knowledge (146) assessment (136) faculty (134) which factors predict maintained patterns of publication in student-run journals? quantitative a primary outcome related to student-run journals’ success is active publication. journals were labeled as active if they published an issue in fall of 2022 (i.e., the most recently completed semester at the time of submission). the following predictor variables were created using the data that were coded: number of authors, number of keywords, presence of an abstract, mean publications per year, and indexing in eric. these variables were selected because they were either numerical or vector class variables that could be derived from the coded data and feasibly be used as predictors. a logistic regression model was created to predict active publication using these variables. we attempted to include a variable defining whether a journal was included in the eric database; however, the model did not fit appropriately, leading to its’ exclusion as a predictor. table 7 displays the outcome of the predictor model. table 7 logistic regression predicting journal activity β se wald p η2 intercept 5.92 .87 46.48 < .001 # of authors .05 .10 .25 .622 < .001 # of keywords .04 .06 .49 .472 .001 presence of abstract 5.04 .76 44.25 <.001 .206 mean pubs./year .15 .03 20.05 < .001 .040 note. β = unstandardized regression coefficient, se = standard error, wald = wald chi-square value, df = degrees of freedom, p = p-value, η2 = partial eta squared, pubs. = publications based on the predictor model, two predictors of active publication were not statistically significant: number of keywords and number of authors. for each one-unit increase in the number of keywords, the estimated log odds of a journal actively publishing increases by 0.04. this coefficient is not statistically significant (p = 0.472), so we cannot conclude that the number of keywords has a significant effect on active publishing. moreover, the number of keywords explained less than 0.1% of the variance in active publishing. for each one-unit increase in the number of authors, the estimated log odds of a journal actively publishing increases by 0.05. this coefficient is not statistically significant (p = 0.622), so we cannot conclude that the number of authors has a significant effect on active publishing. the number of authors explained approximately 0.1% of the variance in active publishing. the model identified two statistically significant predictors of active publication: the presence of an abstract and the mean number of records a journal publishes per year. the coefficient for presence of abstract (5.04) represents the estimated difference in log odds of a journal actively publishing between articles that have an abstract and articles that do not have an abstract. this coefficient is statistically significant (p < 0.001), so we can conclude that it is a andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 21 significant predictor of active publishing. moreover, the presence of an abstract explains 20.6% of the variance in whether journals published actively. for each one-unit increase in mean publications per year, the estimated log odds of active publishing increase by 0.15. this coefficient is statistically significant (p < 0.001), so we can conclude that mean publications per year is also a significant predictor of active publishing. mean publications per year explain 4.0% of the variance in whether journals published actively. see table 1 for the mean number of publications per year for each journal. the fifth predictor, whether journals indexed in eric or not, was not an appropriate fit for the model. since few student-run peer-reviewed journals of education index in eric, the standard error was very large compared to the coefficient. therefore, it is not a useful predictor of active publishing and was excluded from the analysis. qualitative having identified two key predictive factors for the “success” of student-run journals (maintained patterns of publication), we will remark on two interesting implications with these findings in mind. first, we recall the fact that for the student-run journals in question, the overarching themes related to vision, mission, and purpose stressed the solicitation and publication of transformative, boundary-transcending work. this discourse was further couched in a thematic of “the margin,” and resonated with the position of the student-run journals themselves within the hierarchy of academic publishing in education. leaning into the margin, journal leaders spoke to concerns of community outreach, critical and transformative scholarship, and with that, conveyed a tacit repudiation of at least some of the standardized practices associated with academic publishing. one might say it is somewhat anticlimactic, then, to find that of the variables we analyzed, it is precisely those “standard” elements (e.g., the presence of abstracts, the mean quantity of papers published per year) that are most suggestive of long-term success for student-run journals. as noted, success is subjective: one can easily argue that quality, however defined, is more important than quantity. yet the “mainstream” metrics indicative of a maintained pattern of publication, we argue, does not entail that journals compromise their critical, disruptive, and transformative aims. as leaders of one of these journals, we will confidently say that we have not sacrificed anything in this respect. it suggests that student-run outlets should maintain practices consistent with certain academic standards— requiring and making available abstracts, in this case—and establishing internal processes for optimizing the flow of manuscripts from submission through to publication. we are aware that this is a material question as much as it is one related to internal policy, vision, guidelines, and transparency for prospective authors regarding expectations for manuscript formatting and the peer-review process (see table 5 again for consistencies and inconsistencies with respect to these criteria). by material, we mean labor and resources. while we do not have the space here to go far into the topic of austerity in higher education (hall & bowles, 2016) and its disproportional effects on graduate students (see o’regan, 2021), we will suggest that, as graduate students are continually asked to do more with less, it may be an increasingly difficult task to establish and maintain the labor division and resource management necessary for student-run journals to sustain pipelines of production, to review and publish research at sufficient rates, maintain their websites, and market themselves to prospective authors and audiences. as leaders of one of the longer-running student-run journals as indicated by our review, we can point to strategies that have helped us navigate these structural and material barriers. the andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 22 first and perhaps most important is our strategic focus on special issues. in our approach, when a new graduate editor is added to our team, they are asked to outline an issue in their subfield of expertise, and either create a call for papers or solicit manuscripts from established or rising scholars (oftentimes both) on this topic. with the assistance of the editors-in-chief, this editor will serve as the “lead” for their issue, which has a double benefit. on the one hand, it allows every editor the opportunity to build professional skills related to the planning, organizing, and publication of a volume. on the other hand, it distributes labor in a more manageable way throughout our journal’s biannual publication schedule, allowing us to maintain a consistent flow of papers through our pipeline without overburdening our editorial team (who, when not leading an issue, serve as blind peer-reviewers of one to two manuscripts a semester). we are not saying this is a panacea for the structural, labor-related, and logistical challenges that student-run journals may regularly confront. rather, given what our analysis has demonstrated regarding predictors of student-run journal longevity, we want to give one qualitatively informed account of how, given our own institutional setting and context, we navigate the demands of an increasingly competitive and monopolized “market of ideas.” for us, that has meant upholding consistent, transparent expectations for submissions, distributing labor in a way that is sensitive to the lives of our editorial teammates while drawing on their disciplinary expertise, all the while maintaining an uncompromised focus on critical, transformative scholarship in various areas and subfields of education, including policy and leadership, curriculum and instruction, and teacher education, among others. discussion the purpose of this mixed methods bibliometric analysis was to identify trends in student-run academic journals in education in the u.s. and identify factors that predict maintained patterns of publication in student-run journals. below is a summary of recommendations for student-run peer-reviewed journals of education based on the current trends and issues identified in this corpus of journals. recommendations for student-run journals of education student-run journals of education should (a) form sustainable editorial structures, (b) follow consistent publication patterns, (c) solicit authors purposefully, and (d) continue leaning into the margin. form sustainable editorial structures it is vital that student-run peer-reviewed journals of education form sustainable editorial structures. firstly, sustainable structures help ensure the longevity of the journal, allowing it to continue publishing quality research and contributing to the wider field of education. several journals in the field have become inactive, and although it is difficult to determine the precise reasons why, it is highly likely that their editorial structures were not built for sustainability across years. student-run journals require students to be editors, and those students eventually graduate and often move on to become editors for mainstream journals of education. the window for student editors to contribute to student-run journals is typically narrow. newer doctoral students may not be adequately trained to serve as editors, and more experienced doctoral students have a short countdown to graduation. we suggest that journals establish a common period for students to serve as editors and continuously recruit new editors from consecutive cohorts. maintain enough editors so that each editor reviews approximately two andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 23 submissions per semester. finally, the editor-in-chief must identify and train their replacement. for a successful transition, this training should occur over two semesters: one in which the incoming editor-in-chief shadows and one in which they co-manage. some journals rely on faculty to help manage the transition, which may also be a useful approach as they offer a lasting presence that students cannot. additionally, sustainable structures promote consistency and efficiency in the editorial process, which can enhance the reputation of the journal and attract more high-quality submissions. authors may be attracted to the faster peer-review process typically provided by student-run journals relative to mainstream journals. ultimately, forming sustainable editorial structures is crucial for the success of student-run peer-reviewed journals of education, as it helps ensure their continued growth and impact in the academic community. follow consistent publication patterns broadly speaking, journals should create and enforce guidelines both for the editorial team and authors. our analysis identified the presence of abstracts as a significant predictor of journal longevity. we see the absence of abstracts as a proxy for the journal’s integrity to following guidelines. those that keep fidelity with guidelines, whether those set by the american psychological association (apa) or another organization, are more likely to survive during leadership transitions. several journals posted guidelines that called for authors to follow apa guidelines (see table 5) but did not regularly enforce these policies based on our analysis. additionally, the majority of the articles included in this corpus contained undescriptive titles, abstracts, and keywords (see figure 5). journals should call for revisions to these important indicators in cases when it is unclear what the record will contribute to the field. overall, we recommend that journals enforce apa guidelines more consistently to promote longevity and overall quality. to support these practices, journals should consider indexing with eric in addition to their institutional repositories. this transition has several positive impacts. first, eric gives journals much more publicity than institutional repositories because it is a widely searched database in the field, whereas repositories are not (callicott et al., 2016). second, journals that wish to index in eric must undergo an audit to ensure that they follow several of the practices recommended in this section. therefore, making this transition will likely improve the quality of a journal’s editorial practices and their reach in the field of education. solicit authors purposefully we calculated the mean number of publications per year for each journal (see table 1). this publication statistic was a significant predictor (p < .001) of journals being active at the time of analysis. therefore, we encourage student-run editorial teams to develop policies and practices that promote consistent and persistent article publication. there are several strategies journals can implement to achieve this goal. first and foremost, disseminate information about the journal to potential authors. given the short reach of student-run education journals, editors need to be actively engaged in identifying and inviting prospective articles to submit to their journal in order to promote growth. journals should also consider developing special issues on timely topics. special issues allow for specific calls to be developed that are more likely to draw in potential authors than open calls, particularly during the early years of the student-run journal. special issues should be planned in advance. for example, an editor might plan a special issue in the summer and invite several potential authors to contribute with a spring publication date set. andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 24 special issues might be published in tandem with open calls or separately, depending on the journal’s procedures. some student-run journals elect to only accept submissions from authors from the university in which the journal is housed. we do not recommend arbitrarily limiting the number of potential authors and submissions in this way. continue leaning into the margin it is important for student-run peer-reviewed journals of education to continue leaning into the margin for several reasons. firstly, leaning into the margin allows for the amplification of marginalized voices and perspectives within the field of education. by prioritizing research and submissions from scholars who have been historically underrepresented, these journals can help diversify the academic discourse and challenge dominant narratives. additionally, leaning into the margin can help address gaps and blind spots in research, providing a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of educational issues. moreover, student-run journals that prioritize marginalized voices and perspectives can help create more equitable and inclusive academic spaces where scholars from diverse backgrounds feel valued and represented. ultimately, leaning into the margin is crucial for student-run journals of education to fulfill their potential as agents of change and progress in the field. limitations the present study was limited by a few factors. first, the search procedure for identifying student-run peer-reviewed journals of education was not systematic. it would be difficult to achieve a systematic review of student-run journals because they are not commonly housed in databases, like other professional educational journals. instead, a review of eric, internet searches, and personal communications were used to identify journals. it is possible that this search strategy resulted in unidentified journals, which would negatively affect confidence in the findings. additionally, due to resource constraints and the number of identified records, the records could not be coded deeply. without performing full-text reads, several interesting variables related to themes, record types, and record length could not be measured. full-text reads could both quantitatively and qualitatively shed light on the ways in which published works relate to the journals to which they were submitted. this task may be more manageable for editorial boards of individual journals. although bibliometric analysis can provide valuable insights into the journal’s publication patterns, authorship, and content, it has several limitations. for example, it may not capture the quality of the articles published in the journal, and it may not reflect the impact of articles beyond the academic community. furthermore, bibliometric analysis relies on the quality and completeness of the metadata associated with the articles, which may not always be accurate or consistent. missing data, particularly the absence of keywords and abstracts, was common among student-run journals. conclusion we started from the premise that student-run academic journals of education provide real value to the field of educational studies. we acknowledged that value is not just a contested term by nature: it is, in the context of student-run journals, more elusive to define, given the absence of systematic studies on their purpose, thematic content, and long-term trends. through this mixed methods bibliometric analysis, we have taken a decisive step in the direction of andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 25 quantifying and qualifying characteristics and patterns in student-run journals, identifying predictors of their longevity, discovering overarching thematic consistencies, and recommending certain practices that, as leaders of a student-run journal ourselves, have been crucial for navigating and overcoming structural and institutional barriers. given the persistence of these barriers and roadblocks—where socio-economic trends in higher education, and their effect on graduate students especially, give us reason to think they are not only here to stay, but will intensify over time—we hope that our study, and the snapshot it provides, might serve as a tool for student-run journals to make more informed decisions pertinent to their long-term success. we believe graduate students enter the field of education based on their desire to change things, address shortcomings, and shake up status-quo ways of thinking—and, indeed, we have seen how these tendencies are reflected in the philosophical stances and dispositions of the studentrun journals examined here. but as the old idiom goes, “the devil is in the details,” and our review suggests that the small details (the formal processes and guidelines, the criteria necessary for building consistent pipelines of review and production) are just as important for the success of student-run journals as are philosophical principles, ethical stances, and moral imperatives to disrupt dominant perspectives and recenter conversations around marginalized perspectives and voices. we are of the opinion that student-run journals can, and must, do both. andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 26 references alamri, y. 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(2021, april 6). graduate student exploitation runs rampant at the university of georgia. medium. https://medium.com/jour4090/graduate-student-exploitation-runsrampant-at-the-university-of-georgia-da847e103c4c r core team (2022). r: a language and environment for statistical computing. r foundation for statistical computing, vienna, austria. https://www.r-project.org/ https://doi.org/10.4103/1357-6283.188756 https://doi.org/10.1080/15424065.2018.1432437 https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.81.2.6l42343qqw360j03 https://doi.org/10.1080/02763870902755890 https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0182.03 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360903532032 https://doi.org/10.17206/apjrece.2022.16.3.179 https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2015.959031 https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2722646 https://medium.com/jour4090/graduate-student-exploitation-runs-rampant-at-the-university-of-georgia-da847e103c4c https://medium.com/jour4090/graduate-student-exploitation-runs-rampant-at-the-university-of-georgia-da847e103c4c https://www.r-project.org/ andress & armonda: student-run journals of education current issues in education, 24(2) 27 author notes tim t. andress https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4566-9731 the university of texas at austin tim.andress@utexas.edu alex j. armonda https://orcid.org/0009-0006-0898-7075 the university of texas at austin armonda@utexas.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4566-9731 mailto:tim.andress@utexas.edu https://orcid.org/0009-0006-0898-7075 mailto:armonda@utexas.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ current issues in education, 26(2) 1 volume 26, issue 2 november 20th, 2025 issn 1099-839x leveraging on stakeholder involvement to create a student success culture through institutional capacity assessment at a university in south africa clever ndebele walter sisulu university munienge mbodila walter sisulu university abstract: institutions of higher education face the ongoing challenge of fostering a culture that empowers students to excel academically, professionally, and personally. such a culture requires a common understanding among all university stakeholders on what constitutes student success and how this can be achieved, and the institutional capacity assessment tool (icat) is one tool that can be used to establish this. using the quantitative methods, this paper discusses how the icat helped one south african university assess its capacity for enabling student success and identify strengths and areas for improvement. a structured survey (the icat tool) was administered to gather data from institution staff and stakeholders, applying mixed methods, which combined qualitative and quantitative insights to evaluate institutional capacity comprehensively. results show that completing the self-assessment tool enabled institutional executive management, academic support staff, and academics to evaluate their institution’s capacity to improve student success. through icat, the university gained several benefits: insight into the key capacities for student success, stakeholder engagement across all areas of the institution using a common framework to share opinions and identify perception gaps, prioritization of areas for improvement, and the development of strategies to build and strengthen student success interventions. keywords: student success, student support, stakeholder engagement, icat. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 2 citation: ndebele, c., & mbodila, m. (2025). leveraging on stakeholder involvement to create a student success culture through institutional capacity assessment at a university in south africa, current issues in education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2310 accepted: october 20th, 2025 leveraging on stakeholder involvement to create a student success culture through institutional capacity assessment at a university in south africa efforts to promote student success in higher education institutions (heis) have underscored the importance of fostering a supportive and inclusive academic culture. stakeholder involvement is critical to student success initiatives in any institution of higher learning. by involving various stakeholders – including academic staff, administrative assistants, students, and outside partners – plans to improve student outcomes are more likely to consider the whole university community's needs, viewpoints, and expertise. this article investigates how a south african institution might foster a culture of student achievement by utilizing stakeholder involvement through an institutional capacity assessment tool (icat). south africa's higher education system faces difficulties due to systematic inequalities that resulted from apartheid, socioeconomic gaps, and differing degrees of academic readiness. the historical and socioeconomic background of south africa makes these difficulties especially acute. a comprehensive strategy that includes stakeholder involvement and institutional capacity building is needed to address these concerns. the icat offers a strong framework for assessing and enhancing the institutional capabilities required to promote student achievement. the icat provides actionable insights for capacity development by methodically evaluating important domains like leadership, governance, financial management, human resources, and service delivery. this allows for the identification of strengths and areas for improvement. this study explores how a south african university can leverage the icat to engage stakeholders and foster a sustainable culture of student success. it examines the outcomes of the capacity assessment, evaluates the roles and contributions of various stakeholders in the assessment process, and assesses their impact on institutional strategies and student success initiatives. this study aims to provide a model for other academic institutions operating in similar environments by highlighting the mutual benefits of stakeholder engagement and institutional capacity evaluation. the paper is structured as follows: first, a review of relevant literature on student success, stakeholder involvement, and institutional capacity assessment; second, an outline of the research design and methodology; third, a presentation of findings from the case study; and finally, a discussion on the implications for policy and practice. regarding policy, the findings emphasize the need for a more inclusive and collaborative approach to student success initiatives. regarding practice, they highlight the importance of leveraging stakeholder involvement and using tools like icat for capacity development. https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2310 ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 3 literature review student success in higher education promoting student success has been a significant focus of most higher education institutions for several decades. literature has revealed that student success in higher education is a multifaceted concept ranging from academic achievement, personal development, and postgraduation outcomes (engle and tinto, 2008; kuh, 2008; kuh et al.,2005; tinto, 2012). the fact that more students from a broader range of backgrounds are enrolled in higher education institutions and that this trend is expected to continue has brought greater attention to this issue (nces, 2014; trow, 2007). furthermore, most university dropouts occur during or after their first year of study (credé & niehorster, 2012; willcoxson et al., 2011). understanding student success, especially in their first year, is crucial because obtaining a degree has been associated with cognitive, social, and economic benefits for individuals, their families, and society at large (de koning et al., 2013; mayhew et al., 2016). student success in higher education is a comprehensive and multidimensional construct encompassing various aspects of a student's academic and personal development. it goes beyond academic achievement to include persistence, graduation, and post-graduation outcomes such as career readiness and lifelong learning. central to student success is holistic development, which integrates academic, emotional, and social growth. factors such as institutional support, student engagement, and the availability of resources and opportunities play critical roles in fostering student success initiatives. effective teaching practices, robust student advising systems, student counselling, and inclusive campus environments are essential in supporting students' journey through higher education. in addition, student success is not just about acquiring knowledge but also about developing skills, resilience, and a sense of belonging created by the institution, which empowers students to thrive both during their academic careers and beyond. in order to promote student success and retention, tinto (2012) highlighted the importance of institutional support, which includes engagement opportunities, academic advice, and mentoring. institutions that foster a sense of belonging and community amongst their students tend to have higher student success rates (tinto, 2012). according to kuh et al. (2005), institutions that adopted student-centred learning approaches, such as active learning, collaborative projects, and experiential learning, enhanced student engagement and academic performance. the socioeconomic background of students also significantly impacted their success. engle and tinto (2008) discussed how financial aid, scholarships, and support services are critical in helping economically disadvantaged students succeed. furthermore, kuh (2008) identified high-impact educational practices, such as undergraduate research, service learning, and internships, as crucial for fostering deep learning and personal development, thereby enhancing student success. in the south african higher education context, student success is influenced by unique socio-economic and historical factors. the literature highlighted key themes such as historical inequality and equity, financial constraints, academic preparedness, and institutional intervention or support (badat, 2010; letseka & maile, 2008; mwangi et al., 2018; themane & mabasa, 2022; vambe et al., 2025; yeld & hendry, 2007). letseka and maile (2008) specifically examined the impact of historical inequalities and the need for equity in higher education. academic underpreparedness remains a central challenge. according to the council on higher education (che, 2013), south africa’s higher education quality council, ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 4 underpreparedness manifests in various ways, from struggling in the formal curriculum to difficulty with adjusting to independent study and a university environment. “it takes different forms in different subject areas but the common feature in all settings is that what the students know and can do – attainments that were good enough to gain them entry to higher education – do not match the expectations of the institution (che, 2013, p. 57).” research consistently highlights how the current south african school curriculum fails to adequately prepare learners for the demands of tertiary education (chiramba & ndofirepi, 2023; jansen, 2011; mabulana, 2025). this mismatch between curriculum in schools and the expectations of higher education, sometimes referred to as “the articulation gap,” is problematic in that high school education does not end where higher education begins (chauke & malatji, 2024; moyo, 2020; nthabiseng et al., 2024; tewari, 2016; tewari & ilesanmi, 2020). this misalignment between the learning requirements of higher education programs and the actual knowledge and competencies that the students bring from the schooling system leaves many underprepared. as the che (2013) concluded, what can be said with confidence is that many students entering universities are underprepared for the traditional forms of higher education at present offered in south africa. songca et al. (2021) revealed that these historical inequalities originate from the differentiation and diversification along the lines of race and ethnicity, resulting in the advantages of historically white institutions and the disadvantages of historically black institutions. badat (2010) argued for the importance of improving student success among traditionally disadvantaged groups to address these disparities. letseka and maile (2008) discussed the impact of historical inequalities and the need for equity in higher education, arguing that addressing past disparities is crucial for improving student success among previously disadvantaged groups. according to scott et al. (2007), financial constraints remained the most significant barrier to student success in south africa among the more disadvantaged. the authors advocated for increased financial aid and support services to help students from lowincome backgrounds. further, badat (2010) highlighted the varying levels of academic preparedness among students entering university. the need for foundational programs and academic support to bridge the preparedness gap was also emphasised. mwangi et al. (2018) examined the efficiency of institutional interventions, such as tutoring, mentoring, and supplemental instruction, in enhancing student success. they found that targeted support services are essential for improving retention and graduation rates. institutional capacity assessment institutional capacity assessment in higher education is essential for evaluating and enhancing institutions' overall effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability. numerous frameworks, approaches, and effects on institutional performance and student outcomes are covered in the research on this subject. lusthaus et al. (2002) provided a comprehensive framework for organisational assessment that includes examining organizational motivation, capacity, and performance to help institutions identify their strengths and areas needing improvement. these frameworks provide a structured approach to identifying strengths and areas for improvement. kaplan (2000) highlighted the importance of capacity building, emphasising the development of internal capacities to address opportunities and challenges from the outside world. kaplan's work emphasised the significance of organisational learning and innovation in capacity evaluation. in their discussion of the function of quality assurance in institutional capacity assessment, harvey and williams (2010) emphasised the necessity of ongoing process ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 5 improvement to uphold institutional responsibility and high educational standards. according to schofield (1998), benchmarking is an essential instrument for evaluating an institution's capabilities since it enables organisations to analyze their performance against best practices and make necessary adjustments. the importance of strategic planning and implementation in institutional capability evaluation was examined by bryson et al. (2006). according to their research, organisations with strong strategic plans are more likely to accomplish their objectives and improve overall performance. amaral and magalhães (2002) investigated the connection between institutional capability and governance structures, pointing out that the resilience and flexibility of institutions depended on efficient governance. in his emphasis on the value of leadership development in capacity building, sullivan (2004) made the case that institutions need strong leadership to be guided through times of transition and to ensure sustainable development. in their discussion of the vital role that faculty development played in enhancing institutional capacity, bland et al. (2005) stressed the clear correlation between faculty skill development and professional advancement and the institution's capacity to fulfil its educational mandate. the majority of the literature on the institutional capacity assessment in higher education provided a comprehensive overview, highlighting issues such as frameworks, quality assurance, performance impacts, continuous development and the importance of capacity building and leadership development (amaral & magalhães, 2002; bland et al., 2005; bryson et al., 2006; harvey & williams, 2010; kaplan, 2000; lusthaus et al., 2002; schofield, 1998; sullivan, 2004). in south africa, institutional capacity assessment is crucial for addressing historical disparities and promoting equitable access to quality higher education (songca et al., 2021). the significance of institutional capability evaluation in promoting fairness and transformation in south african higher education was examined by badat (2010). it entails evaluating an institution's capacity to offer accessible and inclusive education to all societal groups. the importance of governance and leadership in institutional capability was emphasized by cloete et al. (2004). steering organizations toward their strategic goals and raising overall performance requires effective leadership. the effect of financial management on institutional ability at south african institutions was investigated by kraak (2004), who showed how sustainability and the effective use of resources depend on sound financial practices. lastly, in evaluating institutional competence, the council on higher education (che) (2004) emphasized the need for quality assurance systems. the importance of the institutional capacity assessment tool (icat) in creating a student success culture historically, educational institutions have relied on traditional metrics such as test scores and graduation rates to measure success. however, these metrics often fail to capture educational quality and effectiveness's complex and multifaceted nature (darling-hammond, 2010). consequently, there has been a shift towards more comprehensive approaches considering a broader range of factors, including leadership quality, staff competencies, resource allocation, and organisational culture. the icat is pivotal in fostering a culture of student success by providing a comprehensive framework to evaluate and enhance institutional capabilities across critical domains such as leadership, governance, financial management, human resources, and service delivery (lusthaus et al., 2002), as shown in figure 1. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 6 figure 1 institutional capacity assessment areas note. archive, siyaphumelela a saide initiative. retrieved from https://siyaphumelela.org.za/surveys24.php) by systematically identifying strengths and areas for improvement, icat empowers institutions to develop targeted strategies that address specific challenges impeding student success, promoting a data-driven approach to decision-making and resource allocation (kaplan, 2000). furthermore, icat facilitates stakeholder engagement, involving faculty, staff, students, and external partners in a collaborative process that builds a shared commitment to creating an environment conducive to academic, social, and personal student development (bryson et al., 2006). this comprehensive assessment tool enhances institutional effectiveness and cultivates a supportive, inclusive, and responsive educational culture that prioritises and actively promotes student success (harvey & williams, 2010). in the context of this study, the icat is used to help one university in south africa assess its capacity to enable student success and identify strengths and areas for improvement. theoretical framework: stakeholder salience model stakeholder involvement entails collaborating with individuals and utilising available resources to facilitate collective efforts toward achieving shared objectives and goals (bartle, 2007). duke and gansneder (1990) argued that involving stakeholders in school decision-making is essential, not just for democratic reasons but because educational innovations rarely succeed without their participation. in higher education, stakeholder involvement remains equally crucial to ensure that institutions stay responsive to community needs and adaptable to changing societal demands. this study is premised on the stakeholder salience model as proposed by mitchell et al. (1997). the stakeholder salience theory asserts that managers of organisations and projects should consider the interests of individuals or groups affected by the organisation (gupta et al., https://siyaphumelela.org.za/surveys24.php ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 7 2020; shafique & gabriel, 2022) and is used as a guide to help managers identify and prioritise stakeholders and their interests (crane, 2020). the model provides a framework for prioritizing stakeholders based on three key attributes: power, legitimacy, and urgency. power refers to a stakeholder’s ability to influence the organization, legitimacy is the perceived appropriateness of their relationship with the organization, and urgency reflects the time-sensitivity, that is, the time interval in which the response to a request produces a useful effect (bores, 2022; del águila & del sagrado, 2023; raha et al., 2021; shafique & gabriel 2022; van dijka et al., 2021). the model identifies seven types of stakeholders by varying combinations of these attributes, ranging from latent stakeholders, possessing only one attribute and having low priority, to definitive stakeholders, possessing all three attributes and requiring immediate attention (covin et al., 2020; freeman et al., 2020; kapiriri & razavi, 2021). this model helps organizations identify and respond effectively to stakeholders based on the significance of their claims, ensuring resource allocation aligns with strategic priorities. figure 2 gives an overview of the stakeholder salience model (mitchell et al., 1997). figure 2 the stakeholder salience model note. mitchell, agle, and wood, 1997. in applying the stakeholder salience model to the context of higher education, kezar and lester (2011) emphasised the importance of collaborative governance, where stakeholders, including students, staff, and external partners, are actively involved in decision-making processes. this approach fosters a sense of ownership and accountability. bringle and hatcher (2002) emphasized that community engagement strengthens stakeholder involvement and encourages higher education institutions to collaborate with community stakeholders and local partners to enrich student learning and enhance institutional relevance. according to etzkowitz ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 8 and leydesdorff (2000), partnerships between universities and industry stakeholders are vital for driving innovation and economic development, aligning educational programs with labour market needs to prepare graduates for their careers. lizzio and wilson (2009) highlighted the importance of student participation in institutional governance. engaging students in decisionmaking processes empowered them and led to more effective and inclusive policies. in south africa, stakeholder involvement in higher education is crucial for addressing the country's unique socioeconomic and historical challenges caused by apartheid. badat (2010) discussed the need for inclusive stakeholder engagement to address the historical inequities that have shaped south african higher education. engaging diverse stakeholders ensures that policies and practices are equitable and inclusive. jansen (2002) also observed the role of stakeholders in policy development and implementation, emphasising the importance of involving government, academia, and civil society in shaping higher education reforms. further, cele (2004) highlighted the importance of amplifying student voices in institutional governance. ensuring students actively participate in decision-making processes is crucial for creating a responsive and inclusive educational environment. bender (2008) stated that fostering social and economic growth requires forging strong relationships between academic institutions, local communities, and business sectors. these collaborations help coordinate academic curricula with societal and economic demands to support students throughout their academic journey and beyond. methodology present case study the setting of this present case study is the south african higher education system, a landscape marked by significant inequalities among institutions, driven by their diverse geographic locations, levels of resourcing, and distinct cultural, racial, and political histories (leibowitz et al., 2015; leibowitz et al., 2017). under the oppressive regimes of apartheid and colonialism, these social inequalities were deeply entrenched and permeated all facets of social life, including the higher education system (songca et al., 2021). this systemic exclusion particularly marginalised black individuals and women, reflecting and reinforcing the broader societal injustices of the time (badat, 2010). even after thirty years of democracy, the lingering effects of apartheid continue to shape the landscape, leaving student experiences at historically black universities—often situated in rural areas—deeply challenging. these institutions remain marked by isolation, neglect, and inadequate resource provisioning, creating environments that fall short of the educational ideals envisioned for a democratic south africa (hsrc, 2005; ndebele et al., 2017; songca et al., 2021). walter sisulu university (wsu) faces the challenge of enhancing student success despite the socioeconomic inequalities and historical inequities that characterise the students and the region. to address these challenges, wsu embarked on a strategic initiative to leverage stakeholder involvement through the icat. wsu has a diverse student population, many of whom come from underprivileged backgrounds with varying levels of academic preparedness. the university recognised that improving student outcomes required a comprehensive approach that involved all stakeholders, students, faculty, administrative staff, and other internal partners. to this end, wsu adopted the icat to assess its institutional capacity and identify areas for improvement to foster a supportive environment that promotes student success. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 9 research design and data analysis the icat survey utilizes various methods to analyze data tailored to its specific implementation and objectives. it is primarily designed to assess an institution’s capacity across key domains, including teaching and learning, institutional effectiveness, and student success. in the context of this case study, the data analysis procedure followed a systematic approach, comprising the following stages: tool presentation, survey dissemination via remote link management by the siyaphumelela project, data aggregation, data conversion and visualization, and stakeholder feedback and next steps, as illustrated in figure 3. figure 3 survey procedure note. diagrammatic representation of methodology by the authors tool presentation the objective of the tool presentation was to introduce the icat to key institutional committees and stakeholders for buy-in and awareness. comprehensive presentations were developed to communicate the tool’s purpose, methodological structure, validation process, and its significance in driving institutional improvement. the tool was presented at high-level forums, including faculty boards, the institutional management committee (imc), and senate meetings, with a focus on demonstrating its role in systematically assessing institutional strengths and gaps. emphasis was placed on how the survey data would directly inform strategies to enhance teaching quality, learning outcomes, and operational efficiency across the institution. survey dissemination via newsdesk this step was aimed at ensuring all relevant stakeholders were informed and provided access to the survey link. an email communication introducing the survey, its purpose, and completion instructions was drafted and disseminated through the university’s newsdesk platform, which is an online platform for sharing communication. the email included the survey link, managed by the siyaphumelela project. the siyaphumelela project is a south african higher education project funded by kresge foundation from the usa with the aim to: 1) improve capacity to ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 10 collect student data and integrate it with institutional research, information communication technology, academic development, student services, planning and academic divisions, 2) create south african models of universities using successful data analytics to improve student outcomes, 3) create greater awareness and support for evidence to improve student success in south africa, 4) create and highlight a shared vocabulary and consensus on especially effective practices to improve student success and 5) enlarge the cadre of experienced institutional researchers versed in data analytics to support student success. in addition, stakeholders were provided with a deadline for completing the survey. the administrator in the siyaphumelela project centralised and streamlined data collection to ensure secure and efficient data handling. the university collaborated with the siyaphumelela project to manage the survey link. the siyaphumelela project ensured that the link remained active, functional, and accessible to participants until the closing date and monitored the progress of survey completion. for the institution to have better perceptions of the various salient stakeholders as well as to align interventions and address gaps to reflect the actual experiences of all stakeholder groups, data on various stakeholder identities were captured on the survey. rather than relying on aggregated data that may mask important disparities, this breakdown provides actionable intelligence to strategically allocate resources, address role-specific needs, and foster evidencebased improvements where they matter most. table 1 displays the various categories of salient stakeholders who participated in the survey in order to give a picture of the stakeholders who have embraced the integrated student success initiative. table 1 participants by stakeholder category and role data analysis and interpretation through data analysis, we derived actionable insights from the survey data. data aggregation and visualization were conducted through the descriptive research approach, which relies primarily on low-inference, low-assumption methods that use no or minimal statistical adjustments with basic frequency analysis presented through figures as a particularly useful tool (loeb et al., 2017). under descriptive research, graphs, charts, and tables can be used to display descriptive statistics in a way that is easy to understand and interpret in this approach (alabi & bukola, 2023; ghanad, 2023; wolniak, 2023). pie charts were used to identify patterns, strengths, and areas requiring improvement. participant function number executive management 5 academic staff 36 student development and support services 6 student academic support 10 peer learning support 6 total 63 ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 11 results this section presents the key findings that emerged from our analysis across the main areas of the evaluation. the capacity levels are categorized into four tiers: level 1 represents a minimal capacity level where foundational structures are in place but require significant strengthening. level 2 indicates that basic capacity has been established, though further development is still needed. level 3 reflects a strong and well-developed capacity level, demonstrating consistent effectiveness. finally, level 4 signifies an exemplary capacity level, where best practices are fully institutionalized and serve as a model for excellence. from the identified themes for the study, more than half of the participants felt either a strong or exemplary level of capacity had been developed for the following six themes: 1) the extent to which professional development meets the needs of academics, 2) demonstration of evidence-based, innovative, and reflective teaching practices, 3) integration of teaching excellence in university hiring retention and promotion policies and practices, 4) provision of career guidance services, 5) integration of academic and non-academic support for students, and 6) provision of personalized student support services. meanwhile, fewer than half of the participants believed that either a strong or exemplary level had been achieved in the following four themes: 1) instructional practices that acknowledge the diversity of student backgrounds, 2) evidence-based data-driven interventions, 3) application of aligned research-based instructional practices, and 4) responsiveness to basic student needs that might affect their performance. these four dimensions, which participants feel need further capacity, are critical for student success. three of them relate directly to issues that may affect student performance, while the fourth relates to scholarly teaching informed by research, which has a bearing on the effectiveness of the teaching. application of aligned research-based instructional practices the first question in figure 3 examined whether applied, research-based instructional practices align with the institution's vision and goals for student success. in alignment with the institution's vision and mission, applied, research-based instructional practices are essential for fostering academic excellence, addressing diverse learning needs, and promoting continuous improvement in teaching and learning. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 12 figure 4 application of aligned research-based instructional practices from the findings, 25% of the 36 participants felt that a strong level of capacity had been established to enable academic staff to apply research-based instructional practices that align with the institution's vision and goals for student success, with 21% of the participants citing an exemplary level of capacity in place. findings further suggest that while there is a substantial foundation (80%) for enabling academic staff to apply research-based instructional practices, the quality and depth of implementation vary. the fact that only 46% of the participants rated the capacity as strong or exemplary suggests that while progress has been made, there is still significant room for improvement. the institutions may need to focus on enhancing the consistency and effectiveness of these practices to ensure they are fully embedded across departments and adequately support the institution's vision for student success. this could involve targeted professional development, better resource allocation, or stronger alignment between institutional policies and teaching practices. instructional practices that acknowledge the diversity of student backgrounds looking at the diversity of students at the institution, there was a need to understand instructional practices that acknowledge the diversity of student backgrounds, which is crucial because it ensures that education is inclusive, equitable, and effective for all learners. at this institution, students come from varied cultural, social, economic, and educational contexts, which influence how they engage with and understand the material. figure 5 presents the feelings of the participants in this area. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 13 figure 5 instructional practices that acknowledge the diversity of student backgrounds in response to the question on whether instructional practices acknowledge student diversity, 36% of participants indicated that only a minimum level of capacity had been established, while only 20% reported an exemplary level of capacity in place. this suggests that while efforts to incorporate diverse teaching methodologies are underway, they may not yet be fully developed or implemented effectively across the institution. there is a need for further emphasis on building capacity, providing professional development, and embedding inclusive practices to ensure all students' diverse backgrounds are comprehensively addressed, thereby promoting equity and inclusivity in learning environments. the extent to which professional development meets the needs of academics one question examined whether professional development that meets the needs of academics is essential for effective teaching practices. figure 6 presents participants’ responses to this question. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 14 figure 6 the extent to which professional development meets the needs of academics from figure 6, 35% of participants felt that a strong level of capacity had been established to address the professional development needs of academics at various stages of their careers, with 20% citing an exemplary level of capacity in place. the finding suggests that while professional development support is available, it may not fully meet all academics' diverse and evolving needs, particularly across different career stages. the institution should aim to strengthen these efforts by tailoring professional development opportunities, ensuring equitable access, and focusing on practical, evidence-based training to enhance teaching quality and career advancement. demonstration of evidence-based, innovative, and reflective teaching practices demonstrating evidence-based, innovative, and reflective teaching practices is crucial for enhancing student success, nurturing professional growth, and staying attuned to the dynamic evolution of education. figure 7 presents the participants' responses in alignment with this inquiry. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 15 figure 7 demonstration of evidence-based, innovative, and reflective teaching practices the results show that only 34% of respondents believed there had been some degree of progress in building the necessary capacity to enable academics to effectively demonstrate evidence-based, innovative, and reflective teaching practices. furthermore, only 19% percent of those surveyed felt that the level of capacity established was exemplary, suggesting that more needs to be done to capacitate and empower academics to enable them to adopt advanced and effective teaching strategies. integration of teaching excellence in university hiring, retention, and promotion policies and practices in line with the university's strategic goals, excellence in teaching is one of the institution's focus areas; integrating teaching excellence into university policies will foster a teaching-focused culture that benefits students, enhances faculty development, improves institutional quality, and supports the university's overall mission to provide a top-tier educational experience. figure 8 shows the feelings of participants when asked about the integration of teaching excellence in university hiring, retention, and promotion policies and practices. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 16 figure 8 integration of teaching excellence in university hiring, retention, and promotion policies and practices from the responses, 36% of participants felt that a strong level of capacity had been established to ensure that teaching excellence was integrated with university hiring, retention, and promotion policies and practices, with 26% reporting an exemplary level of capacity. this implies that a majority (62%) of participants believed this capacity was not just in place but advanced. this suggests that the institution is successfully fostering a strong focus on teaching quality within its academic workforce management practices. provision of personalised student support services an institution dedicated to fostering academic success, retention, engagement, and holistic development strongly emphasises personalised student support services. figure 9 illustrates the participants' responses regarding the provision of these services. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 17 figure 9 provision of personalised student support services from figure 9, 50% of participants felt that either a strong level or exemplary level of capacity has been established, and the institution had redesigned university processes so they are more personalized in order to better support students. the fact that only half of the participants felt that the level of capacity established was either strong or exemplary reflects that while the institution is on the right track in creating a more personalized environment for student support, more still needs to be done to improve personalized student support services. responsiveness to basic student needs that might affect their performance responsiveness to basic student needs is one of the key indicators under the icat survey. figure 10 shows participants' feelings on the extent to which the institution’s interventions are responsive to basic student needs. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 18 figure 10 responsiveness to basic student needs that might affect their performance from the findings in figure 10, 51% of participants felt that either a strong or exemplary level of capacity had been established to address basic student needs that might affect their attendance, class participation, and overall university engagement. these respondents believe the institution has made commendable efforts to address basic student needs, suggesting that the institution is proactive in supporting students by tackling challenges such as financial difficulties, mental health issues, or other personal circumstances that may affect their academic involvement. however, since 44% of the participants did not agree that adequate capacity had been developed to address these basic needs, the university should identify this as a priority area for improvement. integration of academic and non-academic support for students one of the challenges faced by higher education institutions is overcoming the silo mentality that separates academic and non-academic departments in providing student support. one survey question addressed this issue by examining efforts to foster a more collaborative working environment. figure 11 presents participants’ responses. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 19 figure 11 integration of academic and non-academic supports for students 16% of participants reported that a strong level of capacity had been established, indicating that the institution is working to integrate academic and non-academic supports for students. meanwhile, 41% reported an exemplary level of capacity. together, these results suggest that a majority (57%) of participants believe the institution has developed the capacity to provide a more holistic and interconnected support system that addresses both academic needs (e.g., tutoring, course advising) and non-academic needs (e.g., counseling and career services). overall, this indicates that the institution is on track toward creating a more unified and supportive environment for student success. this holistic approach ensures that students receive the right support at the right time, whether they are struggling with academic challenges or personal issues. it dismantles the barriers between academic and non-academic departments, fostering collaboration and enabling more seamless, timely interventions. for instance, in the dlt model, staff from various units collaborate with student affairs; when a student is identified as at risk, the shared data allows for prompt action. if a student is facing mental health difficulties, their academic performance may suffer, but with access to both counselling and tutoring, they can better navigate the emotional and academic challenges they face. provision of career guidance services figure 12 presents participants' responses to a question regarding the provision of career guidance services at the institution, with their responses on this matter detailed below. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 20 figure 12 provision of career guidance services from the findings, 22% of participants felt that an exemplary level of capacity had been established and that the institution provides guidance to help all students make informed career choices, with 31% reporting a strong level of capacity in place. this indicates that the institution recognizes the importance of supporting students' career development from an early stage. the finding that 47% did not agree that adequate systems are in place to guide students in making informed career decisions from the outset highlights the need to better promote these initiatives among all university stakeholders to ensure broader participation in student career guidance. evidence-based data-driven interventions a question was posed to assess whether participants believe the institution is utilising evidence-based, data-driven interventions for student support and institutional practices. figure 13 illustrates the participants' responses on this matter. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 21 figure 13 evidence-based data-driven interventions from the above findings, 44% of participants felt that either a strong or exemplary level of capacity had been established, and that data was regularly used to improve instructional practices. this indicates that while the ideal has not yet been reached, the institution has started actively leveraging data to enhance teaching and learning. by establishing the student tracking unit in the directorate of learning and teaching (dlt) in 2021, the institution has made significant strides in building a data-driven university. these efforts are focused on addressing key areas that require targeted student interventions, ensuring a more proactive and informed approach to student success. overall, this reflects that while the institution has made strides in integrating data into its instructional practices, efforts need to be made to reach more of the stakeholders who work with student data. discussion the findings reveal a complex landscape of institutional capacity for supporting instructional practices, professional development, student services, and policy alignment. research-based instructional practices research-based instructional practices have laid a solid foundation for aligning teaching with institutional goals. however, the gap between general and exemplary capacities, as shown in the results, suggests an opportunity to enhance the quality and consistency of these practices across departments. training in culturally responsive pedagogy could be a strategic focus to strengthen diversity in teaching practices. there is a need for further emphasis on building capacity, providing professional development, and embedding inclusive practices to ensure all students' diverse backgrounds are comprehensively considered, thereby promoting equity and inclusivity in learning environments. the scholarship of teaching and learning (sotl) provides ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 22 an opportunity to ground instructional practices in research. major and braxton (2020) showed that a scholarly approach to teaching entails being familiar with the latest ideas in one’s subject, being informed by current ideas for teaching that subject, and reflecting on one’s teaching practice and the student learning. sotl work provides a space for disciplinary academics to expand their knowledge about teaching and learning and empowers them to transform and extend their knowledge of university teaching and learning (behari-leak, 2024). data-driven personalised services are vital for student success data-driven personalised services are critical for fostering student success, particularly in diverse educational contexts such as wsu. the icat survey highlights the importance of institutional capacity in utilising data effectively to enhance student outcomes. by leveraging scalable solutions like the implementation of an early warning system using predictive analytics, the university can identify at-risk students early, allowing for timely and tailored interventions that meet their unique needs (ifenthaler et al.,2021). at wsu, where students often come from varied socio-economic and educational backgrounds, early detection of struggling students using predictive analytics offers a powerful tool to bridge gaps in academic performance and support retention efforts (ndebele et al., 2017; songca et al., 2021). for example, data patterns derived from learning management systems, well-being records, student academic background records, digital literacy, attendance records, and assessment results can help pinpoint students who may struggle academically or socially (mbaleki et al., 2023). this enables the institution to allocate resources more effectively, such as offering targeted tutoring, counselling, or peer mentorship programs. however, achieving these outcomes requires significant infrastructure and human capital investment. integrating analytics tools and dashboards, alongside comprehensive training for academic staff and student support staff, can empower educators and administrators to make informed decisions that directly improve teaching quality and student engagement. using data-driven insights into teaching practices, wsu can enhance the alignment between its instructional strategies and the diverse needs of its student population (ifenthaler et al., 2021). while implementing an early warning system using predictive analytics is a promising approach, the results from the icat survey underscore the need for more inclusive and holistic strategies. these strategies must account for the university’s unique demographic and cultural context, ensuring that interventions address academic challenges and support students’ social and emotional well-being. such integration fosters a more equitable learning environment where all students, regardless of their backgrounds, have the opportunity to thrive. integrated approach one of the challenges identified in higher education is the need to break down the silo mentality that separates academic and non-academic departments in supporting students. reviewing academic support programmes across several countries, kezar and holcombe (2018) found that although numerous interventions have been developed to support students, few are comprehensive or connect existing initiatives into an integrated framework that links curricular innovation with out-of-class support for first-year students. they further argue that integrated programs combining curricular and co-curricular supports may be more effective in serving historically underserved students. findings from this study similarly indicated that most respondents believe the institution has made significant progress in developing the capacity to integrate academic and non-academic ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 23 support for students. this suggests an ongoing institutional effort to create a more holistic and interconnected system that addresses both academic needs (e.g., tutoring, course advising) and non-academic needs (e.g., counselling, career services). a new model initiated in the university under study (directorate of learning and teaching (dlt) strategic plan 2024) has seen academic support staff in dlt, which is a centralised academic support directorate in the university, being redeployed to faculties to provide integrated academic support at the faculty level. this move enhances integration, fostering collaboration between academic support staff and academic staff. reporting on communities of practice (cop) initiative that sought to improve the culture of learning and teaching at an australian university, bridge et al. (2024), found indications that these cop promoted collaboration by functioning as loci of cross-institutional consultation and coordination, which bridged “the divide between academic, policy, administrative and support units, therefore holds promise in facilitating cross-institutional understanding and collaboration” (p. 38), providing the basis for an enhanced student experience. in addition, bridge et al. (2024) found that the cops increased connectivity through improved collaboration between academic departments and centralised policy and support units and created spaces in which shared understandings of key concepts and policy details could be negotiated. other studies have also foregrounded the issue of integrated student academic support services. tinto (2012) observes that “too often, institutions invest in a laundry list of actions, one disconnected from another. the result is an uncoordinated patchwork of actions whose impact on student retention is less than it could or should be” (p. 5). reporting on an academic advising student support initiative conducted at two universities in australia, picton et al. (2024) argued that to achieve a whole university approach to advising, a focus on embedding a shared philosophy of supporting and developing students across all university activities is needed, where facets of advising are the integrated responsibility of all staff and areas of the university. picton et al. (2024) further recommend that universities should devote time to developing staff understanding of roles and responsibilities within a whole university approach. consultation and regular discussion among academics, institutional policymakers, administration, and support units help to forge a stronger sense of identification with the institution and to overcome perceptions that policies are centrally imposed, which is sometimes the source of academic resistance (bridge et al., 2024; hewett et al., 2017; stensaker, 2015). responsiveness to basic student needs that might affect their performance responsiveness to basic student needs is crucial because it directly impacts students' ability to succeed academically. students face a range of challenges, from financial hardship and housing insecurity to mental health struggles and family responsibilities (camelia & ramona, 2018; kezar & holcombe, 2018; nurmalitasari et al., 2023; thielking et al., 2019). if these needs are not addressed, they can hinder a student's focus, motivation, and overall well-being, ultimately affecting their academic performance. in this study, the lower percentage of 38% that reported either a strong or exemplary level of capacity in place in this responsiveness highlights the need for robust initiatives, including accessible food security programs, mental health support, and financial aid. capacity building of those working with students is key to ensuring interventions to mitigate these challenges are effective. while the importance of tailoring support services to meet the needs of diverse student cohorts is recognised, findings by kilmartin et al. (2024) highlighted the need to provide ongoing professional development to support practitioners in the delivery of nuanced support services to students. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 24 in their study in the context of australia, li and carroll (2017) identified the strong need to provide support to students from vulnerable groups from an early stage to prevent such students from dropping out relatively early in their courses. this is because, as thielking et al. (2019) noted, over half of the student respondents from their study reported a moderate to high level of financial stress in relation to being able to afford study and living costs. with regard to career guidance and counselling as a personalised service, the fact that 38% of respondents in this study felt minimal capacity had been built in this area means that the university needs to flag this as an area for improvement. early career guidance is critical in preventing misalignment between student aspirations and academic paths, and the institution should consider embedding career counselling within the curriculum. in this regard, camelia and ramona (2018) contend that factors leading to university dropout may be psycho-pedagogical, including a lack of counselling services. to conclude, responsiveness to students’ basic needs student needs that influence their performance requires the university to adopt the four fundamental principles of academic support: inclusivity, personalisation and integration, developmental focus, and student-centredness (mcintosh, 2023; picton et al., 2024). integration of teaching excellence in university hiring, retention, and promotion policies and practices teaching excellence is a cornerstone of effective higher education, yet its recognition within academic hiring, retention, and promotion policies often lags behind research output. while many academics feel empowered to adopt innovative and reflective teaching practices, institutional policies must explicitly reward and incentivise these efforts to embed them within the culture of teaching excellence. this involves establishing clear, measurable criteria for evaluating teaching excellence and aligning it with the frameworks used to assess research productivity (olsson & roxå, 2017). from the responses in this study, some level of capacity has been established to ensure that teaching excellence is integrated with university hiring, retention, and promotion policies and practices. this suggests that the institution is successfully fostering a strong focus on teaching quality within its academic workforce management practices. embedding teaching excellence into hiring, retention, and promotion policies ensures a holistic approach to academic success. it shifts the focus toward creating a supportive environment where teaching innovation and student engagement are encouraged and rewarded, fostering a culture of continuous improvement in higher education. results from a study to qualify the impact of receiving a national or regional united states department of agriculture teaching, extension, and research award (tera) on teaching identity by bethel et al. (2021), suggestted that departmental and college level administrators can foster subcultures that promote teaching excellence through providing access to professional development opportunities, support for peer mentoring and evaluation, and revised promotion and tenure policies that recognize teaching effectiveness as a productivity metric. literature indicates that some universities have established strong frameworks to foster teaching excellence. for example, sanders et al. (2020) advanced that initiatives which include teaching fellowships and awards, promotion and reward systems, professional development opportunities, and schemes for professional recognition have contributed directly or indirectly to the development of teaching excellence within the higher education sector. however, there is a clear need for tailored professional development programs that cater to academics at different stages of their careers. for instance, early-career lecturers and adjunct faculty often face unique challenges, such as limited mentorship access or reduced professional growth opportunities. ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 25 tailoring development initiatives to address these needs can help bridge gaps and promote equity among academic staff (van der sluis et al., 2022). conclusion in conclusion, the study has provided valuable insights for the university to leverage in implementing effective student success initiatives. discussions on the institutional capacity assessment process and its results by the internal stakeholders are essential for the development of management policies and institutional planning. the results provide a structured approach to identifying strengths and areas for improvement, and foreground the importance of capacity building, emphasizing the development of internal capacities to address opportunities and challenges facing organisations. the following implications are drawn from the findings. implications for policy the institution should prioritise evidence-based strategies to foster teaching excellence and inclusive practices, ensuring these efforts are aligned with broader institutional goals. this alignment will create a more cohesive and impactful approach to student success and institutional growth. implications for practice academics and administrators require ongoing support and collaboration to effectively address the diverse needs of students, optimise resource allocation, and innovate teaching methodologies. strong communication and joint efforts will be key to meeting these challenges and enhancing student outcomes. the findings highlight notable achievements while also identifying strategic areas for improvement. addressing these areas will elevate the overall quality of education and enrich the student experience, creating a more inclusive and supportive academic environment for student success at the university under study. references badat, s. 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(2011). beyond the first-year experience: the impact on attrition of student experiences throughout undergraduate degree studies in six diverse universities. studies in higher education, 36, 331–352. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070903581533 author notes clever ndebele https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4258-4812 walter sisulu university cndebele@wsu.ac.za munienge mbodila https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4158-9037 walter sisulu university mmbodila@wsu.ac.za more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://doi.org/10.3390/su141811765 https://doi.org/10.24085/jsaa.v9i1.1427 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9763-8 https://doi.org/10.25916/5cda0897ec397 https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070903581533 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4258-4812 mailto:cndebele@wsu.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4158-9037 mailto:mmbodila@wsu.ac.za https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ndebele & mbodila: building a student success culture current issues in education, 26(2) 29 this step was aimed at ensuring all relevant stakeholders were informed and provided access to the survey link. an email communication introducing the survey, its purpose, and completion instructions was drafted and disseminated through the university...